Disney's Animated Tide Turns

In the late 1980s, Disney discovered the virtues of sex, but that's not the only reason 1989's The Little Mermaid was such an enormous success and game changer. The first film of the "Disney Renaissance", the studio finally snapped out of its rut of almost exclusively producing chaste animated stories about talking animals (the disastrous Black Cauldron not withstanding) and instead gave us a beautiful movie about a sexy girl in a bikini trying like mad to get with a handsome boy. But many other elements came into play to make this film a masterpiece--the return to a sense of grandeur all but absent since Sleeping Beauty, use of Broadway style songs to move the story instead of being an occasional diversion, the psychological resonance of Hans Christian Anderson's premise, and the crucial revelation that exaggeration can be beautiful.

I remember listening to the commentary track on Sleeping Beauty and hearing about how the animators hated working on Price Philip and any character who had to closely resemble real life people. Animators preferred working on the more cartoonish supporting characters who, more often than not, were the real stars of the film--the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, the mice in Cinderella, or the dwarfs in Snow White. This was born of the belief that for someone to be beautiful they had to be more realistic. Of course, between Snow White and The Little Mermaid there are plenty of examples of sexy cartoons--from Ralph Bakshi's experimental films of the 70s to the emerging power of Japanese manga and anime as a globally influential phenomenon. Indeed, one can possibly detect the influence of anime in the dramatically larger eyes Ariel (Jodi Benson) has compared to earlier Disney princesses.

But Ariel is distinctly not like typical anime characters in the department of animation. Characters in anime tend not to move as much, a feature born of budget constraints that became a distinctive part of the artform. American animators tend to want as much movement as possible, even if it looks bad, whereas anime tends to work more like illustration, benefiting from its static nature, occasionally enhanced by movement deployed with surgical precision. The American way of doing things can lead to characters moving in strange, jerky gesticulations, like the human characters in The Black Cauldron. Ariel, though, is always captivating, her gestures evocative of true human expression heightened by ingenious aesthetic instincts.

As with previous Disney films centring on human characters, live action actors were shot for reference footage and actress Sherri Stoner, who shot Ariel's reference footage, deserves some credit for Ariel's expressiveness. But the animator Glen Keane took Ariel far past any natural movement Stoner could be capable of. I wouldn't be the first to note similarities between Jessica Rabbit and Ariel--I don't think it's a coincidence they both have the same hair colour (Hans Christian Anderson said the little mermaid's hair was black) and I certainly think Jessica's popularity encouraged Disney to make Ariel more sexual. But rather than say Ariel is the offspring of Jessica, I would say they both have a common ancestor called Pauline.

This was a character from a 1945 Donald Duck short called "Duck Pimples". Pauline was a parody of a femme fatale existing in a surreal dream world take-off of a crime film Donald finds himself in in this extraordinary short. Pauline may not have even been intended to be beautiful, her movements have more the quality of parody--she's a particularly gabby femme fatale. But she is beautiful, in part because of her exaggerated features and gestures. Also in Jessica and Ariel's DNA one might find traces of Slue Foot Sue, another redhead, from Disney's 1948 package film Melody Time.

In both cases, the animators had been more focused on creating an exaggerated character than on creating a serious dramatic figure--Pauline and Slue Foot Sue are quite different from Cinderella, their official Disney princess contemporary.

And like those characters, Ariel is sexy, and you can sense the pleasure the animators had in creating shots like this:

Her recoil from Scuttle (Buddy Hackett) is just a bit more extreme than natural. And, of course, there's the lovely sequence of her bottomless, staggering happily on the beach.

Unlike Pauline, Sue, and Jessica, though, Ariel is innocent. There's not a manipulative or petty bone in her body and a big part of the immense appeal of the "Part of Your World" sequence is the impression of complete, unvarnished, earnest desire. There are no layers of psychological trauma creating phantom compulsions. Maybe she doesn't really understand the human world but she wants it with a childlike sincerity. One could draw comparisons to Pinocchio--she's a child who goes out into the world on a quest to transform herself in the process. Hans Christian Anderson's story is even closer to Pinocchio because, rather than just becoming human and getting the guy, the little mermaid hopes to gain a soul in the process. The soul, in Christian understanding, could be translated into the sense of valid personhood Pinocchio seeks by becoming a real boy. Like Disney's Peter Pan, though, their Little Mermaid works out to be almost an anti-Pinocchio. "Part of Your World" sets up Ariel's innocent desires and misconceptions and then we see her take drastic, dangerous action to achieve her goals of entering the human world and kissing Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes). But unlike Pinocchio, Ariel never learns a lesson, never has an epiphany where she understands that her father was right to be cautious. This is despite Sebastian's (Stephen Wright) encounter with a psychotic chef--the film brings up several times the human tendency to kill and eat fish but always plays it off with as a laugh and Ariel never has to reckon with it. Partly for this reason, the film feels like it loses focus a bit once Ariel becomes human. Getting Eric to kiss her isn't quite a satisfying enough goal and doesn't seem like the natural answer to the yearning expressed in "Part of Your World".

I wouldn't say we necessarily need a relationship between her and Eric and maybe a kiss could stand in as a theatrical shorthand but it doesn't quite measure up. Partly I think this is because Eric's animation isn't as interesting--Ariel's always more captivating so it's hard to sympathise with her attraction to him. "Part of Your World" taps into a recurring motif in fantasy fiction of the 70s and 80s--Ariel's yearning for the far off human world is quite a lot like Luke Skywalker gazing at the twin suns, dreaming of being far away from Tatooine. Star Wars followed up that moment with a world and a drama big enough to complement that feeling. Ariel has that great moment on the shore where she reprises a bit of "Part of Your World", noting "something's starting". It feels like the start of a grand adventure, not a bid for a boyfriend.

This might be because Disney wasn't able to translate something else in Hans Christian Anderson's story for a modern audience. In the story, the little mermaid finds a statue of the prince long before she meets the prince himself and she builds her dreams around that work of art. When she does save him from a shipwreck, her desire for him to know her as the one who saved him causes her to visit the sea witch and make the deal to get her legs. In the story, her legs cause her pain with every step--like "knives" stabbing into her and her feet even bleed. A feminist reading might perceive this as a girl who tortures herself for the approval of a man but I was reminded of stories of Ginger Rogers' feet bleeding after training with Fred Astaire or the tortures ballerinas endure for their art. Hans Christian Anderson describes Ariel's ability to dance as extraordinarily beautiful. Even though she does all this to capture the heart of the prince she hardly knows, we always have the impression that what she's doing is somehow noble. Even before his love ultimately goes to another and the mermaid refuses to sacrifice him for her own welfare, we understand instinctively that she's a good, selfless person. This is because Anderson is writing from an antiquated understanding of beauty as a virtue in itself. Although the Disney film has great beauty, it also has the modern lack of faith in beauty necessary to show a character sacrificing her comfort and ultimately her life for beauty and love.

There are a lot of ways in which this is a transitional film. It's the last Disney animated film with xerography, traditional cell drawn animation. It has no real class themes--Ariel is royalty pursuing royalty--though Ursula (Pat Carroll) has something of Ratigan in her. One may note that both she and Ariel seek to transform themselves into someone more beautiful though Ursula is willing to sacrifice others.

The animation, music, and design carry into a nice action set piece climax that almost takes the film into swashbuckler territory. All of the pieces work so well I can almost forgive the final act for not quite fulfilling the promise of the first.

The Little Mermaid is available on Disney+.

Supervising Superhumans

WandaVision returned to something more ordinary last night with a Halloween episode. It was fun seeing the characters in their comic book costumes though that kind of self-referential humour is so old hat at this point I think I would've liked it better if they dressed as witches and goblins. If they wanted to be really funny they'd have dressed Quicksilver as The Flash.

Still no explanation for why it's the Brian Singer-verse Quicksilver instead of the Joss Whedon-verse Quicksilver. He remembers being shot like the Joss Whedon version but maybe that happened to the Bryan Singer version, too, I don't know, I never saw Dark Phoenix. I like how he and Wanda can speak directly about the strangeness they're stuck in but that it's filtered through dopey sitcom dialogue and mugging.

I think it's supposed to be like Malcolm in the Middle this time, I'm not sure.

Outside the force field there's continued drama with the evil white patriarch that's starting to feel even more superfluous. I felt for Vision trying to escape though I think no-one was surprised when it seemed he couldn't survive outside the television world.

I do always enjoy a Halloween episode.

I wonder what the odds are of getting a season finale written by Joss Whedon and directed by Bryan Singer? Maybe in an alternate universe . . .

Twitter Sonnet #1442

Fluorescent waits around adventure's rock.
The time for hair to grow was late at night.
The movie seat contained a golden sock.
Beside it sat a mild, sleepy wight.
The broken bed politely makes itself.
Behind the ears, a vision saw the sound.
As fallen eyes distinguish Henry's health.
The other world decides he mix was round.
The smaller face contained a larger pie.
A bigger cake supports a tiny crab.
To stretch the game, the pawns would baldly lie.
A score of clowns invade the little cab.
Returning dough constructs a circle nut.
The oven door with mitts was firmly shut.

JK Rowling, Joss Whedon, and Gina Carano: Controversy Roundup

A lot of kids have been calling me "Harry Potter" since the weather became cold enough for me to wear my big Inverness coat. I guess the Harry Potter movies are generally where most kids in Japan see Victorian clothes. Harry Potter is very popular at the schools where I've worked and it's easy to guess why; it's about children in a school with uniforms. There are plenty of Japanese films, TV shows, and manga that do the same thing, placing their stories of magic, romance, or horror in the context of junior high or high school. I don't mind being called Harry Potter though I've never read the books and haven't seen all the movies. I am thankful for the one kid who called me Sherlock Holmes.

Often when I hear Harry Potter mentioned, I think of the recent transphobia scandals around J.K. Rowling. I wonder when or if that'll ever filter down to Japan. I've been reading articles and watching YouTube videos discussing the issue from both sides, one side hailing Rowling as a sudden heroine for free speech and the battle against social engineering and the other side lambasting her for propagating transphobic conceptions. I suppose it's long been a problem for the Left--to qualify as progressive, one must have all the right opinions. She is, for many now, irredeemably tainted and anything she might have to say about feminism or human nature generally is either somehow bigoted or totally worthless. I heard there's already a shift in how she's discussed in classrooms.

Recently, the YouTuber ContraPoints released a video essay on J.K. Rowling and, like a lot of ContraPoints' videos, I find myself wanting to like it more than I actually do. Natalie Wynn--ContraPoints--has great style and humour. I like the shot of her typing on a keyboard with a xylophone mallet. And I think she's right in pointing out some of the many problems with Rowlings' argument, particularly the strikingly vitriolic, transphobic public posts from some people Rowling lists among her allies. Wynn doesn't mention any of Rowling's transgender allies. Which is not to say I think, "She has trans-friends" is a valid argument to prove Rowling isn't transphobic though, on the same token, having transphobic friends doesn't make one a transphobe. Still, Wynn successfully shows how Rowling's fixation on false transwomen invading female spaces is irrational.

ContraPoints has a reputation for considering the conservative perspective which is what makes it all the more frustrating when she does not. Her discussion of Rowling's judgement being affected by trauma is a useful bit of perspective. At the same time, she pretends that there is absolutely no validity to any of Rowling's concerns. What about the issue of children being given treatment that permanently alters their development? Is it more important to honour a child's current self-perception or is it irresponsible to trust the notoriously fickle and changeable goals of a young teenager? To pretend there's no debate to be had here is intellectually dishonest at the least. The issue of whether or not children should be given the right to choose to undergo life changing procedures seems separate from the issue of whether or not you consider gender dysphoria a valid experience.

Also unfortunate is how ContraPoints addresses the issue of whether or not the word "bigot" is a slur. She attacks the issue in a thoroughly pedantic way, essentially arguing that "bigot" can't be a slur because it's a verifiable aspect of personality--you can prove someone really is a bigot whereas a slur is generally a rude, alternate term for race or sexual orientation. She might successfully have shown bigot can't be a slur but she misses the point by even making this argument. The word "fat" isn't a slur but it's usually insulting to call someone fat. The point isn't whether "bigot" is a slur, it's that it's being used to dismiss people or arguments wholesale, much as insults are generally intended to, on the basis of feeling rather than contemplation.

Yesterday came word that Disney fired Gina Carano from her role as Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, essentially on the grounds that she's a bigot. A Lucasfilm spokesperson released this statement:

"Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable."

The irony here is that the tweets that landed Carano in hot water were tweets that decried the current political climate and what seemed to her an exhibition of bigotry from the Left.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

I'm an old fashioned internet denizen who still thinks we should avoid comparing our opponents to Nazis (though it's as natural as breathing to many on the Left now). But here we have a clear case of a charge of bigotry being treated as an insult--the idea that the Left can be bigoted is so beyond the conception of the people at Disney that their response is to call Carano a bigot for calling the Left bigots. So much for everyone coexisting.

I didn't think Carano gave a very good performance--though I thought she was a little better in the second season, I don't mind the prospect of her absence. But I find the reason given for her firing a little disturbing. It occurs to me that Disney probably couldn't fire her for giving a bad performance, a thing which, unlike her political views, does directly affect the job they'd hired her for.

Yesterday also came the news a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast members have come forward with allegations of "toxic" behaviour from Joss Whedon. At the head of these allegations are those from Charisma Carpenter who played Cordelia on Buffy and Angel. Her two anecdotes to establish Whedon's toxicity were an incident where he became angry at her for getting a tattoo of a rosary and an incident where he asked her if she was going to allow her pregnancy to come to full term. Frankly, I can see his point of view in both cases--both are things that drastically altered the actress' appearance and therefore affected the project Whedon was in charge of. For various reasons, he'd be powerless to fire her over them. He was out of line asking Carpenter if she was considering an abortion, especially since he likely knew she was Catholic. But both cases show she had chosen her personal life ahead of her art without any apparent qualms. I don't think Whedon is an especially good director and his talents as a writer are somewhat uneven and don't age well--Xander's jokes are particularly annoying and lead me to suspect they're the kind of caustic things Whedon would say in real life. But I do respect a commitment to one's art. Getting a tattoo seems a particularly selfish action on Carpenter's part and makes me wonder what else she may have done.

Really, though, I don't know Whedon or Carpenter and can't truly judge their characters. But Carpenter has said she voiced her support for Whedon in the past and even said she'd work with him again. Now she says she's changing her stance because of Ray Fisher and the Time's Up movement. Who's to say three years from now she won't say something similar about her current stance? If she firmly believed something a few years ago she considers false now, who's to say she won't make a complete 180 again when the influence of different political winds are in the air? Which, of course, is the fundamental problem with so many of the allegations that come years after the fact. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who also released a statement yesterday, has a little more cred because her hatred for Whedon is well known and has been for decades, though I've only heard of it as being related to creative differences.

Again, I don't know Whedon and can't really judge him but my impression is he's a bit of a dick. That said, I've yet to hear anything that makes me think his life and career should be ruined.

I've seen people wonder how Whedon can be such an ardent feminist publicly and abusive to women privately. Whedon himself wrote the response to this in the second season Buffy episode "Ted" in which guest star Jon Ritter plays a perfect father figure until he's alone with Buffy, at which point he turns abusive. That Whedon wrote such an episode, and that he so vociferously expressed feminist views publicly, suggests to me that he genuinely considered himself a feminist.

What if his feminism was the kind that believed he should be as tough on women as he is on men? His fantasy is, after all, about a super strong woman who turns on her attacker in the blind alley. Now that I work in junior high schools and see how differently boys and girls typically behave, I'm shown evidence on a daily basis that girls really do need to be treated more gently than boys. There are exceptions and I believe in the validity of the transgender experience but I'm inclined now to believe gender is not merely a construct.

Anthony Stewart Head says he doesn't remember any bad behaviour from Whedon but that he's willing to believe his female costars. For me, the last thing any of this makes me want to do is take a leap of faith.

Lonesome Artefacts

To-day I read one of the two new Sirenia Digests this month, a short story from Caitlin R. Kiernan called simply "UNTITLED PSYCHIATRIST #5". It features, as many other stories for the Digest have, a patient talking to a psychiatrist. In this case, the patient gives a beautiful description of a sort of post apocalyptic city.

There are descriptions of strange, pervasive cold and weird gaunt, grey people. At the centre of the story is a visit to a museum and I loved the sadness underlying it. It seemed all too pertinent to current events, to a society whose vigorous impulse to change the world means forgetting the past, or what the past means. This story is a good and, appropriately, sad song for our times.

The Birds of Setsubun

There's no sneaking up on this bird. There have been lots of beautiful birds coming out of hiding--I've been seeing a lot of these with the blue and red feathers.

I was telling students last week that it was Groundhog Day (February 2) and they were telling me the next day was Setsubun (節分, February 3), which marks the first day of spring regardless of what groundhogs see in the U.S.

The big birds are out and about, too.

And I've also seen my first official turtle of 2021.

If it's anything like last year, this fellow will be only the first of a massive tide of turtle mobs.

A Pratfall to Save the World

Conflict and negotiation have failed to unite North and South Korea but a screwball romantic comedy has never been tried--until now. Crash Landing on You (사랑의 불시착 "Love's Emergency Landing") is a South Korean Netflix series from 2019/20 about a successful South Korean business woman who's hit by a tornado while paragliding. When she wakes up, she meets the man of her dreams--in the demilitarised zone. I watched the first episode last night. It's a bit silly but not bad.

Son Ye-jin plays Yoon Se-ri whom we meet getting photographed by paparazzi in the midst of her latest affair. In fact, she's a brilliant entrepreneur with her own successful company. She comes from a wealthy family who mostly despise her but, despite this, her ailing father offers her the inheritance of the family financial empire. I started to like her when, upon being offered this, she immediately proclaimed she would fire most of her father's top people--some of whom happened to be her spoiled siblings.

Everything's cued up for success until she takes that fateful paragliding trip. She's brilliant but the show can't seem to stop from making her a bit daft to go for broader jokes, as when she only thinks its funny at first when a tractor flies past her while she's paragliding.

Her love interest is a stoic North Korean soldier who finds her hanging from a tree. Hyun Bin as Ri Jeong-hyeok is handsome but not very lively. But that's part of the role, I think it'll take a few episodes before I get a real sense of him. There's already some hint that he's conflicted about his loyalty to North Korea--somehow I doubt this series is going to end with the two sides realising they both have valid and wonderful forms of government. Son Ye-jin is good but I wish she wasn't so dopey sometimes--though that, too, is in the writing.

Crash Landing on You is available on Netflix.

Twitter Sonnet #1441

The thought of dragons keeps the reader late.
The pages rustle, telling drafts intrude.
Behind the lacquered panel, shadows wait.
A stealthy chatter round the dark ensued.
A garish green disturbed the sleeper's peace.
Commanding winds, the wizard stopped a cloud.
Behind the stone, the droning voices cease.
Between the trees appeared a stripey shroud.
A fire traces skinny stones to read.
About the moon, the frigid clouds collect.
Remembered words foretell the painted seed.
A second step away from land direct.
In dark or light, the words she'll never find.
Between the clutching roots the soil's blind.

Lost Soul Intersection

One of the best early season episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is "I Only Have Eyes for You." This second season episode succeeds on several layers--horror, drama, and pure cleverness.

A ghost manifests at Sunnydale High in the days leading up to the Sadie Hopkins dance. It forces two random people to reenact a lover's quarrel between a teacher and student that became violent. The Scooby Gang thinks they find a solution by chanting with candles in separate parts of the school but, instead, it just leads to each person facing a surprisingly effective bit of horror.

Even the bad cgi pit that starts to pull Willow through the floor is effective. Maybe it's just because it's part of a sudden, unrelenting barrage of scares, maybe it's the sense that Willow can hardly be expected to take measures against sudden holes opening beneath her feet. But it's really disturbing.

Meanwhile, Buffy glimpses one of the ghosts as a rotting corpse. He's not a zombie or anything so the shock comes without any warning.

The premise is good and the scares are good but on top of this writer Marti Noxon finds a very clever way to use this for the main season story arc between Buffy and Angel. This moment of spectral violence is, in the context of Buffy and Angel, a moment of unusual tenderness now that he's lost his soul.

And it gets even cleverer from there in the way it proves to lead to a solution to the problem.

It's also an appropriate narrative turn after Buffy had expressed a complete lack of sympathy for the guy who killed his girlfriend. Suddenly she's made to see similarities between herself and the boy. But Buffy potentially killing Angel surely can't be compared to the boy murdering his lover because she wanted to break it off. Could it?

Angel lost his soul and has been actively tormenting Buffy and her friends while the boy's lover was also his teacher and was breaking off the relationship for his own good. But arguably, from the boy's imperfect perspective, it amounts to the same thing. His repeated line about how someone doesn't just wake up and stop loving someone makes as much sense for Buffy to say to Angel. It might seem, from a child's perspective, that his lover, in making a mature decision, had lost her soul. And then we might consider again the age difference between Buffy and Angel.

It's a provoking juxtaposition and a nice cap to an already great episode.

Christopher Plummer

I'd forgotten how many movies I'd seen Christopher Plummer in. The great actor passed away a couple days ago. Scores of roles stand out, supporting and leading roles--Star Trek VI, The Man Who Would Be King, The Sound of Music. Then I looked at his filmography and remembered he was in 12 Monkeys, Somewhere in Time, and many others. I'd forgotten he was an NPC in Skyrim.

An old fashioned Shakespearean actor like Patrick Stewart or Anthony Quayle, his craft was in finding effective ways of delivering lines, interpreting the emotions in them and finding ways to communicate them to the audience with tone, inflection, and pacing. And like many such actors, he was as great in a pulp genre film as he was in something of higher artistic aspirations. The first film that comes to my mind is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Like many Terry Gilliam films, it's a story about the importance of imagination and independent thought and, like most such stories, it seems to hold less and less interest for young people. The film which featured Heath Ledger's last role seems to be almost forgotten except it is listed among even brief lists of Plummer's works in articles about him. Maybe, in spite of everything, in spite of the dull slogans people try to feed themselves, a work of rich imagination and surprising narrative actually did take root somewhere in the substrata of the zeitgeist. Old Parnassus might have been gratified to think so.

On the same token, I'm a little amused to see Knives Out isn't getting much prominent mention in articles about Plummer. Despite being such a darling barely more than a year ago, most headlines about Plummer include The Sound of Music and maybe The Man Who Would be King.

And Plummer himself was certainly capable of remaining outside the sway of any political forces. He took over a role from Kevin Spacey in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey but when asked to comment about it, Plummer said, "I think it’s very sad what happened to him. Kevin is such a talented and a terrifically gifted actor, and it’s so sad. It’s such a shame. That’s all I can say because that’s it." Despite this, Hollywood didn't ostracise Plummer. He wasn't cancelled. He was, of course, above our modern bullshit. He took the role because it was his business and his art, he had the casual audacity in this day and age to assume someone was innocent until proven guilty. I would say that comes from the spiritual fortitude of having his own mind.

Twitter Sonnet #1440

Collected notes create a ragged book.
To make the spin, balloons were talking fast.
For something watched, the eyes began to look.
The future sliced a corner off the past.
In fortune's nose the smell was never gone.
For fated heat descends upon the ball.
The blasted chill was stretched to run a con.
Decisions wait to burn the crispy fall.
Correct deductions cut the oranges quick.
In liquid grapes the future thinned the blood.
The talking time was marked along the stick.
A feisty rain creates the swirling mud.
The moving stage contained a number dead.
But something lived between the pages read.

Suspender Suspense

It's nice to see a family so devoted to braces. Last night's new WandaVision was a big improvement over the previous and I find myself becoming genuinely interested in Wanda's mental state.

We actually have a moment where Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) steps out of the sitcom reality and we see her in her old costume with hair that can't decide if it's red or blonde. The SWORD director guy (Josh Stamberg) has predictably turned into a boring caricature of the patriarchy and starts calling Wanda a terrorist and trying to kill her. Meanwhile, Rambo--I mean Rambeau (Teyonah Parris)--deduces that Wanda's actions indicate a more complex situation. I like the idea that Wanda might be making decisions that she herself doesn't understand and that she doesn't quite know the extent of her own control of the situation.

I'm intrigued by the fact that she doesn't quite know how to dress herself, too. This latest sitcom seems maybe to be an early '90s Full House type--meaning Elizabeth Olsen is finally following in the footsteps of her elder sisters, Mary Kate and Ashley. But that doesn't explain why the aspect ratio is no longer 4:3 and it also doesn't explain her hideous wardrobe.

Sure, that kind of plaid and denim combo is a kind of early '90s monstrosity but those high waisted jeans are a bit of an anachronism, as are the tight fit of both her and Vision's (Paul Bettany) clothes.

Maybe the infiltration of 2020s' fashion is a sign of Wanda's control breaking down?

Of course, the big bombshell was the end of the episode which featured an appearance from Evan Peters as Quicksilver--and not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played Quicksilver in Age of Ultron, where the character was introduced alongside Wanda. Evan Peters played Quicksilver in the Fox X-Men films so this is the first sign of how Disney plans to incorporate their new custody of X-Men rights into the MCU. We already knew they were planning to keep Deadpool, a character whose ability to cross intellectual properties seems more or less built in, but now we're getting some idea of how Disney may try to use more characters in that universe. Plenty of people seem to have connected the dots already with the upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies--the latter of which features Elizabeth Olsen prominently as Wanda and even contains the word "multiverse" in the title.

Hopefully future episodes will at least maintain this level of writing quality. I see it was the only one so far written by Peter Cameron and Mackenzie Dohr. Given that Jac Schaeffer is the showrunner, we probably can't count on seeing them too many more times. Oh, well.

WandaVision is available on Disney+.

A Valentino for You

An exceptionally handsome young Cossak becomes an exceptionally handsome outlaw in 1925's The Eagle. Rudolph Valentino stars in this lovely romance in which the main attraction is definitely his chemistry with Vilma Banky.

Dubrovsky (Valentino) is happy in his life serving the Czarina Catherine II (Louise Dresser) until the Czarina takes notice of him and decides she wants more from him than prowess in combat.

When he walks out on her, she signs his death warrant. His castle is handed over to a corrupt nobleman named Kyrilla (James A. Marcus) who condemns Dubrovsky's father to death in a miserable cottage. Young Dubrovsky vows revenge and he does so by becoming the Black Eagle, swooping down on Kyrilla's thugs.

Very little of the film is actually spent with Dubrovsky wearing the mask and being a highwayman. It turns out Kyrilla has a beautiful daughter, Mascha (Banky), whom Dubrovsky had met before and sparks had already ignited. He ends up posing as her French tutor and most of the movie is spent with him insinuating himself into the household and her heart. Come to think of it, that's almost the plot of Parasite, isn't it?

Valentino and Banky have such magnificent chemistry. I love how they hold a long pause just gazing at each other, each captivated by the gaze of the other, maybe her a little more than him.

The Eagle is public domain so it's available all over the place.

The Expanse Short a Man

Last night's finale of The Expanse, season five, was mostly disappointing, shifting from bad tonal choices to odd tonal choices. It did have bright spots, though, and even a disappointing episode of The Expanse is still better than the average TV series.

Spoilers after the screenshot

So we finally know how they handled the departure of Cas Anvar--they killed off Alex abruptly. Having a stroke after rescuing Naomi (Dominique Tipper) is a nice way of reminding the audience of the constant danger involved in the crew getting juiced up to handle g forces. Aside from that, though, it really didn't feel like the right time from a storytelling perspective. Alex had some good episodes at the beginning of the season that seemed like they were just the start of a new chapter for him.

In addition to that, the reactions of the rest of the crew, particularly Bobbie (Frankie Adams), who'd been teamed up with him all season, seemed peculiarly bland, which makes sense if the episode was shot before the makers of the show decided to edit Alex out. The banquet scene at the end feels particularly bizarre.

After all the bitterness and struggle of the season, now everyone's kicking back, getting their drunk on, and dressed in red and black. It felt like a dream sequence--part of me seriously expected it to be. Marco isn't even dead. Which is another disappointing thing, considering he was such a weak, uninteresting villain.

The two bright spots of the episode were Drummer (Cara Gee) and Naomi (Dominique Tipper). The drama between Drummer and her crew as they decide to take the painful steps of parting ways with Marco was great and the conclusion of Naomi's already gripping survival story was terrific.

I don't know the exact nature of the allegations against Anvar but I'm inclined to think he shouldn't have been fired unless he'd been convicted of a crime. But, oh, well, it's just a TV show. It kind of feels like the heart's gone out of it, anyway.

The Expanse is available on Amazon Prime.

The Viral Slayer

Even the Slayer can be felled by the flu. The second season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, amusingly titled "Killed by Death", has Buffy landing in the hospital after fainting in the wake of a fight with Angelus. While convalescing, she glimpses one of the creepier monsters on the series, a toothy gentleman called simply "Death" by the kids at the hospital.

As if the flu itself isn't dangerous enough. This demon guy, it turns out, is invisible except to people who have the flu--and it sucks the life out of sick people with its proboscis eyes, leaving bystanders wondering what the hell happened.

There's a lot of potential in this idea--the terrible feeling of a loved one being taken by an unstoppable and unknowable ailment, the physical manifestation of that terrible illness in the form of a truly nightmarish figure. I think the episode could have done a lot more with the idea but I do like Buffy's lifelong fear of hospitals being related to a memory of seeing her cousin fall prey to one of the demons.

Angelus briefly turns up so Xander can confront him. Sometimes, when Angel was a villain, his appearances felt a little superfluous. The Big Bad in each season didn't normally appear in every episode but I suspect since David Boreanaz was in the opening credits the makers of the show were obliged to bring him in regardless of whether or not they needed him. The effect is to somewhat diminish the sense of threat he poses since each confrontation ends with him running away with his tail between his legs.

Twitter Sonnet #1439

The taxing claw discovers ev'ry nose.
The dreams of scattered cookies fell to crumbs.
But something lurks and counts its silver toes.
The sentence works beyond subtracted sums.
The rusty shades concealed a singing voice.
As razor cars were yellow passing by.
Resorting last to straws we slammed the choice.
And now relax beneath a settled sky.
The ground contains decisive little hogs.
A shadow tells the tale of clime and year.
Alarming clicks repeat in temp'ral fogs.
The babe was got before the polka cheer.
The rolling drums entail a demon's name.
The largest house accrues a boat of blame.

Thinking of Boba

Disney's announced so many new Star Wars and Marvel shows for Disney+, it seems like I hear about a new one every week. So far, though, I'm more eager to see The Book of Boba Fett than any of the others. It's almost entirely due to the presence of Robert Rodriguez as co-showrunner though I think I'm also interested in Boba's continued story, especially since I've been watching his story arc on Clone Wars lately. Although the mystery surrounding him was one of the coolest things about Boba Fett when he was first introduced in the original trilogy and animated short, I like the story George Lucas wove around him in Attack of the Clones and Clone Wars--Though the ordinary man just trying to make his way in the galaxy retains some mystery for how, in fact, extraordinary his life is.

In any case, I doubt anyone would argue the Robert Rodrguez episode was the best episode of The Mandalorian. And yet, Rodriguez was a last minute replacement, which might seem astonishing to many people. Aside from Jon Favreau and Taika Waititi, he's the only director who worked on the series who'd established a name for himself as a director prior to working on the series, and his credentials for action filmmaking far exceed Favreau's and Waititi's. El Mariachi and Desperado are classics while From Dusk Til Dawn, Sin City, Machete, and Planet Terror all have strong followings. Rodriguez should have been the elusive luxury, not the last minute replacement. Few directors alive are more perfectly suited to take the reins of Star Wars. Why doesn't Disney act like it?

There are a lot of reasons. There's reason to play your cards close to your chest when you're negotiating as we saw when it looked like Sony was going to take Spider-Man away from the MCU. So Disney might not want to look desperate and be forced into giving Rodriguez a bigger paycheck. But there are more issues than that. There are the political issues--and I don't mean Rodriguez being a potential target of his MeToo icon ex-girlfriend, Rose McGowan. I mean the politics that forced Disney to hire so many untalented directors in the first place, like Bryce Dallas Howard, who seems to be payback for her father coming in to take over directing Solo. The relationship there is obvious, but how many relationships do you suppose aren't obvious? How many people are hired as a result of negotiations for seemingly completely unrelated matters?

Some people would be inclined to cast everything in the light of Disney pandering to SJWs or conservatives, and I do think there is a little of that happening, on both sides, but less than the politically rabid may think. Some creative choices will be forced based on a conception of an overall Disney vision unique to the company. Some choice are about guessing and second guessing just what people want. Really, it's a miracle any lucrative material ever gets matched up with the optimal artist.

I hope Robert Rodriguez directs most if not all of the episodes.

A Kitten for the Dogs

It makes sense for several reasons that Disney made 1988's Oliver & Company. The story of a cute animal orphan in New York, it could be seen as chasing after American Tail, former Disney animator Don Bluth's 1986's box office success--even beating The Great Mouse Detective. But the alignment of Charles Dickens' classic story of economic class with a Disney film about animals is also a very logical step on the road that began with Lady and the Tramp and continued with 101 Dalmatians, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, and The Great Mouse Detective. Sadly, Oliver & Company is not one of the strongest entries in the series but I do like it more than The Aristocats.

Like in Dickens' novel, Oliver (Joey Lawrence) is the least interesting character in the story, existing as a sort of living McGuffin. I like how Disney decided to abbreviate the beginning sequences at the orphanage, though, by showing Oliver as the last, unadopted kitten in a cardboard box by the road that eventually gets soaked with rain.

Yeah, a kitten no-one wants, that's how you know it's a fantasy.

It's not long before he runs into Dodger, an older and more dashing take on the character than Dickens' cocky youngster. This Dodger is voiced by Billy Joel and he sings "Why Should I Worry?" while skipping over busy, crude cgi, traffic. It's the highlight of the film.

Dickens' Dodger is more of a Little Rascal while Billy Joel's is more Errol Flynn. Still, he does try to cheat Oliver at first and it's the rest of the colourful Fagin gang who takes him in.

Fagin himself is voiced by Dom DeLuise and his depiction avoids being the anti-Semitic caricature he somewhat is in Dickens' novel and definitely is in David Lean's film. He's very well animated, too.

Starting with The Black Cauldron, I've noticed the more realistically human a character looks, the worse his or her animation is, and that goes for the little girl, Jenny (Natalie Gregory). The child of a wealthy family, she takes the place of the uppercrust household that takes in Oliver in the book.

Bette Midler fetchingly voices the vain Georgette, a self-absorbed poodle who lives in Jenny's home. Her introductory musical number, "Perfect Isn't Easy", is a perfect showcase, showing how nicely the actress was matched to the role. And the animation for her is deliciously expressive.

She might have been a great villain except the filmmakers completely lose the thread with her in the film's oddly rushed final act. Suddenly she's the love interest of Cheech Marin's amusing chihuahua character. And if this isn't a sharp enough turn, the end of the film has Fagin and the gang hanging out with Jenny and her butler. In a shot of unintentional surrealism, Fagin gives Jenny a pile of garbage for her birthday.

As with The Aristocats, the puzzler here is why Disney would so explicitly invoke economic class issues only to treat them as totally irrelevant. It really feels like production had to rush to the finish line and a whole lot of rational thought went out the window in the process.

Still, the movie's well worth watching for its good songs and impressive roster of character actors matched with brilliant animation. I didn't even mention Robert Loggia as a very menacing take on Sykes as a mobster.

It's Mr. Eddie nine years early.

Oliver & Company put Disney back on top, beating Don Bluth's competing film, The Land Before Time, handily at the box office. Still, the renaissance was yet to come.

Oliver & Company is available on Disney+.