(no subject)
Oct. 20th, 2019 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Well, Batwoman is a keeper. Seen two episodes now -- and it is well paced, character centric, and answers questions quickly while posing new ones, with no drag.
Bonus points? It is a series about a female vigilante who may or may not be as crazy as the psychopathic killer that may or may not be her twin sister. It's basically a female version of Batman and the Joker, with a nifty twist -- are they related?
Add to this various subplots. Oh, relationship drama in vigilante superhero wrapping, grey morality abounds.
I'd say it's the best of the new dramatic series to date. At least from a pacing perspective. Or my favorite.
2. Almost Family -- I'm considering giving up on. The sisters are grating on my nerves. Actually everyone is. I kept wanting to throw things at the television set -- it can't be good for my blood pressure.
Also considering giving up on the legal procedurals, which never work for me any longer any how. Not a fan of legal procedurals. Not sure the cast on either is enough to keep me.
So to date? Evil, Sunnyside, Mixedish, Perfect Harmony, Almost Family, All Rise, Bluff City Law, the Unicorn, Bless this House -- have either already or are about to hit the proverbial scrap heap. (I can't watch everything...there's only so much time available in a week. And these things start to mount up.)
And possibly Poldark -- which I can't seem to watch without throwing things at the television set. I don't know what happened, but I appear to have turned a corner on BBC costume dramas or Masterpiece presentations. I couldn't watch The Press either.
3. John Scalzi's take on Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese's dissing of Marvel Super Hero flicks.
Apparently Coppola felt Scorsese was getting all the press on this. Honestly, I miss the days in which I was blissfully unaware of what these guys thought of films they didn't make. They aren't movie critics, they are film school geeks who made their best flicks in the middle portion of the 20th Century, when technology was still far behind the eight ball.
4. Scorsese or Coppola (or anyone) griping at Marvel films as not “true cinema” or despicable or whatever is essentially also condemning the vast majority of major studio output — competent entertainments — to the same fate. Which seems, I don’t know, a tad *dramatic.*
5. (Not to mention that Scorsese and Coppola — and indeed nearly any major director with more than a handful of films to their name — has forgettable “competent entertainments” on their resume as well. They did films for money/to keep busy/to catch a wave, too.)
6. I won’t suggest Marvel films are great cinema in general, but what I can say is that I appreciate Disney’s consistent high competence with these films — if you think it’s easy, note WB’s DC inconsistencies, or Universal’s aborted “Dark Universe.” It ain’t easy, folks.
7. Which is why Marvel films *have* their exalted place in common culture at the moment — as “Competent Entertainments” they fill their brief with a consistency very few other franchises ever have. That’s not down to an “auteur,” that’s down to an institutional dictate.
8. Which in point of fact may be what Coppola and Scorsese — who came to fame in the 70s as cinematic auteurs — are actually griping about: Marvel films are the antithesis of the sort of films they create and that they admire, ones of a specific directorial vision.
9. Which is fine! But doesn’t rise to the level of cinematic despicableness, any more than the studio-era musicals or gangster films, so much more about a studio identity than any specific director (even if some directors became identified with the genres), were despicable.
I kind of agree. Of course I find it difficult to care what Coppola or Scorsese think, having watched their films and seen the flaws. I enjoyed them for what they were. But I'd rather go re-watch the Marvel flicks. Sorry boys.
4. Three Absurd Stories Show How Badly NASA Misunderstood Women
(The first headline? Sally Ride didn't need 100 tampons for a week long mission. Honestly, I doubt she needed one. They call it a monthly period for a reason, fellas.)
5. How did this poisonous plant become one of the American South's Most Long-Standing Staples?
Hint? It's a parasite purger.
6. Explainer: Why is Turkey Fighting Syria's Kurds?
Almost everyone agrees that the chaos that has descended on Syria since last week—when Turkey invaded Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria after the Trump administration’s announcement of a withdrawal of U.S. troops—was the bloody aftermath of a betrayal. But just who stabbed whom in the back is up for debate.
Kurdish forces based in Syria say the United States abandoned them with no warning and no justification after years of cooperation fighting against the Islamic State. But Turkey says the U.S. decision to partner in the first place with the Syrian Kurdish forces—which it considers an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group based in Turkey—was itself a betrayal of Washington’s fellow NATO ally. U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to endorse that view in a press conference on Wednesday in the White House.
The Kurdish claim is easy enough to adjudicate: The U.S. military made promises to the Kurds, or at least implied commitments, that it failed to keep. The Turkish claim—essentially, that Syrian Kurdish forces are allied with terrorists—is more complicated and more dubious. Here’s why.
Who are the Kurds?
Having first emerged in the 10th century, the Kurds are today considered the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own, despite having been promised autonomy in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. “The two great powers of the day, Britain and France, reneged in 1923 and carved up the Kurdish territories into modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria,” writes the historian Bryan R. Gibson in a recent article for Foreign Policy. Kurds have been fighting for some form of independence ever since, often in the teeth of state atrocities such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare against Kurdish civilians. The closest the Kurds have come to an independent state is an autonomous region of northern Iraq, which has been largely self-administered since the U.S. invasion of 2003.
What is the PKK?
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the Kurdish acronym PKK, was founded as a Marxist-Leninist group in Turkey in 1978 in response to state-backed discrimination against Turkish Kurds, with the goal of creating an independent Kurdistan. A PKK insurgency against the Turkish state began in 1984, and fighting between the two sides has continued intermittently ever since, accompanied by heavy-handed Turkish repression in Kurdish areas, resulting in the deaths of more than 40,000 people, a majority of them Kurdish civilians. The PKK, for its part, has focused its attacks on the Turkish military over the years, but it has also hit civilian targets. Turkey and the United States have both designated the PKK a terrorist organization.
What is the SDF?
The Syrian Democratic Forces were officially founded in northern Syria on Oct. 11, 2015, to defend the area amid Syria’s civil war and the rising Islamic State. The organization includes Arab and Assyrian militias, but its primary component has been the People’s Protection Units (abbreviated from the Kurdish name Yekineyen Parastina Gel as YPG), made up of ethnic Kurds. The United States encouraged the formation of the SDF and partnered with it to fight against the Islamic State.
What’s the relationship between the SDF and the PKK?
The SDF, as described above, is primarily composed of the YPG militia. That militia was itself officially founded in 2011 as the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish party Democratic Union Party, or PYD. Turkey’s claim is that the PYD is an offshoot of the Turkish PKK and that the PKK had a hand in initially setting up the YPG. The PYD denies those links.
I've always found it confusing. But the battles erupted again right after I visited Turkey in 2000.
7. Secret Life of The Tower of London's Chief Guard
The title looked interesting. No time to read. Have fun.
Bonus points? It is a series about a female vigilante who may or may not be as crazy as the psychopathic killer that may or may not be her twin sister. It's basically a female version of Batman and the Joker, with a nifty twist -- are they related?
Add to this various subplots. Oh, relationship drama in vigilante superhero wrapping, grey morality abounds.
I'd say it's the best of the new dramatic series to date. At least from a pacing perspective. Or my favorite.
2. Almost Family -- I'm considering giving up on. The sisters are grating on my nerves. Actually everyone is. I kept wanting to throw things at the television set -- it can't be good for my blood pressure.
Also considering giving up on the legal procedurals, which never work for me any longer any how. Not a fan of legal procedurals. Not sure the cast on either is enough to keep me.
So to date? Evil, Sunnyside, Mixedish, Perfect Harmony, Almost Family, All Rise, Bluff City Law, the Unicorn, Bless this House -- have either already or are about to hit the proverbial scrap heap. (I can't watch everything...there's only so much time available in a week. And these things start to mount up.)
And possibly Poldark -- which I can't seem to watch without throwing things at the television set. I don't know what happened, but I appear to have turned a corner on BBC costume dramas or Masterpiece presentations. I couldn't watch The Press either.
3. John Scalzi's take on Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese's dissing of Marvel Super Hero flicks.
Apparently Coppola felt Scorsese was getting all the press on this. Honestly, I miss the days in which I was blissfully unaware of what these guys thought of films they didn't make. They aren't movie critics, they are film school geeks who made their best flicks in the middle portion of the 20th Century, when technology was still far behind the eight ball.
4. Scorsese or Coppola (or anyone) griping at Marvel films as not “true cinema” or despicable or whatever is essentially also condemning the vast majority of major studio output — competent entertainments — to the same fate. Which seems, I don’t know, a tad *dramatic.*
5. (Not to mention that Scorsese and Coppola — and indeed nearly any major director with more than a handful of films to their name — has forgettable “competent entertainments” on their resume as well. They did films for money/to keep busy/to catch a wave, too.)
6. I won’t suggest Marvel films are great cinema in general, but what I can say is that I appreciate Disney’s consistent high competence with these films — if you think it’s easy, note WB’s DC inconsistencies, or Universal’s aborted “Dark Universe.” It ain’t easy, folks.
7. Which is why Marvel films *have* their exalted place in common culture at the moment — as “Competent Entertainments” they fill their brief with a consistency very few other franchises ever have. That’s not down to an “auteur,” that’s down to an institutional dictate.
8. Which in point of fact may be what Coppola and Scorsese — who came to fame in the 70s as cinematic auteurs — are actually griping about: Marvel films are the antithesis of the sort of films they create and that they admire, ones of a specific directorial vision.
9. Which is fine! But doesn’t rise to the level of cinematic despicableness, any more than the studio-era musicals or gangster films, so much more about a studio identity than any specific director (even if some directors became identified with the genres), were despicable.
I kind of agree. Of course I find it difficult to care what Coppola or Scorsese think, having watched their films and seen the flaws. I enjoyed them for what they were. But I'd rather go re-watch the Marvel flicks. Sorry boys.
4. Three Absurd Stories Show How Badly NASA Misunderstood Women
(The first headline? Sally Ride didn't need 100 tampons for a week long mission. Honestly, I doubt she needed one. They call it a monthly period for a reason, fellas.)
5. How did this poisonous plant become one of the American South's Most Long-Standing Staples?
Hint? It's a parasite purger.
6. Explainer: Why is Turkey Fighting Syria's Kurds?
Almost everyone agrees that the chaos that has descended on Syria since last week—when Turkey invaded Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria after the Trump administration’s announcement of a withdrawal of U.S. troops—was the bloody aftermath of a betrayal. But just who stabbed whom in the back is up for debate.
Kurdish forces based in Syria say the United States abandoned them with no warning and no justification after years of cooperation fighting against the Islamic State. But Turkey says the U.S. decision to partner in the first place with the Syrian Kurdish forces—which it considers an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group based in Turkey—was itself a betrayal of Washington’s fellow NATO ally. U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to endorse that view in a press conference on Wednesday in the White House.
The Kurdish claim is easy enough to adjudicate: The U.S. military made promises to the Kurds, or at least implied commitments, that it failed to keep. The Turkish claim—essentially, that Syrian Kurdish forces are allied with terrorists—is more complicated and more dubious. Here’s why.
Who are the Kurds?
Having first emerged in the 10th century, the Kurds are today considered the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own, despite having been promised autonomy in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. “The two great powers of the day, Britain and France, reneged in 1923 and carved up the Kurdish territories into modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria,” writes the historian Bryan R. Gibson in a recent article for Foreign Policy. Kurds have been fighting for some form of independence ever since, often in the teeth of state atrocities such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare against Kurdish civilians. The closest the Kurds have come to an independent state is an autonomous region of northern Iraq, which has been largely self-administered since the U.S. invasion of 2003.
What is the PKK?
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the Kurdish acronym PKK, was founded as a Marxist-Leninist group in Turkey in 1978 in response to state-backed discrimination against Turkish Kurds, with the goal of creating an independent Kurdistan. A PKK insurgency against the Turkish state began in 1984, and fighting between the two sides has continued intermittently ever since, accompanied by heavy-handed Turkish repression in Kurdish areas, resulting in the deaths of more than 40,000 people, a majority of them Kurdish civilians. The PKK, for its part, has focused its attacks on the Turkish military over the years, but it has also hit civilian targets. Turkey and the United States have both designated the PKK a terrorist organization.
What is the SDF?
The Syrian Democratic Forces were officially founded in northern Syria on Oct. 11, 2015, to defend the area amid Syria’s civil war and the rising Islamic State. The organization includes Arab and Assyrian militias, but its primary component has been the People’s Protection Units (abbreviated from the Kurdish name Yekineyen Parastina Gel as YPG), made up of ethnic Kurds. The United States encouraged the formation of the SDF and partnered with it to fight against the Islamic State.
What’s the relationship between the SDF and the PKK?
The SDF, as described above, is primarily composed of the YPG militia. That militia was itself officially founded in 2011 as the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish party Democratic Union Party, or PYD. Turkey’s claim is that the PYD is an offshoot of the Turkish PKK and that the PKK had a hand in initially setting up the YPG. The PYD denies those links.
I've always found it confusing. But the battles erupted again right after I visited Turkey in 2000.
7. Secret Life of The Tower of London's Chief Guard
The title looked interesting. No time to read. Have fun.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-21 01:13 pm (UTC)Among other things you don't have to cultivate poke. Like all weeds it's hard to get rid of.
People probably tried the young leaves not knowing what the plant was going to grow into. Their stomachs would teach them when it was time to stop harvesting the leaves. Other weed leaves like prickly lettuce and dandelion can be eaten when they're young enough.
It's more amazing that people got brave enough to try tomatoes. You do not want to mess with poke berries. Brush your the back of your hand against a full grown poke plant and nothing happens. Brush against a tomato plant and your skin will itch.
The famous Saladin, foil of Richard the Lionhearted, was a Kurd.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-21 05:05 pm (UTC)According to the article poke was used by the early settlers to get rid of round worm and other parasites that got in through their feet, etc. The toxicity of the plant killed the parasites.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-21 03:43 pm (UTC)Scorcese would never dismiss the gangster flick the way he does Marvel movies, because his own movies draw a lot from the classics of that genre. And I doubt Coppola--director of Dementia 13 and FFC's Dracula--would rag on horror movies as despicable.
To each his or her own, gentlemen. Marvel Studios has earned my ticket. You can stay home and watch Scarface (1931 version) on TCM.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-21 05:11 pm (UTC)Yep, agreed. Scalzi also cites all those Hollywood musicals. (Not to mention the Biblical flicks and Westerns which aren't that different).
no subject
Date: 2019-10-22 01:40 am (UTC)I tried Poldark once and it wasn't for me. Neither was Downton Abbey, for that matter; I don't think I've enjoyed that specific sort of Very British historic setting soap opera for a long time now... but younger me would probably have enjoyed both.