I've slept in a recliner for two nights now. The first was more difficult but by the second night I was either more acclimated or more tired because I slept easily, despite a surprising amount of noise of people walking around and slamming doors. I fell asleep listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack on my noise cancelling headphones and really feel I'm living my best cyberpunk life.
That's the jazz standard referenced by "Isle of Joy", the new Daredevil from Wednesday. The episode basically satisfied me, even when a few things happened I thought were silly.
The episode began with a shot of a blue rose accompanied by some ethereal vocals. Since Twin Peaks just turned 35 years old this week, I wondered if this was a reference to the blue roses featured in that mythos. Of course, the point of the blue rose on Twin Peaks is that it does not occur in nature. So what are these artificially coloured roses doing at Riker's Island?
I like how they're writing Heather as kind of a jerk now. It's probably because they're moving her out of the way ahead of Karen's return but, whatever the reason, it's nice for Matt to have her as a foil. We get that classic super secret identity dilemma when Heather demands he give her attention . Meanwhile, what distracts him is Tony Dalton's character, the Swordsman, being threatened by Wilson Fisk. It was kind of weak that Swordsman and Fisk didn't fight then and there but it's nice watching Tony Dalton work, as much as I didn't like his character on Better Call Saul. He's much better suited to playing the Swordsman.
I liked how furious Matt was that Fisk was trying to get to him through Heather, furious enough to throw caution to the wind. But why the hell did he take a bullet for Fisk? Maybe it was instinct.
Now that Fisk has survived an assassination attempt, the similarities between him and Trump are even more underlined. I'm not sure the show can say anything valuable by drawing that parallel but it's good drama by itself.
Daredevil is available on Disney+.
Twin Peaks is now 35 years old but over the weekend I honoured the memory of David Lynch by watching Mulholland Drive. The 2000 movie is one of Lynch's most lauded. Generally most people consider either Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet to be his best film. Mulholland Drive frequently ranks number one on Best Films of the 2000s lists, as well as lists of Best Films of the 21st century. I certainly like it.
It's become fashionable among some circles to consider Lost Highway to be kind of a rough draft for Mulholland Drive. They do have some things in common. They're both set in LA (they form the first two parts of what's sometimes called Lynch's LA trilogy, which concluded with Inland Empire) and they both feature characters who become other characters and who perceive other characters as becoming other characters. In both of them, substantial portions of the film are likely entirely in the main character's head.
The main difference, besides the fact that Mulholland Drive is generally better liked, is that Mulholland Drive has a much more logical narrative. Despite many people claiming to be confused by the film, it's actually very easy to understand, whereas Lost Highway is deliberately obtuse. Lost Highway is confusing because its protagonist is confused. This puts you in his perspective. Certainly, Mulholland Drive puts you in the perspective of Naomi Watts' character, especially in the last act, which features some of the most emotionally gripping scenes of Lynch's career. But perhaps we don't share in her disorientation. Maybe she isn't truly as disorientated as Bill Pullman's character in Lost Highway. It could be she knows exactly what she's doing the whole time. Maybe on some level she does but I'm inclined to think she's successfully deceiving herself, which leads to the effectively horrific conclusion.
I would say the primary reason Mulholland Drive is liked better than Lost Highway and Inland Empire is that it stars pretty young women. That always makes a difference. Certainly they're worthy of their roles. It remains Naomi Watts' best role, as much as I did enjoy Janey E.
The Club Silencio scene is practically a scene from an early French New Wave movie. The whole point Lynch makes with dubbing and language could've come straight from a Godard film. Except while Godard plays tricks with sound and editing to take you behind the curtain in a sort of cool, intellectual way, Lynch uses it to show how heartbreaking it can truly be to find this world you've put your heart and soul in may amount to nothing but surface. This is a movie that breaks my heart every time. This one and Kurosawa's Ikiru are the only movies that reliably make me feel like crying.
X Sonnet 1932
A set of random pens were pooped at lunch.
A thousand barrels blocked the river's course.
Banana pipes were bloated past a bunch.
A silent train conveyed a paper horse.
No breakfast thoughts invade the afternoon.
A morning face was seen as time explodes.
A group of thugs would not be called a goon.
Respect for crackers surely now erodes.
A careful ear could crack the corn from cobs.
You must recall a kernel conjures pop.
Its just your time the system daily robs.
A layer cake was shaped to ape a cop.
For fluffy births, the science doesn't kneel.
A rigid hand would take the crazy wheel.
Maybe I read something last night about sexual assault allegations against Schrader. His representative claims that he kissed the woman in question twice but backed off when she wasn't interested. Imagine if that's true, and, at this point, I'd say it's a good chance it is. How disgusting we have to comb through the minutiae of everyone's private lives now.
I spent the day in Kakogawa yesterday, the town I'm going to be working in and hopefully moving to soon. I'd better be moving there since it'll be a three hour commute if not. I may try staying at an internet cafe. The process for moving into a new apartment is very slow in Japan. The wheels of paperwork have just gotta turn.
Springtime in Japan means the beautiful sight of cherry blossoms shedding their petals in peaceful pink clouds. Or horrific clouds of pink madness if you take the perspective of 1975's Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (桜の森の満開の下). In this delightfully demented horror comedy, a vicious mountain footpad meets his match in an even more vicious, but beautiful, shrew.
The mountain man (Wakayama Tomisaburo) comes upon a small party of city dwellers, a man, his wife, and their servant. He slaughters the man and servant but stops short when he lifts the wife's veil. Struck by her beauty, he decides to add her to the collection of wives he has going up in his little mountain shack. This shrew (Iwashita Shima) never shows an ounce of fear, though, and demands that he carry her up the mountain, which he does. She complains the whole way.
She demands that he behead all his wives, which he does, save one, the meekest, whom the shrew decides to take as a servant. Normal life for this little found family consists of the mountain man robbing and murdering travellers and giving their severed heads to the shrew to use as playthings. She plays with them like dolls, performing all their voices and enacting little dramas. She demands they move to the city where the mountain man can get her a wide variety of heads.
How does she control this wild man? She laughs at him. Never underestimate the power of embarrassment in Japan. She frequently lashes him with that ubiquitous word, "恥ずかしい!" "Embarrassing!" He's supposed to be strong, why can't he carry her? He's supposed to be vicious, why can't he get her more heads? He's supposed to be brave, why can't he live in the city? And this poor dumb brute rises to the bait every time. The film is a sobering lesson for killers everywhere from Shinoda Masahiro.
Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees is available on The Criterion Channel.
Two young women with clearly delineated personalities find themselves surprised by themselves in Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Allen has always been influenced by Ingmar Bergman and it particularly shows here but I also found myself thinking of the Archers' I Know Where I'm Going and the early films of Bill Forsyth. Forsyth was famed for his delicate, "gossamer" humour and that's how I'd describe the humour in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Those looking for a plot with a point that's easy to articulate may be disappointed but I enjoyed the ride.
Much like I Know Where I'm Going's protagonist, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) travel to another country firmly convinced of who they are as a narrator directly explains to us. Vicky likes stability and Cristina doesn't know what she wants--she just knows that she wants something wild. With this setup, we expect things to go sideways.
They do in short order when a gentleman called Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem) approaches them and invites them on a trip to Oviedo and to have sex with him. Predictably, Vicky is incredulous but Cristina is intrigued. Of course, they both go with him and some things happen according to the narrator's prophecy and some things don't.
As the story progresses, the personalities of the women as explained to us become a kind of veneer in a way that suggests the superficial quality of any human veneer (this aspect of the film certainly owes something to Bergman). Penelope Cruz won acclaim for her role as Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's violent but remarkably insightful ex-wife. She comes into the film like a sudden storm but gradually her madness starts to look like sanity as Cristina's sanity starts to look like dullness. This was the last of three movies Woody Allen made with Scarlett Johansson and I wonder if she was upset to realise that the essence of her character is that she's a little dumb and Johansson embodies it kind of perfectly. As she enters a three way relationship with Maria Elena and Juan Antonio, she can't keep up with how sharp Maria Elena is and how patient Juan Antonio is. Does she feel pitied? She can't seem to explain it herself when she is the first one to say she finds the relationship wanting.
Vicky's previous love for stability, perhaps inevitably, turns out to be an indication of a fundamentally unstable nature. While Cristina can't seem to get over a certain hill of contemplation, Vicky seems to be speeding madly down the other side.
The film offers no trite conclusions and the ending has a bittersweet feeling of fulfillment perhaps missed and a persistent mystery over what, exactly, the right move would've been for these two ladies.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is available on The Criterion Channel.
X Sonnet 1931
Here comes a town with talent leaking good.
No actors here could form a building grant.
The trouble is, a few were made of wood.
Performance must produce a man or ant.
But women called the bank and froze a pop.
No snacks were cold when summer came along.
You have to ask the winter now to stop.
Or autumn once to sing an extra song.
As chilly leaves would fall in spring we watched.
We waited 'mongst the pews for whales to speak.
But Orson Welles would preach a shapeless blotch.
The early dawn beholds the conquered peak.
It seems the mountain's made of water still.
No hardened ice would form for nature's will.
Okay, I guess I can't put off writing about Wednesday's Daredevil any longer. I hate writing negative reviews but in for a penny, in for a pound. It's particularly disappointing because I had high hopes for this show. Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk is truly one of the best things about not just the MCU but comic book film and television of the last thirty years. But once again, Disney was under the impression they could cut corners in one of the most essential aspects of any production: the writing.
"Art for Art's Sake" (Walter Pater is rolling in his grave) was written by Jill Blankenship who also wrote the abysmal episode three, "The Hollow of His Hand", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
I've said this before; I hate when so many people in a large city just coincidentally know each other. Heather is both Muse's therapist and Wilson Fisk's therapist and Matt's girlfriend. This might have worked had the story been set in a small village but this is just silly. The worst part, though, is that, after all that set up with Muse, he's snuffed out so abruptly, so soon. The police tell Fisk they're positive Daredevil was in the room beating on the guy even though they weren't inside the room. It's all well and good for Fisk to have them take credit for taking out Muse but is Fisk even sure what lie he's telling?
This episode was clearly a reconfigured episode from the first draft of the series. There's a lot of very obviously looped dialogue whenever events from the Netflix series are referred to. When Heather talks about Foggy and Karen, her face is always off-screen. When Fisk talks about his time in prison, his face is mostly off-screen.
Detective Kim reports to Fisk about the Muse investigation because apparently she's lead detective as well as hostage negotiator despite the actress giving a performance on the level of an old AT&T commercial. It's a shame it couldn't have been Misty Knight. Fisk asks Kim if she's certain Bastian is Muse and she says, "Certain, no. Confident." Too bad she didn't think to have him tailed then.
Matt's able to recognise Heather's face by touching paintings. Why not just give him eyesight at this point? This is lazy, lazy writing. Since the cops also found the lair, they could've had Daredevil overhear someone else identifying her from the pictures. Hell, she's probably therapist for the whole damned city.
The action scene where Daredevil comes in to save Heather from Muse is really sloppy. I was just going over it again. Heather's tied up and she taunts him for having a gun and then there's a shot of him holding a gun. Then there's a reverse shot and he's holding a knife and he comes towards her threateningly. Then he's grasping her arms with both hands and shortly thereafter we see the gun on the table. How is it they can't even get the action scenes right?
Well, next week's episode is bound to be better. I'm kind of not surprised the show's ratings haven't been great but if Disney had made the effort from the beginning to ensure this had good writing they could've slowly built a groundswell of support of the show. Andor should've taught them that lesson.
Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.
At long last, a new chapter of my webcomic, Dekpa and Deborah, is online. When I finished the previous chapter last April, I didn't expect it would take me a whole year to upload another. I actually drew most of the pages in August but I was unable to finish over the summer because making Japanese subtitles for The Last Unicorn dominated all my time.
By the way, the character of Red Roger Ferguson is my own creation, he was not a real, historical pirate, as far as I know. There were a number of "Red Rogers" though. There's a character in the Robin Hood legend and even a peculiarly muscular kangaroo of the name. I think "Red Roger" sounds more natural than Walter Matthau's pirate captain simply called "Red" in the Roman Polanski movie Pirates.
There's a lot of violence and nudity in this chapter. Clothing seamen in the age of sail was a real problem. The Royal Navy didn't have a uniform until the 18th century (April 1748, in fact) and the only garments issued to crewmen before that were slops, which were typically very cheaply made breeches that did tend to fall apart.
It occurs to me that Dekpa, with her magical companion, has become a kind of demented Disney princess. Anyway, enjoy the chapter.
Happy Birthday to Dorothea Dix, Muddy Waters, Elmer Bernstein, Peter Vaughan, Anthony Perkins, Andrei Tarkovsky, Cherie Lunghi, David E. Kelley, Hugo Weaving, David Cross, Robert Downey Jr., Heath Ledger, and Natasha Lyonne.
He was an A-lister from his appearance in the original Top Gun in 1986 and remained a big star into the '90s but it seems he wasn't uptight about playing supporting roles. His supporting roles in Tombstone and Heat are certainly memorable. The latter film, which has lately garnered a lot of attention, is considered one of the greatest crime dramas of all time and his role was integral to it.
I saw him in person at San Diego Comic Con in 2010 when he was there to promote Twixt with its director, Francis Ford Coppola. A remarkable experiment, it was initially Coppola's plan to edit the film live based on audience reactions. Coppola demonstrated by showing us a trailer edited live. The audience that day responded most warmly to shots of Kilmer's character being foolish, drunk, and funny.
He was excellent as Jim Morrison in The Doors biopic, though I'm not the greatest fan of its director. I also enjoyed seeing him pop up in films like Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob: Reboot.
For me, though, his greatest role will always be Madmartigan, the "greatest swordsman who ever lived" in the fantasy film Willow. I always loved the European Middle Ages and medieaval fantasy films in particular. When Willow came out in 1988, I was nine years old and it was fantastic.
Sure, the comedy's a little broad and Willow is hardly the finest George Lucas film but Kilmer as Madmartigan exemplified the kind of cinematic hero Lucas and Spielberg were creating; a guy a who makes mistakes and who is sometimes misled by his passions. No fascist hero was Indiana Jones or Madmartigan, even when they were also larger than life. These were human heroes for humans. I, for one, think humanity benefited and I thank Val Kilmer for his part in it.
X Sonnet 1930
Electric blue were words of ancient force.
But boats of twisted reeds conduct a hope.
The winding brook conforms to serpent's course.
The rocks would roll along the broken slope.
As gods of wine beheld their own, they wept.
The mighty sword would rust as trolls would rule.
Within expectant hearts, the dream was kept.
The gun of Holiday's a quiet tool.
The stately raven churned the film of yore.
In days of heat, the lucky thief was warned.
His song would lead us through a spirit door.
No shrink could shrink the bat when scorned.
It seems there's naught for little men to do.
And still he says he'll win this war for you.
I've been watching Andor again, I guess in preparation for the upcoming second season. Hell, I just wanted to watch it again. I can't remember so enthusiastically looking forward to new episodes of a weekly series since Twin Peaks. It doesn't even feel fair to compare it to the other Disney+ Star Wars shows. Andor doesn't need to borrow any franchise laurels, it stands completely on its own.
What makes it so good? One simple way of expressing it is that it's a show about people slowly realising a bad situation is worse than they imagined and that they'll be required to make bigger sacrifices than they'd ever dreamt of. Andor's progression is mirrored by Mon Mothma's. He slowly realises that getting by as a thief is not only impossible but not really who he is. This is first confirmed when he quick draws on that guy at the end of the heist arc. Instinctively, he shoots someone for betraying the Rebellion, not because it's in his own best interest.
Mon Mothma has already settled into a life of more subterfuge than one traditionally required of a senator but she finds even this isn't enough, she must go further outside her comfort zone. The show builds scenes around these dreadful character epiphanies, like the one in episode 10, which I watched last night, in which Mon Mothma slowly realises she's going to have to encourage her teenage daughter to go out with a gangster's son just so she can move her own finances to fund the Rebellion. In the same episode, Kino Loy's character progression reaches its climax. His reluctance and growing horror is what most creates a sense of the prison break drama. All the Disney Star Wars shows have big name actors but none of them use the opportunity so well as Andy Serkis was used in his role as Kino Loy. With all the sets and costumes and special effects, it's the expression on his face that truly creates an impression of the experience.
I also love just how delicately twisted the relationship is between Syril Karn and Dedra Meero. I love the scene in episode nine when he confronts her on the bridge. He has all these grand words about duty and dedication to justice that all also sound like he's head over heels for her. He doesn't hear that part of what he's saying but she does and she reacts like he's a stalker. It's fascinating watching the two of them and thinking about what's really going on subconsciously and how aware either one of them is of it. Hot damn, this show is good.