Ummagumma

Note: This post contains minor spoilers about Blade Runner 2049 . Last Saturday I finally got around to seeing Blade Runner 2049 . I missed the opening weekend due to other commitments. The film has performed poorly at the box office , but that did not deter me from wanting to see it on the big screen. I was not disappointed. 2049 melds seamlessly to the original Blade Runner  (1982) in terms of its dark, alluring aesthetic . Like the original, 2049 is dystopian, yet beautiful to behold. The original Blade Runner was released the year after I graduated from college. I was still living in Athens, Georgia at the time, working odd jobs and partying a lot. I remember being blown away by the cinematography, the philosophical undertones about (among other things) the yearning for more life, and the unsatisfying "happy" ending that seem out of place with the rest of the film. Years later I bought "The Director's Cut" (1991) when it came out on VHS. Bla

On Sunday I finished watching  The Vietnam War , the 10-episode PBS series by distinguished documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick .  For the most part it was a riveting, if at times challenging and depressing, viewing experience that featured interesting in-depth interviews from a variety of soldiers on all sides, reporters, draft dodgers, politicians, activists, wives and families, prisoners of war, advisers - basically the entire gambit of participants in that tangled and protracted conflict. I was rather obsessed with the war in Vietnam back in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's.  I read everything I could get my hands on about the conflict in order to better understand it as both a military and cultural phenomenon.  So I already knew most of what Burns and Novick detailed in their 18-hour rendering of the seemingly endless and hopelessly convoluted story of what started out as a savage revolt against discriminatory French colonialism and ended as an Am