There are Many Plants

Alyssa Milano takes the baton from Drew Barrymore to play the hazardous Lily in 1996's Poison Ivy II: Lily. It's direct to video, has a 14% Rotten Tomato rating, and is about what you'd expect.

Director Anne Goursaud commented the film was more popular with boys because of Milano's nude scenes but the plot feels much more like the kind of porn aimed at girls. It was written and directed by women, so it's not surprising. Lily, Milano's character, like Bella in Twilight or Osha/Mae on The Acolyte, doesn't have much of a personality but all the men in the story would die for her.

"Your beauty frightens me," says her art professor, Donald (Xander Berkeley), as he convinces her to pose nude for him. Lily finds a box of Ivy's old stuff in her dorm room, presumably the same Ivy from the first film. Lily poses in front of a mirror and quotes from Ivy's diary tidbits about seducing and manipulating men. Later, in a final scene exposition dump because none of this was established throughout the film, Lily explains that she wanted to be different and sexy because she was having trouble adjusting to the crazy students at her art school.

Primarily it's the professor versus a slacker bad boy student called Gredin (Johnathon Schaech--yes, that's how it's spelt) who are helplessly devoted to her beauty but there's also a quiet guy named Robert whom Lily kisses at a masquerade, her one actually slightly promiscuous act in the film and she immediately expresses shame. She also does things the script wants us to think are crazy like cutting her hair from waist length to shoulder length and wearing halters with no bra. Her nice girl roommate Tanya (Kathryne Dora Brown) is shocked when Lily wears black lipstick and flowers in her hair. In retaliation, Tanya says she won't introduce Lily to her girlfriend, who is introduced at that moment at the same time Tanya's lesbianism is established. The two girls kiss, leave the room, and leave the film, apparently the point being that lesbians can be the moral centre of a film when the protagonist is ever so slightly colouring outside the lines. Their mission accomplished, they depart from the story.

It occurs to me this film qualifies as "Dark Academia" with its college setting and gossipy plot involving sex and murder. It has a few moments of cheesy fun, many unintentionally hilarious moments. There's a really cheap ploy for shock value when the professor's little daughter is hit by a car. The low brow manipulation was cheesy enough but I started cracking up when I saw this guy driving the car.

It's not just the actor's appearance but also his lighting and the expression. I feel like the little girl wandered into an Arby's commercial. I vividly imagined this guy going out for a roast beef sandwich and I was delighted he got mixed up at all in the soap opera dinner party.

The little girl's stuffed bunny flies up in the air and actually lands on the asphalt with a "squeak". Was the comedy entirely unintended? I wonder.

I discovered Alyssa Milano is secretly a pop megastar in eastern countries. Apparently she has said she hasn't tried to establish her music career in the U.S. because she fears it would be laughed at. Really?

Yeah, okay, that's fair.

It reminds me of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless saying Americans like the worst French performers, like Maurice Chevalier. Of course, it's Chevalier's outrageous Frenchness that appealed to American audiences, so I can only assume it's Milano's adorable Americanness that makes up for the complete lack of interesting vocal inflection. Even so, looking at her music videos, it's astonishing one was produced, let alone several. I mean, it's on par with Rebecca Black.

The Regenerative Mutant Duo

Well, I sure got hyped for 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine. I enjoyed the first two Deadpool films but all the teasing around this new one made it feel like Deadpool might indeed be the Marvel Jesus he claims to be. I realised how well the hype had played me while I watched the fairly average, decently entertaining movie. I wasn't angry, I was just kind of amused. Kudos to the marketing team or whoever was responsible for stirring up the internet storm--Ryan Reynolds deserves a lot of credit.

Hugh Jackman does, too, though more passively. He allowed his Wolverine portrayal to be played up as legendary. And they made use of the fact that he said he wasn't going to play the role anymore after Logan. It almost immediately becomes a gratuitous but effective gag in the movie itself.

How about the movie itself? It premiered a few days earlier in Japan so I got to see it. It's fine. It's better than the first one, not as good as the second. The absence of Domino was particularly disappointing but the cast was already crowded. Domino's an interesting enough character alone, she could carry a movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a buddy comedy, in the mould of 48HRS or Lethal Weapon. It's not as good as either of those but it's not bad. I got tired of Deadpool's endless jokes and his emotional plot about how he wants to matter and get back with his girlfriend is fairly bland, especially since Morena Baccarin's character amounts to basically just another cameo. It's never really clear why she broke up with Deadpool or even if she really did.

Some of the fourth wall breaking jokes were funny though most of the jokes I actually thought were funny were entirely within the confines of those imaginary walls. I found the term "educated wish" very funny.

Hugh Jackman sells Wolverine's damage a lot better though he, too, suffers from vague writing. We know he blames himself for the deaths of the other X-Men in his universe but it's left entirely up to the audience's imagination just how much blame he actually deserves.

Audiences in Japanese movie theatres rarely laugh even if they're enjoying a comedy but I think nearly all the jokes about 20th Century Fox and Disney went right over everyone's heads. I remember once talking about the Sony and Disney rights issues with Spider-Man in a junior high school class I was teaching. No-one knew what I was talking about and it was very difficult to explain. A lot of people here have never even thought about IP rights and so on so I wonder if this will affect the film's global box office. On the other hand, it's not rated R in Japan, it's rated 15, which means third year junior high school students can see it. Mainly it's because the Japanese don't care about cursewords and ultra-violence isn't such a big deal, especially animated violence, which this basically is.

Deadpool does have a fanbase in Japan. I saw a girl at the movie theatre, dressed as a maid, taking pictures of all the Deadpool & Wolverine posters, even posing in front of one, holding up a Deadpool keychain.

My favourite thing about the movie, surprisingly, is the villain. Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova actually steals the scene from Ryan Reynolds. She's funny and threatening and really very cool. I truly hope we haven't seen the last of her.

I was surprised the movie didn't tie in to the MCU more than it does though it really rewards the viewer for having watched the Loki series on Disney+.

As for the cameos from other Marvel film universes, mostly they were amusing. Occasionally they were cool and one of them added a little emotional weight to Wolverine's story. One cameo of a famous actor who'd never before had a chance to play a character he'd been rumoured to have been cast for proved he's totally unsuited for the role. One very surprising character who'd starred in a series of films blew all the other cameos away. The actor has been basically retired for a while and he more than proved he still has the stuff.

The climax of the film amounted to the usual light show with a few more jokes. Deadpool made a joke about being "in the homestretch", alluding to the long run times of these films and I was inclined to take it less as a joke and more as a helpful notification that I would soon be able to go out and get a snack. It wasn't that I was hating the movie but it was actually nice to know it wasn't going to run out its welcome.

I don't think this is going to save the MCU. But if you can take it for what it is, which is about a third of what it's hyped to be, it's not bad. If you enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok, you'll probably get about 60% of that pleasure from it.

The Image of Heat

I watched my favourite summer movie last night, Kurosawa Akira's 1949 detective movie Stray Dog (野良犬). Even back in San Diego, it was a sympathetic companion on blazing hot days. Now that I live in Japan, experiencing the more humid heat for a summer with a rainy season, the movie's an even better friend.

Of course, there was no air conditioning in 1949 Tokyo. That scene where Murakami interviews the girl in the police box, with the tin roof another character remarks on makes it like an oven, visually captures the muggy misery so perfectly. You can feel how that poor girl is just smooshed by the god of humidity.

Before that, there's Mifune Toshiro just soaked with sweat as he goes through records. Sweat stains are really taboo now in Japan but not in 1949 I guess. You can see sweat stains going through the armpit of his jacket. Not as badly as Bill Paxton in Predator 2 but it's still impressive.

The movie also makes me really thirsty for beer so I had some Sapporo while I watched. It's a good thing I prefer Japanese beer because you can't seem to get imported beer in Japan, though there's all the familiar whiskey brands from Scotland, Ireland, and the U.S. Kurosawa's Drunken Angel makes me want whiskey but in Stray Dog there's the scene where Murakami pursues the pickpocket all day until they finish at a beer joint and she gives up, bringing him a bottle of beer to where he sulks outside and they both look up at the stars.

This is just before the famous 11 minute sequence with all the actual footage of post-war Tokyo. Mifune in a ragged uniform, desperately searching the crowds for someone who sells guns. But maybe the scene that best sells the heat is the one of all the sweaty, exhausted dancing girls. I guess the biggest flaw in he film is Awaji Keiko as one of those girls, the one who ends up being the killer's girlfriend. I remember hearing how, no matter what Kurosawa did, Awaji just failed to express any of the emotions any scene called on her to express, and Awaji later said she regretted being so difficult. It's extraordinary to see from an actress in a major film, but such extreme emotional reserve is not uncommon in Japan even to-day.

I guess I'll be going back out into that heat to-day. Maybe I'll be lucky and the rain will kick in.

X Sonnet #1865

The heavy gavel hides a broken clock.
A vase conceals a spy who waters plants.
The ancient wreck was hid beneath a dock.
The Mighty Thor's disguise was purple pants.
A doubled sky obscures the mirror lake.
A war was hid behind a word for "late".
An abacus was hid within a cake.
Accountants keep a hidden dinner slate.
A secret question looms behind the moot.
Compartments kept the smuggled danger space.
A rubber knife was strapped inside the boot.
On Yavin's moon, they built a Rebel base.
Concealed behind the screen's the mask of Pan.
Revealed above the ocean, sirens swam.

Once the Psycho Box is Checked . . .

Having been made sane by Robert Loggia, Norman Bates is set loose again in 1983's Psycho II. It's a pulpier film than the original, concerned more with plot, heroes, and villains. On the other hand, Anthony Perkins gives a spellbinding performance and the film's complicated plot functions as a portrait of overwhelming paranoia.

Bates is set up with a job at diner in addition to resuming ownership of the Bates motel. Dennis Franz plays the sleazy motel manager who deeply offends Norman. Perkins plays Norman like the boy scout who never grew up which, in a sense, he is. He brings home a beautiful young woman, Mary (Meg Tilly), from the diner. Mary says her boyfriend's thrown her out and at first it seems like an awful convenient setup for a pretty young woman to end up staying with Norman. But all is not as it seems.

Perkins' performance is so vulnerable and honest, you really feel for him as he tries his damnedest to stay sane. Various forces conspire against him and then some of those forces conspire against each other. The little more information the audience is let in on than Norman gives us just enough insight to see how impossibly tangled is the web he's caught in. While the first film is about the troubling, blurred line between victim and perpetrator, the second has rendered Norman entirely a victim, though in a very interesting way. Perkins' performance has a lot to do with it. I don't think the film would've been half as effective with someone else. With all the deception swirling around him, it's the truth of Perkins' performance that anchors the film.

Mary's relationship with him gets complicated though there's only one moment that suggests a possibility of romance between the two and I loved Perkins' performance when the idea occurs to him. The look of pain, fear, and hope mingling on his face makes human vulnerability in itself seem like a threat. No wonder Mary's frightened.

The Present President is Not the Future President

One good thing about Kamala Harris taking over the Democratic nomination is that she'll be able to beat Trump at a debate. Yes, odds are stacked well against her actually becoming president but the former prosecutor should have an easy time showing she has a better command of facts and logic than Trump. Sadly, with her reputation of political partisanship and lack of natural charisma, it's probably going to be like Hillary Clinton all over again. On the other hand, the 2016 race was very close and Clinton did win the popular vote.

I do think there's a chance Harris could win if focus could be placed on her greater competence. Biden's perceived incompetence and Trump's actual incompetence means we're coming out of eight years without a president everyone could agree on was basically qualified for the job. It's possible this issue could have better legs than woke-fatigue and the habitual, naked manipulations of the Left. Trump lies all the time but that tends to seem innocent next to the mass manipulations of media the Left perpetrates. Harris would do well if she can distance herself from that.

It is late in the game but three months is a long time in politics. A lot could still happen.

Bram Stoker's Fried Chicken

I've been growing a Van Dyke lately but since I wear glasses I'm a little worried I'll look like Colonel Sanders. I started thinking about other examples of men who combined glasses with a Van Dyke and I thought of Gary Oldman in Dracula. This led me to imagine the whole 1992 movie with Colonel Sanders in place of Dracula.

I imagine the scene in the church at the beginning with Dracula proclaiming "Chicken is the life and it shall be mine!" holding up a bucket of fried chicken instead of blood. On the carriage on the way to the castle, a woman hands Harker a necklace with McDonalds' golden arches and says, "For chickens travel fast". Then a host of chickens running about can be seen the swirling mist before the carriage approaches. Sanders is a polite host to Harker, treating him to a modest dinner of roast beef, but excusing himself by saying, "I never eat . . . beef."

Lured by curiosity and a familiar voice in the night, Harker makes his way to the bed chamber of Sanders' brides. Monica Bellucci arises from the bed holding a bucket of chicken. She sees the golden arches necklace and it melts before her fury. In the mirror above, we see Harker writhing on the sheets, drumsticks in both hands and a greasy wing in his teeth. Then Sanders appears, enraged. The brides ask if they are to have nothing this night and Sanders brings forth a live chicken. Harker, horrified, screams. Seeing this, Sanders cackles in sadistic pleasure.

Back in England, Lucy Westenra has been growing increasingly exhausted and Dr. Seward is confounded by the empty buckets and chicken grease on her bed every morning. One night, Mina follows Lucy as she seems to walk in a trance out to the garden. There Mina beholds Colonel Sanders making violent love to Lucy, fried chicken paraphernalia strewn about them.

Van Helsing is giving a lecture on the relationship between fried food and cholesterol when he receives a telegram from Seward. He leaves at once for London where he's shocked by Lucy's state. "This young woman needs chicken and chicken she must have!"

Later, the men emerge exhausted. Quincy, an American friend of the family, remarks the girl has had the equivalent of ten whole chickens put into her.

Mina, meanwhile, has struck up an acquaintance with a mysterious and charming colonel. "Chicken," he explains to her one evening over dinner, "Is the aphrodisiac of the soul. The chicken wants your soul. But . . . you are safe with me." The conversation moves to spices and Mina stands, imagining but perhaps remembering a particular combination of herbs and spices that blend with the juices produced by breaded and fried chicken. "Fried chicken of such rare and succulent flavour as to be found nowhere else . . ."

"There is such a chicken," says Sanders.

Alas, Lucy suffers a heart attack, her arteries utterly clogged after a night's feast in which her bedchamber seemed to her to be flooded with flavour.

Van Helsing knows this isn't the end. He and the other men creep into Lucy's tomb where they find her coffin vacant. Her reanimated corpse enters behind them, carrying a live chicken. Van Helsing subdues her with the golden arches.

In the asylum by Carfax Abbey, the mad Mr. Renfield deep fries flies and worms. Seward asks if he would like a kitten to which Renfield replies, "A chicken! A big chicken!" kneeling before the doctor and begging. Mina is brought to Seward's chambers in the asylum while the men break up the boxes of spices Sanders has stored nearby. Sanders sneaks into Mina's room and the two are sloppily feasting on her bed when Van Helsing and the others enter.

That's about as far as I've gotten. I feel like it would end with Mina chopping the head off a chicken.

Thor Needs Light

Since I cancelled my Disney+ subscription, I remembered I'd been watching through the MCU movies again. Maybe I'll see if I can finish them before August 15th, when my subscription ends. Last night I watched Thor: The Dark World, which used to be considered the worst MCU movie. Now several films have surpassed it, of course. It's still a little dull. Christopher Eccleston is sadly playing a not especially interesting villain. But I did like how it felt more like Norse mythology than any other Thor film. Nice to see taverns on Asgard instead of everything being rainbows and chrome.

I don't quite understand why Stellan Skarsgard running around naked is supposed to be so funny. I like how Loki is actually a trickster in this one. Kat Dennings sure is a buxom beauty, is she only doing Marvel projects now? Her filmography has been fairly sparse the past few years.

The scene where Idris Elba takes down a spaceship with a knife was pretty badass. The scene where a ship crashes through Odin's palace (I don't think that's supposed to be Valhalla, is it?) has a nice feeling of catastrophe. Anthony Hopkins has not had good things to say about working in the MCU but he does a fine job as Odin, managing to inject some mystery into a fairly unremarkable treatment of the character in the script. Natalie Portman . . . She kind of gave a good performance in Black Swan but mostly I don't think she can act. Seeing her in a Thor movie reminds me of the story that leaked about Taika Waititi offering her a role in a Star Wars movie, evidently forgetting or not knowing she was in the prequels. With all the bad press Waititi got for Love and Thunder, looking back now, it really seems like some people were out to get him.

Alan Taylor of Game of Thrones directed Dark World and it's competent work, lacking the real sense of life Waititi gave to Ragnarok. Taylor has said Marvel made a lot of changes he wasn't comfortable with. If that was the problem, it's a shame Disney didn't learn from it.

Thor: Dark World is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1864

Reflective suits were kept beneath the waves.
The normal talk revolved around the King.
At home, he kept his empty paper graves.
The frugal fist proclaimed the ground a ring.
With floating symbols holding hands was rice.
The meal of choice emits a steam for men.
In savage hearts, a leopard skin is nice.
A nanny mixed some sugar cubes with sin.
The storms would gather just to smell the meal.
A champ was forged with broken chairs and cuffs.
A trick has made the haunted king for real.
The court was filled with idle boasts and bluffs.
When time decays the wooden space, we fly.
When plastic stars would melt, we wouldn't cry.

The Direct Results

Lee Marvin will stop at nothing to get the 93k owed to him by a bunch of gangsters in 1967's Point Blank. John Boorman directs this kaleidoscope of experimental action that effectively uses non-linear sounds and imagery.

I was strongly reminded of Suzuki Seijun, whose Branded to Kill came out the same year. I wonder if Boorman was influenced by Youth of the Beast or Tokyo Drifter.

The film begins with a heist gone wrong. We find a disoriented Walker (Marvin) getting shot by Mal Reese (John Vernon) in a prison cell. In voiceover, Walker wonders why he's in a prison cell and asks where he is, what's happening. The audience, having just started the movie, is right there with him.

The pieces start to come together as Walker starts to execute his plan to get what's coming to him. My favourite bit of sound experiment has the sound of Walker's footsteps layered over a sequence where he breaks into a woman's house, getting a stranglehold on her before going into the bedroom and unloading his revolver on her empty bed. Slowly we're given to understand that this is Lynne (Sharon Acker), Walker's wife.

He sits on the couch and says nothing as she, in a drug haze, answers a series of questions he doesn't ask: why she betrayed him, who she's been with since, how she feels about it. It really feels like Marvin had lines in the script and Boorman just said, "Let's try doing it without you saying anything." It works.

There's a kind of playfulness in Suzuki movies that isn't in Point Blank which, for all its off-the-wall experimentation, is fairly grim. Walker seems less like he's seeking satisfaction than like he's executing the actions requisite in a dispassionate, amoral universe.

Point Blank is available on The Criterion Channel.

Voices from the Star Wars Screensaver

People generally don't seem pleased with the last episode of Acolyte. Not that many people watched it, the ratings being a new low for the steadily declining franchise. But I watched it, so I guess I'll talk about it. The gist of my impression is that, as swings of the lightsabre go, this was a whiff.

I was kind of hoping I'd find out if I was right that Mae was a Force projection of Osha's. Instead, the extent of the revelation was Sol saying the two are in fact the same person. What does that mean? Are they clones? Why did they look different as children? Can they read each other's thoughts? He says they're one person, but if that doesn't actually reflect anything that happened in the story, then it's just hot air. It's an idea but one that was never given legs.

A lot of reviews are focusing on the sloppiness of the plotting. Vernestra makes Sol the fall guy for all the murders. Presumably that includes Inara despite all the witnesses on hand to say otherwise. Mae's killer instinct had just kind of faded away a few episodes back so now, whatever, I guess she's into the rule of law over vengeance killing. Maybe it's because she and Osha are the same person, so if one is mild, the other is wild? Ah, the see-saw of duality.

I think the sloppiness of the writing is due less to incompetence than to a genuine lack of concern for plot mechanics. College literature courses nowadays are more focused on applying particular analytic theories to texts than they are on the mechanics of the story so I'm quite ready to believe the writers of Acolyte simply did not care if anything made sense except on the most abstract thematic level. It was the same with Echo. The characters have powers and they do things and if you ask how and what then, well, you're a nerd. Get out of the clubhouse. The point is that institutional authority is corrupted by hubris. The writers see their job as beginning and ending with the idea and actually conveying the reasons behind it likely seems a gratuitous exercise. So Sol doesn't say he killed Mae and Osha's mother because she looked like she was turning into a big death bird in the process of disintegrating Mae. That would be impertinent. Why did Bazil tear up the wiring in Sol's ship? Why did Osha decide to train with Qimir? Why anything? People are always just doing stuff, okay?

I will say it's very sweet how much Leslye Headland is clearly in love with her wife, Rebecca Henderson, who plays Vernestra. Most people watching wondered why the show was leaning so much into her character. The green paint and the bald head don't flatter her and make her look more like a Star Trek alien than a Star Wars alien. She has kind of a snooty governess quality. I could see her playing the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, though she wouldn't be my first choice. As a character, she never managed to do anything particularly interesting because, without any logic to the events unfolding, there's no particular weight or significance to anything she or anyone else does. But she was front and centre, she was given the quirky lightsabre whip, she got to talk to Yoda at the end. We should all be so lucky to have such an enamoured spouse as Headland is for Henderson. Headland, I guarantee you, would be physically incapable of understanding why anyone would find Henderson uninteresting.

I've cancelled my Disney+ account. I'm just not getting value for money and it is a pain in the ass for me to transfer money from Japan to my U.S. account. I'll probably come back for Andor season 2 next year but for now I'm just sticking with The Criterion Channel.

And Now They're Told Again

Vincent Price took audiences through a watered down set of three Nathaniel Hawthorne stories in 1963's Twice Told Tales. The title comes from a book of short stories by Hawthorne, though only one of the three filmed actually comes from that volume. All three filmed stories lack the moral subterfuge of the originals but they have lovely production design and Price is always, well, priceless.

The first story, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", substitutes the original story's chaotic moral landscape of sinners with a simpler morality tale in which the doctor's discovery of a fountain of youth leads to him being smacked down by fate. His best friend, played by Price, is only now revealed to be a rival lover of Heidegger's resurrected fiancee. Jealousy and violence ensue, and everyone is punished for tampering in God's domain.

Next is "Rappacini's Daughter". Price plays Rappacini and Joyce Taylor his daughter. This one's actually not so different from the original though, as lovely as Taylor and the production design are, they can't match the lovely, perverted romanticism of Hawthorne's prose.

Finally, Price plays the man intent on unlocking the mystery of "The House of the Seven Gables". Apparently Price starred in another adaptation of this Hawthorne novel back in 1940. I'd like to see that one. This one still has that lovely 1960s Vincent Price lustre but is needlessly rushed to fit the anthology format.

It's a fun little anthology film that would pair well with Milk Duds and a make-out session.

Shannen Doherty

I mentioned in February finding out that Shannen Doherty had terminal cancer, and now she's passed away. I mentioned it in my review of her 1992 erotic TV movie, Blindfold. I knew she was beautiful but, before that movie, I didn't know just how fun she was.

I was never a fan of 90210 but I did watch Mallrats over and over. That movie doesn't exactly showcase her too well--she's the dissatisfied girlfriend the whole time, that movie really belongs to Jason Lee. Last night I chose to honour her memory by watching Heathers, which I suppose is still widely considered her best work.

Though, like in Mallrats, hers really is a supporting role, though one with a bit more variance. I love the bit where she's at the funeral of Heather #1 and we hear her mental prayer about how she'd dreamed of killing the other Heather so many times and considers her death a sign from God that she'd been thinking on the right track.

I read on Wikipedia the film's screenwriter originally intended it for Stanley Kubrick, that it was inspired by Dr. Strangelove. And, yeah, it is that kind of tone of satire. I read an article in the past couple years about how Heathers hasn't aged well, that its humour about school shootings and suicide and bullying is too much about things that are real problems in our world. I would say, that actually means the movie has aged well. The shallow, narcissistic gestures taken in the wake of the apparent suicides are a potent reflection of how violence and tragedy are routinely co-opted by the media to-day. I mean, the murder of the first Heather basically becomes a P.R. triumph for her. Shades of Donald Trump?

The movie's taken some flack for its resemblance to 1976's Massacre at Central High, though that movie is much more of an allegory and lacks the effective satirical elements of Heathers.

Anyway, here's to you, Shannen Doherty.

X Sonnet #1863

No chomping chain could hold the mouth from tongues.
Deserving drinks were dumped above the skull.
A thorny op'ra burst the tumble lungs.
But ramb'ling on, the marble traced the bowl.
The lucky luckless day has shot to years.
With iron shorts, the biggest boy advanced.
The sun delivers racks of frothy beers.
With heedless glee, the drooling foxes danced.
A shaking dream invests a box with blood.
A step beyond reflection brought the fetch.
Distressed and drunk, the cattle dwelt in mud.
A secret red awaits the finest catch.
The ghost was green and never seen as real.
Eventually, the spirits cease to feel.

He Lived to Tell Another Tale

He might have zero military experience, he could've dodged every draft for every war in American history. Thanks to his quick media savvy, Donald Trump has cemented his image as warrior martyr president.

Trump really has had some incredible luck with his campaign, though mostly it's had to do with misguided strategy on the Left. The insistence on going with the safe choice of sitting president Joe Biden as candidate has backfired. Continued, elaborate P.R. wars against Trump have only served to make the Left look dishonest. It's all played so perfectly to creating a beleaguered martyr narrative for Trump, I'd be tempted to call it a conspiracy, though part of the Left's aggressive P.R. war has been to repeatedly label conspiracy theorists as unhinged nutcases. Every time I see one of those memes I get a sick feeling that I'm seeing evidence of a conspiracy.

Of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term "vast right week conspiracy". Is it really so crazy to think people occasionally get together and plan the things they do? I mean, I'm all for spontaneity, but come on.

But the narrative that's accumulated around Trump almost seems better than human beings could plan and execute. For all the rhetoric about the violent Right, it's the Right who keep getting shot. There was Ashli Babbett, the unarmed woman shot and killed in the January 6th riot (yeah, I know she had a pocket knife). Now Trump himself has been injured and one of his supporters killed.

Last week, there was another story about a shooting in the U.S.--all charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin for his part in firing the gun that killed a cinematographer and injured a director during rehearsal for a movie in 2021. The case was dismissed because the prosecution had withheld evidence. The prosecutor at fault, Kate Morrissey, was asked on the stand if she had referred to Baldwin as an "arrogant prick" and a "cocksucker". She denied this, saying that she appreciated his politics and his work on Saturday Night Live. I imagine she was referring to Baldwin's famous run on the sketch comedy show playing Donald Trump. Well, at least she didn't shoot him.

President Biden said the attempted assassination of Trump was not representative of who were are as a people. I'm not sure about that. Of course, I live in a country, Japan, where a former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was successfully assassinated two years ago at a train station just forty-five minutes north of me by train. I would say that when open, intelligent, critical debate has been broadly devalued and discouraged, it might have something to do with the fact that violence and manipulation are seen as increasingly valid alternatives.

Gonna Need an Ocean of Calamine Lotion

A wealthy family takes in, and is taken in by, a pretty teenage girl in 1992's Poison Ivy. Drew Barrymore made a splash with this box office bomb that nonetheless enjoyed some longevity on home video. It's a shallow, glossy noir pastiche that's occasionally enjoyable schlock.

Sara Gilbert plays Sylvie, a nerdy rich kid who watches Ivy (Barrymore) on a rope swing, dreaming of what it would be like to be "skanjy"--this movie's term for skanky or slutty.

Before you know it, Ivy has taken Sylvie under her wing and has beguiled Sylvie's wealthy parents into letting her move in. Sylvie's parents are played by Cheryl Ladd and Tom Skerritt and I have to say Skerritt is skanjier than anyone else in this movie. He plays a local news anchor given to high handed editorials which his daughter despises. Normally the dad in this kind of movie makes some effort to resist the hot tomato on his radar but from the moment Skerritt lays eyes on Ivy he looks like he wants to shtup her.

He's so pathetically horny, it's kind of hilarious. His wife has a terminal illness and there's a scene where Ivy seduces him right on his wife's sickbed while his wife is sleeping in it and, sure, there's some astonishing audacity on Ivy's part but mostly I was thinking what a callow weakling this guy is. Have some respect for your wife, dude, and just go masturbate somewhere.

Barrymore is delectable in this movie but her character's a two dimensional echo of greater femmes fatale before her. She and Sara Gilbert have good chemistry I wish the movie had made better use of.

A friend here in Japan lent me this movie on DVD so I discovered the film's title in Japan is "Body Heat". That's not a translation from the Japanese words for Body and Heat. It's literally the English words "Body Heat" written in katakana. Meanwhile, Lawrence Kasdan's famous 1981 film, Body Heat, is known as Shiroi dress no onna, or "White dress woman". It's like someone in charge of distributing Poison Ivy in Japan had long rued the lost opportunity to use such a great title. I wonder if there's some other, mid-2000s movie, being sold as Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy wishes it were as good as Body Heat.

The Hazardous, Amorphous Landscape

In 2013, director Paul Schrader, writer Bret Easton Ellis, and actress Lindsay Lohan were the dream team assembled for The Canyons. The film was trashed by critics and shut out of SXSW for "quality issues", despite Schrader being an established director with over forty years of acclaimed movies in his filmography. Bret Easton Ellis, among others, later claimed the film was unfairly disregarded due to Lohan's reputation at the time. Frankly, it seems obvious that this was the case when a film festival would go so far as to suggest the film lacks basic competence. Now the film has undergone reassessment and has received praise. I think it's pretty good. But am I just being a reactionary, a Paul Schrader partisan?

It's kind of like the Star Wars prequels I guess. I remember enjoying them in the theatre, then questioning myself, then coming back and saying, "No, this is really bad." Then coming back and saying, "No, this is actually quite good." At this point, Red Letter Media's commitment to hating the prequels seems religious. The original Mr. Plinkett analysis seemed spot on at one point but now it seems sad and thin, only the satire of the Plinkett character himself remains interesting. There's that oft repeated clip of George Lucas making the prequels and saying, "It's like poetry, it rhymes," to explain why certain lines and character motives repeat throughout the series. The clip is presented as though to imply there's something flawed in Lucas' rationale but, at the end of the day, repeating aspects of a plot within a story of great length is not unusual or an intrinsically bad idea. An impression of Lucas' error is conveyed with all the wit of a kid repeating what someone says in a high, nasal tone. The implication is something deserves to be mocked because it is being mocked.

It's maddening to think about because you can't simply say all art is totally subjective. Some movies really are bad. Sometimes we love bad movies for personal reasons, sometimes we hate good movies for personal reasons.

Is Lindsay Lohan's beauty subjective? She'd already had a lot of cosmetic surgery by the time she made The Canyons. But the movie's about L.A. culture, a culture in which the precise look Lohan has is sought and paid for by women every day. Does a community nurture a belief in a standard of beauty just to justify compulsive spending or has familiarity made this style truly attractive in the community or is it a mixture of both?

The movie's almost American Psycho in L.A. The character of Christian played by James Deen is sort of like Patrick Bateman: a narcissistic, delusional power player. But the film is more about a community of people and how they compulsively investigate and keep secrets from one another. Christian and Lohan's character, Tara, frequently have strangers over to their house where they have orgies. Christian doesn't like Tara to have sex with other men, though it's implied it's happened occasionally at these orgies. He becomes obsessed with the idea that she's sleeping with Ryan (Nolan Funk), an actor whom Christian, a movie star, has recently gotten a job for on his current film. Tara and Ryan are forced to navigate a perpetual obstacle course of gossip and investigation even as they both engage in their own gossip and investigations.

The obvious irony is that, under the veneer of sexual liberty, there's a constrictive iron net composed of insecurities and suspicions. It's certainly a very sharp movie and performances are good or at least appropriate throughout.

The Canyons is currently available on The Criterion Channel as part of a collection of Paul Schrader movies.

Shelley Duvall

Shelley Duvall has passed away. A beautiful actress who generally conveyed a sense of gentleness and frailty, she frequently worked with Robert Altman, eventually being perfectly cast as Olive Oyl in his live action Popeye. But it's of course for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that she's best remembered. That trademark frailty of hers is so fundamental to selling the overall menace that pervades that extraordinary film. It's due that film's remarkable longevity, as younger audiences have discovered it, that Duvall will hold a place in humanity's collective imagination for a very long time to come.

Duvall also produced a memorable series of fairy tales adapted for the screen in the 1980s.

X Sonnet #1862

The safety vouched by doors is fragile cash.
Supporting struts deceive the home with love.
No glob of faces earns the daily bash.
But still the heart recalls a hand and glove.
The empty movie houses break the day.
Abandoned wooden pieces fit but poorly.
But brick'll stand beside projected clay.
Electric hearts connect but ever sorely.
Pervasive dreams of candy conjure clouds.
The colour scorned was sapped from people's minds.
A now they'll ever walk through charcoal shrouds.
And dwell on webs no gentle spider binds.
A fragile spindle sang a subtle song.
Some restless souls discerned there's something wrong.

Double Double, Jedi in Trouble

Episode seven of The Acolyte aired last night, an extra long episode, clocking in at at least 34 minutes, minus credits. The credits were kind of an important part this time, though, including as they do a very not-Star Warsy sounding R&B song that dishes at length about the main characters.

Seriously, I'm going to be really surprised if my "Force projection" theory is wrong at this point. First they showed Osha and Mae reciting that weird poem in the recap, then they showed them reciting it again in the episode. This comes before the reveal that their blood samples show they're a single consciousness. So, yeah. I think Mae really died and the adult Mae we see is Osha's Force projection, just like Luke did in Last Jedi, except she's doing it subconsciously.

This would all be more interesting if Osha and Mae hadn't become so wishy-washy by this point. In this new episode, we even see a bit from Mae's perspective in which we see she really didn't want to burn the place down. Just as in the present she now doesn't really want to be a Sith. You'd think killing Carrie Anne Moss and the guy with the fake beard would've strengthened her resolve.

In this episode, there's a shot where the Jedi are analysing plantlife on Osha and Mae's planet. Sol is in the foreground holding some moss and you can see Carrie Anne Moss in the background and I thought, what a missed opportunity to have Carrie Anne Moss carry a moss.

So, again, I think this is all reverse engineered from an academic's analysis of indigenous versus colonist experience. The two personae of a single consciousness, Osha and Mae, is like how a member of an indigenous culture would have two different personality modes, one to engage with the outsiders and one that holds true to the culture of the old tribe.

Colonialist encounters can be messy with disastrous misunderstandings, which would be the point of Sol stabbing Osha and Mae's mother when it seemed she was changing into a giant death bird. Meanwhile, the coven mother was merely . . . I'm not sure what she was trying to do.

The Acolyte is available on Disney+.

The Answers to the Questions

This is my favourite so far, both song and video, from Chrystabell and David Lynch's new album, "Cellophane Memories". I love how subtle the video is. Lynch doesn't direct the viewer to any of the almost imperceptible changes that occur, your own eye is responsible for whether you're watching Chrystabell in the see-through dress or the little man with half a face caught in mid-motion.

Like the previous songs, there's a siren's call quality to it. Chrystabell seems not so much to be a definite woman but a dreamt of ideal or manifestation of fundamental, irrepressible desire. The man with the fractured face is almost indistinguishable from his environment. One indefinite being dreams of another. The sense of sorrow and urgency underlying it all imbues these clouds with anxiety parallel to the weird sedative quality. It's lovely.

It reminds me of "Ghost of Love", Lynch's song from the Inland Empire soundtrack, especially with that guitar and percussion.