The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are engaged in quite the game of brinksmanship of late. Amid warnings from leadership on both sides that a default of the US Government is imminent in a little over a week unless the debt ceiling is raised, no one on either side seems willing to get a deal done, despite the fact that all the compromise deals that have been offered by both sides, and rogue elements within their parties, are similar to the point of being indistinguishable to anyone who sees little difference between two and three trillion dollars. (That’s where we’ve come to in our debt and deficit debates, where our leaders are quibbling over numbers so vast that they enter into the abstract. It’s not the number ‘trillion’ that catches the eye in this mess, it’s the numbers ‘two’ and ‘three,’ and even ‘3.2.’) Continue reading “Elephant Dung and the Final Defeat of Liberalism”
The Empty Balcony: Source Code
Written by Ben Ripley and directed by Duncan Jones, Source Code is a modern terrorism thriller that has an interesting premise. Using technology, a government agency has developed a method of melding a person’s consciousness with the last eight minutes in the life of a dead man. In this case, the dead man is a victim of a terrorist attack on a train that happened that very morning. For those eight minutes, the film’s protagonist, Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), experiences all the sights and sounds the victim did while aboard the train, but this isn’t a replay of recorded events. Colter can move around and interact with the environment, exploring places that were hidden from the view of his deceased avatar, strike up new conversations, etc., all in an effort to find out what happened aboard that train. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Source Code”
Job Creators? Really?
Conservatives have always been good at framing political debates. They, and their party, the GOP, recognized long ago that facts have little sway in the way people embrace a political morality or in the way they vote. Frame a debate in the right way, and the argument is won before it is even joined by the opposition. Continue reading “Job Creators? Really?”
The Empty Balcony: Gojira & Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
Gojira is a very serious film. To watch it is to glimpse how grievously Japan was traumatized by World War II. Released only nine years after the end of the war, the film is heavy on imagery meant to invoke memories of the destruction that swept Japan’s cities. The origins of the monster Gojira are a pricking of the wounds left over from the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebomings that destroyed almost all large Japanese cities. What we see in this film is a generation of people still trying to cope with events from a decade past. At times, in scenes that take place in overflowing hospital wards or on streets where characters are surveying the devastation, I was struck by the realization that these people on screen were drawing from their own memories in their portrayals. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Gojira & Godzilla, King of the Monsters!”
The Empty Balcony: The Adjustment Bureau, or, Angels Play Dirty
Mr. Dick has hit the silver screen again. The Adjustment Bureau, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, is a love story with a divine bent. Matt Damon plays David Norris, a young, very successful politician who discovers by accident that the world is not as it seems. Free will? No. There is none, unless one was to count the meaningless minutiae of daily life, such as what toothpaste to use in the morning. The big stuff, like wars and choosing the right insurance policy, is left up to ‘The Plan’ — a set of instructions for the direction of the entire human race penned by a mysterious figure called the Chairman. In the Chairman’s employ are an army of caseworkers who adjust the actions, and even impulses, of humans when they stray from THE PLAN. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: The Adjustment Bureau, or, Angels Play Dirty”
Bring ‘Em Home, Then Cut Their Budget
The United States of America had a higher expenditure in defense spending in 2010, $687.1 billion, than it had in 1988, when military outlays reached $531.6 billion (both numbers in constant 2009 USD. Figures obtained via The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.). This means that the United States is spending more of its treasure in combatting stateless terrorist organizations consisting of no more than a few thousand extremists, and that pose zero existential threat, than it spent at the end of the 1980s staring down the Soviets in the Cold War, a state of undeclared animosity that threatened not only the existence of the United States, but the continued survival of civilization itself. Continue reading “Bring ‘Em Home, Then Cut Their Budget”
Into the Darkness
Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by U.S. Special Forces. The country is jubilant. President Obama, in his address announcing the killing, entered the operation into the lore of triumphalism that has been a part of the American ethos for its entire history. It was our can-do spirit, our ceaseless pursuit of greatness, that guaranteed success. It was a great moment in American history. Continue reading “Into the Darkness”
The Empty Balcony: Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa isn’t a typical British gangster film. Many of the hallmarks are there, to be sure. Gritty London scenery, almost impenetrable accents, and Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins. But many of the things a viewer expects from the plot of a British gangster film are absent. There’s no big heist being planned. There’s no grisly murder to revolve the story around. There’s violence at times, but it isn’t the gratuitous kind. It doesn’t rule the film. When it comes, it’s a necessary outcome of the story. Mona Lisa tells a story wrapped within a recognizable genre, but it uses that genre as a tool to tell the tale of a complex personal relationship. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Mona Lisa”
The Empty Balcony: 13 Assassins
Three historical periods in Japan are among the most interesting and compelling in the annals of human civilization. The Sengoku period, also known as the Warring States period, comprised the height of feudal conflict from the 15th century to the early 17th century, culminating in the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. The new era of peace which followed, the Edo period, lasted until the Shogunate collapsed in the wake of internal and external pressures for Japan to end its forced isolation and open its shores to the modern world in the 1860s. What followed was the Meiji period, when the emperor was restored to power, and Japan, through numerous fits and starts, became the empire that was finally defeated by the Allies in World War II.
The legacy of the past, particularly the rigid caste structure that used to exist in Japanese society, is still very much in the public consciousness there, owing to the mythologies surrounding the samurai. A privileged class of warriors, the samurai rose alongside the violent and prolonged wars that typified feudal Japan. One could not seem to exist without the other. Once the wars ended with unification, however, the samurai were without their core purpose, relegated either to roles as bureaucrats, or as restless vagabonds, the laws of the time barring the honored warrior classes from making a living in so-called menial positions as laborers, merchants, or artisans. Yet the samurai were never weaned properly off their warrior ethos. The erosion of the samurai’s self-worth was one of the driving factors behind the collapse of the Shogunate. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: 13 Assassins”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Spice World & Trancers II
I never met a movie I wouldn’t watch.
— Missile Test
I thought I was being clever when I made that little play on the famous Will Rogers quote. I never thought it would get me in trouble, that I would be forced to live up to such whimsy as if it were a true declaration. I was wrong. One of my friends, Michael, over at Daily Exhaust, decided to challenge my integrity and the integrity of Missile Test by throwing out a suggestion for a shitty movie review. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Spice World & Trancers II”