What's Really Happening?

This new Bruce Springsteen song has nearly four million views as I write this. For the first audio only upload, there are over 5 million views. These videos were released two days ago. It's the first new release from Springstreen to exceed a million views since 2023. Fascinatingly, most of the comments I see on the "Streets of Minneapolis" videos seem to be from Germany, Portugal, Poland, and even South Korea, alongside some statements from Minnesotans expressing gratitude for Springsteen's eloquent expression of solidarity. I think this song will be remembered long after 2026.

In a crisis situation, people often talk about how things seem unreal, even people who are direct witnesses. Some comments I've seen since the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have wondered why there hasn't been a more profound reaction to this violation of law, community, and social order in the United States. This song is an example of one way art functions. To say art is a mirror often makes it seem like art is insubstantial or meaningless but without a mirror you can't see yourself. Art is the mirror. Undeniably real things sometimes don't seem to take form until the human race finds some way to process it, to find and communicate the meaning to itself.

I see a lot of people reposting the line from George Orwell's 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It's an apt quote for how blatantly Trump, Noem, and their cohorts have lied. Unfortunately, it's too often also applicable to leftwing media. The two sides of the political spectrum in America have seldom been more at odds and yet, if you take a view from outside the bubble, they've also seldom been more alike. If you think back to the bizarre excuses and gratuitous exultation in the wake of Charlie Kirk's shooting, it's easy to see the left is just as capable of reckless rancor. Overall, it's clear a new kind of rhetorical methodology has come to dominate the landscape. It's brought us to this point where laws are increasingly unable to serve their function as abstract processes, a civilised substitute for the physical violence of war. There's too much bad faith. Springsteen's known for being something of a partisan but he's a genuine artist and his song can't help but evoke the plain reality.

Two innocent people were murdered by people endowed with authority.

It's not just murder, it's a crack in the social order. There are only two possible outcomes now; civil war, or the mechanisms of American justice rally to hold the guilty accountable. The latter seems almost impossible at this point.

I was a little hesitant about Alex Pretti at first because I didn't see any of the video of his murder for a few days. I saw he was a guy in military colours with a black cap low over his face and I heard he was carrying a gun. I'm not disputing his right to carry a gun but he certainly seemed like a guy who was there to start shit while there was nothing ambiguous about Renee Good's murder. But then I saw one of the many videos of Pretti being shoved to the ground, being disarmed, and then just being executed. As I saw Sam Harris say in a video, it doesn't matter if Alex Pretti were the worst person in the world. He was restrained and there was no reason for ICE to use deadly force. Even Anakin Skywalker had a better excuse for executing Count Dooku.

Yeah, I'll use a Star Wars reference. Again, art is what helps us see reality. That's one way we can tell good art from bad art.

I guess that partly explains why one man dressed as Batman to protest ICE. I guess we've reached a turning point when political speakers are more likely to dress as Batman than as the Joker.

X Sonnet 1979

Where shuffling feet attract their ragged shoes
The walkers want a rubber stop to clear
The fragile floor, inviting scratching clues
To win a prize beside the puzzled bear
Who turned his head in time for pastry shows
Designed to teach a penguin how to talk
Discerning birds who wear tuxedo bows
And stamp the brutal ice to hotly walk
Away from cold, ahead to ifrit town
Partaking of the fire beer and gin
Which renders peace beneath pierrot's crown
Of lollipops and someone's stupid grin.
We play it all beneath the common house
And petty brains prostrate before the mouse.

Catherine O'Hara

Catherine O'Hara has passed away at the age of 71. She's best known for playing mothers, particularly in Home Alone and Beetlejuice. She was in the sequel to Beetlejuice just two years ago and she seemed so vital, her comedic timing and line delivery just as snappy and quick as they were back in the '80s. She was also recently on The Last of Us and Schitt's Creek, neither of which I've seen, but she was clearly very active still. So far no details seem to have been released about the sudden illness that took her life.

She was one of the many famous comedic performers of the '70s and '80s who came up through SCTV, possessing that rare combination of beauty and great comedic instinct. A lot of videos are being uploaded on YouTube of her and I was fascinated by this David Letterman interview from 1983:

The Caterer and the Lost Lamb

A guileless, innocent young Irishwoman is taken in by a kindly English serial killer in 1999's Felicia's Journey. Directed by Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, it's based on a book by Irish author William Trevor and the concept seems like a metaphor for the history of Irish/English relations. I don't know if that was intended but it's in any case an oddly sweet, understated Hitchcockian delight.

Bob Hoskins plays Joseph Hilditch, the manager of an expensive catering company. It's not hard to see some economic commentary when the portly Hopkins is shown loading up his shopping cart with groceries before going home to make a weird, elaborate plate of pork ribs in his enormous kitchen just for practice. Meanwhile, the young Irishwoman, Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), is wandering the streets looking for the young man who ran out on her. She's come to Birmingham looking for him, even though the only information he gave he was that he works at a lawnmower factory. I doubt any viewer will have any illusion that such a factory exists which makes it all the more tragic that Felicia's faith never wavers until the proof is incontrovertible. Elaine Cassidy's performance is always credible, though, and you always worry for her, especially when Hilditch takes an interest in her as we're gradually let into some of the more disturbing aspects of his personality, such as his collection of secretly recorded videos of previous girls he's cared for.

I think the Hitchcock influence is quite intentional. I was often reminded of Hitchcock's Suspicion and one shot very nearly replicates the one of Cary Grant carrying a sinister glass of milk up the stairs at the end of Suspicion. Hoskins gives a terrific performance, of course. I'm so used to him playing tough guys. Here, he affects a slow, perpetually smiling, saccharine but somehow also genuinely warm demeanour, just right to set Felicia's worried heart at ease. But he also gives nuance to a character that might otherwise have been simplistic.

The two characters are both archetypes and mostly the story succeeds from Egoyan's pacing and compositional juxtapositions. But there are some curious, haunting depths to Hilditch's character.

Felicia's Journey is available on The Criterion Channel as part of an Atom Egoyan playlist.

The Free Will of Deathclaws

Last night's new episode of Fallout was another mixed bag though I'm starting to think the negative qualities of this season are less to do with the varying abilities of the various writers but more to do with a general lack of desire or ability to give firm narrative direction to the season overall.

I liked the stuff between Lucy and her father. I liked how things were complicated by the realisation that he really was a good father. This is added to the fact that Lucy really doesn't have a good argument as to why he shouldn't deploy his brainwashing tactics to pacify the violent gangs of the wasteland. But this also means when Lucy betrays him the lack of rationale for her betrayal is conspicuous. If this were a good Star Trek episode, this would be the point where Kirk or Picard makes a great speech about free will. Fallout defaults to "Just 'cause."

Meanwhile, despite Ron Perlman being introduced as a super mutant in the previous episode, he's totally absent from this one without any explanation. It feels really odd. It's like they made this episode before the previous episode and didn't know Perlman was going to be in it. This episode also has to deal with the problem of the Deathclaws on the Vegas strip and here it's heavily implied that the monsters are somehow confined to the strip. There's no explanation or comment on how or why. It did lead to a good action sequence, though.

Although I continue to dislike the flashbacks for Cooper, I did like the backstory established for Stephanie as a Canadian who was hardened by the annexation of her country by the United States. This is a a detail from the first game and I liked that they brought it back. Sadly, it's also no longer so far fetched. I also like how it gives some complexity to Stephanie's character.

Fallout is available on Amazon Prime.

The Responsibilities of the Open Road

A man and his wife carefully and prudently map out getting away from all of life's responsibilities in 1985's Lost in America, a film co-written by, directed by, and starring Albert Brooks. At times, this comedy is more of a fascinating thought experiment than it is a funny movie but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

David (Brooks) is so sure he's about to be promoted to senior vice president of the ad agency where he works that he's already sold his house and is in the process of buying another one. When it turns out his boss wants him to move to New York from Los Angeles instead, with no change to his salary, he has a meltdown in the office. He visits his wife, Linda (Julie Hagerty) at her workplace and she's bewildered by this turn of events. Shortly thereafter, the two go over their finances and determine that they can liquidate their assets and live unemployed in a mobile home for the rest of their lives.

Back in the '80s, when the American economy wasn't the nightmare it is to-day, this probably seemed like a plausible daydream to a lot of people. Albert Brooks decided to see what it would be like if one actually did it and he thought through all the angles. When that wasn't quite exciting enough, he has Hagerty's character lose almost all their money gambling in Las Vegas.

David wants to have a life like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, a movie he refers to repeatedly, but, for people like him, it turns out to be an existence of constant anxiety. It's some really impressive work from Albert Brooks whose performance somehow manages to have the energy of a young Jack Lemmon even while he's in charge of directing duties. Julie Hagerty is a perfect foil as an unflappable but invariably supportive ditz.

Lost in America is available on The Criterion Channel.

Before the Pills

What if this life is just a computer simulation? It's not a new idea, sure, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 series, World on a Wire, is based on a 1964 novel. Fassbinder does a lot of interesting things to conjure the sense of a simulated world with minimal special effects and I like the ambiguous sense of panic undergirding the whole story.

Klaus Lowitsch plays Fred Stiller, the new technical director at an institute housing a supercomputer that hosts a complex simulation. But the truth of the matter isn't even that simple.

The production design features a lot of reflective surfaces and a pretty consistent blue/white/orange colour scheme. There are suggestions of artificiality in the dialogue and the people whom Stiller interacts with. Why do beautiful blondes keep turning up? Why is Stiller consistently compared to James Bond?

It's understandable why people would want to escape an entirely simulated existence but mainly on an instinctive level. Would the real world really be better? How could they know? At least life in the real world wouldn't just be someone else's interpretation of reality of how reality ought to be. That's the real suffocating part of it, I'd think. No-one can come to grips with reality when everything is fake. The film may be less a commentary on technology and more of a satire of a country dominated by propaganda. It's one of those things that makes me think science fiction may be the only genre capable of honestly analysing human society.

World on a Wire is available on The Criterion Channel.

Hazardous Hopping

A lone bellhop finds himself spending News Year's Eve handling four strange predicaments in 1995's Four Rooms. An anthology film consisting of four stories directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, it features the bellhop played by Tim Roth in each one. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino's is by far the best segment but the other three all hold points of interest.

In the first, a coven of witches checks into the hotel and Ted the bellhop (Tim Roth) finds himself seduced by a topless Ione Skye, the lead from Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. She looks fantastic in this movie as one of the witches. The other four instruct Ted to "make her smile" and there's an amusing moment when he tries to make funny gestures before finally getting that they mean he should have sex with her.

One of the witches is played by Madonna. It's a very small role yet somehow she won a Razzie for Worst Actress. Like Lady Gaga's nomination for Machete Kills, this feels like misogyny, or at least resentment directed at Madonna. She's hardly in the movie long enough to establish herself as a bad actress, let alone the worst actress.

The second story is the least interesting. Ted accidentally enters a room where a man (David Proval) is holding his wife, Angela (Jennifer Beals), hostage, gagged and tied up. Ted has to think fast to save himself and there are some funny moments.

The third story, from Robert Rodriguez, has Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita as a wealthy couple who leave their two children (Lana McKissack and Danny Verduzco) alone in the room, paying Ted to look in on them routinely and answer their calls. The kids are both talented and they have an amusing running gag about smelly feet that turns out to be something more sinister.

Finally, the Tarantino segment has Ted going up to the penthouse where Tarantino himself plays a big shot called Chester Rush. He's having a party with Angela (Jennifer Beals, the same character from the second segment), a guy named Norman (Paul Calderon), and an uncredited Bruce Willis playing a guy named Leo. Pacing, dialogue, and composition quickly show how Tarantino's filmmaking instincts set him apart from the average director. The plot hinges on an obscure Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode in which Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen make a bet with one of them staking his finger on a chopping block, the other his new car. The whole segment builds up to a moment when Ted might actually have to cut off Norman's finger. Tarantino builds it up beautifully with long tracking shots punctuated precisely with quick cuts at the appropriate moments.

Four Rooms is available on The Criterion Channel.

When a Swan Goes to War

How many martial artist ballerinas have there been in fiction? There was Summer Glau's character on Joss Whedon's Firefly. There was a South Korean movie on Netflix a couple years ago. My own webcomic, Boschen and Nesuko, features a ballerina martial artist. Now there's one in the John Wick universe played by Ana de Armas in 2025's Ballerina. Much like the John Wick movies, it's almost a feature length action sequence on conspicuously stylised soundstages. It's fine, as far as that goes, but somehow de Armas' character, Eve, doesn't connect as well as Wick. Maybe it's the lack of profound weariness that Wick seems burdened with throughout the series.

This movie was directed by Len Wiseman of the Underworld series and it certainly seems a perfect fit. Returning John Wick cast members include Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, and Keanu Reeves himself, and they're all good. Equally so are new characters played by Gabriel Byrne and Norman Reedus. But, sadly, Eve sucks the air out of the film. Which is odd because I really like Ana de Armas. I think the trouble is that the film is, like the John Wick movies, really asexual and sex appeal is one of de Armas' best assets. She was so memorable in No Time to Die because of it. She can't draw on that asset here and nothing else is introduced to compensate, not the peculiar weariness of Wick nor anything else. There's no hook. Maybe her being a ballerina was supposed to be it but nothing really comes of that. She's a ballerina but in her action scenes she's usually wearing some nondescript dark street clothes and all of her fighting moves just look like the usual kicking and karate chops. Maybe it would be silly to have her fighting in a tutu. But they needed to go somewhere with the concept. Maybe bladed ballet slippers? Maybe they didn't feel like they needed to try so hard when they already had the brand recognition.

Ballerina is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.

X Sonnet 1976

In avocado news, the things are green.
The skin is dark and bumpy, be afraid.
'Tis not a yam nor yet a giant bean.
Its pit a ball of life that God hath made.
For God creates the greener things at hand.
From frogs to Hulk, they owe their lives to Him.
The crowning grace enlarged a jolly man.
He sells his peas without the stain of sin.
For what is green if not a second hue?
'Tis chlorophyll imbues the tree with blood.
The light reveals a yellow mixed with blue.
Its ostrich roots invade the safety mud.
So wander forth and think of spring to-day.
That's all a goblin has betimes to say.

Sword of the Golden Man

The full list of Oscar nominees was released earlier this week. Of the movies I've seen, I'm not especially fond of any. I suspect One Battle After Another will sweep the awards. If nothing else, Teyana Taylor is a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress. And she was good in the movie, the stuff between her and Sean Penn was the best part of the movie. And I'm glad the Oscar category is still called "actress" instead of "female actor" like the Golden Globes. Where are the people who used to be angry about "female" being somehow a sexist term? I suppose in a couple years it'll be "woman or girl actor". Whatever sounds the most inelegant, the most like a crude AI translation.

The Oscars, as usual, are all about politics, both Hollywood's internal politics and U.S. politics at large. One Battle After Another arrived just as ICE was solidifying its reputation as America's less competent version of the Gestapo. Everyone's gonna feel good sticking it to them, even if it is ultimately an impotent gesture. Maybe this year someone will make a really good movie about how fucked up the ICE situation is. At any rate, I'm sure more than a few people will try.

I'm not surprised Kokuho wasn't nominated for Best International Picture, though it did pick up a nomination for Best Makeup. I think the film was in part crafted specifically with the intention of getting international awards attention but the makers of the film lacked an understanding of the politics of American and European cinema. Japan previously won Best International Feature Film with 2021's Drive My Car, which fit the mould much better with its story from the iconoclast Murakami Haruki and featuring an ambiguous relationship between a man and a younger woman. At its heart, Kokuho is a very conservative film.

I think Frankenstein has a solid chance at winning Costume Design and Production Design but I don't think its screenplay has received more than polite affection.

The Demise of Josie Packard

I'm getting into the final episodes of season two in my latest Twin Peaks re-watch. Gordon Cole, the FBI chief played by David Lynch, has returned which I think also signalled a return of David Lynch's creative presence, though he wouldn't direct another episode until the final episode of the season.

This also follows from the death of Josie Packard, a mysterious character whom one assumes has importance to the series as a whole because she's the first character we see in the first interior shot after the opening credits in the first episode. She's gazing into a mirror wistfully. The common interpretation of this scene is that it's an introduction of the show's preoccupation with doubles, with people who have split personalities, multiple personae. After Josie's death, Harry, who was in love with Josie, has a conversation with Catherine in an episode co-written by series co-creator Mark Frost. I feel like Catherine's analysis of Josie may be close to the concept Lynch and Frost discussed for her when originally creating her character.

HARRY: What made her do the things she did? What was she after?

CATHERINE: I've been asking myself a lot of the same things.

HARRY: Catherine. I need to understand.

CATHERINE: Well, I think that, early in her life, she must have learned a lesson that she could survive by being what other people wanted to see, by showing them that. Whatever was left of her private self she may never have shown to anyone.

HARRY: So all the stories, the lies were--

CATHERINE: Well, who knows. They may not have seemed untrue to her. What she needed to believe was always shifting to suit the moment. In spite of all the things she tried to do to me and my family I find it curiously hard to hate her for it.

That certainly fits with the character we saw throughout the series and with actress Joan Chen's performance. I feel like every time she asked Lynch or Frost for her motivation for any given scene she must have been told, "She's afraid." Almost every scene of dialogue she had after answering questions about Laura was her pleading with someone. It makes sense that the demoniac character of Bob appears to drag her into the underworld. Yet at the same time her compulsive duplicity gives her a strange form of innocence, maybe the innocence of a shark who doesn't stop to wonder why she can't stop swimming.

Back to Not Changing

Last night's new Fallout was pretty good, I'm relieved to say. It would've been a lot better if they hadn't introduced Deathclaws rampaging throughout the town a few episodes earlier because now it doesn't make sense that they're totally absent from the streets of New Vegas. The episode also featured some of the pointless flashbacks I don't like. But the stuff that was good was really good.

We find Cooper (Walton Goggins) still impaled on a pole in the street that Lucy (Ella Purnell) had shoved him onto with a powerfist. I liked how people just walk by him indifferently. Who would want to get involved with the noseless ghoul struggling for his life and sanity?

Meanwhile, Lucy has a moral quandary when she wakes up in her father's (Kyle MacLachlan) home base. He gives her a pretty vivid demonstration of why lobotomising everyone is a viable path to peace.

And, of course, I was really pleased to see Ron Perlman finally show up. Perlman was a glaring absence from season one. He had been in every major Fallout game since the first one came out in 1997, typically providing the narration for the introduction and epilogue. Here's the one from the first game:

It's kind of a shame the show has changed the nuclear war from being one between different countries over resources to some kind of convoluted internal U.S. conspiracy. Trump unabashedly going after Venezuela and Greenland for their resources is both apocalyptic and cartoonish, the kind of juxtaposition of enthusiastic stupidity and horror the distinguished the tone of much of the Fallout games. However, the plot in the Vault in last night's episode kind of went back to that concept as the denizens foolishly squander their remaining water supply on an inbred support stack club. It hit just the right point between absurd and undeniably plausible.

Fallout is available on Amazon Prime.

The Disappearance of Neil Gaiman

I was going through my iPod a few days ago and came across Where's Neil When You Need Him?, a 2006 album featuring various singers and groups performing songs in tribute to the works of Neil Gaiman. Nowadays, perhaps the answer would be, "Why would we need him?" At least, certainly that would be the answer on Reddit forums formerly dedicated to him. But where is he? This month marks one year since the last time Gaiman released any public statement aside from court filings. His once prolific social media presence is gone.

Am I the only one who finds this creepy? Leaving aside for a moment whether you consider the allegations against him to be true (they seem flimsy at best to me), isn't it weird that a guy one day had a highly vocal and passionate fanbase and over the course of a very short time was abandoned by them? It seems like a lot has been devoted to talking about how one should be wary of the sense of personal connexion to a famous creator. Maybe the famous creator ought to be just as wary of a fanbase. Maybe it's just another indicator of an increasingly shallow culture. I'm not sure.

I saw people who once expressed their deep, emotional connexion to Neil's work just rhetorically wipe their hands of him. It's like in The Court Jester when the character is hypnotised to change personalities at the snap of a finger. Or the clones in Revenge of the Sith turning against the Jedi when triggered by "Order 66". Could this be psy-ops? Mass brain washing? Surely that's crazy. But is there an angle from which this doesn't look crazy?

Storms Remembered

I used to love watching Ang Lee movies constantly. Around 25 years ago, if I wanted a guaranteed good time, I'd pop in Eat Drink Man Woman or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So it's weird that it's been so long since I watched one. The Criterion Channel has had 1997's The Ice Storm online for a couple months and I started watching it again and was amazed how I kind of forgot about this movie that I used to watch repeatedly. It's a Thanksgiving movie and I never even think of it when Thanksgiving rolls around. It's weird.

The last Ang Lee movie I really got excited for was Lust, Caution, which was a decent movie and one I ought to watch again since I've been reading about that period in Japanese history, it would be nice to get the Chinese perspective as well on Japan's occupation of Manchuria. But after Lust, Caution, Life of Pi was just okay and then I didn't even feel interested in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man. I have no idea why.

I'd forgotten how funny The Ice Storm is. Almost every scene concludes with an excellent punchline of some kind, which is strange because when one thinks of it, whether one has seen it or not, one tends to think of it as a grim family tragedy, which it is as well. But it's also really funny. My favourite character is Sigourney Weaver's character, Janey. Of all the confused and conflicted characters, she knows exactly what she wants and has little patience for all these crazy people. She's having an affair with Kevin Kline's character and tells him bluntly she already has a husband and doesn't want another one when he starts trying to chat with her after sex.

I love her reaction in this scene when he tries to talk about his wife suspecting their affair. Her facial expression clearly says, "Why are you even talking?"

Janey's all physical and is impatient she has to put up with this world of abstract thought and morals. My favourite part is when she catches Christina Ricci's fourteen year old character exposing herself to her son. So she pulls her aside and babbles about how her body's a temple and then goes on to a vague story about kids in ancient tribes being sent off into the woods to "learn a thing or two."

This ensemble movie kind of sits at a junction of Hollywood history. It has these two '80s stars, Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, and then a bunch of up-and-comers--Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Katey Holmes. And they're all good in it.

The Ice Storm is available on The Criterion Channel.

Cutting Two Ways

Here's an artefact for you. 2013's Machete Kill, a movie starring Mexican Americans and future Trump supporters that vigorously advocates for illegal Mexican immigrants to the U.S. Robert Rodriguez directed this sequel to his 2010 film Machete as more of an exploitation parody than its more sincere predecessor. It's pretty funny, and it's a lot more enjoyable than its 29% Rotten Tomatoes score suggests.

The divergence in critical reception between the first and second film is likely explained by the presence of Mel Gibson in the second as the villain. The presence of liberal darling Lady Gaga in a minor role was not enough counterbalance. She appears in only a few scenes but still earned a Golden Raspberry nomination, which is hard not to see as politically or misogynistically motivated, considering how well she's distinguished herself as an actress in the years since. I call her a liberal darling but, as a practicing Catholic, I suspect Gaga has more than a few conservative ideals.

Once again, the film stars Danny Trejo as the title character, the badass freedom fighter Machete. The first Machete from 2010 was the first time I ever heard of ICE. The sequel finds Machete working with Jessica Alba as a rogue ICE agent and we join the two ambushing a bunch of military, who ironically look more like ICE to-day. This movie was made three years before Trump was first elected to office and it's almost difficult to imagine how different life was. The film features Charlie Sheen (credited by his birth name, "Carlos Estevez") as a president who answers the phone when he's in bed with three women. This was back when people liked to fantasise about the president being a rule breaking wild man. To borrow a Morrissey lyric, "That joke isn't funny anymore, it's too close to home and too near the bone."

A recurrent line in the film is "Justice and the law aren't always the same thing." In the movie, this justifies Machete doing all kinds of crazy things to get a cartel boss with his heart wired to a nuclear weapon across the Mexican border but it has the clear real world implication for illegal Mexican immigrants. But some might use the phrase to justify the ICE officer who shot a woman in the face. Eerily, Machete Kills features a few instances of women being shot in the face, including Jessica Alba in that opening scene.

But I said this movie was funny, didn't I? Just like the fake trailer from Grindhouse that served as impetus for these films, the concept of every scene seems to be Rodriguez trying to find something to do that's crazier than you'd expect. The first film had a memorable scene with Machete using a man's entrails, this one has Machete throw an adversary's intestines into helicopter blades. Sofia Vergara heads a brothel and brandishes a bra with gatling gun nipples, although there's no nudity in this film, fitting more of the exploitation parody tone than a straightforward exploitation film. One scene in which Trejo has sex with Amber Heard features a caption telling viewers to put on their 3D glasses just as she's taking off her dress and the screen transforms into meaningless, distorted colours.

This was a couple years before Heard married Johnny Depp and it's certainly not hard to see what he saw in her. The film also has Elon Musk in a cameo, a man whom Heard dated after she broke up with Depp, though they don't share a scene.

There are a lot of big names in this film. Also present are Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Michelle Rodriguez, and Antonio Banderas.

Machete Kills is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.

Milk Drinkers

Milkfed is a Japanese brand, despite the fact that they seem to exclusively feature Caucasian models in their advertisements (a common thing in Japan). At first I thought its name was a reflection of Japan's preoccupation with milk but to-day I learned the brand was launched in the mid-90s by none other than Sofia Coppola.

"What do you mean, 'Japan's preoccupation with milk'?" you may ask.

This is one of the enduring mysteries of Japan for me. Before I came here, I figured living in Japan would be really convenient for me as someone who doesn't drink milk. I'd heard most people in eastern Asia were lactose intolerant. Maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans will remember the line from season seven when the Chinese girl thought Giles was trying to kill her by feeding her ice cream. That would be an awfully inefficient method of murder, wouldn't it?

Anyway, I got here and found that not only did people drink milk but the kids at school had to drink milk and all the teachers apparently drank it too, with the school lunch. I've never been able to get a satisfying answer as to "why". One woman I asked a couple years ago gave me the same answer you'll get if you google it, which is that it was heavily promoted after World War II as a source of nutrition for a malnourished populace and retained a reputation as an exceptionally healthy beverage ever since. I didn't feel like this was enough of an explanation for people to continue drinking it despite the bloating and gas it must cause. I suspect the schools, as government institutions, enforce milk drinking because an industry was built up around it in the mid 20th century and it needs money to survive. And consumers aren't voluntarily buying it in sufficient quantities.

I didn't actually know if I was lactose intolerant, just that at some point milk and many milk products started making me gassy and, in many cases, gave me diarrhea. My mother thought I actually had irritable bowel syndrome and, it's true, other things also set me off. So when I first came to Japan, I decided to really test myself and drank the milk with the school lunch. Mostly, I was fine but there were times when I had to run for the restroom because I would defecate uncontrollably after consuming milk. Obviously this was inconvenient when there were two classes scheduled after lunchtime. I also tend to participate in club activities after school and on one occasion I was with an English club I was very fond of and they were about to present me with a Christmas present when I realised I had to make an urgent trip to the restroom. "Really, now?" said the Japanese teacher. I had to run down all three storeys to the teachers' restroom. The wonderful students kindly waited for me.

After a couple more inconvenient and embarrassing incidents, I realised I had to stop drinking milk. At first I quietly put the little carton of milk back into the box at lunchtime. Someone from the lunch staff would ask "Who didn't drink their milk?" I started telling them that I couldn't drink it anymore. I didn't expect it to amount to much but I was astonished to find it was treated as a very serious issue. People who'd previously been friendly to me became hostile. One vice principal remarked that I was clearly not a real teacher, a favourite bullying tactic among a lot of the staff I've worked with. Some people who liked me would occasionally visibly choose not to drink their milk in solidarity, as mirroring behaviour is a common form of camaraderie in Japanese culture. In the past year, there hasn't been much fuss about my abstaining from milk drinking but recently someone had been quietly putting milk on my lunch tray. I didn't pay it much mind and just took it off my tray. The lady on the lunch staff asked me if I was unable to drink milk, to which I said yes. The next day the main dish on the lunch menu consisted of curried rice. I didn't realise at the time that Japanese curry typically contains milk because most recipes I see online call for cocoanut milk, which is how I always made curry back in the U.S. So I was surprised when I had some painful gas after lunch before realising what had happened. No-one had warned me.

Is this all just because milk is seen as nutritious? Is it all just because of the dairy lobby? I feel like this is one of the mysteries I may never get to the bottom of.

Anyway, the past few days I see everyone online has been talking about David Lynch due to his recent birthday and the anniversary of his death. I have been watching a lot of Lynch's Twin Peaks this weekend so here's a milk related Twin Peaks clip for you:

X Sonnet 1975

A commanding milk is marching forth to throats.
No year or age can pass without the stream.
The pearly fluid floats the sickly boats.
From mighty udders flows the costly cream.
The bev'rage choice befits an evil bot.
The sort who leads a crew to acid blood.
For every chest the bursting creatures got
The cow would chew a lump of making cud.
A rain of white obliterates the night.
An endless void became a shapeless pale.
The bane of guts would obfuscate a right.
The precious stuff has filled another pail.
'Twas once for only bovine babies meant.
'Tis now to helpless humans daily sent.

By Popular Demand

So Kathleen Kennedy has officially stepped down as head of Lucasfilm after years of rumours that she would and arguments that she should of varying degrees of civility. The woman's work with Lucas and Spielberg goes back to the original, classic films but there are numerous articles and videos that demonstrate how she was neither very interested in or had much understanding of Star Wars.

I can't help dwelling on one thing George Lucas says in the video and how eerily prescient it seems now:

It's about good and evil in us . . . as well as our institutions. So--and the idea that some of us think we're really great people but in the real world we're not. We're terrible people . . . you run your life in a very selfish way and you think you're doing good when you're actually not. And, at the same time, it's about how do democracies turn back into dictatorships. Why do people who have the power and the freedom turn it over to someone who's gonna take it away from them. It happens through history forever and ever and . . . All Star Wars is about updating that idea and saying, "Watch out," because there are people out there who don't play by the rules and if you're not careful you're going to lose all your freedom. At the same time, those people who may not play by the rules--because they're selfish and greedy--turn themselves into evil people who don't care about other people.

Say what you will about Lucas' writing, his insight is undeniable and Kennedy never exhibited anything like that. There's an interesting paradox in Lucas' statement, by the way. He talks about people losing their freedom because they don't play by the rules. Doesn't freedom mean having the option not to play by the rules? And if you feel bound by the rules, are you truly free? It's easy to see the danger of people not playing by the rules when Trump and ICE routinely break laws but, on the other hand, I don't support the deportation of everyone who came to the U.S. illegally, i.e. by breaking the rules. Having the freedom to choose to follow a truly ethical code is what allows someone to realise their own humanity, to meaningfully engage with reality.

Anyway, Kennedy's being replaced as head of Lucasfilm by Dave Filoni. I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe if the reception to Ahsoka taught him never to try writing fiction again he can be someone who chooses talent better than Kennedy did. I doubt it. We may be in for a two hour movie of Rosario Dawson slowly reading horoscopes.

If I were in his place, I'd get the writers from Andor to do a series about Imperials during the original trilogy. That Andor and Rogue One were the best things to come out of Disney Star Wars is plain to everyone. But who knows, maybe that Starfighter movie will be good.

Never Bet Your Booze

A drunken Shakespearan actor stumbles into Italy in Federico Fellini's 1968 short film Toby Dammit. Very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", it serves as a nice companion piece to Fellini's 8 1/2, which was about a director, and Dolce Vita, which was about a paparazzo. This movie covers the actor's perspective with Terence Stamp playing the title character, a man succumbing to alcoholism and in the midst of a media blitz. It's delirious and unnerving.

From the beginning, when we meet Toby on the plane, to when he's stumbling out into the airport, Fellini cuts from one aggressive zoom to another as various bizarre and/or eager objects and faces seem to rush at Toby. He also starts to have visions of a mischievous girl, drawing him towards a grim fate.

Toby Dammit was part of an anthology film that also included segments by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim. For some reason, The Criterion Channel is showing Toby Dammit in isolation. I've seen the Roger Vadim segment, Metzengerstein, at some point but not William Wilson, the Louis Malle story. I strongly suspect Fellini's is the best of the three, though. It's a vigorous assault of ingenious filmmaking.

Fall In, Fall Out

Even though I knew this week's Fallout wouldn't be as good as last week's, I was still looking forward to it. That goes to show how good last week's was. Sadly, the writer on this week's, Owen Ellickson, is no Jane Espenson. But the episode had some things I liked.

Last week ended with a cliffhanger, Lucy and Cooper staring down a Deathclaw on the Las Vegas strip. Although the Deathclaw had just been shown tearing through the side of a building, Lucy and Cooper somehow escape by dodging behind a wall of scrap. After a flashback, we see them hanging out in a market area and Cooper gets a drink at the bar where the bartender opines about the Deathclaws being just another gang running things. So . . . are they not wild beasts? Do they have human intelligence? Why did that one tear through the side of a building then?

The episode also annoyingly brings back some random characters from season one, an old woman and a young hipster guy. What are the odds of the hipster guy turning up in Vegas around the same time as our main characters? This is the kind of writing that makes a world seem too small. Also, I just didn't like this character. He doesn't fit in the Fallout universe, he belongs at a craft brewery in a gentrified neighbourhood.

I did like the scene in which Lucy has a mishap with her gun in the shop. Her line in which she wonders who she is had a kind of an Alice in Wonderland quality. Ellickson previously wrote for The Office so his dialogue for the Vault people seemed fitting enough.

Fallout is available on Amazon Prime.

Twelve Plus Seven

I dozed a bit while watching the 1970 version of Twelfth Night with Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson, though the twelfth day of Christmas was last week. It's on YouTube now, on the The Shakespeare Network, embedded above. I've already written about it once, back in 2018, when I watched it on Amazon Prime where it was labelled as a 1969 production. I wonder who's right.

Guinness is so good as the hypocrite Puritan. It's a shame he's not so widely remembered for his comedic talent. It's hard to imagine anyone playing Sir Toby better than Ralph Richardson, either, the kind of sadistic Falstaff. As I said in my 2018 review, Malvolio, Guinness' character, is an ass but he doesn't deserve the treatment Sir Toby dishes out for him. It kind of reminds me of horror movie morality in which someone receives punishment disproportionate to their sin, like the girl who sleeps around and gets murdered for it. I wonder if someone could reinterpret Twelfth Night as a horror movie. Imagine Malvolio's love for Olivia treated as something sad and tender while Sir Toby and his cohorts are the vicious yokels from The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I'd be interested in seeing such an interpretation. In any case, I think it's clear why Sir Toby never inspired the affection Falstaff received.

The 4k version of this Twelfth Night production also looks much better than the one on Amazon Prime did. Why is free stuff so often superior these days?

The Veil of the Murderess

Of course I've been watching Twin Peaks again and last night I came to the episode directed by Diane Keaton from February 9th, 1991. Diane Keaton died in October last year and, as I soon learned, Annette McCarthy died in 2023. McCarthy played Evelyn, the femme fatale character who tries to frame James for the murder of her husband. McCarthy was 64 when she died. Her birthday was April 12, one day after mine. She retired from acting in the early 2000s and became "an executive chef" specialising in Italian cuisine. This role on Twin Peaks was the highest profile role in her career.

And I feel relatively assured in saying it's the role most Twin Peaks fans hate the most. I certainly have always maintained this subplot was the lowest point of the lowest segment of Twin Peaks as a whole. After the groundbreaking first season and the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder, a film noir pastiche was certainly not an out of the way idea, but it was executed without any of the effective weirdness David Lynch is known for and generally feels like a cheap late night Showtime movie. Which is no surprise considering David Lynch was notoriously absent for most of season two, although McCarthy's Wikipedia page says that Lynch personally cast her.

All that considered, I have to retroactively admire how evidently Diane Keaton really tried to make something of Evelyn. Her segments of the episode suddenly feel very much anchored in her point of view beginning with an extreme closeup of her feet in black heels and fishnet stockings that slowly tracks up to an extreme closeup of her veiled face. And yes, as I said recently in another review, you can always tell when the director is an actor if there are lots and lots of closeups. There are lots of closeups of Evelyn, not just of her face but also of her body, particularly her legs. I wondered if they would seem more exploitative if I didn't know a woman had directed the episode. It's kind of impossible to know but in any case the shots successfully convey a sense of entrapment, like Evelyn is encased in her funeral garb much as she's trapped in the murder scheme. Keaton also likes to overlay slow motion footage on other footage, in Evelyn's case, footage of her distant, numb expression behind the funeral veil seems to dominate her in other scenes, as though she yearns to escape her own coldness.

The episode also features the conclusion of the plot about Ben Horne believing he was Robert E. Lee and Doctor Jacoby pretending to be Ulysses S. Grant in order to support the fantasy. That's something you couldn't do on television to-day. It's also interesting because, with the two original cast members of West Side Story, Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn, in the roles, it's the most Twin Peaks actually felt like a reunion for them.

Anyway, I expect to be tired of watching Twin Peaks at some point in the 2050s.