Poem: Lava Flow (2012)

Lava Flow

Myriad shades of black

Ramble under a magic-marker sapphire sky

With delusions of motion,

Like the false current

Of a flash-frozen river.

Rolling hellish mounds

Of rippling charcoal seem to stream

Beneath the blue.

Don’t believe the prehistoric vastness

Of this brittle wasteland,

The dinosaur roar

Of ocean waves

Breaking beyond the horizon.

A mere twenty years ago,

This was palm trees and fruit blossoms and sandy island coast.

All that summer-vacation lushness

Was consumed

By the liquid fury

Crawling down from the mountain

Where the god glows at night.

It oozed, cooled, and crystallized

Into ossified sable,

Burying everything the landscape knew.

Follow the twisting red-sand path

Over the fractured, flowing expanse,

Seeking the solid places

Where the earth won’t fissure

Under your feet.

Follow the crashing

Of glass water cracking,

Pummeling the newly ancient ground

And grinding the god’s rage

Into sand once more.

There, an infant beach –

Fine as flour,

Darker than soot –

Lays on the bones

Of the once-was shore.

It hugs the sun while it can,

Knowing that, one day,

Fresh orange ire will tumble again,

And a dusky new barrenness

Will swallow it whole.

Last Four Shorts: Fatty Arbuckle & Buster Keaton

Rounding off Buster Keaton’s early films with Fatty Arbuckle, these knockabout comedies aren’t the best Arbuckle-Keaton shorts (in my opinion,) but there’s always fun stuff to be had.  And honestly, it’s just interesting to see Buster doing silent slapstick in films that aren’t his. 

The Rough House (1917)

It’s just tons of fighting, with and without food, over all sorts of things.  Oh, and fire.  Not much plot to describe, so I’ll hit on noteworthy gags.  Fatty tries to put out a fire with a teacup, and fun camera trickery lets him roll a full service out of a table cloth.  And, for a Fatty Did It First, he does the dancing bread-roll routine later popularized by Chaplin (and, much later, Benny & Joon.)  Buster is a hardworking bit player, playing a few small roles and taking lots of hard licks.

Best Buster Bit:  While playing a cop, Buster and his cohorts get knocked down when they run into a guy on their way out of the station.  The others pick themselves up and dash off, but the 5’5” Buster sticks around to straight-up kick the guy in the face – from a dead stop, I might add.

Oh Doctor! (1917)

Fatty plays a (married) doctor who gets in trouble when he falls for another woman with a no-good boyfriend.  Buster, hilariously, in Fatty’s son – hilarious because he plays him as a legitimate tyke, in short pants and everything.  Although, since Buster spent his childhood mimicking his dad, maybe it’s fitting that he played a child in adulthood.

Best Buster Bit:  Fatty pushes Buster into a table, over which he somersaults backwards and lands in a chair.  When the camera cuts back to him from Fatty no more than a few seconds later, he’s casually lounging with his legs crossed, his feet on the table, and a book in hand.

Good Night, Nurse! (1918)

Fatty is sent to a hospital to be cured of his drinking.  His doctor, Buster plays, instills confidence as he roams about in a blood-spattered coat while brandishing a meat cleaver.  Fatty’s attempts to bust out include disguising himself as a nurse, for whom Buster naturally falls.

Best Buster Bit:  Buster’s shy flirtations with “Nurse” Fatty are fantastic, especially when Fatty gets overenthusiastic with the playful nudging and sends him literally head-over-heels.

The Hayseed (1919)

This one’s fairly aimless.  Fatty and Buster work at a general store, and as usual, Fatty is competing with another guy over a girl.  He does, however, come up with one of the more creative ways I’ve seen for measuring a girl’s ring finger.

Best Buster Bit:  As Fatty spins his girl at the village dance with her legs in the air, he spins her right into Buster, knocking him on his back.

A Few Words on New Who Regeneration Episodes

In Who, endings are a big deal.  A regeneration episode isn’t as crucial as the one directly following it (the first outing of a new Doctor is huge,) but between the show’s longevity and enormous fan devotion, a proper farewell is paramount.  Unfortunately, I feel new Who gets so caught up in this importance that the finales often fall short because of how hard they try to be the goodbye-to-end-all-goodbyes.  (Spoilers for Nine, Ten, and Eleven’s final episodes.)

Nine’s regeneration is my favorite by far.  “The Parting of the Ways” has some definite too-muchness – there are billions of Daleks, Jack is brought back from the dead (before Rory made it commonplace,) and Rose gains goddess-like powers – but it’s not as overwrought as the later finales.  First, it takes time out for character moments, like Jack’s goodbye to the others and the death of Lynda, and while the Bad Wolf is enormous and deus ex machin-y, Rose’s connection with the Doctor grounds it.  It also helps that it’s not framed as a Big Important Regeneration.  It’s not prefaced by prophecies or This is the End anvils.  An unspoiled fan wouldn’t know it was a regeneration episode until it actually happens.  And the scene itself is sublime.  It’s so perfect, with the Doctor’s desperation to hold it back as he half-explains what’s coming to a bewildered Rose.  And then, his final line – after all the guilt and grief, he quietly states that he really was fantastic, and then that wonderful smile right at the end.  That’s how you write a regeneration.

By contrast, Ten’s last episode is an object lesson in everything wrong with RTD-era Who.  “The End of Time” is the Biggest Deal in the History of Ever, with returning Time Lords, returning Gallifrey, impossible choices, all-but-literal gnashing of teeth, and probable set-reconstruction from all the devoured scenery.  It’s a bombastic embarrassment with the stakes ratcheted up to the stratosphere and no sense of when to quit.  It’s littered with discussions about the Doctor’s impending death, and when he thinks he’s escaped the Big Bad Prophecy, only to realize he’ll have to die to save Wilf, his tantrum really sours me on Ten.  It’s like, look – the guy isn’t asking you to save him; in fact, he’s telling you just to leave him because he wants you to live.  If you’re gonna save him, don’t whine about how unfair it is and make him feel like a jerk for “taking” your life from you.  That’s not something I should be thinking about a Doctor in his last moments.  Ten may not have wanted to go, but after this finale, I was certainly ready to move on.

Which leaves us with Eleven.  “The Time of the Doctor” isn’t as bad, but it’s nowhere near what he deserves.  It’s super Moffaty, tossing every plot/monster Eleven ever had in a blender and ending up with a story that makes almost no sense.  There’s also Moffat’s penchant for being the showrunner with the mostest – he doesn’t go BIG!!! the same way that RTD does, but of course he added an extra Doctor for the 50^th anniversary and revealed here that Ten point Five counts as a regeneration, so he gets to be the one to address the 12-regeneration limit, and his Doctor lives longer than any other.  90% of the episode is an ego trip instead of a goodbye to a great Doctor.  That said, although the regeneration is dragged out far too long, Eleven’s last moments are lovely.  I love his ragged weariness, the striking vision of Amy at the end, and the gentle way he tries to reassure and prepare Clara.  His final speech is a knockout that gains back some of the good will lost by the preceding mess and, as with Nine, we see Eleven going out with grace.

So what’s with Who?  One out of three isn’t a good track record, especially for something so important.  Who, stop trying to write Events! and start writing good, emotional endings.

Relationship Spotlight: Will Graham & Hannibal Lector (Hannibal)

There’s still a couple months before Hannibal returns for its third season, but it’s never too early to write about this gorgeous, horrific show (not many series could fit both those adjectives in equal measure – Hannibal’s definitely a rare breed.)  The subject of today’s post is, of course, the most compelling reason to watch the show:  the twisted, twisted relationship between psychologically-fragile FBI profiler Will Graham and Hannibal Lector, his psychiatrist who possibly steps a smidgeon outside normal ethical practice (I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers.)

Despite the deafening alarm bells of “Run, Will – he’s a cannibal!!” dramatic irony, it’s impressive just how engrossing Will and Hannibal’s relationship is.  The irony is there, naturally.  The man who can dexterously place himself in the mind of any killer can’t see the killer sitting across from him, Hannibal’s position gives him access to all manner of FBI intel, and it’s an obvious exercise in disgust every time he invites Will over for a sumptuous dinner of human flesh.  With our insight as viewers into Hannibal’s blatant insidiousness, it would be easy just to focus on this side of things, but the series offers so much more to dig into.

In Will’s sessions with Hannibal, it’s clear that the not-so-good doctor isn’t just a murderous foodie with a taste for his own kind.  His gas-lighting manipulations are almost like another kind of cannibalism.  He consumes Will by breaking him down piece by piece, making him question everything he thinks he knows.  Part of it is utilitarian – Will is an expert with uncanny abilities, and since he’s the person most likely to get wise to Hannibal’s unsavory habits, it behooves Hannibal to throw him off his game.  However, practicality is only the tip of the iceberg.  Really, Hannibal plays with Will’s mind because he wants to.  He deceives, disorients, and dominates Will, pushing him just to see when he’ll break.  It’s absolutely sick, and it really says something that, for a character who literally kills people and eats them, this is what makes my skin crawl the most in relation to Hannibal.  At the same time, though, I like how much it hammers home his sociopathy.  Destroying Will is nothing to him because he honestly doesn’t care – it’s a necessity, or an experiment, or a game, and Will is just a thing Hannibal can use.

As part of Hannibal’s subjection of Will, he seeks to isolate him from everyone else.  Gradually, by degrees, he alienates Will from his coworkers and his few friends, wanting to position himself as the only one Will relies on.  This has both a tactical motivation – it leaves no one to help Will – and a sinister one – it makes his control of Will more complete.  Beyond that, Hannibal feels a perverse attachment to Will.  He’s fascinated by Will’s empathy disorder, which allows him to fully identify with anyone.  Not only is it the polar opposite of Hannibal’s pathology, which disallows empathy entirely, but he’s taken with the idea of Will’s dark potential.  Will can step into a killer’s head the way other people step into a room, and if Hannibal just applies the right pressure, perhaps he could be trapped there.  Through Will, Hannibal tries in part to create a playmate for himself, and he considers Will a friend in a way that only a sociopath can.  He “cares” for Will much like someone would care for a prized possession; Will is someone he owns, and any “sadness” (or facsimile thereof) that Hannibal feels over problems in their “friendship” is self-centered distress at the loss of his toy.  I like this, too – the show demonstrates that Hannibal isn’t an automaton without suggesting that he’s anything less than utterly vile.  “Connecting” with someone in his distorted way doesn’t make him salvageable.  Instead, when we see how he warps it, it only serves to highlight how despicable he really is.