From the Desk of…
Did you know Moses was born circumcised? Maybe that’s why he kinda forgot about having it done to Gershom. Anyway, these are the sorts of reasons why I don’t get invited the holiday dinners so much. Apparently Moses isn’t suitable conversation for them. Fie, I say! Learn the lore. In other more recent news, Tennessee went through a whole thing where it expelled some Black lawmakers from the state legislature for “participating in an unauthorized gun safety protest.” Naturally, they did not expel the white legislator similarly involved. Representative Justins Jones and Pearson were cast out from the people’s house by party line votes. The local legislative body has already returned Jones to his seat unanimously, and a similar event is likely to occur for Pearson. A lot of people seemed very surprised that this happened. A lot of people responded as though this event felt like the turning of a tide. Maybe it’s my pessimistic ways of thinking, but it all just sort of felt like the natural conclusion to unchecked authoritarianism? The driving out of one’s political opponents isn’t exactly deep in the playbook. Oh well. One other thing that rocked was the “revelation” that Justice Clarence Thomas hobnobs with wealthy conservatives who collect Hitler memorabilia. There has been seemingly no end to the discussion on whether people are allowed to have friends, and if those friends are allowed to collect Nazi stuff, and if it’s okay for Harlan Crow, notable conservative funder, to keep the Nazi stuff in his house with the George Bush stuff instead of outside in the “garden of evil” where he seems to have had all the leftist stuff placed, Che and Lenin and Mao and the rest of the gang. I’d like to see an interview with his interior decorator, frankly. Maybe it’s like a bed and breakfast where there’s a “jungle room” and a “medieval room” and a “horrors of the 20th century” room.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, you probably didn’t come here from Twitter.
The Brain Dump
Maybe I just need to log off. I'm not "feeling the shift." I'm not "seeing the change." I don't "sense the pivot." I have no expectations that the events of today will lead to positive outcomes in the future, even if "the vibes are different."
Happy birthday to film star Jackie Chan (69)!
mmm... a stack of subs
blessed are the cheesemakers
ordered enough stamps that the USPS sent me a stamps catalog for collectors... no, I just needed to mail some stuff... please do not think of me this way
Lot of decent quoting and good commentary this week, but fewer original thoughts. Probably related to the weather.
At the Movies
Finally back out to the cinema.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), dirs. Michael Jelenic, Aaron Horvath ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
The first signs of trouble were the packed theater on a Friday night. Leery of being seated next to strangers for such a cinematic spectacle, I prepared for the worst. As it would turn out, Eric and Taylor, two crossfaded college kids whose names have been changed to protect the innocent, would be the highlight of the screening. Taylor, the chaperone to Eric's rowdy energy, had trouble containing his former roommate's excitement for Mario. Eric had arrived with two beers and managed to spill some on several other people on the row, but he gave them all sips to make up for it. I'm sure the alcohol would kill any germs, and they both had the joie de vivre of someone who will live forever. They'd been planning for this outing for over a year, you see, and they were both very ready for it.
The next sign of trouble came in the course of our conversation when, as we discussed the fellow playing Metroid Dread on his Switch and the other dude flirting with a whole row of girls, we realized that not even the pre-roll for the film had started. We were sitting in a fully-packed and fully-lit theater twenty minutes past the scheduled start for the film, and yet they weren't even showing the trailers yet. Still, thinking perhaps there were issues with tickets or concessions lines about which staff was being considerate, we waited, Eric continually being reminded by Taylor that there were children around and assuring people that he didn't actually jack off in the theater during The Shape of Water.
About forty minutes after the scheduled start time, staff entered the theater to tell the crowd that they were aware nothing was playing but that they should have it fixed in "a few minutes." The remarkable thing was that people's desire to see Mario was so great that no one left at that juncture, save perhaps to get refills. A few minutes turned into more, and it wasn't until about an hour past the start that staff returned to say they were "rebooting the software" and that it should be fixed in "a few minutes." That sent people to the doors, but as Taylor pointed out, perhaps the real Mario was the friends we made along the way. A real Mario Party, if you will.
Staff returned ten minutes later to tell everyone that the screening was canceled. A child burst into tears at the news, apparently unswayed by the allure of a free ticket for a future film. One person flipped off the crowd as he left. I thought that was rude. Eric and Taylor and I waited for things to die down before leaving, but not before we promised to say hey to each other when we end up in the same funeral home.
Anyway, I went across town to another theater and watched the movie and it was pretty good. Princess Peach said "Great Kong Army" before a Jim Steinman song played. They should let me direct a prequel about the Great Ape War. Strangely, a lot of weird narrative overlap between this one and the live-action one! It looked pretty, and it made me laugh, and it had some cute references, and kids seemed to like it. What more could I want?
Still... that first crowd was electric. I wonder what they would've thought of it.
Super Mario Bros. (1993), dirs. Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
You know, I think I've realized it is truly a miracle that this movie even exists. Nintendo is now so protective of its everything that the idea they would allow anyone to make anything with a modicum of creativity or re-interpretation is absurd. Not to say that they aren't within their rights to keep their brands anodyne and their image pure but... as Princess Daisy said to Peach, "Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt [sic]" (very real quote, don't look it up).
I can't tell you a single line of dialogue from The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) that I saw last night, but I was quoting this one before and after watching it. I was sitting there thinking to myself around the one-hour mark thinking "this is pretty good, but it could use a little more merging the dimensions" (which, little did I know...). Just the Iggy and Spike character arcs of "gleeful goons for fascist" to "radical Marxists advocating for revolution" is a delight. Luigi saying "must've been a non-union job" is a cherry on top.
The movie was very influential on me. I know that now.
The Ten Commandments (1956), dir. Cecil B. DeMille ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
I probably already quote this movie a weird amount. Man, that Dathan guy kinda sucks, right? Also, Vincent Price's name is Baka. Anyway, this is like THE Biblical epic, and the Passover sequence is effective and creepy. Got weirdly hit by the dude with the fig tree as they left Egypt. Imagining being DeMille and revisiting my own work like this, would probably feel consciously like fashioning a magnum opus, like I'd been working towards it for an entire career.
I also hadn't realized that the throne I used to have was pretty much directly modeled off the throne in this.
Exciting stuff on deck this week! Probably ought to see at least one new release though.
One Picture
They need to make a movie about the Harrowing of Hell and Jesus doing a prison break to get the virtuous pagans out of there. Like The Great Escape but with Jesus. Keep the Steve McQueen though. Or Chicken Run, if that plays better. Lose Mel in that case.
In closing,
Go outside as much as possible this week. It’s your time.