BEFORE: Well, it's sure been a crazy week, right? Even crazier if you watch the news - and some of us are old enough to remember when there was only ONE kind of news, and it was called "The News". Now we have liberal news, conservative news, fake news, AI generated news, news from corporations owned by billionaires, and we're not even getting into content here, just the slants and the decisions made to kill certain stories, which is really just another form of censorship. But it's like the black mold in our nation's house, is the thing that you don't see that is allowed to grow and fester and it will, eventually find its way into the foundation of the house, meaning that we'll all either have to move or burn it to the ground and rebuild.
Maybe we'll remember that this was the week that free speech was put down, because we now have a country where the government is able to shut down any TV show where the material makes fun of the ruling party or the commander-in-chief, and this is 20 different ways of wrong, like we knew it could get this bad but we all didn't want to believe it. But you madmen just had to. re-elect him and blow the whole thing up, didn't you? I will keep broadcasting as long as I can, but we're in a "Lord of the Flies" situation for sure, I myself have written posts that mock the President, many in limerick form, so I've hidden behind the veil of anonymity for exactly this reason, they can't shut me down if they don't know who I am.
Anyone who said they would move out of the country if Trump got re-elected and then did NOT follow through is probably regretting that decision right now. He's got a goon squad that can pop up in any city he doesn't like, he can get anyone cancelled for saying bad things about him, meanwhile he can continue saying bad things about THAT person, or anyone else, with no repercussions at all. That hardly seems fair. Also he gets to choose which parts of the Constitution he wants to uphold and defend, and which parts he gets to ignore. Again, doesn't seem right, but what do I know, I'm not a Constitutional scholar, just someone who said this day would get here eventually.
During the first term we gave up our freedoms voluntarily because of the pandemic - the right to assemble, the right to pursue happiness, the basic liberty of leaving the house just to run around the corner to get a sandwich, but we did this because it wasn't safe. People did not like it, I get that - but now we're losing the right to watch what we want to watch, say what we want to say and believe what we want to believe, because of one man with a fragile ego. People SHOULD not be liking this at all, I'm just wondering now when someone's going to do something about it. Sad to say, it's still not safe out there, and I don't imagine it will be for some time.
Hadley Robinson carries over from "The Boys in the Boat". After this I'm going to go stock up on some toilet paper, it might be that time again.
THE PLOT: Four tech millionaire friends reunite during worldwide economic turmoil.
AFTER: This is a film designed to prove to you that the 1% of the people who own about 31% of the nation's net worth aren't just part of the problem, they ARE the problem. I guess there will always be a top 1%, no matter how you slice it, but come on, you know who I'm talking about, people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, some guy named Larry Ellison and so on. They've got their money in all sorts of companies across technology, social media and e-commerce, and really the only thing that can lessen their fortunes, as we've seen with Bill Gates and Bezos, is divorce without a pre-nup. So they are vulnerable, just saying.
We don't know what they do with their time, we don't know where they go when they want to kick back, we don't know if they gather together and play poker in beautiful mountaintop hideaways, and we don't know if they have any feelings or soul left if there is hardship or disaster somewhere else in the world. Is there any trace left in them of the humans that they used to be, or does nothing really matter to them, which would technically fit the definition of sociopaths? When the excrement really hits the fan, would they be there to help or would they just sit back and watch the world burn, while figuring out what land they could buy on the cheap after the collapse of society? Probably the latter, right?
This was supposed to be a semi-regular poker night, four long-time friends who also happen to be rich CEOs in the tech world - and they're NOT supposed to be talking business at this mountain hideaway, the three rules are "no deals, no meals, no high heels". Meaning leave the women at home (sexist) and only food that's portable, like sandwiches (meal-ist?) but these guys can't stop being who they are, just by getting together they see ways that one guy's new app could really be useful if he partnered with the other guy's business, they can't just turn off who they are, plus they also go on a hike to the top of the mountain so they could write their net worths on each other's chests and also scream their secret non-regulatory desires into the open air as a way of manifesting them. And they're friends, so there's totally no competition or shaming of the guy who's only a multi-millionaire and NOT a billionaire. Yeah, right, because that's totally what happens.
One of the guys runs an AI company, so one guess over who's responsible for the chaos around the globe. Somebody in one company used his app to depict the citizens of another company killing and raping people, and now things have turned to crap, and wars are popping up, and people are dying FOR REAL over fake news, but no, I don't think we need to do anything, this is just the marketplace going through a correction phase. Pass me another sandwich, would you? Guys, this COULD happen, we have the technology now to make a deepfake AI video of one world leader declaring war on another world leader, and do you really believe that we could somehow fix that before the missiles start flying? And the flip-side of this is that we could have video of some other world leader doing something very very BAD, like killing a nun or raping a child, and they can then just say, "Oh, that's AI" and we won't be able to prove that it's NOT.
Great, welcome to the future, everyone, I hope you brought enough sandwiches. Remember a few weeks ago when Putin got caught on a hot mike talking to the premier of China, and what they were discussing was the possibility of harvesting organs from common folk so that they could live forever? This is where tech is heading, and there are very few guardrails on that now, too. Meanwhile our own government has gutted the Department of Health & Human Services and fired everyone who thinks that vaccines are a good idea and don't cause autism. Scared yet? Remember that in the before times Trump disbanded the pandemic crisis response team, a year or two before we had an ACTUAL pandemic. Why, it's almost like one thing caused the other, or at least made it a whole lot worse, but that's crazy, plus I could get shut down for just suggesting that, so I would never draw that completely correct conclusion.
Meanwhile, back at Mountainhead (which they point out rhymes with "Fountainhead", but I wish I knew enough about Ayn Rand to see the implications there...) three of the tech bros are tossing out ideas for the future, maybe getting to a point where society can go "post-human", like maybe with the right moves now, in ten years we could get to a point where someone's consciousness could be uploaded to a computer or live in the cloud or something, which would mean they would kind of live forever. This is very attractive to one of the billionaires because he has a disease and despite his doctor saying he could live 20 more years, he feels his days are numbered and wants to take steps to be that first guy to live on digitally.
After discussing a few other scenarios (including shrinking people down to tiny size, like in that movie "Downsizing"), they realize that the fourth guy's technology is counter to this bizarre future plan, but in a way that I didn't quite understand. I guess these sociopaths actually want to accelerate the growing chaos around the world so society will fully collapse and they can replace it with a global technocratic dictatorship - you know, like you do. But Jeff's app, Bilter, is the fact-checking app, kind of like the counter to AI, like it can tell you what's real news and what is fake news. Well, that kind of goes against the plans of the other three guys, so they determine that they have to kill their friend Jeff - again, like you do. So I guess this is supposed to be a comedy of sorts, as these three privileged CEOs have no idea how to kill somebody, or what to do after that, like how do they hide the body or how do they disguise the fact that Jeff was stabbed or suffocated or had a bowling ball dropped on his head? It's a little funny that they have no idea and they don't let that stop them, but then when you think about it, it's not really funny at all.
I guess whether you view this as a comedy or as a horror film really depends on what happens in the future - so I have to leave it for the next generation to decide. Perhaps once you put all this out into the world, reality will follow suit, life will imitate art in some fashion. Or this will be regarded as a warning sign and people will take steps to ensure this never happens, it's really tough to say.
Directed by Jesse Armstrong (writer of "Downhill")
Also starring Steve Carell (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Cory Michael Smith (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Ramy Youssef (last heard in "Wish"), Daniel Oreskes (last seen in "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999)), David Thompson (last seen in "Win Win"), Ali Kinkade, Ava Kostia, Alex Pena, Amie MacKenzie, Larkin Bell, Capri Eaton, Emmi Eaton, Andy Daly (last seen in "Unfrosted").
RATING: 5 out of 10 smoothies
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