Working It Out

Last night I watched "The Equation", another episode from the first season of Fringe. It's another episode that feels distinctly X-Files-ish, with a plot about geniuses being abducted to solve a mysterious equation.

The main appeal of the show continues to be Walter Bishop, the heroic mad scientist, who in this episode returns to the dreaded mental institution to interview an inmate. He doesn't want to go back but he can't in good conscience avoid an opportunity to find a clue that might lead to finding a kidnapped child. John Noble, who I knew primarily as Denethor from Peter Jackson's film of Return of the King, gives a performance that's an intriguing mix of deadpan and vulnerable. He's good for a joke here and there but you also worry for him.

The kidnapped child is a musical genius whose composition turns out to be the important equation, transposed to musical notes. There are lots of fan covers of the song on YouTube, which is by Michael Giacchino.

Fringe is available on Max.

With Chest Parasites Like These . . .

I watched episode seven of Fringe last night, written by JJ Abrams and Jeff Pinkner. I had no idea JJ Abrams could be so clever, not that I'm a hater of his Star Trek and Star Wars movies. But this episode of Fringe feels oddly more like a classic Star Trek episode than his Star Trek movies ever did.

An FBI agent seems to suffer a heart attack and he does, though not in the traditional sense, as Broyles says. It turns out there's some kind of toothy parasite clammed down on his heart which is graphically portrayed when a surgeon cuts a gaping hole in his chest. That's pleasantly wild stuff, and then I like how it unfolds as an alien medical detective story. It all culminates in an absurd but gripping climax in which Olivia has to get an answer from a detained spy in Germany who will only talk to her if Walter can temporarily revive the brain of a dead man. It's quite the three ring circus.

Fringe is available on Max.

Meeping Time

Doctor Who is back and for real this time, not like those Chris Chibnell seasons. Last night, "The Star Beast" premiered, the first of three 60th anniversary specials, all written by Russell T Davies, the man who brought the show back in 2005 and ran it for a few seasons. Also back is director Rachel Talalay from the 12th Doctor era (2014-2017) lending the special a narrative coherence not seen since that time. And, of course, David Tennant and Catherine Tate have returned to star and they're both fantastic as ever.

I enjoyed the special though I was reminded as much of Russell T Davies' weaknesses as of his strengths. "The Star Beast" is flattered by its contrast to the messy 13th Doctor era but, taken on its own, it ranks with only average Davies episodes. One thing it's definitely not is a good starting point for people unfamiliar with Doctor Who.

It begins with a long recap of Tennant's final season and an explanation of why Donna can't be allowed to see too much of the Doctor. Even this is not enough for the new viewer not to be bewildered by gags like the psychic paper or references to various aliens in doll form.

The dolls were made by Rose, Donna's daughter and the first properly transgender character on the show, played by Yasmin Finney. Finney is fine but Davies' treatment has a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner feel to it, kind of hokey and awkward. Donna and her mother talking about Rose in the kitchen felt like something from a PSA.

I liked how Rose had a shed where she goes to be alone and make dolls and it's where she stashes the alien Meep. But on that note, it seems like we should've gotten more reactions from Rose as revelations about the Meep started coming. Maybe the show didn't have time because it was focusing on the Doctor and Donna, but it felt like Rose was set up to be more of a main character.

I like how her name ended up being a clue that paid off, though. It's the kind of loose thread that in the Chibnall seasons would've just been a mistake or a leftover from a sloppy rewrite. In "The Star Beast", it's a hint that makes sense of a big payoff.

The new TARDIS interior is pretty great. It's perfect for the anniversary.

"The Star Beast" is available on Disney+ in most of the world and BBC's iPlayer in the UK. In the US, all previous episodes of the revived era are on Max, formerly HBOMax, and unrelated to Cinemax. The classic era of Doctor Who is available on BritBox. Is this all confusing enough for you?

X Sonnet #1793

The signal cords connect to make a web.
A linen sky conforms about the giant eye.
An empty farm awaits no Johnny Reb.
Construction starts as girls deliver pie.
Synthetic suits were suited best for sand.
As travel north's rerouted south, we turned.
Our answer song enlarged a little band.
Of burning hair, the spirits quickly learned.
Returning faces wear a single coat.
Beyond the age of thirty-five was ten.
Plus four would make the man another goat.
And senseless lunches craft another win.
Returning hearts were doubled twice from space.
A cart of clothes could fill the wooden case.

The Doctor was X

If you should find a cannibal is running loose among the staff of your mad scientist college, it's best to conduct an investigation yourself in your enormous emerald mansion. 1932's Doctor X presents just such an administrative problem and solution. The result is a truly fantastic early Technicolor horror film.

Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwell) presides over the college and his daughter, Joanne, is played by the beautiful Fay Wray.

It's times like this I'm reminded Wray was not just some lucky girl who happened to be picked up by the right giant gorilla at the right time. Her expressions imply a perceptive and sensual nature. She seems innocently indignant and then just turned on by the goofy newsman who functions as the film's hero, Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy).

He's a practical joker and there are multiple scenes featuring his hand buzzer. It kind of works, though, and in fact leads to one of the best scenes in the film which begins with a shot of surprisingly effective horror and ends with a surprisingly effective payoff for Lee's penchant for practical jokes.

The film was shot in two colour Technicolor, which means everything's shades of green or red. The film has been restored thanks to the George Lucas foundation (nice to see how those Star Wars billions are being spent) and that limited colour palette looks stunning, particularly the greens.

Doctor X is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1745

Her castle wall was lined with secret glass.
With ev'ry step a trap, her hem was scratched.
Through darkened halls, she'd see a figure pass.
Her old and tattered drapes were crudely patched.
Explaining dolls to castle guards, she rushed.
Her words became a soup before she ate.
But soupy meals could never sate a lush.
You see, her pulpy shelves had fed her pate.
The em'rald curtains wreathed her stealthy trip.
The danger built on stones beneath her feet.
She poised the lemon rind across her lip.
The hobbled guest prefers her trick to treat.
She found a horse behind the wall at ten.
A royal crown was left where last she'd been.

A Clone's Message

The title of 2023's They Cloned Tyrone may prompt you to ask, "Why? Why did they clone Tyrone?" That's a question the film never answers, though perhaps it thinks it does. Somewhere in this muddled, racist mess, the filmmakers may well believe they conveyed any number of things.

Jon Boyega stars as drug dealer Fontaine, a taciturn young man who's shot to death, only to wake up the next morning as though nothing happened. But his death was witnessed by a Pimp called Slick (Jamie Foxx).

The two men are joined by one of Slick's prostitutes called Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) as they embark on an adventure to uncover a vast conspiracy.

The Wikipedia synopsis calls the film "retrofuturistic" which is I guess a reference to the fact that Fontaine has an old car. I don't know. Characters mention Sponge Bob and 50 Cent. There are surprisingly few references to gangsta rappers compared to the number of references to Spider-Man, Nancy Drew, and Star Wars.

Supposedly part of the insidious secret plot is to turn black people into white people, or at least, that's what we get from the infodump that serves as a climax. But it's not the movies and books starring white people, nor is it the Scottish and French alcohol the characters drink. No, it's--and I kid you not--the fried chicken, the grape juice, the hair products, and the gospel church. Yes, the evil scientists are trying to turn black people into white people with stereotypically black things. I guess the hair products that straighten women's hair kind of fits but it's certainly suspicious that a women's product that screenwriters Tony Rettenmaier and Juel Taylor (both men, one white) would have no interest in would be one of the Devil's instruments.

Incidentally, no parallels are drawn between the government hypnotising the populace and the pimp keeping a psychological hold on the women selling their bodies so he can buy expensive clothes and alcohol. Nor is a connexion made between the drugs Fontaine pushes, or his strong arm tactics, and the machinations of the conspirators.

The film is kind of cute in the few moments it gets away from its drunken conception of political messaging. I liked how Fontaine, Slick, and Yo-Yo became a team without really seeming to think about it, just out of an instinctual camaraderie. Though their infiltration of the enemy base requires some vigorous suspension of disbelief.

They Cloned Tyrone is available on Netflix.

X Sonnet #1727

A pleasure spurned was really spite for veal.
With leg o'mutton sleeves she served the scotch.
But patrons broke a plate before the seal.
And all the local cats could do was watch.
As galloped ghosts were polled we scattered tips.
However blank the page, we warrant knights.
Behold a cleaning label noting pips.
The captain's heart adorns a sleeve by rights.
Remembered noses notched above the bridge.
The reasons stated lopped around a hole.
A dozen questions lay below the fridge.
And only frozen chickens took the poll.
Enduring splashes soak the busy rail.
An idle dolphin stretched the iron pail.

On the Weird Outskirts

I finally watched the first episode of Fringe. The 2008 series created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci isn't bad so far, certainly better than what I've become accustomed to from Alex Kurtzman's work on Star Trek series.

The pilot episode centres on a beautiful FBI agent called Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv). After her partner is infected by a bizarre manufactured virus, she must enlist the aid of a mad scientist called Walter Bishop (John Noble). To spring him from a nuthouse, she needs the help of his handsome rogue of a son, Peter (Joshua Jackson).

After this first adventure, the FBI assigns them to "Fringe" science cases so it seems like the show's pretty much The X-Files except with Walter Bishop creating some of the strange phenomena from within the group.

The science feels legit enough to give stakes to the action and the emotional journey Olivia undertakes is pretty good, even if Anna Torv is a bit stiff. I like the show's use of a device that allows people to enter the dreams of others, including dead people. I can see that idea having a lot of potential.

Fringe is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1714

Withholding camel cars requires sound.
To hear again, the deafened mobster sang.
In choosing roles, the critic starts a round.
An endless loop requites the restless gang.
The glowing green delineation jumped.
Between the brains, a notice killed a dream.
In sweaty haste were punchy fluids pumped.
To scare mosquitos, trolls become a team.
The nose of Death was nostril black and deep.
Regress to foam or pay the sea with sand.
When giant bullets speak they do in "beep".
A golden butler lends the shell a hand.
Surprising snacks explode the plastic can.
Enriching Otter Pops have forged a man.

Quantifying Quantumania

I'd have never expected Michelle Pfeiffer to carry the first blockbuster of 2023. But that's just what she did with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Mostly a mediocre entry in the MCU canon, it's not as good as Wakanda Forever or Doctor Strange 2 but I'd rank it above Thor: Love and Thunder.

Even more than Loki, it was clearly, very strongly influenced by Rick and Morty and was written by Jeff Loveness who, like Loki and Doctor Strange 2 writer Michael Waldron, started writing for Rick and Morty in its fourth season. From its second season and a little bit in its first, Rick and Morty has prominently featured multiverse plots mixed with other weird stories involving shrinking, transmogrification, and space travel. It seems obvious to everyone at this point that Kevin Feige watched Rick and Morty and thought, "This could be a story told over a phase in the MCU." Again, though, why he chose only writers from after Rick and Morty's best era is beyond me. Obviously Justin Roiland's unemployable now but that still leaves a whole lot of writers from the first few seasons.

The new Ant-Man movie also carries over some of the amorality and politics from Rick and Morty, uncomfortably yoked to Disney's morality imperatives. The villain, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), is a character from Marvel comics with a history of timeline variants, though, in the comics, several years would be spent with each variant before another was introduced. The MCU version seems clearly to be influenced by the vast civilisation of variant Rick Sanchezes on Rick and Morty with whom Rick occasionally clashes. To be fair, this aspect of Rick and Morty may have drawn influence from the comics' Kang. But I doubt the comics had so much ironic humour. One major character dies in Quantumania and it's basically played for laughs.

All the irony diminishes Paul Rudd's Scott Lang quite a bit and Rudd's performance somehow doesn't have enough heart to round him out. No-one gives such a performance except Pfeiffer.

They don't give her as many jokes, either, but I think its Pfeiffer's own abilities that actually made her the only character I felt any investment in. And she gets all the meaty dialogue, too, and although Kang's motives are vaguely written and his plan and arguments infamously unclear, I believed there were really things at stake when Pfeiffer was talking because she seemed to believe them. The only other actor in the movie who actually sells an emotional reality in the cgi realm is Bill Murray. He appears all too briefly as an old flame of Pfeiffer's but he quickly establishes something nuanced and interesting. It really is a shame people are in the process of trying to cancel him.

I loved some of the creature designs, particularly of a sort of red paramecium character called Veb (David Dastmalchian). I wish they'd avoided including humanoids among the Quantum realm's citizens but that might have been a budgetary problem.

Lang's daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is pretty but really bland. I did like that she brought up the homeless crisis in US cities. When even the MCU is talking about it, hopefully we're getting to the point where people who can do something about it will finally get off their asses.

Evangeline Lilly's character, Hope van Dyne, is utterly pointless. She contributes nothing to any scene of dialogue and feels entirely like an afterthought. She dramatically saves Scott a couple of times but only serves to dilute the drama by doing so. Without a personality, she's basically a dull deus ex machina. If Feige were wise, he'd just make Pfeiffer the main Wasp. Hell, make her a star of the next Avengers movie. Her character was a founding member of the Avengers in the comics anyway.

I heard Jonathan Majors was influenced by Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight and, once I knew that, it was hard not to constantly see it. Still, he's entertaining to watch and he transforms his imitation of Ledger's radical performance into a more conventional, but fun, exercise in scenery chewing.

Michael Douglas is fine, of course, though a scene where he extols the virtues of socialism when talking about his hordes of voiceless ants is funny for reasons I don't think were intended. Really, if you're trying to sell people on socialism, maybe using infamously mindless social insects is not the best idea. On the other hand, it's a good anti-socialist statement.

I don't think I laughed at any point the movie intended me to. Neither did the other three people at the 6pm Saturday night showing I went to. And this movie's doing well at the box office? Well, I do live in Japan.

The Subtle Difference Between Stupid and Smart

What will it be, a world ruled by science or a world ruled by tyrants? Such is the too simplistic question posed by 1936's Things to Come, a visually splendid but philosophically daft science fiction film conceived by HG Wells and produced by Alexander Korda.

We begin with "Everytown", a place presumably meant to be a generic stand-in for any city in the world but is pretty obviously an English one. It's 1940, four years in the future from the film's release, and John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is worried about reports of impending war, despite recent assurances from authorities there will be none. To a British audience in 1936, that would've sounded awfully familiar.

And of course there is war. In one of the film's best scenes, a pilot from Everytown is shot down. Dying from his wounds, he sees a little girl approach as his allies above deploy gas. He gives his gas mask to the child, marvelling that he did so after he probably killed her parents, deliberately. It's a nice moment to show the senselessness of war.

The decades pass and endless war reduces Everytown to rubble and its people to a primitive tribe. A ruler emerges played by Ralph Richardson, who hams it up admirably. He lords it over the town in a furry vest and helmet, angrily demanding the deployment of aircraft despite the total absence of petrol to fuel them.

Now John Cabal returns, wearing futuristic tights and a calm demeanour. He talks about a new society of scientists ruled by reason. He's not worried when Richardson takes him hostage. Some time later, his allies arrive in force--a fleet of massive black bombers dropping "peace gas"--a gas that puts everyone to sleep instead of death.

Okay, a fair enough argument for science triumphing over infantile tribalism. Except as decades advance, Wells' vision of a society ruled by reason grows less acute. We see a marvellous future city sadly designed with ugly, featureless walls and balconies. We meet a sculptor, chipping away at a vaguely Native American figure, who complains of this new world where humans are trying to do things they weren't meant to, like going to space. Based on this vague argument, he somehow rouses millions of people to try to tear it all down. Meanwhile, on the other side, an old man tells his granddaughter how humans used to have foolish things called "windows" because they hadn't invented artificial sunlight yet. Mind you, that's not presented ironically. Wells evidently longed for a future in which fresh air and sunlight were not such disgusting necessities.

In obviously being inspired by the emerging tyrants of the 1930s, Wells fails to address the issues that actually made them popular. That they presented a vision of glory in contrast to a reality of poverty, something, ironically, Things to Come also does. So when the film concludes with Raymond Massey, playing the noble grandson of John Cabal, waxing triumphant on the glories of "progress" and "conquest" as the mob is massacred offscreen by concussion from the launching spacecraft, one is more astonished by the extremity of the film's tone deafness than by any of its astonishing special effects.

Things to Come is available on The Criterion Channel.

Your Future is Moist, Jake Sully

That crazy old James Cameron really did it. Avatar: The Way of Water was not only filmed and released but has become a massive box office success. And even I enjoyed this one. I wasn't a fan of the original but there are moments in this second one where I really appreciated a feeling of seeing something extraordinary.

Partly I think it's because we've all gotten accustomed to really bad cgi. So to see cgi that was meticulously crafted over five years almost feels like spotting a woolly mammoth at the mall, especially with the 3D on top of it. I mean, just think about--it's an over three hour movie about big blue people in 3D--and it's a worldwide box office success. It seems to defy all reason, as the first one did. And I haven't noticed any strong Avatar fandom holding on in the 13 years since the first film. Mostly whenever people talked about it it seemed like it was to joke about how it's a Pocahontas rip-off.

I watched the first Avatar again a couple weeks ago and I appreciated it more, though I still think Pocahontas is the superior film. But I do get caught up in the suspense of the film's last act.

Really, the story is more like Princess of Mars than Pocahontas and the follow-up feels like it cribs even more from Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Like the first movie, it has far too much exposition, a more egregious problem since we should all be relatively familiar with the characters and world by now. Yet the first 15 minutes or so of the movie are Jake (Sam Worthington) narrating the events that took place between the two films, rather needlessly. Now Jake is a resistance leader, coordinating Na'vi guerrilla attacks on Earthling colonists. When Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), resurrected in a Na'vi avatar body, targets Jake and his family, Jake realises he needs to pack up and move to another part of the planet.

This is one of many points in the film where, if you think about it for two seconds, it falls apart. Do the resistance strikes continue without Jake? Wouldn't the Earthlings just go after the next leader? Would they waste their resources going after an exiled leader? Would they even know Jake had moved on? Since the Na'vi and humans aren't in constant conflict, were there ever any formal peace talks? Were there any kinds of treaties or discussions about the possibility of peace talks? If not, why doesn't anyone bring this stuff up?

Anyway, Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have reduced roles in the film which mainly focuses on their kids, biological and adopted. Sigourney Weaver is back, now playing the teenage Na'vi called Kiri, who gestated in Dr. Augustine's (Weaver in the first film) avatar. A lot of the film's best visuals involve Kiri communing with nature.

First with the forest, then with the astonishing underwater environments.

The writing still isn't great, bogged down with simplistic environmentalist morality and a repetitive plot in which the kids get kidnapped again and again. But everything is elevated by the level of detail in the worldbuilding, both in terms of Na'vi culture and the physical environment. The underwater shots are captivating and one has to marvel at the complex, totally imagined, ecosystem carrying on with its business.

If the weather and pandemic permits, I heartily recommend seeing this in 3D if you can. The spectacle really is 90% of the cake here but what a spectacle it is.

Avatar: The Way of Water is in theatres worldwide.

Somewhere Between Everywhere

The recent trend of multiverse stories reached a high point with 2022's Everything Everywhere All at Once. The directors, known as the Daniels, use the concept as an allegory for the current culture wars in the west but the first two thirds of the film manage to be a pretty effective story regardless.

Michelle Yeoh shows again she can be a great lead as she plays Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat in the U.S. She had all kinds of aspirations, as we learn when she visits the IRS and an ornery woman with a bad haircut (Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to tell her she can't write off the professional expenses of a singer or a novelist.

Evelyn also has the responsibility of brokering a relationship between her elderly father (James Hong) and her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who has an American girlfriend. All of the conflicts in Evelyn's hectic life are exacerbated when her husband (Ke Huy Quan) is suddenly possessed by an alternate reality version of himself and teaches her how to tap into the skills of her alternate lives. She'll need all of these skills (especially martial arts, of course) to fight the villain, a young woman trying to pull the universe into some kind of interdimensional black hole.

Surprisingly, Evelyn, a conservative, is positioned as the heroine of the allegory. Her desire for the universe to remain relatively stable sure seems more reasonable than the postmodern nihilism of the film's villain. But the film is a negotiation between the two political extremes as it is a conflict between generations. Some change, certainly, is in order, but past experience does have meaning and significance.

The film kind of reminds me of Netflix's Russian Doll, which also begins by taking a well trodden Sci-Fi path in an interesting new direction, but falls apart in its final act. Everything Everywhere All at Once falls apart in exactly the same way. It's as though the writers panicked and thought the audience wouldn't get exactly the message they wanted to transmit, so they threw all of the established logic of the world they created out the window so the characters can directly info-dump their motives at each other. It gets a little tedious and if the over two hour film had been trimmed by about thirty minutes, it would have been great. As it is, it's pretty good.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is available on Showtime.

Twitter Sonnet #1647

Another chore begins a life repeat.
Again the dishes stack beside the arm.
The dull progression spells a long defeat.
The sluggish action chews pistach'yo charm.
The shrinking coin reflects a rising price.
Discussing bread, the girls dispersed to play.
To bake the dough, the mistress treats it nice.
And now is how an hour comes a day.
Aloft, the lizards fight for chimney rights.
Escaping clouds were warned of dimming skies.
The stars converse and hold the twinkle lights.
Prevention stirs the heart to wanting pies.
The crawling numbers smear the dawn and dusk.
A sightless hulk departs the waxy husk.

City of Aliens

Who's to say space aliens aren't pursuing bloody vendettas on the streets of L.A.? 1987's The Hidden offers such an explanation for a series of crime sprees throughout the city perpetrated by previously peaceful citizens. Kyle MacLachlan plays the agent sent to stop the killer. It's a surprisingly decent action film, though generically shot. There are two future Twin Peaks stars in the film. Along with MacLachlan, Chris Mulkey also appears in the film, though briefly. He plays the first in a series of hapless human hosts the alien uses for its crime sprees. The film opens strong, with Mulkey walking into a bank with a shotgun, slaughtering folks before stalking off to his ferrari with sacks of loot. There's a good car chase, the likes of which cgi has made extinct, before he's gunned down by the cops. But this is not the end. Thomas Beck (Michael Nouri) is the detective in charge of the case. He's ruffled when a man claiming to be an FBI agent called Gallagher (MacLachlan) strolls in and starts giving orders. But the two become grudging buddies throughout the film as Beck can't help coming to the conclusion that there is one killer using multiple human hosts. The film also stars Claudia Christian, who I know mainly from Bethesda games (I've been playing a lot of Skyrim recently, by the way). She plays the most interesting of the evil alien's hosts, a stripper whose breasts the alien can't stop playing with. You can't fault the alien for its taste. It also blasts most of Concrete Blonde's debut album from car stereos over the course of the film. I'd have expected Guns N' Roses or something but I dig it. The Hidden is available on The Criterion Channel.

Prisons of Metal and Mind

Andor continues to impress me. Last night was the first in another three episode arc, this one written by Beau Willimon. So this one is primarily setup, introducing new characters and situations. In the process, the show once again feels like the first true expansion of the Star Wars universe in years.

There were two big guest stars this week, both having appeared in Star Wars movies before; Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis.

Whitaker reprises his role of Saw Gerrara from Rogue One. The conversation he has with Luthen Rael was another fascinating development on the character of the Rebellion. First I liked the two of them dancing around who's responsible for Aldhani. It shows just how cautious Rael is with Saw, and with good reason. The second thing I liked about their dialogue is how vehemently Saw refuses to work with a Separatist. Of course, the character was introduced on The Clone Wars in which his sister died fighting the Separatists. But the dialogue also calls back to some of the great political episodes of The Clone Wars in which Padme reaches out to old friends among the Separatists, showing this conflict really is more complicated than good guys versus bad guys. Rael correctly points out that a Rebel effort can't be sustained with Saw's puritanism.

Serkis, meanwhile, plays Cassian's supervisor and fellow prisoner, Kino Loy, a far cry from Serkis' previous Star Wars character, Snoke. Unless he ends up being Snoke somehow, which would be kind of funny. But in the span of this episode, with all the security details and the dialogue among the prisoners, Willimon really makes this feel like a prison with a culture among its inmates and guards. I suspect it'll be the fact that Cassian keeps his mouth shut about Aldhani while in prison that convinces Rael not to have him killed.

I figure Vel and Cinta will have something to do with his escape. The brief dialogue the two have in this episode is really sweet and it occurred to me theirs is the first lesbian relationship between main characters in Star Wars. It's nice it doesn't just feel like a token inclusion, they really feel like they have something together that's really going to be tested by the war.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Flash and the Queen

I haven't said anything yet about Queen Elizabeth II's death in this blog I suppose because I figure my focus is primarily on movies, literature, and art. So I thought, how could I honour her memory? By watching her favourite movie. So I googled and, it turns out, according to multiple websites, Queen Elizabeth II's favourite movie was 1980's Flash Gordon. My first thought was, "Didn't anyone tell her about Star Wars?" But it turns out the 1980 spin on the 1930s comics and serials has a very different appeal to George Lucas' ode to that same era. I wouldn't be the first to call it campy. It shares a screenwriter with the 1960s Batman series. But I found myself thinking of The Rocky Horror Picture Show even before Richard O'Brien showed up on the planet of Robin Hoods led by Timothy Dalton.

I was surprised by the amount of sexuality in this movie Elizabeth II liked watching with her grandchildren. On meeting the villain, Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow), the female lead, Dale (Melody Anderson), is subjected to some kind of tractor beam that gives her an orgasm.

Afterwards, Flash (Sam J. Jones) says he doesn't understand what happened but that she was, "Sensational!" Later, when he sees her in the new gown Ming's given her to be his concubine, he says she looks great. Can you imagine Luke saying the same when he sees Leia in her metal bikini?

There's a sense of everyone being kind of aware that this is all a kinky slumber party with a massive budget.

The supporting cast is great. Max von Sydow is good as always and actually comes off as a calculating ruler, making me wonder if the Queen took him as an example of how not to reign. Topol as professor Zarkov is much more theatrical and entertaining than his counterpart in the old serials. But Melody Anderson is delightful because she perfectly captures the kinds of mannerisms and line deliveries of an actress from the '30s. She almost sounds like Judy Garland.

There are two stunning women in this movie trying to woo Flash, the other being Ming's daughter, Princess Aura, played by Omella Muti, who looks like an optimised hybrid of Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson.

All this and songs by Queen (the rock band, not the monarch). The movie really is a delight and I found myself grinning a lot. Her Majesty knew how to pick 'em.

Guts of the Artist

In a world without pain or infection, artists have nowhere to go but in. David Cronenberg's 2022 film Crimes of the Future is good old fashioned Cronenberg. It's weird how I can find something so comforting and disturbing at the same time. But I admired how much this movie made my skin crawl in much the way I've always admired Cronenberg's work of the '80s and '90s.

Crimes of the Future, which, aside from the title, has no relation to Cronenberg's other movie of the same name, begins with a little boy on the beach. His mother, from a nearby balcony, warns him not to eat anything out there. He doesn't, but she's not pleased when he comes back and proceeds to eat the plastic wastebasket in the bathroom.

And so she murders him, disturbed by this inhuman behaviour which, we learn later, happens to resemble surgical modifications her ex-husband, and the boy's father, had made to himself which enabled him to eat plastic. So we start to get some idea of the social and political forces at play in the future imagined by Cronenberg.

But the protagonists of the film are a pair of performance artists played by Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux. This may be one of Cronenberg's most personal films because in scenes where Mortensen's character, Saul Tenser, talks about his creative process and Lea Seydoux talks about surgery, we're reminded Cronenberg has a background in both the avante garde art scene and in surgical medicine. In this world, pain and infectious disease have been almost completely eradicated. Saul, an anomoly, does feel pain as part of a condition in which he regularly grows entirely new internal organs. In art performance pieces, Seydoux's character, Caprice, performs surgery on him and describes to an enraptured but small indie audience the nature of Saul's most recent creations. The way he talks about them fittingly mirrors the uncertain, yet personal and driven, perspective of an artist.

In some ways the story resembles other things I've read and seen, like some older issues of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirenia Digest as well as the story concept behind David Bowie's Outside album. In Cronenberg's own oeuvre, I was reminded of Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, and, of course, Videodrome. But there's a good dose of The Brood and The Fly in here, too.

In one sense, I think Cronenberg's vision with this movie reflects trends in modern society as young people increasingly indulge in more extravagant self-modification. Wealthier transgender YouTubers like Contrapoints and Jessie Gender have undergone skull shaving procedures that drastically alter the shape of their heads to appear more feminine and, living in Japan, I see plenty of people who've had work done on their eyes. But Cronenberg presents a world enraptured by biomechanical technology and transfixed by strange internal organs. The trend these days seems to be to move away from acknowledging the physical body as more and more people prefer to psychologically inhabit the internet with more honesty than the corporeal world. We live in a world of Virtual Youtubers and people who use increasingly sophisticated digital filters to totally alter their appearance. In Asian countries, young people are increasingly presenting a fantasy reality in which they and their friends are more and more resembling anime characters. Cronenberg's vision underestimates, and is likely not interested in, the youthful compulsion to be pretty.

But taken on its own merits, Crimes of the Future is a fascinating portrait of a strange alternate universe of compulsions and sex. Cinematographer Douglas Koch, standing in for the sadly absent Peter Suschitzky, provides a nice imitation of the kind of sensual shadows Suschitzky created for many of Cronenberg's previous films. The stalwart Howard Shore returns once again to provide the score, this time choosing a soft electronic sound. Mortensen and Seydoux both give fearless and generously sensuous performances. Seydoux in particular comes off as more committed than I've seen her in any other role.

As is often the case with Cronenberg at his best, he blends repulsive and attractive stimuli so seamlessly that you start to believe he really has invented a new form of sexuality.

Twitter Sonnet #1617

An angry brain controls the neighbour's flat.
The wakeful birds disrupt the nightly row.
Across the street, a dinner fills the vat.
Nutrition doomed the crispy bacon sow.
A pitcher benched could yet accrue a score.
Observing bills could float about the pool.
The only threat's an absent wild boar.
A quiet mouse could trick a singing fool.
A proper tool was melted prey in Hell.
A purple sickness crouched in foil bricks.
A poison breakfast comes for master's bell.
A passion swelled like algae turning tricks.
Configured guts accepted sex and art.
The moistened play provides an actor's part.