I always thought this was a great short story. What a perfect subject for an easily made mini-movie. No super complicated special effects. Some old clothes and props. I like it.
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items
Barry Lyndon (1975) – A Movie Review
I watched “Barry Lyndon” for the first time last night. I read that it was one of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpieces. And I do respect Kubrick’s art. But after watching it I realize that a masterpiece can be terrible entertainment.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
The movie is the story of the career of Redmond Barry an Irish man who allowed his passions to dictate his fate to a degree that is painful to watch. He gets into a duel over a girl (his cousin) and this forces him to flee his home to avoid legal prosecution and then he joins the British Army during the Seven Years’ War and by deserting his service he ends up in the Prussian Army and after that he becomes first a spy and then a crooked gambler. And finally, he marries a rich English widow and attempts to become part of the nobility. And while attempting this he allows his philandering to alienate his wife and step-son and eventually lands him in a duel with this step-son in which Redmond loses a leg. Along the way his wife presents him with a son of his own and the little boy is tragically killed in a riding accident. He ends his life in exile returning to Europe to attempt to live off his ability to cheat at cards.
If this sounds like a ridiculous plot for a movie, it’s because, it is!
Ryan O’Neal plays Redmond and Kubrick directs the film as a straightforward narrative with very little dialog and only a few scenes that provide much in the way of emotional discovery. What this movie provides is cinematography. Beautiful landscapes, remarkable palaces and estates, perfectly lighted and photographed interior shots; all of the products of a master cinematographer. As a photographer myself I can appreciate the care with which the shots were set up and displayed for the viewer. And the costumes and battle scenes and rural settings are amazing. But that’s all you get. The story moves forward at a glacial pace and there really isn’t anyone in the story (except the six-year-old little boy who dies) that you care about at all. Redmond himself is a selfish, dishonest man. And he is surrounded with mostly the same kinds of people. Who can I recommend this movie to? I guess photographers, cinematographers and diehard fans of Stanley Kubrick. It’s just too slow and empty and bleak for a general audience. It’s visually beautiful and emotionally empty. Sorry.
What Have You Got for the Pot?
I wanted to do a movie review. I’ve recorded Barry Lyndon and was going to watch it. But I got home late from work and the movie is three hours long and I thought I might fall asleep before I could write a review of it. So, I’ll wait for a better opportunity.
But it got me thinking about all those lists of the top twenty, fifty, one hundred or two hundred movies of all time. So, I looked at a bunch of lists. Some by leading directors, some by professional critics and some by just regular people.
I was horrified.
So many movies that I know are truly awful get on these lists. It makes you wonder if there can truly be a list of the top twenty movies of all time, never mind the top one hundred. One list from IMDB had, “The Shawshank Redemption” as the second-best movie of all time. It had, “Raging Bull” as the fourth-best. I find both of these rankings impossible. There are literally dozens of movies better than either one of these (in my opinion). By the same token, the list made up by famous directors also had movies listed that I’ve seen that were awful. Any top 100 list that includes, “Eraserhead” needs to be scrutinized very carefully to see if the judges have been using LSD at the time of the survey.
Okay, maybe there is no such thing as an objective list of the best films. But surely there must be a way to write an algorithm that incorporates several criteria to eliminate the worst excesses of either hyper-artistic avant-gardism and knuckle-dragging philistinism and provide a solid dependable list of very good films to look at. I think it can be done.
One thing though. I think it is necessary to divide the list into categories. Comedies, dramas, action-adventure and other genre movies need to be judged separately. It’s too difficult comparing films in different categories against each other. And in a way it’s unhelpful. Someone who hates comedies isn’t going to agree that any comedy can be better than the films he likes. And vice versa.
But for today’s post I’m going to ask the audience to take an active role. Pick one movie that you think has been neglected by critics that deserves to be elevated to a loftier status. And then pick a movie that is hailed by critics or the public as outstanding that in your opinion stinks. If you can only do one or the other, please feel free to provide that. I’m always looking for good movies to watch and I think it will be interesting to hear what movie you think doesn’t deserve the acclaim it currently enjoys.
I’ll start the ball rolling. Hitchcock’s, “Vertigo” always ends up in the top twenty movies according to high-brow critics and top flight directors. I’ve seen it and think it’s terrible. I’m not sure what exactly all the hype is about but it must be the “cinematography.” Something about camera angles. Well, they can keep it.
A movie I think has been overlooked is an earlier Coen Brothers movie, “Miller’s Crossing.” Gabriel Byrne is the protagonist; a gangster named Tom Reagan who works for Leo O’Bannon played enthusiastically by Albert Finney. John Turturro and Steve Buscemi are also part of the cast. True to the Coen Brothers style, there is over the top violence and emotional havoc in all directions but the effect is powerful and very interesting. If you like gangster movies this one is worth a watch.
So, what has everyone else got for the pot?
Tom’s World – 10OCT2025 – Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata
It’s Beethoven for me, especially Movement 1 of Moonlight Sonata. it is brilliant, minimalist, and pure beauty. I want this played at my funeral.
Update:
Bach Oboe and Violin, mesmerizing
Update:
And now, for something completely different—
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10OCT2025 – SF Longevity
There have been several SciFi takes on this. Three stick out to me beyond Heinlein’s tales of Lazarus Long. These are Niven’s Boosterspice in Known Space, Blish’s antiagathics in the Cities In Flight, and Weber’s Prolong in the Honorverse.
My memory on Cities In Flight is poor, but I think the antiagathics were rare and kept only to the upper class so it has limited effect on it’s society other than envy of the upper classes.
In both Known Space and the Honorverse there is a tendency for careers to be MUCH longer. What would have been generational wealth tends to be personal wealth over time. Prolong gets you 200-300 years in very good shape.
Boosterspice is unlimited, Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday at the start of Ringworld and hangs around MUCH longer(potential spoiler for a 30-50 year old series 🙂 ). There is a hint in a later Known Space story that, over time, Boosterspice also makes Humans VERY risk averse (though not quite Puppeteer risk averse).
In the Honorverse Prolong also seems to extend the period of fertility so 100+ year old couples can be seen having children much later in life. I do not know about boosterspice.
At the time of Ringworld, Earth is still run by the UN and the birthrights system, but little is said otherwise. That said Teela Brown had not yet had boosterspice when she (presumably 20 something) heads off to the Ringworld(again potential spoiler). This might suggest that although extending life the effect on fertility is either negative or irrelevant so reproduction is limited by the normal span of ~ 40 years.
Eine kleine Mozartmusik
In association with this morning’s movie review of “Amadeus” here is a musical chronology of some of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s keyboard compositions starting at age five!
Of course if I hadn’t been distracted from music by my passion for sitting around watching tv who knows what I myself might not have achieved.
Amadeus (1984) – A Movie Review
Here’s yet another movie I haven’t seen in forty years. Although in a sense this is the first time I’m seeing parts of it because it’s the “director’s cut” which added twenty additional minutes to a movie that was already 161 minutes long.
I’ll dispense with the idea of plot spoilers. The whole movie is the confession by aged composer Antonio Salieri of his “murder” thirty-some-odd years before of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a man he openly admits produced music of a divine quality. Basically, Salieri sets out to destroy Mozart as a way of taking revenge on God for giving the gift of producing sublime works of musical art to a man he judges to be obscene and undeserving instead of to himself whom he judges to be pious and deserving.
Over the course of several years, he does everything imaginable to ensure Mozart cannot make enough money to flourish including using his influence with Emperor Joseph II of Austria to discourage any patronage from the nobility. Eventually he discovers that Mozart has a deep-seated neurosis around his father’s dissatisfaction with the way Mozart lived his life and after his father’s death Salieri impersonates Mozart’s father’s ghost by showing up as a masked figure to commission Mozart to compose a requiem mass. Salieri knows that Mozart will assume the mass is for his father and this will further injure his physical and mental health.
Finally, because of mental stress, malnutrition, alcoholism and probably tuberculosis Mozart collapses during a performance of one of his operas. Salieri takes advantage of Mozart’s wife Constanze’s absence to persuade Mozart to work through the night to try to complete the mass which Salieri hopes to pass off as his own during Mozart’s own funeral as his final insult to God. But Constanze arrives just in time to take away the manuscript from Salieri and mourn for her husband as he expires.
All of this story is told as a confession by Salieri to a priest who arrives at Salieri’s room in a mental hospital where he was installed after attempting suicide on account of guilt for killing Mozart. But at the end of the film he is unrepentant, insane and declares himself the patron saint of mediocrities, a man whose works of art are completely forgotten by the world, while Mozart’s music continuously grows more and more popular and celebrated over time.
Basically, this movie is a tour de force by F. Murray Abraham playing Salieri with Tom Hulce as Mozart coming in a close second. But let’s face it. No one is watching a three-hour period piece about Mozart unless he wants to hear the music. Between the actual recordings of his chamber music and generous chunks from several of his operas this is not just a theatrical presentation. It’s a concert too.
And for that reason, I don’t think I can recommend this movie to anyone who dislikes classical music. I believe it would be painful to watch that much of something that doesn’t appeal to you. I’m not sure if even the theatrical release version of the movie at 161 minutes would be short enough for the non-music lover. But for people who don’t mind a little opera sprinkled on their corn flakes this might be a movie to consider. I thought it was pretty good.
You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice
So, I learned some stuff today about publishing a book.
- There’s no such thing as an objective authoritative critic who can tell you whether your book is good, bad or indifferent. In other words, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” If you believe your book is good then you take your chances. So that puts the onus back on me. Do I believe in my book or not?
- After you write it and put a cover on it and edit it, then you have to get influencers to tout it and reviewers to praise it. But after all that you have to advertise it on Amazon to the tune of thousands of dollars. Otherwise, no one will know it’s there.
Well, now I’ll have to search my soul and decide just how much I want to get my book out in the world. Do I put my money where my mouth is? I guess I’ll find out. Now, all this is still preliminary. I have to get a cover and get an editor to tell me about all my typos and inelegant grammatical constructions. And get a marketer to “alert the media.” And for the next month I’m going to be buried under a project that will prevent me from concentrating on anything important. But by the third week in November, I’ll be available (other than a Thursday where I’ll be buried under cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie).
Well, it was definitely a clarifying experience. There’s no way to pass the buck on a thing like this. The author has to search his soul and use the wisdom of Solomon to make the correct decision. Well, so what? What’s Solomon got that I ain’t got, in spades? Darned right!
So, if you drive through Dunwich and you see a disheveled geezer picking up bottles and cans on the side of the road, it may be me trying to raise enough capital for the project. With any luck I’ll strike oil in the north forty and I can start on the gold leaf hardcover edition that all of us “real authors” like so much.
Okay, so enough moaning and groaning. The journey is the reward they say. So, I’ll just follow my nose and see where all this ends up. Of course, if I get too enthusiastic Camera Girl will wonder why the checking account has gotten so anemic. And that could trigger all kinds of hazardous situations. After all she has complete control over my food supply and knows my sleeping habits. But I won’t allow artistic decisions to be influenced by cowardly and pedestrian concerns. “Ars gratia artis,” you know.
Well, back to something comical; the government shutdown! I hear Trump is going to permanently terminate “hundreds of thousands” of federal employees to get back at the Democrats for shutting down the government. That’s a pretty bold move. I’m starting to believe there are no limits to what he plans to do to the federal government. He seems to be borrowing Obama’s statement that he would “fundamentally transform the United States.” And at this rate maybe Trump will actually do it!
I Am Oz, the Great and Powerful! Who Are You!
Tomorrow, I have an appointment to talk with a marketing expert. Someone who gets paid to say how to market a book so that people will find it and want to buy it. What are my expectations? Surprisingly, I’m not expecting miracles. What I’m hoping to do is learn what the limits and parameters are for this kind of service.
For instance, what is the reach of this business? What is the specificity? I’ve been led to believe by everything I’ve read that Amazon and Google can target ads to someone based on what they want to buy right now. Well, okay so how much does it cost to target only those people?
Another thing I’m interested in is pricing. Obviously the lower the price of something the more people will be willing to buy it. So, there is probably an optimum price for maximizing profit. But what if you want to maximize the number of people who read your book? Is zero and option? And is some minimum price just as good?
And I want to know if these experts are well-acquainted with right wing readers (my target audience). After all, I’m not selling to the people who read “A Handmaid’s Tale” or “Woman on the Edge of Time.” Those people would be rooting for my villains. So, I want to know how specific they can get with the audience that they are reaching as potential readers.
Also, I want to know if they can tap into expert critical opinion to tell me ahead of time whether my story even has potential to interest a large audience or not. They might be able to convince me that I’m attempting the impossible. That piece of information alone would be extremely valuable to me. I mean, sure, I’m just like every author. I love my creation and think it worthy of an audience. But maybe I’m very wrong. Knowing that ahead of time could save me a lot of money and pain.
So, I’ll spend tomorrow collecting my thoughts and writing down questions to ask the “Wizard.” One thing I’m interested in is how important a cover is. Sure, a glossy cover with a sniper on a building above an Antifa riot would really hammer home the story better than just a text but what is the actual difference in sales? Could I compensate by dropping the price to $0.99 for a few days or weeks to get word of mouth? After all aren’t most books now e-books? Do people need a cover when they’ll be reading the “book” on a Kindle?
And finally, I’m intrigued by the idea of running a Kickstarter to try and drum up funds and give the project visibility before the book is even up for sale. I recently watched Larry Correia run a Kickstarter and he’s gotten $250,000 in advance sales. Now I’m not kidding myself. He’s got an enormous fan base already so there’s no comparison but still, the “GoFundMe” site has high visibility for whomever uses it. So, I’ll ask about that too (even though I think I know what the answer will be).
So that’s what my Thursday looks like. Maybe after tomorrow I’ll have a new perspective on selling my book. Or maybe I’ll be even more confused than ever.
Tomorrow the Stars – A Science Fiction Book Review – Part 1 – Poor Superman
A while ago I spoke of buying a book I owned fifty-some-odd years ago. So, here’s a story from that book to talk about. The author Fritz Leiber was pretty popular back in the day. So, I don’t intend to rewind the plot here because it’s a short story (twenty-eight pages) and anyone can find it out there in the public domain, I’m sure.
But I just want to give some impressions of the best aspects of the story. This is explicitly a post-apocalyptic world. New York City and Washington DC are craters. And because of the disaster the US government has been supplanted by a regime called the Thinkers. They are frauds who have convinced the populace that they have supercomputers and atomic rockets that go to Mars to commune with the all-wise Martians and something called the “Mind Bomb,” etc., etc., etc. The real scientists have been cowed into keeping quiet and the nominal leader is a guy named Jorj Helmuth who was a publics relations specialist in the before time but now believes his own hype and thinks he’s a master of sleep learning and hypnotism and whatever else he’s made up.
The story is basically the maneuvering of Jorj, his cronies, the scientists and a few other actors on stage. Leiber lays out the story and the characters in broad strokes but very skillfully and it’s fun to recognize the Soviet (and American) propaganda playbook being run to fascinating effect. It’s a cautionary tale about idealism and chicanery and power politics and the danger of believing in your own lies. And even thought this story was written in 1951 it reads the same as if it was written today or tomorrow.
And it has a great villain who just exudes realpolitik and a feme fatale and even a twist ending to make sure you don’t forget that it’s from the golden age of science fiction. And even the title of the story is the punchline.
All these same people inhabit our present world. The lies and make believe from then is no different from the BLM or Antifa grifts that we see all around us. Probably the closest thing would be the climate change scam that has bankrupted Europe and exacerbated the monetary problems we’re experiencing.
So, that was fun. There are a few more stories in the book that I’ll highlight in later episodes of this book review. But I’ll say that “Poor Superman” is the crème de la crème of the entire collection. And since it’s the last story in the book you finish it off with a smile on your face. See, that Bob Heinlein really knew the trick to editing an anthology. Make sure the last story leaves them wanting more.
So, who remembers this story or at least remembers the name Fritz Leiber? Surely, I’m not the only old science fiction fan here and I’d love to get some other opinions. After all, I’m just one man. And I’m not even superman.