The Age of Indulgement

Conditions: Clouding Over

The Haves and the Have Mores

So. This punk kid steals some beer, gets drunk, and goes out driving in his truck with some friends. He crashes into another car on the side of the road, killing four people and critically injuring two others. And the judge sentences him to 10 years probation, because the lawyer argued that, since the kid had wealthy and lenient parents, he wasn’t brought up right and so his capacity to obey the law was diminished. A thing that has been labelled “Affluenza”.

After the public outrage over the “affluenza” defense, Tarrant County prosecutors are trying to press “intoxication assault” charges against Couch, the Star-Telegram reports. The maximum sentence for that charge is three years in a juvenile detention facility, but prosecutors think it’s better than nothing.

“Every case deserves a verdict,” a prosecutor wrote in an email to the newspaper.

Experts are doubtful the new effort will work, since it’s unusual for the sentencing on lesser charges to be harsher than on the primary charge.

- nation.time.com

I have to say, as miscarriages of justice go, this is a doozy. Not only is it a giant middle finger to the relatives of the dead, it’s also essentially an open invitation to the privileged to go ahead and do whatever reckless thing that they want, safe in the knowledge that there will always be a way out, a big gold parachute, a back door, and a bail-out. Truly, there is no justice in this world.



Film Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I knew full well when walking into the theater that this was the middle part of the story, that we would start in the middle, and we would end still in the middle, and that it would take three damned hours to get from one point to the other. I was prepared for my quest. I had a comfy seat, some M&M’s, and a loose pair of shoes. The key is to pace yourself, mentally. Take the time to relax and breathe evenly. And crucially, don’t expect anything of substance to actually happen at any particular point. If you find yourself linking moments or ideas together, and anticipating suddenly where the plot might actually be going, you have to physically stop yourself and remember: no. These are the hours of six to nine within the second film of the three part adaptation of the book called The Hobbit. We’re neck-deep in the bloat.

Every action sequence has been dragged out and inflated so that it just goes on and on and on and yet on until it becomes a meaningless mush of motion blur, whirring blades and people hopping around like jackrabbits. There’s an issue I have with how these movies seem to be put together. I remember a time when a fight sequence would be carefully crafted out in a careful and coherent manner. Each moment or beat would be set out in a way that the audience could appreciate. Sitting through the action sequences in this thing though, I am no longer sure that filmmakers do that any more. I mean, does anyone really think that there was someone at some point who sat down and carefully worked out exactly how for instance Legolas would jump from one spot to another, fire several arrows left and right into Orcs, then spin around and jump over yet more Orcs and firing into them as well? I just can’t see someone saying “Okay, so he’ll jump from here to here while this guys spins around like this, then he shoots an arrow there”. “Wait a moment Pete, that would be his 14th arrow, and as we all know wood-elfs only carry 13 arrows”. “Okay good point, so back when he flipped over the rock formation and fired arrow 14 we’ll make it that he only stabbed the Orc with the arrow, then pulled it back out again”. “Genius!” No, I don’t buy that. Instead I think what happens is there’s just a note on the otherwise-blank page of the script that says “then some crazy shit happens”, and then it’s up to the animators to just bang together a string of fight moves until they run out of time and have to start working on the next sequence. It would explain why every action sequence just turns into a mush of shapes and movement.

There’s a squadron of Orcs who spend the film chasing the dwarves, and occasionally fighting them. But despite their tattoos, scars, array of weapons, and distinctive dental work, what’s remarkable is that the Orcs are completely ineffective as a fighting force. Incapable of inflicting anything more than a single arrow wound over all the multiple engagements they have. So as an armed force of evil they are hopeless. As a dying force however they are absolutely brilliant, able to be mown down seemingly by the hundreds whenever a fight sequence breaks out. I don’t get what the big deal is with Orcs being the great new dark threat that’s got Gandalf so worried – their only talent lies in being able to run onto swords or arrows at warp speed and then fall down, often without their heads. Even the kids join in on the Orc bashing.

And so we finally get to the mountain, where Bilbo is sent in by himself to find a jewel, and instead has an extended dialogue sequence with the dragon, Smaug, who it turns out is far more interested in talking about how great he is, roaring, and whirling around in circles, than he is in actually eating any of the dwarves. And since the film is only three hours long, there’s no time to fill us in on what the plan is to actually kill the dragon, so we just have to guess as suddenly the last action sequence is launched upon the weary audience, forges are started up and giant gold reservoirs are sloshed around, and then ...a giant golden statue is forged? The hell? Eventually even the dragon gets bored with it, and flaps off to burn up a nearby village as we wearily dust ourselves off and stagger off in search of sustenance. So, only one more year, and three more hours, to wait before we can finally get back to where we started from. See you there. One indistinct blade out of five.



- Peace out