Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

Just saw The Ten Commandments Cecil B. DeMille 1956 version. I enjoyed it very much.

I can’t take Chuck Heston seriously no matter what he says or does, mostly because all I can hear is him telling Mister Burns, “You truly are the king of kings.” Luckily, this only enhances the entertainment value of the movie.

While probably maudlin and by modern comparisons possibly banal, I find Moses’ treatment of various individuals from his past touching and maybe even moving. Maybe even instructive.

The character of Nathan comes too close to succumbing to the Iron Giant Effect at times. But as the representation of a kind of self-preservation and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately logic, he seems rational enough and quite necessary to explore the higher ideas of the movie, ie. evidence and faith.

The movie has some very inspirational special effects. And some corny ones which I still enjoyed. This could simply be because the visual effects are hand made, or, if you like, artisanal. This should be a term: Artisanal FX. I only just noticed that you can’t have artisanal without anal.

Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh offers disprovable scientific conjectures to disregard The Plagues Of Egypt. To paraphrase: The river turns red via leaching of iron oxides in the mountains which causes the frogs to flee into the fields and into human populations. This tainted water fatally poisons cattle which triggers an explosion in the pest population and an increase in the spread of disease, etc… Later, Pharaoh pays hard for his Occams Razor type rationalization.

He also has a pretty convincing speech on the self-serving impetuses of various religions, including his own. Turns out, Pharaoh’s thesis is incorrect, at least when it comes to one of said religions in light of how poorly numerous supernatural events turn out for him.

I never would have sought to see the movie. I watched it almost by accident through the magic of basic cable. I saw a movie in a theatre about the Sagrada Familia today that I’ve had circled on my calendar. Did not enjoy it. I am thoroughly in the camp that believes that the un-curated TV experience carried over from our past allows for a valuable type of media consumption.


Also, during the movie, on a major US network, I saw an ad for Farm Heroes Saga on mobile. I didn’t know they did that.

Saw The Wind Rises. There are many obvious reasons for liking Ghibli films, but I can now confidently say there is a slightly more obscure reason that might only appeal to me. And this is very appealing: Miyazaki films have no bad guys. Lots of actors acting badly, but no bad guys. Lots of characters who might even be the root cause of conflict. Yet, they have these believable and relatable motivations fighting off our moral gut reactions.

So far, I remain the only person I know who does not like The Iron Giant.

Saw Tim’s Vermeer yesterday. SPOILER ALERT! TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN THE MOVIE BUT ARE PLANNING TO DO SO! If you’ve continued to read, I’ll assume you’ve seen the movie or at least know how Tim Jenison’s machine works. Jenison and Penn Jillette both state that the human acts completely objectively, as if he is a cog in the machine and not the driver. According to them, the human is only there to apply the paint and to process when the mirror’s edge has disappeared. Which sounds like something one could do with software, a camera, and a modified CNC machine. I don’t know if either of them would try to make that claim, but it sounds like a logical question to follow up with. That question being, could we then build a machine that can “look” at a room, any room, and paint a Vermeer?

Also, doesn’t Jenison’s and Jillette’s claim ignore the gorilla in the room distinction between the precision and invariance of inanimate materials versus the imprecision and variance of flesh and the human twitch? Surely the artist lends some character to the painting when using the machine? The film never tries to tackle this question: Is Jenison’s Vermeer effectively indistinguishable from the original? I know that’s not the premiss of the film. But it’s more than a tangential question, isn’t it?