“Wanna buy a piece of the moon?”

Disney just put out this big expensive “spiritual prequel” (who came up with that line?) to the Wizard of Oz. That 1939 Judy Garland vehicle was one of the most groundbreaking, bizarre films of any era, pushing ideas about what could be done with movies to the very edge and also nearly killing two cast members along the way. Campy as it may be, and dated, still: it was released in 1939? Two years previous, people were still commuting from Germany to South America… by way of zeppelin. (I mean, in 1939, Gandhi was still trying to get Hitler to chill out.) So: this movie is pretty amazing for something from a very long time ago.

The only good thing about this new movie, Oz the Great and Powerful, is that it clearly undercuts the worst invention of the movie The Wizard of Oz in its adaptation. (Obviously, we are going to talk about what goes on in these movies, so if you are concerned about learning plot points or whatnot, for some reason, then go away.) The great departure in the Wizard of Oz screenplay was that it is at least very strongly suggested that Dorothy had banged her head about and had a long hallucination, waking up right where she was, in Kansas all the while. In the novel — as evidenced by its 13 money-making sequels! — Oz is a “real” place. (Just like Narnia.) In this movie, our Wizard arrives in Oz, also from Kansas and also by way of tornado, which presents several questions regarding this method of transport. He meets the witches that rule, sort of, the land. (Technically, the land is between rulers.) Then he stays, presumably until Dorothy gets there, a generation later.

This is all already confusing and strange. There are two “bad” witches and one good witch. The bad witches are the daughters of the former king. Why was the reign of the former king so terrible that he had to be assassinated by the lone good witch? Can she still then be a good witch, though? Why only one good witch? What is the source of the powers of these witches? Why does one witch have an American accent and one has an extremely posh and entirely made-up English accent even though they are witch sisters? Am I really going to blame “different witch boarding schools” for that one? Why are there only three all told anyway? Are there no witchlets? What are the odds that the king of the Emerald City would have two daughters who were both witches? Was the king a witch? And why also is the society so tightly structured? You are apparently either a witch, or a farmer, or a mechanic, or a munchkin. How can an entire country exist with no class mobility whatsoever?

So there is a war in which the wizard finds himself and Rises to the Occasion, thereby making the bad witches flee and other stuff, the end. It seems like things were maybe going better before he arrived? The good witch killed the king. Surely she could take out the bad witches. Then everything would be fine. But he complicates things.

We have him there — he is the focus of the movie, unfortunately — so he has to have things to do. The movie ends, incredibly, with the wizard, having saved the day from the two witches — although apparently not finally, since, you know, Dorothy arrives and everything is a wreck in the next movie — making out with the good witch. Bizarre and unconscionable.

The reduction of the plot to what are essentially three romantic entanglements is actually rather disgusting! There’s no way to say this without sounding prudish. The Wizard of Oz managed to divorce itself from romance entirely (although not from frightening psychosexual imagery, sure) yet find a plot. That the hero of this movie is forced to have romance with essentially three of the four women in the movie is just nuts.

That’s how you can tell this movie suffers from a major accident, in that they wrote this story about the wizard, and then, while doing so, found a much more interesting story, which is the history of these witches. But because everyone thought that no one would pay to go see this movie about The Witches of Oz, they had to keep the main dude. The main dude’s story is boring and terrible. The witches, they are exciting.

And simultaneously, James Franco is like a great null space, he’s like the gap in the cat’s cradle. I don’t know if he’s trying at all, or is being understated and natural, or if he’s actually trying to be affected, to camp up the proceedings. But he’s such a significant non-entity that he exposes the fact once again that the film shouldn’t be about him. While meanwhile, Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz as witches are pretty effectively going yabba-dabba-do as hard as they can, like Fred Flintstone’s feet in his stone car.

This is sort of a great paycheck for some seemingly nice people, which is fine. It’s intriguing too that this movie has a, so sorry, “hipster” cast. It’s like the casting was done by the marketing arm of an entirely different movie. It doesn’t need a James Franco and a Michelle Williams. I don’t think this is a red herring though. Relatedly, 75% of the main cast should have bagged on this. The only one who I think comes out ahead is Mila Kunis, somehow. (Not sure if I can actually explain the cultural capital v. capital capital math on that one, really, if push comes to shove.)

Anyway, this movie is terribly bad.

None of this matters. The dude in front of me at the movies said “When the fuck does Dorothy show up?” really loudly about halfway through. So Hollywood will never go broke underestimating, etc., etc.

by Abe Sauer

A spot about a father suffering from Alzheimer’s is the most popular of a new series of ads that has young people on China’s social networks talking — or better put, it has them talking about crying. “Every time I see it I cry,” writes one Weibo user. Hers is a typical reaction. Filial piety might seem a laughable topic for a public-service campaign in the west, but in China, it’s the basis for a campaign aimed to guilt kids into thinking about the elderly. Making China’s youth cry is not enough, though; China needs the new generation to act on that guilt, to buy into the Confucian ideal that has long served as the country’s social safety net.

The only problem is that China is also asking them to buy everything else.

The Alzheimer’s ad concludes with the tagline: “He’s forgotten a lot of things. But he’ll never forget he loves you.” Pow! Cue tears of a hundred million one-child children who’ve gone off to work hard, achieve China’s middle-class dream, and reap the consumer and lifestyle spoils that dream affords.

Across social media, the subject of crying is a common one. “Today everyone on the web is crying,” wrote another Weibo user of the spots. Some wrote that the campaign is “like tear gas.”

It’s no surprise that, in an interview with the Yangtze Evening Post, the Chinese creative team behind the spots revealed the inspiration for the standout Alzheimer’s ad came from the real-life experiences of one of the team.

Other ads in the campaign may be eliciting less reaction, but they’re still resonant. One spot, “Mom is Waiting” (妈妈的等待) is equally emotionally fraught.
The ad follows a mother playfully raising her boy into a man, who then proceeds happily into his future as the camera pans back as the lonely mom fades away: “Don’t love too late. Go home more often to visit.”

Not all of the ads are so grim. One titled “A Belated New Sweater” (迟来的新衣) features migrant workers motorcycling home to rural areas for a warm Spring Festival (“Chinese New Year”) celebration. Tagline: “China. Let your heart go home.”
Though the focus is always on going home, the campaign explores other themes, including one spot set in Africa, where the nation’s booming investment has created a substantial Chinese expat community.
Another spot highlights generational connections as an elderly man pays his respects to his late mother.
In common between all of the ads are exceptionally high production values and quality video work. China has done “visit home” public-service ads in the past, but none approach the focused, emotional laser of the latest campaign. None had the subtlety of that moment when the camera lingers on the wrinkles of a mother beaming proudly at the successful, returned son. It’s a testament to the ads’ powers that one doesn’t need to speak a word of Mandarin to feel the emotional impact.*

Hong Kong director Alfred Hau (侯仲贤) is behind the work. Hau, who has done ads for western brands like Kohler, is well known for video that captures the warmer subtleties, humor and nostalgia of Chinese family dynamic. Hau’s Hong Kong market work (with Such Partners) for US discount retailer PriceRite is a display of these talents, including making a tender emotional connection between low-price Tupperware and your dad’s 1970s porn stash.

But China’s drive to get its kids to “visit home” is more than a philosophical desire for a Confucian ideal. It’s an economic imperative.

China’s social safety net in part relies on each generation taking care of the last. Except, thanks in part to China’s one child policy and overall slowed population growth, by 2035 the nation is projected to have 280 million residents over the age 65, or about 20 percent of the whole. By 2040, the elderly will account for closer to 30 percent of the total.

One characteristic of China’s economic rise has been that younger workers leave home to move to booming urban areas. No surprise, they find the vibrant lifestyles there more appealing than their more rural beginnings. A growing number of reports also suggest what has long been suspected — a generation of spoiled, single, “after 80s” and “after 90s” (80后, 90后) children who know nothing but breakneck economic betterment and have been pushed to succeed in competitive environments are now finding it hard to think beyond themselves.

“I’m busy everyday. Even weekends. I went home at Spring Festival but when else can I get away, I’m always working,” a Shanghai friend named Golden told me. From a smaller town west of the urban Yangtze River delta and working at as HR head hunter, Golden shrugged and reasoned that he would maybe go home more often but worries his boss would notice and those who do not go home would get ahead.

His colleague, a 20-something named Chad, went home for Spring Festival but echoes the sentiment. “I have a life in the city. I go to the gym. I work hard and like spending time with my friends. My parents live in Sichuan. Do you know how far it is from Shanghai to Sichuan?”

Both said they’d seen the Alzheimer’s spot and been moved, though not quite to tears. Golden says he got his parents a Surface tablet and taught them to use it to keep them occupied. “I just hope they don’t spend to much on Taobao now,” he concluded, referring to China’s popular eBay online retailer.

The situation was more ominously thrown into relief in a great, recent Aeon Magazine piece on China’s youth that featured a paradigm-shaking comment from one 26 year old: “It’s not just a generation gap. It’s a values gap.”

That the gap is about values should keep China’s central planners up at night. China’s current elder-care facilities could, at best, handle 2 percent of the total in-need population. Last month, China Daily reported that the wait for a spot at Beijing’s No. 1 Social Welfare House was about 100 years.

China’s “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly” includes a chapter titled “Maintenance and Support by Families” with these instructions:

Article 10 The elderly shall be provided for mainly by their families, and their family members shall care for and look after them.

Article 11 Supporters of the elderly shall perform the duties of providing for the elderly, taking care of them and comforting them, and cater to their special needs.
The supporters referred to here are the sons and daughters of the elderly and other people who are under the legal obligation to provide for the elderly.

The spouses of the supporters shall assist them in performing their obligation to provide for the elderly.

Article 12 The supporters shall pay medical expenses for the elderly suffering from illnesses and provide them with nursing care.

A common false perception of China is that it’s lawless. In fact, it’s fat with laws. What China lacks is enforcement. Its laws governing elder care are no exception. In 2011 and 2012, China threatened to legislate elder care with a law allowing parents to sue deadbeat children. But even thinking about a practical way to enforce such a law leaves the brain as snarled as one of Beijing’s famousEnd-Times traffic jams.

Lest this be mistaken as a problem exclusive to Mainland China, other regional neighbors are facing similar filial deterioration. In 2010, Singapore’s Ministry of Community and Youth Services produced the emotions disemboweling “Father and Son” spot to push traditional Chinese filiality. It even threw in some callouts to Christian values for the hell of it.

While never far from mind in China, the web has made thoughts on the subject of filiality more easily shared by China’s always-online youth. Two years ago, social network users went bonkers for a short film with a similar theme, “Heaven’s Lunch.” Viewed millions of times, the film elicited the same reactions of weeping and tears as the new CCTV ads. “Lunch” also is about watching a mother die. In fact, she fades away just as in the new “Mom is Waiting” spot. (As with so many in this genre, “Lunch” also revolves a great deal around cooking and eating food, the de facto shared language of most Chinese families.) Of course, while this online sharing can create a positive message multiplier effect, it can make an audience numb to the message.

In a 2011 man-on-the-street piece at Rednet, a reporter asked different Qingdao residents about their spending. What he found was parents spending lavishly on their (usually single) children with little leftover for the grandparents. One parent said her child required spending 36,300 RMB ($5,850) a year, which left only 2,900 RMB ($470) for her parents in rural Huitang. The parents spoke of car payments, tuition, lessons, dinners, gifts, entertainment, insurance, cell phones and other more or less everyday expenditures of consumer culture.

And that’s why the push to get children to save money and care for the ballooning elderly population is paradoxical messaging from Beijing. China is actively attempting the move from a state infrastructure investment-driven economy to one more reliant on consumer spending. But adding the financial burden of parents onto those who are to shoulder the job of consuming enough to push China into a new economic model may just be too much to ask, even harder than asking them to watch mom and dad die over and over and over again.

* It’s worth noting that even in the consumer products world, China’s advertisers commonly appeal, usually subtly, to a sense of filial piety. And it’s not a new trend. In the west, advertising knows 1984 as the year of the Apple “1984” Macintosh ad. But in China’s ad history, 1984 was the year of manufacturer Weili’s (威力) breakthrough”Mother, I had a dream” ad that skipped the typically emotionless laundry list of product features in favor of correlating giving mom a washing machine to being a loving, dutiful child.

Related: The East Is Drunk: Hammered and Sickled in China and Meet Mike Sui, A Dude From Wisconsin Who’s Now China’s Biggest Viral Start

Abe Sauer is the author of How to be: NORTH DAKOTA.

Scary mummies in museums are not so different than you, experts say, because even the most hideous dried-up corpse from thousands of years ago suffers the same mundane risks for heart disease as people still shuffling along today: hardened arteries.

Bored researchers did a “stress test” on 137 mummies from around the world and found a third of the monstrosities were suffering from atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

The heart condition is commonly believed to be associated with modern lifestyle errors such as smoking cigarettes and eating so much bacon and thinking that’s funny, but this new research suggests mummies have been suffering these heart problems since the good old days when this was considered an honorable way to conclude your life.

The research brings into question the common modern belief held by many successful young people that they could somehow avoid the clenches of death if they “could emulate pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural lifestyles,” the BBC reports. But that is unlikely.

As mummies were usually members of the elite 1%, it is possible that they engaged in poor health choices beyond the means of most of the population.

Photo by Gary Lynn Moseley via Shutterstock.

Is it okay to eat steak again? Sure, why the hell not. And if you need help…

A notable baby was the victim of a shameless thief last week in San Francisco, and city officials are warning that such crimes are almost certain to occur again. The well known infant’s diaper bag had been innocently left unattended at the city’s Hall of Justice when the baby’s foster mother forgot to the crucial personal item while going through the security line.

The baby, known only as “Baby Nash,” is famous because two police officers saved his life with CPR, and also they “drove him to the hospital themselves,” which was a selfless sacrifice that saved the baby’s life. Earlier, the baby’s biological mother had abandoned him somewhere.

Thanks to the security cameras everywhere that collect video of all aspects of life, a 59-year-old jerk was arrested for stealing the important diaper bag. The man apparently has a long record of such arrests, and was found in one of the city’s historic residential bum hotels. Baby Nash had no comment.

Photo by Hart Photography via Shutterstock.

Even speaking as someone with 126 emails — oh Lord, 128 since I started writing this — marked as “important and unread” that I really do intend to answer as soon as possible, which is proving to be something of a struggle, and also sort of humiliating given that some of them date back to, like, January, this claim that people are digitally wasting our time with politeness is, as the publisher of Little Brown put it this morning, pretty much the day civilization died.

But here’s the deal. For each member of your family that your column cites, it becomes doubly as dubious. (This tactic is a hallmark of columns filed by reporters on their way to SXSW or the Oscars or whatever else they have to be at while still filling up that space in our newspapers.) So in this Nick Bilton joint about etiquette and communication, which absolutely definitely has some kernels of truth, for sure, he cites his dad (angry that the kids don’t listen to voicemails) and his mom (with whom he now communicates “mostly through Twitter,” which seems to me a remarkably “weak connection” to have with a primary family member), he has doubled down on parental anecdotes.

Bilton’s point — “But many social norms just don’t make sense to people drowning in digital communication” — is a funny and not really wrong but still wacky case of blaming other people’s norms for your own helpless situation. We’re the ones doing it wrong, if we can’t get through our inboxes or texts or whatever properly. And the norms vary farther than we may expect. A voicemail, in the real world, is not actually an “impolite way of trying to connect with someone.” It’s perhaps inefficient in many cases, but outside of our bloggy ridiculous bubble, there are actually entire industries whose work is transacted by telephone, where email is limited to “Hey, just left you a voicemail, call me when you can.” That is because these real people work in businesses who actually matter, where real money changes hands, and where lawyers are regularly involved. You still can’t subpoena a phone conversation. Though great news: surely Google Glass will change all that.

“New Zealand’s latest surfing sensation is Zorro the piglet who has been hogging the waves since he was just three-weeks-old.” Remember that the next time someone tells you surfing is a sport.

“The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the government’s chief medical officer for England has said.” Also there is “a nagging concern among health officials who say the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico could become a breeding ground for one of the hardest forms of TB to treat. Already, both California and Texas, as well as some states on the Mexico side of the border, have unusually high rates of drug-resistant TB.” And just last week, health officials warned that “deadly infections with bacteria that resist even the strongest antibiotics are on the rise in hospitals in the United States, and there is only a ‘limited window of opportunity’ to halt their spread.”

Image: CDC

“An article on Page 66 this weekend about five young men who won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship describes the group incorrectly. Though no women are included, it is not the case that the X chromosome is not ‘represented in this year’s crop of winners.’ All five men, of course, have an X chromosome paired with a Y. (The women have neither a Y nor a fellowship — just X X.)”