Restraint versus Matcha

Catholicism is pitted against Japanese tea ceremony in 1962's Love Under the Crucifix (お吟さま, "Lady Ogin"). Shot in colour and set in the 16th century, this was the last film to be directed by Tanaka Kinuyo. I imagine the cost of the film against a low box office was likely a contributing factor in this. Tanaka has enjoyed more fame as an actress, particularly for her work with Mizoguchi Kenji. Mizoguchi was not supportive of his star's directorial career but while Love Under the Crucifix lacks the depth of thought and profundity of Mizoguchi's films, it's a decent romantic melodrama.

The story revolves around Ogin (Arima Ineko), the daughter of a real life tea ceremony master named Sen no Rikyu, a favourite and confidant of the rulers Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He's played by kabuki star Nakamura Ganjiro II in the film who imbues the character with serenity and gentleness to contrast with a Christianity portrayed as oppressive and cruel.

Like any good heroine of women's pulp romantic fiction, everyone loves Ogin, particularly the man who converted her to Christianity, Ukon Takayama, played by Nakadai Tatsuya. When she pleads with him to become her lover despite the fact that he's married, he visibly restrains his violent emotions and tells her how physical love is a sin. In a later scene, Sen no Rikyu talks about the natural attraction between men and women as something that should be acknowledged and acted on, in congruence with the honesty of tea ceremony. I'm not sure the contrast between unyielding restraint in Catholicism versus a free love philosophy of tea ceremony is quite an honest depiction, to put it mildly.

Tanaka directs like an actress, like so many actors and actresses turned director--She uses lots and lots of closeups. Despite the period setting involving major figures in Japanese history, the story feels very small because very little is given emotional depth outside of Ogin's romantic predicament. We see vassals and farmers and merchants with a lot of props and costumes but all their dialogue is stiff exposition explaining the historical context or ruminating on the motives around Ogin and the men in her life.

The cinematography's a bit bland--everything is lit like a department store. The performances are really good, though, particularly from Nakadai and Nakamura.

Love Under the Crucifix is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a collection remembering Nakadai Tatsuya.

Is It Really So Strange?

The bravest citizens of Hawkins assemble once again to fight the threat of Demogorgons from the Upside Down in Stranger Things, season 5, the first four episodes of which premiered last week. They start good and finish strong with a couple wobbly parts in the middle.

They really should've moved the time period up to the '90s. These are clearly not kids anymore, which is hardly a surprise given that the show first premiered nine years ago. The first episode of the new season begins with a flashback to season one Will in 1983 before cutting ahead to current Will, supposedly just four years later but the guy we see looks like he's cleared a decade at least. At least the show acknowledges that the little nerds have all sprouted into surprisingly big guys when three of them stand up to some bullies tormenting Dustin, who's still kind of short.

Dustin has a dust up with the bullies that built tension really nicely and I was sorry that the subplot evaporated by the third episode. The third episode seems almost like an alternate universe, everyone is so different in it, and then I realised it was probably because it was not written by the Duffer Brothers but by Caitlin Schneiderhan. The auteur effect is real, folks.

The highlight of the four episodes is an action sequence at the end of the fourth. Will finally figures out something I think everyone in the audience saw coming a mile away but it's satisfying nonetheless.

This season's '80s guest star is Linda Hamilton as the villainous Dr. Kay, who's stationed within the Upside Down with a bunch of troops. One of the possible plot holes this season is that, while we see guns have basically no effect on Demogorgons, somehow this base in the Upside Down is perfectly secure and holding a bunch of specimens. It's nice to see Hamilton and it made me immediately switch over to watching Terminator 2 on Amazon Prime.

Stranger Things is available on Netflix.

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard has died. The playwright and screenwriter was 88. In his long career he wrote many films I admired, many of them without credit. Steven Spielberg has said Stoppard wrote more than the lion's share of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, despite going uncredited. The dialogue in that film is at times corny ("Twelve o'clock!" "What happens at twelve o'clock?") but also filled with surprising nuance and insight. I always like the moment where Indiana complains to his father that they never talked and his father counters, "Well, what do you want to talk about?" and Indiana can't think of anything. As is so often the case, long term resentment just evaporates when confronted.

Stoppard is said to have been most famous for writing Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead and then writing and directing the film adaptation of it. It's been decades since I saw it so I don't remember it very well but the concept is surely one of the most interesting Shakespeare pastiches. Life is bigger than the operatic stuff occurring on centre stage.

Of course, he co-wrote Terry Gilliam's Brazil, one of my all time favourite movies that's essentially tattooed on my mind. I watched it so many times in high school, college, and the years after and I'm always happy to return to it. It's funny, it's devastating, it's above all an uncommonly clear-eyed view of a human compulsion to reduce oneself to a machine. I'll always be grateful for that film's insight and honesty.

Thanks, Mr. Stoppard.

X Sonnet 1969

Comparing things results in stranger stuff.
The people 'round the block report on birds.
No freedom here, we traded all for fluff.
Conditions here presage the sleep of words.
Exchange a normal coin when times are weird.
You mustn't spend a dime where gold is sought.
These things the Scottish duck had never feared.
Advice forsook, a magic dime he got.
A tower held it nigh a liquid state.
The pool of wealth has driven workers mad.
It boxes ears and blocks the balding pate.
But Scrooge McDuck was never plucked or had.
And so the mansion grows with gentle ghosts.
And time has told on secret, vicious hosts.

The Naked One

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Recently, Variety published their list of the top 100 comedies of all time. As usual, there are all kinds of problems with the list. The only Buster Keaton movie is Sherlock Jr., the only Chaplin movie is The Great Dictator, yet there are two Howard Hawks movies and two Coen Brothers movies. Some of the movies, like Poor Things at number 65, barely seem to qualify as a comedy. Withnail and I is kind of funny but I don't know if it belongs in the top 100. Of course, there are very few foreign films on the list, just a few French movies, but comedy is the genre that most rarely translates effectively. Comedy typically relies on a lot of cultural references. The exception is physical comedy, which tends to be universal, so it's not a surprise one of the French movies is a Monsieur Herlot movie, though I'm surprised it's Playtime. I'm a little surprised there's no Jackie Chan movie on the list.

The real controversial choice is the number one pick, 1988's The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. I don't know if it really deserves to be at number one, but it's certainly a damn funny movie. I watched it last night. I don't think I'd seen the whole thing since I was a kid, though I've watched Police Squad, the series it's based on, a few times, in the intervening years. Police Squad may be a little cleverer but it's hard for any movie to rival Naked Gun for sheer density of jokes of a wild variety of subject matter that the narrative nonetheless flows smoothly through. One moment, you're laughing at the repeated sight gag of Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) invariably crashing into something when he stops his car and next you're laughing at some nonsense wordplay or Frank mistaking someone else's press conference as his own.

The first scene doesn't really work. Frank beating up a bunch of despotic world leaders just seems like an odd daydream but, after that, the movie's consistent gold. A lot has been said about the perfection of Leslie Nielsen's deadpan but Priscilla Presley is pretty good, too.

It's common to portray the hardboiled cop as an untidy bachelor and I love how this scene takes it to an absurd extreme. There's not one item in Frank's fridge that's not impossibly ancient. It's great how Priscilla Presley just keeps nattering on and only slows down slightly when she sees the odd assortment of mouldy objects in the freezer.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is available on Netflix.

Sister Routes

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I went to The Criterion Channel's Family Reunion playlist last night and picked out the best looking one, Woody Allen's 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. It's a comedy about relationships set in New York, which of course describes a lot of Woody Allen movies. This one's more of an ensemble piece than usual and although Allen himself plays a role, he's not the sole point of view character as he typically is.

The title characters are Hannah, played by Mia Farrow, and her two sisters, Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey). As the film opens, we're treated to a narration by Elliot, Hannah's husband, played by Michael Caine, who's secretly in love with Lee, or believes he is. He's possibly a stand-in for Allen himself, as in other Allen movies in which Allen himself doesn't star. In any case, it was the first time I ever thought Michael Caine bore some resemblance to Woody Allen.

Allen plays a television producer named Mickey who's Hannah's ex-husband. He's a hypochondriac and much of his subplot concerns his anxiety over the possibility that he has a brain tumour.

According to Wikipedia, the film was influenced by Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, and I was indeed reminded of the Bergman film at the beginning of Hannah and her Sisters, which depicts many of the characters gathering for a Thanksgiving party, much as the characters in Fanny and Alexander gather for Christmas. Unlike Fanny and Alexander, Hannah and Her Sisters has Max von Sydow in a small role. The man who'd starred in so many famous Bergman films had been unable or unwilling to return for his old friend's elegiac effort that was supposed to be a kind of summation of Bergman's career. But here he was, a couple years later, in a film by Bergman's admirer, Woody Allen.

Von Sydow plays Lee's husband and he tells her directly that Elliot's been "lusting" after her. She knows too, of course, but she hasn't put it so bluntly to herself in the thoughts we hear in her narration, she just ruminates on how Elliot blushed when speaking to her and calls it a "crush". I guess that's ultimately what unites the two sides of the film, an exercise in bad faith in the Satre-ian sense of the term. In one plot, two people engage in an affair who aren't honest with themselves about their intentions and, in the other, a man obsesses with illness he has little reason to suspect he actually has.

Hannah herself is a small role, being the calm centre of the storm. Carrie Fisher has a small but effective role as a family friend.

Hannah and Her Sisters is available on The Criterion Channel.

Movie Talk

Patton Oswalt was a guest on Bill Maher's Club Random podcast recently and I was surprised to learn what a cinephile Oswalt is. Maher has slightly better than average knowledge of old films, enough for the two to have a conversation. The two talk about Robert Altman a bit and Maher refers to Altman's 1970 film, M.A.S.H., as "mean-spirited". That's an interesting way of putting it. It's on The Criterion Channel now and I watched it and I'm not sure "mean-spirited" is the term I'd use but it's certainly obnoxious to anyone watching it from an Asian country. It was obviously all shot in California and mostly it feels like we watch Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper (Elliott Gould) goofing off. It's barely more than implied that they're saving lives as field medics, I guess to sanctify their smugness. I guess it's supposed to make up for them humiliating Sally Kellerman's "Hot Lips" in the shower, too. If anyone's wondering if the Japan depicted in the film comes off in any way authentic, the answer is a resounding no. The foreign countries just exist on some hazy periphery while Sutherland and Gould strut around the centre stage.

The constant gong stinger is plenty obnoxious all on its own.

Maher and Oswalt got to talking about Altman by talking about Philip Marlowe and the Marlowe movie Altman made starring Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye, which I also watched recently (and liked better than M.A.S.H.). They also talked about Howard Hawks' 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep and Oswalt weighed in on the two cuts of that film; one which hews closer to the original novel, and one made a year later that replaces more expository scenes with scenes of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall having exciting dialogue. Oswalt champions the recut version as an example of the studio knowing better than the film's original director. Personally, I like both versions and to really enjoy the 1946 version--well, either of them, really--one really needs to have read the book. It's famously one of the most convoluted plots of all time in any case. It always amazes me that they changed nothing about the plot involving Carmen Sternwood's nude photos being used for blackmail except the fact that she's not naked in them. So she basically threatens to murder someone over pictures of her wearing a dress. All this is presented to the audience like it's perfectly reasonable. I do like Martha Vickers as Carmen. She really justifies Bogart's line to the butler, "You ought to ween her, she's old enough."

What He Has Done

2009's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is a rare confluence of talent, a Werner Herzog movie produced by David Lynch. I'd been in the mood to watch it again ever since I saw it was up on Criterion Channel and then one of its stars, Udo Kier, died a few days ago. The cast also includes Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Grace Zabriskie, and Braf Dourif.

Shannon stars as Brad McCullam, a young man who murders his mother with a 19th century military sabre. It's based on a true story but Herzog says about 70% was invented by the filmmakers. He was more interested in creating a portrait of a personality.

The film is set and shot in the actual city where the real crime took place, my home town, San Diego. It's certainly a potent experience for me to watch it now that I've been living in Japan for almost six years. The film even includes a lot of real details from the city. The Coronado Bridge is mentioned significantly, Balboa Park is shown and mentioned. Even the ostrich farm belonging to Brad Dourif's character is true to life--if you drive around the backroads of San Diego long enough, you will indeed come across an ostrich farm or two.

In the film, McCullam goes to the farm with Udo Kier's character, the director of the production of Orestes McCullam's starring in. I felt like Herzog was trying to create a moment by putting the crazy uncle played by Brad Dourif in frame with Kier's character when Dourif's launches into a homophobic tirade about the ancient Greeks. Kier, who was openly gay throughout his career, maintains perfect poise, though.

I know I've seen this movie before but somehow I can't find my old blog entry on it. I feel like I would probably be repeating myself if I talked about the film's religious subtext. I liked how all the oatmeal containers that play a significant role in the film are labelled "Puritan Oats" instead of "Quaker". The kindly face of the mascot is the face of God, McCullam claims. His fiancee, played by Chloe Sevigny with unwavering affection and loyalty, has the unlikely name of Ingrid Goodmanson, like she's an amalgamation of 17th century Dutch and English Protestants just come over on a boat.

There are so many little Lynch touches to the film but it's hard to say if Lynch really did contribute these things or if Herzog was adopting some of Lynch's style. Obviously there's the casting of Zabriskie as the mother; Zabriskie is among the stable of frequent returning performers in Lynch's films. But a lot of the dialogue feels very Lynchian in the way the characters push and savour odd significance in certain words, as when Dafoe's character says McCullum is "Irish, maybe even Scottish," as though in his mind Scottish is a more extreme version of Irish. There's the way characters linger over the term "white water rapids" when they discuss the deaths of the people who went to Peru with McCullam.

This was one of the movies that first solidified Michael Shannon's reputation for playing intense nutcases. McCullam's madness always hovers on the border between tragedy and comedy, familiar territory for both Lynch and Herzog. He takes Ingrid outside in one scene and points first at one house and then another and announces that he's going to buy it for her. She, a good Puritan, takes him in all earnest seriousness, and explains to him he doesn't have that kind of money. He just stares at her with those intense eyes and says, "So what?" like a holy visionary. But the situation is so absurd it only highlights how off the rails he is.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Udo Kier

Udo Kier has died. The German actor was 81. To have seen him is to remember him, whether it was in one of his over 200 films or in a commercial, you remember those striking grey eyes. But he was also an actor of deft, captivating talent.

In the '70s, he starred in a pair of Gothic horror satires for producer Andy Warhol, Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. It's the former that earned him fame but I'm partial to the latter. Kier plays Dracula as a brooding, tentatively petulant young aristocrat. It's a terrific deadpan performance in a remarkably intelligent and sexy comedy.

He later starred in the experimental French version of Jekyll and Hyde called Docteur Jekyll et les femmes. He covered his Gothic bases.

In his long career, he could leave a mark on a movie with a very brief cameo, as he did in the original Suspiria, while also having major roles in films by some of the greatest avante-garde filmmakers of our time, like Lars von Trier and Werner Herzog. And despite his flawless deadpan, he was ready to join a bizarre comedy, including the infamous Moon Nazi movie, Iron Sky.

Here's a man whose legacy is woven into the fabric of avant-garde cinema history.

Back to Don Quixote

One of the best things about where I'm currently living is that I'm just a few blocks from a Don Quijote, a "tax free" discount store known for its eclectic and expansive selection of merchandise. If you're interested in Japan and you've never been to Japan, you've probably watched YouTubers strolling through its aisles of chaotic kitsch. You can also get groceries there, though their selection of produce is not consistent. But they have a lot of packaged and foreign foods, especially oddball items that evidently didn't find success on other store shelves, such as the Hot and Spicy Stir-Fried Lobster Pringles I bought a few weeks ago (I thought they were pretty good). Their liquor selection is also surprisingly great. You can get Johnnie Walker Red, Black, Double Black, Black Ruby, and even Green Labels, though I've been partial to Cutty Sark these days. They also have clothes, appliances, stationery, Halloween costumes, camping gear, and who knows what else.

A few days ago, I noticed they had a huge display for the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future and I again marvelled at the cultural currency that movie currently exerts in Japan. Now at Don Quijote you can get a variety of remote controlled Delorians, tote bags and thermoses with the fictional Pepsi logo from Back to the Future Part II, and bags with mystery prizes. Apparently in Shibuya there's even a full sized Delorian. You can see a full list of goods on their website. Look at that, I'm using Japanese English, saying "goods" instead of "merchandise".

I can't find any information on the origin of the name and how much it has to do with Cervantes' Don Quixote. I searched and searched but soon realised it was a quixotic quest.

Following Those Fliers Again

One of the Howard Hawks movies I'm fondest of is 1939's Only Angels Have Wings. Cary Grant runs an air freight company in South America. Something about the story of men merrily living between potentially fatal missions in a decrepit little bar appeals to me, I guess.

Jean Arthur is a singer who comes to town. Two flyboys immediately try to pick her up. They succeed in convincing her to let them take her to the bar--she's just happy to be talking to two Americans for once. The flirtatious encounter is interrupted when their boss (Grant) swaggers in wearing the biggest panama hat worn by a lead actor in cinema history. One of Arthur's would-be wooers has to brave the storm. He doesn't make it.

That's just the beginning. Arthur can't understand how the men carry on when life's like this all the time. Of course, she starts to fall for Cary Grant's character. Rita Hayworth shows up as his old flame.

It's about as good an adventure noir as you'll ever see. It's on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a Howard Hawks playlist.

X Sonnet 1968

On closer look, the world's a woeful dog.
His plaintive, searching eyes are seas of ink.
His nose, a molten rock that's spouting fog.
His mouth, a sloppy wet and toothsome sink.
On closer look, the sun's an angry cat.
Her piercing eyes are flares of solar flame.
Her fur, a roiling vast and burning vat.
Her fiery core, a spiteful, sleepless brain.
On closer look, the moon's a frightened mouse.
His floppy ears are secret country flags.
His twitching nose, a small surveillance house.
His little guts are buried body bags.
Our math was wrong, the sun has chased the moon.
The earth is still and waits for violent doom.

Colm Means Quality

Colm Meaney always was, and still is, one of the most successful Star Trek actors at getting roles outside the franchise. Hell, the guy was in John Huston's last movie (The Dead, based on the James Joyce story, currently streaming on The Criterion Channel). The makers of Deep Space Nine certainly seemed to know what they had and I just finished watching three unrelated episodes starring his character, Miles O'Brien. The most lauded of the three is "Whispers", a second season episode from February 1994 in which O'Brien returns home to the space station to find everyone's behaving very strangely around him, even fearful or hateful. It is brilliantly grim, a paranoid, existential tale worthy of a film noir.

O'Brien wakes up to find his wife, Keiko, and daughter, Molly, are rushing out the door at 5:30 in the morning. Molly doesn't seem to want to go near him and Keiko's excuses are rushed and oddly weak. Later, he finds Commander Sisko has been giving orders to a man on O'Brien's crew instead of going to O'Brien first, the standard procedure between Commander and Chief of Operations. Small things get bigger and stranger as the story progresses. There are some odd turns of logic once you find out what's going on but it mostly holds together, especially since the performances are so good, particular from Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix here in Japan.

Your Dracula

I was listening to a YouTuber talking about Dracula a few days ago and I marvelled again at the story's longevity and reach. Even schoolkids here in Japan know the character somehow, just by pop cultural osmosis. Along with Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, and Alice, it's amazing how well characters from English literature of the 19th century have endured. It strikes me that Dracula has survived for reasons similar to Alice. They're both irresistible prompts for audiences and other writers to expand on the characters.

Dracula is barely in the book. He only has a few scenes of dialogue. In the film adaptations, directors, screenwriters, and actors have free range to make him a charming, seductive psychopath, as in the Lugosi version, or an unearthly night creature, as in the Nosferatu movies, or as a tragic, romantic figure, as in the Langella and Oldman versions. The filmmakers can stride forward, confident they've gotten to what they see as the real essence of the character, only for their interpretations to be, in the end, just that; interpretations. These interpretations inevitably reflect the interpreter. Dracula is the frightening, unknowable Other or a reflection of the artist's own darkened self image.

Alice is much the same. Aside from the prefatory poems, the Alice books are remarkably unsentimental and even amoral, particularly for the Victorian era. But most adaptations can't resist adding a love story for Alice or some kind of moral. And, of course, there are the many "dark" Alices, which somehow never seem to be quite as dark as the hints in the original books. Scenes like the baby turning into a pig or the looking glass house have suggestions of horror much bigger than the brevity of their presence.

Who Can You Trust?

If you're a regular schlub, down on his luck, who enters town by crashing his truck into another, and the prettiest gal in town takes an inexplicable interest in you, exercise caution. That would've been good advice for Glen Ford in 1947's Framed, a film noir directed by Richard Wallace. It's a good one, too.

Ford plays Mike, a mining engineer with a college degree who's nonetheless had to take odd jobs, like truck driving. The shady outfit he's driving for at the beginning apparently couldn't be bothered to give him a truck with functioning brakes but they did make him sign a contract that makes him liable for any damages or legal troubles he might get into with the car.

Fortunately, or so it seems, the luxuriously dressed barmaid he meets before the police nab him decides to pay his fifty dollar bail for no reason.

It all becomes clear to the audience before it does to Mike. It turns out the dame, Paula (Janis Carter), is having an affair with a wealthy banker (Barry Sullivan) who wants to bump off his wife. Mike turns out to be of around the same age and build as the banker, if you get the picture. Mike gets the frame.

Ford is always a solid centre of any noir. He always seems to be just barely containing a boiling fury and there's certainly plenty for him to be furious about.

Framed is currently available on The Criterion Channel. And apparently on YouTube.

Puddle to Man

As much as I liked Odo on Deep Space Nine, I was never much interested in episodes where he sought to uncover the mystery of his own origins. He's set up as a hard-nosed detective character and that's how I mostly liked to see him, working out the clues, trying to crack some case. Usually when he's doing that, he's a supporting character. Maybe actor Rene Auberjonois really wanted opportunities to emote, though, because he always goes to pieces in these episodes about this origins.

But I did enjoy "The Alternate" recenlty, an episode from January 1994. It guest stars James Sloyan, a very familiar face to Star Trek fans. He was on two episodes of The Next Generation and one episode of Voyager, each time playing a different character. He also had frequent guest roles on other shows starting in 1970. His last television credit on Wikipedia is that Voyager episode in 1995.

He plays Dr. Mora Pol, the scientist who discovered Odo when Odo was just a mysterious pile of goo. It was Mora who studied and nurtured Odo in his formative years and Sisko and others around him automatically refer to Mora as Odo's father. Odo himself resists this idea, just like a child with a difficult relationship would.

It's an interesting contextualising of a parent and child relationship. I say "formative" and it's really in more ways than one as it's plain that Odo has modelled his hair style, appearance, and gruff voice on Mora's. Since Odo is a shapeshifter whose natural state is a pile of goo, he can't help but wear his self-image on his sleeve, as it were. When he loses control in his anger at Mora, he becomes a shapeless mass, losing the identity he formed over the years. I could envision telling a story about a shapeshifter who totally changes their default shape at least once a decade as they encounter new "formative" experiences.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix. You know, I'm feeling confirmed in my old opinion that season two is the best season of Deep Space Nine. But I'll have to wait 'til I've rewatched the others.

Unforgivable Misdeeds and Music

A young woman comes out of rehab to attend her sister's wedding in Jonathan Demme's 2008 film, Rachel's Getting Married. It's more cheerful than a Lars von Trier movie but it's gloomier than most. It's filled with good performances and an interestingly staged wedding ceremony.

Anne Hathaway plays Kym, the family black sheep. It's from her perspective we see everything else as she struggles to find a place within her family. She's been a substance abuser all her life but we learn about a third of the way through the movie that the real fissure between her and her family is caused by the fact that she had a little brother who died when he was in the backseat of a car Kym drove off the road when she was high. The sister getting married, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), their mother (Debra Winger), and father (Bill Irwin) hover between determined hospitality and unbridled rage directed at Kym. As the wedding planning moves into the events of the wedding itself, the viewer is invited to gauge how honest any expressions of affection are, or if there can be any true bond left after what Kym had done.

The wedding party was filmed in an improvisational style. Actual musicians can be seen jamming, including Robyn Hitchcock, Fab Five Freddy, and Sister Carol. This is explained by the fact that Kym and Rachel's father works in the music industry. The wedding party has a remarkably authentic atmosphere.

Rachel Getting Married is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a family reunion playlist, presumably for Thanksgiving. This oughta perk everyone up.

Most Excellent

Lately I've been seeing photos of Tom Baker on my Facebook recently being awarded the title of MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). So I watched one of his Doctor Who stories I hadn't seen in a while last night, "The Sontaran Experiment", the third episode from his first season in 1975.

He had such a great hat in his first season, it's a shame he always wanted to take it off. Indiana Jones fans who may note a similarity to the one worn by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark may like to know that both hats were made by Herbert Johnson of London, both "Poet" models. Since both Raiders' costume designer and Harrison Ford himself made numerous tweaks to the hat, I've long suspected the hat as it was originally purchased looked quite a bit like, if not identical to, Baker's first season hat. It is "crushable" so Baker could fold it up and put it in his pocket, as he often did. I have a Herbert Johnson hat myself and I've not yet dared to do this yet but the felt is remarkably flexible.

It's strange that both of the actors playing the Doctor's younger companions have died but Baker's still with us. Long may he live yet and record Big Finish audio dramas.

"The Sontaran Experiment" is the shortest story of Baker's entire run as the Doctor, being only two episodes. It's also unique in having no interior shots, having been filmed entirely on Dartmoor in Devon. It certainly looks desolate though I imagine residents of England find it as familiar as all those shots of desert on Star Trek look to those of us from southern California. At least the location in "The Sontaran Experiment" is actually meant to be England, albeit 10,000 years in the future. The Sontarans still look as creepy as they do silly. They're pretty impressive aliens given it was a low budget series in the '70s.

Classic Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on BritBox in other countries.

The Social Winter Begins

Over twenty years ago in the US, a young man's fancy often turned to women. Not only women on the internet but even women with whom he regularly interacted or might potentially interact with. Now as this brand of dating culture is seemingly falling into obsolescence, it's worth remembering how much it spurred the early progress of social media, the very thing that's been strangling mating instincts to death for the past fifteen years. Witness 2010's The Social Network, David Fincher's engaging biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook.

Facebook's still with us to-day. I use it. I know it has a reputation now of being for the older folks as the young generally now prefer TikTok and Instagram but even many young people maintain Facebook accounts too keep in contact with their parents and grandparents. Which makes it all the more fascinating that Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, is shown to be driven in his quest to break new internet ground by the culture of campus lust surrounding him at Harvard.

It's hard to see exactly where Zuckerberg's feverish pursuit of status ends and his desire to alleviate his loneliness begins. He wanders through life cloaked by his rapid-fire, glib observations and ripostes, sometimes clever, sometimes vicious, but always seeming like he's having to backtrack slightly because his line of thought has already breezed past issues everyone else is still struggling with.

He comes off as a genius but did Facebook really need a genius to create it? I'm left wondering how accurate Aaron Sorkin's screenplay really is and if maybe he so awed by what Facebook achieved that he was unable to conceive of Zuckerberg being an otherwise unremarkable young man. But taken as a work of fiction, it is an interesting portrait of a brilliant young man and a worthy reminder of how young people used to indulge their sexual impulses with each other.

The Social Network is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a playlist of movies with Trent Reznor soundtracks. Now that Reznor, with his collaborator Atticus Ross, has scored many more films and diversified his style quite a bit, it's interesting going back to 2010 when a score from him could be expected to sound a least a little bit like Nine Inch Nails.

X Sonnet 1967

The fate of finger brains explains the tune.
For music floats the ghost of swimming jam.
In the mash the berries bring a heavy spoon.
Conduct your buck beneath the glowing ram.
Create your money made of molten steel.
Advance the vision quest below the belt.
You'll see the baby time was something real.
You tried to think but barely only felt.
Return with pelts and make a savage bed.
The photo shoot began before the wheel.
Invent another kind of foot to tread.
And win a special frozen chicken meal.
Your kitchen space extends beyond the poles.
But careful now, it's full of deadly holes.

The Neutrinos are Rigged

I like weird stories about luck, I'm not sure why they seem to be so rare. One of the reasons Deadpool 2 is my favourite of the three is that Domino's luck power is so much fun. I guess it's basically like the reverse of the bad luck in the Final Destination movies. If the writers can be truly creative in how the weird luck manifests, I really get into it.

"Rivals", a 1993 episode of Deep Space Nine, is another weird luck story. It guest stars Chris Sarandon, brother of Susan. He's best known for playing Humperdink in The Princess Bride and he was the voice of Jack Skellington (Danny Elfman provides the singing voice). On Deep Space Nine, he belongs to an entirely human looking species whose power is listening. There's not much supernatural about what he does so I'm not sure why they called it a special ability. He cons a woman out of an addictive gaming device and opens a casino to compete with Quark, unwittingly magnifying the device's power to warp the laws of probability throughout the space station.

I really like how it influences the subplot about Bashir and O'Brien playing racketball.

On a lot of shows, this setup would lead to maybe O'Brien celebrating an incredible victory or finding the grace to admit he's out of his depth with Bashir. Instead, it gets weird as the ball starts to favour O'Brien. Bashir's racket even just breaks at one point. It's Star Trek so they call the science officer and start analysing it. It's nice to think about a future where the pursuit of truth takes precedence over petty rivalry.

Which is the Dream?

The young man, frustrated by the intransigent status-quo, is attracted to the lone, powerful man who impudently casts convention aside to rise in the ranks to the status of Emperor. The young man is Pierre at the beginning of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Pierre is a sympathetic character despite the fact that Tolstoy was not himself a fan of Napoleon. One mark of Tolstoy's greatness, and a key aspect of his ability to write characters, is that he understood perspectives that were not his own.

I've been listening to an audiobook of War and Peace lately while walking to and from work. Just like the first time I read it, I enjoy the "Peace" sections more than the "War" sections. I suppose because there are more women in the Peace sections though I do appreciate the complicated portrait Tolstoy paints of officers and soldiers, caught up in petty dramas, in nurturing certain modes of behaviour, in strategising that often seems more retroactive than proactive.

I like this bit from the point of view of the young soldier, Rostov, thinking about a colonel with whom he'd previously had some interaction:

It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish him—Rostóv. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.

All these young men go to war with such vainglorious fantasies of personal heroism or of at least having the opportunity of showing their honour. When the reality turns out to mainly be mindless marching and various camp chores, naturally the imagination rushes in to fill the gaps in the story their young minds imagine must be happening, just outside their ability to directly perceive it. The reality of conflict can burst that bubble but so can thirteen year old Natasha's laughter at the dinner table. There's a dinner scene earlier with members of multiple families and esteemed persons in which a grave discussion about honour in battle is interrupted by Natasha deliberately asking very loudly about desserts. While she may not understand the long psychological road of nursed egos and resentments that led to the discussion, her instinct that it's bullshit is no less accurate.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the elders.

“You had better take care!” said the countess.

“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natásha again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.

Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.

“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother and to Pierre, glancing at him again.

“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.

Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even Márya Dmítrievna.

“Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice cream.”

“Carrot ices.”

“No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed; “I want to know!”

Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.

One Woman's Sanctuary . . .

The mysterious wormhole to the other side of the galaxy opens. Anything could emerge but of course it's more humanoids because it's Star Trek. The second season episode of Deep Space Nine, "Sanctuary", shows what happens when millions of refugees decide to take up residence on the nearby planet of Bajor. It's not really about aliens but it's a nice thought experiment about human cultural interaction.

The refugee aliens are the Skrreeans. Their homeworld had been decimated by the Dominion, an ongoing antagonist for Deep Space Nine. According to their religious beliefs, they are to settle on a "planet of sorrow" which their leaders decide is Bajor. One interesting parallel that isn't brought up in the episode is that the Bajorans themselves attach religious significance to the wormhole. A lot of the drama in other episodes revolves around the Bajorans allowing religious considerations to have more influence over policy decisions than practical ones but, when the shoe's on the other foot, they're less amenable to allowing millions of strangers settle on their homeworld.

The practical reality is that Bajor just doesn't have the resources to absorb so many people despite the insistence by the Skrreeans that they can make famine stricken land fertile and thus be a boon to the Bajorans. That's faith the Bajorans don't just share in.

This episode comes from 1993, long before the refugee crisis in Europe and it's different enough from the Palastine/Israel conflict to not come off as an allegory for it. Without the imposition of real world factions, it holds up as a pure contemplation of some of the ways culture can potentially hinder or facilitate integration.

Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix.

Nakadai Tatsuya

One of the giants of Japanese cinema, Nakadai Tatsuya, died on November 8th, though his death was announced yesterday, the 11th. He was 92. This charismatic actor who gave cinema such a wide diversity of performances throughout a very long career nevertheless primarily considered himself a theatre actor. He starred in a long list of productions, many of them Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare. You know an actor's versatile when he's played Richard III and Falstaff. So it's fitting that his best known role in the west is probably as Ichimonji Hidetora in Kurosawa Akira's adaptation of King Lear called Ran (乱).

Nakadai's large eyes that lent charisma to so many of the characters in his youth became the mad, desperate eyes of the Daimyo whose world is collapsing around him, the betrayal surrounding him revealing the worst of human nature from which he'd theretofore been somehow sheltered. But that was just the last in a series of films he made with Kurosawa Akira. He had a crucial role in Yojimbo (用心棒), one of Kurosawa's most famous films, as the sadistic yakuza gunman. Nakadai's talent as an actor enabled him to play another character in the sequel, Sanjuro (椿三十郎), a man whose life is defined by conscientious observance of duty.

He made eleven films with Kobayashi Masaki and, while I don't myself think of Kobayashi on the same level as Kurosawa, Naruse, or Ichikawa, Nakadai's work for the famed director is certainly impressive. Sword of Doom (大菩薩峠) and Harakiri (切腹) are still well known films among western cinephiles. And few actors have undergone the kind of arduous effort that Nakadai made in Kobayashi's anti-war trilogy, The Human Condition (人間の條件), in which he played a soldier whose experiences form the basis of Kobayashi's unvarnished criticism of Japan's wartime policies and the crimes committed by its officers in China.

He appeared in more conservative films as well, serving as narrator for Japan's Longest Day (日本のいちばん長い日), the star-studded look back on the last days of World War II that portrayed the outgoing wartime staff with honour and dignity.

These films, two of the Kurosawa movies I mentioned as well as the Kobayashi movies and Japan's Longest Day, were all made in the 1960s, a decade in which Nakadai also starred in the haunting sci-fi classic The Face of Another (他人の顔) and had memorable roles in three movies by the great director of domestic dramas, Naruse Mikio, including the film for which Naruse is best remembered now in many countries, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (女が階段を上る時).

I can think of very few actors whose careers could match Nakadai's in terms of longevity and diversity. He's certainly always a welcome sight. Any film he turns up in is one I know will be well worth watching.

A Second Look at Second Sight

One of my favourite episodes of Deep Space Nine when I was a kid was "Second Sight", a second season episode from November, 1993. Imagine my surprise when I discovered yesterday that it's widely considered one of the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine, both by critics and by people who worked on the show. No accounting for taste, I guess. I watched it last night and I still like it but, sure, it's not a masterpiece. In fact, I think one of the reasons I always liked it was that it's kind of low key, not really presuming to be anything much, despite the fact that it features a guy reigniting a dead sun by crashing a shuttlecraft into it.

That's the subplot, though. The main plot is a romantic story in which Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) meets a mysterious woman called Fenna (Salli Elise Richardson). She wears a red dress and has pointy ears, two classic, immediate turn-ons. They flirt a little and have some chemistry and then she just vanishes. They have a couple other similar encounters before Sisko gets to the bottom of the mystery.

It turns out to be something similar to the concept of Kon Satoshi's 2006 film Paprika. Fenna turns out to be a psychic projection of another woman, a manifestation of that woman's subconscious. I guess I liked the little tragedy of Sisko having chemistry with a woman's subconscious desires but having nothing at all between himself and the waking woman, a situation that can only be resolved by the two of them never speaking again.

Dislike for the episode generally seems to revolve around the woman's husband, played by Richard Kiley. Maybe I've had it mixed up all along and his was supposed to be the main plot and Fenna's the subplot. It really doesn't come off that way, though.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix.

Shambling Once More to Life

Once again, archaic machinery sparks and and ignites while a patchwork corpse is held aloft, strapped to a table in a brand new Frankenstein. This one comes from Guillermo del Toro who imbues the work with the lush, fantastically gothic visuals he's known for. It also has marvellous performances from a well chosen cast. Unfortunately, the screenplay offers a more morally simplistic version of the tale than Mary Shelley's original novel. Still, as a filmmaking spectacle, it's well worth watching.

For some reason a few critics have complained that Jacob Elordi is too handsome to play the creature. These critics likely have not read the novel in which Shelley's attraction to the creature is evident. As is well known, she belonged to a circle of authors united by common preoccupations for certain themes. Byron, Blake, even Wordsworth were united by their love for Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton's Satan was an attractive hero for the Romantics who pondered the possibilities for a strong willed man, freed from the constraints of religion and morality. The creature is Mary Shelley's own Manfred. He is a victim of the amoral act of his creation but his triumph is also to be beyond morality.

This is something del Toro either does not understand or has no interest in. His version of the creature is innately moral and avoids perpetrating the murders and manipulations he did in the novel. It's a shame because I'd argue that, with a Napoleon in the White House, such questions are well worth exploring now.

Instead, del Toro is interested in the story as one of paternal abuse. Victor's kind and loving father in the novel becomes the cold and physically abusive Charles Dance in the film. This pattern of behaviour manifests again when Victor shows little patience with the fact that the creature comes to life unable to immediately speak fluent English. One consequence of this is that Victor often comes off as cartoonish. His motives often make no sense except from the idea that del Toro wanted him to be generally unpleasant.

Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz are both excellent in the film despite their roles being superfluous. Goth plays Elizabeth, Victor's childhood sweetheart in the book, now the fiancee of his brother in this new film. The love triangle, eventually becoming a square when the monster is introduced, may be more entertaining for others than it was to me. I certainly appreciated Goth's costumes especially since it was clear she did not, as Winona Rider did in Bram Stoker's Dracula, insist on wearing modern underwear.

Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Francis Ford Coppola movie, casts its shadow over this film as it does all fantastic horror made in the years since. Since its release in 1992, a lot of people have tried to do for Frankenstein what Coppola did for Dracula, most obviously Kenneth Branagh with his 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, made from a Frank Darabont screenplay del Toro admired. I wouldn't say del Toro has finally succeeded where others failed but the visuals are certainly there, even if they aren't as varied and innovative as the ones in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

As Frankenstein movies go, James Whale's films from the 1930s remain unsurpassed. But del Toro's has plenty going for it.

2025's Frankenstein is available on Netflix.

The Boundaries of an Angel's Memory

In talking about films noir and works of fiction dealing with memory problems, I often reference 1946's Black Angel, despite the fact that it somehow remains relatively obscure. The Criterion Channel's very appropriately showing it on their Blackout Noir playlist this month so I watched it again to see if it's still as good as I remember it. It is.

Dan Duryea stars as a drunken nightclub pianist whose cold-hearted ex-wife tells her doorman not to let him in to see her. While he drinks and bangs angrily at a piano, she does let other men in to see her. One of these is Kirk (John Phillips), who's having an affair with her despite the fact that he's married to the pretty sweetheart Catherine (June Vincent). When Duryea's ex-wife is murdered and it seems clear Kirk did the deed, Catherine nonetheless sticks by him.

She enlists the aid of Duryea's character, Martin, and their amateur investigation leads them to none other than Peter Lorre as a shady nightclub owner called Marko. Everything seems to be falling in place as you'd expect before the film pulls the rug out from under you with one of the darkest endings of any film noir. Of course it involves a blackout and memory loss.

Duryea usually plays thugs but always with plenty of nuance and here he shows he could truly sink his teeth into a more complicated character. The supporting cast is all good, particularly Lorre, but it's Duryea's hopeless bitterness mixed with instinctive selflessness that makes this movie a real heartbreaker. I'll go right along referencing this as an unrecognised landmark in film history.

X Sonnet 1967

The infiltration leaks between the seams.
A brittle box could break and yet refrains.
Nothing goes the way a mollusc seems.
In ev'ry arm there hides a tasty brain.
At dawn, the water burns a greenish blue.
The horizontal eight became an eye.
Its tranquil gaze discerns the morning's hue.
A ruddy sun announced the rolling die.
The glowing bloody air has soaked the grass.
Misfortune paired with luck on ev'ry blade.
Another star emerged from roiling gas.
A fickle god demands a price be paid.
But flotsam flies about the endless deep.
Exhaustive search ensures some secrets keep.

Sorry, Charlie

Recently, a video of Charlie Kirk speaking about Japan during his visit to Tokyo has been getting a lot of attention from Sanseito and other right-wing Japanese groups.

While I still don't think he should've been shot, I must observe he speaks from a position of profound ignorance when it comes to Japan. He presents a contrast between the U.S. and Japan by saying that the U.S. is primarily a "propositional" country while Japan is not. However, much of the modern Japan that he praises is a product of a series of propositions that have occurred since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, or even since the early 17th century if we're to include a timeline of changes instituted with philosophical rather than immediately practical intent.

Nominally, the "Restoration" was meant to restore absolute authority to the Emperor after the Edo period in which the country's governance was managed by a shogunate and "bafuku", a system in which regional lords maintained partial residency in Edo as a means of centralising policy formation and execution in the realm. But the Restoration is described by historians more accurately as a renovation. The country adopted a Charter Oath which presented a radical proposition for societal reform:

By this oath, we set up as our aim the establishment of the national wealth on a broad basis and the framing of a constitution and laws.

1. Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.
2. All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.
3. The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.
4. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature.
5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.

The last item was assiduously pursued by government officials and scholars who spent extensive time in Europe and America, observing social and government institutions. As a result, the fundamental framework of Japanese society was reordered, including the educational system, in which free public education was established modelled on western examples. It's in this period that the famous "sailor suit" school uniform was adopted in schools.

In some ways, it could be argued that Japan is more propositional than the U.S. as the Charter Oath and institutional reforms were less influenced by the culture's endemic religion than the English colonists were influenced by Puritan heritage and the ideological conflicts of 17th century England.

Of course, Japan's identity is inextricably bound to a culture that has evolved for over a thousand years but the policies pursued during the Meiji Restoration as well as during the occupation of Japan following World War II have shaped the country profoundly and are just as inextricable. Certainly there's tension between the two elements but less so than in other countries that have undergone similarly profound changes such as France or Mexico. One might attribute this to a culture that is extraordinarily suited for adaptation and progress.

Somewhere, Vision Persists

A third season of Star Wars: Visions recently premiered on Disney+ to not half as much hype as the first season. Which is too bad because it's a vast improvement on the second season. Unlike the second season, which was a series of Star Wars animated vignettes from various small animation studios from around the world, the third season has gone back to the first season format of employing just seasoned Japanese animation studios, including Production I.G. and Trigger among others.

Production I.G.'s vignette is one of the best, and one of the ones that actually feels like it could fit within the canon continuity. A Jedi girl is trapped on a derelict spacecraft where she befriends a small droid. In the short run time of the episode, an effective warmth develops between the two characters and by the end the viewer is invested in the stranded droid's devotion to its master and the girl's desire to escape and reunite with her friends. That one was written and directed by Shiotani Naoyoshi.

The Studio Trigger vignette, "The Smuggler", was written and directed by Otsuka Masahiko, who made several episodes of the new Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. Obviously the tone differs a great deal from that series but "The Smuggler" also centres on an earthy female protagonist, essentially a female Han Solo. It's pretty good. All but two of the vignettes centre on a female character so I guess they were still going by the "Force is Female" mandate. One way in which they substantially differ from Disney Star Wars, though, is that the Japanese writers and directors seem not only to like Jedi but actually understand them. The young American writers who have emerged from an academia that has routinely taught them to despise religion struggle to portray a spiritual order in a positive light but Japan is still a country in which just about everyone visits temples and shrines on New Years, people's homes typically have small shrines, and you can see signs of the country's spirituality everywhere.

So there's real heart behind the Jedi's faith in "The Lost Ones" from a studio called Kinema Citrus. Written by Haga Hitoshi and directed by Haga alongside Takahito Oonishi, this one ended up being my favourite. A Jedi woman rescues some civilian children from a crumbling village. Not realising she's a Jedi, they repeat some of the anti-Jedi propaganda they've been indoctrinated with, and she takes it grace and without bitterness. She sees past their prejudice to give them words of wisdom and comfort.

The season is bookended by the two stories that don't feature female protagonists, the last vignette being the more interesting of the two. Simply called "BLACK", it's a Bill Plympton-style fever dream of scribbled animation, apparently depicting the rambling thoughts of a stormtrooper over the course of his violent demise. I certainly appreciated its boldness. It was written and directed by Ohira Shinya, a Ghibli animator who worked on several Miyazaki Hayao films, including his most recent film, The Boy and the Heron.

Star Wars: Visions is available on Disney+.

The Fantastic Force Field Woman

Sue Storm, with help from the other members of the Fantastic Four, works tirelessly to fend off an attack from a gargantuan space alien in 2025's The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This latest attempt to adapt the Fantastic Four comic franchise to film doesn't seem to have done much better than previous versions. I think public appetite for stories about the characters has always been pretty low. The film also suffers from the blandness that has infected many of the recent MCU films but the cast is solid, particularly Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

The special effects for Moss-Bachrach's character, Ben Grimm, aka "The Thing", are some surprisingly weak computer generated animations. Moss-Bachrach, who'd already played a character in the MCU, memorably on the first season of Jon Bernthal's Punisher series, really is a talented actor and he makes up for the deficient special effects somewhat. His subplot involves a flirtation with Natasha Lyonne. Lyonne is one of the more refreshing rising stars of the past fifteen years and it's always nice to see her but she's oddly underused in this film. Maybe they're setting her up for a larger role later.

The most emotionally effective dialogue scenes are the tense encounters between Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) which successfully combine anxious, adolescent chemistry with the pressing need to address a cosmic threat.

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards creates a submissive and guilt-ridden character beside the calm wisdom and authority of Sue (Vanessa Kirby). Her power in this film is primarily creating forcefields while the ability to turn invisible is occasionally shown as fringe benefit for comedic effect. Overall, she's basically the same as the Wasp in the Ant-Man movies.

I've been watching X-Men'97 again recently and it's a shame Kevin Feige couldn't have learned from Beau DeMayo's decision, in his capacity as showrunner of X-Men'97, to directly adapt the comic books stories that made the characters popular in the first place. Thunderbolts was a better movie than the other two MCU movies this year, despite being the least financially successful. I can only hope Marvel learns the right lessons.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now available on Disney+.

Diane Ladd

Diane Ladd died on Monday. She was 89. Mother of Laura Dern, Ladd was herself a prolific actress who worked with Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski but, of course, I remember her best for her roles for David Lynch, appearing alongside her daughter in Wild at Heart and Inland Empire. It's in Wild at Heart that she had, for me, her most memorable role as the impressively villainous Marietta, mother to Laura Dern's character, Lula. Consciously modelled on the Wicked Witch of the West, Ladd rose to the task of being tremendously creepy, aided in no small part by Lynch's sound design and composition.

Those gulps she takes from her martini have always been one of my favourite moments of unsettling mouth noises from Lynch's films.

Yet her character is not entirely unsympathetic as the audience is compelled to see from her distressed and bewildered perspective when she encounters the mystery of her boyfriend's disappearance.

She was also good in Inland Empire as a nosy talk show host and in her role as the fake Mrs. Mulray in Chinatown she certainly made an impression. Inland Empire is currently available on The Criterion Channel but sadly Wild at Heart remains Lynch's most elusive film, as far as availability on streaming goes.

Take Me to Your Manager

Sometimes I wonder how much of the apparent progress of AI is an illusion conjured by human regression. I've talked before about some of the inaccurate or oddly subjective responses I've gotten from Google's AI, such as misattributing the source of a John Milton quote or supplying oddly diplomatic opinions in place of factual responses. How often are such things taken as accurate responses by people who obviously don't know any different since they were googling the question in the first place? Is quality control even possible, since it would likely mean someone whose breadth of knowledge is comparable to a computer database?

I noticed recently that Google Translate isn't as good as it used to be. Google used to be better at translating English to Japanese than it was at translating Japanese to English since Japanese relies more on context. Yesterday I was checking the translation for a word for alien in Japanese, "宇宙人", which I've always heard pronounced as "uchuujin." But Google now insists it's pronounced "uchuubito". Except when I hit the "sound" option, in which case the AI voice pronounces it as "uchuujin". I'm guessing the sound option is still drawing from an old AI framework while the text is drawing from a new one.

Google's own AI overview in its search function apparently also disagrees with its choice of pronunciation.

When you try to translate "alien" from English to Japanese, the first option you get is just the English word "alien" written in Japanese characters, which seems suspiciously lazy.

Hopefully this won't impact interstellar diplomacy.

The Music Life

Yesterday I went to a three hour concert for the brass band of one of the junior high schools I currently work for here in Japan. It was special because it was the last concert for third year students in the band (junior high school is three years in Japan). Now they have to focus on studying and getting ready for high school. One of them I talked to said she doesn't want to go to high school and instead plans to immediately pursue a career as a musician (high school is not compulsory in Japan). I'd say she has a good shot, given how good this particular school's brass band is, but all the junior high school brass bands I've seen in Japan have been amazing.

I suppose I don't have much frame of reference since I can't remember paying much attention to my high school brass band and my junior high school didn't have one. But I always enjoy watching the band's planning, procedure, and practicing. Unfortunately in this town, it's more difficult to build a rapport with students than it was in my previous town since I tend to be assigned to schools for only two weeks at a time with occasional longer or shorter spells of one to four weeks. I go back to the same schools--I'm working in only three this year--but I miss how in my previous town I'd be with the same school for four or five months at a time. This made it easier to get a sense of where the students are in their studies and decide what material to use or develop.

Yesterday's concert also featured students from another school I haven't worked at and I was delighted when they performed "Brazil", the same song featured in Terry Gilliam's great film of the same title. Though considering how that film skewers bureaucracy, it may be a little too close to home for Japan. But the students are of course unaware of that association. The students from the school I work at played a medley of Deep Purple songs, including "Smoke on the Water". I wonder how it got in their repertoire. I've seen their archive of music sheets, some of it looks very old. At one point someone must have been a rock fan, or maybe it was an inherited repertoire from some other source.

I discovered to-day Deep Purple released an official music video for "Smoke on the Water" just last year, much like Talking Heads only recently made a video for "Psycho Killer". I dig this trend.

X Sonnet 1966

As questions raised regarding hope arose,
We found a book describing black despair.
The channel page was choked with buggy prose,
But seemed to show a dance from Fred Astaire.
The group recalled that Rogers followed suit,
With cherry syrup squibs she laced her shoes.
This was a fact to grief the girlish moot,
We know the secret sauce was blood and booze.
Arise, o floor of dancing digit tombs.
Your kindle now aglow with burning veins.
Above, a falling flock of ghosts resumes,
Their haunt above the bay of rusty chains.
No blame could chase the turkey 'cross a year.
So gather feathers, make a poultry bier.

The True King of Streaming

Criterion Channel has some terrific playlists this month. They've got a Werner Herzog playlist that has all of his most famous movies (Grizzly Man, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Nosferatu) as well has his collaboration with David Lynch (My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?), his gloriously off-the-rails, Nicholas Cage led Bad Lieutenant movie, and about three dozen other movies.

This month there's also a playlist of four movies with Trent Reznor soundtracks (Natural Born Killers, Lost Highway, The Social Network, Bones and All), and a playlist of "Blackout Noir", that's films noir in which a main character's memory loss plays a crucial role.

It's from that playlist I chose a film last night, 1946's Deadline at Dawn, which I thought I hadn't seen but it turned out I'd seen at least twice before. For some reason I tend to forget its title, I just remember it as, "The one in which Susan Hayward plays a dime-a-dance girl." She's engaged in this occupation when she meets a guileless, good-natured sailor called Alex (Bill Williams) who'd gotten blackout drunk the night before and woke up with a wad of cash. His helplessness finally thaws Susan Hayward's cold front and she accompanies him to the apartment he remembers going to with a lady the previous night. Unfortunately, said lady is now a corpse.

The movie's intriguing opening scene is of this lady (played by Lola Lane) having an argument with her blind but sinister ex-husband. There's so much about it that's unusual for an American film of the '40s, it's amazing I tend to forget about this scene. But maybe I only have eyes for Susan Hayward. It's a shame she was never in a really great movie. I think The Lusty Men was probably the best one she was in, or that South American western with Richard Widmark I can't remember the name of. The movies where she was centre stage, Smashup and that prison movie she won an Oscar for, really don't hold up. But she was a great actress.

Criterion Channel also has an amazing Howard Hawks playlist this month, including not only his great screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday) and crime movies (The Big Sleep and Scarface) but even some of his westerns (Red River, Rio Bravo, and The Big Sky). When I get a hankering for a John Wayne movie, it's very rare I can find one on any streaming service. Now I got two of his best at my fingertips. November somehow does seem the right month for old westerns.

Criterion proves again why it remains for me the one indispensable streaming service. I can go months without Netflix or Disney+ but Criterion's always golden. It doesn't hurt that it's about six to ten dollars cheaper than the big boys, too.

Candye'en

Happy Halloween, everyone. Halloween night was last night for me. I had some bourbon and watched Ghostbusters. I thought about getting candy but my sweet tooth seems nonexistent these days. I feel nostalgic about it. I go to the store and look at candy but then when I imagine what it tastes like it's not remotely appealing. Just a few months ago, I was routinely snacking on chocolate bars but the desire seems to have totally vanished.

Halloween candy is very different in Japan. There's a lot of cookies, cakes, and wafers. Candy corn is totally absent. Unlike candy canes, I can't even order candy corn on Japanese Amazon. I don't especially want any, I guess. I can enjoy a candy corn but two of them generally seem to be slightly more than enough for me. Japanese candy is said to be not as sweet as American candy. I'm not sure that's an adequate description of the difference. American candy tends to more of a waxy, oily, or gelatinous quality while Japanese candy tends to a breaded or creamy quality. KitKats are very popular in Japan and they famously come in a variety of unique flavours here. The chocolate covered wafers fit in pretty well with home grown Japanese products like Pocky and Melty Kiss.

I've been in the mood to watch a Hammer movie but I always get decision paralysis when trying to pick one and end up watching something else (like Ghostbusters). It's easier to just keep moving forward and watching things I've never seen, I guess.

The Hallowed Files

Happy Halloween, everyone. Well, it's the 31st here in Japan. I wanted to watch a horror movie last night but there was no time so I just watched another episode of The X-Files instead, "Tooms" from season one. It's a sequel to an episode earlier in the season called "Squeeze" that introduced the character of Eugene Tooms, a man who can stretch and contort his limbs to fit through any space and who eats human livers to maintain his immortality. "Squeeze" was not as solidly written but it was more satisfyingly weird. "Tooms" seems to run out of ideas for Tooms himself and ends up focusing on show mythology and the relationship between Mulder and Scully.

They actually have a flirtatious moment when Scully convinces Mulder to let her take a shift staking out Tooms.

It's really amazing how natural and effective their chemistry already is at this point. The whole "will they or won't they" tension is different from so many other series because there's kind of no tension in it. They're so comfortable with each other and neither one seems especially driven to seek a physical relationship. There's a kind of serenity in their acceptance of whatever permutation their relationship is set to take, perhaps because the problems they routinely deal with seem so big in comparison. Or perhaps they're just so damned cool. I like the artfully placed curl of hair by Scully's mouth.

The X-Files is available on Disney+/Hulu.

Your Twisted Academic Career Begins

When I came to Japan in 2020, a new smartphone game was taking the country by storm called Twisted-Wonderland. It's a Disney property developed in Japan and created by Toboso Yana who'd previously made the Black Butler series. Twisted-Wonderland ties not only into Alice in Wonderland but several of Disney's more famous movies (though some of them, like Hercules, are not at all well-known in Japan). The concept seems much closer to Harry Potter, though, as it follows students at a boys' magical university called Night Raven College. Five years after the game was released, the anime adaptation premiered on Disney+ a couple nights ago.

The main character is Yuu (I guess in the game this means you are Yuu). He's captain of a high school kendo club, getting ready for a tournament when he's suddenly teleported to the entrance ceremony at Night Raven College. The room, which looks like a massive gothic cathedral, is filled with students. Since the game primarily focuses on collecting and nurturing magical college students, quite a few of the students depicted in this scene, which takes up the bulk of the episode, are familiar to fans and each likely has its own devoted fanbase of girls who have nurtured their own version of the character through an academic career. This results in a scene where the makers of the show feel obligated to give reaction shots to each and every one of the characters after something dramatic happens, and each one of them gives a little, "Ah!" "Eh!" "Hmm!" "Huh!" etc.

Very little happens in the first episode as a result. The character designs are pretty cool, especially Headmaster Crowley, who wears a creepy mask. The students are all the handsome boys you'd expect from a game aimed at girls. I find myself wondering if a female character will ever show up. It'll be a challenge for the writers to come up with a satisfying story while not short-changing any of the many characters. There was one line I thought was funny when one character refers to another as "Juice" and that character indignantly reminds the other that his name is "Deuce!" I also like the aesthetic of the Alice in Wonderland area shown in the trailer.

Twisted-Wonderland is available on Disney+.

Murder and Surgery

It's been a while since I even thought of trying to predict the killer's identity on Only Murders in the Building. Last night's season finale had a reveal that felt particularly arbitrary, as though all the character names were in a hat and one was drawn at random. But it was a funny episode.

Seeing the events of the murder in flashback with all the clues in place was maybe unintentionally funny. Lester running and texting about his murder as though he already knew it was going to happen certainly didn't feel natural. I don't know why they'd bother being so pedantic when the killer's identity wasn't especially tied to any narrative.

The most memorable part was the setup for next season at the end and the characters bickering over what constitutes a murder "in the building".

Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+/Hulu.

I also watched a second season episode of Deep Space Nine last night on Netflix. I don't like to pay for both services at the same time but my pause on Disney+ doesn't go into effect until November 7th.

"Invasive Procedures" is an episode in which the space station is taken over by a group of criminals headed by a Trill played by John Glover, best known now for his role as the media mogul in Gremlins 2. The Trill are a species that can use large, slug-like "symbionts" to form a consciousness comprised of their humanoid brain and a mass of life experiences contained in the symbionts from previous hosts. In this episode, the John Glover Trill wants to take the symbiont from Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell). I do miss the days when we could have an hour of prime time television exploring what it means for a sentient being to have its consciousness divided between an internal organ and a surgically implanted slug.

X Bugs

Mulder and Scully head to the woods to fight bugs in a 1994 episode of The X-Files called "Darkness Falls" written by series creator Chris Carter. This follows from "Shapes", another episode in which the pair of investigators visited woodland, which makes it feel slightly odd that this one spends more time with buildup. It's a welcome difference, though, as the tension in this episode derives from their distance from civilisation, the state of their vehicle, and the reliability of a cabin generator.

The episode really needs all this because the evil bugs turn out to be a fairly unconvincing glowing green glitter effect. However, the cocooned, desiccated bodies of victims they find are pretty cool. I also like how the episode plays with the relationship between eco-terrorists and loggers in Washington State. Washington is of course near Vancouver, the show's normal filming location, which seems like it should have made filming easy, though according to the Wikipedia entry it turned out to be an unexpected nightmare due to weather conditions.

The X-Files is available on Disney+/Hulu.

Bad, Bad Nun

A nun's frequent, bizarre visions of holy figures and manifestations of stigmata upend the normal life of a 17th century convent in Paul Verhoeven's 2021 film Benedetta. Beautifully shot with great performances, this is one I've been wanting to see ever since it came out. The first half of the film exceeded my expectations but I was a little disappointed in the second half. On the whole, though, this was a very worthy experience.

We meet Benedetta as a child on the road to a convent in Pescia. There, her parents hope to deposit the girl who routinely has wild visions of the Virgin Mary. They're waylaid by bandits, one of whom attempts to steal a necklace from Benedetta's mother. Benedetta calls down the wrath of the Virgin and immediately a bird flies out of a tree and poops in one bandit's eye. They laugh, return the necklace, and leave. I would have preferred at least a hint of awe in their reaction.

The tension between whether Benedetta is actually experiencing and/or causing miracles is one of the driving forces of the narrative. After being accepted at the convent, the film jumps ahead 18 years. Now played by Virginie Efira, Benedetta the young woman is something of an embarrassment to the Abbess Felicita, played by Charlotte Rampling.

Felicita is one of the film's more interesting characters and I sort of wonder if this was due to a stipulation from Rampling. Felicita's daughter, Christina (Louise Chevillotte), is more vigorous in her hatred of Benedetta and is even willing to stretch the truth when making accusations. Felicita is wise, tactful, and prudent and that same doggedly rational thinking prevents her from wholeheartedly persecuting Benedetta.

The film's loosely based on a true story of a 17th century nun. The primary mistake Verhoeven makes is focusing too much on Benedetta's sexual relationship with a novice nun, Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), making it the crux of Benedetta's troubles with church authorities. In reality, it was Benedetta's bizarre ceremonies and possessions that mainly landed her in hot water. Verhoeven transplants too much of a modern attitude about homosexuality to the 17th century. He does avoid using the terms "lesbian" or "homosexual", neither of which were yet in use to refer to same sex physical attraction, the latter not being coined until the 19th century. But part of the reason for this is simply that people just weren't much concerned about what women were doing with each other in bed. The biblical Book of Ruth may even have been used as an example to support an intimate relationship between Benedetta and Bartolomea. Maybe this is why Verhoeven awkwardly chose to add a wooden dildo to their relationship. Maybe he'd have argued that a movie in which Benedetta's claims of being possessed by holy figures would simply not satisfy a modern audience.

I really liked Bartolomea as she's first introduced, running from her abusive shepherd father. She introduces a carnal element to Benedetta's life and I appreciated small details of historical perspective presented by her character, as when Benedetta tells her she's beautiful and the girl remarks that she didn't know, she'd never even seen a mirror. She and Benedetta use the latrine together, the first time for Bartolomea to experience such a luxury. She remarks that she'd normally just go out and shit among the animals. The two women use straw for toilet paper which certainly adds some perspective as to the probable state of their nether regions during the sex scenes.

Benedetta strongly reminds me of Flesh and Blood, Verhoeven's 1985 film. Both films are periods pieces (Flesh and Blood set in 16th century Italy), both feature main characters who adopt messianic roles of uncertain legitimacy, and both feature the characters in somewhat anachronistically extravagant sexual relationships. Both films are otherwise admirable for their attention to, and inspiration drawn from, historical detail. Both films seem to lose focus a bit in the second half. Both were box office disappointments, not even coming close to recouping their substantial budgets.

Both are well worth watching, though. Virigie Efira is a worthy successor to Sharon Stone in Verhoeven's Basic Instinct and Total Recall, delivering a similarly cocksure, slightly unhinged performance.

Benedetta is available on The Criterion Channel in their Nunsploitation playlist.

Chasing the Rabbit

I have to admit, I often don't understand why something becomes popular. I saw the new Netflix series, Black Rabbit, was number one in the U.S. Nielson ratings so I watched the first episode last night. I don't get it. I mean, good for Jude Law and Jason Bateman, I think they're both good actors. But why is this number one and Jude Law's previous series, Skeleton Crew, not? I guess people really like Jason Bateman. Was Ozark this popular?

Black Rabbit focuses on a New York restaurant founded by two brothers, played by Law and Batemen. Law's character is in charge of the place when the show starts while Bateman's getting into trouble out west. A deal where he's trying to sell a collection of coins to some shady guys instead of at a collector's shop for some reason goes sour and he kills one of them. So he high tails it back to New York.

It's not bad I guess but it's . . . not much. No witty dialogue, no interesting plot twists or fresh premise. It's a couple of guys and a restaurant with some crime thrown in. Maybe it's a slow burn. No idea why this is number one.

Black Rabbit is available on Netflix.

X Sonnet 1965

Aggressive white was pushed with chalk and paste.
A green became a faded black by dusk.
The gleeful ghouls of rot patrol the waste.
Their noses root a blackened pumpkin husk.
Unsated by the candle throat, they burn.
They ravage suns from careful patterns stitched.
From nature find they nothing sweet to learn.
At every chance their sour humour switched.
To rule the body, all the heads were guts.
To covet rule, the brain was turned to squash.
On every candy corn, the strawman gluts.
With stinking orange goo, the bastard washed.
A pumpkin patch is sinking 'neath the bog.
To fill the void, there comes a poison fog.