Doctor Where

I'd planned to watch the season finale of Doctor Who last night but for some reason it didn't go up on Disney+ as early as it has normally been. So I watched it this morning and it was worth the wait. I thought it was terrific. It was pure ice cream for a long time Doctor Who fan but, again, I have to say that the hypothetical young new fan would be totally lost between all the plot dependent references to old episodes and an extraordinarily complicated plot with fast pace dialogue. Just like the clear political bias, it's something I can appreciate, even though it seems perfectly obvious this is all dooming the show to minuscule ratings and almost certainly a hiatus.

Spoilers ahead for the episode.

I expected the title of "Reality War" to make this a sort of allegory for the ongoing global, cultural/political war between the various shades of right and left. And it kind of was. Maybe it'll seem even more so once I've had time to digest it. I liked the conclusion of Conrad's story, not only because it was less politically polarised but also because it saved Ruby from looking like a complete idiot for falling for Conrad pretending to be her boyfriend. There was something real in their relationship and Conrad did have something more than just smug spite in his heart. On that note, I also liked the more nuanced dialogue between the Doctor and the Rani as the two bonded over being the last of the Time Lords.

With all the timey whimey plot stuff, the episode still managed some truly satisfying emotional beats. The strongest being the thread about Poppy--and Ruby being the only one who could remember her. I loved how Poppy vanished, her jacket, as it's being folded, slowly transforming into a handkerchief before disappearing entirely.

I thought Poppy was going to end up being Susan's mother. But then we never even got an explanation to Susan turning up in the past couple episodes. I guess they didn't want to overwrite that Eighth Doctor audio play after all.

The reappearance of Anita from the Christmas special was good and I liked her visiting the Eleventh and Third Doctors instead of it being yet another reel of every single previous Doctor. The moment of her finding out the current incarnation is gay was a nice character moment though, considering he spent a year with her and certainly wasn't keeping his sexuality a secret, it's hard to believe she didn't know already.

I kind of appreciated the appearance of the Thirteenth Doctor although it didn't make any sense. Maybe it was just nice because she got such a raw deal. Jodie Whittaker never gave a bad performance.

She seems to have taken the spot usually occupied by the current Doctor's former companions who all make appearances when a Doctor regenerates. I'm so glad Davies didn't do another bigeneration, though it may be a pretty clear sign that Ncuti Gatwa really wanted to get gone. He only lasted two seasons. Anything less than three is a sign of unusual circumstances. Eccleston stayed for only one season because that was the plan from the beginning and he was a big movie star there to just help kickstart the show (and, it turns out, there was a lot of bad blood between him and the producers). Notably, Colin Baker only got two seasons because he was so terribly unpopular. Gatwa's departure, given the fact that it was preceded by abysmally low ratings, seems like it was certainly a sign of some form of dissatisfaction with the current state of the show.

I wondered if we would even see the Doctor's new face. Just like the 14th Doctor, it turned out to be someone not so new. I have to say, I'm not pleased with the choice. It really feels like Davies is cannibalising his own work in a desperate attempt to slow a free fall. I don't think it's going to work, at least not for ratings. I can appreciate a fan service fest and Davies is able to inject even that with stimulating ideas. But the show desperately needs a true regeneration.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ everywhere else.

Persistent Songs

I was showing Tom Waits' "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You" to students a few days ago because it contained relevant grammar and then, last night, I watched an Ally McBeal episode that included the song. That's the second time that's happened with my viewing of Ally McBeal this year. The previous time was when I'd just watched Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart and then an Ally McBeal episode included "Take Me Home You Silly Boy", a Tom Waits song written for Crystal Gayle to sing for that movie.

The Ally McBeal episode I watched last night was "Out in the Cold" from January, 2000, a time when people still generally believed homeless people in the U.S. were mostly mentally ill. In this case, Ally is intrigued by a homeless man who shouts some surprisingly insightful things at her. The two end up bonding over the fact that they both have hallucinations. It sounds more comedic than it was, the show actually takes it very seriously. It certainly plays very differently to-day when many Disneyland castmembers are reportedly living out of their cars.

I like how writer David E. Kelley seems to make writing pivots based on (presumably his own) critical appraisals of the show. Ally's visions were just a comedic effect in season one, then they became vaguely spiritual before finally settling on being an actual, serious mental health issue that she's avoiding taking medication for. And Billy coming off as slimier than originally intended seems to have led to him being an outright creep. I'm still digging that.

Ally McBeal is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet 1941

No reading horses fled the burning barn.
So many bookends burned to keep the books.
No equine readers stayed to read a yarn.
The common hay was held with simple hooks.
McAfee scams disgraced the common box.
No virus worth its bytes was fooled for long.
The vaunted 'lectric ghost was just a fox.
No A nor I exceeds its scary song.
A paper door could never shut at night.
No warming breeze could staunch the dream.
A question ends before the answer's right.
No cookies marred the taste of sweetened cream.
Please send a coffee up for me to drink.
No mighty brew or blend would make me blink.

Japanese Versions

Last Saturday I went to one of the malls in town, a place called Ario. It has no movie theatre and, unlike American malls, Japanese malls never seem to have anchor department stores. The food court did have a surprising number of American restaurants, including a McDonalds and a Burger King as well as a Subway. I hadn't been to a Subway since leaving the U.S. so I ate there. There were no footlongs on the menu because the country uses metric and because the Japanese don't like large portions. The regular sandwich looked roughly equivalent to a six inch. I got the cheapest one, which was a tuna sandwich at just over 700 yen, with fried potatoes and coke coming to just over 800 yen, a bit over five dollars. So no five dollar footlong here, though I heard the footlong is now just over six dollars in the U.S. Still, since the tuna sandwich was the cheapest on the menu, that means Subway in Japan is on average probably more expensive than it is in the U.S., at least in this town. I imagine it can only be more expensive in a major city.

It was a nice mall and I was pleased to see their grocery store had Guinness stout. I've noticed that the quality of the beer selection is inversely proportional to the quality of the liquor selection in most stores here. If they have a good selection of beer, they have a weak selection of whiskey. If they have a good selection of whiskey, they have a weak selection of beer. I tend to enjoy beer only on hot days and it was a cool, rainy day, so I didn't buy any, opting instead to pick up some Tullamore Dew at an excellent nearby liquor shop (which has a weak selection of beer).

Rounding out my nostalgic Saturday, I stopped at a nearby Starbucks and ordered a tall drip coffee for just over 400 yen, roughly comparable to the average three dollar price in the U.S. Nowadays, if I get a coffee when I'm out, I tend to opt for a vending machine, where it's usually around 150 yen. But a sparsely crowded Starbucks on a rainy day is invaluable. I stayed there reading Marius B. Jansen's Making of Modern Japan, published in 2000, the year of its author's death. Marius B. Jansen shares a birthday with me, April 11, though he was born over fifty years earlier, in 1922. Born in the Netherlands and raised in the U.S., he was a professor of Japanese history at Princeton and in the aftermath of World War II had a role in the Occupation of Japan. He was the first foreigner to receive the Distinguished Cultural Merit Award from the Japanese government.

The book, as its title suggests, is fundamentally teleological, constructed in such a way as to explain why Japan is the way it is to-day (or in 2000), beginning with a narrative of history starting with Sekigahara, a battle in 1600 that began the Tokugawa era. I've been surprised how useful the book's insights are to my own life and situation and, in descriptions of Japanese customs and behaviour in the 18th and 19th century, I've been gaining a better understanding of the culture I interact with daily.

I first heard of the book from a mysterious YouTuber called Apostolic Majesty who has a number of really good lectures on his channel on history, The Lord of the Rings, and Bethesda games.

With Friends Like These

A few weeks ago, I installed a Skyrim mod that seemed to break the game. I don't even know which mod it was as I tend to install bunches of ten or fifteen at a time. Trying to figure it out, I uninstalled one at a time and then even mods that were already installed when the game still worked. Nothing did the trick. When I tried to start the game, nothing happened, like the computer didn't even know I'd double clicked the icon. So I had to completely uninstall the game and all the mods and start from scratch. It took almost three weeks to get the game back up and running in an acceptable modded state, just in time for me to try Varinia, the new companion mod from Maplespice.

Maplespice is the creator of Remiel, an extremely popular follower mod and certainly by far the best one I've ever installed. Many reviews and forum comments on Remiel are about how amazingly lifelike Remiel's dialogue is. The average follower mod tends to be an embarrassing female simp who becomes obsessed with the player character in dialogue and then is overpowered in battle so that oftentimes it feels like the computer is playing the game for you. Sadly, I think this speaks volumes about the average heterosexual male fantasy these days; a hyper competent girl who's capable of doing any and all of the work and who for some reason rapturously adores you. Remiel, meanwhile, can get knocked down pretty easily (follower characters usually can't die) and, although you can start a romance quest line with her, it's more satisfying to avoid it. Here's some dialogue she has with another mod follower called Thogra gra-Mugur:

It still amazes me all these great mods, into which people have put so much work, are still totally free.

So far, Varinia isn't quite as amazing as Remiel. Remiel feels more well rounded and I wonder if it was the mod author's inexperience that led to Remiel being loaded with a wider range of ideas. Varinia is a spy/assassin character, better suited for evil playthroughs. Maybe it's the narrower focus that makes her less satisfying. Though I wonder if the mod creator is afflicted by a problem I often think about affecting artists, which is a fear of the vulnerability inherent in creation. Art is about communicating something about our humanity and it takes guts to do that, or possibly a lack of awareness of just how vulnerable we're making ourselves. I think this is what often leads to a progression in careers in many media in which artists do their most popular, intimate work earlier on and somehow make progressively less satisfying media even as their skills are refined. Maybe Tim Burton would argue all day that Big Fish is actually a better film than Edward Scissorhands or Francis Ford Coppola would argue Megalopolis is better than The Godfather. On the other hand, I would say his Dracula is better than The Godfather so maybe there's hope for us old artists yet. And I haven't played that much with Varinia, maybe she improves.

Render Unto Black Caesar What is Black

An enterprising lad goes from shining shoes to ruling Harlem in 1973's Black Caesar. Fred Williamson gives a charismatic performance in this decently written blaxploitation film.

Tommy (Williamson) starts his way up the ladder when he grabs hold of a man's leg while he's shining his shoe so a gangster can gun the man down. From there, Tommy gets courier jobs before finally taking the initiative and killing someone wanted dead by the local mafia boss. In return, he asks for control of part of town.

The argument is pretty clear; the oppressed black man becomes the oppressor once given the opportunity, a sad, fairly common commentary on the cyclical nature of tyranny. Williamson's performance is good and impressively vicious and the film has a score and songs by none other than James Brown.

Black Caesar is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Guitar After the Apocalypse

In a post-apocalyptic, post-gender world. a young woman follows her destiny as the "seventh son" of a genealogy of ramblers in 2025's O'Dessa. Sadie Sink is the captivating star of this film which is an entertaining adventure, though not really much better than the kinds of Mad Max knock-offs I remember from MST3k like Alien from L.A., City Limits, and Warrior of the Lost World.

The movie follows modern American leftist ideology so perfectly I was able to predict many things from scene to scene. When a priest shows up, I knew he'd be a villain. When an MC starts introducing a singer about to perform a sexy dance of veils, I knew the dancer would be a guy, and not even a strikingly beautiful guy. Much like the live action Cowboy Bebop adaptation, the movie sets out to be transgressive but can't help putting its gender non-conformists into boxes. So the gender fluid guy has to be a burlesque singer, again.

I assume Sadie Sink does her own singing and she's really good at it. The songs aren't bad at all and I like the willow design on her guitar. From a basic filmmaking standpoint, it's well made and the politics don't get in the way of the storytelling. I was genuinely interested in the fate of Sink's character and was rooting for her. The visuals were typical for the post-apocalyptic genre but not bad, especially if you're a fan of the genre, which I am.

O'Dessa is available on Disney+.

The Distant Land and the Near Trap

Somehow, movies from the 1930s and '40s seem to do a better job portraying the experience of living in a foreign country. One terrific example is 1937's Pepe le Moko, directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Jean Gabin. Gabin plays the titular gangster, a Frenchman hiding out in the Casbah of Algiers where he has the foreigner's peculiar experience of being welcome and rejected at the same time.

Pepe has a strange friendship with Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), the man intent on arresting him. So long as Pepe remains in the Casbah, Slimane is unable to do so and the two carry on a cold but puckish friendship. Fate finally puts the finger on Pepe in the form of a woman, a tourist named Gaby (Mireille Balin) from Paris. Pepe's conversations with her revolve around reminiscences of Paris. In bed with her, Pepe remarks that for all her loveliness and the fineness of her clothes and jewellery, he values her for how she reminds him of the Metro. She seems to recall for him an old familiar world from which he has long been separated.

Pepe's local lover, Ines (Line Noro), is jealous of Gabby but is more frightened of the vulnerability Gaby creates in Pepe. Slimane spots the same vulnerability and exploits it, manipulating both of the lovers. This leads to a remarkable scene where Pepe, at home, believing Gaby has abandoned him, listens to another exiled Parisian as she sings along with herself on a recording from decades earlier, a song about a past and a better life that is forever out of reach for her. I love how there's no reaction shot of Pepe for the whole scene. Her song is so clearly suited to his mood and situation that to show any reaction would be somehow redundant and cheap.

Pepe le Moko is available on The Criterion Channel.

Doctor Doubt

The new Doctor Who was decent, if you happen to share Russel T Davies' politics. And I do, but I can't help lament his decision to take the show further into marginalisation. I mean, does anyone think the show would be converting anyone?

I think maybe the Conrad guy is based on Tommy Robinson. I don't think the simplistic, belligerent character is going to draw away any Tommy Robsinson devotees. I really liked the Rani's ship, though. I liked how everything seemed to be made of bone and those aliens collecting doubts reminded me of the medical alien from Farscape if it were designed by Gerald Brom.

The concept behind the episode, called "Wish World", is of reality transformed by someone seeking a return to a past that didn't really exist, a pretty typical form of political cycle most recently and starkly in evidence from the "Make America Great Again" crowd. But I was also reminded of reading about Japanese history yesterday and how the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century was not really a restoration at all but a radical transformation of the country into something it had never been before, despite many participants being motivated by "kokugaku", a Japanese academic philosophy emphasising the superiority of Japanese culture in earlier eras. You could also look at the Restoration in England in 1660 which certainly didn't return things to the status quo of the 1630s. It's a nice template for the Doctor and Belinda to be trapped in a reality that inevitably has flaws. The guy in the office freaking out because the Doctor called him beautiful could only be aware of homosexuality since, in the time when awareness of homosexuality was less prevalent, it wasn't out of order for a straight man to call another beautiful at all. You can't be constructive when what you're concerned with is destruction at heart.

I was also reminded of the first story featuring the Rani, 1985's Mark of the Rani, in which she takes advantage of 19th century Luddites. I have to say Archie Panjabi falls far short of Kate O'Mara's portrayal. I even prefer Anita Dobson ("Mrs Flood") who at least avoids all the pathetic teeth gnashing.

The scenes with Ruby and the group of disabled people was really, really awkward. It wouldn't surprise me if that scene alone was the cause of many televisions being shut off or channels changed. In any case, I don't think the show's downward trajectory is going to be righted any time soon. But "Wish World" wasn't so bad.

Marvel Getting in Touch with Itself

I was in the mood for a Marvel movie last night and I was scrolling through the ones on Disney+ I hadn't seen. I hadn't seen the first Wolverine movie from 2009 because everyone said it was really bad, so much so it was gratuitously retconned in the Deadpool movies, complete with insults. I started watching it and, yeah, it's pretty bad. It's kind of dull. Ryan Reynolds is in it as a distinctly not-Deadpool version of Deadpool. It was like having a movie with a Spider-Man who can't climb walls and has a different personality. Why do it? I suppose writers David Benioff and Skip Woods figured their ideas were superior to the source material. That is the same Benioff who adapted Game of Thrones for television so I guess that was par for the course.

So I switched to the original, 2000 X-Men film that introduced Hugh Jackman's Wolverine to the world. What a difference. How good that movie remains. It still feels fresh that it spends time introducing Wolverine, Magneto, and Rogue in very natural, earthly circumstances.

The recent news from Marvel is they're shaking up their release slate in the wake of disappointing box office performances by Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts. It's really a shame because Thunderbolts is actually quite good. I could've told them it wouldn't do well, though. Florence Pugh is very pretty but she looks like a little boy in all the posters. Everyone wears boring black costumes. I remember months back when Grace Randolph was comparing Thunderbolts to Suicide Squad she called Yelena, Pugh's character, the Harley Quinn of the film. Margot Robbie's sexiness as Harley Quinn in the original Suicide Squad movie single-handedly made it a hit and redoubled the character's cultural icon status. Florence Pugh's dowdiness seems to have drawn no-one to the cinema. The sexy Harley Quinn made the otherwise lousy Suicide Squad a hit, so I think it's fair to say the aesthetically unimpressive hair and makeup on Yelena sank the chances of the otherwise well made Thunderbolts. Yeah, you can turn your nose up at the fact that sex sells. But you do so at your peril.

Dem Noodle Bones

Mostly I've been pretty pleased with the neighbourhood around my new apartment. There are lots of restaurants and a movie theatre. I've dreamed all my life of living near a movie theatre and I finally got my wish. But there were still a few things I wished were in walking distance, particularly a laundromat, though I've been washing most of my clothes by hand. A few weeks ago, I went to see a concert put on by the brass band of one of my schools and I had to go down a street I'd never been down. Not only did I find a laundromat and a liquor store with a good selection of Irish whiskeys, I found a Makotoya, barely ten minutes from my apartment!

Japan's ramen is legendary all over the world and I've had a lot of amazing ramen since coming to Japan five years ago. But by far, one of the best restaurants I've eaten at is Makotoya.

Their signature ramen has a beef bone broth. Nowadays, ramen generally comes in four kinds of soup bases; salt and soy sauce are the two traditional bases and the popular newcomers are miso and pork bone broth. Pork bone is typically my favourite kind but Makotoya's choice of using beef bone broth is an excellent alternative. As you might expect, it has kind of a milky quality, which is nice for someone like me whose gut no longer likes to digest milk properly. A basic bowl of their beef bone broth ramen without egg is relatively cheap at only around 750 yen, which I think comes to around seven dollars. For a hundred yen more, you can get their 赤辛牛白湯 ramen, a red spicy variant.

The place never seems too crowded and I can always get a seat at the bar with space for my book so I can read while eating. There are a lot of restaurants I want to try around here but it's going to be hard tearing myself away from Makotoya at lunchtime.

The Size of Schwartz

What is the central gag of 1987's Spaceballs? It's Star Wars but everyone's regular schlubs from Canada and New York, mostly Jewish (John Candy was Catholic). The 80s was a time of great Jewish comedies. Nowadays, we still have Larry David and Mrs. Maisel but the time of the Jewish comedy superstar is over. Well, comedies in general tend not to be box office hits now.

A lot of Spaceballs' comedy also comes from literalising. Chewbacca was always based on George Lucas' dog, now John Candy is playing a literal half man, half dog. The Millennium Falcon was like a mobile home, now it's actually a Winnebago. There's more to this comedy than simply unmasking creative concepts; it divests the concepts of the poetry of the fantastic and makes them mundane. It's a joke on the characters because that's the joke played on everyone in real life. No-one's ever going to have the Force. You're more likely to be stuck with Schwartz. But, hey, that's life. The vile gangster is more likely to be a pile of pizza than a giant space slug.

It's a galaxy of puerile motives. Everyone is thinking about sex all the time. The pretty female officer smirks at the camera after seeing President Skroob's exposed genitals. Joan Rivers' version of C3PO's primary mission is to protect the virginity of the princess. That actually brings her a little closer to the mute servant girl in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (隠し砦の三悪人), the movie that was a primary influence on Star Wars. The characters that provided the basis for R2D2 and C3PO were much earthier, much more focused on bodily needs than Lucas' version of the low caste, point of view characters. Maybe Andor introducing sex to the Star Wars universe is a precursor to getting something closer to The Hidden Fortress in a way. I'd say it would need at least fifteen years to develop and I'm not sure Star Wars is going to be financially viable for that long.

We've come all this way and it's still hard to talk about sex without making it a joke. But something like Spaceballs can feel like a breath of fresh air. Or at least canned air.

Spaceballs is currently on Amazon Prime in Japan.

Back to the House

I finally watched the first episode of House of the Dragon season two last night. It's certainly not as splashy an opening as season one but it's nice to be back in that world of beautiful costumes and dark, mediaeval locations. I appreciated some greater level of detail in this one, especially the scene at the docks where you can see men scraping barnacles off a ship.

I guess the show hasn't reached the heights of Game of Thrones. It seemed like everyone on Game of Thrones started turning up all over the place, especially in big budget movies, but the only star who seems to have come out of House of the Dragon so far is Milly Alcock, who was in less than half of the first season. I guess the legacy of Game of Thrones' rushed final seasons continues to haunt the franchise.

"A Son for a Son", the season two premiere episode of House of the Dragon I watched last night, certainly didn't feel rushed. We spend a lot of time with Rhaenyra grieving for the son she lost at the end of the previous season, setting up her motive for revenge. Writer and showrunner Ryan Condal also takes a moment to lampshade one of the more egregious missteps in season one's writing, when Rhaenys, for no apparent reason, refrained from killing the opposing leadership when she had the chance. I'm sorry to see the writer of that notorious episode, Sara Hess, wrote a few episodes of season two.

Still, even on its worst day, House of the Dragon is a cut above most shows.

Wonderful Dames

I was going to watch Psycho last night because I saw it was on Japanese Amazon Prime but it was some really lousy, unrestored print. Sometimes I wonder if the reason old movies tend not to be popular in Japan is because most movies made before 1970 are only available in copies that look like they came from a roll of celluloid that's been stashed on the floor of a taxi for twenty years. There are exceptions. For some reason my Japanese copy of Secret of the Incas is pristine.

So I didn't watch Psycho. I tried to watch Ally McBeal a bit but the episode, a Thanksgiving episode in which it turns out Ally's father had been flirting with Georgia, was filled with too many lame coincidences and I couldn't keep watching. So I just drifted off to sleep watching Valerie and Her Week of Wonders again on The Criterion Channel. What a wonderful colour palette that movie has.

This morning I woke up to see Natasha Lyonne visited the Criterion Closet practically naked. She chose Mike Leigh's Naked and David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch among other movies. Maybe she was protesting Cannes' recently announced prohibition on people showing up nude on the red carpet. Maybe she just wanted to remind people she's not exactly like Peter Falk.

I realised she's almost exactly my age. She was born the same year and the same month--she was born April 4, 1979 and I was born April 11, 1979. She's definitely aged better.

X Sonnet 1940

Where citizens were nothing more than pies,
The shop was selling cakes and sticky rolls
Of upper crusts, the best were kept with eyes
Obscured in tanks of fish with shaky goals,
Accrued for foggy syrup, placed within,
A filter's clog, to make a sweetened life,
To quickly ravage thoughts of idle sin,
And check the dance of someone's drunken wife
Before the crew of new cadets could dream
Of something bigger, pulling up parades
Above the heads who just escaped a stream
Of molten rock as music now invades
The sound of happy morning coffee beans
Stampeding down a hill of leafy greens.

Don't You Forget About Who

I forgot all about Doctor Who on Saturday, which says something. But when I finally did watch it on Sunday I was very happily surprised to find it was a pretty good episode. I'm surprised to see many review quotes saying the episode feels "rushed" because, to me, it was the first story this season that didn't feel rushed. In particular, I liked that writer Juno Dawson gave some space for Belinda to panic over the apparent death of the Doctor. It was the kind of human reaction to a dangerous and scary situation the show rarely seems to get around to anymore. It was one of the things that made it feel like a classic series episode.

Dawson has written a number of books, including This Book is Gay, which ranks as the tenth most banned book in America, surely an admirable distinction. Her Doctor Who episode, "The Interstellar Song Contest", features gay characters and possibly a reference to transgenderism (Dawson is transgender). When one character, Cora, is revealed to be a member of species that faces persecution across the galaxy, her partner accuses her of dishonesty. This conceptual conflict tends to crop up more in arguments over trans issues than it does over hidden ethnicity. I thought Cora was an effective enough character, particularly when she was being gracious with Belinda.

I'll go into more significant spoilers for the episode now so, be warned.

Maybe the most notable aspect of the episode, for fans, is a pair of revelations that point back to the classic era. We finally learn who Mrs. Flood is--it turns out she's none other than the Rani, a Time Lady from the Sixth and Seventh Doctor eras originally played by Kate O'Mara. In this episode, she "bi-generates" and becomes Archie Penjabi. I like Archie Penjabi and it's nice to see her getting work though the show's going to have to do some work to distinguish her from Missy now. I also still really hate the idea of bi-generation. I have a bad feeling we're just not going to get an explanation for the Rani's bi-generation. I wonder if it'll eventually be revealed to be a biological response to a diminished Time Lord population. In any case, the Doctor's claim to be "last of the Time Lords" gets weaker and weaker.

Particularly since the episode features another Time Lady, none other than Susan Foreman, with Carole Ann Ford reprising the role she first played all the way back in the show's 1963 premiere. For decades, fans and people working on the show have wanted to see the return of Susan and the fulfillment of the First Doctor's promise to one day come back to her. That actually did occur in an audio play starring Paul McGann and Carole Ann Ford and I always thought this was why it never happened on the show, that the makers of the show wanted that audio play to be canon. Maybe it still will be. In any case, I wonder why Russell T Davies chose now to bring Susan back. Ratings were slightly up for this episode but they're still well under the norm even for the 13th Doctor era. Maybe, despite his optimism in interviews, it's an acknowledgment by Davies that this really is the end for Doctor Who, at least for a few years. The Doctor's reunion with Susan would make for a good bookend.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer and on Disney+ everywhere else.

Completing the Spell

I finally finished watching The Magicians last night, the SyFy series that started in 2015 and ended in 2020. I'd watched every episode and stopped before watching the final episode about four years ago. Why? I don't know. I did the same thing with A Touch of Frost. You'd think watching a whole series would make me want to watch the final episode but for some reason I didn't really feel motivated with either of these shows. But I was recently poking around American Amazon and remembered I'd actually bought the last episode for around three dollars several years ago.

I couldn't completely follow all the various plot strands in the last episode, I couldn't remember everything that was happening, but I enjoyed it.

It's a very cosy show. Something about the fact that, due to its low budget, it's almost entirely filmed on just four or five sound stages, even though it's a story with a scope covering alternate dimensions and timelines and city locales, makes it feel like a group of friends playing pretend in a large house. It also has a true serial feel to it, like a picaresque or the original Flash Gordon. There's no three act or any other kind of structure. It's just; this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens . . . Maybe that's why it didn't feel appropriate to watch the end. It was kind of an inconclusive ending, anyway. I wonder if the cast and crew expected to get another season some day, somehow. It doesn't seem likely now though, looking at their Wikipedia pages, it doesn't appear the cast has had much work in the past couple years.

It was a good cast. That was what first attracted me to the series. I saw them all live at San Diego Comic Con and they had such a great rapport that I was compelled to watch the show. I was pleased enough by the show which quickly outgrew some initial soap opera water weight to become a leaner Buffy style fantasy adventure with quips. It's good. And Olivia Taylor Dudley is really hot.

Let's Get Super

The new Superman trailer premiered a few days ago. It's supposed to be the first full trailer though it seems like we've already seen an awful lot, mostly involving the dog, Krypto, which has been effective. This trailer finally gives us some Clark and Lois interaction and I'm disappointed to see she already knows his secret identity. It seems like that fun dynamic hasn't lasted long in any superhero film since the first Christopher Reeve movie. I suppose people feel like it prevents the characters from having meaningful dialogue. I would recommend those people watch the popular anime Spy Family in which two characters have identities they keep secret from each other and it's loads of fun. And it has a kind of nuance because a secret identity can stand in for the inevitable depths and complexities about another person which we're unable to understand however open the person is or however much we might pry into their personal lives.

This is the first time David Corenswet really came across as Superman for me but, sadly, it was when he wasn't in the costume and his muscles were allowed to show through a simple white button down shirt. This Superman costume is all wrong. The high collar looks military and it makes him look smaller. It's thick, too, like Batman's armoured suit. The costume shouldn't look like it's something he needs for protection.

Rachel Brosnahan is pitch perfect as Lois.

I love the saturated colour palette, which is one thing that definitely shows James Gunn was the right director for this material. He usually does go for a rainbow over the more standard two or three key tones. It's more difficult to work with so much colour but the rewards are worth it.

I really hope this movie is good. We need more media demonstrating that altruism is cool. There are too many fucking savages out there, including the big orange one squatting on the White House.

Joe Don Baker

Joe Don Baker has died. He was 89. Like most people of my generation, I know him best, perhaps unfortunately, as the star of Mitchell and that film's appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1993. It's widely considered one of the very best episodes of MST3k, in no small part due to the endless jokes made at Baker's expense.

I remember reading an interview with Trace Beaulieu, who voiced Crow T. Robot at the time, where he said he felt kind of bad about riffing so much on Baker, saying that he was actually a fan of Baker's work. And Joe Don Baker was indeed a good actor in quality, pulp films of the '70s like Charley Varrick and The Outfit with Robert Duvall which Quentin Tarantino praised in his book Cinematic Speculations, commending Baker's performance.

Joe Don Baker had a long career that shifted between cheesy and classy. He had roles in Scorsese's Cape Fear and in multiple James Bond movies. His last film was 2012's Mud. Farewell, Mr. Baker. I promise I'll remember you for the right reasons.

Andor Closes with a Tale of Two Women

For the final three episodes of Andor, which were quite good, the curious decision to bring a new writer to the series, Tom Bissell, was made. It wasn't a bad idea, it turns out. Bissell is best known for writing video games, according to Wikipedia. Maybe that gave him a good instinct for kinetic suspense.

Kleya's infiltration of the hospital had kind of a horror video game vibe, actually. More than anyone else, these three episodes were really Kleya's story as we see flashbacks from her first encounter with Luthen and how he raised her and trained her juxtaposed with her bringing their operations to an end and finally being coaxed into going to Yavin. Her journey in the three episodes, from an agent of paranoia in a reality defined by consistent despair to accepting the reality of Yavin, a world of hope, stands in for the story of the Rebellion as it progresses from a spark of limited fire to a flame poised to seriously threaten the Empire.

That was great but I think the best parts of the episodes were the vicious, bureaucratic shufflings within the ranks of the ISB, starting with that wonderfully absurd, nightmarish moment when Dedra is arrested at the height of her professional triumph.

I also loved that the Imperial mind couldn't acknowledge that Jung was a spy. In Krennic's interrogation of Dedra, he was obliged to make some awkward verbal contortions to portray Jung as the accomplice of Dedra the data scavenger. She points out that she was forced to be a scavenger, to get access to intel she didn't have clearance for, in order to do her job. The system has absurd rules built in likely for the very purpose of being invoked only when a scapegoat is needed or an officer needs to be disposed of for some other equally sinister or absurd reason.

I noticed Tony Gilroy has been kind of kissing up to Dave Filoni lately in interviews and one of last night's episodes even featured one of Filoni's signature "loth cats". I'm hoping this means Gilroy is trying to secure a place for himself at Lucasfilm. I'd love to see him write a series or movie just focusing on Imperials.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Of Rice and Madness

"日本の米" was trending on my X feed this morning, "Japanese uncooked rice". Bad rice crops that began a couple years ago are continuing to be a headache as distributors who horded rice are gouging prices. It turns out, this has led to an increase in imported rice consumption, including my old friend Calrose rice from California. Maybe California will just gradually be imported, bit by bit, and I'll find myself home again in ten years without actually going anywhere.

I resumed watching Ally McBeal last night, a season three episode called "Seeing Green". I'd stopped watching the show for a while after waking up in the middle of an episode about Ally's mother with no memory of any of the events leading up to it. I finally figured out I'd slept through at least three and a half episodes which Disney+ dutifully unspooled for this insensible potato. I miss not falling asleep so easily.

"Seeing Green" continues to explore Ally's adorable dementia and her uncontrollable hallucinations of Al Green, who actually guest stars. Meanwhile, Billy joins a self-help group for men uncomfortable with their own chauvinistic instincts but finds he's actually quite comfortable with them. It's nice to see writer David E. Kelley realised how slimy Billy comes across and decided to lean into it.

X Sonnet 1939

Together, ants were making cake of hay.
No time was lost for horses built of frogs.
You see, perspective saved the drowsy day.
The moral lessons fade in corp'rate fogs.
No problem hurts as bad as jumping rails.
They whip the air and make the clouds their thralls.
But fire shrinks from wheels attached to pails.
The royal ice can thus afford its balls.
And now you see the flow of heaven's trade.
At ev'ry point, a check determines toll.
Disputed taxes call for Jedi aid.
A tariff war in space infects the goal.
The traffic words were bunched about the skirt.
A tattered hem would gather little dirt.

The Face of Funny

I found myself watching 1957's Funny Face again on the weekend. What an odd man Fred Astaire was. Such a great dancer, such an odd look. I truly think he was asexual. He never seemed especially interested in any of his costars, just pleasant and gracious. Somehow Ginger Rogers made it work with lust entirely on her side. Audrey Hepburn is impossibly lovely as always but she can't make the chemistry work between her and Astaire somehow in Funny Face.

It's not that he was thirty years older than her. She worked fine with Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, William Holden, and Cary Grant. Grant was probably the best because she was able to work up some real lust for him in Charade. Like Funny Face, Charade was directed by Stanley Donan so maybe that was a lesson the director took from Funny Face.

The screenplay is surprisingly intelligent and its dialogue about high art and philosophy versus fashion and sensual indulgence is interesting. Maybe the movie is too intellectual. It gets bogged down in it and Hepburn doesn't get time to properly come across as overcome with feeling.

The Hazards of a Creative Process

I'm halfway through watching Etoile. What a delightful show. I think it's the most solid series I've seen from the Palladinos. At least the first four episodes are. According to some reviews, it kind of goes off a cliff after this so I guess I should savour it now.

The screwball comedy dialogue is exquisitely written and perfectly delivered. A lot of stuff that felt slightly out of place or gratuitous on Gilmore Girls makes sense in the world of obsessed ballet people. You can have a guy who flies from Paris to freak out about his choreography because someone was recast without his knowing. You can have Cheyenne's weird routine about picking a partner. It's absurd but also very credible.

And all that great stuff stops in the fourth episode so we can actually watch some ballet and it's beautiful. Again, I thought of The Red Shoes. Maybe any ballet movie or series would inevitably draw comparisons to that one that set the standard but, just like The Red Shoes, it goes from being a behind the scenes procedural to being actual ballet. I guess The Red Shoes does it with a lot more chutzpah because it gives us a single story while Etoile goes for a montage. Still, it's wonderful stuff. It's a shame this show isn't getting more attention.

Etoile is available on Amazon Prime.

Let's Analyse!

Hey, kids! Did you enjoy last night's Doctor Who? Did you like the theoretical dispersion of conceptual text deployed through post modern analytical framework? What a rip roaring adventure!

Okay, so Doctor Who is currently not for kids, or anyone who's not an American or British college student or liberal arts graduate from the past twenty-five years. And, no, it certainly wasn't for Nigerians. Nigeria has its own film industry and it looks like this:

I certainly am pleased by the idea of Doctor Who going to Africa but it would be nice if he had an adventure there instead of weak, reheated Salmon Rushdie fluff about the nature of stories, their connexion to culture, and the nature of cultural identity. I'm not a fan of Rushdie's work but last night's Doctor Who couldn't hope to approach his intellect or creativity.

It was written by Inua Ellams, a Nigerian born British writer and poet whose biggest success was a play called Barber Shop Chronicles, and last night's Doctor Who had the Doctor visiting a barbershop in Nigeria. Apparently it's somewhat related. In this case, the barbershop turns out to be a spaceship powered by the stories told by people trapped in the shop, a pretty simplistic allegory for how indigenous cultures are exploited for the self-interests of powerful colonialist entities. Again, it's all been done better by Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Angela Carter, and various other people fifty or sixty years ago. Now, you could argue that Doctor Who in the 60s and 70s was influenced by Flash Gordon and HP Lovecraft and I would say, yes, influenced to tell exciting stories, not influenced to regurgitate academic twaddle. Ellams might have been better off drawing influence from Nollywood. At least those movies are fun. His Doctor Who episode almost ranks with Disney's Wish as being a conceptual boondoggle but I wouldn't say it's as convoluted as Wish. Few things are.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere.

The World for a Thigh

Penelope Cruz is at the centre of a dramatic storm of sex, comedy, and tragedy in her debut role of Silvia in 1992's Jamon, jamon ("Ham, Ham"). It's a story of rural prostitutes and idle, wouldbe matadors fit for a soap opera except everything is shaded with absurdism. It's pretty fascinating.

Sylvia discovers she's gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, Jose (Jordi Molla). He wants to marry her, much to the ire of his mother, Conchita (Stefana Sandrelli), who considers Silvia's mother (Anna Galiena) to be no better than a whore.

Into the mix wanders Javier Bardem as Raul, a young man who works delivering ham and modelling underwear. At night, he practices bullfighting in the nude for some reason and Bardem was evidently willing to show everyone how well hung he is. He sets his sights on both Silvia and Conchita, making an already volatile situation chaotic.

The title of the film invites the viewer to see this as a problem of the flesh but it becomes absurdly literal in the climax. Everyone is quite noisy about what they see as points of honour and the true passions of their hearts but, at the end of the day, it seems all a matter of ham.

Jamon jamon is available on The Criterion Channel.

Dreams of the Future or the Past

Last night I dreamt I moved back to the U.S. but it was filled with Japanese junior high schools for me to work at. I got a job at one in Washington and commuted every day from San Diego somehow.

It occurred to me that if Diego Luna became a saint he would be San Diego.

I see Mon Mothma is trending on Twitt--I mean X--this morning. With 4,000 posts, so I guess it's one of those that X has served up for my particular reality. I guess it's ironic that her trending speech is about the loss of objective reality.

Doctor Who also seems to be on this tack. The final episode of this current season is called "The Reality War".

I have to say I still find Obi-Wan's line about truths depending on our points of views to be more insightful. But certainly we have to agree on some basic facts, even if those facts turn out to be delusions in the long run. I think most people sense that without acknowledging it. It can become dangerous when people get too hung up on the precise truth. That's what the Puritans were. They wanted to stick to the pure words of the bible without the tangents of interpretations the Catholics had extrapolated from it. But to-day the Puritans are hardly remembered for being objective.

Obi-Wan smoothly goes from talking about truth depending on point of view to telling Luke he has a clear destiny. It's a contradiction but, hey, he also happened to be right, though he got the precise nature of that destiny wrong. I guess it's like God said on that episode of Futurama, you have to use a light touch.

The whole concept of transgender depends on the idea that truth can be different from observable reality. So does the concept of God, for that matter. So arguing about the necessity of truth can be a hazardous path, regardless of your political allegiance.

X Sonnet 1938

A circle captures nothing serving squares.
Repeated masters drift beyond the mind.
Abandoned forests hold their ghostly bears.
A carbon copy shows where nature signed.
A fax machine was used to stop a door.
But secrets held within were made of ink.
The rich concoct a vague idea of poor.
A gang in chains has made a summer rink.
Where fashion summons human hearts from Hell,
Where dolphins walk with tacky metal legs,
You'll find the mad have rung the chapel bell.
It goes to show you never hide your eggs.
For hatching happens any place on Earth.
The dice are rolled with ev'ry chicken birth.

Committed And/Or Damned

Wow. Could there be anyone who wasn't pleased with last night's trio of new Andor episodes? I, for one, was captivated. They were written by Tony's brother Dan Gilroy who wrote the Aldani heist arc in the first season. Back then, I wondered if Dan was not a better writer than his brother. Now I really think he is.

Unlike the previous groups of three episodes this season, last night's trio felt like a distinct set of three episodes rather than a single continuous narrative. The first episode, "Messenger", was the first to really feature the Force. No flashing lightsabres, no floating boulders, just a quiet healing scene, but it's enough to really freak Cassian out. The Force Healer senses extraordinary clarity in Andor that stands in contrast to his incredulous exterior. We've seen this in his actions, though. Despite what he says about wanting to get away and live a safe life somewhere far away from war, his instincts always show firm commitment to the cause.

The second episode focused on the Ghorman massacre and also features the heartbreaking conclusion of Syril and Dedra's story. Dedra may be back next week in some capacity but Syril likely will not. It's worth remembering why Syril got into this: he was investigating what he thought was a murder. He was driven by a sense of justice. Unlike most of the Imperial characters we met, he, at least not consciously, was not driven by malice or a desire for personal glory. Finally, he's forced to confront the fact that the Empire isn't what he thought it was and the fact that there's no room for people like him in it. The truth is so contrary to everything he believed that he seems to shut down before he spots Cassian and is spurred to action entirely by sentiment. The episode's title, "Who are You?", is spoken by Cassian when he doesn't recognise Syril. It has a great double impact, not only as a revelation of the disproportionate sense of importance the two men see in each other, but as a precise manifestation of the conflict going on in Syril at that moment. Who, indeed, is he? Without his sense of purpose, perhaps he's nothing at all, which makes it terribly appropriate that this is the moment of his death.

Dedra, meanwhile, is clearly hit hard by the loss of Syril. She was in this for advancement and malice. It was even her idea to manipulate the rebels on Ghorman. Somehow, though, she really did come to love Syril and this has clearly altered her perspective. Denise Gough's performance is amazing. You can see the conflict tearing her apart inside. She really seems damned.

The conflict between truth and reality comes back in Mon Mothma's speech in the next episode in one of those moments that really feels like a commentary on real world politics but not so much as to lock it into an allegory. There were some hints that the situation on Ghorman might have been inspired by the conflict in Gaza and I was very glad the show veered away from making it a direct allegory of that. As it is, you can find parallels to Gaza, Ukraine, World War II France, and many other things.

Apparently, the events in the third episode, "Welcome to the Rebellion", line up with episodes of Star Wars: Rebels but it's still plenty satisfying to those of us who found Rebels to be weak and insubstantial. It's awfully gracious of the Gilroys to preserve continuity like that when I think most people could care less, considering how plainly the writing on Andor is superior.

The show can coast now, these three did the job. But I'm eagerly looking forward to next week anyway.

La Fuerza de Mayo

To celebrate May the Fourth and Cinco de Mayo, I watched The Empire Strikes Back while eating tacos. I boiled a little ground beef with cumin, garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper and then added some lime and cilantro to it. I put it on my homemade tortillas with shredded cabbage and cherry tomatoes. They were good tacos. No leftovers because I still can't afford a refrigerator at my new apartment.

I watched A New Hope last month and was eager to watch Empire Strikes Back. I seem to be in a phase of my life where I'm suddenly seeing the original trilogy with fresh eyes. Like Bruce Willis says in 12 Monkeys when he's watching Vertigo, old movies change because we change. We become different people and thus see them with new eyes. I couldn't guess how many times I've watched the original trilogy since I first saw it when I was three or four years old. But still, on Monday, I can laugh at the little incline of the head Leia gives to Han when he glances at her while talking to Lando. Their relationship still feels fresh, even after I've written at length about the dynamics between the two. How he correctly identifies her attraction to him but fails to see his own vulnerability, his attraction to her. He assumes that having insight into the feelings others can't control means he has control over his own feelings.

And here's a movie where the Jedi dialogue is about fear, hatred, willpower, and belief. It's right here, big as life, the thing Disney repeatedly fails to capture about the Jedi. This is what the Jedi are about, not bureaucratic manoeuvring or colonialism. Isn't there anyone working in Hollywood now who gets that?

It can't be said enough how handsomely shot Empire Strikes Back is. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky's deep blacks and smooth, matte whites never look remotely artificial. Only Greig Fraser on Rogue One has approached this level of revelation in cinematography for Star Wars.

The Asterisk Answered

I really like Florence Pugh's dress in this picture.

So, yes, Marvel has spoiled their own movie. I guess they figured it'd be impossible to keep this cat in its bag now. Or maybe they wanted to distract from the fact that people weren't spoiling the film.

Honestly, it's impressive they did keep this secret so long. I guess they have to fight hard now with counter-leak strategies.

It really is a good movie, by the way. It's a pretty good Father's Day movie, actually, so it's a bit awkward that Mother's Day is actually coming up.

I see a certain Ukrainian actress is still promoting the film although one thing that seemed slightly odd to me was how much it foregrounds Russian characters who've done bad things for Russian governments. And the Ukrainian actress' role in the film was cut considerably, to the surprise even of the film's screenwriter, who didn't know about it until he first screened the film. Hopefully I'm reading too much into it but if I were Disney/Marvel, I'd make David Harbour's character distance himself more from the Red Guardian identity.

So after everything fell apart when Disney placed their bets on Jonathan Majors and the Multiverse, they course corrected by hanging everything on Florence Pugh and misfit characters. The latter do tend to be the best in any case. I think everyone's in agreement that Wyatt Russell's failed Captain America is better than the official Captain America. So the villain of Falcon and the Winter Soldier has won.

It's fitting that Wyatt Russell should find his breakthrough role at Disney since his father, Kurt, was handpicked for stardom by Walt Disney himself. After all the characters and actors Marvel has thrown against the wall who've failed to stick (all three of the Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp), Russell, Pugh, and Harbour really feel like they could be legitimate successors to Downey Jr. and Evans. Add Spider-Man, Shuri, Deadpool, and Doctor Strange and they've actually got something pretty solid.

Here's hoping it all works out. I'm of the firm belief that good movies improve the whole human race.

X Sonnet 1937

Engrossing cables captured every eye.
At home, the chatter blanked to waking dreams.
Let's walk the kitchen, check the winning pie.
I see the peepers through the ragged seams.
We knew a name before we took the road.
We knew the spot that Google maps ordained.
Beneath our hearts, we had the secret code.
For don't you find communication stained?
There's never just a meeting over cups.
For ev'ry time we look, we see a pit.
To breathe is just to drown, as people know.
And running fast is just to simply sit.
And now a snack to drag the runners down.
And fill the gorgeous little ev'ning gown.

A Simpler Time, with Simpler Writing

Well, that was a pretty depressingly lame new episode of Doctor Who. While the new Russell T. Davies era has generally been better than the Chris Chibnall era, I get the impression sometimes that Davies' solution is to do what Chibnall did even harder. So Pete McTighe, a writer from the Chibnall era, wrote Saturday's new episode, "Lucky Day", and it received the lowest ratings in the relaunched show's history.

It reminded me of a more belligerent version of the Oscar Isaac/Laura Dern conflict in The Last Jedi. Instead of a decent, headstrong guy whose desire to go against the dictates of authority led to problems, we have a smirking, bottomless pit of inexplicable spite and an authority who's willing to sic man eating beasts on him because he offered her a personal insult. This was not the best setup for the UNIT spin-off, that's for sure.

The Doctor shows up at the end to lecture the villain and tell him how horrid he is. Villains can certainly be smirking and thoroughly bad but the show needs to ask itself more often, "What would Tom Baker do?" in the face of such a fellow.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.

The Thunder Squad

2025's Thunderbolts* is a good Marvel movie. It's not one of the cobbled together cgi monstrosities like Ant-Man in Quantumania. The writing is relatively solid, though I had plenty of problems with the script. But I'm going to have to echo what just about every review is saying; the performances knock this one out of the park.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Lewis Pullman, but particularly Florence Pugh, turned this from a perfectly adequate Suicide Squad pastiche into something really extraordinary.

The film spends a lot of time ruminating on character and the writing isn't very insightful, it's even slightly insulting if you happen to be an introvert because it pushes the necessity of never being alone. But it has some nicely poetic turns, particularly with Sentry/Void who borrows pretty heavily from psychological anime like Evangelion and Akira. But the performances take this material about personal misery and disaffection and squeeze it for all its worth.

Wyatt Russell gets some nice subtle stuff as John Walker and in just a few scenes he's way more interesting than Sam Wilson. David Harbour proves once again he's the ultimate dad actor.

But Pugh, Pugh, Pugh! She's just so damned good. And I was going into the movie ready to criticise her terrible hairstyle. I don't give a damn about her hairstyle now. I even like her blue eyeliner. She's amazing. With a few subtle expressions, she brings across her state of profound ennui and when she needs to be raw and emotional she's like a young Marlon Brando; surprising yet thoroughly credible.

The performance make everything else work beautifully. I was afraid for the characters when cgi crap was flying everywhere, like it was real crap! This is one to see.

Ballet Battery

I started watching Etoile a few days ago, the new Amazon Prime series from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the wife and husband team behind The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls. It's a good, modern Red Shoes ballet procedural.

The show stars Luke Kirby, who played Lenny Bruce on Mrs. Maisel, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's strange to see outside of a Lars von Trier movie, playing New York and Parisian impresarios, respectively. Their respective troupes trade personnel as they both take funding from a sinister British oil baron played by Simon Callow. Lou de Laage is a star ballerina named Cheyenne who's swapped to the New York troupe.

Cheyenne and Callow's character are presented as political opposites; she, a firebrand activist, and he, a ruthless capitalist. I can see how the Palladinos plan use them for political commentary. Unfortunately, the weakest scene in the series so far is the introduction of Cheyenne, whom we meet on a ship in a storm as they attack a craft for environmental violations. It's all cgi, which I don't mind, knowing the show has a tiny budget, but de Laage is one of those actresses who is unable to raise her voice under any circumstances, even when she's supposed to be shouting over the chaos of a trawler beset by tossing waves. From then on, I had trouble buying her as the tempest in a teapot she's supposed to be.

Luke Kirby, though, is excellent. Here he basically plays the show's resident Lorelei Gilmore or Midge Maisel; the reasonable, witty one beset by kooks.

I'm surprised how little attention the show's gotten. I wouldn't have heard of it if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Caitlin's blog. But whenever I go to the Prime website, there are dozens of new shows and movies I've never heard of before and never hear of again. I don't know how these studios sustain this output.

Festival of Dread

Now I've watched "What a Festive Evening", episode six of Andor season two, a nice little symphony of suspense. As I noted yesterday, the writer of this arc, Beau Willimon, wrote the prison arc last season, which was stronger than this because it revolved around one man's life changing and it was done with an extraordinary performance by Andy Serkis. But "What a Festive Evening" was by no means bad.

The best part of it was the shifting dynamic between Luthen and Kleya. It always seemed that Kleya was Luthen's assistant, now they seem more like partners. The scene where Kleya removed the bug from the artefact, using Jung as a shield, was a lovely trapeze act of tension. The bug getting stuck was like the old device of the car not starting at the absolutely worst moment. Ben Mendelsohn's presence as Krennic added to the sense of menace, as did Mon Mothma's slightly too bold arguments. There was also the very fact that Jung is already a mess of nerves and could have broken off at any moment.

The heist plot was good though not quite as strong. I liked Vel and Cinta and wish Cinta could've stayed around longer. It's funny, one of the things Andor is noted for is not being in line with the modern, bad screenwriting that seems to come from students who've spent more time criticising other writers than learning how to actually tell a good story. "What a Festive Evening" does one of those things that that crowd of people always complained about; having a gay character killed in order to provide motivation or character growth for other characters. I remember it was called "Bury Your Gays" though this one might also be "Fridging". I don't mind writers doing that but I feel like Cinta had potential as a character that the show would've been better off exploring. Not to mention Varada Sethu shines more in this role than she does on Doctor Who. It really made me notice how much better hair and wardrobe are on Andor compared to Doctor Who. She somehow just looks a lot better, even when her hair is supposed to be messed up. But I guess Andor's budget is pretty lavish.

Andor is available on Disney+.