The Atomic Submarine

Imagine those fighting COVID-19 as the crew of the resolute USS Tigershark, boldly patrolling the Arctic Ocean, guarding against micromanaged wherewithal. In television and film.

Sometimes you don't need to worry so much about Olympian heights and infernal crevices, you can just adapt the golden narrative mean to whatever random idea happens to inspire you.

Sometimes editing gets in the way of the cultivation of free spirits, and naysayers and critical conjurors would have only ruined crafty good times.

Sometimes it's important to have multiple characters who are never really developed, yet keep keepin' on tried tested and true, to a formulaic instinct lock stock incandescent.

Sometimes you don't need bells and whistles, nooks and crannies, rhyme nor reason, you don't even have to use music to keep your film laidback, restless, thawed.

Sometimes questions or second takes only blind a unique vision, whose primordial circumspects would have never been sighted otherwise.

Sometimes when you're tasked with finding striking exemplars of independence, you need to look beyond considerations like applicability, to construct a more robust scenario.

Sometimes there's not much of a point but peeps find purpose in a lack of recognition, proceeding onwards sure and steady without projection, forecast, recall.

Sometimes you simply love somethin' that isn't overflowin' with shoulds and s'post'as, something that no one else seems to get but for you guarantees resolve.

Sometimes meaning isn't meant to be profound, it's more of a relaxed Sunday afternoon expression, perhaps achieving momentary awestruck ends, but without desires to influence or motivate.

Sometimes time is of the essence, so not much time is taken, yet something still comes together, with definitive shape and yield and texture.

Sometimes you need a little context, sometimes simply nothing at all, sometimes there's periodization, at others, essential breakdowns.

Sometimes not taking your time and advancing posthaste full-throttle, creates something larger than life, in the hearts and minds of curious imaginations.

Sometimes things seem so serious, so stressed out and commandeering, best to tune it all out and proceed without ever contemplating repercussion.

There have to be reasons why The Atomic Submarine is in the Criterion Collection, perhaps its total lack of assumption justifying free form collocation.

There's a certain charm no doubt that generates magnetism when you act without thinking.

And you still manage to pull it all off.

Preferred protracted transfers.

Manifesto

Sizzling with cerebral sanctified spunk, a crisp calisthenic collage of artistic movements (manifestos) comedically condensed and maniacally applied, a bit of witty amusing marcochotic minimalism, envisioned extrapolated bizarro encapsulations, diabolic discombobulation, ebullient disillusion, Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto is the most intelligent film I’ve seen in years, but it’s not just an abstruse display of eviscerating conceit, it’s funny too, a rare gift, to transform material as serious as that which Rosefeldt creatively lampoons into a series of critical reflections upon the nature of active being in a manner that chuckles as it castigates and drizzles high and dry, isn’t that easy to do at such a high level, sort of like Monty Python on steroids contemporizing credulia with Žižekean cheek and Derridean poise, a deconstructive magnum opus whose only failing is inherent within its repetitive structure, still, if I was in school I’d like to write essays about it, that would be irresistible, or teach it I suppose, Malcontent Manifestos: The Embroiled Baker's Slather, may pick up a copy regardless, Cate Blanchett’s incredible.

I’d have given her the oscar nod although I’m not sure whether or not you can be nominated for 13 short distinct performances as opposed to one lengthy one.

If that’s an unwritten rule, it should have been rewritten.

As far as manifestos themselves go, I don’t really know what to make of them.

I’ve learned that people like to take part in movements, organizations, hierarchies, even highly independent people, I’ve even found great comfort within unabrasive hierarchies which gave me room to maneuver as long as I respected the levels myself, but in terms of directly following one creed exclusively and abiding by its principles unyieldingly, well, I find that to be quite difficult, unless they aren’t sadistic and I’m being paid an enormous sum that allows me to travel and own property.

It’s like I’m judiciously applying French civil law without a Napoleonic code while bearing in mind precedent based upon what I’ve experienced, read, heard, seen, and created, a lot of the time.

That makes its fun.

Ecstatic extracts.

Conciliatory conscience.

Beware the manifestos that promote violence. If things are despotic and millions are starving, that’s, starving, while an elite few flaunt their wealth that’s one thing, but revolutions often wind up with millions dead, that’s millions of dead people, and the new system often resembles the old eventually with different families occupying the same positions of power.

Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is a must read for those with revolutionary sympathies.

Read it 'til the end!

Peaceful revolutions, quiet revolutions, can remarkably change things however, gradually creating a cooler state of affairs that makes daily life much less desperate for the impoverished.

Not a perfect solution by any means, but democratically moving forward step by step towards something more meaningful, something less cruel, for human and animal kind alike, manifests progressive change that doesn’t rely on monstrous bloodshed.

Keep the non-violent manifestos coming. 

You couldn’t do better.

People like to follow things, get involved. 

I like the idea of following things and getting involved.

Even do get involved from time to time.

Take part. 

Emphasize. 

Doctor Strange

Mind and body.

Interrelations.

Descartes aside, the only real indication that my body has a source code independent of my mind is apparent every time I arrive home and have to use the washroom. I can be out for a while successfully holding back with mind over matter but once my body detects an outlet in close proximity it vehemently takes control of my upcoming accelerated actions.

With sharp immediacy.

And irrepressible distinction.

Turning this peculiar relationship into something spellbinding, into something interdimensional, requires a unique set of skills begrudgingly acquired by one Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), which is more than just a rushed formulaic addition to the Marvel armada, don't get me wrong, I love the formula, it's a fun film to watch but doesn't measure up to Captain America: Civil War (with another 45 minutes it may have [Strange's conversion and training passes by too quickly and the intriguing practical applications of the supernatural are pinned-down by the action {too much brawn, not enough brain}]), it's also a metaphorical guide to the spiritual benefits of rigorously studying a subject or subjects that inspire you, whether they be sporting, artistic, scientific, or rhetorical, game tapes, books, experiments or debates imaginatively generating alternative realities for the eager student/teacher/coach/professional from which they can create agile plays, literary allegories, locked-down lightning strikes, or stunning arguments, synthetically, analytically, fictionally, environmentally, as do the Ancient One's (Tilda Swinton) pupils in Doctor Strange, with intergalactic active primrose.

The film metaimaginatively converses with technology to reflect upon spirit and multidimensionally interpose.

Macrodiscourses of empire and conquest having been thoroughly exhausted and replaced by micropastures of cerebral cyberspatialities, real world style, it seems that these are strange times indeed, which Marvel has entertainingly narrativized ad stock.

With the old school tradition of universal conquest still worked in.

Making millions off an American Honey style blockbuster.

That would be, philosophically humungous.

21st century style.

Loved the library.

*No Big Bang Theory cameos?

The Imitation Game

A mind unlike any other, with an idea, a vision, confidently clad in driven unyielding pertinence, searing arrogant genius, applied to teamwork, to working as a team, to theorize, to crack codes, to imagine an immaculately mechanized gaseous maelstrom, sucking in cyphers then spitting out circumstances, World War II's oppressing destruction caught in its construct like visceral vacuumed variability, results producing tactics which serve to plan, to strategize daily essential outputs affecting lives and the people who live them, the soul crushing realities of life and death logic, covertly consensualized, as spiralling boisterous bedlam.

To suffer in ecstasy.

And win the war.

The Imitation Game celebrates unprecedented advances in theoretical practicalities, adding humanistic plights to the achievement of goals, balance and structure within the hierarchy, competing authoritative conceptions, managing the exceptional's zeal.

Creation's credibility.

Love's unacknowledged blush.

It's about a brilliant mathematician who creates an apparatus that cracks Nazi Germany's enigma machine.

Beyond tragedy, what eventually takes place, difficult to think that so many incredible leaps forward have been squashed in their infancy by culturally accepted prejudices, suffocatingly husking hopes and dreams.

Futures.

From Black Bear Pictures.

Thor: The Dark World

The new Thor film, Thor: The Dark World, takes too many liberties in its preparations for battle.

Its clumsy approach to the construction of its foundations begets a gurgling perfunctory stale flaccid belch.

Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) restoring order to the 9 Realms, not choosing between cotton candy and caramel corn.

But this is a film, not a skyscraper, and after the, sigh, Dark Elves, invade Asgard, it picks up steam and successfully delivers an action-packed dialectic twisting shifting scorn, eccentric citizens of Earth scientifically counterbalancing the religiosity, with glasses, humour metrically romanticizing the miscues, the hammer, pounding and pulverizing away.

Go __ck yourself Loki.

Still, the Convergence could have been more lavish.

As it stands, it's an alright Convergence, but if it only happens once every 9,000 years or so, perhaps Thor: The Dark World could have spent an extra 10 to 15 minutes exploring its quasiphantasmagorical interrelations, multiple entities from manifold worlds gravitating towards these shocks, intertwining piquant interplanetary processions, coordinated cataclysmic chaos, tantalized and transitioned through Thor.

I usually don't recommend that things be more lavish, but in Thor: The Dark World's case, they may have had some extra money to spend.

In a situation like this you don't need to set everything up beforehand.

And you can intermingle select forthcoming synergies within.

Pacific Rim

Can't decide if this film was brutal, interdimensional, or exceptional, meaning it was fun, if not ludicrous, to watch.

And write about.

A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.

They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.

But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.

It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.

By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.

The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.

Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).

After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.

Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.

An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.

Nice touch.

Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.

Quotable lines abound.

Kon-Tiki

Since a young age I've preserved a healthy skepticism regarding whether or not Columbus discovered America.

As I'm sure many others have as well.

Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.

I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.

But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.

Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.

Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.

Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.

Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.

It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.

A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.

I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.

And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?

Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.

Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?

Worth investigating anyways.