Anarchoblogs

If you thought Brandon’s zombified pic of me was creepy, check out these symmetrical versions:

So, in a quiet little move that will probably attract scant attention, Disney has bought Lucasfilm and is planning a third Star Wars trilogy.

Now my feelings about the Disney company are much like the Rebel Alliance’s feelings about the Death Star (mainly for their fantastically excessive abuse of the bad-anyway IP system). All the same, I can’t help thinking this might be a positive development. Lucas’s strengths are in coming up with ideas, and directing big special-effects scenes; but his weaknesses are in writing scripts and directing actors. That’s why the original trilogy was better than the prequels. And the original 1977 film (the only entry in the original trilogy to be written or directed by Lucas) was good because Lucas was still listening to advice in those days, from his movie-industry friends like Spielberg and Coppola, and even from the actors (which is why Luke doesn’t shout “Nooooooo!” when he finds his dead aunt and uncle, as Lucas had intended); but Lucas has long since become a white hole, from which information can exit but never enter. While the Avengers films have had their flaws, Disney has made some creative, outside-the-box choices for directors and screenwriters there; and for all my grumbles I even liked John Carter more than most people did. So I think wresting the lightsabre from Lucas’s cold live fingers might open similar opportunities for the Star Wars franchise.

There was a time when I would have been worried that Disney would try to make Star Wars too cutesey. But it hasn’t done that with the Avengers; plus after Jar Jar there’s not much deeper one can sink into that particular hole.

Just came across an excellent review of Part I. Much of it applies equally to Part II.

I’ve written the introductions to Laissez Faire Books’ new e-book editions of Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Jerome Tuccille’s It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.

The Anthem intro is online here, and the Tuccille intro should be available soon.

I’m sure someone somewhere, upon reading them, will ask why the Rand-lover who wrote the Anthem intro and the Rand-hater who wrote the Tuccille intro have the same name!

In related news, I’d assumed my monograph Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand was out of print (Amazon offers it for the un-tempting price of $200), but apparently the book is still being published by, and is available “upon inquiry” from, the Atlas Society at some almost reasonable price, although they do not advertise it in any way, either on their website or via Amazon; moreover, the book is also available as a free pdf on their website (here – in a somewhat cleaner copy than the ones currently floating around the internet), though again it’s not exactly announced with bugle and drum, and you’ll only come across it if you’re hunting for it.

The same applies to Neera Badhwar’s similarly themed Is Virtue Only a Means to Happiness?, likewise available in the same hidden easter-egg way (here).

The Atlas Society does it this way because … um … okay, this is a case where Verstehen hits a brick wall. But anyway, they’re available!

I recently finished Lampedusa’s The Leopard, a book I’ve been meaning to read for years. My edition comes with some bonus features at the end, one of which is a short story titled “The Siren.”

I was struck by how much “The Siren” seemed (in plot and theme, not in style) like a mashup of two stories by H. G. Wells, The Sea-Lady (about which I’ve previously blogged) and “The Door in the Wall.” I suspect the similarity is not a coincidence – because Lampedusa explicitly has his narrator note with surprise the main character’s bookshelf of H. G. Wells works.

Um, spoiler alert I guess.

I just got back from seeing Atlas Shrugged Part II. (Actually the full title turns out to be Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike, though the strike is never mentioned as such in this film, even though it was mentioned in the last one.) I thought it was better on the whole than Part I (especially in the second half, where I began to feel Rand’s aesthetic vision coming through a little bit), though many of my reservations about Part I apply to II as well.

The new Dagny does a decent job, but she doesn’t have the commanding presence the role requires. (Nor did the previous Dagny.) She also seems a bit too old for the role, just as the previous Dagny seemed a bit too young. But the new Rearden seems pretty good (if also a bit too young), and Adama’s dad as the new Francisco is excellent, I thought; plus Arye Gross unexpectedly steals the show as Ken Danagger. As in the first movie (though in a quite different way), Wesley Mouch seems much too forceful; he should be more of a Karl Rove type.

There are some surprise cameos, including treats for Star Trek and Babylon 5 fans – and a nauseating cameo from Sean Hannity, who plays himself defending Rearden (thereby inexcusably linking Rand’s ideas with the GOP agenda; for all Rand’s deviations from the left-libertarian plumbline, she still doesn’t deserve that).

While some plot compression is unavoidable, I was sorry to see Rearden’s development arc shortchanged, and the character of Ragnar (always a favourite with anarchists) eliminated entirely. And although setting the film in our own future rather than in Rand’s (in effect) alternate timeline was probably unavoidable (for financial reasons), one of the many costs of this decision is that, given contemporary sexual mores, the threatened blackmail over Dagny’s affair simply becomes unbelievable.

Jim Peron mentioned to me at Libertopia how unfortunate it was that the Jeff Allen scene was changed. Having seen the movie, I understand why they did it – to save time by having the same person who provides the information about Galt’s time at the 20th Century Motor Company also be the person who helps Dagny find transportation when her train is stopped. But as Jim noted, the chance to subvert popular perceptions of Rand by keeping to the original story where Dagny rescues and befriends a tramp who was about to be thrown off the train is a regrettable missed opportunity. The movie also doesn’t make clear, as the book did, that most of the regulations against which Dagny is fighting are special favours for her company, not restrictions on it; this change underplays Rand’s anti-corporatist message. (The cheap shots at the Occupy movement are annoying, but admittedly not un-Randian.)

The special effects, while subpar, are forgivable, with the exception of the John Galt Bridge scene, where the angle of the bridge just looks weirdly askew, as though the laws of perspective have undergone local deformation.

Apart from the action scenes (which I thought were handled reasonably well, given budgetary constraints), the pacing seemed a bit too languid and lacking in energy. I’m no devotee of fast cuts for fast cuts’ sake; after all, I love the opening scene of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But lingering scenes should have something worth lingering for; there were a number of scenes (at Jim’s wedding party, for example) where each shot seemed to last about twice as long as it needed to. The worst instances of excessive lingering were on the homeless man’s 1776 sign around mid-film, and the Dagny/Galt meeting at the end; it’s a bit too much like shouting and pointing “ooh, feel the significance!” The same applies to the onscreen Rand quote at the end, needlessly hammering the message home. (Plus, re the Dagny/Galt meeting, why does Galt, having quite sensibly told the injured Dagny not to move, then hold out his hand in such a way as to require her to crawl forward?)

Still, I hope they make the third one – though given that there were only three people in the theatre tonight, a week after it opened, there are reasons to worry.

In other movie news, last night I finally saw Looper, which I thought was terrific.

I suspect it’s not a coincidence that the lead judge in this trial scene from Atlas Shrugged II looks so much like Paul Krugman.

Although I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan, his last two albums haven’t been favourites of mine. (Maybe I need to give them another listen.) But this song off the most recent album is an exception:

In other news: cross Blondie’s “Call Me” from American Gigolo with the original Doctor Who theme, add some anti-authoritarian lyrics, and voilà:

And this is how it ends …. Lindalee’s last Doctor Who review until Christmas. Extra-massive SPOILER ALERT:

Phil Sandifer, who is blogging his way through the history of Doctor Who over at his fascinating and provocative TARDIS Eruditorum, has just released the second volume of the book version, this one focusing on the Troughton years. Like the first volume, the new book includes the relevant posts from the blog but also lots of new material. Moreover, it also features a fantastic cover, complete with fake aging, designed by James Taylor (not the one you’re thinking of; and not that one either).

When I say run, run to your local bookstore and get your copy now! And when they inevitably turn out not to have it, buy it online here.