Ran

Yeah, excellent episode, I love the delving into the completely different ways of looking at things. Fuji is to some degree very unhappy to be consort to Blackthorne... but when they're arguing after Buntaro abuses Mariko, and Mariko tells her there's nothing to dishonor in the Anjin's house, you can see that at the same time there's a sting to that because she was consoling herself somewhat that at least he was hatamoto and held in favor by Toranaga -- but it's not real honor or title, it's illusory, simply a way to hold on to the foreign pilot. Torenaga's rueful laugh when Blackthorne offers Fuji's father's swords to him, especially when we've since learned their actual origin as something purchased off some drunken samurai to tell Fuji a pretty story about how brave her coward of a father was, was terrific. Also, LInda remarked that she'd never seen a landslide depicted on screen like that before, and I agree -- how often do we actually see landslides on shows? That was genuinely terrifying, especially with the VFX showing trees sliding down the mountainside.

The 334th Fighter Group was based in England and escorted bomber groups in Mustangs on the Berlin raid featured in episode 7, and their planes had red noses (fairly common for American fighters, that) and also red tail markings. So I suspect that's what was shown, or at least intended to be shown.

This was referring to the scene with Croz and crew not being able to get their gear when they were supposed to be wheels up in a few minutes, and he kicked in the door so they could get at it. Then he went and shoved the guy who was in charge of the equipment into his food in front of everyone. Think that was the previous episode. I definitely think that I would have gone with splitting time for the whole show between the 100th and the Tuskegee Airmen, and then having them finally meet up as they did when they were introduced, finally given P-51s to fly.

Some of it looks pretty cool. Some of it makes me a little sad. I was not a fan of the prequel Jedi/sith wire-fu gymnastics, and they're doubling and tripling down. At the same time, you know, I do love good wuxia and they are obviously borrowing its choreography language here such as the masked woman sliding back dramatically when Force pushed. It's also great to see multiple Jedi working together and investigating things.

Funnily enough, just the other day I got the 431 issue on my own phone (Google Pixel 6a) as well. I cleared cookies and cache and it sorted out. I will make more attempts to see if we can improve the situation further.

Eh, Backdraft was pretty well-regarded at the time, as I recall. I certainly had no problem with him in it, his faults didn't really seem to matter much given the form of the thriller and the cast around him. But YMMV.

Very different thing, but just as good, I agree. Lanthimos and Stone are an incredible team.

Okay, folks, so far I've seen no issues and the server is now steady, so I think we're fine to say that you can now work on this wiki. Do let me know if there are any issues with things like uploading images, getting thumbnails made, etc.

Quick note, folks, we are testing moving the wiki to a brand new server. The DB is up to date through the 16th, but any changes made after that may be lost ATM. Apologies for that. I would suggest not doing much work until I give the all clear. Hammering out some issues still. ETA: Also, those who make family trees and maps and such which uses specialized extensions, if you can poke around and see if those still seem to be looking right, let me know. And any other issues, let me know!

Having recently watched Kore-eda's Monster, I saw that he had directed a series for Netflix called The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, which seemed intriguing. It was not entirely what I expected, but was actually even more interesting. First, it's very much a slice-of-life, low drama show [ETA: Just learned it's based on a manga, Kiyo in Kyoto], but the setting is what's interesting. Two 16-year-old girls, Kiyo and Sumire, are best friends who set out from their home (Aomori, a city in northern Japan) for Kyoto in hopes of becoming maiko, apprentice geisha. Kyoto prides itself as the center of traditional Japanese culture, and getting a glimpse into the lives of maiko and geiko (the regional term for geisha in Kyoto) was really unexpectedly fascinating. There's a lot of details that I would never have realized. A small one is the fact that two men, father and son, seem to have some special relationship with Saku House (the yakata, apprentice house) that appears to be a family tradition based on a joke that the father's own father had been doing the same sort of work. They are handymen, but they also help the maiko dress in their elaborate kimonos on certain occasions, which I wouldn't have expected. And makanai, the title of the show, is a term for the custom of making a daily meal for staff (or in this case the residents of the yakata) rather than for customers. Kiyo turns out to have no talent for being a maiko, but is a first-rate cook and loves nothing more than to be in the kitchen, so despite her youth she ends up becoming the makanai for the house. I mean, I need to emphasize, it's a slice of life show. Stakes are low. No one ever raises their voice in anything like anger. But it's pretty neat to get a look into Japanese traditional culture, and the performances are sweet and gentle. It's a nice way to while away the time from heavier stuff. (Saku House is associated with the provinces leading geiko, Momoko (playd by the striking Ai Hashimoto). Kore-eda and his writers have fun with her, as we soon learn she's a fanatic for zombie films with a bunch of zombie paraphanelia in her apartment, where she plays Splatoon with her erstwhile boyfriend who'd like to be more than that... but the life of geiko is very tradition bound, and if you marry or have a child, you have to leave the profession; this is one of the aspects of the show that adds a little tension... but just a little, as characters are not given to making dramatic, precipitous decisions.) Beyond that, Netflix also added Ford vs. Ferrari, which I've never seen before. What can I say? It's good! Really professionally directed and composed, and Damon and especially Bale are great. As I understand it, a part of the film -- when Ford courts Ferrari -- is seen from the other perspective in Michael Mann's Ferrari. And finally, as it appears on a bunch of indie best of lists, I checked out Passages from director Ira Sachs, the story primarily of Tomas, a gay married film director who is one of the most incredibly malignant narcissists ever put to screen. Played by Franz Rogowski, Tomas ruins his relationship with his husband (played by the ever-wonderful Ben Whishaw) when he has a one night stand with a woman (played by Adele Exarchopoulos), and then can't help himself but going back for more as it strains the relationship to the breaking point. And then... well, he wants his cake and he wants to eat it too, and proceeds to cause chaos in everyone's lives as he tries to get everything that he wants without any seeming genuine care or, even, understanding of what the people he's screwing (quite literally) are thinking or feeling.

Sneak peek for X-Men '97:

The essence of what happens in the end is the same in the show as in the book, as I understand, but

The animation wasn't to a high standard, but as someone who was reading the comics from around the time the cartoon came out, it was really cool to see familiar storylines play out on the screen. They drew in particular from the Claremont era, and also the massive relaunch under Jim Lee, so you get characters like Omega Red showing up. That was, at the time, pretty neat. That said, Batman: The Animated Series started airing the same year, and it absolutely trounced X-Men on pretty much all levels -- animation, design, story, voice acting, writing. Spectacular cartoon. Really looking forward to the new Bruce Timm-led Batman: Caped Crusader. Hopefully it'll be out sometime this year.

Last month, I watched William Friedkin's Sorcerer for the first time, and thought it was pretty incredible. By some happenstance, an acquaintance mentioned he was going to rewatch To Live and Die in L.A., a 1985 neo-noir from Friedkin that a lot of people say was influenced aesthetically by Miami Vice. Regardless, I decided to check it out as well, never having seen it before... and man, it's actually pretty incredible. The script is a little so-so on the dialog level, but the sheer cynicism of it, especially in the final minutes, is breathtaking. Also, a phenomenal car chase sequence, which I had to look up and has apparently been listed on a lot of "best car chase" lists over the years alongside Friedkin's own The French Connection. William Petersen plays a Secret Service agent by the name of Richard Chance, an amoral man with a deathwish who'll do anything to get his target, including stepping on the wrong side of the law. He's after Rick Masters, played by Willem Dafoe in one of his biggest roles to date, a con turned noteworthy artist... who also dabbles in counterfeiting US currency. There's lots of violence, there's sex, there's unlike partnerships, moral dilemmas, and more. Stylish as hell, too, of course. I'm not sure if Miami Vice was really an influence or if it was just the mid-80s and Friedkin was adapting to the styles and forms. If you have not seen it, do not read the spoilers:

What do users care about the ownership of the company? What special love are they supposed to have for ByteDance? I would suggest they have none. I would also suggest that the idea that the algorithm weights towards CCP talking points (as Yglesias anecdotally shows when he searched "Ugyhur") is concerning. Now, if the idea is that rather than sell TikTok will simply leave the US market... well, I think Yglesias is right, people will bitch and then they'll move on to the TikTok-alikes from Meta or whoever. Moreover, I would say that the refusal to divest and choice to leave the US market kind of proves the point that China sees a big propaganda upside on Chinese ownership of the company and would rather leave the market than let go of its control. And to be clear, if they leave the US market rather than sell, the EU is almost certainly going to make similar demands, and presumably ByteDance will then leave the EU market as well. The US would not allow Meta to become majoirty-owned by China or Russia. It wouldn't allow X to be.

Yeah, they're not trying to shut down TikTok, they're just trying to mandate that it no longer be owned by a Chinese company. I liked Matthew Yglesias's analogy in a recent post at Slow Boring: Also, worth noting that TikTok is banned in China. So they can't say they're not going to let it out of Chinese hands because then the US will use it to aim propaganda at and gather data on Chinese users.

Baffling. Anyone else?

You shouldn't have her leaping off of great heights or scaling walls, repeatedly doing things that have sharp stops and turns, sure, but long walks at her own pace are absolutely fine. We've taken to running Lancelot (the most energetic boxer we've ever ownedf) on a treadmill for half an hour at a steady pace pretty much daily on top of walks, training, his play with Winter, etc., and it really helps at times to take the edge off. Training for obedience and doing exercises as well that make her use her brain can also be very tiring for a dog -- scent work especially, making her really use her nose. It's hard to do every day, for sure, but it might be worth looking into some of those dog puzzles that offer treats and such, something for her to work on, as a way of passively getting her some added stimulation. She will no doubt have a great desire to chew on things still . We recently bought some Nylabone toys and Lancelot, who has a very strong drive to chew on stuff, will often settle for that until he's tired of it, and he's less destructive than he was (have some rather chewed up plastic storage boxes from earlier on). And while crating is not something I've ever done and don't think is necessary... blocking the dog off into a less sensitive part of the house might be good. Do you have any sense of what the other dogs are doing when she decides to do this? Is she trying to play with them and when they refuse she turns to making her own fun? Or is she perhaps acting out in part out of anxiety? Does she show much distress when you leave, as compared to the other dogs?

I don't think he's volunteering for that job again any time soon.

It starts well, has some good skewerings of the publishing world throughout, but it also leans a lot on family drama which is well-written but nothing you haven't seen before. It's elevated by the performances. ETA: Also, last night Netflix released To Kill a Tiger, one of the Oscar-nominated documentaries. It covers the events following the gang-rape of a 13-year-old girl in a rural rice farming community in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India. Her father and mother determine to take it to the police, with the support of a women's organization named the Srijan Foundation that advocates the law being used to deal with these cases. The problem is that in these rural communities, the usual preference is to handle it internally, and of course the natural suggestion is that the girl is then married to one of her rapists. The family's refusal leads to incredible pressure, and it highlights the fact that their life is lived communally, and being shut out of the social life of the village also means losing out on the communal aid, which can make things incredibly difficult. We follow the case all the way to a conclusion, and I have to admire the young girl for her bravery (she personally reviewed the documentary and agreed to let them release it) and that of her family. The coda at the end shows that their determination seems to have had an effect in their native state, as more women and girls became willing to come forward cases to the courts.

Ah, so they have the rumpnissar! Smart to leave them right to the end. Linda said there'd be riots in the streets if they left them out of this. Some of this was filmed like 10 minutes away at Bohus Fortress.

Still haven't gotten to the second half of Sandman, myself. I think I felt some trepidation about how The Doll's House was going to be adapted, but we'll get around to it eventually.

Oppenheimer has very well secured its place as one of the greatest biopics ever made, and will be remembered as such. I think Zone of Interest is another A+ film that will stand the test of time. Barbie is not going to be soon forgotten, either, and will be one of those films that mothers will be showing to their daughters years down the line. I'd say Poor Things will be remembered as Yorgos Lanthimos's best film (unless and until he ends up making something better, I suppose). Those are the four unequivocal A films for me. Past Lives I've a special place for, but it's a first for Song and I suspect she'll be making even better movies down the road. ETA: Now, to put it another way, which of these films will eventually end up in the Sight and Sound 250 greatest films? Zone of Interest seems a given to me and I'll be shocked if it's not there a decade from now. Oppenheimer, maybe, but it may take a couple of decades of distance. Ditto Poor Things, and that depending on Lanthimos's further career. But I suppose I can't imagine Barbie or Past Lives will.

I'm a little sad that we haven't glimpsed a Me 262 so far. This show definitely has the same problem of The Pacific, in that the story is so split-up, so it's not just following one group of guys through the whole of the war. But it's very competently done, and some of the air battle sequences have been pretty bracing.

I assumed it was some sort of Norman French name, but no, it's rooted in Old English but perhaps with Norman French orthography. maybe in how it ended up trying to fit the original Anglo-Saxon, Ceolmundleah, which meant "Ceolmund's clearing", Ceolmund being a personal name. Also, discovered that Cholmondeley is pronunced... as Chumley? Those always fascinate me.