68 Kill
directed by Trent Haaga
Violent indie movie with great acting and obvious yet important message
There are two things you need to know upfront about this low budget award winning independent film. The first is that it is a very violent film. People die. People get very badly hurt. The camera doesn't shy away from that. In some aspects this is like a depraved live action adult Looney Tunes cartoon adaptation. So if a person whacking someone else upside the head or in the kidneys with a golf club because they are admittedly a sick evil individual makes you queasy, then you know what to do. The second is that by making most of the female characters more compelling and far more aggressive than the primary male character this film reverses the usual gender stereotypes and assumptions. Combine that with the fact that most of the women are also morally depraved and physically dangerous then you have a film that, if it had mostly male villains, would likely be cheered in some quarters as honest truth telling. But because the women are mostly bad some people called the film misogynistic. I didn't feel that way but that's just me. I can only call it like I see it. The film doesn't posit that women as a group are better or worse then men. It did very strongly suggest that one particular man needed to make better choices about the women he trusted and which body part did his thinking for him. I didn't expect the story to be as strong as it was. So that was a pleasant surprise.
Women in 68 Kill use sex to mark territory and express dominance. If you appreciate works by people such as Tim Dorsey, Bill Fitzhugh, and yes Tarantino then you might be able to accept some of the film's choices This was an adaptation of a novel by Bryan Smith. It's an absurd pulpy cheap romantic crime caper film. It also has elements of horror, comedy and strangely enough a coming of age storyline.
The Dark Tower
directed by Nikolaj Arcel
This film is both based on and in some aspects a sequel to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. King has alternately described the series as his magnum opus and stated that sequels to many of his other works can be found within. I haven't finished this book series though it is one of my sister's favorites. King has placed references to and explanations of this series in many of his other novels. This series, or at least the books I've read, combines King's gifts for both High and Low art. In fact you could even say that it blows away those arbitrary distinctions. It's pretty complex stuff with dense plot, conflicted characters who don't necessarily fall into neat boxes of good or evil, detailed universe building and intricate mythologies with lots of backstory. As with the Gormenghast or A Song of Ice and Fire works, some people thought that The Dark Tower series was essentially impossible to adapt to the screen. Almost by definition someone working in the visual arts would be unable to translate the soul of King's words to the big screen.
Because I have not completed The Dark Tower series I didn't have a solid idea in my head about what should be included in a movie adaptation. I had no fierce feeling about which characters should be included or dropped or how they should look or act, with the exception of the primary good and bad guy, Roland and Walter O'Dim. Probably if I had read all of the books I would have much stronger ideas about what the director and writers should have done with the source material. But in this case ignorance was bliss. Or at least it could have been.
An umbrella grouping of right wingers, including but not limited to college Republicans, neo-Nazis, Alt-Right supporters, neo-Confederates, white nationalists, and others descended on the University of Virginia campus at Charlottesville over the weekend to protest the planned removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, military leader of the most violent rebellion in U.S. history, and proud slave owner and white nationalist. This was part of their Unite the Right program, which as you might imagine is designed to rebuild the Right into more of a pure expression of white nationalism and separatism. Some would probably argue that the Right doesn't have too far to go in that regard anyway. Shouting such catchy slogans as "White Lives Matter" and "Jew will not replace us" along with all of the normal racist and anti-Semitic slurs which are common for them, the white nationalists scuffled with police. But of course the police were not the true target of their hatred.
The white nationalists had come ready for a fight, or had rather come ready to hurt people since almost none of them appeared interested in a fair fight. They assaulted counterprotesters of all colors with bats, sticks, fists, and poles, apparently particularly the black ones of course. In a move that was grabbed from the ISIS playbook one of the terrorists, James Alex Fields, also deliberately drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, wounding several and killing one Heather Heyer. Despite all of this violence coming from the right, President Trump could not and did not manage to specifically condemn the white supremacist violence. He only mumbled something about condemning the bigotry coming from all sides.
As you may have noticed President Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un have been trading insults and threats over the past few weeks about just how bad they're going to curb stomp the other country. Kim has made threats to attack Guam while Trump has said that any North Korean bad behavior will be met by fire and fury the likes of which the world hasn't seen. Trump says that the US military is locked, loaded and ready to go. Many people, both intelligent and not, attacked Trump's statements as unpresidential. They were. But at the same time if someone is threatening your country you're probably going to threaten them back. There tends to be an expectation among some experts that whatever Trump says will be wrong. That's usually a pretty good expectation. But in the case of the North Korean regime there has been a decades long bipartisan failure to prevent what the U.S. sees as bad behavior by North Korea. North Korea has nukes. North Korea isn't giving up its nukes. North Korea has been continuing to test missiles. Those missiles have been getting better and better. This is simply not a problem that Trump created though he is certainly capable of making things worse.
There may have been, sixty years ago, a small window to settle the North Korean question militarily on terms favorable to the United States, as Douglas MacArthur would have told you (and did tell other people), but in the current day with a nuclear armed Russia and China, that window has likely closed.
Depending on which survey you happen to believe Michigan is consistently the state with the second or third largest crop of apples each year. The crop is coming soon. I like apples but even more than apples I like what apples portend: cooler weather, women in sweaters, football and fall. Those all kind of go together in my head. Apples also mean that there will be lots of apple pies, apple fritters, apple sauces and all sorts of other treats derived from that fruit. There are thousands of different kinds of apples. They don't all exist in Michigan but there are enough different Michigan varieties to keep a fan of this fruit well satisfied for the next three months as fall arrives, with its lower temperatures and overcast skies. Apple lovers won't have to wait much longer to sink their teeth into their favorite fruit: This year's Michigan apple harvest is ahead of schedule, with certain varieties' predicted peak harvest dates falling anywhere from a few days to an entire week ahead of normal.
According to Michigan State University Extension, data collected from around the state suggests the apple harvest will be significantly early for certain varieties in some parts of Michigan, but that the cropload will be 65 percent of normal due to frost damage earlier in the year. "As always, the weather seems to be unusual each year and 2017 was no different," MSU Extension posted in an article predicting apple harvest dates late last month.
MacIntosh apples, for example, are 10 to 11 days ahead of normal in some parts of the state, and, in general, a few days ahead of the 2016 harvest. Meanwhile, peak harvest for Red Delicious apples is predicted to range from one to eight days ahead of normal, depending on what region they are in.
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Hacksaw Ridge
directed by Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson may hold ugly opinions or beliefs that you don't like. He may occasionally make even uglier statements when he is drunk or upset. But since I don't know the man personally that doesn't impact my enjoyment of his film work. Maybe I would feel differently if I was the real life target of one of his volcanic bigoted tirades. But I haven't been. Sometimes people who have great skills aren't necessarily very nice people. Sometimes very nice people are utterly incompetent artists. It's just the way it is. This is a roundabout way of saying that I think this film serves as Gibson's re-entry into Hollywood royalty. It has A- list stars, excellent cinematography and impressive writing/storytelling. It helps that this is based on a true story, something of a tearjerker. Gibson pulls out all the stops to wring every bit of emotion out of the viewer. I think it works. He also brings his penchant for blood and martyrdom to the forefront but as this is a war movie, that makes sense. This is not a war movie like the old 50s and 60s war movies where someone would get hit and fall down.
Maybe in the late 60s or 70s we'd see a splash of red. No. This is a post-Saving Private Ryan war movie. Gibson does his best, and his best is pretty damn good, to bring across the horror, carnage and randomness of war. There is the danger of become too inured to such graphic violence but of course no matter how horrible these images are they are nothing compared to the reality of war. I don't think that you can watch this film and come away thinking that war is anything less than an obscenity to be avoided at almost any cost.
Someone is Bleeding
by Richard Matheson
This is Richard Matheson's earliest story. It is very different from his sci-fi or horror work. It's a short story that I read in the "Noir" collection. I'm not sure if this was ever an American film but it's something that screams out to be made into a movie. The characters aren't super strong but there is a constant feeling that something isn't quite right. I guess you could call this American noir writing. Though the story is only 154 pages Matheson takes his sweet time developing the plot and themes. He spends a lot of time on description and dialogue. He doesn't explain every little thing. Although the story takes place in sunny California a lot of the action takes place at night. Given some of the dark deeds and aberrant sexuality this contrast between light and darkness works. There's a very strong Chinatown vibe to this story, if that comparison works for you. This story is the spiritual Godfather to works such as Chinatown and Blue Velvet. A psychologically and/or morally damaged hero risks it all to save a strange beautiful woman who may not be worth the effort. In post WW2 California a veteran, journalism grad and writer named David Newton is taking in the sun on the beach when he meets a remarkably curvy blonde
woman named Peggy Ann Lister. Well David is not the sort of fellow to let good things get away from him if he can help it. Despite the fact that Peggy seems only marginally interested in David, David holds up his side of the conversation well enough to pique what seems to be something close to attraction in Peggy.
It's hard to tell what Peggy really thinks though because for reasons which don't need to be disclosed here Peggy has a profound distrust of the entire male gender. And once she knows David a little better she's not averse to telling him that even he is not really within her circle of trust. David flips back and forth between wanting to tell Peggy off and storm away from her and persist to break through her defenses to show her that he is that one in a million good guy who will never hurt her or make her do anything she doesn't want to do.
