Last night's daddy-long-legs on my apparently very mouldy bathroom sink faucet. Or whatever the green stuff is--it's as hard as stone, I'm not even sure I'm going to be able to scrub it off. I might need a chisel
I watched "Cold Blood" last night, finishing off the two part eleventh Doctor Silurians serial. It didn't really introduce much new from the previous Silurian stories--it's not outright stupid like Warriors from the Deep, but I thought the first Silurian serial, the third Doctor's Doctor Who and the Silurians, is still the best in what hasn't been an especially good Doctor Who continuing story. That first one I thought actually better conveyed the story of humans going to their worst natures in the interest of promoting security while the Doctor pleads with everyone to make peace. Jeez, it's weird how that describes both the newest and the oldest story. At least the Doctor's stopped qualifying the name "Silurians" in response to fan letters pointing out that an intelligent race of reptilian bipeds couldn't have existed on Earth at that time. Because I guess it's totally credible otherwise?
I realised if I keep watching one episode a night I'll finish on the twenty seventh of August--the same day the brand new episode airs, the second half of a two parter. I couldn't have planned it better.
Having just returned from the school bookstore where I spent over two hundred dollars on books a day after paying thirty dollars for an oil change after sixty dollars for a smog check I would just like to say I'm tired of shit costing too much. The funniest was a bullshit book on Interpersonal Communication for the bullshit Communication class I have to take. A new copy costs 108 dollars, a used copy eighty something, and the copy I got on my Kindle was seventy dollars. Hooray, I saved money, but it's hard to celebrate when it seems like fifteen dollars would be generous for a book like this.
I just walked through the aisles with my Kindle, typing in the titles of each of the books I was expected to dump gratuitous piles of money into. I only found two of the books on my Kindle, I think I saved a total of forty dollars. It's hard to feel too proud about it. I think I'll try not driving my car again until Monday.
Things could be worse. For instance, I watched Bicycle Thieves last night. So many people would scoff at the premise for a movie--a whole movie about a guy looking for his stolen bicycle because he needs it for his job putting up posters of Rita Hayworth around town. It nicely reflects the heart of neorealism, and ultimately all good art--it comes from observations of people and nature, not from finding the right forms and algorithms.
The tension created in Bicycle Thieves is almost Hitchcockian the way it builds from one small thing on top of another--as Antonio tries one method after another to get his bicycle back, finding each one useless. The thief gets away too fast in a crowd, the police don't have the resources to help with such a petty crime. He and his friends search the markets where parts of bicycles are sold, the sea of anonymous parts conveying the hopelessness of this route.
And finally Antonio and his little son Bruno are forced to just wander the streets searching for the bicycle by themselves. I imagine it's almost hard to find bad shots in Rome, but Bicycle Thieves is still an extraordinarily beautiful looking film. The realism of the footage adds to the credibility of the search process and at the centre is Antonio's anxious, cratered face.
The realism of the world and his fragility created both by Lamberto Maggiorani's performance and the reactions of his kid portray a situation inexorably taking a man apart.
Twitter Sonnet #293
Tear legs ennoble ancient brown cask blood.
Diapers and fake husbands widen the eyes.
Spider ears cannot hold the headphone bud.
Wafer smiles flutter over fishwives.
Paddles slip back through the confetti mill.
Rainbow horror drains to the pot of gold.
Bushels of blue veins turn up in the will.
The cheap insulated stilts have grown old.
Fifty dollar denim has its gut lint.
Pleather shoe tongues bristle with cat charges.
Complex fortunes favour monster moth rent.
Somewhere a pink mouse nostril enlarges.
Lilliputian shadows dissolve faster.
Too many overcast skies bore plaster.
I'm seven episodes into the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who and liking it. It's like Thelonious Monk after four seasons of Elton John. Not quite as melodramatic, no big highs or big lows, just consistently good.
There hasn't been anything like the breathtakingly brilliant episodes Moffat wrote during the tenth Doctor era, and I feel like I'm seeing the writer in a different mode, that of the season long arc mode.* I kind of wish modern television wasn't so married to this format, but Moffat does seem to be doing a good job with his ideas spread out like this.
Matt Smith, despite being much younger than David Tennant, comes across as a much older Doctor, and feels quite a bit more like the classic Doctor than Eccleston or Tennant, and I think it's more to do with how he's written than Smith's performance. The Doctor very maturely backing away from Amy's advances feels a lot more like someone over nine hundred years old than the guy falling for Rose.
But Smith's performance is good, too--I read Moffat had him study the second Doctor and it's very apparent. I liked that "Victory of the Daleks" directly referenced the second Doctor era, though I don't really like the new Dalek design. I just don't think enough is gained from it to justify losing the classic shape.
I was also disappointed the fish alien vampires in "The Vampires of Venice" didn't end up being the same species as the fish alien vampires from The Curse of Fenric, though otherwise I liked the serial.
The two parter about the Weeping Angels was very good and it made me curious to see if Moffat can credibly establish the beginning of a relationship between the Doctor and River Song. I think it would be sort of cool if she turned out to be Lady Peinforte from The Silver Nemesis, the only other character established to have known the Doctor's name. I guess that would require a pretty complicated obstacle course of plot, though.
I have yet to see any companion who felt like they could be anything more than a friend with benefits for the Doctor except Romana. She's the only one who's seemed like she could go toe to toe with the wisdom and experience that comprise his personality. River's written as sassy, but she doesn't feel yet like this is borne of a real intimacy with the Doctor. It almost comes off as defensiveness borne of intimidation.
*Incidentally, in case anyone wonders why I persist in using "season" rather than "series", it's a conscious choice on my part. I find the term "series" being applied to groups of twelve episodes awkward when it's also what we call Doctor Who in its entirety and also the show beginning in 2005 to present when comparing it to the 1963 to 1989 run.
I dreamt last night I lived in some kind of dark, brick complex with a small entrance between video game arcades leading back to the larger space, which was a collection of rooms. Sort of like a base in Antarctica. I think it was closer to how I always imagined the Ninja Turtles' home in the sewers. Living with me was Tegan and Nyssa, companions to the fifth Doctor on Doctor Who, and Kurt Cobain. Cobain had a recording studio there and I heard him recording a new song, adding extra "y" sounds to words like Courtney Love tends to do. Tegan and Nyssa were upset with me because I kept bringing hemp milk home but I explained to them that there was a lake of hemp milk to the south, so I was getting it for free, which calmed them down.
Then Tegan was trying to tell me something really important but I accidentally accepted a teleport from a bot Amee had sending out automated notices and teleports for her business. I arrived in a bazaar of brightly coloured tents and Amee was with five other women, all dressed in saris, chasing a man in a bear costume. Since she didn't seem to have time to talk, I went back to the compound and found Tegan in Nyssa's room where Nyssa was playing video games on a console system. Tegan still seemed worried but no longer interested in talking about it.
Maybe the weird dream is to do with all the wine I had yesterday--my parents have been watching a series of DVDs on wine making and wine tasting and yesterday they invited my sister and me to join them. They'd gotten the four wines discussed in the chapter we were going to watch, two whites and two reds, so we could taste along with the host, Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan. Does she look crazy to you?
My sister thought she looked like Jennifer Carol Wilbanks, a.k.a. the "Runaway Bride", the woman who ditched her wedding with an abduction hoax a few years ago.
I guess it's those wide open eyes, which Simonetti-Bryan had pretty constantly throughout the video. My mother, like probably a lot of people, doesn't quite get the "we mock because we love" concept. The more wine we all drank, the more tickled my sister and I became with Simonetti-Bryan and the somewhat hokey production values of the video and the less our mother was willing to take it in stride. I kept saying, "No, I really like her. I think she's great." And I meant it, but I couldn't stop it from sounding insincere. "I just think she's fierce," I said, which didn't help. Then I started digging a Lars von Trier press conference style hole for myself, "I think I could save her. I think she just needs to be held."
Oh, well. My mother brought up the fact that Simonetti-Bryan is well educated and makes a lot of money as though that somehow disqualified the impression my sister and I had. But that was part of her charm as far as I was concerned--she seems really into what she does, and that she seems a little awkward, kind of emotionally fragile . . . I don't know, it's cute. I feel weirdly like a pig for feeling that way, but I do, I just can't help it.
One of the many pictures I didn't post from Comic-Con--this is the DeLorean from Back to the Future Part III. Yesterday I actually saw a DeLorean on the street, exactly the same kind that was used for the Back to the Future movies, only it didn't have the time travel stuff in the back. It's an oddly flat car.
I actually meant to talk about the DeLorean at Comic-Con because it was accompanied by Claudia Wells, who played Marty's girlfriend Jennifer in the first film;
She was replaced in the second and third films by Elizabeth Shue, and I remember when I was a kid pointing out to an adult, I don't remember who, that it was a different person and I was told I was wrong. Elizabeth Shue looks enough like Claudia Wells that I could doubt myself, which made the subtle differences in their features and mannerisms sort of disturbing. There was kind of an uncanny valley quality, except with real people.
I tried watching The Big Boss, a.k.a. Fists of Fury last night, the 1971 Bruce Lee film. I was enjoying it until I recognised "Time" by Pink Floyd on the soundtrack--from the album Dark Side of the Moon released in 1973. And I realised either Pink Floyd ripped of a Chinese film composer or I wasn't seeing the original version of the film.
So I checked Wikipedia and found out that I was indeed seeing a version rescored in 1983, not only nicking Pink Floyd but King Crimson as well. I couldn't continue watching after this--which was pretty annoying as I was already halfway through. It doesn't look like Bruce Lee's films have ever been released in particularly good DVDs and it sounds to me like some motherfuckers are cynically exploiting the popularity of these films.
This morning I read "THE GRANTING CABINET", a new story in the latest Sirenia Digest, which read more as an interesting discussion of how the mind processes fiction. Alongside Caitlin's recent blasting of the "trigger" phenomenon in her blog, she seems to be focusing on the often unrecognised fundamental effects fiction has on the mind. It sort of reminds me of Pierrot le Fou, and makes me contemplate a literary version of the French New Wave in film.
Twitter Sonnet #292
Black stars send red crayon though the phone line.
Jumping beans rattle across a bone plate.
Parti-coloured drills spark in the brain mine.
Burning bloom washes in an Endless Eight.
Hollow blue struts hold up a cold shadow.
Quartered cherries infect a worm stomach.
Kings need more ticks than the clocks can endow.
Stalemates offer monotonous panic.
Peanuts replace the last lunch of the week.
Laser grapes darken the mouldy eyelash.
Newspaper mulch brick buildings are too weak.
Black liquorice tongues taste a deep space bash.
Dark "Time" wrongly scores 1983.
1985 made flat machines free.
I sure love these spiders. Especially now that there seems to be a freakish number of mosquitoes around here. Do your work, spiders, godspeed.
I had to get my car smog checked yesterday and I made sure to tell the guys not to disturb the spider eggs still on the back of the car.
You may not want to know what Sonny Chiba is holding in this picture. I will say the shredded cloth came from a pair of boxer shorts.
That's just one of many examples of violence the severity of which I found pleasantly surprising in The Street Fighter, a 1974 martial arts film unrelated to Capcom's Street Fighter series of video games, which feature a lot less eye gouging.
Chiba plays Takuma Tsurugi, one of the most amoral movie protagonists I've ever seen. There's no reason in the world you should root for this guy, but you kind of do. Maybe it's the shear joy he takes in beating people up. I've never seen anyone so pleased to have torn out the Adam's Apple of his defeated foe. It's wonderfully consistent, too, with his amorality. He doesn't become enlightened halfway through or anything, he goes after the job of protecting the rich heiress simply because it gives him a paid excuse to take revenge on the people trying to kidnap her to take her fortune--and Tsurugi wants to take that fortune from her too.
The movie had a sort of unsatisfying ending, but I guess that's why there are sequels. And no, by the way, this movie was not shot by Jack Cardiff. I'm not on a programme here, fool.
King Vidor's 1956 adaptation of War and Peace is amazing in a lot of ways, and might have been a great film if it had had a different director. He's the one I blame for the movie not only exhibiting a lack of understanding for the material but in some cases expressing a philosophy exactly opposite of that which Tolstoy was writing from.
A crucial element in the book is the lack of real control Napoleon, Kutuzov, and the people nominally in charge of the involved nations actually had over the battles that took place in the war. The 1956 movie instead gives insights Tolstoy had into the war and puts them into the mouths of Napoleon and Kutuzov, both men clearly being portrayed as the powerful forces that were solely responsible for deciding things. One of the aspects of the book that supported Tolstoy's argument, and one of the most viscerally effective aspects of the book, impressions of the conflict from the perspectives of the common soldier, are entirely omitted, and the most prominent character of those sections, Nickolai Rostov, is reduced to a very minor role, which is a pity because he's played rather well by Jeremy Brett.
I'm not sure knowing the book made the movie easier or harder to follow, as characters are assigned different bits of dialogue and functions within the plot. Boris is totally absent and Natasha is shown to have interest in Pierre from the beginning--of course the characters don't age as much as they do in the book, which creates problems especially in regard to Natasha about whom there's still dialogue about how much she's grown up since the first part of the movie. The drama between Nickolai, Maria, and Sonya still apparently exists and is referred to off hand by other characters, which makes it feel even stranger that we don't actually get to see any scenes dedicated to them.
Yet, the film isn't without its good points. Audrey Hepburn as Natasha is perfect casting, and Anita Ekberg is lovely as Helene, though another part of the problem with the movie is that people who are portrayed by Tolstoy as simply not having the nobility of character displayed by Andrei, Pierre, or Natasha are portrayed as outright villains, which is particularly frustrating in the case of Lise and sabotages the impact of much of the story. Henry Fonda was a great actor of greater range than most people might think--compare his roles in The Lady Eve and Once Upon a Time in the West--but he's not convincing as an aristocrat.
It is a beautiful film. Shot by Jack Cardiff, it has a wonderful complexity of tone not usually associated with Technicolor films of the 1950s. His indoor scenes are filled with his usual Rembrandt shadows and contrasts of cool and warm colours that are both striking and subtle.
I noticed that for scenes dealing with God in some way, Cardiff used very strong red light, for churches and death beds, as in this scene with a very striking slash of red across the floor;
His outdoor shots are often gorgeous, too. Although I rued the absence of Tolstoy's soldiers' perspectives, the sort of bird's eye view of the battlefields often look like paintings.
A scene of Pierre walking from one view of battle through proscenium trees to another is both amazing for its visual beauty and for the coordination of so many extras.
And speaking of which, I was astonished by a scene of the French cavalry galloping through retreating infantry;
I'm guessing horses were hurt in the making of this film. They sure don't make 'em like that any more.
The camera angle probably conceals the careful rows in which the infantry is probably arranged, but it's still a damned impressive piece of choreography.
When indoor sets are used for outdoor scenes, Cardiff's photography is still amazing. The scenes don't look like they're actually outside, of course, but they're excellent examples of beautiful artificiality. My favourite was the sun through haze causing the snow to glitter during the duel between Pierre and Dolokhov.
I was a bit disappointed by the costumes at first. I realised this may be reflective of the different impressions of beauty by the English costume designers I'm used to seeing in Jack Cardiff shot films--a plain yellow dress worn by Hepburn at the beginning of the film was terribly boring and this outfit worn by Maria may be one of the most hideous costumes I've ever seen;
I almost wonder, since IMDb lists two costume designers, mentioning that one was uncredited, if the film's initial costume designer was fired and replaced because later the costumes become absolutely gorgeous. Dig Maria now;
I love that wrap. From behind;
And I loved the use of flowers on the dresses Sonya and Helene wore to the opera, and Natasha's grey with gold is also lovely;
There are few things more depressing than seeing morons snark. Try watching Fox News for a few minutes, you'll see what I mean. I guess it makes some people angry. I've had what I refer to as a "Donald Duck Complex" for as long as I remember, which basically means that often when I get angry I automatically see my anger as ridiculous and I'm overcome with a sensation of futility. But seeing morons snark is almost like getting that sensation from both ends--a moron snarking so succinctly transmits the situation of someone ignorant who could not be further from seeking enlightenment.
Sometimes this double whammy of futile situations can produce anger in me, almost by force, as it seems to be accompanied by a mild nausea. It took a few minutes for me to get there, though, after I looked at this article at Jezebel. I mean, at first, I thought it was just funny. It is funny seeing all these male superheroes and authors posed like Wonder Woman. I don't agree with the idea that motivated the article, but that doesn't stop the pictures from being funny.
Then I started thinking about the minds that think those drawings are witty, that they say something about the oppressiveness of imagery of sexualised women. I thought about a bit on The Best of Howard Stern which I listened to again a few weeks ago where Artie Lange described going to another level of anger when he realised he'd gotten caught up in arguing with a moron, namely Sal Governale. Now, Artie likes Sal, I think Sal's funny, and he can't help having a low IQ. And he has a lot of opinions I don't agree with. So I try to remember that as I find myself compelled to argue with the people at Jezebel, as I find myself in the situation where I feel like I need to blog about things that my instinct says ought to be really fucking obvious.
Urgh. Okay. Here we go.
Let's start with the fact that showing these guys posed as Wonder Woman is not tit for tat. I love Alan Moore, I think he's one of the best writers living to-day, but Alan Moore in a happy face speedo is not sexy. I would bet this is true to most people who are sexually attracted to men, though I'm willing to bet there is a real minority of people who'd disagree. Now, does it demean Alan Moore to make him look sexy? Only if you assume there's something inherently sinister about the fact that people find him sexy.
So what would be tit for tat? Maybe muscle bound guys with handsome faces? You know, how they're actually drawn. If you think Wonder Woman is an unrealistic standard for women well you don't exactly see Superman pumping gas, do you?
That's what this kind of fantasy is about--revelling in an unrealistic ideal. Sure, maybe there are guys who expect every woman to look like Wonder Woman. Ladies, you don't want those guys. They're morons. Well, on the other hand, if we're talking about the ladies I'm seeing on Jezebel, maybe they're made for each other.
The best was one commenter who posted a picture of a buxom comic book woman in an action pose and said, "She is in the middle of a fight but those boobies are not breaking a sweat." What does that even mean? I suppose I ought to feel an inkling of hope from the fact that the commenters noticed Deathstoke's penis is visible in the same picture and it seems to have shut them up.
Twitter Sonnet #291
Small octopi are still big for spiders.
Mosquito stars ride the skin firmament.
Fresh flies appear on arachnid riders.
Bloody seeds form a planter government.
Inverted combs tangle negative hair.
Dark temple feathers hide a fish's egg.
Only one subject may pose of a pair.
All real knights know how to move like a leg.
Sanguine mosquito butts think tomato.
Feathers burn at the mossy make out spot.
Hot sidewalk melted a sweet potato.
The invisible bug shrank to a dot.
A dry carapace lies on the wrong route.
Emo banjo drives salamanders out.
"The Eleventh Hour", Matt Smith's first episode as the Doctor, is good. I liked the story about the crack in the universe, but it wasn't anything as breathtaking as the previous episodes written by Steven Moffat. And I really didn't like the Doctor's chest thumping at the end of the episode--that was something I always blamed Russell T. Davies for. I'm hoping it's gradually phased out all together if this isn't the last gasp of it, for continuity's sake.
One episode isn't really enough to judge from, but so far I like Matt Smith. He has the right look, certainly. But the real pleasure for me is Amy Pond. Holy fuck, she is hot.
Her hair, her legs, her lips. I'm calling it now--sexiest Doctor Who companion of all time. Oh, those lips! I want to spend a week in bed with her. It's a good thing I didn't try seeing her at Comic-Con as I'd be utterly depressed at having seen her so close and yet so far beyond my grasp.
Oh, and her relationship with the Doctor is pretty sweet. Which I consider almost as important as her colossal sexiness. I only wish some asshole hadn't written a spoiler at the top of Amy Pond's Wikipedia entry that reveals she becomes a mother. WARNING: INCOMING UNABASHED OFFENSIVE STATEMENT That does dampen her sexiness slightly. Oh, well, it's not like Karen Gillan's a mother in real life.
Anyway, to-day, since I've now seen the complete existing stories of every Doctor who's come and gone, I thought I'd rank them. Though only with the proviso that I may change my mind later.
10. Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor
It's easiest to pick the worst, and Colin Baker is hands down that. It's not a good sign when a Doctor is eclipsed by his companion's breasts, and that companion isn't even particularly great.* One could say what all the other Doctors had in common was a something, a uniqueness, somehow, except maybe Paul McGann. Colin Baker lacks star quality and range--he might be passable as a supporting player, but not as even a noticeable one.
9. Paul McGann, the Eighth Doctor
It's a little unfair to judge, since he only had one episode with which to make an impression, but although he gave a better performance than Colin Baker, he was also not particularly distinctive. In fact he was sort of studiously milquetoast, probably reflective of the fact that the show was courting 90s American television audiences. And he had the stupid half-human thing.
8. Christopher Eccleston, the Ninth Doctor
Similar to the eighth Doctor in two respects--I don't feel like he was around long enough to develop properly and the show during his time was busy trying to find its footing in modern television. In a way, it's good Eccleston's Doctor got the black leather out of the way so Tennant could wear the more Doctor-ish eccentric suit with tennis shoes. Though the ninth's more subdued look also worked as a reflection of the Doctor's recent traumatic experiences, something which Eccleston's performance incorporated well within the overall arc of the Doctor's story.
7. William Hartnell, the First Doctor
In "Time Crash", the tenth Doctor has an interesting line about how he used to be old and serious, the way one is "when you're young," which made some interesting sense. In fact, the first Doctor does come across as markedly shorter on wisdom than those who followed him. Starting off as someone seemingly interested only in satisfying himself and his own curiosity, his tenure shows him somewhat gradually coming around to a more heroic role as the show's focus shifted the Doctor from reluctant and grouchy enabler of other people's adventures to a more innocent, if still crabby, creature. Hartnell doesn't give a very complex performance, but that leads to another endearing thing about him, that his mannerisms are so of the old school of ordinary British acting. One could easily pop him into a supporting role in The 39 Steps or The Thief of Bagdad.
6. Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor
A somewhat more laid back and benevolent Doctor, it was rare to see the third panic the way the second seemed constantly to do. By the end of his tenure, I had grown somewhat tired of Pertwee's all serious, all the time tact, but watching his serials isolated from the rest of his tenure one appreciates the subtle textures he gave to line deliveries. And his face was so wonderfully odd.
5. Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor
His last serial easily his best serial, it somehow elevates most of his previous episodes. Delivering a less complex and eccentric performance than his predecessor, he was nonetheless convincing as someone possessing centuries of wisdom while more capable of exhibiting fear than Pertwee. Still, his lack of a real sense of vulnerability could run a little dull at times, while at others it recalled Errol Flynn's irrepressible cockiness, an actor the show unabashedly compared him to.
4. David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor
Perhaps the Doctor with the greatest capacity for vulnerability, it's nonetheless a close call for me between him and Davison as by the end of Tennant's run I felt I got a little too used to his regular five emotional notes--idle chatter (often with a Tom Baker-ish low "Well"), screamy boast, salivating angry explanation, lip quivering verge of tears, and emotional shutdown wide-eyed stare. But he played his instrument well for most of his run and conveyed both wisdom and charm. With a good script, he was excellent.
3. Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor
This guy was a wonderful blend of silly and sinister. Those dark sad eyes, his tendency to run words together. He almost seems like the Doctor's soul crafted a cunning parody of the clown-like sixth Doctor. He gave the impression of hidden, strange alien wisdom under a layer of comedy that was both deceptive and sincere. His tenure was much too short--the comparatively bland eighth Doctor is sort of puzzling next to him, which makes you wonder if, with this regeneration, a rare and fascinating worm a got into the Time Lord apple.
2. Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor
Like the seventh, a masterful capacity to contain both wisdom and silliness. As I sort of said yesterday, the second Doctor is better than Jesus. And he's not even my favourite.
1. Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor
This one epitomises the Doctor in every way for me. No, he doesn't seem especially vulnerable, which is what I think turns off a lot of the modern audience to him. What he has is a remarkable habitation of the character. He never loses his shit, however bad it gets, but you always feel Tom Baker accepts the reality of a scene. I guess there's something method about it. Again, that important melding of wisdom and silliness but he somehow managed to be satisfyingly silly and clearly in on the joke. It's like he's both inside and outside the story at the same time, laughing at the absurdity of what he's having to deal with, or even laughing at himself, right along with us. And at the same time completely respecting that reality. Which is ideal for a being called a "Time Lord", if you think about it.
I won't say the sixth, eighth, and ninth Doctors' ranks had anything to do with the fact that I couldn't find pictures of them wearing hats. But it just might have.
