Awake in the Night Land

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It's the same thing every year...

I ate all the candies—and we are still three days away from Halloween (observed)!

I just can't help myself. What can I say? That's what happens when one is awake in the Night Land.

I'll just have to get some more candies before Thursday evening, I suppose. There's no way around it.

All the same, I'll just be posting that sign in the front yard, just in case I don't get to it in time.



Does anyone still give away shiny pennies on Halloween anymore?

Nickels and dimes?

Half dollar coins?

Perhaps this one would do in a pinch:



Or, maybe, that one:



No. Wait...



Not THIS ONE:


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Valerian and the City of Planet Hollywood

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My date (the cool girl I picked up at The Wulfshead, last Friday) and I were very, very, very lucky indeed, though we didn't know it at the time, to decide to go to the movie that night and be amongst the very few who got to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in full XD 3D at the Howard Hughes Cinemark wide screen auditorium (THE ONLY PLACE IN TOWN, and apparently, as it turns out, also possibly the only day, THE MOVIE WAS ACTUALLY FEATURED IN 3D ON A WIDE SCREEN, at the time of its release.



You can still see the movie in 3D, but, for some strange and baffling reason, well beyond my comprehension (I don't know much about Hollywood politics), you won’t find it featured on a wide screen anywhere in LA, and, for all I know, in the rest of the country either.

If I were to be pressed to speculate about this, and formulate some kind of an opinion, my guess would be that the U.S. doesn’t care much about cities of a thousand planets, all it cares about is Planet America, but that’s just my unqualified opinion and perhaps I am making too much of this—with my date being such a Francophile and me such a great fan of the Valerian and Laureline comic series, and all. What do I know?

According to an interview with Luc Besson, dated November 2016, Valerian had been scheduled for some time already to be released in IMAX on the 21st of July, and then, apparently, Dunkirk (which was shot mostly in IMAX) coveted the same date on the calendar and Valerian got kicked out of the IMAX theaters, as a result. Dunkirk also secured a quasi-monopoly on all the wide-screen theaters too (like, from what we've been able to tell, Cinemark XD and Arclight WS).

When asked, at the time, in that same interview, whether he had considered moving the release of Valerian to an other date, Luc Besson explained that they chose the date two years ago and that the movie was set to be released not only in the U.S., but everywhere else in the world already: "You can’t move just because one director comes here. So we will go 21st of July no matter what. But we are in 3D, so we have a 3D version and RealD and IMAX everywhere else in the world."

That said, it is unfortunate, in this great country of ours, that the film couldn’t be given a fair chance and got deprived of being shown in the format that does it the most justice.

One would think that in America, out of all places, the entertainment industry would not be so suppressively reductionist.

Is it naive of me to believe the world is large and complex enough to afford people more of a choice and that there ought to be more to planet Hollywood than just black and white, or the false dilemma of being made to choose between apples and oranges, or between Nolan and Besson, two directors featuring two very different kinds of movies?

Scott Mendelson at Forbes, had this to say about it:








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Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

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       Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached,
       thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.
       —Albert Einstein

Some people just simply don't get it.

And that means you, Rotten Tomatoes:



And you, Katie Walsh and Christy Lemire:





It is you who are confused, Christy.

Mike And Dave Need Weeding Dates is NOT raunchy comedy, it is absurdist/existential comedy at its very best.

Says who?

Says Salvatore Attardo:



I quote:





But, as I said, some people don't get it:



Or perhaps, it is just simply the "professional" critics who don't get it.

The audience seems to be getting it well enough.

Is Mike And Dave Need Weeding Dates a successful comedy?

Well, let's put it to this simple test: Does the audience laugh?

The audience does!

A lot!

And that's all one needs to know. Forget the professional critics. Forget Salvatore Attardo. People are laughing. The proof is in the pudding. This is all the evidence one needs that Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates is successfully funny.

People are laughing because at some level the movie connects with them. It's close to home, and in your face. It connects with people's daily reality—a thing that, incidentally, professional critics, just like politicians, have totally become disconnected from. The movie exposes the absurdity of daily reality and social conventions and makes light of the burden of all those arbitrary rules and norms governing our society and behaviors all of us have been programmed through force of habit to take for granted without necessarily thinking about them.

This dialogue from the movie, in which Alice attempts to cover her total ignorance of what a hedge fund is, is a most perfect illustration of it:



You are laughing?

Of course, you are—that one piece alone is a pure gem.

But are you laughing at Alice, now, or are you laughing with her?

How many people, if put on the spot, would actually be able to give a coherent definition of what a hedge fund really is about?

Insofar as I am concerned, this is possibly one of the best description I have heard.

The way she picks up those ready-made words form the talking points mosaic of daily news (like so many people do), and spin them to the point where they lose coherence, beginning with "too big to fail," and ending up with "Bernie Mac" and "DL Hughley," through words association, inscribes itself in the tradition of Absurdist/Existential comedy at its best.


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Oh, for heaven's sake

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And why, in heaven's name, not, woman?





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Représentation

Des représentants de commerce du Peuple sont en scène et échangent de terribles invectives.

Le rideau tombe et se relève sans que les acteurs y aient prêté attention et ils continuent leur "conversation".

- Qu'est-ce que cela peut faire que je lutte pour la mauvaise cause puisque je suis de bonne foi ?

- Et qu'est-ce que ça peut faire que je sois de mauvaise foi puisque c'est pour la bonne cause ?

Ils se saluent.

Le rideau tombe puis se relève.
Ils s'en aperçoivent et s'invectivent.

— Jacques Prévert, SPECTACLE (1949)

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Je veux te voir

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Apropos of nothing...





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Your Future Has Been Adjusted

Which does raise the question:

What is the perfect amount of scuffing?

Do they really pay consultants seventy three hundred dollars to figure these things out?





I mean, don't get me wrong, if supply-side economics is your shtick, that's fine with me.

Just one school of macroeconomic among others . . .



The way I look at it, everyone's entitled to their beliefs and all that. But shouldn't the guy have run under the GOP banner?



Just asking.
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Ouch!

You know that's gotta hurt.

Sorry, Edward James . . .



You are a handsome lad and all. You have presence and you made a fine weatherman anchorman for ABC, but I think Keith is right on that one.

Besides...you asked for it.

The kind of television journalism [Ted Koppel] eulogizes failed this country because
when truth was needed, all we got were facts --- most of which were lies anyway. 
The journalism failed, and those who practiced it failed, and Mr. Koppel failed.

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Whatever happened to no one gets left behind?

Good question!

Hey, call them a bunch of commies if you want to, but you've got to give it
to Five Finger Death Punch on this one.



I haven't had time to do any research, so I am not as familiar with the band as
I should be as I am posting this, but judging by this one song, it seems to me like
the world could use more socially concerned progressive voices like theirs:



What a vocal performance! Ivan is awesome.

No one gets left behind, another fallen soul

No one gets left behind, another broken home

No one gets left behind, we stand and fight together

No one gets left behind, or we all die alone

Have you no honor? Have you no soul?

Have you no backbone? Have you no spine?

Whatever happened to No one gets left behind?

No one gets left behind, I know you made it up.

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Villains by necessity

Via Wired, via Dvice
Is that so?

Mmm...this could be fun!





And my anticivic self asks: "Where are the counterpowers?"


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There's no stopping progress

"The most basic rationale for the use of unmanned systems is to reduce the user’s risk of casualties."

That's what they say, sir.

When questioned about it, military commanders reflexively cite this as the most important benefit of the new technology.


The way one soldier put it: “When a robot dies, you don’t have to write a letter to its mother.”


Now, let me ask you:


What kind of a callous comment is that?


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Most courteous of the gentlemen to enquire

It is true: an ever-increasing number of fine establishments have been printing requests for patrons to refrain from using their cell phone in their dining rooms.

The Wulfshead has no such prohibitions.

All in all, the management trusts patrons to observe proper cell phone etiquette.

As the gentlemen may know, there is no knowing when an emergency may occur.


When such calls come in, our experience has been that most cell phone users usually excuse themselves to continue their conversations in a more private spot.


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A Woman's Place

They weren't?


Oh, pooh!

Don't you just hate it when a filmmaker, nowadays, just doesn't understand what the proper place of a woman in a fantasy setting should be?


Obviously, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg didn't properly research their subject:


Many a popinjay do agree with Fred.

Witness: Kenneth Turan's vitriolic review of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland:


Goodness gracious . . .


Otto Weininger must be rolling in his grave :)

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