Aside from being RL busy and getting the daily horror show from the US like everyone else, I did watch a couple of fictiional things. My collected reviews:

Zero Day (Miniseries, Netflix): solidly suspenseful, but ultimately fails at what it wants to be, i.e. a 70s style political thriller. Not least because it was to be a political thriller without taking a stand in rl politics. Also, there are a couple of moments where you glimpse what could have been a really good work of fiction but then the narrative swerves from what it has seemingly set up to a far less interesting turn. Starring Robert de Niro as retired President George Mullen, the last President, we're told, to command bi partisan respect. When there is a cyber attack that shuts down all online traffic on every device in the US for a solid minute, with a threat of more to come, he's put in charge of a commission to investigate the causes. Said commission is given even more extra powers and habeas corpus suspensions than the Patriot Act after 9/11, and the reason why George Mullen gets appointed by his successor, who is black and female and played by Angela Bassett, is because only he is trusted to not abuse those powers. Other players include an evil tech billionaire (female), a slimy Mr. Speaker (male), George's estranged daughter, a Congresswoman, and an populist influencer who has Tucker Carlson's mannerisms but a pseudo left wing vocabulary. No party affiliations are mentioned for anyone, but it's pretty obvious the Speaker is supposed to be Republican and George's daughter a liberal Democrat. Emphasis on "supposed", because like I said, the miniseries shies away from any actual politics. We're told, repeatedly, that the country is deeply divided and nothing can be done anymore, but no one ever mentions issues the country is divided about. There are the usual red herrings while George investigates - and like I said, technically the miniseries is solidly suspenseful, and de Niro is good in the part - but each time the show could rise above avarage, there are these frustrating turns. For example: ( Spoilers ensue. )

But what really pushed it from "suspenseful with flaws" into "failed" territory for me was the ending( . Spoilers are willing to accept stories with witches and ghosts, but not THIS type of fairy tale. ) In conclusion, you can skip this one, despite some fine actors present.

Paradise (First season, Disney + outside of the US which is where I am, Hulu inside the US): Now we're talking. This one, otoh, does everything right. It's not just suspenseful, it's twisty, with lots of interesting characters whose motivations make sense. And excellent actors, including Sterling K. Brown in the lead, James Marsden as the second most important male role, Julianne Nicholson in the most important female role and Sarah Shahi. If you're unspoiled, which I was, the pilot first makes you believe it's just a murder mystery (it opens with a dead body, so that's no spoiler) with some political trappings since the murdered man is a (former?) President, and our lead part of the team of Secret Agents responsible for his security and inevitably both an investigator and a suspect. But before the pilot is over, the first of many great twist lands, because the setting is revealed: no, we're not in some idyllic town where the President has retired after his term of office, we're really ( in a very different spoilery genre ) And more questions pop up through the season as some are answered. The mixture of twists and reveals is handled just right. Whle Xavier remains the lead throughout, the way the episodes give the central spotlight to a different character in addition to him in each episode, thus introducing the ensemble who each have their own stories and motivations reminded me a bit of Lost. As did the way the interlocking stories sometimes return to the same scene(s) from different povs.

Now, this series when it tackles politics doesn't shy away of actually going deeper than just "we're so divided, but surely a patriotic speech and an outside threat will fix it". Here, too, we have a shady female tech billionaire. (Btw, I'm not complaining that we get tech sisters instead of tech bros in those thrillers. The women might be evil, but they are far more human and interesting than You Know W'ho. Well, Samantha aka Sinatra is, not so much the lady in "Zero Day". The reason why Sam(antha) is code named "Sinatra" is because of a cruel but not inaccurate joke Cal's (also billionaire) father made, telling his son "you think you're Dean Martin, but you're not, you're just Peter Lawford, only in the Rat Pack because of who you're related to". Sinatra is the one with the actual power in the top hierarchy, but while she's the season's main antagonist (not the killer, though), we also get an entire episode focused on her early on (second or third episode, I think), learning her backstory and what made her who she is. This series gets the difference between explaining and excusing so very right, it's awesome. And each time I was afraid it would go for the easy way out - ( as with a spoilery fear ) it didn't. And everyone was so human, including those with limited screentime.

Sterling K. Brown delivered a fantastic lead performance, and there wasn't a weak link in the cast, including the younger actors. And the last but one episode where we finally saw how ( a spoilery momentous event took place ) And despite the ( spoilery ) genre, as many examples of people following their better nature as there was of people following their worst. In conclusion: this one is a must.

Daredevil: Born Again (episodes 1 + 2): Which technically is a first season, except it's not, it's a fourth season of the Netflix show, now produced by the House of Mouse. Now as opposed to Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, Matt Murdoch and friends actually finished their Netflix show in a better place than where they started from, with the Netflix showing having used its third season for a reconciliation arc, so I was in two minds when I heard about this sequel. Because a state of happiness does not Daredevil drama make, so it was a given things woiuld have to get worse again. Otoh I was delighted by the Matt cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home and his turning up in She-Hulk, and also liked The Other Guy's (to put only vaguely spoilery) appearances in Hawkeye and Echo, so concluded I was in the market for this now show.

( Spoilers for the first two episodes ensue. )

Daily horrors whenever one catches up with the news, both on a global and national level, makes for an increasing need to find some way to fannishly relax. (Mind you, there are no safe zones from current day insanity in fandom, either. Some weeks ago yours truly was horrified to learn the claim that the Orange Felon supposedly likes Sunset Boulevard, one of Billy Wilder's masterpieces. I'm still in denial about that - maybe he just likes some songs from ALW's musical version? How would he even have the patience and focus to watch an entire movie with no action scenes, no sex scenes and lots and lots of sharp dialogue, not to mention no macho hero in sight? What Billy Wilder, who as a young man watched the country he was in go from a Republic to a fascist state, but who was with all cynisim pretty idealistic about the US where he found refuge would have said about the present, I don't want to imagine. At the very least, he'd demand a rewrite. I mean: like all VPs during the Munich security conference, the current one a few days ago visited Dachau. I'm not exaggerating, it is what every single US VP attending the Munich security conference has done. Like the rest of them, Vance got a guided tour by one of the few still living survivors. If it filtered through that Dachau, one of the very first German concentration camps which when it was built and put to work in 1933 included as its very first inmates Social Democrats, Union Representatives and Communists, i.e. the very people Elon Musk and Alice Weidel (Germany's Marine Le Pen wannabe) declared to be Nazis to an audience of billions, Vance didn't say. Instead, he went from visiting a concentration camp to meeting Weidel, i.e. the leading woman of a certified right extremist (or if you want to be less polite, Neonazi) party, and then held forth at the conference where he claimed to defend free speech (you know, while his boss kicks out reporters daring to say "Gulf of Mexico" and erases trans people out of existence) and told Europeans they're the true anti democratic dictators and should work with their Nazi parties already.

Billy Wilder, at his most cynical, would not have written such caricatures as are currently in charge of dismantling democracy not just in the US but nearly everywhere. Btw, the retort by our current secretary for defense, Boris Pistorius, was this:





Aaanyway. I find history podcasts not just interesting in general but at such times as these oddly comforting in a "this, too, shall pass" way. (I am not referring to the history of the 20th century, of course. That currently provides a "this, too, shall come back" vibe.) Since it's been a while, some impressions on my English language favourites:

History of Byzantium: got into something of a depressive slump after the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, but that's history, and it is now back to the narrative. (Decline-and-fall-like as it has to be.)

Not just the Tudors: continues to be very entertaining, and most guest speakers Susannah Libscombe interviews are good, with the occasional dud; most recently there excellent episodes on the various males of the Borgia family, and then for Lucrezia she changed her interview partner and alas her new interviewee was, shall we say, less than stellar.


History of the Germans: has since last I wrote been reordered so there are thematic seasons, i.e. if you're just interested in, say, the Ottonians or the Hanseatic League, you can listen to just those seasons. On a personal level, my experience with this podcast has been that the seasons that deal with parts of history I'm not so familiar with captivate me more than those I do already know a lot about, but not because the later is badly researched (au contraire), it's just that I love getting intrigued and learning more. So of course I have favourites. In the recent year, I loved the Interregnum season (starring among others Rudolf von Habsburg, the first Emperor of that family, going from simple count to HRE buy "waving a marriage contract in one hand and a sword in the other" as he tactically married his many female relations to lots of dying-out-older nobility, Ludwig the Bavarian (proving that getting excommunicated by the (Avignon) Pope is no longer the big deal it used to be as he employs, as Dirk puts it, half the cast of The Name of the Rose, and Karl IV, he after whom the bridge and a lot of other things in Prague are named after) and the current season, The Reformation before the Reformation, which you get the whole late medieval enchilade of corrupt popes and antipopes, the Council of Konstanz (good for book swapping, not so good for actual radical reforms, ask Jan Hus, who gets burned during it) and then the Hussite Revolution in Bohemia.

Revolutions: Mike Duncan's second podcast which used to be finished with the Russian Revolution but now has been resumed by him with a highly entertaining sci fi season, the Martian Revolution. Its backstory sounds a bit inspired by The Expanse as well as lots of the historical revolutions he has covered. If the CEO of OmniCorps whose blinkered know-it-all-ness, ego and lack of anything resembling human empahy triggered the Martian Revolution sounds a bit like a current tech bro in charge of the White House, I'm sure it's entirely coincidental.

In addition to being busy, these last few weeks made you basically stare in fear at every bit of news from the European election onwards. And today, it's "how much will France set itself on fire and Europe with it?" day. I suppose there are the British elections to look forward to, which if nothing else will end fourteen years of Tory horror, but there, too, there's the red thread of going after trans people (and their allies) to boggle at. (Speaking of that, it's been so bizarre to watch JKR getting radicalized through the last decade, to the point where now you can bet on every public pronouncement of hers being anti-trans. Never mind her writing, I'm sitting there thinking, woman, you used to care about actual problems, poverty and social equality being very large among them. I mean, I've read your first non-Potter novel, which is very much about that. You were the first millionaire to give so much money to charity to that you downgraded yourself from the billionaire's list. And now you've devolved into a hate spewing caricature? Good grief.)

Anyway, if, like me, you need distraction from said rl misery and a reminder that both people and the world can be lovely, too, but don't have the time for plays/movies right now because Darth Real Life is breathing down your neck on a personal level, too, why not check out travel vids on YouTube? In recent weeks, I've become quite attached to The Adventures of A plus K, featuring a young American couple travelling not solely in the US but all over the world with a wonderful amount of enthusiasm (for sights and food alike) and guts (see: their adventures in Finland). Originally an algorithm brought them to my attention because of their Munich vids, but soon I was going through their Scandianvian adventures and US National parks back log.

Because it's often instructive to check out how other people see you and what you're used to, I also find vids by non-Germans living in Germany interesting, like Type Ashton, with her counterpart, a German vidder living in the US, being Feli from Germany.

And lastly, if you do need something fictional but aren't up for new stuff because of the above mentioned business: there's the rewatch option of things where because you know them already it's okay to fast foreward in some places or rewatch favourite scenes. I've reminded myself that while I never got what the big deal with Oscar Isaacs was in the SW Sequels, I completely get it in Moon Knight, which I feel fell a bit under the radar because it's one of several Marvel Disney series Disney pumped out in recent years. He's great in the, hm, two leading roles, to put it as unspoiliery as possible, May Calamawy is absolutely fantastic as Layla El-Faouly, and while I haven't read the comics, what the show does with Egyptian mythology is actually way better than what Marvel did with Norse mythology. (Extra points for using Taweret instead of Isis. No offense to Isis, but there are other goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon!)

Thus fortified with the occasional distraction, I get get to work. And will try to not check the news too often for French election results tonight...

P.S. David Tennant icon courtesy of the fact that apparently Sunak's latest pre election PR masterpiece is going after him?

This weekend I had two antivaxxers trying to enlist/convert me, one of whom was also a Putin defender going on abouto how the "mainstream media" was reporting it all wrong. But at least I'm related to neither of them; a friend of mine has to put up with his own daughter insisting that covid does not exist. Meanwhile, I, alas, had it (with symptoms) last month, despite having been vaccinated because of the new Ommicron variant, and I can tell you, fun this was not. Have some Ukraine related links:

Ukrainian demonstrations in Russia-occupied Kherson

Article about Natalya Sindeya, the founder of Dozhd, one of the last independent Russian media which was just shut down.

Profile of Volodymyr Zelensky, one of several to be published in the last ten days; this one in the New Yorker

More reviews unposted from recent weeks: Vice turned out to be a scathing satire which keeps the comedy painted on its barely contained volcanic rage. It's also preaching to the choir, of course, as I very much doubt conservatives are going to watch it. (I'm using "conservatives" in the traditional sense, i.e. I don't mean just Trumpists but also what remains of the Republican party that does admit to having problems with the current occupant of the White House.) It's even more preaching to the choir when you watch it in Germany, because seriously, back then there was cross-party consensus over here that the "weapons of mass destruction" charge was, to quote our then secretary of state, Joschka Fischer, talking to Rumsfeld during the G9 in Munich, "not convincing". To put it mildly. Bush II. was loathed, while I don't think many people were aware of who Dick Cheney was.

However, while the movie was at no point boring, did a pretty good job at tracing the various threads leading not just to Cheney's position in the Dubya years but to the current situation - the rise of Fox News and the decades of brainwashing that went with it, the destruction of anything progressive (Carter's environment-friendly solar cells on the White House being but one visual case in point), the accummulation of presidential powers, the Supreme Court as a partisan instrument (Florida!), the abandonment of even the pretense of following internationally agreed on ethical rules (yay torture! yay prisoners who are neither criminals nor prisoners of war and thus aren't given the rights of either!), and contains a lot of good performances, I find it ultimately lacking as a character drama, or dramedy, or however you want to put it.

Not because Christian Bale isn't his reliably good self. He delivers on every version of Cheney we see, from drunk frat boy to loving husband and father, from cog in the machine to super Machiavellian power player. But it feels more like a series of vignettes not connecting to a whole. By which I mean: early on, you see Lynne (Amy Adams is also very good) give Drunk Fratboy Cheney the "come to Jesus" speech, or rather, the "if you don't change yourself and become someone worth my time RIGHT NOW, you'll never see me again" speech, which galvanizes him to stop being a useless frat boy and start being a hard working future overlord in training. But it doesn't feel like there's an emotional connection between the young guy standing there getting metaphorically slapped into the face by his girlfriend and the clever manipulator later. They are both very well played by Christian Bale, but they don't feel like the same person. Even when there's the textual call back of Cheney observing drunk frat boy George W. during the Reagan years and then years later having his first serious conversation with Reformed Dubya about the later's candidacy, when the character brings up his own "wild" years as one of the ways to establish a rapport, there is an emotional disconnect.

It's similar with the scene where Cheney for once in his life chooses love over power - when he decides not to run for President himself so his lesbian daughter Mary won't get put through hell - vs the various other scenes when he does something ruthless. You don't get the impression of a multi-facetted man but several different men. To make a comparison to fictional guys: take my all time favourite Londo Mollari from Babylon 5. Who in the course of the show does a great many horrendous things. (Including starting a war under false pretenses.) But there is a connection between Londo's appealing characteristics and his dark side; the Londo who is enough of a romantic beneath the cynical aphorisms veneer to fall in love with a dancing girl is the same Londo nostalgic his home world's imperial past; that, too, is romanticism, and it bears toxic fruits. (And in yet another turn, this also makes him capable of sacrificing himself for his people.) There is no question of the Londo throwing exubarant parties in season 1 and the Londo watching the planet Narn bombed into the stone age in s2 is the same person. And that's what I'm missing in Vice.

Now you could say this is because JMS had several seasons of tv to tell Londo's story, while Vice is a two hour movie. But I think it comes down to something else, which perhaps is crystallized in a scene between Cheney and Rumsfeld when they're both working in the Ford White House; Cheney asks "Rummy", who at that point has the superior position and experience, "what do we believe in?", and Rumsfeld just laughs. That immediately felt fake to me, even for a satire. And also like a Doylist confession that our scriptwriting team and director didn't really have an explanation; to me, however, it seems that if you want to write a character like Cheney, you need to know what your version of this man believes in in order to create a whole person rather than a series of (witty, enraging) vignettes. Mind you, one reply to this could be: the point of the movie isn't to understand Dick Cheney, not even a fictional version of him. It's to expose what he (and others like him) did.

Of course, in many ways if you're a moderate or left-leaning, Cheney as a villain, and his rise to power, is easier to make sense of on your own than the Orange Menace's success and the way the various secret services and the military are suddenly hopes for damage control. Between Halliburton and all the government jobs in various Republican administrations he held, Cheney works as a a perfect embodiment of the military-industrial complex. The idea of him as the string puller and Bush the Younger as his stooge fits with narratives as old as Evil Viziers and Weak Monarchs. Basically: he fulfilles all the tropes, almost too easily. Now that kind of story offers hope of a happy ending (one day, the vizier is overthrown/there's a new government), which this film decidedly does not. It's positioned to arrive in a context where the rot accummulating in conservative America through the decades of Cheney's life has become all consuming. The film's narrator's identity is build on the not so hidden metaphor of the old consuming the future to keep their power, quite literally. But: the audience likely to watch this movie already believes that. So again I'm left with wondering why it was created.

In conclusion: an entertaining, frustrating work; overall, I'd classify it as an interesting failure.

24 hours at JFK: long detailed article about two of the Iraquis detained when the ban first struck.


Anti Trump Poems : because if humor and poetry won't save us all, they sure as hell will help us make it through these times.



Ron Rosenbaum tells the story of the Munich Post, and its long refusal to sugarcoat anything Hitler did. Ostensibly the article is Rosenbaum's take on whether or not you can make comparisons between 45 and The Guy From Braunau, but really the story of the Munich Newspaper that fought Hitler from the very start when he was just an also ran small time demagogue in Munich to the time they were closed and, to use a Steve Bannon term, "shut up" in 1933 at his command is at the heart of it.

The world is a scary, scary place right now. By which I'm not referring to the orange menace, though the fact that he got this far and continues to spread his poison is horrible. But frankly, what scares me more is how in so many countries, including my own, so called mainstream politicians are adopting the vocabulary of right wing thugs while said thugs are on the rise. UKIP is pretty much superfluous in Britain right now since the current Tory P.M. puts scorn on the term "citizen of the world" in an almost literal quote from the 1930s Nazi papers (I'm painfully aware of Godwin's law, believe me, but she truly did - and that was a pretty famous quote at that), and wants to "shame" British firms employing foreigners by publishing lists, Orban in Hungary has just destroyed the last independent paper, comes fresh from a xenophobic campain that would feel right at home in the 30s and, just to show he wants to emulate his buddy Putin in everything, dishes out insults at LGTB people in his spare moments (asking Hungarians whether they want a family with mother and father or "people who can't tell whether they are men or women"). Poland is ruled by similar right wing nuttery, and like Hungary, it was elected by popular vote. In France, you have Marine Le Pen and the National Front who to me is more frightening than Drumpf because she could truly become President the way it looks right now. As for my own country: see above: re: mainstream conservatives falling over themselves trying to emulate the AFD thugs. Two weeks or so ago the general secretary of the CSU said that his nightmare was "a football playing altar boy from Senegal" because "we'll never be rid of him". (See: he didn't even use the "non working, Islamic menace" type of cliché. Instead, he conjured a completely integrated asylum seeker.) If you believe he had to step down or that there were in any way negative consequences for him from within his own party, think again. On October 3rd, holiday of German unity, our chancellor and president were in Dresden precisely because Dresden has become such a hottub for right extremists, as a counter gesture. There were hundreds of people screaming the Nazi word "Volksverräter" (people's traitor) at them. The Saxonian police wished them (the demonstrators) "a successful day".

All of this, far more than Drumpf by himself (who makes me throw up), makes me live in a constant state of dread.

Briefly on non-rl news, which are a welcome distraction: Yuletide assignment: that was fast! Not something I've done before, not what I expected, but not a problem, either, I can do it, and will enjoy doing it (which is why I had offered the fandom in question to begin with).

Seems that British Politics show I mentioned a week or so ago has written half of their leads out (and all of those pushing for that unbelievable potline). briefly tried to promote a new female villain but then settled on making the lead one of the former minor supporting characters, also female.

Meanwhile, the flashback episodes are still going on. If you want to catch up:

The Chilcot Report, Digested Edition (because it's better to laugh than to cry)


On that note, fanfic from a recently cancelled show, Agent Carter:

Il diavolo rosa: Nonna Manfredi versus Bernard the Flamingo. It's the showdown of the century!

Because US politics provide less angst for me than European politics: on twitter, JMS (i.e. J. Michael Straczkynski, for you non B5lers) has not only urged anyone who ever liked one of the shows he's worked on to vote for Bernie Sanders, but has enlisted fictional characters as well by pointing out that Peter Parker and Superman (he said Superman, not Clark Kent) , both of whom he wrote in comics, would most definitely vote for Bernie.

Great Maker, as Londo Mollari would say. Whose endorsement wasn't offered, undoubtedly because Londo's political choices are, err, not of the type that you'd want in rl. Anyway, I can't decide whether I'm more amused or more inclined to face palm. Not that I'm not prepared to believe Peter Parker would vote for Bernie Sanders, but I could be mean and point out Peter Parker (comics book edition) is canonically vulnerable to Daddy figures persuading him into endorsing major political decisions he later disagrees with. During JMS' run, no less. (And that's the first and last time anyone will compare Bernie Sanders to (comic book) Civil War era Tony Stark.) No, but seriously: I'm all for urging people to vote and for expressing one's beliefs about a candidate. Drafting comic book heroes into it, though, has to be a new one.

Though now I want the fanfic where Peter votes for Bernie while Aunt May votes for Hillary. Meanwhile, MJ (still married to Peter at the time of JMS writing him) is of the "anyone who can stop Trump or Cruz" persuasion and is amendable to either candidate, but that's not what Peter and May want to hear, who try to convince her she HAS TO MAKE A DECISION.

Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson is writing an article of how Spider-Man is stealthily supporting Trump. Why? Because he hates them both. Since when has he ever needed another reason?

I'm currently so worried, angry and frustrated about events like these, which keep happening over here (two more only last night). Which makes the need for fannish things to enjoy even more urgent. On that note, here's an Orphan Black rec. One of the s3 elements I was pleasantly surprised by most was the way the late (since the pilot, so not really a spoiler) Beth Childs was used, the way Sarah's thoughts keep coming back to her. This story expands on the mental Beth-Sarah conversations by giving Beth conversations with a great many other characters. Intense, with a dream logic that makes emotional sense, and extra points for including Amelia:

and when they sing (8316 words) by piggy09
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Orphan Black (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Beth Childs & Sarah Manning, (sort of) - Relationship, Beth Childs & Kira Manning, Beth Childs & Helena, Helena & Amelia (Orphan Black), Beth Childs & Rachel Duncan, Beth Childs/Paul Dierden
Characters: Beth Childs, Katja Obinger, Kira Manning, Helena (Orphan Black), Amelia (Orphan Black), Rachel Duncan, Charlotte Bowles, Paul Dierden, EVERYBODY SHOWS UP TO CHAT OKAY
Additional Tags: Dreams, Confusing and pretentious
Summary:

As soon as Sarah had enough memories for Beth she was here: this kitchen, the safest place Sarah knew, a keeping-place until Sarah was ready to meet her. She had been alone there for a while. There were visitors, sometimes, but mostly Beth was just alone. Waiting and waiting and waiting for Sarah to come and see her.