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Old April 27th, 2014 #14
Alex Linder
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Movie Thumbs

By Alex Linder [index]

April 27, 2014

Blackfish (2013) - 7/10. Documentary about keeping killer whales in captivity for public entertainment as at SeaWorld or former SeaLand in Canada. Turns out they sometimes kill people, you know, these whales, and management covers it up. Interesting things: just how WASPy SeaWorld and this foamy animal-training subculture is generally. The trainers are Brady Bunch types, as are the families who come to see the show. Management is dark and shadowy, don't hear much from them. They simply cover up what actually happens to preserve appearances, in every case. For it is the way of the WASP, whether high-end Episcopalian-illiberal elite, or low-end Baptist preaching dirt-eater. To the WASP, appearances are all that matters. Everything is trainer error, nothing is due to animal aggression. Nothing is fundamentally wrong with cooping up giant animals in small spaces. It's ok to lie about 'facts' (like the life length of the orca in captivity versus wild) as long as it makes the paying customers feel good. It may be that jews own SeaWorld, as they own most entertainment, from movie production companies to cruise lines, but the working environment, the subculture investigated in this film, is as WASPy as it gets.

Fun facts: 100% of male orcas get fin impotence, as it were: 'dorsal collapse' they call it. Their top fin simply flops over rather than stands erect. In the wild this only happens 1% of the time. It is impossible not to read a spiritual and symbolic significance into this. The bottom line seems to be that even if you genuinely care about the animals, and follow proper training procedures...the animals will never be wholly happy cooped up, and attacks on trainers will never be completely avoidable. In short, it's a grey area. It's cool to train and swim with giant sea creatures, and audiences enjoy and will pay to see such things, but it comes at a price to both the animals and the people who work with them. That's life in the big city, I guess. I don't feel compelled to respond to what's presented in any particular way (beyond appreciating learning that orcas apparently have evolved a brain structure related to emotion not found in humans), though the point of the movie tends toward the idea that this stuff is basically unhealthy, immoral and probably ought to be outlawed. I don't agree with that, but there are certainly valid points to be made against shops like SeaWorld. It's funny though, this great concern for whales all these ex-trainers have, now that they're no longer employed and paid by SeaWorld. Why, they act like killer whales when the trainers run short of fish rewards for proper behaviors.

And then there's this, which any WN will appreciate. It's one of the lies peddled by management, that the orcas you see in the family fun park are a real family - just like yours! Say two-three people:

Quote:
"[They are] falsely representing the collection of animals they have at a particular park as a family. An artificial assemblage of their collection however management decides they should mix them. Whichever ones happen to be born, bought or brought in. That's not a family. You've got animals from different cultural subsets that have been brought in from various parks. These are different nations. These aren't just two different killer whales. These animals, they've got different genes, they use different languages. What could happen as a result of their being thrown in with other whales that they haven't grown up with, that are not part of their culture is there's hyperaggression, a lot of violence, a lot of killing, in captivity, that you don't ever see in the wild.
Gee. It sort of sounds like forced race mixing in America. Maybe we should outlaw that. Or even merely make a movie about it. But those are merely white people involved, not some magnificent creature like a killer whale, deserving of respect.

Blue Jasmine (2013) - It's nice to be shocked every now and then. I really liked this movie. Give it 7/10. Have seen most Allen films, disliked most of them, not least because they're all overrated. All of them. Allen's a double-ugly jew - not just physically but mentally. This movie works better than the others because he's not in it. It's a character study of a WASP woman mentally fractured by her inability to parse her idea of herself as a high-minded high-ender with her actual low-rent circumstances. The reviews make no mention of the ethnic aspect here, but to me this movie works best as a study of elite WASP liberal obnoxiousness. Ordinary people aren't good enough for this woman, which I have no problem with, because to an extent it does betoken standards, but she has no call to ruin their lives, and this she does, without caring or even really noticing. Apply this woman's mindset to politics and you get what is called liberalism. Mere reality is far too crude and uncompelling for this case of head; it seeks refuge in ideological fantasies, not caring that this inflicts misery on everyone around it. It's all and always about how the WASP feels about himself; his picture of himself as preferring and exhibiting the highest and best in everything, yet while this taste can be real, it can also be merely fashion, and extremely destructive, and the WASP too often can't tell the difference or simply doesn't care. Jew Allen shows this WASP woman genuinely not caring that her wealthy lifestyle is a product of her husband's financial fraud - and in one crucial scene she does acknowledge that she basically knew it. She certainly knew it when out of anger she called the FBI on him, which had the unintended consequence of reducing her to the circumstances she hates so much she can't cope with them save through eyebrains filtered through xanax and vodka. All that matters to this WASP woman is successful social presentation and preserving one's place in the right circle. Particularly good is the scene in which Jasmine and her sister, who lives a working-class life, have drinks with the sister's fiance, an Italian greaseball mechanic, and his similarly low-rent friend. Blanchett has been widely praised, and rightly so. Just watching her eyes slide around like an uncomfortable snake as she tries to evade direct, reasonable questions from the men, desperately trying to pretend this is not HER actually doing THIS with THESE people...it's the whole thing in microcosm. The high-end WASPs are some of the most unappealing and dangerous people the planet has ever produced. A woman or man who thinks she has a beautiful mind is a danger to all around her. I'm not theorizing either, I've seen this directly in real life. There can't be enough movies made about the essential lousiness of the high-end WASP illiberal, even if it's a ratty, drecky shecky making them.

The Skeptic (2009) - 5/10, average horror film; not unpleasant, ok ending. I enjoy any movie with white men acting straight. The serious brother from Wings is a good example. Just a serious man talking and speaking and acting rationally. I like that.

Computer Chess (2012) - For a couple years in high school, chess was a big part of my life. I gave it up because I realized I could never be great at it, and I didn't particularly enjoy playing it seriously - in tournaments. Or at all. I found very much to be true what pro football coaches say: the pleasure of the wins is far outweighed by the misery of the losses. Tournament chess is the most physically wracking thing I've done. You wouldn't think that, would you? But try playing 3-4 high-pressure matches in one Saturday, with not much time in between, eating out of vending machines. It curdles your stomach and frays your nerves in the most irritating way. You're always one move from disaster. If you're playing someone lower ranked than you are, you should win. If you're playing someone higher ranked, you're usually beaten pretty soundly. It just isn't fun at all, except to a certain type. But for about two years, I was into it pretty heavily.

It's not a thing you can really develop a skill at either, is my impression from experience. The people who are great at it are born that way, as in most things. You can study openings and books all you like, but you're not going to get that much better. Unless you really enjoy it, there's nothing particular to be gained from playing it. As with languages, with chess you get all these claims about how it helps you in other areas of life, but this really isn't true. Success in chess is based on pattern recognition, and this is one of those things you either instinctively have or don't.

Computer Chess is a mockumentary about a computer chess tournament. Give it a 6/10. From the White point of view, shows the diversity of a handful of white men is more than the rest of the world combined, indeed it might be the only true or deep diversity going, the rest being skin deep. This genuine and interesting intra-white diversity is best captured in scene where the Cal-Tech nerd is in a hotel room with a New-Age couple there for a weekend of holistic healing complete with rebirthing. These familiar types are contrasted skillfully enough; there is more distance between these white ways of taking the world than is needed to encompass the comparatively shallow and limited inferior races. The Cal Tech kid is super nerdy, introverted, shy, intelligent, you know the type or stereotype; today we talk about Asperger's or call them 'spergy.' The couple is touchy feely irrational but warm-happy, as they try to draw the sharp, narrow kid into their sexual spumescence. He can stand it only so long before bolting, as we knew he must.

(Polish) Seksmisja (Sex Mission) (1984) - good, 7/10. Cheesy '80s movie but in Polish, of all things. A comedy. Similar set-up to Idiocracy. Two test subjects are put to sleep for science; they wake up much later than supposed to, in 2044, when women rule the world. Hijinkskis ensue! As always, fun to read misshapen subtitles: overcepting private conversations - overcept works for me in our age of drones. "We have slept through the best years of our lives! I was supposed to get an apartment in '98!" Now that's some echt Polish-communist humor right there, boy. Venerical, suiciders. "Why are they lying so much? for some higher ideals."Ah! That's that Pravda/Istina (noble-ideological 'truth' vs. gritty-street-factual truth; i.e., lie vs reality) difference I used to go on about in my earlier radio show. In any case, it's an enjoyable movie if you can find it.

Last edited by Alex Linder; April 27th, 2014 at 11:24 AM.