The Way

I was recommended this movie by my priest who has done the pilgrimage Man, I am glad I saw it.

Spoilers:

The premise of the movie is very straight forward. An aging doctor (Martin Sheen) gets a call that his estranged son (Emilio Estevez) has died in the Pyrenees while attempting to walk the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of St. James. It is a pilgrimage dating back to the early medieval era and ends at the Catedral Basilica de Santiago de Compostela.

The father, Tom, is sort of a cranky, restrained sort of person and his son, Daniel, is more of the free spirited type who decides to quit his pursuit of a doctorate to travel and take The Way of St. James. Tom gets the call about his son’s death while golfing with colleagues, and, although you know they are estranged, you can immediately tell the love the father has for his son by his reaction.

You only see the son, Daniel, living in one flashback scene with a quote that is worth the price of admission. Tom gets to France to pick up the remains of his son and identify the body. He decides to have his son cremated and he decides on the spur of the moment that he is going to complete the pilgrimage that his son started. With his son’s gear he sets out the very next morning.

If you have ever seen the excellent comedy, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, you kind of know what comes next for Tom as he meets fellow pilgrims on The Way. Tom is a closed off guy that doesn’t like things intruding on his chosen, planned out life. His buffered self deflects initial intrusions until the life and the way and his companions finally break down this built-up exterior.

If you haven’t seen the film and read this far, shame on you. There are no men in capes in it, no action sequences on ropes, just characters on a journey. A character story. I loved it and am including it in my favorite movies list.

Is Jennifer Lawrence Dumb?

The answer to that question is yes, and no.

It relates to an interview she had in Variety recently where she claimed she was the first female action star. The money quote:

“I remember when I was doing ‘Hunger Games,’ nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”

Lawrence went on to say, “It just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies”

https://variety.com/2022/film/features/jennifer-lawrence-viola-davis-action-heroes-motherhood-1235451405/

The yes to this question of Lawrence’s dumbness is the fact that she is always putting her foot in her mouth. You are forced to look at a photo of her and wonder, are you really dumb?

The no part is the reason behind the quote above. I do not think she was unaware of the obvious erroneousness of her comment. The examples are legion: Sigourney Weaver – Alien frnachise, Linda Hamilton Terminator 1 & 2, Angelina Jolie – Lara Croft, Uma Thurman – Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2, and the list goes on and on.

Fact is Lawrence’s comment hasn’t been true since her parent’s generation. Heck, if you want to really stretch it out, Lawrence’s comment hasn’t been true since her grandparent’s generation. In 1968, Jane Fonda defeated the Orgasmatron in Barbarella. I suppose that isn’t looked upon as female empowerment, but she did defeat the bad guys so…

Note that the interviewer, Viola Davis, did not correct her even though she too must have known the glaring error of the statement.

But it was not an error to them. Truth for the elite, the Leftist elite, is a question of function. There is no correspondence theory of truth in the gnostic, modernist, leftist, Marxist view of the world. And that is what we witness here. Jennifer Lawrence is not dumb, she is fully elitist.

The narrative can never end. America will always be a racist country, the classic inequities will always be there, women will always be trampled upon by men. We are ALWAYS and forever in the harrowing horror of horrors known as the 1950’s. We have made no progress. Therefore the glass ceiling always heals itself and remains forever.

They, the downtrodden, always need to be lifted up, they always need to be buffeted and supported, they always need, desperately, inspiration against the Cis-gendered, patriarchy. Women are always in need of encouragement front the evil straight white male. Homosexuals and transgenders always need encouragement and support (and draconian laws leveled at everyone else) even when they have achieved the status of untouchable.

We must always maintain the narrative, it must always be the beginning of the struggle. That was the purpose of Lawrence’s comments, and that was why she wasn’t called out by the interviewer.

You can see similar comments by Michelle Obama who makes you think you are living over century earlier than you in fact are. She makes comments how she lives in terror of the police (remember she has the protection of the secret service for the rest of her life). How she was never proud of her country before her husband got elected. One wonders what she would have thought of this country had he failed to win. It is always the 1950’s she is always in trouble by the white man – that narrative must be maintained.

NO PROGRESS!

Puppy Time!

There is no day that would not be cured by these guys…

It has been almost a year since my dear Luca died and yesterday was five years since my wife’s dog, Cia, died. It is time. Strange, it feels guilty as hell, like a giant cheat.

Then again, look at those faces. My tastes run with the pug on the far left, but they are all perfect. I filled out an application with a breeder. Waiting to hear back.

My pug will be named Paulie. Paulie from the Sopranos, that is.

What an Asshole

My sweet Luca was named after Luca Brasi

If I live long enough to have a pug after Paulie, I will have to come up with another fictional gangster. That shouldn’t be hard, there are a lot of them, the only requirement is that the character’s name fit a cute, chunky pug.

And no, I will not have a pug named Big Pussy…

Why I do this, I do not know. All I know is I was drinking beers many, many years ago while watching The Godfather with my wife. I turned to her and said, “I’m going to have a pug and I am going to name him Luca.” This after seeing the scene with Luca Brasi at Michael Corleone’s wedding. I had to wait thirteen years because my wife’s dog at the time, Missy, would only have one dog – herself. Some dogs are like that. Strange how fast time flies. Not only did the time come to have that pug named Luca, that time is in the past and now I am going to have another, Paulie. Seems not long ago at all that we were watching that wedding scene.

Bill and Ted Face the Music

I loved the first Bill and Ted movie and the first half of the second movie. I grew up in the 80’s – even played in a real sucky band. It was with a little eagerness that I watched this one. It could be a train wreck, but what two musicians with dreams of rock and roll heaven turn out like thirty years later had a lot of potential.

What a bummer of a movie. I didn’t have high hopes because such an endeavor rarely turns out well. Thirty years later and what can you expect?

Well, I didn’t expect it to be PC’d. There was not a single off-colored joke. Heck, if there were jokes period, I missed them I guess. They spun this as some sort of family movie. This is like George Lucas’ claim that Star Wars was a children’s film. Really, George? Genocide is what children should be watching? Ted even reads off a series of numbers that included a 6 followed by a 9 (69, dudes!) and there was no sign that those two numbers had anymore significance than if 7 succeeded 6. It is as if the writer didn’t know this was a gag in the first movies, or more probable and worse, this is all the acknowledgement they felt they could give to the joke.

Oh, the Woke-World, may you go down in flames.

There was the usual inclusion heavy in minorities – which is, to me, not really here nor there usually. But in the last quarter of the film, as if they were told their racial quota wasn’t balanced, appears a young black kid with no purpose whatsoever who rambles lines of techno-babble that no one on or off screen understood and served no purpose in the plot at all.

Granted, trying to pull this movie off with the characters acting exactly as their younger selves with the same exact jokes would have been worse than stale. To turn it into a family film of politically correct sterilization made it one of the scarier films I have seen.

Scary world we live in, that is.

The Incredible Mr. Limpet

I found this on TCM (that’s Turner Classic Movie to you). So ridiculous this movie has stayed in my mind over the years since I was a child in the 1970’s. It is one of those goody films from the mid-60’s, sort of in the Jerry Lewis vein.

In it, Mr. Limpet, played by Don Knotts is a nobody who wishes he was a fish. He gets his wish and helps the US Navy against the Nazi U-Boats in WII. The film is part live action (to use that term anachronistically) and part animation.

I enjoyed it as an adult. Crusty the crustacean was a fun character.

Spoon Fed Entertainment and the Imagination

I mentioned in my last post that there have been improvements since the early 60’s. One of them was race relations (no, CNN, it is not worse, and it is even better under Trump than Obama) and the other way technology. However, I added that many of us are locked in this technology unable to communicate with our fellow man, and unable to use our imaginations.

I wonder if this has been studied with any seriousness? I assume I am not wrong in this. I am noticing more and more the lack of public examples of reading. I counter that with the caveat that I live in the sticks in eastern North Carolina. Reading requires that you take parts and create in your own mind images and meaning that are conveyed through words by the writer to your mind.

A lot of people simply watch stupid things on YouTube. There is a scene in Mike Judge’s excellent Idiocracy where Luke Wilson’s character, waking up 500 years in the future, awakes in another man’s apartment. This man is a drooling dolt as is everyone in the future and he is sitting in his chair

watching a show about a guy getting his balls repeatedly wracked in various ways. With eyes half open he stares vacantly at the screen laughing moronically every time the guy on the television experiences testicular damage.

Likewise on the big screen now people are spoon fed giant spectacles of thinly cut characters in base stories of good guy versus bad guy. The stories are on comic books on the big screen. These kinds of spectacles started with Star Wars. And I am a big fan of the original films (also a great enemy of the Disney sacrileges!)

Although I find the comic movies to be too stupid to be enjoyed by those over five, there is nothing wrong with enjoying such a spectacle in principle. One wishes they were deeper than a kid’s wading pool…

But something happens to the imagination when it is simply

Star Wars: The Last Fan (Edited)

I deleted the contents of this post because it is not in the tone nor form I wish to speak in. Although, for those that did read it, it was certainly true to my thoughts and feelings for the film.

Here is my final summation. Screw you, Disney – go bankrupt on your SJW feminist drivel. I’m done with Star Wars. Hell, can’t even watch the originals since George had to wipe his ass on those as well.

[Well, that was pretty much the same tone and form… but it had a brevity the former did not, no?]

I’m out.

“The Matrix” (Part 1 of 2) Commentary by Fr. Robert Barron | Word On Fire

Source: “The Matrix” (Part 1 of 2) Commentary by Fr. Robert Barron | Word On Fire

I became a fan of now Bishop Robert Barron several years ago after stumbling upon his commentary on the Matrix and Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower on YouTube. Hell, I even became a Dylan fan. That’s saying a lot because Dylan’s music is not in my usual sphere.

Before that I assumed priests to be quite removed from anything so earthly. Actually I didn’t know anything at all about priests outside of scenes from The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror. This clip is part one of two parts on the Matrix. If you want to see part two or any of his other stuff, he is not hard to find on youtube.

Happy Viewing!

The Force Awakens – Revisited

Last Monday, nearly a month after seeing it the first time, I went back and watched it early in the morning. I have to say I had a much better impression of it the second time I watched it than the first time. That is certainly something I could never get myself to do with the prequels.

One of the things I had against it the first time is the usual, modern, spectacle of skinny little girls beating up men. But, on review, before she got what I have to call a Force infusion, she engaged in no upper body combat, merely kicking and a staff. That’s alright, I can buy that.

I know it is heretical to say nowadays, but girls are not as physically strong as boys. So I need a good explanation as to why a waif is sending men to the floor. Trinity in The Matrix had a very good reason – she was in the Matrix. If she was doing that to giant goons in the real world, I would have laughed.

I still have a problem with her being able to do all manner of things for which there is, as yet, little explanation. One hopes that the new guy on the film is not a drooling retard and realizes that he has to come up with a way cool power for Luke that enables him to virtually train Jedi from afar…

The Force Awakens… Tired and Confused

So I saw The Force Awakens on Christmas Eve.

Based on initial viewing – meh.

First the good points (and I’m going to be quick).

It did not look like the prequels, it had the look (so far as you can try such a thing) and feel (you can never really go back…) of the originals.

Also I knew as soon as the usual episode scroll rides to the top of the screen that we were not going to get bogged down in senate debates and Jedi council meetings, and conversations that take place on a couch, etc. We were going to get what we came for.

Unfortunately that brings right to the bad. I was almost, no I was, hoping for a council meeting, a senate debate or something. This was a JJ Abrams Star Wars, all guff and action and not a single attempt to explain anything.

Now explanation is not always necessary. In movies in particular, if you can express it through action instead of explanation through dialogue, that is the proper way. In Return of the Jedi we needed no explanation to know what is going on behind the mask as the Emperor is electrocuting his son before his eyes.

But The Force Awakens, as  I said, is a JJ Abrams film, he delights in doing things that have to have an explanation and then refuses to do so. It is as if the man enjoys pushing people out of the world of his own films.

Firstly, the trailers for The Force Awakens all had the black storm trooper (he is black when he takes off that helmet, his uniform is as any other stormtrooper) he looks like a man that has just suddenly emerged from a terrorizing nightmare. We are led to believe that this is the person of the new trilogy. But it is not, it belongs to some little girl. A girl who serves the modernly well-worn bromidic falsehood that little girls can fight and defeat men twice her size.

And that would be fine, if we were given some plausible (plausible here is plausible by the rules of the world created) reason for why she can do this. For instance, waif, Carrie Moss’s character, Trinity, in The Matrix