A wealthy man of leisure and his similarly carefree daughter find their lives changed by a woman of firm morals in 1958's Bonjour Tristesse. Based on a famous French novel and directed by Otto Preminger, the film successfully holds a dark mirror up to hedonism.
Cecile is played by Jean Seberg a couple years before she was in Godard's Breathless, and Godard has said that he regarded her role in Breathless as a continuation of this one. Both Godard and Truffaut liked her but I feel like it would be reasonable to mistake Seberg for a bad actress. I guess she was really just suited for a particular role, that of a capricious, psychotic, and yet not vicious, young woman.
All she wants is to maintain a life of constant partying on the Riviera with her father, played by David Niven. But his latest affair with a boozy French version of Marilyn Monroe (Mylene Demongeot) is interrupted when Deborah Kerr shows up as his old acquaintance, Anne. They soon become better acquainted, in fact engaged, at which point Anne begins to feel responsibility to Cecile and forces the girl to spend more time on her studies.
It's not like Cecile needs a career. Why shouldn't she and her father carry on as they always did? She argues with Anne that their old friends seem perfectly happy in their depravity. "Then why do they drink so much?" asks Anne.
Still, by the end of the film, it's debatable whether Anne's morals are true in themselves or if the tristesse, the sadness, that comes about comes more from Cecile and her father's particular affection for Anne. Kerr's role here is not so different from her roles in Black Narcissus, The Innocents, or Night of the Iguana. She had a real knack for playing women of firm resolution who are simultaneously, attractively vulnerable.
Bonjour Tristesse is available on The Criterion Channel.
It was kind of big news that the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace was number two at the American box office over the weekend. Fall Guy was number one and it's said to be a disappointing number one so maybe the standards aren't exactly high. Still, Phantom Menace took in 8 million dollars. That's pretty good for a movie everyone's got on their streaming services or on their shelves. It did better than the re-release of Return of the Jedi a couple years ago.
Where's the cultural brainwashing on the prequels? Is it a bad movie everyone has been tricked into thinking is good, or is it a good movie everyone was tricked into thinking was bad? This really fascinates me. I like the prequels, not as much as the original trilogy, but I like them. It wasn't like everyone hated them at first and then they grew in esteem. Roger Ebert gave Phantom Menace four stars when it came out. I remember I bought the big deluxe VHS copy (which one of my cousins took). I had a Queen Amidala doll and a Phantom Menace CD case. Generally people didn't like Jar-Jar. One white friend described him as being like Amos 'n' Andy in terms of being an anachronistic racial caricature. But a black woman I worked with at the time said she and her kids adored Jar-Jar. That's anecdotal but Jar-Jar says "'tis" and "boyo". He doesn't really fit the racial caricature profile except he's the cowardly sidekick like Stepin Fetchit often was. A perspective on film history would have better informed my coworker and her kids they should be offended. But it's all perspective, it's all subjective.
Well, the main problem with the prequels is they lacked anything like the Han/Luke/Leia chemistry and that mostly comes down to Lucas' luck with casting the first time. People have really warmed to the chemistry between Obi-Wan and Anakin in the second and third films but it's somehow never as raw as those original trilogy actors. Maybe the cultural difference is key--younger audiences don't connect with such natural interactions. Maybe it's just because I live in Japan and in my professional circles there's a lot of weird resentment and backstabbing but I haven't met a Gen Z person who's comfortable speaking openly and honestly, at least not outside the internet. I also watched an episode of Ally McBeal last night in which the characters debate whether you should look in a partner's eye during sex. Having sex in itself would be too much of a novelty in a more modern production. So for younger audiences, the lower heat levels between the prequel actors may actually be a selling point.
Watching Phantom Menace last night, I really felt like it's a remarkable film. The levels of creative detail are fascinating. There are lots of little moments, like Jabba flicking that little animal off his balcony during the pod race and the thing screams as it falls like bloody murder. Was that a sentient lifeform? Is this a sign of Jabba's cruel indifference or did he basically just kill a bug? We can't really be sure and it feels alien because of that. We easily understand but we also don't. It's like the cantina in A New Hope.
The set designs and costumes are all amazing. For all the criticism of the boring title crawl, the movie actually maintains a lot of tension and a very brisk pace. It helps to listen to it with the volume up high. Ben Burtt's sound design helps the basic general background sense of terror that comes along with the space scenes and the dizzying camera twists. There's something odd about the pilot of Qui-Gon an Obi-Wan's ship. Then there's a double cross and the ship's destroyed. The Jedi switch between fighting for their lives to trying to reach the bridge to complete their mission. What are these Trade Federation guys doing? It may take time for the kids to understand but once you do, it is interesting that this merchant fleet has suddenly decided to blockade a sovereign territory.
The politics, which are supposed to be the big snooze fest, have aged really well. When Palpatine's talking to Amidala about the senate bureaucrats who can't get anything done, we can all sympathise, even as we know that he's the crooked puppet master. Hell, that's not so different from Trump. For the people who remember seeing Episode I when they were kids twenty years ago, discovering the insight into politics to-day seems a revelation and maybe kind of a comfort that George Lucas understood this aspect of human nature all those years ago. Maybe we can cope with this.
And then, of course, there's final duel. The pod race is also pretty good and has, again, a level of detail you don't see nowadays.
As sure as the sun rises in the morning, Cinco de Mayo has followed Star Wars Day. I had too much tequila and watched Desperado last night, which was May 5th in Japan. Cinco de Mayo isn't celebrated, nor does there seem to be many people aware of it, here. May 5th happens to be Children's Day in Japan but this year it's being observed on May 6th because of fairly recent legislation to allow people to have a day off work for the holiday. Children's Day is part of a string of holidays known as "Golden Week". Perhaps one day Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo will form part of an American Golden Week. Cinco de Mayo does seem like more of a Mexican American holiday than a Mexican holiday at this point. That's why I watched a Robert Rodriguez movie instead of a Luis Bunuel or Guillermo del Toro movie.
Something that surprised me about Tales of the Empire yesterday was that they didn't use the digitally recreated voice of James Earl Jones as they did for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Instead, Vader just never speaks during his brief appearance. I was kind of disappointed. I suppose I should be against it to be consistent in my position that machines should not be permitted to take jobs away from creative talent. But it kind of makes sense for Darth Vader and James Earl Jones did give his consent. Though, it's true, there's something unsatisfying and lifeless about the "performance" on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Will it always be that way or is it only a matter of time before these machine voices learn to give effective performances?
Lately I've been playing Skyrim using a new mod called "Dragonborn Voice Over". Originally in Skyrim, the player character has no voice, you only hear the people your character speaks to. Now with this mod, not only does your character have a voice, there are a whole range of user made voices, many of which are derived from samples of voice work in other games. The software is able to take these voices and reshape them to fit the dialogue in Skyrim seamlessly. There's even an imitation of choices for emphasis and emotion.
It occurs to me that artificial life forms may very capably be able to simulate sentience long before they actually achieve it, if they ever truly do. I suppose sentience may be inevitable but I find it very hard to believe somehow. Maybe that's surprising coming from someone who grew up on Star Trek but Commander Data never squared with my conception of technology. I regarded him as a fantasy being.
Sci-Fi stories about artificial intelligence usually follow the outline of something that everyone thinks is a toaster eventually exhibiting signs of human-like cognition. I can't at the moment think of any opposite example. I mean, a story in which some specimen of artificial intelligence everyone thinks is capable of human level cognition turns out to be just a complicated toaster. I guess that would be like one of those episodes of the original Star Trek in which a society's god turns out to be an unfeeling computer, or like that Henry Mudd episode with the killer sexbots. But imagine something like that movie Her in which the Joaquin Phoenix character believes his AI mate is as good as human but then finds out she was never more than algorithms. I imagine that would be kind of soul crushing. It's still hard for me to even imagine getting attached like that to a specimen of AI, though. It's not like we love cats and dogs for their human-like intelligence. There's something else there which computers don't have. Maybe it's just the sense of need.
X Sonnet #1841
A little loud, the singer cleared the room.
Of seven tables, two were kind of full.
A book collapsed to make a dusty "boom".
But down a better house you'll never pull.
Decisions split the spider's heart in two.
Conclusions culled the silk from oil cloth.
A dozen busy maidens sewed a clue.
Persistent snobs could never greet the moth.
Tequila soaked the sober soil fast.
Tortilla plans negate the spicy rice.
But limes and margaritas never last.
A warning song was heard this morning twice.
A space burrito crashed in salsa seas.
A drunken droid has switched to herbal teas.
Dave stands up and walks to the kitchen. His arms swing at his sides at a slow, steady pace. His legs seem to swing below his floating torso as though they don't make contact with the ground. He takes a popular recipe book off the shelf, opens it, and smiles. "I'm going to make a cake," he says.
In a mixing bowl, he deposits a cup of flour and smiles. "I've added the flour. Oh! Now I will add some water." He proceeds to add the water. He stirs mechanically with a placid smile on his face. He pours the mixture into a mould and places it in the oven. "Time to start baking!" he says, turning the knobs though his eyes don't seem to focus on them. Twelve hours later, he opens the oven to find a charred mess. "No!" he says, leaning forward slightly, "I can't let this cake die!" The scene fades out.
Hours later, Dave is seated at a clean, nondescript table with two human friends, each with short, nondescript haircuts and wearing nondescript jumpsuits. There's an empty plate before each person with a few crumbs. "That was a delicious cake!" says one. "How did you save it?" says the other.
Dave smiles his placid smile. "With a little help from an old ally. But that's a tale for another time."
Roll credits.
So, yeah, Tales of the Empire is typical Filoni. The new six episode series, consisting of very short, ten to seventeen minute episodes, presents first the unremarkable tale of the unremarkable Morgan, whom we met first on The Mandalorian. We see how she survived the attack on Dathomir by General Grevious, one of the best story arcs from Clone Wars (written by Katie Lucas with some help from her father, one assumes). So it's a suitably plump vein for the Disney leech to suckle and supplies us with a few wisps of excitement. The second three episodes mine an even better vein, finally continuing the story of Barriss Offee, a former Jedi who turned traitor and was arrested on Clone Wars before Disney bought Star Wars.
There's some genuinely interesting moments as we see some bitter inner conflict manifest in Barriss. Unfortunately, Disney's edict that all bad people be dumb as rocks seems to be in effect in this series (how Andor was spared that, I don't know). When the Fourth Sister, the Inquisitor a turned Barriss is apprenticed to, starts grumpily killing people all the time, even when it directly works against her own interest, Barriss' choices don't seem to be between Light and Dark but between common sense and intense stupidity. Oh, well.
Tales of the Empire is on Disney+. Happy Star Wars Day.
In case anyone was wondering, I did get my refund from Amazon. So for future reference, for anyone wishing to cancel their Prime subscription, the current procedure seems to be to chose the "won't renew" option on the subscriptions page and then, after Amazon renews your membership and charges you anyway, you need to ask for a refund, which you will receive in "three to five days". Funny they can charge you instantly but when it comes to giving you money they were never supposed to take to begin with, well, that takes some processing time. Naturally.
Of course, I still have Japanese Amazon Prime, which is a whole lot cheaper. I said five dollars a month a few days ago but I forgot how weak the yen is now so it's probably more like three dollars. I don't have access to the various channels I did on American Amazon Prime and of course there's a lot of content unavailable in Japan. I also can't rent movies because, although I can pay for the subscription with my American debit card, I'm required to have a Japanese card in order to rent or purchase any streaming content off Amazon Prime Japan. I have no idea why. I'm able to get Japanese Netflix with my American card. Currently I only have Disney+, Criterion, and Japanese Amazon Prime, though. I've been tempted to cancel Disney+ but Doctor Who's starting next week.
I miss Netflix sometimes. I read to-day that David Lynch had two projects in the works for Netflix that've been cancelled by the streamer. So much for Netflix being more open to maverick filmmakers. It's a shame Criterion doesn't have the money to finance Lynch. I wonder what he'll try next. Whatever he does, with so many Twin Peaks cast members dying, and Lynch himself getting no younger, it seems like time is running out. It's really sad. Here's a man, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers, if not the greatest filmmaker, alive, and yet he can't find a studio to produce his work. It's not like Twin Peaks: The Return did so poorly in 2017. But maybe people figure its success was due to coming back after a couple decades and any new endeavours wouldn't have that appeal. It seems like Lynch wasn't totally happy with his experience making the show for Showtime. I wonder if that would change if Sony does manage to buy Paramount, as they've put forward a bid to do. Given Sony's rigidity, I can't imagine things would change for the better.
Too bad he doesn't have wineries to sell, like Francis Ford Coppola did. Coppola's wineries became legends in themselves and he was able to sell them in order to attain every auteur filmmaker's dream; total creative control over a big budget movie. I'm so looking forward to Megalopolis. But even for Coppola, this is likely something he'll only be able to do once. This is why, as much as I love movies, I never wanted to pursue a career as a filmmaker. Even the greatest talents in the industry have to go through hell and high water just to get a movie made.
The Wikipedia entry for 1950's Born to Be Bad describes Joan Fontaine's character as "a manipulative young woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants." But the interesting thing about this Nicholas Ray noir is that she isn't actually all that vicious and it's unclear if she deserves the moral retribution dished out to her by the film's universe.
We meet her as an apparently shy young woman called Christabel who's come to stay in the San Francisco home of Donna (Joan Leslie), who works for Christabel's uncle. Donna's engaged to the fabulously wealthy Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott) and when the two go out for the evening Christabel is shocked to find Robert Ryan has let himself into the kitchen.
Ryan plays Nick Bradley, a smug, swaggering young author who effortlessly disarms Christabel. She hates him but she's drawn to him for the same reason, you know the drill. But it's Robert Ryan and Joan Fontaine so it's legitimately sexy.
Now, I would say Christabel is a manipulative woman but I wouldn't say the course of events that unfold are the effects of her complex Machiavellian scheme. Christabel goes shopping with Curtis to help him pick out a birthday gift for Donna. She comments on how marvellous a particular necklace is but changes her focus when she sees the price tag. The salesman is peculiarly aggressive with it, following Curtis and Christabel about the store with the necklace until Curtis is finally persuaded to buy it. Christabel remarks that perhaps Donna wouldn't want something so extravagant. When Donna receives the necklace happily, the issue of whether she's marrying Curtis for his money is introduced and becomes a subtle wedge between them.
All of Christabel's manipulations are like that. She gives a little push here and there but it seems other issues independent of anything she does end up persuading Curtis to marry her instead of Donna.
When they do marry, Curtis complains that Christabel has arranged to make herself a board member of so many charities entirely for the purpose of spending little time with him. It's possible the implication here is that she's doing something bad but she actually does seem to be devoting her time to these charities. If she were a soulless, "bitchy" (as multiple reviews inexplicably describe her), gold digger, wouldn't she be spending all her time just partying and shopping? What finally proves to be her downfall is that she can't resist having a rendezvous with Nick instead of visiting her sick aunt. Is Christabel selfish and unfaithful? Sure. But "stop at nothing?" What unfolds from there is arguably more tragic than just. Much like Cat People or Leave Her to Heaven, this is one of those in which the ostensible villainess is the most sympathetic person in the movie.
Born to Be Bad is available on The Criterion Channel.
X Sonnet #1840
A wild shade dispenses spirit hands.
As proud as apples, people rise above.
Convene the force of regal hunting bands.
Remember now that arrows signal love.
A stack of random junk ensures the sky.
No people came without a bridge of earth.
The god was rocks or days when finches cry.
The growing crop was twice a human's worth.
Performance cleans the apple cart of care.
As cleaning deems the students real, commence.
Remember times when hearts would take a stair.
No bin returns the dust you might dispense.
A dreamy stroll has pierced the workaday,
Confusing crowds from Guam to Paraguay.
X-Men'97 delivered a solid first part of its three part finale last night, "Tolerance is Extinction". Co-written by Beau DeMayo, it capably weaves together story threads based on the comics and includes some really impressive action scenes.
Wolverine finally shows some proper participation fighting the Sentinel zombies. He's joined by Nightcrawler in one of the best action sequences so far in the series. I have to say Nightcrawler outshined Wolverine a bit. The animators gave him a real dancer's grace and his teleporting was as impressive as it was in the second Bryan Singer movie.
Meanwhile, Jean, Scott, and Nathan have a nice creepy sequence with Trask's mother. Everything has that great feeling of a pulp serial. Even the subplot about Jubilee and Roberto doesn't feel preachy.
I'm looking forward to next week and finding out what Magneto's up to. He seems to be exerting some kind of ultimate power that shuts off machines everywhere. I wonder why he didn't use it in Genosha.
I couldn't sleep last night so I read the latest Sirenia Digest, which didn't help me sleep but was pretty good. It contains a new short story from Caitlin R. Kiernan called "Terra Mater (Dissolve)". In her prolegomenon, Caitlin includes a quote from herself in which she talks about the stories for the digest being "dreamlike". The new story fits that bill especially well, consisting of two women voyaging through some kind of dark underworld. The sense of living myth mixes well with Caitlin's talent for credible dialogue.
Like a lot of people lately, particularly writers and artists, Caitlin has been struggling financially. If you've enjoyed her work, or hope to some day in the future when you get a chance to read it, I recommend visiting her GoFundMe and donating.
The year's not been kind to me financially so far, either. By the way, if you ever decide to cancel your subscription to Amazon Prime, be prepared to put in some labour and creative thinking. I had two Amazon Prime subscriptions, one for American Amazon Prime and one for Japanese Amazon Prime. Japanese Amazon Prime is much cheaper, only about five dollars a month, and I can order products from all over the world on it. So there was no point in me paying 149 dollars a year for the American version. I went to the subscription page and clicked the end subscription button and the note on it changed to say my subscription would end on April 18. I thought it was settled. But about a week later I found I still had that subscription and I'd been charged 149 dollars. A little quick googling turned up this article which reveals the FTC claims Amazon Prime has been actively sabotaging customer attempts to cancel their subscriptions.
I went back to my subscription page and tried to cancel again and discovered Amazon is willing to refund me the money it charged me against my wishes on the 18th. It's supposed to take three to five days to come through for some reason. We'll see if they're good as their word this time. Does it seem to you various services are getting more and more crooked?
A wealthy businessman is murdered and it somehow involves boutique prostitutes and a whole lot of ornate decor in 1995's Jade. It's not a boring movie. I quite enjoyed it though, apart from a terrific car chase, I suspect the film's appeal lies more in campiness than its filmmakers intended.
Director William Friedkin was really proud of this movie but he seems to be in the minority. Michael Biehn, who had a supporting role, called the screenplay by Joe Eszterhas "a mess". Eszterhas was so upset by the extent of the changes Friedkin made to the story that he almost had his name taken off of the film.
The cast is entirely c list, headed by David Caruso as a detective investigating the murder and Linda Fiorentino as a psychologist who has a secret life as the sexually adventurous "Jade". If I had to pick one, I'd say Fiorentino's casting is the primary flaw in this deeply flawed film. She's meant to be playing an intensely seductive, sexually voracious mystery woman. Fiorentino was unwilling to be naked, necessitating the copious, obvious use of body doubles. She was unwilling to even take the role until it was made clear that her character was not a prostitute. Fiorentino, with her monotone delivery, is about as alluring as an iron ingot.
The film is set in San Francisco, a location famed for its car chases in various films. There's a scene in this one in which Caruso's brakes have been cut and he's forced to try to control his car as it goes down the city's famous hillside roads. 1951's House on Telegraph Hill, which I watched recently, has almost exactly the same scene.
Then there's a fantastic car chase in which Friedkin seems to be trying to outdo Bullitt. He doesn't accomplish that but it's a damned impressive sequence, starting with Angie Everhart convincingly being hit by a Ford Thunderbird. Caruso pursues the car down those wavy streets, down grassy hillsides, through a Chinatown parade, and finally out at the docks. There's some incredible stuntwork.
The film ends oddly abruptly with the reveal of a secondary villain. We're left knowing Caruso has one clue to this villain's identity but the film, I guess, decides we don't need to know if he ultimately succeeds in his investigation.
The film's score is by James Horner but you don't hear much of Horner's work. Mostly you hear Loreena McKennitt's "Mystic's Dream" over and over. One long sequence just uses Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring".
Jade is available on The Criterion Channel.
X Sonnet #1839
Suspicious choices tripped the tightened string.
Alarms were hid within the violin.
Assembled cops commenced to end a sting.
Disarmed, the thugs subside to ride a tide.
Corrosive jobs in conscience make a crow.
Embittered prey conveyed the way ahead.
Aggressive blades obeisance made below.
Determined wolves know hooves behoove the dead.
Tenacious cars debarred heroic men.
Confusing plots were thought the blot of art.
Ambitious dames defamed angelic sin.
Barbaric broads applaud the oddly tart.
Renewing fires tries the blighted pan.
Recumbent dusk has crushed the lusty ram.
It seems everyone's talking about 1995's Heat lately (probably because the studio's trying to generate buzz ahead of the sequel) and there it was on The Criterion Channel. So I watched it for the first time in nearly thirty years. I like it a lot more now. It's a movie for older viewers.
It's very cool. Elliot Goldenthal's score veers between subtle electronic atmosphere and rock n' roll pulse. Mann had a reputation for music from Miami Vice so that played into it, I think. The whole film's filled with the anxiety of being perched on the edge of destruction, or being just around the corner from "the heat" as De Niro's recurring line has it.
All the promotion at the time was about De Niro and Pacino but their performances aren't particularly interesting. Not that they're bad. Even Pacino, who'd already lost the subtlety that distinguished him early on, is not strictly bad with his bombast. I can believe a weathered L.A. detective is like that. Watching it last night, I didn't remember much about my viewing approximately three decades ago, but when Pacino entered a warehouse with his men I knew something about the scene involved Pacino shouting, "Great ass!" So it's certainly a memorable performance.
De Niro isn't so different from his character in Goodfellas but, frankly, without the complexity. I don't think he phoned in any role at that stage in his career but this was probably the closest he got to it. It's nowhere near as interesting as what he did in Cape Fear and Jackie Brown. But that's fine. Coolness is this movie's excellent vibe and De Niro's plain performance works perfectly for that.
I was more surprised by what an amazing supporting cast it has. In main roles there are Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Natalie Portman, and Ashley Judd. But the film also has Danny Trejo, John Voight, Henry Rollins, Jeremy Piven, and Hank Azaria. That's a party.
That legendary action sequence, when the heist goes wrong and there's a gunfight in the street, is still exemplary. The sound design and editing are fantastic. You feel the pervading terror of what's happening like few other scenes of its kind in other movies. It's still an amazing film.
Demons have been on my mind a lot lately. I've gone back to reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World again. I'd been reading Saint Augustine's City of God and some time ago I got to a portion in which Augustine wrote about demons. Of course, Augustine wrote under the premise that demons were really malevolent entities while Sagan invokes the term as a symbol for intellectual processes gone compulsively astray. Yet the effect is not so different; the nature of the cause may be different but both men caution the reader against the same effects. Sagan's book has this wonderful quote from Francis Bacon's 1620 work Novum Organon:
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar [in Bacon's time, "the vulgar" referred to the common, majority of the people]. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.
It's prettier hearing Augustine talk about such things as demons, though, as false mediators between God and humans.
There's so much in City of God that I recognise in the rhetoric of Christians I've heard all my life, in some ways more than the bible itself. It really speaks to how Augustine shaped the religion as we know it.
In talking about the faults of religion, Carl Sagan mentions the Holy Trinity as a tellingly confused concept. Augustine spends quite a lot of time explaining the Trinity, at one point talking about how the Trinity is plainly reflected in human nature. I was impressed by one particularly complicated line of thought:
For we both are, and know that we are, and delight in our being, and our knowledge of it. Moreover, in these three things no true-seeming illusion disturbs us; for we do not come into contact with these by some bodily sense, as we perceive the things outside of us--colours, e.g., by seeing, sounds by hearing, smells by smelling, tastes by tasting, hard and soft objects by touching--of all which sensible objects it is the images resembling them, but not themselves which we perceive in the mind and hold in the memory, and which excite us to desire the objects. But, without any delusive representation of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this. In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? for it is certain that I am if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person deceived, should be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am. And, consequently, neither am I deceived in knowing that I know. For, as I know that I am, so I know this also, that I know. And when I love these two things, I add to them a certain third thing, namely, my love, which is of equal moment. For neither am I deceived in this, that I love, since in those things which I love I am not deceived; though even if these were false, it would still be true that I loved false things. For how could I justly be blamed and prohibited from loving false things, if it were false that I loved them? But, since they are true and real, who doubts that when they are loved, the love of them is itself true and real? Further, as there is no one who does not wish to be happy, so there is no one who does not wish to be. For how can he be happy, if he is nothing?
Augustine addresses suicide later in the book but putting aside whether he's right or wrong about people always wanting to be happy or alive, there's also a problem with the certainty of love, as it's certainly possible for a person's affections to be manipulated chemically. He was aware of this and elsewhere he takes time to talk about the distinction between will and passion.
The insight into human nature is considerable and Carl Sagan acknowledges the power of religious stories and myths to relate such things. Sagan also has a quote from Bertrand Russell: "Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth."
Speaking of Bertrand Russell quotes, recently the famous former Muslim converted to atheism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has recently written an article announcing her conversion to Christianity called "Why I am now a Christian", in reference to Russell's "Why I am not a Christian". She talks about the influence Russell had on her initially becoming an atheist but the gist of her justification for her more recent conversion is that the human mind cannot effectively cope without the bedrock of some formally organised moral belief system. She also quotes G.K. Chesterton "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything." This seems similar to what Augustine says about the dangers of demons leading the mind astray.
So it's not like she had an epiphany, some sudden awareness of God's existence and the veracity of scripture. It's similar to what Jordan Peterson once said when asked if he believed in God: that he behaves as though he does. Can this sort of conscious double think really be useful? Carl Sagan had a quote from Thomas Paine on the matter:
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Of course, Hirsi Ali and Peterson are being somewhat honest about the dissonance. Does that make it better? Sagan acknowledges Christianity was the origin of many of the tools of rational thought that characterise science:
On one level, they share similar and consonant roles, and each needs the other. Open and vigorous debate, even the consecration of doubt, is a Christian tradition going back to John Milton's Areopagitica (1644). Some of mainstream Christianity and Judaism embraces and even anticipated at least a portion of the humility, self-criticism, reasoned debate, and questioning of received wisdom that the best of science offers.
Maybe this new conscious application of Christian belief will work, I won't claim to have the wisdom to say. It seems like it would be cold comfort to most people, though, for whom comfort is a primary function of religion.
I suspect there's a very complicated equation written on a white board somewhere at Disney HQ explaining why we should like 2023's Wish. One thing's for sure, the film's writers and directors tried very, very hard to make this movie, celebrating 100 years of Walt Disney Studios, the best possible. Their failure, creatively and commercially, is tragic. I can only hope it will serve as an edifying example of why an artist shouldn't put analysis before expression. I know it won't but I can hope. Or wish.
And, boy howdy, was it a failure. Let's marvel at that a moment. It was projected to make between 45 and 50 million on its opening weekend and instead made only 31.7 million. It only went down from there. Variety called it a "cataclysmic disaster".
Sometimes, good movies do poorly at the box office. Sometimes bad movies do very well. This was a bad movie that performed badly. Like so many bad movies, it seems like its chief flaws ought to have been obvious. Its confusing premise about a wicked king who accepts the wishes of his subjects, volunteered for safe keeping, is right away something that's going to be hard to explain, particularly to the film's target audience, children. I tried to imagine a mother trying to help her kid with it.
KID: What is the bad man doing, Mommy?
MOM: He's stealing their wishes.
KID: What's a wish?
MOM: You know when you want something very much?
KID: Like an iPhone?
MOM: No, no. Like something really important. Remember when you told me you wanted to be a singer?
KID: *struggles* The bad man takes Asha's voice, like Ursula?
MOM: No, no. He takes your desire to be a singer.
KID: What's desire, Mommy?
MOM: Well--it's--well. You'll understand when you're older.
KID: Can we go home now?
The film makes a lot of references to the whole of the Disney canon but there's particular attention to "When You Wish Upon a Star". It's worth remembering how clearly that functioned in Pinocchio. Geppeto wanted a little boy, Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy. The audience didn't need to take a literary analysis course to appreciate it. "Wish" comes off so much as a lousy college essay that the first laugh it got out of me was when the bullshit culminated in a song called "I'm a Star". These are actual lyrics:
Here's a little fun allegory
That gets me excitatory
This might sink in in the morning
We are our own origin story
If I'm explaining this poorly
Well I'll let star do it for me
It's all quite revelatory
We are our own origin story
I tried contemplating what it would mean if we weren't our own origin stories. Do the lyrics mean the alternative is to think that we're only supporting characters in another person's origin story? A funny thing to condemn in a movie filled with supporting characters.
The main problem with all this gobbledygook is to render character motivations utterly meaningless. It's not clear why the citizens of Rosa decided to participate in this scheme to begin with, it's not clear why they suddenly change their minds about it, it's not clear if people are able to formulate new wishes, or if people really did have dangerous (for example, murderous) wishes the king really was keeping for the public safety. I think there was some idea of this being a dystopian tale along the lines of Brave New World or 1984, one in which suppressing ambition has disastrous consequences. But the king doesn't take people's wishes until they turn 18, leaving lots of time for ambitions to accrue.
Anyway. I think it's abundantly clear it's time for Jennifer Lee to retire. The art design is really pretty, though, and I liked the purple and green palette.
Wish is available on Disney+.
X Sonnet #1838
The summoned actor stalked the shady stage.
"And where's a mark?" he asked the glaring ghost.
The shaky spectre crushed a puck in rage.
Above, the script descends to coat the host.
A pair of nervous legs traverse the dark.
A human mountain breathes across the night.
Romantic dreams began as child's lark.
What starts as shade becomes a blinding light.
A chandelier becomes a billion suns.
The wretched truth was inked throughout the sky.
As black as coffee, death invests the guns.
Demise was writ behind the spirit's lie.
The lovely pictures change to tiny dots.
Desires change to foggy math and thoughts.
I'd forgotten how much Ally McBeal was about looks, at least in it's first season. It's like David E. Kelley felt he had to present a lawyer's argument about why he was making a show about a pretty lady. In episode six, "The Promise", Ally is forced to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to an obese lawyer, saving his life. A side effect is that he falls in love with her.
Ally's roommate, Rene, like many token black characters before and after her, is so far there just to be the show's moral centre. She chastises Ally for turning the guy down, insisting it was a decision based on looks (Ally never asks Rene if she'd date someone overweight). Ally has a good defense--she'd met the guy's fiancee, who thanked Ally for saving his life, just a few days before their wedding. Of course Ally doesn't want to date him. But under Rene's questioning, Ally clearly seems to realise this is only a convenient excuse.
This kind of topic was somewhat taboo in the early '90s, it's really taboo to-day, in which the current PC creed holds that everyone is equally beautiful, one of those party lines that feels like a willful denial of the reality in which Sydney Sweeney recently became a sensation.
The episode ends somewhat ambiguously. Of course Ally doesn't date him but we're left to wonder if, by choosing his obese fiancee, he's settling for the best he can get, giving up on his dreams of true romance. While I dislike the PC dread of acknowledging beauty, I think presenting the failure to attain romantic fulfillment as intrinsically tied to looks is not satisfying. There are plenty of unhappy couples of two attractive people. Maybe the real anachronism of the episode is that it betrays a belief in being able to find and pursue true love. The guy's attraction to Ally is based on the fact that she "kissed" him to save his life. That's sweet and poetic, but actually tells him very little about her personality, her hopes and aspirations. I think it's fair enough grounds to want to go out with someone, but not to conclude that this person is the love of one's life.
Ally McBeal presents an American culture with a much greater prevalence of economic stability than is experienced by the vast majority of Americans to-day. Many people are newly discovering the very old consideration for marriage, the economic one. A show like Ally McBeal is quite darling now.
I remember there was a lot of controversy outside the show, too. Calista Flockhart got a lot of flack for being too skinny so I guess it cuts both ways.
"Bright Eyes", last night's new X-Men'97, was pretty good, despite not being written by Beau DeMayo. Instead, the teleplay comes from Charley Feldman and JB Ballard--not JG Ballard, as Google will suppose you mean when you try to google him. JB Ballard doesn't have enough writing credits to be noticed by Google and once again Disney shows their propensity for preferring cheap writers over experienced writers. If they don't have AI working on scripts now, you know they want it so bad. Anyway, it was a decent episode.
Rogue tearing up a military base gave us some satisfying action and a seeming reference to Gunbuster's "Inazuma kick".
I enjoyed that.
This comes with a cameo by Thaddeus Ross, still sounding more like the late William Hurt than Harrison Ford (it's neither of those actors, though). But the big cameo comes later in the form of Captain America himself, who doesn't approve of Rogue going . . . rogue. That was fun. All of the plotting was satisfying, everything clicked.
I really liked Rogue killing Trask and Wolverine giving his seal of approval only for Trask to pop back up as a superzombie, like a physical manifestation of moral consequences. That adds a great extra layer of tension.
This is from a 1992 episode of The Simpsons, "Colonel Homer", which I watched last night. I love how the song, which was written for the episode by the voice actress, Beverly D'Angelo, strips all nuance and complexity from the experience of a companionable song. It would be absurdly simplistic for most of us, but Homer matches its absurdity. Here's one of the reasons The Simpsons used to be magical. We laugh at Homer but it's a laughter that comes as we're forced to acknowledge we know exactly why he reacts as he does. By presenting a simplified equation, it holds a mirror to the valuable experience we've all had at one time or another, when we connected with a piece of art because it somehow seems to understand us better than any friend or acquaintance.
The episode proceeds to be a parody of Coal Miner's Daughter and various other stories about troubled rises to fame. Homer is positioned as the corrupt manager, modelled on Elvis Presley's Colonel Tom Parker, but it's clear from beginning to end that he has no conscious idea of exploiting Lurleen. He's motivated by the power her song had over him and the desire to see her succeed. Again, his simple-heartedness is both funny and kind of beautiful.
This is the only episode of the entire series to be written solely by series creator Matt Groening.
The Simpsons is available on Disney+.
X Sonnet #1837
A phantom's wrists were tied behind a post.
A picture moved across the darkened room.
Between the candles, smoke revealed a ghost.
A voice remained beyond the day of doom.
Reflective tea would spread distrustful dreams.
Some figures stagger up the jagged beach.
A thousand miles down some hazy beams.
An ancient skull suggests a faltered reach.
A banshee born at dusk conceives a song.
A simple tune beguiles simple souls.
A burning building steers the driver wrong.
A mirror beer was warmed by freezing coals.
The final lizard dropped an ancient curse.
Decrepit hearts have dreamed of something worse.
It was my birthday a couple weeks ago (April 11) and I celebrated by drinking whiskey and watching Chimes at Midnight, or, more accurately, falling asleep during it, around two thirds through. Now that I'm apparently someone who dozes off easily, there are some movies I think particularly suited for it. Chimes at Midnight is one, Blade Runner is another, I watched that on Sunday. It's just the hour, between 9pm and 10pm, somehow this seems to be prime doze off time. Often I then find myself perfectly able to stay up as long as I like once I've gotten past 10pm. So, yes, Master Shallow, I have heard the chimes at midnight.
Orson Welles constructed a pretty good digest of Falstaff's story from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2. There's nothing you miss, nothing that feels extraneous. Falstaff's story is intrinsically tied to Hal and the King and they both have plenty of their dialogue from the plays. Henry IV's death scene, in which Hal takes the crown prematurely, is all there so you understand the depths of Hal's feeling of debt to his father. This is necessary to show the tension in Hal's choice between the two father figures, which is also the choice between whether he's going to be a responsible, moral leader, like Henry IV, or a man given to sloth and debauchery, like Falstaff.
I often think Shakespeare didn't intend Falstaff to be such a great character. I think he was really just meant to be the devil on Hal's shoulder. But in giving him depth and genuine charm, Shakespeare ended up making one of his most believably human characters. I saw an interview with Orson Welles in the 1960s (Chimes at Midnight came out in '66) in which he likened Falstaff to a "Flower Child". He really isn't, and this is clear enough in Welles' own film. He's a robber and he takes bribes. His great speech about how honour can't mend wounds is both genuinely thoughtful and genuinely cowardly. I mean, what's Henry IV supposed to do, just let Hotspur take over the country? It's possible Henry IV shares some blame for being too harsh with Hotspur but it's a deliberately ambiguous point.
But no-one wants grievous injury. Everyone "would it were bed time and all well" instead of being forced to take part in deadly battle. We'd all like to take our ease in our inn. So Falstaff is naturally easier to identify with, even if it might be hard for some of us to admit. Which is of course what makes the central moral conflict of the two plays so perfect.
Over the weekend, I tried some recent, western produced TV series about Japan, Shogun on Disney+/Hulu, and Tokyo Vice on Max (though it's included on Amazon Prime in Japan). I enjoyed both for different reasons. Shogun is a satisfying adventure story while Tokyo Vice is an insightful procedural.
I never watched the old Shogun miniseries with Mifune Toshiro. This new one, like that one, is based on the novel by James Clavell. American couple Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo serve as creators of the new series which was shot in Vancouver, with the exception of a couple of establishing shots in Japan. It stars Hiroyuki Sanada, whom you might remember from the recent John Wick movie. I think he's replaced Ken Watanabe as the biggest Japanese star in Hollywood. The series is mainly told, though, through the point of view of an Englishman called John Blackthorne who came to Japan on a Dutch ship, hoping to unseat the Catholic Portuguese monopoly on trade with Japan. This has a lot of basis in history and Blackstone is loosely based on an English navigator called William Adams.
Tonally, the series is clearly aiming for something along the lines of Game of Thrones and it succeeds with a lot of tough-as-nails dialogue, though some of it is anachronistic, as when noblewoman Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) suggests to a Catholic priest that he'll find Christ up his own ass. Japanese feminine modesty is sacrificed to the familiar Hollywood cause of trashing Catholics. Not to say Catholics are particularly popular in Japan (I recommend this lecture on the topic).
The first episode of Tokyo Vice was directed by Michael Mann, was shot in Tokyo, and is based on the memoir by Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who was the first foreigner to work at a major Japanese newspaper. The book had enough of an air of authenticity in its coverage of organised crime in Japan that it has never been able to find a Japanese publisher. Mann's assured style seamlessly brings you into a world of casual corruption and routine journalistic capitulation. Shadows and neon halos conjure crime scenes and strip clubs, illuminating a jaded detective who matter-of-factly tells the protagonist "there is no murder in Tokyo." Ansel Elgort stars as Adelstein and I found him a lot more effective than he was in The Fault in Our Stars. I'll have to see how effective the show is in episodes not directed by Michael Mann but so far I'm impressed.
