Re: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 09:29:15 +0100, Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

On 19/05/2024 17:03, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sat, 18 May 2024 20:52:40 +0100, Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:
 

On 15/05/2024 17:52, Paul S Person wrote: >>> Something similar happened with a film I say decades later.

>
But the /wierdest/ problem I ever saw -- or, rather, didn't see -- was
when the soundtrack played but there was no picture. Of course, since
this was an "art film", it seemed perfectly possible that that was the
intended experience. When caught, we heard the film being rewound and
then it started again.

>
Derek Jarman's _Blue_?  :-)
>
A blank blue screen throughout.  The narrative
is mostly about being gay in London, and getting
AIDS, so you may have not seen it at the
Base Theater.

 
No, this was later, in a 10-plex that later became a Sundance theater
and then was sold. (Sundance installed large seats with cupholders,
introduced reserved -- ie, assigned -- seating, and obtained a liquor
license so you had to be 21 to see a PG-13 film. Wierd.) It is,
however, nice to know that my suspicion that the blank screen was
intentional was not entirely unrealistic.
 
The film I was referring to was about Mexicans being hired to
manipulate what RAH called "Waldoes" across the border in USA
construction sites. At last, Mexican labor without the Mexican! P

>
So is this science fiction or...  You said art film.
So, satire?

Well, shown in a theater commonly regarded as an "art house", anyway.
So, if it wasn't, it could have been. How could I tell until they
restarted it with the visible stuff visible? When all I had was the
sound, "art film" sprung to mind.

Near-future SF. Among other things, it illustrates the idiocy of a
border wall by showing how it ends on the Pacific shore, and so can be
evaded by swimming or boating.

But it wasn't really a satire. A /real/ satire would show the USA
completely bunkered with a Wall on every coast as well as the land
borders. Imagine the maintenance on a thing like that!

In real life, we have robots on production
Lines, in farming now I think, but not quite
on construction sites.  The trade prefers safety
violations committed by human machine operators
who are physically present.

These were, as I said, what Heinlein would have called "Waldoes" (I
don't remember the film using the term), working in the USA. Run
remotely from Mexico.

The plot was about the monetization of water by a Greedy Corporation (one
of D's heroes, no doubt) who sequestered all the water available to
the protagonist's home town, held the town up for ransom, and starting
killing whoever resisted. The ending was pretty much what you would
expect.

>
A remote-manipulated robot becomes U.S. President
(again), and the tables are turned?

Nope. But the greedy water company got what was coming to it.

A lot depends on the budget.  But wasn't
_Terminator_ pretty cheap?

I don't think I ever said it was a big film. It was a film about a
young man who leaves his small town for the big city and eventually
saves the town from dying of thirst. It has some action, but the story
is, how should I say this?, rather ordinary.

When the second reboot Bond film (/Qantum of Solace/) come out, it was
roundly ridiculed for treater water as a vital resource. The film I
have been describing did the same thing, on a much smaller scale, but
nobody noticed.

IIRC, California is having problems with water distribution rights as
the value of the resource becomes all too apparent. Much the same can
be said of the Southwest in general, IIRC. My own State, Washington,
has a water emergency declared in all but two counties (one of which I
am in) and the farmers are apparently beginning to feel the pinch.

In time those films which treated water as a valuable resource worth
fighting over (on however small a scale) will be seen as prophetic.

ObSF: when _Star Trek III_ starts out tiny and
monochrome.

 
IIRC, /Windjammer/ started out small as well.

--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"