Beware Sartana's Brand of Generosity

Gianni Garko, the original Sartana, returns with a moustache in 1970's Have a Good Funeral, My Friend . . . Sartana Will Pay (Buon funerale amigos!... paga Sartana). Very generous of him and I can confirm he lavishly spends on coffins throughout the film taking this bit established in Yojimbo to decadent levels. Yet this film is a return to a more grounded, satisfying storytelling after the previous entry, Sartana's Here . . . Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin, drove the series' slightly coy sadism into self-parody. This one even has a sweet hint of a suggestion of romance for Sartana.

The plot isn't wildly different from previous entries--Sartana, the mysterious, preternatural gunman with gadgets is hunting people down having something to do with some kind of land swindle.

Among his enemies this time are a corrupt banker and the Chinese owner of a saloon, Lee Tse Tung (George Wang). For the latter, the film's climax turns out surprisingly to be a melee, taking Sartana out of his trick shot element. Tse Tung wields an anachronistic Japanese sword against Sartana but it leads to the cool image of Sartana wielding a katana when he naturally turns the tables.

There's less emphasis on Sartana's ability to hide his guns and escape certain death and more focus on him intimidating people with his presence. He also seems to have a soft spot for Abigail (Daniela Giordano), a young woman mixed up in the bogus land deal.

Two thirds of the way through the movie there's a particularly nice action sequence when four outlaw brothers are randomly introduced and very quickly dispatched by Sartana. They're introduced nicely, though, with music and visual composition so watching their showdown with the film's hero is really very good.

Have a Good Funeral, My Friend . . . Sartana Will Pay is available on Amazon Prime.

Demons in the Community

A boy's life radically changes when his family is slaughtered by demons in Kimetsu no Yaiba. Only his younger sister is spared--and only because she's been turned into a demon. This entertaining anime series from last year is wildly popular at the Japanese junior high school where I currently work. I don't know if it's a phenomenon all across Japan but I think the show's rural setting might make it more appealing to students living in a rural area.

One of the most astonishing things I've learned while living in Japan is that many of the things in anime I assumed were fantasy or exaggeration turn out to be quite true. This includes the often comically effusive behaviour of the students and also the presence of beautiful, ancient neighbourhoods and landscapes. Parts of the area in Nara where I live look exactly the same as the neighbourhoods I see in MIkio Naruse movies from the 50s and not at all dissimilar to the feudal Japan depicted in Kimetsu no Yaiba.

The show feels very much like an illustrated manga. There are a lot of moments with minimal animation, half frozen images where we hear the protagonists' thoughts. Like in many other anime that employ this cost saving method, the impact of the action sequences is diluted somewhat. Similarly, the shift in focus from the horror of Tanjiro's (Natsuki Hanae) family being killed to his training as a demon slayer is too quick, the emotional weight not quite being what the circumstance requires. I'm three episodes in and the training is pretty standard stuff, like having to swing a sword one thousand times.

I'm hoping the show gets back to the eerie material between Tanjiro and his sister, Nezuko (Akari Kito), who seems ready to devour him in the first minutes of her resurrection. She's certainly my favourite character so far, and not just because her name is close to my own Nesuko from my old web comic, Boschen and Nesuko. I doubt the creator of Kimetsu no Yaiba took any influence from me but the two characters do have some similarities.

In art club to-day, I was talking to three girls about a Kimetsu no Yaiba notebook that belonged to one of them. I was trying to say things about the show in very simple English so I mentioned a kind of interesting scene in the third episode where Tanjiro uses his sword to split the mask of a character named Sabito (Yuki Kaji). I think I was saying something like, "Sabito's mask was cut." Mask being a word that has plenty of currency these days. While I was talking, a quiet little boy sitting in the corner stood up and left the room. "He's a Sabito fan," explained one of the girls. "But he's very shy," said another. I wonder what it is about Sabito that this little guy seems to be so sensitive about him?

Kimetsu no Yaiba is available on Crunchy Roll.

The Surrounding Water

There's one of the trains I normally take to work.

I love all the canals and rivers running through Kashihara. They're beautiful in themselves but they're also populated by gorgeous wildlife.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of what I think are prawns in a little gutter in the neighbourhood near my school.

At first I thought they were crayfish but when I googled Japanese crayfish I discovered the only ones in Japan are far north of here. But these seem big for prawns, especially their pinchers. I wonder if someone in the neighbourhood is keeping them to sell to local markets.

I've been seeing some good sunsets lately.

Twitter Sonnet #1367

Configured words resemble stars and snakes.
A counted void amounts to something big.
For all the planets give the aether takes.
Ideas were crammed beneath the moonless wig.
The sleepy cable dripped the inter-line.
The maker shook to spill the coffee bean.
The optic world a deed was forced to sign.
The tale was crammed to fit a minute scene.
Another moon replaces movie tapes.
In time the garden disks were mirror eyes.
For taste the peepers touch the bite of grapes.
And all the host were stuffed in stranger pies.
A starry figure tramped behind the sound.
The life of songs continues 'neath the ground.

Dreams, Dark and Massive

Combining visual artistry with music is one of the distinguishing features of film. Still, it's amazing to think that just thirteen years after the first feature length sound film there was anything so audacious and imaginative as 1940's Fantasia. Not that it was entirely without precedent, being essentially a feature length version of Disney's own Silly Symphonies shorts. But those short films can't rival the scale and majesty on which Fantasia operates or the imagination behind some of its modes of expression.

The first segment is its most abstract, consequently the most difficult for children to sit still for. Using Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor", which was already beginning to be associated with horror films, the animation is freeform, starting with colour and shape before moving to more concrete imagery. This is actually explained by the film's somewhat superfluous host, critic and composer Deems Taylor. But it accomplishes just what he says, being a remarkable visual transcription of beautiful sound. The character of the more concrete images, clouds and musical notes, convey the majesty evoked by the composition.

Most of the musical choices and their animated accompaniments seem calculated to inspire awe. Even "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", originally intended as a Mickey Mouse short, is extraordinary in scale of terror when Mickey confronts the looming and crashing waves of his folly. The implacable, eerie broomsticks, marching continuously, are more nightmarish for the simplicity of Mickey himself as a character.

Most people prefer Donald or Goofy, their shorts lending themselves to better opportunities for comedy. They both have very straightforward flaws--Donald with his temper and Goofy with his stupidity. Mickey always felt sort of ill-defined. As the mute protagonist racing against embarrassment and death, his insubstantiality becomes another piece of the fearful patchwork in the turbulent sea, another source of instability.

Fantasia also features some of the sexiest women ever animated for a Disney film, beginning with the sensuous fairies populating the "Nutcracker" segment, followed later by the coquettish centaur women, or "centaurettes", according to Wikipedia.

This is from the segment set to Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony", the first piece of a Disney animated film I've noticed to be censored on Disney+, though this censorship actually goes back to the film's 1968 rerelease. The original 1940 version featured stereotypical black child slaves tending to the white centaur women, giving the scene of ancient Greece an anachronistic flavour of the romanticised pre-Civil War American south and making the sexy centaur women into southern belles. In addition to the obvious racism, its a fascinating look at how women in the antebellum southern U.S. were dreamed of in the 1930s. Taken with Gone with the Wind, there seems to be a sexual piquancy in the folly of beautiful women in a lifestyle supported by slavery rather than a justification of the institution. The important thing for the artists here is that the women are beautiful, vulnerable, and spoiled. Like Clark Gable, a guy might fantasise about teaching these saucy creatures a thing or two.

The "Rite of Spring" presents another snapshot of the collective imagination of the time, in this case the contemporary impression of prehistoric Earth. The dark figures of the dinosaurs framed by sinister red glow are another inspiring nightmare. The doomed stegosaurus in his struggle with the tyrannosaurus is a concrete terror while the preceding chaos of volcanoes erupting and swirling slime is another example of strange, unstable majesty.

Perhaps the least effective segment is "Dance of the Hours", with the hippopotami and alligators. It's still pretty funny but sits oddly beside the other segments, the only one that seems to be more of a parody of classical music than a complement.

Of course, one of the best remembered images of the film is the mountain that transforms into, or reveals itself to have always been, a demon. In "Night on Bald Mountain", the impressively oppressive music is fitted perfectly with the satanic figure surrounded by the dead compelled to rise and swirl about him. With "Sorcerer's Apprentice", "Rite of Spring", "The Nutcracker", and the appearance of a thunderbolt lobbing Zeus in "Pastoral Symphony", the film returns repeatedly to a contemplation of fate and the level of control one has or hasn't over life. Whether it's the random molecules in the primordial soup or an army of marching broomsticks.

Fantasia is available on Disney+.

Substitute Pieces

For anyone who plays chess, "The Most Dangerous Match", the 1973 episode of Columbo, holds plenty of points of interest. The writers clearly had more than casual knowledge of chess and the competitive chess world, drawing together a plot about rival grandmasters that feels credible, as far as their personalities, and satisfying, in terms of the murder motive.

Laurence Harvey, father of the bounty hunter Domino, plays grandmaster Emmett Clayton who happens to have a personal connexion to his opponent, Tomlin Dudek (Jack Kruschen), having once been in a relationship with Dudek's assistant (Heidi Bruhl).

She takes delight in the idea of Dudek beating Clayton in the only thing he cares about. The two grandmasters end up having dinner together along with an impromptu game using food and cutlery. When Clayton loses, the buildup makes it very clear just how badly it cuts his pride and sense of identity. His desire to not only murder Dudek but to make the death as humiliating as possible for him makes perfect sense to any serious player who's had a losing streak.

But in that kind of chess, no grandmaster can compare with Columbo (Peter Falk). Falk's great, of course, putting the screws into Harvey and Harvey, who died that same year, is pretty good, never playing it as an over the top maniac, just as a terribly sensitive man.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

From Luggnagg to Japan

A rice field to-day near the school where I work. There are a lot of fields like this everywhere.

I had a discussion about Gulliver's Travels to-day with some other teachers. Looking through one of the text books for the second year junior high school students, I was surprised to learn there's an annual festival for Gulliver held in Kannosaki. This is to commemorate the fact that Gulliver visits Japan near the end of the book. One of the few books I was able to bring with me in my luggage is the 1952 Britannica edition of Gulliver's Travels. One of the teachers, despite my assurances to him that even native English speakers struggle with 18th century literature, is now making a valiant attempt to read it.

It seemed like a good book to read when travelling to a distant land. I was reading it on the train but now I've switched to reading Macaulay's History of England. Whatever else you might say about him, Macaulay's prose is lovely, even when describing things that should be intensely dull by all rights.

The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole system of human life from different points and in different lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. The players were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw, and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young candidate for academical honours was no longer required to write Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the day and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid during several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable. The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new. It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death.

Twitter Sonnet #1366

The mountain's wing resembles heights of dance.
In time for bronze and marble, gods appear.
Between the worlds was just an idle chance.
The lobby glass was frightful all austere.
Familiar names perhaps combine in soup.
The pretty clock offends the rusty eye.
Reminders flip the spokes an endless loop.
A game of dice requites a second try.
The tiny dragons formed a perfect sign.
Directions changed as wind conceals the voice.
A finger grew from old and ragged twine.
The answer fades behind an endless choice.
The coat contains a set of boards and pawns.
The watching cat inspects her meal and yawns.

The Versatile Sonic Screwdriver

It's Sunday again so it's time for the fifth instalment of my Doctor Who fan fiction.

(Part I can be found here, Part II can be found here, Part III can be found here and Part IV is here).

DOCTOR WHO

"The New Model Tomb"

by Setsuled

Part V

The inspector drew her gun and pointed it at the Doctor. “We don't want anything!” she shrieked. “Now you will remain silent and come with us!”

The inspector would respond to no further attempts at conversation with the Doctor as they went back to her craft. Rob looked for the man called Jean whom they'd seen when first entering the reactor building but he was nowhere in sight. He asked the inspector where he was but was met with stony silence.

Once they were in the car it rose back up into the night sky. “Not much traffic,” the Doctor remarked. “I don't see any other cars out there.”

She looked at Rob who was reclining happily in his seat. The Doctor smiled and also leaned back, putting her bare arms behind her head, her coat having been left back at power station. “Good to rest after sweaty work, eh?” she said.

“A more luxurious capture I've not suffered,” replied Rob.

They ascended further as they approached a mountain and a very dark, featureless tower. It grew larger and larger, much larger than Rob had estimated its size from a distance. An opening now slowly appeared and expanded beyond which a tunnel lit by evenly spaced white lights grew to meet them.

“This is very impressive, I must say,” said the Doctor, her fingertips resting lightly on the window pane as she tried to peer around the edge. “The isolated location and the elevation are perfectly balanced.” She glanced at Rob and tapped the glass. “Between the lights are interlocking sensors . . . “ she looked over to watch the Inspector's hand flying across the controls. “And there's a separate code for every ten feet! The Inspector must input ten characters a second!” The Doctor looked over at Rob to see his baffled face. “A series of passwords,” she said, “communicated to the machines by hand.”

Rob looked from the Inspector to the tunnel outside and said, “'Tis a far sight more formidable than the Tower of London, to be sure.”

The craft landed on a thin platform and they were ushered into a corridor with long, vertical strips of light on either side. Between these strips, the air shimmered with colour like a soap bubble. The Doctor told Rob these were “security forcefields.” Inspector Marwat typed a series of numbers into a panel by each field for it to vanish just long enough for them to step through. At a corridor junction they met a pretty blonde woman wearing a white coat over the usual armour. She, like everyone else, wore the little helmet skeleton. She stood on the other side of a forcefield.

“Thanks for staying late, Judy,” said Inspector Marwat.

Judy smiled tightly and said, “I've usually taken my shoes off by now.” The two of them both started typing quickly on either side of the forcefield. Rob realised they were hitting precisely the same buttons at precisely the same time.

“That's certainly something you couldn't do without a cybernetic implant,” said the Doctor, folding her arms across her chest and smiling as she looked down her nose at the the two Aeons.

“Yeah, so maybe it wasn't a good idea to poison people,” said Judy. “Might want to think about that before you commit acts of terror and sabotage, hmm?” This earned a caustic laugh from the Inspector and four other people in a room they walked into now. One desk occupied each corner of the room, each with a shiny metal surface perfectly bare of paper or tool. Nonetheless Rob recognised a clerical space.

“Good one, Judy!” said a man with dark hair and red nose at one of the desks.

The Doctor and Rob were placed in a cell. Like the car, it greatly exceeded Rob's idea of the comforts that should accompany imprisonment. Two soft white bunks were separated by a white silk screen. Benches on the walls were upholstered like the seats in the Inspector's car and there were even video screens, the purpose of which the Doctor explained to him as providing information and entertainment by way of recorded plays and pamphlets.

“Truly, a man could pass his days in perfect bliss!” said Rob.

The Doctor laughed, “I've seen more than my share of prisons and this one, I must say, surpasses others on both security and comfort.” She reclined on her side on one of the benches like Cleopatra on a divan, resting her cheek on her palm. “We could live out our lives comfortably here. Would you like to, Rob?”

He sat down on a bench along the wall perpendicular to hers, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “No,” he said firmly. “Maybe I ought to. But I don't. Many's the lad lured to sea by the promise of comfort and riches. But those that stay in the life are either slaves or . . . men like me.”

“What sort of man would that be?” she asked.

He laughed and looked down. “I hardly know myself.”

“'Only the shallow know themselves',” the Doctor grinned. “A man named Oscar Wilde wrote that. Shallow you're certainly not. But as a seaman I'm sure you're aware that depths have their advantages, even the unfathomable kind.”

He laughed again, looking down as he blushed. “I think you flatter me. Really, I think it not so profound. Like you said, I tend not to join in my fellows in egregious slander of Royalists. Though, at heart, I suppose I am a Parliamentarian, there's something . . . ” He grimaced, searching for the word. “About their certainty. Their certainty about so many things that really are . . . obscure. But perhaps I am simply . . . irresolute.”

The Doctor shrugged. “I hardly think so.” She sat up, stretching her arms over head. “But perhaps we may indulge ourselves in some repast, eh, hmm? You should eat, my boy!” She let out a breath as she dropped her arms and stood up. “Let's see what's on offer.”

She walked over to a wall panel that she evidently recognised, a sort of cupboard built into the wall with a row of black buttons above it. Peering at it, she raised her eyebrows, her enormous eyes widening to a slightly comical effect, drawing a smile from Rob. “A robust selection!” she said. “What meal have you dreamed of in your long hours at sea?”

“Hmm . . .” he thought. “A shoulder of mutton with oysters?”

The Doctor laughed. “Well, this thing wasn't wired for 17th century guests. I'll order for us both . . .” She pressed a series of buttons and there was a rumbling far below them followed by a clatter, like a barrel of cookware was overturned into a copper tub. She now turned her wide eyes to the floor and took a step back. Both the Doctor and Rob slowly looked up as the sound travelled all the way up to the panel. There was a shaking behind the wall and then the door shot open loudly. Within was a tray with two large plates, two small plates, and two cups. The Doctor cautiously removed the tray and brought it over to Rob. She sat beside him.

The two large plates held what looked like roasted potato and various vegetables, the small plates each had a few slices of bread with cream coloured crusts. He took up one of the cups, the liquid inside was a translucent amber.

“Barley tea,” said the Doctor. She took a sip from her own cup and made a face. “Or that's what I asked for. This is more like . . . lemonade. But sweeter.”

Rob took a sip and recoiled. “'Tis sweeter than honey . . . And somehow repulsive.”

The Doctor took a bite of the bread and nearly choked on it, coughing heavily. Rob instinctively put a hand on her shoulder.

“I'm—I'm all right,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her throat. “It's like the ingredients of a thousand bargain birthday cakes condensed into one. But it seems meant to pass for ordinary bread.”

This was not an encouraging commendation but Rob had eaten nothing but small morsels of mouldy bread for two days. He hastily crammed two slices of the bread into his mouth. The thick, eggy sweetness seemed to permeate the back of his tongue while it also burned his nostrils. But he worked it down slowly while the Doctor watched, fascinated. He started on the potato which was like lumps of sugar and burnt cocoanut.

He felt a little embarrassed, slowly but steadily chewing the mass in his mouth while this beautiful, elegant, and weird woman stared at him. But he was so hungry.

“We need to get you some real food,” she said in a resolute tone, standing up. “Good thing I took this from my coat.” She produced the sonic screwdriver from her skirt pocket.

Just as quickly, though, she put it back in her pocket as they both now heard two pairs of footsteps approaching. Soon, on the other side of their cell's forcefield, there appeared Inspector Marwat and the old man from the power station. The Inspector seemed annoyed and the old man looked uncomfortable, faintly embarrassed, and angry.

“Hello!” said the Doctor. “Nice to see you again. How are things at the power station, all running smoothly? And how's your leg? I'm the Doctor, by the way, I don't think we were introduced.”

“You have a lot of nerve,” said Marwat.

“My name's William, William Hayashibana. The reactor is back to normal levels,” he said grudgingly. “And my leg is fine.”

There was an uncomfortable silence finally broken by the Doctor who said, “You're welcome.”

William peered at her, searching her countenance and big, round eyes which were open wide, suggesting a weird mixture of intense interest and placid equanimity.

“Maybe this is all some kind of game to you,” said Marwat, sarcastically. “But poisoning the implants is worse than killing people. You're effectively trapping them in a living Hell.”

“Hmm,” the Doctor frowned and put a hand on her chin, leaning her head down thoughtfully.

“I don't know what kind of people you are or where you came from,” said William, slowly building steam as he spoke. “I don't think you're Wanters. But you don't understand. We Aeons, when we're children, we're helpless. We don't know anything. But when I was ten I knew I wanted to be an engineer. So I got the data installed to me and that's who I become. You know what would've happened otherwise?”

“Years of schooling?” asked the Doctor.

“Maybe! Or maybe I'd have failed the first or second test required to advance to the next level. And then where would I be? Who would I be?”

“Good question!” the Doctor grinned at Rob who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

William nodded, “That's what I thought. You don't understand. I'm an old man now. I have a long career to look back on and I can feel pride in the things I've accomplished. Optimising the north east turbine . . . Repairing the . . .” he struggled for words. “the—the” he held his hands up, as though trying to grasp something before letting both fall back to his sides. “So maybe, what's left of my mind after the poison, it can't . . .” he took a breath. This was clearly not something he'd had the courage to say aloud before. “Maybe I can't do the things I used to. Maybe I don't . . . know what I used to. But I'm seventy-two years old. I've had a good long career. What you did to me is cruel.” He fixed a stare on her. “But if you do it to my son, or a kid just starting out, that's . . . evil. I can't think of a better word for it.”

The Doctor now employed a very cautious, gentle tone. “Have you considered the possibility that the implants weren't poisoned but are simply malfunctioning on their own?”

Inspector Marwat groaned in disgust and William frowned at her.

“How long have you been using the implants?” asked the Doctor.

“A long time . . .” William said helplessly, looking at Marwat.

“Hundreds of years ago, the first Aeons made the data cloud,” said the inspector impatiently. “They put it together and created it to make us whole.”

The Doctor leaned forward, tilting her head slightly. “Yes, and?”

Inspector Marwat looked baffled, “That's it. That's how it happened. Look, I need to take you two to the interrogation room.” She punched in a code and William stepped aside.

The Doctor shrugged and Rob stood up. They followed the Inspector and William down the corridor.

“Much of what you say is well beyond my ken,” said Rob. “But I consider myself a seaman. I collect the wages of an able seaman when pay's not in arrears, which it too often is. But I came to be so not for my childhood fancy but years on a soggy wharf, building callouses as a young lad carrying tackle or learning to tie knots.” They started to pass through the forcefields and Marwat began inputting codes. Judy was already visible waiting for them at the junction. “There were years when I was the lad who could barely tie a bowline.” Rob continued. “There were years when I was the lad who could splice two lines as neat as any fine lady's embroidery. It's not simply being able to do that makes me me. It's all the years before. If I didn't go through those years, well . . .” He scratched his head. “Might be I wouldn't be so understanding to them what was still learning.”

“Haven't you noticed that you're frightened all the time?” said the Doctor, gently. “In ways the Wanters don't seem to be?”

“The Wanters are ignorant and repressed,” said Marwat flatly.

They came now to Judy who was standing there, staring at them with an odd smile on her face.

“Still here, Judy?” said the inspector tiredly.

“Ah, yes,” she said quickly. She was blinking rapidly.

“Wait,” said the Doctor but the inspector was already inputting a code in the nearby panel. Judy's hand went to her corresponding panel to punch in precisely the same code at precisely the same time. But her hand moved too slow and then too fast as she tried to catch up.

“Judy!” cried the inspector.

Judy screamed and clutched at her helmet, backing away. The lights went out and then the white illumination was replaced by a dim red causing Rob to strain his eyes. A high pitched horn sound now repeatedly pealed throughout the corridors.

The Doctor now pushed the inspector aside and raised her sonic screwdriver to the panel. The forcefield went down but the light stayed red and the alarm continued to sound.

“How did you do that?” said Inspector Marwat, angry and frightened. Judy slumped to the floor, against the wall, staring in terror at the opposite wall, her eyes rapidly moving side to side, searching.

“I think I can get us out of here,” said the Doctor. “We can talk about how later.”

“Doctor, this whole building will be filled with toxic gas within ten minutes,” said William. “Can you get us out of here before that?”

The Doctor raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. She looked back at the wall panel thoughtfully.

“Doctor?” said William insistently. “Doctor?!”

TO BE CONTINUED

Ian Holm

Ian Holm, who died yesterday, is said to be best known for his roles in Lord of the Rings and Alien--Bilbo Baggins and Ash the android, respectively. Those are both great roles but barely the tip of the iceberg for one of the greatest, most ubiquitous actors of his generation. From the title role in King Lear to Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild, he could bring a vital interpretation to a lead role or, very frequently, elevate a film by his performance in a key supporting role.

In Terry Gilliam's 1985 masterpiece Brazil, Holm played the cowardly, bureaucratic boss of the film's protagonist, a conceited office worm yet in his way just as sinister as the psychotic Ash. Holm was great playing cold, or rather, someone who's mentally cracked in some way you can see in their eyes. Genuinely disturbing men.

Yet he was also capable of playing sweet, sometimes impressively melancholy men. His role as Lewis Carroll in 1985's Dreamchild (he appeared in six movies that year!) was echoed in 1998 by his performance as the White Knight opposite Kate Beckinsale's Alice in a TV production of Through the Looking Glass. It's hard to imagine an actor better conveying the timid and affectionate man who prefers the honest world of children to the nonsensical labyrinth of adult society.

And when he was younger, he offered a particularly energetic take on the role of Puck in my favourite film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the 1968 version with Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, and Judi Dench.

I'm bound to see him again, I'm sure, in the many films he made I've yet to see, and that's good to know.

The Long Picture

This is an unfinished drawing I've been working on in the art club of the Japanese junior high school where I've been working as an assistant English teacher. "You like love," said one of the students, looking at it. I guess that's true. I'm posting it now because I'll probably immediately give it away to one of the students when I finish as I've done with previous drawings. It's really relaxing drawing in that club and it's nice to be able to pass on some basic knowledge about pencilling and inking, the kind of stuff artbooks are reluctant to divulge. Though a lot of the kids need no help from me, wow. The kinds of drawings I see, I couldn't have dreamed of producing when I was in junior high. A group of girls sit with me while I draw and one of them likes drawing highly detailed clockwork dolls. All her drawings look like they came right out of a professional manga.

She joked that her friend is famous and, since I can't use my Japanese (part of my job is to create situations where the kids are forced to use English), I had to forgo the opportunity to use a joke in Japanese I actually managed to formulate, that for all I knew, everyone at the school was famous behind all the masks. It's a strange new world. It's gotten so it's positively weird when I see someone's face. When I leave school, I see lots of kids without masks while they're exercising--after two kids in China died from wearing masks while exercising in the heat, policy has relaxed to allow kids to remove their masks while playing sports. It's almost shocking to see so many bare faces. I have this strange impulse to cry out, "What are you doing, everyone? Hide!"

I'm really not sure how much good any of the rules are, though, when the kids are constantly hugging and wrestling between classes. It's kind of silly watching their horseplay one minute and then two minutes later watching them observe rules requiring them not to pass papers to each other. Hopefully the virus doesn't get too widespread in Japan. How do I tell kids not to hug each other?

Here are some of my recent photos:

I think I saw one of the fabled "murder hornets". It was dead.

Twitter Sonnet #1365

A paper bed confused the back at night.
The ocean spoke of heavy water eyes.
The mammals turned as motion bubbles might.
The darkest depths desist on open skies.
The numbers held in mind were one to ten.
Beyond the teens the dice create a void.
The mountains came to seem a woody pen.
The island served a cake too long enjoyed.
A little water floods the sugar sea.
The desert throat reports a set of sounds.
Entire drums of honey move the bee.
Another buzz precedes the lunar rounds.
The endless trunk contained forever leaves.
Resentful habit slights what thought achieves.

Murder Most Illogical

It's Columbo verses Spock in "A Stitch in Crime", a 1973 episode of Columbo. Well, Leonard Nimoy, anyway, two years before his I am Not Spock autobiography. In 1973 he was still playing Spock in animated form but the murderous surgeon he plays here is indeed pretty far from the Vulcan science officer. It's a good episode though more for Peter Falk than Nimoy.

An especially dishevelled Columbo shows up to the crime scene with a hard boiled egg, asking if there's any coffee. He explains to suspects and witnesses throughout the episode how he hasn't had much sleep. The effect is sort of like Super Columbo, it's pretty charming, especially when he loses his temper at Nimoy who seems to outright taunt him at one point.

Anne Francis, who'd appeared in the season one episode "Short Fuse", returns as a different character, the murder victim who spots Nimoy's attempt kill another victim by using temporary suture instead of permanent suture in a heart surgery. Pretty clever, really.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

The Badness of the Timing

So here we are, the infamously premature final episode of Farscape. In some ways, a decent enough episode that returns to some aspects of the show largely absent from the fourth season, but, at the same time, it feels oddly rushed in places and some characters make oddly abrupt decisions.

Season Four, Episode Twenty Two: Bad Timing

Having accidentally mentioned birds of paradise are plentiful on Earth, Crichton (Ben Browder) now has to race against the Scarrans, who ingest the plant to prevent themselves from intellectually devolving. Who'd have thought birds of paradise would be so hard to synthesise.

But the episode begins with Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) and Sikozu (Raelee Hill) being expelled from Moya because Braca (David Franklin) has shown up with the Peacekeeper command carrier he's seized from Grayza. This leads to a couple sweet moments between Scorpius and Sikozu dining on the big Peacekeeper ship.

There's no time for Grayza to appear in this episode, though, or for Stark (Paul Goddard) to comment on Scorpius being there in the first place. Stark feels very hastily written in the episode as Pilot's (Lani Tupu) helper. I sense a lot of hasty rewriting was going on--it made sense when he was torturing Scorpius, it made no sense that he was a bioloid. Why would the Scarrans bother making a bioloid of Stark anyway?

The episode doesn't even have time to show Pilot in a transport pod navigating a wormhole, having been temporarily removed from Moya to perform a risky wormhole popping stunt Crichton has contrived. But we do get the nice scene of Crichton on the moon, bidding farewell to his father.

More bittersweet is Crichton and Aeryn (Claudia Black) on the boat, meeting what looks like their ultimate fate at the hands of a very impressive animatronic alien.

The episode also features Chiana (Gigi Edgley) finally using her power vision again, though, sadly, it's to be rendered permanently (for now) blind.

Fortunately, this isn't, of course, really the end of the series. A miniseries, The Peacekeeper Wars, follows. It is the end of the fourth season, in many ways the most generic season of the series. The relationship plot between Crichton and Aeryn revolves around her pregnancy and the identity of the father, the kind of story that would seem more at home on a soap opera. And it's delivered unevenly, from the traumatic and serious events around Aeryn's capture and torture, to the coy evasions of the subject in some scenes. The makeup and effects, however, are certainly at their strongest with the Scarrans in particular benefiting from redesigns in both wardrobe and makeup. Lacking the absorbing drama of season three and the adventurousness of the first two seasons, it's still pretty frelling good.

. . .

Farscape is available now on Amazon Prime.

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: I, E.T.
Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis
Episode 4: Throne for a Loss
Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future
Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again
Episode 7: PK Tech Girl
Episode 8: That Old Black Magic
Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist
Episode 10: They've Got a Secret
Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear
Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue
Episode 13: The Flax
Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton
Episode 15: Durka Returns
Episode 16: A Human Reaction
Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass
Episode 18: A Bug's Life
Episode 19: Nerve
Episode 20: The Hidden Memory
Episode 21: Bone to be Wild
Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby
Episode 2: Vitas Mortis
Episode 3: Taking the Stone
Episode 4: Crackers Don't Matter
Episode 5: Picture If You Will
Episode 6: The Way We Weren't
Episode 7: Home on the Remains
Episode 8: Dream a Little Dream
Episode 9: Out of Their Minds
Episode 10: My Three Crichtons
Episode 11: Look at the Princess, Part I: A Kiss is But a Kiss
Episode 12: Look at the Princess, Part II: I Do, I Think
Episode 13: Look at the Princess, Part III: The Maltese Crichton
Episode 14: Beware of Dog
Episode 15: Won't Get Fooled Again
Episode 16: The Locket
Episode 17: The Ugly Truth
Episode 18: A Clockwork Nebari
Episode 19: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part I: A Not So Simple Plan
Episode 20: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part II: With Friends Like These . . .
Episode 21: Liars, Guns, and Money, Part III: Plan B
Episode 22: Die Me, Dichotomy

Season Three:

Episode 1: Season of Death
Episode 2: Suns and Lovers
Episode 3: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part I: Would'a, Could'a, Should'a
Episode 4: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part II: Wait for the Wheel
Episode 5: . . . Different Destinations
Episode 6: Eat Me
Episode 7: Thanks for Sharing
Episode 8: Green Eyed Monster
Episode 9: Losing Time
Episode 10: Relativity
Episode 11: Incubator
Episode 12: Meltdown
Episode 13: Scratch 'n Sniff
Episode 14: Infinite Possibilities, Part I: Daedalus Demands
Episode 15: Infinite Possibilities, Part II: Icarus Abides
Episode 16: Revenging Angel
Episode 17: The Choice
Episode 18: Fractures
Episode 19: I-Yensch, You-Yensch
Episode 20: Into the Lion's Den, Part I: Lambs to the Slaughter
Episode 21: Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Episode 22: A Dog with Two Bones

Season Four

Episode 1: Crichton Kicks
Episode 2: What was Lost, Part I: Sacrifice
Episode 3: What was Lost, Part II: Resurrection
Episode 4: Lava's a Many Splendoured Thing
Episode 5: Promises
Episode 6: Natural Election
Episode 7: John Quixote
Episode 8: I Shrink Therefore I Am
Episode 9: A Prefect Murder
Episode 10: Coup by Clam
Episode 11: Unrealised Reality
Episode 12: Kansas
Episode 13: Terra Firma
Episode 14: Twice Shy
Episode 15: Mental as Anything
Episode 16: Bringing Home the Beacon
Episode 17: A Constellation of Doubt
Episode 18: Prayer
Episode 19: We're So Screwed: Fetal Attraction
Episode 20: We're So Screwed, Part II: Hot to Katratzi
Episode 21: We're So Screwed, Part III: La Bomba

How and Why and What We Remember

This is a mural dedicated to George Floyd, the man who was murdered by an arresting police officer a few weeks ago. The creators of the mural and the millions of protestors around the world would tell you the artwork is designed to portray a victim of systemic racism and not to celebrate Floyd's crimes that include armed robbery and drug possession. Commentators who mention Floyd's past have naturally been condemned for being in extremely poor taste.

This is the statue of Edward Colston, erected in 1895 in Bristol, England, to commemorate his philanthropic works and not to celebrate his involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Until recent years, to suggest that it was would generally be considered in poor taste.

Can I really draw a comparison between these two men? Floyd's crimes affected a few people and were possibly perpetrated under desperation or motivated by psychological issues formed from a young age. Maybe, like the pusher in Foxy Brown, he saw crime as the only way for a black man to fulfil his ambitions in America. While others, like Foxy herself, might call that a cop out.

Speaking of cop outs, on the subject of slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I've never quite accepted the argument that the English simply didn't understand how reprehensible slavery was. It was illegal to possess slaves on English soil, despite the profits made in England on the slave trade. The very fact that such a law was evidently debated and enforced suggests that people were thinking about the moral implications. On the other hand, Samuel Pepys, one of the historical figures whose legacy is supposedly on the chopping block, believed sailors who told him black people changed colour when submerged in water. It's not as though he had a greater authority to turn to on the subject (he might have asked one of the few black people in England, I suppose, but "do you change colour underwater?" is a weird icebreaker). It's difficult for people now to imagine a world where information was so slowly proliferated and so frequently unreliable. On the other hand, Wikipedia informs me that in 2018, an art installation in front of the statue informed people about the victims of modern forms of slavery, like fruit pickers or factory labourers. Do you suppose it unlikely any of the protestors who destroyed Colston's statue is a beneficiary of modern slavery?

It's hard to convey complexity in a statue, it's up to the viewer to discern what is being commemorated. Though perhaps memorials of George Floyd and Edward Colston would be better viewed as reflections of the viewer than as symbols of race or institution. Otherwise, surely Mount Rushmore will have to come down. We all know about Thomas Jefferson.

Should there be no statues at all, at least of real people? An interesting aspect of George Floyd is that he is being remembered for what was done to him and not for what he accomplished himself. In the past twenty years, has anyone achieved real status as a civil rights thinker or leader? Michael Moore? George Takei? No-one I can think of is on the level of Martin Luther King, Jr. And MLK's legacy is of course in question, not because of his personal life, but for the reasons that he was long considered great--because he promoted peace and understanding instead of violence and zealotry. This seems to have become a dangerous way of thinking.

How can we commemorate the achievements of individuals when every individual must be a symbol of a group?

Statues are easy for a movement to take possession of. After the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's government ordered a statue of Charles I destroyed. The statue, which hadn't even been erected yet, having just recently been finished, was, by pure luck, not destroyed but kept in storage. It was finally installed after the Restoration and it still stands to-day at Charing Cross in London. However, in his novel, 1984, George Orwell made a subtle point by referring to it as a statue of Oliver Cromwell.

Twitter Sonnet #1364

Contentious dots combined to make a tie.
The Polka brings the spirit smile home.
Repeated cakes suggest the extra pie.
A marble game could raze the whole of Rome.
An itchy chin detects a windy day.
The noodle knots inform the pasta lump.
With sailing thoughts the dreams invade the bay.
The water stopped inside the rusty pump.
Completed arms extend to eyes and ears.
The pencil rose to swap the pen and ink.
And after class, utensils broke for beer.
We left the salt around the glossy sink.
The stone became a fluid thing at dawn.
The metal falls before the dizzy brawn.

The Cleanest Money

After years of people recommending it to me, I finally started watching Ozark a few days ago. Two episodes in I'd have to give it a resounding, "Not bad."

One of the latest in the long line of shows influenced by Twin Peaks, this one also has a heavy dose of The Sopranos. The basic concept, of a man from the city finding revelations in a small, rural town filled with dangerous and eccentric characters, is more like Twin Peaks, but the focus on his family dynamic and his relationship with organised crime feel more like The Sopranos.

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney play Marty and Wendy Byrde--he's a money launderer for a Mexican cartel and she's his faithless spouse. Together with their two kids, they suddenly move from Chicago to a rural town in Missouri because the cartel has figured out Marty's coworkers have been skimming some of the cartel's funds.

Instead of the mystery of a beloved teenage girl's murderer, the question motivating the drama, at least so far in season one, is how much longer the cartel is going to let Marty live and whether or not the job he's currently doing for them, laundering 8 million, is even doable in such a small town.

Like most Twin Peaks imitators, and Twin Peaks itself when David Lynch wasn't around, it never gets the quirky townsfolk quite right. Lynch has the kind of talent for making people who are bizarre yet feel 100% authentic. The elderly man (Harris Yulin) who, for awkwardly contrived reasons, lives in the basement of the Byrdes' new home, is spotted walking naked to the lake at one point for a punchline.

Maybe it's more like Green Acres, the southern characters feel about that authentic. Everyone on the show is either a genius or a caraciture. But for the former category, it does make for some clever plotting. I was certainly compelled to keep watching as Bateman tried, and sometimes succeded, at swimming faster than the other sharks in the first episode.

Ozark is available on NetFlix.