On a lark I signed us up to go see this movie called the Monk and the Gun at the Asian Society on Park here in NY. I don't actually remember where I actually heard about it - maybe email because I subscribe. Here's the trailer. It doesn't give too much away. The director is Pawo Choyning Dorji. He did a little setup before and then did a Q&A after. The movie has been making the festival circuit, premiered and maybe Telluride, and was long-listed for a foreign Oscar. It was the first ever entry from Bhutan. Pawo had done one movie before, the Lunana, the Yak in the Classroom, which I would like to see. 

So now that I've got all of the trailers out of the way. The experience of the movie was great. It was Friday night and I had to go into the city, and I don't like going out too much nowadays, with the severe sound sensitivity, etc. And I don't like spending too much money. Concerts are all like 100+ a ticket which I can afford, but why. Really, why. And then my hearing was so destroyed after seeing Redd Kross a few weeks ago. I've never had that happen before, but my ears were messed up something fierce afterwards. My wife sounded like a squeaky robot, and since then she's pointed out that I say "what" a lot and she has to repeat herself. So next time I see the doctor, I will mention this and see a specialist. In the meantime, I will reduce my exposure to noise - possibly by moving to Bhutan, and meditating in a monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas, far away from people that think consumerism, sports and fashion are "cool" and say "like" all the time 

After hearing about the movie, the first thing I did was look up Bhutan. And that's pretty much the first thing people have asked me when I've talked about the movie. Where is Bhutan? Bhutan reminds me a little bit of Andorra. It's this country that managed to retain it's sovereignity, despite - as Pawo pointed out - it's sandwiched between the world's most populous democracy (India) and the world's biggest communist nation. (China.) If you want to get to Bhutan, you head north from India until you hit the Himalayas. It's to the right of Nepal, and Bangladesh, straight north from the Bay of Bengal.  

Some interesting facts about Bhutan - they are famous for having a GHI - a Happiness Index, rather than a GNP. They were the last nation on earth to have internet and to open up to outside influence. They still don't have a lot of tourism and they don't let anyone climb their mountains and leave their parks garbage-strewn. Thus they are home to a few of the last unclimbed Himalayan peaks in the world. 72% of the country is covered in forest, and by law that needs to remain above 62%. They are the only carbon negative country in the world. They have universal free healthcare and education - which is taught in English. And they only transitioned from being a hereditary monarchy to being a democracy in 2008 – and that's what this movie is about. 

The movie begins with a slow burn. Many wide shots of the gorgeous rural landscape, and the movie moves as slow as the Bhutanese, before picking up. We see the locals getting a TV for the first time. We hear over the radio that they are going to try "mock elections" first, so that the Bhutanese citizens can learn how to vote. We see them having to learn to register (why would I know my birthday? Why would someone have such useless information?) and how the choices of democracy starting creating divisions where there was none before. And in the midst of all this, a Lama, or senior monk, asks for a gun. All the changes that are going on, call for it. Ominously. (I think that an Bhutanese citizen would know what he wants the gun for, but for us, it's a mystery.) To thicken the plot, a foreigner is introduced - an American gun collector. We see the American gun collector travel across country to meet with someone who has a collectible - an old civil war rifle. He wants to buy it for a ALOT of money but before he can get the cash, the old guy gives it away to a monk who takes it to the old Lama - what's he going to use it for? 

The movie crescendos with the voting, and the gathering of the full moon called for by the Lama, and we find out why he needs the gun. 

An expertly constructed screenplay, with some timely and pointed commentary on guns and modernity– it achieves it's intention. It's a perfect little vacation, that leaves you feeling refreshed and wondering - why are we in such a hurry to destroy ourselves in the pursuit of (the American version of) Happiness? 

So many good movies are up for awards it's really amazing. Hollywood, and the movie industry looked in the mirror and said, if we don't get our shit together we're going the way of radio, books written by white guys, and that Blockbuster that Quentin Tarantino used to work at. There are probably 3-5 movies that are worthy of Best Picture. Oppenheimer for sure, and Maestro - both of a type, labors of love by powerful Hollywood craftspeople with the charm and craft to pull off something of world-tilting scale and caliber. Barbie of course which gets an A for cultural phenomena, spectacle and and social commentary. And then there are the less well-endowed entries, that we are working our way through now. The Holdovers - seen, and liked. Can't believe I'm old enough to know when someone is knocking off the '60s and giving it a millennial bent, for cool's sake. It's like back in the 70's when they did The Sting and all of the guys supposedly from the 30's had wide 70's collars. All the kids the Holdovers looked like cool gen Z kids. Everyone sees other times through the lens of their time. We can't help it. We see other people through the lens of our own experience. Wbich was pretty much the theme of the movie, now that I think about it. The movie was solid, and touching - with a human question at its core – when we make assumptions about other people, well, again, maybe we're justing seeing them through our own inescapable lens. Compassion is the most noble of all human emotions and this holds true for all time and all peeps. 

We watched Anatomy of a Fall over the last two nights. It's nice that it got a nomination and it's a good story but is it a great movie? It's so intimate, in a way, that I can't believe anyone likes it but me. After hearing the premise, I wasn't sure that even I would find it interesting. But it had it's own procedural momentum and the narrative had it's own Columbia-paced irresistible force.We watched it over two nights. With the subject being a writer, and how a biographical-based writer might create their reality as if they were writing a book, the writerly-ness of the narrative made sense. I loved how the arc of the story brought it back to the blind son, because he was the only person equipped and knowledgeable enough to know both of the people involved, and to make a decision. It had to be him. In the end, it was his story, he was the writer. And justice really was really partially blind. As a personal side note, I really related to the Dad, and why he killed himself. Frustrated writer and suicidal codependent that I am. Took a few days to get over that. It was also interesting to see 

Too much information? 
I gotta step out and get a colonoscopy. 

So the colonoscopy went like shit. I didn't start the clean out early enough and the results were inconclusive. If I thought the movie was making me neurotic, I was absolutely losing it after I realized that I'd taken a day off, shit-canned a work meeting that I should be rights be the lead on, done all of this effort eating the SuTab, spent $1500 of money we don't have right now, etc. And all for nothing. I could blame it on the people - everything is really not-human right now and no one spoke to me in person about the procedure, but nowadays we really need to advocate for ourselves. That is, if we can get anyone on the phone. Otherwise, idk kids, maybe we do give our kids the hint that they'll have to get by without us and take a little walk out the 4th story window. 

Tried to go to see American Fiction last night, but I was having a tough time staying in the theatre. I really wish I could be a normal person, but literally what the fuck is wrong with people? I'm sitting in front of some weird boomer couple, kicking my chair like a 12 year old, stuffing her face with popcorn and then talking. Why do people go to the theatre to eat? Are we all children? What is going on? 

So we came home and watched Fremont - a cute little movie about an Afgan emigre, a former interpreter who works at a Chinese Fortune Cookie factory and ends up writing the future cookie messages. Shot in black and white, there's a bit of a deadpan Wes Anderson "we're-making-a-movie-here" sensibility to the framing and delivery. Really fun. Jeremy Allen White makes an appearance. It's not revealed which brand of underwear he has on.  

And last night we watched Past Lives. Again, a nice little movie. Again, with it's subject being a writer, there's a writerly-ness to it all. It's good that the Korean vibe has moved past John Woo style action to creating actually story. A nice movie. Not Best Picture material, but a I'll remember it for at least a month to 6 weeks. 

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