TrickJarrett.com

Chernobyl (2019) - DNF / 5 Crises

[DNF is an abbreviation for "Did Not Finish"]

I tried. I really tried. I gave the first episode half an hour. But I just couldn't get into it. The awfulness of it all being that raw and real is fantastic television. It is fantastic television which isn't for me.

The Fall Guy (2024) - 4 out of 5 stunts

A very fun and absurd movie. The montage of actual stunt footage over the credits was fantastic.

Civil War (2024) - 3/5 stars

Watched Civil War and overall found it a fine watch but nothing that blew my mind or left me wanting to watch more.

Fallout (2024) - 4 of 5 PIP Boys

I binged Fallout this weekend after putting it off. I never played the games and just didn't expect to enjoy it. The real reason I enjoyed it is unquestionably Walton Goggins.

Argylle (2024) - 3/5 Stars

Definitely closer to The Gentlemen absurdity than actual Jason Bourne. As long as you go into it with properly calibrated expectations, you should enjoy it.

Appaloosa (2008) - 2/5 Cowboys

We were looking through Ed Harris' movie credits and ended up watching this movie after The Abyss. It... was something. I guess. Definitely not one I'd recommend.

The Abyss (1989) - 3/5 Stars

I definitely had confused this and Sphere in my head over the years. But it was a fine movie, though the ending definitely left me unsatisfied.

Road House (2024) - 2/5 Stars

Earlier this week the wife and I sat down to watch this movie on Amazon Prime. As ardent lovers of action movies, we expected to enjoy this one. It's definitely meant to be in the Fast & the Furious genre of the modern day, but truthfully we just found much of it dumb and disappointing.

Connor McGregor, as you might imagine, is not exactly destined for the silver screen. The plot has so many problems. And sadly the action scenes were largely just... disappointing.

Satisfied watching it on streaming rather than paying to see it in theaters.

The Lies of Locke Lamora - 4/5 Stars

I have been wanting to read this book for a while. In fact I tried a few years ago but bounced off it. Listening to it, via the Libby audiobook app, finally got me through the book. The style of the book takes some getting used to, it jumps back and forward in time which was part of what was offputting for me, but once I got settled I found it quite enjoyable.

There is a character, "Chains" (and whatever you are imagining for this character, I guarantee you are wrong.) I quite like this character and I kept imagining them portrayed by John Noble back in the early 2000s, when he played Denethor in the LOTR movies.

I'm onto the second book in this series, here's hoping it keeps my attention!

Killers of the Flower Moon (2003) - 4 out of 5

Katie and I finally watched it via AppleTV. Overall I enjoyed it, but it's also not the sort of story I tend to enjoy. It was well crafted and the narrative kept me engaged despite there not being any real mystery to it. I haven't read the book, though it is in my virtual stack of unread ebooks. Honestly, seeing the movie, I am less likely to check out the book - but we'll see.

Secondhand Lions (2003) - 5 out of 5 Lions

I've seen this movie countless times over the years. It's a comfort favorite and I love it for the tall tale nature and the cast. It's just wonderful for what it is.

Scarcity Brain - 3 out of 5 hunger pangs

I just finished this audiobook. It fits neatly into my 'infotainment' category. There are some interesting ideas here, but it isn't a book I'll rush out to tell my friends to read.

It starts out strong, delving into the history and modern business of slot machines and how they shape and are built around playing the human brain against its person, something the author calls the scarcity loop. Playing on that mechanism in our brain to drive the further capitalism.

Overall I found this the most interesting portion of the book, and everything afterwards was something I could have personally skipped. There were interesting insights and stories, but nothing that made me go 'oh wow!'

Good Omens, Season 1 (2019) - 4 of 5 Fallen Angels

So I started watching this when it first came out and then something happened and I forgot. Then, I watched The Sandman and mentally I just marked myself as having watched this as well. The whole streaming Neil Gaiman tv-show thing. In any case, I realized my mistake and put it on to watch over the past week.

David Tennant and Michael Sheen are amazing together. Fantastic chemistry and so much fun.

One Piece (2023) - 5/5 Dreams

The live-action remake of the One Piece manga/anime was a lot of fun. I slept on it after the disappointment of the Cowboy Bebop live remake, but I'm glad I finally checked it out. Unlike Cowboy Bebop, I didn't go into it familiar with the source material except the scant details, and now I'm curious to check it out.

The show is fun and silly. I watched some of it with my mother-in-law in town, she patiently sat and watched an episode with me. Later that day she was describing 'that pirate show' to my wife and she said, "I enjoy much of what you all watch, but that pirate show is one I don't get." I am not overly surprised by this, it's far outside her standard sort of thing she'd watch, but I found her overall befuddlement somewhat amusing.

Anyway, I highly recommend you all watch it if you haven't already.

There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm - 3.5 / 5 Antimemes

There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm

Blurb from its Amazon listing:

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

Ironically, I can't remember how this book came across my attention. Maybe it was a mention by a BookToker, or maybe another social media post, but the premise grabbed my attention as it is about something which has long fascinated me, playing with memory.

The book is not normally in the realm I would read. It is a bit of a horror novel, with lots of gore and body horror described, but I came to think of the horror aspect of the novel as a bit more art house / new age. The base concept of the novel is so out there and theoretical that it made it easy for me to remove myself from the action and partition it off in my mind - I'm not the one enduring the horror, I'm the observer.

The premise of the novel is hard to summarize, but I think the way I will approach it is this: It is a novel in the vein of the online "SCP" genre. SCP is an a meta genre of fiction writing, where many different individuals contribute to a corpus of sci-fi / horror / supernatural stories with a very dark and, often, experimental tone or styles of writing.

This book is very much all of that. It is weird. It is hard to read sometimes as your brain grapples with shifts in voice or perspective, etc. But it was an interesting ride. Like sitting in a bumper car as it traverses through an art house. You're a passenger with no control of the story, observing what is around you, jarred and bumped and sometimes confused.

As the rating says - largely, I liked it. I have no desire to read it again, even if I would get more out of it with a better understanding for its goings on. Worth noting, it is a quick read. And while I spread it out over a few days, my reader tells me I spent just three hours reading it in total.

This is my first book of 2024. I'm setting a goal of reading 50 books this year, and while I started this one last year, I feel it is fair to count it to this book total as I could have as easily read it all this morning had I decided I wanted to.

Rustin (2023) - 5 of 5 Dreams

I quite enjoyed the movie. As I told my wife, this is the sort of movie that leaves me emotionally drained. I'm sad that Bayard Rustin isn't a name I recalled hearing earlier in my life. I will definitely be looking up a biography or another historical book about him and his story.

This film reminds me how I want a series of documentaries, working title, "Just off Screen" - which highlights people like Rustin, who are important players in notable historic movements or moments, but who tend to fall just out of the focus of history's cameras.

I enjoyed this article about the film by Tanisha Ford, a professor at CUNY. It lauds the highlighting of Rustin and also notes some of the overlooked aspects in service to the narrative. Here are that article's two closing paragraphs:

Rustin does not offer any altogether new revelations about the significance of the March on Washington. In fact, it reifies the widely accepted narrative of the march as a triumphant moment for the movement and a transformative moment in US history. It does not zoom out beyond the groups assembled in its two rooms to show the degree to which the march was hotly contested by the more radical, grassroots arm of the movement. For example, Malcolm X referred to the march as the "Farce on Washington." He was critical of the White House's heavy involvement in the planning of the march and the big dollar donations that "Big Six" civil rights leaders such as Wilkins, King, and Whitney Young received from philanthropic foundations to underwrite it.

But the film is triumphant in that it proves that centering the most marginalized, like Bayard Rustin, brings other underappreciated, undercelebrated activists into the national conversation. In the film's closing scene, Bayard Rustin is collecting trash from the National Mall lawn. King has given his now classic "I have a Dream" speech, to rousing applause. Wilkins and the Big Six have brokered an Oval Office meeting with President Kennedy to make him commit to civil rights legislation. And yet Rustin—somewhat by his own choice—does not enter that room. As this scene conveys, his work is, literally, at the grassroots. Thus, by focusing on grassroots organizers, Rustin pays tribute to people such as Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Ella Baker, Joyce and Dorie Ladner, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Cortland Cox, Rachelle Horowitz—many of whom are still alive to receive their flowers.

Titanium Noir (2023) - 3.5 / 5

Cal Sounder is investigating a murder. A murder which makes him among the most perfect people to investigate it for reasons which the story unfurls as you move through the story.

I enjoyed the premise, writing and story. Cal Sounder is an interesting protagonist, though his smarmy nature can be annoying. He isn't an unreliable narrator, but you definitely come to realize that he doesn't reveal everything he knows as soon as it is relevant, and only when it fits the flow of the story.

This is a bit of a spoiler, so I'll hide it: One trope which I have found to grow tiresome is how some authors use the hook of an unknown clue, in this case, a particular phrase. The protagonist spends a lot of time figuring out what this mysterious clue is, only to have the author reveal it wasn't something to be solved at all - it was a misheard or misunderstood phrase. I find that trope tiresome and annoying in 99% of its uses.

Lastly, I am beginning to wonder if my expectations for writing is too high when it comes to conclusions, or if it is something else.

For much of the story, I was in the midst of the action and able to imagine it unfolding around me. But, for roughly the last quarter of the novel, I felt removed and as an outside observer. I feel this way more often than not for stories, so I'm beginning to think if this a me-thing and less a fair criticism toward the author as it is not limited to this novel. It might be tied to my ADHD, once the mystery is resolved or in the final act of resolution, my brain shifts gears. I'm not sure.

"Requiem for the American Dream" book review

I haven't read the book yet, it's on my virtual stack to get to eventually. I did enjoy this review of it though.

Ours Was the Shining Future, Leonhardt’s first book, is an attempt to explain what happened. His take, which I believe is correct, is that democratic capitalism (defined as “a system in which the government recognises its crucial role in guiding the economy”) has since the 1970s given way to a laissez-faire free-for-all in which corporations and short-termism rule. In this world, he writes, “there is no longer a mass movement focused on improving economic outcomes for most Americans. The country’s largest activist groups, on both the left and the right, are focused on other subjects.”

How did we get here? In Leonhardt’s analysis, changes to three things — political power, culture and investment — mean that average, working Americans have been left behind. Since the late 1960s, the “old labor” of the New Deal has been hijacked by a new and more entitled “Brahmin left”, increasingly made up of college-educated elites that talk down to workers rather than with them. In a country that fundamentally skews more socially conservative, the Democratic party has also become too radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights.

Because of this, they have lost the electoral votes needed to push through badly needed economic policies such as long-term public investment, as well as more progressive taxation, plus healthcare and educational reform, that would temper rising inequality. Add in a “greed is good” culture of self-interest and global market forces pushing only what’s good for the quarter, and you get a country in decline.

Dirty Harry (1971) - 3 out of 5 .44 Magnum rounds

Watching this, it is very apparent that the movie is over fifty years old. It feels like it from the start and throughout it. Things are said and done which would never fly today. And yet, it was still a good movie.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) - 5 out of 5 stars

James Baldwin: The story of the Negro in America is the story of America, and it is not a pretty story.

Here is a description of the movie, written by Jwelch5742 on IMDB:

In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, "Remember This House." The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.

I admit struggling to find words for this film, as it is so important to tell stories which I have zero direct experience with. But it is a reminder that a movie which came out seven years ago about an intellectual who died almost forty years ago, and discusses the lives of three great men who died longer ago than that - is still timely and important today.

James Baldwin: Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced. History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals.

Contact (1997) - 5/5 Stars

The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

I love this movie. It's truly fantastic and nails the hopeful dream of science, and the headwinds it faces at every step of the way. I apparently hadn't spoken of my love of this movie to Katie before, but I would consider this movie among my top 10 science fiction films of all time, possibly higher.

Of course the movie is based on the book written by Carl Sagan. Sagan didn't live long enough to see the movie, but he worked on the film and reportedly did his best to keep it heavily based in science.

Barbie (2023) - 4/5 Barbies

A truly fantastic movie. An amazing commentary on society from top to bottom, delving into what it is to be human.

Hijack (2023) - 3.5/5 Stars

Idris Elba drama about an airplane hijacking. Overall an enjoyable watch if perhaps a bit predictable for me.

Jury Duty - 3 out of 5 verdicts

I'm watching the finale of Jury Duty and I am boggled at the idea of dealing with the insanity and stupidity of the show for three weeks for a stupid civil lawsuit.

Overall, the show was fine. It was silly and ultimately not a show I needed to see. It was heartwarming in the finale but also it just... was fine.

I wouldn't tell anyone they have to see the show.

Fast X (2023) - 2 out of 5 car explosions

The movie is a montage of cameos, nonsensical plots and over the top stunts all in the name of family. As a die hard fan of the franchise, I loved it. As a moviegoer - wow it was thin.