In the year 2022

In the Year 2022

 

The United States economy underwent a relatively tumultuous, though admittedly favorable metamorphous in the year 2022. The cosmic increase of agricultural product sales represented the sole cause for this turbulence. In that year, the Remote Sensor Lawn Management System was released into the market with Joan Deere (formerly John Deere, though bought out by the niece of the late writer, Betty Friedman) alone claiming 92 percent of the agricultural products sale. For a quarter, Wall Street lunged up and down like a Carnival Cruise ship in a late summer hurricane. However, by the close of the fiscal year, the market had managed to survive the colossal re-alignments of funds except for pork belly stock, which remains to this day almost non-existent. The exact cause for this remains unknown and provides ample material for conspiracy theorists of all sorts and several militias’ in western Arkansas who claim to have been the target of the misfortune.

            The Remote Sensor Lawn Management System performed the maintenance of lawn mowing while you observed and directed it from the comfort of your favorite chair. (The picture on the package was actually a man in a hat lying in a hammock) The advent of the Remote Sensor Lawn Management System had profound effects on the retail industry, but the product’s greatest influence was upon American culture itself. It became a symbol of status and progressive living. One analyst, a member of the S.H.I.F.D.L.O.G. think tank coined the phrase, “another British invasion.” This of course, alluded to the screaming popularity of the product, particularly with women and its origins out of a small lab in Southampton, England.

             Raphael Paltier, a non-citizen working in England developed the product and sold the technology to a small company outside of Redding for 2.5 million dollars. Three weeks and one World Cup later, Joan Deere had swallowed the Redding firm for 12 million dollars.

            Though, no recorded evidence of the technology landing in Joan Deere’s central facilities in Deerfield, Illinois exists, several documented sources reported a police sanctioned fence outside the corporation that bayed hundreds of screaming women looking to get a peek at the new equipment. Conservative reports downplayed the rumors swimming around the product and predicted the United Kingdom fad would be “here today and gone tomorrow.”

            Upon purchasing this wave of agricultural technology, the average person who brought it home would open a package the size and weight of a common P.C. printer. They would then take out the Remote Sensor Lawn Management System remote control which was roughly the size and density of a pack of baseball cards (old school Tops cards made from real cardboard, not those glossy plastics they issue out today.) They would then remove a double pack of rechargeable remote control batteries wrapped in cellophane and finally the System( which I shall now refer to it as for the sake of brevity) itself.

            The System, at first, came in one size and color only. It was circular, about 14 inches, the average size of corporate pizza. The height of this machine, initially, was around 10 inches making for one very tubby tool. The casing of the product was a type of titanium metal and blue racing stripes flanked its sides with the words “THE SYSTEM” enshrined on its front side, a helpful graphic that alleviated initial confusion over which direction was forward. Flipping over the tool was not laborious as it weighed in at a mere 14 pounds 11 ounces. Exposed, the undercarriage revealed two wheels with built in tread for better traction and a simple blade about the size of a baby’s arm that spun much like the old fashioned conventional gas mowers located between the wheels. The wheel axel was not exposed. There was also an on/off switch positioned in the upper right corner.

            After skimming over the unpackaged directions, the new user would set the System down in their grass, having placed the on switch in the on position and step back to start the mower. Pressing the on button located in the top corner of the remote control started the motor. In the middle of the controller was a type of joystick apparatus that allowed for any angle of movement. Turning the machine proved the prime point of positional difficultly with the contraption. A dilemma that was resolved by employing circular rotational patterns of mowing that replaced the archaic horizontal, vertical, or professional diagonal patterns. Later, Deere would put out a model with a diagonal mode, but it was rarely employed for the circular angles left on the yard soon became status symbols associated with sophistication of the System.

            An operator could be up to 100 feet away from the System while it operated. However, not paying attention to the System’s path could be detrimental to the machine, oncoming traffic, children at play, or pets in nearby yards. There is a whole anthology of legal cases associated with the System available through Artic Bird Books.

            The average yard could be thoroughly cut within ten to fifteen minutes though setting aside thirty to forty minutes to include time for raking and bagging the cut grass was recommended. Deere did not release the Remote Sensor Lawn Management Bagger machine until a full four years after the System came out.

            The most innovative feature of the System was its means of energy. Mr. Peltier, originally a bilateral acrobat and traveling cosmetologists, had perfected a chip that would allow the System to run for seventy hours before it needed to be replaced. This feature was as explosive as a love chorus driven pop song in the fifties for two reasons. In no particular order: (1) The fledgling mid east wars of the early 2000s created a temporary oil crisis that was discovered by a group of migrant workers to, in fact, not be a crisis at all. This crisis brought the Schwarzanegger administration to its knees sparking “The Great Oil Debates of the Probates”, the outworking of which of course was the Oil Regulation Laws which nearly obliterated Exxon/Mobil and other leading gas tyrants of the time. Needless to say, alternative means of energy were abundantly researched and reasonably exhausted on test markets. The System was an answer to ungrateful prayers. (2) Joan Deere designed the System in such a manner that only certified operators of qualified tools could replace the chip which in turn created thousands upon thousands of the now famously nostalgic “Deere Repair Shops” throughout North America.

 

 

 

Atonement

Ripping through a recent round of failed World War II epics, Atonement comes out strong, a tightly scripted and executed handful of scenes with the wit of Wilde and the authenticity of Austen. The shots move quickly moving back and forth between the present and the near present ushering meaningful dialogue complete with implicit exchanges as well.  The story line follows Cecilia struggling to come to grips with her feelings for Robbie, played by James McAvoy who is less uncertain of his affections for the striking heiress portrayed by the very talented Keira Knightley. The story is complicated by the protrusion of the adolescent Briony, who although sharp is drawing erroneous conclusions of the two’s relationship- a simple enough mistake that comes to shape the future and development of these three characters.

            Without going to deeply into the plot, this dynamic greatly alters the course of the story and we are thrust suddenly several years into the future where we find Robbie, now a foot soldier in the British Expeditionary Forces wandering through the French countryside with what is left of his platoon. The quick, charging pace of the film comes to a pronounced halt. The scenes run much less cohesively while Cecilia and Robbie reunite from where the film transitioned several years back.

Director Joe Wright allows the two to share the screen via a sudden shift into the not so distant past and that just long enough to let a genuine connection blossom before he rips them apart again. The film quickly moves into one of the greatest uncut scenes in recent history, a modern cinematic masterpiece, a five and half minute scene that runs uncut in euphoric visual mastery. The backdrop of this scene is one of the most dramatic moments in World War II- the evacuation of the English forces from Dunkirk; a story well known in English lore though lesser so in the American conscious.

The Luftwaffe had the Allied forces surrounded after the stunning success of the Blitzkrieg subsequent victory in the Battle of Dunkirk and expected to annihilate them completely. An eleventh hour rescue operation was hatched by the British that entailed the use of every vessel in British ports that could float. World Cup winning yachts, pleasure crafts, tugs, fishing scrawls, cruise ships, and the like were employed with their owners at the helm in a momentous effort of bravery and brawn as the men charted the open waters with the Royal Air Force giving cover, but through land mine infested waters with the German assaulting relentlessly. The British and French forces converged on Dunkirk beach awaiting evacuation sabotaging their equipment while thousands of injured were laid along the beach where nurses tended to the wounded as best they were able. The operation, dubbed Operation Dynamo was a success and will forever stand as a seminal turning point in the war and a trophy of the human spirit as over 330,000 troops were rescued.

Robbie’s experience transpires apart from any knowledge of these events. He stumbles onto the camp which resembles something Biblical in its proportion, falling about through the ruins surrounding the beach at Dunkirk. The scene is eclipsed multiple times with the harrowing, eerie remains of a Ferris wheel that rotates in the background, slowly complimenting the scene’s pace which could best be expressed as a stupor. The pure existentialism of the shots is stunning, engaging, haunting. The shelling that rattles in the distance, the smoke raising from various propositional sites of wreckage, the despair of the soldiers, all work to illuminate this long shot aimed at embodying the horrors of war. The film’s score escorts this scene through sometimes difficult transitions while maintaining a unified experience.

The story then moves into almost a third film all together with a documentary style interview with an elderly woman who we learn is the now aged young Briony who has written these events in a novel titled ‘Atonement.’ This transition is so abrupt, so defined that it leaves the viewer holding the pieces of the film they thought they were watching. However, Wright’s authentic shift accomplishes its purpose relying heavily on an interview structured dialogue that plays back and forth with film’s score and Briony’s raw emotions.

The major flaw in Atonement is Wright’s lack of ability to weave the scenes together to form a cohesive whole. Though each of the film’s three major parts could stand alone as masterful short films, their collective expression fails to deliver the film’s intentions and ultimately prohibits it from achieving the measure of stature of it aspires to. Yet, the film works on a variety of levels with artful execution to produce a twist on the epic war love story

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

 

An exceptional film by newcomer Andrew Dominick that brillaintly depicts midwestern culture in the late 19th century. The artful work of Dominick captures the movement of light and shadow with particular mastery in skyscapes and other natural shots. The camera illuminates the haunting echoes and half light particular to turn of the century housing. The open pasture scenes do the original Artist justice as a careful character study unfolds to the back drop of an equally mastered soundtrack composed by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. It’s careful development and movements fill out the narrative which accompanies the story line.

The narrative which for the most part works well is derived straight from the novel of the same name by Rob Hansen. The dialogue and subsequent scenes follow Jesse James and Robert Ford and ultimately the fatal interesection of the two. Ford, much younger than James joins the gang longing for fame only to learn the ugly reality of the storied outlaw and is soon drawn into a dillema of loyalties. There are no giveaways here as the film’s title implies- Ford ends up killing James only to find his act of heroism is not received as such in a society consumed with the worship of the anti-hero and awash in its own naive perceptions of the fabled murderer-James that is.

This movie joins the rank of classic western cinema with a brillaint performance by Casey Afleck as Robert Ford and a strong showing by Brad Pitt who has lost the purity of his portrayals since the days of Legends of The Fall or A River Runs Through It, though nonetheless captures James very well.

The film is poorly served by the thesis of the Hansen novel which seeks to portray Ford as a type of coward for assassinating a man who would be akin to a serial killer in modern times. Hansen insists this is the case because Ford felt threatened by him and acted only out of fear, but how that is not portrayed as a simple matter of survival is beyond comprehension and a stretch by any measure. The film follows the vain and sad days of Ford’s life as he is thrust into the limelight only to find what so many fame chasers have found also- that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is laced with poison. The commentary on the vanity of fame is welcome and always a timely moral tale. But the insistence on the cowardice of Ford and the comparison of the two’s fame leaves the film with more of a sizzle effect than a bang. The end that Hansen and in turn Dominick are aiming at is that James was a true American folk hero while Ford was just a poser. Thus, the film falls prey to the very sublime idiocy it depicts- the love of the anti-hero, a distasteful American icon and that to its shame. The one who adores this iconoclast suspects themselves clever for observing redeeming qualities in sociopaths or lesser villains. This stigma, this blight on American folk character falls back on itself and its bland attempt to capture the complexity distilled into humanity.

That flaw aside, that inordinate anti-hero affection syndrome, which to give Dominick credit, a healthy chunk of Americans suffer from, the film stands out as an excellent piece of cinema worthy of any collection.

US States Renamed for Countries with Similar GDP’s