Return to the Movies

 After roughly two years my wife and I returned to the movies today--Belfast.

We enjoyed it: some laughs, a moist eye or two, and an education in Van Morrison.

Judging by the audience covid took out a lot more old men than old women.

I can't say whether it deserves "Best Picture", but it deserves the nomination.

"Worth" Movie and FSA Programs

 Saw some publicity for the movie "Worth", a dramatization of Kenneth Feinberg's management of the distribution of the funds for relatives of 9/11 victims. The title relates to the problem of determining "worth": do you assess worth based on economic losses or regard everyone as equal?  

We see the same conflict in public assessments of some FSA farm programs: do you issue payments based on economics: the amount of production, the acreage, the losses of production due to disaster OR do you regard all producers as equal.

Judging by recent stories on agricultural programs, many people believe that farm programs should treat each farmer equally.  But a third criterion is also raised--"deserving" which might include "need" and "reparations." Very few of those who aren't farmers are willing to support programs which compensate for economic losses, which means big farmers get more.

I'll be interested to see the movie.

"The Situation" (Good Money-Losing Movie)

 According to IMDB this movie had a $1 million budget and made $48,000 at the box office. That must be close to a record for losing money on a film which actually made it to the theater. 

It's a lot better than that, at least if you can get past the lousy sound job (very uneven but often the music/background obscures the dialog),  It would be redeemable if it had captions, but it doesn't. Having said that, most of the reviews at IMDB are respectful.

Anyway my wife and I stuck it out.  Perhaps our receptivity was enhanced by having been watching the first 23 episodes of Fauda (season1 and part of 2). "Fauda" seems to equate to SNAFU.  It's based on an Israeli special ops unit fighting against Hamas and eventually ISIS with a reasonably balanced view of both the Israeli heroes and the Palestinian villains.  It describes a complex situation in the West Bank, a complexity which is related to the complex situation of the American-Iraqi relationships in "The Situation".

The Situation was written and produced by Wendell Steavenson, a (female) war correspondent based on experiences in the Iraq war.  It was released in 2006, perhaps just as the US was turning against the war, so it should have done well. It really would be worth someone's time and effort to fix the sound.  

Every Cow Has "Her People"/

Vox has an interview with the director of "First Cow", who comments of the cow: "She had her people."

She also agrees with the interviewer: “Milk is so exciting.”

Thoughts on Movies and CGI

Wife and I watched the 1993 movie "Gettysburg".  It's not a movie which would be made today. It's not how we see the Civil War battles, indeed not how we see war today.

But regardless, I want to note a technical difference.  In Gettysburg the moviemakers were able to use the thousands of Civil War re-enactors to serve as extras in the movie, especially of course in the battle sequences.  The result, to someone who's used to the CGI-enhanced or based battles of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones., is very different.

How? 

• in some ways it's more realistic.  It's more "fractal" I 'll call it because less regular. When crowd scenes are composed by creating one segment--say 50 riders on horses, and duplicate it multiple times to give the appearance of 500 riders, I think we subconsciously are aware of the duplication.
• it shows the difference between bottom-up and top-down compositions. When you have 1,000 real people coming together to act as soldiers their behaviors and actions retain a lot of individuality.  You're only able to get a high degree of uniformity in places/situations like Korean military or dance displays where the people can be trained over months and years.  When someone at a computer generates 1,000 images of people, while her imagination may be great she cannot imagine 1,000 realities.
• in some ways it's less realistic, or at least less supportive of the story.  In the scenes showing masses of soldiers there's always the odd person running around or someone doing something which wouldn't be included, not even thought of by a CGI designer.  It can be distracting because you can't determine whether the action is part of the story, or just random noise.  (It's probably more realistic in a real battle scene that's what happens, but it's not what we've been trained to expect in a movie.  Chekhov's thing was if you show a gun on a mantel in Act 1, it had to go off by Act 3.  That's not life, but it's modern storytelling.) 

I assume there will never be another Gettysburg, at least not shot on American soil.

On the Basis of Sex

Today's news about Justice Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer comes a few days after we watched the biopic: "On the Basis of Sex".

It was better than I anticipated, or at least I was more affected by its portrayal.   Ginsburg was 3 years ahead of my sister at Cornell, and she was likely in the same class as a first cousin.  So at least vicariously I knew something of the situation of women in those years, although as far as Cornell was concerned things were changing, at least for undergrads. (I had one female professor in 4 years there.)

The Proliferation of Popular Culture References

My wife and I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime and watch regularly.  Maybe I'm just feeling out of it these days, but it seems to me there are more and more popular culture references in what we're watching, more and more of which I don't get.

Sometimes it's musical, which since I've not kept up with popular music since the Beatles it's understandable I'll miss them.  Often it's what critics like to call "homages" or "call-outs" to other programming.  Those I miss as well.

I think it's "Billions", the third season of which we just finished, which made me particularly aware of this.  It's possible it's just the writers of that show who are especially into references to other pieces of popular culture, but it seems more pervasive.  Although there are fewer directors' commentaries these days now that Netflix is shifting from DVD's to streaming, they're another way I become conscious of things I'm missing.

It seems a logical trend in our culture: the more time people spend watching and listening, the more likely creators will cross-reference things.  I suspect the trend also means fewer references to the older sources of reference material: the classics and the Bible. 

Movie Review: Green Book

The movie has attracted some flak in the media, but my wife and I enjoyed it.

In a way it reminded me of movies like "Pretty Baby Woman [Freudian slip]"--the standard plot about people with different personalities who change each other, especially the one where with the romantic stereotypes of the spontaneous, earthy, joi de vivre type gets the uptight person to seize the day

The movie does that plot well.  It's relieved from being too corny because in this movie the black character is the WASP buttoned up one and the white character is his opposite.  To me that dynamic is more important to the movie than the racial issues--the prejudices of the 1960's and the segregation in the South--though it's the racial aspects which seem to attract media attention.

And the acting is great--we've liked Mortensen from past performances, ever since Witness and then LOR.  Despite the 50 pounds he may have added for the role, and the weight he may have added doing all the eating in the script, he still comes across as capable and intelligent.  And the only thing wrong with Ali is I can't spell his last name.

It hasn't been doing well at the box office, but it just picked up five Golden Globe nominations for the movie and its actors.

For the Good Old Days of DVD Extras

The NYTimes had a piece on the fading away of extra features which used to be included on DVDs. My wife and I are long-term subscribers to Netflix, back in the days before streaming, and we (or I at least) enjoyed most of the features, particularly the director commentaries. The best movies seemed usually to have been models of teamwork: a lot of talented people working together for a common goal.  No doubt that was an exaggeration, or more kindly a rosy colored look back.

The commentaries varied widely: some directors would narrate the action on the scene--very boring.  Others would use the action as the launching point for little stories, discussions of technique, particularly the more cinematic types.  Some would make a point of praising the work of both the actors on screen and the members of the crew behind the scenes. Some series, like Breaking Bad, and Mad Men, would have multiple features and often two or more commentaries per episode.

I'll miss the extras.

Phantom Thread

Thursday and time for another short movie review.  This week it was Phantom Thread, with my spouse's favorite  actor (excluding beefcake types), Daniel Day Lewis.  As usual, he was very good, as were the two women. The cinematography was great.  It's getting lots of nominations for awards, and good reviews from critics. Having said all that, I was rather bored.    I'd give it 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.

My reaction to the writer/director's last film with Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood, was similar.

Molly Bloom

I seem to be falling into a pattern of short movie reviews, given my wife and I are regularly seeing movies since the holidays.  Today was "Molly Bloom", with good performances by Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.  With that talent it's a good movie, not great. Part of the problem is the male-female dynamic: Bloom fights to gain a position, and is beaten down by men, three times.  She loses her first game, she's beaten up for refusing to cooperate with Russian gangsters in laundering money, and she's arrested by FBI and has her money confiscated.  Finally her dad shows up and explains her psychology based on family trauma.  So the "arc" (any reviewer has to discuss a character's arc or have the reviewer license taken away) is failure leads to self-knowledge. 

Bottom line: it's worth seeing.

See "The Post"

Just saw The Post.  Having lived through  the time, living in downtown DC and as a regular reader of both the Washington Post and the NYTimes, the atmosphere was familiar.  The movie's well-written and well-acted, possibly set for Oscar nominations.

A point and a nit:  Kay Graham tells McNamara that her son, and all "their sons" (by which she means the sons of the people at her parties) went to Vietnam while he was lying about the policy.  I'd be curious about the percentage of military age sons of members of Congress served in Vietnam.  I'd also like to see a comparison with the same populations in this century.  I'd bet both percentages are less than in 1942-45.

The nit:  I swear I saw a sign "Fort Andrews" in the background of an early scene, a sign which should have been "Andrews AFB" (now "Joint Base Andrews").

Wind River

Saw the movie today and liked it. Written by the same guy who did Hell or High Water and Sicario, both of which we liked.  Atmosphere a bit like Longmire, a Netflix series we also like (i.e., rural area, Native Americans and whites).

Detroit

Just saw Ms. Bigelow's new movie: Detroit.

It's similar to her previous three movies: K-19, the Widowmaker, Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty, in that it's based on facts and avoids many movie cliches.  Our verdict on it: "interesting".  I think that means, it's worth seeing, just as it's worth seeing your dentist, assuming your dentist is very capable and you've got some dental problems.

Conservatives Surprise: Movie Reviews

Scott Johnson, a conservative at Powerline, is someone I rarely, perhaps never, agree with.  So his reviews of Fences, Hidden Figures, and Hell or High Water were surprising.

Loving Trump

Just saw the movie "Loving".  Quite good, will be on some Oscar lists, but not up to last year's Spotlight.  That said, this thought struck me:

Richard Loving would have voted for Trump.

Why?  Because he felt powerless to take care of his wife, a feeling shared by many Trump voters.

The Future of Jobs? From Linen to Games

We've gotten into Game of Thrones, now on season 2.  Last night the commentary mentioned Banbridge.  Banbridge is a town in County Down, Ulster of about 16,000.  It happens to be near where my great grandfather was born, and has been mentioned by my cousin who has made regular trips back to Ulster.  Turns out the town was into linen;  in the words of Wikipedia: "The town owes its success to flax and the linen industry, becoming the principal linen producing district in Ireland by 1772 with a total of 26 bleachgreens along the[River] Bann. By 1820 the town was the centre of the 'Linen Homelands' and its prominence grew when it became a staging post on the mail coach route between Dublin and Belfast."

But linen has fallen on hard times, and there's just one linen mill left operating.  One of the others failed in 2008, and has since been converted to a production studio.It's this studio which hosts a part of Game of Thrones for some seasons.

When you think about movies, they're made all over.  Vancouver and Montreal, Morocco and Eastern Europe, New York, North Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico are just a few of the locations I remember being used for the movies and TV shows I've seen recently, not to mention the old standbys of Britain and Italy.

And the remaining linen mill in Banbridge has long specialized on fine linens and bespoke linens.

So what we have is a shift of jobs from making products to making entertainment.  What's notable is these jobs presumably are safe from automation, which is more than we can say for manufacturing or many service jobs.

Bullwhipping Phd

Via Scholarly Kitchen, this video.

The Lady in the Van

Enjoyed this movie very much.  I see on Rottentomatoes that the critics liked it better than the public (92 percent to 75). I suspect the difference is because it's not the heartwarming story you might expect.  I laughed a lot, perhaps because I'm old enough to enjoy some black humor, perhaps because I just carried over a reflex from watching Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.  As usual, she's very convincing.

Don't See "Hail Caesar"

Don't see it, that is, unless you're over 65 or are devoted to post WWII movies.  If you meet either of those conditions, see it.  It's very funny, with more of a message than you might expect.