Echo: Tuklo

 "If the offer still stands... I'm helping you."

This is the best episode so far. Of course, it centres on Maya, Bonnie and their Uncle Henry being kidnapped and waiting for the Kingpin's goons to arrive, including a rather awesome big set piece to Rob Zombie's "Dragula".

But, of course, the episode was about more than that.

Bonnie's Choctaw ancestry continues to be important, and not just in the decoration of the new artificial leg for her made by Skully. Delightfully, we have a pre-titles sequence set in the Old West in the style of an old silent film, complete with intertitles, about another kick-as female ancestor whose skill Maya seems to have... somehow inherited? The character from the comics is well after my time; perhaps this is her thing.

But, even more, it's really about character. Henry, despite his annoyance at what Maya has brought to him, choosing to side with her regardless. Bonnie meeting Maya, in awkward circumstances, and her bitterness about Maya not getting in touch just once. That Skully urges both Maya and Chula to reconnect. That last bit of misdirection at the end, where we think Maya is going to see Chula.. and she sees someone else entirely.

I still don't quite know where this is going, but there's a nice unity of styler, motifs and tropes. This is very good.

Inspector Morse: Deceived by Flight

 "You can't arrest a man because his wife won't sleep with him."

This is,perhaps, not as good an episode as some, and it feels for much of its length as though it's drifting somewhat aimlessly... but then, very late, we get the resolution, and it's all damnably clever, the clues all hidden in plain sight.

There's lots to enjoy here, even if we get the hoary old trope that the woman Morse fancies is inevitably the killer. Lewis gets to be good at cricket, and we get to learn Morse's old uni nickname of "Pagan", so-called because he wouldn't reveal his Christian name! I'm not sure that Lewis agreeing to use his leave to go undercover while the DIY was taken care of is at all realistic, but then Colin Dexter always did cheerfully refuse to do any research on police procedure.

There's an ugly look at how rampant homophobia was in 1989- and it was- but the script makrs very clear whose side it's on. Once more we get to see what a different world it was- the cars, the fashions, the technology- despite it being a time I very much remember. Sigh.

Zen philosophy is discussed, and of course E.M. Forster. But there's alsothe philosophy of cricket... and there, I suppose, I'm with Morse.

Comments

 Annoyingly, for a while I've only been able to respond to comments as "Anonymous" because Blogger makes me "sign in"... but then once I come to comment I'm still "Anonymous". But now it seems I have to "sign in" to repond to comments at all, which I can't because I'm me. Any other bloggers know a way round this?

Grr. I've used Blogger for 13 years, but it's creaking a bit, and so much of my stuff is on here. But there are lots of little things that don't seem to work as well. Should I be worried? I'm noticing the tags later in the alphabet don't work once you reach a certain number...

The Sweeney: Ringer

 "Who's Godot?"

"Plays full back for QPR."

I knew of The Sweeney, of course. I certainly knew the theme tune, one of those based nicely around the syllables of the name of the programme. I knew "get your trousers on, you're nicked". I knew John Thaw was in hisearly thirties, looking somehow much older... but then, everyone seemed to in the '70s. The endless nicotine and the Lutwaffe, no doubt. 

And yes, I knew it was incredibly laddish, about the Flying Squad, the East End, and policing in a world before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, a very different world. So... is the first episode what I expected?

Well, yes. It is. This episode is a nice little opener, establishing what Regan and Carter are like, whata maverick Regan is, how his strai-laced superintendent can't stand him. It shows us a vanished East End underworld not long after the Krays. It shows us a world, not long agos, when photographs needed to be developed. It establishes that this is going to be great actor spotting fun- we have Brian Blessed and Ian Hendry as gangsters, and June Brown as a little scrote's mum. 

It also shows us the '70s, though. The clothes, the different values- Life on Mars for real- and the cars, oh the cars.

I think I'm going to like this...

Echo: Lowak

 "You seem to have forgotten that the people close to you are the ones who get hurt..."

The strong start continues; I'm enjoying this. Maya is home in Oklahoma, slowly gearing up for a war with the Kingpin about which she seems methodicallyorganised and VERY confident.

Yet it's not all war; there'sa lot of good character stuff here. She's amongst her family... and is she exploiting her naive cousin Biscuits in bringing a war from New York to those she loves? Why is she avoiding her grandmother (Chula) or her childhood companion Bonnie? Is old, delightfully cynical Skully also being drawn into danger? It's a nice bit of moral ambiguity. Is Maya really a hero, or just one side of a gang war bringing chaos and death? Her cousin Henry seems to think so. Then again, it seems he has openly divided loyalties...

But what adds depth here is the thoughtful scenes about Choctaw history and culture, the "first Choctaw"- clearly paralleled with Maya- and the fascinating lacrosse(?) game in 1200 BC at the start that will no doubt resonate later. It's a fascinating reminder to this Englishman that Anglophone North America may superficially seem a culture similar to ours, with a shared language and history... but not really. In truth, it is a faraway land, as old and deeply rooted as anywhere in the "Old World", a patchwork of human cultures all but destroyed by the diseases of we Europeans. I'm not sure of the subtext of all this yet, but I'm certain that one will emerge. I ceertainly loved the scene with the tourists in Skully's shop and their cultural ignorance.

We get an opening titles this time, with the Yeay Yeah Yeahs and an image of Wilson Fisk! I didn't fail to notice the throwaway reference to Madripoor either. But this is pretty continuity-lite, and it's own thing. Good.

The Cruel Sea (1953)

"You know, when you lose a ship, it's like losing a bit of yourself."

I'm becoming increasingly fascinated by British war films made in the decade or so after the Second World War, after a few years had passed and there had been time for reflection on this extraordinary event that had twisted everybody's lives out of shape for six long years, with unimaginable pressure and stress. There's a lot of action, yes, but also a lot of inherent philosophical musing, humanity, and deconstruction of the "stiff upper lip" trope, which never was straightforward.

On the surface, this is the saga of a ship- well, mostly the one ship- and it's crew, as they live and develop over the six years of the War on an Atlantic convoy, protecting the merchant navy from u-boats. There are bit action set pieces- rescuing mainers whose vessels have sunk, chasing u-boats and, indeed, abandoning ship and trying to survive overnight on a tiny little raft.

Yet this is, more than anything, a film about people, in all their complexity. One of the crew hopes to marry his shipmate's sister, only for her to be killed in an air raid. An officer dies a watery death, knowing his wife is sleeping with another man. The first officer wonders whether proposing to his partner is the right thing or not- is there a place for permanence among the uncertainties of war?

This is by no means one of the very best of its genre, but the cast is solid and the script, if not quite first class, is raised up by its themes and subject matter. And, if nothing else, it taught me how to pronounce "coxswain".

Batman: The Doom of the Rising Sun

"I assure you I'm no footpad!"

The finale starts off with a fascinating, and rather good, cliffhangerresolution. Last episode we saw Batman bundled into coffin and said coffin fed to the crocs. This resolution isn't the first to resolve the cliffhanger by editing in some extra footage- but it really owns what it's doing, and I admire that. There's quite a lengthy sequence of Batman using Morse Code and Robin coming to his aid, revealing that it's not the Batman in the box but Wallace, one of Daka's anonymous and expendable henchmen.

I suppose it's a cheat, if you see re-editing as that. But I really admire the fact that it takes the episode six and a half minutes to get to the point where the coffin is fed to the crocs. For a movie serial cliffhanger resolution, this is positively avant-garde.

The rest is as one would expect, I suppose; Batman and Robin infiltrate Daka's hideout, there'sa fight, there's the obvious racial slur, Daka is fed to the crocs, the zombies are cured and Martin exonerated. But it's all very nicely done, and I love the scene where Captain Arnold finally meets his unofficial best officer. There's some nice comedy stuff with Alfred, too.

Overall... well, it's a movie serial. We know what we're getting. But this is rather better than most. It's just unfortunate that the blatact racism, even taking full account of historical context, is just so very far beyond the pale.

Echo: Chafa

 "You have greatness in you..."

Bear with me; Robin of Sherwood will follow in this blogging "slot", then more Twin Peaks, but first I need to catch up with the MCU; I'm well behind.

Already this is different, with a warning about "mature content" and the Marvel Spotlight logo. I'm avoiding online spoilers as far as I can, but Bob Iger's changes at Marvel Studios are clearly under way, with this the first truly street level series under the Disney Plus imprint. Hawkeye came close, but we haven't really seen anything like this since the Netflix shows.

And this opening episode is, basically, superb, Indeed, all the more so for much of the first half being a recap of Maya's backstory that we've already seen in Hawkeye. There's greater depth, though. We see more of Maya's family, her childhood in Oklahoma, her identity as Choctaw. I love the riffing on what I assume to be Choctaw mythology.

All of the backstory is in greater depth, though. This time it is Maya Lopez, not Clint Barton, who is the star. It may look like a recap, but it works. Plus we get a nice little Daredevil cameo.

It's all extraordinarily shot, too. The many fight scenes are truly cinematic. I'm one of those people who are easily bored by fight scenes, and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. And then we learn (well, we suspected, but...) that Wilson Fisk, just as Maya determines to take over his empire, is alive. I'm hooked.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeouisie (1972)

 "Unbelievable what they smoke in the army..."

It's about time I watched and blogged another of Luis Bunuel's extraordinary late run of films, made in his sixties and seventies, and this one in particular is as good as its reputation, irinically winning an Oscar while satirising the lifestyle it represents.

The direction is, as one would expect, both superb and multifaceterd. It's all very surreal, of course, but the surrealism is not quite meaningless here, and I suspect it would reward multiple viewings very well. The surrealism is constant, but it never crosses the line into something which could never happen in real life, just skirting that line between the unlikely and the impossible. An exception is in dream sequences, which abound here, revealed to be so at the end of the scene and dreams nested within dreams. The dream sequences at their modst absurd- the sergeant's night walk in the street, the lieutenant's childhood trauma, the dinner party suddenly revealed to be on stage before an audience- are truly dreamlike in how they feel, an extraordinary achievement.

Yet this is not simply surrealism for its own sake. The central conceit is of six wealthy individuals, one of them the ambassador of a fictional South American dictatorship, are repeatedly thwarted in their desire to have a dinner party. Snobbery is a constant theme, with constant commentary on how food should be cooked or carved, or how a spirit should be prepared or consumed- at one stage a chauffeur is mocked for not sipping his drink properly. These concerns are meaningless, existing only to add artificial meaning to the lives of the privileged who are apart from the cares of the world in their aloof world of affairs and dinner parties.

The film is a visual treat, but it is certainly no "difficult" arthouse film. It is darkly funny throughout and the perferct combination of art and enjoyment. Truly one of the greats of cinema.

Twin Peaks: The Last Evening

 "One can never answer questiions at the wrong moment..."

And so the first season is over, rather satifyingly. Of course, not all threads are tied up, but we have a certain amount of closure. And that's quite the cliffhanger at the end, foreshadowed by the Log Lady's introduction at the very beginning.

It's a superb episode full of shocks. James and Donna finding the necklace initially seems important, but Dy Jacoby getting attacked and killed by a masked man. Then again, Leo is eventually killed by Hank before he can kill Bobby; Jacques Renault is smothered to death by Leland, presumably as revenge for Laura, and then there's that final shooting of Cooper himself.

I've no idea what's going on. After all Catherine and Pete have plotted, it's Leo who sets fire to the mill. Why? Ironically, Catherine and Pete may die as a result. Did Leo have the missing ledger too? And poor Shelley.

So much else, though. Agent Cooper is superb in One Eyed Jacks, showing us what a subtle performance Kyle MacLachlan is actually giving. Cooper is at once folksy, steely and badass, a unique combination.

Then there's Hank's trying to win back Norma, and his "arrangement" with Josie. There's Nadine's attempted suicide. There's Laura's "mystery man", who she fancies despite him possibly trying to kill her, a rather intense kind of kinky.

This is all, of course, just plot. But it's more than that. It's mood. It's carefully cultivated weirdness. Yet it's character too. Twin Peaks is truly unique.

Wow. I'll switch now to the second season of Robin of Sherwood, but after that I'll be back to Twin Peaks.

Batman: The Executioner Strikes

"Looks like a trap..."

"'Course it is. But we won't get caught in it."

Of course you won't, Bruce. Although I suspect you fell for it far too easily and there's something afoot. Were you really in that coffin that got fed to the alligators in their little pit at the end, you know, that pit of alligators that is getting suddenly emphasised in this penultimate episode, almost as though it may have a role to play in Dr Daka's fate in next episode's finale?

But I get ahead of myself. The opening cliffhanger, I have to say, was superb, and the resolution to the spike trap is pretty damn good. Linda actually does get zombified, and used as bait in a trap for Bruce Wayne who, of course, Daka and his hoodlums seem to know is Batman when the plot requires but not when it doesn't, such as when they see Robin in the back of the car but are thrown off the scent by the sight of Bruce Wayne. But let us not be churlish about these things.

Things are actiually pretty exciting at this point. No more random fights and set pieces... well, a few... asit seems that things are actually happening.

Better Call Saul: Wiedersehen

 "We should only use our powers for good..."

This is a fascinating penultimate episode. An awful lot happens, and there's so much character development... but it's still not clear how the finale is going to shape up. Well, aside from Werner escaping and trying to go home because he misses his wife. This is nicely done, and logically follows on from subtle hints that have been recently dropped. The lab is progressing, and starting to look like the lab we know from Breaking Bad.  Morale with the other Germans is high. There's a cool sequence with the demolition.

But then there's new guy, Lalo Salamanca, who we (and Nacho) first saw last episode. Suddenly he's in charge, using a clearly annoyed Nacho as an underling and throwing his weight around. He visits his "Uncle Hector, now disabled as we knew him in Breaking Bad... and, in a bizarre little mini-origin story, gives him the bell. This is a symbolic changing of the guard from one Salamanca to another. He's smarter than Hector, confident, and I love his comment that his uncle is  "Same old Hector... just wants to kill everybody".

He's going to annoy a lot of people, of course. His confrontation with Gus, two intelligent alpha males sizing each other up, is fascinating. But I rather fancy Gus' chances. Lalo isn't long, I suspect, for this world.

We start the episode with Kim and Jimmy on another scam, Kim by now absolutely a natural at the lying and all that comes with it. The two of them are on exactly the same page. Jimmy confidently expects to be reinstated as a lawyer... and he now has a new potential clientele, who know him as Saul Goodman. It looks like the future is being set up...

But he fails his reinstatement hearing.

And Jimmy doesn't take it well. The mask slips. Jimmy, a selfish, malevolent, entitled *** behind the surface charm, lashes out at Kim, who in turn tells him some home truths: she always comes running to him.

They seem to reconcile, but... what now? I don't know, but this is extraotrdinary television.

Morbius (2022)

 "I'm going to get hungry. And you don't want to see me when I'm hungry."

I'm not too familiar with the Morbius character; he tended to not really be around when I was reading Marvel comics in the '80s and very early '90s, when I stopped due to shiny covers, too many crossovers and too much indulging of arrogant star artists. Anyway, here we are, and I believe (although there may be one or two TV movies and the like) that this is as of now the last Marvel film of any kind that I hadn't seen...

Oh. I still have to see Madame Web. Gulp.

I'm well aware of this film's... mixed reception, shall we say, but I rather enjoyed this rather straight riff on Michael Morbius' origin story, despite the modern directorial techniques as seen in the overly CGI'd action bits and the literal darkness pervading everything. I mean, can't they turn the lighting up a bit, just occasionally? But the script is solid and, while I wouldn't use a stronger word, so is Jared Leto. The character of Morbius is nice and nuanced, despite Martine, Nicholas and even Milo being a bit one-note.

The highlight of the film is, of course, Matt Smith making the very wise acting choice to chew as much scenery as possible while having fun as the baddie, as without him the film was threatening to be far too po-faced. There's not a lot of humour in the rather straightforward, competent yet workmanlike script, so this redresses the balance a bit.

The film, then, is quite good. No more than that: it's an unusually expensive looking B movie. It's fine. It's fun but doesn't pretend to have any depth.

That post-credits, mind... the Vulture is in the Venomverse (are we saying that?) and... he's doing a Nick Fury and assembling a super team of Spider-Man adversaries. Er, that's bonkers. Which is excellent. Bring it on.

The Amazing Digital Circus: Pilot

 "Do you like adventure, activity, wonder, danger, horror, pain, suffering, agony? Death, disease, angel food cake?"

I don't usually watch online animations made by younger creatiions, to put it mildly, but this one is splendidly disturbing and crammed with brilliant ideas... and it was introduded to me by Little Miss Llamastrangler. Who is nine.

Yes, Exactly. 

Circuses are, of course, nightmare fuel, so this pilot episode to what I  hope will be a series quite rightly leans into that. The existential horror is exquisite. Our POV character, Ponmi, puts on some headphones and finds herself stuck, seemingly forever, like her predecessors, in this circus-themes digital hell. Her predecessors are various degrees of insane, having slowly and painfully come to terms, of sorts, with their terrible fate, although some better than others. The cynical Jax, the meek Ragatha, the unconfident Kinger, the utterly broken Zoobie. 

The perfect touch, though, is that their captor and ringmaster, Caine, is not even malevolent or evil, but has no conception of the pain he's suffering, always maintaining the air of the cheerful and, indeed, family-friendly compere. This is far more effective than having a malevcolent antagonist would have been. Cruelly, the idea of an "exit" is dangled in fromt of our poor Ponmi, only to be cruelly taken away. She, like all of them, has forgotten who she was in her "real" existence... but, of course, as with The Matrix and Roger Zelazny's Amber series... what is "real" existence anyway?

If, like me, this isn't normally your thing but you like the sound of it, check it out for free on YouTube. It's only twenty-five minutes long, and it's brilliant.