The Invisible Counterpoint

Patrick McEvoy-Halston August 19 at 10:42am After "Hell or High Water" getting so much attention, and now with "Logan Lucky"... and even perhaps with "Paterson," and even "Logan" (and "Manchester by the Sea"?), we appear to have the makings of an emerging pattern: people who've been long-ignored by society and felt the burdens abandonment made for them, testing to see if it might now be time for their re-evaluation. One of the things we take notice of in each of these films, is not simply the humiliations they've incurred, the sense of "smallness" they've had to suffer from, but a weighing to see if their weight sufficient so if the finish of the film does break for them, does weigh in heavily with them, for it to feel hedged against fallback. These films are video, dramatizing that a call has sounded, and something in people we haven't been much interested in lately is having them test t...

Patrick McEvoy-Halston  shared a  link . August 17 at 2:08pm One of the requirements for this group is that there not be any political campaigning. We've already seen that there is some confusion as to what this means. Posts have gone up -- like is "Dunkirk" a Brexit movie? -- that at least one person thought shouldn't have been permitted. Specific candidates have been mentioned, which also garnered some reproof (though how on earth we can go weeks at a time without ever mentioning "T" is a bit beyond me). Some clearly understand a bro ad conception of what campaigning is, while others see it precisely limited to arguing my-candidate-is-better-than-yours-so-there! Some see any political discussion as ruining groups that are a singular delight for their absence--ostensibly a rarity in the world of the internet. Some feel the absence of discussion of this sort would be starkly neutering.  My prompt for the group is for some discussion ...

The New Yorker  shared a  link . 16 hrs Richard Brody   wrote this about "Atomic Blonde": It is a movie that has it both ways; it shows how the sausage of freedom is made, with gory battles behind the façades of public life—but it turns that gory combat into a new façade, another illusion that hides still others that are far more complex, troubling, and unresolved. Have you seen it yet? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below. Let's keep the discussion about this film on this thread. Empty East-Versus-West Espionage in “Atomic Blonde” The new movie, starring Charlize Theron, uses the last days of the Berlin Wall as the backdrop for an utterly insubstantial and unengaging spy action-drama. NEWYORKER.COM - - - - - Patrick McEvoy-Halston  If the movie appeals to people who themselves find bliss in not-knowing, it's quite the criticism of everyone who liked it. M...