No Moon, No Slam

I had to go to Osaka yesterday for work so, in a fit of nostalgia, I decided to visit a Denny's in the city. I discovered Japanese Denny's completely misses the point of Denny's.

For one thing, it's not open 24 hours. For another, they stop serving breakfast at 11am. What a tragedy. As Tori Amos put it in "Purple People", "Breakfast, every hour, it could save the world." No world is being saved here.

The morning menu was full of the same kind of tiny Japanese versions of American foods I see at Coco's. Miniature pancakes, hamburger patties without buns (they call it "hamburg"), a few leaves of lettuce with stripes of thousand island dressing, and the odd salmon sashimi thrown in. Now, I love Japanese food. I think Japanese food is the best food in the world. But if you open an American restaurant in Japan, surely you'd be catering to people who are in the mood for American food? People don't go to sushi restaurants in the US to eat pizza.

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with the Japanese obstinacy when it comes to experiencing foreign culture. I do love that Japan wants to remain culturally unique. But I wish they'd step outside their comfort zone now and then. It's kind of funny that Lord of the Rings isn't very popular in Japan because Japan is the Shire. A people in love with gardening, hospitality, comfort, and cosy charm, that also doesn't really truck with the ways of outsiders. These are Hobbits.

Denny's in Japan is very similar to Coco's but Coco's seems to be much more popular. Coco's was also an American diner franchise though I think they're all out of business in the U.S. I remember them from my childhood so I was excited to see them here, just like Tower Records. But like Tower Records, it's not quite the same animal.

The whole concept of the "diner" actually doesn't seem to be current in Japan. I'm told Coco's is specifically considered a "family" restaurant. It fills a particular slot in the vibrant restaurant culture of Japan. There are places you go with your friends, there are places you go with your co-workers, there are places you go to eat alone. There are places for age groups. Coco's and Denny's are clearly meant for Mom, Dad, and the kids. Denny's in the U.S. advertises itself as a family place, too. But in aping the classic diner aesthetic it also fulfills that function and caters to all sorts.

But, of course, the distinguishing feature of Denny's is that it's open 24 hours. I remember going to Denny's at 3am after finishing a chapter of one of my comics and enjoying a victory All American Slam. Or you could go there after a long drive. Or it was the place you could go to with your friends after hanging out til the wee hours. Or for college students to go and study.

The Denny's I went to yesterday did have a nice bar for laptop users, with single occupant spots with outlets. So maybe there's some thought to catering to a less family oriented crowd. But without being open 24 hours, it's missing that crucial niche filled by Denny's and IHOP in the U.S. There are 24 hour places in Japan so I don't see why they couldn't get on it. McDonalds and Starbucks are basically the same in Japan as they are in the U.S. and they're doing well.

I couldn't get coffee at Denny's (!) so I checked my phone to see if there were any nearby Starbucks.

Yep, Starbucks is doing just fine in Japan.

For dinner at Denny's I ended up getting the "American Club Sandwich".

It wasn't too bad. Really dry but I've had worse.

I caught a beautiful sunset outside.

Only Gene in the Building

Wow. What an incredible night of television. Better Call Saul and Only Murders in the Building both had exceptional episodes. Better Call Saul in particular was extraordinarily brilliant.

Directed by Michelle MacLaren and written by Alison Tatlock, "Nippy" was a rare exhibition of relentless tension. From the moment Carol Burnett, playing a woman in a motorised wheelchair, meets Gene (Bob Odenkirk) on a snowy sidewalk, the story constantly keeps the viewer constantly captivated.

What is Gene's scam with the woman? Can he keep it up? It turns out her son is the cab driver who recognised him as Saul. Can Gene maintain this delicate balancing act? Well, not only does he spin those plates, ladies and gentlemen, he takes on two more, concocting a plan to rob a department store and worming his way into the lives of two security guards to do it.

Not only can he do it, he clearly seems alive for the first time in years. This is why retail employers don't like to hire exceptionally smart people. Without a complex problem to work on, they get bored and depressed. It's not just the Saul identity Gene misses. It's not the suits and the glam--it's the challenge and the risk. The same things that drove him as "Slippin' Jimmy" and in his relationship with Kim. And also, sometimes, as in the Sandpiper case, it's what drove him to do a genuinely good deed.

Gene has another problem, too, as we see in the scene where he has to distract the guard unexpectedly. He's profoundly lonely, he has no-one in his life who cares for him really. No-one will miss him if he dies. Now he's starting to think about that wife he has somewhere in the American wilderness . . .

Also to distract the guards, of course, he uses Cinnebons. What great free publicity. Or maybe it wasn't free, maybe Cinnebon provided some budget to the show. In any case, it sure made me hungry for Cinnebon. The department store, meanwhile, is the fictional "Lancaster's". I wondered at first why no real department store would lend their name to the show but then I realised the plan Gene concocts to rob them is a little too credible. Having worked in a department store myself, I'd say, yeah. It'd probably work. If you're willing to spend the money to rent a freight truck and buy a cell phone for a single use and you've worked out a way to reliably distract the security guards from watching the cameras. Gene says Jeff, the cab driver, doesn't have to worry because the security tapes will be wiped by the time the department store does its next inventory. But actually, since Jeff steals a relatively small quantity of merchandise, the missing inventory would likely be put down to "shrinkage" and never seriously investigated. I mean, even if someone suspected it was a robbery, no-one wants to waste time sitting through hours of security footage. There are always little discrepancies. I remember the manager of the JC Penney where I worked would always quote some astonishingly big number at the end of inventory periods--I'm talking thousands of dollars of merchandise unaccounted for. I never heard about any shoplifters being apprehended for it. It was as likely to be due to paperwork discrepancies, damaged merchandise, or some other mix-up. Only the store manager, who had to answer to corporate, truly cared, and even then she was far too busy to spearhead a massive investigation.

This sense of authenticity is partly why this episode works so much better than any of the nonsense with Gus or Lalo. Those Mexican cartel guys are like cartoon characters--they're larger than life figures that could maybe fit into the kind of Spaghetti Western that Breaking Bad eventually tried to be. But the initial concept of Breaking Bad, the chemistry teacher who becomes a drug lord, tapped into a very appealing authenticity. And that's what last night's Better Call Saul did.

And what an intelligent way to cast Carol Burnett, who is superb.

Only Murders in the Building was also good. An exceptionally funny episode. I especially liked the scene where the three main characters are too distracted with their personal drama to notice their glitter bomb going off in the background. Guest appearances by Tiny Fey and Jane Lynch also worked very nicely.

Twitter Sonnet #1605

The prime balloon could pop below the ship.
To sound the sea the captains reached accord.
Ideas were spread like salmon salsa dip.
And ev'ry hand about deserves reward.
Belaying pins could clutch the masts above.
The thickened grey revealed a monster star.
The lowered sky was like a whale in love.
A tightened course has cracked a mizzen spar.
The desert mall was far below the snow.
A weather people came and built the wind.
Another name and cards were thick for Joe.
A cautious eye is peeping round the bend.
Behind the lifeless clouds a colour waits.
Electric bolts will arc for gravid fates.

David Warner and Paul Sorvino

We've lost two great actors this week. David Warner died on Sunday, aged 80, while Paul Sorvino died on Monday, aged 83. Sorvino was in one great movie, Goodfellas, while Warner was in a million movies of varying quality. Both were on Star Trek: The Next Generation within a year of each other.

Sorvino was in the seventh season episode "Homeward" in which he played Worf's human foster brother. It was a role that needed an actor capable of subtlety and showing shades of grey. Sorvino was more than up to the challenge and played a believable character while keeping the audience guessing if he was a scoundrel or just rough around the edges.

Of course, his best known role was as the taciturn gangster boss Paulie in Goodfellas. He had the quiet warmth of an ideal patriarch and the menace of a contented psychopath, all at the same time.

David Warner appeared in the sixth season two parter, "Chain of Command". He was also in two Star Trek movies in significant roles, Star Trek V and VI but it's for his TNG role as a Cardassian torturer that he's most likely to be remembered to-day. The essentially two man show between him and Patrick Stewart, in which Warner's character used psychological tactics to make Picard see five lights when there were only four, has become an enduring meme. An evocative touchstone for how easily and completely the human mind can be made to perceive a fraudulent form of reality.

But this great role is by no means even the tip of the iceberg in Warner's long career. To say he was ubiquitous would be an understatement. I've already watched at least two movies featuring him this year--John Carpenter's Body Bags and a production of Midsummer Night's Dream from 1968. If you're in the habit of watching genre movies and television of the past 40 years, odds are pretty good that you've seen him recently, too.

It's my favourite film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in fact. Warner plays Lysander alongside Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, and Ian Richardson. And with that powerhouse cast he's perfectly capable of holding his own.

Many actors fear taking too many roles for cheapening their cache. But Warner could appear in piles of schlock like Quest of the Delta Knights (featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000) but still elevate an otherwise already quality film with his presence. He's irreplaceable in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits or as Jack the Ripper in Nicholas Meyer's Sci-Fi thriller Time After Time.

I don't think there's another actor who has appeared in three of my favourite television series: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Twin Peaks, and Doctor Who. He also starred in dozens of underrated Doctor Who audio plays, even playing the Doctor himself on multiple occasions.

And still, there are many more roles I'm not even mentioning. Many I haven't seen yet. I look forward to them.

Is There a Better Life?

To-day I read the latest issue of Sirenia Digest. It includes the first part in a serialised version of Caitlin R. Kiernan's upcoming book, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. Though so far the protagonist is a woman, a scientist wandering among dinosaurs in prehistoric times. Not even a naked bombshell as depicted in the Richard Corben art borrowed for the cover. So it promises to be a recontextualising of the "boy's adventure tale" concept, a surprisingly postmodern idea for Caitlin. But it is good so far, concentrating as it does on the raw meat of a time travel journey. It actually does remind me a bit of Tarzan. I really liked a comparison Caitlin draws between triceratops and cattle. Somehow it really reminds me of late '70s and early '80s David Bowie.

I've been very much in the mood for jungle stories lately. What else have I been reading? Well, I've been reading William Dampier's journal again, also a sort of boy's adventure tale, even if it is non-fiction. I've come to the pirate scientist's adventures in and around Peru of 1683:

November the 3rd, at 6 a Clock in the Morning, our Men landed about 4 Miles to the South of the Town, and took some Prisoners that were sent thither to watch for fear of us; and these Prisoners said, that the Governour of Piura came with 100 armed Men to Payta the Night before, purposely to oppose our landing there, if we should attempt it.

Our Men marched directly to the Fort on the Hill, and took it without the loss of one Man. Hereupon the Governour of Piura with all his Men, and the Inhabitants of the Town ran away as fast as they could. Then our Men entered the Town, and found it emptied both of Money and Goods; there was not so much as a Meal of Victuals left for them.

The Prisoners told us a Ship had been here a little before and burnt a great Ship in the Road, but did not land their Men; and that here they put ashore all their Prisoners and Pilots. We knew this must be Captain Eaton's Ship which had done this, and by these Circumstances we supposed he was gone to the East-Indies, it being always designed by him. The Prisoners told us also, That since Capt. Eaton was here, a small Bark had been off the Harbour, and taken a pair of Bark-logs a Fishing, and made the Fishermen bring aboard 20 or 30 Jars of fresh Water. This we supposed was our Bark that was sent to the Lobos to seek Capt. Eaton.

In the Evening we came in with our Ships, and Anchored before the Town in 10 Fathom Water, near a Mile from the shore. Here we staid till the sixth Day, in hopes to get a Ransom from the Town. Our Captain demanded 300 Packs of Flour, 3000 Pound of Sugar, 25 Jars of Wine, and 1000 Jars of Water to be brought off to us; but we got nothing of it. Therefore Captain Swan ordered the Town to be fired, which was presently done. Then all our Men came aboard, and Captain Swan ordered the Bark which Capt. Harris commanded, to be burnt, because she did not sail well.

Alongside casual accounts of pillage and plunder, Dampier describes the geography and wildlife:

This Island at Sea is of an indifferent height, and appears like Lobos de la Mar. About a quarter of a Mile from the North-end there is a great hollow Rock, and a good Channel between, where there is 7 Fathom Water. The 15th Day we went ashore, and found abundance of Penguins and Boobies, and Seal in great quantities. We sent aboard of all these to be drest, for we had not tasted any Flesh in a great while before; therefore some of us did eat very heartily. Captain Swan, to encourage his Men to eat this coarse Flesh, would commend it for extraordinary Food, comparing the Seal to a roasted Pig, the Boobies to Hens, and the Penguins to Ducks; this he did to train them to live contentedly on coarse Meat, not knowing but we might be forced to make use of such Food before we departed out of these Seas; for it is generally seen among Privateers, that nothing emboldens them sooner to Mutiny than want, which we could not well suffer in a Place where there are such quantities of these Animals to be had, if Men could be persuaded to be content with them.

Have you been eating any coarse meat to dissuade you from mutiny lately?

Twitter Sonnet #1604

With meaning, apps delay the rise of blue.
To proof a coffee, triple suns appear.
The strength to ape is weak but really true.
A lizard asks a wasp to brew a beer.
Another useless paper grew above.
Beneath the house an ant could dwell alone.
An itchy hand imbued the soulless glove.
And so the finger bath its paths atone.
A pretty orc creates an axe of gems.
A flying word could send a sentence up.
A special spider grew a thousand limbs.
An ancient brew could crack the golden cup.
A jungle journey ends in sugar fields.
A keg of rum is all the harvest yields.

Comic Con 2022 TV Trailers (Some of Them) Ranked

So I can't go to Comic Con this year. I can still see all the trailers like everyone else. And I can rank them because it's the God given right of every Internet denizen to do such things if not our sacred responsibility. Here we go.

4. Interview with the Vampire Season 1

This one doesn't look very promising. Looks like they moved up the time period so that Louis is made into a vampire in 1910. Which makes the fact that he's black a whole lot less interesting, which was likely the point. The writers aren't likely so bold. I didn't catch any glimpse of Claudia, I don't think. With only about 110 years between Louis being turned and the interview taking place, there's a lot less time for Claudia's story to get traction. Will the Theatre des Vampires stuff take place during the 1970s? I guess it would have to for Claudia's age disparity to mean anything. So far, this looks like a weak imitation of the Neil Jordan movie as much as the Lord of the Rings series looks like a weak imitation of the Peter Jackson movies.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Like everyone else, I suspect his series will be terrible. The only thing that gives me pause is that Gennifer Hitchison, one of my favourite writers from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is working on the series. Though obviously the material is very different so I don't know if her skills will translate. The trailers and teasers have so far offered nothing specific except it's about the birth of Sauron and Galadriel is apparently the protagonist and now she's a warrior woman. The visuals borrow shamelessly from the Peter Jackson movies, particularly the look of the Balrog. The Balrog as described by Tolkien doesn't really resemble the glorious black smoke devil from Jackson's movie. So this would seem to suggest the Amazon Prime series is set in the same universe as the Peter Jackson movies.

It kind of doesn't matter what the ratings are since the money's already spent on the series, and supposedly there's a guaranteed season two. I guess it's not like Amazon Prime memberships are going to decrease if the series isn't a wild success. I suppose investors might be angry but mostly it looks like a situation where there's very little need for demonstrated profit for expenditure. If only Jeff Bezos were throwing money at David Lynch. I mean, it's like he's a Renaissance art patron at this point. If only he had that kind of taste.

2. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

I never read the comics but the trailer gives me the same impression I had of them--a slightly more serious version of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The special effects still look bad. In light of the recent news of special effects artists being mistreated by Disney, I guess that's not a surprise. I guess She-Hulk doesn't look worse than Gumby and Gumby was funny so maybe she will be too. I am excited to see Daredevil again.

1. The Sandman

This one looks the most promising. I'm a fan of the comics and mostly this looks like a faithful adaptation. Minor tweaks in the casting mostly seem good, especially the inclusion of Jenna Coleman and Gwendoline Christie. The woman playing Death doesn't seem to have the laid back sparkle of the comic version but maybe she'll surprise me in the full series. David Thewlis is pitch perfect casting.

The Distant Dream of Cash

So you want to send money to a poor man in Senegal. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Witness the odyssey undertaken by one man in 1968's Mandabi. Writer and director Ousmane Sembene portrays the surprising labyrinth of ignorance, social custom, politeness, graft, outright theft, and even honesty that stop a man cashing a money order from his nephew in Paris. Featuring many candid shots of the Dakar streets and businesses, it's an instructive and well crafted glimpse into a life of poverty in late 1960s Senegal.

Ibrahima Dieng (Makhouredia Gueye) is an unemployed but scrupulously religious man who lives with his two wives and seven children. They get by, apparently, largely on the generosity of their neighbours, relying on credit and likely empty promises of repayment. But this is a devoutly Muslim community. In one scene, where it looks like Dieng has been robbed, people throughout the town automatically donate foods and essentials to Dieng's family. Dieng himself is shown giving money to beggars when he hardly has anything himself because he believes it's good luck to do so--or bad luck not to.

Then one day, the money order comes. The postman delivers it to Dieng's wives while Dieng is sleeping. Later, Dieng tells them not to breathe a word of it but the damage is done. His younger wife has already talked about it at the market and even bought some water on credit. But was the family supposed to go without water?

Well, it should be a simple thing for Dieng to go to the post office and pick up the 25,000 francs. Except they won't cash the money order if Dieng has no photo ID. Dieng can't even read and barely understands the important papers he keeps, papers that do not include a birth certificate but do say he was born "around 1900 in Dakar."

Frustrated in his first attempt to get a birth certificate from City Hall, Dieng surmises he needs an influential friend, his self-esteem not countenancing the possibility that his troubles could be due merely to miscommunication and incompetent staff. Fortunately, he does have a relative in town who can read and even spots him some cash for a bus trip home. This cash Dieng too soon gives to beggars and is conned out of the rest. Meanwhile, back home, his wives are at their wits end dealing with creditors and other people who have dreamed up reasons they're owed money or rice. And Dieng's younger wife even takes it into her head to buy a bra.

Finally, it seems the well-meaning, perfectly decent society and rickety low level bureaucracy are like a wire net that closes tighter and tighter the more an individual attempts to assert any distinguishing space for himself. A minor act of kindness could mean complete disaster for Dieng and his family.

Mandabi is available on The Criterion Channel.

Galactic Parton

There was a terrific new episode of The Orville last night with a surprise appearance from Dolly Parton. Though I might have predicted she's appear after she was mentioned so reverently in an episode last season. And it's with reverence she's brought up again, now an idol to a renegade colony of Moclans.

Once again, Joel McNeely delivered a score that elevated the material considerably. I'd say his work is at least 60% of why this episode is so effective. Not just for his Celtic-folkish, instrumental rendition of "Jolene". The shuttlecraft escape at the end of the second act felt more like Star Wars than any recent Star Wars show, partly because of McNeely's score and partly because of Andre Bormanis' writing.

The episode was written also by Brannon Braga but I tend to suspect any space tactics on display come from former Star Trek technical advisor Andre Bormanis.

Braga brought his A game, too. The episode is filled with genuinely provoking philosophical conundrums. The Moclans hate females so much they surgically alter female babies at birth. But the Moclans are an important Union ally in the war against the Kaylons and breaking with them now could mean death for everyone. So there's that tension. The renegade colony, which is populated by Moclan women, exists only due to a delicate treaty. Contravening the treaty, Haveena has been smuggling female babies out of Moclas and she tries to enlist Topa to help her, to get Topa to use the Orville's transmitters. Now she's endangering Topa but it's all in the name of saving potentially millions of babies.

I love the details on her costume.

So when Topa is kidnapped, there's a real tough question about whether Haveena should confess what she did or if she should let Topa be tortured to death. It takes a holographic recreation of Dolly Parton to sort her out.

Parton was good, though her plastic surgery is making her look weirder and weirder. She's starting to look a little like Warwick Davis crossed with Tim Curry. But her voice and attitude are both still intact.

Watching her, I found myself thinking of my grandmother who died last year, who also, like Parton, was from Tennessee. She was a big fan of Dolly Parton. I thought about how Parton keeps existing even though my grandmother is gone. It seems strange somehow.

Anyway, it was a good episode. It's on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ elsewhere.

BB Dreams for CC

I dreamt last night I met Brigitte Bardot at a museum. It was in a non-existent European country. The museum was underground and seemed mainly to consist of the future according to the 1960s. Lots of Star Trek and Doctor Who sets--featureless grey and navy blue walls and panels with Christmas light keypads. She was more like 1950s Bardot, though, with long blonde hair and curly bangs. She showed me around. I tried to tell people about it but no-one believed me.

Oh, by the way, no Comic Con reports this year because I'm still in Japan. I actually considered going back to the U.S. for Comic Con since I still get a professional badge--actually the badge that was kicked down the line from the cancelled 2020 Comic Con. But at this point it didn't seem worth the expense or the risk. Maybe next year.

Twitter Sonnet #1603

The weather wrought a second Zeus for fame.
The double turned to two again to reign.
As tall in light the children grow defamed.
The prankster's circles lie beneath the rain.
The teasing teeth remembered tricked the red.
A dream of dragons changed to nights of bats.
The lab procured a book the monster read.
Assurance passed the mouths of ancient cats.
With jungle dreams the plane contained a map.
The ancient stone proclaimed the brothers moot.
With rolling fame the dame pronounced a sap.
The broken stone detained the slimy boot.
Forgotten fireplaces keep the cast.
The ash's lengthened limbs recall the past.

Only Saul in the Building

Last night brought new episodes of Better Call Saul and Only Murders in the Building. This week, Better Call Saul was definitely the more interesting of the two but Only Murders in the Building wasn't bad.

More scenes of Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne making out were worth the admission price alone. Though, honestly, Gomez doesn't seem that into it.

It seemed a bit late in the game to establish Martin Short's character having an ability to spot a killer. But I thought Steve Martin starting to get cosy with Jan (Amy Ryan) again was funny.

Better Call Saul went close to how I was expecting. I figured the aftermath of last week's trauma would cause a split between Jimmy and Kim. It was interesting that writer Ann Cherkis made the split around Kim's realisation that she has too much fun being bad with Saul and then Saul apparently accepting the break after Kim confesses how she'd forecast their breakup if she'd told him Lalo was back. It was a scene that really said a lot more about Kim than it did about Jimmy and maybe Cherkis was unable or uninterested in exploring the man's perspective in this. But with a big jump cut, it was enough to establish Jimmy's full conversion to Saul.

Waking up with a prostitute in his palace of tackiness, we see "Saul" is no longer merely an act. It's who he is. The tragedy that began with Jimmy's tension with Chuck ended with Jimmy's trauma with Kim. Now he's in the depths of Hell. Can he climb back out?

Of course, the episode spent too much time with Mike and Gus but, as boring as I think that subplot is, I do have to appreciate the subtlety of Giancarlo Esposito's performance, particularly in the wine tasting scene.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ elsewhere while Better Call Saul is available in various places. I watched it on Netflix.

Love and Blunder

So Thor: Love and Thunder is a bit weak. It's been thoroughly covered at this point and the box office drop in its second weekend tells an accurate story. It's disappointing because Thor: Ragnarok was so good and because Love and Thunder has some good qualities. One of those good qualities is not how much its humour resembles Monty Python.

I love Monty Python but the Python movies and Flying Circus are not works of fiction that encourage you to care about the protagonists and their achievements, they're not stories in which we're truly concerned about the welfare of the characters. Life of Brian ends on a joke about everyone suffering slow, painful death. That's not the right tone for a Thor film. At least not an MCU Thor film.

In a Monty Python movie, it wouldn't matter that the plot doesn't make any sense. It wouldn't matter that Thor and his friends have to disguise themselves to enter a convention of the gods even though Thor is a god himself. It wouldn't matter that Jane seems like a completely different character to how she was established in the first film. It wouldn't matter that the characters continue cracking jokes and focusing on their personal lives after all the children in Asgard have been abducted by an army of shadow demons. In a movie where we're supposed to care about the stakes, though, these things are deadly.

So in retrospect it seems even more miraculous that Taika Waititi hit just the right balance in Ragnarok. It's been reported that actors improvised a lot on Love and Thunder and that's how it got such a jokey tone. Improvisation is one of the things that made the first Iron Man work so well but maybe Jon Favreau is just better at harnessing that storm than Waititi is. Possibly Waititi just doesn't have the accrued instincts to sense what's right for more dramatic material. It's a shame because Christian Bale, as the villain, Gor the God Killer, is actually pretty effective. His makeup and performance make him a pretty impressive villain.

And there are some real thought provoking ideas introduced. In an odd moment of serendipity, I'd been talking with my friend, Rizu, with whom I saw Love and Thunder, about Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov and how he refused to believe in a benevolent god because innocent children are exposed to cruelty and suffering. And Love and Thunder begins with the death of Gor's child followed by Gor finding his deity lounging in an oasis, gorging himself on fruit. The theme of imperiled children comes back when Gor kidnaps all the children in Asgard.

I'm starting to wonder if Disney has some kind of mission plan about showing children being warriors since this movie features something like that following on the heels of Leia getting a blaster holster at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It seems an unfortunate choice given the epidemic of school shootings in the U.S. What is Disney thinking? Does someone at Disney think kids need to be encouraged to fight their attackers? It just seems like poor taste. Now, if you had something like Jim Hawkins fighting Israel Hands in Treasure Island, it would make sense. Here's a kid backed into a corner, forced to kill. It's exciting but also terrible and frightening. The kids in Love and Thunder and Obi-Wan Kenobi never seem especially frightened. So it's not really an exploration of a traumatic and violent situation, it's just like they're stroking kids' egos.

Natalie Portman is also a big problem in the film. This isn't quite the worst example of a female character taking over from an established male character. The fact that she assumes the name of "Thor" in the movie is never explained nor does it make any sense. But the role requires Portman to step well outside her limited skillset as an actress. She certainly gives it her best shot and I commend her for putting on some muscle. But the actress who formerly distinguished herself with her beauty and a sort of ethereal aloofness just can't act with . . . I guess I'd call it personality. She just doesn't seem to know what it's like to have a personality.

There were some funny jokes. The stuff with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the beginning was good. I liked the use of Guns N Roses music. But Love and Thunder is one of the weakest MCU films to date.

The Force of Guinness

No wave of destruction is so relentless or implacable as an artist. You can take that straight from 1958's The Horse's Mouth, a brilliant comedy directed by Ronald Neame from a witty screenplay by its star, Alec Guinness (adapted from a 1944 novel by Joyce Cary).

Guinness plays Gulley Jimson, a painter who looks and sounds a lot like Tom Waits. He lives on a ramshackle houseboat and spends his time harassing potential patrons or harassing his local publican (Kay Walsh) or painting. He does it all with a matter-of-fact momentum and is as likely to toss off a brilliant one liner about how he's really a terrible painter as he is one about how he's a great painter. He delivers every line with such little enthusiasm, and his statements are so baldly insubstantial, that he clearly seems to view linguistic communication as merely an annoying, occasionally unavoidable obligation.

Any lie is acceptable if it will get him money to eat, drink, or paint. Though occasionally food doesn't seem to be particularly important. He ravages the home of a wealthy acquaintance, selling off the furniture while the owners are away in Jamaica, and allows another artist, a sculptor (Michael Gough), to wreck the neighbour's flat, too.

The dialogue is relentless in its charm and wit as Jimson is in his demolition of civilisation. All in the name of art, as it should be.

The Horse's Mouth is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1602

The glassy rim could carry light away.
Across an empty sea we planted trees.
With birds the lonely whale was led astray.
The greedy door devoured twenty keys.
Denuding music drops a key to drink.
We lost the paper boat and took the steel.
But ev'ry day the ship traversed the brink.
The galley preps a final savage meal.
The circles show where drinkers fly to space.
Identified, the flying object fled.
The number writ confounds the cops a pace.
But velvet sky could pass for cosy bed.
The broken bottle popped balloons of blood.
A story mixed with sand and sandal mud.

Disney+ MCU and Star Wars Shows Ranked

Since it won't be until late August that we get any more MCU or Star Wars shows, I thought this would be a good time to do a ranking of all the Disney+ shows so far (except What If, I still haven't mustered the energy to watch that). I'll avoid heavy spoilers.

Before doing the ranking, I would have thought the MCU shows would rank higher but, for the most part, I realised I still actually prefer the Star Wars shows. The MCU has long been criticised for not being visually interesting while impressive visuals are an essential part of Star Wars. So Star Wars shows with weak visuals tend to rank low on my list. But for both the MCU and Star Wars series, I generally found the shows that worked best tended to focus on character relationships, with an emphasis on focus. When actors and scripts are allowed to build chemistry organically over time, these shows do what television has classically been able to do better than most movies--give you a feeling that you live with these people. The shows that fail often do so because of a lack of this focus, coming across as scattershot and schizophrenic. The problem, in a word, is Disney. Or, in another word, morality. Superhero stories are traditionally stories of very simplistic morality, and so, as Alan Moore has somewhat recently said, they are inherently childish. Although Star Wars is commonly regarded as a story of good versus evil, it really isn't. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, the character at the heart of all the George Lucas films, occupies the role of both hero and villain and the films are interesting partly because they explore just what these roles mean. The Disney Star Wars shows have worked better the more they've drifted away from simplistic morality while the MCU shows have faltered the more they've steered closer to simplistic morality. Since this morality is likely composed of corporate memos, it's likely the kind of shallow morality more concerned with how one is supposed to feel than with how one actually does. The Star Wars shows have benefited from Jon Favreau's creative control, even though Faveau himself is not perfect. He does, however, show a good ability to recognise his own mistakes and improve.

12. Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Although the chemistry between the two leads on this series showed some promise early on, and Wyatt Russell's U.S. Agent was outstanding for his moral murkiness, this is easily the worst of the Disney+ shows. Its lack of focus could partially be blamed on rewrites forced by the pandemic (though, in retrospect, having a plot relevant to current events seems like it would have been more of an asset). But the confusing tangle of motives for the characters, particularly the villains, is likely due to more than that and, worst of all, the show was a really bad introduction to the Falcon's new role going forward.

11. Ms. Marvel

This is another one that started well--it started even better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier--but then got completely lost in ridiculous and sterile plot territory. A truly charming lead character is drowned in waters of meaninglessness by the end.

10. The Bad Batch

It's never as interested as Clone Wars was under George Lucas' creative control but certain episodes established and nicely built on the character of Omega. However, many episodes ran into the same problems as Star Wars: Rebels in which formerly lethal threats feel insubstantial, played for broad comedy with characters who don't seem particularly worried.

9. Loki

Once again, this show's biggest asset was chemistry between its characters, in this case between Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson. But the show lost focus when it shifted attention to Loki and his female variant. Plot problems that were already apparent early on began to overwhelm the show once Hiddleston and Wilson weren't playing off each other. By the end of the series, Loki's behaviour was wildly out of character for no apparent reason. The scheming Shakespearan character everyone loved from the Thor films was gone with no justification.

8. Obi-Wan Kenobi

The first of the live action Disney+ shows without Jon Favreau's involvement and it shows. The writers don't seem to be particularly interested in Star Wars or the characters and there are many moments of familiar characters doing and saying things that too drastically contradict their previously established personalities (why the hell would Obi-Wan Kenobi give anyone a blaster holster?). A weak sense of stakes established by characters shrugging off fatal lightsabre wounds is only one of the more vivid examples of weak writing. But it did have some strong performances and some late script contributions from Andrew Stanton elevated the final two episodes.

7. WandaVision

I have to admire the boldness of this show's premise and the performances from most of the leads were terrific. Some of the stuff related to the series' villain is great though Monica Rambeau failed to establish herself as interesting enough to be the lead for an MCU film. The show also had the infamous "Boner" fake out, for which it loses a lot of points. But there was some genuine insight into how it explored Wanda's psychology in the end.

6. Moon Knight

Here's an example of great character chemistry that's even more admirable when you consider it's one actor in both roles. The penultimate episode exploring their relationship was truly great. Ethan Hawke gives a nicely nuanced performance as the villain and Konshu is one of the best cgi creations in recent years. Sadly, the female lead is weakly established and the plot is jerked artificially in too many directions by corporate mandates.

5. Hawkeye

Of all the MCU shows, this is the one that most felt like it managed to do what it set out to do. It didn't aim as high as the others maybe, but that's perfectly all right, especially when you've got that great chemistry between Hawkeye and Kate Bishop. The only real complaint I have about this show is in how it took a previously interesting and complex villain and turned him into a simplistic thug. But I'm far from alone in complaining about that so hopefully Disney will listen this time. Otherwise, this is a sweet, cosy little Christmas series.

4. The Mandalorian, season one

There are a lot of problems with how this show conceptualises the Star Wars universe but by the end it does manage to establish truly good characters with interesting relationships. Favreau's interesting casting decisions--particularly Werner Herzog, Bill Burr, and Carl Weathers--pay off big time. Taika Waititi's direction of the series finale elevated it considerably and cinematography by Greg Fraser in a few episodes gave this show the kind of beauty essential to giving Star Wars the sense of awe it ought to have.

3. The Mandalorian, season two

And here's what I'm talking about when I say Favreau is good at learning from his mistakes. He completely abandons the silly "bounty hunter guild" from the first season and a lot of the simplistic morality. This was a season focused on giving us action and adventure in a distant galaxy and at times it was even breathtaking. Robert Rodriguez's episode reintroducing Boba Fett reminded us why Rodriguez is one of the great action directors to come out of 1990s indie cinema.

2. Star Wars Visions

Although this series is a mixed bag, it's altogether a triumph. Unfettered for the most part by Disney's creative mandates, this series truly explored new territory in Star Wars, visually and thematically. "The Elder" is the only piece of Star Wars fiction under Disney that truly reflects an understanding of what the Jedi are supposed to be while "Lop and Ocho" has the kind of pairing of family relationship and pulp adventure that was integral to the original films. This is Star Wars. Although, ironically, it's essential to watch Visions with the Japanese language track. A lot of people discovered for the first time by watching Star Wars: Visions just how bad English dubs of anime tend to be, even with celebrity voice actors.

1. The Book of Boba Fett

This show had heart and made a truly interesting character out of Boba Fett. His integration into a Tusken Raider tribe and the changes it wrought in his personality truly fulfilled the promise of Spaghetti Western via Star Wars that Favreau had teased from the beginning of The Mandalorian. The relationship between Fennec and Boba was nice and subtle, too. I only wish there'd been more time to develop a relationship between Boba and Jennifer Biels. And once again, Robert Rodriguez brought the right kind of attitude for the material. I only hope he returns for season two after internet users orchestrated such a vigorous campaign against him for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of his work.