It doesnβt take long to stop and enjoy what you happen to enjoy in life. Itβs really only stopping for five minutes and taking in whatβs around you. I donβt take my camera out of the bag enough; Iβm guilty of looking straight down the road and only focusing on the destination as of late when I should be taking time to enjoy the journey.
Thereβs so much to see and I forget sometimes that I have to work for a living; I am a husband and father, and those come first. And I like my job and love my family.
But what I do, not best and not what I enjoy most, whatβs at my core and gives me peace and alone time is this:
Just wandering and exploring and watching the revival of this and destruction of that. Iβm an observer; I keep the record so that others might see what we were and what we are to become.
The wife and I are watching Infinite tonight on Paramount+.
First off, Mark Wahlberg, I’m a fan. I have enjoyed him in everything I’ve ever seen him in except for Pain and Gain (just a bad movie all around) and the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening, which I couldn’t finish. Not a comment on Wahlberg; it’s just probably Shyamalanβs worst movie.
A sci-fi, action adaption that examines the concept of reincarnation through remarkable visuals and well-established characters who need to use their memories and past learnt skills to ensure the future is protected from Infinites that seek to end all life on the planet.
imran (from IMDB)
I’m about thirty minutes in, and I’m getting a heavy Matrix/Wanted feel with a dash of Highlander.
Wahlberg plays Evan McCauley (IMDB has the last name as Michaels), and he’s immortal-ish. This is more immortal by way of reincarnation, retaining all former knowledge and skills. But it seems he needs a jumpstart.
He’s in a war, caught between two factions of immortals, and heβs apparently on the losing side.
One side The Believers want to protect humanity. The other side wants to end the world.
A tale as old as, well, a lot of sci-fi movie plots.
This all takes me back to Highlander. Not just the movie (or movies, I’ll suffer through the bad ones), but the series.
I loved the first movie, but the series with Adrian Paul was an absolute favorite of mine.
The first season was slow for me, but then came Joe Dawson.
The addition of Dawson and The Watchers added so much to the mythos of Highlander. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and I believe they ended Highlander: The Series on a good note.
I would love to see it rebooted, but I’m going to need Jim Byrnes back; to keep an eye on things.
Infinite was good. I’ll probably watch it again. I would rather see the storyline fleshed out in a series rather than one film. All in all, 7 out of 10 stars.
It was a bit rushed but still a good time for action fans, I think.
Tonight we continued the childrenβs cinematic education with Ferris Buellerβs Day Off.
The movies of my day (yea, this is very much within the timeline) rated as PG-13 prove one thing, we were not sheltered from language and innuendo like kids are today.
PG-13 from 1986 would probably be a hard R today if you threw in a bare breast.
Personally, I think that the John Hughes movies of the 80s are masterpieces. Gen X can quote them line for line. It might even be a better proof of age for most anything in place of ID.
Cashier: Can I see your ID?
Customer: Oh, he’s very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads – they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.
They donβt and wonβt make movies like this anymore. Their day has come and gone. Often replicated, never duplicated comes to mind.
At least we have the historical archives.
Which reminds me, grab those hard copies while you can.
I just finished watching Run Hide Fight and I have to say that if The Daily Wire keeps turning out quality entertainment like this the culture war is on!
Iβm a big Thomas Jane fan and have been before The Punisher and after watching this movie the title of this post came to mind.
Isabel May gives a fantastic performance as Zoe Hull a teenager working through the grief of losing her mother. Thomas Jane plays her father Todd (come on guys! Couldnβt you have named him Frank?!)
The plot is centered around a school shooting. Zoe is the Die Hard-ish hero of the film, but there are so many people having a hero moment in the film.
I recently (just this week) subscribed to The Daily Wire site and Iβm glad I did. This is going to be money well spent along with everything else I already get, including the articles and podcasts.
This is a great alternative to Hollywood. Iβm glad to be at least putting some money towards people who align with my values and who see the problems I see with our culture.
Iβm listening to them talk about more movies, childrenβs movies, the series. And that fairly excites me. So glad to see some alternative to what we have now.
They Live (titled onscreen as John Carpenter’s They Live) is a 1988 American science-fictionactionhorror film written and directed by John Carpenter. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, the film follows an unnamed drifter[nb 1] who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media. Wikipedia
I didnβt know there was a short story that it was based on until this morning. The short story is Eight OβClock in the Morning by Ray Nelson.
I liked the short story [spend] nearly as much as I like the movie.
Both the movie and the story have [consume] certain parallels to what is going on right now. How much of your thought is controlled by the talking heads on TV and what the media pushes through your phone?
Before I start, this isnβt a religious post or a post about freedom and liberty.
No. This is about a journey and the things that happened along the way. A journey to get to a place we were at the whole time.
Several decades ago, a writing team came up with an idea for a comedy/SciFi show for British television. I donβt know all the particulars but the first thing I saw was this.
This is from the episode Tongue Tied and is a better filmed image than the first episode. But fans will nitpick and theyβll also get the first episode feel.
Then…
Whatβs happeninβ, dudes?
This is an SOS distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors are Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the disaster, and his pregnant cat, who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Lister’s only companions are a life form who evolved from his cat, and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew. I am Holly, the ship’s computer, with an IQ of 6000, the same IQ as 6000 PE teachers.”
The wife and I had moved to a new apartment on a Saturday. No cable until the following Monday. So I rigged up a make shift antenna on the TV (tube TV, thatβs how far back the story goes) and all we could get was PBS.
And that was okay. Back then, PBS had some fairly entertaining stuff on Saturday nights.
The first thing that came up was Red Dwarf.
Every Saturday night we got to catch an episode or two. Right from the first episode.
And we were hooked.
The next three times we moved the series would start over again. It was like a good luck charm. And we would watch it all over, again.
Then we moved to our house here and it wasnβt on PBS anymore. So that Saturday morning we went out looking for the DVDs and found them.
And that first Saturday night we watched the first series.
Itβs a tradition for our home. A weird one, maybe. But itβs ours.
Now weβve passed that on to our daughter and son.
Weβve been to The End and The Beginning. Weβve been Tongue Tied and Backwards. Weβve encountered everything from Despair Squids to Pleasure Gelfs.
Donβt even get us started on Polymorphs.
Weβve seen the Boys from the Dwarf get into and out of all kinds of scrapes. Weβve seen them become heroβs and be the villains.
Itβs a great ride.
And then we come to The Promised Land.
I wasnβt going in with high hopes for a feature length episode. I was thinking that might be pushing it for this show.
I was surprised. It was something I would have paid for at a theater. And I wish I could have seen it all on the big screen.
So here we are, at journeys end and we find out:
The Promised Land is not a planet.
Itβs a place in your heart.
Itβs a way of thinking.
It sounds a bit like home. But the building doesnβt make a home, the people do.
And now weβve gone through it all. The family has seen the whole thing. Taken the entire journey.
Watching CBSs EVIL on Netflix. Itβs very good. Interesting.
We finished watching Elementary last night. The show had some great heart string pulling moments between Miller and Liu. We became tied to the show because of the back and forth between them and to us the payoff from that relationship made it well worth watching.
But then, Iβve been a Johnny Lee Miller fan since Hackers.
Sherlock Holmes : Look. I’ve never felt any pressure from you that I co-parent. But, your idea that I take *no* responsibility for raising your child is naΓ―ve. It’s not that I think you’re incapable of raising a child on your own. Of course you are. But, short of us dissolving our partnership, I’m not capable of not being involved. No-no, not as a child’s father, but as its mother’s friend.
[Deeply sincere and with great regard]
I mean, I’d lay down my life for you. So, if you succeed in adopting a child, I’d lay down my life for him or her’s. It’s as simple as that.
Dr. Joan Watson : Have you thought about what you wanna be called by my kid? I mean, assuming… I get one.[At his surprised silence]