Space, Time, and a Jumbled Mess

Well, that wasn't so bad for a Chris Chibnall episode of Doctor Who. Actually, it reminds me of last season's penultimate episode in which Chibnall also set up some intriguing things. So I expect the next episode to disappoint me, too.

To be fair, this one was also pretty disappointing. Though I knew the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) getting turned into a Weeping Angel wasn't going to amount to anything. A more genuine disappointment was the conversation between the Doctor and Tecteun, the adoptive mother or kidnapper introduced in "The Timeless Children", now played by Barbara Flynn. I think if Flynn had been revealed to be another incarnation of the Doctor, it might have been more satisfying. She comes off much sharper than Jo Martin or Jodie Whittaker and actually seems much more like the Doctor.

Instead, we got another retread of the conflict over whether the Doctor is a selfish tyrant with her companions, something that Steven Moffat had already run into the ground. Now, not only is it unoriginal, it makes a lot less sense since everything's been so softballed in the Chibnall era.

The Doctor's companions seem to be having an easy time of it in the early 20th century and I actually kind of liked them being world travellers. It's too bad Chibnall has relegated the previously intriguing Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally) to being another stupid white man. Now Yaz (Mandip Gill) is bragging about how much smarter she is than Dan (John Bishop) and Jericho. The knuckleheads substantiate her boasts by not knowing how a rope works when they climb into an Egyptian tomb. It occurs to me this might be something subs really enjoy and I wonder if Chibnall spends the weekends wearing a ball gag while a woman in leather strikes him with a riding crop. And, by all means, if you're getting off on this stuff, I'm happy for you. It detracts from the story a bit, though. Yeah, I admit it, sometimes gratuitous kink can do that. If kink is what this is.

Meanwhile, Chibnall's sudden attempt at humour continually, catastrophically, falls flat. One joke was just confusing--when Dan mentions being from Liverpool, Yaz says, "You're from Liverpool? Why didn't you ever mention it?" At first I thought, that is strange, since they've been together three years now. You'd think he'd have mentioned where he's from at least once. But then I thought, is that question supposed to be sarcastic? Like he's been constantly mentioning he's from Liverpool off-camera?

It almost makes me wonder if there were ten episodes cut from this season or something. That would explain why this episode felt so rushed. We only have one episode left, by the way, and I don't think Dan has spent four minutes with the Doctor. Big Finish is going to have to be really creative if they ever want to insert audio adventures between these episodes.

I was happy to see UNIT back, though the whole evil mastermind plot with Craig Parkinson doesn't make any sense if you think about it more than half a second.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer.

For Practical Purposes

Frontier settlers could take heart if Robert Mitchum strolled onto their homestead, singing and playing guitar. He forms one part of a love triangle in 1948's Rachel and the Stranger, the other nodes being William Holden and Loretta Young. It's not an earth-shattering masterpiece but a quite competently made, pleasant hour and nineteen minute diversion.

I tried figuring out when it's set. The round brimmed hats and lack of belt loops suggest pre-Civil War but no-one's wearing knee-breeches. So my bet is around 1840. William Holden plays David Harvey, a stoic man with a farm, a little boy (Gary Gray), and a recently deceased wife. Mitchum plays Jim, a wanderer and professional hunter and friend of the family who stays with them on occasion.

David reaches the practical conclusion that his boy needs a mother to school him while David's out tending crops and livestock. So he saddles his horse and sets out for town to get a new wife, just like that.

Lucky for him, the local Parson and his wife are just as pragmatic as David and they suggest a local bondwoman, Rachel (Young).

David effectively buys her and marries her and then the three of them go home. You can guess how things go from there.

It all plays out with decent subtlety and all the actors show why they were stars. David is forced to reluctantly acknowledge things and doesn't seem to notice when he constantly interrupts Rachel before she can make suggestions or tell him about her skills. Yet Holden never gives the impression of a tyrant, just a clueless guy. Mitchum strolls along and starts singing with Rachel and the tension begins.

Rachel and the Stranger is available on the Criterion Channel.

Owboy Nobop

I finally finished watching the live action Cowboy Bebop last night. I guess you don't need to me to tell you it's not very good. Everyone's saying it now, in a heart-warming union of normally polarised political camps. The consensus seems even greater than the one for the nigh-universally disliked Thirteenth Doctor era of Doctor Who. Even Screen Rant is talking shit about it, which means they think it's very safe to do so. We can all come together in our disappointment.

A lot of people start by talking about how "cringey" Ed is, though Ed doesn't appear until the last scene of the last episode. Played by non-binary actor Eden Perkins, who, surprisingly, still doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, they come off sort of like a zany '90s Jim Carrey knock-off. Maybe Yahoo Serious. Yeah, they're pretty annoying but it's hard to imagine how else a faithful, live action version of Ed could behave.

A lot of the problems with the show stem from an attempt to apply cartoon logic to live action. The final episode recreates the cathedral action sequence from the anime where Spike falls through the stained glass window, about three storeys up. The anime cuts to him recovering in very cartoonish, full body bandages, with Faye sitting nearby, a shot that plays with Faye's association with bondage as well as the show's cartoon nature. In the live action version, Spike is simply walking normally along the wharf with a barely perceptible limp. It was kind of acceptable in the anime because the cartoon logic is acknowledged and played with--in the live action version, it just seems dumb.

The show goes out of the way to insist it's not kink-shaming, featuring a few scenes of characters literally engaged in bondage. But I guess the writers feel you have to make a very clear distinction between bondage implemented for sexual pleasure and bondage the occurs as part of a fantasy series' plot. This is what happens when you have writers who categorically don't understand fantasy.

Another recurrent problem is the show's diminishing of heterosexual male characters, particularly Spike (John Cho). His skill as a martial artist was a defining part of his character in the anime--in the live action version, he seems to be just average, except in one scene in the penultimate episode where he takes out a whole building of gangsters. Clearly meant to be as impressive as the hallway scene in Oldboy or the one on Daredevil, it suffers again from slowly executed choreography. Spike's face is kept in shadow for much of it so it seems even John Cho's stunt double is a slow-poke. It was particularly evident after watching Shang-Chi.

The sexual chemistry between Spike and Faye (Daniella Pineda) is nervously avoided by making the two of them pals who gab about loofahs. Faye has a one night stand with a woman, a sexy mechanic with pretty much no personality otherwise, who gives Faye her first orgasm. It's all done purely for titillation, which I'd normally be all in favour of except, again, it makes Spike look like chopped liver. Spike can't seem to fight any of his own battles, either, and fights he won on the anime are almost invariably now fights where he's saved by someone, usually Faye or Jet. This leads up to an intensely stupid climax in which the final nail is put in the coffin of Julia's character, or any chance that she'll be as intriguing as her anime counterpart.

For some reason, several stories have been repurposed to be about young women breaking free of their domineering or manipulative mothers. The eco-terrorist episode about the Ma Barker type with three sons is now about a Ma Barker type with two sons and a daughter who finally musters her courage and stands up to the old woman. Faye's con-man love interest, Whitney Haggis Matsumoto, from the anime becomes an older woman in live action who had posed as Faye's mother. They must put aside their differences and work together for one episode in which, at least in spirit, Faye finds she's an apple that hasn't fallen too far from the old con woman tree. It's mildly nice but tonally way out of place.

Well, the turnaround on reboots these days is like two or three years. Maybe next time the property will be exploited by people with talent.

Twitter Sonnet #1496

A challenge tilts the wind beyond the mill.
And here a stalwart crow engaged to stand.
The armour rusts despite an iron will.
He cocked his hat to stir the heartless band.
The scattered snow was like an army lost.
The snakes of smoke adorned the frosty ridge.
Behind the fighter's back he weighed the cost.
A gleaming knight defends a fateful bridge.
The steps were shifting fast beneath her feet.
The reeds were singing songs of names and heads.
Another figure took the vaunted seat.
So feeble dreams defend a score of beds.
We read of ancient fish on glowing books.
And slowly put our mouths to wire hooks.

Put Ten Rings On It

2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is easily the best MCU movie since Thor: Ragnarok and it's entirely because of the action sequences. Everything else about the film is pretty run of the mill but the fight choreography is like a real wuxia film.

The performances aren't bad. As usual, there are a few big names in supporting roles, in this case the standout is Tony Leung as Shang-Chi's father. He's genuinely cool and charismatic, making up for the fact that his motives are often muddled in the screenplay. One minute he's trying to protect his family, the next moment he's willing to sacrifice them all. He believes in harsh discipline for his kids, something that obviously benefited Shang-Chi.

Simu Liu as Shang-Chi gives a decent enough performance, though the screenplay doesn't give him much personality. He's a good guy trying to figure out what's happening and that's about it. But Liu is obviously a truly skilled martial artist, which is easily apparent in the first great action sequence, a fight on a bus in San Francisco.

San Francisco remains the best city in the U.S. for car chases. Shang-Chi follows in the footsteps of Bullitt--those crazy downhill streets still add instant magic. Ang Lee knew that when he made Hulk.

Michelle Yeoh is kind of wasted later in the film as a leader of some villagers in a secret magical land. But that secret magical land is is really pretty, featuring stylised lions and dragons that look like they jumped out of an ancient Chinese tapestry.

As usual, the cgi has a cheap, sweat shop quality, but the designs are almost good enough to overcome it.

Awkwafina is mostly pretty annoying as Shang-Chi's sidekick, Katy. In a few moments, her husky voice reminded me of Margot Kidder, especially in a scene where Shang-Chi is trying to rescue her during a fight on some construction scaffolding. But once again, an MCU screenplay blushes and refrains from exploring romantic chemistry between its leads. Instead, she gets a lot of the increasingly monotonous "normal folk" gags that generally encumber MCU movies, visually reflected by her ugly pants and fanny pack.

It would've helped a lot if she'd been gorgeous, I have to say. If you're not going to put any effort into the dialogue, you can make some amends by giving us a pretty face to look at.

Ben Kingsley makes a mildly amusing appearance, reprising his role as the false Mandarin from Iron Man 3. It would've been nice if they'd found more for him to do but by the climax he's just another bystander.

So, yeah, a mostly standard Marvel package except unexpectedly kick ass ass kicking. Shang-Chi is available on Disney+.

Thank Birds

I hope everyone back in the U.S. had a good Thanksgiving. Here in Japan, there's Labour Thanksgiving Day, which was created after World War II to replace the old harvest festival of Niiname-sai. It's on November 23 so it was on Tuesday this year. That doesn't stop the shops around here from having Black Friday.

I came up with a little power point to tell classes of second year junior high school students about Thanksgiving. I also made some illustrations for it. See if you can answer this question:

The Reeve can Play at That Game

"The Reeve's Tale" isn't as original as "The Miller's Tale" and arguably not as raunchy. The Reeve, who happens to also be a carpenter, gets revenge on the Miller for his tale about a cuckolded carpenter by telling one about a miller cuckolded even worse. It's not clear whether he interprets the Miller's Tale as a deliberate insult but his own tale is so full of gratuitous spite it's funny. The Miller's carpenter is a jealous idiot, the Reeve's miller is a jealous idiot and a malicious thief. When he skims grain off a couple young scholars, their revenge is to ravage both his wife and his virgin daughter.

The miller's wife goes to the wrong bed because one of the scholars, John, moves the cradle from the foot of her bed to the foot of his. According to Wikipedia, there's some debate about whether the other scholar, Aleyn, rapes the daughter or if they have consensual sex. Considering he jumps her before she knows what's happening, I'd call it rape, albeit a rape she ends up enjoying. Which is the sort of thing that only happens in porn usually. In this case, it fits perfectly with the Reeve's thoroughly malicious narrative take-down.

"The Miller's Tale" was intended to "quite" the Knight's, you could look at it as a kind of revenge. The revenge of the average, uneducated man against the refinement of a higher class. The Reeve may have had the same thought and gives this little monologue to his miller when he plots to steal grain from the scholars:

This miller smyled of hir nycetee,
And thoghte, ‘al this nis doon but for a wyle;
They wene that no man may hem bigyle;
But, by my thrift, yet shal I blere hir yë
For al the sleighte in hir philosophye.
The more queynte crekes that they make,
The more wol I stele whan I take.
In stede of flour, yet wol I yeve hem bren.
“The gretteste clerkes been noght the wysest men,”
As whylom to the wolf thus spak the mare;
Of al hir art I counte noght a tare.’

The Reeve, as a serf but also an official who serves to administrate a lord's lands, is both lower class enough to join the fray and upper class enough to do it not quite so deftly, or with as much good humour.

After the World and the War

A good bunch of guys come back from World War II and have trouble adjusting to civilian life in 1946's Till the End of Time. This drama from Edward Dmytryk is pretty straight forward, seeking to address common psychological and social issues faced by veterans. It succeeds decently enough at that but there's also an intriguing, understated spookiness about the relationship between leads Dorothy McGuire and Guy Madison.

The film starts with a lot of veterans disembarking at San Diego, getting health checks before having interviews about insurance and pension and whatnot. The film cuts to different soldiers as they discuss future plans, most of them tellingly not having any clear idea of what they'll be doing now. Most have vague ideas of taking good positions in high paying jobs.

The standout is Robert Mitchum as a vet with a silver plate in his head which, he jokes, he figures he could pawn for an easy dime one day. But the movie doesn't follow him, instead choosing the handsome but blander Guy Madison.

Before the war, he evidently had the nicest, most normal life a 1940s American guy could have. Loving parents, a good high school experience behind him, and a load of friends. When he gets home the house is surprisingly empty, presenting an intriguing little puzzle as he wanders about. It's a little way Dmytryk establishes the feeling of being slightly out of step--the parents simply happen to be out. So Cliff (Madison) heads off to the local jukebox joint to catch up with the old gang. There he finds the sweet and brooding Dorothy McGuire as Pat.

As their relationship progresses over the film, Pat's sorrow over the death of her husband, who was a fighter pilot, dovetails with Cliff's post-war inertia.

The movie follows a pretty predictable pattern as Cliff and Pat yell at each other now and then and then apologise a scene or two later. McGuire's a lot better than Madison but Madison's simplicity comes across as an honest lack of smarts. It seems unfair for him to have to rethink his whole life.

Robert Mitchum does come back, first having stricken it rich, then having lost everything, of course. There's an amusing scene where he shocks Cliff's mother with some light banter about gambling and girls. There's also a nice brawl at the end.

Till the End of the World is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1495

The where the running script reverts we ran.
To save a tree, we made another plant.
Entire beans could fill a single can.
A team of bees could cheer a single ant.
The copied picture cut the centre point.
To pivot off the person, paint was scraped.
The working gel relaxed the lousy join.
It's good to know the better show was taped.
The greener grass was grey in olden times.
Atop the horse we plant a hollow man.
We grow a crop of taters, oats, and lime.
And all you need's some corn to grease the pan.
The steady chance was but a leaky drain.
The talking dog was but a heavy rain.

No Cause for Weeping

Wow, hey, the new Doctor Who episode wasn't bad. I know I kind of predicted it last week when I noted Chris Chibnall had a co-writer for it but it's still pretty surprising.

The co-writer is Maxine Alderton who also wrote "The Haunting of Villa Diodati", another one of the better episodes of the Thirteenth Doctor run. I'd say "Village of the Angels" is stronger, especially if you ignore the Bel and Vinder scenes, which I suspect were the bulk of Chibnall's contribution. I suspect this script was originally written as a standalone story before it was decided to make the whole season a connected narrative.

There were so many refreshing things about the episode. A character, Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally), is introduced who's actually kind of interesting and is allowed to develop gradually over the episode. Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) actually spend more than two seconds together, making it believable that they're comrades. The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) gets a few funny things to say and she's shown coming up with decent strategy.

It's not perfect. The rapid cutting on the moving angel just makes it seem kind of pointless that we don't see them in real motion. Director Jamie Magnus Stone still does too many closeups. The child actor playing Peggy seems completely disengaged. When she's not sad that her grandparents died, it feels more cheap than creepy or a sobering comment on how bad the grandparents were. I noticed Mandip Gill was tearing up and I wondered if that wasn't in the script, like maybe Gill also felt the moment was inappropriately psychopathic.

All in all, this episode was definitely the high point of the season. I even like the brief little foray into Weeping Angel politics. Seeing this decent episode made the deficiencies of the other episodes this season even clearer. I really don't think Chibnall's trying anymore.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC's iPlayer.

Keepin' On Bebopin'

I'm four episodes in now on the live action Cowboy Bebop and I've just started to realise how much I wanted it to be a good show. I still want it to be good, I fully intend to finish it. I keep focusing on the things that work--the sets, the ships, most of the costumes. Daniella Pineda is actually really good despite her ill-advised video mocking the fans. She has excellent comedic timing. And, you know what, she does show a lot of skin.

I think the awkward truth that no-one can say out loud is that she can't wear Faye's original costume because she's an endomorph. Faye's original costume would simply look really bad on her. If she were Uma Thurman or Bai Ling, it would've looked great. If I were casting the show, I would've looked for an ectomorphic comedienne from Singapore, then it would also match the anime Faye's ethnicity. But, on the other hand, Pineda's sense of timing is great so maybe it's worth changing the costume and her character.

Adrienne Barbeau as the eco-terrorist leader Maria Murdock was perfect casting. And I applaud her for taking such an unflattering role. I didn't like how the poison gas turns people into trees instead of monkeys, though. The monkey thing wasn't just hazardous for your health, it was embarrassing. I suspect that the idea of any physical attribute being embarrassing is too politically incorrect now, though.

This show is definitely diminished by some ideological leanings. The cops, the ISSP, who were corrupt in the original anime, are now ridiculous caricatures, right out of a "defund the police" wet dream. But the worst flaws in the show's writing aren't necessarily political.

The writers don't understand cool. Or they suspect cool is fascist. Spike in the anime was cool. Like Steve McQueen or Kowalski in Vanishing Point or Cary Grant in Notorious. A man of few words, seemingly relaxed, often when things around him are in turmoil. Live action Spike cracks stupid Revenge of the Nerds jokes, cackling with Jet about some Cosmonaut that Faye reminds them of. He makes you want to beat him up and take his lunch money.

My suspicion that they've simply removed his expertise in martial arts seems to have been accurate so far. It's kind of sad. It's like, the writers couldn't bring themselves to include it because they just couldn't muster that much faith in their own fantasy. Vicious (Alex Hassell) suffers from a similar problem. The cold badass from the anime is now a man who pathetically whines to Julia about how he is a real man. And Julia (Elena Satine) is petty and manipulative. Which is especially disappointing because Elena Satine is really beautiful in the role.

Spike has a scene with Ana--who's so different from the anime she's basically a whole new character--where he explains to her he can't tell Jet about his syndicate past because he's afraid Jet won't understand. And, he tells Ana, that would break the both of them. Ugh. This is like Chris Chibnall territory--a character actually explaining his motivation. It's also a shit motivation--and definitely not cool. Spike didn't tell Jet about it in the anime because he didn't need to and dredging up the past was a painful prospect in itself. That was clear without Spike ever once having to say it.

The head writer on this live action Cowboy Bebop is Christopher Yost. The good press for Yost touts him as the writer of Thor: Ragnarok and The Mandalorian. He was a writer, of three writers, on Thor: Ragnarok, and he also worked on the infamous Thor: Dark World with two other writers. He co-wrote one episode of The Mandalorian, a teleplay I hated, for an episode I only liked because of the presence of Bill Burr. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised his Cowboy Bebop would turn out this way.

Even so, like a sucker, I'm going to keep watching. The idea that Cowboy Bebop could ever be resurrected has always seemed impossible but that very impossibility has always made it the more tantalising.

This live action version is available on Netflix.

Fall Into Her Deadly Web of Hugs and Caring

Okay, okay, so I really watched 2021's Black Widow this time. Mostly it stacks up with everything I'd heard--it has good performances and some sweet moments but lacks a real sense of suspense and the action sequences are weak, both in terms of special effects and composition. The choreography isn't bad, though.

I can imagine a conundrum at Disney. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a character defined by her lack of family who gradually gains one in the Avengers. A standalone movie for Black Widow can't have the other Avengers but Disney, for whatever arcane pact with the corpse of Walt, must always make their movies about family. So what do you do? Give Black Widow another family.

She jokes at one point in the film that she's the girl with no family who now has two. Which is a bit of lampshading, if you ask me, so Disney can have their cake and eat it, too. You know, in this era of "representation", I wonder how anyone who grew up without a family feels about this decision to hook Natasha up with a couple of them.

One of the more charming moments shows her watching Moonraker and speaking along with all the dialogue. One remembers how Winter Soldier was filled with sexually playful dialogue between her and Captain America and rather misses that tone here. Watching her sit down to dinner with an admirable cast is kind of sweet but seems like it should belong in another movie. It certainly does nothing for this film's lagging momentum.

Florence Pugh is really cute as Black Widow's adopted sister though I don't know why Disney is so committed to these "pass the torch" characters. Why not just concentrate on introducing other Marvel characters?

David Harbour is great Russian stereotype as big gentle dad. Rachel Weisz as the mother figure doesn't get much personality. Ray Winstone as the villain is wonderfully effective, a real conceited asshole, and I wish he'd had more screentime.

I suppose after the years of build-up it would be inevitable for the first, and only, solo Black Widow movie to disappoint. Even so, I can't help feeling, "Is that really all?"

Black Widow is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1494

A metal pipe could stifle pencil lead.
A running bike awaits the clever three.
To choose a jacket, crouch behind the bed.
Collect a hive to buy a single bee.
A curse prevents a fabric lion fight.
The drifting pair could sing when far apart.
Along the river, flags prohibit sight.
We loaded cubic bags in box's cart.
A blinking dot's a world if dots are great.
We sat again against the bluer grass.
A shadow sought a starless cloud to mate.
The dream's dismissed as something cute but base.
Another orange collapsed the cherry cask.
Enormous roots support the shadow task.

Cowboy Rebop

The already infamous live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop premiered last night on Netflix. The whole season was dropped but I've only watched one episode because I have a life. But actually I didn't hate it. It has a lot of flaws but I wouldn't call it a shit show.

Almost everything brought over from the anime works. The plot about the Red Eye fugitives, the design of the ships, the world building, and Yoko Kanno's music all work. The new material Kanno's recorded blends smoothly with the old stuff and it's really cool seeing the old ships in live action simulating cgi.

The action sequences so far don't work at all. As I expected, John Cho moves too slow (we could call him "John Slow"). As an actor he's decent, though, and I'm warming up to the idea of an older Spike. It makes the fact he's already built a new life subsequent to a tragic past make a lot more sense.

Mustafa Shakir will take some more getting used to. He gives a good performance and his eyes are really striking but he has a vulnerability about him that jives oddly with the tough guy dialogue. He always seems on the edge of cracking. It's awkward with the dialogue, especially some of the oddly sadistic stuff he and Spike say now. That's a big difference from the anime--Spike and Jet never gloated and laughed about putting a bullet into some small time thug before. It's particularly odd with Jet who's supposed to be more mature but it also robs Spike of a lot of his cool.

It seems like they might have made Spike less skilled at martial arts to compensate for Cho's lack of ability. He actually has a fight with Faye at one point and it actually seems almost even. We also don't get the cool moment where Spike is the only one who's able to fight Asimov under the influence of Red Eye.

The show does a lot of Sin City-ish emulation of animation that mainly just undercuts the sense of reality. Daniella Pineda's not bad though I still don't like her costume, especially her generic leather jacket. I'll keep watching.

Flood Avoided

I guess "The Miller's Tale" is the best known of The Canterbury Tales. It's the one literature professors hope will draw some interest from a sleepy classroom, boasting, as it does, a fart joke. The tale is sometimes invoked as a defence of scatological or lowbrow humour. It does show how futile it is to get on your high horse about this stuff--people will laugh at what they laugh at, sometimes against their own moral preference.
Just how often students laugh when Nicholas lets one rip in Absolom's face is another matter. The comedy is robbed of its timing by an audience whose grasp of even their contemporary English grows weaker every year. The same obtuseness makes the setup difficult to grasp. Part of the comedy is in how smooth Nicholas usually is and how fussy Absolom is. Yet, there is a timelessness about these gags.
"The Miller's Tale" is a rebuff to "The Knight's Tale", not only of its arguments, but its very premise. It rejects the notion that human nature resembles what the Knight depicts in his tale. The Knight spoke of two men vowing undying love for a woman at a distance. The Miller speaks of two men immediately seeking to fulfill physical urges and nothing more. Nicholas and Absolom don't even care that Alisoun is married, implying they don't really care about marriage or vows.
Knocking the legs of moral presumption out from under the Knight inevitably pokes holes in his tale's ultimate statement about fate. Gods and dukes may control the fates of the two rivals and the woman but that's only because they choose to place themselves above the moral chaos of "The Miller's Tale".
But is chaos all it's cracked up to be? You might call me a snob that I don't tend to laugh at lowbrow humour. I do appreciate it, as I do "The Miller's Tale", as part of a portrait of humanity. God knows people could benefit from taking themselves less seriously nowadays.
Twitter Sonnet #1493
A glowing paper passed the shady pen.
Where nothing drinks the food was ever dry.
For pleasing signs we rent a printed hen.
Upon the egg we swore to never die.
The myst'ry book was waiting near the beer.
The optic glass beheld the cooler stoop.
For nature's truth the plastics clearly fear.
We gather fruits to sell the rusty coop.
The pretty coat was crazy like a cape.
The second drink was juice or soda salt.
The city's small beside the giant ape.
The pointy building housed a golden vault.
The southern town was taped to western shows.
The gaudy head was thick with glowing bows.

Another Web is Woven

Okay, I finally got around to watching Black Widow. The 1954 film noir written by Nunnally Johnson is cleverer than I was expecting and it helped a lot, I think, that I went in knowing very little about the plot. But I'm going to go ahead and tell you a little bit about the plot.

It's a story of high society in New York and there are a lot of nice, on location, exteriors of the city.

The story centres on young Nancy Ordway played by Peggy Ann Garner who, for some reason, gets fifth billing. Maybe it's because the film also stars Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, and George Raft. Most of the film is from Van Heflin's point of view, and he gives voice-over narration. He plays Peter, a successful Broadway producer who meets Nancy at a party one night. He's charmed by her and decides to take her out to dinner--but he makes sure his wife (Gene Tierney) knows all about it.

The dialogue is clever and also has amusingly inside-ballpark writer talk. Nancy is an aspiring writer and she glumly tells Peter that she's been told she "can write like Somerset Maugham" or "like Truman Capote but not both at the same time." And Peter says, "Why don't you do what everyone else does and write like Ernest Hemingway?"

Van Heflin gives the best performance in the film, especially once it becomes a murder mystery and he finds his life unravelling. George Raft plays the police detective and, as usual, doesn't give much of a performance. I thought that was just my opinion but I see on the Wikipedia page for this movie that Nunnally Johnson himself said Raft "learns his lines very well... he's not an actor in particular. He was a personality that was very well fitted for that period." I guess that's true.

Once it became a question of murder, I instantly knew who the killer was. I had no doubts. I said back when I was reviewing Only Murders in the Building I'm not usually good at guessing the killer. Now I'm starting to think I've changed.

It's a good movie but I really don't see how it ties into the MCU.

Black Widow is available on The Criterion Channel.

Doctor Mess

Sunday's new Doctor Who was called "Once, Upon Time". Why is there a comma? Much like the whole episode itself, it's confusing and pointless.

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) makes the desperate decision to jump into purple clouds which are something to do with Time. There's also a planet called Time and, at one point, someone says there are dark times on Time. But don't worry because Who's on first!

Meaning the charmless Jo Martin returns to remind us of "The Timeless Children" and the charmless world-building Chris Chibnall has done. Fans of Martin can expect chestnuts like her asking Jodie Whittaker what she's doing here and telling the bad guys they'll never get away with their plans.

Once again, the story's fractured and, once again, the new companion, Dan (John Bishop), is no companion in the literal sense of the word because he doesn't accompany the Doctor for very long. Three episodes now, halfway through the season, and the two have still barely been in the same room for over three minutes. So much for the idea that he was going to be a love interest for the Doctor.

The episode also introduces Bel, played by Chinese-born Northern Irish actress Thaddea Graham. So the BBC are checking some boxes there--East Asian and Irish actors have both been scarce in the show's history. It's too bad she falls very flat. She's in a gunfight with Cybermen and she makes happy noises whenever there's an explosion. I think the idea was to make her sort of Errol Flynn-ish but the action is so inauthentic that her delight only serves to further undercut the reality of the scenes.

I will say Jacob Anderson is doing a good job as Vinder. I didn't even realise he was the same guy who played Grey Worm on Game of Thrones until I looked him up just now. Now I'm a little curious to see him play Louis on the Interview with the Vampire series (Oh, yeah, that casting happened).

I also kind of liked the Weeping Angels turning up in Yaz's (Mandip Gill) video game. Next week's Weeping Angel episode is the only one this season in which Chibnall gets a co-writer so maybe it'll actually not be completely terrible.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC's iPlayer.

A Nice Stable Amphibian

It turns out kissing a frog isn't always an instant path to fortune, as evidenced by 2009's The Princess and the Frog. The last traditionally animated film from The Walt Disney Studios, they temporarily revived the medium to make amends for the lack of a black princess in the canon. With such overtly political motives, I expected the film to be a lifeless slog, but it wasn't. Surprisingly, it's one of the few Disney films I've seen from the past fifty years that doesn't feel like it was written by a committee. It certainly has its flaws, and in some crucial places--the songs by Randy Newman are utterly forgettable (I watched the movie last night and I've forgotten all of them) and the animation on the female lead is nearly lifeless. The two leads spend too much of the film as poorly conceived, surprisingly generic looking cartoon frogs, and the plot is a bit shallow. But Tiana, the female lead, has clearer motives than Belle and the writing, if not masterful, is at least consistent. The art design is lovely, combining a Lady and the Tramp influence with fantasy New Orleans. And the villain, a voodoo warlock voiced by Keith David, is pretty good.

The film begins with Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) and her best friend, Lottie (Jennifer Cody), listening to The Frog Prince being read by Tiana's mother (Oprah Winfrey).

I was immediately surprised by how lifeless Tiana's animation was. Usually animating children is where Disney particularly excels. The animators evidently felt less restricted in making Lottie a more broadly expressive caricature. I suppose they may have been apprehensive of protests of cultural insensitivity which, of course, came anyway.

I suppose the film's depiction of New Orleans is a bastardisation, too, but I found it really pretty. The 19th century style buildings blended with swamp foliage had almost a Sleeping Beauty-ish splendour. Keith David's witch doctor character may be an offensive stereotype but the animation of his magic, along with Keith David's performance, is very cool. I really liked his independently functioning shadow, which works better in animated form than in the live action Dracula movie that likely inspired it (as much as I do love Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula).

Tiana as an adult is at least attractive. Alas, around thirty minutes in, she gets turned into a frog when she kisses Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos). So begins their adventure on the bayou, seeking the aid of a voodoo priestess (Jenifer Lewis). Prince Naveen is an easygoing partyboy, a contrast to the hard working Tiana, and their rapport has some of the same charm as It Happened One Night. If only they didn't look like Battle Toads.

Their animations isn't even that interesting. Nothing about it gives you the impression the animators spent any time studying the movements of real frogs. It's almost on par with '90s after school, TV Disney, like Darkwing Duck or Rescue Rangers. Which is fine for a TV series but really doesn't cut it in a theatrical release.

But I was happy to see a Disney film promote the importance of hard work. By the end, I was genuinely rooting for Tiana though her lesson gets muddled. The animation is good enough that it seems a real tragedy Disney never followed up with another 2D animated film. I suppose they have time yet.

The Princess and the Frog is available on Disney+.

...

This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
Bolt