Rant: Perception

We sense an incredible amount of data, far beyond what gets filtered down to a tiny articulable amount. Sometimes some of that data bypasses some of those filters, or seeps thru anyway, and reaches conscious cognition anyway – kinda freaking us out in the process with the manifestation of the perception & interpretation. AFAIK the phenomenon of autism is the lack of certain mental filters, inundating the autistic’s cognition with huge amounts of raw data, allowing for the “savant” ability to perceive & recall intricate details, and as a consequence be unable to focus on particular details which are socially expected by “neurotypicals”.
 
For a more sane analysis of nuanced perception, read Tom Brown’s “Science and Art of Tracking”. Might help translate the weirdness of perceptive dreams and nutcase supernaturalism into the reality of better understanding what you do perceive.

Movie: Taken

Teenage daughter vacations in Paris. Father has 96 hours to rescue her from kidnappers. Visceral, compelling tale - to parents, about what evils may befall their offspring; to older children, a reveal of how evil others can be and how playful ignorance can kill.

I put this with Braveheart as a story parents should share with their older (!) kids, a platform for frank discussion of how much of the world operates and how we should behave in response.

Well done as an entertaining thriller. Downfall is how so much of the story relies of nick-of-time coincidences; consider how different an end if only actions spanning days occurred a few seconds off. As a father of a playful little girl, I hoped for somewhat more applicable solutions to every parent's nightmare. Perhaps a trip to Storm Mountain's High Risk Personnel training (to wit: how to survive a kidnapping) is in order.

Movie: X-Men Origins Wolverine

Teeth-grinding adrenaline-pumping low-cognition guy movie. The three prior X-Men movies alluded to the mysterious amnesic history of the unsophisticated yet compelling character Wolverine; this story at long last unfolds his 175-year lifespan - and why that one nasty badguy is so keen on almost but not quite killing him.

Understand that this movie is a tangent to the obsessively complex X-Men comic book series. Lots of characters are introduced, many with very brief involvements featuring unexplained extreme behavior which will leave fanboys smiling and nodding while their SOs tilt their heads wondering "what the heck was THAT all about?" Relax, enjoy, and recognize this is just a small part of a much bigger story.

Movie: The Woman in White

Another nicely-done Victorian-era chick-flick about aristocrats jockeying for positions to marry up, access fortunes, and bump off anyone in their way. This one is a bit darker than usual, as we discover why the ghostly, disheveled & deranged woman in white is the key to the high-society combat that unfolds.

Surgery: complications and recovery

Went home for a couple days, then had signs of internal bleeding so I went back to the hospital for another week.

Upshot for the whole affair:
- Lost one organ (gallbladder)
- Almost lost another organ (pancreas)
- Seriously annoyed another (liver)
- Got knocked out 4 times
- 4 CaT scans
- 1 radioactive injection
- Transfused 9 units of blood & plasma
- Starved for most of 2 weeks
- Lost 10 pounds
- Jabbed with needles maybe 100 times
...and thankful for all of it.

We have a wonderful health care system. Everything done was just between me and my 8+ doctors. Keep government bureaucrats out of it.

Recipe: No-fat Peach Cobbler

 
No-fat Peach Cobbler
 
1 cup self-rising flour
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup dried milk powder
1 15-oz can sliced peaches “lite; no sugar added”
 
Reconstitute milk powder using 2/3 cup juice from can (which should contain right amount; add water if needed).
Mix flour, sugar, milk until smooth.
Pour into 8” non-stick baking pan.
Lay peach slices on top.
Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.
 
Convenient for camping! No refrigeration needed. Carry dry ingredients in zip-loc bag, mixing in bag when ready. Don’t forget a can opener. Heat Dutch oven in campfire coals, use 3 pebbles to raise baking pan from bottom of oven.

Surgery: success

Seems all went well. Am very tired. More details later.

Surgery: Gallbladder

Long story short, here I am in a hospital bed waiting for my anti-coagulation reversal so I can get my gallbladder yanked out torrow afternoon. Karen is napping, and Kirsten is figuring out how this bed works. I'm trying to ignore the pain in my upper abdomen caused by gallstones, an inflamed gallbladder, and possibly a plugged pancreatic duct. And I'm sharing it with you! Soon I get pumped with "fresh frozen plasma" to bring my blood clotting rates back to near (but not too near; see last year's heart surgery) normal.

Not sure what else to add. Next post may be after surgery, and I may be groggy/incoherent.

Movie: Bridget Jones - The Edge Of Reason

This sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary is, as sequels are, a distillation and enhancement of the more memorable portions of the original. In this case, we get our heroine looking less fashionable, more unduly idiotic, and more pitiable, all garnering more affection from the audience. It's just one tantalizingly embarrassing moment after another, culminating (and wallowing) in sweetness. Likewise, we get our hero looking ever more cold, heartless, and misunderstood to conceal the sheer depths of his affection and devotion to her. And of course, we get our villain ever more cavalier, attractive, self-serving and heartless, so much that when he gets his due we don't really care - not for lack of making us care, but because he has so earned his complete lack thereof.

Let us hope there is a Celebrity Extreme Makeover show just so news-anchor Bridget can finally look the part for her man.

Rant: Minimum Wage Increase

The dollar is about to be devalued again, as minimum wage will soon be increased to $7.25/hour. Remember the "gold standard"? now we have the "commodity labor" standard. ...and the standard is about to be adjusted downward.

$1 will now be worth 8 minutes and 17 seconds of commodity labor (mundane jobs like floor sweeping which virtually anyone can do).

This change will have a ripple effect whereby prices will adjust to reflect the new value. During this adjustment period those getting "minimum wage" will have a temporary advantage in the marketplace. Over time this ripple will settle out, and those making minimum wage will be back in the same position in the economy as before.

The value of commodity labor and the value of commodity goods will, on the whole, maintain their relative proportional balance. A gallon of gas will, after this economic ripple effect settles down, still cost 1/3rd hour of work - no matter the numeric declaration of the medium of economic exchange. Whatever a dollar is, and no matter how many of them you get for sweeping floors for an hour, you'll still have to sweep a floor for about 20 minutes to buy a gallon of gas.

Movie: Knowing

Eeeexcellent.

Setting aside the obvious questions of "how could it be THAT precise?" and "why did they take THAT path instead of just grabbing 'em?", an amazing what-if tale of knowing exactly when, where, and how many a series of horrible events would take. Just one piece of paper with a series of numbers, leading to a discovery of meaning that destroys one's philosophy of cause, effect, and probability.

The intensity is sustained, believable, and fresh. Great drama, great horror, thought-provoking. The previews I expect you have seen show imagery hinting at what I can reveal is an absolutely spectacular sequence of total devestation, winning this stage of the ongoing struggle of filmmakers to evoke the most mind-blowing depiction of the destruction of a popular location.

Movie: 28 Weeks Later

The first part of this instant franchise, 28 Days Later, told of the "Rage virus" outbreak in England, which killed nearly everyone by either becoming a zombie* or being eaten by one. The few who survive do so by their wits and risks, being picked off as the relentless packs cross their paths. A stronghold against the outbreak is found, but human nature being what it is even the safest place is not. Little of 28 Days Laater involves zombies, but that little more than makes up for the disparity via sheer frenetic intensity. Insofar as the ending manages to be happy, it is a happy ending (meh).

In typical sequel fasion, 28 Weeks Later takes the most memorable bits and spends most screen time addressing that material: lots of action, punctuated by intense social drama. This time, however, the standard degrading formula really works as the distilled essence pulls the material into a more powerful and accessable story. Having been revealed in the first story that England, being isolated, did not infect the rest of humanity, we learn some 28 weeks after the initial outbreak that the Rage virus has burned itself out and that London may be rebuilt and repopulated. ...at least until two children return from their well-timed trip abroad (having saved them from the outbreak) and, evading adult authority and containment as children tend to, they return home to find their treasured belongings - and their presumed-dead mother. The virus isn't gone, but there is, for a few, a natural resistance to the disease which must be preserved and exploited at all costs. The remaining tale follows the consequences of this discovery, which is simple and dramatic, and may not be predictable. Those of us who appreciate such horror films will, to be obtuse, look forward to 28 Months Later.

* - A trait of modern zombie movies is to never use the word "zombie".

Movie: Australia

Good solid drama. Finding herself in charge of her late husband's cattle ranch with little advanced notice and little staff to manage it, finding herself unavoidably falling for a contractor thereof, and finding herself the virtual adoptive mother of a half-breed aboriginal boy, our heroine must save the Pacific cattle industry on behalf of the WWII US military and in defiance of an Australian robber baron. ...and this movie pulls it off!

Action, romance, capitalism, survival, and all the other elements of the classic popular American story - set, of course, in Australia.

Movie: Man On Fire

Director Tony Scott has developed a unique style, featuring frenetic hand-cranked multi-shot saturated-color imagery (see the short "Agent Orange" for a PG introduction). This is often poured on thick during high-action, high-stress, and/or high-violence scenes. Know this before watching, as it may be too much for some viewers.

This is a revenge movie. It isn't happy, though characters grow, repent and redeem themselves. The story arc is dramatic as a haunted bodyguard learns to live & love again, only to fail his job, and in revenge proceed to eliminate everyone involved (how that ends may be predictable, but is dramatic).

In stark contrast to, say Shoot 'Em Up, the action herein is believable - perhaps too believable for some tastes. The hero is not impervious to temptation, frustration, nor bullets, and I don't mean idealized versions of any of them.

Well done for a visually stunning tragedy.

Movie: Punisher - War Zone

The comic book series Punisher is a hyper-violent ongoing tale of a man wreaking havoc and hell upon the criminal underworld in retaliation for the wanton death of his family. This movie captures that world, persona, and consequences perfectly. If you know who The Punisher is and find the concept intriguing, see this; if not, don't.

Movie: Shoot 'Em Up

Duh-YAM. Talk about over the top. As Ebert describes Shoot ‘Em Up: “This one goes so far, if you even want to get that far, you have to start half-way there, which means you have to be a connoisseur of the hard-boiled action genre and its serio-comic sub-basement.” Hard-boiled indeed. This is Woo’s Hard Boiled crossed with Children of Men.

Let me clarify that last comment. This movie is actually inspired by a scene from Hard Boiled, where the hero runs around with a newborn while being shot at (that being an enormous understatement). The actor for this movie did practically the same thing – i.e.: run around with a newborn while being shot at (that, also, being an understatement) – not long ago in Children of Men. Now, having identified the two grittiest movies regarding protecting a newborn whilst dodging pallets of high-velocity lead, we get two hours of that premise involving so much lead viewers should be greeted with an FDA health warning during the opening credits. This one goes so far … well, Ebert summed that up.

My rating? Maybe as low as 3/5. Intense visuals (mostly involving firefights), gratuitous copulation (during firefights), and ever-more-over-the-top situations (featuring firefights), you’d think that that many baddies with that much firepower directed at one person that exposed that long would somehow manage to get one little chunk of Pb on target. He, on the other hand, took out more people with carrots. Entertaining to be sure (at least until some needless politicking was injected), but not meaningful or life-enriching. The Matrix at least explored pop psychology.

Movie: I Am Legend

Truly we are entering the golden age of zombie movies. The zombies themselves, meh, but the story of the survivors grows to great, if gory, depths.

In flashbacks we learn how our hero* experienced the traumatic fall of civilization, crashing into a few loners striving against the hordes of remaining zombies**. The story arc here is fine (if a bit flawed), from loss to survival to quest to success to final price paid. The zombies are a little too animated and a little too smart, but the rest of the movie makes that forgivable.

Between this and 28 Days Later, I'm impressed by the depth of the genre, and how major hyper-active cities can be filmed as dead.

* - I'm noticing how some movies have characters worthy of the moniker "hero", while others merely have "protagonists".

** - Zombie movies never use the term "zombie" anymore.

Movie: Hitman

Exactly what older teen boys want to see, and exactly what their mothers don't want them to: violence and sex, both naively under- & over-portrayed at once. Hey, it's based on a video game - go figure.

Our protagonist is the viewer viscerally living thru the bald social misfit formed into the perfect assassin. He takes on one target after another in ... ya know, I don't quite remember and don't quite care. Suffice to say he takes on one target after another, and saves - or doesn't - the girl. Slick, cool, not the slightest consideration of real-world consequences (which, in stark juxtaposition, Munich does to a fault).

Ladies, you don't want to see this. You probably don't want your man seeing this either, but he very well may when given a chance to do so.

Movie: Renaissance

A moderately interesting kidnapping mystery, presented in an incredible new visual style - with the latter overwhelming the former.

The visual style is what Sin City wanted to be but didn't quite achieve: live action in striking black-and-white - and I mean only black and only white, save for a slight use of flat single-tone gray and a tiny dash of color. All action was acquired with computerized motion-capture, down to the minute facial expressive details which The Polar Express, otherwise amazing, was derided for lacking. The captured motions then translated to detailed 3D graphics, in turn flattened to purely black and white. The result is amazing. The result is a live-action cartoon, a slick union of contradictory visual techniques.

The story, sorry to say, isn't as sharply stunning. In no way does the story lack, but neither does it triumph - serving more as a premise for applying the long desired and never achieved imagery.

Movie: London

I picked up this movie because the soundtrack was done by The Crystal Method. The album is good, the movie ... well, it's another movie about losers.

Unable, for no good reason, to declare his love for his girlfriend (name: London) with a simple and unprompted "I love you", they part ways. Learning she is to enjoy a going-away party for her move to the other coast, he crashes the party, hides in the bathroom (sharing dope and engaging in impassioned and meaningless conversations with whoever wanders in), he eventually learns what is meant by "too little too late". Loser.

I'd like to know why some people enjoy such films. I guess they're uplifting for some; I can't imagine what life would see it as such.