WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE XII: WINTER 2021
Hello People of the World;
Well, look like we made it to the end of another year. But things never change. People making huge issues over our safety to lead us down paths we should not go. The image projected pretends to be the image they are fighting.
It finally snowed enough here to stick to the ground. It got colder too, and these days, I wish people would go back to complaining about the weather. Man, I never knew I had it so good.
Sorry it has been later and later that I post these. I open up a new file and add things as the month progress. However, this past month, things hit pretty hard and I lost track of it. Now, it was just a matter of catching up. But as with all things in the world. When you climb up put of the pit, more dirt gets thrown on you. It doesn't look like things are going to end anytime this year. So.
As always: Stay safe. Stay home.
All right, let’s get going:
1:[ This virus really showed how equal we all really are: we are all susceptible to propaganda. No matter which party you are. We all believe what we believe despite our own eyes. Now it is costing us.
2:[ “Dune” – This is better than I thought it would be. I attribute that to the director. I was constantly nudging Bonnie at all of the Jodorowsky influences. I am a huge fan of the Jodorawky Dune treatment. Yeah, I get it, Jodorowsy "didn't get" Dune. He would have made it about Paul Atreides becoming an intergalactic messiah. "Herbert was actually writing against false intergalactic messiahs!" DIDN'T I KNOW THAT?
"Dune", for those NOT IN THE KNOW, is about House Atreides being assigned possession of the planet Arrakis, which is the main producer of spice, which grants ESP and is used for interstellar flight. However, all this is, is a political ploy to force a war between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, the previous rulers of Arrakis. It seems House Atreides is a house with growing popularity and influence in the space guilds.
Duke Leto (Oscar Isaacs) immediately begins working to secure the support of the Freman, the indigenous population and labor force for the planet. Meanwhile, he and his concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), have a son Paul (Tim-oh-tay, Shah-yome) who Is being groomed to be Kwisatz Hadarach, Bill Hadar's great-great-to-the-nth-power grandson and intergalactic messiah.
The coup happens and Jessica and Paul are separated from the Atreides forces and find themselves among the Freman. Here, Paul's vision of Chani (Zendaya) come to fruition in meeting her and Stilger (Javier Bardem) and are accepted into the group after completing a fight to the death ritual. Still, Paul's visions of a mass religion spreading in his name, troubles him.
I really did not spoil anything. The book is well-known. The story should carry you through the movie.
Despite it being good, and though I know Jodorowsky's Dune is now looked down on, what I wish more than anything is that what filmmakers should steal from the Jodorowsky Playbook is the color palate. Since when did science fiction become so fuckin' drab? HIGH RECOMMENDATION (not the highest, but high) I quit the book. I found it pretty Meh. So, that alone discounts my opinion on any of the movies, I'm told.
“Drive My Car” – Based on the short story "Drive My Car" by Haruki Murakami, "Drive My Car" tells the story of an aging (He's nearly 48! Aging!) actor/director Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who, while on a two-month fellowship at a theater festival in Hiroshima, is assigned a driver to take him between the hotel he is staying and the festival center. This upsets him as he is in the habit of both, driving his beloved Saab 2000, and listening to a recording of his wife's voice in practice of the play "Uncle Vanya" which his is staging for the festival.
The driver Misaki (Tōko Miura) is a taciturn but able driver and they develop a rapport in the hour drive to and from the theater. Complicating the after is Kafuku learning a disturbing secret about his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), and his casting of a young TV star Koji (Masaki Okada) in the lead that leads to more troubles.
All in all, it is as good as the critics say. I loved the cinematography, the story and the acting. Hamaguchi is a fine director. The film is nearly three-hours long, and its opening credits do not take place until 40-minutes into the film. But the artistry of the film never left me bored.
I am such a fan of Japanese cinema. Ask people who know me. It's not so much a Sino-fetish as it is a style of filmmaking as close to what I want for Native American cinema. Ask folks who know about my controversial opinions of modern Native representations and you'll understand why I wish Native cinema was at this level. Or, don't, it's just my opinions. Another being, go see "Drive My Car", you'll not regret it. TOP TEN OF 2021
“Spider-man: No Way Home” - Did you see all those videos online with people screaming and cheering and being idiots because Spider-man; thus proving Scorsese's maxim? No? Happy for you. A big part of the movie thee-ah-tah going experience is the audience you are seeing it with.
These days, packing a theater is not the greatest of ideas. Now, I am a clapper when the right movie comes around. I clap at certain points of a film that move or excite me, much to the chagrin of the fam. I sometimes cheer alongside fellow theater-goers if the tone and mood has been set up by the story. Hell, I'll blurt a riff at a movie scene or dialogue if the mood strikes me. And, yet....
"Spider-man: No Way Home" picks up where "Long Way from Home" left off, with the revelation of Spider-man's identity as Peter Parker. When his life goes to hell because of it, he goes to Doctor Strange to try to make it so that no one ever learned he was Spider-man. The spell is wrecked and the well-known high-jinks from the trailers that you saw ensue.
People who know Peter Parker is Spider-man are pulled into the MCU.
Leading to the most fuckin' obnoxious and violent cheering for VERY. SINGLE. DETAIL/APPEARNCE/REFERENCE of things of Spidey Past, that sometimes five minutes would go by and we would miss dialogue or details that would move the story forward. It seemed to be on purpose after a while.
A goblin bomb lands CHEER FOR FIVE MINUTES!
One of Doc Ock’s armatures lands CHEER FOR FIVE MINUTES!
Someone says that "Responsibility" thing CHEER FOR TEN MINUTES! It gets called back to later? CHEER FOR 20 MINUTES!
Another Villain Makes an appearance CHEER FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES!
And on and on, every single thing that little kids thought they were supposed to cheer or cheered along with the old man crowd getting their teen years validated YET AGAIN on screen. It got so bad that some of the cheerers would stop and then start screaming at those STILL cheering to "Shut the fuck up!". That's how bad it got. I wonder if "Battleship Potemkin" got this treatment?
Though I am no fan of his, I did feel bad for Jamie Foxx for once - he barely got a cheer. (Hmm, I wonder why?)
Char kept turning to me and apologizing because she picked the theater because it was not sold-out. She figures, now she knows why. You can also blame me for becoming an old, but I guarantee, if you were there, no matter how tolerant of the world you feel you are - this experience, would have changed you. BTW the movie was fine and SPOILER 1: not all of the Spidey's show up*.
And if you don't know the spoilers by now: please, don't cry about knowing them here because I state them. Hell, this entire movies hinges on you knowing them and feeling the nostalgia. Nothing will beat "Into the Spider-verse" in my opinion. That is still the best Spider-man movie.
This one is way too attached to the nostalgia of past movies and not a great homage to the spider-lore like 'Spider-verse" was.
SPOILER 2: the Movie Spideys show up. Who DID NOT KNOW THAT ALREADY? But there was NO NICK HAMMOND! #NoNickHammondNoSpiderverse
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PS: We are going to wait for a few weeks before seeing this again. Maybe then, we can hear the movie.
PPS: We did and this time the audience was damned near lethargic. Char thinks because it was a returning crowd that already knew the spoilers.
*NOTE: I mean the expected Spidey's show up (Tobey Em and Andy Gee); but if they are playing with a multi-verse, then bring in as many spideys as possible! Make up some. GO crazy. Don't just play into nostalgia. Biggest disappointment of the movie. Once again: #NoNickHammondNoSpiderverse
3:[ “Beans” Review – Directed by Tracey Deer, tells the story of Beans, a young Mohawk girl comes of age during the Oka Crisis in the early 1990’s. This is the best movie I have seen in 2021. It hits home a lot as I lived through a time where the local townspeople turned on Native people as well. This story of a young lady’s need to grow up in this environment and learn to deal with becoming a mature woman. It is heartbreaking, funny at times, and real. The best film of 2021 in my book….
4:[ Seeing YouTubers buy into their own hype. I’ve seen it with celebrities and with Native artists. Hell, I’ve done it myself early on in my “Art Career”. You can always tell when a person reaches it. They begin to think they are critic proof. Or they hold their own opinion to be suddenly the final opinion on things. Then, when they get called out, they hide behind the opinions of “their lessers”. Pathetic. Once I see it happen, I cannot un-see it everywhere…. Look for it in your heroes. Always.
5:[ The word "masterpiece" is so overused that it has lost all meaning….
6:[ I have been trying to get into the filmmaking industry for the past year or so. Mainly through submitting more to film festivals and looking up Chicago-based groups or programs. I want to act more next year. So, it you have a Chicago-based film project that needs a side actor. Let me know. I have applied to the Array Crew and the Chicago Made film industry program and was turned down by both. Not enough industry experience I gather. I work independently on my films outside of the industry, so I don’t have any. But I am willing to put myself out there in terms of acting in small or bit parts. I have been accounted an okay actor from the projects I have worked on. Let’s see what happens this year….
7:[ I have been watching a lot of reaction videos over the past year due to the never-ending pandemic. Wear a mask people. It’s that simple. I have been seeing a lot of reaction to Whedon’s “Firefly” and while I do enjoy the series, never thought it was a great as everyone believes it to be. I think this is due to it having a single season. Many are intrigued by the character of the Shepard as played by Ron Glass and many reactors lament never learning his backstory.
I feel that this is okay. Your imagination fills in the gaps and I think that works best in many cases. I felt that way about Hannibal Lector. But there are those who want an in-canon explanation. So, here’s one: it comes at the of the Firefly feature film “Serenity”, when after the big reveal and the adventure ends, when the The Operative sees the truth behind his actions as false, his beliefs destroyed, he tells Malcolm, “I am no longer their man.”
This, I believe, is Whedon’s lowkey way of giving us Shepard Book’s backstory….
8:[ We cannot go back to “Normal” all after this: yet here we are ignoring everything so we can shop and mingle and have brown people serve us shit again.
9:[ This Item Intentionally Left Blank….
10:[ I turned the big five-oh this month. It is cliché to say that I never feel my age. I do have a sense of wanting to know what happens next in our world today. I knew we would get past the bad Presidents and some family matters and issues. But I must go forward with the notion that the path ahead may be shorter than the path behind me. I like to think that I am 1/6th of the way there. I dare not say I am wiser because the world will always find a way to show me more that I don’t know. “Break from what you know and you will know more.”
Anyways.
That is it for this month. That’s it for this year, as we put another plague-ridden year behind us. And here we thought 2020 was the worst. Started with a traitorous bang and left with an ever-sickening whimper. So, we will all, I suppose.
As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.
Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
2022 Ernest M Whiteman III
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