JUNE - EPISODE VI: SUMMER 2021

WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE VI: SUMMER 2021

Hello People of the World;

 

Sorry to post a day late. I was caught up in some creative projects and a presentation event on the final day. The weather is getting warmer I must admit and rather than complain about other peoples’ complaining. I am going to point out that this is a definitive outcome of Climate Change. No doubt about it. Look at the Arctic seas and how the icecaps are melting and their rising temperature.

 

As always: Stay safe. Stay home.

 

 All right, let’s get going:

 

1:[ This virus really showed how equal we all really are: we all want to be serviced by people we think are lower than us, and call it “good for the economy”.

 

2:[ I keep finding Setsuko Hara films online. I thought I was stuck with the Ozu works and everything else was non-U.S. only. Yet, I have in the past year, viewed Naruse’s “Repast” and “Sound of the Mountain”, as well as “Here’s to the Young Lady” thanks to the Criterion Channel. I have watched, “Tokyo Sweethearts” and “The Blue Mountains Parts 1 &2” since. They all sort of convey the same type of character she played a lot of in these films. I wished she was given more parts like in Kurosawa’s works “No Regrets for Our Youth” and “The Idiot”.

 

I am producing a short film critique of “Tokyo Story” and looking into how we as an audience have sort of locked her into this imagined visage of her persona. It was really blunting to her want for better roles. Really interesting stuff I am finding. Stay tuned for that.

 

3:[ Yeah, flying cars will never happen. What're going to do when your engine stalls? Can you imagine drunk drivers downtown? What about those jerks that have to get past everyone on the expressway? All of the cars falling form the skies, into homes and buildings, playgrounds, is a guarantee they will never happen….

 

4:[ Movie reviews: Didn’t really watch any new movies this month. With theaters opening, and the last movies I saw in the theater were “Knives Out” and “Roma”, it will be tough to find a great film to start going back to the theaters for….

 

5:[ I am tired of people not getting the ending of “Glass”. It is all spelled out in all of the movies. The characters themselves all tell us what the deal is.

 

In Unbreakable, we forget that water WEAKENS David Dunn. It’s his kryptonite. When he tells Elijah the story of his near-drowning, Elijah even states, “I never said YOU COULDN’T BE KILLED”

 

When the school nurse retells David the story, she talks about how he laid there for so long, they all though he was dead, but he was TOO WEAK to move. In Glass, he was sprayed for trying to escape and even Ellie states that he can barely move after. So, David cannot fight back after being dunked in that tank for so long. Even if is a psychosomatic trigger, he thinks and believes he is weak when exposed to water, and he can be drowned in a sad and pathetic way. Why? David Dunn said it best himself, “Heroes don’t die like that. Regular people do.”

 

This was an origin story, not for Mr. Glass, the Horde, or for the Overseer, but for the world they exist in, where they are part of the regular people. That is what Madam Glass means at the end, “This is where we are let in on the Universe.”

 

No, they didn’t ruin David’s character. Everyone wanted a Universe-saving finger snap. What they got was a death consistent with the character. What gets me, is that all if this is stated clearly in all of the films….

 

6:[ We cannot go back to “Normal” all after this: I think the reason we don't point out that boarding schools' separation of Indigenous children from their families also happened in the US, is because we are too comfortable with the fact that it is still happening at our southern border, that it is actually STILL U.S. policy.... (Yeah, many of the children being taken there are Indigenous.)

 

7:[ People who complain about cracked screens in online phone review videos. Isn't a cracked screen on you for being such a clumsy oaf that you dropped it or banged it into something to begin with?

 

That is it for this month.

 

 

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.”

 

 

2021 Ernest M Whiteman III