An American tourist in Russia
The 2009 to 2016 period was a dark age of cinema and I struggle to think of even one good American movie from that period. This slew of terrible capeshit, lazy game adaptions, and half-baked remakes of old IP is now commonly referred to as “Obamaslop.” I wouldn’t say movies have improved since then, but … Read more
There’s this very popular trope in movies and TV of a “damning” video or document that, if exposed to the public, would collapse the whole government. We see this trope over and over again. Like in the 2005 sci-fi movie Serenity (based on the TV show Firefly), the good guys “expose” the government wiping out a whole planetary colony in a botched drug trial that makes people either go catatonic or turns them into sado-masochists. The entire premise of this movie is that if people find out their government is incompetent and evil, they’ll want a different government.
I know this is a popular talking point that commentators reflexively agree with, but is it actually true? The most famous French novel, Les Miserables, is about a guy who goes to prison for stealing bread. In the most famous Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, the main character literally thinks if people don’t want to starve to death they should just wOrK hArDeR (libertarian moment). The moral of that story is rich people will only pay their employees properly if they’re threatened with burning in hell forever. And remember, Dickens was writing when Britain had the largest empire to ever exist.
I rewatched The Big Sleep (1946) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall yesterday, and since I had almost no memory of this movie, it was like a new experience. The Big Sleep is like a video game long before video were even a thing. The hero wanders from scene to scene facing a series of … Read more
