Grumpy Rootbeer

Thrillers and cop movies this week. Much 70s masculinity.

Would have been my movie of the year last year if I'd been able to see it last year

They are all the mother in law from zone of interest. Eager to paw over the spoils, but aghast if they have to see the glow and smoke from the ovens.

It's going to be like a biblical revelation whenever media executives as a class realize that you can actually do very well making and releasing a bunch of little, cheap things that make decent money instead of gambling everything on The Current Fad every few years.

It actually will raise money on an ongoing basis, just not from the billionaires themselves: it will force more money back into circulation within the regular economy creating taxable economic activity and wages.

If I had donor class money, I would be using it to stand up as many left wing news orgs as possible. Alas.

The great thing about the collapse and surrender of the legacy news media is that it means there's never been a better time to build it for yourself. Honestly, this is maybe the first moment since I was in school that I would advise a young person to go into journalism, as long as they have ambition

Pepper-wrongi

This Weeks Editorial Cartoon: Pepper-wrongi

I went to nine years of Catholic school which involved going to a lot of Catholic Church services at which I was not allowed to receive communion because I was Lutheran.

Sure he kicked off and singularly failed to ameliorate the worst financial crisis in American history, but at least he really stuck it to those gross veterans in the bonus army!

Well, yeah. Of course it would. Watergate involved a small number of people and events that took place over a very limited period of time. This involved a huge number of people and activities over the course of decades.

Ah, so more the mother from The Zone of Interest than the wife.

Not quite that many years on, but yes.

Jeff Bozo, more like

Mom didn't buy them any new clothes after they hit their growth spurt over the summer

He's been huffing his own farts so much he's become hypoxic.

Like, Bond in particular was a series in part about experiencing different parts of the world and different ways of life (however problematically). The last few decades it's largely just been about the lifestyles of the transnational ultra rich.

One of my takeaways from rewatching the Godzilla and Bond franchises was noticing how much 20th century mass culture was informed by an ambient interest in popular science, history, and anthropology in ways that just aren't true today.

See Anders Brevik, a shut in who just played world of warcraft and posted on white supremacy forums claiming he did his mass murder to defend a Norwegian culture he took no meaningful part in

The decline of right wing cultural production is just due to the fact that they don’t like culture, they like the signifiers of culture, ie “classic sculpture means white people are better.” They don’t like art at all except for this purpose. They don’t even like the nerd stuff they whine about

One of the guys I do habitat for humanity volunteering with has one and I can only shake my head every time I see it

Inbred submental artistos who can't dress, bathe, or feed themselves without the assistance of a servant or slave patting each other on the back for being noble and honorable as the try to kill one another over petty slights and business deals gone bad.

Yeah, he got lucky that they and then we all got really sidetracked by a little virus immediately afterward

Well, the DnD movie was made by people who actually have deep familiarity with and affection for that property, whereas Abrams and his guys were at best casual Trek fans as I recall.

The hubris of thinking they could just jump right to redoing Wrath of Khan. Nuts.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Into Darkness. That's probably my number one. An insulting piece of shit

I think Garland is a far better script writer than director. He needs someone who can breathe some humanity into his work, otherwise it comes out really cold and alienating.

Yeah, it wanted to be a movie narrowly about being a war photographer where the specifics of the war don't matter. I think that's a foolish goal to begin with, but doubly so when you decide to pair it with and market it around the high concept of a second American civil war.

Honestly, 3 isn't that bad in retrospect. Venom absolutely doesn't need to be in there and there's a handful of truly dumb scenes, but most of it is on par with the other two.

Or get to acknowledge that queer people exist