Suffragette

A family.

A job.

A resolute drive to maintain the status quo and make ends meet within de/mobilizing socioeconomic circumstances.

Early twentieth century Britain.

Miserable times for female labourers. They work longer days than men for less money, have to put up with the sexual advances of their bosses to keep their positions, the law favours their husbands who have total control over their households and children, they don't have the right to vote, and can rarely enter male dominated professions; thus, they can't either elect representatives who sympathize with their plights, or provide upstanding examples of competent professional clarity.

The suffragette movement developed in response and the curious young previously unaware Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) soon finds herself caught up in its momentum.

Suffragette uses her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) to accentuate the obstinate ironclad stereotypical dogma categorically dismissing women's rights, as he never even considers trying to understand suffragette outrage, and locks Maud out of their house, preventing her from seeing her son, after her civil disobedience is noted in the unforgiving press.

The authoritative policeperson (Brendan Gleeson as Inspector Arthur Steed) violently suppressing their movement which becomes more volatile after their right to vote is denied, does begin to consider the logic of their cause, during a powerful scene where Maud, having been thoroughly beaten down for her actions, still argumentatively upholds the rationality of universal suffrage, eyes almost glazing over with despondency, as she boldly reminds him that women make up 50% of the population.

He doesn't suddenly start supporting them, but the change in his demeanour suggests he may have been part of the establishment that eventually granted women freedoms similar to those enjoyed by British men.

Suffragette's about power, and the ways in which an unquestioning adherence to cultural codes of conduct can negatively minimize freedoms for large groups, those benefiting from the composition of the codes not willing to see them modified, those oppressed by them too frightened to speak out, some of them revelling in their advantages, to the point where they'll utilize brutal methods to ensure their authority endures.

It uses the example of a naive heartbreaking beautiful trapped reluctant ingénue and the group she befriends to emphasize their abuses.

It isn't the strongest film I've seen championing the rights of oppressed groups, because it focuses too intently on a small cross-section, and doesn't multidimensionally stratify its intense historical homage.

Nevertheless, by focusing intently on a small cross-section, it does tenderly yet intransigently present the need for gender balance, as well as rights within the workplace, in any time period, by not shying away from and humanizing specific harsh realities, which condescendingly define/d many prolonged historical epochs.

Worth checking out.

Vixen

Percolating pixie dust
a sugar plum bejewel encrust
ensconcements warm the huggable
enseasoned chuckles dainty droll

casserole.

The Martian

Accidentally left behind and isolated on planet Mars, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) digs in deep in order to robustly flourish against overwhelming interplanetary odds, his team rapidly travelling back to Earth, unaware, that he still lives.

Contact is soon made with NASA headquarters yet bureaucratic dillydallying prevents him from communicating with his unsuspecting teammates.

Forced to survive, he employs his botanical ingenuity to boldly cultivate nutritious potato crops, while strategic planning contemplates his rescue back home.

The odds are grim that he'll ever return alive.

Yet trash talk and contentious humour ensure his independence is universally dispersed.

Spatial tenacity.

Temporal quid pro quo.

The Martian, juxtaposing the intense public relations of executive decision making with the humble orchestrations of an astronaut tilling barren countryside, indoors, mathematical inclusivity, scientific parchment, necessitated artistic leisure, perplexing public speaking, it strictly operates within established timelines to generate a complicated sense of extraordinary repartee by directly laying it down without overlooking conflict or relaxation.

Within this dynamic frame collegiality heartwarms and action accelerates whether it be physical exclamations or tense cerebral intersects.

Shaking hands and deliberating, the script's tight and the direction excites, from multiple starstrikes, with collective and individual decision making, infinitesimally precise calculations, and plenty, plenty, of disco.

Not bad.

I didn't know Rudolph's nose was powered by the spirit of the Northern Lights.

That's super hardcore.

Brooklyn

The down home, the perspicacious, the loving, the transformative, a new life in Brooklyn awaits modest Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) as she leaves her hometown in Ireland in search of difference abroad, job prospects and alternative acquaintances expanding her conscientious integrity, homesickness and tedium challenging her burgeoning resolve.

It's a feel good tale, moving along at a brisk pace, Eilis's self-sacrifices endearing her to those she meets, who respond by opening doors which she resoundingly walks through.

There's character development but it's sparse and fixated, every aspect of the script calculated to polish stock responses, the polish heartwarmingly uplifting and consistent nevertheless, as every chance interaction collocates constitutional blooms.

A straight shooter, consummately conflicted when she returns home for a funeral, an idyllic pastoral future suddenly materializing, chanting out between worlds, delicately torn asunder.

If Brooklyn's momentum had occasionally paused, swayed, reflected, something more profound could have perhaps been stated, a visceral dimension arising from the resultant contemplations, a judicious milky way transcendentalizing urban and rural.

It's not concerned with such interstellar abstractions however, and competently accomplishes what it sets out to do, a straightforward yet enticing examination of goodwill, restricted yet nimble, acquiesced to trouble making.

This style of filmmaking makes the accomplishment of hard fought goals seem far too easy by reducing devastating complexities to a collection of brief highly saturated moonbeams.

Still, it's nice to see positive films that mildly if not naively celebrate change in flux.

Like roses or a box of chocolates.

Maple syrup.

Caramel.

Jangle

Bustling streets in snowflake shadow
generosity's a hallowed
bright insight the shade's cascade
defined beneath the lantern's aged

suspension glittering infused
spry independence each induced
impassioned spirited serene,
individuality

enriched in its communal bower
seasoned pluck the elfin hour
carolling ensweetened sprites
the frosty reins endearing nights

Was waiting by the chestnut pinto
when I saw her by the window;
she waved and then slipped out of sight;
I blushed in secret coy delight.

Carol

Longevity, expectations, accepting who people are as opposed to who you want them to be, appreciating it as they change independently, organically, rather than as a result of the imposition of deductive logic, stereotypes, roles, baby dolls, damsels in distress, it works for some I suppose, for intervals, at times, blunt force and supple misgivings, dialogues constructed, abbreviated, expanded upon, which examine how the masculine robotically initiates, how the feminine submissively emerges, I don't know many couples like this but I see them in movies and read about them in books, often, the man not in love with the woman herself but how she looks believing it's his duty to dogmatically define her, to make her his radiant reflection, consumed by his strength, obsessed with his aura, vice versa, which may work for a time, inspiring passion and humour fuelled by traditional adherences, admittances, basic conceptions of the natural, the good, the permanent, until predictability sets in, not many able to exist for another exclusively, whether husband, wife, servant, manager, or concubine, and as time shifts and moments fade the desire for individuality, for organizational renaissance, eclipses established power dynamics, and authoritative constructs engender prolonged disputes if love can't compensate, can't cooperate, endure.

Carol Aird's (Cate Blanchett) husband can't accept who she is, and, thoroughly versed in chivalry, can only truly love her if she innocently obeys.

Yields to his will.

About to travel down the same path, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) meets Carol one day at a department store, an electric fascination etherealizing their conversation, gloves forgotten encouraging future meetings, trips to the country, unheralded destinations.

Free love.

Carol gently explores and patiently navigates disparate domains to timidly yet vividly explore ecstasy in bloom, critiquing those who too rigidly seek consensus, while celebrating the joys inherent in true romance.

Refreshingly unobtrusive, it modestly presents the facts and gracefully frees from guilt the tender.

Without seeming like it's trying to do anything at all.

Sensitive sweetly flowing wisdom.

I usually don't take note of costume design, but there's a cool scene where Abby Gerhard's (Sarah Paulson) dress suavely matches the chair she's sitting on.

Struck me anyways.

Costume design by Sandy Powell.

Art decoration by Jesse Rosenthal.

I think you're supposed to revel in the power struggle.

I always thought that path led to the dark side.

In love, anyways.

Legend

Underground prestige, the lure of the incorrigibly irascible, sophisticated in its blunt obstinacy, thrilling in its inexhaustible excess, a young girl, fascinated by the criminal underworld, scooped up by a smooth talking gangster, lives the life of an espoused sensation, freed from her drab impoverished prospects, shackled by overwhelming instabilities.

Fears.

The Kray twins (Tom Hardy) dialectically indoctrinate with either a suave well-groomed authenticity or an insatiably psychotic rage, depending on which one is in prison or who commands more clout, Leslie Payne (David Thewlis) efficiently bookkeeping as Ronald's hatred for him slowly grows.

Ronald's indiscretions multiply erratically as time passes and his violent caprice threatens their organization's fundamentals.

Frances Shea (Emily Browning) marries Reggie who has the restrained brains to keep afloat but can't shyly tread while Ronald is intent on drowning.

Active invincibility mortally wounded.

Frances suffocated by the madness.

The Legend, boldly applying a feminine conscience through narration to a gangster film in order to examine chaotic crime through the oft overlooked perspective of an observant non-combatant.

It doesn't work very well, the film struggling to assert itself as either a corrupt frenzy or a righteous indignation, the polarized dialogue thereby generated between both the Krays themselves and the Krays and Frances resultantly muddled and incoherent.

It's possible to successfully pull something like that off but I would argue it requires a less straightforward approach, one which utilizes formal cerebral charm to artistically blend fraternal factions.

Legend's so focused on differentiating the Krays (which it does well) that the secondary material, that which would have transported it to another level, staggers in stagnant inadmissibility.

There are several minor characters of note and the script is quite diverse but hardly any of them develop much personality as the Krays engage in reckless gangstering.

Still, there's a great line equating the underworld and the aristocracy.

A strong effort from the filmmaking team, flush with future potential.

Cat Watches Christmas Lights Being Put Up Outside

Meow meow stretched out from left to right
this twiney pine seems out of sight!
Why do you fasten it in varied
staggering contortions berried

blue and cloud and rasp a bushel
haystacks packed relax the push I'll
sway and swerve and pitch and pounce
the fumble rumbled unpronounced

I count one clip it's grip a session
toiled to shine in kind procession
presence like a tasty treat
a' shimmering with tactile beats

replete the switch a' flicked endawned
a mesmerizing pantheon
these lights requite like surreal sugar
cinnamon and candied sherbet

swirling.

Krampus

Take heed for the information contained herewith concerns spirits of a different kind, whose purpose in regards to Christmas is to malevolently punish and ruin those who disrespect its sincere generosity, arising from the fiery depths of ancient lore to assert his rank as naughtiest, Krampus the unforgiving unleashes his supernatural wrath, the postmodern world unaware of his vengeful agenda and Saint Nicholas unable to counter his chaotic disdain, a heartfelt letter warmly written with tender loving care representative of the true spirit of Christmas is torn to pieces after its author is ritualistically humiliated, said humiliation having cauterized the mutual contempt two related families hold for one another as they attempt to bond over the holidays, in a searing transcendent sweltering condemnation, the wealthier family unimpressed with the gruff pretensions of their less affluent cousins, the less affluent cousins none to subservient to the airs of their relatives, common decency misplaced as they assemble to dine, discourses of purity belittling the times, the letter is torn and they must maintain a united front to defend their families against Krampus's rancour, Omi (Krista Stadler) having met him before, inasmuch as her warnings demand that they exercise extreme caution, lassitude sets in and Krampus's minions infiltrate freely, the Christmas spirit revitalizing their familial fervency as they boldly defend their own, but Krampus is not prone to listen once he has risen, a desperate confrontation ensuing with the festively spiritual maladroitly abandoned, as Krampus reminds them that Christmas requires thanksgiving through his harsh and gratuitous penalties, necrobatically assigned by harbingers of the ungrateful, the absurdity of it all oddly upholding pleasantries like amazement and wonder, the gross infernal exaggerations, the total and complete lack of goodwill, grotesquely generating feelings to the contrary, to the contemporary, insensitively and unconsciously underscoring virtuous contemplations of both bounty and cheer, the beautiful communal ties of the season, rejoicing through the act of gift giving, celebrating life with family and friends, to renew a sense of endearing well being, a mirthful maturation, amusing in solace and laughter.

Trumbo

They actually did it, Hollywood actually made a mainstream film that rationally discusses an individual's right to be politically active on the left, even if you're a communist, the communists are heroes in Trumbo, and those who blacklisted them during the McCarthy era, even John Wayne (David James Elliot), undeniable villains, using their power and influence to prevent hard working Americans from working because they held alternative political views, even going so far as to send them to prison for accessing fundamental American freedoms, while living fundamentally American lives.

Positive things are said about communism within. Trumbo uses the word communist. It's about a bunch of vilified commie writers. The plight of the worker isn't lampooned or infantilized.

I don't believe in communism, or at least am quite skeptical in regards to its practical application or ideas like the permanent surplus, but it is still remarkable to see its proponents championed in a film made in the United States (said proponents weren't as familiar with forced labour during Trumbo's time I'm assuming[the forced labour is supposed to disappear because communism is supposed to arise out of the bounty of hyper-capitalism but history seems to have proven that if you try to adopt communism without the bounty of hyper-capitalism forced labour and limited freedoms abound{unless you're one of the elite few/it's possible that China is trying to create hyper-capitalist conditions to achieve communistic goals but I think it's dangerous to think that way\}]).

I've been wondering how Trumbo managed to see the light of day and it reminded me of some ideas from Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's more social democratic The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, which is a level-headed comparison of statistical data sets from the world's richest countries that suggests inequality is detrimentally effecting the free world's health and well-being, nations like Sweden and Japan scoring high points, countries such as the U.S and Britain not faring so well.

This isn't a book review although I do highly recommend reading the book, but Wilkinson and Pickett do examine the relationship between popularity and governmental initiatives, rationally proving how initiatives which promote a higher degree of equality have brought about monumental changes in various societies when they have been accompanied by popular support, or a logical need to effectively implement them.

One way of looking at this in the anglosphere is to ask the question, "how can we make a more equal society by cashing in on equality?", although that probably isn't how Wilkinson and Pickett would have phrased it. It depends on what you mean by "cash in."

Japan and Sweden apparently have adopted completely different approaches to "cashing in" and both nations enjoy a high degree of prosperous equality, Sweden preferring a system with high taxes which level out the playing field through the provision of governmental social services etc., Japan preferring to ensure that wages are more equal so that more people take home more money and therefore have more money to spend on services that the government would otherwise provide through taxation.

In regards to Trumbo, I'm wondering if its availability is the product of the movements I've been reading about in the U.S at the Huffington Post, American movements which seek a higher degree of social equality, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recognized as their feisty factotum.

It's not that I don't think there are plenty of socially responsible films being made in Hollywood, I think I've proven that Hollywood definitely still has (and always has had) a strong socially constructive urge.

It's more that Trumbo doesn't demonize those who in the past advocated for communism specifically, that it in fact celebrates them, while actually discussing communism, in a gentle somewhat naive way, that heartwarmingly surprised me.

There are too many examples of corrupt communistic bureaucracies for me to think positively about its results in the field, but its goals can influence other discourses on the left who take a less radical approach to fighting poverty and improving standards of living.

It shouldn't be categorically dismissed.

Trumbo boldly presents a life of dedicated action and incredible resolve blended with exceptional ability and tender humanity.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) even falls into the trap of taking himself too seriously and managing his labour force too demandingly, which is a trap that scant resources often creates, which is why the right profits from inequality, such psychological profits earned by first not allowing its opposition to financially tread water and then humiliating it afterwards as a lack of resources challenges the practical application of its ideas.

Japan has low taxes but generally high incomes, that's why Japan is excelling according to The Spirit Level.

If you don't have a disposable income, it's harder to donate to political parties that want to help you acquire a disposable income for instance.

Trumbo's the real deal however, and adjusts his approach as it becomes too overbearing, listening to and understanding his wife's (Diane Lane as Cleo Trumbo) reasonably worried critique.

There's a tendency in some films which examine the past, great men of the past, to focus most of their energy on the husband, their wives often complacently managing the home in the background.

Bridge of Spies does this anyways.

Perhaps this is just the result of specific historical relationships, but it's also a way to normalize stereotypical gender relations without seeming culturally insensitive.

Trumbo is somewhat light for a film that looks at many lives that were ruined by a zealous adherence to a specific point of view.

But it does warmly present the commie point of view while pointing out that it was an American point of view at one time, and that Americans shouldn't be sent to prison for exercising their fundamental freedoms, at any time, that line of thinking corresponding directly to Stalinist or Naziesque approaches (why am I suddenly thinking of the ways in which Donald Trump uses his freedoms?).

It's unfortunate that in the free world people accept unjust methods such as the ones depicted in Trumbo to starve and assault their political adversaries; I'm reminded of the ways in which the Harper government recently vilified environmentalists as an example.

In Trumbo, they illegally take everything away from the opposition and then call the resultant protesters whiners or babies when they legitimately complain, the culprits revelling in their corruption thereafter.

Dalton Trumbo never stopped protesting, and picked his battles wisely. It had a harsh affect on his family for a time, but he recognized his errors and became the person he wanted to be.

A role model for conscientious film writing.

With another outstanding performance by John Goodman (Frank King). There's a hilarious discussion of advocating for working class rights in B movies.

Hey, maybe they just decided to make a film celebrating great writers of the past who happened to be communists. You're free to do that in a free country. Regardless of the political climate.

Don't forget about Project Everyone at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Or The Leap Manifesto.

The goals may seem lofty, but if everyone takes the time to act in an environmentally responsible way at the local level, recycling a bit more, thinking a bit more about alternative energy sources, reusing things instead of replacing them, taking things like the mediterranean diet into consideration, using public transit from time to time, then they can constructively start reaching enormous heights, day by day, one step at a time.

It's about sustainability.

Taking care of things.

Throw a bit of love in there.

Try something organic.

I used to eat meat all the time until I had this job for years working in a labour camp of sorts where they fed me really well. Every night there was a meat option and a vegetarian option and eventually I started eating both options every night. By doing this, I discovered that vegetarian cooking was worthwhile and recently I started cooking dishes without meat, substituting different vegetables for the meat I would normally add. I still often eat meat, but it's small steps like these that can make a big difference when millions of people start taking them.

What's your step?

You don't have to wait for people to start recommending things, you can just start doing things yourself, every other day.

That's what individualistic democratic agency is all about.

Make some chilli.

Secret in their Eyes

Crushing unconscionable all-consuming guilt frenetically drives Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to hunt down a vicious killer, his life having been rigidly repressed ever since he missed an appointment 13 years ago.

Defined by this moment, and the professional relationships he developed therein, he will not yield in his pursuit, and after years of struggling to surface, has finally found a constructive lead.

She still loves him.

And he still loves her, codes of conduct having sublimated their longing for unity, the flame still burns, impassioned by the meaninglessness of time.

What awaits them is what they least suspected, nocturnal netherwhirls soiled and crested, reciprocal tortuous incarcerated plumes, valiantly embittered, confiscated in ruin.

A loving team, a gregarious group, punctually paralyzed through unremitting strife.

Secret in their Eyes.

The film blends the past with the present to accentuate an atemporal thrust for resolution, and although this creates a dismal opaque omnibus, it still aptly reflects a desperate psychological sterility.

It also asks tough questions regarding the war on terror, nationally juxtaposing the private with the cultural, to add a chilling layer of vengeful domestic inquiry.

The darkness is counterbalanced by the mainstream cast whose subdued supplementary teamwork collegially cultivates the light.

Well done but missing something, Secret in their Eyes punishes to persevere, ethics timelessly emboldened, obsessive displaced haunts, enervating in its resolve.

Looking Along Belmont Street, Ethel Seath

To retrofit and quaintly canter
streets the wit the glaze the banter
treetops spied their nestled worn
a' slumbering enchanted shorn

revisions reveries in edits
manifested mansioned credits
warmth beneath the snowflake zest
the blankets grumbling nimble nests

acrested merry eiderdown
the dreamlike cherry pastis round,
brittle animated rations
hibernation sworn compassion

unfastened.

The Night Before

3 confidants, and an annual tradition, a' revelling on Christmas Eve to the tune of friendship and jocularity, rekindling the strength of their amicable bonds each and every year to celebrate the intensity of camaraderous humour, age having decreed that due to the build-up of maturing responsibilities this will be their last irreverent outing, itinerary set, rejuvenating synergies pending.

As an added bonus this year, three tickets have been acquired to attend a secretive party, known for its legendary merriment, coveted by young, old and middle-aged alike.

Will the mysterious counsel of a local pot dealer enlighteningly guide their way as they descend into the night and encounter both shenanigans and loves lost?

And will the magic of Christmas single-maltly convince them that the bonds they have forged congenially transcend time?

As a matter introspective.

A fun thought provoking feelings evoking tenderly rowdy illumination of adult aspirations, The Night Before suspends pretensions of the rational to festively define what is sane.

Note that its definition bizarrely blends the buddy comedy and the Christmas classic to hazily establish a disjointed sense of the revelatory.

But when form aptly reflects content, our role models evolving over the course of an evening of regenerative confusion, who I am to argue with logistics merry making?

Jingle, bells.

Miley Cyrus impresses.

Creed

Driven by an intense desire to prove himself in the ring, Apollo Creed's son Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) quits his steady job and embarks in search of training.

His privileged upbringing and headstrong individualistic nature don't smoothly fit in the grizzled pugilistic realms in which he must flourish however.

Unable to find a trainer in L.A, he soon flies to Philadelphia to court a legend who may be willing to take him on.

But Rocky's (Sylvester Stallone) been retired for many a year, and doesn't take to Adonis's ultraconfident approach, until he remembers the chance Apollo Creed once gave him, and decides to once again professionally serve.

The talented intent savvy well educated rich young upstart must acclimatize himself to Rocky's strict streetwise regimen in order to become a contender.

Rocky has the knowledge he requires.

And is willing to keep his identity secret, to respect his desire to make a name of his own.

Creed struggles with one of its most difficult inherent weaknesses well; it was easy to generate sympathy for Rocky, even in Rocky IV, but not so easy to sympathize with Adonis.

Not that it isn't easy to sympathize with his desire to succeed, it's just that when you see him trying to control things with attitudes his humbler less affluent competitors rarely adopt, it is somewhat grinding.

His desire to make a name for himself and the respect he shows Rocky spar with this point of irritation however, and at least establish that he wants to be humbler, he wants to integrate, it's just quite difficult for him to do so due to his enriched psychology.

It's still his dream and it's inspiring as he follows it regardless, making sacrifices in its pursuit, even if he always has the silver spoon sustaining him.

The finished product may be frustrating for Michael B. Jordan though, Stallone having stolen so many scenes that you leave the theatre thinking more about how his character progressed than how Adonis's was crafted.

Younger generations might not care about Rocky so much.

Best Supporting Actor nomination?

At the same time the script seems to be self-reflexively chiding the franchise as Rocky trains Adonis while undergoing chemotherapy, the balance between rejuvenation and tradition simultaneously excelling while convalescing.

Things are too easy for Adonis in Creed, trainer, beautiful partner, and title fight all falling into his lap without a back breaking struggle sincerely belittling him.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Creed as it followed Adonis on his journey of self-discovery, even if it's not as heartwarming as Rocky, he still dedicatedly perseveres and does his best to cultivate his gifts.

If the film had focused on his Mexican fights and he had not met Rocky until the end, it may have been stronger.

Room

A different kind of malevolence, like a sick experiment a demented philosopher would subject his or her family to in order to study the isolated innocence of the nascent imagination.

Solitary semantics.

Ontological incarceration.

A mother and son locked away for years in a shed, never leaving, never seeing the outside world.

The child, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), having spent his entire life in the shed, imaginatively tries to make sense of existence, while his Ma (Brie Larson) attempts to define the outside world.

It's difficult for him to comprehend, and his creative energies, as applied to his confined explorations, idealize the passionate curiosity of youth, his desire to learn more stifled by a lack of resources.

Escape cunningly presents itself and the real world suddenly emerges, but emerging into a hyper-reactive media sensation contrasts monstrous plans with excessive exposure.

It's too much for his overwhelmed mom, as it would be for anyone, but familial strength steps up as required, to cuddle in consultation, and placate emotionally complex obsessions.

Tough film, Lenny Abrahamson's Room, juxtaposing different pressurized extremes and their belittling affects on a severely traumatized family.

Those are the tough questions you don't ask.

Jack's lack of knowledge saves him from the psychological torments disintegrating his mother, his attempts to simply be profound in their hesitant wonder, the compassionate easing the transition for both of them, trust contra control, revelations of an inchoate spirituality.

Marshmallow

Cones opined say scattered smooch
your garnished grinds in tattered soothing
bewitched bemoaned molten lather
chiselled pith a latticed matter

rarefied.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

The unfathomable having become undeniably rational, entrenched rebel forces prepare for an assault on Panem's capitol, the districts conscientiously united, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) locked down and reeling, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) disobeying direct orders to simply act as messianic catalyst, thereby overtly inspiring heroics, instinctively striking back against iconic tyranny.

But the politicians are aware of their potential post-victory predominance, and fear Everdeen's influence in their reimagined state, divisive hypotheses compromising the purity of their cause, the innocence of guiltless reckoning, pushed propagandistically to the sidelines.

The extraordinary orchestrations of the bellicosely desperate beget a dissolute response with extreme dispassionate contempt.

Two leaders, Snow and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), one male, one female, holding on to or coveting supreme authority, drastically maneuvering to inculcate anew.

Throughout The Hunger Games it's clear that the rebel's cause is just.

Snow must be defeated.

He rules absolutely.

Yet in Mockingjay - Part 2 the politics of revenge and their inherent conflagrations remind viewers that citizens of the capitol did not necessarily support Snow, and were indeed terrorized citizens themselves inasmuch as they could not politicize, as a child spots but doesn't give up the Mockingjay, her mother brutally killed moments later.

There's no invincible playbook for such situations, and when terror strikes, or absolutism oppresses, resultant countermeasures can be as uncompromising as those they intend to suppress.

The Mockingjay - Part 2 constructively operates within this volatile antagonism, providing thought provoking disparities for those who engage in war.

The film, on the one hand, seems too sterile, a lack of emotion or a too hardened drive dehumanizing the conflict, making it seem more like a textbook than a testament, still boldly running through the motions.

But on the other, this point of critique fails to recognize the cold calculating dehumanizing affects of war, which turns communities into ordinances, the mischievous into the monstrous.

Wearwithal

I don't get buying clothes online.

Often when looking for new clothes I'll try something on that looks perfect only to discover that my initial impression was incorrect.

Obviously I don't want to see something that looks perfect online and then order it to find out that I don't like it when it arrives.

Avatars might make a difference.

If online clothing stores offered the option to create an avatar that duplicates your appearance in every possible way, perhaps then trying clothes on this avatar would help you to decide whether or not they are indeed fit for purchase.

I don't think I would ever do that, but do think that the avatar should be option when shopping for clothes online, if it isn't already.

CFL Playoff Picks, Grey Cup Pick

Ottawa Redblacks/Edmonton Eskimos: Hamilton played well last weekend and were one play away from being in a position to win after having clawed their way back late in the game. But an epic play brought about an epic defeat and they'll have to wait another season to strike at the Grey Cup once more. It was a great season and a great run considering all their injuries and Masoli reminded me of Joey Flacco as he passed for more yards than Henry Burris. Edmonton didn't have much trouble with the Stampeders and look poised to win this Sunday. Their defence is much stronger than Ottawa's and they handily defeated them twice early on in the season. Ottawa's turn around should be commended however, and they've significantly improved as the season's progressed. Burris has demonstrated that he's still a significant threat and can win big games when given the opportunity. The various teams that have played in Ottawa off and on for the past three decades haven't produced many wins. Tough times for CFL fans in the nation's capital. I honestly don't see how they're going to beat Edmonton this Sunday but I'm picking them nonetheless. Burris furiously punishes the Eskimos as he unleashes an incomparable barrage of unquestionable offensive brilliance. That's how they'll do it. Hoping it's not a blowout. Picking the Redblacks.

At the Café, Prudence Heward

Amazed restraint penetrating blues
what can be done I'll do for you
this rush reserved intense resolve
observed emancipated calls

I've looked up words in literary
testaments, conducive, varied,
but never have I applied them
to these external eXistenZ

intentions newborn integrations
let loose sly imagination
can this fragile wintergreen
outlast such serendipity?

I'm keen yet cautious subterfuged
want to enjoy this joy's dispute
the energized eclectic flight
of reason strung out fair polite

a question ice can break rethought
expressions choice descriptions caught up
computations freeflow swing
I bought a gingerbread basting

a sip this liquid fertile mirth
will warm my blood with agile worth
alert these unearthed freedoms merry
paramount converted barely

hawthorn.

Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones)

The brilliance of family, supportively nurturing and caring for one another, intimate bonds strengthened over time, often challenged by organically generated conflicts, still loving in its unconscious bedlam, stabilized volatility cohesively generating truth.

Anne Émond's Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones) introduces one such family, and lovingly blends their harmonies and tragedies, suicide haunting their intergenerational dialogues, a son struggling to comprehend, a granddaughter artistically responding.

The overwhelming joy corresponding to a particularly tender period of time cripples as it fades, the knowledge that it cannot be reproduced shattering a fragile sensibility, impatient as it slowly ages, unable to see future joys to come.
  
The film isn't really that sad, rather, it's a wonderfully humble and cheerful low key moderation of a family that grows together over time, focused intently on David (Maxim Gaudette) and his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay), beautifully highlighting different moments which subtly caress time passing.

Its gentle warmth gracefully tends a humanistic modesty whose sweetly flowing aesthetic embrace makes you wish you could hug someone close to you, like sitting around a campfire or snuggling beneath a comforter.

It calmly and solemnly warns against becoming too caught up in innocent ecstasies, by depicting what is lost through premature departure, without condemning those who decide to quietly slumber.

Equitable.

Remember

Decades pass, monumental changes revitalize cultures and nations are reborn, but the past still haunts survivors with an unrelenting immediacy which cannot be forgotten, forgiven, Auschwitz's legacy, rationalized perpetual vengeance.

Atom Egoyan's Remember sombrely examines such a mindset through a series of alarming encounters which thoughtfully comment on differing degrees of punishment.

Much stronger than The Captive or Devil's Knot.

A holocaust survivor, Zev Gutman (Christopher Plummer), the last person alive who can identify a Nazi war criminal, begins a solemn journey to find him, guided by a compatriot who's too infirm to travel.

When you consider the relationship between Gutman's health and his mission, his mission itself seems profound yet reckless, he can't even remember what he's doing whenever he wakes up, obsessive testaments, pure uncompromising revenge.

The film viscerally questions Gutman's quest, apart from one sequence where a contemporary Nazi is confronted, by integrating lives lived and lost, the present, the world that bloomed after World War II's devastation ended, notably in the final scene where the oppressor is caught ensconced in his familial bower.

Daughter and granddaughter witnessing.

He could have been tried, sentenced, flushed out by an organization dedicated to convicting war criminals.

Absolutely punishing the guilty in front of the innocent through murder 70 years after they mindlessly followed totalitarian commands is not the way to move progressively forward.

Such acts ensure the perseverance of vengeance perpetually.

Remember cautiously yet capably constructs this idea.

Perhaps Kurlander (Jürgen Prochnow) wasn't mindlessly following orders, he could have been one of the psychotics, but his family remains guiltless in the film, unaware of the horrors he once unleashed.

Volatile subject matter skilfully postulated.

With the best twist I've seen in awhile.

Haunting in its drive.

Provocative.

Love the Coopers

A tough look at loveable yet prickly familial frustration as interdependence contends to celebrate the holiday season.

Woe abounds as expectations have led to disappointment and latent engrained perennial disputes condone the eruption of homogenous feuding.

Yet love also persists, coating their arguments with huggable layers of rosy historical endearment, cozy familiarity embedding accessible cheer, like fluffy comfortable blankets filled with age-old soul, reunionizing banter and pith, struggling to reach out amidst the haughty grievances.

It's a Christmas film at that, and yes, I could examine it through a less festive lens, but I did leave the theatre feeling warm and gooey inside, if not lightheaded, reminded as I was of the merriment and wonder that excels at this time of year, eager to watch Christmas specials on YouTube, contemplative of the excitement that still has yet to come.

It is heavy on the patriarchy, the women usually coming round to seeing the male point of view.

Balancing the genders strengthens scripts even if you're writing about cave people or the 19th century.

Bucky (Alan Arkin) does ideally represent the enlightened patriarch whose occasionally harsh counsel aids his family and others as they interact with one another and struggle to deal with life's pressures.

His grandson Bo (Maxwell Simkins) following in his footsteps.

The petulance and the poignancy, the dazzling and the discontent, Love the Coopers heralds the holiday season, along with myriad other cultural exclamations, like a blazing birth of mirthful obstinance, eggnog spiked with gin, it's a great time of the year.

Le Garagiste

A long drawn out inexorable purgatorial condition eats away at the fiesty Adrien (Normand D'Amour), Le Garagiste, his active life having been reduced to a series of strict and tedious rummagings, inexhaustible excretions, as he patiently awaits a new kidney.

Fatigue leads him to hire a young mechanic to work at his garage, fate having tricked him into engaging his only son, whom he didn't help raise but never forgot, suddenly communicating, in the language of a younger generation.

The phone rings after 5 years of silence to announce that a donor has been found.

But the new kidney doesn't jive, and after a lively respite, his routine hauntingly rematerializes.

Courage in the face of adversity waning, he's left psychologically paralyzed.

A sad film, a mournful investigation of intergenerational and marital misfires, the desperate longing to joyfully convalesce, the crushing mental instability of a far too embalmed lifestyle.

Entrenched.

Renée Beaulieu illustrates Adrien's despondency by repeatedly filming him back at the hospital, hooked up to the dialysis machine, antiseptic ubiquity.

I thought many scenes were cut too short and more could have been done with Adrien's relationship with his son Raphaël (Pierre-Yves Cardinal).

Whether or not Beaulieu meant for Le Garagiste to indirectly comment on the current national euthanasia debate is a point for consideration.

Raphaël doesn't have a life altering kidney for instance.

It seems to be suggesting that it's a positive thing, as Adrien's suffering becomes too much to bear.

I think euthanasia should be an option for chronically ill patients suffering intensely.

If God thinks they should continue to live a life of constant pain for years in order to die naturally, he or she could be more loving, don't you think?

Complicated issues bucolically narrativized, Le Garagiste coddles to question, while incrementally challenging stoic perseverance.

Cold and bleak, it subtly generates a wistful external dialogue, celebrating health by interrogating helplessness, that which could be, harrowingly dislocating.

Rue Sainte Catherine, Adrien Hébert

The swell it surges fastened sights
consummate in flux daylight
upright the hails spry merriatric
inundated interactive

twists and turns submerge extend
immersive surfaces and then
exceeded heeded exclamations
décor alors minty patience

caught up in the bustling bright
illuminated festive heights
the coruscated complement
to generosity's intent

commenced.

Burnt

Excellence.

The pursuit of a constantly revolving evolving aesthetic immediacy cohesively demanding strict attention to every detail.

The tiniest seemingly unnoticeable pittance searing an unforgettable scathing blight on chef Adam Jones's (Bradley Cooper) culinary reputation, as he coordinates his kitchen's impeccable outputs with the assiduous rigour of an omniscient razor sharp extremity.

In real time.

His team responding in turn, observantly and efficiently respecting his knowledge, his hyper-reactive creative discipline, they merit the strength of his sought after 3 star accreditation, lacerating the wake of his stern commanding temper, acerbic accessibility, confident he can help them improve.

Which he does, having reformed his life after recklessly responding to his calling's accompanying stresses with a maddeningly adroit consumption of interrogative intoxicants, his resultant penance exasperatingly tedious, competently undertaken, to the haunting revelatory end.

Convalescence.

Adam Jones, the exceptional, striving for authenticity with every nanopeculiarity, synthesizing tradition with inspiration to practically adjudicate ingenuity.

Thriving under pressure, Burnt celebrates teamwork as opposed to constellation, the imperfections of the subjective idealized thereby, accentuated yet indoctrinated, revealing, one picturesque particle at a time.

Humanistic.

CFL Playoff Picks, Finals Round

Hamilton Tiger-Cats/Ottawa Redblacks: Hamilton picked up a huge win last weekend by working together as a constructive combative resiliency. This Sunday the stakes are much higher and the opponent more formidable, the Redblacks having recently defeated the Cats twice home-and-home. Hamilton can win. Head coach Kent Austin will have them prepared. They've had ample opportunity to study Ottawa's offence and can therefore respond with potent defensive strikes, thereby throwing Henry Burris off his game, and putting the ball back in Masoli's hands. Smart level-headed explosively steady play, taking risks as required and confidently responding to set-backs should lay the groundwork for a tough Hamilton victory. That's how they've been playing all season. Picking the Tiger-Cats.

Calgary Stampeders/Edmonton Eskimos: again with Edmonton versus Calgary. How many times will these fierce rivals play to see who advances to the next coveted round? They both finished the season 14-4 with almost identical points for and against, Edmonton defeating the Stampeders twice, taking 2 out of 3 to hoist the Albertan crown. But the regular season is over and one more game must be played to decide who is indeed the champion of Alberta. When teams are this close in the standings I generally stick to home and this game's being played in Edmonton. Calgary has played more efficiently in recent playoff years however and won the 2014 Grey Cup in a bitterly close game. Experience versus ingenuity. With Calgary leading for long stretches, I'm picking the Eskimos.

Victoria

Free-spirited rustlings, attentive impromptu celebratory collisions, mirthful match making meaninglessly meandering, startlingly energetic Dionysian reciprocity, trending, inquisitively intercepting, a night out, a night out with restless strangers, immediate acculturation, Berlin, she's from Spain, works in a café organic, has to work the next day, talented artistic discipline, immersing, communicating, meets wild pack catches eye of one, they converse explore activate, through the streets on the roof, seated, swathed in inexplicable fascination, lives lived trust, a starstruck elegance, a flowering imprecision, cut short suddenly, suddenly descending into ruin, a favour, payback, high-stakes manipulation, demands indiscreetly delegated, crime, they must commit crime, no time to think, immediate reaction, Victoria (Laia Costa) saved to embark discriminately, she only understands Sonne (Frederick Lau), she's the driver, sequestered behind the wheel, they act acquire burn, escape, fried on adrenaline and amphetamines they crash the nightlife, reason rushing in, comprehension, awareness, coerced to desperately perform then crushed, incendiary largesse, despotic agency, consequences closing, unrestrained pressurized emergencies, stick together, trust, compensate, a gross underestimation necessitating one sole response assaults the beautiful with extreme neglect, gentility infused with reckless violence, souls tenderly humanizing warmth and compassion forced to willingly expedite the whims of a psychopath, what could have been haunting you for hours afterwards, the shocking juxtaposition's brilliant constant uninterrupted motion leaving an impassioned imprint on your overwhelmed soul, like you were there, like you took part, the immediacy of the style dominating your reflections and refusing to let go as you consider what took place, a cinematic triumph, as loving and innocent as it is ruthlessly expedient, its chilling naive aura, never to be forgotten.

Cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.

March Storm, Georgian Bay, A. Y. Jackson

Cinders smoulder arisen rupture
woebegone imprisoned husker
pelting toil inclement suckling
pheasant wayward thund'rous rustling

gates wide open soil deluged
banks their burdens subterfuge
waves riled-up with frothy feathers
increments cajoled untethered

amulets each drop infused
enriched befuddled stray bemused
crashing down upon the earth
muses sparring as they birth

unearthed invention awestruck coals
their consummate extracted souls
enveloped microcosms chant
the lightning strike's electric stance

romance.

Spectre

Audaciously challenging his most cunning reanimated nemesis, Bond, James Bond (Daniel Craig), must reflexively disconnect an intrusive network of terrorist and governmental spies, threatening to legally monitor all of Great Britain's online activity, disguised as freedom fighters, to facilitate limitless access to all.

Blofeld's (Christoph Waltz) back, and it soon becomes clear that he's cacopheinated every catastrophe Daniel Craig has averted thus far, Spectre having returned to the franchise's fore in transition, with the intent of legitimizing vigilant maniacal longevity.

Bond must stop them, and M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and Q (Ben Whishaw) assist him along the way.

It's nice to see Q out in the field and Moneypenny continuing to play a more vital role.

There's a clever subplot where M must counter governmental representative Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) who's in league with Spectre and hoping to shut down the 00 program permanently.

M knows that fighting terrorism still requires a human touch and although disappointed in Bond for (sort of) disobeying direct orders and stealing, still adamantly cheers as he recklessly takes Spectre on.

The film's alright, but I'm ranking it third in the Daniel Craig Bond films, much better than Quantum of Solace, but not as strong as either Casino Royale or Skyfall.

It's like it spent too much time trying to recapture the essence of the Connery films, and although this did appeal to my love of that epoch, it still seemed like it didn't focus enough time on continuing to quintessentially complicate Daniel Craig's.

He's been in 4 now and I think it's safe to say he's the best Bond since Connery.

I'm hoping he's back for a fifth.

He deserves the money.

Look at what they pay Schwarzenegger for the Terminator films.

Also, I've seen more exciting opening sequences, the opening sequence should really function as an outstanding separate short film with the potential for integration in the main narrative still standing on its own merit, The Living Daylights perhaps providing the best example.

Spectre's desert base suffers from Jupiter Ascending syndrome as well and destructs far too quickly near the end.

Nevertheless, Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is a classic giant of a foe, Waltz and Craig forge a chilling familial dynamic, its contemporary analysis of invasive information gathering behemoths fits well with the times, Blofeld lives to die another day, and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) is an exceptional Bond Girl.

With the best Bond Girl name ever.

According to Citizenfour, terrorist organizations didn't help governments establish omnipresent online access you know, they completed that task on their own, although, since they justified said completion on the grounds that they established such networks to fight terrorism, it's as if the terrorists were responsible for causing democratically elected governments to treat their own citizens like terrorists.

That's solid Bond.

Even if people are held accountable, it does seem like such networks are here to stay.

I'm already imagining old man conversations where I discuss the ways of the 1980s with a youthful generation of the future, discussing how there used to be a concept known as privacy which faded as the years passed to uproarious thunderous applause.

It's like hip Orwell.

That's how the West reimagined 1984.

Constant surveillance coupled with limitless access to anything you could possibly be interested in worldwide, exceptions pending.

I can't imagine Trudeau's Liberals using such tools to land their opponents in prison on trumped up charges sensationalized in the media, which is what it seemed like Team Harper was eventually going to do.

Perhaps they can neuter them to the point where scenarios like the one just suggested can never be enacted?

Or just scrap Bill C-51, and the TPP.

I bet that's what James Bond would do.

Perhaps Prime Minister Trudeau II is like James Bond?

Slash Jedi.

CFL Playoff Picks, Semi-Finals Round

Toronto Argonauts/Hamilton Tiger-Cats: tough times for the Ti-Cats late in the season. Collaros was having an MVP year before he went down and Hamilton has had trouble winning in his absence. But their defence still gave up 108 points less than the Argonauts this year and the Cats did beat Toronto three times with Collaros at the helm. Can one of Hamilton's back-up QBs win three straight in an epic salute to underdog excellence, thoroughly supported by outstanding defensive play? Or will Collaros make a surprise return and orchestrate another exceptional onslaught? Who knows, but either way I'm taking the Tabbies. They've got the defence and they're playing at home. They're going to have to play well to win, but playing well comes naturally to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Bring on the epic. Go Ti-Cats Go!

B.C Lions/Calgary Stampeders: Statistically speaking, this match-up seems like a straightforward win for Calgary, as long as they don't prepare in a straightforward fashion. They won 7 more games than B.C during the regular season, scored 41 more points, had 140 fewer points scored against them, defeated the Lions twice, and finished the year with a record well above 500. But this is the CFL Playoffs and it is only one game. B.C could severely punish the Stampeders with unrelenting athleticism each and every quarter to ensure that they live to face Edmonton in the Western Final. I'm thinking that doesn't happen though. Picking Calgary.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

If vampire narratives were constructed long ago to suggest that the European aristocracy was carelessly gorging itself on the life blood of the European worker, and zombie narratives countered this characterization by connoting that the European worker was simply jealous of the aristocratic mind, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse asks the questions, "where do American scouts scouting in small town America fit into this dilemma?, and how can scouting build bridges between classes who solely work, and those who only play"?, scouting thereby redefined as a constructive democratic bourgeois intensity.

There are no vampires in Scouts Guide but there is an exclusive gathering, the sons and daughters of the capitalistic elite, the cool kids, in attendance, our scouting heroes given the wrong address in direct humiliation.

The zombies spread after a lackadaisical janitor interrupts a scientific experiment, accidentally awaking a zombie, who then rapidly devours his misplaced curiosity.

Soon the majority of the town is infected as the scouts unknowingly camp out in the woods, and the cool kids cavalierly consort, blissfully unaware.

But soon these 3 scouts must emerge from the forest to apply their skills in battle, aided by a savvy cocktail waitress thereafter, in their unheralded altruistic calling.

Friendship is on the line as two of them are thinking of quitting scouts and one remains true to their cause.

The zombies's hunger leaves them little time to air grievances however, as they fight together as one to save those who ignorantly disdained them.

Thus, since the zombies have been coerced into blindly embracing ideological dogma, and the capitalistic progeny is too young to understand why, the scouts must jurisprudently save them from an unprovoked attack, having tried to save at least one zombie beforehand, while hoping the virus can one day be cured.

Attendee Kendall Grant (Halston Sage) is impressed and expresses her gratitude physically.

Is it juvenile, insufficiently serious, undeniably heroic and fun?, who am I to say?

I thought perhaps the scouts weren't scouting prominently enough for a lot of the film, but the grand finale ingeniously made amends.

It is fun.

I think I saw a bear zombie, a human who had been bit by a zombie bear.

No werebears though, no werebears.

Did a Canadian Prime Minister recently say, "Because it's 2015," in relation to the creation of his well balanced federal cabinet?

That's, well, the correct word, is awesome.

It's been so long.

I don't know how to react to good things.

Alfred Pellan!

Red Squirrel

Chitter-chat pack react, apple fritter the ruse,
egotistic pretensions you boldly defuse,
sanctity's guardian chase the daylight,
scavenge and scamper to burnish, excite

in their sights you admonish the forest's renowned
denizens rumbling through plush tumbledown
chipper-chirping regalia, inaugurated,
pine needles hushing the fiercely deflated

prorated your bids to define splotchy hallow
ephemeral moments key lime in the shallows
as long as you bombastically snark the ruckus
I'll never endeavour to outshine your shushes

percussive.

*I had originally written "boundless grids" and was then going to write a couple of lines about how I encounter red squirrels wherever I go in the boreal forest, but then a red squirrel started chittering behind me, and I took his editorial advice to heart. "Boundless" was then replaced with "your," "consider" with "apple fritter," . . .

The Forbidden Room

The derivative extracted percolates like pirouetting chestnut, the motion of which extends imaginative license to respect exfoliating indulgences, transitioning from text to subtext to limbo as tasks require undertaking in unwound fecund interdimensional free verse.

Rapscallions.

Tin cups.

Motivated to achieve yet strangleheld by absent physical qualifications, footholds, dreamlike advice metaphorically displacing, insubstantial links riveting unconnected clues, a Kafkaesque hesitance, pursuing, deliberating.

Insecurely supernatural.

Rasputin.

It's possible that the act of distilling the metaphorical displacements through poetic conjecture could construct links in a theoretical chain attached to anatomical veins focused on discussing Lacan or conjuring the ingredients for a delicious microbrew.

Contentment forthcoming.

A stash.

Treasure.

The flames unextinguished as sparrows scatter to intermittently supplant discourses of the heroic.

Cloth delicately swathes young suckling.

Eternal springs of adolescent visions abscond with gruff jingling clairvoyance, you must do something, respond, jangle, consider, trek, quaff, imprisoned existential platinum withstanding phantasmagorical creosote, a glass of milk, chocolate, prime rib, crackerjacks, blankets in winter, firelight, white pine.

The master narrative's unacknowledged marrow.

O negative.

Superlative improvisational resin.

Whole grains.

The Forbidden Room.

The Last Witch Hunter

Well versed in obligatory pyrotechnics, unerringly battling the forces of evil, Kaulder (Vin Diesel) middle-agedly sharpens his blades, to once again confront an ancient monstrosity.

Who condemned him to immortality.

Unacknowledged eternal pain.

Aided in his endurance by a vigilant religious order, he balances the supernatural while they chronicle his dispassionate deeds.

Beknownst to their principal antagonists.

Whose disrespectful taunting unleashes a visceral tirade.

Imposition.

The Last Witch Hunter seemed more like a television pilot than the first in a series of films, its quotidian spirituality (sparse character development fraught with mundane interpersonal relations) and lacklustre transcendencies (we're supposed to feel threatened by the return of the witch queen [Julie Engelbrecht] but the methods used to combat her are much too conveniently countered [it's easy to take her down]) making a better fit for the televisual realm (these issues would be addressed in subsequent episodes), in my bland and indolent opinion.

Its structure makes a coy comment on threats however, Kaulder having trouble defeating fierce Warlock Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) at first, then easily disposing of him as the witch queen regenerates, the increased level of competition functioning as a catalyst for Kaulder whose skills instinctually augment to face the more potent foe.

It could be a great television show, who knows, I usually just watch films these days, and Star Trek in winter.

I go to the cinema so often that watching films on a television or computer screen regardless of size makes them seem less fascinating.

Much better to see films in theatres.

Disappointed by The Last Witch Hunter.

Sedition

Shocking restocking the cursed gathered cower
encurdled regurgled stark diamondbacked scours
the venom beleavened contaminates, shrieks,
forlorn voracious inanimate creeps

indiscreet in extolling their cauldron's stale brew
riddled with asinine ghoulish obtuse,
pathologically pinstriped imparched invalids
rustlings pernicious perdition's surfeit

I spotted them perched up on high in an oak
the chill autumn air gently wrestling my cloak
their plan seemed in earnest as leaves round me fell
and winter's approach served to darken their spell

caramel strikes I channelled its spirited essence
distilled it through rhyme and spiked it with sentence
a crow passing by sent it gliding on air
to counter their potion's rapacious despair

Guinevere.

Crimson Peak

I think Crimson Peak was meant to be funny, to be a dis/possessed take on an old style of filmmaking that used to relish in its mediocrity before succumbing to mass alterations in taste.

If this is the case, I didn't get it, and although it might have been paying tribute to a bygone era of gaudy enterprise, it doesn't change the fact that this film suppresses.

It's hard to write that, I usually love Guillermo del Toro's films, larger than life macabre matriculations fluidly dictating realities of the fantastical.

Crimson Peak's production design is on par with his earlier work but the story and its associated devices are uniformly unexceptional and consistently dull.

It seems to be taking itself seriously throughout, that's its greatest shortcoming.

And the intermittent bursts of graphic violence taken out on historical paradigms, the stricken aristocrat avenging herself on the rise of the bourgeoise for instance, seem out of place in a horror film that's so resoundingly not scary.

If it had seemed comic, like it was seriously making fun of itself, it may have corrosively triumphed.

It didn't seem that way to be me though, not, not, at all.

Jessica Chastain (Lucille Sharpe) does put in a great performance however.

She's got talent, and commands every scene she's in.

I am somewhat worried about the Denver Broncos's offence this season, but am also thinking their lacklustre play may be a positive thing.

Peyton Manning usually enters the playoffs on fire and often loses his first game.

Thus, if he has to struggle to win a bunch of close games throughout the regular season, perhaps he'll be better versed in the art of ensuring playoff victory in January and February.

Thoughts.

Gut Instinct

I like the idea that my gut is full of different microbial communities who flourish and decline depending upon what I eat and drink.

It makes me want to minimize the decline of any form of healthy bacteria currently residing in my stomach by maximizing the number of soulful foods I digest.

Through eating a diverse variety of foods rich in nutrients, perhaps I will be able to nurture the communal development of a multicultural bacterial resonance deep within, whose corresponding tastes will be as effervescent as they are augustly tribal.

Apparently they may even affect my mood and control my weight.

I wish I could keep track of their organizational movements.

Thinking it's time for a greek salad.

Jealous of the Hazda.

God Dam

I often don't think about God, or God's existence, anymore, the study of history and amount of blood that continues to be shed around the world in his or her theoretical name having left me thinking that there is no God, or at least one that cares about intervening in the affairs of planet Earth to end exploitation and oppression etc., however, the existence of the beaver does lead me to believe that perhaps God or some form of multidimensional spiritual unity (God for short) does exist, for the following reasons.

Most of the animals I'm familiar with spend most of their time searching for food and/or taking care of young, striving to exist, peacefully or aggressively comporting themselves.

But for some bizarre reason, the beaver spends its time collecting wood in order to make dams so that it can significantly alter its terrain, often to the benefit of neighbouring species.

The raccoon doesn't do this.

Neither does the fox.

I saw a nature program about the foolish introduction of beavers to islands off the coast of Argentina which suggested that beavers build dams because the sound of running water irritates them intensely, and they proved their point by playing the sound of running water on a ghetto blaster, which a beaver then covered in mud shortly thereafter.

Why does the sound of running water irritate them so?

And how did they figure out how to stop it?

It's possible that they just watched birds building nests and somehow applied such home building skills to the creation of dams, but why don't other animals do similar things?, why is it only the beaver?

Perhaps the other animals are simply much lazier than the industrious beaver whom they thank for helping them find food yet secretly begrudge for working so hard?

And if God gave the beaver the power to build dams, why didn't he or she give similar powers to the other animals?

Impossible to say, yet still, for some primordial reason, beavers build dams while most of the other animals have a less productive relationship with existence.

Why do they build these dams?

Why?

*If the existence of the beaver does prove the existence of God, I still don't think he or she is set to intervene in human affairs at any given time. It makes more sense to me that s/he gave us the power to understand and take care of our environment in order to better our lives. If we destroy that environment through pollution and oppression consequently, I wouldn't expect him or her to return to heal it, rather, I would expect her or him to return to reprimand us for having destroyed it. That makes more sense to me.

Eternally so.

Bridge of Spies

I remember reading a comic about Pink Floyd in my youth to learn more about the band.

It was fun and informative and one of its frames still sticks out in my mind.

It concerned the creation of The Final Cut and depicted David Gilmour exclaiming something like, "most of these songs were cut from The Wall."

Harsh times.

The band only ever reunited for one show.

Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies made me think of that moment due to its similarities to Lincoln.

Similar themes, a similar pursuit of justice, of truth, a principled man upholding fundamental rights amidst an onslaught of professional and cultural criticism, doing what's right, consequences notwithstanding.

But it's a pale comparison of Lincoln, whose robust multidimensional political intrigues made me recommend it for best picture in 2013.

To its credit, Bridge of Spies does stick to a particular aesthetic throughout, jurisprudently maintaining constitutional continuity, it's just that this aesthetic, no doubt cherished in my youth, is overflowing with trite sentimentality.

You know exactly what you're supposed to think and feel in every scene.

It's like Lincoln focuses directly on the American community with a large cast and myriad staggering displacements, while Bridge of Spies clandestinely curates a lawyer's objective search for counterintuitive yet ideal vindications of the American individual, in a blunt straightforward concrete crucible.

No bells and whistles here, just a basic introduction to American liberty provokingly stylized for today's film loving youth.

It does advocate for a remarkably logical and upright attitude concerning the sociocultural politics of espionage.

I can't behind this one though.

Way too formulaic.

Entreat

Celebrating surfaced skies
justice rematerialized
a crutch, an instinct there preserved
the democratic spirit's surge

a reborn international
perspective flanked with liberal
renditions sea lions open-minded
dig in deep expand refine it

saddened still by such a loss
New Democrats discarded costs
to wisdom sewn collectively
Mulcair still lives resplendently,

a new envisioned plush horizon
speech no longer crushed the silent
voices rush to reclaim key
exhilarated freedoms heed

exceed.

Ville-Marie

Time, working, family, accidents, surprises, routines, love.

An emotion sustained for months or a lifetime, regardless passionate rapture eternally embraced, questioned, appealed to, reevaluated, censored, longed for by many, cursed by a few.

Guy Édoin's Ville-Marie intertwines several lives to examine love professionally, from occupational perspectives, working love into the working day, as it follows two mothers working in amorous domains.

Proust's madeleine can be confusing as you're sitting at work doing some everyday task that seems to have nothing to do with anything you've ever done, before you're then suddenly flooded with long forgotten memories.

The intensity of these memories can throw you off for a second or two as you readjust to whatever it is you happen to be doing, considerations of the madeleine then complicating things further, before you refocus, and plunge back within.

There's no time to dissect the correlation.

No time to illuminate the emotion.

You can come back to it later after the moment has passed if you have an inkling to do so, after which point the resonant intensity will have decreased, and you may have to rely on meditation to recover it.

It's this frame that I externally apply to Sophie Bernard (Monica Bellucci) and Marie Santerre (Pascale Bussières) as I consider their struggles with love, both having estranged relationships with their sons, both competent professionals haunted by their family lives.

Their predetermined roles.

Ville-Marie isn't that simple, rather, it's an intricate delicate yet harsh illustration of the devastating affects of unexpected consciousness altering collisions.

It isn't really delicate or harsh but seemed to be surreally moving back and forth within a continuum established between these qualifications, or perhaps within a spherical relation with love forging the z-axis, professionalism, relationships, family, honesty, and trust stylizing the encompassing bulk material.

The ponderous weight.

Dreamlike yet relatable, Ville-Marie maturely investigates unpronounced social phenomenons, tragically exemplifying the confines of material existence.

Caught within its relational void lie several struggling characters, unconsciously searching for meaning, madeleines within madeleines, awoken by shocking extremities.

With hints of Mulholland Drive.

Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre

It comes down to one man, his independence in jeopardy, democracy in motion, the deciding vote, will Canada or will Canada not go to war?, the Conservatives pro, the Liberals contra, local economic interests seeing opportunities both lush and lucrative, employment, outsiders, vehemently upholding ethical curricula, the pressure intensifying, he seems unconcerned.

Steve Guibord (Patrick Huard) that is, independent MP for a federal riding in Northern Québec, suddenly thrust into the limelight, suddenly given supreme authority.

It's a lighthearted comedy, Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre, heartwarmingly dealing with extraordinarily complex political issues with down home country charm, issues such as Aboriginal Rights, workers rights, big d Democracy, intergovernmental relations, ethical reporting, international sensations, war, and protesting, to name a few.

Haitian born Souverain (Irdens Exantus) endearingly humanizes these factors in an erudite salute to political philosophy.

Seriously contrasting Ego Trip's Sammy.

Obviously many of these issues are quite touchy, and they're momentarily resolved somewhat achingly, but the film does skilfully keep things local, perhaps accidentally addressing predetermined criticisms, by remaining blissfully aware.

Politically aware.

The geopolitics of the proposed war aren't really discussed, the in-depth analysis of war's impact out maneuvered by the prospects of economic growth, unfairly depicted protesters from Winnipeg failing to outwit, until Guibord's daughter's (Clémence Dufresne-Deslières as Lune) frustrated pleas begin to register.

I do find that many people I know are politically aware, but politics is a multidimensional continuum, especially in Québec where the dynamic is much more intense, and when you have a plethora of parties each advocating to specifically yet generally define political awareness, the concept sort of dematerializes, even if it's highly abstract to begin with.

Focus. Remain focused.

It's not that you can't expect an awareness of geopolitical agitations to be found in the North, but you can expect such realities to hold less weight than putting food on the table, on occasion, especially if a mine closes, government subsidies dry up, or tensions increase due to conflicting resource management agendas.

Guibord recognizes this, and playfully uses it to its advantage.

It's not just like that in the North.

But apart from its schmaltzy meandering, I really loved watching Guibord, being a part of the audience.

I didn't get some of the jokes, and didn't really like it, but, and the same thing happened while I was watching Ego Trip, the audience loved it and did get the jokes, and from their friendly laughter I found proof, more proof, that Québec really does have its own vibrant film industry, where citizens do really take their home-on-the-range domestic films seriously, a living breathing cultural conviviality, something that's missing from English Canada.

I haven't said that for years.

Did the Liberal party fund this film behind the scenes?

Questions.

*Who came up with the English title? Lame.

It saddens me to write this, but tonight is a night for celebration.

I honestly thought Mulcair would make a better prime minister than Justin Trudeau, but that didn't happen, and Trudeau's not so bad.

I couldn't believe how he turned things around after the Maclean's debate.

He started making inspiring speeches, and, good points. 

I thought Mulcair was more eloquent and erudite, but he unfortunately never took off with the electorate the way Layton did.

The parties aren't that different really, on a number of issues, and you wonder if their attempts to differentiate themselves only bring them closer together. 

I would love to see the Liberals introduce proportional representation in parliament. 

Your vote really can matter in a proportional representation system. 

You don't have to vote strategically.

You can vote for the party you want to win.

I did vote for the NDP. 

But wow did the Liberals ever sell Trudeau well.

And did he ever rise to the occasion.

He looked like a teenager compared to Mulcair and Harper in the Maclean's debate.

And it was like that teenager hit his early forties less than a week later.

And his youth so mesmerizingly contrasted Harper and Mulcair's aged wisdom that he was able to boldly refine a new vision for Canada, one rich with youthful energy, that's hard not to dismiss.

I like having a young hipsteresque Prime Minister.

Was really hoping the NDP would still hold the balance of power in parliament in a minority situation. 

It's still early.

Maybe they still will.

The best shot the NDP's ever had, brought down by the niqab.

Ridiculous.

Bandits

The shoreline streaked with pitter-patter
rustlings sleuthing earthen matters
believing that their movements stake
invisible imparted gaits,

but I did indeed detect them
as they stretched throughout the spectrum
searching for envisioned snacks
closely following the tracks

which have lead historically
to jiving nursed serenity
investigated flush potential
exploring designs reverential

off they went upon their journey,
cute, thought I, this hurly-burly
nighttime versed adventuring
upon the land's eternal cling

cruising.

The Walk

The ultimate performance, unannounced and unanticipated, sheer indubitable factualized vision, confidently clinging to an irrepressible irresistibility, lights, camera, action, essential timing delicately stretched, sensational spotlights, a breathtaking parlay.

With the unknown.

The exponential.

High-wire walking between the twin towers.

Nitroglycerin.

At the break of dawn.

Again, a team, symphonic accomplices, taking great risks to accomplish the legendary, photographic amorous mathematical mingling, caught up in the surge, improvised precise romantics.

Hijinks.

It's an entertaining performance, The Walk, its subject matter providing inspirational added value, tenderly heightening taut peculiarities, the underground's apex, transcending on cue.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Philippe Petit) holds it together.

He exuberantly functions as both starving artist and master of ceremonies to conjure an athletic tribute to will and determination, like you're seated in the front row of a stealth big top, ideal showpersonship, nimbly navigating in stride.

In English and French.

Walking the line, North to South, back again, wild card or integral force?

You decide.

Although The Walk isn't exactly cultivating fallow artistic ground, it's still permeated by intense awe inspiring wonder, like gelatin or spontaneous friendship, swaying and blowing with the breeze.

It seems like Zemeckis was genuinely concerned with fascinatingly presenting a down to earth yet wily crowd pleasing sentiment, and with the cast and crew energetically on board, and the climax pressurizing the audacious, I found little to critique about this film, caught between two worlds, a Parisian New Yorker's lexicon.

Everest

A team assembled, leaders guiding both veterans and new recruits, with goals of ascension, summits, their lives held in trust, clutching the ropes, struggling with shock, slowly and steadily moving one foot forwards, circulatory stamina, keeling, as a storm sets in.

It's sometimes but not often the case that strictly adhering to every rule at all times doesn't encourage smooth workflows in the civilian domain, in work-a-day realms where your life isn't directly threatened, but Baltasar Kormákur's Everest warns that when engaged in high stakes adventuring, adhering to the rules is a best practice at all times.

Years of successfully leading the bold up Mount Everest have left both Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) feeling invincible, and although steps are taken to ensure health and safety, crucial factors are ignored, for which they pay a strict penalty.

One heart has grown too big.

Another simply thinks he can do anything.

Everest succeeds as a majestic unpretentious accessible quest, relying on will and determination to motivate its operandi, the rationality of the insurmountable, brashly grappling with its cause.

I was worried that it would unreel like a horror film, the mountain claiming its victims one by one, due to the ways in which it introduced most of its characters, but it isn't like that at all, the storm rather menacing the group as one.

As nature formidably contests, there's a sense of incomparable awe.

A force too omnipresent to dread.

Inspiring images of climate change.

Cinematography by Salvatore Totino.

It's about strength, you know.

Sure, I don't like the niqab, I don't like what it stands for, but does it threaten my identity as a Canadian?, are you mad?, perhaps I spent too much time watching American television and movies as a kid, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more than 0.00000000001 percent of the population embracing archaic discriminatory traditions to come into conflict with my confident sense of self.

Ridiculous.

It shouldn't even be an issue.

Segregating and outcasting minorities is more offensive than the niqab, and it only causes the segregated to resent the population at large.

Leave them be, let their children grow up in a multicultural environment where gender equality is sought after.

They're much more likely to discard the niqab having grown up in a tolerant environment than in one which enflames hatred.

Which is what the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois are trying to do.

And if they don't discard the niqab, they will still only make up 0.00000000001 percent of the population.

Like snake charmers or mollusk worshippers.

Who cares?

Unwind

The birds and squirrels chirp or scamper
entranced by her nutritious candour
early morning snacks delight
their youthful luminescent sights

I like to sit and watch them jockey
Nature's existential hockey
bury chomp deke out to nibble
while I ponder what to scribble

tough to earn your daily bread
within the urban concrete spread
though everyone still finds the time
to cherish moments this sublime

in rhyme.

*Thanksgiving poems

Morning Star

A crisp enlightened autumn morn
darkness shivering to scorn
approaches of the burning light
comprehensive solar flights

while one last unextinguished star
adorns the moon with flames pulsar
a fleeting nighttime Cinderella
bids farewell to Gargamella

spotted by a vision crimson
tides they turn with imprecision
a chance to change what's come to pass
with lively bold and unsurpassed

vivace.

Aurelius

Rush outlast the toil's deluge
10 hours passed and this site's huge
when suddenly blinks of the eyes
see respite materialize

a friendly word presents itself
tobacco cultivated helps
to put fatigue back on the shelf
adrenaline exalted pelt

what's left with unrelenting vigour
the end's in sight extend the rigour
an unexpected brief ignites
instincts herculean, might,

excite.

Sicario

Revenge.

Obsession.

Law.

Order.

The big picture, international intrigue, drugs smuggled in from Mexico to the United States, 20% of the American population consuming them while the profits fuel domestic violence south of the border, the number of sequestered kingpins having expanded in recent decades, too many to control, too deadly to ignore.

Stats and info provided by Sicario.

The film indirectly comments on ISIL, on Saddam Hussein, the theory that he was the strongperson who kept the extremists in check, who maintained Iraqi order regardless of his methods, the vacuum created after his removal having led to ISIL, who is currently seeking to control much more than Kuwait.

Plutocratic blunders.

It's the same thing in Sicario, the Americans having had more success monitoring/controlling the drug trade when there was only one kingping narcotically nesting, according to the film, a multidimensional marketplace full of alluring alternatives working well for the sale of computers or jeans, but not for the trafficking of drugs.

Wolves eating wolves.

Victims menaced and menacing.

Sicario fictionalizes tough decisions, capital gains, as Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) seeks to assassinate a leading man, and Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) idealistically monitors his actions, the masculine and the feminine conflicting thereby.

A Mexican policeperson, a father, enters the narrative to ask the question "do Alejandro's methods justify his results, do his means justify his ends"?, the violent violently infernalizing social spheres, do as you're told or you'll never grow old, dig in deep and try to exist, extreme unlicensed ego, upheld by any means necessary.

No exceptions.

No limits.

No humour.

Behind the scenes kings and queens.

À la carte.

I liked the film; thought that it could have been more menacing.

Shades of Zero Dark Thirty. 

Trainwreck

Trainwreck provides an unconcerned look at players coming off the bench, of accompaniments, of value-added information.

The overt narrative kept losing me.

But throughout the film there are a remarkable number of scenes that suddenly pop-up and add unpretentious inappropriate callous cheeky depth, again and again, scenes which break through the tedium and nonchalantly confide, like writer Amy Schumer was aware that one component of a bipartisan entity (a relationship) sometimes finds romantic comedies unfulfilling, and cleverly came up with ways to keep them playfully amused.

Excalibur.

Enter LeBron James, who I thought performed well enough, commenting on this and that while exercising a pleasantly absurd frugality.

Brainstorming ideas for new articles at the office offers brief insights into minimalistic discourses of the hilarious.

Check out Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei.

Dianna's (Tilda Swinton) blunt obstinance proves fertile, like an egg pickled in stolichnaya.

And it's like these subtle snarky distractions are slowly building to a fever pitch, in the form of a well-played quasi-intervention, Matthew Broderick, LeBron, Chris Evert, and Marv Albert sitting in, expressing their interest while coveting the genuine, unexpected and well executed, a welcome late inning strike.

Reminiscent of Rance Mulliniks.

Asteroids.

Lovin' Sarah Silverman right now.

The old saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

It's fitting for what I'm about to write, which may sound ludicrous at best.

It's well known that the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois want Québec to separate from Canada and form an independent country, I think it's safe to say this without doubting its truth or disputing its validity.

But is there another political party, one from English Canada, that also wants Québec to separate?

I read Maude Barlow's Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future within Fortress North America years ago, and at one point within she mentions that Stephen Harper was opposed to multiculturalism, public health, public education, the wheat board, Canada Post, unions, gender equality, multilingualism, anything public, anything communal, any initiative created by and/or for the people, people power, disliked by Stephen Harper, kings and queens, CEOs, loved, cherished, kowtowed to.

Please forgive me if I've left something out of her list or added something that wasn't there previously. I don't have a copy of the book with me to fact check.

I think it's safe to say that since 2011 Harper has lived up to Barlow's depiction of his reputation and attacked what Too Close for Comfort feared he would attack, a sustained omnibus assault on Liberal politics, a blitzkrieg in action, no hesitation, no debate, no consultation, no fear.

But what about Québec? How does Québec fit into this?

Québec isn't necessarily at odds with the rest of the country in its pursuit of social democratic ends, Ontario has the same basic public grid, and British Columbia hasn't elected a right wing government in decades either, analysis of Christy Clark's performance pending.

But it's hard for the Conservatives to win seats in Québec, Québec's presence in Canada necessitates bilingualism and at least biculturalism at the Federal level, Québec often looks to Europe more closely than the United States for inspiration, and I've only met one person in Québec who doesn't refer to Harper with loathing, although my social networks are quite small.

But more importantly, Québec is a have not province and the rest of the country sends billions of dollars in transfer payments to Québec every year, money that would become a loan if Québec in fact separated.

Québec would take its portion of the federal debt with it as well (I'm assuming a debate over the size of that debt would last at least a decade) and then have to replace all of the services currently provided by the Federal government with homegrown Québécois ingenuity, which would cost billions.

Québec would receive much more tax revenue, but would it be enough to even pay the interest on their debt, which is already significant, after their portion of the Canadian debt is added to it, and they suddenly have to replace all of the services currently provided by the Federal government?

Not to mention all the Anglo businesses that will take their billions to Toronto and set up shop.

But the Bloc and PQ do want to separate, and they're banking that they can separate without creating an economic disaster that leaves their country looking more like Honduras than Switzerland.

If the Conservatives encourage this behind the scenes, a secret deal made between the Conservatives and the Bloc and the PQ, they'll be rid of a significant thorn in their side, and without the threat of Québec voting against them every election, it will be much easier for them to win majority governments, assuming they continue to wield influence in Ontario, which will be easier to influence if Québec is out of the picture.

But there's also this.

If Québec does go bankrupt, English Canada, the United States, Britain and France can effectively buy everything in Québec, it would be like a garage sale, they could pick up billion dollar industries for a song and then take all the profits for themselves after their capital restabilizes the region.

Do the Conservatives want Québec to separate from Canada?

I can't answer that for certain, but I'd wager they do.

The Bloc and the Conservatives are certainly using the same strategies to win seats in the current election.

Imagine that, one of the founding fathers of an independent Québec, Stephen Harper?

I'm sure stranger things have happened.

But in the history of Canada, that's a big, unequivocal, nope.  

*Also, note how Harper has been applauding how his government has created laws that can strip dual citizens of their Canadian citizenship this week. That's one of the biggest problems with Québec separation. Every citizen within the province will likely be able to apply for dual Canadian citizenship if Québec separates. There's a bit of a pesky kerfuffle.