Category Archives: Film & TV

Atomic Blonde (trailer 2)

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Jason Bourne can just sit the fuck down. I’m not gonna say Atomic Blonde is a great movie. We could argue all day about that. I am gonna say it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time. Boy, oh boy… where to begin?

I’ve heard critics say there was no story. Well, if you need a story, take my library card and go check out Great Expectations. If you want an entertaining movie, look no further.

Now let’s talk about action. I thought the fight sequences in Atomic Blonde were as good (better?) as anything since the first Bourne movie. Remember the fight scene in Kill Bill: Vol.1 between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah (in Michael Madsen’s mobile home)? And the scene where James Gandolfini kicks the living shit out of Patricia Arquette in True Romance? Every fight scene in Atomic Blonde was at the level or a smidgen above.

You might not have noticed but after a long, protracted fight scene, male stars might have a cut lip and be breathing hard. Charlize Theron LOOKED and ACTED like she’d been in a brawl. And during the brawl? Grunting and screaming and gasping. I mean, you were _there_! Oh yeah. I’ll bet there was a half gallon of fake blood splashed on the camera lens during these scenes. And watch for the quick POV (point of view) camera shots.

What else? The sound track! Best I’ve heard in awhile. Every cut worked.

And last but not least… girl-on-girl sex. That’s become standard far in these liberated times. Every action movies needs some hot lesbians. Was Charlize Theron’s character a lesbian? Don’t know. But there was a 20 second scene that was so hot they should have handed out welder’s goggles as you entered the theater.

I was expecting a cartoon but got way more with this movie.

Tired: Ethan Hunt, James Bond, Jason Bourne
Wired: Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde

Awaken

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“Awaken is a new feature documentary by Tom Lowe (YouTube) detailing humans’ relationship with technology and the natural world. The project was shot in over 30 countries during a five-year period, all while making use of next-level cinematography techniques such as time-dilation and underwater photography, ultimately providing viewers with a look at the universe like never before. No post-production effects have been used for the picture, as everything has been captured and thus showcased ‘in-camera.'” (Release in 2018)

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

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Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) is a book by Jerry Mander, who argues that many of the problems with television are inherent in the medium and technology itself, and thus cannot be reformed. From Wikipedia page:

“Television has effects, very important effects, aside from the content, and they may be more important. They organize society in a certain way. They give power to a very small number of people to speak into the brains of everyone else in the system night after night after night with images that make people turn out in a certain kind of way. It affects the psychology of people who watch. It increases the passivity of people who watch. It changes family relationships. It changes understandings of nature. It flattens perception so that information, which you need a fair amount of complexity to understand it as you would get from reading, this information is flattened down to a very reduced form on television. And the medium has inherent qualities which cause it to be that way.”

Two movies about politicians and politics

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The playlist above includes seven clips from two movies: Frank Capra’s 1939 classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Jimmy Steward, jean Arthur, Claude Rains); and Dave (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella and the brilliant Charles Grodin). I’ve posted all of these clips but thought they’d make a nice, tidy playlist.

PS: the tiny horizontal lines with the pointer in the top-right corner, indicates a playlist of several videos.

Travelers

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“Thousands of special operatives, sent back in time from the future, are tasked with preventing the collapse of society. These operatives, known as “travelers”, take over the body of a 21st century individual via a “transfer of consciousness”; to minimize impact on the timeline, it is performed moments before the person’s “recorded time of death”. The transfer requires the exact location of the target; smartphones and GPS have made this possible only from the early 21st century onward. Prepared using social media and public records concerning their targets, small teams of travelers must maintain their hosts’ pre-existing lives as cover while carrying out missions, dictated by their “Director” in the future, aimed at saving the world from a series of catastrophic events. The Director communicates with travelers via pre-pubescent children used as “messengers”; unlike adults, any child can safely be taken over for a few minutes and then released from control. The show focuses on one team of five travelers, starting from their transfers of consciousness. As the series progresses, changes in the present make significantly unanticipated changes in the future.” (Wikipedia)

Atomic Blonde Trailer

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The best thing about Alien: Covenant was the preview for Atomic Blonde. Ridley Scott gave us a scifi classic with Alien. James Cameron delivered a darn good follow-up. That would have been the place to stop. Very disappointed in Ridley Scott.