Fury (2014)

The tank crew of the Fury are the sole remaining tank out of a platoon.  Upon returning back to the nearest base, they are assigned a new machine gunner/backup driver; the last one was killed during the previous action.  Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) is a clerk who can type 60 words a minute but has no tank experience.  Sgt. Collier (Brad Pitt) is not happy to have such a raw recruit but has no other option.  Here is a story of Norman being thrown into the deep end of the pool to either sink or swim.

It is April of 1945 and the US Army is overrunning Germany but the casualties are very high.  Joining another 4 tanks, the Fury heads back into the action.  Along the way, they tackle gun emplacements, clear a town, face a Tiger tank, and defend a crossroads.  The action is intense and sometimes graphic.

 

The role of each tanker is detailed quite well.  Gordo (Michael Pena) is the driver, Swan (Shia LeBeouf) is the gunner, Travis (Jon Bernthal) is the loader, and Collier is the commander.  The workings of the Sherman and the teamwork involved in operating it is the best part of the movie.  Where Patton had tanks swarming around, this is a detailed look at one tank and its crew.  Very enjoyable.

 

The ending was disappointing.  The German column would have marched around the tank rather than throwing away a third of its force to repeatedly attack it.  Maybe the tank should have been named the Alamo instead.

Angels Flight

It is 2 in the morning and Harry Bosch is waiting for a call from his wife.  She went out last night and he hasn't seen her.  When the phone rings, he is surprised to find that it is Deputy Chief Irvin Irving.  Howard Elias, a high profile lawyer who made a career of suing the LAPD, has been murdered.  Elias was about to go to trial on a case involving cops torturing a black suspect so everyone suspects a cop killed him.  The city is on edge and there are fears of a repeat of the 1992 riots.  Because police themselves are high on the suspect list, Internal Affairs Division is called in to assist.  Detective Chastain, a long-standing nemesis to Bosch, is suddenly his subordinate in this explosive case.  They have hardly gotten started when the FBI are brought in to allay fears that the LAPD would whitewash the case.

 

Not as good as previous books.  The plot is too intricate and comes across less real than others in the series.  The inclusion of Eleanor leaving Bosch is unsatisfactory and felt tacked on to provide additional stress.  Bosch's love life is a constant disaster.  To date, he has been involved with Eleanor (felon), Jazz (felon), Sylvia (the wife of a cop who he killed), and Theresa (coroner).  He sure can pick 'em.  Much like The Black Echo, everything matters.  There are no loose ends and just about everyone proves to be corrupt.  It is a very dark picture he paints.  One does not expect cops to have a sunny disposition.

 

Were it not for Jeffery Epstien, the pedophile ring among the wealthy elite that is exposed in the book would have been farfetched.  Nope, turns out Connelly was onto something despite writing this book in 1999.

 

Overall, a good book and worth your time.

Militant Normals

In this book, Kurt Schlichter explains how it is that an outsider like Donald Trump was able to harness the frustration of normal Americans into an electoral victory over the elites of both parties.  Mostly, normal Americans - apolitical folks of middling to low education - have been content to live their lives with only occasional concern for what is happening in Washington DC.  This worked well enough for most of the 20th century.  After all, the elites had won WWII and put a man on the moon.  The economy was mostly great from the post-war period until the 2008 crash.  However, there was a growing rift between the elites and the normals.  The elites, who have always looked down on the normals, became a lot more open in their disdain.  Hillary's 'deplorables' comment is the most noteworthy but there are many others.  Then there is the two-tier justice system.  Crimes by the elites are not treated the same as crimes by the normals.  Much of this was tolerable when the elites actually did a competent job of governing but the repeated unwinnable wars, unchecked illegal immigration that neither party took seriously, and nearly 2 decades of a stagnating economy riled them.  First, they responded with the TEA Party movement and were trashed and defamed by both parties.  Donald Trump, a man who spent most of his life among the elites, tapped into the unrest among the normals and rode it to the Republican nomination and the presidency.

 

The best part of the book was his ripping into Conservative Inc., the voices of conservatism who have spent decades writing about policies and ideas that are never enacted, even when Republicans have been in office.  Amazingly, most of Conservative Inc. became the Never Trump movement, despite the fact that Trump has enacted many of the policies that these very writers and pundits have promoted for decades.  Looking only at the judges who have been appointed, conservatives should be ecstatic for the Trump Presidency but they are not.  Schlichter posits that they are elites first and conservatives second.

 

The book is an easy read and highly-relatable.  Though a retired colonel, trial lawyer, and syndicated columnist, he writes more like a guy ranting at the dinner table than a professor lecturing the unlearned.  There is no mincing of words.  Great stuff.

Loserthink

Scott Adams latest book gives advice on how to avoid unproductive thinking, Loserthink is the term he coins.  Perhaps the most common type of loserthink is to believe one can read minds.  For example, when someone says they are opposed to illegal immigration, critics invariably accuse the person of racism.  The critic presumes what is in the mind of the border control advocate.  Such does not advance opposing sides to a reasonable solution but only hardens differences and makes a compromise more difficult.  That is a key factor in loserthink; it doesn't lead toward resolution and is thus unhelpful.

Each chapter proposes that one think like a different kind of professional: economist, entrepreneur, historian, psychologist, leader, etc.  Each has a particular way of viewing issues that is unique to them and a cure for various types of loserthink.  Some of the suggestions are:

- Use ego as a tool, not an identity.  Too often ego prevents one from recognizing errors.

- The past is gone.  Don't let it influence current thinking.  Don't throw good money after bad.

- If the big picture is good, don't get caught arguing over the little things.
- Fairness is subjective.  The best you can do is equality under the law.
- Arguing by coincidence/anecdote is usually just confirmation bias.
- Analogies are good for explaining, not predicting.

There are many and all far more thoroughly discussed.  Everyone is in a bubble of their own biases and these are tools to help recognize when you are in a bubble and also how to pop the bubble of others.  He freely admits to committing loserthink on a regular basis himself but these techniques have helped to identify when or, in many cases, have it shoved in his face by others who have read the book.

 

Worthwhile read.

The Current War (2017)

It is 1880 and Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is on the march.  His 13 hour light bulb will revolutionize the world and he has plans to electrify the country.  He has opted to use Direct Current (DC).  His influence is so great that he dictates what JP Morgan will pay him to accomplish this goal.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) has plans to provide light to the country.  He views direct current as limiting, requiring power generation stations at short regular intervals.  He opts to use Alternating Current (AC), which has almost limitless range.  This proves surprisingly effective.  Unfortunately, though he can provide light, he can't power machinery with AC, a big drawback in his competition with Edison.

Recognizing that Westinghouse is providing power at a cheaper cost, Edison declares AC to be too dangerous to use when compared to DC.  To prove his point, he electrocutes a horse for a press gaggle.  As Westinghouse is undeterred, Edison eventually agrees to help design the electric chair as long as it is credited to Westinghouse's alternating current.

 

Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) arrives from Europe to witness the lighting of Wall Street as Edison gives the command.  He then gets a job working for Edison.  He is soon disillusioned and strikes out on his own.  Lacking the resources of either Edison or Westinghouse, he is soon destitute.  However, he has overcome the problem of powering machinery with alternating current.

 

The competition comes down to who will light the Chicago World's Fair: Edison or Westinghouse?

 

There is much more to the film, detailing the lives of these titans of industry and invention.  Normally, movies in this time period are Westerns.  Most of the action is in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  Great film, highly recommended.

Judy (2019)

The story opens in Los Angeles as Judy Garland (Renee Zellweger) takes her daughter and son to a club where she performs, using them as stage props.  Afterwards, she takes them to her hotel but she is turned away.  She is in arrears on her bill and is ushered out the door.  Without options, she takes her kids to the home of her ex-husband, Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell).  With the kids in bed, she sets out for her daughter's house.  Liza Minnelli has a party in full swing when Judy arrives.  Judy meets Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock) and hits it off with the younger man.  Broke and with a long track record of unreliability, Judy cannot find steady income and Sidney wants custody of the kids.  Desperate, she gets an offer from London and sees no other options.  Off she goes.  While in London, she demonstrates her unreliability again and again.  She also marries Mickey Deans, her 5th and final husband.

 

If I wanted to make a movie that would make people dislike Judy, this is the movie I would make.  It is hard to like Judy.  There are flashbacks to her time as a young actress for Louis B Mayer where she developed many of her self-destructive habits.  Was this an effort to blame 46 year-old Judy's problems on Mayer and the studio system?  It sure felt like it.  Beyond The Wizard of Oz, I can't think of another role where I saw Garland, thus it is hard to judge how well Zellweger did in capturing her.  Though she may have captured the personality and mannerisms, she didn't get the voice.  Renee sings well but she's no Judy Garland.

 

Not recommended.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Finally saw this film and I was most let down.  The movie - set 25 years after the original - opens with a pair of lawyers posting an eviction notice on the door of the Banks' home.  Michael (Ben Whishaw) had taken out a loan after his wife died and has absent-mindedly failed to make payments for the last three months.  Though willing to pay the three month due, it is too late for that.  He must pay off the entire loan.  Not a problem, he has shares in the bank from his father.  But he has misplaced them.  When finally discovered, he had used the share certificate to draw a sketch because he must have been short on paper.  Only by happenstance does his youngest son save the sketch - not to frame or save as a family keepsake - to cut in pieces to patch an old kite.  Michael is a pathetic, incompetent man-child, a hopeless buffoon.  I disliked him from start to finish.  To make matters worse, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) declares that she will stay until the door opens.  Which door is that?  The door that allows Michael to view the world as he did in childhood.  Helpless widower with three children retreats into childhood.

 

Then we have Michael's older sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer).  She is a spinster who spends her time picketing for workers' rights, a throw back to her mother's suffragette marches in the original film.  It is unclear how she earns a living or why, at this late date, she should be romantically attracted to Jack the lamplighter (Lin-Manuel Miranda).  She acts like some teenaged girl with her first crush around Jack.  Jane is in her mid-thirties and should have had much better options than Jack that she clearly skipped.

 

All the dazzling musical numbers, the return of Dick Van Dyke, and talents of Miranda and Blunt  can't overcome these underlying facts.  Michael is a failure and will continue to be a failure.  He escaped his deserved fate this time thanks to Deus ex machina.  He and his children will not be so lucky next time.  Jane's romance with Jack is just a fling; if she was seeking marriage, she would have long since been married.  Clearly, if this is the adults they came to be, Mary Poppins failed them as a nanny.

 

Watch the original instead.