Queen Kong

The location is moved from Africa to Siberia and Leo's first love interest becomes an American woman. These are among the many deviations from the source material in the 1935 version of She. Many of the changes were due to the Hays Code, which had begun to be strictly enforced the previous year. All the changes diminish the film either by degrading the quality of the story or introducing racist elements. But this movie has some impressive special effects and Randolph Scott is pretty good as Leo.

This is the only version I've seen so far that treats "She" as a proper name. People say things like, "That was She's idea." It sounds really awkward. I don't think the name "Ayesha" is even mentioned.

Altogether, it seems a misbegotten film. It was directed by Merian C. Cooper, who made King Kong, and he reused some props and sets from his more famous film because he was forced to work on a reduced budget for She. According to Wikipedia, Cooper considered She to be the worst movie he ever made.

One might assume moving the location from Africa to Siberia was to avoid the imperialist trope of a savage African tribe being ruled by a white person. But it was in fact racism that motivated the change, not Cooper's or Universal's but the Hays Code's, which forbade depictions of miscegenation. The Wikipedia entry says that that the book depicts a white man marrying a black woman but that's actually not true. The woman, Ustane, is a member of the Amahagger people whom Ayesha rules. Haggard describes the people as having yellowish skin and aquiline features. People of colour, maybe, but not black. In other adaptations, including the ones previous to the 1935 version, they're generally white, as indeed they are in the 1935 version. But Ustane's replacement, an American girl named Tanya played by the scrumptious but vacant Helen Mack, doesn't even marry Leo in this version.

Mack is in fact prettier than the woman who plays She, Helen Gahagan, though Gahagan is beautiful. But another effect of the Hays Code was that the title character of the story was no longer permitted to be in any way ambiguous; she must very clearly be a villain every second, so even the dumbest guy in the back row won't get the wrong idea. She's cruel, and the interesting dialogue she has in the book about the difficult decisions she has to make as ruler when administering justice is reduced to a cock-eyed speech in which she explains she must rule with terror. When she goes into the flame at the end, she does so while continuously heaping insults on Tanya. In addition to this, the Hays Code meant that Gahagan didn't get anything like Betty Blythe's see-through clothes or jewel bikini. Her black silk coif with a crown was used as inspiration for the evil queen in Disney's Snow White. In any case, it's understandable that Leo and Holly aren't haunted by the memory of her beauty in this version, especially not Leo, with Tanya clinging to him.

Holly is played by Nigel Bruce, best known for playing Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes. His version of Holly, like his Watson, is played for broad comedy. So much for the tragic, hirsute professor from the book.

The movie has some good matte paintings and Max Steiner's score is good. In contrast to the director's feelings about the film, Steiner evidently considered this the best score of his long career. There's also a surprising, randomly well choreographed dance sequence near the end. Something about the fact that it's so well choreographed makes it incredibly silly. I couldn't help laughing.

Shes

I've been watching every film adaptation of H Rider Haggard's She: A History of Adventure. Yes, there were multiple productions. For almost a century, this was one of the all time most famous fantasy novels. The earliest adaptation is from Georges Melies himself, a very short film made in 1899 called The Pillar of Fire, which really only depicts the very end of the book.

I'm not sure who that little green devil's supposed to be. The set, too, seems to be entirely a product of Melies' imagination. But what a set!

The next adaptation of the book, called She and made in 1911, is short at only 24 minutes but still decides to spend a lot of that time telling a different story from the book, beginning in ancient Egypt and depicting Ayesha's relationship with a pharaoh.

The 1925 version certainly blows the 1911 version out of the water. H. Rider Haggard himself actually wrote the intertitles and the actress playing Ayesha, Betty Blythe, starts to make it believable that men lose their minds over how beautiful she is. Not that's ever truly believable in any adaptation of the book. That's the kind of thing maybe you can only accomplish in prose. But at least Blythe isn't wearing a big shapeless robe the whole time, instead opting for sheer clothing that leaves nothing to the imagination or a jewel encrusted brassiere.

It's edifying to note how different a sexy fantasy babe outfit looked in 1925. It was the dawn of skimpy clothing in western culture and they evidently hadn't figured out that consideration for the natural contours of the body should be involved in designing and tailoring seductive wardrobe. What's meant to look glamorous and regal often looks sad and frumpy. Personally, though, I like how everyone has bad posture by to-day's standards.

Title by Jimmy Two Times

A gorgeous English girl tries to assimilate in an Italian high school where everyone speaks English. Sexually exciting tension arises when she meets a hot young MMA fighter in 2026's Love Me Love Me. This whole movie is unabashed sexual role play. The plot is absurd until you consider it as just a pretext to serve and exacerbate the sexual tension between the two charismatic leads, Mia Jenkins and Pepe Barroso Silva.

This is an Italian movie, despite its English main character and everyone speaking English most of the time. It kind of reminded me of old Spaghetti westerns and Giallo movies in which many of the cast spoke Italian on set to be dubbed over by English speaking actors. I don't know if that was done in Love Me Love Me but a lot of the actors did seem dubbed, especially Silva.

He plays the bad boy MMA fighter. Like most bad boys in this kind of story, it turns out to be a veneer for a complete sweetie pie. It turns out he was only rude to June (Jenkins) because he wanted to protect his best friend, Will (Luca Melucci) from her. There are a lot of excuses for James (Silva) to be openly rude to her or manipulatively seductive, as when he prompts her to orgasm with sexy texts.

Mind you, despite all the sex in this movie, there's no nudity. I wonder if this was actually intended for teenagers.

Anyway, the two stars really make this movie captivating, particularly Mia Jenkins, whose combination of lust and loathing she feels for James is really believable. And hot.

Love Me Love Me is available on Amazon Prime.

To the Bigger Body Goes . . .

Arnold Schwarzenegger invaded Tales from the Crypt in 1990 to personally direct a story about a man trying to improve his physical appearance. As far as I can tell, it was the one and only time Schwarzenegger directed anything, so I guess he decided it wasn't for him, but he doesn't do a bad job. He goes for the gusto and the mad scientist in the story is broadly played, living in a broadly decorated spooky castle.

"The Switch" is based on a 1955 issue of Tales from the Crypt and stars William Hickey (whom you'll most likely know as the voice of Dr. Finkelstein in The Nightmare Before Christmas) as an elderly millionaire who wants to marry a beautiful young woman (Kelly Preston). However, he hasn't told her he's rich because he wants her to love him for his other qualities. He doesn't see the irony when, after she tells him he looks too old for her, he decides to gradually replace every part of his body until he looks like a young man.

It is interesting Schwarzenegger would choose this story to adapt. I suppose he took the opportunity to show people there are no shortcuts to bodybuilding or, at least, none worth taking.

Tales from the Crypt is available on Shudder.

White Ladies

A young mediaeval woman fights the patriarchy with a little help from some forest witches in 2024's Heresy (Witte Wieven, "White Ladies"). It's unimaginative and it's derivative. Despite only being about an hour long, it's also dull and hard to get through.

A lot of people compared this movie to Robert Eggers' VVitch. As much as I disliked that movie, Eggers at least knew a little bit about the period he was portraying. All the makers of Witte Wieven seemed to know is that men are all evil and women are all pure. It's amazingly consistent. Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) lives in a miserable little hut with her mediaeval husband who berates her for not getting pregnant. So she follows the gloomy old wisdom of the village and pisses into a miserable wooden bowl and buries it to see if grimy, grey little worms show up in it, thus signifying that she's barren. Everyone trudges through the mud in their grey and blue world for another miserable day. Then, in the gloomy, miserable forest, Frieda encounters shapeshifting, giant white forest women with crimped hair. Perhaps because Frieda's hair is also anachronistically luxuriant, they bond.

When the miserable menfolk discover Frieda's gotten miserably pregnant despite the miserable worms in her miserable bowl of piss, they scream about her being the devil. Only the other miserable young woman in the village sticks by Frieda. Everyone's miserable.

So this is not the movie to see if you're curious about history. However, if you're curious about vague, uneducated, contemporary impressions of the Middle Ages, this movie's illuminating.

Heresy is available on Shudder.

Sonnet 2004

Concealing smiles trapped the imp in space
No time was right when clocks were jammed with toast
Remember thoughts when scanning ev'ry face
Or otherwise you'll think each man's a ghost
Connecting miles sapped the plane in air
No rhyme was wrong when socks were jammed with feet
Remember seats assigning ev'ry chair
Or otherwise you'll dream each butt's elite
Condoning styles raised the trade to art
No dime is lost when stocks were bought in bulk
Remember threats when throwing ev'ry dart
Or otherwise you might become the Hulk
No fine excised the ships from out the bay
Forget the thoughts and choose a thing to say

Crypt Justice

It's funny how the anti-heroes of Tales from the Crypt are so often trying to get rich quick. The second season, which premiered in April, 1990, stars Demi Moore as a gold digger who marries a slob played by Jeffrey Tambor. She does this after a fortune teller foresees Tambor getting an inheritance and then dying shortly thereafter. The episode is based on an issue of the comic Shock SuspenStories, published in 1953. Interestingly, the adaptation sets the story in the '50s instead of updating it for a contemporary setting, as other episodes do. The two stars, particularly Moore, are effective and the episode's a nice little slice of demented fate.

Tambor apparently wore a fat suit for the episode with unpleasant facial prosthetics, all to show how implausible it is for the beautiful young Demi Moore to be attracted to him for real. But in the horror tradition, Moore's character receives a comeuppance far more severe than she likely deserves.

Tales from the Crypt is available on Shudder.

Or Take on Vacation

A free spirited, goofy young woman is best friends with a handsome, emotionally supportive young man and the two go on vacations every year together. Will they ever become more than friends? 2026's People We Meet on Vacation relies on us not to expect the idea to have ever occurred to either of them for five years. The film clearly aims to be something like When Harry Met Sally but without sensible underlying character motives it can only hope to be a distant pastiche.

Poppy (Emily Bader) is the young woman. She's a travel writer who's become bored with travel. But then she meets Alex (Tom Blyth) whose company suddenly enlivens any location, whether it be Tuscany or New Orleans or any other picturesque place to be drinking a glass of wine.

During a camping trip with a group, one thing leads to another and Alex reluctantly agrees to go skinny dipping with a few other people while Poppy stays chatting with a man in her tent. Of course, Alex's clothes get washed away while he's swimming and he's forced to make his way to Poppy's tent with one hand on his crouch. When she sees his abs she says, like it's the funniest little surprise, "You're ripped?!"

The movie discretely avoids allowing the characters to mention any attraction to each other, allowing the viewer to indulge in the fantasy of sexual innocence until the, er, climax. It's a cute movie.

People We Meet on Vacation is available on Netflix.

Up, Left, Down, Left

Train stations in the big Japanese cities can be labyrinthian but usually not as bad as what you see in 2025's Exit 8 (8番出口). A young man trying to leave finds himself repeatedly walking through the same corridors with strange instructions on the wall. It's a clever and effectively eerie idea. Apparently it comes from a video game of the same title. The movie uses this concept to tell a story about a young man's reluctance to start a family.

The young man (Kazunari Ninomiya) has a girlfriend who's pregnant. As he tries to find the right way out of the train station, there's a consistent background tension surrounding his delayed decision as to whether he will commit to his girlfriend and child. I was reminded of Me Me Me, the GAINAX video designed to compel young men to step away from fantasies and start normal families. The trouble with both cases is they present the decision as being between an endless, soulless rut and a perfect life with a beautiful woman. The audience knows it's not a fair argument and even happily married people are likely to recoil from such heavy-handedness.

Ironically, though, Me Me Me is really sexy and Exit 8 is still effectively creepy, especially if you've spent a lot of time in Japanese train stations. The young man's reluctance to help the woman functions like a moral flaw in a horror movie protagonist so the audience senses he's a ripe candidate for demoniac justice.

Exit 8 is available on Shudder.

Late Messages

A young woman leaves voicemails for her deceased sister, not knowing they're being intercepted by an attractive young man in 2026's Voicemails for Isabelle. It's a charming, old fashioned romantic comedy that indulges in the familiar tropes and plot patterns. There's a slightly Hitchcockian element to the film, too.

If you have any familiarity with romantic comedies, you will quickly perceive how the movie will play out. Jill (Zoey Deutsch) is so vulnerable and goofy in an approachably attractive way, but not threateningly attractive, making her a suitable point of view character for the film's target demographic. Wes (Nick Robinson) is so enamoured with the voicemails that he moves to San Francisco, where Jill lives, and tracks her down. Their relationship develops and he struggles with his dark secret.

The tone aimed for here his akin to You Got Mail or Shop Around the Corner but the San Francisco location inevitably reminded me of Vertigo. Wes isn't like Scottie as much as he's like Judy. By meeting Jill under false pretenses, he draws her in in the same way Judy/Madeleine drew Scottie in, though he spends less time crafting a persona. But the dynamic between the two is affected by the fact that she doesn't know he's heard her voicemails to Isabelle, much as the dynamic was fundamentally different before Scottie finally realised the woman he loved may have been a complete fantasy. But Voicemails for Isabelle sticks to a standard three act romantic comedy plot--the couple meets, the couple experiences conflict and separation, the couple resolve their conflict and reunite.

Wes avoids being creepy because he never becomes a point of view character. He is the handsome stalker who flatters the vanity of the point of view character in a way that makes him guilty, thereby making him simultaneously in service to and indebted to Jill. If he were a point of view character, we'd be more inclined to evaluate the intrinsic merit of his actions. He exists to complement Jill. The two are cute together.

Voicemails for Isabelle is available on Netflix.

Brand New Spider

I guess time has done nothing to dull the public's appetite for Spider-Man: the new movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, has scored nearly a billion dollars worldwide in its opening weekend. It's a good movie, not as good as Homecoming, which is still the best film of Tom Holland's run, but good.

For a long time, it seemed like MCU movies were allergic to the secret identity. Spider-Man was the only MCU character who retained that traditional aspect of the superhero comic, and then they took it away from him. It's nice to see Brand New Day really runs with the secret identity concept now that it's been restored to the character via supernatural means. He wears his mask a lot more than usual in these live action movies, even having full dialogue scenes. Combined with the fact that Holland wears the most comics accurate costume in this film, I sometimes had the feeling I was watching a luchador movie. But I liked that. I wonder if that helps the movie, too, in countries like Mexico where masked heroes are more embedded in the culture.

Jon Bernthal is kind of a modern Telly Savalas. He chews scenery like crazy but there's something undeniably charming about his affectation. The unexpected friendship between Punisher and Spider-Man is amusing and surprisingly sweet though I don't know if this Punisher quite feels like the same man from the old Netflix series.

Speaking of Netflix, Sadie Sink's in this movie as a secret character. I won't spoil it for you if you've somehow managed to avoid spoilers but I will say she looks amazing. Her eyes seem like they've doubled in size since Stranger Things. Hopefully this isn't because she got a bunch of fat sucked out of her face and is instead the work of a talented makeup team.

The movie's villain is a secret. The filmmakers chose to make the villain a familiar Marvel character but with totally different motives and slightly different powers, resembling the character in physical appearance and name only. I thought this was a bad idea. Since the new powers were those of Killgrave, the character played by David Tennant on Jessica Jones, I wondered why they didn't just have Killgrave be the villain. David Tennant would've been a great presence in the film.

I wish there'd been more time the Hulk in this movie but critics who say this movie is overstuffed have a fair point. What this movie made clear is that Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is long overdo for his own movie. Thor: Ragnarok kind of cheated and gave him one. If Disney can't get the rights to make a standalone Hulk movie, they should consider another Ragnarok and make another two hander with the Hulk and someone else.

In addition to all the compositions meant to resemble classic comic covers throughout the film, I felt like director Destin Daniel Cretton was trying to outdo every previous, awesome shot of Spider-Man swinging through New York. He gives them a run for their money. I appreciated the ambition in any case.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theatres.

Two Girls, One Shark

Sometimes a bull shark turns up when you least expect it. 2026's The Devil's Mouth finds a group of college kids stuck in a partially submerged cave system in Thailand with the insatiable shark. The result is a decent survival horror film, particularly effective for its character development.

This is the second new movie this year I've seen starring Lana Condor. It wasn't on purpose, though I liked her a lot in both movies. The other one I saw was Pretty Lethal, the action movie about ballerinas stuck in a hotel. In both movies, she plays a spoiled brat, but I found myself rooting for her in Pretty Lethal. Her position in Devil's Mouth is a little more complicated.

The story primarily revolves around the relationship between her character, Max, and her best friend, Sara (Kathryn Newton). Before the main plot begins, there's a short vignette in which Sara gets left behind, swimming out at sea, by the group, partying in a yacht. Jellyfish gather around Sara and they start stinging her. Luckily, the group circles back and rescues her.

Max had been the only person who knew Sara was in the water but Max had forgotten while getting drunk. Unfortunately, Max is kind of a narcissist and is unable to confront the fact that she made a mistake. The tension is buoyed further by the fact that Max had convinced Sara to move from New York to L.A. with her just before the incident. So Max rapidly accrues a lot of thematic debt early in the movie, the kind of thing that's normally punished severely by the gods of horror movies. Sara, meanwhile, is clearly the film's moral centre and has "Final Girl" written all over her.

Most of the movie is set in the caves and the characters spend almost the entire time swimming, trying to find a way to escape the shark trapped in there with them. Throughout the film, the relationship between Max and Sara is spurred into sudden evolution by the crisis. Minute by minute, the viewer is invited to consider whether or not they want Max to live. She is obnoxious but oddly vulnerable in her unwavering pursuit of a positive self-image.

The movie reminded me a little of Neil Marshall's The Descent, which is a better movie, but The Devil's Mouth isn't bad.

Apparently I've seen Lana Condor play Jubilee in X-Men: Apocolypse, her first role. She's certainly gotten much bustier. It seems she's garnered controversy for not wearing bras or other supportive garments on red carpets.

Why can't women dress in movies the way they do on red carpets?

The Devil's Mouth is available on Amazon Prime.

All These Hotels

I have now seen three new movies this year about people trapped in hotels. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose. But I've said how much I like such stories. Is the film industry pandering to me personally or is setting a whole movie on sound stages just cheaper? Probably the latter, huh? The latest I've watched is Do Not Enter. A group of young urban explorers infiltrate an abandoned resort hotel. The screenplay is intensely stupid, the performances are weak, the production design looks cheap. But I couldn't stop watching.

The cast is very pretty, particularly Adeline Rudolph as Diane. Her boyfriend, Rick, is played by Jake Manley and the other female member of the group is Cora, played by Francesca Reale. She explains at one point that her job in the group is keys--somehow she's able to find ways to open doors. I liked how the movie continued to come back to that. Any time there was a need for a door to be opened, everyone looked at Cora.

Trouble comes from two fronts in their exploration of the abandoned Paragon Hotel: there's a rival group of urban explorers who are more ruthless and there is some kind of skinny white demon. He's creepy looking enough. The actor, Javier Botet, was born with physical abnormalities he puts to use making the monster off-putting.

The rival group is there for the cash, millions of dollars of which is hidden somewhere in the hotel. It turns out to be just piled up in the office. So whatever company owned this hotel just couldn't be bothered to take the piles of cash and this urban explorer group is the first to find it. On top of this, the desire to pick up cash evidently abandoned is portrayed as immoral. But that's still not the dumbest thing in the script.

At one point, the leader of the ruthless rival group just tosses Rick off a balcony and we can see he falls at least seven storeys down a hole that somehow exists on every floor through the centre of the hotel. Cora points out that Rick had their only map, so the two groups head down to find Rick. They call his name. They expect him to be alive. And he is. No, there's no explanation. He just fell seven storeys and everyone acts like it was almost nothing.

Actually there's a worse moment when a guy named Frank (Laurence O'Fuarain), a reporter accompanying the group, falls down a service shaft. It's so clear there's nowhere for him to land but the film cuts to him lying on some nondescript grey surface, somewhere, of course uninjured. It cuts away and we're left to imagine for ourselves where he was and how he survived. Yet again, I felt like the screenwriters were drawing on their experience playing video games. The characters in the movie seem to act on the assumption that they have health bars and power ups.

But I kept watching this. Meanwhile, I'm having trouble finishing the new Masters of the Universe movie. Maybe it's because, as bad as it is, it still feels like a genuine attempt by a young filmmaker to entertain while Masters of the Universe feels completely committee produced.

Do Not Enter is available on Amazon Prime.

Sonnet 2003

With random points assigned, the book was taught
No lesson learned reversed the pigment brain
So sandwich meat and rye was dearly bought
Entire lunches clogged the evening train
Collect in here, the cards we use for weight
We'll never see the night without a dog
So many patrons paid to set the bait
And made a tiled path across the bog
Revenging ghosts were hid beneath a hat
The big sombrero boiled up with sauce
It chanced a bandit brought a smiling cat
The natives talked and made the mouser boss
So solve your problems fast with ample brims
A spider has a lot of useful limbs

Comic Con Report, volume 9

Porco Rosso is still my favourite Ghibli movie.

I already posted most of the cosplay photos I took this year to my Instagram but, for those of you who don't follow my Instagram, I'll post them here.

These two reminded me of my students in Japan.

I tried to find interesting costumes I wouldn't see posted on other sites.

You see, there's no reason for Indiana Jones fans and Lara Croft fans to be at odds.

I saw some nice costumes. I didn't see astondingly ambitious costumes with multiple puppet limbs like I used to. I saw no centaurs, no angels or demons with massive, operable wings. I didn't see the Cinema Makeup School.

This was the skimpiest costume I saw and I could tell she was someone who remembered how Comic Con used to be. I'd noted for years the decline in girls wearing sexy costumes. There were still some but no army of Slave Leias or Dawn or Morrigan Aenslads. At one point a girl walked in front of me in the Exhibit hall in what I thought was a sexy cowgirl costume. I said, "Good costume but I don't know the character."

"Then it isn't a good costume," she said, smugly. Both her and her friend had looks on their faces like they thought I was up to something.

Still, I couldn't help asking, "What character is it?" She told me she was a character named Appleblossom, apparently from My Little Pony. She was not dressed as a pony.

I saw a few Wonder Woman cosplayers. One of them was walking through Artist's Alley, sternly announcing, "No touching."

But now there seems to be just a general lack of enthusiasm for cosplay compared to former years and compared to ComiKet. It occurred to me that all of the fandoms that previously dominated Comic Con aren't all that popular anymore--Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who are no longer the phenomena they once were. Twilight and Game of Thrones aren't what they once were, though I saw some House of the Dragon costumes. Add to this post-Covid Trauma and the systematic desexualisation of American nerd culture and I suppose it's no surprise things seemed generally subdued.

And, of course, many of the biggest names of Comic Con in years past, like Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon, have been cancelled. Kevin Smith was still doing his Evening with Kevin Smith in Hall H. But it seemed like there were no more big names associated with going to Comic Con almost every year. I did see a guy in Artist's Alley selling his drawings of Death from Gaiman's comics. We both talked about how we liked the character but he avoided saying her name.

There was big celebrity stuff, like Johnny Depp, emerging from cancellation to play Ebeneezer Scrooge. I did not witness it but I think it could be an interesting movie. It's directed by Ti West who made those X/Pearl movies with Mia Goth. Given popular attitudes regarding the surging number of homeless people, this might be just the time for A Christmas Carol.

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.