#the only way I can get through this case is to read Newman as dramatically fucking with everyone

[mayasaura]

I still hate everything the plot is doing with Newman, but calling Blackquill "Birdman" is based and I hope it becomes a Thing

[newmusickarl]

Album & EP Recommendations

Album of the Week: Grapefruit Season by James Vincent McMorrow

“I’m trying to be less prepared” stated Irish singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow this past week at his Rough Trade Nottingham In-Store show. This was mentioned in the context of McMorrow telling the audience of his decision to “wing it” for his first gig back post-COVID lockdown, rather than intensely rehearsing as he would previously. It turns out this new laidback outlook on life has been key to McMorrow coping better with the anxiety he has dealt with his whole life, but also to unlocking the songs that are to be found on his fifth album, Grapefruit Season.

During the Nottingham show to which I was lucky enough to attend, McMorrow made a point to say that this new album, his first in four years, is the one for which he is most proud, as he felt it was him being as open, honest and care-free as possible with his audience of listeners. This is evident almost immediately on second track Gone, which feels like the tone-setter for the rest of the album, centred on a striking refrain of “I give less f*cks than I used to, still give a lot of f*cks.” Discussing the track with Broadway World last year, McMorrow said:

“Gone is about the disintegration of relationships. In my case, the disintegration of my relationship with myself. No song or lyric I’ve ever written has come as close to this one at capturing how I feel about life - how I hear it, my fear of it, my obsession with it, my belligerent belief that I can control it, my quiet acknowledgment in the middle of the night that I will never control a single thing. And there’s nothing wrong with any of it. There’s absolute beauty in embracing the chaos and the decay.”

This freedom and “embracing the chaos” attitude have clearly helped McMorrow to hit a new creative peak, with many of the tracks on this new collection some of the very best he’s written to date. From the soulful guitar grooves of Planes In The Sky, the string-tinged piano ballad Poison To You and the infectious downbeat pop melody of Hollywood & Vine, McMorrow is constantly found in fine form. However, arguably the album’s finest moment comes in the form of Headlights, a gloriously produced, synth-driven track, which also features some wonderful gospel-like vocals and bluesy guitars towards the back end of the track. It’s quite dazzling, much like almost every track here.

James Vincent McMorrow has always been an immensely talented songwriter, but thanks to his moment of personal enlightenment he is sounding better than ever on this latest album. With unfiltered, sincere lyrics and inventive sonic explorations, Grapefruit Season makes for quite the audio journey.

Listen here

Montero by Lil Nas X

Rapper-singer Lil Nas X seems to cause controversy through simply being unapologetically himself and as a result, his debut album Montero has been one of the most hotly anticipated pop albums of 2021.

Having burst onto the scene with his breakout single Old Town Road, Lil Nas X has since delivered several massive singles in the build-up to this debut, with each one accompanied by a cinematic or visually extravagant music video. The reaction to these by some narrow-minded folk has been that of shock and outrage, with people seemingly appalled and astounded by Nas X’s openness with his own sexuality. Off the back of the bold, tongue-in-cheek video for the title track, some even suggested the singer was actively promoting Satanism through his work. This is all of course nonsense and if they were to listen to his debut album with an open mind, they would find that Lil Nas X is just a pop star that is willing to be refreshingly honest and candid about who he is and what he wants from life.

Both introspective and confessional, Nas X proves across every track on this record that he’s not only capable of writing great pop music, but he’s also not in the least bit afraid of showing his vulnerability to the listener either. This can be seen on recent single Sun Goes Down, where Nas X offers insight to his struggles growing up and fitting in, conflicted by his complexion, his homosexuality, and finding himself lonely and isolated as a result. There are several quite tender moments like this, including the brilliant guitar-driven rock ballad Life After Salem, however they are evenly balanced out with more upbeat moments like horn-backed single Industry Baby. There’s also some pitch-perfect collaborations to be found here with Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Miley Cyrus and, most notably, Elton John, all lending their talents at appropriate moments.

However arguably the strongest moment comes when Nas X dips his toe into some pop punk for the album’s sort-of centrepiece, Lost In The Citadel. With some stylish production, heartfelt lyrics and a killer mix of guitars and synths, it’s just a mightily well-crafted pop song.

Overall, this is a star-making first outing for Nas X, who was already well on his way to global success before this record had even landed. However now he is well on his way and importantly with this debut, he has shown he is not just a flash in the pan but a truly great popstar in the making.

Listen here

Silence by Alexis Taylor

And finally this week, Hot Chip frontman Alexis Taylor released his quite stunning fourth solo album, Silence, a record that comes from the other end of the spectrum to that of his electronic outfit. Built entirely around Alexis’ soulful vocals, a piano and some well-placed, understated string arrangements, there is no dance to be found here but rather a beautiful collection of ambient ballads.

The pick of these is the title track itself as well as Violence, the latter of which offers one of the most haunting tracks I’ve heard all year. Ending quite unceremoniously with the gentle crashing of the Wollongong Waves, if you need something peaceful and reflective this week then I can’t recommend this album enough.

Listen here

Tracks of the Week

Let’s Get The Party Started by Tom Morello & Bring Me The Horizon

Kicking off the singles front this week is a rock collaboration of gargantuan proportions as Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine teams up with Sheffield metal behemoths, Bring Me The Horizon. Built on goliath-sized riffs and an anthemic chorus, this one is a straight up rock banger that will have you moshing out in no time.

Listen here

U&ME by Alt-J

Elsewhere, Leeds-based trio Alt-J marked their return this week with the first single from their upcoming fourth album, The Dream, which is due to drop early next year. My initial thoughts are that this track feels a lot like more of the same, with Joe Newman’s quirky vocals backdropped by some folky harmonies and guitar melodies. It is not a dramatic comeback or shift in style, but fans of their sound will no doubt still enjoy this one.

Listen here

Hall of Mirrors by Let’s Eat Grandma

Also making their comeback this week are the brilliant duo of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, otherwise known as Let’s Eat Grandma. Hall of Mirrors is their first new music since their phenomenal 2018 sophomore album I’m All Ears, and sees the duo shift away from their experimental electronica over to the dreamy synth-pop melodies that they first started introducing on that wonderful second album.

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Godsend by Sundara Karma

Also returning with new music this week are Reading-based indie outfit Sundara Karma, who continue with the pop experimentation they started on last year’s Kill Me EP. With a heartbreaking chorus and some soaring instrumentation, it’s a comeback that’s both immensely moving but also quite triumphant.

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Earthlings by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis have also announced a new B-Sides & Rarities album this week. Due for release in October, it pulls together all their best lost gems from 2006 to 2020, including this stunning off-cut from Ghosteen that features gentle tribal chanting over some truly transcendent synths.

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FAKE by Lola Young

Singer-songwriter Lola Young continues to be one of my favourite discoveries of the year so far, with this new single seeing her channel the late-great Amy Winehouse for this soulful and bluesy ballad. If you’ve not heard Lola sing yet, just check this one out and I guarantee you’ll be blown away.

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I’m Sorry by Josef Salvat

Australian singer-songwriter Josef Salvat also released his brilliant new single I’m Sorry this week, a pulsating synth-driven track with a wonderful neon-glow and 80s-style pop shimmer.

Listen here

Set You Free by Kyla La Grange

And finally this week, Kyla La Grange made her long-awaited return to the music world, releasing this absolutely amazing and completely unique cover of the N-Trance classic, Set You Free. Also comes accompanied with a typically artistic and colourful video from La Grange, which you should find the time to check out.

Listen here

[angelofberlin2000]

This article is written by an obviously great fan of Keanu on occasion of the first JOHN WICK! Angelica Jade Bastien wrote another amazing article about Keanu Why Keanu Reeves Is Such an Unusual (and Great) Action Star on February 17, 2017. Her articles about Keanu are such a delight to read!

____________________________________________________

by The Editors

February  9, 2016  |  

The February issue of online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room is called "The Unloved," and is focused on making a case for a handful of unloved and overlooked movies. In addition to this excerpted essay from Angelica Jade Bastién about Keanu Reeves, this month's issue also has pieces on "Elizabethtown," "The Hobbit" trilogy, "Afternoon Delight," "Bellflower," "The Sweetest Thing," "Detention," and "The Man Who Knew Too Little." The illustration above is by Brianna Ashby.

You can read previous excerpts from the magazine here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or purchase a copy of their current issue, go here.

I. Transfixing Stillness

Keanu Reeves missed his calling as a silent film actor.

Critics and viewers alike refer to him as stiff, shallow, fake, always playing himself. These opinions have been repeated enough that they’re treated like fact. But this critique misses something. Keanu’s power lies not in transformation or the ability to wrap his mouth around clever word play. No, Keanu is at his most powerful when film is at its most elemental. Like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and the greatest of silent actors, Keanu has immense screen presence and a keen understanding of communicating story through physicality, albeit with a very modern inflection. A simple glance or curled lip can unfurl lengthy character history or upend expectations.

But this isn’t the commonly held image of Keanu as an actor. He’s been steadily working since the mid-1980s, his earliest defining role one-half of the titular loveable but dim-witted duo in "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure" (1989). Through a variety of high profile blockbusters, low-key dramas, and interested misfires in period pieces, Keanu is still stuck in the amber of our first impression; we don’t treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, he’s seen as a truly bad actor of little worth. No matter where you fall, you likely believe he isn’t worthy of critical study or even much respect for his craft. But this image—of odd blankness, affability but dim wit, worth only found in action films—ignores how purely cinematic his acting style is. For Keanu, acting isn’t a mode of transformation but a state of being. He transmutes story into flesh.

In the biography Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger recount Richard Burton’s bafflement, acting alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the splendidly overwrought "Cleopatra" (1963), over her seeming lack of technique: “ ‘She’s just not doing anything,’ he complained to [Joseph L.] Mankiewicz.” But the director pulled him aside and showed him footage “that took his breath away.” Burton, Kashner and Schoenberger explain, “was struck by Elizabeth’s absolute stillness,” and learned from her “how to tone down the theatrical performances for the camera’s cool eye.”

I’ve often wondered if Keanu’s costars ever think the same thing, since he has a similar transfixing stillness. Bret Easton Ellis once noted that Keanu has a “stillness, an awkwardness even, that is unusually empathetic. He is always hypnotic to watch.” When you watch him opposite actors with more pronounced tics—like Robert Downey Jr. in "A Scanner Darkly"—Reeves almost seems like he’s doing nothing. But still, your eyes gravitate toward him.

Because of Keanu’s style, the gap between his good and bad performances is a chasm. There is no middle ground for him (which perhaps explains some people’s distaste for his work). Keanu’s failed performances are those that push him toward a theatricality against his natural instincts. They also tend to be the kind of roles actors use to challenge or prove themselves—difficult accents, lush period pieces, reliance on verbal dexterity. The most damning performance in his career is that of Jonathan Harker, the fiancé to the legendary vampire’s object of obsession in Francis Ford Coppola’s fever dream take on Bram Stoker’s "Dracula." If you ever come across a list of the top acting miscasts, Keanu’s performance in the film is likely on it. The critical reaction to his role is so poor it has its own subsection on the film’s Wikipedia page. It’s hard to figure out which review is the most damning. Total Film writes dismissively that “[y]ou can visibly see Keanu attempting to not end every one of his lines with ‘dude.’” Entertainment Weekly said he appeared “out of his depth.” AskMen was especially vicious, writing, “It’s one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it’s quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins[...] [They] ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent, and abysmal instincts for all to see.”

Yes, in "Dracula" Keanu is overburdened by the period costumes, lost in the details of each frame as if he were another illusion, appearing as though he’s wandered onto the wrong set. This isn’t because he’s out of his depth. It’s because he’s fighting against his natural instincts as an actor. The harsh criticism of Keanu’s performance in Dracula seeks to dismiss his career as a whole. But Keanu wouldn’t have such a long-running, successful career without fulfilling a cultural need or tapping into something primal that draws our attention.

II. The Crossroads of Virile and Vulnerable

One critical consistency between Keanu’s virulent pans and more beloved roles (think of the tender-hearted hustler in 1991’s "My Own Private Idaho") is the common refrain that Keanu always “just plays himself.” The harsh ring of “just” implies a lack of craft and worth as an actor. The statement also assumes we truly know the personalities of stars. We can rattle off details of Keanu’s tragedies during the 1990s (stillborn child, death of his girlfriend eighteen months later), find plenty of platitudes about his kindness, and get a narrow view of his personality through interviews. The act of thinking we know a star as high-profile as Keanu isn’t novel, especially in the age of never ending press cycles and paparazzi. What’s more fascinating, though, is what the “playing himself” criticism says about Keanu as an actor.

Critics and audiences alike have a warped view of the history of acting, as if “true” cinematic acting began with the deification of Marlon Brando, followed by the 1970s glory days of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Each of these actors pronouncedly transform themselves from role to role. They take on various accents with panache, layer on idiosyncrasies, whittle their bodies down or bulk themselves up. A character is a costume to put on and never take off until the last camera rolls. It isn’t a coincidence that Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey’s recent renaissances and newfound respect both involved dramatic weight loss. Keanu is one of the few high-profile modern actors to not go for willful physical transformation or uglify himself for gravitas. If you’re not “transforming” as an actor, there is a belief that you’re doing something wrong. This line of thinking harkens back to the idea that we must suffer for our art. But Keanu is more powerful than actors who rely on physical transformation as shorthand for depth, because he taps into something much more primal and elusive: the truth.

The first time we see Keanu as FBI Agent Johnny Utah in the beloved surfer-crime drama "Point Break" (1991), he sits on the hood of a car seemingly unperturbed by the rain pouring down on him. It takes a moment to recognize the shotgun that sits in his lap. His hair slick. His tight black shirt and jeans clinging to his impressive body. The camera holds close to his lips as he unfurls a piece of gum and puts it into his mouth, and then we see a sequence of him blasting through a gun course at Quantico. This introduction gives rise to the kind of action star Keanu grows into, much different than his 1980s predecessors who tended to be powered by an unerring confidence and machismo. Their emotional landscapes weren’t as developed as their biceps. The opening of "Point Break" illustrates how Keanu’s relationship with the camera informs his onscreen masculinity. He carries himself with a supple vulnerability, at times even a passivity, that seems at odds with the expectations for an action star.

I’ve found myself attracted to Keanu’s presence because of the way he marries typically masculine and feminine qualities. He’s both intense and vulnerable, kind and tough, honest and mysterious. Keanu, of course, isn’t the first star to exist at the crossroads of virile and vulnerable. Actors like James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman embody a similar alchemy that have drawn women (and men) to them. But these actors often seem to fight against the lustful gaze of the camera, while Keanu supplants himself to it. Where they seem cynical, disinterested, or too wounded as a romantic lead, Keanu is utterly open.

In "Point Break," he’s a hotshot with a gun and a badge. But he’s also an object of lust for the camera (and audience), with a disarmingly open smile. Furthermore, without the help of a woman—the short-haired pixie vixen surfer Tyler (Lori Petty)—he wouldn’t be able to integrate himself into the gang of robbers/surfers led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). This artful dynamic—a woman of greater skill guiding a passive man into a world beyond his imagination—develops even further in "The Matrix" (1999). Some of this, of course, exists on a plot level. But Keanu tends to let his scene partners take the lead, becoming almost a tabula rasa on which they (and we) can project our ideas of what it means to be a hero, a man, a modern action star.

III. Modern Loneliness

"Constantine" (2005) has a lot working against it. As an adaptation of the Hellblazer comics from Vertigo, it isn’t memorable. But as a continuation of Keanu’s thematic exploration of loneliness as an actor, it is. "Constantine" casts off most of the comics’ canon for the screen. Gone is the London setting, the character’s British background. The cynicism, chain smoking, and dark humor remain, even though Keanu (who is of Chinese, Hawaiian, and English descent) looks nothing like the blonde-haired comic character. Searching for emotional truth in a fantasy comic adaptation involving a working class magician who can see angels and demons and toys with the black arts seems like a fool’s errand. But sometimes you find grace in unlikely places. Amongst CGI demons, Tilda Swinton’s androgynous take on the archangel Gabriel, and lots of hellfire, Keanu somehow provides a trenchant take on the burden of loneliness in the big city.

(When looking closer at Keanu’s career, loneliness comes into focus as a thematic preoccupation. He’s often disconnected from the world around him, forging relationships only with intense effort or by accident. While he’s a great romantic lead—more so in films where romance isn’t the main plotline—I think he’s even better suited to moments when he’s wading through the cold, dark waters of spiritual isolation.)

The loneliness that comes with the modern metropolis—like Los Angeles, where Constantine resides—has a different tenor than loneliness anywhere else. It’s magnified to such a great degree in part because of the bizarre effects of population density. Everyone handles loneliness differently. Many, like Constantine, take to trying on addictions and seeing which fit. And addiction aside, most people dealing with loneliness—including myself—acquire weird habits to fill the darkness. A small moment about thirty minutes into "Constantine" (just before he meets Rachel Weisz’ earnest, Catholic cop who has yet to realize she’s being swept up in a battle between heaven and hell) illustrates the idiosyncrasies that come with loneliness.

Constantine sits alone under the harsh fluorescent lights of his apartment, doing what he does best—slow self-destruction at the hands of smoking and alcohol. A spider as sickly as the peeling paint on his walls tumbles across the table. He puts the spider under an empty glass, watching it for a few moments with dull curiosity as it makes sense of its tiny, glass prison. He blows some cigarette smoke into the glass, but keeps the spider trapped. “Welcome to my life,” he remarks. It’s a series of small gestures only the lonely think of, then actually go through with. Enacted by other movie stars, this moment could come across as maudlin or empty. But the great beauty of Keanu’s skill makes the short scene at once painfully earnest, chillingly lonely, and aching with self-pity.

"Constantine" taps into a lot of what makes Keanu sincerely watchable and an actor of surprising depth. An emotional truthfulness? Check. Strong physicality? Just watch the way he plays with a pack of cigarettes or curls his body when he has a coughing fit. Interesting handling of modern masculinity? It’s all there, even if the film isn’t always aware of it. And nine years later, Keanu would finally find a vehicle that perfectly amplifies his strengths.

IV. Keanu Reeves, Action Star (A Certain Baggage)

"John Wick" (2014) stars Keanu as the titular former assassin, so feared he gained the nickname Baba Yaga (The Boogeyman). From the moment we see Keanu as John Wick, he carries himself like he’s wounded. These psychological wounds eventually give way to physical ones. His peaceful retirement is first interrupted by the death of his wife, then his old life creeping back in. Before her death, his wife arranged for him to receive an adorable puppy named Daisy, meant to help him grieve, and Wick gradually warms up to the dog. Unfortunately, he crosses paths with Iosef (Alfie Allen), the obnoxious son of a powerful mob boss/former associate. Maybe if Iosef knew of Wick’s reputation, he wouldn’t have brutally beaten Wick, killed Daisy, and stolen his 1969 Mustang. This crime leads Wick on a quest for revenge through a deadly world full of the ghosts of his past profession. "John Wick" synthesizes Keanu’s greatness—his central, thematic loneliness; his command of physicality and stillness; and his peculiarly vulnerable masculinity.

On the surface, "John Wick" is a simple, classic story of revenge with some of the most impressive world-building I’ve seen in years. Beyond that, though, it metatextually capitalizes on the story arc of Keanu Reeves, Action Star, regaining his title in the genre. He sells every punch given or received, every thrown knife, every ounce of blood spilled. There is weight to the action in the film. You see the toll it takes on his body and, at times, a minute shift of his expression acknowledging how age affects performance. When he’s already wounded and gets into a fight for his life with Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), we feel it.

Wick is cut from the same cloth as Alain Delon’s assassin in "Le Samourai" (1969), whose cool stoicism and impressively-styled badassery yields a heavy influence. But while Delon and his kin seem sharp and cold, like cut glass, Wick is powered by something altogether different—longing, loss, connection. In Keanu’s hands, Wick isn’t void of emotion—or struggling with its first pangs—but brimming with it.

The film frames Wick as mythic. His face moves from mournful to vengeful at a clip. His eyes lock with a man just as he stabs him in the gut until he dies, while lights the color of cotton candy blue and magenta shift the architecture of his face to something fearsome. Keanu tells Wick’s story through his body—the way he wears a suit and his wedding ring, the cool determination in his eyes, the flash of warmth in a brief scene with Addy (Bridget Regan), the slackness in his face when he sees Daisy dead. This is a man who has nothing to lose, who carries the weight of his history with each step—and “his” history here is both Wick’s and Keanu’s. Stars like Keanu bring a certain baggage with them—the roles we’ve loved, the bitter taste of when they’ve failed us, half-remembered gossip. This context informs "John Wick."

There are actors we admire, and then there are the stars we love. The best of them get under our skin, becoming a part of our lives, following us through tragedies and triumphs. Keanu is one of those stars for me because of the sheer joy watching him brings. But there’s also the joy for the medium that radiates off him. Actors like Keanu—who find beauty in stillness—are why film was created in the first place. It’s a medium that can show us the truth of the human condition in a way no other form can. Keanu often taps into the truth of the shifting boundaries of modern masculinity, of how our bodies tell as much of a story as what we say. "John Wick" is as much a slick revenge flick as a fairytale. Keanu Reeves is back, the film seems to be whispering to us.

But was he ever gone in the first place?  

[weekendwarriorblog]

Weekend Warrior Extra: What to Watch Over the Holidays!

Since this is the last column of the year, and honestly, I have no idea if I’ll be able to continue this into another year, I’m going to change things up a little. I’m not even sure if anyone is reading anything I write about repertory or limited releases anyway, so we’ll see how I feel about continuing to write all that stuff for free.

1917 (Universal)

One of my favorite movies of the year is Sam Mendes’ absolutely brilliant World War I epic, following the journey of two soldiers, played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, as they’re sent on a mission to the frontlines to deliver a message to hold off an attack on the Germans. I already reviewed the movie for ComingSoon.net, so I won’t say too much more about it, but it is a movie that works well on repeat viewings just because every aspect of the filmmaking is so masterful, particularly the decision to make the film a single shot. There’s a lot to talk about the technical aspects of the film from Roger Deakins’ cinematography to the breath-taking production design and gorgeous score by Thomas Newman, but I want to draw special attention to the screenplay by Mendes with Kristy

Wilson-Cairns, which I feel is being overlooked in favor of the technicality of the film, maybe since there are so many stretches without dialogue. Don’t let that fool you. It takes a great deal of research and description in a screenplay to lead to a movie this good, and the writing that forms the backbone of Mendes’ latest and greatest should not be ignored. 1917is easily one of the year’s best film, and though it only opens in New York and L.A. on Christmas Day, it will be nationwide on January 10.

KNIVES OUT (Lionsgate)

I also reviewed Rian Johnson’s comedic whodunnit right here, so I don’t have a ton more to say about it, but I’m so happy that it’s continued to do well since opening over Thanksgiving. If you haven’t seen it and want a fun couple hours at the movies, Johnson’s movie can provide that, but it’s also quite a brilliant twist on the ensemble whodunnit that I’ve generally been a fan of as a kid, and the movie definitely stands up to repeat viewings.

BOMBSHELL (Lionsgate)

I also highly recommend Jay Roach’s “workplace drama,” which is about the Fox News sex scandals, mainly surrounding the news corp’s founder Roger Ailes, as played by John Lithgow. The movie stars Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as “Kayla Pospisil,” as a composite character, the story following the three FOX News employees as they navigate the difficult Venn Diagram of politics and sexuality (or sexualization). Most of the events take place around the 2016 Presidential Election and Donald Trump’s grilling by Kelly about his statements about women, something that backfires for the anchor. At the same time, Carlson is moved to an afternoon slot, and she decides to fight back against Aisles’ demotion (and her subsequent firing) by getting lawyers and accusing Aisles of sexual harassment. As we learn from Robbie’s character, Aisles gets up to much worse, and I loved what her character brought to the mix, particularly her relationship with Kate McKinnon’s character. I’m thinking the movie hasn’t gotten nearly as much traction with critics because it’s written and directed by men, in the former case, Charles Randolph, the Oscar-winning writer of The Big Short, but we have to give some credit to the amazing female cast assembled and what they were able to bring to the material to make the film far less dreary than it might have been despite the yucky nature of the Fox News world. I also think that attention should be paid to John Lithgow’s performance as Ailes, which is a lot more than a good make-up job. Lithgow is such a nice person so for him to play such an oily, slimy character so well makes me think he shouldn’t be overlooked in the awards conversation. This is now playing in about 1,500 theaters across the country, and hopefully, it will be in even more over the coming weeks.

LITTLE WOMEN (Sony)

Sort of related to Bombshell in that it explores women’s issues from a very different standpoint, that of Louisa May Alcott’s classic piece of coming-of-age literature set post-Civil War. Greta Gerwig ably tackles far more difficult material for her second feature as a filmmaker, proving that Lady Bird was no fluke. It reunites Gerwig with that film’s Oscar-nominated star, Saoirse Ronan, playing Jo March, the writer who is trying to make her way in life and through her career as a writer.  I’m not a huge fan of the source material but Gerwig and Ronan have created such a marvelous bundle of joy in this film that follows the journey of the four March girls, but does so in a non-linear way that forces to pay close attention. Ronan is wonderful, as always, but I was equally and maybe even more impressed by Florence Pugh, who plays the super-dramatic Amy in a way that makes her far more convincing as the younger and older versions of her character than some of the other young actresses.  I think Emma Watson as Meg might be somewhat the weak link of the movie but she isn’t terrible and I did enjoy some of her scenes. Gerwig’s movie is rounded out by wonderful performances from the likes of Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet (fantastic as Theodore Lawrence), Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts and others.  Actually, I really loved all of the interactions between Chalamet, Ronan and Pugh, three fantastic actors who I’m sure we’ll continue to see more great things from over the next few decades. I haven’t seen enough of the adaptations of Alcott’s book to really know how this stands up, but it’s the first time I really was interested in these characters and their story, and that’s quite an achievement.

CLEMENCY (NEON)

Although Warner Bros’ JUST MERCY (see below) is getting a ton more attention and marketing, personally I preferred Chinonye Chukwu’s CLEMENCY (NEON), which premiered at Sundance way back in March but just had a much more lasting impact. It stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden where the pressures of death row executions have started to take a toll on her personal life, especially with the impending execution of Aldis Hodge’s Death Row inmate, who claims his innocence. This is a really tough drama to watch at times, but with such amazing performances by Woodard and Hodge that it pulls you in and keeps you riveted to what might happen next. I’m a little bummed that Chukwu isn’t getting more attention for her brilliant work writing and directing the film vs. other films like the recent Queen and Slim.  She’s a great filmmaker and I can’t wait to see her next film, A Taste of Power.

UNCUT GEMS (A24)

I’m not as big a fan of the works of Ben and Josh Safdie as many of my fellow critics are, but this crime-comedy (of sorts?) starring Adam Sandler, helped make me see their crazy mode of filmmaking in a new way. While I recommend this with reservations, I do think that Sandler’s role in the movie as Howard Ratner, a New York jeweler merchant to the stars, could help the Safdies break out to a new audience as they certainly seemed to have refined their mode of filmmaking with Uncut Gems, and the mix of characters and situations really make the movie something unlike anything else you’re likely to see this year.  The gist of the story is that Howard gets his hands on a valuable gem from Africa and that seems to change his luck as a chronic gambler where everything seems to be going right for him… until it doesn’t.  Much of the story involves him trying to get the rock back from basketball player evin Garnett (played by himself) who borrows the valuable gem and then won’t give it back.  All-in-all, it’s a pretty entertaining film with an absolutely amazing last act that will expand nationwide on Christmas Day.

THE TWO POPES (Netflix)

In case you don’t want to go out in the cold this week, you can also stay home and watch some of the great films now on Netflix. While I assume you’ve already seen The Irishmanand Marriage Story, I hope you’ll also check out this wonderful two-hander written by  Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour), which explores the relationship between Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and his successor Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce), as they try to get along even though they don’t see eye-to-eye on how the Catholic Church should be won. I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed this movie, but it reminded of a little-seen 2016 movie called The Journey, a two-hander starring Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney as two sides of the war in Northern Ireland trying to come to an accord while driving to the airport from talks that have fallen apart.  I’ve long been a fan of Pryce but playing the Argentine cardinal who would become Pope is a fantastic role that allows him to show so much more depth as an actor, but we also learn a lot about Pope Francis’ past and the regrets he has about his involvement with the government’s anti-religious actions. Hopkins is also great, and for a movie that’s mainly two men talking, it’s perfectly captivating.

Although it’s been out for a while now and has already been losing theaters, I also recommend checking out Marielle Heller’s It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers, if it’s still playing anywhere near you, because it’s a really wonderful story about a journalist whose spotlight of Mr. Rogers turned into a way that he can find redemption in his own family issues.

I’ve actually seen a lot of the other movies opening in limited release this weekend, including the doc WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL  (Juno Films), which opens at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday. If you’re even remotely interested in film criticism and its origins through the story of one of the most respected and beloved critics, you definitely should check this one out. I haven’t seen it since Doc-NYC back in 2018

As mentioned in my write-up of Clemency above, I wasn’t nearly as crazy about Destin Daniel Cretton’s JUST MERCY (Warner Bros.), which is a different movie with similar elements, this one starring Michael B. Jordon as Bryan Stevenson, a young civil rights attorney who is trying to free a wrongly-convicted Death Row inmate, played by Jamie Foxx. Cretton’s good luck charm Brie Larson (they first teamed for Short Term 12) is also in the movie, but I don’t feel she’s nearly as good, and there was just something about the movie that really didn’t click with me. Even so, it will also be nationwide on January 10 and maybe I’ll try to give it another chance before then.

I was semi-excited about Donnie Yen’s return in the title role of Wilson Yip’s grand finale, IP MAN 4: THE FINALE (Go USA Films), which has the martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee (and whose first name, I only just realized, is “Man”) comes to San Francisco in the late ‘60s to back up his pupil’s desire to teach non-Chinese martial arts. Along the way, he gets into issues with the local martial arts masters as well as the Marines, who believe that Japanese judo is the only proper martial art. As with some of the other movies in the series, this one is mainly good for Yen’s performance and his martial arts scenes, although Kwok-Kwan Chan is also excellent as Bruce Lee in one particularly good fight scene, and there are a few others as well. My main issue with this, as with may martial arts film from China, is that the American actors are written terribly and the performances they’re giving (particularly by regular offender Scott Adkns) are just terrible. It’s a classic case of over-villifying the non-Asian characters to the point of them being a joke, and there are few surprises about who is going to win in most fights. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the other chapters, and martial arts fans will probably like parts of this, but it’s not a particularly good movie when all is said and done.

A movie I liked quite a bit more is François Girard’s historical drama THE SONG OF NAMES (Sony Pictures Classics), produced by Robert Lantos (Barney’s Version), another terrific Canadian film that deals with Jewish issues. It stars Tim Roth as Martin Simmonds, a young British man whose family took in a Polish Jew named Dovidl, who was also a violin virtuoso, to live with them just before the start of WWII. The night of Dovidl’s anticipated 1951 live concert debut in London, he vanishes, and years later, Martin, starts to track down his old friend to find what happened to him. It’s a pretty amazing movie, partially due to Roth’s performance, but also the two young actors playing Martin and Dovidl, since so much happens in the past. Like much of Sony Classics’ output, this will probably appeal more towards older audiences, but it’s another original story set during the period of the Holocaust that puts its own spin on the times with the musical element, which plays such a large part in the film. (Clive Owen plays the older Dovidl, but it’s a fairly small role compared to the others.)

I’m very excited that The 21st Annual Animation Show of Shows (ACME Filmworks)is returning to the Quad Cinema on Christmas Day, and while I was hoping to write something more extended about this, I just haven’t had the time. There’s an amazing line-up of films from a lot of different countries including Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Belgium and more, but there’s also a couple doc shorts about the filmmakers among the films. The Czech Republic film Daughterwas recently included on the Oscar shortlist for animated shorts, but otherwise, it’s a fairly strange mix of films, including the very disturbing Kids.

I haven’t seen Wayman Boone’s horror film Apparition (Vertical Entertainment), starring Mena Suvari and Kevin Pollak, but apparently, it’s another horror movie involving an APP that connects to the user to the dead. It’ll open this Friday.

A few other things on Netflix over the next couple weeks including John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch special, which looks like more quirky fun from one of my favorite stand-up comics. That opens on Christmas Eve i.e. today, while a couple new series begin on Netflix on New Year’s Day, The Messiah(starring the wonderful Michelle Monaghan) and Spinning Out.

I decided to take a much-needed break from the repertory stuff this week, but we’ll see what happens with that going into the New Year, and I’ll have my annual Top 25 to share with you all next week!

[theconservativebrief]

“This is a completely false allegation.”

That’s what said Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said in a statement on Monday after an allegation surfaced that he had attempted to rape a woman named Christine Blasey Ford decades ago when they were both in high school.

“I have never done anything like what the accuser describes — to her or to anyone,” he said. “Because this never happened, I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself.”

This accusation has not been fully investigated, so we don’t yet know what happened for sure. But Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation does not, based on what I’ve researched, have the characteristics of a false rape accusation. I would know. I’ve studied hundreds of them.

A few years ago, I wrote an article on false rape accusations after becoming obsessed with the issue and how frequently it’s used as a cudgel when allegations of sexual misconduct come out. I ended up spending months reading hundreds of accounts of false accusations in newspapers and magazines, scientific and government studies, and in the database of the US National Registry of Exonerations, which has documented every exoneration in the United States since 1989.

I worked to find the nuggets of useful information in flawed research, like sociology professor Eugene Kanin’s 1994 study, which was based on uncorroborated judgments of police officers as to whether a report was true or false, as well as government studies intended for other purposes, which sometimes dealt with cases of false rape accusation in a sidebar. Through this painstaking process, I became very familiar with what a false report of rape tends to look like. I’m confident that Ford’s allegations do not fit this profile.

To briefly recap Ford’s allegations: She says that one evening when she was about 15 she was at a small party in suburban Maryland. She left the group to go upstairs to the bathroom. She says that Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, who were 17, caught her on the way and Kavanaugh pushed her into a bedroom.

There, in her words: “Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with [Judge], who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.” She says that Kavanaugh also groped her over her clothes and ground his body against hers. At last, she says, Judge jumped onto Kavanaugh so hard he toppled him and Ford escaped.

Again, Kavanaugh denies that any of this happened. When asked about the allegations, Mark Judge, who was implicated in the alleged assault, told the Weekly Standard, “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”

Studies have found that false accusations are quite rare, but when they do happen, they tend to share several important characteristics. To anyone familiar with false rape accusations, the striking thing about this story is that it’s so undramatic. False stories typically have a lurid quality, often involving bizarre forms of cruelty that don’t always strictly make sense.

A good example is the University of Virginia student who accused several fraternity brothers of gang rape in a 2015 Rolling Stone article that was later proved to be fabricated. In the article, the accuser said that her attacker jumped her and crashed them both through a glass table to the floor, where he and six other men proceeded to rape her on the broken glass for three hours while calling her “it” and behaving with inhuman brutality.

In another famous case, a stripper hired to dance at a party at Duke falsely accused members of the lacrosse team of rape. In her story, the accuser described being suspended from a ceiling in the bathroom while three men attacked her at once. In another version of her story, she said she had been raped by 20 white men.

The reason for this dramatizing tendency is clear. There’s no point in making up a rape story that may cause people to minimize the seriousness of the allegation or make them think, “So what?” It’s crucial to a false accuser to tell a story so horrific that no normal person could fail to be moved.

In Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh, we have none of this. The event described feels common. Ford emphasizes that both Kavanaugh and Judge seemed to have no inkling of the seriousness of what they’re doing, and the story ends with the slapstick note of Judge knocking them all into an ungainly heap.

She alleges that she feared Kavanaugh might kill her through drunken clumsiness, not through savagery. This is not a story crafted to earn sympathy or destroy someone’s character. This is a story someone tells because it’s most likely true.

Additionally, Ford herself — a married professor who teaches part-time at Stanford — doesn’t fit the profile of a false accuser. Adults who make false accusations generally either have a criminal history or suffer from a specific type of mental illness known as a factitious disorder: a personality disorder related to Munchausen syndrome that compels them to say they’ve been assaulted in dramatic ways.

Note that no study points to mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder being associated with false reports of rape. This distinction is crucially important, since having mental illness is strongly correlated with being a victim of rape.

It is comparatively common for teenagers to make false accusations, typically as an alibi to get out of trouble. These cases can end tragically, as in the story of the 14-year-old girl with cognitive deficits caught in a compromising position with a boy by her mother, who assumed she’d been raped. The panicked girl agreed to the false accusation and only confessed her lie after the boy was already in prison.

Ford’s situation, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different. It is not common for adults to falsely report that they were raped many years after the accusation. In my research I didn’t come across a single verified example of this. So — counterintuitively for many people — if Ford had reported the assault when it happened, there would be far more reason to suspect it was a lie.

Finally, while Ford’s alleged story of drunken wrestling sounds nothing like a false rape accusation, it does sound exactly like millions of real attempted rapes. It’s such a common story that it’s likely happening to many people as you read this sentence.

In fact, when defenders of Kavanaugh aren’t insisting Ford is a liar, they’re energetically arguing that what Kavanaugh is accused of is so normal it doesn’t matter. If we ever hope to live in a world where it isn’t normal, we cannot continue to elevate alleged sex offenders to the highest positions in our society.

Sandra Newman is the author of several books, including the novels The Country of Ice Cream Star and The Heavens, forthcoming from Grove Atlantic/Granta in February 2019. She has written for the Guardian, the Atlantic, Aeon, Quartz, and Slate, among other publications.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Original Source -> I’ve studied false rape claims. The accusation against Kavanaugh doesn’t fit the profile.

via The Conservative Brief

[sherristockman]

Fasting — A Powerful Metabolic Intervention That Can Dramatically Boost Your Health Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola I hope you all are recovering well from a well deserved holiday weekend in the U.S. I am beyond excited to introduce you to a remarkable individual who inspired me to implement what I believe is the most powerful metabolic health intervention you can undergo. Although it is the cure for over 80% of the population that has insulin resistance it is also helpful for all of us. So much so that I have committed to monthly five day fasts and as you read this I am in the third day of a five day fast. In this interview, George Newman, whom I met while lecturing at a low carb conference in San Diego this past summer, discusses many important details of: multiple day water fasts. Newman has no formal health training. He's an engineer, but he really knows his stuff and talking to him inspired me to re-evaluate my stance on extended water fasting, which I didn’t think was necessary in the absence of obesity, diabetes or some other specific health challenge such as cancer. “I've had a long and interesting health journey,” Newman says. “Thirteen years ago, I ended up with atrial fibrillation (AFib). In my case, it was brought on by excessive or chronic fitness … At that point I was participating in high altitude long distance races. I was doing fairly intense training. For example, the Pikes Peak Ascent race, which would start out at 6,300 feet and go to 14,100 feet over 13 miles. It was after a training run that I got my first AFib episode … I had a parasympathetic response, a vagal trigger to AFib, which means that my system … got very slow for a couple of days and that slowness [became] a trigger for my AFib. The short story of that is I managed, after a two-and-a-half-month episode, to create a regimen for myself that includes a lot of high-dose magnesium, which has kept me relatively in rhythm for most of that time. I did detrain. I don't do chronic long distance endurance exercise anymore. I am still fit (with rock climbing, alpine skiing, HIIT and bodyweight exercise) but I've taken that out of my routine.” Addressing AFib As a result of this incident, and refusing to accept the conventional medical wisdom that advocates taking medication or undergoing cardiac ablation surgery, he began researching how to optimize his health. AFib is a condition where there’s increased or aberrant electrical activity in the atrium, the smaller chamber of the heart. Essentially, the chamber contracts erratically and isn't able to sync with the ventricles in a proper 1-to-1 ratio. AFib is a fairly common problem among endurance athletes. While there’s a genetic component, endurance exercise raises your risk by putting undue stress on your heart. Your heart is actually designed to work very hard in short spurts, not continuously for long periods of time. That said, extreme athletes are still a relatively small subset of people who get AFib. Most are older and have other comorbidities. Magnesium Is Extremely Important for Optimal Heart Health As mentioned, magnesium is a supplement Newman now takes daily, and in very high amounts. At one point he was taking up to 5.5 grams of elemental magnesium a day. These days, he’s typically taking 1.5 grams daily, which is still a far cry from the recommended dietary allowance of 400 mg per day. It’s rather difficult to overdose on magnesium, though, as it has a laxative effect. If you take more than your body needs, it’ll just come out the other end. The fact he was able to tolerate over 5 grams a day without getting diarrhea also suggests he was sorely depleted. It’s worth noting that intense exercise does deplete magnesium, so if you exercise a lot, you need more magnesium than you would if you were inactive. “The total body store of magnesium is about 30 grams, including the bones and everything,” he says. “Why I wasn't hanging on [to the magnesium] I've never quite figured out. Whatever it is, I have done [high-dose intervals] several times. When I first figured out my routine of high magnesium and detraining, I had a period of two years without an AFib event and I thought, ‘Oh, I've had reverse remodeling, I'm cured and I don't need these supplements.’ So, I quit taking them. Within 24, 48 hours, I was in AFib. I'm like, ‘OK, I don't need to repeat that,’ and so I haven't intentionally [stopped taking magnesium] since. I don't want to give people the impression that this is an easy thing to do. It worked for me and it's probably worth trying, but it is fairly rare that you can do this.” While Newman’s AFib remission strategy of magnesium and detraining works very well, it is not 100 percent perfect. In addition to magnesium, Newman does use a prescribed medication, flecainide, on-demand to convert himself into normal rhythm when the magnesium strategy fails. In the last 4.5 years, he’s gone into AFib four times for a total of about five hours out of rhythm. For those with compromised kidney function, electrolyte supplementation may need to be avoided altogether. In those with normal kidney function, excess electrolytes will be excreted. Electromagnetic Field Exposure Can Trigger AFib On a side note, aside from chronic overexercise and magnesium deficiency, exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) can also increase your risk of AFib. This effect has been well-documented, and includes not only cellphones and Wi-Fi but also the electric wiring in your walls. Ideally, you need to sleep in an EMF-free environment, especially if you have AFib. The simplest way to do that is to shut down the electricity to your bedroom, assuming your bedroom isn't surrounded by other rooms adjacent to it, in which case you would need to actually measure the electric fields. Interestingly, one potential reason why Newman does not appear to be affected by EMF may well have to do with his magnesium loading. We know from Dr. Martin Pall’s work that EMF toxicity is mitigated through your voltage-gated calcium channels. Since magnesium is a natural calcium channel blocker, it helps block the adverse effects of EMF. Still, the fact that you don’t notice a sensitivity to EMF does not mean it’s not causing some kind of damage. Research has shown damage occurs whether the person is sensitive enough to feel it or not. You May Need More Magnesium Than You Think In George’s case, it appears his AFib was triggered by low magnesium caused by endurance exercise, which subsequently upset his potassium-to-magnesium balance. By taking supplemental magnesium, his potassium level also balanced out. To determine your magnesium level you could do an erythrocyte red blood cell (RBC) magnesium test. “Dr. Caroline Dean does a lot of work with magnesium. Looking at the RBC magnesium levels, she suggests, at the high end of normal, 6 to 6.5 mg/dL as a good range. The first time I ever tested, before I had backed off [magnesium] a little bit was 7.8, and a more recent test was around 7.5 mg/dL.” I too took this test recently for the first time. At the time, I was taking over 1 gram of magnesium per day. Surprisingly, my RBC magnesium was only 3.5, which is below average. It didn't make any sense and, like Newman, I’m presently at a loss as to why my level would be so low when I’m taking such a high dosage. “I know that there are people in my AFib world and there are some people that are very sensitive to magnesium levels. One of my friends was taking intermuscular magnesium and also doing IV magnesium for quite a while to keep his levels up. I know there are people that do this,” Newman says. “Herbert Mansmann, a large man [and] Type 2 diabetic, spent the latter part of his life as a retired pathologist studying magnesium. There are papers written by him and at one point he took 20 grams a day for a year. He was able to actually mitigate the diabetic neuropathy symptoms in his legs by doing that. It was his work that [made me] realize I'm probably not going to have a problem overdosing on [magnesium].” The Benefits of Magnesium Bicarbonate In the early ‘90s, Australian ranchers observed that sheep drinking from a particular spring had better health outcomes. When they tested the water, they found it was relatively high in magnesium bicarbonate. Following in the footsteps of some of George’s AFib acquaintances, I started making a magnesium water drink. By adding milk of magnesia to chilled carbonated water, you create magnesium bicarbonate.1 I used a SodaStream to create the carbonated water rather than buying bottled soda water, and bought additive-free magnesium hydroxide, commonly known as milk of magnesia. Most of the magnesium hydroxide sold contains additives. You can also use magnesium acetate. The reason you have to do this exotic preparation is because magnesium bicarbonate is not available in powder or pill form. It must be created through this chemical reaction. Now, it does not taste very good, and after discussing the matter with Tyler LeBaron, a chemist with the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation, I learned there’s really nothing special about magnesium bicarbonate per se. As long as you're getting the ionic magnesium and the carbonate, you're going to get the benefits. So, I now take potassium bicarbonate on a nightly basis instead. This provides the beneficial carbonate ions, and provides a little alkalization as well. I’m going to experiment with the potassium bicarbonate in combination with high-dose magnesium while monitoring my magnesium level monthly to see if I can improve my level this way. “Another way you can get it is [by using] magnesium acetate. You can do that, again, with milk of magnesia, and I use organic apple cider vinegar in a ratio of 2-to-7 (two parts milk of magnesia to seven parts vinegar). That creates magnesium acetate, which from what I understand converts to magnesium bicarbonate in the body. That's a quick reaction. The magnesium bicarbonate reaction with carbonated water does take a while,” Newman says. “There's lots of different types of magnesium and people talk about what's best. For my primary purpose, which is the AFib, in my case any magnesium works. I can take magnesium oxide, I can take citrate, bicentate, you name it, it doesn't matter. I just need to take it, take it regularly and take it in sufficient quantities.” Fasting — A Powerful Metabolic Therapy Newman has really enlightened and motivated me by example about the profound benefits of water fasting, even when you do not have a weight or insulin problem. With a fasting insulin level of less than 2, I really did not think fasting would benefit me. Newman, however, inspired me to revisit this topic, and thanks to our discussions, I now fast for four or five days at a stretch. My first fast was a four-day fast, and I now do a monthly five-day fast. I actually look forward to it now. There's no pain. You can get more done — the mental clarity is just profound, not to mention it makes life easier and less expensive since you don’t have to buy, prepare, eat or clean up food for a few days. What I'm most excited about is the fact that it radically improves your body's ability to digest damaged cells, a process we called autophagy. It also increases stem cells. Newman explains: “When you look at Valter Longo's work … their aha moment was when cancer model rodents, mice, were fasted before chemo, during chemo, after chemo and then refed until they came back to their before-fast weight … Chemo will normally knock your white blood cell count way down, but after six or seven cycles [of fasting and refeeding], they noticed that these mice had the white blood cell count of young mice and not cancer model mice with a lot of chemo. That was intriguing to me. A question I have is, how long must the fast be to really get this [effect]? Because they figured out that the stem cells in these mice were creating new white blood cells … I listened to an interview that Rhonda Patrick had with Guido Kroemer. He's a colleague of Valter Longo's … He mentioned that a mouse, when you fast it for a day, loses 10 percent of its body weight … My point is that if I fast for five days, it’s nowhere comparable to fasting a mouse for two days. So, a question I have is how long do you really need to fast to bring that [stem cell effect] out, and I don't know the answer to that question.” Considerations When First Becoming Fat Adapted Interestingly, the late pathologist Dr. Joseph Kraft determined that about 80 percent of people with a normal glucose response have an abnormal insulin response — a condition he dubbed “diabetes in situ,” in other words, diabetes waiting to happen. He believed this diagnosis could predict who might develop Type 2 diabetes in the distant future, giving you a warning as early as 25 years ahead of time. To determine your glucose and insulin responses, all you really need is an oral glucose tolerance test and a fasting serum insulin test. Should you find that you, like Newman, have diabetes in situ, becoming keto adapted (fat adapted through nutritional ketosis) is perhaps the easiest way to go about reversing it. While my book “Fat for Fuel” delves into nutritional ketosis and mitochondrial metabolic therapy in greater detail, here are a few helpful pointers: Eat a ketogenic diet, high in healthy fats, low in net carbs with moderate amounts of protein Make sure you’re eating enough salt. You need probably 6 to 8 grams of high quality natural salt per day. When you're fasting, this is hard to do because you don't want to drink salt water. A workaround I use is to simply pour some Himalayan salt in the palm of my hand and lick it. I'll do that several times a day when fasting. This will help you avoid the so-called “keto flu,” which is nothing more than a sodium deficiency. Getting enough salt from your diet is typically not an issue while you’re on a ketogenic diet To prevent much of the discomfort and side effects associated with the transition into fat burning, start by extending the time that you do intermittent fasting. Each day, gradually restrict your eating window until you’re down to four or even two hours. If you do that for a month or so, you're going to be burning fat, which will make the transition into a ketogenic diet rather easy and complication free Fat Adaptation Helps Ease Transition Into Fasting At present, Newman fasts five days every two weeks (and 22 hours a day on eating days, where his diet is ketogenic — 75 percent fat calories, mostly monos, eating from Dr. Steven Gundry’s Plant Paradox food lists; and fairly frequently eating a lot of resistant starches, especially on workout days. He is weight stable from fasting cycle to fasting cycle). Once a year he also does a seven-day fast with his wife, who otherwise keeps to an intermittent fasting schedule where she fasts 16 hours a day. I currently water fast five consecutive days once a month. This is because most of the fasting metabolic magic of increased stem cells and autophagy doesn’t happen until after three full days of water fasting. However, I strongly recommend becoming fat adapted before making the transition into doing multiday water fasts. Newman agrees, saying: “Before [you] just dive into a long fast, first I would suggest reading “Fat for Fuel,” [and also] read Jason Fung's book [“A Complete Guide to Fasting”]. If you're on medications, be careful. Really think about what you're doing, especially medications that affect your blood sugar. This is powerful stuff. You can get into trouble … Arm yourself with knowledge. I’m well adapted … Even when I eat a fairly high carb meal, [my] beta hydroxybutyrate — the serum ketones — [are] still at a minimum 0.5, 0.7, 2.0 which is considered nutritional ketosis. What I'm saying is I've been doing this for so long that my body makes ketones even if I'm not [eating strict low carb] … So, now I've transitioned into fasting. It's a natural transition for my body and I'm convinced that this is how our paleo ancestors worked — it was just a natural transition. It wasn't like, ‘Oh, if I'm out of ketosis for a day, I have go through a two week readaptation [into burning fat for fuel].’” Water Fasting Is a Powerful Strategy to Optimize Health There's enormous fear around water fasting. Many believe their body will go into starvation mode, resulting in all sorts of catastrophes, not to mention having to struggle with unrelenting hunger for days on end. The truth is, if you do your research and apply the strategies recommended in this interview, you’re not going to go into starvation mode; you’re going into health-generating mode. And you’re not going to be overwhelmed by hunger. “As Fung [reveals] in his book, hunger's not on a linear upswing. It does come in waves but the longer you fast, generally the easier it gets. If you are keto adapted, then you really don't have the hunger issue to a great degree at all,” Newman says. I now see fasting as a process of health optimization because the benefits for fasting for four or five days is just extraordinary. After reviewing Longo’s patents on fasting and fasting-mimicking diet (in which the protein is exclusively vegan and very low in sugar to avoid triggering specific nutrient sensing pathways), one of the things Newman noticed was that human subjects were not pushed into nearly as deep a fasted state as the animal subjects. “They always kind of were dancing around lightweight from my perspective with their human subjects,” he says. By fasting five days out of every 14, Newman goes far beyond what most clinical practitioners and researchers will attempt, and his lab work provides strong anecdotal evidence that this intense kind of fasting does not impair health — it improves it. At the time of this interview, he had completed 13 cycles of five-day fasts every two weeks, and had not lost any muscle mass, and his bone density is that of someone half his age. “I did a DEXA scan to get some objective evidence … I have a T score of zero [which] means you have the average bone mineral density of a 30-year-old of your sex. I'm 62 years old. If you had a +1, that would mean you'd have the bone density of one standard deviation above; a -1 would be one standard deviation below. Then, on my body composition results, and this is for my all my limbs and everything, my body fat percentage was 16.7 … I'm not bodybuilder lean but I'm pretty lean. I checked my blood sugar in the afternoon and it was 31. This is the fifth day of a fast and my serum ketones were at 6 … I went to the gym, and [did a] super slow to failure workout … I hadn't done one in about a month and I hadn't [worked out] on a fasting day, and I managed to increase my time under load by an average of 84 percent. Then I started doing that workout … every fifth day, [and] I've managed to incrementally increase my time under load largely every time on the fifth day of a fast, which I thought was interesting because I don't have any fuel on that day.” Is Water Fasting Right for You? Most people would likely benefit from longer water fasting, whether you’re overweight and diabetic or not. The key is to properly prepare yourself and not jump in half-cocked. At 62, and having a diagnosis of AFib, Newman is an inspiring example of how simple lifestyle strategies can turn your health around. In his case, he’s managed to keep his AFib largely under control with a combination of keto adaptation, fasting and magnesium supplementation. Like George, most of you reading this are not medical or health professionals, and he really shows that if you have intelligence and persistence, you can read the literature and safely implement health strategies that can help solve the problem at its foundational core. Hopefully you'll consider integrating fasting into your self-help toolkit, because it’s really one of the most profound metabolic interventions I know of. As an added boon, not only is it not going to cost you a penny, it’ll actually save you money because you won’t be buying food for a few days. As noted by Newman, “I would think that if the population would just do even like a 5-to-2 fast, where you're fasting two days a week as a general rule, if people did that it would probably change the health trajectory of the nation dramatically.” All of that said, there are several absolute contraindications. If any of the following apply to you, you should NOT do extended types of fasting: Underweight, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 or less. Malnourished (in which case you need to eat healthier, more nutritious food). Children should not fast for longer than 24 hours, as they need nutrients for continued growth. If your child needs to lose weight, a far safer and more appropriate approach is to cut out refined sugars and grains. Fasting is risky for children as it cuts out ALL nutrients, including those they need a steady supply of. Pregnant and/or breast-feeding women. The mother needs a steady supply of nutrients in order to assure the baby's healthy growth and development, so fasting during pregnancy or while breast-feeding is simply too risky for the child. I would also caution you to avoid fasting if you struggle with an eating disorder such as anorexia, even if you are not clinically underweight. In addition to that, use caution if you're on medication, as some may need to be taken with food. This includes metformin, aspirin and any other drugs that might cause stomach upset or stomach ulcers. Risks are especially high if you're on diabetic medication. If you take the same dose of medication but don't eat, you run the risk of having very low blood sugars (hypoglycemia), which can be very dangerous. So, if you're on diabetic drugs, you must adjust your medication before you fast. If your doctor is adverse toward or unfamiliar with fasting, you'd be wise to find one that has some experience in this area so that they can guide you on how to do this safely.

[mindthump]

The 10 Most-Read WIRED Stories in July http://ift.tt/2f32TkQ

Ah, July, that summer month in which we settle into long, lazy days and slow, softball news. Or, that's usually the case. This year, that pattern was disrupted by what can only be described as disrupting news. The day after Fourth of July, North Korea successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile. AlphaBay, the online black market bazaar, experienced a takedown that threw the dark web into chaos. Amazon Jeff Bezos briefly usurped the title "world's richest man" before ceding the mantle back to Bill Gates. Even the unveiling of Tesla's Model 3, the car maker's "affordable" electric vehicle, seemed to herald the dawning of a new automotive age. It all culminated with a dramatic health care vote and whiplash in the White House. Yep, it seems the summer doldrums never had a chance to start.

WIRED covered all this and more, including the death of several storied products, the quest for immortality, and the security vulnerabilities that leave virtually no technology safe. After a month like this, everyone deserves a little light summer reading.

The step into the future occurred in May at the company’s Nevada test track, where engineers watched a magnetically levitating test sled fire through a tube in near-vacuum, reaching 70 mph in just over five seconds. That is but a fraction of the 700 mph or so Hyperloop One promises, but put that aside for now. What matters here is all the elements required to make hyperloop work, worked: propulsion, braking, and the levitation and vacuum systems that all but eliminate friction and air resistance so that pod shoots through the tube at maximum speed with minimal energy. —Alex Davies

“Sorry,” my mom says for at least the third time. “Can you explain what a chatbot is?” We are sitting next to each other on a couch in my parents’ house. My dad, across the room in a recliner, looks tired, as he increasingly does these days. It is August now, and I have decided it is time to tell them about my thoughts. As I have contemplated what it would mean to build a Dadbot (the name is too cute given the circumstances, but it has stuck in my head), I have sketched out a list of pros and cons. The cons are piling up. Creating a Dadbot precisely when my actual dad is dying could be agonizing, especially as he gets even sicker than he is now. Also, as a journalist, I know that I might end up writing an article like, well, this one, and that makes me feel conflicted and guilty. Most of all, I worry that the Dadbot will simply fail in a way that cheapens our relationship and my memories. The bot may be just good enough to remind my family of the man it emulates—but so far off from the real John Vlahos that it gives them the creeps. The road I am contemplating may lead straight to the uncanny valley. —James Vlahos

Nir Barzilai’s big plan isn’t necessarily less quixotic than those being dreamed up at Silicon Valley biotechs. It’s just quixotic in a completely different way. Rather than trying to develop a wildly expensive, highly speculative therapy that will likely only benefit the billionaire-demigod set, Barzilai wants to convince the FDA to put its seal of approval on an antiaging drug for the rest of us: A cheap, generic, demonstrably safe pharmaceutical that has already shown, in a host of preliminary studies, that it may be able to help stave off many of the worst parts of growing old. Not only that, it would also shorten the duration of those awful parts. —Sam Apple

Your brain's ability to collect, connect, and create mosaics from these milliseconds-long impressions is the basis of every memory. By extension, it is the basis of you. This isn't just metaphysical poetics. Every sensory experience triggers changes in the molecules of your neurons, reshaping the way they connect to one another. That means your brain is literally made of memories, and memories constantly remake your brain. —Nick Stockton

Last Christmas, Nathan Seidle's wife gave him a second-hand safe she'd found on Craigslist. It was, at first glance, a strange gift. The couple already owned the same model, a $120 SentrySafe combination fire safe they'd bought from Home Depot. But this one, his wife explained, had a particular feature: The original owner had locked it and forgotten the combination. Her challenge to Seidle: Open it. —Andy Greenberg

In a way, though, the death of the iPod feels like a critical moment for an entire generation. The way some people think about flipping through the LPs in a record store, or obsessively organizing their CDs into a hefty black Case Logic binder, some people remember their iPod: plugging it into the computer, waiting forever for iTunes to open and sync, managing metadata and curating playlists. Most of all, the feeling of a clickwheel whirring underneath your thumb as you searched for the perfect track. —David Pierce

Scientists have already used plain old DNA to encode and store all 587,287 words of War and Peace, a list of all the plant material archived in the Svalbard Seed Vault, and an OK Go music video. But now, researchers ... describe using a Crispr system to insert bits of DNA encoded with photos and a GIF of a galloping horse into live bacteria. When the scientists retrieved and reconstructed the images by sequencing the bacterial genomes, they got back the same images they put in with about 90 percent accuracy. —Megan Molteni

When you imagine riding a Segway MiniPro electric scooter, your biggest concern is probably falling on your face. Much lower on that list? The notion that attackers could remotely hack your ride, make it stop short, or even drive you into traffic. Unfortunately, as one reacher found, they could have done just that. —Lily Hay Newman

No one should shed a tear for Flash’s coming disappearance. The web will be safer, faster, smoother without it. But between now and 2020, the internet does need to figure out how to deal with the remains. —Brian Barrett

[weekendwarriorblog]

Weekend Warrior Extra: What to Watch Over the Holidays

Since this is the last column of the year, and honestly, I have no idea if I’ll be able to continue this into another year, I’m going to change things up a little. I’m not even sure if anyone is reading anything I write about repertory or limited releases anyway, so we’ll see how I feel about continuing to write all that stuff for free.

1917

One of my favorite movies of the year is Sam Mendes’ absolutely brilliant World War I epic, following the journey of two soldiers, played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, as they’re sent on a mission to the frontlines to deliver a message to hold off an attack on the Germans. I already reviewed the movie for ComingSoon.net, so I won’t say too much more about it, but it is a movie that works well on repeat viewings just because every aspect of the filmmaking is so masterful, particularly the decision to make the film a single shot. There’s a lot to talk about the technical aspects of the film from Roger Deakins’ cinematography to the breath-taking production design and gorgeous score by Thomas Newman, but I want to draw special attention to the screenplay by Mendes with Kristy

Wilson-Cairns, which I feel is being overlooked in favor of the technicality of the film, maybe since there are so many stretches without dialogue. Don’t let that fool you. It takes a great deal of research and description in a screenplay to lead to a movie this good, and the writing that forms the backbone of Mendes’ latest and greatest should not be ignored. 1917is easily one of the year’s best film, and though it only opens in New York and L.A. on Christmas Day, it will be nationwide on January 10.

KNIVES OUT (Lionsgate)

I also reviewed Rian Johnson’s comedic whodunnit right here, so I don’t have a ton more to say about it, but I’m so happy that it’s continued to do well since opening over Thanksgiving. If you haven’t seen it and want a fun couple hours at the movies, Johnson’s movie can provide that, but it’s also quite a brilliant twist on the ensemble whodunnit that I’ve generally been a fan of as a kid, and the movie definitely stands up to repeat viewings.

BOMBSHELL (Lionsgate)

I also highly recommend Jay Roach’s “workplace drama,” which is about the Fox News sex scandals, mainly surrounding the news corp’s founder Roger Ailes, as played by John Lithgow. The movie stars Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as “Kayla Pospisil,” as a composite character, the story following the three FOX News employees as they navigate the difficult Venn Diagram of politics and sexuality (or sexualization). Most of the events take place around the 2016 Presidential Election and Donald Trump’s grilling by Kelly about his statements about women, something that backfires for the anchor. At the same time, Carlson is moved to an afternoon slot, and she decides to fight back against Aisles’ demotion (and her subsequent firing) by getting lawyers and accusing Aisles of sexual harassment. As we learn from Robbie’s character, Aisles gets up to much worse, and I loved what her character brought to the mix, particularly her relationship with Kate McKinnon’s character. I’m thinking the movie hasn’t gotten nearly as much traction with critics because it’s written and directed by men, in the former case, Charles Randolph, the Oscar-winning writer of The Big Short, but we have to give some credit to the amazing female cast assembled and what they were able to bring to the material to make the film far less dreary than it might have been despite the yucky nature of the Fox News world. I also think that attention should be paid to John Lithgow’s performance as Ailes, which is a lot more than a good make-up job. Lithgow is such a nice person so for him to play such an oily, slimy character so well makes me think he shouldn’t be overlooked in the awards conversation. This is now playing in about 1,500 theaters across the country, and hopefully, it will be in even more over the coming weeks.

LITTLE WOMEN (Sony)

Sort of related to Bombshell in that it explores women’s issues from a very different standpoint, that of Louisa May Alcott’s classic piece of coming-of-age literature set post-Civil War. Greta Gerwig ably tackles far more difficult material for her second feature as a filmmaker, proving that Lady Bird was no fluke. It reunites Gerwig with that film’s Oscar-nominated star, Saoirse Ronan, playing Jo March, the writer who is trying to make her way in life and through her career as a writer.  I’m not a huge fan of the source material but Gerwig and Ronan have created such a marvelous bundle of joy in this film that follows the journey of the four March girls, but does so in a non-linear way that forces to pay close attention. Ronan is wonderful, as always, but I was equally and maybe even more impressed by Florence Pugh, who plays the super-dramatic Amy in a way that makes her far more convincing as the younger and older versions of her character than some of the other young actresses.  I think Emma Watson as Meg might be somewhat the weak link of the movie but she isn’t terrible and I did enjoy some of her scenes. Gerwig’s movie is rounded out by wonderful performances from the likes of Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet (fantastic as Theodore Lawrence), Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts and others.  Actually, I really loved all of the interactions between Chalamet, Ronan and Pugh, three fantastic actors who I’m sure we’ll continue to see more great things from over the next few decades. I haven’t seen enough of the adaptations of Alcott’s book to really know how this stands up, but it’s the first time I really was interested in these characters and their story, and that’s quite an achievement.

CLEMENCY (NEON)

Although Warner Bros’ JUST MERCY (see below) is getting a ton more attention and marketing, personally I preferred Chinonye Chukwu’s CLEMENCY (NEON), which premiered at Sundance way back in March but just had a much more lasting impact. It stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden where the pressures of death row executions have started to take a toll on her personal life, especially with the impending execution of Aldis Hodge’s Death Row inmate, who claims his innocence. This is a really tough drama to watch at times, but with such amazing performances by Woodard and Hodge that it pulls you in and keeps you riveted to what might happen next. I’m a little bummed that Chukwu isn’t getting more attention for her brilliant work writing and directing the film vs. other films like the recent Queen and Slim.  She’s a great filmmaker and I can’t wait to see her next film, A Taste of Power.

UNCUT GEMS (A24)

I’m not as big a fan of the works of Ben and Josh Safdie as many of my fellow critics are, but this crime-comedy (of sorts?) starring Adam Sandler, helped make me see their crazy mode of filmmaking in a new way. While I recommend this with reservations, I do think that Sandler’s role in the movie as Howard Ratner, a New York jeweler merchant to the stars, could help the Safdies break out to a new audience as they certainly seemed to have refined their mode of filmmaking with Uncut Gems, and the mix of characters and situations really make the movie something unlike anything else you’re likely to see this year.  The gist of the story is that Howard gets his hands on a valuable gem from Africa and that seems to change his luck as a chronic gambler where everything seems to be going right for him… until it doesn’t.  Much of the story involves him trying to get the rock back from basketball player evin Garnett (played by himself) who borrows the valuable gem and then won’t give it back.  All-in-all, it’s a pretty entertaining film with an absolutely amazing last act that will expand nationwide on Christmas Day.

THE TWO POPES (Netflix)

In case you don’t want to go out in the cold this week, you can also stay home and watch some of the great films now on Netflix. While I assume you’ve already seen The Irishman and Marriage Story, I hope you’ll also check out this wonderful two-hander written by  Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour), which explores the relationship between Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and his successor Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce), as they try to get along even though they don’t see eye-to-eye on how the Catholic Church should be won. I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed this movie, but it reminded of a little-seen 2016 movie called The Journey, a two-hander starring Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney as two sides of the war in Northern Ireland trying to come to an accord while driving to the airport from talks that have fallen apart.  I’ve long been a fan of Pryce but playing the Argentine cardinal who would become Pope is a fantastic role that allows him to show so much more depth as an actor, but we also learn a lot about Pope Francis’ past and the regrets he has about his involvement with the government’s anti-religious actions. Hopkins is also great, and for a movie that’s mainly two men talking, it’s perfectly captivating.

Although it’s been out for a while now and has already been losing theaters, I also recommend checking out Marielle Heller’s It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers, if it’s still playing anywhere near you, because it’s a really wonderful story about a journalist whose spotlight of Mr. Rogers turned into a way that he can find redemption in his own family issues.

I’ve actually seen a lot of the other movies opening in limited release this weekend, including the doc WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL  (Juno Films), which opens at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday. If you’re even remotely interested in film criticism and its origins through the story of one of the most respected and beloved critics, you definitely should check this one out. I haven’t seen it since Doc-NYC back in 2018

As mentioned in my write-up of Clemency above, I wasn’t nearly as crazy about Destin Daniel Cretton’s JUST MERCY (Warner Bros.), which is a different movie with similar elements, this one starring Michael B. Jordon as Bryan Stevenson, a young civil rights attorney who is trying to free a wrongly-convicted Death Row inmate, played by Jamie Foxx. Cretton’s good luck charm Brie Larson (they first teamed for Short Term 12) is also in the movie, but I don’t feel she’s nearly as good, and there was just something about the movie that really didn’t click with me. Even so, it will also be nationwide on January 10 and maybe I’ll try to give it another chance before then.

I was semi-excited about Donnie Yen’s return in the title role of Wilson Yip’s grand finale, IP MAN 4: THE FINALE (Go USA Films), which has the martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee (and whose first name, I only just realized, is “Man”) comes to San Francisco in the late ‘60s to back up his pupil’s desire to teach non-Chinese martial arts. Along the way, he gets into issues with the local martial arts masters as well as the Marines, who believe that Japanese judo is the only proper martial art. As with some of the other movies in the series, this one is mainly good for Yen’s performance and his martial arts scenes, although Kwok-Kwan Chan is also excellent as Bruce Lee in one particularly good fight scene, and there are a few others as well. My main issue with this, as with may martial arts film from China, is that the American actors are written terribly and the performances they’re giving (particularly by regular offender Scott Adkns) are just terrible. It’s a classic case of over-villifying the non-Asian characters to the point of them being a joke, and there are few surprises about who is going to win in most fights. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the other chapters, and martial arts fans will probably like parts of this, but it’s not a particularly good movie when all is said and done.

A movie I liked quite a bit more is François Girard’s historical drama THE SONG OF NAMES (Sony Pictures Classics), produced by Robert Lantos (Barney’s Version), another terrific Canadian film that deals with Jewish issues. It stars Tim Roth as Martin Simmonds, a young British man whose family took in a Polish Jew named Dovidl, who was also a violin virtuoso, to live with them just before the start of WWII. The night of Dovidl’s anticipated 1951 live concert debut in London, he vanishes, and years later, Martin, starts to track down his old friend to find what happened to him. It’s a pretty amazing movie, partially due to Roth’s performance, but also the two young actors playing Martin and Dovidl, since so much happens in the past. Like much of Sony Classics’ output, this will probably appeal more towards older audiences, but it’s another original story set during the period of the Holocaust that puts its own spin on the times with the musical element, which plays such a large part in the film. (Clive Owen plays the older Dovidl, but it’s a fairly small role compared to the others.)

I’m very excited that The 21st Annual Animation Show of Shows (ACME Filmworks)is returning to the Quad Cinema on Christmas Day, and while I was hoping to write something more extended about this, I just haven’t had the time. There’s an amazing line-up of films from a lot of different countries including Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Belgium and more, but there’s also a couple doc shorts about the filmmakers among the films. The Czech Republic film Daughter was recently included on the Oscar shortlist for animated shorts, but otherwise, it’s a fairly strange mix of films, including the very disturbing Kids.

I haven’t seen Wayman Boone’s horror film Apparition (Vertical Entertainment), starring Mena Suvari and Kevin Pollak, but apparently, it’s another horror movie involving an APP that connects to the user to the dead. It’ll open this Friday.

A few other things on Netflix over the next couple weeks including John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch special, which looks like more quirky fun from one of my favorite stand-up comics. That opens on Christmas Eve i.e. today, while a couple new series begin on Netflix on New Year’s Day, The Messiah(starring the wonderful Michelle Monaghan) and Spinning Out.

I decided to take a much-needed break from the repertory stuff this week, but we’ll see what happens with that going into the New Year, and I’ll have my annual Top 25 to share with you all next week!