Tag: analysis

Ponty Praises: Typoman

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Good old Ponty is back with a video game review, and one with a particular relevance to blogging:  Typoman.

Anyone who writes daily will tell you that you will have typos.  If you’re not taking time to proofread, revise, and edit your writing (which I rarely do for these posts), you’re guaranteed to have them, no matter how fluidly and clearly you wrote.  Some lone word, some misapplied apostrophe, some stray letter, is going to sneak its way in.

Also, a game about spelling words is perfect for a blog, one that possesses pretenses of featuring literary non-fiction on rare occasions.  Words that must be spelled in a dangerous video game environment are even better.

But let me wrap up, lest I commit a dreaded typo.  Ponty delivers a great review of what sounds like an amazing game.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Typoman (let me know if he—or I!—have committed any crimes against spelling and grammar):

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Monday Morning Movie Review: My Dinner with Andre (1981)

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A couple of weeks ago my older brother texted me this classic clip from The Simpsons, which he dubbed one of his favorite throwaway gags from the show:

The Simpsons largely accounts for my love of absurdist humor (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but also for my vastly encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century pop culture and politics.  It is solely because of that clip that I know of My Dinner with Andre (1981).

Even knowing nothing about the movie when I saw the clip above as a kid, the joke landed because the idea of playing an arcade game about two guys having a conversation was just so absurd, my brothers and laughed our butts off.

But, as The Simpsons often did, it planted the name of that film in my mind.  When my brother sent me that link the other day, it got me thinking that I really needed to see the movie.

I’m so glad I did.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

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The excellent horror host Joe Bob Briggs opened the current season of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs with a screening of the 1925 silent film The Phantom of the Opera (1925), the classic starring Lon Cheney in the title role.  I had never seen the film, and I can see why it has stood up to the test of time.

It’s also wild to consider that this movie is 100 years old.  It released the year my paternal grandfather was born, between the World Wars, before the Great Depression.  The 1920s and the 2020s share more than we realize, but it was also a fundamentally different world.  That the movie is still enjoyable is a testament to the strength of the story.

There is no original print of The Phantom that survives today (according to Joe Bob), and the score to the film has, it seems, been lost to time.  The version Joe Bob presented seems to track closely with the plot on Wikipedia, and featured a score composed and recorded in 2011.  The version he presented also featured colored tinting, an early version of Technicolor.

Based on the music credit after the film, this version is not the one Joe Bob presented, but it’s a reasonable facsimile and worth your time:

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TBT: VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

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It’s hard to believe that a year ago, we were gearing up for a presidential election.  Now Trump is back in office—woooooot!—and he has a worthy successor in the wings.

It’s going to be tough sledding in the years ahead, but it’s reassuring to know that we have a legitimate successor ready to roll in 2028.  Vance’s incredible speech to the various heads of Europe’s governments earlier this year was a call to government accountability—and for Europe to wake up.  It was not an attack on Europe, per se, but a powerful plea for its leaders to do something to improve the lives of their people.

I’m excited to see more from Vance in the years to come.

With that, here is 17 July 2024’s “VP Vance: A Worthy Successor“:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Strain (2014-2017)

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Today I’m taking a bit of a departure from my usual reviews.  Instead, I’m going to review a television series, although one with a cinematic quality and a Hollywood director attached:  The Strain (2014-2017).

The Strain is about a group of creatures that resemble a zombie-vampire hybrid called the strigoi (also called “strigs” and “munchers” in the show).  These creatures are filled with parasitic worms that they pass onto their victims.  Even one worm will multiply rapidly inside a host body, although the full transformation into a strigoi takes a few days.

The strigoi in the show are under the control of The Master, an ancient, powerful strigoi who has almost limitless power over his minions:  he can see through their eyes; he can speak through their mouths; he can command them to attack (or not to do so); and he can give some strigoi greater or lesser degrees of autonomy and/or their original personalities.  The Master can also transfer himself (in the form of a red parasitic worm among thousands of white ones) to other bodies, and can give humans “The White”—a white substance that, in the right doses, grants humans incredibly renewed health and an extended lifespan.

There are strigoi not under The Master’s control, but the show never clearly explains why.  One strigoi, The Born, is the vengeful offspring of The Master and a human.  There are also The Ancients, a set of which reside in New York City (the “New World Ancients”), and a set that reside in the Old World.  The New World Ancients are portrayed as vampiric husks, existing in a state of stasis and complacency.  All of these strigoi are at odds with The Master.

A plucky band of humans, led by the elderly Jewish pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian, also fight against The Master, to degrees that grow increasingly desperate as the show progresses and their numbers dwindle.  Setrakian is a Holocaust survivor, and his archnemesis is Thomas Eichhorst, the chief lieutenant of The Master.  Eichhorst was the commander of the concentration camp where Setrakian was held captive, and the two share a lethal bond that, I would argue, is the best part of the show.  The decades-long duel between them is fascinating viewing.

So, what of the show itself?  I have mixed feelings about it, to be sure.  Over the course of its four seasons, I found much about the show that I found tedious and boring.  Season 3, particularly, got bogged down in side stories, but the finale almost made the ride worth it.

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TBT^16: Modern Art and Influence

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I’m currently reading through J.D. Cowan‘s short book The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide (those are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you), which isn’t precisely a guide on how to write pulp but, rather, an extended argument for why one should write pulp.  Cowan unapologetically—indeed, enthusiastically—argues that the “low art” of the pulps provides readers what they want:  action and wonder.  He makes a reasonable argument for reviving this older form of writing, which features punchy writing and upright heroes:  audiences want to read such stories, but “OldPub” (his term for the current publishing industry) prefers massive tomes that push approved messages.  Readers lose out, therefore, on good stories, and the publishing industry is dying as a result.

That’s gotten me thinking about art and writing and what not.  Last summer, a guest writer, Brian Meredith, wrote a post entitled “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Art” here at TPP.  I don’t precisely agree—I think we can have (more or less) objective standards for what qualifies as good art and literature—but he does touch upon what I think is the important distinction between “low” and “high” art.  Cowan argues in his book that pulps are “low art,” but that doesn’t make them worthless.  But both low and high art can, I would argue, be quite bad.  Just take this example from author and poet Liza Libes (Libes is an exquisite writer; she’s just sharing an excerpt from some trashy “romance” novel); no one can read that and not realize it’s awful writing (and not just because of the lurid subject matter).

But the worst art is art that is only valuable in the financial sense because the people making it are either a.) well-connected and/or b.) elevated because of some perceived victim status.  We’ve had too much of both lately, and it’s why—as Cowan argues—the publishing and film industries are dying slow deaths (and, yes, yes, shortened attention spans due to TikTok and what not play a role, too, I’m sure, but people go to those platforms because they at least give folks what they want).  That was the crux of this post, first written back in 2021 and reblogged mercilessly every summer.

With that, here is 25 July 2024’s “TBT^4: Modern Art and Influence“:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Years Later (2025)

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Yours portly and his brother made it to a couple of movies during this most recent trip to Indianapolis.  While we were up in Chicago, we beat the heat with a viewing of 28 Years Later (2025), the third film in a long trilogy spanning back to 2002 with 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Apparently, this third installment lingered in development hell for two decades.

It was well worth the wait.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

While I was in Indianapolis visiting my brother (a post about that trip will be up eventually), we went and saw the newest film in the long Jurassic Park/Jurassic World series, Jurassic World Rebirth (2025).  I wasn’t expecting much besides the usual popcorn summer flick—lots of crazy dinosaurs, huge explosions, etc.—and that pretty much is what the movie is all about it.  But I found I enjoyed the flick much more than I anticipated.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly ventured to his local cinema last week.  One of the glories of summer vacation is that I can go see the movies at 11:40 AM on a Thursday morning, which is exactly what I did when I went to see Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).

Why such an early showing?  Well, the movie—and this point is my chief complaint about it—is nearly three hours long.  Like every major film release these days, directors seem incapable of shooting and editing a film that is under two hours.  A small handful of super long films don’t feel long, and I welcome their three-hour runtimes, but those (like Goodfellas [1990]) are very much the exception to the rule.  What happened to the tight, 90-minute flick?

M:ITFR gets a bit of a pass because it is the final (allegedly) film in a franchise that dates back to 1996.  Think about that—this franchise pre-dates the birth of Dr. Fiancée by two years.  I was eleven when the first film released; I’m forty now.  It is a testament to Tom Cruise‘s longevity, dedication, and fitness that he was able to play Ethan Hunt for so nearly thirty years.  Cruise famously and frequently performs his own stunts; seeing a man of his age (he’s 62; he’ll turn 63 in July) perform them is impressive.

The flick was filmed back-to-back with its predecessor, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), but the writers’ strike delayed production of M:ITFR until 2024.  That means Cruise played Ethan Hunt for twenty-eight years—dang!

But I digress.  Is the impossible length of this film worth accepting the mission?

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TBT^16: Reclaim the Rainbow

The Portly Politico15 Comments

It seems that last year’s trend of major corporations downplaying gayness is continuing.  Yes, a recent iPhone iOS update mentioned including a “Pride” background or wallpaper or some such nonsense, and I’m sure all of my phone’s apps will turn into rainbows until July, but the more blatant and outrageous stuff seems less prevalent.

As I noted last year, I could be wrong, but the general tenor of the times have changed.  The essential problem with all of corporate America and our governments celebrating homosexuality is that, eventually, all of these people will die off.  You’re already engaging in a form of behavior that makes procreation impossible, and even the heterosexual fellow travelers (“allies”) are pumping themselves full of birth control and/or anti-human ideology.  The demographic reality favors religious traditionalists, not men in assless chaps engaging in buggery.

I don’t think that demographic implosion has occurred yet, but maybe we’re witnessing the beginnings of it.  In twenty years, I would not be surprised if Target quietly pulled all “Pride” celebrations and began marketing baby diapers to conservative Christians aggressively.

Regardless, let’s pray for all of those lost in the quagmire of sin; we’re there, but Christ Redeems and Saves—even the guys in assless chaps.

With that, here is 6 June 2024’s “TBT^4: Reclaim the Rainbow“:

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