Right Now, Someone Wants Your Snack

Sometimes you can't see the mood altering pulsars for the dried food rectangles. Or what Farscape's American astronaut, John Crichton, calls crackers. In the grand scheme of things, you have to ask yourself, do crackers really matter?

Season 2, Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter

Widely considered one of the best episodes of the whole series, if not the best, it finds our heroes behaving irrationally in a remarkably credible way. I don't think this could've been a first season episode because the kinds of dialogue and interaction on display seem like they could only have come from a cast and crew very comfortable and familiar with one another.

Set entirely aboard Moya, the episode begins with Crichton (Ben Browder) incredulous as some of the other crew return from grocery shopping with crates of what he quickly identifies as "crackers" and a blind alien (Danny Adcock) promising to fit Moya with a cloaking device.

Crichton reluctantly tests the device on his module and already there's some great back and forths among the cast. Claudia Black, who plays Aeryn, remarks on the DVD commentary on how two-shots are so much better for actors because you can see their real reactions to each other instead of reactions created with editing but there's a nice cut between two close-ups of Crichton and Aeryn here as she munches on crackers. She's compelled to laugh as Crichton piles up one incredulous observation after another and we can see in this episode the two are bonding in a way that goes quite beyond season one's incidental cuddling.

T'raltixx, the blind alien, says they have to go through a pulsar field to reach his planet. He also says the light from the pulsars has minor, psychologically altering effects on "lesser" species. Everyone on the bridge immediately asserts the light has no effect--except Zhaan (Virginia Hey) who spends most of the episode blissfully riding through multiple photogasms.

And then, very soon, everyone's trying to kill each other. But there are always strongly worded arguments justifying the fights--they work so well because the actors are totally committed to intensely irrational dialogue. Chiana (Gigi Edgley) becomes suspicious when Aeryn won't play a hologram recording of Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) for her. When Crichton suggests Aeryn should just go ahead and play the message, Chiana immediately wants to know why Crichton wants her to see it so bad. You can see complete sincerity in Gigi Edgley's suspicion and the scene is capped with Aeryn washing her hands of the issue, telling Chiana to watch, or don't watch, the recording, "I really don't care." She gives the line the slow, deliberately patient tone of someone speaking to a crazy person and it plays so well because of how earnest Chiana had seemed.

On Moya, sincerity comes with a certain amount of sarcasm so, in a gun battle between Crichton and Aeryn later, the dialogue comes with outright laughter at the very idea of not trying to kill one another. And, of course, there's the crackers.

Chiana, D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), and Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) take charge of the precious food rectangles. When Crichton dares to suggest that there might just be bigger issues to worry about, the idea is so plainly absurd to the cracker guardians that they can only scoff at Crichton's pathetic attempt at manipulation.

The episode climaxes in a different direction of absurdity. There's kind of an Evil Dead 2 vibe as the plan becomes about Crichton wearing Zhaan's puke on his face to attack T'raltixx wielding a sword and shield. I really can't do it justice--everyone should experience "Crackers Don't Matter" at least once in their life.

. . .

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone

The Mall of Strange

I've been watching the new season of Stranger Things for two days and so I'm two episodes in. So far I like it, particularly since the story partly revolves around a shopping mall. I always loved malls when I was a kid, especially indoor malls, like the one depicted on the show. I loved the feeling of a world created and contained in this space with its own lighting and atmosphere. It's been kind of depressing hearing about malls dying off due to online shopping so it'd be nice if Stranger Things helps make them trendy again.

Two episodes in, the season's not bad. I like the music though I feel like there's a bit much of it and the Fast Times at Ridgemont High gag at the pool with the gender reversal feels a bit much like a recycled joke from Family Guy. There are few recycled formulae that I think may have been intentional, like the "will they or won't they" romantic subplot between David Harbour and Winona Ryder--the story makes a direct nod to it with a clip from Cheers. This may also be some indirect influence from The Orville and its retro romantic plot between Ed and Kelly. So far, though, there's more that works in the two episodes than doesn't.

I'm still trying to decide if Suzie, Dustin's (Gaten Matarazzo) girlfriend, is real or not. He claims she's hotter than Phoebe Cates which just doesn't seem possible. But the other characters are saying she's made up so much that I figure she might have to be real.

I don't feel much enthusiasm for the Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) subplot. I doubt I'm alone with my attention being completely transferred from Jonathan to Steve (Joe Keery) and Nancy's need to prove herself as a reporter seems nowhere near as exciting as when she was dealing with weird sexual issues. But maybe things will go somewhere I don't expect.

I liked the shopping montage in the second episode with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Max (Sadie Sink), especially for using Madonna on the soundtrack. I generally like all the music on the show but too often they seem to be songs I don't think were particularly popular in small town 80s America.

The subplot about local businesses protesting the mall makes me wonder if the Duffer Brothers drew inspiration from this old, 1982 special report:

You can see the bit about small businesses struggling at 11:55.

I'm so torn. I love malls but I hate seeing the small businesses hurting. Sometimes issues aren't black and white, I guess, which is a good thing to keep in mind with a story like Stranger Things.

One Hundred Years of Three

So to-day is Jon Pertwee's one hundredth birthday. I knew it was coming so I decided to watch a nice long serial from his era of Doctor Who. I settled on the seven episode serial The Ambassadors of Death which ran from late March to early May in 1970. The third serial from Pertwee's first season as the Third Doctor, it's the only one from that season I hadn't seen more than once and I'd never seen the fully colourised version that was released in 2012. As always, the colourising is impressive though sometimes the orange spots on people's skins look a bit bright.

It's certainly the weakest of Three's first season though it's competing with three outstanding serials--Spearhead from Space, The Silurians, and Inferno. Inferno remains the only serial that's ever actually given me nightmares but the creepy astronauts in Ambassadors of Death are pretty good, too.

The faceless astronauts from the Tenth and Eleventh era episodes like "Silence in the Library" and "The Impossible Astronaut" owe a debt to these original ambassadors. But The Ambassadors of Death also has its influences. Doctor Who from the beginning was a descendent of the Quatermass serials. Few so clearly show the Quatermass influence as The Ambassadors of Death, focusing as it does on a rocket base and a mysterious accident befalling one rocket mission that turns out to have been caused by alien interference. There might also have been some influence from Marooned, the John Sturges movie released the previous year (and featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 under the title of Space Travellers). It's one of the reasons the first season of the Third Doctor era feels a world apart from the last season of the Second Doctor era which featured a serial, The Seeds of Death, in which the Doctor and his companions make a similar Earth rocket journey that feels more Frau im Mond than NASA.

Now Pertwee is obliged to exchange his velvet coat for realistic safety gear and mission control has Ronald Allen as a slightly more emotionally vulnerable version of Gregory Peck's character in Marooned.

Allen's performance still kills me--I love his subtle jaw wag as he seems to allow each line to pass his lips with forlorn savour. He certainly has "soap opera" written all over him and he compares oddly with Pertwee, who's always excellent.

Pertwee in his first season gave a kind of performance I hadn't seen on the show before. He clearly spent some time working out ways he could communicate outside the dialogue. I suppose you could say he chews scenery but it always feels natural and refreshing the way he'd wait before replying to a question by thinking a moment, bouncing his fist off a desk or pacing. You always got the sense of him really putting a question through his mind before formulating an answer. It also helped contribute to the impression of him as a dandy intellectual. Here's a man who sees value in taking his time.

There's also a fair amount of James Bond influence on display. When his companion, Liz (Caroline John), is asked to explain how she was captured, she wryly replies, "I ran into an old friend."

Ultimately, the serial meanders a bit much and the plot about military rogues hijacking alien ambassadors to potentially rob Fort Knox or somewhere like that is a bit thin--though I did like the shady mercenary character Reegan (William Dysart) who seems as willing to help the Doctor as anyone else. The aliens themselves work great and I love shots of them in their space suits solemnly approaching on a blinding, sun drenched road.

Twitter Sonnet #1253

The early bird became a feathered worm.
A tropic desk produced a ruler's inch.
The apple tree produced throughout the term.
And ev'ry day we saw the waiting finch.
The deepest lizards found the surface man.
A helmet hid a darkened mask beneath.
A monster bade Atlantis quit the pan.
Infernos dream of crossing summer heath.
The astronauts delivered faces down.
In time the colour turned for older tape.
A modest crop became a silver crown.
A hero wore a velvet coat and cape.
His speedy yellow car escaped the field.
But time and space the Third would never yield.

Death and the Stone

Now for another story about youth versus age. Or relatively young versus somewhat older. I'm not sure how old Chiana is on Farscape (the Farscape wiki doesn't know either) but it's pretty clear she's much younger than everyone else, maybe late teens. It's enough to make for a nice episode about two generations misunderstanding each other.

Season 2, Episode 3: Taking the Stone

We learn a little bit more about Chiana's past, namely that she had a brother she looked up to. I say had because she learns in this episode, thanks to an implant in her belly, that her brother has suddenly died.

Crichton (Ben Browder) blows her off when she says she needs to talk, not catching on that it's an urgent topic from her tone. So runs away and falls in with a gang of misfit youths, apparently about the same age as her, who live on an otherwise deserted planet. They live in caves below the tombs of their dead ancestors, one of whom Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) expeditiously robs.

This leads to an amusing subplot about cursed loot, though the funniest part is when Rygel discovers a worm in the decayed face behind a jewelled mask. Instead of screaming in horror, he gasps and says, "Bonus!" and promptly puts the critter in his mouth. We'll never have another Rygel.

Meanwhile, Crichton and Aeryn (Claudia Black) play Chiana's surrogate parents. Crichton is the dad who doesn't like the dangerous games she's been playing with her friends and Aeryn is the wiser mother who continually reminds Crichton his aggressive techniques are going to backfire.

Chiana directly tells him he's not her dad or her lover or even her "tralk". We return to the series' thematic premise about lost people bonding as a new kind of family--it's not unlike Rebel Without a Cause, really. One of the main problems with a new kind of family is that it lacks the reinforcement of tradition so when trouble arises there's no device to keep anyone from splitting when they feel like it, even if staying is ultimately in their best interest. We've seen this already with Talyn.

The episode also follows on from "Vitas Mortis" in contrasting physically appealing youth with unappealing age. Here, Crichton eventually discovers the "lost people"--people older than 22--among the tribe Chiana's fallen in with are people shamed into hiding because their flesh shows signs of damage from the local radiation.

The young dislike age because it reminds them of death, it's an indication that they might not be as indestructible as they think they are. The priestess in the previous episode was almost ready to sacrifice Moya just to forget about being old. In "Taking the Stone", the kids defy death with crude extreme sports, most prominently a free fall down a chasm only to be caught by a "sonic net" created by their own carefully tuned screams.

Use the wrong intonation and you're dead. And Chiana's raring to give it a go herself--no wonder Crichton's worried about her. But is she really disgusted by age or does she really want to kill herself or is there some other issue that Crichton just can't understand? It's a good episode for her character--not her best, but good, though I think anything Chiana touches is gold on Farscape.

. . .

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis

The Common Spider

So you think just anyone can be Spider-Man? Well, you could be right according to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a beautifully animated film with engaging voice performances. The screenplay is rigorously formulaic in ways that detract from the story but the visuals and performances more than make up for it.

A bizarre technological experiment results in a variety of alternate universe versions of Spider-Man appearing in one version of New York. But this New York already has two Spider-Men--a blonde Peter Parker (Chris Pine) with a remarkably happy life and a newly minted Spider-kid, a cop's son named Miles Morales (Shameik Moore).

But blonde Parker's killed early in the film and the untested Miles must take up the Spider-mantle. Like Tom Holland in the MCU films, Miles goes to a private school. I wonder when it was decided Spider-Man needed to come from a wealthy background. I guess it gives him the same advantage Bruce Wayne had and it better explains his ability to create sophisticated gadgetry. Still, I miss the idea of the character going to a public school.

A version of Steve Ditko's cover for the first issue of Spider-Man appears in the film because Spider-Man in the film's main dimension is a celebrity with his own tie-in products, including comics.

Unfortunately, Ditko's art for the interior pages isn't used. But that's a tiny quibble--the film's visuals are fantastic, a really neat blend of cgi and 2D animation while also using comic homage editing and panelling like Sin City.

Mahershala Ali plays Miles' sketchy uncle Aaron, a far cry from Uncle Ben. When Miles tells him about a cute girl at school--who turns out to be Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld)--Aaron advises Miles to put a hand on her shoulder and say, "Hey" in a seductive manner. This was one of a few moments in the film where I instantly knew, "Oh, we're going to be seeing this again and it's going to suck." And indeed, it's a gag repeated throughout the film to persistently awkward effect but none worse than its appearance in the film's climax as an emotional beat.

The main villain is Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) who owes a lot to Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of the character in the NetFlix Daredevil series. Which is a nice enough shorthand considering most of the film is busy dealing with multiple versions of Spider-Man.

Nicolas Cage plays a version of Peter Parker called "Spider-Man Noir". Played mainly for gags, it's fun hearing Cage doing impressions of actors from the 30s and 40s. The Wikipedia note for his character is amusing for the wrong reasons: "Cage based his character on the films of Humphrey Bogart, specifically the voices of actors from that era such as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson." Yes, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson from the films of Humphrey Bogart. I mean, if you'd just said the films of Humphrey Bogart that could be anything, I guess you need to specify with actors who are not Humphrey Bogart? Maybe whoever wrote that thought Humphrey Bogart played other actors?

There's also a forgettable anime parody version called Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and a really great Looney Tunes homage called Spider-Ham (John Mulaney).

And there's an alternate Peter Parker called Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) who reluctantly becomes Miles' mentor. This Parker's life hasn't turned out so splendidly as blonde Parker's and there's a nice chemistry between this washed-up Spider-Man helping a new one come into his own. It's formulaic but also sweet and it's nice seeing them teach each other to have some self-esteem. Their final lines to each other are awkwardly staged and punch a little too hard but the relationship between the two is established well enough by the actors and the wonderfully expressive animation that it works.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is available on NetFlix.

On the United States and Dependence

Happy Independence Day, United States. Though Aladdin has now outgrossed Independence Day to become Will Smith's biggest hit of all time and the country is 22 trillion dollars in debt. I live in the United States, in southern California, where there was an earthquake this morning I didn't feel but know it happened because I read it on the internet. There's a massive homeless crisis here and property values are going up because anonymous buyers are purchasing lots of property with cash. What is independence? A state of mind? Hopefully.

I still haven't seen that Aladdin movie. I'd like to, I hear it's good and Aladdin was my favourite of the 90s Disney films when I was a kid (though it's lost some lustre now that I know how much it borrowed from the superior 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad). It's weird how no-one adjusts for inflation when talking about box office records. In article after article, from one record breaking film to the next, no-one seems to think it worth mentioning the ranking isn't adjusted for inflation. I guess it wouldn't be very interesting to keep saying, "And 1939's Gone with the Wind is still number 1." This wouldn't make money for anyone right now and it's a movie not reflective of current popular cultural values. Maybe. Though it's a little hard to tell when so many sites ping-pong back and forth between saying how regressive cultural attitudes are an ever present danger and acting like they don't exist.

I was reading The Communist Manifesto a few days ago after watching Property is No Longer a Theft. Not that I'm thinking of turning Communist--quite the opposite, really. I used to consider myself a Communist, or at least a Socialist, but I've changed my mind over the past few years. The way I used to look at it was to say even if it's true what some on the right say, worse case scenario, that people are fundamentally out for themselves and most people are selfish--even if it turns out that's true, surely it would be best to embrace the philosophy that says we can all work together one day in a single wonderful cooperative where everyone knows that we all need to work for each other. Where enough folks get up in the morning and think, by gum, society needs plumbers so I'm going to volunteer myself as a plumber. Surely, even if humanity isn't psychologically ready for that, it's best to believe it has a potential to be and to work toward that end. But I've already waited too long.

I've been really liking Robert Louis Stevenson lately. My mind goes back to an essay he wrote partly about his own shift from Socialist beliefs to Conservative called "Crabbed Age and Youth".

For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men.

But Stevenson, at the end of the essay, acknowledges some self-contradiction because at several points he also asserts that he is not "abashed" at having been Socialist and argues that it's good for young people to have strong opinions, even if they're wrong. "[I]f St. Paul had not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian." It's this magnanimous view Stevenson has towards mistakes, which I tend to sympathise with, that makes Socialism so unattractive to me now. When I see young and extreme leftists exercising the full strength of their ironic wit to make those who disagree with them seem the epitome of evil, when leftist journalists carefully massage stories to downplay inconvenient details or outright omit them, I feel, in a way, the most sorry for that commentator or writer. Sooner or later, these people will think or do something that will make themselves guilty in their own unforgiving rhetoric. Then they can either punish themselves, delude themselves, or change their minds. I've seen firsthand enough of the kind of perpetual terror some of the self-deluded live in that I prefer to be one who has a change of mind.

It is in vain to seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a medium so perturbed and fleeting. This is no cabinet science, in which things are tested to a scruple; we theorise with a pistol to our head; we are confronted with a new set of conditions on which we have not only to pass a judgement, but to take action, before the hour is at an end. And we cannot even regard ourselves as a constant; in this flux of things, our identity itself seems in a perpetual variation; and not infrequently we find our own disguise the strangest in the masquerade. - Robert Louis Stevenson

I'd still describe myself as a liberal. But I can see too much of the trouble caused by the "fairy tales of Socialism" as Louis Stevenson calls them, not only for the believers themselves but for everyone else who may have benefited from a more practical form of liberalism.

So I'll conclude this July 4th ramble by simply reminding my fellow liberals it might be constructive if the country thought electing someone other than Trump was a reasonable thing to do.

Twitter Sonnet #1252

Considered cups were left in dusty sun.
Reflected rooms return to mind at once.
As language drifts along the table run.
The ink evades what Word forever hunts.
The steady peel of paper bares the wall.
The drapes beneath a pallid film revive.
The figure beams of light obey a call.
With shadow paint the plan's at length contrived.
A blanket shroud conceals a shifting form.
The working clocks compel the frame to stand.
The chilled and rusty limbs again're warm.
A signal heart appears on ev'ry band.
Perspectives blurred beneath the bourbon tap.
The moving ground remained a single map.

Accidental Vampirism

Nothing will come from nothing. On Farscape, that means you can't recapture your youth without sucking the life out of a living ship.

Season 2, Episode 2: Vitas Mortis

Actress Melissa Jaffar makes her first appearance in this episode. She returns as a regular cast member and different character, Noranti, at the end of season three. Here she plays a mysterious Luxan priestess on her deathbed, alone and far from home, living in a temple where Crichton (Ben Browder), D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), and Zhaan (Virginia Hey) find her.

Our Moya trio are wearing their cold weather gear, adding to the sober atmosphere of the story.

Nilaam, the Luxan priestess, is the first Luxan adult we've seen aside from D'Argo (we briefly see his son in flashback and hologram in season one). At first, D'Argo is reluctant to help the woman with her dangerous death ritual but he's overjoyed when, after he's done so, she becomes young and beautiful, now played by actress Anna Lise Phillips.

Well, she's younger, anyway. The Luxan nose hood really doesn't do anything for me, your mileage may vary. It certainly turns D'Argo on and very quickly the two are in bed, having a sex marathon. Meanwhile, Chiana (Gigi Edgley) gets stuck in the laundry back on Moya. Are these things related?

I should back up and mention there's an earlier scene establishing Chiana doing laundry in this weird glowing fluid that apparently serves another function on Moya. I don't think I've seen a laundry scene in any other space opera. I could be forgetting one--in any case, it's rare, and I love seeing it here. There's an amusing moment too where Chiana's indignant because Aeryn (Claudia Black) expects her to wash Aeryn's clothes. I guess there's still a little Peacekeeper in Aeryn after all that she seems surprised the alien girl doesn't want to do the Sebacean woman's laundry.

Anyway, the glowing fluid solidifies, trapping Chiana, and the ship's hull starts to wither, causing hull breaches to pop up all over the place. It's some time and investigation before the cause is determined--during the ritual, Nilaam thought she was drawing on D'Argo's energy to restore her youth when in reality she'd tapped into Moya.

What do you do when you discover the lovely new life you've found as come at the cost of another being's suffering? Even Nilaam, a priestess, at one point rationalises that Moya is, after all, "only a ship!" D'Argo can't accept this, of course, being personally acquainted with Moya. At least he and Nilaam did have their brief time together.

. . .

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby

Theoretical Economic Systems or Butchery versus Burglary

How can the average Marxist start putting his philosophy into practice in a Capitalist country? A nervous young man named Total starts with the little things in 1973's Property is No Longer a Theft (La proprietà non è più un furto). A film that's much more interesting than it is funny or viscerally appealing, its ideas of Capitalism versus Communism playing out in a personal battlefield are explored with nice sets, costumes, makeup, and a particularly good score from Ennio Morricone.

Total (Flavio Bucci) works in a bank despite the fact that he's allergic to money--after touching bills he compulsively scratches his face and hands. Considering the massive poster of Karl Marx in his home, it may be fair to call his condition psychosomatic.

His father (Salvo Randone) routinely tells Total that money is a reflection of self-worth, that the two of them are poor because it's what they deserve based on how society has reckoned things. Total boils in frustration all the while. At work, he develops a hatred for the Butcher (Ugo Tognazzi) who comes into the bank regularly and hands out meat. After watching a foiled robbery which ends with the Butcher viciously kicking one of the thieves on the ground, Total acquires a mad, fixated hatred for the Butcher.

He hates the Butcher so much he decides he wants to bring him down to the same level of poverty as himself. But the Butcher turns out to be improbably wealthy--he has a fabulous apartment and owns several buildings. Total's technique is steal the Butcher's small belongings, one at a time. First he steals his butcher knife and then his hat while he's masturbating in a porno theatre. He breaks into the Butcher's apartment where he finds a beautiful woman in pearls, Anita. He takes the pearls and fondles Anita's genitals--after all, no-one owns anything, even their own bodies.

It's fitting that Anita is played by Asia Argento's mother, Daria Nicolodi. As Asia Argento's campaign of vengeance disguised as altruistic crusade was eventually unmasked by her hypocrisy, the world depicted in Property is No Longer a Theft is one where people are inevitably motivated by a desire for dominance, whatever they may otherwise profess. In the first half of the movie, we are invited to laugh at the Butcher and Anita who do bear a resemblance to Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons.

Everyone seems aroused in a positively sexual manner by every transgression they get away with. The police detective investigating the thefts seems to struggle to withhold an orgasm as he talks about every detail of the crime. Anita switches between being horrified by Total to feeling pleased at getting one over on the Butcher, who it seems she was with only for the money. Maybe.

But the interplay between need and desire isn't so easily defined. Total finds he takes sadistic pleasure in the dominance he exerts through his random thefts. He glorifies in depriving the Butcher, Anita, and anyone else of a sense of control. In the end, no-one comes out of the movie looking especially good but the Butcher seems just a bit more honest with himself.

Property is No Longer a Theft is available on Amazon Prime.

That Old Genesis is Neon Again

As you may have noticed every time you open up NetFlix, and the algorithm has chosen it to court your attention, Neon Genesis Evangelion was released on the streaming service ten days ago. What does that mean to me when I have two copies of the series on DVD and VHS and the remastered version in high-def? The sound is certainly better on NetFlix except for some very crucial differences. But I think it's entirely likely millions of people will be exposed to the series' brilliance for the first time, to find the experience a delight and, even better, a challenge and intellectual stimulant.

Thankfully, NetFlix is providing the original Japanese language version with optional subtitles and English dub. I have to admit I was curious about the dub, a brand new one NetFlix commissioned to much controversy among fans as well as dismay among the voice actors who first dubbed the series in English back in the 90s. I can understand why the voice actors would be upset but it always surprises me when I see any evidence there are fans of English dubs of anime, particularly dubs from the 90s. Unless big name voices are cast, like in Miyazaki movies, all the English language voice actors tend to sound like kids putting on bad impressions when they play with action figures. When this is added to the inaccurate and awkward translations, the English dubs tend to be a thoroughly disappointing experience.

I found the new NetFlix dub to be just about exactly as bad as the old one. Everyone's voice sounds phony and put on and the script is an awkward thing crammed into their mouths. The only improvement I noticed was that everyone seems to pronounce Japanese names more accurately. But it wasn't nearly enough to keep me from switching to the Japanese version a few minutes into the first episode. Of course, I also watched the second episode last night, it's kind of impossible not to watch those two episodes together.

The end credits of the first episode tipped me off to the most unfortunate change to the NetFlix version. In many territories, including the United States, NetFlix chose not to pay the licensing fee for "Fly Me to the Moon", the Bart Howard song written in 1954. The cover versions included in the end credits were an integral part of the series' tone. Rei's piano theme has been substituted, a melancholy melody that removes the contrasting effect of the original end theme when it appeared immediately after a grim episode conclusion. But even more importantly, the "Fly Me to the Moon" melody was used in the series itself on at least two crucial occasions--when Misato and Kaji are walking home in episode 15 and then, in episode 21, my favourite episode, the melody is used in the climax. Netflix has removed the score from these scenes without replacing it and seems to have done so without access to the original recordings because the dialogue sounds distinctly and distractingly muddy. This would be bad enough if these scenes weren't particularly important but they happen to be two of the most important scenes in the series, especially the second instance. It's in those moments where the viewer is meant to have a kind of epiphany--it's the moments where the use of the song as an end credit theme suddenly makes sense when it seemed just a provoking contrast before.

There's no question there's a vital aspect of the show missing. But this version also contains the remastered scenes, many of which are very good, particularly in episodes 21 through 24, and I suspect many fans outside Japan have never seen these versions. Although I was watching without subtitles, I hear the translations are more accurate, which has caused accusations of "straightwashing" because Kaworu now says he likes Shinji when they're bathing together instead of saying he loves him. In my opinion, the romantic or sexual chemistry between Kaworu and Shinji is by no means diminished, it just makes the dialogue a little subtler. You can say "suki" in Japanese, literally translated as "like", has more significance than it does for English speakers, but I ask my fellow English speakers, if a guy says he likes you when you're sitting in a bath naked together, how likely are you to take it as platonic?

Anyway, if you've never seen Evangelion, I guess I'm saying, if you have no other option, you can get something pretty close to the proper experience from this release. Maybe you should watch this a few times, though:

Twitter Sonnet #1251

The newer pair of brows were arched at once.
A pair of spies were secret through the smoke.
Forbidden buttons changed the biggest runts.
A cloudy suit the Madeleines evoked.
A partial toy was making songs alone.
On broken dials symbols touched the dream.
Computers ticked what's properly condoned.
A silken stitch unites the leather seam.
A shining can replaced a mirror tube.
Reclining nymphs observe the moving trees.
The wooden ducks invite the tender rube.
The strongest club would miss but all the tees.
The absent flight replaced a silent noise.
A naked turkey built a house of toys.