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I'm not sure that I agree that the film portrays Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon as righteous so much as, in a way, foreordained, but that's down to personal interpretation

I think Odysseus killing the suitors is the place where the thing Nolan's trying to do most stumbles, because it's the only violence in the film that tries to be even vaguely redemptive, which is out of touch with the rest of the film

Moreover, I genuinely don't understand how you think that my pointing out his mishandling of SpaceX -- and that said choices ought to have some consequences in his future search for higher office -- is a reference to the absolutely insane and homophobic attempt to have his kids taken away from him

....I feel like "him going softly on a company owned by a crazy fucking devil of a man" cuts pretty directly against the claim that he "knows right from wrong"

my kingdom for either an edit button or the ability to notice I've left a stray 'an' in something before I hit the post

spacex fan boys lost their minds at me when I predicted exactly this btw blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-te...

I cannot emphasize enough how fucked up SpaceX's Texas site is and the Biden administration (specifically the FAA under Pete Buttigieg) gaslit everyone who pointed out this was de facto eminent domain (w no compensation) of protected wildlife habitat

Buttigieg's consistently soft handling of Tesla and SpaceX -- and thus, of Elon Musk -- is a big old flashing vulnerability if any one of his political rivals want to land an nasty and entirely justified hit on him going forward

*Trojan historian watching as the Achaeans break down the gates* Wow, my civilization is undergoing a complex transformation from a heavily centralized and stratified administrative society to a more socially-fragmented modality of living in which material culture is dispersed amidst smaller sites.

I have to say, I pretty profoundly disagree with the idea that work composed at a time with vastly different ethical and cultural values is not valuable as art

Never was there a worse match between man and material

Genuinely! The correct answer to "How could you cut Tomb Bombadil?!" is "what would you trade for him?"

I mean you can also catch it in regular theaters. I think it's a fine viewing experience either way

artists often make choices that I think are wrong in my capacity as an audience member and (lapsed) critic, but I do personally find it helpful to ask if there are practical or consistent narrative reasons why they made them. Those aren't always flattering to the work but they're usually interesting

I've never really understood these either, to be honest with you

How do you depict the gods onscreen? How much emphasis do you give to the victims of the war, and where? How do you present the violence of a sacked city? Which incidents from the text do you keep, and which do you opt to leave out? There are lots of ways to do these. They all have potential costs.

If there is anything I've been chewing over around Odyssey/adaptation discourse, it's trying to think through, specifically, the trade-offs that come with making certain narrative and practical choices

I keep coming around to this (to my mind, very practical) question when it comes to adaptations of lengthy texts. There are practical considerations for how long a movie can reasonably be, logistical ones when it comes to length of IMAX films. So it's useful to think specifically: what do you cut?

There may not necessarily have been elaborate philosophical structures built around it, but it is a very human thing to look at a situation and go "you know what, this fucking sucks"

At the very least, quite a lot of people throughout time and space have recognized that slavery was a very bad fate that they did not wish to be -- but absolutely could end up -- subject to