Happy Halloween, everyone in the time zones where it's October 31st. It was another lean Halloween for me. It's a good thing I spend the whole month watching horror movies. This past week, though, my internet speed has been shit so streaming services were frequently interrupted by the old spinning loading dot with its little comet trail. I wonder if I added up all the minutes I've spent watching that, how many years it would be.
So I've been watching my DVDs and blu-rays. Coppola's 1992 Dracula, of course. Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow which, despite having a screenplay I really don't like, which deviates from the original story severely, still has beautiful cinematography, costumes, and score. And a great cast. I also watched The Vampire Lovers again, another one with a great cast.
I've found myself really craving 12th Doctor era Doctor Who and I've been watching that. Peter Capaldi is so damned good. I suppose I should try watching that new Amazon series he's on, The Devil's Hour I think it's called. Except, of all the streaming services, my internet hates Amazon the most. Certain sites seem to have a particular brew of cookies that my provider, Softbank, likes to throttle. Amazon and Google are at the top of the list. Whenever I load g-mail, it knocks my internet out for ten minutes half the time. I've taken to only checking e-mail on my phone, which uses the same service provider but always works fine. I guess that goes to show where Softbank's priorities are.
Anyway, last night I watched "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who Lived". I love how most of Twelve's second season are two part episodes. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did the first time. In particular, the Doctor's interpreting the baby, which I usually found cloying, is ominous and sweet. There's no clips of that on YouTube but here's a nice deleted scene:
Teri Garr passed away on Tuesday. She was 79. Her long career began in the '60s. She made a memorable appearance on the original Star Trek series before her career took off in the '70s when she worked with Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola. She largely disappeared from the beginning of the 2000s, a sadly common fate for actresses famed for youthful beauty, but in her case it was due to the cruelty of nature. She had multiple sclerosis that resulted in a variety of traumatic health problems and eventually her death.
She didn't stop working, though. She had the occasional small role in a film or did voice work. Her role in 2001's Ghost World is so small I had no idea she was in the movie for a long time.
It being Halloween, I imagine a lot of people are going to be watching Young Frankenstein. I imagine a lot of people would be watching it regardless. It is a classic of the season and Garr is an integral part of it. Who doesn't remember the "roll in the hay" or the "knockers"? People used to dismiss the idea that women could be funny because beauty is somehow antithetical to comedy. Garr demonstrates how untrue this is. It's not simply that she happens to be funny and sexy at the same time; that sexiness is a vital component to the comedy, it's why the jokes work. Questions and anxieties about sex are fundamental to the collective human psyche. Of course sex is funny. And Teri Garr made that admirably clear.
X Sonnet #1894
A mindless chuckle pinged connexions weak.
Diffusing cakes became the beef of men.
Discernment split the second mirror peak.
Across the glass, a daughter sought to win.
'Twas bats again the castle cast as staff.
Deserving lords require rarer beef.
Carousing vamps refuse the lonely calf.
Their raucous party filled the steamy bath.
The bouncing word was changed from naught to wax.
With wax we make a clock to pass the time.
A melting dream consorts with heavy Macs.
Another mountain chose a man to climb.
The dodging fly was caught in tangled legs.
The spider people hatch a trillion eggs.
Last night's season finale of Only Murders in the Building was one of the funniest things I've seen in years, following from an exceptionally funny season. I can't remember the last time a movie or show made me laugh so much. The teleplay was by series co-creator John Hoffman and newcomer J.J. Philbin, which sounds like a pseudonym to me but I couldn't guess for whom. Regis Philbin? I doubt it.
The story picks up with Mabel (Selena Gomez) being held hostage by the imposter screenwriter, Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha), in the apartment across from Charles' (Steve Martin). Mabel tries to stall by criticising a joke Marshall made in his screenplay about America Online. Like many of the effective comedic moments in the episode (not that screenplay), it hinged a lot on the timing of the performers and Jamie Babbit's direction. But there were a lot of clever lines in the script.
Oliver (Martin Short) goes downstairs to meet briefly with his fiancee, Loretta (Meryl Streep), who says the movie she's making is moving production to New Zealand because "the algorithm says it's newer." Streep's delivery on that line was pitch perfect. I'm laughing just thinking about it now. It was one of two digs in the episode at Hollywood studios becoming mindlessly reliant on algorithms.
The second half of the episode felt oddly truncated, being mainly a denouement for this season and setup for the next. There were a few moments I got the distinct impression were edited down from something much longer.
I look forward to next season. Though, if they want to get their ratings up, I think they're going to have to find Mabel another boyfriend or girlfriend.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
What makes someone want to watch other people in private? Michael Powell's 1960 film, Peeping Tom, sheds some light on this problem but it presents such a unique case, one may wonder has useful it could be in analysing the phenomenon as a whole. However, watching it again a few nights ago, for the first time in at least a decade, I was astonished by the seemingly fresh insight it yielded. It almost felt like I was seeing it for the first time. Perhaps it's because I've lived in Japan for almost five years now and Japan, along with other east Asian countries, has a fundamentally different perspective on voyeurism.
I remember once a junior high school student told me that her friend wasn't allowed to masturbate until she passed an upcoming test. Her mother forbade her. I was so astonished both by the student's frankness and by what she had told me that I thought I'd misheard her. I asked her to tell me again but the student became shy and changed the subject. I was deeply disturbed that a parent would violate her 14 year old child's privacy so much as even to regulate a deeply personal act and use it as a tool of manipulation. But the concept of privacy is more or less a western concept. In a collectivist culture like Japan's, the idea that someone has an existence outside of society is considered perverse. Mind you, I live in a very conservative part of the country and from what I gather, ideas of privacy, among others, are closer to western values in Tokyo and Osaka. Is it even right for me to judge, though, coming from such a cultural perspective? Maybe not, but every time I spot a neighbour looking through my window, or hear some other insinuation that my privacy has been compromised by someone who doesn't even believe in the concept, I certainly find it irritating to be on the receiving end of such ethnocentrism.
Morality here seems almost entirely external. So long as the subject remains unaware of what is done to him, anything is permitted. Nothing becomes real unless it's seen and digested by society. And then, even if the subject is evidently aware, community rhetoric will repress awareness of that awareness if the subject's awareness is too inconvenient.
I then think of Mark (Karlheinz Böhm), the main character of Peeping Tom, and what growing up under constant surveillance and manipulation by his father did to him. There's something sweet and innocent about him that coincides with a fundamental disregard for the humanity of others. He fervently watches footage of the latest girl he's killed but in all his conversations with his victims and others, he's always polite, soft spoken, and gentle. The real world exists for him in the camera, his father made sure of that, and he'll use whatever tactics necessary to enable him to film, to quietly disappear and become pure observer.
And yet, Mark's existence as object of observation is a constant parallel reality. When other children were learning how to interact with other people normally, Mark's whole personality was built on being something that is watched. Despite being a serial killer, he takes amazingly little care to prevent detection. He has no locks on his doors, he hides the body of a victim in a prop trunk on set of the movie on which he works as a camera operator. He kills coworkers, making no effort to find victims that can't be traced back to him. It's commonly said that Mark wants to be caught but I don't think that's exactly true. I think it's more like he sees his arrest as an inevitable stitch in the fabric of his reality. He is, of course, continuing his father's study of him as an exhibition of fear, though with no intelligent direction. There's no sense that his "documentary" is to be edited to provide insight in narrative form to any student of psychology. There's an exultation in the control he's able to assert over women who exist in a more liberated realm than he can ever broach and yet that very assertion of dominance and control is part of a pattern inflicted on himself by his own internal observer. Sadism is a device for managing reality he inherited from his father but he has adopted it with less volition than his father presumably had.
Now how much stronger would this continual observation and manipulation be if it were carried on down generations?
Peeping Tom is available on The Criterion Channel.
Jeri Taylor passed away a couple days ago at the age of 86. She wrote the above episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Drumhead", of which she was particularly proud. Not seen in the clip is legendary screen actress Jean Simmons who played a key role in an episode about a witch hunt and subtle racial discrimination.
Taylor wrote for three Star Trek series: Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, the last of which she co-created. Her work was often very thoughtful, political, but not ever, as I recall, truly polemical. I don't remember Voyager very well, I tend not to re-watch it. But her two parter for Deep Space Nine, "The Maquis", introduced the rebel group that remained a part of Star Trek for years afterward. It facilitated many of the show's signature, thought provoking analyses of war and attendant issues of loyalty and retribution. Taylor was certainly integral to what was best about that silver age of the franchise.
X Sonnet #1893
Permission froze the words to mean enough.
The heart cannot escape the metal arm.
The coat was cold from sleeve to ruffled cuff.
Embedded code creates computer smarm.
The hand contains intentions weird and dull.
A ceiling swarm attracts the blinding drunk.
A group of eyes were clustered 'round the hull.
Assorted lives fulfilled the secret trunk.
A secret word was passed amongst the mob.
To threaten ants was normal work for men.
A candy corn erodes the wholesome cob.
The holiday was rife with feinted sin.
The pastry shop displayed imprisoned rolls.
Pervasive fear creates reflexive trolls.
So Donald Trump's interview with Joe Rogan went up on YouTube yesterday, as I write, and has 22 million views, 1.3 million likes and no dislikes. The Howard Stern interview with Kamala Harris went up two weeks ago, has 1.6 million views and likes and dislikes are disabled. That last detail is crucial and key to one's popularity over the other--one at least gives the impression of honesty, of a willingness to take public opinion head on, while the other would put up a barrier.
That's the impression. Is it the truth? I find it hard to believe out of 22 million people, not one would dislike Trump. But maybe they'd think of it as a vote against Rogan. The view count could be bots. I don't really think so. Rogan is wildly popular, Stern really isn't at this point. The true test between the two candidates won't come unless Harris sits down with Rogan. I think she ought to at this point and probably won't. The biggest problem the left faces, and Joe Rogan astutely points this out in the Trump interview, is that everyone can see they're trying to manipulate the truth all the time. Rogan could be in Russia's pocket, he didn't really challenge Trump on his relationship with Putin at all. I don't think Rogan is in Putin's pocket, though.
The Rogan/Trump interview is simply easier to listen to. Rogan always comes off as friendly and reasonable and he has a way of bringing up contrary points without seeming resentful or combative. He did confront Trump on his persistent denial of election results and I don't think Trump realised how foolish he came off because of how diplomatically Rogan constructed the segment.
Trump is relaxed and interesting in the interview but to the unbiased listener I don't think he came off well, at least not as a presidential candidate. He rambles frequently--which Rogan charitably calls "weaving", and Trump, with his fragile ego, eagerly accepts the term. And Trump shows himself frequently unable to recall the names of people important to the stories he tells or points he's trying to make. Sometimes he meanders so much he becomes nonsensical and his continually stressing the importance of being friendly with Putin or Kim Jong Un doesn't come off as tactful but every bit as guileless as Harris accuses him of being.
If Harris loses this race, I think it'll be entirely on the lack of transparency. We really do need a candidate outside of the machine Rogan talks about but Trump is simply not suited to be president. He's too simple-minded. But I sure hope Harris accepts Rogan's invitation to do his show.
An English family fleeing mysterious scandal in their home country establish themselves at a sprawling homestead in rural Maine. Things get weirder from there in 2017's Marrowbone. Produced by J.A. Bayona, now best known for Amazon's The Rings of Power, it's much like that series in that it feels like the makers of it have seen lots of quality productions and tried to cobble together their own from impressions rather than feelings. The result is formulaic, sometimes ridiculous, but occasionally pretty.
Allie (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a young American woman who meets the family, headed by matriarch Rose (Nicola Harrison). Rose has three boys and a girl. When she dies, Jack (George MacKay) becomes head of the family and the siblings decide to hide their mother's death for fear of being separated and adopted.
The film has clear moments that present us with missing information and most viewers will be waiting for a twist ending, having been trained by various movies from M. Night Shyamalan and his imitators that began to lose popularity roughly a decade earlier. Writer/director Sergio G. Sanchez's answer to this problem is to nest multiple twists in the end. It results in an intensely plot driven film and the characters therefore feel like they're held at arm's length, functioning essentially as pawns in a chess puzzle. Some of the contortions the story's obliged to go through in order to serve the plot are really silly, particularly a crucial moment where Allie is informed of many of the family's secrets via a handmade scrapbook that was left for her in the hollow of a boulder. It's a cloyingly precious moment that will try the viewer's patience since the plot at this point is in a position of critical suspense, in which Allie learning the truth before the following day is crucial to the family's survival.
Imagine the local authorities are due to confiscate all your property, separate your family, publish scandal about you, and your way of handling it is to get out the construction paper, yarn, and crayons and spend all night laboriously designing, compiling, and sketching. I'd say someone deserves a trip to the funny farm.
I won't spoil the end of the film but, I think, it must certainly have come from a devotee of Michel Foucault. Some people might like that but I was rolling my eyes. The cinematography is pretty, though, and there are good performances by Anna Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, and Kyle Soller.
Last night's Agatha All Along was good and felt very much like a TV show. That's been a particular asset of this show, er, all along, actually. It's the first one to use the new Marvel Television logo and it seems they're making good on their new strategy to build these series more like television series than like movies.
I wondered why Patti LuPone, with her famous ego, took what was essentially a fifth string role in an ensemble but last night made it clear she was kind of front and centre all . . . er, all along.
It was a pretty cool set up and pay-off and certainly gave her a memorable send-off. I liked how Tarot was woven into it and how it seemed like the show's writers genuinely understood Tarot. The witch cosplay was nice and Agatha was eerily perfect as the Wicked Witch of the West.
I watched Howard Stern's interview with Kamala Harris a few days ago. Long time readers of my blog know I was an avid Howard Stern listener fifteen or so years ago. I started listening to Stern in the '90s and went back to him sporadically. When I was making comics full time, his was a perfect show to occupy my ears while I was inking or colouring. But at some point he started to change, around the time Artie Lange left. He santised himself so much it seems strange to think at one time he was the prototypical "shock jock".
Despite not having listened for years, I knew the story he opened the interview with, the one about the Prince concert he attended. I've heard him tell that story a dozen times but it's not as dull as when he does an impression of his mother, which he did at the end of the interview. I can't imagine why he still thinks that's entertaining, except maybe he doesn't think about what he's doing too much anymore.
The interview had little of value. Stern talks about how even Saturday Night Live's mild jokes about Harris make him nervous. No wonder he had no challenging questions for her. More than anything, though, it's the dishonesty that bugs me. Putting aside all the shock and gross-out humour that once defined his show, it was Stern's unvarnished honesty that really kept listeners tuned in. Now he says he can't even understand why people would vote for Trump. This is despite Stern admitting in the interview that Trump was a guest at his own wedding. Trump used to make appearances on the Stern Show all the time. I certainly wouldn't fault Stern for not wanting to vote for Trump or having reasons for disliking Trump's policies, even disliking Trump as a man. But to say that he doesn't even understand Trump's appeal seems like it could only be a lie. If there's one guy in the U.S. who understands why people are voting for Trump, it should be Stern. I think it's that kind of dishonesty, that reflexive fear of even acknowledging empathy with the other side, that makes politics so bitterly polarised.
I prefer Harris because she's competent. But I wouldn't say I don't understand people wanting to vote for Trump. People voting for Trump is like people who prefer to date someone they know is dumber than themselves. They think that's the safe option because a stupid person is easily comprehensible. That makes them charming. But stupid people are capable of making mistakes beyond the limits of a stupidity fetishist's imagination, particularly since wanting a stupid partner is a declaration that you don't like to have to think too much about your partner. But stupidity is a dark and treacherous sea.
X Sonnet #1892
With lazy blasts, the sun destroys the paint.
Contented swallows bask in falling chips.
To watch the pigment dry is vaguely quaint.
To watch it fall's akin to faucet drips.
A hiking man was left in ages past.
Another portal turns the first around.
A race of cats neglects to honour Bast.
A set of teeth would render words profound.
Realities of gesture spill the soup.
No care sufficed to keep the substance flat.
Surprise dispersed among the canny troop.
A chorus girl concealed a gallant's hat.
The moaning singer missed the crucial key.
The victor claimed defeat from evil tea.
Last night's Only Murders in the Building, directed by the ever reliable Jamie Babbit, revealed the killer for this season. As usual, there were no real clues that could have enabled any viewer to reason out the killer's identity but I found it to be a very satisfying reveal anyway.
Spoilers ahead
So, yes, the guy with imposter syndrome turns out to be an imposter! I love this idea, especially because I think so many people with imposter syndrome are imposters. How could it not be so when American colleges have basically become expensive daycare centres for adults, particularly in the humanities department? Do you know how many students I met at college who wouldn't dream of reading a book through, let alone going to the trouble of developing their own thoughts? An obscene number, I assure you. But every time someone says, "Gee, I don't think I'm actually qualified for my job," we're all supposed to say, no, no, you just have cold feet. We could be encouraging them to do their diligence instead. Try making an effort, you might feel better.
It's not to say the average professional imposter is a murderer like the guy on Only Murders in the Building. But the kind of whiny hustler he is certainly familiar. His fake beard is even funnier now.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
I don't know what video to post so here's another Selena Gomez video:
I liked the joke last night about her "erotic non-sexuality" and her sad reply, "It's the sweaters." I think I was right that it was Gomez's dissatisfaction that led to her sexier look last season.
Since I got Disney+ again, I've picked up watching Ally McBeal again. I find myself slightly more irritated by flaws in the show I recognised even when I first watched it back in the '90s. I grew tired of it back then because it got stuck in a pattern of introducing new characters with wacky personality traits to make up for the previous ones growing stale and repetitive. In the episode I watched last night, "Being There", from near the end of season one (May 4, 1998), Peter MacNicol's character, John Cage, goes through a litany of his gags that were mostly just faintly funny when they were first introduced--his mental bells he hears to build confidence, his comfort words he repeats when stressed, and his nose that occasionally whistles in awkward moments. That last one was at least funny the first time. I'm also finding the cuteness around the character of Ally herself a lot more cloying than I did the first time. The previous episode, in which she adorably faints for having to deal with a homicide case, was excruciating.
However, once you weed through all this baloney, David E. Kelley does give you something thought provoking. In the case of this episode, Ally's roommate, Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), goes on trial for assault when she breaks the neck of a man whom she invited back to her apartment for sex. Suddenly, this character that had seemed little more than a token black character, there to make wise pronouncements about love and life in the service of Ally's main plotline, becomes interesting. I like how Kelley takes something that had been mined for cheap gags in previous episodes, Renee's aggressive flirtatiousness, and turns it into an interesting problem.
With the suspense of a jury response hanging over the dialogue, the mind compulsively finds the ambiguities in the situation. There's great value in being able to watch something like this, from outside our current era of political thinking and neuroses. Is it fair to say Renee has any culpability here?
I sure love David Cronenberg and 1977's Rabid has long been one of my favourite of his films. I suppose it's my soft spot for beautiful vampire women. But Cronenberg's irrepressibly strange yet undeniably rational approach to storytelling is always captivating.
I've heard him say in an interview that he sees no separation between mind and body; he doesn't believe in the soul, he believes the brain is one physical organ among all the others. Watching one of his movies, I find myself contrasting this idea with Saint Augustine's idea of the sexual organs functioning independent of the human soul. There's something to be said for that. Just because a girl physically excites a fella doesn't mean it's a good idea for him to have sex with her, for a variety of reasons. So his physical urges may indeed conflict with his true best interest, and I think it's healthiest to recognise physical attraction as something that functions independently of the mind.
On the other hand, can we really trace all the intricate ways the two are intertwined? Most of the commentary I've read on Rabid is that it's a sort of indictment of hypersexualised media and its effect on the culture. The film stars Marilyn Chambers, a former porn star, who, after a motorcycle accident, is treated to experimental, emergency surgery at a plastic surgery clinic. The result is that her body mutates, becoming only able to sustain itself on blood obtained through a new appendage that has formed in a new orifice in her armpit. The people she feeds on then become essentially mindless zombies. So the natural beauty of a woman's body is perverted by an exploitative male doctor and she finds she must play a predatory game in order to survive.
She's at first unaware of what becomes of her victims and she commits her first assaults instinctively, embracing men who come near her out of concern or lust. But is she really innocent of the harm she causes or is she just kidding herself?
Videodrome does a much better job of making a connexion between sexually stimulating media and psychological manipulation on a massive scale. Rabid, to me, functions more like Hitchcock's The Birds in which the delicate, subtextual rules of civilised romance and sex are overturned by the unpredictable permutations of nature. The plastic surgeon may be exploiting the opportunity to try out a new surgical technique, but it also happens to be the only way to save the woman's life. And while I'm not interested in cosmetic surgery myself, I don't consider it morally wrong, nor does the film effectively make the case that it is in any way.
Rabid is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a surprisingly small David Cronenberg playlist, only his earliest works. It's been ages since I watched Naked Lunch or Crash, I'd like to see one of those again.
X Sonnet #1891
A lack of sense became a zombie curse.
Or something took the mall behind a car.
A better sale occurs for something worse.
You know our planet's sun's a quiet star.
Refining fuel requires space to fly.
The clearest choice could hatch a plastic egg.
But choices fall behind the running guy.
I noticed leeches stuck around his leg.
A dozen watchers screamed for service trays.
With pudding running low, we gathered cream.
A fashion model blinks in many ways.
But nothing good evades the greedy team.
Comparing moons has blinded nights of bliss.
Obnoxious heads would butt before they kiss.
If you've ever wondered about the stigma faced by divorced mothers in Japan, 2002's Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から) is a good illustration. And a pretty good horror movie to boot.
Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the midst of her divorce and is fighting for custody of her little girl, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Her nerves are raw all the time. In addition to having to prove herself constantly, she happens to be an especially sensitive woman who once had to go to therapy to deal with trauma from proofreading manuscripts for horror novels. Having been in therapy, of course, is a strike against her.
She and Ikuko move into a new apartment in which it soon becomes apparent that a water stain on the ceiling is growing and frequently drips water. There's also a little red child's bag that repeatedly turns up and may have belonged to a child who went missing. Yoshimi starts to think she catches glimpses of the missing girl.
She reports the water stain to the building manager but he won't lift a finger beyond noting it in his log. Does he not believe her? She doesn't seem very stable. At this point, the viewer is challenged to wonder if she's imagining everything. How reasonable are the people who dismiss her claims out of hand? How reasonable are the people who say that she's late picking her daughter up from school every day? She claims she's not late every day, only some days, due to work. Is she telling the truth? Does she know the truth?
Although the movie remains within her point of view, it makes the viewer complicit in doubting her. It wouldn't be the first movie that presented its story through an unreliable narrator. This narrative is a balancing act that finally resolves in a way I found satisfyingly creepy and psychologically evocative.
A young man's whole life spirals out of control when he provokes the ire of a pretty, psychotic dame in 2002's Swimfan. It is, as most reviews say, a pretty typical Fatal Attraction clone but it's directed with some surprising competence.
Ben (Jesse Bradford) is a swimmer for his high school team with dreams of a professional career as an athlete. His plans are derailed by Madison (Erika Christensen), a femme fatale who seduces Ben for casual sex one night and then never lets him forget it.
Among the other noir elements, Ben's level of responsibility for the ensuing shitstorm is complicated by his own complicity. He didn't really have to have sex with Madison. We also learn he has a criminal history of drug use and theft. Does he deserve what she's dishing out? Does a guy like him deserve to be able to turn his life around?
Sure, there are plenty of movies that have done it better with more stimulating ideas but director John Polson never does anything distractingly bad. The film's an acceptable diversion.
I got caught up on Agatha All Along and watched the newest episode last night. It's not a bad show and there are several moments I really enjoyed. It has a song, "The Ballad of the Witches' Road", written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who also wrote the song entitled "Agatha All Along" for WandaVision and are best known for writing the music for Frozen. And it's a good song.
The show's ratings have been low from the beginning and have declined further and further. Agatha All Along was created by Jac Schaeffer, who also created the successful WandaVision, which goes to show how much that show's success owed to it being tied to a still vibrant MCU. A lot of talk has been about who these new movies and shows are for. Agatha All Along seems very clearly aimed at wealthy, middle aged women. With the characters jumping from realities that include one that parodies (but really cosplays) Big Little Lies, one that adopts the aesthetic of late psychedelic rock, and one that resembles a slumber party from an '80s horror film, it's no stretch of the imagination to say the show's target is very clear. And it's not a target classically associated with Marvel fandom. At least they kept the budget down this time.
I would even say the character of William (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed in last night's episode, is not there to attract a young, gay, male audience but to please older women who like young gay men. His story was kind of interesting. I liked the idea of him being a spirit that takes control of a young man whose consciousness dies in a car accident. That it occurs after his bar mitzvah has a nice symbolism to it.
I preferred the previous episode, though, in which Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) was able to act as a real (if conflicted) villain. I liked the ambiguity over how much control she has over draining the powers of other witches. It kind of takes her into Rogue territory, I suppose.
Agatha All Along is available on Disney+.
X Sonnet #1890
The common break was cruel as glacial Coke.
Replacement soda crushed the child's heart.
Reclining bears alone observe the joke.
Commercials sold the shop around the cart.
A sandwich love would launch a hoagie house.
Resemblance haunts the darling angel cop.
Collected dolls surround the frightened mouse.
To rise, the geese have sold a feather crop.
A pretzel dog beheld the river harps.
A king was sleeping over swords and dames.v
A million questions stirred the summer carps.
These pictures melt beyond their paper frames.
The changing road was lit with cash and wine.
A billion dollars burst the human dime.
Does sexuality imprison or empower women? 2016's The Love Witch seems to argue it depends on how you use it and the right way to use it may be unknowable. It's an intellectual but also a pretty, intentionally campy film that I enjoyed.
From what little I've read of director Anna Biller's intentions, the less I know of those, the better. The protagonist is a witch named Elaine (Samantha Robinson) who describes her philosophy as one devoted to pleasing men. Yet, as she expands on what her conception of pleasing them actually consists of, she reveals it's founded on a deeply patronising impression of men. "Men are fragile," she says, and can't emotionally withstand criticism or mentally process contrary opinion from a woman. They also just want sex all the time. So Elaine's idea of pleasing men is basically date raping them with magic.
When we see her with a professor whom she picks up in the park, we find she's not so complaint as she claims. She won't make out with him in the car when he asks, though she doesn't come out and say no. She gives him some drugged booze and asks him to take her inside where she insists on cooking him some steaks first. When they've had sex and he turns out to be whiny and co-dependent, somehow she finds herself murdering him. What else can you do when you can't have a straight forward conversation?
Biller indulges in a meticulous recreation of 1960s style in terms of sets, wardrobe, and editing. Unlike most such nostalgia films, it doesn't seem like an imitation of Tarantino but like Biller actually has a fondness for the style from watching scores of films from the period. Like most Tarantino films, though, it's not actually set in the period--people use cell phones and you can see some modern cars in the background of some shots. It's just an indulgence in style and I can dig it.
The Love Witch is available on The Criterion Channel.
I wonder if the reason ratings are lower this season on Only Murders in the Building is that there aren't so many actors of Selena Gomez's generation. Season three was lighter on young actors, too, but it had that big tease of Gomez in the wedding dress and also a lot of oddly sexy outfits for her (I really miss those). This season, there's Paul Rudd and Kumail Nanjiani, both of whom are very funny but have kind of established themselves as guys who show up to garnish old, established IP. I always thought Mabel's romance subplots were kind of awkward but maybe the show needed them.
Anyway, last night's new episode introduced another young woman, a German locksmith who looks like a supermodel, which is kind of cute. There was an interesting ongoing bit between Eugene Levy and Steven Martin in which the former tried to make the latter angry. I found it more interesting than funny. I was curious about Martin's range for physical comedy at this point.
I just realised the guy playing Dudenoff is an actor named Griffin Dunne, who played David's undead best friend in American Werewolf in London. It's a small world.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
Kathy Bates picked up an ax for Stephen King once again in 1995's Dolores Claiborne. I wouldn't rank it among the best King adaptions but it's not bad, having a great cast, a score from Danny Elfman, and a solid screenplay by Tony Gilroy.
Compared to the madwoman Bates played in Misery, Dolores just isn't as interesting. The movie acts like her motives and actions are a big mystery but, from the beginning, they somehow never really are. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe because of how director Taylor Hackford initially presents Dolores standing menacingly over the elderly Vera (Judy Parfitt) holding a rolling pin too obviously indicates there's more to the story than what we see.
Dolores is accused of murdering the woman for whom she was sole caregiver. Dolores' daughter, Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh), comes back to the small Maine town to defend her mother against the investigation conducted by Detective Mackey (Christopher Plummer). Mackey suspects Dolores of foul play here because he suspects she'd murdered her husband, Joe (David Straithairn), eighteen years earlier.
A lot hinges on Selena's memories and the film spends a lot of time with flashbacks. It's a quite self-consciously feminist film with all three of the female leads remarking on how treatment by men forces a woman to be "a bitch". Selena's repressed memory of a sexual assault is a key dramatic point in the film and marks it as a forerunner of a lot of post-Me Too narratives that deal with women re-interpretting past sexual experiences as assault. An important distinction is that Selena has repressed the memory entirely and the signs of having done so are plainly visible in her erratic and nervous behaviour. The film is in this both ahead of its time as well as truly dated. The next serious treatment of this topic should also deal with the dangers and potential abuse of a system where people are legally able to interpret themselves as victims several years after the event.
In any case, Dolores Claiborne intelligently maps out, through the framework of one woman's life, just how many extraordinary obstacles are put in a woman's path. The movie may have succeeded better had Dolores been a slightly more colourful character. Maybe there was some attempt at this, judging from the odd epithets she comes up with. At one point she calls Christopher Plummer's character "the Grand Poobah of upbutt." The trouble is, there's never really any point in which it seems plausible that Dolores is the malevolent creature Plummer's character makes her out to be. Without that potential in play, there's also no true sense of the unfair perceptions a woman would have to deal with in such circumstances. The trouble in such a real life situation would be in the ambiguity. This film never leaves you any doubt.
Dolores Claiborne is available on The Criterion Channel.
This is what I invented for lunch this weekend: Curry Pumpkin Soba. I boiled buckwheat soba noodles with chopped pumpkin (green Japanese pumpkin, of course) and made a sauce with cocoanut milk, turmeric, salt, pepper, curry powder, red pepper, and parsley. It's pretty good and clears my sinuses.
It's pretty much a result of what I figured out I could do with what I had lying around. I ate it every day this three day weekend. To-day, Monday, is a national holiday in Japan, Sports Day, because sports are that important here. It really is like a religion. That doesn't spot me and many others observing the holiday by staying in and playing video games.
X Sonnet #1889
My internet was slow and full of hooves.
The gelatin arrived because of doom.
The tiny footed thieves bereave the woods.
Conduct yourself with space within the room.
Describe a floating nose without an eye.
Describe an ear without a waxy wand.
Demand insured the smiling ghost was spry.
Of candy, phones become excessive fond.
Defend your life from cocoanuts and beer.
Along the wall, supply your ready men.
Corrections built the prisons free and clear.
The demons built a chart describing sin.
A lovely lass arose from Satan's brow
Inspired man to push a rusty plough.
1981's An American Werewolf in London is on The Criterion Channel now. I hadn't seen it in years so I watched it again. I don't know if I remembered what a nihilistic movie it is. That was part of what made it effectively scary when I was a kid, and a lot of other movies from the early '80s. There's no sense of moral order to it, shit just happens.
One of the reviews quoted on Wikipedia argues that the movie is about being Jewish. I'm not sure about that, it feels to me the two Americans just happen to be (possibly) Jewish--aside from a nurse peeking at David's circumcised penis and presuming his religion from that, I don't remember any direct reference to him being Jewish. On the other hand, his name is David and whether or not he is actually Jewish may not matter in terms of the film's subtext. You could see a comment on the Holocaust, I suppose, in that mass murder occurs without any sense of moral order. The ghosts urging David to kill himself might certainly represent religious guilt exacerbated in extreme circumstances. There's even a line, an off-hand joke, when the two American boys decide to stop at the pub in the wilderness--"Whatever happens, it's my fault"/"Whatever happens, it's your fault."
Despite Rick Baker's amazing transformation effects, I find the encounters with zombies and the dream sequences much more effective than any of the actual werewolf stuff. When David's in wolf form he looks more like a bear, he's much too shaggy. But we've never had a good werewolf movie with the special effects it deserves. Why do their hands always get longer? Surely they should get smaller?
Anyway, I really like the dream sequence with stormtroopers with monster faces--oh, yeah, I guess they're Nazis, aren't they? Maybe that critic has a point. Well, that dream always freaked me out as a kid because it seemed to have no logic to it beyond being part of the general dread coming down on David.
Jenny Agutter is so fucking gorgeous in this movie. I need to watch Walkabout again.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago it can be kind of a pain in the ass getting ahold of Hammer films. Well, last year I started collecting some used Hammer DVDs here in Japan.
A Japanese company called SPO Entertainment evidently manufactured some really nice Hammer box sets some years ago. They don't contain the major titles, no Frankenstein or Horror of Dracula, but they do have many that are, as far as I'm concerned, among Hammer's true best. I bought volume I and III of the main line and a special set of Ingrid Pitt's movies.
They don't have really anything in terms of special features or frills but I admire the simplicity and taste of the design. The main line sets simply used the original poster art for the DVD case covers, which was absolutely the right way to go.
Japanese blu-rays are in the same region as the U.S. but DVDs aren't, so I guess these would be almost useless for me if I ever moved back to the States. On the other hand, they might just look nice on a shelf.
X Sonnet #1888
I always check the clock in diff'rent spots.
No time was present past the av'rage cake.
Connexions weld the sloppy people dots.
With buckets full, the berries start to bake
Becoming dull distinguished mighty stones.
A river gushed with flavour over grains.
There's nothing left to warm the jester's bones.
The dog would not arrive to hide his pains.
With brainless imps about the pond we wait.
No rain arrives the slake the crashing thirst.
No plane arrives to stall the walking fate.
A better day attends beside the worst.
Rebirth requires burning blood and beans.
The stranded toad bestows the needed means.
In Charles Dickens' blistering 1850 criticism of Christ in the House of His Parents, the above John Everett Millais painting, he describes the painting thusly:
You behold the interior of a carpenter's shop. In the foreground of that carpenter's shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown; who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist's next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles's.
As expected from a writer of Dickens' immense talent, the criticism is sharp and funny. Which does nothing to diminish the fact that it is plainly and thoroughly wrong. But that goes to show just how shocking the Pre-Raphaelites were in Victorian England.
It's ironic that Dickens embraced such an ideal of art when the most memorable aspects of his own work are the dirtiest, commonest characters. I found myself thinking of Todd Phillips. I haven't seen Joker: Folie a Deux--it hasn't been released yet in Japan and I won't be able to afford to see it when it is. But, while I've made an effort to avoid spoilers, I've read enough about the audience reactions and the film's surprisingly abysmal box office numbers to know Phillips has done one of those infamous "subversions of expectations". I thought back to how the first film was received by critics. A signifying example is YouTuber Jenny Nicholson's review of the film in which a portion of her critique focused on her dissatisfaction with the way some people liked the movie. There was a moral outrage element to criticisms of Joker and Quentin Tarantino correctly identified the film's climax as its most interesting part for how it made the audience vicariously complicit in Arthur's crime. Over time, critics have smoothed their feathers and fashioned a countenance to be hip to Tarantino's insight. But not the film's director, Todd Phillips.
I knew the Joker was not meant to be seen in any way heroic in that first movie. And it doesn't surprise me that Phillips would seek to sabotage what he may see as an excess of sympathy. As interesting as that moment was in the first film, Joker, at the end of the day, really is a Taxi Driver pastiche and never truly approaches the genius of the Scorsese film because Phillips isn't close to Scorsese's genius.
A lot of talk now is about how much autonomy a director should have when making a movie. I would still say a failure with a more unified artistic voice is more interesting than a failure composed of sterile studio formula and market research. It's unfortunate art is obliged to be a business, particularly when so much great art isn't recognised as such until years after it's already lost everyone truckloads of cash. But I don't think Phillips falls into that category.
Yesterday I showed The Last Unicorn to the English club at the junior high school I'm working at. That's harder than it sounds. You see, I'm in Japan, and The Last Unicorn has never been released here, despite the fact that the animation on the Rankin Bass movie was done by a Japanese studio called Topcraft, a studio which later combined with others to become none other than Studio Ghibli. It was puzzling that it had never been released here. So back in July, I decided my big project for August would be to make Japanese subtitles for the film.
It was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be, even though, for the most part, I wasn't doing the actual translating. Although the movie had never been released in Japan, Peter S. Beagle's original 1968 novel had, and had been translated. Most of the dialogue in the book happens to be the same in the movie so this meant I could get a translation in much better Japanese than I'm capable of. The main trouble was that it used a lot of kanji I'm unfamiliar with--the Japanese writing system uses three sets of characters; katakana and hiragana are simple pronunciation based characters similar to the English alphabet but kanji consists of thousands of Chinese characters, each with multiple pronunciations and pictographic elements. Only a fraction of them are in common use but this changes from decade to decade meaning that there are characters in books from, say, 70 years ago that average young Japanese people would struggle to read to-day. This is one of the ways Japan keeps itself insulated from common citizens developing critical thinking skills.
So it was very slow going because the characters were too small to simply scan with my phone. I had to look up unfamiliar kanji on Wiktionary by the radicals. For example, the little character on the left side of 信, "believe", is actually a small version of 人, "person". Wiktionary has helpful pages of these "radicals" I could go through to eventually find the kanji I was looking for.
Of course, the songs aren't in the book. I found translations for two of them; the main theme has been covered a few times so I found a translation for it on a blog from about fifteen years ago when some young Scottish singer with some level of fame in Japan covered it. "That's All I've Got to Say" was covered on an episode of The Orville so I was able to get that translation from Disney+. The other songs I had to translate myself. The students said my translations weren't perfect but they got the gist.
So yesterday may in fact be the first time the movie was screened for a Japanese audience since it was first released in 1982. The students seemed to enjoy it though, actually showing it to them, I was reminded what a lousy time the early '80s was for animation. How could I make excuses for the fact that every character was painted exactly the same regardless of the lighting? Or the strange jerky movements of occasionally, improperly aligned animation cells? I couldn't say it was because it was an old movie when older movies like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty stand up against anything to-day. It truly was a Dark Age. At least The Last Unicorn has an excellent story, a superb voice cast, and decent songs.
Meryl Streep wrestled Melissa McCarthy on last night's Only Murders in the Building. And even then, Streep came off as effortlessly natural. That's a great actress.
The main trio go to hide out at Charles' sister's house. She turns out to be McCarthy, an obsessive doll collector with a husband who lives in a boat in the driveway. I guess this has become the show where every major star whose career is lagging goes. She was funny enough, I guess. Her heartfelt dialogue with Steve Martin about her missing spleen was a little better than her broad comedy with Martin Short just because it was so intriguingly odd.
I feel like this show should have guest appearances from Selena Gomez's contemporary pop stars. Here she is looking disconcertingly sexy in one of her old videos:
I'm not complaining about the sexiness by any means. It just goes to show what a different world she comes from than her costars.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere (like Japan).
I've been watching The X Files lately, the first time I've gone back to watch the show since it first aired. I rewatched some episodes when the series was first airing but this is the first time in 25 years or so I've actually gone back to those first episodes. One thing that's surprised me is that the show was clearly more influenced by Twin Peaks than I thought it was. The first two episodes, both written by Chris Carter, feature the FBI agents going to small towns and meeting the locals. The first episode has a young woman die mysteriously and the local sheriff talks about how he knew her. The series did get its own identity but I know the Twin Peaks shadow never went away.
The X Files, at least in the U.S., doesn't have quite the legacy of Twin Peaks. Partly, I think this is a benefit of Twin Peaks getting cut off at the end of its second season. The X Files outstayed its welcome by a very long stretch. The revival series didn't generate the interest the Twin Peaks revival did.
Anyway, it's nice to watch a show with decent writing. The third episode, the first one not written by Carter, is a little weaker though the character of Eugene Tooms is great. It's kind of silly that the other FBI agents are scoffing at Mulder for thinking Toom's the culprit when he has the guy's fingerprints at the crime scenes. Mostly, the writing's good but it was pretty lame that they gave Mulder this smoking gun and contrived not to have him share it with the agents who said he was crazy. The episode is carried by how intriguing Tooms is and the great chemistry between Mulder and Scully.
The X Files is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
X Sonnet #1887
The broken bulb extends beyond the house.
Reliant names were changed beyond the dream.
Though dark, the fire's more than hats can dowse.
With brick and mortar, walls repel a beam.
Conditioned air resembled frozen flame.
Decipher codes before you send your mail.
We knew the plan before we knew the name.
The lettuce wilts because it envies kale.
The trouble bit the webbing gauze to glue.
Above the startle chimney, moons retreat.
They lied to say that purple's never blue.
Some others say the hat was nigh complete.
Addition tails improve the fish's dance.
Contrition jails disprove the wish's chance.
A little boy battles appliances, pipes, and wiring in his step-mother's house in 1988's Pulse. I recommend not reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia because it provides an explanation for the supernatural events in the film that the film itself does not provide. One of the reasons the movie works so remarkably well is its deliberate avoidance of straight forward explanation.
Little David (Joey Lawrence) is already stressed out by the uncomfortable situation of staying with his dad (Cliff De Young) and his dad's new wife, Ellen (Roxanne Hart), at their Los Angeles home. He'd rather be back home in Colorado. But a strange situation is about to get even stranger.
A man across the street is seen beating the crap out of his furniture before all goes silent. The police walk in to find a man apparently dead by power drill, presumably by his own hand. David starts talking to another kid on the street--another nice thing about this movie is, even though the kids are cute, the movie never makes too much of it, it treats them as people with feelings and information to share. This other kid tells David about how the dead man used to accuse the kids of poisoning his lawn.
David breaks into the house and encounters a strange old man in a fedora who provides an explanation for what David's already starting to experience with electricity in his father's house. But this old man also seems pretty off and later we learn he also has a bomb shelter. Is he really giving us an explanation or is he just another guy bewildered, only a little more confident about articulating his suppositions?
"Lovecraftian" is a word that gets overused but this is a real, genuine example of that quality of menacing ambiguity that distinguishes so much of Lovecraft's work. This movie's got it.
Let's take a moment to appreciate James Spader. There's an actor who'll try just about anything but even in a pretty straight forward role he's good. 2000's The Watcher is a remarkably unremarkable film. Director Joe Carbanic, who has no Wikipedia entry, directed this theatrical release with effects and editing that say "made for TV". Alongside Spader, it stars Marisa Tomei post-My Cousin Vinny and Keanu Reeves, post-Matrix. How and why? It turns out Carbonic forged Reeves' signature on the contract but Reeves preferred to go through with the film instead of engaging in a legal battle! I guess that goes to show how tough such lawsuits can be to prosecute.
I didn't hate the movie. It was kind of interesting seeing Spader in such a normal role, playing an obsessed former FBI agent with no apparent sexual fetishes beyond a scene where he glances casually at a Victoria's Secret catalogue.
Reeves plays against type as the serial killer who's introduced accompanied by Rob Zombie's "Dragula". Despite hard '90s alternative rock being his theme music, he just looks like Keanu Reeves in a nondescript leather jacket. I guess he's believable as a villain, as Reeves is ever believable at anything. More believable than he is as a Victorian real estate broker.
His victims are always friendless women who look like supermodels, who were apparently common enough at the time in Chicago for him to go on a spree. The second victim was the most implausible, a pretty brunette begging for change who approaches older men calling them "Dad" but apparently never has any takers, or even anyone who just stops to chat with her.
Mostly it's just nice watching Spader work. Tomei plays his psychiatrist. She broaches the idea that he and Reeves are linked by mutual obsession but kind of just by rote, like the director figured you had to make some mention of that in a movie like this, and never goes anywhere with it. She and Spader seem set up for romance but the film's flat footed there, too. All the same, I liked Spader's character with his messy apartment and bad habits which are vaguely implied to have caused him to collapse at one point for medical reasons undisclosed to the audience.
I came home from work yesterday to find my desktop computer monitor was broken. It just shows vertical white lines now. At least I still had my old monitor which still basically works except it has a horizontal white line through the bottom of the screen. It's a slightly smaller Asus, the one that crapped out entirely was a Benq. I never had one just die abruptly, my monitors usually go slowly. There's usually a grace period where I can kid myself and pretend there's nothing wrong, like everything in the upper left corner is just normally slightly pink or the random discoloured dots are a software problem.
This came at the worst possible time. October's traditionally a lean month for me because I don't get paid, since there's no school in Japan in August. I won't be revisiting any visually impressive favourite films until November. It's not a good time to watch 2001, that's for sure. I'm glad I finished my latest watch of Twin Peaks a few days ago. Part of me likes to think my monitor going out is related to the power surge in the Palmer household at the end of season three.
Last night I watched the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building on my laptop. I can't remember any previous season being so consistently funny. Even Paul Rudd, guest starring as the stunt double of his character from last season, is dynamite. I don't even think about Ant-Man when I see him.
I have absolutely no prediction for the killer this season. The show never plays fair with its clues so there's no reason why I should have a prediction. But what the hell, I'll throw out a wild guess and say it's Paul Rudd's character with his phony Irish accent. He's the highlight for me so far on this season filled with highlights.
X Sonnet #1886
A boring man returns the rice to fields.
On lifeless feet, the legs of grass would swim.
Controlling bats contrive to foil guilds.
Demented creeps construct a phony whim.
A field of mice computes a sky of cats.
The wayward boat contains the king of shrimp.
When drinking blood, preserve a thought for bats.
A loving thought does not create a simp.
The broken bulb extends beyond the house.
Reliant names were changed beyond the dream.
Though dark, the fire's more than hats can dowse.
With brick and mortar, walls repel a beam.
Refunding snakes was never planned or done.
A dog was sleeping sound upon the bun.
Why worry about vampires when mutant bats are bad enough? Witness 1999's Bats in which Lou Diamond Phillips battles the cgi beasties, occasionally swapped with noticeably less mobile puppets for closeups. It's cheesy!
It reaches a nadir of cheesiness in one scene where the scientist (Bob Gunton) defends making bats into perfect killers because "I'm a scientist. That's what we do! We make everything a little better." The wise-cracking black sidekick character (Leon) says, "I don't know about you but I don't like anything moving higher up the food chain than me. Period!" And the outraged blonde (Dina Meyer) calls the scientist a "son of a bitch!" It achieves a harmony of stock characters delivering hammy lines that assembles a fine, greasy cheese sandwich. I miss Denny's.
It's all set in Gallup Texas so Lou Diamond Phillips can strut around as the sheriff with an accent and proclaim bats will not make mischief in his town. It's a lot of fun.
A young man's only chance at saving his family and his future is to win a cross country dog sled race in 1994's Iron Will. It's kind of Jack London nerfed to shaving foam but it is a fairly enjoyable, family friendly flick.
After Will (Mackenzie Astin) sees his father perish after falling through thin ice, his mother gives him the hard truth that they're going to have to sell their beloved huskies to get by. Then Will gets ahold of an ad for the big race with a big prize.
The cinematography is really bland. Snowy landscapes can look pretty dull at midday. There are a couple pretty standard sunset shots but mostly the look of the film gives it a made-for-TV sense of scale. Kevin Spacey is effective in a small role as a newspaper reporter who turns Will's story into something that inspires the nation. There's some really thinly contrived drama in which Will suddenly becomes angry with Spacey's character for no apparent reason, this setup being there just so Will can feel sorry later when Spacey's character turns out to be a true friend. Maybe something was cut.
It's often said hauntings are the result of ghosts having issues left unresolved from their mortal lives. 2001's Pulse (回路) posits the opposite may also be true, that ghosts are a reflection or symbol of issues left unconfronted by those still living. This film by the other Kurosawa, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, comes from that wonderful post-Evangelion period in Japanese media when artists were exploring daringly insightful psychological analyses in their works.
We meet a young woman, Michi (Aso Kumiko), who works at a rooftop greenhouse in Tokyo. She visits a coworker, Toguchi, at home, speaks to him briefly, and then is startled to discover his corpse hanging from a noose, apparently having been dead for some time.
In another part of town, a college student named Ryosuke (Kato Harukiko) is setting up his first computer with an internet connexion (it was 2001, remember). He's confused to find the site continually loads up footage of unknown individuals walking listlessly around their apartments. Freaked out, Ryosuke visits the college computer lab where he finds a beautiful young student called Harue (Koyuki) is surprisingly helpful and interested in him. As the movie progresses, the characters find themselves compulsively discussing loneliness and the possible futility of attempting to achieve meaningful connexions. It's a little startling how quickly Michi and her coworkers are willing to brush past Toguchi's suicide and carry on work as usual, gossiping as they arrange plants. When Harue asks Ryosuke if he got set up for the internet because he wanted to connect with people, he finds himself baffled and unable to explain his own motivation beyond some vague comment about how everyone else was doing it.
The film's intent on social commentary becomes clearer as the scope of the hauntings broadens to include the entire Kanto region. As ghosts become a more prevalent part of everyone's lives, the living exhibit stranger behaviour. Ryosuke and Michi finally meet when he stumbles upon her car sitting idle in the middle of the street while she sleeps with her head rested against the wheel.
The atmosphere is pretty effective and the ghosts are nice and creepy. Pulse is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a playlist of Japanese horror movies.
X Sonnet #1885
Returning tubes were jammed with people bread.
We toast the night when yeast discovered wheat.
A rising loaf could float attendant dead.
Descriptions labelled ham a deadly meat.
A circle night began with burning guns.
Throughout the night, the riders only thought.
Across the street, a phantom quickly runs.
With gentle hands, the moth was never caught.
Impressions burnt to walls could move the eye.
Important boats were leaving home behind.
Decisions cut the mollusc monster pie.
Of dreams the normal ghost doth us remind.
Repeated tides have left the clothing pale.
A soup of ghosts has fed the lonely whale.
