5X5: #4--Entertainment! for a Time of Sickness

The added free time can present some annoyance, if not properly filled.  There have been any number of posts and articles with ranked lists, offbeat suggestions, rumors of new (usually filmed at home) shows and performances.   I've been scanning through them and have a few of my own, mostly through experience of the otherwise dreck and re-runs .

'Contagion' (2011) as Intro Course for Dealing with The Real Thing
If you have not seen this Steven Soderbergh movie this year, you could've had a crash course in this year's pandemic in two hours.   (OK, one hour 46 minutes, according to imdb)  Early on in my confinement, I managed to find it for another viewing.

It's painful, but also a story of survival at the level of the human experience through the whole course of an emerging pandemic, with a superb cast and script.  Much will seem familiar, because it's what we're going through. It's a different virus, with a different trajectory, but so much of it could have prepared our society for it, if we'd watched it and taken it more to heart.

The basic parameters are an outbreak of a "chimeric" virus (bat/pig) spreading easily by respiratory means from an initial set of infections in China and carried on by international air travelers.The US breakout  (Minneapolis) is shown through the tribulations of the husband (Matt Damon) of Patient Zero (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his daugher (their young son succumbs early).   Then, she has a sudden, fatal seizure, and it goes from there. The infection begins to spread through casual contacts she made en route back home from her business trip to China.

(Some of the next bit may be spoilers...)

 Among aspects that the careful attention to science+ captured for the film is the rapid deciphering of the DNA of the virus, but the difficulty in developing a vaccine for a novel virus.  The CDC official on the scene of the breakout (tragically awesome Kate Winslet) opens a hospital triage location in the largest stadium in the city.  Her boss (Laurence Fishburne) is shattered and cuts some corners, but he ends up being heroic. There is a blogger (Jude Law) who peddles a false remedy, and various story permutations follow for him.  The film explains the "R-nought" concept, the number indicating the propensity of a disease to spread--it's actually just the average number of new cases per existing one.++

The movie posits panicked runs on supplies (in the film, on pharmacies), with those leading to some looting (including guns) and rioting. There are even armed security screens at state boundaries mobbed with cars.  So far, to Americans' credit, the social response in our reality has been more restrained, the recent Astroturfed protests in a few states notwithstanding, at least partially because the mortality rate of the virus in the film is several times higher than our (much-disputed) own.  Rather than anarchy, in the real world the poor seek healthcare.

The film also has an international element, addressing the problem of the worldwide distribution of the eventual game-changer, the vaccine.  A WHO official (Marion Cotillard) is kidnapped by provincial Chinese seeking to jump the queue.  One of my few criticisms of the film's resolution is that the global challenge is presented early in the cycle but not closed.  The lottery-type distribution of vaccine issuance by birthdate that the US decides upon (the hand of partisan politics is barely felt in Contagion) brings domestic peace, but what about....(insert names of many failed nations)?

Somewhat on this topic, I have found reference to a sci-fi novel about a breakout pandemic and authoritarian measures taken to contain it, written in 1997 with the prescient title 2020 (by Hamutal Shabtai).  From the interview with the author, who is somewhat apologetic about the length of the book (I haven't tackled trying to find it yet),  the story includes the aspect of China trying to suppress word of the burgeoning threat, the challenges of systematic testing and how it erodes free society, and then the potential brutality of policies separating those detected as infected from the vulnerable.


+Ref. podcast interview with the film's writers for Vanity Fair,  a pro screenwriter with a top epidemiologist.  Quality, Soderbergh style.  The podcast may have a paywall. 
++Here is a set of estimates of the "R-sub T", the infectiousness of Covid-19 over time by state, made a couple of weeks ago.

Saved by Infection?
Back on the topic of movies and invasive species, the other must-see for this period of time, if you have not seen it, is the film that may signal the eventual redemption of the Oscars, which seemed lately to have fallen into a permanent trap around Hollywood's immobile conventions and their lack of diverse creators, roles, and economic opportunity.  I was so appalled by the nominations this year I hadn't even written my usual Oscar preview here, and I watched most of the show with a resigned lack of enthusiasm.

That changed for me when they announced the winner of the Best Director award, and I gave a shout of joy when Parasite won Best Picture.  It showed me that the Academy's voting electorate, within the straitjacket of the nominations, had brought the right attitude.  One way to make Oscars more interesting is to feature more prominently the excellent films produced around the world, with the aim of making the show truly a world championship (since a competition, it seems, it must be) and not a high-priced back-pat.

I am totally committed to the experience of cinema, like theater both public and private, of the darkened room and the big screen, but Parasite, though plenty visual, will stream very well, or indeed work with any format.  What makes it special is its manic creative energy, astonishing characters, and intricately-woven plot.  The one downside for me (slight spoiler) is the Tarantinesque "cathartic" bloodbath near the end, but it is redeemed with a Hitchcockian post-climax twist.


TV Overview:  Delving into the Escapist Void
Enough education, though.  Let's talk about entertainment which takes us away from virus-related concerns.

My tv-watching habits (mostly sports, news, science/nature shows, talking-head public affairs) have taken a serious and sudden change.  No more live sports, and the news is always pretty much the same.  The talkshows haven't taken much of a hit, and nature photography is better than ever before.  (I particularly liked the PBS' Nature show for Easter, "Remarkable Rabbits".)   Under the circumstances, though, I've had to dig deeper.

In this depressing Drumpfist era,  I had already found it easier to glom onto iconic popular culture events that have no basis in reality.  I accept that it's a miserable excuse, and that effective activism would be a far more potent and honorable response, but these have been miserable times, and, while activism was certainly possible, its effectiveness has been blunted.

(This was due to the fog created by Chief Twit Dimwit's lies and provocations, McTurtle's slow walk to 2020, and endless blather from those seeking some kind of lawful justice that Robert Mueller and his report,  House committee subpoenas, and Senatorial Profiles in Cowardice can never provide.  Seeking satisfaction was self-delusion, a sort of escapism. *)

And so I chose to attend the two singular popular culture events of 2019:  The Avengers: Endgame and the final season of Game of Thrones.   The first got much greater praise than it deserves, while the second has been criticized more than it deserved.

Serial moviewatching is a venerable tradition, and comic-book hero movies are similarly well-established. I have not gone so far as to immerse myself in their multiverse, though.   I read comic books sometimes way back when, but I didn't really care if they were DC or Marvel, even then.  Save for a few SH movies I've seen over the years--I was somewhat impressed when the Christopher Reeve Superman series combined the commercial potential of the '60's Batman series with somewhat less cheese, and I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s rehab work as IronMan, and Alfred Molina any old time (Doc Ock!)--little stands out  (OK, I'll admit that Guardians of the Galaxy was funny.)

Because of this limited emotional commitment, my appreciation of the biggest movie box office film of all time was stunted, particularly so as I have never seen Part I of the Avengers megahit two-parter.  It made for a fairly objective viewing of what I came to see as a standard-issue time-travel script.  Star Trek did it at least as well, from the point of creative storytelling. Doctor Who does it with more humor and better aliens.  Obviously, the production values of the Marvel series are world-class, but that is just table stakes for action megahits:  we want more!**

As for GoT, one has to credit the patience and depth with which this fictional world was developed.  I will admit it was a lot more data than I was willing to take on.  I had seen an episode or two, casually, over the first years of its run, so I knew the stars of the story and some of the place names and story themes.  I watched all of the penultimate season, binge-watched seasons 1 and 2 in the marathons prior to the release of the final season (but then stopped due to some travel), and then the ultimate one.  So, I saw the half I wanted, retained some significant holes in my understanding of past events, but had no problem following the fast-moving final season.

I was not one of those sorely disappointed by the outcome.  The key aspects of the two-part wrap (the war with the Walkers, and the siege of Kings Landing) did no more than bring things to ends prefigured (as possible outcomes) earlier, through the track of the main characters' destinies. The political denouement of the new king, etc. was anticlimactic, which is the norm for the end of great TV series.

Two things, related, that I really loved about it:  1)  the importance of that limitation of time and linear space which constrained everything in a pre-vehicular era, and then how dragons were the equivalent of nukes that dissolved those limits; and 2) the opening credits!  The effortlessly shifting camera angles and focus on the regional map (see below:  the big picture looks suspiciously like Greece, the Aegean,, and Asia Minor) served effectively to transport us into the fictional world.  I already see evidence that the excellent notion of that sequence has been picked up by other series.


*I barely escaped from that depression, only to fall into the crater of our disappointing Presidential primary and its excruciating, ugly process. Waste can be defined as the Cost of Bad Quality.  As the subject here is another, and we have somewhat crawled out of our crater, I will say no more.
**By "we", I mean "I".  Seems like the rest of the world had little problem with it. 

It's a Reality Show World

"This ain't really life, ain't really life, ain't nothing but a movie."--Gil-Scott Heron,  B-Movie

This was in 1981, just after we were all shocked as the reality sunk in that Americans had elected an actor, Ronald Reagan, to be their President.  You could extrapolate to the present, and then it would not be so surprising to consider our reality becoming virtual, a video game of some sort.  But, no--much more disappointing. 

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" - Gil-Scott Heron, again.  

Ten years ago, that quote was not viewed as being proved false--social media was enabling movement faster than the cameras could arrive.  Now, we know:  television (video) is too much a player to be revolutionary, and is an important tool in the hands of Reaction's surveillance. 

I won't say I never watch so-called Reality Shows:  As a family, we enjoyed The Amazing Race (travel being a big thing for us), and some Fear Factor (spectacularly gross, but limited variety).  I have tried to avoid any others.   Though imitation of reality is at the core of storytelling, and even documentaries generally are edited, these shows that purport to be real but are artificially created offend my sensibilities.  Amazing Race was a good example. It never broke the fourth wall, but in every one of those taxi cabs or jitneys, or airplane cabins or customs lines there was, somehow, a camera capturing all their squabbling and confusion. Come on. 

So, I have to admit that I have watched a lot of The Voice, and not just this year, because it's one of my wife's favorites.  I am continuously impressed by the quality of the performing contestants they bring to the show, and the sophisticated arrangements and staging are impressive.  I hate the show's formats for the (exaggeratedly slow) series of cuts to the contestant pool, though, and the amount of fluff that is padding the (excellent) performances is excessive.  

While there is too much emphasis on the coaches' phony "win" percentages, I also tend to feel that the real performers are somewhat exploited--though I admit, willingly so.  They are not amateurs, but semi-pros; most have honed their performing craft in a variety of live settings, but they need that big break (which I am far from convinced comes through the route of these shows--current Voice coach Kelly Clarkson is the only true star who has emerged this way, to my knowledge).   The winner should be guaranteed ample cash money plus a recording contract, and all the finale performers paid generously.  Are they?  Generally these shows would say so if it were the case.  Instead, the coaches get the big payouts, making this the Nike of game shows.  In normal times, I'd say it's good for local employment (in LA). 

With the dearth of live entertainment for The Voice to continue the final rounds of the current season, our TV has picked up a show, Songland, which followed it on the same channel in recent weeks. I have seen a couple episodes, but no more.  It is sort of the obverse of The Voice. The idea is that semi-pro songwriters come in with a potential pop song which they pitch--through performing it--to a team of songwriting coaches and a performing artist who has promised to record it (and give royalties for it to the episode's winning songwriter, and presumably, their coach).  The three finalists (out of four) for the episode then re-work the song with the coach's assistance, to fit the performers' preferences, and the performing artist chooses the winner at the end.   I believe it's the show's second season. 

As a format, it's good: much better than The Voice's one, concise, straightforward, and honest. Though the royalties for the song will likely be rather trivial in the end, there's a chance for a big payout, and at least it will give some honest credits for the resume.  The songs themselves are not really my problem, as they are all designed to provide an immediate hook, and a catchy hummable chorus.  The better ones have clever wordplay in their required rhymes.  So, we all know what is what, about this kind of song, but the making of the sausage itself is what disgusts me, even if this is like the real-life pop music "sessions"  For me, the show is simply too damn formulaic--the romance is nowhere evident. 

A couple more Small-Screen World comments for this special time of unquestioned TV cultural dominance:  This situation reminds me of the time in the early '80's when music videos suddenly became a very big deal (they already existed in limited number and quality prior to that).  The choices you as video producer had were somewhat few:  you could show the band performing the song, or pretending to perform it while doing something, or show the story the song was trying to evoke, or something completely unrelated (which was rarely greenlighted for production).  The chops for performing in a studio environment, which musical performers have have developed and perfected over the years, serve them especially well in this environment, whether they play to the camera or ignore it.   

Still, whatever your content, you can either present yourself in your office--there may at least be the shelves of books you may have read behind your shoulder for the viewers to enjoy--or in your garden or backyard, or present a series of other people doing the same.  I guess a couple have tried for a more intimate setting, though I have seen only one on a roof, and none in a basement.  But that's limiting, for sure.  Here are a couple ideas if this continues to drag out: 

A quick-hit musical variety show with topical content, like Laugh-In; 
A holographic (instead of Zoom) meeting of a small group of participants; 
Performances in concert halls with minimal attendees (5% capacity?), full special effects, and added sound-absorption. 

The Quality of Merch is in Its Strains
Top five of the current season--I will attest to having consumed each in the jurisdiction in which it is produced, as prescribed by law:

Blue Dream (H-NM) - 18.0%
Armagnac (S-CO) - 19.6%
Blueberry Headband (I-NM) - 20.6%, (I-CO)- Unk.
Pineapple Trainwreck (H-CO) - 24.6%; Train Wreck (H-NM) - 19.5%/
Blue Dream (H-CO) 23.6%/Blue Maui (H-NV)-Unk.

Contrary to what this might indicate, though, I'd prefer sativa if more were available commercially.  I agree with Bill Maher that they should cut down on packaging, or at least reycle their cylinders and tubes.  And, as may seem obvious, my favorite color is blue.

The Best Thing I've Seen on Facebook lately (I have no idea of the credits):  Our Current Location within a Dystopia-based Venn Diagram

From reddit/MapPorn: