Having Some Sympathy and Some Taste

I couldn't manage to sleep more than six hours for some reason. Unbelievably groggy to-day. I watched three movies last night. I guess I'm enjoying having a lot of extra time before I have to go to school on Monday. I watched Vertigo, The Vampire Lovers, and the 1925 Ben-Hur, that last being the only one I hadn't seen before and I'll probably write about it another day when I can sound halfway intelligent.

The Vampire Lovers I'd actually been nursing for about a week. It's become one of those movies I like to have always on tap and then I try to make one viewing last several days. It's just such lovely mental spackle. Beautiful vampire lesbians and some great actors in Ingrid Pitt and Peter Cushing with the knockout Madeleine Smith.

But mostly I just like watching Ingrid Pitt's face. She has something like her fellow Hammer stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee--a fundamental sensitivity that animates her expressions and perhaps a mathematically perfect arrangement of facial features to strike a certain chord in the viewer. I would find it hard to believe anyone's not rooting for Mircalla despite the fact that she's written as the villain.

Certainly Pitt had some extraordinary life experiences to back up that aura. I'd rather like to see this animated film;

When Pieces on a Chess Board Get Up and Tell you Where to Go

It's not a good sign when one of the greatest chess players of our time is beaten by police and arrested for peaceful demonstration of dissent. I guess whatever weirdness the U.S. is into with Julian Assange, I ought to be thankful punk bands aren't being sentenced to two years in prison for "hooliganism". Well, not above the board, anyway.

I dreamt last night I was at a shop that sold rocks and liquor--it only occurred to me after waking that a good name for the shop might've been "On the Rocks". Or maybe "The Drunken Geologist" since these weren't just any rocks but carefully collected and sorted stones. I was going to buy a bottle of scotch from the little old lady who ran the store and I set it along with my wallet on the counter. My wallet for some reason was an old canvas velcro, bright orange wallet I had when I was a kid. The lady told me they had a better scotch on sale, so I turned to grab it and when I turned back around my wallet was gone. After a bit of searching, it turned out the old lady had accidentally taken it and put it in a machine that ground stone into gravel. All that remained were shreds of canvas, dollars, credit and ID cards.

Remember, the last Echo Erosion's online to-day. Don't make me carry you there.

Pigeon Gets Answers

Well, the final Echo Erosion is now online. I modelled the gun Pigeon's carrying in this chapter after the colt that Peggy Cummins uses in Gun Crazy, though it's lacking enough detail that it could be any of a number of different revolvers. Feel free to try to spot the other references in this chapter and the whole comic. There's a huge Twin Peaks reference in chapter five I doubt anyone will ever get.

Surprise Haze

I feel like I have a hangover but I haven't had alcohol in days, which is so unfair. I don't know what it is. I think it could only have partly to do with the fact that I probably got less sleep than I remember. It's one of those occasions where my alarm went off eight hours after I went to bed and only some time later do I start to recall periods of being awake throughout the night. But I'm unaccountably foggy and clumsy for that. It's a good thing all's I got is colouring to do to-day. Yesterday I powered through pencilling and inking the last three pages of Echo Erosion. Now I just gotta colour them, which should take eight or nine hours.

It's pretty scary what's happening with Julian Assange. It is possible the guy really is a rapist, but it's awfully suspicious that it became a criminal proceeding, equivalent to being actually charged, only after Assange had left Sweden. And it's equally strange Ecuador can't get a promise from Sweden that Assange won't be extradited to the U.S. if handed over to Sweden. It's looking like of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, and Ecuador, Ecuador has the most honest government in the room.

The idea is repugnant on so many levels--a man's exposing corruption in government is responded to by an exploitation of ambiguous laws regarding sexual assault. Though, again, maybe he is a rapist. But if so, what would Ecuador have to gain by harbouring him?

Twitter Sonnet #416

Stalin germinates the natal wombat.
Damaged jello loses transparency.
Restricted camels memorise a cat.
Prison zebras repel all clemency.
Earthquake sandwiches must stagger the bread.
Nervous armchairs cherish no recumbent.
Uniform foreheads herald the bland stead.
Ghostly octopi absorb the trident.
Tempered lawns withstand rainy gnome thoughts.
Unravelled lanterns rent green bottle coke.
Puzzled printers plainly blitz grated dots.
Latex eyebrows resist the soap sun-soak.
Alkaline alley-oops elevate souls.
Tea drenched handkerchiefs energise all holes.

There's Always Another Frontier

I didn't much like the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a kid--I remember no-one I knew did. All the Trekkies I knew made fun of it. But, it'd been more than a decade since I last watched it, so I watched the new Blu-Ray last night. It still pretty much sucks, at least compared to later episodes. Patrick Stewart's not bad out of the box, though he's obviously still finding the character, not quite sure whether to be elegant or crabby as he's given several awkward moments to show he doesn't know how to handle himself around children. Later episodes are much better--making him just awkward instead of yelling at Wesley Crusher to leave the bridge like a little boy yelling at any girl trying to get into his tree house.

It sure looks nice on Blu-Ray. I hear they enhanced some effects, I'm not quite sure where--my memory's not up to the comparison, but the space shots are beautiful, especially since this is my favourite Enterprise design.

Though it also reveals some less than flattering tiny details, like all the guys in the background wearing dresses.

Not that these things are any more flattering on the women. But it's kind of remarkable for a series that so reluctantly even acknowledged the existence of homosexuality to suggest cross dressing was status quo in Starfleet. It's kind of a puzzle.

Also, I was able to get a clear look at Tasha Yar's stunt double, whose wig makes him look like Rod Blagojevich;

Am I the only one who thought of "White Christmas" when Q used his freeze ray on Denise Crosby?

The plot isn't exactly bad, about Picard and the crew trying to prove to Q humans aren't savages by rescuing a giant jelly fish. Q's not as unbearably corny as he is in later episodes yet. Though what this action demonstrated to Q that he couldn't get by looking in Starfleet records anyway I don't know, though I guess the idea was he was only using it as a pretext to play with them all along.

Will Screen Time Spoil Jayne Mansfield?

I feel like the average moviegoer in 1957, when they went to see a Jayne Mansfield picture, with Jayne Mansfield's name billed above the title and no-one else's, they probably wouldn't have expected, or wanted, that movie to be quite like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Mansfield appears in maybe a fourth of the film and although she's wearing only a towel or bubbles for most of her screen time, little good advantage is taken of her assets by the people who shot this movie. It's also not a particularly funny movie for one billed as a comedy. It's not exactly bad, it draws you through without anything particularly exciting happening in it, largely because the actors who do get plenty of screen time are very good. The plot uses broad, sitcom logic to bring across a pretty bland moral. But I've seen worse movies.

The real star of this movie is Tony Randall as Rock Hunter. His comedic timing is keen and inventive and keeps his business interesting even when it isn't particularly funny. His funniest moment in the movie is maybe his subtlest, when he walks quietly into a room with a borrowed suit that's much too big for him.

In this scene, two thirds through the movie, which seems like it's going to be the climax, Rock's visiting the hotel room of movie star Rita Marlowe (Mansfield) to get her to sign an endorsement for a product, lipstick, his advertising firm is pushing. She's previously agreed to do him this favour because, through a typical, wacky, improbable chain of events, he's posing as her lover in order to provide her with a certain kind of publicity she wants. In a Billy Wilder movie, maybe there'd be a fantastic neurotic ballet of comedic narrative as Rock repeatedly tries to get Mansfield's signature and is continually thwarted and tempted by her incredible sexuality. She even has a line to her secretary about how she intends to keep Rock in the room. But in this Frank Tashlin film, all that actually happens is he gives her the contract, she signs it, and he leaves. And Mansfield only has one or two more short appearances afterwards.

The movie is in fact about Rock Hunter's success at his advertising firm and how he handles it, ending with a message about how happiness isn't necessarily found at the top of the corporate ladder, though all the characters who are happy at the end do just so happen to be made phenomenally rich by improbable circumstance, and have the luxury of financing whatever lifestyle they want.

In addition to Randall, the movie's kept going by a really great supporting cast. The longest scene Mansfield has in the movie involves little talking from her as she sits in her bubble bath listening to Joan Blondell deliver a monologue about her long lost love. Blondell's performance in this 1957 film strikingly retains the mannerisms of a mainstream early 1930s actress. It made me admire Lillian Gish's ability to seamlessly adapt to any era of film even more.

Giving a better showing are two actors I recognised from Alfred Hitchcock movies--John Williams from Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief, and, even more of a standout for me, Henry Jones as Rock's supervisor Henry Rufus.

I recognised him right away, of course, from his tiny role as a judge at Scottie's hearing in Vertigo. Even in the small part, his delivery is strikingly odd. Obviously distaining Scottie's handling of Madeleine's case, he speaks in a low, nasally monotone which is given freer range in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? He makes a not particularly funny line into a funny one early in the film when he tells Rock that he has bad news. When Rock says, "I can take it straight!" Rufus says, pouring himself a drink, "So can I. This is all gin." The subtly sad, ironically reassuring tone he gives to the line makes it odd and effective. He's also close to how I always imagined a resident of Innsmouth would look.

From The Shadow over Innsmouth;

His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull, expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery-blue eyes that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly undeveloped ears.

One scene in the movie does awkwardly seem to play on Mansfield's sex appeal, as she hugs Rock just as he uses the word "titular" and we see a bag of popcorn he's carrying in his pocket start to pop. I sort of wondered why no play was made on the term "rock hunt" but maybe that would've been a bit too strong.

Get No Ass, No Mars

It's 99 degrees Fahrenheit here to-day, I was out walking in it. I thought to myself, "Why seek Mars? It is here before me."

But I looked at photographs from the Mars rover Curiosity with Tim a couple days ago and found them amazing.

One thing that occurs to me is that they've actually been pretty accurate lately in movies and television in portraying Mars. More than anything, though, it makes Mars seem downright gettable. Then again, there are pictures of Katy Perry's ass making the rounds to-day, too.

I'm drinking hot tea as usual in spite of the weather. It turns out I like Darjeeling tea. I didn't think I did because I had some from Starbucks years ago and it tasted like soap. It turns out Starbucks' Darjeeling tea simply happens to be extraordinarily bad. Who knew?

Twitter Sonnet #415

Demoralised suction cupids collapse.
Lush leprechaun calamine kills clover.
Reticent salads spark pepper relapse.
Entranced saucepans pummelled the Mars rover.
Apple polemics cancel the court lime.
Afterthoughts thicken a quiet toupee.
Melancholy copses purchase their pine.
Normal cavalry have no cars in play.
Tinted torpedoes please the chicest sub.
Alphabetic bursts belabour the gloom.
Felt oceanic thumbs press for the dub.
The vague rectangle's a car we presume.
Sharp edged cranberries watch the koala.
Brass buttons are pulled into Mancala.

Words are Flowing Out Like . . .

I've really got Doctor Who on my brain. I had five separate dreams last night, all involving Doctor Who in some way. I only remember two--in one of them, the tenth Doctor was trapped in some kind of hotel in which there was a courtyard on every floor with a different carnival of some kind. He ran into the eleventh Doctor and the two of them started trying to figure out how to escape. In another dream, I showed up to the astronomy lab I'm taking in the fall and found it was taught by Denholm Elliott. Only he slowly started transforming into a young Tom Baker, who was dressed in his fourth Doctor costume except he had a smaller blue bonnet.

I guess I was dreaming about Doctor Who because the last thing I did before I went to bed was look in on a conversation on Facebook between me, Amee, and her friend Patrick about how the old Doctor Who was more Sci-Fi and the new Who is more Fantasy. Patrick mentioned the greater amount of technobabble in the new series. I thought about how the famous multipurpose line "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" indicated the presence of technobabble in the old series as well, but I see it was actually only used in full twice.

The first time I remember hearing the term "technobabble" was in reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where, while generally reflecting unreal science or mechanics, it was at least generally comprehensible to people who knew something about the subjects. I kind of feel it's an injustice that one term lumps truly meaningless technological speak with speculative and imaginative technological speak. I've been reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lately and one of the remarkable things about it is how detailed and imaginative all the technological information is.

I feel like a slug to-day, though not an unhappy slug. I had some wine last night, which always seems to give me the worst hangovers, but I slept nine hours, the result being a sort of entranced state with benevolent vibes. It's a groovy thing. I guess I'll go see about doing the many things I had planned for to-day.

Enough of Anything Can be Stuff

The first word that comes to mind in attempting to describe 1979's Caligula is "prolonged". It's a stew with several good ingredients discernable but almost obliterated by the conflicting flavours of other things tossed in. It's a film with notorious extended scenes of hardcore sex that is at the same time often difficult to pay attention to. It's sort of like if someone played Led Zeppelin really loud at the same time Duke Ellington was being played really loud. It's almost dumb fate that the two pieces of great music occasionally coalesce into something interesting.

It actually resembles 1963's Cleopatra in the sort of mess it is, coming from feuding, multiple directors and screenwriters with conflicting visions for the project. I rather like to imagine the Caligula in this film played by Malcolm McDowell as being the grandson of the Octavian played by Roddy McDowall. Wow--I didn't even realise until I typed it out they have almost the same last name.

There is an impressive cast in Caligula--Peter O'Toole and Sir John Gielgud appearing in an expressionistic orgy sequence at the beginning as Tiberius and Nerva respectively. This expressionism in sets, lighting, and costume is contrasted with enormous, expensive looking realistic sets and locations in other scenes. Both are actually really well put together, the mild tonal dissonance not quite rising to the level of a flaw. The dissonances that most hamper the film are the extra porn scenes thrown in by Bob Guccione and a general lack of direction in the way the characters are written.

Tinto Brass was nominally the director for most of the shoot, but he left during editing and the contrast between his scenes and those added by Guccione are pretty severe. The best example I can think of is a scene where Helen Mirren, as Caligula's wife Caesonia, is having a three way with him and his sister, Drusilla, played by the beautiful and talented Teresa Ann Savoy.

This wasn't hot enough for Guccione, I guess, because he felt the need to include two women watching them through a peephole before being inspired by it to fuck each other, too.

Which is pretty good. It's some nice lesbian porn, though the actresses seem a little phoney. It's still decently shot and the girls are really beautiful. But it's like having a scene from Batman: The Animated Series spliced randomly into The Dark Knight.

Also coming to mind are hardcore bits shoved into a scene where Caligula observes a women's bath in disguise and a scene where he's prostituting the wives of senators. The behaviour of the porn actresses thrown in is a bit confusing. We see shame faced or stoic close-ups for older women, in the latter case, between shots of younger women apparently really getting their rocks off. Are these also senator's wives? Are they prostitutes? Did Caligula actually do something these wives had wanted him to do? I think the question that most often came to mind in these extraneous scenes was, "Who are these people?"

Which is not to say there's not hardcore stuff that was shot by Brass, and it's not to say I'm against hardcore sex in movies. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, nor does having it continually in the movie. Some might say, okay, once you've established that Rome at this time was filled with jaded, gratuitous sex and violence, that's enough. I would say--just because it's established for us doesn't mean it stops happening. This is the world the characters live in, and keeping it present is important. But what we have here is sort of like a wampa inexplicably showing up on a Star Destroyer.

The inconsistency in characterisation is a bigger problem. O'Toole and Gielgud come out well because they're not in the movie very long--Gielgud in particular has an interesting suicide scene, personifying the last vestige of a nobler Rome.

Helen Mirren is subtly interesting as an intelligent courtesan Caligula seems to really love and who genuinely seems to get him. But Caligula himself is a trainwreck of writing. We get scene after scene of him being decadent, and the idea of a man whose assumption of his divinity has made him reckless and lazy comes across. But it's prolonged--a few less scenes of him horribly slaughtering a helpless and loyal captive or having strange and violent sex would've improved the film. There are a few good notes that are held longer than the melody can support.

Hot Lunch

This is the feast that was happening outside the Japanese restaurant where I had lunch to-day (大川).

It sure feels like the hottest summer in U.S. history. I just got back from a variety of errands on foot--gas is too expensive even in this heat--and I'm completely soaked in sweat. I feel like an udon man.

I printed out the first story in the Sirenia Digest, "ONE TREE HILL (THE WORLD AS CATACLYSM)", and read it over lunch and tea. It was good. It's not related, as far as I can tell, to the television series of the same name, though I can't be sure never having watched the show. Caitlin says in the prologue it's influenced by the work of Shirley Jackson but, as usual of Caitlin's work, it strikes me as being more Lovecraftian. Which was interesting as it got me thinking about the essential differences between Jackson and Lovecraft. One might say "ONE TREE HILL" is close to how a Shirley Jackson story written by H.P. Lovecraft may have looked.

I suppose the primary difference between the two is that Jackson wrote from the perspective of nervous, introverted, unreliable narrators and Lovecraft wrote from the perspective of nervous, introverted narrators in unreliable worlds. In Shirley Jackson's work, even though your vehicle is this person whose point of view has been made so strange, whose categorical discernings are so rigid and strange, you still get the impression of a world ticking outside this head without Jackson ever deviating from the first person narration. That's one of the things that made Jackson such a particularly great writer, and it's a talent that I think makes her more accessible as a writer for many people than Lovecraft's talent does. People like dialogue, being fooled into thinking what's really just one writer concocting all this stuff is in fact several independent minds. In Caitlin's work, and in Lovecraft's, the narrator's mind and the environment are inextricable, the characters seem to be manifestations of the protagonist's nerves. What's interesting about "ONE TREE HILL" is the character or creature the narrator perceives but never looks at directly. It seems for most of the story to be a manifestation of the narrator's better judgement, or indoctrinated civilised judgement, until the end when it seems to be shown as a more definitely supernatural other. An entity whose nature is precisely that which the entity had been attempting to dissuade the narrator from investigating. So it becomes an interesting rumination on how the mind works and the validity of perspectives on certain modes of living being better than others.

Twitter Sonnet #414

Chilled choices sap Google's grain demesne.
Huckleberry raspberries blame genes.
Friendly records duped Andy Dufresne.
Prisons deprive disks of bonus dirt scenes.
Television Yosemite sinks grey.
Martian shellfish help carry pills back home.
Animal robbers need concrete to stay.
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Strong scented sundae mantels still remain.
The pipes replenish ponds on the old street.
Diverse rations are too strange to retain.
Squares trust too many pixels to compete.
Luminous dagnabbit and tarnation.
Disturbed dunk tanks trickle radiation.

Taking Root in Cardboard

My appreciation for Roger Corman's 1960, original version of The Little Shop of Horrors increased quite a bit when I read it was shot in two days and one night. That's a pretty remarkable feat, particularly since there's a lot in the movie that genuinely works.

First of all, the concept, as I said when talking about the 1986 version, is so wonderfully evocative of conflicts between the human as an animal and the human as a more controlled, civilised creature. I said Dionysian versus Apollonian then--in the original move it's maybe closer to Satan versus God. The plant, in this case named Audrey Junior, is in this case more definitely tied to Seymour's bad or weak decisions. Particularly at the end, when the faces of the people Seymour's killed--or collected after death--appear in the buds of Audrey Junior at what's supposed to be Seymour's moment of supreme triumph.

None of the faces in the buds actually resemble the actors but, still, not bad for a forty eight hour shoot.

The biggest flaw in the movie, actually, is something I've noticed in the Roger Corman's movies I've seen on Mystery Science Theatre 3000--he's amazingly consistent at leaving dead space at the top of the frame.

You could actually improve this movie by cropping out the top and making it a widescreen film. Faces are always smack dab in the middle.

The performances aren't too great, except for Dick Miller and Jack Nicolson in a tiny role as the masochistic dental patient, played by Bill Murray in the 1986 version. The obviously sexual quality of Nicolson's screams of ecstasy as the drill went into his mouth were pretty remarkable for 1960.

The performances were otherwise hampered a bit by a compulsion to have everyone behave with a very broad shtick, particularly in the case of Seymour, who was improved vastly in 1986 by Rick Moranis' natural oddness. Though the broadness did suit the cartoonish humour somewhat. I liked Seymour's hypochondriac mother, as I suspect anyone would who's known someone who seems constantly consumed with diseases and illnesses they might catch. The cops are funny, Dragnet parody hard boiled guys. They appear briefly but have my favourite lines in the movie--when one casually mentions he lost one of his kids last night because he was "playing with matches," and responds to his partner's perfunctory words of concern by saying simply, "That's the breaks."

And the other cop introduces himself in narration as "Fink. Detective Sergeant Joe Fink. I'm a fink."

Mighty Like a Wardrobe

I think my favourite piece of Cleopatra Jones' wardrobe is this bonnet. The feather arrangement reminds me of a feather hand with an oversized feather thumb.

This is a nice 1973 blaxploitation film, an hour and twenty eight minutes long with an over two thousand word Wikipedia entry, exhaustively comparing her to James Bond and analysing her significance to feminism and race relations in America. Though I guess to really be analogous to James Bond, she would have to treat men like some little boys treat ants with magnifying glasses.

She's a just a nicer person than James Bond. She comes home from burning poppy fields on the other side of the planet to look in on the community she grew up in, where people battle poverty and drugs, a status quo enforced by crooked cops and a delightfully over the top Shelley Winters as a Ma Barker type.

Wikipedia says showing a hypersexual lesbian mob boss is homophobic. Hey, how about the guy named Doodlebug, doesn't that say people who absent-mindedly draw things in notebooks are insects? Personally, I like hypersexual lesbian mob bosses.

Antonio Fargas, who played Doodlebug, also played Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch. I wonder if another actor has a goofier list of character names on imdb. Looking at his imdb page now, I see Fargas has also played guys named Bishop Titus Kingston, Jimmy Lipps, Shoop Summers, Smitty Rollins, Slick, Old School, Flyguy, El Gato Negro, Finesse, Monsieur Henri, Jerry Blackmore, Sweetstick Weldon, and, oh, I've seen him already in Pretty Baby as Professor. Now that's a résumé to be proud of.

He's pretty solemn and quiet in Pretty Baby while in Cleopatra Jones he's a funny, over the top gangster so he has range.

Tamara Dobson has Cleopatra Jones herself is also really good, beautiful and with an effective air of cool authority. One doesn't quite buy her skinny limbs beating up big guys, but she never breaks stride or loses confidence, even riding a motorcycle with this blouse.

The action in the film isn't bad. A car chase isn't on the level of Bullitt, though it seems to have been influenced by it, as perhaps all car chases at the time were. But it's better than a TV show. Mostly the movie is a nice reason to drink in the majesty of Ms. Jones and her wardrobe that almost rivals the Cleopatra played by Elizabeth Taylor.

A Rush and a Push

It's amazing how much more hung-over I get from wine than from any other kind of alcohol. I had a glass and a half of cabernet sauvignon last night and to-day my brain seems to be on some distant, foggy outcropping of styrofoam.

I was up late and then spent way too much time to-day dealing with my Second Life chess club, which is going to be re-launched in another location we're pretty excited about. The owner of the sims, which is this whole conglomeration of sims called Winterfell apparently after something in the G.R.R. Martin books, seemed very excited about having a chess club, too. But it probably wasn't the best day for me to be talking to people--I think I came off well enough but it felt like a stove I was constantly having to light in my head with one of those cheap cardboard matches I can rarely get to work. And I still need to do some rough drawing for the last chapter of Echo Erosion, the script for which I finished yesterday, a day behind schedule. Truth be told, I would've liked a couple more chapters but there's simply no time or money for it. I'm hoping the last chapter won't seem too crammed. Anyway, thanks to everyone who donated. All two of you. Of five hundred eighty visitors. I guess I'm no Amanda Palmer.

I actually received an e-mail from someone once asking where they could buy my comics because they felt uncomfortable donating. This capitalism thing sure is hardwired.

I'm still drifting in my television watching--I started Firefly again the other day and finally dragged myself to the tenth episode of The Sopranos, "A Hit is a Hit", which turned out to be my favourite episode of the series so far, and not just because Tony's mother wasn't in it. It had some of the best writing of characters I've seen on the show and in television in general. I loved Tony trying to make friends with his Italian merigan neighbour and his wall street player friends. The scene at the golf course where one of them asks Tony how real The Godfather was, causing the neighbour to look panicked, rang so true somehow, as was his neighbour talking about pictures of "a beautiful hit" he saw in an old newspaper. It was silly, but a sort of credible silly to where, on the surface, you think how crass they are about something that's very serious to Tony, contract killing, and then you think--wait a minute, this should seem like a serious subject to everybody. I suppose the idea of wall street marauders being callous isn't new, but it just doesn't seem to get old.

Twitter Sonnet #413

Capital cats contribute buses of
Ridiculous cumulonimbus Tang.
Nickels make a new Nikolai Rostov
For fountains of tremendous Artie Lange.
Weight withholds the oil damage from Zeus.
Eunuch unicycles crack sexlessly.
Double Dragon goatees glimpsed burn the deuce.
Cheese was a chimp who chuckled helplessly.
Ornate nerf necklaces sully a throat.
Octopus pedestrians treat trauma.
Gentle lamb shades light the lamps for a goat.
Faint flora waged wobbly war on fauna.
Mothball ballistae stagnate all decade.
Reptiles rallied the redressed arcade.

The Mind's Martini

Hypnosis and psychoanalysis used to be such wonderfully flexible devices of fiction. No-one knew much about them so you could use them to justify all kinds of crazy shit. It's funny how on Doctor Who the Doctor doesn't turn people and animals into slaves by just holding a crystal in front of their faces anymore. In 1949's Whirlpool, hypnotism is a good enough explanation for the fact that Tierney robs her husband, drives to a place outside town, stashes the loot, and frames herself for a murder. A lot of people might dismiss the whole movie as silly now, which is too bad because it's a decent film, with one fascinating character and a story with an intriguing perspective on the ways in which people deal with one another.

They drink a lot of remarkably small martinis in this movie. Or I'm used to remarkably large ones. Hmm.

Whirlpool reunites director Otto Preminger, star Gene Tierney, and composer David Raskin from 1944's Laura. But Whirlpool has a screenplay co-written by Ben Hecht, resulting in noticeably cleverer dialogue, particularly in the case of Jose Ferrer's character, a hypnotist whose brilliant insights make him come off as a sort of Sherlock Holmes, first when he swoops in to make excuses and exonerate Gene Tierney's kleptomaniac character when she's caught stealing a pin at a department store, then when he's deducing things about people at a party by observing superficial details.

Ferrer's roughly analogous to Clifton Webb's character in Laura, being the most interesting character in the movie, an obsessive intellectual misogynist whose outwardly benevolent gestures to the heroine aren't necessarily what they seem. But while Webb's interesting and peculiarly sympathetic for his tragic flaws, Ferrer's character is more like watching a very unusual trainwreck, which has its appeal but isn't quite as amazing.

Tierney looks beautiful in the movie and being caught in a situation made by things she couldn't say about herself all her life, imprisoned by an ideal of normalcy that prevents her from being open with her husband and leads her down a dangerous path, one could see the movie as a commentary on gender relations. But her character in Laura somehow comes out more interesting, especially in the extended cut of Laura as we find her to be a character strangely ignorant of the hurt she's inflicting or, in the regular cut, a woman of strange magnetism, defined more by the reactions of men around her than by her own actions, becoming a sort of MacGuffin for male preoccupations and dysfunctions.

Comparing the two movies one could say this is an example of less being more, or rather subconscious being better than conscious.

Many Things

This is the ladybug that rode in on my hat last night.

So there's another mass shooting in the news now. I wonder how long before the same people who blamed the Dark Knight Rises shooter's actions on the content of the movies start insisting that no-one lay blame on a culture of racism against people of the Middle East promoted by the right wing. I think it's more useful to think about the fact that people are able to take these larger abstract messages as motivations for violence. I guess I wouldn't be making a particularly radical statement by saying at this point we clearly need a better system for diagnosing and treating the mentally ill, but movement on the issue seems pretty grossly overdue.

I do feel like there's a problematical emphasis on violence for solving problems and self expression in the culture and media, but I don't see it as direct cause of violent crimes so much as a reflection of the popular perspective on responding to violent crime. I mean, the "stand your ground" law in Florida used to justify George Zimmerman's crime is a particularly harsh example of this, but I'm thinking more of the people arguing the response to gun violence is for more private citizens to carry guns.

Anyway, things seem to be getting pretty horrific.

When I was making dinner last night, I found the television still wasn't picking up channels for some reason so, since I like to have something on while I'm making dinner, I put in a DVD of David Bowie music videos I got a long time ago. I wonder if anyone still buys DVD music video compilations when you can just pull these videos up on YouTube whenever. But I kept getting distracted from making dinner by just the pure, wonderful greatness that is Bowie.

Supermen II

And now let us turn to the strange case of Superman II, or Superman II. A major Hollywood film of which two complete versions exist, two films sharing some footage (around 15%), the same plot, most of the same actors. Neither version is superior to the first Superman, but they're both good films, the Donner version being the better despite making a great deal less sense than the Lester version.

Superman II, for those who don't know the story, was taken out of Superman director Richard Donner's hands when he had about three fourths of the movie already filmed. New scenes were shot and some scenes were reshot for the film's eventual theatrical release by Richard Lester, who received the sole director credit. The change of directors met with protest by some cast and crew, including Gene Hackman who refused to return for footage shot by Lester, and bits with him in Lester shots are performed by a very obvious body double.

Lester's version makes more sense. We get more information about how people get to and from places and why. But Donner's version is much better paced. I remember reading that Lois and Clark were modelled on Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby and this comes through much better in Donner's footage of the two at The Daily Planet--their dialogue overlaps more, the camera moves more, the people move more. There's an impression of an old fashioned comedy routine, the same vibe one gets from the scenes with Luthor and his henchmen that remain in the Lester film.

In Lester's version, there's an overt attempt to make the story campier. A scene where General Zod and his followers summon a gale to torment people on the streets of Metropolis is filled by Lester with silly routines of people losing their wigs and toupees, a guy on roller-skates, a guy in a phone booth who won't stop talking on the phone however bad the wind gets (one can guess how Lester might have done it differently in the age of texting). The comedy derived through energy and pacing by Donner is far more effective and respects the characters and the internal logic of the world better.

Both movies have random shit that doesn't make sense. Maybe Lester's biggest contribution on this front is the strange cellophane S symbol Superman throws at Non. Donner's version, unfortunately, features again the device of Superman reversing the Earth's rotation, in this case just so Lois will forget about his secret identity, but also wiping out the entire plot of the movie in the process, which again leads one to wonder why he didn't do this sooner. But Superman reversing time is a pretty notorious story flaw, I probably don't need to go into why for you.

The fact is, the movie could defy all kinds of logic and it would still be better just because of the better chemistry between Lois and Superman. Also, Margot Kidder looked like a corpse in Lester's footage.

Maybe the most crucial difference between the two films is the way in which Lois discovers Superman's identity.

In Lester's version, Clark stumbles over a big pink bear skin rug in the over the top honeymoon suite, putting his hand in the fire demonstrating that he's not harmed. He says afterwards, "I don't know why I did that," since of course he's not actually as clumsy as Clark is supposed to be. Lois points out maybe he subconsciously wanted her to know the truth.

In Donner's version, Lois shoots at him. When Superman points out she might have killed Clark if she'd been wrong, she reveals she'd shot him with a blank.

On the one hand, I could see how one would say Lester's version is better because it contributes to Superman's motivation to take her to the Fortress of Solitude and give up his powers for her. I say, none of it makes sense anyway. There's no real reason Superman has to give up his power--in the Donner version, he even has sex with her before getting into the chamber which dispels Brody's theory about him ejaculating "like a shotgun through her back" (Mallrats). And in both versions we're just meant to accept their relationship which is based entirely on him saving her with a wink and a smile in their few relatively brief meetings. Donner's scene is funnier so it wins in my book.

Twitter Sonnet #412: Vertigo Edition

Raspberry halo holds manifold lie.
Platinum profile truth hits water.
Circles in San Francisco stick the eye.
A true flower ghost still seeks her daughter.
An excellent swimmer swoons for the bay.
Bouquets cut to museum models won't wilt.
Souvenirs evince the folly to stay.
Broken necks can make towers seem to tilt.
Falling shadows crack the red roof tile.
Painting parodies do no-one justice.
Somewhere took two wandering a while.
Carlotta's dreams damn Gavin's artifice.
Yellow and red break the eyelid flower.
Makeovers vanish in the blue tower.