Comedy Waddled from the Sea

Now this is how you make a screwball comedy. Or at any rate the first two thirds of one--2016's The Mermaid (美人鱼) is one of the best comedies I've seen in years. With a sense of humour that reminded me of Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, the first portion of the film strings along gags with nice comedic timing with two effectively goofy stars. The last section is a less effective action film but I've seen worse and it doesn't sink the whole ship.

Lin Yun plays a mermaid named Shan who sells roasted chickens in a fairground stall. Her mission, living among the humans, is to assassinate Liu Xuan (Deng Chao), a mega-rich tycoon who has developed a new sonar device that causes all sea life to explode in the bay inhabited by the merfolk.

"Here's a cute little goldfish," says one of his subordinates before graphically demonstrating the device. The film is quite conscious of the broad villain typical for a fantasy film in this vein and therefore plays it up to beyond absurdity. The other way the film mines the concept for comedy is by not side stepping things other films normally do, creating instead ridiculous workarounds.

Normally in a mermaid film, like Splash or Disney's The Little Mermaid, there's an explanation as to how the mermaid can walk about on land temporarily--a magic spell that gives her human legs. There's nothing like that in this film, Shan has simply learned to waddle about everywhere on her fins which she keeps hidden in a bulky pair of yellow rubber boots she always wears.

This adds to the dazed and uncoordinated performance Yun gives. Her open mouthed grin revealing the sharp teeth everyone comments on is simultaneously guileless and beastly.

Her first attempt to kill Liu Xuan is a nice, rather cartoonish sequence of physical comedy where her attempts to throw sea urchins at him and stab him with a poisoned fish spine are continually thwarted by obstacles that turn up without him even noticing. In the process, she witnesses him singing along to his favourite song, the hilarious "Being Invincible is So Lonely".

The two end up bonding over the song and romance ensues after the two throw up with each other on a tilt a whirl.

Also very entertaining in the film is Show Luo as Shan's half-octopus uncle who's forced to cut and cook two of his tentacles to keep his disguise at one point.

Zhang Yuqi plays Ruolan, Liu Xuan's former lover and psychopath business partner who becomes the villain in the last part of the film. She gives a good performance and she's funny, playing up the arrogance of her even greater ruthlessness than Liu Xuan's, but the film's unconvincing cgi, which is adequate for the comedy scenes, makes the action at the end pretty insubstantial. Still, one can't help but grow to love Shan and Liu Xuan and therefore want to see them overcome their tribulations.

Stop It, Dreyfuss, Stop It

This is a doodle of Jenna Elfman I made while attempting to escape from 1998's Krippendorf's Tribe. The film just kept going, though, its rigorously stupid plot posing consistent insults to my intelligence.

Krippendorf (Richard Dreyfuss) is an eminent anthropologist and single dad, dealing with the death of his wife, who was also an anthropologist, and who, with him, sought a hidden tribe in the film's cheesy and poorly researched version of New Guinea that looks like it was filmed on an L.A. backlot. It's never explained how Krippendorf's wife died but it leaves room for Jenna Elfman to show up as Veronica Micelli, a former student of Krippendorf who has followed in his footsteps to become an anthropologist. She assumes he's going to give a lecture on the lost tribe--even though he never found it--and even though he's completely unprepared to give a lecture he agrees and tries to make up things as he goes along. He says the tribe has family units of single dads and makes up some words so obviously phony that everyone buying into the lecture must never have passed kindergarten. That includes all the faculty and administration of the anthropology department of Krippendorf's university.

I understand the film is trying to be a screwball comedy but even in a screwball comedy no-one's as dumb as the people are in this film. That's part of the fun of the tangle of manners and implausibilities in Bringing Up Baby or the absurdities tossed out in Duck Soup in defiance of social convention. Krippendorf's Tribe is a continuing decent into lazily conceived stock gags and ill-considered routines involving Dreyfus dressed as the chief from his made up tribe and video taping himself having sex with Elfman without her knowledge and showing it as an exposé of mating rituals.

I think the film was trying to satirise "tabloid anthropology" and interest in sensationalised stories of communities with little or no advanced technology. Though it never makes the case as to why we shouldn't be interested in mating rituals, I suppose there's an implicit dislike of media portrayals of sexuality of any kind I'm not in touch with so can't appreciate.

Anyway, I'm just glad it's over and I'm not watching the movie anymore.

On the Death Spectrum

The best looking Roger Corman movie I've seen so far is 1964's The Masque of the Red Death. Probably because its cinematographer was Nicolas Roeg, who went on to direct Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Based on the famous Edgar Allan Poe story, Corman takes the tale of Death extravagantly bringing the aristocracy to the level of the lower class and makes it into a more conventional tale of good versus evil. Still, those great visuals, along with performances by Vincent Price, Jane Asher, Hazel Court, Patrick Magee, and Skip Martin, make this a very enjoyable film.

Skip Martin plays Hop Toad, a dwarf jester, his character from another Poe story, "Hop-Frog". Martin gives a very nice performance, much more complex than dwarf actors tended to get. His revenge on a nobleman, played with typical twitchy smoulder by Patrick Magee, fits in well enough with Prince Prospero's decadent revels. But it's not by itself enough for Corman to pad out the film to feature length.

Most of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is in his description and set-up--there's very little plot. So Corman throws in some villagers--Francesca (Jane Asher), her father (Nigel Green), and her lover (David Weston), he gives Prospero a consort named Juliana (Hazel Court), and he makes the two of them Satan worshippers.

Corman makes the Red Death figure distinct from Satan yet thanks to a trippy sex nightmare enjoyed by Juliana we know that Satan's real in the story. So there's a background drama of Satan versus Death happening. Death for some reason wants Francesca and her men to escape. Only in the movies.

Vincent Price as Prospero of course sells his strutting evil monologues pretty well, none of which, of course, are from Poe. "The knowledge of terror," he concludes one speech, "is vouchsafed only to the precious few." Then a clock strikes, startling his guests from their reverie. Though I guess he was saying that most people aren't afraid?

Anyway, what a pretty castle he has. My favourite is this bath into which he almost immediately puts Francesca, whom he's trying to seduce to the worship of Satan.

Twitter Sonnet #911

The questions posed by does find no mountain.
When under three vertical marks, it's signed.
A figure strides in gliding grey kaftan.
The tiny script along the rail resigned.
A team of three reside behind the tube.
In rubber arms abide the strength of Zeus.
The shape of clouds condense sunless rube.
In sleeveless gowns she kept the ace and deuce.
Two wheels apace behind the cart keep up.
The hands untied appoint the digit down.
No dash or stroke can fill a paper cup.
No plunging ghost can fill the mossy gown.
Tomatoes tapped beneath the shadow limb
Revert the spirit's sign to liquid sim.

The Use of a Sword

Losing an arm may seem like a disadvantage for a swordsman but it's a lot more than that in the 1967 wuxia classic One-Armed Swordsman (独臂刀). It's a really strange story in several ways with striking psychological subtext. It also has a beautiful, unapologetically artificial sound stage aesthetic.

Fang Kang (Jimmy Wang) is the star pupil of Qi Ru Feng (Tien Feng), head of the Golden Sword school, so named for the distinctive golden swords used by Qi and his students. Fang Kang is the son of a man we see killed while defending Qi in the opening scene. The dead man leaves behind a broken sword which Fang Kang holds onto, dreaming of one day taking revenge.

So we begin with some potent symbols of damaged masculinity--a dead father and a broken sword, the classic phallic symbol cut in half.

Qi's daughter, Pei (Angela Pan), has a crush on Fang Wang which manifests in her taunting him with his being born of a lower social class and she imposes on his respect for her father by commanding him to chop firewood like a servant. Two other students, jealous of Fang Kang, team up with Pei in bullying him, the episodes reaching a climax when the two students and Pei challenge Fang Kang to meet them for a battle in the woods.

Fang Kang has already decided to leave because he fears being low born will cause trouble for Qi. But like a good, reluctant hero, though he tries to avoid fighting Pei and the students, they force him into it. He easily beats the two men and then, because he's afraid of hurting Pei even on accident, he fights her bare handed, also defeating her easily. Then things get really interesting--she cuts off his arm.

So Fang Kang is running through the woods, maybe bleeding to death--Pei and the students don't know how to react, Qi shows up and sees the arm and puts two and two together. They never catch up with Fang Kang who ends up finding solace with an orphaned farmgirl named Xiao Man (Lisa Chiao Chiao) who nurses him to health and even has a handy book for training in left handed martial arts.

Already Fang Kang is symbolically emasculated with his broken sword, then a woman cuts off his arm and he's saved by another woman. Yet he's an exceptionally skilled martial artist, his talents becoming even more useful when his one-armed technique turns out to be perfect for combating a new weapon crafted by Qi's arch enemy. As Xiao Man encourages him to forsake fighting and be a farmer with her, the story has the standard theme of a legendary fighter being compelled against his will to go back to a life of killing, but with all this subtext added on it makes the world of martial arts itself seem imperilled. Qi, Fang Kang's master, was saved in the opening scene by one of his students and Qi's enemy uses a weapon that pulls a sword from an opponent's grasp, a trick that is arguably more of a cheat than an actual fighting technique.

The concepts of honour and achievement in the world of martial arts are constantly disrupted with the most skilled practitioner a mutilated man seeking to abandon the artform. In a way, one could see this as an ancestor of the recent South Korean film, High Heel, about a skilled transwoman police detective who's prevented from transitioning by a life of violence that continually pulls her back in. In One-Armed Swordsman there's a simultaneous sense of the feminine being in healthy opposition to a life of violence while also being frustrating for it at the same time--because violence in an action movie is obviously central to the appeal and the catharsis.

Plain Patchwork

The Sixth Doctor audio plays are better written than his television episodes were--some, like Jubilee, are simply some of the best Doctor Who stories ever--so one can almost forget how unimpressive Colin Baker is. The 2008 audio play, The Doomwood Curse, which I listened to this past week, reminded me again that he comes off like a 1980s afternoon sitcom actor, fit more for Full House or Small Wonder. It's the third now I've heard which pairs him with India Fisher as the former Eighth Doctor companion, Charley, and the contrast is not flattering. Both Fisher and Paul McGann were capable of infusing complex and varied emotion into their line delivery, Colin Baker really only has a few notes. He works very well with Maggie Stables as the audio companion Evelyn, who also gives a superior performance, but the nature of their characters makes their rapport work. Although the Doctor tends to have more of the answers, she's much more the emotional core of their stories so that they become really more like The Evelyn Adventures with her Companion, the Doctor.

The Doomwood Curse is a nice enough story, reminding me a bit of the Mind Robber, not only because it has characters from Gulliver's Travels coming to life. Set in the 18th century, I enjoyed references to Daniel Defoe novels, Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe, particularly since I'd just been reading both books recently.

Charley finds a pulp novel on the TARDIS which the Doctor realises is overdue to be returned to an automated alien library somewhere. They encounter strange, fact obsessed intelligences and somehow end up being transported to a version of the manor depicted in the book in an 18th century England where reality seems to be falling apart. Much of the story concerns the real highwayman, Dick Turbin and Charley's fondness for romantic rogues is brought up again. I found it amusing that this aspect of her personality is reintroduced as though this is where she's going to learn her lesson about how real highwaymen aren't glamorous at all--and she completely fails to learn the lesson by the end of the story.

Gloomy and Morose and Dreary, the Black and Dark and Sable Armour and Protective Metal Covering was Sinister and the Women Swooned

So you have a "howling tempest". But is it dismal? Yes, says the first line of The Animated Skeleton, a 1798 novel by an anonymous author. In fact, "Dismally was the tempest howling round the cottage of Jacquemar." What the story lacks in character development or restraint, it makes up for in sheer abundance of adjectives and adverbs. Not considered a great work of fiction by any means, I still found the book charming in its stream of conscious garishness.

At some point we're told it's set in the Middle Ages, maybe in the preface, I'm not sure where. It doesn't really matter as nothing in the story indicates any specific year or period between 1300 and 1800. Set in France, the story follows a peasant family fleeing the lackeys of a wicked Duke before it turns out the Duke is a Count and the actual Duke is a nice guy but his wife is evil and they have a haunted wing in their castle they never go into. Every ten pages or so, the story seems to dump its premise to make a new one with some of the same characters, finding time along the way to vociferously champion feminine modesty.

The peasant family, Jacquemar and Dunisleda and their kids, are taken under the wing of an old man named Grodern and his son who takes them to a convent where the evil henchmen of the evil Duchess stop short of apprehending them for fear of violating the sanctuary offered them by the Abbess. During their flight through that infamous tempest, Dunisleda had told them the story about how her humble peasant garb had only aroused the wicked Count further, beginning the novel's confusing layering of narratives. In telling Jacquemar about the designs the Duke and Duchess has on them, Grodern is compelled to tell a long story about two knights visiting the Duke who want to investigate the haunted wing of the castle. If you're wondering why Grodern isn't telling the same story to Dunisleda, her primary function in the novel is to lose consciousness, prompting this bit of poetry from Jacquemar;

Drearily, drearily;
Life will but pass too drearily!
Arise, my Dunisleda, smile,
One look, sad sorrow to beguile.

Sorrow is bad enough. Heaven help you if you get sad sorrow. That's double triple dog sorrow. With complications from drearily.

Grodern tells Jacquemar how one of the men they'd killed in an effort to escape had been a favourite of the evil Duchess.

Jacquemar, who I think is not convinced at this point that the Duchess is evil, says, "Is it a crime then to have a favourite?" A lot of the dialogue in this book hits somewhere just off the target of making sense.

'Descend, foul fiend, and take us from this gloom,' holla'd Grimoald.--

"Your epithets are not encouraging," replied the voice [of the ghost].

Grimoald is one of the knights that comes to the castle, though Grimoald is not his real name, which he keeps hidden. Unique among all the characters of the book, he's neither a complete villain or an epitome of virtue. He's described in an impressive and mysterious manner by Grodern;

The party at the same place was last night augmented by the arrival of a stranger knight, in black armour. Every thing he had about him was black, except what I proceed to describe:--He carried a shield covered with cloth of the same dismal hue. On being asked what were his bearings, he removed the black cloth, and showed that his shield was covered with another painted one. 'Beneath this,' said he, 'they are; but never until a certain deed is done shall it be removed; then shall my cognizance be seen, and then shall my name be known. Until then, call me Grimoaldus the Avenger.'

Buried somewhere in that haystack of superlatives, it sounds like there's someone not to be fucked with. Except ten or so pages later the author suddenly can't stop bullying him. In their investigation of the ghost, the knights and the Duke end up in a courtyard where Grimoald actually gets stuck in the mud, yelling angrily at the ghost taunting him. Then there's a genuinely funny scene later in the novel where the protagonists are all gathered in a room, taking turns playing a harp and singing and Grimoald broadly feigns being too self-conscious to perform before none too subtly demanding the instrument and proceeding to sing,

Hark, the tempests of the north
Split their caves and sally forth:
Rocky fragments up they tear;
High aloft their spoil they bear;
Howling, rend the trembling air;
Whizzing from the earth they fly,
Dash the clouds and bruise the sky.

We're meant to take this as clearly artless and ham-fisted, Grimoald continuously made the butt of jokes from then on. It's a shame he never learned the grace of composing lines about dreary sad sorrow or dismal howling tempests. How can he even bring up tempests without telling us if they were dismal or not?

Twitter Sonnet #910

A sleep as clear as paint appoints the eye.
Rod Serling's slumber steeps as green as tea.
A finer crow destroys the worldly pie.
In two dimensions posts defend the bee.
In Dido's dream the IV drips a wine.
A velvet cable blushed with gravid threads.
Intensely watched by skulls the cats will dine.
A banquet raided late by Ness and Feds.
A shield sufficed for certain thoughts delayed.
In honour winds encircle stairs too real.
Deformed, the window cut the pants displayed.
A long assertion snapped the holy seal.
A haunted wing affrights its ghosts with birds.
The echoed wings of bats assume the words.

50 Years and Trekking

Well, here we are, the big day--the day, September 8, Star Trek premièred on television fifty years ago. But unlike Doctor Who, there's no two hour television special reuniting cast members from through the years, no featurettes put together by CBS or Paramount. I guess that's what Comic Con was supposed to be but at Comic Con it never had the steam Doctor Who or Star Wars has on a regular year. It's simply not as popular. Why not? Well, appropriately enough, I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation a few nights ago called "Identity Crisis". Star Trek, your supplicant beseeches you, let's consult the holy tapes and look for our answers.

The question is often framed--I know I've certainly framed it this way--what is Star Trek? What are its distinguishing features that set it apart from Star Wars, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, and what have you that made it more popular at one point and less popular now? Well, like Doctor Who, Star Trek has been many things over the years. Ronald D. Moore at Comic Con said the movies are generally modelled on Wrath of Khan and Wrath of Khan is fundamentally different from Star Trek on TV at its best. Nicolas Meyer, who directed Wrath of Khan, wasn't a fan of Star Trek at the time he was hired so he decided to make the movie like a Horatio Hornblower novel, depicting an intense naval battle between nemeses, a model the movies adhered to until it was ran into the ground with Star Trek: Nemesis only to be resurrected by J.J. Abrams, who also publicly said he wasn't a fan of Star Trek.

The Next Generation cast was no longer considered suitable for a franchise because movies that were fundamentally different from the shows that made them successful were unsuccessful. Then J.J. Abrams came and did the wrong thing in the right way again.

Simon Pegg, before being forced to make a movie that also stuck to the Khan formula, also talked about how this was not really TV Star Trek. Though actually, the essence of the Khan model did appear on television now and then, even before Wrath of Khan, in episodes of the original series like "The Doomsday Machine". But more often, Star Trek was more of a Science Fiction series than Doctor Who or Star Wars tends to be, featuring stories about people encountering and reacting to something strange based on a variety of speculations based on real science. This observation has been made often enough. But watching "Identity Crisis" it became clear to me why this became less and less effective.

The problem with "Identity Crisis" is that it's not about an identity crisis, not really. Well, in a literal sense it is--the story is that Chief Engineer Geordi Le Forge (LeVar Burton) discovers that he and a former crew mate are slowly turning into alien creatures after being infected on a planet years ago. That's a fine concept except that's all it ever is--Le Forge spends the whole episode playing detective, trying to figure out why this is happening and how to stop it before he completely changes. The episode fails to have him or his former crew mate reflecting on how they feel or showing how it effects the people around them and their relationships. By comparison, one can look at David Cronenberg's version of The Fly to see how this kind of story can be told in a more effective way.

But this is a common problem with how people think about Star Trek and Science Fiction in general, I would speculate because traditionally Sci-Fi fans were the sorts of people who were uncomfortable exploring their feelings. At its best, Star Trek served them what they didn't know they wanted or needed in the form of what they thought they wanted or needed. An episode of the original series like "City on the Edge of Forever" or "The Changling" had speculative science--concepts of time travel and independently evolving artificial intelligence--and used these science concepts to explore human reaction--making impossible decisions about loved ones or feelings of isolation.

Last year I watched a fifth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I didn't appreciate half as much when I was kid and has now become one of my absolute favourites. "The Perfect Mate" with guest star Famke Janssen as a rare telepathic bonding specimen of an alien species has a love story more reminiscent in some ways of the original series than of The Next Generation--the captain having to deal with a beautiful alien woman whose cultural practices of love making are attractive and confusing. But by making a character who bonds to an individual, and making all men susceptible to pheromones, the episode nicely takes a new perspective on how much affection is based on circumstance and biology. The dilemma is better presented by Patrick Stewart's Captain Picard, though, not only because Stewart is a much better actor than Shatner but because we can't mistake what he's doing for one of Kirk's famously numerous one-episode-stands. The episode takes what in other hands would have been a broad concept and teases out surprising nuances and challenges to the viewer.

The upcoming Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, is supposedly going to follow the modern model of television, that is a continuing story from episode to episode rather than the old model where everything at the end of each episode generally went back to how it was at the beginning. Of course Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was one of the pioneers of this exciting form of story telling on television but I worry some opportunities for exploring new territory in the old way will be lost by adhering to it. Hopefully this won't be another example of Star Trek desperately trying to keep up with the times by throwing itself out with the bathwater.

Half a Story, but with Singing

Let's assume the argument about prostitution was settled hundreds of years ago, then let's make a musical comedy with an extremely superficial version of the argument. I can imagine this was the pitch for 1982's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and possibly for the stage musical it's based on, though apparently the film departs from its source in many ways to tailor it for its stars, Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds. They do have nice chemistry, though it's largely Parton who carries it. As a whole, the movie has little islands of genuinely entertaining comedy in the midst of a hazy, unfocused story.

In the middle of the film, various average people on the street are interviewed to give an opinion on whether prostitution should be legal. Each gives a simplistic version of typical arguments--an old woman says it gave her essentially a night off when her husband went down to the Chicken Ranch (the place referred to by the title); a young man argues that it prevents rape. This all presumes that men need to have sex periodically. But okay, I do agree people should have the option to pay for or sell sex if they want to, I don't really agree with the implicit "necessary evil" aspect of these arguments.

But it's the fact that the movie broaches the arguments at all that sabotages it. As a simple hearted musical that just assumed everyone in it accepted prostitution, that would have been fine. But if you're going to portray the debate, you need to portray the debate, the topic is too sensitive. I don't know if I expect something like Mizoguchi's carefully thought out examination of the business in Street of Shame but there's far too much left unsaid in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In narration at the beginning of the film, we're told that for generations, the people of the town have seen their sons go to the Chicken Ranch. I heard Chris Isaak in Fire Walk with Me in my head asking, "What's missing from that statement?" No, not the uncle, but the daughters. Where are these prostitutes coming from? Everyone in the movie talks about how it's okay to go to a prostitute, no-one mentions how they'd feel about their daughter becoming a prostitute. And aside from Parton's character, Mona, who is the madam and having sex exclusively with Reynolds' character for three years, we don't get to know any of the prostitutes working at the brothel. None of them become characters.

Reynolds plays the town sheriff, Ed Earl, who mishandles things when an over the top television crusader played by Dom DeLuise makes it his mission to shut the Chicken Ranch down. DeLuise doesn't make any arguments against prostitution, content just to announce over and over that the place exists.

Ed Earl and Mona have a nice rapport and there's even a nice duet between the two about how much they like sneaking around together. The movie makes some nice references to female libido as Mona convinces Ed Earl to wear some tiny leather briefs.

But as nice as their rapport is, there are many points where their relationship doesn't make sense, as when the two are just about to have sex and Ed Earl is distracted by police business. He comes back to find she's sneaked out of the house. Why? It's never explained but the scene is punctuated with Ed Earl's disappointment as though the audience would be too busy laughing at his frustration to think about the fact that Mona did something with no apparent motivation.

The songs aren't bad--I enjoyed a song from the governor (Charles Durning) that's about politicians giving a song and dance instead of directly answering questions. And of course, Dolly Parton outshines everyone whenever she starts singing--including poor Burt Reynolds having to duet with her. There are also several nice jokes, particularly from Parton, like, "It's always a business doing pleasure with you," or "You know what burns my ass? A flame about three feet high."

Time Served

On the subject of anti-Semitism, some invisible gate seems to have been opened for Mel Gibson and he's sauntering back into Hollywood. He has a movie coming out he directed, Hacksaw Ridge, the first since everyone started talking about his anti-Semitic rants and for some reason generally ignored voice mails he left for his girlfriend saying he hoped she would be "raped by a pack of niggers" because she dared to speak back to him when he told her she ought to "just be quiet and blow me." Unlike his anti-Semitic remarks, he has never publicly apologised for this although he did take her to court, and won, because she was present when Howard Stern implied Gibson physically abused her and did not contradict the radio host, thereby losing $500,000 in settlement money for which she was required not to discuss alleged abuse at Gibson's hands.

I really liked Machete, the Robert Rodriguez movie starring Danny Trejo--it was generally loved by critics and audiences. The sequel featured Mel Gibson and no-one had anything much good to say about it and it didn't do half as well at the box office. I didn't see it, I'm not sure why--as someone who watches a lot of old movies--yesterday's Oliver Twist review is a good example--I can't skip films just because the director had some backward or deplorable opinion or another. I don't think Gibson's movies are that good, the ones he's directed. I will happily watch movies he's acted in--the first three Mad Max movies and The Year of Living Dangerously are great. But I don't understand why he's suddenly now getting something he didn't have with The Expendables 3, Machete Kills, Get the Gringo, and The Beaver--good buzz. Coinciding with a court case that ruled improbably in his favour based on a very tortured interpretation of a radio interview. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I can't help feeling like something is going on in the background when I see something like this.

Throughout the whole drama between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, I was a little surprised at how many people were quick to take sides--not counting friends of the two. It's a bit like why I don't understand Atheists who get angry with Agnostics. Yeah, I agree there's no evidence for God and I don't consider myself "spiritual" but why do I have to believe or disbelieve? I don't know what colour the floors are in the JFK airport bathrooms, do I have to decide anyway? With the Depp/Heard divorce, it seemed to me an interesting case of two kinds of prudence colliding like clouds in a thunderstorm: because there's a long history of abuse victims' claims being dismissed out of hand, one should believe the victim when they say they've been abused. At the same time, we have a legal system where people are famously "innocent until proven guilty." And there's a very good reason for that--a system where anyone accused is assumed guilty is vulnerable to obvious abuse. Mel Gibson reminds me why people are so vehement to take the side of someone who says she's a victim of abuse because it seems like in this case, unlike the Depp/Heard story, no-one cares.

Twitter Sonnet #909

A winning marble fades among the geese.
In climax viewed by ants a foot approached.
In paper bills, the names dispersed in peace.
In scissor shapes, the troops perforce encroached.
Correctly guessed, the jar will vomit beans.
In powdered lines the wind destroyed the coke.
An airport built from drugs for none redeems.
So send his airy lordship out to soak.
A sinking sloop abandoned all its eels.
The space expands on sight for bully stars.
The oranges, apples, pears alike have peels.
Forgotten rinds combine in garbage bars.
Picked up on it quick, he said he was there.
Porridge belongs to someone else's bear.

More Twist, Less Oliver

Sometimes the worst people are the only people worth paying attention to. Everyone knows Oliver Twist is the least interesting character in his own story--David Lean certainly knew it when he adapted Charles Dickens' tale for his 1948 film Oliver Twist. Paring down much of Oliver's story from the book, Lean made a movie much more about the criminals, and did so with great effect aside from some really disappointing anti-Semitism.

Alec Guinness does a brilliant job playing Fagin, the Jewish boss of the gang of street urchins. Despite his garish makeup and ridiculous false nose he's always subtle. The look is inspired by the original illustrations by George Cruikshank, which in turn match up with Fagin's physical description by Dickens. But Lean arguing the need to adhere to the original look for Fagin makes especially little sense when he felt comfortable making other changes, like removing almost everything from the book's last act. I can't say I blame protesters for stopping the film getting shown in Germany right after World War II, as much as I am against censorship. At least with Fred Astaire's black face in Swing Time I could say he meant well, as a tribute to Bill Robinson, even if he was misguided. This Fagin, though, is just purely obnoxious.

The film seems to go through Oliver's story in the workhouse and then the mortuary at a lightning pace though Francis L. Sullivan is given time to deliver an understated and effective performance as Bumble. Mary Clare as his wife is surprisingly menacing beating the shit out of him though she's nothing compared to Robert Newton as Bill Sykes.

This is from my favourite shot in the film--the Artful Dodger (Anthony Newley) is goaded by Fagin into revealing that Nancy (Kay Walsh) had betrayed them. The camera pans up with Bill as he starts forward and it twists ever so slightly. With the energy of Newton's performance, the jagged shapes of the set--the way those rafters converge on Bill--and Guy Green's black shadows against white, he's terribly threatening. Then there's the horror of him actually confronting Nancy.

Played by Kay Walsh, who was Lean's wife at the time, Nancy comes off a bit too posh and asexual. Diana Dors is in the film briefly as Charlotte, the mortician's servant. How much better she would have been as Nancy than Walsh but sadly she wasn't a star yet.

"You're Playing with Your Food, This ain't Some Kind of Game" - "Weird Al" Yankovic

Do we want to watch teenagers kill each other? 2012's The Hunger Games says, "Yes, especially their heads," as this dystopian Sci-Fi film with excessive close-ups and badly edited action scenes pits randomly picked teens against one another in deadly combat for television. Featuring the passive protagonists common to American teen fiction, the film is entertaining and sometimes adorable.

Many people have pointed to forebears, other stories in film, literature, and television that have employed this basic concept, most often the novel Battle Royale and its film adaptation. Personally, I always like to point to the 1985 Doctor Who serial Vengeance on Varos and wonder why no-one else does except maybe Doctor Who fans don't want to encourage anyone to watch anything from the Colin Baker era. But originality is overrated--almost all stories can be traced to something else that did something similar first. The Hunger Games may be the first to bring this kind of story to lightweight teen fiction, though, its gentler focus on boys and girls cautiously admitting they might like to hug at some point before having responsible sexual intercourse certainly distinguishes it from Battle Royale which didn't seem to have a particular target audience beyond young adults and up.

It's a bit jarring going from seeing Jennifer Lawrence fighting tooth and nail for her life and her family in 2010's Winter's Bone to seeing her generally react by just looking shocked to the details of her impending death match. I think the two most assertive moments she has in the film both involve her shooting at apples. But considering her skills with hunting and using a bow would seemingly make her the best suited to win when she and the other teenagers are set in their demarcated bit of wilderness, she seems to spend a lot of time getting knocked out, getting ambushed, and succumbing to freak accidents.

Most of which happen somewhere outside the frame dominated by REALLY BIG FACES. They should have called this movie The Hunger Heads.

Almost an hour is spent before the teens do get to their arena. This first hour could've been edited down a lot, the reiterations that this is showbiz and the kids need to train for fighting isn't nearly as interesting as when they finally get to it. The most effective tension in the film comes with the introduction of the adorable Rue (Amandla Stenberg) who becomes an ally to Katniss.

Somehow I was worried a lot more for her than for Katniss' kid sister at the beginning of the film. Maybe it's just that Stenberg, as an actress, is able to do a lot more with facial expressions.

Every action scene is a blurry mess. This is a trend that's started going away over the past few years. I can't blame The Hunger Games for it--even Batman Begins was guilty of it. I can understand the thinking--the middle of battle is a chaotic place where it's hard to tell what's happening, perception overwhelmed by amorphous, vigorous movement that conveniently conceals how cheap the choreography is and how poorly trained and rehearsed the actors are. Say what you want about the Star Wars prequels, but I greatly appreciated Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christenson training like hell so those sabre duels could be impressive at full frame. At least now action movies are generally cutting corners by using cgi versions of the actors instead of doing the kind of washing machine theatre we get in The Hunger Games.

The Unsought Return

For decades, no-one had been asking: "When will Adric return to Doctor Who?" Everyone's least favourite companion seemed to have a pretty definite departure in 1982's Earthshock but, of course, on Doctor Who nothing is final unless we want it to be. And even though we wanted it to be, Adric returned in the 2008 Fifth Doctor audio play The Boy That Time Forgot, not played by the original actor, Matthew Waterhouse. Otherwise it's a pretty entertaining audio play about prehistoric, intelligent giant scorpions.

The story continues from the events of another audio play, The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, which left the Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) stranded in Victorian London. After holding some kind of psychic seance in an effort to locate the TARDIS, the Doctor, Nyssa, and two native Victorians, are transported to an alternate version of prehistoric Earth where the dinosaurs were wiped out by a civilisation of sentient scorpions.

It's rare for Doctor Who to feature characters who are so different from human beings--and some would argue the audio format suits the intelligent arachnids better than the moth people in the television serial The Web Planet. To human characters at first, their language is unintelligible chittering which we hear translated and performed by actors in scenes from the scorpions' point of view, while the humans' voices are muffled. It was nice the audio play decided to work with the fact that the TARDIS translation circuits weren't present rather than just ignoring it (the usual choice).

Time hasn't improved Adric, who's here played by Andrew Sachs as a bitter old man who's obsessed with Nyssa. It is kind of nice that now the Doctor and Nyssa are in agreement with the audience in disliking Adric though unfortunately this doesn't last. I found myself wishing writer Paul Magrs had left well enough alone--Earthshock may have been a better ending than Adric deserved, but all but the most wicked of us deserved Adric ending.

Otherwise, the story's pretty good. I liked the idea of this precarious civilisation of scorpions held together by psychic calculations and the conversations between them that dropped hints about their former savage nature were good. The two Victorians accompanying the Doctor and Nyssa were also entertaining to listen to, one of them played by Harriet Walker who I see now is set to play the king in an all female production of Shakespeare's Henry IV. She also apparently played someone named "Dr. Kalonia" in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I saw that movie three times and I can't place that name. I'm sure she'll get an action figure, though.

Twitter Sonnet #908

In stacks the pancakes scold the bank for notes.
His hat became a pant in union slacks.
Invent the stove and soon your country votes.
The time returned its disk in daily sacks.
Mistakes solidified in cakes like wood.
To eat an oak is folly for the tongue.
The nun Chuck's nunchaku is understood.
No habit wimple sings what's never sung.
The hinge will not believe the brows of string.
A stinging haunch of cheek concealed the tree.
At ev'ry step a stork stacked up to cling.
The sky escaped to scorch the candle bee.
The extra knees were made to wreck the bow.
No suppliant pose can sustain us now.

Trumpy's Little Potato

It's September now so we have just over a month left of not knowing whether Donald Trump will be president. Hillary Clinton leads pretty consistently in the polls though by a narrower margin than seems reasonable given how many stupid and mean things one constantly hears about Trump doing. Trump often complains about the media being against him and, really, he's right. Though if corporate interests are in any way at fault, as he claims, their role must be minimal at this point compared with Trump himself picking fights with the likes of Fox News and Joe Scarborough, the people who ought to be the best ally of the Republican candidate. From the left, though, the anti-Trump output seems as much heartfelt as it is political.

Maybe it's my age, maybe it's their age, but Stephen Colbert and, in his scattered appearances, Jon Stewart, don't seem to have the clear cutting satire they had in the days of Bush. Maybe it's the sense of time rapidly running out and the greater sense of the media's responsibility in halting Trump within a certain time frame. During the Bush years, Stewart and Colbert were the exasperated outliers among a mostly complacent media, now they're part of the establishment and I get the feeling that with great power has come the sneaking feeling of powerlessness. No matter what anyone in the media, left or right, says or does, Trump always seems to be within ten points of Hillary Clinton. Imagine if the media did nothing. Or maybe that wouldn't matter?

Trump is often compared to a bully and he certainly is. Next to him, the media often seems like the victim of a bully, the good kid who runs to the teacher and says, "Look what Donny did!" expecting justice, not able to believe the teacher doesn't give a shit.

The above clips shown on Colbert are from a much longer Trump speech on immigration, you can see the full thing here. One thing the clips don't convey is the feeling of listening to Trump relentlessly reiterate the idea of zero tolerance for undocumented immigrants. His rhetoric goes past "illegal immigrants" and even Lou Dobbs' "illegal aliens"--Trump's preferred term is "criminal alien," belying his brief, usual tossing out of "I'm sure many of them are good people." He says that once before screaming over and over, "Millions of criminal aliens". Trump cites specific examples of rapes and murders perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, decries the lax enforcement methods that are supposedly responsible, and says nothing about stricter gun regulations despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of crimes committed with firearms in the U.S. are committed by American citizens.

I'm sure I've known several undocumented immigrants. I met one last year who actually mentioned she was undocumented. She works with special needs children here in San Diego and she's going to school. She was one of the nicest and most practical people I've met in the past few years. When Trump says Mexico is going to pay for his "great wall" (deliberately invoking China?), he implies it's in Mexico's interest as well. Why? He says that the workers coming in from Mexico are "lower skilled workers with less education, who compete directly against vulnerable American workers." How are American workers vulnerable to the less skilled and educated? Of course this is because the people who've lived in worse conditions in Mexico are more willing to accept lower wages and harder jobs than American workers. Of course, this has all been said many times and should be obvious but Trump keeps saying the same things as though it's not.

The most interesting part of the speech to me, though, was his use of the word "bully", referring to the immigration laws he says are lacking:

"We’re like the big bully that keeps getting beat up. You ever see that? The big bully that keeps getting beat up."

He's proud of being a bully. He walks loudly and carries a little stick. Okay, sorry, that was cheap.

Writhing Minds

The experience of confusion due to mental illness is a difficult thing to really appreciate for those of us who haven't (or think we haven't) experienced it. There are examples of film and literature that do a brilliant job conveying something of what it is like. 1948's The Snake Pit isn't one of the best but it is very good, particularly for Olivia de Havilland's performance.

The first few minutes are the best in the film. It opens with just her face as she responds to a voice from off screen asking her questions about herself in a cool, professional, but gentle manner. They sound like real questions, but then she's unsure there's someone truly there at all. The voice asks her if she hears voices to which she replies she hears this voice.

This scene more than any other in the film gives you the a real feeling of her character's, Virginia's, disorientation. As she's led into the mental institution, we have a better idea of where she is than she does but like her we know little about her. She can't remember if she's married or how she got there.

The film lets up on this finally for a scene where Virginia's doctor, Dr. Kik (Leo Genn), and her husband, Robert (Mark Stevens), discuss in detail her story leading up to the breakdown that has confined her to the mental hospital. Much like Nightmare Alley or Hitchcock's Vertigo, Psycho, or Marnie, the film is much better when it's not trying to explain things.

I liked Leo Genn in this movie though I can see why many people would find him insufferably smug. I think having seen him even more insufferable in Green for Danger may have made him just the comforting authority figure he's supposed to be in this film. Still, listening to him explain to Virginia the nature of her issues is laughably bad. A little portrait of Sigmund Freud stares irritably at him as though to say, "You know nothing of my work," as he explains to her that her mummy and daddy, daddy in particular, didn't show her enough love when she was little. And that's why she loses her memory and becomes borderline homicidal when someone expresses affection for her.

Though I would argue the film's not as sexist as some claim. Neither Dr. Kik or any of the other doctors claim she needs to submit herself to a man, rather they come to the point where it's important for her to realise that a husband can't be her father.

In addition to de Havilland's performance, the film has some other good points, including its portrayal of the petty nurses who mistreat the inmates and an effective scene near the end where Virginia finds herself unjustly placed among the tough cases in Ward Five. A nurse scolding inmates for stepping on the rug is amusingly followed by a bow-legged old woman dancing on it while singing "Sweet Georgia Brown".

But de Havilland's performance is the best part. Her voice over as she tries to figure out how much the people around her can tell she's not like them, as she wonders how much she can trust what she sees and hears, sounds perfectly lucid even when she's not, helping to put the viewer in her position.