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barleysinger
Reviews
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
WHy do people love this movie?
I love horror movies and I had heard about this one for ages. I don't expect them to all be masterpieces of film. I had heard and read about how wonderful Polanski was as a director & so I looked forward to a chance to see this film. I eventually saw the movie it and was very disappointing. From my standpoint it lacks any tight directing. The pacing crawls without any meaningful suspense. The main character looks like she has no idea what she ought to be doing. The cinematography looks like it was done by a film student who had never seen a horror movie. At some point you are supposed to start making things look and sound frightening.
Now many of the actors in that film were quite talented but they were used poorly by the director & frankly the script is lacking. The basic concept is sound but I found this rendition sorta sad.
So at that point I tried to learn more about Polanski and his work. I watched more of his stuff. I was underwhelmed. In my opinion he's in the same category as Woody Allen. Overrated. Not that talented. Pervy & creepy as a person.
It most probably was trying to lay down a parallel to an actual NYC cult that owned their own building and had famous members (Sullivan Institute) but with satan added in for a big scare; which never really comes. Ido think that the plot relies far to much on Christian religious indoctrination rather that trying to do things that are scary. I think that people who weren't indoctrinated as children to believe in and fear satan won't find the film scary or the plot very sensible.
The 100 (2014)
Fun story, terrrible science
* it would have taken many thousands of years for the earth to be in the post nuclear war situation that is presented with that many new (stable) established species
* humans do not become immune to radiation effects over the generations. Cosmic radiation is not at all the same as dangerous and long lasting radioactive isotopes that accumulate in species.
* the long term effects of living at lower gravity are serious and space stations that tumble cannot maintain enough force to simulate normal gravity.
* the space stations would have had to be much further from the planet for their size, or the stations would have had to have a whole lot of fuel to maintain such a low orbit
* it takes a massive technical culture to put a space station into orbit and to keep it there and running. They had no replacement parts. They had no way to get more fuel. They had no ability to get raw materials or manufacture items from them. They had no way to replace their stock of medical supplies. They would have needed a vast set of satellites just for food production even if they ate yeast. And their gene pool was too small without the a very cautious and intentional breeding program that was not about personal choices.
* the Mountain Men could not have maintained their high tech culture for 1000 years as all their technology would have long since stopped working, as it would have required impossible repairs with nonexistent parts.
Bad Santa (2003)
Tried for satire, misssed and found pathos
The movie is well put together but I think the writers and director/producer team missed on a basic concept of humor. This is the sort of dark humor (or an attempt at it) where a character we expect to act one way, doesn't - and you need certain other elements for that to be funny, none of which are present.
It's supposed to be a satire of contrast. For this to work we need our misfits to be in a world where at least SOMEBODY is a likable person living a fairly normal life. They only vaguely relatable character is a very depressed & neglected kid which isn't exactly fertile ground for fun (unless you find children being neglected and beaten-up to be humorous). The con-men have to be relatable people but they are irredeemable examples of abnormal psychology - not satires. They are a distillation of how real horrible people really do act. Willie the conman is drunk, sex obsessed, abusive, violent and uses people for whatever he can get. None of those actions are portrayed in a comic manner, just as facts. They kept missing comedy and finding pathos instead.
Prohibition (2011)
Very good, but with an element oddly missing
I really liked the fact that this documentary went deeply into the history of what led up to prohibition; the social normality of drinking alcohol and the slow change from 'temperance' (moderation not drunkenness) over to full abstinence, etc. The push toward alcohol prohibition was interrupted repeatedly, it was melded into other political issues like women's right to vote, and fused into the new version of US Christianity that had swept the nation. It was also part and parcel with deep racism and xenophobia - often aimed against the very migrants it was *claimed* to be there to help. Prohibition was supposed to stop poverty and make life safer, but it did the opposite - it destroyed the 5th largest industry in the nation (and other reliant jobs) creating mass unemployment at a time with no government unemployment system. It created organized crime (which is tied now to drug prohibition).
The view of the local bar as being a center of commerce and community for the lower classes (who did not have private clubs) was not the view held by those who saw alcohol as the central evil of their era. But then they wanted easy answers... not accurate ones.
People in that era were told (in the first mass political propaganda machine ever) that alcohol was the cause of all their social ills; that domestic violence, prostitution, poverty, gambling, and many other things were all due to the bottle. They were told that with no alcohol people could be made 'better' & society would be better. All would be well. Somehow few people questioned the information they were getting, but then they had not experienced that sort of propaganda before.
There was a good discussion of the long era in which the prohibitionist movement grew, and of the sudden increase in alcohol production, and the result of the rise of groups that were against drinking or let alcoholics help each other stay sober.
THE MISSING PART? However there was no discussion at all of *why* so many people in that era drank to excess, or why any substance (or other obsession) becomes the center of self destructive behavior. After all,you can't sell anything to people - including excessive amounts of alcohol, to people who won't swallow it down.
The *why* of all substance misuse is nearly always tied into feelings of emotional pain and the desire to escape them; hopelessness, despair, trauma, and a desire to have a mental 'vacation'. Looking at things in this way is less popular than anger. It doesn't let people have easy answers to complicated problems, or give them people to vilify. It fails to let them 'off the hook' when it comes to looking at their entire way of life. Anything can be used this way, including ideologies and theologies.
The fact is that nearly all the people in that era lived in abject poverty & had no real rights. There were no government enforced rights at all : no workers rights, no right to equal housing, there were no unemployment benefits or disability system. Child labor was common and sweat shops were normal. Jobs paid so little that you could starve to death while fully employed, working 12 hour days. People were worked extreme hours, in dangerous conditions, and could be fired for anything (including being too sick to come to work, having a kid to care for, or for refusing to do a thing that was wrong or even illegal). You could be fired for not going to the employers church (see the job requirements 'Dwight L Moody' met, when hired by a relative).
Empires of money were made by people willing to do 'all the wrong things' for cash. The employees & employers knew this; and that all jobs were like that so you could not quit a job & find better treatment. Nobody was willing to say no to greed or on the job cruelty. After all, the entire prohibition movement came into being in a US shaped by men like Daniel Webster (who believed the poor were poor because of their inferiority, their race, their original nationality, and that the US should be CLASSIEST and keep voting a privilege of the wealthy... education too). It was not a good thing to be poor in a world shaped by folks like Webster.
Read "The Jungle" for a look at US migrant life in the early 20th century. The migrants in it found the US was not the new wonderful world they had hoped for. It was terrible, dirty, and filled with poverty. They rapidly discovered that nobody could be trusted in the cities, that most US city people were con artists who preyed on each other constantly and had no ethics; that jobs were hard to get & easy to lose; that their family members died of poverty (the cold, starvation, lack of medical care) surrounded by people who COULD help but would not. At the end of the work day (or in despair over no work) many chose to disappear into a bottle. Knowing what they faced at home, men stayed at the bars, fearing going back to the pressures of their impoverished family. Yet nobody was campaigning to STOP the conditions that sent people off to drink in order to cope.
It was easier to blame booze and ban it (and more satisfying as you could feel superior) than it was to go after the CAUSES of mass alcoholism and address them, by reeling in the abuse of power and addressing poverty.
It still is easier to use the blunt instrument of the law to deal with the societal results of greed and cruelty, and it is still done everyday.
August Rush (2007)
A Wonder of Emotion, some people have sour grapes about
SPOILERS!!!
The movie is wonderful. I get the sense the Evan might have a touch of S y n e s t h e s i a - also correctly spelled in the English speaking world as s y n a e s t h e s i a...neither of these is in the IMDb spelling dictionary...IMDb needs to fix its dictionary.
There is a moment in which we see letters dancing about even OFF of a sign he is looking at (or this might be dyslexia).
He seems to sense music in everything. People with that capacity might just have it cross over into s y n e s t h e s i a.
I love this movie. It touched me deeply as a musician. I did not find the story too contrived as there really are people who were taken away from a parent by way of a mother being told that her child died. It was common for a long time. It happened often in Australia even in the 1970s. There are also many known cases where a parent and child (separated) or of siblings (etc) - found one another years later...by accident.
I also did not find the child's musical abilities to be impossible. My wife went to University at 9 in a program developed for her (IQ > 200) and I am a IT specialists and musician (I play many instruments and compose and have played instruments better after one afternoon than other did after years of effort). He had an entire school days long to play with and learn the BASIC staff.
I found Robin Williams very believable as a person guilty of Faginy...but instead of a band of young thieves he trained musicians...with JUST ENOUGH knowledge to keep them dependent on him. He kept basic IMPORTANT pieces of music theory unknown to them - the musical staff, t a b l a t u r e (IMDB...FIX YOUR DICTIONARY) , etc - all of which really helps musicians in learning and communicating with one another. WIZARD did all this to keep his money. He used FEAR to keep Evan in his hands...all for the money.
I also found the scenes with the son and father playing music together to be very reminiscent of my own experiences in the way that musicians really do act, in pure joy of musical expression...playing together and bouncing ideas off each other.
So yes, as a musician who is/was a lower level prodigy with a wife who was off the charts in all mental abilities, I know a bit about being unusual. As such, I did not find this at all unbelievable.
ALSO - in reply to "headly66"
Evan did not INVENT a new way to play the guitar.
I have seen people play this way, It is not new. I have used variations on it myself. There are a huge number of different ways to play the guitar and may different ways to tune it. I have used that method of playing (both hands on the neck, striking the strings with the flat of the hand and using "hammerons"). It is now new. You know very little about the guitar, music or real highly unusual 'prodigies'.
I happen play many instruments, some of which I could play after one day (without instructions) better than other people who I knew, who had several years of lessons. Is it an average experience? No. It does still happen. Unfortunately in the real world, life gives and takes. You will not be seeing me at a concert ever again, after years of performing.I am disabled and have M.C.S. now.
Some of the people who saw this don't seem to understand what it means to be a prodigy. I like this story for the very reason that it is a tale in which one person out of so many other like them...just ONE of the very rare, the very talented, the highly intelligent...got a real CHANCE in the world instead of having their life destroyed by a predator, Monsanto, a war, crazy parents...and even did so in the only first world nation to *NOT* have any real affordable education or health care. Just once...in fiction...an amazingly talented kid did not have their life and talent destroyed by the greedy...nothing went wrong that was not corrected in time.
* CYNIC ALERT *
Of course the cynic in me says that "WIZARD" stalked Evan...and later on (exactly one year to the date after the concert, in a fit of rage) came after Evan and kidnapped him after killing his parents (Telling Evan he had them prisoner and would kill them if he did not cooperate). Later, after years of playing on the street as a modern slave...his healths fails him. Breathing in all those exhaust fumes and eating cheep GM and additive filled food, eventually leaves our genius child as a young adult...fat and pale, no longer producing testosterone, sterile from GM soy in fast foods, losing his memory from early onset Alzheimers from pesticides, and then eventually dead from cancer by 25...in the gutter...as an unknown John Doe...but then that's just me <(evil grin) ...ha ha ha... (maybe in a version as if done by Ingmar Bergman).