2022 is of the tiger, which I could see already on New Year's Eve at Kashiharajingu. People were setting up booths for to-day so I'm going to go see if anything's still shaking this afternoon.
A lot of people stuck around for midnight--the booths opened at 11pm. But didn't feel like hanging around in the cold so I went home and watched Yojimbo. I remembered one of the gang bosses in the movie is called Ushitora because his mother went into labour during the Year of the Cow and gave birth in the Year of the Tiger. So his name literally means "Cowtiger".
Yesterday, one of the teachers I work with made me Osechi, a big sort of bento box traditionally eaten on New Years. So I'll be having some more of that now for lunch. Happy New Years, everyone.
Last night I finished Scenes from a Marriage, Ingmar Bergman's 1973 miniseries. It was good from the beginning but by the end it achieves a stranger power as the title becomes an increasingly bold statement.
The latter half of the series might have been better titled Dissolution and Remnants of a Marriage as we watch Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullman) first separate, go through a lengthy divorce process, and finally are married to other people.
Yet each episode features the two coming together and having long conversations in each others' arms, even having sex. They shift back and forth from angry rebukes to passionate pleas. One minute Johan claims he has always hated Marianne, and has had this thought every time he's had sex with her--the next minute, he's pleading with her to take him back. Marianne casually mentions never having had an orgasm until she had sex with a man named Henrik, after she'd divorced Johan. And yet it's with Johan she sneaks away to a summer house while Henrik's out of town.
With all these extreme contradictions, one might expect the quality of writing to be on the level of a silly soap opera. Bergman's genius, though, makes all of this completely credible, the confusion and contradiction always real. We watch Johan slowly transform from a content, confident, and respected professor to a man whom the world has taken down several pegs. One woman, as kindly as possible, informs him how bad his poetry is. A prestigious job in America quietly evaporates. At first Johan bitterly complains to Marianne about campus politics and conspiracies before finally accepting he was just never as amazing as he thought he was.
Marianne has learned to be more confident, more in touch with her own feelings (and not just when it comes to orgasms). Arguably, their separation and separate marriages have made Johan and Marianne a better couple by the end of the series. And yet Marianne fearfully clings to Johan and, with genuine desperation, asks why she's never loved him. Are the two of them, in the end, simply friends, comrades who know each other better than anyone else, or are they something more? Which is the more comforting answer?
Scenes from a Marriage is available on The Criterion Channel.
I was looking forward to The Book of Boba Fett more than I've looked forward to anything Star Wars in several years. Or anything, really. Robert Rodriguez directing Star Wars? One of the most talented action directors of the past thirty years who happens also not to be shill? Sign me up. I knew there was no way the show could live up to those expectations but it was pretty damned good. The first episode was better than any episode of The Mandalorian except maybe the Taika Waititi episode or the one also directed by Robert Rodriguez. But, as is so often the case with a show I love, a lot--not all and not even most--of the viewer reaction seems to be along the lines of, "That was boring! Nothing happens!" I've been looking for reviews and reactions in the hopes that other people love it as much as I do and so far it seems the critics are on my side, at least. YouTube critics seem to love it--then I scroll down to their comments, many of which are variations of "It was okay but no Mandalorian" or "It was boring."
There are many movies and TV shows of the past few years that have produced a big divide between critics and general audiences but I don't think it's always for the same reasons. Sometimes I think it's because critics get paid off, or bribed by other means, to give good reviews, sometimes I think bad audience scores are coordinated troll efforts. In the case of Book of Boba Fett, I think the issue is more along the lines of Twin Peaks: The Return. I often think about one review I've read of the David Lynch series that remarked on how, for most shows nowadays, you don't really need to see it, you just need to hear the dialogue to know what's going on. You can't be texting or doing homework while Twin Peaks is on and expect to get anything out of it.
People talk about how TV shows are replacing movies but TV is still much more dialogue driven than film--that's why we usually look at the writers, not the directors, as the showrunners. To watch and appreciate The Book of Boba Fett, you have to watch it.
The first ten minutes or so of the episode has little to no dialogue, We lucky viewers get to watch Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) escape the Sarlacc pit. Which was nice and satisfyingly disgusting. Rodriguez does a much better job than any previous director of making the effects backgrounds feel organically integrated with the foreground live action. The sandstorms and Boba's fatigue distorted vision after he's captured by sandpeople help give the situations an emotional and visceral reality.
That's the flashbacks. We also have scenes set in the present where Boba is learning to manage the criminal empire that once belonged to Jabba. A lot of viewers expected him to be more ruthless but there's nothing really previously established about Boba that would indicate he has no sense of fair play or code of conduct. He's a bounty hunter, not an assassin. This might make him a bad fit for a crime lord, though, which I don't see as a flaw in the show's premise but rather as a perfectly credible flaw in Boba Fett's character--he's too good for his own good and he's lucky he has Fennec (Ming Na Wen) to encourage him to kill people.
I did think it was a bit implausible when the two of them walked out into the middle of the street without their helmets. Both characters should know better. But that's a problem with Jon Favreau's teleplay. Everything else works. Fennec chasing the thugs over the rooftops of Mos Espa (it's not Mos Eisley, as some critics have mistakenly called it) is a prime example of how expertly Rodriguez shoots action and of how good he is at blending effects backgrounds with footage of actors.
Temuera Morrison is terrific. He's a bit bulkier than Boba Fett looked in the original trilogy but he's so good I don't mind. Some actors can exude the aura of a coiled spring and that's often what makes someone a great action star. Jason Stathem has it, Toshiro Mifune had it. Temuera Morrison has it. I can see why he must have been so good as an abusive husband in a pair of successful movies in New Zealand in the '90s (Once Were Warriors and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted). His Boba Fett is a man whose sadistic rage seems to be just an inch behind the curtain. Which makes the fact that he's trying to be the nice crime boss an interesting paradox.
Disney is squeamish about on-screen kills but the makers of the show do get away with showing Boba obliterate a guy with a rocket launcher and a few other definite deaths. But I suspect at some point learning the lesson that he needs to rule with fear is going to be more like letting himself off the chain. Machiavelli said it's better to be feared than loved, though he also said the worst thing you can do is be hated. I'm not sure Boba's up to finding that balance and the finale might just be his daring escape from Tatooine. But I'd be down for either outcome.
The supporting cast is all good. I've always liked Ming-Na Wen and it's nice to see her finally, after all this years, in a solid production. David Pasquesi was an impressive standout as the mayor's Twi'let major-domo and Jennifer Beals was pretty hot in her brief scene as another Twi'lek. It's nice they're letting female Twi'leks be sexy again instead of trying to prove they can also be pilots and senators. Come on, they're non-existent aliens, surely they don't need any chaste representation.
But, despite all its many other good qualities, the highlight of the episode was Boba's fight with that desert monster. I wouldn't be the first to say it looked like a Ray Harryhausen monster and, egad, was that homage a smashing idea. It was the best cgi Star Wars monster since General Grievous.
The Book of Boba Fett is available on Disney+. For the love of God, watch it. Give it ratings. Give it all the ratings.
Twitter Sonnet #1507
Discarded bugs were building secret chests.
Recycled limbs adorned the model man.
Across his back the ink has tallied bests.
His burning cake is stuck upon the pan.
What tiger waits above the mochi girl?
What snowy shape approaches sun and shade?
Divided numbers close to fetch the pearl.
Delinquent lunches eat to make the grade.
With plastic hair, we built a heavy mask.
Its hunger turned around and bit the snow.
Resources pooled to hoist the aging cask.
Engagements shift to suit her picky beau.
To find the air again's to grasp at sand.
To keep a viper pit's to pay the band.
For some reason, Sony's not releasing the new Spider-Man film until January seventh in Japan. I guess that's better than Ghostbusters: Afterlife, another Sony film, which isn't being released until February. What gives? Sony's a Japanese company and Covid's not nearly as bad in Japan. I guess I'm not bent out of shape about it--I hated Spider-Man: Far From Home and the new one has the same director and writers. I guess it goes to show how much I like the character that I'm willing to shell out money to see it. Or maybe I'm just happy that it managed to beat out China's propaganda film, The Battle at Lake Changjin, to be the top grossing film of the year. But, really, the entertainment media look like a bunch of saps for having faith in the numbers China reported for Chiangjin and Hi, Mom. You're really trying to tell me there are more people in China who wanted to see a cheap period war film than who wanted to see No Time to Die or even Venom 2?
Anyway, whatever my love for the character, I realised I'd never gotten around to watching 2011's The Amazing Spider-Man. This is despite the fact that I like Emma Stone and I thought Andrew Garfield was amazing in Never Let Me Go. I guess I was sore about them booting Sam Raimi. Well, now Raimi's making one for the real MCU, though I heard Disney's demanded a lot of reshoots of him. Yeah, though he can make a Spider-Man or Evil Dead 2, Raimi does now and then make a Spider-Man 3, but I'd still say the price for allowing an auteur his freedom is well worth it in the long run. Eighty years from now, a lot of the MCU movies will have about the same status The Egyptian or The Robe has now, those massive sand and sandal epics of the 1950s most people don't remember who were born after 1960.
And The Amazing Spider-Man stands as testimony of just how boring a film can be when it's produced by people whose concerns are limited to marketability.
Garfield and Stone do give good performances, particularly Garfield, who manages to make all of the many moments his Peter Parker is at a loss for words completely distinct and reflective of internal motives. It's great, too, seeing a Spider-Man movie again where the love interests seem like they're sexually attracted to each other instead of just accepting couplehood by default. Altogether, though, The Amazing Spider-Man feels very small.
A big part of it is the cinematography, which is much darker than the Raimi films or the Jon Watts films. It seems more appropriate for a Batman movie but Batman movies are more stylish than this. This movie's whole style concept just seems to be "darker". And that extends to Spider-Man's costume which includes big sunglass lenses for the eyes.
But, just like the Raimi and Watts films, he spends way too much time with the mask off. It's especially egregious in the Jon Watts movies when the mask's eyes are more expressive. The filmmakers never let the audience get used to the idea that this is his normal face, that Peter Parker's face is the disguise. After it worked so well with Deadpool, there's no excuse for it now.
Anyway, the performances are all good in The Amazing Spider-Man except they never overcome the lifelessness of Webb's direction. Garfield has a lot of time to spend with Sally Field and Martin Sheen who create a distinct dynamic for the Parker household. But the scenes are shot like those general purpose, stock videos sold to advertisers.
So, if Sony knows what's good for it, they'll never waste time revisiting this iteration of the character . . .
The Amazing Spider-Man is available on Netflix in Japan.
Another two issues of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirenia Digest were in my inbox yesterday, issues 185 and 191. They're both good but 191 is by far the superior.
191 features a story called "Metamorphosis D (Imago)" and it's about a couple who have conflicting memories about a possibly extraterrestrial encounter in the woods. The interesting thing is how this leads to an argument between the two and it becomes a nice illustration of how two people can be misled down paths of reasoning by invoking knowledge and experience that aren't precisely appropriate. But they may be imprecisely appropriate, or related on some fundamental level of human conception. Which makes misunderstanding more likely--because they're compelling rabbit holes.
One character says something in her sleep which the other misinterprets. The first interprets anger in the other as the prelude to physical violence. It may not be, or maybe she's picking up on a frequency in itself that is as irrational as physical violence. This is part of a story that also includes the narrator's perception of physical transformation and two distinct recollections for the same period of time. It's great--it's one thing to have a story about conflicting perceptions, it's another thing to have one that makes it so intimate.
185 featured another of Caitlin's stories with a narrator using futuristic dialect, another nice, poetic experiment in language craft. The story about sinister mannequins is not bad, though maybe not the most interesting one I've ever seen in the Digest.
I did get some Wrath of Khan vibes from Friday's new episode of The Expanse. I'd be surprised if Keon Alexander isn't basing his performance of Marco Inaros on Ricardo Montalban. But while I can believe Khan as the leader of a group of genetically engineered radicals, I still don't buy Marco Inaros as the leader of the whole Belter civilisation.
Even Filip (Jasai Chase-Owens) stood up to him after his embarrassing failure to destroy the Rocinante. I'll admit, that was pretty satisfying, but I still remember when this show's big selling point was its realism.
The whole trap Inaros set up for Ceres station doesn't quite make sense, either. Sure, it is now the responsibility of Earth and Mars to care for the people Inaros abandoned, and this looks again like allegory for occupying U.S. forces in the Middle East. But once again, the analogy doesn't quite work. There's no religion tying the people on the station to Inaros' mission so he's just going to look like what he is, a madman who promised them victory and then scarpered. Even if Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) can't get supplies to the people, the Earthers will have to work extra hard at being assholes for Inaros' PR plan to work.
It felt a little out of place, but I liked Peaches (Nadine Nicole) expressing remorse for the mentor she murdered a few seasons back. And Bobbie (Frankie Adams) and Amos (Wes Chatham) eating together was cute. I still don't want to see them fight.
The Expanse is available on Amazon Prime.
Twitter Sonnet #1506
Departing feathers speak of frozen birds.
Beyond a veil of static crawled the sky.
Assorted lights reflect in liquid words.
Distinguished bells adorn the bold and shy.
A question formed in strings of Christmas light.
To step beyond a sleigh we need a boot.
We never ask the snow to win a fight.
We never grew a man from twisted root.
Our stars engaged the liquid fabric coat.
Recalling paint, the model plastic grew.
Replacing trees, we built a giant boat.
Across the seas, we taught the natives blue.
On morning three the puppy played a horn.
Beneath the douglas fir a cup was born.
A lot of people list Eyes Wide Shut as their ironic favourite Christmas movie. Is it really so ironic, though? Like a lot of Christmas movies, it's about family bonds being tested. And it gets at something most Christmas movies lack the courage to--the questionable reality of any feeling of connexion between two human beings.
I guess I've written about this movie enough already. I wrote a long analysis back in 2007. I've certainly read plenty of analyses. In earlier attempts to write about the film, I've focused on Tom Cruise's character, Bill Hartford, as being a kind sexual alien. Yes, maybe he is, but I find him much more sympathetic now, perhaps because I've lost more of my youthful confidence that two people can ever truly know each other. People have impressions, and sometimes we seek to validate the impressions other people have of us because we like them or at the very least don't want them to feel disturbed. That's why Alice (Nicole Kidman) wears her mask. Bill is so innocent he doesn't even realise he wears a mask until a literal mask is put on him and he's forced to take it off.
It's brilliant how the film continually presents new situations that test the boundary between sexual motives and chaste interaction. To establish a doctor as the main character, a man whose profession requires him to examine naked women from time to time, is a perfect choice. Here's a man with complete confidence in how he's compartmentalised his life. He finds that confidence continually undermined as he finds himself put off-balance again and again.
Actually, I only wanted to talk about the Christmas lights to-day. If the movie doesn't make you believe in the true meaning of Christmas, it can at least make you believe in the power of Christmas lights. My goodness, Stanley Kubrick knew what he was doing. All that diffuse, colourful light is simultaneously fantastic and ordinary, sensuous and childish, hedonistic and civilised.
I hope you're enjoying your Christmas or one of the other holidays celebrated on December 25 or 26. Eyes Wide Shut is available on Netflix in Japan (and yes, it's the rated X version).
Happy Christmas, everyone. It's been the 25th for over eleven hours here in Japan. Christmas is plenty popular at the department stores, less so at the temples. But I went to Nara Park, which has a cluster of temples, anyway because it's crawling with friendly, wild deer.
Because of this, deer are the mascots of Nara prefecture so it's always kind of incidentally Christmasy here, at least to Western eyes.
Also, sometimes there are Christmas trees in the official buildings. The boy with the antlers is Sento-kun, Nara's mascot.
Other wildlife was scarce on my recent trip but I did see two herons.
The deer are very hungry. They're used to people giving them special deer cookies you can buy throughout the park but crowds have been scarce due to Covid. Fortunately, there are acorns for deer who aren't too lazy to forage for them:
Here's a deer coming down the steps of the Great South Gate of Todai-ji Temple:
Here's the gate:
There are two massive wooden statues from the 13th century under the gates:
They looked nice and sinister in the sunset:
May Heaven's guardian warriors keep your Christmas safe.
Twitter Sonnet #1505
The dotted egg completes the grammar tank.
To sleep in softer shells we cooked the bird.
We kept the feathers hidden near the bank.
We know a flaying paper breathed a word.
In icy walls the strings of light awoke.
The timing chimed with turning glass and dust.
A ragged tyre gripped a broken spoke.
The forest changed in sudden bursts of rust.
The same movie's changed its bands of hue.
Where hopeless steps were looped around the arm.
The campers left some wrappers plus a clue.
The hidden monkey's sandwich was on a farm.
The red and green were cookie colour sweet.
The pulsing lights became electric beat.
Few things are more gratifying than breaking free from the restraints of society. 2013's Frozen, like The Lion King, is an exceptionally successful Disney movie for doing things that run contrary to Disney's usual morality. In this case, it's to show how satisfying it can be to reject society. Written and co-directed by Jennifer Lee, it's the natural next step following her work on Wreck-It Ralph. Frozen is a more genuine recontextualising of a villain. Unlike Ralph, Elsa actually does hurt people just by being herself. Elsa as a character, particularly with the song "Let It Go", is one of the most powerful things Disney has ever produced. Unfortunately, not everything about the movie works, especially in the final act in which the story's true villain, Hans, lacks sensible motivations and implies a deeply cynical attitude about human nature. But, in addition to Elsa, the film has many good qualities, including its art design and some of its supporting characters. Mostly I stand by my first review of the film from 2014, in which I talked about the differences between the Hans Christian Anderson story and the Disney film. To-day I'm going to elaborate a bit on my feelings and discuss some other things that have occurred to me in the intervening years.
The project was long in development before Jennifer Lee came aboard--in fact, she didn't join production until 2012, just a year before the film's release, which is hardly any time at all for an animated film like this. But considering how much Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen outshine Disney films from the previous few years, Lee is likely responsible for much of what makes Frozen work.
However, it wasn't Lee who decided to shift the story's focus to Elsa. According to an interview from 2013, it was the writing of the song "Let It Go" that led to the film's transformation.
Sung by [Idina] Menzel, the Tony Award winner for her role of Elphaba in “Wicked,” the song sheds a new light on Elsa.
“Up until then, Elsa was pretty much a straightforward villain,” says Lee. “We wanted to know more about her, what she would be like if she could be herself without fear. After that, she was much more complex, more interesting and sympathetic.”
The change required Lee to do some rewriting, which she was happy to do.
“Everything now hangs on the theme of the power of love versus the power of fear,” she said.
Does it, though? "Let It Go" could be seen as a song about rejecting fear but it's also a song about rejecting society. It's Elsa's parents, and her consideration for Anna, that led to the repression she's now dramatically letting go of. "Let It Go" is a rejection of love and fear. It has a lot in common with The Lover Speaks' "No More 'I Love You's", a song made famous when Annie Lennox covered it.
Lennox even seems to be making herself a sort of Disney villain in the video.
You could look further to see how the love versus fear dichotomy really isn't present in the film. It's Elsa's caution, substituting for Anna's absent fear, that compels her to forbid Anna's marriage to Hans. The accident that led to Anna's injury earlier in the film might have been prevented had she and Elsa been instilled with some fear regarding the use of Elsa's powers. The film does not successfully portray love and fear as opposites, instead they often work in tandem, which is certainly more realistic.
Recently, I finally gained access to Japanese Disney+. Despite the fact that I live in Japan, I had to use a VPN to access my Disney+ account because Disney in Japan had some kind of exclusive deal with the Japanese smart phone company Docomo. That seems to be over because I was able to load the site without my VPN. I can switch on the original English dialogue for the movie but all the titles and signage are in Japanese.
The Japanese title, Anna to Yuki no Jou, or "Anna and the Snow Queen", shows how the makers and distributors of the film originally thought audiences would interpret the story's focus. Anna is also voiced by Kristen Bell, the biggest star in the film. Sayaka Kanda, who voiced Anna in the Japanese version, was also a big star (she died last week in an apparent suicide). Anna is much more of the Disney princess mould--unwaveringly optimistic, usually cheerful, and inclined to perceive only the best qualities of people she meets. This is something the film lightly parodies in how quickly she ends up engaged to Hans.
It's not exactly fair to previous Disney princesses. None of them are explicitly shown to get engaged to their princes on the same day they met them, with the possible exception of Cinderella. But, as I argued in my Cinderella analysis, Cinderella's marriage is better interpreted as a political one than as a romantic one. Or rather, the romance for Cinderella is not in that she finds a man she absolutely adores, but in that she exchanges the prison of her family for the power and beauty of royal status. Which is arguably the same thing Hans is trying to do in Frozen.
Initially presented as a basically decent fellow, the movie drastically alters its tone for the character late in the story when Anna seeks him to heal her frozen heart by giving her "true love's kiss". He adopts a sadistic tone as he tells her she need then find someone who loves her and goes on, like a caricature of a Bond villain, to outline his plan to marry her and murder Elsa. On the face of it, this doesn't make any sense because we've seen him not only refrain from killing Elsa but also prevent other people from killing her. Maybe he figures that if Elsa dies the winter will be permanent but that's to ascribe motives which the movie makes no attempt to imply. It seems much more likely that Hans was rewritten at a date too late to modify material earlier in the film.
Maybe at some point the problem for Anna was not about choosing between a good man and an evil man but a man for whom her affection grew naturally over time as opposed to a man who dazzled her with a meetcute. Which would have been a much subtler and worthier story. As it is, smashing the villain button on Hans late in the game looks like panic and results in a cynical implication--even though Hans may act like a reasonable person, underneath he's a complete psychopath. And it's true, psychopaths are known for their appealing facades, but this is a children's movie and Hans isn't merely charming. He's shown taking action out of apparent concern for Anna as well as the kingdom. This isn't so much of a "Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover" situation as it is a "You Should Never Trust Anyone" situation.
In their duet, Hans notably sings about finding a "place" rather than a person and we know he has 13 brothers ahead of him in the line of succession. There was nothing odd or even sinister about a prince seeking a marriage with a foreign princess in early modern Europe. In fact, that's why Elizabeth Stuart, the "Winter Queen", married Frederick of the Rhine. It was part of James I's project to forge peace between Catholics and Protestants. The idea that neither Elsa nor Anna wouldn't consider political motives in Hans' courtship is much stranger than the idea that they would. In fact, Hans would be completely in his rights to be surprised at Anna's interpretation of their relationship as "true love", even after an honestly amiable fraternisation.
Interestingly, Anna's dialogue with Hans seems to set up his perception of Elsa as a wanton killer.
HANS: What happened out there?
ANNA: Elsa struck me with her powers.
HANS: You said she'd never hurt you.
ANNA: I was wrong . . . She froze my heart and only an act of true love can save me.
Any reasonable person hearing this dialogue would interpret Anna's words to mean that Elsa had intentionally used lethal force against her. It's slightly unnatural for Anna to frame it this way, even accidentally, which hints at a writer's intention to unnaturally manipulate character development. Anna never amends her account, either, so right up to the point when Hans aims a killing blow at Elsa and Anna blocks it with her hand, he has good reason to think that Elsa attempted to murder Anna. All of this suggests that he was originally conceived as, at the very least, a more nuanced character. This might have been a film with no true villain at all.
But let's go back to "Let It Go". It makes a lot of sense that introducing the song to the film required rewrites. Even as it is, it implies some things that aren't really supported elsewhere in the story. Elsa comes back to the "conceal, don't feel" line we'd heard in an earlier song. But where does this come from? We see her father teaching the line to her like a mantra. Presumably it's so her powers won't get out of control. The trolls advise the family that Elsa should learn to control her power and it seems that Elsa's parents, out of love and fear, would rather just teach her to repress it. Then there's a line in "Let It Go"--"You'll never see me cry." Who is that directed towards? She's not repressing her emotions anymore. Possibly it's to announce that her feelings are now her private property, possibly it's to say that the joy she finds in her new freedom precludes any chance of tears. It seems, in any case, to imply that someone wanted to see her cry. Who? Instinctively, we think of the parents. The liberation of the song is so effective that it implies either real abuse or that Elsa's happiness is dependent on her freedom to exercise destructive behaviour.
Although Frozen is popular in Japan, students I've talked to about it don't seem to find the song particularly interesting. It turns out the Japanese lyrics are vastly different. Notably, there's no "let it go" in the Japanese "Let It Go". What is one repeated line in English becomes various lines in Japanese that are about Elsa revealing her true self and about her intention to live alone. Instead of saying "The cold never bothered me anyway" she says "I'm not cold". It makes her sound like she's in denial, like she's out of touch with reality, whereas the thrill in the English version is in the impression that she's getting in touch with reality for the first time in years.
She sings about freedom from right and wrong and about how she's one with the air and the sky. This is very Romantic, as in the English literary movement. It might have come from Byron's Manfred and that's why I think she's a Byronic or Satanic Heroine. It's better if you consider how likely it would be that she knows her storm would be doing some damage even before Anna points out Arendelle is frozen over. She's not stupid, she'd have to know kicking off winter in the middle of summer would have consequences.
The song has been read as queer-coded, which is not surprising for a song about repressing one's natural urges in order to please one's family. But there are some slightly sexual undertones to the song, too, especially in a line like "Your perfect girl is gone". That it's accompanied by a shot of Elsa wiggling her hips--a moment mocked in Frozen II--suggests that there's some sexual behaviour included on the menu of her new liberation. She's notably without a romantic partner in the film. Perhaps the implication is simply that she's indulging in her own sex appeal for her own pleasure. There's a certain courage in seeing oneself as sexually appealing. And, of course, it's vanity, adding another kind of bad it feels so good to be.
Frozen is available on Disney+.
...
This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.
I can say it with certainty now--Hawkeye is the best of the Disney+ MCU shows. I give WandaVision a lot of points for audacity but Hawkeye is more consistent in quality. Unevenness is a problem that plagues all the other MCU Disney+ shows, probably because so many novice writers are given filler episodes. Hawkeye benefits from being short and having a simpler premise. The two episodes written by Jonathan Igla, the first episode and the final episode, are by far the strongest and accounting for more than a third of the series' overall runtime, they do a lot of heavy lifting. The finale did a good job balancing so many characters and plot elements. It isn't perfect, but it mostly succeeds where it counts.
Spoilers after the screenshot
The biggest disappointment was Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), although it was kind of inevitable. What made him strong on Daredevil was that he had so much time to develop. On Hawkeye, he basically has one episode, and I can imagine anyone who hasn't seen the Daredevil series is wondering what all the fuss is about this guy. It was a big mistake giving him a showdown with Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) as the whole concept of Kingpin is that he's a guy who doesn't usually get his hands dirty, he has minions doing all that for him. That he randomly walks up to Eleanor (Vera Farmiga) in the street feels really off. Kingpin shouldn't be going anywhere without ten lieutenants flanking him. That said, D'Onofrio still has great presence and does that wonderful jaw-clenching thing. The sound design deepened his voice, too, which is a cheap but often effective trick for villains.
Vera Farmiga continues to be appreciably slimy. It was a bit silly when she hit Kingpin with her car--there's no way she had time to crawl to the front seat, back up the car, and circle it around into position. But she oozed menace when she was trying to bargain with Kate by acting so wide eyed and innocent. Who knows how else she benefited from her partnership with Kingpin?
Speaking of partners, it was effectively sweet when Clint (Jeremy Renner) finally called Kate his partner. The buildup in previous episodes comes to good fruition and Kate's speech about how inspiring Clint was to her as a little girl was also very nice.
It really was a good Christmas show, though it hit the comedy notes a bit too hard sometimes. Clint getting stuck in the tree was dopey and the Larpers went from bad to full cringe. I did love Tony Dalton, though, taking the opportunity to brandish a sword. He's frankly much more enjoyable here than on Better Call Saul, though in most respects I'd say Saul is superior to this and most other shows from the past ten years.
I wanted to like the banter between Florence Pugh and Hailee Steinfeld a lot more and it was nice to be able see that the actresses were indeed in the same location this time. The rapid switches from earnest action to broad comedy, though, only served to diminish the impact of both. When Yelena does the exaggerated "Ow!" after Kate hit her with the bola, it seemed way out of character and downright sloppy for a Black Widow. However, Pugh and Renner fighting on the ice while finally having the emotional confrontation about Natasha's death was very effective due especially to Pugh's and Renner's performances.
I'm warming up to Echo, too, and Alaqua Cox looked very good with her hair down. I do think, though, that the Echo series will really be more of a Wilson Fisk series, if it knows what's good for it.
So overall, a good finale, and a good cap to a solid miniseries. Hawkeye is available on Disney+.
One of humanity's perennial tragedies is the tendency for ideological conflict to crush normal life in the name of justice. 2015's Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) depicts the start of the Nepali Civil War from the perspective of a child who's just trying to keep a hen in the middle of it all. While people are harassed or killed by Maoists or government forces, all the time this boy just wants to maintain his little egg machine. Director Min Bahadur Bham draws influence from Italian Neorealists to produce a somewhat cold yet interesting film.
I thought of Vittorio De Sica or Robert Bresson when I realised most of the people in Kalo Pothi were probably not professional actors. Khadka Raj Nepali as the little boy, Prakash, is pretty convincing though some of the supporting performances are a bit stiff and sort of bewildered.
I can see why Bham opted for this style. A gathering of Maoists is stripped of any genuinely rabble-rousing energy to show us these are basically just a group of random people making noise. The camera work is also often conspicuously cold and avoids framing anyone in suggestive ways, often putting people off-centre in telephoto shots. Shots often begin several beats before action occurs and then wait several beats after characters have left the screen, as though the presence of humanity isn't worthy of any particular notice. Sometimes this does make one wonder if the film is worth noticing but it is a nicely apolitical portrait of an intensely political, bloody chapter in human history.
Kalo Pothi is available on Vimeo.
Twitter Sonnet #1504
The spinning birds required second beaks.
The chopper sky confused the muscle run.
Behind the palms we drank the island leaks.
A box of books can weigh a metric ton.
The bird was blue but not as blue as ink.
We measured days with candied drops of rain.
And something fell behind the rusty sink.
We think perhaps the map will lead to Spain.
The jagged lines describe a softer serve.
Along the cable, lights convene to eat.
The sugar road compels the sweets to swerve.
It's said the legs will end with people's feet.
The burger crafted well deserves the yen.
The chicken tutored well escapes the pen.
