Kick-Ass
directed by Matthew Vaughn
A deconstruction of comic book movies that also is an ode to superhero movies
Kick-ass, a 2010 film, is a mish-mash of a movie. It is simultaneously a romantic comedy, a savage parody of superhero movies, a violent revenge movie, and an honest ode to heroism. Kick-Ass makes fun of almost all of the cliches found in comic book movies (it's based on a comic book) while later upholding them. YMMV on this. You can get whiplash from the multiple changes in theme and tone, but I liked this film a lot. The black humor will not be to everyone's taste. It came close to going over the top a few times. It definitely did with one character. The film's most defining character is not the titular hero but a young girl killer who is the spiritual sister of such anti-heroines as Arya Stark and River Tam. This girl is deadlier and a little meaner.
The title character, a high school student named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), is an average teen in almost every way. He has no super powers. He's not super strong or super smart. He has no special abilities with weapons, math or computers. And he would rather spend his time fantasizing about his busty English teacher or other women, attractive or not, than take the risk to try to get a real life girlfriend, like his sexy classmate Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca). No Dave is content to go to school, hang out with the other nerds, and read comic books.
IT
directed by Andy Muschietti
IT is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.
Because they have so much internal commentary and deep characterization, many of Stephen King's novels have resisted well-done cinematic adaptations. IT, on the other hand, got most things right. This film successfully adapted the letter and spirit of King's novel while prudently dropping a few of King's written events that would not have translated to the screen or to mainstream audiences. Whereas Tolkien famously said that he disliked allegory, I do not think that King has ever made a similar statement. King crammed allegory and metaphor about the loss of childhood innocence into the novel IT. To quote a famous rock song that came out shortly before this novel we have to "Hold on to sixteen/as long as you can/Changes come around real soon/make us women and men". The director and screenwriter do an admirable job of capturing the unease and discomfort of youth sliding into adolescence with adulthood right around the corner.
The movie gives us a supernatural trans-dimensional monster that stalks the children of Derry, Maine. The director argues that this monster is no more dangerous to the children than such real life evils as physical abuse, incest, poverty, emotional assaults, racism, bigotry and the moral blindness, desperation and despair that too often accompany adulthood. The director does not beat you over the head with this argument. The director makes children the film's focus and shows adults from children's POV.
Fall is almost upon us. That means among other things plenty of apple and pumpkin pies, apple cider, baked apples, various sorts of apples in apple mills and grocery stores, women in sweaters, football, and the thankful departure of heat, humidity and insects. But as wonderful as all of those things are, perhaps the most glorious indication of autumn is the changing colors of the leaves as they slowly fall from the trees. This is really fun to watch and experience. There is a lot of beauty in the world. Fall is a great time to look around and experience it. The monotony of the summer season's green disappears in an explosion of all sorts of reds, oranges, browns, and yellows. I think that Michigan provides one of the most exciting displays of this change but in truth most places in the United States offer the marking of the changing of seasons and the approach of winter. The below foliage map shows the peak color change times for the lower 48 US states. Hopefuly wherever you may be you can take some time out to enjoy the physical beauty of the world.
Some consider it to be the most incredible time of the year. Gorgeous colors vibrantly encoring the end of summer as the trees put themselves to bed for the long sleep of winter. The Great Smoky Mountains floods with thousands upon thousands of annual visitors all hoping to achieve a breath taking view of the beautiful renaissance of nature.
There's a couple of things I don't do. The first thing is shop at Walmart. I don't like their declasse marketing approach and ruthless management style. The second thing is ride the bus. There's not many mass transit options where I live and work now anyhow. The last time I rode the bus was in Detroit some decades back. A fight broke out, one in which I had no part in starting and in which I did not participate. The bus driver stopped the bus and called the police. Not wanting to be bothered to actually do their job and figure out who did what the police just forced all of the black males in a certain area off the bus and called it a day. The group kicked off the bus included yours truly. The bus driver and police drove off. As the fight restarted I walked home, now fully convinced that I needed a car of my own. There are too many strange and/or violent people who infest our mass transit options.
I was reminded of both of these self-imposed prescriptions by two recent incidents. The first took place in Washington D.C. A bus passenger, a woman who is evidently suffering from either mental illness, drug issues or intense paranoia, didn't like the way that the bus driver, also a woman, told her to have a nice day as she exited the bus. Rather than do what most people would do and keep moving, this lady, one Opal Brown, threw a cup of urine on the bus driver before running away.
One of the greatest challenges in a post-civil rights movement society is to translate black political power into black economic power. I think it's fair to say that given the stats around black unemployment, wealth and income that just giving black people the right to vote isn't enough. Just electing black politicians (or white politicians beholden to black interests) isn't enough. We need something stronger to change economic realities. I was recently reminded of this by some of the latest news concerning the construction of the new Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. This arena will be a venue for concerts and for games by the Pistons and Red Wings. The arena will be city owned but will be managed and operated (and profited from) by Olympia Entertainment, a sub company of Ilitch Holdings. The Ilitches, a local billionaire family, own Little Caesars, The Detroit Tigers, The Red Wings, a local casino, and several other venues and properties in and around Detroit, including the famed Fox Theater. If you're working in sports or entertainment in the Detroit area, chances are excellent that you're going to rub shoulders with the Ilitches at some point.
The Ilitch family was one of the few well known Caucasian run large private businesses to maintain a continual presence in Detroit during some very lean years in the eighties and nineties. They have given charity to many (including late civil rights legend Rosa Parks) and provided good pr for the city. They have also profited nicely from some sweetheart deals, including the financing of the new arena with taxpayer backed bonds, some of which was money supposed to go to public schools. Silly me. I thought that if you were a billionaire you could finance your own arena but maybe you don't become or stay a billionaire by needlessly risking your own money.
Pandemic
by Scott Sigler
Pandemic is the conclusion to the sci-fi/thriller trilogy started in Infected (reviewed earlier here). This book has been out for a minute but I just recently got around to reading it. This was a shame because Pandemic is a really good story. But on the other hand I recently happened to be stuck at a few places where there was nothing else to do but read so this came in very handy. Sigler doesn't write, or rather I should say I haven't read, anything that is overtly supernatural, and Pandemic is no different. Obviously scientific reality is stretched but the dangers in Pandemic are based in plausible, although very unlikely events. The stage Sigler sets is much larger in the final series installment than in Infected and the middle book Contagious. There are some characters from prior books who return for Pandemic. I liked that previous events left marks on people. It made the depictions breathe.
All of us are literally teeming with bacteria, viruses, germs, and parasites. Many of these are essential for continued life. Others apparently have no major effect on us, for good or bad. And a small minority are dangerous to our health and life and those of other humans. Our immune system has evolved to prevent many of these organisms from killing us. But what happens if a superior alien intelligence bypasses or hijacks our immune system and rewrites our DNA in order to change humanity into something else entirely? That was the premise of the first two books. An alien Orbital encountered Earth. Relying on previously encoded instructions it seeded Earth (well mostly Michigan -the author is a Michigan native) with infections that were a combination of virus/machine/plant material. The infected humans changed. They attempted to convert other humans and build a gateway to allow the aliens to transfer themselves to Earth. These attempts failed. The US government destroyed the Orbital along with the changed humans.
However, Pandemic postulates that the artificial intelligence encoded in the Orbital was capable of learning from its mistakes. Before it was destroyed it altered the algorithm and purpose of the infectious agents it released upon humanity. It got smarter. And although it was destroyed, a small payload portion of the Orbital, no larger than a pop can, fell to Earth, in Lake Michigan to be precise.
I'm not a lawyer. And I don't keep up with all of the ways in which the Federal government and various states and municipalities, often with winks and nods from the current Supreme Court, attempt to get around the limitations placed on government actions by the Fourth Amendment. But one thing which still seems to be in force, in law if not respected on the street, is that the police cannot absent your consent, your arrest, a warrant or some sort of probable cause take samples of your blood, your flesh, your DNA. A nurse named Alex Wubbels attempted to politely explain this to a police officer named Jeff Payne. Payne wanted to draw blood from a man who had been involved in an accident. Payne admitted to another officer that he did not have probable cause but wanted the blood drawn anyway. Wubbels refused and explained that the hospital policy, based on the law was that the hospital would not assist unless certain conditions were met. Payne apparently lost his temper and since he had been given previous authorization from his supervisor, arrested the nurse. Watch video below. Arrest starts at roughly 6 minute mark.
