Tag Archives: Rupert Everett

November 13, 2024 · 22:13

Trials of a madman

Something made me think of King George III today. He was known as the mad king. For me it wasn’t what I knew, but it was the view thrusted on me by Nigel Hawthorne who played the Madness of King George. He got assistance by Helen Mirren, Ian Holm and Rupert Everett. What mattered is that this view gave me the rest of the setting. You see the Kyiv Independent (at https://kyivindependent.com/for-2nd-day-straight-russias-reported-losses-in-ukraine-surge-to-record-levels/) gave me ‘For 2nd day straight, Russia’s reported losses in Ukraine surge to record levels’ now, war is indiscriminate for the living. The living are merely people who haven’t died yet and War in any form relishes death above all other currencies. What got to me was “This surpasses the previous record of 1,770 set just the day before. The total figure stands at 712,610.”

We are also given “In a bid to regain control, Russia has deployed 50,000 troops, including soldiers from North Korea, to the Kursk region.” I tend to ask Ares for advice on these matters and he gives me that it will merely take an additional 17 days for them all to be slaughtered. The Koreans are out of their element and that implies an increasing amount of miscommunication between the Russians and Koreans will increase the rate at which their bodies and souls become separated. This reflects on ‘the Madness of King George’ as King George should have been able to see that America was lost to him, and he gave the order to battle for America. He of course didn’t count on the French who liked England to be weaker. Russia is making a generic same setting using Koreans, mercenaries, Nepali forces (about 200 of them), Serbians as well as some Bosnians. It seems that the fifth largest army is no longer depending on its 1.15 million active-duty personnel and close to two million reservists. They are willing to let the other people swallow the bullets meant for Russian forces. Yet the larger setting is ignored. Are they setting a stage where they hope that the others will swallow bullets until the Ukrainians run out of ammo? Do you remember these arrogant Russian media types claiming it was a mere 2 days exercise? We are in day 994 now and there is no letting up. Even more so, Russia has lost territory to the Ukrainian forces. There is no way that the top of the Kremlin does not see that. Lets be clear, the high command of the Kremlin is as able as most of the NATO countries and they see these numbers too. More important, they also see that Russia is now indebted to North Korea now. If someone would have told them in 2000 that this would happen a mere 24 years later, they would have howled with laughter (and rightfully so). We now see that Russian logistics are a mess, Russian hardware is failing all over the place in their own biosphere. These machines are not able to withstand the Russian conditions, a first setting that would have been required. As such, what mess is Russia in? Oh, and before you think this is the larger part, you would be wrong. The larger part are the 18750 lost drones. The cheapest military drone is about $700K, making this an effort to tap the vein at $13,000,000,000. One element is costing them 13 billion and counting. The second is 20350 pieces of artillery, wanna guess how cheap they are? And replacing them is a costly and time consuming issue. The Russian army is about to be a mere shadow of an empty egg shell. That setting was 850 days in the making and the Kremlin let it all happen. There is no loyalty towards Putin, as I see it these generals are letting this happen to the Russian population. Why? This is not some ego setting. I have never seen an ego letting this happen to 712610 fellow citizens. I get it, if you are under attack this could happen, but Russia instigated this attack and there lies the crunch. In other news Lord Hades is welcoming over 725000 souls into his domain. As I see it he is happy and Ares is merely mesmerised by the utter stupidity of people. 

We are also given “Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that as”tens of thousands of enemy soldiers from the best Russian shock units” are aiming to push Ukrainian forces out of the Russian enclave, raising concerns of a significant escalation in the war.” It is a thought that makes sense, but the other side is equally possible. If President elect Trump lets this sail, it would take the better part of two decades for the Russian forces to be anywhere near to a threat to NATO and other parties that rely on President elect Trump. In this I oppose the view by Aljazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/australia-spy-chief-says-west-faces-new-russia-china-iran-n-korea-axis) where we are given ‘Australia spy chief says West faces new Russia, China, Iran, N Korea ‘axis’’, I get that we are given “Andrew Shearer, said on Wednesday that the strategic impact of the emerging axis, with China and Russia at its core, had been underestimated.” As I see it, the Ukrainian offensive with Russia, North Korean and Iran is a bit of a sizzler. As Iranian drones are dealt with the weaknesses are exposed making it easier for Israel and NATO allies to create counter measures. China will keep its distance as it would be tactically sound. Iran as it loses its proxies through Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi become close to powerless. At this foundation China prefers to stand alone, with NATO allies contributing to this violent settlement, China gets a real chance to look at what their optional opponent is capable of. And with China leading an economic windfall in several places, it can afford to wait. Whatever Russia and China deal we are given, until I have investigated the source of the intelligence, I merely see that an old premise becomes optional. It comes from James Grady who also wrote six days of the Condor. This story showed us the setting of a China stage (in Montana if I remember correctly). They spoke about something called ‘Gamaljoen’, it I remember this correctly (from Dutch). A person who through attachments was ‘made’ important and that person created importance by making the connections more important than they were. The person was not that important in the end, but the intelligence network wasted resources and time to learn this. It is entirely possible that China is now employing this setting and others like Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu are voicing this setting. In the meantime (as I personally see it) China seems more clever that this and they are unwilling to claim any stake in this lose-lose battle that it represents. This is rather nasty news for Sergei Shoigu, but there it is.

Are these truly the trials of a madman? In this I accept that I could be the madman, but see at what has happened in the last 925 days, am I that wrong? 

Oh and if the Koreans are up to it, cook a decent mean for the Russians. If the South Korean kitchen is anything to go by, they could use a proper meal. In the realm of Hades those without honour feast on the bones of whomever they slay. You can ask Ares, he can usually be found in the northern part of the Ancient Agora of Athens. Hades can be found in the palace of Tartarus, getting there is however quite the challenge. The Myrmidon tend to make short work of trespassers.

So there is my happy moment of the day, you have a nice day too.

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December 28, 2021 · 23:36

Is there tinsel in this town?

We seem to get rather fickle on what we see on the big screen and the small screen. We are pushed from event to event by marketing trying to create the new hype, from makers hoping for us to indulge in a new taste of Tinsel and we are letting it happen, we are giving in. We give in too often and we give in to readily. Yet the danger is that in that stream we lose sight of the good stuff, we lose sight of what could be awesome. 

I am not debating whether a series is good or not, it tends to be set to individual tastes, but marketing does not allow for individual taste, it requires clusters, because it is cheaper to tailor to a group. The problem is that it works too well. To give this a spin, lets look at data

In a normal setting we see 

Good ratings – 23
Average ratings – 37
Low ratings – 31
No ratings – 9 
Total – 100

Now consider that marketing sets the stage for people to only see the top 25 percent, in this setting we see that those with good ratings does not cover the 25%, so some over the average series drip in. But marketing hands to us that those with no rating do not count and now we get a different setting through what some call user missing values.

Good ratings – 23 (25%)
Average ratings – 37 (40%)
Low ratings – 31 (33%)
Total – 91
No ratings – 9 
End Total – 100

23 out of 91 is now 25% and as such the threshold is made and ALL the average series are disregarded by the marketing department as as such they fall from your view too. The truth is a little more complex than that, but the setting fits. The problem is that YOU did not vote, 100 people voted in this case. But is that not based on THEIR personal preferences? This is in part the problem with clusters and statistics. Statistics have their purpose, I believe in them, yet if we do not see the danger they pose we will be marginalised into the outliers we are so eager to avoid. 

To see what we might love, we need to see a lot more than we are given and the cluster marketeers are eager to avoid that setting, they represent THEIR client and what that client is bringing and it is now, in the era of Covid that some realise that we are given to shallow a choice, it is the setting of time and the setting of available time that made us look around and now that we see more we wonder what we are missing out on. I personally had reservations when the Name of the Rose was redone a a series, but when I found out it was an amazing journey I took it in. A series largely avoided by too many for all kinds of reasons, but who of you saw The name of the Rose with John Turturro, Rupert Everett, Damian Hardung, Stefano Fresi and others? Explortion is the one thing that tinseltown marketing fears, it disrupts their clusters and changes the way we see series. We are already changing this through Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime and others, the setting that we pay monthly and get all they offer is a setting that marketing is not completely ready for, but in the era of Covid the setting alters even more, now the entire field is seen and it worries the marketing departments in entertainment, we have too much free time and still that same monthly budget. These departments now fear the power of Churning, especially Netflix and Disney Plus are empowered by churners and the field will get larger. Soon there will be a new players that offers both for a nice price and that is when the field changes even more. Channel Plus and Foxtel faced that stage around 1999-2003 and now we see the first settings where Netflix and Disney Plus might face it soon enough too. In this, I expect that statistics will play a larger impact here. It is nice to see these two players throwing billions a year, but the numbers do not support that stage and a setting where they can work on a 60%-80% budget and share the members is preferred to the stage of losing them. There is still Apple, HBO and a few others. And this is their fear, they claim it is not, but the numbers are out there, because if the others unite the idea of getting 5-7 channels for one fee will overwhelm them and it will cost them over time a lot more, all whilst they still fight each other with new and more exciting IP, IP I equalled in a mere two months as I had some free time. 

As I see it the numbers are working for me and even when that population becomes a whole lot bigger, so will the outliers in the data. I reckon that we will see a first stage in 2023, when 5G becomes a much larger stage and if covid goes on the way it does a change in 2022 is not out of the question. 

You can wonder all you want, or you can wait to see what happens next. In this stage that will work in your favour. In September we were given “Netflix is expected to boost content spending on an amortised basis by a healthy 26% in 2021 to $13.6 billion — and the streamer’s budget could hit $18.9 billion by 2025, as it increasingly shifts the mix toward originals”, now consider that globally, Netflix had in Q3 2021 213,500,000 members. How long do you think this spending continues all whilst churners are now becoming a much larger stage for concern? At $10 a month (and not for the 4K option) we see a monthly stage that goes around $2B a month, so 6-7 months for the spending and we forgot about infrastructure, under those spendings Netflix has a near balanced stage, a stage that goes wrong they get more than one series wrong as a hit. And there is every chance that 2022 will get more people to the cinema, covid might have stopped us, yet we never forgot about the big screen Tom Holland showed that much with his $1B plus view on the new Spiderman and more is coming. Netflix and Disney Plus are in a dangerous stage. Disney might have reserves but when you spend well over $10,000,000,000 there will be hardship and when you add it all together we see that the numbers cannot continue as they are at present, I hope you see that too and when the clustering marketing efforts fall away, when the view digresses to the stage that becomes smaller as time is no longer a luxury we once had, the stage will take another turn, at that point we all wonder what comes next. We wonder what will happen, we all do and that is fine, but in that stage Netflix (Disney too) will need to alter the game they are playing at present. I see no other option for them the game they play now will prove to be too expensive for several players in that game.

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October 28, 2019 · 14:01

Been There, Done that reprised

It was 2 weeks ago when I was confronted with the ‘Monk Soup‘ by Lucy Mangan, a view of a book that was made into a film 33 years earlier and now remade into a seasonal view with John Torturo, Rupert Everett and Damian Hardung. With 5 episodes on SBS on demand it was time to see how much of a soup this choice ragout actually was. I have to admit that I am not even sure whether this series is a soup, or food for the wretched. It shows how Europe was in those days, it is about half of the first episode that we arrive in the Italian abbey where the story takes shape, we are treated to the interaction of monks, the way we imagined that William of Baskerville would be, yet in this dirty and flaming Europe, a simple monastery is showing people in wealth, not through the wearing of cloaks and heavy garment, not through the power of wealth, but through the absence of dirt, a cooperation of virtue in letters and in an absence of hunger.

The people in the abbey do live an exalted life that much was clear from the first half of the story. It is hard to be of swift justice here, yet I try, for me the movie was an excellent way of setting the stage, yet at the end of the first episode we see that the movie was a great way to tell a story, but this story is worthy of more and that is how it is from the very beginning, yet I wonder how many seasons will follow the first, and how many are required to make this story a complete story.

It is the beginning of the second episode and at this point I am almost completely convinced that Umberto Eco’s work would require no more than one season, yet I keep an open mind, the interactions with the girl are more abundant that those in the original movie. We also see the search in much more detail that we saw in the movie, but that is also my flaw, the digestion of the movie is a wrong step as the movie is merely the representation of the book as the director saw it, in this version we watch a much larger version of the book and it is a wondrous trip that you will take in this version of the Name of the Rose, it shows a much more interesting abbey, with its machines working, with its faith working in different directions, what faith allowed for in those days, that is perhaps the strangest part of the journey you will embark on. And it makes sense as it is part of the story, when you think of it the entirety of the story is based on what the church thought, what the church allowed for and what the speakers of the church wanted for, perhaps that is the larger part of the story that we are not ready for, or perhaps better stated, we were not ready for it in 1986, now we are. We are more critical of what was, when we see the unfolding of the story, the unfolding towards a work wrapped in cloth, we get a version that is not monk soup, it is a hearty stew, with the main story in the setting, with the churches and their priorities. It is at the end of the second episode that we get some level of apprehension on how large the library of the Abbey truly is.

The name of the Rose is truly an amazing piece of work, something that you will watch, and consider for a long time to come. No matter how this is seen, it should not be seen as ‘Monk Soup‘, but if we have to go by food, then this is nothing short of a Spezzatino di Vitello, made with Veal carpaccio, which unlike ‘Monk soup‘ has delicious ground and the soup we expected s much more descriptive and much more verbose than the description we saw in other depictions. I expected that but I was willing to expect a different view, we do not all have the critical eye to set to the task of each work, I know this and I do not wish to judge to previous judgments, yet I feel I have to as this work was sold short, even by me, I let the folly of the ‘Season‘ cloud my judgment, but it seems that there is so much more to the setting of the Rose, that we are not ready of the full story that John Torturo and Damian Hardung are bringing is opposition to Rupert Everett as well as the members of the abbey who are not welcoming to Bernardo Gui, as well as an populous who is caught in the middle of it all. To know more you will just have to watch yourself and it is well worth watching. It is perhaps more critical on the Roman church then any work I have ever seen before.

I can’t wait to get this first season on Blu-ray, to admire this on the big screen, absent of advertisement and something I can replay when I feel like it.

 

 

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October 12, 2019 · 11:25

Been there, done that

We all have those moments, we have all seen events where we attend, take notice and basically after 5 seconds we are in the stage of ‘What else is new?‘, that was the stage when I got my fingers on ‘The Name of the Rose review’ by Lucy Mangan. I am not judging her review, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/11/the-name-of-the-rose-review-john-turturro-umberto-eco) seems decent enough, yet the very first part where we could relate to the movie (also based on the book), released in 1986, where Sean Connery is the monk, Christian Slater is his apprentice and the prosecutor is seen in the shape of F. Murray Abraham. It is a wonderful movie and we get the story in less than 2 hours. In addition we see the rise of Ron Perlman as ‘La Idiota di stupido‘ (aka Salvatore) is not to be missed; he really puts his print there. In the movie the entire stage makes sense, the people, the interactions and the squabble (Gui versus William), we see that pride lives on many planes.

So when I see the review missing out on that reflection I wonder how much Lucy knew (perhaps the omission was intentional), yet I believe that when we look at stars the size of Sean Connery and John Turturro, both with very distinguished careers that comparison makes sense. When I see ‘Monk Soup’ (according to the reviewer) it is important to see the cast as it is. In that same stage, the shaping of Adso under William first by Christian Slater and now by Damian Hardung is also important, the movie makes that clear, whether the series will is presently unknown to me. It gives us how knowledge is seen and how some is optionally is wisdom but a lot is not, the presentation of evidence that gives rise to Bernardo Gui as the evil tool, first by F. Murray Abraham and now by Rupert Everett is equally important. And it is interesting that both sides have actors and stars that would be on equal footing. So why is the BBC version seen as ‘Monk Soup’? If I were to judge going by: ‘Episode 1: The Name of the Rose Series 1‘ then it would be that the Name of the Rose would be a great movie, optionally a great mini-series, but a TV series with seasons? Let’s not forget that the entire story plays over the time of around a week, so how are you setting that in multiple seasons? As I did not watch it I would speculate that we would be watching paint dry, making Monk soup a nice change of pace for the viewers.

In the end, I am not reflecting on the BBC series (not until I have seen them and I am curious), especially with this cast. My issue will become, where was the wisdom to do this story in series? Why not a mini-series of 3-4 episodes of 1-2 hours per episode, perhaps even merely one season all 8 episodes, the fact that the entire matter played over a week makes that an option, yet to set the stage of 60-90 minutes to cover a day at an abbey might make it long, slow and optionally dry. Abbeys were famous for an absence of wine and hookers, so whilst pharmacies and scrolls will not get the same result, it might have an impact on the people in the now (opposing those who were around in 1327).

In the end, I did not dislike the view of Lucy Mangan, yet the absence of any mention of the movie, the radio play and so on gives an incomplete view, a view absent of comparison, it was her choice and as such automatically a valid one, I merely would have taken a different look, hoping to give an optional clear view for all those curious to see it.

 

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