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Finding You: Sentimental RomCom

Feb9

It’s not often that I get into the sentimental stories, but Finding You starring Rose Reid and Jedidiah Goodacre was sweet. Maybe I just like movies set in Ireland and fiddling music, but I really enjoyed it and thought the banter between the two was fun. It’s also great to see the downside of celebrity and fame showcased. The acting wasn’t super great, but, boy, was the bad acting for the pretend dragon show fun. All in all it’s an inoffensive, sentimental romcom. I would now like to read the book, There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones. Also the “Cliffs of Insanity” a la The Princess Bride are in it. How can one not love that?

The life lesson in the story was mainly about holding grudges. What a waste of your life! What silliness to not even hear the other person out. How much one can miss out on. The silent treatment is a foolish, foolish human coping mechanism. but at the time, when we’re hurt, it seems reasonable, and then some just let it continue indefinitely. But we forget: We don’t know everything. We don’t know the whole story of the other persons actions and circumstances, perhaps only that they have hurt us. Finding out their side is sometimes vital to completely understanding the situation, for often it’s just that, a misunderstanding. And if both people aren’t communicating, well, lifelong grudges grow and fester. It’s just such a shame, but we’ve all been there and guilty of it. Anyway, it just reminded me how wonderful communication is. None of us–none of us–are mind readers. I can’t read your mind and you can’t read mine. This is so important to remember. Some people don’t even communicate to the other person that they are hurt and why, so the other person never really knows what happened. Some know they are being misunderstood, but have too much pride to clarify things or something. Anyway, it can all get to be such a mess and it’s a wonderful blessing when two people have a relationship where they can truly share and communicate with each other. What a wonderful thing.

Have a great Valentine’s Day and don’t forget to tell your loved ones that you love them! Everyone needs to hear it, even if they know it already.

It’s Groundhog Day…Again: Movie Memories

Feb2

Growing up, we had several goto family movies that we watched. We favored other dark humor comedies like Better Off Dead starring John Cusack, and Clifford starring Martin Short (also The Breakfast Club coming of age story which is really not appropriate for kids, but TBS showed it quite often, so we had a censored version), but my personal favorite was: Groundhog Day.

What would you do with your life if you literally had forever? This is probably something humanity has wondered since death came into the picture at the beginning of the world. What amazing things could we do if we just didn’t die? Groundhog Day plumbs the great opportunity such a thing would present to a human, and also the great burden it would be to never die in a body and world so corrupted.

In what I think is his best performance ever, Bill Murray portrays weatherman Phil as he goes to the small town of Punxsutawney to cover their annual Groundhog Day celebration in which a groundhog, also named Phil, is consulted on whether or not we will have six more weeks of winter. This depends on whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not and is an odd tradition that we kids had never really heard of before the movie. It’s fun nonsense, I guess.

Although Groundhog Day came out in 1993, it is classic and has aged well. The themes in it are universal, the love story sweet. It has a timeless, everyday quality about it, with memorable performances not only from Murray, but Andie MacDowell (Cedar Cove) as Rita, and several character actors that populated a ton of Hollywood movies at the time. Phil has his worst day ever, stuck in the cold winter in a town he hates, and wakes up the next day to find out it’s not the next day: He’s reliving Groundhog Day again…and again.

How long Phil has to endure this time loop, we’re never told, but it’s long enough for him to become a piano virtuoso and learn French. It’s also long enough to learn the names and details of everyone in town on that day. At first Phil is frustrated and depressed that this has happened, but soon he realizes he can do whatever he wants without consequences. But as time passes, or rather does not pass, this has little appeal for him.

We see his sinister and manipulative side really come out in his romantic conquests, of which there are at least two, but there certainly could be more not included in the story, in which he learns whatever information about a woman he needs to get her to sleep with him. As the longest day ever continues, Phil actually falls in love with one of them, his charming, beautiful producer Rita. But Rita’s not as easy as the other girl, and Phil gets rejected far more times than a man could probably stand. He enters a dark phase in which he tries to kill himself repeatedly without success. This is dark comedy gold as Phil also kidnaps his groundhog counterpart, thinking if they both die this cycle will end. It doesn’t.

The cycle only finally ends with the vain, selfish Phil turns a corner and becomes a better person. Again, we don’t know how many Groundhog Days he goes through to get there, but it’s surely a lot, and through it all is a true love for both his fellow man and especially for Rita. It is heartwarming and wonderful to see him transform and amazing to see how Rita responds to this. He really sweeps her off her feet and does it all just by being a good, talented, unselfish person. He does the same good deeds every day even though he knows there’s ultimately no good consequences for him in a tomorrow that will never come. Punxsutawney becomes his home, the people who are there that day his family.

Finally, when Phil’s worst day ever has become his best day ever, and he gets the love of the woman of his dreams, then the cycle ends and he has a tomorrow. I always wondered what his life was like for him after all of that, and perhaps that would be some interesting fan fiction. It would also be interesting to see a modern remake of the story. As the name Phil is so oft repeated in the movie and some of its famous quotes, too, I always have a bit of sympathy for any guy named Phil on this day, because they perhaps get annoying people yelling the movie quotes at them. Ah, well, we all have our burdens to bear.

At once hilarious and endearing, Groundhog Day is wonderful writing and characterization and I’m sure will be something families watch again and again in the future. It allows us to dream, what if, and tells us, nope, such a journey would be far harder than you think it would. The love story is also great and I think the movie is perfect for Valentine’s Day. This was a time when Hollywood writers still believed that love and romance was true.

6 Quick Drama Reviews

Jun17

Tale of the Nine-Tailed

Starring Lee Dong Wook (Goblin) and Jo Bo Ah (Shut Up Flower Boy Band). 2021.

Enjoying it a lot more the second time. The characters are all great.

The Devotion of Suspect X

This one’s a Chinese movie from 2017. Starring Wang Kai (When a Snail Falls in Love) and Zhang Lu Yi. Directed by Alec Su.

Although I really liked a lot of the shots and the silence of the movie, it just wasn’t compelling. It’s a murder mystery that’s too easy to figure out, and although the friendship of the main two men is interesting, the story just isn’t thrilling in the way it could have been. The movie is based on a book and there are some other adaptations, so might check those out sometime.

One Page Love

Starring Hashimoto Kanna. 2019 Japanese drama directed by Keita Motohashi. Not having much luck with the Jdramas. This one I will maybe finish eventually, but I find the main character boring. And three love interests in a little much for only a few episodes.

The Divine Fury

Korean movie from 2019. Although I love me some Park Seo Joon (What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?), this was too scary for me. And the theology was certain to bother me before long, so I gave up.

Touch Your Heart

2019 Kdrama starring the much beloved second lead couple from Goblin: Lee Dong Wook and Yoo In Na. Am only on episode 2, but it’s pretty funny, the kind of romcom women love to watch and probably most men hate to watch. Both main characters are simultaneously lovable and annoying. Whatever youth serum the two leads are ingesting, I want some! They look great.

Doom at Your Service

This one is 2021 and currently on air. Starring Seo In Guk (The Smile Has Left Your Eyes) and Park Bo Young (Strong Women Do Bong Soon), it is a slow-burn supernatural romance with fantastic acting, an odd world in which the god of it is pictured as a young women who must continually die for the world. Definitely not as powerful as Jesus. He only had to die once for all time. There’s a lot to like – the acting and chemistry between the leads is awesome. The soundtrack’s pretty good, and the love triangle subplot with the minor characters is unexpected and interesting on its own. Still, the show is a bit slow for me and muddled. The world isn’t so far (I’m on episode 10) explained well to my satisfaction and I would prefer more action. No real villain so far, except for Doom himself, and the god girl who sometimes seems good, sometimes malicious. As it’s got SIG in it, I may do a longer review when I finish it.

Updates

I’m getting so, so close to finally finishing my initial draft of TfD, Season 3. It would help if I actually wrote from time to time…but, there’s so many distracting–look, a squirrel! As I’ve committed to a book fair this fall, I’ve got to start to be on the ball, already. Fighting!

As for reading, I am now on Prince Caspian in the Narnia series and am just going to write a blog post once I’m done with the whole series. Have lately to find a Regency Romance that I like enough to actually finish to review. Nonfiction reading: Dr. Mütter’s Marvels by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, and then The Story of Japanese Tea by Tyas Sosen (I don’t know how to make the line above the o). Thriller reading: The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong, and then the second book in the Bowers Files series.

Quick Review: Cold Eyes / Updates

Jan21

Hello, world! Happy Thursday. Here’s a quick review for you and some updates on what may be coming next.

Since I love thrillers, I was stoked to watch the spy/heist movie Cold Eyes starring Jung Woo Sung (A Moment to Remember) , Han Hyo Joo (W), and Sol Kyung Goo (The Tower). Although a well done movie, and awesomely intense in parts, I found it too darkly lit and too slow. In addition, although the acting on the one hand was great, it was largely expressionless, which suits the characters’ line of work, but doesn’t make it so exciting to watch.

Detective Ha Yoon Joo (Han) is a new recruit for a special police surveillance team. She’s really good at the job, mainly due to having a photographic memory, or something close to it, and it’s amusing to watch as she grows with each case and how her supervisor trains her. Their main quarry for surveillance is catching the man and/or team in charge of various heists happening around Seoul. James (Jung) is a hard man who also has our sympathy, because he’s clearly ready to get out of the criminal business. My favorite character was definitely Chief detective Hwang (Sol), and he would be an awesome boss to have, pushing you to do your best.

The biggest takeaway I took from the movie was just how smart anyone in spying and high level crimes like this has to be. I don’t have the skills to do either, and if the real life surveillance teams are at this level, I am impressed, hats off. Other than that, Cold Eyes didn’t really bring anything new to the drama and the script was too vague to really be memorable.

Updates

Okay, time for some reading/watching updates. Don’t talk to me about writing! TfD3 is happening, it’s totally happening, it’s just going at a snail’s pace, as most of my writing goes.

Reading: Still working through my fall picks, but I doubt I’m going to review any more of those at this point, so let me share some choices I have for this year.

Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: It’s been awhile since I’ve read the whole series and, come to think of it, I’m sure I’ve actually read the whole series!

The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voigt: Been meaning to re-read this for awhile now, and I’m determined to finally do so this winter, if only other stories would stop distracting me, already! It’s a great tale about orphans rising to greatness in her fictional world of The Kingdom. It now goes by a different title, which is sad to me.

A Daughter’s Devotion/The Laird’s Inheritance by George MacDonald: This one I picked up at a thrift store last summer. It’s a giant volume of two books and is Christian fiction as well as a slice of Scotland’s literary history.

The Wanderer by Fanny Burney: Although way longwinded, Burney’s stories are pretty entertaining. I can see why Jane Austen was a fan of hers. Not sure this will top Evelina, which the BBC need to make into a drama, already!, but I’ll give it a go.

Watching: Haven’t been watching a lot lately, but I’m hooked on Tale of the Nine-Tailed starring Lee Dong Wook (Goblin). I think Lee should only do action/fantasy from now on, as he’s so much better at it than in real life dramas where he seems to suck the energy out of the screen. In both this one and Goblin, he brings energy. Full review coming next week.

Other dramas I plan to try: Signal, the Japanese version, which I think came first. The Korean one was so awesome, it will be fun to check out the original. Other thrillers I want to see are Train, Goodbye Mr. Black and Awaken. Haven’t found any new RomComs that have caught my eye yet.

Politics: So the US now has a fraudulent president who’s also going senile. It’s sad, really sad for our country, but the fight for freedom and fair elections continues. This is not over by a long shot and I’m really glad that whatever Q was it woke a lot of people up to the awful corruption around us.

More reading: I knew I posted this too soon! Also plan to reach The Once and Future King by T.H. White as I’ve never read it and like the whole King Arthur tale, and also Wizard, the Life and Time of Nikola Tesla, which I bought about ten years ago and also haven’t read yet.

Quick Reviews

Aug7

Haven’t finished anything to review lately, so just have some quick partial reviews:

The Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier: Am about halfway through the book and it’s pretty much the same as the movie, except it takes place in France instead of England. Enjoying Du Maurier’s writing as usual, but I think the main character comes across as a lot more charming in the movie. The other characters seem all the same. The film makers did a good job at adapting the story. I already know what’s going to happen, but am super curious about how the endings are different.

Peanut Butter Sandwich: This Japanese romantic comedy just wasn’t my cup of tea. Made it to episode 4 and just realized I was very bored. The story was neither funny nor romantic, though I was impressed at the government rookie being able to fit into so many service jobs without a hiccup. She’s got skills. The middle-aged woman obsessed with PB sandwiches was creepy and the guy agent looked dazed half the time. As for the other characters and their storylines–meh. Also, who wants the government investigating our love lives? None of their business.

Lookout: This Korean drama is a second watch for me. With hopping music, dynamic characters, and plenty of intrigue, I think I’m enjoying it even more this time around. The show stars Lee Si Young (Boys of Flowers) and Kim Young Kwang (Pinocchio), both of whom I think were born for these roles. Kim is especially on the money and enjoying acting his character and his character acting. The episodes are only half hour ones, so the plot and action moves relatively quickly.

Your Name: Also a second watch. Some of the best animation out there. Although I didn’t care for the Garden of Words, Makoto Shinkai hit this one out of the park. Definitely best to watch on a big screen if you can. It’s difficult to imagine an American cartoon or even CGI production that can touch what Japan can do with anime. Can’t wait to watch Weathering with You again later this fall.

The Garden of Words: A Mis-step

Aug2

With the highly anticipated digital and DVD release of writer-director Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering with You just around the corner, I thought it might be fun to check out another of his anime films, The Garden of Words. Although on the one hand Garden can be considered a great story, it’s also a giant mis-step in storytelling and knowing one’s audience. Spoilers and much negativity ahead.

As with Weathering with You and also, Shinkai’s previously popular Your Name, the artistry in Garden is amazing. Rain, storms, any sort of weather, really, gives the illustrators the chance to really show off what they can do. It is a feast for the eyes. The trouble here is the story, or rather the ages of the people in the story, or rather that it involves a high school student and an older woman…who works at his school.

Let me explain, and I’m by no means the final opinion on this, but sometimes one has to know the waters into which they are dipping their toes. Maybe Japan embraced this storyline and didn’t think anything of it, but for American audiences, this story is a turn off due to not only the age gap, but to the fact that the 27-year-old woman works at the teenager’s high school. Why does she end up leaving her job? Accusations–wrong, but still–accusations of inappropriate behavior with the students. Talk about a storyline in which you are all but assured you’ll be misunderstood.

People are often uncomfortable with relatively harmless stories like Big starring Tom Hanks, a comedy where a kid gets to experience being grown up for a time. Despite the funny, rather endearing story, there’s a serious creep factor involved in having any sort of relationship that’s not a family relationship between a child or teenager and an older person. It’s a truth that cannot be avoided. In the past, sometimes teenagers were thought of as adults, but for many countries they are now considered children, no matter how mature they may be for their age. Artists today continually pick at this boundary, trying to make something palatable in the main stream which should not be. Quite a lot is at stake regarding this. Great harm can come to children and teenagers because of it. Monsters prey on teenagers and children precisely because they are too young to truly understand how they are being manipulated.

Even one of my favorite dramas, High School King of Savvy starring Seo In Guk, weirds people out, though in that he’s the American equivalent of 18, pretends to be ten years older for much of the story, and great pains are taken to show how mature and responsible he his. It would just be a more comfortable story if the character was, say, in college, but then it wouldn’t be as funny. Although the romance was done well, it’s just an uncomfortable story all around.

In the teenage world, even a year can be a big difference. When dealing with teenagers having any sort of relationship with an older stranger, one must consider first that this will be a turn off to the audience, and rightly so. Making the character as young as 15 is not a wise choice. It’s a mis-step, because the likelihood that you and your story will be misunderstood is very high. Again, I don’t know a whole lot about Japan or Japanese culture, but the director here doesn’t help himself in the slightest. He very much makes their relationship romantic–a beautiful rainy garden, facing a storm together, quoting poetry, him tracing her feet, the boy mistaking what they have for romantic love, and so on.

It’s a story meant to show a connection between two strangers. Sometimes when one is extremely lonely, it is a complete stranger who fills that void and becomes a badly needed companion, but due to the age gap of the characters and the fact that she works at his school–I think she’s a counselor or something–it’s just, again, a great mis-step. To his credit, the young man gets rightly angry when he finds out she works at his school and didn’t tell him. Shinkai may think that what he’s asking of his audience is to appreciate a connection of companionship between strangers, but in reality, that’s just not what he presented. A lonely, alienated from both friends and family teenager is exactly who adult pedophiles pray on, and women commit this sin just as men do. I talk about this more a bit further on.

Let me take a break to give some background involving a newer phenomenon surrounding pedophilia and what the media calls conspiracy theory. To me, the term conspiracy theory is a made up term created to stop people questioning certain things. One of those things that people really need to start questioning, is what the rich and powerful do with all that money and time. Because many are involved in human trafficking and the sex slave trade.

Have you heard of Q-anon? That whole Q thing is entirely about good people battling the pedophiles. Supposedly President Trump and certain people in military intelligence are breaking up pedophile networks around the world. This is something you can actually look up. Since Trump took office, there have indeed been a very high number of people caught doing these things and there have been many, many children saved, all around the world.

Believe that’s Trump’s aim or not, I thought it pertinent to mention, because the other aspect of this is the still-under-the-radar slow push to make pedophilia ok in the mainstream. This follows on the transgender push for teens–these people know exactly what they are doing. The slow push manifests itself not only in films like this, but continual pedophilia jokes from celebrities and comedians on Twitter, the demanding that young children have the right to choose their gender (and thus consent to sex, right?), and the growing number of articles about the poor pedophiles and their plight. The crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell are only the tip of the iceberg of what’s going on here.

For those who followed Pizza Gate, which was actually not debunked, and now for those who follow Q, there is evidence that those in power, politicians, celebrities, a staggering amount of people, are all involved in human trafficking of minors–and using our money to do it. You don’t have to take my word on that, but if you’re curious, there’s plenty of research to find online–well, the stuff that the “masters of the universe” tech companies haven’t censored yet. I warn you, though, it’s not a happy place to go. The only comfort in the knowledge of the bad going on is the knowledge that whether it’s Trump or the Q team or not, some people with the power to do it have been slowly bringing these monsters to justice.

Back to the film: All that above is probably something that the director wasn’t aware of, but it’s just another angle to the whole age gap that reveals what a poor choice making the main character a teenager, and even a young teenager at that, was, at least for an American audience. Again, I am not sure how the film was received in Japan, but I do know that the director’s other films are wildly popular.

The creepiest part of the story is the fact that the woman works at the boy’s school and the accusations against her. At least in America, we have a very real problem with teachers and school workers preying on their students in a sexual way, specifically female teachers. In the past ten years there’s been way too many new stories about yet another 30+ year old woman teacher having sexual relations with her male students. These true incidents are why a story of this sort is a really difficult sell for Americans specifically: The audience is being bated to some degree to say this is ok. In a story like this, we are being asked to agree that it’s ok for a teenager and older adult to have a friendship like this.

But in reality even a friendship is not ok, because even if the adult sets appropriate boundaries, the teenager is likely to confuse things, just like he did in this story. Teenagers are just figuring out love and the opposite sex, and it’s up to the adults to not put them in situations in which we confuse them more, something the female character absolutely did in this story. She withheld information from him and it speaks volumes for her character that instead of facing her troubles, she goes to the park to drink beer, eat chocolate, and spend time with a student, eerily close to what she’s being accused of. I’m not sure any audience should be feeling sympathetic towards this woman. She’s completely clueless to a degree in which one has to question if she actually is clueless.

I’m sure I’ve now overstated my case twenty times over, but the choices made in this film, visual amazingness aside, were such a mis-step that it begs incredulity. Again, what exactly is the audience being asked to condone and why? It’s hard to believe that the creators of the movie are actually that naive. For those who love the film, perhaps just as I love High School King of Savvy, these stories are really flawed, and maybe it would be better not to admire them–for the children’s sake.

The Scapegoat review (Spoilers)

Apr3

To watch the movie first or read the book first? This was a tough call for me, but since I was certain the movie would lose some impact if I did read the book first, I went ahead and watched The Scapegoat starring Matthew Rhys. Now I’m chomping at the bit to read the book, but that probably won’t happen for awhile as there’s much on my plate as far as both reading and writing projects.

The Scapegoat (2012) is an adaptation of the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Recently, I have become a big fan of du Maurier and her amazing, atmospheric writing. She has great skill in writing in just about any time period and sounding relatively authentic, plus has a great affinity for thrilling plots. The Scapegoat is a doppelgänger tale, two strangers switch places and their lives are never the same after. The plot immediately brought to mind the works of Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), whose Strangers on a Train is also on my reading and eventual watch list.

Two identical strangers meet coincidentally in a pub. One’s rich, the other poor. Shades of Prince and the Pauper, and they do exchange places, though the poor, out of work schoolteacher gets tricked into it. John continues the charade of playing Johnny because he’s rather thrilled with the aspect of being rich for awhile: Cool car, big house, etc. After meeting Johnny’s family, however, he realizes that his twin isn’t a very nice person, keeping mistresses, continually cheating on his wife, lying, and generally being careless with the welfare of his family and company. It quickly becomes clear that a company deal Johnny was supposed to have brokered did not happen, and he’s placed John in a position to take the fall.

The schoolteacher’s character quickly becomes clear: He’s very kind to all of Johnny’s family, especially his very precocious, annoying daughter, nicknamed Piglet. Since John is more bookish and intelligent than Johnny, he even finds a way to remedy the company situation and ends up getting the deal done, anyway. Throughout the film, which takes the place over maybe a week or so, we see how John affects Johnny’s family in positive ways, hearing out their troubles, getting his mother (Eileen Atkins) to forgo her morphine addiction and get out and among people again, comforting his sister (Jodhi May) who is still in mourning for the loss of a loved one, and giving real hope to his brother and a chance for him to move forward career wise.

Johnny is placed firmly in the villain camp. He comes back to find John settling quite nicely into his rather great life, and is so jealous, especially of John’s connection with his wife (Alice Orr-Ewing), that Johnny actually manipulates her into committing suicide. Fortunately, due to the precocious yet very smart Piglet, John is alerted and gets there just in time to save her. It is heavily implicated that Johnny was the cause of the suicide of Rose, whom his sister loved, and that he likely manipulated her in the very same way. Despicable does not even begin to describe this person.

As Johnny would now like his life back, now that the schoolteacher has fixed everything, John finds that he must literally fight for his life in order to oppose him. It is only the housekeeper/nanny (Phoebe Nicholls) who calls John out as not actually being Johnny, and it’s something she does as a last resort to get the better man to stay, stay and keep doing good for the family. I think it likely the rest of the family members suspect something–how could they not–but like this new Johnny so much, they prefer not to question. This is truly a happy ending: The villain is dead and has gotten his just desserts, and a much better man is installed in his place.

The term scapegoat comes from the Bible’s Old Testament. The sins of all the Israelites were symbolically placed on a goat by a high priest and the goat was sent off into the desert to die. This concept of someone or something else punished in one’s place is found throughout the Bible, because Jesus the Savior, though he was innocent, took on all of the sins of the world, and the punishment and death for them. He also conquered death from rising from the dead, something that Christians celebrate every Easter.

Another story connected with this idea, is The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman, in which a poor boy is whipped or punished whenever the rich boy does something wrong. In this story, the boys also swap identities. In effect, that is what a scapegoat means, taking on the identity of another person.

A great watch, and I can’t wait to read the book. Next week I will be back to reviewing Korean dramas. Just started Two Weeks starring Li Joon-Gi from the popular Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo. It’s about a falsely accused man trying to prove in innocence and make it time to donate bone marrow for his daughter dying of leukemia. I’m also reading and immensely enjoying the book The Lies of Lock Lamora. I heard about the book from perusing reviews of Six of Crows, which I loved. This is also a fantasy heist/con artist story, and although I never got into the Game of Thrones TV series, I think fans of that would like this.

Remembering Outbreak

Mar27

Sadly, I don’t own the movie anymore, but for awhile Outbreak (1995) starring Dustin Hoffmann, Rene Russo, and Morgan Freeman, was my favorite disaster movie. Contagion, made in 2011 I thought kind of meh in comparison. Hoffmann’s really not much of a leading man, in my opinion, but I think he shines in the role, especially as it’s not so much a story about a worrisome viral outbreak, as it is a tale about corruption.

I think with the current Coronavirus outbreak going on, we can all see just how many of our politicians use situations like this to gain more power and money, often with little care for their citizens. With their mouths they say they care, but their actions often go against that.

In the film, a deadly virus escapes from Africa in the form of a cute monkey being sold on the black market. The monkey ends up in California, escapes, and subsequently starts infecting the people he comes across. One of the best scenes in the movie, comes with Patrick Dempsey, clearly sick, on an airplane with other passengers. Germaphobes everywhere will have nightmares, as they also will from a movie theater scene where they show how the droplets from coughs and sneezes spread everywhere.

Offhand, I don’t remember how deadly the disease in the movie is, but am pretty sure it is many orders of magnitude higher than the current virus we are dealing with. In Outbreak, panic is truly justified, both from the CDC and from the average person. Despite that, though, the fictional Americans in this movie would hardly recognize the Americans of today. I think they would be baffled at putting the whole country–whole countries–on lockdown for something with symptoms not much different than the yearly flu. For the town that gets put in military lockdown and quarantine, those who are still healthy would be scratching their heads at how quickly we current Americans all acquiesced to a much wider quarantine. These days are strange days, and I wonder if all flu seasons hereafter will be different. If people will now actually stay home when they are sick and if employers will mandate them to do so. Hey, maybe we’ll all get more sick days to use. Maybe, though, it will be a mandated yearly loss of freedom of movement, gathering together, and the like. Many people are worried this will be the end result.

The best thing about the movie is that they find a cure, not a vaccine, which oddly people seem to equate to a cure, but an actual cure. Here we all are being encouraged to wait on a vaccine that will be ready well after we’ve all been exposed, when the virus has multiplied into many different strains, and, well, you get the idea. For many, this seems like a fear psy-op initiated by the media. I tend to agree. The numbers just don’t seem to justify the response, and there’s almost no analyzing of the data: For example for Italy, how many were and are older and already had compromised immune systems and underlying health issues? This matters because these are people who should already be self-quarantining almost all the time, but especially during times of the year when sickness tends to go around. Does it really make sense to restrict the movements of everyone who has a healthy immune system? Our current “science” will tell us it makes sense, just like they tell us the only way to protect these people from other diseases like measles is to vaccinate everyone, no matter any adverse effects of immunization on otherwise healthy people. Another thing I’m curious about from Italy: How many infected and/or dead are actually Chinese workers from Wuhan? I have heard they imported quite a lot of workers from there in the past year or so.

I have been waiting for the numbers of infected to rise, for hospitals to be overwhelmed and the like, because I don’t want this to be a psy-op, I would rather it be real. Awful as it sounds, it’s far more frightening to me if it’s fear pushed on us to get more power. I would much rather deal with a truly deadly virus than a hoax fomented by people salivating to bring the world to its knees. Real or not, the panicked reaction is almost impossible to go against. This is peer pressure at its finest, a real-life Stanford Experiment playing out right in front of us.

At the end of the movie, Dustin Hoffmann saves the quarantined town from getting annihilated off the face of the earth. Thankfully, we are nowhere near calling for the deaths of sick people, yet we are almost callously sentencing quite a few of our fellow citizens–healthy and sick–to very dire straights should we let this forced economic collapse continue. Every year there’s a dangerous disease out there, spread like a cold or flu–sometimes it just is a bad cold or flu. Are we really going to stop our lives every time flu season hits? With something like Ebola that has a very high death rate, to stop everything would be justified, but this… We didn’t do this for Ebola. We didn’t do this for SARS or Zika, or swine flu, or any other outbreak from recent memory.

Whatever the truth is, I know God’s in control, but sometimes I’m not sure what to pray for: An end to disease or that we wake up from this spell we’ve been put under? Probably, it should be both.

For a different perspective on this whole outbreak–I am not the only skeptic–checkout Del Bigtree’s Highwire show and Amazing Polly, both on Youtube. Del, especially, in his most recent show from yesterday goes through quotes from many doctors who also think the freakout just isn’t warranted. Also weird that the freakout continues despite clear forms of treatment showing quick results. If this is a bioweapon, as some claim, it’s not a super effective one, but that wouldn’t be the point, would it? No, if it were a bioweapon, manufactured by the evil people of the world, it’s just enough, just enough to keep that fear going, for the next time. A next time that may never happen, but now will always be a collective fear until it fades and a new fear trends.

This all reminds me of a couple of short stories I wrote considering Totalitarianism. They are below. Happy reading.

A Society of Health (written in 2010)

“Aaachoooiee!!”  Alyssa Taylor sneezed mightily into a tissue from the box on her desk.

“Bless you.”  Raymond Bins, her coworker said as he tapped away on a computer spreadsheet.  “Coming down with something?”

“I think it’s allergies.  Ever since we moved here––”

“Who sneezed?”  Ariana Blight stepped ferociously around the office partition.  She looked a bit like a crow with her tiny, birdlike frame, black sweater and pants.  Her dull gray hair was pulled tightly back into a bun that rested heavily on top of her little, wobbling head.  

Alyssa raised her hand.  “Guilty,”  She smiled sheepishly.  “Sorry, I know my sneezes are so loud.  My daughter always says I sound like a firecracker.”  She drew back into her chair as the older woman stepped up to her, the woman’s beady eyes bright with anticipation.  

“Do you have a cold?”

“It’s…just allergies.”  Alyssa exchanged a glance with Raymond who had stopped typing.  “This building is so full of dust…”  Ariana continued to inspect her, bending low enough to look up her nostrils.  “Is everything all right, Ariana?”

“You have mucus,”  She pointed to the left nostril.  “There.  It appears yellow, not clear.  Blow into this.”  The small woman brought forth a crisp handkerchief from the bowels of her sweater.  Laughing a little, Alyssa obliged.  Raymond rolled his eyes and made crazy signs that the old woman couldn’t see.  It had never been clear to them what exactly Ariana’s job at the company was, but she always seemed to know everything about everyone.  Ariana fearlessly opened the handkerchief and proceeded to inspect the leavings.  “As I thought. Yellow, going on green.  You, Ms. Alyssa Taylor, have the beginnings of a very bad cold, an infection.”

Alyssa shrugged.  “You know, I did feel a bit off yesterday, but I thought it was the weather.  And my allergies get so bad this time of year…”  She trailed off when she saw the glinting triumph in the older woman’s eyes.  “Is there a problem?”

Ariana Blight pulled a small flip-top notebook out of a sweater pocket.  She proceeded to read:  “United States Code, Title Forty-Two, Chapter Two, Section Eight Thousand Four Hundred and Nineteen:  All persons shall take precautions to prevent the spreading of the common cold.  Subsection D, Four:  Any person expectorating or sneezing in a public place shall be examined for infection.  If infection is found, said persons are duty-bound to report to the nearest Health Center and receive treatment.  Upon refusal to do so within one hour of infection report, said person may be subjected to a fine of One Hundred Dollars or up to Thirty days in the local quarantine cell.  Subsection D, Twenty:  Any and all persons failing to comply with this Chapter shall be labeled as a Spreader of Disease and a criminal under this Title Forty-Two.”  

“What?”  Alyssa blinked up at her.  “I don’t…I’ve never heard…”

“They didn’t publish it, you see,”  Ariana whispered softly, leaning over her.  “Only passed it, our wonderful…New Congress.  Now, let’s come along down to the office Health Center, shall we?”  Alyssa sat there blankly.  “Ah, and Raymond…”  The crow-like woman filled out a yellow slip from her pad of paper, ripped it off, and handed it to him.  “The citation number, should you wish to pursue legal action in the near future.  Being around her nine hours out of the day, you are the likeliest to suffer from her…negligence.”  Raymond took the paper and paled at its contents.  “Of course, should you also come down with said infection and fail to address it immediately, you will be issued a citation as well.”

Mottle Knows Best (from 2010)

Mrs. Mottle scurried after her neighbor, Rose.  Rose stopped abruptly on the sidewalk and turned around with a grimace.  “Following me again, Mrs. Mottle?”  She put one hand on her hip.  “Let me guess, block party meeting this evening?”

“We are a social group.”  Mrs. Mottle said, taken aback at Rose’s fierceness.  “We get together and talk about the happenings in the neighborhood.”

“Gossips, the lot of you.”  Rose tapped her heels impatiently.  “I’m due at the office in twenty minutes.  If I arrive late and someone else grabs up the spot, I’m blaming you.”

“Me?”  Mrs. Mottle’s heart fluttered.  “Rose, you are so irritated at me when I’m only trying to help you…for your own good!  They may take you away!”

“What?”  Rose’s eyes narrowed and she stepped forward.  “What did you say?  What have you been telling the block party, Mrs. Mottle?  Only too happy to ‘report,’ aren’t you?”

Mrs. Mottle realized she’d said too much.  “N-no, of course not, dear.  We’re only here to help!  I would never get you…in trouble, but for your own good, it––”

“Then what is it?  What did I do this time?”

“Rose, you must understand that I have your best interests at heart.  This morning,”  She sighed, “Now prepare yourself…this morning your shower was seven minutes.”  Mrs. Mottle looked up hopefully only to find Rose staring down at her open-mouthed.  

Rose crossed her arms.  “And?  I’m waiting for the punch line…”

The younger woman laughed shortly.  “Oh, Rose, why, you’ve forgotten!  The new edict!  Now let me see if I remember it straight, ‘all citizens are responsible for their water use.  To go beyond the recommended five minutes for a shower is shameful and a waste.’ So you see––”

“Oh, shut up!”  Rose pulled her handbag up higher on her shoulder.  “What does it matter if I take a seven-minute shower?  What does it matter if I take a twenty-minute shower? I’m paying for it!  We have entire oceans at our disposal, and, apparently you haven’t noticed because you’ve been too busy spying on people, it has rained cats and dogs every evening for the last eight days!  Oh, and another thing!  You think the Higher-Ups really care about these things?  You think the block party does?  Damn it, Mrs. Mottle!  Can’t you see what they’re doing?”

“Of course, Rose, but Practical Science states––”

“Ha!  As if PS is ever practical!  Or right!  One day eggs are good for you, the next they’re bad!  Why, I saw an article just the other day on the evils of fruit!  Fruit!  You know what it is, don’t you?  They want us to eat only that dog food for humans they keep manufacturing, while the Higher-Ups feed on steak and wine!  Oh, I can’t believe I let you rile me up this early in the morning!  Good day, Mrs.  Mottle!”  Rose tromped off in her heels.

Her neighbor looked sorrowfully after her.  Little did Rose know the danger she was in.  Two more strikes and she would have to be put in rehabilitation…for the common good, of course.  Mrs. Mottle didn’t like her task, but the important thing was that the laws be kept.  Rose was always going off about the “stupid, ridiculous, impractical laws that made real living impossible!”  Mrs.  Mottle didn’t think that was for them to judge.  That was for the Higher-Ups, the people who knew better.  She wasn’t sure at that moment why they did know better, but surely they must, as they were in charge.  She must inform the party of Rose’s seven-minute shower.  The young lady puffed out her chest.  They would talk it through.  They would come up with a solution and show Rose how her thinking was wrong.  It was only a matter of time.  

More Movie Reviews

Nov22

The fun of reading and watching stories for me often is reviewing and analyzing them, it’s not just about the enjoyment of watching and reading. Thus, I am always eager to have a new opportunity to do reviews. Lately, I’ve been writing some reviews of ancient films for my friends at tardy critic.com

If you like my writing and want to read more of my stuff, check out their site. A movie gets reviewed once it’s ten years old, or even twenty or thirty, far away from all of the hype and fanfare of when it first came out in theaters. So far I’ve written reviews of 10 Things I Hate about You, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Sherlock Holmes.

Happy reading! Also, who is totally watching Trains, Planes, and Automobiles and Pieces of April for Thanksgiving this year?

Split: A hit

Nov22

Ever since M. Night Shyamalan’s surprise success with The Sixth Sense and the twist ending that no one saw coming, his movies have been both highly anticipated and also scorned. For an artist, success on a first project is both a blessing and curse. The blessings are obvious, future projects will be funded and you already have an audience waiting for them. The curse is that whatever you create in the future won’t be same as that initial project, and future projects are more likely to be seen as worse, not better. It’s basically the “one-hit wonder curse,” and many bands, especially, have found it’s probably better to be moderately successful at the start and grow from there.

Much of the hype around Shyamalan has disappeared over the years, which is only good for him, I think. Twist endings work one time, and then the next time everyone’s expecting it and trying to outthink the writer or director, and if they correctly guess the ending, they somehow think they “beat” the artist and sometimes even declare the work as no good, simply because they were able to guess the ending. We’ve all probably been guilty of this mentality at least once in our lives, and it really makes no sense, as the audience isn’t supposed to be competing with the artist. At least most of the time.

That all being said, Shyamalan still loves his twist or surprise endings, but it has definitely garnered mixed reviews, sadly, much of them negative. I thoroughly enjoyed Signs, The Village, Devil, and Unbreakable, but thought The Last Airbender was one of the worst movies I’d ever seen. Other films like The Lady in the Water and The Happening, seemed as if they were meant to be clever, but didn’t deliver on that promised cleverness. Even though there’s been many of his films I don’t enjoy, I do try to give him a chance when I can.

(Spoilers ahead) The other day I borrowed Split from the library. Not only is it a Shyamalan film, it also stars James McAvoy who is a master of the acting craft. I’d previously seen trailers for the movie and knew it involved someone with a split personality, but not much else. It also looked scary, so I wasn’t sure if I was in for a ghost story like The 6th Sense or if it would be more of a general thriller.

Split is about a person with multiple personalities, all stemmed from child abuse, as is often the case. It’s a psychological disorder that some think is really demon possession or hallucinations, and some think just isn’t real. Real or not, this disorder has been used time again onscreen often to great effect, like in Identity starring John Cusack. Knowing Shyamalan’s love of twist endings, I wondering if the movie would end along similar lines.

The story starts right away, with little introduction to the characters. Three teenaged girls are being given a ride home by one of their dads, but someone comes up and knocks him out and gets into the driver’s seat. It is “Barry,” James McAvoy’s character, or as we come to find out his true name: Kevin. The man abducts the girls and locks them up in a basement somewhere. The plot follows a basic thriller of this type, with the girls making plans to escape and Barry threatening to assault them. A twist comes pretty quickly when the girls realize this man appears to have multiple personalities, one of them a woman, one of them a nine-year-old boy. Casey, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, immediately starts trying to outthink their abductor. She seems to know that ordinary ways of escaping aren’t going to work here. It’s mentioned that Casey’s a bit of a loner and through out the movie we see flashbacks of her life, memories with her dad and uncle that slowly bring us to the understanding that she was abused when she was younger.

Kevin’s personalities are at war with each other. One of them repeatedly sends pleas for help over email to his current psychologist, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley). She is a woman who firmly believes that multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder does exist, and most of her patients seem to share this affliction.

While watching, I noticed a lot of unusually angled shots and close shots that seemed vaguely familiar. It also seemed as if Casey had a slightly doe-like appearance, which was interesting considering all of her flashbacks on her abuse were about going hunting. Near the end, her hunting skills come in handy as the story takes a more supernatural turn: Kevin has a 24th personality: An indestructible animal-like person. It turns a bit slasher film once this “animal” show up. Casey is the only one to survive and it’s because the animal sees the marks of abuse on her body. Because of this, he considers her pure, like him, and even under her own trauma-induced supernatural transformation.

With all the animal talk, I did start to think that the girls were being held at a zoo, so was pleasantly surprised to have guessed that correctly. I didn’t guess the twist at the end, though, but found it awesome. We’re shown an average diner with a TV playing the news and talking about how this man killed people, and because of his disorder has been nicknamed The Horde. As a couple people are talking about it, they say it sounds a lot like Mr. Glass, a bad man from a few years ago and also the villain in Unbreakable. And there he is, Bruce Willis’s hero from Unbreakable sitting next to them.

Unbreakable is my favorite Shyamalan movie, though many find it slow. The ending of that film reveals it to be a comic book origin story. I’m not a huge fan of comic books and rarely read them, but I love movies based on the superheros from them, and it was great to see how such a story could play out in a not so cartoony world. Something about Bruce Willis’s quiet strength in the movie is thrilling. Split is now part of this same world and I understood why some of the shots and angles in the film seemed familiar–they were to look like comic book panels.

For me, Split was definitely a hit and I hope that Shyamalan continues to make more films of this nature. James McAvoy did a superb job playing Kevin, and much of the time I forgot it was him, so engrossed in his character was he. Like Mr. Glass, since Kevin believes he has super abilities, he therefore does. Thankfully, this isn’t how the real world operates, but it’s interesting that these two characters who have had such a hard life use that to justify their villainy. Now that does happen often in the real world. I’ve noticed in Korean dramas that there is also this tendency to portray characters who undergo trauma as developing special abilities. It works well for stories, but the message it’s sending is dubious, perhaps glorifying trauma and abuse to a status it doesn’t deserve. Victimhood isn’t something to crow about, it’s something to heal and recover from, a view which I think Shyamalan shares, as so far the victims of circumstance have chosen to become villains rather than heal.

Looking forward to eventually watching Glass, another of Shyamalan’s films in this comic book world. Sadly, looks like it’s promos call it the final chapter in this series.