The lost post...
I wrote something on the fly yesterday, and it didn't post. Writing "on the fly" means I compose in the box allocated to Blogger™, as opposed to the cut & paste of writing in Microsoft Word, and being somewhat thoughtful. Actually, it did post. Scroll down.
I seem to recall that it was a diatribe about Hollywierd directors and their misuse of magnesium squibs. I don't care that the world is going to hell; as long as my TV works, and I can watch endless reruns of classic movies, I am a happy camper.
I also touched on the fact that the world bores me; I am jaded, and don't care about humankind all that much. It was a pretty good post, it just didn't survive.
Michael Mann, Sir Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Jackson, and a few others, like the late, great Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick, keep me watching movies. I should perhaps be making commentary about the sorry state of the world, but movies are pieces of life that blow reality back in our faces.
As for those magnesium squibs...many directors don't know how to handle action sequences. They play it large, and go for the fireworks. Hollywierd can never capture the intensity of close quarters combat, but those directors who underplay it are much closer to the mark. Bullets don't strike giant magnesium sparks. The effective gauge for this movie critic is how much magnesium goes off in the first shoot-out.
I am truly jaded. Real life awaits commentary; the world approaches a crossroads, and I live in denial with old movies. We are all living in some post-9/11 denial, like it was a movie with a bad ending, and some creative editing will change the outcome. Are any of my readers old enough to remember Nevil Shute's On The Beach? That movie, and the book it sprang from, scared the hell out of me. The empty city of San Francisco, and that Coke bottle tapping out Morse code, was much more frightening than "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".
There is a lot of re-examination of 9/11 right now. Five years seems to be a safe window. Half a decade, as someone put it, seems a safe time. We put too much precedence on anniversaries. The Islamofacists will kill us where we stand, while we light anniversary candles. I was in Mrs. Todd's geography class at GMA when JFK was shot; I was in a hospital room on 9/11. Certain times and places do not escape memory.
I seem to recall that it was a diatribe about Hollywierd directors and their misuse of magnesium squibs. I don't care that the world is going to hell; as long as my TV works, and I can watch endless reruns of classic movies, I am a happy camper.
I also touched on the fact that the world bores me; I am jaded, and don't care about humankind all that much. It was a pretty good post, it just didn't survive.
Michael Mann, Sir Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Jackson, and a few others, like the late, great Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick, keep me watching movies. I should perhaps be making commentary about the sorry state of the world, but movies are pieces of life that blow reality back in our faces.
As for those magnesium squibs...many directors don't know how to handle action sequences. They play it large, and go for the fireworks. Hollywierd can never capture the intensity of close quarters combat, but those directors who underplay it are much closer to the mark. Bullets don't strike giant magnesium sparks. The effective gauge for this movie critic is how much magnesium goes off in the first shoot-out.
I am truly jaded. Real life awaits commentary; the world approaches a crossroads, and I live in denial with old movies. We are all living in some post-9/11 denial, like it was a movie with a bad ending, and some creative editing will change the outcome. Are any of my readers old enough to remember Nevil Shute's On The Beach? That movie, and the book it sprang from, scared the hell out of me. The empty city of San Francisco, and that Coke bottle tapping out Morse code, was much more frightening than "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".
There is a lot of re-examination of 9/11 right now. Five years seems to be a safe window. Half a decade, as someone put it, seems a safe time. We put too much precedence on anniversaries. The Islamofacists will kill us where we stand, while we light anniversary candles. I was in Mrs. Todd's geography class at GMA when JFK was shot; I was in a hospital room on 9/11. Certain times and places do not escape memory.
posted by Robert at 3:58 AM
11 Comments:
On the Beach was required reading at my Jr High.
You are right, the coke bottle scene in the movie was 'scarier' than most movies of more recent vintage are no matter what their intent.
It is clear to me that movie makers have thrown over the art of suspense and story telling (at least generally I am sure someone can do it) for the gory and sensational.
Such a loss.
If I recall the credits properly, Cary Grant commanded the sub that made its way back to a dead San Francisco.
The few survivors in Australia committed gleeful suicide. This is not a happy ending to a world overrun by Islamic fanatics.
Given the state of post-modern political correctness, do we submit to dhimmitude, surrender our lives and our children's, or put up a fight?
The ultimate message of On the Beach was that everyone loses.
I have this "stand and fight..." idea that serves me well...
OLA...
The fact that I can recall a news story from two weeks ago speaks volumes to my increasing senility.
The fact than Americans can't see beyond the latest child-murder story is a sad commentary.
Since I work third shift, I was sleeping, therefore blissfully unaware of the events of 9-11-01 while they were happening...but then I woke up. If only more of my fellow Americans hadn't gone back to sleep on the issue, so to speak...
I'm always gonna miss that post that never posted...
I was zoned out on drugs on 9/11, zapped in a hospital bed watching something mindless on American Movie Classics. A tearful nurse ran in, demanding that I change the channel to some network news coverage.
I was in the midst of a calm explanation of the B-26 that rammed the Empire State Building in the 1930s, and how accidents can happen, when the second jetliner flew onto the screen and hit the other tower.
The world has never been the same.
In 1963, I was in 6th grade (Catholic parochial school). The PA system suddenly announced that President Kennedy had been killed. Classes stopped and we all said a prayer.
Two days later, my father and I were watching TV when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live television as we were preparing to leave for church.
The year before (1962), the nuns had us practicing how to march into the large foyer of our church building and lay on the floor and cover our heads during the Cuban missile crisis.
On 9/11, I was at work and started getting sporadic reports that a plane had hit the WTC. I thought it must have been a Cessna or something and kept working. When people started talking about bombs going off and a second plane, my first thoughts were "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein".
We had just come back from church in 1963, and turned on the eye to the world [TV] to look again at the national tragedy when Ruby blew Oswald up. There are so many questions about that, and simple angry vengeance doesn't cover it. There was some agenda in play.
There are all kinds of scientific and egineering explanations for the collapse of the towers. I'll never forget that nurse screaming "Change the channel!", or my own feeble explanation that it had to be an accident. Talk about living in denial...such a thing was incomprehensible, until the moment they did it.
I got quite good at that "duck and cover" move. No way those dirty Commies were going to get me!
I still fall out of my wheelchair with remarkable acumen. The Russians are allegedly our friends nowadays, but I am taking no chances. Besides, even if the Ruskies have backed off, North Korea or Iran is going to bust a nuke over our heads in the near future.
I guess I'm one of the hopless romantics that believe that things, current events especially, are use to keep us, on some level, afraid. This condition must be good for some interest or another because so much effort is put into it. It started lo those many years ago, Rusians/Cubans and escalated from there.
Freeway shooters
Mad Cow disease
Terrorists
Bird flu
Iraq
Iran
North Korea
Legionnaire disease
Liberals
Gay marriage
Sex Drugs
Rock and roll
Feminism
The list is endless, each of these and many more have been trotted out and trumpeted as though they would cause the end of life as we know it.
Nut's, still here
All those things scare me, too. I don't consider rock & roll a threat to civilized life on earth, but the rest of your list is suitably scary.
We are born to die, but given my 'druthers, "sex drugs" sounds like an interesting way to check out. There's an old joke about coming and going at the same time.
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