Train stations in the big Japanese cities can be labyrinthian but usually not as bad as what you see in 2025's Exit 8 (8番出口). A young man trying to leave finds himself repeatedly walking through the same corridors with strange instructions on the wall. It's a clever and effectively eerie idea. Apparently it comes from a video game of the same title. The movie uses this concept to tell a story about a young man's reluctance to start a family.
The young man (Kazunari Ninomiya) has a girlfriend who's pregnant. As he tries to find the right way out of the train station, there's a consistent background tension surrounding his delayed decision as to whether he will commit to his girlfriend and child. I was reminded of Me Me Me, the GAINAX video designed to compel young men to step away from fantasies and start normal families. The trouble with both cases is they present the decision as being between an endless, soulless rut and a perfect life with a beautiful woman. The audience knows it's not a fair argument and even happily married people are likely to recoil from such heavy-handedness.
Ironically, though, Me Me Me is really sexy and Exit 8 is still effectively creepy, especially if you've spent a lot of time in Japanese train stations. The young man's reluctance to help the woman functions like a moral flaw in a horror movie protagonist so the audience senses he's a ripe candidate for demoniac justice.
A young woman leaves voicemails for her deceased sister, not knowing they're being intercepted by an attractive young man in 2026's Voicemails for Isabelle. It's a charming, old fashioned romantic comedy that indulges in the familiar tropes and plot patterns. There's a slightly Hitchcockian element to the film, too.
If you have any familiarity with romantic comedies, you will quickly perceive how the movie will play out. Jill (Zoey Deutsch) is so vulnerable and goofy in an approachably attractive way, but not threateningly attractive, making her a suitable point of view character for the film's target demographic. Wes (Nick Robinson) is so enamoured with the voicemails that he moves to San Francisco, where Jill lives, and tracks her down. Their relationship develops and he struggles with his dark secret.
The tone aimed for here his akin to You Got Mail or Shop Around the Corner but the San Francisco location inevitably reminded me of Vertigo. Wes isn't like Scottie as much as he's like Judy. By meeting Jill under false pretenses, he draws her in in the same way Judy/Madeleine drew Scottie in, though he spends less time crafting a persona. But the dynamic between the two is affected by the fact that she doesn't know he's heard her voicemails to Isabelle, much as the dynamic was fundamentally different before Scottie finally realised the woman he loved may have been a complete fantasy. But Voicemails for Isabelle sticks to a standard three act romantic comedy plot--the couple meets, the couple experiences conflict and separation, the couple resolve their conflict and reunite.
Wes avoids being creepy because he never becomes a point of view character. He is the handsome stalker who flatters the vanity of the point of view character in a way that makes him guilty, thereby making him simultaneously in service to and indebted to Jill. If he were a point of view character, we'd be more inclined to evaluate the intrinsic merit of his actions. He exists to complement Jill. The two are cute together.
I guess time has done nothing to dull the public's appetite for Spider-Man: the new movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, has scored nearly a billion dollars worldwide in its opening weekend. It's a good movie, not as good as Homecoming, which is still the best film of Tom Holland's run, but good.
For a long time, it seemed like MCU movies were allergic to the secret identity. Spider-Man was the only MCU character who retained that traditional aspect of the superhero comic, and then they took it away from him. It's nice to see Brand New Day really runs with the secret identity concept now that it's been restored to the character via supernatural means. He wears his mask a lot more than usual in these live action movies, even having full dialogue scenes. Combined with the fact that Holland wears the most comics accurate costume in this film, I sometimes had the feeling I was watching a luchador movie. But I liked that. I wonder if that helps the movie, too, in countries like Mexico where masked heroes are more embedded in the culture.
Jon Bernthal is kind of a modern Telly Savalas. He chews scenery like crazy but there's something undeniably charming about his affectation. The unexpected friendship between Punisher and Spider-Man is amusing and surprisingly sweet though I don't know if this Punisher quite feels like the same man from the old Netflix series.
Speaking of Netflix, Sadie Sink's in this movie as a secret character. I won't spoil it for you if you've somehow managed to avoid spoilers but I will say she looks amazing. Her eyes seem like they've doubled in size since Stranger Things. Hopefully this isn't because she got a bunch of fat sucked out of her face and is instead the work of a talented makeup team.
The movie's villain is a secret. The filmmakers chose to make the villain a familiar Marvel character but with totally different motives and slightly different powers, resembling the character in physical appearance and name only. I thought this was a bad idea. Since the new powers were those of Killgrave, the character played by David Tennant on Jessica Jones, I wondered why they didn't just have Killgrave be the villain. David Tennant would've been a great presence in the film.
I wish there'd been more time the Hulk in this movie but critics who say this movie is overstuffed have a fair point. What this movie made clear is that Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is long overdo for his own movie. Thor: Ragnarok kind of cheated and gave him one. If Disney can't get the rights to make a standalone Hulk movie, they should consider another Ragnarok and make another two hander with the Hulk and someone else.
In addition to all the compositions meant to resemble classic comic covers throughout the film, I felt like director Destin Daniel Cretton was trying to outdo every previous, awesome shot of Spider-Man swinging through New York. He gives them a run for their money. I appreciated the ambition in any case.
Sometimes a bull shark turns up when you least expect it. 2026's The Devil's Mouth finds a group of college kids stuck in a partially submerged cave system in Thailand with the insatiable shark. The result is a decent survival horror film, particularly effective for its character development.
This is the second new movie this year I've seen starring Lana Condor. It wasn't on purpose, though I liked her a lot in both movies. The other one I saw was Pretty Lethal, the action movie about ballerinas stuck in a hotel. In both movies, she plays a spoiled brat, but I found myself rooting for her in Pretty Lethal. Her position in Devil's Mouth is a little more complicated.
The story primarily revolves around the relationship between her character, Max, and her best friend, Sara (Kathryn Newton). Before the main plot begins, there's a short vignette in which Sara gets left behind, swimming out at sea, by the group, partying in a yacht. Jellyfish gather around Sara and they start stinging her. Luckily, the group circles back and rescues her.
Max had been the only person who knew Sara was in the water but Max had forgotten while getting drunk. Unfortunately, Max is kind of a narcissist and is unable to confront the fact that she made a mistake. The tension is buoyed further by the fact that Max had convinced Sara to move from New York to L.A. with her just before the incident. So Max rapidly accrues a lot of thematic debt early in the movie, the kind of thing that's normally punished severely by the gods of horror movies. Sara, meanwhile, is clearly the film's moral centre and has "Final Girl" written all over her.
Most of the movie is set in the caves and the characters spend almost the entire time swimming, trying to find a way to escape the shark trapped in there with them. Throughout the film, the relationship between Max and Sara is spurred into sudden evolution by the crisis. Minute by minute, the viewer is invited to consider whether or not they want Max to live. She is obnoxious but oddly vulnerable in her unwavering pursuit of a positive self-image.
The movie reminded me a little of Neil Marshall's The Descent, which is a better movie, but The Devil's Mouth isn't bad.
Apparently I've seen Lana Condor play Jubilee in X-Men: Apocolypse, her first role. She's certainly gotten much bustier. It seems she's garnered controversy for not wearing bras or other supportive garments on red carpets.
Why can't women dress in movies the way they do on red carpets?
I have now seen three new movies this year about people trapped in hotels. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose. But I've said how much I like such stories. Is the film industry pandering to me personally or is setting a whole movie on sound stages just cheaper? Probably the latter, huh? The latest I've watched is Do Not Enter. A group of young urban explorers infiltrate an abandoned resort hotel. The screenplay is intensely stupid, the performances are weak, the production design looks cheap. But I couldn't stop watching.
The cast is very pretty, particularly Adeline Rudolph as Diane. Her boyfriend, Rick, is played by Jake Manley and the other female member of the group is Cora, played by Francesca Reale. She explains at one point that her job in the group is keys--somehow she's able to find ways to open doors. I liked how the movie continued to come back to that. Any time there was a need for a door to be opened, everyone looked at Cora.
Trouble comes from two fronts in their exploration of the abandoned Paragon Hotel: there's a rival group of urban explorers who are more ruthless and there is some kind of skinny white demon. He's creepy looking enough. The actor, Javier Botet, was born with physical abnormalities he puts to use making the monster off-putting.
The rival group is there for the cash, millions of dollars of which is hidden somewhere in the hotel. It turns out to be just piled up in the office. So whatever company owned this hotel just couldn't be bothered to take the piles of cash and this urban explorer group is the first to find it. On top of this, the desire to pick up cash evidently abandoned is portrayed as immoral. But that's still not the dumbest thing in the script.
At one point, the leader of the ruthless rival group just tosses Rick off a balcony and we can see he falls at least seven storeys down a hole that somehow exists on every floor through the centre of the hotel. Cora points out that Rick had their only map, so the two groups head down to find Rick. They call his name. They expect him to be alive. And he is. No, there's no explanation. He just fell seven storeys and everyone acts like it was almost nothing.
Actually there's a worse moment when a guy named Frank (Laurence O'Fuarain), a reporter accompanying the group, falls down a service shaft. It's so clear there's nowhere for him to land but the film cuts to him lying on some nondescript grey surface, somewhere, of course uninjured. It cuts away and we're left to imagine for ourselves where he was and how he survived. Yet again, I felt like the screenwriters were drawing on their experience playing video games. The characters in the movie seem to act on the assumption that they have health bars and power ups.
But I kept watching this. Meanwhile, I'm having trouble finishing the new Masters of the Universe movie. Maybe it's because, as bad as it is, it still feels like a genuine attempt by a young filmmaker to entertain while Masters of the Universe feels completely committee produced.
Do Not Enter is available on Amazon Prime.
Sonnet 2003
With random points assigned, the book was taught
No lesson learned reversed the pigment brain
So sandwich meat and rye was dearly bought
Entire lunches clogged the evening train
Collect in here, the cards we use for weight
We'll never see the night without a dog
So many patrons paid to set the bait
And made a tiled path across the bog
Revenging ghosts were hid beneath a hat
The big sombrero boiled up with sauce
It chanced a bandit brought a smiling cat
The natives talked and made the mouser boss
So solve your problems fast with ample brims
A spider has a lot of useful limbs
I already posted most of the cosplay photos I took this year to my Instagram but, for those of you who don't follow my Instagram, I'll post them here.
These two reminded me of my students in Japan.
I tried to find interesting costumes I wouldn't see posted on other sites.
You see, there's no reason for Indiana Jones fans and Lara Croft fans to be at odds.
I saw some nice costumes. I didn't see astondingly ambitious costumes with multiple puppet limbs like I used to. I saw no centaurs, no angels or demons with massive, operable wings. I didn't see the Cinema Makeup School.
This was the skimpiest costume I saw and I could tell she was someone who remembered how Comic Con used to be. I'd noted for years the decline in girls wearing sexy costumes. There were still some but no army of Slave Leias or Dawn or Morrigan Aenslads. At one point a girl walked in front of me in the Exhibit hall in what I thought was a sexy cowgirl costume. I said, "Good costume but I don't know the character."
"Then it isn't a good costume," she said, smugly. Both her and her friend had looks on their faces like they thought I was up to something.
Still, I couldn't help asking, "What character is it?" She told me she was a character named Appleblossom, apparently from My Little Pony. She was not dressed as a pony.
I saw a few Wonder Woman cosplayers. One of them was walking through Artist's Alley, sternly announcing, "No touching."
But now there seems to be just a general lack of enthusiasm for cosplay compared to former years and compared to ComiKet. It occurred to me that all of the fandoms that previously dominated Comic Con aren't all that popular anymore--Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who are no longer the phenomena they once were. Twilight and Game of Thrones aren't what they once were, though I saw some House of the Dragon costumes. Add to this post-Covid Trauma and the systematic desexualisation of American nerd culture and I suppose it's no surprise things seemed generally subdued.
And, of course, many of the biggest names of Comic Con in years past, like Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon, have been cancelled. Kevin Smith was still doing his Evening with Kevin Smith in Hall H. But it seemed like there were no more big names associated with going to Comic Con almost every year. I did see a guy in Artist's Alley selling his drawings of Death from Gaiman's comics. We both talked about how we liked the character but he avoided saying her name.
There was big celebrity stuff, like Johnny Depp, emerging from cancellation to play Ebeneezer Scrooge. I did not witness it but I think it could be an interesting movie. It's directed by Ti West who made those X/Pearl movies with Mia Goth. Given popular attitudes regarding the surging number of homeless people, this might be just the time for A Christmas Carol.
Okay, I'm going to pause Comic Con Reports for to-day because I gotta talk about The Odyssey discourse. There's been such a fascinating turn of events on it--Emily Wilson, the woman whose translation of The Odyssey supposedly served as Christopher Nolan's inspiration, wrote a scathing review for the movie. And it's an insightful review. There are some achingly obvious flaws in the film no-one else seems to point out, such as the clunky, expository dialogue. Like Telemachus awkwardly dropping into conversation an explanation of the suitors' presence and how long they've been there. Or Penelope asking Odysseus why they ritually sacrifice things. That would be sort of like Hillary Clinton asking Bill Clinton why we hold elections.
Wilson calls out the lack of sexuality, she calls out Odysseus' lack of wit, she calls out Nolan's imposition of Christian morality on the ancient world. It's all the sorest thumbs that somehow most critics didn't see sticking out.
But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat. Attempts at vigorous speech – ‘My dad’s coming home’ or ‘Let’s get off this fucking beach’ – sit uncomfortably next to grandiose meditations: ‘Yes, my queen. The breaking of Zeus’ law, spreading like plague. Our age of bronze is collapsing, and maybe he couldn’t bear to see the ruins of what he’d done. Anywhere. Least of all, his home.’
Wilson's name had been used so much by advocates of the film it seemed to cause a minor meltdown among the zealots when she revealed her dislike of it. Joyce Carol Oates seems slightly embarrassed now that her tweets about Wilson's review were picked up by various outlets.
though Twitter is totally ephemeral, & all on Twitter know that what happens on Twitter matters only on Twitter & has not even a fleeting shadow in the real world, yet, to my astonishment, not one but two ultra-casual tweets of mine on the subject of Nolan's "The Odyssey" were pumped up into two (2) separate articles in The Guardian (!).
for one who'd written actual reviews for The Guardian years ago, & usually admires its essays, I have to say that I am somewhat shocked that The Guardian of all publications should be rummaging through the online Dumpster for something to reprint.
Yes, she apparently is describing her own X account as an "online Dumpster". Anyway, the main tweet from Oates that's been going around news sites is this one:
yes, her tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note. rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan's film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.
within the world of translators this seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective & not equivalent to the original text.
one would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.
"The crude language of MAGA folks"? Really? In her review, Wilson says,
The race-neutral casting of Nolan’s Odyssey was inevitably deplored in some quarters. But there is nothing progressive about it. Most of the non-white actors – Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott – play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist
If Oates were truly familiar with rightwing or MAGA discourse about the film, she would know that those quarters are complaining about the race-neutral casting because it has people of colour playing white characters.
There's nothing remotely MAGA about Wilson's review. Oates use of the term amounts to ad hominem. Oates' claim that Wilson is unable to tolerate other points of view is so at odds with the evidence that it makes Oates seem like she's the one unable to tolerate an alternate point of view. This seems even more so in a more recent tweet in which Oates has manipulated herself into calling the text Odysseus a weakly written character by to-day's standards:
whenever classics are involved feelings naturally run high. however, Nolan could not possibly have made a film in which Odysseus was a sort of action figure with no regret or remorse; a "primitive"man of action; everyone would have hated such a film for its superficiality.
in "The Odyssey" there are many, many lines in which Odysseus is deeply moved, even cries; he behaves in childlike impulsive ways at odds with "cunning" Odysseus. evidently ancient Greeks did not consider a man crying/weeping, admitting to "blanching terror" any sort of unmanly man.
yet, Odysseus is also pitiless with perceived enemies, who are usually just unfortunate individuals not of his tribe. he cares not in the slightest for women raped by his men or the "booty" they cart off like common thieves.
how to create a coherent character out of such a mixture? doubt that any filmmaker could manage it.
It's such intellectual dishonesty to criticise a fictional character for being clever in one scene and emotional in another. Contradictions can be a problem but they can also be the greatest asset in a screenplay, the very stuff of compelling complexity.
Ugh. What is it with this movie? I loved Oppenheimer, which I remember getting criticism for Florence Pugh's nudity and a lack of Japanese characters (it was plenty controversial in Japan), neither of which I had a problem with. Did Nolan dutifully go in the opposite direction on both counts--less sex and more diversity--and now zealots wish to reward him? I really don't understand the religious level support of this movie.
I do believe it's fair for artists to have different interpretations of source material. One of the reasons I love old movies is because they offer a window into perspectives on the past. People in the 1930s thought it was perfectly fine to have Robin Hood in clinging tights, they thought Maid Marion should wear a glittery frock. People saw movies like Robin Hood and many of them knew that the real Middle Ages didn't look like that. But not everyone. Many people grew up believing that Gone with the Wind was a perfectly fair and accurate view of the Civil War. Not everyone's a college lit major, taught to understand point of view. When films like The Odyssey and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tend to push the same revisions, it's worth considering how many people take this as a direct view of the past. At the very least, there's no reason to condemn Emily Wilson for not towing the line.
I got a lot of new comics this year at Comic Con so I'll just continue on from yesterday. No strictly adult titles to-day so hopefully the algorithms won't shield you from to-day's post.
The Bean is a charming new fantasy series by Travis Hanson. When I talked to him, he told me his primary influences were Bone and the Rankin Bass Hobbit. We chatted about how we both liked John Huston and Brother Theodore in the film. I didn't manage to ask if he called his comic The Bean after Orson Bean, who voiced Bilbo in that movie.
The Bean has great art, particularly in its backgrounds, which were reminiscent of the Rankin Bass movie or even Arthur Rackham with strong lines and twisty, beautiful woodland and hills. You can find it here.
Doctor Atlantis is a steampunk, sea-faring adventure comic by Ian Ally-Seals and Carl Mefferd. I got issue two from 2013. It's a fun book with the tone of a swashbuckler serial. The main character has taken control of a giant submersible in defiance of the British navy. There are sea monsters and sea battles. You can find it here.
Strike-Man is a short comic by two Spanish guys I met at one of the mixers I went to, Paco Santos, Jr. and Jose Martin. Strike-Man is a baseball player superhero who shoots baseballs out of his hands to fight zombies and a variety of other menaces. I read just a sample but it was of decent quality with an appealing sincerity about it. You can find it here.
I also read an anthology of short works by various creators from 2019 called Accidental Aliens, produced by a San Diego based art studio of the same name. The contents are all strange and horror fiction. My favourite was a short called Bones Bugs & Harmin Me by Drah Hard and Stormko. This one's a meta-work, along the lines of House of Leaves. It appears to be a battered old issue of a slasher comic that's been vandalised by a child, with notes scribbled in the gutters and moustaches and rude symbols drawn on the characters in some panels. As you might expect, there's a strange crossover between the two narrative layers. It's effectively creepy. You can find Accidental Aliens here.
This is an example of some work by Tim Vigil, whom I met at Comic Con. He became very friendly when I told him that I, too, make adult comics. He's been an established name for decades, his most famous work being Faust, which was adapted to film in 2001. I bought a book of his art and he kindly included a signed print in the purchase. I was impressed with how much personality he evoked from the poses and expressions of his demoniac bombshells.
So let's talk about some human artists. This year I felt compelled to focus on a lot of adult work. Of all the comics I bought this year, one of my favourites was a series called Wicked Town, written by Francis Stokes with art by Andrea Dailey, first published in 2025.
Wicked Town follows a young woman in the 1970s who's born with healing powers. She has a husband and kids and their new suburban neighbourbood has a strange and sinister secret. The series has a very folk horror feel to it, reminding me also of witch movies of the '60s and '70s, even of Rosemary's Baby. It's an interesting story and Dailey's art style is pretty, sexy, and sometimes creepy. You can find Wicked Town here.
I bought the first issue of a series called Dust Bunny, written by Jason Martin with art by Maurico Mora. The art pleasantly reminded me of early 2000s GAINAX, particularly Top wo Nerae 2. The first issue mainly establishes the premise, which has a beautiful woman in a bikini, a "Bounty Duster", who hunts a post apocalyptic desert for dehydrated dust zombies. The art's consistently good and sexy with exceptionally nice colours. You can find Dust Bunny here.
I bought two issues of a series called The Untamed, written by Sebastian A. Jones with art by Peter Bergting. Set in a hellish fantasy world, the series follows a mysterious stranger returned from the dead, seeking vengeance on a grand scale. He meets a young elf woman whose destiny may be to save the world. This series began in 2017 and has a blurb from Clive Barker on the back, so it's not exactly obscure. But I enjoyed it, despite the general lack of backgrounds in the artwork, which I feel is important to works about fantasy worlds. Still, the writing does a good job of establishing a sense of the world depicted. You can find The Untamed here.
This was from the most entertaining panel I saw at this year's Comic Con. It was called "Actors Turned Comic Book Writers"--In the picture, from left to right, is moderator Jordan Blum (co-creator of M.O.D.O.K. and Minor Threats), Hannah Rose May (Ghosts, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Curb Your Enthusiasm), Aimee Garcia (Dexter, Day of the Dead Girl), AJ Mendez (WWE, Day of the Dead Girl), and Patton Oswalt ( Ratatouille, TV's Son of TV's Frank, Young Adult, Sandman, Agents of SHIELD, and about ten billion other projects). Oswalt was of course the funniest one there but Hannah Rose May was surprisingly salty while also being charming. A very small child asked the panel what their favourite comic was and the group struggled to recommend titles that weren't adult but couldn't help mentioning The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, and Aimee Garcia even recommended a title called Killing Children. The moderator expressed his astonishment that Killing Children was recommended to a child.
Oswalt talked about his writing process a little bit after someone else in the audience invited him to compare comic book writing to the narratives he weaves in a stand-up routine. Oswalt made the point that comics, more than any other medium, allows the creator to direct the reader's attention. He discussed changing an entire script for Minor Threats, the series he writes with Jordan Blum, just so particular page would be on the other side of another, instead of beside it, in order to achieve an impact.
Before this panel, I saw two DC panels in the same room, the one immediately previous being a panel for DC's Absolute series, for which everyone in the audience received this very cool pins:
This Supergirl looks like Eva Marie Saint to me, about as far from the Millie Alcock version as you could get, I guess. I had no idea Green Arrow had a skull mask these days. The button is so cool it kind of makes me want to be a Green Arrow fan. That's how they get you.
The Absolute panel was very popular. Of the many people on the panel, creators Scott Snyder and Tim King seemed to be the most popular. Snyder seemed to speak more than the others but everyone talked about how much they enjoyed the creative freedom the Absolute series afforded them.
Looming like a dark cloud over this year's San Diego Comic Con was the mysterious and sinister threat of AI. Everywhere, I could sense the dread over how this behemoth is going to dismantle the industry as we know it, starting with the most vulnerable artists. This year I attended a couple mixers for creatives from various industries held in the nearby Marriott and I was surprised by the diversity of people I met, from fresh college graduates to Emmy winners. The impression I had was of everyone sensing a new instability in the already fragile ecosystem of the entertainment arts. So the last panel I attended for this year's Con was one called "A.I. and the Creative Industries: Where We Stand", which was held in a small room, Room 32AB. The room rapidly filled up, every seat was taken and people were standing in the aisles, a fact that seemed to surprise the moderator. When he asked for a show of hands how many of us were artists or professionals of some other variety in entertainment or arts, many hands shot up, and I sensed an extraordinary fervency in attention to what the panel had to say.
The panel (going from left to right in the above photo) was Ben Zhao, a University of Chicago professor who specialises in AI technology, Tim Friedlander, a voice actor who is also the president of the National Association of Voice Actors, and Deana Igelsrud, a Democrat who was representing the Concept Art Association. At one point, she came to tears as she talked about the situation, which she described as corporations wanting to "kill art." A QR code for a petition was presented on a power point--I signed it and if you would like to as well, you can find it here.
Primarily, the panel was discussing how AI has been using art to generate its own material without credit or remuneration being given to the sources. Professor Zhao has developed a tool called Glaze which alters visual art on a level imperceptible to the human eye but which sabotages imitative AI so that, if you put a Van Gogh painting through the AI that's been treated with Glaze, it comes out looking like digital puke. Meanwhile, Friedlander discussed how there essentially exists no protection for voice actors whose voices can now be easily replicated by AI. In some cases, actors have willingly signed away the rights to their voices, the most famous being the recently deceased James Earl Jones, who signed his voice over to Disney to use for depictions of Darth Vader in perpetuity.
While the performance given by the AI generative voice on the Obi-wan Kenobi series was notably weaker than Jones' in the films, it was still indistinguishable from a real human voice, so you can see the concern voice actors would have for the impact of the technology on their livelihoods, especially when young, struggling voice actors might be convinced to sign their voices away forever.
Igelsrud spoke about how prominent figures, like Martin Scorsese and George Lucas, have been speaking in favour of AI. I share the dread everyone feels about what AI is going to do, and what it's already doing, but I don't think Scorsese and Lucas are endorsing AI because they've been bribed. I think they recognise the inevitability. I think most artists, particularly those in the less publicly visible sections of production, are something like carriage drivers at the dawn of the automobile. I don't see how AI could ever replace human creativity, but I'd have never imagined AI could do what it's already doing. As big a threat as it is to the livelihoods of so many people, perhaps the bigger threat is to the basic value of the human mind itself.
There are two big problems with any attempt to stave off the encroachment of AI. Igelsrud mentioned one when she said that any time their efforts reached high level politicians, they were told that attempts to regulate AI in the US would set the country back in its competition with other countries, particularly China. The other problem is that people enjoy AI produced content, such as the above video of Darth Vader in Fortnite. It is funny. It works. As much as people might admire the glamour of a successful artist's life, most people have no true conception of what it is to be an artist, and simply can't imagine the harm AI presents. At the end of the day, human artists, at least of the calibre produced by a competitive system which has no rival to surpass humans, will become extinct.
Another view from atop the San Diego Central Library yesterday where I went to use the restroom. A one eyed security guard in the restroom told me not to enter one stall because his gun was in there. I shrugged and said okay.
I spent most of yesterday watching panels in room 6DE, which, I recalled at one point, was the same room in which I usually saw Ray Bradbury. This year I caught two DC panels, a panel for actors who became comic creators, and a spotlight on the one and only Frank Miller.
Miller was promoting his autobiography and talked about his early career. In the exhibit hall this year, I've spoken with artist Tim Vigil a few times and I told him about Frank Miller's panel. Vigil asked if Miller told the story about submitting his work to Neal Adams. "Yes, he did!" I said. I guess he often tells this story.
When he was just trying to break into the comics industry, Miller found Adams in the phone book, called him, and arranged a meeting. He showed Adams his portfolio and Adams proceeded to give Miller some harsh advice. I remarked to Vigil that it's probably good for everyone to get some tough advice now and then but Vigil pointed out that Adams and Miller had two very different aesthetic sensibilities. Adams' work tends more towards realism and fidelity to human anatomy while Miller's work is closer to the kind that emphasises action, a bit closer to Jack Kirby.
Miller spoke a bit about Jack Kirby and a lot about Steve Ditko about whom he's co-hosting a panel to-day. I can't believe this Comic Con is almost over.
Sonnet 2002
Participants in dolly games increase
Across the mirror, pretty fetches come
Dishonest paradigms will soon decease
Recall the dame who drew Invader Lum
Across the court she runs to hug a man
No lightning strikes the trusty bounden guard
Beneath the smiling god is mirrored Pan
In sleeping gowns, some girls invade a yard
Invigoured grass is pierced by metal hoops
Croquet commenced again for Alice heads
What are these pretty dancing ribbon loops?
And tell me whither art some sturdy beds?
As Salome deliberates with knives
I go and buy a dozen extra lives
I had the honour of speaking with Jaime Hernandez yesterday after watching a panel featuring him and his brother, Gilbert, the two of them being responsible for the legendary Love and Rockets indie comics. Also on the panel was Peter Bagge, creator of Hate, which I've not read. The host of the panel was the man who published the works of Bagge and the Hernandez brothers.
The group reminisced about underground comics of the '70s and agreed that the scene essentially died out before the end of the '70s and lived on only in the works of a few creators who managed to find something close to mainstream success, like R. Crumb. They discussed the impact of Frank Miller and Alan Moore comics in the '80s, creating a bridge between mainstream comics and indie comic style writing.
They discussed their working habits. Gilbert likes to listen to podcasts sometimes while drawing but Jaime has ceased to listen to anything while working because he has taken to writing as he draws. I imagine after so much time, it all must be second nature to him. Someone in the audience asked the panel what new comic artists they liked and none of them knew of any. Jaime confessed that he had lost all curiosity and, when he felt competitive, it was only with himself and his brother. He described being shown the work of some new artists occasionally who were described to him as hot and exciting but stated that he was unimpressed by anything.
This did not surprise me. If you look at how comics of the '80s influenced comics of to-day, the kind of work the Hernandez brothers were producing have been far less influential than the work of artists like Jim Lee, but even then, none of the young artists I've been looking at attempt to approach anything like Lee's attention to detail. Certainly there's little effort to achieve the combination of expressiveness, detail, colloquial culture, and adult styling that the Hernandez brothers mastered. Their style is an evolutionary offshoot that has sadly died out.
I didn't have much to say to Jaime when I spoke to him after the panel. I was kind of exhausted, so I just told him I admired his work and still reread it frequently.
I was surprised to see this Ralph Bakshi style Frodo Baggins at the Lord of the Rings fan club booth in the exhibit hall yesterday. The Prancing Pony mock up was pretty impressive.
By the way, I'm posting a lot of photos on my Instagram. I'll be making some more detailed blog entries after the Con's concluded.
Yesterday I saw the panel for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. It was hosted by Keke Palmer and, along with the museum curator, Matthew Senreich, Seth Green, and Jim Lee were there to talk about the museum's extraordinary collection of both fine and pop art, the museum honouring both equally. Though I guess I ought to have seen the panel last year, when George Lucas and Guillermo Del Toro were in attendance. Here's a trailer for the museum's film programme I saw yesterday:
I mostly roamed the exhibit hall yesterday. Here are some Avengers costumes:
They fit the usual Disney Marvel mandate of sexy men with dowdy women.
It's hard to imagine paying so much to advertise something so unpopular. But it's always been that way at San Diego Comic Con. Generally the big ads taking up the whole sides of hotels were of series I'd never heard of before and never heard of again. At least I'd heard of Strange New Worlds.
This is my first Comic Con in six years, the first since coming back from Japan. Wednesday was preview night, I have the four full days to look forward to. So far it's a sad state of affairs. Downtown San Diego is filled with people forced to sleep on the streets and empty, abandoned buildings which people are barred from entering. I'm sure there's some kind of twisted economic rationale for all this suffering and ugliness. I walked past the remains of Horton Plaza Mall, which used to be one of the best parts of Comic Con, at least to me. Last I heard it was being gutted to become office space. Looks like they only managed to gut it and then called it a day.
The old San Diego Central Library building still remains empty after six years. The new building, further to the south and closer to the convention centre, had the first panel I went to for this year's Comic Con, one on using comics in education. Here's a view from the venue, which was on the top floor, whence I could see the Coronado Bridge:
The panel was hosted by a high school English teacher from L.A. and a university media professor from Oregon. They showed a power point on defining the superhero and talked about inviting students to create superheroes who specialised in combating problems in the community. Everyone was tasked with creating their own superheroes. I made a spy superheroine who could stop time and who combated secret organisations bent on manipulating humanity. One elderly woman near the front of the room triumphantly told the hosts how ChatGPT had made a superhero for her. A shy young man told them how Google AI had made a superhero for him. Both seemed pleased to have gotten something over on the system. I guess neither of them appreciated what the hosts said about the activity being an opportunity for self-expression. I suppose they did, though, express their opinion that they'd rather not do any work.
A pure-hearted but feisty young woman is forced to work in cabaret in 1950's Aventurera. This delicious, spicy melodrama stars Ninon Sevilla as poor Elena, who descends into the life of elaborately themed musical numbers in Juarez. Will she survive the shame when she even starts to like it?
Elena is the daughter of wealthy, classy parents and she's on the cusp of womanhood. Then she discovers her mother's having an affair and her father commits suicide. One thing leads to another and, after a cheap hoodlum called Lucio gets her drunk, she winds up in the clutches of a manipulative brothel/cabaret madam called Rosaura.
All this is to provide context to the audience who could then enjoy watching her gyrate barelegged in glittery costumes knowing all the while that her heart is untainted by the sin of performing arts.
Sevilla is an absolute delight to behold. She's beautiful and a talented dancer but it's her constant mugging that makes her a real delight. In scene after scene, she faces the camera while people talk about her in the background and a range of emotions play out on her face at a thousand decibels. I hope she never played high stakes poker.
Aventurera is available on The Criterion Channel as part of a spotlight on Ninon Sevilla this month.
Imagine being so impressed by your sexual fantasies you thought they surpassed a classic of English literature. Then you put it to film and it turned out most people thought your fantasy was tame, boring, racist, and inferior to that classic of English literature. Such is the situation director Emerald Fennell finds herself in after the failure of her adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It wasn't easy to finish watching this movie, its overwhelming blandness is excruciating in its own right, before coming to the fact that it assumes the name of a novel I love.
There's not even really any nudity. Which is odd because there was plenty of it in Fennell's previous film, Saltburn, and star Margot Robbie has hardly been shy about doing nude scenes in the past. Are we really supposed to be turned on just by all the corset tightening and kissing? I guess Fennell is.
And, yes, we're supposed to be turned on. That was Fennell's whole reason for deviating from the beloved source material: to indulge in an unabashed sexual fantasy. So much of the novel is jettisoned to make Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi, an unambiguous victim. Which is funny because that's exactly what happened to his character in Del Toro's Frankenstein. I guess no-one wants to think badly of Jacob Elordi under any circumstances. There's none of Heathcliff's cruelty, his savagery. He plainly tells Isabella that he doesn't love her multiple times so the cruel deception in the novel becomes an S&M relationship she enters knowingly--the culmination of this is her crawling around and barking like a dog, perhaps a reference to the animal Heathcliff decides to kill in the book. The Jacob Elordi version would never do such a thing, of course.
Can there truly be colour blind casting? It all kind of reminds me of Stephen Colbert, when he used to pretend to be a right wing ideologue all the time, saying, "I don't see colour." This was a send up of the idea that race in our society can just be completely ignored. It's funny how ownership of this stance tends to get batted back and forth between the left and right. The right is upset by Lupita Nyong'o, in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, playing a character who was white in the source material and the left is upset by Jacob Elordi playing Heathcliff, a person of colour in the source material. Meanwhile, I'm stuck beyond the pale in my position that characters are better off being cast with actors who resemble their counterparts in the source material. I love art more than politics. As such, I can get behind some race swapping. Orson Welles did a production of Macbeth in the '30s with an entirely black cast. That was a great opportunity for black actors who may never have had the chance to do something so high profile otherwise. But it's not the 1930s anymore.
Did Fennell intend to make all the people of colour villains or did it just work out that way on accident? She goes with an interpretation of Nelly Dean as an unreliable narrator, which is a popular reading of the source material that isn't really supported by the text, and she makes Edgar Linton an oppressive patriarch. These are the two characters Fennell decides to make non-white. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a coincidence. But it's one hell of a coincidence.
Most of the negative reviews grudgingly allow that the film has good production design. It is pretty although somehow Margot Robbie doesn't look very good. Her skin is really blotchy and she seems somehow stocky. I don't know what happened. I remember first seeing her in The Wolf of Wall Street and thinking a woman couldn't look more perfect. I felt compelled to watch The Suicide Squad afterward to confirm she could still look fantastic. One of the oddest choices in Fennell's Wuthering Heights is to put wallpaper in Robbie's bedroom that's supposed to resemble her skin, complete with moles and veins. But it doesn't look like her skin, it's clearly not the same colour when she stands next to it. It just looks like skin. It reminded me of stories of Nazis using the skins of Jews whom they murdered in concentration camps to make furniture and accessories. Maybe that's not the association Fennell was going for. I suppose she just couldn't see the colour.
