Giles's Notes/blog/2024-03-24T18:00:00-04:00'The Legend of Korra' Season 3 'Change' - TV Review2024-03-24T17:32:00-04:002024-03-24T18:00:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-24:/blog/legend-of-korra-s3.htmlA better antagonist than last season.
<p>
Review of the previous season: "<a href="/blog/legend-of-korra-s2.html">The Legend of
Korra, Book 2</a>."
</p>
<p>
The third season sees Korra and Team Avatar fighting the "Red Lotus,"
an anarchist offshoot of the White Lotus that we knew from the original
series. They're led by Zaheer (voiced by Henry Rollins), who's
probably the most interesting antogonist that Korra gets during the
course of the show. Even if Rollins' delivery is occasionally a little
bit too declarative and flat. Amon (season 1) was interesting ...
until he turned out to be a liar. Unalaq (season 2) was ... kinda not
interesting, just evil. Zaheer is a believer, understandable,
compelling, and charismatic. The season also has some good fights
(yeah, I like the fights). The season also leaves Korra in fairly bad
shape: it's not really a cliffhanger, but she's in poor health.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2014. With Janet Varney, David Faustino, P. J. Byrne, Seychelle
Gabriel, J. K. Simmons, Mindy Sterling, Kiernan Shipka, Lisa Edelstein,
Anne Heche, Henry Rollins, Skyler Brigmann, John Michael Higgins, Grey
DeLisle, Peter Giles, Kristy Wu, Alyson Stoner, James Remar.
</p>
-->
'The Wrong Box' - Movie Review2024-03-10T20:43:00-04:002024-03-12T07:39:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-10:/blog/the-wrong-box.html1960s British Farce finds some laughs from unappealing characters.
<p>
"The Wrong Box" is a star-studded British farce from 1966, revolving
around the winding down of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine">tontine</a>. As the
link to Wikipedia explains, a "tontine" is a bizarre but real legal
construct that involves a group of people all hoping the other members
of the group will die before they do, because the last living person
gets all the remaining money. Wikipedia refers to it as a "mortality
lottery."
</p>
<p>
By 1900 or so (I don't think the date is ever stated), brothers
Masterman Finsbury (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson)
are elderly, the only two remaining members of a tontine. The two
haven't spoken for 40 years, despite living next to each other.
Masterman lives with his grandson Michael (Michael Caine) who is a
medical student. Joseph lives with his granddaughter Julia (Nanette
Newman) and his two two nephews Morris (Peter Cook) and John (Dudley
Moore). The death of the third-last person in the tontine triggers a
series of shenanigans between the remaining two and the people
surrounding them.
</p>
<p>
My primary problem with the movie is that every single one of the
people involved is a moron. Michael and Julia are sweet, but fools
nevertheless. And everybody else is reprehensible. Many movie-goers
have no trouble with this, but I find I need sympathetic characters to
care about: there are none here.
</p>
<p>
Despite which, there are a huge number of jokes delivered by some of
Britain's best actors and comedians (including - not mentioned yet -
Peter Sellers). Some are duds, but enough hit home that I was somewhat
amused. I can't recommend the movie, but if you decide to watch it the
sheer density of jokes will probably have you laughing at something.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1966, dir. Bryan Forbes. With John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael
Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Nanette Newman, Tony Hancock, Peter
Sellers, Tony Hancock, Wilfrid Lawson, Thorley Walters, Cicely
Courtneidge, Diane Clare.
</p>
-->
'The Legend of Korra' Season 2 'Spirits' - TV Review2024-03-09T19:33:00-05:002024-03-12T07:36:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-09:/blog/legend-of-korra-s2.htmlGorgeous artwork, good story.
<p>
<a href="/blog/legend-of-korra-s1.html">Review of previous season</a>.
</p>
<p>
The first season of "The Legend of Korra" was our introduction to the
new avatar Korra, and our introduction to the world that's seventy or
eighty years advanced from the one we saw in "Avatar: The Last
Airbender." It was also about Korra learning to airbend, with the
Season (or "Book" as they prefer to call it) titled "Air." This second
season is called "Spirits" and is about the origins of the Avatar (not
Korra specifically, but all Avatars), the way the spirit world
interacts with the human world, and about Korra and Team Avatar
learning to deal with those interactions.
</p>
<p>
Korra is young, impetuous, and occasionally hot-headed. This leads her
to leave her air-bending mentor Tenzin in favour of her father's
brother Unalaq who promises to teach her about the spirit world. And
it's true, he's better qualified to do this than either her father or
Tenzin. But his motives are suspect, and when she finally figures this
out Korra says to Tenzin: "Everything Unalaq taught me was to help
himself. Everything you've done was meant to help me." Which was
true, and also a lovely lesson to the viewers to consider the
motivations of the people who help you. This also shows the attitude
of the show as a whole - combining fun characters and huge action
set-pieces with relatively gentle moral lessons.
</p>
<p>
The original series had good artwork, But the artwork of this entire
series is gloriously beautiful, just amazing - although blatantly CG in
places. This season makes ideas barely hinted at in the first season
("the spirit world") into a massive, concrete thing that hugely impacts
Korra and her friends.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2014. With Janet Varney, David Faustino, P. J. Byrne, Seychelle
Gabriel, J. K. Simmons, Mindy Sterling, Dee Bradley Baker, Kiernan
Shipka, Lisa Edelstein, John Michael Higgins, Aubrey Plaza, Aaron
Himelstein, James Remar.
</p>
-->
'Renfield' - Movie Review2024-03-09T15:38:00-05:002024-03-12T07:43:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-09:/blog/renfield.htmlOver-the-top Cage and lots of blood splatter, what could go wrong?
<p>
"Renfield" is a character in Bram Stoker's <em>Dracula</em>. This
movie riffs on that character and his difficult relationship with
Dracula, which we find in this movie extends to the modern day.
Renfield is played by Nicholas Hoult, who has grown horrified of the
depredations of his master Dracula. But he's a familiar: it grants him
some power, but not nearly that of Dracula and he cannot escape. In
his hunt for food for Dracula, he starts attending meetings for people
struggling with codependent relationships. From there, he gets tangled
up with a morally perfect cop with rage issues (Awkwafina) and both he
and Dracula decide to move on from their relationship. But ending it
isn't easy.
</p>
<p>
The movie is massively absurd, thoroughly blood-spattered, and (of
course) includes a ludicrously over-the-top performance from Nic Cage.
Actually, there are no non-over-the-top performances in this movie ...
but nobody tops Cage, which kind of makes the others look almost
ordinary. The movie doesn't get far beyond the basic premise I've
already outlined, but if you're up for a bloodbath horror-comedy, this
is entertaining enough to do the job.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Chris McKay. With Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Nicolas Cage,
Ben Schwartz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones, Adrian Martinez.
</p>
-->
'Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent' Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2 - TV Review2024-03-04T16:43:00-05:002024-03-05T08:35:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-04:/blog/law-and-order-toronto-s1.htmlToronto locations are fun for Torontonians, but weak writing sinks the show.
<p>
This review is based on the first two episodes only.
</p>
<p>
The two main characters in the first two episodes were detectives Henry
Graff (Aden Young) and detective Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe).
After a couple episodes, I was thinking about the posters we've seen
around Toronto: these show the two of them, their police captain (Karen
Robinson), and crown attorney (K. C. Collins). I think the balance has
been more even in the past: in most L&O variants, we spend about
half our time with the detectives, and half with the lawyers. In the
first two episodes, the single lawyer showed up long enough to mention
the need for "indisputable evidence" (both episodes) and then went away
again, immediately. So this is a detective show?
</p>
<p>
Graff is an obnoxious walking encyclopedia: he knows the quality of the
soil in your planter box and how it probably got that way, he knows not
only the currents on Lake Ontario but also how they change during a
storm. As he did this repeatedly on multiple subjects, it seemed less
and less likely he could know all this stuff. He's a walking plot
device.
</p>
<p>
My friend and I had a great time enjoying the blatantly Toronto
locations, but the weak writing was a problem. I'm reviewing these
two episodes (rather than the full season) because I'm not expecting to
watch any more, and I want a reminder of why not. It might get better,
but that would require the writing improve significantly ...
</p>
<!--
<p>
2024. With Aden Young, Kathleen Munroe, K. C. Collins, Karen Robinson.
</p>
-->
'Elemental' - Movie Review2024-03-01T18:54:00-05:002024-03-12T07:35:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-03-01:/blog/elemental.htmlAnother charming, clichéd, and beautiful movie from Pixar.
<p>
Our main character is Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), daughter of Bernie
(Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi). They're fire elementals.
Bernie and Cinder have immigrated to Element City, where they face
racism from the water, air, and earth people. But they give Ember the
best life they can.
</p>
<p>
One day, Ember is running the family store when a pipe bursts in the
basement. Water isn't great for fire elementals, so she seals the leak
- but not before a water person ("Wade Ripple," voiced by Mamoudou
Athie) pops out of the leak. He immediately starts writing tickets for
code violations against their business. She tries to prevent him, and
ends up pursuing him into the centre of the city where she's never
really been before.
</p>
<p>
The movie is incredibly heavy-handed about racism and accepting
differences between people. And the story beats about honouring your
family and still finding your own path are worn slippery by the million
movies that have walked this path before. And yet it's Pixar: they
find joy and humour in the small moments, and manage to make an
enjoyable and pretty movie despite having absolutely nothing new to
say.
</p>
<p>
The "director's commentary" is with Peter Sohn (the director) and three
of his technical staff, animators and the like. When Sohn talked about
how the movie tied in to his own immigrant experience (growing up in a
store run by his Korean parents, encountering racism), it was kind of
interesting. But they spent much more of their time talking about how
unusual and difficult the animation was. I don't question the truth of
that, but ... those sections were kind of dull to me.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Peter Sohn. With Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del
Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara, Mason
Wertheimer, Ronobir Lahiri, Joe Pera.
</p>
-->
'The First World War: A Major Channel Four Series' - TV Review2024-02-17T22:09:00-05:002024-02-24T07:27:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-02-17:/blog/the-first-world-war.htmlA relatively small political crisis spread to engulf the entire world in a war that killed more people than any war in history.
<p>
Four DVDs, ten episodes of roughly 50 minutes each, based on a book by
Hew Strachan. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426688/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">IMDB
entry about it</a>. This is less daunting at a mere four DVDs
compared to ten DVDs for "The Second World War" which I received at the
same time. I'm hoping to watch that next.
</p>
<p>
This pounded home a well known adage: "war is hell." And possibly
never as much as the First World War. It started with an assassination
that should have only affected a couple countries ... And ironically
the person assassinated (Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary) was a reformer who wanted similar things to the
assassin (Gavrilo Princip), although from the other side of the
dispute. This was a disagreement between the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and their unhappy subjects the Serbians. But the Germans leapt in on
the side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the French and British
felt compelled to take up the defence, and soon not only the whole of
Europe but most of Asia was embroiled in the battle. It spread across
a couple continents in a couple months, and then dragged in Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and eventually the U.S. (and even, indirectly,
Mexico).
</p>
<p>
Aside from mentioning that planes actually mattered for the first time
in this war, and mentioning the Red Baron and his squadron for a couple
minutes in the second last(?) episode, flying was essentially ignored -
much to my disappointment (it's a primary interest of mine).
</p>
<p>
The whole thing is fascinating: how an assassination in a crumbling
empire by a member of a small oppressed group started a war that
consumed the entire world - a war that ended up being about Germany
versus the rest of Europe. It's also brutally depressing: a couple
million people killed (more even than the Second World War), and the
map of Europe completely rewritten as three different empires collapsed
(Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire). And
worse: as the narrator was quick to point out at the end of the movie,
Germany was forced to pay reparations (which they mostly didn't pay)
and was never defeated on German soil - which led to bitterness and
patriotism that only twenty years later led to the Second World War.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2003, dir. Marcus Kiggell, Simon Rockell, Ben Steele, Corina Sturmer,
Emma Wallace. With Jonathan Lewis.
</p>
-->
'Zen Flesh, Zen Bones' - Book Review2024-02-07T07:55:00-05:002024-02-13T07:42:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-02-07:/blog/zen-flesh-zen-bones.htmlI'm too tied to logic to find enlightenment in this tradition.
<p>
<em>Zen Flesh, Zen Bones</em><br />
Compiled by Paul Reps<br />
1957, Doubleday Anchor, 175p
</p>
<p>
For a time, this was one of the best known Zen texts published in
English. It's a collection of famous Zen and pre-Zen writings.
For those to whom it would mean something, it collects <em>101 Zen
Stories</em>, <em>The Gateless Gate</em>, <em>Ten Bulls</em>, and
<em>Centering</em> (the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra) in one relatively slim
book.
</p>
<p>
Amusingly, while I can say I've <em>read</em> the book, I cannot say
I've <em>understood</em> it. In the manner of a Zen koan, the book
presents stories that make no sense when looked at with traditional
logic, and some of the stories appear to contradict the thought
processes in some of the others. But this doesn't concern Zen
practitioners, as the stories aren't meant to be logical, they're meant
to bring enlightenment by causing your mind to escape the constraints
of logic.
</p>
<p>
I like many things about Zen Buddhism, most of which can be encompassed
in a single quote from a monk in a Japanese Zen monastery (during a
meditation class I attended): "This isn't mysticism. It's not even
religion. It's mind training." That was a brilliant lesson. But this
book ... not so much, not for me.
</p>
'The Marvels' - Movie Review2024-02-03T17:31:00-05:002024-02-03T22:14:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-02-03:/blog/the-marvels.htmlNot Marvel's worst movie, but so far back it can't see the front-runners.
<p>
The movie vacillates wildly between comedy, drama, tragedy, and space
opera - hell, it even flirted with being a musical. What it was meant
to be was a money-making product pumped out by Disney that somehow
precisely followed in the rules laid out by 32 previous Marvel movies -
and yet still quirky and unique. It's no more successful than that
genesis suggests. Which is unfortunate, as they've lined up a fairly
good cast (notably Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani as the
three Marvels).
</p>
<p>
A sequel to "<a href="/blog/captain-marvel-movie.html">Captain
Marvel</a>," the primary plot driver is the new Kree leader
Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) using a new power-up ("one of the two legendary
Quantum Bands") to restore the atmosphere of the planet Hala ... while
incidentally destroying a world that the Skrull had taken refuge on.
This act also "entangles" the three Marvels (Carol Danvers / Captain
Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel) ... although if
you haven't seen the TV mini-series "WandaVision" and "Ms. Marvel"
you'll be somewhat in the dark about two out of the three of them. By
"entangle," we mean that whenever they use their powers, they swap
places with each other. Or at least it happens when it's cinematically
convenient. And as mentioned, the tone of the movie is all over the
map - now comedic, now tragedy, 5-10 minutes of musical (no joke), a
lot of space opera, and some of it's played for drama.
</p>
<p>
This isn't as bad as "<a href="/blog/quantumania.html">Ant-Man and the Wasp:
Quantumania</a>" which defined a new low point for the Marvel
cinematic universe (although they tried with "<a href="/blog/eternals.html">The Eternals</a>" too),
so there's that. I was going to say "I don't know why I don't stop
watching," but the truth is I do know: I love superheroes. And those
unburdened by the MCU history ("<a href="/blog/project-power.html">Project: Power</a>"
and "<a href="/blog/how-i-became-a-superhero.html">How I
Became a Superhero</a>") are sometimes quite good.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Nia DaCosta. With Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman
Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan
Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Samuel L. Jackson.
</p>
-->
'Into Flight Once More' - Movie Review2024-01-28T23:17:00-05:002024-01-29T11:48:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-28:/blog/into-flight-once-more.htmlFor those who like history or airplanes or both.
<p>
For the 75th anniversary of D-Day in 2019, something like fifteen
American DC-3 / C-47 aircraft flew from all over the U.S. to Normandy.
Given that the planes involved were mostly between 70 and 80 years old,
and each was separately and privately financed, this was a hell of an
achievement. This 2022 TV special narrated by Gary Sinise documents
the planes, the people, and the flights as they flew first to New York,
then by steps (following an old World War 2 transit path) to Goose Bay,
Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, and finally Normandy. They included
footage from the D-Day flights, and talked both to the plane crews and
to some of the remaining veterans who were on the D-Day landings.
</p>
<p>
This is a must-see for aircraft geeks (I'm in this group), a good thing
for history buffs, and probably a dull slog for the rest of the world.
I recommend it ... and those are the caveats.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022, dir. Adrienne Hall. With Gary Sinise.
</p>
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'All the President's Men' - Movie Review2024-01-27T20:07:00-05:002024-01-28T12:39:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-27:/blog/all-the-presidents-men.htmlAn important moment in American history marked by a very good movie.
<p>
Strangely, this is effectively a sequel to 2017's "<a href="/blog/the-post.html">The Post</a>" (which I
watched very recently) although this movie was made in 1976. It is
also facts-based, and portrays several of the same people at the
Washington Post (portrayed by different actors), only a year after the
events of "The Post." Our two leads are different: Robert Redford is
Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman is Carl Bernstein. Woodward thinks
that the break-in at Democratic National Committee in the Watergate
complex is strange: the five guys caught have unusual connections and a
very high-priced lawyer. Woodward is a new reporter, but he has a high
level government contact who's willing to feed him some information
(titled "Deep Throat" by one of the editors because they didn't have
any other name for him). He teams up with the more experienced
Bernstein, Deep Throat pushes them to "follow the money," and we
watch as they try.
</p>
<p>
It's a tense and effective movie portraying an important moment in
American history. I'll still stand by "<a href="/blog/spotlight.html">Spotlight</a>" as the best
newspaper film ever made, but this - like "The Post" - is also very
good.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1976, dir. Alan J. Pakula. With Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack
Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander,
Stephen Collins, Ned Beatty, Robert Walden.
</p>
-->
'Three Days of the Condor' - Movie Review2024-01-23T21:56:00-05:002024-01-23T22:15:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-23:/blog/three-days-of-the-condor.htmlDecent if depressing 1970s spy movie.
<p>
Robert Redford is the smartest intelligence agent in his small division
of the CIA. He and his group work in a cover location in New York
analyzing world literature for possible references to other
intelligence activities. One day he goes out to pick up lunch for
everyone, and returns to find his entire crew murdered. He calls
headquarters ... but has the sense not to trust them entirely either.
He kidnaps Faye Dunaway for the use of her car and her apartment as a
place to sleep.
</p>
<p>
Having watched "<a href="/blog/extraction-movie.html">Extraction</a>"
yesterday, it seemed so weird that people just ... died when they were
shot once or twice. The two movies exist in separate worlds ... I had
to adjust my expectations from super-anti-heroes down to "ordinary
people."
</p>
<p>
My favourite quote was from Redford, who said (accurately enough) "I'm
not a field agent. I just read books!" But as mentioned, he's one of
their most intelligent: he survives ambushes and causes all kinds of
problems.
</p>
<p>
I didn't find the relationship between the kidnapper and the victim
believable, and the movie is depressing. Redford is good. It's all
very ... 1970s.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1975, dir. Sydney Pollack. With Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff
Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman, Addison Powell, Walter McGinn,
Tina Chen.
</p>
-->
'The Post' - Movie Review2024-01-21T21:36:00-05:002024-01-28T12:42:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-21:/blog/the-post.htmlGood movie about the Washington Post printing the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
<p>
In Washington, 1971, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) is the owner and
publisher of the Washington Post after the death of her husband. Her
editor is Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), and she and the board are trying to
make the paper a publicly traded company right as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers">Pentagon
Papers</a> broke in the New York Times. Both the people named and many
more in the movie were real people, and the Pentagon Papers were a very
big deal - which drove the question of freedom of the press all the way
to the Supreme Court.
</p>
<p>
The movie is primarily about the Pentagon Papers and freedom of the
press, but they do kind of make a case for what an uphill battle
Katharine Graham had every day as a female manager of a paper in the
1970s.
</p>
<p>
I suspect this movie exists because of "<a href="/blog/spotlight.html">Spotlight</a>," Tom
McCarthy's brilliant story of the Boston Globe's series of publications
about the child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston and around
the world. While I would argue "Spotlight" is the superior movie, this
one is still very good. Like "Spotlight," it makes a strong case for
free speech and an independent press.
</p>
<p>
UPDATE: if you watch this, you should also watch its spiritual - and in
some ways literal - sequel, 1976's "<a href="/blog/all-the-presidents-men.html">All the
President's Men</a>" (if you haven't seen it).
</p>
<!--
<p>
2017, dir. Steven Spielberg. With Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah
Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood,
Matthew Rhys.
</p>
-->
'Extraction' - Movie Review2024-01-20T21:22:00-05:002024-01-22T11:37:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-20:/blog/extraction-movie.htmlViolent and miserable, only for fans of exceptionally dark action movies.
<p>
An Indian drug lord's son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is kidnapped by a
Bangladeshi drug lord (Priyanshu Painyuli). Borderline suicidal
Australian mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is hired to "extract"
the boy. Mayhem, bloodshed, and betrayal follow. The kid seems nice,
but even if the extraction wasn't a double-cross, you're doing a drug
lord a favour. And this movie is grim from beginning to end: it has
zero sense of humour. You'd think that might be because it was trying
to be realistic, but you'd be wrong: our lead good guy is a fucking
superhero, hammered with abuse but keeps going like ... well, Thor, who
Hemsworth plays in another franchise also led by the Russo Brothers.
</p>
<p>
The movie was directed by Sam Hargrave. The action scenes are endless,
but aside from there being too much, they were effective. The writing
and production are from Joe and Anthony Russo, the team that brought us
the Marvel's "Avengers" series of movies. This is based on a graphic
novel the Russos also had a hand in. Chris Hemsworth was also a
producer. The acting is reasonably good for an all-out action movie.
</p>
<p>
I found this movie a miserable experience. Fun action movies the
viewer wants to revisit. This ain't that. Good drama movies take you
through an elegant story, teach you something. This ain't that either.
This is just a punishing slog of brutality. Which Netflix viewers
loved. According to Wikipedia, it "became the most-watched original
film in Netflix's history, with over 99 million viewers during the
first four weeks."
</p>
<p>
<strong>SPOILER ALERT:</strong> Stop reading if you plan to see the
movie, etc. There's a sequel. Which also stars Hemsworth as Tyler
Rake. Which negates the emotional and physical sacrifice he made in
this movie, in which he DIED at the end. Or at least he should have
died: he had multiple critical injuries, the last of which was a bullet
shot through the neck. Followed by a fall off a bridge into what's
probably among the world's most polluted rivers. Survival was only
possible because of the financial pressures of sequelitis.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2020, dir. Sam Hargrave. With Chris Hemsworth, Rudhraksh Jaiswal,
Randeep Hooda, Priyanshu Painyuli, Golshifteh Farahani, Pankaj
Tripathi, David Harbour, Pankaj Tripathi, Shataf Figar, Suraj Rikame.
</p>
-->
'Shut Up and Sing' - Movie Review2024-01-20T19:38:00-05:002024-01-22T11:45:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-20:/blog/shut-up-and-sing.htmlFreedom of speech is fine as long as you don't do it in public.
<p>
"Shut Up and Sing" is a documentary about the Dixie Chicks,
specifically about the fallout from a comment their lead singer Natalie
Maines made during a UK concert at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War:
"... we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from
Texas" (their home state). This comment was received very poorly by
conservative elements back in the U.S. And since the Dixie Chicks'
base is Country music fans, who are mostly conservative, that off-hand
joke changed their lives forever.
</p>
<p>
Here's the short version: they had horrible things said about them,
they (particularly Maines) received death threats ... and they stuck
together. Not only did they stick together, two years later they wrote
a new album that addressed the controversy and their reactions to it
called "Taking the Long Way." It was successful despite (and possibly
to some extent because of) the controversy - and although they were no
longer welcome in their home state or dozens of other Country Music
bastions, they found themselves selling out stadiums around the world
where they'd never really been before.
</p>
<p>
The movie covers a lot of topics, the most obvious being free
speech: the tag line of the movie summarizes the view of conservative
Americans, "freedom of speech is fine as long as you don't do it in
public." This movie was a warning about that view, and it's deeply
depressing to find ourselves in 2024 with it having got worse rather
than better. But the movie also addresses resiliency, and the
willingness to change. The Chicks lost a lot of radio stations, and
interviews with the station programming managers show that playing
Chicks' songs would have been financial suicide for them. And then
there were the sponsors, who reacted in much the same way - except the
Chicks might have kept the sponsors by issuing the appropriate
apologies ... and they had the strength to say no. They went through a
couple years of turmoil, but it made them stronger and (I may be
projecting a bit here) happier. It hit their income a bit, but not
nearly so much as you'd think, as they started selling much better
outside traditional Country Music markets. "Taking the Long Way" also
won three Grammys.
</p>
<p>
I don't like country music ... but because of this movie I really
listened to "Taking the Long Way" around 2007. Three of the songs on
that album have become mainstays in my playlists to this day: "The Long
Way Around," "Lubbock or Leave It," and "Not Ready to Make Nice," all
of which are about the trauma they went through. From Wikipedia,
Maines said of "Not Ready to Make Nice": "We tried to write about the
incident a few times, but you get nervous that you're being too preachy
or too victimized or too nonchalant. Dan came in with an idea that was
some kind of concession, more 'can't we all just get along?' and I
said, nope, I can't say that, can't do it. And we talked about it, and
he said, what about 'I'm not ready to make nice?'":
</p>
<pre>
Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting
I'm through with doubt
There's nothing left for me to figure out
I paid a price
And I'll keep paying it
I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and I don't have time
To go round and round and round.
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'cause I'm mad as hell, can't bring myself
To do what it is you think I should ...
I know you've said
"Can't you just get over it?"
It turned my whole world around
And I kinda like it
I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don't mind saying
It's a sad, sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter, sayin' that I better
Shut up and sing or my live will be over
</pre>
<p>
It's a powerful song, made more powerful by not referring directly to
their own problems - it could be about anybody saying something that
someone else doesn't like.
</p>
<p>
I love the movie, and I loved hearing this intelligent and
strong-willed group of women talk and struggle through this horrible
thing that happened to them. Still, I wonder if the movie would speak
to people who didn't live through the incident (particularly
non-Americans ... I was living in the U.S. when Maines said what she
said). On the other hand, the movie does retain a lot of relevance in
the ongoing fight for freedom of speech ...
</p>
<!--
<p>
2006, dir. Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck. With Martie Maguire, Natalie
Maines, Emily Robison, Adrian Pasdar, Rick Rubin, Simon Renshaw, Gareth
Maguire.
</p>
-->
'Pantheon' Season 1 - TV Review2024-01-20T18:40:00-05:002024-01-21T10:37:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-20:/blog/pantheon-s1.htmlThought-provoking animated SF TV series about 'uploaded intelligence.'
<p>
This series (eight episodes of 40 minutes each) is set in the current
day ... with the added speculation that there's a company called
Logorythms run by "Stephen Holstrom" (clearly based on Steve Jobs of
Apple fame) who has invented "Uploaded Intelligence," a process which
allows a human mind to be uploaded into a computer. There are a couple
caveats: the first is that your brain is destroyed by the upload
process so your physical body dies, the second being that in a matter
of a few years, your intellect will deteriorate. This is called "The
Flaw," and a race is on to fix it. But the uploaded are being used as
digital slaves ... at least until they escape, and unsurprisingly
they're pissed when they do. And they're in the world's computers with
the ability to cause incredible havoc.
</p>
<p>
Our main character is Maddie Kim (Katie Chang), an intelligent 14 year
old whose father died and was uploaded - although initially she knows
only that he died. The first episode is about the discovery that some
part of her father lives on, and the second episode introduces the idea
that he's not the only uploaded person. We're also introduced to
another teenager, Caspian Keyes (voiced by Paul Dano), a genius
computer hacker.
</p>
<p>
I'm not sure I buy the basic premise of the series, the idea of
"Uploaded Intelligence." At least not yet - we're nowhere close to
that kind of technology. But whoever wrote this ("based on a series of
short stories by Ken Liu") really spent a lot of time thinking about
the consequences and fallout of the problem. This is both very well
written and very well plotted, a really impressive and enjoyable piece
of work.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022. With Katie Chang, Paul Dano, Aaron Eckhart, Rosemarie DeWitt,
Chris Diamantopoulos, Raza Jaffrey, Daniel Dae Kim, Ron Livingston,
Taylor Schilling.
</p>
-->
'Blood and Thunder: The Sound of Alberts' - TV Review2024-01-12T21:53:00-05:002024-01-15T09:01:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-12:/blog/blood-and-thunder-the-sound-of-alberts.htmlTed Albert, Harry Vanda, and George Young were behind much of Australia's most famous music from 1965 through the 80s.
<p>
This is - as the title suggests - supposed to be about the immense
influence Ted Albert had on Australian rock music. And I'm not going
to claim otherwise. But to me - as a massive fan of Flash and the Pan
- it was mostly a movie about the Young family, AC/DC, and most
importantly Vanda and Young. This is a TV mini-series, with two
episodes of an hour each.
</p>
<p>
In 1963, a large chunk of the Young family (including eight(?!) sons)
emigrated from Scotland to Australia. In the Villawood Migrant Hostel,
George Young met Netherlands immigrant Johannes Hendrikus Jacob van den
Berg who he named "Harry Vanda," and the two shortly formed a band
called The Easybeats. You may not remember that name, but I bet you've
heard their most famous song: "Friday on My Mind" (also written by
Vanda and Young). It was Ted Albert who gave them their recording
contract. While the Easybeats were rocketing to fame, Malcolm and
Angus Young were learning guitar and cooking up a little band called
AC/DC. And Vanda and Young were in London (and maybe Los Angeles)
writing songs for other bands after the dissolution of the Easybeats.
AC/DC had a long road of mostly money-losing touring to get them to
fame, and it was Ted Albert who bankrolled them for a couple of their
worst years. Vanda and Young recorded and engineered AC/DC's first
eight albums in Albert's studio: that's right, these were the guys in
the booth for "Dirty Deeds," "Highway to Hell," and "Back in Black."
And for a while, Vanda and Young wrote and recorded their own stuff
again with this weird band (that I love) called Flash and the Pan that
was big in Europe. I'm leaving out a dozen other bands and artists
that went through that Albert-Vanda-Young factory because they didn't
interest me as much.
</p>
<p>
Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was Ted Albert wanted to do a
movie - and did. When his wife took him to this quirky little musical
called "Strictly Ballroom," he knew he'd found the right one. In case
you don't know how that ended, a bunch of unknown actors with a first
time director called "Baz Luhrmann" made a low budget film that was
widely critically acclaimed and swept the world.
</p>
<p>
One of Vanda and Young's most unusual practices was how they recorded
several of their bands. They noticed that several of the pub bands
sounded fantastic at the pub ... and flat and uninspiring on
recordings. They realized it was that live energy that was missing -
so for a decade(?) they were dragging their bands straight from their
pub gigs into the studio for a recording session. Their work hours
became midnight until 6 AM. It seems to have worked ...
</p>
<p>
The series felt a little self-serving, a bit of a hagiography, and I
wondered if the Albert family had some money in this production. But
checking other sources after watching the series, it all seems to be
pretty close to the truth. It's a hell of a story.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2015, dir. Paul Clarke. With David Field, Angus Young, Brian Johnson,
Malcolm Young, Harry Vanda, Peter Garrett, George Young, John Paul
Young, Fifa Riccobono, Gordon "Snowy" Fleet.
</p>
-->
Night Court, Season 3 - TV Review2024-01-11T21:36:00-05:002024-01-22T11:02:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-11:/blog/night-court-s3.htmlSlapstick on the rise put me off the series.
<p>
Reviews of
<a href="/blog/night-court-s1.html">Season 1</a> and
<a href="/blog/night-court-s2.html">Season 2</a>.
</p>
<p>
So much mugging. And slapstick. Mostly John Larroquette as Dan
Fielding, but they're emphasizing reaction shots from all the
characters more as well. There's an orangutan. And Bull talks to it -
and evidently gets responses. The dripping sentimentality has, if
anything, got worse in this season.
</p>
<p>
At one point Bull is somewhat drugged (I can no longer remember why,
but it's part and parcel of the writers providing improbable events to
drive the comedy) and Harry orders Dan to stop Bull from leaving a
room. Out of character, Dan agrees. And when Dan tries to stop Bull,
Bull says "If you try to stop me, I'll be forced to invent the human
pretzel." Dan tries to stop him, and we find out that John Larroquette
was still quite flexible at the time. It was a funny gag, but it was
also kind of the start of the mugging and slapstick.
</p>
<p>
The other bailiff (ie. "not Bull") for the first two seasons was Selma
Diamond. She died of lung cancer before the third season started
recording. She was replaced by Florence Halop (who I didn't think was
nearly as good in the role). Unfortunately, Halop - who was also a
heavy smoker - died of lung cancer after this season. She was replaced
by Marsha Warfield as "Roz," who (happily) stayed with the show through
the rest of its run. I'm a little sorry that giving up on the series
at this point means I won't see Roz at all: I vaguely remember her as
being a good character in the series from the occasional episode I saw
on broadcast TV back in the day. But the series became significantly
less funny this season and I'm quitting.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1985. With Harry Anderson, John Larroquette, Richard Moll, Markie
Post, Charles Robinson, Florence Halop.
</p>
-->
'Suzume' - Movie Review2024-01-08T19:46:00-05:002024-01-09T06:35:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-08:/blog/suzume.htmlMakoto Shinkai's best - and that's saying something.
<p>
Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara in the Japanese version) is a 17 year old
high school girl. On the way to school one day, she meets an
exceptionally attractive young man - who asks her if there are any
abandoned towns or buildings locally. She decides to follow him, and
at the abandoned onsen opens a door that behaves very oddly. Things
only get weirder from there ... and I think that's all I'm going to
give for a plot summary.
</p>
<p>
Makoto Shinkai is possibly Japan's best Anime director - up there with
Mamoru Hosoda and Hayao Miyazaki. I've seen all of his full-length
films, and this is the best of the lot. "Garden of Words," "<a href="/blog/your-name-movie.html">Your Name</a>," and "<a href="/blog/weathering-with-you.html">Weathering With
You</a>" are all really good ... and this is better than any of
them. The fantasy mechanisms by which his heroines and heroes have
adventures are never subtle: this one sees Suzume chasing a talking
cat, and trying to find doors that cause earthquakes in the company of
an animated, talking chair. Not subtle. The artwork has been
fantastic in everything he's done. But he's finally really getting
somewhere with the family dynamics and his characters' emotions, and
the twists and turns of the plot are elegant and enchanting. A
beautiful piece of work.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022, dir. Makoto Shinkai. With Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri
Fukatsu, Shota Sometani, Sairi Ito, Kotone Hanase, Kana Hanazawa,
Hatsumoto Hakuō, Akari Miura, Ryūnosuke Kamiki, Ann Yamane, Aimi.
</p>
-->
'The Equalizer 3' - Movie Review2024-01-07T19:10:00-05:002024-01-15T08:35:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-07:/blog/equalizer3.htmlNot great, but best of the Equalizer series with a gorgeous setting on the Amalfi Coast.
<p>
The movie opens in a Sicilian winery, where we see dozens of bodies.
This is followed by Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) killing even more
people. In a rare miscalculation, he's injured as he leaves. He
drives away, and eventually pulls over and passes out from shock. He's
nursed back to health by a doctor in a small town on the Amalfi Coast.
</p>
<p>
I'm not sure where on the Amalfi Coast this was set, but the town is
absolutely gorgeous. It's referred to as "Altamonte," but there's no
such place on the Amalfi Coast. I suspect that tourism to that area
has surged since the release of this movie - it's incredibly beautiful.
</p>
<p>
As McCall recovers, he falls in love with the place and its people.
But all is not well: the Camorra (think "Mafia" and you'll be close
enough) is trying to get its claws into the town. You'll be shocked to
hear that McCall decides to become the town's defender.
</p>
<p>
There's not much more you need to know about the movie: it's very
violent as Robert McCall does what he does - with gorgeous scenery and
occasional mild ruminations on doing good deeds by killing people.
This is - surprisingly, given that this is a threequel - the best
reviewed of the "Equalizer" movies. And I'm inclined to agree. It's
not that it breaks the bonds of the formula or anything, but it's
prettier and a bit better constructed than its predecessors.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Antoine Fuqua. With Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning,
Eugenio Mastrandrea, David Denman, Gaia Scodellaro, Remo Girone, Andrea
Sarduzio, Andrea Dodero
</p>
-->
'The Rebel Moon - Part One' - Movie Review2024-01-07T15:09:00-05:002024-01-09T06:26:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-07:/blog/rebel-moon-part-one.htmlPretty, and astonishingly derivative.
<p>
Zack Snyder has a mixed history as a director: "The Watchmen" was good,
but I'm less enthusiastic about "300" and "Sucker Punch" is a
significant (if admittedly visually stunning) failure. On this movie
Snyder was all of Director, Writer, Producer, and Director of
Photography. To my eye, he's most qualified for that last role.
Unfortunately, he also thinks he's good at shaping stories - which I'd
say he soundly disproved on this outing.
</p>
<p>
I knew we were in trouble right out of the gate: when you need a long
opening voice-over to explain the politics of the Imperium (because
the writer is too unskilled to work it into the story-telling of the
movie), you've got major problems. Highly reminiscent of the opening
explanatory text of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" (remember the
excitement you felt at hearing about trade embargoes in the
introduction to that movie? Neither do I.)
</p>
<p>
Our lead is Kora (Sofia Boutella), who we first meet as a farmer in a
small village on a moon on the outskirts of the Imperium. But we're
quickly told she's not a native, having come from outside a few years
ago. When evil admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein - digging himself
further into the pit of bad-guy stereotyping) and his massive warship
arrive, he explains (violently) that he'll be back in a few days
expecting nearly all of their harvest (leaving them to starve). Kora
decides to leave quietly, but when several soldiers attempt to rape one
of the town's young women, Kora shows an incredible skill as a warrior.
She then sets out to round up warriors to help them fight the Imperium
warship when it returns.
</p>
<p>
The rest of the movie is essentially an SF re-implementation of the
first half of "<a href="/blog/seven-samurai.html">Seven
Samurai</a>" as she and others go from planet to planet collecting
brave and famous warriors for their cause. The movie is reminiscent of
every SF movie that came before it: the influence of the "Star Wars"
franchise is most visible (particularly the Cantina scene of the
original movie), but Snyder borrowed from "Alita: Battle Angel,"
"Bladerunner," and countless others.
</p>
<p>
Snyder has, as mentioned, a certain visual flair. But cheesy dialogue,
ill-drawn characters, and strip-mining the rest of the SF canon for
your content make this a weak outing.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Zack Snyder. With Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed
Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Charlie Hunnam, Anthony
Hopkins.
</p>
-->
'The Gods Must Be Crazy' - Movie Review2024-01-07T13:06:00-05:002024-01-09T06:30:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-07:/blog/gods-must-be-crazy.htmlStill one of the classics of comedy.
<p>
I watched this around the time it came out, and last saw it in 2008.
As I mentioned in my review then, it borrows heavily from the Keystone
Cops. It's got a healthy splash of old school slapstick. Despite
being based on these ancient comedic ideas, it manages to put them to
very fine use and end up being very funny indeed.
</p>
<p>
The movie starts out looking like a documentary about the Kalahari
desert with a voice-over about the plants and animals there, and then
gives us a few minutes mocking modern urban and office life, before
finally getting us set up on our four wildly different plotlines. We
have Xi (played by Nǃxau ǂToma), a member of the San tribe who knows
nothing of the modern world, who is attempting to dispose of an evil
Coca-Cola bottle that's caused strife in his tribe. We have Andrew
Steyn (Marius Weyers), researching elephants in the desert. We have
Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) who's abandoned her news reporter job
to become a teacher in a tiny town in the desert. And we have Sam Boga
(Louw Verwey) and his men, a violent rebel group on the run. Andrew is
sent to pick up Kate, and much of the movie is spent on his bungling
incompetence with women and the antics required to transport her across
the desert in a barely functional Land Rover that's been titled "The
Anti-Christ" by Andrew's employee M'Pudi (played by Michael Thys).
M'Pudi speaks Xi's language, and so is pulled in as a translator when
Xi runs afoul of laws he has no understanding of. And eventually, they
all run afoul of the escaping armed rebel group.
</p>
<p>
None of which really fills you in on the comedic genius of the movie:
Weyers is quite possibly the greatest slapstick artist since the 1920s.
Weyers was born 60 years too late: he's so good at slapstick he could
have had starring roles in Charlie Chaplin's movies. Better yet, the
movie uses that slapstick judiciously, breaking it up with social
commentary and other forms of comedy.
</p>
<p>
Wikipedia points out there's been some controversy about the movie's
completely ignoring Aparthied, and patronizing the San. They're not
wrong, but also ... this is a comedy, not social commentary. Despite
these possible problems, the movie remains one of my all time favourite
comedies.
</p>
<p>
There's one official sequel (and three low budget unofficial sequels),
but it's not as good and not recommended.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1980, dir. Jamie Uys. With Nǃxau ǂToma, Sandra Prinsloo, Marius
Weyers, Nic de Jager, Michael Thys, Louw Verwey, Ken Gampu.
</p>
-->
'Confess, Fletch' - Movie Review2024-01-05T22:46:00-05:002024-01-07T09:22:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-05:/blog/confess-fletch.htmlEccentric investigator Fletch returns in a new movie.
<p>
In 1985, a movie called "Fletch" was released starring Chevy Chase as
the title character. I haven't seen it, or its sequel "Fletch Lives."
I was aware of the first movie, but not being a fan of Chase I never
watched it. As it turns out, Jon Hamm's outing as Fletch isn't so much
a revival of Chase's character as a revival of a character created by
novelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletch_(novel)">Gregory
Mcdonald</a>, who wrote ten Fletch novels and another six spin-off
novels about related characters. Chase's first movie appears to be a
plot match for the first <em>Fletch</em> novel, while this movie draws
its title (and presumably plot) from one of the later novels.
</p>
<p>
Jon Hamm plays Irwin Maurice Fletcher, who really doesn't like his
first names and prefers to be called "Fletch." We first see him
arriving at an upscale rental in Boston, where he finds a young woman
dead on the floor. We rapidly find out his reactions aren't like other
people's: he has a casual phone call with the police about the dead
body, and then relaxes with a drink in his hand. He then proceeds to
irritate the investigators (Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri) by being
equally casual and unconcerned with them - thus becoming their prime
suspect even though he placed the call.
</p>
<p>
Fletch is in Boston looking for some paintings stolen from the family
of his Italian girlfriend (Lorenza Izzo). As Fletch keeps telling
people, "I was an investigative reporter of some repute." The police
try to trail him as he investigates both the murder and the paintings,
with only mixed results: he's very good at losing tails by a variety
of eccentric and humourous methods. Ultimately he gets his answers and
is almost killed over a missed detail (don't give me this "spoiler
alert!" crap - we already discussed him starring in a very long series
of books). He's referred to as "stupid" several times, but I think
that's really missing the point - and also the police officers who
called him that were too smart to have missed the fact that he's a very
sharp guy. Occasionally sloppy, and definitely arrogant (which they
more accurately called him), but they knew what he'd done and he didn't
get there by being stupid.
</p>
<p>
Hamm as Fletch is very good. His comedic timing is good, although I
think I've seen him do better in other movies. I think part of that
opinion is based on the movie's insistence on cutting over to Fletch's
face for reaction shots, in which he grimaces or frowns or whatever,
and that's supposed to be funny. Not as much so as they thought it was
... he was far better in action and dialogue scenes. And the ending
was disappointing: another layer of deception is revealed that felt
particularly unbelievable (it upped my opinion of Fletch's intelligence
and lowered my opinion of his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence">emotional
intelligence</a> in one swift stroke). But - and I guess this is
probably the most important judgment - I would return to watch Hamm in
the role again: it was fun enough for that.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022, dir. Greg Mottola. With Jon Hamm, Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr.,
Ayden Mayeri, Lorenza Izzo, John Slattery, Marcia Gay Harden, Annie
Mumolo, John Behlmann.
</p>
-->
'Night Court' Season 2 - TV Review2024-01-04T18:23:00-05:002024-01-12T10:31:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-04:/blog/night-court-s2.htmlLight-weight but funny.
<p>
Review of
<a href="/blog/night-court-s1.html">Season 1</a>.
</p>
<p>
I was entertained throughout this season by the knowledge that public
defender Billie Young (played by Ellen Foley - who stayed with the show
only one season) is the female lead singer in Meatloaf's "Paradise by
the Dashboard Light" - which was a formative song in my life, but is
probably unimportant to people not of my generation.
</p>
<p>
The pattern is set: there's always some case or problem that Harry
Stone (Harry Anderson) solves through his humanist outlook, usually
stretching through most of the episode. Surrounding that, there's
Harry's goofiness, Dan's lustfulness and avariciousness, Billie's
occasional dramatics, Mac's deadpanning and unflappability, Bull's
inconsistent thick-headedness, and Selma's world-weariness. And of
course the bizarre characters who show up in the courtroom.
</p>
<p>
It remains more than funny enough to continue watching. And they
managed to end the season on one of their strongest jokes of the year.
It wasn't high-class humour (it appears someone split the seam of their
pants), but it was very funny.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1985. With Harry Anderson, John Larroquette, Richard Moll, Ellen
Foley, Charles Robinson, Selma Diamond.
</p>
-->
'Freakonomics' - Book Review2024-01-04T08:31:00-05:002024-01-06T09:58:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2024-01-04:/blog/freakonomics.htmlInteresting book, but statistics are a slippery path to 'the truth.'
<p>
<em>Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything</em><br />
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner<br />
2005, HarperCollins, 242p
</p>
<p>
This book was a best seller when it came out nearly twenty years ago,
and I was curious. As they mention in the introduction, there's "no
unifying theme," it's just a bunch of different topics that Levitt and
Dubner thought would interest the world. I'll allow others to attempt
to describe the book.
</p>
<p>
From the authors' afterword: "Some of these ideas might make you
uncomfortable, even unpopular. To claim that legalized abortion
resulted in a massive drop in crime will inevitably lead to explosive
moral reactions. But the fact of the matter is that
<em>Freakonomics</em>-style thinking simply doesn't traffic in
morality. As we suggested near the beginning of this book, if morality
represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world."
They're referring to what they did in the book as "economics," I
suppose because Levitt is an economist. But largely it would be more
accurate to refer to huge chunks of the book as "statistics" as much of
it has little to do with money.
</p>
<p>
Another description, this time from Wikipedia:
<ul>
<li>Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo
wrestlers, as well as a typical Washington, D.C. area bagel
business and its customers</li>
<li>Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan
and real-estate agents</li>
<li>Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the
surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of
crack cocaine dealers</li>
<li>Chapter 4: The role legalized abortion has played in reducing
crime, contrasted with the policies and downfall of Romanian
dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu</li>
<li>Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on
education</li>
<li>Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
Did I like the book? It was interesting. But I think everyone should
read <em><a href="/blog/how-to-lie-with-statistics.html">How to Lie
with Statistics</a></em> before they read this book. Not that I think
the authors of this book were trying to lie, and apparently Sumo Japan
thought they were telling the truth (look up "Freakonomics" on
Wikipedia and read the fallout), but looking for truth in statistics is
a slippery path. I believed them, but I'm not entirely sure I should
and will keep an open mind going forward.
</p>
'Plane' - Movie Review2023-12-30T21:16:00-05:002023-12-31T09:14:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-30:/blog/plane-movie.htmlUtilitarian action movie.
<p>
"Plane" is a very utilitarian action movie. It starts by setting up
the characters, including pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) and
prisoner-in-transport Louis Gaspare (Mike Coulter). Amazingly, Butler
gets to speak in his native Scottish accent (if you look at his acting
history, he's mostly spoken "American").
</p>
<p>
While it felt like they had put considerable effort into making the
details of our character's working in the cockpit of the plane
accurate, in other areas there were numerous continuity errors (I
wasn't trying to find them, but some were quite obvious). The most
annoying one was in a long conversation between Torrance and his
co-pilot (Yoson An), every second shot of An had him without his safety
harness on - even though they were experiencing extreme turbulence.
Then it would cut back again, and he'd be harnessed properly. Back and
forth.
</p>
<p>
They land - badly - on a small island in the Philippines. One that's
controlled by rebels, who are far more interested in hostages and money
than rescuing the passengers. (I'm not telling you anything that isn't
in the trailer.) Torrance and Gaspare work together in an attempt to
free the other passengers.
</p>
<p>
As I said, utilitarian. With the exception of the continuity errors
and some sloppy science, it's not bad: there are fights, dramatic
moments, rescues, etc. The kind of people who like this sort of thing
will probably enjoy this - you know who you are.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Jean-François Richet. With Gerard Butler, Mike Colter,
Yoson An, Tony Goldwyn, Evan Dane Taylor, Paul Ben-Victor, Daniella
Pineda, Lilly Krug, Kelly Gale, Joey Slotnick, Remi Adeleke.
</p>
-->
'Polite Society' - Movie Review2023-12-30T19:29:00-05:002023-12-31T09:08:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-30:/blog/polite-society.htmlUnevenly surreal British-Pakistani family martial arts flick.
<p>
After Nida Manzoor's screamingly funny TV series "<a href="/blog/we-are-lady-parts-s1.html">We Are Lady
Parts</a>," I was more than willing to give the well-reviewed
"Polite Society" a shot. The movie feels kind of like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurinder_Chadha">Gurinder
Chadha</a> turned up to 11 - an unnecessary emphasis when Chadha's
movies are already at <a href="/blog/blinded-by-the-light.html">about a nine on
the dial</a>. This is about British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan
(Priya Kansara) who wants to be a stuntwoman. And just like Jesminder
Bhamra in "Bend it Like Beckham," her family doesn't support her. And
just like "Beckham," her sister is getting married. But in this case,
our star decides that the wedding is bad and sets out to sabotage it in
increasingly spectacular ways.
</p>
<p>
As one of the friends watching with me pointed out, it alternates
between scenes that are mundane and expected, and others that are so
surreal that you expect it to turn out to be a dream sequence or
alternately the police will arrive to break up the fight. Neither
happens, and you're just left shaking your head in confusion.
Understand: I like surreal, and something that's consistently mildly
surreal is (usually) fine by me. But this one never found its tone,
never felt cohesive, never made sense. A serious disappointment.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Nida Manzoor. With Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Nimra Bucha,
Akshay Khanna, Seraphina Beh, Ella Bruccoleri, Shona Babayemi, Shobu
Kapoor, Jeff Mirza.
</p>
-->
'The Roundup' - Movie Review2023-12-26T21:14:00-05:002024-01-02T08:28:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-26:/blog/the-roundup.htmlAction-Comedy-Police-Revenge, whatever you call it, it's fun to watch.
<p>
Ma Dong-seok (sometimes - usually on American movies - credited as "Don
Lee") plays police officer Ma Seok-do, reprising a role he first played
in 2017's very successful "The Outlaws" (which I haven't seen). This
time, he and his Captain go to Vietnam for what appears to be a fairly
straight-forward repatriation of a Korean criminal. But it's rapidly
clear that Ma Seok-do uses his own playbook, and even though they don't
have jurisdiction he goes on something of a rampage in Ho Chi Minh City
looking for the associates of the criminal who's turned himself in.
There's comedy and there are bloody murders, and the action returns to
Korea for the second half of the movie.
</p>
<p>
Ma Dong-seok is ... well, he's not beautiful, and he's bulky. But he's
also charismatic and muscular, and it's <em>almost</em> believable that
when he hits someone, they fly backward a couple metres. The main
criminal they end up pursuing is Kang Hae-sang (Son Suk-ku), who is
alarmingly proficient with a cleaver, and has no conscience.
</p>
<p>
Sits slightly uncomfortably between "Action Comedy," "Police Drama" and
"Bloody Revenge flick," but if you're okay with some violence (and
subtitles), this is a lot of fun to watch.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022, dir. Lee Sang-yong. With Ma Dong-seok, Son Suk-ku, Choi Gwi-hwa,
Park Ji-hwan, Heo Dong Won, Yoon Byung Hee, Kim Seung Hyun.
</p>
-->
'Knights of the Zodiac' - Movie Review2023-12-25T21:41:00-05:002023-12-31T11:15:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-25:/blog/knights-of-the-zodiac.htmlFlashy and silly kids live-action manga, doomed to failure.
<p>
Based on the manga <em>Saint Seiya</em>. Every bit as stupid as I
expected, so my hope was that it would also be "fun." The effects are
reasonably good, and they chose from the top end of B-list actors'
list. Famke Janssen, Madison Iseman, Mark Dacascos, Sean Bean (who
dies, because he almost always dies ...).
</p>
<p>
The protagonist is "Seiya," played by the mononymous "Mackenyu" - who
turns out to have at least two different last names he's gone by
("Maeda" and "Arata"), neither of which match that of his famous
father, Sonny Chiba. Closer examination shows that Sonny Chiba's birth
name was "Sadaho Maeda." Mackenyu is good-looking, buff, and an
untalented actor. Seiya has a tragic back-story which we see a bit of:
he's a street orphan, raised (and taught how to fight) by his older
sister, who was taken from him by an evil organization.
</p>
<p>
After that small piece of back-story, we see Seiya entering an
underground fighting tournament. He's very good at not getting hit,
but when he's battered by the leader of the underground tournament, he
manifests "Cosmo," which we see as flaring blue light and which
protects him. And then Sean Bean and Marc Dacascos show up to rescue
him before the evil organization can haul him away because he has
"Cosmo." It turns out that he's destined to become the Pegasus Knight,
defender of the goddess Athena. (Did I mention that this is silly?)
We get more fights, a training montage, Seiya bonding with the young
woman who will become Athena (Madison Iseman), and eventually the big
final fight.
</p>
<p>
The problem is ... Iseman and Mackenyu are carrying the story, and
they're not very good actors. Of course most people who watch this
aren't overly concerned with that minor detail, but should they pay
attention to the "drama" instead of the action, they'll be deeply
disappointed. The supporting cast is no better: take, for example,
Mark Dacascos. A good martial artist who isn't a terrible actor, but
will never be cast as a dramatic lead. Although Diego Tinoco deserves
some kind of recognition as the worst of the lot as the lead henchman
of the antogonist: he put on sarcasm-face at the beginning of the movie
and didn't drop it for the entire run.
</p>
<p>
This was never intended to be a stand-alone movie - it was a manga
series after all. They carefully set up a sequel at the end, a sequel
that's extremely unlikely to land as not only did this bomb with
critics, its box office was awful. Sorry Seiya, you may be the Pegasus
Knight but we'll never see the rest of the Zodiac.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Tomek Bagiński. With Mackenyu, Famke Janssen, Madison
Iseman, Diego Tinoco, Mark Dacascos, Nick Stahl, Sean Bean, Caitlin
Htson, Katie Moy, TJ Storm, David Torok, Ryusei Iwata.
</p>
-->
'Night Court' Season 1 - TV Review2023-12-24T20:42:00-05:002023-12-31T09:24:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-24:/blog/night-court-s1.htmlThe structure is painfully 1980s, but the humour was occasionally hysterical.
<p>
"Night Court" was a silly 22 minute per episode situational comedy that
ran from 1984 to 1992. It starred Harry Anderson as Judge Harry Stone,
who was very young and goofy and possibly last pick to fill a judge's
position. But he quickly proves himself to be a decent man who's good
at find eccentric and effective solutions to problems. I saw a lot of
this series on broadcast TV back in the 1990s, but this is the first
time I'd sat down and watched the first season in sequence. (The first
season was 13 episodes: later seasons were 22 episodes per year.)
</p>
<p>
The pilot episode is very funny, but by the second episode it had
settled into having some melodramatic absurdity (a bickering married
couple, Bull with a baby) be the focus of the episode. While the
absurdity and dripping sentimentality were par for the course for
period sitcoms, I found it kind of grating. What makes "Night Court"
somewhat watchable is the humour - which at its best is very funny
indeed. And probably the reason the show got a 2023 reboot.
</p>
<p>
The history of the actors is interesting if you dig into it: Harry
Anderson was a touring magician, occasionally hosted Saturday Night
Live, and had a recurring bit on "Cheers." John Larroquette was the
court's sex-obsessed prosecuting attorney. Both of them are very tall
at 6'4" ... but are made to look normal-sized by Richard Moll (playing
bailiff "Bull Shannon") who is the court's towering security guard and
frequent comedic foil. Paula Kelly is the public defender - she was
only with the series for a year, being replaced by Markie Post who held
the role from seasons 2-9. Likewise, Karen Austin played the court
clerk in the first season ... but (if Wikipedia is correct) was let go
because she had Bell's Palsy (which seems kind of unfair), and replaced
with Charles Robinson who played the court clerk in seasons 2-9.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1984. With Harry Anderson, John Larroquette, Richard Moll, Paula
Kelly, Karen Austin, Selma Diamond.
</p>
-->
'Fittest on Earth: Retro/Active' - Movie Review2023-12-24T18:43:00-05:002023-12-26T09:23:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-24:/blog/fittest-on-earth.htmlSlickly produced but surprisingly dull.
<p>
Somewhere in Wisconsin in 2022, a whole bunch of fitness fans and
athletes got together for a week of events to select the "Fittest
on Earth." I found the selection of events kind of interesting, but
the athletes were a surprisingly dull lot, and the events were
presented in a dull way. Despite a nearly two hour run time, they
didn't manage to make any of the events exciting because they diced
them up into such tiny parts. Across 5-to-7 days, there are a LOT of
events, so if they want to show some or most of them they have to do it
chopped small ... or they could have concentrated on one or two events.
Instead they showed us tiny bits of events, and talked to the top three
competitors of each gender. And the competitors talked in clichés, ate
a lot, and grunted through events.
</p>
<p>
"CrossFit" is apparently not only the group making the movie, but also
a company that makes cross-fit equipment. This amounts to a very long
and disappointing ad for a sport/lifestyle. I respect the achievement
of the athletes, but that can't make this a good movie.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Mariah Moore. With Adrian Bozman, Ricky Garard, Laura
Horvath, Roman Khrennikov, Justin Medeiros, Mal O'Brien, Tia-Clair
Toomey, Patrick Vellner.
</p>
-->
'Speed' - Movie Review2023-12-23T22:52:00-05:002023-12-26T09:19:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-23:/blog/speed-movie.htmlOccasionally very silly, occasionally very good.
<p>
I think I saw this shortly after it came out, haven't seen it since.
It's an incredibly silly movie ... and yet it's one of the classics
of action cinema. I can kind of see why, although the flaws are enough
that I'm unlikely to watch it again. There are huge problems ... and
there are some really good elements that mostly redeem it.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Bad</strong>:
<ul>
<li>the whole "bus must stay over 50" concept ... but I guess we
have to swallow that to watch at all, and it's not terrible
</li>
<li>Keanu Reeve's (typically) wooden acting ... although it did
manage to show me he's improved in the intervening years</li>
<li>The whole subway sequence at the end, which I think they should
have dropped entirely</li>
<li>And finally, the prize: a bus jumping a 50 yard gap in the
freeway (see: "<a href="/blog/movie-science.html">Movies that
Maul Science</a>")</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
<strong>Good</strong>:
<ul>
<li>Dennis Hopper's vicious (but not really
over-the-top!) villain</li>
<li>The palpable tension on the bus for most of the ride</li>
<li>And, surprisingly, the rapport between Keanu's character and
Jeff Daniels' character</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
Still not a favourite of mine, but at least I kind of understand why it
holds the regard it does.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1994, dir. Jan de Bont. With Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra
Bullock, Joe Morton, Jeff Daniels, Alan Ruck, Glenn Plummer, Beth
Grant, Hawthorne James, Carlos Carrasco, David Kriegel.
</p>
-->
'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' - Movie Review2023-12-23T20:31:00-05:002024-03-12T07:35:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-23:/blog/spider-man-across-the-spider-verse.htmlGood, but even Lord and Miller can't make 'To Be Continued' an appealing ending.
<p>
Review of the original: "<a href="/blog/spider-man-spider-verse.html">Spider-Man: Into the
Spider-Verse</a>." Like the last one, the real drivers here are
writer-producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
</p>
<p>
Almost as good as the first one (something of a miracle, given how good
the first one was), often just as hyperactive. Suffers slightly from
go-big-or-go-home - although Lord and Miller are the two who could pull
this off ... So they went with 10,000 versions of Spider-Man. Almost
as good ... right up until the end where it became clear it wasn't
going to end and they went with a classic (and no less annoying for it)
comic book "To Be Continued."
</p>
<p>
Gwen Stacey (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) gets recruited by the
multi-versal Spider Society, and chooses to visit her friend (from the
previous movie, and still our main character) Miles Morales (Shameik
Moore). Miles fights "The Spot," who can move through portals. The
Spot is weak and goofy, but slips through Miles' hands and starts
jumping universes to increase his own power so he can beat
Miles/Spider-Man. Several of the Spider-Men chase him. Miguel
(Spider-Man 2099, voiced by Oscar Isaac) - the leader of the Spider
Society - explains "canon events" to Miles. How each of the
Spider-people has important people in their lives that die, and how
those events cannot be disrupted and must happen. Miles disrupts one
of these events in another universe, which causes a tear in space-time
... or something like that. But far worse is that his own father is
scheduled to die at the hands of Spot and he's not "allowed" to do
anything about it.
</p>
<p>
Lord and Miller have decided that this movie is about story-telling and
fate: it's not just a Spider-Man story about Miles Morales, it's also
carrying a big discussion about how stories are constructed - one that
both Miles and the audience have to navigate. This is talking about
the whole multi-verse thing that Marvel's comic books built up over
decades so they could repeatedly tell the same story with variations.
It's trying to nail an over-arching structure onto it, and they
leave us with the question "is Miles's fate sealed, or can he (and his
Spider-friends) change it?"
</p>
<p>
It's better than it sounds, just as the last one sounded insane if you
put it on paper but was great if you watched it. But even Lord and
Miller can't make "To Be Continued" appealing.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson. With
Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Vélez, Jake
Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, Greta
Lee, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, Oscar Isaac.
</p>
-->
'Enola Holmes 2' - Movie Review2023-12-22T23:20:00-05:002023-12-23T16:44:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-22:/blog/enola-holmes-2.htmlSlick, mildly amusing, mildly annoying.
<p>
Review of the original movie
<a href="/blog/enola-holmes.html">here</a>.
</p>
<p>
The movie opens on Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) on the run from the
police in 1880s London. We get about a minute in, and flip to the
favourite trope of the first movie: Enola turns to the camera and says
something like "maybe I should explain how I got here." So we flash
back to something less exciting than a foot chase, namely her trying
and mostly failing to set up her own detective agency. The reason for
her failure: she's female (and young). In this version of London,
there's diversity and no racism, but women (more historically
accurately) lack many rights we take for granted now.
</p>
<p>
Enola's only client is Bessie Chapman (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) who is
about ten years old(?), poor, and attempts to pay Enola a couple
pennies (which Enola refuses). Bessie's "sister" (another match girl)
has gone missing. Ironically, after I'd watched the movie I found
the movie's tie-in to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike">1888
Matchgirls' Strike</a> more interesting than the movie itself ...
</p>
<p>
I loved that they emphasized that everyone needs help sometimes, and no
one should try to do everything on their own. This was stated by
Enola's mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) and was a dig at her son
Sherlock's isolation across the entire Conan-Doyle canon, but was
targeted at Enola - and got Enola to reach out and start to build
bridges. And even help her older brother to start to do so too.
</p>
<p>
The movie is glossy, well constructed, and mildly entertaining. I
still don't like Enola talking to the camera - it's the smugness and
self-awareness that bothers me. Again, okay for a <a href="/blog/deadpool.html">Deadpool comedy</a>, not
so hot for a Sherlock-Holmes-adjacent mystery. And the whole thing is
too twee, too conveniently fantasy. I imagine there'll be a third
installment, I'm less certain I'll return for it.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2023, dir. Harry Bradbeer. With Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill,
David Thewlis, Helena Bonham Carter, Louis Partridge, Adeel Akhtar,
Susie Wokoma, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Hannah Dodd, Abbie Hern, Gabriel
Tierney, Tim McMullan.
</p>
-->
'Preacher' Season 4 - TV Review2023-12-13T21:02:00-05:002023-12-23T16:50:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-13:/blog/preacher-s4.htmlFinal season is full of spectacle, stupidity, and the grotesque.
<p>
Reviews of
<a href="/blog/preacher-season-1.html">Season 1</a>,
<a href="/blog/preacher-season-2.html">Season 2</a>,
<a href="/blog/preacher-s3.html">Season 3</a>.
</p>
<p>
By this final season, the show seems to have moved on to nothing but
spectacle-for-spectacle's sake. And an obsession with penises, the
most unpleasant of which is Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) being tortured by
having his foreskin removed hundreds of times (it regenerates - he's a
vampire). Hitler and Jesus duke it out at the boardroom table, and God
is shown to be powerful, petty, and capricious (in person: the previous
three seasons had been exploring these possibilities in a more
theoretical capacity). Blood, guts, and the grotesque dominate.
</p>
<p>
<strong>SPOILER ALERT:</strong>
If you haven't but intend to watch this series, STOP READING.
</p>
<p>
In the end, Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) gets his discussion with God
(although he had to die, go to hell, and return to get there). Whether
or not you find it satisfying is a matter of personal taste: Jesse
points out many of the things that atheists and agnostics have been
pointing out for decades, which all boils down to God's neglect of his
subjects and the suffering this creates.
</p>
<p>
To me the most irritating thing was the sloppiness of the ending. This
is biblical in scale: I felt like it should have a clean ending, like a
biblical story. But instead it's spectacularly messy. Jesse manages
to thrash God in a fight <em>after</em> releasing Genesis, which makes
no sense. The Saint of Killers killed God (good), but ends up on God's
throne having declared his choice of hate over love (that certainly
seems bad). The writers did manage one lovely twist: the angel and
demon who love each other and have been fighting and fucking all
through the second half of the season turn out to be the parents of
Genesis and turn up to fight for Genesis and Jesse in the end (good).
But their deaths turned out to be completely pointless as they fail to
stop the Saint of Killers ... and then Jesse talks the Saint of Killers
into not killing him (sloppy plotting). At the end of the series, Herr
Starr walks away clean: I assume the writers thought this was funny
and/or cool, but he was such a reprehensible character that I found it
hard to swallow.
</p>
<p>
A disappointing ending to a series that, I suppose, was bound to end in
disappointment.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2019. With Dominic Cooper, Joseph Gilgun, Ruth Negga, Ian Colletti,
Tom Brooke, Graham McTavish, Pip Torrens, Noah Taylor, Julie Ann Emery,
Mark Harelik, Tyson Ritter.
</p>
-->
Building CDE in 20232023-12-02T10:09:00-05:002023-12-04T09:25:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-12-02:/blog/building-cde.htmlCDE: old fashioned, very hard to build, and with security risks.
<!-- CODE IS ORANGE -->
<p>
In 1993, when Sun / Solaris and "workstations" were still a big
thing, a consortium of Unix companies created a desktop environment
called the "Common Desktop Environment" or "CDE." If you want to read
up on the history, see the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment">Wikipedia
entry</a> about it. Years ago I created an extensive graphic of what
window managers borrowed code or ideas from what other WMs (<a href="/wm/bloodlines.html">here</a>). According to it, CDE was based
on code from HP's vuewm, and ideas from vuewm and MWM. Visually, it
was heavily influenced by the then-current and influential Motif
toolkit. CDE had some (but not a lot) of influence on the appearance
and behavior of XFCE, and in 2000 Sun phased out CDE in favour of
GNOME.
</p>
<p>
CDE was proprietary. The code would have been useful if they'd
open-sourced it in 2000, or even 2003. But they waited until 2012, by
which time most people had lost interest. The code was essentially
un-buildable because of the ties to dead Solaris toolchains. But in
the last few years, someone (or a group of someones) have dug into the
code to make it buildable with modern Linux tools. This work is taking
place (slowly) at <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/">Sourceforge</a>.
</p>
<p>
I'm about to criticise the current state of CDE: this is not meant to
knock the hard work of the people trying to bring CDE up to modern
standards, which I dearly hope they'll continue. I'm detailing my
own experience, and outlining existing problems.
</p>
<p>
Out of some strange combination of sentimentality and curiosity (and a
nearly three decades-long love of <a href="/wm/index.html">Window
Managers</a> in general), I decided to build this antique on a Debian
12 system (they claim it's buildable on <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/SupportedPlatforms/">multiple
other Unixes</a> - you may notice it doesn't mention Debian after
version 10). The list of <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/LinuxBuild/#debian">required
dependencies</a> is large. It was time-consuming to check through
and install, but workable. The most alarming part of this was this
lovely notice:
</p>
<pre>
Security Note
CDE has had quite a few known security vulnerabilities in it, and
it is likely that several more unknown ones still exist. Don't
expose it to the Internet. In fact, never expose any desktop to the
Internet.
You should think strongly about enabling the dtspcd and
rpc.ttdbserver daemons. Unless you know what they do, you almost
certainly don't need them.
The following advisories have no traced resolution in this release;
xxxxxx - 1999-11-xx - <a href="http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1999-11.html">http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1999-11.html</a>
179804 - 2004-03-23 - <a href="http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/179804">http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/179804</a>
</pre>
<p>
Outstanding security advisories from twenty years ago ...
gggrrrreeeeaaatttt. I get it though: it makes more sense to work on
getting the software to build before you tackle those - they're not a
problem in a non-building system! But it being unwise to put the
product on the Internet ... well, that's a bit of a blocker for most
people, as our systems are never NOT on the Internet. Nevertheless, I
proceeded.
</p>
<pre>
$ time make
... [ HUGE SNIP HERE ] ...
make[3]: Entering directory '/home/giles/Code/cde-2.5.2/doc/en_US.UTF-8/help'
SGML_SEARCH_PATH=".:.." \
/usr/bin/ksh ../../../programs/dtdocbook/doc_utils/dtdocbook2sdl -H ../../../progr
ams/dthelp/parser/pass2/parser/dthelp_htag2 -L en_US.UTF-8 \
-o Appmanager.sdl `basename Appmanager.sdl .sdl`/book.sgm
In entity PART included from Appmanager/book.sgm:53:0
onsgmls:/home/giles/Code/cde-2.5.2/programs/dtdocbook/sgml/docbook.dtd:72:30:W: duplicate declaration of parameter entity "local.notations"
dtdocbook2sdl fatal error:
Error processing book.out.132640.sdl by ../../../programs/dthelp/parser/pass2/parser/dthelp_htag2
make[3]: *** [Makefile:1309: Appmanager.sdl] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory '/home/giles/Code/cde-2.5.2/doc/en_US.UTF-8/help'
make[2]: *** [Makefile:440: all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/giles/Code/cde-2.5.2/doc/en_US.UTF-8'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:447: all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/giles/Code/cde-2.5.2/doc'
make: *** [Makefile:587: all-recursive] Error 1
real 21m39.928s
user 18m55.440s
sys 2m32.373s
</pre>
<p>
This is a 2 core 4 thread 4th-gen i5 chip with 8G of memory at it's
disposal ... but now that I think about it, a build from that period
is probably single-threaded and unable to use multiple cores. Back
then, a build of this project must have taken several hours. And it
failed. This appears to be something to do with the help system, but
between this failure and the fact that "you shouldn't use this on the
internet," I'm going to let this one lie for a couple releases.
</p>
'Dragon Rider' - Book Review2023-11-28T21:24:00-05:002023-11-30T08:34:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-28:/blog/dragon-rider.htmlPedestrian prose and plot for over 500 pages of weak children's fantasy.
<p>
<em>Dragon Rider</em><br />
by Cornelia Funke<br />
translated by Anthea Bell<br />
2000, The Chicken House / Scholastic, 523p
</p>
<p>
As amazing as it may seem, Anne McCaffrey never wrote a book called
<em>Dragon Rider</em>, even though she wrote <em>Everything Dragon
Everywhere All at Once</em>. This book is by Cornelia Funke, a
well-known German author of children's fiction - most or all of that
output being fantasy, as this one is.
</p>
<p>
Our main characters are Firedrake (a dragon), Sorrel (a brownie), Ben
(an orphaned boy), and Twigleg (a homunculus). The initial story
driver is the evil humans, who are moving into the valley that
Firedrake and his dragon friends live in. The dragons are further
threatened by our antagonist, Nettlebrand - an evil dragon-like
creature that likes to eat dragons. Our protagonists meet sentient
rats, fairies, dwarves, sea serpents, a basilisk ... And it felt a
little like the whole thing could have been put together by a ten year
old. I guess every author thinks "what can I do now to move the plot
forward?" I had assumed that an author as well regarded as Funke would
be more ... creative. The prose is pedestrian too, but it's filtered
through translation from the German so it's hard to know where to lay
the blame for that.
</p>
<p>
The book is also thick at over 500 pages. It's sweet, and I don't mind
having read it, but I have trouble associating this with the creative
mind behind <em>Inkheart</em> which was far more interesting.
</p>
Resurrecting The Griffin PowerMate on Linux: Part 2, as a Service2023-11-27T16:04:00-05:002023-11-27T21:31:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-27:/blog/powermate-linux-service.html<p class="first last">Making the Griffin Powermate work automatically on plug-in.</p>
<p>See also: <a class="reference external" href="/blog/powermate-on-linux.html">Resurrecting The Griffin PowerMate on Linux</a>, about starting work with this device.</p>
<p>I'm going to outline how I currently have this set up on Debian 12 Linux. With the following files in place, the Powermate works to control MPD on a remote machine using the <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">mpc</span></code> client software. And all that's required is you plug it in. I'll outline the setup in its entirety, and explain after. This all needs to be done as root, and requires the <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">evtest</span></code> utility.</p>
<p>Add <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/root/bin/powermate-mpc</span></tt>:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="ch">#!/bin/bash</span>
<span class="c1"># https://m0aws.co.uk/?p=2201 (GO: 2023-11-08)</span>
<span class="nv">devName</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"/dev/input/by-id/usb-Griffin_Technology__Inc._Griffin_PowerMate-event-if00"</span>
/usr/bin/evtest<span class="w"> </span><span class="si">${</span><span class="nv">devName</span><span class="si">}</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">|</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">while</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">read</span><span class="w"> </span>LINE
<span class="k">do</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">case</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nv">$LINE</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">in</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"clock"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value -1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"counter"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(BTN_0), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"click"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">esac</span>
<span class="k">done</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Add <tt class="docutils literal">/etc/systemd/system/powermate.service</tt>:</p>
<!-- There's a "systemd" lexer in 2.16: as of 2023-11-27, Debian 12 is at 2.14.
.. code-block:: systemd -->
<pre class="literal-block">
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=no
ExecStart=/root/bin/powermate-mpc
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
WantedBy=sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:14.0-usb1-1\x2d1-1\x2d1.4:1.0.device
</pre>
<p>Then nail them together with a udev rule, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/etc/udev/rules.d/10-local-powermate.rules</span></tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
SUBSYSTEMS=="input" \
, ACTION=="add" \
, ATTR{id/vendor}=="077d" \
, ATTR{id/product}=="0410" \
, TAG+="systemd" \
, ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}+="powermate.service"
</pre>
<p>Run <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">udevadm control --reload</span></code>. You should also run <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">systemctl daemon-reload</span></code>.</p>
<p>At this point, your Powermate should "just work" once plugged in.</p>
<div class="section" id="explanation">
<h2>Explanation</h2>
<p>See <a class="reference external" href="/blog/powermate-on-linux.html">Resurrecting The Griffin PowerMate on Linux</a> for an explanation of the Bash script at the core of this. You can rename it or move it as you see fit, but you'll need to correct the reference to the script in the service file.</p>
<p>The SystemD service file is fairly straight-forward. You can call it what you want, but you'd have to update the udev rule to reference the new name. What wasn't straight-forward was figuring out the <strong>WantedBy</strong> line. The AskUbuntu link in the <a class="reference internal" href="#bibliography">Bibliography</a> showed an example of this, but no explanation of how it got that line. I extrapolated ... a lot. <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">udevadm monitor</span></code> gave the device name as <cite>/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0</cite> - which will probably be the same for you? I hope so, because otherwise you'll have to dig out that device name, then: turn every "-" into a "x2d", then (order is important because we have overlapping character sets) turn every "/" into a "-", except for the very first one, which you drop, and then finally add ".device" on the end. I don't understand this ... but I did make it work. (Some further testing shows the service doesn't work without the "devices" <strong>WantedBy</strong>, but I've changed it from ending in ".device" to ending in "-device" and it works either way ...)</p>
<p>The final piece is the udev rule. This is similar to what I did previously to identify the device, but now I've added <strong>, TAG+="systemd" \</strong> (not sure that's needed, haven't tested without it) and <strong>, ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}+="powermate.service"</strong> which triggers the start of the service file.</p>
<p>Please read the caveats in the previous blog entry about the Griffin Powermate: using <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">evtest</span></code> to do this is hacky. Incredibly useful, but somewhat dubious.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="bibliography">
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/559833/how-do-i-properly-invoke-a-systemd-service-from-udev-with-an-argument">https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/559833/how-do-i-properly-invoke-a-systemd-service-from-udev-with-an-argument</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://askubuntu.com/questions/1239044/how-to-get-script-to-always-launch-on-device-connect">https://askubuntu.com/questions/1239044/how-to-get-script-to-always-launch-on-device-connect</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
'After the Thin Man' - Movie Review2023-11-26T19:33:00-05:002023-11-27T09:07:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-26:/blog/after-the-thin-man.htmlDisappointing, not the equal of the original.
<p>
The original movie "The Thin Man" starring William Powell and Myrna Loy
as Nick and Nora Charles is a marvelous comedy-mystery about a retired
detective (Powell) and his rich wife (Loy) who find themselves solving
a mystery. Powell and Loy had a great chemistry and were wonderful
together. Of course, the box office success of the first movie called
for a sequel ...
</p>
<p>
For those not familiar with the series: "the thin man" of the title was
the victim in the first movie, not Nick Charles the detective. So the
extension of the "Thin Man" part of the title to all the Nick and Nora
Charles mysteries doesn't actually make much sense - except of course
to marketers.
</p>
<p>
This begins right after the ending of the last one, with Nick and Nora
arriving back in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. For added comedic
value, there's a massive party at their house to welcome them back ...
except nobody recognizes them. For more comedic value, their dog Asta
finds that Mrs. Asta has apparently been having an affair with the dog
next door. Neither of these subplots generated much in the way of
laughs, and they don't add to the mystery plot you knew would appear
shortly. Which it does, in the form of Nora's cousin Selma - whose
husband Robert has disappeared. Nick - as in the last movie - isn't
interested in playing detective. And - again as in the last movie - is
badgered into doing so by his wife.
</p>
<p>
Finding Robert proves easy, and we find out he's a liar and a cheat.
But when he's shot shortly after that, there are multiple suspects
because of the complex web of relationships surrounding him, and
suddenly Nick has a murder to solve.
</p>
<p>
The mystery was fairly interesting - although there were one or two
minor but suspicious players / red herrings whose motivations didn't
seem to ever be explained. Sadly, they fell back on "gather them all
together at the end and see which suspect buckles," same as in the last
movie. While Nick and Nora are still charming, they weren't as funny
as in the original and a couple added subplots meant for comedy weren't
terribly funny and felt unnecessary. I'm going to give the rest of the
series (there are four more) a miss.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1936, dir. W.S. Van Dyke. With William Powell, Myrna Loy, James
Stewart, Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Jessie Ralph, Alan Marshal,
Penny Singleton, Sam Levene, William Law, George Zucco.
</p>
-->
The Equestrian Statue of Condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni2023-11-20T18:39:00-05:002023-11-21T08:56:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-20:/blog/colleoni-equestrian-statue.html<p class="first last">The strange history of one of the world's most famous equestrian statues.</p>
<p>There's a statue in Venice that my father was fascinated by - although he never saw it in person. I saw it in Venice in 2003 and in turn have become fascinated. It's of Condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni. What fascinates me isn't just the sculpture by Verrocchio (which is great), but the story of how it came into being. I'm going to crib this almost entirely from a small number of pages on Wikipedia: you can read them yourself if you prefer, I'll link them in the <a class="reference internal" href="#bibliography">Bibliography</a>.</p>
<p><em>My mediocre picture of the Colleoni statue.</em></p>
<img alt="side view of a sculpture of a man on a horse on a high pedestal" src="/Venice/pics/20030319.2.SS/20030319.2.SS.06A.web.jpg" />
<p>Bartolomeo Colleoni was born near Milan in 1400, and trained as a soldier. He was a mercenary, and spent most of his career in the wars between Milan and Venice. One might assume he fought for Venice given the statue, but like most things about this story, it's not that simple. He switched sides several times. He was never accused of treachery, because he always switched sides in the interludes between the wars. He was a "condottiero," the captain of a mercenary company: the term derives from "condotta," the contract under which the soldiers worked for the city lords. He was apparently an extraordinary tactician. He spent his later years working mostly for Venice and retired there, having amassed a considerable fortune. When he died in 1475, he left a large sum of money to the city for their current war, and requested an equestrian statue of himself be placed in Piazza San Marco. Which is a big ask: it was the heart of the city then as it is now.</p>
<p>The city lords seem to have been happy enough taking the money, and did commission the sculpture ... but city rules said no sculptures in Piazza San Marco. So the sculpture of a mercenary ended up in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo.</p>
<p>Andrea del Verrocchio was the sculptor from Firenze (Florence) who was commissioned to create the sculpture. It's fairly certain he had never seen Colleoni - so the sculpture is "not a portrait of the man but of the idea of a strong and ruthless military commander ..." The sculpture took so long that Verrocchio died (in 1488) before it was completed. Verrocchio had asked that his student complete it, but the city of Venice finally decided on Alessandro Leopardi, who completed the statue in 1496.</p>
<p>What makes it a great sculpture is not only the technical quality (it shows an accurate horse, and an accurate armoured rider), but the sense of presence you get from it. You know by looking at the sculpture that this guy was an imperious bastard who was accustomed to getting respect - or any damn thing he wanted. And you have to feel that the obnoxious personality this presents may not be what Colleoni wanted, but it's probably what he deserved.</p>
<div class="section" id="bibliography">
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue_of_Bartolomeo_Colleoni">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue_of_Bartolomeo_Colleoni</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeo_Colleoni">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeo_Colleoni</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_del_Verrocchio">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_del_Verrocchio</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottiero">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottiero</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
'His Dark Materials' Season 3 - TV Review2023-11-19T17:41:00-05:002023-11-20T06:38:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-19:/blog/his-dark-materials-s3.htmlCrazy, but wonderfully appropriate ending to this grand fantasy series.
<p>
Reviews of
<a href="/blog/his-dark-materials-s1.html">first season</a>,
<a href="/blog/his-dark-materials-s2.html">second season</a>.
</p>
<p>
The third and final season of <em>His Dark Materials</em> gets pretty
weird. We see not only multiple other worlds (including the land of
the dead) - but multiple other species. That includes angels, the
witches from the first season on Lyra's world, harpies, and something
akin to an intelligent elephant. And in the mean time, Lord Asriel is
waging war against Heaven (although the TV series is careful never to
use that term, he's fighting "the Authority").
</p>
<p>
It's hard to talk about the season without spoilers: I'll issue a
warning before I do. Here's the thing: if you buy into the whole wild
and strange construct, the last two or three episodes are deeply
affecting and very, very good. If you didn't - it might come across as
spectacularly cheesy. I bought in, I loved it, but ... it's hard not
to notice that it was a bit heavy-handed in places. That's partly
Pullman's writing, but it's also partly the need to compress a lot of
plot and philosophy into a relatively short TV series.
</p>
<p>
They carried over one of my favourite things from the book - one of my
favourite, horrific things. The concept of "pre-emptive penance," the
idea that you can do penance throughout your life, and then you can do
the sin later. Not that they really examined that, but they dropped
the term for those who wanted to think about it.
</p>
<p>
<strong>SPOILER ALERT!</strong>: Stop reading if you haven't seen the
series, etc.
</p>
<p>
Let's talk about Lyra's parents - brought to the screen with
considerable accuracy by the script and Ruth Wilson and James McAvoy.
Two of the most awful people who had ever lived. Both with incredible
strength of will and fierce intelligence, her mother is possibly the
most conniving and manipulative person alive, and her father is willing
to sacrifice anything and anybody for what he believes in. Between
them, they achieve the unachievable. They are both willing to
sacrifice <em>anything</em> - including themselves, and they do. And
it's one of the great things about the Pullman series: he was okay with
acknowledging that sometimes horrible things are done to achieve great
things.
</p>
<p>
One of the details from the book I was really looking forward to seeing
them put on film was when Will and Lyra released "the Authority" (aka
"God" by any other name) from captivity in a big box that was forcing
him to remain alive instead of dissipating (which he was happy to do).
Will and Lyra open a box, and a maybe-angel dissipates - but no
explanation is given. So they carried over the scene ... but without
explanation only people who had read the books knew what was going on.
I thought that was a bit of a cop-out.
</p>
<p>
I got weepy when we saw Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and John
Parry (Andrew Scott) again, even after their deaths. A grand end to a
great series. That's right people, the possibility of original sin is
what makes life worth living.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022. With Dafne Keen, Amir Wilson, Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, Lewin
Lloyd, Ruta Gedmintas, Will Keen, Jade Anouka, Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jonathan Aris, Chipo Chung, Simon Harrison, Kobna
Holdbrook-Smith, Jamie Ward, Simone Kirby.
</p>
-->
'The Lodger' - Movie Review2023-11-16T20:22:00-05:002023-11-17T19:36:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-16:/blog/the-lodger.htmlSome strong marks of Hitchcock's later greatness make this worthwhile for fans.
<p>
"The Lodger" was based on the 1913 novel of the same name by Marie
Adelaide Belloc Lowndes. It was first made into a silent film in 1927
by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ivor Novello (well known to this day as
his name is attached to an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Novello_Award_for_Best_Song_Musically_and_Lyrically">ongoing
music award</a>, first won by a little-known band called "The
Beatles"). Strangely, the movie was remade just five years later as a
talkie ... also starring Novello. Hitchcock's version was a success,
the talkie was not. And it's been made into a movie another three
times (give or take) since.
</p>
<p>
The copy I saw was impressively awful: the soundtrack was badly
written, seemed to have little relation to the film, and did jump-cuts
to other parts of the music whenever it felt like it. Those jump-cuts
weren't even in sync with the numerous jump-cuts as 5 and 10 second
chunks of the film just ... disappeared. The contrast was so blasted
out that it was extremely hard to read the teletype news text we were
supposed to be able to see, and the movie's most memorable image was
almost unrecognizable. I only noticed it going by because I was
looking so hard for it:
</p>
<img src="/images/blog/2023-11-16.IvorNovello.Lodger.jpg" alt="Ivor Novello with the shadow of a cross on his face" />
<p>
That is a striking, fantastic image. Imagine it so bleached the cross
is almost not present ...
</p>
<p>
And finally, I'll talk about the movie itself. First, we're shown that
London has been subject to a string of murders of fair-haired young
women by someone who leaves a calling card that says "The Avenger."
Then, a mysterious and thoroughly creepy young man (Novello, as "the
lodger") shows up at the house of our heroine Daisy (a pretty
fair-haired girl and likely target of the Avenger) and her family,
where he takes a room. He even arrives with the lower half of his face
covered with a scarf, exactly as a witness described the Avenger.
Daisy's cop boyfriend is a bit of a boor, and behaves boorishly when
Daisy takes a liking to the lodger. Daisy's parents suspect the lodger
after he sneaks out the night of a murder. Etc.
</p>
<p>
I thought "this is too obvious for Hitchcock, even if it's early
Hitchcock." And I suspect he thought so too, and enjoyed playing with
expectations: "this is too obvious ... but now you think he's not the
one when maybe he really is ..." like that. Novello does creepy really
well (without, I might add, being too clichéd about it). The acting
is, well, silent movie over-acting, but not nearly as bad as "<a href="/blog/metropolis-movie.html">Metropolis</a>," and
it's pleasantly well constructed. Not a great masterwork, but unlike
some of Hitchcock's earlier movies (I'm thinking particularly of the
deeply disappointing "<a href="/blog/rich-and-strange.html">Rich and
Strange</a>," this one is worth seeking out for Hitchcock fans
- although I sincerely hope you find a better copy than I did.
</p>
<!--
<p>
1927, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June
Tripp, Malcolm Keen, Ivor Novello.
</p>
-->
Resurrecting The Griffin PowerMate on Linux2023-11-09T21:43:00-05:002023-11-10T07:42:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-09:/blog/powermate-on-linux.html<p class="first last">A brilliant script by m0aws resurrects old USB input devices.</p>
<p>I own both a Griffin PowerMate and a Shuttle Xpress: these are both USB input devices that are old enough to qualify as tech antiques. But the PowerMate at least is worth working on: it's essentially a beautifully made USB volume knob. That's it. Sometimes simplicity is good. It used to have a Linux driver, but no more. The Shuttle Xpress never had a driver at all, and so has collected dust for a decade. How do you get them to do anything useful? This was the question that drove me to really dig into <a class="reference external" href="/blog/udev-basics.html">udev rules</a> in my previous blog entry. Please read that before tackling this one.</p>
<p>The tools I ended up using to identify and make these work are similar but slightly different from those used previously. I was looking at block devices (storage) yesterday, I'm now looking at input devices (keyboards, mice, and ... these things).</p>
<p>When the PowerMate is plugged in, you can find it by numerous methods. <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">dmesg</span></code>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
[2291635.687395] usb 1-1.4: new low-speed USB device number 80 using xhci_hcd
[2291635.807116] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=077d, idProduct=0410, bcdDevice= 4.00
[2291635.807131] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[2291635.807136] usb 1-1.4: Product: Griffin PowerMate
[2291635.807189] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Griffin Technology, Inc.
[2291635.817402] input: Griffin PowerMate as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/input/input52
</pre>
<p><code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">lsusb</span></code>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
Bus 001 Device 080: ID 077d:0410 Griffin Technology PowerMate
</pre>
<p><code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">cat /proc/bus/input/devices</span></code>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=077d Product=0410 Version=0400
N: Name="Griffin PowerMate"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:14.0-1.4/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/input/input52
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event17
B: PROP=0
B: EV=17
B: KEY=1 0 0 0 0
B: REL=80
B: MSC=2
</pre>
<p>This last has something very useful that I don't think can be found elsewhere, namely the Sysfs path for the device. To learn more about the device, we use that value and run <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">udevadm info -ap /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/input/input52</span></code> - this generates 294 lines of output so I won't paste it here, but from that collection I found these two:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
ATTR{id/product}=="0410"
ATTR{id/vendor}=="077d"
</pre>
<p>Again: read the previous entry for warnings about how you need to test these attributes, carefully and often. In this case, these turned out to be the "correct" attributes, because this udev rule worked:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
SUBSYSTEMS=="input" \
, ACTION=="add" \
, ATTR{id/vendor}=="077d" \
, ATTR{id/product}=="0410" \
, NAME="input/powermate" \
, RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'PowerMate found'"
</pre>
<p>This relies on the <tt class="docutils literal">/usr/local/bin/udevlogger</tt> script in the previous entry.</p>
<p>This is, of itself, not too useful: we've identified the device and logged when it's connected to the system. But there's no current driver for the PowerMate, so it's still not very useful.</p>
<p>We can test it with the <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">evtest</span></code> command (on Debian, install the "evtest" package). Just point the command at the device link: <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">/usr/bin/evtest /dev/input/by-id/usb-Griffin_Technology__Inc._Griffin_PowerMate-event-if00</span></code>. The initial output looks like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
Input driver version is 1.0.1
Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x77d product 0x410 version 0x400
Input device name: "Griffin PowerMate"
Supported events:
Event type 0 (EV_SYN)
Event type 1 (EV_KEY)
Event code 256 (BTN_0)
Event type 2 (EV_REL)
Event code 7 (REL_DIAL)
Event type 4 (EV_MSC)
Event code 1 (MSC_PULSELED)
Properties:
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
</pre>
<p>But the interesting part happens when you start twisting the knob or clicking the top:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
Event: time 1699585314.188129, type 2 (EV_REL), code 7 (REL_DIAL), value -1
Event: time 1699585314.188129, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1699585314.548214, type 2 (EV_REL), code 7 (REL_DIAL), value 1
Event: time 1699585314.548214, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1699585316.188087, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 256 (BTN_0), value 1
Event: time 1699585316.188087, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1699585316.372273, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 256 (BTN_0), value 0
Event: time 1699585316.372273, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
</pre>
<p>Which is all grand: we've proved the device is issuing commands that are available to the system. But without a valid driver for the device, it's not very useful! I didn't know where to go with it.</p>
<p>Enter m0aws, with a simple, ghetto, yet brilliant script idea:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="ch">#!/bin/bash</span>
<span class="c1"># https://m0aws.co.uk/?p=2201 (GO: 2023-11-08)</span>
<span class="nv">devName</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"/dev/input/by-id/usb-Griffin_Technology__Inc._Griffin_PowerMate-event-if00"</span>
/usr/bin/evtest<span class="w"> </span><span class="si">${</span><span class="nv">devName</span><span class="si">}</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">|</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">while</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">read</span><span class="w"> </span>LINE
<span class="k">do</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">case</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nv">$LINE</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">in</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"clock"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value -1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"counter"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(BTN_0), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"click"</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">esac</span>
<span class="k">done</span>
</pre></div>
<p>I've massively stripped down his script. It never occurred to me to simply read the output of the test command. Simple and brilliant. Why do I say "ghetto?" Because this is effectively the same as screen-scraping: if the output of <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">evtest</span></code> changes, it can break this script. And if input comes in too fast, Bash may not keep up. There are problems. But you know what? I think it's fantastic because I'm not limited by the choices of whoever wrote a driver for the PowerMate who thought (for example) the only possible thing I could want to do with it was activate the <strong>XF86VolumeUp</strong> key when the knob was turned. This script allows me to run a command: <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">mpc volume +1</span></code> which adjusts the volume on my MPD server.</p>
<p>The adjustment is incredibly easy:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="ch">#!/bin/bash</span>
<span class="c1"># https://m0aws.co.uk/?p=2201 (GO: 2023-11-08)</span>
<span class="nv">devName</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"/dev/input/by-id/usb-Griffin_Technology__Inc._Griffin_PowerMate-event-if00"</span>
<span class="nb">export</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nv">MPD_HOST</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"pi44v3.local"</span>
/usr/bin/evtest<span class="w"> </span><span class="si">${</span><span class="nv">devName</span><span class="si">}</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">|</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">while</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nb">read</span><span class="w"> </span>LINE
<span class="k">do</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">case</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nv">$LINE</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="k">in</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span>mpc<span class="w"> </span>volume<span class="w"> </span>-1<span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(REL_DIAL), value -1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span>mpc<span class="w"> </span>volume<span class="w"> </span>+1<span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span>*<span class="s2">"(BTN_0), value 1"</span><span class="o">)</span><span class="w"> </span>mpc<span class="w"> </span>toggle<span class="w"> </span><span class="p">;;</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="k">esac</span>
<span class="k">done</span>
</pre></div>
<p>And like that, the Griffin connected to my desktop controls my MPD server (on a separate Raspberry Pi).</p>
<p>Ideally, this script would be started by the udev rule(s) when the PowerMate is plugged in, and stopped by another rule when the PowerMate is removed. That's a project for another day.</p>
<p>The Shuttle Xpress has more buttons and knobs. I'm still in the process of mapping them to functions, but it works well too - even though a driver was never available for it!</p>
The Basics of Writing udev Rules2023-11-09T18:31:00-05:002023-11-11T12:36:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-09:/blog/udev-basics.html<p class="first last">My version of how to find your device info and write udev rules with it.</p>
<p>According to Wikipedia, "udev (userspace /dev) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the /dev directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices are added into the system or removed from it, including firmware loading as required by certain devices." Cool, but ... what the hell does that mean? Almost everything in Linux is a "learn by doing" topic, but this more so than most ... Let's get to work.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: this was written and tested on Debian 12/bookworm. I think most of these processes are similar on other Linux distros, but I can't guarantee it.</p>
<div class="section" id="start-simple">
<h2>Start Simple</h2>
<p>Grab a USB stick. Run (as root) <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">dmesg --follow</span></code> which essentially "tails" the kernel messages. Take a look at the recent messages, to get an idea of what's been happening, and particularly what the current latest message is. In my case it was "[2279055.867682] PM: suspend exit". Plug the USB stick into your computer: you'll see a bunch of text similar to this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
[2280121.095999] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 73 using xhci_hcd
[2280121.212225] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=0951, idProduct=1603, bcdDevice= 2.00
[2280121.212240] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5
[2280121.212246] usb 1-1.4: Product: DataTraveler 2.0
[2280121.212250] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Kingston
[2280121.212254] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 200801250000000000004315
[2280121.215472] usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[2280121.216050] scsi host4: usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0
[2280122.233164] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[2280122.233925] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[2280122.234562] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] 15769600 512-byte logical blocks: (8.07 GB/7.52 GiB)
[2280122.234997] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[2280122.235003] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[2280122.235440] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page found
[2280122.235444] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[2280122.463555] sdd:
[2280122.463837] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
</pre>
<p>This gives you a fair bit of information about the USB stick ... although maybe not as much as we're eventually going to want to write udev rules. We need a pointer to the device, and given that this is a storage device, the place to look is <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/dev/disk/by-id/</span></tt> where I found <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_200801250000000000004315-0:0</span></tt>, which was a link to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">../../sdd</span></tt>. I'm beginning to really like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/dev/disk/by-id/</span></tt> (and its relative <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/dev/input/by-id/</span></tt> - we'll get to that another day) because that ID will be the same if you plug the stick into another Linux machine, and unique - even if you have another 8G Kingston DataTraveler stick.</p>
<p>Hit Ctrl-C to break out of <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">dmesg --follow</span></code>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="track-add-and-remove-usb-events">
<h2>Track "add" and "remove" USB Events</h2>
<p>Before we get to writing event handlers, we need a simple logging script to keep track of our events. I placed this one at <tt class="docutils literal">/usr/local/bin/udevlogger</tt> and the contents look like this:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="ch">#!/bin/bash</span>
<span class="nb">echo</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="k">$(</span>/usr/bin/date<span class="w"> </span>+%Y%m%d%H%M.%S<span class="k">)</span><span class="s2"> </span><span class="nv">$@</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="w"> </span>>><span class="w"> </span>/tmp/udev.log
</pre></div>
<p>That's it: all it does is write a datestamp and all parameters passed to it into a file in the <tt class="docutils literal">/tmp</tt> folder. Keep in mind that the <tt class="docutils literal">/tmp/</tt> folder is wiped every reboot: if you do this work as root, you could write to <tt class="docutils literal">/var/log/</tt> where logs are more traditionally placed, but this is temporary, an experiment - so for now I recommend temporary storage.</p>
<p>The other part of this is an actual udev rule. This will be in a text file that should be added to the <tt class="docutils literal">/etc/udev/rules.d/</tt> folder. The filename needs to end with <tt class="docutils literal">.rules</tt>, and common practice is to call it something like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">80-local.rules</span></tt>. If there are a lot of rules they'll usually be numbered, and the "80" indicates where in the sequence this would run - which is to say "not very important" as rules 00 through 79 will run before it. My <tt class="docutils literal">/etc/udev/rules.d/</tt> folder was empty, so it's kind of a moot point ...</p>
<p>Create <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/etc/udev/rules.d/80-local.rules</span></tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'block add'"
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="remove", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'block remove'"
</pre>
<p>Again, this must be done as root, and since you're messing with the kernel's behaviour - be a bit careful. In this case, probably the most important thing is the <tt class="docutils literal">+</tt> after the <tt class="docutils literal">RUN</tt>: that means "do this also." If your system auto-mounts USB sticks, removing the <tt class="docutils literal">+</tt> could potentially stop any other actions from happening, like that auto-mount. <tt class="docutils literal">SUBSYSTEM</tt> is "block" because we're looking for a block device, namely USB storage. And we're looking for both the "add" and "remove" actions, and doing marginally different things in each case.</p>
<p>Whenever you make changes to udev rules, there's one more step needed: you need to reload the rules with <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">udevadm control --reload</span></code>. After you've done the reload, plug in (or unplug) your USB stick. Then look at <tt class="docutils literal">/tmp/udev.log</tt> which should now include a dated notice about the add/remove of the USB stick. If you're going to end up tweaking the rules over and over, I would recommend you run <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">tail -f /tmp/udev.log</span></code> in another terminal so any changes to the file automatically appear in that terminal.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="identifying-specific-usb-devices">
<h2>Identifying Specific USB Devices</h2>
<p>Stop and think about what we've done: when you add or remove a USB block device, a shell script is run. This could allow us to copy data off, or to, a specific USB device. What if we could be more specific about which device? To do that, we need to be able to identify our devices. Examine the output of: <code class="ss shell-session"><span class="go">udevadm info --attribute-walk --name=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_200801250000000000004315-0:0</span></code>. We're looking for "ATTR" entries that look unique. Initially I tried 'ATTRS{vendor}=="Kingston"' and 'ATTRS{model}=="DataTraveler 2.0"' in the new rule below. First, they're not unique, second ... they didn't work.</p>
<p>This is a good time to pause and point out that the best piece of advice I got from all my reading on this subject is to CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME. And lest it not be obvious: test after each change.</p>
<p>A couple caveats here: the ATTRS you're looking at may not look like those shown, for example I have another device (input, not block) that called these "ATTR{id/vendor}" and "ATTR{id/product}" and then the values were hexadecimal, so this stuff can vary considerably. Also: the listed output includes the whole USB tree, and the attributes that worked for me were under "looking at parent device" which was ... unexpected. What I used was found by searching for the specific serial number, and copying both that ATTR and the nearby "idVendor" ATTR. We take these values, and craft a new line in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/etc/udev/rules.d/80-local.rules</span></tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'block add'"
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="remove", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'block remove'"
SUBSYSTEM=="block" \
, ACTION=="add" \
, ATTRS{idVendor}=="0951" \
, ATTRS{serial}=="200801250000000000004315" \
, RUN+="/usr/local/bin/udevlogger 'vendor / serial number inserted'"
</pre>
<p>In this case, I've constructed the new line with backslashes for line continuation. This can be useful when lines would otherwise be very long. You should also notice that I'm now triggering two events on "insert" of the specific USB stick: one generic, which will log "block add" (and would do so for any USB stick or USB HD) and one highly specific that will trigger only on this USB stick. Yes - you can have multiple rules.</p>
<p>Join us next time for more on how to identify and utilize old/obscure USB input devices!</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="bibliography">
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev</a></li>
<li><dl class="first docutils">
<dt><a class="reference external" href="http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html">http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html</a></dt>
<dd><ul class="first last">
<li>an extensive (if old) guide to "Writing udev rules"</li>
<li>this should be a primary resource</li>
<li>it claims line breaks aren't possible: this is the only inaccuracy I've found in 2023, and it's a non-breaking issue. But I did prove above that line breaks now work with backslashes.</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
</li>
<li><dl class="first docutils">
<dt><a class="reference external" href="https://opensource.com/article/18/11/udev">https://opensource.com/article/18/11/udev</a></dt>
<dd><ul class="first last">
<li>from 2018-11: detailed and low-level</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
</li>
<li><dl class="first docutils">
<dt><a class="reference external" href="https://linux-kernel-labs.github.io/refs/heads/master/labs/device_model.html">https://linux-kernel-labs.github.io/refs/heads/master/labs/device_model.html</a></dt>
<dd><ul class="first last">
<li>an explanation of the kernel device model</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://linuxconfig.org/tutorial-on-how-to-write-basic-udev-rules-in-linux">https://linuxconfig.org/tutorial-on-how-to-write-basic-udev-rules-in-linux</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
Toronto's PATH2023-11-06T21:37:00-05:002023-11-09T21:42:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-11-06:/blog/toronto-path.html<p class="first last">Toronto's PATH lives up to its promise ... in some very weird ways.</p>
<p>Toronto's PATH is a fascinating construct. "PATH" is the uninventive title given to the approximately 30km of corridors joining hundreds of buildings in downtown Toronto. An official map can be found <a class="reference external" href="https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/8d9e-path-map-feb-2021.pdf">here</a>. My friend <a class="reference external" href="https://sarahjmccabe.com/">Sarah</a> recorded our track on her phone, as shown below: most of it (especially north of Union Station) is below ground, so the image is more of a geographical work of art than an accurate recording of our walk.</p>
<p><em>photo: GPSes don't work well underground</em></p>
<img alt="a very jagged red line inaccurately painting our path through Toronto's underground PATH" src="/images/blog/2023-11-06.PATH.png" />
<p>PATH is presented as this continuous way to get from place to place indoors. But it's a disorienting experience - not just because you can't see any of the above-ground landmarks, but because every building, every tunnel is styled differently. The expected experience is walking through a brightly lit corridor with attractive retail stores on both sides. And that happens sometimes - especially around First Canadian Place or Union Station. The less glamourous picture is the plain cement corridor, and that certainly happens too. Trotting up and down stairs, or encountering 45° turns in corridors that are indicated as straight on the map. Then there's the areas that are under construction or renovation. You'll walk through dozens of food courts. Once you get south of Union Station, pretty much all of PATH is above ground - I had thought it was all subterranean. And, if you walk around enough, you'll find the low point of PATH, when you go through a set of doors into a parking garage, look both ways to make sure you don't get run over, then cross and go through another set of doors into another tunnel. The experience is mixed, to put it mildly. It was weird and fun to take escalators up in multiple places and find some random tower lobby. Some of the most entertaining stuff is listed below:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>walking through the ticket booth area of the Scotiabank Arena</li>
<li>finding the beautiful half-spiral stone stairs made 100 years ago that ascend to one of the city's oldest hotels</li>
<li>walking by Roy Thompson Hall and look through huge windows into their lovely sculpted below-ground space</li>
<li>finding a story machine that will (for free) print you a "1 minute," "3 minute," or "5 minute" story. (Although I protest the use of the word "story:" we printed two 1 minutes and a 3 minute, and all were poems.)</li>
<li>detouring to a Lindt store and sampling and buying chocolate balls</li>
<li>popping up to the first floor of the very large CBC building, with its display of relics (reel-to-reel tape machines, a 16mm film editing console)</li>
<li>visiting the TD Gallery of Inuit Art (small ... but also free)</li>
<li>admiring Joe Fafard's bizarre sculptural tableaux "The Pasture" through a window, with seven metal cows lounging on the grass</li>
<li>getting to see the CIBC banking hall at 25 King West (only open during business hours or "Doors Open")</li>
</ul>
<p>And a couple photos from the walk:</p>
<p><em>photo: Banksy on the PATH, and the exploratory team.</em></p>
<img alt="Sarah and Giles beside a Banksy graffiti image" src="/photography/202311/20231106.1737.GO.iPhoneXR.web.jpg" />
<p>Wikipedia says 'Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public "installations" are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on.' That's right: we take concrete slab that's been defaced with graffiti, we yank it out of the wall it was originally part of, and make it an art installation surrounded by thick glass. No irony there.</p>
<p><em>photo: My favourite portrait of me in the last several years - thanks Sarah. At Waterpark Place.</em></p>
<img alt="Giles walking out of a wall sculpted as a crowd of people" src="/photography/202311/20231106.1528.GO.iPhoneXR.web.jpg" />
'Murder In Provence' - TV Review2023-10-29T19:54:00-04:002023-10-29T22:02:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-10-29:/blog/murder-in-provence-tv.htmlProvence is gloriously beautiful (and temporarily English-speaking). The mysteries are alright.
<p>
This sounds like a part of the French "<a href="/blog/murder-in-the-auvergne-mountains.html">Murder
in ...</a>" series that I've watched several of. It's not: it is
instead a series of three movie-length (90 minutes each) mysteries in
Provence - in English. It may of course have been inspired by that
series.
</p>
<p>
Our protagonist is Antoine Verlaque (Roger Allam), a judge in Provence.
They make a point of explaining that judges are different in France,
being a part of the investigation more than sitting in courtrooms -
almost like this was written for an English audience. He's assisted by
police woman Hélène Paulik (Keala Settle) and his romantic partner
Marine Bonnet (Nancy Carroll) whose work eventually draws her into his
work.
</p>
<p>
The series makes the best of its setting, showing sweeping and gorgeous
shots of Provence in 1080p. The first two episodes are fairly good
mysteries, but the third, while not necessarily "bad," really put me
off by moving into extremely personal territory in the last few minutes
of the episode. I apologize to anyone who's read me saying this
before, but I want to watch detectives <em>detect</em>, not struggle
for their lives. I wasn't loving the series (although it's not bad)
before I hit the ending, and the last half hour really put me off.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2022. With Roger Allam, Nancy Carroll, Keala Settle, Patricia Hodge,
Kirsty Bushnell, Geff Francis, Samuel Barnett, Christophe Tek.
</p>
-->
'Assassin's Apprentice' - Book Review2023-10-29T15:43:00-04:002023-11-06T11:16:00-05:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-10-29:/blog/assassins-apprentice.htmlMediocre and slow-paced, the action picks up around page 390 of 435.
<p>
<em>Assassin's Apprentice</em><br />
by Robin Hobb<br />
1995, Bantam Spectra, 435p
</p>
<p>
"Robin Hobb" turns out to be one of a couple pseudonyms used by
Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who wrote several books under the name
of "Megan Lindholm" before this "debut" novel as Robin Hobb.
</p>
<p>
Our main character is "Fitz," a term that in their world means simply
"Bastard." He's the bastard son of Chivalry, one of the Princes of the
kingdom he lives in. One of the book's several conceits is that Fitz
is writing this autobiography in his old age. His memories start at
the age of six - very vividly. He remembers being taken from his
mother and birth family and given to the royal family ... and remembers
absolutely nothing before that.
</p>
<p>
Initially he works in the stables, but is eventually raised to be, if
not a part of the royal family, at least close to it. And he's
secretly trained as an assassin. This book uses its 435 pages to
detail Fitz's life up to approximately age 15, showing in the process
that he's smart, observant, and skilled in a couple forms of magic
(although he doesn't initially understand this). With the politics of
the Kingdom in upheaval, all of this gets exciting and the action gets
interesting around page 390.
</p>
<p>
This took me months to read: that only happens when a book is
slow-paced. And not terribly well written. Although not so slow-paced
that I ever dropped it entirely. I was ... underwhelmed by her idea
that people in the royal family are named by characteristics: the King
is Shrewd, his Queen is Desire, the three princes are Chivalry (whose
wife is Patience, although her behaviour least seems to embody her
name), Verity, and Regal.
</p>
<p>
Overall not bad, but certainly not one of the great fantasy books. The
author has the decency to wrap things up nicely, although it's clear
that there's still a threat to the Kingdom for a sequel. A sequel I
won't be bothering to read.
</p>
'Alienoid' - Movie Review2023-10-28T22:46:00-04:002023-10-29T10:47:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-10-28:/blog/alienoid.htmlCrazy yet entertaining SF/Fantasy/Time Travel action comedy from Korea.
<p>
Choi Dong-hoon is a popular director in Korea, having directed several
blockbuster films. I encountered him when I saw "<a href="/misc/movies.html#woochi">Woochi: The Demon Slayer</a>,"
which is a hugely entertaining Korean historical fantasy film that
stretches into the modern day with a wizard having fun and fights in a
modern Korean city. This time out he decided to mix science fiction,
fantasy (in the form of Daoist wizards again), time travel, and alien
technology into an entertaining mess. With one caveat that I wish I'd
known before I started the film: the Korean film title ends in "...
Part 1" and the movie itself ends in a massive cliffhanger.
</p>
<p>
We're told that aliens have been trapping other evil aliens inside
humans for centuries: this is a prison planet. Guard and Thunder are
here to prevent break-outs. The story opens with Guard and Thunder
fighting an escaped prisoner in 1380 AD ... and ending up with a human
baby to raise because Thunder is a sentimental robot and Guard ...
well, doesn't stop Thunder. And we also find out that the Crystal
Knife they possess allows them to travel through time - which they do,
to the modern day. It only gets weirder from there.
</p>
<p>
It should be noted that this is essentially an action-comedy: there are
multiple comedy set-pieces, some of which retain their humour across
cultures to North America. I really enjoyed the movie ... right up
until it said "To be continued" at the end. Extremely annoying.
</p>
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<p>
2022, dir. Choi Dong-hoon. With Ryu Jun-yeol, Kim Woo-bin, Kim Tae-ri,
So Ji-sub, Yum Jung-ah, Jo Woo-jin, Kim Eui-sung, Lee Hanee, Shin
Jung-geun.
</p>
-->
'The Lost King' - Movie Review2023-10-27T23:40:00-04:002023-10-28T11:32:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-10-27:/blog/the-lost-king.htmlSweet but slightly weak portrayal of the finding of Richard the Third's body.
<p>
Richard the 3rd is one of England's more contentious kings. Most of
the world is aware of him because of Shakespeare's play. Because it's
one of Shakespeare's better written plays, it gets presented regularly,
and new film versions come out about once a decade. And that means we
all know he's an ugly, hunch-backed, evil, child-murdering usurper.
Except ... history doesn't particularly support this.
</p>
<p>
For those who think Shakespeare's proximity in time to Richard make the
play more "accurate," you need to understand first (as pointed out by
our protagonist) that Shakespeare wrote his play 100 years after
Richard's death. In a time when accurate histories of the royals were
non-existent, and Richard was a reviled and defeated "usurper" because
history is written by the winners. And secondly (not mentioned in this
movie), Shakespeare lived and worked at the whim of Queen Elizabeth.
He took multiple opportunities in his plays to write long (and usually
boring) speeches aggrandizing her relatives - "accuracy" had nothing to
do with it, it was all aimed at the survival of his theatre group. He
was a great writer, but he was more subject to the whims of the
reigning queen than modern playwrights are to current politics.
</p>
<p>
Our protagonist is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Langley">Philippa
Langley</a> (the link is to Wikipedia - she's a real person),
played by Sally Hawkins. After seeing a performance of Shakespeare's
<em>Richard III</em>, Langley begins to think the portrayal of Richard
in that play may be inaccurate. She begins to research him, which
leads her to the local Richard the Third Society (in reality, Langley
<em>started</em> her local society: my assumption is that this
arrangement made the storyline run more smoothly). She becomes
determined to "pay her respects" to this king ... except that nobody
knew where he was buried. She's haunted by visions of Richard (Harry
Lloyd), and begins to follow up on all the research done into where he
might be buried. All while struggling with work problems, odd
relationship arrangements, two kids, and myalgic encephalomyelitis
(better known as "Chronic Fatigue").
</p>
<p>
Hawkins' performance has been much lauded, and it's good. But I didn't
think it stood out all that much from the very good bunch of actors
around her. And the biggest problem for me was that this felt a lot
like a TV-movie-of-the-week - "heroine struggles against disease and
circumstances and evil academia to triumph and be proven right in the
end." The fact that it's pretty much all accurate to reality doesn't
change that much. I watched this in part because Stephen Frears
directed two of my favourite movies ("Dangerous Liaisons" and "High
Fidelity") but conveniently forgot his uneven track record (best
represented here by "<a href="/blog/tamara-drewe.html">Tamara Drewe</a>" - which
was at least "interesting" if not "good"). I liked this, but it wasn't
a stand-out.
</p>
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<p>
2022, dir. Stephen Frears. With Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry
Lloyd, Mark Addy, Lee Ingleby, James Fleet.
</p>
-->
'Go On' - TV Review2023-10-18T19:37:00-04:002023-10-18T20:29:00-04:00Giles Orrtag:None,2023-10-18:/blog/go-on-tv.htmlAnnoying but funny short-lived sitcom starring Matthew Perry.
<p>
"Go On" was a short-lived sitcom (one season, 22 episodes) starring
Matthew Perry of "<a href="/blog/friends-s1.html">Friends</a>" fame (he's
done other things, but that's still what everyone references ...).
He's sports radio host Ryan King, whose wife died in a car accident.
When he tries to return to work too soon it goes badly, and his
manager and best friend (John Cho) forces him to attend a grief
support group. While he initially denies his need to be there, he
eventually realizes he has a lot to work through. True to the sitcom
set-up, the group leader Lauren (Laura Benanti) is severely
under-trained, and the group members are all exceedingly eccentric.
Ryan's in-your-face antics liven the group up and help many of them
progress.
</p>
<p>
Ryan often starts an episode doing something stupid that turns out to
be related to his grief, and during the course of the episode he learns
a lesson (or everyone learns a lesson) and he (or several people)
behaves better. Episodes are roughly 22 minutes each, which means they
go for massive character quirks rather than actual character
development. And they don't even stay true to the characters: Ryan's
not a genius, but he's not stupid. But in one episode his best friend
declares him a moron - and for the duration of the episode, for comedic
purposes, Ryan is a moron. Other characters get similar treatment,
although the moron bit was probably the worst case. And then there's
"Mr. K" (Brett Gelman), the weirdest member of the group. Every writer
who came up with a joke so weird it didn't work for any other character
just tacked it onto Mr. K, who's a hodge-podge of different behaviours
that make no particular sense.
</p>
<p>
Obviously I was pretty annoyed with some of the problems with the
writing. But the characters avoid the worst of the clichés, and most
importantly, the show is very funny in places. And while they make
jokes about grief and death, it's never making fun of people for
grieving. I enjoyed watching one season.
</p>
<!--
<p>
2012-2013. With Matthew Perry, Laura Benanti, Julie White, Suzy
Nakamura, Tyler James Williams, Brett Gelman, Sarah Baker, John Cho,
Allison Miller, Tonita Castro, Seth Morris, Bill Cobbs, Hayes
MacArthur, Piper Perabo, Terrell Owens.
</p>
-->