Getting to the Top

A woman's pursuit of adrenaline leads her into the clutches of a deranged cannibal in 2026's Apex. This latest iteration of "The Most Dangerous Game" is pretty good with capable direction by Baltasar Kormakur and uncompromising performances from Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton.

Eric Bana's briefly in the film as Theron's husband. The two are a couple who like seeking thrills around the world. We meet them climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. When a blizzard hits, Bana's character is killed and the film jumps ahead a few years to find Theron on a quest to kayak alone in the wilds of Australia. This gives her some interesting subtext (though one could say this is "fridging"). It's too bad Bana couldn't have stuck around, though. He's such a good actor but you hardly see him anymore.

The film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of Theron's character as she at first grimly paddles through rapids, the rush achieved under the shadow of unrelenting grief. Then, as she meets Egerton's character in the jungle after her pack is stolen, it becomes a story of her fight for survival.

Egerton's performance is impressively deranged and I loved the reveal of his especially abnormal predilections, though it verges on cheesy when it's revealed he wears dentures to conceal his sharpened teeth. I'm not saying he wouldn't sharpen his teeth, I just don't know why he'd conceal it when he's hunting a woman alone through the jungle.

Anyway, the suspense is good and never lets up. Apex is available on Netflix.

Blank Page

Yesterday, ahead of watching the new Daredevil: Born Again, I was seeing a lot of articles crop up about how dismal the ratings are for the series this season, much lower than for the first season. It doesn't surprise me. The show has kind of a cheap aesthetic, less unified and streamlined than in its previous incarnation, and it lacks the amazing action choreography that was a calling card of the old series. But primarily the problem is the writing. It's not the wokeness. Andor had progressive, revolutionary politics but now Andor is the benchmark of quality at Disney+. Daredevil: Born Again, meanwhile, makes me think there's some credence in the theory that Disney's secretly having AI write scripts. Last night's episode was credited to Heather Bellson, but it, and many other episodes, feels sort of like a theoretical model of what a show like this should be.

It's missing all of the character development that made the old series so interesting. The episode focuses a lot on Karen, though it's still a mystery why the law firm retroactively included her name, especially since there's no question of her mounting her own defense when she's in a courtroom in this episode. We get a reference to her brother but viewers will be lost if they didn't see or don't remember the episode in season two of the old series that gave her character a prolonged flashback. Similarly, no-one would understand why Bullseye would want to do a "good deed" unless they saw how his character developed in the third season of the old series. The show leans on this stuff but doesn't have anything new to introduce.

There are some interesting performances by Matthew Lillard and Michael Gandalfini but Lillard's character never becomes more than an extended cameo. Gandolfini has an arc but what motivates him? Is it just his attraction to BB? BB, meanwhile, had only one interesting moment, in the previous episode, in which she felt conflicted about what to do with regards to Gandolfini's character.

I guess you could describe the show's fundamental problem in that way; the characters are rarely in situations where they need to make meaningfully difficult decisions. There's an emerging conflict between Matt and Karen but that's another one that started in the old series and on the old Punisher series. Here's an opportunity for the show to make a meaningful comment on the use of violence in politics but Matt's side of the argument is really hazy. Is he conflicted over whether or not he should kill people? Not really.

Also, what, exactly, is Karen charged with? The courtroom dialogue in particular feels disconnected. The opening statements both conclude with "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." But of what? Out of curiosity, I asked Google's ever diplomatic AI, which responded:

In Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 7 ("The Hateful Darkness"), Karen Page is arrested and faces charges related to aiding vigilante activity following a protest clash, heavily pushed by Mayor Wilson Fisk. She is processed and held in the 15th Precinct, where Fisk confronts her, seeking to punish her for past actions and current defiance.

The fact that the charges are vague could've been part of the drama. It could've been something her lawyers mentioned. It's almost impressive how well the show evades committing to specific plot details. Why are there so many people at the trial or is it only a hearing? Why is everyone interested in this one woman arrested at a protest?

What Disney needs to do is not only hire good writers but give them time and autonomy to develop their ideas. The impression I get is that's something they really don't want to spend money on.

The sad thing is, especially after the shooting on Saturday, this show about a lawyer who's also a masked vigilante who believes in not using lethal force, could've been the most relevant series of the year. Its irrelevance shows the extent of Disney's blunder.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Media and Punishment

This past weekend, a another man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, this time at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Also this past week it was announced that Gerry Conway, the writer who created the Punisher (along with two artists), passed away.

The Punisher is famous for being the Marvel character who kills people in the name of justice. Critics on the left have generally disliked the Punisher who was introduced in an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1974. He was similar to a popular character type appearing in films of the period, the uncompromising enforcer, the justified revenge killer, as seen in movies like Death Wish and Dirty Harry. The Punisher is a popular character in the U.S. military and law enforcement, a fact which Marvel writers and artists have long been uncomfortable with.

And yet, for years now, political assassins in the U.S. have almost exclusively been left-wing. Violent video games are often also blamed for inspiring shooters but the White House Correspondence Dinner shooter, Cole Allen, was so opposed to violent video games that he developed a video game he specifically labelled as non-violent. Of course, these correlations are statistically irrelevant and anecdotal.

In his manifesto, published in The New York Post, Allen labels Trump a paedophile and a traitor. The reference to paedophilia is presumably to do with Trump's association with Jeffrey Epstein. There are also claims from individual women that Trump engaged in sexual behaviour with them when they were minors. However, unlike other criminal charges that have been levelled at Trump, it hasn't been proven that Trump did commit sexual crimes against minors.

In that first Punisher story, the issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Conway, perhaps unintentionally, shows the flaw in the Punisher's M.O. He targets Spider-Man and seeks to kill him because he believes Spider-Man is a murderer. It's only Spider-Man's extraordinary powers that prevent the Punisher from killing him before the vigilante realises his mistake. This is one reason that executions are not left in the hands of individuals. Individuals are more prone to error, are more prone to being biased and influenced by emotion.

Of course, Trump has shown repeatedly that he is above the law. Cases against him, both for personal wrong-doing and overextentions of presidential powers, have invariably melted away, leaving him unscathed. What choice do we have in such a case? Allen evidently decided there were no other choices.

I am someone who enjoys violent video games and I like many Punisher stories, particularly the first season of the Netflix series with Jon Bernthal. However, I recognise the difference between cathartic fiction, which presents a simple narrative, and complex reality, which is often distorted by the individual's need for simplicity and emotional gratification. For real life, I prefer to take the example set by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings who checked Frodo's wish that the villainous Gollum had been killed by reminding him that even wise people cannot predict the outcomes of such actions. One might ask how often assassinations have led to positive change or how often they've instead merely instigated cycles of violence.

I think Cole Allen's demon was more likely born of news media that increasingly present simplified narratives of good and evil in the political spheres. This is one reason I've always preferred fiction.

Ai of the Beholder

A friend of mine on Live Journal, poliphilo, recommended the above AI movie this morning. I hope he doesn't mind me picking on him, he's a really nice and insightful guy, but I can't get it out of my mind that he said the above film, The Patchwright, is like "Blade Runner- only better." I strongly disagree. To me, this statement is like saying "Oasis is like The Beatles, only better."

It's worth noting it's not an entirely AI generated film. It's not a case of someone opening an app on their phone and writing the prompt, "Make a twenty minute cyberpunk movie," and pushing a button. It has a director, presumably someone who crafted compositions and made editting decisions, as well as writers and human voice actors. Generally I find AI produces inferior product but I'm not categorically against the idea of people being able to use it to craft films of apparently quality production values at a tiny fraction of the traditional cost. But the film's story is derivative to say the least. A cyborg treasuring memories that aren't necessarily his, questioning the nature of memory and human sentiment and the significance of the individual, is Rachel's story from Blade Runner retold.

Sure, originality isn't everything, but I don't find this a better version of the story, for some reasons that may be subjective. I don't like excessive closeups and one reason I think Blade Runner does a better job at establishing a sense of a world space is that it features more shots establishing space, it has more dialogue scenes in which multiple characters are simultaneously visible and in which a majority of the screen isn't dominated by their faces but by the environment.

Patchwright favours portraying older and more grizzled characters, which seems less plausible in a world in which people customise their appearance as preferences generally lean towards more youthful looks. This has long been an aspect of computer generated imagery; weathered skin, objects with tiny bumps and pronounced textures, have tended to look more impressive for about 25 years. Youthful beauty tends to manifest in less detail rather than more.

In terms of visual design, I don't find the film more impressive than Blade Runner either. The aesthetics of the costumes, makeup, and facial prosthetics draw from very obvious influences, including Ghost in the Shell, Alita: Battle Angel, and David Lynch's Dune. Honestly, I don't think Blade Runner is even a fair comparison. Director Zack London has more in common with the makers of Alien from L.A. or City Limits or dozens of other Blade Runner and Mad Max knock-offs from the 80s and 90s. The only difference is that computers give him access to better special effects.

Though, on that subject, I remember how impressive the opening scene from Final Fantasy VIII looked when I saw it in a shop window in 1999. Now it looks pretty cheap and quaint. I suspect AI will also age poorly.

I also don't like the performances, but this may also be subjective. The facial expressions seem over-exaggerated and lack the subtle nuances of real actors. But one could accuse Baz Luhrmann films of the same thing.

Anyway. Sorry poliphilo.

It's Newport

I've been in Newport, Tennessee for nearly two weeks now. Yesterday I took a walk around the little downtown area.

But can one truly ever leave Japan? I keep having to stop myself from saying "ohayo gozaimasu" and "sumimasen" to people. I have been saying "Excuse me" more than Americans tend to.

Downtown is about a dozen very old buildings. There's a courthouse, lots of little law offices, bail bonds places, pawn shops, and bars.

This is one of the buildings I dimly remember from childhood. I was born in Tennessee but my parents divorced when I was very young and I think I was four years old when I moved permanently to San Diego, California.

That's me with a Big Bird birthday cake I also dimly remember. A lot of the time I've spent here has been going through my father's many, many, many photos of family and friends. That's one improvement of our digital age. Mountains of photos can now be stored in a few kilobytes.

That's the old train station which you can also see on Newport's Wikipedia page in a photo dated 1939.

Some of the old buildings are pretty cool.

A lot of places were closed because it was Sunday morning although the churches I passed were quiet. A lot of places looked permanently closed.

Another place I dimly remember is this old car wash.

I remember it being about as creepy when I was a kid.

The really strange thing about visiting Tennessee is that when I last visited six years ago, just before leaving for Japan, I visited my grandmother, her husband, my father and my father's girlfriend. Over the course of those six years, all of them died. The executor of my father's estate is his best friend from high school and he did most of the work dealing with my father's things while I was in the process of getting back from Japan as fast as I could, which was still almost a month. Now I have no family here, it feels like a completely different town.

Face It

It's often said that Batman has the best rogue's gallery of any superhero. I was watching the much lauded and influential Batman: The Animated Series from the early '90s last night, the two parter that introduced Harvey Dent/Two Face. The character has such a simple concept but, as with the Joker and Poison Ivy, it seems to be an infinite resource for stories.

The Animated Series follows some of the reconceptualising of the character's origins that had been established in the late '80s comics, making the two halves of his personality the result of childhood trauma that's exacerbated by his disfigurement. The climax of the story has Harvey arguing with his fiancee; he argues life is dominated by chance and she insists he has the responsibility to take control of his life. That's an interesting way to go with the character, I wonder if it's an argument from one of the comics.

I went back and read the 1942 introduction of the character in the comic. Apparently the story was written by Bill Finger, Batman's co-creator, though Bob Kane, Batman's other co-creator, is credited as Two Face's sole creator for some reason. He was originally named Harvey Kent, his name obviously changed to avoid confusion with Superman, though interestingly his introductory comic features a scene in which he attacks a movie theatre where people are watching a Superman cartoon.

I actually find his derangement more interesting in the original comic. The "childhood trauma" angle sounds very much like late 20th century pop psychology. In the original comic, his fiancee is a sculptor and she's not the saint she's portrayed as in The Animated Series, nor is she a villain. She's horrified by his appearance. A lot of people would be. We act like we're above valuing people by appearance now but you don't see Hollywood stars without perfect teeth, often even if they're playing a character whose teeth would realistically be unsightly. A lot of the importance we put on appearances is something we don't consciously acknowledge which is a very effective way of rendering Harvey a fundamental outsider, someone society can't even consciously contemplate. This is an idea explored in Abre los ojos and its remake, Vanilla Sky.

It's also interesting how the comic shows Two Face actively performing good deeds when his coin toss ends up on the unblemished side. He robs a gangster and gives the loot to charity. Usually the coin coming up "good" just means he refrains from killing someone, as in the Christopher Nolan movie. It would be interesting to have a longer story in which the concept of his duality being truly random is played out. Though, really, it could never be truly random because Harvey always chooses the parameters. He chose the gangster, he chose the charity just as he chooses the particular crimes and the particular targets. The coin chooses good or evil, but it's Harvey who defines that good and that evil.

Sonnet #1989

The domino entreats the icy die.
From piece to piece, the plastic game divides.
In other times, the iv'ry turned a try.
The shady rule within the alley hides.
The darkened clouds above the hill advanced.
The grass was cold beneath the heated air.
Within the earth, the stormy spirits danced.
And launched their darts aloft with noise and flare.
The thunder thoughts defined the shape of land.
As lightning burned the anxious felon clouds.
A rain descends and turns to active sand.
The atoms seek a match to light the shrouds.
Continued motion shows the normal street.
But something waits beneath our busy feet.

Battle of the Blondes

Sydney Sweeney goes to work for a haywire Amanda Seyfried in 2025's The Housemaid. Many reviews say the first two thirds of this movie are good and the last act is ridiculous and lame. Those reviews are correct.

It kind of reminded me of the 1972 Hammer film, Fear in the Night, a gaslight movie from the point of view of a young woman who goes to live in an expensive old house with her husband in an attempt to start a new life. The first two thirds of the movie is a terrific sequence of developed tension. Then the inevitable twist changes the narrative and distances the audience from the point of view character, thereby diluting the sense of credibility in every threat it tries to establish.

The Housemaid begins with Millie (Sydney Sweeney) as a desperate young woman living in her car who can hardly believe her luck when ridiculously wealthy Nina (Amanda Seyfried) hires her to live in her home and perform general chores for Nina, her husband, and her prepubescent child, Cece. Shortly after Millie takes residence, Nina's personality flips and she becomes a psychotic, tyrannical boss. Nina's husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), is the only solace and voice of reason and Millie finds herself increasingly drawn to him.

I will say I went into this movie assuming that a third act twist would somehow reveal that Nina is the true sympathetic character and that Andrew was the true psycho. I won't spoil the movie for you to say whether or not that ended up being true but it did mean I had my eyes peeled in the first two acts to spot anything that might undermine such an eventual twist. And there were many things. I won't say whether or not my prediction was accurate but I will say the last act is ridiculous and jettisons all the tension accrued in the first two acts by suddenly asking the viewer to ignore almost all of the character development from the first part of the film.

This film was directed by Paul Feig. Yes, the same Paul Feig who directed the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot almost everyone hates and who directed a slew of unpopular comedies. Somehow, the one good movie he made, Bridesmaids, has apparently made studios want to keep giving him chances. The Housemaid did well at the box office because it stars the two most beautiful blondes of the past twenty years. The idea of Sydney Sweeney in a sexy thriller was the primary draw. You know that won't stop someone from looking at all the Sydney Sweeney fans lining up to see the movie and saying, "Wow, people sure like Paul Feig."

Feig very reluctantly delivers the sexy scenes people wanted but, viewer be warned, he does his best to avoid indulging the so-called "male gaze". He goes so far as to put Sweeney in a hilariously unflattering, boxy dress for the big romance sequence. The sequence, in which she goes to a luxury hotel with Andrew, still kind of works because the threat of Nina has been well established at that point so the tension is ever present. There are many components of a good movie here.

Money in the Snow

An embarrassed young woman asks a handsome stranger to pay for her drink, not knowing he's hiding from the law in 1956's Nightfall. This low budget Jacques Tourneur film noir is a slightly delirious, cock-eyed suspense story centred on characters played by Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft. The two have a surprisingly sweet, effective chemistry that pairs well with the film's weird, convoluted crime plot.

Ray plays Vanning, a World War II veteran who's being pursued by two tough guys (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond). Circumstances throw him and Bancroft's character, Marie, together but despite the two obviously criminal thugs chasing him, Vanning won't take Marie's suggestion that he call the police. Unbeknownst to Vanning, a man working with the cops has already been shadowing him.

The backstory is given piecemeal in intermittent flashbacks. Vanning had been up in the mountains with his friend when the two had a tragic encounter with bank robbers. There's some terrific shots of snow covered mountain scenery.

Like a lot of noirs, though to a lesser extent than in a movie like Detour, the improbable convolutions of the plot become more interesting if you read the protagonist as a not entirely reliable narrator. And Vanning has plenty of motive to add varnish to his past when he's talking to the beautiful young woman who miraculously enters his life. Ray and Bancroft are so cute together. The first time he kisses her when she's lying on his couch is so innocent and simple that it's impossible not to root for these two, whatever the truth might be.

Nightfall is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Modicum of Daring

Last night's new Daredevil: Born Again was one of the better written of the Born Again series. It's kind of a low bar, though, and there were a few weak bits in the teleplay by Devon Kilger and Jesse Wigutow. But I appreciated how the story got weird at points.

This episode had some of the best moments for characters introduced in Born Again. There was some nice tension in BB's visit to Blake's mother's house. It was the first chance BB had to make a difficult decision, for the actress to convey some kind of internal conflict, and she felt real for the first time. Blake's assumption that the data drive he found in BB's coat was connected to the Fisk parody broadcasts was pretty extreme but not in a bad writing way (even though it was clearly ADR), more like a legitimate paranoia way. Blake's actually shaping up to be an effectively tragic character.

I really liked the moment when Cashman tells Heather to choke him. There's an eroticism in the scene that makes her trauma uncomfortably confusing, as real trauma often is. It makes Cashman into a truly Satanic character and makes Heather a lot more interesting than she ever was in season one.

I like Jessica Jones a lot, especially the first season of her series, but her first scene in this episode was annoying and her meetup with Daredevil felt superfluous. The scene with her daughter annoyed me because it introduced yet another peculiarly fearless kid like Leia in Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ant-Man's kid in Ant-Man 2 or a dozen other examples. I suspect there's a mandate from Disney that discourages writers from portraying children as frightened. And the scene introduced another annoying potential "pass the torch" kid character. The only one of those that's been any good was Yelena and Thunderbolts tanked despite being a good movie.

The fight scene between Daredevil and Fisk was good though I think they've long since milked that white painting dry of all dramatic potential. I also liked the continuation of Karen turning into more of a Punisher sidekick than a Daredevil sidekick, despite the fact that her dialogue was some of the stuff I was able to predict before it came out of a character's mouth.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris died a few days ago at the age of 98. I've never read his books but his Human Animal series from the '90s, along with James Burke's Connections, left a lasting imprint on my perception of human nature. He was criticised for the broadness of his inferences sometimes but perhaps those critics failed to notice that every episode began with a title card describing the programme as "a personal view". Much of his work was opinion and you can judge for yourself the validity of his opinions. I was watching the second episode this morning and I don't think I agree with his assertion that eating a meal alone is invariably an inferior, anxious experience, though I wonder if my preference for watching movies or reading books while eating provides a substitute for companionship.

I find his thoughts on the contrast between carnivorous and herbivorous diets fascinating. The idea that carnivores have more leisure time comes with a lot of implications for the nature and development of abstract thought and any example of behaviour outside of actions taken purely in the interest of survival.

It's strange how innocuous shows like this seemed in the '90s when there's been little of the type or quality ever since.

He's Probably the Man You Need In Some Kind of Crisis I Think

A man of ambiguous occupation is probably the one force standing in the way of an ambiguous menace ambiguously tied to another man of ambiguous occupation in 2007's Michael Clayton. This is a good example of a movie that's a little too clever for its own good.

George Clooney stars as the eponymous protagonist. He's referred to as a "fixer". At one point, a police detective remarks that Michael has cops thinking he's a lawyer and lawyers thinking he's a cop. He works for a firm headed by a character played by Sydney Pollack and they're tied up with what Wikipedia calls an "agricultural conglomerate" called U-North who are up to some kind of shady shenanigans. Michael's colleague, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), knows something about U-North so he's being tracked. He's also losing his mind. He strips naked during a deposition and runs across a parking lot for some reason.

Tilda Swinton plays someone involved with U-North. I wasn't really sure what her motives were for most of the movie but I think she was a villain.

There's so much cloak and dagger and double talk and people being cagey that it all boils down to people walking around and looking intense, it all kind of greys out. Star Wars was a really good thing for Tony Gilroy, Rogue One and Andor tethered him to something solid. He's obviously very clever but sometimes cleverness can fly off into the clouds and that's what happens with Michael Clayton.

Michael Clayton is available on The Criterion Channel.

Short of Middling

I'd heard "Meridian", a 1994 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, was unpopular both with fans and with people who worked on the show. Watching it last night, I could see why, but it has its moments.

It has, like many episodes of '90s Trek, an A and B plot. The A plot is based on the Gene Kelly musical Brigadoon about a Scottish village that magically appears once every century, its inhabitants not experiencing the intervening period of time. Kelly plays a modern guy who falls in love with a girl in the village played by Cyd Charisse.

In "Meridian", the crew of Deep Space 9, cruising about in the Defiant, their little warship, witness an entire planet suddenly appear out of nowhere. The inhabitants turn out to be a standard group of Star Trek humanoids in vaguely Renaissance alien costumes. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) falls in love with a local guy played by Brett Cullen. First he's going to go off with her to Deep Space 9, then she's going to stay with him on the planet. It doesn't work out, of course. There's no weight to the tragedy because neither the actors nor the characters have even an ounce of chemistry. There is an effective scene of Dax bidding farewell to her old friend Sisko (Avery Brooks), though it's undercut by the lack of effectively established motive on Dax's end.

The B plot involves Quark (Armin Shimmerman) trying to get a holographic scan of Kira (Nana Visitor) so he can make a pornographic simulation featuring her for a client who's been lusting after her. This disgusting endeavour is played for laughs and both Quark and the client get their comeuppance in a satisfying way, though I gather many fans feel Quark ought to have received severer punishment.

The client is played by legendary genre actor Jeffrey Combs, best known for the '80s adaptation of Lovecraft's Re-Animator. It was the first of many characters Combs played on Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. Combs appears at a minute and ten seconds into this clip from the beginning of "Meridian".

People Under the Moon

That's my grandfather, on the left, in his moonshiner days. Apparently moonshiners generally wore fedoras. An old man at a local deli two days ago got a kick out of seeing me in mine as it reminded him of his own grandfather, also a moonshiner. I've been going through a lot of family photos at the home of my recently deceased father here in Tennessee.

Here's one of me around 25 years ago, unknowingly emulating my grandfather's style. I'm with my father and grandmother.

There were lots of photos of me, most of which I didn't care for. I kind of like this one in which I have some fish.

Sonnet 1988

Approaching time returns the leaves to dust.
They left a shade about the living wights.
A dappled tomb resists encroaching rust.
A troupe of empty sockets take the sights.
A ragged band descends the verdant hill.
The gang still play guitars, trombones, and drums.
They form a ring around a copper still.
The morning liquor quites the group in sums.
But living viewers, note the silence reigns.
Beyond an echo, spirit voices speak.
As spirits fill a cup and deathless veins.
A figure plants a flag atop the peak.
As songs unheard enrich our quiet dreams,
The dust will dance in palid morning beams.

Postmadamism

Western music seems to be entering an era of pretty young ladies. I say "seems to" because I don't entirely trust my impressions anymore since the algorithms are always putting together a particular tapestry of what it is it thinks I want. Sure, I like pretty young ladies. But doesn't everyone? Hasn't everyone always? From Juliet to Marie Antoinette to Madonna. Now YouTube is feeding me Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. I was watching Rodrigo's new video in which she dances around Versailles in a frilly postmodern frock and asked myself if I would enjoy this song sung by a balding old man. Probably not. That doesn't make it bad, though. "Pretty" "young" and "lady" are all relevant parts of our existence and engaging with all three is certainly valid.

She makes a lot of references to older songs in her lyrics, in this case The Cure's "Just Like Heaven". In "deju vu" she references Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". In both cases, she also claims to have special insight into the songs. She says she knows why Robert Smith wrote "Just Like Heaven" and she boasts that she introduced the music of Billy Joel to the ex-boyfriend who's now introducing him to his new girlfriend. She's the very model of the postmodern major hipster. But, hey, I do like watching her and I dig her references.

Chappell Roan seems like the artsier alternative though I'm not sure how much depth there really is in her most popular song, "Pink Pony Club", about a young drag queen in west Hollywood. We can all applaud her espousing progressive sexual values but would the song have been as popular had it been performed by an actual drag queen? Maybe not, but I find something heartening about it anyway. And there's her seemingly Caitlin R. Kiernan inspired video for "Casual" that makes me feel like, "Hey, this young person likes the things I like."

The lyrics of the song at first seem to have little to do with the content of the video but both seem to be questioning how to categorise a developing relationship.

"You said, "Baby, no attachment"
But we're
Knee deep in the passenger seat, and you're eating me out
Is it casual now?
Two weeks, and your mom invites me to her house on Long Beach
Is it casual now?"

In both this and Rodrigo's "Drop Dead" and Sabrina Carpenter's "Manchild" the singer's primary point of concern is how to define a relationship, what label to give it or a partner, or what significance to derive from shared interests. Did Mick Jagger wonder what satisfaction was when he complained he couldn't get any? Did David Bowie need to know how to label the relationship with the Rebel Rebel who didn't know if she was a boy or a girl? These young artists seem to live in compulsive analytical space. Perhaps this is just what the children of postmodernism look like. Though it may be fruitful to compare "Manchild" to "Mannish Boy", "Manchild", both song and video, is kind of peak postmodernism.

Magic and Resentment

I've been watching Ingmar Bergman's 1958 film The Magician over the past several weeks, sometimes just parts of it, sometimes the whole movie. I first wrote about it back in 2019 and I don't have much to add to that review except I didn't mention how Bergman shows what the travelling magician does is an expert version of what all the other characters do in their daily lives.

The consul's house which the Magician, Vogler (Max von Sydow), visits is filled with servants, functionaries, and their wives. There's an old woman who claims to know witchcraft and gives a "love potion" to a young man which is really rat poison but provides the social lubricant necessary for him and a servant girl to sleep together, which they both already wanted to do.

Magic and stories are used as pretext or diversion. The wife of one of the officials becomes obsessed with Vogler and wants him for her lover until she sees him without the wig and false beard that everyone already knew was fake anyway. It's not the revelation of his deception that disturbs her, it's the revelation of her self-deception, her indulgence in a fantasy that he only provided an inspiration for.

But it's still primarily the obsession of Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand) with proving Vogler a fake that fascinates me. Again and again, Vogler is easily proven a fake, if it weren't already clear from his wig and beard, but again and again, Vogler demonstrates his power over Vergerus. If Vergerus is so sure there's nothing to Vogler's abilities, why does he want to dissect Vogler? Why does he shrink in fear away from Vogler when he encounters him in the attic?

The most frightening thing about the film, for an artist, is how authentic it is. No matter how effective an artist is, however ingenious his ability to give the audience a valuable experience, "rational" observers with unshakeable faith in their own ability to think logically, will be there to deride the artist as a fraud and freeloader.

The Magician is available on The Criterion Channel.

Daredevil: Watch Again

Here comes the nostalgia. The new episode of Daredevil: Born Again, written by Jesse Wigutow, relied heavily on past content. If you like to linger thoughtfully over past episodes of TV series, you may enjoy this episode more than the less sentimental among us.

We have duelling flashbacks with Matt recalling his times with Foggy and Wilson recalling his first meeting with Vanessa. In between, there's the sloppily written story of Blake, Michael Gandolfini's character, kind of leaking information to the press about Vanessa being in critical condition. Most of the dialogue between Cashman and Blake indicates Cashman and/or Fisk is upset about Vanessa's location being leaked to the press and Blake is suspected of having doing so but at some point in production the makers of the show must have realised BB found the location with no help from Blake so they looped in some dialogue of Blake telling BB that Vanessa was in critical condition while Blake was facing away from the camera. Either way, it seems odd that Blake is their prime suspect for the leak in a hospital full of people. It seems odd they had any expectation of keeping a lid on the information.

Foggy fans got their wish to see the man again and Foggy haters like me got their wish to not see Foggy resurrected. So far. A story about Foggy helping a disagreeable client in the name of justice parallels Matt's present struggle with Bullseye. It's funny, I call him Bullseye but keep referring to Matt as Matt. They're showing him in the costume a lot more so maybe they want me to think of him primarily as Daredevil. I guess the old Netflix series did too good a job moving the show away from a costumed superhero show.

The Fisk/Vanessa stuff felt like it justified flashbacks a little better but going over her decision to exhibit the white painting was kind of like a Star Wars prequel explaining more than anyone ever wanted or needed. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a really good performance in the episode, though.

Oh yeah, and we get to see Fisk's old right hand man, Wesley. Were there people out there who really wanted to see him again?

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Hot World

My world tour continues and this morning I'm in Newport, Tennessee. It's going to be unseasonably hot here, around 30 Celsius, in the 80s Fahrenheit. It was also unseasonably hot in southern California and in Japan.

I've been in six different airports over the course of two weeks so I figured I may as well rank them.

6. San Diego International Airport, California, U.S.A.

This one ought to get points for nostalgic value but when I decided to walk from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 I found I had to go through a labrynthian detour due to construction. There was also no currency exchange onsite.

5. McGhee Tyson Airport, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.A.

I saw this one only briefly but all the shops were closed already when I came in at around 9:20pm. Why?

4. Los Angeles International Airport, California, U.S.A.

It got the job done but was surprisingly lacking in local colour.

3. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Michigan, U.S.A.

I had to quickly make a connecting flight but I had to cross the whole big airport to do so which meant I went through its big glowing sci-fi underground tunnel which runs beneath the planes to connect the A concourse with B and C. That was cool.

2. Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan

Quick and easy baggage check, lots of great food, and a konbini where I could buy ziplock bags for my chargers. Very handy.

1. Icheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea

From the whimsical, musical buggies to the pretty stewardesses to the infinite number of liquor shops, there's absolutely nothing to complain about regarding this one.

The Money Eaters

A young stockbroker pursues an alliegience with a notoriously ruthless colleague in 1987's Wall Street. Director and co-writer Oliver Stone dives into the world of stock trading to tell a surprisingly simplistic moral tale. Other than a couple clever one liners, this movie's mainly entertaining for its '80s cheese value.

Charlie Sheen plays Budd Fox, a lowlife stockbroker working in a vast, noisy office of cold callers, and his father, Carl, is played by Charlie Sheen's real life father, Martin Sheen. While Budd aspires to be the deadliest shark in the tank, his father is a salt-of-the-earth union leader who don't truck with his boy's uptown dreams. The two Sheens together ham it up and make you say, "Hey, that's Martin Sheen with Charlie Sheen."

But Budd meets another father figure, a slimy bigshot named Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas, who has the film's two immortal lines; "Money never sleeps" and "Greed is good," which perhaps best sums up '80s right wing philosophy. It's that absolute faith in the idea that somehow everyone relentlessly gourging on all they can grab will all work out for the best, despite what you might think. However, things turn out exactly as you might think, if you have a halfway decent moral compass.

Now Oliver Stone's friends with Vladimir Putin. That tracks. Wall Street could almost be Soviet propaganda.

Wall Street is available on The Criterion Channel.

Refreshed San Diego

I wandered a bit more around San Diego yesterday. I went down to Mission Valley Centre Mall because they have a currency exchange place and I had a stray 5000 yen in my wallet which turned out to be around 28 dollars in American money. The Mission Valley area is one of the posh areas of San Diego. Not the poshest, that would be La Jolla, but a lot posher than Chula Vista or El Cajon. There are two malls, Mission Valley Center and Fashion Valley, and they illustrated neatly the rising disparity between commoner malls and upper class malls. Fashion Valley was always the one for rich people but Mission Valley had the usual kind of anchor stores, Macy's and Robinsons May, even a Montgomery Ward way back in the day. Now all the department stores are boarded up, empty buildings, the food court's gutted, and the Ruby's Diner that used to occupy the centre has been razed. Meanwhile, anything that's closed in Fashion Valley has been replaced by something more expensive.

One thing that surprised me is all the closed Starbucks. I guess people got really tired of Starbucks. But the coffee company really did overdo it. I guess the days of Starbucks across the street from Starbucks are over. It seems like there's no shortage of Starbucks within other businesses, though.

Conversely, I was surprised and pleased that Barnes and Noble is still open and doing well. The generic editions of classic novels are really pretty and I was sorely tempted to buy the Chiltern Classics edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray but lugging my collection of books to the post office is too fresh in my memory.

Most editions feature a portrait of a young man. Not doing so seems wiser to me as no picture is going to measure up to Wilde's descriptions.

I found myself consciously forcing myself to break Japanese habits. I actually walked while drinking coffee. This is something I have seen some young people do in Japan but it is still very rare and frowned on by older generations. I also noticed I was unconsciously walking on the left side of the path as you're supposed to do in Osaka and areas west of Osaka.

I completely missed COVID in the US. I was a little surprised to see a couple women still wearing medical masks.

I noticed in the men's rooms the toilet stalls tend to be more often occupied than the ones in Japan. I think American men are defacating more. It may simply be that they're eating more.

I had a teriyaki chicken plate at Fashion Valley for 11 dollars. The food court stuff is still not terribly expensive though that would be very overpriced in Japan, especially since it wasn't very good. I missed some American food. I got a proper sandwich at Submarina a few days ago and it was fabulous. Still, nothing compares to Japanese food.

It's strange seeing so many people with tattoos, which are still considered gang symbols in Japan and even gangsters usually keep them covered. I'm not fond of tattoos and still can't imagine why I would want one but I love self expression and individuality. I guess, in a nutshell, that's what I missed most about the US. Self expression and individuality.

Everyone Deserves an Eternity in Court

Keanu Reeves takes a job at a Satanic law firm in 1997's The Devil's Advocate. I saw this when it first came out but all I remembered about it was that it referenced John Milton and that people tend to make fun of Al Pacino's performance in it. Although I agree with most people that Pacino's performances after the early 1980s are inexplicably inferior to his earlier work, I don't find his performance terribly bad in The Devil's Advocate. The movie, with a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, is also much better written than I remembered.

Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a criminal defense attorney in Gainesville, Florida with a talent for winning unwinnable cases. When he manages to secure a not guilty verdict for a man who's clearly guilty of the child molestation he's charged with, Kevin is recruited to join a prestigious firm in New York. So Kevin moves to the city, into a vast, luxury apartment with his wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron).

A lot of the movie's second act is from Mary Ann's perspective as the wives of other lawyers at the firm slowly exert more and more psychological control over her. The head of the firm, John Milton (Pacino), gets in on the act when he coerces her into changing her hairstyle.

While Mary Ann's being driven mad, Kevin finds himself taking to his big city cases like a duck to water. Although the manipulations of Mary Ann are pretty blatant, I like how the story around Kevin is driven by his own compulsion to sin. When Mary Ann is ailing, Kevin refuses to step aside from the high profile case he's working on.

In addition to Pacino's Satan actually going by the name John Milton, my favourite 17th century poet is also directly quoted. Pacino's Satan also behaves like Milton's Satan to some extent. He's motivated not simply to corrupt people but to use their behaviour to demonstrate flaws in God's design.

The Devil's Advocate is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1987

Eternal slumber beats the sugar drum.
Effective beats were melted down for grain.
A melty crust was crushed in lively rum.
A brewer's life distilled itself in vain.
Distilling juice produced a troubled drop.
For trouble boils late the flagrant fool.
A flagrant flange adorns the saucy top.
A pizza sauce absorbed the slacker's drool.
A slacker finds his peace beneath the box.
To find a card, the seekers want a deck.
A special card connects the feet to socks.
Connexions wane beneath the wooly neck.
From peerless sheep the wool was quickly sheared.
By watchful sheep the dreams of all were cleared.

Stealing the Mainstream

Margaret Qualley co-directed this new Sabrina Carpenter music video. Once again, I'm compelled to notice how Qualley has surpassed her mother's career.

The plot of the music video of a group of gals ransacking a mansion is reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring. I like the song and I'd say it's more remarkable than the video which almost seems cliche at this point. American media really seems to be normalizing theft. I watched a Hank Green video a few months ago in which he got a kick out of the recent Louvre heist in which Napoleonic era French royal jewels were lost to the world.

Maybe bettering the lives of the burglars was a greater good than whatever historical perspective may have been gained by billions of people across generations viewing the jewellery in person. Considering the material the thieves were able to use in the heist, they weren't beggars so I think it's more likely the case of a few moderately rich people getting richer at the less tangible expense of the public. It's funny how the more communist perspective people take on these things also makes them more interested in material value than in spiritual or intellectual value. Not to mention the hazardous situation that might have arisen had the thieves' endeavor been recognised during their attempt. But, hey, I like good picaresque, too.

San Diego Moment

It's strange being back in San Diego. I've taken a few good walks around. It feels like a dream. It's strange what I notice feels different. I feel the subtle differences in smell and air pressure. I'm glad I won't have to live through another muggy central Japan summer. But I had some of the best experiences of my life in Japan. Up until two years ago, I would never have even imagined leaving Japan, I was so happy there. Then things changed. It's a long, pathetic story and I'm planning to write a book.

One thing I'll say is that when I left the US, I felt like the US was dying and coming to Japan felt like going somewhere experiencing a rebirth. Now I feel the opposite, I feel like Japan's in the throes of a slow death and the US is experiencing a rebirth. I know it might not seem that way from the news and probably it's my personal, subjective point of view.

I remember driving through Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. In San Diego and elsewhere, I remember sullen, angry young men in the streets, looking for a target for their resentment. In recent years, I've started to see and hear Japanese men doing the same thing. As in America, it coincides with rising xenophobia and homophobia and transphobia. I wonder if I can find a country where people can consistently abide by a "live and let live" mindset.

Anyway, I've been planning to write a book about my experiences in Japan. To quote Roy Batty, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

San Diego's lovely to see again in any case.

This Fisk

There was some exciting stuff in the new episode of Daredevil written by Chantelle M. Wells whose previous credits include Yellowjackets and Echo. I wonder how much of it will stick.

The big event was in the very end of the episode in which Wilson Fisk's wife, Vanessa, was seemingly killed by Bullseye. I have a bad feeling it's going to turn out she miraculously survived. But the nice thing about the episode is that many people had easily discernable motives. You can see why Bullseye would want revenge on her.

Though, now that I think about it, there are still a lot of characters with murky, inexplicable motives. I liked seeing Lili Taylor again and it's interesting that she and Vanessa hit it off, I just wish I understood why. Maybe the fact that they were about to have an alliance for no apparent reason is a sign that Vanessa won't survive.

I liked seeing Karen interviewing people and for a moment I thought we were going to see her being a journalist again. But she's kind of a black hole in Born Again. Her motives were always clear in the old series. Here, I don't even know what her job is and apparently she's been retconned as a partner in the old law firm.

Matt investigating while disguised as an AVTF officer was interesting though it felt really Batman-ish.

I feel like if he put half as much effort into stopping Fisk as he puts into saving Fisk then Fisk would already be behind bars. Though he does have a point that making Fisk into a martyr isn't a good idea. One can draw parallels to real life once again and ask whether the killing of Charlie Kirk did the American Left any favours.

I kind of liked the one-upsmanship in the Matthew Lillard scene.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

In Pursuit of Time

I'm in the third of four airports I'm visiting to-day. I left from Tokyo's Narita Airport on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at Seoul's Icheon Airport Wednesday evening and then went back to Wednesday afternoon to arrive here, at LAX. My final stop will be San Diego to catch up with Wednesday evening again.

Even just being in the Korean airport, I started to notice all the Japanese mannerisms I'd gotten used to. I went to a beer stand to buy a bottle of water and the girl working there looked incredulously at me. I swiped my card wrong and she gave me the bottle for free without saying anything. There's something that would absolutely never happen in Japan.

Yes, a beer stand. Icheon airport has dozens of shops with signs that just say "Liquor and Tobacco". I guess they didn't have the wave of social engineering Japan had to wipe out cigarette smoking.

Koreans are so pale. The airport buggies constantly play electronic music, like it's a Disney parade. Mostly The Nutcracker. I had to restrain myself from laughing the third time a pretty, straight backed young woman with very serious bright red lips drove by with the carnival music. I pictured to myself what it would be like if she was really having a ball, laughing and waving and bobbing along with the music.

Final Ramen

Okay, I took a couple pictures. For my last full day in Japan, I went to Shibuya and wandered around. Looks like the future doesn't it?

It started to rain and I didn't have an umbrella. Since it was almost lunchtime, I went into a ramen shop, Ichiran Ramen. I'm sure glad I did. I got some tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen because it's my favourite standard variety of ramen, not knowing the place is famous for its tonkotsu. It was divine. I had a beer with it and the combination was exquisite beyond my capacity for words to convey. They should've sent a poet.

Now I have an 18 hour flight ahead of me. At least I have lots of books to read.

A Day in the Biggest City in the World

Good morning from Tokyo. This is the not especially inspiring photo from my hotel room in Chiba by Tokyo Bay. There is a bull in the lobby, though.

The real selling point for me is that the room was only fifty dollars a night. I might have gone even cheaper and stayed at a manga cafe but I have too much luggage. My room is small but it does what I need it to. If you're in Japan and you're looking for cheap accommodation that's bigger than a capsule or a voting booth, look for an APA Hotel.

I'm leaving to-morrow. Walking through Tokyo Station last night, I felt sorry that I can't stay in this city for at least a week. I noticed a trend of young women carrying around stuffed animals. First I saw a girl with a big lavender rabbit, then another girl with a big pink rabbit, and then a white girl with something I didn't get a good look at. Probably a rabbit. I wonder if it's for Easter. Probably not.

I don't really feel like taking pictures, actually. I often see tourists walking around taking footage. Why should I bother?

Sonnet 1987

As time deployed its friends, the train was slowed.
A secret time was kept in strangers' pockets.
Through dampened cities, crystal spirits glowed.
Their fingers stuck in Heaven's sweetest sockets.
The blazing sun usurps the rite of spring.
The normal coat was now a stifling sleeve.
A veil of sweat enticed the girl to sing.
The point of flesh, to find a place to cleave.
Where winter winds were trampled under hooves,
Untimely summer throttles cherry trees.
Suspicious deer observe from lofty rooves.
A line of sheep were eating morning cheese.
Condensing matter clogged the holy train.
A pleasure pulled the glass beyond its pane.

Reordered Who

I'm in the final stages of cleaning out of my apartment so I have no time this morning but here's a very odd ranking of Doctors Who I watched this morning while eating breakfast. I'd like to know who voted on this one. The hostess disassociates herself from it at several points. If she names the source, I may be too sleep deprived to have heard it. I'm really astonished how far 6 and 13 rank above 3 and 5. Is Peter Davison cancelled or did people think they were voting for Pete Davidson? While I don't agree number 1 should be number 1, I will say he's an unexpected but very worthy choice.

The Worth of Books

Going through the many old and new problems attendant on moving out of Japan, I discovered that Japan Post has a new policy that prohibits sending anything valued at over a hundred US dollars to the US. This is in retaliation to Trump's tariff policies but this is such a new rule that the post office web site doesn't mention it, even though one is required to make labels for all international shipping on the web site before going into the post office. Many employees of the post office are unaware of the rule, too, which means some parcels I'd already sent off end up being returned to me.

This is a problem for me because my last day in this apartment is to-morrow, Monday, and my flight leaves on Wednesday. This means I suddenly have to figure out what to do with a bunch of stuff I thought I'd already taken care of, most of it valuable stuff I didn't want to get rid of. Mostly I'm talking about books.

What books do I have that are so valuable? Well, the sad irony here is that this is a result of me personally setting a high value on books. When the label web site tells me it's mandatory for me to ascribe a monetary value to all objects contained in the parcel, I'm forced to put a price on items that could be valued very differently depending on the buyer and seller. If you collect old books, like I do, then a hardback copy of Bleak House printed in the 1940s is surely worth at least forty dollars. To people who believe books are antiquated objects now made obsolete by digital media, my copy of Bleak House is worth less than an equivalent quantity of blank paper. So I could have been justified in filling in all the price fields with one or two yen. Fool that I am, I wrote what I thought the books were actually worth.

All this to get revenge on Trump. It goes to show, revenge is never quite as simple as you'd like it to be.

And, oh yeah, Happy Easter.

The Irrepressibly Strange Home Front

This past week, I've been spending most of my days carrying things to the post office or to second hand shops, preparing to move out on Monday. To wind down in the evening, I watched 1944's A Canterbury Tale again, Powell and Pressburger's strange tale of three travellers in a small town on the road to Canterbury.

It's a strange sort of propaganda film. I mean, as with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I think Powell and Pressburger set out to make a propaganda film but they were both too interested in complicated ideas to do a proper job of it. What is the message a British soldier's meant to come away with? "Go out there and fight for the magistrates putting glue in girls' hair back home!" And then there's Erwin Hiller's haunting cinematography. You can't even see the main characters' faces in the first minutes of the film as everyone stumbles about in the dark around the train station.

The three travellers are Sgt Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), and Acting Sgt. Bob Johnson (Sgt. John Sweet). Peter's with the British army while Bob's an American and Alison's a "land girl". a part of the Women's Land Army that did work on the British home front during World War II. They meet in the small town of Chillingbourne and soon encounter the town's infamous "glue man" who pours glue on Alison's hair as he's done to several other girls. He runs off before they can apprehend him. It's not until the three take refuge in town hall that we get a good look at their faces. The film's loaded with a sense of mystery and danger but it's counterbalanced by the cheerful, affable conversation between the three people newly acquainted with each other. They meet the magistrate, Colpeper, whom Alison immediately suspects is the secret identity of the glue man.

The mystery provides a baseline of tension throughout a film that consists of Bob talking to local woodworkers about wood and Alison trying to find work around town. These scenes bring the little town to life, creating a vivid portrait of rural England. The weirdness of the mystery in the background is somehow a vital part of bringing the place to life. The mystery is not who the glue man is--it's pretty clear it's Colpeper--but rather how the gentleman who gives lectures on British history and waxes poetic on the dreamy landscape and historical significance, could possibly be the glue man. His explanation, when it comes, is hardly sufficient either and it seems likely that Colpeper himself doesn't quite know why he does what he does. The viewer will likely infer that it's a manifestation of his sexual repression and that does seem likely. He's a strange character and yet, then again, is he? How many such gentlemen led double lives, with a second life that they could hardly explain if they tried? Is Colpeper not as familiar, in a way, as the landscapes and Elizabethan inns? Certainly the original Canterbury Tales had its share of bizarre and perverted characters. How many times did people have to reconcile the respected and beloved figure of authority with his messy private life? Nowadays, a guy like Colpeper would've been cancelled but in Powell and Pressburger's vision the three protagonists still like Colpeper despite his inexplicably strange and disturbing deeds.

The first time I watched the film, I remember not liking John Sweet's performance as Bob but I've done a complete 180 on that. He's so Lynchian, especially when he's talking about wood.

It occurred to me the film is a bit like Dracula with Bob being the Quincey Morris character.

A Canterbury Tale is available on The Criterion Channel.

Final Buffy

When I first watched the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I thought it suffered too much from the suddenly very strong influence of the Lord of the Rings movies. Practically all fantasy media since the early 2000s has been in some way influenced by the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies so it's no surprise. But suddenly Buffy was at the head of an army, giving speeches while a new orc-like vampire variant was introduced that could swarm up from the Hell Mouth, which became a kind of subterranean Mordor.

I can see the logic of wanting to increase the scale of the drama for the final season but what it really amounts to is a show switching away from what it was good at to fit the mould of an entirely different genre and it falls apart. It may have looked like a good outline at the beginning of the season--Buffy loses the confidence of her army but gets a magic weapon, she returns at a crucial, dramatic moment, and there's a great battle. I've already talked about how Buffy's exile made little sense. I have to say the magic "scythe", which is really an axe, looks so unwieldy as to be distracting. It's very short but has a spiked butt meaning Buffy or Faith often has to grip the spike just wield it. Altogether, it looks like a junior version of an already ridiculous fantasy weapon.

Watching it alongside the final season of Angel really confirms my impression of Angel being the far superior show at that point. When Spike transfers from one series to the other, he becomes more interesting again. In the final season of Buffy, there's little more to him than being Buffy's adoring fan.

I'd totally forgotten Anya dies in the final episode of Buffy. It goes by so fast and the other characters don't seem to react much until Andrew, of all people, eulogises her. I think the first time I watched the episode I didn't even notice she died.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Double DD Day

For some reason, two new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again were released on Wednesday, episodes two and three, written by Dario Scardapane and Heather Bellson, respectively. I have to say, the Heather Bellson episode was much stronger but I'm not feeling good about the writing on this season overall.

Scardapane's episode ended with Karen punching out a guy in full body armour. I've complained about this with Disney Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Disney seems to think the only qualification someone needs to knock someone out with a single punch is to be a main character. One of the most egregious examples was at lease only in a comic, when Princess Leia knocked out a stormtrooper with a single punch. That's something no-one ever did in the original trilogy. I know we've seen Karen training with Matt but even Daredevil usually has to have a fight scene with the AVTF guys. Maybe the intention was to imply that Karen had an extended fight scene off-screen but that wouldn't make sense given that the guy ends up being someone who wants to work with them. At the beginning of the third episode, at least a metallic sound effect was added to imply Karen used some kind of metal object to knock the guy out. I think during editing someone realised One-Punch-Karen was a dumb idea. I thought this season wasn't going to be sloppy.

There was also a scene in the second episode in which Detective Kim shows up at the bar and it's not clear if she's a threat or not. Then there's some obvious ADR in which she hastily praises "the resistance" and being a rebel. Is this one of those things for people who are scrolling through their phones while the show is on? It really doesn't feel like a good idea to use the term "resistance" again.

Okay, there were things I liked, particularly in the third episode. Lili Taylor as the New York governor immediately has a strong presence and seems like a real threat to Fisk. Tony Dalton and Michael Gandolfini both gave exceptional supporting performances, particularly Dalton who's as effective in the extended action scene as he was in the courtroom or in prison.

The similarities between the AVTF and ICE were both stronger and weaker. The AVTF guys seem more driven by ideology while the ICE guys seem more like armed thugs. But as the AVTF seems to be targeting immigrants more and more it's harder to believe the resemblance is accidental.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Train's Various Occupants

Since I'm leaving Japan to return to America soon, and will be visiting Tennessee relatively soon, it seemed like a good time to watch Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train again, a film I'd not seen since high school. It's one of Jarmusch's best, probably my favourite of his films. It's an anthology film featuring three interconnected stories about foreigners visiting Memphis, Tennessee.

The first story features a Japanese couple. Having lived in Japan six years now, I was surprised at how authentic the characters seemed in terms of dialogue and performance in comparison to depictions of Japanese people from other American films. Then I read that the film was co-produced by a Japanese company and it made sense. The couple's reaction to a fast speaking American woman in this clip is not unlike reactions I've occasionally seen among students when they hear English.

That's Nagase Masatoshi as Jun and Kudoh Youki as Mitsuko. Since this movie was made decades before A.I. we can all be impressed by Nagase's skill at lighting a cigarette:

I wonder how many times he practiced that. He's so nonchalant.

Mitsuko might be classified nowadays as a "manic pixie dream girl" but I've met a lot of Japanese girls like her. They're just as fun to talk to as you might imagine but you shouldn't mistake enthusiasm for a lack of depth.

The second segment features an Italian woman (Nicoletta Brashci) stranded in Memphis and the third story features Steve Buscemi, Joe Strummer, and Rick Aviles as a trio of low-lives who rob a liquor store. Joe Strummer is the same Joe Strummer you may know as the lead singer of The Clash and I enjoyed his performance here. He's from England, of course, but Buscemi is also a kind of foreigner here, being from New Jersey. All the segments are good but the Japanese couple are by far the best. Their segment best captures the idea present in all three stories of cultural exchanges mysterious in their simultaneous intimacy and inscrutability.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins is in all three segments as the hotel night clerk and Tom Waits plays a DJ heard on the radio in each segment.

Mystery Train is available on The Criterion Channel.

Who's the Custodian of a Relationship?

Kim Novak's commented on an upcoming film about her relationship with Sammy Davis, Jr. Apparently she's unhappy with Sydney Sweeney playing her in the movie. Novak complains Sweeney "sticks out so much above the waist," and fears the movie will focus too much on the sexuality of the relationship.

"There’s no way it wouldn't be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time," Novak said. There's some irony here because, in her day, Novak was criticised for being all sex appeal with no real acting talent. Even Alfred Hitchcock described her as "terrible" in his interview with Francois Truffaut while Truffaut praised her "passive, animal" quality, which may have been another way of saying she was sexy.

I think Sweeney's a good actress, I enjoyed her performance in The Voyeurs a few days ago. She certainly does "stick out above he waist" more than Novak ever did but I can't honestly complain about that. I mean, she has extremely nice breasts. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the epitome of muscularity in film, Sydney Sweeney epitomises the bust. In addition to this, her face and mannerisms don't much resemble Novak. Better casting might have been a young Christina Ricci. Jeez, can I think of anyone who's in the right age group now? Jenna Ortega? I must have Wednesday on my mind. Well, both Wednesday actresses exhibit that "passive, animal quality" Truffaut talked about. Natalie Portman or Patricia Arquette would've been good.

Kim Novak is 93 years old and it's worth noting that works of film media have become much more preoccupied with overt sexuality than they were when Novak was a major player in Hollywood. She remembers the relationship between herself and Sammy Davis, Jr. as something valuable for having "so much in common." Sex was probably a very small component of the relationship for her. On the one hand, there's a difference in generational values at play, but on the other hand, Novak is quite justified in being offended that a personal relationship of hers is being mischaracterised and potentially dismissive of the thing she felt was truly valuable in it. Instead of just saying she's old fashioned, I think it's worth pondering whether or not our society has become one that prioritises sex too much and has lost the ability to value other aspects of a romantic relationship, aspects that, in the long run, are far more important.

Slayers Excluded

I noticed a lot of positive PR for Sarah Michelle Gellar has been turning up on my Facebook feed. I guess it's damage control after the Buffy reboot failed to take off. Meanwhile, I'm still watching the original and I got to one of the weakest plot points in the final season, coming from an April 29, 2003 episode called "Empty Places" written by Drew Z. Greenberg. In this one, Buffy is kicked out of her house by her sister and all her friends because she wants to attack the season's villain, Caleb (Nathan Fillion).

I feel like the way this happened in the writers' room was that someone made an outline and said, "Wouldn't it be wonderfully dramatic if Buffy was rejected by everyone only to come back at a crucial moment to save the day?" Yes, but can this be accomplished in a sensible way? They're fighting a monster that can overpower their most powerful fighter easily and who apparently can attack them any time, anywhere. So Buffy's plan to go on the offensive isn't preposterous. But even if everyone disagrees with her, it hardly seems sufficient justification to throw her out and shun her.

If they really wanted this particular dramatic arc, they needed to provide better motivation for Buffy's friends and followers. Maybe they could've had Buffy cross a line, apparently break some part of the group's moral code. Maybe she could have acquired some kind of dangerous demoniac power that made her proximity seem a threat to everyone. I don't know.

Anyway, with Buffy gone, the other Slayer, Faith (Eliza Dushku), takes over, the original outcast bad girl. She is a more interesting and concrete character than Buffy overall. It was nice having an appearance by Harry Groener as the mayor in the subsequent episode, her boss from season three, giving her an opportunity to show how she's matured and become more self-possessed.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Sonnet 1986

The milk of knowing plants was rare and warm.
Decisive snails were slowly taking charge.
Collected dolls did not foresee the swarm.
They only saw the gang of crooks at large.
Dalmatians mount the stage of turtle woe.
No spots would grace the pigeon's fluffy coat.
Combustion turned the steamy cup of joe.
Ideas began to overtake the goat.
The placid mammal raised a group of cubs.
Concussive ropes resound about the brig.
No players joined the wood tobacco clubs.
No grabbers took the candy coated cig.
The gentle balance fell between the sheets.
The soap contains excessive boiled beats.

Living In a TV

A young man's moral crisis is experienced in a dreamlike series of events involving video tape in 1989's Speaking Parts, a Canadian film directed by Atom Egoyan. The film's subtext regarding the simultaneous distance and extraordinary intimacy of video media is fascinating and reminded me a bit of Inland Empire or Videodrome.

Lance (Michael McManus) and Lisa (Arsinee Khanjian) are housekeepers at an expensive hotel. One day, Lance finds a movie script in a hotel room and cons his way into getting an audition. Around this time, he stops speaking to Lisa, who was possibly his lover. Lisa claims Lance was her lover but it's not clear if Lisa understands reality in the same way most people do.

Lance has worked as an extra on various movies and Lisa regularly rents them at the local video store so she can watch him in the background of various scenes. Eddy (Tony Nardi), the proprietor of the video store, takes an interest in Lisa. They get to talking about Eddy's sideline as an event photographer and occasional interviewer and immediately Lisa wants to conduct interviews for Eddy. This is a job Lisa is woefully unqualified for. In her first attempt, she interviews a bubbly, happy young bride at a wedding. Lisa is a foreigner with a thick accent and unshaven eyebrows. She's clearly never spent time in Hollywood circles or even among the popular girls at school. She's an introvert and all of her questions sound demanding and uncomfortably fervent. She's the food lover who thinks her love can make her a good chef. But getting people to talk and open up is a skill one has to develop and the poor young bride starts to panic and cry in response to Lisa's existential questions, particularly a strange one about how you "feel your love" in your partner.

So from this, it's not entirely clear if Lisa and Lance were ever together or if it was all in Lisa's imagination. We never see Lance actually speaking to her as a lover.

Meanwhile, Lance gets to know Clara (Gabrielle Rose), the woman who wrote the script he found. It turns out the script is a true story about Clara's brother who donated a lung to her. However, the director wants to fundamentally alter the script so Clara implores Lance to demand changes once he gets the role.

Lance and Clara sleep together but after that they communicate almost entirely through video conference. At one point, they masturbate for each other, Lance watching her on the little CRT television. The director of the film Clara wrote the screenplay for only speaks to her through the same method, signifying the communications barrier he puts between them.

It's hard to imagine what it was like in 1989 now that we live in this world where video communication is common and porn is ubiquitous. But the movie doesn't feel irrelevant. If anything, it makes me wonder at some fundamental aspect of human perception that may have been lost or altered in the years since.

Meanwhile, Lisa begins to experience what may be full blown hallucinations involving video that somehow may make a real link between her and Lance. The line between subjective and objective becomes increasingly difficult to perceive. Which is a point well taken.

Speaking Parts is available on The Criterion Channel.

I Wonder You

I felt bad for casting aspersions on Wonder Man without watching it properly so I went back and watched the first two episodes. It's not as bad as I originally thought though it does fail the test, "Would I Watch This If It Weren't the MCU?"

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Simon Williams. In the comics, Wonder Man was a supervillain who became a superhero who eventually became a Hollywood actor. In the MCU version, Simon watches Wonder Man movies as a kid and grows up wanting to play the fictional superhero. In the first episode he meets Trevor Slattery, a recurring MCU character played by Ben Kingsley. He first appeared in Iron Man 3 and in short films. The director of the first two episodes of Wonder Man, Destin Daniel Cretton, directed Shang-Chi, in which Trevor Slattery also appeared.

In this show, Slattery is a pathetic has-been, a more forlorn version of Steve Martin's character on Only Murders in the Building. Simon's youthful over-enthusiasm gives the two nicely contrasting personalities. Kingsley gives a good performance, of course. Abdul-Mateen II is a little bland but sometimes charismatic. It's nice listening to them trade movie trivia.

Joe Pantoliano plays himself. In the MCU, he used to star on a hospital drama with Trevor. There's a funny scene in the second episode involving him. Pantoliano is so good, gives such a sharp, witty performance, it's kind of a shame he isn't playing a superhero or something. Maybe he will anyway.

Hollywood loves to make movies about itself but they're only occasionally successful at the box office. Here's my top ten list:

10. Tropic Thunder
9. The Other Side of the Wind
8. All About Eve
7. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
6. In a Lonely Place
5. Inland Empire
4. Sullivan's Travels
3. Sunset Boulevard
2. Singin' In the Rain
1. Mulholland Drive

Wonder Man is available on Disney+.

A Human Work

Yesterday, Melania Trump appeared at the White House with a robot who speaks with pronounced vocal fry. I guess if your robot's going to resemble a berserk killing machine from Evangelion, having it sound like a 20 something barista is one way to counterbalance the horror.

Should I say it or she? I don't know, there will need to be a courtroom drama about robot pronouns.

Commander Data provides a Merriam-Webster definition of "android"--"an automaton made to resemble a human being." Melania's robot refers to itself as a "humanoid" which, on Star Trek and elsewhere, typically means an alien life form that bears at least some rudimentary resemblance to a human. I suppose they didn't use "android" for fear of legal troubles with Google's Android phone. Ironically, Google's Android was originally to be called "Droid" until there was the possibility of legal trouble with Lucasfilm because that's the word for robots in the Star Wars movies. So we have a little game of copyright musical chairs to reshape the landscape of our language.

Melania's robot notably doesn't take any questions and it seems like the barista speech was pre-recorded, possibly by a real barista. Though AI and synthetic voice generative software would seem to be far enough along to have such a level of communicative ability in a robot. Maybe there's not enough room for it amidst everything it needs to sense its environment and control its own movements in response. Human bipedal motion is a more delicate and complicated procedure than we're typically conscious of.

It was an altogether unimpressive demonstration, now that I think about it. Why am I even writing about it? Well, artificially intelligent robots seem like an inevitability at this point. Maybe this is a sign we can at least rest easy that they won't be working for Trump.

The Devil's in His Kitchen

The first episode of the new season of Daredevil: Born Again does feel more solid than season one. I don't know if this indicates a better season overall but the pacing felt more natural, conversations didn't feel oddly crammed into blocks of a few minutes. The action scenes are better but still nowhere near the level of the old Netflix series. The performances are good with one new supporting character being a standout.

During the whole Paul Dano non-controversy in which Quentin Tarantino criticised the actor, Tarantino also took a swipe at Matthew Lillard. This basically confirmed for me that Tarantino had not watched Twin Peaks season three because anyone who's seen that amazing 18 hour work of art knows that Matthew Lillard can be really impressive. As a new character on Daredevil, he infuses a lot of life and intrigue into the scenes he appears in.

He plays Mr. Charles, some kind of fixer working for Fisk. A lot of people are talking about how eerily Wilson Fisk's "Anti-Vigilante Task Force" resembles ICE under the Trump administration, especially considering that people who worked on the show claim everything in season two was written two years ago. I don't necessarily believe that. Although the makers of the show obviously wanted to avoid the schizophrenic quality of Born Again's first season, Disney and Marvel are, I think, too addicted to late stage tampering to have abstained from it entirely.

But Vincent D'Onofrio's version of Wilson Fisk was always based on Trump, at least a little, even in the first season of the Netflix series. He was a greedy, tacky landlord in that, just like Trump was primarily a greedy, tacky landlord in the '80s. Though one of the best things about the Netflix Daredevil series was how complex Fisk's character was. I think some people are afraid of making villains too sympathetic so they actively avoid making them complex. But one thing Andor showed was that you could reveal the humanity of your villains without making them enviable. The audience sympathises with Dedra Meero but no-one would want to follow in her footsteps.

So the Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF) resembles ICE because they work for a Trump figure and they're a bunch of chubby guys in bullet proof vests, beating up innocent people. They're a simplistic bunch of comic book thugs; it's not hard for them to superficially resemble something because they're not very complex. So I don't find the parallel very interesting in itself but I do find it interesting that such a broad, two dimensional villain resembles people in the news. Partly this is an indication of the oversimplified narrative presented in modern news media, partly it's an indication of a real moral void in American leadership and law enforcement.

So far I'm not getting a whole lot from the character development this season though I did like the conversation between Karen and BB about her uncle. I really like the line Karen repeats, "The easiest people to manipulate are manipulators." I think that's a line from the old series, I'm not sure. In any case, it's a surprisingly astute observation from a show like this.

I didn't like the dialogue doubling down on the "Nelson, Murdoch, and Page" thing that seems to be retconning the old law firm to have included Karen as a partner. Does she have a law degree now?

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Malaise of Dangerous Men

Terence Stamp rats on his former comrades in the London mob and is thenceforth marked for death, pursued by John Hurt and Tim Roth in 1984's The Hit. This Stephen Frears film has a surprisingly effective tone of detached, melancholic comedy.

For his courtroom betrayal, Stamp's character, Willie, is rewarded with a new life in Spain under witness protection. However, a pair of hitman working for his old crew track him down, kidnap him, and start driving him to Paris, where they expect to meet up with the boss. At this point the film becomes a road movie.

John Hurt and Tim Roth play the two hitmen, Braddock and Myron. Hurt is cool, detached, and experienced while Roth, whose first film this was, plays Myron as a naive young hoodlum. Willie is surprisingly calm and jovial and subtly starts trying to play his two captors against each other.

Braddock is experienced but he starts making a number of mistakes. He takes a woman hostage, Maggie (Laura del Sol), whom Willie observes ought to have been executed immediately. Both Braddock and Myron seem attracted to her, Myron the more foolishly, but Braddock's hesitation from harming her seems strange when the filmmakers go to such pains to establish him as a cold blooded psycho.

According to Wikipedia, this is one of Wes Anderson's favourite British films and it makes sense with the film's subtly twisted moral comment and delicately comedic chemistry.

The Hit is available on The Criterion Channel.