These little Roanoke fur-twerps need to be more careful about getting underfoot. We not-quite-middle-aged New Yorkers aren’t used to animals darting about our feet. And we … can’t see quite as well as we used to, either.
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“All that a speech can say/ About Democracy”
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
— excerpt, W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939
“Summer,” Alfons Mucha, 1896
Oil on panel.
Throwback Thursday: the Atari 2600’s “Berzerk!”
“Berzerk” for the Atari 2600 was one of my favorite games in the 1980’s. It wasn’t exactly high-concept … you shot at robots who shot at you, in a series of redundant maze configurations. To mix things up a little, both the robots and the walls were electrified, so you had to make sure your little monochromatic avatar didn’t touch either.
The more difficult levels added another threat — a giant happy face (like the famous 1970’s t-shirt design) named “Evil Otto.” It … sort of bounced through the maze, and was also electrified.
“Berzerk” was an unusual game, too, because you could take a break from it. The game didn’t have a “pause” function; the Atari 2600 was far too rudimentary for that. But if you killed every robot in a room, you could just allow your little guy to stand there before walking him into the next maze. You could get up, go outside and play, call your mother from the landline, or make a peanut butter sandwich on toast (considered a delicacy at the time.)
If you want to play the original “Berzerk,” you can play it for free right here over at Virtual Atari.
Poster for “Requiem for a Dream” (2000)
Artisan Entertainment.
This joke is so weak, it would perish in the jungle.
Sooooooo, whenever you order the strangest item on a menu, it’s a Darwinian selection.
Cover of “Amazing Stories,” Gabe Keith, January 1959
Ziff-Davis Publishing.
A review of “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014)
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) is easily the least of the Tom Clancy adaptations. But that shouldn’t be enough to indict the film; the other film treatments of the author’s books have all been roundly excellent. (Okay, 2002’s often-reviled “The Sum of All Fears” might be an exception, but I still like that flick even if I’m in the minority.) I’d rate this outing a 6 out of 10.
It isn’t a bad movie … it’s just an average, generally undistinguished boilerplate spy thriller that seems half-heartedly rewritten as a reboot of the Clancy films. Screenwriters Adam Cozad and David Koepp pay cursory attention to the title character’s background, and a key plot development from the books that I will not spoil here. But the film utterly lacks the mood, detail or methodical plotting of anything Clancy created.
It’s all very generic stuff. We’ve got a generic, telegenic, twenty-something action hero (Chris Pine), his generic hot girlfriend (Keira Knightley), the expected Russian bad guy (Kenneth Branagh) and a by-the-numbers climax — including the last-second requirement to divert a bomb from its target. Rounding it all out is Kevin Costner, the most generic good guy ever to behave predictably on screen — he characteristically projects the expected, wholesome gravitas. Even this film’s title is generic — it sounds like the name a marketing department would come up with for an entry in a video-game series.
There are plot elements that are painfully implausible, even by spy-movie standards. Jack Ryan’s new girlfriend, for example, surprises him by arriving in Russia in a flourish of quirky-girlfriend spontaneity, only to discover his secret career and then be fully enlisted in a spy operation. Branagh doubles as the movie’s director; his work here is surprisingly problematic. This is yet another movie in which important action sequences are barely comprehensible because of frequent, rapid cuts.
Oh, well. It certainly isn’t all bad. There isn’t a single bad actor in the film, for example. If I don’t like Branagh’s directing, I love his acting. The guy is magnetic — he alternately and convincingly projects menace and charisma to perfection. Alec Utgoff shines too, in a small role as a soft-spoken, ironically disarming Russian assassin.
People tend to either love or hate Costner. I like him quite a bit. No, he doesn’t always demonstrate an incredible range. But his acting is competent and he’s likable and consistently convincing. He’s the actor equivalent of that old American sedan that isn’t flashy but always starts reliably when you need it to get you to work.
Hey, you might like this movie far more than I did. I was an obsessive fan of the books, so my standards may be a bit high where they are adapted to the screen. Your mileage may vary.
“Roses Trémières,” Henri Fantin-Latour, 1889
Oil on canvas.
A very short review of the premiere of “NOS4A2” (2019)
So I checked out the first episode of AMC’s “NOS4A2” last night, after the ubiquitous ads successfully piqued my interest. (I frequently get turned off to shows or movies when they’re overexposed by a bombardment of marketing, and resolve not to watch them out of spite. Seriously. But “NOS4A2’s” creepy trappings and the promise of Zachary Quinto as a child-abducting vampire were enough to get me to sit down with the first episode.)
This was decent! I’d rate it an 8 out of 10. The writing, directing and acting were all quite good, the protagonist’s troubled family drama was a lot more compelling than I expected, and this looks like a horror-fantasy series with some creative stuff going on. I had a little trouble buying the 26-year-old Ashleigh Cummings as a high school student, but she’s great in the role. And Quinto chews the scenery just fine as the vampire who apparently feeds off of the life force of the kidnapped children while they sleep. (The character becomes more interesting when he grows younger — and the talented Quinto then infuses his interpretation with a manic, evil energy.)
The jury is still out with me, however, on this show’s horror elements. They’re creatively conceived, but they might be a bit too campy and stylized for me. (You know what I mean if you’ve seen the ads.) “NOS4A2” was adapted from an immensely successful 2013 young adult novel by Joe Hill, and I suspect that the fantasy-horror mashup here is exactly what made the book appeal to fans of the YA genre. It remains to be seen whether it will be too corny for more mainstream horror fans.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 