Sun, 25 May: Weekly Review 63

I’m recording a film on my PVR called Isle of Forgotten Sins. It’s from 1943 and is set in the south sea isles. Letterboxd reviews aren’t great, but it has John Carradine in it and a b-movie vibe I can’t resist. I also was going to record a noir film called Too Late For Tears starring Lisbeth Scott, but I’ve already got it, just haven’t watched it yet. That being the case, I decided to watch it tonight. The Letterboxd reviews were pretty glowing, especially about Scott. I watched it and liked it. Scott is the most fatale of femmes in this one, ready to do absolutely anything to keep hold of a stash of money that’s come her way. She’ll lie, she’ll steal, she’ll kill, and she’ll pay the price. She was great in it, but have to say, I only had eyes for Kristine Miller, the cutie who played Scott’s husband’s sister. Wow, what a dame!

But on that south seas isles front, there’s definitely a connection there for me with that Roy Orbison song, Leah, I listened to the other day. I’ve been thinking of making a playlist based on songs set in or about the south sea island area, from Hawaii to the China Sea. Traditionally ‘tiki’ music. I want something loungey and laidback, but with a couple of curve balls thrown in, like Hawaii by The Beach Boys and Holiday In Waikiki by The Kinks. Also maybe David Bowie’s Red Sails.

I borrowed the art book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. My idea is to list all the ones that are in the galleries I might visit on my trip to England and France and see them. I know I’ve seen a few of them already from the first time I went over there in 1990, but I can’t remember all of them. And oopsie, I just noticed the book’s Preface was written by none other than Rolf Harris! The publication date for this edition was 2011, so obviously before the paedophilia controversy. Awkward!

Watched some Youtube, which included a clip for the new Stereolab song, Transmuted Matter. The song is really good, especially the extended instrumental passage at the end. I’ll be taking possession of the new album soon via post. New ‘Lab after fifteen years, yay! I also saw a clip by a Japanese group called Band Maid. This was something I discovered in my Bocchi the Rock manga, because there was a panel that referenced this clip. It’s enjoyable JRock with a group of cute girls in maid outfits, of course.

Watched film Jarhead. This is one of the blurays Daryl gave me recently. I wanted to see it because it was not endorsed by the US Department of Defence. This mean’s it’s probably a bit more realistic than your average Hollywood war movie. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Swoff, a marine going to war in Kuwait for Operation Desert Storm. He’s a sniper who, in the end, never gets to shoot his rifle. The flyboys in their jets take all the glory. The early training scenes reminded me of Kubrik’s Full Metal Jacket, while the later desert scenes reminded me of Three Kings. There were some nice surreal touches, such as a horse covered in oil that appears to Swoff as he tracks through the fields. A briefing the fresh marines receive by the commandant makes it very clear the reasons they are there is for the oil. There’s one party-pooper in Swoff’s squad who insists on asking the political questions about why they are there, but he’s shouted down. It was an unusual film in that, apart from an early training scene, no one in Swoff’s unit actually dies, and the violence is to a minimum. I gave it three and a half stars on Letterboxd.

Watched the animated film Flow with my friends Lui and Lisa. It was a nice tale of a cat surviving a great flood in the jungle and of its survival with the help of other animals it joins with. There was no dialogue, no cute talking animals ala Disney, just a thoughtful soundtrack. It’s built around various vignettes showing the animals’ struggles, especially as they maintain their lives on the boat they have sequestered. A nice touch is how each of the animals takes turns in steering the boat’s rudder. The capybara seems the most chill and level-headed, but the cat is quite resourceful. Each of the animals seems to represent some aspect of humanity, from the lemur’s materialism, to the bird’s gentle authority. It’s a thoughtful, intriguing journey they go on with many lessons to tell of how we can get along, if we try. The background animation was great, but the main characters were sometimes roughly sketched in, lacking detail and texture.

Started reading Tori Amos’s book Resistance. It seems to be a book about how her music has been influenced by politics. She relates the story of being a fourteen year old girl and playing in a gay bar in Washington. The customers are mostly politicians who educate her about politics. I can see it’s gonna be a pretty quirky journey, and I’m here for it.

As I worked at Knox today I had a browse through J&B Hifi. I noticed they had season 2 of the To Your Eternity anime on bluray. I was tempted but I didn’t think enough of season 1 to follow it up. Even though they had a get one free deal, because I didn’t see anything else I fancied. I looked for copies of TV’s Castle for that season three I want, but they didn’t have any. I’ll probably get it cheap at an op shop, or maybe the library. They also had the recent album Wish You Hell by Red Velvet Wendy, which again, was tempting.

Borrowed manga of Your Name vols 1 and 2. Started reading Vol 1. It seems to diverge from the Makoto Shinkai film, featuring mainly new excerpts from the story of Mitsuha – sometimes when Taki is in her body.

This inspired another viewing of the film. There was a lot I’d forgotten about it, so it was good to refresh my memory. It’s part disaster movie, part body swap movie. I’d forgotten how much Mitsuha’s friends Tesshi and Saya featured in the story, for one. Then there’s the detail where Mitsuha goes to Tokyo and meets Taki, but he doesn’t recognise her because he only knows her three years in the future. I’m still a little confused about how Mitsuha and the townspeople of Itomori survive the second iteration of the comet’s landing. It looks like Mitsuha and her friends have not been able to do enough to divert the disaster, because her father will not cooperate. Anyway, it’s a great film about cosmic connections – or ‘Misubi’. I gave it four and a half stars on Letterboxd. It missed the full five stars because it’s a little convoluted and some of the details about Taki and Mitsuha’s body swapping don’t quite add up (like how did they not notice the three year discrepancy?). There’s also the problem of Taki feeling up Mitsuha’s boobs whenever he’s in her body. It’s played for laughs, but it’s definitely a ‘Japanese’ thing. I’ve done no research on it, so does that place featured in the film, Itomori, exist? If it does, it looks amazing. I imagine it has tourists all year round.

I had a listen to the audio I’d recorded of the Steve Kilbey concert and it sounds pretty good. I can definitely do something with this. Only problem was the format was m4A and I needed to convert it to WAV in order to edit it. Luckily, I found a good site called Freeconvert that did the job brilliantly – and for free. The internet is an amazing thing.

A film came across the work desk that inspired a borrowing. It was Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. It stars Emma Thompson as a lonely woman who enlists a male prostitute for a night. It’s an unusual premise, and role, but I’ll be interested to see how it plays out. It has the potential to be incredibly cringe, and I wonder how cringe can it go, and can I take it? I like how Emma looks on the cover artwork: vulnerable, awkward, and yes, a little bit hot. But I’m old.

I watched the film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. It was good, structured around a number of client sessions between the male prostitute Leo Grande’ and Emma Thompson’s character. She’s out to explore her sexuality, and maybe finally have an orgasm, after years of being with an unresponsive husband who recently died. It’s a very theatrical two-hander of a film, mostly featuring the two leads and a lot of dialogue. Some sex is definitely (but discreetly) had, but it’s mostly about the talk. All through it I couldn’t help wondering if Emma was wearing some kind of prosthetics to make her look more dowdy and a bit overweight. The final shots feature very sagging breasts, whereas in the scene previously, when she was having some wild sex with Leo, they looked downright perky. I suspect prosthetics or at least digital manipulation. It doesn’t matter in the end: it’s a very brave performance speaking to issues of body shame. It’s interesting how the woman needs reassurance from the male prostitute, whereas a man wouldn’t give a fuck. He’s paid for it, now he’s getting laid – and the way he looks doesn’t figure into it. He paid. End of story.

Here’s a quick update of the book Quarantine by Greg Egan I’ve started reading. There’s way too much quantum physics jargon but some very interesting concepts discussed. The story revolves around a giant shroud that’s covered our entire solar system by some alien species that shuts out the light from the stars. The assumption is that Earth has been quarantined for some reason from the rest of the universe. That’s pretty out there for starters. But now one theory has come up that suggests the reason why we’re being quarantined is because of our ability to collapse the quantum wave with (it turns out) our brains. It’s thought there are species out there that live within those super-positioned states and we’re essentially committing some kind of act of genocide upon them whenever we collapse the quantum state. Mind blowing!

I found a good new Youtube channel to subscribe to tonight. It’s NihonJohn, a channel that specialises in Japanese pop culture. I watched an episode about one of my favourite Jpop singers and anime voice artists, Nana Mizuki, then one about Nakata, the guy behind the band Perfume. The Nana ep was titled ‘Japan’s most famous Seiyuu singer’. That’s a person who sings anime theme songs. New Japanese word for me! There looks to be lot of other quirky episodes that I’ll wanna check out when I have the time.

I was scrolling through Twitter/X when I got the good news that Twice is finally releasing a new full album in July. It’s tentatively titled Four, because it’s the fourth album, duh, but the goss is it’s just a working title for now. The image that came with it was a bit of film of the members all wearing blue and sporting long black wigs. I have no idea what it means, but I’m ready for it.

On my flexi van run today my patron Lizzie lent me a copy of her bumper book version of the Tao Te Ching. It’s by Ralph Alan Dale and it’s an amazing compendium of information and references for the Lao Tzu book. It was a little bit thrust upon me by Lizzie, who’s been studying Taoism, but it’s a welcome book and I will give it some study, when I have time. But it’s definitely a ‘boomerang’.

Also on the van run my other patron at that stop, Michael, had a book he’d reserved, which I delivered to him. It was On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray. I looked at the blurb and this guy is a complete right-wing nutter. It suggests the problem with the Israel/Gaza conflict is ‘Western support of the Palestinian cause’. WTF? How much money is the US giving Hamas, as opposed to Israel? And Israel, a ‘beacon of progress’? Remind me, how many civilians have they murdered in Gaza so far? Have to admit, it was disappointing seeing my patron borrowing such trash. But I said not a word about this to him. Instead, we chatted up a storm about our usual favourite subjects – mainly music.

Oonagh at work today informed me about the Korean Cultural Festival that’s going on in Melbourne today and tomorrow. I looked at the schedule, which includes some Squid Game-themed attractions, and although I’ll miss most of it due to work, I could catch the Kpop idol performance and judging tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll go (no, I didn’t).

I watched the latest Twice Date series. The first one was Nayeon and Mina on what was called their Sushi Date. They mostly talked about the food, but they were very comfortable with each other. Mina recalled the time Nayeon showed up at her Misamo showcase in Japan and how much she appreciated that. After the ‘date’ they went to a special photo booth session called Public Not Public and had their photos taken in various mocked-up public places, like trains and elevators. It was a fun idea, with the two mugging for the cameras, and Nayeon particularly making some suggestive poses with Mina. In the elevator she lunged at Mina making it look like she was making an aggressive sexual advance. I suppose it was all a publicity stunt for this Public Not Public company with the usual promotional kickbacks. They’re probably paying for this series.

Afterwards, I was checking out Twitter/X and someone called Sana In Rollin put up a photo from the shoot that showed what looked like Nayeon going down on Mina in the train. Check the photo. I missed that in my initial viewing of the show. The replies were pretty funny, especially one that simply said ‘sushi date’. This naughty stuff almost never happens in Twice World, where almost everything they do is ‘above board’. Their songs aren’t even especially risque, with no profanity – unlike a lot of other Kpop artists. Well, there was that line in Moonlight Sunrise that sounded like ‘I need your cock right now’ (it was intended to be ‘I need you o’clock right now’). They’re good girls. Really.