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From my movie review in Taki’s Magazine:
Blue Pills Matter
Steve SailerDecember 29, 2021
There is no better demonstration of The Matrix’s concept of the blue pill that leaves its victims able to perceive only the simulacrum of reality curated by the powers-that-be than that virtually every review of the sequel The Matrix Resurrections refers to the auteurs of the 1999 science-fiction classic and its depressing follow-ups as the “Wachowski sisters.”
Even more blue-pilled, many critics have convinced themselves not just to say that frauteurs Larry and Andy Wachowski are now Lana and Lilly, Hollywood’s most famous female sci-fi directors, but to believe it.
Bluest of all, more than a few have trained themselves to have faith not only that the Wachowskis are women in 2021, but also that they—due to transcendental gender dogma’s miraculous power to alter not just the present but the past—were female in 1999, and that therefore the original Matrix was made by women. As Orwell might assert, “The Wachowski brothers have always been the Wachowski sisters.” …
Read the whole thing there.
I want to thank everybody who has contributed to this Christmas 2021 iSteve fundraiser to allow me to get cataract surgery on my eyes in 2022.
For those who haven’t yet, here are nine ways for you to contribute to the December fundraiser:
First: Most banks now allow fee-free money transfers via Zelle.
Zelle is really a good system: easy to use and the fees are nonexistent.
If you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay/Zelle. Just tell WF SurePay/Zelle to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrAT aol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.) Please note, there is no 2.9% fee like with Paypal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.
Zelle contributions are not tax deductible.
Second: if you have a Chase bank account (or even other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay/Zelle (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay/Zelle to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it’s StevenSailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with Paypal or Google Wallet, so this is also good for large contributions.
Third, Zelle might work with other banks too. Here’s a Zelle link for CitiBank. And Bank of America.
Fourth: You can use Paypal (non-tax deductible) by going to the page on my old blog here. Paypal accepts most credit cards. Contributions can be either one-time only, monthly, or annual. (Monthly is nice.)
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Steve Sailer
P.O Box 4142
Valley Village, CA 91617
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Please don’t forget to click my name at the VDARE site so the money goes to me: first, click on “Earmark your donation,” then click on “Steve Sailer:”
This is not to say that you shouldn’t click on John’s fund too, but, please, make sure there’s a blue dot next to my name.
VDARE has been kiboshed from use of Paypal for being, I dunno, EVIL. But you can give via credit cards, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, check, money order, or stock.
Note: the VDARE site goes up and down on its own schedule, so if this link stops working, please let me know.
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Here’s the OCR
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
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As Terrence Howard had long ago proven, 1 x 1 = 2. The autogynephiliac aspect was staring us in the maw this entire time.
I’m not a big fan of “The Matrix” (1999); started watching it a couple of times, but never made it all the way through. I’ve been told that it was inspired by one of my favorites, “Dark City” (1998).
Regardless of how tiresome are the Wachowski boys’ movies or their personal lives, I hope that they haven’t made any irreversible surgical changes that they would certainly eventually regret.
What a wonderful feeling it is to scroll past the pledge drive without guilt, knowing that part of Steve’s non-metaphorical clear vision is mine. I recommend it to everyone.
I’m confused
People point to all the reboots and sequels coming out of Hollywood as evidence of cultural exhaustion, but at least The Expanse, currently streaming on Amazon, adapts from a series of science fiction novels published in the last dozen years or so. Despite the political conflict portrayed in that series, it also shows something positive about man’s potential, reminiscent of Heinlein’s stories in the golden age of science fiction, because it would take extraordinarily competent people to colonize Mars and the asteroids in the first place.
;-)
I read the books before watching the series--both are solid--but the series can be a bit of a downer at times....
Barnes and Noble in Phoenix the last couple days has put all the hardcover books in their stores on sale for 50 percent off. I couldn’t resist, so I bought one about the bourgeois revolution in Western society which looked interesting. When I got home, I examined it more carefully, and then I noticed one of the coauthors’ names: Deirdre McCloskey.
Oh. That Deirdre McCloskey, born Donald McCloskey. Well, at least I paid half price for his book, so that mitigates the financial damage of dropping some royalty money in McCloskey’s purse.
In a 2015 G-File about how transgender madness requires us to butcher language, he had an aside about how he refers to McCloskey as Deirdre out of a sense of respect and good manners...
https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/caitlyn-jenner-gender-fluidity-nature/
...as if manners should trump the truth: the other person probably shouldn't impose a naming preference that causes others to violate their principles.
This was the first time I saw that the limits of Goldberg's principles didn't account for much.
Hi steve. I had cataract lense replacement a few months back that went to shit.
Torn and detached retina, hole in the macula, emergency vitrectomy surgery.
Eyesight is fucked now.
Very unlucky
Keanu’s Thomas Anderson is no longer a Chicago office drudge. In 2021, he’s a San Francisco game designer legendary for his Matrix videogame.
Sounds like Tron… or is it Matron? Or just Tran?
Transgender a prelude to transhuman?
Video Link
Is there a word for the mischievous, ideologically motivated calling of a transy by hizzer new name even when speaking of the past? I don’t know. But I listened to Glenn Greenwald the other day because I appreciate his defenses of free speech and his willingness to criticize the New York Times and other big media on their mendacity. But when speaking of the Assange case, he said that Chelsea Manning had revealed secrets, when of course there was no Chelsea Manning at all but still a man who was named Bradley Manning.
Jesus Christ
Steve!
The link for Larry Wachovski’s full-time dominatrix Ilsa Strix leads to National Geographic.
How do you even work if you are being dominated full time?
I guess those are the guys who built my house then. Has it ever rained in your kitched? It’s not a glitch in the Matrix!
Come to think of it, the simultaneously released eXistenZ is much more girly than the Matrix. At least they don’t behave like in an FPS in there all the time then pretend this solves real-world problems.
Or, as I already said, this one by Mamoru Oshii released a year earlier, which (spoiler) apparently doesn’t have a reality layer, a bit like UBIK:
If you have to go meta in a movie that is not supposed to do so, it’s obviously a bad sign.
Otherwise, one would film “Microserfs”, featuring the amoral Vax Nerd Gates back when he was exploiting his workers.
Anyway, happy year’s end and maybe someone can convince our host-in-chief to extend the time during which you can edit comments. It’s not as if it matters if you edit them before approval.
This is from the Oxford Dictionary. Red Pilled is a thing. Hanging around Unz is the red. I just started watching The Matrix on HBO Max. Its good. And the movie-sure-could be motivated by their sublimated Trans desire.
Like Gide’s The Immoralist.
Unless it is sublimated, it is just too pervy and on the nose to be interesting. More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. I can feel the endless regret to come.
Maybe also mention how Trinity decides to mess up Mr. Anderson’s cisheteronormal marriage for some higher purpose about kicking the Matrix’ peacefully coexistent ass for no good reason except “MUH LIBERTY”, like a critical theory jewish professor who is at unease with the current situation.
Anyway the left can’t meme:
‘Matrix’ writers set out to reclaim ‘Red Pill from right-wingers’
They absolutely ARE the agents now.
Let those who look into the antifa abyss take care that they do not themselves become fa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBEVuzWHaOcReplies: @Clyde, @Mike Tre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Hemon
"Me and my people" versus the Deplorables. Of course the Bad People don't read highbrow commentary like the AV Club.
Despite their heroic Communist world saving, evil "right-wingers" have appropriated their meme.
So sad for them.
The only review I have read (Wall St. Journal) panned the latest Matrix. Audiences seem to be ignoring it almost as much as West Side Story (redoux).
Go Woke and go Broke.Replies: @Clyde
I have it on good authority that it was a mostly peaceful coexistence.
Matrix 4 had some cool ideas for a story; a story left untold by Matrix 4.
I was half paying attention the movie. Did it explain why Morpheus and Smith look different in this one? At one point I looked at the screen and Morpheus was made of pixels or something. Maybe I missed the explanation.
The movie was godawful in every sense. It took a frigging hour to convince Neo he was in the the matrix, and then the next hour was spent trying to convince Trinity. Not even much action
In the review, the link for
> Instead, [Larry Wachowski] could now afford a full-time dominatrix (professional name Ilsa Strix).
mistakenly leads to a wholesome National Geographic paean to James Cameron’s bathyscaphes.
The Mystery of Larry Wachowski is a seemingly-unauthorized reprint of a memoryholed 2006 Rolling Stone article that chronicles the slo-motion implosion of Larry’s life and marriage, ably assisted by his dominatrix paramour.
Since it was written in pre-Great-Awokening times, the author is allowed to quote these people and describe their conduct. Not a good look.
It’s no wonder that all the real movie reviewers want to skip past the backstory.
Even more blue-pilled, many critics have convinced themselves not just to say that frauteurs Larry and Andy Wachowski are now Lana and Lilly, Hollywood’s most famous female sci-fi directors, but to believe it.
Frauteurs is a splendid coinage! Thanks.
The first film was very good, essentially a modernized Plato’s cave/Gnosticism allegory. Solid dynamics, acting, action. A truly good sci fi movie. Stylized action, a sort of archetypal themes for masses.
Others were …meh. Endless shooting over nothing.
The brothers ….. no comment.
The Wachoski freaks took neither the blue or red pill but lots of hormone pills! And they still look like dudes. Whatever!
I lost all interest in the franchise since Matrix 2. The first instalment was a decent movie with a gnostic and immature message. The rest have been trash and I expect this last film to be no different. I’m not watching it.
I wouldn't underestimate a film that has created imaginary universe for so many people & whose "message" has entered the vocabulary.Replies: @Dumbo
OT: I’ve decided to go back to brick-and-mortar and stop supporting Amazon. I’m simultaneously giving up digital books. A couple of weeks ago I saw The Real Anthony Fauci by RFK Jr. was trending number 1 with rave reviews (including from Ron Unz). So I had to get a copy.
I went into my local Barnes and Noble in an upper-middle class Whitopia town outside of Boston. There were stacks and stacks of The 1619 Project, A Promised Land by Barack Obama, Renegades by Obama and Bruce Springsteen, etc. All prominently displayed out front. But I didn’t see even one copy of RFK Jr.’s #1 bestseller. I asked a worker and she told me that they don’t have it in stock but I could put my name on a list to order it. I declined as I’m not thrilled putting my name on a list for controversial book. Now after Christmas I did an online search of local Barnes and Nobles in the Boston area and not even one store is showing having a copy of RFK Jr.’s book in store. Wow.
Not sure how buying it from them in person is somehow better than using Amazon. Check Thrift Books and see if they have any copies in stock.Replies: @Dnought
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Real-Anthony-Fauci/Robert-F-Kennedy/Children-s-Health-Defense/9781510766808
It’s like that moment when you realise that Ghostbusters was Dan Ackroyd’s documentary about his Grandfather, a Dentist with a serious interest in Seances and ghosts, and that Dan actually thinks ghosts are a real thing and that Bull Murray wasn’t being sarcastic in his role as Venkman. Dan Ackroyd was fucking nuts. He wasn’t playing for laughs. Likewise, The Matrix was about leathered up transsexual post humanism all along. Have some sympathy for Agent Smith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzX97o86wu8
Jan 27, 2010Replies: @El Dato, @Jack D
https://zoomboola.com/images/content/2018/3/uzn_15216335031.jpgReplies: @Truth
If you want a review of the movie, look elsewhere.
If you want to know more than you ever wanted to about the directors, read the article.
Is it a coincidence that the pills are blue?
Not bad!
Thank God Hollywood is finally over.
Doogie Hauser M.D./the psychic trench coat wearing dude in Starship Troopers is now in the Sarah Connor’s/Donnie Darko’s psychiatrist role! The secret of The Matrix is that we are still living in the late nineteen nineties. The empire never ended.
Why hasn’t Jimmy Cameron turned himself into a 8′ tall blue-furred squirrel person? He’s falling behind.
The hilarious thing about Wachowski brothers is that while they changed their first names, they kept their Slavic male last name, instead of changing it to Slavic female version, Wachowska, thus “misgendering” themselves in perpetuity.
Autogynephilia alright , the other thing is, as Abbé Galiani had it back in 18th century France in his dialogue of the Marquis and the Chevalier: Women are weak and ill and thus don’t have to accomplish as much as men (except kids, that is). – Seen from that angle, what the two directors of Hollywood fame get from their Transformation is: They rid themselves a bit from the competitive pressure that comes with being nerdy male big shots = the smartest and toughest and best selling writer-director superstars. Plus: It is most likely more pleasant to be a (bossy) Trans person than to be a masochist? – So: They made their lives a bit more relaxing. – I’m amused that I even think about this stuff, because I was never afflicted by the Matrix-fever. (I didn’t even watch the movie except for some twenty minutes.)
Hollywood is Weimar Berlin in its institutionalized depravity. I think there are a lot of self-hating above-the-line types, some of whose grandparents and great grandparents were active in Berlin, before the deluge, who unconsciously harbor a dark desire to will back that which rendered their people to ash and bone.
Speaking of the Wachowskis, I’ve never understood why their Cloud Atlas was so disliked and ignored by the great and good. It’s a terrible movie, to be sure, but it pushes every button The Establishment loves: wonderful blacks oppressed by horrible whites, brave women, weak and cowardly men, noble homosexuality, catastrophic global warming, and a Wakanda-like advanced technological black civilization in South Africa that is gonna happen just as soon as the racisms stop. And whiteness as Original Sin is stitched through the movie using reincarnation as a multiplier effect! You’re not just irredeemably evil in this life, Whitey, you’ve metaphysically evil in all incarnations! Betcha wokels never thought of that one before! Wachowskis takin’ it to the next level, uh-huh…
I know the film is a piece of crap for too many reasons to go into here (okay, this one: what’s with the Wachowski’s fetish for hilariously bad makeup?), but plenty of lousy films with The Preferred Narrative have been pushed before, and this one was massively expensive, so why abandon it? Does a good story still matter? Or maybe it was just a little bit before its time?
It almost made me feel sorry for the Wachowskis: they spend millions abasing themselves before Hollywood’s gods, and they get … neglected and ignored.
Almost made me feel sorry for them, but not quite.
Great review. LarryLana enlisted Bosnian-American Literary Darling Aleksandar Hemon to provide the muscle on this script. Hemon has been telling interviewers that his chief mission was to “reclaim” the true meaning of red-pill blue-pill slang from the bad guys, and he’s just the man for the job because, according to him, unlike other screenwriters, he’s not held back by “niceness” and his hatred is truly intense for… us.
He’s an interesting and depressing unicorn: A straight white male thriving in the current clown world of literary fiction. His survival methodology is exactly what you’d think. Immediately after the Rittenhouse verdict, he Tweeted:
This country will be undone by its commitment to white supremacy.
Keep enlightening us with your keen insights on the human condition, Sasha. You’ll need a trophy hall when all is said and done.
Peter Wilkinson in the Rolling Stone-article. – If this isn’t pure nostalgia, it is dumb. – Or camp, hehe – radical chic.
I know the film is a piece of crap for too many reasons to go into here (okay, this one: what's with the Wachowski's fetish for hilariously bad makeup?), but plenty of lousy films with The Preferred Narrative have been pushed before, and this one was massively expensive, so why abandon it? Does a good story still matter? Or maybe it was just a little bit before its time?
It almost made me feel sorry for the Wachowskis: they spend millions abasing themselves before Hollywood's gods, and they get ... neglected and ignored.
Almost made me feel sorry for them, but not quite.Replies: @SFG, @Truth, @Altai
You really shouldn’t feel sorry for people with the royalties to the Matrix movies.
Isteve is awesome, but I also dont do guilt. I’ve only ever paid an online content creator once, and that was cos they’re in a poor country, and they’re the greatest cover band known to man….
Please indulge me, they are clearly superior musicians. Also. Give Steve money.
Literally, I watched their cover of Steely Dan’s “My Old School” yesterday.
Have a listen:
https://youtu.be/P_8aZZ9d_EA
How can Steve forget the Wachowski’s initial foray BOUND, a decent enough flic on its own terms and a perfect encapsulation of mid-90’s greater beta male energy- ersatz Tarantino neo-noir plot choc-a-bloc with gangsters, stolen loot, and threats of extreme violence inside a tie-me-up-tie-me-down beta male sneaky-f*ck “lesbian” empowerment fantasy- “Hey babe, why don’t you ditch your macho and unpredictability violent boyfriend and come away with me? And if you want to explore my- I mean your- dream of kissing pretty, feminine girls, I won’t judge.” Yeah, nothing says I’ve always been a girl on the inside (or mid-90’s beta male) like steaming over Gina Gershon playing tonsil hockey with another cute starlet.
Looking forward to Steve’s review of Don’t Look Up. This movie was supposed to be a parody of Trump and how the planet will end unless we recognize climate change but the clownishly concerned only with herself President played by Meryl Streep seems to be less like Trump and more like a foreshadowing of President Kamala. I think this may have dawned on the (smarter) Leftist critics and the film has gotten very mixed reviews despite the start studded cast.
In any case, political parodies have a sell-by date. After he left office, Alec Baldwin retired his Trump impersonation because it had lost its sting.
Personally, I thought that the movie was a subtle as a brick. A well done comedy makes you laugh even if you disagree with its politics but this was not well done.
More like Lord Fauci and Gates the Vaxx Nerd.
Are leftists just deliberately dumb or are they naturally dumb?
I first noticed this a few years ago when reading Bruce Jenner’s updated Wikipedia biography. It kept referring to Bruce as a “her” even during the part of his life where he unquestionably identified as male – modeling for Playgirl, banging one female hottie after another, etc.
Wikipedia (which has locked Jenner’s bio to most editing, of course) currently seems to have settled on omitting all pronouns in its section on Jenner’s athletic career, with its copious mentions of him winning the Men’s Decathlon, being named “Male Athlete of the Year,” and referring to himself as a “guy”:
In that section, in every place where it would it would be normal to refer to “he” or “she,” since the subject has already been named, it uses his surname, instead.
But once it gets past his athletic career it switches to overt past-tense revisionism, referring to him as a “she” even in the 70s and 80s, when he undeniably thought of himself as a man.
Clever girl. That has to be one of the all-time biggest scores in history for a hooker.
Even in 2006, Rolling Stone author Peter Wilkinson went to great pains to distinguish Larry Wachowski's then-paramour (now-wife of Lana Wachowski) from a garden-variety sex worker.
I now know more about the difference than I thought I needed to, but words can't be un-read.
Wilkinson counts the ways in which these individuals' weirdnesses led them to harm others. Or maybe the destructive impulses came first.
A society that showers wealth and celebrity on people like this...Replies: @Thomas, @TWS
When I was younger, I always wanted a Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian shirt. Oh, God! Does that mean I’m gay?
She has made several references to her "partner" and "girlfriend" with whom ( I assume) she's living.
Other night I asked Wife, well something seems odd about that.
If she was (still) male, living with a woman would be normal. If she was a woman (born), living with a woman might mean nothing but a roommate. Or that she's a lesbian.
But why would a (born) male become a (trans) woman just to live with another woman (as a newly minted lesbian)? Seems like a lot of trouble for the same outcome...
Of course there is the cross dressing and female "identity" which may comport presumably with Amy's innate psychological outlook. But she was born with a female lesbian "identity"?
Weird. Just like your hypothetical tee shirt.
I know nothing about her roommate/partner so she may be trans as well. Two former men now roommates as women? Again, a lot of changes for the same result?
Not my business really, I suppose.
This society has become so rich that people can transform themselves at will, seemingly. Not yet cats, but that may be coming. God help us.
Amy does seem pretty nice and is personable. Has crushed her opponents, now earning over $750K. Current acting host Ken Jennings is the all time champ but could be replaced by a trans woman if she keeps winning.
"Men, is there anything they can't do?" Replies: @JimDandy
Dark City was great sci-fi noir, and there were some visual similarities between the two, but given the time it takes to make movies, could The Matrix really have been influenced by it?
I know the film is a piece of crap for too many reasons to go into here (okay, this one: what's with the Wachowski's fetish for hilariously bad makeup?), but plenty of lousy films with The Preferred Narrative have been pushed before, and this one was massively expensive, so why abandon it? Does a good story still matter? Or maybe it was just a little bit before its time?
It almost made me feel sorry for the Wachowskis: they spend millions abasing themselves before Hollywood's gods, and they get ... neglected and ignored.
Almost made me feel sorry for them, but not quite.Replies: @SFG, @Truth, @Altai
I don’t go for documentaries. Just my preference.
steve is a funny guy. he’s the biggest blue pill dealer on unz.
maybe it’s because he’s half andaman negrito. that would explain the never released 23&me.
sad.
One thing that has kept the Matrix up as a classic was that it was made in 1999 and so it was part of that wave from the mid 90s to early 2000s of films that looked fantastic as this was the height of real film cinematography before digital came in.
From the clips I’ve seen of this new Matrix, it looks like there wasn’t anywhere near enough talent or enthusiasm in it’s production/post-production for it to look as compelling. It requires more vision and work to make digital films look as good. It may also be that rather than taking full advantage of digital cameras new freedom, they just got lazy and shot the same as before only with the results looking worse. The safety net of not having to worry about film making them more lazy in setting shots rather than spend exact time so as not to waste their precious film. Apparently the originals were lit with great care with artificial light too giving them a unique feel. Now ‘Lana’ has said she has come to appreciate natural light (Not the friend of digital cameras either) and so the new film looks dull and washed out.
It looks and feels as if it was made for the sake of it. The suggestions are that WB were going to make this film with or without any Wachowskis and so ‘Lana’ came in for it. (Probably for the best in terms of PR, ‘Lana’ is shorter more feminine looking and disarmingly eccentric with the rainbow dreads, the other one though…)
I saw an interview with the director and the total lack of passion or enthusiasm for the film was clear and apparent on both sides.
The best analysis of the Matrix from the time was that it was a giant action movie about alienation. (A common trope of Gen X media, the first generation to come of age in the post-68 era but compared to Gen Y and Gen Z, living in a comparatively intact and cohesive society, all Gen Z memes are about depression and anxiety) Today the character of Mr. Anderson would most likely be deeply alienated by SJW stuff and the transgender craze. And today who is more alienated than straight white men who can think for themselves and feel like they’re wading through a surreal funhouse of emotions and narratives they can’t relate to in the slightest. Or maybe just embrace his half-Asian ancestry and become a turbo ethnic activist pretending to be a liberal universalist.
We went from the nerds being declared the new elite to a world where the people they couldn’t stand or relate to the most, highly extroverted teenage girls and boys with cluster B traits scream constantly across the universe from social media and the rest of the world has to take their meltdowns seriously. Their innate discomfort with this being taken as proof that society was actually right to mock them for their social inadequacies.
In light of what happened maybe the machines were 100% right to describe their simulation of 1999 as ‘the peak of your civilization’.
Crashed and burned--with more crashing and burning sequels to follow.
This is very common in science fiction, both movies and novels--a brilliant idea brilliantly executed at first, and then it proves impossible to maintain, devolving into meaningless "action" scenes and/or boring "relationship" scenes.
Great review of a mediocre movie.
Keanu was unable to match his action in John Wick and I didn’t think of the studio saying, ‘don’t break nothin’. In retrospect it seems obvious.
The wachiskis are the least feminine looking dudes on the planet.
The Woke-owskis have only ever produced degenerate Hollywood garbage. I have no interest in seeing any of their movies.
I know the film is a piece of crap for too many reasons to go into here (okay, this one: what's with the Wachowski's fetish for hilariously bad makeup?), but plenty of lousy films with The Preferred Narrative have been pushed before, and this one was massively expensive, so why abandon it? Does a good story still matter? Or maybe it was just a little bit before its time?
It almost made me feel sorry for the Wachowskis: they spend millions abasing themselves before Hollywood's gods, and they get ... neglected and ignored.
Almost made me feel sorry for them, but not quite.Replies: @SFG, @Truth, @Altai
It was released in 2012 before GamerGate and the ‘Great Awokening’ that radicalised the media and internet. And, needless to say, before Der Trumpening.
Well it’s worked for the Williams Sisters.
The original Matrix movie started out brilliantly–the blank room scene, waking up as a “battery” for an alien civilization….and then
Crashed and burned–with more crashing and burning sequels to follow.
This is very common in science fiction, both movies and novels–a brilliant idea brilliantly executed at first, and then it proves impossible to maintain, devolving into meaningless “action” scenes and/or boring “relationship” scenes.
“Keanu’s Thomas Anderson is no longer a Chicago office drudge. In 2021, he’s a San Francisco game designer legendary for his Matrix videogame. ”
Both Neo and Trinity died IRL in Revolutions. Are they literally resurrected? Are they still in the Matrix? Or is it a spoiler?
The fact that both Wachowski brothers went tranny is curious. Here is the fundamental question: Would the Wachowski brothers have gone tranny had they never been famous? To ever know the real answer to that would go a long way to explaining the “nature” of transsexualism.
They themselves had to have at least partly taken the redpill idea from Total Recall, whether they admit it or not.
To Live and Die in LA
Casino
Heat
Terminator one and two
Alien (only the first Alien movie)Replies: @Stan Adams, @Waylon Sisko
What’s Spanish for “That Girl”?
I can’t wait not to see this.
“Early Life”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Hemon
You are going to have to order a book like that online. Barnes and Noble is totally woke, check out their children’s section if you want to see stuff that makes Obama look like a moderate. When I was in Barnes and Noble shortly before Christmas, the 1619 Project stack looked like it had been untouched.
Not sure how buying it from them in person is somehow better than using Amazon. Check Thrift Books and see if they have any copies in stock.
I lost all interest in the franchise since Matrix 2. The first instalment was a decent movie with a gnostic and immature message. The rest have been trash and I expect this last film to be no different. I'm not watching it.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
The first film was a very good movie, in my opinion. Archetypal substrate is evident, but, don’t forget- masses use the red pill-blue pill dichotomy (for instance, in the manosphere).
I wouldn’t underestimate a film that has created imaginary universe for so many people & whose “message” has entered the vocabulary.
I didn't bother to watch any of the sequels. No one appears to be watching this last one.
It was almost predictable that the mentally ill directors would become "transgenders", and they did.
Droll and funny. Nicely done.
Nothing on the magic negroes? Do the white characters get killed off in the end again? If there is no transgender message, is there a racial message?
What gets me about the Matrix is that the ideal, underground, “real” society is nothing but a Lennie Kravitz video.
A Lennie Kravitz video is apparently heaven to both the people who created and the people who adore this dumbass movie.
The distributor, Simon and Schuster, provides several alternative means of purchase here:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Real-Anthony-Fauci/Robert-F-Kennedy/Children-s-Health-Defense/9781510766808
I had an Amazon gift card, from my birthday back in October, and I finally used it, last night. Among my purchases, I got the Kennedy book’s Kindle edition for only \$2.99!
Good point. My guess is it would, however, end up as ‘Wachowskx’.
In any case, political parodies have a sell-by date. After he left office, Alec Baldwin retired his Trump impersonation because it had lost its sting.
Personally, I thought that the movie was a subtle as a brick. A well done comedy makes you laugh even if you disagree with its politics but this was not well done.Replies: @Pericles, @J.Ross, @El Dato
His final act as Trump was to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, after which he realized he was not the real thing after all.
Be as it may- the late Autogynephilia is something I find truly incomprehensible.
I think I can understand homosexuality; also, real TG in the early stages of life (girl in boy’s body etc.).
But how a man in his 40s suddenly & authentically wants to be a woman- this I find beyond my cognitive abilities …
Probably it’s some issue with the wrong brain program getting switched on. Who knows?
It's not that they suddenly felt that way, it's that they care less about the consequences. Or the consequences are lessened due to being more secure in their work hierarchy or in some cases being divorced or having grown children so they don't have to worry about disrupting their family. (As much)
In short, they don't, they just enjoy the idea of it. Prior to it being forbidden to mention, even Family Guy got what was going on. (The prior discussion of vaccination actually makes this very old clip look very late 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5STsTjw45es
Similarly where are all the adult women equivalents to the adolescent girls we're told need to have their breasts surgically removed and their endocrine system and be pumped full of testosterone HRT? Do they exist in similar numbers? How did their lives go? Are they upset they didn't transition?
I suspect there is no cohort of anywhere near similar size to the one of adolescent girls born in the late 90s onwards in the adult female population who came of age prior to the trans craze. They didn't go through the formality of existing until Tumblr and TikTok.Replies: @fish
I have not ever bothered with any Matrix sex-change ops movie. Crazy people make crazy movies.
Here is a good, solid movie I saw a few weeks ago.
“News of the World”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6878306/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_8
If you have Netflix check out “El Dragon”. I got Netflix for just one month so I could see “El Dragon”.
Three good TV series that are out currently-
“Mayor of Kingstown” — Mayor of Kingstown: Created by Hugh Dillon, Taylor Sheridan. With Jeremy Renner, Dianne Wiest, Hugh Dillon, Tobi Bamtefa.
Also –
Yellowstone
Dexter
Movies and TV series I refuse to see – Vampire movies and comic book based movies. Zombie movies too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBEVuzWHaOcReplies: @Clyde, @Mike Tre
Total Recall is one of my top five, along with:
To Live and Die in LA
Casino
Heat
Terminator one and two
Alien (only the first Alien movie)
William S. Petersen had back-to-back starring roles in two of the most underrated movies of the '80s - To Live and Die in L.A. and Manhunter - and then seemed to disappear for a long time.
(A few years before CSI, he did star in that cheesy thriller Fear featuring Mark Wahlberg as a psychopathic bad boy obsessed with Reese Witherspoon.)
I think I can understand homosexuality; also, real TG in the early stages of life (girl in boy's body etc.).
But how a man in his 40s suddenly & authentically wants to be a woman- this I find beyond my cognitive abilities ...Replies: @SFG, @Altai, @J.Ross
I’d make a crack that women have it better these days, and that may be influencing the increased number of trans women , but this predates that.
Probably it’s some issue with the wrong brain program getting switched on. Who knows?
Gee, it’s almost as if self proclaimed Woke (male) H-Wood scripters are now admitting that they intentionally propagandize their work as part of some subliminal effort to brainwash unsuspecting audiences.
“Me and my people” versus the Deplorables. Of course the Bad People don’t read highbrow commentary like the AV Club.
Despite their heroic Communist world saving, evil “right-wingers” have appropriated their meme.
So sad for them.
The only review I have read (Wall St. Journal) panned the latest Matrix. Audiences seem to be ignoring it almost as much as West Side Story (redoux).
Go Woke and go Broke.
“The first film was very good, essentially a modernized Plato’s Cave/Gnosticism allegory.”
All narrative entertainments are essentially shadows on a wall; and the Gnostic notion of the world as soul cage for Yahweh is compelling but its ubiquity is rendering it old hat. I think the transvestite brothers watched Rainer Fassbinder’s World on a Wire and agreed the synthetic reality idea is great but needs more bullets.
That brings up current Jeopardy! champ Amy Schneider. She’s trans and very good at the game.
She has made several references to her “partner” and “girlfriend” with whom ( I assume) she’s living.
Other night I asked Wife, well something seems odd about that.
If she was (still) male, living with a woman would be normal. If she was a woman (born), living with a woman might mean nothing but a roommate. Or that she’s a lesbian.
But why would a (born) male become a (trans) woman just to live with another woman (as a newly minted lesbian)? Seems like a lot of trouble for the same outcome…
Of course there is the cross dressing and female “identity” which may comport presumably with Amy’s innate psychological outlook. But she was born with a female lesbian “identity”?
Weird. Just like your hypothetical tee shirt.
I know nothing about her roommate/partner so she may be trans as well. Two former men now roommates as women? Again, a lot of changes for the same result?
Not my business really, I suppose.
This society has become so rich that people can transform themselves at will, seemingly. Not yet cats, but that may be coming. God help us.
Amy does seem pretty nice and is personable. Has crushed her opponents, now earning over \$750K. Current acting host Ken Jennings is the all time champ but could be replaced by a trans woman if she keeps winning.
“Men, is there anything they can’t do?”
> Clever girl. That has to be one of the all-time biggest scores in history for a hooker.
Even in 2006, Rolling Stone author Peter Wilkinson went to great pains to distinguish Larry Wachowski’s then-paramour (now-wife of Lana Wachowski) from a garden-variety sex worker.
I now know more about the difference than I thought I needed to, but words can’t be un-read.
Wilkinson counts the ways in which these individuals’ weirdnesses led them to harm others. Or maybe the destructive impulses came first.
A society that showers wealth and celebrity on people like this…
I won’t see this one, but I was just dragged into WSS. I agree with the blogger that the film deserves a net- ‘thumbs up’.
The prop (product placement) signs for soft drinks were done in good taste, but the producer failed his young audience members by not pointing out that cola used to be a lot cheaper (and Pep ½ that of Croke), and by not pinning the blame on gov monetary policies; acheap candy bar lifted from Doc’s was a poor frame of financial reference. Instead, he just brushed-off the phenomenon as another item, on the cultural landscape, lost to the passage of time. Like the old Palisades Amusement Park (also prop-signed).
The producer could not have anticipated that in the [later] scenes, when the presence of a gun became a focal point, that the audience would be distracted by their minds’ ear hearing Baldwin yell, “Cold gun!”
Even in 2006, Rolling Stone author Peter Wilkinson went to great pains to distinguish Larry Wachowski's then-paramour (now-wife of Lana Wachowski) from a garden-variety sex worker.
I now know more about the difference than I thought I needed to, but words can't be un-read.
Wilkinson counts the ways in which these individuals' weirdnesses led them to harm others. Or maybe the destructive impulses came first.
A society that showers wealth and celebrity on people like this...Replies: @Thomas, @TWS
Difference of level of acquired skill and production value in the same labor market, essentially. The bottom end of that market basically admits anyone with a hole in them, no funny costumes or accessories required.
For one perspective, Nietzsche wrote “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.”
Both Neo and Trinity died IRL in Revolutions. Are they literally resurrected? Are they still in the Matrix? Or is it a spoiler?
The fact that both Wachowski brothers went tranny is curious. Here is the fundamental question: Would the Wachowski brothers have gone tranny had they never been famous? To ever know the real answer to that would go a long way to explaining the "nature" of transsexualism.Replies: @Steve Sailer
“Both Neo and Trinity died IRL in Revolutions. Are they literally resurrected? Are they still in the Matrix? Or is it a spoiler?”
I don’t remember the sequels well. The main characters are alive again in the latest movie For Reasons that I didn’t bother to pay attention to. The real reason is because Keanu is still a big star, so of course they figured out an explanation for why he is back.
I think I can understand homosexuality; also, real TG in the early stages of life (girl in boy's body etc.).
But how a man in his 40s suddenly & authentically wants to be a woman- this I find beyond my cognitive abilities ...Replies: @SFG, @Altai, @J.Ross
It’s a combination of caring what others think declining with age and a fetish which seems to dove-tail with submission and BDSM stuff. In a sense part of what they enjoy about being a woman sexually is a chance to be the submissive partner and the humiliation of being a man in drag. (Or perhaps they also enjoy the idea of being an object of sexual desire in a way almost all of them never enjoyed)
It’s not that they suddenly felt that way, it’s that they care less about the consequences. Or the consequences are lessened due to being more secure in their work hierarchy or in some cases being divorced or having grown children so they don’t have to worry about disrupting their family. (As much)
In short, they don’t, they just enjoy the idea of it. Prior to it being forbidden to mention, even Family Guy got what was going on. (The prior discussion of vaccination actually makes this very old clip look very late 2021)
Similarly where are all the adult women equivalents to the adolescent girls we’re told need to have their breasts surgically removed and their endocrine system and be pumped full of testosterone HRT? Do they exist in similar numbers? How did their lives go? Are they upset they didn’t transition?
I suspect there is no cohort of anywhere near similar size to the one of adolescent girls born in the late 90s onwards in the adult female population who came of age prior to the trans craze. They didn’t go through the formality of existing until Tumblr and TikTok.
“Autogynephilia alright”
Hollywood is Weimar Berlin in its institutionalized depravity. I think there are a lot of self-hating above-the-line types, some of whose grandparents and great grandparents were active in Berlin, before the deluge, who unconsciously harbor a dark desire to will back that which rendered their people to ash and bone.
That itself would make for interesting proposals. Which might have to be filmed in the Carolinas, or Poland.
Your notion of James Cameron as his own SF hero — Captain Nemo — is good stuff. I appreciate his gifts as technician and explorer more than his filmmaking abilities. His films after Aliens are bloated spectacles. Avatar plays like an expensive Saturday morning cartoon. It’s just goofy.
OT Maxwell guilty on most counts.
Morgoth had a pretty good review of “The Matrix Resurrections.”
My thoughts on looking at The Matrix as a franchise in 2021: the original movie was the apex, and also the swansong, of 1980s and 1990s cyberpunk genre. That genre appealed to Gen X-ers (like the Wachowskis) with tropes centered around rebellion, technology as a force for individual independence and empowerment, artificial reality as a potentially liberating surreality, and an aesthetic of black leather, sunglasses, and guns. (Trinity was a low-key expy of Molly Millions, the cybernetic assassin girlfriend of the protagonist in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the trope codifier for cyberpunk. The protagonist of that book was a burned-out hacker who is re-granted his ability to access cyberspace by a mysterious stranger, pretty much exactly the same way Neo gets taken out of the Matrix in the first movie, and gains the ability to “hack reality.”) In the 1990s, Gen-Xers seemed to be portrayed as a generation in need of some sort of rebellion on the scale of the one their Boomer forbears supposedly had during the 1960s, but who had nothing really left to rebel against at the “end of history.” (Fight Club is the best cinematic expression of this sort of frustrated ennui.) The urge for rebellion was sublimated into artificial worlds and fiction.
Cyberpunk as a genre is played out by 2021. (Another of Keanu’s projects in the last couple years was the video game Cyberpunk 2077, based on a 1980s-vintage pencil-and-paper roleplaying game that played the cyberpunk setting straight. The video game turned into a technological and marketing disaster, missing its sales forecasts by more than half.) It turned out that in reality, “cyberspace” turned out to be an even more subtle and insidious vehicle for oppression over the real world than was imagined. The generations after Gen X were more interested in conformity, meaning, and the ascriptive identities that were given to them by the “Matrix” than they were in breaking free and determining their own realities. And aesthetics in the virtual world (either the latest Matrix, Instagram, or WoW) have gone to pastel-colored clothing and hair (sort of like Larry’s new do). Gen Xers grew up and sold out (other prominent Gen Xers are among the Architects of the real-life Matrix, including Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey).
I’m doubtful I’ll ever see this latest outing, but if the main narrative driver is the chemistry between Neo and Trinity… Frankly, neither the characters nor the actors had any chemistry in the first movie, and they never developed any in the two movies that followed. The attempt 18 years ago in the third movie to make Trinity’s death scene and goodbye to Neo all emotional and dramatic lapsed into such narm (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narm), that somebody in the theater audience when I saw the movie actually shouted out “I can’t take it anymore!” I guess Larry really did move from making guy flicks into (bad) chick flicks.
Dark City, the Matrix and the 13th Floor all came out around the same time, but I don’t think they had any direct influence on each other. Dark City is the weakest of the 3 IMO
“Maybe also mention how Trinity decides to mess up Mr. Anderson’s cisheteronormal marriage for some higher purpose about kicking the Matrix’ peacefully coexistent ass for no good reason ”
I have it on good authority that it was a mostly peaceful coexistence.
So that makes 2 fairly high profile celebrity men going tranny after being under the control of a dominant and narcissistic female lover, with lots of drugs thrown in. The other being Bruce Jenner of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBEVuzWHaOcReplies: @Clyde, @Mike Tre
They absolutey got the the red pill / blue pill dichotomy from Total Recall. Even the consequences of taking either pill is similar in both movies. The movies are actually pretty similar from start to finish.
Even in 2006, Rolling Stone author Peter Wilkinson went to great pains to distinguish Larry Wachowski's then-paramour (now-wife of Lana Wachowski) from a garden-variety sex worker.
I now know more about the difference than I thought I needed to, but words can't be un-read.
Wilkinson counts the ways in which these individuals' weirdnesses led them to harm others. Or maybe the destructive impulses came first.
A society that showers wealth and celebrity on people like this...Replies: @Thomas, @TWS
I could have gone my entire life knowing none of this information and I would have been a happier person. Lovecraft was right. There are things man is not meant to know.
Unobtainium. I will never forgive that laziest of writing.
Bezos is a late Boomer, not an X-er.
Did Deirdre also take half off?
Not even the greatest documentary of all time, “The Planet of the Apes?”
Cameron’s Ex, Kathryn Bigelow, proved to be a better director than he is.
She has made several references to her "partner" and "girlfriend" with whom ( I assume) she's living.
Other night I asked Wife, well something seems odd about that.
If she was (still) male, living with a woman would be normal. If she was a woman (born), living with a woman might mean nothing but a roommate. Or that she's a lesbian.
But why would a (born) male become a (trans) woman just to live with another woman (as a newly minted lesbian)? Seems like a lot of trouble for the same outcome...
Of course there is the cross dressing and female "identity" which may comport presumably with Amy's innate psychological outlook. But she was born with a female lesbian "identity"?
Weird. Just like your hypothetical tee shirt.
I know nothing about her roommate/partner so she may be trans as well. Two former men now roommates as women? Again, a lot of changes for the same result?
Not my business really, I suppose.
This society has become so rich that people can transform themselves at will, seemingly. Not yet cats, but that may be coming. God help us.
Amy does seem pretty nice and is personable. Has crushed her opponents, now earning over $750K. Current acting host Ken Jennings is the all time champ but could be replaced by a trans woman if she keeps winning.
"Men, is there anything they can't do?" Replies: @JimDandy
Yeah, I’ve toyed with the idea of identifying as a lesbian and not changing anything about myself. Not seriously, of course, but there must be guys out there who have chosen to do this and reaped some benefits.
…that name reminds me of possibly the first time I noticed the mask slip off Jonah Goldberg.
In a 2015 G-File about how transgender madness requires us to butcher language, he had an aside about how he refers to McCloskey as Deirdre out of a sense of respect and good manners…
https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/caitlyn-jenner-gender-fluidity-nature/
…as if manners should trump the truth: the other person probably shouldn’t impose a naming preference that causes others to violate their principles.
This was the first time I saw that the limits of Goldberg’s principles didn’t account for much.
I’ve read that the whole red state/blue state categorization is a reversal of the prior norm, a result of focusing on Tim Russert’s map during the contested 2000 elections.
Our having the “red pill” meme is at least some compensation for losing an easy reminder that, beneath the rainbow flags and the Black Power symbols, all leftists are Reds.
…I really like the opening about blue pills, and this week Steyn makes the point that Covid hysteria is a natural fit for this insanity, including the toll it has taken on our children.
“Why would you even notice the mental health of the nation’s youth when your profession has meekly swallowed the idea that there are no longer male and female genitalia, merely external and internal genitalia?”
https://www.steynonline.com/12011/america-sticks-out-its-tush
I am not going to do a spoiler here, but I am laughing about your post–you saw Season 5, right….
😉
I read the books before watching the series–both are solid–but the series can be a bit of a downer at times….
To Live and Die in LA
Casino
Heat
Terminator one and two
Alien (only the first Alien movie)Replies: @Stan Adams, @Waylon Sisko
Good list.
William S. Petersen had back-to-back starring roles in two of the most underrated movies of the ’80s – To Live and Die in L.A. and Manhunter – and then seemed to disappear for a long time.
(A few years before CSI, he did star in that cheesy thriller Fear featuring Mark Wahlberg as a psychopathic bad boy obsessed with Reese Witherspoon.)
I took one of the team today and spent \$5.49 to see The King’s Man, a prequel to the two earlier King’s Men movies, the second of which was embarrassingly stupid.
TKM was a bit long at 2:11 (aren’t they all) but Ralph Fiennes played it straight and there were few Huh? moments. It was set in WW 1, included historical events and figures (Sarajevo, Lenin), had a few surprises, beautiful scenery (NZ), and was not woke at all. A solid B.
The latest Spiderman movie is printing money at the box office because it is an old-fashioned action film. West Side Story is going down the drain for its wokeness. Get woke, go broke is a lesson Hollywood seems reluctant to learn.
Not only have they done this, but the school not only refused to punish them, it enabled them.
You now recall that Chris Elliott (who resembles a younger James Cameron) had a brief speaking role in The Abyss.
To Live and Die in LA
Casino
Heat
Terminator one and two
Alien (only the first Alien movie)Replies: @Stan Adams, @Waylon Sisko
Heat is in my top five, too, and I think it’s still far enough under the radar that we won’t see any sequels or reboots, thankfully.
I think I can understand homosexuality; also, real TG in the early stages of life (girl in boy's body etc.).
But how a man in his 40s suddenly & authentically wants to be a woman- this I find beyond my cognitive abilities ...Replies: @SFG, @Altai, @J.Ross
The answer is in their best movie, Bound. Trannyism is the logical ultimate doom of the simp who thinks vulvas are magic and girls don’t go to the bathroom. I was shown (but did not keep screengrabs or title name of) an ancient Roman poem in translation. A togaéd simp attends the worship festival of a goddess, the evening’s theme is “chicks are neat.” Simp cuts off his junk and presents himself to the party’s Big Table, expecting maybe a miraculous completion to the transition (or just recognition). Instead the goddess and her attendants are disgusted and cast him out into the cold. Not only can trannyism come from heterosexuality, but without masculinity (check!), and given a dishonest picture of womanhood (check!), it’s downright logical.
"I saw one poor wretch throw his genitals at an open door. Unfortunately, he missed. He then proceeded, slowly, to bleed to death in the roadway, since it is considered blasphemous to come to the aid of a would-be priest of Cybele who has failed to find, as it were, a proper home for his sexuality. I have seen this ceremony a number of times in Babylon, as well as in Sardis. I have never understood the veneration that these nations have for Anahita or Cybele or Artemis or whatever name the voracious mother-goddess happens to bear."
– Gore Vidal, 'Creation' (novel wherein a Persian philosopher/statesman travels about the world in the 5th century BCE)Replies: @J.Ross
No. She directed exactly one re-watchable movie, Point Break—and that was thirty years ago.
No, I’m afraid you are wrong. Zero Dark Thirty was a better movie than anything that James Cameron has made since The Terminator.
ZDT is a confused mess, especially as Osama was reported to have been killed DURING the filming, which forced the writers to alter the plot, and the haphazardness of it shows.
Also, whereas Hurt Locker had memorable actors, the woman in ZDT comes across as girly. She belongs in a Disney movie.Replies: @Mr. Anon
The Matrix trilogy could’ve been so much more than it was. The first was an out-of-nowhere excellent cyberpunk-esque Chosen One with stupendous special effects. Bu the next two proved all the Wachowski brothers did was special effects and leather; they couldn’t write well at all and that their first movie’s “depth” wasn’t really there at all, just the cuts and wackiness hid the shallowness.
Shallow cash grabbers with wokeism thrown in for good measure, the Waschowski bros. didn’t have the balls (haha) to go for a great final head spin: that everything that occurred outside the Matrix was also in the Matrix, and that the computers had created this elaborate escape-from-the-Matrix to keep the rebellious humans in check by giving them a massive side quest that served no purpose other than to out and exhaust them. That would’ve been a groundbreaking trilogy.
Anyway, then success went to these guys’ heads, and one ended up with a dominatrix who controlled him so much she convinced him to publicly display himself as a girl. Which is, actually, something I’ve seen before: a domineering woman who is encouraged to dominate a man and ultimately brainwashes/humiliates/emasculates him to the point she forces him into a dress and makes him pretend he’s a girl.
"Me and my people" versus the Deplorables. Of course the Bad People don't read highbrow commentary like the AV Club.
Despite their heroic Communist world saving, evil "right-wingers" have appropriated their meme.
So sad for them.
The only review I have read (Wall St. Journal) panned the latest Matrix. Audiences seem to be ignoring it almost as much as West Side Story (redoux).
Go Woke and go Broke.Replies: @Clyde
This was Matrix three. I don’t know how woke the latest redo/edition of Spider-Man is. But it’s earning the highest box office since the Kung Flu kicked in. It seems that Hollywood is as busy as ever, though with some adjustments for the movies to be put on line directly or after a brief interval in the theaters. Online means less money can be spent per movie. So actors salaries are going to go down and same falling earnings for those who work behind the scenes, such as makeup, wardrobe, assistant camera men, major and minor supporting actors. There will be no more \$20 million per movie actors, except for Tom Cruise for a while longer.
Blue Bill or the Blue Fairy?
David wants to be made into a real boy.
Wacko Bros wanted to be made into real girls.
Maybe the transracial fantasy of Get Out is a possibility. Whites turning into blacks.
It’s a really good book. She has really interesting positive things to say about capitalism including how it made friendship important. I was disappointed though thst she was one of the persecutors of Northwestern psychologist Michael Bailey who promoted the autogynophilia theory of Trans (this was described in Alice Dreger’s book Darwin’s Middle Finger)
I don’t think Heat is under the radar. Michael Mann said on a recent podcast that he’s going to have a novel out next summer that follows the characters in Heat from 1988 to 1998.
Mann's Miami Vice isn't quite a classic, but it's mesmerizing. I don't think I'd mind another bite at that apple, but a more conventional version would lose all the charms of Mann's version.
Movie star pay probably peaked around the turn of the century. But there are now more acting roles due to all the TV shows, so actors in Hollywood aren’t hurting.
Similarly, how can the average computer user possibly get close to filling up the 1TB hard drive that most computers come with or used to? The only way is storing lots of movies, 4K movies and videos.
This is why these days I see so many laptops and computers coming with a 128GB or 256GB NVMe drive instead. 128GB is too small with not much head room. This can wear out the NVMe drive prematurely. I like to arrange for a 256-500GB NVMe Windows boot drive, along with a secondary storage hard drive of 1TB.Movie star pay probably peaked around the turn of the century. But there are now more acting roles due to all the TV shows, so actors in Hollywood aren’t hurting.More actors are making more money, at the expense of the stars and the 10-20 million dollar payday mega-stars, like Stallone and Schwarzenegger used to be.
I just flat out didn’t like the matrix.
It was corny and the story didn’t make any sense. Why would there be a bunch of kung fu fighting with agents in a simulation? The computer would just zap you like a virus. Everyone was wowed by the CGI and seemed able to ignore the technically deficient story.
Keanu Reeves is not a good actor which is why he never gets a serious role. He mostly gets tacky action movie roles where he has lines like “no way dude” and shoots people.
Then the brothers that made the movie decided that they were actually chicks once it became trendy to be trans.
One of them really does not pull it off and should go back to being a man.
Dan Aykroyd Believes In Ghosts on Q TV
Jan 27, 2010
(Nah, not really. But it wouldn't suprise me if an eloquent meme-infector article would indeed appear).
Not sure how buying it from them in person is somehow better than using Amazon. Check Thrift Books and see if they have any copies in stock.Replies: @Dnought
I’ve actually found Barnes and Noble to be a little less woke than Amazon, they will actually carry some books (The Transgender-Industrial Complex by Scott Howard, for example), that are totally verboten at Amazon.
The reason why you can’t score a hardcopy of The Real Anthony Fauci at Barnes and Noble has nothing to do with “wokeness”, it’s just that the publisher underestimated the demand for the book and didn’t print enough copies-Amazon itself doesn’t have any hardcopies either-you have to buy it from one of their secondary source “marketplace sellers” who are charging premium prices, from what I have seen.
You can pick up an electronic copy from either Barnes and Noble or Amazon for \$2.99.
And one reason to buy from Barnes and Noble is to help keep them in business as a competitor to Amazon. If Amazon ever gets a monopoly on bookselling, you’ll see even less alternative information available, I guarantee you.
His Last of The Mohicans was very good. This was shot in the mountains and hills of North Carolina. He was involved in Miami Vice TV series and Mann’s Crime Story (on TV) which was very good. But gone after two seasons. It was basically about how the Mafias from a few cities took over Las Vegas with their own money, plus the money from raiding the ultra corrupt Central States Teamsters pension funds. Mann’s Miami Vice movie, I didn’t like it the first time I saw it. But it got better the 3rd and 4th times while fast forwarding it a bit. I rarely watch movies more than once.
Damn. Fortune favors the bold.
Mann casted Jamie Foxx in Collateral (which was very good) and used him again in Miami Vice, a decision I suspect Mann came to regret. But overall, Miami Vice is still good and eminently rewatchable, like most of Mann’s movies.
To be precise the name is Polish.
I wouldn't underestimate a film that has created imaginary universe for so many people & whose "message" has entered the vocabulary.Replies: @Dumbo
Bullshit. The blue/red pill was the ONLY memorable thing about that movie. The rest of it was trash. Tiresome cliches and bad acting.
I didn’t bother to watch any of the sequels. No one appears to be watching this last one.
It was almost predictable that the mentally ill directors would become “transgenders”, and they did.
In any case, political parodies have a sell-by date. After he left office, Alec Baldwin retired his Trump impersonation because it had lost its sting.
Personally, I thought that the movie was a subtle as a brick. A well done comedy makes you laugh even if you disagree with its politics but this was not well done.Replies: @Pericles, @J.Ross, @El Dato
Hugh Hewitt (who has worked for the President doing drugs) says that the one little detail about being made to pay for complimentary snacks is actually 100% real.
And TV via streaming. Regular old cable TV is losing ground to streaming. Such as Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock network, Discovery plus. More proof of this, Blue Stream came to my development with a proposal to wire us up with fiber optic. Starting at 300mb/s and increasing every year of a 6 year contract. Television was not even mentioned, though Blue Stream is a cable TV provider. Internet phone too. During the meeting we had, I was surprised how many neighbors were getting 1000mb/s internet via Comcast. What can you do with all that bandwidth? This kind of bandwidth is what a small business can use. Not a home.
Similarly, how can the average computer user possibly get close to filling up the 1TB hard drive that most computers come with or used to? The only way is storing lots of movies, 4K movies and videos.
This is why these days I see so many laptops and computers coming with a 128GB or 256GB NVMe drive instead. 128GB is too small with not much head room. This can wear out the NVMe drive prematurely. I like to arrange for a 256-500GB NVMe Windows boot drive, along with a secondary storage hard drive of 1TB.
Movie star pay probably peaked around the turn of the century. But there are now more acting roles due to all the TV shows, so actors in Hollywood aren’t hurting.
More actors are making more money, at the expense of the stars and the 10-20 million dollar payday mega-stars, like Stallone and Schwarzenegger used to be.
Collateral was good and w lots of dark humor. Here is more Mann>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mann%27s+Crime+Story&atb=v305-3__&ia=web
Speaking of pop culture, THE VULTURE’s Helen Shaw offers an interesting take on the use of the Cloisters in Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY. It’s all about the link between “medievalism” and “white supremacy:
https://www.vulture.com/2021/12/west-side-story-2021-how-it-differs-from-the-original.html
Agreed – amazing cover band and I’ve looked at their stuff for years.
Literally, I watched their cover of Steely Dan’s “My Old School” yesterday.
Have a listen:
Thankfully, not all of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9KtGi5JexY
https://e00-telva.uecdn.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2020/12/18/16082796113262.jpg
In any case, political parodies have a sell-by date. After he left office, Alec Baldwin retired his Trump impersonation because it had lost its sting.
Personally, I thought that the movie was a subtle as a brick. A well done comedy makes you laugh even if you disagree with its politics but this was not well done.Replies: @Pericles, @J.Ross, @El Dato
‘Don’t Look Up’ Is No Laughing Matter
I can’t imagine what Elon, Steve and Jeff has to do with any of that.
More like Lord Fauci and Gates the Vaxx Nerd.
Are leftists just deliberately dumb or are they naturally dumb?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzX97o86wu8
Jan 27, 2010Replies: @El Dato, @Jack D
I hope Ron picks this up for the next American Pravda.
(Nah, not really. But it wouldn’t suprise me if an eloquent meme-infector article would indeed appear).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzX97o86wu8
Jan 27, 2010Replies: @El Dato, @Jack D
There’s a blast from the past. Don’t you know that Ghomeshi has been cancelled? You are not allowed to show his clips anymore.
At least give Keaunu Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, that gave me lots of laughs. There is a 3rd time around remake out that is rated at 82% at Rotten Tomatoes. So Keanu endures despite your snipes.
Oh I'm with you there actually. Bill and Ted is a great movie. Really cracked me up with the historical references. His lines consist of stuff like "Dude whoa" so it is perfect for him.
Point Break isn't bad but he still had too many lines.Replies: @clyde
I did not know that. I never heard of the guy before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Ghomeshi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Jian_Ghomeshi
That’s not saying much as, except for the first third of Terminator 2, everything Cameron did after Terminator sucks.
ZDT is a confused mess, especially as Osama was reported to have been killed DURING the filming, which forced the writers to alter the plot, and the haphazardness of it shows.
Also, whereas Hurt Locker had memorable actors, the woman in ZDT comes across as girly. She belongs in a Disney movie.
Maybe Matrix is Celine and Julie Go Boating for the kids.
There is no pill but there is a candy that transports the two female leads into other dimensions.
Interesting idea maybe but I found it excruciating. The only Rivette films that work for me are The Nun and especially The Secret Defense.
Jerry Garcia’s favorite film is another mind-bender. A Polish one.
I’ll bet Wackos like Victor/Victoria and Tootsie. At one time, that stuff was considered funny, not serious.
People worry about regulatory capture but it seems the institutions of mental health has come under peer-review capture, or queer-review capture. The nuts took over the asylum. We have ‘Rachel’ Levine telling us about mental health.
It’s like this movie.
“On the day of the goddess, those young men who wish to serve her slash off their genitals and run through the streets, holding in one hand their severed parts. Less ambitious devotees of the goddess think it good luck to be splashed with the blood of a new eunuch. This is not difficult; there is a lot of blood. Finally, exhausted, the self-made eunuch throws his severed genitals through the open doorway of a house, whose owner is then obliged to take in the creature and nurse him back to health.
“I saw one poor wretch throw his genitals at an open door. Unfortunately, he missed. He then proceeded, slowly, to bleed to death in the roadway, since it is considered blasphemous to come to the aid of a would-be priest of Cybele who has failed to find, as it were, a proper home for his sexuality. I have seen this ceremony a number of times in Babylon, as well as in Sardis. I have never understood the veneration that these nations have for Anahita or Cybele or Artemis or whatever name the voracious mother-goddess happens to bear.”
– Gore Vidal, ‘Creation’ (novel wherein a Persian philosopher/statesman travels about the world in the 5th century BCE)
Nah, that one was Hollywood fiction. The “apes” got along with each other.
https://zoomboola.com/images/content/2018/3/uzn_15216335031.jpgReplies: @Truth
LOL, Yes, Old Sport; all of it.
Hadn’t heard that, thanks for the info… I still hope and suspect Hollywood will overlook the movie in their efforts to strip-mine every classic.
Mann’s Miami Vice isn’t quite a classic, but it’s mesmerizing. I don’t think I’d mind another bite at that apple, but a more conventional version would lose all the charms of Mann’s version.
It's not that they suddenly felt that way, it's that they care less about the consequences. Or the consequences are lessened due to being more secure in their work hierarchy or in some cases being divorced or having grown children so they don't have to worry about disrupting their family. (As much)
In short, they don't, they just enjoy the idea of it. Prior to it being forbidden to mention, even Family Guy got what was going on. (The prior discussion of vaccination actually makes this very old clip look very late 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5STsTjw45es
Similarly where are all the adult women equivalents to the adolescent girls we're told need to have their breasts surgically removed and their endocrine system and be pumped full of testosterone HRT? Do they exist in similar numbers? How did their lives go? Are they upset they didn't transition?
I suspect there is no cohort of anywhere near similar size to the one of adolescent girls born in the late 90s onwards in the adult female population who came of age prior to the trans craze. They didn't go through the formality of existing until Tumblr and TikTok.Replies: @fish
So who says it’s only the Simpsons™ that can predict the future…..
ZDT is a confused mess, especially as Osama was reported to have been killed DURING the filming, which forced the writers to alter the plot, and the haphazardness of it shows.
Also, whereas Hurt Locker had memorable actors, the woman in ZDT comes across as girly. She belongs in a Disney movie.Replies: @Mr. Anon
I agree.
I thought it was a well made movie. It held my interest.
The movie had an ok start, but quickly became lame once Neo received the red pill and wasn’t the same Neo as before.
"I saw one poor wretch throw his genitals at an open door. Unfortunately, he missed. He then proceeded, slowly, to bleed to death in the roadway, since it is considered blasphemous to come to the aid of a would-be priest of Cybele who has failed to find, as it were, a proper home for his sexuality. I have seen this ceremony a number of times in Babylon, as well as in Sardis. I have never understood the veneration that these nations have for Anahita or Cybele or Artemis or whatever name the voracious mother-goddess happens to bear."
– Gore Vidal, 'Creation' (novel wherein a Persian philosopher/statesman travels about the world in the 5th century BCE)Replies: @J.Ross
Well, gosh, some girls are just happy when you try to figure out how whistling in the dark works.
At least give Keaunu Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, that gave me lots of laughs. There is a 3rd time around remake out that is rated at 82% at Rotten Tomatoes. So Keanu endures despite your snipes.
Oh I’m with you there actually. Bill and Ted is a great movie. Really cracked me up with the historical references. His lines consist of stuff like “Dude whoa” so it is perfect for him.
Point Break isn’t bad but he still had too many lines.
When I peruse old youtube videos, I often see the comment, "The 80s were the best, and same for the music" The 1980s lasted until 1994 or so.
Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot reportedly got \$20 million each for Red Notice. Netflix paid the studio that made it \$200 million. I could only get through half of it, because it was as dumb as The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. Of course, CDAN says Netflix is a giant money laundering scheme, so what do I know.
Oh I'm with you there actually. Bill and Ted is a great movie. Really cracked me up with the historical references. His lines consist of stuff like "Dude whoa" so it is perfect for him.
Point Break isn't bad but he still had too many lines.Replies: @clyde
What a revved up movie. Last time I saw it was when it came out/ 1991. I must see it again to get my 80s-90s vibe and mojo back. If I can. It all started going downhill when Windows 95 came out, along with the internet. Windows 95 was what got me onto the www and a few trillion others.
When I peruse old youtube videos, I often see the comment, “The 80s were the best, and same for the music” The 1980s lasted until 1994 or so.
Half in the Bag: The Matrix Resurrections
Dec 31, 2021