1. We would have gone regardless. As my younger daughter says, This is a Matt Damon house. Also, Sharlto Copley, who was wonderful as the sweet tragic naïf in District 9, here is pretty terrifying as a creepy belligerent sadist.
2. I usually sit through a movie utterly oblivious to plot holes, but even I noticed these. Most ridiculous: that only the arrogant factory owner and the security chief (Jodi Foster, ridiculous) are invested in the system’s evil. The president of Elysium and the Homeland Security (really) staff talk like well-meaning mid-level functionaries at a hapless nonprofit. In a real Elysium, the evil would be spread pretty generously – the elegant .000001 percenters would willingly collude, steely in their indifference.
3. Elysium? The whole joint looks like Beverly Hills: clean, with broad flat green lawns and palm trees and pale unused swimming pools and weirdly empty palatial homes. The sparse population is eternally at cocktail parties in a Ralph Lauren ad. I gather the look was intentional. But let’s face it – in a situation like that people would quickly devolve into immobile fat slobs. And the teenagers, well, have you met a teenager? The whole setup would be part Wall-E, part Less than Zero.
4. The last third was so violent that it actually grew boring. Oh my heck, just get to the damn point. We’re not impressed.
5. The ending? Ridiculous. We get it; please stop hitting us about the head and neck with the frilly pillow. It reminded me of the Simpsons parody of The Departed – a rat comes scampering along and Ralphie says, “The rat symbolizes obviousness.”
6. Having said all that, I’m still glad I saw it. I’m always interested in the way Matt Damon brings this quality of fundamental, tense, hard-earned decency to so many of his roles. And I’m interested in that other trend that is starting to permeate our world – you know, the one in which the wounded and the forgotten overthrow the wicked.
7. And I love how Neill Blomkamp invents a world, in all its grubby, mean, sordid, hostile, sweet details, so that you believe it – you feel you are living in it already.
Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
Our paver for this week is a cobbled path along Skaneatles Lake in New York state. Skaneatles, at the top of the lake, is a little town with a fair amount of money – this is a place to live if you like scenic prospects, velvety lawns, and regattas – chilly privilege at play. This is not to say that I dislike it. It’s really beautiful.
One thing I always think about when I remember this town is the lake. It has a classical beauty, broad, softly gleaming, fringed with low hills. And in this day and age it still has water that is wonderfully clean. The water in Skaneatles Lake is so pure that towns and cities as far off as Syracuse use it, unfiltered.
This walk borders the north edge of the lake. I think of walking there, from time to time, of standing at this spot and looking across the water. You just feel rested, remembering it.
Every time I push the panic button, this show up.
2. This glossy circular delivered to my home mailbox. My home mailbox. My home mailbox.
3. Interpreting personal consumer data with pinpoint accuracy? Perhaps not quite there yet.
4. An invitation for my foot to get blown off.
5. Sorry, neighbor! Did that hit you?
6. This circular also offers “technology advanced ammunition” such as copper-plated hollow points. One line of hollow points is called CCI Swamp People and its tag line, right on the box, is: “CHOOT ‘EM!”
7. Really, it is. An economical 375 rounds for $28.99.
8. Among those shot this weekend in Chicago: a six-year-old boy, riding in a car with his mom. He is the sixth child age 7 or younger shot in Chicago since June 30.
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