Spiders, an Ant, Lobsters

Friday night’s movie fix, courtesy of Netflix by mail, was a winner, The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018), the fourth installment in the Lisbeth Salander millennium saga. The plot concerns a coveted computer program and the forces out to possess it: the U.S. and Swedish governments, and a rogue group headed by Lisbeth’s twin, Camille, groomed by their dead psychopath father. The action is crisp and the locations beautiful, a multinational production filmed in Berlin, standing in for Sweden. I was reminded of the three B’s: Batman, Bond and Bourne. England’s Claire Foy has assumed the role of the avenging anti-hero. Director Fede Alvarez of Uruguay, Steven Knight and Jay Basu adapted the screenplay from the novel by David Lagercrantz, who took over the series after the untimely passing of Stieg Larsson. Although an action film, it does contain a bit of great dialogue which, to my chagrin, I was unable to find online. Spoken by the beautiful Swedish agent regarding the potentially dangerous program, it goes something like this: “Who would you rather have it — the Americans who are always going off to war, or us, who never are?” At first I was miffed, seeing it as an insult. I then realized it’s true of every modern president before Trump, who never put boots on the ground. Foy, in her mid 30’s, is in the midst of an outstanding career, having won two Emmys for her work in The Crown. She is fantastic as Anne Boleyn in the Wolf Hall mini-series. 48,000+ users at IMDb have rated …Spider’s Web, forging to a consensus of 6.1 on a scale of ten, too low, in my opinion. It runs just short of two hours. I did not pause it once, so swept up was I. Of course it contains violence and sexual content, non-explicit. No doubt tobacco companies endorse the flick. It was a disappointment at the box office. Made on a budget estimated at $43 million, it returned $35+ million worldwide, a big gap for streaming and DVD sales and rentals to close. Maybe Covid hampered its take. Here’s Foy in character, photo from Google Images:

“Do as I say, not as I do” headline from nypost.com: “Zuckerberg uses private jet frequently despite climate activism.” He has joined a long list.

From an article at foxnews.com by Angelica Stabile: Dr. Eugenijus Kavaliauskas of Lithuania submitted the following image to Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography. Despite the interest it has attracted on the web, it didn’t place. It’s a close up of an ant. Photo from GI:

An indian summer day, perfect for selling stuff curbside. My thanks to the kind folks who bought books. One was a pictorial on the art of Marsden Hartley. Born in Maine, his work was influenced by the Cubists he observed in Paris and Berlin. He also wrote poetry, essays and short stories. He passed away at 66 in 1943. Facts from Wiki. Here’s Lobster Fishermen, photo from GI:

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