David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence has exactly one idea: The Man With A Dark Past. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a cafe owner in a small town, and in a robbery ends up revealing a stunning capacity for violence. This is followed up by criminals who recognise Tom as ‘Joey’ and track him down, causing a spiral of violence – not just from the criminals, but from Tom’s family. The Man With A Dark Past is a classic genre element; examples range from Rick Blaine to Don Draper, and it’s something of a cliche in goofier genre works; think of the vampire Bill being haunted by his past in True Blood, and this being part of his sex appeal.
The interesting thing about A History of Violence is how it’s entirely about this concept. Western public education tends to emphasise the ‘central theme’ of a work; everyone who ever attended a public school in America, Australia, or England can attest to being made to read a classic work and articulate what it’s about. This isn’t the most helpful approach to criticism; it treats all works as propaganda, and even ones that are propaganda tend to have a denser collation of ideas, if only to support the work’s length. My own idiosyncratic approach tends to be more about articulating the processes and morality of characters and the author.
A History of Violence is different, though. This movie is entirely, completely about a single idea, with every scene being an expression of it. The sex scene between Tom and Edie is infamous for being one of the few mainstream representations of a 69 sexual position, but it’s also specifically setting up that they have a tender, intimate relationship built on mutual love, attraction, and trust. It makes it all the more horrifying when she later discovers he’s capable of some monstrous things; we wouldn’t care about their relationship tearing apart if there wasn’t a relationship to tear apart.
Obviously, that’s some basic story structure – I think of Back To The Future laying groundwork for the climax with some simple moves. But the individual details are so vivid and simple, and they tie up neatly into a more complex thematic statement. I think especially of Tom’s son Jack getting into a fight at school, and there’s no argument Tom can make that what he did was wrong – even if he was right, he’d look like a massive hypocrite.
A way of looking at it is that a Man with a Dark Past must, necessarily, have a Bright Present. It’s an artistically necessary contrast; a Man with a Dark Past and a Dark Present is boring and obvious. What’s a pleasant life for an American Midwestern Man to have? A wife, two kids, and a small business. How would these elements react to an American Midwestern Man having been a sadistic murderer? And to his sadistic murderer past surfacing again?
There are two kinds of stories I like. The first are ones dense with ideas – a potpourri of millions of ideas colliding (Tarantino movies are a useful example). The second are things like this, which take one idea and pull every possible concept out of it. Breaking Bad had “Mr Chips turns into Scarface”, and A History of Violence has the Man With A Dark Past. Cronenberg and screenwriter John Olson use a dramatic structure to wring out every aspect of the idea; Tom is forced to kill a man to protect his business, which draws the attention of his old colleagues (who he’s forced to kill), causes ripples in his personal life, and draws the attention of the baddest motherfuckers. Consequence has a way of pulling maximum depth out of an idea – characters do things and are forced to justify them, and sometimes find they can’t.
In life, one must often pick between scope and intensity. Tarantino chose scope, Cronenberg chose intensity. I often hate when people justify the use of cliche on the basis that it can provide the groundwork for originality – that’s something usually said by people who want to sound like someone you should take advice from. The fact is that most cliches are used by people who just want to push the story forward with as little work as possible. Not everyone takes a cliche as something True, and will follow that Truth down whichever terrifying corridor it goes.
“Hey, when you dream, are you still Joey?”
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
The Narrow Margin – LA cop has to get the widow of a Chicago mobster to the coast via train to testify before a grand jury. But things are not entirely what they seem. This noir B-movie directed for the most part by Richard Fleisher is 71 minutes and I don’t think i am exaggerated much in saying more happens here than a lot of more recet movies twice this length. The cast of relative unknowns is excellent top to bottom, and you can feel every sway and buck of the ride even though almost none of it was filmed on a train.
Kojak, “The Best Judge Money Can Buy” – A judge seems to have killed himself, but of Kojak is not sure of that, and needs to convince both his boss and the father of the victim, also a judge. A well assembled procedural buoyed by the always reliable John Randolph as the father. Guests also include Abe Vigoda as a mobster (naturally) and John Aniston, soap opera legend, father of Jennifer, and best friend of Telly Savalas (Telly is Jennifer’s godfather).
The Return of Sherlock Holmes, “The Musgrave Ritual” – A trip by a cold-ridden and utterly bored Holmes to the ancient home of a college classmate leads to mystery, murder, and a heretofore unsolved scavenger hunt. The story is a bit silly – the hunt unearthed a lost crown of Charles I – but the execution is solid, under the direction of David Carson before he left for America and success (and failure) on the Star Trek franchise and other TV shows. The cast includes a brief appearance by Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan on Doctor Who), his last job before his death; and Michael Culver, who played the ill fated Captain Needa in The Empire Strikes Back.
Frasier, “Miracle on Third or Fourth Street”/”Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast” – In the former, Frasier’s Christmas plans go asunder and he decides to take a shift on the radio, and ends up learning, if not the true meaning of Christmas, at least a bit of humility. Just the right amount of sentiment, but the situation Frasier ends up requires he dress down in a ripped sweatshirt and jeans. Which feels wrong for Frasier no matter how many years he hung out at Cheers. In the latter, Martin gets lucky (an expression Frasier tells Niles no one uses anymore but I will stick with it), and naturally Frasier has no idea how to handle his dad having a sex life. The writers handle it pretty well. Notable guest voice in the latter is Henry Mancini, not long before Frasier uses Moon River to beg forgiveness from Martin’s romantic interest.
The Narrow Margin is one of my favorite train movies. For fans of The Killing, it’s obviosly the movie where Kubrick got the idea of casting Marie Windsor for the femme fatale. That woman’s urine could cut diamonds.
Live music — jazz drummer Dafnis Prieto and his Sí o Sí Quartet (bass, piano, woodwinds), at times I think they worked best as a trio — puzzle pieces fitting in strange but remarkable ways, particularly in the opening piece. The sax player had a fairly generic tone early on but opened up, on “Naive” in particular he used streaks and smears in a beautiful impressionist piece. But the music was generally more up-tempo and Prieto is a damn beast of a drummer, Cuban-born and a polyrhythmic whirlwind with swing and discernment, one of the best parts of the show was him clearly deciding not to make a hit. He had a long solo to open “Conga Ingenua,” a piece reminiscing about the festivals of his youth, and the whole band went off on the main song itself, there was a nice encore following it but this was the highlight. Great stuff, although the Berklee venue had ass seats, tiny stiff bullshit that was not comfortable to sit in.
And then on Saturday was Andrea Gillis and Gene Dante And The Future Starlets in a basement venue, much more my level of comfort. Dante plays fun glam-rock and has a strong stage presence but I was there for Gillis, who got her old band back together to play an album they released 15 years ago, the release party was at this very venue and I was there, fuck I’m getting old. Gillis still plays regularly and is great but the old band is just a total joy, folks who clearly love each other and were having an absolute blast blasting out these tunes, the bassist in particular has always been a spark of energy and she hasn’t lost anything over the years. Tons of fun and then they played “Hand on the Plow,” a cover of a Mahalia Jackson song that has always been a highlight and they found a new level as the song progressed — Gillis biting off and then shouting the lyrics and the band realizing in real time that the sound they were making was bigger than usual, putting the fun in the back seat for the moment of filling the room with determined rage. An incredible performance, I felt lucky to be there.
Bills vs. Chiefs — maybe don’t keep running into the fucking line when it isn’t working you dopes. I hate the Chiefs and all their works.
On the other hand, the Chiefs frequently play close to my house, and you can’t say anything greater about a team than that.
Wooooo live music!!
Dave watching any Chiefs game:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFUC2CNsF3M/?igsh=azlhenl5djl3czdv
Live Music – some garage-punk kinda stuff on Friday night, the headline band (Hyperdog, from Austria) were a little one-note for me but had a good energy. The other band, Fruit Tones, were a lot better – very retro but with good riffs and hooks. Local multi-venue festival on Sunday. I bought a ticket before the lineup was announced and when they did reveal it I wasn’t massively bothered about seeing anyone. Especially since when the day rolled around it was stormy and I was hungover. But I went anyway and saw a few good things, hadn’t seen local semi-breakout act Do Nothing before and they were good, as were Blood Wizard who (unfortunately?) don’t really sound like their name.
Justified – getting towards the end of season 3 and Quarles is coming off the rails in terrifying fashion.
Simpsons – ran into a couple of season 7 episodes on TV, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield” and “Bart the Fink”. Both pretty great.
Woooo live music! BOOO non-bloody Blood Wizard, that is a damn good band name and it is a crime to misuse it.
Yeah, McDonough really sinks his teeth into the opioid-addicted, more desperate than ever version of Quarles in the last episodes.
Woooo live music!!
Star Trek: Section 31 — It’s fine. Some of it is worse than fine. (Literally every choice made by Sven Ruygrok as Fuzz is wrong. I don’t know if it was his fault or Osunsanmi’s but the rest of the cast is fine or better. Literally every second Ruygrok is on screen the movie is actively getting worse.)
It really has no connection to Star Trek except a couple character backstories. Except of course that if they hadn’t slapped “Star Trek” on the title I’d never have watched it at all. You can see how it was originally designed to be a serialized season, and sometimes the seams are glaring. But on the other hand, I think it becomes fairly entertaining for 90 minutes while it would be a real slog for 10 episodes. The tone is also weird, with the script making the characters Whedon-lite quip machines as they bury a friend or confront the imminent deaths of trillions of people. But then something else happens and a fair amount of of it is pretty cool, so you can move on.
Part of being a Trekkie is forgiving the stinkers. I don’t plan to rewatch this anytime soon, but it’s nowhere near as boring as The Fight or aggravating as The Alternative Factor, and the cast is all pretty good other than Ruygrok (Liao isn’t anything to write home about, but he’s fine. Richardson I liked a lot.) Now, bring on S3 of Strange New Worlds.
Miracle on 34th Street — Revisited for my YOTM piece which will be up soon.
No power on Earth can get me to watch something with Section 31. I hate the idea and have since it was created and wish the producers just ignored it instead of making it more and more deeply canon.
This is actually one of the things that I like the most about this movie. They pretty much chucked the whole idea of section 31 as this Machiavellian power behind the throne that nobody knows about, but which has been ruthlessly directing the history of the Federation for centuries. Instead, it’s just Mission Impossible in space.
I’m no Trek expert and I don’t know enough about Section 31 other than the few episodes of DS9. So with that little knowledge and the visuals I’m seeing for this current show, it seems to be an attempt to give a harder gritty edge to Star Trek. It’s the complaint of Trek moving closer to Star Wars and now MI??? Whatever happened to just being Roddenberry’s Trek? DS9 in general is about as hard as I want my Star Trek, anything more is chocolate in my gagh.
I am perhaps more accepting of Trek going in different directions than many Trekkies. (I discuss it a little in my YOTM on the 2009 movie back at The Solute.) But I don’t think this movie should be seen as an announcement of a new direction. It certainly is *taking* a different direction than we have often seen in Star Trek. But it’s coming from the same office that is producing Strange New Worlds, which is for the most part a faithful replication of earlier Star Trek themes and types of stories in a modern parlance, as well as the recently ended Lower Decks and Prodigy, both of them in their own way a love letter to the history of the franchise. This is just one installment out of 950.
Shadow of the Vampire – Both hilarious and menacing look at filmmaking and method acting in the…vein…of Living In Oblivion. Dafoe and Malkovich are very campy duelling as to who can overact the most. Dafoe has the make-up and mannered acting while Malkovich goes full Malkovich. It’s the most Nic Cage movie where his personality comes through as producer. So there is another meta aspect going on here. Great atmosphere in its horror.
Saw this before I watched the actual Nosferatu and still loved it somehow.
Same!
Dear Zachary – A film I somehow knew nothing about and watched for a film group discussion with Son of Griff. This is a highly rated, among users of Letterboxd, IMDb etc, and I think that’s a result of it going hard for extreme emotions, and a bit of a novelty factor for the time it was made. Because it’s an extremely odd and frequently very off-putting combination of funerary tribute and an episode of Dateline. Even though the conceit of the title would seem to spell it out, I spent much of the time baffled as to who this was for. After several twists that address that exact question, it lands on presenting itself as a tribute to the true heroes of the situation. That’s a fine goal, but this is far too grim to work as the celebration of the living it claims to be. It uses the language of lurid true crime stuff, with frequent shock cuts and a score that would overwhelm even a silent filmmaker. It’s like a sympathy card made out of a crime scene photo. Sometimes a filmmaker inserts themselves by necessity, but when the narration responds to an unbelievable tragedy with “My movie now took on a whole new meaning,” I’m sensing some myopia about the situation. The amount of work the filmmaker went through is detailed as carefully as any person or case in the film. Make an advocacy doc, make a macabre investigation of your friend’s death, make a hagiography of a friend and his family. But the movie can’t serve all these masters. If this were truly the grand act of tribute and kindness it claims to be, I don’t think any of us would ever see it.
I initially had a high opinion of this because it hits like a sledgehammer, and at the time I first watched it, the raw impact of that felt like enough. It’s definitely more memoir than journalism of any sort, and I think the best argument for it is that it captures what it’s like to be on the sidelines of a brutally gobsmacking tragedy. But I’ve never rewatched it because, well, you don’t want to get hit with a sledgehammer that often, and it’s made me think about how ideally, true crime should get at something more than unprocessed horror (which can feel as exploitative, in its way, as something more prurient).
But it’d been so long since I’d seen it that I hadn’t remembered how much of the filmmaker’s POV is in it, and now this is making me–perhaps unfairly–wonder if it’s also ground zero for my least favorite examples of the genre, the “I’m worried it might seem gross to just write about something horrifying that happened, so instead I’ll write a navel-gazing inspection of my own interest in the horrifying thing” subcategory. I guess at least here it happens organically, by virtue of him genuinely being involved with the family, but often there’s the feeling that the creator wants to avoid looking too shamelessly interested in violence, and rather than just accepting that interest and figuring out how to fairly and ethically explore the event as history/journalism, they put an intellectual veneer on it instead, because–*checks notes*–being interested in the circumstances of someone’s murder is bad, but using that person’s murder as a prop in your own story of intellectual and artistic development is self-reflective. Less effective and probably less respectful, but, you know, more sanitary.
/rant
Where the film seems dishonest to the viewer, to my perspective, is that it begins as a testimonial to a man’s life designed for an audience of one (as addressed in the title) and then veers into a victim’s rights screed about 2/3rds of the way through directed, one presumes, at a larger audience. This is where the filmmaker’s ethical responsibility really falls short, as he fails to employ standard journalistic methods (such as using interviewing people outside of the victims’ immediate circle to explain where, and why, failures were made) to accomplish anything but outrage, some of which seems misdirected considering the complexity of the legal issues involved. This transition, as you state, is organically part of the process by which circumstances reshaped the direction of the project, but I think it’s clear that the filmmaker 1) wasn’t up to the task of being responsible to his obligations and 2) allows his subjectivity to come through without an introspective commentary as to his becoming an advocacy based documentarian. Where the film works best is as a portrait of Zachary’s grandparents, whose tragedies inform their emotions towards the justice sustem and their actions to seek explanations as to its failure. It captures their emotions but I don’t think its enough to wash away a lot of the film’s other problems.
I agree in principle, although this film could actually maybe use a bit more navel gazing? The following is off the record because I think it’s bad form to assume bad motivations of a documentary filmmaker if they don’t go out of their way to prove a negative. But! I can see this as a guy inserting himself into this story as much/more than having it foisted upon him. He definitely does not know at least some of the guy’s current friends and colleagues, all his personal stories about him are from high school age at latest, and at the very least there’s easily a version of the film to be made where he doesn’t mention all the miles he’s putting in to record these interviews or set up a camera to film himself meeting the man’s child, doesn’t stage himself on the phone calling the judge’s office etc. It makes the emotional button-pushing sour to me. It’s undeniably a sad, sad story. It’s sad when you read it on Wikipedia. But one’s obligation to that story is different whether you’re inside it or outside it, and if there’s a way to make a movie that fulfills both obligations, this isn’t it.
“It’s like a sympathy card made out of a crime scene photo” is a great line and an immediate hard pass on this for me.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a grand act of tribute and kindness. I think that’s how it started and then the whole purpose of the documentary was torn away and most of what’s left is very emotional and raw. I think in the perfect world a better, kinder person would have come in and helped with the editing process and made it a bit more coherent and more kind. But I also think the emotional wallop even someone who’s not super close with the family experienced means I give the filmmaker some grace.
Grace is the right approach, the greatest value is in the moments that capture that raw emotion (the grandfather’s outburst is especially electric and that guy’s been through enough he can say anything). There’s a phrase in our city council’s guidance (and many other organizations, I’m sure) that I think about a lot which bans “corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Meaning rather than having to prove someone’s motivations to be corrupt, taking actions that are indistinguishable from ones that are motivated by corruption carries the same penalty. I’ll invoke the same principle here, I think it is valid and healthy to assume the filmmaker had the best intentions throughout. But are the choices made distinguishable from ones that would be made by someone with baser intentions (for distribution, attention, etc)? Not in all cases, I would argue.
Definitely wish the film had benefitted from an outside eye, or if not, steered more directly into the personal elements and not veered toward the shock presentations.
Yeah.
And I understand why he’s so angry with the mother, but she was clearly…not well, at all, and I’m not sure how productive that anger really was.
After Life
Whatever one memory I would choose for this version of the afterlife, I think it would be something that made me feel a little like this movie makes me feel. Gorgeous, bittersweet, intoxicating film, one that somehow swiftly and deftly covers all the pains and pleasures of life (and how closely those two can sit together) and the scrappy beauty of filmmaking on a budget, with cotton tufts for clouds and everyone teaming up to make a train car rock back and forth. I’d picked this up a while back as a Criterion sale blind buy, and since I didn’t know what kind of mood I was in on Friday night, I picked this essentially on a whim, and what a beautiful way to go into the weekend.
The Taste of Things
Sumptuous, delicious-to-behold food porn, with a bonus meditation on living through (sometimes devastating) personal changes and slowly working out a way to hold onto a sense of pleasure and time. It’s easy to talk about the food–and it’s some incredible-looking food–but the part that touched me most was actually Dodin talking about seasonal delights and how pleased he is, every time, to see them come around again, how the year’s cycle brings its firsts that you can count on. It’s a kind of earthier church calendar, in a way, a sensualist’s construction of the year, and it’s lovely. This is a bit longer than it needs to be, I think–it winds up feeling more like the prince’s eight-hour dinner course than it really should–but I’m still very glad I watched it.
Miracle Mile
Just an absolute banger of a film. This nails the genre shift, and I think that’s because it never drops its first genre: this continues to be a romance, and a quirky LA movie, even as it descends into hellish desperation: there’s still the sense of the film understanding and taking pleasure in its people and their eccentricities, it’s just that sometimes those people are making small talk at a diner and sometimes they’re dying and sometimes they’re committing Percocet-fueled necrophiliac rape on a rooftop. Harry and Julie make for one of my favorite screen romances here, sweet and attached and colorful and caring. (Diamonds, you might even say.) Anyway, maybe one day I’ll watch this all the way through without openly weeping, but that certainly didn’t happen this time. There’s still something about this that almost makes me feel better about the horrific possibilities it’s showing, and I think it’s the fact that even if the characters can’t change their fates (war, especially this kind of war, is the ultimate unfair interruption of your own narrative arc), they can change their experience of them. Very Angel, in that way: “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”
Needless to say, as a Southern California denizen, the themes of Miracle Mile, and the whole genre of SoCal apocalyptica, have been on my mind the last three weeks. The Wilshire Corridor, as it is sometimes called, is a perfect location to represent Los Angeles’ distiction as a postmodernist capital, where the socialistic ideals of modernist townhouse community (as represented by the Park La Brea Towers) collide with the consumerist fragmentation of identity consumerism of it’s department store shopping districts, with the iconic Johnny’s Diner as the axis from which the magnitude of cataclysmic catastrophe emerges through the communicative rationality of a cross section of city life. Seriously, why doesn’t this movie get more love?
The Tastes of Things is a good nap movie, and I mean that in the best way. It’s so soothing. Just make sure to wake up for the great final line.
Live Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Shake the Sheets 20th Anniversary Tour
Woo live music!
One of my favorite bands here, and one I probably haven’t gotten to see since… 2008? Shake the Sheets isn’t even my favorite album by the band, although you know that if you read my music of the 2000s series. (And if you didn’t, why not?) But I was surprised at how much of the album I still remembered by heart, even considering that. I guess some things never leave you, and this music has really been burned into me deeply.
After the album set, Leo kicked off with a few solo songs. He opened with a request he got from a Bandcamp message, “Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead.” It’s one of my very favorites, so the way I reacted sure made everyone around me think I was the one who sent in the request. I wasn’t. We did get to hear a few more from my favorites, The Tyranny of Distance (“Timorous Me,” of course, but also “Under the Hedge” and closing with “Biomusicology”) and Hearts of Oak (“Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”, of course, but also “The High Party”).
Anyway, that rocked. Opening act Spells was pretty good too, but they ain’t a part of my soul in the same way.
NFL Conference Championships
Well, Washington won the turnover battle against Detroit 5-0, and then… lost it 0-4 against Philadelphia. That’s pretty much the whole story for that game. (Well, and Washington just not being able to stop Philadelphia.) We did get one of the funnier moments I can remember from an NFL game, the first-ever time I can recall a ref warning a team that the “palpably unfair act” rule could be in play.
The late game was a lot more thrilling. Hey, maybe one year we’ll see some new teams in the Super Bowl at last.
The Shield, “Game Face” through “Possible Kill Screen”
Game Face: Kleavon is back!
Animal Control: Tavon is back! There’s some heavy irony in this one that I can’t post without spoiling.
Bitches Brew: Farrah is back! Lester is back!
Parricide: We’re never going back!
Moving Day: Beltran and Heap are… not back, but here. Dutch won’t have Billings’ back! Corrine no longer has Vic’s back!
Party Line: Stella is back! The 2008 housing market crash is back!
Petty Cash: Van Bro is back! And the Black Board of Directors are here! Man, if we’re talking about spinoffs, I’d like to see one of the glory days of those dudes.
Possible Kill Screen: Danny is back! And everything else is fucked! Now we’re really never going back.
Yeah, I can’t believe I stopped here, either. But I ran out of time. I got a job, you know?
Animal Control, “Baby Kangaroos and Chickens”
Josh Segarra (you may remember him from season 3 of Abbott Elementary) is squatting in the attic of Shred and Patel’s house. Their attempt to deal with it hits a snag thanks to Patel’s vanity.
Fiona is throwing a fundraiser for the Animal Control department, and Victoria shows up to help her set up… and, well, that goes the same place it went a couple of episodes ago when Frank dropped by to visit. So, of course, the fundraiser turns into a competition between the two to see who’s going to be the last one standing at the end of the night.
A quick phone call from Fiona suggesting a roast leads Emily to rewrite her speech, and, no surprise, she’s terrible at it.
The Frank-Victoria stuff is the most interesting part of the episode, not just because they’re a funny competitive pairing, but because we’ve gotten little hints here and there that there might be a real chemistry between them, even as much as they’re in denial about it, and this is the first time we’ve really had the idea brought out in the open. (Also, it’s still funny for Frank to be saying things like “We’re basically the same age.” Grace Palmer is 30; Joel McHale is 53. Looking good for 53, but still.)
Also, Shred finally gets one over on Frank in the cold open, and that’s really funny. “I peed a little, but it was worth it.”
Going Dutch, “Korfball”
A Dutch guy named Jan walks into a game of pickup basketball the American troops are having, and starts mocking their silly American sport that they probably play after eating fried food with ranch at the state fair. He says it’s nothing like “korfball,” which as far as I can tell, is kinda like basketball except it sucks. Apparently the base does play a yearly game with the locals, and never wins; it’s all in good fun, community relations, cultural exchange, things of that nature. The Colonel, of course, wants this year to be different, and then finds the right angle to get his daughter’s (aka Maggie, aka the Captain) competitive juices flowing. Also, it turns out that Papadakis is kind of a savant at it. Catherine Tate’s Katja returns, somewhat turned off by Patrick’s (that’s the Colonel’s name) competitiveness.
There was some pretty funny stuff this episode. We got a hoot out of the sight gag of Papadakis trying to crash Patrick and Katja’s dinner. As far as the final lessons learned and all, I dunno, though. I get the let’s-have-fun cultural-bonding angle to it, but that guy Jan was talking a lot of shit.
Shoresy, some season 1 and season 2 episodes
I let my wife pick these while she convalesced a little. I wasn’t super duper paying attention. Not the show’s fault, I just had other shit on my mind / that I had to do.
Tacoma FD, “Pirate World”
See above. Having worked on a TV production once, Eddie’s giant ass was very relatable.
Suburgatory, “Down Time” and “Entering Eden”
Wildly unfortunate pun in that last title. “Down Time” is a little more interesting, with Lisa and Malik’s unnecessary pitying of Tessa, and Ryan of all people coming in to save the day (he really is deeper than you’d expect).
Wooooo live music! Now I’m thinking how hilarious “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” would be as the final montage music for The Shield.
I’m having trouble thinking of a funnier one. “The Ballad of the Sin Eater” is in that space where it’s too on the nose to be ridiculous but not on the nose enough to really be appropriate.
Wooooo live music!!
SATURDAY
Castlevania: Nocturne
Season 2, Episode 5. “Into the Abyss”. First time.
Neither of the Castlevania series has been immune to wonky pacing, and this is the first episode this season where I really feel it. Which is to say that good things still happen, but the talks gets a bit slow and heavy at points.
Maria asking her mother to turn her into a vampire was tough to swallow but I think a necessary step for these characters. Good on Tera for refusing and running away.
Alucard interrupting fucking Max Robespierre during a speech is an inspired bit, really upping the ante for an all-out war in Paris.
Loved Edouard singing a farewell to Emmanuel, another brilliant bit of the show giving interiority and soul to its purpoted monsters.
Richter and Anette fighting vampires in the Parisian catacombs is inspired, the kind of setting that would have been perfect in any of the games. Didn’t expect them to have feelings for each other, but it makes a lot of sense. They have gone through plenty of similar shit. That has to be put on pause though, and I’m intrigued to see what awaits Anette in her journey to the spirit world.
Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Episode 8. “Tantas flores cayeron del cielo”. First time.
A remarkable hour of television, and a triumph of intermedium adaptation. I don’t want to give the impression that this is a perfect adaptation of the novel: for one, there’s no way to replicate Gabo’s breathless, peculiar, lackadaisacal narration and its shifting of time, but the show has made it clear that it’s just as good at illustrating the impending sense of doom that’s tied to the Buendías, Mancondo, and life in general.
We finally get to the execution of the coronel Aureliano Buendía, who says his goodbyes to his mother Ursula and takes his place in front of the firing squad, remembering that remote afternoon when his father took him to see the ice. Time is circular and doom is certain, but at the final moment his brother José Arcadio and Rebeca save him from the squad and free him, and the firing squad (who’d been warned about being cursed if they executed the coronel) itself joins Aureliano on the rebel. However, time is circular and doom is certain, and shortly after José Arcadio mysteriously dies of a gunshot in his own home, with a single strand of his blood travelling at the moment of the shot all the way to Ursula in her kitchen. It’s a spellbinding moment from the book that’s beautifully translated to the screen, and proof that despite their differences mother and son never stopped loving each other.
War continues, and yet Aureliano feels still present in Macondo, linked to his departed brother, his mother, and his son. The latter grows infatuated with his aunt Amaranta, who after a romance once again spurns a man, probably dooming him. He goes away to join his father in the war. Aureliano spends years fighting, eventually turning his back on the liberals and waging war on everyone. His only peace comes when meeting with his enemy, conservative general Moncada, right before the latter is sent as the new civil and military leader of Macondo. Right away he brings peace, education and stability to the town, making peace with Ursula and the townspeople. In a way, it’s another instance of Aureliano being present while still away.
Which leads to Aureliano once again having visions of the future, specifically of the impending death of his father, José Arcadio. He is taken from the chestnut tree and given a magnificent death scene, travelling between infinite rooms through the present, past and future of his entire family, making peace with the old ghost of the man he killed when he was young. There’s an unforgettable moment when they walk among the stars, and the stars turn into a shower of yellow flowers that fall in Macondo through the night and cover the night during his funeral procession. It’s a moment of sad beauty, and yet another era closing on Macondo.
And the next era dawns with Aureliano’s army coming to the edge of the town, preparing to attack despite Ursula’s pleas. The episode leaves her praying at her husband’s grave, hoping against hope that Aureliano calls off the attack. And then a single gunshot stops her, breaking her heart as her and her husband’s dream of Macondo shatters.
Really looking forward for the rest of this adaptation to drop, probably sometime this year.
Babylon 5, Season One, Episode Seventeen, “Eyes”
Another middling episode. Sinclair gets fucked over by an investigator who turns out to have been in line to take over the station before Sinclair was given the job. The most interesting stuff here is largely based around Ivanova, who now has a much more plot-based exploration of her personal ideals and sense of dignity – she’s resistant to being probed by a telepath in the first place, enough to threaten to resign her commission. Much of her actions are driven by honour and face.
This also has a comic subplot with Lennier fixing up Garibaldi’s motorbike. They make a surprisingly fun pair – Lennier is effortlessly sincere in an almost child-with-autism kind of way while Garibaldi is gritty and no-nonsense, but both are idealistic and have conviction, which ends up bringing them together.
On The Air, “Pilot”
This is an obscure TV show Mark Frost and David Lynch made after Twin Peaks – a sitcom that really is only the funny bits of Twin Peaks. I think the humour was the most inconsistent part of that show, and this is wildly inconsistent and weird – I notice it really kicks into gear when Miguel Ferrar, by far the best actor on this show, walks onscreen, because he says the absolutely absurd dialogue with complete conviction.
The Call Of Cthulhu
This is essentially a fan film of the story, done in the style of the movies being made when Lovecraft wrote it. Unlike most fan adaptations, it works hard to adapt it to a specific cinematic style; unlike most exercises in style imitation, it works not only to present original imagery, but to convey a particular emotion. It goes right down to the cast imitating the stiff, awkward acting of the time; I think the only part that stood out was a way-too-close closeup, and otherwise it felt like an accurate capturing of gothic silent film (particularly that of Fritz Lang).
What Did We Play?
Stray – still enjoying this feline adventure quite a bit, it has a good atmosphere but after a couple of very well-designed games I’m finding myself picking holes in the actual gameplay a bit. Some of the cat-centric stuff is fun (being able to push things off tables, regular scratch posts) but there should really be a button that allows you to sniff things.
My wife never misses an opportunity to press the “nap” button, so she’s very much in the spirit of things.
Fatal Fury 2 – Super Nintendo on Nintendo Switch Online
This dropped on Switch during the week and after playing it for a while I found the some problem I always have in older Fatal Fury arcade titles, which is an absurd standard difficulty. This is the SNES version though, which allows you to lower the difficulty, so I did. I started an arcade run, alternating between Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui and making it all the way to the final stage. It’s still quite difficult but it’s a lot of fun, not as fast and precise as Street Fighter was on SNES but with its own style and technique. Of course it doesn’t look as good as the arcade version but it looks very good on its own too. Absurd that they let the bosses fight with a long stick, a sword and full body armor, how is that legal?
I left my save state at the final boss, came close to beating him twice already. I’ll try to beat him with both Terry and Mai during the week, and maybe I’ll even give the arcade version another run, see if I can make it past the second stage for once.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2021
Alright, fully committing to actually playing games again, and specifically to diving into hyper-realistic simulation games. I played about a quarter of the way through the tutorial and got incredibly bored – my standards were pretty low, but it’s all just pointing and clicking.
Great article, and I love the idea of committing to a single idea and exploring it with this level of unflinching thoroughness, pushing it as far as it can possibly go. But I’m also now distracted by how much I love “something usually said by people who want to sound like someone you should take advice from” as a burn.
I felt attacked!
I did find myself thinking, “Uh, have I said this at some point? It’s possible.”
I had to deal with a guy like that this weekend, after I had written the essay. This is a warning that I’m a prophet in ways that even come back on me.
Often the reference point I make for movies like this is the initial run of Disney features. Films like Bambi and Snow White are remarkably barebones in their plots, but they stretch themselves to feature length by adding details that make everything feel rich and lived-in.
This is a film whose Man With a Dark Past plot is very simple, yet it’s effective because of the attention to detail. Watching the trailers for the upcoming film Love Hurts, which feels like it has the same plot structure, doesn’t quite click, but I am still intrigued to see how they treat such a simple plot. Will they spend the time filling in all the details to feel solid? Right now it feels like they’re aiming for goofy, which could work or could backfire spectacularly.
There’s a real clarity that comes with sticking with a simple theme, I think.
Dunno if you ever read the comic, but even as a teen, I was gobsmacked that the creators introduce The Man With A Dark Past and then have NO INTEREST in developing the feelings and reactions of the other characters, especially his family – Cronenberg evidently rewrote the entire script for his own purposes and you can tell, the book is okay, especially the scratchy pen artwork ala a sketch artist’s, but there is actual psychology and thought given to the film. (It’s other biggest idea is what violence does to a body, like how the guy on the ground shudders and spasms because, well, his nose has been driven into his brain and that’s the physical reaction the action would provoke.)
I’m somewhat cold on Cronenberg overall largely because his movies seem concentrated on one big idea which, in the long run, doesn’t evolve significantly over the course of his narratives (or simply limps along to a foregone conclusion). I like this one better than most, in large part because those consequences feel impactful across a range of perspectives beyond the protagonist’s objective. Pulp concepts, like the Man with a Past, seem to force Cronenberg to engage with community dialectics, as well as those of gender, that his more highbrow projects avoid in their thesis driven worldviews.
“A way of looking at it is that a Man with a Dark Past must, necessarily, have a Bright Present.”
Hmmm. Maybe not bright, but fraudulently clear? He may not be in a great place, just at first blush not a person who has been in a bad one. Thinking of Gary Cooper in Man Of The West here, which has some similarities to A History Of Violence — he’s just trying to do right by his community when his past blows up on him and he lets himself get blown up, he’s not doing anything hubristic. Part of AHOV is the History aspect, Tom acknowledging that he has one and ultimately his family accepting that, at least for the moment. Your sidebar of Breaking Bad is interesting because Walter White is another person with a history that he refuses to really examine and the tension between what he was and what he tells himself he is is overwhelming. It’s making me think of the Bob Odenkirk vehicle Nobody and how it manages to find the worst of both worlds — a Tom-ish schlub has a history of violence and it comes to light, but this is “cool’ and justified, a fantasy of having great power and the excuse to unleash it.