Two women, in comics form

.

Two fascinating women who crash into classic tales and remake them in their own image. "Beauty and the Beast" becomes a sculptor and a shadow, and Supergirl gets to be Rooster Cogburn in a scifi retelling of True Grit.

They are both every bit as good as I hope that sounds.

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085) Beast by Marian Churchland, finished July 24

Fantastic Comics has been having this crazy blowout sale on older graphic novels they need to unload, so the boys and I stopped by Saturday and picked up a dozen books for fifty bucks, including this one.

This is a fresh take on Beauty and the Beast and it is, in fact, actually fresh. It's roughly the modern day (I'm estimating 2000) and our hero is a young sculptor who is hired to attack a large piece of marble. Her benefactor goes by Beast and seems to be made of shadows, but she doesn't run and she does sculpt.

The art is beautiful and melancholy. I'm not 100% sure about the ending (a second reading might help) but the book as a whole is a clear victory.

an hour maybe


086) Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by King/Evely/Lopes, finished date

By the time something comes into the library and I read it, I've often forgotten why I wanted to read it in the first place. Luckily, I trust past me and so even with a stack of comics I'm excited about (see above) I picked this up to read first.

I didn't realize until I sat down to write this review that it was written by the same author of a Superman story I wished to compare it to. Reading that review it's clear I liked the story, but the memory I'm left with most clearly is how deeply it expected you to know the DC Universe and all its fiddly details. This story too sends a supersomebody around the universe in service of a young girl but it avoids all the minor stumbling that got in Superman's way. And it's even more successful at managing the levels of storytelling and the cuts back and forth and the voice-forward narrator. In other words, it much the same but Supergirl is superior on every level. Except demanding of the reader a knowledge of minutia. And who wants to win in that category?

Part of what works particularly well in this volume is the model its following. If Tom King were to tell me Woman of Tomorrow was not based on True Grit I would call him a liar. The basic plot and the lead (nonsuper) protagonist are straight from the pages of that great American novel. This is not a knock. Everything's a remix and the trick is to steal well and understand the value of what you're lifting. As Eliot put it, "good poets make [what is stolen] into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn." That's what happens here. Because the differences between True Grit and Woman of Tomorrow are legion, but their souls remain in deep conversation. If someone wants to make an excellent Supergirl "television event," this should be their source material.

It's not just King's writing of course that makes this work. We're talking about comics, after all. While he may have introduced the restraints and the structure, it would not live without the astonishing and beautiful work of Bilquis Evely (colored with aplomb by Matheus Lopes).

One of the problems Lady Steed has with action movies is the action. It's cool and everything but it just goes on and on and on. She's not wrong. And while the ballet of violence provides its own beauty and done well can marvel and amaze, can reveal character and theme, can matter—it can also, not matter how excellent, drag a story to a dead stop. This story is about decades of violence, but the violence rarely if even holds center stage by itself, and some of the largest and most impressive fight scenes occurred between issues and were left unseen.

Incidentally, I disagree with the ending of Woman of Tomorrow, but exactly why what happened is what happened is open to debate and criticism and analysis. In other words, it is literary. I'm not making any claims that Woman of Tomorrow is perfect or anything, but it certainly does rise to the level of literature.

how long goes here
 

 

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Previously . . . . :

Do not watch Oppenheimer on IMAX

 .

Nothing against IMAX—it's still the best place to view space or to fall into the Grand Canyon—but Oppenheimer is mostly talking heads and it's just not necessary. In fact, it gets in the way of the story because there are times where it is difficult to see all the conversation that is being show as it is being shown. Plus, if you're going to shoot that big, you might want to consider a faster frame rate. I know that this film has maxed out what is possible in terms of the amount of film an IMAX projector can hold, but when the camera panned over Los Alamos it just fuzzed away. That might not have happened on a smaller screen.

Plus—and keep in mind I haven't watched a film on IMAX since The Dark Knight—the sound was awful. It's not supposed to be, right? IMAX is also supposed to have great sound? But this film is mostly talking and yet maybe 30% of the dialogue was unintelligible. I think that was a problem with the way the sound was being played by the theater. I have an email into IMAX's how'd-it-go line. If they respond with useful info, I'll throw it in a comment.

Also, I seem to remember this happening on IMAX before but perhaps I'm wrong, the lint on the projector lens! So much lint! Moving around, causing problems. A couple of them might have been actual moths!

Look: I liked the movie. You can read about the movie itself when the month ends. But I think Chris Nolan is wrong—this is not best seen on IMAX. Get a nice big screen. But not that big.

From prehumanity to eternal destiny

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We'll be travelling with humanity all through time this go-round, from before we'd evolved to our current species to leaving the planet for the first time to leaving the planet for good. In between, we'll get some reasonable advice about building a career with words, and living with families, both good and terrible. We'll also visit one of my dearest friends from childhood, Roald Dahl, and a fellow who's movies I liked except they freaked me out, one Don Bluth.

Join me?

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077) Tuki: Fight for Fire by Jeff Smith, finished June 28
078) Tuki: Fight for Family by Jeff Smith, finished June 29

So I told you after I first read volume one that this was a two-volume set. Ah ha. Ah ha ha ha. There will be six. But I'm committed now.

This is Jeff Smith doing what Jeff Smith does best, weaving tales and crafting a world. It's just as beautiful and compelling as you'd expect. Here at the end of act one, our ragtag multispecies group has come together through danger as a true family, their leader has accomplished his quest, but we really have no idea what might come next. And when you consider that we haven't yet met every brand of human from two million b.c., I guess we do have some story let to tell.

Honestly, I'm glad it's not over.

two days


079) The Writer's Hustle by Joey Franklin, finished July 8

I liked a lot of things about this book, I did. I liked Joey's helpful attitude, for instance. And his attempts to see lots of different ways for things to work out as you craft your own creative life. But he has a couple blind spots— Or maybe a better way to say it is that he feels the things that matter most to him matter most. Which is natural. We all feel that way. And I actually thinking his preaching the gospel of humility is really helpful. And when it comes to trying to teach at a university's creative-writing program, humility and an expectation of failure is the only rational path forward.

And honestly, I think a lot of the thinks that did rub me weird he's probably right about. I just don't want to hear them.

Simultaneously, I did feel called to repentence as well. I really oughtta be more involved with the local writing community, for instance. It's true.

My recommendation is to read the chapters you need and set it aside. Other chapters might matter later. Some may never matter at all. But he's a wise guide to the things that matter to you now.

maybe a couple weeks
 

080) Future Day Saints: The New Arrivals by Matt Page, finished July 16

Another triumph from Matt Page. His weird mix of woke Mormon satirical preachily storytelling-slash-advertizing is like nothing else anyone is doing and it should not be missed. (Click to buy.)

If you're not seeing him with frequency on Facebook, you might have missed the announcement. (I'm not on Facebook so I'm not sure how I knew to preorder. A miracle, I presume.) But volume three is here and a must-read. In my opinion, this volume best strikes the balance between standalone story, overarching events and themes, and all the itchily ironic/capitalistic fake (and real) ads. I felt this had the most purely felt moment of the three books and the highest frequency of laughs.

Anyway. I recommend leaving them around the house. They will attract kids and give them some vocabulary that Primary sometimes just misses.

Plus, they're just fun for everyone.

an afternoon
 

081) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, finished July 18

I'm on the hunt for a very specific work of Afrofuturism; I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for, but this isn't it. This novella has some interesting ideas and a scene near the end that really sings, but ultimately it's the perfect example for those who say being neither a short story nor a novel is an error.

The story's main ideas and set pieces are woefully underdeveloped, making it a bad novel. And it's symbolic conceits are stretched thin, making it a bad short story. Okorafor went on to write more stories, making a novel-length trilogy (three novellas and a short story), and maybe things come together at that length, but I think if I read her again, I'll aim at one of her true novels. She has a strong command of sentences and paragraphs, and her reputation is too broad and deep for me to think my complaints would hold across her oeuvre.

maybe four days
 

082) Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary, finished July 19

Beverly Cleary is a great writer. These books are pleasant for me to read, fun for my 6yrold, and the family is growing and changing and dealing with realistic problems book by book, all filtered realistically through the point of view of a growing child.

Really, what's not to love?

a small number of weeks


083) Just One More by Annette Lyon, finished July 20

JULIET

Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this,
Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it:
If, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I'll help it presently....
Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring...

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hold, daughter: I do spy a kind of hope,
Which craves as desperate an execution.
As that is desperate which we would prevent.
If, rather than to marry County Paris,
Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That copest with death himself to scape from it:
And, if thou darest, I'll give thee remedy.

JULIET

O, bid me leap...
From off the battlements of yonder tower;
...or bid me lurk
Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;
Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live [a mother] to my sweet love.

= = = = =

I adapted the above ever so slightly to make a point about my biggest issue with this novel. And as it regards the The Big Twist, continue reading my review at your own risk.

I appreciate the artistic chutzpah of getting one of your heroes to commit suicide as a way to accomplish some great good, but I can think of a dozen things she could have done instead. Crash her car, for instance.

The novel has alternating chapters, which switch between the two pov characters and time (the victim's are before her murder; the friend's after). It's a solid enough structure although sometimes it feels the structure forced the plot into unnatural behaviors. But one thing the structure does is place readers into circumstances where the novel feels obliged to tell us stuff rather than let us see it. The most egregious is our victim's personality. I get she's an abused woman and that's sapped a lot of her personal valor, but that she ever had any is largely asserted without evidence. And that she gets her mojo back in order to strategically suicide herself ain't exactly convincing.

Sigh.

I didn't want to get all negative in this review. I really wanted to like it. Annette's been waiting to dive into suspense her entire career and I think this book will meet its audience's needs, but I just really wanted it to be something other than what it was.

a couple weeks or so


084) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl, finished July 22

"The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" is the Dahl tale I've been counting my favorite for over thirty years. I haven't read it since I was a teenager, but it's wonder and power have stuck with me. The idea of seeing without my eyes is now a baseline daily fantasy and Henry's journey from rich cad to selfless hero just by following a path of intense study has become a core archetype in my understanding of human possibility.

So I was delighted when one of my favorite filmmakers announced he would be making it into a film starring an admired actor. Of course, this also meant it was finally time to reread at least the story and perhaps its entire collection.

I've actually been meaning to do this for years, but my copy which I've had since my tween years has refused to uncover itself. I'm convinced I still have it, but the occasional Saturday looking through boxes has never revealed it. And, now that there was a deadline, I had to compromise my standards and, gulp, read some other copy.

My own county library doesn't have a copy, so I interlibraried it. It has the wrong cover etc etc, but hey—that's how it goes, I guess.

Anyway, I started at the beginning and read through. The only other story I was certain was in the book was "The Hitchhiker," which I also remembered fondly and think of whenever I interact with police. But the other stories also came back quickly as we read. The strange modern fairy tale of "The Boy Who Talked with Animals" certainly hits different now. And "The Swan," one of the most horrifying stories I encountered as a child, is still horrifying but in different ways. And the ending makes more sense than it did before.

The book also includes a spattering of nonfiction—perhaps all Dahl's nonfiction until the release of Boy, which I received as a present circa age thirteen. And which has also stuck with me, though I considered it then the least of Dahl's writings. In "Lucky Break" (in this volume) he admits as much, that he is not a writer of nonfiction. He does so in the remarkable recounting of how he became a writer. There are very few universes in which it happened. And so how lucky are we? He also includes that first bit of writing in which he recounts being shot down in WWII. At the time, the first part of the story was great and the hallucinogenic last-half was absurd. From my position here in my 40s, it too makes much more sense. Though the entire marketing of this book as "for kids" seems . . . peculiar. I imagine his kids books sold better than his adult collection and while you can't sell "Switch Bitch" to kids, you can sell "The Swan" and "A Piece of Cake"—even if it'll never do Willy Wonka numbers.

And "Henry Sugar"? It takes up 72 of the book 225 pages. I still see the magic of the story and I enjoyed reading it though it didn't quite sweep me away. In part because I was reading as a writer and picking some holes in its worldbuilding and narrative choices, and because I was trying to adapt it to film as I read, curious about the choices Wes Anderson is making.

Although the story doesn't work as well for me all these decades later, I'm glad it did then. I'm grateful I reread and reread it.

I know we're reevaluating Dahl the man now and there are hints of his failings even here, but also there is evidence that complicated people can bring beauty and goodness into the world. Let us give ourselves permission to do so.

a small number of weeks


085) Somewhere Out There: My Animated Life by Don Bluth, finished July 22

I heard of this book through editing an essay by Randy Astle. My library didn't have it and so I requested they get a copy; they got four. One of which I have now read.

And I must say: What an intensely charming book! He is a delightful companion through his life. He's so wonderful to hang with and be regaled by that little details slide by unnoticed. After stories about teenage crushes, we have no idea he has a son until the acknowledgments. Where did he come from? And while he doesn't seem to have axes left to grind, some Hollywood folks (Spielberg, for instance) don't exactly come off shingingly.

Through it all, his passion for hand-drawn animation rules the day. You also get a good sense as to why some of the movies failed commercially and critically. But in the end, I want to go back and watch the ones I haven't seen. Which, if you include those I haven't seen as an adult, is all of them.

Between Astle's analysis and Bluth's love, they all seem worthy of attention.

A sidenote in keeping with my latest complaints about editing. There are some funky errors in this book. Not a lot. But more than you would expect. And I suspect BenBella (whom I've called out before) has processes that are to blame. I mean—at one point, an entire line of text was absent. I suspect it was underneath the whitespace surrounding an illustration, but I'll never know for sure! That sorta thing just shouldn't happen.

coupla weeks
 

 

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Previously . . . . :

Preorder now!

 

.

On Amazon already, but no doubt it’ll also be on Bookshop soon.

Hey hey hey! It's ADG7!

 

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Today is Lady Steed’s and my anniversary. Because of family reasons, a getaway weekend wasn’t possible, but we weren’t locked into the house at night even though we had no specific plans. So on a whim I checked Freight & Salvage’s website—perhaps because we’re planning on going there Monday for Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs—and holy smokes but what is this?

Well, I was instantly converted but I didn’t see how I could drag my beloved to a Korean show on our anniversary, but I put on the Tiny Desk Concert all the same:

 

This, I need not tell you if you just spent the last seventeen minutes watching it, is amazing. And Lady Steed didn’t hate it, so off we went.

And it was even better live.

What you see in the video was the first chunk of the show, then there was an instrumental bit, then the singers came back in 80sish attire to close it out. Just as campy as the opening in traditional clothes and the lead singer in drag and yet totally different.

The whole show was awesome both generally (everyone had fun at Freight & Salvage tonight) but also specifically to me. I love Korean folk music (if you have never been on a Korean college campus and run into thirty percussionists doing laps in a concert hall you haven’t lived; sorry, but it’s true) and basically what ADG7 does (buy their albums) is do to Korean music what we saw done with Western folk music in the 90s, from Loreena McKennit to Dead Can Dance. I honestly cannot imagine what could be better than that. This is a combination I have consciously asked the universe for many times and now it is here.

They said this was their first concert in the U.S. this tour, but, best I can tell, after tomorrow in Grass Valley, their next date is twelve days from now in Germany. Don’t know if that’s accurate, but check your local cool venue and look for ADG7 (악단광칠). Believe me: you will have an excellent time.

Also, if you’re in to that sort of thing, members of the band came out and chatted with people afterward.

Phorbe on Titan(s)

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I was at a bowling alley last week and not bowling because I had come to write—but I had forgotten the first half and outline of the story I was working on. I borrowed a pen from the front-desk guy and "borrowed" a bunch of summer-league applications and sat at the (unopened) bar and wrote two paragraphs before I realized I was going to botch the whole thing. So instead I wrote a bunch of poems over the two or three hours I was there.

This is one. When I wrote it, I knew we'd know if the sub people were rescued or not before it could possibly be published. (We now know they were already unrescuable.)

Thus, in a way, this phorbe was born in the past. And it only becomes more unpublishable as time goes on so I'm posting it here.

At least we haven't placed a man on that moon yet.

Here it is, in its never-to-be-fully-rewritten glory:

 

Phorbe on Titan(s)

 

We don’t yet know
don’t have any idea,
yet, really, what there is to
know about Titan.

Titan the moon with
the inscrutable surface, the
moon with the unknown oceans,
with the chance of life, and

Titan the sub with
the fiberglass hull, the
sub you can only be let out from
with tools only outsiders can bear.

Both Titans may be
Titans holding life,
may reveal great wonders,stories to
be told for ages hence.

Wet, cold depths are
cold, for starters, and
depths are natively mysterious,
are hidden—and hide.

The Titanic itself took
titanic amounts of time and money to find;
itself it buried, which burial
took only hours.

Hours are what they
are allotted in breath, assuming
what happened wasn’t a sudden fiberglass failure—
they happen, you know. Catastrophically.

Makes you wonder if
you, I , we should just stay off Titan’s
wonders, whatever they might be.
If life lives, let it live.

But we must know,
we must get to the ocean’s floor,
must see if skeletons remain,
know whether the hull is solid, twain, shattered.

Oh, Titan! Titan! Titan!
Titan lost,
Titan sought,
Titanic turned to money-making myth.

We want to know.
Want
to
know.

We want to know,
want to remove enough mystery
to make the bardo plain and thus
know our own unknowable passage—now.

Juneriffic Filmorama!

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Lots of great movies this month! One so good we watched it twice.

Also note the return of the in-class movies with the assigned readings. In case you want to get extra smart. And all for you getting extra smart. Click away.

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ELSEWHERE
link+ dvd

Heathers (1988) 1, 2

Do you think, were this not a beloved classic, this movie would today be simply inaccessible?

Anyway, it is beloved and it played well with students. I was worried but it was a hit. And, as that class's last movie of the year, they were reading it well. They noticed a bunch of stuff re color, for instance, without any prompting from me. It's cool how, in just three weeks, they get so much better at this.

Anyway, the ones who aren't already living post-graduation, that is.

ELSEWHERE
library dvd

American Graffiti (1973) 1, 2

I don't know how this one has never appeared on one of these lists before. What better movie to show a bunch of seniors a week from graduation?

And the kids did like it and had good things to say, but that #2 reading up there really gave us the vocabulary to explain what we were thinking.

I'm blown away that Candy Clark got an Oscar nomination. Not because she didn't deserve it, but it's just hard to imagine that sort of performance getting that sort of recognition today. Brava.

ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

Let There Be Light (1946)

A note on the date:

Usually I go with whatever date IMDb chooses, and 1980 makes sense according to their criteria, but to me it's wrong wrong wrong. I figure we either go with 1946, the original date, or 2012, when John Huston's original version was finally released to the public. The 1980 version was heavily edited and doesn't seem to me proper to count.

This film documents WWII soldiers returning from service with severe mental issues and the treatments they undergo. I suppose in 1946 we didn't want to admit the good war broke men and in 1980 we still wanted hide their identities, but in 2023, these men (and those who treat these men) feel heroic.

The methods come off as modern and successful and the whole thing is thought-provoking and impressive. I found the thing inspiring and I reckon it could have done a lot of good if released back in the Forties.

But nobody ever asks me these things.

(poster image from hoopla)

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)

Believe it or not, this is the first time I've seen Basil Rathbone play Sherlock Holmes. (I don't count this.) And wow but was I wrong about a lot of things. Most signficantly, I thought his were the original stories ala Jeremy Brett (who will always be my Holmes), but no; this was more like the Benedict Cumberbatch Holmes: contemporary stories featuring our favorite characters.

The film came out in 1942 and this story is midwar. It's based on a classic tale (vaguely), but the classic tale didn't have the macguffin of a gamechanging bombsite, obviously something that speaks much more dearly to a British midblitz.

This 68-minute piece is . . . not great. There's not a lot for Rathbone to chew on and while I can accept a bumbling Lestrade, a Watson this dumb is not for me. The performance is great, I just don't like the choice. But the film is filled with dumb choices (imo). I mean, they took half the film to tell me Dr Tobel was Swiss. His accent cycled through so many iterations that I had given up guessing.

I did like (spoiler alert) the demise of Moriarty. I suppose he came back in later films (yup), but this variation on the waterfall was wonnnnderful. And I kinda like that, since it's 1942, it happened offscreen.

Anyway, not a new favorite or anything, but I'm up for more. Maybe with the other three that are in the public domain. They're easy enough to find.

THEATER
Century 16 Hilltop

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

A worthy successor to a marvelous original both visually and kinetically. It has some emotional high points, but the payoffs are waiting for the next film. Let's hope they nail it.

I will say that the time with all the spiders was solid, but the exposition and chase scene went on too long.

The introduced a new villain and developed him in a variety of ways that makes him live . . . and makes him terrifying.

I wasn't sure how it was going to end unfinished but then in the last few minutes it started cranking things like crazy. I'm stoked for March.

But it's hard to say a lot about the film as it really is only half a movie. So we'll wait and see. But my expectations are high.

ELSEWHERE
link+ dvd

Victor/Victoria (1982)

Ten years on, this PG version of Cabaret appears. Which is a bit unfair, but they're both American films about early-20th-century Europe paying with sex and sexuality shunting all the musicality to stage shows. Clearly, the suits were thinking it.

As it began, I thought the film was going to take the easy way out of the boy/girl//straight/gay set-up, and eventually it did, but en route it complicated things much more than the expectations it birthed in act one.

The cast is great, the runtime is too long, the gags are mostly good and with one exception justified, the Mancini music was okay, the writing was best when it dived into uncertainty and weakest when it tumbled into comedic cliche, and the thing as a whole was fine. I wanted to like it more but I liked it fine. I estimate it holds up but I'm curious what the youths would say.

ELSEWHERE
Internet Archive

Nightmare Castle (1965)

I did not respect this movie. I watched it 4x speed without sound while I was in a Zoom meeting. I genuinely do not know if it's in Italian or English. I will say that it was paced at such that 4x felt like 2x if that makes me any less villanous.

I don't know the scientific/supernatural gobbledygook that explains what's happening, but I could follow the story, no problem. We got some murder and a nice variety of evils and plenty of translucent nightgowns.

What else can you ask for from 1:44 (15 minutes longer than the American cut!) of proto-giallo?

HOME
library dvd

The Cameraman (1928)

So after his own studio went kaput and he was purchased by MGM who intended to domesticate him, he and a crew went to New York where, as luck would have it, the studio heads were not. And so they were able to make something almost as loose as the peak Buster that preceded The Cameraman. The changing-room scene was improvised with a guy who was not on set as an actor and the studio used it for decades to teach comedy writing. They watched it so often that that scene was worn out and, for a time, presumed lost.

So a studio that deeply distrusted improv showed an improv scene to teach writers how to write natural-feeling comedy.

Anyway, it has one of his most famous shots and a lot of fun set pieces. His costar is delightful and never have I so wished for my own capuchin.

Buster is getting close to aging out of his lovestruck idiot, however. I can't help but wonder if this fact is part of why MGM pushed him into other roles. And sure, every MGM movie he was in broke money, but imagine what he would have evolved into if allowed to do so on his own terms!

Sigh.

I know Buster wasn't bitter. But sometimes I'm bitter on his behalf.

(Everything I read about MGM [1, 2, 2] makes me think that no one who had an office possessed any sense of irony. And that the death of Thalberg was the death of any good sense in the suite.)

HOME
library dvd

Confess, Fletch (2022)

It's a good enough movie but the gears never quite meshed. They didn't grind but the machine didn't run as smoothly as it could have. The funny bits could've been a bit funnier, the twists a bit twistier. And the ending a bit more moral.

In other words, it's a good movie. Just, somehow, it didn't have enough to be great.

I'm all for them making more, though. They could still pull it off.

HOME
library dvd

your name. (2016)

First viewing, this movie blew me away. This time, not so much. I still think it works and I still admire how complex the storytelling is and excepting the disappearing phone messages, I feel it successfully changes the rules without breaking the rules. I like that kind of ambition.

But the way it is full of drama and sentimentality means, I think, that sometimes it'll work for me and sometimes it won't. Watching it, I was reminded of Mirai, and as I just went back and read what I wrote about it. I suspect, on second viewing, I'd be less impressed with it as well. What I think is happening is that watch one blows me away. Watch two is mostly me remembering the movie as I watch it, almost watching myself watching it, giving myself a secondhand experience. But future watches will be free of the tyranny of first impressions.

Or, in other words, I think viewings three through x I will settle into the film and just appreciate the art and the craft and the success.

Anyway, that's me. Not your name.

HOME
library dvd

The Menu (2022)

So I loved this. It gave me everything I was hoping to get and more. I can't say exactly what the mores were without spilling extratrailorial spoilers, so I think I shan't, but let me say the cast provided such excellent details (special shoutouts to Hoult and Fiennes and Brucato, but please don't think that by singling them out I mean to slight anyone else—this is a cast that expanded every moment to its fullest expression), and that the plot found wriggle room that gave me things I'd hoped for but could not think possible.

Anyway, very sharp script, generous direction, wise editing.

It's everything I want from a horror-comedy-thriller-satire.

Plus, I'm not sure we'll ever get tired at looking at Anya Taylor-Joy impossible skull and all the fae magic it's wrapped in. Surely she cannot look like that when seen in normal human surroundings, like, say, a sidewalk. Surely not.

HOME
our dvd

The Mexican (2001)

We've owned this dvd so long that, in the case, is stashed our original tickets, when we saw Ocean's 11 in theaters, December 2001, as we visited my brother in Vegas. It was either that or Amélie and, although Amélie is a great movie, it's impossible to argue we chose incorrectly.

But the funny thing is we've never watched this dvd. We saw the movie once before we bought it, but never after. Even though we still remember the movie fondly and can't see an El Camino without saying its name ala Brad Pitt, we'd just never returned to it.

And now we have and we're happy to announce it's just as good now as it was then.

The cast is even better, in a way. I don't think I had opinions about Bob Balaban or JK Simmons at the time. And it was a good year for Brad and Julie (they also being in Ocean's 11) and the mysterious figure you don't meet till the end who, in 2001, also played Royal Tenenbaum.

And the director's atop his game also. After this, he released The Ring the year after and the first Pirates of the Caribbean the year after that, which made him someone I always pay attention to (even though I despised the second Pirates movie).

Anyway, Brad Pitt plays a low-level (and inadvertant) hood for whom everything always goes wrong. Julia Roberts plays his impatient girlfriend. James Gandolfini plays a truly dangerous hood hired to bring them in. Both the Mexican and California deserts sing with life and real people and excellent touches like the dog who just loves his football. The set design is excellent, the sepia-toned flashbacks move, the music is excellent and in such good conversation with the edit. Little details like traffic lights and hubcaps find ways to return in ways that matter.

It's smart, swift, and funny. And surprisingly moving. And will teach you to never never never shoot your gun in the air. No matter how fun the party is.

That's definitely the lesson I've held onto all these years.

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library dvd

Spite Marriage (1929)

Buster's final silent feature! You can tell he's had some control stripped away, but the film has major and distinct setpieces. Dorothy Sebastian is a game comedienne and while the film is low on boffo, it has plenty of lesser fun to go around.

Buster's character (his first Elmer) is in love with a star of the stage. When her costar/boyfriend marries a socialite, she, thinking Buster wealthy, marries him out of spite. Things don't go well. She gets plastered (leading to this famous scene) and eventually Buster's forced to abandon town so she can sue him for divorce. But on his way out of the hotel, he ends up falling in with criminals and an ocean only to find himself alone on a yacht with—

You know what? Never mind. The plot is surprisingly fun. Maybe you should just watch it.

The one historical bummer is that you get a strong (and era-accurate) dose of just how popular Lost Cause-themed entertainment was. Gross.

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library dvd

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

We laughed more at this movie than most movies, but it's also shocking and deeply sad. It bathes in ambiguity. It feels so tired and lived-in and real.

We've never seen any of Martin McDonagh's features but we have seen "Six Shooter" and it too features deep Irish brogues, startling violence, rural areas, strange relationships, and Brendon Gleeson, so I don't feel like a newbie. And this was great so I'm wanting to go back and see his others. Starting with In Bruges, which seems to be most people's favorite.

My petty complaint is centered in skepticism that this usage of nice and the phraise two to tango would have made it to an itty rural Irish island by the early 1920s. But I didn't let it ruin anything for me. And who knows. Maybe I'm wrong. (I probably am but I'm definitely not.)

Anyway. The Irish. Am I right?

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Disney+

Fire of Love (2022)

So I knew enough about this movie to expect it to be well made, interesting, and cool, but dang. This movie is intensely cool. All the period footage cut together---

The opening has no words, just people in an impossible landscape. And much of the film slides back into that space. Looking is enough.

Hearing the vulcanologist lovers in their own words with minimal intrusions from the narrator (a gruff Miranda July) brings them to life. Images from their own team fill the runtime, intersperced with classy and simple yet idiosyncratic animations explain all we need to know.

We were also blown away but just how much fun all this stuff is to look at. It's like a Wes Anderson movie only the earth is exploding and melting and running away.

Anyway, wildly entertaining, absolutely beautiful, quietly moving.

THEATER
Hitching Post

Elemental (2023)

So I don't care what the box office says, I loved this movie. I think it's the best Pixar film for a while. Granting that I haven't seen Lightyear and that I think Soul deserves a deeper consideration, it's the best since at least Toy Story 4. The dumb trailer and low BO had me worried, but wow.

The worldbuilding had some gaps (I don't believe anyone at Pixar really knows how that sport works), but the character dynamics on both a personal and societal were excellent. And given how many corners this movie looks into, I'm shocked I haven't heard a bunch of shallow anti-woke backlash. But that's something to be happy about, I suppose. Anyway, I wept through the end and the little bit o' plot that happened that could easily have felt like cheating they totally nailed.

It's not a flawless film; another round or two of notes could have fixed a couple minor flaws; but I loved it. Top-tier Pixar, just not tippity-top tier.

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Movies in the Park

The Indian in the Cupboard (1995)

Wildly, one of my sons had just watched a video talking about how well the effects in this movie have held up and now here we are in a park watching it. And you know what? Yes. And not just the effects. This is a good movie.

And I'm kinda glad there are no sequels. Although I liked the other books as a kid, there's a certain integrity to ending the story at this point. Yes, this is slimmer than the novel, it's a single coherent whole. Well done, team.

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our dvd

Blades of Glory (2006)

This movie appeared just as we were moving across the state and maybe we would've tried harder to see the new Jon Heder if Benchwarmers hadn't been so so terrible and just a misunderstanding of what he brought to Napoleon Dynamite. Besides, in 2006, we didn't ahve a lot of evidence that Will Ferrell made better movies than David Spade / Rob Schneider. Ugh.

As for Will Ferrell's career, he is huge at this point and his in the middle of his unofficial series of sports-movies (this one falls between Talladega Nights and Semi-Pro) and Blades of Glory too is a hit.

I know because I just looked it up. I'd assumed it wasn't because it was kinda the end of Jon Heder's blockbuster career. So . . . why?

I don't know, but here's a theory. When I met him and his brother in 2009, I was immediately afterward told several stories about how they went around to various entertainment companies and used his fame to basically demand gifts. He was just going around looking for free stuff all the time, allegedly. So maybe it wasn't that he lacked box-office value or skill (he was great in Blades but that he was just kind of a hassle. I wonder.

Anyway, it's a shame.

Blades of Glory is a dumb movie but it's very funny and not too grossouty and it has the ultimate 2006 cast (also features Amy Poehler, Will Arnett, Jenna Fischer, and, off his Incredibles triumph, Craig T. Nelson). The effects have aged well and it's not chockfull of homophobia (as I'd feared). In short, it's the very best kind of dumb comedy. And maybe the only figure-skating movie I've seen? (Even though it was among my high-school bestfriend's favorite movies, I still haven't seen The Cutting Edge.)

THEATER
Century 16 Hilltop

Asteroid City (2023)

So my most-anticapted movie of 2023 absolutely was worthy of my high expectations. I laughed pretty much through the whole thing, although that didn't stop me from from being moved at certain points.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they almost moved me. But I can see the future well enough to see how they will become more moving with each viewing.

Thematically, I think I would place it nearest French Dispatch, although it covers much of its ground with more constraint.

One thing I admire about Wes Anderson is how be creates worlds that manage to be equally unreal and utterly real and how transgressing the boundaries between the two creates much of the effect. We need more of that in film. In this emotional space.

And did I mention I laughed all the way through? There were only seven people in the theater so Lady Steed kept elbowing me to hush but it was too funny.

Which somehow did not get in the way of its sadness and tragedy.

Plus, my favorite little girls since O Brother.

Win win win win win win win.

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Disney+

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

If my memory is correct, the only time I've seen this one was on VHS, 1990. So it's been a long time. In my memory, it's my favorite Indy movie. And yeah, it totally holds up. And so many of my favorite Indy moments come from this film. Talking about it now, we suspect it's excellence (it's superiority?) comes from his relationship with his father. It's the best drawn, deepest, and most meaningful relationship in any of the movies. You believe it in a way you don't with any of the women. Even Short Round is hollow once you realize he doesn't come back in any movie. The way Harrison Ford says "Dad" makes this relationship by far the most grounded and real of any.

Plus you get the best haha lines (I hate those guys, no ticket, he chose poorly) and some of the most striking visuals (that bridge!). Maybe, objectively, Raiders might be better. But mayne not.

THEATER
Century 16 Hilltop

The Flash (2023)

The movie starts big and daring, throwing thirty cg babies out the window. But—is that a good thing?

And lets talk about those cg babies. They are so distressingly fake. And then, in the final shot, they switch to a real baby! Why?? When you've already disrespected those STAY OUT signs posted around Uncanny Valley, whey suddenly remind us you've been trespassing.

Ben Affleck's Batman and Supergirl never look real. Hardly in any shot in the film. They look like videogame characters. And then it occurred to me: maybe that's the goal? Maybe this isn't another story of vfx houses being abused by the studio (though surely that's still true) but this is feature, not bug. Perhaps their intended audience is people who consider gaming the superior artform (or at least their primary artform) and so movie standards don't apply. If you're aiming for awesome, you need to look like a videogame.

Maybe. I dunno. But it would explain a lot about how the film looks.

In the end, I mostly enjoyed the movie. It had many moments that sung. But they rarely sang together. Just individual bits that got on different trains.

The big emotional and plot climaxes made story sense but didn't really do much for me. In part because I'm not sure I believed their logic. And in part because as much as I came to like some of the characters, their arcs didn't always follow. They went where the story told them to—not ncecessarily where they, as individuals, wanted to go.

So it made for a fun night out with my son, but I'm hesitant to recommend it.

Besides, who is some of that fan service for? People talking incessently about the DCU on Twitter don't watch George Reeves. Or Christopher Reeve, for that matter. And the Nick Cage movie was never even made. Who is that stuff for??? At least when Spider-Verse played those games they didn't pause for applause. It just happened and if you were quick and in the know, maybe you caught it. Wooo.

Flash is one of my favorite characters. But I still haven't seen the Flash movie that I want to see. And, at this point, I don't know if I would recognize it if I did.

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library dvd

Winchester '73 (1950)

I've heard of it of course, but it was reading this Criterion essay that made me move it up the to-watch list. I just went back and reread it and I largely agree with its argument. But it's interesting—after finishing the movie I hit the special feature INTERVIEW WITH JAMES STEWART and the movie started again. That's right. Jimmy Steward did a dvd commentary! I accidentally crashed it about fifteen minutes in but among the things I learned is that Mr Stewart's opinion is that he's not really playing a different character. That's it's vulnerability that engines his characters through their stories. And you know what? I think both are true. This is a man who has lost himself in the drive for violence. And this is a man who retains his vulnerability.

The structure of the film is great. Starting with the title, it's the story of a terrific gun that through violence and bad luck passes from man to man to man. But it's also the story of Stewart's quest for revenge. But there are side stories about an engaged couple and the last hurrah of native warriors, with hints about things like evolving race relations, and plenty of things that are barely commented upon like the abuse those poor horses suffer or the way law enforcement just decides to burn down a woman's house in order to kill a badguy. This isn't some great heroic past. And when James Stewart gets a hair more violent than he needs to, unable to stop himself, as he twists some villain's arm behind the back. Why? So he can kill another villian. It's villains all the way down.

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Disney+

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Ends up the other kids didn't watch it with the grandparents so we got to watch it again. And why the heck not? It's great.

It's a fabulous representative of Spielberg's art. The nonshowy but dynamic use of camera (dolly especially, but zoom and more) and some killer, effective (and nonshowy) oners.

Plus, this movie's how we know Indy's a Jack Mormon. That has to count for something.

Some other thoughts to end the month:

1. A lot of ink has been spent talking about how John McClane looked like a real person (as opposed to a musclebound Hercules-shaped human monster) and could actually get hurt and thus changed American action movies. But let's not forget that Indiana Jones managed both those things for years before Die Hard hit theaters.

2. Is there a name for the sort of irony we see here where part of the audience's pleasure is seeing Sean Connery, perhaps the great action hero of his generation, play a dweeb?

3. In such simple lines, this film draws a great and true picture of a father/son relationship.

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