Adventures in Grocery Shopping

My new oatmeal. I feel classier already. When I got to Japan, I worried I wouldn't be able to find oatmeal and, indeed, most of the grocery stores near me don't carry it. But for some reason, the two next to Yamato-Yagi Station carry a lot of foreign food, including oatmeal--even Quaker Oatmeal. There's a little supermarket inside the station and there's one across the street, accessible through an underground tunnel, that's much bigger. It's worth going despite the fact that Yamato-Yagi for me is a fifteen minute walk plus a train ride of about 210 yen. I was surprised to find the little store inside the station itself was closed due to the Corona virus to-day, though.

A state of emergency has been called in Japan, still voluntary. There's a tension between people wanting to follow government instructions and people wanting to celebrate Golden Week, a period of traditional holiday, lasting from April 29 to May 5. The government has tried to rebrand it as "Stay at Home Week" but the street was pretty crowded to-day. Many of the restaurants and cafes were closed but many also had outside stalls set up with "take out" signs and tasty looking packaged meals. I settled for two rice balls and sandwiches and a couple Soy Joy bars at the station.

The mall is closed, though, except for the grocery store and the Daiso (a really nice, popular 100 yen store) on the ground floor. I was really starting to like that mall, too. Now I hear talk all this might not end until September. I doubt it, though. Once the rest of the world is out of lockdown, I doubt Japan will keep the state of emergency going on its own, even it was late to start, especially since the effectiveness of the lockdowns is debatable. According to Pathology Professor John Lee at The Spectator:

We have substantially reduced the number of people circulating in the community. If lockdown is working, and stopping the spread of the virus, it might be reducing the circulation of milder versions among the population, while at the same time concentrating people with the most severe disease in hospital wards. There we can find the perfect viral storm, containing everything needed for rapid evolution: huge numbers of reproducing units (the virus), an environment for rapid reproduction to take place in (patients and staff), and selection pressures (things that alter how the virus spreads, such as density of people, severity of disease, or length of survival).

Apparently even WHO has recommended Sweden's strategy of not having enforced lockdowns. I suspect his alone will be enough to keep Japan from doing anything more severe than it's already doing now.

Meanwhile, I'm limiting my time out to trips to the grocery store but I've still been able to enjoy a few of the sights. This big beautiful egret has been hanging out in a nearby canal:

Of course, butterflies are out in force:

And the mystery of abandoned gloves continues:

The Mind Unknown

Farscape's angriest character, D'Argo, finds he has to face whether or not he can control his rage in a fourth season episode refreshingly reminiscent of earlier seasons.

Season Four, Episode Fifteen: Mental as Anything

When was the last time an episode was about anyone's backstory but Crichton's (Ben Browder)? Not since season three. Well, I guess Jool a little bit at the beginning of season four. But this is the first episode since early in season three to focus on D'Argo's (Anthony Simcoe) past and the first time his wife's murder has been talked about since, I think, season one.

At Scorpius' (Wayne Pygram) recommendation, half of Moya's crew--for some reason only all the male crewmembers--visit a master of some kind of mental discipline, Katoya (John Brumpton), in order to receive training. Among the students is none other than Macton (Blair Venn), brother of D'Argo's deceased wife, Lo'Laan (Rachel Gordon).

It had been established earlier that D'Argo's imprisonment was for the murder of his wife and that he'd been framed by Macton who put the blame on Luxan "hyper-rage". Macton, D'Argo believes, was Lo'Laan's true killer. When D'Argo first sees Macton, his first instinct is to murder him. But eventually, D'Argo confesses to Crichton that he may well have killed Lo'Laan himself because hyper-rage also causes blackout, meaning he might have killed Lo'Laan without retaining memory of the crime.

The torment of not knowing for sure is fertile ground for great story and character development but the episode eventually does provide an answer. Before that, though, Anthony Simcoe gives a brave, unrestrained and effective performance. He does a good job of showing the horror in contemplating the possibility that Lo'Laan had been lying to him, to spare his feelings, about whether or not he'd ever hit her in fit of hyper-rage. He shows the horror of considering the possibility that he may have killed the woman who was willing to give her life for him.

Meanwhile, Crichton undergoes special training in a metal box over lava. His final escape from this is a moment of distinctly Crichton-ish, amusing, and slightly scary madness.

. . .

Farscape is available now on Amazon Prime.

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone
Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter
Episode 5: Picture If You Will
Episode 6: The Way We Weren't
Episode 7: Home on the Remains
Episode 8: Dream a Little Dream
Episode 9: Out of Their Minds
Episode 10: My Three Crichtons
Episode 11: Look at the Princess, Part I: A Kiss is But a Kiss
Episode 12: Look at the Princess, Part II: I Do, I Think
Episode 13: Look at the Princess, Part III: The Maltese Crichton
Episode 14: Beware of Dog
Episode 15: Won't Get Fooled Again
Episode 16: The Locket
Episode 17: The Ugly Truth
Episode 18: A Clockwork Nebari
Episode 19: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part I: A Not So Simple Plan
Episode 20: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part II: With Friends Like These . . .
Episode 21: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part III: Plan B
Episode 22: Die Me, Dichotomy

Season Three:

Episode 1: Season of Death
Episode 2: Suns and Lovers
Episode 3: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part I: Would'a, Could'a, Should'a
Episode 4: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part II: Wait for the Wheel
Episode 5: . . . Different Destinations
Episode 6: Eat Me
Episode 7: Thanks for Sharing
Episode 8: Green Eyed Monster
Episode 9: Losing Time
Episode 10: Relativity
Episode 11: Incubator
Episode 12: Meltdown
Episode 13: Scratch 'n Sniff
Episode 14: Infinite Possibilities, Part I: Daedalus Demands
Episode 15: Infinite Possibilities, Part II: Icarus Abides
Episode 16: Revenging Angel
Episode 17: The Choice
Episode 18: Fractures
Episode 19: I-Yensch, You-Yensch
Episode 20: Into the Lion's Den, Part I: Lambs to the Slaughter
Episode 21: Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Episode 22: A Dog with Two Bones

Season Four

Episode 1: Crichton Kicks
Episode 2: What was Lost, Part I: Sacrifice
Episode 3: What was Lost, Part II: Resurrection
Episode 4: Lava's a Many Splendoured Thing
Episode 5: Promises
Episode 6: Natural Election
Episode 7: John Quixote
Episode 8: I Shrink Therefore I Am
Episode 9: A Prefect Murder
Episode 10: Coup by Clam
Episode 11: Unrealised Reality
Episode 12: Kansas
Episode 13: Terra Firma
Episode 14: Twice Shy

Sand of Gor

We've all undergone tests of endurance in our lives, be it long plane flights or the grimy purgatory of a DMV. Last night I faced a test from 1987 called Gor. Based loosely on John Norman's series of notoriously sexist fantasy novels, the film, while sexist, is slightly less so than the source material, not boosting a culture where the rights of women are dependent on the will of men, instead relying on more standard forms of cinematic sexism such as relegating women to one-dimensional, stereotypical roles either dimly lusting for or hectoring the bland male hero.

This is not Outlaw of Gor, the movie featured in a classic episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Outlaw of Gor is a sequel to this film and, sadly, there seems to be no Rifftrax or MST3k episode for it. Why do they waste time riffing on good films like Empire Strikes Back when turkeys like this are so thoroughly deserving of attention? I've spoken to some Gor fans who've told me the first film is better than the second. It must be a pretty fine distinction. Maybe Gor fans just hate Jack Palance's goofy hat in the second film.

This film features poor Oliver Reed in a goofy hat, playing the film's villain, Sarm. I saw recently Al Pacino admitted in an interview to doing bad films with the intension of single-handedly elevating the production with his performance. I wonder how many actors have adopted this strategy. Reed seems to be phoning it in here but his peculiar, whispery intonations are at least more interesting than everyone else in the film.

Well, Rebecca Ferratti as the female lead, Talena, is pretty bodacious and she actually does some decent stunt work, including a leap onto a horse early in the film. Her swordplay is awkward but that's to be expected with limited rehearsal time and swords like these.

But nothing can prepare the viewer for the epic blandness of Urbano Barberini as nerdy professor instantly turned beefcake warrior Tarl Cabot. Talena falls in love with him by the end, I guess. Everything seems so vague in this movie. A dwarf named Hup (Nigel Chipps) begs to join the party at one point, arguing he can get them into Sarm's fortress, but the film completely forgets to give him any kind of motivation for doing this. He seems to be doing it just because it's what new companion characters tend to do at that point in this kind of film. The veneration Cabot receives as a hero warrior feels just as default--everything he manages to do seems to be by luck, as when he accidentally kills Sarm's brother at the beginning of the film, or because his enemy is weirdly sloppy, as when Sarm hands Cabot a branding iron, inexplicably expecting him to use it on Talena.

Sarm started the film wanting to take vengeance for his brother's death but the film completely forgets this motive halfway through, switching to a plot where Sarm is trying to convert Cabot to his side. Why? It just seems to be the done thing.

Gor is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1348

An extra step was stayed with helpful glue.
The time it took to test a ticking clock.
We alpha knees were legs we always knew.
We hid the bank inside a giant sock.
In bubble ether flew a plushy mind.
Atop forgotten beds the monsters wait.
There's chips and dimes in cushions round to find.
A dreaming day adopts a sleepy gait.
In rings of oat the milk acquires starch.
A pushy box reminds the maze to stop.
A proof of purchase nets the stately larch.
A speeding voice offends the nasal cop.
A dairy built a house of hardened milk.
A bus constructs a bed of rubber silk.

It Pays to Pay Friends on the Parole Board

Why worry about prison when you've got connexions on the parole board? By the 1940s, quick turn-arounds for prison inmates were notorious in many places throughout the U.S., and so Hollywood made 1948's Parole, Inc. Called a film noir by Wikipedia*, it's really not. It's a simple, short crime film, "ripped from the headlines," as they say. It's no masterpiece but its ambitions aren't even that high. It succeeds at being pretty good.

Federal Agent Richard Hendricks, played by a sharp and cagey Michael O'Shea, decides to go undercover as a bank robber so he can trace the line of underworld connexions to whomever's bribing the local parole board. The film goes step by step through his decently smart plan--he assumes the identity of a real thief but uses an alias, allowing the gangsters at hand to snoop and find out his "real" name. He lets slip that he knows a certain comrade of the thief he's posing as and everything works.

If this really were a film noir, he'd get mixed up with a dame or become fast friends with one of the crooks, there'd be betrayal and existential confusion. There's none of that here, Richard just does his job, straight down the line, and doesn't even lose his wits when the beautiful lady in charge of the gang, Jojo (Evelyn Ankers), demands his kisses as payment for assistance.

It's a bit surprising to see a woman portrayed as the boss though she turns demure when a real heavy takes charge in the form of a lawyer named Rodescu (Turhan Bey). The climax of the film has some effective tension when Richard executes a tricky plan at Rodescu's summer house.

Parole, Inc is available on Amazon Prime.

*The Wikipedia entry was edited in 2017 to add the film noir label. Nowadays even musicals are getting called films noir. There's a generation now that thinks any old movie where people wear fedoras is a film noir.

Fire, Speed, and Bourbon

The Sirenia Digest returned to-day with a visceral new story from Caitlin R. Kiernan, "The Great Bloody & Bruised Veil of the World".

Juxtaposing a very personal experience of the first person narrator's with a very strange supernatural occurrence, there's a sense of coiled violence, of fevered flight. There's more movement in the story than Sirenia Digest stories tend to have. The protagonist, an unnamed woman, begins the story speeding through the woods, distraught over a conflict with her girlfriend. Caitlin does a nice job in establishing how the narrator feels a kind of separation from herself, in establishing the strangeness in her own violent reaction. The motion of the speeding car comes to a sudden stop with a scene of death, of abundant evidence of recent fire but with a singularly abnormal thing at the centre.

An exceptionally good story and a bit of a new direction for the Sirenia Digest. It's well worth a read.

The Story of Sarah Jane Smith

This past week brought a surprise treat for Doctor Who fans in the form of a new, 13 minute story written by Russell T. Davies, performed on YouTube by several Who and Sarah Jane Adventures actors. Sort of a radio show with visuals, featuring actors in quarantine, the short film observes the anniversary of Elisabeth Sladen's death by finally providing (presumably) canon closure for her character, Sarah Jane Smith. The video is below and it is very sweet:

Interesting there's not one hint of a reference to the newest Doctor Who episodes.

Watching the video prompted me to go back and watch "School Reunion", the Russell T. Davies era episode--actually written by Toby Whithouse--that marked Sarah Jane's first appearance in the revived series.

I'm always amazed when going back to Ninth and Tenth Doctor episodes by how adult the show was. It was kind of an exciting time for grown ups and Doctor Who, both in terms of the show and the Big Finish audios, which were both exploring more adult themes at the time. I suppose the theory was that all the Doctor Who fans were grown up now and the show should follow them into adulthood. Now maybe it's skewed more towards a new audience of kids, though it still manages to feel more infantilised than episodes from the 70s that were ostensibly for kids. "School Reunion" tackles subjects that kids would likely find difficult, boring, or impenetrable. Many of those things are also things adult programming isn't generally allowed to be about anymore, particularly the episode's central source of dramatic tension--the fact that Sarah Jane's age has changed her and that the Doctor (David Tennant) clearly prefers to travel with young, beautiful women like Rose (Billie Piper).

It was really refreshing that the show, in the early Davies era, had the guts to acknowledge and admit what was perfectly clear. From Liz Shaw onward, the Doctor's always had a young, extraordinarily beautiful woman with him, barring a few very brief interludes like The Deadly Assassin. It's silly not to acknowledge it means something. The Eleventh Doctor era kept it up a little while but then things took a turn with the Twelfth Doctor which I wonder now if it wasn't a reaction to a speech Ten has in "School Reunion".

When Rose confronts the Doctor on his evident predilection for picking up young women and abandoning them, he makes a really moving speech about how Rose can spend the rest of her life with him but he can't spend the rest of his life with her--if he stays with any companion, he'll be forced to watch them, as he says, "wither and die." Not so the Twelfth Doctor, with his running gag about being unable to tell how old people are. And this culminated with the Christmas episode that was originally supposed to be Clara's last, when he met her old and on her death bed and, of course, to him, she looked as young as she always had. It's a sweet moment, possibly sweeter if you consider whether Steven Moffat was saying the Doctor subconsciously rewrote his own perceptions so he wouldn't have to face the problem he talks about in "School Reunion."

Of course, needing young people doesn't explain why he needs beautiful young people. But that really shouldn't require explanation, should it?

Twitter Sonnet #1348

A broken step disturbs the spiral case.
Ascending dancers rectify the ghost.
A pilot placed a pillow 'neath the base.
The crackers claimed a flavour like the host.
Neglected hose abandoned mail for night.
Acquired helms contract the head for plays.
Decisive gloves constrict the fingers tight.
Demanding boots can stomp the grass for days.
In craving bread the yeast reserved rewards.
The open store contained a can of Coke.
Behind a shuttered eye were sight accords.
The twisted arm an ancient record broke.
When silver dogs return the bats invade.
In plastic coins are hazard debts repaid.

Fencing with Flashlights

Rarely has so very little been animated so very well. We already knew the outcome of the conflict on Friday's new Clone Wars. Rebels has already established who lives and dies. That doesn't mean the story can't be interesting--Better Call Saul and, indeed, the Star Wars prequels and earlier episodes of Clone Wars have shown just how great prequels can be. Unfortunately, Dave Filoni sticks mainly to connecting dots in an episode with a distinctly fan-fiction-ish vibe.

The episode begins without narration for once and the opening music sounds very little like Star Wars and quite a lot like the work of the recently deceased Krzysztof Penderecki, best known for his music's inclusion in the scores to The Shining, Twin Peaks, and other films. This gives the episode an eerie tone right off the bat and adds to the ominous quality of Maul (Sam Witwer) hinting at the impending Order 66. Something, again, which would be more effective if Rebels hadn't established Ahsoka's clones as having resisted the order. I hope at least some of the clones she relied on turn.

The question to ask is, what does this story add to what's already in Revenge of the Sith? Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) tells Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) about Anakin being asked to spy on the Chancellor and she's angry on Anakin's behalf. She's still loyal to him, which is certainly tragic, but we know she won't have a real confrontation with him until the very unsatisfying episode of Rebels where she meets Darth Vader. She and Maul make an interesting pairing because they're both disillusioned apprentices who have turned their backs on their respective orders. Maul reaching out a hand to Ahsoka seems as though it was meant to evoke Kylo Ren and Rey in Last Jedi--it would have been interesting to see Ahsoka work with Maul for a while. Certainly a lot more interesting than seeing them engage in a fight that goes nowhere and proves nothing. But it sure was well animated.

Even better than Ahsoka and Maul teaming up would be Vader and Ahsoka teaming up. In fact, that would be a great premise for the live action series. Why should Ahsoka be so sure the Empire is the wrong way to go? She doesn't like the Jedi Order. Vader slaughtered the Jedi Order and that's much farther than Ahsoka would go. But what if Vader and Ahsoka were stranded on a planet together or had to work together for some other reason? Maybe Ahsoka would start thinking the Empire makes life more safe and secure for people than the constant volatility of the Clone Wars. She can't redeem Vader, that's Luke's job. She and Vader need another kind of conflict to chew on.

But spare us Maul's undergrad thesis on how "justice is a construct." Oof. Star Wars dialogue is infamously bad but that's pathetic.

Tormented Space Justice at Your Own Risk

Bad things happen to all kinds of people on Farscape and it's not always clear who most deserves a sympathetic hand. So Chiana drastically misjudges a situation.

Season Four, Episode Fourteen: Twice Shy

After sealing a deal with some traders, somewhere out in Tormented Space, Noranti (Melissa Jaffer) and Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) think they've done a pretty good day's work. But just as they're leaving, the traders produce a sex slave named Talikaa (Paula Arundell) and offer to sell her, too. Chiana (Gigi Edgley), understandably incensed at the the idea of a young woman being abused, insists on buying the girl's freedom.

That doesn't stop her from taking Talikaa back to her quarters and engaging in some aggressive flirtation. Talikaa's charming innocence turns Chiana on ("What is 'sexy'?" Chiana, "Sexy . . . is my favourite colour"). This may not be Chiana at her wisest but how could she have predicted Talikaa would turn out to be a giant spider monster?

This monster drains the most distinctive personality traits of its victims so John (Ben Browder) loses his optimism, Aeryn (Claudia Black) her stoicism, Rygel his greed, D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe) his anger, and, Chiana, amusingly, her sex drive.

A subplot in this episode involves Aeryn and Crichton arguing about his taking drugs to forget her. She has no tolerance or understanding for this, which is surprising because it's almost exactly what she herself does in season three when she tries to drink away her memories of the other Crichton. I'm surprised the episode doesn't make at least one reference to this, maybe because it was written by a first time writer for the series, David Peckinpah. Nephew of Sam, David Peckinpah passed away on April 23, 2006, fourteen years ago yesterday, by amazing coincidence.

But mainly I like this episode. Talikaa is good as both someone to show the crew how dangerous it is to assume things about other people based solely on their own experience and as an amoral villain--she has no sympathy when Crichton talks to her at the end. Or malice, either. Moya's crew are just food to her. An effective way of looking at things until, of course, it isn't.

. . .

Farscape is available now on Amazon Prime.

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone
Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter
Episode 5: Picture If You Will
Episode 6: The Way We Weren't
Episode 7: Home on the Remains
Episode 8: Dream a Little Dream
Episode 9: Out of Their Minds
Episode 10: My Three Crichtons
Episode 11: Look at the Princess, Part I: A Kiss is But a Kiss
Episode 12: Look at the Princess, Part II: I Do, I Think
Episode 13: Look at the Princess, Part III: The Maltese Crichton
Episode 14: Beware of Dog
Episode 15: Won't Get Fooled Again
Episode 16: The Locket
Episode 17: The Ugly Truth
Episode 18: A Clockwork Nebari
Episode 19: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part I: A Not So Simple Plan
Episode 20: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part II: With Friends Like These . . .
Episode 21: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part III: Plan B
Episode 22: Die Me, Dichotomy

Season Three:

Episode 1: Season of Death
Episode 2: Suns and Lovers
Episode 3: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part I: Would'a, Could'a, Should'a
Episode 4: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part II: Wait for the Wheel
Episode 5: . . . Different Destinations
Episode 6: Eat Me
Episode 7: Thanks for Sharing
Episode 8: Green Eyed Monster
Episode 9: Losing Time
Episode 10: Relativity
Episode 11: Incubator
Episode 12: Meltdown
Episode 13: Scratch 'n Sniff
Episode 14: Infinite Possibilities, Part I: Daedalus Demands
Episode 15: Infinite Possibilities, Part II: Icarus Abides
Episode 16: Revenging Angel
Episode 17: The Choice
Episode 18: Fractures
Episode 19: I-Yensch, You-Yensch
Episode 20: Into the Lion's Den, Part I: Lambs to the Slaughter
Episode 21: Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Episode 22: A Dog with Two Bones

Season Four

Episode 1: Crichton Kicks
Episode 2: What was Lost, Part I: Sacrifice
Episode 3: What was Lost, Part II: Resurrection
Episode 4: Lava's a Many Splendoured Thing
Episode 5: Promises
Episode 6: Natural Election
Episode 7: John Quixote
Episode 8: I Shrink Therefore I Am
Episode 9: A Prefect Murder
Episode 10: Coup by Clam
Episode 11: Unrealised Reality
Episode 12: Kansas
Episode 13: Terra Firma

Rain Always Falls Somewhere

Through a haze of glitter and autumn leaves stepped one of the coolest cats of all time to turn the silver screen purple. 1984's Purple Rain has been criticised for having a plot not equal to the strength of its music, for the acting ability of its leads not matching the stage presence of Prince. But that's all bullshit. This movie works pretty damned well, more as an extended music video, maybe, but gods. That music is so good, the less to distract from it, the better.

Prince stars as "The Kid", leader of one of the resident bands at a hot Minneapolis club. That's right, Minneapolis! What did you think? Prince is from Minnesota and that's where the film was shot, too. The location lends a sense of space I don't think you'd get in New York or L.A. Also, crucially, Lake Minnetonka is in Minnesota.

But, sadly for Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), nowhere near the lake in this famous scene. Tricking her into stripping down and jumping into the water is just one of the little games the Kid plays with his love interest. You could criticise the movie for never resolving any of its conflicts--his insistence that Apollonia not have her own singing career is never really resolved, for example. But life rarely has resolutions to that kind of thing and songs rarely do, either. And although there is a rough arc, really this movie is like being in a series of moments.

It's appropriate for a story about the cycle of violence. We see how the Kid's father (Clarence Williams III) is physically abusive to the Kid's mother (Olga Karlatos) and we see this violence and compulsion to control manifesting in the Kid's own behaviour. The movie isn't trite enough to attempt to explain the origins of this behaviour. Instead it provides complications, like the father's insistence that, whatever he's done, he'd still die for the Kid's mother and we sense he means it--this ties into the songs "I Would Die 4 U" and "Purple Rain". Oddly, I was also reminded of The Smiths' "What Difference Does It Make?" which was released in Britain the same year, 1984. But Morrissey and Prince have a lot in common, which is probably why Morrissey admired Prince so much.

And I mean Morrissey and not Morris E. Day, or Morris Day, Prince's contemporary and costar in Purple Rain. His performance is livelier and more comedic than Prince's as arguably the film's villain. Goodness, he looks so young.

Prince is in more of the Rebel Without a Cause role, the misfit youth at the centre of so much of 50s and 60s pulp but his more overt femininity adds another dimension to his abusiveness and mischievousness. His M.O. is to step back and be mysterious most of the time. When his bandmates Wendy and Lisa (Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman) yell at him for never listening to one of the songs they wrote, most of his reaction to them is in the inferences they make about his silence. Only once does he directly insult their music and it sounds suspiciously like an ADR line possibly not even delivered by Prince. Apollonia seems drawn to the way he presents puzzles for her, demanding she give him her anklet before sauntering over to a pawn shop window with it. But then he gives it back to her when she asks if he sees anything he likes in the window, as though he's rewarding her for being stylish or creative. There is a demon in the Kid's blood but you can't easily say it makes him good or bad. Sometimes it's bad, sometime it's what makes him magic. The pain inherent in this continuity and contradiction is right there in every scream in the microphone, every impossible guitar riff.

Mostly, though, ye gods, this movie has magnificent music.

Twitter Sonnet #1347

Again the chains have conquered floating heads.
The magic split in triple spheres above.
Throughout the night the bats've made the beds.
A final cot was saved for Jo the dove.
Tomato cartons caught the olive wine.
A gang of horses brought the tunnel up.
The people talked between the ragged twine.
Returning drink accepts the home-ish cup.
The drunken horse returned to castle inn.
A tavern lit in purple sound was built.
Entire towns converged to settle in.
In candle light the evening cards were dealt.
Another candle topped the shape of cake.
The leaves recall the touch of autumn's rake.

A Long Dangerous Walk

Last night brought not just the end of the fifth and latest season of Better Call Saul but the conclusion of a really terrific trio of episodes. Beginning with "Bagman", written by Gordon Smith and directed by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, the show finally managed to make its Mexican drug cartel subplot interesting by making it a traumatically personal experience for Saul.

Through the perspective of Saul's (Bob Odenkirk) reactions to being ambushed by gunmen and saved by Mike (Jonathan Banks), all the gunplay and posturing suddenly become deadly serious. In the next episode, "Bad Choice Road", writer and director Thomas Schnauz makes a very wise choice in not making the events of the previous episode about Saul's deal with Kim (Rhea Seehorn) about not lying to her. She only brings it up to highlight the fact that the trauma Saul has clearly experienced has gone well beyond any such relationship boundary.

In fact, the season finale, "Something Unforgivable", is almost a step backward because it spends so much time on Lalo (Tony Dalton) and Nacho (Michael Mando) in Mexico without Saul--and once again, like Breaking Bad, the show returns to that annoying device of tinting yellow everything that happens in Mexico.

The United States does not have a monopoly on the rest of the spectrum, you know.

But the confrontation between Lalo, Saul, and Kim at the end of "Bad Choice Road" remains to haunt the episode. That stand off so brilliantly played off the underlying tension of Saul's trauma, his long standing criminal inclinations, Kim's increasingly dodgy ethics and sensitivity for Saul, and Lalo's suspicion--and then Kim saving the day by basically being a really good lawyer. So this show does have legs without Chuck after all.

The final episode seemingly sets up a conflict for season six in which Kim and Saul go after Howard (Patrick Fabian) to win millions in a case from season one. I can't imagine this will go well for anyone. I kind of hope we don't find out Kim ended up going to federal prison. I definitely don't want her to die, I'm still holding out hope we'll see her in the present day.

A Rumpled Coat and a Keen Nose

I'm five episodes in on the first season of Columbo and already the great detective's methods are getting to seem more uncanny than anything. I just finished "Lady in Waiting" last night, from December, 1971, written by Steven Bochco. Bochco at least goes to the trouble of making the villain played by Susan Clark rather sloppy.

I love how we get footage of how she imagines the crime will go--her victim, her brother, coming up to their mansion, finding his key is missing, and then coming in through her glass door so she can "accidentally" shoot him under the pretence of thinking he's a burglar. It all goes wrong when it turns out he has a spare key hidden in the floor pot. Even so, Columbo (Peter Falk) solves the crime with pretty tremendous inferences about grass stains on shoes and a late edition of the newspaper sitting on the table by the door.

It's no wonder he turns out to be an angel in Wings of Desire. I mean, it's fortunate Peter Falk's weird charm makes Steven Bochco's writing seem magical instead of corny. Never underestimate a man with a dead eye. Peter Falk sure would've been a great Odin.

Some of it's carefully contrived, of course. I'm on the fence over whether I like how he buttons only the bottom button of his suit jacket. On a three button jacket like that you're supposed to only button the middle one. Wearing it like this once or twice makes him seem like he dressed in a rush or in distraction but every episode is a bit much. I love the earth tones and the green tie, though, and it's great how his dusty old brown car perfectly goes with his ensemble.

Every episode seems to have a special guest star, the best so far being Ray Milland in "Death Lends a Hand" and Suzanne Pleshette in "Dead Weight", the former giving the silly story an improbable sense of gravity and the latter just as delightfully doing the opposite alongside a murderer played by Eddie Albert.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime via imdbTV, free with commercials.