Good Reads meta-data is 40 pages, rated 3.87 by 101 litizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Thoughtful.
Tagline: Abandon clichés all who read here.
A diva who was horribly disfigured and mutilated in a theatre fire, slowly is recovered, that is, remade into…? That is the question. On the one hand her brain has been placed in an artificial body, say like MurderBot as discussed elsewhere on this blog.
In that way her life was saved by the heroic efforts of a team of doctors and technicians, but now, how shall she/it live? That is another question.
A take on the mind/body problem, as well as personal identify and autonomy, especially for a woman. Some of the Good Reads reviewers, as usual, entirely miss the point.
A compelling if protracted story with an ending, happy or otherwise. I heard it commended by Gary Wolfe in a Wondrium lecture and sought it out. It took some seeking but I found it in a collection selling for $500 on Amazon and $5 on Abe Books.
Catherine Moore
Inspired by this reading I got another one of hers. To dodge the sexism of the age, she often wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett or Lawrence O’Donnell.
Good Reads meta-data is 240 pages, rated 3.33 by 823 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: Kabakon.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: The coconuts did it.
Setting – German New Guinea in 1906, where a retired Brit has gone to hide from his troubles, but mercifully we are spared his backstory.
Sweltering in the heat and humidity, swatting a long list of insects, Brit ponders the fate that brought him to this malarial shore, when a local German colonial official pays him a call. Oh, oh, has Official come about the creative writing he did on his residency application. No, but on that self-same application Brit said he had served as a military police officer in the Red Coats. That fact was not one of his lies. Official would like Brit to investigate, unofficially, a recent death on the island of Kabakon.
After the de rigueur hesitations, Brit complies to set off in the company of a liberated woman travel writer, and a minor colonial administrator along as his minder. Delicacy is required because the island is owned by a wealthy woman, a planter, who bought it outright from the German authorities long ago, and so is private property. Ergo the Brit is a surrogate for the Germans. The European residents who live on it pay her a rent and mind their own business. It is one of them who has died in circumstances that are cloudy.
Once enisled things get even more delicate because the islanders are vegetarians and nudists. Most are German but not all. Brit sees much sunburn some of it where the sun does not usually shine and forests of mosquito bite pustules on their bare flesh. The manly features of several of the men are fully described though these details are unlikely to figure in the plot. The women are not scrutinised to the same detail by our shy narrator. Yet he had to be told of the drastic steps two of the men have taken to leave behind the temptations of the flesh. Maybe he needs new glasses.
The dozen or so Kabakons are sun worshippers who live on hot air and coconuts with the occasional banana. They be heliotarians, fruitarians, and breatharians. What a trifecta. They also endure the sledge hammer sun, the monsoon rains, and the devouring disease-carrying insects. Sado-masocists in short.
There is a lot of manners and mores between the clothed and the unclothed, Germans and Brits but little detecting. The few natives mentioned are ciphers. Indeed, there is so little detecting I was left unsure what there might have been to detect.
There is an abrupt change of narrator in last chapter or two that confused me.
***
German holdings in the Pacific
I chose it for the exotic context of German colonialism. In the Pacific this empire included: German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, Nauru, the Mariana and Caroline Islands, and Samoa as well as concessions extorted from China, and some other rocks in the sea. (There were also more extensive holdings in Africa.) Kabakon is so singular it does not shed any ambient light on the other colonies.
I listened to it from Audible, which was sometimes inaudible on the street.
Good Reads meta-data is 263 pages, rated 4.06 by 5,039 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: Strine.
Verdict: She’ll always be Essie to me.
Tagline: The Honourable is at it again.
Miss Phryne Fisher puts the 1929 world to rights after an unpleasant discovery at a St Kilda funfair. Eventually, the piste leads her to the titular town. There is a great deal of preliminary padding of time and place and couture with many side- and backstories and little momentum through the three-quarter point but it does accelerate when finally she gets to Castlemaine.
She makes an inauspicious arrival bound and gagged in a flour sack. While thus restrained she concludes it took three men to kidnap her, the two who accosted her on the dark streets of Melbourne and another waiting in the the car to make the getaway. So the odds are three men to one against her. ‘About even then,’ she concludes and in due course she proves to be right. These men, stupid as they are, failed to remove the pistol from her silk-stocking holster, the knife concealed in her handmade shoe, or the sap in her hidden pocket. Such carelessness will have its reward.
By the time constabulary belatedly arrives she has overcome the villains, having coshed one, stabbed another, and drawn a bead on the third, or something like that.
We spent a day in Castlemaine a few years ago and found much to like in it, including das KaffeeHaus, the Buda Historic Home, and the regional Art Museum. I also bought some fine Murray Cod for dinner from ‘She Sells Sea Shells.’
Kerry Greenwood
These comments derive from listening to the Audible reading while on my Newtown patrols, morn and eve. At times the traffic, air, foot, and wheel, drowned out the sound, adding to the mystery.
IMDb meta-data is runtime 1h and 39m, of rated 5.3 by 3,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Iberian.
Verdict: Lugubrious
Tagline: Iberians in space!
In distant 2020 the first crewed multinational mission lands on Mars. Wallop! Caught in a sandstorm it makes a very bad landing. It takes the first 30 minutes or more to establish that point and something of the personalities, several of whom should never have been selected for the mission either because of temperament or what seems to be a lack of technical ability, as well as personal hygiene.
What follows is Lifeboat (1944) without Alfred Hitchcock’s direction or John Steinbeck’s screenplay. These five must wait two years for the low-bid manufacturer’s guaranteed road service vehicle to bring a new battery, which will arrive long after the life support in the lander has failed. And no, they cannot plant potatoes. See, I thought of that, too.
After that slow (read: boring) start it does gradually develop into a character study without the arrested development ‘shoot ‘em up’ of Hollywood, though also without the depth, complexity, and variety of Lifeboat.
There is a surprise in the last reel that undermines everything that has gone before. See it to believe it. The Mars on one of the Canary Islands has a surprise in store. But it is left unresolved.
Several of the players are Portuguese, though the production was Spanish, altogether a rarity, this is an Iberian science fiction movie. Oh, and the dialogue is dubbed, poorly, by high school students, or so much of it sounds.
GoodReads meta-data is 202 pages, rated 3.60 by 5 litizens.
Genre: Non-fiction; Species: History.
DNA: ANU.
Verdict: Read that.
Tagline: Feudalism remains.
The archipelago that comprises Fiji is a thousand nautical miles long with two hundred islands, some twenty of which are inhabited with a total population today of just under one million in Melanesia, as distinct from Polynesia (further east) and Micronesia (further north). Within these groups of ‘nesias’ (islands) there are cultural and racial similarities. Melanesians are more likely to have darker skins. ‘Poly-nesia’ means a lot of islands, while ‘Micro-nesia’ refers to small islands. Rather mixed lines of demarcation: pigment, area, and number. (‘Indonesia’ means ‘Indian islands.’)
These Pacific islanders are reputed to be descendants of daredevils who went rafting from Taiwan millennia ago.
Prior to the British arrival, Fijians divided into clans or tribes with chiefs and that has remained the primary level of social organisation. These tribes had conflicts among themselves, and occasionally pirated around nearby islands like Tonga, Noumea, Samoa, or Cook, which broadened the gene pool. Then Europeans arrived to trade first in copra (dried coconut) which releases oil if pressed. It was a fad as a luxury good in Europe.
Then came sugar cane to rival the West Indies, where blight threatened supply. That had two consequences. First, commercial interest grew, led by the CSR from Sydney, later including investor Frank Packer. Second, there came in train a demand for much cheap labour in the cane fields. This latter demand arose at a time of dislocation on the Indian subcontinent, where there was large scale internal migration to escape drought.
The result was an indentured servitude program recruiting Indians (men and women) to work in Fiji at a pittance (which was far more than they would have had in India). Estimates suggest as many as 30,000 in short order, and more later. Subsequently, the Fiji population at times has been about 50:50 between island Fijians and Indians with a smattering of others (Chinese, Kiwi, Māori, Strine, Tongan, Samoan, Brit). Per Wikipedia today the ratio is closer to 60:40.
During this colonial period, the British tried to devolve responsibility by negotiating with the Fijian chiefs about land and government. Hmm, but there were conflicts among the chiefs that hampered that. The chiefs preferred to deal with the Brits whom they regarded as equals, rather than the Indians whom they regarded as slaves in all but name. (I am going beyond the author in some of this interpretation.)
Here is what is interesting. When the Brits began withdrawing, they wanted to hand over to an elected government. The more recent example of this approach is Hong Kong. The Indians (though there were religious and caste differences among them, these were rinsed out by the Fijian waters) were keen on elections. Not the Fijians, who insisted that the chiefs nominate each other for seats in government. This mixed arrangement of half elected and half appointed was not going work very well but it lasted.
The Indians were very well organised (inspired by Gandhi) and got themselves elected with a mandate, whereas the chiefs’ purpose seemed to this cynic to be to hold onto their feudal entitlements. The differences and tensions between the two communities are deep seated.
With the proliferation of beet sugar, island cane sugar lost value, and tourism began to develop in the 1970s. Hence, our trip. We are the number one business for Fiji.
Derek Scarr
The author’s circumspection and concentration on description did put me in mind of ANU — privileged and complacent. It also made me conclude he was keeping the door open for a return visit to Fiji by not calling things as he saw them. Tricky doing that.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime for two episodes of 1h 45m each, rated 7.7 by 7,100 cineastes.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: West Germany.
Verdict: Prophetic.
Tagline: Unique.
At a reception sponsored by a state research institute Hero, while casually talking to an old acquaintance, turns his head to follow the progress of an elegant woman across the room, and when he turns back an instant later Acquaintance is gone in mid-sentence. Poof! Nowhere to be seen in the crowded room. Moreover, when Hero asks others about Acquaintance no one else admits to seeing him and others deny he exists. There is no one by that name in the institute or on the guest list. Worse, later he cannot find any record of any kind of his existence. He has become a man who never was.
The institute has created and runs an elaborate social simulation in lifelike virtual reality transmitted onto screens throughout the room. Its purpose is to model and assess the impact and consequences of social practices, programs, procedures, and policies. A few diehard SyFyians will have realised that the source is Neo’s favourite novel by Daniel Galouye Simulacron 3 (1964). In it one of the practices modelled is the banning of cigarette smoking. As an echo of that, smoking is much in evidence in this film.
The simulated world is complete in every detail and its Sim inhabitants think that they are living beings, with the exception of a few spies from the Institute who monitor, evaluate, and report upward. Ours is the upper world. So we think. Beware hubris!
Hero pursues the acquaintance who was and then wasn’t there down into the simulated world and learns…. Quite a lot. As always, Plato got there first as admitted by Hero. It is not often that Plato is mentioned in mass market entertainment.
It is a marvellous example of cinema, creating two worlds on a paltry budget. That is accomplished on, let us say, our surface world through the use of mirrors and glass in and through which images are fractured, reflected, reversed, all of which confuses the original with its images. The simulated world is shown mostly via flickering greyscale video on TV monitors, except when upper characters pass through the membrane of virtual reality to visit the Sims via headsets.
Did Neo ever see this? Bet he did.
It is far too long, and does seem to go round in circles at times, but well so be it. Consider that to be the scenic route. It certainly showcases its prescience about technology and its integration into society, though not the miniaturisation of electronics. The computers involved in this story are monumental.
Speaking of smoking, who can forget Hero lighting his cigarette using a Bic from a woman? See it to believe it. Those troubled by A.I. today had better not watch this film. Indeed, since 1972 it has seldom been seen. I saw it at a foreign film night screening in Montréal in my grad student days with some pals, and found it, well, strange. Then it disappeared. Only in the last decade has it been retrieved, remastered, and released. That is all to the good, but the subtitles were in such a small font I could not always read them in my home. My efforts to adjust the size failed.
It is of its time and place with heavy-handed sexism, and much masculine smoking and drinking. It also shows the director’s preoccupations. While the teutonic atmosphere is emphasised, it was in fact filmed in Paris, where the production costs at the time were much lower. There he meets Lemmy Caution!
It was one of the innumerable projects of that live-fast, die-young and leave an enormous body of work enfant terrible Rainer Fassbinder (1945-1982). I also watched the Making of video on the DVD to learn more about Fassbinder. What a prodigy.
Thinking about all this brought to mind an Outer Limits episode, Demon with a Glass Hand (1964), which I will try to locate.
Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life (2012).
Good Reads meta-data is 485 pages rated 3.74 by 168 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
DNA: Italia.
Verdict: Finely shifted
Tagline: Synergy of fact and fiction.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) aspired to greatness, beginning that quest by changing his name from ‘Durante’ to ‘Dante’ to imply a connection to a once great family name in Florence. This change is characteristic of the aspirations and method of the man.
The Guelph and Ghibelline dispute dominated social and political life in Dante’s time and place. While Florence was identified with the Guelph cause, occasionally there was a swing to the Ghibellines. A victorious sect would banish its enemies, seize their property, ransom its members, and depending on God’s will murder them en masse! Dante had no interest in this bloodbath but he could not ignore it. This conflict started in the 11th Century and continued for centuries, with neither a definitive beginning nor end.
It arose from the clash of secular and sectarian authority, that is, over who appointed bishops: the Pope (Guelphs) or the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). That doctrinal cleavage aggregated a great many other political, social, and personal motivations. Each of those unities had divisions with its ranks, for example, there were black and white stripes among the Guelphs. Regional and dynastic loyalties led to conflict among Ghibellines. And so on and on. It all seemed cataclysmic to the participants and it is meaningless to us, like so many murderous religious disputes.
Autobiographical references are to be found in all of Dante’s works, as per the custom of the time, and a systematic examination of these references indicates that they pad his resumé with fictions. Or as the author delicately puts its, Dante did not draw an exact line between fiction and fact. This penchant is most visible, of course, in the longest work where there is the largest number of such autobiographical selfies, the Commedia, where he meets many deceased relatives, friends, and mentors who were in fact no such thing. He claims many associations with people to bathe in their reflected glory borne from social status, poetic achievement, or civic heroism, who had nothing to do with him: including, it seems likely, Beatrice herself. To illustrate his free use of fiction, he peopled the Commedia with more than one person who was still alive, giving Dante the opportunity to pass his judgements on those people, which he certainly did, though not always consistently. On this inconsistency see below.
About this point I paused once again to ponder the parallels between Dante and Machiavelli. I put the question to Google AI on 7 July and got this response: ‘Both Dante and Machiavelli were Florentines living during a period of political and social upheaval. However, their responses to these challenges differed significantly, with Dante focusing on moral and religious ideals and Machiavelli prioritizing practical political strategies.’
Hmm, what underlies this anodyne generalisation is this. It refers only to their written work. In Dante’s case it was De Monarchia (1313) in which he concluded that a only universal monarch above and apart from all sectional, regional, sectarian division could bring and insure peace: Big Brother with a crown. Whereas in the Prince, Machiavelli described what he saw and tried to find patterns in the instances of politics he observed.
So far, well, so good, but there is more. In his life Machiavelli worked for a Republican government: his texts, including the Prince for those with eyes to see, shows that preference. He remained true to that conviction throughout his tenuous exile. (The story of writing the Prince for a prince and presenting it to him, is one of his elaborate jokes that has passed into reality by repetition, in my opinion, a minority one to be sure, but right all the same.)
In his own exile Dante behaved according to the stereotype of Machiavellian and Machiavellianism, currying favour by trimming, temporising, and tacking with the prevailing, local political winds. One day he was ardent Guelf, and a week later a born Ghibelline, then a born-again White Guelf, and so on. He did not trust to prayer alone but to his wit and wile to survive. This variation is shown in the Commedia where inconsistent judgements are rendered on the long journey. Inconsistent, yes, and at times deceitful as this biographer shows ever so delicately. Dante did all of this balancing on the ball of fortune in a world of confusion, conflict, and – some of the time – chaos while living by the grace and favour of hosts.
And Exhibit B is that Dante’s name and the Commedia went onto the Papal Index, just like Machiavelli. That was in retaliation for all those popes whom he had sent to Hell!
Yet Dante’s name has not entered the lexicon as an adjective or noun for deceit, dissimulation, or duplicity. Why is that? When you can answer that question, let me know.
The point is not to condemn Dante’s survival instinct, but to highlight the opprobrium visited on the blameless Machiavelli. By the way, as far I can tell, Machiavelli does not mention Dante’s De Monarchia in his History of Florence, though he does mention the man himself, his trials and tribulations. Nor does he mention Dante at all in The Prince. This vacuum has generated a speculative literature in which Machiavelli’s silence is made to speak! On that, perhaps, more another time.
For some reason in the mysteries of little grey cells pondering this conundrum brought to mind Gerald Durrell’s description of a jellyfish as a process. The fish is itself 95% water and it is immersed in water. It is but 5% out of that water. To think of it as separate from water is to misconceive it entirely. It is rather like abstracting a dancer from the dance, leaving only footsteps on the stage. Something like this applies to Machiavelli for whom politics was a process and abstracting from it is a distortion. Think about that. I know I will.
Returning to the poet, none of his personal peccadilloes. proclivities, and penchants, detracts a single iota from the Commedia; its grandeur is sui generis and self evident. We heard a translated reading from Paradise a few years ago, in of all places, Redfern, and were transported to another place. Mind you the reader had a voice of smoked honey that made it easy to listen. The translation was by John Ciardi whom I met years ago at another poetry reading.
This biography is an exemplar in the careful, systematic, and critical way it pieces together the story of Dante’s life. That makes the going slow, true, but also, and more importantly, sure. However, it lacks a final summation chapter. It is weighted to his activities more than his creativity, and perhaps that is why the abrupt ending. Still I would have liked to learn more about, e.g., how the Commedia got on the Librorum Prohibitorum of forbidden books. And more about that adjective Divina, which he did not use.
Marco Santagata
This reading reminded me I read a krimi some time ago that features Dante himself in his role as Florentine Prior, a kind of magistrate. There are several in this series and I will read another in due course.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1h 24m, rated 5.4 by 9,100 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Incomprehensible.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Huh?
Tagline: Look, Ma, no … point.
IMDb summary: ‘The year 2039. Captain Lee Miller is a lone astronaut stationed aboard the International Space Station. During downtime, he reads the journal of Captain Lee Briggs, a soldier during the American Civil War. Abruptly, contact with Earth goes dead and Miller is left alone aboard the space station.’
It seems men keep journals and women keep diaries. Let’s think about that some other time.
Ingenious and pointless, like the title.
It opens with a long and puzzling Civil War battle (re-enactment) and then, gets even muddier. The date 4 June 1864 is specified, to no purpose it seemed within my attention span.
Astronaut Robinson Crusoe marooned in space is a well worn trope, and every time I have seen it, starting with Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) it is, well … boring. Without a doubt the prize for most boring instance to date within my ken goes to Magellan (2017), as discussed elsewhere on this blog. This one gets a dishonourable mention.
Die Schlüssel zur Freiheit (2025) The Keys to Freedom
Not on IMDb: runtime 5m.
Wim Wenders narrates a brief meditation of war and peace occasioned by the anniversary of the German surrender in a school room at Rheims France on 6 May 1945. It is thoughtful, moody, quiet, measured, and altogether a relief from contemporary insanity.
The film is on You Tube and elsewhere. An insightful review can be found in the NYT.
By the way that surrender was re-enacted a week later in Berlin with the Soviets presiding. That explains a scene I saw in a film awhile ago and questioned. Answered.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m, rated 6.4 by 38,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: Claim jumpers abound.
Gold rush among the stars. A teenage girl and her father prospect for rare minerals in the far reaches of the galaxy on a rainforest planet and encounter some unpleasant types wearing masks. Shoot-outs follow, and Randolph Scott does not ride to the rescue. More’s the pity. Also absent is a leathery old timer chewing tobacco in this space oater.
The twist is that, oops spoiler, the girl grows up quickly in this environment. Remember Kim Darby? I do.
The girl or her nemesis are in nearly every scene and carrying the film as far as it is carried. The second half becomes clichéd, some might say. Well, I did.
The setting is effective and the two principals are committed to their parts, unlike some of others who seem to find the whole thing boring. Oh, maybe that was me.
A few years earlier, It was preceded by a very short short of the same name on DUST as proof of concept to raise the money for this effort. Full marks for wit, energy, and initiative.
