What Home?

Even 2004 seems too recent for Disney to make a movie praising the American frontier but they sort of did with Home on the Range. Visually, the film calls back to the shorts about Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed from Melody Time, but of course the humour is much more ironic. Actually it feels quite a bit like '90s Warner Brothers cartoons, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons, except never funny. Well, I laughed once, when a chicken voiced by Estelle Harris incredulously asked, "Who would eat a chicken?!" Once again, this is a Disney movie with intelligent animals that raises the issue of humans eating them without taking it seriously. But everything about this movie is pretty insubstantial with the exception of one song.

Alan Menken returned to compose the music and most of the songs aren't very interesting. His work for Disney hadn't really been interesting since Pocahontas. And once again, none of the songs are performed by the characters, but rather by music stars, in this case country stars, off-screen. According to Wikipedia, one song, "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again", was written in response to the 9/11 attacks, which would have still been recent when the film was in production. Which makes sense of the fact that the song seems sincere and heartfelt and totally out of place in an otherwise vapid irony fest.

It's certainly the first time I ever appreciated Bonnie Rait.

The plot of the film itself concerns three dairy cows trying to catch a yodelling cattle rustler (Randy Quaid) so they can use the bounty to save their farm. The three cows are voiced by Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, and Jennifer Tilly and their rapport is somewhat reminiscent of Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty. The tension between the newcomer "showcow" Maggie (Barr) and the dignified Mrs. Calloway (Dench) is presented as the film's central conflict but I never felt even slightly invested in it. The performances felt so isolated. It may be because I never liked Barr's style and always found her voice dully monotone but Dench also doesn't feel very present.

I was kind of amused by an appearance by Steve Buscemi, whose character was clearly modelled on him.

So this is the last 2D, traditionally animated Disney film until The Princess and the Frog in 2009. Considering the political motivations behind The Princess and the Frog, Home on the Range could be said to be the last traditionally animated film produced that way for its own sake. It's certainly no grand finale.

Home on the Range 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

Indy on Tap

My internet has been really bad all weekend so last night I had to watch something off a disk. As it happens, three spools of my old DVRs from when I was pirating things all the time arrived in a box of my books so I watched an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles I burned to disk nine years ago. It was a 1993 episode directed by Joe Johnston, known for directing The Rocketeer and Captain America: The First Avenger, so he's no stranger to early 20th century American fantasy.

This episode finds Indy (Sean Patrick Flannery) in high school and working as a soda jerk. His girlfriend is Nancy, played by Robyn Lively, just two years after she was on Twin Peaks. Nancy and Indy are a sweet couple and very supportive of each other as they investigate the theft of Thomas Edison's plans for an electric car.

It turns out the plans were stolen by an oil company. I wonder if this idea came from screenwriter Matthew Jacobs or from George Lucas. It seems pretty prophetic now, in any case.

It's odd we never see or hear about Nancy again and, yet, that was also part of the magic of Indiana Jones. There were so many characters and aspects of his life that are peculiarly isolated to individual stories, especially his love interests, much in the mould of James Bond. Which is one of the reasons Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feels like it's so much on the wrong foot.

One of the remarkable things about The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was how distinct every episode was, with every story introducing new locations, characters, costumes, and props. No wonder it was so cost prohibitive. It occurs to me, too, that the absence of real story arcs runs quite contrary to modern television tastes, not to mention the serials that originally inspired George Lucas. Even though I enjoy watching an episode now and then, they never end stoking a compulsion to immediately see the next one.

We get a dinner scene at Indy's house where we can see his family has black servants. That could never be presented without comment to-day. If it were the BBC or Netflix, the racial demographics of the party guests and servants would probably be measured to precise percentages, realism be damned. You could say that Indiana Jones is a fantasy, but that argument feels particularly odd considering Lucas obviously intended the show to be partly educational, which is why things like Edison's electric car are included (Edison really did try to develop an electric car). But apart from any such considerations, it's nice to see that, in the 90s, filmmakers were still able to present negative aspects of a period without artificially moralising about them.

I never really saw Indiana Jones in Sean Patrick Flannery. This is one of the rare episodes where he actually wears the hat and it always looks terrible on him.

His face was made for a straw boater.

The Wonted Vivacity of the Colour Realm

Since my subscription ends to-morrow, I decided to give HBOMax one last try last night and watched 1939's The Wizard of Oz. The whole movie played without stopping but it was pretty muddy most of the time. I probably should have stopped but I kept thinking it would clear up. How does Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+ do it? How is it, even when my internet isn't great, I can stream HD movies mostly uninterrupted and mostly in good quality? Whatever it is, HBO shouldn't ask for fourteen dollars a month unless they start doing it, too. I took screenshots to-day from YouTube where, of course, the picture is crystal clear.

I haven't seen The Wizard of Oz since I was a kid, not in at least thirty years or so. I was sort of saving it for a night of maximum nostalgia. Surprisingly, it didn't deliver that. It felt more like a genuine time machine, I guess. Hearing the familiar musical cue in that first shot of Dorothy running down the road after crouching a moment with Toto, the feeling I had was a reflexive, "Well, here we are again." The feeling of watching a movie so many many damned times it's downright routine, not a feeling I expect for something I hadn't seen in thirty years. I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing. It does seem shorter now.

I'd say it's a great movie but kind of overrated compared to other Technicolor fantasy films from the period. I prefer Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, Disney's Snow White, Fantasia, and Pinocchio, as well as The Thief of Bagdad. I see in the Wikipedia entry that Salman Rushdie is a big fan of the movie, which makes sense, because so much about what makes it interesting was probably unintentional. It sabotages its own themes in an intriguing way. Dorothy runs away because of this cruel world where her little dog can be confiscated just for chasing a cat and this subplot is quietly left unresolved. There's no reason not to expect Almira Gulch to come back the next day and take the dog again. Frank Morgan appears as a fortune teller before he becomes the Wizard and both characters are shown to be manipulative. He plays on Dorothy's guilt and sympathy to send her back home to Auntie Em. It's not hard to imagine where many interpretations of the film as political allegory end up.

The film shines in a more genuine, straightforward fashion with its songs and performances. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is so powerful on its own, its power ironically adds to the sinister quality of the ostensibly good forces manipulating Dorothy away from freedom and escape. In the end, Glenda has that line about how if Dorothy's heart's desire isn't in her own yard, then it probably wasn't there to begin with. Which is spoken as though it proves she belongs back home, but when you think about the line itself, it actually says absolutely nothing. Which appropriately makes the dream sequence feel more like a dream sequence. Dreams are very rarely moral.

Twitter Sonnet #1472

The jumping coat was leather, brown, and long.
Decisions won a barrel planted late.
The varied voices sing a cricket song.
Important walks produce a roller skate.
A crucial stat replaced the phantom zone.
The endless sky's repealed behind a roof.
Familiar flesh is banned by foreign bone.
A plastic foot encased the withered hoof.
The language drifts in ovals 'cross the plate.
A secret ninja knows it front and back.
We traded boots to buy a single skate.
The tactful man's content in stagey sack.
A magic mix produced a pair of shoes.
The sequin scales were mashed in streaming hues.

When Exploration was Appealing

I wasn't going to write an entry for Star Trek Day, which was two days ago. But then Caitlin wrote a nice entry about it and I realised I wanted to, too. It is the 55th anniversary. About the franchise generally, I don't have much to add to what I wrote on the 50th anniversary. In that entry, I joined a number of people in complaining about the lack of acknowledgment of the anniversary shown by Paramount or CBS. Maybe I should've counted my blessings because the past few years have seen a painful attempt to replicate Disney's hit-and-miss exploitation of Star Wars, including marking a particular day on the calendar for the franchise. The current state of Trek is sadder than it was five years ago. I guess there were some episodes of Discovery's first season that weren't so bad but I found season two too excruciating to finish. And I'm baffled that anyone has managed to get past episode two of Picard. One person has told me she truly likes it so maybe I'll force myself to give it another chance.

Star Trek is not well known here in Japan. Neither the students nor the other teachers at the school where I work are aware of it at all, another contrast to Star Wars, which is not only well known but also somewhat popular. No-one knows who George Takei is. Ironically, given Star Trek's mission of diversity and universality, it seems distinctly, culturally more American than other American Sci-Fi franchises. Perhaps that's part of its DNA, having been pitched by Gene Roddenberry originally as a "wagon train to the stars".

I watched an episode of The Next Generation last night, just the next in line in my gradual, decades long, slow rewatch. A not particularly interesting sixth season episode called "Face of the Enemy" with a teleplay by the talented Naren Shankar. Deanna Troi wakes up to find herself disguised as a Romulan aboard a Romulan warbird in an effort to help some defectors get to Federation space. I guess it was appropriate since Deanna Troi was my favourite character as a kid, essentially because she was the most beautiful woman on the show. Watching the opening credits, though, nice and remastered with good sound, I thought back to the fantasy the show gave me as a child to go out and explore space. Where is that desire now? Actually, that much can be found in Japan. I've seen a lot of NASA shirts lately and students doing projects about their dreams sometimes talk about wanting to go to space. It's nice to hear.

If You're Going to Double Cross Someone, Make Sure It's Not Jean-Paul Belmondo

One of the cleverest action movies I've ever seen is 1981's Le Professionnel. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays kind of a combination of Rambo and James Bond. An agent for the French government, he's double-crossed by his employers and spends most of the movie slowly and surely exacting his revenge. That doesn't stop him from romancing beautiful women on the way.

He's sent to assassinate the president of a fictional African country. He's sold out by the French government--an expedient solution when the political situation changes while Joss (Belmondo) is in the field. He spends two years in a labour camp before he effects a daring escape with lots of explosions and machine guns.

The first thing he does when coming back to Paris is send flowers to his mistress, Alice (Cyrielle Clair). He also stages an elaborate ruse so he can spend the night with his beautiful wife (Jeanne Beaumont). Only in a French movie.

The ruthless commissaire Rosen (Robert Hossein) becomes his nemesis. He tries to be quite brutal with Joss' wife after this incident but Joss embarrasses him so effectively it nicely sets up the stakes for Rosen's further pursuit of Joss as well as just how brilliant Joss is. We truly believe the message he leaves written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror--he'll always be just behind Rosen.

There's a terrific car chase right in front of the Eiffel Tower and of course Belmondo insisted on doing all of his own stunts.

Le Professionnel is available on The Criterion Channel.

Jean-Paul Belmondo

When he starred in 1960's Breathless, one critic praised the charm but peculiar ugliness of Jean-Paul Belmondo. He was perfectly cast as a young man steeped in inspiration from classic film while not quite having the star-wattage. He was believably average. And yet, Jean-Paul Belmondo, who passed away yesterday at 88, went on to become one of the greatest stars who ever lived. In gangster films for Jean-Pierre Melville, in more New Wave films for Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. And finally he was a reliably bankable action film star, the kind of star his character in Breathless might have dreamed he was.

He never went to Hollywood, despite plenty of opportunity. He remains a distinctive part of European cinema. He often played doomed men who seemed to take their inevitable fate in a glum but affable stride. He accepts the crushing weight of Godard's postmodernist pessimism in Pierrot le Fou; he's gamely brought to destruction by Catherine Deneuve in Truffaut's update of Vertigo, Mississippi Mermaid.

He also rapidly scaled the side of four storey building in that movie. He conveyed ennui and yet always also the sense of coiled physical power that made him a great action star in a film like The Professional in 1981. The tension between undeniable potential and inevitable doom made him inimitable and fascinating. Everything that made him a great gangster or a doomed lover made him also perfect for the title role in Leon Morin, Priest. That burning confidence becomes in this context a quiet self-possession and a beautiful form of commitment.

Currently you can see many of Belmondo's best films on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1471

The skipping stream at last resigns to fall.
The words decrease in speed behind the lips.
Assistance waits beyond the mirrored hall.
The tallest waiters work for higher tips.
Reluctant spinning circles yield a stream.
With patient heart she sat before the box.
At last, the picture came to take the screen.
She walks the dream and shod with only socks.
A burglar lasts beyond the final shove.
The siren's letters fast the island drew.
The poster mirror lures another love.
Pierrot finds a party painted blue.
On endless screens remain his stumb'ling heat.
The strong, ungainly steps imprint the street.

The Make Up Test

"I cannot praise a cloistered virtue," is a John Milton quote that's gained some currency lately. It's from Areopagitica, Milton's pamphlet criticising the English government's policy of licensed publishing, and, more broadly speaking, it's about free speech. Milton's point was that, if a person is never exposed to a diversity of ideas, you can't really know if they have the capacity to discern good ideas from bad, begging the question of whether or not their supposed virtue is legitimate. But I thought of the quote yesterday when reading Harlan Ellison's 1966 story "Delusion for a Dragon Slayer". The concept for this story is that, when people die, if they haven't ever truly been tested in their lives, a new world is created just to give them the opportunity. The story follows Griffin, a dull, ordinary, modern man who's killed suddenly due to a freak chain of circumstances. Suddenly he finds himself transformed into a muscular, classical hero, captaining a galley on a mythic quest.

Ellison finds a voice for this story that is a perfect blend of his confrontational/conversational and prettily poetic. I particularly liked the scene where Griffin finds himself in that classic, truly rare, scenario of rescuing a damsel in distress. Ellison's description of just what the very sight of Griffin's ideal woman does to him simultaneous pokes gentle fun at and honours the most fundamental human needs for sex, love, and validation. It's a great story and it's included in the collection I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

Counterfeit Heat

I wonder if Kathleen Turner in 1981's Body Heat is the original '80s femme fatale. Watching it last night, I thought of my recent viewing of Black Widow and how cold Theresa Russell is in that movie. These femmes fatale are reptilian in a way they never were in the golden era of noir. Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan obviously drew primarily from Double Indemnity but while Barbara Stanwyck is certainly murderous, manipulative, and avaricious, you don't come away with the impression you never saw for sure her true feelings. Turner's character, Matty, is such a complete enigma by the end of the film it's almost a horror movie. I would say she's closer to Bram Stoker's conception of Dracula than a '40s style femme fatale. The main reason for this is how successful Kasdan, Turner, and William Hurt are at conveying a sense of irresistible sexual passion in the first part of the film.

The dialogue is an emulation of the classic noir, highly stylised back and forth. Chandlerian but not quite "How fast was I driving" Chandlerian. But it still gives a real sense of two people navigating their sexual needs in dialogue. Hurt is insistent yet playful, Turner is cool but fervent. The idea that she felt absolutely nothing for him, enough to casually betray him, almost seems like a paranoid conspiracy theory. Or, indeed, like misogyny. An impression given credence by another odd difference between this and old noir--Hurt's character is surrounded by a really caring network of guys. Even his rival attorney played by Ted Danson cares enough about him to give him thinly veiled warnings about an investigation being conducted on him. Mickey Rourke, in his breakout role, is a criminal, a demolitions guy, whom Hurt had helped stay out of prison. Even that doesn't quite explain the deep concern Rourke evidently feels for him, enough that he goes out of his way to warn Hurt about danger.

Kasdan's dialogue really is clever, though, and the performances are great. The movie's good enough I watched it in dribs and drabs last night, struggling to get HBOMax to stream. It took about three hours to watch the two hour movie. I got screenshots from YouTube trailers and clips to-day. I'm so done trying to use HBOMax.

The Copied Sky

Sometimes I really don't know why I watch the movies I watch. My internet was down last night due to a rainstorm so I went through a pile of old disks that came in a box of my books from the U.S. I came across a disk I'd labelled just "The Crooked" but it ended up being a 1975 Western called Against a Crooked Sky. It's a cheap knock-off of The Searchers starring Richard Boone and I have absolutely no memory of why I tracked it down and made a copy.

A frontier family encounter three Indians from a tribe they don't recognise. They capture the beautiful young daughter, Charlotte, played by country singer Jewel Blanch. She sings the movie's theme song so badly it makes me wonder why her Wikipedia entry primarily identifies her as a singer.

Her father (Clint Ritchie) goes off to search for her and orders her teenage brother, Sam (Stewart Peterson), to stay at home for some reason. Sam feels guilty because Charlotte had been captured partly because she'd protected him so he goes off looking for her anyway. He immediately loses his horse when trying to swim with it across a river and he's rescued by a grizzled old prospector called Russian (Richard Boone).

Despite the name, he's an American and the most entertaining part of the movie. He's usually drunk and seems to spend a lot of time in his underwear, singing a song the lyrics of which mainly consist of shouting, "I killed a bear." He also has a dog named Bear Killer.

Another interesting aspect of the film is the mystery around the Native American tribe. They wear a lot of gold jewellery and skirts so I think the idea is that they're supposed to be a surviving remnant of an Empire from before the Europeans came to the New World. There's an interesting scene where Sam discovers the way into their lands by how the light filters through a crack in a cliffside.

Though I think, ultimately, the reason for the tribe being made up is so the writers can ascribe whatever plot convenient customs and traditions to them they want. But even with that handy consideration, the climax still doesn't make sense on its own terms.

The worst part of the film, though, is how the characters react to rape and murder, which is hardly at all. When it looks like Charlotte's finally been done for, the film cuts to the family laughing and enjoying their newfound friendship with Russian. Mention is made of how the mother (Shannon Farnon) doesn't talk as much as she used to, as though this is inexplicable behaviour. It's like the screenplay was written by androids.

Against a Crooked Sky is public domain so you can see the whole thing on YouTube.

Twitter Sonnet #1470

A four plus ten accepts the present gift.
The graceful unicorn could kneel on cue.
The extra power clogged the ancient lift.
A buried green returned with Mountain Dew.
Involving streams conduct the eyes to now.
Forgotten mirrors cracked to make a fake.
We tied the ribbons all about the plough.
The hotter store could house a simple rake.
A crooked disk revealed a blooming sky.
The stranger's belt enticed the waist to bind.
We divvied forks to eat the giant pie.
Beneath the bridge we ate a pumpkin rind.
The plastic tray resides in boxy dark.
The answer's stuck beneath the golden ark.

More than Old Men in the Building

Every now and then, I do think, "I should watch a new show or movie unrelated to Star Wars or the MCU. I should get in touch with to-day." But then I go and pick something hopelessly un-hip, as I did last night when I watched the first two episodes of Only Murders in the Building. All of the advertisements make it look like an ultra-safe show for someone to try to get their grandkids to watch with them. "You should watch the new Steve Martin show. You know, it has that Selena Gomez you like." And it was pretty much what I expected--one of those cosy soundstage series with old superstars who are also executive producers, insuring they needn't go anywhere or do anything remotely difficult. It almost seems like co-creator Steve Martin challenged himself to make the least challenging series for himself he could. Yet, the performances are all solid, some of the jokes are funny, and the plot, while not being terribly imaginative, doesn't feel formulaic. The whole thing is set mostly in a fabulously expensive New York apartment building. This is probably another thing that attracted me to the show--my thing for stories about people trapped in one big house. This one is especially a microcosm because Gomez's character, Mabel, has basically lived her whole life there. This becomes an important part of the plot as we see her flashbacks to a clique of sexy young building dwellers she used to belong to. Bonding over their love of The Hardy Boys, they "investigate" other apartments--breaking in and occasionally stealing things. Yeah, these hot young hooligans are obsessed with The Hardy Boys. They even have first edition hard backs. Charles, Martin's character, points out this is strangely old fashioned, as is Mabel's name. No explanation is really offered, though, the questions functioning as a half-gesture at lampshading. But the first episode, written by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, is an old man's fantasy. I'm old enough to know something about that idle urge to find young people who are genuinely interested in the stuff I loved as a kid. The hard truth to swallow for a lot of older people is that, most of the time, young people are desperate to get away and be with other people their own age. I was talking to a generation Z friend about her trip to a doctor a few months ago and she told me there's something that happens when older people talk, she finds that she can't focus and their words just start to lose meaning after a few minutes. I've seen it happen when I talk to her plenty of times, too. Her face just goes blank. Knowing this adds an extra layer of bittersweet to a scene where Charles is picking a lock while Mabel stands behind him, waiting. He tells her about his parents and about how his father abused his mother and he promised himself he'd never allow himself to become like his father. And that's why he prefers to be alone. He says it a bit casually but the blocking of the actors and the composition of the shot say how much more is going on. Picking a lock means Charles has to be on his knees facing away from her while she stands, looking down on him while he tells this emotionally vulnerable story. We see he can't see her face change with shades of concern and empathy. This beautiful young woman, who's into old books, is genuinely interested in this old man. If it were in the five or six years after Lost in Translation came out, when this kind of thing was trendy, there'd likely have been a romance between the characters. Now I doubt Martin would dare. Charles is an actor who hasn't been successful since the early '90s while Martin Short's character, Oliver, is an unsuccessful Broadway director who's secretly behind on his rent. During that lockpick scene in the first episode, Oliver's off begging his son for money so he can pay rent. Considering the separate career trajectories of Martin and Short, and how often it's seemed like Martin casts Short out of charity, it seems like there's a bit of truth in these characters. The fact that they're both in the entertainment business also might indicate this is personal. On the other hand, it probably made the characters much easier to write and perform. Both of the first two episodes are directed by Jamie Babbett (The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, The Orville, The L Word). The second episode is written by Family Guy writer Kirker Butler and naturally starts to drift away from the more sentimental aspects. Still, nothing too crazy happens. Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+ outside the U.S. and on Hulu in the U.S.

Scattered Webs of the Evening

The spiders are coming out in force. Three days into September and the cicada sounds have been replaced by cricket sounds to-night and it's remarkable how much it's starting to feel like autumn already. Last night I saw two frogs hopping down the stairs into a train station but I couldn't get a good picture. I hope they caught their train.

There's still cicada body parts everywhere. A cicada was a rare sight in San Diego. I'm getting used to the little nutcases here in Japan. I say little but they're like small birds zooming around, crashing into everything. On the stairwell outside my apartment the steps are littered with wings and abdomens and legs. I'd be surprise to see an intact corpse at this point.

Yesterday I started back working at the junior high school. I'm so happy to be back, though actually I'd been going there throughout the summer to help supervise the art club. These kids never get tired. They're in there, drawing and colouring, with pencils, paints, and inks while the brass band endlessly practices outside, the soccer team does muscle training, the kyudo team gracefully hit their marks, and the judo club throw down one another. This is Sparta.

In the art club to-day, a student and I were goofing around, trying to make another student break her poker face. I succeeded by singing "Mairzy Doats". I guess that's teaching English.

Clothes of the Vampire

I more and more strongly suspect Joss Whedon had the crew watch Vertigo at the start of Angel season two. After an episode in which Darla pretends to be a random human to make Angel look crazy comes "Guise will be Guise" by Jane Espenson. From the clever title onward, this episode builds wonderfully on some of Vertigo's themes, including deceptive appearances, a virtuous instinct inevitably being entangled with baser instinct, and a supernatural ruse.

In this case, it's Wesley (Alexis Denisof) who pretends to be a vampire when Angel (David Boreanaz) is out of town. It's his presentation as a dark defender, a role he's initially forced to take in order to protect Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), that attracts the woman he's hired to escort, Virginia (Brigid Brannagh).

A character who's introduced on her bed, everything in juvenile pastels, emphasising a sexual innocence that proves in the end to be another significant illusion. Meanwhile, Angel is off getting advice from someone he thinks is a powerful psychic (Art LaFleur).

I love how the episode cuts between the Angel plot and the Wesley plot, having each play off each other. When the psychic calls Angel on his habit of wearing dark clothes and commenting on how he chooses to portray himself, the scene cuts to Wesley talking tough wearing Angel's overcoat. The psychic says Angel does have a reflection, it's what we see in the impressions other people have of him.

And in another brilliant move, the psychic turns out to be fake, forcing Angel and the rest of us to evaluate his insights on their own terms.

It's amazing to think Espenson used to be one of my least favourite Buffyverse writers, now I think she's one of my favourites.

Angel is available on Amazon Prime and Disney+ in many countries.

Twitter Sonnet #1469

A second stage resembled carts and cabs.
With careful sticks the wooden house expands.
Complete the box inserting proper tabs.
A boss denies the words that push demands.
The cheapest printer still can cycle ink.
A noodle cake awaits the thirsty foot.
We chased a phantom down below the sink.
A changing movie ran beneath the soot.
Collected hours summon scrolls of text.
A helpful thought was turned to tuck the wing.
A turtle left the island sore perplexed.
The early kettle's well prepared to sing.
A spiral system closed the distant space.
A distant science builds a dreamy ace.

The Unholy Present Perfect

Will Dracula rise again? With a title well ahead of you is 1968's Dracula has Risen from the Grave. A Hammer horror film directed by Freddie Francis, it features Christopher Lee as Dracula but no Peter Cushing this time around. His adversary is a steadfastly honest young baker played by Barry Andrews, a dead ringer for Roger Daltrey.

I kind of hoped it was Daltrey when I saw him, despite not seeing Daltrey's name in the credits. The Who versus Dracula? I'd be down for that. But Andrews is charismatic in his own right.

The story feels suspiciously like a screenplay originally written without Dracula or even supernatural horror in mind into which Dracula was inserted. Screenwriter Anthony Hinds seemed preoccupied with the worth of honesty. Paul, Andrews' character, wants to marry the daughter of the Catholic Monsignor (Rupert Davies) who's just gotten home from putting a big crucifix on Dracula's castle, to make sure the Count never, ever rises from the grave. Along the way, he inadvertently attracts the eye of Dracula, who has already risen from the grave.

Paul's father is played by Hammer regular Michael Ripper, once again playing a tavern keeper. He advises his son that honesty isn't always the best policy, that he should know when to play things close to his chest. Unfortunately, Paul wants nothing to do with tact, and when the clergyman he hopes will be his father-in-law asks his religion, Paul happily owns himself an atheist.

You'd think the rest of the film, in which Paul's fiancee (Veronica Carlson) and the buxom tavern wench (Barbara Ewing) are both bitten and enthralled by the famous vampire, would cause him to reexamine his beliefs. But the plot proves to be more about the monsignor accepting Paul as his daughter's chosen.

Freddie Francis delivers the goods again as one of the better Hammer directors. I particularly like a rooftop set/matte painting combination he uses repeatedly throughout the film, making it the choice location for battles or even just the routine route for clandestine young lovers.

Dracula has Risen from the Grave is available on HBOMax, one of four Hammer films, the others including Hammer's first Dracula film, their first Frankenstein film, and the Hammer version of The Mummy. I'd say The Mummy is the best of the group with Frankenstein in second but, despite loving Hammer movies, I've never been fond of their first Dracula entry. It's a shame Warners doesn't have some of the better Hammer films on HBOMax, like Frankenstein Created Woman, Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Brides of Dracula, She, or The Vampire Lovers.

A Park Off the Compass

I have HBOMax until September 12th and, streaming problems aside, I want to get my money's worth out of it. Last night looking for something I could watch knowing there'd be technical problems, I came across the South Park Pandemic Special. I remembered hearing about it and kind of wanting to see it last year, partly because I was surprised anyone was talking about South Park again, and partly because we were just a few months into the pandemic's accompanying social madness, in which people cooped up in their homes were screaming routinely online at each other from both sides. If there was ever a good time to lampoon the lunacy of the American media and public, that seemed like it. Unfortunately, I found the South Park Pandemic Special to be just kind of annoying and sort of fascinatingly out of touch on multiple levels.

I'm not sure how long it'd been since I'd seen a South Park episode. Probably fifteen years, that's the last time I blogged about it. From a 2006 entry:

Matt and Trey used to be more inventive. I wish they'd retire, before the show shares The Simpsons' fate.

Well, that ship has definitely sailed. As a side note, it's amazing to recall that The Simpsons seemed well and truly creatively dead fifteen years ago and it still lurches on to-day.

South Park succumbed to a different kind of death. While The Simpsons became boring and cynical, South Park seems to have just become dumber and meaner while also pandering to a political ideology whose young adherents probably wouldn't be caught dead associating with the show. Fifteen years ago, I got in an argument with a friend about the infamous trans episode of South Park, in which the writers equated being transgender with getting surgery to become a dolphin or something. At the time, I thought one could have a discussion about where the line is as to what constitutes legitimate grounds for reassignment surgery but that the trans community seemed too small and vulnerable to deserve such angry potshots. My friend, a trans person herself, argued that the South Park episode was only meant to criticise people who call themselves trans but make no serious effort to pass and who get angry when other people call them on it. Ironically, this same friend is to-day too woke to even speak to someone as politically incorrect as myself. This is something I've found again and again in this new era--the wokest people I know are usually the people who liked deeply "problematic" humour years ago.

Now, in the Pandemic Special, writers Matt Stone and Trey Parker have portrayed the police force as violence addicted adolescents who deserve to be defunded in between a plot about Stan's father being responsible for the pandemic because he fucked the bat in Wuhan (and a pangolin). How many "defund the police" types are up for Stone and Parker's gags about kids and animals being mutilated? I'm not even sure the circles would touch in that venn diagram.

They do make a few jokes about the hysteria and hostility of lockdown culture but it's not very insightful. The episode did stream without any problems.

There's a too brief subplot with a hint of heart in which Stan desperately tries to help Butters get to Build a Bear. Stan sublimating his own anxieties into helping Butters was kind of sweet and genuinely seemed to speak to the general cabin fever experience of the pandemic among those who can afford to stay at home. But, sadly, the episode decided to spend 90% of the time with the plot about Stan's dad thinking his semen is the cure for Corona. It was just tedious, like a drunk who thinks he's really funny rambling on and on.

Deborah by Starlight

A new chapter of my webcomic, Dekpa and Deborah, is finally online. I passed the 200 mark with this one and now the comic stands at 202 pages. And it only took me six years! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

Twitter Sonnet #1468

The years in sequence gather thorns and leaves.
The time of curling wind reveals the rock.
A gnarled trunk would seem a face that grieves.
The roots combine to make a wooden lock.
A sooner mass abuts the rooster crow.
Misleading lefts revert the step to right.
Inexpert shafts rebound abaft the bow.
The question fish produced a western kite.
With water thoughts the soap would clean the clothes.
Forever running, pipes conveyed the spark.
A stone was like a door that never closed.
The journey stopped before the starting mark.
The frozen ear detects a fire near.
The darkened ice contains a waiting fear.

The Beaming Dead

2000 was the year Spike turned pink on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The same year, Kate turned pink on Angel.

I guess pale was out of fashion in the Buffyverse, for vampires as well as humans.

The Kate screenshot comes from "Dear Boy", an episode of Angel in which Darla, the vampire who turned Angel originally, newly resurrected as a human, poses as an ordinary human to make Angel's friends think he's crazy. I suspect it continues the influence of Vertigo seen more directly a few episodes earlier in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been". Vertigo references always make me happy (and aren't going out of style since WandaVision ended with one). But I also like the Darla plot in Angel season two for how it starts to bridge the gap between Angel and Angelus, his evil self. It can seem like kind of a cheat, the ideal of souls on the two series. Why should Angel feel guilty now for things he did when he was essentially possessed by a demon? 2000 was the year lines started to blur a little.

On Buffy as well. This was the year Spike realised he was lusting for Buffy. Or the year he realised he was in love with her, depending on how you interpret it. What does it mean for him to love without a soul? It certainly seemed like his relationship with Drusilla was more than lust all along.

I kind of like that the shows never really explored their implicit Christian rulebook. We never find out why crosses hurt vampires. We never find out exactly what having a soul means. The ambiguity tortures the characters in a pretty credible way.

The Great Eye is Frustrated

Well, it took about a week, but I was finally able to squeeze The Two Towers out of HBOMax. There have been thunderstorms around here lately and I think it interferes with my internet, which is wifi from a box. Yet, all my other streaming services worked well enough. Even The Criterion Channel worked fine if I set the quality to 520. But when I got halfway through The Two Towers: Extended Edition, the part where the wargs attack, the player stuttered and finally froze up completely. Over the next few days, I tried to pick it back up but could only get two or three minutes at a time. Last night it finally let me watch the rest but, sadly, the spell was kind of broken. The emotional impact of a film is of course modified by whether or not you watch it piecemeal. Not always in a bad way--I like to prolong the experience of some movies by splitting them into episodes. Oddly enough, as long as they are and kind of episodic, the Lord of the Rings movies are not among those I like to split up. Peter Jackson's filmmaking style is so much about flow from one scene to the next that breaking them up feels wrong.

So I enjoyed the first half of the film much more, being able to get swept up in Jackson's pacing and arrangement of scenes. The casting continued to be spot on. Brad Dourif as Wormtongue is a great example of an actor elevating the material. He doesn't hold back on the delivery, even making little hissing sounds. Yet he suggests depth and complexity not present in the dialogue that helps make him captivating. The screenplay gets some credit, giving some dialogue of Gandalf's from the book to Wormtongue so he can have a moment of genuine insight into Eowyn (Miranda Otto). The dialogue is still beautiful but now it also helps establish his threat and his humanity.

Andy Serkis makes Gollum age very well. The cgi has started to look dated though these movies never did have the most seamless computer effects. But it's the authenticity of emotion that matters and Serkis does it. I only wish Elijah Wood and Sean Astin's performances had aged as well as everyone else's. But most of the time they're good enough.

Even a lot of changes Jackson's team made that I don't like I can still understand. Like the scene where Sam cooks the rabbits. There's no way the film could do something like the version of that scene in the book, which is about the wonder of Sam creating something like the feel of Bag End right there on the edge of Mordor, just with his cooking and ordering Gollum about like a servant. There are other changes I've come to sorely lament.

It's easy to see why they did what they did with the Ents. To give Merry (Domanic Monahan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) something to do, to add dramatic tension to the end of the movie. These things are nice in the short term but the logical integrity of the book's version makes it something you can contemplate on its own terms years later. When I watch the movie now, I just think, "How did Treebeard, a shepherd of the forest, not know Saruman (Christopher Lee) was cutting down Fangorn? How did none of the other Ents know?"

The Arwen (Liv Tyler) scenes have a beautiful tone and I love the fact that they gave Hugo Weaving the text about Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) from the end. Arwen's inner conflict over her devotion to Aragorn doesn't feel explored well enough for it to be introduced at all, though.

I do like the Ents unleashing the river on Isengard as an action sequence more than the Helm's Deep battle which feels oddly stagebound. It has too much artificial lighting. The night battle sequences on Game of Thrones definitely did it better, though, since everyone complained about it, it may not set a new standard, sadly enough.

Generally, The Two Towers is not as good as The Fellowship of the Ring, though maybe I'd feel differently if it'd streamed properly. Even if I could afford to keep HBOMax, I'm not sure if I would. Maybe after a few years when they've ironed out their technical problems and I've become a trillionaire.