setsuled: (Louise Smirk)


Is it better to say Mata Hari was a powerful, successful spy for the Germans, or that she was unfairly made a scapegoat by popular sexist notions? I wonder if Carrie Fisher was pondering this when she wrote the teleplay to the 1993 episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, "Paris, 1916". From a story by George Lucas and directed by Nicolas Roeg, it's exceptionally good television and portrays an improbably complex relationship between a sharp, worldly Mata Hari and a sweet teenage Indiana Jones.



Roeg, the director of Walkabout, Bad Timing, and The Man Who Fell to Earth directs an episode that easily outshines "Verdun, 1916", the episode with which "Paris 1916" is paired so that Lucasfilm could release the episodes as a single film, called Demons of Deception. Both have the same credited cinematographer but the lighting is so much lovelier and the production design produced from such keener instincts for colour it's difficult to believe the two are part of the same series, despite sharing a star.



"Verdun, 1916" has some nice action sequences but suffers from the same problem most of the series does--lacking the ingenious sequences pairing charismatic but fumbling characters with perfectly orchestrated action choreography of the films, the television series, with its endless string of famous figures, too frequently had the feel of an unimaginative "info-tainment" history lesson. But "Paris, 1916" creates actual characters and makes Indy more complex as well.



Sean Patrick Flanery, who never really seemed like good casting to me, at least not as good as River Phoenix, is used well here for his very youthful look and demeanour in a story about a young man figuring out the subtleties of romance with a very capable instructor in the form of Mata Hari. Italian actress Domiziana Giordano plays Mata Hari, who's 5'8", according to the only source I can find on google that has a height for her, two inches shorter than the real 5'10" Mata Hari, and three inches shorter than 5'11" Sean Patrick Flanery. So it must have been a creative decision to make her look much taller than him.



She's frequently shot like this, like a great bird clutching its prey. Her size is enhanced in other ways--I loved how she looks in this breakfast scene with a massive, fur lined dressing gown.



She almost looks like she was designed by Aubrey Beardsley. But I suspect there was also an intended ode to Greta Garbo's portrayal as Mata Hari in the 1931 film--Giordano has more than a passing resemblance to Garbo. But "Paris, 1916" is far less sentimental than that film.



Though in Fisher's teleplay there's something of pre-Code Hollywood's embrace of the sexually mature and experienced woman personified by the likes of Garbo or Marlene Dietrich in contrast to the Victorian woman-child. After Indy confronts Mata Hari after he's seen her with another lover, her response is to give him a lesson that reminded me of Dietrich's "I've Been in Love Before".

INDY: I can't believe you kissed that old goat.

MATA HARI: How could you say you love me and not trust me?

INDY: You've been lying to me! You don't love me, you've just been using me for your own vanity.

MATA HARI: When you said you loved me, was that true? I mean, really true, from your heart?

INDY: Well, no, not exactly.

MATA HARI: So you've been lying to me! And that's all right for you, not for me? And why did you tell me if it wasn't true?

INDY: Because it's what you wanted to hear! And it's not as if I don't care about you, I do.

MATA HARI: What you care about is the pleasure I give you. I'm so much older than you, I've had so many lovers. But what would be the point of telling you this? I like you and I don't want to make you unhappy.



In one of their first scenes alone together, the breakfast scene, she concocts a fantasy for him. She tells him about dancing naked in a temple for a master Yogi, then stumbling "sprawling" before him. She says he took his clothes off and got on top of her and when Indy, horrified, asks why she didn't run away, she tells him vaguely that the power he had over her was very strong. Indy later learns that, as in reality, Mata Hari's background in Java was completely invented as part of her stage persona. This story she tells him is entirely to arouse him, a fantasy about female passivity and male dominance, but the fact that she orchestrates the fantasy to seduce him makes her interaction with him almost the opposite of the impression created by the story. She is his teacher and her power over him is very strong.



She's teaching him how respect functions in relationships based on lust and fantasy. She has no desire to hurt him, he simply isn't experienced enough to separate his idealism from the truth of human sexual appetite. All this takes on an added poignancy when considering how these worldly bedroom fantasies appear in the context of accusations of espionage, particularly in the light of public opinion still influenced by Victorian morality.



There's also a really delightful couple at the beginning of the episode played by Ian McDiarmid and Jacqueline Pearce. Pearce's disapproval of Mata Hari, attempting to steer Indy away from such a disreputable woman, gives some hint of this public attitude which would eventually play an integral part in Mata Hari's downfall.

Twitter Sonnet #1078

We rue connexions broke by chewing dawns.
The chomping night referred to chains the shop.
Digesting crews repaint the eaten prawns.
A swallowed fish foretells its gold'll stop.
In dusty hands the butterfly emerged.
The building tree established girder leaves.
No question met where phony scalps submerged.
The tightened thigh could blame elastic greaves.
The peace reclines between appointments kept.
In careful cuts the timing breathed to taste.
As weapons moved their thieves and masters slept.
Between tomatoes stretched a shrouded waste.
The chances clot in catacombish skies.
The pins permit excess of ninety tries.
setsuled: (Default)


I might've enjoyed Star Wars: The Last Jedi more if I hadn't been sick. I've had this flu for about a week and it feels like everything's sort of at a distance. Maybe that's the reason at the end of the movie I didn't get that elation I associate with the end of a Star Wars film. I just thought, "That was fine." There were some things I thought were definite flaws but I thought it was better written than Force Awakens and it was generally an agreeable way to spend over two hours in a comfortable chair.

Spoilers after the screenshot



There's a long article on Vulture about how this is the most populist Star Wars movie yet. There's plenty of support for this argument--Luke (Mark Hamill) schooling Rey (Daisy Ridley) on the arrogance of the Jedi Order, the focus on working class characters, the reveal that Rey's parents aren't royalty. On the other hand, one could point to plenty of instances where the film argues we should give up a measure of our freedom to authority figures. The whole point of the Holdo (Laura Dern) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) plot was that sometimes it's best to trust your superiors even if what they're ordering you to do seems completely ridiculous. And after all his pissing on the Jedi, Luke seems proud at the end to say that he definitely won't be the last one. If this movie were in any way meant to be a comment on the 2016 U.S. election, then Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) offering allegiance to Rey on the grounds that her lack of pedigree is immaterial to him, with Princess Leia representing the wise establishment, one can argue it's downright anti-populist, at least as far as the Donald Trump brand goes.



Though I like Kylo Ren a lot more than Donald Trump. The strongest part of the movie for me was his relationship with Rey. I wasn't one of the people who thought Rey basically being Superman in Force Awakens was a flaw, for the character or the movie, but the fact that she's more vulnerable and fallible in Last Jedi makes her a lot more interesting. The fact that she seriously begins to question the simple, straightforward hatred she has for Ren is a nice way of opening the character up for the audience, because the questions she's struggling with become the same ones the audience is asking. Can Ren be saved? Is it okay to start kind of liking him after he killed Han Solo? The fact that physical attraction is involved makes these questions unexpectedly sexy. It's like the relationship between Han and Leia in Empire taken to far more serious levels--Ren really is a scoundrel.



But things are nicely complicated by the two sides of the story, from Luke and Ren, about why Ren destroyed the Jedi temple. With all the echoing of things from earlier movies, I was surprised neither said, "So what he told you was true . . . from a certain point of view." Luke standing over Ren with his lightsabre is something that has vastly different meaning depending on whose point of view you're seeing it from.



Snoke's (Andy Serkis) biggest mistake is not having the imagination to see things from Ren's point of view. He can use the Force to read his motives but he fails to appreciate how his manipulation of Ren, connecting him with Rey to exploit Ren's inner conflict, would make Ren feel.

The fight scene in the aftermath of Snoke's death was my favourite part of the film. Suddenly all the cards have been tossed up in the air and who knows where they'll land. Rey and Ren fighting back to back is one of the nicest frenemy team-ups I've seen. I'm not even going to question why these red stormtroopers are so loyal to a dead Snoke.



I liked how Rian Johnson spent time cleaning up some of Force Awakens' flaws. One of the best is in Johnson's treatment of Hux (Domhall Gleeson). He was a joke in Force Awakens but we were meant to take him seriously--here, the movie knows he's a joke and Snoke seems much smarter for treating him that way. Last Jedi has some of its own flaws, though, mainly involving the casino planet and the new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), who's incredibly dull. John Boyega, in my opinion the strongest performer of all the new trilogy actors, is sadly wasted. His much more natural performance makes the budding romantic relationship between him and Rose seem totally mismatched. It's like shipping Spike Spiegal with Princess Toadstool.

That's primarily why the casino planet plot doesn't work, though the surprisingly generic 1940s look to the place didn't help. It almost felt like Star Wars Holiday Special territory. The war profiteer stuff was interesting but has been handled much better and with more complexity on Clone Wars. On the other hand, I thought Benicio De Toro was great. It was like he was reprising his role from The Usual Suspects and he completely dominated every scene he was in. I really hope he's back for the next movie.



Another standout performance was from Mark Hamill. This guy deserves a "Most Improved Over the Course of a Lifetime" award. He's come a long way from the one note whiny kid from A New Hope and Corvette Summer. But I knew he had this in him when I heard his performance in The Killing Joke, really, by far the best part of that adaptation. Killing off Luke was a really big mistake. Hamill has so much vitality and skill and there's no real narrative need to have him gone. Well, obviously there's the whole subtext about the old passing away for the new, but I really hated that scene with Yoda (Frank Oz).



Luke didn't bother to read the Jedi Texts because they were boring? Really? They're not even big books. Even if they're boring, fuck, man, it's your job. Work isn't always supposed to be easy. I might be accused of reading too much into it but knowing how much college students rely on cliff notes and Wikipedia summaries I was really not enthusiastic about a scene depicting book burning.

Luke was also at the centre of another of my least favourite parts of the film, his climactic battle with Kylo Ren. How did Ren not notice Luke was using the lightsabre Ren and Rey had just destroyed? How did it not occur to him that Luke survived the AT-AT blasts because of some kind of hologram or projection? I sincerely doubt there were many people in the audience who didn't pick up on it right away. And why would Luke give Leia phantom dice? Why would she leave them behind?



I did like the look of the salt planet though I suspect the guy deciding to taste the dirt some other guy had just walked on will end up being the butt of many a joke. I like that Johnson was trying to expand the sensory palette in giving the audience a literal taste of what they were seeing but who licks weird red dirt from someone's footprint?

But the movie had much more good than bad for me. I didn't like it as much as Rogue One but I liked it more than Force Awakens. If I were to rank the movies now, the list would probably be 1. Empire Strikes Back, 2. A New Hope, 3. Revenge of the Sith, 4. The Phantom Menace, 5. Rogue One, 6. Return of the Jedi, 7. The Last Jedi, 8. Attack of the Clones, 9. The Force Awakens.
setsuled: (Frog Leaf)


I think this is the angriest pigeon in San Diego. I saw him during Comic Con at a trolley station.

I still have panels I want to talk about but I thought I'd take to-day to talk about more miscellaneous Con matters. I packed a lunch every day of the Con and on Thursday and Saturday I enjoyed watching some live, violent mediaeval melee while I ate.



Like every year, the Society for Creative Anachronism was holding unscripted melee between folks in full armour--plate, chainmail, and lots of padding. As hot as it must have been under all that stuff, it still made more sense to me than Chris Hardwick wearing a sweater.



I usually get footage of the fights but this year I decided to try focusing on stills.



I didn't notice until just now the Daenerys looking on from above the fray.



I made really good sandwiches, by the way. Olive hummus, tomato, tofurky, cucumber, and spinach.



I'm not sure what these people on the periphery with poles were doing. I guess they're for any fighter whose gusto carries him or her into the crowd.



Once again, the Cinema Makeup School was on the floor demonstrating some amazing makeup. Here someone seems to be becoming the Joker.



Also on the floor was the Personal Property Auction of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, which seemed kind of fucked up.



It seems like only recently I heard that Fisher's daughter, Billie Loud, was awarded her mother and grandmother's property. She wants to get rid of it already? I assume not everything's here. But some of it certainly didn't look like junk.



Lourd's pretty young, I wonder if she's going to regret getting rid of any of this when she's older. Than again, maybe this isn't part of the property she has custody of. It's hard to imagine this is all stuff from collectors, though.



I didn't see a lot of Star Wars cosplay at the Con this year, maybe because Disney decided to reserve all the Star Wars stuff for their own Con.



I talked to this woman dressed as Leia in the slave bikini from Return of the Jedi about how there used to be legions of Slave Leias at the Con. This year I only saw three. Otherwise, for Star Wars, there were the usual stormtroopers and Mandelorians, the sexy Ewok, and there was a Donald Trump/Darth Vader mashup I didn't get a picture of but his picture seems to be among a lot of collections online. Certainly the anti-Trump feeling was visible at the Con, which would have been nicer if I felt like he was really about to be removed from office.

There was some pretty wonderfully horrific anti-Trump art by Ron English at his booth but I was more impressed by this big thing on the top of his booth:



Twitter Sonnet #1017

When buildings made of white bananas fall
A backwards dream became the sifting glass
To place a boot beneath when feet are tall
And flower sleeves arise from clothing grass.
A sugar sun attempts to tame a big,
A massive shape unformed to make the cloud
Condense so soon to solid snacking fig
A Newton treat to drop the apple shroud.
In buckets cars are racing for the rain,
For fuel to take the spinach form from air,
From stringy green and canned as sugar cane,
As bottled as the rum that turns to stare.
Descending poison can convert the day.
A season strayed here from its ancient way.

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