ÉIRU.
Just started watching “Ironheart”.
(Okay, I’m an absolute sucker for this Marvel nonsense, I love it, don’t shame me). 
Anyway, early in episode 2, the ghostly AI of our hero’s best friend does this:
What does this remind me of?
The answer came to me when I was taking the muttly for his evening walk.
It’s a nod to Peter Parker texting Happy in one of the Spidey films.
I love these little Easter eggs.
I hate that they make me so happy (no pun intended).
But hey, I could live in the real world. That would suck.
Saw a couple of articles today talking about the show quite positively. Glad people are enjoying it, i’m still in my “worn out on Marvel” headspace so my interest level in it is pretty much zero. That said don’t take me for a hater, honestly happy to hear its good and hope to enjoy it at some point.
Just watched Polite Society by the same director. Wild and wonderfully funny movie.
Goes without saying but trigger warning. Death and suicide are discussed.
Where are we going, Where have we been?
—
Why We Fight: Prelude to War (Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak 1942)
Summary
Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the US’s entering WWII, American film director Frank Capra enlisted in the Army. Already a highly acclaimed director with popular successes such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Meet John Doe (1941), Capra was tasked with creating films which would explain to US troops why the US had entered the war, explaining the histories that led up to Pearl Harbor and the principles which the US was fighting for and against.
This project ultimately became the seven film Why We Fight series. Created mostly from recontextualized Axis propaganda footage, Capra’s series is also propaganda, albeit mostly factual and in service of a far juster cause. The first film, Prelude to War, was considered important enough to be released to the general public and even received an Academy Award for best documentary film.
Prelude concerns itself mostly with contrasting the idealism of the US with the gangsterism of the Axis powers. Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria is credited as the beginning of WWII. Italy’s subsequent war against Ethiopia is mocked as an attempt to pull “the old trick of a foreign war to divert from troubles at home.” Germany is not focused on much, but we do see Nazi book burning footage and German school children singing that Hitler is their savior. Worthwhile for the history minded, but surely without contemporary relevance.
Why We Fight (Eugene Jarecki 2005)
Summary
“On at least one occasion, Eisenhower was heard to say by those in the room, ‘God help this country when somebody sits at this desk who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.’”
Documentary about the military-industrial complex, made during the Iraq War. (And during the Afghanistan occupation, although that receives scarcely any mention. This seeming neglect is arguably justified by the film’s well-founded assertion that Iraq had been a planned target well before the September 11 attacks and is therefore more pertinent to the film’s argument.)
While Capra’s film answers its implicit titular question with hymns to democracy, freedom, and justice, Jarecki takes a more critical look, beginning with President Eisenhower’s farewell address warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Over the course of the film, it is argued that this complex actually consists of four components, the professional military, the “defense” industry, Congress, which almost invariably approves funding for the military because the funds benefit so many districts, and think tanks, unelected organizations which develop the policies which justify the use of the military.
Ultimately, Jarecki implicitly argues that while in WWII US democracy was imperiled by forces abroad, now it is imperiled by forces from within. While perhaps a bit overly discursive, a very good look at this important issue.
(The film is also potentially available in better quality from Alexander Street, via your local university library.)
DVD on hold to pick up at my local library branch, first in line….thank you!
I had never heard of this cartoon before. It looks like it has been cancelled. It’s very child friendly, but it’s stop motion and so neat that you can’t help but like it. What’s on executives’ minds these days? They only make children’s animations with bad CGI and now the AI thing. Not everything is about making a profit. Even in our capitalist system, there must be room for beautiful, neat things, made with love or simply silly things that make us smile from time to time.
Saw this yesterday as well. That cry at the end is just amazing animation.
“But we won an emmy…”
Carbon/Silicon - Why do men fight?
One of our local hosts on our local public radio station, Lois Reitzes is retiring and today was her last show… Start with the second half of Rose Scott’s program, as Rose interviewed her today:
Some of you not in ATL might remember her Adult Swim bumps…
That ending. 
I had seen it described as a post-brexit film with characters yearning for a past that never really existed and i completely bought in to that while watching. The interviews that Garland and Boyle have given certainly seem to leave no ambiguity and it’s mad that Boyle directed the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony with all its jingoism and misremembered past when this seems the complete antithesis of that. I really enjoyed it, it had moments that made my blood run cold, actual humour and a part of the film which was genuinely moving but that ending… i’m struggling with it to be sure.
Watched this last night…
It was excellent, though a tragic and at times kind of hard watch (lots of death and tragedy)… The young man who played Benji was so very good…
Oh good… They would have whitened it up and ruined it…
