Star Wars VII - space nonsense

Everyone has been waiting to hear what a 40-something guy who has never seen a Star Wars film thinks of the new Star Wars film. Well, it's nonsense.

But maybe they are all nonsense. Granted that the first one was amazing, and turned the film industry on its head. I haven't seen it but its as much a part of modern culture as The Bible. It set out a world galaxy with particular rules that the next six films needed to try to follow. As a newbie I have one dumb question, and I guess this is an age-old Star Wars conundrum but; during a light-sabre battle can't anyone else just shoot those guys with a regular gun? Is it a chivalry thing, while there is a fluoro tube duel happening the unwritten rule is Do Not Disturb?

Also stormtrooper armour - is there anything that it actually stops?

From the start the writing of VII is dross:

Weary old Alec-Guinessy guy to Stalloney pilot dude: "I've seen too much"
[Tie fighters swoop from the clouds]
Pilot dude: "We've got company"

Spoiler warning here but surely anyone who cares deeply has seen the thing already?

From what I have gathered people think the three prequels were bad. This one picks up after the last good one, Revenge Return of the Jedi. The attraction for fans is seeing Old Han Solo and Chewie, Old Leia and Old Luke. As a nonfan this left me watching Leia and Han smouldering at each other as they spoke in expository sentences that attempted to move the story along and help anyone like me feeling left behind. It was very clunky.

Unfortunately I was lagging behind from the start, as the prologue text slanting away into space told me about the Republic, the Empire, the First Order and the Resistance. What a mess. Sounds like they have saved energy on writing by just doing a search and replace, new bad guys and new good guys. The new Death Star is ..... BIGGER. The new Darth Vader takes off his mask and he looks like someone you would rent a DVD from.

There is a black character who comes across as a bit of a coward and a woman character who tells him to stop grabbing her hand, then cleans up baddies with her stick-fightin' skills. This is probably meant to count as progressive. Rey (I thought she was Rae which is a name that suggests social science teachers and lady farmers) has been left out of the whirlwind of new merch, for some devious reason.

Supposedly Lucasfilm thought boys would arc up if any girl characters were included.

I am not into fantasy, books or films. Oh, you have a problem Chief Protagonist? Why don't you just wave your wand/ use the force and solve it? Oh, bad guy has a bigger wand/ stronger force? Yawn. Better enlist a wise elder with a puckish sense of humour to train you up with some new skills/ build you a fancier wand. Actually come to think of it Bond films fit the same mould.

The film ends with Rey finding Luke on a remote cliff by the sea - this is very important as the camerawork and music tell you by their sizzling intensity. Luke has presumably been there a long time and while Rey is very  s-l-o--w----l------y  reaching into her satchel for something it looked like he was hoping for a sandwich.

I did like the mechanicals; the big creatures and Rey's hovertractor that looked like a Massey Ferguson. But overall I was pretty disappointed as the reviews I read said this was a good film anyone would enjoy, not just for fans. Noooooope.  ★★☆☆☆

Lincoln - some errors

I mentioned Lincoln the other day and got one big thing wrong. Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, not Steven A. Douglas. Please, calm your seething - it could have happened to anybody who has an inflated idea of their command of American history, as I do.

However - something serious that the filmmakers got wrong is that they show Connecticut voting against the Emancipation Proclamation. Connecticut have apparently demanded this be fixed before the DVD is released.

I think it would be nice if this could be done by having famous Connecticutian and rapper, 50 Cent, do a pimp roll onto the set in a really poor attempt at 1850s costume. When the speaker says "Connecticut?" 50 Cent says "You know it, Wiggy".

Zero Dark Thirty

Tuesday was the first day of the school year, and also my dear wife returned to work. So, as a person who works from home, you would imagine I just revelled in the peace and quiet and/or called a No Pants Day. In fact I decided that I, - free of the need to include, involve, listen to or supervise others - would walk to North Hobart, see a very long movie, then walk home again. And that would be my day.

So, I had a very nice walk. I get anxious about being late for things, and that has spoiled my enjoyment of many a walk - the thought that if I don’t speed up I’m going to miss something. I walked to school with Elf and the kids thinking after that I would walk home, and then at some stage head off to the cinema for the 10.45 showing. At some point I abandoned that plan, and after seeing the kids to their new classrooms, I just kept on walking, and gave myself a very, very leisurely stroll.

Now to the movie. I had seen that it had very positive reviews, and the chap in the local paper said that it dealt with the very violent real events (torture, terrorist attacks and the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden) in a restrained way - which convinced me to see it, as I am not interested in gore & splatter.

The first two minutes are sound only - over a black screen you hear very affecting audio from September 11. At the start of the film we meet Maya, the young, slim, redhead CIA officer who becomes obsessed with finding Bin Laden. This is all supposedly based on the facts, but I don’t know if this is a montage of more than one person or a completely invented character.

She is newly arrived in-country at one of the CIA’s secret bases. I forget if this was in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Her new boss Dan is waterboarding a prisoner, and we get to see plenty of that. It’s monstrous. Some such as Waleed Aly have called this a pro-torture film. Maya goes from being very uncomfortable witnessing waterboardings, to ordering them to be carried out. As she is the “hero” of the film and is ultimately successful in getting intelligence that leads them to OBL, it leaves itself open to this accusation.

But I disagree. The film does not show any prisoner giving up intelligence while being waterboarded or immediately after. Maya’s stroke of genius was  POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT  to convince a disoriented and sleep-deprived man that he had already told them what they wanted to know. From there, he let his guard down. Yes - waterboarding, 24-hour death metal music and other abuses of human rights got him to that point.

I am an Amnesty member and anti-torture. The reality is that there is a wide grey area between what is illegal and what I am comfortable with. Do I have the right to urge the banning of things that are a) effective and b) not illegal? 

One of the planks of Amnesty’s anti-torture platform is actually expressed by a sceptical character in the film, and it’s not about human rights at all. It is that “intelligence gained through torture is low quality intelligence - in these circumstances people just say anything”. This is an amoral argument against torture, but a good one, which is why Amnesty uses it.

I think what the film does show is that the treatment the US defines as being short of torture is (as depicted) torture. The US military says that waterboarding is OK as it is not “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Dan says repeatedly to the prisoner - “You lie to me, I hurt you” and then does. Whether it’s severe - well, Maya didn’t want to watch when she was first confronted with it.

I got caught up in the spy thriller aspect, but a bit confused by some of the helicopters-over-Abbotabad stuff.  PSA  One chopper is damaged on landing and can’t take off. Some of the SEALs on the ground blow it up, as it is a top-secret weapon, but we see that from within the other chopper that has taken off. So guys were left behind? No - it looks like everyone makes it back OK. Odd.

It was a very good film, but one that filled me with dread and paranoia. If I was backpacking near the Pakistan border now (rather than 15 years ago) this is NOT a film I would like see. It is not going to win any friends in the Pakistan Tourism Board, that’s for sure. 

Lincoln

I am very keen to see the new Abe Lincoln film. I just went to my first movie on my own for about 20 years (Zero Dark Thirty - review to follow), and the trailer for Lincoln was pretty compelling. I love the idea of Tommy Lee Jones as Steven A. Douglas.

Anyway. I was just trawling through some Lincoln stuff and I came across this quote from a letter to a newspaper editor. During the civil war Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to do this, that or the other for the slaves. He had very strong personal view that the slavery should end, but as he explains, his personal view came second to his official duty.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union ...  I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

It's striking how clear to Lincoln was the distinction between his personal view and his duty as President. Although we in Australia wish our politicians now had more deep convictions and would act on them more often*, Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanship here rests on putting his aside. Interesting.

*This is written in the early stage of a 7-month election campaign where the Labor government has pinched most of its policies from the previous Liberal government, and the Liberal opposition's policies are merely bumper sticker slogans, most beginning with the words No or Stop.

City of Samba - small work of genius

This is quite the most entertaining, beautiful and impressive thing I have seen/heard for ages.

Tilt shift of the Carnaval party in Rio de Janeiro.

Soundtrack available here: tinyurl.com/6mrzndl

Made by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli.

Captured during Carnaval of 2011.

Music by Jarbas Agnelli.

Hollywood on the Gold Coast

I have never been to Hollywood on the Gold Coast, so I don't know what they have going on there these days, but the old ads used to show Beetlejuice walking around. Walking funny. I guess he had some kind of spring-loaded stunt-tongue or something. Anyway, I always thought it was a pretty out-of-mind movie for them to be promoting in that way.

It (Beetlejuice) was on TV the other night and we just got to talking here about H on the GC and what other movies might be represented there. Feel free to make your own list of funny incongruous films at this point (mine was The Unforgiven, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, and Bridges of Madison County).

Dave suggested Trainspotting - I am giving him 4 and a half stars for that but 5 for myself for suggesting they have a ride where you go down the toilet like Renton, then come out down the coast at Seaworld, in a pool full of seals.

There would be queue around the block for this

Is flying a motorbike difficult?

No, not really. A clip from a film I have never heard of called Megaforce, courtesy of John Hodgman

A movie and a wallaby

In honour of St. Valentine's Day, Elf and I have just been to the movies, to see Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais and Tea Leone. A movie is a once-or-twice a year things for us, so reasonably special. I'd give this one a B+, its moderately heartwarming, quite funny, has a good cast and a good script.

It's not very well known that St Valentine is the patron saint of not just lovers, but also wallabies. When we got home I flicked on the outside light to feed Hattie and a small wallaby up on the lawn just kept on munching, pretty much ignoring me and the small carnivore at my feet. We have had stacks of wallaby company all summer. I've been woken up many times by one hopping across the deck just above and backwards a metre from my head. Strangely we never hear or see possums anymore.

From looking back through the blog I can see this has been an exceptional summer for wallabies. One night in January we had three at once, a male and two females. To our amazement the females got up on back legs and started fighting, á la Sir David Attenborough documentaries (forgive me re-using this pic from last year).

I am on a mission to find out more about this...

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Could you spell "clavecin"?

We watched Spellbound last night, a really well made documentary about the 1999 National Spelling Bee in America. It followed eight of the children, as they won their local spelling bees, and prepared for their big trip to Washington DC for the final. The final was agonisingly tense, I had to stop the movie and get a stiff drink towards the end. I am emotional putty in the hands of any story like this.

Some of the words the kids were asked to spell were incredibly obscure. When one of "our" kids got a curly one incorrect I found it very hard to take. One of the eight, Nupur Lala, was the eventual winner. Her last word was "logorrhea". I was very happy for her, but felt devastated for some of the others who had come so close. I don't think I could ever put my kids or myself through this. I told Elf that if the boys ever get involved in spelling bees, I will need to go away to a hut in the bush for the weekend.

Kids from South Asian backgrounds seem to do particularly well, there were quite a few of them. They are very assimilated - everyone including Nupur herself called her "Nooper".

This is a terrific doco, it deserved its Oscar nomination in 2004. I gave it an A.

Festival of Wise-ass Animals 2 and 3

Today we watched Madagascar. I have had to endure the DVD games that go with it enough times, so I was determined to watch the actual film before it went back. This was much more fun than Happy Feet. Sacha Baron Cohen as Julien, King of the Lemurs, was a hoot. At the end he gave away his crown to the lion (I forget his name) played by Ben Stiller. Lion: "You can't give away your crown!" Julien: "Its OK, I've got another one, its bigger and its got a gecko on it."

Finally (it rained a lot today, OK?) we all sat down to watch Curse of the Were-rabbit. I have always been a big Wallace and Gromit fan. I saw The Wrong Trousers and The Great Day Outin 1995 and I was hooked. C of the W is fabulous and has many side-splitting moments. To solve a nasty lawn infestation, Wallace builds a vacuum cleaner for rabbits. Dozens of surprised but not unhappy rabbits orbiting in the transparent collecting tank was pure plasticine magic. So much is communicated by a tiny eyebrow movement - the finesse of director Nick Park should be a lesson to everyone else having a go at this genre.

I would give Happy Feet one and a half stars, Madagascar three stars and Curse of the Were-rabbit four stars.