Open thread 8/24/21
“The Lives of Others” was an incredibly good movie. I never gave a thought to how it was filmed in terms of technique. So while this analysis may be obvious to you, it was news to me.
[NOTE: The narrator makes an error at around 0:44 to 0:46. It’s not nervousness – although of course the man is nervous. But he has been ordered to put his hands there.]
And Nancy changes the rules so she can ram the multi trillion dollar green deal bill down our throats….https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/overnight-nancy-pelosi-changes-house-rules-ram-3-5-trillion-green-new-deal-forever-change-america-failed-marxist-state/
Changing the rules last minute….how the Democrats cheated to win the 2020 election.
Local Dems beginning the roll out of their vaxx policy.
Reliably obedient San Jose’s city council will vote today on beginning a vaxx passport scheme
“3.4 21-1917 Vaccine Mandate. Recommendation:
(a) Adopt an urgency ordinance requiring all attendees and staff at events at City facilities-such as the SAP Arena, Convention Center, and Center for Performing Arts–to demonstrate proof of vaccination prior to entry in a gathering of any substantial size, such as 50 or more persons. The City should utilize commonly accepted and readily deployable methods of proof, such as the State of California’s QR Code-enabled system. PLEASE NOTE: APPROVAL OF THIS URGENCY ORDINANCE REQUIRES 8 OR MORE AFFIRMATIVE VOTES. City Charter Section 605(d).
(b) Return at a subsequent Council meeting to evaluate data and discuss whether San José should similarly require vaccination prior to entry in indoor dining, theaters, gyms, and other privately-owned facilities that serve the general public.”
As far as I can see
1) not based on preventing access by sick people. Being unvaxxed doesn’t mean your are infectious.
2) no provision for natural antibodies in those who have recovered
3) no provision for religious or other objection
4) no mention of the fact that the vaxxed can spread infection
5) no mention of concern about how this will affect businesses which have been stressed by shutdown
For those interested in the Tennessee flash flood, here is the sequence of events:
http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2021/08/the-catastrophic-tennessee-flash-flood.html
Lives of Others is a great film. A “must see” in my opinion, especially by those leaning Left in this country.
I bought a Criterion edition Blu-ray copy of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Blood Simple” film a few years ago. Their first film with a real budget.
The disk has an option to hear a running commentary between Joel, Ethan, and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld on how and why they did each scene, including the gaffs. What’s different about that commentary track is that they recorded it decades after the making of the film.
Barry later had success as a filmmaker with films like Men in Black. One of the silly things from the dialog that sticks in my mind is a simple interior shot of a small motel room, and Barry says, “Yeah, that’s a ‘high, wide, and stupid’ shot.” A moderator asks him about that phraseology and he replies that this was a term of art he got from director Penny Marshall. Put the camera high, with a wide angle lens and take it all in. No decision making required.
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Biden has his heels dug in. He is sticking with the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.
There is also an excellent book on life in East Germany, ‘Stasiland’, by Anna Funder. I reviewed it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/33672.html
A terrifying event, Mike Smith.
I got into to it on Twitter with Omaha-based sportscaster Kevin Kugler. He does NFL games. Surprise!
He thinks the new Spiderman movie looks great. I tweeted that it looked ridiculous. I was attacked.
But the larger issue – which I did tweet – is that China now has so much influence in the US that we don’t see any movies like Crimson Tide, The Russia House or The Hunt for Red October. In fact, the CCP forced the removal of some jacket patch for the new Top Gun movie.
The reason we have so many mindless superhero movies is that they make BIG MONEY in China.
Politics is downstream from culture. China owns us.
I’m embarrassed that I’ve never seen “The Lives of Others.” I’d like to blame the fact that I most often watch older movies, but the truth is I see too much painful reality around me to watch this bit on film. Enough that I know the evil the Stasi did, or so I tell myself. Maybe I need to watch it, if only to remember the precedents for own own social and political evolution.
Topo Gigio:
I highly recommend it. It’s not like a documentary or anything like that. It’s a brilliant, brilliant film. The guy in this clip, who plays the Stasi guy, is an astounding actor. It has a riveting plot, absolutely riveting.
Last year, I remember seeing some medical articles about the possibility of MMR vaccines giving some protection for children against C19. Now, there are more medical articles about the connection between the MMR vaccine and mild C19 cases in children. There are other articles discussing the impact of having current diphtheria/tetanus booster shots and milder C19 symptoms in older patients.
“It seems that one of the reasons which may explain the low prevalence of COVID-19 in children is their high level of immunity due to receiving routine vaccines at that age. On the other hand, considering the similarity of COVID-19 to some other respiratory diseases such as measles, rubella and mumps, and the immunity followed by receiving MMR vaccine, it possibly had led to reducing the severity of COVID-19 in children ” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310886/
I never had the MMR vaccine, but I did have the diseases as a child. A MMR antibody test (Quest Direct for $129) shows that I have very strong antibodies against the diseases even after 65+ years. I wonder if this explains why I can’t remember having a severe case of the flu or colds. I do take supplements (D3, Zn, Mg, C, Quercetin) to help my immune system. I don’t plan to take the current C10 vaccines for medical reasons, but my doctor & I are watching for the Novavax option.
So, if you have young children or grandchildren, you may want to check their MMR vaccine status or antibody level since there are no vaccines for that age. And I wonder if these side benefits of other vaccines are driving the increased CDC ads for having other vaccines/shots?
More studies need to be conducted looking at general health and disease severity.
Max Hertzberg has written a series of novels whose hero is Unterleutnant Reim of the Stasi. Lots of detail of the inner workings of the DDR state.
One of the only movies that made me cry. Bambi was the other one and I was 5.
A bow to Neo for shining a light on this true cinematic work of art, a bracing embodiment of just how masterful a film can be.
“Let Racism Die the Death It Deserves,” Black Father Tells School Board in Speech Against Critical Race Theory
https://thenewamerican.com/let-racism-die-the-death-it-deserves-black-father-tells-school-board-in-speech-against-critical-race-theory/
Neo:
You’ve convinced me. I’ll watch it.
The Tennessee flood was bad, but it is hard for computer model to predict record events. That takes experience forecasters.
Australia.
https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/2021/08/23/we-hate-our-government/
Hat tip Bayou Renaissance Man.
Excellent movie! I downloaded it about the time of the 2021 inauguration. Very appropriate indeed. And now that New Zealand is in lockdown, it will be a good movie to watch tonight. Lockdown in NZ is very different than Australia. Less aggressive, and people are spending time in their gardens and going for walks. That is not to say that people do not have Covid fatigue.
JHCorcoran:
Lockdowns in places like Australia and New Zealand are traps, in a way. Both are basically islands and can keep foreigners out if they want to (as well as controlling relatively small populations), and their COVID rates have remained low. They then ascribe the low rates to the lockdown. And since their populations don’t develop immunity through mild infections, they feel they must keep locking down for every flare. It’s a self-perpetuating approach.
Neo,
I disagree that NZ. is a trap. I do agree it is not perfect. We can always leave and return with quarantine, which is quickly starting to be at your own home. NZ’s approach has more to do with the concern that the hospitals would be overrun with sick people and they would not be able to handled it. This is really the fact of the lockdown. We had one lockdown a year and a half ago, that had a defined ending. The focus since has been on flare ups, mostly in Auckland, where a third of the population lives. That said, this lockdown is getting criticism from media and citizens. The Kiwis are reticent, but they will push back and I think if they continue into next week the political fortunes of Labor will take a deep dive. It is already slipping.
Australia’s approach, I agree. Their approach does not make sense and it is ridiculously hardline. Not unlike various States in the US. South Dakota is handling the pandemic better then New Jersey.
JHCorcoran:
I was thinking primarily of Australia, which I’ve heard much more about. Perhaps New Zealand’s approach has been more different than I thought.
At least, in the US, states like New Jersey really had been hard hit compared to Australia. So it’s not the same in that regard.
OMG. Kate Brown, governor of my former state of Oregon, just instituted an OUTDOOR mask mandate!
Exempted? The homeless, people engaged in competitive sports, and those delivering an outdoor speech or performance. The homeless. Because they couldn’t pay a fine, or they don’t get covid?
Griffin, is King Jay next? He seems to follow her lead. So the vaccine doesn’t work, I guess.
gwynmir:
Probably cause all the homeless have already had it.
Not that her reasoning is based on anything like that. It’s just that they’re a protected class – mostly because they wouldn’t obey, anyway.
Neo:
Yes, sadly, probably true that they have already had it.
On a more cheerful note, I live in sw Washington, in east Vancouver to be precise and I went to my local Walmart right after posting the above and fully half the people were not wearing masks (WA new indoor mask mandate went into effect yesterday)!
Did me proud, and I left mine off as well.
Just in case you’ve forgotten:
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/indianapolis-star-confirms-it-despite-being-29-of-the-population-blacks-commit-77-of-homicides-in-majority-white-indianapolis/
I have always wondered who it is that could actually sit through a superhero movie. They are so incredibly boring. Weak hapless loser people persecuted by pointlessly evil people, blah blah blah. Puke. Same for “olden times” fantasy; same for Space Fantasy masquerading as Science Fiction.
From what I have read, most productions are aimed at young teens, anyway.
And to think that as a young kid I was annoyed at the mere and comparatively slight marketing manipulation that required a “love interest” in almost every TV re-run safari or adventure film.
I could watch 70 year old potboiler adventure movies like “King Solomon’s Mines”, or “The Naked Jungle”, or “Secret of the Incas” everyday for a week before I could sit through one Star Wars. Even if it was only to try and spot the Land Rovers in the background stampeding the gazelles, or how much of Leinigen/Heston’s jungle plantation hacienda was made of plaster of paris.
Oh, wait I take that back … a little.
There was about 30 seconds cumulative in “Man of Steel” worth one’s time as I recall.
But I think that that is all the time the villainess played by that German actress, was actually on screen.
Zaphod:
People here are well aware of crime rates such as that. We have no need of your gratuitous reminders.
@DNW:
Re Movies Today:
Thing is that formulaic crap and rehashes *works*. The sausage machine is financialised up the wazoo like every other entity today and doesn’t like too much Alpha in the soup. Head down the multiplex and see who is watching boom bang blockbuster movies on big screens. Teenagers and Diversity. Plus there’s summer and holiday season releases for small children. That’s it, really.
Blockbuster Movies have to get past Chinese sensors and at the same time evade Western Woke Tripwires. It’s a difficult needle to thread. Added complication: It hasn’t even been 100% necessary to draw in huge Chinese cinema audiences for all of these films because (long story cut short) there has been a huge racket of overstated cinema box office revenues being used as money laundering schemes in PRC. I know someone owns a multiplex in Shanghai and got this from horse’s mouth, but is open secret in industry anyway. Apparently has been cracked down on a bit, but no idea how seriously.
There’s also the PC Gaming effect. Many here will be familiar with PC Games of 20 or 30 years back. Some may have seen grandchildren playing these things. Not all will have observed what high end computer gaming looks like. Basically exactly like hyper-real superhero CGI effect movies.
I was stupid enough to start watching a movie called Greyhound with Tom Hanks as a WWII Atlantic Convoy destroyer captain. After about 30 mins, realised that this thing had virtually zero plot and was essentially the live action cut scenes from a AAA Release PC Game stitched together. Bizarre, but true.
All the big brains tend to work in streaming drama series today. Most of them are woke as hell, but at least it’s aimed at making Midwits feel smart — which is a step up from contemporary blockbusters.
Gratuitous Cuomo Bashing:
https://vdare.com/articles/michelle-malkin-coward-cuomo-s-last-act-of-treachery
“In the dark of night, safe from public scrutiny or accountability, Coward Cuomo granted clemency to one of the radical left’s most notorious anti-cop convicts—a man whose family’s elite privilege I’ve chronicled for the past 19 years. David Gilbert is the Weather Underground domestic terrorist sentenced to 75 years-to-life in prison for his role in the infamous 1981 Brink’s robbery in Nyack, New York. Gilbert and his wife, Kathy Boudin, were leaders in the 1960s group of rich-kid agitators who bombed government buildings and corporate headquarters and aided convicted felons in jailbreaks.
The married militants acted as chauffeurs for the Black Liberation Army robbers who held up a Brink’s truck at a Rockland County mall and stole more than $1.6 million. Two of the holdup victims gunned down in the botched Brink’s robbery were police officers. One was a private security guard. All three were military veterans from working-class backgrounds.”
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/right-flight/
You won’t be sorry to have spent the time to read this. Lucid.
Here’s just one taste:
Miller cites the divisions of the Civil War but, in my judgment, gets the lesson backward. Americans are more divided, not less, than we were on the eve of that great conflict. As Abraham Lincoln put it, accurately, to Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, back then there was only one “substantial difference between us.” Today it’s hard to think of one substantial commonality.
@JimNorCal:
Good link thanks!
Another Money Quote:
“Put simply, California wants to rule Texas but Texas doesn’t want to rule California, and especially doesn’t want to be ruled by California. These irreconcilable desires set the stage for a great clash, sooner or later.”
David Foster: Thanks for pointing to your book review from 2012, “Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall” if I recall correctly. By Anna Funder.
I will immediately share it!