I had picked this up at a used book store a long ways back after reading nothing but rock bios for a while - thought a little historical non-fiction could beef my brain up.

Took about a year, but I finished it yesterday and the timing of the whole submersible ship implosion while doing some tourist viewing of the sunk Titanic lined up in a pretty unsettling way for me.

As far as the book goes, this is my second from Erik Larson, the first being Devil in the White City, which was excellent as was this one. Erik Larson has an incredible skill for writing a mix of textbook material and humanizing detail that allows you to both learn and care, while organized in a way that builds suspense despite the events being common knowledge. It almost reads like historical fiction, his research is very thorough into both the people he describes and the events that happened, providing context to both that creates a rich and educational reading experience.

Worth noting:

• Woodrow Wilson spends the whole book being a total simp and an emotional sad sack.
• Winston Churchill is both admirable and contemptible in his actions, in modern times he would be seen in a much more negative light.
• While making it clear that the German U-Boat commander Walter Schweiger is a cold and calculated man focused entirely on sinking ships with little care for the human toll, even he at times is a relatable character.

While the current events aren’t totally related as instead of a torpedo submarine we are currently talking about a luxury submersible used to do sight-seeing of a passenger ship’s wreckage, the first hand accounts of the survivors of the Lusitania’s sinking paint an absolutely horrifying picture of living through a shipwreck.

I never watched Titanic (I only watch good movies, thank you) (jk) but to imagine the absolute chaos and carnage of thousands of people in the middle of a freezing ocean, getting off the boat just to still be maimed or set adrift amongst the debris and surrounded by corpses and other terrified people… it’s rough.

Good read, check it out.

John Wick: Chapter 4

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Year: 2023 // Runtime: 169 min // URL: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366206/

Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller // Producer: Chad Stahelski // The Internet Has Rated It: 7.9

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, George Georgiou

I Give It: 12/13 Tumbles Down Ridiculous Long Flights of Stairs

Sad I missed it in the theater here but just got around to watching this at home.

Thought this would be a good opportunity to test out how compatible my personal movie note / reviews I do in ObsidianMD are when copied and pasted into beehaw (or whatever other fediverse platforms)

Like all the other John Wick movies, let’s just get this out of the way: The plot is… present. You don’t have to think about it any more than that and if you do, you’re ruining it for yourself. It is almost completely unimportant, nobody is watching this for the plot.

Here’s John Wick, he’s a badass that likes dogs. The ultimate assassin who doesn’t want to assassinate anymore, just wants to be at peace with a dog somewhere and he misses his wife. Rules for the assassin way of life (“the old ways”) are introduced at convenience for plot progression. There are super-assassins and there are henchmen, John has to battle all of them with few exceptions. In the realm of villains there are pure-villain pieces of shit like nightclub owning Killa, or the sympathetic but duty-bound (or financially motivated) badasses that you like while still pulling for John to emerge victorious.

The John Wick movies are all about fight scenes which are amazingly choreographed and never get boring. Even when they the laws of physics are clearly broken or one combatant is flailing in the background while John deals with another guy only to come back to fighting stance just in time for John to beat him up again, they manage to maintain a sense of high stakes and excitement and it always feels fun first. The rest of the universe moves to amplify the coolness of battle sequences. Cars on the street, dancers in clubs, lighting features in museums, water whenever the movie decides it would be cool to have some water falling, they all move to serve the greater purpose which is meticulously detailed, over-the-top, perfectly executed combat choreography. The world is dense with people, and they're all NPCs until they're ready to fight. Bystanders don't act like people would with people engaging in mortal kombat all around them, they act like nothing's happening until the fight is over and they leave the club at a medium-brisk pace.

Every environment in what resembles our world is dramatically lit in an extreme version of whatever that place's earth counterpart would be… every main character looks like a comic book character, pause the movie at any point and it looks like you trained Midjourney on a graphic novel and requested a photorealistic render of a panel. Osaka looks like infinite-neon cyberpunk Osaka, and of course it’s full of assassins. The Ruska Roma syndicate operates out of a Catholic Church in Berlin has way more candles and dramatic paraphernalia than already would adorn a normal Catholic Church. Paris is full of fog machines and incandescent lighting

Regardless of location, it’s all assassins. Homeless guys are assassins. Auto-mechanics? Assassins. Pedestrians? About 60% assassin. Frenchman with a baguette? Probably assassin. Dog? Very good boy and assassin. Everyone listens to old fashioned looking radios where DJs broadcast to the world about murder assignments. There is a fleet of Assassins Guild Worldwide call-center girls dressed like it’s the 1950s but they're covered in tattoos and using green text CRTs to put out ever-increasing bounties via command-line. People switch languages mid-conversation to show off how smart and cultured they are and subtitles appear on screen in an extremely corny action-movie font.

It’s all very dumb, but if you watched the first few movies you know that and don’t care. And nobody should, because it’s all part of the kinda dorky action aesthetic.

The overall impact of this style is mixed, in other parts of the series I've had to roll my eyes a bit and wondered "Wait, I'm loving this, but is this movie actually good?" It can take me out of my temporary suspension of disbelieve to see just how ridiculous what's on the screen is at times. When you first see a new character sometimes my first reaction is "What the fuck is this guy?" Once I reframe it to comic-book or videogame sensibilities in my mind I am able to get back to enjoying the flick.

Stylistically goofy decisions aside, John Wick accomplishes exactly what it's supposed to: it's action packed and entertaining, funny at times, violent while only occasionally entering gross-out territory, and it manages to keep the viewer engaged throughout the entirety of the film

I loved it, all 169 minutes of it, and I'll probably watch it again soon.