Presenting a Presentation Presently

Aren't stories adorable? Wes Anderson seems to be posing this question with 2023's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and three other short films also based on Roald Dahl stories (The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Poison). Anderson takes his deliberately stiff and artificial style to new heights in this blend of prose and cinema. The films are occasionally quite charming but, on the whole, I found Anderson's mannerisms overbearing. They convey an idea of how good Dahl's stories are but never become stories themselves, either as adaptations or riffs.

We begin with Ralph Fiennes playing Dahl himself, sitting cosy in his studio, explaining his habits (including keeping a chocolate on his desk) before launching into the narration. He gives narration throughout all four films but only filling in certain blank spots. The rest of the time, the characters themselves recite prose to the camera. The characters, like the dogs in Anderson's Isle of Dogs, maintain a solemn, earnest manner when describing events. Even when Dev Petel breaks narration to speak to another character, he punctuates sentences with rapid turns to the camera to say, "He said."

There are also costume and makeup changes. It's all very adorable and across the emotional gulf it imposes we can glimpse the interesting story of a card sharp played by Benedict Cumberbatch who learns to see through cards after encountering a story about a holy man in India (Ben Kingsley). The actors are all great, particularly as they take on multiple roles, and the costumes are smashing. I really want the corduroy coat Ralph Fiennes wears as the titular character of Ratcatcher.

I guess if you think of it as a series of illustrated readings instead of short films, they work a little better. But actually reading the stories is the superior experience.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and the three other shorts are all available on Netflix.

X Sonnet #1744

Tomato reds were holy signs of fruit.
The needed food could carry ships to Hell.
For bossy shoes, the Devil's name is Boot.
So zombies came and rang the mummy bell.
As nigh the bottle dock a bug has reached
We ready bollards back a block for line.
Remember rust when rotten pastries breach.
The endless space is void but still it's mine.
Retractions cracked the foreign names to wit:
A pile knows a flattened dog can wait.
Recover mail to set the charging sit.
And then you launch your feet beyond the gate.
You're doing something, even laundry counts.
As soap and water swirl, the tension mounts.

Michael Gambon

It was only a few weeks ago I watched Michael Gambon in 1999's Sleepy Hollow and now he's passed away at the age of 82. He was an actor with great stage presence and a magnificently deep voice but he was also capable of great nuance and warmth. He's most famous for taking over the role of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies when Richard Harris died and I always thought it was a big improvement. I've never had particularly strong feelings about the Harry Potter series, I neither loved nor hated them, but I definitely thought Gambon brought a lot of life to the role Harris had seemed a bit bored playing.

Gambon had a long and successful stage career. Early on, he was part of Laurence Olivier's company. I would love to see some of the performances he gave before being forced to retire in 2009 due to an inability to remember lines. I'd especially like to see his turn as Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in 2005.

One thing you can see is his starring role, alongside David Thewlis, in Samuel Beckett's Endgame on YouTube. Gambon and Thewlis are perfect actors for Beckett as they're both exceptionally good at infusing expressive humanity into roles. That's especially important to tether Beckett's absurdism, to show the audience how Beckett is using absurdism to isolate human nature.

A Namba Afternoon

I spent the afternoon wandering around Namba in Osaka a few weeks ago. I think it was in my first year living in Japan that a guy at Starbucks tried chatting me up by complimenting my attire. Although I wasn't interested in flirting with him, I was kind enough to return the compliment--he was nicely dressed--and he told me he got his outfit in Namba. This led me to vaguely assume Namba was some kind of fashion haven and recently I've been wanting some rust coloured chinos. After seeing Matthew Broderick wearing rust trousers and brown shirt on Only Murders in the Building, I wanted to make more rust and brown outfits. I see people around here wearing rust coloured trousers all the time and finally decided I wanted a pair but, oddly enough, I don't see any in the local shops. I think they must get sold out really fast.

So I went to Namba and didn't find any. It was an interesting afternoon, though. I've never seen so many foreigners, and all of them apparently wealthy, since I was in Tokyo. There was a middle aged French couple who seemed to be lost. There was a 20 something redheaded Australian girl loudly arguing with her parents who were on the other side of a busy sidewalk. It was strange to overhear so much English.

Who wants takoyaki (octopus in fried batter balls)? I do.

I saw a lot of artwork. Part of Namba Station for some reason has a bunch of reproductions of art from the Chicago Museum of Art.

I dug the Degas.

Along the river, there was some local art.

I also saw Spider-Man:

X Sonnet #1743

Familiar bugs protect the hill from death.
Behind the varied plants, the eaters live.
Behold the leagues of ash and take a breath.
For time has come to stay and space to give.
Reduced returns have paradise in hawk.
Assembled brothers barter music rights.
Successful kills could feed the hungry clock.
Although the ice would fain retreat from fights.
Emerging fast from dusk's the pallid face.
Beneath a starless eve, the workers sweat.
Revolving pools deny the angel's grace.
Below the busy froth, crustaceans bet.
Diluted honey rains above the woods.
The critters don emrboidered magic hoods.

A Soaker Tan'O

Last night's Ahsoka was almost competent and there were a few moments I think were actually good. The editing was a bit better, managing to cover up for some of the weak fight choreography. Some of the special effects were astonishingly bad, though, and the writing wasn't great. It is a little better now, though, because . . .

Dave Filoni now has male characters to drive all the action. He's a little better at writing men and the episode, which turned on the actions of Thrawn, Ezra, Baylon, and a surprise appearance from C3PO, actually has everyone speaking at a natural pace.

We also had another brief appearance from Anakin, the man who remains at the centre of Ahsoka's universe.

I never liked Ezra on Rebels but actor Eman Esfandi is pretty charming. Even though he and Sabine still lack appropriate emotional reactions to circumstances, I thought it was kind of cute when his hair was singed and he said, "Close!"

But the episode began with Hera at a hearing, threatened with court martial.

Are they kidding with this set? It looks like a cut scene from a '90s PC game.

C3PO walked in with a message from Senator Leia Organa to save Hera's bacon. Sadly, this mostly just highlighted the absence of Carrie Fisher. The gratuitous anti-droid comment from the senator framed the conversation again for Disney's ongoing, annoying "droids' rights" subplot. They don't understand, or they don't care, we're supposed to laugh at C3PO, not with him. The result is a scene that earns the word "cringe".

I do like Lars Mikkelson as Thrawn and with his delivery alone he almost makes it seem like leaving Sabine alive was all part of a clever plan. Almost.

Ahoska is available on Disney+.

Only Cookies on the Table

Last night's Only Murders in the Building seemingly had a lot of revelations so I'll be going into some spoilers to-day.

The tone of the writing felt a little more . . . the word I want to use is "flippant". Maybe "disconnected" or "cold". Writer Elaine Ko has the trio laughing comfortably when telling Dickie they actually thought he was his brother's killer for a while. Oliver's heart attack is quickly dispensed with at the beginning of the episode and apparently has had no emotional repercussions.

I knew Paul Rudd was talking to cookies or some other fattening snack in that footage. Last night's episode treated it as a big revelation, though, which kind of surprised me. I thought it was obvious.

Selena Gomez looked good in that wedding dress, especially when she was running, but Ko's explanation for why she was wearing it, something set up earlier in the season, if I remember right, didn't make much sense. They had to get to the courthouse in 20 minutes but they all had time to change into wedding attire? That might take half an hour by itself, nevermind the cab ride. Even finding the courtroom could take ten to thirty minutes.

I feel like the apparent killer will turn out to be a red herring, especially since Oliver was actually eating Red Herring dip. I guess we'll see next week.

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

The Whig and the Jacobite

Have caution when accepting your sudden fabulous inheritance. David Balfour, the protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel Kidnapped, foolishly allows himself to be hoodwinked by his sinister uncle. David ends up packed up on a brig bound for America and slavery in this terrific novel that turns out to be mostly about Jacobites.

The first several chapters feel like a pirate adventure as Stevenson admirably describes life aboard that bad brig upon which David finds himself.

Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king’s ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were “at a word and a blow” with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.

Then they take on another prisoner; a prominent Jacobite called Alan Breck--a real person, despite this being a work of fiction. The novel is set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745 and the bulk of the book follows Alan and David in a desperate journey across Scotland. Along the way, they run into other prominent, real life Jacobites. This is all despite the fact that David is a Whig, which makes his tumultuous friendship with Alan all the more endearing.

We were no sooner done eating than Cluny brought out an old, thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing.

Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face, but I spoke steadily, and told them I had no call to be a judge of others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which I had no clearness.

Cluny stopped mingling the cards. “What in deil’s name is this?” says he. “What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of Cluny Macpherson?”

“I will put my hand in the fire for Mr. Balfour,” says Alan. “He is an honest and a mettle gentleman, and I would have ye bear in mind who says it. I bear a king’s name,” says he, cocking his hat; “and I and any that I call friend are company for the best. But the gentleman is tired, and should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you and me. And I’m fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can name.”

Alan Breck is an attractive character but he's the least interesting of Stevenson's line of morally ambiguous men I've read so far. He doesn't have the enigmatic nature of Long John Silver or James Durie in The Master of Ballantrae. Or Doctor Jekyll. But there's enough to make Kidnapped an engaging road narrative with a satisfying conclusion.

Spiders of the Fall

The higanbana, aka spider lilies, are here so it feels like autumn has started. What's even better, the weather has cooled. A little.

So yesterday I decided to try my hand at making some persimmon muffins, persimmons being in season and a traditional autumn treat in Japan.

They came out pretty well. I used almond milk because my guts just can't seem to handle cow milk these days. It's inconvenient because, as I was surprised to discover, a kind of milk mania has arisen in Japan in recent decades. I suspect it has something to do with a dairy industry lobby. But now a population that's more inclined to lactose intolerance than many others is subject to and perpetuates messaging about how drinking milk is manly and essential to health. I often think of Ash from Alien.

There have also been a lot of butterflies lately. Here's a beautiful caterpillar I saw yesterday:

The right side is the head and the left side is the butt. The little wand on his butt waggled as he walked.

X Sonnet #1742

Intoning tunes, the parrots brought the song.
Astounding deals were reached in secret lots.
Acquired cars were gently used for wrong.
Perceptive right was lost amid the bots.
A flying goal was just its name in truth.
Machines mishandled mar the turtle chest.
Misfortune finally pulled the pulpy tooth.
Consumption chose the morsel eaten best.
A symptom table choked on ginger ales.
Remember blank, the name without a line.
Afforded bars allow the prison bails.
But then again, the ghost can pay a fine.
Arriving spiders summon red and thin.
Concealing blades of grass were green and slim.

Closer to Turtles

Well, I've lived to see the day that Trent Reznor scored a Ninja Turtles movie. At least 2023's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a good movie. It has the best, most natural, dialogue of any Ninja Turtles incarnation I've seen.

It seems like Nickelodeon reboots Ninja Turtles almost annually. In fact, there was another movie released straight to Netflix just last year, based on the most recent animated TV series that began in 2018, following the end of another incarnation that ran from 2012 to 2017 (that 2012 series was really good, by the way). That series came out after a four year gap from the previous one. Then there's the various films, the live action Michael Bay movies, the well liked standalone 2007 animated film, the live action films from the '90s with Jim Henson puppet costumes. Somehow, none of this has diluted the brand.

I guess it may be because the characters are always recognisable. Leonardo's always the leader, Donatello's always the nerd, Raphael's always the hardass, and Michelangelo is always the laid back slacker. This time, Seth Rogen is leading the team of screenwriters and they've made the most believably teenage version of the team. The visible insecurity as they rib each other, the inexperience they display in fights, their struggle to find purpose and moral guidance, all make them feel like real teenagers (unlike the characters in that Six of Crows book I talked about last week).

This is aided by the casting of real teenagers in the roles, kids who have few or no previous credits to their names. The supporting cast is loaded with recognisable names, though. Jackie Chan plays their adoptive father, a mutant rat called Splinter, and I really liked the way he was written, too. He tells the story of his and the turtles' origins in flashback and I loved how he thought it important to mention that, when transformed, he and the turtles remained the same age they were before. It has that authentic feeling of a batty, inexperienced storyteller misunderstanding the importance of different pieces of information.

Rogen casts himself as Bebop, the mutant warthog, alongside John Cena as the mutant rhinoceros, Rocksteady. Both are perfectly cast, though the characters don't really get a chance to shine (this is the second animated role this year in which Rogen was perfectly cast, following his turn as Donkey Kong in Super Mario Brothers).

The story in this film seems to draw a lot of inspiration from X-Men, focusing on different factions of mutants arguing over whether humans should be befriended or obliterated. Ice Cube plays the lead villain, an enhanced fly amusingly called Superfly. I was a little disappointed with the ending that felt more like it belonged in a Marvel movie but, with so many incarnations of this franchise, I certainly can't fault the filmmakers for experimenting.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is available on Paramount+.

Perceptions of Falling

I read the new story in the latest Sirenia Digest this morning, "NEITHER FROM NOR TOWARDS" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's sort of an alternate version of one of her older stories, "Galapagos". I enjoyed it, particularly as it revolves around a number of references to the first couple chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I think the reason there's never been a proper film version of the Alice books is that their genius is in how much they accomplish with so little. That first part of the story, where Alice is falling and having confused thoughts about her identity, her physical location, her knowledge, and her perception are such compelling prompts for interpretation. Every film or video game version inevitably boils down to the adapter's interpretation so that it cannot match the depth and complexity of those relatively simple twenty or so pages of a children's story. "NEITHER TO NOR FROM" captures some of that sense of disorientation as Caitlin expands out from one particular facet with a story about Mars and a strange artefact. It's good.

Alice in Wonderland has been on my mind a lot lately. So has Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the big life change of moving to a different country, my life in Japan also means I'm living in the countryside for the first time after 40 years of living in a big city. Without going into too much detail, I'm finding Holmes' famous quote about the countryside to be quite true. You can hear Jeremy Brett delivering it in this adaptation of "The Copper Beeches" (at around 23:40):

A Devil a Day

Looking for a good public domain movie to watch to-night? You could do worse than 1953's Beat the Devil starring Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, and Jennifer Jones. Jones is billed over Lollobrigida but it's mainly Lollobrigida I think of as the female lead. She is luscious in this movie.

She plays the wife of Bogart's character and I don't know why his attentions are drawn off by Jennifer Jones. Well, Jones is pretty cute, too, playing a spoiled British tourist who decides to make a game of it when she finds herself in the midst of crooks. Bogart along with four other professional criminals have some kind of scheme involving uranium in Africa, the movie's never too clear on the specifics.

Peter Lorre plays one of the four crooks and delivers one of the film's most oft quoted lines:

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook.

The screenplay was written by Truman Capote and director John Huston while the the film was being shot. There's something exciting about the minute by minute sense of invention. The movie has a lovely casual tone, like you're just hanging out with these crooks. Even a moment like the one where one of the crooks starts spouting off about Hitler and Mussolini comes off as an amusing sideshow rather than dramatic.

Bogart seems like he's having fun though you can clearly see he lost his front teeth in a car accident during production.

Beat the Devil is available on YouTube and Amazon Prime and probably lots of other places.

X Sonnet #1741

The arch resembles birds in tepid love.
Oh, here's a symbol thick as leaden shoes.
And where's a burning soul to kill a dove?
For rites as such were wrought to kill the blues.
The violent styles change about a hair.
A second more's enough to hang a clock.
A voice contained the smallest hint of care.
A gravid trap could ape an iron lock.
So why's a rock the bouncing damage ball?
The plaster rains across the jagged floor.
A catered curse careens along the hall.
A ready nurse abused the crazy poor.
With melted candy coated shoes we go.
The air beyond the bowl can lately glow.

A Sucker to Know

Last night's Ahsoka was the best of the series so far. It was terrible but it had some nice design work and the writing was dumb in a slightly different way than in previous episodes. It reminded me of something stupid I noticed all the way back on an episode of Star Wars: Rebels.

I wrote in my 2017 review for an episode of Rebels called "Trials of the Darksaber";

Here Sabine casually caresses the Ghost's resident droid, Chopper, who shivers with apparent pleasure in response.

So . . . that was surprising. What was that? Oh, how I want Sabine and Chopper to be lovers. What a lovely can of worms that would be. Of course, I know that's not what's going on here but, egad, how happy I am to construe it that way. What's actually going on here, I'd say, is a further attempt to establish Sabine as a bona fide Disney princess.

In "Ghosts of Geonosis" she had her Tinker Bell moment, now she's having her Snow White/Cinderella/Aurora moment. The way those princesses seemed to have a perfectly innocent physical rapport with deer, mice, owls, and dwarfs, Sabine has it with Chopper. And now that we know she is a daughter in a major Mandalorian house with the potential to become leader of all Mandalorians thanks to inheritance, she's literally a princess.

Now think about Sabine's relationship with the horse/wolf mount that Thrawn's people just kindly handed over to her. It automatically seems to love her and seems to be making up for Sabine's persistent naivete. Just like the forest animals in Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Tangled, and so on. They really want Sabine to be a Disney princess.

They may have leaned in way to hard on the naivete angle. She just seems intensely stupid most of the time. After, by pure dumb luck, the Empire gives her a mount to explore a totally alien planet, she gets angry with it and argues with it after it gets spooked by her fight with the bandits. She doesn't thank her lucky stars that she doesn't have to go on foot across a wasteland with no food and water. She decides to argue with the animal instead. It has to beg for the pleasure of carrying her ass across the hellscape. I'm inclined to think there's some, perhaps unconscious, misogyny in this writing.

By more pure, dumb luck, she runs into some cute snail people who just so happen to be taking care of Ezra. They offer her food the moment she gets to their camp which she refuses and, okay, maybe their food would kill her but when was the last time she ate? Also, I couldn't help hearing Indiana Jones in my head; "You're insulting them and embarrassing me."

And there was Ezra, hale and hearty on snail people food. Their reunion was another moment that compelled me to marvel at how void Dave Filoni is of imagination. Their casual hellos had the vibe of Luke Cage running into Danny Rand. Scratch that, Luke Cage and Danny Rand were more excited to see each other. And they lived in the same city. Sabine just travelled to another galaxy, potentially sacrificing her own to do so. Ezra hasn't seen a friendly human in more than a decade but he's casual about it, too. Compare that to Han's reunion with Lando in Empire. Luke's reunion with Biggs in A New Hope. People used to have emotions in the Star Wars universe. Hell, a passionate kiss wouldn't have been out of order. Dave Filoni consistently tees himself up and whiffs.

We only see Ahsoka herself briefly at the beginning where she and Huyang seem to be treating the intergalactic ride in a space whale like a car wash. They're bored! They're killing time with stories.

Meanwhile, the bad guys arrive on the planet of moorland. Baylon and his apprentice, Shin, have a conversation that's so badly written, it's like it came from a first draft in a community college creative writing class. Baylon explains to Shin that this is a place of madness and dreams and the subject of folklore in the familiar Star Wars galaxy. Thanks for the infodump because we're certainly not going to see any of this. Despite this legendary background to the place, Baylon and Morgan had seemed bored and barely interested, of course, when they first arrived at the planet.

Lars Mikkelsen brings some welcome subtlety to his performance as Thrawn. In fact, since he's so nice to Sabine, and the New Republic council all seemed like slobbering assholes, I started to wonder if Thrawn taking over wouldn't be such a bad thing.

And yes, we got Ezra last night, too, and he's looking biblical, just like his namesake. I still wonder why Filoni chose names from the bible for Kanan and Ezra.

Star Wars: Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

The Past Dictates the Future

If you watched the episode recap at the beginning of last night's Only Murders in the Building it basically spoiled the end of the episode. So that's fair warning if you haven't watched it yet.

Meryl Streep was back and was a major part of what made the episode work so well.

Her non-verbal reactions created a lot of the story and you can see the value in casting a great actress in even a fairly simple role.

It was also a good episode for Steve Martin who had to sing his "patter" song to completion. It's actually a pretty snappy tune.

No sexy outfit for Mabel this week but I did really like the pattern on her cardigan.

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

When Fire Washes Up

In these extraordinary times, studios throw millions of dollars at aggressively stupid screenplays. One specimen is 2023's Elemental from the once creatively vibrant Pixar Animation Studios.

The high concept premise is, in a world of sentient, anthropomorphised elements, a fire elemental and a water elemental have a romantic comedy. It's a, shall we say, steamy premise and the best part of the movie is when the two experiment with touching. No amount of neurotic sanitation could deprive that moment entirely of sensuality.

However, to get there we have to suffer through an idiot plot in which Ember (Leah Lewis), the fire elemental, is compelled to pretend to know nothing about the water leak that almost destroys her father's shop. Wade (Mamoudou Athie) is the water elemental and city inspector who cries all the time, something that's supposed to be funny or cute but instead comes off as the most excruciating Lucille Ball impression you could imagine.

There's an allegory for immigrant families, evidently based on director Peter Sohn's real life experiences, but, as is usually the case with allegory, it has to tie the premise in knots to stay on track. Why did the fire elementals have to immigrate? Because their house was destroyed in a flood. A shot of frowning elders in their homeland, I guess, is supposed to somehow explain why the family couldn't simply find a new house in the homeland they still love. Then we have the potentially very unwise decision to paint these particular immigrants as people who can explode and destroy parts of the city at any moment, an idea that might not have occurred to Sohn had he been the son of Middle Eastern immigrants instead of Korean immigrants.

The animation is good, of course. I'm sure executives felt within their rights pocketing millions on the strength of what the animators sweated over.

Elemental is available on Disney+ in most countries.

Remember Humanity

Happy Respect for the Aged Day (敬老の日, Keiro no Hi), everyone. Since to-day was a holiday and I knew I'd be able to sleep in, I made myself a very full day yesterday. I went to see a performance by the brass band at the current junior high school I work at at 12:30. Among other songs, they performed the themes to my two favourite Matsumoto Leiji series, Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999. Galaxy Express 999 has been on my mind often in the past five years as I meet so many young people who want less and less to do with their biological bodies. Considering the pro-transhumanist messaging in Disney Star Wars and the popularity of Vocaloids in Japan, this might be a good time to revisit 999. The series follows a little boy travelling through space in the hopes of replacing his feeble human form with an immortal mechanical one. Along the way, he encounters various people whose transformations into machines result in various tragedies.

Let's honour the aged and their message about the dangers of becoming more machine than man.

X Sonnet #1740

A dusty town divides bananas fair.
A backward look invites the jeep to park.
Conditions plain were signed with lusty flair.
But lightning plunged the shop in inky dark.
Suspicious fish have taken kings and queens.
The last of watchful pawns dispensed defense.
Aquatic souls were swapped for coffee beans.
The ocean planet's pool was quite immense.
A steam conclusion marred a wasted time.
The broken glass was pushing flower shapes.
Serrated shards disturb the flowing slime.
Arrested plans were bleeding, sour grapes.
A million ashes cloud the boiling dreck.
The souls of pirates bloat the blackened wreck.

The Adults aren't All Right

To-day, Herrington High School, to-morrow, the world. Such seems to be the thinking of the alien invaders in 1998's The Faculty, a science fiction horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez. It's not on the level of Desperado or From Dusk Til Dawn in Rodriguez's '90s output but it still has a lot of life in it, particularly in its editing and cast.

What a cast. The titular faculty has Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, Jon Stewart, Famke Janssen, Daniel von Bargen, and Piper Laurie. And every one of them has something fun to do.

I especially liked Famke Janssen changing from a shy young teacher, apparently struggling with her attraction to a delinquent student, into a ball buster whose head can walk independently from her body.

Josh Hartnett plays that delinquent drug dealer while the other students staging a final resistance to the alien threat include Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster, and Elijah Wood. Even Elijah wood's dad is played by Christopher McDonald. Nearly everyone in this movie is someone I remember from a good role in another movie or TV show.

Like Scream, a lot of dialogue in this movie is spent comparing it to other horror and science fiction, particularly Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This was in the years before people realised that acknowledging within your film that it's not original doesn't actually make it more original. The movie would've been fine without that self-aware stuff. The cgi near the end is weak but Rodriguez was still mostly in top form as an action director.

The Faculty is available on The Criterion Channel. I know, a Robert Rodriguez movie on Criterion? What next, Tarantino? Could it actually happen?

The Lost Pumpkin

I found an orange pumpkin! Two, in fact. It's not really a bona fide American orange pumpkin, I guess, it seems to be a freak among the normal Japanese green pumpkins. It tasted like the green pumpkins--I boiled it with some udon and cabbage. But it looked nice and autumnal on the kitchen table.

The photo's actually from last month but it scarcely feels more autumnal now, halfway through September. We're in the middle of a heat wave here in Kashihara, Japan, in fact. I suppose that's nothing new but September 15 is Felt Hat Day, the day men used to switch from wearing straw hats to felt hats. And I was definitely not up to making that change. The fact that the day is located on September 15 let's us know there was a time and place when it was generally reasonable to switch to a warmer hat.

This is no weather to have your head wrapped in felt. If you ever see pictures of real archaeologists in the field, you generally see them wearing straw or canvas hats, not felt like Indiana Jones wore through South American jungles and African deserts. Felt sure looks a lot better on camera, though.

I'm spoiling for fall. A few days ago, I watched Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow again. I often want to revisit that film around this time of year though I tend to like the script less every time I watch it. I guess it's in keeping with Burton's Hammer and Roger Corman influences that the story diverges so much from the source material but the Christianity vs. Science vs. Magic theme feels increasingly dated. Still, if they'd gone with the original story, they couldn't have had any of the cool Headless Horseman action scenes. I love the Danny Elfman score, the cinematography, the production design, and the costumes. Christina Ricci looks gorgeous and Johnny Depp gives a good performance.

They Called It Retirement

It's funny how a story of murder and madness can be so cosy. 1941's Ladies in Retirement stars Ida Lupino as a wealthy woman's servant who tries to get her mentally unstable sisters moved into the country house. The movie has beautiful atmosphere around its existential rumination on class resentment.

Ida Lupino was 23 years old at the time but she's playing a character who was supposed to be 60 on the Broadway show on which the film is based. The filmmakers tried to do everything they could to make her look older but Ida Lupino still looks young even for 23.

So it's a little odd when 31 year old Louis Hayward, playing a character called Albert, shows up claiming to be her nephew. It's odd but not impossible, of course, if Lupino's character, Ellen, had an older brother or sister who had a child before Ellen was born. So I mostly just looked at it like that, except the nephew angle is an odd choice for Albert to choose when he cons Miss Fiske (Isobel Elsom), Ellen's employer.

One of the things I love about this movie is that it pits a remorseless conman against a desperate murderess. There are no heroes here. At the same time, like any good noir protagonist, Ellen's motives complicate the issue. Ellen's two mad sisters, played by Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett (I was so happy to see a movie in which Elsa Lanchester and Ida Lupino are sisters), have been abused in a London asylum. They've got nowhere else to go. We also learn the three came from a previously wealthy family and much of their former furniture and knickknacks are in Miss Fiske's home because she'd bought them from Ellen. So the film puts a lot of tension on the artificial construct of transactions on which society is based. Does Ellen really have a right to turn out Ellen and her sisters, however badly the sisters behave? So the motive to murder is abundantly clear. It's a pity for Ellen that Albert starts nosing around.

Ladies in Retirement is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1739

The question pasta washed a saucy state.
O fortune's stalls please house a worthy horse.
The climbing score reduced the going rate.
A shiny ship resumed the glitter course.
A watching worm has wondered why we stopped.
A scrap of song enlivens seconds lost.
Above the crimson trees a signal dropped.
With wooded bars the forest reckons cost.
A moment's lust demands a cloudless sky.
Obtrusive eyes have ruined heaven's lure.
The frightened people can't resist to pry.
Intrusive brutes demand a single cure.
The final break removed the foot from leg.
The changing month infused the pickled egg.