No People Were Harmed during the Making of this 

Apocalypse

WOD Summerfest Milwaukee 2023

The War On Drugs  

Summerfest Milwaukee

July 6th, 2023

It's a Thursday night, so we know that the music has to stop at 11 because there are people needing their sleep, even in Milwaukee, and that need to get up for work on Friday.  The perfect weather, 60F, some clouds, huge moon, and the atmosphere of Summerfest inhabits quite a few stages all along the shore.  It's the 55th year for this festival, billed now as the largest in the world.  At the ULINE stage, the venue closest to the city and water's edge, and facing towards the lake, the weather changes as this 7 member group, The War on Drugs, takes the stage.  Their setup time was over an hour, and there is a reason for that...

 

It seems that it is a "requirement" that you stand on your bleacher.  You don't stand in front of it.  You don't sit on it.  You get up on it and stand there...the entire time.  I did it.  And it was not a problem.   The music held us up there.  It was almost like an anti-gravity thing, elevating.  

 

The wall of sound that this band creates is nothing short of a RKnRL miracle. I've never heard so many blended hooks in one single concert.  The performance went on well past 11PM, and into the next day actually, in my head that is.  I could not shake the music, and didn't care to.  My head was bobbing all the way back to my home town, 1.5 hours away.

 

WOD has transcended the genre of rock and engaged a following that also transcends the age range, with thousands of listeners.  I witnessed a majority of college aged teens and 20s, but there were plenty of the 60s, 70s, and 80s era tie-died head-bobbers bouncing right along with them, myself included in that group.  From the opener to the end at 10:59:59, there was no lack of enchantment.  I've been listening to this group on Spotify for about a year, and had them on regular play, and I knew all of the songs, so that's always helpful in lending a pleasant experience.  But I was NOT prepared for something that was 6x better than the recorded versions. It was a sonic experience that you just can't escape. Kudos to their crew as well that make that happen.

Almost everyone has had a favorite concert, if you've been to them.  Mine was the Vigilantees of Love together with The Call in St. Louis, about 1990, with a good friend.  And it's been a high mark since then, until this concert.  I'd have to say it was an equivalent experience, in many ways.  Their live presence is something you'll just have to go see/hear for yourself.

 

For my music friends, I had summed it up with the following quote:

"Absolutely blown away...the real thing."

New WOD fan:

- Agitatus

Other People 2016

Other People 2016

TVMA - 97 min

The setting is passively aggressive Sacramento.  The full-sized family are all played by great actors, the casting was perfectly done, and the laugh breaks are at all the right points, like the dinner scene where all is serious, yet in chimes Molly Shannon with a near-SNL line that ends the scene, so we're still smiling though it all.  It is, in fact, a very poignant vision of the loss of a parent, and one who loves much.

 

The film is technically about a woman who gets cancer and how it affects the entire family.  All the obligatory stages and scenes are there that make for a great emotional fictional take on a very real subject.  So it's a drama, described on IMDB as "revelatory".  IMO this is meant to be said with an air of snottiness.

 

Well, usually the major amount of screen time is centered around the real main character of course, or pair of characters at the very most.  Great.  But it's not Molly Shannon.  The real story that is woven into almost every scene is that of David, played by Jesse Plemons (of noted Breaking Bad cast, along with many prominent roles over the last few years).  The acting by Plemons, and the direction of Chris Kelly are what drive this story to that side of it's teeter totter. 

 

This is not one of those works that lacks maturity, as the label says.  It is OTT maturity, in your face maturity, homosexual love maturity, with quite a few boyfriends in the mix.  AND...as many scenes of David with every-day people in every-day situations, humility, frailty, vulnerability, and insecurity.   We have the young boy that is a cross dresser at age possibly 11?  He throws himself in front of the whole family in a display of dressing the part, and a younger sister that represents the lesbian community.  We also have to have the stereotypical father figure that cannot tolerate the idea of his son being a man lover, and then we see him rendered powerless in the end. 

 

"Other People"  is the term aptly used in the story for whom we suppose these things, like cancer, happen.  This film is a tossing together of a formulaic and otherwise normative story line structure, yet juxtaposed over the top of it is that thick layer of fudge which is the writer/director's dream goal.  The entire presentation here is a Sundae.

 

I'm seeing this as opportunistic.  You take a well-hashed genre of "parent dying of cancer" and apply a Genenda to it, which can stand for Gay Agenda as much as it also stands for Gender Agenda.  It's like painting a suit of clothes with latex paint before you go out so you can have exactly the shade you desire.  The suit is still the same, and now is lacquered with a new color.  It is, of course, acceptable procedure to do so as almost every theme available has been presented in many different ways, but we just want to be clear about what is being painted.  In times past, we've seen classic stories turned into XRated material, like the XRated version of Cinderella for instance.

 

This is Boiling Frog material, a part of the progressively aggressive "code of inclusion" that dampens the grass in the Hollywood hills. Concerning codes...

 

Did you know that on even a lower-than-average set in the motion picture industry you can have an entire scene ready to shoot, the cameras are ready to start rolling, the slate person is there, the lights are trimmed exactly, and we're waiting for...the electrical staff member who is necessary under the Union rules to be there to throw a particular switch that no one else can switch besides them.  But...he's on the roof smoking a doobie with someone.  Said Union Electrical Worker would  have a hard time getting fired for it as well, meaning not for the weed, but missing his assignment and creating a massive delay.  Yep, the new rules are getting carved in to the system.

 

 

So we'd have to conclude then that if catering to the new normal in Hollywood of "leveling all playing fields for equality's sake" were the goal here, then this film has definitely pushed...uh, I mean done that.


- Agitatus

7 Lives of Lea

The 7 Lives of Lea  

- a Genenda (sic)

TVMA - 2022 - Netflix

 

By now everyone knows that TVMA doesn't mean anything when it comes to the actuality of who sees what.  It's rated this way because of content that is in the "MA" class, but that doesn't make it mature.  It is obviously aimed, [yes I can use that word because I am a free agent and write whatever I want to on this blog.  I am not in a union, or conscripted by a company, or a slave to a cultural bias or ideal that is corrupted by political power or money.  Ah hem...so...] ...aimed at the youth culture that are it's main cast, most of which are in high school, which is that period where gender, sex, relationships, and figuring out our place in this world are the driving forces behind our actions at that age.  So why not influence, right?

 

It IS mature if you're the producer, meaning that as a producer, the world of Netflix is not immune to onslaught of the gender agenda.  Gendenda?  That's a good new word.  Might as well adopt it, make it part of the lexicon of actual English words, just like so many other revisionists have done.  Like "gay" for instance.

 

I don't care what you think of me as a reviewer.  It's more important to tell the truth...call the spade black and the flower yellow, whatever...honest dialogue is lost now in any case, because we've left the solidity of common moral belief, and are chasing after our own "dream", whatever that is.  Ok, I'm not part of that.

 

But the producers of this show are definitely sold out on the idea that crossing genders is a "normal" part of life, and to hide such things is a bad idea all around.  

 

Let me phrase this as if I were the producer of this show, or in a conversation with one of the writers: 

 

 "Listen, to have stability, to have peace, to bring maturity, kids need to make decisions early about who they are.  If they have feelings for the same sex, it's better for them to get it out now, to say it.  I want this show to be all about that, so set it up that the parental figures in the story have actually LIED about who they are, and it brings about ruin in the end.  The main character, she sees through that.  And oh, make sure her best friend is definitely gay, and show her in a normal relationship with a girlfriend, yet she can also have a straight friend as well and it's all good, right?"

 

Look, the world is full of ideas.  But one idea that is simply intellectually, morally, historically, and psychologically insufferable, is that people in high school can make good decisions about their choice of gender attraction.  EVERY kid on the block has at one point or another "thought" about the same sex, and we know for a fact have explored those thoughts and feelings in real life.  That does NOT determine sexual preference.  A kid playing Doctor with the same sex kid next door does not "make" them homosexual.  Nope, most likely it is the presence of a pushy, deterministic, decidedly ultra-liberal, biased piece of MEDIA that pushes our children to believe that their feelings in this way "mean", or are conclusory, that they are homosexual, and therefore might as well "come out with it".  

 

Ok, so...Netflix, why don't YOU come out with all of the notes from your internal meetings between writers and producers, and....oh yeah, the people who pay the bills in general at your house, so we can read them for ourselves?  Mel B?  Shawn and Dan L?  Noah B?  Jerry S? ...a host of others?

 

Like that's going to happen.

 

And why do I get the sneaking suspicion that if I keep writing like this, my blog will mysteriously disappear one day? Well, only if it gets noticed.  Like it ever has.  Only 11K views.  That's not enough weight to throw a glass of water on a volcano.  BUT...I'd bet there are not just a few of us out here with glasses of water like mine to toss.

- Agitatus

Warrior Nun

Warrior Nun   2022              

2 Seasons

2 simple terms:

 

Radical Feminism

 

Lesbians 

 

Easiest review I've ever written.


 

 

- Agitatus

Don't Look Up  

2021 

R - 2 hr 18 min 

 

There could not be a better painting, photograph, article, poem, or song that describes the current state of our culture at large than the film “Don’t Look Up”.

 

But of course, it’s really much bigger than that.  The last 5 minutes of the film sum it up quite well at the dinner table.  Thank you Timoth’ee Chalamet.

 

While a completely fictional comedic farce, the internal contents of Don’t Look Up underscore the nature or our media, leadership, prurient idolatry, and collective narcissism, and in essence, our humanity,.  And not to be outdone…our place in time.  As large as a comet, the juxtaposition of banal false hope and real love could not be more distant than east…is to west.

This is a must-see for all those who are addicted to having their tongues firmly planted in one or the other cheek in any given moment.  But concurrently, the effect can be as devastating to our conscience as a look into a mirror while illuminated at 5400K bright daylight.  

Brilliant.  As well written, executed. and as devastating as any Ben Hur, Citizen Kane, or Apocalypse Now could have been.  At this film’s cornucopia of images, convergence of politics with reality, and poignant paraleipsis, irony is at it’s finest, and even Shakespeare would have been envious.

Enjoy Responsibly.

 

- Agitatus

Mosquito Coast 2021

TV-MA Season 1 -  7 Episodes

I remember very well the details of the Peter Weir film of the same name, with Harrison Ford, 1986.  Every actor in that film was an icon, or became one.  Hellen Mirren, River Phoenix, Martha Plimpton, all the members of the family.  

 

The same genius myopic vision of the progenitor of the Paul Theroux novel is now a direct descendant, the nephew, of the author, Justin Theroux.

 

It would seem that the casting here could not have been more fitting, as it was self-applied by the actor himself, and the director, and the producer.  Yep, all the same.  And I say fitting, because the character he plays, for all practical purposes, may very well be him in real life.  He is noted as saying that he has no ambition...ok...no "street" ambition as the character in the AppleTV series might also say he does not.  But Justin certainly fits the profile of the lone genius and multipod, as he's had his hand in every position except possibly script girl.  

 

The Series, well, it's a different animal than the earlier film, that's for sure.  The same theme of anti-societal, or anti-oligarchical innovation and system disruption is in the main character, yes, but the sum of the plot parts could not be any more different, and definitely caught up with the 2K world.  

 

I'll have to say that this series takes many of it's cues after Breaking Bad, as so many TV series since then have.  The gritty reality, the brutal characters, the hair-raising tension/suspense, but mostly...the main character, Allie Fox...all point in the same dangerous direction as Breaking Bad.  There are many moments when I swear it's Bryan Cranston on the screen and not Theroux.  The way he puffs his chest out, and calmly, dismissively hands out his decisive and ultimately persuasive directions to his family, of course in this case the whole operation up front from the start and not a coverup.  Walter White had us all strung along for some time with his "case" of underdog, and his heroism in the face of cancer and "the man", until you couldn't help but get sick of all of the people he used and killed.  Here, we have a much more elevated hero/anti-hero it seems, that while guilty of activities that have led to people being hurt, we might be much more persuaded to align ourselves with because of his seemingly absolute affection for the family, and his hatred of all things hypocritical and wasteful. His empathy for the disenfranchised could not have been more poignantly stated than when he labels all of those indigent souls running around under the city concrete as being "simply no longer able to consume...non-consumers...so that's their crime...they can..." no longer participate in the great capitalist engine, my words for what he said.  Yeah, that was a very clear moment that encapsulated the "insight" of his character, and the "cover" for his drive to action.  

 

However, we know that all great altruistic utopians had as much ego as anyone else, and many a justification for their excesses in obtaining their goals, including such subtle subterfuge even as playing the heartstrings of their family members.  Yet most characters of this nature it is believed, have historically had some genuine love for the end result being prosperity and the comfort of their own.  This is of course the very same trait that also leads these cavalier souls to be blinded by their programs of change, or their rendition of human revolution.  

 

The thing that struck me most about this season 1 was the effect that Allie Fox's drive and behavior had upon his family, specifically his son, near the end of the season.  We see his teen-aged son come to grips with and experience a few things that even those of a later age, 21 to 30 yo maybe, have not had to deal with.  A devastatingly tough and quick way to grow old before your time.  

 

Well, it's a thriller, well produced, directed, acted, lensed...ok, most of it is Justin's doing, yes, but if something is good and gripping as this story is, you can't help but get drawn in and begin to take sides.  

- Agitatus