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I reviewed Steven Soderbergh’s feature film Contagion back in 2011. The first half is pretty exciting. I don’t remember the exact plot other than, spoiler alert, it was, plausibly enough, All Gwyneth Paltrow’s Fault.
The first half, in which several of Contagion’s eight Oscar nominees (Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes, and Elliott Gould) drop dead from a new southeast Chinese germ transmitted merely by contact, is almost as creepy as promised. You’ll want to watch Contagion through a couple of eyeholes in a large upside-down plastic garbage bag. Granted, that doesn’t sound comfortable, but the alternative is touching things that thousands of other moviegoers have touched. …
But the second half is realistically dull as Matt Damon sensibly holes up in his nice house in a nice suburb of Minneapolis and waits the pandemic out for several months:
How would daily life change due to a colossal epidemic spread by touch? Soderbergh appears paralyzed by a belated realization that the necessary “social distancing” would make survivors act in ways bad for engaging moviemaking. The healthy would don surgical masks, sit far apart, and spend even more hours on the Internet. But what’s the point of hiring eight Oscar nominees to cover their famous faces while exchanging text messages?
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Candles?
Off-topic,
HBO’s WATCHMEN gave us superheroes vs the Klan. Now SHOWTIME’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is going to give us La Calavera Catrina vs Nazis in 1938 LA:
I guess that Latinx actors are so boring that they had to bring in sexpot English actress Natalie Dormer to play La Catrina…..
….which is kinda funny….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_Catrina
Or, in other words, it looks like complete garbage.
*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*
This is from the 2006 Bong Joon-ho movie The Host:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+host+2006+movie+scenes&&view=detail&mid=5DBBA9D59FCF5A4443E55DBBA9D59FCF5A4443E5&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dthe%2520host%25202006%2520movie%2520scenes%26qs%3DAS%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D4%26pq%3Dthe%2520host%25202006%2520movie%26sk%3DHS1AS2%26sc%3D8-19%26cvid%3DBB37A98597BC410397527363CB9374C6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBKEFgOUzs&feature=youtu.be&t=3Replies: @Steve Sailer
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+host+2006+movie+scenes&&view=detail&mid=5DBBA9D59FCF5A4443E55DBBA9D59FCF5A4443E5&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dthe%2520host%25202006%2520movie%2520scenes%26qs%3DAS%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D4%26pq%3Dthe%2520host%25202006%2520movie%26sk%3DHS1AS2%26sc%3D8-19%26cvid%3DBB37A98597BC410397527363CB9374C6Replies: @the one they call Desanex
Sorry, this is the direct link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBKEFgOUzs&feature=youtu.be&t=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBKEFgOUzs&feature=youtu.be&t=3Replies: @Steve Sailer
Jeremy Irons’ “Speak to me as you would a child, or a golden retriever; it wasn’t brains that got me where I am, I can assure you” line in “Margin Call” is one of my all-time favorites.
What about Dean Koontz, who after the fall of the USSR changed the deadly virus in Eyes Of Darkness (1981) from “Gorki-400” to “Wuhan-400”?
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-koontz-book-idUSKCN20M19I
https://classicmovierev.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Red-Dawn-19848-1024x576.jpgTo Red Chinese initially in Red Dawn's 2012 remake (and then N Korean in the final cut to sell the movie in China):
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B0o2s2-yrVk/TzXQfZG0lqI/AAAAAAAAAVY/kwRsbkpnolY/s1600/dawn2.jpg
Back in the political world, we’re starting to see the first outlines of a legit partisan angle.
Of course, for a while now the Megaphone has been trying to blame Trump for the whole thing. That hasn’t gotten any traction. The President has said and done a bunch of dopey things, but nothing that seems as though it has affected anything.
Now, however the reality of lack of testing in America has come to the fore. That may not be important right this second, because if everybody got tested, the positive people could self-quarantine, for that matter any other meaningful countermeasures against the virus would be more effectively targeted.
When and if it becomes clear that Trump knew or should have known about this and had the chance to take meaningful action, but didn’t, that’s when the game can change pretty quickly.
https://youtu.be/XZ-EOg38t1oReplies: @Boethiuss
Of course, for a while now the Megaphone has been trying to blame Trump for the whole thing. That hasn't gotten any traction. The President has said and done a bunch of dopey things, but nothing that seems as though it has affected anything.
Now, however the reality of lack of testing in America has come to the fore. That may not be important right this second, because if everybody got tested, the positive people could self-quarantine, for that matter any other meaningful countermeasures against the virus would be more effectively targeted.
When and if it becomes clear that Trump knew or should have known about this and had the chance to take meaningful action, but didn't, that's when the game can change pretty quickly.Replies: @HammerJack, @Kronos
Ah, there you are. Still hoping you can bring Jeb Bush back.
That’s an excellent movie with a stellar cast. Paul Bettany is a treasure. It’s strange how few people have seen it.
I enjoyed the fact that the young analyst, who brought the impending disaster to light, was a Mechanical Engineer, “by trade”, that went into finance. He said something like, “Numbers are numbers.”
It seems that engineers just can’t help noticing things, wherever they are working. I suspect that many iSteve readers, come from our profession.
https://www.unz.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=moderated#
Here’s my review of “Margin Call.”
https://www.takimag.com/article/insider_traitors/#ixzz1brbkE78f
https://www.unz.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=moderated#
The movies “Train to Busan” and “World War Z” were much more fun explorations of pandemics, although probably too low-brow for you, Steve. (Train to Busan actually critiques Korean society though.)
As for studies of contagious outbreaks, my favorite is Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." Which is of course actually happening, in real time, all throughout the West.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard, @AnotherDad
There’s always The Andromeda Strain too.
“World War Z” was just a big-budget remake of “The Crazies,” instead of an adaptation of the Studs Terkel-like oral history of the outbreak presented in the book. Which would make a great HBO miniseries, more panoptical than The Walking Dead, which has grown tedious.
As for studies of contagious outbreaks, my favorite is Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” Which is of course actually happening, in real time, all throughout the West.
I tend to agree with the commenters who think militaries would rapidly breakout incendiary weaponry for the cleansing effects that it would have on the zombies and the plague that causes it.
The very first thing that happens in any actual catastrophe is the return of traditional sex roles.
The current feminized order is entirely a product of modern technological prosperity, and the modern welfare state and bureaucracy it supports.
And it is unlikely--more plausible, but still very unlikely--that they'll be much racial kumbaya, especially with respect to blacks and whites. There certainly will be zero tolerance for the tedious racial "tolerance" of today.
In a crisis, people relying on people they can trust and that basically means people you know, and beyond that people of your same ethnic group who share the same norms, values, expectations, culture. (And especially for non-blacks to trust blacks, who are 10x more criminally dangerous, even now when we have "civilization" of a sort enforced by police authorities. A white would simply be an idiot to fall in with and rely on a black stranger in a post-civilization world.)
The post-apocalyptic world will have social--racial and sexual--norms much more like the world of 1920, than the world of 2020.
It would be entertaining to see a movie or show that gets that at least plausibly right ... but don't expect apocalyptic truth from Hollyweird, any more than they provide truth about anything else.Replies: @Kim
Based on the great work of the American writer E.P. Evans (“The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals”) – though with inadequate credit-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hour_of_the_Pig
is a fairly good film with a delicious contagion twist in the tail…
It was marketed as “The Advocate” in the USA.
I can work from home. I’ll just get fat because I can’t stop eating when working from home.
I hope this does not effect The Masters.
Outbreak (1995) Official Trailer – Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman Sci-Fi Movie HD
https://www.unz.com/isteve/world-war-z/
IIRC didn’t Paltrow’s character eat a bat (unknowingly) to contract the disease?
HBO's WATCHMEN gave us superheroes vs the Klan. Now SHOWTIME's Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is going to give us La Calavera Catrina vs Nazis in 1938 LA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WqFMwMiF3I
I guess that Latinx actors are so boring that they had to bring in sexpot English actress Natalie Dormer to play La Catrina.....
https://thehooksite.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Penny-Dreadful-City-of-Angels.jpg
....which is kinda funny....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_CatrinaReplies: @Dr. Krieger, @Mr. Anon, @The Wild Geese Howard
I instinctively dislike Natalie Dormer. She’s the type that makes me cheer when Anne Boleyn gets her head chopped off.
Clair Foy rubs me the wrong way too, but her Anne Boleyn execution scene is the best. The French Executioner was very skilled. Skip to about 2:20
Interesting how he got the ‘Wuhan’ part right about the virus.
The switcheroo from “Gorki-400” to “Wuhan-400” in the late 80’s is remindful of the remake of Red Dawn and its being Soviet (ie ‘Russkie’) in 1984:
To Red Chinese initially in Red Dawn’s 2012 remake (and then N Korean in the final cut to sell the movie in China):
But the second half is realistically dull as Matt Damon sensibly holes up in his nice house in a nice suburb of Minneapolis
No kidding. There’s a point where it almost starts to become interesting as Damon watches armed men break into a neighbor’s house to loot it, and Damon acquires a gun from a neighbor’s house. But it’s all boring after that, no roving bands of looters setting fires, no Omega Men, no nothing.
I suppose it’s an accurate representation, because if it wasn’t for the progressive Leftist Media Fear Machine that has been tuned to a fever pitch to dislodge the hated Orange Man in the White House, you’d be a little bored with American Covid-19 news.
I recall towards the end of Have Spacesuit Will Travel it is recommended to the main character he start his post secondary ed in ME.
I think I watched that movie at the time and had almost completely forgotten it; Gwinneth Paltrow dying was the only memorable thing in it.
If there’s anyone, God forbid, that I wouldn’t mind getting the coronavirus, is that insufferable Paltrow – or many other air-headed Hollywood actresses and actors like her.
I think I watched that movie at the time and had almost completely forgotten it; Gwinneth Paltrow dying was the only memorable thing in it.
HBO's WATCHMEN gave us superheroes vs the Klan. Now SHOWTIME's Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is going to give us La Calavera Catrina vs Nazis in 1938 LA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WqFMwMiF3I
I guess that Latinx actors are so boring that they had to bring in sexpot English actress Natalie Dormer to play La Catrina.....
https://thehooksite.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Penny-Dreadful-City-of-Angels.jpg
....which is kinda funny....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_CatrinaReplies: @Dr. Krieger, @Mr. Anon, @The Wild Geese Howard
Looks like an SJW / latinx cover of a James Elroy novel.
Or, in other words, it looks like complete garbage.
Not so strange if you consider that some, me for instance, consider plague films as interesting as watching paint dry. I was coerced by my wife, into watching “Outbreak”. Only the volume level in the theater kept me awake through the entire thing.
In that movie Contagion, wasn’t the WHO shown to be a crack team of competent and compassionate public servants led by Morpheus, rather than what they really are: a bunch of UN-bureaucrat hacks led by a Chinese-backed stooge.
As for studies of contagious outbreaks, my favorite is Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." Which is of course actually happening, in real time, all throughout the West.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard, @AnotherDad
I tried to read “WWZ” and eventually the PC got to the point where my eyes were rolling so hard that I had to put the book down.
I tend to agree with the commenters who think militaries would rapidly breakout incendiary weaponry for the cleansing effects that it would have on the zombies and the plague that causes it.
Soderbergh’s Contagion = Describes a goon throng.
Yeah, it was Gwyneth Paltrow’s fault. Wonder if she caught it from Harvey? It’s no wonder she’s a big proponent of yoni steaming.
I haven’t seen it for a while, but my recollection is that the final sequence of the film is a sort of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance montage that shows a bat eating from some horrifying monkey corpse in the jungle, then dropping from an overhang into a pigpen, then the pigs being loaded on to a truck, one of the pigs being butchered then taken to a restaurant at a casino, the chef preparing the pig, then coming out front to take a picture with some of the diners, who include Paltrow. And the last image is a picture of the chef and Paltrow smiling cheek-to-cheek as the photo is taken. But I don’t believe any direct bat consumption is shown or implied.
Spoilers:
Contagion Ending
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HH1-ozS_AReplies: @Will
HBO's WATCHMEN gave us superheroes vs the Klan. Now SHOWTIME's Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is going to give us La Calavera Catrina vs Nazis in 1938 LA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WqFMwMiF3I
I guess that Latinx actors are so boring that they had to bring in sexpot English actress Natalie Dormer to play La Catrina.....
https://thehooksite.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Penny-Dreadful-City-of-Angels.jpg
....which is kinda funny....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_CatrinaReplies: @Dr. Krieger, @Mr. Anon, @The Wild Geese Howard
Oh look, yet another Black Dahlia retelling.
*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*
Of course, for a while now the Megaphone has been trying to blame Trump for the whole thing. That hasn't gotten any traction. The President has said and done a bunch of dopey things, but nothing that seems as though it has affected anything.
Now, however the reality of lack of testing in America has come to the fore. That may not be important right this second, because if everybody got tested, the positive people could self-quarantine, for that matter any other meaningful countermeasures against the virus would be more effectively targeted.
When and if it becomes clear that Trump knew or should have known about this and had the chance to take meaningful action, but didn't, that's when the game can change pretty quickly.Replies: @HammerJack, @Kronos
They’re shooting in a “spray and prey” style in the dark hoping they’ll get lucky and hit Trump. Do many Democratic strategists (Roger Stone types) think Hurricane Katrina brought down President George W. Bush?
As for studies of contagious outbreaks, my favorite is Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." Which is of course actually happening, in real time, all throughout the West.Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard, @AnotherDad
I’ve seen some of the Walking Dead and it’s the most ridiculous piece of PC b.s.
The very first thing that happens in any actual catastrophe is the return of traditional sex roles.
The current feminized order is entirely a product of modern technological prosperity, and the modern welfare state and bureaucracy it supports.
And it is unlikely–more plausible, but still very unlikely–that they’ll be much racial kumbaya, especially with respect to blacks and whites. There certainly will be zero tolerance for the tedious racial “tolerance” of today.
In a crisis, people relying on people they can trust and that basically means people you know, and beyond that people of your same ethnic group who share the same norms, values, expectations, culture. (And especially for non-blacks to trust blacks, who are 10x more criminally dangerous, even now when we have “civilization” of a sort enforced by police authorities. A white would simply be an idiot to fall in with and rely on a black stranger in a post-civilization world.)
The post-apocalyptic world will have social–racial and sexual–norms much more like the world of 1920, than the world of 2020.
It would be entertaining to see a movie or show that gets that at least plausibly right … but don’t expect apocalyptic truth from Hollyweird, any more than they provide truth about anything else.
Why not? It’s got Bowdoin College, Colby College, and Bates College, plus an excellent maritime academy.
You enjoyed the movie because it gave you an opportunity to preen? Uh, okay, I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.
But I can tell, from your other comments, that you're a sniping Horse's Ass. So slag off.
The very first thing that happens in any actual catastrophe is the return of traditional sex roles.
The current feminized order is entirely a product of modern technological prosperity, and the modern welfare state and bureaucracy it supports.
And it is unlikely--more plausible, but still very unlikely--that they'll be much racial kumbaya, especially with respect to blacks and whites. There certainly will be zero tolerance for the tedious racial "tolerance" of today.
In a crisis, people relying on people they can trust and that basically means people you know, and beyond that people of your same ethnic group who share the same norms, values, expectations, culture. (And especially for non-blacks to trust blacks, who are 10x more criminally dangerous, even now when we have "civilization" of a sort enforced by police authorities. A white would simply be an idiot to fall in with and rely on a black stranger in a post-civilization world.)
The post-apocalyptic world will have social--racial and sexual--norms much more like the world of 1920, than the world of 2020.
It would be entertaining to see a movie or show that gets that at least plausibly right ... but don't expect apocalyptic truth from Hollyweird, any more than they provide truth about anything else.Replies: @Kim
A post-apocalyptic world would bring back slavery and cannibalism. It would have little resemblance to the year 1920.
“yoni steaming”? Sure, but really tough ones you have to roast.
https://youtu.be/XZ-EOg38t1oReplies: @Boethiuss
That’s exactly right. And for as long as it stays spray and pray, there shouldn’t be much partisan impact. The problem is that as the crisis goes on, their aim will be getting better. People will start figuring out, at least for the sake campaign bomb-throwing, exactly what Trump did and what he should have done instead.
This certainly won’t be a mini Black Death. I doubt it will be a Spanish Flu 2.0 even. But it is something. And as modular quarantine buildings go up in more cities and more EconoLodges are commandeered for isolation, Trump’s “this is just a flu, in Dow Jones we trust” attitude will wear thin.Replies: @Boethiuss
As much as I would like to blame Gwyneth Paltrow for the decimation of the world’s population (btw, is that really such a bad thing?), I think you didn’t watch the last few moments of this film closely enough, Steve. After a couple of hours of blaming the self-absorbed, adulterous, socially and ethnically promiscuous Paltrow for the horrific pandemic that killed millions – including the irreplaceable Kate Winslet – Soderbergh lets her off the hook by showing the Chinese/Hong Kong casino butcher/chef coming out to greet the blonde American VIP just after handling the porcine patient zero without washing his hands – and we all know the Chinese don’t really get modern hygiene.
Banana.
Spoilers:
Contagion Ending
Preen? I liked the movies for a lot of reasons. It had an interesting bleached color palette. Since it takes place overnight and in the very early morning, you get to see those cool shots of an empty New York City. Its kind of dream like. It also had a great cast (Irons, Spacey, Bettany, Tucci, Moore). My comment t was just one of of the things I liked about it.
But I can tell, from your other comments, that you’re a sniping Horse’s Ass. So slag off.
I doubt the Democrats would be handling coronavirus any better but if DT wants re-elected he needs to wise up and treat this like a problem. Cancel his rallies and take a more somber tone.
This certainly won’t be a mini Black Death. I doubt it will be a Spanish Flu 2.0 even. But it is something. And as modular quarantine buildings go up in more cities and more EconoLodges are commandeered for isolation, Trump’s “this is just a flu, in Dow Jones we trust” attitude will wear thin.
A world where coronavirus is the biggest issue in contemporary politics is not world where Trump does well. People are going to care more about getting straight answers in difficult situations from people with actual knowledge and expertise. They're not going to care as much about the Trump infatuations.
Too many of us are fixated on Biden. Joe is stupid, Joe is senile, Joe can't spell cat if you spot him the c and the a. Yeah so what.
This turn of even has at least the possibility of adverse impact for us in terms of
1. downticket races this cycle
2. Presidential and other races in future cycles
3. public opinion for everything, starting say 3 weeks from now.
Collectively, those things are more important than Trump being reelected. In particular, the negative attacks from Trump against Joe, even if they hit, aren't the sort of thing that is going to motivate anybody to believe that Democrats have to be stopped. Whereas they may very well think that if Bernie were the nominee instead.
good band name, that…
I think by ME, he means Mechanical Engineering, not Maine. I shorten my field to EE or I say “Double E”, sometimes.
https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc
I was on Netflix the other day to see what new stuff they added for the month of March (I don’t know why I bother, it’s never anything I want to watch) and noticed that they just added the movie Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman. The plot of the movie is an airborn virus comes to a small town in the USA from a diseased monkey and it’s so deadly that the military is going to kill the entire town. Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, and others must find a cure before the US govt decides to bomb the place. I can’t tell if it’s bad timing or good timing on Netflix’s part. Did they add it because of the Coronavirus, or was it just next up on the schedule and they didn’t realize that it might be in bad taste to add it while there is an actual outbreak of a deadly airborn virus?
Spoilers:
Contagion Ending
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HH1-ozS_AReplies: @Will
Fair enough. I thought I was doing OK to remember as much as I did after eight years. Wait, was I the one who ate the monkey corpse? This is going to keep me up all night.
This certainly won’t be a mini Black Death. I doubt it will be a Spanish Flu 2.0 even. But it is something. And as modular quarantine buildings go up in more cities and more EconoLodges are commandeered for isolation, Trump’s “this is just a flu, in Dow Jones we trust” attitude will wear thin.Replies: @Boethiuss
That’s true, but I think it goes deeper than that as well.
A world where coronavirus is the biggest issue in contemporary politics is not world where Trump does well. People are going to care more about getting straight answers in difficult situations from people with actual knowledge and expertise. They’re not going to care as much about the Trump infatuations.
Too many of us are fixated on Biden. Joe is stupid, Joe is senile, Joe can’t spell cat if you spot him the c and the a. Yeah so what.
This turn of even has at least the possibility of adverse impact for us in terms of
1. downticket races this cycle
2. Presidential and other races in future cycles
3. public opinion for everything, starting say 3 weeks from now.
Collectively, those things are more important than Trump being reelected. In particular, the negative attacks from Trump against Joe, even if they hit, aren’t the sort of thing that is going to motivate anybody to believe that Democrats have to be stopped. Whereas they may very well think that if Bernie were the nominee instead.
I figured. I was being a wise-ass to make a point about shitty, made-up acronyms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5povsMKfT4Replies: @MEH 0910