Unity 1918
Our little town’s arts council has been extremely fortunate to have drawn the interest of some brilliant young folk. They wanted to do drama. Dinner theatre, they said. We were…
Culture
A Harsh Reality
The election of Donald Trump on Nov 5 left me feeling numb. Why? Because it confirmed my worst fears about the majority of Americans. Over the coming weeks we’ll see…
Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 2
Charles Darwin knew the score. In Chapter 11 of his famous and brilliant book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, he wrote, “We can clearly understand why a species…
Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 1
There’s one particular scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, about twenty minutes in, when Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler see the dinosaurs walking wild in the open…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Paul Rogers discusses the imminent threat of more extreme weather events, shortages of the necessities of life and increased division and inequality if the…
Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Maybe I’m just old and jaded, but after watching the 2023 movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I couldn’t figure out why the film wasn’t in WalMart’s $5 bin…
The Death of Reading?
There are days when I despair for humanity’s future. Many days, of late, it seems, and they seem to get more frequent as I read the news. I recently read…
Musings on The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Cultural Appropriation
Yes, I get the reason some people might have been outraged that a white guy (Johnny Depp) played an indigenous person in the 2013 movie version of The Lone Ranger.…
Intellectual Self-Defence: Time For A Reading Sabbatical
To be brief: The obsession with quantity and volume has to end. More is not always better. Quality matters most. But people in the 21st century are addicted to endless…
Squid Game
The UCP’s “bread and circuses”* approach to government is no longer working. The “bread” (low taxes and high employment) is no compensation for our crumbling healthcare, education, and social services.…
Musings on the Post-Xmas Days
I am glad to have reached the first week in January of 2024 without telling a lot of people to simply fuck off and leave me alone during the past…
Review: The Banshees of Inisherin
I had expected comedy. Maybe not laugh-aloud, rib-splitting stuff. Not slapstick and pratfalls. But humour of the British sort. Oscar-Wilde-ish witty dialogue. Banter like that from Fry and Laurie. Joycean…
Accuracy, Licence, and the Death of Stalin
One of my favourite movies in my collection — seen three times already on DVD or Blu-ray but likely to be seen more — is the 2017 satire, The Death…
Review 9: Son of Godzilla
I‘ve hesitated to write this review because, of all the films in the Godzilla franchise, I dislike the campy-cute, family-friendly Minilla, the so-called “son” of Godzilla. Minilla appears in three…
Cultural Differences of ASD
I was once introduced to a new colleague who made very direct, sustained eye contact, and I thought to myself as I spoke with him: he’s on track to be…
Review 8: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep – 1966
In 1966, the original director of the Godzilla series, Ishiro Honda, left to do other projects and left the next film — Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, aka Godzilla vs…
65: A Catalogue of Disappointments
Can a movie featuring aliens, dinosaurs, spaceships, one of the main actors from Star Wars, and a giant asteroid about to crash into the planet be bad? Sadly, yes. The…
Canada Day
The Soapbox family had a wonderful Canada Day and we hope you did too. We had a celebratory dinner with family and friends. We started with drinks and snacks on…
Lost Counterculture
Henry Madison, just some random dude on twitter, wrote an interesting bit on concerts and the enmeshment of generations. I disagree with several of his claims below: Blondie “Imagine a…