Monthly Archives: December 2022

Dave is our God, for he is all-creating, all-knowing, all-…. line!

Dave Made A Maze (2017) is a top-rank whimsy machine.

Maybe literally.

Annie, a young contemporary professional, comes home from a business trip to find her boy friend, or maybe boy toy, Dave, has made a maze the living room of their apartment. Constructed of traditional cardboard, artist-wannabe Dave has chosen to go with an enclosed variety of maze that he has constructed from within, meaning that when Annie comes in the door, her living room is engulfed in a maze, and she can’t find Dave. Neither, for that matter, can he.

But she can hear him, and he can hear her, just by yelling. Warned not to enter, nor to destroy, she goes along with these suggestions when he expresses existential alarm at her disassembly attempts.

But their friends, called upon to help talk him out of the construct, talk themselves into going in after them, despite his frenzied attempts to dissuade them, and before we know it, shrinkage occurs, and the fun begins.

Indeed, the fun can’t be stopped even when one friend ends up with her tongue-protrudant head ends up separated from the rest of her.

And now it’s an exploration of Dave’s subconscious, a race against the monsters who think humans tasty, and the real question: Will Annie keep Dave around after this particular fuck up?

A whimsical comedic horror that left us laughing, Dave Made A Maze is good fun. Unless you have an artist in the family. Then, good luck with that.

Long-time readers will recall my occasional, but sincere, concerns about journalism’s faltering ability to cover news critical to the health of the United States. This observation, from Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and professor at the Medill School, does nothing to reassure me that the problem is being resolved:

Franklin predicts that “if we don’t fix the crisis in local news, we’re going to see more George Santos-type cases and instances of politicians going unchecked.”

Fox News has proven uninterested in the task, instead letting the Fox owners’ lust for money and power dictate their agenda. It’s getting to be too late to return to the traditional journalistic models, and that may result in the loss of everything we hold dear.

Parvenue:

a woman who, having risen socially or economically, is considered to be an upstart or to lack the appropriate refinement for her new position [Dictionary.com]

In the example, parvenues is used. The author may be referencing the above regardless of gender. Noted in “Learning an old lesson from the Tudors: Grifters gonna grift,” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:

From Wikipedia.

Long ago, in a reality far, far away, the legendary Orson Welles put on a radio play, and, lo, it wasn’t all that bad. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1939), was broadcast as part of the Campbell Playhouse series of radio plays, from a novel by Agatha Christie.

As is often the case, Christie is chronicling the not unusual burden that wealth can impose on individuals, whether one that controls it, Roger Ackroyd in this case, or lusts after it, as do several characters in this clever little play.

But not, of course, Mr. Hercule Poirot, now in retirement in the tidy little village of King’s Abbot. Upon the discovery of the rich Mr. Ackroyd’s death, he leaps into the breach, more than willing to plug it with his, ah, little gray cells. Kind of annoying, that.

Needless to say, but nonetheless mentioned, nothing is really what it seems. Misdirects are everywhere, and crabby characters around every corner, even in the control booth of the play, one might suspect.

Naturally, the play comes complete with commercials. Sometimes such cultural ephemera can be fun, even fascinating. These were not; indeed, they made my Arts Editor shake her head in some disgust.

So much for Campbell’s Chicken Soup.

But they are mercifully short. The audio itself is in excellent shape, with very little distortion. While I don’t think it’s to everyone’s taste, it’s only an hour long, so if you want a peek into how people spent their entertainment time 90 years ago, this is not an atypical activity. We fount it on Amazon Prime. Enjoy!

You’d think it was a horde after just one night.

And the cats? They keep pushing their walkers about, complaining they’re too tired to chase the whipper-snappers.

An entire movie about ambling. Whoda thunk?

Now You See Me (2013) is about seven magicians. Four are a team, working together to accomplish amazing feats of illusion; one is a monitor, tracking and deconstructing them.

And the last two? Ah, but that’d be telling.

Sadly, none of them come to life; they are a collection of cardboard cutouts in this story, a story formulated by tellers captivated by their own cleverness, and not about the impact of the plot on those who’ve been plotted about. As a result, there’s merely an intellectual question of where this is going, how the tricks are accomplished, and no driving need to see the plot succeed, or not, because of a connection to the characters.

At best, it’s a paean to the importance of planning and preparation.

And, maybe … well, that’d be telling, too.

Important to completists, I suspect, but not many others.

I think the drama in New York surrounding Rep-elect George Devolder-Santos (R-NY) is building into a wave that Santos will not be able to surf through. The big time pundits such as Steve Benen have been noting Santos’ lack of support by Republicans, some of whom are even making the appropriate noises about Santos resigning.

And part-timers are starting to point at oddities in his FEC reports. This is from justin423 on Daily Kos:

I pulled down all 1.8 million disbursement records from the FEC, loaded it into a database, and then screened it for just transactions between 199.90 and 199.99. Looking at the data, it appears a lot of campaigns spent that amount on zoom, and after removing those transactions, we have confirmation.

only 1 ID shows up with more than 5 transactions with THIRTY-SEVEN transactions for exactly 199.99 each totaling about $7400….

Committee ID…C00721365

Devolder-Santos for Congress…

www.fec.gov/…

yeah, those totally look like campaign expenditures…

And then he shows them. Follow the link if you’re interested.

I’m a little puzzled by aspects of the quoted FEC filing. My Arts Editor cum Former Banker suggests money laundering, although just how sending $199.99 to, for example, “DELTA AIRLINES,” will launder money was not clear – unless that’s not the Delta Airlines who we think we knew and, well, let’s just not go on with that. But apparently $200.00 is the point at which the FEC starts paying attention, so there’s something fishy going on.

There’s two potential consequences to what I’m seeing. First, Santos might make it to and participate in the swearing in and seating of new members of Congress, as that happens January 3rd, 2023 – that is, next Tuesday. But how long will he last before he’s shamed out of Congress? Well, it’s not clear that he can be shamed out of Congress. As a Trump supporter, it’s likely that he’ll emulate his political leader by simply ignoring the shameful aspects of his life, and thus not do what an honorable person would do: resign and seek solitude.

But it’s not impossible, or even unlikely, that he’ll be arrested and charged with some election-related crime, and that could result in his resignation. If he still won’t resign, the House might gets its gumption up and expel him, but that takes 2/3 of the membership.

The other consequence is What will this expose? Remember, Santos won his 2022 election in an upset, and it wasn’t even close, with a nearly 9 point victory. Democrats held this seat starting with the 2012 election and won by large margins; prior to that was the redrawing of district lines, rendering comparisons dubious.

Was New York District 3 substantially redrawn after the 2020 election, and the result naturally had Santos winning? If so, why did election watchers still pick his opponent, Robert Zimmerman (D), to win? Or did something happen here? While I recognize there’s a superficial similarity between this speculation and the actions of Republican election deniers, it’s only superficial. I’m curious as to whether evidence, real solid evidence, is found for election fraud of some sort: subversion of election machines, election workers actually engaging in fraud, or some other activity of an illegal nature that gave Santos an illicit victory? I have no interest in lighting my hair on fire while screaming about election fraud with zero evidence.

This second consequence might possibly have nation-wide repercussions. I rate this a 5% change of occurring.

Hey, why did the dead chicken cross the road?
Oh, no, not him again.

In Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957), aliens from outer space who view humans’ tendency towards violence with alarm decide to Do Something About It.

And that would be to resurrect some freshly dead humans from their graves and send them to kidnap live humans for further study.

I can’t believe I hadn’t seen this horrendous mess before now. It’s bad. It’s embarrassing. Sometimes it’s laugh out loud funny.

But it’s not worth a single serious word. No, seriously, it’s not. Only view after a cushioning dose of your favorite alcohol. Try to drink only during commercials.

The latest nominee for overwhelming loyalty to the former President is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Here’s WaPo’s Aaron Blake:

Shadowbanning:

Art teacher Jennifer Bloomer has used Instagram to share activism-themed artwork and announce classes for eight years. Then last fall, while trying to promote a class called “Raising anti-racist kids through art,” her online megaphone stopped working.

It’s not that her account got suspended. Rather, she started to notice her likes dwindled and the number of people seeing her posts dropped by as much as 90 percent, according to her Instagram dashboard.

Bloomer, it appears, had been “shadowbanned,” a form of online censorship where you’re still allowed to speak, but hardly anyone gets to hear you. Even more maddening, no one tells you it’s happening.[“Shadowbanning is real: Here’s how you end up silenced by social media,” Geoffrey A. Fowler, WaPo]

Back when I was active in social media provision, single line BBSes only generated enough content for such a thing when they were networked together, such as Fido (I hypothesize they had enough traffic) or Citadel-86, and even that would come under the “only barely” column, so I have no administrative experience with such a tool. Moderation consisted of creating subject areas (“rooms”), deletion of messages, or, on rare occasion, expelling someone from the community.

On an unrelated note, this is a banyan.

But I can see shadowbanning’s utility and its dangers. Whether or not the social media providers can be forced to reveal more of their inner workings and other such data related to shadowbanning depends on whether they are behemoths relative to competitors or not, really. The government can mandate it, but then there’ll be litigation, with a fair to middlin’ chance that the law would be invalidated.

And this is a trust issue crossed with an unknown algorithm, isn’t it? Algorithms need not be fair, they can be grossly unfair, not to mention just out and out broken. Building that trust with your userbase is a big part of being a social media provider. But, on the other hand, forty years ago users just walked if they didn’t trust the provider. These days there are not nearly as many providers.

Will Mastodon step into that gap? I’ve heard it described as a ‘fed-iverse’, which sounds a lot like how the networks of BBSes worked, each having its own administrative policies. I wonder how that’s working out for them. I suppose I should investigate and see if Mastodon sites have local-only traffic as well network traffic, or if it’s all network.

Ya gotta wonder what’ll happen with these babies when he gets macular degeneration.

If you have superheroes, you must, eventually, have retired superheroes, right? Watchmen (2009) briefly, if darkly, treated the subject; The Incredibles (2004) also deal with the subject with a certain noir brevity. Supervized (2019), however, makes it the entire point of the movie: what’s to be done with those wheezing, tired folks who were once superheroes, may want to continue to be super, but can only manage it in spurts?

And what if they suspect the retirement home manager is engaged in the theft of their powers?

Well, it’s all fairly silly, but at least it’s engaging and has some chemistry. The powers may be different, in some ways, from that of the aforementioned movies, or, for that matter, the equally grim TV show Heroes (2006–2010), but the only really intriguing power is that of Madera Moonlight, a newly arrived resident, a regal presence who finds two of her former lovers resident in their Irish retirement home, and can communicate with the beings of the “negative dimension,” known as the Elder Gods, and use some of their power in this dimension.

Now that she’s elderly, using her power gives her a terrible headache. An aspirin, please.

The story rambles hither and yon, featuring rivalries rooted in personality conflicts decades old, but unfortunately the final battle between those who’ve given so much and those who are taking so much isn’t rooted in what the audience knows, but in the unmentioned and unforeseeable circumstance that one can have, well, too many powers.

And that makes that final battle an unsatisfying climax.

If you’ve been wondering what happened to some of your favorite stars, such as Louis Gossett, Jr., or Beau Bridges, this is a fine way to spend a couple of hours. Their relaxed competence and obvious amusement at the movie they find themselves in has its own entertainment value.

But if you’re looking for your next high-strung episode along the lines of The Boys (2019, 2020, 2022, ?), this is not for you. This is for some mild giggling and a little light meditation, rather than shocking gouts of blood and guts.

Oh, and the costumes are awful to the point of feeling … right?

So is this a bumblebee playing?

And here’s SciShow going into more detail.

Mark Sumner on Daily Kos presents one of the weirder theories for, ah, current Republicans:

As in other mammals, the effects of infection by [Toxoplasma] gondii are very different between males and females. But here’s what happens to men infected by this tiny, single-celled organism:

… the personality of infected men showed lower superego strength and higher vigilance. Thus, the men were more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic.

Suspicious. Jealous. Quicker to make an immediate judgment. Less willing to listen to others. Guys who were ready to break the rules if it helped them personally. Sound familiar? Other factors, such as self-control and even “clothes tidiness” were found to be decreased by infection. Here’s another one: Infected men scored significantly lower than uninfected men when it came to establishing relationships with women.

It is very hard not to draw a line between these results and guys like Nick Fuentes screaming about “replacement theory” and fretting over declining sperm counts while claiming that relationships between men and women “are gay.”

I suppose it’s comforting, in a way, to think ideological opponents are being driven around the bend by an infection, all zombie-like. It may even be true.

But, considering this from the non-conventional point of view, could this be simply a way to avoid understanding your adversaries’ positions and reasons? To not acknowledge good points that might fatally damage your own religiously held ideological tenets?

Sure, Fuentes is freaking nuts. But not all Republicans are as nutty as he, and some may have valid points that should be addressed. Is this a way to avoid allowing any validity to your opponents?

Lissome:

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• • adjective Moving or able to move with grace and ease; lithe and graceful.
  • adjective Easily bent; supple.

… [Wordnik]

I’d seen it before, but was uncertain as to its exact meaning. Noted in “A 1934 murder mystery’s pages were printed out of order. Now the world is obsessed.” Hannah Natanson, WaPo:

I love this article, “Cutting through customer service doom-loops by calling in a ‘Karen’,” from WaPo:

Perhaps the least satisfying character is the singer, Shawn Colvin, who is necessarily on stage the entire time and exhibits little variability. It’s still a cute character, though.

The Starlighter (2018?) is an exercise in charm, in the rarely seen art of cut paper for animation, and in the original, and sometimes disturbing, forms of fairy tales and fables, as sung by Shawn Colvin. Constituting a story within a story within a story, from the audience it requires concentration and a delight in whimsy, and an acceptance that twenty minutes is all you’re getting.

The audience for this may be small, in more ways than one, but they should be delighted by the varied characters, the slice of life approach, and the technical competence of the entire production. If this sounds at all interesting to you, dip your toe into The Starlighter.

My Arts Editor insists these are gnome hats.

This one has the traditional splash of color.

A bit artsy.

This may need some trimming.

But the last couple of apple harvests from this tree weren’t very good. This tree was diagnosed with fire blight a few years back, and may not have any good harvests left in it. A shame, we had several really fabulous harvests from it.

Banyan:

A banyan (through Portuguese banian and Arabic بنيان, banyān, from the Tamil வாணியன், vaaniyan/வணிகன், vanigan, the Gujarati વાણિયો, vāṇiyo, meaning “merchant”, ) is a garment worn by European men and women in the late 17th and 18th century, influenced by the Japanese kimono brought to Europe by the Dutch East India Company in the mid-17th century. “Banyan” is also commonly used in present-day Indian English and other countries in the Indian Subcontinent to mean “vest” or “undershirt“. [Wikipedia]

An example is provided here, courtesy my Arts Editor, a former professional tailor.

Please excuse the hair.

One of these two wishes to eat the other. Can you guess who is predator and who is prey?

Warm Bodies (2013) is our annual Christmas movie for 2022. When it comes to Christmas movies, we like to find something that is surprisingly good, with the bar set by Anna and the Apocalypse (2018) in December of 2019, along with Rare Exports (2010) the year before.

So how did Warm Bodies work out? An intelligent take on the possibility that the nearly supernatural pathogen infecting humanity and turning them into zombies might be defeated by our immune systems, given a bit of time, this story follows ‘R’, a young man, or zombie, who retains at least some self-awareness, as he introduces us to the zombie and boney communities. The former are the infected who retain most of their flesh; the boneys are those zombies who’ve torn all the flesh from their own bodies, but still require the flesh of the living for sustenance. They are little more than cranky animated human skeletons.

And ‘R’ doesn’t really feel a part of either community. After all, eating the flesh of the living isn’t an attractive attribute when one runs into a beautiful, uninfected woman named Julie. So he does the next best thing:

He doesn’t eat her.

In fact, he saves her. From here, the story trundles on semi-predictably, from Julie’s repulsion at ‘R’, to acceptance, affection, and of course, well, who knows? All while cleverly dodging the eternally hungry.

But a predictable story, clever and well-done, is nothing to sneeze at, and this is moderately well-done. There may not be the surprises that befall the audience member in Anna and the Apocalypse, from plot to songs, but this subject is treated seriously.

And it works, if you’re willing to ignore a few plot holes. Like, how did the uninfected build a wall around a city so damn fast? How does boneys feeding on the uninfected sustain them, precisely?

But there’s good chemistry and more than a bit of fun here. While it’s not the new bar to clear in the Christmas Movie category, it’s a worthy story.

The destruction of the Republican Party, the political strategy of former Speaker, quitter, and Rep Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and possibly some other parts of the conservatives, such as the “conservative movement,” appears to be well under way now, and while the following report from Fox News seems, and is, extraordinary, I think we’re going to find it’s just the first in a series of many chronicling the Republican Party being torn apart by its constituent power-seekers, selfish and fourth-rate.

Thirty-one House Republicans are doubling down on their threat to oppose any legislation in the next Congress that is favored by GOP senators who vote for a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill this week.

The group of House Republicans, led by Texas Rep. Chip Roy, says the threat is serious. In a letter sent to Senate Republicans on Wednesday, which was obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, the lawmakers said they would block “even the smallest legislative and policy efforts.”

“We reiterate that if any omnibus passes in the remaining days of this Congress, we will oppose and whip opposition to any legislative priority of those senators who vote for this bill – including the Republican leader,” the lawmakers wrote.

Their threat could have major repercussions for next year, as the GOP-controlled House will only be able to lose a handful of votes on any piece of legislation before having to rely on Democrats to secure passage.

And the Senate GOP reaction?

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said he does not think the House message “intimidates anyone.”

Will we be seeing a war between GOP Senators and GOP Representatives? Probably not. For one thing, GOP Senators will find it difficult to initiate legislation that is not inherently bipartisan, as they are in a 51-49 minority. That legislation which the Senate passes and sends on to the House will either be highly obscure, such as the naming of Post Offices, and thus of dubious worth in blocking, or of high enough popularity that the entire House GOP will not be willing to put their seats on the line in order to satisfy the demands of an extremist faction.

But the threats, the tendentious noise from these names, such as McCarthy (CA), Chip Roy (TX), Gosar, Greene, and quite a few others, will be enough to signal the continuing dissolution of the Republican Party. By dissolution I do not mean shrinkage, for there are plenty of extremist barstool types who will think they’ve found a political home that will welcome these views that are so tenuously linked to reality; but the clamor and bizarre, brutal contents of their voices will dismay the independents, who are the keys to power in our current and future political situation.

Do you doubt it? Elsewhere I discussed Democratic over-performance in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections, relative to expectations; only in the 2021 Virginia and New Jersey off-year elections did they fail to outrun expectations^[1]. The boisterous foolishness of a GOP full of officials dedicated to self-aggrandizement, religious nonsense, grifting, and associated poor behaviors will continue to repel independents, regardless of what the currents of history, if you will, are thought to dictate by conventional pundits. It’s necessary for Democrats to direct independents’ attention to the unacceptability of the GOP candidates for office, but that appears to be less and less of a problem, as the overperformance that I noted appears to indicate that GOP marketing wing, once second to none, may either be breaking down, or just can’t find a way to successfully market such names as Finchem (R-AZ), Lake (R-AZ), and many other Republicans to the electorate. It’s probably a combination of the two.

And, meanwhile, more Republicans, once considered extremists in their own right, will be chased from the party, branded RINOs. Hike up your shirts, folks, so we can read your cattle marks easily enough.

¹ This could have been an important lesson for the Democrats, but I think they’ve only learned some elements of it, such as disassociating from the Defund the police slogan. Others, such as their premature position on transgenderism and consequent tactic of bullying, do not seem to have been recognized.

But this could be a bigger bite than usual. Even with those rabbit ears.

I Kill Giants (2017) gets off to a promising start as we follow Barbara Thorson, a 12 year old, at a guess, living on the American eastern seaboard, through a day or two of her life: the bullies at school who find her less than compliant, the teachers who find her less than compliant, the principal who finds her less than compliant, the new school counselor who finds her less than compliant.

And at home, where her older sister and brother also find her less than compliant. Parents? Not in sight; the older sister seems to be running the joint.

But intruding into Barbara’s world is Sophia, a British import of Barbara’s age who seeks her friendship. Barbara is a practicing supernatural specialist, it turns out, defending the town from the giants who turn up every month or so. Sophia finds the giant schtick hard to believe, but the bullies are rough, and Barbara does help Sophia with those bullies. Soon, she’s learning from Barbara about the habits of the giants, and how to kill them, from nasty deadtraps to fire.

And into Barbara’s imperfect world comes two things: a terrible and surprising hurricane, containing a supernatural force that even she cannot really hope to defeat, and the revelation, at least to the audience, that her mother is alive.

And present.

Upstairs.

In bed, with a terminal illness.

And this introduces the troubling question of whether all of this is a heroic fantasy that lets Barbara pretend that she is a force to be considered in the world, when the reality is that she’s simply another piece of detritus swirling about in the wake of the random vortex in which we all try to live our lives, construct social barriers against the terrors of chaos, and be happy, OR if the giants, of which we see hints and hear their imprecations, do exist, and Barbara is doing a desperate duty protecting the town not only from the naturally self-interested giants, but from the very knowledge of their existence.

And this is where the story begins to fall apart. Perhaps I was simply too interested in the questions of what lies beyond our puny, natural perceptions, and took the giants to be real and Barbara to be the guardian of the town. That left the unanswered question of how Barbara learned how to kill the giants, and do so without revealing their shocking existence to the town’s inhabitants. I mean, those are gonna be some big scat left behind.

But the explanation that this is just cover against the incomprehensible Universe damaging Barbara as it swirls unfeelingly onwards is a cop out, just another story of replacing reality with a fantasy, and clumsily done at that. It’s never entirely clear which way the story is going.

Part of it is the incomplete character building. Her older sister, Karen, is little more than a cardboard cutout whose sudden stress, while understandable, just doesn’t come across as a clue to the real nature of the story. Maybe it’s her mother’s terminal illness, maybe it’s having giants staring in the windows. The brother is a zero. The bullies are more fun, and as it appears that they’re set upon by giants at one point, we have to wonder.

In the end, I found this to be a story that loses its way after a fast start. But maybe your mileage will vary. I hope it does. Enjoy.

Unbeknownst to the audience, the Bad Guy had attached one of the phone electrodes to Nancy’s inner thigh.
She’d always been a bit of a masochist.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939) shows the celebrated pre-adult detective determinedly faking evidence, concealing evidence, conspiring to break laws, breaking and entering, disorderly conduct, destruction of property, more breaking and entering, and indiscriminate shrieking when she finally finds herself in too much trouble to just face down. This is all in her relentless pursuit of the guilty party in a murder case involving a horse race track and two little old ladies who are tangled up in the rules of inheritance of a father who was apparently a little nuts.

Or maybe it’s just a plot device used to drive the story in a certain direction. Complete with a handle and everything!

My Arts Editor was approving of Drew’s forthright approach to solving the murder – I think – but it was all a little bit too pat for me.

Wait, is Nancy Drew’s middle name Patricia?

Great cinematography, OK dialog, hapless boyfriend. Face it, it’s from a B-list series, at best. Sure, Casablanca (1942) was also considered a B-list production when it was made, but this is no Casablanca. No brains needed, just a trifle of moral outrage.

And tolerance for another mildly incompetent police force.

Long time readers will recall this short thread on how to minimize police brutality through financial incentives. Back in September of this year, WaPo had an article on progress on precisely this topic:

ST. ANN, Mo. — A patrol officer spotted a white minivan with an expired license plate, flipped on his lights and siren,and when the driver failed to stop, gave chase. The driver fled in rush-hour traffic at speeds of up to 90 mph, as other officers joined in the pursuit. Ten miles later, the van slammed into a green Toyota Camry, leaving its 55-year-old driver, Brent Cox, permanently disabled.

That 2017 police chase was at the time the latest in a long line of questionable vehicle pursuits by officers of the St. Ann Police Department. Eleven people had been injured in 19 crashes duringhigh-speed pursuits overthe two prior years.Social justice activists and reporters were scrutinizing thedepartment, and Cox and others were suing.

Undeterred, St. Ann Police Chief Aaron Jimenez stood behind the high-octane pursuits and doubled down on the department’s decades-old motto: “St. Ann will chase you until the wheels fall off.”

Then, an otherwise silent stakeholder stepped in. The St. Louis Area Insurance Trust risk pool — which provided liability coverage to the city of St. Ann and the police department — threatened to cancel coverage if the department didn’t impose restrictions on its use of police chases. City officials shopped around for alternative coverage but soon learned that costs would nearly double if they did not agree to their insurer’s demands.

Jimenez’s attitude swiftly shifted: In 2019, 18 months after the chase that left Cox permanently disabled, the chief and his 48-member department agreed to ban high-speed pursuits for traffic infractions and minor, nonviolent crimes.

Part of the trick is to make the cost impact those responsible for policy:

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Jimenez said in an interview. “If I didn’t do it, the insurance rates were going to go way up. I was going to have to lose 10 officers to pay for it.”

The most stubborn people can be moved this way – or even be caught doing the wrong thing.

Beneath his pretty exterior lurked … Cthulhu! Wait, that can’t be right, the Big C didn’t like that brand of cigarette. Must be some other Elderly God.

Force of Evil (1948) looks into the moral dilemmas of a pair of brothers, the younger brother, Joe Morse, a lawyer working for the mob, a mob looking to take over the bookie trade, and the older brother, Leo, runs, of course, a bookie operation.

The former is angling for a piece of the action, while the latter is simply trying to offer an honest service. Indeed, some of his employees are what we today call challenged, working for Leo despite their various handicaps, and sometimes Leo makes sure they get home after work.

But the mob is not interested in honesty, and Joe discovers that the weight he swings is insufficient to his ends of financial wealth and familial integrity.

And don’t forget Leo’s assistant, Doris, to whom Joe takes a shine. Can she possibly survive the association?

Yep, this is noir, a story of bad decisions, of poor lifestyle practices, of shabby desire taking precedence over the duties of adulthood – and the arrogance that goes along with it all. This may not be the darkest of noir, but it’s definitely in the genre: Joe finding the organization considers him a tail, not the body, a hammer rather than the brain directing it.

And all brought on by his desire for financial rewards rather than the societal rewards that Leo seeks. And that’s where there’s a crack in this plot, because bookie operations are commonly criminal, ugly operations; that decent Leo would get involved is a little hard to credit. Maybe I’m prejudiced against bookies, or maybe I don’t understand the history of bookies, but I found it a little disturbing that the good guy was actually just another criminal.

But this may be a minor blemish, depending on the audience member. It’s not a bad 1940s movie at all, with excellent acting and cinematography; in fact, there’s nothing wrong with the technical aspects.

It’s down, dirty, and discouraging as humanity tussles with itself. And, maybe, loses.