Speed:Need Ratio - Top Gun: Maverick, Reviewed

In many ways, Top Gun: Maverick is the most unlikely of sequels; a return to a militaristic aviation fantasy, three and a half decades on. Since the first Top Gun came out, we have seen the end of the Soviet Union and American planes at war in a few different places, notably Iraq and Afghanistan. The world has come a long way since then in some ways, while in others the regression is palpable. So can a Top Gun sequel still work? And more importantly, is it worth your time and money to see it?

It certainly works - you have to allow a little fudging around the timeline, and the biggest suspension of disbelief is in forgetting Tom Cruise turns 60 this July (surprisingly easy, given how he looks), but it works. And frankly, it is a better story than the first TG, a jock film where the sport is air combat maneuvering.

Early in the film, Tom Cruise's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell receives a dressing down from Admiral Cain (Ed Harris), who quickly exposits the idea that Maverick has overstayed his welcome, not only as an SR-73 test pilot but in a navy where aviation is becoming more and more the province of uncrewed vehicles and drones. 

Look at him - he looks, what, about 40 here? Maybe?!

Luckily another admiral (Val Kilmer, reprising his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky) wants him to train a group of hotshot pilots for an impossible mission in an unnamed country which bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the original 1977 Death Star attack. And so the veteran pilot travels to San Diego (not Miramar, this time!) where he must prove himself not only to senior officers who doubt him but much younger dogfighters unimpressed by his reputation.

Foremost among them is Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Mitchell's former backseater and RIO, "Goose," whose beef with his instructor is deeper than just having been present when his father died. Yes, the marketers actually held a few things back from the trailer, bless their pointy little heads, and so there are a couple of surprises to be found in what could have been a very cookie cutter film.

Make no mistake, Top Gun: Maverick is by no means a challenging or arthouse film, but it does surprisingly well in the quieter moments, especially those involving a rekindled romance between Mitchell and Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), the infamous "Admiral's daughter" from the first film. None of the relationships feel given away, all of the interactions feel earned and make sense. And I tell you what, the scene between Cruise and Kilmer is kind of minimalist, but was masterfully done, and was the heart of the movie for me.

Even the rivals are rational, and the plot (as thin as it is in places) never needs to be advanced by stupid people. When the final mission finally arrives, the enemies remain faceless behind tinted visors, and the real villains are time and terrain. The filmmakers and in particular director Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Tron: Legacy) do a wonderful job explaining the challenges and linking them to the drills during the training sessions that make up so much of the film.

But let's be honest here - the other elements are all good, but if you aren't into planes at least a little bit, I am not sure this movie is really for you. Pretty much all the action sequences take place in the sky and/or cockpit, and are at least as well filmed as any in Tony Scott's original. To be fair though, Tony didn't have the option of cramming an astonishing 16 IMAX cameras into the cockpit of a single plane, did he?

F/A 18 Hornets, both dual and single-seat versions, are the aircraft of choice for this film, and they look marvellous in their ACM sequences and streaking through canyons at high rates of speed. If the theme of Planes Go Fast has any appeal to you whatsoever, you will want to see this movie on as big a screen as you can manage. We saw it in IMAX which was marvellous and also gave the tremendous foley work and sound capture a chance to shine, as well as the score, which combines Harold Faltermeyer's original work with new material from Hans Zimmer. And Glory and I lead the charge of turbine-loving in our household, but Audrey and Fenya had a great time too.

This review may have been a waste of time for me to write in some ways -with a $151 million opening weekend (a career-best for Tom Cruise), you may already have seen it, or made up you mind you are going to. But if you are on the fence, I will say this: there is indeed more to the movie than just jets. Not a whole heck of a lot more, but it is there. And the jets? 

They are wonderful!

Holiday Games

(This is from Dec 2014, but apparently reverted to draft at some point? Grr…)

One of the best things about having a little extra time away from work or school is the opportunity to play somewhat more involved board games. Getting a quick round of Blokus or Tsuro in is no great challenge, and can be done after supper during the week, but the opportunity to do something a little grander should not be squandered.

 

The girls and I got in a game of the Aliens movie game one afternoon, which let me dust off some older miniatures and put on the soundtrack. If you've never played, it is a neat little cooperative game, full of tension and surprises, and there is a great web version of it here. We played using the beginner rules since it was the first time out for the girls, and managed to escape with 8 marines! Poor Wierzbowski...

 

We enjoyed playing Anomia with the cousins, and were happy to get the party edition with six new decks for Christmas from Tara. Still a game that brings frustration and entertainment in equal measure, but is easy to teach and rounds go very quickly.

 

Today we got to break out Risk 2210, which is still my favourite iteration of the 4 different versions I own. The game still ran for hours, despite having a five turn limit, but the various cards and the addition of lunar and undersea colonies to the classic map makes for a much more unpredictable game. And Glory's new pyjamas make for much more unpredictable pictures, too.

 

I am really looking forward to trying Space Cadets: Dice Duel, a real time, team-based, head-to-head spaceship matchup. Players frantically roll custom dice for each station like shields, helm and weapons, only pausing play when the Captain shouts "Fire!" In order to resolve the effects. I have the first Space Cadets game, a cooperative game based on a similar principle but without as many dice. Dice Duel allows 8 people to play against each other in teams of 4, with games taking about a half hour apiece, allegedly.

Hopefully 2014 will have many more opportunities to roll dice, throw cards, curse and laugh, regardless of whether we win or lose.

 

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The Blue Cathedral

For the first time in three years, our household returned to Rundle's Mission at Pigeon Lake, along with several others from St. Albert United Church.

I was reluctant to go, despite having attended almost every year since 2005 - the post-Covid fatigue (please don't let it be long Covid!) still has me fading out every afternoon without fail, which is also why I am only returning to work for half-days next week. But Audrey suggested that I could nap out there just as easily as I can at home, and I really wanted to see people from my church face-to-face again, so I went.

I am exhausted but glad I went. The weekend was low-key, and no one minded when I would disappear for 2+ hours in the afternoon to pass out. But we caught up while chatting on the balcony overlooking the lake, and enjoyed warm sunshine together for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

I brought along my phone's projector and a screen we hung with Command hooks so we were able to watch the Oilers win two playoff games on Friday and Sunday night, and played some boardgames together on Saturday evening, bringing Tsuro and Timeline to some people who hadn't played it before.

My niece and her fiancé came out for parts of the weekend, which was a delightful surprise, and we cooked smokies on an open fire with our extended families.

But Sunday morning may have been the highlight in many ways - meeting for worship outdoors at the foot of the Rundle's monument. Listening to birdsong and lapping waves before lifting our own voices in song, unmasked for the first time in two years. Rev. Mervin said there was no better place to experience God than out in the world They made, and I had to agree.

Our community of faith has been coming to this place on the Victoria Day long weekend for four decades now. The children who played on the lawn and jumped in the lake now watch their own offspring tear around, often under the smiling gaze of the grandparents who started the tradition.

Returning here felt good, and I hope we can continue to do it.

Curiocity: The Civil War Projectiles

curiocity - an intermittent series of posts addressing one or more unusual items around our household (fr. curio (n), any unusual article, object of art, etc., valued as a curiosity.)

On a small display shelf on the mirrored hutch in our bedroom are two large lead projectiles laid on foam in a box with a transparent lid. They have been there long enough that, like so many household objects, they have become almost invisible to me most of the time. But when someone bumps the dresser and they tip over or if I need to move them so I can dust, they always produce a cloud of memories. I picked them up in a souvenir store at a civil war battlefield; an impulse purchase I have never regretted.

Most people who go to visit the National Military Park in Gettysburg Pennsylvania probably do so out of an interest in that battle, or in the American Civil War at least. My interest in the ACW began afterwards, or perhaps during. 

While living in Toronto, Audrey and I visited Gettysburg three times over a four-year period, both of us enjoying history as much as we do, and it is a remarkably well-preserved battlefield, definitely worth the trip. On our last visit, we were joined by two friends from Edmonton, Pete (the Rare Hipster) and Brent (the Hoodlum), the latter of whom I am sad to say I have only seen once in the past 12 years or so.

Brent was a real military history buff, and had come out to G'burg with Audrey and I on a previous visit, where we discovered that there would be a massive reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg the following summer to commemorate its 135th anniversary. With Audrey pregnant and expecting in November, we realized this might be our last child-free vacation in a while, and asked Pete to join us as well.

Someday I will dig up the photos from that trip and show you the massive reenactment as well as an Amish market, and Brent reenacting a famous and grisly photo from Devil's Den, and the amusement park only I knew existed in Hershey, PA, but this short post will be about bullets.

The ones in my little display box are called (incorrectly) Minnie balls, but are, in fact, Minié bullets. They are not spherical but pointy -streamlined for straighter and faster travel. They were used by both the North and the South during the Battle Between the States, and there were a lot of them fired by the thousands of troops who fought there for three days in July of 1863.

I couldn't guess how many in total, but the two points that testify to the seriously unhealthy amounts of lead in the air are first, that there are multiple instances of bullets fused together because they collided in mid-air. Not a lot mind you, but holy cow, more than one? At least two different museums have such examples on display, and they are also owned by a handful of private collectors. Think of it; despite firing only 3-4 shots per minute, there were still enough bullets fired in anger that more than one time they were intercepted in flight - astonishing!

The second point of proof is the sheer number of bullets they have dug up around the battlefield, and at the time, people were still finding them on a regular basis. So many, in fact, that most of the many gift shops in Gettysburg have small bins of them by the cash register so you can buy one or two with your change.

There were other bullets as well; I think it was Audrey who picked up a malformed one from a separate bin, flattened and with irregular indentations in it.

"What are those, miscasts or defects or something?" I asked the shopkeeper.

"No," he said, "Those ones all came from the Spangler Farm."

My expression made it clear that I did not understand the significance, but Brent spoke up: "The field hospital? Ew."

The clerk gave a wicked grin and nodded. "That's right; those ones are full of teeth marks from the poor unfortunates undergoing field surgery or amputations without anesthetic..."

I finally clued in and finished his sentence; "...and so they literally had to 'bite the bullet'."

Audrey took a closer look to verify the marks as dentition, then dropped it into the bin with only the mildest expression of disgust. And I mean, good on her - let's not forget she was well into her second trimester by this point!

I reached across the counter and grabbed the tidier display box, with blue and grey foam showing the representative sides of the conflict. "I'll take these ones instead, thanks."

Return of the Son of Covid, Part II - Spoke 2 Soon

 A week ago tonight I wrote how decent I was feeling, much of it attributable to the high spirits associated with feeling like you have perhaps bested a modern-day plague responsible for 15 million deaths, according to WHO. 

But like Ripley stepping back onto the deck of the Sulaco in Aliens, I should have known the story wasn't over.

I woke up very tired the next day following a rough night of sleep, which was hardly out of the ordinary for me. I figured as long as I wasn't coughing I could certainly put in my time on the phones. But it started out rough and only got rougher, and by the end of my shift, I was not only exhausted, but my cough had returned. Or had it? How do you differentiate between "a" cough and "the" cough - I mean, we are doing lots of cleaning, there is dust flying about, surely a bit of coughing is to be expected?

But the next day the cough and exhaustion persisted, and I ended up home from work again, napping fitfully during the day, and coughing while awake. When I spoke to my doctor on Thursday, he wondered, as I had, if I had perhaps overdone it by returning to work too early and provoking a relapse. He suggested I take the rest of the week to recover and now, here I am - unsure about returning to work tomorrow fully 12 days after testing positive, and at least two weeks of being symptomatic.

This persistence meant not being able to attend Geekquinox (already once-postponed and now postponed again), not being able to celebrate Mother's Day and my birthday with a rare evening out, and missing the opening weekend of a new Marvel studio - I can't even remember the last time that happened.

Luckily Audrey is so accommodating - we ended up having a lovely day at home. She went out and fetched drinks and a lovely tiramisu (my favourite!) from Mercato in St. Albert, and I ordered us some tasty burgers from Woodshed.

No one had much energy after that much food (Fenya is still recovering and Glory worked the Mother's Day brunch at Hathaway's this morning to boot), so we played a game of Azul that saw Audrey triumphant.

A quick blog post and I will be off to bed -  it will be a trying week with training at work, and new windows being installed here on Wednesday and Thursday, casting the household into disarray.

I wish I was ending the week feeling more like I did a week past, but hope that a good night's sleep (whatever that looks like) will put me back on track, and try to focus less on a frustrating week and more on a lovely Sunday spent with loved ones.

My Covid Experience

My Covid experience mirrored the colds I get once or twice a winter, for the most part at least. The exhaustion preceded the cough, and the cough made sleep more difficult, which doubtlessly prolongs the duration of the illness.

Glory tested positive on Wednesday the 20th, her second day of a stuffy nose and sneezes. Audrey and I both tested negative the following day and went (masked!) to the movies for her birthday and saw The Lost City with Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock (I can't call it a great movie, but we had a wonderful time and quite a few laughs). Audrey woke up the next day with the sniffles and tested positive, but I didn't. 

I harboured no delusions - I was going to catch this plague, I had no doubt. It felt inevitable, but I was working from home anyways and didn't feel too awful; just a little tired on Friday afternoon after work. My intention was to guts through it as much as I could. 

But I tested on Tuesday morning (Apr 26) to satiate Audrey's curiosity, and not only did I test positive, but that second stripe pigmented up almost immediately and to a very dark shade of purple. Well, never was one to do things by half-measures, I suppose.

Did the test affect my outlook or energy levels? I don't think so, but who can say for certain? By the next day, I had coughed throughout the night and was extremely tired, so I took the day off work [and the following day as well] to rest. Unable to sleep during the day, at least I was not using my voice or aggravating my cough. Unable to focus enough to read or do any painting, I scrolled endlessly on my phone or iPad or re-played Call of Duty in a haze. 

Thursday I returned to work but asked to stay off the phones due to my nasty cough, spending the morning in a meeting and online training sessions. I responded to correspondence in the afternoon, a process that involves enough steps to make me ill at ease doing it in most situations, and my bleariness definitely impacted my outlook - a case study in remote presenteeisim.

When I woke up on the downstairs futon Friday morning, I felt like I hadn't slept at all, despite having gained at least 6-7 hours of slumber (drug-induced to overcome the wheezing and coughing). I called work to say I would not be in, fell back to sleep (a rarity in itself!) and didn't wake up until just before noon.

Canéla decided to join me shortly thereafter, and I think I drifted off again, so I didn't actually make it upstairs until after 1:00.  Of course, one of the nice things about being ill is that you can indulge yourself in all manner of comfort foods with very little of the usual guilt, so I made myself a plate of chips in the air fryer. I garnished them with smoked salt and served them up with a ramekin of leftover gravy, a feast that 17-year-old me would have been proud of. 

Sadly, the coughing didn't really start to abate until the next day, but by Saturday night it had become much more infrequent. In fact, by bedtime, I felt ambitious enough to start thawing a tenderloin for the next night's dinner, mere hours after having abdicated that evening's cooking duties to Smilie's restaurant and their large servings of hot and sour soup accompanied by delicious egg rolls.

Which brings us to today. I went to sleep last night aided only by melatonin and woke up earlier than I would have liked, and was unable to fall back to sleep, despite my best efforts. Having said that though, I did sleep through the night (another rarity, even pre-Covid!), and spent the rest of the day merely tired and not exhausted and zombie-like as I had been for much of the previous week. The barest tickle is there to remind me of the cough that has plagued my days for almost a week.

So! Not all the way out of the woods yet, but to all appearances I seem to be on the mend. Audrey returned to work today and Fenya (who finally tested positive yesterday) feels better today than she has for the past couple of days. No loss of taste or smell and no signs of long Covid for any of us, thank heavens. 

I am very grateful for the vaccines and boosters our household has received, as I am sure they made our experience far less severe than it might have been without them. Frankly, it was bad enough as it was!