Politics from Noam Chomsky:
And though there is more to learn about the background, it is not likely to have much effect on what seems now a reasonably plausible picture. It’s worth proceeding for the sake of history — assuming that there will be any history that will even care if the plan to establish lasting Republican rule succeeds. No exaggeration.
I’m no longer shocked by much of anything. If there were an attempt on Biden’s life, that wouldn’t greatly surprise me. The political situation is dire but been that way so long that it’s becoming normalized. There was a cartoon on Facebook about a happy character. Why happy? He had stopped watching the news. I’m halfway there. I still read about it, though.
Discovered an HBO series called The Newsroom. A utopian view of the way news should be. If I can take a clip from it and put into mikeplaces, I will.
Lately, I’ve given thought to periods within a life: phases. Too fragmented to expound on here, but I will at a later date. It goes like this. Grab a few years out of a person’s life and there will be sets of norms: entertainment, politics, social morality, friendships, musical groups, and so on. In the middle of this period, we live as if that is the way of the world. We can say, “This will change, of course,” but it’s an intellectual recognition, like in four years we’ll have a new President. But, there’s a feeling of security in this, our world, with these norms.
In some nerdy moment, any attempt to describe in conversation what I’m saying here will be met with no surprise at all because the other party has accepted, intellectually, the idea. But the other person hasn’t done so in a way that would diminish the reality of the norms. The norms are static. They become the life.
An example will help. Movie icons. In this decade, older women still swoon over Robert Redford, men over Ava Gardner. These are the images they have of the 1960s actors. They reflect on this phase, and if they were to talk about these two gorgeous icons, it would be that phase referred to.
Stopping here in the name of significance; that is, until I can root out further meaning.
Speaking of movies, I wrote this in regard to an email from Mike in Arizona about worst movies ever made. The standard is Plan 9 from Outer Space. I responded:
Plan 9 is not my idea of a bad film. I read the good article in your reference. One hundred percent agreement. But, BUT, my idea of a bad film uses different criteria. Shocker, huh? One of my candidates for worst film is the sacred cow “Around the World in 80 Days,” Hollywood kitsch at its best, throwing the weight of stars, music, production at the viewer in a way so overwhelmingly that, “Gosh, how could we not love it?”
I don’t love it. In 1965, I read a book that forever changed the way I view movies, Pauline Kael’s “I Lost It at the Movies.” What did she lose? Her notion that Hollywood is out to make good films. It isn’t. It’s a big money snow job. The aforementioned “80 Days” is a great example of this. When I watch a movie now, in the back of my mind is, “Show me that you’re making an honest effort to say something. If you try and fail, that’s okay. If the production value is low, that’s okay.” The quote from the article says it:
“As mythologised in Burton’s Ed Wood, the film wasn’t some cynical hackjob, but a truly eccentric labour of love. Hence, says Sexton, the “romantic appeal” of a writer-director-producer who “has gained the status of a kind of anti-auteur”. Plan 9 from Outer Space might be a failure, but it’s a heroic failure.”
Same with “Manos,” though a fertilizer salesman probably doesn’t have the same passion as an Ed Wood. I watch a lot of stuff on Prime. Most of it is utter trash. I mean really bad. Big stars, lots of Jerry Bruckheimer car crashes, but the story? Forget it. Okay, the story in “Plan9” is crap, but at least Ed Wood is not setting out to snow the audience. That’s the one issue, the one approach that sinks any movie to me.
The article was from the BBC site: Worst Movie Ever Made.
Years back got part way through an article on what makes a bad movie. The topic overwhelmed me and I never finished it. The above is a good summary, though.
Periodically, too often, I come down, it seems like, with flu symptoms. It hit me that these sick days follow nights when I’m debilitated from a lack of sleep. Will check this out over the next few months.
