The Day the Earth Stood Still

broderic on December 29, 2008

All throughout The Day the Earth Stood Still you just know that Keanu Reeves is an emotionless alien and not just for the character he plays, but for his acting.

If there was one movie not worth remaking, it was the original, The Day the Earth Stood Still. It’s not that the original was a great movie not to be tinkered with, but that it’s message of peace, love and kindness among men can be told in hundreds of ways that something original can be created without rehashing the old. The original is a classic sci-fi film, and it has wonderful sci-fi elements. To update to now means to mash up sci-fi with the CG thriller action idioms that dominate Hollywood movies today. To update to now means to take those precious rhythms of the original story and flatten them to a monotone of contemporary dreariness. To update to now means to make a very forgettable film. The original was not.

In the original, the viewer was active in confronting the need for change. In the latest, the viewer is replaced by the plaintive wail of a character expressing that things can change. In the former, it is left to each one to devise whether change can happen. In the latter, the need for change is just another story moment. It is groveling which hurt the latest. That character seems to whine too much. In the original, we must change because we are confronted with the need to; we the viewer are asked to act. The latest makes us passive, and it makes us fools. No more whining about it.

2 of 5 stars.

Link of the Day [10.22.08]

broderic on October 22, 2008

Socialism? Funny that you should mention it, Senor McCain. As Matthew
Yglesias points out, your pal, Palin, seems to be right in the middle of
a socialist collective in Alaska. The government has nationalized the
means of production. Alaskans own the oil, which in turns funds the
state. Rugged Alaskans? Do these guys even work? That's rhetorical,
but it does get into how silly leveling charges of socialism at Obama
are. If I do recall, it is the current, Republican administration, that
is in the midst of nationalizing the banks.http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/10/socialism.php

Quote of the Day [10.20.08]

broderic on October 20, 2008

"In this present crisis, government is not a solution to our problem;
government is the problem."President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address

La Guernica

broderic on August 7, 2008

This is interesting, too. On this day, besides Hiroshima, the Spanish town of Guernica was devastated by German bombs. It’s another sad memory for mankind.

Hanging in the Rénia Sofia is Picasso’s La Guernica painted in response to the tragedy of that day. It’s perhaps the most visited painting in that museum.

When we visited last year (it’s been almost year?), there were crowds around it. The scene reminded me of seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. People were intensely studying it and contemplating the horrors of the day. They say it’s one of the more humanistic of paintings. You see it and you wonder how we could do such a thing. Man can be so unkind to his fellows.

It’ll be an everlasting testament to evil.

In Hiroshima, there still exists burnt out shell of the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall. It signifies our yearning for peace. Can’t we all just get along?

Link of the Day [8.06.08]

broderic on August 6, 2008

At 8:15 AM sixty-three years ago, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. In an instant, 140,000 people were killed, and the fate of the world was changed. Who knows if the war in the Pacific could’ve been won without the bomb? Who knows what we had unleashed? It is a legacy that remains with us to this day. Should we have been the ones to use it? If not us, would they have used on us or our allies?

http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html

Quote of the Day [7.09.08]

broderic on July 9, 2008

“My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but
tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.”

Kodos, “Treehouse of Horror VII,” The Simpsons