An earthquake occurs in the middle of a sermon and unleashes a horde of fire-breathing cockroaches from the depths of the earth. 1975's Bug depicts these traumatic events and those that follow. It's cheesy, the screenplay was co-written by William Castle, but a cheap '70s horror flick sometimes can feel like a balm.
The insects crawl up from a big crevasse opened by the earthquake. They bag their first kills in the form of an old man and his son who try to get their truck started, not knowing some of the fateful cockroaches have crawled into the tailpipe. So they explode.
As is often the case with '70s movies these days, I want every single shirt the men are wearing in it. You know that western style shirt with the pointy pockets and the yoke on the shoulders, they're usually plaid? I saw John Foggerty on Club Random a couple weeks ago wearing one. He said his wife makes them because they can't buy them anymore. Actually you can find a few on Amazon. I have two. One of them was a very lucky find at a Sears that was closing six years ago, it was less than ten dollars.
Anyway, bugs keep attacking. There are two scenes of them preying on young women. In one case, the bug camps out on a telephone receiver and when she unwittingly puts it to her ear the bug latches on. She runs around screaming, for some reason not even attempting to pull the bug off while it starts to set fire to her ear canal. "Make an effort," I said to the screen.
Much of the film follows a professor (Bradford Dillman) who tries to preserve this quirky new species in spite of everything. He's pretty good, he has slight Herbert West vibes.
A group of young friends looking for a better buzz decide to try summoning the dead in 2002's Long Time Dead. It didn't set the world on fire but it's a basically enjoyable horror flick.
The group is renting a house where they hang out, get high, and have sex. There's a vibe slightly like Trainspotting. They all head for the club one night where someone gets the bright idea to use a ouija board.
Lucy (Marsha Thomason) is the one who knows about all this stuff. She doesn't live in the house with the others, she has a houseboat in which we see various eastern and middle eastern symbols and icons tacked up on her wall. Yet when the spirit at the ouija board calls itself a "Djinn", she's never heard of the term. So that's a bit silly but it's the only thing that really bothered me about the movie.
The evil djinn starts to pick the kids off, one by one. I was a little disappointed he went for the girls first, I was kind of hoping the one played by Lara Belmont would last to the end. I guess the "final girl" is a tired trope but the alternative is a letdown.
I've been having some vivid dreams lately. A few nights ago, I had one about Bruce Wayne kind of failing to become Batman. But only kind of. Gotham City was partially deserted and lawless. Bruce was still putting together the materials to become Batman but he didn't have quite the enthusiasm, and from the state of the city, I could kind of see why. I saw lots of deserted streets and debris. It was the Robert Pattinson Bruce Wayne and I saw him in a simpler mask and costume. Does the city need a Batman if it's barely a city anymore?
I had another dream that same night about my hometown, Santee, California, also partially deserted and cluttered with debris. The trains weren't running so I couldn't get from the grocery store and back home. When I woke up, I remembered it's only since I moved to Japan I've regularly been taking trains places. There was a never a train from the particular grocery store I remembered.
Seems like political commentary, doesn't it? It's not so different from how I remember the U.S. being just before I left for Japan. Everything I read indicates things have gotten worse. It makes me sad to read about how shopping malls are dying. I read a few days ago the Wal-Mart was closing at Parkway Plaza Mall in El Cajon. I remembered when Wal-Mart opened there I felt like it was a sign of the place's degradation. Now Wal-Mart's too good for it! I read one article about a couple of girls who stole a whole cartload of goods quite brazenly. They loaded it all into their car and weren't stopped until a cop pulled them over on the freeway. Employees, of course, wouldn't have stopped them because the employees are told not to do anything. I've heard cops, in many cities, aren't supposed to chase thieves either. Doesn't anyone think there's a relationship between this and the fact that everything's getting impossibly expensive? I suppose it's a chicken and the egg question.
X Sonnet #1848
The sooty sky defies the rival sun.
But pleased, the suns defer to pregnant dust.
Through pigment portals, rubber legs'll run.
Accepting ceilings feed the spring of lust.
A quarry dives beyond the distant hill.
In want of sleep, the witch defers a day.
A dirty cloud congealed to make a will.
A sort of sea combined to make a bay.
The slowly loading rain distorts the wife.
To husband seeds demands a rainy time.
Productive soil draws the bounds of life.
Another tuber starts its lonely climb.
Contentious dreams confirm the falling sky.
The amber past consoles the frozen fly.
For years, the SyFy Channel made a series of intentionally bad movies in imitation of imitations by Tarantino and Rodriguez. I'd never watched any of them until recently when I saw 2005's Attack of the Sabertooth. I have to admit, I enjoyed it.
It's primarily a Jurassic Park knock-off. The main difference is everyone's an asshole. I mean, aside from the low budget and general sleaziness.
The John Hammond analogue is a more typical, tyrannical tycoon (Nicholas Bell) who doesn't want some escaped sabretooths to spoil his party for investors. There are lots of scenes of the security staff trying to deliver bad news to him at the party and him telling them to deal with the problem, "That's what I pay you for!" "I don't care how!" etc.
Our heroes are two of the security people, a lazy rogue called Brian (Brian Wimmer) and his sexy girlfriend, Savannah (Stacy Haiduk). Even after bloody body parts of their coworkers show up, she still wants to slack off for some workplace sex. He's only put off when another coworker, a native to the island, tells him several of her previous boyfriends died mysteriously from her "evil eye". I guess the screenwriters figured Fiji islanders and gypsies are pretty much the same group. He says things like, "My people believe," etc. I kept expecting him to actually use the "We people of the mountain" line from Tod Browning's Dracula.
Added to the mix are a group of frat and sorority pledges who have to break into the park and steal various items. How they got there in the first place or how they even heard of Primal Park is not clearly explained. They get more than they bargained for when pursued by the big cloned cats. As you might expect, the cgi is bad. Actually, it's probably worse than you might expect. Most of the time, the sabrecats are portrayed by physical props, dummy heads and paws. Very occasionally we get a full size cartoon cat who doesn't seem to be part of the same physical reality as anything else.
Richard M. Sherman died a couple days ago at 95. Following his brother Robert's death in 2012, both Sherman Brothers are now gone, the team who composed memorable songs for quite a lot of movies. Winnie the Pooh, The Sword in the Stone, and The Jungle Book were all theirs, but I think Mary Poppins remains their crowning achievement.
Like the heroine's self-description, the movie is practically perfect in every way. The cast is flawless, remarkable for such a large ensemble. It has gorgeous matte paintings and a decent story. But if I had to pick one element that's more crucial than any other, I'd say it's the songs. Wistful, ominous, and playful, often all at the same time, the Sherman Brothers songs help give the film that subtle air of melancholy and dread that underlies all the hijinks.
It's a movie kids love but, like so many great children's stories, it's really about the adults. The climax of the film depends on a change of heart by Mr. Banks, a character who's on the periphery for most of the film. When Bert unexpectedly takes Banks' side after rescuing the children in those scary alleyways, it's to explain the essential tragedy of adulthood; Banks has no parents or nanny to go to. Bert's own financial circumstances are never really addressed but the fact that he does a variety of odd jobs and wears dirty old clothes implies luck that does not match his cheery demeanour. The chemistry between him and Mary Poppins is left understated and can never be addressed. There's no time for it, the children are more important. Poppins has to leave them, too, whatever her umbrella might insist her true feelings are. I'm not sure the sense of sacrifice would be much felt at all if it weren't for the Sherman Brothers' work.
Walt Disney. who died a few years after Mary Poppins was released, had a particular fondness for "Feed the Birds". Richard Sherman himself explains:
X Sonnet #1847
The scavenged ones'll add to make a new.
To-morrow dogs replace the cats at work.
Refuting chalk excludes the stub of blue.
It's only now the monkey ghost'll lurk.
Select informants crushed the metal can.
In time, the bars constrict about the eye.
No glasses kept the sight from living man.
A string of words conformed to cast the die.
Controlling motion cons the eye when wide.
To see the squishy beans, traverse the rocks.
His car departs the solid mountain side.
There something sad about the heavy socks.
As blackened clouds deform for magic fun,
A weird and wistful herald's life is done.
Some folks in Hollywood compel one to marvel at their continued ability to get work despite continually producing mediocrity. One of the most infamous is David S. Goyer, who manages to hide his lack of imagination by befriending genuine talent. When he stands on his own, with a movie like 2009's The Unborn, which he wrote and directed, the truth becomes painfully clear; the guy's got nothing.
Casey (Odette Yustman) is a pretty girl with no personality that the film can think of mentioning. She has scary dreams of dogs and dead people with twisted heads resembling monsters from Japanese horror and David Lynch movies. She keeps hearing "Jambi wants to be born now" which of course brought to mind the genie from Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Unfortunately, the truth is not so entertaining.
Her investigation leads her to an old woman who informs her the ghost child pursuing her is a dybbuk and recommends that she see a rabbi named Joseph Sendak (Gary Oldman). God knows why she recommended him in particular since he basically tells Casey he doesn't believe in this stuff. But he finally agrees to help and since getting rid of the dybbuk is an exorcism of sorts, he enlists the aid of an episcopal priest played by Idris Elba. It's kind of sad Goyer, who's Jewish himself, thought this was necessary. It's not like Max von Sydow brought in a rabbi in the Exorcist. Maybe it's part of a postmodern, all religions are equal, compulsive plot point.
I'd like to say something nice about the movie. Gary Oldman and Idris Elba are always great. Odette Yustman looks really good in her underwear . . . That's all I got. Like I said, the jump scares don't work. The lighting is bland, there's not much going for the production design. I kind of liked the outfits worn by Meagan Good, who plays Casey's friend.
After his first couple episodes this season of Doctor Who were just so-so, I was starting to lose faith in Russell T Davies a bit. Fortunately to-day brought "73 Yards", which is mostly excellent.
Hey, do people still say yards in Britain? I thought it was all metric there.
Anyway, the first half of the episode had the sort of cosily creepy quality of a First, Second, or Third Doctor serial. Ruby pursued by that stationary figure who seemed to render anyone who talked to her permanently terror stricken felt like The Web of Fear or The Demons, especially when Ruby met a group of characters in a pub. I was hoping the episode would involve this group and stay in that little Welsh town. But I like the story it became.
I partly wish the story gave no explanation at the end but, on the other hand, it kind of didn't. I kind of figured early on who the woman was likely to be but there's no explanation for how she got to be where she was, or why she was doing those hand signals. A lot is left up to viewer interpretation, which is probably for the best.
I don't have any complaints about the episode, except possibly to say I found it odd the woman in the pub chastised Ruby for not having a coat when she was clearly wearing one. Sure, a heavier coat would have been warranted but it was yet another moment where it felt like people involved with the production didn't quite read the script closely enough.
Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere.
I'm not exactly sure why Michael Keaton looks different in these trailers to how he looked in the original film. Maybe it's just that he's skinnier.
I'm looking forward to the movie, I guess, despite the fact that its writers come from Wednesday. I liked Jenna Ortega on that show but I'm not getting any strong vibes from her character in this movie so far.
Tim Burton's changed so much as a director since the first movie, generally to seem more tired and less passionate a filmmaker. But I'll be happy to hear that Danny Elfman score and I'm sure Keaton will give a good performance. The first movie is kind of unique and did such a good job of creating a sense of a world. I'm glad to see they've apparently gone back to the same town which was so integral to the first film's flavour.
I fell asleep last night trying to watch David S. Goyer's The Unborn. I don't generally consider jump scares something that makes or breaks a horror movie, mostly because they're cheap, but it's kind of fascinating that Goyer's instinct for jump scares is so weak. Not one of them landed, hence me falling asleep. Maybe I don't give jump scares enough credit.
X Sonnet #1846
The jungle breeds an agile blonde for trees.
No horse could pass the zebra gate with paint.
Delicious days were like a cake of cheese.
The mad flamingo's cry was passing faint.
Inviting ghosts detained a drinking pair.
A morning beauty saw no sign of clothes.
A sleepy bar was open late to care.
An early building claim its right to prose.
Repression cast potato chips for lunch.
As growing fields demand a muffin, cook.
There's stuff to make a pastry sing a bunch.
So gather all the sugar at the brook.
Demand for stone secured the creek's support.
Recycled ghouls confirmed the ghost's report.
An attractive young couple find themselves drawn into the web of a strange, elegant man in 1990's The Comfort of Strangers. It's a fascinating little gem of a movie, a subtly crafted piece that compels contemplation.
There are no weak links on the staff. It comes from a book by Ian McEwan with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and it's directed by Paul Schrader. It has music by Angelo Badalamenti. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson play the young couple, Christopher Walken plays the sinister man and Helen Mirren plays his wife.
The film's typically described as an erotic thriller but, while eroticism is certainly an element, it addresses a broader aspect of human nature. Everett and Richardson find their accumulated instincts for politeness and socialisation draw them into Walken's company like gravitational pull. There are only a few explicit hints that he has an agenda that's alien and hostile to them.
Nowadays, Walken's performances accentuate his peculiar mannerisms but here they're used to speak volumes on their own. Mirren is also quite subtle. The really sinister thing about them, what eventually makes sense of the behaviour, is that it's a kind of pantomime, a veneer of humanity to cover a carnal interest in the young couple with complete disregard for their humanity. Walken's character is like a fascist dictator without a country.
Or he and Mirren are like a country of two. I was reminded how xenophobia can make a people regard foreigners as animals and they therefore feel comfortable taking whatever liberties you might take with a cat or a dog.
The film also has beautiful cinematography and production design. The Comfort of Strangers is available on The Criterion Channel.
1984's Sheena, based on the Sheena, Queen of the Jungle comics, is widely considered a bad film. I guess it is. The dialogue is hokey, as is much of the premise. It's also really charming, though.
Maybe it's because they just don't make 'em like this anymore. I love to bring up the fact that Disney was too cheap to shoot the Black Panther movies in Africa. The notorious Sheena was shot entirely in Kenya and it pays off with plenty of gorgeous location shots, embellished further with the gorgeous Tanya Roberts in nearly every frame.
Sometimes it's a stunt double, and it's pretty obvious when it is, but that also means it's easy to see how much Roberts herself did. And that's surprisingly a lot. People who complained about her acting ability should consider how remarkable it is she could swing from a vine, gracefully land barefoot on the ground, and smoothly initiate dialogue. She has the simple-minded earnestness of the type of fantasy girl she's playing, quite convincingly enough. She delivers what the role calls for. According to the Wikipedia entry, Paeline Kael was the only critic who appreciated Roberts' work at all.
Let's not forget how comfortable Roberts was doing quite a lot of nude scenes. It's remarkable to think this was a PG movie. I mean, when you consider PG means "Parental Guidance", it makes sense. It goes to show how ratings have migrated.
The score by Richard Hartley recalls Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire", which gives an oddly tranquil tone to the action scenes. But it also reminded me of the general Lucas/Spielberg influence on film in the '80s, when filmmakers strove to make adventure stories that inspired a sense of awe and wonder. Watching Roberts riding a horse bareback, painted to look like a zebra, the score, location, and cinematography invite us to savour how wonderful it is to witness a world in which a beautiful jungle girl exists.
The life of Gia Carangi, one of the first supermodels, is depicted as a tragic deterioration in 1998's Gia. Part of me thinks I'd have enjoyed this movie more if I'd ever been a drug user and had some first-hand experience with drug addiction. Then I remember I like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Naked Lunch and consider the possibility this is just a tedious movie. Angelina Jolie looks fantastic in it, though.
The first part of the film is the best, in which we meet Gia working at her father's diner, wielding a switchblade as a guy nervously tries to flirt with her. In the above trailer, you can see another memorable scene with the knife in which she carves her name into a receptionist's desk.
There's also a nice nude photoshoot, awkwardly filmed but made palatable by Jolie's beauty. She has a relationship with a makeup artist played by Elizabeth Mitchell that seems promising at first but ends up being the route to a reductive addiction story. Gia promises to stay clean, there's another disaster, she takes drugs, things get worse, she lies, etc.
Mila Kunis plays a young Gia in early scenes. It never occurred to me before how much she looks like Angelina Jolie.
Yesterday I watched another really long YouTube video, this one four hours, Jenny Nicholson's long gestating review of the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser. I always enjoy Nicholson's coverage of theme parks but I don't think I realised how curious I was about this particular theme park experience until I started watching the video.
Well, I mostly listened to the review while playing Skyrim. If you want something to listen to while doing chores that you can glance at now and then, I recommend it.
What a peculiar topic for our time. As the gap between rich and poor increases, theme parks in the US are increasingly becoming the exclusive domain of the rich. Nicholson argues that perhaps there are middle class families who splurged and spent the 6,000 dollars on two nights at the Star Wars Hotel. I don't think Nicholson's aware of just how small the middle class has gotten. But even for rich people, she doesn't defend this price. It's not a favorable review by any means.
I'd sort of forgotten how much I loved Star Tours as a kid. Star Tours, of course, was free with the price of admission to Disneyland in those innocent days of the 1980s. I assume it still is.
Galactic Cruiser seems like the natural next step in evolution but obviously it was botched spectacularly, as more commentators than Nicholson have noted. One thing Nicholson doesn't mention is the lack of celebrity cameos. One of my favourite things about Star Tours was the animatronic C3PO, voiced by Anthony Daniels himself. Animatronics never really looked human but an animatronic droid was kind of perfect. It was like really seeing C3PO. It's a shame Disney made Star Wars merch and attractions so damned tacky but maybe if I were a kid I'd find it just as magical as I did the original Star Tours back in the '80s.
I like the idea of staying at a hotel that was a good simulation of a spacecraft but, frankly, for six grand, I would expect to be on an actual spacecraft. Though I see now that SpaceX charges between 50 million and 100 million. That's a lot of money for going nowhere.
X Sonnet #1845
Reluctant dudes returned to fill a week.
Denial rose to relish pedal bikes.
With extra feet, the rider ploughs a peak.
So time at last would end the hobby hike.
Mosquito master burbles blood at brunch.
Embarrassed staff removed his tray of flesh.
Containers cracked to fill a honey hunch.
The day of bugs concludes with nothing fresh.
Impressive stunts succeed on shoeless feet.
Conflicting tongues disrupt the verbal fight.
Reversing time returned to bone its meat.
Ideas composed a foul but fragrant night.
Beyond the sky, a metal sausage choked.
For thousands spent, the plastic goose was broke.
A few days ago, I was listening to Bill Maher's Club Random podcast and he was talking to the comedian Bill Burr. I like Burr and Maher and the two seemed to be having an amusing back and forth with a little ribbing. I didn't have time to finish listening to the whole thing but then a few days later I started seeing on X all these messages about how Burr had totally owned Maher. A few other quotes thrown about suggested that things had gotten really nasty. Burr evidently likened Maher to a fantasy football enthusiast on the topic of the Israel/Palastine conflict and insisted Maher had no right to talk about the subject because he had no practical experience. Which is certainly a funny view for anyone on X to champion.
I suspected the "fight" was blown out of proportion so I watched the whole thing and, yes, it was. The two never even entered a proper argument, the most that could be said is that each occasionally seems to misread the other's comedic insult as a genuine one.
Now there are a lot of digest videos of the original with titles like "Bill Burr Ruthlessly Mocks Bill Maher in Incredibly Satisfying Watch" and "Bill Burr MANHANDLES Bill Maher on Club Random". These videos have hundreds of thousands of views. It's really amazing.
When something like this happens, like when there were suddenly a bunch of insubstantial but rigorous articles trashing Russell Brand, it really creeps me out. It clearly indicates a malevolent manipulation of media, whether it's at the behest of a government or just a bunch of resentful assholes in the business, I don't know. I have come to the opinion that Brand is taking money from Russia somehow. In one of his videos, Brand casually brushed aside the very idea that Alexei Navalny's death, when he was imprisoned for criticising Putin, might have been murder. Which was a depressing moment. But it got me thinking, does the opposing government psy-op force look at this and say, "Okay, we can't just present this clear evidence to people. We have to manipulate them with salacious headlines into coming to the right opinion."
I've known people who do that and I've always hated it. You know, when someone has a strong opinion about something they don't think you will agree with or understand so they tell you a lie to inspire an equivalent level of hatred. Of course a government agency would do something like that. But it's hard to believe they'd be so ham-fisted. Or maybe I'm just too conceited.
It was weird hearing Burr criticise Maher for knowing big words, for being familiar with My Fair Lady. I know they were doing a comedy bit, but there are people who have real resentment about that stuff. I think it's a side-effect of lousy higher education. People get a liberal arts degree and feel a sense of accomplishment--then they meet someone who's actually read Moby Dick and the cognitive dissonance is painful. They feel that if they, with their expensive degrees, don't have that level of accomplishment, then no-one should.
Is Bill Maher arrogant, sometimes obnoxious? Yes. These are his faults. Oddly, it's one of the reasons I always preferred him to Jon Stewart. Stewart always presented a neat, clean package and often enough I, too, ate up his carefully edited clips from various news channels. But Maher is like Fred Astaire, dancing without the edits. His faults are one of the reasons you know what you're seeing is real. And that's too rare a commodity these days.
That old Moffat magic is back. To-day's new Doctor Who, "Boom", was a potent reminder of why Steven Moffat is the best writer of modern Who. Even though the story wasn't airtight, even though there were things I didn't wholly agree with philosophically, it was well constructed from a storytelling perspective, filled with genuine tension and a real sense of threat to the main characters.
We start off with a precarious situation built on a precarious situation. Two soldiers, one of them apparently blind, wander through a foggy minefield and one of them suggests the fog itself could be a threat. The blind soldier gets a call from his little girl and he promises her he'll be home soon. Ain't it ominous.
Then the 15th Doctor, wearing his best outfit yet, dashes out of the TARDIS in the direction of screams, heedless of mines he so far knows nothing about (but beknownst to us). All this is before the credits roll. I don't care how much you hate Steven Moffat, and he's one of those people who tend to be hated to a degree that mystifies me, you must see he's damned good at this.
In a lot of ways, "Boom" harkens back to the 12th Doctor's first season in its dwelling on soldiers and war, though I believe the Anglican military dates back to the 11th Doctor's first season. The relationship between a cutthroat, capitalist military organisation and a faith based soldiery is somewhat simplistic conceptually but it's cleverly delivered and Monday felt like a real person, despite living out these big concepts.
There were some logistical problems I think Moffat overlooked--why couldn't Ruby just shoot the ambulance? But the climax of the episode felt earned and was very effective.
I loved some of the lines, too, which Moffat tailored for Fifteen. I especially liked, "I'm more explosive than I look and I know how I look."
I like Russell T Davies but I think this episode shows again he can't hold a candle to Moffat. I was happy to hear Moffat is also writing this year's Christmas special.
New episodes of Doctor Who are available on Disney+.
A group of young friends are beset by a supernatural something-or-other in 2007's Dead Mary. It's low budget and feels like a Sci-Fi Channel movie but manages to evoke some genuine creepiness before getting too distracted by gossipy drama.
The group gathers at the usual cabin in the woods (usual for them and the movie's genre). Someone proposes the idea of playing "Dead Mary", which is exactly like Bloody Mary except you say "Dead Mary" in the mirror three times instead of "Bloody Mary". Maybe the filmmakers thought Bloody Mary was too well known or something, I don't know.
Anyway, nothing much seems to happen after a few of them do the recitation in front of a mirror. I liked the film's slow build-up and afterwards there was a nice ambiguously paranoid aspect to what exactly was happening. Sadly, the kids spend too much time bickering about who's sleeping with whom. But it can't take away totally from the film's enjoyable qualities.
Dead Mary is available on YouTube.
X Sonnet #1844
A proven case was thrown to feed the birds.
Corrupted voices crowd the noisy dame.
A burning eye denounced reflective words.
Collected cam'ra fingers dodge the blame.
A relay race informed the life of keys.
Batons were made of metal hooks for doors.
Among Brazilian plants, avoid the bees.
In dread of ghostly hounds, avoid the moors.
Percentage rain permits a lonely cloud.
For leaders eating lunch, the dinner calls.
A better moose constructs the antler crowd.
Between the roof and floor we hid the walls.
A crazy cabin crunched a bunch of sods.
The folly forest thrived against the odds.
Last night's finale of X-Men'97 ended the season as it had been from the beginning--sticking fairly close to the comics. The teleplay by Beau DeMayo and Anthony Sellitti brought famous bits from the comics with a few minor adjustments. It was a satisfying episode though perhaps not quite as astonishing as some earlier episodes from the season, particularly "Fire Made Flesh" and "Remember It".
It was a delight watching Rogue pummel Bastion. I knew she wouldn't be able to finish him but it was nice fantasising about her beating his brains to putty.
A lot of the story featured Charles and Magnus in the mind of Magnus as Charles tries to revive Magneto in a more benevolent form. It was kind of neat seeing their first meeting. Young Charles was looking oddly sassy.
I'm a little disappointed that the injury Magnus got from Wolverine didn't turn out to be more serious than it was.
Wolverine's in a coma, meanwhile, with Morph watching over him, a departure from the comics in which Morph didn't exist. Morph takes the form of Jean to proclaim love for Logan. I think some people really want romance between Logan and Morph. I prefer Logan lusting after Jean but an affair with Morph having to constantly take Jean's form for Logan might be entertainingly messed up. Still, I see Logan as being too principled for that.
In this day and age, a kid can't always expect the same people to be their parents throughout their childhood, but few have had the parade of fathers that little Mitan has in 2018's Soshite, baton wa watasareta (そして、バトンは渡された, "And, the baton was passed"). It gets bogged down in sentimentality in the last act but this is a basically entertaining little drama.
Initially, the story is presented with two separate threads, following Mitan as a small child (Inagaki Kurumi) as well as the girl once she's in high school and goes by the name of Yuko Morimiya (Nagano Mei). For all we know, they're different people, at first. Mitan lives with a father who works in agriculture and Yuko's father is a shy man with an office job.
Mitan's mother has recently passed away and one day her father meets a beautiful young woman, Rika, (Ishihara Satomi) with expensive tastes. You expect the voraciously smiling dame to be a ruin to the family but she and Mitan actually develop a bond over shopping for clothes and makeup. Then, Mitan's father gets a job in Brazil. He wants to relocate the family but Rika won't have it. So he moves alone to Brazil and Rika hides all of his letters to Mitan. And she finds another husband, a wealthy man, and tells Mitan he's her new father.
That's dad number two. Eventually she absconds with a third, the shy man whom we first met as Yuko's father, and at last, the stories connect at about the halfway point.
Yuko's story is less interesting, being a fairly average teen romance in which she falls in love with a handsome young man who, like her, also loves playing piano. The filmmakers wisely realised that Rika was the most interesting character in the movie and the last part of the film focuses on solving the mystery of why she's no longer in Yuko's life, as well as the mystery of why she collected fathers for Mitan/Yuko. The latter is never quite answered satisfyingly and, unfortunately, the last act of the film indulges in the kind of overwrought sentimentality that plagues too much modern Japanese cinema. But for the most part, it's an enjoyable film.
Soshite, baton wa watasareta is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.
Sometimes two people with a miraculous quantity of interests in common meet and fall in love. Then things get complicated, as we see in 2021's Hanataba mitaina koi wo shita (花束みたいな恋をした, "Fell in love like a bouquet"). This is a cosy little romantic drama, refreshing among modern Japanese love stories due to having a lower level of implicit contempt for imperfection. It owes a lot in tone to American romantic comedies of the '90s and early '00s. The stars are cute and genuinely charming.
Mugi-kun (Suda Machiki) is a comic artist who loves trendy movies and music. He's a bit of a snob. One day at a cafe, he remarks to a friend that someone seated at another table can't be a true music fan because they're not paying attention to the left and right labels on their earbuds. Unbeknownst to him, a pretty young college student, Kimu-chan (Arimura Kasumi) is making exactly the same observation. But it's not for some time that these two connoisseurs properly meet, when they both miss a train one evening.
Once they get talking, they grow increasingly excited by how perfectly their tastes align. It's fun watching them have fun, they're both very cute and the viewer can bask in the warm glow of this depiction of a perfect little relationship.
I was surprised to see a modern Japanese romantic movie that depicts two people moving in together, having premarital sex, and ultimately shows the urge for financial success being the issue that finally drives a wedge between the two. One thing I really liked about that was that I could easily see people in the audience sympathising with each character's opposing point of view. Kimu wants to keep love of art as a top priority in life, Mugi wants to focus on accumulating enough money so that they can eventually have a comfortable marriage. It's not entirely realistic, of course, the two already have a fabulous apartment. But it's a fair argument.
I was pleased by the ending, which I won't give away. It seemed like a ray of hope for Japanese culture.
Hanataba mitaina koi wo shita is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.
Roger Corman died last week. It's hard to think of a bigger name in the movie business that became big primarily for its association with bad movies. Corman made bad movies, many of them popular, for more than 70 years, as director and producer. As producer, it's well known he helped foster the talents of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, and many others.
I love many of his schlockier movies. In addition to providing fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, movies like Swamp Women with Marie Windsor had sleazy charms of their own. Who doesn't enjoy a gang of girl thieves, bare-legged in a swamp, somehow never getting one mosquito bite? As a producer in the '80s, he made some fantastically unrestrained pulp genre films, chock-full of naked women and slimy aliens. A lot of the problems in Corman productions evidently stemmed from his money anxieties, as director Jack Hill discovered when his fantasy film Sorceress faced erratic, sudden budget cuts that shredded Hill's original vision.
Yesterday, Paul Schrader said on Facebook:
ROGER CORMAN. Let's not too sentimental about Corman. Even in my exploitational extremes I couldn't interest Corman in my scripts. Rolling Thunder began at AIP but moved on to 20th. Roger wouldn't touch Blue Collar even with Pryor. As soon as they could
Coppola, Scorsese and Demme all moved away from AIP. Roger was better at hyping his rep than at making good films or supporting good filmmakers.
It's a fair point, if slightly awkwardly timed. I'd argue Corman made some genuinely good movies in the 1960s, though. The Little Shop of Horrors is a genuinely sharp and nuanced satire, even if the musical remake is definitely superior. Corman's string of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, many featuring Vincent Price in his best remembered roles, are fantastic indulgences in atmosphere. The Haunted Palace is one of the best adaptations of an H.P. Lovecraft story, though the bar is admittedly low on that one.
He was the best of producers, he was the worst of producers. Rest in peace, Roger Corman, though your movies will continue writhing on screens for eternity.
X Sonnet #1843
Redundant thralls displease impatient bats.
Devoured time returns, becoming space.
Collected answers yield illusion stats.
Dissected clues construct a plastic face.
Dishonest motives break the happy stride.
Kentucky bourbon blots the summer start.
Refreshing liquor battles stubborn pride.
Appointments scrabble cool and careful art.
Success revoked the cheaper charms of us.
Loquacious plants devoured many men.
Recruiting Price at cost of Pallas bust,
Delicious junk sustained the movie tin.
Contraptions spin the image story's gleam.
Parentheses of tombs define the dream.
One of the great unsung performances in film history has to be Christopher Lee in 1966's Rasputin the Mad Monk, which I watched again last night. For all his association with cheap, lurid horror movies, Christopher Lee was by no means a chewer of scenery. He had a strong belief in restraint. That's what made him so great as silent, stoic monsters. But casting him as a boisterous madman results in a magnificent chemical reaction.
Lee's Rasputin is every bit as hypnotic, enigmatic, capricious, and physically intimidating as you would want from Rasputin in a movie.
A huge man with big black hair and beard, gazing with wide eyes and sadistic smile is lurking in the doorway. Then this frightful monument laughs and grabs someone and dances madly.
His miraculous healing powers are never explained. His supreme confidence suggests it's a fruit of conquest rather than any bargain, anything that might have required him to relinquish something. If he had a soul, he certainly doesn't seem to miss it. He exists totally outside the rules of civilised Russia but he knows the rules to flaunt them, to use them to his advantage, to plunder the privileges of the Tsarina.
But we first meet him at a little countryside inn where he saves a woman from fatal illness. Her husband, the innkeeper, is understandably grateful and willing to accede to any request. Rasputin seems to make a game of just how far he can push the man's appreciation, right up to taking the man's daughter into the barn.
In a long career of playing villains, Rasputin may be Lee's most admirably terrible.
