Author: Monkeystador

Enthusiast.
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Endurance

I need to read the book, it’s all anyone talks about in the comments.

Though I have not yet become the sort of History Dad who has devoured every single book and article ever written about Shackleton’s expedition, it is a story that has fascinated me ever since I first learned about it in grade school. Beyond the gory details about frostbite and shifting ice floes and starvation, what has always stuck with me is the supreme sense of alienation that the story first filled me with. The year 1915 wasn’t that long ago, geologically speaking, and yet to read about what Shackleton and his men experienced is to be confronted with the inconceivable. It gets how cold in Antarctica? Those guys walked how many miles? Pack ice can do what to a ship? I am able to imagine exploring the arctic in the early 20th century no easier than I can imagine exploring Mars today, the only difference being that real human beings actually did the former. The courage (lunacy?) it must have required to journey into such a brutal unknown is something none of us will likely ever be able to understand.

– Tom Ley

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Line Goes Up

I watched this over the course of a few days recently. It rocks.

It’s a nerd’s-eye view of crypto/NFT/blockchain etc and looks at the big picture with a keen intellect and dry sense of humor.

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Yeah No Thanks

It’s funny, when I had met with Tim about it last, and we’re talking about five years ago at this point, the reason that it’s so hard to get going is because so many people love it and because there are 10 million ways to get that sequel wrong and four ways to get it right. It’s such a very fine needle to thread that I certainly didn’t get it there, on the script side. I didn’t thread the needle. There are things that were cool and some interesting ideas. I’ve certainly emotionally moved on from it and just said, “If it happens someday, it happens.”

– Seth Grahame-Smith, writer of The Lego Batman Movie

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Another King: “She Used To Pound Down”

Carole King rules. Songs I forgot she wrote but probably you guys all know:

  • I’m Into Something Good (Herman’s Hermits)
  • Chains (Beatles)
  • The Loco-Motion (Grand Funk Railroad)
  • The Porpoise Song (Theme from “Head” The Monkees Movie)
  • Up On The Roof (The Drifters)

I included the above because I enjoy the Scottish punk versions of things, and go Monkees of course. In describing Up On The Roof:

Appropriately enough, the song was born among the rat-race noise of a crowded city street. “Carole came up with the melody in the car – an a cappella melody,” …

A peaceful moment above the fray would have seemed like heaven to King – a young woman with two children and a demanding full-time job in a hit factory. The sophisticated arrangement was overseen in the studio by King herself, who was barely 20 years old at the time. “Carole used to hang in there with us tough,” Drifters member Charlie Thomas told Emerson. “She used to pound down. She wasn’t no hard woman – a girl, at her age. But she played the piano and it was amazing the songs she gave us.

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I Hope They Consulted Fat Elvis

I haven’t watched many of these, and almost always prefer footage of the original artists to their biopics. From Vince Mancini’s The Academy Can’t Quit Biopics, Even When They’re Bad:

Biopics now seem to exist somewhere outside of movies, belonging more to public relations; flashy advertisements for their stars and validations of their subjects’ legacies. Missing is the expectation that we’re actually going to gain any insight about their subjects… So it is we’ve gotten decidedly un-illuminating, subject-friendly portrayals such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman.

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I Liked This Film

I even liked the writing about this film.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I dislike about movies: certainty, endings, faithful adaptations, characters saying the name of the movie within the course of the movie, diegetic music, explanations, CGI, and the non-casting of Barry Keoghan in a Barry Keoghan-ass role. Here is a non-exhaustive list of things The Green Knight has going for it: the correct casting of Barry Keoghan, ambiguity, an ever-shifting sense of “reality,” mushrooms, unexplained phenomena (what’s up with the big people?), and an anti-ending. So, a perfect movie for 2021.

and:

David Lowery’s movies make me feel like I’m watching a movie for the first time. All the familiar hallmarks are there, but it never settles into anything resembling a predictable pattern.

I don’t enjoy any other filmmaker so abstract or so self-consciously arty, nor could I entirely articulate Lowery’s purpose in any given scene. Words fail, and that’s part of his power. I’m left with an unmistakable feeling: this was a good trip.

The beauty of Green Knight is that it’s so fully realized on every level — score, cinematography, production design, acting — that even when you don’t know entirely what Lowery is on about you can’t look away. It’s almost as if every individual shot has a narrative arc unto itself. It’s so compelling on a micro level that the “big picture” becomes irrelevant. You stop worrying “what does this mean” and “where is this going” and simply savor the moment, like a creature of pure sensual pleasure. Like I said, mushrooms.