"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Sometimes, you just have to commit adultery to save your marriage... A hoary old movie trope (thanks Woody Allen!) that Babygirl also leans into. Not that this movie ever REALLY says anything definitive about anything. On the one hand, it seems to mean to be kink-positive, as Nicole Kidman's high-powered CEO struggles to climax with her objectively hot, loving husband and finds release with an intern who's too easily got her number. On the other, the film also lays in images of neuro-programming (her childhood, that her business is about automation), so masochism is... bad? These elements are so underplayed, they feel orphaned from an earlier version of the script. But this is a movie with characters who need to feel jeopardy to be sexually satisfied, and yet denies its audience any real aesthetic satisfaction. It teases and threatens jeopardy, but deflects it at every turn as if we'd shouted out our safe word any time the going got tough. Ultimately, I just can't believe in Harris Dickinson's motivations - he goes from meeting his boss to almost immediately treating her like a submissive - and he therefore becomes a fantasy thirst object for whatever segment of the audience likes this sort of thing. Babygirl has some good things - I like the sound design and the soundtrack (even if the songs are a bit on the nose), and Antonio Banderas is impeccable - but I don't think it works nearly as well as its more ambiguous trailer. Or much at all.
At home: I'm not really conscious of Guido Crepax's Valentina comics, but erotic Italian comics aren't really my thing. The strip was born of a superhero series, and mixed in sci-fi and fantasy. One of the volumes, Baba Yaga, was made into an erotic horror flick two years after publication (so 1973) and it's a TRIP. I love the mod look, not just in terms of fashions and spaces, but in the way it uses stills to tie into both Valentina's profession - photographer - and the source material's original medium. The heroine falls under the spell of a local witch, which involves surreal dreams, a magic doll, and a cursed camera. The encounter seems to threaten Valentina's sexuality, and I don't know if this is an ingredient in the comics, but the film certainly seems to be saying something here. It is very much set in a world of leftwing activists in a frictive relationship with national fascism, and I wonder if it's therefore about anti-establishment liberal attitudes rubbing against traditional "values" in a psycho-sexual way. It's hard to say, but there's definitely a lot to talk about after the end card drops.
A tight little noir signed Jacques Tourneur, 1956's Nightfall is really quite clever. An early scene has our lead (Aldo Ray from We're No Angels) orders a drink with a twist and is asked "small twist or big twist?" and you just know this is going to have a lot of turns. I almost want to call it the 1950s' Fargo. Indeed, characters are never what they first seem to the other characters, nor to the audience, and it simple crime story is immensely enlivened by that. You might say that as night falls, it's hard to see people clearly. Anne Bancroft is great in this (though she shouldn't quit her day job and actually go into modelling - she doesn't have the walk), as is the lighting and the location work. The villains are a nice noir double act, and the threatened and inferred violence (it's still 1956, after all) is percussive and effective. Underknown and underseen!
Remove Bill Murray from Meatballs, and I think you'd still have a cute, fairly realistic vignettes about summer camp, playing for nostalgia more than anything else. Pranks, summer flings, forced camaraderie. Cute, but not memorable. Billy Murray gives this early Ivan Reitman film a bit more shape, however, and more goofiness. He's basically improvising his way through scenes and his P.A. announcements are a lot of fun, but I think where he shines best is in his relationship with a boy who has a hard time making friends and is the camp outcast. Looks like Murray is great with kids, and not so great with adults, which seems fair given he's still a camp counsellor at his age. I wish they'd done more with the rival camp for rich kids across the lake, with their pretentious activities and nasty 1-percenter dispositions. When the North Star kids are up against the cultural appropriators of Camp Mohawk, there's a better semblance of a plot, proving that sometimes, you need villains to jeer at to keep the energy going. I mean, these guys are better at everything and STILL feel entitled to cheat. Booooo! Murray's Tripper is kind of the perfect coach in this situation. It's not a great film by any means, but I was surprised how charmed I was by it.
All I really remembered from watching Fritz the Cat a long time ago was cartoon animals getting high and screwing. There's not a WHOLE lot to it other than that. Can't say Ralph Bakshi's opening gambit in the world of adult animation isn't a fair adaptation of Robert Crumb's work, but that's not exactly narratively based, so as a feature film, it's kind of slapdash. There are some brilliant bits, like the billiard player's death and the explosive climax, but generally, the storyline is rather dull. Said cat is part of the sexual revolution and at first uses political talk to bed girls, but is progressively drawn into activism until he hits a radical limit. Those politics are a little naive and simplified, but as an anti-establishment screed, I'm sure it has its fans. Not so much for its content as its format - Bakshi (like Crumb) was making something for adults that looked like it was made for kids, and just that (and taking the X-rating) takes some balls. But Fritz is a product of his time, and once you get past the shock value (which we, as a society, did, decades ago), we're left with dated ideas, language and solutions, and a movie that doesn't really have any momentum, political or otherwise.
Seems to me Cunk on Life promises a kind of nature show hosted by the always-bonkers and never-informed Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan), but it's more about various aspects of human life - religion, philosophy, art - and comes across as rather haphazard. It's Cunk, so it's never going to be coherent exactly, but there are leaps here that defy category. Maybe it's because I'm a French-Canadian raised Catholic (well, THERE'S a redundant phrase), but we mock religion as a matter of course, so starting on creation as defined in the Bible, etc. felt like very low-hanging fruit (apples, I guess). I start to chuckle after those segments when they get into human biology (one biologist takes these interviews so seriously, it's pretty hilarious). The special also has fun with the format, creating fake commercials and constantly telling what's going to happen next, but never getting 'round to it. It's Cunk, so it's funny, but it does often feel like it's a clip show from other, non-existent, specials, like they just couldn't stay on course.
Annette Haywood-Carter is one of those "talent to keep an eye on" female directors (I swear, it's in her IMDB bio) that somehow never got to make films more than once every 5-10 years, despite her first feature, Foxfire, being a very cool, gorgeous-looking, 90s coming of age with a very specific point of view. And yet, I probably wouldn't have known it existed except for the fact I was looking up Clint Eastwood's Firefox and had a dyslexic Google moment. High school girls who don't really know each other are bonded for life when they take revenge on a teacher sexually harassing one of them after a badass runaway (Angelina Jolie) encourages them to. And then this sisterhood has other adventures punishing bad men in their lives, but realistic consequences tend to ensue. It's not some kind of fantasy, they get into trouble no matter how much they're in the right. The rest of the cast isn't hugely famous and more easily become their characters (the lead Hedy Burress was in Boston Common, but I hardly remember the show, and I suppose I know Jenny Lewis as a singer - and she does sing a bit here - but I didn't recognize her). This kind of movie needs a good soundtrack, and it IS strong, without going for any of the obvious, cliched hits.
Everybody knows Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella's most famous book-to-screen translation, Field of Dreams, but in addition to writing a lot of baseball stories, Kinsella also penned a large number of stories about Natives. Dance Me Outside adapts that story - which I read in college - and adds other threats from the short story collection (more would be added in The Rez, a TV series that spun out of the film). It's really all about the friction between Natives and Whites, in particular after a Native girl is murdered by a white boy, who doesn't exactly pay for his crime. A revenge story is brewing, but director Bruce MacDonald (here between Highway 61 and Hard Core Logo) expands the tale to make us know the characters better, as a community and as individuals, before the short story's revenge story can take place. The subplot about the lead's brother-in-law being white adds to the texture of this world even it connects very little to the main thrust of the story. But I forgive it because I'm just enjoying getting to know the cast.
Elizabeth Sankey's Witches starts out as a film essay about witches - how they fascinate her, how she tapped into them through movies, and indeed, the documentary is composed of film clips from such material in addition to testimonials - but then turns into a documentary about postpartum anxiety, depression and psychosis, some of which happened to her. Which then loops back around very cleverly to witches again, and how the confessions of these women in the 17th Century seem to have a lot in common with testimony from present-day women who have had these particular mental health issues. Sankey puts herself in the camera's crosshairs, narrating over footage when she isn't telling her story directly, or interviewing friends and professionals doing the same (among them Sophia Di Martino, Sylvie from the Loki series). It's powerful and affecting stuff, and the participants show an incredible amount of candor revealing thoughts that would have gotten them burned at the stake centuries ago, and still leads to a lot of deaths today. So let me be candid too: I wept throughout. Highly recommended to anyone who plans on have children - not as a deterrent, but as a important piece on mental health you hopefully will not need, but shouldn't be ashamed to.
I've read some Murakami, but not Tony Takitani. I still can Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of the short story is true to the writer's style. Set in a gray, ashen Japan - at first, a post-war dust heap, but later a desaturated image of loneliness, and then fear of loneliness - the eponymous character lives a barren existence until he meets a fashionable beauty, but discovers that while love initially transforms a person's faults into qualities, those faults may come to haunt the relationship. And yet, still retain their beauty by association. Though an exploration of loneliness - the loneliness you can live with and the one you can't - on a higher level, it's about prisons. His father's during the war, his own through habit and psychology, and the woman's, addiction. A subtle, quiet story, but strong, and like Murakami's work, a world created though sensory images, here essentially read to us by a narrator, with pieces spoken by the characters in non-diagetic moments, giving the film a certain poetry, the sense that's it's a kind of dream, a dream born of certain fixations.
Books: As with The Chase, John Peel went to Terry Nation's original scripts for his adaptation of The Daleks' Masterplan, and there are perhaps darker moments here than on the show (with so many episodes lost, it can be hard to tell) - shades of Nation's later Blake's 7 - but it also makes Sara Kingdom much wetter. The serial is so long, Target Books split it into two. Interestingly, the first book is called Mission to the Unknown (title of the Doctorless episode that prologued the story and included more naturally in the novel), but didn't call the second part "The Daleks' Masterplan", which is just odd. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The serial is Nation's best "picaresque" story (the bar is NOT high) and holds together well in novel form. Up until the last third, anyway, after which there's way too much back and forth, a lot of pointless action, and absolutely ludicrous "science". Events are strung together much more solidly in previous acts, and Peel makes the deaths of characters older fans KNOW are doomed still resonate (beyond being shocking to readers who don't know where this is headed). Mavic Chen will always been cool - he's so catty to the Daleks - and we get to know a but more about the invisible Visians, but, y'know, Terry Nation padding incoming.
Audios: Eddie Robson's Prisoner of the Sun comes in near the end of the Eighth Doctor Adventures' fourth season, and has to contend with Doc8 having lost his companions. The result is quite clever, putting the Doctor on a space station in the middle of a star for multiple years, ever wondering if his attempts at stymieing devastating solar flares are real or just some fiction to keep him prisoner. Sheridan Smith - normally the absent Lucie Miller - gets a paycheck thanks to the Doctor programming android assistants with her voice, but can these A.I.s be trusted, or are there factory specs under the villains' control? So an interesting puzzle to be solved, by both the Doctor and the audience, in a story that would be difficult to pull off with the human companion standing at the ready. Sure, the novels aged Ace and Sam up, but Lucie stuck on a space station for half a dozen years wouldn't really work - she'd have gone barmy!
The finale to Big Finish's Eight Doctor Adventures (Season 4, but really, full stop), comprised of Lucie Miller (the title, not the character) and To the Death, brings a literal scorched Earth surprise that doesn't just put an end to ongoing storylines, but to several important characters as well, their potential be damned. In Part 1, the Daleks are back on post-Dalek Invasion Earth, trying to pull a repeat with even high stakes, and the Doctor doesn't appear for most of it, leaving Lucie, Alex and Susan to get on with things. With the Meddling Monk in the picture, you'd be right to wonder if all of this will be undone somehow. That's how extreme it feels. Part 2 requires a heck of a lot of explanations, so it's very talky. I don't like it as much. It does have some wild action, and a number of shocking and/or touching moments that are well played, but it hardly gives you a respite. Needless to say, the Doctor comes out of the experience a changed man (is this where he cuts his hair?) in time for the next phase of Doc8's life (the Dark Eyes series). Exciting, but I feel a little shell-shocked.
RPGs: My goals for Torg Eternity in the new year are many - start building a large cast again, more opportunities for social interactions, pay off old subplots, be less strict with the act structure and let sessions flow into one another more naturally - and our first play of 2025 did all of that. The Player Characters get themselves captured on purpose in Tharkold and are forced to participate in pain-centric Reality TV in the hopes of breaking informants out and maybe sabotaging the whole operation. Turns out a reality clone of their old nemesis Dr Grimm is directing these shows, so they have a personal grudge. One of the cast of contestants is a new PC, with Fabien once again switching "reality clones" for an escaped thrall with magic-using abilities (which the technodemons absolutely hate). He'll fit right in considering the players are always kind of playing "dominating" games to decide who is actually the leader. In Tharkold, them's fighting words - everything is hierarchy, and hierarchy is everything. With the underground studio in northern Russia packed to the gills with Gamma-level threats to keep the participants in check (why else allow them to keep their weapons?), the PCs may regret their more frontal approach as we headed for a cliffhanger there... This is also the first session where SOME of the players noticed they had new custom skills on their character sheets (because I offered rolls on them, not because they're in any way observant, of course), a little gift for hitting Gamma Clearance level.
Best bits: It didn't take long for the obnoxious Realm Runner to get almost voted out (someone even started a rumor he was a mole). Given that the poor soul who DID get eliminated was immolated with a laser beam on the spot, it's a good thing the PCs managed to corral enough votes in their favor. Most fun NPC to date is probably the neo-samurai who was a member of Storm Break (jeers!), trying to atone for the group's mistake in Nashville (cheers!) and who is a badass warrior. In the Battle Bears challenge, requiring two teams to approach, anaesthetize and install cyberguns on a wild bear so it can shoot the other team, the Runner tried all sorts of tricks to "accidentally" get some thralls in the studio crew shot, but the best gambit goes to the Magic-User who rolled so well on his Intimidation of the Runner and Frankenstein, he actually forced them to switch bears while they were ahead to get past a step that was too difficult for him and his NPC partner. The Monster Hunter incapacitated the cameras in their cell/Big Brother house by placing a daub of liquid light on each. With the PCs separated (winners and losers), they tried to coordinate something, but a Setback on the Drama card brought in all sorts of high-powered threats. The Grimm Director was quite happy to reveal the Producer was actually a powerful female technodemon, and we sort of left it with the Monster Hunter intimidated back to his cell, the Magic User down half his hit points facing off against her with terrible odds, the other two about to face a terrifying guardian creature, and oh, did I mention the full moon is about to rise and one in the party is a lycanthrope?
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