Tagged: reviews
“Bare All” vs. “For All”, A Joint Review of The Return by Uberto Pasolini and Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning by Christopher McQuarrie
I have always longed to be absolutely open-minded when it came to art. At an early age I was aware there were art critics who could find and explain beauty and power and relevance in art that I generally found unappealing. “What do they see?” was my question. This was followed closely by, “Will I ever see it?”
Ralph Fiennes has a full frontal nude shot in Mr. Pasolini’s telling of “The Odyssey.” I really want to understand why. My guess and how I understood it was it provides fodder for reviews like this one. He gave me the line, “Like Ralph Fiennes’ bold nude scene, Pasolini’s film presents Homer’s epic as nakedly as ever. It’s a ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ retelling.”
Then I would add, “Unfortunately, whatever he was aiming for, it hits more like a Cliff’s Notes summary of the definitive epic than a masterful adaptation. The poem is more than the naked delivery of facts because beauty, power, and relevance demand more.”
Tom Cruise, on the other hand—while still baring much epidermis—does not bare all in Mr. McQuarrie’s latest and final(?) Mission Impossible installment. Why not? There are probably many reasons. Surely near the top is his desire to make a movie which will entertain every living human on Planet Earth, now and forevermore.
We all already knew China was important to him (ref: Taiwan flag removal on leather jacket in TG2). He released this one in Tokyo, I gather. So there’s that. But we’d be fooling ourselves if we thought only in terms of round eye and slant eye. He wants all of us.
For me, there is a blandness that necessarily accompanies this approach to universal art. It is best captured by how jokes, to be funny, must remain particular. “A priest, a nun, and a monk walk into a bar” works. “One religious man, one religious woman, another variation of a religious man walk into a workspace” does not work.
So when art is made, for me, the same applies. There is a requirement for creating something that ensures there is some level of audience guaranteed to understand it, but if you worry too much about this and try to be certain that everyone will understand and not be offended etc, then you lose the point.
To this I will add and conclude that what TC and McQ made is beyond this attempt at universality. They aimed so high and are such capable men that they achieved something truly remarkable. I mean that I believe they fulfilled their goal. It’s not a perfect movie. But it is a movie that every living human being on Planet Earth will enjoy, now and forevermore.
Reading Log 4.9.2025
Same for Vol 2 as I said about Vol 1, “Grant’s memoir was amazing and astounding on nearly every level. What a time to have been alive.”
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Re: Pilgrim’s Progress: I will share the text I sent to a friend.
“On another subject, I finally started John Bunyan’s famous ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’.
Four chapters in and I would say this book may be more valuable to Christianity than the Bible itself. One more entry in the matter of ‘what a shame that folks have dropped it out of vogue’.
If you want a copy, I can send one to you. It is part of our homeschool set.”
(Obviously I would need a GoFundMe account to accomplish this for the world’s population. But if you are serious that all you need is a copy to get you reading, my offer stands. Comment below or email me. We’ll get you one.)
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I have read tons of Mark Twain. Or it feels like it. But I had no idea about Mr. Wilson and the twins. Twain is ridiculous. I always thought he was hilarious, as evidenced here again, but these open the “ridiculous” description too. And watch out! The “n” word is on full display as he calls into question everything you have ever thought about life on earth.
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The reason you read Pascal is to see for yourself that these “greats” are impossible to justly or sufficiently summarize. The infamous “wager” is far more involved than how it typically is presented.
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The math essays don’t teach you particular skills, but they are interesting and do contain such marvelous sentiments, found curiously nowhere else, as, (paraphrasing) “We don’t need to think more. We need to think less. We need to accomplish as much as possible with as little thinking. That is true advancement.”
Oh, and if you want a single essay as an icebreaker, to test the waters, it’s Euler’s hands down. “The Seven Bridges of Königsberg.” See here.
****
I like writing these updates. But I wonder if anyone will ever use them as intended. Time will tell.
One Thought While At The Greatest Book Store In America
The checkout clerk soiled the entire experience when he directed me and a pair of crackheads to line up behind the “line starts here” sign that was to my left.
What I thought, but did not say, was, “If you, sir, can paint your fingernails black, then I don’t have to follow any rules, thank you very much.”
The crackheads were more prompt in their obeisance, and also dirty, so I spaced myself appropriately, which landed me in the right direction, but in front of the aforementioned sign.
I told them, “I’ll stand in front of the sign.”
They didn’t seem to appreciate my defiance.
The Game of Telephone: Why You Need To Read More
The game of “Telephone” among famous scientists does not start and stop with Newton and the apple that he never wrote about.
Check this out.
Bertrand Russell was born in 1872. In 1897 he would have been 25 years old. In 1897 he published a fellowship-winning thesis. It was entitled, “An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry.”
Read this.
Those words were published in 1897 (same year as Russell’s first book) by William James. (See highlighted parts.)
Now read this.
Those words were published by Stephen Hawking in 1988. (91 years after Russell was 25 years old and published his thesis; 91 years after James’ words were published.)
Sure. I grant you that it is possible that Russell gave lectures to little old ladies in 1897, despite his being 25 years old and having only published a thesis on geometry that no little old lady would ever be interested in (or aware of). But that only solves the lesser problem. How does “rock” become “turtle”?
Seriously.
Obviously the nature of the situation is Hawking placed the importance of “truth” well below standards when deciding how to open his best-ever-selling book (that is seriously flawed for more than this reason).
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This is why you need to read, and read, and read, and read, and read. The solution is more reading.
Shaking My Head/Nerd Alert!, A Review of A Brief History of Time, By Stephen Hawking
The Spiderman of physicists, Stephen Hawking, introduces the second edition of his book with, “The success of A Brief History indicates that there is widespread interest in the big questions like: Where do we come from? And why is the universe the way it is?”
Just past halfway through the book, in his chapter titled, “The Origin and Fate of the Universe”, he suggests, “The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”
In the final chapter (before the Conclusion), he writes, “We would then be able to have some understanding of the laws that govern the universe and are responsible for our existence.”
In the final paragraph of the book (excluding three brief and meaningless portraits of Einstein, Galileo, and Newton) he suggests, “However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we should all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.”
Firstly, for context, the second bestselling book in that chart is—self-help/dating/pop-psychology. Third is a cookbook. In other words, while I love that Metallica’s Black album is the bestselling album since certain record-keeping data began, while I think they deserve all possible head-banging praise from us mortals, the number two is Shania Twain. Put another way, Mr. Hawking got his 15 min of fame, surely. But his staying power is yet to be seen—and I wouldn’t bet on it. Additionally, “pity” is a very real motivator. My money says give mobility of limb back, and the Brit’s wouldn’t have paid to see the five foot man-eating-chicken carnival act.
Next, close as you look, you will find no written record of a belief that life unfolds arbitrarily. Instead, you will find people have always believed in order—but they got the order wrong. Pointedly, then, Hawking and contemporary physicists are in nowise special. They’re just doing their best like everyone before them.
Thirdly, “govern” and “responsible for” are not synonyms. You want to tell me that the sensation when an elevator starts up and the sensation of being stuck to the ground are indistinguishable? Great. But the idea that the aforementioned sensation(s) are responsible for my being is laughable. Get outta here!
Lastly, no, thank you. This idea that I have to wait upon “my betters” (or anyone) to finish their navel-gazing before I can opine as regards the nature of existence is just silly. Telescopes and microscopes are cool. But truth is not some distant or small object.
Previous authors, like Einstein, Jeans, and Eddington, among many, many others, wrote in order to explain what they were doing. Hawking, conversely, writes to announce his conclusions. The effect of their books could not be more striking.
It reminds me of the time I met an unmarried Major while I, too, was single (though a lowly First Lieutenant) in the Air Force. He was such a loser. He did precisely what he wanted all the time—and loved every minute of his life. Nobody liked him. He had no friends. To add one dollop of paint to the portrait, I’ll share this. When we drove around the base in Iraq in the big van, he would lie down on a bench seat for fear of the enemy targeting him because he was a Major. The point is not his earnestness, the point is the unhinged-ness. Anyhow, I recall thinking, immediately after meeting him, “I must get married.”
Likewise, had I read Hawking before Einstein, Eddington, and Jeans, and their predecessors, I would have never picked up another popular physics book. As it stands, my foundation is unshaken (thankfully) and the topic still interests me. But Hawking does not.
Should you read this best-seller? Nope. Life is too short. Start with Einstein’s The Evolution of Physics.
“Decide”, A Review of Mothers’ Instinct by Benoit Delhomme
If you’ve somehow hesitated on this one, rest assured that it is worth watching. It isn’t perfect. But compared to all the other trash that is being proffered as “movies” these days, it is a return to the classic definition. (You don’t even want to know what my co-workers were about to watch when I came to the rescue.)
The tone was perfectly subdued, precisely unpronounced. No one holds your hand and points out what to notice. You either get it (and are disturbed in the titillating manner you found appealing) or you probably are bored and never really wanted to watch it.
As far as the leading ladies, Hathaway performs her role better than Chastain. But she also has the easier task.
The best part of the film is how the immediate fallout from the boy’s death is so natural. By way of comparison, consider the tragic mid-air. People’s reactions have centered on personal responsibility (pilot error) vs. systemic failure (FAA/ATC). And that debate is crazy to me. It’s actually why I choose to fly. I have ultimate authority for the safety of the flight. Not many jobs offer that.
As a recap, the helicopter pilot said, “Traffic in sight.” And then we all learned that he did not have the traffic in sight.
In this movie, the tragic death is more purely accidental. The trick, or hinge, to it is that one mother happened to see it coming but couldn’t get there in time, and the other mother should have been watching. But, different than the pilot, the boy never said, “I know I might die if I am wrong, but I am not wrong.”
I say all this to bring to the forefront that the post-tragedy questions “how to respond” and “how to interpret with and deal with others’ responses” are totally distinct from the mid-air’s “how to prevent this from ever happening again” question.
Moreover, the truly fascinating aspect of the plot is how powerfully the story debunks utopian notions of how good life could become if only. Life is great, people. But death is a part of life.
Death is a part of life. You don’t want life to be worse because of death. So talk about it. Think about it. Prepare for it. As a topic, death should be no different than meals or clothes or relationships.
Ultimately, I want to say this. If you feel death approaching, say, at the hands of an unstable woman, flee! It’s best not to hesitate on that one.
A Year of Reading in Review
As promised, so far as I remember and/or marked, here’s what I read in 2024. The colorful books with the banner “not for resale” really were just since October—I’ve been on a tear of late. Same with the comic books; when I cut movies (for the most part), I had to find something light and so chose comics that I always wanted to read. You don’t see a few others from a “Predator vs. Black Panther” series and an “Alien vs Avengers” series. A collection of Jack London is the two-page table of contents pic that starts with “The Yukon” and ends with “White Fang.” The individual “First Reading” etc are from the Great Ideas Program. And the table of contents of essays are from Gateways to the Great Books companion set to the GBWW.
I may post again with an answer to the question, “So what did all this reading do for you insofar as tangible results, Captain?” For today, I want to share an infamous quote by Faraday. When he was asked, “What is the point of this discovery of yours?”, he responded, “What is the point of a child?”
Happy New Year!
On Reading “The Divine Comedy”
Oh sweet Book, thou mantlest thyself with a smile, by what ardentcy dost thou require my time whose arrow, aimed right or left, loosed evermore sheathgone, anon to crawl, broken mirror upon, ever opening virgin wounds ere disconsidered more believable than metamorphastication of hell’s lord to heaven’s Supreme Good, be collected!
“Comedy in the Old Sense”, A Review of Joker: Folie à Deux, Directed by Todd Phillips
Everyone knows what a tragedy is. The word has kept its meaning through the years. The meaning of comedy, however, has not held constant. In a sense, this change is no different from how the concept of heat as substance was discarded in favor of heat as motion upon experimental data which confirmed there was a difference between temperature (strength) and heat (quantity).
Anyone know in what sense comedy was used in the past, say for such a work as Dante’s Divine Comedy? That’s right, “a happy ending.” That story has a happy ending. (Spoiler: It ends in Heaven.)
That is the sense that I mean when I chose to title this review, “Comedy in the Old Sense.” I do not mean that the film is funny.
As a family man, I do not get to the movie theater much these days, so I had to wait, like the rest of you, to watch the movie on a streaming service (co-worker’s account). So I was more than well-versed in the terrible reception of the highly anticipated film. While I would like to believe my critical eye is objective, I offer some backstory to the tardy review because I cannot deny that I came into the movie with a different mindset and much lower expectations than the World before me. Truth be told, by the time I watched it, I needed to prove everyone wrong. I needed to see the genius.
And so here it is.
The movie, unlike its predecessor, is pure comedy. As no one wanted to see that, because no one expected that, everyone missed it. Regardless of its initial reception, like the Divine Comedy, literally for the exact same reasons, I offer that this comedic work is an instant classic and will stand the test of time even more-so than Joker. Because we do like our happy endings.
Time for a proper [SPOILER ALERT]. (But I’d keep reading because the movie is better when not a mystery.)
Joker is the bad guy. And the bad guy dies.
That’s right. Good guys win; bad guys lose. That’s a happy ending, right? Well, the final scene in Joker is that a fanboy fellow asylum-mate unexpectedly (perhaps only to Arthur Fleck) kills Arthur.
Get it? From this old perspective, the first movie is a tragedy, because Joker, while arrested, clearly wins. But in the sequel, the continuation of the story, he dies. The bad guy loses—which is what happy endings require. So it’s a comedy.
If the film misses any mark, it is that the “good guy” remains nebulous. Is it Batman (meaning merely our awareness of the character since he is not in the film)? Is it rule of law in general? A jury trial in particular? Is it truth-telling in the face of fear? Is it truth in general? We aren’t really told, so it’s anyone’s guess.
That’s the broad strokes. But I want to hit some minutia for posterity’s sake.
Hollywood is messing up on casting right now (GLADIIATOR being the other major instance). Certain actors are too talented for small roles. In Joker: Folie à Deux, the problem is Gleeson. His character was fairly important to the story, but his past credits are too distinguished. The polish he brought resulted in him standing out like a sore thumb. It was all tease, no climax. Let’s not do that again.
In America’s on-going battle of the blondes, Hollywood thinks Margot Robbie could only be topped by Lady Gaga. (This isn’t criticism, just acknowledging who’s hot and who’s not—according to our betters.) This is interesting. Gaga did a perfectly fine job in the film. We probably can just admit she did a perfect job. But I’d say she risked more than she needed to on this role—even as she should be flattered beyond belief.
I recently watched Alien: Romulus as well. I am not sure why I didn’t review it—it is good. But I am very sure that the first time I saw the xenomorph appear I thought, “Man. That is so beautiful. Probably the best looking bad guy ever.” Update: after watching Joaquin Phoenix with the makeup on and hair green and charisma maxed out, I’d say it’s a tie. Joker is just beautiful. I’m telling you, keep an eye on how this movie is received down the years. We like beauty, as a species.
Let’s end on a philosophical note.
In the film Red Belt, the martial art’s instructor goes through a list of, “If you stand here, can I strike you? If you stand here, can I strike you?” Etc. This continues, of course, until he positions his student outside of striking distance and concludes, “So don’t stand here (anywhere close).”
Joker is killed by the nicest-to-him inmate (not Batman or the police or the law), precisely when/because his guard is down. I just can’t help but wonder, “WTF, over?”
Why do we hurt each other?
Some Outstanding Quotes From Recent Reads
A book I have always dreaded is, “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington. I viewed it like the pet shop snakes Pee Wee didn’t want to rescue from the fire. I could not have been more wrong. It is astonishing. (For the uninitiated, it was written around 1900; Washington was a former slave turned champion of education and recognized leader of the Negro people in the times that followed their big day.)
“The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man. All this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole Nation lend a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the South.”
(Pause here to consider the fullness of love captured by those words.)
“Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”
And I add this next one with a special eye affixed on Black Jesus himself. (Please recall this was spoken by a former slave. No bed, no bathing, no shoes, no toothbrush, no mealtimes. Scratchy shirts, no education. Etc etc.)
“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing.”
That begs repeating.
“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing.”
(It’s only natural to take a quick break before continuing to the next quote.)
Long ago I bought Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, partly out of interest, partly to impress a girl. I never opened it that paperback copy. But a beautiful hardbound copy was in my Great Books set and the guided reading propelled me to taste and see. So I finally had a chance to discover what it’s all about. Couple to this that back in Seminary (Evangelical, not Catholic) the phrase “intellectual assent” was thrown around like “please and thank you”, usually in a smug, “Faith isn’t just intellectual assent”. (This was said in conversations about apologetics and sharing the Gospel in general.)
“Now the act of believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God…”
For the thousandth time then, say it with me, “We’re all just little repeaters”. It’s depressing in a way. But it’s also fun to track down the true creators among us.
Next and last for today is Jack London’s White Fang. I can’t recall if I ever read it. I know I watched a movie from the 90s by the same name, but to suggest it was based on the book I am reading would be criminal.
(Keep in mind this quote is about a wolf *wink*.)
“But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience.”
(Another long pause for contemplation is only natural here.)
I write these posts for me. But I confess to you that today I write with the hope of spurring someone, anyone on to the delight of reading Up From Slavery and White Fang. (Aquinas is too much for anyone not professionally interested.)
Captain’s Log 