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Better Call Saul S02
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1729
And as the characters flesh out more and more I find myself increasingly addicted, in that unusual position of some current awareness of popular television.
It's brilliant, and more so every episode as you come to appreciate not only Slipp'n Jimmy's slide from grace, the incorrigible non-conformist, his tragic flaw also his saving grace, the contrast in the way both he and Kimberley leave their jobs, there are the one second sight gags where he fills his coffee cup in the boiler room of the nail salon with Mont Blanc Pens presumably lifted from the law firm, (note the continuity, he fills the cup, pause, count, 9 pens, then in the pan away there's a dozen), he's finally his own man, and who can't relate to this? And there is abundant foreshadowing, the drug dealer crossing the border, the visual metaphors, a bug crawling upon the road, a Popsicle stick cemetery as the driver retrieves his gun...
It's all of the same brilliance you'd expect from Vince Gilligan, not - at the moment - as dark as Breaking Bad, but certainly every bit as good, and the clouds are gathering...
Nazi Loot in the Catskills
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Lost
- Hits: 2066
From Atlas Obscura, in WW2 a couple of Nazi Saboteurs were thwarted in NY and their cash purportedly hidden in the Catskills.
Read the full story here: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/buried-somewhere-in-the-catskills-is-a-stash-of-nazi-loot
Acquired Savant Syndrome
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1876
Yep, it happens. Like that time the radioactive spider bit me in the lab...
Link: http://nautil.us/blog/what-its-like-being-a-sudden-savant
The Act of Killing
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2269
Unbelievable.
I haven't seen the documentary that won the Oscar for 2012, but I have a hard time believing it in any way beat this...
Produced by Erroll Morris and Werner Herzog, Director Joshua Oppenheimer gives opportunity to some of Indonesia's more celebrated executioners, murderers, rapists and gangsta's to reenact their war crimes and tell their story.
This is dark, but brilliant fare. Now in their 70's, Indonesia's murdering class still in power, they want their story told, and are happy to reenact their executions, murders, and rapes for the the camera. Without justification (but with substantial Western Encouragement), "The Act of Killing" retells Indonesia's Genocide not so much as a rabbit hole as a moral and ethical abyss, as the characters both freely acknowledge their roles and duties yet without in any way accepting moral culpability...
The murderers watch it and shower it with approval. They go on collections, where they terrorize Chinese immigrants for protection money, freely given on the basis of their reputations alone. There's the epiphany where the lead executioner, in his role of the victim, realizes what he thinks his own victims felt, until the director is compelled to interrupt and advise him "...but you knew you were acting, in a film, whereas your victims knew they would die...", or words to that effect...
And yet somehow, each of them, the inane lifestyles, the unthought values and unconsidered consequences, the idolizing and worshiping of the most despicable of human traits, somehow you get the feeling that perhaps they realize, that despite their place in a society that not only accepts but celebrates their "accomplishments", that somehow they know that what they did was wrong...
It's a Russian doll, infinitely nesting, tangled and tangling web of the darkest of human fears and realizations. It's shame on META META META levels. It's the firsthand portrayal and reenactment of heinous and amoral things, and as painful as it is to watch it's complicity to ignore. And if you think it's irrelevant, read this:
This is ongoing and worldwide, Mexico, Rwanda, Syria, Croatia, again and again, but few countries have had the audacity to celebrate and promote their war criminals like Indonesia has.
Reviews: http://www.cbc.ca/documentarychannel/feature-programs/the_act_of_killing/
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/05/act-of-killing-screening-in-indonesia
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_act_of_killing/
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