Completing the Spell

I finally finished watching The Magicians last night, the SyFy series that started in 2015 and ended in 2020. I'd watched every episode and stopped before watching the final episode about four years ago. Why? I don't know. I did the same thing with A Touch of Frost. You'd think watching a whole series would make me want to watch the final episode but for some reason I didn't really feel motivated with either of these shows. But I was recently poking around American Amazon and remembered I'd actually bought the last episode for around three dollars several years ago.

I couldn't completely follow all the various plot strands in the last episode, I couldn't remember everything that was happening, but I enjoyed it.

It's a very cosy show. Something about the fact that, due to its low budget, it's almost entirely filmed on just four or five sound stages, even though it's a story with a scope covering alternate dimensions and timelines and city locales, makes it feel like a group of friends playing pretend in a large house. It also has a true serial feel to it, like a picaresque or the original Flash Gordon. There's no three act or any other kind of structure. It's just; this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens . . . Maybe that's why it didn't feel appropriate to watch the end. It was kind of an inconclusive ending, anyway. I wonder if the cast and crew expected to get another season some day, somehow. It doesn't seem likely now though, looking at their Wikipedia pages, it doesn't appear the cast has had much work in the past couple years.

It was a good cast. That was what first attracted me to the series. I saw them all live at San Diego Comic Con and they had such a great rapport that I was compelled to watch the show. I was pleased enough by the show which quickly outgrew some initial soap opera water weight to become a leaner Buffy style fantasy adventure with quips. It's good. And Olivia Taylor Dudley is really hot.

Let's Get Super

The new Superman trailer premiered a few days ago. It's supposed to be the first full trailer though it seems like we've already seen an awful lot, mostly involving the dog, Krypto, which has been effective. This trailer finally gives us some Clark and Lois interaction and I'm disappointed to see she already knows his secret identity. It seems like that fun dynamic hasn't lasted long in any superhero film since the first Christopher Reeve movie. I suppose people feel like it prevents the characters from having meaningful dialogue. I would recommend those people watch the popular anime Spy Family in which two characters have identities they keep secret from each other and it's loads of fun. And it has a kind of nuance because a secret identity can stand in for the inevitable depths and complexities about another person which we're unable to understand however open the person is or however much we might pry into their personal lives.

This is the first time David Corenswet really came across as Superman for me but, sadly, it was when he wasn't in the costume and his muscles were allowed to show through a simple white button down shirt. This Superman costume is all wrong. The high collar looks military and it makes him look smaller. It's thick, too, like Batman's armoured suit. The costume shouldn't look like it's something he needs for protection.

Rachel Brosnahan is pitch perfect as Lois.

I love the saturated colour palette, which is one thing that definitely shows James Gunn was the right director for this material. He usually does go for a rainbow over the more standard two or three key tones. It's more difficult to work with so much colour but the rewards are worth it.

I really hope this movie is good. We need more media demonstrating that altruism is cool. There are too many fucking savages out there, including the big orange one squatting on the White House.

Joe Don Baker

Joe Don Baker has died. He was 89. Like most people of my generation, I know him best, perhaps unfortunately, as the star of Mitchell and that film's appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1993. It's widely considered one of the very best episodes of MST3k, in no small part due to the endless jokes made at Baker's expense.

I remember reading an interview with Trace Beaulieu, who voiced Crow T. Robot at the time, where he said he felt kind of bad about riffing so much on Baker, saying that he was actually a fan of Baker's work. And Joe Don Baker was indeed a good actor in quality, pulp films of the '70s like Charley Varrick and The Outfit with Robert Duvall which Quentin Tarantino praised in his book Cinematic Speculations, commending Baker's performance.

Joe Don Baker had a long career that shifted between cheesy and classy. He had roles in Scorsese's Cape Fear and in multiple James Bond movies. His last film was 2012's Mud. Farewell, Mr. Baker. I promise I'll remember you for the right reasons.

Andor Closes with a Tale of Two Women

For the final three episodes of Andor, which were quite good, the curious decision to bring a new writer to the series, Tom Bissell, was made. It wasn't a bad idea, it turns out. Bissell is best known for writing video games, according to Wikipedia. Maybe that gave him a good instinct for kinetic suspense.

Kleya's infiltration of the hospital had kind of a horror video game vibe, actually. More than anyone else, these three episodes were really Kleya's story as we see flashbacks from her first encounter with Luthen and how he raised her and trained her juxtaposed with her bringing their operations to an end and finally being coaxed into going to Yavin. Her journey in the three episodes, from an agent of paranoia in a reality defined by consistent despair to accepting the reality of Yavin, a world of hope, stands in for the story of the Rebellion as it progresses from a spark of limited fire to a flame poised to seriously threaten the Empire.

That was great but I think the best parts of the episodes were the vicious, bureaucratic shufflings within the ranks of the ISB, starting with that wonderfully absurd, nightmarish moment when Dedra is arrested at the height of her professional triumph.

I also loved that the Imperial mind couldn't acknowledge that Jung was a spy. In Krennic's interrogation of Dedra, he was obliged to make some awkward verbal contortions to portray Jung as the accomplice of Dedra the data scavenger. She points out that she was forced to be a scavenger, to get access to intel she didn't have clearance for, in order to do her job. The system has absurd rules built in likely for the very purpose of being invoked only when a scapegoat is needed or an officer needs to be disposed of for some other equally sinister or absurd reason.

I noticed Tony Gilroy has been kind of kissing up to Dave Filoni lately in interviews and one of last night's episodes even featured one of Filoni's signature "loth cats". I'm hoping this means Gilroy is trying to secure a place for himself at Lucasfilm. I'd love to see him write a series or movie just focusing on Imperials.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Of Rice and Madness

"日本の米" was trending on my X feed this morning, "Japanese uncooked rice". Bad rice crops that began a couple years ago are continuing to be a headache as distributors who horded rice are gouging prices. It turns out, this has led to an increase in imported rice consumption, including my old friend Calrose rice from California. Maybe California will just gradually be imported, bit by bit, and I'll find myself home again in ten years without actually going anywhere.

I resumed watching Ally McBeal last night, a season three episode called "Seeing Green". I'd stopped watching the show for a while after waking up in the middle of an episode about Ally's mother with no memory of any of the events leading up to it. I finally figured out I'd slept through at least three and a half episodes which Disney+ dutifully unspooled for this insensible potato. I miss not falling asleep so easily.

"Seeing Green" continues to explore Ally's adorable dementia and her uncontrollable hallucinations of Al Green, who actually guest stars. Meanwhile, Billy joins a self-help group for men uncomfortable with their own chauvinistic instincts but finds he's actually quite comfortable with them. It's nice to see writer David E. Kelley realised how slimy Billy comes across and decided to lean into it.

X Sonnet 1939

Together, ants were making cake of hay.
No time was lost for horses built of frogs.
You see, perspective saved the drowsy day.
The moral lessons fade in corp'rate fogs.
No problem hurts as bad as jumping rails.
They whip the air and make the clouds their thralls.
But fire shrinks from wheels attached to pails.
The royal ice can thus afford its balls.
And now you see the flow of heaven's trade.
At ev'ry point, a check determines toll.
Disputed taxes call for Jedi aid.
A tariff war in space infects the goal.
The traffic words were bunched about the skirt.
A tattered hem would gather little dirt.

The Face of Funny

I found myself watching 1957's Funny Face again on the weekend. What an odd man Fred Astaire was. Such a great dancer, such an odd look. I truly think he was asexual. He never seemed especially interested in any of his costars, just pleasant and gracious. Somehow Ginger Rogers made it work with lust entirely on her side. Audrey Hepburn is impossibly lovely as always but she can't make the chemistry work between her and Astaire somehow in Funny Face.

It's not that he was thirty years older than her. She worked fine with Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, William Holden, and Cary Grant. Grant was probably the best because she was able to work up some real lust for him in Charade. Like Funny Face, Charade was directed by Stanley Donan so maybe that was a lesson the director took from Funny Face.

The screenplay is surprisingly intelligent and its dialogue about high art and philosophy versus fashion and sensual indulgence is interesting. Maybe the movie is too intellectual. It gets bogged down in it and Hepburn doesn't get time to properly come across as overcome with feeling.

The Hazards of a Creative Process

I'm halfway through watching Etoile. What a delightful show. I think it's the most solid series I've seen from the Palladinos. At least the first four episodes are. According to some reviews, it kind of goes off a cliff after this so I guess I should savour it now.

The screwball comedy dialogue is exquisitely written and perfectly delivered. A lot of stuff that felt slightly out of place or gratuitous on Gilmore Girls makes sense in the world of obsessed ballet people. You can have a guy who flies from Paris to freak out about his choreography because someone was recast without his knowing. You can have Cheyenne's weird routine about picking a partner. It's absurd but also very credible.

And all that great stuff stops in the fourth episode so we can actually watch some ballet and it's beautiful. Again, I thought of The Red Shoes. Maybe any ballet movie or series would inevitably draw comparisons to that one that set the standard but, just like The Red Shoes, it goes from being a behind the scenes procedural to being actual ballet. I guess The Red Shoes does it with a lot more chutzpah because it gives us a single story while Etoile goes for a montage. Still, it's wonderful stuff. It's a shame this show isn't getting more attention.

Etoile is available on Amazon Prime.

Let's Analyse!

Hey, kids! Did you enjoy last night's Doctor Who? Did you like the theoretical dispersion of conceptual text deployed through post modern analytical framework? What a rip roaring adventure!

Okay, so Doctor Who is currently not for kids, or anyone who's not an American or British college student or liberal arts graduate from the past twenty-five years. And, no, it certainly wasn't for Nigerians. Nigeria has its own film industry and it looks like this:

I certainly am pleased by the idea of Doctor Who going to Africa but it would be nice if he had an adventure there instead of weak, reheated Salmon Rushdie fluff about the nature of stories, their connexion to culture, and the nature of cultural identity. I'm not a fan of Rushdie's work but last night's Doctor Who couldn't hope to approach his intellect or creativity.

It was written by Inua Ellams, a Nigerian born British writer and poet whose biggest success was a play called Barber Shop Chronicles, and last night's Doctor Who had the Doctor visiting a barbershop in Nigeria. Apparently it's somewhat related. In this case, the barbershop turns out to be a spaceship powered by the stories told by people trapped in the shop, a pretty simplistic allegory for how indigenous cultures are exploited for the self-interests of powerful colonialist entities. Again, it's all been done better by Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Angela Carter, and various other people fifty or sixty years ago. Now, you could argue that Doctor Who in the 60s and 70s was influenced by Flash Gordon and HP Lovecraft and I would say, yes, influenced to tell exciting stories, not influenced to regurgitate academic twaddle. Ellams might have been better off drawing influence from Nollywood. At least those movies are fun. His Doctor Who episode almost ranks with Disney's Wish as being a conceptual boondoggle but I wouldn't say it's as convoluted as Wish. Few things are.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere.

The World for a Thigh

Penelope Cruz is at the centre of a dramatic storm of sex, comedy, and tragedy in her debut role of Silvia in 1992's Jamon, jamon ("Ham, Ham"). It's a story of rural prostitutes and idle, wouldbe matadors fit for a soap opera except everything is shaded with absurdism. It's pretty fascinating.

Sylvia discovers she's gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, Jose (Jordi Molla). He wants to marry her, much to the ire of his mother, Conchita (Stefana Sandrelli), who considers Silvia's mother (Anna Galiena) to be no better than a whore.

Into the mix wanders Javier Bardem as Raul, a young man who works delivering ham and modelling underwear. At night, he practices bullfighting in the nude for some reason and Bardem was evidently willing to show everyone how well hung he is. He sets his sights on both Silvia and Conchita, making an already volatile situation chaotic.

The title of the film invites the viewer to see this as a problem of the flesh but it becomes absurdly literal in the climax. Everyone is quite noisy about what they see as points of honour and the true passions of their hearts but, at the end of the day, it seems all a matter of ham.

Jamon jamon is available on The Criterion Channel.

Dreams of the Future or the Past

Last night I dreamt I moved back to the U.S. but it was filled with Japanese junior high schools for me to work at. I got a job at one in Washington and commuted every day from San Diego somehow.

It occurred to me that if Diego Luna became a saint he would be San Diego.

I see Mon Mothma is trending on Twitt--I mean X--this morning. With 4,000 posts, so I guess it's one of those that X has served up for my particular reality. I guess it's ironic that her trending speech is about the loss of objective reality.

Doctor Who also seems to be on this tack. The final episode of this current season is called "The Reality War".

I have to say I still find Obi-Wan's line about truths depending on our points of views to be more insightful. But certainly we have to agree on some basic facts, even if those facts turn out to be delusions in the long run. I think most people sense that without acknowledging it. It can become dangerous when people get too hung up on the precise truth. That's what the Puritans were. They wanted to stick to the pure words of the bible without the tangents of interpretations the Catholics had extrapolated from it. But to-day the Puritans are hardly remembered for being objective.

Obi-Wan smoothly goes from talking about truth depending on point of view to telling Luke he has a clear destiny. It's a contradiction but, hey, he also happened to be right, though he got the precise nature of that destiny wrong. I guess it's like God said on that episode of Futurama, you have to use a light touch.

The whole concept of transgender depends on the idea that truth can be different from observable reality. So does the concept of God, for that matter. So arguing about the necessity of truth can be a hazardous path, regardless of your political allegiance.

X Sonnet 1938

A circle captures nothing serving squares.
Repeated masters drift beyond the mind.
Abandoned forests hold their ghostly bears.
A carbon copy shows where nature signed.
A fax machine was used to stop a door.
But secrets held within were made of ink.
The rich concoct a vague idea of poor.
A gang in chains has made a summer rink.
Where fashion summons human hearts from Hell,
Where dolphins walk with tacky metal legs,
You'll find the mad have rung the chapel bell.
It goes to show you never hide your eggs.
For hatching happens any place on Earth.
The dice are rolled with ev'ry chicken birth.

Committed And/Or Damned

Wow. Could there be anyone who wasn't pleased with last night's trio of new Andor episodes? I, for one, was captivated. They were written by Tony's brother Dan Gilroy who wrote the Aldani heist arc in the first season. Back then, I wondered if Dan was not a better writer than his brother. Now I really think he is.

Unlike the previous groups of three episodes this season, last night's trio felt like a distinct set of three episodes rather than a single continuous narrative. The first episode, "Messenger", was the first to really feature the Force. No flashing lightsabres, no floating boulders, just a quiet healing scene, but it's enough to really freak Cassian out. The Force Healer senses extraordinary clarity in Andor that stands in contrast to his incredulous exterior. We've seen this in his actions, though. Despite what he says about wanting to get away and live a safe life somewhere far away from war, his instincts always show firm commitment to the cause.

The second episode focused on the Ghorman massacre and also features the heartbreaking conclusion of Syril and Dedra's story. Dedra may be back next week in some capacity but Syril likely will not. It's worth remembering why Syril got into this: he was investigating what he thought was a murder. He was driven by a sense of justice. Unlike most of the Imperial characters we met, he, at least not consciously, was not driven by malice or a desire for personal glory. Finally, he's forced to confront the fact that the Empire isn't what he thought it was and the fact that there's no room for people like him in it. The truth is so contrary to everything he believed that he seems to shut down before he spots Cassian and is spurred to action entirely by sentiment. The episode's title, "Who are You?", is spoken by Cassian when he doesn't recognise Syril. It has a great double impact, not only as a revelation of the disproportionate sense of importance the two men see in each other, but as a precise manifestation of the conflict going on in Syril at that moment. Who, indeed, is he? Without his sense of purpose, perhaps he's nothing at all, which makes it terribly appropriate that this is the moment of his death.

Dedra, meanwhile, is clearly hit hard by the loss of Syril. She was in this for advancement and malice. It was even her idea to manipulate the rebels on Ghorman. Somehow, though, she really did come to love Syril and this has clearly altered her perspective. Denise Gough's performance is amazing. You can see the conflict tearing her apart inside. She really seems damned.

The conflict between truth and reality comes back in Mon Mothma's speech in the next episode in one of those moments that really feels like a commentary on real world politics but not so much as to lock it into an allegory. There were some hints that the situation on Ghorman might have been inspired by the conflict in Gaza and I was very glad the show veered away from making it a direct allegory of that. As it is, you can find parallels to Gaza, Ukraine, World War II France, and many other things.

Apparently, the events in the third episode, "Welcome to the Rebellion", line up with episodes of Star Wars: Rebels but it's still plenty satisfying to those of us who found Rebels to be weak and insubstantial. It's awfully gracious of the Gilroys to preserve continuity like that when I think most people could care less, considering how plainly the writing on Andor is superior.

The show can coast now, these three did the job. But I'm eagerly looking forward to next week anyway.

La Fuerza de Mayo

To celebrate May the Fourth and Cinco de Mayo, I watched The Empire Strikes Back while eating tacos. I boiled a little ground beef with cumin, garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper and then added some lime and cilantro to it. I put it on my homemade tortillas with shredded cabbage and cherry tomatoes. They were good tacos. No leftovers because I still can't afford a refrigerator at my new apartment.

I watched A New Hope last month and was eager to watch Empire Strikes Back. I seem to be in a phase of my life where I'm suddenly seeing the original trilogy with fresh eyes. Like Bruce Willis says in 12 Monkeys when he's watching Vertigo, old movies change because we change. We become different people and thus see them with new eyes. I couldn't guess how many times I've watched the original trilogy since I first saw it when I was three or four years old. But still, on Monday, I can laugh at the little incline of the head Leia gives to Han when he glances at her while talking to Lando. Their relationship still feels fresh, even after I've written at length about the dynamics between the two. How he correctly identifies her attraction to him but fails to see his own vulnerability, his attraction to her. He assumes that having insight into the feelings others can't control means he has control over his own feelings.

And here's a movie where the Jedi dialogue is about fear, hatred, willpower, and belief. It's right here, big as life, the thing Disney repeatedly fails to capture about the Jedi. This is what the Jedi are about, not bureaucratic manoeuvring or colonialism. Isn't there anyone working in Hollywood now who gets that?

It can't be said enough how handsomely shot Empire Strikes Back is. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky's deep blacks and smooth, matte whites never look remotely artificial. Only Greig Fraser on Rogue One has approached this level of revelation in cinematography for Star Wars.

The Asterisk Answered

I really like Florence Pugh's dress in this picture.

So, yes, Marvel has spoiled their own movie. I guess they figured it'd be impossible to keep this cat in its bag now. Or maybe they wanted to distract from the fact that people weren't spoiling the film.

Honestly, it's impressive they did keep this secret so long. I guess they have to fight hard now with counter-leak strategies.

It really is a good movie, by the way. It's a pretty good Father's Day movie, actually, so it's a bit awkward that Mother's Day is actually coming up.

I see a certain Ukrainian actress is still promoting the film although one thing that seemed slightly odd to me was how much it foregrounds Russian characters who've done bad things for Russian governments. And the Ukrainian actress' role in the film was cut considerably, to the surprise even of the film's screenwriter, who didn't know about it until he first screened the film. Hopefully I'm reading too much into it but if I were Disney/Marvel, I'd make David Harbour's character distance himself more from the Red Guardian identity.

So after everything fell apart when Disney placed their bets on Jonathan Majors and the Multiverse, they course corrected by hanging everything on Florence Pugh and misfit characters. The latter do tend to be the best in any case. I think everyone's in agreement that Wyatt Russell's failed Captain America is better than the official Captain America. So the villain of Falcon and the Winter Soldier has won.

It's fitting that Wyatt Russell should find his breakthrough role at Disney since his father, Kurt, was handpicked for stardom by Walt Disney himself. After all the characters and actors Marvel has thrown against the wall who've failed to stick (all three of the Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp), Russell, Pugh, and Harbour really feel like they could be legitimate successors to Downey Jr. and Evans. Add Spider-Man, Shuri, Deadpool, and Doctor Strange and they've actually got something pretty solid.

Here's hoping it all works out. I'm of the firm belief that good movies improve the whole human race.

X Sonnet 1937

Engrossing cables captured every eye.
At home, the chatter blanked to waking dreams.
Let's walk the kitchen, check the winning pie.
I see the peepers through the ragged seams.
We knew a name before we took the road.
We knew the spot that Google maps ordained.
Beneath our hearts, we had the secret code.
For don't you find communication stained?
There's never just a meeting over cups.
For ev'ry time we look, we see a pit.
To breathe is just to drown, as people know.
And running fast is just to simply sit.
And now a snack to drag the runners down.
And fill the gorgeous little ev'ning gown.

A Simpler Time, with Simpler Writing

Well, that was a pretty depressingly lame new episode of Doctor Who. While the new Russell T. Davies era has generally been better than the Chris Chibnall era, I get the impression sometimes that Davies' solution is to do what Chibnall did even harder. So Pete McTighe, a writer from the Chibnall era, wrote Saturday's new episode, "Lucky Day", and it received the lowest ratings in the relaunched show's history.

It reminded me of a more belligerent version of the Oscar Isaac/Laura Dern conflict in The Last Jedi. Instead of a decent, headstrong guy whose desire to go against the dictates of authority led to problems, we have a smirking, bottomless pit of inexplicable spite and an authority who's willing to sic man eating beasts on him because he offered her a personal insult. This was not the best setup for the UNIT spin-off, that's for sure.

The Doctor shows up at the end to lecture the villain and tell him how horrid he is. Villains can certainly be smirking and thoroughly bad but the show needs to ask itself more often, "What would Tom Baker do?" in the face of such a fellow.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.

The Thunder Squad

2025's Thunderbolts* is a good Marvel movie. It's not one of the cobbled together cgi monstrosities like Ant-Man in Quantumania. The writing is relatively solid, though I had plenty of problems with the script. But I'm going to have to echo what just about every review is saying; the performances knock this one out of the park.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Lewis Pullman, but particularly Florence Pugh, turned this from a perfectly adequate Suicide Squad pastiche into something really extraordinary.

The film spends a lot of time ruminating on character and the writing isn't very insightful, it's even slightly insulting if you happen to be an introvert because it pushes the necessity of never being alone. But it has some nicely poetic turns, particularly with Sentry/Void who borrows pretty heavily from psychological anime like Evangelion and Akira. But the performances take this material about personal misery and disaffection and squeeze it for all its worth.

Wyatt Russell gets some nice subtle stuff as John Walker and in just a few scenes he's way more interesting than Sam Wilson. David Harbour proves once again he's the ultimate dad actor.

But Pugh, Pugh, Pugh! She's just so damned good. And I was going into the movie ready to criticise her terrible hairstyle. I don't give a damn about her hairstyle now. I even like her blue eyeliner. She's amazing. With a few subtle expressions, she brings across her state of profound ennui and when she needs to be raw and emotional she's like a young Marlon Brando; surprising yet thoroughly credible.

The performance make everything else work beautifully. I was afraid for the characters when cgi crap was flying everywhere, like it was real crap! This is one to see.

Ballet Battery

I started watching Etoile a few days ago, the new Amazon Prime series from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the wife and husband team behind The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls. It's a good, modern Red Shoes ballet procedural.

The show stars Luke Kirby, who played Lenny Bruce on Mrs. Maisel, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's strange to see outside of a Lars von Trier movie, playing New York and Parisian impresarios, respectively. Their respective troupes trade personnel as they both take funding from a sinister British oil baron played by Simon Callow. Lou de Laage is a star ballerina named Cheyenne who's swapped to the New York troupe.

Cheyenne and Callow's character are presented as political opposites; she, a firebrand activist, and he, a ruthless capitalist. I can see how the Palladinos plan use them for political commentary. Unfortunately, the weakest scene in the series so far is the introduction of Cheyenne, whom we meet on a ship in a storm as they attack a craft for environmental violations. It's all cgi, which I don't mind, knowing the show has a tiny budget, but de Laage is one of those actresses who is unable to raise her voice under any circumstances, even when she's supposed to be shouting over the chaos of a trawler beset by tossing waves. From then on, I had trouble buying her as the tempest in a teapot she's supposed to be.

Luke Kirby, though, is excellent. Here he basically plays the show's resident Lorelei Gilmore or Midge Maisel; the reasonable, witty one beset by kooks.

I'm surprised how little attention the show's gotten. I wouldn't have heard of it if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Caitlin's blog. But whenever I go to the Prime website, there are dozens of new shows and movies I've never heard of before and never hear of again. I don't know how these studios sustain this output.

Festival of Dread

Now I've watched "What a Festive Evening", episode six of Andor season two, a nice little symphony of suspense. As I noted yesterday, the writer of this arc, Beau Willimon, wrote the prison arc last season, which was stronger than this because it revolved around one man's life changing and it was done with an extraordinary performance by Andy Serkis. But "What a Festive Evening" was by no means bad.

The best part of it was the shifting dynamic between Luthen and Kleya. It always seemed that Kleya was Luthen's assistant, now they seem more like partners. The scene where Kleya removed the bug from the artefact, using Jung as a shield, was a lovely trapeze act of tension. The bug getting stuck was like the old device of the car not starting at the absolutely worst moment. Ben Mendelsohn's presence as Krennic added to the sense of menace, as did Mon Mothma's slightly too bold arguments. There was also the very fact that Jung is already a mess of nerves and could have broken off at any moment.

The heist plot was good though not quite as strong. I liked Vel and Cinta and wish Cinta could've stayed around longer. It's funny, one of the things Andor is noted for is not being in line with the modern, bad screenwriting that seems to come from students who've spent more time criticising other writers than learning how to actually tell a good story. "What a Festive Evening" does one of those things that that crowd of people always complained about; having a gay character killed in order to provide motivation or character growth for other characters. I remember it was called "Bury Your Gays" though this one might also be "Fridging". I don't mind writers doing that but I feel like Cinta had potential as a character that the show would've been better off exploring. Not to mention Varada Sethu shines more in this role than she does on Doctor Who. It really made me notice how much better hair and wardrobe are on Andor compared to Doctor Who. She somehow just looks a lot better, even when her hair is supposed to be messed up. But I guess Andor's budget is pretty lavish.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Our Man on Gorman

I only had time to watch two of the three new episodes of Andor last night but that sure wasn't a reflection of their quality. I thought the two I watched were better than the first three. Written by Beau Willimon, who wrote the prison story arc last season, this new one is the most the show has felt like a spy thriller.

I'm so much happier with the colour palette in this arc. The blues and yellows have been changed for muted mints and mahogany on Gorman with graceful lines that recall art nouveau. It's easy to imagine ordering absinthe at one of these gorgeous Gorman bars.

Cassian and Bix have an interesting domestic drama going as Bix suffers ongoing nightmares from her torture. Of all the unhappy characters on Andor, Bix has consistently been the unhappiest. However, my favourite subplot belongs to Syril and Dedra.

Syril's dreams have come true and now he's a double agent for the Empire. He has a beautiful and powerful girlfriend he occasionally sees. What a lucky lad. But the highlight is just how complicated and credible his position is as he plays the Gorman resistance so thoroughly. This fantasy show demonstrates for us just how plausible it is to game revolutions and create volatile political situations. This is more interesting than I'd ever hoped Star Wars could be under Disney.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Memories Transposed

On Monday, I found the students at the junior high school where I currently work in Japan were being shown a movie from 1983 called この子を残して, which literally translates to something like "The child left behind" but was given the title Children of Nagasaki for some western release, though it is difficult to obtain outside of Japan now. Directed by Kinoshita Keisuke, one of the luminaries of 1950s cinema, it has a style out of step with '80s Japanese cinema, featuring long takes, wide shots of ensembles, and few closeups. It endeavours to be partially an unvarnished account of a survivor's experiences of Nagasaki, during and after the bombing. It comes from a very particular perspective yet argues for sensitivity and reflection. It's very simple in its philosophy and while Kinoshita was not among Japan's greatest directors and this was not one of his best films it still has an appreciable impact.

Kinoshita's most famous works were made in the 1950s with actress Takamine Hideko, including the two Carmen movies, Carmen Comes Home and Carmen's Pure Love, the former being Japan's first full length colour film. Carmen Comes Home, the story of a stripper who returns to her rural hometown, is an attempt to harmonise two aspects of Japanese culture; its deep rooted conservatism and its enormous sex industry. Children of Nagasaki attempts a similarly impossible task with a little more success, being the true story of Nagai Takashi, a Catholic Japanese doctor and author who wrote about his experiences surviving the bombing of Nagasaki.

For many in Japan, Catholicism remains a symbol of the worst of western cultural decadence, so Nagai's life of remarkable humility and contemplation provides a striking counter example. That he should be the lens through which a story of the atomic bomb's horror and devastation is told makes for a complicated narrative from the start.

The film shows Americans in a negative light, going beyond the atomic bombing to show some of the most graphic footage from the Vietnam War of the depredations of American troops, the purpose of which I suppose can only be a general comment on the fundamental character of Americans. The film does not go into Nagai's experiences in Manchuria in the 1930s where he was at odds with the Japanese military.

It's a sobering example for the students, I should think. At the very least, I think it's useful to show them that sometimes misfortune may befall them that was beyond their control to prevent.

There was a Doctor

Now that my internet's up and working, I've finally remembered to watch Doctor Who. I was very busy for the past couple weeks but it says something that I totally forgot about it. The two episodes I missed, "Lux" and "The Well", weren't bad, and "The Well" was even really good.

"Lux" apparently had the lowest ratings in the show's history, according to Wikipedia, though I think they're only counting the revived era. It features Alan Cumming voicing an animated character come to life. It was cute, certainly a better mid-20th century episode than the Beatles episode last season. The costumes were great.

But while I can appreciate camp, it was really nice to get an episode that wasn't campy with "The Well". The understated horror of some creature lurking behind someone was really effective and recalled some of the best episodes from Davies and Moffat's heydays. As such, though, it doesn't hit the level of revelation those classic episodes had. Or even "Wild Blue Yonder". Would it have been more effective with David Tennant in the lead? Ncuti Gatwa is good but not on the level of Tennant or any of the first four Doctors since the show was revived in 2005. I think a lot of the problem may be also that there's no hint of romantic chemistry between Doctor and companion, which was also a key problem in the Jodie Whittaker era.

Varada Sethu is good as the new companion, Belinda Chandra, though her role on Andor is more interesting and she's barely been in that one so far. I liked the reaction shots of Gatwa when he confronted the mysterious alien. The look of pure horror on his face was was perfect. I liked how the show never gave us a clear shot of it.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ everywhere else.

Probably Back

I finally have internet again. At least I think I do. The new box the guy gave me just winked out. I guess if it comes back I can post this. If it doesn't, well, my first sentence will be a lie.

Ah, it's back.

My provider is Softbank. They demanded proof of my residence to get set up which I got from city hall last week. And they wouldn't take my old wifi box thing. It's ridiculously difficult to get rid of computers and peripherals in Japan. Even though I was supposedly only renting the old box, they will only take it back if I mail it to them, which I have to do by May 20th. Otherwise I have to pay for a special sticker from city hall to put on it for garbage collection.

I'm still not done moving my stuff but I only have four or five things left. Tuesday is the end for sure. I hope. Please let it be the end. I hate moving.

Oblivion Proof

It's funny some of the things I've managed to hold onto through various moves. My grandfather gave me this 3M monitor cleaning kit when I was a kid, in the early '90s. As you can see, it's for cleaning CRT monitors. I've used it on a modern flat screen and it seems to work but I kind of don't want to use it up.

I didn't manage to get everything from my old apartment yesterday after all so I'll be going back to-day. Another three hour train ride. Since I was carting books yesterday, I gave up on Six of Crows and was reading Exquemelin and Saint Augustine instead.

A few days ago, Bethesda surprised the world by releasing a remastered edition of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

I'd like to play it, I guess, but I'd need a lot of upgrades I don't see myself being able to afford in the near future. The absence of modded content would probably drive me right back to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim anyway. That's what I was playing last night.

I have a mod installed that makes the dragons more difficult and appear more frequently. I'm getting kind of tired of constantly fighting dragons. I can't get any other quests done. I'd feel kind of like a coward for disabling it, though.

X Sonnet #

With veggie tables, lunches mapped a life.
You count your greens with orange and radish red.
But bigger sorts are white beneath the knife.
No plant we eat is ever truly dead.
It must be thought a crime to hunt a root.
A ghost will knock the tape from table top.
You wouldn't want to be beneath a boot.
A giant's foot is hard to quickly stop.
No special spell could halt the grace's aim.
But money solves a problem here and there.
Yet still the hunt abstains from poison game.
Or even from a deadly grizzly bear.
We woke beneath a gooey cherry sun.
Beyond us, all the choicest deer had run.

Rambling On

I'm in Osaka this morning, in a McDonalds, on my way back to Nara prefecture to get the last of my things from my Kashihara apartment. The trains are sparsely crowded to-day though many of the people I see have suitcases. I guess Golden Week is starting for everyone, though I only get one day off for it next week and two days the following week. Golden Week is Japan's version of spring break but it consists of a series of holidays that just happen to occur within the same spread of seven days. I guess it's not a very lucky Golden Week this year because two of the days happen to fall on the weekend.

I'm carrying empty bags and a suitcase which I plan to fill with the things still in my apartment. For a book to read on the train, I brought along Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, which I'm still struggling to finish since buying it around two years ago. I feel guilty not finishing a book, no matter how much I hate it. I'm about halfway through it, maybe I can make a big push on it this weekend. I'll be on the train for a long time.

It's a fantasy novel, the story of a group of misfits executing a heist. What bothers me about it is that it's supposed to be a group of people who've known hard times; slavery, prostitution, extreme poverty, and prison. But they all come off as spoiled rich kids. They live in a world with minimal pain and lots of amenities. But maybe I'm just a grouch. When I was in elementary school, I had a lower threshold for fiction with realism and credible ugliness. Maybe I just need to think younger.

The Unmodded Atmosphere

2001's Vanilla Sky is really not a bad movie. Conceptually, it really doesn't improve on Abre los ojos, the 1997 Spanish movie of which it is a remake. But director Cameron Crowe brings his natural knack for relationship dialogue to the sci-fi premise and the film's cast is certainly terrific. In addition to the main cast including Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, Kurt Russell, and Jason Lee, it seems like every bit part is someone interesting. Tilda Swinton and Timothy Spall have supporting roles and then Michael Shannon and Alicia Witt both make appearances.

So much time had passed since I last watched it. I saw it with Trisa on New Year's Eve when it was first in theatres. When we came out of the movie theatre, 2001 had become 2002. We agreed it was refreshing to see an intellectually stimulating film. I still appreciate this quality of it though now I can much more clearly see its influences. It rests on the bedrock of Vertigo, of course. The main character's fear of heights would seem a non-sequitur otherwise, for how little bearing it has on the story. There're also the big posters of Jules and Jim and Breathless, both films which were influenced by Vertigo.

Tom Cruise plays David, a spoiled rich man whose life is torn apart by the competing gravitational pulls of two women, played by Cruz and Diaz. Diaz plays Julie, a girl with whom David has settled into a comfortable routine of casual sex despite lacking any true affection for her while Cruz plays Sofia, a recent acquaintance. He never gets more than a kiss from her but the promise of a relationship with her dominates his imagination. This is similar to the two women in Vertigo. There's Midge, the Barbara Bel Geddes character with whom James Stewart's character, Scottie, has a comfortable and frank relationship, and Madeleine, the woman who excites Scottie's imagination but who is both within his grasp and also as unobtainable as a mirage.

Cameron Crowe is so good at capturing the chemistry of flirtation and he also knows how to make it go sour. The dialogue between Cruise and Cruz after the car accident that disfigures him is so perfectly, painfully awkward. They're too early in a relationship for all the emotional baggage he wants to hang on her and she's clearly uncomfortable confronting the limits of her own empathy. There's a karmic appropriateness that David becomes the obsessed, clingy lover after Julie had been the same to him. But Julie's idea of love was based entirely on the physical while David's is based entirely on imagination, on "delaying pleasure" to dwell in the anticipation. Arguably, Julie's conception of love is the more realistic, yet it seems ugly to think of love as just physical familiarity. This is the conflict between physical and sensual that runs from Vertigo through the French New Wave movies.

Cameron Crowe very clearly comes down on the side of the sensual with Sofia. I've always felt he shouldn't have tipped his hand so much in the last act of the film. But I do like how much the sci-fi aspect contributes to the ultimate mystery of reality.

Opening a Door to Andor

I still have no internet in my apartment but I was excited enough for the new episodes of Andor that I trudged all the way to the manga cafe to watch them last night. Mostly, I was not disappointed, though nothing in the three episode premiere has approached the highest points of the first season. It's just nice watching a Disney+ show that feels real, like something writers sat down and thought about how to make a good story for rather than something produced by a committee from a venn diagram of corporate and political interests.

The first of the three episodes had my favourite moments. I loved the scene between Cassian and the girl who helps him steal the TIE fighter. I loved how writer Tony Gilroy thought about how difficult it would be to leave one's normal life on abstract moral grounds. When Cassian tells her she's waking up to her true self, it almost sounds like an indoctrination into a cult. Naturally, rebelling against the established order would probably feel that way.

I liked how Krennic was brought in with little fanfare. We all knew he was coming, so he's just there. The top secret meeting was great. I really loved the two propagandists bragging about how they made the galaxy hate the Gormans. The mixture of political intrigue and personal character drama reminds me of Game of Thrones but modern era style propaganda is a topic Game of Thrones couldn't approach.

I enjoyed the scenes of the wedding at the Mothma estate. Geneveive O'Reilly is doing a fantastic job playing Mon Mothma though, in terms of writing, I think it was a little too predictable that Luthen was going to kill that banker guy.

I really didn't like the colour palette. Just when I thought we were done with everything being blue and yellow, it seems to be making a comeback, now in costume design rather than cinematography. Almost everything was blue and yellow on Chandrila and everything was blue and yellow on that farming planet where Cassian's friends were living. I also didn't like the use of so much diegetic orchestral music. I liked in the original trilogy and in the prequels all the orchestral stuff was kept to John Williams' score and the in-world music sounded alien. But George Lucas kind of broke that rule with that silly "Jedi Rocks" routine in the special edition of Return of the Jedi.

These are quibbles though. I'm just happy to have this calibre of writing in the Star Wars universe. Again, Gilroy has written something which makes you feel like, yes, this is how fascism takes hold and maintains its grip.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Old Career in a New Town

I wrote this yesterday:

I'm in my new apartment and my internet's not working yet so I don't know when I'll be able to post this. My new apartment has exactly the same layout as my old apartment. No-one does homogeneity like Japan. It's pretty convenient. I know exactly where to unpack everything.

One difference between this and the old apartment is the floor is almost entirely covered with tatami. I've heard how difficult tatami is to take care of so I wasn't especially excited about this feature. I'm looking forward to discovering its advantages. According to google, tatami absorbs humidity and releases it on dry days. We will see.

This apartment is very near train tracks. So far the sound of the trains going by hasn't bothered me. I slept easily through the night. The trains kind of just sound like wind. There's also an old shopping mall with a movie theatre nearby, which of course I'm really excited about. It has a supermarket on the bottom floor and they sell Guinness, which I've recently decided is my favourite beer. So I'd say pros are outweighing cons at this point.

X Sonnet 1936

A distant space resembles here and now.
No travel broadens minds at ease in lochs.
No dinosaur was found to break a cow.
Across the heath, we hear the mournful fox.
He stole a goose whose feathers poison gods.
A little paw has stopped the ghostly train.
A whisp of smoke betrayed the morning odds.
A growing fire pleads the clouds for rain.
Across the stars, a hapless few would fight.
No other troops could stomach running guns.
In addled kids, we see the future light.
In baking bread, we see the heavy buns.
Your path was built of ebon kitten plans.
The marriage rule is like a chain of cans.

I'm posting this from McDonald's, using their wi-fi. I foolishly thought I'd be able to get internet up and running after work but it was not to be. I'm thinking it's unlikely I'll have internet 'til the weekend, which is annoying. It would have to happen just when the new season of Andor was about to premiere. I suppose I can head back to the manga cafe to watch it. Maybe I'll even try posting blog entries on my phone. I don't relish the idea.

Since I can't watch blu-rays without an internet connexion, I've been watching a DVD, Hammer's The Abominable Snowman, one of Peter Cushing's best. I keep falling asleep during it because every day seems to find a reason to make me stay up late and get up early. It's not the movie's fault, though.

You Can't Hop Away from Irony

Happy Easter, everyone. I don't have much time to enjoy it to-day because I'm busy moving to a new apartment. The community manager of my current apartment building is kindly helping me move by driving my books and furniture to the new place, which is an approximately three hour drive away. We travel west through Osaka and Kobe. Yesterday we saw a car the colour of a carrot.

I often speak to students here in Japan about western holidays with which they may not be familiar. I haven't talked to students about Easter in a long time. The holiday comes at the start of the school year here when I'm usually doing my self-introduction and the students are otherwise getting ready for the new semester.

Easter is a little odd. It seems almost as important as Christmas but there are few Easter songs and stories. I can only spend so much time talking about eggs and bunnies. Maybe I could take the opportunity to show students Elvis Costello's "Little Palaces", though I'd have to find a translation for it. And it would really be kind of an ironic Easter artefact, the song about oppressed workers in a Cadbury town who beat their children to take out their resentment. I think many teachers from the U.S. in Japan, whose job is partially to explain U.S. culture, too often fall into the trap of regurgitating the dark or trivial facts that were the focus of anti-colonial college rhetoric rather than explaining the basic reality of traditions. Still, one day I would like to show "Little Palaces" to a Japanese class. I just need to find the right pretext. There's a lot of class resentment in Japan, a song like this might be really appreciated if presented the right way.

The Comparative Value of Opinions

Over the past week, I've been listening to this Joe Rogan interview with Douglas Murray and Dave Smith, really an argument, I don't think "debate" is the right word, between Smith and Murray. Rogan barely participates. The two primarily argue about Ukraine and Gaza and about the relative legitimacy of various opinions on the topics. From the start, I knew Murray was in the right but that nearly everyone would come away from the interview believing Smith had won the argument, and that's exactly what happened.

Murray is pro-Israel and Smith is pro-Palestine. Murray champions the cause of Ukraine while Smith routinely argues that Ukraine deserves blame and Putin was unjustly provoked. Smith is a libertarian while Murray is more of an old school conservative. Murray also came on advocating traditional authority and angrily denouncing Rogan's tendency to platform only a specific group of voices. It was not a good strategy on Murray's part if his aim was to convert Rogan, Smith, or most of Rogan's listeners to his point of view, all of whom naturally resist the idea that formal education and field experience have any bearing on one's qualifications, which is of course why they voted for Trump, valuing instead charisma and relatability.

The crucial point Murray was trying to get across was proved again and again by Smith's own arguments, which is that it's almost impossible for someone like Smith to have a useful perspective because the bulk of the content he creates is reacting to points of interest rather than points of genuine importance. It's more interesting to find ways in which Putin might actually be in the right, it's more interesting to take the side of Palestinians, than to stay with the simple and plain reality that Putin invaded Ukraine and Hamas is a brutal, myopic regime with genocidal goals that stands in contrast to Israel, a country where Jews and Muslims coexist and people are actively engaged in trying to foster peace. It makes me wonder how much Russian influence is genuinely infecting U.S. media and how much of it is just the instinct of entertainers to swim against a current of content by figures like Murray, who stubbornly continue to believe proper perspective on international issues requires foreign travel and extensive education. It really is a stark example of the devaluing of education that so many people see Murray as the loser of this argument.

Werewolves and Aliens

I read "FORESTS OF THE NIGHT (LYCANTHROPE TRIPTYCH)" last night, a story in the latest Sirenia Digest by Caitlin R. Kiernan. As the title suggests, it's three vignettes about werewolves, but much more subtly than werewolf stories tend to be.

I particularly liked the second which involves a pair of lovers having a conversation mid-coitus. What I liked about it is that it implies some strange and mysterious aspect of werewolf behavior without explicitly giving the reader any explanation. There's just enough of a hint of logic to make the story linger. But all three of the triptych are good.

Yesterday I saw an article in The Guardian about new evidence discovered for the existence of extraterrestrial life. I've had David Bowie's "Life on Mars" stuck in my head ever since.

X Sonnet #1935

Reflecting fruits would taste of glass and ghosts.
Expensive taste was deemed an island's fault.
Beneath the palms, the ladies wait for hosts.
Beneath their hands, the girls were hiding salt.
The sea requires carried grains at dawn.
Replenished waves can then assault the pool.
A hungry horse would eat the hapless pawn.
But 'neath the rook, the fellow's very cool.
Unwanted eyes were forced in breakfast bowls.
A dapper green has cased the hawker's food.
Excessive sweets have burned the meal with holes.
The sun creates a ghastly morning crude.
The people's beach would claim the Carpenter.
The Walrus comes disaster's harbinger.

Daring and Punishing

Last night's finale of Daredevil: Born Again felt largely like a setup for season two. I guess that's not surprising given the troubled production history that saw the show handed from one creative vision to another. There were aspects I liked about the finale but somehow it all added up to something less satisfying than the finales on the original Daredevil series.

I was very happy to see Karen return. I know a lot of people don't like her but I like Deborah Ann Woll and her character's issues with using lethal force, which didn't come up, though maybe it's distantly represented in the love triangle with her, Punisher, and Daredevil. It was nice that her position as a supporting character on both the Daredevil and Punisher shows finally paid off with scenes between the three of them. Jon Bernthal was also very good in the episode though the action scenes tried to make up for a lack of the superb practical fights from the original series by overlaying a lot of cgi violence and editing. There was also a really awkward ADR line of Daredevil saying, "Frank, stop!" I suppose because someone realized Matt had gone too long without complaining about Frank's methods.

Punisher is a tricky character to throw in for a teamup with one of Marvel's more mainstream characters. The episode really revelled in the slaughter he perpetrated. Which, sure, is fun, but I think the show has lost its way from being about a conflict between allowing the rule of law to function and taking action when the law falls short, and where that line lies. It seems more like a show about good dictators versus bad dictators.

It's really a shame the show couldn't have made itself undeniably of a quality high enough to be a part of the Spider-Man storyline. With Fisk locking up all the vigilantes, it's really strange Spider-Man is uninvolved, particularly since Kingpin was originally a Spider-Man villain in the comics. But it was nice watching Vincent D'Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, and Jon Bernthal work. And yeah, Charlie Cox was fine. I am glad they stuck to their guns and have so far not resurrected Foggy and instead used his death as one of the points of turmoil for the living characters. Hopefully some alternate universe Foggy doesn't turn up next season.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Witch and the Enchantress

I've been reading more Clark Ashton Smith and I found the juxtaposition of two of his stories, "Mother of Toads" (1938) and "The Enchantress of Sylvaire" (1941) to be fascinating. They're both stories about a young man who falls in love with a woman possessing great magical power. In one story, he's shocked and repulsed to find he'd been seduced by her glamour while, in the other story, he willingly avoids the chance to learn whether or not the beautiful body he perceives is the woman's true form.

I don't say that he allows himself to be deceived, nor does the story express it that way, though the reader is free to interpret it that way. If he truly loves the woman, why should he want to see her in any other way than how she presents herself?

The latter story naturally comes off as more interesting and mature than the former. It occurs to me that the progress of the human soul is to cease stripping others to the basely physical and choosing instead to share in the beauty of refined conceptions. It's not hard to relate the story to a variety of human rights issues as well as the dynamics of human relationships in general. Like a lot of great fantasy, it's not an allegory of any one thing but applies itself to something more fundamental and general.

Jean Marsh

And now Queen Bavmorda, Jean Marsh, has died, less than a week after her costar in Willow, Val Kilmer. But though she never approached his level of worldwide fame, Jean Marsh had no less an impressive filmmography. How many people can say they both starred in and co-created a successful TV series, as she did with Upstairs, Downstairs?

It was primarily as evil fantasy queens that I knew her, both in 1988's Willow and, much later, on Doctor Who as a version of the Arthurian villain Morgan la Fay in the 1989 serial Battlefield. But if you search for "Jean Marsh" on my blog, you'll see she impressed me in a lot of roles over the years, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone, in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, and in a 2007 Doctor Who audio play. Her connexions to Doctor Who were many; she was married to the Third Doctor, John Pertwee, and she appeared in a First Doctor serial. I also thought she made a memorable appearance in the famous Elizabeth Taylor led 1963 version of Cleopatra as Octavia the Younger. She's certainly left a great legacy in performances. She was always sharp, always captivating.

X Sonnet #1934

We start the dream on distant desert sand.
A calm but urgent man describes the doom.
Along with this, a Dal was master planned.
A woman bends the timeless, moving loom.
And now she pleads the case for Antony.
Away she's sent from costly epic sets.
And finds herself the cause of agony.
For Hitch and many other reckless bets.
But dark became the cloud around at eight.
With murder thoughts, she chased a clever dame.
Her spell awry, her form the portal ate.
But little time would pass before she came.
A line of knights have fought her crooked ploys.
Eternal, though, will hold her wicked joys.

Being Belinda

A new episode of Doctor Who quietly premiered on Disney+ on Saturday. It was pleasant enough, I suppose. It's really not hard to see why ratings continue to decline for this show, though.

The story begins with the introduction of Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), the Doctor's new companion, in a scene that feels weirdly like a Saturday Night Live sketch and is about as funny as modern one tends to be (in other words, not). Belinda and her boyfriend, Alan (Jonny Green), very obviously not teenagers, are meant to be seen as such, sitting on a park bench where he tries to woo her by telling her girls aren't good at math before presenting her with a certificate showing he'd gotten a star named after her. This sets up the episode's lazy, half-assed parody of incels because Russell T Davies remains defiantly woke even if his understanding of wokeness seems to be defined mainly as things that will piss off the Right.

Where's the heartfelt character drama like we had with Rose and her mother? I guess we do have some of the sparkle of untethered, weird adventure like Martha's introductory episode and Martha was another companion who was lacking in much complexity, her episodes succeeding more for their sci-fi/fantasy concepts than for her personal investment in them. Belinda seems as though she may have been inspired by the Fifth Doctor's companion, Tegan, who spent a lot of her time cheesed off that the Doctor couldn't get her home. Tegan's ire was typically more entertaining, though.

The idea of a planet and then a people being named for Belinda Chandra was really cute, though. The Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) continues to be entertaining in his flamboyance though I don't find him as satisfying as Twelve or Ten.

The episode felt oddly rushed at times, as though chunks of dialogue were skipped over in haste, especially in the final scene in the TARDIS. The drama with the rebels and the woman whom the Doctor'd evidently chosen as a new companion also moved much to quickly to accrue emotional weight, also feeling insubstantial for how typical they were for Doctor Who subplots.

The show is better than it was under Chris Chibnall but it's more like a slowed descent than a rise. Maybe what the show needed wasn't Russell T Davies but a Russell T Davies, someone with the passion and daring to take the show in new and surprising directions like Davies in 2005.

Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.

The Expanding Rim

My birthday was Friday (I'm 46 now) but I mostly celebrated on Saturday, despite having a lot to do since I'm in the process of moving. I made fish tacos, watched Rogue One, and played a lot of Skyrim. I feel like it's going to be a while before I'm able to have quality time with Skyrim again so I tried to make the most of it.

I have two characters going lately, a magic user named Nancy and a warrior named Alistair. Nancy is a real challenge because I made her to be an entirely support character. For a long time, I'd wanted to see if I could get through the game with Illusion magic as my primary skill. It could be frustrating at times so when I just wanted to hack at things I'd switch over to Alistair. But I've gotten Nancy to level 41 which, I think, is the highest level I've gotten any character in years. The Ordinator perk tree mod adds a lot of abilities to Illusion to keep it interesting. It's always fun to cast "frenzy" on a group of bandits from a hiding spot and watch them all attack each other and, with the mod, you're able to use Illusion spells even on very high level monsters if you're at a high level yourself, something that really ought to have been a vanilla feature. It's not as though swords won't affect certain high level monsters. There are several illusion spells that summon doppelgangers of enemies to fight them, which I love, and mental manipulation abilities to use on people you come upon sleeping. You give them dreams about you to make them your devoted follower or simply steal their dreams and convert them into useful buffs. Unfortunately, Illusion spells seem to be useless against dragons so when there's a dragon I mostly run around casting healing and buff spells on my followers.

Mostly I have to credit the follower mods for keeping things interesting. Since Nancy has little to offer in terms of offensive capabilities, she needs a team of damage dealers around her. So she has custom modded followers Remiel, Val Serano, Ashe, and Lydia. Lydia is actually a vanilla character but I have a mod that completely replaces and expands all of her dialogue. Nancy's high Speech skill also grants her an animal companion (a cave bear at the moment) and I've levelled her high enough in Conjuration that she can have two summons at a time, thanks to the Ordinator perk tree mod. The trade-off is that if she has no summoned creature she has a reduced magic resistance and armour rating.

It was hard to get a screenshot with every follower visible. I just realised I got Ashe mid-blink. The ice monster is one of the summons.

Val Serano and Remiel have all the best dialogue, some of it banter with each other, despite the fact that the two characters come from two different mod authors. Val Serano has some genuinely funny lines though too many of them are references to Indiana Jones and The Princess Bride. Remiel, though, has become easily my favourite companion and the only one I have with my warrior character, Alistair.

Even most of the best follower mods have a bunch of annoyingly obsequious dialogue and the characters have ridiculously powerful attacks and abilities. Not so Remiel. The only really powerful thing she has is that she can pick any lock and the mod author made a very handy spell function for her so you can just point and click at a lock you want her to pick. I can see her being a must have for any playthrough of Skyrim for the foreseeable future.

Strangeness on the Train

I've been having a three hour commute by train lately and I've been reading mostly Clark Ashton Smith, Harlan Ellison, Tobias Smollett, and Edgar Allan Poe. I hadn't read much of Clark Ashton Smith before, now I can say I've read two stories set in his fictional French province of Averoigne, "The Colossus of Ylourgne" and "The Disinterment of Venus" (both first published in Weird Tales in 1934).

"The Colossus of Ylourgne" is quite a long story about a demented dwarf who makes a gigantic patchwork corpse and somehow transplants his face and soul to it, after which he goes on a rampage. It's all set in the middle ages. Anyone looking to shake up the kaiju genre might want to look at this. I guess it's pretty similar to Attack on Titan, actually.

"The Disinterment of Venus", in which a group of monks accidentally unearth a beautiful statue of the Roman goddess, is pretty obviously an allegory of sexual repression turning to violence. I found myself thinking of Mother Joan of the Angels and Ken Russell's Devils, those movies inspired by the 17th incident of horny nuns possessed by demons. Smith's story is about men who go crazy, though. It must've been one beautiful statue.

X Sonnet 1933

An error forced the fish to swim in fear.
A toothy bud arose above the bed.
The water changed and bubbled up to beer.
Now nourished rough, the mighty marlin led.
But double country claims have brushed his scales.
The current raked the fellow first to Spain.
A racket smacked him back 'mongst sushi whales.
WIth vinegar they feel but little pain.
In empty sea, the time was dowsed to death.
A rusty watch has missed the minute hordes.
A bubbling brine assumes the place of breath.
Their dame arose, bedecked in weedy cords.
And now the fish will dance and sort of sing.
They form a strange and hostile outer ring.

This Brave Manga World

I'm writing this morning from a manga cafe called Kaikatsu Club. Manga cafes have, as you might expect, a lot of manga, but they also have booths you can rent for the night, which is why I'm here. I'm in the process of moving from one town to another that's around three hours away by train. There's been a few hitches in the tangled path of paperwork so my move couldn't be completed before I had to start work in the new town. Fortunately, you can stay the night at a manga cafe booth for just over 2000 yen (less than 20 dollars). Amenities include wifi and even a shower.

I've slept in a recliner for two nights now. The first was more difficult but by the second night I was either more acclimated or more tired because I slept easily, despite a surprising amount of noise of people walking around and slamming doors. I fell asleep listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack on my noise cancelling headphones and really feel I'm living my best cyberpunk life.

Daredevil's Blue Rose Case

That's the jazz standard referenced by "Isle of Joy", the new Daredevil from Wednesday. The episode basically satisfied me, even when a few things happened I thought were silly.

The episode began with a shot of a blue rose accompanied by some ethereal vocals. Since Twin Peaks just turned 35 years old this week, I wondered if this was a reference to the blue roses featured in that mythos. Of course, the point of the blue rose on Twin Peaks is that it does not occur in nature. So what are these artificially coloured roses doing at Riker's Island?

I like how they're writing Heather as kind of a jerk now. It's probably because they're moving her out of the way ahead of Karen's return but, whatever the reason, it's nice for Matt to have her as a foil. We get that classic super secret identity dilemma when Heather demands he give her attention . Meanwhile, what distracts him is Tony Dalton's character, the Swordsman, being threatened by Wilson Fisk. It was kind of weak that Swordsman and Fisk didn't fight then and there but it's nice watching Tony Dalton work, as much as I didn't like his character on Better Call Saul. He's much better suited to playing the Swordsman.

I liked how furious Matt was that Fisk was trying to get to him through Heather, furious enough to throw caution to the wind. But why the hell did he take a bullet for Fisk? Maybe it was instinct.

Now that Fisk has survived an assassination attempt, the similarities between him and Trump are even more underlined. I'm not sure the show can say anything valuable by drawing that parallel but it's good drama by itself.

Daredevil is available on Disney+.

Down that Road Again

Twin Peaks is now 35 years old but over the weekend I honoured the memory of David Lynch by watching Mulholland Drive. The 2000 movie is one of Lynch's most lauded. Generally most people consider either Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet to be his best film. Mulholland Drive frequently ranks number one on Best Films of the 2000s lists, as well as lists of Best Films of the 21st century. I certainly like it.

It's become fashionable among some circles to consider Lost Highway to be kind of a rough draft for Mulholland Drive. They do have some things in common. They're both set in LA (they form the first two parts of what's sometimes called Lynch's LA trilogy, which concluded with Inland Empire) and they both feature characters who become other characters and who perceive other characters as becoming other characters. In both of them, substantial portions of the film are likely entirely in the main character's head.

The main difference, besides the fact that Mulholland Drive is generally better liked, is that Mulholland Drive has a much more logical narrative. Despite many people claiming to be confused by the film, it's actually very easy to understand, whereas Lost Highway is deliberately obtuse. Lost Highway is confusing because its protagonist is confused. This puts you in his perspective. Certainly, Mulholland Drive puts you in the perspective of Naomi Watts' character, especially in the last act, which features some of the most emotionally gripping scenes of Lynch's career. But perhaps we don't share in her disorientation. Maybe she isn't truly as disorientated as Bill Pullman's character in Lost Highway. It could be she knows exactly what she's doing the whole time. Maybe on some level she does but I'm inclined to think she's successfully deceiving herself, which leads to the effectively horrific conclusion.

I would say the primary reason Mulholland Drive is liked better than Lost Highway and Inland Empire is that it stars pretty young women. That always makes a difference. Certainly they're worthy of their roles. It remains Naomi Watts' best role, as much as I did enjoy Janey E.

The Club Silencio scene is practically a scene from an early French New Wave movie. The whole point Lynch makes with dubbing and language could've come straight from a Godard film. Except while Godard plays tricks with sound and editing to take you behind the curtain in a sort of cool, intellectual way, Lynch uses it to show how heartbreaking it can truly be to find this world you've put your heart and soul in may amount to nothing but surface. This is a movie that breaks my heart every time. This one and Kurosawa's Ikiru are the only movies that reliably make me feel like crying.

X Sonnet 1932

A set of random pens were pooped at lunch.
A thousand barrels blocked the river's course.
Banana pipes were bloated past a bunch.
A silent train conveyed a paper horse.
No breakfast thoughts invade the afternoon.
A morning face was seen as time explodes.
A group of thugs would not be called a goon.
Respect for crackers surely now erodes.
A careful ear could crack the corn from cobs.
You must recall a kernel conjures pop.
Its just your time the system daily robs.
A layer cake was shaped to ape a cop.
For fluffy births, the science doesn't kneel.
A rigid hand would take the crazy wheel.

When Bears Sleep

Last night I dreamt Paul Schrader was eaten by bears. I came upon his disemboweled corpse at an assisted living facility, in an outdoor area partly covered with snow, and there were several partially eaten attendants as well. There were three huge grizzly bears sleeping in different places, one with its fur painted to resemble Captain America.

Maybe I read something last night about sexual assault allegations against Schrader. His representative claims that he kissed the woman in question twice but backed off when she wasn't interested. Imagine if that's true, and, at this point, I'd say it's a good chance it is. How disgusting we have to comb through the minutiae of everyone's private lives now.

I spent the day in Kakogawa yesterday, the town I'm going to be working in and hopefully moving to soon. I'd better be moving there since it'll be a three hour commute if not. I may try staying at an internet cafe. The process for moving into a new apartment is very slow in Japan. The wheels of paperwork have just gotta turn.

Cherry Blossom Madness

Springtime in Japan means the beautiful sight of cherry blossoms shedding their petals in peaceful pink clouds. Or horrific clouds of pink madness if you take the perspective of 1975's Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (桜の森の満開の下). In this delightfully demented horror comedy, a vicious mountain footpad meets his match in an even more vicious, but beautiful, shrew.

The mountain man (Wakayama Tomisaburo) comes upon a small party of city dwellers, a man, his wife, and their servant. He slaughters the man and servant but stops short when he lifts the wife's veil. Struck by her beauty, he decides to add her to the collection of wives he has going up in his little mountain shack. This shrew (Iwashita Shima) never shows an ounce of fear, though, and demands that he carry her up the mountain, which he does. She complains the whole way.

She demands that he behead all his wives, which he does, save one, the meekest, whom the shrew decides to take as a servant. Normal life for this little found family consists of the mountain man robbing and murdering travellers and giving their severed heads to the shrew to use as playthings. She plays with them like dolls, performing all their voices and enacting little dramas. She demands they move to the city where the mountain man can get her a wide variety of heads.

How does she control this wild man? She laughs at him. Never underestimate the power of embarrassment in Japan. She frequently lashes him with that ubiquitous word, "恥ずかしい!" "Embarrassing!" He's supposed to be strong, why can't he carry her? He's supposed to be vicious, why can't he get her more heads? He's supposed to be brave, why can't he live in the city? And this poor dumb brute rises to the bait every time. The film is a sobering lesson for killers everywhere from Shinoda Masahiro.

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees is available on The Criterion Channel.

Gently Colliding Ingredients

Two young women with clearly delineated personalities find themselves surprised by themselves in Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Allen has always been influenced by Ingmar Bergman and it particularly shows here but I also found myself thinking of the Archers' I Know Where I'm Going and the early films of Bill Forsyth. Forsyth was famed for his delicate, "gossamer" humour and that's how I'd describe the humour in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Those looking for a plot with a point that's easy to articulate may be disappointed but I enjoyed the ride.

Much like I Know Where I'm Going's protagonist, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) travel to another country firmly convinced of who they are as a narrator directly explains to us. Vicky likes stability and Cristina doesn't know what she wants--she just knows that she wants something wild. With this setup, we expect things to go sideways.

They do in short order when a gentleman called Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem) approaches them and invites them on a trip to Oviedo and to have sex with him. Predictably, Vicky is incredulous but Cristina is intrigued. Of course, they both go with him and some things happen according to the narrator's prophecy and some things don't.

As the story progresses, the personalities of the women as explained to us become a kind of veneer in a way that suggests the superficial quality of any human veneer (this aspect of the film certainly owes something to Bergman). Penelope Cruz won acclaim for her role as Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's violent but remarkably insightful ex-wife. She comes into the film like a sudden storm but gradually her madness starts to look like sanity as Cristina's sanity starts to look like dullness. This was the last of three movies Woody Allen made with Scarlett Johansson and I wonder if she was upset to realise that the essence of her character is that she's a little dumb and Johansson embodies it kind of perfectly. As she enters a three way relationship with Maria Elena and Juan Antonio, she can't keep up with how sharp Maria Elena is and how patient Juan Antonio is. Does she feel pitied? She can't seem to explain it herself when she is the first one to say she finds the relationship wanting.

Vicky's previous love for stability, perhaps inevitably, turns out to be an indication of a fundamentally unstable nature. While Cristina can't seem to get over a certain hill of contemplation, Vicky seems to be speeding madly down the other side.

The film offers no trite conclusions and the ending has a bittersweet feeling of fulfillment perhaps missed and a persistent mystery over what, exactly, the right move would've been for these two ladies.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet 1931

Here comes a town with talent leaking good.
No actors here could form a building grant.
The trouble is, a few were made of wood.
Performance must produce a man or ant.
But women called the bank and froze a pop.
No snacks were cold when summer came along.
You have to ask the winter now to stop.
Or autumn once to sing an extra song.
As chilly leaves would fall in spring we watched.
We waited 'mongst the pews for whales to speak.
But Orson Welles would preach a shapeless blotch.
The early dawn beholds the conquered peak.
It seems the mountain's made of water still.
No hardened ice would form for nature's will.

What Art?

Okay, I guess I can't put off writing about Wednesday's Daredevil any longer. I hate writing negative reviews but in for a penny, in for a pound. It's particularly disappointing because I had high hopes for this show. Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk is truly one of the best things about not just the MCU but comic book film and television of the last thirty years. But once again, Disney was under the impression they could cut corners in one of the most essential aspects of any production: the writing.

"Art for Art's Sake" (Walter Pater is rolling in his grave) was written by Jill Blankenship who also wrote the abysmal episode three, "The Hollow of His Hand", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I've said this before; I hate when so many people in a large city just coincidentally know each other. Heather is both Muse's therapist and Wilson Fisk's therapist and Matt's girlfriend. This might have worked had the story been set in a small village but this is just silly. The worst part, though, is that, after all that set up with Muse, he's snuffed out so abruptly, so soon. The police tell Fisk they're positive Daredevil was in the room beating on the guy even though they weren't inside the room. It's all well and good for Fisk to have them take credit for taking out Muse but is Fisk even sure what lie he's telling?

This episode was clearly a reconfigured episode from the first draft of the series. There's a lot of very obviously looped dialogue whenever events from the Netflix series are referred to. When Heather talks about Foggy and Karen, her face is always off-screen. When Fisk talks about his time in prison, his face is mostly off-screen.

Detective Kim reports to Fisk about the Muse investigation because apparently she's lead detective as well as hostage negotiator despite the actress giving a performance on the level of an old AT&T commercial. It's a shame it couldn't have been Misty Knight. Fisk asks Kim if she's certain Bastian is Muse and she says, "Certain, no. Confident." Too bad she didn't think to have him tailed then.

Matt's able to recognise Heather's face by touching paintings. Why not just give him eyesight at this point? This is lazy, lazy writing. Since the cops also found the lair, they could've had Daredevil overhear someone else identifying her from the pictures. Hell, she's probably therapist for the whole damned city.

The action scene where Daredevil comes in to save Heather from Muse is really sloppy. I was just going over it again. Heather's tied up and she taunts him for having a gun and then there's a shot of him holding a gun. Then there's a reverse shot and he's holding a knife and he comes towards her threateningly. Then he's grasping her arms with both hands and shortly thereafter we see the gun on the table. How is it they can't even get the action scenes right?

Well, next week's episode is bound to be better. I'm kind of not surprised the show's ratings haven't been great but if Disney had made the effort from the beginning to ensure this had good writing they could've slowly built a groundswell of support of the show. Andor should've taught them that lesson.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.