Another Mountain

Last night I dreamt Sylvester McCoy was my uncle and he was taking me on a tour of New York City. I suppose it's because McCoy's birthday was recently and I was admiring New York in Only Murders in the Building.

Yesterday, the last day of August, I decided to go up Mount Amanokagu, one of the three famous mountains of Kashihara, the Yamato Sanzan.

So now I've been up all three, though it's been a year or two since I went up Miminashi. Maybe I'll go again this weekend. Here's a map at Amanokagu showing the three mountains:

The grid shows Fujiwara City, the capital of Japan from 694 to 710, with Fujiwara Palace being the dark square in the middle.

Amanokagu is 500 feet tall, smaller than Unebi but a little taller than Miminashi, which surprised me. I felt like I got to the top of Amanokagu much faster.

There was a little shrine at the top. I saw a guy there with a big green bug net. A popular summer activity in Japan is bug catching. There's also an insect museum near Amanokagu. I think I had my fill of gnats yesterday but I was heartened to see plenty of spider webs.

Here's Mount Unebi from Amanokagu:

Here's Miminashi:

My glamorous selfie:

The Ambling Ahsoka, Further Down the Trail

Ahsoka episode three was a brief flight covering little ground. There were some things I liked, though, and a couple things I thought, in addition to being bad, were kind of curious.

Top of that list would be Hera's son, Jacen. Last week, one of the things people complained about in the first two episodes was the absence of Hera's son, last seen at the end of Star Wars: Rebels. I didn't complain about it because I honestly forgot all about him and didn't care very much when I was reminded.

But it's so odd the way he was shoehorned into the third episode I kind of think Dave Filoni had forgotten about him, too. First we hear Mon Mothma ask Hera about Jacen--which makes it seem even stranger that Ahsoka and Sabine never inquired about him as presumably they're closer to Hera than Mon Mothma. And then we get an actual scene with the kid.

It feels so perfunctory, so much like an afterthought. I was tempted to think it was shot over the past week after all the reviews pointed out Jacen's absence but surely that's not possible with the actor's strike going on. But I bet it was added some time late in the production.

This was also the first time we saw Genevieve O'Reilly playing Mon Mothma in a show set after the original trilogy. I'd have thought they'd have made more effort to make her look like Caroline Blakiston. They could have at least changed her hair. She actually looked more like Blakiston in Rogue One. But I guess I don't mind O'Reilly taking over the role. She was excellent on Andor though perhaps her presence serves as another reminder of how much better the writing was on that show.

The New Republic politicians mostly appeared to sneer at Hera for wanting to follow a trail of evidence leading to Imperial Remnant activity. She provokes their disdain because the trail is loosely related to a friend of hers who went missing. Boy, that was lame. I was reminded that in the old Expanded Universe books, the New Republic was also portrayed as immobilised by bureaucratic disagreements and a belief that the Imperial remnants no longer presented a serious threat. I remember finding that tedious and silly then, too, though at least it turned out a spy was at the bottom of it.

Lately, I've been thinking about this interview with George Lucas and Dave Filoni (it starts at around 9:20):

One of the striking things about it is that, even though it's heavily edited, George Lucas has nothing nice to say about Filoni and a couple of Filoni's remarks are critical of Lucas, like where he implies Lucas was being foolish for making episodes of The Clone Wars about banking. It's a little ironic since some of the best parts of Mon Mothma's subplot on Andor involved banking. Filoni says kids wouldn't be interested in it, and that may be true, but kids aren't the only audience for Star Wars. Even setting aside the fact that people who were kids in the '70s, '80s, and '90s are adults now, a lot of the people lined up for Star Wars in 1977 were teens and adults. So I reject this idea that Star Wars is just for kids.

Another interesting part of the interview is the story about how Filoni frequently had to explain to Lucas what he was trying to do and Lucas frequently had to tell him that his, Filoni's, ideas were not translating onto the screen. That sounds like it would be good advice about now when it comes to the relationship between Ahsoka and Sabine.

We still have no idea what the big fight was that drove these two apart. There's not even a hint of the kind of tension you'd expect in the aftermath of such a rupture. They're just blandly polite to each other.

I did kind of like the training scene (though the show's weak fight choreography was again in evidence). Mainly it was for David Tennant as Huyang.

You could say he's kind of playing a deluxe C3PO. Few people argue Anthony Daniels is an especially good actor (Alec Guinness certainly wasn't impressed) though he works in a broad role like C3PO and oddly kind of makes the case that Star Wars droids aren't sentient. However, David Tennant is, I believe, one of the greatest actors of his generation (watch his Hamlet if you haven't already). Some of the nuance he puts on his lines on Ahsoka make them almost delicious. And, as usual, Filoni seems to loosen up when he's writing male characters.

The score on Ahsoka is good and I like the planet with the red trees. Is it supposed to be Dathomir? If only Filoni could write Ahsoka and Sabine. A lot of people are criticising all of the unnatural pauses. I think Filoni may be trying to emulate Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West.

For one thing, Once Upon a Time in the West isn't universally beloved (though I love it). It's not even usually considered Sergio Leone's best (though it's generally in the top three). But I would say Once Upon a Time in the West is more effective because the motives behind the sparse dialogue are clearer and the stakes are obvious enough that real tension hangs in the pauses.

It also should be noted that Once Upon a Time in the West isn't a kids' movie. I certainly wouldn't expect a three year old to sit still for long lingering shots of Jack Elam's face. So another part of Filoni's problem may be that he's not even clear on what he's trying to do.

Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1733

Essential buttons pay for houses cheap.
The demon mirror cries to see itself.
Through woods of wire hair the kittens creep.
A pastry box contains a captive elf.
Her eyes bananas called for sporty splits.
Explaining cows has led to foreign zoos.
It's not for eyes the summer cooler spits.
But time is short for paying fruitless dues.
As danger mornings mount the nights extend.
A floppy fist rewards the wimpy man.
As lousy lines were gathered blanks descend.
A vapid kid regressed to rusty pan.
Another zebra ball has knocked the night.
She lifeless flipped through space in lifeless flight.

Only Cleavage in the Building

Remember last week I said I thought Selena Gomez wanted to look sexier this year on Only Murders in the Building? Well, I'm feeling pretty clever this week, I can tell you. And her in that cocktail dress is a pleasure in itself. Last night's episode was also exceptionally funny, especially the scene where Martin Short and Meryl Streep have dinner.

And I loved the ferry scene afterwards. This show really makes me want to visit New York.

I don't know if I feel like Short and Streep quite have romantic chemistry, though. They feel respectful and friendly, I kind of feel like I'm watching them be cohosts at the Oscars.

They're better than Mabel and that documentarian guy, though. And Charles and his makeup artist. I feel like I want Charles and Mabel to run fast as they can from their respective obnoxious love interests this season.

At this point, my pick for this season's killer is the documentarian guy. The show never really plays fair with its clues but based on the fact that they don't want to do yet another female character and Mabel's lover last season was a fake-out--and she seems to be moving really fast with this guy--I think he's the strongest contender at the moment.

You know, I can't actually remember who the killer was last season. I guess that's a sure sign it doesn't actually matter.

Core Align

A little girl frustrated at the lack of attention given her by her parents is at first delighted to find a more accommodating Mom and Dad with button eyes. 2009's Coraline Is Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2002 novella, capturing some of the eeriness of its source material and adding a lot of cartoonish charm.

I was feeling a little sorry I didn't like Good Omens 2 and wanted to watch something to reaffirm my fondness for Neil Gaiman. I read Coraline when it came out. I was such a Gaiman fan then, I bought the hardcover book and the audiobook read by Gaiman himself. I remember sitting in my car, listening to it, in a mall parking garage where I liked to go to be alone. I would say, outside of Sandman, Coraline is his best work, that I've read.

It's a simple concept with a suggestion of old-fashioned morality pushed to a slightly sadistic level. It feels like Hansel and Gretel or The Snow Queen, something from Hans Christian Anderson or the Grimm Brothers where you can clearly see the moral instruction but the story fills out with strange or frightening ideas in a pleasingly gratuitous way.

I kind of wish the character designs had learned closer to realistic. It's harder to appreciate the strangeness of the other world when Coraline herself already has a massive head with a flat top. But Selick's stop motion is the perfect medium. I believe these button eyed people can coexist with these people who have eyeballs. In live action with makeup or cgi buttons, it would have felt more clearly demarcated. The stiff, jerkiness of the stop motion adds to the sense of nightmare.

Coraline is available on Netflix in Japan.

Twin Things

Every time I think I've seen the most unabashed Twin Peaks homage, another one comes along. Last night I watched the first episode of Dark, a German series that began in December 2017, the same year Twin Peaks: The Return aired. Dark also has a healthy dose of Stranger Things, too, itself a series influenced by Twin Peaks. Sadly, so far Dark doesn't have much to add to the sum of its influences.

It came highly recommended. I watched it because yesterday I saw on Paul Schrader's Facebook he'd posted to say someone had recommended a new European show to him with a title that began with "D" and he couldn't remember what it was. The comments on the post recommended a variety of shows that began with D, and many that began with B for some reason, but it seemed Dark came up more than any other title. I would guess that most of the commenters have never seen Twin Peaks.

Set in a small German town deep in the woods, the first episode of Dark introduces us to many people in the community while everyone's searching for a missing teenage boy. There's the ornery owner of a hotel, there's the 30-something couple hiding their affair (though neither one is married so I don't know why), and there are the teenage kids of them all, and all the kids are doing drugs.

A girl spots a boy smoking a joint in a dark alley. She stops to scold him--for smoking poor quality pot. And I sensed the joke was supposed to function in this way--you're meant to think she's going scold him for doing drugs, but then you're supposed to be surprised and amused that it's actually the quality she wants to chastise him about. Maybe 2017 in Germany was like 1997 in the U.S.

The end of the episode features a kid apparently being experimented on in a scene pretty clearly derived from Stranger Things. Unfortunately, Dark didn't learn from Stranger Things and Twin Peaks that tragedy alone does not interesting characters make. One kid's in therapy because his father killed himself. One kid has a younger brother he argues with. But no-one has any texture. All the kids look like catalogue models.

There is a spooky cave I kind of liked and the guy who committed suicide left a note not to be opened until a specific day and time. I was really curious to see what it said when his trembling mother finally opened the thing at the appointed time. But the show wouldn't let me see. Hopefully that means they're saving it for the next episode. I wonder if that's enough to compel me to watch it.

Dark is available on Netflix.

X Sonnet #1732

The steady sparks displace the jelly night.
But liquid sun salutes the proffered sweet.
A Danish breakfast fuels the easy sight.
But soon the broken cars demand their meat.
A worser thirst decides the victor's rum.
A hunting party packs the steel and glass.
Above the blood, a shark was serving chum.
If not for pie the girl'd be eating bass.
The proper way to think of flame is fast.
Returning time was lost in brittle woods.
Again, the dreamer's mind conducts the past.
Some missing words delayed the crucial goods.
Between the rows of desks or trees they lurk.
The trav'llers, orcs, and oil woodsmen work.

A Blade Needs Only One Edge

A great director can make a great movie from a terrible screenplay, a good example being 2002's Blade II. David Goyer's screenplay is intensely stupid but director Guillermo del Toro overpowers the force of stupidity with atmosphere, pacing, composition, and a pure instinct for horror.

The first film was distinguished by exceptionally pathetic vampires. The second film solves this problem by introducing a new strain of mutant vampires who are much stronger, faster, and scarier.

Their mouths open up like the Predator and they have a second inner mouth like the alien from Alien. There's even a great dissection scene reminiscent of the facehugger dissection.

And the action scenes are terrific. Donnie Yen is sadly underused but Wesley Snipes and his stunt doubles could move appreciably fast. There are a few bits of outdated cgi but not enough to be a serious flaw.

Even though it doesn't make any sense, Kris Kristofferson returns from the first film, where he was clearly killed. But it's good to see him. Ron Perlman and Norman Reedus are both welcome additions who add a lot to the film. The latter character is part of a twist that makes absolutely no sense but he's also in a great scene where the mutant vampires lay siege to his van.

Mostly the makeup and special effects hold up perfectly.

Blade II is available on Netflix in Japan.

Cracking It

It'd been several years since I'd seen it so, when I saw 1981's Thief was currently on The Criterion Channel, I decided to watch it again. It was even better than I remembered.

The first ten minutes or so could work as a beautiful short film. We watch Frank (James Caan) and his cohorts crack a safe, showers of sparks around Frank as he drills into the metal. It's a success and afterwards Frank chills at the docks in the early morning. He offers a danish to a stranger and the two agree the sunrise is beautiful, which it is.

Tangerine Dream's score is a gently exciting synthasiser drone for city nighttime shots between jobs. When Frank's at work, a drone of electric guitar emerges and this movie so nicely conveys the impression of working hard at a job you're good at.

Frank does have anger issues. Over a decade in prison has deprived him of basic social skills and he lacks the patience to learn them. He practically abducts the girl he wants to marry (Tuesday Weld)--lucky for him, she really does like him. He makes a scene at the adoption agency where he's not so lucky.

The film's famous for its meticulous attention to real details, coming from real life thieves who served as technical advisors. In the end, though, the film's really a fantasy, almost in the mould of a Charles Bronson vigilante film. The climax is preposterous as Frank alone goes to take down the gang that hired him. But Caan's performance never stops being terrific and Michael Mann's direction--this was his first film--shows him already to be a master of pacing.

Thief is available on The Criterion Channel.

Back in the Cage

Last night I finished watching the second season of Luke Cage. It wasn't as strong as the first season but it was still lightyears beyond the new Marvel shows on Disney+, at least in terms of writing. Some of the performances are top notch, too.

The second season lacks the presence of Mahershala Ali, who played villain Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes in half of the first season. I think it's likely Ali's memory of the good writing on Luke Cage led him to demand better writing on the upcoming Blade film he's set to star in, for which he's forced Disney to recruit Nic Pizzolatto. Good for Ali. I hope the deal survives the strikes. Someone really needs to sit Disney down and talk to them about writing, it's beyond embarrassing at this point.

It's hard to believe Luke Cage's second and final season was only five years ago. It seems like a lifetime. The writing on the show isn't always perfect. There are a few episodes of padding in the second season, like episode 11, where scenes and dialogue get a little repetitive. But one episode that seemed mostly filler, episode 9, where several characters are forced to lay low in one of Danny Rand's buildings, turned out to have one amazing scene thanks to Alfre Woodard.

On paper, it's basically just a rehash of her character's, Mariah's, backstory established in season one. But Woodard's performance as she tells her daughter about being raped, is truly amazing. She really is this show's Wilson Fisk. She refers to her rape again in the final episode, where she uses it as an excuse for the fact that she's unable to feel love for her daughter. That was a bold move from writer Cheo Hodari Coker who forces the audience to think about it and ask, "Does rape do this or is this something unique to Mariah's experience?" This is how you do MCU for adults.

Simone Missick continues to be captivating as Misty Knight. She had a courtroom drama series after Luke Cage that's been cancelled. I hope that means she's free to show up as Misty in future MCU projects.

Mike Colter as Luke Cage disappointed some fans of the comics but if nothing else he's physically right for the role. I can suspend disbelief and think of Krysten Ritter or Finn Jones as super strong but it helps a lot when you can actually see massive muscles on your star.

Finn Jones guest stars as Danny Rand in the season's tenth episode and I was amused to see him brace himself when he gave Luke a hand to get to his feet. Colter has really quick reflexes, too. Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist all had some amazing fight scenes, especially compared to what we get in the MCU now, Shang-Chi being the sole exception. I wonder what the odds are of Shang-Chi ever meeting Iron Fist.

Luke Cage is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1731

Potato schisms ever split the roots.
Implore the feather bed to fly away.
For while the rest awaits she'll wear her boots.
There's precious little else the elves convey.
The stalwart zebra stood and spoke a word.
Returned and now a carrot, flesh revives.
And yet excitement rates about at curd.
But little depth through mindless haze survives.
A gentle whistle closed the club at dawn.
And now the mighty fold a song inside.
Removing brains enhanced the latent brawn.
But smaller ears have set the sound aside.
In hollow hay, nutrition kicks the horse.
An angel's dreams were dragged a diff'rent course.

Ah . . . Sou ka?

Well, here we are. Fifteen years after first appearing as a supporting character in the Clone Wars cgi movie, Ahsoka Tano is now starring in her own live action series, Ahsoka. After watching the two premiere episodes, I saw that Andor, not Ahsoka, was trending on Twitter with people either observing how much better Andor was or people complaining about people saying Andor was better. So, yeah, Ahsoka seems to have hit the ground stumbling.

A lot of reviews say it's slow and that it's almost incomprehensible if you haven't watched Star Wars: Rebels. I'd say, yes, both are true. Though I will say that one of the main problems with Obi-Wan Kenobi was that it lacked the sense of awe and majesty you get in classic Star Wars movies. So in that sense, I appreciated Dave Filoni's slow and almost ceremonial pace at times. But the guy just can't write. I used to say he couldn't write female characters and his male characters are a little more nuanced but I think, at the end of the day, he's just all around a bad writer and the slow pace makes it all the more excruciating to experience.

I don't mean he's a bad writer in the George Lucas way, like Lucas imitating the stiff style of Flash Gordon dialogue. Filoni has no emotional connexion to the characters so it feels mostly like he's treading water, waiting for something to come to him and nothing does.

The first scene is kind of cool if intensely stupid. A New Republic ship comes across a strange vessel asking to board and issuing an outdated Jedi code. Instead of even opening a channel to get a visual or even aural impression of the strangers, the captain says he'll "call their bluff" and invites them aboard. Of course, they come aboard and use red lightsabres to slaughter everyone.

Cut to Ahsoka herself, now unlocking a puzzle in an ancient temple of some kind. This is another in a series of attempts to bring an Indiana Jones-ish vibe to the Star Wars universe and I'm going to quote from my review of a Bad Batch episode that attempted something similar with similarly unimpressive results:

The target of her tomb raiding in the episode, the "Heart of the Mountain", doesn't have a lot of lustre, literally and figuratively. We know it's something from before the time of the Republic, we know it's on a planet in an uncharted system. But why is it legendary? We find out it serves a function, but what do people believe it does? A legendary artefact ought to have legendary powers. The idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark was clearly a religious symbol, representative of a god. The sort of Incan trappings of the Idol and temple carry associations for the audience, mixing the known and the unknown.

Part of the reason artefacts have a mystique in tomb raiding stories is because there's a mysterious culture around them. Whether it's the cities in H Rider Haggard or the cults and books around Cthulhu in Lovecraft, there's a sense of unknown culture. In Star Wars, which Lucas created as a playground where you could "other" aliens who didn't even exist, you should be able to have screaming weirdos trying to thwart Ahsoka, some evidence of some deeply strange or hostile society around the artefact, several steps removed from, but still implicitly connected to, the object. Without it, the sense of mystery around the object is absent and it just feels, as some reviewers have said, like a video game.

For some reason, Ahsoka's compelled to work with Sabine Wren to decipher the map she obtains. Why, in the whole New Republic, Sabine Wren is uniquely qualified to decipher the thing is never made clear. Nor is it revealed why Ahsoka and Sabine split up. Sabine had had a go at being Ahsoka's padawan but we're told, but never shown, they had some terrible clash of personalities that compelled Sabine to give up padawaning and searching for Ezra. Seems like a pretty important character development point to just omit, doesn't it? I guess it's stashed somewhere with the reason Nick Fury and Captain Marvel stopped looking for a new homeworld for the Skrulls.

We catch up with Sabine on her speeder, now played by the gorgeous Natasha Liu Bordizzo. Even the chaste Dave Filoni can't resist tracking a shot up her thigh. She's speeding away from a ceremony where she's set to be honoured, her absence somehow only discovered at the very moment the master of ceremonies announces her name. So two starfighters are scrambled apparently to arrest her?

This is what you do when someone doesn't show up to a ceremony in her honour? During the ceremony?

We also catch up with Hera, my favourite character from Rebels entirely because of Vanessa Marshall's performance. Now she's played by the ridiculously miscast Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But this is only the latest in a series of badass roles (Kate, Birds of Prey) Winstead has insisted on playing despite being totally wrong for them. She's reunited with Rosario Dawson, her costar from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, a movie where Dawson and Winstead were both perfectly cast. Dawson as a plainspoken, charismatic chatterbox and Winstead as the pretty, naive airhead. She's run so far away from that, it reminds me of how Edward Norton tried to play only suave romantic leads after being perfectly cast as the dweeb in Fight Club. People have suggested Winstead got the job because Ewan McGregor is her husband.

And, yeah . . . Rosario Dawson is wasted here. She would've been great as the young Ahsoka Tano, energetic, clumsy, and charismatic. But Dave Filoni has taken one of the most creative performers of dialogue alive to-day and cast her as a statue. Incidentally, this extends to her fight choreography, which is lumbering and limp.

But at least none of her fights end like the duel Sabine has with dark Force user Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). When I saw Sabine getting stabbed through the gut, I laughed out loud. It seemed impossible that they would do this again after a widespread critique that too many people were surviving lightsabre skewerings. It's gone from critique to meme, even. It's truly astounding that even Disney would be this stubbornly idiotic. But. Here it is. You could argue Shin stabbed her slightly to one side of Sabine's gut, potentially only destroying her intestines, but that only begs the question, "Why didn't she finish her off?" No-one even seems surprised Sabine survived. My revenge headcanon says she has trouble with bowel movements from now on.

Do I have any positive comments? Sabine looked great, at least before she cut her hair. Why did she have to cut her hair to wear a Mandalorian helmet? We saw this kid on The Mandalorian, right?

I get why Disney is hyping Dave Filoni. They want a credible successor and Filoni has a rabid gang of fans. Filoni certainly likes to hype himself, and he'll bend the truth to do it, like when he tried to take credit for Darth Vader's hallway fight in Rogue One, which people actually involved with the film quickly denied. An Ahsoka series could have been great if he'd gotten some of the writers actually responsible for Ahsoka's development on Clone Wars, like Paul Dini, Henry Gilroy or, hell, why not Katie Lucas? George Lucas created Ahsoka because he was thinking about his relationship with his daughters and it turned out Katie actually wrote some pretty good episodes of Clone Wars, including the memorable Dathomir arcs.

Well. Maybe it gets better next week. Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

Rooms and Legs

I'm starting to think Selena Gomez requested a sexier look for this season of Only Murders in the Building. Last night's new episode featured her in a short skirt, showing off her legs again after her performance in Oliver's dream, and a form fitting cardigan. Another character even makes a joke about her typically big, shapeless sweaters.

Whatever the reason, it's an improvement.

Last night's episode was called "The White Room", referring to a gag where Charles, so bad at delivering his song for the show, finds himself mentally transported to a legendary actors' "white room". The other actors describe it as a sort of psychotic break and hallucinatory haze from which the actor emerges finding evidence that they've done something unspeakably grotesque.

I felt like the shots of Charles in the white room could have been funnier but I really enjoyed the awkward reactions of the other characters when Charles emerged from the zone.

I think I'm enjoying this season more than either of the previous two.

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

Summer Onions

Yesterday I saw some turtles had scored themselves a lifetime supply of onions.

I'm really sick of the summer heat this year. It's making me sluggish and unmotivated. I went to the mall yesterday to enjoy free air conditioning with everyone. I read Thomas Carlyle at Starbucks for a while. I had a nice big tuna rice bowl, magurodonburi, for lunch because it was fairly cool. It also turned out to be delicious.

Here's a spider I saw yesterday. I hope she's writing, "Autumn is coming".

X Sonnet #1730

A flower dream was small and known to bloom.
But later years revoked a thought for dreams.
Reversed, we woke the end and slept the doom.
So where's the sense to sew the sloppy seams?
It starts at See's with suckers sold for cash.
A broken pumpkin butterscotch contends.
The featherweight's above the grave with trash.
Of hasty kills a foolish plot portends.
A glowing salad praised the fire dressing.
Triangle bread could change the stomach mind.
But hearts were sugar notes of candy blessing.
At least, that's what the power people find.
The mound of oats arose to greet the day.
We trust the sun of yarns will find a way.