Sunday!

28 thoughts on “Sunday!”

1. I watched Ex-Machina this week. I did not like it. The “twists” and “surprises” where very easy to figure out and Oscar Issac’s performance was not up to his usual self. He ended up telegraphing is character too much and that also made the twists and surprises blah. We now seem to be in an age where happy endings would still be seen as too sweet but “twist” endings are getting way too predictable and dull.

   There is a documentary on Netflix called Sour Grapes which is fun for anyone who likes to see the misbehaving rich who think they are sophisticated have their asses handed to them on a platter. The documentary is about a wine forging scandal from the early and mid 2000s and is a view into the world of high priced wine buying and auctions. We are talking rare vintages where people spend thousands if not tens of thousands on a bottle of wine. Burgundies are the usual object of desire.

   The basics of wine forging are this. Do research into a highly sought after bottle of wine, replicate the bottle, the cork, the wax seal, the label (with appropriate aging of course). Then you take a mix of cheaper wines and blend them together to stimulate the taste of the desired wine. It helps if you have tasted the desired wine yourself.

   I would think that most wines become vinegar after a few decades though.Report

   1. One of the defining characteristics of a good (red) wine is precisely this, that it will not sour into vinegar over time.

      If movies about wine, and in particular wine snobbery, interest you, may I suggest that you check out Bottle Shock.Report

      1. I was going to say, “That’s actually bottling technique,” but, on second thought, that might well spin the dialogue into a, “Proper bottling is integral to exceptional aged wines,” area of discourse, and I’m not so sure I’m prepared for that.

         Therefore, I say nothing.
         Though I use many words in which to accomplish this task.Report

         1. There’s a reason I only buy wine from retired botanists. They know how to sterilize things (and keep the fungus out).Report

            1. Do you have any suggestions for compelling a botanist to retire, or do you just wait around for them to age well?Report

               1. Elect Trump?
                  Nah, I wait for them to retire…Report

      2. @burt-likko

         I watched Bottle Shock last night upon your recommendation. It was a cute movie.Report

2. What if Angry Birds was about colonization and not immigration? What if our current problems with people being terrified of immigration are colonization guilt leading to projection? (whoops, no politics! but you started it.) Granted I slept through most of the movie so your take is probably more perceptive than mine :D.

   What I’ve been doing:

   I spent most of the week reading the letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (with a few return missives from Woolf to make things more whole) and the letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay to a lot of people (mostly relatives or intimate friends).

   I watched Holes yesterday, it’s charming and reminded me mostly of how much I like the book. Did not demand my full attention.Report

   1. Well, the pigs showed up, made friends, stole the eggs, went home.

      So it didn’t map 1:1 for either immigration or colonization… but I’m pretty sure it was running with an immigration thing anyway.

      Anybody else here see it?Report

      1. Regardless whether the movie was about immigration or colonization, I thought the execution was rather ham-handed (oh yes he did!). CLEARLY, the movie was about American foreign policy and our time-honored practice of moving into a region, making friends with the natives, and then exploiting them for their natural resources before clearing out and leaving a mess in our wake.

         I liked Red from the start. I identified with Red and his anger management issues and saw a fellow traveller in Red’s gruff, sour, sarcastic, unpleasant demeanor. It seemed like an understandable, though not entirely mature nor constructive, response to a society that insisted he pretend to be happy while enduring torment at the prehensile wings of his fellow birds. Heck, I’d have moved to the beach, too! I’m probably more like Red at work than I should admit publicly.Report

   2. I saw Holes when it came out. The kids were 8 and 9 at the time, and the plot was complicated enough that it required explanations afterward.Report

3. Finished reading Little, Big. It’s very good but astonishingly complicated. More people here need to read it, so we can talk about it.Report

   1. As it happens, I’m looking for a new book to read.

      If anyone is interested in this suggestion, you can buy the book (and support the site) here. Might we do a book club in, say, January?Report

      1. I like this idea and would, of course, be happy to write some of the recaps.Report

   2. I have a copy somewheres, and I generally love Crowley’s work. Complicated, always.

      Also Love and Sleep.Report

   3. In the middle of moving, so along with no internet* outside my phone, no reading hard involving material. On that note, reading the first book of the Expanse, Leviathan Wakes. Fun, fast paced, a bit ciffhanery. Solid B+ material.

      *Just popped back to the old state for a few, do the house cleaning and take care of a little business.Report

4. Why they call it the No Fun League:
   
   The 49ers blocked a punt and returned it to Chicago’s 4-yard line, but San Francisco’s Rashard Robinson was called for unsportsmanlike conduct for making a snow angel in the end zone.
   Report

   1. “Section 62-3.16: A player expressing himself in the opponents endzone when that expression is deemed to result from either joy, happiness, or a combination thereof, is punishable by applicable penalty yardage, monetary fines, public self-immolation, or psychological evaluation.”Report

   2. I can’t even. Was he adjudged to be using snow as a prop? Like when they decided that goalposts and pylons were not part of the field for purposes of celebration only?Report

   3. That goes back years. I believe Welker in NE originally drew that exact flag.Report

      1. Good knowledge.

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFObX9cgHFsReport

   4. Well. It’s actually consistent with officiating practice, because it was the second guy who got flagged. The actual returner, Dontae Johnson, made a snow angel and wasn’t flagged (neither was Randall Cobb of the Green Bay Packers). Celebration by individuals generally doesn’t get flagged.Report

5. Finally watched the Ghostbusters remake last night. So-so overall, but Kate McKinnon’s mildly crazed engineer was wonderful. I’m willing to come out of retirement if I get to write the real-time control software for Dr. Holtzmann’s stuff…Report

   1. I think of the original every time I hear a computer described as “diskless”.Report

   2. The AI liked the fuss over the new Ghostbusters so much, that now it’s trying to get Schumer to lead a Barbie Movie.Report

      1. Haw. I’m looking forward to a gender-flip Barbie movie.Report

6. Saw Dr. Strange on Saturday (wife’s choice, no really). Quick takes:

   1. Is the Marvel universe completely and utterly devoid of philosophical/theological inquiry – or is it just the movies?
   2. “Dark” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting with regards #1. Of course, “look at the eyes” is probably all we need, right?
   3. I remember when characters other than the main one had backstories and were properly introduced into a narrative. Heck, a parson can’t come to dinner in an Austen novel without a page and a half precis on the status of his vicarage and why he came to be invited. In Dr. Strange the story literally hinges on the mysterious character of the Celt… nothing.
   4. I take it Dr. Strange was an American? He would have been funnier as a Cumberbatchian Brit.
   5. The Dr. Strange Jesus loop was interesting… I assume in the comics he came out of it…changed?
   6. I’d be happy if all the people writing chase scenes were rounded-up, spanked, and sent to bed without supper and royalty checks. (Of course, we’d have to catch them first… argh, foiled already).

   So my serious question is whether the, erm, source material was at least somewhat inquisitive with regards the multiverse, eternity, good and evil… not to mention the characters in the drama? Or are the comics all plot and car-chases too? I was given to believe there was at least *some* thought to these “deeper” issues.Report

   1. In the source material there were benevolent powers typically paired with malevolent ones. The highest powers, though, were somewhat a-moral.Report

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