1. Auto-play videos on web pages are one of the worst ideas of the internet age. Every single time you go to a web page you have to rush to pause the thing before it starts, as likely as not hearing the first second or so over and over and over. Even if I’m going there for the first time, who wants to load up a website and immediately have a 30-second spot playing in their faces before they can even get their bearings? This strikes me as a practice pioneered by men who looked at the whole question in the abstract, never bothered to try it for themselves, and simply got copied because it’s the ‘correct’ thing to do.

2. Also, words cannot express how much I loathe WordPress’s ‘block’ format. Just let me use a rich-text editor like any normal website instead of expecting me to fumble through your clunky, intrusive interface that breaks the flow of work and throws up extra barriers every time I want to edit paragraphs (I have an idea that there’s a way to work in normal mode, but I can’t remember how).

3. Didn’t actually intend to start out ranting against the computer age. On another note, we watched The Sound of Music while I was up in Maine. It struck me that, on paper, one wouldn’t think that this was one of the greatest films of all time. It sounds like a light, Hallmark-style romance at best: a free-spirited would-be-nun goes to serve as governess to a stern aristocrat, they fall in love. Even if you say ‘it’s a musical, and the songs are really fun’, it doesn’t seem like it would be anything special.

I think what sets it apart (I mean, besides Julie Andrews and Christopher Plumber absolutely dominating in their respective roles) is the time and place: Austria on the eve of the anschluss. That lends it an added grandeur as being not so much the story of an unlikely romance, but of the fall of Old Christendom before revolutionary Europe, but the carrying on of its beauties nonetheless.

The Captain is a relic of old, Imperial Austria (“A world that’s disappearing” as he sadly notes), embodied in the loss of his wife. He doesn’t know how to move on, so he shuts himself up and closes off anything that reminds him of her; rather like many a man who doesn’t know how to carry on after the Great War destroyed the remnants of the old world. Enter Maria to bring some of that orderly beauty and tenderness back, and showing that such things can still be preserved and the joyfully-elegant Austro-Catholic lifestyle can be carried on regardless of what has be lost (incidentally, edelweiss is the flower of remembrance in Austria; what the poppy is in England, as well as symbolizing the old empire).

Meanwhile, the Nazis want to appropriate that to their own ideology (hence the German officer insisting that “nothing has changed” in Austria), embodied in their demanding the Captain take a commission in the Kriegsmarine. The Nazis want to take all that was good in the old world for themselves, the Austrians want to preserve and pass on what can be preserved.

In the end, their culture – embodied in music – is the only thing they’re able to carry away with them, as a family, as they flee into Switzerland.

All of which is to say, there story is full of rich undertones beneath the cheerful songs and antics. Especially set against the achingly-beautiful mountains, cities, and landscapes of Austria. That film is simply steeped in old-world beauty to a degree few films can manage, and this is what gives it a lot of its power.

4. Another film night was The Abyss: Cameron’s lesser-known sci-fi adventure from between Aliens and Terminator 2. It’s much more of a straight science-fiction, as opposed to action or adventure film than those two, but it pulls it off pretty well (come to think of it, straight-up science-fiction films, as opposed to horror or action films in a sci-fi setting, are comparatively rare). The story is about an experimental underwater oil-rig that gets co-opted into helping the navy salvage a downed nuclear submarine. Little by little, they realize that the incident has put them into contact with alien lifeforms dwelling in a deep ocean trench some three miles below the surface. A hurricane strands them in a damaged facility, and the head of the military operation goes mad from pressure sickness just after getting his hands on a nuclear warhead from the sub, and it becomes a race to prevent him from launching a preemptive strike on the aliens.

The Abyss is certainly an interesting and engaging film, though it’s not quite as solid or as gripping as some of Cameron’s other works. Good-not-great territory, but with that warmly-satisfying pure-sci-fi tone that is so rare: time spent exploring practical technological developments (e.g. liquid breathing fluid for ultra-high-pressure environments) or contemplating ideas like what a first contact with alien creatures might look like and what kind of technology they might employ. Kudos especially to the design team, as the alien craft are some of the most suitably other-worldly in cinema.

5. Apparently, The Abyss was also an absolute nightmare to shoot, filming in an abandoned nuclear power-plant filled with millions of gallons of water, with all the cast and crew having to be in diving equipment. Both Cameron and Ed Harris nearly drowned on separate occasions (Harris ended up punching Cameron after the director just kept filming while he was drowning), the water was filled with so much chlorine to kill algae that it burned skin on contact, and one scene where a submachine gun gets fired in a sub bay required them to use live rounds to get the right effect (which is insane). Several of the cast suffered nervous breakdowns during the shoot, including an incident where the main cast members just started destroying their own trailers to get their frustration out. Ed Harris in particular refuses to talk about the movie to this day.

At least Cameron had the sense not to try to film in the open ocean. The makers of Waterworld weren’t so thoughtful.

6. We spent this week in my classical history class reading about Alexander the Great. One anecdote that I hadn’t heard comes from Plutarch. Alexander fell ill while he was in Egypt and a certain doctor was prescribing a remedy for him. One day he receives a letter telling him that the doctor is an enemy in the pay of his rivals and that he means to poison him with his potions. Alexander hides the letter when the doctor comes in, accepts the potion, and hands the doctor the letter to read as he’s drinking the potion.

So, Alexander’s letting the guy know that, if he is poisoned, everyone will know he did it. And at the same time demonstrating that he himself isn’t afraid of being poisoned. Also a signal to any rivals who might be watching: I’m willing to drink what I know may well be poison just to prove a point. What do you think I might do to you?

Say what you will about Alexander, and there’s a lot to be said, but there is a reason men followed him.

7. There is a sort of grandiose personality like that; not a simple thug, however brutal he may be, but a combination of warrior and performer, who is as aware of the higher things in life as he is of the practical side. They are rare in the pages of history, but they tend to make an impact. Alexander and his ilk are well worth studying if you want to create an interesting hero (or villain).