The Blue and Copper Knight

A young man sets off on a quest to get his head cut off in 2021's The Green Knight. It's based on the 14th century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem I really like, so I was excited for this film. Sadly, I very much doubt the filmmakers actually read more than the Wikipedia synopsis because their work bears little resemblance to the source material. Instead, it's an embarrassingly ill-conceived feminist deconstruction of some version of the poem that exists in the filmmakers' imagination featuring that now infamous copper and blue colour correction cinematography.

Except when it's yellow, which the cinematographer seems to have confused for green, a colour you'd think would turn up more often in this film.

Especially since Alicia Vikander, who plays the temptress in the castle, has a long, boring speech about how green symbolises nature taking over things. Of all things I might have imagined the Lady temptress to be, a windbag wasn't one of them. But from the way Gawain listens enthralled, I think she's meant to come off as profound rather than like a half-assed term paper.

Gawain is played by Dev Patel and, in this day and age, we can't expect any explanation for the fact that he and his mother are of Indian decent. But he does look pretty knightly, I must say, and his performance is good. Too bad he's not actually playing a knight because, unlike in the poem, this Gawain hasn't been knighted yet and his quest to meet the Green Knight's challenge is a task he needs to fulfill on the path to knighthood. This version of Gawain pays regular visits to a brothel, because that's the only way these filmmakers can consider it a movie for adults I guess. His favourite prostitute is Essel, also played by Alicia Vikander, a casting choice that doesn't seem to say much except that Vikander's face is the symbol of Gawain's failure to maintain his chastity. Guinevere is played by the markedly less attractive Kate Dickie and there is the not-subtle argument at play that pagans are better because they're sexier and healthier.

Not that Arthur (Sean Harris) or Guinevere are ever called Arthur or Guinevere. The only thing that suggests the Arthurian characters maintain their identities is a brief reference to the sword in the stone.

Erin Kellyman makes an appearance as the ghost of Saint Winifred who asks Gawain to dive to the bottom of a lake in the middle of the night to retrieve her skull. When he asks what she'd give him in exchange, she replies in a righteous tone with a question, "Why would you ever ask me that?" Oh, they'd have skewered the original poem good if the original poem had included a scene remotely resembling this!

The poem is about a test of a knight's integrity and could be interpreted as either a mockery of chivalry or a celebration of it. The film, which adds in a talking fox, a scene where Gawain trips on mushrooms to have visions of giant naked women striding solemnly through the mists, has nothing particular to say except that it thinks women are better than men and nature is better than Christianity (no mention is made of Winifred wanting to be a nun). This shallow set of motives is delivered with overly mannered editing and a score almost invariably at odds with what's being depicted. It would be nice to see someone make a proper movie from the great poem.

Meeting the Kids

Lately I've been seeing a lot of people talking about a Tennessee school board banning Art Spiegelman's Maus and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. As usual, the headlines make you think there are bonfires and goosestepping school officials chucking books into the flames. But then you read the article and it turns out the books are just being removed from the curricula due to depictions of nudity and incest. It's interesting people who are normally concerned about triggery content don't seem to be raising concerns about these things.

I certainly don't think these books should be banned. I'd absolutely make them available in the school library for students who are ready for the material. But speaking as someone who teaches eighth graders, the idea of making them required reading in a classroom strikes me as cruel. There may be a few students ready for this material but for most of them it's going to feel like punishment. I would argue the symbolism in Maus is probably too sophisticated for kids to whom you might need to explain that, no, Tom from Tom and Jerry is not a Nazi. And Toni Morrison I could see for senior year of high school, maybe, but overall I'd think she's college material, which is where I read her. And that's probably why young teachers are using her works--they'd just read her in college and lack the imagination to find books someone could appreciate from an eighth grader's perspective.

Why not teach Alice in Wonderland? Or Treasure Island? Why not make these kids excited about literature before hitting them with the hard stuff? More than anything, I feel there is a need to nurture a love for the medium rather than a need to expose kids to works designed as wrecking balls for concepts they're barely acquainted with and which probably seem irrelevant to them.

This isn't to say I don't think kids should be exposed to uncomfortable historical topics. One of the English books I teach from here in Japan has a chapter on Martin Luther King Jr. without any explanation of the history of race relations or slavery in the U.S. Japanese junior high school students naturally don't study U.S. history any more than U.S. junior high school students study Japanese history. So, when I've gotten to that chapter in the book, I've spent an entire class period giving them a lecture on the history of race relations and slavery in the Americas. But I don't do it using irony or complex symbolism. It's a straight forward lecture and that's what's appropriate for eighth graders whose reading level is currently Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba.

A New Worm Sign

Once again, audiences solemnly processed into theatres and onto Arrakis, desert planet, for 2021's Dune. The latest adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic Science Fiction novel, a source material which many a talented auteur has attempted and failed to bring to the screen properly, is now brought to us by visionary director Denis Villeneuve. The Canadian filmmaker whose distinctively austere style suited Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 is perhaps ideal for Herbert's thought experiment novel which reads less like an interstellar adventure and more of a sociological treatise. Of all the adaptations, Villeneuve's is the best at intelligibly presenting the novel's complex plot. And yet, the very strengths of Dune make it an unlikely blockbuster and despite a moderate success at the box office I suspect any sequels, if they are produced, won't fare so well financially. While I admire the film's intelligence, its coldness excludes some aspects of human nature and, in so doing, ultimately weakens Herbert's complex argument.

The story follows a noble family in the distant future in which an interstellar empire is comprised of several ducal families ruling at the behest of a central government. At the head of this government is an emperor, a figure left unseen in this version. The protagonist is Paul (Timothee Chalamet), heir to the powerful Atreides family, headed by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac). After the sinister Harkonnen family are kicked off of Arrakis, the Emperor orders the Atreides family to take over spice mining on the desert world.

But all is not as it seems as many interests behind the scenes are carefully manipulating events to their advantage. One of the more interesting is the Bene Gesserit, a powerful religious institution that has mastered forms of hypnotism. Herbert's interesting commentary on organised religion seems primarily based on the Catholic church and one of the more fascinating aspects of the story is the order's psychic infiltration of the religion of the Fremen. Arrakis' native culture who manage to survive in its harsh desert environment, their beliefs centre on the coming of a messiah, a figure who happens to seem a lot like Paul. One might compare this grand manipulation as something like Christian missionaries modifying the beliefs of pagan cultures in the British Isles or Scandinavia to align with Church doctrine.

One of my two favourite casting choices in Villeneuve's film is Charlotte Rampling as the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. She plays the role with an appreciable aura of tenacity and pragmatism.

My other favourite is Stellan Skarsgard as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. His subtle, sensitive performance gives the impression of a man with layers of cunning and malevolent strength, very different from the cackling gasbag in the David Lynch version.

Timothee Chalamet as Paul and Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica, his mother, are perfectly good, despite the fact that she's only twelve years older than him. They're an effective duo as they flee across the sands from a sudden attack.

Dune is cold and intellectual and that's why it will never be able to compete with Star Wars. And yet, the environment presented in A New Hope is, in its way, more complex than even Herbert's complex tale. People have been talking lately about Dune's influence on Star Wars, of course, but there are a lot of things Star Wars was clearly influenced by and I would say the primary two are Akira Kurosawa, which is well known, and Doctor Who, which isn't talked about at all. But I've long argued the influence is undeniable, especially from the Third Doctor story The Monster of Peladon. Arguably, with its story of an Emperor and politically vying factions, Monster of Peladon was probably influenced by Dune. But Monster of Peladon has a clear Darth Vader character, more of an adventure serial atmosphere, and livelier banter, so my suspicion is that Lucas may not have read Dune and unknowingly drew indirect influence from it via Monster of Peladon.

In any case, one of the things about Kurosawa that influenced Lucas was the fact that he could watch a period film like The Hidden Fortress and understand the story despite not knowing the cultural significance of many of the things he saw. So in the first Star Wars film, we have a story that proceeds briskly along through elements that are never explained to us--like the fundamental nature of droids, the backstories of the Jawas or Sand People, or any of the myriad peoples and organisations we see in Mos Eisley. Dune's austerity comes at the cost of this complexity. But that complexity is life and, as such, Dune's argument lacks a fundamental component.

Likewise, the simplicity of Paul's character undermines the story a little. In Star Wars, we understand Luke not just as a chosen one or a hero, but as a boy who likes wasting time with his friends at Tosche station. He likes ships and has a toy he plays around with while talking to his droids. He looks at the two suns and dreams of getting off of Tatooine. In the new Dune movie, Paul talks about not being sure if he wants to be Duke but we don't get a sense of what he does want, either in terms of his destiny or just what he likes to do in his free time. But that would almost seem out of place with the minimalist sets which seem to demand no character exceed the bounds of a hypothetical construct for a political parable.

So, while this may be the superior film, I hope you'll not think me a David Lynch simp for saying I still prefer Lynch's version. It's true, the ending of Lynch's film isn't just a mess, its message is uninteresting and directly opposite to Herbert's more fascinating argument. But Lynch, particularly in the first third of the film, breathes life into the material, creating a genuine sense of weirdness and other-worldliness from how bizarrely disgusting his Harkonnens are to how deeply strange his spice pilots are. In comparison, Villeneuve's austere production design brings to mind a chic restaurant or an Apple store more than something truly futuristic or alien. That's also why I think Blade Runner 2049 is a stronger film than his Dune because it inherits some of the cultural clutter of the first Blade Runner movie.

Villeneuve's Dune is a finely polished stone. But maybe some rough edges might've helped it.

Twitter Sonnet #1517

Detected flames were fish behind the eyes.
Above the tower, glass reflects the land.
Her dancing steps became a row of pies.
The hourglass reflects a word in sand.
The letter found its place beside the blade.
The random tree was red in verdant woods.
Converging lines of heat illume the glade.
The words beneath leaves conceal the goods.
To break lecture's stride we pause for verse.
Imperfect strands ennoble woven hats.
But where's the topper gone to shelter curse?
We all persist beneath the welcome mats.
The desert houses worms and suits.
A stretching shade condemns the feeble roots.

A Friend in Times of Truffles

You might think you can guess why a pig would be so important to a man but you might be wrong. 2021's Pig has certainly surprised a lot of people who assumed it would be a different kind of film than it is. This is largely due to intentional misdirection in the marketing campaign and within the film itself--leading to a couple aspects of the story not making sense on reflection. But on the whole, it's a nice, melancholy rumination on how amoral business practices bleed into corrupting an artform and the well-being of the artists. And it's lovely to see Nicholas Cage disappear into a role.

As we watch him stalk the streets of Portland, in pursuit of his stolen pig, he's not conspicuously Nicolas Cage, he's a man named Robin Feld. A hermit we meet living alone in the gorgeous woods of Oregon with his truffle pig, now forced to make contact with the human world again.

Director Michael Sarnoski sure makes the woods look beautiful and dark. His shots of the city are less interesting, coming off as an imitation of Nicolas Winding Refn with their excessive use of neon. But it's nice just to watch a movie with such an easy, contemplative pace in which the filmmakers aren't constantly trying to find ways to feed you exposition.

Ultimately, the film is a rumination on the state of artistic expression in the modern media which is now dominated by twin forces of soullessness--corporate cowardice and deconstructionist academic theory. Don't watch the movie expecting a revenge fantasy because Robin finds a much more powerful, more eloquent way to respond to what was done to him.

The Little Merboy

Two young sea monsters go ashore to chase their dream of owning a Vespa in 2021's Luca. What is it with Disney and Vespas lately? Anyway, its a sweet little movie about how friends support each other with their contrasting personalities.

This a Pixar movie, the first one I've watched since Wall-E, if you can believe it. Maybe when I've finished going though the Disney Animation Studios canon I'll start on Pixar because this wasn't bad.

You'd expect this movie to be influenced by The Little Mermaid, and it is, though the director doesn't own up to it in any of the quotes from him on the Wikipedia page. He talks instead about Miyazaki and Fellini. Miyazaki I can see, particularly in the human town, which looks like something out of Kiki's Delivery Service, but the sea monster community looks more like something from Sponge Bob.

Fellini I don't see at all, despite the Italian setting. There's a lot of Italian language peppered into the English dialogue which made me kind of wish the whole movie was simply recorded in Italian. But I suppose it would've never gotten to be the number one streaming movie of 2021 that way.

Luca (Jacob Temblay) is the smart, timid boy while Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the dumb, brave boy. Alberto teaches Luca to go out of his comfort zone while Luca teaches Alberto to be a little more contemplative. Then a human girl, Giulia (Emma Berman), is thrown into the mix and of course causes tension. But these kids are too young for a romantic plot.

The dialogue is funny and always follows the action and the characters nicely. Only in the end does Alberto start talking out of character to explain the moral of the story to Luca, but it's sweet and insightful so I didn't mind it so much.

Luca is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1516

The hat of corn was popped to prime the house.
The flickered man was agent z to eight.
A billion bees construct a metal louse.
Beyond the clock we count it soon to sate.
The waves of fiction bathe the babe of fact.
Computer birds were pretty, far from land.
To wear the office armour begs some tact.
Abated storms were naught but painful sand.
The second armour now is called the first.
The busy players part beyond the field.
She finished work before the salmon burst.
At night, the picture raised another shield.
The little bike resumed its colour course.
A motor leaps beyond the fastest horse.

Everyone Goes to Tatooine

A surprisingly good episode of The Book of Boba Fett last night considering it was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard. She directed some of the weakest episodes of The Mandalorian and I still think her presence on these shows is Disney paying back Ron Howard for stepping in on Solo. But she actually did a decent job on the fairly low key episode last night though, since it relied mainly on baked in, previous established elements, most of the credit probably has to go to the writing and performances.

The clues last week that Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) would appear this week turn out to have understated the fact. Not only did he appear, he took over the whole show, basically making this a new episode of The Mandalorian in which Boba Fett didn't even make an appearance. In a way, it makes sense considering the creators had been calling Book of Boba Fett "The Mandalorian season 2.5". But with only seven episodes for Boba Fett, I don't quite see why a lot of this material couldn't have been saved for Mandalorian season three.

Anyway, it was cool seeing Din wielding the Dark Sabre. When he cut that guy in half it was pretty much confirmed, if it needed to be, that Boba's reluctance to kill now has nothing to do with Disney policy.

And it was just nice seeing Din again and his colour coordinated armour. It really is a shame Boba has to wear black with dusty green. Obviously Boba changed the armour's original colours from when his father wore it, couldn't he do it again? Or would that be too drastic a change for fans? He can't lose those robes, though, considering how much they mean to him, being gifts from the Tuskens. But, damn, last night proved how much colour coordination matters.

The ring space station was cool. Din reconnecting with his old Mandalorian friends featured some subtle lore smoothing dialogue, confirming that, instead of being representative of all Mandalorians, they are in fact a small cult. Naturally they incorporated their survival into a justification of their beliefs.

There were some logistical problems I had with the episode's writing. Why were the clients desperate to pay so much for just receiving the head of the bounty when surely his death was the important thing? Why did Din risk losing his weapons, particularly the Dark Sabre, just to fly commercial? Why does he accept a new ship with no cargo hold? Does he need space to transport bounties? But it all felt like a nice way of making the world feel a little bigger to spend so much time watching Din and Amy Sedaris working on the thing. Even if it does seem like a bit of indulgence when there's not much story-telling time left this season.

The end of the episode teases an appearance by Grogu before Din finally meets up with Boba. Is Luke training Grogu on Tatooine or is Din heading off-world again? Once again, Luke's complaint about Tatooine in Episode IV, that it's the place furthest from the centre of the galaxy, seems a less and less accurate description. Everyone's going to Tatooine.

Next week is the episode directed and co-written by Dave Filoni which makes me wonder if it's the one in which we'll see Cad Bane. I suppose it would have to be if we're going to see Cad Bane at all, there's not much time left. I'm feeling less and less like Jennifer Beals is going to get a big scene.

The Book of Boba Fett is available on Disney+.

Research is for Landlubbers

16th century naval warfare was hard enough. Imagine if 18th century Portuguese infantry were thrown in! Well, you don't have to because 2021's Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea (മരക്കാർ അറബിക്കടലിന്റെ സിംഹം) presents just such a scenario. It's not a sci-fi film, it seems just to be very poorly researched, despite being the most expensive Malayalam movie ever made. The plot is ridiculous melodrama and the lead has no business weakly swinging a sword through an action sequence. But it's kind of a delight.

Reportedly based very loosely on the story of bandit-turned-admiral-turned-bandit-again, Kunjali Marakkar IV, it shows the man's hopeful youth, where he's played by Pranav Mohanlal, and the tragic events that forever embitter him to the Portuguese. When his country allies with Portugal, he becomes a Robin Hood figure, a folk hero who robs from the the empowered and somehow stands up for the little guy.

Now played by Mohanlal, who leisurely ambles through through the role henceforth, he's made an admiral when Portugal becomes the country's enemy. The ensuing naval battle has cgi on the level of a video game in which Portuguese ships vaguely resembling late 16th century galleons are manned by Napoleonic soldiers, most of whom are played by Indian actors speaking English.

It's still not as bad as later in the film when Kunjali is beset by Portuguese peasants wearing crisp white shirts and 20th century clip-on suspenders.

The best part of the film is a rather brief episode presenting the doomed romance between Kunjali's Chinese subordinate, Chinnali (Jay J. Jakkrit), and the daughter of a noble family, Aarcha (Keerthy Suresh). One of the better musical numbers is her duet with Chinnali with different string instruments.

The Indian characters have slightly more historically accurate costumes and, in any case, they're stunningly opulent as always for Bollywood.

Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea is available on Amazon Prime.

Breaking the Bonds of Bond

Despite its name, 2021's No Time to Die features a lot of people dying. In Daniel Craig's final turn as his particularly grim and dour James Bond, he manages to have a little fun in an otherwise unremarkable outing.

I'm not an especially big James Bond fan and the only one of the Daniel Craig movies I'd seen was Casino Royale. But I figured, all the James Bond movies are meant to be stand-alone anyway. Well, turns out they used to be, now it's an ongoing serial and this one starts with Bond in a settled relationship with Madeleine (Lea Seydoux). Since a lot of the film's superior first two thirds involve his struggle with whether or not he can trust her, I wondered if she was named after Madeleine in Vertigo.

That relationship paranoia is good, and plays well with the somber Billie Eilish tune that plays over the credits, but the best part of the movie by far is the Cuba sequence.

Here the film seems to take a brief detour into a completely different, much more old fashioned, Bond movie. Ana de Armas is gorgeous in an impossible dress, every bit the classic Bond girl otherwise absent from the film.

I laughed when I saw the article a few days ago about the guys suing a studio because de Armas had been cut out of another film. But now I kind of get it. And in this one scene, her character is more vividly established than in the entirety of her previous collaboration with Craig, Knives Out.

Bond himself, now divested of his patronising humour and other character flaws, is just a generic Action Guy, and this is a significant aspect of the final act's lack of lustre. Remi Malik as the villain spins some philosophy about how people long for oblivion and Bond is presented as a counterpoint, neatly summed up by M (Ralph Fiennes) with a quote from Jack London:

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Sure, that's a good message, but it doesn't really come from any argument organic to the film. Oblivion has no advocates, we don't get the sense Bond is ever truly tempted to just sit and watch the wheels go round.

Lashana Lynch is introduced as Nomi, the new 007. If the idea was to float her as a potential replacement protagonist in a spin-off series of films, No Time to Die makes surprisingly little effort to sell her to the audience. Even Jeffrey Wright, in a small role as a CIA agent, is given more interesting things to do. Nomi doesn't get one badass moment, not one clever line, no eyebrow raising punctuation of a scene. The only mystery around her is about what she's doing in this movie.

Craig still has that nice sense of brutality that made him so good in Casino Royale despite some impression of him sleepwalking in the role. Whoever really does replace him, I hope they don't seem quite so mature, and I'm not talking about age.

Pictures for Words

I haven't had much time to work on my comic but I make a lot of art for work. This is a series for teaching subjunctives. I made some drawings and broke the class into groups. Each group had ten to fifteen minutes to make as many sentences as possible for the picture currently on the screen. One point for each sentence, two points for using subjunctives, and the group with the highest score won the round.

One of my favourites for this picture was, "If I could eat my hair, I could live." There was also a sentence about cocoanuts falling on his head but I can't remember how it went.

Many students came up with simple sentences for this like, "There is a child," or "The girl with the black hair is the same height as the girl with the red hair." One of the more fashionable girls in the class came up with, "If I had style, I could dance." Which made me smile.

I also made a series of pictures for the difficult task of explaining present perfect to the second year students but haven't had a chance to put them in practice yet.

I made two sets to show somethings present perfect and simple past sometimes mean two very different things and sometimes they literally mean the same thing, that the choice to use one or the other is like choosing colours of paint.

This could be, "I crawled to Mama," or "I have crawled to Mama." Both would have the same meaning but slightly different emotion. I'm also planning to show the class U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" despite the fact that Bono says things like, "I have spoke," using the wrong verb form. I'm always trying to think of ways to show the kids how inconsistent English is for native speakers.

Twitter Sonnet #1515

Containing heat became the giant's job.
A silly man was drinking carrot juice.
Emerging whales requested air to lob.
Entire worlds submit a loose caboose.
Before the walking back, a path was wet.
For treasure's weight, the shell was hardened fast.
We settled late a sharp but festive bet.
The reel revealed the cats in love with Bast.
The thoughtful car could carry cases home.
We timed the cake to rise above the corps.
Our little talk reminds the lad to roam.
There's less to say when kings expected more.
The steady waltz progressed across the ice.
A loaf of bread could house the hardy mice.

Moana is Less-ana

If you're going to tell a boring story in film, you might as well include boring musical numbers. So at least 2016's Moana is consistent. Released the same year as Zootopia, it differs in quality to an astonishing degree, which may not be too surprising since it comes from a completely different creative team. Though it was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who'd delivered quality films for Disney in the past, including The Little Mermaid. In retrospect, the Disney Renaissance may have owed more to the songs composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Moana is usually compared to Pocahontas but you can also look at it as an inverse of The Little Mermaid--it's about a human princess who wants to go to sea instead of a mermaid princess who wants to walk on land. This comparison easily illustrates why The Little Mermaid succeeds so well where Moana fails: the songs were better, the story was more romantic, and the voice actress was better.

I heard Moana was a somewhat rushed production which would explain why it often feels like an outline or illustrated notes. I remember reading about Polynesian navigation techniques in oceanography class and it truly is fascinating. But this, along with aspects of Polynesian culture, are explained to the audience without feeling really lived in.

Maui, voiced ably enough by Dwayne Johnson, is the film's strongest asset. A lovable rogue sort of character, he's based on a trickster god from Polynesian folklore. We know he was a trickster god because one of the musical numbers awkwardly tells us this. I'm not sure if it's Lin-Manuel Miranda's deficiencies as a songwriter or the film's dry, exposition heavy tendencies that make the songs so lifeless or if it was a perfect storm of mediocrity. In any case, the songs never quite seem to get to a melody, often coming across as intros to songs that never get started.

But, yes, Maui gets all the personality Moana herself is denied and his "Your Welcome" song at least has some attitude. Though the scene where he urinates on Moana's hand was a bit tonally strange for a Disney film. Certainly it's a first for a Disney princess. It's not really funny and it's slightly creepy, like the man who suddenly tries to grope a female coworker at a Christmas party. Considering how much goes to committee at Disney, it's really remarkable this got through. The look on Maui's face when he does it certainly isn't endearing.

But while Moana's character design is sexy enough she doesn't seem to respond sexually to Maui or anyone else. Her voice actress, Auli'i Cravalho, in her first role, has the tinny sound of an average high school drama club performer.

The driving force of the narrative is a magic stone, a heart stolen by Maui from a mother island, the absence of which causes a gradually spreading blight. So it's basically the Sampo. Moana's father (Temuera Morrison) is chief and fiercely against the idea of anyone venturing past the coral reef around their island that has so far been spared the effects of the blight. When the island's food sources do start to become scarce, it's odd that only Moana still argues for going past the reef.

Her "I want" song comes separate from this, though, basically being about her desire to explore, very similar to, but vastly inferior to, Ariel's "Part of Your World". It's also not so different from Belle's desire to escape her little town. But like Ariel and Belle, the fulfillment of Moana's desire is oddly muted, being eclipsed by other plot elements introduced. The finale borrows heavily from Princess Mononoke but without the rumination on the balance between nature and human ingenuity that drives Princess Mononoke. At most, Moana just seems to be saying it's good to have a heart but not to exhibit too much passion, especially not with melody.

Moana 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
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled
Winnie the Pooh
Wreck-It Ralph
Frozen
Big Hero 6
Zootopia

Eternal Blandness

A medium ain't always happy, as viewers of 2021's Eternals discovered. I wish I could at least applaud the film for taking the MCU in a more artistically innovative direction, but it really only does that when viewed through the lens of producers who only think about money. Maybe they said, "Okay, we're doing well, let's throw the dice now on that weird crap that makes a pile of money about 5% of the time." Unfortunately, imitating Stanley Kubrick and Denis Villeneuve isn't truly indulging in their method. Those guys are great because they're not trying to make a kind of movie, they're trying to use the form to express a human feeling. So this film directed by the apparently dull as dishwater Chloe Zhao, while ostensibly trying to make a cocktail of half art, half MCU formula, actually just mixes two formulas while she brings no life to the table herself.

The story, based on comics from Jack Kirby, is about immortal beings who secretly live on Earth to defend it against multicoloured space wolves called Deviants. The Eternals look human and they wear generic, boring costumes, but we have to take the film's word for it they're spectacular.

Regardless of how well the film did, it's going to be part of the MCU going forward because the Eternals, as a species, are a big part of MCU cosmic, which we see in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor movies. But unlike those movies, there's very little fun, passion, or variety in Eternals, a movie about pretty people standing around, politely acknowledging that they dislike the suffering of humanity.

The only character in the film who's allowed to have any fun is Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani). This Eternal decides to become a Bollywood star and he's therefore given a big dance sequence. It's hard to imagine a director worse suited for filming such a thing than Chloe Zhao. Whatever you might think of Bollywood, the dance sequences in even the worst Bollywood movies have enough energy to power a city. All this film's sequence seems to say is, "Isn't it funny how people dance in Indian films?"

Otherwise, Kingo's comedy isn't that interesting, either, especially not his video documentary of the Eternals which never distinguishes itself from the bits it imitates, notably the one from Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek are the biggest names in the film and both of them feel totally disengaged. It's hard to tell, I guess, since all the actors were evidently directed to project tepidity, but Jolie and Hayek both seem like their minds were 500 miles away from the film set.

The Eternals massive ship has an exterior clearly meant to invoke the monolith from 2001 while the interiors have a minimalist style reminiscent of Villeneuve or Ridley Scott. I frankly feel the minimalism is overdone in Villeneuve's films (though I haven't seen Dune yet). Here, it only finds another way of reflecting Zhao's lack of creativity.

The really annoying thing about it is that, going forward, I'm afraid the suits are going to say, "We tried being artsy with Eternals and look what happened! Better stick to the formula."

Eternals is available on Disney+.

Z versus S

There's plenty of sex and violence in the new season of Kimetsu no Yaiba, aka Demon Slayer. This show that's beloved across Japan by people from ages three to seventy. Good for them. And Japan's crime rate is astronomically lower than countries now trying to clamp down on this kind of thing.

The latest arc, "The Entertainment District", features the trio of demon fighting boys, Tanjiro (Natsuki Hanae), Inosuke (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka), and Zenitsu (Hiro Shimono), teaming up with a master slayer named Uzui (Katsuyuki Konishi) to investigate a red light district in Tokyo. The three boys dress as geisha to infiltrate three different geisha houses where Uzui's three female ninja assistants disappeared. Soon they discover a demon woman who uses her obi sash to dismember people. In the latest episode, Tanjiro's sister, Nezuko (Akari Kito), furthers her transformation into a demon in order to savage the villain.

In the process, Nezuko herself loses several limbs only to regrow them, multiple times. Not for the first time, only now more vividly, I'm reminded of my own Nesuko from Boschen and Nesuko.

Like Nesuko, Nezuko tries to resist a natural bloodlust, she can regrow her limbs, and she doesn't wear panties. She does part her hair on the opposite side, though.

I guess the similarities are likely all a coincidence. Nesuko certainly talks a lot more than Nezuko who remains mute most of the time. Still, I'm reminded of the minor character from Panty and Stocking with Garter Belt that was clearly modelled on Gir from Invader Zim and wonder if this is another example of a Japanese artist drawing inspiration from a casual perusal of American media. I guess it's flattering, if so. But it makes it all the stranger now that I work with kids who love this show and, as I share in their enthusiasm, I can never say to them, "Hey, I made a Nesuko, too, decades before this one . . ."

Kimetsu no Yaiba is available on Netflix in Japan and Boschen and Nesuko is available on my website, Anelnoath, worldwide.

Twitter Sonnet #1514

With tighter trousers, legs approach the bench.
The time arrived when crystal formed a flame.
A metal neck consumes the fleshy wrench.
We all remembered late the lodging's name.
A muffler wet was like a scarf for tongues.
We hid the treasure deep below the pad.
The cheapest house contained the wooden lungs.
No shedding wig could hide from us the mad.
The ruler broke for words with nothing in.
The music held a solid rule above.
The package broke the bread's recycling bin.
The spotless alley's filled with hearts of love.
Another demon dances strange with blood.
Another rabbit runs from Elmer Fudd.

Boba's Reasons

A solid episode of The Book of Boba Fett last night, if not quite as exciting as the first three. It was directed by Kevin Tancharoen, who directed the 2009 remake of Fame, a Glee concert film, and a Britney Spears concert film, among many other things. So I was hoping there would be a dance number in this episode. But I was happy to see the episode answer a big question I had going into the series.

Why is Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) so loyal to Boba (Temuera Morrison)? Now we know. Not only did he save her life, he inspired her with his ideas about how he thinks a family should be run. At the same time, this also explained why he's been such a merciful leader so far, though most of the more intelligent critics picked up on it already--the Tuskens taught him the value of community.

I also like how the culture of people addicted to cybernetic implants are called "mods". Looks like their bikes' resemblance to vespas is no coincidence--vespas were a part of mod fashion culture in the 1960s.

Speaking of modes of conveyance, I became really fond of Boba's bantha and was sorry to see it go, though I was glad he wasn't killed by stray fire and forgotten.

Though, of course, I was happy to see him get his ship back, too, and to see him swoop down on the biker gang like a god of hellfire.

Will people stop complaining now that Boba's too merciful? Of course not, because the complaints weren't made in good faith to begin with. Still, it was nice to see. The show has hinted the bikers weren't really responsible for killing the Tuskens but they did raid moisture farmers so I'm not shedding tears over them.