16 December 2007

Ideocracy

Although not as funny as I would have liked, it is actually the most
accurate description of "survival of the fittest" one can find in
popular culture: Darwin's theory doesn't describe the fittest taking
over but, rather, the most re-productive taking over.

14 December 2007

Understanding the World Through Extrapolation

Perhaps much of what I know about place sin the world where I have
not been is based on what I have seen in movies and related media.

So I take a sense of how places I HAVE been are portrayed in movies
-- the mis-representations, the exaggerations, the fabrications, and
the accuracies -- and use that to judge how well movies about places
I have NOT been likely portray those places. Using that calibration,
I then extrapolate what the places I have not visited, but have seen
in movies and other media, must be like.

02 December 2007

Death of President; Westworld

Death of a President is oddly patriotic for a film critical of Bush's
America. The patriotism lends the fictional documentary an aura of
authenticity, but would be the first place to start when trimming the
running time to a digestible length (perhaps 70 minutes).

Westworld: Now I recall why it took me so many years to watch this
movie: Even now the only version of this campy sci-fi classic from
the early 70s is a pan-and-scam travesty of what was probably a very
cool Cinemascope motion picture. The film oozes "limited budget and
not sure how to stretch it" from every frame, and manages to hit
every cliche. What impresses one most, now, if the soundtrack -- not
the twangy western bits, but the incidental music, especially during
the third, chase, act.