The Lost Pumpkin

I found an orange pumpkin! Two, in fact. It's not really a bona fide American orange pumpkin, I guess, it seems to be a freak among the normal Japanese green pumpkins. It tasted like the green pumpkins--I boiled it with some udon and cabbage. But it looked nice and autumnal on the kitchen table.

The photo's actually from last month but it scarcely feels more autumnal now, halfway through September. We're in the middle of a heat wave here in Kashihara, Japan, in fact. I suppose that's nothing new but September 15 is Felt Hat Day, the day men used to switch from wearing straw hats to felt hats. And I was definitely not up to making that change. The fact that the day is located on September 15 let's us know there was a time and place when it was generally reasonable to switch to a warmer hat.

This is no weather to have your head wrapped in felt. If you ever see pictures of real archaeologists in the field, you generally see them wearing straw or canvas hats, not felt like Indiana Jones wore through South American jungles and African deserts. Felt sure looks a lot better on camera, though.

I'm spoiling for fall. A few days ago, I watched Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow again. I often want to revisit that film around this time of year though I tend to like the script less every time I watch it. I guess it's in keeping with Burton's Hammer and Roger Corman influences that the story diverges so much from the source material but the Christianity vs. Science vs. Magic theme feels increasingly dated. Still, if they'd gone with the original story, they couldn't have had any of the cool Headless Horseman action scenes. I love the Danny Elfman score, the cinematography, the production design, and the costumes. Christina Ricci looks gorgeous and Johnny Depp gives a good performance.

Ichabod Rides Again

I showed the Sleepy Hollow part of Ichabod and Mr. Toad to two classes of first year students to-day. One class was pretty quiet for it but I was really pleased with some big laughs and gasps from the second class. I already knew they were a particularly congenial, rowdy bunch of kids and maybe it shouldn't surprise me they were more receptive to old fashioned, zany American cartoon humour than some other classes.

It does get me thinking what a strange thing American cartoons were. The kids were saying, "Sugoi" and "sugei" (amazing) when Ichabod was stuffing whole pies in his mouth or swiftly avoiding Brom Bones' punches. Yeah, I realised, these are superhuman feats. It's weird how we tend not to think of it.

I took the opportunity to explain some western superstitions before the film so they understood when Ichabod avoided walking under the ladder and guided the black cat out of his path.

I showed part of Alice in Wonderland to second year students last week, the part where Alice grows big in the White Rabbit's house. Having shown it to a few silent student audiences, I was pleased to hear a group of girls really get into it. One girl laughed at just the right moment when Alice opens the shutters to peer out the window in giant form. I've discovered this girl's English is very strong.

"Why are you so good at English?" I asked her.

She shrugged, "I don't know!"

I followed up with one of my standard questions; "What did you eat for breakfast this morning?"

"Yoghurt, a chocolate doughnut, and hot cocoa!"

I'm used to kids just saying, "Rice," or, "Bread". The more I talk to her, the more I think she's the right audience for Alice in Wonderland. She's also a natural leader, like River Phoenix in Stand by Me. The other girls look up to her and I saw her comforting a girl who was crying after a difficult test. I'm continually amazed by the students I meet on this job.

Saved by the Book

A few months ago, I was reading Francois Truffaut's book-length interview with Alfred Hitchcock and was reminded of the scene in 1938's The 39 Steps where Robert Donat's character's life is saved because a hymn book in his pocket stops a bullet.

Alfred Hitchcock: . . . What I like in The Thirty-nine Steps are the swift transitions. Robert Donat decides to go to the police to tell them that the man with the missing finger tried to kill him and how the Bible saved his life, but they don't believe him and suddenly he finds himself in handcuffs. How will he get out of them?

After reading this, I seemed to come across again and again what TV Tropes calls the "Pocket Protector". I can recall three movies I watched this year by name that have it--Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Plunkett and Macleane, and Rainy Dog. The first two of those movies were both released in 1999 and were set in the 18th century while Rainy Dog came out in 1997 and was set in contemporary Taipei.

Maybe it's a measure of the religious leanings of Western audiences that over sixty years after a hymn book saved the hero in The 39 Steps it's a book of witchcraft that saves the hero in Sleepy Hollow while a villain is saved in Plunkett and Macleane by a nice thick bible. Or maybe it's just a sign of the kind of movies I end up watching.

It's a villain that's saved in Rainy Dog and it's by a cigarette lighter, much like a character in 1992's Hard Boiled. Asian films seem to prefer a concealed metal object over a book.

I feel like I've run across more instances of this plot device lately but I can't remember them. Maybe it's a sign I should carry something heavy in my breast pocket? Maybe it's just a sign I should remind everyone to read.

Twitter Sonnet #1177

A dream assembled markets for the street.
A ticking watch was dropped in bourbon straight.
Reflections made the face a very beet.
The early worm arose so very late.
A cagey coat contained the heart and ribs.
The apple fell across from heated snow.
Galoshes stayed where steps were calling dibs.
In crystal ice is more than atoms know.
Regarded glasses turn the eye again.
A name resembled clumps of tangled hairs.
The elbows knew the knees were real akin.
For joints as links were chained to bears.
In pockets kept beside the heart's a song.
The lighter's smaller book was very strong.

A New Old Hollow

The beautiful shots composed for the opening credits alone would be reason enough to watch 1999's Sleepy Hollow but there are more reasons than that. It's not my favourite adaptation of Washington Irving's famous story but it's so fundamentally different that it doesn't seem right to call it an adaptation at all, more like a wildly divergent pastiche. Taken on its own merits, it's a prime example of Tim Burton in the best era of his career; its art direction, set design, costumes, and cinematography are gorgeous and perfectly suit the story; and it has one of Danny Elfman's best scores. It's also a good action film and sits beside Aliens as a great blend of action and horror.

One of the biggest differences between the film and the story is in Ichabod Crane himself. Unlike the odd, physically unattractive man Crane is described as being in Irving's story, this fellow is Johnny Depp when that name belonged to a beautiful man whose mannerisms onscreen evoked vulnerability and sensitivity. This Crane is a proto-forensics pathologist, there to solve murders with brilliantly progressive scientific method and philosophy, his abundance of gifts and accomplishments tempered just enough by a natural cowardice that of course only makes him more charming. Crane in Irving's story is unusual but not extraordinary--he's a school teacher from a different part of the country, from a community with different roots than the provincial Dutch inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow, these differences proving crucial to the events of the story. And instead of being motived by duty and altruism, the Crane of the short story is driven by greed.

I've always felt Irving based Crane on Falstaff, particularly on Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where he had similar thirsts for women and wealth. But, of course, the itinerant schoolmaster can hardly be blamed for wanting a stable home instead of being forced to impose on the hospitality of his pupils' parents. Is this a motive people are no longer able to identify with or is it too close to home?

Burton shifts all the greed over to a conspiracy among the inhabitants of the town, an impressive collection of actors that includes Michael Gambon as Baltus, Jeffrey Jones, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gough, and Ian McDiarmid.

And Christina Ricci plays Katrina, now a witch to help make her the thematic counterbalance to Crane's devotion to reason. Depp and Ricci look terrific together, especially in those costumes. Ricci's style of performance is appropriately more ethereal than Depp's, her thoughts not easy to read on her face while his seems to communicate everything.

The film could have done without some of the plot obstacles placed between them. I like the boy (Marc Pickering) who becomes Crane's assistant but I would've really liked to have seen Ichabod and Katrina spend more time working together. But maybe her absence makes the viewer's heart grow fonder. In any case, the pacing works really well and the Headless Horseman is a really menacing figure, the movie remains a more than worthy Halloween watch.