Barbie brought more enjoyment than Blade Runner in 2023. That's wack.

A still from Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott

Since I finally finished watching Barbie (2023), I can provide my opinion about it. This film turned out to be considerably better than I expected. When it was released in the summer of 2023 in theaters, in the same week as Oppenheimer, I had no desire to see it, and I didn't think that I would see it. Before watching Barbie, I didn't know anything about the director, Greta Gerwig, and I hadn't seen any of her other films, though I have Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019) in my collection. I expected Barbie to be some bland modern film about a doll, but Gerwig managed to turn it into something more than that. I've already seen Oppenheimer, and, since Barbie is the other half of the Barbenheimer cultural phenomenon, I watched the film attentively in order to know well how good the film really is and how it compares to Oppenheimer. While Christopher Nolan probably intended Oppenheimer to be an awards winner, I don't think that Gerwig expected Barbie to win awards and to become the highest-grossing film of 2023. When it comes to entertainment value, I think that Barbie is about as entertaining as Oppenheimer. In my brief review of Oppenheimer, I pointed out that the film has poor casting, except for a few exceptions, and that it does a poor job of portraying the era in which it is set. Barbie isn't a historical film, but I found the casting to be mostly good, and I found the sets and the special effects to be surprisingly good. Nothing in Barbieland stood out to me as inappropriate or bad-looking. I particularly like the travel sequence from Barbieland to the real world. I mentioned that the cinematography of Oppenheimer is underwhelming for me, though there are some scenes that are shot well. I found the cinematography of Barbie to be more appealing, and it's especially fitting in some peculiar scenes, like when Stereotypical Barbie meets Ruth Handler at the Mattel headquarters. As a comedy, Barbie works surprisingly well. There are effective funny bits throughout the film. The film's soundtrack and score are rather good too. All in all, I think that Barbie is one of the best films from the summer of 2023, though it's not among the very best for me because I think that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, The Flash, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 are better films. But the fact that Gerwig was able to make a film this good based on a popular plastic doll is quite an achievement. It's not just an enjoyable fantasy comedy. It also has something to say. I won't get into what it has to say because I don't want to and because I've seen the film only once. I found Barbie to be a more solid film than Oppenheimer. I wouldn't call Barbie or Oppenheimer a masterpiece. If these films are compared to the best that cinema has to offer, they come off as average at best, but there are things that I like in both of them. This is what kind of surprised me. The two films can be described as opposites, and yet they're both kind of enjoyable to watch. This makes me think that maybe I should have seen them in theaters when they were released in July of 2023. Funnily enough, seeing Blade Runner (1982) again in a theater in the summer of last year didn't do anything for me. Since it was a screening of Blade Runner, the auditorium was full of people, but the film, which is a classic, just didn't bring me any enjoyment this time. Before the film began playing, one of the theater staff came to stand before the crowd that had gathered to see the film in the lobby and said that a screening of Blade Runner is special and that the film attracts a large audience. Well, perhaps I wasn't in the right mood or perhaps it's best to see Blade Runner alone. Blade Runner is one of those films that I've seen several times. Therefore, I know what happens in it very well. But I enjoyed watching it the most at home when I was alone and not in a packed auditorium. But the worst experience that I had in a theater last year was when I watched The Virgin Suicides (1999), which turned out to be very dull and very boring. I still can't really forgive myself for buying a ticket in order to see this film. Watching paint dry would have been just as enjoyable as watching The Virgin Suicides. I like Lost In Translation (2003), but Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, her first effort as a director, is just terrible.

What's interesting is that I recently began to read a few non-fiction books that I've already read. Robert Stawell Ball's 'The Story of the Heavens' (1886) is actually the first book that I bought in a used books store. This happened several years ago. But I still haven't finished reading this book because I've been reading plenty of other books and magazines too. I've already read a large portion of Ball's book, and, when I do read it, I enjoy reading it quite a lot. Since I recently got to the chapter about Mars, I will include a little of what Ball had to say about Mars. "Although many valuable observations of Mars were made in the course of the nineteenth century, it is only since the very favourable opposition of 1877 that the study of the surface of Mars has made that immense progress which is one of the most remarkable features of modern astronomy. Among the observers who produced valuable drawings of the planet in 1877 we may mention Mr. Green, whose exquisite pictures were published by the Royal Astronomical Society, and Professor Schiaparelli, of Milan, who almost revolutionised our knowledge of this planet. Schiaparelli had a refractor of only eight inches aperture at his disposal, but he was doubtless much favoured by the purity of the Italian sky, which enabled him to detect in the bright portions of the surface of Mars a considerable number of long, narrow lines. To these he gave the name of "canals," inasmuch as they issued from the so-called oceans, and could be traced across the reputed continents for considerable distances, which sometimes reached thousands of miles. The canals seemed to form a kind of network, which connected the various seas with each other. A few of the more conspicuous of these so-called canals appeared indeed on some of the drawings made by Dawes and others before Schiaparelli's time. It was, however, the illustrious Italian astronomer who detected that these narrow lines are present in such great numbers as to form a notable feature of the planet. Great as had been the surprise of astronomers when Schiaparelli first proclaimed the discovery of these numerous canals, it was, perhaps, surpassed by the astonishment with which his announcement was received in 1882 that most of the canals had become double. Between December, 1881, and February, 1882, thirty of these duplications appear to have taken place. Nineteen of these were cases of a well-traced parallel line being formed near a previously existing canal." I bought 'A History of Science, and its Relations with Philosophy and Religion' (1929) by William Cecil Dampier in the same store and at the same time as Ball's book. I finished reading Dampier's book quite quickly, but I began to read it again recently because it's one of those books that I enjoyed reading the most. The following citation is some of what Dampier had to say about the development of science in Ancient India. "Since little is yet known about the claims that have been made for a very early development of science in China, the only other country in the ancient world which we need consider is India. It is difficult to trace much scientific activity there before the time of Alexander. But in ethical philosophy the name of Buddha (560-480 B.C.) is of course pre-eminent, and schools of medicine existed at the same early date. In the time of Buddha himself, according to tradition, Atreya, the physician, taught at Kasi or Benares, and Susruta, the surgeon, at Taksasila, or Taxila. The work of the latter, at all events, seems to be historical, and a Sanscrit text of it is extant, though the date is uncertain to within a century. A number of operations are described, such as those for cataract and hernia; some account is given of anatomy, physiology and pathology, and over 700 medicinal plants are noted. The memory of Atreya was preserved by Caraka of Cashmir, who, about A.D. 150, wrote a compendium of Atreya's system of medicine, as handed down by his pupil Agnivesa. Perhaps the paucity of Indian contribution to other sciences may in part be due to the Hindu religion. Buddha founded his system on love and knowledge, and a respect for reason and truth; but these tenets, favourable to science as they might have been, were neutralized by the other components of his philosophy. The transitoriness and vanity of personal existence were emphasized; self-annihilation and loss of individuality were made the condition upon which the attainment of spiritual completion depended. This attitude of mind, by distracting attention from all immediate surroundings, tends to arrest the desire for material improvement, which is often the incentive leading to an advance in practical scientific knowledge. But the gentle art of healing was consistent with the Buddhist religion, and for this reason, perhaps, the works of Atreya and Susruta with their stores of medical and surgical learning have survived. In one point the Buddhist philosophy of India touched a problem definitely scientific. A primitive atomic theory was formulated, either independently or by derivation from Greek thought, and about the first or second century before Christ the idea of discontinuity was extended to time. Indian arithmetic is remarkable, in that there is evidence to show that as early as the third century B.C. a system of notation was used from which was developed the scheme of numerals we employ to-day. It is possible that Indian thought influenced the schools of Asia Minor, and through them those of Greece; and it is certain that, at a later time, during the Arab domination in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, traces of the mathematics and medicine of India mingled with the learning saved from Greece and Rome, and re-entered the schools of Western Europe by way of Spain and Constantinople. This explains the fact that, when the Indian scheme of notation replaced the clumsy Roman figures, the primary source of the numerals was forgotten and they were misnamed Arabic. All the separate streams of knowledge in the ancient world converged on Greece, there to be filtered and purified, and turned into new and more profitable channels by the marvelous genius of the race which was the first in Europe to emerge from obscurity." The other books that I've been reading again slowly are Carroll Quigley's 'The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis' (1961) and 'Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time' (1966). Although just about everything that Quigley has to say in his books is interesting, I found the chapter about the collapse of China to 1920 to be most interesting this time. The following is a little of what he had to say. "Respect for old traditions, for the accepted modes of thought and action, for the ancestors in society and religion, and for the father in the family became the salient characteristics of Chinese society. That this society was a complex network of vested interests, was unprogressive, and was shot through with corruption was no more objectionable to the average Chinese, on any level, than the fact that it was also shot through with inefficiency. These things became objectionable only when Chinese society came directly in contact with European culture during the nineteenth century. As these two societies collided, inefficiency, unprogressiveness, corruption, and the whole nexus of vested interests and traditions which constituted Chinese society was unable to survive in contact with the efficiency, the progressiveness, and the instruments of penetration and domination of Europeans. A system could not hope to survive which could not provide itself with firearms in large quantities or with mass armies of loyal soldiers to use such weapons, a system which could not increase its taxes or its output of wealth or which could not keep track of its own population or its own incomes by effective records or which had no effective methods of communication and transportation over an area of 3.5 million square miles. The society of the West which began to impinge on China about 1800 was powerful, efficient, and progressive. It had no respect for the corruption, the traditions, the property rights, the family solidarity, or the ethical moderation of traditional Chinese society. As the weapons of the West, along with its efficient methods of sanitation, of writing, of transportation and communications, of individual self-interest, and of corrosive intellectual rationalism came into contact with Chinese society, they began to dissolve it. On the one hand, Chinese society was too weak to defend itself against the West. When it tried to do so, as in the Opium Wars and other struggles of 1841-1861, or in the Boxer uprising of 1900, such Chinese resistance to European penetration was crushed by the armaments of the Western Powers, and all kinds of concessions to these Powers were imposed on China. The political impact of Western civilization on China, great as it was, was overshadowed by the economic impact. We have already indicated that China was a largely agrarian country. Years of cultivation and the slow growth of population had given rise to a relentless pressure on the soil and to a destructive exploitation of its vegetative resources. Most of the country was deforested, resulting in shortage of fuel, rapid runoff of precipitation, constant danger of floods, and large-scale erosion of the soil. The fact that the southern portion of the country depended on rice cultivation created many problems, since this crop, of relatively low nutritive value, required great expenditure of labor (transplanting and weeding) under conditions which were destructive to good health. Long periods of wading in rice paddies exposed most peasants to various kinds of joint diseases, and to water-borne infections such as malaria or parasitical flukes. The pressure on the soil was intensified by the fact that 60 percent of China was over 6,000 feet above sea level, too high for cultivation, while more than half the land had inadequate rainfall (below twenty inches a year). Moreover, the rainfall was provided by the erratic monsoon winds which frequently brought floods and occasionally failed completely, causing wholesale famine. In the United States 140 million people were supported by the labor of 6.5 million farmers on 365 million acres of cultivated land in 1945; China, about the same time, had almost 500 million persons supported by the labor of 65 million farmers on only 217 million acres of cultivated land. As a consequence of this pressure on the land, the average Chinese peasant had, even in earlier times, no margin above the subsistence level, especially when we recall that a certain part of this income flowed upward to the upper classes. In America the farmer could afford to spend large sums for farm machinery because the labor such machinery replaced would have been expensive anyway and because the cost of the machinery was spread over such a large acreage that its cost per acre was relatively moderate. In Asia there was no capital for such expenditures on machinery because there was no margin of surplus above subsistence in the hands of the peasantry and because the average farm was so small that the cost of machinery per acre (either to buy or even to operate) would have been prohibitive. Because of the relatively low productivity of Chinese (and all Asiatic) agriculture, the whole population was close to the margin of subsistence and, at irregular intervals, was forced below that margin into widespread famine. In China the situation was alleviated to some extent by three forces. In the first place, the irregular famines which we have mentioned, and somewhat more frequent onslaughts of plague disease, kept the population within manageable bounds. These two irregular occurrences reduced the population by millions, in both China and India, when they occurred."