The Killer May be Close! Or Someone Totally Unconnected! Or, Well, Anyone!

For years, anime fans have told me, "You need to watch Berserk! It's brilliant and bloody, no holds barred action!" Why anime fans are so hung up on a 1967 Joan Crawford movie, I don't know, but Wednesday night I did watch Berserk! and found it was a film with an impressively high body count, some of the victims murdered pretty gruesomely. The film is almost entirely devoid of subtext or any thematic intention with one of the most arbitrary twist endings I've ever seen in a movie. But I enjoyed it.

Crawford plays Monica Rivers, the ringmistress and part owner of a travelling circus in England. Michael Gough plays her business partner, Dorando, who's really effectively incensed by Monica's callous reaction to the death of a tightrope walker at the beginning of the film. It's not long before Gough's character becomes the second victim which naturally makes Monica the prime suspect.

It would have been nice if Gough had had more to do but I would have traded all of his screen time for more Diana Dors who has a small part as Matilda, a magician's assistant.

Dors, who was 35 at the time, was considered no longer suitable for the sexy leading lady role, something I vehemently disagree with but which she apparently took in stride. But it makes it particularly ironic that this movie stars Joan Crawford, one of the great anomalies of Hollywood history, who here, in a movie that did well at the box office, was playing the woman every man in the film wanted at the age of 63. Of course, she fought bitterly hard to get those kinds of roles. And she is really good in this--calculating and yet vulnerable, a good person to study as you find yourself wondering if she's the killer or if she's to be the final victim.

But if you're looking for any kind of solid story about Monica or Matilda or anyone, look for another movie, because beyond establishing that a lot of guys want to sleep with Monica, that Matilda is jealous of her, and that several people think Monica's the killer, not much happens until the end of the film when the killer's revealed and the credits role. We then don't get to spend any time with any of the characters reacting to the revelation.

The meandering quality of the story is appropriately accompanied by footage of acts by the actual circus performers who participated in the film. They're pretty amazing, as much as I deplore the abominable treatment the elephants, horses, and lions probably suffered. My favourite was a trapeze act where an upside-down man holds a rope in his teeth while at the other end a woman hangs spinning in a foetal position. Now those are some jaw muscles.

Serfdom of the Zombies

What happens when you don't have a good ruling class? You have a bad ruling class. These are the two options presented in 1966's The Plague of the Zombies, a Hammer film which influenced the later Night of the Living Dead in establishing the familiar concept of the zombie as a mindless walking corpse hungry for human flesh. But this film maintains the Voodoo roots of the zombie that characterised most cinematic portrayals prior to the late 1960s but bears the class subtext that distinguishes media concerning zombies to-day. Structured like a mystery, it also has a pretty adorable pair of protagonists.

Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell) might not have gotten involved at all if his playful and morally strident daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) hadn't opened the letter he tossed aside and insisted he read it. They learn that Sir James' former student, Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) is dealing with a strange new disease in the little village where he's become local doctor and, like Dr. Seward to Van Helsing, is imploring the aid of his mentor.

Sir James and Sylvia are wonderful together in the first part of the film--she the one who always insists they ask questions and investigate, he always a bit more reserved but genuinely respectful of her opinion. The film gradually relegates her into a fully victim role but the two of them have a really charming chemistry in the first part.

Sylvia's victimhood is part of the film's preoccupation with the traditional English class system, though. In a coach on their way to the village, Sylvia and her father see the familiar red coats of young gentry on a fox hunt. Pitying the creature, Sylvia tells the boys the fox went one way when it really went the other. They figure it out somehow later, kidnap her, and are deciding who gets to rape her first when Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson) shows up and by his very presence seems to make the men leave. That's the kind of authority a squire commands.

He's not the only one seen utilising class privilege. When Sir James and Dr. Tompson are caught by police digging up a coffin, they evade arrest largely because they learn James is Sir James. And, of course, the fact that coffin's empty complicates matters.

The presence of Voodoo in the film is already tenuous and it's not surprising Night of the Living Dead would take the short cut past it right to inexplicable walking corpses. We see Haitians engaged in ritual and the aristocratic perpetrator wearing a mask but for all this movie has to do with Haitian Voodoo, accurate or inaccurate, the spellcasters might as well have been banshees or Furies.

The climax features some action Andre Morell isn't terribly inspiring participating in but both he and Carson are very good in the film.

He Belongs to Womankind

Mike likes girls but only in bulk. Or "Smorgasboard" to put it in the term of one of the film's songs, none of which have lingered much in the mainstream consciousness despite all being Elvis Presley songs, the star of 1966's Spinout. An unambitious, mildly amusing story in bright colours packages fairly enjoyable performances by Presley.

He's a lead singer in a rock band, he's a star race car driver, he's played by Elvis Presley: it's no wonder all women, rich and poor, young and old (well, twenty-five), are irresistibly drawn to him. Including his drummer, Les (Deborah Walley), who's miffed that everyone thinks of her as a "fella". She constantly reminds everyone she's a girl.

Being a "fella" hasn't stopped everyone from assuming she'll take all the cooking duties for the band in their cute little soundstage camp sites with gumdrop tents. No strident feminist figure is Les--neither is the successful author, Diana St. Clair (Diana McBain), the worldly twenty five year old who's started stalking Mike because she considers him the perfect man.

I'm not entirely clear on why he's perfect, despite the qualities I've already enumerated, but it's Elvis so we take it as read. Rounding out the top three women pursuing him is Cynthia Foxhugh (Shelley Fabares), the spoiled rich girl whose father's chagrined when he can't pay off Mike to break a previous engagement, for any amount of money, to play for his daughter's birthday. This is where Mike's principles come in, I guess. It had been a long time since the people writing this movie had been struggling, I think. Or maybe it's just the impersonal nature of the work.

Elvis seems half asleep throughout the film, nowhere near as good as he is in King Creole. The songs are mostly forgettable despite Presley's matchless performance though I kind of like "I'll Be Back".

Dig those bold colours. Elvis and his band wore variations of that same tuxedo coat, double breasted vest, and solid silk ascot for most of the film. It looked nice but a little variation might have been better.

Twitter Sonnet #921

A grid that's slowly turning green begins
To rise in batter baked in steel or lead,
To cage a hand that grasps and scratch amends
A crumbling rock that roasts in bones long dead.
The distance has enlarged the coffee cup
Beyond the bounds of mint and woven crate
Imported where the rallied reps can sup
Without the gaze in spirals hurling bait.
An Ewok rug adorns the loo only
At dusk, replaced by empty air before
The matins service stikes the old lonely
Dominican who waits under the floor.
A two to one was twelve to one who stopped.
A breeze repels from peaks they've never topped.

Ash vs. Ass

Well, Ash vs. Evil Dead has certainly raised the bar on gross out on television. What a time we live in--earlier this year Game of Thrones gave us the best battle sequence ever in a television series, and now we have arguably the grossest moment ever in a television series*. And it was a good episode in addition to pushing the bounds of decency.

Another thing this episode demonstrated to me is that it could be improved a lot by removing Ruby and Pablo. Kelly is still not a very well defined character but it was a pleasure seeing how much fun actress Dana DeLorenzo had playing her in this episode. And, really, Ash started out without very much definition, too, and he came to be defined by Bruce Campbell's performance so it would be pretty fitting if DeLorenzo built the character this way. She manages to make the old bit about a soda stuck in the vending machine funny and just the exasperated way she says, “fuuuuck,” is great.

Pablo's issue with hallucinations is kind of interesting but both his pining for Kelly and the not-racist-actually-racist-but-not-racist humour about his heritage are both generally tedious. Anyway, in true Evil Dead tradition, the lifespans of most of the characters ought to be pretty short.

I'm continuing to enjoy Lee Majors as Ash's father--the dialogue between Majors and Ash's former teacher (and lover) was funny. I also loved Kelly and Ash mocking the kids in the street even though I knew immediately it was going to come back to haunt them. But the centrepiece of the episode was really the culmination of Ash cutting up bodies in the morgue.

The battle at the end may be the closest thing to a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts" we'll ever get. Thank the gods. Poor Ash. Obviously we knew the dead were evil but this evil? I am far from squeamish--this is the first time I can remember, in thirty years, cringing while I watched something. So thanks, Ash vs. Evil Dead, for making me feel again. I'm definitely human and capable of emotion. And all the comedy afterwards--Kelly riding with her head out the window in a futile attempt to escape the smell--was also great.

*Maybe I shouldn't be challenging people to prove me wrong on this.

Lurking in the Spotlight

He's just standing behind her. Why, during the debate, did I suddenly see so many people on Twitter comparing shots like this to screenshots of Michael Myers standing behind Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween? Sure, people hate Trump and it's October, but there's something more to it than that. It resonates. Just now I saw this image on Caitlin R Kiernan's Facebook:

The Daily Mail, of all publications, has published a long list of different tweets and posts along these same lines.

It isn't normal body language for a debate. Typically in the town hall debates, when one participant is speaking, the other participant does what Clinton did last night--sit down and make notes. Then there's the fact that he's twice her size, he's a man and she's a woman, and the debate came at the end of a weekend where everyone had been talking about a leaked tape where Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. I saw a few articles that talked about how it was very unlikely that Trump would actually assault Clinton during a debate. But clearly, the possibility was on a lot of people's minds.

But there's even more to it than that. The stalking movie killer behind his intended victim fits on an even deeper level. To explain why, I want to talk first about the way such a monster works in a horror movie.

In the original Halloween, Michael Myers is a character we learn very little about, a fact that's emphasised by his mask. He wears a detailed replica of a human face and it presents to us a lack of emotion. That Myers wears this mask instead of a ski mask or hood is an expression on Myers part. This is what he wants to present to victims and bystanders as he attacks without hesitation.

In the television adaptation of Stephen King's It, Tim Curry plays a creature who presents a double counterfeit of human features, too. On one level, the creature pretends to look like Tim Curry, and on top of that there's the clown makeup, exaggerated human features which also have the effect of distorting and hiding human emotion. In the case of both monsters, neither seems to question its right to kill people. Michael Myers is introduced as a child and the impression is that, when he grows up, he's essentially unchanged; Pennywise, the clown from It, is essentially an animal. Both have the semblance of adult human being but the horror is in the discovery of an interior that lacks a capacity for empathy and an unashamed urge to satisfy its needs at the expense of others.

Donald Trump is a counterfeit presidential candidate. As Clinton observed in the debate, normally she would have a Republican opponent she would disagree with but whom she would consider basically competent. Trump has repeatedly shown ignorance of foreign policy and an extraordinary arrogance, comfortable asserting that he knows more than generals, confidently asserting that climate change is a hoax, and, of course, unwavering in his insistence that Obama wasn't born in the United States. It doesn't matter what people who have trained and studied matters say, he has supreme confidence that he knows better.

This is bad. This was funny in the first debate. It became scarier in the second debate when applied to the dynamics of a physical relationship.

Before the debate, Trump had arranged a press conference where women who've accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment spoke. This was a strategy not cooked up only by Trump himself, I feel sure, particularly after hearing an interview with Rudy Giuliani where the former New York Mayor said it's pointless to discuss the issue of sexual wrongdoing because both candidates are equally bad. Then I understood--some strategist at the Trump camp said, there's no stopping the damage from Trump's tape, all he can do is try to bring Clinton down to the same level. Of course, this has the big glaring flaw in that Hillary Clinton would be seen by all but the most sociopathic as a victim of Bill Clinton's affairs, not a collaborator. It's a startlingly antiquated tactic to lay blame on a wife for a husband's dishonour.

But the way this contributed to the first stage of why the debate made me feel sick watching it is that it was clear that Clinton and Trump didn't belong in the room together presented as equals. Hillary Clinton, a consummate professional who's been in politics and public office virtually all her life, and Donald Trump, who has misappropriated charity donations, bragged about not paying taxes, and bragged about committing sexual assault. The very fact of Clinton having to be in this situation was unnerving. Then, on top of that, Trump clearly didn't understand what he'd done wrong and didn't care.

This is why the moderators sounded so nervous. Anderson Cooper sounded on the verge of tears the whole evening because there's something really frightening about this guy who can't even respond to Cooper's repeated question about whether or not he understands what he bragged about was sexual assault. The "locker room banter" excuse not only becomes thin, it becomes an absurd caricature, like clown makeup or a mask. And Trump is clearly getting angry because he doesn't understand the reality other people live in and he wants to force his version of reality onto everyone else.

He becomes angry instead of frightened. The fact that people start to sense this malevolence makes them frightened and this ends up in a contrast between a confident psychopath (let's just call him what he is) and the people who are unsure. And confidence is more charismatic. That's why Trump was getting laughs and applause. Which further gives the sickening impression of the legitimising of the grossly illegitimate. It takes to a new level the feeling that Trump's candidacy has inspired all along, that no matter how bad he is, he continues to succeed, which makes every rational reaction to him seem irrational. Trump is gaslighting the whole country.

Great Shot, Alpha One, Primary Mission Objectives Complete, the Emperor Will be Pleased

I was all set to struggle to find the grains of Star Wars goodness through the usual irritating Disney filter last night but I was surprised to find myself genuinely delighted by the new episode of Star Wars: Rebels. Why? TIE Fighter!

No, not a TIE Fighter but the great Star Wars video game from the 90s--still the best Star Wars video game, for my money. "The Antilles Extraction" features Sabine infiltrating an Imperial TIE pilot training station to help Wedge Antilles defect to the Rebellion. Nothing about the guy we meet on the show feels especially like Wedge from the movies, though he was never an especially well defined character anyway. He basically functions as a MacGuffin here. But I was excited by the dogfights and the simulated dogfights in this episode that so distinctly felt like something right out of TIE Fighter I couldn't believe it was a coincidence.

The instrument panels aren't replicated from the game but something about the cockpit point of view, the pace of the incoming Rebel Y-Wings and the green blaster fire felt so much like TIE Fighter. The training pods cinched it for me--even the sound effects they make when they open and close sound right out of TIE Fighter.

"The Antilles Extraction" was written by Gary Whitta who also worked on a draft of the screenplay for Rogue One before parting ways with the production over creative differences. He's written for several video games and films and in the 90s he was a founding editor and then editor-in-chief for the U.S. version of PC Gamer--the magazine that, back in the 90s, named TIE Fighter the greatest video game off all time more than once. So, yes, Whitta I would say is well aware of TIE Fighter.

With all the nostalgia for old video games--Nintendo even deciding in recent years it can make money off an old fashioned version of Super Mario Brothers--I think TIE Fighter remains trapped in the past because it was a flight simulator that requires a joystick. I mean, you can play it with a mouse and keyboard but it's really a degraded experience. But who has a joystick nowadays? I do--I bought one a few years ago specifically to play TIE Fighter again but despite the fact that I have two legally purchased versions of the game I had a hard time getting it to work. One copy I managed to get working but without the joystick, the other I got working but I couldn't stop the graphics from being stretched out across the monitor that's much wider than developers apparently envisioned in the 90s.

Anyway. The episode centres on Sabine though it insists on spending some moments focusing on Kanan and Ezra talking about how they feel about how the episode's going to focus on Sabine. I mean, they talk about how she's doing the mission alone. Clearly Kanan and Ezra are our unavoidable anchor characters who must have character moments every episode, unlike Clone Wars which was free to roam among whole different casts from episode to episode. I wouldn't mind it as much if Kanan and Ezra weren't so annoying. Sabine is okay though she's had little or no character development and her voice actress is a little flat. Gina Torres guest starred as a former comrade of hers in the first season, her performance easily outshining the woman playing Sabine. If only they'd just replaced Sabine with her it would be great. There are certain actors Disney has mandated for success however untalented they are , which is why we have that Freddy Prnz11!!x Jr. Smoke or whatever his name is playing Kanan.

Twitter Sonnet #920

An age divides an amber glass in grids.
No villain dwells where aught's with evil marked.
Of fate, the feathered thought in shaking rids.
On eyelash legs we walk into the dark.
A cherry rum sorbet in crystal dish.
Transparent walls permit a membrane light.
Two rows of pins allow the watching fish.
A path twixt sable seats descends to night.
The bread as hard as diamond waits below.
An army crossed the dust and broke the sky.
The atmosphere cast in red then yellow.
In frozen dungeons lurks no gnat or fly.
The churning yolk descends from eggy clouds.
A sulphur rain invades in noxious shrouds.

Cumberbatch of the Doctor

Those looking for a Sherlock and Doctor Who crossover may not be satisfied by the 2008 Doctor Who audio play Forty Five in which Benedict Cumberbatch guest stars as Howard Carter, the famed discoverer of Tutankhamun's tomb. He and the Doctor never make out, for one thing, which I think is high on the list for most people hungry for the team up and the story features the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), narrowly competing with One for the title of Unsexiest Doctor (mind you, he's one of my favourite Doctors. Sex isn't everything). It is a good story.

Forty Five is actually a collection of four short, approximately twenty five minute stories starring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier as his companions Ace and Hex, respectively. Cumberbatch appears in the first of the stories, "False Gods", in which Carter is still twenty years away from his famous discovery. But he is in Egypt and investigating a tomb, discovering figurines which unlock a strange truth about the Egyptian gods--well, a pretty standard truth in many Sci-Fi adventure stories and movies. But it's told in a lively enough manner with good performances. McCoy and Cumberbatch have a few entertaining exchanges as colleague explorers. There's a nice bit of dialogue between Hex and the Doctor when they come across some mummies and Hex gets to thinking about how the Doctor can go back and visit these corpses when they're kids if he wants to.

The second story in the collection, "Order of Simplicity", is a haunted house tale, appropriate for Halloween, with a mad scientist (Jon Glover) whose inventions have gone out of control. Benedict Cumberbatch has a small role in this one as well as a homo erectus in the basement--the story has more differences from the television story Ghost Light than I'm making it sound.

The third story, "Casualties of War", is a bit of a follow-up to the television story Curse of Fenric, in which Ace met her mother as a baby. Set just after World War II, "Casualties of War" has Ace meeting her mother as a little girl, unconvincingly voiced by adult Beth Chalmers. Ace at this point is years older than last we saw her on television and she seems less afraid of her past. The interactions with her family here are consequently less interesting but curious enough for a twenty five minute story.

The final story is called "The Word Lord" after its villain, Nobody No-One (Paul Reynolds), who's a Word Lord like the Doctor's a Time Lord. Word Lord may be one of the campiest titles for a villain I've heard on Doctor Who--the story's clever idea about how the Word Lord is able to infiltrate reality through words is delightful and also campy despite a pretty effectively portrayed death of a minor character in the story.

Exactly What He Seems

I'd like to point out that Billy Bush is here exactly the kind of scumbag I always thought he was. In the brief occasions when I've seen him hosting red carpet things. He instantly comes off as slimy. But, yes, obviously Trump is the headline--Trump comes off as exactly the scumbag HE'S OBVIOUSLY BEEN ALL ALONG. Just look what I wrote yesterday, before I even heard about this recording:

But then again, at least I know Ash would genuinely try to help people while Trump is obviously just waiting to see how he can divvy up the country for the highest bidders. And Ash, while he's crude in his flirtations with women, doesn't tend to verbally attack them when they don't go along with him.

Trump has called the recording just "locker room talk". What does that mean? Is the locker room a place where you say you're going to commit sexual assaults but you don't mean it? I'm glad I've avoided gym class for the past twenty years.

The thing is, I bet a lot of Trump voters will accept this explanation. I mean, that's the only reason they'd have been cool with him so far, except the people with some vague, bullshit dream about Trump being in charge causing some wonderful, glorious chaos revolution. As bad as that would be, I would say to you, no, Trump is not the Joker. Trump is the Penguin. And not even Danny DeVito's Penguin; he's Burgess Meredith. Well, okay, now that I think about it, the Danny DeVito version running for office and saying Catwoman is "Just the pussy I've been looking for" makes him fit even better but, damnit, Trump doesn't deserve the army of penguins affectionately carrying him to a watery grave.

The point is, Trump is not your agent of chaos. He's your agent of cubic zirconia. Blood cubic zirconia. Please, America, turn off the Home Shopping Network, do not order this.

Versus the Bar

If you're reading this from Florida, I hope the impending hurricane dissolves quickly into a gentle breeze. Last night I visited a happier vision of Florida in the season premiere of Ash vs. Evil Dead, which was a lot better than I was expecting.

I guess the fact that Sam Raimi doesn't seem to want to direct any more episodes had kept my expectations low and I still don't really like Lucy Lawless' character. I hate how the show indulges in the common tendency in comedies to make all the women smart and dull and all the men dumb and fun. It's permutated in recent years so that the smart matriarch at least seems self-aware and is able to make jokes based on this awareness--like when Lois Griffin mentions that she smokes weed and that's the whole joke, that she smokes weed.

Lucy Lawless plays the leader of the Evil Dead which, in terms of dialogue with Ash, seems to have made her the ultimate disapproving maternal figure for Ash's antics. So she's boring in that way and she's also boring for undermining what made the first two Evil Dead movies so good; the ambiguous rules around the supernatural forces. The feeling that anyone at any time can be possessed and it's not clear what might reliably prevent it.

But the episode had some nice moments, including a Vampyr-style shadow attack involving Lawless' character's kids. And there were a lot of genuinely funny lines, like when a sheriff mentions to a bar full of people that "Ashy Slashy" went crazy and slashed up his friends and Ash responds, "That's not true, I did not go crazy, I knew exactly what I was doing when I chopped up my friends."

Lee Majors was also really good as Ash's father in the episode.

Some of the the promotional material for the new season were made like ads for Ash as a presidential candidate, an attempt to play off the current election season. I wish they hadn't done this because it's made it a little harder to enjoy Ash. Trump's stupidity and machismo is a little to close to Ash's, I guess, for me. But then again, at least I know Ash would genuinely try to help people while Trump is obviously just waiting to see how he can divvy up the country for the highest bidders. And Ash, while he's crude in his flirtations with women, doesn't tend to verbally attack them when they don't go along with him.

I guess in this way I can sort of understand Trump's hold on his followers and those who have decided they can be complacent and avoid voting for Clinton--even though Trump's stupid and small minded, people relate to him like a character with an unleashed id on television. But to those of you who are charmed by his claim that he's "working for you" now, that think he's going to redirect those amazing smarts that enabled him to spend the piles of money his father gave him on dodging his responsibilities (in what dimension this required intelligence I don't know) would do well to remember something: he probably said close to the same thing to his partners in the businesses he bankrupted or to the students of his scam university.

Twitter Sonnet #919

In solemn sandwich boards the case was put.
Olympic pies, opined the judge, are rigged.
In food we trust the cook can't leave a foot.
Except the subs that dive beneath the gig.
A bean contrived of glass contained the sprout.
A half, a whole, a quarter note parades.
Too heavy were the feathers glued to snout.
No proxy bomb recalled the bad grenades.
A lime the size of Pluto slides to Hell.
In canvas wings an angel tent unloads.
On grounds a hundred years have rung the bell.
Despite fatigue the corpse again reloads.
A citrus fruit suspends above the land.
A diff'rent sun awaits under the sand.

May All Promises of Bad Weather Prove so Placid

Most Indian movies I've seen are Bollywood--with bright colours, sound stages, beautiful costumes, musical numbers, and melodramatic plots. What if a movie set in India had the desaturated colour palette, handheld camera, lack of musical numbers, and aimless dialogue typical of some western arthouse films? Such a film is 2001's Monsoon Wedding, a film that successfully gives us a dull Indian family drama in the western mould.

The film follows the Verma family and their preparations in the days leading up to the marriage of Aditi, played by Vasundhara Das, who is very beautiful but doesn't give an especially interesting performance. She's having second thoughts about the wedding and might go back with an ex-boyfriend.

She doesn't have a lot of screen time because this is one of those big ensemble films that use their large casts to disguise the fact that no one of the many stories it has to tell is particularly interesting, the hope being that quantity will make up for quality.

The broadest subplot has a goofy construction worker falling in love with the Verma's household servant. He sees her trying on the jewellery of her employer and she's embarrassed when she's spotted, as such characters tend to be in the ten thousand other movies that have this scene.

The film seems to realise late in the proceedings that it's been spinning its wheels without getting anywhere so it hastily introduces a subplot about one of the male relatives molesting girls in the family. The film doesn't explore any of the psychological issues effecting the perpetrator or his victims, it's a plot point that's introduced to give the climax something out of the ordinary to deal with, then it's packed away, justice is served, and the credits roll.

That's a Lot of Bodies

Ah, the glamorous, post-modern lives of hillbilly psychopaths. 2003's House of 1000 Corpses deliberately takes the bare bones of a 1970s horror film and reconstructs them into an orgiastic celebration of the villains. More of an extended music video homage to horror films than a horror film, it's a bit longer than it needs to be, kind of wearing out its welcome, but taken in short segments it's pretty fun.

The clearest influence on the film is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as this film's hapless teens find themselves the unwilling guests of a family of colourful backwoods killers. But this family has a much larger budget for stagecraft.

Here Sheri Moon Zombie, director Rob Zombie's wife, plays Baby Firefly in an impromptu routine for the teens who as yet don't quite know what's in store for them. There's a world of neon, leather, and costumes improbably concealed inside the Firefly family's little wooden house. But the teens themselves are also a bit conspicuously artificial, being the two nerdy guys--one slightly more easy going than the other--and their two exasperated, beautiful, normal girlfriends typical of the 70s horror films Zombie references.

Rainn Wilson, here upstaged by Moon Zombie's butt, plays the less easy going nerd, giving a subtler, less ironic performance than his work on The Office. But the blocking in this shot reflects the balance of characters in the film--this is a movie about being the monsters and loving it. The lack of thoroughly established victims makes the monsters seem less monstrous, though since this, less self-consciously, was often the case in the B horror films of the 30s, 40s, and 50s Zombie drops clips from throughout the film, it makes sense. Not unlike The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this is about revelling in being this piece of humanity feared by the "normal" world.

In addition to clips from old horror films, Zombie inserts little features on the members of the Firefly family. These clips feel slightly out of place in the film though the ones focusing on Sheri Moon Zombie are both sexy and touching for how much Rob Zombie clearly loves filming her.

Karen Black quite credibly plays Baby Firefly's mother but by far the best performance in the film is given by Sid Haig as a clown named Captain Spaulding after the Groucho Marx character from Duck Soup.

The first scene in the film, where he and a character played by Michael J. Pollard thwart a pair of armed robbers who try to hold up their carnival "murder tour", is more hilarious and suspenseful than the whole rest of the film.

Take Exactly Fifty Stars and Fifty Wars

I still think Henry Gilroy is the best writer working on Star Wars: Rebels and the new episode written by him, "The Holocrons of Fate", is nicely plotted. The set up with Darth Maul taking the Ghost crew hostage was nice. Though the brief mention of Maul ruling the Mandalorians had kind of a "Darth Vader built C3P0" feeling of the universe being a little too small. I think the episode would have worked better for me as a whole if I could buy into the fantasy conceit of a necessary balance between good and evil.

Tom Baker returns as Bendu, which is great, I only wish he didn't represent that balance, being the neutral Force user. Though, incidentally, he's basically functioned just like a light side Jedi master in his assistance to Kanan and Ezra. Maybe he'll help Maul later on to balance things out.

But why this focus on balance? Do we need someone to die every time someone's saved? The whole idea only works if we keep it at a very removed, theoretical level. But it tends to be treated like the difference between whether you think trickle down economics works or if more money should be put into government projects. This may be a bad time to use this analogy because obviously Donald Trump is an asshole but, theoretically, anyway, the person proposing trickle down economics does so because he or she believes it's going to help everyone in the long run. If someone chooses the Evil side, they're actively seeking to muck things up. But is the Dark Side the Evil side? Anakin actually says in Revenge of the Sith, "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"

There was something really subtle going on with Clone Wars that doesn't seem to be happening with Rebels. All the introductions to episodes of Clone Wars felt like 1940s propaganda with a proud narrator touting the perfect virtue of the Republic, particularly concerning the clone troopers, and the pure evil of the Separatists. The betrayal of the clones hangs over everything really nicely; without making substantial references until the last season to Order 66, the show offers a message more complex for how simplistic it seems. The chosen one, supposedly Anakin, was supposed to bring "balance" to the Force. Mace Windu and Obi Wan think the prophecy's wrong because Anakin becomes a Sith. But who's to say it wasn't becoming a Sith that accomplished that balance? To further complicate the issue, there's the scene of Mace taking the "too dangerous to be left alive" line first used by Palpatine. How "good" are the Jedi? Are they as compromised as the clone troopers?

Mostly it seems like Rebels ditches all this ambiguity. But maybe they'll go somewhere more interesting with Ezra becoming Maul's apprentice, something that really needs to happen, especially since it'll be particularly painful after the effective reconciliation between Kanan and Ezra in "Holocrons of Fate".

Twitter Sonnet #918

Submerged in houses held by living scams
A court of speechless Daleks drowns in debt
Incurred at rates assumed by banks of hams
Still cold by bills of icy dinners kept.
A turning wheel absolves the pond from fish
Too late to shimmer with the morning tick
Or tock of clocks described in fervent wish
Like candles crowd to sheathe a single wick.
A starling hammer sits in state at terms
Ordained in dalliance and gum obscured
Behind the spheres of broken jaws and worms
In moulds, in mills, produced and dear procured.
The amber lantern hung beside the face,
The yellow bulb collapsed inside the case.

The Needless Blur

Normally I say I'm content with a film if it's beautiful. It can have a lousy screenplay but if it looks fantastic, I still have a nice time. Not so with 2013's Mother of George, a film with gorgeous cinematography that feels frustratingly disconnected from its characters.

A Nigerian couple, whom we meet at the beginning of the film, struggle to conceive a child with no success. The husband, Ayodele (Issach de Bankole), is unwilling to see a doctor because he feels it's an insult to his manhood. So the wife, Adenike, played by The Walking Dead's Danai Gurira, is forced to look for another solution.

Gurira is given more to do in this movie than in season three of The Walking Dead but less than in season five. Shots of her in particular, though she's on screen more than anyone else, seem designed to keep the audience at a distance. The film continually frames heads in profile on the extreme right or left, facing off-screen, replying to people we can't see, often starting in the middle of conversations. There are a lot of slow motion shots of faces without context and the filmmakers feel a need to check in with Gurira's ass routinely.

Although traditionally in Yoruba culture a man can have multiple wives, particularly in the case where the first wife isn't getting pregnant, and this custom is brought up, it's unclear why the couple are unwilling to go this route. Adenike also wants her own job so that she can have "her own money". It's unclear what has influenced her to take this non-traditional initiative. We learn so little about her but the movie spends a lot of time on an incident where she spills something on her shirt and her friend talks her into buying a translucent blouse to replace it. Adenike is very self-conscious and Ayodele doesn't approve.

The main plot of the film goes on to concern trouble with Ayodele's brother, Biyi (Tony Okungbowa). But so much information about the trouble is given only after the main, catastrophic plot points that, again, we're kept at a remove from the experience of the characters. Altogether, the feeling one has watching the film is like looking through a stalker's photo album. There's a voyeuristic quality to it that doesn't fit the story. Supposedly director Andrew Dosunmu is from Nigeria though all his credits for the past thirty years are from the U.S. and France. The movie certainly doesn't feel like it was made by someone who regards Nigerian people or culture as familiar.

The Clone from the Future is a Comrade

Some people say the incredibly complicated time travel paradox plots are examples of cheap, hacky writing. Well, I still usually get a kick out of them and enjoyed last night listening to the 2008 Doctor Who audio play Brotherhood of the Daleks.

There's an extra layer of complication on this one in that the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and Charley (India Fisher) are also having to deal with Dalek replicants and can't tell whether they're meeting past versions of the hapless Thals they've already met on a jungle planet that's actually an ice planet or if they're replicants. On top of this, Charley keeps having to dance around the fact that she has travelled with the Eighth Doctor and for some reason Six keeps getting suspicious in this one whenever Charley inadvertently reveals she's from a period just after World War I (as when she uses the term "shell shock").

Charley's attitude about Communism has a hostility that may be a little extreme for someone from 1930 though I liked the Doctor's line in response about how she shouldn't judge a philosophy by how it's been misinterpreted. The reason they're talking about it is that the Daleks they encounter are using some oddly Communist terminology (like "brother") and seem to have trouble saying their favourite word (you know the one). Will Communism save the souls of the Daleks? Of course not, but it's an interesting idea.

There's some genuinely effective anxiety in the group of Thals the Doctor and Charley meet as they are confronted with dead comrades and are forced to figure out whether they're replicants or if they've killed their companions whom they took for replicants. In a really nice scene, Charley overhears the Thals whispering to each other lines from earlier in the story while they're being held in some kind of stasis chamber.