Spontaneous Musings

I thought about taking a walk today but too blasted cold. I consider 25 degrees F too cold. I'm admittedly a wimp who spent Christmas in 70-80 degree weather.

My Optimum upgrade arrived in the mail today. But I can't figure out how to install it - since it didn't come with certain items, and I do not have a cable wall outlet, I have a cable splinter. So I called Optimum and complained, wrangling a tech service call from them. Then they proceeded to call me three times after they set it up - to see if I would cancel it. No, I told them, I'm not cancelling - you sent me equipment I can't install myself. And you failed to tell me what was required prior to my request for the upgrade. This is on you. I think they will charge me $80 for the service call tomorrow - between 2-5pm. Because they like to make you wait three hours to see if they will arrive.

If it doesn't work - I'm switching to Verizon.

The box is sitting on my other armchair, aka dumping ground, waiting for use.

**

Mother has decided - the hell with this latest outbreak - and is going to church tomorrow morning and out to brunch with her friends. (She's going to wear a mask except while eating, and try to sit apart from folks. Also not singing in the choir.)

Meanwhile my church has gone full live-streaming again. But hey, I travel to and from the office two - three times a week, have a guy upgrading my cable/internet service tomorrow, get groceries, do laundry, etc.

Are we all just learning to live with COVID? I'm trying to decide if I can get up the courage to see Spiderman and/or West Side Story in movie theaters? Probably not - even though my cough has lessened.

Last night, I had a nightmare that I was back at school (UMKC of all places), and I forgot my mask. I was wondering stairwells etc, trying to get away from folks in dorms, because I didn't have a mask. It was horrible. Kind of haunts me for some reason or other.

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Binge watched the rest of S4 Yellowstone. Also, got some back story on the writer/director of the series - Taylor Sheridan. He was an actor, and actually has a role in Yellowstone. He played in Sons of Anarchy, and various other things, small roles mostly. And finally realized he wasn't going to get anywhere as an actor - so decided to become a writer/director so he could call the shots. And chose to write what he knew - he's a cowboy who worked as a cowboy in Texas and Montana. So he writes about that - and as he put it, if you don't know it - you fall into cliches.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the whole write what you know - hyper-realism crap. ( Read more... )

Yellowstone is what I like to call a "modern western" - which tend to be rather dark. ( Read more... )

Also, watched the eighth episode of Yellowjackets. I'm hooked. ( Read more... )

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Another thing I wanted to comment on that I saw online - was about fantasy novels and Wheel of Time. I can't find where it came from - except it was on Twitter. The comment was basically that fantasy wasn't all about men up until Wheel of Time novels, that there were a lot of novels by female writers and male writers with female heroines.

This is true.

Wheel of Time is also one of those series that is way overrated due to its political correctness (it has a diverse cast and LGBTA romances), but has issues in well all the other areas such as character development, pacing, world-building, and plotting. One reviewer felt it was a better adaptation of the source material than the Witcher. ( Read more... )

See, this is why I refuse to be a television media critic/writer for onzines. I would end up writing crappy and meaningless articles like the one's I just quoted, and that add zip to our world. I can write that crap for free.

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I'm taking a break from the news. Someone on Twitter coined the term PTTD, Post-Traumatic Trump Disorder. Fitting. Particularly since he's still alive and refuses to go away. And as a result the dumb media can't quite ignore him.

**

Random photo...

Ate too late, again. So a little wired. Maybe a hot shower.

Apartment or flat hunting is frustrating. Not sure sometimes if it is easier with or without a buyer's agent. Without one - you have to do more work and are at the mercy of the seller's agents. With one, you spend your time explaining to them why you just didn't like an apartment they thought was great and perfect for you. It's like a battle of wills sometimes. Although I do like my buyer's agent, who more or less picked me off the street - at the very moment that I'd thrown up my hands and given up on the whole thing.

Been watching Breaking Bad again tonight and finally figured out what it reminds me of. Feel like I've seen this story before. This show or trope is what I like to call a Modern Western - which like the Old Classic Western is purely an American Genre and by American, I mean Mexico and Southwestern and Western United States. If you are American, you probably saw quite a bit of it growing up - either on tv, in the movies, or in books.
( Read more... )

Went to the movie 3:10 to Yuma with Wales today. Had read quite a bit on it and been looking forward to seeing it for quite a while. Am pleased to report that it did not disappoint. Both of us adored it. Doesn't mean you will of course.

3:10 to Yuma unlike most of the Westerns that have made it to the silver and small screen in recent years, is a classic Western. And based in part on a 1957 Western of the same name, starring Glenn Ford and Van Helflin, which was in turn based on an Elmore Leonard short story.

I have a fondness for Elmore Leonard who specializes in what can best be described as character centric noir fiction. The novel I recently completed was compared by two of my readers to Elmore Leonard. I also have a fondness for Westerns, which not everyone does. I adore them - having read over 20 Louis L'Amour's, a couple Zane Grey (don't ask which ones, I've forgotten), and a few Leonard, McMurty, and Cormac McCarthy (who is similar to McMurty in his take on the West). McCarthy and McMurty write what can best be described as "the post industrial age Western" or "modern Western".

Movies...ah, there are different styles of course, this one is described as the classic "ticking clock" Western - where the whole drama is building up to the show-down at the end. The original - according to a professional movie critic I spoke with tonight - took place mainly in rooms, had little action, and was primarily between two men. The family and kid subplots weren't there nor were some of the action sequences. It was also much shorter. But then movies in general used to be shorter - plus no commericials, and only one or two previews. This one had five commericials and four previews. (I miss the days when we did not have commericials before movies or they were a novelty - which was, wait, in the 1980s and early 1990s.) Enough to make me wonder why I bother rushing to movies any more. At any rate - 3:10 to Yuma is similar in style to High Noon - it is a character drama and a psychological drama. Most of the film is spent in a back and forth by-play between two men - Dan Evans, a down on his luck rancher with a family and Ben Wade, a charismatic thief and gunman who Evans is taking to the train in order to collect $200 from the railroad man that Wade stole from in the beginning of the film.

Evans is played by Christian Bale and Wade by Russell Crow - who are both superb in the film and have excellent screen chemistry. Wales and I were riveted by their performances and fell a bit in love with Bale's character and to a degree Crow's. The film centers on their relationship, their motivations, how they effect those around them, and why they do what they do. They are backed up by Alan Tudyke, Luke Wilson (at least I think that was Luke Wilson in a cameo role), Peter Fonda, Ben Foster, and Gretchen Mol. The film is directed by James Mangold who last directed Walk The Line.. Fonda plays a grizzled Pinkerton law man, who is reminiscent of both his father Henry and Clint Eastwood, also Ben Johnson who played similar roles. Ben Foster plays Wade's creepy second in command. And Tudyke a doctor who joins the posse head by Fonda and Evans.

3:10, being a classic Western, is not as dark and misanthropic in character as The Proposition or Unforgiven are - two films that I enjoyed but did not move me emotionally in quite the same way. Partly because I did not like or really care that much for the characters in them - always felt a bit at a distance from them. 3:10 pulls the audience in and keeps them there, you care about these characters and feel for them or at least I did. 3:10 is more similar in tone to the old Westerns that I used to watch with my Dad on Saturday nights in the late 70s and early 80's before HBO or cable, before the WB, CW, UPN or Fox came into being - when we just had NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and UHF - a local affilate channel that played old movies and reruns. Not the spaghetti Westerns or Sam Peckinpah films of the early 70's, but the quieter more character centric depictions of the 50s and 60's - starring Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Van Johnson, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, James Garner, and Henry Fonda.

If you don't have a fondness for this style of movie-making, you may not enjoy this film. It has very few women in it and they are depicted from a male point of few, as is historically fitting for a classic Western. The story is a psychological drama, interspersed with gun-play and action, but mainly it focuses on the battle of words, wits, and will between two men - the devilish Ben Wade who seeks to seduce the battered and down on his luck rancher obsessed with bringing him in no matter what. But it is also a tale about a man attempting to redeem himself in his own eyes and those of his son's. To regain his own self-respect.

It has had mixed reviews and isn't everyone's cup of tea. I loved it. In my opinion it is amongst the best films I've seen this year. It moved me. I left it changed in some small way that I can't quite put a finger on. It gave me hope and made me realize that as hard as life gets, and it gets really hard sometimes, you have to keep going, keep fighting, and not let go of your principles - it also re-emphasized that heros come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and how we decide to define them isn't as clear cut as one might think.

I think whenever I read a movie review be it professional or otherwise, that whether you like or dislike a film has a lot to do with what you bring into it. Who you are, what your issues are, and what you are going through at this particular point in time. A film you loved on Wed, you may hate next month. The same thing is true with books and tv shows. Which makes it really hard to tell from a review or even a conversation about an upcoming film, show, or book - whether or not you, yourself, will like or hate it. When it comes right down to it? Life is a series of small and big risks. We can't know until we've done it. And what we plan, what we think will happen one way or think we'll love or hate? Is most often the opposite than what we planned or thought it would be. Makes life interesting if a tad frustrating at times.

That said? If you don't like Westerns - you probably won't like 3:10 to Yuma, it's as simple as that.

[Sigh. Not the best written review in the world, but I'm not getting paid for this so what the hey. ]