China's Economic Crisis

In 2008, the United States saw a collapse of the real estate market.  Mortgages, which had long been very reliable loans, had been innovated with various market instruments so that they became far less reliable.  All was fine as long as housing prices kept skyrocketing.  Of course, they didn't.  Foreclosures swept the lands and some big companies folded.  However, the houses existed and could be sold by the banks.  The former owners took a hit on their credit scores but were no longer stuck paying a mortgage they couldn't afford.  It took several years, but the economy recovered.

Today, China is seeing the start of their housing collapse.  Throughout the country, citizens have long invested in real estate as the only safe investment.  Somewhere around 70% of all savings goes into real estate.  A little more diversity might have been wise, but the Chinese have been burned by their stock market.  Unlike in the US, the houses on which the citizens are paying mortgages do not necessarily exist.  While the prices were soaring, the builders would sell prospective houses to citizens and then use the money to buy more land where they could promise more buildings.  They would sell these to yet more citizens.  The buildings might be begun but have often not been completed.  Recently, mortgage payers have declared that they will stop paying unless the building resumes.  Evergrande, a major player in the Chinese real estate market, has claimed the unbuilt houses as collateral to secure further loans.  Of course, the non-existing buildings belong to the mortgage payers, not Evergrande.  Shenanigans!  When it collapses, there will be little property to liquidate.  The house of cards that China has built is enormous, dwarfing our 2008 disaster.

On top of this internal catastrophe, China's Belt & Road Initiative is at risk.  It has offered vast sums to other countries in loans to build infrastructure and secure trade partners.  Many of these loans are not performing as hoped (e.g., Sri Lanka's recent meltdown).  Some of the infrastructure is useful (e.g., ports, railways, etc.) but some is purely symbolic (e.g., Lotus Tower in Sri Lanka).  The point of the loans for China should be to increase the income back to China; this is not currently the case.

Given this, China is approaching a crisis that could threaten the government.  It is possible that the government would start a war to divert the populace.  Taiwan beware.

Cosmic Sin (2021)

It is 2524 and a couple on a distant mining planet are about to get busy when the woman hears something.  The man declares that they are the only people on the planet.  However, he goes outside and fires his gun randomly in the darkness.  When the gunfire stops, he does not answer her calls.  Uh oh.  She calls the futuristic version of 911 and declares a first contact situation.

Within 10 minutes, General Ryle (Frank Grillo) is informed.  The history of civilization meeting is usually one of conquerors and the conquered; Ryle has no intention of being the conquered.  He wants James Ford (Bruce Willis) to be brought in and meet him at the base.  Ford was the man who used a Q-Bomb, a weapon that will wipe out a solar system.  He is viewed as a genocidal maniac for having done it.  In less than 30 minutes, the survivors - including the woman who made the 911 call - are back on earth, having traveled by quantum jump.  Of course, all of them have been taken over by the ill-defined aliens and are soon overrunning the base.

The movie has a kernel of an idea that is poorly executed.  That future technology could transport survivors from some distant mining colony to Earth in a matter of minutes is impressive but immensely stupid.  No sooner have the aliens arrived than they drop a tachyon transponder to signal where the homeworld is.  Duh!  They now have hours before an enemy with similar technology to humanity could arrived and drop a Q-Bomb.  Brilliant.  So, a small band of heroes don battle armor/spacesuits to make a quantum jump to the scene of the action; they bring a Q-Bomb.

Though Frank Grillo has top billing, his part is small and he mostly vanished from the film after the quantum jump.  Bruce Willis plays an old veteran who shows all the energy and emotion of a potato.  He could not be bothered to stick around for other character's lines and a stand-in took his place for other actors addressing him.  There isn't a central character, as the story jumps from person to person.  Let's see what Braxton Ryle, General Ryle's nephew, is doing?  Let's have an emotional scene where Dash talks to a young girl and tells her that her sunglasses are really cool and everything is going to be fine.  Now it is time for Dr. Lea Goss to complain about potentially exterminating an advanced civilization; it's a cosmic sin to do such a thing.  Let's jump to the Q-Bomb technician and see how she copes with prepping the Q-Bomb for use and explains how she's just a technician and shouldn't be on the frontlines like this.  Oh, hey, we have this hot sniper chick with a ludicrously large rifle; let's follow her for a bit.

The movie has bad pacing, a scattershot script, undeveloped characters, and several character deaths that are meant to be impactful but aren't.  Who gave the greenlight to this picture?  IMDb gave it a 2.5 rating, which may be generous.

Skip.

Cowboy Bebop (2021)

Our story opens with a robbery at a casino.  While the robbers threaten patrons, Spike Speigel (John Cho) wanders obliviously into the casino wearing headphones.  Seemingly startled to find the crowd of armed men, he surprises them with his martial arts.  Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), Spike's partner, crashes into the fray while complaining that Spike was supposed to wait for him.  The epic fight sees a hole punched in the casino wall, at which point it is clear that this is a space station; everything starts getting sucked into space.

Spike and Jett are bounty hunters, colloquially called 'cowboys' in the future.  They travel the solar system on the Bebop, Jett's spaceship, and live a hand-to-mouth existence with their meager earnings.  In the first episode of the series, they find themselves working against another cowboy, Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda).  She soon becomes an ally, more out of necessity than desire.  Each character has a tragic backstory that led them to the Bebop.  Spike was a syndicate assassin who had an affair with a colleague's girl.  Believed to be dead by the syndicate, he avoids talk of his past.  Jett had been a cop who was wrongly sent to prison.  He has a strained relationship with his ex-wife and barely sees his 8-year-old daughter.  Awoken from cryosleep with no memories, Faye was scammed by a woman claiming to be her mother.  Abandoned by her 'mother,' she seeks some way of finding out who she was and how she happened to be in cryosleep.

All 10 episodes of the series are mash-up storylines from the original anime series.  Many changes have been made, very few of them that were an improvement.  Ein the Corgi seems to have become a cyborg dog.  Ein was a genius dog but could not project holograms from his eyes in the original.  Faye has become a lesbian and has a faux mother, neither of which happened in the anime.  Her risqué outfit and gambling addiction are gone.  Jett had never been married and had no children.  Also, despite the name, he was not a black.  Radical Edward, who only appears in the series finale, comes across as a Pee Wee Herman wannabe in a crazy outfit.  Spike and his backstory are closest to the source material, though many of the background characters in his past have changed.  Vicious (Alex Hassell), Spike's former partner but now adversary, has married Julia (Elena Satine), Spike's love interest.  Julia's role has greatly expanded in the Netflix version and has a dramatic shift in the finale.

The series is entertaining.  The chemistry between Cho and Shakir is terrific.  However, fans of the original found many of the changes to be vandalism.  Some particularly egregious scenes were when Jett talked of using a restaurant bidet, Faye's afternoon lesbian fling with the mechanic, and Spike's potshot at Vicious which demonstrated Spike was an idiot.  Disappointing.  Though not terrible, it doesn't live up to the anime.

Recession

When I took economics in college, the definition of a recession was two consecutive quarters of negative growth/declining Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  Yesterday, the US posted a 0.9% shrinkage in the GDP for the second quarter (April through June) of 2022.  The first quarter (January through March) saw a 1.6% shrinkage in the GDP.  Ipso facto: recession.  Of course, this is a terrible time for a recession.  The midterms are just around the corner and the growth numbers for the third quarter (July through September) won't be released until shortly before the election on November 8th.  Even if the economy rebounds, the voters are thinking about recession as they ponder their upcoming vote; that is never good for the incumbents.

In 1992, George Bush was running for re-election and the economy looked weak.  His opponent, Bill Clinton, proclaimed it the worst economy since Herbert Hoover and rode the slogan "It's the economy, stupid" to the White House.  In fact, the economy was in recovery throughout 1992, the recession having taken place in 1991:

Economic downturns have a deleterious effect on incumbent politicians.  Jimmy Carter suffered through a bad economy and catastrophic inflation in 1980 and was ousted by Reagan.  Donald Trump had a terrible economic year in 2020 and suffered the same fate as Carter and Bush: one-term presidency.

With this history, no one wants to have a recession with the election so near.  Therefore, the plan has rolled out to redefine recession.  President Biden has stated that "Both [Federal Reserve] Chairman Powell and many of the significant banking personnel and economist say we're not in recession."  Rather than the traditional definition of recession, the administration has shifted to the Sahm Rule.

Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months.

By this metric, the US is not in recession.  Ergo, the administration has decided this is the correct method for determining if we are in a recession.

Demolition Man (1993)

It is the near future of 1996 and Los Angeles is overrun with crime.  Sgt. John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) has finally tracked Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) to his stronghold.  Phoenix has kidnapped a bus full of hostages that Spartan intends to rescue.  After infiltrating the lair and killing a number of flunkies, Spartan and Phoenix face off.  Though Spartan wins the fight, he is forced to flee the building with Phoenix over his shoulder before it detonates.  In the wake of the blast, the hostages are found dead and Spartan is held responsible.  He is sentenced to 70 years in cryogenic prison.

In 2032, Simon Phoenix is thawed out for a parole hearing and promptly escapes.  He commits several murders as he flees the prison and makes his way into San Angeles (the megalopolis formed from Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego).  For reasons he does not understand, he has knowledge of computer hacking and martial arts.  Better yet, the society of 2032 is nearly crime-free and has police totally unprepared to deal with him.  Lt. Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) suggests thawing out the man who previously captured Phoenix.

Restored to the police force on a temporary basis, Spartan has the twin problems of adjusting to the modern world and tracking his most dangerous opponent.  The world of 2032 looks shiny and advanced but is surprisingly repressive, with wall-mounted language monitors (cursing is fined) and the outlawing of things that are considered bad, such as cigarettes, alcohol, salt, exchange of bodily fluids, etc.  Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) is the architect of this world, having seized upon the ruins from the great quake of 2010 to remake society.  It is not by chance that a character is named Huxley (the dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley) as there are similarities.

Much of the action is ludicrous but extremely fun.  Where Stallone is grim, Bullock is bubbly.  They contrast quite well and excellently portray the divergent outlooks of their times.  Snipes is hilarious as the heavy with his crazy yellow hair and gleeful villainy.

Great popcorn fun.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994)

The last series with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes consists of 6 stories, all of the standard 1-hour length.  This series has the unusual feature that Mycroft (Charles Gray) appears prominently in two episodes.  In the first - The Golden Pince-Nez - he was a stand-in for Watson.  In the second - The Mazarin Stone - he was the stand-in for Holmes!  Claudine Auger - Bond girl from Thunderball (1965) - appears as a cougar out to marry a wealthy young lord in The Three Gables.  There are a number of actors who would be noteworthy in later years but not yet.  Ciaran Hinds plays a cuckold in The Cardboard Box, Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey's Lord Grantham) plays a man addicted to heroin in The Dying Detective, and Frank Finlay plays an invalid professor in The Golden Pince-Nez.

Much as I like Charles Gray, his replacing Sherlock was off-putting.  His pursuit of the villain was like something out of a horror film as the villain would shoot at the approaching Mycroft only to then discover he was not there.  The episode was begun with a brief scene of Sherlock having to leave for Scotland and ended with him congratulating his brother on solving the case.  Worse yet, the story was a mashup of two Sherlock Holmes mysteries that were poorly stitched together.

Overall, Jeremy Brett made an outstanding Sherlock Holmes.  Edward Hardwicke was an excellent Doctor Watson, providing some humanity that Holmes often lacks.  Rosalie Williams had a long run as Mrs. Hudson and offered more character to the role than one would expect.  The Granada series is a definite must-see for the Sherlock Holmes enthusiast.

Recommended.

Fletch Reflected

Jack has only just finished his story on the Tribe (Son of Fletch) for GCN when he gets a call from an old flame.  Shana is engaged to Chet Radleigh, son of famed inventor Dr. Chester Radleigh.  Dr. Radleigh has an immense estate in Georgia called Vindemia, where he has created an idyllic setting for his family.  However, someone is trying to kill him.  Shana invites Jack to investigate.  Having soured on GCN, Jack heads to Georgia and gets a job at the estate.

Meanwhile, Fletch retrieves Jack's mother from the fraudulent weight loss clinic and drives her from Wisconsin to Wyoming.  He plans to deposit her with a man who trains boxers.  On the road, he often chats with Jack to learn the latest events and offer sage advice.

The Radleighs are the standard dysfunctional family in a Fletch novel.  With the exception of Shana and the doctor's mother-in-law, everyone expresses bitterness toward Dr. Radleigh.  Shana believes that Dr. Radleigh's four children are responsible for the multiple attempts on his life.  There is the oldest, Amy, who has been thrice married and has 7 kids, Chet the Phi Beta Kappa law student who is being groomed for politics, Alixis the nymphomaniac actress, and Duncan the racecar enthusiast.  Doctor Radleigh's wife is a walking case of depression.  Even the employees speak ill of Dr. Radleigh.  There will be no shortage of suspects if a murder is successful.

The storyline with Fletch driving the morbidly obese Crystal across the country is often a lesson on weight control.  It was funny when Crystal suggested that Fletch write a book on the subject since this book offers lots of pop-psychology on the topic.  Meh.  The whole thread of Fletch & Crystal across America is weak and generally not believable.

Jack is a pale reflection of his father.  Where Fletch would cleverly insert himself into social situations and pump people for knowledge, Jack just openly pries.  There's nothing subtle in his questioning.  Mostly, everyone just spills their guts when he's around.  Let's air our dirty laundry with this new anonymous employee.  Some of that is played as the ignore-the-help snobbery of elites but quite often he is poking his nose where lowly servants ought not.

In the end, most of the mysteries that littered the story are not resolved.  The conclusion is disappointing, having comically bad events with a descent into madness.  Not to ruin it, but it has one of those Murder on the Orient Express villains, i.e., everyone did it.  It is not surprising that this was the conclusion to the Fletch series.

Skip this one.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021)

Rather than Geralt of Rivia, this tells the tale of Vesemir.  When Vesemir was a boy, Delgan the Witcher came to the estate to purge a demon.  Delgan was well-paid for the purging.  Vesemir, who is just a servant boy, now had dreams of being a witcher.  His desire for wealth and adventure outweighed his growing affection for Illyana, a servant girl on the estate.  Years later, Vesemir is the most successful of the witchers and also an admitted hustler.  Asked to assist an old acquaintance, Filavandrel the elf, to find missing elf girls, Vesemir declines unless he is paid.  Meanwhile, in the halls of King Dagread, the sorceress Tetra Gilcrest accuses the witchers of spawning the very monsters that they then extort money to slay.  Only Lady Zerbst argues against her, winning the king's indifference on the subject.  Further events move the king toward Tetra's view but still not to the point of attacking the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen.  Instead, Tetra and Vesemir are sent as a team to purge the forest of monsters.  There, they discover a mutated elf girl with a new breed of basilisk at her side.

Here is the story of how Kaer Morhen came to be the ruins that appear in the Netflix series, how Vesemir became the oldest remaining witcher, and why the ability to create new witchers was lost.  As this is animated, the magic is impressive and the monsters are immense and plentiful.  The special effects budget has no limit, and it shows.  However, the story likes to jump about on the timeline, which can be confusing.  There are scenes of young Vesemir as a recruit and then adult Vesemir as something of an obnoxious lout.  This gets most confusing when shifting between the current pool of young would-be witchers and Vesemir's cohort of youths.  When are we?  The story takes place over a 50 to 60 year period but there is no apparent difference in these times.  

At the end of the movie, Vesemir collects the surviving witcher candidates and takes up their training.  Among them is Geralt of Rivia, who is bald so as not to reveal him too easily.

Generally okay.  It provides some history for the world and gives some very good reasons why people would distrust witchers.  Why that distrust isn't equally applied to the sorcerers who made them is not explained.

The Witcher, Season 2

Having finally found Ciri (Freya Allan) in the finale of the first season, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) intends to protect her.  On their way, they stop at the Sodden battlefield.  Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), the third main character of the first season, is missing and presumed dead in the wake of the battle.  Heartbroken, Geralt resumes his journey toward home, Kaer Morhen.  Kaer Morhen is the home of the witchers, a fortress where they train and heal.  There are fewer than twenty left and no means of making more.  As part of his plan to protect Ciri, he begins training her to fight.  The other witchers join in the project and Ciri proves an apt pupil.  Meanwhile, Yennefer is not dead, but she lost her magic at Sodden.  She is crushingly ordinary and now just a captive of Nilfgaardians and later elves.  However, she learns that she may regain her powers by setting herself against Geralt.

As with last season, there are political machinations among the various factions and dissension among the mages of Aretuza (this world's Hogwarts).  Though various kingdoms and their noble rulers appear, it is hard to tell one from another.  Every kingdom is this multicultural melange, that makes it difficult to pick out who is from where.  Even the clothing is indistinguishable.  The world's elves are equally multicultural and seem no different from humans except for having pointy ears.  The world-building is atrocious.  All too often, a keep, fort, or city has not a single cultivated field outside the walls.  How do these people eat?  At one temple, the head priestess lights hundreds of candles.  Unless these are being manufactured by magic, that's unsustainable.  Sure, it looks cool, but really?

The world is tiny.  Several times, characters teleport from one realm to another only to have their pursuers arrive on horseback.  With so big a lead, you still get caught.  Then there was the pure lunacy.  The Black Knight was captured during the Battle of Sodden and is due to be executed.  The monarchs of the alliance are all in attendance as are several mages.  Rather than hacking off his head, his would-be executioner hacks off his manacles and the two flee.  No one pursues them.  Literally, they are just outside the place of execution and ride off down a brightly lit path and not a single arrow nor a single spell is sent to impede them.  What?  The dialogue is weak, often nothing more than the expected cliches answered by more cliches.  Too much of the dialogue is delivered as deep insight rather than the run-of-the-mill pap that it is.

It is not terrible, but it isn't good.  Still, I will watch the next season when it is released.

Son of Fletch

Fletch and long-time girlfriend Carrie are driving back to the farm when they encounter a roadblock.  The deputy explains that there are four escaped prisoners in the area.  In fact, the sheriff wanted to know if he could borrow Fletch's jeep to do some offroad searching.  Stopping well-before the farm, Fletch and Carrie approached the house on foot.  After seeing Carrie safely into a room and arming her with a shotgun, Fletch went back for the jeep.  Upon his arrival, he turned on lights and left the door to his study unlocked.  Soon after, someone arrived.  "Hi, son," Fletch greeted without turning around.

Jack Fletcher Faoni is the child of Crystal Faoni, who appeared in Fletch's Fortune and with whom Fletch had a brief dalliance.  Jack admits to being one of the escaped prisoners and says his crime was attempted murder.  Though the right age and having a strong resemblance to Fletch, Fletch is skeptical.  Jack reveals that his fellow escapees are in the barn and their destination is Alabama.  Mildly curious about this son he never knew he had until today, Fletch plays along but makes sure to have several aces in his pocket should things go sideways.

The escapees are members of The Tribe, a white supremacist organization with dreams of conquering Miami, Florida.  Much of the story covers Fletch's doubts about Jack even being his son.  This is made all the more difficult when Fletch is unable to contact Crystal so she can confirm or deny Jack's story.  However, Jack does know a lot about Fletch.

The villains are only occasionally threatening.  Mostly they are the keystone cops of white supremacy, causing far more trouble for themselves than to others.  Where other Fletch novel's had murders to solve, this one was about confirming whether Jack was Fletch's son or not.  Toward the end of the novel, Jack took over as the main character.

Overall, it started fairly well but the story became less believable as it progressed.  The complete haplessness of The Tribe really diminished most of the tension.  It does make for an interesting follow up to Fletch, Too, in which Fletch met the father he never knew.

Just okay.

Redemption (Book 1 of Ryan Drake Series)

Iraqi Desert, 2007

Ryan Drake is sprawled on the sand, a bullet wound in his abdomen.  He's bleeding out.  His final thoughts are how she said he was a good man.

2 weeks earlier

Mosul, Iraq

A predator drone has gone offline.  When command regains control, they discover that it has fired its complement of Hellfire missiles and flattened part of Mosul.  Someone has hacked the system.

Washington, D.C.

Ryan Drake receives a call from his friend and superior, Dan Franklin.  Franklin needs a team to extract a valuable target from a Russian prison in Siberia.  He has less than a week to get the job done.  Drake accepts the job and learns he is recovering a rogue operative who goes by the codename of Maras.  When he sees the picture, he is seduced by her beauty and the mettle in her eyes.  Franklin refuses to provide any further intel on her.  Drake quickly assembles a team, which is not entirely to his liking, but time is short.  The team will parachute in, secure the operative, and egress via a helicopter.  Sounds easy but it proves a challenging operation.  Maras has been in solitary for several years and isn't the most grateful rescuee.  They have hardly returned her to Washington when she's snatched from her handlers and the team has to chase her across the United States and even overseas.

Overall, a great spy thriller with twists and turns, plenty of action, and some engaging characters.  I liked Drake though some of his emotional issues didn't fit his line of work.  Maras was the strong female and just too overpowered.  I didn't mind that she was a great shot, an excellent tactician, or could read people like a book.  However, when she easily defeats trained fighters who are much bigger and stronger than her, it went a little too far.  The villain, Munro, had that magical ability to vanish while the heroes were occupied with something else.

Of particular note, the author is Will Jordan AKA The Critical Drinker.  He can write a story, which shows that he can create as well as criticize.

Recommended.

Mad God (2022)

The movie opens with some dark passages from Leviticus, notably warning that disobedience will be punished by 'eating the flesh of your sons and daughters.'  When the scrawl ends, a cylinder descends from the sky.  Ground forces blast away but it soon drops below them, passing into some dark caverns for what seems an eternity.  There are ruins, forgotten statues, and horribly mutated beasts.  At last, the craft lands amid more ruins and a single figure in armor and gasmask emerges.  As he consults a map, the craft is hoisted back upward; ah, it is a bathysphere.  I had thought there was an unseen parachute above it.  While the figure follows the map ever deeper into the apocalyptic hellscape, there are endless scenes of cruelty and horror, most of it covered in feces.  So much feces.

The disgust factor is high.  There are giants emptying their bowels while suffering eternally upon electric chairs, humanoids stamped from the feces into a slave workforce, a vivisection in which blood splatters the walls and the 'doctor' yanks organs from a chest cavity while the victim somehow remains alive through the torture, the long stretches of a baby crying plaintively.  Horrendous beasts that inflict pain and suffering for no particular reason, often spewing feces in the process.  There are giant monkey-like creatures whose sole purpose is to shovel an endless flow of feces into piles; when they don't a cruel gnome electrocutes them into submission and the resumption of the task.

There is no dialogue.  Most of the action is stop-motion.  There are a handful of scenes that involves actors, but they do not speak.  The story is difficult to follow.  This is the tale of God punishing man for his disobedience.

Hard pass!  Avoid this movie.  If you want to see some far superior stop-motion, checkout any of the Aardman's movies (e.g., Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Flushed Away, Shaun the Sheep, etc.).  After seeing this travesty of a movie, I was in a sour mood for hours afterwards.  Huge downer with no redeeming quality.