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+.