Michael W Jackson – Political theory and practice

Fact beats fiction, again.

Make Russia Great Again (2020) by Christopher Buckley.

Good Reads meta-data is 220 pages, rated 3.68 by 2,145 litizens.

Genre: Satire.

DNA: Old Money.

Verdict: Ugh!

Tagline: It has happened (t)here.

A fictional account of the 7th Chief of the White House Staff in 3 years, as part of his rehabilitation in a Federal prison. Told absolutely deadpan. The author’s delight is obvious in having the great manure pile all to himself and he feasts on it. And it is sharp and deadly, but…well, reality is worse than fiction. Intended as a Swift satire, reality has overtaken it since publication. The most garish, stupid, outlandish, vile things in the book seem childish compared to what has happened since.

All those Dr Frankensteins, large and small, who created this monster with votes and donations in the mistaken belief they could control it, will be proven wrong. It is an old story, quite unknown to fools, that the monster always bites the hand that feeds it. Since that is the closest hand, it starts there.

Enuf said.

Buckley has a long list of novels to his credit and I might try another when the dust settles from reading this. Starting with Little Green Men.

Writer Heal thyself.

The Healer (2010) by Antti Tuomainen.

Good Reads meta-data is 224 pages rated 3.16 by 2073 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland. Species: Helsinki.

Verdict: Unbalanced.

Tagline: The worst has come.

There is a rich context of Helsinki, some of which resonates with memories of our visit there – the central station guarded by those giants, Stockman’s, the rock church, the bears at the door of museum with the 1919 broken glass in the door.

The hero is sympathetic. Moreover, the police are not cardboard fools.

This world has a oneway descent into a state of nature. There is mercifully no preaching about this catastrophe; it just is. Instead we have a study of how different people react to that fact. Some go into denial. Others welcome it, until it hurts them. A few find profit in it.

Though the authority of the state has all but disappeared, the police are still rule-bound and paper money in euros retains value. Further, for a penurious poet Hero seems to have a good supply of that paper money.

Hamid appears, saves hero’s life, starts a backstory, and then disappears from the text. Poof! Uh? Likewise, hard to fathom was the fact that poet seems to have known nothing about his wife or his two best friends. Instead far too much leans on the plotter’s crutch: the all enveloping conspiracy.

Had this been the first Antti Tuomainen book I read, I would not have read any more. Very Nordic noir formulaic: the protagonist tortured by his backstory, gruesome violence, a bleak environment, insidious corruption by anyone with more than two euros to rub together, and a downbeat ending. Same old, same old.

The north woods

Little Siberia (2018) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 278 pages, rated by 3.67 by 2,278 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: Deep and dark in the forest primeval.

Tagline: Vroom!

Much more serious than any of his I have read before. Deep and dark in the deep and dark north woods 20 miles from the 1944 imposed border with Russia.

Hero is a pastor (though which church and who employs him is left in the clouds, but probably Lutheran) in a small community among the lakes and forests. He tries his best, though like Miguel Unamuno’s Father Emmanuel he has lost the vocation. A few years earlier he volunteered for service as a pastor with a contingent of Finnish soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. That experience marked him.

First he had to extend the compulsory military service training he had done earlier with additional training in hand-to-hand combat and desert survival. In the field he went along on patrols and saw things that, well, if God let this happen, then he had no use for that God. He also got shot with some long term consequences.

But he does not advertise any of this, not even to his new wife. Most the villagers take him at face value, a well meaning but insipid fellow. Nice enough, but not a buddy among the manly elk hunters, loggers, fishermen, woodsmen, trappers, and the other hardy souls who endure 20 hours of darkness 6 months of the year.

Then comes the meteor! Yep. Act of God or what? From heaven or the devil’s spawn? Or both?

There are some exhilarating scenes of F1 driving that set the tone. Most of the early material plays into the plot, though the plot is, to this reader, overdone, as is the cynical ending. But I did finish it and I am glad I did.

I never did get what happened to the gym owner or why such an elaborate set up was needed.

What year is it?

Out of Time (2021)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 32 m, rated 5.6 by 1,500 cinemtizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Area 51.

Verdict: Paul was not alone. [Either you get it or you don’t.]

Tagline: Cop and Aliens.

Three body-hopping aliens are on a mission to confuse the viewer. Pursed by a staunch agent from 1951 they collide in 2021 Los Angeles. Agent teams up with Tiger, and off they go.

Yes, it is a mismatched buddy movie with a few bruises between them, too. I liked the way Vernon came back into the story, and the final alien tot.

It is well worn material, but played with conviction and unexpected twists and turns including jumping jacks with some clever asides. Moreover, the acting all around was superb. It rewarded my patience with the mystifying opening.

On the down side the direction was s-l-o-w, and some scenes were attenuated beyond their value. Get that editing done.

Later I also watched a hour of Sender (2020), IMDb 1h and 50m, rated 3.9 by 97 cinematizens, which exhausted my comprehension and interest long before the hour was over. Though I had a perverse interest in watching one of the characters play Freeze. I noticed several comments on IMDb and You Tube proclaiming Sender to be the best movie ever made, and thought…. You know what I thought, now don’t you.

Rocky is innocent

Beaver Theory (2022) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 269 pages rated 3.92 by 1015 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: Hoot and Holler three-peat.

Tagline: The end.

Actuary is happy, though he is wanted for murder, has been assaulted, is going broke, has been threatened with death, sees his park disintegrating, and faces a revolt from the park staff. A few troubles to be sure. However on the bright side, he now has a bended family which he brackets from these aforementioned purely professional concerns of staying out jail, staying alive, and staying in business.

Who knew running an adventure park could be so…adventurous?

Henri and his slide rule, will they prevail again, despite the odds, or because of them? I read on to find out.

This was the end of the trilogy. Most of the loose ends were tied up but not all. The troublesome brother disappeared, and while I liked the shambling police officer, I wondered why he did not react to the dead and then alive brother. Specifically, as to this title I missed an explanation of who funded the rival park, and what the black mail was about. Maybe that was just me.

They came.

The Aliens (2017)

IMDb meta-data is 1h and 45m, rated 6.5 by 93 cinematizens.

Genre: Drama.DNA: USA.

Verdict: A labour of one man’s love.

Tagline: We are (not) alone.

Admission: I let it run with the sound so low I seldom heard it while I finished the weekend crossword puzzles. My plan was to switch attention to the film if and when the aliens appeared.They did.

Back up. Dedicated UFOist waits in the south western desert every Tuesday afternoon and night for a return visit from the aliens who contacted his dad there forty years ago as he promised his terminally ill father he would do. He is well known to the Border Patrol officers who stop by for a drink of the cold water bottles he always has in good supply. Ditto the local sheriff who calls in once in a while to break the tedium’s of lonely patrols.He spends most of the rest of his time either sitting with his mute father in a hospice or at a pub drinking soda with two other equally inept UFOists. No job seems to detain him. His ahead-flank-speed sister tries to set him up with women, but…the desert seems safer than a blind date. Then one night as he keeps his lonely vigil he hears something, and… Well, there are aliens but not the kind that causes A.I. to mark the film as science fiction, as has happened in some places it seems, judging by the comments on its IMDb page. Ditto You Tube where I came across it. Thereafter it is a kind of love story with twists and turns that I shall not go into but it is a conflict between the humanitarian and the venal. No doubt I missed many explanations in the suppressed dialogue, but in another way I did not miss them, since I have no doubt they were the usual clichés. He finds out, slowly, very slowly, that he is not alone.

****

I kept watching it first to await the aliens and then when they appeared I continued to watch, so I guess I could say it is ‘watchable,’ but I would never let that neologism pass my lips. The players absolutely reek of sincerity and I found that interesting given the veneer of so many actors whom you just know are holding up a mask. Oh, I liked the way the ubiquitous water bottles pay off. There are some repetitions that should have been cut to trim it to feature length of 90m. But the one-man band could not do that.

Bullwinkle did it.

The Moose Paradox (2021) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 300 pages rated 3.76 by 1,916 litizens.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: A two-peat: Hoot and Holler!

Tagline: He’s back!

Actuary’s brother is undead, and has learned nothing from the near death experience. Bad, very bad, for many reasons which Actuary enumerates…at length. Brother is a one-man wrecking crew, filled with good intentions that generate catastrophes, which he duly blames on the nearest innocent bystander. He would seem well qualified for senior management, and he is just that in his own freely given opinion.

Actuary is also so in love, he cannot calculate the cost-benefits of anything, starting with being in love. He speaks without thinking! He makes schoolboy blunders in arithmetic! He takes the bus when he meant to go by train. He turns the wrong way when he exits the bus and gets lost. He is not himself. But then who is he? Indeed, where is he? On the wrong bus.

And, ‘What about the moose?’ A moose in need is a friend indeed. Right, Rocky!

***

Does not compute: the police show no interest in Brother’s return from the dead. I also found Johanna’s capitulation to Brother did not jibe with her no nonsense persona from the Rabbit Factor.

Being

Existir (2021) To Exist

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1h and 22m, rated 5.0 by 152 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Argentina.

Verdict: Less can be enough.

Tagline: Only the Shadow knows.

Seven diverse individuals from around the world are gathered, abducted, and…. Meanwhile in Buenos Aires, She and He, after some preliminaries, started following clues that appear on her telephone screen to find Third who disappeared a couple of years ago, driving off in a huff after a spat, never to reappear. Third’s friends assume he has moved to another city to leave his disappointments behind and they get on with their lives, though what they do off camera remains unknown.

The clues lead them, after the necessary tropes, to a field (yes, of course there is a crop circle within), guarded by a geriatric and a stereotyped general with a Mad Scientist in tow.

All expense was spared, and we soon realise the other couple we see through the looking glass living a perfectly normal life are the writer and his supportive wife. Get it?

Meanwhile, in the story the hacker keeps sending clues to Her phone, and He and She keep on keeping on.

***

The writer meets the written as the written meets the writer. Saw another version of this trope in Gosti iz galaksije (1982) Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy from Croatia last year. But none equals Agnes Varda’s Les Creatures (1966).

Something comes from nothing, contrary to Lear, in this low budget production, making it a part of the story. Nicely done. Compare with John Sayles and Jean-Pierre Melville for cinematic alchemy to conjure something out of the air.

Leporidae, you say, not me.

The Rabbit Factor (2020) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 301 pages, rated 3.78 by 5,053 litizens.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: A hoot and a holler! (The highest rating.)

Tagline: The Rabbit did it, twice.

Actuary is McKinsey-managed out of his 15-year position after being tortured by an open plan office with weekly ‘soft flow’ training sessions to release his inner creativity. The open plan office makes it impossible to concentrate on all the possibilities and assign them values, and the soft-flow training induces nausea in his hyper-rational mind. He has no inner creativity, nor does he want any.

At age 39 for the first time in his life, he is unemployed. Well, no problem, as long as people die there will be work for actuaries. He thought. He was half right. People still die, and more to come, well, to go. He was half wrong because the schools are churning out more mathematicians than anyone knows what to do with. Employers don’t want experienced actuaries who are set in his ways, they want young and strong employees desperate for their first job. Having never spent a Euro in vain, Actuary sits tight on his savings and waits, and waits, and waits with Schopenhauer to keep him company. Hmm.

Then things get worse. His seldom-seen brother dies. Oh, well, he will do the duties that need to be done in a cost-efficient way. It is then that he discovers he now owns his brother’s adventure park, and also his debts, both white and black. Then there is the rabbit.

The ride is slow and unsure, and then wild and unpredictable. Despite the odds, which he has carefully calculated, Actuary discovers things about the park, people, himself, and life. His reaction to art and the artist are charming, if life threatening. I will never smell a cinnamon bun again without flinching.

The managementese interspersed throughout alone is worth the cover price. A close second are the musings of Schopenhauer — in both incarnations — that are interspersed in the text. But then there are Actuary’s efforts to reduce his decisions to Gaussian equations!

Loose ends remain. Johanna runs the kitchen with an iron hand in an iron glove and never wastes anything. That combination made me wonder what she did with freezer man.

This is the third title I have read from this author, and I am very glad I did. The first was so-so, but I liked the north woods setting and finished it. Another was more diverting and I finished that, too, but this is the cake-taker. No, not the cinnamon bun-taker. No way! I have my eye on its two mammalian sequels. Stay tuned for further updates.

The ear is at it again.

Black Box (2012) Boíte Noire

IMDb meta-data is 2h and 9m, rated 7.2 by 17,000 cinematizens.

Genre: Mystery.

DNA: Gallic.

Verdict: Unusual.

Tagline: ‘Ear that?’

Another French movie, another ear, this time on an acoustic analyst who works on the flight recorders from plane crashes, of which there seem to be many to keep him busy. This hero is a super nerd, yet even so he has an attractive wife who seems to love him. Strange. Nerd boy is so introverted he folds up, the more so and often because of his acutely sensitive hearing that makes a reception excruciating, but it means he can hear a change of pitch in background engine noise on a flight recorder.

I wrote an undergraduate thesis on regulatory capture, and that is what we have here. The regulator works closely with the regulated, so closely that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. His wife works for a manufacturer of airliners, and she is personally dynamic and socially adept as well as technically competent, unlike Nerd King who sits all day in a dark room listening to engine noises, she wheels and deals.

The technical aspects are in the forefront, so unlike Hollywood, and these hold interest but as the aged and redoubtable André Dussollier (first credit 1970, and latest 2024) says, ‘with those toys you can make a recording say anything you want,’ and that seems to be what happened in the main event. In reality André would have been pushed into retirement years ago in any public service.

Of course, there is a deep and dark conspiracy that does not involve Boeing, but one thinks of 737MAX nonetheless, to approve a plane before it is foolproof. And a fool proves it.

The forensic detail certainly held my interest, though it was hard to take seriously the mismatched couple. Even harder to take was the disappearance of the chief acoustic technician, played superbly by Olivier Rabourdin, in the middle of the investigation and no one seems to notice or care, for some time.

Good to know that greed, corruption, and stupidity are not limited to the Anglo-Saxon world, but sad to know that screen writers can only grasp bad will, and nothing more complicated.

P.S. there are scores of films that use that title.