Heroes Season 3 Halftime

We’re hearing Suresh's voice again on the show and I'm realizing that much of the talk of evolution came from him in the first 2 seasons.  His was the narrative voice that was so prevalent then and for some time was taken out.  The narrator’s voice is missing from the show.  I thought that it was a very powerful part of the show back then, even if I didn't agree with the content.  To hear him talk again as a character in this latest episode, he's preaching evolution to  a student, about techtonic plate movement.  This brings to mind: if we always identify Suresh as a vital symbol of the show's collective memory, then will the meta-story that is respresented always have that flavor, even when he's not narrating?  What I'm saying is that he seems to haunt the show's background even when he's not there at all.

As for the whole body-switching thing with Nathan, I think that plot has gone on far enough and they need to come to some conclusion and get on with another plot point.  I'm tired of the whole "hey I'm Nathan but I'm really not and part of me is in Matt Parkman" thing.  Sheesh.  Get over it. So it seems they did. Nathan took back Syler, there is no doubt.  Peter watching over him is incidental.

The deaf girl nurse thing:  Nowhere.  That’s got some surface tension, and there is some attempt there, I mean a blind attempt, at moral, at meaning,  but it’s contrived to give the show some depth I think it would otherwise lack.  It involves male/female tension and demonstrates a softer side to the gifts, but is not sustainable, or interesting.  The whole lesbian room mate thing: Nowhere.  That whole scenario is relying on tension as well, and playing to the homosexual agenda by dragging out a friendship, demonstrating that homosexual females can be very deep and loving friends, which of course they can.  But in this context, it is pandering.

All the stuff intertwining with the far past, I realize that it's bringing us back now to the very beginning with the experiments in the west at that camp, but it's all just silly prelude.  Eventually, after we get to the root of the DNA change, we're going to be left with what I've said all along, which is one of 2 things: a choice between believing that messing with DNA is ok, or we should leave it alone.  I believe, because of Suresh's narrative, we're going to be left with a strong emphasis on leaving it alone.  Contrast this: The whole camp in the west thing looked too much like a slave labor camp, or a Jewish internment camp in Nazi Germany, barren and fenced in and such.  There is a reason for these choices in the show's narrative.  Just like the diners that so many of the scene's revolve around all have a late 50s flare about them, like where Charlie waitressed.  This all seems to recall to me the era of nuclear proliferation and the cold war, and therefore a very paranoid and dark time when the brightness of the future was tainted with the fear of it as well.  It has always hung over my generation with a real effect that is more than just a philisophical outcome.  I still remember fallout shelter signs.  Contrast that with the surreal nature of the Carnival.  The wandering freedom of the Carny, lost in space and time, showing up where they want to and disappearing,  the whole thing is a travel metaphor.   Being rootless and unbound also appears to have it’s costs.   Also consider the more up to date cultural symbols of tattoos, clothing styles, earrings, etc, the Half-painted fingernails of the leader, which Hiro tells us in no uncertain terms, is an evil man, simply trying to become more powerful.  It all points to an uncontrollable element, an isotope dangerous, lawless, and unto themselves.  It is also the “home for misfits”.    This can only come out badly, from the way it’s looking.  I’m betting in the end that somehow, like the guy who put people into vortexes, that Samuel will implode, or his community will demand that he stop, by virtue of the fact that he cannot sustain the kind of vision that he is cooking up for this family of his.  He is into some kind of utopian dreaming, and that, by history’s recollection, has almost always been doomed.

If we put a doomed sociopathic figure like Samuel in the forefront, and he turns out to be as evil and uncontrollable as Syler has been, at least as unable to self-control as Syler, then we will have yet another demonstration of the danger of meddling with the DNA structure, and the reason will be seen as the inability of man to control his nature in the face of such potential; we swing to the dark side, given time.

It could possibly mean that the kind of thinking that went into the cold war must be done away with, and that only a new understanding of each other must prevail, in which case the study of DNA must happen, and with great attention to the human element.  This certainly is a much more "human" season than the other ones, what with the deaf nurse that sees colors, the college roomate thing, the Nikki Sanders thing with her needing to chillax and find a friend.  You know, it's all so "buddy buddy".   But deeper still, there is an unsettling sensation that a conniving mind, or minds,  went behind the whole genetic change, that it was orchestrated, and we’re seeing the wild and uncontrollable results that should never have happened.

I stopped trying to figure out what was going to happen with this show a long time ago, with regards to actual events.  But I've never been more sure of the meaning of the show.  The jury is still out on which way it will end up, on one side of the fence or another, but personally I’m betting it’s “don’t touch this.”  Of course, a good story will always keep you guessing so you keep watching and consuming commercials.  So the saga continues in Feb. then. 

What I’m also wondering is what has been COOKING over at Breaking Bad?  Season 3, where art thou?

Agitatus

Garden Party

There's this guy sitting at the therapist, or councilor or whoever, and he has just broken up with a girlfriend, and she's moved out of his house, and he's saying to the therapist, "We broke up." 

Long pause.

"Why?". 

"I don't think she thought I loved her." 

"Did you?" 

"I don't know.  Do we have to get in to this today?" 

So there it is.  This is a perfect picture of our time.  A man is sitting with a therapist.  The therapist is paid or bartered to be there.  You're alone with the therapist and the therapist is there to help you, and is also bound to privacy, so it's like talking to God almost.  And then you come up against this event that is fairly major in your life and you're unsure of the details, and then you tell the therapist that you don't really want to talk about it right now, in which case, if you're the therapist, the next question should be something on the order of "What on earth are you here for?".

Our world now is so filled with vague and diminutive language, and our thought processes so diluted into cliche or non-thinking parlees that it is difficult to imagine that anything meaningful or multi-dimensional can come of our common discourse.  We cannot relate.  We do not have depth.  The "fly-by" mentality of recyclable relationships creates an atmosphere that is always just on the edge of disrespect, contempt bubbling just beneath the surface, only a blink away.

The disposable relationships in this film, after you dispose, that is, of the titillation factors of risque behavior, juvenile plot interest, and gratuitous on-screen flashes of semi-porn, are left barren and wanting.  This may have been the filmmakers' desire, to demonstrate the vacuous culture.  In that case, they did.  It is our culture in summation.  A horrible feeling surrounds this story, if you can call it that.  There is no beginning and no end, just a middle.  The middle is the traveling adventures of several parallel stories that do not parallel each other very much at all, further driving the isolation of the characters along the path of incongruency.

So as a film this was terrible.  As an accurate picture of where we are as a culture, it's pretty much on the money.

Persepolis   10/21/09

Wow, this was a great animated film.  And it was a full-length feature, filled with anxiety, joy, fun, sadness; the life of an Iranian girl.  The music and sounds were great.  Following in the long-ago footsteps of Dorothy on the yellow brick road, only in reverse, the majority of the film is in black and white, and we end with the color scene in the airport.  All of the scenes in the airport, in fact, are in the present and done in color.  They are a well-done pivot point for the bulk of the story.  The animation never lets up with the different creative angles, the darks/lights, movement and layers.  Reviewing the film now by memory, it did not feel flat at all, as some black and white animated films have seemed.  The humor will floor you at times.  The comedic timing was perfect, exemplifying the meaning of "comedy relief".  If it were not for the judicially dispersed comic moments the remainder would have been drear.  Very wise.  This scores a big hit for animation.

The politics: I will need to think them over, as I'm sure the director intended.  Everyone loves to hate the West right now.  It's popular to attribute the world's ills to the Western world and to attach blame to the big gorilla on the block as contributing directly to the hatred in the rest of the world.  I'm just not so sure that's accurate.  After all, you can give a person a gun, but that doesn't mean they have to shoot.  I'll come back to this.

Heroes 10/19/09 - warning: rants involved here

The direction that the latest season is taking is probably not the best for viewer retention, however interesting it is.  It's too slow.  I like it because I know all of the inside characters and previous plot lines that sometimes interweave into the current story, however there isn't enough of that to keep us previous watchers interested either.  I think the circus plot line for Syler is very interesting, and that whole group of people of course is intriguing, but they had better come up with the goods on who those people are soon or we aren't going to put up with it.  That guy who leads the whole circus family is mysteriously evil and likeable at the same time, and that's great character development, but I'm sure he's not the "devil", just like Linderman was not God.

As for the whole cheerleader lesbian thing, well, that's despicable and an unnecessary development thrown in for titillation and appeasement of the homosexual community (I reserve the right to retain the original meaning of the word 'gay' in my writings, and I like the old version, which means 'happy'.  I refuse to allow a politically radical group to steal or destroy my language!).  Next episode: Syler goes in the tent with the beautiful girl and discovers he doesn't like her, so he admits that he is homosexual as well.  Just kidding.  So I'm interested to see though where that whole thing with Claire Bennett goes.  Let me guess: She liked it somewhat, and it interested her, but she's not a lesbian, so she at first is revolted and turns on the new roomate, maybe even moves out for a day or two with another girl, or off-campus, but then discovers that the girl is crushed and has these genuine human feelings and desires, and comes to grip with them, so then agrees to live with her but stay at a distance.  In fact, Claire will threaten her at one point that is she comes near, she will throw her out a window.  Also just kidding.

Never can tell where this show will go with a plot.  But I can generally tell that the vertical direction of the show this season so far is not up.

As for philosophy, it would seem that the direction is still leaning against non-intervention as far as genetic manipulation.  "Don't mess - we want to be normal" seems to be the theme here.

Sons of Anne Archy pt. 2

On 2nd thought, I knew I'd heard that name before.  I went to highschool with Anne Archy, and now I hear through this TV show that she has sons!  Wow, I should write her.  I've checked and it seems she's living in Hollywood CA.  Wow, what a step up for her!  Here is the last known picture of her from my yearbook:

Anne Archy
1998

Sons of Anarchy comment:

Well I haven't seen the show at all, just heard of it, but if the description is anything like the content it could be a waste of time. The reviewer just isn't thinking, I believe. I mean please, oversentimentalization here: "...as its members struggle to balance family life and weapon-trafficking business." What? You're trying to balance family life and a weapons-trafficking business. Riiiiiight. And Marylin Manson went to church last week.

Here's my son of anarchy.

How do we balance Freedom with our need to look after one another?

The words of Barak Obama, as he answers the question, "Is government out of control", and pertaining to the health care debate mostly, as well as spending. This was during an interview with David Gregory of NBC News, 09/17/09.

There it is in a nutshell. Carefully gliding around the words, "Big Government" or "Government Role" or anything else having to do with the word Government, Barak couches the answer in "Need" first of all, and "Looking after one another". So if we were mathematicians, we would equate that as: Government = Care for One Another. So those then that oppose Government spending on some levels, especially with regard to Health Care, Social Security, or other more "personal" programs that deal with the basic human needs (please see Maslow on his heirarchy), then they are almost automatically viewed as "non-caring" or even stamped "anti-caring", by this rhetoric.

While the President has noted that this kind of debate, this topic, is "an argument that has gone on for the history of this Republic", it's worth noting that the rhetoric that he is using to assuage those on the middle of the fence and can be purchased with romantic language of this type, has also been going on since.....well, the garden? Take a bite of the fruit.

The only way that we can truly "Look after one another", is through the community and the church. This is where all of our real caring has, and will, come from. All else is commerce.

Agitatus

Breaking Bad

Brian Cranston is being credited with making the show "cook". Yep, he does on screen, but I'd say equally the writing is most superb behind the scenes. It's the story itself that pops, so I'm giving 50% to that and 50 to Brian.

If you've read your Shakespeare then you'll understand this tragedy as it unfolds. Many a squeamish folk ask the question of "why" when it comes to tragedy, or entertainment of this kind. There are many reasons, chief among them self-reflection, so that we do not fall into the same pit. There is also the cautionary tale, the same thing as self-reflection, and closely related is also the social commentary that holds itself up to us as a mirror and allows a reflective look into the soul of what is making us tick as a people group. This is all of those, and more.

The MORE would be the look at Middle Age. No, not the Scotts vs. the Brits, and Joan of Arc; MIDDLE AGE, meaning my age, like between 30 and 50 somewhere, where a person gets all old feeling and starts looking back with regrets and longings and tries to revisit his/her youth, OR make up for something that is currently missing that we didn't feel like we got right, or enough of. That's definitely the camp where our High School chemistry teacher fits in. The layers that Dr. White goes through and are on display in the show are phenomenal. But you also could not get a better side crew than Aaron Paul, who plays Jesse, and the wife, Skyler, who is played by Anna Gunn. The new-to-acting yet also brilliantly played son of Dr. White is RJ Mitte, playing Walter Jr. The character has CP, but so does Mitte in RL, so he understands that role from the inside.

This twisting plot is very much from the pages of Shakespeare, as admits Producer Vince Gilligan. There is also a very interesting insider podcast you can download if you want to get all the inside scoop, and it's actually very good, mostly because the podcast is done by those actually producing, writing, acting, and directing the show. That always helps.

But just past season 2 now it still remains to be seen to what depths the actions of our Dr. White will take him. You wonder just how much BADDER it can get than what we ended up with in the last episode. This is the only show I've actually purchased in DVD format. That says something about the way I feel about it, since I'm difficult to part with my cash. I say explore this show, but it is not for the squeamish. Enjoy.

Uh.....I think enjoy might be the right word.

Agitatus

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

First impressions:

A sweeping panorama of the last century, without being a sweeping panorama. The interjection of key moments of our last century are woven into the fabric of the story, the most obvious yet still well done example being the launch of a rocket from Cape Canaveral. It is done in such a way as to be seen as a celebration of the two main characters' relationship, more than a significant moment in national history. The moment as history is noted as a progression of time in the plot, but most significantly as a passing backdrop to the more prevalent and powerful beauty of the now that is between the two lovers.

A forlorn look at longing and loss, supported by, indeed sharing in the creation of it, a sorrowful and haunting musical score. The shadow of the story of the clock, the rewinding of history, the desire to return to innocence, the longing to stay in one place in one time and remain in love at its Zenith, are all intertwined. At the moment of their middle ground, the center of their lives, Button and Daisy face each other at ease in bed, and Button states that he is sad that things don’t remain the way they are. She says in return that some things do. Love transcends the physical moment.

Utilizing the current time period in the place and form of Katrina was a perfect metaphor for the story, as was the choice of place for the initial disparities of the two characters’ distance from one another, contrasting New Orleans with New York. As the antiquated innocence of the one and the brazen , progressive decadence of the other burn their way away in both their lives, finally meeting in the center, the journeys of our two characters dovetail perfectly in rhythm and purpose. As Button finds his place in life and matures inwardly, he also takes up sailing, an escapist kind of craft. (That brought me back for a moment to the same activity and similar motivation that Pitt performed in Legends of the Fall). As Daisy seeks to run more into the arms of the world, she finds herself in Paris, even more distant than New York, that city’s heavily guarded secrets of self-seeking and indulgence finally taking her under in her wild ride. Later, when the two are finally together, they both opt out of their separate worlds and join to make a new one completely of their own will and flavor, the modernism of the design and style, the invasion of the television (it’s bad final form is shown in the contrasting stark cold black and white it was), the sparse furniture, the luxuriating in almost solely each other then becoming their whole focus, living fully at the crossroads of their lives. The places of these events were used perfectly in the story.

Of course there are the most notable subtle, gradual changes in Button, of which other more worthy special effects and cinematography articles should speak of, the best probably in Film Comment’s review.

My writing, as usual, is what the film is about. One comment sticks out at present, during the aftermath of a death of one of the home’s residents. “Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?” That comment is almost worth the price of admission.

As I dig deeper into what the film has said to me, I’ll write again. Thanks for reading.

About the future. It is right now, as I write it. It's not in stone. Yet, there is The Revelation of John. So how can they both exist? Because outside of time anything is possible, and the Revelation of John and right now both exist outside of time. God exists both outside of all time and inside our time, because it's possible for Him, and impossible for us to understand because we are locked IN time. In fact, the whole idea of time is our reckoning, not His.

So there you have it: my theory in a nutshell.

Have a nice night.

Agitatus

Burn After Reading:

Well, this is not something I read, so I can't burn it. There was a part of me, about half way through, that wished I could burn after viewing. However, something in the face of Frances McDormand kept me watching. It was something hopeful, and utterly hopeless. She was pathetic, as her character should have been. All of the people involved were utterly hopeless, and pathetic. This is a picture of ourselves, as we could be, if we let our utterly base selves rule the universe.

Malkovitch is perfect as ususal. His role here is a pathetic, washed-up CIA schmutz, and he wants to write his memoirs?? The wife, Tilda Swinton, is right to laugh. Who exactly is going to want to read the memoirs of an inside CIA analyst that had nothing to do with anything exciting except the Balkans? So Malkovitch's attempts at dictating on the couch in his bed attire could not have been more appropriate, and more funny. His overtired ankles sticking out above the slippers, the position of laying flat, looking at the ceiling. This was brilliant by the Cohens.

And surprising, although disturbingly funny, was the death of Pitt's character, the gym enthusiast. To see all of these relationships wrap up the way they did, with the CIA director acting as a distant and non-invasive god in the background, was both fun, and wise, and well-written.

I would have added one more thing, a twist: I would have had Tilda Swinton's character driving away in the end with one of the CIA people, and talking into a phone about her next appointment. We don't really know what happened to her directly, however, one can assume that she went on living in the same townhome, and maybe finding a new lover, and possibly a blood stain on the back of the closet.

All these people that you know....

I look on Facebook, and I see several hundred people all interfacing. Now there's a word for you. Interfacing. At least we suppose we're interfacing. Real interfacing is actually meeting face to face and exchanging glances, stories, comments, and emotions. Those are all things that just cannot happen on Facebook. So why do we spend so much time there? Maybe a sense of desperation? Isolation? Maybe a sense that the people that we're with are not interesting enough by themselves, and somehow we need to reach out to more? Maybe we have an inflated sense of ourselves, and somehow those we're with are not enough and we need to share ourselves with more than just the present company? Maybe the ones we're with have grown familiar and bred contempt? Perhaps it is also this interned sense of self that leads us to reach out to more because we look in the face of those we are with and they are not good enough for us, and then we look at ourselves.....and realize that we are not good enough for our selves either. There's a conundrum for you. Good enough for our own selves.

So we network, and interface, and share, and hope someone, like a fish on a line, will comment in our comment section, and thereby validate our parking ticket. We are parked here, yes. Waiting. Hmm.

Agitatus