She Takes a Kid

A little boy's family is murdered by the mob and it's up to one tough dame to keep him safe in 1980's Gloria. Gena Rowlands gives a good performance as the title character and her husband, John Cassavetes, capably loads the first part of the film with tense excitement. But as events swiftly become less probable, the film becomes less and less satisfying.

Who is Gloria? Why is she so cool under pressure, how come she's so good with a gun? She finally explains to the kid, Phil (John Adames), that she's "friends" with the very mobsters that gunned down his parents and sister.

Immediately, a car full of mobsters rolls up and ask Gloria what she's doing. She immediately guns down the whole car load of them, causing the car to flip over when they try to get away. It's one of many moments in the film that feels like the filmmakers were making things up as they went along.

As Gloria continually establishes herself as a flawless, morally pure killing machine, I found myself wondering just what she did for the mob that left her in this condition. Even less plausible is the fact that she and the kid are able to book tickets and get hotel rooms after we see her and the kids' pictures are all over the news, naming her as a kidnapper.

Rowlands' performance is charismatic and fun so, even if the film is ultimately meaningless fluff, it is mostly entertaining.

There's More than Castles in the Clouds

It's time for the annual Fantasy Faire in Second Life again. Second Life is the oldest and biggest virtual world on the Internet still up and running (it started in 2003). It's also easily the most beautiful and complex, though I suppose Zuckerberg's Metaverse isn't much competition.

Fantasy Faire is an event to raise funds for the American Cancer Society in which some of the best creators in Second Life create hundreds of square kilometers of fantasy environments housing temporary shops and providing venues for fundraising. As I write, this year's Fantasy Faire has so far raised around $75,000 U.S. dollars.

Here's a map of this year's Fantasy Faire:

Each green dot is a person. I took this picture while I was attending the party you can see represented by the tower of green dots in the middle. This was at a place called the Akipelago designed by Haveit Neox, Lilia Artis, and Gidgette Adagio.

I'd stumbled on the party while wandering. I'd started my tour of Fantasy Faire this year at Spirits' Crossing, designed by Marcus Inkpen and Sharni Azalee, and started working my way south and clockwise.

This was a nice, gloomy mediaeval town.

Next I visited a dark, crystalline valley called Dingir, designed by What88 Zond.

My avatar had bananas.

I had to hop past Szystrum Synod because it seemed always to be packed with people. So next I visited the gothic town of Sialdor by Dacien and Marcel Blackwood.

From there I finally found some sun in Nysaris by Kadaj Yoshikawa and Janire Coba.

Next to this ancient Rome land was one called Opera, designed by Alia Baroque and Garvie Garzo, seemingly meant to evoke Rome in another sense.

Who wants some wine?

Looks like a good spot for my aria.

I noticed a familiar harpsichord:

I first saw this harpsichord over ten years ago. Its creator abruptly disappeared one day, eight or nine years ago. He didn't update his profile, he didn't properly close his store so it just vanished when he stopped paying rent. I can only assume he met with some terrible tragedy. But his works live on.

Next I visited a tent city called Glimmering Meadows by Julala Demina and Lil Cinnamon.

And then a sort of maraca tree town called Khumbala by Ketsui Naidoo, Robynredhead, and Ghosted.

Further west was the middle eastern style Safe Haven by Sweetgwendoline Bailey and Mondi Beaumont.

After that, I headed north for the volcano town populated by alligator people called WooHoo Bay by Lrriven.

There's always a water themed area at Fantasy Faire and this year it was Isles of Aquarius by EchoRayne Ayashi and Liz Corryong.

This area was the most difficult for my computer to process but I fought my way through a pleasant swim.

After this was a pretty standard, but very pretty, fantasy forest called Sipala by Gidgette Adagio.

North of Sipala was the playfully gaudy Giggenwhirl by Allie Munro, Krystali Rabeni, Peter Locke, and Lunar Tripsa.

Not my cup of tea. But after that I walked into the wonderful land called Fungalmire by DaveOSaurus (really, it's not what it sounds like).

They got mushrooms, and how.

Heading east, I visited a mysterious town called Flambois by Beq Janus and Elizabeth Jarvinen.

And then the very beautiful The Shimmering Fen by Elicio Ember.

Again, mushrooms, but the lighting distinguished this place nicely.

After this was a lovely, sort of Nordic themed land called The Winding Valley by Eldowyn Inshan.

It kind of reminded me of Skyrim.

After this there were three winter themed lands, starting with Frostweald by Searlait Nitzschke.

Then Fairelands Junction by Saiyge Lotus.

And Nova Nadiya by Elizabeth Tinsley and Garvie Garzo.

And then I was back where I started at Spirits' Crossing--but I had one more place to visit. I was finally able to enter Szystrum Synod by Walton F. Wainwright and Victor Eton.

I could see why it was always so crowded. It looked like Coruscant, in a very good way.

I only wish I had time to explore it more thoroughly.

I believe there's about 24 hours left of Fantasy Faire. If you want to see it, Second Life is free to use so have at it.

Twitter Sonnet #1695

Beneath the mud a human shape abides.
Electric life begins to claw below.
If to awake a forest shade decides.
And on the root a spirit doth bestow.
Familiar songs barrage the beating head.
In time, the tune's repeated many ways.
But wait, a single note is never dead.
Affixed to sonic space, the number stays.
A wicker rabbit grabs a couple dreams.
But sketchy grass would scratch the lucky feet.
Suspicious moons were packing cheese and beams.
Foreboding came the steady lunar beat.
Electric teeth divide and shape air.
The stars combine to show a bloody bear.

There's a Red House Over Yonder

A professor assembles a team of psychics to explore a haunted house in Stephen King's 2002 miniseries Rose Red. I enjoyed this thing way more than it possibly deserves. King is treading very familiar territory, director Craig R. Baxley has all the weaknesses of a run-of-the-mill, '90s television drama director, and of the ensemble cast, only Julian Sands and Melanie Lynskey are really good. But I found this series quite cosy.

Longtime readers of this blog will remember I have a big soft spot for haunted house stories, especially stories of people trapped in a house, and especially especially such stories with labyrinthine houses with shifting dimensions, which this one is. I think it goes back to an episode of Simon and Simon with a similar premise I watched late at night as a child.

Rose Red was recommended to me by the groundskeeper at the school where I work and he let me borrow his DVDs of the series. He knows nothing of my love for such stories. I looked for other odd coincidences in the tale and noticed my name, Adam, belongs to one of the former inhabitants of the house and another character disappeared in 1911 in April--I was born on April 11th, 1979. I love stuff like this. By the way, if you're thinking now I should read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, I already did, on Caitlin's recommendation. But as it's one of the few books--by strange coincidence!--that was contained in one of the boxes sent to me in Japan, I've been thinking of reading it again.

Rose Red aired two years after House of Leaves was published though it was supposedly in development for at least seven years. It contains an odd number of references to Ghostbusters which I think is actually a clever bit of misdirection on Stephen King's part. The paranormal psychology professor, Joyce, is played by Nancy Travis in a flat, over the top way that actually starts to make sense later on (still, I suspect she's playing a role meant for Julia Roberts). She butts heads with the dean who seeks to dismiss her for her devotion to studying the paranormal.

Ah, '90s TV over-the-shoulder shots.

She hopes to finally get evidence of ghosts by assembling a team of psychics to stay at a famed haunted house. I enjoyed the introduction of the various characters but poor Julian Sands, who went missing in January this year while hiking and still hasn't been found, easily outshines everyone as a calm, insightful gentleman. Melanie Lynskey is also good as the big sister of a super powered psychic teenager.

It's not until an hour in that they all finally arrive at the house, at which point everything is delightfully turned on its head. I almost wonder if King asked himself, "What if the Ghostbusters stayed at the Overlook Hotel?" and Red Rose presents what he imagined would be the outcome.

This must have been one of the last of an era of TV movies. It was shot in 4:3 and looks very cheap compared to the cinematic productions on streaming services to-day. I think a strong case could be made for King's original script to be readapted to-day for Netflix or something because the writing is certainly equal to better production values.

But there's something about cheap TV sets being employed for labyrinthine haunted houses. Such sets tend to deprive the viewer of a sense of the house's exterior, creating an impression of woodpanelled corridors in a void. As though punching through a wall would reveal empty space rather than a potential escape route. God, I love it.

A Place in the Galaxy

I chose to observe Star Wars Day this year by watching Star Wars--that is, A New Hope, the 1977 movie that started it all. I'd been meaning to since watching Andor and since I'd seen many comments from people flatly asserting that Star Wars has no artistic merit and limited entertainment value. Since then, I've been thinking of the reasons why audiences might be losing touch with the franchise.

What are some of the reasons it's hard for people to-day to understand the impact of the first film? One thing that strikes me about it is how much it hinges on Luke finding his way. Luke really is a solidly conceived and executed character. We see his restlessness, his teenage petulance, his longing for escape and something bigger he doesn't quite understand when looking at those twin suns.

It's hard to overstate the importance of John Williams' score which continually broadens the scope of everything we see.

Luke doesn't just want to leave Tatooine, he wants to fight. He wants to join the Imperial Academy like Biggs and it's implied he'll use that as a jumping point to join the Rebel Alliance. Andor makes it clear the kind of daily impact the Empire has on an ordinary citizen but Luke's desire to fight is more fundamental than saving the galaxy or even in acheiving personal validation. He's reckless enough to check out the Sand People after he's already recovered R2D2. He has his big rifle and it seems he's looking for an excuse to fight.

When his aunt and uncle are killed, he's solemn and awed. He doesn't seem to feel much grief, not like he does when Obi-Wan dies.

Obi-Wan and Han Solo present two models for Luke for how he might fit in with society, how he might satisfy his needs while maintaining positive connexions with other people. Obi-Wan dazzles Luke with stories of "crusades" and honourable warfare he embarked upon with Luke's absent father, the original missing male role model. Alec Guinness' performance conveys a profound inner peace Luke knows nothing about but Obi-Wan presents him with a path of wisdom and discipline to achieve it. Meanwhile, Han shows how a man sometimes needs to put his pragmatism ahead of a sense of honour or duty. Ultimately, it's of course Obi-Wan who exerts more influence.

I suppose these things might not connect with younger audiences to-day. The MCU movies tend to be about people who are already grown. But even young Peter Parker is too squeaky clean to have the kind of urges Luke has (Peter Parker in the comics, or the Sam Raimi films, is another story). I suppose it's possible this generation doesn't like stories about a protagonist having a dark side, or stories where such impulses are natural and must be managed and taught to find satisfaction in acceptable ways.

A New Hope is primarily told from Luke's point of view and this is what makes the cantina scene so effective. He'd clearly never seen so many aliens in one place before--not just in terms of species but in terms of people not from his world. The initial audience for Star Wars would have been as bewildered as Luke. Luke has some experience dealing with people. A human from another planet might be mysterious indeed but Luke would have some ready understanding of facial expressions and mannerisms. The cantina drops a sea of new and inscrutable expressions and customs. There are faces he can't read, associations he can't rely on (one guy literally looks like the Devil). Even the humans have peculiar hairstyles and wear strange things.

He calls the Millennium Falcon a piece of junk. How true is that really, though? What is Luke's frame of reference? Probably the equivalent of magazines and catalogues which showcase products in their ideal forms. Han does have a valuable lesson for Luke about what it's like to actually live in the galaxy.

I found myself thinking of Kimetsu no Yaiba, the mega-hit anime franchise. It starts out a lot like Star Wars. The protagonist, Tanjiro, is a teenager who comes home to find his family slaughtered and his sister transformed into a demon. He meets an old master who trains him and he's obliged to go to a world that's culturally alien to him. The substantial difference between Tanjiro and Luke is that Tanjiro is not established with any previous desire to leave home. He was quite content in his domestic lifestyle and now his primary motive is to cure his sister so that they might some day return to a semblance of happy, normal life. It's his sister, Nezuko, who has the violent impulses that must be managed and they're implicitly abominations, causing Tanjiro to feel shame and horror.

Domesticity and creature comforts may be the true religion of Japan but maybe prioritising them is no longer so uniquely Japanese. Maybe people all over the world are more passive than they used to be and the desire to fight and conquer is no longer felt. Or at least, maybe it's no longer consciously acknowledged.

Still Guarding It

If the rigours of space travel don't change you, maybe a mad scientist will. Such perils beset the protagonists of 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 3, director James Gunn's supposedly final film in his MCU series that began nine years ago. This new one's by far my favourite of the three and I think it's the best MCU film since Thor: Ragnarok.

I liked the previous Guardians films but not as much as other people I know. I've found the films, particularly the second, emotionally overwrought. I've vastly preferred Gunn's work for DC so far, The Suicide Squad being one of my favourite films of the past few years and Peacemaker one of my favourite series. It seems to me, the more fundamentally deranged or morally questionable Gunn's characters are, the more he earns the emotional high notes he aims for.

But Guardians 3 works in large part for how successfully it establishes a sense of threat. That was the main flaw in Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder--both films undermined any sense of the danger the protagonists might face by having the characters seem uninvested in their own reality, the rules regarding their powers being flagrantly inconsistent, or the villains being absurdly weak and/or stupid. Guardians 3 dismisses that right from the beginning when Rocket's hit by a strange glowing man and a well choreographed action sequence ensues. Everyone's caught off guard, Peter has to rouse himself out of a drunken stupor, and altogether you can sense everything hanging the edge of a precipice.

From the beginning, I wondered if Gunn would in some way encode his personal drama with Disney into the film, and I think he did. The villain, the High Evolutionary, is a scientist in the mould of Dr. Moreau, seeking to create a morally and intellectually perfect species via body and genetic modification of animals. He creates Rocket by surgically modifying a raccoon and embraces him like an adopted son, regaling him with tales of a perfect world to come. But when the High Evolutionary brews a better batch of creatures, not only does he not feel Rocket and his fellow experiments are necessary, he considers them monstrosities who must be killed. If you change out genetic engineering for social engineering, Rocket for James Gunn, and the High Evolutionary for Disney, it makes sense. The fact that Rocket's friends are unable to escape could refer to friends of Gunn's, like Joss Whedon, who weren't able to return from cancellation as Gunn did.

The artistic subculture of edgy humour and horror Gunn comes from would have once been embraced by the left as a sign of general progress or of "punching up" against oppressive philosophy. Now that those things are seen as problematic, like Gunn's offending Tweets, the perpetrators have been marked for erasure. It should be remembered that Gunn's tweets were public for a decade before he was fired for them.

It's especially ironic Gunn would be cancelled on these grounds since the Guardians movies have always been about showing the humanity of morally problematic characters. Guardians 3 strikingly makes no apologies for the violence perpetrated by Drax in a few scenes, like when he clotheslines an innocent motorcyclist to steal his vehicle.

The cast is great, the returning cast as well as new castmembers, particularly Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. Nathan Fillion has a small role, perhaps as a nod to Firefly, but this Guardians as much as its predecessors strongly shows the influence of Farscape. I was especially reminded of the first season Farscape episode called "DNA Mad Scientist". Gunn has been quite honest about how much Farscape has influenced him. It's too bad that hasn't translated into widespread interest in the twenty year old Science Fiction series. If you like Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll very likely love Farscape.

The music in the new Guardians is great, of course. I particularly liked Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands" in the end credits.

Twitter Sonnet #1694

Another figure burns to make the fruit.
The ruined wicker parts before the sun.
A savage mob effects communal brute.
A grinning hare pronounced the morning done.
The puppy basket bought a bony mind.
A pair of lenses fill the frames for eyes.
'Twere few the sprites were not considered kind.
Their feathers clogged the salt of friendship pies.
The running rodent wore a little mask.
Discovered friends could barely stand a god.
The body place contained a secret task.
In space, a tape was something fairly odd.
A golden witch's son could change a star.
Adventure friends convene and hit the bar.

The Disinherited Knight Appears

I've been reading Walter Scott's 1820 novel Ivanhoe again lately. I read about half of it a year ago and got distracted reading other things so I started it again. I'm enjoying it much more, which I partially attribute to reading it in paperback instead of on my Kindle. The physical paper and ink somehow suits the dignity of the novel better. That dignity is certainly integral and part of the reason I found it difficult to read before.

Scott is clearly in love with The Canterbury Tales and The Faerie Queene among many other medieval and romantic works. Sometimes it prevents Ivanhoe from breathing its own life and even when I'm enjoying it it's certainly on a more nostalgic, distant level than I enjoy the more red-blooded Shakespeare plays Scott quotes from. Nonetheless, the jousting tournament Scott describes has many thrilling, even cinematic, moments.

The trumpets had no sooner given the signal, than the champions vanished from their posts with the speed of lightning, and closed in the centre of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backwards upon its haunches. The address of the riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur; and having glared on each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars of their visors, each made a demi-volte, and, retiring to the extremity of the lists, received a fresh lance from the attendants.

And I do share Scott's sentiment in moments where he drags the action to a halt just to muse on the things that have come and gone.

At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area; a single champion riding in front, and the other four following in pairs. All were splendidly armed, and my Saxon authority (in the Wardour Manuscript) records at great length their devices, their colours, and the embroidery of their horse trappings. It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little:

“The knights are dust,
And their good swords are rust,
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
[Scott quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge]

Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins—the place that once knew them, knows them no more—nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!

I also appreciate some of the extensive detail he goes into when describing clothing and faces, particularly in the early chapters. If you slow down and really work with him, you'll find he conjures some really vivid pictures. And some of it really conveys a unique sense of medieval places. I particularly liked this bit:

No fewer than four silver candelabras, holding great waxen torches, served to illuminate this apartment. Yet let not modern beauty envy the magnificence of a Saxon princess. The walls of the apartment were so ill finished and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook in the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.

In the Woods there Grew a Tree . . .

Happy May Day, everyone. Of course, yesterday was May 1st here in Japan so I had my annual viewing of The Wicker Man (1973) last night.

I found myself wondering what Summerisle would be like a few years later. My preferred fantasy is that the crop is actually good after Howie's sacrifice and there are only occasionally bad crops in ensuing years. Maybe they steadily become more frequent instead of calamity abruptly descending. In any case, it's easy enough for Lord Summerisle to negotiate his way out of being sacrificed.

I wondered at some children finally starting to rebel against the status quo. One of the eeriest things about the movie is how thoroughly everyone is sold on the philosophy. The Wicker Man would be good on a double feature with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The crimes of the Manson family must have made something like the Summerisle religion seem plausible. One scene that gets more striking every time I watch the movie is the little girl who has a beetle tied to a nail in the classroom, and her delight at how the beetle can't help eventually crushing itself to death. Howie says, "Then why in God's name do you do it?" and she looks offended but can't reply. And that's of course a metaphor for what they do to Howie. They have this whole spiel about how, in presuming on his authority, he's brought this fate upon himself. But it's the people of Summerisle who've set everything in motion. The beetle might crush itself to death but that wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't tied it to a nail. It's obvious but you can see a certain kind of madness very easily washing its hands of the murder.

The Wicker Man is available on The Criterion Channel.