A few words about the movie, 12 Monkeys (1996)

Generally a pretty good movie! My main problems with it were:

a) Willis’ character was a major nutcase, violent, and not too bright, either. He’s supposed to travel back in time, not to prevent a biomedical event that kills most of humanity, but to seek information about the virus that would help those in the future deal with it better. Why on earth would you send him, of all people, back to the past on such an important mission?

b) A few of Terry Gilliam’s art direction choices, especially the lab in the future, were absurd and detracted from the believability. He did the same thing, in spades, in Brazil. That can work in the sort of flicks Tim Burton usually does, but it’s just a silly diversion with something like this.



But I’ve always liked Willis, and Madeleine Stowe was very good.... Brad PItt is a bit over the top here. The fact that he was nominated for Best Supporting for this says a whole lot about how stupid and unfair the Oscars are....

This was “inspired by” the famous French short, La Jetée, which we watched in junior year honors English. (Our teacher was media-oriented, and we watched quite a few important (and cool) shorts in class.) Anyway, “inspired by” is a good way of putting it. The movie uses the basic paradoxical time -traveling ideas of the La Jetée storyline, but of course, adds a whole lot to it in the way of plot and characters.

I had actually written a little short story for 8th grade English class that was pretty similar (though a whole lot shorter). In that, the character travels back in time to prevent a nuclear war and ends up being the one who starts it.

No doubt, somehow my subconscious traveled two years into the future to draw inspiration from my viewing of La Jetée....

Moby, Coldplay, Walter Cronkite

20090719 Blog

I’m wrapping up day one of a three day weekend. Spent rather a lot of time online today, in a fairly idle way. Listened to Moby’s new album, “Wait for Me.” If you’re on Facebook, you can listen to it at http://apps.facebook.com/mobydownloads/. I thought it was kinda blah, actually. I liked Moby’s “18.” This is way inferior to that.

And then I downloaded, free, Coldplay’s live album. Only listened to the first song of that, so far, which was OK. That one you can get at http://bit.ly/WTgiP. It’s a zip file, but it’s OK. It’s definitely from Coldplay.

I also listened to all of a CD that had two old 1965 Peter & Gordon albums, “I Go to Pieces” and “True Love Ways.” Here’s the thing: when P&G are good, they are very good. When they are bad, they are just awful. Their cover of Elvis’ “All Shook Up” is about the lamest recording I’ve ever heard. But that “I Go to Pieces” is sweet! They were one uneven act. And fairly often, Gordon’s singing was just absurd.

This has been kind of a 60s day. The whole of CBS Sunday Morning was dedicated to Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS newsman who just died. I wonder if my Brit friends have heard of him? While he was a consistently important and reliable newsman, he is generally famous for three broadcasts, and the reason he is famous for them is precisely because he deviated from his usual, meticulous, factual reporting. People trusted him because of that reporting, but also because they could see he was a real person, with real emotions that came out during the momentous events he reported.

The first, of course, was his reporting of the assassination of JFK. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen all of this. The guy taking the presidential seal off the podium where JFK was supposed to speak... Never saw that before. I was in the 4th grade, and I think I was home for lunch (I lived a few blocks from school and could walk home). I was (seriously) probably watching Bozo the Clown on Chicago’s WGN at the time. They probably interrupted it with a bulletin, which is probably why TV bulletins even now send a chill down my spine. But I really don’t remember anything until the part where I got back to school and the teachers were all crying and they had us watch TV all afternoon.


Couldn’t find a decent clip of his Vietnam speech, but what happened was, he’d been over there and was very troubled by the loss of American lives. It was after the Tet offensive, and he believed he had to editorialize against the war, because the government and the military were simply lying. After his speech, President Johnson famously said, “If we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost America.”

Finally, this is a short clip about his reporting of the lunar landing (which BTW happened 40 years ago today). In it, you can see his famous reaction, taking off his glasses and saying, “Oh, boy!” Overwhelmed: