The Hot World

My world tour continues and this morning I'm in Newport, Tennessee. It's going to be unseasonably hot here, around 30 Celsius, in the 80s Fahrenheit. It was also unseasonably hot in southern California and in Japan.

I've been in six different airports over the course of two weeks so I figured I may as well rank them.

6. San Diego International Airport, California, U.S.A.

This one ought to get points for nostalgic value but when I decided to walk from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 I found I had to go through a labrynthian detour due to construction. There was also no currency exchange onsite.

5. McGhee Tyson Airport, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.A.

I saw this one only briefly but all the shops were closed already when I came in at around 9:20pm. Why?

4. Los Angeles International Airport, California, U.S.A.

It got the job done but was surprisingly lacking in local colour.

3. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Michigan, U.S.A.

I had to quickly make a connecting flight but I had to cross the whole big airport to do so which meant I went through its big glowing sci-fi underground tunnel which runs beneath the planes to connect the A concourse with B and C. That was cool.

2. Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan

Quick and easy baggage check, lots of great food, and a konbini where I could buy ziplock bags for my chargers. Very handy.

1. Icheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea

From the whimsical, musical buggies to the pretty stewardesses to the infinite number of liquor shops, there's absolutely nothing to complain about regarding this one.

The Money Eaters

A young stockbroker pursues an alliegience with a notoriously ruthless colleague in 1987's Wall Street. Director and co-writer Oliver Stone dives into the world of stock trading to tell a surprisingly simplistic moral tale. Other than a couple clever one liners, this movie's mainly entertaining for its '80s cheese value.

Charlie Sheen plays Budd Fox, a lowlife stockbroker working in a vast, noisy office of cold callers, and his father, Carl, is played by Charlie Sheen's real life father, Martin Sheen. While Budd aspires to be the deadliest shark in the tank, his father is a salt-of-the-earth union leader who don't truck with his boy's uptown dreams. The two Sheens together ham it up and make you say, "Hey, that's Martin Sheen with Charlie Sheen."

But Budd meets another father figure, a slimy bigshot named Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas, who has the film's two immortal lines; "Money never sleeps" and "Greed is good," which perhaps best sums up '80s right wing philosophy. It's that absolute faith in the idea that somehow everyone relentlessly gourging on all they can grab will all work out for the best, despite what you might think. However, things turn out exactly as you might think, if you have a halfway decent moral compass.

Now Oliver Stone's friends with Vladimir Putin. That tracks. Wall Street could almost be Soviet propaganda.

Wall Street is available on The Criterion Channel.

Refreshed San Diego

I wandered a bit more around San Diego yesterday. I went down to Mission Valley Centre Mall because they have a currency exchange place and I had a stray 5000 yen in my wallet which turned out to be around 28 dollars in American money. The Mission Valley area is one of the posh areas of San Diego. Not the poshest, that would be La Jolla, but a lot posher than Chula Vista or El Cajon. There are two malls, Mission Valley Center and Fashion Valley, and they illustrated neatly the rising disparity between commoner malls and upper class malls. Fashion Valley was always the one for rich people but Mission Valley had the usual kind of anchor stores, Macy's and Robinsons May, even a Montgomery Ward way back in the day. Now all the department stores are boarded up, empty buildings, the food court's gutted, and the Ruby's Diner that used to occupy the centre has been razed. Meanwhile, anything that's closed in Fashion Valley has been replaced by something more expensive.

One thing that surprised me is all the closed Starbucks. I guess people got really tired of Starbucks. But the coffee company really did overdo it. I guess the days of Starbucks across the street from Starbucks are over. It seems like there's no shortage of Starbucks within other businesses, though.

Conversely, I was surprised and pleased that Barnes and Noble is still open and doing well. The generic editions of classic novels are really pretty and I was sorely tempted to buy the Chiltern Classics edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray but lugging my collection of books to the post office is too fresh in my memory.

Most editions feature a portrait of a young man. Not doing so seems wiser to me as no picture is going to measure up to Wilde's descriptions.

I found myself consciously forcing myself to break Japanese habits. I actually walked while drinking coffee. This is something I have seen some young people do in Japan but it is still very rare and frowned on by older generations. I also noticed I was unconsciously walking on the left side of the path as you're supposed to do in Osaka and areas west of Osaka.

I completely missed COVID in the US. I was a little surprised to see a couple women still wearing medical masks.

I noticed in the men's rooms the toilet stalls tend to be more often occupied than the ones in Japan. I think American men are defacating more. It may simply be that they're eating more.

I had a teriyaki chicken plate at Fashion Valley for 11 dollars. The food court stuff is still not terribly expensive though that would be very overpriced in Japan, especially since it wasn't very good. I missed some American food. I got a proper sandwich at Submarina a few days ago and it was fabulous. Still, nothing compares to Japanese food.

It's strange seeing so many people with tattoos, which are still considered gang symbols in Japan and even gangsters usually keep them covered. I'm not fond of tattoos and still can't imagine why I would want one but I love self expression and individuality. I guess, in a nutshell, that's what I missed most about the US. Self expression and individuality.

Everyone Deserves an Eternity in Court

Keanu Reeves takes a job at a Satanic law firm in 1997's The Devil's Advocate. I saw this when it first came out but all I remembered about it was that it referenced John Milton and that people tend to make fun of Al Pacino's performance in it. Although I agree with most people that Pacino's performances after the early 1980s are inexplicably inferior to his earlier work, I don't find his performance terribly bad in The Devil's Advocate. The movie, with a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, is also much better written than I remembered.

Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a criminal defense attorney in Gainesville, Florida with a talent for winning unwinnable cases. When he manages to secure a not guilty verdict for a man who's clearly guilty of the child molestation he's charged with, Kevin is recruited to join a prestigious firm in New York. So Kevin moves to the city, into a vast, luxury apartment with his wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron).

A lot of the movie's second act is from Mary Ann's perspective as the wives of other lawyers at the firm slowly exert more and more psychological control over her. The head of the firm, John Milton (Pacino), gets in on the act when he coerces her into changing her hairstyle.

While Mary Ann's being driven mad, Kevin finds himself taking to his big city cases like a duck to water. Although the manipulations of Mary Ann are pretty blatant, I like how the story around Kevin is driven by his own compulsion to sin. When Mary Ann is ailing, Kevin refuses to step aside from the high profile case he's working on.

In addition to Pacino's Satan actually going by the name John Milton, my favourite 17th century poet is also directly quoted. Pacino's Satan also behaves like Milton's Satan to some extent. He's motivated not simply to corrupt people but to use their behaviour to demonstrate flaws in God's design.

The Devil's Advocate is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1987

Eternal slumber beats the sugar drum.
Effective beats were melted down for grain.
A melty crust was crushed in lively rum.
A brewer's life distilled itself in vain.
Distilling juice produced a troubled drop.
For trouble boils late the flagrant fool.
A flagrant flange adorns the saucy top.
A pizza sauce absorbed the slacker's drool.
A slacker finds his peace beneath the box.
To find a card, the seekers want a deck.
A special card connects the feet to socks.
Connexions wane beneath the wooly neck.
From peerless sheep the wool was quickly sheared.
By watchful sheep the dreams of all were cleared.

Stealing the Mainstream

Margaret Qualley co-directed this new Sabrina Carpenter music video. Once again, I'm compelled to notice how Qualley has surpassed her mother's career.

The plot of the music video of a group of gals ransacking a mansion is reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring. I like the song and I'd say it's more remarkable than the video which almost seems cliche at this point. American media really seems to be normalizing theft. I watched a Hank Green video a few months ago in which he got a kick out of the recent Louvre heist in which Napoleonic era French royal jewels were lost to the world.

Maybe bettering the lives of the burglars was a greater good than whatever historical perspective may have been gained by billions of people across generations viewing the jewellery in person. Considering the material the thieves were able to use in the heist, they weren't beggars so I think it's more likely the case of a few moderately rich people getting richer at the less tangible expense of the public. It's funny how the more communist perspective people take on these things also makes them more interested in material value than in spiritual or intellectual value. Not to mention the hazardous situation that might have arisen had the thieves' endeavor been recognised during their attempt. But, hey, I like good picaresque, too.

San Diego Moment

It's strange being back in San Diego. I've taken a few good walks around. It feels like a dream. It's strange what I notice feels different. I feel the subtle differences in smell and air pressure. I'm glad I won't have to live through another muggy central Japan summer. But I had some of the best experiences of my life in Japan. Up until two years ago, I would never have even imagined leaving Japan, I was so happy there. Then things changed. It's a long, pathetic story and I'm planning to write a book.

One thing I'll say is that when I left the US, I felt like the US was dying and coming to Japan felt like going somewhere experiencing a rebirth. Now I feel the opposite, I feel like Japan's in the throes of a slow death and the US is experiencing a rebirth. I know it might not seem that way from the news and probably it's my personal, subjective point of view.

I remember driving through Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. In San Diego and elsewhere, I remember sullen, angry young men in the streets, looking for a target for their resentment. In recent years, I've started to see and hear Japanese men doing the same thing. As in America, it coincides with rising xenophobia and homophobia and transphobia. I wonder if I can find a country where people can consistently abide by a "live and let live" mindset.

Anyway, I've been planning to write a book about my experiences in Japan. To quote Roy Batty, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

San Diego's lovely to see again in any case.

This Fisk

There was some exciting stuff in the new episode of Daredevil written by Chantelle M. Wells whose previous credits include Yellowjackets and Echo. I wonder how much of it will stick.

The big event was in the very end of the episode in which Wilson Fisk's wife, Vanessa, was seemingly killed by Bullseye. I have a bad feeling it's going to turn out she miraculously survived. But the nice thing about the episode is that many people had easily discernable motives. You can see why Bullseye would want revenge on her.

Though, now that I think about it, there are still a lot of characters with murky, inexplicable motives. I liked seeing Lili Taylor again and it's interesting that she and Vanessa hit it off, I just wish I understood why. Maybe the fact that they were about to have an alliance for no apparent reason is a sign that Vanessa won't survive.

I liked seeing Karen interviewing people and for a moment I thought we were going to see her being a journalist again. But she's kind of a black hole in Born Again. Her motives were always clear in the old series. Here, I don't even know what her job is and apparently she's been retconned as a partner in the old law firm.

Matt investigating while disguised as an AVTF officer was interesting though it felt really Batman-ish.

I feel like if he put half as much effort into stopping Fisk as he puts into saving Fisk then Fisk would already be behind bars. Though he does have a point that making Fisk into a martyr isn't a good idea. One can draw parallels to real life once again and ask whether the killing of Charlie Kirk did the American Left any favours.

I kind of liked the one-upsmanship in the Matthew Lillard scene.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

In Pursuit of Time

I'm in the third of four airports I'm visiting to-day. I left from Tokyo's Narita Airport on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at Seoul's Icheon Airport Wednesday evening and then went back to Wednesday afternoon to arrive here, at LAX. My final stop will be San Diego to catch up with Wednesday evening again.

Even just being in the Korean airport, I started to notice all the Japanese mannerisms I'd gotten used to. I went to a beer stand to buy a bottle of water and the girl working there looked incredulously at me. I swiped my card wrong and she gave me the bottle for free without saying anything. There's something that would absolutely never happen in Japan.

Yes, a beer stand. Icheon airport has dozens of shops with signs that just say "Liquor and Tobacco". I guess they didn't have the wave of social engineering Japan had to wipe out cigarette smoking.

Koreans are so pale. The airport buggies constantly play electronic music, like it's a Disney parade. Mostly The Nutcracker. I had to restrain myself from laughing the third time a pretty, straight backed young woman with very serious bright red lips drove by with the carnival music. I pictured to myself what it would be like if she was really having a ball, laughing and waving and bobbing along with the music.

Final Ramen

Okay, I took a couple pictures. For my last full day in Japan, I went to Shibuya and wandered around. Looks like the future doesn't it?

It started to rain and I didn't have an umbrella. Since it was almost lunchtime, I went into a ramen shop, Ichiran Ramen. I'm sure glad I did. I got some tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen because it's my favourite standard variety of ramen, not knowing the place is famous for its tonkotsu. It was divine. I had a beer with it and the combination was exquisite beyond my capacity for words to convey. They should've sent a poet.

Now I have an 18 hour flight ahead of me. At least I have lots of books to read.

A Day in the Biggest City in the World

Good morning from Tokyo. This is the not especially inspiring photo from my hotel room in Chiba by Tokyo Bay. There is a bull in the lobby, though.

The real selling point for me is that the room was only fifty dollars a night. I might have gone even cheaper and stayed at a manga cafe but I have too much luggage. My room is small but it does what I need it to. If you're in Japan and you're looking for cheap accommodation that's bigger than a capsule or a voting booth, look for an APA Hotel.

I'm leaving to-morrow. Walking through Tokyo Station last night, I felt sorry that I can't stay in this city for at least a week. I noticed a trend of young women carrying around stuffed animals. First I saw a girl with a big lavender rabbit, then another girl with a big pink rabbit, and then a white girl with something I didn't get a good look at. Probably a rabbit. I wonder if it's for Easter. Probably not.

I don't really feel like taking pictures, actually. I often see tourists walking around taking footage. Why should I bother?

Sonnet 1987

As time deployed its friends, the train was slowed.
A secret time was kept in strangers' pockets.
Through dampened cities, crystal spirits glowed.
Their fingers stuck in Heaven's sweetest sockets.
The blazing sun usurps the rite of spring.
The normal coat was now a stifling sleeve.
A veil of sweat enticed the girl to sing.
The point of flesh, to find a place to cleave.
Where winter winds were trampled under hooves,
Untimely summer throttles cherry trees.
Suspicious deer observe from lofty rooves.
A line of sheep were eating morning cheese.
Condensing matter clogged the holy train.
A pleasure pulled the glass beyond its pane.

Reordered Who

I'm in the final stages of cleaning out of my apartment so I have no time this morning but here's a very odd ranking of Doctors Who I watched this morning while eating breakfast. I'd like to know who voted on this one. The hostess disassociates herself from it at several points. If she names the source, I may be too sleep deprived to have heard it. I'm really astonished how far 6 and 13 rank above 3 and 5. Is Peter Davison cancelled or did people think they were voting for Pete Davidson? While I don't agree number 1 should be number 1, I will say he's an unexpected but very worthy choice.

The Worth of Books

Going through the many old and new problems attendant on moving out of Japan, I discovered that Japan Post has a new policy that prohibits sending anything valued at over a hundred US dollars to the US. This is in retaliation to Trump's tariff policies but this is such a new rule that the post office web site doesn't mention it, even though one is required to make labels for all international shipping on the web site before going into the post office. Many employees of the post office are unaware of the rule, too, which means some parcels I'd already sent off end up being returned to me.

This is a problem for me because my last day in this apartment is to-morrow, Monday, and my flight leaves on Wednesday. This means I suddenly have to figure out what to do with a bunch of stuff I thought I'd already taken care of, most of it valuable stuff I didn't want to get rid of. Mostly I'm talking about books.

What books do I have that are so valuable? Well, the sad irony here is that this is a result of me personally setting a high value on books. When the label web site tells me it's mandatory for me to ascribe a monetary value to all objects contained in the parcel, I'm forced to put a price on items that could be valued very differently depending on the buyer and seller. If you collect old books, like I do, then a hardback copy of Bleak House printed in the 1940s is surely worth at least forty dollars. To people who believe books are antiquated objects now made obsolete by digital media, my copy of Bleak House is worth less than an equivalent quantity of blank paper. So I could have been justified in filling in all the price fields with one or two yen. Fool that I am, I wrote what I thought the books were actually worth.

All this to get revenge on Trump. It goes to show, revenge is never quite as simple as you'd like it to be.

And, oh yeah, Happy Easter.

The Irrepressibly Strange Home Front

This past week, I've been spending most of my days carrying things to the post office or to second hand shops, preparing to move out on Monday. To wind down in the evening, I watched 1944's A Canterbury Tale again, Powell and Pressburger's strange tale of three travellers in a small town on the road to Canterbury.

It's a strange sort of propaganda film. I mean, as with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I think Powell and Pressburger set out to make a propaganda film but they were both too interested in complicated ideas to do a proper job of it. What is the message a British soldier's meant to come away with? "Go out there and fight for the magistrates putting glue in girls' hair back home!" And then there's Erwin Hiller's haunting cinematography. You can't even see the main characters' faces in the first minutes of the film as everyone stumbles about in the dark around the train station.

The three travellers are Sgt Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), and Acting Sgt. Bob Johnson (Sgt. John Sweet). Peter's with the British army while Bob's an American and Alison's a "land girl". a part of the Women's Land Army that did work on the British home front during World War II. They meet in the small town of Chillingbourne and soon encounter the town's infamous "glue man" who pours glue on Alison's hair as he's done to several other girls. He runs off before they can apprehend him. It's not until the three take refuge in town hall that we get a good look at their faces. The film's loaded with a sense of mystery and danger but it's counterbalanced by the cheerful, affable conversation between the three people newly acquainted with each other. They meet the magistrate, Colpeper, whom Alison immediately suspects is the secret identity of the glue man.

The mystery provides a baseline of tension throughout a film that consists of Bob talking to local woodworkers about wood and Alison trying to find work around town. These scenes bring the little town to life, creating a vivid portrait of rural England. The weirdness of the mystery in the background is somehow a vital part of bringing the place to life. The mystery is not who the glue man is--it's pretty clear it's Colpeper--but rather how the gentleman who gives lectures on British history and waxes poetic on the dreamy landscape and historical significance, could possibly be the glue man. His explanation, when it comes, is hardly sufficient either and it seems likely that Colpeper himself doesn't quite know why he does what he does. The viewer will likely infer that it's a manifestation of his sexual repression and that does seem likely. He's a strange character and yet, then again, is he? How many such gentlemen led double lives, with a second life that they could hardly explain if they tried? Is Colpeper not as familiar, in a way, as the landscapes and Elizabethan inns? Certainly the original Canterbury Tales had its share of bizarre and perverted characters. How many times did people have to reconcile the respected and beloved figure of authority with his messy private life? Nowadays, a guy like Colpeper would've been cancelled but in Powell and Pressburger's vision the three protagonists still like Colpeper despite his inexplicably strange and disturbing deeds.

The first time I watched the film, I remember not liking John Sweet's performance as Bob but I've done a complete 180 on that. He's so Lynchian, especially when he's talking about wood.

It occurred to me the film is a bit like Dracula with Bob being the Quincey Morris character.

A Canterbury Tale is available on The Criterion Channel.

Final Buffy

When I first watched the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I thought it suffered too much from the suddenly very strong influence of the Lord of the Rings movies. Practically all fantasy media since the early 2000s has been in some way influenced by the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies so it's no surprise. But suddenly Buffy was at the head of an army, giving speeches while a new orc-like vampire variant was introduced that could swarm up from the Hell Mouth, which became a kind of subterranean Mordor.

I can see the logic of wanting to increase the scale of the drama for the final season but what it really amounts to is a show switching away from what it was good at to fit the mould of an entirely different genre and it falls apart. It may have looked like a good outline at the beginning of the season--Buffy loses the confidence of her army but gets a magic weapon, she returns at a crucial, dramatic moment, and there's a great battle. I've already talked about how Buffy's exile made little sense. I have to say the magic "scythe", which is really an axe, looks so unwieldy as to be distracting. It's very short but has a spiked butt meaning Buffy or Faith often has to grip the spike just wield it. Altogether, it looks like a junior version of an already ridiculous fantasy weapon.

Watching it alongside the final season of Angel really confirms my impression of Angel being the far superior show at that point. When Spike transfers from one series to the other, he becomes more interesting again. In the final season of Buffy, there's little more to him than being Buffy's adoring fan.

I'd totally forgotten Anya dies in the final episode of Buffy. It goes by so fast and the other characters don't seem to react much until Andrew, of all people, eulogises her. I think the first time I watched the episode I didn't even notice she died.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Double DD Day

For some reason, two new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again were released on Wednesday, episodes two and three, written by Dario Scardapane and Heather Bellson, respectively. I have to say, the Heather Bellson episode was much stronger but I'm not feeling good about the writing on this season overall.

Scardapane's episode ended with Karen punching out a guy in full body armour. I've complained about this with Disney Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Disney seems to think the only qualification someone needs to knock someone out with a single punch is to be a main character. One of the most egregious examples was at lease only in a comic, when Princess Leia knocked out a stormtrooper with a single punch. That's something no-one ever did in the original trilogy. I know we've seen Karen training with Matt but even Daredevil usually has to have a fight scene with the AVTF guys. Maybe the intention was to imply that Karen had an extended fight scene off-screen but that wouldn't make sense given that the guy ends up being someone who wants to work with them. At the beginning of the third episode, at least a metallic sound effect was added to imply Karen used some kind of metal object to knock the guy out. I think during editing someone realised One-Punch-Karen was a dumb idea. I thought this season wasn't going to be sloppy.

There was also a scene in the second episode in which Detective Kim shows up at the bar and it's not clear if she's a threat or not. Then there's some obvious ADR in which she hastily praises "the resistance" and being a rebel. Is this one of those things for people who are scrolling through their phones while the show is on? It really doesn't feel like a good idea to use the term "resistance" again.

Okay, there were things I liked, particularly in the third episode. Lili Taylor as the New York governor immediately has a strong presence and seems like a real threat to Fisk. Tony Dalton and Michael Gandolfini both gave exceptional supporting performances, particularly Dalton who's as effective in the extended action scene as he was in the courtroom or in prison.

The similarities between the AVTF and ICE were both stronger and weaker. The AVTF guys seem more driven by ideology while the ICE guys seem more like armed thugs. But as the AVTF seems to be targeting immigrants more and more it's harder to believe the resemblance is accidental.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Train's Various Occupants

Since I'm leaving Japan to return to America soon, and will be visiting Tennessee relatively soon, it seemed like a good time to watch Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train again, a film I'd not seen since high school. It's one of Jarmusch's best, probably my favourite of his films. It's an anthology film featuring three interconnected stories about foreigners visiting Memphis, Tennessee.

The first story features a Japanese couple. Having lived in Japan six years now, I was surprised at how authentic the characters seemed in terms of dialogue and performance in comparison to depictions of Japanese people from other American films. Then I read that the film was co-produced by a Japanese company and it made sense. The couple's reaction to a fast speaking American woman in this clip is not unlike reactions I've occasionally seen among students when they hear English.

That's Nagase Masatoshi as Jun and Kudoh Youki as Mitsuko. Since this movie was made decades before A.I. we can all be impressed by Nagase's skill at lighting a cigarette:

I wonder how many times he practiced that. He's so nonchalant.

Mitsuko might be classified nowadays as a "manic pixie dream girl" but I've met a lot of Japanese girls like her. They're just as fun to talk to as you might imagine but you shouldn't mistake enthusiasm for a lack of depth.

The second segment features an Italian woman (Nicoletta Brashci) stranded in Memphis and the third story features Steve Buscemi, Joe Strummer, and Rick Aviles as a trio of low-lives who rob a liquor store. Joe Strummer is the same Joe Strummer you may know as the lead singer of The Clash and I enjoyed his performance here. He's from England, of course, but Buscemi is also a kind of foreigner here, being from New Jersey. All the segments are good but the Japanese couple are by far the best. Their segment best captures the idea present in all three stories of cultural exchanges mysterious in their simultaneous intimacy and inscrutability.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins is in all three segments as the hotel night clerk and Tom Waits plays a DJ heard on the radio in each segment.

Mystery Train is available on The Criterion Channel.

Who's the Custodian of a Relationship?

Kim Novak's commented on an upcoming film about her relationship with Sammy Davis, Jr. Apparently she's unhappy with Sydney Sweeney playing her in the movie. Novak complains Sweeney "sticks out so much above the waist," and fears the movie will focus too much on the sexuality of the relationship.

"There’s no way it wouldn't be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time," Novak said. There's some irony here because, in her day, Novak was criticised for being all sex appeal with no real acting talent. Even Alfred Hitchcock described her as "terrible" in his interview with Francois Truffaut while Truffaut praised her "passive, animal" quality, which may have been another way of saying she was sexy.

I think Sweeney's a good actress, I enjoyed her performance in The Voyeurs a few days ago. She certainly does "stick out above he waist" more than Novak ever did but I can't honestly complain about that. I mean, she has extremely nice breasts. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the epitome of muscularity in film, Sydney Sweeney epitomises the bust. In addition to this, her face and mannerisms don't much resemble Novak. Better casting might have been a young Christina Ricci. Jeez, can I think of anyone who's in the right age group now? Jenna Ortega? I must have Wednesday on my mind. Well, both Wednesday actresses exhibit that "passive, animal quality" Truffaut talked about. Natalie Portman or Patricia Arquette would've been good.

Kim Novak is 93 years old and it's worth noting that works of film media have become much more preoccupied with overt sexuality than they were when Novak was a major player in Hollywood. She remembers the relationship between herself and Sammy Davis, Jr. as something valuable for having "so much in common." Sex was probably a very small component of the relationship for her. On the one hand, there's a difference in generational values at play, but on the other hand, Novak is quite justified in being offended that a personal relationship of hers is being mischaracterised and potentially dismissive of the thing she felt was truly valuable in it. Instead of just saying she's old fashioned, I think it's worth pondering whether or not our society has become one that prioritises sex too much and has lost the ability to value other aspects of a romantic relationship, aspects that, in the long run, are far more important.