Andor Closes with a Tale of Two Women

For the final three episodes of Andor, which were quite good, the curious decision to bring a new writer to the series, Tom Bissell, was made. It wasn't a bad idea, it turns out. Bissell is best known for writing video games, according to Wikipedia. Maybe that gave him a good instinct for kinetic suspense.

Kleya's infiltration of the hospital had kind of a horror video game vibe, actually. More than anyone else, these three episodes were really Kleya's story as we see flashbacks from her first encounter with Luthen and how he raised her and trained her juxtaposed with her bringing their operations to an end and finally being coaxed into going to Yavin. Her journey in the three episodes, from an agent of paranoia in a reality defined by consistent despair to accepting the reality of Yavin, a world of hope, stands in for the story of the Rebellion as it progresses from a spark of limited fire to a flame poised to seriously threaten the Empire.

That was great but I think the best parts of the episodes were the vicious, bureaucratic shufflings within the ranks of the ISB, starting with that wonderfully absurd, nightmarish moment when Dedra is arrested at the height of her professional triumph.

I also loved that the Imperial mind couldn't acknowledge that Jung was a spy. In Krennic's interrogation of Dedra, he was obliged to make some awkward verbal contortions to portray Jung as the accomplice of Dedra the data scavenger. She points out that she was forced to be a scavenger, to get access to intel she didn't have clearance for, in order to do her job. The system has absurd rules built in likely for the very purpose of being invoked only when a scapegoat is needed or an officer needs to be disposed of for some other equally sinister or absurd reason.

I noticed Tony Gilroy has been kind of kissing up to Dave Filoni lately in interviews and one of last night's episodes even featured one of Filoni's signature "loth cats". I'm hoping this means Gilroy is trying to secure a place for himself at Lucasfilm. I'd love to see him write a series or movie just focusing on Imperials.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Of Rice and Madness

"日本の米" was trending on my X feed this morning, "Japanese uncooked rice". Bad rice crops that began a couple years ago are continuing to be a headache as distributors who horded rice are gouging prices. It turns out, this has led to an increase in imported rice consumption, including my old friend Calrose rice from California. Maybe California will just gradually be imported, bit by bit, and I'll find myself home again in ten years without actually going anywhere.

I resumed watching Ally McBeal last night, a season three episode called "Seeing Green". I'd stopped watching the show for a while after waking up in the middle of an episode about Ally's mother with no memory of any of the events leading up to it. I finally figured out I'd slept through at least three and a half episodes which Disney+ dutifully unspooled for this insensible potato. I miss not falling asleep so easily.

"Seeing Green" continues to explore Ally's adorable dementia and her uncontrollable hallucinations of Al Green, who actually guest stars. Meanwhile, Billy joins a self-help group for men uncomfortable with their own chauvinistic instincts but finds he's actually quite comfortable with them. It's nice to see writer David E. Kelley realised how slimy Billy comes across and decided to lean into it.

X Sonnet 1939

Together, ants were making cake of hay.
No time was lost for horses built of frogs.
You see, perspective saved the drowsy day.
The moral lessons fade in corp'rate fogs.
No problem hurts as bad as jumping rails.
They whip the air and make the clouds their thralls.
But fire shrinks from wheels attached to pails.
The royal ice can thus afford its balls.
And now you see the flow of heaven's trade.
At ev'ry point, a check determines toll.
Disputed taxes call for Jedi aid.
A tariff war in space infects the goal.
The traffic words were bunched about the skirt.
A tattered hem would gather little dirt.

The Face of Funny

I found myself watching 1957's Funny Face again on the weekend. What an odd man Fred Astaire was. Such a great dancer, such an odd look. I truly think he was asexual. He never seemed especially interested in any of his costars, just pleasant and gracious. Somehow Ginger Rogers made it work with lust entirely on her side. Audrey Hepburn is impossibly lovely as always but she can't make the chemistry work between her and Astaire somehow in Funny Face.

It's not that he was thirty years older than her. She worked fine with Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, William Holden, and Cary Grant. Grant was probably the best because she was able to work up some real lust for him in Charade. Like Funny Face, Charade was directed by Stanley Donan so maybe that was a lesson the director took from Funny Face.

The screenplay is surprisingly intelligent and its dialogue about high art and philosophy versus fashion and sensual indulgence is interesting. Maybe the movie is too intellectual. It gets bogged down in it and Hepburn doesn't get time to properly come across as overcome with feeling.

The Hazards of a Creative Process

I'm halfway through watching Etoile. What a delightful show. I think it's the most solid series I've seen from the Palladinos. At least the first four episodes are. According to some reviews, it kind of goes off a cliff after this so I guess I should savour it now.

The screwball comedy dialogue is exquisitely written and perfectly delivered. A lot of stuff that felt slightly out of place or gratuitous on Gilmore Girls makes sense in the world of obsessed ballet people. You can have a guy who flies from Paris to freak out about his choreography because someone was recast without his knowing. You can have Cheyenne's weird routine about picking a partner. It's absurd but also very credible.

And all that great stuff stops in the fourth episode so we can actually watch some ballet and it's beautiful. Again, I thought of The Red Shoes. Maybe any ballet movie or series would inevitably draw comparisons to that one that set the standard but, just like The Red Shoes, it goes from being a behind the scenes procedural to being actual ballet. I guess The Red Shoes does it with a lot more chutzpah because it gives us a single story while Etoile goes for a montage. Still, it's wonderful stuff. It's a shame this show isn't getting more attention.

Etoile is available on Amazon Prime.

Let's Analyse!

Hey, kids! Did you enjoy last night's Doctor Who? Did you like the theoretical dispersion of conceptual text deployed through post modern analytical framework? What a rip roaring adventure!

Okay, so Doctor Who is currently not for kids, or anyone who's not an American or British college student or liberal arts graduate from the past twenty-five years. And, no, it certainly wasn't for Nigerians. Nigeria has its own film industry and it looks like this:

I certainly am pleased by the idea of Doctor Who going to Africa but it would be nice if he had an adventure there instead of weak, reheated Salmon Rushdie fluff about the nature of stories, their connexion to culture, and the nature of cultural identity. I'm not a fan of Rushdie's work but last night's Doctor Who couldn't hope to approach his intellect or creativity.

It was written by Inua Ellams, a Nigerian born British writer and poet whose biggest success was a play called Barber Shop Chronicles, and last night's Doctor Who had the Doctor visiting a barbershop in Nigeria. Apparently it's somewhat related. In this case, the barbershop turns out to be a spaceship powered by the stories told by people trapped in the shop, a pretty simplistic allegory for how indigenous cultures are exploited for the self-interests of powerful colonialist entities. Again, it's all been done better by Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Angela Carter, and various other people fifty or sixty years ago. Now, you could argue that Doctor Who in the 60s and 70s was influenced by Flash Gordon and HP Lovecraft and I would say, yes, influenced to tell exciting stories, not influenced to regurgitate academic twaddle. Ellams might have been better off drawing influence from Nollywood. At least those movies are fun. His Doctor Who episode almost ranks with Disney's Wish as being a conceptual boondoggle but I wouldn't say it's as convoluted as Wish. Few things are.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere.

The World for a Thigh

Penelope Cruz is at the centre of a dramatic storm of sex, comedy, and tragedy in her debut role of Silvia in 1992's Jamon, jamon ("Ham, Ham"). It's a story of rural prostitutes and idle, wouldbe matadors fit for a soap opera except everything is shaded with absurdism. It's pretty fascinating.

Sylvia discovers she's gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, Jose (Jordi Molla). He wants to marry her, much to the ire of his mother, Conchita (Stefana Sandrelli), who considers Silvia's mother (Anna Galiena) to be no better than a whore.

Into the mix wanders Javier Bardem as Raul, a young man who works delivering ham and modelling underwear. At night, he practices bullfighting in the nude for some reason and Bardem was evidently willing to show everyone how well hung he is. He sets his sights on both Silvia and Conchita, making an already volatile situation chaotic.

The title of the film invites the viewer to see this as a problem of the flesh but it becomes absurdly literal in the climax. Everyone is quite noisy about what they see as points of honour and the true passions of their hearts but, at the end of the day, it seems all a matter of ham.

Jamon jamon is available on The Criterion Channel.

Dreams of the Future or the Past

Last night I dreamt I moved back to the U.S. but it was filled with Japanese junior high schools for me to work at. I got a job at one in Washington and commuted every day from San Diego somehow.

It occurred to me that if Diego Luna became a saint he would be San Diego.

I see Mon Mothma is trending on Twitt--I mean X--this morning. With 4,000 posts, so I guess it's one of those that X has served up for my particular reality. I guess it's ironic that her trending speech is about the loss of objective reality.

Doctor Who also seems to be on this tack. The final episode of this current season is called "The Reality War".

I have to say I still find Obi-Wan's line about truths depending on our points of views to be more insightful. But certainly we have to agree on some basic facts, even if those facts turn out to be delusions in the long run. I think most people sense that without acknowledging it. It can become dangerous when people get too hung up on the precise truth. That's what the Puritans were. They wanted to stick to the pure words of the bible without the tangents of interpretations the Catholics had extrapolated from it. But to-day the Puritans are hardly remembered for being objective.

Obi-Wan smoothly goes from talking about truth depending on point of view to telling Luke he has a clear destiny. It's a contradiction but, hey, he also happened to be right, though he got the precise nature of that destiny wrong. I guess it's like God said on that episode of Futurama, you have to use a light touch.

The whole concept of transgender depends on the idea that truth can be different from observable reality. So does the concept of God, for that matter. So arguing about the necessity of truth can be a hazardous path, regardless of your political allegiance.

X Sonnet 1938

A circle captures nothing serving squares.
Repeated masters drift beyond the mind.
Abandoned forests hold their ghostly bears.
A carbon copy shows where nature signed.
A fax machine was used to stop a door.
But secrets held within were made of ink.
The rich concoct a vague idea of poor.
A gang in chains has made a summer rink.
Where fashion summons human hearts from Hell,
Where dolphins walk with tacky metal legs,
You'll find the mad have rung the chapel bell.
It goes to show you never hide your eggs.
For hatching happens any place on Earth.
The dice are rolled with ev'ry chicken birth.

Committed And/Or Damned

Wow. Could there be anyone who wasn't pleased with last night's trio of new Andor episodes? I, for one, was captivated. They were written by Tony's brother Dan Gilroy who wrote the Aldani heist arc in the first season. Back then, I wondered if Dan was not a better writer than his brother. Now I really think he is.

Unlike the previous groups of three episodes this season, last night's trio felt like a distinct set of three episodes rather than a single continuous narrative. The first episode, "Messenger", was the first to really feature the Force. No flashing lightsabres, no floating boulders, just a quiet healing scene, but it's enough to really freak Cassian out. The Force Healer senses extraordinary clarity in Andor that stands in contrast to his incredulous exterior. We've seen this in his actions, though. Despite what he says about wanting to get away and live a safe life somewhere far away from war, his instincts always show firm commitment to the cause.

The second episode focused on the Ghorman massacre and also features the heartbreaking conclusion of Syril and Dedra's story. Dedra may be back next week in some capacity but Syril likely will not. It's worth remembering why Syril got into this: he was investigating what he thought was a murder. He was driven by a sense of justice. Unlike most of the Imperial characters we met, he, at least not consciously, was not driven by malice or a desire for personal glory. Finally, he's forced to confront the fact that the Empire isn't what he thought it was and the fact that there's no room for people like him in it. The truth is so contrary to everything he believed that he seems to shut down before he spots Cassian and is spurred to action entirely by sentiment. The episode's title, "Who are You?", is spoken by Cassian when he doesn't recognise Syril. It has a great double impact, not only as a revelation of the disproportionate sense of importance the two men see in each other, but as a precise manifestation of the conflict going on in Syril at that moment. Who, indeed, is he? Without his sense of purpose, perhaps he's nothing at all, which makes it terribly appropriate that this is the moment of his death.

Dedra, meanwhile, is clearly hit hard by the loss of Syril. She was in this for advancement and malice. It was even her idea to manipulate the rebels on Ghorman. Somehow, though, she really did come to love Syril and this has clearly altered her perspective. Denise Gough's performance is amazing. You can see the conflict tearing her apart inside. She really seems damned.

The conflict between truth and reality comes back in Mon Mothma's speech in the next episode in one of those moments that really feels like a commentary on real world politics but not so much as to lock it into an allegory. There were some hints that the situation on Ghorman might have been inspired by the conflict in Gaza and I was very glad the show veered away from making it a direct allegory of that. As it is, you can find parallels to Gaza, Ukraine, World War II France, and many other things.

Apparently, the events in the third episode, "Welcome to the Rebellion", line up with episodes of Star Wars: Rebels but it's still plenty satisfying to those of us who found Rebels to be weak and insubstantial. It's awfully gracious of the Gilroys to preserve continuity like that when I think most people could care less, considering how plainly the writing on Andor is superior.

The show can coast now, these three did the job. But I'm eagerly looking forward to next week anyway.

La Fuerza de Mayo

To celebrate May the Fourth and Cinco de Mayo, I watched The Empire Strikes Back while eating tacos. I boiled a little ground beef with cumin, garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper and then added some lime and cilantro to it. I put it on my homemade tortillas with shredded cabbage and cherry tomatoes. They were good tacos. No leftovers because I still can't afford a refrigerator at my new apartment.

I watched A New Hope last month and was eager to watch Empire Strikes Back. I seem to be in a phase of my life where I'm suddenly seeing the original trilogy with fresh eyes. Like Bruce Willis says in 12 Monkeys when he's watching Vertigo, old movies change because we change. We become different people and thus see them with new eyes. I couldn't guess how many times I've watched the original trilogy since I first saw it when I was three or four years old. But still, on Monday, I can laugh at the little incline of the head Leia gives to Han when he glances at her while talking to Lando. Their relationship still feels fresh, even after I've written at length about the dynamics between the two. How he correctly identifies her attraction to him but fails to see his own vulnerability, his attraction to her. He assumes that having insight into the feelings others can't control means he has control over his own feelings.

And here's a movie where the Jedi dialogue is about fear, hatred, willpower, and belief. It's right here, big as life, the thing Disney repeatedly fails to capture about the Jedi. This is what the Jedi are about, not bureaucratic manoeuvring or colonialism. Isn't there anyone working in Hollywood now who gets that?

It can't be said enough how handsomely shot Empire Strikes Back is. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky's deep blacks and smooth, matte whites never look remotely artificial. Only Greig Fraser on Rogue One has approached this level of revelation in cinematography for Star Wars.

The Asterisk Answered

I really like Florence Pugh's dress in this picture.

So, yes, Marvel has spoiled their own movie. I guess they figured it'd be impossible to keep this cat in its bag now. Or maybe they wanted to distract from the fact that people weren't spoiling the film.

Honestly, it's impressive they did keep this secret so long. I guess they have to fight hard now with counter-leak strategies.

It really is a good movie, by the way. It's a pretty good Father's Day movie, actually, so it's a bit awkward that Mother's Day is actually coming up.

I see a certain Ukrainian actress is still promoting the film although one thing that seemed slightly odd to me was how much it foregrounds Russian characters who've done bad things for Russian governments. And the Ukrainian actress' role in the film was cut considerably, to the surprise even of the film's screenwriter, who didn't know about it until he first screened the film. Hopefully I'm reading too much into it but if I were Disney/Marvel, I'd make David Harbour's character distance himself more from the Red Guardian identity.

So after everything fell apart when Disney placed their bets on Jonathan Majors and the Multiverse, they course corrected by hanging everything on Florence Pugh and misfit characters. The latter do tend to be the best in any case. I think everyone's in agreement that Wyatt Russell's failed Captain America is better than the official Captain America. So the villain of Falcon and the Winter Soldier has won.

It's fitting that Wyatt Russell should find his breakthrough role at Disney since his father, Kurt, was handpicked for stardom by Walt Disney himself. After all the characters and actors Marvel has thrown against the wall who've failed to stick (all three of the Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp), Russell, Pugh, and Harbour really feel like they could be legitimate successors to Downey Jr. and Evans. Add Spider-Man, Shuri, Deadpool, and Doctor Strange and they've actually got something pretty solid.

Here's hoping it all works out. I'm of the firm belief that good movies improve the whole human race.

X Sonnet 1937

Engrossing cables captured every eye.
At home, the chatter blanked to waking dreams.
Let's walk the kitchen, check the winning pie.
I see the peepers through the ragged seams.
We knew a name before we took the road.
We knew the spot that Google maps ordained.
Beneath our hearts, we had the secret code.
For don't you find communication stained?
There's never just a meeting over cups.
For ev'ry time we look, we see a pit.
To breathe is just to drown, as people know.
And running fast is just to simply sit.
And now a snack to drag the runners down.
And fill the gorgeous little ev'ning gown.

A Simpler Time, with Simpler Writing

Well, that was a pretty depressingly lame new episode of Doctor Who. While the new Russell T. Davies era has generally been better than the Chris Chibnall era, I get the impression sometimes that Davies' solution is to do what Chibnall did even harder. So Pete McTighe, a writer from the Chibnall era, wrote Saturday's new episode, "Lucky Day", and it received the lowest ratings in the relaunched show's history.

It reminded me of a more belligerent version of the Oscar Isaac/Laura Dern conflict in The Last Jedi. Instead of a decent, headstrong guy whose desire to go against the dictates of authority led to problems, we have a smirking, bottomless pit of inexplicable spite and an authority who's willing to sic man eating beasts on him because he offered her a personal insult. This was not the best setup for the UNIT spin-off, that's for sure.

The Doctor shows up at the end to lecture the villain and tell him how horrid he is. Villains can certainly be smirking and thoroughly bad but the show needs to ask itself more often, "What would Tom Baker do?" in the face of such a fellow.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.

The Thunder Squad

2025's Thunderbolts* is a good Marvel movie. It's not one of the cobbled together cgi monstrosities like Ant-Man in Quantumania. The writing is relatively solid, though I had plenty of problems with the script. But I'm going to have to echo what just about every review is saying; the performances knock this one out of the park.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Lewis Pullman, but particularly Florence Pugh, turned this from a perfectly adequate Suicide Squad pastiche into something really extraordinary.

The film spends a lot of time ruminating on character and the writing isn't very insightful, it's even slightly insulting if you happen to be an introvert because it pushes the necessity of never being alone. But it has some nicely poetic turns, particularly with Sentry/Void who borrows pretty heavily from psychological anime like Evangelion and Akira. But the performances take this material about personal misery and disaffection and squeeze it for all its worth.

Wyatt Russell gets some nice subtle stuff as John Walker and in just a few scenes he's way more interesting than Sam Wilson. David Harbour proves once again he's the ultimate dad actor.

But Pugh, Pugh, Pugh! She's just so damned good. And I was going into the movie ready to criticise her terrible hairstyle. I don't give a damn about her hairstyle now. I even like her blue eyeliner. She's amazing. With a few subtle expressions, she brings across her state of profound ennui and when she needs to be raw and emotional she's like a young Marlon Brando; surprising yet thoroughly credible.

The performance make everything else work beautifully. I was afraid for the characters when cgi crap was flying everywhere, like it was real crap! This is one to see.

Ballet Battery

I started watching Etoile a few days ago, the new Amazon Prime series from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the wife and husband team behind The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls. It's a good, modern Red Shoes ballet procedural.

The show stars Luke Kirby, who played Lenny Bruce on Mrs. Maisel, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's strange to see outside of a Lars von Trier movie, playing New York and Parisian impresarios, respectively. Their respective troupes trade personnel as they both take funding from a sinister British oil baron played by Simon Callow. Lou de Laage is a star ballerina named Cheyenne who's swapped to the New York troupe.

Cheyenne and Callow's character are presented as political opposites; she, a firebrand activist, and he, a ruthless capitalist. I can see how the Palladinos plan use them for political commentary. Unfortunately, the weakest scene in the series so far is the introduction of Cheyenne, whom we meet on a ship in a storm as they attack a craft for environmental violations. It's all cgi, which I don't mind, knowing the show has a tiny budget, but de Laage is one of those actresses who is unable to raise her voice under any circumstances, even when she's supposed to be shouting over the chaos of a trawler beset by tossing waves. From then on, I had trouble buying her as the tempest in a teapot she's supposed to be.

Luke Kirby, though, is excellent. Here he basically plays the show's resident Lorelei Gilmore or Midge Maisel; the reasonable, witty one beset by kooks.

I'm surprised how little attention the show's gotten. I wouldn't have heard of it if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Caitlin's blog. But whenever I go to the Prime website, there are dozens of new shows and movies I've never heard of before and never hear of again. I don't know how these studios sustain this output.

Festival of Dread

Now I've watched "What a Festive Evening", episode six of Andor season two, a nice little symphony of suspense. As I noted yesterday, the writer of this arc, Beau Willimon, wrote the prison arc last season, which was stronger than this because it revolved around one man's life changing and it was done with an extraordinary performance by Andy Serkis. But "What a Festive Evening" was by no means bad.

The best part of it was the shifting dynamic between Luthen and Kleya. It always seemed that Kleya was Luthen's assistant, now they seem more like partners. The scene where Kleya removed the bug from the artefact, using Jung as a shield, was a lovely trapeze act of tension. The bug getting stuck was like the old device of the car not starting at the absolutely worst moment. Ben Mendelsohn's presence as Krennic added to the sense of menace, as did Mon Mothma's slightly too bold arguments. There was also the very fact that Jung is already a mess of nerves and could have broken off at any moment.

The heist plot was good though not quite as strong. I liked Vel and Cinta and wish Cinta could've stayed around longer. It's funny, one of the things Andor is noted for is not being in line with the modern, bad screenwriting that seems to come from students who've spent more time criticising other writers than learning how to actually tell a good story. "What a Festive Evening" does one of those things that that crowd of people always complained about; having a gay character killed in order to provide motivation or character growth for other characters. I remember it was called "Bury Your Gays" though this one might also be "Fridging". I don't mind writers doing that but I feel like Cinta had potential as a character that the show would've been better off exploring. Not to mention Varada Sethu shines more in this role than she does on Doctor Who. It really made me notice how much better hair and wardrobe are on Andor compared to Doctor Who. She somehow just looks a lot better, even when her hair is supposed to be messed up. But I guess Andor's budget is pretty lavish.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Our Man on Gorman

I only had time to watch two of the three new episodes of Andor last night but that sure wasn't a reflection of their quality. I thought the two I watched were better than the first three. Written by Beau Willimon, who wrote the prison story arc last season, this new one is the most the show has felt like a spy thriller.

I'm so much happier with the colour palette in this arc. The blues and yellows have been changed for muted mints and mahogany on Gorman with graceful lines that recall art nouveau. It's easy to imagine ordering absinthe at one of these gorgeous Gorman bars.

Cassian and Bix have an interesting domestic drama going as Bix suffers ongoing nightmares from her torture. Of all the unhappy characters on Andor, Bix has consistently been the unhappiest. However, my favourite subplot belongs to Syril and Dedra.

Syril's dreams have come true and now he's a double agent for the Empire. He has a beautiful and powerful girlfriend he occasionally sees. What a lucky lad. But the highlight is just how complicated and credible his position is as he plays the Gorman resistance so thoroughly. This fantasy show demonstrates for us just how plausible it is to game revolutions and create volatile political situations. This is more interesting than I'd ever hoped Star Wars could be under Disney.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Memories Transposed

On Monday, I found the students at the junior high school where I currently work in Japan were being shown a movie from 1983 called この子を残して, which literally translates to something like "The child left behind" but was given the title Children of Nagasaki for some western release, though it is difficult to obtain outside of Japan now. Directed by Kinoshita Keisuke, one of the luminaries of 1950s cinema, it has a style out of step with '80s Japanese cinema, featuring long takes, wide shots of ensembles, and few closeups. It endeavours to be partially an unvarnished account of a survivor's experiences of Nagasaki, during and after the bombing. It comes from a very particular perspective yet argues for sensitivity and reflection. It's very simple in its philosophy and while Kinoshita was not among Japan's greatest directors and this was not one of his best films it still has an appreciable impact.

Kinoshita's most famous works were made in the 1950s with actress Takamine Hideko, including the two Carmen movies, Carmen Comes Home and Carmen's Pure Love, the former being Japan's first full length colour film. Carmen Comes Home, the story of a stripper who returns to her rural hometown, is an attempt to harmonise two aspects of Japanese culture; its deep rooted conservatism and its enormous sex industry. Children of Nagasaki attempts a similarly impossible task with a little more success, being the true story of Nagai Takashi, a Catholic Japanese doctor and author who wrote about his experiences surviving the bombing of Nagasaki.

For many in Japan, Catholicism remains a symbol of the worst of western cultural decadence, so Nagai's life of remarkable humility and contemplation provides a striking counter example. That he should be the lens through which a story of the atomic bomb's horror and devastation is told makes for a complicated narrative from the start.

The film shows Americans in a negative light, going beyond the atomic bombing to show some of the most graphic footage from the Vietnam War of the depredations of American troops, the purpose of which I suppose can only be a general comment on the fundamental character of Americans. The film does not go into Nagai's experiences in Manchuria in the 1930s where he was at odds with the Japanese military.

It's a sobering example for the students, I should think. At the very least, I think it's useful to show them that sometimes misfortune may befall them that was beyond their control to prevent.

There was a Doctor

Now that my internet's up and working, I've finally remembered to watch Doctor Who. I was very busy for the past couple weeks but it says something that I totally forgot about it. The two episodes I missed, "Lux" and "The Well", weren't bad, and "The Well" was even really good.

"Lux" apparently had the lowest ratings in the show's history, according to Wikipedia, though I think they're only counting the revived era. It features Alan Cumming voicing an animated character come to life. It was cute, certainly a better mid-20th century episode than the Beatles episode last season. The costumes were great.

But while I can appreciate camp, it was really nice to get an episode that wasn't campy with "The Well". The understated horror of some creature lurking behind someone was really effective and recalled some of the best episodes from Davies and Moffat's heydays. As such, though, it doesn't hit the level of revelation those classic episodes had. Or even "Wild Blue Yonder". Would it have been more effective with David Tennant in the lead? Ncuti Gatwa is good but not on the level of Tennant or any of the first four Doctors since the show was revived in 2005. I think a lot of the problem may be also that there's no hint of romantic chemistry between Doctor and companion, which was also a key problem in the Jodie Whittaker era.

Varada Sethu is good as the new companion, Belinda Chandra, though her role on Andor is more interesting and she's barely been in that one so far. I liked the reaction shots of Gatwa when he confronted the mysterious alien. The look of pure horror on his face was was perfect. I liked how the show never gave us a clear shot of it.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ everywhere else.

Probably Back

I finally have internet again. At least I think I do. The new box the guy gave me just winked out. I guess if it comes back I can post this. If it doesn't, well, my first sentence will be a lie.

Ah, it's back.

My provider is Softbank. They demanded proof of my residence to get set up which I got from city hall last week. And they wouldn't take my old wifi box thing. It's ridiculously difficult to get rid of computers and peripherals in Japan. Even though I was supposedly only renting the old box, they will only take it back if I mail it to them, which I have to do by May 20th. Otherwise I have to pay for a special sticker from city hall to put on it for garbage collection.

I'm still not done moving my stuff but I only have four or five things left. Tuesday is the end for sure. I hope. Please let it be the end. I hate moving.