Author: admin

Old

There was a time when I thought Lady in the Water was M. Night Shyamalan’s worst movie. (It’s hard to beat the concept of a mermaid secretly living in an apartment-house swimming pool.) But then came The Happening (angry vegetation responding to the threat of global warming), to which the worst-of title immediately passed. Then came a frustrating tie—the dreadful double-header of the Last Airbender and After Earth. That was a tough call (although I’d give After Earth the edge).

Now there’s a new boss in town. It’s Shyamalan’s latest movie, called Old, and it’s hard to imagine that it might ever be surpassed in the area of awfulness.

Not coming up with his own stories is usually a good idea for Shyamalan, but here it makes no difference. Old is based on (or “inspired by,” a classic dodge) a graphic novel by French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy. The book, called Sandcastle, is about a Mediterranean beach where time mysteriously speeds up so fast that visitors find themselves living out their whole lives in a single day (with death signaling the end of their vacations). The author offers no explanation for this place—what it is, what caused it—which makes the story’s inherent horror all the more horrifying.

But Shyamalan is burdened with a PG-13 rating, which doesn’t encourage downbeat stories or eerie, open-ended conclusions. Everything must be explained, and neatly wrapped up at the end. So the writer-director is compelled to invent stuff, which is no longer his strong suit. Thus, the entire ending is an awkward fabrication, nowhere even suggested in the novel and unpersuasive in its every particular. And the rest of the script is a fiesta of infelicities. There’s an English rapper (Aaron Pierre) on the fatal beach, and Shyamalan, possibly not a rap enthusiast, has decided to call him “Mid-Sized Sedan.” Then there’s the persistently daft dialogue, which batters us like flying debris in a hurricane wind:

“Something is going on with time on this beach,” says one character, stupidly.

“Somebody will figure this out,” says another. “We just have to wait for them.”

“I went to private school,” says Mid-Sized Sedan.

There are a number of good actors imprisoned in this movie, playing either the doomed adults or their children (at various stages of physical development). Gael García Bernal is the nominal lead, accompanied by Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) as his wife and Alex Wolff (Hereditary and Pig) as one of their kids. Also in evidence are Lost alumnus Ken Leung, Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace), Eliza Scanlen (Little Women), and—the movie’s creepiest character—mad-eyed Francesca Eastwood (daughter of Clint, half-sister of Scott). All of these performers must have been hoping for something much different when they signed on Shyamalan’s dotted line. As one character here says to another after viciously slashing him with a knife, “Sorry.”

Pig

Pig is a Nicolas Cage movie without the showpiece freak-outs the man’s fans and detractors have come to expect by now, late in the latter days of his near-40-year career. Which is to say the picture is not another paycheck-begging exercise like Drive Angry or Bangkok Dangerous or the legendarily pitiful 2006 Wicker Man (“Not the bees! Not the bees!“). Instead, it recalls the bold performances of his celebrated past—in films like Adaptation (2002), Moonstruck (1987), and of course Leaving Las Vegas (1995), for which he won an Oscar.

Cage has worked with top directors over the years: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, the Coen brothers. David Lynch, for whom he starred in the 1990 Wild at Heart, has likened him to a jazz musician. With Pig, he’s taking a flier on first-time feature director Michael Sarnoski, who co-wrote the movie’s script with first-time screenwriter Vanessa Block. They can all be proud of the results of this collaboration.

Cage plays a virtual hermit named Rob, who lives alone, more or less, in a ramshackle cabin in the soggy backwoods of Oregon. Rob’s only companion is a pig he calls Apple, with whom he forages for black truffles to trade with a slick young wholesaler named Amir (Alex Wolff, of Hereditary), who uses his profits from the truffle trade (a pound of the pricey fungi can sell for thousands of dollars) to finance his hotshot lifestyle.

Fifteen years ago, before his wife died and his world fell apart, Rob was a celebrity chef in the foodie paradise of Portland. He doesn’t miss his old life in the big city, but he has to return there after a couple of creeps burst into his cabin and beat him up and make off with his valuable truffle pig. His search for the little beast takes him first to a high-end restaurant run by a former employee named Finway (David Knell), who currently specializes in pretentious food of the sort that’s served under glass bells filled with the smoke of smoldering pine cones (make that Douglas fir pine cones). Rob remembers that Finway once dreamed of opening his own English-style pub but was diverted by the gourmet trade. Looking around at the clientele, he is quietly contemptuous. “You live your life for them and they don’t even see you,” he says. “You don’t even see yourself.”

Still dirty and disheveled from the home invasion in which Apple was stolen, Rob continues slogging around Portland collecting clues as to the missing pig’s whereabouts. Not everyone is happy to see him. “I remember a time when your name meant something to people,” says a sneering food-scene veteran named Edgar (Darius Pierce). “But now you have no value. You don’t exist.”

As we soon enough realize, the movie is not really about a pig: Apple is just a snouty MacGuffin. The picture is about human values, both timeless and transient, and Cage, gray-haired and caked with dirt and dried blood, projects the importance of that distinction with a masterful calm. He also sautés a pan full of pigeon parts and mushrooms and discusses the joy of persimmons with a little boy on the porch of the house in which Rob and his late wife once lived. The movie is warmed by its consistently human scale.

Some viewers might have quibbles with the picture. There’s a long sequence, for example, in which Rob visits a brutal underground fight club that caters to restaurant personnel, and while this might be a real thing, it still seems unlikely, which is a distraction. But the movie is an impressive success for its key creators, and a quiet triumph for Cage, who appears to be back at last after being gone far too long.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3eLM7Tg
via IFTTT

Officials in one Arizona school district are learning just how seriously families take privacy after parents were asked to consent to letting their children be questioned about a checklist of sensitive subjects including illegal behavior, income, and gun ownership. The district quickly backtracked, claiming the consent form hadn’t been properly vetted and that such private information would never be sought. The survey is voluntary, officials emphasized. But the damage is done and the consent form has erupted into yet another political battle over government-dominated education.

The issue blew up on social media earlier this week when the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) uploaded to the parent portal a form asking for consent to social-emotional screening of students.

“The electronic signature attached to this Annual Verification packet authorizes SUSD to complete an emotional health and wellness screening of my child and to collect personal information including but not limited to income or other family information, medical history or medical information, mental health history or mental health information, and quality of home and interpersonal relationships, student biometric information, or illegal, antisocial or self-incriminating behavior critical appraisal of individuals within a close relationship and gun/ammunition ownership,” the form read.

The reaction was fast and furious.

“Scottsdale USD wants to evaluate my family’s income, medical and mental health history, my child’s ‘biometric’ info, as well as our gun and ammo ownership. No thanks!” Twitter user Amanda Wray tweeted in response.

“It went viral as soon as many parents started reacting to it,” Shiry Sapir, who just enrolled her three-year-old in a SUSD preschool, told me. “Just know the verbiage comes straight out of statute 15-117. Almost word by word. They tried to overpass the statute with that consent which is so wrong.”

Sapir, who earlier this year filed a statement of interest as a first step in seeking the Republican nomination for Superintendent of Public Instruction, pointed to a state law passed in 2016 (the aforementioned statute 15-117) that requires public schools to get parental consent before asking about a laundry list of topics, many of which were included in the SUSD consent form with the same phrasing. The implication was that the school district planned to seek information deemed so sensitive that it was specifically protected by law.

“So the bottom line is that we made a mistake, initially uploading a parent/guardian consent form document that had not been properly vetted by the district before it was posted – that’s what raised the completely valid concerns of some of our families earlier this week,” SUSD representative Nancy Norman told me via email. “Fastbridge SEL screening is a completely optional undertaking,” she added about the social-emotional learning program developed by Minneapolis-based FastBridge Learning. “It is parents’ choice whether to have their children take part in it.”

The district sent the same message to parents in a statement responding to the uproar. The consent form, the statement emphasized, was for an optional screener that had been adopted district-wide in May after being used earlier for grades K through 3.

“Notwithstanding this, SUSD’s initial parent acknowledgment form incorrectly stated that the FastBridge screener might ask for personal information about income, family matters, medical or family medical history, mental health history and other categories of private information. To be clear, the FastBridge screener does not and has never sought this information.”

The statement pointed parents to a web page for FastBridge’s Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener program. As of the 2018-2019 school year, the company’s assessments were used in 45 states. Online screening examples focus on behavioral issues and not on the sensitive information detailed in the SUSD consent form.

Overall, then, the SUSD appears to have been its own worst enemy, carelessly asking parents to consent to the questioning of their children about sensitive topics that aren’t actually addressed by the assessment program it adopted. Bureaucratic clumsiness predictably produced outrage from families primed to expect the worst by years of politicized schooling and battles over the ideological content of classroom lessons.

After months of controversy over the introduction of racially charged curricula in classrooms, following on decades of conflicts over the political spin school officials put on lessons, it’s difficult to think of a more effective way of angering parents than to tell them you want to question their kids about income, illegal activity, and gun ownership. Many people already assume that schools are agents of enemy political factions; such intrusive interrogation is guaranteed to set them off. The furious reaction was inevitable in a society of diverse values and points of view that funnels most kids into a state monopoly on education (you’re allowed to opt out—but only so long as you continue paying for the state schools). Actually, the reaction was not just inevitable but anticipated long ago.

In On Liberty, published in 1859, John Stuart Mill advocated requiring children to be educated, but not letting government operate schools. He said it was best to “leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased” with government doing no more than paying tuition for those in need to avoid “difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties.” 

A century-and-a-half later, having maintained government as the default operator of schools, we’ve also maintained their continuing status as battlefields. As a result, parents assume the worst when educators make controversial decisions about curricula or threaten to interrogate children about their home lives.

“I will be introducing legislation to stop schools from asking any of these very personal & invasive questions,” vowed Arizona Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R-Scottsdale) in an indication that the controversy won’t disappear soon.

Ultimately, the only way to settle these eternal struggles over schooling is to “leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased” for their children. They’ll be free to pick education models of which they approve and so won’t feel the need to turn every lesson plan and screening tool into yet another battle over access to young minds. That has to be better than continuing distrust and conflict.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3zoYFrJ
via IFTTT

7/23/1936: Justice Anthony Kennedy’s birthday.

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3zvmUEq
via IFTTT

The Jesuits at 112-year-old America magazine must have been surprised to learn there were “no Catholic magazines” in America. That claim appeared in the publisher’s statement of the inaugural edition of The Lamp, a Catholic journal launched last spring to fill the stated void.

If you can stomach hubris at such a pitch—and if you’re not turned off by a publication declaring up front that its editors “reject the progressive left [as well as] the libertarian-conservative right”—there are insights to be gleaned in these heavy-stock pages. My sense of the world is richer for having read about how Europeans see private firearm ownership and citizen militias not as bulwarks against tyranny but as reminiscent of “the paramilitary units that facilitated not only Mussolini’s rise to power, but Hitler’s also.”

But as in the agricultural context, the gleaning will have to be followed by winnowing, as chaff in the form of throat clearing, smug asides, and tiresome essays on the demonic nature of market capitalism are discarded on the way to the sustenance. Be prepared to work for your bread.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3y1xCm2
via IFTTT