Loki's Location

A strangely dull Loki last night considering all that happened in it. Maybe I was too tired from a busy day, I don't know. It came from writer Eric Martin whose previous most prominent credit was writing a Lifetime movie called The Other Mother. Really, Disney? This is the best you can do? Martin also worked as an assistant on Rick and Morty so, along with showrunner Michael Waldron, who wrote an episode of Rick and Morty, it seems someone at Disney, maybe Kevin Feige, felt the MCU needed to move to a tone somewhat akin to that cartoon series. I haven't seen Rick and Morty but I feel like the odd plot problems on Loki do seem like they come from people trying to write a series drama who are too used to working entirely with cartoon logic.

I found myself darkly amused, contemplating the possibility that the deaths of Owen Wilson's and Tom Hiddleston's characters last night were permanent. The show did a good job setting them up, establishing a relationship between them, and allowing chemistry to accrue between the actors. So there is at least some emotional weight when simple-hearted Mobius feels betrayed, though it's more and more frustrating that he and everyone else seems to be cleverer than Hiddleston's Loki. Killing him off now, though, would be sort of like killing off Scully in season one of The X-Files. The possibility of one or both of these characters really being dead would out-boner the boner joke from WandaVision. Hiddleston's Loki appearing in the post credits sequence would seem to suggest the writers aren't quite going that far. Probably.

I do like the idea of a romance between Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and the weird narcissism of it. Though it's still not as weird as actual Norse mythology, of course.

This one episode sets up drama, and escalates to a showdown, between Sylvie and Ravonna (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). I felt like I was supposed to be more interested in it than I was. Even less satisfying was the sudden importance of Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku). When Sylvie shows her her true past she says, "I looked happy," as though she were seeing her memories in third person. This is a clear example of Eric Martin thinking like a cartoon writer, failing to get into the head of a character. She should have said, "I was happy."

I liked the design of the Time Keepers, being pretty close to their appearance in the comics, and the effect on their voices. Their deaths were another thing that felt way too premature.

A lot of this show reminds me of arguments I used to have with kids in Junior High School when my friends and I used to create our own fictional beings. One of us would create one all powerful being and then another kid would say, "My all powerful being is even more powerful." Then another kid would say, "My guy can eat planets!" and another kid would, "My guy can eat the universe!" I think of this as the moment I was born as a fiction writer, the moment when I realised that power in itself is really, really boring.

Loki is available on Disney+.

The Fires of La Forge Remain Unlit

Why was Geordi La Forge so unlucky in love? He came close again in "Aquiel", a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This time it was with an actress with whom the production staff felt Levar Burton had no chemistry. They were quite right but at least she wasn't a Holodeck simulation.

The episode has a dog, a pet of the title character, Aquiel (Renee Jones). It made me wonder if there were Holodeck programmes just for dogs. Like maybe every morning a Starfleet officer drops their dog off to run around a meadow and chase--and possibly even kill--phantom cats and rabbits.

The episode has a decent enough murder mystery. Aquiel and her dog apparently survived a mysterious attack on a subspace relay station near the Klingon border. It's strange how Federation relations with the Klingons are dealt with in this episode. Picard (Patrick Stewart) has to deal with a belligerent local official and a Klingon attack on the station is considered a real possibility yet such was the state of peace between the two intergalactic powers that the relay station apparently only had light defences.

The point of the station is to boost communication signals. Sounds like kind of a boring job and one for which it seems like the computer could do most of the work. Maybe that's why there was so much drama between Aquiel and the only other humanoid occupant of the station. Did Aquiel kill him? Was it a Klingon who, it turns out, also appeared on the station?

Aquiel seems to be dead at the beginning of the episode so Geordi watches all her personal logs to look for clues. It was an idea apparently inspired by Laura, the classic film noir. It kind of sets up a pattern for Geordi, though. The most prominent romantic plot he has in the series is with Leah Brahms, the woman whose holographic representation he fell in love with before actually meeting her. As that hologram was based on personal files and even psychological profiles of the real person, it was pretty voyeuristic in an interesting way, and you can hardly blame the real Brahms for being upset. Aquiel is similarly upset when she discovers Geordi had gone through her personal logs though at least he had a good excuse this time.

Before long, they're touching the crystal, if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge. Aquiel's an alien whose species keep a special super-intimacy crystal that partners touch to be closer than you or I can imagine, though it all looks conveniently chaste. They don't even rumple their Starfleet uniforms. Interestingly, Demolition Man also came out in 1993. It was a time when people were dreaming of escaping from the messy necessity of physical love, I guess, though "Aquiel" only lightly touches on it, so to speak. There's some unintentional comedy when Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) bursts in and interrupts them.

Not a terrible episode, though it seems to be ranked low on many lists.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is available on Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Rain Birds of Nara

There have been lots of rain and storms around here in Kashihara, Japan, lately. Yesterday I didn't think there would be any so I didn't bring any umbrella. It rained while I was at work but there was a lull when I was walking home. A student from the art club was walking with me and she also had not brought an umbrella. She seemed nervous as she pointed out to me the birds were flying low to the ground and explained to me it was a sign the rain was about to start again. She might have been nervous because she was carrying her precious box of colour pencils. Last year, the box was about half her size, this year it's about a third of her size. It's fascinating watching how quickly these kids grow. I'm still amazed she lugs the thing to school every day.

I'm back at the school with the big art club which I was able to attend the first time yesterday since March. Since then, I'd received a lot of my old books in the mail from the U.S. so I brought in a big picture book about the Pre-Raphaelites. It did my heart good to see a group of about fifteen girls crowding around the book expressing their amazement at the techniques of John William Waterhouse and Edmund Blair Leighton. They pointed out details like the shine on a velvet cloak or the branches of trees in the background against a sunset. I'm so happy to be around these students, they make me feel better about the whole world.

On Saturday, I saw some more kids playing with fireworks:

The Not So Last Crusade

Still in the mood for old favourites last night, I watched 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Although it is among my favourite films, it's my least favourite of the first three Indiana Jones films. For one thing, it's trying too hard to placate fans who didn't like Temple of Doom by aping Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's also strangely sloppy.

There are a lot of shot continuity problems, particularly in the tank chase scene which seems to be trying to outdo the great truck chase scene from the first film. There's the bit where Indy gets the strap of his gasmask bag caught on a gun--something it would seem impossible to do on accident since the strap is under his coat--and then he gets out of it just as impossibly over a cut. He loses his hat so many times in the fight, too, only for it to reappear on his head in the next shot. I found myself fantasising about alternate timelines emerging from each of these shots and elderly Indiana, years later, telling Mutt about how he used to have this really nice hat until a Nazi punched him on top of a tank one day.

It occurs to me Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only Indiana Jones movie not to have a father/son plot. Maybe the upcoming James Mangold movie will change that. I don't have high hopes for that movie. Mangold has produced a few good films and a lot of turkeys, nothing on the level of Last Crusade, let alone Raiders or Temple of Doom. Temple of Doom remains my favourite just in terms of tone and subject matter, though I recognise Raiders as probably better objectively.

I do love Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr. He's nerdy yet virile. He's like Gary Cooper's character in Ball of Fire all grown up. I've criticised the film before, though, about how his dialogue switches between insightful and dopey. There's no excuse for that "11 o'clock!" dialogue on the plane. But then there are great lines like "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like you should try reading books instead of burning them!" It's pretty sad how frequently that line comes to mind nowadays.

I kind of feel like Elsa is short-changed. She's actually the most nuanced female character in any of the Indiana Jones films. She's with the Nazis but she cries at the book burning. She betrays Donavan but it's implied she deserves her fate when her avarice gets the better of her in her last moments. She's like an update of Belloq, a dark reflection of Indiana. I guess there just wasn't room in the movie for it but her role could have been bigger and more satisfying. Still, overall, good movie.

Twitter Sonnet #1457

The dark was parsed with rapid yellow lines.
Reflected silk recorded late appeared.
With nothing writ we blanked the passing signs.
The normal board presents the written weird.
A whistle ponders stone to make a horse.
Successful dresses wait in tiny shops.
Discarded flowers halt the river's course.
The record zings whenever static hops.
In desert valleys shadows fight for souls.
The music's faint from shattered diner horns.
The rusted spoon still rings in empty bowls.
Of heavy rain a new report f'warns.
Tenacious hats would keep the doctor's road.
A lot of bolts would hold the tractor's load.

A Highway Unnavigable

It turns out Lost Highway is available on Netflix in Poland. I found this out a few days ago when I watched a left-wing YouTuber called Maggie Mae Fish's comparative analysis of Lost Highway with The Shining. As the title of the video, "MYTH OF THE AUTEUR", suggests, Fish uses the two films to attempt to demonstrate the illegitimacy or immorality of auteur theory. Like many people who criticise auteur theory, she either doesn't understand it or pretends not to understand it. Certainly her analysis relies on very selective pieces of evidence. This is a problem I find common to reviewers with political bias, left or right. Ironically, it's not unlike Fred Madison's own selective memory, his preference to remember things his own way to create a palatable narrative.

Oddly, Mae argues that Lost Highway is a superior film to The Shining because Lynch is less true to auteur theory than Kubrick. I suspect this would be quite a surprise to Lynch considering how vocal he's been about the necessity of film directors having final cut. Some of Mae's evidence is directly contradictory, as when she criticises Kubrick for not directing his actors and praises Lynch for allowing actors to make creative contributions. Surely, Kubrick is doing just that by not directing his actors? Also, Lynch is known for not directing his actors, too. Harry Goaz talks about having to do the same take dozens of times in a behind the scenes feature on Twin Peaks season three while Lynch wouldn't directly tell him what it was he was looking for.

Underlying Mae's argument is the implication that to be an auteur you must be responsible for every creative decision in a film. Which is silly because no proponent of auteur theory argues that auteurs never use separate screenwriters. Alfred Hitchcock, one of the very principle directors cited in the days when the concept of the auteur was formulating, was known for not directing some of his actors and for being generally hands off in productions later in his career. He didn't compose the scores and he didn't design the costumes. He had some input on these things but not always. Yet his films do represent his consistent creative signature because he was ultimately in charge of choosing his collaborators.

Mae argues that both Lost Highway and The Shining are about a misogynist and that Lost Highway is the better film because the misogynist is less sympathetic. I would dispute three points there--I don't think Jack Torrance is more sympathetic than Fred Madison, I don't think the presence of a sympathetic misogynist degrades a film, and I don't think there's any evidence that Fred Madison's a misogynist.

We don't even know for sure--he doesn't even know for sure--that he killed Renee. A guy doesn't need to be a misogynist to be a murderer and we never see Fred or Pete make any statements, direct or oblique, applying any general opinion of women. The best I think you could argue is that Pete cheats on Sheila with Alice after Fred was angry at Renee for cheating on him. That's hypocrisy that may imply a double standard. Or maybe it just means Fred/Pete tends not to think things through. We do have evidence of that.

In any case, Mae's obvious love for David Lynch is endearing, anyway. I'm grateful for her VPN ad that tipped me off about the film being on Netflix Poland.

Like most of Lynch's films, I think Lost Highway benefits from not having a single valid interpretation. I watched it on Friday and enjoyed soaking up its atmosphere in a quiet, dark room. I'll give you my interpretation, in case you're wondering.

I think Robert Blake's Mystery Man is an agent from the Black Lodge. Fred Madison is sort of like Cooper's doppelganger--a denizen of the Black Lodge who left and didn't return at his appointed time. The Mystery Man is a demon who feeds on jealousy and violence and he was attracted to Fred because of this. He was surprised to find that Fred was also a denizen of the Black Lodge, a shapeshifter who long ago forgot his original name and shape. I came to this conclusion after the scene where the Mystery Man points a camera at Fred and asks, "What the fuck is your name?!" It suggests the Mystery Man doesn't know and he really wants to find out--he also seems slightly surprised and infuriated that it's an issue. But the two of them are birds of a feather, after all, because they collaborate in killing Mr. Eddie. I think the Mystery Man had an assignment to kill Mr. Eddie in retaliation for the killing of the porn star played by Marilyn Manson. I think Manson's character may either have been from the Black Lodge or someone important to the people of the Lodge. I don't think Fred consciously understands any of this.

Anyway, that's my current interpretation. Mostly I think it's a film that works brilliantly on an emotional level and that its lack of clear logic is evocative of the irrationality of the human mind. You can string together the beads in so many meaningful ways because the underlying currents of emotion are meaningful in ways beyond words.

Aggressive Negotiations

A pretty good episode of The Bad Batch last night courtesy of script editor Matt Michnovetz and supervising director Brad Rau (along with Nathaniel Villanueva). I don't quite understand why Jennifer Corbett is credited on the Wikipedia entry as head writer if Michnovitz is script editor. "Script editor" was the title traditionally given to the person understood to be the showrunner/head writer. That's certainly how it worked on Doctor Who for so many years. Script editors like Robert Holmes or Douglas Adams are considered the guiding voices of the series during their tenure. And whatever the other precise jobs a script editor has on a show, if they are, at the very least, editing every single script, I would say they must be the most consistent creative voice on a series and therefore the head writer. He's even credited as script editor on episodes Jennifer Corbett wrote. Maybe Corbett's function as head writer is more hands off, maybe she just gave everyone the general arc of the series in the broadest terms. Anyway, last night's episode was good.

The location was really nice. I loved the atmosphere, the yellow fog that creeps between Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) and Cad Bane (Corey Burton) as they stand off. I love the idea of seeing a tarnished and grungy version of the normally pristine Kaminoan structures. The clones in jars, reminiscent of the Hammer horror-ish scenes from Rise of Skywalker, were nice too, and capped off splendidly by the disturbing sight of Fennec being briefly pinned by the naked corpse of some genetic abomination.

I was a bit disappointed by Cad Bane in the episode. It's funny, when Bane was first introduced on Clone Wars, I found him kind of irritating for how easily he was able to outmanoeuvre and fight off the Jedi. Now I'm irritated by how easily a human bounty hunter with an oddly big face is able to outmanoeuvre and fight off Cad Bane.

At least we know her face gets smaller when she becomes live action. You'd think they'd have just modelled her on a young Ming-Na Wen, there's plenty of footage of her.

I can't get used to Bane's smaller hat, either, but it does make him look taller. I also felt the Ennio Morricone-pastiche music was a little too broad. Brad Rau might as well have interrupted the episode to directly yell at us, "IT'S LIKE A SPAGHETTI WESTERN, GET IT?!"

I like the return of Todo-360, still voiced by Seth Green, whose codependence on Bane actually forms the emotional core of the episode, as much as it has one. I did feel for Omega (Michelle Ang) but she didn't have any particularly hard choices in the episode. It was nice seeing her reunion with Hunter (Dee Bradley Baker).

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

For Wealth and Forgettance

There may be infinite ways you can look at any work of art but I see two principle ways you can look at 1949's Caught: either as a left-wing fantasy about the intrinsically superior virtue of the working class or as a restless battle between two vindictive, psychologically disturbed people. I find the latter interpretation more interesting but Lee Garmes' enchantingly dark cinematography and lead performances from Robert Ryan, Barbara Bel Geddes, and James Mason make this a dynamite noir either way.

I watched this movie on Wednesday night and it wasn't until about twenty minutes in I realised I'd seen it before. And here's my review from nine years ago. It's a playful review that doesn't probe too deeply in the film, focusing more on the opening scene where Barbara Bel Geddes washes her feet, but I might have made something more of the opening screenshot I used.

While she dreams about a life of wealth and comfort, Leonora (Bel Geddes) spreads her legs and swats flies between them. This seems a potent symbol of the methods she'll eventually use to marry into wealth, as much as she does have pangs of conscience about it. After being invited to a yacht party thanks to blind luck--catching the eye of a customer at a department store where she works--she's reluctant to go through with attending the party despite having spent time and money on a dress and makeover. Her very reluctance to go says volumes about her motives when she finally does.

She happens to run across the wealthy guy running the party, Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), before she even gets on the boat. She accepts a ride with him but balks at going into his house. There's an abrupt jump cut to Smith in his psychiatrist's office talking about how he'd broken up with Leonora after four dates. When the psychiatrist implies Smith doesn't know how to be intimate with people, he immediately calls Leonora and starts to take steps to marrying her, apparently out of sheer contrariness. Despite the fact that Leonora's internal conflict is supposedly the centrepiece of the film, we don't have a single scene of Smith's courtship of her or of the moment where she consents to marry him.

There's another jump cut, now to Leonora alone in Ohlrig's mansion with Franzi (Curt Bois), a servant of Ohlrig's who plays piano and makes catty jokes about how Ohlrig is a monster. Ohlrig does seem to be paranoid and becomes jealous enough when Leonora laughs at a colleague's joke that he orders both of them out of the room. But Ohlrig never physically abuses her. Nevertheless, Leonora is unhappy enough that when Ohlrig suggests she go away, she takes him up on the offer. She goes to work as a secretary for the saintly Dr. Quinada (James Mason), a paediatrician serving the poorest, working class citizens of New York.

When critics talk about a film noir like Detour, they talk about how the movie's narrative being through Tom Neal's point of view clouds the events depicted with suspicion, especially the people who just happen to die around him, from whose deaths he gains financially or otherwise. The number of unnatural jump cuts in Caught make me think director Max Ophuls has something similar in mind. At one point, Ohlrig comes to find Leonora in her new life. She tentatively agrees to go with him and then there's a jump cut to her waking up in bed in Ohlrig's house. There are no scenes to show any of Ohlrig's behaviour that result in her having sex with him or marrying him. We have no direct evidence that he coerced her, that she was genuinely attracted to him, or that she succumbed to his wishes due to a desire for his wealth. The absence of these key scenes, crucial for the film's nominal argument, raise my suspicions about our point of view character, Leonora. Are we seeing her edited memory?

To add fuel to this fire, we do know that Ohlrig suffers heart attacks when he doesn't get his way--in one case, Leonora admits wishing he would die. The film ends with an event truly remarkable for a film from 1949--Leonora and Quinada actually celebrating the fact that she miscarries the child she'd conceived with Ohlrig. Ohlrig had threatened to get sole custody of the child, something portrayed as a villainous act, and yet . . . Would the kid have really been better off with Leonora? And, hey, if we're talking about edited memories, can we be so sure it was a miscarriage?

Caught is available on The Criterion Channel until June 30.

Twitter Sonnet #1456

A figure turned and faced the empty board.
The figure changed as walls and curtains blurred.
The iron gate repelled the rusty sword.
Confounding truth was ever plain absurd.
Suspicious coats were carried back to Saks.
An easy heart destroyed the hardest man.
The money built a town in lofty stacks.
A house was built of wood and moistened sand.
The cooking sheet was rife with cookie crumbs.
We hid the bike to trick the passing boat.
A growing cake defeats the sickly sums.
A shrinking pie displays the number goat.
It's via steps the feet return to roost.
The dreamy brain confers to greed a boost.

Another Slice of Glorious Purpose

Last night's decent new episode of Loki, "Lamentis", was written by the upcoming Ms. Marvel series headwriter, Bisha K. Ali. Prior to the episode, commentary on Ali has largely focused on her outspoken left-wing political beliefs and the fact that she deleted over five thousand of her tweets when she was hired by Marvel. Whether she intended it to be or not, though, last night's Loki was pretty light on politics.

The female Loki, who goes by Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) for reasons she has yet to explain beyond a dislike for the name Loki, turns out to be physically stronger and a more proficient martial artist than our familiar Tom Hiddleston Loki. Where he was easily subdued by TVA agents, Sylvie, finding her powers useless in the TVA realm, easily overpowers and murders several guards. It's nice to see that the two are still being written as villains, though there are a few odd moments where it seems like Ali forgets, as when Sylvie accuses Loki of collaborating with fascists. What an odd thing to say to a man who'd just been trying to become ruler of the galaxy.

Loki, in turn, criticises Sylvie's apparent desire to destroy the TVA without any particular goal in mind. Whatever problems the system may have, surely it's better to have the multiverse kept in order, assuming that's what the TVA are really doing? The argument is reminiscent of the current dialogue between the Antifa/"Defund the Police" left and those of us who see the system as a necessary part of having an existence with any measure of safety and comfort. With the reveal that the TVA weren't being honest with their strangely incompetent employees, it seems like, within the MCU at least, Ali's point of view will be the accurate one.

Apparently last night's Loki has drawn comment for revealing that Loki is bisexual. Loki director Kate Herron tweeted:

I would quibble this doesn't actually establish Loki as bisexual, only that both men and women had been attracted to him. But okay, if Herron's happy, good for her.

It's been four years now since the San Diego Comic Con I went to where I first really began to notice nearly every panel for every TV series or comic had someone with a frozen smile, mechanically parroting lines about how we had to empower women by making them front and centre in our media, apparently all part of a massive ideological push in the wake of Donald Trump's election. Results of the effort have been mixed and whether or not they've done anything for feminism, or have in fact set back the cause, is certainly debatable. This latest example of a beloved male character pitted against a new, stronger female counterpart isn't as bad as some. At least the two performers seem to have interesting chemistry. Though when Sylvie claims to be just as much a hedonist as Loki--only so long as it doesn't affect the mission--made me wonder how much we really can regard these two as versions of the same character.

Loki is available on Disney+.

Beauty Beyond Your Fingertips

A wealthy old man boards a train and then dumps a bucket of water on a beautiful girl pursuing him. He sits down with a psychologist, a magistrate, and a young mother to explain why in 1977's That Obscure Object of Desire (Cet obscur objet du désir). The final film of the surrealist master, Luis Bunuel, it portrays the relationship between the frustrated old man and the enigmatic woman with captivating comedy, drama, and dream logic. This film manages to convey some things very true about the nature of desire.

Mathieu (Fernando Rey) visits the home of a friend where he finds himself enchanted by the new housemaid, Conchita, played by the cool and statuesque Carole Bouquet. He correctly deduces by her mannerisms and delicate hands that she doesn't come from a working class background. It turns out she's a flamenco dancer from Seville.

When Mathieu confronts her about her past, the actress playing Conchita inexplicably changes to the sultrier Angela Molina. Conchita's actress will change between Bouquet and Molina throughout the film. Mathieu's fascination with her increases and she claims to return his affection. Time and time again, though, just as they're going to consummate their relationship, Conchita finds some reason to abstain. Sometimes it's as simple as not being in the mood, sometimes it's an intricately laced pair of shorts Mathieu finds impossible to remove.

Or something equally absurd. Sometimes Conchita seemingly reveals that she'd been stringing Mathieu along just for his money, other times she seemingly reveals her apparent cruelty was only a means of keeping his passion inflamed. She claims to do such things only because she fears losing him. Is she telling the truth? What does she believe about her own motivations? The answer is no clearer than the one about why she's played by a tag team.

The film abounds in clues. Somehow they all seem deeply meaningful even as it's impossible to add them up in a way that closes the case.

Occasionally a man is seen carrying a dirty burlap sack. In one scene, Mathieu carries it himself. Throughout the film, left-wing groups perpetuate random terrorist attacks. In one scene, Mathieu's driver is beaten and killed by terrorists and Mathieu is left by the side of the road. He's shaken but, by the time he gets home, Conchita dominates his thoughts again. Which should be edifying for any terrorists watching--no bomb, no hijacking, no mass slaughter can compete in the imagination with an unsatisfied romantic urge. That much, at least, is clear.

That Obscure Object of Desire is available on The Criterion Channel.

Some Musical Respite

I saw some kids playing with some small fireworks, or "hanabi", 花火--"flower fire"--on Saturday. It's a traditional summer activity in Japan. This was outside a curry restaurant where I went to help some kids study. There's another big test coming up this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I talked to a girl yesterday who seemed exhausted as she told me that, after school, she was going first to cram school, then to supper, then to another cram school. There's no lack of effort on the part of these poor kids but people have still find themselves wondering why Japan lags behind other countries in English. I heard one guy opine that it was because Japan is too focused on testing. I think that may be true but it only scratches the surface. I think there's just a deeply ingrained belief that it's more important that things should be done a certain way than that they should be done at all. Which isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds--it can mean the ends don't justify the means.

Yesterday, I also listened to kids present their essays on songs they like. One girl from art club, who usually produces some of the more interesting, stranger drawings, shared this song:

The title means something like "The Saturated Summer". I suppose it's hardly a surprise so many of the songs the kids like are big, cathartic releases of emotion.

A lot of songs are from anime series and a lot of the songs sound like they're from anime series even if they aren't.

That one was released in February of this year and already has over 56 million views.

I was happy to see a few kids like the theme from the new Evangelion movie:

Twitter Sonnet #1455

The easy short was long and long again.
Discovered air rebounds led to blanks.
The golden collar marks the genie train.
A tiny flask replaced the lion tanks.
The spirits green and red were pale at dusk.
Beside the ghost a table fell and broke.
The em'rald bed's a merely fluffy husk.
Beyond the glass a guest has lately spoke.
Adventures hid in cases understood.
Revealing names were parsed in diff'rent tongues.
Authentic faces fell behind the wood.
The pulpit bow was climbed by knotted rungs.
Eternal mornings bring the lightning back.
In darkness, flowers cut the green and black.

The Critical Ghost

Raising the dead can be a bit of a bother, yet there are points both for and against such a project, some of which are elucidated in 1945's Blithe Spirit. Directed by David Lean from a play by Noel Coward, a snooty upperclass couple find themselves inconvenienced when a seance summons the spirit of the husband's dead first wife and the spirit decides to take up permanent residence. It's a very funny film and actually quite eerie in moments thanks to some darkly shaded Technicolor and a committed performance from Margaret Rutherford as the medium.

We meet Charles (Rex Harrison) and Ruth (Constance Cummings) engaging in gentle, sophisticated banter about his first wife, Elvira, as they dress for a dinner party.

CHARLES: I remember her physical attractiveness, which was tremendous, and her spiritual integrity, which was nil.

RUTH: Was she more physically attractive than I am?

CHARLES: That's a very tiresome question, Darling, and fully deserves a wrong answer.

RUTH: You really are very sweet.

CHARLES: Thank you.

RUTH: And a little naive, too.

CHARLES: Why?

RUTH: Because you imagine that I mind about Elvira being more physically attractive than I am.

Perhaps Ruth really can take the high road about Elvira's beauty when the woman is dead and gone but it becomes a decidedly more sensitive subject when Charles is constantly conversing with the invisible woman returned to the land of the living. For some reason, only Charles can see Elvira (Kay Hammond).

I love how she's introduced, first as a voice only Charles can hear and then a heavy wind causes the curtains to billow out and from between them she glides into the room in a diaphanous evening gown.

She's a bit green, too, from makeup and lighting. She proceeds to smugly chide Charles on various matters from the gardening to the decorating, both unmitigated disasters, as far as she's concerned, and Ruth is at fault. It takes a floating vase to prove to Ruth that Elvira isn't a product of Charles' drunkenness but after this Ruth very soon seeks out Madam Arcati, played by Margaret Rutherford, for assistance in sending Elvira back from whence she came.

Rutherford is so good in this, so full of eccentric enthusiasm, coming off as someone who's spent far too much time alone studying an esoteric subject. Among other things, it brings a fascinating sense of credibility to what she's doing and supports some curious opening title cards:

When we are young
We read and believe
The most Fantastic Things

They seem more appropriate for a Jean Cocteau film than this concoction of dry, high brow lunacy. Somehow these two contradictory elements, the fantastic and the ironic, play off each other pretty well in this movie.

Blithe Spirit is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1454

Remembered steps were blue and envy green.
Above the floor assistants pin the chart.
Entire forests laze in Sally's bean.
The slackest tree could win a soil heart.
The moving camp required boats and rafts.
Gorillas slept in placid groves and rooms.
The flimsy limbs dissolved for shoddy grafts.
Above the din a somber tuba looms.
The global glob was something full and blank.
Elusive stats report the glad annoyed.
To float the data minds profoundly sank.
We fly abreast of clear and foggy void.
The end was never clear in runny print.
The air itself repulsed the kindly meant.

The Emperor's New Nihilism

A selfish monarch learns to value the humanity of his subjects in Disney's animated film The Emperor's New Groove. Released in 2000, this film had been in development for over six years, during which time it profoundly changed form due to conflicting decisions and indecision from Disney management. What started as an epic romance, loosely patterned on The Prince and the Pauper, tonally similar to other Disney Renaissance films, became an oddly disposable comedy with brilliant animation reminiscent of Chuck Jones. It's not an easy film to watch and I found myself overcome by impatience around thirty minutes in. The problem is the main character, the titular Emperor voiced by David Spade, whose selfishness is such an ouroboros of self-parody he becomes a comedic black hole. The villains, voiced byPatrick Warburton and the great Eartha Kitt , fare much better, particularly Warburton's character, Kronk, but not quite enough to make this a movie I'd ever want to watch again.

Extreme selfishness can be funny. Think of how far Oscar Wilde got with it in his plays. I think the problem with Emperor Kuzco (Spade) is there's no real pleasure in the selfishness. There's a kind of ghostly smarm as he reclines on his throne and servants pile treasures about him. There's not even a sense of genuine sadism as he rejects a line of gorgeous brides. Nor is there a sense of genuine lust. He's just cruel without any sense of motive, not even for the pleasure of cruelty.

Eartha Kitt plays Yzma, advisor to the emperor, functioning less like Jaffar in Aladdin than like Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, another story about a monarch being deposed and magically cursed by his advisor. In that case, Prince Ahmed is not the most interesting character in his film but he's still engaging enough because we understand his motives right from the beginning.

Yzma is juxtaposed with Kuzco and the two are shown to be similar in their contempt for the peasantry. Yet Yzma's motives are much clearer--she desires the throne--and she takes delightful pleasure in her schemes. When Kitt was originally cast, there were to be musical numbers in the film similar to other Renaissance era films but ultimately The Emperor's New Groove went the same route as Tarzan and The Lion King, employing pop singers, in this case Sting and Tom Jones, to sing separately from the main characters. What a tragedy that Eartha Kitt didn't have a musical number. Jones plays "Theme Song Guy", giving us a humdrum musical number to introduce Kuzco, while Sting's song appears only in the end credits. He wrote a number of songs that were cut from the film and the song that does remain is so tonally at odds with the rest of the film I actually laughed when it started to play. It's like if "Feed the Birds" played at the end of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

John Goodman has some natural warmth as Pacha, the peasant who ends up being Sabu to Kuzco's John Justin, but he's also a bit boring and the only interest to be had between he and Kuzco comes from the zaniness of the animation.

Some of it is so good it reminds me of the heyday of Disney and Warner Brothers shorts about Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny. One is reminded that the studios put the kind of effort in those shorts later reserved only for feature films.

Yzma is good but the only character who completely works is her henchman, Kronk, voiced by Patrick Warburton. He's just such a good natured lug that there's comedy inherent just in the fact that he's working for Yzma. And then he's oddly proficient--as when he accidentally takes over duties as a cook at a diner or reveals he can speak Squirrel.

The diner sequence is an example of how postmodern the humour is--which I think is the real reason Kuzco himself is so empty. He's too busy being a kind of character to be a character. It also means The Emperor's New Groove is kind of the anti-Pocahontas. There are no natives of Peru in the cast and there's no apparent attempt to honour Incan culture. On the one hand, I do think Disney needed to move away from the idiotic politics behind Pocahontas and some cartoonish anarchy is certainly a way to do that. But on the other hand, the humour in The Emperor's New Groove is often so obnoxious and empty, I feel like it left a hole in my stomach lining. At least Pocahontas and John Smith were sexy. The best The Emperor's New Groove can manage is one affable henchman and it's just not enough.

The Emperor's New Groove is available on Dinsey+.

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This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur