Nathan Tyree: Amber Guyger Guilty of Murder

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https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/10/01/dallas-jury-reaches-verdict-in-amber-guyger-trial/?fbclid=IwAR28-JAhtFBVWplmxgjVo2hR4oWE_BUV6RvuP78Uc-PlOH8xqKEEcMSnibI

this makes me happy. I had believed that the jury would let her get away with it. That I was wrong gives me a moment of good cheer.

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Nathan Tyree: at some point doesn't this have to matter?

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http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/09/and-boom-goes-the-dynamite-2

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Nathan Tyree: Bret Easton Ellis

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Less than Zero is the kind of book that makes you think "this kid has potential, I can't wait to see what he does next". Sadly, next was The Rules of Attraction; a badly written adolescent level pile of dumb. But then, he wrote American Psycho. That book is a masterpiece. Satire like a sock full of pennies. The perfect deconstruction of 1980's America. A stunning work of brilliance. Sadly, Ellis would never write another novel. Oh, he would publish "books". Books full of mental masturbation, stupid navel gazing, self aggrandizement, paper thin plots, detestable characters. Just nothing that should count as art or even entertainment.

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Nathan Tyree: The best films of 1999

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Obviously my choices are idiosyncratic and will not align with yours, but I think these are the best films of 1999.

1. Being John Malkovitch
2. Audition
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley
4. Magnolia
5. Bringing Out the Dead
6. eXistenz
7. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
8. All About My Mother
9. Eyes Wide Shut
10. The Iron Giant
11. Office Space
12. Election
13. The Blair Witch Project
14. Fight Club
15. Dogma
16. Man on the Moon
17. The Red Violin
18. Bowfinger
19. The Matrix
20. Three Kings
21. Boys Don’t Cry
22. The Straight Story
23. American Beauty*
24. The Insider
25. The Limey

*At the time, American Beauty ranked much higher in my estimation. It has not aged well (for reasons both obvious and less so), and perhaps doesn't deserve even the rather low position I have given it. But, I wanted to keep it in the list because of the importance it had at the time.

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Nathan Tyree: It's worse when you smile

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There is a moment in Yojimbo where Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune) has been defeated. He is hiding out, badly beaten, his face a wreck of blood a bruises. We get the now iconic shot of him slumped against a wall, his hair a rat’s nest falling about his head. A ray of light cuts across his face to illuminate his one remaining good eye. Then we learn that it’s worse when he smiles.

AS action films evolved, the heroes mostly stopped being like Sanjuro. That is, human. Action heroes slowly morphed into super-human constructs. The peak of this process came with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold played unstoppable forces of nature taking on entire armies and alien monsters. The stakes got lower and lower as the audience became more and more convinced that the hero could never fail, never die.

But then, John McClane came along. Die Hard took us back to the fallible, destructible, human protagonist. McClane gets hurt. Really hurt. He does dumb shit (like taking off his shoes in the middle of an action movie). John McClane felt like he could lose. Like he could die.

Of course, the dreadful sequels would slowly morph McClane into yet another superman who can somehow outrun fireballs. That makes sense. It’s a cycle that repeats. McClane would give way to The Rock playing unbeatable forces of nature in films that effectively have no stakes at all.

Maybe that means we are just around the corner from a new, mortal, dumb hero who can reinvent action movies again and get us back to something as perfect and moving as broken Sanjuro being told that it’s worse when he smiles.

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