Guts of the Artist

In a world without pain or infection, artists have nowhere to go but in. David Cronenberg's 2022 film Crimes of the Future is good old fashioned Cronenberg. It's weird how I can find something so comforting and disturbing at the same time. But I admired how much this movie made my skin crawl in much the way I've always admired Cronenberg's work of the '80s and '90s.

Crimes of the Future, which, aside from the title, has no relation to Cronenberg's other movie of the same name, begins with a little boy on the beach. His mother, from a nearby balcony, warns him not to eat anything out there. He doesn't, but she's not pleased when he comes back and proceeds to eat the plastic wastebasket in the bathroom.

And so she murders him, disturbed by this inhuman behaviour which, we learn later, happens to resemble surgical modifications her ex-husband, and the boy's father, had made to himself which enabled him to eat plastic. So we start to get some idea of the social and political forces at play in the future imagined by Cronenberg.

But the protagonists of the film are a pair of performance artists played by Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux. This may be one of Cronenberg's most personal films because in scenes where Mortensen's character, Saul Tenser, talks about his creative process and Lea Seydoux talks about surgery, we're reminded Cronenberg has a background in both the avante garde art scene and in surgical medicine. In this world, pain and infectious disease have been almost completely eradicated. Saul, an anomoly, does feel pain as part of a condition in which he regularly grows entirely new internal organs. In art performance pieces, Seydoux's character, Caprice, performs surgery on him and describes to an enraptured but small indie audience the nature of Saul's most recent creations. The way he talks about them fittingly mirrors the uncertain, yet personal and driven, perspective of an artist.

In some ways the story resembles other things I've read and seen, like some older issues of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirenia Digest as well as the story concept behind David Bowie's Outside album. In Cronenberg's own oeuvre, I was reminded of Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, and, of course, Videodrome. But there's a good dose of The Brood and The Fly in here, too.

In one sense, I think Cronenberg's vision with this movie reflects trends in modern society as young people increasingly indulge in more extravagant self-modification. Wealthier transgender YouTubers like Contrapoints and Jessie Gender have undergone skull shaving procedures that drastically alter the shape of their heads to appear more feminine and, living in Japan, I see plenty of people who've had work done on their eyes. But Cronenberg presents a world enraptured by biomechanical technology and transfixed by strange internal organs. The trend these days seems to be to move away from acknowledging the physical body as more and more people prefer to psychologically inhabit the internet with more honesty than the corporeal world. We live in a world of Virtual Youtubers and people who use increasingly sophisticated digital filters to totally alter their appearance. In Asian countries, young people are increasingly presenting a fantasy reality in which they and their friends are more and more resembling anime characters. Cronenberg's vision underestimates, and is likely not interested in, the youthful compulsion to be pretty.

But taken on its own merits, Crimes of the Future is a fascinating portrait of a strange alternate universe of compulsions and sex. Cinematographer Douglas Koch, standing in for the sadly absent Peter Suschitzky, provides a nice imitation of the kind of sensual shadows Suschitzky created for many of Cronenberg's previous films. The stalwart Howard Shore returns once again to provide the score, this time choosing a soft electronic sound. Mortensen and Seydoux both give fearless and generously sensuous performances. Seydoux in particular comes off as more committed than I've seen her in any other role.

As is often the case with Cronenberg at his best, he blends repulsive and attractive stimuli so seamlessly that you start to believe he really has invented a new form of sexuality.

Twitter Sonnet #1617

An angry brain controls the neighbour's flat.
The wakeful birds disrupt the nightly row.
Across the street, a dinner fills the vat.
Nutrition doomed the crispy bacon sow.
A pitcher benched could yet accrue a score.
Observing bills could float about the pool.
The only threat's an absent wild boar.
A quiet mouse could trick a singing fool.
A proper tool was melted prey in Hell.
A purple sickness crouched in foil bricks.
A poison breakfast comes for master's bell.
A passion swelled like algae turning tricks.
Configured guts accepted sex and art.
The moistened play provides an actor's part.

Listen to the Words

It still takes a long, long time for me to colour pages of my comic and I still look for things to listen to. Lately I haven't been keen on audiobooks for some reason but I discovered The Criterion Channel is a good source of one of my favourite things to listen to; movie commentary tracks. Does any other streaming service have these? I'm so happy Criterion does, and surprised, considering they seem to have gone well out of vogue even for special edition Blu-Ray releases.

While colouring yesterday, I listed to film critic Tony Rayns' commentary for Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), film scholar Peter Cowie's commentary for Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), and I listened again to Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola's commentary track for the 1941 Thief of Bagdad.

I've also been listening to a lot of things on YouTube, particularly this guy:

The History Guy has uploaded so many videos on so many topics that, even though the videos are relatively short, I can just leave YouTube cycling through them while I focus on colouring. I love the diversity of topics he chooses. In one video, he talks about a narrowly avoided airline disaster in the 1980s, in another, he's talking about Ancient Rome, and in another about the cultivation of bananas or about the history of screws in Canada. It's all done with a palpable love for history and blessedly free of discernible modern political bias. Yesterday I listened to part of his compilation on wild west outlaws:

I find I never get tired of it.

My summer vacation, the month of August, is coming to an end and I go back to a life dominated by Kashihara's marvelous junior high schools on Friday. It's been a good August and I'm glad I managed to get at least one chapter of my comic done. I'm sure looking forward to autumn, though, and September 15th, formerly known as "felt hat" day, when I've decided I'll switch from wearing my straw hat to felt hats again. What am I talking about?

I don't wear a boater, though, I wear a Stetson straw fedora, which you can see in my own YouTube video about Cinderella:

That's another thing I did this summer, that video. That mustard coloured hat band was another thing. I bought that hat last year and it came with a thin, leather band held on with cheap glue. It came apart after I walked in a rainstorm, which was okay because I didn't like it anyway. This year I followed a bunch of online tutorials to make my own band from some ribbon I bought at a craft store. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. But thank goodness people love DIY in Japan so it was easy to find ribbon and all the sewing tools I needed.

The hat itself is actually polyester, not real straw. Generally I try to avoid synthetics but I've heard genuine straw hats don't stand up to much wear. I like to have things that'll last me for years that I don't have to worry about replacing. I'm pretty happy with the hat, though I still prefer my felts. It's survived a few rainstorms now. It seems to soak up water like a sponge but it goes back to normal after I've left it drying out on the clothesline. And it's very light so I made a chinstrap for it with some twine, a bead, and a little green plastic jewel a favourite student made me in an oven. This is one of the things kids in the handmaking clubs routinely do in the junior high schools here. Students have presented me with all kinds of little plastic handmade trinkets I'm always honoured to receive.

Deborah Talks

There's a new chapter of my web comic, Dekpa and Deborah, online. It's a Deborah heavy chapter. Enjoy.

Happy Birthday Mary Shelley, Evelyn De Morgan, Joan Blondell, Fred MacMurray, Peggy Lipton, Frank Conniff, and Jessica Henwick.

Drakes Get It Done

If the first episode of House of the Dragon centred on Daemon, the second, "The Rogue Prince", sets out to establish Rhaenyra as the other lead. She doesn't quite hit the ground running as well as Daemon did but she's not bad.

I'm enjoying Milly Alcock's performance and it's a shame she's set to be replaced by another actress when events jump forward in time later in the season. Alcock is 22 years old, it seems silly to replace her with a 30 year old actress. Also, I see Alcock was born on April 11, which also happens to be my birthday. So clearly the stars are on her side.

A lot of her drama so far revolves around the unprecedented circumstance of a female heir to the Iron Throne. I wish the show did a better job of establishing how this sexism manifests in the minds of the people of Westeros and what are some of the root causes of it. It makes it difficult to drum up meaningful drama about glass ceilings, so far it's being treated merely as a matter of Rhaenyra needing to prove herself. If women can't sit on the Iron Throne, it seems obvious for a woman who wants to do so to ask, "Why not?"

If we were to look at the real Middle Ages, say in the 1400s, which seems roughly the analogous time period to House of the Dragon, there was a history of a few reigning queens to point to as examples. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche of Castile, Margaret of Anjou. These were all regents who served as rulers while their husbands were indisposed or absent for extended periods. Maybe the ruler of Westeros would be more comparable to a Caesar but even then you could talk about Cleopatra. Does Rhaenyra really have no frame of reference? Are there no widow countesses or duchesses she could look to as prototypes?

Last week's episode incidentally illustrated one of the prime arguments against a woman ruler--women had a high chance of dying in childbirth. A king could continue marrying long after one unsuccessful childbirth. A queen, like Daemon's prospective bride or like Elizabeth I, could abstain from bearing a child but then that raises the obvious problem of succession. And it was a problem when Elizabeth I died, resulting in her cousin, James, already King of Scotland, becoming England's monarch. It seems like these are all matters the king's council on House of the Dragon should be bringing up.

At least the show continues to be lovely. It's so nice to have this weekly eye candy again.

House of the Dragon is available on HBOMax.

Twitter Sonnet #1616

The standing cat awaits attending serfs.
Important leeks were soon digested whole.
The boat's a bowl of lentil soup at berth.
The angry calf denounced the phony foal.
A waving tie salutes the action scene.
Constructing masks results in taking deals.
Remember now the fated Coffee Bean.
Exchange the buzz and scrap the dicey meals.
A rubber cross was sprinkled thick with glass.
A spider day accosts the smelly brute.
Elusive cakes bedevilled Fabienne's ass.
No burger breakfast stained the shepherd's suit.
The changing coat enabled lords to dive.
Beneath the sea do scaly devils thrive.

The Fleet Remains at Harbour

Some movies stick with me despite being neither particularly great or bad. One such film is 1955's Moonfleet. There are so many marks of greatness in this movie but they're each kind of painful because they never quite come together in a satisfying way.

I think this movie mainly stays in my mind because I listen to the soundtrack often, particularly when I'm working on my comic. Composed by the great Miklos Rozsa, it's the greatest pirate movie score that wasn't written for a pirate movie. Well, it's kind of a pirate movie. Set in the 18th century, it centres on smugglers in Dorset, and one malevolent smuggler ghost called Redbeard whose hidden diamond functions as a MacGuffin.

A lot of the changes made to the story for the film seem to have been to court fans of Treasure Island. The book's protagonist, John, is turned into a child and a rogue called Jeremy Fox (Stewart Granger) is invented to be his untrustworthy guide and protector.

Their relationship never works as well as the one between Jim and Long John Silver in Treasure Island. Stewart Granger is good as a handsome, romantic hero but he's not as sinister or mysterious as Robert Newton. The little boy in Moonfleet, Jon Whiteley, doesn't come off as discerning as Bobby Driscoll. This is a problem because he's set up as the point of view character but the viewer will always have a better understanding of circumstances than he does.

But director Fritz Lang made this a beautiful film. Here's a fine example of the lost art of conspicuously artificial set design. Lang was still the man who'd made Metropolis and Nibelungenlied. There are three beautiful women in the movie, too.

I love the mad eyes on Liliane Montevecchi, who plays the Gypsy dancer. Joan Greenwood as the wife of George Sanders' Lord James Ashwood, is delicious when she flagrantly flirts with Jeremy.

John meets a girl, too, Grace (Donna Corcoran). She first meets him, startling him, while he's looking at the corpse of a hanged man.

What a visual. Could we call that a meetcute? She seems unperturbed by the corpse, one of the things that makes her seem like she's going to be an important character. But after she leads John to Jeremy's manor, we never see her again. One of many building blocks for the bigger movie this doesn't end up being. Maybe I keep going back to watch it again because the promise baked into it calls to me. It needs to be fulfilled but it never will be. It's like a curse.

Hulk Matters

As I said yesterday, I hadn't seen 2008's The Incredible Hulk until Thursday night. I'd avoided it all these years because I was holding a torch for Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. Generally the word was that the 2008 film turned out to be vastly inferior, and I certainly found that to be true. Inferior not just to Ang Lee's movie but compared to other comic book movies in general. Certainly in 2008, which also had both The Dark Knight and Iron Man, it drew the short straw.

Do I have anything nice to say about it? It starts off more creatively than modern MCU movies, featuring location footage in Rio de Janeiro, and I love the fact that Bruce Banner is working at a soda bottling plant. It's so plausible and it connects the action plausibly back to the US but it's also really outside the box for a movie like this. I can't remember the last time a superhero had such a blue-collar job. Not since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, I think. I guess there was Shang-Chi working as a valet, but that had such an obvious tie-in to the action.

Anyway, it turns out that The Incredible Hulk doesn't start with a clean slate. Producer Gail Anne Hurd, who also produced Ang Lee's movie, called The Incredible Hulk a "requel". And, yes, it does kind of pick up where Hulk left off. Banner is in South America and the people concerned about him in the US are Thaddeus Ross and his daughter, Betty, just like in the Ang Lee movie. Eric Bana as Bruce has been replaced by Edward Norton, Sam Elliot as Thaddeus has been replaced by William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly as Betty has been replaced by Liv Tyler. From Elliot to Hurt was kind of a lateral move but Tyler and Norton can't compete with Connelly and Bana. Or with Mark Ruffalo, for that matter.

The two have absolutely no chemistry. Bruce pines for her and feels pained that he has to avoid her when he's back in the US but when the two do run into each other, despite a passionate rainstorm kiss, they quickly settle into a vibe of polite acquaintances. Tyler's very pretty but the script doesn't give her much. The real problem is Edward Norton.

This is one of the movies that cemented Norton's reputation as an actor who tries to take control of a production. It's why Bruce Banner was recast for The Avengers and I wonder now how much Joss Whedon had to do with that decision. One of the big points of contention between Whedon and the cast of Justice League is that Whedon wouldn't take notes from them. Whedon said he hadn't worked with "a ruder group of people." Now that Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, and Gal Gadot have elsewhere established themselves as difficult to work with, are we not yet at a point where we can say Whedon knew what he was talking about? I still have no desire to watch either cut of Justice League, though. But I said the same thing about The Incredible Hulk, so who knows?

Edward Norton, like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is a performer who's spent a career running away from the kinds of roles he was obviously made for. I know of only one occasion when Norton was perfectly cast--in Fight Club. He's perfect in that role because there's something fundamentally impotent about him. He's exactly the right contrast for Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden. But he's wrong for Bruce Banner because you don't ever sense his containing some kind of brutal, primeval anger. I get that impression from Eric Bana and Mark Ruffalo, not from Edward Norton. It's the same quality that prevents him from seeming like he's thirsty for Liv Tyler.

It's a shame Mark Ruffalo hasn't had a solo Hulk film. The problem is that Universal has distribution rights to any Hulk movie but Disney owns the character in every other way. Apparently Disney's relationship with Universal isn't as cosy as their relationship with Sony. You can't even watch The Incredible Hulk on Disney+, I had to rent it on Amazon.

Legally Super

Last night brought another funny little episode of She-Hulk. Like the premiere episode, it was written by Jessica Gao and it'll be the last one written by her until the finale on October 13. Hopefully the various writers-without-wikipedia-entries in between are better than the average new MCU or Star Wars writer. Gao, like Michael Waldron, who worked on Loki and Multiverse of Madness, had previously worked on Rick and Morty and it's starting to look like a fair assumption that Kevin Feige is a Rick and Morty fan. At least, so far, the MCU output from both writers hasn't been as jokey and insubstantial as Love and Thunder.

Gao has said in interviews that no-one working on She-Hulk has any legal writing expertise. That's really a shame. I've thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes but they've mainly concentrated on relationships and Jen's (Tatiana Maslany) new superpowers. Last night's episode brought in Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) and his argument, that he was a soldier just doing his job who fell prey to the effects of experimental drugs he took in good faith, sounds like it could be really interesting debated in a courtroom.

I'd actually never seen The Incredible Hulk (2008) so I watched it last night. And yeah, I think Blonsky has a pretty strong case. Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), a general in the US government, hired Blonsky, a specialist from the UK, to assist in the capture of a dangerous fugitive. It turns out that fugitive turns into a berserk green giant who apparently massacres American soldiers and indulges in wholesale destruction. It makes sense Blonsky was trying everything he could to take him down. This could make for a juicy courtroom drama and what a boon that an actor of Tim Roth's caliber was willing to come back to the MCU for it.

It's a shame Disney didn't hire David E. Kelley, creator of Ally McBeal, which could be seen on a TV in the bar in last night's She-Hulk.

Kelley even wrote a rejected Wonder Woman pilot so he might have even been up for She-Hulk (Considering the things Warner Brothers has greenlit in the past decade, I wouldn't hold the fact that Kelley's Wonder Woman pilot was rejected against it). But goddamn Disney's penny-pinching.

Anyway, so far She-Hulk is good as it is. I've heard a lot of people complaining that its feminism is too belligerent but I haven't seen that so much so far, aside from possibly the manplaining reference last week or the guy who referred to a "hot chick" as an "it" this week. Mostly the feminism has come in the form of character opinions, which are certainly plausible. Hopefully the show will keep up the good work.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1615

The deepest well concealed the biggest grain.
The sky enclosed a plot of sightless gods.
A desp'rate stroll reduced the sleeve to stain.
Some crimson coats convene and take the odds.
The darker stones were hid beneath the floor.
Assembled singers gasped when worse occurred.
Another burglar broke the busy door.
The panicked suits were never quite absurd.
The time was men were green and dames were elves.
We stretched a suit to fit a pumpkin thief.
As fury keeps a wallet, help yourselves.
The law obscures a boney serum beef.
With summer dances set for chopping blocks
She swapped her crocs for bunny bobby socks.

Only Suspects in the Season

I got caught up on Only Murders in the Building yesterday, which had its second season finale on Tuesday. It was a better finale than the first season's, I thought, and this time I wasn't able to predict the killer. Maybe many people did, because there were clues, but I have no problem with that. The problem with the first season is that I solved the murder without even trying, it was just obvious. This time, there was a nice triple fake-out that made sense within the flow of the story and allowed Steve Martin and Martin Short to hilariously imitate slow motion footage.

I wish Shirley Maclaine had appeared in more than two episodes but I suspect she wasn't up for it, it seemed to me she was being fed her lines a couple of times.

I would have liked things to have gotten hotter and heavier between Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne but Gomez really didn't seem into it. Maybe it was her normal droning line delivery but I never felt like romance was happening. It made Delevingne seem more obsessed, though, which kind of helped the finale.

The real breakout of the season, though, was Adina Verson as Tina Fey's assistant. Verson doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry! I hope she gets a lot more roles after this because she showed some good comedic timing and dramatic range.

The season ended with a really nice setup for the third season. I look forward to it. I hope it's released in fall or winter, though, because it's not as fun watching everyone in overcoats in scarves when I'm in the summer sweat box called my apartment.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ elsewhere.

Targaryens in the House

Game of Thrones is back and it doesn't suck. House of the Dragon's first episode is pretty damned good, in fact. Showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik seem to understand what people liked about Game of Thrones--complex characters with understandable motives; storytelling that takes its time; beautiful costumes and locations; good performances and brutal action; borderline hardcore sex scenes. So far it's nailing everything.

It's still hard for me to see Matt Smith as anything but the Eleventh Doctor but now he's a really buff, draconian enforcer Eleventh Doctor. Seriously, the skinny poindexter somehow turned himself into Mr. Muscles.

He's definitely the standout on the show. His character, Prince Daemon, really is a dangerously smart strongman in the making. This show isn't going to treat its viewers like idiots and that alone makes me excited. But I'm a lifelong fan of mediaeval fantasy so there's quite a lot on this show that excites me by default.

Oh, I loved that joust tournament. We need more jousting in film. I loved the contrast between the ruthless brawling and the little princesses putting their pretty wreaths on the lances.

I also liked the slight redesign for the Iron Throne, which, from what I understand, is closer to the books. I'm eager to see more of this show.

House of the Dragon is available on HBOMax.

Dinosaurs and Darkness

The above 1901 painting by one CRK, Charles R. Knight, is featured with the work of another CRK, Caitlin R. Kiernan, in the newest Sirenia Digest. It contains the last third of Caitlin's new story, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. It features some nods to old adventure stories but has a more realistically untidy ending. Like the way most things in life end, it just stops.

Like the earlier portions, and much of Caitlin's fiction nowadays, it's composed of isolated, separate narrative pieces that give a sense of scope and sometimes, surprisingly, provide momentum. But my favourite part is the last fragment, taking place in a prehistoric forest. There are some wonderfully ominous descriptions of the place and the impending fate at hand.

Lately I've also been reading H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra, a book that has a lot less to do with Cleopatra than I was expecting. She's actually much more prominent in the first part of the book even though she doesn't make an appearance but is only talked about. That at least makes her seem important, and she functions as a threatening figure in everyone's mind. But when the novel's protagonist, Harmachis, gets himself installed as her high priest, if turns into a silly harem drama, with Cleopatra and her handmaiden vying for Harmachis affection. The book is much better before that.

When Harmachis meets the goddess Isis, some of the description is Lovecraftian in its sense of scope and dread.

Soon the lights began to pale in the rolling sea of air. Great shadows shot across it, lines of darkness pierced it and rushed together on its breast, till at length I only was a shape of flame set like a star on the bosom of immeasurable night. Bursts of awful music gathered from far away. Miles and Miles away I heard them, thrilling faintly through the gloom. On they came, nearer and more near, louder and more loud, till they swept past above, below, around me, swept on rushing pinions, terrifying and enchanting me. They floated by, ever growing fainter, till they died in space. Then others came, and no two were akin. Some rattled as ten thousand sistra shaken all to tune. Some rang from the brazen throats of unnumbered clarions. Some pealed with a loud, sweet chant of voices that were more than human; and some rolled along in the slow thunder of a million drums. They passed: their notes were lost in dying echoes; and the awful silence once more pressed in upon me and overcame me.

...

Twitter Sonnet #1614

The Arctic sneaker carried cold to woods.
Escaped beyond the hedge, the clippers fight.
To tread a road of rice, request the goods.
A waxy shell can clutch nutrition tight.
The tiny 'stache was sharp as cactus spines.
Interrogated fish could only stare.
The passing seal would bark at jagged lines.
A party chose instead to suck the pear.
An answer waits across from faded locks.
Effective arrows bide the time of moons.
Enforcing sales recall the part of stocks.
The animation grants to bugs a boon.
Above the stones a sudden fight erupts.
They're old as hell but hold the tiny pups.

A Ballerina No More

Breaking out of the traditional mould of romantic relationships may be liberating and healthy but there's some weight in the opposing argument, too. Arguments about the drawbacks are artfully illustrated in Ingmar Bergman's 1949 film Thirst (Törst). Obviously more conservative than his later films, which are really too complex to be tethered to any political ideology, it's of course still way too daring for American audiences of the time. Even at this stage, though, Bergman was too interested in real human behaviour to allow his work to become simplistic propaganda.

I was watching an episode of The Boys last night but I had to stop because sometimes that show just turns into really cynical, mean-spirited propaganda. The show isn't bad when it just focuses on characters, but gets unbearable when someone working on the show gets nervous that we might not be thinking of American conservatives as secret Nazis. When I've had too much of that kind of thing, Bergman is one of the sources I turn to as respite. I'm fortunate there's still a few Bergman movies I haven't seen. I didn't expect Thirst to have any ideological influence.

But Bergman has a much surer hand, even in 1949, so when a woman is nearly seduced by a lesbian in one scene, you'd have to really force an interpretation of the lesbian as a negative character. Valburg (Mimi Nelson) is almost sympathetic, certainly she's beautifully shot.

And one suspects Viola (Birgit Tengroth, who wrote the short story the film is based on) would have been a lot better off if she'd accepted Valborg's invitation to dance.

But the film primarily focuses on Rut (Eva Henning), to whom we're introduced in the first scene, impatiently pacing a hot hotel room while her lover, Bertil (Birger Malmsten), sleeps.

Flashbacks start to appear as though we're witnessing memories that haunt her. She used to be a ballerina before her first lover, Raoul (Bengt Eklund), forced her to get an abortion that permanently damaged her health.

In the early days of her romance with Raoul, Rut is an innocent young virgin. In the present, as Bertil's lover, she's prone to erratic mood swings, to being strangely clingy with a child who peeks in on their train car--all but forcing chocolate on the child--to suddenly screaming in the middle of the night because Bertil won't wake up to have sex with her. Maybe the idea here is that this is what happens when a young person is corrupted by loose living. But Bergman's direction and the performances from the actors make it real enough for this person that it's pleasantly easy to forget about any political motive.

Thirst is available on The Criterion Channel.

Stabbing Follows Burning

A summer camp caretaker is horrifically burned after a prank pulled by teenage boys goes wrong in 1981's The Burning. He leaves the hospital permanently disfigured and decides to take his revenge . . . on a prostitute. For a guy whose life was ruined by boys, he spends a surprising amount of time going after girls. His arch enemy turns out to be a nerdy peeping tom and this might be a good time to mention Harvey Weinstein conceived the story. But a lot of other people were involved, too. The director, Tony Maylam, is competent and cinematographer Harvey Harrison is surprisingly talented. And the performances are all good down the line, much better than the typical '80s slasher.

The Burning marks the film debuts of Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter, though Hunter's barely in the film. Alexander at least accompanies the ill-fated teens canoeing up the river where the killer, Cropsy (Lou David), starts to massacre them with a pair of gardening shears.

He gets around to murdering some boys, too, but he starts out focusing on the girls. This choice is never explained

It's an ensemble cast but by the last act the main protagonist works out to be Alfred (Brian Backer), a teen we're introduced to peeping on one of the girls in the shower. Another character, Glazer (Larry Joshua), is introduced as kind of a bully who threatens to beat Alfred up and I think we're meant to hate him but I found him the most appealing character in the movie. The movie seems to assume we sympathise with Alfred, though, and even if I didn't know Harvey Weinstein came up with this story--and that he's prone to self-pity about his pathetic history with women--I still don't think I'd have liked Alfred. He's "corrupt without being charming" to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde.

The makeup effects by Tom Savini are pretty good and there are some good jump scares.

The Burning is available on Shudder until the end of the month.

A Bit of Tokyo

I was in Tokyo for five days. In addition to going to Comiket, I wanted to spend time in the biggest city in the world because I hadn't yet, really. When I first came to Japan, I stopped briefly at Narita Airport before getting a short flight to Osaka. Narita is in the general Tokyo area but it didn't really feel like I'd been to Tokyo.

I live in Kashihara, which is a small city in Nara Prefecture, less than an hour away from Kyoto and Osaka. They say the grass is always greener on the other side but actually I like this grass the best. I mean, Kashihara is small but big enough that I have everything I need. If I want to do some serious shopping, Osaka is easy to get to. If I want to see some beautiful historical buildings and swanky restaurants, Kyoto is easy to get to. It took me three hours to get to Tokyo by bullet train. But Tokyo was pretty great.

I had two guides. I knew about all the famous parts of town from all the Japanese movies I've seen. And I also asked my students to recommend places to go and things to do.

My hotel was a cheap APA hotel in Minato, around 4000 yen a night (so less than 40 dollars). There wasn't a whole lot to see around there, though I did have incredible chicken kebob at a corner restaurant one night. But my hotel was in easy walking distance of Tokyo Tower.

It was surprisingly expensive to go to the top deck--3000 yen! I ended up just going to the middle deck for 1200.

It was still a good view.

Many of my students recommended an old part of town called Asakusa. I'm not sure why. It was nice but nothing to write home about. I guess I should have visited the temple. They'd asked me to eat monjayaki but, despite searching high and low, I could not find a monjayaki restaurant that was open. Maybe it was a Covid thing but I don't know why just monjayaki restaurants would be closed.

I did see a lot of wanted posters:

I ended up just having chashu ramen for lunch.

If you like really tender pork, I strongly recommend chashu ramen.

It was after Comiket, on Sunday, that I really started exploring the city in earnest. The first place I wanted to go to was Shinjuku because I really like this Keiko Fuji song;

Shinjuku is yakuza headquarters in Tokyo so, unsurprisingly, it basically turned out to be a red light district filled with gambling dens and strip clubs.

It was in Shinjuku I found a restaurant that served edomaezushi, another thing my students recommended.

Edo is the old name for Tokyo and "mae" means before or in front of. So this is sushi made from fish, roe, and shrimp from the Tokyo area and treated with vinegar in a way that served to preserve the meat in ancient times.

It was good, very tender with a subtle flavour. And expensive--5000 yen, which I gather is relatively cheap for edomaezushi!

After Shinjuku, I visited Harajuku and Shibuya, the fashionable shopping areas of Tokyo.

I didn't buy anything. And it was tough to resist temptation. For, behold:

I took this picture from a little window across the street because I wanted to show that this Tower Records is in fact a tower. Yes, it's the whole building. That's nine storeys of music, CDs and vinyl mostly. On the floor dedicated to rock music, I found a two disk set of Nine Inch Nails performing with David Bowie. On the floor with soundtracks, I found a three disk extended edition of the Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack. Every section I looked at had something ranging from rare to ultra-rare. In the vinyl section, I spotted a whole Dalek album, the first Doctor Who merchandise I've seen anywhere in Japan.

After Shibuya, I went to Ginza. I remembered how cool Ginza looked in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and I wondered if anything remained of that chill bar scene from the 1960 movie. Now it appears to be a very expensive shopping district.

I saw a lot of foreigners here, I didn't feel special at all. I'd say 30% of the people I saw were white and I heard a lot of English being spoken. Some of the buildings were really beautiful.

I didn't get anything in Ginza, either. But after Ginza, I stopped in Akasaka and found another meal my students had recommended.

Menchi-katsu is breaded, deep-fried meat. I started eating before I remembered to take a picture. It comes with a bowl of shredded lettuce and there's an assortment of sauces you can choose to add to it. It was pretty good and thankfully cheap, less than 1000 yen.

On the way back to my hotel one day, I randomly decided to stop in a place called Nakano. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be Otaku-central, containing a huge mall for anime, manga, video games, cosplay, and various other hobby and nerd goods.

So that's some of what I did in Tokyo. This entry is getting really long so I think I'll save the rest for another time.

Twitter Sonnet #1613

The volunteer could drive us up the wall.
Abysmal business charred the building black.
A crooked man was yet surpassing tall.
Corrupted boys began to build the track.
A normal hour took the cloudy day.
Revolving eyes were ever right at noon.
We crammed a ransom 'neath the choc'late bay.
The smuggler's fleet departs before the moon.
The growing brick was yet a coffin shape.
Diverse examples tried the yankee plant.
A puppet's teeth could never cut the tape.
Recall what butter does and jelly can't.
The stacks of stuff arrived in varied hues.
The rare and common blend in vibrant blues.