Review: “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” — very disappointing

I saw this film earlier this week at the cinema.

In my opinion, this installment (following on from the previous trilogy) was confused and a serious drop in quality.

The underlying problem is that it is set too far in the future, and it took ages to get story going. The storylines seemed a bit confused and tenuous, at times. It’s unclear why the villain is so determined to break into the man-made underground bunker. It’s one of the many plot devices that we’re never really explained. So, the denouement feels sluggish.

The film’s protagonist is “Noah”, which I assumed would be Caesar’s son — as he seems to resemble him. However, it becomes v. clear that this film isn’t related to Caesar at all. The actual “kingdom” is surprisingly basic and primitive — notwithstanding an apparent and “serious” increase in the apes’ cognitive and linguistic abilities. 

The final action scene utterly strains the film’s credibility. Despite many generations of neglect and decay, there were apparently groups of humans somewhere with a computerised ground crew? Why was the satellite card from the bunker so important? How did the woman know where to find it? Why couldn’t the human battalion have simply built or fashioned some alternative? And why does the young woman, after all her experiences, decide not to go inside the human bunkers at the end — but stand outside to observe things?

Also, I found the apes less relatable. I found it difficult to care about Noah at all, or his eagles.

I enjoyed the theme of the de-evolution of Caesar, and his ideas, into some quasi-religious esoteric movement. That was very interesting with parallels in Christian sectarianism and Marxist groupuscules. The Orangutan was probably the most fascinating ape. He was teaching Noah about Caesar’s ideas (which are only referred in brief). It would have been fascinating to have heard more of his teachings. But, we don't get that.

Lots of Avatar-like CGI with some amazing landscapes though.

Rating: 1/5 ★

Review: “The Pale Blue Eye” — really enjoyed it

“The Pale Blue Eye” is a murder thriller/horror set in the early 1800s released by Netflix last year.

I really enjoyed it.

Directed by Scott Cooper & cast include Christian Bale, Timothy Spall, Harry Melling, and Gillian Anderson. It is a detective story with Bale as Detective Landor and Melling as Edgar Allan Poe. They team up to solve a series of grisly killings in this period gothic “drama”.

The film is great at creating an oppressive & chilling atmosphere. I really enjoyed the interaction and chemistry between the duo Detective Landor and Poe. Their partnership is the facsimile of the Holmes/Watson duo. 

Exquisite photography and a disquieting Howard Shore score accompanies this film throughout.

However, where the film lacks is an ordinate amount of time is devoted to unearthing the mysterious Marquis family. It has the effect of separating the detective duo. Harry Melling’s Poe falls in love and aches for a fellow cadet’s terminally sick sister; while Bale strays around aimlessly. For me, these meanders feel like we’re treading water as opposed to developing the plot.

The ritualistic “occult” scenes in the basement felt a little cliche, as if it were rushed. This, I think, was a lost opportunity to bring some horror.

The great “reveal” is great and Christian Bale gives an emotional final act.

All-in-all, I enjoyed the film all the way through. It isn’t a masterpiece but it’s good fun.

Rating: 4/5 ★★★★

King Charles III’s new portrait by Jonathan Yeo

I think it’s brilliant! 

Very vivid and engaging. Artistic and beautiful.

I like the atmosphere of the painting, but it’s HRH’s face that is most absorbing. It grows on you.

I think his face has the faint lineaments of a smile, but I also sense some melancholy or pathos.

Alastair Sooke has written that the portrait reveals “a vulnerability the late Queen was rarely allowed”. He “isn’t entirely sure of himself”. I don't think he is uncertain or anxious. But the heaviness of the eyebrows, the kindly wrinkles, and the narrowness of the eyes hint at some kind of sadness.

The awful effect of glazing to works of art in museums

This painting is “Saint John the Evangelist” by Domenichino in the late 1620s.

As you can see, there is a sheen reflecting the light in the glass installed in front of the painting. It doesn’t help that the National Gallery has bright lighting. 

I find it a bit depressing. It’s so intrusive, awkward and unwelcoming to any visitor. These glass panels were never part of the original display culture of the museum. 

I went to see a Rembrandt and noticed how hard it was to discern his deep blacks and background dimensions. It is quite common now to see a lot of the early impressionist works behind glass.

It must surely damage the artwork themselves, and create a humid micro-climate behind the glass?

And ... Why?

According to Dr. Finaldi — director of the National Gallery in London, it is because of how art has become cultural symbol of vandalism and attack:

Finaldi also speaks frankly about the impact of climate protesters who targeted John Constable’s Hay Wain in July 2022, Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in October 2022 and Diego Velázquez’s “Rokeby Venus”, in November 2023. The Velázquez incident, involving a hammer, represents “a gear shift to a more brutal and violent attack”, Finaldi says.

Reluctantly, the gallery has recently glazed several hundred of its most important paintings which had not previously been glass-protected. Finaldi explains: “It is costly and puts them at one slight remove from the public, since it pushes the painting a little further back into the frame and produces a deeper shadow at the top of the picture.”

In the 1990s the National Gallery proclaimed “from the Tube to the Titians in three minutes”. Entering the gallery is now slower, because of security checks, but this normally short delay is “part of modern life”. 

“Modern life”, indeed! 😑

Hostages have been Israel’s Achilles’ heel ... ( and why go into Rafah)

Last week, there were (and probably still are) protests in Israel over the fate of the 132 hostages still held by Hamas.

Israel’s strategic weakness has been its approach to hostages. If some poor Israeli is taken; they are traded for assets way more valuable than themselves. Israel places a higher value on human life than her enemies. And, Hamas has benefitted from this ... over and over and over again. In 2011, a huge mistake was made in releasing 1027 prisoners for 1 kidnapped soldier (Gilad Shalit): 450 were Hamas terrorists, 280 serving life sentences. And half returned to terror activities and murdered more Israelis. The trade was a weakness to be exploited. And that is precisely why Hamas was focused so heavily on hostage taking on Oct 7. Engaging in this war, as if the hostages didn’t exist, as much as possible, is the right call. 

Hamas has absolutely no intention of meaningfully returning the hostages. They would only “return” the hostages by placing them in the way of Israeli fire.

As such, the focus should be on preventing this from happening again — i.e. completely obliterating Hamas. Half measures will only lead to more future bloodshed. It’s time to root them out of Rafah. I feel v. sorry for the civilians, but that’s on Hamas as the “representative” of Gaza. This is war, and wars suck.

Israel cannot compromise its national security. Israel doesn’t have the might of the US military. The Afghans discovered the hard way that President Biden, and other Western leaders, could stand back and permit a fascist regime to take over. Israel was created by those who understood that such a Holocaust could happen. Israel is surrounded by states and peoples who openly declare their desire to “kill the Jews”. Unlike the Palestinians, Israelis have nowhere else to go. Israel must act to maintain and preserve its security.

And, as a liberal democracy, Israel will observe international law and the rules of war. This was made clear when they dispersed notice recently for people to evacuate temporarily to prevent further bloodshed in the ensuing bombing campaign. In law, intent matters — not numbers. And, the ICJ have already declared that there is no genocide. Not even a plausible case of genocide.

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Israel has no option against an enemy that doesn’t “answer” to anyone

Israel needed to go into Rafah.

In earlier rounds of negotiations and in Cairo, Israel has faced considerable pressure from the international community to reach a negotiated settlement and cease their operations in Gaza. 

On the other hand, the only pressure on Hamas to compromise has been the threat of further military action. There is no other real pressure on Hamas. They hold the hostages and they don’t care about Gazan suffering. How can there be pressure on someone who doesn’t care about their own citizens. Hamas doesn’t have to answer to anybody. 

There is no middle path for Israel between either continuing full force with their military action until Hamas are obliterated, or sitting down at some negotiating table and giving Hamas more or everything they want.

Salmon risotto

So delicious. 😀

Salmon, peas, lemon, pepper & salt, mascarpone, veg stock.

Finally, some rocket on top.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Last week, I went to the Imperial War Museum London’s “Holocaust Galleries”.

It is a dedicated gallery to conserving the memory of the lives and devastation wrought by the Third Reich.

It’s very moving. There were lots of photos of so many families and children caught in the web of WW2 and antisemitism. Including life in the ghettos which were overcrowded and miserable, with limited food, sanitation, warmth, and medicine. 

I realise how outrageous it is that urban city centres in America are somehow called “ghettos”. The original ghettos were designed to isolate and control millions of Jews during the Holocaust.

There is a tendency to think that we know enough or too much about the Holocaust. In my view, if anything, we don’t learn about it enough. It’s the sheer scale of what happened that still shocks me. It’s a state-wide industrial scale. Like an Orwellian fiction. 

Before the Nazis, there were 3 million Jews in Poland. After they left, there were under 200,000 left. The Auschwitz gas chambers were capable of “processing” 2000 lives per hour.

On more than one occasion, the guards ran out of Zyklon-B and fed little Jewish children to the furnaces while they were still alive.

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Oct 7 and the Holocaust: the rising antisemitism

Today, posters of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas is very striking. Although there are some parallels, it must be said that there is nothing in similarity between the Holocaust and what’s going on in Israel-Gaza today. 

Oct 7 was the worst atrocities to Jews since the Holocaust. Eradicating Hamas is thus a just cause. Not out of vengeance, but the necessity of keeping Israelis safe in their homes.

Nevertheless, the attack by Islamist terrorists against the only Jewish state has been accompanied by a rise around the world in antisemitism. 

These recent “protests” (with “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or “Intifada revolution” etc.) give implicit succor to the pro-Hamas fanatics who attack the Jewish identity, and the right to exist. Anti-zionism is anti-semitism. 

They should be demanding that Hamas release the hostages of Oct 7. They should not be equivocating Oct 7 with wartime civilian deaths in Gaza. They should be rebelling against hate. 

If people retort by saying only a few bad apples were making those chants; then, at what point, do these protests containing rotten apples become bad protesta? If you’re at a protest and people around start chanting something you don’t support, you need to remove them or remove yourself. Otherwise, standing side-by-side, people will assume they are together.

My favourite Eurovision 2024 song by Portugal — “​Grito” by Iolanda

This is my favourite Eurovision song. I’ve been playing this song for days now!

This singer blew me away. She has an absolutely euphonious gorgeous voice. Elegant, with passionate words (lyrics translation here).

At first, I didn’t “understand” the dancers and found them a bit distracting. But, then I realised that they are translating her fears and after her scream; they vanish from the scene as she is “cured”.

I don’t think she will win ... as quality is not appreciated at the Eurovision. They like “freaky” stuff.

I also found a beautiful acoustic version on Youtube. 

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Our own UK’s eurovision song was by Olly Alexander (“Dizzy”). It’s embarrassing 😒. Underwhelming and utterly generic.

The music was repetitive and boring with no climax. I also don’t really get what all those male dancers add to anything ... generic.

What are the “pro-Palestinian” protesters actually fighting for?

From University of Michigan to Columbia, protests over the war Israel-Hamas conflict continue to rock campuses across the US. And now, it’s moving to England & the University of Cambridge.

But this is not their war. Where are the demands for the return of the remaining hostages? What about demanding that the perpetrators of Oct 7 atrocities be brought to justice? Nope ... didn’t think so. 

There has been a huge outpouring of antisemitism amid these protests — Jewish students being barred from their own campus by pro-Palestinian activist thugs, told to go back to Poland and to the gas chambers, a Jewish student being beaten unconscious in UCLA, Jews told they were the next target for terrorists. When they shout ‘globalise the intifada’, it reminds me of the Brownshirts.

Today’s Cambridge pro-Palestine camp’s spokesman refused to condemn Hamas or describe them as a terror group when questioned by The Telegraph (reported at 3:26pm).

All civilian deaths are abhorrent; but we shouldn’t lose sight of the basic proposition: Hamas’s declared intention is to annihilate Israel and its population – whilst Israel is fighting against a fanatical fascist enemy who prop their own citizens as human shields and then cynically and gleefully propagandise the inevitable collateral casualties. 

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So what are they fighting for?

1. A narcissistic game of pretending to be a revolutionary and pretending to be part of something bigger than oneself. Protesters in the 60s were fighting for CND, Vietnam, gay rights, animal rights, environmentalism etc. Today’s protesters are positioning themselves against the progress made in the 60s onwards. I.e. with Hamas.
2. Antisemitism — Where were these protesters when Syria was wiping out its citizens? Where were they when Iraqi women were protesting against the killing or girls and women? There are no protests against the War in Yemen with over 150k+ direct casualties in that conflict. They only can be bothered to protest against the Jews. 
3. To isolate Israel from the global economy. They want the West to adopt the old “Arab boycott” against Israel in which any kind of business with Israel/Jews is banned. No oil, no gas, no electricity, no food. Essentially, they want to turn Israel into North Korea. This is ironic as they claim that Israel banning of trade with Gaza amounts to “genocide”.
4. They don’t want ceasefire. They want intifada. “Students for Justice” in Columbia — and people like Norman Finkelstein — have endorsed Hamas on October 7 arguing their “resistance” was justified. There is enough toxicity among this “underbelly” that a non-insignificant pro-Hamas sentiment can be easily found. Some are no better than their Holocaust-denying fellow travellers.
5. Decolonisation “settler-colonial” dialectical narratives — At recent protests, they were shouting that Israel are white colonialists oppressing brown people. This offshoot of Marxian traditional class-conflict presents itself in the post-modern “identity-politics” “decolonization” framework which leading universities (whose academics are overwhelmingly left-wing) have been pushing for years now. This shows a serious lack of understanding about Middle Eastern demographics. There are Lebanese & Palestinians who are the whitest people you can see. Meanwhile, there are Israelis who are black, and every shade in between. Essentially, projecting US racial dynamics onto this conflict. 
6. And some are genuinely well-meaning students, albeit mistaken, about the conflict; and have imbibed the media tropes about “genocide” etc. They are decent and would probably be shocked if they knew enough about their comrades. I suspect that most pro-Palestine supporters probably didn’t even know where the Gaza strip was before Oct 7. 

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Some interesting articles:

Michael Powell, in “The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone’” (The Atlantic). He writes, about the protests at Columbia University:

As the war has raged on and the death toll has grown, protest rallies on American campuses have morphed into a campaign of ever grander and more elaborate ambitions: From “Cease-fire now” to the categorical claim that Israel is guilty of genocide and war crimes to demands that Columbia divest from Israeli companies and any American company selling arms to the Jewish state.

Many protesters argue that, from the river to the sea, the settler-colonialist state must simply disappear. To inquire, as I did at Columbia, what would happen to Israelis living under a theocratic fascist movement such as Hamas is to ask the wrong question. A young female protester, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, responded: “Maybe Israelis need to check their privilege.”

 John McWhorter, in “The Columbia Protests Made the Same Mistake the Civil Rights Movement Did” (NYT), also writes:

What happened this week was not just a rise in the temperature. The protests took a wrong turn, of a kind I have seen too many other activist movements take. It’s the same wrong turn that the civil rights movement took in the late 1960s.

Beyond a certain point, however, we must ask whether the escalating protests are helping to change those circumstances. Columbia’s administration agreed to review proposals about divestment, shareholder activism and other issues and to create health and education programs in Gaza and the West Bank. But the protesters were unmoved and a subgroup of them, apparently, further enraged … Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall — and the visible destruction of property — and say, “Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately”? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news.

JMW Turner at the National Gallery

Below is a write-up of paintings of Turner’s at the National Gallery. 

If asked about my desert island paintings — Turner would be included. I really love his work, and he’s so important in the history of art. 

Why? Because the sublime 19th century romantic landscapes have the psychological depth and emotion that leave you with a sense of awe. Nature on a grand scale — massive skies, crashing waters, etc., and the sublime.

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The Fighting Temeraire

A beautiful & moving elegy. Slightly mournful but leavened with glory. Turner’s sunsets are so intense. 

A grand old navy sail-ship being scuttled by the new steam-age. The steam-propelled tug tows the old “Temeraire” up the River Thames to a ship-breaker’s yard in Rotherhithe, South London. There is also a white flag on the mast of the tug. 

This painting depicts the final journey of the “Temeraire”, a famous warship sold by the Royal Navy in 1838. So, this was a real ship but probably not as Turner depicted it. The “Fighting” probably refers to her combat in the Napoleonic Wars and at the Battle of Trafalgar. Like us, in our obsolescence, when we too get old and are scuttled off.

Turner wonderfully contrasts the veteran ship against the blissful & radiant setting sun. Water seems to have no life other than to emphasis the sky, clouds, and smoke. Reflections in the water slow down the energy of the painting. The “Temeraire” also seems ghostly and ethereal while the tug boat is dark and powerful.

The sunset is on the same horizontal level as the Temeraire suggesting an approximation — and slightly obscured by the thick orange-smoke of that tugboat.

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Sun Rising through Vapour

Idyllic, charming.

A warm, reposeful and quiet afternoon by the coast for a fishing community at the fore. 

The calm is accentuated by the stillness of the sea.

Fish on the floor, a man pulling up his trousers.