JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

First break in 10 years. Writing offline, in cursive.

Back in August.

In case of emergency, read a book.

And I don’t know how to process that sentence.

(One-fifth of a novel, to be exact.)

Dunkirk is a big, impressive, very accomplished film about an event little known outside of Britain. I leave you to read the critics spraining their fingers to praise it, many of them using the K-comparison, which almost certainly guarantees a backlash.

I did not know about the Dunkirk evacuations until I read Ian McEwan’s Atonement, in which Robbie Turner, who is imprisoned on the false testimony of the child protagonist, is let out of jail when he volunteers for the army. The middle chapters of the novel follow Robbie and other stragglers as they try to make it out of the town and to the sea, where they hope to board the ships that will take them home. It’s an elegant portrait of chaos and fear.

If Hello Kitty represents happy-go-lucky submission to globalization, Sanrio’s newer characters respond to the market with soul-crushing resignation or seething rage. Aggretsuko “is a symbol and expression of the pent-up stress and irritation that is rife in the world today,” her designer, Yeti, wrote in an email. And Gudetama, Amy wrote, parallels “the people in modern society who despair amid economic hard times.”

How Sanrio Makes Anti-Capitalism Adorable and Profitable

Yes, a movie that makes us root against our species also shows humanity’s potential for greatness. This humanity resides in Caesar the ape (nurture wins this argument). He is a hero in the classical sense, possessing what the Greeks call arete.

Few had high hopes for a prequel trilogy to a 1960s science-fiction movie that had already spawned a movie series, TV series, a failed reboot (Burton-Wahlberg) and this classic Simpsons musical sketch.

I hate every chimp I see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Zee…

But they did it. From Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where James Franco raised Caesar the super-intelligent ape and accidentally brought about the end of the human race; to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where Caesar tries to establish peaceful coexistence with the remaining humans while fighting off the challenge to his leadership from Koba, who believes in total war with the humans; to War for the Planet of the Apes, the trilogy has grown stronger. This conclusion to the Apes trilogy is majestic.
(more…)

This year he has won the Australian Open and Wimbledon. Next month he turns 36.