Under a Different Light

As traditional patterns of upbringing break down, and kids are moved along according to everyone's instincts, it's possible for a young person's development to follow an untraditional path that is tragic for its consequences but also completely natural and a revelation about human nature. A girl named Vic in 2015's Bande de Filles (literally "Gang of Girls", released in English speaking countries as "Girlhood") is one such misfit. Director Celine Sciamma with this film may be the heiress to Nicholas Ray, Karidja Toure as Vic the heiress to James Dean or Marlon Brando in this modern troubled youth and gang film that nicely explores the life of a young woman who can't conform to the gender norms that are breaking down even as people are still shamed and punished for them.

The film opens with a scene that neatly presents this new world--teenage girls playing American style football. And not as a novelty, these young women are really into it, the victors gleefully celebrating. Marieme, who later becomes known as Vic, is not allowed to continue in this life, however, as flunking the same year three times means she's not allowed to continue on to high school. It's the football for which she's received all the positive reinforcement but it's being kicked out of school that brings her so much shame she won't admit to it at home.

So she spends the time she was supposed to be spending at school hanging out with other young people in a similar situation and eventually joins a gang. There are four of them, and one of them mentions to Marieme, whom they rename Vic, that there had been another fourth member who was forced to leave the gang because she got pregnant. These gangs apparently limit themselves to four members but also, crucially, we learn from this that having a baby precludes women from membership.

Vic lives with her mother, two little sisters, and her physically abusive older brother. Her mother doesn't have much time at home, her work as a cleaning women, with which Vic sometimes assists, keeps her busy so mostly Vic's brother is in charge. When he hears that Vic has beaten up another girl in a one on one fight, the two bond over football video games. When he finds out she had sex with a guy, he calls her a slut and he beats her.

Who knows how he'd react if he'd known how that sex went down, in which Vic was clearly the dominant partner, ordering her boyfriend to strip after she'd won the fight as though he was her prize. The film presents this pattern again and again--Vic being rewarded for transgressing gender norms and then being punished at the same time.

Vic might be transgender--towards the end of the film she begins to dress more like a man but the impression I had was more that she simply had a different idea of what it means to be a woman than the oddly hovering cultural prescription. She and the other members of her gang buy clothes and try them on with each other, dancing and lip syncing to Rihanna. It's not a case of someone abjuring everything pertaining to one gender and adopting the other, Vic finds herself drawn to aspects of both and the people around her encourage her. There emerges a plain practical problem in this as it essentially leaves her without a future as she's unable to accept or is barred from all opportunities and social acceptance. But the film doesn't present Vic as simply a product of her environment, rather she is a particular sort of person who was allowed to blossom in this environment.

Twitter Sonnet #820

Detected metal stuck to arms of glass.
American revisions grasp at beams.
The counterfeit column of tenners passed
The toll inspector's spectacle and steams.
A green and yellow funnel elephant
Mistook the Turkish bath for marshmallow.
If Mortensen revised the doc extant
No harvest goddess fears a field fallow.
Tornado napkin DNA resolved.
An errant sauce returned as pizza ghost.
A fact and story tipped the sphere revolved.
Inured to menus all resist the host.
The rains in lands of plastic halt for heat.
In gusts of spirit gowns there burned the peat.

From the Ashes

I liked the concept of last night's Ash vs. Evil Dead a lot more than the execution. Considering all the insanity with guns that's gone down in the past few years in the U.S., the thought of a redneck militia being overrun by Deadites and mocked by Ash is pretty appealing. The idea of one woman rising from the flames (though with an obvious body double for the nudity) and another actually flirting back with Ash are also both appealing. It's only a shame the actual writing was so bad, particularly the dialogue.

The dialogue in the opening scene was just one clunker after another. There was Kelly's weird joke about how all the blood that's been shed is to keep the country "moist" and then Ash lying about looking at Amanda's cleavage. Suddenly Ash is sheepish? He isn't at any other time in even this episode.

Maybe the most surprising thing is that two of the three writers on this episode were Dominic Dierkes, whose script for the second episode I liked, and Ivan Raimi. Maybe it was Raimi and Dierkes who did the concept and Sean Clements did the dialogue.

I did like this scene where Kelly and Pablo confront a gas mask Deadite and Kelly discovers a machine gun isn't as easy to just pick up and use as the movies make it look.

I've spent almost the entire day colouring comic to-day. This seems like it used to go faster. I went out to finally do some Christmas shopping at around noon only to realise when I got to the mall I'd forgotten my wallet. So I had to come back home and didn't have time to go back out again. I miss time.

Jobs for Voices

Sometimes Doctor Who doesn't need to make sense, as we learned last week. Last night I listened to the 2006 Seventh Doctor audio play Night Thoughts which made even less sense than last week's television finale. But it had some very nice atmosphere, working a sort of creaky gothic time travel vibe.

The Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex find themselves on an island on Earth some time in the future where a few people have gathered to do experiments. There's a little girl voiced very unconvincingly by a grown woman and there's some kind of invisible beast that records people and plays back the recordings when it attacks, particularly a recording it takes of the Doctor saying, "Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly." The explanation for this beast's existence, depending on some crude time travel device that sends recorded voices through time, not only doesn't make sense, it changes the nature of the monster after the explanation is given.

I get the feeling that a lot of times the actors don't read the script before performing in these audio plays. Bernard Kay as Major Dickens here seemed to be deciding whether or not he was supposed to be a broad villain type while he was in the middle of reading his lines. As he progressed from saying he killed someone, to saying it was an accident, to saying he was trying to save the person, back to saying he killed them on purpose, he seemed to be searching for the right pitch of hysteria.

It's not as bad as a Fifth Doctor story I had to stop listening to a couple weeks ago. Peter Davison and the actor who plays Turlough, Mark Strickson, kept getting their lines wrong. Maybe I'm detecting a lack of enthusiasm on everyone's parts because this was around the time the show had been revived on television.

Speaking of resurrected television series, you may have heard Mystery Science Theatre 3000 surpassed its goal, raising 5.7 million dollars on Kickstarter, breaking the record set by Veronica Mars. Hopefully it'll have more of a lasting impact than the Veronica Mars Kickstarter, too.

I still really don't get the logic of getting a whole new cast. Joel Hodgson points to the ever changing cast of Saturday Night Live but generally when people leave Saturday Night Live they do so voluntarily, or if they're let go it's reasons specific to the individual actor. Although all old cast members have been pretty gracious, and Rifftrax even offered a free short as a reward to backers, Bill Corbett, the second voice of Crow, couldn't resist a catty tweet. When someone asked if he'd be returning as Crow, he replied: "Doesn't look like it. Seems @TraceBeaulieu [the original voice of Crow] and I are way too old to do puppet voices."

I'm not familiar with the comedians who are taking the roles of Tom Servo and Crow in the new season. I like Felicia Day and Patton Oswald, who are playing the new mad scientists, and the diverse array of comedic talents--from Jerry Seinfeld to Dan Harmon to Robert Lopez, co-writer of the songs for Frozen--is impressive and I'd be surprised if the result wasn't something very funny. But I suspect it won't have the same flavour that most of the Kickstarter backers long for. There was something unique about the rapport the actors had on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the kind of thing you get when it's a whole team that emerged from the same theatre or comedy scene, in this case Minnesota. There was the sense of an isolated universe that, despite its later influence, played by a different matrix of comedic sensibility than projects coming out of L.A. or New York or Chicago. For example, many viewers have remarked on how odd it was that a show about people making fun of movies come across as starring particularly nice people. More than anything, it had the sense of familiarity, like these were a bunch of men and women from not only the same neighbourhood but maybe the same house.

Well, we'll see what happens.

The Inscription of Action

A beautiful, still world inhabited by beautiful, still people. Hou Hsiao-Hsien gives us this in 2015's The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘), a martial arts film with a very simple, conventional plot that never becomes half as interesting as its visuals are intensely beautiful.

Last year, The Grand Budapest Hotel's use of 4:3 aspect ratio reminded me of Yasujiro Ozu, a director to whom many have compared Wes Anderson. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's acclaimed new film is entirely in 4:3 and reminds me even more of Ozu. I didn't even remember right away that I'd seen another Hsiao-Hsien film, a Japanese production called Cafe Lumiere, that was created explicitly as a tribute to Ozu.

Hsiao-Hsien, unlike Ozu, does move his camera sometimes but he loves long times where the camera doesn't move much. In fact, he loves much longer takes than Ozu. Hsiao-Hsien also likes much higher contrast between light and dark than Ozu. The Assassin's first few minutes are in black and white as we watch the beautiful young woman, Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), learning the assassin trade from a nun-like mistress.

After Nie Yinniang fails to fulfil a contract killing because she didn't want to kill the father of a little boy, the film switches to colour but a colour that's still very high contrast in its light and shadow. It reminded me of early Technicolor films where cinematographers had not adjusted to the colour camera's need for much greater light.

I rather wish Hsiao-Hsien had taken another page from Ozu's book and filled his movie with characters rather than occasionally shifting mannequins. Of course, with Nie Yinniang it makes sense that she almost always has the same blank expression--she's supposed to have suppressed her feelings entirely for her job. But everyone in the film takes long, deliberately artificial pauses. So this story of a girl trained to be an assassin nun who finds herself wanting to go back to her family ultimately doesn't have time to become more complex even than Black Widow's plot from the last Avengers movie. The Assassin is really more animated coffee table book than movie. But it is really pretty.

Twitter Sonnet #819

A saddened helmet popped the screenless tube.
Implacable the vacuum steals the crumbs.
Dehydrated pancakes aren't fixed with lube.
To water grain and salt at last succumbs.
The ceiling leaks at inopportune times.
From light there came the drips of pipes or bath.
Will maintenance arrive ere water climbs?
So now there's this in peaceful slumbers path.
Diverting cards reset the balanced well.
A talk descends from modern hat displays.
No pillar, chain, or hair withstood but fell.
A Ganymede sent sex along relays.
Dilithium pig boulders move too slow.
Decoding blank regurgitation flow.

"Rage! Blow! You Cataracts and Hurricanoes, Spout!"

I told Manny, the maintenance guy at my apartment building, that I'm starting to really think I'm cursed. It's now three years in a row I've suddenly found water raining down from my ceiling. And every time it's been for a different reason. Last time it was because my upstairs neighbour had dropped a fish tank. Last night, while I was inking and my rice was cooking, two hours before I needed to go to bed to get up early this morning, It started coming down from the light in the centre of my bathroom ceiling.

I was strangely calm, even though I had no idea how I was going to stop the water from flooding the floor and meaning I was going to have to get my floor torn out as well as my ceiling. It's become kind of routine. I did manage to save the floor, though, by re-purposing my kitchen trash can. I then went upstairs to knock on my neighbour's door to notify them they've lost another fish tank or their bathtub's overflowing, hoping it wasn't because someone had lost consciousness in the shower. But there was no-one home or at least no-one was answering the door. So I called the number for my apartment building management which after two prolonged electronic messages I finally got to the "emergency maintenance" voice mail. I left a brief description of what was going on, I waited and finished making dinner while listening to steady drips and wondering how long I was going to be without a bathroom. I finally received a call back fifteen minutes later to inform me I'd called the wrong Pacific Bay Club--the name of my apartment building company. Apparently there's also one in Arizona, which was surprising given, and my geography is admittedly fuzzy, I'm pretty sure there's not a Pacific Bay in Arizona.

So I went through the same routine with the correct number and Manny showed up. He's a really nice guy and I was sorry to have pulled him in during his off hours. Turns out the culprit is a burst pipe this time and I'm going to have to have a dehumidifier in my apartment for at least four days. I have this bad feeling it's going to be worse than that. At least I'm going to have a bathroom, albeit no shower, for now. If someone had asked me "What would be the worst time for this to happen?" this weekend might have been high on the list since I have to work on final papers and projects for school. I had planned to spend all day Friday on my twelve page paper for Star Trek class.

We watched an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in class yesterday, the second we've watched overall and therefore the second I've seen this decade. The first one, "Stigma", wasn't bad, about how Vulcan mind melds were once taboo and had a communicable disease. The second one, the one from yesterday, wasn't great, but it had Peter Weller. Called "Demons", from the final season, it clearly reflected the vastly reduced budget the show was working with. It had one of the worst faux outdoor sound stages I've seen in any Star Trek series--including the original series. Weller played the leader of a Nativist movement that wants to kick all aliens off of Earth and I remarked that it seemed like Peter Weller was actually playing Donald Trump. The professor and several students concurred.

To-day in John Milton class, the professor began talking about Trump while discussing Samson Agonistes and how it provides insight into the mentality of terrorists. The professor unabashedly referred to Trump and the tone of his and his followers' rhetoric as fascistic, going so far as to invoke 1930s Germany. I've been surprised how comfortably people have been invoking Nazi Germany the past few days in discussing Trump but, for once, it is certainly a fair cop. When you talk about expelling an whole group of people from the country for their religion, you're going to sound like Hitler in a rather significant way. There are a lot of differences, of course--I don't think Hitler and his anti-Semitic rhetoric met with the kind of ridicule in Germany that Trump is the butt of to-day. And yet the reason Trump is frightening is because of how well he does in polls. It points again to the disconnect between two ideologies in the U.S. Liberals like me are generally surprised when they hear Trump has so many supporters. Hell, prominent conservatives are surprised and repulsed. How can so many people live in the same country and be so distant from each other? It's like two gorillas in a room completely unaware of each other's existence.

Well, on the subject of politics, there's video now on YouTube of a performance of scenes from Henry IV: Part One I took part in for my Shakespeare class. Our group appointed a director, Sam (who plays Worcester), who chose the modern day setting of Washington D.C. I prefer setting Shakespeare plays in the time and place Shakespeare intended but I guess it would have been unfair to ask everyone to buy elaborate costumes. Anyway, I chose the play and edited the script so I didn't want to tyrannise creative decisions from there. I play King Henry IV--I turn up at around 8:50 though you can hear my voice at the beginning because I decided to give a brief introduction filling people in on the events of Richard II, the play to which Henry IV is essentially a sequel. The video is courtesy of the guy who played Hal, whose name is Chris, or rather his girlfriend, I think she took it with her phone. You can see my camera in the upper right running out of battery in the hands of another student, Richard, who kindly agreed to record for me. There were three cameras total on the performance and only Chris' girlfriend's phone had the battery for it.

I managed to memorise my lines pretty quickly (much to my surprise) in a couple of hour long sessions alone several weeks in advance. After this, I compulsively repeated them to myself over and over in quiet moments, trying out different readings. I may never get the king's tirade to his son out of my head. Falstaff (played by a guy named Shannon) is still my favourite character but this experience made me appreciate the king a bit more.

Fingers of Light Between the Bars

What if prison makes criminals rather than reforms them? Even in the case of a beautiful, pure, innocent girl? 1950's Caged presents a slightly improbable scenario but with enough credibility to make its noir existential downward spiral effective. It's aided in no small part by its actresses.

Eleanor Parker plays Marie, a nineteen year old girl who's bewildered and terrified when she's brought to prison. She was convicted as an accessory to armed robbery because she tried to stop a store owner from killing her husband when he stole forty dollars--a few dollars less, one prison employee remarks, and it wouldn't have been a felony and Marie wouldn't have gotten one to forty. Of course, it seems really improbable that a judge and jury would convict the wide eyed little Marie but, okay, it's just likely enough for us to go with it. Parker doesn't quite seem nineteen--she was twenty eight at the time--and her wide eyed shock at her circumstances has more to do with 1940s ideals about youth than actual youth. But she gets a lot better as the film progresses and the more corrupted she gets the more realistic she seems.

Agnes Moorehead is the best actress in the movie. She plays Ruth Benton, the woman in charge of the prison who's frustrated in her endeavours to fight the broken system that does more harm than good to women like Marie. Benton is simply, plainly good, there's little complexity to her and the role would have been dull in the hands of most other actresses. But Moorehead conveys the desperation and the necessary ferocity in her conflict with corrupt politicians and a sadistic underling played by Hope Emerson, who gives a fine performance which has a lot to do with the exploitation of her unattractive and physically imposing appearance.

At Marie's first parole hearing, Benton points out to the panel how little has gone right for Marie. She's had a baby in prison that she was forced to give up for adoption because her step-father wouldn't allow Marie's mother to care for it. And her husband was killed in the armed robbery. But because Marie can't show that she'd be able to support herself outside, she's "flopped back", sent back inside. Gradually, the criminal queens exert their influence on her.

Like all good films noir, there is the simultaneous feeling of inevitable doom and free will. How much of Marie's downfall is rotten luck, how much is due to her own choices? The scales definitely feel more tipped to the "luck" end here but there's enough ambiguity that one gets the impression of the particular psychological torture Marie is undergoing.

Three Sudden Generations

This former teen idol still looks too young to be a grandfather as he'd be the first to tell you. But a grandfather he is which he discovers--along with the fact that he's a father--in 2008's Scandal Makers. The original Korean title translates, according to Wikipedia, to "Speedy Scandal", which is far more appropriate to describe how suddenly Nam Hyeon-soo's life is turned upside down in this cute, entertaining comedy melodrama.

Nam Hyeon-soo (Cha Tae-hyun) has retired from the pop music business to become a radio host who offers wholesome, conservative advice to callers. Little does he know the single mother calling into the show asking whether she should confront her father is in fact the daughter he never knew he had. He tells her to go to see her father immediately and he finds her and her little son waiting at his apartment that evening.

Despite a lot of over the top, goofy flailing about as he tries at first to hide them from his girlfriend (whom he abruptly breaks up with), Hyeon-soo eventually takes his medicine and lets them stay. After a paternity test proves 100% he's the father of Hwang Jae-in (Park Bo-young), they settle into a domestic life he keeps completely secret from the public--until she decides she wants to become a pop star like her old man. Of course, the grandson can also play piano like a master and Dad is absurdly overshadowed.

The story's not remarkable--he establishes a friendship with the grandson (Wang Seok-hyeon) who adorably beats him at cards, there's a third act rupture where it seems like this family's not going to stay together--pretty predictable stuff. The actors are relatively charming, though, and while Cha Tae-hyun is over the top he isn't too annoying. Park Bo-young is pretty and gives a performance with real energy and creativity.

This is one of those movies I watched because it came up when I clicked for a random Wikipedia article which has resulted in giving me worse movies than this. This wasn't so bad.

Twitter Sonnet #818

The ink awaits the plane of quilless eyes.
No blank redrawn correspondence was stuck.
Repeats between the lanes of faultless pies
Are cherry, pumpkin, lemon feats of pluck.
Potato Tammany hours ascend.
The holy order wrenched the call to canes.
Remembered stalks torment but don't offend
The corn with straw hat scarecrow lion manes.
Remains of beachless sand fell in the dark.
A peevish monk unlocked the mind's giraffe.
No nuns could find a decent place to park.
A lemon wine flowed from the glass carafe.
Epoxy legs stampede across the free.
All hands prepare for an adhesive fee.

The Force Predictions

It feels kind of like we've already seen Force Awakens, or at least a sizeable portion of it. What's the latest supercut of all released footage, thirteen minutes? It feels like there's new footage every day and yet a lot of the plot remains a mystery, one thing that separates this rebirth of Star Wars from the lead up to The Phantom Menace, accurate internet leaks from which allowed "Weird Al" Yankovic to write the lyrics to "The Saga Begins" with a completely accurate plot description based entirely on leaks. J.J. Abrams and his people have managed to play things much closer to the chest and despite his recently expressed regret about doing the whole bait and switch with Cumberbatch Khan on the previous Star Trek film, I wouldn't put it past him to encourage misinformation about this film. So I thought I'd publish my predictions now about Force Awakens so there's a record of how wrong I was.

Well, I was right about one thing, or so it seems--Harrison Ford gave it away in a recent Twitter interview that there's a great sabre battle between Daisy Ridley's Rey and Kylo Ren. Despite trailers showing John Boyaga with the lightsabre, I had a feeling Ridley would be the resident Jedi. I based this on the fact that she's white--no, I'm not a racist, black people can use the Force. But I suspect she's either Luke's daughter or a relative of his. I think George Lucas has been lying in his recent interviews and Abrams has modelled his film on Lucas' outlines to some extent, that the films will continue the story of father/offspring conflict. In a way, we've had this already in Clone Wars, as Lucas has said the character of Ahsoka Tano, who has a pupil/instructor relationship with Anakin Skywalker, was based on his experience as a father of daughters. I only wish I had confidence in the pay off of that relationship when Ahsoka meets Darth Vader on Clone Wars. Imagine if Lucas had stuck around for that--perhaps while not even being conscious of it he would have essentially become the father figure from the dichotomy in which he was the son before.

So, yes, I think Kylo Ren is Luke Skywalker. I think Adam Driver is doing the voice like James Earl Jones did the voice for David Prowse. Any images of Driver in costume I suspect were either created to mislead us or Driver is simply playing the character until he's unmasked. So, gamblers, if you wanted my prediction, that's it, go ahead and place your bets accordingly. I should warn you I don't have a great track record on these things, though.

The Zombies are Crazy

Well, that was better than last week's Ash vs. Evil Dead and Lucy Lawless' character finally did something interesting to back up her swagger. More importantly, the Deadites felt threatening again.

It's still not quite the solid gold of the first episode. Last night's had a pretty dull, cliche scene for Pablo and Kelly where Pablo tries to figure out how to confess he likes Kelly and Kelly says she sees him as too pure to want such things from women, managing to bring out the old sitcom dichotomy of the ever pining boy and the ever oblivious girl. I'm starting to wonder why Pablo and Kelly are still around, the second episode seems to have fulfilled all their best potential.

The diner scene was good mainly for the Deadites and Ash's improvised cologne. I still don't like his power glove and the scene of Kelly throwing him the shotgun was odd and awkward. But I liked the return to the feeling that the Deadites can strike anyone at any time.

And Forget

So clearly I'm not the only one who likes the red "velvety" coat but I would argue that the black frock coat is just as--if not more--"Doctory". It was nice seeing the Doctor wearing a real frock coat again. And a relatively high collared waistcoat. It was a good season finale for Doctor Who.

Since the hybrid thing began this season, I did think of the Eighth Doctor's TV movie from the 90s and the bit where he revealed he's half human. I didn't think they'd go there with the hybrid arc this season for two reasons--they legally can't, all plot elements related to the TV movie are owned by--was it CBS? ABC? one of them. The other reason is it's a really dumb idea. Why does the Doctor need to be half human? It was obviously a bullshit idea to make him "relatable".

But the idea is brought up and the Doctor neither confirms or denies it, probably because of the legal constraints. Personally, I hope those constraints stay in place if Moffat is really planning on doing that, though I guess there is a logic to it, as noted--it makes sense of the fact that the Doctor goes to Earth all the time.

Anyway, to discuss this episode any further I'm going to have to do spoilers so--they're ahead.

So instead of a companion having her memory wiped, like Donna or Jamie or Zoe, it's the Doctor this time. Which thematically is a nice turnabout and I like how he remembers Clara as a story but plotwise it doesn't make much sense. I can see why wiping Clara's memory makes sense--so the Time Lords can't track her. But how does that make sense for the Doctor? Well, c'est la vie.

I love that they seem to have set up the Undead Clara and Immortal Me audio adventures. What is the statute of limitations? Do we need to wait for the Fourteenth Doctor before we hear Jenna Coleman and Maisie Williams team up again? It's great in any case, and that alone makes up for the fact that, as nice and bittersweet as their parting is, I have to admit I think the original end of the Christmas special, when Jenna Coleman changed her mind about leaving the show, was more exquisitely heart breaking.

The Cloisters was kind of neat. I loved the conversation between Clara and the Doctor as they're trying to unlock the floor plate. I wonder if this president's daughter he ran off with is covered by any of the comics or audios. Or was he talking about Romana? Was she the daughter of a president?

I don't understand what Ohila was doing in this episode, she seemed completely superfluous.

This was a better season for the Doctor than last season. The writers wisely spent less time trying to channel Malcolm Tucker and Capaldi was magnificent throughout the season, particularly in "The Zygon Inversion" and "Heaven Sent". The guitar schtick worked like gangbusters and I even liked the sonic sunglasses. The previous season had a better arc for Clara and a better, more solid arc overall, but I preferred this season's series of two part episodes. The show had needed something like that for a very long time and I'm hoping Peter Jackson's upcoming episode next season will also be a two parter.

Twitter Sonnet #817

The film became a foot in ancient logs.
If fronds befell the proto-tree, so bark.
No peace for Fred and Alice neighbour's dogs.
So Myst'ry Man constructs the highway Ark.
Invasions cast in noble light return.
A lance deploys to aid the martyred Joan.
Reports descend from God to slash and burn.
But Dreyer's eye has pared them to the bone.
Reed's moment manifests garage magic.
"I like that song," says old Eraserhead.
A fire left a wheelchair mechanic.
A sound at dawn and Dick Laurent is dead.
The legend bounced from sand to naugahyde.
A Viking ship passed myth to bona fide.

The Generic Brand Version of Scorsese

So what the hell happens when Rollergirl takes off her skates? That's the question 1997's Boogie Nights just left unanswered. Ugh. Maybe it's meant to torment me, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, a question that's meant to go unanswered. But I really got to thinking, what if a person went years and years without removing her roller skates? We don't know if she removed them to bathe, certainly some of the shorts she wears would be difficult if not impossible to put on without removing the skates. Not to mention the horror-show ingrown toenails. But what if we took her at her word and assume the skates truly never come off? Would she lose the ability to walk, do you suppose? I imagine something like Chinese foot-binding would be happening to stunt or deform her bones, especially if we assume Heather Graham's character is meant to be rather young. Also, I was looking forward to a scene where removing her skates would be like a metaphor for her sharing her true self, or a realisation that her skates were her true self, like the scene in Paprika where it's some guy's dream that the "real" woman is hidden underneath Paprika's skin. The skates are Rollergirl's identity so in a real sense they're who she is. They are her feet.

But the movie doesn't go that way, she really amounts to no more than an extended, recurring gag with a few moments of false profundity, like many other characters in the film. Don't get me wrong, I liked Boogie Nights, I thought it was funny, but not like Goodfellas or Raging Bull, Scorsese films Boogie Nights unabashedly imitates, but like Airplane! or The Naked Gun. Boogie Nights is at its best when it's pure, superficial parody.

Mark Wahlberg plays Eddie, soon renamed Dirk Diggler, a young man whose enormous penis, which we don't see until the end of the film, makes him a star in the porn industry of the late 70s and early 80s. We're introduced to the world in which Burt Reynolds' character, Jack Horner, is essentially at the top with tracking shots through a pool party accompanied by contemporary music on the soundtrack in unmistakable resemblance to scenes in Goodfellas.

But where the humour in Goodfellas comes from real insight into human beings, Boogie Nights is populated by amusing caricatures I think the film at times mistakes for realistic characters. William H. Macy, for example, plays a porn producer whose wife's complete disregard for fidelity is played for laughs. She literally fucks a guy in the street while people stand around and not one person seems to understand why Macy's character is upset, the absurdity of their reactions naturally being funny. But when this plot turns deadly serious in the end, it feels like a rather cheap turnaround because it's had no real proper character development to back it up.

Dirk Diggler is really the same way. He's a completely innocent naive kid who shows empathy and concern for everyone until he does one line of coke and suddenly he's a complete asshole, everything he says is obnoxious. Obviously drug addiction changes people but Henry in Goodfellas was still capable of showing ranges of emotion and reaction both before and after he became an addict.

Julianne Moore's character Amber Waves is sweet and Moore is brilliant in the role, creating just the right impression of layers of accumulated psychological armour she can't take off even if she wanted to. She has all this maternal instinct she's redirected to her fellow porn stars and associates because her ex-husband won't let her see her kid. This would have been good subtext but it quickly becomes text as everyone almost immediately starts directly talking to her about it, Rollergirl begging to be considered one of her children. We still feel for Amber but, even though she's not funny, she exists in the simple logic of a parody film.

The end of the film features a reference to Raging Bull, one could say it's almost a parody of Raging Bull and it's about half as effective. But when the movie knows its place, like in the parody spy films Diggler makes with John C. Reilly's character, it's a lot of fun.

The Stop Motion Perils of Maritime Adventures

What makes a voyage golden? As far as 1974's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is concerned, I'd say it's Ray Harryhausen, Tom Baker, and Miklos Rozsa with a dash of Caroline Munro.

Like most Arabian fantasy films made in the west, it's heavily influenced by Alexander Korda's Thief of Bagdad, but not many of the films influenced by that 1940 film boasted the composer, Miklos Rozsa, whose score for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is in many ways like his robust score for the earlier film, though it contains no songs with lyrics.

For the most part, the cast isn't nearly as interesting in the 1974 film, the only real exception being Tom Baker as the villain, an evil wizard called Koura.

Unlike Conrad Veidt in The Thief of Bagdad, Koura is a bit clumsy and most of the setbacks he suffers throughout the film are due to his own mistakes or bad luck than to anything Sinbad does. Baker makes this odd vulnerability work and I think just about any viewer, regardless of whether or not they've seen Baker on Doctor Who, is likely to sympathise with him more than the dull John Phillip Law as Sinbad. Caroline Munro as a slave Sinbad buys, takes aboard ship, and sets free while at sea--conveniently when she can't decide not to accompany him--is beautiful and Munroe's smirk has some natural charm but there's absolutely nothing to her character but devotion to Sinbad.

Apart from Tom Baker, the other real stars of the film are the creatures designed and animated by Ray Harryhausen. Baker is really good reacting to a little demon he creates with black magic:

Most of the monsters in the film are statues brought to life, the most impressive being a statue of Kali with which Sinbad and his men have a rather effectively choreographed fight. General Grievous, eat your heart out.

Efforts of the Damned

To a Christian, what's scarier than a loved one being possessed by the devil? Perhaps a world where amoral people risk their lives for money--this may explain why the director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin, followed up that famous religious horror movie with 1977's Sorcerer, a brilliantly if someone coldly shot film with absolutely amazing special effects that ponders a humanity beyond the grace of any god.

One of the reasons the film may not have been successful in its original release, both critically and financially, is that for the first twenty minutes or so the audience is left with little to grasp onto in terms of character. Friedkin, without any hint as to the primary concern of the movie, introduces us to a hitman, Nilo (Francisco Rabal), a corrupt French banker named Victor (Bruno Cremer), an Arab terrorist named Kassem (Amidou), and an American who's a driver in the Irish mob named Jackie (Roy Scheider), each character introduced in a completely different country, none of them apparently having any relation to each other.

Each character's story is mainly action--We meet Jackie driving his cohorts away from a hit that goes horribly wrong, Nilo just assassinates someone and doesn't speak, Kassem is among a group of terrorists who organise an attack in Israel. Only Victor gets some real humanising moments with his wife but most of his segment is complicated banking shenanigans. It's not surprising that many viewers' minds wandered by this point.

Each character's story ends with exile and we finally see them all in the same place, a small South American village with a U.S. oil complex in the middle where most of the male villagers work. With this purely exploitive centre of a community, there is a moral vacuum that becomes viscerally apparent after a catastrophic accident kills several workers whose burnt bodies are taken by truck through the village. People crowd the truck crying and pleading but there's a fundamental disconnect between the oil company and the people--the financial authority is not a moral authority that can provide perspective and support at a time of spiritual crisis.

The accident has left a perpetual spout of flame, burning oil gushing up from the ground. The foreman goes to a stash of dynamite necessary to close the hole only to find the explosives have been left in a leaky shack too long and are extremely volatile. They might still be used but the slightest bump while carrying them might set them off. So the foreman starts looking for desperate men to transport the dynamite by truck for vast sums of money, and so our four protagonists come together.

The special effects in the accident itself were amazing but pale in comparison to sequences of the huge trucks crossing a decrepit wood and rope bridge over rushing water.

It's flawless, you don't see the tell-tale bluish tinge of old blue screen shots and I'm really not sure how they accomplished these sequences. Unlike the introductory segments, the stakes are powerfully felt and compulsively one goes back to considering that these guys are doing all this for money.

The film is great at giving a sense of unforeseeable chaos from which there is no protection from any sovereign, benevolent force. No matter how hard the men work or how many risks they take, none of it in the end matters when any moment they can die and, even if they succeed, all of them are still truly guilty and still hunted.

Twitter Sonnet #816

The scars of red piano cake will freeze.
A prophecy of celery suborned
The smoked repast beyond a savour tease
And pledged to scraps of dreaming lunch unborn.
The late olives are well acquired peace.
No branch becomes martinis made for drink.
The night above there flew these very geese.
Apply your lipstick in the kitchen sink.
Admitted moths have earned their matchless brand.
Unknown the theatre was grabbed by grout.
A list of kings succumbed to sinking sand.
Ordained, the silt was pathed for total rout.
A leopard's spot removed from wooden queues.
Symbolic suns advanced though chuted pews.

Cumulonimbus Bergman

How equal is the relationship between mentor and pupil, master and servant--or rather, is one person's struggle more interesting than the other? The immediate instinct of most people would be to say, "No, they're both people and therefore both as potentially interesting as people can be." 2015's Clouds of Sils Maria enters into dialogue with this notion, challenging it, as we watch an older actress cast in the role of elder she played opposite to as a young actress. It's a nice, somewhat academic movie on age, identity, and perspective that pays tribute to Ingmar Bergman in more ways than one.

Juliette Binoche plays Maria, a famous and revered actress who is associated with a playwright and director named Wilhelm Melchior. Melchior wrote the play and made the film that made Maria famous, his character, like Bergman, involved in both theatre and film and Maria might be taken as a version of Harriet Andersson whose appearance in Bergman's Summer with Monika defined and launched her career.

At a tribute to Melchior, Maria meets up with another actor associated with the director, Henryk (Hanns Zischler), who seems to be based on Max von Sydow. The film uses these stand-ins to make some commentary on Bergman's life, work, and relationships. Melchior commits suicide and his widow begs Maria to keep this secret, making me wonder if we're meant to ponder whether Bergman committed suicide. Henryk is self-absorbed and abusive and is said to have tended not to have understood the material Melchior gave him to work with, which may be a commentary on von Sydow who moved to Hollywood as soon as he could where his film choices have rarely rivalled the artistic heights of Bergman's films.

Maria is approached by a young director who wants her to play the role of elder in a new version of the film that made her famous. This story is of a business woman and her ambitious assistant who seduces and abandons her in the interest of pursuing her own career. Maria reads lines for this with her assistant, Valentine, played by Kristen Stewart. Neither character remarks on the obvious parallel, which becomes a crucial clue for something that happens later in the film. But Valentine provides Maria with a conduit to contemporary young adult culture, passionately trying to explain to Maria the virtues of superhero movies.

Not only did I find Kristen Stewart's performance interesting, I liked it better than Binoche's, which seemed comparatively self-conscious, which may have been intended. But Stewart seemed like a real young person, eager to engage with a respected colleague on intellectual topics.

Their discussions and the nature of identity that becomes involved with the discourse is in a sense very Bergman. Though it feels less like an inspired director paying tribute to Bergman and more like a very bright student who's made this film as a final project in a class on Bergman. The film doesn't do anything as strange or challenging as Bergman does in Cries and Whispers or Through a Glass Darkly. It's by no means bad, though. It's perhaps unfortunate that it invites so many comparisons to Bergman, not being a work of unparalleled genius shouldn't count against it. It is perhaps comforting to know that, in reality, at least, the elder's work is far more vibrant and alive than the acolyte's.