Which is the Dream?

The young man, frustrated by the intransigent status-quo, is attracted to the lone, powerful man who impudently casts convention aside to rise in the ranks to the status of Emperor. The young man is Pierre at the beginning of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Pierre is a sympathetic character despite the fact that Tolstoy was not himself a fan of Napoleon. One mark of Tolstoy's greatness, and a key aspect of his ability to write characters, is that he understood perspectives that were not his own.

I've been listening to an audiobook of War and Peace lately while walking to and from work. Just like the first time I read it, I enjoy the "Peace" sections more than the "War" sections. I suppose because there are more women in the Peace sections though I do appreciate the complicated portrait Tolstoy paints of officers and soldiers, caught up in petty dramas, in nurturing certain modes of behaviour, in strategising that often seems more retroactive than proactive.

I like this bit from the point of view of the young soldier, Rostov, thinking about a colonel with whom he'd previously had some interaction:

It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish him—Rostóv. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.

All these young men go to war with such vainglorious fantasies of personal heroism or of at least having the opportunity of showing their honour. When the reality turns out to mainly be mindless marching and various camp chores, naturally the imagination rushes in to fill the gaps in the story their young minds imagine must be happening, just outside their ability to directly perceive it. The reality of conflict can burst that bubble but so can thirteen year old Natasha's laughter at the dinner table. There's a dinner scene earlier with members of multiple families and esteemed persons in which a grave discussion about honour in battle is interrupted by Natasha deliberately asking very loudly about desserts. While she may not understand the long psychological road of nursed egos and resentments that led to the discussion, her instinct that it's bullshit is no less accurate.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the elders.

“You had better take care!” said the countess.

“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natásha again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.

Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.

“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother and to Pierre, glancing at him again.

“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.

Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even Márya Dmítrievna.

“Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice cream.”

“Carrot ices.”

“No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed; “I want to know!”

Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.

One Woman's Sanctuary . . .

The mysterious wormhole to the other side of the galaxy opens. Anything could emerge but of course it's more humanoids because it's Star Trek. The second season episode of Deep Space Nine, "Sanctuary", shows what happens when millions of refugees decide to take up residence on the nearby planet of Bajor. It's not really about aliens but it's a nice thought experiment about human cultural interaction.

The refugee aliens are the Skrreeans. Their homeworld had been decimated by the Dominion, an ongoing antagonist for Deep Space Nine. According to their religious beliefs, they are to settle on a "planet of sorrow" which their leaders decide is Bajor. One interesting parallel that isn't brought up in the episode is that the Bajorans themselves attach religious significance to the wormhole. A lot of the drama in other episodes revolves around the Bajorans allowing religious considerations to have more influence over policy decisions than practical ones but, when the shoe's on the other foot, they're less amenable to allowing millions of strangers settle on their homeworld.

The practical reality is that Bajor just doesn't have the resources to absorb so many people despite the insistence by the Skrreeans that they can make famine stricken land fertile and thus be a boon to the Bajorans. That's faith the Bajorans don't just share in.

This episode comes from 1993, long before the refugee crisis in Europe and it's different enough from the Palastine/Israel conflict to not come off as an allegory for it. Without the imposition of real world factions, it holds up as a pure contemplation of some of the ways culture can potentially hinder or facilitate integration.

Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix.

Nakadai Tatsuya

One of the giants of Japanese cinema, Nakadai Tatsuya, died on November 8th, though his death was announced yesterday, the 11th. He was 92. This charismatic actor who gave cinema such a wide diversity of performances throughout a very long career nevertheless primarily considered himself a theatre actor. He starred in a long list of productions, many of them Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare. You know an actor's versatile when he's played Richard III and Falstaff. So it's fitting that his best known role in the west is probably as Ichimonji Hidetora in Kurosawa Akira's adaptation of King Lear called Ran (乱).

Nakadai's large eyes that lent charisma to so many of the characters in his youth became the mad, desperate eyes of the Daimyo whose world is collapsing around him, the betrayal surrounding him revealing the worst of human nature from which he'd theretofore been somehow sheltered. But that was just the last in a series of films he made with Kurosawa Akira. He had a crucial role in Yojimbo (用心棒), one of Kurosawa's most famous films, as the sadistic yakuza gunman. Nakadai's talent as an actor enabled him to play another character in the sequel, Sanjuro (椿三十郎), a man whose life is defined by conscientious observance of duty.

He made eleven films with Kobayashi Masaki and, while I don't myself think of Kobayashi on the same level as Kurosawa, Naruse, or Ichikawa, Nakadai's work for the famed director is certainly impressive. Sword of Doom (大菩薩峠) and Harakiri (切腹) are still well known films among western cinephiles. And few actors have undergone the kind of arduous effort that Nakadai made in Kobayashi's anti-war trilogy, The Human Condition (人間の條件), in which he played a soldier whose experiences form the basis of Kobayashi's unvarnished criticism of Japan's wartime policies and the crimes committed by its officers in China.

He appeared in more conservative films as well, serving as narrator for Japan's Longest Day (日本のいちばん長い日), the star-studded look back on the last days of World War II that portrayed the outgoing wartime staff with honour and dignity.

These films, two of the Kurosawa movies I mentioned as well as the Kobayashi movies and Japan's Longest Day, were all made in the 1960s, a decade in which Nakadai also starred in the haunting sci-fi classic The Face of Another (他人の顔) and had memorable roles in three movies by the great director of domestic dramas, Naruse Mikio, including the film for which Naruse is best remembered now in many countries, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (女が階段を上る時).

I can think of very few actors whose careers could match Nakadai's in terms of longevity and diversity. He's certainly always a welcome sight. Any film he turns up in is one I know will be well worth watching.

A Second Look at Second Sight

One of my favourite episodes of Deep Space Nine when I was a kid was "Second Sight", a second season episode from November, 1993. Imagine my surprise when I discovered yesterday that it's widely considered one of the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine, both by critics and by people who worked on the show. No accounting for taste, I guess. I watched it last night and I still like it but, sure, it's not a masterpiece. In fact, I think one of the reasons I always liked it was that it's kind of low key, not really presuming to be anything much, despite the fact that it features a guy reigniting a dead sun by crashing a shuttlecraft into it.

That's the subplot, though. The main plot is a romantic story in which Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) meets a mysterious woman called Fenna (Salli Elise Richardson). She wears a red dress and has pointy ears, two classic, immediate turn-ons. They flirt a little and have some chemistry and then she just vanishes. They have a couple other similar encounters before Sisko gets to the bottom of the mystery.

It turns out to be something similar to the concept of Kon Satoshi's 2006 film Paprika. Fenna turns out to be a psychic projection of another woman, a manifestation of that woman's subconscious. I guess I liked the little tragedy of Sisko having chemistry with a woman's subconscious desires but having nothing at all between himself and the waking woman, a situation that can only be resolved by the two of them never speaking again.

Dislike for the episode generally seems to revolve around the woman's husband, played by Richard Kiley. Maybe I've had it mixed up all along and his was supposed to be the main plot and Fenna's the subplot. It really doesn't come off that way, though.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is available on Netflix.

Shambling Once More to Life

Once again, archaic machinery sparks and and ignites while a patchwork corpse is held aloft, strapped to a table in a brand new Frankenstein. This one comes from Guillermo del Toro who imbues the work with the lush, fantastically gothic visuals he's known for. It also has marvellous performances from a well chosen cast. Unfortunately, the screenplay offers a more morally simplistic version of the tale than Mary Shelley's original novel. Still, as a filmmaking spectacle, it's well worth watching.

For some reason a few critics have complained that Jacob Elordi is too handsome to play the creature. These critics likely have not read the novel in which Shelley's attraction to the creature is evident. As is well known, she belonged to a circle of authors united by common preoccupations for certain themes. Byron, Blake, even Wordsworth were united by their love for Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton's Satan was an attractive hero for the Romantics who pondered the possibilities for a strong willed man, freed from the constraints of religion and morality. The creature is Mary Shelley's own Manfred. He is a victim of the amoral act of his creation but his triumph is also to be beyond morality.

This is something del Toro either does not understand or has no interest in. His version of the creature is innately moral and avoids perpetrating the murders and manipulations he did in the novel. It's a shame because I'd argue that, with a Napoleon in the White House, such questions are well worth exploring now.

Instead, del Toro is interested in the story as one of paternal abuse. Victor's kind and loving father in the novel becomes the cold and physically abusive Charles Dance in the film. This pattern of behaviour manifests again when Victor shows little patience with the fact that the creature comes to life unable to immediately speak fluent English. One consequence of this is that Victor often comes off as cartoonish. His motives often make no sense except from the idea that del Toro wanted him to be generally unpleasant.

Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz are both excellent in the film despite their roles being superfluous. Goth plays Elizabeth, Victor's childhood sweetheart in the book, now the fiancee of his brother in this new film. The love triangle, eventually becoming a square when the monster is introduced, may be more entertaining for others than it was to me. I certainly appreciated Goth's costumes especially since it was clear she did not, as Winona Rider did in Bram Stoker's Dracula, insist on wearing modern underwear.

Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Francis Ford Coppola movie, casts its shadow over this film as it does all fantastic horror made in the years since. Since its release in 1992, a lot of people have tried to do for Frankenstein what Coppola did for Dracula, most obviously Kenneth Branagh with his 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, made from a Frank Darabont screenplay del Toro admired. I wouldn't say del Toro has finally succeeded where others failed but the visuals are certainly there, even if they aren't as varied and innovative as the ones in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

As Frankenstein movies go, James Whale's films from the 1930s remain unsurpassed. But del Toro's has plenty going for it.

2025's Frankenstein is available on Netflix.

The Boundaries of an Angel's Memory

In talking about films noir and works of fiction dealing with memory problems, I often reference 1946's Black Angel, despite the fact that it somehow remains relatively obscure. The Criterion Channel's very appropriately showing it on their Blackout Noir playlist this month so I watched it again to see if it's still as good as I remember it. It is.

Dan Duryea stars as a drunken nightclub pianist whose cold-hearted ex-wife tells her doorman not to let him in to see her. While he drinks and bangs angrily at a piano, she does let other men in to see her. One of these is Kirk (John Phillips), who's having an affair with her despite the fact that he's married to the pretty sweetheart Catherine (June Vincent). When Duryea's ex-wife is murdered and it seems clear Kirk did the deed, Catherine nonetheless sticks by him.

She enlists the aid of Duryea's character, Martin, and their amateur investigation leads them to none other than Peter Lorre as a shady nightclub owner called Marko. Everything seems to be falling in place as you'd expect before the film pulls the rug out from under you with one of the darkest endings of any film noir. Of course it involves a blackout and memory loss.

Duryea usually plays thugs but always with plenty of nuance and here he shows he could truly sink his teeth into a more complicated character. The supporting cast is all good, particularly Lorre, but it's Duryea's hopeless bitterness mixed with instinctive selflessness that makes this movie a real heartbreaker. I'll go right along referencing this as an unrecognised landmark in film history.

X Sonnet 1967

The infiltration leaks between the seams.
A brittle box could break and yet refrains.
Nothing goes the way a mollusc seems.
In ev'ry arm there hides a tasty brain.
At dawn, the water burns a greenish blue.
The horizontal eight became an eye.
Its tranquil gaze discerns the morning's hue.
A ruddy sun announced the rolling die.
The glowing bloody air has soaked the grass.
Misfortune paired with luck on ev'ry blade.
Another star emerged from roiling gas.
A fickle god demands a price be paid.
But flotsam flies about the endless deep.
Exhaustive search ensures some secrets keep.

Sorry, Charlie

Recently, a video of Charlie Kirk speaking about Japan during his visit to Tokyo has been getting a lot of attention from Sanseito and other right-wing Japanese groups.

While I still don't think he should've been shot, I must observe he speaks from a position of profound ignorance when it comes to Japan. He presents a contrast between the U.S. and Japan by saying that the U.S. is primarily a "propositional" country while Japan is not. However, much of the modern Japan that he praises is a product of a series of propositions that have occurred since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, or even since the early 17th century if we're to include a timeline of changes instituted with philosophical rather than immediately practical intent.

Nominally, the "Restoration" was meant to restore absolute authority to the Emperor after the Edo period in which the country's governance was managed by a shogunate and "bafuku", a system in which regional lords maintained partial residency in Edo as a means of centralising policy formation and execution in the realm. But the Restoration is described by historians more accurately as a renovation. The country adopted a Charter Oath which presented a radical proposition for societal reform:

By this oath, we set up as our aim the establishment of the national wealth on a broad basis and the framing of a constitution and laws.

1. Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.
2. All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.
3. The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.
4. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature.
5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.

The last item was assiduously pursued by government officials and scholars who spent extensive time in Europe and America, observing social and government institutions. As a result, the fundamental framework of Japanese society was reordered, including the educational system, in which free public education was established modelled on western examples. It's in this period that the famous "sailor suit" school uniform was adopted in schools.

In some ways, it could be argued that Japan is more propositional than the U.S. as the Charter Oath and institutional reforms were less influenced by the culture's endemic religion than the English colonists were influenced by Puritan heritage and the ideological conflicts of 17th century England.

Of course, Japan's identity is inextricably bound to a culture that has evolved for over a thousand years but the policies pursued during the Meiji Restoration as well as during the occupation of Japan following World War II have shaped the country profoundly and are just as inextricable. Certainly there's tension between the two elements but less so than in other countries that have undergone similarly profound changes such as France or Mexico. One might attribute this to a culture that is extraordinarily suited for adaptation and progress.

Somewhere, Vision Persists

A third season of Star Wars: Visions recently premiered on Disney+ to not half as much hype as the first season. Which is too bad because it's a vast improvement on the second season. Unlike the second season, which was a series of Star Wars animated vignettes from various small animation studios from around the world, the third season has gone back to the first season format of employing just seasoned Japanese animation studios, including Production I.G. and Trigger among others.

Production I.G.'s vignette is one of the best, and one of the ones that actually feels like it could fit within the canon continuity. A Jedi girl is trapped on a derelict spacecraft where she befriends a small droid. In the short run time of the episode, an effective warmth develops between the two characters and by the end the viewer is invested in the stranded droid's devotion to its master and the girl's desire to escape and reunite with her friends. That one was written and directed by Shiotani Naoyoshi.

The Studio Trigger vignette, "The Smuggler", was written and directed by Otsuka Masahiko, who made several episodes of the new Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. Obviously the tone differs a great deal from that series but "The Smuggler" also centres on an earthy female protagonist, essentially a female Han Solo. It's pretty good. All but two of the vignettes centre on a female character so I guess they were still going by the "Force is Female" mandate. One way in which they substantially differ from Disney Star Wars, though, is that the Japanese writers and directors seem not only to like Jedi but actually understand them. The young American writers who have emerged from an academia that has routinely taught them to despise religion struggle to portray a spiritual order in a positive light but Japan is still a country in which just about everyone visits temples and shrines on New Years, people's homes typically have small shrines, and you can see signs of the country's spirituality everywhere.

So there's real heart behind the Jedi's faith in "The Lost Ones" from a studio called Kinema Citrus. Written by Haga Hitoshi and directed by Haga alongside Takahito Oonishi, this one ended up being my favourite. A Jedi woman rescues some civilian children from a crumbling village. Not realising she's a Jedi, they repeat some of the anti-Jedi propaganda they've been indoctrinated with, and she takes it grace and without bitterness. She sees past their prejudice to give them words of wisdom and comfort.

The season is bookended by the two stories that don't feature female protagonists, the last vignette being the more interesting of the two. Simply called "BLACK", it's a Bill Plympton-style fever dream of scribbled animation, apparently depicting the rambling thoughts of a stormtrooper over the course of his violent demise. I certainly appreciated its boldness. It was written and directed by Ohira Shinya, a Ghibli animator who worked on several Miyazaki Hayao films, including his most recent film, The Boy and the Heron.

Star Wars: Visions is available on Disney+.

The Fantastic Force Field Woman

Sue Storm, with help from the other members of the Fantastic Four, works tirelessly to fend off an attack from a gargantuan space alien in 2025's The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This latest attempt to adapt the Fantastic Four comic franchise to film doesn't seem to have done much better than previous versions. I think public appetite for stories about the characters has always been pretty low. The film also suffers from the blandness that has infected many of the recent MCU films but the cast is solid, particularly Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

The special effects for Moss-Bachrach's character, Ben Grimm, aka "The Thing", are some surprisingly weak computer generated animations. Moss-Bachrach, who'd already played a character in the MCU, memorably on the first season of Jon Bernthal's Punisher series, really is a talented actor and he makes up for the deficient special effects somewhat. His subplot involves a flirtation with Natasha Lyonne. Lyonne is one of the more refreshing rising stars of the past fifteen years and it's always nice to see her but she's oddly underused in this film. Maybe they're setting her up for a larger role later.

The most emotionally effective dialogue scenes are the tense encounters between Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) which successfully combine anxious, adolescent chemistry with the pressing need to address a cosmic threat.

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards creates a submissive and guilt-ridden character beside the calm wisdom and authority of Sue (Vanessa Kirby). Her power in this film is primarily creating forcefields while the ability to turn invisible is occasionally shown as fringe benefit for comedic effect. Overall, she's basically the same as the Wasp in the Ant-Man movies.

I've been watching X-Men'97 again recently and it's a shame Kevin Feige couldn't have learned from Beau DeMayo's decision, in his capacity as showrunner of X-Men'97, to directly adapt the comic books stories that made the characters popular in the first place. Thunderbolts was a better movie than the other two MCU movies this year, despite being the least financially successful. I can only hope Marvel learns the right lessons.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now available on Disney+.

Diane Ladd

Diane Ladd died on Monday. She was 89. Mother of Laura Dern, Ladd was herself a prolific actress who worked with Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski but, of course, I remember her best for her roles for David Lynch, appearing alongside her daughter in Wild at Heart and Inland Empire. It's in Wild at Heart that she had, for me, her most memorable role as the impressively villainous Marietta, mother to Laura Dern's character, Lula. Consciously modelled on the Wicked Witch of the West, Ladd rose to the task of being tremendously creepy, aided in no small part by Lynch's sound design and composition.

Those gulps she takes from her martini have always been one of my favourite moments of unsettling mouth noises from Lynch's films.

Yet her character is not entirely unsympathetic as the audience is compelled to see from her distressed and bewildered perspective when she encounters the mystery of her boyfriend's disappearance.

She was also good in Inland Empire as a nosy talk show host and in her role as the fake Mrs. Mulray in Chinatown she certainly made an impression. Inland Empire is currently available on The Criterion Channel but sadly Wild at Heart remains Lynch's most elusive film, as far as availability on streaming goes.

Take Me to Your Manager

Sometimes I wonder how much of the apparent progress of AI is an illusion conjured by human regression. I've talked before about some of the inaccurate or oddly subjective responses I've gotten from Google's AI, such as misattributing the source of a John Milton quote or supplying oddly diplomatic opinions in place of factual responses. How often are such things taken as accurate responses by people who obviously don't know any different since they were googling the question in the first place? Is quality control even possible, since it would likely mean someone whose breadth of knowledge is comparable to a computer database?

I noticed recently that Google Translate isn't as good as it used to be. Google used to be better at translating English to Japanese than it was at translating Japanese to English since Japanese relies more on context. Yesterday I was checking the translation for a word for alien in Japanese, "宇宙人", which I've always heard pronounced as "uchuujin." But Google now insists it's pronounced "uchuubito". Except when I hit the "sound" option, in which case the AI voice pronounces it as "uchuujin". I'm guessing the sound option is still drawing from an old AI framework while the text is drawing from a new one.

Google's own AI overview in its search function apparently also disagrees with its choice of pronunciation.

When you try to translate "alien" from English to Japanese, the first option you get is just the English word "alien" written in Japanese characters, which seems suspiciously lazy.

Hopefully this won't impact interstellar diplomacy.

The Music Life

Yesterday I went to a three hour concert for the brass band of one of the junior high schools I currently work for here in Japan. It was special because it was the last concert for third year students in the band (junior high school is three years in Japan). Now they have to focus on studying and getting ready for high school. One of them I talked to said she doesn't want to go to high school and instead plans to immediately pursue a career as a musician (high school is not compulsory in Japan). I'd say she has a good shot, given how good this particular school's brass band is, but all the junior high school brass bands I've seen in Japan have been amazing.

I suppose I don't have much frame of reference since I can't remember paying much attention to my high school brass band and my junior high school didn't have one. But I always enjoy watching the band's planning, procedure, and practicing. Unfortunately in this town, it's more difficult to build a rapport with students than it was in my previous town since I tend to be assigned to schools for only two weeks at a time with occasional longer or shorter spells of one to four weeks. I go back to the same schools--I'm working in only three this year--but I miss how in my previous town I'd be with the same school for four or five months at a time. This made it easier to get a sense of where the students are in their studies and decide what material to use or develop.

Yesterday's concert also featured students from another school I haven't worked at and I was delighted when they performed "Brazil", the same song featured in Terry Gilliam's great film of the same title. Though considering how that film skewers bureaucracy, it may be a little too close to home for Japan. But the students are of course unaware of that association. The students from the school I work at played a medley of Deep Purple songs, including "Smoke on the Water". I wonder how it got in their repertoire. I've seen their archive of music sheets, some of it looks very old. At one point someone must have been a rock fan, or maybe it was an inherited repertoire from some other source.

I discovered to-day Deep Purple released an official music video for "Smoke on the Water" just last year, much like Talking Heads only recently made a video for "Psycho Killer". I dig this trend.

X Sonnet 1966

As questions raised regarding hope arose,
We found a book describing black despair.
The channel page was choked with buggy prose,
But seemed to show a dance from Fred Astaire.
The group recalled that Rogers followed suit,
With cherry syrup squibs she laced her shoes.
This was a fact to grief the girlish moot,
We know the secret sauce was blood and booze.
Arise, o floor of dancing digit tombs.
Your kindle now aglow with burning veins.
Above, a falling flock of ghosts resumes,
Their haunt above the bay of rusty chains.
No blame could chase the turkey 'cross a year.
So gather feathers, make a poultry bier.

The True King of Streaming

Criterion Channel has some terrific playlists this month. They've got a Werner Herzog playlist that has all of his most famous movies (Grizzly Man, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Nosferatu) as well has his collaboration with David Lynch (My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?), his gloriously off-the-rails, Nicholas Cage led Bad Lieutenant movie, and about three dozen other movies.

This month there's also a playlist of four movies with Trent Reznor soundtracks (Natural Born Killers, Lost Highway, The Social Network, Bones and All), and a playlist of "Blackout Noir", that's films noir in which a main character's memory loss plays a crucial role.

It's from that playlist I chose a film last night, 1946's Deadline at Dawn, which I thought I hadn't seen but it turned out I'd seen at least twice before. For some reason I tend to forget its title, I just remember it as, "The one in which Susan Hayward plays a dime-a-dance girl." She's engaged in this occupation when she meets a guileless, good-natured sailor called Alex (Bill Williams) who'd gotten blackout drunk the night before and woke up with a wad of cash. His helplessness finally thaws Susan Hayward's cold front and she accompanies him to the apartment he remembers going to with a lady the previous night. Unfortunately, said lady is now a corpse.

The movie's intriguing opening scene is of this lady (played by Lola Lane) having an argument with her blind but sinister ex-husband. There's so much about it that's unusual for an American film of the '40s, it's amazing I tend to forget about this scene. But maybe I only have eyes for Susan Hayward. It's a shame she was never in a really great movie. I think The Lusty Men was probably the best one she was in, or that South American western with Richard Widmark I can't remember the name of. The movies where she was centre stage, Smashup and that prison movie she won an Oscar for, really don't hold up. But she was a great actress.

Criterion Channel also has an amazing Howard Hawks playlist this month, including not only his great screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday) and crime movies (The Big Sleep and Scarface) but even some of his westerns (Red River, Rio Bravo, and The Big Sky). When I get a hankering for a John Wayne movie, it's very rare I can find one on any streaming service. Now I got two of his best at my fingertips. November somehow does seem the right month for old westerns.

Criterion proves again why it remains for me the one indispensable streaming service. I can go months without Netflix or Disney+ but Criterion's always golden. It doesn't hurt that it's about six to ten dollars cheaper than the big boys, too.

Candye'en

Happy Halloween, everyone. Halloween night was last night for me. I had some bourbon and watched Ghostbusters. I thought about getting candy but my sweet tooth seems nonexistent these days. I feel nostalgic about it. I go to the store and look at candy but then when I imagine what it tastes like it's not remotely appealing. Just a few months ago, I was routinely snacking on chocolate bars but the desire seems to have totally vanished.

Halloween candy is very different in Japan. There's a lot of cookies, cakes, and wafers. Candy corn is totally absent. Unlike candy canes, I can't even order candy corn on Japanese Amazon. I don't especially want any, I guess. I can enjoy a candy corn but two of them generally seem to be slightly more than enough for me. Japanese candy is said to be not as sweet as American candy. I'm not sure that's an adequate description of the difference. American candy tends to more of a waxy, oily, or gelatinous quality while Japanese candy tends to a breaded or creamy quality. KitKats are very popular in Japan and they famously come in a variety of unique flavours here. The chocolate covered wafers fit in pretty well with home grown Japanese products like Pocky and Melty Kiss.

I've been in the mood to watch a Hammer movie but I always get decision paralysis when trying to pick one and end up watching something else (like Ghostbusters). It's easier to just keep moving forward and watching things I've never seen, I guess.

The Hallowed Files

Happy Halloween, everyone. Well, it's the 31st here in Japan. I wanted to watch a horror movie last night but there was no time so I just watched another episode of The X-Files instead, "Tooms" from season one. It's a sequel to an episode earlier in the season called "Squeeze" that introduced the character of Eugene Tooms, a man who can stretch and contort his limbs to fit through any space and who eats human livers to maintain his immortality. "Squeeze" was not as solidly written but it was more satisfyingly weird. "Tooms" seems to run out of ideas for Tooms himself and ends up focusing on show mythology and the relationship between Mulder and Scully.

They actually have a flirtatious moment when Scully convinces Mulder to let her take a shift staking out Tooms.

It's really amazing how natural and effective their chemistry already is at this point. The whole "will they or won't they" tension is different from so many other series because there's kind of no tension in it. They're so comfortable with each other and neither one seems especially driven to seek a physical relationship. There's a kind of serenity in their acceptance of whatever permutation their relationship is set to take, perhaps because the problems they routinely deal with seem so big in comparison. Or perhaps they're just so damned cool. I like the artfully placed curl of hair by Scully's mouth.

The X-Files is available on Disney+/Hulu.

Your Twisted Academic Career Begins

When I came to Japan in 2020, a new smartphone game was taking the country by storm called Twisted-Wonderland. It's a Disney property developed in Japan and created by Toboso Yana who'd previously made the Black Butler series. Twisted-Wonderland ties not only into Alice in Wonderland but several of Disney's more famous movies (though some of them, like Hercules, are not at all well-known in Japan). The concept seems much closer to Harry Potter, though, as it follows students at a boys' magical university called Night Raven College. Five years after the game was released, the anime adaptation premiered on Disney+ a couple nights ago.

The main character is Yuu (I guess in the game this means you are Yuu). He's captain of a high school kendo club, getting ready for a tournament when he's suddenly teleported to the entrance ceremony at Night Raven College. The room, which looks like a massive gothic cathedral, is filled with students. Since the game primarily focuses on collecting and nurturing magical college students, quite a few of the students depicted in this scene, which takes up the bulk of the episode, are familiar to fans and each likely has its own devoted fanbase of girls who have nurtured their own version of the character through an academic career. This results in a scene where the makers of the show feel obligated to give reaction shots to each and every one of the characters after something dramatic happens, and each one of them gives a little, "Ah!" "Eh!" "Hmm!" "Huh!" etc.

Very little happens in the first episode as a result. The character designs are pretty cool, especially Headmaster Crowley, who wears a creepy mask. The students are all the handsome boys you'd expect from a game aimed at girls. I find myself wondering if a female character will ever show up. It'll be a challenge for the writers to come up with a satisfying story while not short-changing any of the many characters. There was one line I thought was funny when one character refers to another as "Juice" and that character indignantly reminds the other that his name is "Deuce!" I also like the aesthetic of the Alice in Wonderland area shown in the trailer.

Twisted-Wonderland is available on Disney+.

Murder and Surgery

It's been a while since I even thought of trying to predict the killer's identity on Only Murders in the Building. Last night's season finale had a reveal that felt particularly arbitrary, as though all the character names were in a hat and one was drawn at random. But it was a funny episode.

Seeing the events of the murder in flashback with all the clues in place was maybe unintentionally funny. Lester running and texting about his murder as though he already knew it was going to happen certainly didn't feel natural. I don't know why they'd bother being so pedantic when the killer's identity wasn't especially tied to any narrative.

The most memorable part was the setup for next season at the end and the characters bickering over what constitutes a murder "in the building".

Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+/Hulu.

I also watched a second season episode of Deep Space Nine last night on Netflix. I don't like to pay for both services at the same time but my pause on Disney+ doesn't go into effect until November 7th.

"Invasive Procedures" is an episode in which the space station is taken over by a group of criminals headed by a Trill played by John Glover, best known now for his role as the media mogul in Gremlins 2. The Trill are a species that can use large, slug-like "symbionts" to form a consciousness comprised of their humanoid brain and a mass of life experiences contained in the symbionts from previous hosts. In this episode, the John Glover Trill wants to take the symbiont from Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell). I do miss the days when we could have an hour of prime time television exploring what it means for a sentient being to have its consciousness divided between an internal organ and a surgically implanted slug.

X Bugs

Mulder and Scully head to the woods to fight bugs in a 1994 episode of The X-Files called "Darkness Falls" written by series creator Chris Carter. This follows from "Shapes", another episode in which the pair of investigators visited woodland, which makes it feel slightly odd that this one spends more time with buildup. It's a welcome difference, though, as the tension in this episode derives from their distance from civilisation, the state of their vehicle, and the reliability of a cabin generator.

The episode really needs all this because the evil bugs turn out to be a fairly unconvincing glowing green glitter effect. However, the cocooned, desiccated bodies of victims they find are pretty cool. I also like how the episode plays with the relationship between eco-terrorists and loggers in Washington State. Washington is of course near Vancouver, the show's normal filming location, which seems like it should have made filming easy, though according to the Wikipedia entry it turned out to be an unexpected nightmare due to weather conditions.

The X-Files is available on Disney+/Hulu.

Bad, Bad Nun

A nun's frequent, bizarre visions of holy figures and manifestations of stigmata upend the normal life of a 17th century convent in Paul Verhoeven's 2021 film Benedetta. Beautifully shot with great performances, this is one I've been wanting to see ever since it came out. The first half of the film exceeded my expectations but I was a little disappointed in the second half. On the whole, though, this was a very worthy experience.

We meet Benedetta as a child on the road to a convent in Pescia. There, her parents hope to deposit the girl who routinely has wild visions of the Virgin Mary. They're waylaid by bandits, one of whom attempts to steal a necklace from Benedetta's mother. Benedetta calls down the wrath of the Virgin and immediately a bird flies out of a tree and poops in one bandit's eye. They laugh, return the necklace, and leave. I would have preferred at least a hint of awe in their reaction.

The tension between whether Benedetta is actually experiencing and/or causing miracles is one of the driving forces of the narrative. After being accepted at the convent, the film jumps ahead 18 years. Now played by Virginie Efira, Benedetta the young woman is something of an embarrassment to the Abbess Felicita, played by Charlotte Rampling.

Felicita is one of the film's more interesting characters and I sort of wonder if this was due to a stipulation from Rampling. Felicita's daughter, Christina (Louise Chevillotte), is more vigorous in her hatred of Benedetta and is even willing to stretch the truth when making accusations. Felicita is wise, tactful, and prudent and that same doggedly rational thinking prevents her from wholeheartedly persecuting Benedetta.

The film's loosely based on a true story of a 17th century nun. The primary mistake Verhoeven makes is focusing too much on Benedetta's sexual relationship with a novice nun, Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), making it the crux of Benedetta's troubles with church authorities. In reality, it was Benedetta's bizarre ceremonies and possessions that mainly landed her in hot water. Verhoeven transplants too much of a modern attitude about homosexuality to the 17th century. He does avoid using the terms "lesbian" or "homosexual", neither of which were yet in use to refer to same sex physical attraction, the latter not being coined until the 19th century. But part of the reason for this is simply that people just weren't much concerned about what women were doing with each other in bed. The biblical Book of Ruth may even have been used as an example to support an intimate relationship between Benedetta and Bartolomea. Maybe this is why Verhoeven awkwardly chose to add a wooden dildo to their relationship. Maybe he'd have argued that a movie in which Benedetta's claims of being possessed by holy figures would simply not satisfy a modern audience.

I really liked Bartolomea as she's first introduced, running from her abusive shepherd father. She introduces a carnal element to Benedetta's life and I appreciated small details of historical perspective presented by her character, as when Benedetta tells her she's beautiful and the girl remarks that she didn't know, she'd never even seen a mirror. She and Benedetta use the latrine together, the first time for Bartolomea to experience such a luxury. She remarks that she'd normally just go out and shit among the animals. The two women use straw for toilet paper which certainly adds some perspective as to the probable state of their nether regions during the sex scenes.

Benedetta strongly reminds me of Flesh and Blood, Verhoeven's 1985 film. Both films are periods pieces (Flesh and Blood set in 16th century Italy), both feature main characters who adopt messianic roles of uncertain legitimacy, and both feature the characters in somewhat anachronistically extravagant sexual relationships. Both films are otherwise admirable for their attention to, and inspiration drawn from, historical detail. Both films seem to lose focus a bit in the second half. Both were box office disappointments, not even coming close to recouping their substantial budgets.

Both are well worth watching, though. Virigie Efira is a worthy successor to Sharon Stone in Verhoeven's Basic Instinct and Total Recall, delivering a similarly cocksure, slightly unhinged performance.

Benedetta is available on The Criterion Channel in their Nunsploitation playlist.

Chasing the Rabbit

I have to admit, I often don't understand why something becomes popular. I saw the new Netflix series, Black Rabbit, was number one in the U.S. Nielson ratings so I watched the first episode last night. I don't get it. I mean, good for Jude Law and Jason Bateman, I think they're both good actors. But why is this number one and Jude Law's previous series, Skeleton Crew, not? I guess people really like Jason Bateman. Was Ozark this popular?

Black Rabbit focuses on a New York restaurant founded by two brothers, played by Law and Batemen. Law's character is in charge of the place when the show starts while Bateman's getting into trouble out west. A deal where he's trying to sell a collection of coins to some shady guys instead of at a collector's shop for some reason goes sour and he kills one of them. So he high tails it back to New York.

It's not bad I guess but it's . . . not much. No witty dialogue, no interesting plot twists or fresh premise. It's a couple of guys and a restaurant with some crime thrown in. Maybe it's a slow burn. No idea why this is number one.

Black Rabbit is available on Netflix.

X Sonnet 1965

Aggressive white was pushed with chalk and paste.
A green became a faded black by dusk.
The gleeful ghouls of rot patrol the waste.
Their noses root a blackened pumpkin husk.
Unsated by the candle throat, they burn.
They ravage suns from careful patterns stitched.
From nature find they nothing sweet to learn.
At every chance their sour humour switched.
To rule the body, all the heads were guts.
To covet rule, the brain was turned to squash.
On every candy corn, the strawman gluts.
With stinking orange goo, the bastard washed.
A pumpkin patch is sinking 'neath the bog.
To fill the void, there comes a poison fog.

Beyond the Bleachers

I woke up at around 2am and read the latest Sirenia Digest, which contains a new Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "PALE ROLLERS". As Digest stories go, it's uncommonly straightforward, the narrative book-ended by a present tense account of the narrator's trip to sea in a small boat. His destination is a mysterious spot related to an object he acquires in the middle section of the story, in the past, at a curiosity shop where objects choose their purchasers.

By keeping the supernatural and narrative experimentation to more of a minimum than usual, Caitlin achieves a milder, but potent sense of threatening weirdness.

Reading it at 2am, it blurred oddly with an article I read on Yahoo about how Shohei Ohtani is somehow the best and the worst thing that ever happened to baseball. Like he's hit a high point no-one can ever match. Somehow the author's hyperbolic mixture of awe and dread followed smoothly from Caitlin's story of things of abnormal magnitude drawing people in.

Of course, people love to talk about Ohtani here in Japan. I don't follow professional sports at all but I kind of like how Ohtani has an old fashioned, Joe DiMaggio, national hero quality. I guess Ohtani would be better called an international hero.

Wolf Files

"Shapes", an episode of The X-Files from April 1, 1994, is another one to feature a familiar face from Twin Peaks. This time it's Michael Horse who, like Don Davis before him, basically plays the same character he did on Twin Peaks, only now it's in a werewolf story. Not a bad one but this is not generally considered The X-Files' finest hour.

Mulder and Scully go to investigate some killings on a Native American reservation. A naked man is shot by a rancher who claims to have seen not a man but a vicious animal. It turns out to be part of a pattern tied into ancient legends of the manitou.

The episode's Wikipedia entry claims it was criticised for portraying a manitou as essentially a werewolf. The current Wikipedia page for manitou is very short, It begins by describing the manitou as "the fundamental life force in the theologies of the Algonquian peoples." If you check the editing history of the page, you find the word was once considered to have more variant meanings among the Algonquian people. In 2013, the entry said, "Manitou are the spirit beings of Algonquian groups of Native Americans. Manitou is similar to the East Asian qi, the Hindu Brahman or the Japanese kami." There's no citation for this reference while the new version of the entry cites only a book published in 2001.

It's fun watching Mulder and Scully pitted against a werewolf. As usual in pre-cgi movies and television, the werewolf looks more like a gorilla so you rarely get a good look at it. Actually, I still don't feel like anyone's done a proper werewolf in a movie. I do like the one in Skyrim quite a bit.

The X-Files is available on Disney+/Hulu.

The Twin Peaks Loop

In my recent Twin Peaks rewatch, I came to episode 14 a few days ago, the one in which Laura Palmer's killer is revealed. It's been said since that Lynch never intended to reveal the killer's identity and that he wanted it to be a perpetual mystery in the background. I can see the appeal of that. When I watch the show with someone who hasn't seen it, I'm made freshly aware of how much of the show's excitement lived in the uncertainty surrounding most of the characters. Almost anyone could be Laura Palmer's killer. But it's hard to wish for a world in which the perfectly constructed episode 14 doesn't exist.

I love the sense of overlapping realities and perspectives. There's the murder scene which continually switches between the two actors who represent the killer in the dream world and the waking world, there's the shift between the performance by Julee Cruise at the roadhouse and the Giant in that other reality, communicating to Agent Cooper.

I suppose this is the real pivot point, this is where the show stops being a murder mystery and becomes a fantasy series as the driving narrative arc slowly becomes exploring the mystery of the Black Lodge. Before it was the supernatural serving the murder mystery, from here it's the murder plots serving the supernatural. It could be argued that this is what lost the public as much as David Lynch's absence. It's hard to separate the two, I guess, if Lynch truly didn't want the killer to be revealed. Yet it's a very influential aspect of the show, most obviously on The X-Files. In returning to direct the final episode, Lynch manages to make it viscerally as well as conceptually interesting, something he does more fully in the third season.

The other direction could have been something like Fire Walk with Me, using the supernatural as a means of exploring the emotional state of someone involved in otherwise earthly concerns, following in the vein of Laura Palmer's Secret Diary. I'm not sure if that could've been sustained successfully for a full season. The domestic problems haunt the supernatural problems in season three like soil on which strange plants grow. There's Diane's recollection of assault and what it means considering what her character ends up being. There's the contemplation of the relationship between Cooper's moral nature and the fracturing of his identity across multiple characters whose motives and actions vary in purity. One things for sure, none of it would be even half as interesting without Lynch.

The Robot Sees

Last night's Only Murders in the Building was directed by the prolific Jamie Babbit and featured a tighter focus on this season's murder mystery. This season, it's been the murder of the building's elderly doorman, Lester. One of the gags recurring throughout is about a robotic replacement for the dead man called LESTR. LESTR partially narrates the episode. It was kind of funny.

The suspect becomes Lester's human replacement, Randall. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez all fail to run after him, two of them because they're too old and one of them because she's wearing awkward shoes. Nathan Lane returns to have wine with Selena Gomez. None of it was riotously funny or gripping but it was cosy viewing.

Next week's episode is the finale. This show has been one of the things that mark autumn for me in lieu of an actual change in the weather though the past couple days have suddenly been really chilly. It's amazing, it's like someone flipped a switch.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+ and/or Hulu.

Who is He and Who is He?

A teenage boy discovers his best friend is not his best friend but a mysterious entity that took his friend's place in 2025's The Summer Hikaru Died (光が死んだ夏). I've watched the first two episodes of this intriguing series that conjures a sinister, anxious mood.

Yoshiki (Kobayashi Chiaki) and Hikaru (Umeda Shuichiro) are sitting and chatting one day when Yoshiki casually remarks that Hikaru is not really Hikaru at all. Hikaru laughs sheepishly and admits the real Hikaru died in the woods and that the boy sitting beside Yoshiki is a counterfeit, the creation of an entity that struggles to describe itself. Evidence of its supernatural nature becomes clear when part of Hikaru's face melts into an iridescent fluid mass that begins to reach for Yoshiki's face.

The two remain friends because, with all the normal stresses of teenage life, Yoshiki needs a best friend. I've often observed how important best friends are to students in Japan, which makes sense in Japan's collectivist culture in which self-perception is formed by a continuous feedback loop of perceived impressions from others. This makes the nature of this Hikaru entity all the more intriguing and gives the show a great deal of relevance for the real adolescent experience. As puberty causes the world to seem bigger and stranger, our own identities become as uncertain as those of the people around us. The uncertainty of Hikaru's identity and true nature creates a fundamental uncertainty in Yoshiki's own self-perception.

I can see the influences of Evangelion and a few other things. There's even a touch of Cronenberg in the second episode when Hikaru opens his shirt to reveal a large vertical slit similar to the one James Woods has in Videodrome and the vaginal symbolism is just as apparent and intended. As the relationship between Hikaru and Yoshiki becomes stranger, it seems inevitable somehow that it would become more intimate.

The Summer Hikaru Died is available on Netflix.

The Dangerous but Necessary Guitar

A boy holds onto his dreams of music stardom for a journey into the underworld in 2017's Coco. Among the more beloved Pixar films, Coco succeeds in being more than a Day of the Dead gimmick by offering genuine insight into family psychology at odds with the youthful desire for self-realisation.

I remember in Desmond Morris' Human Animal series a scene of a baby crawling away from his parents and Morris remarked on how from even a very early age the human child has an instinctive desire to run away from safety in an effort to find its own identity. In Coco, Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) is a boy whose passionate desire to be a musician is at odds with his family's peculiar, systematic hatred of all things musical. It's more than just an aesthetic preoccupation, of course, it's an indicator of skeletons in the family closet, both literal and figurative.

Disney, for a long time, was criticised for repeatedly giving us rebellious teenage protagonists but teens are often rebellious. It's simply human nature. If Miguel gives up music, what can he be but just another caricature in the assembly? One could argue life's bigger and more complex than a choice between two extremes, a fact grasped better by adults than children, which leads to their inability to understand the child's polar thinking. But that's as much naivete on the adult's part as it is the child's rashness, because the dichotomy is real because the conflict is real. So it makes sense that Miguel, being trapped in the Land of the Dead, refuses his great grandmother's blessing because it comes with the condition that he renounce music. He runs deeper into the underworld even though it may cost him his life. And he's quite right to. If he can't live according to his principles, is he truly living?

The other side of the coin is existence for adults, whose need to be remembered is here prompted by true existential peril. Just as Miguel needs to define himself, Hector needs to be remembered--crucially for his creative prowess and ability to delight others. What may seem an adolescent vanity to impatient adults remains a crucial aspect of existence throughout life and afterlife.

I found the movie extremely predictable. I knew exactly what would happen when Miguel met the famous singer and how the plot would transpire with Miguel's new friend, Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal). But it didn't matter. The performances and animation are both good and the Day of the Dead aesthetic is fun and lovely. I loved all the marigold petals.

Coco is available on Disney+.

Nuns Tend to Their Needs

When one first hears the term "nunsploitation", one likely imagines something like 1977's Behind Convent Walls (Interno di un convento). It's crazy nuns, running around, indulging in sexual mayhem with themselves and each other. It also happens to be a very well shot film with some stills resembling Caravaggio paintings.

It was a time when people were trying out erotic film as a serious artform and sometimes gave it production values to match. Director Walerian Borowczyk was described by critics as a "genius who also happened to be a pornographer" according to Wikipedia.

The film doesn't really have anything to say that wasn't said better by Black Narcissus or Mother Joan of the Angels but it has a lot of charming moments. In one scene two nuns bicker over the handsomeness of the men they have sketched in their notebooks, hidden between the pages.

Behind Convent Walls is available on The Criterion Channel now as part of a Nunsploitation collection.

X Sonnet 1964

The angry weakened bird was watching paint.
Compelling boredom packed its sugar tight.
A syrup corn has made a cheapened saint.
Some extra chalk can ape a fractured light.
The board was dry as bone by morning crow.
The rooster roots for hens who like to love.
So Cupid draws his modern super bow.
The feathered shaft was just a ragged dove.
You see in dreams, a troupe of troubled nuns.
They divvy beer to stave the hunger off.
And wish for wheat to bake their daily buns.
A fast can pierce the heart in reckless sloth.
The shadows dance a copy caper slow.
What near the chapel has a ruddy glow?

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Billie?

One of my favourite Doctor Who writers, Robert Shearman, has made some controversial comments about the show recently.

“After 1989 we had, for years, a current Doctor,’ Shearman continued. “Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books [original novels published in the nineties] you thought, ‘It’s the current Doctor – McCoy or McGann’. No one’s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means. In a funny way, the closing moments of The Reality War seem to put a full stop on things. We didn’t have that before.”

Shearman's work for Doctor Who has mainly been the audio plays. He wrote by far the best of them, particularly the Eighth Doctor story Chimes at Midnight and the Sixth Doctor story Jubilee, which he adapted for the Ninth Doctor in 2005 as "Dalek". The Big Finish audios were one of the pieces of supplemental media created in that period between the end of the classic run in 1989 and the beginning of the new era in 2005. I'd say he's absolutely right--fans could feel like they were experiencing a continuing story, even under the threat that that story may end up being retconned (though it wasn't, at least as far as the Big Finish audios are concerned). This time, they can't. If anyone tries to write the Billie Piper Doctor, they'd be obliged come up with some kind of explanation for her, to establish her personality, whether it's a mix of the Doctor and Rose, just Rose or just the Doctor, or something else entirely. So any audio plays, comics, or novels that come between now and the show's return can only be things filling in gaps between past episodes. It may truly turn out to be the nail in Doctor Who's coffin.

Apparently Doctor Who executive producer, Jane Tranter, has decided to take offense to Shearman's comments.

That’s really rude, actually, and really untrue . . . It’s a 60-year-old franchise. It’s been going for 20 years nonstop since we brought it back in 2005. You would expect it to change, wouldn’t you?

This kind of makes me wonder if the Billie Piper Doctor was her idea. Arguably, the gist of Shearman's comments are precisely opposite to how she characterises them--he's saying the problem now is that the story can't change because no-one knows how to go forward.

It's too bad because I'd say Shearman would make a hell of a showrunner. Yes, he has a penchant for the super weird and conceptual and many would argue that the problem was too much of that kind of thing in the recent run. But his stories generally felt grounded and built up slowly to their weirdness by establishing characters and clues.

It would be nice if they decided to do a season of the Eighth Doctor next. Of course they won't but fans have wanted that since 2013. I guess that would be pretty retrogrssive, though.

I would argue the trouble really started with the bi-generation. It makes the obvious path now to go with the David Tennant Doctor who's still around and make the Billie Piper Doctor his companion. The obviously politically correct idea of making the Doctor and companion equals in this way is really lame. Of course, it also doesn't really make sense but I bet that's what they were thinking. The same line of thinking was basically behind Donna and the new Rose's stories.

Here's what I would do. Get a new showrunner, someone well outside the clique, and start the show with someone totally new in the role, stuck on earth in, oh, let's say the 17th century (you know that's my favourite). Have a whole new set of stories, leaning toward a gothic tone like Tom Baker's second season, and slowly bring in clues to explain what happened. Have visions of not only Rose but the Doctor as other past companions and maybe eventually reveal the problem was something contaminating the regeneration process so that it was continually regurgitating familiar faces for a while which the Doctor escaped by finally generating a new face. The story could be a metaphor for the show itself, I guess.

The Long, Lazy Days of Vampires and Crooks

Two beautiful, taciturn young ladies dressed as clowns are captured by a vampire's thralls in Jean Rollin's 1972 film Requiem for a Vampire (Requiem pour un vampire). This is one of the more enjoyable of Rollins' sleepy gothic erotic films.

There's not really a good reason given for why the girls are dressed as clowns or why they're exchanging gunfire with a pursuing vehicle. I assumed they'd committed some kind of robbery but their brief explanation much later in the film is only a vague statement about how they were at a party and got into trouble. But I don't really need an explanation and frankly it's better there isn't one.

It's also not clear why the girls rarely speak to each other. It's almost a silent film before they finally end up at the mysterious chateau where the thralls recruit them. Under a spell that prevents them from leaving the area around the chateau, they're tasked with luring victims to the ruins in the days before they themselves will become vampires.

But when they finally meet the vampire patriarch, he turns out to be a charming, wistful gentleman who says the days of the vampire are coming to a close and his current disciples probably won't even manage to become vampires. Where most vampire movies of the time revel in decadent horror, this one's mostly gentle ennui and sex. There are lots of contemplative shots of the girls wandering the woods. I like this one of the blonde waiting for victims, idly lying on her stomach next to some daisies while the wind sweeps the tall grass about her.

Requiem for a Vampire is available this month on The Criterion Channel as part of a Jean Rollin playlist.

Drew Struzan

Famed movie poster artist Drew Struzan has died. His long and prolific career is most distinguished for his work with Spielberg and Lucas on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. But not only did he do a lot more posters than that, he did more iconic posters.

Okay, I'd argue Back to the Future is really more of a Spielberg movie than credited director Robert Zemekis' movie (I say the same thing about Who Framed Roger Rabbit). But I've always liked the wrong geometry of the Delorian in this poster which you don't see in the posters for the sequels (though they were also painted by Struzan).

He also did posters for John Carpenter movies, including the iconic posters for The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. The latter is one example of many in which Struzan's work kind of exceeds the quality of the film he was promoting.

Kurt Russell looks like he's inviting us on an unabashed decadent pulp adventure which makes it disappointing that he's doing a John Wayne parody in the film itself.

He did several posters for off the wall, '70s sex comedies and horror films. In between, he did a couple of nicely Mucha inspired posters for The Seven Percent Solution and Harry and Walter Go to New York.

He seemed to end up painting Harrison Ford often. Outside of Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, he also did the posters for Blade Runner, The Frisco Kid, and several Indiana Jones video games and collections.

Of his Star Wars posters, I like the ones where he leaned into romance the best, Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones.

With Attack of the Clones, as with Big Trouble in Little China, Struzan's poster is a bit better than the movie itself. At least it has no cgi.

He worked with Guillermo del Toro as well and his poster for Pan's Labyrinth nicely gives us a preview of the film's symbolic production design with a symmetrical composition of Struzan's own devising.

Here's an artist whose work will continue to be in our eyeballs and minds for eternity.

Meryl ex Machina

An effort to find something for Meryl Streep to do on Only Murders in the Building seemed to lead to her doing everything in last night's episode. She's such a good actress, it feels especially odd for her to be dealing with this TV sized dialogue. But, okay, it was a decent episode.

A "ladies night" in the secret casino leads to Loretta (Streep), Mabel, and Detective Williams going undercover. This allows Selena Gomez to show off her newly skinny body with a stunning little gold cocktail dress.

Loretta claims to have psychic ability and I was amused when it turned out she really did, apparently able to see into Renee Zellwegger's mind when conversing with her. Though, in the end, it felt a bit like the inexplicable mind vision scenes in Ant-Man and the Wasp: In Quantumania. Like the writers just couldn't imagine a more logical plot so felt obliged to randomly introduce a supernatural ability.

But Meryl Streep is so good. I really liked her performance in the airport when she was slightly bewildered by her flight delay. She chews the scenery but it's plausible.

Yet, Dianne Wiest steals the episode a little when she unexpectedly joins the group and completely fails to maintain a poker face when talking to Zellwegger.

Only Murders in the Buildingis on Disney+ and/or Hulu.

Nun's the Word

What do you get for the Devil who has everything? The final film of Hammer Studios (before their relaunch decades later) was 1976's To the Devil a Daughter. Its remarkable cast includes a late career Richard Widmark, Nastassja Kinski in her first role, Denholm Elliott, and Christopher Lee. This month, Criterion features the film on a Nunsploitation playlist but I wouldn't call it a Nunsploitation movie as much as a Satanic possession movie in which one character happens to sort of be a nun. It's not an especially bad movie if you can't watch Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist.

I find my opinion of the film has not changed since I reviewed it in 2012. I didn't find it as confusing this time since I remembered the basic plot from my previous viewing but the film's tendency not to let the viewer in on character motives still has the effect of nullifying the suspense.

I didn't remark last time on how much I like the Satanic cult's Ashtaroth crucifix.

It looks silly, yes, but I don't think that was an accident. It's a parody of a proper crucifix. There is something fundamentally satanic about parody. It's a mockery.

It is kind of disappointing having Ashtaroth without it being Astarte, the apocryphal Queen of Heaven. That would've given the film an interesting spin.

Lee and Elliott give the best performances in the film. Widmark seems a bit checked out. Kinski was very young and not the actress she would become in a few years but she comes across as very sweet and of course very pretty.

Still Vigilant

I'm still playing that Vigilant mod for Skyrim. It's vast, it's like a whole other game. I'm amazed how many assets one modder made. The mod's plot is divided into acts, I'm now in the third which is a completely separate hellscape from the main game. It's Coldharbour, a realm that is part of the game lore. It's the realm of Molag Bal, the Elder Scrolls' version of Satan. Well, one of several as there's a pantheon of both good and evil gods. The creator of the Vigilant mod, Vicn, shows a lot of fidelity to the established lore of the series, though many reviewers say the Coldharbour section is strongly reminiscent of Dark Souls.

As I mentioned before, the modder is Japanese and I found myself thinking a lot of Final Fantasy games. It has a similar rambling plot with lots and lots of flashbacks. It occurs to me memory tends to be a more prominent topic in Japanese fantasy fiction than it tends to be in western fantasy. Much of Kimetsu no Yaiba is flashbacks, more than necessary to provide backstories and motivations for the characters. There's a clear pleasure taken in dwelling in memory for a long time. In Vigilant's Coldharbour, you encounter a series of damned knights whose memories of misdeeds you can enter and alter to absolve them. Though whether time is actually altered isn't clear.

The only area in which the modder seems not to have made everything himself is in animations. Many of the monsters reuse animations from vanilla Skyrim enemies--the giant scorpions are clearly using the animations of the vanilla game's giant spiders and so on. But otherwise, it's a herculean effort for one modder. There seems to be no end of the custom made armours and weapons I encounter, all of exceptional quality which is boosted by a texture upgrade mod from another modder. The dungeon maps are pretty good, too, though they tend to feature puzzles, which I tend not to like. Video game puzzles often seem more about trying to figure out the thought process of their creators than actually trying to overcome an obstacle in a realistic manner. For example, sometimes it takes some time for me to figure out that I'm suppose to find some special switch or key rather than simply going around a certain obstacle. I've found that by doing the latter I've gotten to areas of Coldharbour before I'm meant to, which makes things more confusing.

I'm basically using the same character I was using last time I wrote about this mod though technically she died at the end of an effectively creepy haunted house act. At the end of that plotline, you get the choice to either accept Molag Bal's assistance or martyr yourself. I chose martyrdom which sends you back to the Vigilant headquarters and opens the custom character menu--the implication being that you're now a different person following in the footsteps of your previous character. I thought this was a bold choice though the player really has to make an effort to go along with it because you still have all the same gear in your inventory, all the same quests. I decided to play along and left all my gear in a trunk and changed my character's face and name. Most of my followers are gone and I don't know if I'll ever get them back (except for two followers connected to vanilla quests, which highlights a flaw in the implementation of this idea).

If you want to see the mod in all its splendour without playing it yourself, there are several YouTubers with playthroughs. I recommend the one below though I haven't watched it all the way through myself because I don't want spoilers.

X Sonnet 1963

The rusty metal skins patrol the waste.
Undulled are blades they drag across the dust.
The skulls within now lack both smell and taste.
Above there looms a ghastly bovine bust.
A bull beholds a petty, pricking creep.
But one of many hordes who grind the stones.
They carry ore to fill the devil's keep.
Let none now envy gold that laces bones.
Arrayed about the wall are archers primed.
No respite halts their day and nightly watch.
A wayward mortal up the mountain climbed.
A withered sun becomes a bloody blotch.
The grinning guard await your errant sword.
The rotting ship departs with fools aboard.

Diane Keaton

Diane Keaton has died at 79 years of age. One of the most distinctive qualities of this great actress' performances was their vivacity, their sense of effortless nature. She and Laura Dern, I would say, are the two actresses in the history of cinema whose ability to deliver conversational dialogue best and consistently captures a sense of someone genuinely fumbling through words. Despite undoubtedly memorising and rehearsing her lines, Keaton always seemed fresh and real.

She's best known for her work in the Godfather movies as well as a string of Woody Allen's greatest films, most notably as the title character in what's regarded by many as his best film, Annie Hall. Keaton's personality and fashion sense are well known to have influenced the character we see on screen so she is in more than the usual ways (for an actress) responsible for making it a great film.

In her late career, she shifted to solid and appreciable supporting roles in family drama and comedy movies like the Father of the Bride films and The Family Stone. She was also occasionally a director and she directed an episode of my favourite TV series, Twin Peaks, a decent episode in the popularly disliked latter half of the second season.

It's hard to believe an actress of such natural vivacity could be dead. Her movies will certainly live as long as movies do.

The Motives of Our Attending Spirit

Well, here's some more concrete evidence AI isn't perfect. I was watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull again this week and I felt sure the John Milton quote used in the movie was from Comus, a masque Milton wrote in 1634. I decided to double check and googled "Milton Quote in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and the AI gave me this response:

The AI incorrectly states that the quote comes from Paradise Lost. It does not, it comes from Comus, from a soliloquy by the "Attending Spirit", a mysterious omniscient being whose benevolence and identity are fodder for stimulating debate. As when I pointed out the interpretation Google's AI gave to Ian McShane's accent in Pirates of the Caribbean, I find this a strange mistake for an AI to make. I mean, it seems much more like something I'd expect from human error. Paradise Lost is Milton's most famous work so I can see your average human assuming that's where the quote came from. Why should an AI have such a prejudice? I can find the quote in Comus by going to Project Gutenberg and hitting "control F". Surely AI should be able to go through such a process even faster. Wouldn't it be more difficult for it to amalgamate the common assumptions about Milton, digest them, and regurgitate them to provide something that simulates a human error? I guess there is such a thing as trying too hard.

So it seems the AI is basically a pool of internet content with weak discernment for the relative integrity of its sources. Perhaps it's no more sinister than that, though that's plenty sinister.

One of the things that keep me coming back to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull despite its flaws is the interrogation scene where Cate Blanchett's Soviet character talks about her ambition to harness psychic power from the crystal skulls for mind control, "A mind weapon. A new frontier of psychic warfare. That was Stalin's dream." Apparently Stalin really was interested in psychic ability. Blanchett's lines about forcing Americans to believe the Soviet version of history reminds me of Putin's long history lecture in his infamous interview with Tucker Carlsen. With AI spreading misinformation, maybe it'll wind up to be a real crystal skull. If it hasn't already.

How They Cover Their Hands Now

I've been noticing a lot of sock puppet videos on YouTube lately, floating to the top of my particular algorithm soup. For those who don't know, in internet lingo a "sock puppet" is, according to Wikipedia, "a false online identity used for deceptive purposes . . . Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, defend, or support a person or organization, to manipulate public opinion, or to circumvent restrictions such as viewing a social media account that a user is blocked from." Mostly I've been seeing Japanese sock puppets aimed at foreigners, particularly pro-Sanseito sock puppets, like this guy called Shohei Kondo who has a lot of videos about video games and dating that casually slip in messages about how actually Sanseito isn't as crazy as its reputation suggests and they just want what's best for everyone, etc.

Yesterday I came across this guy called Evan Edinger whom I can't say for sure is a sock puppet but his videos somehow generate over a million views despite being extremely bland. The video I watched part of (and linked to) begins with him explaining how he, as an American, grew up in an environment where guns were a fundamental part of life and Britain introduced him to this novel idea that maybe the average person doesn't need to own a gun. His voice and cadence sound so fake (not A.I. fake just phony shill kind of fake) that I assumed he was a sock puppet before I saw his regular view counts. Could so many people really be interested in a sock puppet's content? Maybe he's just a really good sock puppet. So far I'm not seeing it but I never understood Dancing with the Stars either. Anyway, speaking as an American myself, I never experienced that feeling of having to own a gun and I don't know if anyone I knew did. Even people I knew who owned guns gave me the impression that it was their own particular predilection rather than an omnipresent need everyone in the social group feels to own a gun. I'm sure there are people like that but the YouTuber's description of it as just an every day fact of every American's life is ridiculous and feels like anti-American propaganda.

This is all, of course, why I've always said fiction is superior to non-fiction. Non-fiction, by its nature, asserts truth as its province and implicitly sets itself against that metric. Fiction is just ideas with no pretense at being otherwise.

Now that it's starting to feel like autumn I've been listening to more Elvis Costello lately. I don't know why exactly but Elvis Costello is associated with autumn for me.

Just Because X Doesn't Mark a Spot Doesn't Mean It's Irrelevant

Scully and Mulder find their investigation frustrated by lies and surveillance devices in a February 1994 episode of The X-Files called "E.B.E" ("extraterrestrial biological entity", which doesn't roll off the tongue like simply "E.T."). I like how this episode lays a groundwork of uncertainty for everything else.

For one thing, Mulder finds out there's a limit to how far he can trust his mysterious "Deep Throat" source, who in this episode lies and even deliberately gives Mulder false evidence of a U.F.O. in an effort to manipulate him. Meanwhile, Scully finds a listening device hidden in her pen. That's gotta be a small device to fit in a pen but not at all far fetched. Can you imagine how small cameras and listening devices can be now? Ask someone from a country like South Korea or Japan where voyeurism is at epidemic levels.

Back in the U.S. in the '90s, though, surveillance was something the government used against pesky FBI agents. Mulder tears apart his apartment looking for hidden bugs, finally finding one in a power outlet. He Scully then split up and carefully meet up at a convenience store in another state before embarking on their plan to follow a freight truck that may be carrying a crashed alien ship. But whoever's manipulating Mulder is using his own desire to find aliens against him, a plot device I really liked.

This is also the episode that introduces the Lone Gunmen, those lovable crackpots.

It occurs to me that there's been a massive shift in how Americans commonly regard conspiracy theories and exploring ideas of government deception. Now it's Trump's White House staging bogus inquiries into classified U.F.O. intelligence and it all seems like a sad pantomime. Or maybe they took a page from the shadowy characters who sought to use Mulder against himself. Scully has a nice line in the episode, "The truth is out there. But so are lies."

The X-Files is available on Disney+ in Japan.

Only Trophies in the Building

On last night's Only Murders in the Building, the team confronted the three billionaires in a wonderful faux-17th century manor house.

I want to live in this place so bad. It's better than Major Clive Wynne-Candy's house. All those creepy hunting trophies! The weird tusk table!

It was basically a funny episode, too. Oliver wanders off in the woods and Loretta (unseen in this episode) calls in a "silver alert". This paired well with all the lavender Oliver wears in this episode.

It was funny when Charles and Mabel had to answer Broadway trivia questions with Oliver absent. Do these kinds of life or death situations ever actually occur?

Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+.

That Old Slasher Magic

A masked man goes around killing people and only one young woman seems to be taking the disappearances seriously. 2004's Toolbox Murders feels like a throwback to slasher movies from twenty to thirty years earlier so it's appropriate that it's directed by one of the masters of that period, Tobe Hooper. It's certainly refreshing.

I found myself thinking of Ginger Rogers' criticism of Saturday Night Fever, that the young people think "they can dance with their faces." Where she and Fred Astaire showed their dancing prowess with full frame long takes, musicals of the '70s and '80s preferred to conjure energy with editing and composition. Similarly, one of the most memorable parts of Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first attack from Leatherface, when a shot that began of a woman standing at a door transforms when he rushes out to grab her. A typical modern slasher would feel compelled to cut quickly between Dutch angles. Somehow Hooper was better able to convey a sense of watching a real nutcase spring from the shadows and inflict gruesome injury.

Toobox Murders is a remake of a '70s movie not directed by Hooper though apparently it shares nothing much in common with its predecessor's plot. In this one, Angela Bettis plays Nell, a young, recently married woman who's moved into a haunted Hollywood apartment building with her husband. When odd absences start to occur, no-one believes her when she insists something weird is happening.

So it's a slasher film with elements of supernatural horror, though it may just be insanity believing it's supernatural. It's good and creepy anyway. Juliet Landau is also in the movie all too briefly.

Toolbox Murders is available on The Criterion Channel.