Where Pink Petals Go

Where art thy vim and vigor, Mrs. Bear? She's not, as they say in Japan, genki. I saw her in Uda last week.

It's been very warm for March, leading to some early blossoming.

I'm wondering if I should make a trip down to Yoshino, where there's a magnificent valley of cherry trees. Last time I went in March, it was too early and I saw just cobwebs of skinny grey branches. But this year maybe it's different. The train was full of elderly people in hiking attire coming from the south, the direction of Yoshino, yesterday. I guess there's no harm in waiting a little longer.

Serial Killer Movie

Someone strangles several women in Boston, earning him the name of "Boston Strangler" in 2023's Boston Strangler. Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon star as the two reporters who broke this real life story of serial murders. It's a decent enough procedural with little to distinguish it other than the fact that it's never annoying. Knightley and Coon both give good performances.

Loretta (Knightley) is stuck in the lifestyles section of her paper but she really wants to report on murder. She gets her big chance when a number of women turn up dead with silk stockings tied around their throats.

She partners with the more experienced Jean (Carrie Coon) and soon she's learning the ropes, dealing with cops and coroners, landlords and relatives of victims. Sometimes Loretta feels a little too modern, as in one scene where she doesn't flinch when a landlord tells her one victim had a broomstick shoved up her vagina, and he doesn't seem surprised that she doesn't flinch.

I watched the movie because Paul Schrader recommended the movie on his Facebook but he complained about the "immaculate period cars". I'd say that problem of artificial cleanliness extends to the sets, costumes, hair, and makeup, too.

I was a little distracted by the presence of David Dastmalchian. I'm unable to see him as anyone but Polka Dot Man now.

Boston Strangler is available on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ in other countries.

Twitter Sonnet #1679

The falling snow included rolls of tape.
With sound design, the meeting came a blast.
Congrats were due to ev'ry happy ape.
But please consult the other folks we cast.
With wavy heads the troop for barbers ran.
Against the blowing wind ye've never walked.
Approach and change the flat and useless van.
Sure there's a decent man as all could talk.
The night was soft about the spoiled Spam.
In paper beds, the ladies slept in peace.
But paper hats have proved a famous scam.
No captain ranks above the royal geese.
Abnormal lists can prompt a normal blink.
Tornado dreams collect the morning ink.

In a Neat Little Town They Call Belfast

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone, although it's already the 18th here in Japan. This year I bought a bottle of Jameson and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Mike Leigh's 1984 film Four Days in July, the latter of which I'd never seen before. It was surprisingly relaxing for a movie about the Troubles though there is an underlying tension throughout the picture.

It's set in Belfast and follows a young Protestant family and a young Catholic family. The women in both families are pregnant for the first time.

Most of the film consists of slices of life. We listen in on conversations between the couples and friends visiting. Stephen Rea has a small role as a window cleaner for the Catholic family. He stops work to chat with them a while.

All the time, I was listening for some reflection of political or religious partisanship in the dialogue. Anything of that sort, though, seems to be incidental as when the Catholic wife (Brid Brennan) sings a revolutionary song in bed as a lullaby for her husband (Des McAleer), successfully putting him to sleep.

The loyalty to both sides is there. The Protestant husband (Charles Lawson) is with the British security forces and he has a clear enough contempt for terrorists. But he seems more concerned with swapping old stories about drunken bets or trivia about Northern Ireland.

The dialogue feels so authentic, it really felt like I was just hanging out with all these nice folks. Surely they needn't start killing each other.

Four Days in July is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Batch Drips

Wednesday also brought an exceptionally bland episode of The Bad Batch. It had kind of an interesting concept but it never got off the ground.

The episode begins with Phee Genoa (Wanda Sykes) once again referencing Indiana Jones, in this case the opening of Temple of Doom. But Phee is able to spot the poisoned drink and several other traps. That makes us like her more, right? I seriously think some writers think of these things as a kind of competition, forgetting viewers aren't necessarily more attracted to prowess than they are to vulnerability.

Sykes' delivery is still weirdly slow, like she's reading a book to two year olds. And maybe that's on purpose, maybe she thinks that's her audience. It doesn't stop other voice actors from speaking at a normal pace, though.

From the Indiana Jones scene, the episode moves to another kind of blandness, imitating Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I'm a fan of TNG but one of the problems that show had, stemming from a low budget, was a constant series of "alien" planets and peoples that looked like Earth and humans. We get one of those with Pabu, where the people wear the same kinds of generic tunics and trousers that humanoid civilisations tended always to wear on TNG.

We're a long way from the cantina scene now.

The people of Pabu exhibit a bland friendliness that complements their wardrobe. Things start to get interesting when there's a sea surge and there's a sudden need to evacuate to higher ground. But no-one's killed or injured. So, gentle viewer, you may yawn and blissfully drop into slumber.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Official Mando Dandyism

I really, really wish last night's Mandalorian was better than it was. The locations I loved, the action sequences I loved, some of the premise I loved, the performances I liked. But, damnit, the writing was perplexingly sloppy again. How long have they had to work on this thing? Why, why is it like this?

It started with something good, some dog fighting in which Bo Katan and Din Djarin deal with some TIE Interceptors. In my day, TIE Interceptors didn't have hyperdrives, but whatever. It was a cool scene.

And then we cut to Coruscant for a completely different plot. I'm guessing this whole section was written by inexperienced screenwriter Noah Kloor, who's credited along with Jon Favreau for writing the episode. He had a staff writing credit on Book of Boba Fett, though none of that series' scripts are actually credited to him. In 2020, he co-wrote a stop motion Christmas special with two other writers. And that brings us to the sum total of his imdb credits.

I love Coruscant. When I was a kid, before the prequels came out, I used to love the old Expanded Universe stories set on Coruscant. And I loved Coruscant in the prequels and on Clone Wars, though it never seemed quite as sinister as it did in those old books. The idea of a neverending city with a vast murky underbelly appealed to me and I liked how last night's episode gave us some little infodumps on the lore which most of us Star Wars geeks already know. It was amusing that Doctor Pershing (Omid Abtahi) seemed a little like a tourist.

The segment begins with Pershing doing a sort of TED Talk at the familiar opera house from Revenge of the Sith. I liked seeing the location again, but it made no sense for him to be giving this big speech about the potential in genetic research only for it to be followed by him sidelined by a bureaucratic policy and talking only reluctantly about the possibility of attempting such research again. Like the alligator fight in the first episode, it felt like the opera house scene was tacked on by someone who didn't actually understand the rest of the episode.

I liked the idea of former Imperials being rehabilitated and reintegrated, and it's nicely chilling how many echos we see from Andor. It looks like Pershing is even working in a cubicle similar to the one Karn worked in. It goes to show, the ideology of the regime may change but uprooting the habits of a bureaucracy may be another thing altogether. Of course, anyone who was pissed off by Luke Skywalker becoming a bitter old man in Last Jedi may not enjoy this stuff, either.

I liked Katy M. O'Brian's performance as Ella Kane, Pershing's duplicitous new friend. Though the elaborateness of her scheme to entrap him didn't make a lot of sense. She could have at least gotten tickets for the tram.

The episode is bookended by segments with the Mandalorian characters. Just last week, I mentioned how nice it was Katee Sackoff gets to act with her face. The moment I saw last night's episode was called "The Convert" I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. And sure enough, at the end, we had Bo Katan getting accepted into the tribe. Ugh. Well, maybe next week's episode will finally convince me it's interesting for these characters never to take their helmets off. But next week's is co-written by Dave Filoni so I kind of doubt it.

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1678

A dappled pie delayed the party guests.
Asleep at home a foolish clerk resides.
To-night the eyes'll close on twenty tests.
A dozen bellies pulled computer tides.
A broken thought was gliding over sky.
The winter wind was all contained at home.
Removing ghosts resume a banshee's cry.
Again, the agent's forced to widely roam.
A harmless action set the party's tone.
A gentle gun deserved a heavy drink.
Abhorrence firmly banned the hollow bone.
And now the guests are past the very brink.
Returning houses hold a talk to none.
The day belongs to homes that lack a sun.

Another Irrevocable Change

Yesterday was a long, bittersweet experience. It was graduation day here in Japan and I watched students graduate from junior high school whom I met in their first year when I came to Japan in 2020. Junior high school is three years in Japan, and it's the last period of compulsory education. So it's regarded as much more important here than in the US. I recently saw some video from my own junior high school graduation back in 1993.

I'm the blonde in the middle with glasses. To my left is my friend Tim. Everyone in the video looks restless and bored, a far cry from the formal series of bows and singing and speeches I witnessed yesterday.

After the ceremony, the teachers and staff make the "flower road" in the field outside, lining up in two rows for the departing students to walk through. Then everyone mills around, taking pictures and making final farewells before the students finally exit, officially no longer junior high school students. I spoke to as many students as I could. Some of them I'm really going to miss and am bitterly sorry I'll never be able to see again. I work at several schools but they all hold their graduation ceremonies on the same day, so I can only go to one. I went to the school at which I'd spent the most time but that still left out a lot of students I dearly wished I could have seen.

After lunch, I went to the mall and was delighted to see and talk to many students from many schools. Many of the girls were wearing tiaras and sashes. One girl, a kick boxing champion, had done her hair and nails to perfection, her nails having little silver flowers glued to them. I saw some students I hadn't seen since 2021, whose school I wasn't assigned to last year. That was an unexpected treat.

Even after all that, there were still several students I was disappointed not to see. In previous years, some of them flagged me down later throughout the year at train stations. Getting closure seems to be very important to people here. I can only hope I will eventually see some of these students. In particular, there were two I worked with after school, teaching them how to read Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. I sure I hope I see them eventually. But there's every possibility I never will.

The Short Road to the Party

It's a nice day, everyone's having a good time, there's a picnic. Some strangers show up to play some "jokes" that seem suspiciously like an ideological coup in 1966's A Report on the Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech). Banned in its home country of Czechoslovakia for many years due to its perceived criticism of Communism, the film is very simple but very sly.

A group of bourgeois friends are enjoying a lazy lunch in the grass when they spot a distant group of revellers. Thinking they're heading to the same banquet they are, the picnickers stumble towards the main road. One of them finds an aggressively smiling stranger (Jan Klusak) suddenly locking arms with him.

He's with a group of sullen faced young men in ties. The amiable picnickers are reluctantly ushered into lines hastily drawn in the dirt. They're told they're now in a room and two dashes on the ground mark the door. One man among the picnickers of a certain disposition encourages everyone to play along. Another becomes angry and marches straight through a "wall".

It's hard to say exactly what philosophy the interlopers espouse only that they're very keen on controlling everyone under a flagrantly false veneer of good fellowship. The film successfully boils down a large political phenomenon to a more personal situation. You see, quite credibly, the process through which authority establishes itself while constantly protesting that it isn't authority at all. And you can see how flagrant, unchallenged hypocrisy gives it infinite license.

A Report on the Part and the Guests is available on The Criterion Channel.

Where Many Have Gone Before

I couldn't get past the second episode of Star Trek: Picard season one. But I heard the new season, season three, was actually pretty good so far so I skipped right to it. And it is pretty good. What a nice surprise.

It's not perfect. It has a few dumb things and just poorly considered lines of dialogue. Like when one character meets Worf and says, "Picard talks about you all the time!" No, no, Picard wouldn't talk about Worf all the time. Can you imagine? "Lieutenant, come to my ready room. You know, Worf used to visit my ready room. Would like some prune juice? You know who likes prune juice?"

"I'm guessing Worf?"

There are lots of those little auto-pilot lines that sound like the writer just wasn't considering--wait. Was this show written by an AI? . . . Well, it has the same credited writers as season two, which I hear was even worse than season one. The key difference is that Akiva Goldsman and Michael Chabon are absent from season three. I guess sometimes a show just needs fewer writers, not different writers.

Maybe they ought to have credited Nicholas Meyer and Jack B. Sowards, director and screenwriter, respectively, of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which the first four episodes of Picard season three gratuitously and unabashedly ape. The fourth episode is even called "No Win Scenario".

It's not the first time, or even the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixteenth time a Star Trek series or movie has tried to do Star Trek II again. Even the last Next Generation movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, borrowed heavily from Star Trek II, featuring Tom Hardy as Picard's clone/son figure. Picard season three more closely follows the the Star Trek II model.

The famous Captain Picard/Kirk, now an admiral, feeling his age a little, goes on an inspection tour of a Starfleet vessel. It turns out his old flame, though, Beverly Crusher/Carol Marcus, who's involved with a scientific project outside Federation jurisdiction, is in trouble. Working alongside her is her son, Jack Crusher/David Marcus, whose true identity as Picard's/Kirk's son she's kept hidden since his conception. But there's a villain afoot unconnected with all this family drama and pursues our heroes into a nebula where the two ships play a blind game of cat and mouse. And the whole thing ends with the witnessing of a remarkable birth that symbolises a new youth for Picard/Kirk.

Despite all this obvious copying and pasting, the four episodes are genuinely good. The writers have finally taken the hint that fans want their old familiar characters back along with logical problem-solving plots. Riker, Crusher, and Worf are all back in the mix. I wonder, too, if the writers are trying to woo back more conservative viewers by relegating most of the female characters to support roles, which would be cynical and, I think, a misreading of what said fans actually want.

But anyway. Three new cast members really shine; Todd Stashwick as Captain Shaw, commanding the ship Riker and Picard end up commandeering, Ed Speelers as Jack Crusher, and Amanda Plummer as Vadic, a character not unlike the one Plummer's father played in Star Trek VI.

Once again, Patrick Stewart is back as Picard, but I find myself saddened by how feeble he is now. I miss his strong, stern delivery. There are a couple scenes where you can see a fire kindled inside him, particularly the scene where he confronts Beverly about keeping their son a secret from him. Suddenly, he's alive and animated again. In other scenes, though, Stewart really seems checked out. He even slurs his words together a lot. I wonder how much of it is his age and how much of it is just him being so damned tired of Star Trek at this point. It's too bad the showrunners have burned their bridges with William Shatner. Nine years older than Patrick Stewart, he nonetheless seems a lot livelier.

The mechanics of the space battles and the character relationships work well enough that I was truly invested in the finale of episode four. So I guess I'll stick with this thing for now.

Star Trek: Picard is available on Paramount+.

Twitter Sonnet #1677

A stranger's face replaced an empty mug.
The oil fathoms wait for falling souls.
A devil scoops them down an iron jug.
As screaming fish abide in prison bowls.
Between the bubbles, eyes were hidden well.
A time of stars has warped the golden fleece.
Beneath the sea, an oyster hides a bell.
A signal lost in time denies us peace.
A captive lung rebounds against the cage.
Ascending steam refined a laser cloud.
Amounting sky condensed the stars to rage.
Descending suns announced the doom aloud.
Remembered ships were fat before the town.
A vicious crew emerged to tear it down.

I Just Have a Few Notes

I got home late from Osaka last night and didn't feel like watching a movie. In the morning I watched the second episode of Robert Blake's YouTube series. Recorded within the last couple years, the episodes are just him at home going through boxes of old photos. So far he's talked almost exclusively about his roles as a child. Apparently he didn't think too much of Lost Highway at that point in his life, something seemingly confirmed by David Lynch in this interview:

Although, this interview from the time of the film's release shows him being more positive about it--and also somewhat derisive of his body of work previous to it:

I guess people change. Which is a pretty good summary of Lost Highway, actually.

I didn't realise Lost Highway, in 1997, was Blake's last movie. I wonder why. His arrest didn't happen until 2002.

Speaking of performers with strong personalities, lately I've been reading about how Jenna Ortega rewrote a lot of her own dialogue on Wednesday.

“There was times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense, where I just started changing lines … I would have to sit down with the writers, and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things."

Ortega went on to give specific examples, quoting stereotypical “teenage” dialogue that clashed with Wednesday’s dark, brooding persona.

“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega said. “Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about like, this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she said, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No, there’s no way.’”

Ortega even mentioned choreographing her own dance, the most iconic scene from the show, after discovering that Wednesday was originally meant to inspire a flash-mob, stating: “why would [Wednesday] be okay with that?”

Ortega implied that she had completely reshaped her character to give Wednesday more of an arc, saying, “I grew very, very protective of her, but you can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you.”

I don't agree that arcs are essential to creating good characters or stories but, for the most part, it sounds like she was definitely a better writer than the show's credited scribes. The fact that Tim Burton has just cast her in Beetlejuice 2 suggests it wasn't Burton she was clashing with, either, and that Burton had a relatively small creative role for a director on Wednesday. If they do another season, I hope they get better writers. Maybe they should just have Jenna Ortega do the writing.

Speaking of publicised rewrites, I've been amused by this ongoing story about Dave Filoni's supposed involvement in the filming of the Vader hallway scene at the end of Rogue One. Freddie Prinze Jr., star of Filoni's Rebels, recently claimed the Rogue One scene was 100% conceived and executed by Filoni even though Filoni himself claimed in an earlier interview that he'd never filmed any live action before his work on The Mandalorian. Then, finally, Gary Whitta, one of the original writers on Rogue One, said the scene was filmed by the film's original director, Gareth Edwards. It wasn't even part of the reshoots by the second unit director.

Which sounds a lot more plausible to me. I remember when Filoni imitated the sequence in the final episode of Rebels where it made absolutely no sense.

I bet at some point Filoni, or one of Filoni's people, told Freddie Prinze that story about Filoni making the scene for Rogue One, just like Filoni has successfully convinced people he created Ahsoka Tano. The guy's career is taking credit for things at this point. Meanwhile, what has he done since George Lucas sold Star Wars that wasn't running off fumes from Lucas and Jon Favreau? I suspect the upcoming Ahsoka Tano series will be the make or break point. When that show ends up sucking, everyone's going to stop buying into his PR except his most virulent stans. And that'll be yet another headache Disney can't afford.

I'm reminded again how Bob Dolman complained about Disney execs tampering in the writers room on the Willow series. And the stories going around about how the ending to the latest Ant-Man movie was changed to its current lame incarnation. And I'm reminded of the Disney Dark Ages of the 1970s and early 1980s, when a lack of a strong creative vision and too many unimaginative cooks in the kitchen nearly sunk the studio. And here we go again.

Robert Blake

Robert Blake passed away a few days ago. The 89 year old actor was one of the Little Rascals, he gave an extraordinary performance as a killer in In Cold Blood (clip above), he starred in a popular cop show called Baretta, and he was the Mystery Man in David Lynch's Lost Highway, the role I best remember him for.

When you search for "Lost Highway clip" on YouTube, most of the most popular results are of Blake's character. Lynch made a brilliant choice in casting Blake well against type. His eerie black eyes and tenacious grin create the demoniac man more than the makeup and costume.

Quentin Tarantino dedicated his novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Blake. Which has led people to draw comparisons between Blake and the character of Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in the film. Both men may have murdered their wives, neither was found guilty of the crime, leaving only a court of public opinion to weigh in. It's a circumstance more familiar in a David Lynch movie or series, particularly Twin Peaks, which is populated by characters who seem to be different people depending on the circumstance and perspective.

Who was Robert Blake? All I can say for sure is he was a great actor and a fascinating man.

Cross Out

Wednesday's new Bad Batch felt like it followed on from the episode "The Solitary Clone" earlier in the season. It has the same tone and focuses on the same character, offering a resolution that I found a little disappointing.

Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker) has been ordered to a remote outpost where a few clone troopers are barely getting by. Their supplies are running low and the outpost faces regular attacks from unknown assailants. The episode scrupulously avoids providing any motivations for these assailants, not even showing their faces. This is all to shore up sympathy for the clones, reminding me of the early days of Clone Wars in which the propaganda style, manipulative tone was interesting in the way of Starship Troopers.

In this case, though, it's to make us sympathise with the clones against the two dimensional evil Imperial officer called Nolan (Crispin Freeman). In the end, it's Nolan who finally shakes Crosshair's loyalty to the Empire. Which was really disappointing. Crosshair had been one of the more intriguing characters on the show and for his story to be resolved so cheaply was a real letdown.

The poor, bearded clone commander introduced in the episode is very sympathetic. But is he really more important to Crosshair than his former comrades or anyone else he failed to side with against the Empire? Oh, well. I do like the continued development of the clones as embittered war veterans.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1676

A solar turtle robbed the tortoise mine.
If having questions tipped a brain it's strange.
Along the ridge the faeries burned a sign.
A million hornets glowed across the range.
The nose was high upon the mountain school.
Another train was stopped before the snow.
A clock reflects the absent, timeless fool.
A frozen egg creates a baby show.
Afraid of eggs, the buttless chick departs.
Another dawn dissolves angelic night.
Sir Dum to Dee a timely fact imparts.
There's naught to wring from merry maiden's right.
Decisive storms would break the icy sky.
Incisive shards'll puncture ev'ry pie.

Space Monsters

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

From the Jungle to the Deep

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

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

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

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

Between a Cock and a Hard Head

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

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

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

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

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

Tess is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1675

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

Tom Sizemore

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

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

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

The Fall of Tar

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

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

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

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

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

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