The Big Cats are Also Watching

The fence is good because it has meat on it. This lioness is one of several lions, tigers, and bears I saw yesterday at Lions, Tigers, and Bears, an exotic rescue animal sanctuary located near my sister's house in Alpine, California. She and I visited the beautiful sanctuary yesterday.

We immediately saw three white lions, two females and one male named Lou, when we drove up. Lou rolled around on his back for us.

The enclosures for most of the animals were spacious and beautiful. Our guide, Michelle, took us around with a few other visitors as she fed the animals, a time of day when an appreciable amount of personality comes out in the creatures. Michelle also told us a bit about the abusive former owners of some of the animals, which ranged from deliberately cruel treatment to simple neglect. It was amazing to hear how often some asshole buys a bear or tiger cub without considering the expense and difficulty of caring for an adult.

This bear was unable to walk when he was brought to the sanctuary due to a lifetime of malnutrition. He can walk now after rehabilitation but he can't run or stand.

We watched all the bears being fed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which they seemed very happy to receive. All of the big cats got meat.

So did the little bobcats.

We also saw pumas, leopards, and tigers. This was the healthiest looking tiger we saw, Maverick, named after Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun:

But my favourites were definitely the lions. Watching them being fed, seeing them growl and bare their teeth so close, was extraordinary. I took some video--the big male lion, Hank, was mesmerising:

The sanctuary spends a lot of money caring for and rescuing these animals and can use all the help they can get. You can donate at their web site here.

From Angry Working Class to Artist with a Thompson

I first saw Albert Finney, who passed away yesterday, in Miller's Crossing, a 1990 gangster film in which Finney plays a mob boss. It was only years later that I learned he rose to stardom in roles as a young man that emphasised his youth. He was one of the distinguished faces of the "Angry Young Man", a recurrent subject in British film and literature of the late 50s and 60s. But young or old, he brought an intensity to his performances that was usually a combination of simmering anger and keen apprehension.

In Britain's version of the New Wave, he was as refreshingly natural with his unconventional good looks as Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless. It lent credibility to his character in 1960's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning that helped make that film's realism so magnetic; it made him odd casting opposite Audrey Hepburn in 1967's Two for the Road, a film that nonetheless is kind of lovely for its portrayal of two mismatched lovers frequently in conflict.

He was a great actor and cinema is better for having him. I'm glad there are a lot of his movies I have yet to see. I can certainly recommend the ones I've talked about, particularly Miller's Crossing, a film I'm always pleased to return to, in no small part because of Albert Finney.

Cats are Watching

If you should decide to commit murder, beware that the eyes of a large, ginger cat may be upon you! 1973's Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (La morte negli occhi del gatto) seems like it might have a premise similar to Hammer's 1961 film The Shadow of the Cat but the titular cat plays a far more passive role in the 1973 film. A fairly scattered murder mystery that never generates the necessary focus on its protagonist played by Jane Birkin it's nonetheless as stylish as you can expect from any Italian genre film of the period. And its cast definitely seem to be having a good time.

A young woman named Corringa (Birkin) goes to stay with her mother, Lady Alicia (Dana Ghia), in their ancestral Scottish castle which, like everything else in the film, doesn't for a moment seem like it's in Scotland.

As her carriage first approaches the place, she doesn't notice the face of an ape watching from a window. We're later told it's an ourang-outang but it looks a little more like a chimpanzee and a lot more like a guy in a suit.

Corringa finds a lot of suppressed tension among the occupants of the castle which includes her mother; her aunt Mary (Francoise Christophe); her aunt's lover, Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring); a priest named Robertson (Venantino Venantini), and a beautiful young French woman named Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann). And hidden away is the handsome, stormy young Lord James (Hiram Keller), who owns the ape.

As people start getting murdered there's a suggestion that the family may be vampires, something that's connected to the cat at the first funeral. Serge Gainsbourg shows up in a small role as a police inspector, his voice hilariously dubbed over with a broad Scottish accent.

Birkin's performance is playful but credible enough as the young girl who's not nearly as naughty as she thinks she is. Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1203

Across a cotton river lint would stay.
A ferry built of softened parts embarked.
A rainy language tells the proper day.
A row of flower pots was clearly marked.
For hair some clouds were fanned about the head.
For teeth some solid grains were deftly used.
For ears tamales hap'ly cooked instead.
For eyes a pair of grapes were lightly bruised.
A secret door was thin as walls could go.
Revealed by ticking, hidden watches sprang.
An extra book was filled with stuff to know.
Projected graphs in tidy bundles sang.
Magnetic hands were taken round a curve.
A feathered shot descends from Heaven's serve.

The Difficulty of the Easy Going Man

A mysterious, cocky, handsome young outlaw gets himself in the middle of a touchy hostage situation in 1965's A Pistol for Ringo(Una pistola per Ringo). Featuring a little more comedy than typical for a Spaghetti western, the humour nonetheless functions mainly as an intriguing surface layer for some very effective tension.

The precariousness of the situation is somehow emphasised by the seemingly carefree attitude of the film's protagonist, Ringo (Giuliano Gemma aka Montgomery Wood). He's introduced playing hopscotch with a bunch of kids and his playful demeanour doesn't change when he suddenly guns down a group of men who've shown up to kill him.

He's preternaturally good with a pistol and so an effective part of the tension is built by keeping guns away from him. Whenever he casually asks for one, we're compelled to examine his cool demeanour to determine if it's just a blind and if he's planning to immediately execute anyone who hands him that pistol finally.

The film's directed by Duccio Tessari who co-wrote the screenplay for A Fistful of Dollars. A Pistol for Ringo bears some resemblance to the Fistful of Dollars/Yojimbo/Red Harvest premise with Ringo's professed loyalties seemingly changing from one side to the other. What mainly distinguishes it is that the audience is almost as much in the dark about Ringo's true motives as anyone else.

A group of Mexican bandits rob a bank and then take over a ranch belonging to the wealthy Major Clyde (Antonio Casas). The bandits hold the Major and his family hostage, including the Major's daughter, the beautiful Ruby (Lorella De Luca), who also happens to be the sheriff's fiancée.

The sheriff (George Martin) reluctantly accepts Ringo's offer to allow him to infiltrate the gang, for which Ringo demands 30% of the bandits' spoils. He takes a page from Doctor Who's playbook and refuses to take a gun, correctly assuming that packing a weapon will be more likely to get him shot.

The leader of the bandits, Sancho (Fernando Sancho), is more cunning than smart, most of the gang's savvy belonging to his consort, Delores (Nieves Navarro). Another layer of tension is present as Delores is gradually charmed by the Major's genteel overtures. For most of the film, it's unclear if the Major has really tapped into an ambition she has to live in classier style than among the bandits or if she's just playing with the Major for her own amusement. Even subtler is the hint that there could be chemistry between Ringo and Ruby.

There's some slapstick comedy and Sancho's foolishness is played a bit broadly at times but never exactly outside the realm of credibility. There's an intriguingly delicate balance between broad comedy and satire throughout the film, as in a scene I particularly liked when Sancho thinks he has Ringo dead to rights as a traitor, but stops in his tracks when Ringo simply asks for a higher percentage of the loot. With no rationale or evidence, Sancho immediately assumes Ringo must have a plan for Sancho's side that justifies his asking for more money, and it makes Sancho furious.

The film has a good score from Ennio Morricone and it's available on Amazon Prime.

Woman or Beast

There was a really nice new story by Caitlin R. Kiernan in this month's new Sirenia Digest; "The Lady and the Tiger Redux". Its title suggests its relationship to the 1882 story by Frank R. Stockton and a quote at the end also invokes the They Might Be Giants song referencing the story (also called "The Lady and the Tiger"). Caitlin's story lacks any surface elements to tie it to the Stockton story, involving instead a common subject for Caitlin; a pair of lovers who have encountered something strange and the psychological repercussions.

Told from the perspective of one of the lovers, a strange finding in the woods is either dreamed of or remembered. Wonderfully strange imagery and phenomena are described, including a sandy ground that has been exposed to so much heat parts of it have been turned to glass. The point of view character is frustrated in her inability to remember the subject of an argument between her and her lover. This and the mystery of the strange discovery, which turns out to be intimately related to the lover, have something in their ambiguity that suggests the mental exercise of the Stockton story. The They Might Be Giants song takes aspects of the story's premise, turning the lady and tiger into characters and exploring their needs and desires, that imply something about the fundamental nature of Stockton's story, the qualities of instinct and need that build to the original tale's question for the reader about the human heart. A question, of course, intended to force the reader to form an opinion that reveals something about themselves.

Caitlin's story also seems to dwell on the primal building blocks of the Stockton tale, bringing the thematic preoccupation to the intimate psychological space between two people. It's a lovely and haunting story.

Memories of Detecting

Last night brought one of the best episodes of this new season of True Detective. Directed by series creator Nic Pizzolatto, only the second episode of the entire series which he's directed (the first being last week's), "If You Have Ghosts" was also solely written by Pizzolatto. Some clues move the mystery along a little bit, the nature of Wayne and Amelia's relationship is explored further and, in the nicest scene, Wayne has a confrontation with Roland that derives some real power from the show's non-linear structure.

Spoilers after the screenshot

The ageing makeup on Roland (Stephen Dorff) isn't nearly as good as the makeup on Wayne (Mahershala Ali) but the scene worked really nicely, anyway. Apparently the two haven't seen each other in a long time because of some terrible, unresolved argument--only it turns out Wayne, because of his worsening memory problems, can't remember it. This revelation understandably has an impact on Roland--just imagine, something so big it redefined the nature of your relationship with someone, then learning that whole story is just gone from the mind of that someone. It must be like learning someone died.

It also puts us more in Wayne's perspective, too. It functions like watching Memento the first time--since we also have no memory of that argument, our knowledge of the relationship between Wayne and Roland is about the same as Wayne's.

Amelia (Carmen Ejogo) gets closer to Wayne after taking her home with him following the nice action sequence at the beginning of the episode. I like her hairstyle that's also like a hat. I tease but in fact I do really like it.

In the 90s, we get a little more insight into the friction between them, Wayne's apparently more conservative values making him reluctant to involve his wife in his work. Or at least that's how it seems to Amelia. I suppose we may yet learn there's another reason for his reticence.

Twitter Sonnet #1202

The longer fish could see a fin beyond.
In tiny rings the watches ticked a day.
In steady drips the drinks en masse abscond.
The empty air would never wish to pay.
Reflections lost in mirrors find a pool.
In greener depths the pressure crushed a root.
A timid ram retreats beneath his wool.
The forest teems with verdant hidden loot.
A pack of bouncing suns disturb the line.
Approaching trees portend a tattered web.
The sharpened walls defend a growing pine.
The noisy tide at last begins to ebb.
Predicted noise deluged the coffee shop.
Unlikely rain surcharged the flying mop.

Daleks Another Day

Watching Doctor Who on BritBox has been full of surprises for me lately. This time I watched the 1972 Third Doctor serial Day of the Daleks and discovered it was the special DVD version from 2011. Not only were the special effects radically altered but all the voices of the Daleks were changed to feature a performance from Nicholas Briggs, the man who's voiced the Daleks since the revived era began in 2005 and who's voiced them for the audio plays even longer than that (for some reason he was credited as "Nick Briggs" for the recent New Years special). For the most part, I like the special edition updates. I was on the fence at first regarding the replacement of the Dalek voices but I went back and listened to my old copy and have to admit replacing them was a good call.

According to the TARDIS Wiki:

The voices of the Daleks were redubbed by the revival-era voice actor of most Daleks, Nicholas Briggs. Having refined his portrayal of the Daleks to a degree of high confidence with his performance, his renditions of their voices are much smoother and harsher than the somewhat tentative delivery of the original voice artists, Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline. As this was the first serial in several years to feature the Daleks, both were new to the role of providing Dalek voices: neither of them had previously worked on the series, and they had difficulty cementing their portrayals. Producr Barry Letts decided not to use them in this role again, and for the remainder of the Pertwee era Michael Wisher and Roy Skelton became the main voice artists portraying the Daleks.

The original voices are a clipped monotone, the performers evidently failing to understand Daleks need to sound urgently peeved at all times. Briggs has that down to a science.

I can give or take most of the new effects, particularly the establishing shots of future Earth, but the new laser effects were sorely needed.

Originally the actors just pointed the guns and there was a sound effect. It's almost like the show was filmed in the understanding that there would be a special edition one day to complete it. I don't even mind the extra shot the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) takes at an Ogron in the special edition.

I never understood why the Ogrons, a brutal alien warrior race in service of the Daleks, never appeared again after the Third Doctor era. Of course they've been in audio plays and other expanded media but never again on the show. They're pretty effectively menacing and their makeup and costumes don't seem to be as restrictive as that of the Sontarans or the Cybermen. I always suspected Peter Jackson modelled the Uruk Hai in his Lord of the Rings movies after the Ogron.

The Third Doctor earns his reputation as a dandy in this serial. He spends a lot of time lounging and drinking and commenting on wine. The first part of the serial has him sampling wine from a diplomat's cellar while waiting for a ghost in a Georgian manor. In later parts of the serial, he's captured in the future by the Controller (Aubrey Woods) who eventually permits the Doctor and Jo (Katy Manning) to lounge about and drink wine. It's oddly comforting to watch Pertwee relaxing.

The Controller is one of the more interesting one off characters from the Third Doctor era. Woods plays him almost exactly like the Master with a broad, sadistic fervour. But after he wins Jo's confidence we learn that he may not have been entirely dishonest with her as he explains to the Doctor that he only serves the Daleks because he sees no hope in any alternative. Ironically, he ends up being more helpful than the guerillas who are directly fighting the Daleks, who turn out to be accidentally their own worst enemies thanks to a time loop. I wonder if Louis Marks meant to make the somewhat unusual point that subtle political manoeuvring can sometimes be more effective than direct attack.

Star Trek: Recovery

Begun, this back-pedalling has. Thursday's new episode of Star Trek: Discovery dove into reversing several of the creative changes the first season made to the Star Trek universe, tossing in vague allusions to explain them or to hand wave them away. The show continues to have some nice visuals and a story that's tolerable enough, possibly a little too violent for some.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I'm pretty jaded so L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) waving around a baby's severed head didn't bother me but it certainly seemed gratuitous and was probably a nasty surprise for some viewers I probably would have advised avoiding. And I don't even believe in trigger warnings.

At the same time, the makers of the show seem busy trying to make concessions to Trekkies. The most obvious being that Klingons have hair again, their hairlessness last season sort of explained by an off-hand remark from Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) about their hair growing now that they're no longer at war. I can sort of buy that all the Klingons decided to ritualistically shave themselves before going into battle, less natural is the fact that they've all decided to speak Federation Standard (which Ash [Shazad Latif] confirms is really English) most of the time. I remember some people complained about the Klingons always speaking Klingon in season 1--it didn't bother me, but I watch a lot of foreign films so I'm pretty used to subtitles. But in the older series I always assumed when Klingons seemed to be speaking English to each other we were hearing a translation. Which may be what happens in the scene later in the episode where L'Rell switches languages mid-sentence. I'm not sure why the episode would do both things, though.

It's kind of like how Ash's concept has never quite been settled between Ash being Voq in the body of a human or Voq's body having been transformed. The explanation seems to differ slightly depending on who's writing the episode.

Then there's course correcting that's a little more abrupt. Amanda (Mia Kirshner), Spock's mother and Michael's adoptive mother, is the first character on Discovery to directly mention the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression. She does so in reference to Sarek insisting Spock be raised this way. Is this the same Sarek who broke down in tears talking to Michael about the power of love last season? Maybe Vulcans decided to have emotions just for the war with the Klingons.

In a review last season, I wrote:

I thought the Vulcans being portrayed as open with their emotions was a result of sloppy writing but now I think it was a conscious creative decision. I don't recall any mention of the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression, or of how strong emotions once tore Vulcan apart before they came up with this way of life. Maybe the creators felt this didn't look good in the face of the popular pseudo-scientific metric of "emotional intelligence".

And then, in Thursday's new episode, one of the psychiatrists who was caring for Spock directly mentioned measuring Spock's "Emotional Intelligence". Emotional Intelligence as a field of study seems to have yielded only a little concrete value and whole lot of pseudoscience. But I guess the people currently in charge of Star Trek have faith in it. I suppose they're entitled to their religious beliefs. I just hope Star Trek doesn't turn into Battlefield Earth.

Meanwhile, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is less cutely neurotic this episode and is now seemingly having a nervous breakdown for seeing the ghost of one of her classmates. This didn't work for me because I didn't feel bad for Tilly. She needs to display some moxy before I'll be ready to root for her. Why does she even want to be a captain?

I'm still digging Pike's (Anson Mount) ready room (I think I misidentified it as his quarters last time).

Them There Glowing Blue Eyes

Last night delivered the best episode of The Orville yet. "A Happy Refrain" didn't merely follow the pattern set by Star Trek: The Next Generation but actually improved on one of the older series' more memorable episodes. Just as I suspected, the show has used Claire and Isaac to create a story like the fourth season TNG episode "In Theory" in which Commander Data and a human attempt a dating relationship. For The Orville, Seth MacFarlane has written something smarter about artificial intelligence and more insightful about human nature than its predecessor. In the process, he creates several scenarios that are both thought provoking and very funny.

Spoilers after the screenshot

"In Theory" portrayed the relationship between Data and a young human woman, Jenna, as arising from his desire to learn more about what it means to be human and her desire for a more emotionally reliable partner. It ends up not working because Jenna discovers she needs a companion who can understand and sympathise with her emotions. The Orville could've gone this route, and in the relationship that's developed between Claire (Penny Johnson Jerald) and Isaac (Mark Jackson), such a trajectory might be plausible from how useful he's been to her in helping care for her children. Instead, though, we find a woman who has a good idea of exactly what she's getting into.

Both Ed (Seth MacFarlane) and Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) remark on how they consider Claire the wisest person on the ship so they're less worried about her than they would be anyone else. When it's suggested that Claire is just projecting her own ideas onto Isaac, Claire provocatively argues, "Don't we all do that, in any relationship, especially when someone's being a little mysterious?"

Arguably, "Happy Refrain" has a point of view completely opposite that of "Primal Urges". What is Isaac if not an elaborate simulation? One could say the relationship interferes with Claire's life--it causes her distress when he's insensitive and who knows how it might complicate the relationship with her kids. Couldn't this be construed a form of porn addiction?

But just like with Data, the point of the episode is to explore the ambiguous edge of sentience; what is the something that distinguishes Isaac from metal and wires? Dwelling on that question too much is a little fruitless when we're talking about a fictional being who's really as sentient as the writers decide he is. But years of commentary and parodies have shown up the flaws in the old concept and MacFarlane is obviously well versed in them. He knows to avoid many of the cues that gave Data away as more human than he was supposed to be. Isaac is much more of an asshole, heartlessly casual about breaking up with Claire because he's had sex with her. The hilarious scene where he follows LaMarr's (J. Lee) bad advice to break off the relationship by acting like a jerk, forcing Claire to break up with him, only further emphasises his limited concern for her feelings.

So when Isaac creates a human simulation for Claire to more satisfyingly share a kiss with we see what a difference a face makes. It's not just the physical contact of a kiss, it's the extra, tiny bits of information one instinctively reads from every minuscule change in a human facial expression.

It doesn't hurt that actor Mark Jackson's not a bad looker, either. Projecting indeed.

With the great, absorbing central plot the episode has a lot of excellent garnish; the two social circles of the guys in engineering and Kelly, Claire, and Talla (Jessica Szohr); Bortus' (Peter Macon) moustache (that alone almost killed me); and a surprisingly cool sequence with a symphony orchestra in the shuttle bay conducted by Mark Graham, who's "head of music preparation" for The Orville and has also worked on the past few Star Wars and Marvel films.

"A Happy Refrain", especially after last week was a bit disappointing, was really great to see. The performances by Mark Jackson and Penny Johnson Jerald were amazing, too--I have to say I really underestimated Johnson Jerald. But I don't remember her ever being this good before. If I had six thumbs they'd all be up for this episode.

Twitter Sonnet #1201

A straying mount conveys his rider wrong.
Addresses writ on ev'ry stone were odd.
The even blocks were tasked to prop a song.
This castle's known to neither witch nor god.
In corners gathered webs absorb the shade.
The rider's steps resound in mould and stone.
In glittered motes the light begins to fade.
At length she finds a plate of ravaged bone.
Abandoned chairs were placed about the hall.
A banquet long decayed awaits the guest.
A whisper cuts the dust behind a wall.
The rider spies an eye but late at rest.
A sudden rain barraged the broken door.
A flash of light revealed but little more.