Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

At the ITA movie night this week, we watched Mulholland Falls by Lee Tamahori (1996). A good film noir on the Evil of Power. Synopsis: little evil meets Big Evil and gets a glimpse of what Evil is. The philosophy of evil is randianly summarized thus: "The cornerstone of civilization is human sacrifice."

I wonder what is the class of statements that a movie can illustrate. Could it be possible for a movie to illustrate that "Power is not evil in itself, Power is Evil itself"? How can a movie provide for economic reasoning rather than mere accounting fallacies? (Using "Run, Lola, Run" techniques, maybe?)

A colleague of mine told me that according to an african friend (from which part of West Africa?), many african tales for little children feature as a hero a thief-crook, whose tricks are glorified and who wins in the end. I'm looking for corroboration of this information, if possible sample such tales, with metadata about the context in which these tales are told.

On se souvient rarement d'un rêve, et rarement des détails, sauf à la rigueur de vagues détails, juste après s'être réveillé. Celui-là m'a donné envie de vous le raconter en brodant un peu pour recréer tous les détails et supposés implicites, qui semblent évidents durant le rêve, et indicibles après. C'est l'histoire d'un jeune couple glamour qui a tout pour être heureux mais ne l'est pas.

House of Fools. The greater madness takes place outside the walls. Made me laugh. Made me cry. What a movie.

It has lots of consistent retro-modern late 1950's like design, including the music score. It has developed psychology for all characters, be them heroes, villains or secondary characters. It knows how to build upon clichés rather than blandly restate them. It has great acting and impeccable story-telling. Last but not least, what I always fall for, it has a didactic story, -- and what more, one where adults learn, too. Where ethics and esthetics join. I'm sure Ayn Rand would approve. The greatest movie I've seen in quite a long time.

Avec son ton léger, très vivant, ponctué par les chants des griots, Madame Brouette est un conte de fée réaliste qui ne tourne pas rond, un condensé de la société sénégalaise et de ses drames structurels, et une ode à la vie qui reprend toujours le dessus malgré tous les obstacles. Le film sent le manque de moyen et l'amateurisme d'une partie de la production; mais loin de chercher à le cacher ou à le nier, le film en prend son parti, et le tourne en un avantage, une note de spontanéité et de vérité, prise avec humour. En fait, comme c'est un film sur la vie dans un pays pauvre, cette pauvreté survécue avec brio est l'objet même du film autant que son cadre. (Spoiler Alert: la suite de cet article révèle trop de l'histoire du film.)

Je pourrais en raconter plus, mais j'en ai déjà dit plus qu'assez. Je vous laisse découvrir un bon moment de magie nègre, débordant de l'exhubérance de l'Afrique.

I quite liked the initial movie Spiderman, which was a didactic story about a geek whiz kid who discovers his moral choices make a difference (and other people's too). But this sequel is more than disappointing: where the first issue was an original ode to morality, this second issue is a boring cliché that instead that promotes a form of moral lunacy, of inversion of values, of philosophical absurdity -- the seed of madness, which leads its individual or collective victims to self-destruction.

Since several friends did recommend this movie, including David Madore, and despite the gripes of Lew Rockwell, I went to watch I, Robot this weekend with my cousin. As was expected, it is quite far from being an immortal chef d'œuvre, but it's indeed a rather well-realized action flick. However, it is only in the very end, and with a twist, that it turns out to be somewhat faithful to the claimed inspiration from Isaac Asimov, and not at all with the original Robot series. Beware: big spoilers ahead.

I know the point of view I am going to give will seem oh so hackneyed. I suppose it must already have been applied to the very same particular case that I will be considering; and many times so, even, but all of these times have remained as obscure as they rightly deserve -- uh, I mean, dark forces conspired to keep the truth from being revealed to the unsuspecting public. Still, at the cost of my mental sanity, I will reveal you how you too can see the great Cthulhu the way H.P. Lovecraft first discovered it. Not that I could refrain from telling you, anyway.

In my series of ideological analyses of popular shows, here is one about Troy, the latest movie, which I saw a few weeks ago, right before breaking up (Brad Pitt is a difficult rival to beat). Just like an earlier Troy movie, it takes sides with the Troyans, and strips the godly quarrel from the story, to make it kind of a realist and romantic war film. My friend David already did a nice review of the movie (in French; beware: spoilers), so I'll only add my opinion and a few more spoilers.

Some time ago, I watched The Last Samurai. Quite a nice picture, with Tom Cruise playing the white guy (to whom the domestic american public can identify) who becomes a Samurai (common kid fantasy) and on the way goes places and meets people few japanese (and no gaijin) have ever had the opportunity to. Ever since Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee entered King Arthur's Court, there has been no limit to what your average american may dare fancy becoming. Of course, it is usually ignorance and lack of ambition, not knowledge and wisdom, that prevents non-americans from daring as much. Oh well.

The plot is so predictable that if you've seen the trailer, filling in the rest of the script with the prototypical elements and constraints of the genre is an academic exercise: please make it a politically correct blockbuster, in a japanese medieval setting, with historical pseudo-accuracy, flavors of war and exotism, and a touch of leftist pseudo-philosophy. After you've seen the movie or completed the above exercise, you may read the following comments without fear of spoilers.

Avril 2007: José Bové est élu président de la République à la tête du Front Citoyen et Solidaire. Le FCS est une majorité plurielle: constitué principalement de membres de la société civile, réunis dans des associations telles qu'ATTAC, il rassemble aussi toutes les forces du progrès qui se sont ralliées à lui, avec de nombreux transfuges du PS, mais aussi la participation des trotskystes, communistes et écologistes; de nombreux démocrates chrétiens apportent leur caution à cette grande cause alternationale socialiste.

Since I don't escape the current events, but only report them late, here is the inevitable Tolkien entry for my blog.

Il y a deux semaines, je suis allé voir un film de Samouraï, Zatoïchi. Une histoire classique remise au goût du jour; j'aime beaucoup. (Attention, spoilers dans la suite du texte.)

Last sunday, I saw Once upon a time in Mexico, a Robert Rodriguez self-proclaimed flick. Quite a nice movie, with a scenario fully packed with all the mexican clichés that Rodriguez could find, which is quite a lot, served with great story-telling, lots of action and romance, and lots of funny T-shirts worn by a Johnny Depp who steals the show away from Antonio Banderas. And let me tell you: it's genuine black magic, and I enjoyed it precisely because it's genuine black magic. It is black magic that works.