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Reviews
San ti (2023)
Condescending & Cliche
The manner in which this project presents the great Western influences that effectively caused China to imitate Mozart, much more than China ever caused the West to imitate forced collective morning conformity synchronicity exercises, is nothing short of cliche propaganda. To them, Newton is a fey moron, Einstein is a psychopathic fiddler, etcetera. The truth is that Mao killed, what, 50-80 million of his own people to gain their enlightenment? This project does not even understand the concept of Buddha's nothingness; the emptying out of narcissistic ego. It instead glorifies academics, the most rotten of politicians, that cannot win against radically independent Western minds like those of John Nash or Wolfgang Mozart, so it ends up hinting at off-Earth colonization where Mao brutalism might actually finally succeed. From this basically flawed narrative structure, how can this production even begin to communicate a higher understanding about humanity's future? Besides, what is its media niche? X Files? Elon Musk Martian hentai? TED Talks glib nonsense? Netflix now has a huge problem on its hands; kind of a wrong QB at the Panthers problem, if you know what I mean, in Western terminology? Those bad decisions ruin entire franchises. Also, now that China has failed utterly at both its cargo cult imitation of life in the States and its desperate attempt to critique the West, it is resolutely curling back into its incestuous collective concept. Their economic system is imploding, while ours is unparalleled. We should not expect major revenue from there, just loose coin for strange rotten fruit with limited shelf life offered by street peddlers. Turn to India short term and Africa long term. Oh, and the aliens, if they exist, are so far away that we will all go extinct before those distances are bridged. Do the life aquatic here and then off to the moon Europa. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.
Unforgotten: Episode #2.6 (2017)
Season Two Ending is Simply Brilliant
Life is but a dream. The Brits remind us that they have The Bard in all that they do when they do their narrative best. That dream is also a nightmare. Hamlet knew it as he paused clutching his bodkin, facing the existential threats we all eventually suffer, if we are allowed to live at all.
There is no greater suffering than that experienced by a child from a personal assault by a trusted adult. The West derives much of its authority falsely from the rape of the innocent, whether it be its children suffering at the hands of priests and teachers and familiars, or its adults suffering under the sadistic authority of university cults of future authority or the ranks of the military or any cut throat business enterprise the GNP depends upon.
At every turn there is a Bill or a Hillary or a Donald or an Ivanka or a Jared or a Vladimir-their manipulated armies of the abused waiting in the wings to act in thrall over permission to project their abuse on a monumental scale-who keeps the tradition of loyalty through sadistic abuse alive.
Then in the middle of the world falling apart because the abused no longer know how to inoculate themselves and others against a simple virus, comes the closing scene of season two of UNFORGOTTEN; we are saved by beautiful narrative that proves our species is not utterly rotten out to the core by the abuses of the elders.
The Bookshop (2017)
Know Quilty to Know Lolita
The pre-emption of any opinion about LOLITA, the "scandal" which this movie uses in tangential fashion to address the #METOO movement at several removes, resides in that opinion's focus on the humor (male imagined vapors?) of Nabakov's writing and to exclusion of and utter disregard for the young "anti-heroine's" lust for Quilty.
Deal with that conundrum or be damned in your pettiness and your petticoats. To refuse an assessment of Asia Argento on the way to condemning Weinstein is to perpetuate the blindness of the enabler...for example.
There is already a lot of cinema about the contemporary female dilemma pouring forth, but all of it will be tawdry, overwrought and insignificant, if it does not get to the killer in the female that makes her willfully wet with blood and other human discharges in the "honest" manner of Ms. Mortimer's daddy's murderers.
Killing Eve (2018)
Yes, precisely, who is leading?
The title of the closing episode to season three speaks volumes. The show belonged to Comer early on and it was exciting. Things have changed. This latest season was a snoozer. We got a lot more women with a lot more screen time, but who really cares, unless body counts (on the screen credits) is all that really matters. Politics destroys art. Proving points behind the camera is a cliche bore. Hearing Villanelle cry in exasperation that she does not want to do this anymore makes perfect sense. The show was a killer about killers created by killers, then the politics crept in, obviously.