Republic.com by Cass Sunstein

I almost wish I’d read the summing up chapter of Republic.com rather than the whole thing. On the other hand, the benefit to be derived from exposing oneself to alternate viewpoints is what the book is about, and I wouldn’t have wanted to read it if I hadn’t been interested in the topic.

The idea is that technology increasingly allows us to filter the news we hear; thus we are in danger of losing touch with (or, worse, becoming polarized from) our fellow citizens and the very government we ought to be creating in conjunction with them. The book is a call for increased awareness of the potential problem but also for individual and private action to combat the tendency towards excessive filtering… and also for top-down policy change (regulation) coming from the government itself, if necessary.

See below for more on what I thought.

Continue reading Republic.com by Cass Sunstein

“I don’t always send snail mail…

…but when I do, I use as many old stamps as I can get my hands on.” —Mom

Here are stamps from 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2012. (Because honestly, who restocks their stationery drawer in odd-numbered years?)

Wait, hang on, that Elvis one is from 1993! We Wertses had that stamp several years before we had email!

It’s not worth anything, though; I checked. Apparently the 1993 Elvis stamp was really popular, so the US Postal service printed tons and tons of them. Which is probably (part of) why the Werts house still had some in 2016.*

The Wertses aren’t the only ones to affix ridiculous numbers of stamps to things, though. I think the Hobors still hold the record.

 

*Update: Mom says at least some of these stamps (including the Elvis one) came from me! Apparently I gave her a bunch of stamps when I left the US in 2008 and knew I would not be able to use them to mail things from Singapore.

Madagascar 3 (2012)

The cover of my DVD of Madagascar 3 features a quote that says, “Easily the best one yet!”

Do not be fooled.

It is funny from time to time, and it must have been spectacular in 3D, but it lacks emotional depth. It made a ton of money, though, unlike Rise of the Guardians, which came out in the same year, and which must have been equally spectacular in 3D, and which personally I liked a lot better.

The premise is that Alex and friends get tired of waiting for the penguins and chimps to come back from Monte Carlo and take them to NYC, so they go to Monte Carlo to look for them. However, an animal control woman who can sniff out animals like a bloodhound and who has always wanted a lion for her collection of stuffed heads starts chasing them. They escape her temporarily, but crash land before they’ve gone far. How can a group of animals move around Europe without attracting notice? By running away with the circus, which becomes an all-animal circus when the penguins and chimps buy out the owner.

The whole thing gives me the impression that some committee decided to make Cirque de Soleil, in Europe, using the Madagascar characters, plus some Europeans with funny accents, and then hastily wrote a complicated, ridiculous plot that included all of the group’s ideas, instead of all of the group’s best ideas.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Not only do kids deserve good stories, kids especially deserve good stories.

Sigh.

At least they got a good light show.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/madagascar-3-europes-most/id909794795

More thoughts, with SPOILERS, below.

Continue reading Madagascar 3 (2012)

Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

Okay, so when I chose to see Mechanic: Resurrection at the theater, I didn’t realize it was a sequel. To a remake.

Maybe someday I’ll see The Mechanic (2011) and The Mechanic (1972). I’m not in any huge hurry, though. This movie was clever but a bit bloody for me. Plus, bald-with-stubble is not exactly my preferred kind of action hero.

The premise is that a highly skilled assassin is blackmailed, by means of a rather shallow-seeming relationship with a lovely woman (who herself has been blackmailed, by means of some orphans in Cambodia) into doing some dirty work for a criminal boss guy. He is given three targets spread out around the world and some really really tight time constraints, and told that, as usual, the kills must look like accidents. Much cleverness and death ensues. I liked the resolution of the conflict, though the conclusion felt a bit tacked on.

Given what a male-centric kind of plot it was (it is an action movie, after all), I was impressed with how much the untrained woman tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to resist her kidnappers. She also managed to communicate a helpful clue to her rescuer. Moreover, she didn’t come across as an overly exaggerated Strong Female Character like Jane in the recent Tarzan movie.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/mechanic-resurrection/id1142118992

The Infiltrator (2016)

I expected The Infiltrator to have more tension, violence, and fear than it actually did. At the heart of the movie is (the real-life story of) a friendship betrayed; the core of this movie is not danger, or even justice or remorse, but sadness. I wasn’t expecting that.

They picked the perfect actor for the role; here you have Bryan Cranston again transforming (albeit temporarily) from a mild-mannered husband to an absolutely driven liar, imposter, and corrupt kind of dude (you know, like he did in Breaking Bad).

The deadly game that the character Robert Mazur plays is reminiscent of the antics seen in Catch Me If You Can (2002), only the consequences of exposure aren’t jail, they’re much, much worse. Bob is in the car when a contact he was meeting with is shot dead and the car flips over. So it’s not as if there’s no fear, no tension, and no violence at all.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-infiltrator/id1133650155

Keep reading for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading The Infiltrator (2016)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Though I didn’t know anything about the book, the title, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the author’s exotic-sounding three-part name were familiar to me for years. I’ve now read the book, but I don’t feel I am familiar enough with Hurston’s historical context or the intervening decades of relevant literary criticism to fully appreciate its significance.

For a plot summary and other thoughts, see below.

Continue reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Longing for longans

This is a box of longan fruit. The longan is a kind of fruit related to lychee and rambutan. The text on the box says:

Fresh Longan
Longing for longans… grab a handful of this sweet, fleshy fruit and enjoy it’s exotic taste!

The box contains some truly tasty fruit, but it’s a shame that its punctuation is rotten.

Turbo (2013)

Well, race fans… What to say about Turbo. Not a favorite. Too many characters and subplots. There are comparisons one could draw between this movie and Pixar’s Cars (2006) and the less obviously related Ratatouille (2007), and Disney’s Planes (2013)… but none of those comparisons favor Dreamworks.

Among the Dreamworks disasters, I liked Rise of the Guardians better than Turbo; I vaguely think Sinbad and El Dorado were okay; I haven’t seen Mr. Peabody & Sherman or Penguins of Madagascar.

Turbo’s premise, which is proclaimed insane throughout the movie itself, is that a garden snail from somewhere in California accidentally gains superpowered speed (and miscellaneous other irrelevant attributes of being a car), finds a human sponsor, and goes to compete in the Indianapolis 500 against his childhood idol, a famous French driver. Throw in Samuel L. Jackson, a Latino, grown-up version of the charmingly oblivious fat boy in Up, more antagonists than you can shake a stick at, and a clip from the hit song “Eye of the Tiger” and you’ve got a mess of a movie.

I thought the filmmakers had passed up the world’s most obvious chance ever to make the old “look at that S car go” joke until I noticed that Turbo’s race number is ‘5’, which looks an awful lot like the letter ‘S’. Kudos, guys! I was expecting the joke and you still got me.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/turbo-2013/id666620766

Keep reading for more on what didn’t work and why, including SPOILERS. (Ha ha, get it? Spoilers!)

Continue reading Turbo (2013)