Star Wars: Loitering

Last night's episode of Ahsoka was supposed to be a big event. Written and directed by Dave Filoni, it also played in select cinemas in the US. It was 52 minutes long (around 42 minutes if you subtract credits). So I guess if you caught an 11am show you could still get lunch at a reasonable time. And since there's not much to distract you in the episode, you'll have plenty of time to consider what restaurant or fast food joint you want to go to.

It really is astounding that someone could get into the position where he could make an expensive, effects laden entry in a major action adventure franchise while having absolutely no instinct for crafting tension or excitement or emotional depth.

I kind of liked the moment where Jacen can hear the lightsabres in the waves. Maybe it was just because they squeezed out one drop of John Williams music for it. Though they were still unwilling to spring for "Anakin's Theme" or "The Imperial March". But the moment is followed by Hera giving instructions like they need to hurry and Filoni gives us this shot:

Just, you know. Standing around, chatting. It's a water cooler moment. How 'bout that little Force using kid? I thought he was blue-screened into the whole series, who knew he'd actually make a contribution?

And there's Ahsoka's flashback to the Clone Wars where, loitering amongst a bunch of troopers, she and Anakin hear sounds of battle nearby. What does the body language of the troopers tell us?

"You hear about those new T16s? I hear they're quite a--what was that? Oh, it was nothing."

When a whole Rebel fleet turns up for some reason to round up six AWOL X-Wings and General Syndulla, the lead X-Wing pilot has a casual chat with the commanding officer. He's supposed to be stalling for time while Ahsoka's making a desperate attempt to communicate with the space whales. Is there a hint of nervousness in his voice? Are there beads of sweat on Ahsoka's brow as she tries to focus? Nope. Everything's serene, everything's casual. Break out the Grateful Dead records.

I think Filoni sees himself as spiritual but even on that score, what is he ultimately saying in Anakin's "Choose life or death" lesson for Ahsoka? She throws her lightsabre away at the end just like Luke did, making it clear that this is just a meandering imitation of Luke's arc in the original trilogy. It's a shame because Hayden Christensen was primed and ready for a comeback.

His reflexes and showmanship with a lightsabre are still top notch and Rosario Dawson looks even slower and clumsier next to him. Maybe Filoni did put something of himself into the character after all.

Overall, this series reminds me of some of the students in my high school art class who would be very proud of themselves for drawing a really nice looking arm or leg but then be too timid to actually finish the picture, worried they'll screw up what they so impressed themselves with. But that "impressive" thing itself was really just a first, rudimentary lesson. Ahsoka always feels like it's telling us, "Nothing much might be happening now, but just you wait!"

Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

A Fish's Day Off

I continue to feel this season of Only Murders in the Building is generally better written than the previous two. Often the show got a bit cringe when it diverged to focus on a supporting character but last night's brief focus on Uma (Jackie Hoffman) was pretty good. I liked the joke about Charles evidently believing he's younger than Uma.

Last night's episode also had a great guest performance from Matthew Broderick and an even better cameo from Mel Brooks. Broderick's performance seemed more like Ferris Bueller than I've seen him in any other performance outside of that film. He had that slightly toneless quality, that hint of psychopathy that's somehow both funny and endearing.

I'm not really wild about the subplot of Mabel doing the podcast by herself. I guess it was inevitable the show would go through the "team break up" plot. But it doesn't hold much suspense. Mabel's outfit was disappointing, too.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere.

Comic Retribution

So now I've started on The Punisher, the last of the Marvel Netflix series. The first season came out in 2017 and the second in 2019. I've seen the first three episodes, all written by Steve Lightfoot, and they're pretty good. Better than Iron Fist, though that's not saying much, and about on par with Luke Cage, though not quite up to Jessica Jones or Daredevil levels.

One of the demands of the writers in the current writers' strike I really don't like is the requirement for all shows to have a minimum writing staff of--I think the number was--six. So many of the best shows have had just one or two writers, or you wish they did. Twin Peaks being the great example. Lightfoot's scripts are smart, both in showing character motivation and in arranging plot. The music is great, both in terms of Tyler Bates' original score and the rock and blues songs. The first episode made very good use of Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Luce":

I suppose Frank Castle could've been better cast. I didn't really like Jon Bernthal on The Walking Dead (a show I stopped watching in season five or six, though I promised I'd go back to it when Negan gets killed off. Has he been killed off yet?). I thought he was a little one dimensional. But the Punisher is kind of a one note character so that kind of works. I kind of wish he was bulkier, though. One review complained he's not charismatic but I'm not sure he should be.

I didn't read much of the comics. I read a couple issues when I was kid, back in the '80s or early '90s. I remember a story about the Punisher fighting a giant robot or cyborg of some kind. It must have been at a low ebb of creativity on the series that the plot had strayed so far from the premise into something so generic. The premise of a vigilante killer you're meant to root for seems inspired by the vigilante films of the '70s, the most famous of which is the Death Wish series. I've never been a fan of those thought recently I read Quentin Tarantino's book, Cinema Speculation, which has deepened my appreciation a little. I've certainly always loved Taxi Driver.

Frank Castle is no Travis Bickle and you're clearly meant to just get good, clean catharsis watching him execute paper thin gangsters. That is fun in a relatively shallow way but it's balanced a bit with mood and reflection on war trauma which the show treats a lot more intelligently than Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The Punisher is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1738

Required science dwindles down to zilch.
A savage sort responds to meaty meals.
Attending prom, the dancers sought to filch.
But savvy guards distract the dizzy heels.
It's turtle shells you see along the beach.
Don't question stones when absence proves a lie.
The slowest slug's beyond the Devil's reach.
But hands are cluttered birds across the sky.
A horse's pace announced a rapid doom.
At hand, a brace of noggins clattered loud.
As tempting shadow ghosts illume the room.
A knowing dame abides behind a shroud.
Replacement violence burns the linen night.
The oil burns the sense so Buicks fight.

Where's the Fantasy?

I'm reading two books now, which I really don't like to do, especially since I don't have as much time to read anymore. But now that my summer vacation's over and I'm back at work I need something to read on the train that I actually enjoy. I'd started reading a book called Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and I'm finding it to be a real slog. So on the train I'm reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, which is just a pleasure.

I guess I'm not the audience for Six of Crows, a 2015 fantasy novel aimed at teenagers, but normally I think I'm able to enjoy anything of any genre. There's an unintended silliness to Six of Crows. I think it's aimed at teenagers. The characters aren't allowed to swear which I didn't notice until a character said "crap" when they really obviously should've said "shit". Yet characters are also gangsters, assassins, and prostitutes who talk about killing and having sex for money. And they all use a kind of 1920s gangster lingo.

It's set in a fantasy version of Amsterdam called Ketterdam and follows a group of preternaturally talented gangsters led by a guy named Kaz and his number two, an assassin called Inej, who can silently scale a building barefoot and is able to "melt into the shadows" at will. But for some reason, all these characters are just seventeen years old. With all the gangster lingo, I'm constantly picturing Bugsy Malone as I read.

I thought, okay, maybe if they've been training since they were two years old, they could be this skilled and this well positioned in the underworld. But both Kaz and Inej reminisce about coming to the city just three or four years earlier as completely naive bumpkins. My problem with this really crystallised when I read this line from the young narrator of Kidnapped:

But I was young and spirited, and like most lads that have been country-bred, I had a great opinion of my shrewdness.

The protagonist really feels like a young man of seventeen or eighteen. I don't understand why Leigh Bardugo didn't simply write the characters older except there's this new idea that everyone needs to "see themselves" in fiction. I know I should read Six of Crows as intentionally dumb escapism. It's the kind of thing I might enjoy if I had a lot of alcohol. You know, if I dumb myself down to its level. It's not just the kids who don't act like kids, there're all kinds of logical errors in its heist plot. Like, they're supposed to be trying to break into some impregnable ice fortress and a new member of the crew tells them there's a big regular event where people from the town's entertainment district are granted access. We'd been told Kaz was basically the most feared gangster in his part of town and others so why didn't he already know about this apparently well known thing that directly involves his industry?

The book's filled with ill-considered stuff like that, not just in terms of plot but also character. It really feels like some role playing sessions I've had where, you know, everyone who's participating doesn't have the expertise or experience to play the characters they're playing, but you let it slide because none of this is going to be published and no-one's expected to enjoy any of it beyond the gratification of their own characters. But this book was published, for people to buy. And incidentally, I'm not sure the physical book is up to scratch. You see the tattered condition of the copy I have? This is not a used book, it's brand new. But I had it in my messenger bag when I went hiking a couple weeks ago and my sweat seems to have just dissolved the cover. In the space of just an hour or so. I've never seen anything like it.

This is really terrible. I wanted to read Six of Crows because I was trying to get in touch with the modern literary fantasy culture. It's the same reason I read Secret History. I'm zero for two, as far as being able to dig this stuff. Am I wet blanket? Maybe I need to open my heart. I don't know.

Skyrim is Undead

This is my latest Skyrim character, Usagi. Yeah, I'm still playing Skyrim, even though the modern gaming world is talking about Bethesda's new game Starfield. Call me a dog with a bone. Actually, a whole lot of bones, thanks to the "Ordinator Perks of Skyrim" mod. This completely revamps the Skyrim skill perks. Every skill has all kinds of interesting new abilities that add a lot of life to the game.

The Restoration skills, which used to all be healing or Turn Undead related, now have bona fide offensive spells sectioned in one branch. With these, you can make a true Necromancer character, especially when combined with skills in Conjuration related to reanimating the dead. The Bone Collector branch of perks enables you to build a small gang of skeleton warriors and mages on special altars located in various places.

A higher level perk allows you to summon an altar anywhere. The game still feels pretty balanced, too, because, since I concentrated so much on Conjuration and Restoration, my character is taken down pretty easily if someone manages to get past her bodyguards. But that's pretty rare. And I did allocate some perk points to Heavy Armour and One Handed. This mod has a skill for One Handed called "Rogue's Parry" that guarantees a critical if you attack an opponent while they're in the middle of an attack. I imagined this character as a sort of an ominous edifice, wielding a sword one handed like Darth Vader, surrounded by aggressive corpses.

I make a lot of characters I don't play through with but this one's almost to level forty. And I still haven't started the main quest. I joined the Imperial Legion and crushed the Stormcloaks, though. Many of those passionate Sons of Skyrim have been forced to serve the Empire in a grotesque afterlife at my bidding. Skyrim belongs to the dead! Huahahaha! I'm looking forward to Halloween this year, by the way.

X Sonnet #1737

Wherever chips were sold to fish she waits.
Where spiral drinks were plunked beneath the nose.
The people knew the donkey's eyes were baits.
But only tigers know where Jasmine grows.
Abscond with scones absorbing paste for blood.
Amorphous beans could never sprout a page.
But coffee ships were burning bricks of mud.
A fragile weight has tipped the lens to rage.
The insect brothers three would play for shit.
A marble game sufficed to break their thumbs.
Some rotting dogs would chew the bony bit.
But mem'ry fails the slack and toothless gums.
Reworking grins have lengthened teeth to spears.
Deserted castles rot beyond our years.

Feather Fist

I finished watching the second and final season of Iron Fist on Monday. On the whole, I found it to be a substantial improvement on the first season, though there were a couple episodes, particularly episode 7, that were so dumb I almost stopped watching. However, I thought episode 8, written by Melissa Glenn, was brilliant, so I kept going. The final two episodes (the season had only ten) were . . . well, fascinating. Partially in a "train wreck" way.

Whatever else one might say about Iron Fist, whether it was the writing or the cheap ass production values, I think it was clear the main problem was that the main character, Danny Rand, was simply miscast. Finn Jones was never meant to be the Immortal Iron Fist. People were upset about the cultural appropriation angle inherited from the comic but I think if it'd been Jason Statham, some real hardcore action guy, it would've worked. The problem is that Finn Jones comes off as such a wimp.

Meanwhile, everyone loved his sidekick. Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing was amazing. She was charismatic, had good reflexes for the action scenes, and you could believe, unlike with Jones, she had fury she sometimes had to struggle to control. So I, like a lot of people, talked about how great it would be if Colleen became the main character.

And then, in the last couple episodes of season two, they actually did it.

After the villain, Davos (Sacha Dhawan), stole the Iron Fist power from Danny Rand earlier in the season, Rand decides it should be Colleen who takes the power back from him.

Yes, it's what I wanted. Yes, if I were running the show, I'd probably do the same thing. But the actual result, watching the actual episodes where this unholy ceremony takes place . . . it was just such a pathetic spectacle. Finn Jones does seem like a wimp, and that was the problem. But it's kind of awkward watching a wimp lose everything. The part that really got me is when he and Colleen break up after she got the power and he was left without it. Maybe this isn't what the writers meant, maybe they tried everything they could to prevent it from looking like this, but I doubt there's anyone who watched that scene of her walking away from him and didn't think, "Oh, of course. He's not man enough for her anymore."

It's not just that scene. There was buildup. In the middle of the season, Davos broke Danny's leg. He gets expensive treatment but instead of doing physical therapy he asks Colleen to train him. To train him. The first season had clearly established him as the better fighter. Now, her beating him up is supposed to somehow fix his broken leg. On top of that, she says for the training to work, they need emotional distance and she forces him to call her "sensei" (and, by the way, if you know anything about Japanese culture, you know if someone demands to be called sensei, it means they're no true sensei). So the breakup comes after wimpy little Finn Jones has been beat up, emotionally rejected and, in superhero terms, fundamentally emasculated. Oof. I didn't like him, but wow. I wouldn't have wished this on my worst enemy.

The saddest part may be the final scene where we see Rand has somehow gotten himself a new Iron Firs power that enables him to supercharge pistols. The scene was clearly there just to convince Finn Jones there was some potential future for his character while everyone actually involved was gearing up for Colleen Wing's Fist the series. Man, oh, man, that was awkward. But I'm glad I saw it because now a lot of the decisions made for MCU movies and shows since then make a lot more sense.

Iron Fist is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1736

For noisy phones, the boys were pizza parts.
Assemble down, above the core and sing.
You'll burn to floss and giant candy hearts.
But only then you'll know from Crosby, Bing.
But where's the sandwich sense in mouldy ham?
We haven't swords to cut the pickle deep.
Her lovely leg was just a mighty gam.
A super flower's worth the golden keep.
We know the duck for how he walks and quacks.
The metal sphere with guns is not a moon.
But suns reply with red and blistered backs.
And yet we stumble up another dune.
With empty air, the jumping people fell.
Expressive stacks of folk create a bell.

A Slow Ka

Last night's Ahsoka had some good qualities but, on the whole, it was another insubstantial episode. The action scenes were a little better though the show's lacking in good fight choreography. I was watching the last episodes of the second season of Iron Fist on Monday and when a show is outshone by Iron Fist you know there's a problem.

The late Ray Stevenson was good as Baylan and he did his best with Filoni's bone-headed dialogue, some of which was unintentionally funny last night. When he told Ahsoka that Anakin used to talk about her and she replied, "He never mentioned you," I thought, "But you don't know his name yet." Maybe Filoni hopes you'll forget such details in the vast space between lines.

SABINE: "Don't worry about me."

AHSOKA: "I'm not."

SABINE: "Good."

AHSOKA: "Should I be?"

SABINE: "What?"

AHSOKA: "Worried."

Oy vey. Filoni could write a book, How to Fill Five Minutes with Three Seconds of Dialogue. I said, "Worried," at the screen twice before Ahsoka said it. It reminded me of the sloth DMV scene from Zootopia.

By the way, worried is used as an adjective here and worry as a verb. The dialogue should have been, "Should I?" "What?" "Worry." Then Sabine could've said, "I just said don't!" and we could have kept the meaningless merry-go-round going for another ten minutes.

Ray Stevenson was good but, boy, Sabine giving the map to him was really dumb. Why did she assume he wouldn't kill her? Why didn't he kill her? What code of honour does he have? I saw people were joking about how Ahsoka criticised Grogu for feeling attachment to Din but seems to have turned a blind eye to Sabine's fanatical devotion to Ezra. A sure sign that a guy can't write female characters is that they spend all their time obsessing with male characters and it appears to be their sole motivation.

The episode ended with Ahsoka in the World Between Worlds where she found an eerily smooth skinned Anakin. You're out of luck if you haven't seen Rebels or Clone Wars. It would've been a lot cooler when Hayden Christensen called her "Snips" if people talked at the same natural pace on this show they did on Clone Wars.

I'm not a fan of the World Between Worlds introduced on Rebels. It's basically a way for characters to cheat death, another way to lower the stakes, and for the show to wallow in nostalgia. But I guess that's the name of the game here.

Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

Only Goldfish in the Toilet

Last night's Only Murders in the Building felt like they were trying really hard to make Steve Martin funny. And he was funny. But it was a little weird how hard they tried. Also, Selena Gomez wore another sexy outfit.

Meanwhile, Martin Short was meeting up with an old friend, another theatre director. He finds Jerry (Peter Bartlett) hiding in "The Phantom of the Opera's dorm room," a chamber located somewhere in the rafters of the theatre. The two played well off each other. It was another scene that made it feel like Martin Short is owning this season. I'm not complaining about Selena Gomez's outfits, though.

That new boyfriend of hers sure seems like he's the killer. Which means he probably isn't. If he isn't, I'm kind of hoping he gets killed off so I can have Mabel to myself. I mean, so that she can be with Martin Short and Steve Martin. As private investigators. Of crime.

By the way, the episode was called "Ghost Light", the title of one of my favourite episodes of Sylvester McCoy era Doctor Who. This after I had a dream linking Sylvester McCoy and Only Murders in the Buildin. Coincidence? Yeah, probably.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ elsewhere.

X Sonnet #1735

For noisy phones, the boys were pizza parts.
Assemble down, above the core and sing.
You'll burn to floss and giant candy hearts.
But only then you'll know from Crosby, Bing.
But where's the sandwich sense in mouldy ham?
We haven't swords to cut the pickle deep.
Her lovely leg was just a mighty gam.
A super flower's worth the golden keep.
We know the duck for how he walks and quacks.
The metal sphere with guns is not a moon.
But suns reply with red and blistered backs.
And yet we stumble up another dune.
A pigeon's still a form of flying bird.
There's meaning more than's found in any word.

Piece for Peace

I've watched the first two episodes of Netflix's live action One Piece. I can't help wondering who this show is for despite the fact that it's apparently massively popular, being one of the most successful shows to ever debut on Netflix, ranking with Stranger Things and Wednesday. It certainly must have a built in audience since the anime TV series has over 1000 episodes, the manga is even longer, and there are several feature films. I saw one of the movies and I wrote about how boring it was last year. The first five or six episodes of the anime TV series I found to be a little better. That's the way with most long running anime series. They get maybe one season where the creators can be inventive, where interesting characters can meet, important characters can die or get significant new powers, etc. But once something becomes really popular, all the characters have to be frozen in a particular stage of development.

I guess hoping to avoid a disaster like the live action Cowboy Bebop, the live action One Piece seems at times to be blindly faithful to the original except where budgetary restraints come in. The bit where Luffy is carried by a giant bird before finally getting a proper introduction to Nami is only passingly referring to in dialogue. But the show keeps the basic aesthetic as well as the underlying rules of the fantasy world.

And that's a problem. When I watch the anime, I feel like I'm watching something for kids aged 13 and under. But the Netflix show has bloody severed limbs and cursing. By the time of the movie I saw, any hint of graphic violence seemed to be absent from One Piece. Early episodes of the anime TV series have a couple actual deaths of unnamed characters. Meanwhile, it's a world where sex doesn't seem to exist, despite creator Oda Eiichiro evidently getting hornier and hornier over the years.

A sure sign Oda had limited input in the live action series is the absence of bikinis. Press says he had a lot of input in his executive producer role but press said the same thing about Watanabe Shinichiro and Cowboy Bebop, only for Watanabe to say he had basically no control after the show ended up being a dud.

The absence of sex is only one of the things I find disturbing about the show. Yeah, I say disturbing because the show is fundamentally about loyalty and morality, about what it means to be a good person. But every dramatic proclamation of morals feels very hollow when the story is so hazy on what the stakes are. Luffy wants to be a pirate who doesn't steal or murder but he and his crew apparently don't have to worry about finding alternative means of survival. If pirates don't steal or kill, it's not clear what they actually do aside from searching for the fabled treasure called "One Piece".

Inaki Godoy is very charming as Luffy and I appreciated how much he reminded me of Errol Flynn. But even Errol Flynn's Robin Hood was fighting Prince John because the ordinary people of English were starving. There was a sense of necessities for survival. The live action One Piece reminds me a little of the Russian Brother series of films, a kind of fascist story about a kindly strong man who goes around beating up bad guys.

One Piece is available on Netflix.

Meet the New Boss . . .

A student comes to school and pits himself against the local despotic regime. This all leads to Massacre at Central High, a 1976 exploitation film. And political allegory, I'm sorry to say, but it does have weird and fun qualities outside its tedious "insight".

David (Derrel Maury) is a quiet but oddly fearless guy. He immediately stands up to three bullies pushing around a kid by the lockers.

Things escalate. David stops the bullies attempting to gang rape two girls so they retaliate by crushing his leg under a car. Then he goes on a murder spree. All that's well and good, but once the bullies are out of the way, all the other students start to act just like them and I rolled my eyes as the film set about making its vapid point.

Sure, there are plenty of examples of tyrants being overthrown to be replaced by people just as bad or worse. But what does this movie actually have to say about it? One of the girls David saved from rape, played by Rainbeaux Smith, echoes the bullies who said, "All she needs is a good fuck." She says of the librarian not cooperating with her and her friend, "All he needs is a good fuck." So they're planning to gang rape him? Yeah, that's plausible (you sense my sarcasm, right?). Poor little Rainbeaux Smith couldn't assault a Care Bear.

It is always nice to see Rainbeaux Smith. Of course she's naked as often as possible, including a long, gratuitous shot of her walking around a campsite and finding dynamite.

The less you think about the allegory, the more enjoyable the film is. For some reason, the director decided not to show any parents or teachers so the school is just a place where teenagers gather to carry books and eat lunch. It actually seems really nice. The guys wear really nice shirts in this movie, I wanted every single one of them.

Massacre at Central High is available on The Criterion Channel as part of this month's new High School Horror collection.

Jimmy Buffett

I wouldn't describe myself as a fan of Jimmy Buffett, who passed away on Friday, but I found myself watching videos of him last night after reading of his death. My parents listened to him and there's a fair bit of nostalgia associated with his sound. While I listen to a lot of '60s and '70s rock, Buffett seems uniquely connected to my parents' generation and so he sounds like my childhood. I do also have two vivid memories concerning him.

One of them was in a high school English class where, for reasons I can't remember, we students were tasked with sharing a favourite song or song for some reason meaningful to us. I remember one girl, whose name I didn't know then and don't know now, who was the type who'd be gregarious in her group of friends but giggling and shy when in front of an audience. She got up in front of the class, red faced and giggling, and promised us we were going to love the song she had to share. Despite her shyness, she seemed absolutely confident in this and from her giggling I could tell we were meant to find the song absolutely hysterical. She played for us Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise":

I remember the whole class listening stone-faced, even the teacher, as the girl continued to awkwardly giggle intermittently. I guess some of us might have been compelled to give her a courtesy laugh but I think everyone was busy trying to figure out what the punchline of the song was meant to be.

The other memory I have is from four or five years ago when I was volunteering at the San Diego Maritime Museum, which is a collection of antique and replica ships, the crown jewel of which is the Star of India, a barque constructed in 1863. One day, one of the supervisors told a group of us assembled volunteers about the time Jimmy Buffett made an impromptu visit to the Star of India. The supervisor said he'd invited Buffett to climb one of the shrouds. Buffett reluctantly climbed up a little ways and came back down. Mainly what I remember is the relish with which the supervisor told this uneventful tale, as though the fact that Buffett hadn't been willing to climb to the first trestletrees proved he was no true seaman. The guy probably had every Jimmy Buffett album but was so keen to squeeze his brief celebrity encounter for all it was worth that he was willing to talk shit about the man to a group of strangers.

Anyway. I watched some Jimmy Buffett videos last night. I enjoyed this appearance on Letterman:

X Sonnet #1734

Reflected staves again commence the match.
A gallant hand extends to greater blades.
Above the deck, a restless chicken hatched.
As tiny larvae fill the verdant glades.
With monkeys making checks, the bill was green.
For after growing spuds, the players ate.
A tricky game is Garden Ball we've seen.
The flowers stand for bees to swallow bait.
Abandoned trucks escort a timid light.
Responding pots of death arrive to pout.
Intensely angry clouds reject the kite.
Her shower takes a year for lack of drought.
The daily burgers dropped to only two.
A wasted drink has lost its merry hue.

A "Fetch" is a Mirror Demon

I watched 2004's Mean Girls last night, the first time in fifteen or so years. Looks like it'll be twenty next year. Who'd have thought it would have had such a long life? Wikipedia has a list of ways it's influenced culture, including this surprising tidbit:

In June 2018, the official Twitter account of the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. made headlines when it responded to a tweet by Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, calling Israel "a malignant cancerous tumor", with an animated GIF of the "Why are you so obsessed with me?" quote from Mean Girls.

It's not like it's the first movie to show teens being catty or people being vain or manipulative. But it is very rare for a film to acknowledge this stuff as a normal part of high school life. Or adult life. I especially like the part where Cady, Lohan's character, talked about how she was desperate to please Regina (Rachel McAdams) at the same time she was bitterly focused on destroying her. The movie does a really good job showing a cycle of resentment coexistent with genuine human affection.

Even more than backstabbing behaviour, the peculiar mixture of love and hate is rarely portrayed in fiction these days. The greatest flaw in Mean Girls is that it has a happy ending, where it's suggested Cady somehow solves the whole psychological problem for the entire school. The movie would've been just about perfect if it ended with things still festering, the girls being driven further apart even as they learned to smile more easily as they kill. And maybe, in one tiny positive note, Cady would have matured enough to know just to opt out of it as long as she could. God knows people are forced to play these games in the workplace. This is why I recommend watching movies.

Mean Girls is available on Netflix in Japan.

Another Mountain

Last night I dreamt Sylvester McCoy was my uncle and he was taking me on a tour of New York City. I suppose it's because McCoy's birthday was recently and I was admiring New York in Only Murders in the Building.

Yesterday, the last day of August, I decided to go up Mount Amanokagu, one of the three famous mountains of Kashihara, the Yamato Sanzan.

So now I've been up all three, though it's been a year or two since I went up Miminashi. Maybe I'll go again this weekend. Here's a map at Amanokagu showing the three mountains:

The grid shows Fujiwara City, the capital of Japan from 694 to 710, with Fujiwara Palace being the dark square in the middle.

Amanokagu is 500 feet tall, smaller than Unebi but a little taller than Miminashi, which surprised me. I felt like I got to the top of Amanokagu much faster.

There was a little shrine at the top. I saw a guy there with a big green bug net. A popular summer activity in Japan is bug catching. There's also an insect museum near Amanokagu. I think I had my fill of gnats yesterday but I was heartened to see plenty of spider webs.

Here's Mount Unebi from Amanokagu:

Here's Miminashi:

My glamorous selfie:

The Ambling Ahsoka, Further Down the Trail

Ahsoka episode three was a brief flight covering little ground. There were some things I liked, though, and a couple things I thought, in addition to being bad, were kind of curious.

Top of that list would be Hera's son, Jacen. Last week, one of the things people complained about in the first two episodes was the absence of Hera's son, last seen at the end of Star Wars: Rebels. I didn't complain about it because I honestly forgot all about him and didn't care very much when I was reminded.

But it's so odd the way he was shoehorned into the third episode I kind of think Dave Filoni had forgotten about him, too. First we hear Mon Mothma ask Hera about Jacen--which makes it seem even stranger that Ahsoka and Sabine never inquired about him as presumably they're closer to Hera than Mon Mothma. And then we get an actual scene with the kid.

It feels so perfunctory, so much like an afterthought. I was tempted to think it was shot over the past week after all the reviews pointed out Jacen's absence but surely that's not possible with the actor's strike going on. But I bet it was added some time late in the production.

This was also the first time we saw Genevieve O'Reilly playing Mon Mothma in a show set after the original trilogy. I'd have thought they'd have made more effort to make her look like Caroline Blakiston. They could have at least changed her hair. She actually looked more like Blakiston in Rogue One. But I guess I don't mind O'Reilly taking over the role. She was excellent on Andor though perhaps her presence serves as another reminder of how much better the writing was on that show.

The New Republic politicians mostly appeared to sneer at Hera for wanting to follow a trail of evidence leading to Imperial Remnant activity. She provokes their disdain because the trail is loosely related to a friend of hers who went missing. Boy, that was lame. I was reminded that in the old Expanded Universe books, the New Republic was also portrayed as immobilised by bureaucratic disagreements and a belief that the Imperial remnants no longer presented a serious threat. I remember finding that tedious and silly then, too, though at least it turned out a spy was at the bottom of it.

Lately, I've been thinking about this interview with George Lucas and Dave Filoni (it starts at around 9:20):

One of the striking things about it is that, even though it's heavily edited, George Lucas has nothing nice to say about Filoni and a couple of Filoni's remarks are critical of Lucas, like where he implies Lucas was being foolish for making episodes of The Clone Wars about banking. It's a little ironic since some of the best parts of Mon Mothma's subplot on Andor involved banking. Filoni says kids wouldn't be interested in it, and that may be true, but kids aren't the only audience for Star Wars. Even setting aside the fact that people who were kids in the '70s, '80s, and '90s are adults now, a lot of the people lined up for Star Wars in 1977 were teens and adults. So I reject this idea that Star Wars is just for kids.

Another interesting part of the interview is the story about how Filoni frequently had to explain to Lucas what he was trying to do and Lucas frequently had to tell him that his, Filoni's, ideas were not translating onto the screen. That sounds like it would be good advice about now when it comes to the relationship between Ahsoka and Sabine.

We still have no idea what the big fight was that drove these two apart. There's not even a hint of the kind of tension you'd expect in the aftermath of such a rupture. They're just blandly polite to each other.

I did kind of like the training scene (though the show's weak fight choreography was again in evidence). Mainly it was for David Tennant as Huyang.

You could say he's kind of playing a deluxe C3PO. Few people argue Anthony Daniels is an especially good actor (Alec Guinness certainly wasn't impressed) though he works in a broad role like C3PO and oddly kind of makes the case that Star Wars droids aren't sentient. However, David Tennant is, I believe, one of the greatest actors of his generation (watch his Hamlet if you haven't already). Some of the nuance he puts on his lines on Ahsoka make them almost delicious. And, as usual, Filoni seems to loosen up when he's writing male characters.

The score on Ahsoka is good and I like the planet with the red trees. Is it supposed to be Dathomir? If only Filoni could write Ahsoka and Sabine. A lot of people are criticising all of the unnatural pauses. I think Filoni may be trying to emulate Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West.

For one thing, Once Upon a Time in the West isn't universally beloved (though I love it). It's not even usually considered Sergio Leone's best (though it's generally in the top three). But I would say Once Upon a Time in the West is more effective because the motives behind the sparse dialogue are clearer and the stakes are obvious enough that real tension hangs in the pauses.

It also should be noted that Once Upon a Time in the West isn't a kids' movie. I certainly wouldn't expect a three year old to sit still for long lingering shots of Jack Elam's face. So another part of Filoni's problem may be that he's not even clear on what he's trying to do.

Ahsoka is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1733

Essential buttons pay for houses cheap.
The demon mirror cries to see itself.
Through woods of wire hair the kittens creep.
A pastry box contains a captive elf.
Her eyes bananas called for sporty splits.
Explaining cows has led to foreign zoos.
It's not for eyes the summer cooler spits.
But time is short for paying fruitless dues.
As danger mornings mount the nights extend.
A floppy fist rewards the wimpy man.
As lousy lines were gathered blanks descend.
A vapid kid regressed to rusty pan.
Another zebra ball has knocked the night.
She lifeless flipped through space in lifeless flight.