Is it me or is it the movies? Part IV

Between my teens and well into my forties I probably averaged 1-3 movie theater visits per week. It was mostly a way of self-medicating. Trading my reality for a couple of hours in one which wasn't my own. It didn't really matter what movie was playing. It could be triple bill in the Oriental of The Master of the Flying Guiliotine, The Toolbox Murders, and Cleopatra Jones, followed by a walk over to the Water Tower and Being There. Some of these theaters had their first showtime at 8am. It wasn't unusual for me to see almost everything which was released in any given month. And if I ever ran out there was always the Parkway or the Fine Arts. 

In the present it's been at least two years since I've been in a movie theater. COVID accounts for some of this, but is it also because not only the movies might have changed but also how and where we watch them? I have a 75 inch big screen HD TV with a Dolby sound bar, a couple of remotes and a subwoofer under my comfy couch. Multiple streaming services with the ability to pause, fast forward, rewind and super slow-mo. The fridge is within walking distance as is the bathroom. So why did I leave this alternate reality paradise? Bond, James Bond. 

If ever there was franchise which needs the big silver screen I can't think of one at the moment. And that's how I found myself at the Regal City North 14 IMAX & 4DX. I don't much care about the IMAX and 4DX and 14 is for the number screens. I was in screen number 9 and as an added bonus could occasionally listen to the sound track from screens 7 and 11. I don't usually have an issue with digital projection, but the ambient lighting might have been off so everything on the screen had a slight gray tinge to it. That's the price you pay for digital. The sound was good, but the same was true for screens 7 and 11. The film itself unfortunately wasn't the best send off for Daniel Craig. It had the traditional Bond elements, but it was as if the Brocollis decided to do a Merchant-Ivory version of an Ian Fleming novel. The acting was fine. Love Connery, but Craig is still the best Bond. The villains were villainous. The female characters attractive and the cars and scenery beautiful. Not sure if it was the writing or the direction, but it just didn't work. If nothing else On Her Majesty's Secret Service finally has some competition for the weakest Bond film. 

So if Bond can't save the movie theater is that the death bell tolling for the movie theater experience? 

P.S. Random observations from watching 30 minutes of trailers:

I have no desire whatsoever to watch anything in which Roland Emmerich is involved. 

Will Smith is a good actor but he is always Will Smith regardless of what he is in. 

I thought Jon Bernthal was a one note actor. He is not. 

Is Jessica Chastain following the Charlize Theron path? Fine if she is. Just asking. 

Speaking of Chastain's path. As long as Hollywood is willing to make movies like The 355, why spend all this energy arguing about whether or not the next James Bond should be a female? Leave James alone. He has suffered enough. Maybe just spinoff Miss Moneypenny. I'd pay to watch that. 

Love trailers, but 30 minutes is too much of a good thing.

It's Their Fault!

The election is over. Depending on how you voted it’s either the dawn of a new era of unimagined prosperity or the beginning of the apocalypse. The people have spoken and if one thing is clear beyond any shadow of doubt, and cuts across all demographic groups, political affiliations, ideology or lack thereof, it’s that It’s Their Fault!

Pick your choice from any of the below list. Multiple selections allowed and encouraged:

• Immigrants
• White Men
• Whitelash
• Backlash
• Cultural Elites
• Political Elites
• Economic elites
• The unwashed masses
• Facebook
• The Media
• Wall Street
• Main Street
• Muslims
• Christians
• City folk
• Country yokels
• Anger
• Ignorance
• Greed
• Any of the seven deadly sins
• Polls
• Lists
• Things left off lists

The country might be divided but this is the one thing we can all agree on. The other is wrong (horribly and indisputably) and they’ve never been this wrong before. Ever. Not even close. Only one thing seems to be missing. An actual debate of the issues and policy.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the immigration debate. For the record, I’m an immigrant. Not only am I an immigrant but I was an illegal, or undocumented if you prefer (for the life of me I can’t understand the debate over the semantic label which regardless of preference basically amounts to the same thing), immigrant before everything got sorted out and I got naturalized. I understand better than most the complexity, issues, pain and hardship involved. Furthermore, I voted for Clinton. I can’t think of a single candidate who was running, or might have run, in any party, who I would have voted for Trump over. I am willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but pretty sure four years from now we will be worse off. Now that that’s out of the way let me present two examples of talking at each other rather than talking.

On the left side of the political spectrum there is the issue of Trump proposing immediately deporting 2-3 million illegal immigrants who are also convicted of crimes. Rather than debating the pros and cons of the proposal this is getting swept up in the general debate of the pros and cons of immigration. Why? Can anyone really come up with valid reasons not to deport people who have been convicted of crimes? We are not talking about citizens. We are talking about illegal immigrants who have done nothing to contribute to the larger society. Why sweep them up into the greater issue and tar and feather the majority of illegal, or legal, immigrants who commit no crimes, work hard and are decent and law abiding citizens guilty of nothing but wanting a better life for themselves? I understand that not every individual in that “criminal” bucket is a criminal or guilty of any crimes, but that’s not really what the debate needs to be about. It’s a side issue. Most reasonable people can agree that illegal immigrants who committed crimes should be deported. Arguing against that merely makes reasonable people question motives and gets us further and further from a solution.

On the right side of the political spectrum there is the issue of building a wall and limiting immigration to create jobs and make America more secure. There is no evidence of either one of those working. Look around you. Do you see any illegal immigrants working in well-paying jobs? Let’s assume you have zero immigration do you think there will be an increase in well-paying jobs? Why would there be? Eliminating illegal immigration will have no impact. Those aren’t the jobs the jobs illegal immigrants are filling. Maybe you were thinking about legal immigration and H-1B visas? In 2014 there were 162,239 H-1B visas issued. Perhaps an impressive number but a tiny fraction of the total 140,000,000 jobs. There is no cause and effect. Stop pretending there is. Okay. Jobs isn’t your real issue. Security is. What makes you think that building a wall will make you more secure? I check the news pretty regularly and I don’t really see an increase of terrorist attacks? The ones I have seen can pretty much be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Contrast this with the usual crime, mass shooting, etc., statistics. Shouldn’t those be addressed first? Neither terrorists nor illegal immigrants are committing those. Do you think that a committed terrorist, or a narco-terrorist for that matter, be daunted by a wall? They’ll just turn back? It doesn’t work that way.

But enough of being divisive and talking at you. Pretty sure none of the above will change anyone’s mind. I rest easy in the knowledge that it’s not my fault. It’s yours and on that we can all agree.

Is it me or is it the movies? Part II

Coming to you soon in glorious 3D!!!

If I see one more preview for a film in 3D I am liable to throw something at the screen. Enough already. Not that there is anything wrong with making films in 3D, but the films being made in 3D are for the most part nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Shows what Hollywood thinks of their audience. Story? Direction? Acting? That's hard and no predictor of success. Let's film it in 3D! Boffo box office! Pretty sure Sophie's Choice in 3D can't be far behind.
On the other hand, there's a part of me that is really tempted by Jackass 3D. If ever there was a gimmick that one's it.



Machete

Robert Rodriguez is a very talented and skilled filmmaker and it really shows in Machete. I saw more than my share of grindhouse films in the 70s. Machete is so good that despite watching it inside of a state of the art movie theater in Riga, Latvia (that's in Europe for the geographically challenged), from the start of the opening credits I was instantly transported to the seedy Chicago Loop of the late 70's. I could even imagine hearing the popcorn popping in the lobby and other not so fond sounds and smells came back in sense memory. Mark of a great film if it can capture the sense and feel of a time and place.
One problem. Grindhouse films were awful. Really, really bad films. The kind of films that distributors would buy the pound and were judged by how many shots of naked women they had and how many kills they contained. These were the type of films that could and would only appeal to 16 year old boys or those who no matter their age still had the emotional maturity of one. So here's the conundrum. If someone makes a great bad film does that make the film great or bad? I don't know the answer, but a part of me wishes Rodriguez would make a straight film for once. Same goes for Quentin Tarantino.

Red

There's a little desperation in my film watching of late. Its not that I haven't seen some good films lately (Social Network, The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), but sometimes you just want something mindless and less filling. I knew exactly what I would get with Red and that's exactly what I got. The only thing I can say about the film is that movie stars should never ever surround themselves with actors. Its just asking for trouble. Bruce Willis is good at what he does. Really he is. I loved Die Hard. All of them. He has even shown an occasional, no matter how brief, flash of acting ability. But in a film with John Malcovich, Helen Miren, Brian Cox and Morgan Freeman, all excellent actors, oops. Movie stars and actors should never mix. The secret of a movie star is that they attract the audience's eye. As Mel Gibson once said they know where to stand and how to look at and look great on camera. As long as they're the focal point of the scene. In an ensemble cast Willis is lost. He just simply does know what to do when the camera is not on him and he isn't the center of the action. And on the few occasions when he tries to act it just falls flat because the other actors don't have to try.

The IPhone and I

I am too poor to be a true early adapter. New technology when it first hits the market tends to be expensive and only as it matures and more and more people take it up the price goes down and the rest of us get to play. Still I have had my moments. Particularly when its media related.
I started using computers around 1980. I actually owned an original Pong and I even bought one of the first Radio Shack 16k computers. Yes. That's correct. 16k. Then I moved on to the PCs and kept on moving along the PC food chain up to the present.
The Internet is an old, old friend. Again started surfing around 1980. E-mail, multi-player games, news groups, chats, are things I used long before they became indispensable to the rest of the world. Still remember sitting in a PLATO computer lab at Truman College around 1982 and talking with a bunch of friends about how wouldn't it be cool if more people knew about what we knew and how someone should build a commercial business around this. We all laughed at the absurdity of the idea since computers weren't exactly user friendly and confined to the world of geeks and nerds. A few years later, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, Windows, Netscape and cheap PCs changed the world. Not ignoring the contributions of Apple computers, but they were always a bit out of my price range and since my main use of computers was for gaming I never left the PC zone.
I love movies so the moment I could afford one I bought a VCR. I skipped the laser disc fad and only joined at the tail end of the DVD era, but the moment plasma screens came down in price a bit I got myself a big screen TV.
Once the Walkmen hit the market I got myself one. Same for the Discmen. Was a little late to the IPod and digital music party, but once I got one I haven't looked back. Digitized my entire LP, CD and Cassette library and haven't bought any music other than in the digital format since.
There is one area, however, that I just never ever took part in. The cellphone revolution just kept on passing me by. Part of it I guess is that I am not one of the most sociable people out there. I have and love my friends, but unless we have something to do and say I am not one for just talking for the sake of talking. Part of it is that I am of a generation and history where the phone wasn't really all that integral part of my life. We never had a phone at home until we moved to the US and I was 15 by then. To me the phone is something you use in case of emergencies or to call someone to say you are running late or to set up a face to face. Looking on the bright side, my phone bills are always very, very low.
But some things are unavoidable. My mother will soon be 79. My father soon to be 90. All three of us are in different parts of the world, so when I found out about my six week Malaysia assignment I decided to get a cellphone so that in case of an emergency I could always be reached no matter where or when.
I wouldn't know a good cellphone from a good rutabaga, but since I loved the IPod and I always admired Apple for its design, technology and innovation I settled on the IPhone. I didn't realize that I was buying into the top of the cellphone food chain, but oh my. I won't bother with a review of the IPhone (plenty of those around) nor is this meant as a plug for the brand (there are other smart phones out there that probably deliver pretty much the same) or an overview of the various features like actually using it to communicate with other humans, but as a piece of media its nothing short of incredible. Here's just a few of my IPhone Adventures:

• Driving around the suburbs of Chicago I get slightly lost. Being a typical male I will not ask for directions. Out comes the IPhone. Click on the Compass icon, get my bearings and point the car in the general direction I need to go. Minutes later click on the Maps icon, click on the location icon, GPS gives me the exact location of where I am, type in the location I am trying to find, and up come step by step driving directions. My masculine pride is in no danger of being compromised.
• Walking around Putrajaya, Malaysia. Same as above.
• In Tioman Island, Malaysia, just for the heck of it use GPS to locate the island and then zoom out to settle a minor argument about how far we are from the peninsula.
• In the middle of KLCC while trying to figure out if they will or will not have fireworks for Hari Merdeka, click on the Safari icon, go to Google and type in "hari merdeka fireworks Kuala Lumpur 2009" and surf a few forums to see if we can find any information about when and where they might have fireworks.
• Watching TV shows on airplanes and during long layovers. Never have to worry about how to fill the time.
• I step out to the hotel balcony to take some photos with the IPhone of the Putrajaya cityscape. Since its hot outside and the AC is running full blast inside I close the sliding door. Point, click, photo. Point, click, photo. Turn around, pull sliding door open. Ooopps. Sliding door will not open. Try again. Nope. Looks like the security bar at the bottom of the sliding door must have fallen down into the secure position when I closed it. Good to know it works as designed. Unfortunately I am on the wrong side of the security. I am on the fourth floor on the garden side in the middle of the afternoon in the heat when most other sane people are indoors. Luckily I spot a gardener walking across. I shout. I wave. He looks up. I explain my predicament. He shrugs. As luck would have it I have come across one of the few in Malaysia who do not speak English. I shrug back. Plan B. I wait a few minutes hoping that another soul will brave the heat. I briefly consider climbing down, but I am not in my 20s anymore. I consider shouting louder until someone answers, but there's that masculine pride again. And then I glance at the IPhone in my hand. Call for help. This way I can keep my voice down and salvage what pride I still have. Problem 1: I do not know the phone number for the hotel. I could try dialing information but being overseas I am not sure if its as simple as dialing 0. IPhone Solution: Click on the Safari icon, go to google, type in Putrajaya Shangri La and find number. Problem 2: For some reason Safari doesn't want to work properly and no matter what I do I can't launch google. Wait a few minutes. Consider climbing down, but I am not even in my 30s anymore. Consider shouting again, but there's still that shred of pride. Glance at the IPhone. IPhone Solution: Click on the Maps icon, locate myself, type in Putrajaya Shangri La in the directions box, up pops a box with Putrajaya Shangri La as the legend, click on it and I have the phone number and location, homepage, etc. Briefly consider memorizing the number then remembering the wonderful world of technology I now live in just click on the phone number itself and the phone dials the front desk. 5 minutes later housekeeping to the rescue.

What will they think of next?

Why my blog isn't really a blog

Main Entry: blog
Function: noun
Etymology: short for Weblog
Date: 1999
Definition: a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer ; also : the contents of such a site

I have a friend who loves language the way other people love, well, the things they really, really love. I often affectionately refer to him as a language fascist. He is a poet by choice so I can understand why language is important to him. I, however, would best be considered as a language liberal. Perhaps a dilettante would be an even better descriptor. I am a non-native speaker of English and quite frankly an awful student. Didn't pay much attention in my high school English classes and by the time I got to college it was too late. My only saving grace is that I love to read so I picked up some of the general gist of the English language, if not always the mechanics of it, along the way.
So why not a blog? Simple. It ain't a journal and it won't always be reflective, and it won't always be commentary and I am tired of the term and I guess I have a little of the language fascist in me as well. Blog might hold the world record for going from a neologism to a commonly used word. But the general idea has been around for a long, long time.
I started using computers sometime around 1979-1980. Yes, kids the Internet isn't new either. Okay. The kids probably don't know it isn't new. So for all of you over 30 who can still remember the dark days before computers, the Internet has been around for a while. In the beginning there was ARPANET and they saw that it was good and things went on from there. My first Internet experience was on PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations). No worries, I didn't actually learn much other than how to play DnD and various other multiplayer games on line. Yes. Multiplayer games have been around for a while too. I have to admit that the graphics have gotten much better. There's quite a difference between seeing bone shards and blood splatter in all of its HD glory accompanied by Dolby sound effects and looking at a text string on a black screen with a blinking cursor waiting for your next move.

"You are in a twisting passage."
"Enter W, D, A or X to continue."
"W."
"You run into a troll."
"Troll hits for 20 hit points."
"You die."
"Press enter to restart."

I was also exposed to such things as P-Notes (e-mail), Notes Files (now referred to as forums, newsgroups, etc.), term-talk (IM). The founding blocks of what we now consider to be common place. Reading and sending e-mail, google, sharing thoughts and exchanging ideas online, etc. I don't mean to sound bitter. Things change. And they should. But for some reason the term Blog bugs me. To me it was a meaningless neologism used to describe something which wasn't new.

And yet here I am.

Blogging.