The Odyssey's Odyssey

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 8

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 7

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 6

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 5

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 4

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

Comic Con Report, volume 3

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 2

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.

Comic Con Report, volume 1

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.

The Reluctant Adventuress

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.

Wuthering Returns

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.

Wuthering Heights is available on HBOMax.

Doomsdays Ahead and Behind

New Avengers Doomsday trailer. When I looked at it just now, it hung on 666k likes for about half a minute. So I guess Satan's excited. I'm staying open minded.

I was saying to my brother-in-law yesterday that I'm not sure Robert Downey Jr. is actually playing Doom. I thought it more likely he'd be playing Tony Stark in a Doom mask for some reason. Now I'm wondering if he even does that because Doom noticeably avoids speaking in the trailer.

I suppose there are people who've seen leaked footage who can tell me for sure. I don't really want to know. I don't like spoilers. It wouldn't be fair of me to dislike people who like spoilers. Studios put so much effort into making you want to see something, it's only natural that a lot of people would want to see as much as they can as soon as they can. Before the internet, filmmakers could generally craft their work in peace and they and the audience would be on two lanes of the same endeavour. A filmmaker could just focus on the story and rely on audience anticipation to contribute to the effort of making the resulting film a gift for the community.

I was talking with a barista a week or two ago about it, and she was anticipating my point and said that seeing spoilers goes against the filmmaker's intention. It was one of those moments in conversation where I felt the person I was talking to was less interested in exchanging opinions than she was in making me feel heard. It only occurred to me later, though, so I didn't get to make the point that while, yes, I feel like filmmaker ought to be able to carry out their intentions, I was speaking more to the audience experience than to the filmmaking process. As I said before about short form videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, they're less satisfying than feature length films because sequence matters. A funny scene works differently if it comes after a scary scene, etc. People, and the algorithms that schlep for them, are not, by and large, filmmakers and lack the skills and instincts for storytelling. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line people seem to have gotten the idea that there's shame in this, that by not seeing what the magician is doing behind the curtain they're somehow being taken advantage of, the filmmaker is tricking them. Partially, I think this is a byproduct of so much focus being put on the personal lives and misdeeds of beloved filmmakers. People are afraid to let go, to give in to the fictional experience. Ironically, this coincides with an increased interest in non-fiction, which tends to be much closer to the hucksterism that people are afraid of.

But I'm thinking of sensory experience. People feel different if it's a rainy day or a sunny day. Intention has nothing to do with it. Maybe there is a God who decided on the weather but whether or not the two conditions make you feel different has little to do with whether or not someone intended them. And, like the weather, sequence has an emotional impact. When you look at spoilers, you rob yourself of the chance of experiencing the story's proper sequence. Since most people aren't filmmakers or artists, they may have the desire to experience a story but they don't know how to put one together. Spoilers may be a crime against the filmmaker, but they're more of a crime against the audience that indulges in them.

But as my little nephew said at one point yesterday, "That's a lot of talking." The beauty of the way things used to be is that no-one would've had to have explained this, I wouldn't be deploying an explanation that would most likely not be heard or appreciated. Most people couldn't access spoilers so they were forced to trust the story by default. But audiences have been robbed of this: worse, they've been manipulated into robbing themselves.

In the Craw of Crawford

A large household in the American south, the people in it, and their friends, are all at the mercy of Joan Crawford in 1955's Queen Bee. As splashy melodramas go, this one's kind of mild but I couldn't stop watching.

Our point of view character at the beginning of the film is Jennifer (Lucy Marlow), who joins the household to care for the children and can't understand why everyone lives in fear of her cousin, Eva (Crawford), the household matriarch. Basically it turns out that Eva reserves the right to any dalliance she pleases and will manipulate to suicide anyone who defies her. The screenplay's not the best in the world but it's quite easy to believe Joan Crawford capable of occupying such a position.

No-one really has much of a southern accent for some reason. There are a lot of servants, all of them black, the obvious implication is directly called out once when Eva's husband starts telling the story of how the old family once had lots and lots of slaves. For this bit of dialogue, and this bit of dialogue only, one of the black servants is seen peeking through a doorway, grinning, apparently to absolve the family history, or something. It's extremely awkward though a surprising gesture from an American movie in the mid-'50s.

At one point, Eva hires a cruel governess to care for the children. This is supposed to help support the impression of Eva as a tyrant but I was just marvelling at the number of people caring for these kids. Eva is a housewife. There's the endless supply of black servants, one of whom has the specific job of caring for the children, and Jennifer came to the house to help care for them as well.

Barry Sullivan plays Eva's smouldering, quietly suffering husband who drinks all the time and makes bitter comments in even tones. Fay Wray appears very briefly, still looking vivacious twenty-one years after King Kong. So that's what happened to her, Frank-N-Furter.

Queen Bee is available on The Criterion Channel in their new Murderous Melodramas playlist.

Sonnet 2001

The orb arises over building score
Triumphant notes announce the quiet waste
The dark and hairy wights peruse before
The black enigma grants a scary taste
And now the war begins with vicious bone
That changes fast to spin in outer space
A business man with smart and even tone
Conceals a plan behind a smiling face
To Jupiter, the men and HAL embark
The smartest gadget known to guileless man
Electric wounded pride distorts a spark
So death awaits the ones who take the van
Beyond conception, lights and shapes approach
The deeper darkness lives beyond reproach

Odd to See the Odyssey

Homer just keeps raking in the dough. Perhaps somewhere up above he's pleased by the box office take of 2026's The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the poet's great, influential epic. He would, though, perhaps find the film's underlying morality somewhat odd and perhaps be bored by Nolan's method of deploying exposition in the first act. But it's hard to imagine anyone not getting caught up in Nolan's dynamic narrative flow and his instinct for finding the appropriate focus amidst a complicated plot with numerous characters. While Nolan's film is no masterpiece, and has several glaring flaws, on balance it's a worthy way to spend three hours in a movie theatre, especially one with air conditioning.

I suppose Homer might also find the colour blind casting to be an odd choice. Right wing media has been vigorous in its derision of this creative decision, which is the second prominent movie this year, after Wuthering Heights, to cast ethnicities without regard to the source material. Personally, I'm not fond of the choice either, but I've been putting up with it for a very long time. It's extremely common in stage adaptations of classic plays and operas. I don't even like it when Shakespeare adaptations aren't set in the place and period Shakespeare intended. I consider these things, even if they seem purely aesthetic, as part of the fabric of the story. It's hard for Americans now to imagine an ancient world in which you could easily deduce someone's region of origin by their physical features but back then--and even now, in many countries--it was a fundamental part of every day life. But while I don't like it, I can still appreciate, for example, the production of Hamlet with David Tennant that appears to be set in the 1930s for no reason. Or a production of Die Walkure with a black Brunhilde, particularly if the woman happens to have a terrific voice. Productions with other positive qualities can win me over even if I persist in disliking their anachronistic aesthetic choices.

But Nolan isn't presenting a realistic adaptation of The Odyssey anyway, though some might mistake it as such because it is gritty and has a severely limited colour palette. There are plenty of deliberately articifial aspects to the film. One of its weakest points is its depiction of the sack of Troy. The famous wooden horse in this film is a finely sculpted, perfect representation of a horse, rather than something hastily assembled on a battlefield, and for some reason it's half buried in the sand. This presents a curious and ominous visual but the overwhelming response I had to it was, "Why? Why would it be like this?" Similarly, Odysseus and his men exiting the horse's belly and stealthily taking out all the guards seems like Nolan went out of his way to make it as implausible as possible. The men are aided by muted sound though the clanking of their armour and the falling bodies must have been comically noisy on set.

I was surprised by how underwhelming many of the action sequences were. But, then, I remember people complaining about the scenes in Batman Begins that were too dark and confusing. However, Nolan's aesthetic interest here is in extreme juxtaposition, showing abnormally large things in contrast to vulnerable little humans. He conjures some real eeriness, particularly with the Cyclops, for which he had a 60 foot puppet constructed. However, the conspicuous choice to keep the giant's nether regions shrouded in shadow was one of the many moments when modern morality was awkwardly foisted on the story. The Greeks certainly weren't shy about depicting genitalia.

But Nolan's Judeo-Christian preoccupations permeate the story in ways it did not in Homer's original. The poem presents us with a window into a world in which morality is intimately tied with physical dominance. Nature, as a manifestation of the Gods' wills, is capricious and brutal, and so human beings are capricious and brutal to one another. Nolan's version of Odysseus is a man consumed by guilt for his participation in warfare itself. He's consumed by guilt regarding his intrinsic moral worth in a way that only an audience that has inherited Judeo-Christian cultural tradition would understand. This, combined with Nolan's ineffective instincts for action sequences, makes the slaughter of the suitors sequence underwhelming.

Matt Damon is excellent casting as Odysseus, I can't imagine an actor to-day more suited to the role. He's effortlessly natural which makes him a great touchstone in a world of Nolan's cold, nigh monochromatic, sepulchral aesthetic. Samantha Morton is great as Circe and the scene in which she transforms the men into pigs is really creepy though this was one of the scenes where someone ought to have said to Nolan . . . it's time for a little cgi. His devotion to practical effects is charming but there are moments we needed to see, like Damon grabbing a crow by the throat, which Nolan felt himself obliged to put off-camera. Yes, practical effects can be wonderful and have the advantage of being more tactile and surprising than cgi. But Christopher Nolan is not Terry Gilliam or Jean Cocteau, he doesn't always have the kind of imagination to make practical effects appreciably bizarre or astonishingly convincing. There's no shame in using a tool at hand if you can't do better without it.

Tom Holland is very good as Telemachus. Charlize Theron, as much as I like her, is distracting as Calypso. She doesn't have time to give a performance so you just see Charlize Theron. An unknown actress may have accomplished more by being more of an enigma. There's nothing about Theron's Calypso that says she's a nymph. I'm not saying she had to be naked all the time, which was a conception of nymphs belonging more to 17th and 18th century painters, but something more interesting than her beige tunic would've been nice. But Mr. Nolan is doggedly devoted to drab and dour.

Robert Pattinson is an effective villain as the head of the rowdy suitors besetting Penelope and by the film's climax I was really invested in Odysseus getting back and wiping the floor with this smug bastard. This, the lead up to the showdown (not so much the showdown itself) is when the movie really finds its stride and Nolan's best instincts are brought to bear.

The Odyssey is now in theatres.

Incorrect Lunar Pigment

I'd been in the mood to watch Louis Malle's 1975 surrealist film Black Moon again for a while but just recently got around to it. It's funny, the Wikipedia entry describes it as an "experimental fantasy horror film". "Experimental" is the only adjective that really fits. It's not really fantasy because there's no underlying logic to the strange things happening and it's not really horror because, at least to me, there's nothing in it that seems like it's meant to be scary. "Surrealist" is one tidy word that seems to cover it.

I like it by it wouldn't be my first choice if I were recommending films of its kind. And as strange as it is, there are quite a few films like it. I mainly wanted to watch it because I'd watched Valerie and Her Week of Wonders too many times. It was also clearly influenced by Tarkovsky and Bunuel. And, of course, Lewis Carroll. It's a story of a pretty blonde girl having a series of bizarre encounters in a strange place.

The urge to make an adult Alice in Wonderland has seemed to haunt writers and filmmakers and video game designers for 60 years now. There are the literal derivations, like American McGee's Alice or Twisted Wonderland but the '60s and '70s produced a number of projects that have more of a general thematic influence. Black Moon's Alice is called Lily and she was played by Cathryn Harrison who, I only just realised, was only 16 when she made the movie. We meet Lily driving a car in some gloomy European countryside. She comes across male soldiers executing female soldiers and flees, eventually ending up at a strange manor. An old woman upstairs speaks to a large rat and laughs at Lily when Lily's panties inexplicably start falling down to her ankles. There is, as usual, much more of a sexual tone to this story than there is in Alice in Wonderland.

Instead of a white rabbit, Lily pursues a kind of unicorn. This unicorn in a fat pony with an excessively long horn.

The film seems to be saying something about nature versus civilisation, a point which is clearest in a scene like the one in which a gang of naked children, who'd been seen chasing a pig earlier, are transfixed when Lily plays Wagner on the piano.

I see on YouTube now a number of clips from the movie have been posted as ASMR. It's funny how an old movie can change for new cultural contexts. I guess it is kind of a relaxing sensory experience at times. There's very little dialogue. In this scene, Andy Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro communicates with Lily by touching her shoulders.

Black Moon is available on The Criterion Channel.

Alien Appeal

A heterosexual young woman and her male, gay roommate are both ensnared by the sexual magnetism of an alien guru in 2026's Touch Me. I respect the hell out of this film's conceptual boldness. I'm not sure why it doesn't quite come to life. Maybe it could've used a script polish by someone with more of an ear for dialogue. But there are still reasons to watch this movie.

Top of the list, as far as I'm concerned, is Olivia Taylor Dudley, who plays the young woman, Joey. Though she's somehow 40 now. How can she be 40? She was my favourite one on The Magicians, which I still think of as one of those shows for the young people, but it did premiere 11 years ago. She still looks fantastic. Maybe that's why she did nude scenes for this movie. I remember when I saw The Magicians' cast at Comic-Con, on a panel, one nervous young man asked her a question and the host said, "Aw, she's on your phone's wallpaper, isn't she?" The young man blushed and admitted she was. I wonder if he was excited to see Touch Me. I know I was, once I realised she was in it, which I didn't until I started watching. The movie begins with her giving a monologue in a continuous shot that lasts a few minutes, telling her therapist about her bad relationship with an alien. And she's really good.

She and her roommate, Craig (Jordan Gavaris), are starting to get on each other's nerves due to some financial tensions. Then Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci) invites them both to his lavish, post-modern home and proceeds to seduce them both. In the sex scenes, Brian becomes a giant tentacle monster.

A lot of the movie consists of confessional scenes in which one of the three characters opens up to the others about feeling betrayed or wanting to betray the others or wanting to make love to the others. Some of it gets a little tedious but maybe it's just because this kind of thing is just not personally to my taste.

I wish the special effects had been just a little better. Some characters get their hands bitten off but the actors clearly still have their hands afterwards, they're clearly just making fists with a little putty spread over them. I know the movie's low budget. Maybe they should've lost body parts that could've been more easily concealed by clothing or camera angles.

I love that films like this can get made now, in which filmmakers can explore an unusual vision. This one was written and directed by Addison Heimann.

Touch Me is available on Shudder.

Peace Made

I finished watching the second season of Peacemaker a couple of days ago and it was terrific. Viewers can expect lots of violence and heavy metal music and good comedy. Only three episodes were directed by the now very busy Mr. James Gunn but he wrote all of them and I assume he chose all of the songs. I like to think of myself as someone who knows a little about music but I'd never heard of a single one of the many metal bands Gunn has used in seasons one and two. But they all rock. Maybe the context has a lot to do with it. I wasn't as thrilled with the new choice of theme song by a band named Foxy Shazam at first--the first season's song by Wigwam was a decadent delight, somehow raunchy and charmingly corny at the same time. But the Foxy Shazam song grew on me fast and I could see how it fit the more emotionally progressive tone of season two.

A lot of the comedy isn't so much about punchline but about concept. Michael Rooker plays the greatest eagle hunter in the world in this season. See, just let that sink in. John Economos' (Steve Agee) incredulous reaction to the very existence of such a man is made even funnier by a new character played by Tim Meadows whose obliviousness to his own lack of decency is so complete that he sees nothing wrong with nicknaming the only female member of his task force "Tits."

The plot of the season focuses on Peacemaker (John Cena) entering an alternate universe where his father and brother are still alive. He does so via a portal that had been in his father's house all his life but he'd been using only to exercise his pet eagle on cold mornings. He finds life so much better in the alternate universe that he wants to switch to living there permanently. However, there's a twist revealed later in the season that seems to have been borrowed from a Ncuti Gatwa era Doctor Who episode. I thought it worked fine but I thought it worked fine on the Doctor Who episode, too, though no-one else seems to be bringing up the episode fondly--I'm not saying which one it was because I don't want to spoil the season of Peacemaker for you.

Anyway, the series was a blast and I hope there's some future for the characters and for James Gunn with the DC movie universe.

Peacemaker is available on HBOMax.