Disasters

The triple-digit heat finally broke this past week, ending our drought. At first the thunderstorms were brief, but on Monday the rain poured heavily, flooding the streets. Apparently a woman died in Dallas when her car was swept away. Extreme weather is getting worse all the time.

Meanwhile I heard that a court ruled that Unilever could overrule Ben and Jerry's, forcing them to resume sales in the West Bank. So apparently they're not going to allow Ben and Jerry's to remain independent in their decisions anymore. Pro-Israel folks are so quick to attack BDS, as if it's not our free speech right to boycott them. It makes me lose respect for the ADL, acting like all Jews agree with Israel's apartheid policies. You can criticize a nation and its government without being racist to its people. And again, not all Jews live in Israel. Don't conflate people with the country.

Laal Singh Chadda

Well it seems that John Oliver's comment is correct, that Warner Bros Discovery is "burning down my network for the insurance money" given all the content they are axing or deleting from HBOMax. Meanwhile they're offering discounts on the streaming service for 1 year, as if anybody has any trust that they won't delete more swaths of content. What a disaster the merger and new CEO are.

Meanwhile I did see Laal Singh Chadda, and somebody helpfully updated the wiki to explain the Indian history references. It was a very interesting movie, keeping the spirit of the original Forrest Gump but shuffling some characters and details around. Remember how Lt. Dan thought he was destined to die in war, like all his ancestors before him? Those flashbacks about all his ancestors dying in war are instead used as flashbacks to show Laal's namesake ancestors who died in war. The Bubba Gump Shrimp Corp instead becomes Rupa Corporation, a parody of the real Rupa Company who sells undergarments and more.

It's named after Laal's longtime love Rupa. Her history isn't quite as dark as Jenny's. There's no implied sexual abuse, but her father does beat and kill her mother, so that she has to stay with her grandma, who coincidentally works for Laal's family. Their childhood friendship is sweet, and Rupa also does a magic trick, pretending to pluck an airplane out of the sky, then showing Laal a toy plane that she already had in her pocket. In later years, when Rupa is in an abusive relationship and suicidal, just the image of a plane flying by is enough to remind her of Laal, and to get her to come down. It's very touching. Also surprising was that Laal's mother cuts off his long hair during a time of anti-Sikh riots, but she never asks him to grow it out again during peaceful times. He only grows it out during his years of running, and then decides to wear a turban once he realizes his resemblance to his military ancestors.

With the Mohammed Baaji character (apparently a Pakistani enemy during the Kargil war), Laal accidentally saves his life, and he becomes bitter and resentful because he can't go home. Eventually he learns to heal, thanks Laal for saving him, and decides to open a school to stop children from being indoctrinated with hate, the way he was. The movie argues against religious extremism and violence. India unfortunately has had lots of religious strife in its history, mixed with its caste system and the problems from the British Raj. I like the movie overall and might try another Indian movie in the future. I heard that they would re-release the popular RRR movie soon, so I'll have to look for it.

Cultural History

Apparently there's a new Indian movie called Laal Singh Chaddha that's a remake of Forrest Gump. I'm kind of curious to see it, but worried that I won't be able to follow the Indian history moments. Or will it be like how Ms. Marvel explains the Partition of India that created Pakistan? Maybe I'll be able to google the history afterward.

In American schools, you just learn the history of the US and Europe, while other countries and continents only get mentioned during the colonialist era or the World Wars. So that leaves me ignorant about the rest of the world's history unless I seek out more information for balance.

Watching the Miss S mysteries on HBO Max was very interesting to see how they adapt Phryne Fisher's world. They swapped the Lin Chung character with a Russian character to keep the interracial romance, and his bride also was a secret Communist, in danger of arrest or death in China. Since I didn't know about the Chinese Civil War or the Shanghai Massacre, I found this very confusing until I looked it up afterward. (Though it still seems questionable that Chinese authorities would target a Russian for being a Communist, thereby risking a diplomatic incident, but I guess maybe if they thought she was spreading Communist propaganda to Chinese citizens....) Other cultural changes in the show included replacing the Gilbert & Sullivan opera Ruddigore with a Chinese traditional opera called The Peony Pavilion. I also liked that Miss S changed the motivations of their Murdoch Foyle equivalent, so that Ding Rushan was insanely trying to resurrect his daughter, not just become a stupid Egyptian god.

After I finished Miss S, I wanted to rewatch Miss Fisher to compare, so I bought the DVDs when I got a good deal on the box set. The Australian series has its own slang about "sheilas" and "diggers" and references to World War I. It also tries to be culturally sensitive to Aboriginal characters and the aforementioned Lin Chung, though they depart from the books by making Jack Robinson the love interest. I have read some of the Kerry Greenwood novels, and Miss Fisher is not as faithful as it could be.

Tides Turning

Yay, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act! My understanding is that it has several parts of the Build Back Better bill from before, even if it doesn't have everything. Glad they got this done before August recess. This is a major win, in addition to Biden's other recent wins. Even Beto went viral for calling a heckler a "motherfucker" for laughing about Uvalde.

Plus the FBI raided Trump to get back all the government documents he stole. Apparently they visited before in June and asked for them back, but he just kept refusing. I don't know why he got so many chances to keep stuff for over 2 years before they finally treated him like a criminal. Was he hording these things just to feel powerful, or was he actually letting foreign spies look through them for a price? I guess they'll find out when they fingerprint the documents.

Midterms are coming this fall, and this stuff will help.

Thai Cave rescue

So I saw the Thirteen Lives movie on Amazon Prime. Ron Howard did a pretty good job focusing on the Thai community and not making it all about the British and Australian divers. (I've previously watched the National Geographic documentary of The Rescue, and it focused mainly on those divers, because they didn't have the rights to the soccer team's story.) Apparently Netflix is coming out with its own version on the soccer team in September, but I've quit them long ago. I will have to consider whether I want to rejoin for a month maybe for this and Knives Out 2.

In Howard's film, we start with the Wild Boar boys finishing a soccer (football) game and discussing the birthday party for Prem, before bicycling to the cave. One boy doesn't go, but he's aware of the others intending to go to the cave. That night, their parents search for them when they don't show up for the party, and we follow the mother of Chai, the youngest boy, as she worries about him. We also see the local governor and his aide, the Thai Navy SEALS, and a water engineer working with villagers and farmers to divert water from the caves.

The British divers do play a prominent role in finding the boys, and coming up with the plan to anesthetize them, but they remain aware that they need to defer to and work with the Thai divers. It's not that the Thai Navy aren't good divers; it's just that their training is for open water diving, and the cave is super tricky to dive, requiring specialized skills. One British diver even takes blessed beads from Chai's mother and tells his more skeptical colleague, "Take it. She's watching." Even if you don't believe in her religion, it's important for you to honor her feelings so she'll feel better about the rescue. They do mention lots of international volunteers helping but thankfully don't discuss Elon Musk and his snitfit. It's pretty good, and the diving feels claustrophobic at parts.

Batgirl Noo!

They canceled the Batgirl movie! Fuck! They were so close to finished, and they won't let us see it after we'd been waiting so long. Deadline says the reason is the recent merger, giving the new CEO an accounting trick that expires in August so he can make the debt disappear. And fan speculation says that DC had to cancel the storyline with Keaton's Batman because of something unrelated in the Flash movie. But all that is bullshit if they're not going to cancel the Flash movie. That one is a huge disaster, but WB is punishing the wrong movie for it. FUCK!!!

I don't know if uproar can shame them into releasing the movie eventually. I mean, shame eventually worked to get the Republicans to pass the PACT act, but I don't know that any corporate CEO has any shame...

Movies and dolls

There's a new Emmet Till movie coming out this October and I saw the trailer. Also, there's some Korean War movie called Devotion based on a true story. That Glen Powell guy seemingly is making a career of playing pilots (ever since astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures.) I guess it's not bad typecasting. I wanted to see the new Thirteen Lives movie about the Thai Cave rescue, but it didn't open anywhere in Dallas/Ft Worth apparently, and I'll have to watch it on Amazon when it gets there.

Meanwhile, after a lull in my collecting, I got a couple of new Barbies recently and a Ken. I got Fashionista #172 for her microbraids and interesting face; she has flat feet and I swapped her shoes for black boots. The Ken doll #193 has rooted hair, and I liked his hairstyle, though I had to wash out all the gel. Then I got the Paramedic from the career Barbies. It was the first Asian-looking doll whose face reminded me of Chloe Kim, though she is more petite. In the store her hair looked yellow blonde, but when I got her home it was more strawberry blonde, which pleases me. I changed her into a gingham dress and braided her hair, so now she looks like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, sort of. Still trying to decide on a name for her.

I'm hopeful that the Barbie movie will be good. I heard a rumor that there are multiple Barbies and Kens, which is just like the real dolls. With the fashionista lines, Mattel started just giving the dolls numbers instead of naming them, the way they used to with Christies, Steves, Alans, Midges, etc. So now every doll is Barbie or Ken. (And the Creatable World dolls can be gender fluid.)

Rest in Peace

There's primaries in a bunch of states today, and in Congress there's been a lot of wrangling over bills lately. I hope they can get them done before recess.

The last week of July was rough with several major deaths. Sad to hear about Nichelle Nichols passing, but at least she won't suffer any more from dementia. There had been talk in recent years about legal disputes among her family and caretakers. I think it was last year that I watched the Woman in Motion documentary about her mission to recruit diverse hires for NASA. Black people were skeptical of NASA's sincerity, warning her that "they're using you" for PR, but she said, "I'm using them" to get real change. What a big difference she made!

Meanwhile the heat continues to bear down on us through August.