Category Archives: movies/tv

4/18/20 – Saturday – library, exercise……

Up early. Listened to Only a Game podcast.

HAL Board of Trustees mtg – active, happy meeting. Received $58,500 PPP money from SBA. Good for 2 1/2 months salaries etc. Lots of talk about new fundraising strategies. Emily made extensive report on our online library programming.

Went to Letterbox Farm to pickup order of eggs and greens.

Karen participated in Balance for Seniors from the library. I did my exercises for the first time in weeks.

Ordered grab bars and other bathroom stuff from Amazon. This will allow us to make the first floor bathroom safe for us to shower in. Short term fix without all of the work planned for a walk in shower.

Karen made meatloaf and sautéed spinach. We drove a portion over to Dave Drake. Had lengthy drinks with Ted and Anne.

Watched the first 30 minutes of China Moon (1995). Gave up at that point. Back to Person of Interest

Movie – War Machine – a misplaced parable

Netflix has just released War Machine onto the streaming media waters. This movie fits into the long tradition of American media mostly puffing up our military exploits or turning them into light tragi-comedy.  Brad Pitt, applying the acting style of a trimmed down George Clooney, portrays the fictional General Glen McMahon. Broadly and obviously based on the story of the real General Stanley McChrystal who took over the War in Afghanistan in June 2009 only to be ousted in June 2010 after a profile appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine revealed much foolishness and derogatory comments about President Obama and VP Biden. The movie has its comedic moments and the very broadly played General MaMahon is bound to either really annoy those enamored of the US military or fulfill the image of buffoonish generals that others may prefer. Continue reading →

Movie – In Order of Disappearance

A Norwegian Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Fargo Revenge Flick

In Order of Disappearance, available on Netflix and Amazon, stars Stellan Skarsgard as Nils, a droll snow plow driver who seeks to revenge the murder of his son at the hands of a bunch of drug dealers in some snow plagued town somewhere in Norway. What follows is a part Rashomon, part Fargoesque tale of murderous revenge bundled up with comedic moments and lots of snow.

I give it a Mr. Wonderful’s maximum thumbs up.

 

BTW – you probably will recognize Skarsgard. He was in Good Will Hunting, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo among many.

More info on the movie here on IMDB.

 

BEHEMOTH (BEI XI MO SHOU) at TSL Hudson

This 2015 movie by Chinese director Liang Zhao is filled with great cinematography and sounds. It trades back and forth between scenes of enormous horizon gulping coal mines, under ground mines, iron making, and ends with scenes of a ghost city filled with enormous apartment blocks in a newly developed but vacant city West of Beijing. But, the most arresting part of the movie is its focus on the workers, men and women, in this relentlessly grim, polluted environment. The only narration is text read over scenes with a nude figure huddled on the ground in front of this devastation. It alludes to Dante’s Inferno.

Behemoth is a refresher course on why capitalism, whether in its American or Chinese variant, needs government regulation, strong regulation to prevent this egregious exploitation of the earth and mankind. Of course this presumes the government is in the hands of the people and nota tool of the rich and corporations. Therein lies the crisis.

The movie runs at TSL over this weekend and the two following. Here is TSL’s calendar.

Also playing at TSL is I Am Not Your Negro, the wonderful, challenging movie about James Baldwin.