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Cake day: June 10th, 2025

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  • I don’t know. I’m usually ready to watch a meandering film with slow pacing, but I know people who won’t put up with that, so I might like movies you find unwatchable. In contrast, there’s a subset of French slice-of-life movies that I just generally dislike while other people love them. Anyway, I’ve only seen 4 Tarkovsky films, and they all move more slowly than, say, a superhero blockbuster. Of those 4, I guess the most accessible is Solaris. Some days/weeks later, I’d watch Andrei Rublev as a change of pace, then after another wait try Stalker.

    Those should be enough to give you a feel for the director, and then maybe you can try Mirror and tell me what I’m missing. I feel like a bunch of symbolism is going over my head. Are those Maoists shaking little red books? What does that evoke from a Russian perspective?






    • Sinners (2025) - 1930s southern black community has to deal with all kinds of issues internal and external when a pair of charming hoodlums return home to go straight and open a juke joint, but what to do about honkies trying to get in on the action? Unspoken moral?: White people suck.
    • Dead Men Walk (1943) - really bad old horror with stilted acting and dialog.
    • Mirror (1975) - Second time I’ve watched it and I am not smart enough to ‘get’ this movie. I adore both Stalker and Solaris (Andrei Rublev is interesting but not my favorite Tarkovsky film), and those I believe I ‘get’, but I feel like I’m missing half of what is communicated in Mirror. Still, it stirs emotions and is engaging to watch. Beautiful imagery.
    • Oedipus Rex (1967) - Pasolini tells the ancient tale of a land blighted because of the sins of its ruler, then ties it to post-war Italy. Recommended.
    • Medea (1969) - Another from Pasolini, but not as good as Oedipus Rex, but is does have opera singer Maria Callas, so worth a watch.
    • Death of a Unicorn (2025) - awful. Inappropriate violence for kids and too mild for adult horror. There isn’t even much of a moral to find since none of it bears relation to reality.
    • Hyenas (1992) - Now THIS is a movie. Set in a small African village, it is something of a parable on greed. It has funny hits in a dry, awful sort of way, and more approachable humanity than anything else on my list this week.

  • I don’t want to diminish the tragedy, but… this reminds me of a joke I first heard told by Garrison Keillor, but it was already old when he told it. Here’s a link to one version: https://www.maxtrescott.com/max_trescott_on_general_a/2011/02/aviation-joke-hunting-for-moose-in-alaska.html

    The following is a joke – not real – the NBC story is real, but the following is NOT:

    Two hunters hire an Alaskan bush pilot to flythem in his float plane out into the Alaskan wilderness for a week long moose hunt. After landing on a lake and dropping them off with all their gear, he reminds them of of the terms, saying, “I’ll be back in a week to pick you up but you can only have one moose between you. The airplane’s not big enough to carry any more than that.” The hunters agree and head out as the pilot flies off.

    A week later he returns to find the hunters waiting with their gear and a wealth of meat including two whole moose heads complete from racks to delap to neck. The pilot is furious. He shuts down and jumps out of the plane. “You idiots, I told you one moose. Now we’re going to have to leave the other here to rot. What were you thinking?”

    One of the hunters replies, “Last year we paid the our an extra $500 and he flew us out.”

    The pilot refuses, “It’s not the money, it’s the weight!”

    “Well that’s B.S.,” says a hunter, “Cuz’ our pilot last year had the same type of plane as you and he took off just fine.”

    After much back and forth, the pilot relents. They load up all their gear, strap one head to each wing and the pilot fires up the plane to takeoff. The aircraft hops and skips on the water, lifts off and stays in ground effect until the last possible moment. The pilot pulls up, clearing the trees at the end of the lake by inches. The aircraft climbs out slowly but not high enough to get over the low, forrested hills and they crash in a tumble of spruce.

    Everyone survived with minor injuries, but the pilot was knocked unconscious in the crash. He was attended by one of the hunters. As he came to, and, as so often is the case, he asked “where are we?” The hunter looked toward the crash and then back to the lake. ”I’m not absolutely sure,” he said, “but it looks as if you got us about a quarter mile further than our pilot did last year."




  • Gomez further criticized the FCC for overstepping its authority in “intervening in employment matters reserved for other government entities with proper jurisdiction on these issues” by requiring Skydance commitments to not establish any DEI programs, which Carr derided as “invidious.” But Gomez countered that “this agency is undermining legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand opportunity” by meddling in private companies’ employment decisions.

    That’s Fascism!

    You can argue that requiring equal opportunity programs were also government overreach, but even a cursory look at the history of those programs shows they were done to combat a deep history of racism combined with the statistics and figures proving discrepencies. Equal opportunity programs were publicly debated and approved to solve a problem. This is being done without review or evidence at the whim of the administration.












  • I’ve only seen four Tarkovsky films, but yes, he’s a fabulous director. I’ve not read the book and don’t know if an English translation would do it justice, so I’ll take your word for it that the extremely good movie was better than its source.

    Note that I didn’t make that list of 6. I just thought the movie community might like to read the article. Y’all don’t have to call me out with all things they skipped because I’d have put stuff like the Wizard of Oz and Ran on there (and then quickly ducked because no one gets away with saying a movie is better than Shakespear’s original work).