“MISCONCEIVED AT VIRTUALLY EVERY LEVEL”: ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review.

All of which is to say that even if you didn’t love Joker on a storytelling level, at the very least I think you have to acknowledge that it captured a sensibility. As such, it remains a vibrant reminder of an incredibly weird moment in the world mood. It has a reason for existing.

Joker: Folie à Deux does not have a reason for existing, and as such, it does not work. Like, at all. It does not work as a comic book movie despite references to Harvey Dent and other DC mainstays. It does not work as a courtroom drama, despite the fact the second half of the film takes place largely within a courtroom. It does not work as a romance movie or a romcom, despite the film’s nominal reason for being is the couple of Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, and Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga). It does not work as a musical, despite the numerous musical interludes. It doesn’t even work as an actor’s showcase, despite having great talents like Phoenix, Brendan Gleeson, and Catherine Keener.

Joker: Folie à Deux is as badly misconceived a movie as I can remember seeing.

Ouch.

Related (From Ed): The Critical Drinker on Joker: Folie à Deux:

UPDATE (From Ed): Who knew the title was so difficult to pronounce?

OPEN THREAD: Thank God it’s Friday.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Vulcan competes second flight despite SRB anomaly. “United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan Centaur lifted off Oct. 4 on a test flight needed to certify the vehicle for carrying national security payloads, but may have suffered a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters.”

DO THE DEEP SEVENS HAVE A COLONY THERE? Changes in The Moon’s Gravity Hint at Unexpected Movement Deep Beneath Its Surface.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Researchers Discover Aspirin’s Surprising Ability To Combat Hormonal Deficiency.

HONESTLY, 35% DOESN’T SEEM ALL THAT IMPRESSIVE: Flu vaccine in Southern Hemisphere reduced risk of hospitalization by nearly 35%.

FIREFIGHTERS BRAVELY RUSHING IN TO COVER BREAKING STORIES!

● Shot: Newsweek Discovers a New Pathology on the Right: Right-Leaning Men Have a “New Obsession,” and It’s Hot Girls With Nice Bodies and Conventional Good Looks!

—Ace of Spades, today.

● Chaser: Is Disney Bad at Star Wars?

—The Hollywood Reporter, yesterday.

● Hangover: Even America’s Newspaper of Record isn’t immune to be painfully slow on the draw! Are You An Unathletic Oaf Who Gets Winded Going Up A Single Flight Of Stairs? Why Pickleball Might Be For You.

—The Babylon Bee, yesterday.

THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Toyota Pushes Back EV Production Plans in America.

JIM TREACHER: #MeToo Is Dead, and Doug Emhoff Killed It.

Once upon a time, Democrats pretended to care what happened to women.

In 2017, following the revelation that film producer Harvey Weinstein was a serial sexual predator, Hollywood and all their fellow liberals did a thorough housecleaning. They named and shamed men who had been abusing women for years. It was #TimesUp for toxic masculinity.

Or so we were told. And told. And told. Again and again and again.

Fast-forward seven years. The president of the United States is a dementia-addled basket case, and his even more inept VP is the Democratic candidate. Most of the “news” industry is frantically trying to convince you she’ll make a good president, because they don’t care about anything but keeping Donald Trump out of office.

So, what do the journos do in 2024 when a woman comes forward with a story of abuse by a powerful man? The first thing they do is check whether there’s an (R) after the guy’s name. If not, he’s off-limits.

They’ll ignore the story as long as they can. And when they’re finally forced to say something about it, they’ll minimize it as much as possible.

They’ll even transform the powerful Democrat into the victim.

That’s what Semafor just did:

To be fair, #MeToo was dead as soon as Joe Biden was nominated, and like Biden, its desiccated husk has been impotently twitching less and less in the years since.

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Students created a way to access personal info via AI and smart glasses.

In a shocking turn of events, someone was able to use a new high-powered tech product for evil. Two Harvard students paired the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses with facial recognition software to rapidly identify strangers and compile their personal information from the internet to highlight the privacy concerns that are getting unboxed with easily accessible consumer tech.

In a video posted to X, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio explained how they built I-XRAY. The program uses the glasses to capture images of random people on campus and at a train station, identify them through a publicly accessible facial recognition search site like PimEyes, and then use a large language model (LLM) to trawl the web and compile the person’s information. Nguyen and Ardayfio could access people’s addresses, the names of their parents, and photos in mere minutes, and even approached unsuspecting people using the info they collected to make them think they had met before.

The creators said they would not release the code for this program but created it to highlight how it’s possible to build invasive tech with recent advancements like smart glasses and LLMs.

They may not be releasing the code themselves, but how hard would it be for someone to reverse engineer the process, now that the cat is out of the bag?

"The creators said they wouldn't release the code for this program but created it to highlight how it’s possible to build invasive tech with recent advancements like smart glasses and LLMs."

More here: https://t.co/2FYHsYPxPI

— Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) October 4, 2024

THIS IS YOUR GOVERNMENT:

In between laughing at the false claim that JD Vance was wearing eyeliner at the VP debate, Obama-Harris whisperer David Axelrod said on his podcast that Hurricane Helene’s victims are mainly Trump voters who will find it hard to vote. Affected Democrats from Asheville are… https://t.co/yIqJWvuomh

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 4, 2024

“JUST WIN, BABY!” Striking Dockworkers Agree to Take a Measly 62 Percent Raise and Not Spoil the Election for Democrats. “Democrats want to win the presidential election. They have fully embraced a complete Al Davis ‘just win, baby’ mentality. If that means some traditional Democratic interest group gets the short end of the stick, there will be time and money to make amends after the election. But no part of the Democratic coalition is allowed to put its personal or parochial priorities ahead of the collective priority of winning the presidential (and down-ticket) elections. There is a discipline, focus, and clear prioritization at work on the Democratic side that simply isn’t matched by the disparate factions on the Republican side.”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey adds that even if Kamala doesn’t win, there’s still an upside for Democrats:

Obviously, Biden and Kamala Harris needed to deliver for union members while not impacting consumers with shortages and higher prices in the days before an election. But now Biden can wash his hands of the automation issue, and so can Harris if she loses the election. The suspension leaves a stinky turd for Donald Trump if he wins just as he’s about to take office, assuming that ILA and USMX can’t settle on automation restrictions. And the rapid increase in labor costs built into the wage agreement over the next six years will incentivize USMX to expand automation as much as possible, so don’t expect this to get settled without another strike during Inauguration Week.

As with 2017, I’m sure there will be plenty of headaches and bad surprises left by Democrats for Trump to deal with over his first weeks in office if he wins next month.

EXPOSED! LEFT TARGETS RIGHT’S FOIA ACCESS: John Kerry made it clear (as if there was previously any doubt) that the Left wants to rewrite the First Amendment. Now, as I explain in my latest PJMedia column, we learn the Left wants to bar conservatives from using the Freedom of Information Act.

WELL, GOOD: Las Vegas Homeowner Shoots And Kills Intruder.

YOUR FREE SPEECH IS ONLY FREE AS LONG AS YOUR FREE SPEECH AGREES WITH ME: YAF Sues UCLA After It Allowed Palestinian Protesters to Shut Down My Speech

Update: I suppose it would help to know that this is Robert Spencer.

BY ANY MEANS FAIR OR FOUL: Democratic Dirty Tricks Are BACK: Green Party Accuses the DNC of Spying, Infiltrating, and Lawfare.

WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO BE A COLLEGE PRESIDENT? It’s a toxic job, but someone with principle can pull it off. (Virtually none of those people will be considered for the job.) Plus, there is an automatic win condition: the first Ivy that hires a principled, conservative president will be building its next campus on Mars with all the money it rakes in from donors.

FIND YOUR PHONE: Apple AirTag. #CommissionEarned