Star Wars Episode IX -- Review

We're still living in Le Trayas, 19 kilometers from Cannes, or 19 quilometros, as they say in Portugal, whereto we are planning to relocate. We kept a Netflix subscription for three or four months last year, during which we watched ONE movie. So we canceled Netflix and decided to resume our occasional excursions to Cannes, where the theaters may show movies in English. And yesterday we went to see the latest Star Wars movie...uh, what was the title..."The Rise of Skywalker" (yes).

This is the Esterel, seen from Cannes, the "mountain" range where we live

I don't quite remember, but this may have been my first time to walk out of a movie before it ended. I had read the reviews, which were so-so, but not devastating.
You watch this movie like you're reading a recipe...
-- "Make sure to satisfy all demographics that count, and don't forget the Marsians and all the other good people of the galaxy;"
-- "Make sure to ignore the established laws of physics, because hard-working American Families, including Donald Trump's, don't care" (so we have this obnoxious space travel going on all the time, and it's particularly grating that we are informed that they travel at the speed of light (meaning, if they are crisscrossing a serious galaxy, that they would still need hundreds or thousands of years to get anywhere));

We could serve as a Star Wars location, save for the beach umbrella

-- "Make sure to separate GOOD from EVIL."
-- "Don't offend anybody," meaning that SELF-HELP is the only permissible ideology/religion left to support the GOOD GUYS. And so we are constantly treated to blatant falsehoods such as 'You can do anything, if you want,' or 'Good people will fight, if we need them,' or 'The force will be with you, always,' or 'Was this review helpful?'
-- (as a lemma to the last ingredient:) "Don't use swear words, or any such thing. And...sex is out of the question, unless it happened light years ago between Harrison Ford and Princess Leia."

"Uuhm"

So, we walked out. It was Chang, partner and photographer, who noted that I was constantly looking at my watch, and suggested that we'd leave.
The special effects are trying to be more special than any previous special effects, and this race is going on now for a hundred years. As this movie shows, there are special limits. We liked the special waves, though (link), because the place we are moving to in Portugal has the highest surfable waves on the planet:

Nazaré, on November 22, 2018

Have a look at the link. Nazaré's waves are better.

Monday morning

Off to Switzerland again

We're back in Switzerland. We left early on Tuesday morning, and here's a picture of the Cannes Film Festival Chang took along the way (the Bay of Cannes, the chartered yachts for the festival parties):

The new face of liberalism

Murder on the Orient Express

So we finally went to Cannes to watch the movie.The box office gal was very happy to see us, since we had tried four days ago, but then we'd gotten the opening hour wrong. 

Us (our hills) seen from Cannes; all pictures by Chang (Jason Yoon)

Well...not a bad movie, although I enjoyed the previous "Murder..." more---which I saw forty years ago. Kenneth Branagh directs this remake and stars as Poirot.

Still almost the same angle. It's about 3:10 PM. We're in a hurry.

Why books no longer sell

Many a literati complain that their books no longer sell. Many a theory circulate why this is so (the disappearance of gay book stores, the disappearance of attention spans, competition from other media, Trump, and so on). But yesterday---yesterday we discovered the definitive answer. Here it is:

Ceci n'est pas une pipe, mais un camp de concentration Trumpien.

No, wrong, this is the airport of Cannes, the main hub of the Cannes Film Festival for anything that moves about by general aviation. Ten years ago, during the Festival, this place was loaded with private jets---Learjets, Falcons, Netjets, Gulfstreams---all patiently waiting for the "talent" to be beautiful, blow insouciant kisses, sign contracts, fuck, collect awards, and then return to Hollywood. And now what? The place is practically empty---emptier, we'd say, than on a normal day of the week when we drive past to go to our discount Lidl supermarket which is just around the corner.

You get it? Nothing sells. Almost. This is not only about books, this is about media in general.

And the underlying reason? Well, a shift in the parameter values of the Power Distribution of course.

Huh? Stay tuned.

(Yes, we possibly should say more about the movie---for the time being then---this picture was taken in Aix-en-Provence, by the way)

As the likelihood of a Trump presidency increases by the minute...

...we asked our friends over at StarWars to share their insights. Here they are:

And while you are at it...okay, first this...

...and soon we'll have a link to an article in the New Atlantic with the best characterization of today's GOP ever (stay tuned).

Sunday matinée

The grass is always greener on the other side...

The Golden Century --- Connubial bliss

Prologue. The Golden Century is an all-you-can-eat oriental restaurant located right next to the landing strip of the Cannes-Mandelieu airfield. If there's any magic to proximity, and if there's any proximity to Hollywood, it’s here. From Brad Pitt to George Clooney to Benedict Cumberbatch, they’ve all been dozens of time inside a two hundred yard circle centered upon the main buffet of the Golden Century. This is the spot where private-jet celebrities touch down on their way to the Festival de Cannes.

The main buffet of the Golden Century

Act I. I had been there once, by sheer coincidence, a few minutes before the place opened for the first time at 7 PM on a nondescript weekday. The doors were already unlocked, I entered unsuspectingly. The place was empty, except for a few nervous waiters and an interior design so intense in its lacquered combination of Formica wood and red lanterns that I fainted.

Spot the difference

We had this interview on The Way She Writes about "linguistically challenged" writers like us, where we were saying typical &t-things like...

I am (and have always been) fairly absent-minded. Absentmindedness is a strength, I think, not a weakness, in general it’s a good thing to be somewhere else with your mind.

...and there was this author picture...

...and people responded with nervous emails along the lines of...what's your secret, what's your secret...?

Here it is (the secret):

Spot the difference.

PS: Cathy Ulrich from Hollywood Hates Me writes: "What difference? I can see no difference."

Street fighter (Jacky)

Jacky, the famous producer, sends this trailer of her latest effort:




There are 12 episodes, apparently, and they are all on YouTube,

HERE  

Enjoy (the Asian cast has an amazing command of English).

San Francisco (12) --- Bullit

While Chang and I were strolling through San Francisco yesterday, the conversation turned to the peculiarities of the street layout here, each street being its own turnpike, as it were, connecting A and B like Alpha Romeos would in the old days, no, wrong, we mean via the shortest route afforded by Euclidean geometry, straight, that is, straight, regardless of the third dimension---and the opportunities this affords to the cinematography of car chases. So here it is---you've certainly seen it a hundred times already---the car chase scene from Bullit, the 1968 movie with Steve McQueen:

Libber-Ace

The book “Behind the candelabra: My life with Liberace” appeared in 1988 and had a good title and a co-author. The movie-idea came to Steven Häagen-Dasz in 2000 during the production of his best movie, Traffic, which also uses Michael Douglas. It took Soderbergh (right, that’s the name), it took him so long because he couldn’t quite figure out “an angle that would differentiate it from a traditional biopic” (according to his own testimony (Wikipedia)). Well, he didn't, or hasn't. This is a traditional biopic with a very traditional story of a very young man being picked up by a very famous one. There is love of some kind (also sex, at one point 4 times per day); there are euphoria, disappointments, drugs, rock-n-roll --- no, actually not, there’s no rock-n-roll because the very famous man is an entertainment pianist from the lounge-lizard school of entertainment pianists --- but there is strife and separation, followed by animosity and reconciliation right before Lee (that’s apparently Liberace’s first name, I always wondered) is carried off by AIDS. AIDS's a kikker for this story, the pianist's HIV-induced death rounds out the plot nicely.

Liberace and Scott Thorson (Damon's character)

Oblivion --- the movie

Perhaps you remember a post from last year, a report from Phuket, the Thai beach 'n sex paradise with its empty, black-marbeled multiplex located in the main mall showing Prometheus, the Ridley Scott movie. What a bummer, Prometheus. After Scott's flick I had given up all hope --- what a silly, one-dimensional horror-story clad in sci-fi illustrations and peopled by captains that fly at superluminal speed and then land their space ship manually on visual clues coming from co-crew that happens to look out of the window.

Hi, I'm Tom Cruise. Yes,  I'm pleased to confirm, turtleneck collars are back in fashion.

An easy act to follow, Hollywood must have thought, and yes, Oblivion is better. There's actually a story, a bit too complex for me, perhaps, the story, but just-so for Chang, who relates to movie scripts like wild boar relate to truffels, he is always, always one step ahead of the script (if that's what wild boar are, the analogy is a bit shaky, perhaps). So Chang knows already that something's wrong with Jack Harper, Tom Cruise's character. Jack and coworker/lover Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are manning this modernistic, nicely appointed, totally airborne watch post, all glass, steel and plastic, a mile high in the sky but otherwise almost looking like Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona pavilion except for the futuristic rounded edges from central casting that have signaled sci-fi since the dawn of time. The watch post also features a swimming pool.

Airborne watch post and helitropic vehicle

Warm bodies (review) (reblogged)

Lokfire from Hollywood Hates Me writes:

So I saw Warm Bodies (the book) laying on the table at the bookstore. I picked it up and perused the back cover.

I'd've perused the front cover, but it was kind of off-putting

A zombie romance? Man, I liked zombies before they were cool. (I kind of hate myself.)  Warm Bodies, a zombie romance, has been made into a movie. Apparently, it's something like a parody of Twilight, which seems silly to me, because why bother to parody something that's already a parody of writing to begin with?

Seriously, though, it just seems like all you'd need to do is point at Twilight and laugh

I haven't left my house in days

Bette Midler

I haven't left my house in days,

I watch the news channels incessantly,

All the news stories are about the election,

All the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis,

Election - erection - election - erection,

Either way we're going to get screwed!"

(We wrote the Pamela Woods part in the Freedom Fries for her; sadly, she doesn't know)