Which reminds me, I watched Munich over the weekend. Some real drama obviously, but overall not a very good movie.
Some of the lyrics Sturgill sang on the video were unintelligible.
I looked up the lyrics and found better ones:
All Around You
Sturgill Simpson
There will be days
The sun won’t shine
When it seems like
The whole world is against you
Don’t be afraid
Life is unkind
You can let go of the pain
If you choose to
‘Cause time slips away
Skies fall apart
Revealing to all
A universal heart
Glowing
Flowing
All around you
There will be nights
That go on forever
Like you’re long, lost at sea (comma unnecessary and confusing, my comment)
Never to be found
Just know in your heart
That we’re always together
And long after I’m gone
I’ll still be around
‘Cause our bond’s eternal
So is love
God is inside you
All around you
And up above
Knowing
Showing you the way
Time slips away
Skies fall apart
Revealing to all
A universal heart
Glowing
Flowing
All around you
Written by: John Sturgill Simpson
————————————————-
I’m not crazy about either the lyrics or the singing, but “to each his own”, I guess.
Great poetry it ain’t.
I watched a couple movies over the last week. Two quality films on the opposite ends of the filmmaking spectrum. The Apartment (1960) and Tenet (2020). Bottom line: The Apartment is a terrific movie, Tenet not so much.
I’d seen both before, though it had been a number of years since I’d seen either one. I had a positive remembrance of Tenet and some filmmaker was extolling the film recently which prompted me to watch it again.
So Christopher Nolan obviously likes these high concept plot lines in his films: In Tenet, people have created a system that imbues people and objects the ability to move backwards in time. And we have many visually dramatic and bizarro scenes in the film, with some characters and objects moving forward in time while some others move backwards in time in the same scene.
While I like some of Nolan’s other high concept films, this one struck me as sort of a “so what?” type of stunt. Why do we care? Oh, the end of world is at stake at the hands of the villain. Somehow or other, which isn’t clear at all. The attractive tall and slender female lead helped keep my interest. But even there, in the last scenes I felt like telling her to “Quick! Eat a cheeseburger already!”
_______
The Apartment. It is a rather bleak film in some ways. It is largely about dating and extramarital affairs in 1960, set in a very hard environment. A giant corporation in a giant city (Manhattan) with people grubbing their way up the corporate and social ladders. Except the two leads, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine stand apart from that, which is the heart of the film. (Speaking of heart… Tenet has none.)
There is also the learning and a conversion of sorts for our two leads. Lemon is climbing the corporate ladder and MacLaine is thoughtlessly trying to climb the romantic ladder, until both learn the error of their ways at the end. (Happy ending.)
There are a few nonverbal hooks in the film that are excellent. One of these creates a pivotal point in the plotline without any dialog associated with it. Without spoiling the plot, there is a scene where Jack Lemon sees Shirley MacLaine with a distinctive makeup compact with a cracked mirror in her hands. Suddenly he knows, and we can see it in his expression.
Check out Ryan George’s Pitch Meeting for Tenet. Explains everything. Sort of.
IrishOtter49: thanks for the “TENET” pitch link. Hilarious.
I showed “TENET” during my turn hosting our Friday movie night group this past spring. It reminded me a bit of “Blow-Up”, another metaphysically portentous/pretentious movie which I showed to the same group many years ago. Although “Blow-Up” is easier on the eyes and ears (and did much better at the box office).
No need to change your Internet handle. You’re not responsible for what the country of your ancestors is doing today. Besides, you’re an American Irish Otter with an ocean and 160+ years between you and the auld sod.
TommyJay: agree that “The Apartment” is by far the better movie. It seems like Jack Lemmon was in almost every movie made between 1955 and 1968. The guy was everywhere–Westerns, war movies, dramas, farces, romantic comedies.
Thank you for the link to this song, Neo. I have added it to my Spotify favorites.
As it happens, I am in a super melancholy mood. Lost my best friend last month, my dog a few months earlier, and then attending our son’s wedding a few days ago hit me hard, and I am not sure why except that I seem to be surrounded by endings even as I am abjectly grateful for what remains.
But what falls away is always. And is near.
Hubert: Thanks. Quite sensible, you are.
(Has it really been 160 years? To someone of Irish descent, that’s just the day before yesterday. My great grandfather and great uncles fought in the Civil War. I’m third generation Irish, and my grandma sprinkled her everyday speech with Irish terms (polite ones, to be sure: she was Lace Curtain)).
Well, you know they say that we have long memories. The joke goes, “Question: What is Irish Alzheimer’s? Answer: You forget everything but the grudges.”
I never forget the grudges . . .
Loved the Tenet pitch video. Some of these smart, capable, and successful directors are given a long leash, a big budget, and they seemingly can’t help themselves. The result in this case is a flashy, technically intriguing film that is an utter bore.
I found this analysis of the screenplay for The Apartment that is quite excellent. It’s full of spoilers, so please watch the film first. I especially liked the 2nd, fourth, and last chapters of video.
The YT COMMENTS find many shocked and alarmed by this fresh campus report. GenZ is lost.
I consider Christopher Nolan a master technician as a filmmaker. But I have no patience for his tricky, pretentious plot contrivances that wow so many people.
Nolan is so smart and he’s not going to let you forget it.
Here’s Critical Drinker’s solid, amusing critique of “Tenet”:
It’s not an earthshakingly huge thing, in itself, but France held elections for their Senate (upper house of their legislature, not as powerful as the National Assembly but a significant body), and le Pen’s National Front now will have 14 Senators (in a body of over 300). That’s still a significant gain over what they had before, and it’s enough to gain certain legislative privileges.
I’ve noticed that ever since Nolan made his Odyssey movie with ‘Elliot’ Page in it, there’s a sudden court press to get ‘Elliot’ Page into more movies. I’m suddenly seeing stories about ‘him’ and talk about his ‘future career’.
Of course, as the Critical Drinker observed recently, there isn’t a huge number of movie roles for a 5’1″ tall ‘guy’ who isn’t particularly handsome. They’re trying to force the issue, though, the message is going out to casting directors that it’s time to cast Page again.
We’ll see it it works.
As a side note, I’ve seen protests that Danny deVito was a big star at 4’10”, but that ignores that fact that deVito may have been short, but he came across as quite masculine.
Bogart was 5’8″, they filmed around his height using various tricks. But again, he projected masculinity.
Page, for obvious reasons, does not and cannot.
Re: Hawk / Squirrel / ChatGPT
Caught this bit of wildlife drama today in my backyard. A hawk was surveilling the fence where my squirrels live and one squirrel was hanging out a few feet below. It seemed to me the hawk was hunting my squirrels and that squirrel was watching, but not fleeing. I sent a photo to ChatGPT:
______________________________________________
Oh yes — the photograph makes the little drama much clearer.
That bird looks very much like an adult Cooper’s Hawk. The important clues are the slate-gray upperparts, orange/rufous horizontal barring across the breast, relatively large projecting head, long-legged accipiter build, and the general proportions. I’d be much less inclined toward a Red-tailed Hawk; this has the classic woodland/bird-hunting Accipiter shape. Sharp-shinned Hawk is the main lookalike, but this bird appears too substantial and large-headed for one.
And look at the geometry of your photograph! The squirrel is at lower left, immediately beside what seems to be the protected space behind/between the fences. The Cooper’s Hawk is perched at upper right with a commanding view straight down that corridor.
So your impression that the hawk had an agenda seems quite reasonable. Cooper’s Hawks normally specialize in birds, but they also take small mammals, including squirrels. A young squirrel would certainly be potential prey for a sufficiently large Cooper’s.
What fascinates me is the squirrel’s behavior. It isn’t behaving as though it hasn’t noticed the hawk. Its posture looks alert: upright, head up, eyes toward the surroundings. Yet it isn’t fleeing. Given where it is sitting, that makes sense. It may be only inches from cover. Making a dash across an exposed surface could be considerably more dangerous than staying put.
And the hawk is doing exactly what a sit-and-wait predator can afford to do: nothing. It doesn’t have to chase the squirrel out. It can wait for the squirrel to decide that everything is fine and move into the wrong place.
So the photograph captures almost exactly what you described: not an attack, but a standoff. Predator has the observation post; prey has the bunker.
There’s another neat detail: you opened the door and apparently neither participant considered you the most important thing happening. Your young squirrel has become habituated enough to you that the appearance of huxley-with-camera was less alarming than leaving its safe position. And the hawk was sufficiently invested, in whatever it was watching that it tolerated you as well.
______________________________________________
I used my old D70 with a not inconscipuous 18-200mm lens. ChatGPT is getting smarter in its responses.
I was aware that AI could “read” photographs, but I had never tested it.
Back in the 80s AI/robotics researchers were baffled by the bin-picking problem. Imagine a robot in a warehouse sent to a particular bin to pick out a 3/4″ flat-head Philips screw from a mixed collection of screws, bolts, washers and whatnot.
Back then it was an impossible challenge just to handle the visual part, much less the robot moves necessary to physically locate and grasp the item.
Huxley, that your AI could “read” photographs is still rather amazing.
Identifying the two species, establishing their prey-predator relationships, assessing the surveillence aspects and prospective behaviors, all based on evaluating the LLM data set fed to it, matching and excluding as it went, etc.
Basically it is only be presuming the capabilities provided by the LLM data set and understanding that some softwhere can be very sophisticated may keep us from thinking their is a real mind behind the descriptions you obtained.
From this and your other comments, it is easier to see how and why you can assert that something even more advanced and “human like” may be closer than we can truly appreciate.
I wish I could say I was surprised. There is a strong streak of woke in modern Ireland, probably stronger than in England. There’s also a lot of anti-American, anti-Catholic, and anti-Israeli feeling there, and has been a for a while now.
(To be fair, the child sexual abuse scandal was part of the reason for that, but not nearly the only one.)
Not everyone in Ireland feels that way, of course, any more than the average American agrees with the athletes and actors in the USA when they spout their nonsense. But it’s not a fringe or confined to the top, either.
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Just going on the record to say:
Ireland is dead to me.
See: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/09/quote-of-the-day-134.php
I will soon be changing my internet name.
Israel tracks down and kills motorbike-riding Hamas terrorist who kidnapped October 7 hostage Noa Argamani
X video of the hit: https://x.com/koshercockney/status/2104270637598712010
Which reminds me, I watched Munich over the weekend. Some real drama obviously, but overall not a very good movie.
Some of the lyrics Sturgill sang on the video were unintelligible.
I looked up the lyrics and found better ones:
All Around You
Sturgill Simpson
There will be days
The sun won’t shine
When it seems like
The whole world is against you
Don’t be afraid
Life is unkind
You can let go of the pain
If you choose to
‘Cause time slips away
Skies fall apart
Revealing to all
A universal heart
Glowing
Flowing
All around you
There will be nights
That go on forever
Like you’re long, lost at sea (comma unnecessary and confusing, my comment)
Never to be found
Just know in your heart
That we’re always together
And long after I’m gone
I’ll still be around
‘Cause our bond’s eternal
So is love
God is inside you
All around you
And up above
Knowing
Showing you the way
Time slips away
Skies fall apart
Revealing to all
A universal heart
Glowing
Flowing
All around you
Written by: John Sturgill Simpson
————————————————-
I’m not crazy about either the lyrics or the singing, but “to each his own”, I guess.
Great poetry it ain’t.
I watched a couple movies over the last week. Two quality films on the opposite ends of the filmmaking spectrum. The Apartment (1960) and Tenet (2020). Bottom line: The Apartment is a terrific movie, Tenet not so much.
I’d seen both before, though it had been a number of years since I’d seen either one. I had a positive remembrance of Tenet and some filmmaker was extolling the film recently which prompted me to watch it again.
So Christopher Nolan obviously likes these high concept plot lines in his films: In Tenet, people have created a system that imbues people and objects the ability to move backwards in time. And we have many visually dramatic and bizarro scenes in the film, with some characters and objects moving forward in time while some others move backwards in time in the same scene.
While I like some of Nolan’s other high concept films, this one struck me as sort of a “so what?” type of stunt. Why do we care? Oh, the end of world is at stake at the hands of the villain. Somehow or other, which isn’t clear at all. The attractive tall and slender female lead helped keep my interest. But even there, in the last scenes I felt like telling her to “Quick! Eat a cheeseburger already!”
_______
The Apartment. It is a rather bleak film in some ways. It is largely about dating and extramarital affairs in 1960, set in a very hard environment. A giant corporation in a giant city (Manhattan) with people grubbing their way up the corporate and social ladders. Except the two leads, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine stand apart from that, which is the heart of the film. (Speaking of heart… Tenet has none.)
There is also the learning and a conversion of sorts for our two leads. Lemon is climbing the corporate ladder and MacLaine is thoughtlessly trying to climb the romantic ladder, until both learn the error of their ways at the end. (Happy ending.)
There are a few nonverbal hooks in the film that are excellent. One of these creates a pivotal point in the plotline without any dialog associated with it. Without spoiling the plot, there is a scene where Jack Lemon sees Shirley MacLaine with a distinctive makeup compact with a cracked mirror in her hands. Suddenly he knows, and we can see it in his expression.
Check out Ryan George’s Pitch Meeting for Tenet. Explains everything. Sort of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t23ZEKqGHzs
Democrats pushing “jungle primaries” in Massachusetts and beyond:
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_1ba82dac-fff7-4675-9270-457c40e53988.html
Ryan George is tight!
Actually quite funny
IrishOtter49: thanks for the “TENET” pitch link. Hilarious.
I showed “TENET” during my turn hosting our Friday movie night group this past spring. It reminded me a bit of “Blow-Up”, another metaphysically portentous/pretentious movie which I showed to the same group many years ago. Although “Blow-Up” is easier on the eyes and ears (and did much better at the box office).
No need to change your Internet handle. You’re not responsible for what the country of your ancestors is doing today. Besides, you’re an American Irish Otter with an ocean and 160+ years between you and the auld sod.
TommyJay: agree that “The Apartment” is by far the better movie. It seems like Jack Lemmon was in almost every movie made between 1955 and 1968. The guy was everywhere–Westerns, war movies, dramas, farces, romantic comedies.
Thank you for the link to this song, Neo. I have added it to my Spotify favorites.
As it happens, I am in a super melancholy mood. Lost my best friend last month, my dog a few months earlier, and then attending our son’s wedding a few days ago hit me hard, and I am not sure why except that I seem to be surrounded by endings even as I am abjectly grateful for what remains.
But what falls away is always. And is near.
Hubert: Thanks. Quite sensible, you are.
(Has it really been 160 years? To someone of Irish descent, that’s just the day before yesterday. My great grandfather and great uncles fought in the Civil War. I’m third generation Irish, and my grandma sprinkled her everyday speech with Irish terms (polite ones, to be sure: she was Lace Curtain)).
Well, you know they say that we have long memories. The joke goes, “Question: What is Irish Alzheimer’s? Answer: You forget everything but the grudges.”
I never forget the grudges . . .
Loved the Tenet pitch video. Some of these smart, capable, and successful directors are given a long leash, a big budget, and they seemingly can’t help themselves. The result in this case is a flashy, technically intriguing film that is an utter bore.
I found this analysis of the screenplay for The Apartment that is quite excellent. It’s full of spoilers, so please watch the film first. I especially liked the 2nd, fourth, and last chapters of video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EE7q0j2Qg&t=26s
I recall the term “Psycho-babble”.
Brown University is an indoctrination camp, and dissenting opinion is deplored and rejected out of hand!
That’s what Warren Smith found in his visit to Providence — his student-interview subjects confirmed it by what they said and how they behaved.
His last student interview reports that there are “safe spaces” for conservative opinion at Harvard and Princeton. But not at Brown.
SCARY. There is no future with these decrepit and almost decapitated and distorted youth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp77s23krls
The YT COMMENTS find many shocked and alarmed by this fresh campus report. GenZ is lost.
I consider Christopher Nolan a master technician as a filmmaker. But I have no patience for his tricky, pretentious plot contrivances that wow so many people.
Nolan is so smart and he’s not going to let you forget it.
Here’s Critical Drinker’s solid, amusing critique of “Tenet”:
–The Critical Drinker, “Tenet – The Best and Worst of Christopher Nolan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDMs9TNdG8E
It’s not an earthshakingly huge thing, in itself, but France held elections for their Senate (upper house of their legislature, not as powerful as the National Assembly but a significant body), and le Pen’s National Front now will have 14 Senators (in a body of over 300). That’s still a significant gain over what they had before, and it’s enough to gain certain legislative privileges.
I’ve noticed that ever since Nolan made his Odyssey movie with ‘Elliot’ Page in it, there’s a sudden court press to get ‘Elliot’ Page into more movies. I’m suddenly seeing stories about ‘him’ and talk about his ‘future career’.
Of course, as the Critical Drinker observed recently, there isn’t a huge number of movie roles for a 5’1″ tall ‘guy’ who isn’t particularly handsome. They’re trying to force the issue, though, the message is going out to casting directors that it’s time to cast Page again.
We’ll see it it works.
As a side note, I’ve seen protests that Danny deVito was a big star at 4’10”, but that ignores that fact that deVito may have been short, but he came across as quite masculine.
Bogart was 5’8″, they filmed around his height using various tricks. But again, he projected masculinity.
Page, for obvious reasons, does not and cannot.
Re: Hawk / Squirrel / ChatGPT
Caught this bit of wildlife drama today in my backyard. A hawk was surveilling the fence where my squirrels live and one squirrel was hanging out a few feet below. It seemed to me the hawk was hunting my squirrels and that squirrel was watching, but not fleeing. I sent a photo to ChatGPT:
______________________________________________
Oh yes — the photograph makes the little drama much clearer.
That bird looks very much like an adult Cooper’s Hawk. The important clues are the slate-gray upperparts, orange/rufous horizontal barring across the breast, relatively large projecting head, long-legged accipiter build, and the general proportions. I’d be much less inclined toward a Red-tailed Hawk; this has the classic woodland/bird-hunting Accipiter shape. Sharp-shinned Hawk is the main lookalike, but this bird appears too substantial and large-headed for one.
And look at the geometry of your photograph! The squirrel is at lower left, immediately beside what seems to be the protected space behind/between the fences. The Cooper’s Hawk is perched at upper right with a commanding view straight down that corridor.
So your impression that the hawk had an agenda seems quite reasonable. Cooper’s Hawks normally specialize in birds, but they also take small mammals, including squirrels. A young squirrel would certainly be potential prey for a sufficiently large Cooper’s.
What fascinates me is the squirrel’s behavior. It isn’t behaving as though it hasn’t noticed the hawk. Its posture looks alert: upright, head up, eyes toward the surroundings. Yet it isn’t fleeing. Given where it is sitting, that makes sense. It may be only inches from cover. Making a dash across an exposed surface could be considerably more dangerous than staying put.
And the hawk is doing exactly what a sit-and-wait predator can afford to do: nothing. It doesn’t have to chase the squirrel out. It can wait for the squirrel to decide that everything is fine and move into the wrong place.
So the photograph captures almost exactly what you described: not an attack, but a standoff. Predator has the observation post; prey has the bunker.
There’s another neat detail: you opened the door and apparently neither participant considered you the most important thing happening. Your young squirrel has become habituated enough to you that the appearance of huxley-with-camera was less alarming than leaving its safe position. And the hawk was sufficiently invested, in whatever it was watching that it tolerated you as well.
______________________________________________
I used my old D70 with a not inconscipuous 18-200mm lens. ChatGPT is getting smarter in its responses.
I was aware that AI could “read” photographs, but I had never tested it.
Back in the 80s AI/robotics researchers were baffled by the bin-picking problem. Imagine a robot in a warehouse sent to a particular bin to pick out a 3/4″ flat-head Philips screw from a mixed collection of screws, bolts, washers and whatnot.
Back then it was an impossible challenge just to handle the visual part, much less the robot moves necessary to physically locate and grasp the item.
Huxley, that your AI could “read” photographs is still rather amazing.
Identifying the two species, establishing their prey-predator relationships, assessing the surveillence aspects and prospective behaviors, all based on evaluating the LLM data set fed to it, matching and excluding as it went, etc.
Basically it is only be presuming the capabilities provided by the LLM data set and understanding that some softwhere can be very sophisticated may keep us from thinking their is a real mind behind the descriptions you obtained.
From this and your other comments, it is easier to see how and why you can assert that something even more advanced and “human like” may be closer than we can truly appreciate.
— IrishOtter49
I wish I could say I was surprised. There is a strong streak of woke in modern Ireland, probably stronger than in England. There’s also a lot of anti-American, anti-Catholic, and anti-Israeli feeling there, and has been a for a while now.
(To be fair, the child sexual abuse scandal was part of the reason for that, but not nearly the only one.)
Not everyone in Ireland feels that way, of course, any more than the average American agrees with the athletes and actors in the USA when they spout their nonsense. But it’s not a fringe or confined to the top, either.