Diplomacy, Gerrymandering and Ice Cream

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Friday will be a very long day.  Excuse my absence from the site.  I’ll do my best to catch up later.

Well, I’ll have to say I was shocked that Hamas gave up the twenty living hostages.  I am a little suspicious of their claiming to not have all of the remains of the dead hostages.  Maybe they’re still holding onto some of the living that way.  But all in all, it seems like the Arabs are applying the screws to Hamas and that is a good sign.  Trump is getting some credit even from the leftist media and that is also encouraging.

And I hear that the Supreme Court is about to declare some parts of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.  Specifically, I think they’ll say that the present maximizing of black representation is a form of anti-white discrimination and that may be an incredible change to the breakdown of seats between the Democrats and Republicans in places like Alabama and Mississippi.  Good.  Gerrymandering makes a 60/40 state like Massachusetts into a 100/0 state in terms of representation.  There are zero Republicans in the US House of Representatives from Massachusetts.  Why should there be any Democratic reps in places like Oklahoma or Utah?  Just draw the district maps so that the Republican suburbs and exurbs out number the urban Democrat strongholds and presto change-o no Democrat reps!  Sounds like a plan.  Thank you, Massachusetts!

Now I hear Trump is going to meet with Zelensky and then give the Ukrainians Tomahawk missiles.  That’s a very powerful weapons system.  And then I hear he’s going to meet with Putin.  Well, he’s really going to have to pull a rabbit out of his hat to end this war.  But let him try.  I just hope we don’t start taking incoming from Russian surrogates.  I was just beginning to hope Trump was serious about making the world more peaceful.  Fingers crossed.

Even though we’ve already had frost on the ground Camera Girl was able to find a live preying mantis in the yard and now it’s taking up residence in our house.  She even bought some crickets at Petco and hopes to keep it alive for the duration.  I warned her this might be a very short reprieve.  I think they’re not programmed to live very long after maturity.  Well, I hope to take some macro shots of our little houseguest before he kicks off.

Unbelievably we’re still getting raspberries from the patch and we had them today with vanilla ice cream.  But we’re down to the nitty-gritty.  I think we’ll be getting a hard freeze in the next week or so.  And I’ve taken a bunch of photos of the wolfbane because by Halloween they’ll be wilted too.  Today the bees and the flies were the only insect life I saw around the yard.

So, a beautiful September and beginning of October is transitioning to more wintery weather but spirits are high and with any luck I’ll survive my three-week ordeal with First Selectman Cthulhu with only superficial damage.

Excelsior!

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 16OCT2025 – Something for the Pot

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May I offer up this the 1985 SciFi Enemy Mine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Mine_(film) )? It is an excellent adaptation of Barry B. Longyear’s novella of the same name, Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (of Das Boot fame). It had a low budget (40 Million) and its special effects are well, dated even for 1985. Excellent acting by Dennis Quaid and Louis Gosset as the principals. Bombed at the box office as it was Neither Star Wars, Dune, nor Wrath of Khan.

I would also like to add in the war film department the 1969 film Battle Of Britain . To say the storyline is weak is an understatement (although it is briefly redeemed by Susannah York prancing about in her knickers). The killer here is the aerial fight scenes. These involve LARGE numbers of actual Spitfires, Me109 and Heinkel 111 aircraft (Me109 and Heinkels being part of the Spanish Air Force). They are well scripted and had input from Douglass Baeder and Air Marshall Dowding. It has a G rating but some scenes are almost too realistic and freaked out the 8-year-old me, who dunned my dad into taking me to the movie.

 

Barry Lyndon (1975) – A Movie Review

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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?

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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?