Space Monsters

The second episode of the new Mandalorian season aired last night and, again, it featured some cool new characters/creatures, intriguing locations, and weak writing.

It doesn't make sense to me that Bo Katan is quite alone. She has a throne and a castle. Maybe she doesn't have the Darksabre but she's still a princess. People ruled Mandalore without the Darksabre for an awful long time.

But on that point, why couldn't she claim the Darksabre when she rescued Din? When he was caught, the sabre was taken from him so that new bug cyborg would have a claim to it. Then she beat the bug cyborg so isn't it hers by right? Considering he didn't want it and she very much did, he could have at least floated the idea. She even has a shield to go with it.

It was a good fight scene against a cool new monster. I also liked the troll-like creatures they had to fight. It almost feels like the Mandalorian of the title is being reoriented to mean Bo Katan. Frankly, I don't think that's a bad idea. Her motives are much more firmly established than Din's and Katee Sackoff gets to perform with her face. As a character, she's far better suited to lead a series.

I guess Grogu really isn't a baby at all. He clearly understands language, can intelligently assess threat, understands space flight and planets, and can make complicated plans. Maybe he just chooses not to talk.

I suppose Andor set a really high bar for writing. But I still feel like Favreau could do better.

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

From the Jungle to the Deep

An American working in the jungles of Honduras gets word he's inherited 200 grand. The tricky part is getting back to Texas to claim it in 1944's Dangerous Passage. This short b-movie is a pretty inventive specimen.

Robert Lowery is pretty charming as Joe, the American in the big panama hat. He meets the equally charming Phyllis Brooks as down on her luck night club employee Nita Paxton, looking to finally purchase a ticket back to the states. She and Joe end up on the same crummy little passenger ship called the Merman after Joe finds himself running from a manslaughter rap.

The filmmakers seem to have been more charmed by Charles Ant as the sleazy go-between who breaks the news to Joe about the 200,000. He makes a coy comment on how valuable Joe's identification papers are and he spends the rest of the movie trying to get his hands on them. But there's another crooked plot afoot as the captain and first mate of the Merman are planning to scuttle the ship and claim the insurance.

The final act gets a bit silly but overall the film's a better than average appetiser or chaser for an A-picture.

Between a Cock and a Hard Head

An innocent young woman is abused by the amoral and the devoutly moral in 1979's Tess. Roman Polanski directed the film ten years after Sharon Tate recommended to him the Thomas Hardy novel on which it's based, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (you can see her buying a copy in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Like Polanski's later film, Pirates, Tess is an astonishingly meticulous and beautiful period film.

Nastassja Kinski stars as Tess, a peasant girl whose drunken father is informed one day by the parson that their family is actually descended from the venerable noble family d'Urberville. Since Tess is well mannered and beautiful, her mother decides to send her to the nearest apparent representative of the respectable branch of the family.

She's swiftly employed by a young cad who purchased the use of the d'Urberville name (Leigh Lawson). A ruthless conman, he falls for Tess and takes advantage of her, emotionally and physically.

Compelled to leave, she next finds herself employed as a milkmaid at a dairy farm where she catches the eye of the handsome Angel Clare (Peter Firth).

Angel seems like a descendant of Romanticism, espousing a love for nature and purity. He also reads Marx, though, so his ideas are influenced by a late 19th century distaste for antiquated systems of hierarchy. Most viewers will catch on pretty early that this guy's a hypocrite and Tess is heading for another disaster. But Polanski weaves such a credible world of peasants and their lords and the ways in which their relationships work that the drama is thoroughly engrossing. Not to mention the film has gorgeous cinematography.

Tess is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1675

A careful piece arranged to buy the board.
Defining time allowed the mind to roam.
With Heaven's help, the songs of Hell were scored.
And now the heart eludes the finest comb.
Before the golden setting sun they fall.
Depraved before the dreams of chicken gods.
To make a patch she knits a ragged ball.
A leaky thatch disturbs the cloning pods.
The morning sun was cowed by burning eyes.
Ascending boots of mud were mute and grey.
Assembled ghosts awaited up the rise.
And thus began the gloomy final day.
Disputes about the tea have changed the grass.
Detectives sought a starlet's perfect ass.

Tom Sizemore

Tom Sizemore passed away a few days ago from a brain aneurysm following a stroke. He was 61 years old. He made a career with memorable supporting performances in movies like True Romance and Saving Private Ryan, delivering inimitably hard-bitten tough guys or slime balls, like the psychotic cop he played in Natural Born Killers.

Of course, I primarily remember him as one of the stars of Twin Peaks, season three. His crooked insurance agent character was strikingly pathetic, begging the strangely somnambulant Cooper for his life. You could see cunning in his eyes all the time, though, which added nuance to all of his scenes.

Here's hoping no-one else from Twin Peaks dies this year. How many have been lost in the past few years? Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti, Peggy Lipton, Robert Forster, Harry Dean Stanton, Walter Olkewicz, Clark Middleton, not to mention Miguel Ferrer, Warren Frost, and Catherine E. Coulson who died before the third season aired. I'm probably forgetting some people. It seems like every week I hear about another one who's died. Even so, I'm still holding out hope for Season Four.

The Fall of Tar

How do you make a movie about the dark side of cancel culture when even contemplating the existence of such a dark side is a potential prelude to cancellation? With 2022's Tar, director Todd Field makes an attempt to hit the truth sideways, in the Emily Dickinson sense. He failed to create something that will convert many yet it is a very intelligent film in both conception and execution. Cate Blanchett gives a flawless performance as the title character.

Her name is Tar, which seems as though it might have poetic significance (is she tarred and feathered?). Lydia Tar is a superstar composer and conductor now living and working in Berlin with her wife and colleague, Sharon (Nina Hoss).

Wisely, Field avoided making the movie about a white straight man, which would likely have killed the project before it began because of, as the kids say, reasons. Blanchett's performance is essential because she creates a woman who leads with a firm hand, whose capacity for sympathy is rather limited. Yet it's also clear how useful her emotional strength is, how necessary it was for her to advance in her career. It also makes her a bedrock for her daughter, who can turn to Lydia when grandmother is too scary or when another kid at school bullies her.

Yet it's Lydia's toughness that may be responsible for the suicide of her former protege. Again, Field wisely leave things vague. It's not clear to the characters how much culpability Lydia had, as is often the case in real life. However, in a scene where she deletes dozens of e-mails, warning other orchestra managers and influential people about the former protege's mental instability, it's clear she's responsible for blacklisting the young woman. Was the woman truly, dangerously unstable? Did she and Lydia have an affair? These are possibilities we're left to contemplate as we judge the severity of Lydia's punishment.

Field spends a lot of time developing the world of orchestras and conductors, how they talk about the past and make creative decisions in rehearsals. He believably establishes Lydia's position of respect and reverence in a very credible world, which makes the sudden swiftness of her fall all the more shocking. He works hard to make it believable, though, I would say there are one or two things in the final act that are a little over the top. On the whole, though, it's a brilliantly realised film. I could see the influence of The Red Shoes, Twin Peaks, and Eyes Wide Shut--the last one even before I found out Todd Field played Nick Nightingale, the pianist in Eyes Wide Shut.

Julian Glover has a small but crucial role in the film and he gives a great performance. It was nice to see him after he was axed too soon on Game of Thrones.

Obscene Reflections

Inflexible moral authority proves a treacherous tool for a judge interrogating actors about their profane performances. Ingmar Bergman's 1969 film The Rite feels like a followup to his 1958 film The Magician, once more exploring the tormented lives of artists versus the destructive ignorance of those who try to regulate them. The Rite is a quiet, simple character study that becomes progressively, fascinatingly nightmarish.

Much of the film consists of Judge Abrahamson (Erik Hell) interviewing the three actors, first together and then separately. His interest in their crimes and the nature of their performances often detours into their personal lives and, at times, it's difficult to distinguish his interest in their potential malevolence from his prurient interest in celebrity gossip.

The actors are two men and a woman. Ingrid Thulin plays Thea, an extremely nervous, thin skinned woman whose psychological vulnerability and compulsive sexual appetite meet with Abrahamson's simultaneous condemnation and lust, of course. Anders Ek plays Sebastian Fisher, one of the actors, and Thea's lover. He's irresponsible with his money and petulantly tries to throw Abrahamson's ignorance back in his face only for Abrahamson to cunningly reverse Fisher's presumptions. Gunnar Bjornstrand plays Hans Winkelmann, Thea's husband and the other actor, whose detachment and confessed lack of sympathy for his wife and comrade are balanced by a real understanding of them and effort to work with and compensate for their personal failings.

Abrahamson seems satisfied with the inferiority of the actors and secure in his moral right and imperative to abuse them and yet, when finally witnessing their performance, the hints of self-loathing seen throughout the film are finally drawn out of him in painful fullness. It's an emotionally raw film altogether, not quite as subtle or as strong as The Magician, but still pretty great.

The Rite is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1674

A glowing rock condemned a metal dog.
Binoculars embraced suspicious eyes.
To wander east, the box collects a fog.
Important babies reach impressive size.
In time the pork could cover island peat.
Removing tags condemned the god to ice.
A funky kid requires frozen meat.
Disturbing keys could open shutters twice.
A single flying spoon could bomb a coat.
Bewitching nails report a ghostly chalk.
Remember gods are never singling boats.
But who recalls that tiny wigs can walk?
The turning shell dispatched its escargot.
Refurbished dawn expressed a burning crow.

Be Afraid, Please

Wednesday's Bad Batch was a sequel to one of my very least favourite stories of The Clone Wars. So I didn't enjoy it very much, though some of the setup at the beginning of the episode was an Alien pastiche that conjured some genuine dread.

Of course, Clone Wars has also done an Alien pastiche, the effective season one episode, "Lair of Grievous". Wednesday's Bad Batch more directly copied the Nostromo and some of the opening shots of the empty cockpit from Ridley Scott's movie.

But then it became that stupid Godzilla pastiche again with the Zillo beast. I can remember the profound disappointment at seeing lightsabres were ineffective against the giant sock puppet. But Dave Filoni is a kaiju stan and I think those folks must exist in a pretty airtight fantasy that thoroughly convinces them that anything remotely resembling Godzilla will strike awe into the viewer.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us, it's just lame. And I liked the first Godzilla.

The ongoing plot about the Emperor's cloning projects is interesting. I guess they're going the long way to finally explain Palpatine showing up in Rise of Skywalker. Though I heard this might be leading up to the revelation that Grogu is a clone of Yoda.

The troopers in this episode wear some really daring necklines.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Back by Popular Demandalorian

The Mandalorian returned last night for the start of a third season. It brought some great action sequences, intriguing new characters, cute moments, and weak writing.

We catch up with Din's (Pedro Pascal) cult baptising a new member when a giant reptile attacks. He seems to be invulnerable to handcannons so it's lucky Din shows up in his refitted Naboo starfighter to blast the thing. And what thanks does he get?

None at all. Not even a mention. It felt strange, like the big, impressive action sequence was added in post. At the very least, someone could've said, "Your deed will not earn you a place back among us." There is not even the tiniest part of me that wants Din to get back in with these people. I'm going to be frustrated if this season doesn't have an arc in which Din learns he doesn't need them.

This has been a consistent problem with Favreau's writing on both Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett. He can't seem to establish believable motives for philosophically driven people. You might not agree with the Jedi philosophy about not forming personal attachments, but you can see the logic in it as it's explained. With the Mandalorians, the only explanation really is, "Because they're aliens!" The same goes for the people who abandoned Bo Katan (Katee Sackoff) because she doesn't have the Darksabre. It's really odd, especially since many of them knew perfectly well why she doesn't have it. The beliefs and practices of other cultures can seem strange and illogical, but they do have underlying reasons, and if you write a fictional cultural without such reasons, it feels insubstantial.

It was nice seeing Carl Weathers again. I don't agree with the circumstances of Gina Carano's firing but I was never particularly invested in her character so I don't miss her. And frankly, it makes the galaxy feel bigger when it's not the same characters constantly turning up over and over.

Grogu with the mechanic rodents was cute and Carl Weathers' constantly trying to interpret them was funny. I also liked the pirates, especially the captain who looks like Swamp Thing.

And kudos to Favreau for actually having one of them say, "Avast!"

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

A Road Paved Beneath the Moon

Robert Mitchum roars across Tennessee and Kentucky in 1958's Thunder Road, totting moonshine. The action in this movie still largely works from the atmosphere conjured by a lot of shadows and Mitchum's ragged demeanour.

Mitchum plays Lucas Doolin, who delivers the whiskey his father makes in an illegal still. Doing so often means having to dodge government agents and gangsters alike, the latter having an interest in taking over the business.

Mostly Lucas is able to keep his cool but he doesn't want his younger brother, Robin (played by Mitchum's son James) following in his footsteps. Lucas seems to take equal shares of pride and shame in his lifestyle and Mitchum's performance helps convey the sense of a man who's made a grim peace with his own ambiguities.

There are two women in love with him, one them a decent jazz singer played by Keely Smith who has a couple of numbers in the film. Robert Mitchum co-wrote a song called "Whipperwill".

Thunder Road is available on Amazon Prime.

A Hunter's Return

I've started reading Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard's 1887 sequel to his King Solomon's Mines. So far I'm finding Allan Quatermain to be a pulpier fare but not bad.

The book begins with Allan mourning the death of his son. He's joined by his old friends from King Solomon's Mines, John Good and Sir Henry Curtis, who entice him to go on an adventure seeking a lost civilisation in Africa. So far, the best parts of the novel were the scenes following Quatermain and his companions through the wilderness as they're stalked by Masai warriors. Following this, Quatermain and his friends find a lavish, European style home run by a Scottish missionary called McKenzie. The comforts Quatermain finds there, along with a cowardly French cook, feel a bit disappointingly cartoonish. We meet McKenzie's perfect, innocent teenage daughter, Flossie, who in short order becomes a hostage of the Masai, mainly to provide an excuse for a great, bloody battle sequence.

Surely one of the most distinguished features of the novel is the introduction of Umslopogaas, Quartermain's friend and deadly Zulu prince. The description of Umslopogaas' axe is memorable in itself.

By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe “Inkosi-kaas”, which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her beauty and power. In the same way he would consult “Inkosi-kaas” if in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed me it was because she must needs be wise, having “looked into so many people’s brains”.

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon. It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft, made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire—all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture, though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing two and a half pounds, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was slightly concave in shape—not convex, as is generally the case with savage battle-axes—and sharp as a razor, measuring five and three-quarter inches across the widest part. From the back of the axe sprang a stout spike four inches long, for the last two of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to be pushed out above—in fact, in this respect it exactly resembled a butcher’s pole-axe. It was with this punch end, as we afterwards discovered, that Umslopogaas usually struck when fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary’s skull, and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or sometimes in a mêlée. I think he considered the punch a neater and more sportsmanlike tool, and it was from his habit of pecking at his enemy with it that he got his name of “Woodpecker”. Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one.

Such was Umslopogaas’ axe, Inkosi-kaas, the most remarkable and fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he cherished as much as his own life. It scarcely ever left his hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it under his leg.

I still can't upload files to my webspace so here's Dizzy Gillepsie:

The Tortuga Lot

'Twas the year 1961 and director Robert D. Webb ruthlessly plundered the footage of older pirate films to make the mild, stage bound adventure called Pirates of Tortuga. Yet Webb did shoot some decent sword fights for the film and some of the performances are terrific, though not necessarily extraordinary.

Most memorable is Italian actress Leticia Roman as Meg, a hastily conceived Moll Flanders pastiche. Captain Bart (Ken Scott) rescues her from a mob after she's caught pick-pocketing. She repays him by stowing away on his ship and taking a bath in his cabin. Then she changes into one of the many expensive dresses he has in one of his sea chests. Why is his sea chest filled with women's clothes and jewellery? This is never addressed.

All the men are wearing little tricorne hats so I figured it was set in the 18th century but then Bart gets orders from Charles II to track down Henry Morgan. My guess is Webb just didn't want his guys wearing big Restoration wigs. But that's not all the monkeying he did with historical accuracy. In this timeline, Henry Morgan has turned pirate again after being appointed governor of Jamaica.

Dave King is pretty entertaining in the film as one of Bart's officers called Pee Wee and there's a memorable scene of him giving fencing instructions to members of the crew. A lot of time is wasted on recycled footage, though. A bear fighting scene is taken from Anne of the Indies and several shots come from The Black Swan for ship exteriors. Since those older movies were shot in 4:3 and Pirates of Tortuga is a wide Cinemascope picture, all the old footage is obtrusively blurry and cropped.

At least sets were built for the film but I'm pretty sure a lot of the same parts used for the streets of London were reused for this film's really unremarkable looking Tortuga.

Picture if You Will

I'm having some trouble getting pictures online. The web hosting service I've used for over twenty years now is starting to seem a bit worse for wear. Everything I uploaded before Saturday seems to work fine but, starting Saturday, everything I've uploaded, while appearing to be on the server, will not load in a browser, despite reloading and re-uploading. I suppose there might be better, cheaper services than the one I've paid 18 dollars a month for for all these years. But I have no idea how to move my massive backlog of files, or if another service truly would be better.

I started out using Yahoo small business which then got sold or rebranded to Aabaco which was then sold to Verizon and was then recently sold to something called Turbify. Turbify seems to be the least reliable. I can't even use an FTP programme. When I am able to upload anything properly, I have to do it one file at a time on the Turbify web site.

So I finally had to use the image hosting on my blog sites. I mirror this blog on three sites--Dreamwidth, Live Journal, and Blogger. Live Journal lets me upload full sized photos, I suppose because I have a paid account, and Blogger lets me do it for free, but no joy on Dreamwidth. Ugh, here's something else that's going to gobble up my time, I guess.

Well, here's a sonnet about pirates:

Twitter Sonnet #1673

They left before the sun could stuff the bay.
The morning air awash in rum and sweat.
Abreast, the dozen ships were well away.
A stack of coin at port comprised the bet.
Instructions late at sea were last obtained.
Alone across the placid sea she drew.
Repast denied for months, the men complain.
The lure of corn diverts the hungry crew.
At last ashore, the captain's horde advanced.
With child dreams of Drake's doubloons they armed.
And over hunger, fear, and rotten luck they glance.
But gaze ahead at spoils past the farm.
At morning light, the pirates slashed it down.
Despotic fingers felled the mighty town.

The Battle of Sea Demons

It remains a mystery to me that 1942's The Black Swan exists and that people don't seem especially interested in it. I watched it again a few days ago. For my money, it's a better movie than Errol Flynn's pirate movies. Certainly it surpasses The Crimson Pirate or any number of other pirate films that get talked about.

I love how the beginning of the movie feels like the climax to another movie we didn't get to see. We catch up with Tyrone Power, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, and a host of ravenous buccaneers storming a Spanish fortress. First Power is caught and put on the rack, then the tables are turned and the Spanish governor gets a stretch. And then the daughter of an English diplomat turns out to be there and it's Maureen O'Hara.

Power as the pirate Jamie Waring without hesitation pins her to a wall and tries to kiss her. This follows from a scene where he and Sanders, as the pirate Billy Leech, got drunk over the prone bodies of two bound girls in their shifts. Why does Jamie become the hero and Leech the villain? Tyrone Power is handsomer? It's as good an answer as any for this totally amoral film.

How did this movie get made in the era of the Hays Code? I really don't get it.

It's perfectly cast, too. In addition to the four excellent folks I mentioned, Laird Cregor gives us the best screen depiction of the famous pirate Henry Morgan.

As in real life, he's appointed to the governorship of Jamaica. In the film we see he's plagued by petty backstabbing from government men who led more respectable lives. I wonder if the film was sold as some kind of precursor to the American revolution. Maybe pirates were just generally presumed to be exceptions to the rules.

Special effects and cinematography are top notch in this film, too.

Leiji Matsumoto

Leiji Matsumoto passed away eleven days ago, I just found out two days ago. A legendary manga creator whose influential works in the 1970s helped forge the distinctive identity of Japanese comics and animation, his style was nonetheless appreciably atypical.

His most famous works are Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, and, my favourite, Galaxy Express 999. Japanese fiction is too often plagued by an overabundance of sentimentality but Matsumoto's work balanced sentimentality with extraordinary brutality. When the child protagonist witnesses the brutal killing of his mother, and quickly exacts violent revenge, the ghostly sentimentality of his encounter with an android who resembles his mother is well earned. The scale of destruction that sets up Space Battleship Yamato, both within the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth and in the aftermath of World War II in real life Japan, justifies its depiction of a desperate crew relying on a symbol of Japan's past.

I hadn't seen Captain Harlock so I watched the first episode last night. As a fan of the Golden Age of Piracy, I loved the show's indulgence in that fantasy. Like Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999, it marries futuristic imagery with anachronistic, antiquated aesthetics and technology. It's all held together with an honest emotional core. It's not hard to see why Matsumoto has left such a lasting impression and will continue to do so.

The Ghost of Bill Sikes Strikes Again

Last night's Bad Batch was okay. Not quite as interesting as last week's but a nice enough retelling of a pretty standard adventure story. It was written by Moises Zamora, creator of Selena: The Series.

It's really Oliver Twist, or at least, the thieves' plot from that book, with Bill Sikes/Fagin this time being a threatening enough big alien called Mokko. This is an often used story formula and we even saw it in one of the Star Wars movies, at the beginning of Solo, in which Han himself was an Artful Dodger.

The Bad Batch's Artful Dodger is Benni Baro (Yuri Lowenthal), who stole the Batch's ship in the previous episode. Can the Batch win over this little rogue who's never had anyone he could trust his whole life? Yep. I'd have recommended Zamora read Dickens' Hard Times.

This is is another visually nice episode, with all the backgrounds looking like paintings and all the characters well animated. The action scenes weren't very well conceived but were good enough.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1672

The drinkers divvy up the street for blood.
To choke the city, velvet cinched the throat.
A row of teeth emerged from crimson mud.
Beneath the altar bleats a snoozing goat.
Ferengi fingers fix the liquor air.
Assembled houses shade the slapping hand.
Aggressive waters move the salmon's care.
His startled face is shoved in river sand.
Her flimsy arms were straw and golden dust.
Another morning marks the field for grain.
Between the sun and sky accrues a rust.
A man in charge divides the wet from sane.
With crimson straps the ankles carry on.
Her arm conveyed the nameless, careless fawn.

Rolling Dice on the Cheap

It seems like Chris Pine's arms have gotten really small while his neck has gotten really big. Maybe he needs to vary his workout routine.

The above trailer is the first one that made the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons movie look any good to me. Since it does so by cutting out all the hackneyed jokes in the other trailers ("He missed!" Of course he didn't), which are presumably still in the film, I still think it's going to be a terrible movie.

Chris Pine is such a good leading actor. How was he reduced to this? Is it the arms? Anyway, I saw the above trailer ahead of the new Ant-Man movie at a Japanese movie theatre. The film's Japanese marketing team must be smarter than its American counterpart. Or maybe just having some distance precludes the possibility of flaws being hidden behind a veil of pride.

It's weird how much this movie seems to be adopting the same disastrous tactic of the previous D&D bomb; trying desperately to make it a hip modern movie for mainstream audiences. Meanwhile, all those bestselling Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books gather dust. At least this movie is set in the Forgotten Realms setting. But judging from the artwork in the newest Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, the franchise doesn't seem to be under the best stewardship at the moment.

His Name was a Sharp Cutting Edge

Wesley Snipes beats down vampires in 1998's Blade. Poorly written and with average direction, this one at least has some good action sequences and good performances.

Snipes sure is great as Blade. Adopting a gravelly voice and stoic demeanour--broken up by the occasional wicked grin--he's believably intimidating and quite fast with his fists.

Kris Kristofferson is captivating as his mentor, Abraham Whistler, and Stephen Dorff, as the villain, Deacon Frost, isn't too bad. He has a somewhat Near Dark/Lost Boys punk vampire vibe which jives with him leading a coup against the "pureblood" vampires led by Udo Kier.

Kier is playing another laughably ineffectual vampire here, similar to the one he played in Blood for Dracula. Only in Blood for Dracula, there was a point to it and at least that character attempted to put up a fight. As Dorff asserts his dominance, the purebloods placidly but uncomfortably shuffle to their dooms with the attitudes of tourists being told they can't take the scenic route.

It's nice to revisit some typical '90s production design but, I must say, there's an awful lot of paper in this fantasy version of New York, or whatever city it's supposed to be.

Blade is available on Netflix in Japan.

The Careful Face

The owner of a bar finds her normal, relatively pleasant life slowly pulling her towards her ultimate fate in 1951's Ginza Cosmetics (銀座化粧). The English title makes it sound like it's about a cosmetics department in a department store yet it is a literal translation. Funny old thing, language is. Anyway, Kinuya Tanaka stars as a widowed mother trying to maintain good relationships in the community while financially keeping her head above water. Directed by Mikio Naruse, it's another of his many brilliant films that quietly but undeniably reveal the tragedies of normal life.

Yukiko (Tanaka) runs a bar and acts as a hostess along with several women working for her. The job of such hostesses in Japan extends to maintaining friendships with patrons. When we meet Yukiko, she's in her room, applying her makeup, while a nervous man offers his profuse thanks. But just as we're thinking she may have slept with him for money, he asks if he can borrow some money from her.

She's caught between a rock and a hard place. Maintaining good relationships is integral to maintaining a good reputation, and maintaining a good reputation is essential for the success fo her business. She nearly faces disaster in a later scene when she can't resist crying, "Thief!" when she spots a man who didn't pay his bill at the bar. Immediately she clearly regrets it and, after taking his money, tries to quietly flee while he tries to make a scene amid the gathering crowd.

Yukiko is forced to rely on the hope that she'll meet a truly generous man who's willing to support her and her son. It's a little similar to Naruse's later film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Ginza Cosmetics is not quite as complex or emotionally effective but it's still a good little slice of quiet despair. Ranko Hanai and Kyoko Kagawa are very good in supporting roles.

Ginza Cosmetics is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1671

Without a dwarf, the princess couldn't sleep.
Resorts denied a pleasure sun from home.
Enormous mice construct a tiny meep.
Construction starts to forge the mighty dome.
Assorted guys were making trouble glow.
Collective bugs could save a glowing rock.
Descendants shrink before they start to grow.
Enlargement changed around the magic clock.
To sate the angry turtle cookies came.
Bereft of paper ones the twos were cut.
Decisions split to make a wing the same.
Humongous shoes approached the wearer's butt.
Repeating circles turn us back in time.
Below the deck she hears the warning chime.

Quantifying Quantumania

I'd have never expected Michelle Pfeiffer to carry the first blockbuster of 2023. But that's just what she did with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Mostly a mediocre entry in the MCU canon, it's not as good as Wakanda Forever or Doctor Strange 2 but I'd rank it above Thor: Love and Thunder.

Even more than Loki, it was clearly, very strongly influenced by Rick and Morty and was written by Jeff Loveness who, like Loki and Doctor Strange 2 writer Michael Waldron, started writing for Rick and Morty in its fourth season. From its second season and a little bit in its first, Rick and Morty has prominently featured multiverse plots mixed with other weird stories involving shrinking, transmogrification, and space travel. It seems obvious to everyone at this point that Kevin Feige watched Rick and Morty and thought, "This could be a story told over a phase in the MCU." Again, though, why he chose only writers from after Rick and Morty's best era is beyond me. Obviously Justin Roiland's unemployable now but that still leaves a whole lot of writers from the first few seasons.

The new Ant-Man movie also carries over some of the amorality and politics from Rick and Morty, uncomfortably yoked to Disney's morality imperatives. The villain, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), is a character from Marvel comics with a history of timeline variants, though, in the comics, several years would be spent with each variant before another was introduced. The MCU version seems clearly to be influenced by the vast civilisation of variant Rick Sanchezes on Rick and Morty with whom Rick occasionally clashes. To be fair, this aspect of Rick and Morty may have drawn influence from the comics' Kang. But I doubt the comics had so much ironic humour. One major character dies in Quantumania and it's basically played for laughs.

All the irony diminishes Paul Rudd's Scott Lang quite a bit and Rudd's performance somehow doesn't have enough heart to round him out. No-one gives such a performance except Pfeiffer.

They don't give her as many jokes, either, but I think its Pfeiffer's own abilities that actually made her the only character I felt any investment in. And she gets all the meaty dialogue, too, and although Kang's motives are vaguely written and his plan and arguments infamously unclear, I believed there were really things at stake when Pfeiffer was talking because she seemed to believe them. The only other actor in the movie who actually sells an emotional reality in the cgi realm is Bill Murray. He appears all too briefly as an old flame of Pfeiffer's but he quickly establishes something nuanced and interesting. It really is a shame people are in the process of trying to cancel him.

I loved some of the creature designs, particularly of a sort of red paramecium character called Veb (David Dastmalchian). I wish they'd avoided including humanoids among the Quantum realm's citizens but that might have been a budgetary problem.

Lang's daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is pretty but really bland. I did like that she brought up the homeless crisis in US cities. When even the MCU is talking about it, hopefully we're getting to the point where people who can do something about it will finally get off their asses.

Evangeline Lilly's character, Hope van Dyne, is utterly pointless. She contributes nothing to any scene of dialogue and feels entirely like an afterthought. She dramatically saves Scott a couple of times but only serves to dilute the drama by doing so. Without a personality, she's basically a dull deus ex machina. If Feige were wise, he'd just make Pfeiffer the main Wasp. Hell, make her a star of the next Avengers movie. Her character was a founding member of the Avengers in the comics anyway.

I heard Jonathan Majors was influenced by Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight and, once I knew that, it was hard not to constantly see it. Still, he's entertaining to watch and he transforms his imitation of Ledger's radical performance into a more conventional, but fun, exercise in scenery chewing.

Michael Douglas is fine, of course, though a scene where he extols the virtues of socialism when talking about his hordes of voiceless ants is funny for reasons I don't think were intended. Really, if you're trying to sell people on socialism, maybe using infamously mindless social insects is not the best idea. On the other hand, it's a good anti-socialist statement.

I don't think I laughed at any point the movie intended me to. Neither did the other three people at the 6pm Saturday night showing I went to. And this movie's doing well at the box office? Well, I do live in Japan.

Visitors We Have Gotten

To-day I read the new Sirenia Digest which contains "Crotalus (Murder Ballad No. 13)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It was good, a mysterious, disjointed linking of recollections related to a strange occurrence. I thought of both Picnic at Hanging Rock and Tristram Shandy. One of the narrators of "Crotalus" also talks about getting off track from the intended narrative. Maybe it's easier for me to take from Caitlin because she isn't trying to tell a hundred jokes a minute. Also, the narrative skirting around a description of a sinister object in the sky is ultimately more interesting than the humorously hinted at destruction of Toby's genitals in Tristram Shandy.

I found myself also thinking of the Japanese junior high school where I work because the story features something we could literally call a UFO--an unidentified flying object--and one narrator is preoccupied with the proper use of past tense and past participle. In talking to another teacher, I discovered the use of "got" as past participle ("I have got a present") is actually the normal thing in most English speaking countries and has been since the 17th century and only we Americans have clung to "gotten". That's according to Google, anyway. Yet other English speaking countries still use "forgotten" so I don't get it. George Elliot used "chase-gotten" and "ill-gotten" as past participle adjectives in Middlemarch.

"UFO" is one of the new vocabulary words for second year students. The teacher I was working with asked the class if they'd ever seen a UFO. One girl said she saw one by a train station, that it was shaped like a triangle. A boy said his father saw one and took two pictures. It was visible in one picture but not the other.

I sure wish I would see a UFO. Especially one with aliens.

Here's a song I've been using to teach future tense:

Twitter Sonnet #1670

Encroaching rest absorbed the wealthy night.
Refreshing plants described the tower wall.
Enraptured vines assist the luckless knight.
Between the walls resounds a lover's call.
Before the dancer's choice was made she ran.
Beside the moving car a cheetah sleeps.
Announcements brought a golden cutting man.
Condemned below the house a secret keeps.
Director lists began the day with lunch.
Descending feathers pull the jerkin down.
Advancing humans ruled the beauty bunch.
Majestic seats reject the golden clown.
For golden busts, the treasure voyage stalled.
Asleep, the dreamer asks if devils called.

Raquel Welch

I wasn't sure I had anything to say about Raquel Welch, who died at the age of 82 yesterday. Then I realised she grew up in my hometown, San Diego, and even graduated from San Diego State University, like me. I tend to think of her as European I guess because she was part of a wave of popular actresses with relatively strong nasolabial folds in the 1960s, most of whom were European. Sophia Loren, Ursula Andress, Julie Christie. Actually, when I try to think of Raquel Welch movies, sometimes I realise the movie I'm remembering is actually an Ursula Andress movie.

Welch is most famous for a poster to One Million Years BC, a Hammer horror movie. I couldn't actually remember if I'd seen the movie, as much as I love Hammer. I had to search my blog and, yes, I reviewed it in 2014. So it's not the most memorable movie. It is a nice poster.

I remember Hannie Caulder a little better, a 1971 western she filmed with Christopher Lee and Diana Dors. But I guess my strongest memory of her is her cameo in 1969's The Magic Christian in which she whips topless galley slave girls on a modern cruise ship.

She certainly was sexy.