Sharing Pant Space

Four best friends find a pair of miraculous trousers that fits all of them in 2005's Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. It's a cute diversion with a likable cast.

Alexis Bledel takes the pants to Greece where she has a little Romeo and Juliet romance, minus the tragedy. Despite her family's disapproval she starts to fall for a Greek hunk from an opposing family.

Blake Lively goes to Mexico where she tries to capture the affections of her soccer coach. Scenes of her flirting with him are pretty sexy and her segments aren't bothered too much with a thin moral.

America Ferrera goes to visit her father, played by Bradley Whitford, who, she discovers to her dismay, has married Nancy Travis (who wouldn't find that dismaying?). Awkward moments are inserted to show Ferrera can speak Spanish but ultimately it's a nice little story about a daughter learning to stand up to an asshole parent.

Finally, Amber Tamblyn plays a wouldbe documentary filmmaker. She meets a little girl dying from leukemia. This story's the weakest of the four with lots of cheap, tug-at-your-heartstrings moments. But Amber Tamblyn gives a decent performance.

It's not a masterpiece but Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants isn't a bad way to spend a couple hours.

Dreams of State

Last night I dreamt I was at a mall in San Diego with some Ghostbusters. No famous ones, though it seemed like we were waiting for Dan Aykroyd to show up. We were sitting at a table talking about the election. We all agreed Trump seemed the likely winner, though none of us said we'd vote for him.

I don't pay close attention to politics these days and, since I live in Japan, I don't have a ground level idea of how the day to day has changed in the U.S. under Biden. I have an impression of Biden's presidency as being sort of shapeless and colourless. Trump had personality, so did Obama, Bush, Clinton, and really everyone before. All anyone seems to say about Biden is that he's old. Maybe that's the reason he seems like a Walmart greeter while everyone else around him is managing things.

I remember when people were criticised for voting for George W. Bush because he seemed like someone you could have a beer with. Then there are the people who say they'd vote for Trump because some of Trump's mistakes and misdeeds seem like the kind of thing the average person might do. The counterargument in both cases being that you should want a president who's above average. People have always liked relatable heroes though perhaps there's a greater lack of humility now. That's why no-one seems to be able to make a good Superman movie anymore.

Also, there must be a lot of fear as the world becomes more complicated and its incomprehensibility and brutality becomes more apparent. Falstaff's little world at the inn looks a lot cosier than Henry IV's complicated map of players.

The Month has a Flavour

Charlize Theron plays a manic pixie dream girl who seeks to rescue Keanu Reeves from his own personality in 2001's Sweet November. Set in a sanitised version of San Francisco where everyone seems to wear colour coordinated clothing, it's definitely a softball drama and earns its 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it is kind of interesting seeing two action stars play off each other in a romantic feature.

Reeves plays Nelson, a ruthless ad man who has no time for his girlfriend Angelica, played by Lauren Graham in a brief appearance. His vicious tenacity loses him both his job and his girlfriend but luckily he meets the beautiful Sara (Theron) at the DMV. He tries to get her to help him cheat on the driver's written test but the instructor catches her whispering and disqualifies her from taking the test for a month. When Nelson offers to pay her salary for a month as an apology for preventing her from doing any work related driving, she tells him he treats women like whores and instead insists that he move in with her and let her change his whole life. I assume at some point there may have been a screenplay with an intelligible thread of logic.

Sara really likes the colour of rust. In her effort to enforce a regime of free spirited independence, she gives away Nelson's clothes and gives him a hoodie the same rust colour as her scarf and the walls of her apartment. It turns out the hoodie belongs to Jason Isaacs who plays Sara's drag queen neighbour. It's a stock "gay best friend" character (no less stock than Sara's manic pixie dream girl) but I liked Isaacs in the role. I don't know why he doesn't get more lead roles.

Reeves is, well, Reeves. Theron is always great but there's nothing she can do to break out of how generic the screenplay and costumes make her. I suppose if I had to be in a prison camp, I'd prefer the warden to look like her.

Spider Echoes

I found myself watching Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie late Friday night. Few movies have such a uniquely time capsule quality. It's impossible not to think of 9/11 when watching it, even though it was mostly filmed before 9/11. That was kind of crucial to what became its function for a few months after the attacks; Americans needed to see something that affirmed their identity outside of how the attacks were poised to newly define the country. So something like Spider-Man was well suited to the task because it was made innocent of the influence of that event. Of course, shots were removed and shots were added, I don't know which ones. I always assumed the crowd on the bridge, shouting about how if you mess with one New Yorker you mess with all of them. And the shot of Spider-Man by the American flag at the end. It's hard to imagine such a sense of unity in the U.S. to-day.

The film is also a product of its time in that it's one of the last unabashed heterosexual male fantasy superhero movies (even if it is quite campy). Mary Jane is there to be rescued in her wet t-shirt, and quite happy to reward Peter with a kiss for saving her life. You don't even generally see low cut tops on women in superhero movies anymore. I thought Zendaya was basically asexual based on her appearance in the new Spider-Man movies, then I saw her wearing some kind of dominatrix robot costume at a fashion show recently. Actresses still routinely wear skimpy dresses on the red carpet that look like they were designed by Frank Frazetta while they're promoting movies where they dress like Mr. Rogers. Considering how popular the first two Raimi movies were with women, it seems it's not only heterosexual men who are pleased by the heterosexual male fantasy. All this used to be obvious but the rumoured, upcoming retooling of the MCU, to steer it away from unprofitable woke messaging, seems like they're trying to get a rusty brontosaurus sculpture to walk.

So, yes, that first Spider-Man movie holds up really well. It's a shame about the masks. The one big improvement in the Tom Holland movies is that they made Spider-Man's mask animated so that he has expressions. Green Goblin certainly could've used something like that. Having Willem Defoe flying around bare-faced in No Way Home was an improvement but an expressive mask would've been better, not to mention closer to the comics.

Spider-Man is available on Disney+.

D'Artagnan's Back and, This Time, She's a Girl

D'Artagnan's daughter lands herself in a heap of trouble in 2004's La Femme Musketeer. A meandering, easy-going Hallmark film with surprisingly good production values and a high quality cast that includes Michael York, Gerard Depardieu, Natassja Kinski, and John Rhys-Davies, it's kind of relaxing to watch. The concept is strikingly similar to the 1952 film At Sword's Point starring Maureen O'Hara as the daughter of Athos.

Susie Amy plays the daughter of D'Artangan here. She shows a nice willingness to perform some of the acrobatics of her stunts but as an actress she doesn't light up the screen. Depardieu gives a subtle performance as Cardinal Mazarin, out of place in a production that very much feels like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Robert Halmi Jr. was a producer).

It felt like the series established the other Musketeer offsprings multiple times, showing them in gambling and thieving hijinks, until I realised just hanging out in the French countryside (actually filmed in Croatia) was the whole point, not the plot about the Spanish Princess being kidnapped. Amy's character, despite being placed as the main character, is mostly really a supporting role as she just sort of hangs around, maternally smiling at her comrades' hijinks. I don't think the Musketeers ever use muskets in this, by the way, or even carry them.

Look Not Beyond the Shroud

That's Roger Delgado, the original Master from Doctor Who, in brown face as the Arab villain in 1967's The Mummy's Shroud. Though Delgado's skin was pretty dark and all the actors were caked in layers of greasy foundation back in the '60s so maybe he wasn't in brown face at all. His father was Spanish so he may well have had Arabian ancestry.

Friday was a holiday here in Japan, the Emperor's birthday, so I spent the day being lazy and watched The Mummy's Shroud in the afternoon. Not considered one of the best Hammer films, it's nontheless better, in my opinion, than some of the ones that are considered among the best. The story's not wildly exciting but there's no real false step in it, there's no "Oh, come on" moments. Sure, it's cheap. The deserts of Egypt were clearly the same English quarries regularly visited by Doctor Who productions. The biggest star in the film is Andre Morell and he dies less than halfway through. But the movie does have surprisingly good cinematography. The lighting is creative without being as garish as it sometimes can be in Hammer films and the compositions are well constructed. I love the sense of awe and wonder the filmmakers try to convey as the explorers first uncover the mummified remains of the exiled young pharaoh.

The full movie is available on YouTube.

And Now the Weather

Happy Twin Peaks Day, everyone. Of course, I have been watching the series again. I wonder how many times I've watched it through since I first saw it in high school, just shy of thirty years ago. I dozed off watching the third episode (fourth, counting the pilot) a few nights ago, the one with Laura's funeral. I can slip in and out of consciousness and still enjoy the pleasant company of each familiar scene. Ben Horne standing between Albert and Doc Hayward. Shelly recounting Leland throwing himself on the coffin. Doctor Jacobi in a hat and velvet cloak at the cemetery after dark. It's not even a David Lynch episode, neither written by nor directed by him but I can still dig it at this point.

I wonder if there's any chance of another season. There was that rumour about a project at Netflix codenamed "Wisteria" years ago. Lynch made that short film for Netflix about interrogating a monkey. It seemed like he was testing the waters, seeing how amenable Netflix would be to his shooting style. Behind the scenes footage showed him frustrated with studio interference during the third season but I don't think Paramount's going to let him make Twin Peaks anywhere else. I've wondered if he thought he could make a spin-off about Carrie Page somewhere else, if he thought he could plausibly say it's not connected to the Twin Peaks IP even though it obviously would be. I wonder if he's working on anything now. He separated from his wife, Emily Stofle, late last year and I read she wants sole custody of their twelve year old daughter. That's gotta be time consuming.

He does have an installation coming up in Milan, something called "A Thinking Room". Sounds like it could be like visiting the Black Lodge. Man, I wish I was in Italy.

X Sonnet #1820

The blinking sabre cat absorbed the grass.
When timeless swords would rust the soldiers wait.
Without a glance, tempestuous ghosts'll pass.
So Fluffy sets a slimy, writhing bait.
The rolling drum would flatten trees and shrubs.
Titanic storms were smashing times in fields.
With all the gowns and pretty traffic hubs
Imagination often lightly yields.
Imagine mental strength divides a word.
With marriage thoughts, you jiggle likely brains.
Above, consult the cream and iv'ry bird.
You'll find the words were naught but choc'late stains.
And so the show concludes with "coming soon".
The flashing screen would please a lucky loon.

A Level Dracula

What seems at first a perfectly innocent lesbian romance turns into naked girls screaming in convents, covered in blood. Such is the fate of characters in 1977's Alucarda, one of the many movies based on Le Fanu's Carmilla. This one has some amazing sets and beautiful girls but becomes overburdened with people screaming and running around.

Tina Romero plays Alucarda, this movie's version of Mircalla/Carmilla, and her first lover/victim is Justine, played by the beautiful Susana Kamini. They're terrific to watch, particularly Romero who infuses her role with reckless teenage passion. Many of the early scenes seem to be borrowed from Hammer's The Vampire Lovers, particularly a funeral scene, but from there the influences seem to be more Satanic nun movies like Mother Joan of the Angels and Ken Russell's Devils as the convent that raised Alucarda is overtaken by hysteria.

The sets are by no means realistic but sort of expressionistically grisly, like they were designed by Goya. It's a fantastic movie to look at but it becomes a bit cacophonous. I kind of like how Alucarda and Justine's pact with Satan means they're in a state of constant psychological torment from then on, so much so they have to constantly scream and writhe, but it does get slightly monotonous.

A Glut of Affirmation

A spoiled young madwoman orchestrates a bizarre tragedy in 1997's The House of Yes. Parker Posey shines as the madwoman, Jackie O, and the film's clever dialogue from the stage play by Wendy MacLeod is always sparkling and devious.

Jackie is named after JFK's wife. We see from the beginning that Posey's Jackie is obsessed with her. She dresses in the famous pink coat and pillbox hat at a party and decorates the outfit with ketchup and macaroni to imitate the gore from Kennedy's fatal wound. The innocent, guileless outsider to the family, Lesly (Tori Spelling), states the obvious--it's not funny. The movie could be read as a referendum on ironic humour. Posey's Jackie imitating Jackie Onassis is so terrible it's funny, but the funny goes right back to sad as the movie progresses.

It's linked to her incestuous obsession with her twin brother, Marty (Josh Hamilton). Their mother, played by Geneveive Bujold, casually mentions to Lesly that when the twins emerged from the womb, Jackie was already holding Marty's penis. And we see the attraction is far from one-sided in a memorable scene where they play piano together and swap corny wordplay jokes like a double act.

Parker Posey doesn't do a very good impression of JFK's wife but she's pleasantly reminiscent of a young Katharine Hepburn--brittle, quick, vain, and clever. She's a delight.

The House of Yes is available on The Criterion Channel until the end of the month.

How to Fill a Coffin

My internet was lousy again last night so I fell asleep watching Django (1966), which happened to be on my hard drive. I forgot how jubilant Franco Nero looks when he lets loose with the gatling gun.

Presumably I had pleasant dreams after that though I can't remember any of them. It's been getting unseasonably warm here. There've already been some ume blossoms and it's been predicted that Tokyo will see cherry blossoms as early as the beginning of March. It's too bad I can't wear my Inverness coat in warm weather the way Django can. Though I don't know how warm it really was in that miserable little town. Evidently there'd been plenty of rain. I'd forgotten how much mud is in that movie. There's mud all over Django's boots and coffin, the prostitutes have an impromptu mud wrestling match, and, as you can see in the clip, one of the main antagonists gets his face down in it. It sets a hell of a tone.

Let This be a Warning

One flaw in marrying a guy you just met is he may be a serial killer. Kim Hunter faces this terrible possibility in 1944's When Strangers Marry (also known as Betrayed). There's a nicely nightmarish quality to the film's rising tension actually enhanced by the fact that not all of it makes a lot of sense. The twist ending isn't very satisfying but it's worth the ride especially with Robert Mitchum onboard in one of his earliest roles.

Millie (Hunter) gets into town and can't figure out why her new husband, Paul (Dean Jagger), is so hard to track down. She runs into an old flame, Frank (Mitchum), and he helps her in fruitless search.

They talk to the police but there's no help there. For some reason, Frank takes Millie straight to the homicide detective. It's not such a strange choice as Paul's evasiveness starts to make him look an awful lot like the "Silk Stocking Killer" who recently made off with ten grand. When Millie finally does track Paul down, he's staying in an apartment with pictures of strangers and an assumed name on the mailbox. Also, he's wearing new expensive clothes. Hmmmmmm . . .

Kim Hunter reminds me of Theresa Wright and the cords this movie strikes were done better in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Even so, When Strangers Marry has good performances and some intriging strangeness. It's available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1819

Announcing rapid changes, bows were broke.
Beyond the middle day, she wrote a card.
For something's left to love with rum and coke.
A jealous hand the pretty brains would guard.
The bloody captains name a yearly bride.
The mountain people make a festive coach.
At dawn, the chosen lass ahead shall ride.
The village life renews at dusk's approach.
The space between an ear and phone's a week.
The busy maid would never catch the lint.
For this, the corners built a massive peak.
The fuzzy floor accrued a mighty dent.
As past the dizzy wedding couples walk,
The angels dread the killer's breezy talk.

The Dummies are Always Watching

We can sometimes go five or six years without a horror movie about a ventriloquist's dummy. But then a movie like 2007's Dead Silence comes along and the world is normal again. It's a James Wan movie so the script is ridiculous and the cinematography is terrible. I kind of enjoyed this one, though, for some reason.

I swear, Wan must employ the laziest cinematographers in the industry. The interior sets are always conspicuously, unrealistically massive so it must be easy to move the camera and equipment around, yet the lighting is all over the place, like they didn't want to adjust anything between shots. This is despite the fact that this movie repeatedly uses the "flashing shadows" gimmick, where something stationary suddenly changes when it's briefly hidden by a rhythmically passing shadow.

The jump scares work and I kind of like how the victims get their tongues cut out if they scream when the monster is present. Though it relies on the idea that everyone screams when they see something scary. I'd have been really safe, I don't even know how to scream.

The movie also features the idea of human corpses being turned into ventriloquist dummies which leads to one of the most spectacularly stupid twist endings I've ever seen from the era of twist endings.

I kind of enjoyed the cheesiness of this movie, though. It's like the Taco Bell nachos of horror movies.

Hopping the Track

George Segal and Richard Widmark have to stop a madman with a taste for exploding amusement park attractions in 1977's Rollercoaster. It's a '70s disaster movie with all the '70s disaster movie cliches, including the protagonist who picked the wrong week to stop smoking, the wife who doesn't understand how important her husband's job is, and a killer who seems intent on both impressing and humiliating the cops. The performances are good, though, and the opening has a hell of a disaster sequence.

The music's really overbearing. Every time, every time, it cuts to shots of the killer (Timothy Bottoms) we hear shrill, high tension violins. The opening sequence drags out a long time with this as he stalks an amusement park at night, alternating between him and shots of happy people with generic calliope music. I thought, "The payoff better be worth all this." And it was!

When the bomb goes off on the track, the cars fly off into the crowds and stands. It's really well done and totally convincing, You know, almost always, when someone falls off a cliff in a pre-cgi movie, you can clearly see it's a dummy and they must have used dummies here but they're totally undetectable. It's really a show stopper.

The movie never matches that moment again but it's not bad if you can forgive the cliches. Richard Widmark is always great and George Segal is solid. There's a nicely tense bomb diffusal scene. A young Helen Hunt is in the film as Segal's daughter.

When No Bad Dream is Just a Bad Dream

A young woman narrowly survives a cult suicide and the ghosts of the other cultists won't let her forget it in 1988's Bad Dreams. There are a lot of nice jump scares in this one.

Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin) lives in a hospital after recovering from a coma caused by the failed suicide. She's haunted by dreams and visions mostly involving the cult leader, played by the reliably menacing Richard Lynch.

The other headcases in Cynthia's therapy group are soon also beset by nightmares that drive them to grisly deaths. The movie's pretty creative in how it mixes reality with phantasm attacks. I liked one male patient with anger issues who first cuts through his hand and then starts tearing up a room, hoping that by expressing his rage he can fend off the ghosts. No such luck, but the weirdness and violence amps up the tension in a nice way.

Jennifer Rubin is pretty good as a vulnerable, beautiful young woman at the centre of this hurricane of carnage.

X Sonnet #1818

No second ghost could use the syrup bar. With pleasing dreams we open shop at eight. But next we push a hand on lazy tar. And so we locked the only child's gate. A crimson hood was bobbing over shrubs. Persistent knights were labelled naught but geese. Romantic lyrics change to stupid blubs. Prospective mayors swap a rancid fleece. The crazy word was placed in normal spots. When people say they're sane, the rootless run. The kings would force a meaning onto blots. But all would fade beneath this blazing sun. Across the forest, hunters track the vamps. The drinkers hide in mouldy forest camps.

Loathing Enumerated

Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles reluctantly begin a romance in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You. Very, very loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew, the screenplay makes little sense and is filled with half-thoughts and cliche contrivances but Ledger and Stiles are both very charming.

Larry Miller is also good as Stiles' father who won't let his other, friendlier daughter, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), date unless Kat (Stiles) does first. But unlike the father in Shakespeare's play, he doesn't actually want either one of them to find a mate.

Instead of taking the project of conditioning a hateful woman into being an upstanding component of normal society, Patrick (Ledger) has to be paid to take Kat out. Of course this is kept a secret from her and, as per normal hackneyed romantic comedy logic, you know the whole time she's going to eventually find out and then they're eventually going to make up. It's so inevitable, it doesn't create tension, it just hangs dully over every scene like a big utility bill you know you're going to have to pay at the end of the month.

I was surprised by a good musical sequence featuring Ledger and Stiles has a nice drunken dance scene. There are a couple of oddly absurdist jokes that feel way out of place, like when Bianca accidentally shoots someone in archery class and just ignores the man falling over in pain. In English class, a teacher orders Kat out of the classroom when she says she likes an assignment he'd come up with. It really felt like the screenwriters had seen some good movies but didn't understand context for some kinds of humour. It's like if When Harry Met Sally became a Monty Python sketch at random moments. Not that this movie is ever as good as When Harry Met Sally.

My Irritating Copilot

I'm short on time this morning because Microsoft decided to install some AI bullshit called "Copilot" that triggers my internet provider, Softbank, to throttle my bandwidth so it's a struggle to get anything to load right now. I have to use data on my phone to get websites to load with any usable speed and mostly I've just been searching for ways to disable or remove copilot. I've found a lot of contradictory answers, none of which have worked, including right clicking on the Copilot icon and asking it to hide the button. Right clicking it does nothing, it seems to think I'm just right clicking on the task bar. It sure feels more like a virus than a feature, though I suppose many of these problems are due to it being a Windows 11 programme that's forced itself on my Windows 10. I have tiny grains of time I have to sift through carefully every morning before I head to work and this Copilot mess has dumped them like so much sand. Now I know I'm going to have to squander time after work on this. It's depressing.

Sheila Shall Live Forever

Happy Valentine's Day. If you ever wondered what Glass Onion would've been like if its screenplay had been tight as a drum, check out its chief influence, 1973's The Last of Sheila. Screenwriters Anthony Perkins (yes, Norman Bates) and Stephen Sondheim crafted a satisfyingly intricate murder mystery about a handful of rich people on a private Mediterranean cruise.

The ensemble includes Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, Joan Jackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch with James Coburn playing the eccentric host, Clinton. He comes up with a game in which everyone gets a secret card, assigning to them some hidden sin, such as "Shop Lifter" or "Informer".

Every time it seems like there's a flaw in the writing, it turns out to be an intentional weakness in some character's scheme. It's great fun. It's also nice to see James Mason in such a juicy role so late in his career in which he was usually somehow compelled to play Humbert Humbert again and again. In this movie, well, he arguably does again but . . . I'll say no more.

The movie does feature a dated understanding of the word "homosexual" but it's easy to get past that. Every member of the cast is valuable and it's even decently shot. It's one of the best puzzle movies I've seen.

X Sonnet #1817

A knotty problem spurred the lover's gall.
As roughly written tables show the pies.
Promotions start exposing fruit and all.
A tangled slinky breaks apart the lies.
A changing tide returned the surfing ghost.
For nothing's lost amid the awesome waves.
For hid within the poisoned sugar host,
There slowly bake the heavy creamy days.
Invaders rise again from diff'rent Hells.
With many rooms, the wooden place was locked.
Beneath the deck, we hear the cloister bells.
With phony books the shelves were fully stocked.
As Cohen's loving croon described a nude,
She lights a lamp and paints a scarlet mood.

Marvellously Flavourless

So I went ahead and watched The Marvels. I'm a Marvel completist, what can I say. That's how they get you. Well, it's how they get fewer and fewer people. I wasn't expecting the movie to be good but I didn't expect its mediocrity to make me so sad.

Bob Iger blamed the film's problems on a lack of oversight by busy Disney executives. Which is funny because too much studio interference is to what people usually attribute the flaws of MCU films. The Marvels does feel relatively cohesive in its voice. The trouble is writer/director Nia DaCosta and her co-writers Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik have delivered something that feels out of touch with human experience.

People die, planets are ravaged, suns are destroyed, and ironic comments are made and casual jabs about celebrity and wardrobe float around. Care about these characters, the movie tells us, but don't worry, you don't have to care that much. Even if you want to, we're going to discourage it.

Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel is the best part of the movie. She actually manages an interesting performance but she's kept at an emotional distance like everyone else. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) tells her, "Don't talk to those people," when Ms. Marvel remarks to a crew of enemy goons that she doesn't have the power of flight. Could this be the beginning of exploring the snobbishness which Brie Larson can't seem to suppress? It would have been kind of nice if they made it part of the character instead of just an accident of Larson's personality. Alas, it seems more likely just another manifestation of the filmmakers' inability to emotionally engage.

All the space stuff feels like dim echoes of Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor Ragnarok, the ironic visual noise now an unsatisfying centrepiece in the absence of the emotional core of story about people. It is much like The Eternals, the other Marvel movie directed by a woman. Some would say this is a sign women can't direct superhero movies. Maybe it's a sign Disney executives don't know how to hire directors.

The Marvels is available on Disney+.

Blindfolds Erotically Obstruct Vision

Shannen Doherty engages in kinky bondage that just so happens to resemble the work of a local serial killer in 1992's Blindfold: Acts of Obsession. This is a gloriously ridiculous bit of softcore porn.

Did you know the USA network used to air stuff like this? This one's got a lot of nudity, a lot of sex. I've developed a lot more respect for Doherty after watching this, just for her straight face when she delivers lines to her psychiatrist/lover (Judd Nelson) about how satisfying her sexlife is now. Neslon deserves accolades for keeping a serious expression when he tells her to be careful as she goes down this path. The dangerous, forbidden path of having sex in handcuffs and a blindfold.

Yep, this was pre-internet, before everyone of all ages routinely heard about erotic asphyxiation or various forms of bestiality and erotic body modification. Just yesterday I saw a video of a girl getting fucked by spiders. Shannen Doherty comes off as so sweet and innocent by comparison.

Apparently she and Judd Nelson had an affair during filming. This really is more of an aphrodisiac than a movie.

On a more sombre note, I see that Doherty has terminal cancer now. She can take some heart in knowing she has left this movie to humanity for all time.

Deborah's Continuing Misfortunes

There's a new chapter of my webcomic, Dekpa and Deborah, now online. It's been almost a year since the previous chapter. What took me so long? I actually finished the first half of the chapter in August and did most of the second half in December and early January. Partly the delay was due to researching Barbary Pirates, which was difficult because it's a topic related to slavery, colonialism, and Islam and it's intensely politically incorrect. Books on the topic written in the past twenty years are vastly different in tone from ones written sixty or a hundred years ago. New books had some interesting facts and helpful perspective but I often had to read between the lines obsessively reminding the reader how bad Europeans are to find confirmation of those terrible things about the Barbary Pirates that were plainly stated in older books. And, of course, I had to do the usual research on ship construction and clothing. I wanted to do a comic that required mountains of research and I sure got my wish. Next year will mark the tenth anniversary since I started working on this thing!

Happy Birthday to Thomas Edison, Philip Dunne, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Eva Gabor, Leslie Nielsen, Tina Louise, Burt Reynolds, Jennifer Aniston, Damian Lewis, and Natalie Dormer.

Swords and Eclairs

When I chat with the Japanese junior high school students I work with, I often like to ask about their dreams. Most of the time, they can't remember any dreams but yesterday a girl told me she dreamed of eating great quantities of eclairs. This particular student is always fun to talk to because comes off as genuine as an old comic strip character. I asked if she had a favourite pastry shop in town (there are many in Japan) but she said she can't shop at them because she's allergic to eggs. No wonder she was dreaming of eclairs.

Here are some of my recent doodles from the art club. As you can see, I've been in the mood to draw Nesuko lately. It's kind of nice living in a country where the comic industry isn't dead.

X Sonnet #1816

A line of hams await the casting brunch.
A glaze of ink adorns the creamy script.
Together, crews assemble fast a lunch.
The foam of lonesome black was full and tipped.
A nightly glow distorts the damaged main.
Armadas drift abeam of scuttled hulks.
Gelat'nous moons would melt to quickly wane.
The slinker cracks a jar then slyly skulks.
The blinking bat forgets to sleep in June.
As timing's right for flight, the sirens wake.
Aloft on leather wings, the creature loomed.
Presented late, the feature pushed a take.
As dusty sets amass a bloody dream,
The crew devoured steamy pastry cream.

Cleaning Up

Sometimes, a movie can have all the right ingredients but still not quite come off. 1996's Curdled was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and stars Angela Jones (Esmeralda Villalobos from Pulp Fiction) as a young woman obsessed with crime scenes and beheadings. It even features a crossover character from From Dusk Till Dawn. For whatever reason, the film just can't seem to muster enough energy to come to life.

It has a splashy beginning. Jones' character as a little girl witnesses a mob hit and is immediately transfixed. Cut to years later and the young woman, chewing bubblegum, sees a TV ad for forensics cleanup crews and decides it's the job for her.

She becomes fascinated with a serial killer played by William Baldwin leading to a long scene in which she finds herself trapped at the crime scene with him. The two carry on a bizarre flirtation that should be a lot more fascinating than it is. Why doesn't it work? Maybe it's the omnipresent samba music that makes the film feel like a generic '90s indie film. Mostly I think it's the editing and pacing. This was originally a short film and maybe it works better in that format. Angela Jones is really good, though.

Willow Where

I seem to be at a time in my life when I can appreciate Jane Espenson's writing more. "Same Time, Same Place" is a really good episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 2002. Willow comes home from England after some amateur therapy to fix her from being evil and finds her friends seem to be absent. In fact, Buffy, Xander, and Dawn were there for her, but somehow neither party is able to see the other. Espenson's premise is a nice way of using supernatural elements to explore the emotional fallout of Willow's situation. The episode's monster, a Gollum-ish creature that paralyses and feeds off of living victims, is one of the few genuinely creepy demons in the series.

The episode also has one of the best "Crazy Spike" moments when Spike talks to Willow and Buffy at the same time and assumes one of them is a hallucination. Though it's kind of awkward that, after the conclusion of the previous episode, that Spike has ended up back in the high school basement somehow. You'd have thought Buffy would've done something for him.

It's also kind of odd how much the demon's paralysis is played for laughs. Buffy and Anya have fun posing a paralysed Dawn even after reading the paralysis may be permanent. Buffy takes a moment to remark on a can of nuts Anya brought back from Brazil.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+ in most countries.

Mind Time

I watched "Inner Child" last night, a first season episode of Fringe. It's the best example so far of the show's tendency to introduce two ideas and have them converge. In this case, Olivia's pursuit of a serial killer turns out to be aided by the simultaneous discovery of a feral child in an abandoned building with special powers.

Walter insists they're not psychic powers but empathic powers. I'm not sure that goes anywhere towards explaining how he knows names and addresses Olvia doesn't know. But okay, it's still fun. It's sweet she and the boy form a bond, it'll be kind of a shame if the show just forgets about him.

I also watched "Crackers Don't Matter", the legendary Farscape episode, last night because sometimes it's comforting when the level of craziness you encounter in life is reflected and amplified onscreen.

X Sonnet #1815

Desired action fizzled out of light.
Reflective disks contain the movie stuff.
A broken laser dropped the day for night.
The angry captive broke a rusty cuff.
With simple shading, pictures sleep alive.
Distorted fire brings itself to bliss.
The meaning changed for desert kings to thrive.
Another swing was Casey's final miss.
On fire loops, the dreams return to port.
Assuming sherry's gone the way of knights.
As dreary voices stall the royal court.
The absent cabbage wins the daily fights.
Across a rougher soil, linen breaks.
And all her sequined skies, the lady stakes.

Rationed Sweetener

Jessica Alba dances around in cargo pants in 2003's Honey. If you're looking for a mild sedative, this might do the trick.

Alba plays Honey like a robot. She's a dancer, teaching at a community centre, hoping to steer troubled kids away from using and pushing drugs. Then, one day, a bigshot music video director spots her at a club and she finds herself working as choreographer to the stars.

Everything happens exactly as you might expect. Alba is pretty and something about her features is somehow evocative of honey. I got distracted reading the wikipedia entry on honey. It is weird that we eat bee spit.

Anyway. Everything looks very clean in this movie. No-one gets in big trouble, there's no sparkle to the dialogue, the sets and costumes look like a Target ad, all plain colours. The editing makes it look like Alba's a better dancer than she is. Alba's best friend, played by Joy Bryant, is really hot, especially in an early scene wearing a knit halter and micro-miniskirt. Even by early 2000s rap video standards, she looks like a hooker, but not in a bad way.

Between the Devil and Amarillo

Satanists pursue an RV across Texas in 1975's Race with the Devil. If you successful forget about an impressively nonsensical plot and don't mind poorly edited action scenes, the film does build some nice tension and features good performances from Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, and Loretta Swit.

The film also stars Lara Parker as Fonda's wife (Swit plays Oates'), rounding out the group of four vacationers. Her performance isn't as good but she's a lot prettier than Swit which director Jack Starrett sees as reason enough to give us closeups of her frightened face that linger just long enough to be a little confusing.

Swit, of course, was Hot Lips on MASH and, while she does give a good performance, it feels very much like a TV performance, bound by TV smarminess a little smaller than the scope of horror the film tries to invoke. However, Fonda and Oates as old buddies who stumble on a Satanic orgy that ends in human sacrifice, are pretty great.

It's for witnessing this orgy the Satanists decide to ruin the quartet's vacation, so begins the pursuit. The four try to make it to civilisation, the city of Amarillo, before the Satanists can finally kill them. If you stop at any point to ask questions like, "Why don't the Satanists just shoot them?" or "How did the Satanists track them to the middle of an empty desert?" a lot of tension is lost as the film's ill-considered manipulative techniques fall apart. But some of the quieter scenes where there characters interact with suspicious townsfolk are pretty effective.

Carl Weathers and Don Murray

Both Carl Weathers and Don Murray passed away in the past few days. To-day, Risshun, the first day of spring in Japan's old calendar, I woke up to find a surprise coating of snow outside, on top of all the cars and rooftops and on the hills and trees. I didn't see this much snow all winter long. It's beginning to look a lot like omens.

Carl Weathers' biggest roles are of course in the Rocky movies and in the original Predator. I haven't seen a Rocky movie in decades but I watched Predator pretty recently and the man gives a solid performance. He and Schwarzenegger pair well together as two muscle bound hardasses, most memorably shown in the meme-ified shot of their two burly arms locked in a friendly grip.

In more recent years, Weathers has been one of the best aspects of Disney's Star Wars projects, acting in and directing episodes of The Mandalorian.

Don Murray starred in a number of prominent films, including Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and the Otto Preminger political intrigue Advise and Consent. But I'll always remember him best for his time on Twin Peaks as Bushnell Mullins.

I saw him in person at San Diego Comic Con. He attended a screening of season three, episode eleven with several other cast members. They were right there with us in the audience. He never seemed uptight, just genuinely happy to be there out promoting this show among people who love the series. He was well cast as the fine man Cooper said he was.

Free of the Shadow

There you have it and let none here dispute the powers of Phil.

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone, though it's already the day after here in Japan. I explained Groundhog Day to many students on February 2nd, as I do every year. Many infer it must be America's version of Setsubun (節分), the Japanese holiday on February 3rd that precedes the first day of spring on the old calendar, February 4th. One Setsubun tradition is throwing soy beans at people wearing demon masks.

But last night I celebrated Groundhog Day by watching, of course, Groundhog Day. This was after whisky and Skyrim and baking muffins so I dozed in and out while watching. But what better movie is there for that than one about a time loop you've seen a million times? To-day I just want to stay in bed eating muffins. I know I shouldn't.

X Sonnet #1814

A mousy menace spiked the tank of fish.
An endless search has yielded guns and dice.
Electric soup has granted Livy's wish.
A weapon trade commenced with giving rice.
The donkey's pace would flatter cats at home.
Required questions sank the function quiz.
Corrupted posts support the polling dome.
A smarter cola tells the tongue to fizz.
The lacking rain reduced the worth of hoods.
In timing late, commuters drop the dew.
Exchanging hate became a fad for goods.
The tempting dead invite the mouse to crew.
Offensive smells were caged with angry kids.
A dragon's gold was proof to any bids.

A Tale of Two Trailers

Two trailers for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire were released a few days ago, one of them an "International Trailer". I suppose the other one would be a domestic trailer then, meant for playing only in U.S. cinemas, though of course anyone can watch either one on YouTube. It's kind of an interesting idea. The domestic trailer focuses more on nostalgia and more prominently features the original Ghostbusters cast while the international trailer focuses more on the plot.

I wish there weren't so many familiar faces in the movie. Paul Rudd just looks like Ant-Man and Finn Wolfhard just looks like Mike from Stranger Things, something the international trailer seems to deliberately emphasise with the music near the end of the trailer. With so many characters, I think there's a danger the film will feel unfocused. McKenna Grace kind of anchored Afterlife but she barely seems to be in these trailers.

Maybe it'll be a good movie, I'll certainly see it. Having watched the original Ghostbusters recently, I think the energy it has, of a few regular guys doing something bonkers and striking gold, works because of how close the filmmakers were to that experience in real life and how rebellious and punk the SNL alums were at the time. That's all stuff that would inevitably be killed by making the concept a franchise, which was kind of true even by the second film. I did like the cartoon show when I was a kid so maybe I can enjoy the new movie on that level.