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Memento at 25

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Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) keeps track of his life through polaroids and the notes he scribbles on them. Sometime around 2002 I was the marketing manager for a small tech company. We were short-handed one day so they sent me out to help a field rep with a server install. It was a small company so the tech and I spoke regularly, at least over the phone. We discovered we both liked movies, so over lunch I asked him the proverbial “seen any good movies lately?’ He mentioned Memento . He said it was a really good movie about a guy with a disability trying to find his wife's murderer. Not exactly a description that makes you drop your fork. But I trusted his taste, so the next time I was at Blockbuster I found the VHS and took the plunge. I bought the retail version of the tape shortly after renting the film. For awhile, as I tend to do, I watched over and over. Everything was on tape back then. I just rewatched Memento for the first time in many years. In fact I’m still rewatching ...
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Back To The Beginning, With Iran Whacked

[ Read all my Iran stuff here. ]  As of 9AM Eastern -  So this may be how it ends. Not with freedom blooming in Tehran, which vanished from the script almost as soon as the bombs stopped being interesting. It ends, maybe, with a memorandum of understanding, the most boring phrase in diplomacy, which is why it is probably how wars actually end. Nobody wants to admit defeat. Nobody wants to admit the thing they said was impossible three weeks ago is now the thing they are signing in Geneva. So they invent a phrase that sounds like a fax machine became secretary of state. Wonderful. If the reporting is right, this understanding more or less takes us back to where we started, only with Iran badly damaged. Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. The Strait of Hormuz must remain open. Nuclear talks are pushed into a follow-on process. Sanctions relief, including oil sanctions and frozen assets, may be staged against compliance. Lebanon may be folded into the deal. The ceasefire gets exten...
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The Gay Cowboy Did It First

I've been writing about Christopher Nolan since 2009 . After The Dark Knight I considered him the best director alive. I haven't changed my mind since. Inception , Interstellar , Dunkirk , Oppenheimer . The man doesn't miss. Even Tenet , if you want something resembling failure, grossed over $365 million world wide on a $200 million budget.  This, in spite of COVID tanking theater traffic in 2020. That's not great but it is not a stinker either. Digital media and streaming sales of the film remain strong. I wasn't following the casting news for The Odyssey, Nolan's latest. I stumbled into it through YouTube, which is where I end up most evenings. Video after video, universally, freaking out about exactly the same things: a Black Helen and Elliot Page. Not the material. Not whether anyone can compress Homer into something worth watching. The same two targets, everywhere, identical. The outrage machine had named its enemies and distributed the assignments. Ah....
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It Will Open Itself

Entering our fourth month in the Iran War, the Strait of Hormuz is moving under seven vessels a day. Before all this started, it was seventy. Just saying, as of today Iran still controls the Strait. Although the Strait will apparently reopen soon, the IRGC seems to be positioning itself to claim that it maintains control of the Strait even though it is open. The official story is that things are trending toward normal. The actual water tells a different story. The United States carried out new strikes near Hormuz against Iranian drone control sites while negotiations were simultaneously underway. That's not a smooth reopening. That's a chokepoint still being contested by everyone with a stake in who controls it. The obvious question, if Trump won the war – “obliterated” Iran was his word, then why isn’t the Strait opening faster? I mean, we obliterated them. So… The answer isn't military. It's trust, and there isn't any. Tanker owners, insurers, crews, and th...
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