Mutants, Take Us Away

It must be nerve-racking trying to make a movie about amazing phenomena these days when every month seems to bring the spectacle to end all spectacles. 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse is an adequate X-Men film. It retreads a lot of familiar territory and has some lousy dialogue but there's nothing especially bad about it, it features great performances and has a good story.

The usually affable and charming Oscar Isaac plays villain here as the eponymous Apocalypse, an ancient Egyptian, ultra-powerful mutant. He's okay, not as amazing as he is in a Poe Dameron type role. But the plot makes Apocalypse feel plenty threatening as he manages to overpower every mutant and put Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) in his usual role of Professor in Distress. Olivia Munn is more interesting in the almost silent role of Psyloche, the character whose history in the comics is a complex tale of a white Englishwoman having her personality transferred into the body of a Japanese woman. Yet Munn has Vietnamese/Chinese/Caucasian heritage! Someone call Margaret Cho!

Despite the lack of racial purity, the great thing about Munn is you can sense how much she loves being here. I love how she was keen on wearing the original costume and in her few bits of dialogue she comes off as sharp and dangerous. She owns the action scenes later in the film as the performer whose facial expressions seem most connected to the special effects.

The standout scene of Days of Future Past belonged to Quicksilver (Evan Peters) whose slow motion run showed the kid being amusingly flippant with his incredible power. Apocalypse has a similar scene designed to be even more amazing and funny as Quicksilver evacuates the whole Xavier school for Mutants mid-explosion while the Eurythemics' "Sweet Dreams" plays on the soundtrack. The film also devotes more time to his story as Magneto's long lost son.

But Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has a whole new family in Soviet Russia in this film which is set during the early 80s. Fassbender sells the desperate devotion he has to the family and humble life he's trying to eke out as a steel mill worker. The film goes back once again to Auschwitz to touch base with the original motivation for his mutant versus human philosophy, something that was startling and effective when Bryan Singer filmed it in his first X-Men film. Now, I suppose it is necessary to get to Magneto's emotional perspective but it is starting to feel a bit repetitive. A scene with his family being confronted by a group of Soviet police, though, would be perfectly adequate without it, especially with a potent line delivery Fassbender reportedly improvised.

The film introduces some new versions of old characters. Sophie Turner plays Jean Grey now and she helps make a climactic scene with her and Professor X pretty satisfying.

My favourite character in the comics was always Storm who was generally short-changed in the original Singer films. Alexandra Shipp replaces Halle Berry, which is not a step down. I can't really tell if it's a step up because she's barely a presence in Apocalypse. Which is inevitable--there are so many characters in X-Men, they can't all have the spotlight or even nice, memorable moments. I just wish it wasn't my favourite character who was getting consistently sidelined.

Recurring Fascism in Time and Space

Doctor Who audio plays often deal with sensitive topics the television series would never dare. For example, a series of four Seventh Doctor audios released in the beginning of 2010 feature the Doctor travelling with a companion who is an unrepentant Nazi after he encounters her in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950s. The four stories aren't perfect but they do explore conceptions of evil and systematic oppression in a thoughtful way. Considering what a tight rope the audio plays walk by having a Nazi who was in any way a protagonist, the fact that they don't come off as completely abrasive and naive is an accomplishment in itself.

The first of the four, A Thousand Tiny Wings, has the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) turn up at the door of an English colonial manor in Kenya inhabited by three Englishwomen. They're terrified of the rebels and the matriarch of the group is comfortable expressing the notion that the Kikuyu people are like children who must be governed by the British because they lack the ability to do it themselves. Also in the house is Elizabeth Klein (Tracey Childs), a Nazi who sympathises with the attitude of the British colonists. The Doctor finds himself having to assist these less than admirable examples of humanity against an alien threat.

The Doctor first encountered Klein in the 2001 audio play Colditz. She's from an alternate timeline where the Nazis won World War II thanks to obtaining a CD walkman from the Doctor's companion Ace, who doesn't appear in this 2010 series. In Colditz, we learn how the Doctor himself was responsible for Klein coming to our timeline--an alternate version of the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann). In the second story of 2010, Klein's Story, we finally hear these events dramatised as the alternate Seventh Doctor, in the timeline where Ace was executed, shows up, gets shot, and becomes Eight, played by Paul McGann, in a much better written story than the primary timeline version of Seven's regeneration into Eight (the 1996 TV movie). It's a nice, very short story that wonderfully demonstrates the Doctor's cunning, particular Seven's ability to play a very long game. A Thousand Tiny Wings, though, faces a number of challenges, not all of which it overcomes. The only Kikuyu character, played by Nigerian British actor Chuk Iwuji, isn't as fleshed out as he ought to have been. But the focus of the story is more to demonstrate that the British have the potential to be just as bad as the Nazis which it accomplishes. A long way from the ardent patriotism expressed on the television series in the past few years.

After this, Klein becomes the Doctor's companion--he takes her along so he can keep an eye on her. They've been together for some time when we catch up with them in Survival of the Fittest, a very entertaining story about an intelligent insect race who communicate by smell. This turns into a fascinating use of the TARDIS translation circuits which translate the insects' smells into audible words and the Doctor and Klein's words into smells. One of the ways writer Jonathan Clements exploits this is to make it so the Vrill, the insects, have no concept of deception or irony--how could you deploy an ironic smell?--so the Doctor and Klein find they need to be careful with what they say, even as it's pretty handy for the Doctor to say, "We're friends" and immediately be trusted. Klein is put in a position where she's compelled to defend this species against humans trying to exterminate them for resources and remarks on how this challenges her ideology when it's turned back on her. Throughout these stories, though, Klein makes no mention of racial superiority and seems to be devoted to the cause of the Nazis entirely in terms of the strong rightfully dominating the weak--thus the title of the story, Survival of the Fittest.

The final story, The Architects of History involves even more alternate timeline complications and is the darkest of this exceptionally dark set. It features a companion of an alternate timeline version of the Seventh Doctor named Rachel Cooper, played by one of the stars of Being Human, Lenora Crichlow. The Doctor does a little of the grand-standing in this story he normally only does in the new television series, talking about how he's the Doctor and he saves people, which makes the resolution of this story particular striking and Rachel's fate particularly sad. We're reminded that Seven is the Doctor who manipulated the Daleks into destroying their own homeworld and proves himself effective in fighting fascists like Daleks and Nazis by guiding them to the inevitable self-destructive conclusion of their might makes right philosophy.

Twitter Sonnet #943

We found a space reserved in severed hands.
The coldest tale input through ink engraved.
It now resides on lemon wall in bands.
A portrait still, a wary life yet saved.
Return to mint occurred at length for crowns.
A blinding wall was stood beside the wine.
A length of acid steeped into the gowns.
In dye derived of royal blood was twine.
In mind the thing could writhe and thirst for seas.
Belief outlined on summits chewing dawn.
In snow we stencilled shades of burning trees.
In atmosphere the ice already gone.
Expanding rings embark from bricks that sink.
Eternity presents an endless brink.

Brittle Rebels

A desperate group of young misfits aim to steal the plans for the Death Star in 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first Star Wars film that's not part of the main saga, unless you count the theatrical release of the Clone Wars pilot (or the Ewok movies or the holiday special--you get the picture). Rogue One is quite good, accomplishing its stated mission to be more of a gritty war film than the main saga, though we're still not talking Apocalypse Now. But it's a lot closer than a lot people would expect and has cinematography second only to The Empire Strikes Back. The most fascinating aspect of the film, though, is its methods of creating characters--in some ways it achieves extraordinary success, in other ways it falls disappointingly short.

Before I get into a proper review, though, there's an issue raised by this film that will have repercussions much bigger than for the film's story or for Star Wars. Many would consider this a spoiler--Disney is treating it as such--but I frankly consider it ridiculous that it's considered a spoiler--it gives away nothing in particular about the plot, but if you're super cautious and don't want to know anything, then don't read on.

Okay, I'm referring to the fact that the film resurrects Peter Cushing with cgi to play Grand Moff Tarkin. This has been on the horizon for a while--if you've seen Ant Man or Captain America: Civil War you've seen how Disney has already made Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. look like younger versions of themselves using the same technology. With Michael Douglas in particular it was extremely impressive, the effect had no flaws that I could see. But Tarkin in Rogue One has much more screen time, is more crucial to the plot, and there's no living Peter Cushing to layer the effects over. I credit it mainly to Ben Mendelsohn, who is absolutely amazing as Director Krennic, that my attention wasn't taken completely out of the story as I stared at this animated corpse looking for a soul. And it has a soul, it's named Guy Henry, an actor many people know from the Harry Potter movies, among other things. He played Tarkin and the effects artists layered the likeness of Peter Cushing over him.

When I was younger, whenever someone talked about a comedian adopting the mannerisms of a famous person in order to make a joke, this was referred to as an "impression". This sort of thing is increasingly referred to as an "impersonation" and I think this reflects that people are losing sight of the fact that what the comedian is doing is giving his or her impression, using his or herself as a canvas on which to paint their idea of someone. Just like an Impressionist painter, like Monet painting a sunset. He might paint from life but it doesn't look like a photograph because it's filtered and transformed through his emotions and ideas. Tarkin in Rogue One is an impression of Peter Cushing and like all impressions it's incomplete and its accuracy depends on the perspective of the viewer. Although Henry does a fine job capturing Cushing's accent and his tendency to roll his Rs very slightly he plays Tarkin as much more of a self-conscious villain than Cushing did. While Cushing did lean in on Carrie Fisher as he intimidated her into giving up information, and he exuded sadism, there was also a natural vulnerability to Cushing that gave his characters nuance and strangely added to the menace of the villains he played. This aspect of Cushing isn't part of Henry or the cgi artists' impression. And in a sense, that's okay. Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness give different interpretations of Obi-Wan as a character, innumerable actors have given their interpretations of King Lear. They didn't usually wear the skins of their predecessors like an Aztec priest, though. But it isn't the eeriness that bothers me so much as the feeling many people will see a computer recreation of Peter Cushing as every bit as good as the original. It's really not him.

Onto a proper review. Some actual spoilers ahead.

I really liked the first scene, in large part because of Mendelsohn and the direction he takes the Imperial Officer type. One of Force Awakens' biggest failings was in Domhnall Gleeson's character, a broad, snarling caricature of an fascist officer. Krennic in Mendelsohn's hands is cunning and his feigning sympathy for Galen, Mads Mikkelsen's character, almost seems genuine in the kind of way where you wonder if Krennic really knows what it's like to genuinely connect with another human being. He seems like a real psychopath rather than Snidely Whiplash.

Mikkelson's great, of course, though he plays a less complex character. But he presents the sense of calm wisdom and self-possession that worked so well in Valhalla Rising. His first scene with Mendelsohn is also one of the first in a series of striking visuals. The farm he lives on with his wife and daughter are obviously meant to remind the viewer of Luke's home on Tatooine but instead of desert it's a field of tall green grass and the wind and clouds give the impression there's an approaching storm. This is clearly not a planet where you need to farm with moisture vaporators. Greig Fraser's cinematography uses a lot of shadows and dark silhouettes, not unlike Peter Suschitzky's for Empire Strikes Back, but while Rogue One's palette is more complex than most contemporary fantasy and action films, its colours are still more subdued than Suschitzky tends to make them in his films. This of course adds to the "gritty" feel.

Like Force Awakens, the central protagonist of Rogue One is a pretty English woman. But while Rey is a wide eyed, innocent country bumpkin, Jyn Orso is a real child of war. When asked if she thinks her father is still alive, she says she prefers to think of him that way--spoken just like a woman who's been forced to create mental walls to ward off true ambiguities too torturous to contemplate. Actress Felicity Jones does a good job portraying this person who is physically and mentally always under threat and whose instinctive reactions are all calculated to push away from people, ideas, and hope. I liked her more than Rey, and I liked Rey. But as with the film Rogue One itself, Jyn was clearly intended for an older audience. However, I don't quite like where the film tried to take Jyn. I sensed Disney handed down an imperative that however Jyn started out she needed to become a strong, empowering leader, and Jones doesn't quite seem to internalise this arc. She gives a speech to some soldiers that I think was meant to be inspiring but I think any real soldier would be unnerved by how his or her commander seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The problem here, for me, is not Jones but the fact that she was forced into this arc at all. I don't think it was necessary and I suspect her speeches were among the notorious reshoots.

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, though, was generally just a wet blanket. He's intensely bland though his character's struggle with the dirty things he's had to do as an agent of the Rebel Alliance was great fodder for some of the film's more impressive dialogues. The film dares just enough to give the viewer the impression of what an existentially frightening thing it is to be a rebel, the feeling that you're never really sure if you're doing the right thing, to assert your little self as legitimate in opposition to a powerful government, but you have to completely commit in order to get anywhere. As such, Forest Whitaker presents a far more interesting character with Saw Gerrera, a Rebel soldier who has crossed the line, according to the Rebel leadership. Whitaker does the right thing and plays Saw as slightly mad, a man who has completely lost his sense of footing. I credit Whitaker for making me see the character who originated in Clone Wars as he might be much further down the road.

Donnie Yen is a great standout as a blind martial artist. Thematically he works as a counterpoint to the more conflicted characters in that he has complete faith in the Force. He's also very funny and his fight choreography is absolutely brilliant.

The most impressive fight scene, or I should say slaughter, though, belongs to Darth Vader. And I would like to thank everyone involved with making Vader truly frightening again at the end of the film. Gone was the Vader on cereal boxes and key chains and here again was this creepy, implacable masked killing machine. At the same time, his conversation with Krennic showed him to be someone with a philosophy, one of the most interesting things about the prequels. He's not exactly a psychopath like Krennic seems to be, he's a man who thinks he can use his anger to a better end.

I feel like I could say a lot more. Alan Tudyk was great, Riz Ahmed was perfect. The locations were great and far more memorable than any in Force Awakens. In general, it's a better film.

Siddhartha in Studded Jacket

I would have thought irony was the soul of Punk. Who can listen to The Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" and think the band were ardent Royalists or The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket" and believe the band was into retail therapy? But, leaving aside what calls itself Punk now in the U.S. and Britain, Punk in some countries now has become as blunt as a tonne of bricks. An example would be the Punk scene in Myanmar as depicted in the 2015 documentary My Buddha is Punk. German director Andreas Hartmann follows a Burmese Punk band and its lead singer, Kyaw Kyaw, without narration, providing only a couple title cards for the historical context. The film is a nicely raw, slice of life that gives a window into the lives of these musicians and Myanmar.

The clips of Rebel Riot's songs and shots of the band recording immediately remind the viewer of Pussy Riot, the Russian protest band obviously influencing Rebel Riot in more than just their name. Like the music of Pussy Riot from two or three years ago, the point of Rebel Riot's music is less an attempt to create a song that might be appreciated twenty years from now than to stage a protest with microphones and musical instruments. "Fuck religious rules!" goes the chorus of one Rebel Riot song. Other songs shown in the film similarly express blunt disapproval for war and conformity. But scenes of Kyaw Kyaw speaking to other bands and people in the streets demonstrate why anything subtler might not go over so well. The people of Myanmar, who have grown up with the propaganda of an oppressive dictator, are shown as unable to critically analyse to any great depths. In one scene, Kyaw Kyaw speaks to a band who call themselves The Nazis and is obliged to explain to them that the Nazis were an oppressive, fascist regime. Like the Nazi bars in Japan or Korea, there's little awareness of the philosophy behind the Nazi party in celebrating its aesthetics. Of course, Nazi paraphernalia was part of the original Punk culture of the late 70s and early 80s but as an ironic statement, skewering the human addiction to fascism. One wonders if the members of the Burmese Nazi band saw Nina Hagen's "Smack Jack" video and assumed she was endorsing the trappings of fascism.

Since an inability to critically analyse, and a deafness to irony, is manifesting more in the U.S., as has been increasingly apparent in the aftermath of the election, we may be entering a post-irony, post-post-modern era ourselves. In another year, the U.S. may have its homegrown Pussy Riot, though as Putin's role in the election is becoming more apparent, there may simply be a U.S. chapter of Pussy Riot. Though judging from how ill-informed Pussy Riot's anti-Trump video, "Make America Great Again", was--it suggests under Trump Russians will be discriminated against and deported--Pussy Riot may need to change its line-up again. "Make America Great Again" is also perhaps too ironic a title.

"Going Shall be Used with Feet"

I've been colouring all day to-day. For an Early English Drama class I'm taking, I adapted a small portion of King Lear for a comic--you can read it here. It was a challenging and odd experience, breaking up the lines and figuring out where things turned into another picture. Mostly I did Act Three, Scene Two, the famous Lear raging on the heath scene, which took me back to Venia's Travels, a comic very much inspired by King Lear. It's also only the second time I've worked from a script by someone other than myself, the other time being the Nebari fan fiction I did with Caitlin years ago. So she's in good company.

This doesn't mean I've stopped working on Dekpa and Deborah, in fact I've done a lot of Dekpa and Deborah related material over the past few months. I don't know when you'll see any of it but definitely eventually.

Twitter Sonnet #942

A fountain timed visage was comped to roads.
The piping piled sources sponged of rock.
The petal tips conceive how shadow goads.
Formica chill enclosed the key and lock.
A golden peg attained a century.
In shells abandoned late the lost return.
Inside ordained fish tanks was mystery.
New northern lights'll each switch on in turn.
In papers kept in leafy stacks inside.
A palace placed no call for colonnade.
In wheels a wordy scallion can reside.
Imprinted hair grows silver God's arcade.
Unstoppered cinnamon insists on cloves.
A madness ran from heath to sodden stoves.

Moon Skunk

This is to-night's full moon. Now that I have a camera with a proper zoom I can take a picture of it.

I had a two hour gap between two of my classes to-day. Normally I spend that time reading but a Fiona Apple line, from her song "Waltz", came to mind; "Go out and sit on the lawn/And do nothing/'Cause it's just what you must do/Nobody does it anymore." So I sat on a bench and just stared into space thinking for a long time. Then this skunk appeared across the way:

It came out of one of those round drains behind it and whenever someone walked too close it'd hide itself in one of the drains too shallow to hide its whole body. But it braved the open air again to reach this food dish I think actually belongs to an orange cat I've seen about the same area:

Man Gave Names to All the Walkers

Was last night's mid-season finale of The Walking Dead a metaphor for original sin? Was it another string of improbable things for Negan to keep smiling about? It was both! It was also mildly entertaining and contained the hope of next year holding the Battle of the Five Communities.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Twice we see women presented with apples. Maggie (Lauren Cohen), who wants to fight Negan, intimidates Gregory (Xander Berkeley) into giving her an apple. Gregory is the ideological adversary of Jesus (Tom Payne).

Carol (Melissa McBride), who wants to be left alone and not get involved in the fighting, reluctantly accepts apples from Morgan (Lennie James) who . . . also doesn't want to fight. I'm not sure how that fits. She also gets a lot of apples from Ezekiel, whose name also happens to be biblical.

Rosita (Christian Serratos) doesn't take an apple but, as the fruit represented knowledge, she does make the same transgression in forcing Eugene to make her a bullet to defy God, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the mysteriously invulnerable controller who asked Rick (Andrew Lincoln) to chop of his son's arm in the season première only to stop Rick at the last second in a manner similar to God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son and then stopping Abraham at the last minute. And the first guy Negan killed was Abraham.

Michonne (Danai Gurira) has also not wanted to toe the line and confronts Rick about changing strategies in this episode. So the general trend seems to be that Eve, the women, want to defy God, Negan, and force the more reluctant Adam, Rick and etcetera, to go along. Though I guess both Morgan and Carol are Adam and that guy with bloodshot eyes in the Kingdom is also Eve . . . well, the metaphor is sort of in there.

Of course, the centrepiece of the episode is the pool game in the middle of the street. I don't know what happened to the writers in this scene, maybe they were pushing up against a deadline, but let's just list the improbable and damned near impossible things required to make this scene function.

1. People gather around the table in a threatening manner for no apparent reason without being acknowledged by Negan or his people.

2. Rosita somehow hits Negan's bat instead of Negan.

3. Negan didn't drop the bat when it was shot by a gun.

4. Negan does not kill Rosita but instead gives her two more reasons to want revenge (killing Olivia and scarring her face).

5. Negan inspects the bullet casing instead of the gun when it was guns his men had confiscated not simply bullets.

6. Negan can recognise a custom made bullet.

7. He assumes Rosita had it custom made and not that it happened to be in the gun when she found it.

8. Negan's still alive despite obviously not having any idea how to use a straight razor.

You don't point the edge straight at your skin unless you want to use it to comb your stubble. Okay, that's a nitpick. It's nowhere near as big an issue as the other reasons Negan keeps not dying though now that I'm looking at him as symbolising God in Genesis and Exodus it all at least makes sense thematically if not realistically.

Well, at least Rick is starting to act a little like Rick again.

You Can Go Back to Old Dathomir

Last night's new Star Wars Rebels had some very nice visual moments inherited from the Dathomir episodes of Clone Wars but was heavier on aimless plot shuffling than on actual character development. Once again.

It was great to have Tom Baker back as the Bendu, however briefly. I suppose I'm biased but hearing him I wonder, "How doesn't everyone watching instantly melt?" The contrast with the whiny kid playing Ezra couldn't be more severe. Baker's so good at delivering a line in a way that's a little foreign to modern television and film acting and pretty close to the style of Alec Guinness--I'm reminded of hearing how Guinness offered to give multiple readings of one line in The Empire Strikes Back. There's a lot to be said for an actor internalising completely the emotions of the role like a method actor but I also love an actor who spends time just thinking about how the words sound coming out of his mouth and crafting something interesting that way. It contributes to a sense of the character's wisdom and discipline, too, which is what makes both Guinness and Baker good for these two similar mentor roles.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I felt like Sam Witwer as Maul tried being creative with his voice in a similar way but it somehow worked merely to flatten his character a bit. I like how the writers continue to give him an actual argument to sway Ezra instead of just, "Hey, let's be evil together!" It's interesting Maul invokes the idea of letting go of attachments which is supposed to be a Jedi idea. This could be a subtle indicator that Maul really doesn't belong to either side which makes me wish Witwer didn't voice him like erratic Evil McEvilton.

Speaking of Obi-Wan, it sounds like they're setting up a showdown between him and Maul. I wonder if it'll be as big a let down as the one between Vader and Ahsoka.

Going back to Dathomir was nice, and it kind of makes sense for Maul to hide out there. I mean, normal logic would say his homeworld is a bad choice for a hideout, but the same logic would say it was a bad idea to hide Luke on Tatooine, so that bird has well and truly flown. The ghosts of the witches were pretty eerie. It'd been nice if they'd gotten Katie Lucas back to write the episode but I guess kicking her father out of the writers' room on Force Awakens would make it awkward to bring her in on anything. Despite the obvious nepotism involved in her getting the job, she did pretty good work on Clone Wars' Dathomir episodes.

Of course, one can't go to Dathomir without thinking of Asajj Ventress but she wasn't even mentioned in the episode. Part of me says, "Wouldn't it be cool if they brought her back?" But a bigger part of me says, "Absolutely not!" They really, really need to stop bringing back people and work more on the people they already have. I mean, after they've killed off the whole Ghost crew except Hera, Zeb, and Chopper. I still don't care about Ezra, Kanan, and Sabine. I sort of want to like Sabine but her voice actress is so bland and I've already ranted before about her obnoxious, manufactured independent artist thing.

Twitter Sonnet #941

A fasting polar bear arrests the snow.
Liquorice dye aligned in clouds to sleep.
A boat could never hold what our cells know.
A new radar is seeking life too deep.
A crystal carbon promise spills a glass.
In likeness gleam, a quick impress of tears.
Unshattered drops, a rain unmet to pass.
The charcoal knife abrased the hill of fears.
A trial played for secret shirts a week.
When never stops, continuance concludes.
Escaping birds could not forewarn the weak.
A face expected thoughts were interludes.
The shadow wings were met by shades of all.
Improper folds evince a tilting wall.

All Time at Once

In the last three months of 2009, Big Finish released a series of three Doctor Who audios featuring the Fifth Doctor and his companion Nyssa trapped in the village of Stockbridge. I'm not sure if it's meant to be any of the real Stockbridges but all three stories are pretty good, particularly the middle story, The Eternal Summer. Though the first story, Castle of Fear, wins points for having the Doctor mentioning he'd like to meet Percy Shelley, perhaps to make up for the unflattering portrayal of him in The Company of Friends.

The three Stockbridge stories correspond with the past, present, and future of the village. Castle of Fear has the Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) witnessing a mummers' play in 19th century Stockbridge and noticing that, alongside St. George and the Dragon, there's also a character called the Doctor who travels in a blue box. So the Doctor and Nyssa must travel to the twelfth century to inspire the events in the play. There's a definite attempt to capture some of the atmosphere of Monty Python and even an oblique nod to Monty Python and the Holy Grail when one character is reminded of her mother when she smells elderberries. The story features the Rutans, the species introduced in the Fourth Doctor television story The Horror of Fang Rock. Voiced by Nicholas Briggs, though, they sound a bit too much like Daleks.

The Eternal Summer is more focused on the logic of time travel though it's also very funny. Written by Jonathan Morris, who seems to excel at cleverly constructed time travel plots--the best example of which is Flip-Flop--The Eternal Summer takes the Groundhog Day premise (and specifically mentions the film) and puts it on steroids. The Doctor and Nyssa find themselves in a Stockbridge that repeats the same day over and over, all the residents remember the repetitions but still react emotionally to events in the day as if they're new, and anachronistic objects turn up all over town making it difficult for the Doctor to determine the actual date. Events layer over each other and other events happen in impossible sequence, like a man who dies grieving for her his dead wife who tells the Doctor about going to his funeral, or another man asking the Doctor if he's planning on going to the wedding/May Day/Christmas celebrations, the audio layering all these events over each other. The story also features an entertaining UFO nut played by Mark Williams (who would go on to play Rory Williams' father on the television series) who's the only one in town immune to the mental conditioning of the other residents.

The final story of the series, the "future" story, is Plague of the Daleks which mixes Daleks with zombies in a Stockbridge that's been turned into a sort of museum. Not as good as the first two, it's still pretty entertaining though zombies don't work very well in an audio format. Their groans paint a pretty limited picture.

Nature's Threshing

It's remarkable how subtle a point of disagreement can be but yet it'll still escalate to a passion that pits brother against brother. 2006's The Wind that Shakes the Barley shows how a community of friends and family who fought alongside each other in the Irish War of Independence could turn against each other in the subsequent civil war. The film is attractively shot with very good performances. A little too cleanly shot for my taste--surprising given its director, Ken Loach, made the remarkably raw Kes--and possessed of definite bias, it nonetheless evokes a real sense of ideological conflict taken to the point of killing.

Cillian Murphy stars as Damien O'Donovan, a young man who doesn't want to participate in the war, even after British soldiers humiliate and bully he and his friends, killing one, for playing hurley. But he has a change of heart after seeing British soldiers hit a train conductor, Dan, played by Liam Cunningham.

Murphy is very good but Cunningham is the real star of the film for my money, even though he gives a less complex performance than Murphy. The film has a lot of scenes where men sneak around before opening fire on each other as well as dramatic execution scenes but the best scenes are set in a little office where people talk politics. The first of these scenes, set during the War of Independence, finds Dan suddenly in an argument with Teddy O'Donovan (Padraic Delaney), Damien's brother and leader of the Republican forces.

Teddy wants to protect a rich landlord from a fine levied on him by judgement of the Republican court because this landlord is supplying the IRA with weapons. Dan makes the good point that the Republic will never be legitimate if the decisions of its court aren't respected by its military. Teddy makes a fair point that there'll be no republic without arms to protect it but he's no match for Cunningham's sharp glower.

Dan effectively points out to the poorer soldiers on Teddy's side how they're being manipulated by wealthy capitalists.

It's an early fissure, indicative of what'll divide the group after the treaty is signed with Britain that gives Ireland control of its economic affairs but still leaves it under the control of the British Empire. Teddy's of the side that sees this as a step forward in a very long fight, Damien sees it as a defeat for the whole cause.

The film is very much on Damien's side, putting all the more charismatic actors on it and making Teddy look foolish and ungrateful. Still, it does show how remarkably intimate the conflict was. It's not cold but it depicts how easily ideas can make neighbours formally declare war on each other.

Semi-Annual Calico Recursion

This calico cat ran right up to me again like she did the last time I saw her, several months ago. And before that it'd been several months. She has a good memory because I've seen her run right past other people to get to me. To-day she let me pet her a few times then set herself up in a guard post, staring across the street with her back to me.

Here's another cute animal I saw to-day at university, in the Professional Studies & Fine Arts building, or PSFA, but I always think of it as the PTSD building:

I heard one of my professors there to-day talking about Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that Democrats use pizzerias for a child sex slavery ring. This led, a few days ago, to a man in North Carolina entering a pizzeria with an assault rifle to "self-investigate". Fortunately no-one was hurt.

It's horrible and sad for many reasons that ought to be obvious. I get stuck on the term "self-investigate". I would say to him, "You mean investigate?" Certainly I think some self investigating would be healthy for him. It's probably not something anyone who believes in Pizzagate is used to doing.

Like the election of Trump itself, learning that so many people believe in such obvious hogwash comes as something of a shock. See, it's not simply that it's repugnant or hateful. Like Trump, it seems like even disgusting people should be smart enough to know better. I'm beginning to realise I take my intellect for granted. Many people apparently have not cultivated the instincts I have that allow me to pass my eyes over a spam e-mail from a Nigerian prince without even having to ponder whether or not it's legitimate. As internet troll culture becomes increasingly smug, naturally it sees no reason to cultivate its critical skills further, and many young and old internet neophytes are handed their smug cards on the ground floor. Hazy ideology floods into the gaps left by critical thinking, just like those memes about Hillary Clinton not getting pop culture references--it seems like it ought to be true, so that's more than half the battle for some.

But still I'm lacking the perspective, I'm not constantly barraged with the fake news that helps build up these conspiracy theories. On a school computer to-day, where I was not signed into any of my accounts and didn't have the little gadgets informing the browser of all my preferences based on frequently viewed sites and videos, I saw on YouTube next to a video I was watching from a 1987 production of Miss Julie a video about Hillary Clinton worshipping Satan to control Bill Clinton. I realised as much as I'm isolated from videos like these because of my preferences, other people are inundated with them the more of them they view.

I don't use a smart phone, my main PC is still using Windows 7. Who knows what the media landscape looks like to someone who's locked into a wider array of software eager to reflect back the user's preferences. Maybe the danger isn't so much computers thinking for people but from stopping thought just as it's starting.

Twitter Sonnet #940

A dust surrounds a rumbling line of knees.
Somewhere in fogs the legs propel the dumb.
In zoetrope speed air swallowed the trees.
A flick'ring shape eclipsed the army's sum.
In coats too shy to raise an arm to strop.
Reflections dulled in summer glinting steel.
A snapping sound from sand presaged the stop.
In tiny wings a chorus chose the real.
A hairless kid caught sight of cars in grass.
Across the hills the convoy took the grain.
In blackened fish the egg presents a mass.
By matins trout accrue for scales a vein.
A hamster wheel enclosed a wolf to run.
A curving grid became the egg and sun.

Boots to Clean and Boots to Kiss

When discussing class mobility, issues of gender and psychological reprogramming are not often prioritised. But they're integral to 1951's Miss Julie and the 1888 August Stringberg play on which it is based. The film liberally adds scenes and characters but presents most of the dialogue and events of the play intact. There's a misogyny in the story which the film plays up and yet there's undeniable insight in its portrayal of human beings desperately struggling with the identities they've constructed for themselves since childhood. And the film is gorgeously shot.

The play is set entirely in the kitchen of a wealthy count's estate but the movie ranges all over the property during the midsummer festivities in which the servants abandon restraint in wild, drunken celebrations. In this context, Miss Julie (Anita Bjork), a beautiful young woman and daughter of the Count, flirts with the valet, Jean (Ulf Palme).

In a wonderfully shot sequence, the two describe their dreams to each other. Julie describes being somewhere high not knowing how to get down and Jean describes desperately trying to climb a tree to reach the highest branch. It's not hard to relate these dreams to their waking life. In both the play and the movie, Jean tells Julie about his crush on her when they were children and the film actually shows the scene he describes of going to church just to gaze on her.

The film creates a scene where Jean, as a child, is running from a governess and hides in a beautiful latrine. When she approaches the latrine, he tells Julie there was only one way out for him--crawling out through the human waste. That's a scene that certainly couldn't have been shot in 1951 Hollywood. It pretty garishly emphasises the position Jean's born into. I almost think it's over the top.

As in the play, the midsummer revellers barge into the kitchen, forcing Jean and Julie to hide in his room where they have sex. Their discussions for the rest of the play involve their competing attempts to convert their idle dreams into a workable plan for their future and requires both to talk at length about experiences that formed their personae.

Julie describes a truly strange childhood environment. Her mother (Lissi Alandh) is a sexual revolutionary depicted as maniacally malevolent in contrast to a gentle, long suffering Count (Anders Henrikson). Julie's mother initiates gender swap experiments in the film in which all the male servants are forced to do jobs normally reserved for women, like spinning thread, and the women are given the men's jobs, like moving a cart of hay out of a ditch. The movie shows the servants being awkward and failing at their swapped jobs while Julie is forced to dress as a boy and is punished for trying to play with her doll.

The play isn't this broad but there is definitely a sense that Julie is psychologically damaged by being "half-male". On the one hand, this seems to suggest there's something inherently wrong with Julie or her mother coveting control over their lives, on the other it's natural for the experience of atypical gender behaviour to be traumatic and awkward in such a solidly patriarchal institution of the 19th century aristocratic home.

My favourite scene in the play and the film involves Julie's bird which she wants to take with them when she and Jean flee for their pipe dream of running a hotel in Switzerland. Jean's response is a brutal attempt at showing Julie the reality of life and yet it's needlessly cruel, a reflection of Jean's own delusions.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the play and film is that the Count is never physically present in the play. He only appears in flashbacks and in locations apart from the principle characters in the film version but, particularly since director and screenwriter Alf Sjoberg deliberately makes him seem so gentle and kind, he loses the status of living social construct which he presents in the play. Even in his absence, his presence haunts the play in the form of his boots and the servant's bell, always there like Pavlov's to awaken deeply ingrained responses from personae more durable than people.

Dice and Guns

Dominating the city through violence is the dream of nearly every young boy in 2002's City of God. The first half of the film is breezy, casual, and kinetic, very likely influenced by Goodfellas. The last portion of the film is a slightly less effective melodrama. Very loosely based on true events and actually shot in the slums of Rio the film provides an entertaining and disturbing glimpse into the culture of the poor in Brazil.

Most of the actors in the film were non-professionals, cast from the actual slum communities. The film is told from the perspective of Rocket, played by Luis Otavio as a child and Alexandre Rodrigues as an adult, who we learn eventually becomes a professional photographer. We see him flirting with his first crush, dreaming about getting a proper camera, and landing his first big scoop, but his story is an underwhelming detour from the more effective parts of the film focusing on the city's gangster culture.

I like the way the first part of the film weaves in the lives of different people from the city, giving brief back stories about an apartment where a woman used to sell pot that gradually evolved to become gang controlled or the story of a proprietor of a small restaurant or a hoodlum named Shaggy (Jonathan Haagensen). In one of the more effective scenes early in the film, he attempts to escape police with his lover, Bernice (Roberta Rodrigues). The scene has an effectively painful tension and disaster.

But most of the first part of the film maintains a casually splashy tone. Even the assault on a brothel by three young hoods has more a tone of mischief than massacre. Which is appropriate given how normalised extreme violence is in the community depicted. The film's most interesting character, Li'l Dice (Douglas Silva and Leandro Firmino da Hora), feels nothing but glee when executing people he robs even as a small child.

Li'l Dice, Li'l Ze when he's older, is at the centre of the film. With his partner, Benny (Michel de Souza and Phellipe Haagensen), he takes over the town and controls the drug trade. From an early age, Li'l Ze's learned no pleasure but in killing and dominating while Benny is more of a people person. Well liked by the community, he steals the beautiful Angelica (Alice Braga) from Rocket and tells Li'l Ze, who's obsessed with who among their drug connexions might be betraying them, that he needs a girlfriend. But Li'l Ze is incapable of connecting with other human beings and too prideful to learn.

The film has a somewhat annoying colour palette--almost the entire film seems to be shades of blue and orange--and the ending's a bit melodramatic. There's also a hint of mystical morality as every act of violence has a karmic restitution later in the film, sabotaging the sense of realism. But the film has an attractive energy to it and does a great job of creating the impression of a world.

Cursed by the Plot Gods to Eternal Life

It must be so lonely being Negan on The Walking Dead. No-one's even good at pretending to like him and no matter what happens he can't die. Maybe that's why he always has that increasingly strained, phoney enthusiasm. He's like a vampire whose supernatural power is the invisible plot shield. Once again, The Walking Dead took us in all sincerity to where only parodies have dared to go in terms of flamboyant, inexplicably resilient villains.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Carl risks everything to go on an assassination mission. Carl has the target of his mission in his sights. Carl doesn't shoot. He kills a bunch of other guys but not Negan. I want to shake this kid.

So, maybe because of the loneliness, Negan treats Carl like a kid brother and shows him around. He even shows him his harem of women who all seem to burn with undisguised resentment towards him.

The weird, implausible philosophy of sexual abuse continues. All of these women are supposedly with him voluntarily. But this seems to be an openly acknowledged lie. Dwight seems to like him less and less, the women don't like him, his lackeys seem afraid of him at best, and he walks around armed with only a baseball bat. Well, how many ways can I say this is silly? Jeffrey Dean Morgan's gone from playing the Comedian to Cesar Romero's Joker.

I can dig the camp stuff when it's a tiger or some Amazons. I guess the baseball bat is kind of appropriately Big. Maybe if Negan wore a baseball uniform and a mask and started calling himself the Slugger.

Did Judith have a growth spurt? I'm so lost on the time scale.

I will say Negan had a point with Olivia. I'd disapprove of his intimidating her if the scenes were played with any sense of reality but as rude as it is to point out that the fat woman is complaining about starving, this is the same point I made about Samwell on Game of Thrones. Unlike Negan, I fully support people accepting their bodies and I don't want everyone to have washboard abs, gods know I certainly don't. But nothing comes from nothing, that fat had to come from somewhere. Yet somehow I doubt there'll be a subplot about Olivia stealing rations.

I like that Gabriel seems to have grown a spine. I liked him putting Spencer in his place. The cowardly, petty priest character is too much of a cliche at this point.

When Negan asked Carl to sing I was bitterly disappointed he didn't sing this;

Twitter Sonnet #939

Encumbrance tops the listing cam'ra centre.
Returns allied in lucid banks connect.
Plastique increases savoured vault's winter.
Illicit tombs entreat no mere insect.
Guitars concede apportioned legs to height.
If strings are steel they'll stretch electric clouds.
Affronts to starless gripes descend at night.
Redress postponed engaged in bridal shrouds.
A gas combines in salads stuck to rule.
Cacophony infirm effaces saints.
As peat is plucked upon the rock by tool.
A curling shade an evening picture paints.
Transmitted ribbons stop in air for cats.
In numbers known to storks the monk combats.