The Shape of Water is a Masterpiece, With Fish Love in it

Guillermo del Toro’s newest work, “The Shape of Water”, is first and foremost, beautiful. The cinematography is amazing, and is set up in such a way that it feels like you really know the locations. The coloration of scenes is used to great effect to maximize the effectiveness of the scenes. I felt so much intensity in the movie, just from the combination of the visual elements. This might seem a bit dry, but that’s because from a technical standpoint, this movie is quite incredible. The musical score is spot on, even further enhancing the emotional depth, and luring you into its depths. Its characters are charming, and though our protagonist, Eliza (played by Sally Hawkins), in this movie is mute, speaking only through sign language (and subtitles for the sign language impaired) this actually makes her more expressive to make up for it, and forces you to really pay attention to her character.

 

Let me say it again, this movie is technically amazing, probably because if it wasn’t, it would be difficult to swallow the premise, because it gets weird. Eliza is a custodian at a secret government facility, night shift, who falls in love with a fish/frog/man/maybe god? However, the side characters, who are all compelling, including arguably the main antagonist Strickland (played by Michael Shannon). You get to really know all of the people closest in the story, and feel their motivations, so that even in the end, you may find yourself rooting for the Russian spy.

 

This movie made me feel a huge array of emotions, and lured me in with its style and charm to reveal a fascinating and beautiful story that enraptured me. This movie is a must-see for anyone that enjoys artistic movies, or the magical story telling of del Toro’s previous works.

Insidious: The Last Key is a movie I am glad I did not pay to see

A friend of mine paid for me to go with them, but I am still disappointed that money was still added to the over $90 million that this movie grossed at the box office. This movie was, in a word, awkward. The comic relief characters, whose dialog, while probably appropriate for the time period the movie is taking place (2010, just a short period of time before the beginning of the initial film), was cringe inducing, and came off as unlikable instead of tension-relieving. Build up to incredibly obvious scares, with only the slightest subversions to occasionally cause a small start. Even the few gasps I heard in my screening could easily have been from the theater volume, which was turned up to ear-damaging levels to make up for how quiet the rest of the movie is. This movie raises more questions than I could possibly count, and answers almost none of them. It introduces a plotline about our protagonist from the first movie, Elise, about childhood abuse and an estranged sibling for nearly 50 years that seems bizarre, and unrealistic. The obvious setup at the beginning of the movie for an ex machina at the climax was so predictable, and so contrived, that after the initial foreshadowing, I hoped it wouldn’t come to pass.

 

For brief moments, I almost thought that this movie could be brilliant. The couple of twists that are in the movie make you briefly think that Elise could be delusional, and bring into question the whole premise of the reality of the movie franchise are quickly tossed aside, and throw the supernatural aspects of the movie into harsh contrast. Anyone who has seen the movie Don’t Breathe, or who already knows the twist of that movie will have no surprises in this movie, but will likely be incredibly confused.

 

In movies, the general rule of “show, don’t tell” is a pretty good heuristic, however, a more accurate representation of the phrase would be “when you can, show, don’t tell”. In this movie, we don’t really learn anything, and nothing is accomplished narratively. We don’t learn any mechanics of The Further, we don’t learn who the demon Keyface is, what his objective is, other than opening metaphysical doors, what he wants, why any of the possessions that occur happen, the root of any of the problems, but we find out that the ending of the first movie is now more tragic in retrospect, as we now know that she left her recently restored family just months after meeting them, but not without setting up these newly introduced family members as being psychics on par with Elise, presumably for the purpose of setting up sequels, where they can presumably bring Elise back as a ghost to communicate with her nieces.

 

This movie was mildly interesting at its best parts, and confounding at its lowest. Definitely not a movie that I would recommend seeing.

The North Korean Ruse

On January 8th, 2018, North Korean officials met with a South Korean delegation on a border town. As a result of that meeting, North Korea has agreed to send a large delegation to the Winter Olympics in February. This seems to be, at first glance, the releasing of tensions between the two nations, and the first steps to a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear threat. The rationale behind this decision from the North should be very closely examined, as it may prove to be little more than a ruse to buy time.

 

The first thing that we need to look at is the timing of the call. Tensions are at an all-time high between North Korea and the United States. Kim Jung Un isn’t planning to send a delegation, which raises fear and concern about the possibility of interference with the games in Seoul across the global community. At the same time, the president of the United States has drawn a red line, and in the press it’s leaked that a limited military strike is being considered. Things are uncertain, and the tension is palpable. North Korea has performed a number of ballistic tests, and has had its greatest success to date, but has not had the opportunity to test their ballistic technology in conjunction with their nuclear warhead technology. North Korea still wants to perform at least one atmospheric test, but no longer can without fear of at least some retaliation. Of course they hold Seoul hostage, but are they willing to shoot their hostage, which keeps the U.S. at bay over a “bloody nose”?

 

The solution it seems, is that North Korea needs to increase its political capital, to buy time, and goodwill, to put off retaliation until their nuclear arsenal is armed and ready, or to expand their arsenal as much as possible. This increases the risk of destruction for aggressors by increasing North Korea’s ability to bypass missile defense systems. The Olympic Games would be a perfect stage for North Korea to strike Seoul, or to hold the games hostage, in front of the whole world. Though the games seem to no longer be as much at risk of some sort of disaster, North Korea now has the whole world waiting on bated breath, to see if the door to peace will be opened by the common humanity shared during the Olympics. It’s the perfect move. While the North Korean regime cannot perform any blatantly aggressive acts, they have bought time against the whole world, since any action taken against the regime will be seen as sabotaging the peace efforts on the peninsula, including by their most hated enemy, the United States. Not only does this protect them until the Olympic games, but may even generate enough goodwill in the global community to perform the last few tests that they need to secure their position in the world as a nuclear power.

 

Will it work? I believe that North Korea has won the war that matters, and now we’ll have to figure out how to deal with it.

 

 

The Crypto-Bubble: Maybe not such a bubble?

Very recently, there has been concern in the crypto currency community about the meteoric rise of a number of crypto currencies. Of course the most notable among these are Bitcoin, which has risen dramatically to over $13,000 in recent days. Monero is another example, which in early 2017 was close to $30, and has now reached around $400. This has led to many speculations that the bubble will burst, causing the value of Bitcoin, along with possibly many other coins to collapse. The question is though, how likely is this to happen?

The rapid increase in value of Bitcoin is not unexpected. While few people still understand what a Bitcoin actually is, that hasn’t stopped the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, even being added to major exchanges. This in turn, has led to an increase in public trust, which feeds into increased adoption, thereby further increasing its value. This leads us to the question of how high can these coins go before it’s too much?

There honestly isn’t much precedent to give an answer based on, but by looking at some trends in other related fields, we might be able to make a reasonable guess.

The first thing that we should look at when determining the viability of these prices, is the continued utility of the coins. Here we’re in good shape, as the usage of Bitcoin has slowly grown, though some of that growth has been diverted to other coins. The important thing though, is that number of transactions performed across currencies is increasing per week, and has not decreased overall. The utility of other specific coins is debatable, but there seems to be no doubt that the currencies remain useful overall.

The next factor to examine is the supply of coins. Due to the rate that Bitcoin is mined, being a fairly consistent increase, with the difficulty being increased to counter large increases in hashrates, the market has resisted being flooded with Bitcoin, and with other coins also having this safeguard included, the rate of adoption has continued to outpace the the number of new coins being produced. A decent comparison might be to the secondary market of many Nintendo products. Products such as the Switch, the NES classic, and its successor the SNES classic have a secondary market value much greater than the primary market value because of the limited distribution of the product, and a steadily increasing supply, with very little drop in demand. Since the number of people who have adopted coins still remains so small as a percentage of the population that it’s available to, and the number of people who will have access to the internet continues to increase, this also bodes well for further increases in price.

The next factor to consider in the Bitcoin bubble is legality and regulation. At the moment, coins are barely regulated, partially due to their internal controls, and partially due to the lack of authority and decentralized nature that is considered in most cases an advantage. China for example, in the early days of Bitcoin, forbade the purchase and use of the currency within their border, but the nature of the technology made such a task impossible to carry out.

The accessibility of these currencies is not to be understated, with an internet connection, and a payment processor, nearly anyone in the world, and potentially off-world in the future would have access to this common currency, since it’s all digital.

Despite all of these things in favor of further increasing the value and use of coins, there are still risks that could severely affect the viability of these currencies in their current state. The first would be an internationally coordinated effort to stamp out use of Bitcoin. Considering its recent addition to more exchanges (though the events in South Korea bear keeping in mind), this seems unlikely to occur. The second metaphorical wrench in the works could be a sudden significant advancement in crypto technology. This could either take the form of ASIC chips advancing faster than the difficulty could increase, or in a more extreme case, quantum computing could theoretically overcome any increase in difficulty, likely causing the currency to implode. Of course, given enough time it’s likely that quantum algorithms could supplement the current models, but could be problematic in the interim. The third factor would be a collapse in digital economies in general. This would be most likely due to some sort of disaster or catastrophic event. If that happens, it’s likely that the value of your Bitcoins is going to be pretty low on your list of concerns.

Other than the minor setbacks that have been occasionally seen over the last decade of the existence of Bitcoin, nothing has stopped it yet, and it looks like Bitcoin will continue to be valuable for years to come.

Bits and Baubles

I’ve had this blog for a long time now, and haven’t done anything with it. Now is the time for change. Therefore, I’m going to use this blog for all the random things that I want to talk about, no particular niche. Nerdy things from thoughts on the state of the gaming industry, to economic and political discussion, to philosophy and ethics. Mostly, I want a place where my ideas coalesce in public.

Honestly, recently I’ve read some low quality content lately, and don’t want to write essays in comment sections, so I’m getting it all out there through this medium. I look forward to generating a lot of content, and maybe a few people will read it as a bonus.

Thanks,

-FG