Weekend Reads: The Matrix, Norm Macdonald, Chinese Reality TV, Republicans and Liberty
Recommended weekend reading material for September 18, 2021.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Lana Wachowski decided to make a fourth Matrix movie to deal with the grief over losing her parents and a close friend.
My dad died, then this friend died, then my mom died. I didn’t really know how to process that kind of grief. I hadn’t experienced it that closely… You know their lives are going to end and yet it was still really hard. My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn’t sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life.
Via The Playlist. The Matrix Resurrections arrives in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22 (watch the first trailer).
Related: The Matrix code (as seen above) is as iconic a visual as any of the movies’ special effects or action sequences. And it all came from sushi recipes.
Ross Douthat explains why The Matrix is, indeed, a good movie (just in case there was any doubt) while also highlighting its moral quandaries.
You don’t need a definite view on free will versus determinism or whether the Oracle is telling Neo the truth, and the koans and literary allusions and all the rest are just window dressing. It’s only in the later movies that they become more essential to the plot, such as it is, and the Wachowskis get tangled in their own pretensions as they do. In the original, though, the story is simple and primal, the stakes clear, the plotting more or less straightforward, and the world-building a neat blend of old theology and futuristic tech. It’s not high art or even the Scorsesean high middlebrow but for a mass blockbuster it’s selling something at once evocative and streamlined, a vivid vision of a nightmare future and our fears about present “reality” collapsing into one.
Will there ever be a female James Bond? Does there even need to be one?
The spectrum of “Bond Girls” ranges from femme fatales to one-dimensional bombshells and, in more recent years, women like Vesper Lynd, who for all her capability still existed to live, die, and emotionally prop up a male hero. Those days may be behind the promiscuous secret agent, if No Time to Die’s emphasis on tough, feminine agents is indicative of the finished product. Big if.
No Time to Die, which will be Daniel Craig’s final adventure as 007, will arrive in theaters on October 8 (barring any more pandemic-related delays).
Numerous comedians and actors, including Patton Oswalt, Seth Rogen, and Jim Gaffigan, have paid tribute to Norm Macdonald, who died earlier this week after a private, nine-year battle with cancer.
The comedian got his start in showbiz as a writer on “Roseanne” in 1992 after making rounds at comedy clubs in Canada. He joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in 1993, and the next year, began his memorable stint as “Weekend Update” anchor until early 1998, when he was replaced by Colin Quinn. Macdonald was best known for his impressions of Burt Reynolds, David Letterman, Larry King and Quentin Tarantino during his five-year run on the show.
Watch Macdonald as Burt Reynolds in this classic Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch. Rest in peace, Turd Ferguson.
In yet another sign that Netflix is investing heavily in anime, the streaming giant recently opened an “Anime Creators’ Base” in its Tokyo office to provide facilities for anime writers and artists. The space was inspired by a 2020 anime series titled Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! in which a group of high school girls team up to create their own anime.
Forget about the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons film. There’s an upcoming TV based on Blades in the Dark.
To truly prosper and be as great a series as Blades in the Dark should be, it will need to become more than just Peaky Blinders with ghosts. There are a few good ways for the studio to accomplish this. The first — and one could argue most important — would be starting each episode in medias res. Latin for “in the middle”, in medias res is a narrative style wherein the plot, in this case an episode of the series, begins in the middle of the story. Bypassing a tedious planning stage and getting right into the heart of a heist is a big part of the Forged in the Dark system — the mechanical chassis on which the steampunk ghost story that is Blades in the Dark is built.
Full disclosure: I’ve yet to actually play Blades in the Dark (so many games, so little time), but I do find its mechanics and gloomy setting really cool and interesting.
Aja Romano’s new favorite TV show is Street Dance of China, a reality dance competition that challenges preconceived notions of Chinese pop culture.
SDC, which launched in 2018, offers a highly popular, highly positive alternative view of hip-hop: one that emphasizes its dancers’ artistry, sense of community, and multiculturalism. Thanks to its vibrance and sense of community, as well as the sheer joy of many of its dance routines, SDC was an ideal form of pandemic escapism.
Constance Grady explores the mysteries and delights of Susanna Clarke’s excellent novel, Piranesi.
The first time I read Piranesi, I scribbled notes about each statue. The minotaurs by the entrance to the House evoke the myth of the labyrinth, which is what the wicked Laurence Arne-Sayles calls the House. An elephant carrying a castle puns on the famous Elephant and Castle inn in London. A woman carrying a beehive — well, certainly that could be a reference to any number of classical myths, which tend to feature bees as a chthonic symbol for life, death, and the soul.
But early on, Clarke makes a point of aiming her readers away from such mechanical, goal-oriented reading.
Piranesi is a delightful novel and quickly became a favorite for both me and my wife. With it, Clarke has created a truly fantastical world filled with all sorts of bizarre sites and phenomena, and one of our favorite protagonists in quite some time.
Meet Nicolas Gentile, the Italian pastry chef who’s living his best hobbit life right now.
I realised that I have always lived in the Shire. The only thing missing was to become aware of it and build a village. I wanted people to enter my mind, my fantasy. Many make fun of us. Some think I am trying to escape from reality. Far from it. I am living my dream, my adventure. By purchasing that piece of land, I have removed it from a reality that I don’t like and am shaping it the way I want.
Earlier this year, Gentile and some of his friends — who were all dressed up like Lord of the Rings characters — walked 120 miles to throw the “One Ring” into the crater of Mount Vesuvius. Talk about living the dream…
Katelyn Jetelina, aka “Your Local Epidemiologist,” has long been one of my go-to sources for COVID-related information. In a recent post, she argues for the need for “accessible, timely scientific communication.”
We have to communicate to the public — the stakeholders — in real time, in “English”, in an inclusive, nonpartisan manner. Building capacity for effective scientific communication needs to be a key part of our national strategy. We have to bring the community along for the ride.
Andrew Egger explores how differing definitions of “liberty” are dividing Republicans in South Dakota. (I strongly suspect versions of this debate are also occurring in other parts of the country.)
Is a Republican government one that primarily exists to protect peoples’ basic rights and otherwise permit them to associate as they see fit? Or is it one that exists to ensure Republicans don’t have to do things they don’t want to do?
Sadly, it seems like more and more folks on the Right are holding to the latter, which strikes me as less an actual political position, and more just plain ol’ selfishness.
A recent Wall Street Journal report revealed that Facebook knows about its products’ detrimental effects (particularly on teenage girls) and has chosen to downplay them, which raises once again that age-old question: what benefits does society actually get from Facebook?
It’s undeniable that social media can facilitate social change. It can also be a useful way for people to keep in touch with their friends and family — and indeed, as Zuckerberg told Congress, it can help people feel less lonely.
But, at some point, the question is whether the public will accept that rationale as an excuse for the company to have free rein to experiment on our collective well-being, measure that harm, and keep the public in the dark about what they learn as they continue to rake in record profits of nearly $30 billion a quarter.
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