Month: July 2020

#REVIEW: ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews1 Comment

I was in the mood for a movie last night, and I offered three options to my wife: Sanjuro, an Akira Kurosawa samurai movie starring noted badass Toshiro Mifune, Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie we’ve both seen but which I felt could stand a rewatch, and Atomic Blonde.

You may see a theme there, and it’s a sign of just how much of an action star Charlize Theron has become that I’m putting her up with Toshiro Mifune without even thinking about it. She’s an amazing actress and also seems to be an impressively genuine individual; I’ve seen several really good interviews with her and she’s always entertaining as hell. (She did a great interview with Howard Stern a few years ago, but I can’t find that online.)

I had thought from the previews that Atomic Blonde was basically going to be a Black Widow movie without actually having Black Widow in it; that is not entirely accurate. This is a spy movie set in Berlin during the last days of the Berlin Wall– the Wall actually falls toward the end of the movie, so the very last days of the Wall– and Theron plays a British agent sent in to recover a list of active agents being shopped around by a former Russian Stasi agent who is trying to defect. It’s a great example of the genre; other than the bit where it’s starring a woman this movie could have been made in any of the last three decades without any change, and other than needing to see into the future to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall I could totally see it having come out in the 50s or 60s as well. It’s got this timeless classic feel to it that I really liked, and the direction, set lighting, that sort of thing all has this great old-school thing going.

There is no trace of the superhero movie in this, though, is the thing, despite having been based on a comic book.(*) There are some great fight scenes, and one of the things that makes them great is that Theron’s character doesn’t have a single fight anywhere in the film that doesn’t take a toll on her. If she gets punched in the face, she acts like she’s been punched in the face, and the film uses a framing sequence where she’s being debriefed by MI6 where she is covered in bruises and looks absolutely beat to hell. There’s an absolutely amazing sequence toward the end of the film involving several waves of two or three bad guys at a time and several staircases. It’s probably close to ten minutes long and it’s all one shot, and by the end of it Theron has won (spoiler alert, I guess) but can hardly walk and frankly is only barely still alive. It’s one of the best fight sequences I’ve ever seen, and it takes what was already a pretty damn good flick and elevates it to something very close to a must-see for anyone who enjoys action films.

I feel like this movie went under the radar when it came out in 2017, so if you haven’t seen this yet, definitely take a couple of hours and check it out. It’s a $3.99 rental in a couple of different streaming services right now; you won’t regret it.

(*) I know nothing at all about the comic book other than the name, so I can’t really address how well this movie works as an adaptation.

Who am I and what is happening

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music2 Comments

Guys I’m listening to a Taylor Swift album on purpose right now and if there’s any clearer sign that 2020 is completely out of control I can’t imagine what in the world it could possibly be. That said, Folklore doesn’t sound like anything else she’s ever done. It’s adamantly not a pop album. I … think I like it, but that might be one of the signs of the apocalypse and I haven’t read Revelation in a while so let me hold off on that determination for a minute.

I said on Twitter earlier that this was like Taylor Swift wrote a Fiona Apple album, but even that doesn’t make sense because I didn’t really like Fiona Apple all that much until her quarantine album came out, and nothing in the world makes any sense any longer.

In other news, I am tired of thinking about my vision, which isn’t improving to the degree I want it to, which is juuuuuust starting to edge into alarming territory, and I have to continue vaguebooking about the thing I was vaguebooking about earlier this week for at least a little bit longer. Until next Tuesday, in fact.

“Vaguebooking” is one word, WordPress, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop fixing it for me.

Also, have I always written ridiculously long sentences around here, or this is a new thing? I feel like it may not be new but it’s definitely getting worse, and I need to work on that.

On wanting to know stuff

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek11 Comments

You may not know this about me: my first semester in college, I was enrolled in an Arabic class. I took Arabic out of pure intellectual curiosity, nothing more; at the time it wasn’t really part of any long-term plan of study or anything like that, it was just as far away as I could get from the languages I’d been offered in high school and it sounded neat. I lasted about three weeks, maybe; it turns out that despite being an excellent student, high school had not taught me to study, and as it happens mastering the Arabic alphabet, which not only has a handful of letters with no English equivalent but where each letter looks different depending on its position in the word– letters that start or end a word look different from letters in the middle, and the primary and final positions look different from each other as well– was more complicated than I could handle at the time. I would eventually fill my language requirement with Hebrew, which isn’t quite as complicated as Arabic, but that was the class that finally taught me to buckle down and study.

I have two big academic failures in my life: Arabic and calculus, and I still want to achieve at least a working knowledge of both before I die. I took calculus my senior year in high school but a bad case of senior burnout combined with a math teacher who was, inexplicably, one of the best math teachers I’d ever had for sophomore Geometry but was utterly unable to reach me for senior Calculus meant that as soon as I was admitted to IU and fulfilled all of my graduation requirements I dropped the class and took an independent study period of Spanish.

Stick a pin in that; we’re gonna take a left turn for a couple of paragraphs.

I’ve never particularly considered myself a weeb– a lifetime of aversion to any sort of Japanese animation not involving Hiyao Miyazaki will kind of nip that in the bud– and while it’s not entirely accurate it’s fair to suggest that the presence of a Japanese voice track on really any form of entertainment is an indicator that I may not be into it. That said, I’ve spent approximately six thousand hours since March playing Nioh and Nioh 2, both Japanese-with-English-subtitles and very loosely based on sixteenth-century Japanese history, and I have sunk a similarly obsessive amount of time into Ghost of Tsushima in the last couple of weeks, which is based on the (real) invasion of Tsushima island by the Mongols in 1274.

And god help me if this hasn’t woken up a previously-nonexistent desire to learn more about Japan.

I keep trying to find a decent English biography of Oda Nobunaga, who appears in both of the Nioh games, and I’m discovering, after spending half of my waking hours listening to people speaking Japanese for five months, a certain interest in learning to at least fumble my way through speaking Japanese. I’m not even sure where to start with that; there are apps and such, but anything reputable is way more money than I’m willing to invest. There are probably some reputable textbooks out there, but I haven’t taken the time to look for them yet.

Which, depending on whether this desire sticks around once I get past these few games, will add another complicated long-term intellectual goal to my list. I feel like I probably ought to get started on at least one of these at some point, right? Which one would you start with, at gunpoint if necessary? 🙂

On planning and the lack thereof

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

A week ago, my school district was telling all of us that we were back to in-person learning on the day school starts. There have been a couple of School Board meetings since then and hundreds of teachers (myself included) have been burning up the internet sending irate emails, and now the plan appears to be that we’re starting with e-learning, but only for two weeks, and then phasing everyone back into the building in early September, except that at least three Board members appear to believe that we need to lose the entire first nine weeks, the plan hasn’t been voted on, and they do not have remotely enough time to hire the people that they are going to need to make any existing plan beyond “keep everyone home” work.

I made this specific point at one of the board meetings, actually; every plan that does not involve keeping us all home requires hiring more people, or if it doesn’t require that immediately, it will start requiring that the very second people start getting sick. We are not at full staffing as a district right now and in the last twelve years we never have been. There is a board vote scheduled on August 3rd, but remember, school supposedly starts on August 12. There is not enough time in nine days to do anything.

The superintendent has sent out three or four separate surveys trying to figure out who both wants to and/or has a medical need to be home beyond “I don’t want to die.” Each time they’ve had to pull the survey because of health privacy violations. They’ve made no decisions about who might be home to teach the kids whose parents don’t want them to enter the buildings and as of right now they don’t have time to, because every teacher that gets pulled out of a classroom means they need to put another body in that room.

(I was very pleased to discover that both obesity and high blood pressure put me in high-risk status for Covid, and no, that’s not a typo; I was pleased. I do not want to return to classroom teaching right now, and it’s nice that for once being a giant fat man is working for me and not against me.)

In addition, the county health department … person— I don’t know if he’s a chairman or what the hell his title is, but one way or another he was at one of the board meetings too. He stated in front of Jesus and everybody that he thinks the county needs to be at or below fifteen new infections a day before he’s comfortable reopening schools. We are currently at about three times that many, and I don’t see that number falling into safe range anytime in August at all, much less September.

A number of things have been clear to me for a while, and at this point I’m basically just waiting for everyone else to face up to reality and make the necessary intelligent decisions: we are not going back to school for at least nine weeks and I suspect we are probably done for 2020. Sports– professional, high school, college, whatever– are not coming back this year. They may have started some practices, but the seasons are going to get cut very, very short if they even get started at all. This has only gotten worse since March, and it’s not getting better until the current US government is mostly replaced, so we’re looking at probably February before we can see any any chance of actual useful positive movement, and if the Republicans aren’t voted out of office in every imaginable capacity in November and then probably forced out of certain government buildings in Washington at gunpoint on January 20 we are dead. I’m not ready to say we’re going to lose the entire school year yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it happened. Not one tiny bit.

None of this had to be this way, but … y’know. Emails.

In which I shamelessly vaguebook

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

God damn it world you owe me this.

I am too fucking superstitious to tell you what the hell I’m talking about, so I apologize for that, but it would be a giant joke to pretend that I have anything at all right now on my mind other than this thing that I’m currently too superstitious to talk about, so let me just say god damn it world you owe me this again and that’s just gonna have to be it until I hit a point not controlled by stupid rituals.

Current actual portrayal of my mental state:

Where’s that Twitter account that just posts a loud scream every twenty minutes? I need that.

More tomorrow, when hopefully I will be calmer.

In which I review a mask

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews3 Comments

I think I have a new favorite mask. I suspect I’m not the only person out there who has been through a whole bunch of different specific masks and styles of masks without finding one that would work well for long-term use, and I just got this one that I ordered through Etsy and I think it may be the big winner. What sets it apart is the size; it’s made specifically for men with large beards, so unlike every mask I’ve tried it actually fits completely under my chin and doesn’t get in my mouth. There’s a pouch in there for a filter if I want to put one in (mental note: figure out how to get mask filters? And whether I need them?) and even without the filter it passes the blow test. There’s also a nose wire that seems to work better than the wires in standard surgical masks, which I never was able to position so as to keep my glasses from fogging up.

I spent a few minutes in front of the mirror just sort of talking as if I was addressing a classroom and it never got in my mouth, and it doesn’t put pressure on my ears– the top band wraps around my head and the bottom one goes around the back of my neck. I’m a little concerned about how it sort of pooches away from my face along my jawline, but that’s at a weird enough angle to the rest of the world that I have some trouble imagining danger droplets getting in that way. The only other concern I can think of is that, as you can tell, the elastic is a little bit on the thin side, so that may be a problem in the long-term. For now it doesn’t feel like it’s going to snap on me, and the drawstring in the back means that it’s not pulling super hard anyway.

All that said, I’m going to give this one a week and if I’m still happy with it at the end of the week I’m going to order a few more. This definitely passes the initial quality test, though.

One-week LASIK update and a book note

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Reading1 Comment

My LASIK surgery was a week ago today, and I’m pleased to announce that I seem to be adjusting fine. Other than the first few minutes after waking up during the first day or two, there’s been no pain, and as you would probably expect I’m noticing my vision less and less as the days go on. I’m still not as happy with my distance vision as I want to be, but the “good range,” for lack of a better phrase, does seem to be expanding, and the scientist in me is suffering from being unable to put my glasses back on and compare what my vision was like back then to what it is now. It’s entirely possible that this is just what it’s always been but I’m paying more attention to it now, but the fact that I don’t know and don’t have a way to check is making me moderately crazy.

The urge to reach for my glasses in the morning and when I get out of the shower remains pretty overwhelming– 37 years of conditioning will do that to you– and I’m also noticing that at the end of the day my eyes are tired, leading to a similarly overwhelming urge to remove the contact lenses that are not actually in my eyes and put my glasses back on. In fact, honestly, other than the (no longer an issue) early eye pain, this has been almost exactly like adjusting to contact lenses, except for all the eyedrops and the vague notion that my vision is improving from day to day. I need to find an excuse to take a drive after dark sometime this week to see if I have any issue with halos or starbursting; driving in general is fine so long as I’m going places I’m used to driving to (which is 100% of my driving; I’m not leaving the house much, because quarantine) but I’m not sure my distance vision is great for driving somewhere new, because I have to get pretty close to road signs before they’re legible and if I was looking for street signs to know where to turn I’d have to either drive slower than was safe or make some very abrupt decisions.

One way or another, though, I’ve been repeatedly assured that the stuff I’m currently concerned about will get better, and I still am amazed at how easy the surgery and the recovery process have been. Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t spend every second I was awake thinking about my vision, so this is definitely on an upward trend.

One additional sign that my eyes are improving is that after not being able to read more than small chunks of Scarlet Odyssey at a time without my eyes getting tired, I blew through Ilhan Omar’s excellent memoir This is What America Looks Like in basically two sittings. Granted, it’s quite a bit shorter, at 265 pages and a relatively large font, but it’s nice that my ability to binge-read is coming back. This is one of those books where I think you probably already know if you want to read it or not, and if you do, you should follow that urge, and if you don’t, you should read it anyway. Omar’s story is barely even possible in America any longer, but remains a perfect example of the type of country we like to think we are, and her life has been fascinating regardless of what you think of her politics (not a problem for me, obviously) so the book is definitely an engaging read. If anything, I wish it was another hundred pages long, as I’d like to know more about what life was like as a younger person for her, both in the refugee camps and her first few years in America when she was trying to navigate middle school without being able to speak English. Give it a look.

#Review: SCARLET ODYSSEY, by C.T. Rwizi

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews6 Comments

Y’all.

I keep almost saying this on the blog, but I don’t think I actually have yet: you need to be reading more African science fiction and fantasy. I don’t know if there’s an actual continental Renaissance going on right now or if it’s just American publishers trying to be more diverse and finally giving these authors a chance or what, but the number of good books I’ve read in the last few years by African or first-generation immigrant authors has been skyrocketing, particularly from Nigerian authors or authors of Nigerian descent, and you need to get in on this. In C.T. Rwizi’s case, he was born in Zimbabwe and currently lives in South Africa, and I’m pretty sure I bought Scarlet Odyssey based on not much more than the author’s name and that absolutely gorgeous cover.

I love it when that works out, and it’s funny that I’m thinking about discovering Fonda Lee’s Jade City much the same way, because I’m pretty sure The Green Bone Saga was the last time I was this jazzed about a new SF/F series. Yes, it’s that good.

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you have probably caught on to the fact that I am a sucker for worldbuilding, and Rwizi’s world is a lush, multicultural, second-world Africa, filled with magic that is in a lot of ways math-based— the way mystics officially become mystics basically requires them to derive a unique mathematical proof called an Axiom that powers and regulates their abilities– and wildlife with robot parts and a ton of overlapping political systems that are at odds with each other, alongside a religious pantheon that is just as multifaceted. Generally with fantasy you either get one or the other; you’re either dealing with kings and emperors or gods and demigods, and this series has both. I want to read a million books set in this world and I want to hear more about every corner of it, especially the bits that exist off the map that the book starts with, which are only hinted at here and there but which seem to have something entirely different going on from the vibe of the rest of the book.

The main character is Musalodi, an eighteen-year-old noble who wants to be a mystic rather than following his brothers into the warrior caste. In his tribe, magic and academics are generally women’s work, and yes I can hear you sighing over there but while this trope has started to get more than a little tiring in general, once Salo gets out of the reach of his people (I’m not going to tell you how or why) his maleness stops being an issue, except for the occasional person who recognizes where he’s from and knows how odd his powers are. Gender-swapped roles is kind of a theme throughout the book, actually; similar things will happen with a couple of different people.

While Salo is definitely the main character, the book employs a third-person rotating narrator style, over maybe eight or ten different characters, a couple of whom will eventually turn out to be the same person. The characters are scattered all over the world and several of them don’t encounter or even know about each other, so it’s likely that there will be some worlds colliding in the future. I don’t want to get too deep into the actual story; this is definitely something that you want to watch unfold on your own without knowing a lot about where it’s going. The short version is that Salo is going to come into his powers, and then get sent on a Quest, capital Q absolutely necessary, by someone who may or may not have his best interests in mind and whose motivations are deliberately kept somewhat unclear.

Oh God, y’all, it’s so damn good. The sequel isn’t due out until March of next year and I want it nowwwww. Go buy this and read it, please; I need somebody to talk to about it.