film

Take A Look at ‘The Flaw’

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I know a lot of you would really like to understand how the economic meltdown happened. Well, OK some of you, as we’re not all econogeeks like yours truly. It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around everything that happened.

May I then recommend The Flaw which is available at Netflix? Weirdly it’s tag “what happens when the rich get richer” doesn’t really sum up the film’s scope, but I suppose it sells well.

It’s an interview-based documentary on the economic meltdown of 2008, told via interviewing people in the middle of it, analyzing it, and involved in it. Stringing together these interviews it creates a smart narrative – and does so without a lot of doomsaying and drama. It’s an oddly human take on a horrible occurrence, which is one of its strengths.

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Fear Of A Checklist Planet (Or Universe)

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The Fan To Pro gang often chats about various issues, and one issue that came up as Serdar and I discussed the Marvel adaptions that sometimes it felt like Marvel was checking off boxes on what to do.

This isn’t to say that Marvel hasn’t done some good stuff.  I consider “Captain America” to be a fine piece of filmmaking with a great central actor, “Iron Man” to have managed to inject old-school charm into high-tech adventure, and “The Avengers” to have done the seemingly impossible with style and heart.  Frankly, the studios and staff are to be commended for making actual, good, movies.

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Inbreeding, Horror, and The Other

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So I got my latest issue of Fortean Times (If you don’t know what it is, just trust me and get it), and among their media section was a blurb review of a film called “Inbred,” which sounds like your standard people get butchered by inbred clan of psychos.  It’s really been a standard trope in Western horror for awhile – the terror of some separate, inbred group of maniacs out to kill you.  The most prominent example of it is likely “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and it’s legions of illegitimate children, but you can easily find the roots in Lovecraft and the various swamp denizens, tribal cultists, and wizardly families who were both possessed of terrible knowledge and a lack of genetic diversity.

It’s not hard to determine why this is terrifying to people, and tells us a lot about humans:

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