Cherry Blossom Madness

Springtime in Japan means the beautiful sight of cherry blossoms shedding their petals in peaceful pink clouds. Or horrific clouds of pink madness if you take the perspective of 1975's Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (桜の森の満開の下). In this delightfully demented horror comedy, a vicious mountain footpad meets his match in an even more vicious, but beautiful, shrew.

The mountain man (Wakayama Tomisaburo) comes upon a small party of city dwellers, a man, his wife, and their servant. He slaughters the man and servant but stops short when he lifts the wife's veil. Struck by her beauty, he decides to add her to the collection of wives he has going up in his little mountain shack. This shrew (Iwashita Shima) never shows an ounce of fear, though, and demands that he carry her up the mountain, which he does. She complains the whole way.

She demands that he behead all his wives, which he does, save one, the meekest, whom the shrew decides to take as a servant. Normal life for this little found family consists of the mountain man robbing and murdering travellers and giving their severed heads to the shrew to use as playthings. She plays with them like dolls, performing all their voices and enacting little dramas. She demands they move to the city where the mountain man can get her a wide variety of heads.

How does she control this wild man? She laughs at him. Never underestimate the power of embarrassment in Japan. She frequently lashes him with that ubiquitous word, "恥ずかしい!" "Embarrassing!" He's supposed to be strong, why can't he carry her? He's supposed to be vicious, why can't he get her more heads? He's supposed to be brave, why can't he live in the city? And this poor dumb brute rises to the bait every time. The film is a sobering lesson for killers everywhere from Shinoda Masahiro.

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees is available on The Criterion Channel.

Gently Colliding Ingredients

Two young women with clearly delineated personalities find themselves surprised by themselves in Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Allen has always been influenced by Ingmar Bergman and it particularly shows here but I also found myself thinking of the Archers' I Know Where I'm Going and the early films of Bill Forsyth. Forsyth was famed for his delicate, "gossamer" humour and that's how I'd describe the humour in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Those looking for a plot with a point that's easy to articulate may be disappointed but I enjoyed the ride.

Much like I Know Where I'm Going's protagonist, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) travel to another country firmly convinced of who they are as a narrator directly explains to us. Vicky likes stability and Cristina doesn't know what she wants--she just knows that she wants something wild. With this setup, we expect things to go sideways.

They do in short order when a gentleman called Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem) approaches them and invites them on a trip to Oviedo and to have sex with him. Predictably, Vicky is incredulous but Cristina is intrigued. Of course, they both go with him and some things happen according to the narrator's prophecy and some things don't.

As the story progresses, the personalities of the women as explained to us become a kind of veneer in a way that suggests the superficial quality of any human veneer (this aspect of the film certainly owes something to Bergman). Penelope Cruz won acclaim for her role as Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's violent but remarkably insightful ex-wife. She comes into the film like a sudden storm but gradually her madness starts to look like sanity as Cristina's sanity starts to look like dullness. This was the last of three movies Woody Allen made with Scarlett Johansson and I wonder if she was upset to realise that the essence of her character is that she's a little dumb and Johansson embodies it kind of perfectly. As she enters a three way relationship with Maria Elena and Juan Antonio, she can't keep up with how sharp Maria Elena is and how patient Juan Antonio is. Does she feel pitied? She can't seem to explain it herself when she is the first one to say she finds the relationship wanting.

Vicky's previous love for stability, perhaps inevitably, turns out to be an indication of a fundamentally unstable nature. While Cristina can't seem to get over a certain hill of contemplation, Vicky seems to be speeding madly down the other side.

The film offers no trite conclusions and the ending has a bittersweet feeling of fulfillment perhaps missed and a persistent mystery over what, exactly, the right move would've been for these two ladies.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet 1931

Here comes a town with talent leaking good.
No actors here could form a building grant.
The trouble is, a few were made of wood.
Performance must produce a man or ant.
But women called the bank and froze a pop.
No snacks were cold when summer came along.
You have to ask the winter now to stop.
Or autumn once to sing an extra song.
As chilly leaves would fall in spring we watched.
We waited 'mongst the pews for whales to speak.
But Orson Welles would preach a shapeless blotch.
The early dawn beholds the conquered peak.
It seems the mountain's made of water still.
No hardened ice would form for nature's will.

What Art?

Okay, I guess I can't put off writing about Wednesday's Daredevil any longer. I hate writing negative reviews but in for a penny, in for a pound. It's particularly disappointing because I had high hopes for this show. Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk is truly one of the best things about not just the MCU but comic book film and television of the last thirty years. But once again, Disney was under the impression they could cut corners in one of the most essential aspects of any production: the writing.

"Art for Art's Sake" (Walter Pater is rolling in his grave) was written by Jill Blankenship who also wrote the abysmal episode three, "The Hollow of His Hand", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I've said this before; I hate when so many people in a large city just coincidentally know each other. Heather is both Muse's therapist and Wilson Fisk's therapist and Matt's girlfriend. This might have worked had the story been set in a small village but this is just silly. The worst part, though, is that, after all that set up with Muse, he's snuffed out so abruptly, so soon. The police tell Fisk they're positive Daredevil was in the room beating on the guy even though they weren't inside the room. It's all well and good for Fisk to have them take credit for taking out Muse but is Fisk even sure what lie he's telling?

This episode was clearly a reconfigured episode from the first draft of the series. There's a lot of very obviously looped dialogue whenever events from the Netflix series are referred to. When Heather talks about Foggy and Karen, her face is always off-screen. When Fisk talks about his time in prison, his face is mostly off-screen.

Detective Kim reports to Fisk about the Muse investigation because apparently she's lead detective as well as hostage negotiator despite the actress giving a performance on the level of an old AT&T commercial. It's a shame it couldn't have been Misty Knight. Fisk asks Kim if she's certain Bastian is Muse and she says, "Certain, no. Confident." Too bad she didn't think to have him tailed then.

Matt's able to recognise Heather's face by touching paintings. Why not just give him eyesight at this point? This is lazy, lazy writing. Since the cops also found the lair, they could've had Daredevil overhear someone else identifying her from the pictures. Hell, she's probably therapist for the whole damned city.

The action scene where Daredevil comes in to save Heather from Muse is really sloppy. I was just going over it again. Heather's tied up and she taunts him for having a gun and then there's a shot of him holding a gun. Then there's a reverse shot and he's holding a knife and he comes towards her threateningly. Then he's grasping her arms with both hands and shortly thereafter we see the gun on the table. How is it they can't even get the action scenes right?

Well, next week's episode is bound to be better. I'm kind of not surprised the show's ratings haven't been great but if Disney had made the effort from the beginning to ensure this had good writing they could've slowly built a groundswell of support of the show. Andor should've taught them that lesson.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Dekpa and the Pirate Horde

At long last, a new chapter of my webcomic, Dekpa and Deborah, is online. When I finished the previous chapter last April, I didn't expect it would take me a whole year to upload another. I actually drew most of the pages in August but I was unable to finish over the summer because making Japanese subtitles for The Last Unicorn dominated all my time.

By the way, the character of Red Roger Ferguson is my own creation, he was not a real, historical pirate, as far as I know. There were a number of "Red Rogers" though. There's a character in the Robin Hood legend and even a peculiarly muscular kangaroo of the name. I think "Red Roger" sounds more natural than Walter Matthau's pirate captain simply called "Red" in the Roman Polanski movie Pirates.

There's a lot of violence and nudity in this chapter. Clothing seamen in the age of sail was a real problem. The Royal Navy didn't have a uniform until the 18th century (April 1748, in fact) and the only garments issued to crewmen before that were slops, which were typically very cheaply made breeches that did tend to fall apart.

It occurs to me that Dekpa, with her magical companion, has become a kind of demented Disney princess. Anyway, enjoy the chapter.

Happy Birthday to Dorothea Dix, Muddy Waters, Elmer Bernstein, Peter Vaughan, Anthony Perkins, Andrei Tarkovsky, Cherie Lunghi, David E. Kelley, Hugo Weaving, David Cross, Robert Downey Jr., Heath Ledger, and Natasha Lyonne.

Val Kilmer

Val Kilmer died on Tuesday at the age of 65. Those who've seen Top Gun: Maverick may not be surprised as the effects of his cancer were clearly visible onscreen. Even so, he performed a memorable scene with Tom Cruise and his old charisma was still plainly there.

He was an A-lister from his appearance in the original Top Gun in 1986 and remained a big star into the '90s but it seems he wasn't uptight about playing supporting roles. His supporting roles in Tombstone and Heat are certainly memorable. The latter film, which has lately garnered a lot of attention, is considered one of the greatest crime dramas of all time and his role was integral to it.

I saw him in person at San Diego Comic Con in 2010 when he was there to promote Twixt with its director, Francis Ford Coppola. A remarkable experiment, it was initially Coppola's plan to edit the film live based on audience reactions. Coppola demonstrated by showing us a trailer edited live. The audience that day responded most warmly to shots of Kilmer's character being foolish, drunk, and funny.

He was excellent as Jim Morrison in The Doors biopic, though I'm not the greatest fan of its director. I also enjoyed seeing him pop up in films like Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob: Reboot.

For me, though, his greatest role will always be Madmartigan, the "greatest swordsman who ever lived" in the fantasy film Willow. I always loved the European Middle Ages and medieaval fantasy films in particular. When Willow came out in 1988, I was nine years old and it was fantastic.

Sure, the comedy's a little broad and Willow is hardly the finest George Lucas film but Kilmer as Madmartigan exemplified the kind of cinematic hero Lucas and Spielberg were creating; a guy a who makes mistakes and who is sometimes misled by his passions. No fascist hero was Indiana Jones or Madmartigan, even when they were also larger than life. These were human heroes for humans. I, for one, think humanity benefited and I thank Val Kilmer for his part in it.

X Sonnet 1930

Electric blue were words of ancient force.
But boats of twisted reeds conduct a hope.
The winding brook conforms to serpent's course.
The rocks would roll along the broken slope.
As gods of wine beheld their own, they wept.
The mighty sword would rust as trolls would rule.
Within expectant hearts, the dream was kept.
The gun of Holiday's a quiet tool.
The stately raven churned the film of yore.
In days of heat, the lucky thief was warned.
His song would lead us through a spirit door.
No shrink could shrink the bat when scorned.
It seems there's naught for little men to do.
And still he says he'll win this war for you.

The Dawning Horror of a Normal Galaxy

I've been watching Andor again, I guess in preparation for the upcoming second season. Hell, I just wanted to watch it again. I can't remember so enthusiastically looking forward to new episodes of a weekly series since Twin Peaks. It doesn't even feel fair to compare it to the other Disney+ Star Wars shows. Andor doesn't need to borrow any franchise laurels, it stands completely on its own.

What makes it so good? One simple way of expressing it is that it's a show about people slowly realising a bad situation is worse than they imagined and that they'll be required to make bigger sacrifices than they'd ever dreamt of. Andor's progression is mirrored by Mon Mothma's. He slowly realises that getting by as a thief is not only impossible but not really who he is. This is first confirmed when he quick draws on that guy at the end of the heist arc. Instinctively, he shoots someone for betraying the Rebellion, not because it's in his own best interest.

Mon Mothma has already settled into a life of more subterfuge than one traditionally required of a senator but she finds even this isn't enough, she must go further outside her comfort zone. The show builds scenes around these dreadful character epiphanies, like the one in episode 10, which I watched last night, in which Mon Mothma slowly realises she's going to have to encourage her teenage daughter to go out with a gangster's son just so she can move her own finances to fund the Rebellion. In the same episode, Kino Loy's character progression reaches its climax. His reluctance and growing horror is what most creates a sense of the prison break drama. All the Disney Star Wars shows have big name actors but none of them use the opportunity so well as Andy Serkis was used in his role as Kino Loy. With all the sets and costumes and special effects, it's the expression on his face that truly creates an impression of the experience.

I also love just how delicately twisted the relationship is between Syril Karn and Dedra Meero. I love the scene in episode nine when he confronts her on the bridge. He has all these grand words about duty and dedication to justice that all also sound like he's head over heels for her. He doesn't hear that part of what he's saying but she does and she reacts like he's a stalker. It's fascinating watching the two of them and thinking about what's really going on subconsciously and how aware either one of them is of it. Hot damn, this show is good.

Macbeth and Politics

I've been trying to listen to Bill Maher's interview with Maureen Dowd for a few days now. It's been hard because my internet seems to be dropping out a lot. This is the Club Random show, a podcast which Maher hosts, usually while smoking pot, and showcases more casual conversations as opposed to his show Real Time with Bill Maher. Rightwing media has been parading Maher as a hero lately because he calls out woke bullshit, a fact he's remarked on, saying how many among the young Right and Left have two different experiences of him because they watch only clips of him supporting their views instead of his whole shows. Really, it's Maher's ability to be critical of both sides while remaining friendly with them that has made him the most important commentator in U.S. politics of the last thirty years. Can you think of anyone else that has had the prominence and longevity he's had?

Anyway, in this political landscape in which people tend to only listen to voices within their bubbles, Maher is one of the few people who can effectively act as a bridge.

The funny thing about his interview with Dowd, though, is listening to how much they both get wrong about old movies and Shakespeare. Maher identifies Dowd as a Shakespeare nut but when he asks her, after she'd compared femmes fatale to Lady Macbeth, if Lady Macbeth stayed with her man, unlike Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Dowd said no. What? The whole point of Lady Macbeth is that she supported Macbeth more than he was willing to support himself. I remember one of the Shakespeare professors I had in college said she was "a terrible woman but a great wife." I always thought that was pretty accurate. For this reason, she's more complicated than a femme fatale tends to be. She's like a trad-wife Dalek.

I was watching a bit of Roman Polanski's Macbeth last night. I've packed up most of my DVDs and blu-rays because I'm moving to a new apartment, hopefully soon. The one DVD I'd neglected to pack was this Macbeth so when my internet went down yet again last night it was the only DVD I had to watch. If I were superstitious, I might make something of the fact that this cursed play has been popping up in my life over the past few days. Anyway, I think Polanski's film version of Macbeth probably has the best cinematography of any (the cinematographer was Gilbert Taylor, also the cinematographer on Doctor Strangelove and Star Wars). The costumes are great, too. I love how much green is in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's wardrobes.

Richard Chamberlain

Richard Chamberlain passed away on Saturday, two days before his 91st birthday. From Doctor Kildare to Twin Peaks: The Return, here was an actor with a very long and colourful career. Over the past few years, I've seen him in two very different roles; as the worried investigator of eerie phenomena in Peter Weir's 1977 movie The Last Wave, and as the legendary Allan Quatermain in a couple of cheesy, fun movies from the late '80s. He always had a kind of sparkle in his eye and he was suited for both serious and campy fare.

It's weird Rotten Tomatoes labels this as a "Herbert Lom Movie". Lom is in it, playing a villain that, like most other aspects of the film, wasn't in the book. His name isn't even mentioned in the trailer. Surely Chamberlain was the bigger star.

His role on Twin Peaks was small, just one scene, but he still went to the premiere:

At any time, the interviewer could've jumped in and said, "I think you actually caught the movie, Fire Walk With Me." Was he afraid of embarrassing Chamberlain or did the interviewer just not know anything about Twin Peaks? My guess would be the latter.

Chamberlain played a lawyer involved in a love triangle that briefly takes centre stage in the first couple episodes of The Return. I didn't even recognise him the first time I watched it but I did notice the actor brought a gravitas and sparkling kitsch quality that helped establish the story Lynch was telling. Even in a small role, he brought something no-one else could.

X Sonnet 1929

A cup of swirling frogs was sold for tea.
The colour green deceived a sea of kids.
Though older now, they dance the Kappa Boogie.
Their silver pool has fetched a million bids.
In eighty-nine, the store was life itself.
But now the place is broken walls and cords.
Within, there yet remains a heavy shelf.
It holds a hardy stack of vintage cords.
The winters passed when fashion asked for pants.
These trousers gather moths as plastic rules.
But ghosts would give the slacks another chance.
At night, they walk the store and warm the jewels.
The darkness carries clothes of yesteryear.
The dreams survive a despot's stubborn fear.

Day Dawns on Deep Discomfort

Jean Gabin romances two women in Marcel Carne's 1939 film Le jour se leve. This is another example of "poetic realism" in French film but, while I liked it, I didn't find it as effective as Port of Shadows, another Gabin/Carne collaboration.

In this one, Gabin plays Francois, a working class joe in a foundry. I loved his meetcute with Francoise, played by pretty young Jacqueline Laurent. The scene starts with him standing there in full gear and mask, blasting away. Then he turns around and sees her in a nice little dress holding a bouquet of flowers. The incongruity was somehow very sweet and the scene only gets better as they both realise they're named for Saint Francis, whose day it also happens to be (October 4).

The two start seeing each other regularly and one night he finds out she's also seeing a flamboyant dog trainer named Valentin (Jules Berry). Valentin's assistant is an older woman named Clara who swoops in and seduces Francois when she sees him at the bar, watching the dog show.

This movie might have been more effective for me if I understood the appeal of Arletty. She was extremely popular at the time and French audiences felt she had enormous sex appeal. She was 41 at the time and this was even ahead of her greatest film, Children of Paradise, also directed by Marcel Carne. I love Children of Paradise despite my inability to appreciate Arletty but Le jour se leve didn't have enough to compensate for what I find to be an utter lack of sex appeal on her part.

It's true, I generally find younger women sexier but I can appreciate Isabelle Huppert or Susan Sarandon, who looked old even when she was young. Something about Arletty is just so hard and cold. Even before I found out she was sleeping with a Nazi officer during the French occupation. I just couldn't buy the idea that Francois was torn between the two women and I certainly didn't believe Arletty was in love with Francois. I didn't believe her tears at all.

She has a nude scene in the movie which is . . . let's just say, really awkward. I guess not everyone can age like Demi Moore but I can't begin to imagine how Arletty's sex appeal was a selling point for this movie.

The movie ends up being about existential terror as Francois' self-image collapses in the aftermath of his sleeping with Arletty and the revelation that Francoise was sleeping with the dog trainer. He holes up in his apartment with a gun while police and a crowd of onlookers gather outside. He screams at them, "Francois doesn't exist anymore!" It's an interesting idea but I kind of wish Carne and his screenwriters had come up with better reasons for Francois' breakdown.

Le jour se leve is available on The Criterion Channel.

Shinoda Masahiro

Shinoda Masahiro (篠田 正浩) died four days ago at the age of 94. Shinoda was a prominent director in Japan's New Wave though, until yesterday, the only movie of his I'd seen was 1964's Pale Flower (乾いた花). However, I absolutely love Pale Flower, a yakuza movie that runs madly contrary to the trends of yakuza movies at the time which tended to cast handsome young idols as misfit yakuza who glory in tales of tragic youth. Pale Flower features a middle aged yakuza, recently released from prison, inured to the culture, bored of everything, finding ecstasy only in the moment of the kill. A sadistic young woman becomes his apprentice in a story about scraping the barrel of self-gratification in an amoral universe (you can see my review from fourteen years ago here).

So last night I watched another Shinoda Masahiro movie, 1979's Demon Pond (夜叉ヶ池), a very different film to Pale Flower, but a good one.

Based on a stage play from 1913, the story follows a teacher called Yamasawa (Yamazaki Tsutomu) who travels to a region between Fukui and Gifu where a legendary Demon Pond is said to be located. He trudges across dry, hot landscape and arrives at a village with enormous thatched roofs (I think it was probably filmed in Shirakawa, which is actually in Gifu). There's a drought. When Yamasawa enters one building, he finds a few people gathered. He has something in his eye so he asks for water. A woman cheerfully offers her breast milk instead, shoving her nipple at his eye, at which he, shocked, recoils. Leaving the village, he starts up a hillside where he's surprised to find a trickling stream. He washes his eye with the water before realising it comes from the very Demon Pond he sought. The villagers won't take water from the pond for fear of angering the dragon that's said to dwell in it.

From here, the film becomes more stylised and deliberately artificial. He goes to the pond and nearby finds a small house occupied by a married couple, though at first he only speaks to the wife, Yuri, who's played by a man named Bando Tamasaburo. Bando is a kabuki actor, the form of Japanese theatre in which, for much of its history, all the female parts were played by men. This was because, in the 17th century, when kabuki was first introduced, the actresses were seen as too sexually provocative for the male audience. Of course, replacing them with men led to men having sex with men but the taboo against women playing women remained in place. It must have loosened at some point, because we have a kakubi actress depicted in Ozu's Story of Floating Weeds as early as 1934.

Bando is an onnagata, a male actor specialising in female roles. Men like him gain repute for artistically conveying ideals of feminine manner.

The other occupant of the house, Yuri's husband, turns out to be Yamasawa's old friend, a scholar named Hagiwara (Go Kato), who wears a very artificial-looking grey wig for reasons that are not explained. He immediately removes the wig when he speaks to Yamasawa.

No reason is given in the story but the film's symbolism is pretty clear. After Yamasawa refuses to have his eyes cleansed by breast milk in that natural, working class world, he instead washes his eyes with the Demon Pond, and thus has senses opened to an unnatural, or supernatural, world where performance has more reality than reality. In his occupation, Yamasawa is already more connected to this world as someone who deals in abstract ideas. There's also a potential class allegory as the people living on the hill maintain a right to the Demon Pond while the farmers suffer from drought. If a certain bell near the pond isn't rung three times a day, the release of the dragon is prophesied to be accompanied by a flood. Since the villagers have a drought, they start to think a flood might not be so bad. Fluid as a symbol of change and new ideas is pretty common and, as is common with revolutionaries, the farmers become too consumed with toppling the old order to begin to understand the devastation that will follow in the wake of the revolution.

Shinoda was obviously a director of great talent and intellect. Many of his movies are available on The Criterion Channel.

More Moana than I Wanna Watch

I like to think I can meet any challenge, at least as far as movies are concerned. But I just can't get through 2024's Moana 2. It's just too damned boring. I got about halfway through before blessed slumber overtook me.

At least twenty minutes of it was exposition. Maybe it was all exposition. There's minutes and minutes of someone babbling about a magical island or explaining Moana's relationship with someone else or just how cool and perfect she is. Then one of the animal sidekicks makes a funny face and after that it's right back to the exposition mill. I just don't think I can take it anymore.

I don't believe a story has to have an arc or flawed characters. I even think a story composed largely of exposition could be interesting. Somehow Moana 2 is utterly devoid of tension, like every wrinkle that could've possibly produced dramatic effect was inexorably ironed out by committee. We've got no love interest, Moana has no tragic delusion, there's no sense of any real threat to her people.

So Disney seems to be allergic to love stories now. Maybe everyone is tired of the female leads pursuing a boy. One of the favourite replacements seems to be an urge to explore. There's a song in Moana 2, "Beyond", I could've sworn was in Frozen 2.

I get it. The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast both had female protagonists who effectively sang about wanting exploration and adventure and then all they got was boyfriends. It always felt like a promise unfulfilled. The difference is that Ariel and Belle felt more vulnerable than Elsa (in Frozen 2) and Moana. There's a real sense that they'd be taking a risk embarking on those adventures. Ariel has the constant, unspoken tension of being a girl with no legs, like a less funny version of Olaf wanting to experience a summer day. She wants something we can plainly see is impossible. That's a perfect story for a teenager. Teenagers have big ideas and we adults have to stand by, cursed with our knowledge of life's true hardships, knowing just how vulnerable these kids are. But, no, Disney seems to say now, not vulnerable! Never vulnerable!

Anyway, I can't properly review Moana 2. Maybe I'll finish watching it at some point but life's short, you know?

X Sonnet 1928

Eclipses climb the crinkle stage of post.
To mail a razor tooth would quite the shave.
For dinner, try the royal ribbon roast.
You have to find a bat in Robin's cave.
A candy coloured waste expands ahead.
The Otter Pops have melted round the world.
Computers lift the recent dumb and dead.
Around our necks the empty snake has curled.
The bloody orange became a ready sun.
But blue departs the void around the ball.
The Silver Surfer starts an aimless run.
He finds the space concludes with painted wall.
Compactor sides converge to trap the heart.
But something lives beneath the Fam'ly Mart.

Where the Show was Born Again

Two new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiered on Disney+ last night and the contrast between the two of them most tellingly shows the difference between the show as it was originally filmed and the show as it was retooled. Episode five feels like it fits with the bulk of Marvel Disney+ content while episode six feels much closer in tone to the Daredevil Netflix series. You can as plainly see the reason for the retooling as episode six is far and away the superior of the two. But I found episode five's echos of Disney+'s previous Marvel content to be unexpectedly depressing. I imagined what could have been if that streaming universe had been of higher quality.

The big surprise of episode five was the appearance of Kamala Khan's father, Yusuf (Mohan Kapur), at his job as an assistant bank manager to whom Matt Murdoch applies for a loan. I hated the way he was written in this episode, basically as a bumbling, Nigel Bruce Dr. Watson type, who, lest anyone not recognise him, dropped one explicit reference after another to his superheroine daughter. I remember I actually liked the first few episodes of Ms. Marvel and I wished I could've been happy to see this connexion between the two shows. There's another reason, too, I was disappointed to be disappointed. Since watching Ms. Marvel, I had a thirteen year old student at one of the schools I work at in Japan who was from Pakistan and she told me how much she liked Ms. Marvel. Sure, I would argue against the idea that people need to see people of their own nationality on screen in order to appreciate a story but, on the other hand, I thought it was nice for this girl, who's so culturally isolated going to a Japanese school, to be able to enjoy a glitzy Marvel series depicting a culture not so unlike her own, and maybe a girl with whom she could closely identify. I feel like Disney/Marvel really let her down.

And, of course, the episode is a ghost of pre-Trump America, when mainstream content was, if awkwardly and ham-fistedly, giving us content promoting cultural and sexual diversity. I never felt so sorry that it didn't go according to plan. I found myself longing for a world in which The Marvels had been a good movie.

But, yes, episode six of Daredevil: Born Again was a lot better. It had good action scenes and good character moments for both Matt and Wilson. Wilson assembling his anti-vigilante squad was another moment that eerily resembled the reality of the new Trump administration, as did Wilson's meeting with the old, moneyed elites (with a nice cameo by the Swordsman).

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Mars and Its Humans

Another Earthman must save Mars from barbarian hordes and bizarre aliens in Leigh Brackett's 1951 novel Black Amazon of Mars. The Amazon in question is neither black nor an Amazon but it's still a terrific story.

The protagonist is Eric John Stark and this is the third in a series of books Brackett wrote about the character. The similarities to Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter are obvious though Stark doesn't spend all his time on Mars and, in this universe, Mars is populated by humans wielding mostly mediaeval level technology, descended from technologically superior colonists.

Brackett is best known to-day as one of the screenwriters of the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. I read Black Amazon of Mars looking for similarities to Empire Strikes Back and there are plenty. There's the mysterious, black helmeted villain, Lord Ciaran, whose face is hidden until a dramatic reveal; the story hits the ground running, with Stark stranded in the desert with a friend who immediately succumbs to wounds, a scene followed by capture by a barbarian tribe and a violent escape; key moments in the plot involve the protagonist having visions.

I love how the story never lets the protagonist off the hook. When he gets to the city to warn them of the impending barbarian attack, the don't believe him and threaten to punish him if the attackers don't arrive. This threat, simultaneous to the attack itself, hangs in the air throughout the buildup.

Stark's an interesting, canny brute, actually reminding me more of Conan than of John Carter. He's able to fight off dozens of attackers at once, which adds to the impact of the climax, when strange alien beings manage to incapacitate him. These aliens are wonderfully Lovecraftian, strange ice creatures with tendrils.

Stark let out one raging catlike scream, and rushed them.

The opalescent bodies slipped away beyond his reach. The creatures watched him.

They had no faces, but they watched. They were eyeless but not blind, earless, but not without hearing. The inquisitive tendrils that formed their sensory organs stirred and shifted like the petals of ungodly flowers, and the color of them was the white frost-fire that dances on the snow.

I was mainly looking for something like the dynamic, pridefully attractive chemistry between Han and Leia. There's a little of that though Stark seems to be a much simpler character, much more secure in his prowess and desires. The women in Black Amazon of Mars are more interesting, more conflicted and brash characters. I suspect Harrison Ford brought a lot of the vulnerability that made Han work so well to the character. Stark has two love interests in the book; the titular black Amazon and a woman named Thanis who, along with her brother Balin, takes the battle wounded Stark into her home when he comes to the city. I liked this moment:

Balin stood up. "Well, for good or evil, at least the sacred relic of Ban Cruach has come home." He yawned. "I am going to bed. Will you come, Thanis, or will you stay and quarrel with our guest?"

"I will stay," she said, "and quarrel."

"Ah, well." Balin sighed puckishly. "Good night." He vanished into an inner room. Stark looked at Thanis. She had a warm mouth, and her eyes were beautiful, and full of light.

He smiled, holding out his hand.

It's a good book; a satisfying bit of amoral pulp.

Or Maybe the Original Text Lacks Something

I watched 2003's Lost in Translation last night. I know it'd been at least twenty years since I'd seen it last. I suppose, since I like Bill Murray and I'm an American living in Japan, it ought to be a touchstone for me but somehow it's not. I suppose because it's really more about marital dissatisfaction and the isolation of being very, very rich, two things I have absolutely no experience with.

The Japan depicted in the film is not the Japan I have experienced. I haven't spent a lot of time in Tokyo, only a couple weeks, though I guess that's more time than the protagonists of the film spent there (I think the action is set over the course of one week). The Japan experienced by Bill Murray's and Scarlett Johansson's characters is one of endless, interchangeable smiling assistants, translators, and indistinct hipsters who want to be their friends.

At its heart, I really think it's director Sophia Coppola's fantasy about dating Bill Murray, or an idealised version of Bill Murray. This is a Bill Murray who is as disinterested in female prostitutes and strippers as any average girl would be. The moment of friction in the film is when he sleeps with the hotel bar jazz singer, and it's clearly shown to be something he regrets even irrespective of Johansson's feelings on the subject. I generally had the impression that Sofia Coppola and Scarlett Johansson, at the very least, didn't form a bond as intimate as the one between Coppola and Murray. I remember a lot of people were kind of shocked when Coppola didn't mention Johansson in her Oscar acceptance speech. Coppola only had eyes for Murray.

I kind of like to think Coppola and Murray had an affair. But maybe he was always just a fantasy for her of the idealised older man. Murray was 53 at the time, Coppola was 32, and Johansson was just 17, though her character was in her 20s. I don't feel like a relationship between the characters has a future. The way Johansson regards Murray suggests someone admiring an idol and from Murray I can only infer physical attraction. The only things they really have in common is uncertainty about their married life and, I guess, cultural isolation in Japan. The latter doesn't really fit with my experience living here and, although I can't speak to what it's like to be married, this problem seems too insubstantially drawn to be interesting. Both of their marriage partners are little more than caricatures. I've never been married but I can appreciate the psychological layers in Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Here, I get nothing.

But Murray is very funny, especially with his improvised lines. His comedic timing is always impeccable. Johansson is gorgeous. I'm not sure why the movie begins with an extended shot of her rear end but I'm not complaining about it. I was surprised to notice she has a bit of a pot belly in the film. She hadn't yet been hammered into MCU shape and I like it.

Lost in Translation is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.

The Walking Peaks

Disney+ in Japan has been aggressively promoting the new season of Gannibal, the horror detective series that began in 2022 based on a 2018 manga. So I gave in and watched the first episode and so far I'm fairly pleased. For one thing, it's nice to see a Japanese live action series that isn't zany or sentimental. This one seems to be a cross between Twin Peaks and The Walking Dead.

A detective named Daigo (Yuya Yagira) moves with his family to a small town to investigate a murder. The locals are a bit eccentric and strangely aggressive. When they find the mutilated body of an old woman in the woods with a clearly human bite mark on her arm, the crowd of locals all draw their rifles on Daigo after he doesn't immediately accept their pronouncement of the death as the clear result of a bear attack.

What could be happening? Daigo's little girl, who has been speechless and emotionless since a traumatic event so far undisclosed, remains speechless and emotionless which she encounters a ragged old man who gives her a human finger. That little girl must have the easiest acting job on television.

So, yeah, in case you didn't guess from the title, cannibalism is involved in the story. It's not bad. Yuya Yagira gives a good performance and I really like Riho Yoshioka as his wife, Yuki. The cinematography is pretty plain with the standard, limited colour palette of a crime drama. It actually really reminds me of European Twin Peaks-inspired series like Dark or Black Spot. The more the merrier, I guess, especially now that David Lynch is dead and we'll never get any real Twin Peaks again. The man certainly has a legacy, that's for sure.

Looming About the Dock on Every Side

A big man in a soldier's uniform, a deserter, hitches into town and becomes a magnet for trouble but also for the affections of the abused. Jean Gabin stars in 1938's Port of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes), a lovely film noir.

He doesn't want to talk to the people he meets and one senses early on there's something in his past he's running away from, something worse than deserting. He winds up in a ragged little excuse for a tavern run by a guy wearing what he insists is a genuine Panama hat. He takes pity on the taciturn soldier and gives him food and drink, pausing to engage in a shoot-out outside with some local hoodlums. Sheltering in the back room, the soldier, Jean, meets the beautiful Nelly (Michele Morgan).

Over the course of this movie, the two of them share some of the best screen kisses I've ever seen. Something about the way she says "kiss me" is just divine.

There's a slightly meta moment when they first meet in which Jean laughs and explains he likes her immediately, "like in a movie." There's also a pathetic little dog Jean saves from getting run over who also likes him for no rational reason. The dog follows him for the rest of the movie.

Michel Simon plays Zabel, Nelly's jealous boyfriend, though he passes it off with elegance somehow. What an incredible performer Simon was. Even in a villainous role his charisma is undeniable, even with his bad posture. As someone with bad posture myself, the guy's becoming my hero. Posture makes a difference. Notice how carefully the Vulture article chose a picture of Neil Gaiman in profile in their smear piece to show he has bad posture.

It's amazing how different Simon is in this compared to the old man he plays in L'Atalante but he's perfectly believable in both roles.

This movie has all the primary defining features of a noir. It's a crime story, it has stylised dialogue, it has existential tension between fate and free will, and the ending is definitely noir. That tension makes the love between Jean and Nelly all the more painful. Is it tragic or simply doomed? The question keeps the movie alive long after it's finished.

X Sonnet 1927

Confusing buzz of voices won't be cut.
And where do people walk who walk alone?
The absence here is like a novel shut.
A cloud of dust and dusk's as dry as bone.
A kindly candle shows in pixel dots.
The blocks of games remain as fond debris.
A shaken hand commits a row of blots.
Espresso chokes the summoned honey bee.
A drop of cherry syrup changed the joe.
Completing breakfast made the mission start.
A holiday has brought a festive glow.
Untimely though at night the speakers part.
An audience of phones has called the fight.
A lot of little screens composed the light.

A Phantom Nemesis

On Thursday, I found myself impulsively reading "The Man of the Crowd" by Edgar Allan Poe. Here's a story that certainly breaks the modern rules of what a story can be. It has no arc, no sympathetic character. It's simply a first person narrative about watching a crowd and noticing someone interesting and sinister.

The story contains a famous Poe quote at its beginning, "There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told." So the story warns us right away not to expect answers. The narrator watches the crowd and eventually follows the strange man and learns next to nothing. You could say as much for most of the other people in the crowd he observes and draws inferences about. He recognises office workers and pickpockets, "men of leisure and men actively engaged in affairs of their own." I'm reminded of Bob Dylan's line in "Like a Rolling Stone", "You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal." I suppose having no secrets amounts to being entirely secret because humanity stripped of persona and art can only be the enigma of human consciousness itself.

The unnamed narrator of the story says he recently recovered from illness and says he, "found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui—moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs." I think I know what he's talking about, I remember feeling that way after physically taxing illness or exercise. It's like you become a perfect eye with all senses receptive to the world. In this peculiarly active, passive state, one enigmatic figure in the crowd arrests the narrator's attention who, being unnamed and undescribed, slyly substitutes itself for all the reader's faculty for input. It's been suggested that the sinister man is a reflection of the observer, which may as well be so. But just as we are what we eat, perhaps we are what we see. That which repels and that which attracts the observer allow us a sort of echo map of the observer. The fact that the observer decides to follow the man all night and into the next day certainly speaks volumes.

There are a number of AI generated audiobooks of the story on YouTube. Already! How quickly AI is plastering over reality. Here's one that's not AI. At least, I can't imagine AI being so affected:

The narrator describes the man with a number of contradictory elements: "As I endeavoured, during the brief minute of my original survey, to form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of bloodthirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense—of extreme despair." To me, this sounds like an addict. The fact that the man compulsively seeks to be in crowds without seeming to focus on individuals suggests to me that he's addicted to crowds. I guess there really is a fetish for everything. He seems like a kind of vampire, an idea borne out in various illustrations of him, particularly in Harry Clarke's lurid 1923 illustration.

Perhaps this is a vampire who feeds on the very discomfort of being in a crowd. The story begins with an epigraph, a quote from a French book: "Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul", "This great misfortune, of not being able to be alone." Perhaps the man literally is this misfortune, anthropomorphised. He is the denial of solitude given face. He anticipates Satre's famous quote, "Hell is other people." The idea of him being a reflection of the narrator works well with this because the perceptions of others do function as a mirror.

In any case, with this story Poe certainly shows his genius for making something so simple so powerful.