Relationship Spotlight: The Clones (Orphan Black)

Even if I just focus on the main players, today’s posts definitely highlights more characters than I ever have in a single Relationship Spotlight before.  If you’re wondering what spurs me to attempt such an undertaking, I refer you to the picture above.  I’m pretty sure there are few problems which can’t be solved with “clone dance party.”  (Some spoilers ahead.)

There’s a lot to love about Orphan Black, but without a doubt, my favorite part of the show is the assortment of ever-growing relationships between the sestras.  For most of them, their lives were only recently upended by the realization of what they are.  They used to glide heedlessly through what they assumed was an ordinary existence:  soccer moms and students, convicts and cops.  Then, each of them experienced a total paradigm shift when they discovered that they’re parts of a top-secret, highly-unsanctioned human cloning experiment.  Shadowy eyes are watching them, nefarious groups wish them harm, their DNA is augmented by a synthesized patent sequence, and they find a mysterious illness worming its way through their genes.  That’s far too much for any one person to process and carry alone – no wonder they turn to the only people who can understand what they’re going through.

Forged together in the fire of what must seem like an insane sci-fi story, the sisters cling to one another.  The frequent meet-ups, phone calls, and Skype sessions go beyond their shared goal of sorting through the many questions that surround them.  Sure, Sarah is good at sneaking around and unearthing secrets, Helena can hold her own in any fight, and Cosima knows her way around a laboratory, but it’s so much more than that.  Sarah will pose as Alison to get her out of a bind of her own doing, who will in turn shoo her husband and kids out of the house so she’s ready to fight alongside Sarah if she’s needed.  When Cosima starts succumbing to the illness that threatens them, the others will do whatever’s needed to help her.  There are plenty of characters who will go to extreme lengths for one another, of course – the clones aren’t alone in that regard.  What makes their relationships stand out more is their depth coupled with the relative youth of their associations.  Less than a year out, and their concern for each other trumps basically anything else.  Their sisters come before romantic partners, before old allegiances, before work, and before personal safety.  Sarah falls out hard with Mrs. S when it comes out that S sold out Helena, and Cosima makes it clear to Delphine that if she puts Dyad ahead of Cosima’s sisters, they’re done.

The fact that they’re not just sisters but clones makes their bonds go deeper even aside from all the sci-fi craziness happening to them.  Although each woman is so different, to some extent, she regards all of the others on some level as extensions of herself.  It’s why Helena, Alison, Cosima, and Rachel almost feel like Kira is, not just Sarah’s daughter, but theirs, too.  It’s why Felix and Mrs. S. have taken them all in as something of a surrogate family.  It’s why, despite Helena and Rachel’s sins against their own, none of the others can bring themselves to take either out.  Helena is being brought closer and closer to the fold, and her tentative relationships with her sestras is helping to cut through her destructive programming at the hands of the Prolethians.  And while Rachel has wreaked all kinds of detached havoc on their lives, I think there’s a part of her, somewhere (very deeply buried,) that longs for the same, to have the kind of family that the other clones have found in each other.  The show can get bogged down in its ever-evolving mythology, but when it focuses on the women at the heart of the series, it hits home every time.

Daredevil (2015-Present)

After a shaky start with the first episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel has definitely gotten the hang of this TV business.  For Marvel shows, I still prefer Agent Carter, because awesomeness, but Daredevil, the first of several Marvel properties to debut on Netflix this year, is another knockout for the brand.  (It’s also worlds better than the 2003 pre-MCU movie, but it wouldn’t have taken much to manage that.)

In a universe with super serums and gods from other planets, Matt Murdock got his powers the old-fashioned way:  being exposed to nuclear waste during a childhood accident.  The incident blinded him, but it boosted his other senses to superhuman levels.  He can eavesdrop on conversations blocks away and hear a lie in someone’s changing heartbeat, he knows how recently someone fired a gun from the smell of the residue on their hands, and put together, his abilities create a pretty thorough impression of the world around him.  Fueled by his laundry list of issues, which range from Catholic guilt to an inability to block out the suffering he hears all over Hell’s Kitchen, Matt begins to head down the vigilante route.  By day, he’s an ethical lawyer in a fledgling practice, and by night, he serves beat-downs to gangsters and lowlifes.

Is it a little eye-rolling that a blind man’s power is super-heightened senses?  Of course – when are we going to get a disabled superhero whose power in no way cancels out their disability?  (I vote for pyrokinesis.  That’s always a good one.)  Still, I like the inventive ways the show uses Matt’s abilities.  It’s far more varied and interesting than the 2003 movie, which spends most of its time showing us how Matt “sees” echolocation-style.  The show also really demonstrates how Matt’s abilities do more than just put him on a level playing field with his sighted adversaries; like any superhero, able-bodied or otherwise, he’s legitimately “super.”

Additionally, Matt more than earns his moniker.  I love the way we see how reckless he is, how he barrels into hugely dangerous situations without any sort of armor or protection, and how much punishment he lets his body take before retreating.  The action is both impressive and brutal, a lot grittier than the typical Marvel fare.  Likewise, the story goes to some pretty dark places, in the plot as well as in Matt’s personal journey as a character. 

Charlie Cox, who I saw earlier this year in The Theory of Everything, does a nice job as Matt, skillfully driving home the “lone wolf with a death wish” angle.  Vincent D’Onofrio joins the proceedings as Matt’s chief antagonist, and Rosario Dawson has a decent recurring role.  The real revelation for me, though, is Elden Henson as Matt’s legal partner Foggy.  That’s right, the former Bash Brother from The Mighty Ducks is just fantastic.  Right from the pilot, when he’s not-so-subtly trying to turn Matt off of the pretty woman Foggy is after, his delivery of, “And she kinda told me she thinks blind people are ‘God’s mistake?’” makes me love him forever. 

Nitpick, though – why does no one mention the fact that Daredevil’s mask doesn’t have eyeholes?  We know why, obviously, but nobody wonders what’s up with that?

Warnings

Some fairly serious violence, dark themes, swearing, drinking and drug use, and sexual content.

When the Poem I Was Writing (2012)

When the Poem I Was Writing

 

When the poem I was writing caught fire,

I wondered which line to save.

I narrowed my smoke-stung eyes

And pored over the piece,

But even as I deliberated,

I was choked by the smell

Of burning alliteration.

No time to choose –

Soon, the whole page would come down.

I crawled across the bottom margin,

Which they say is the safest place to be

Within a burning poem,

And clutched wildly

For any clause

Not yet hot enough

To sear my tongue when uttered.

Buster Keaton’s Single-Line Pitches: Independent Features

This is just something silly that I’ve been playing around with.  I’ll probably do it with other categories of Buster Keaton’s work, and it could be fun to apply elsewhere, too.  Anyway, the following is a list of Excellent Incentives to watch each of Buster’s independent featuresSome would argue that The Saphead isn’t technically part of this group, but, as it doesn’t really fit anywhere else, I’m including it.)

The Saphead – in which Buster buys half a dozen wedding rings and still makes it to the altar with empty pockets

Three Ages – in which Buster gets around on a brontosaurus

Our Hospitality – in which Buster disguises a horse as him disguised as a woman

Sherlock, Jr. – in which Buster dives through someone’s stomach

The Navigator – in which Buster goes underwater and takes a bucket so he can wash his hands

Seven Chances – in which Buster proposes a woman up a tree

Go West – in which Buster offers a cow a stool before milking it

Battling Butler – in which Buster takes a bed, a dresser, and a rug on a camping trip

The General – in which Buster vaults onto a penny farthing bicycle

College – in which Buster attaches a rudder to the seat of his pants

Steamboat Bill, Jr. – in which Buster does a handstand while his pants are caught in a locked door

A Few Notes on Eight point Five

Some call him the War Doctor.  Others call him the John Hurt Doctor, or simply the Hurt Doctor (which seems apt.)  Still others call him Moffat’s Insatiable Need to Pull One Over on the Fans and Also a Tool to Facilitate His Desire to Be the One to Address the 12-Regeneration Limit.  This is Eight point Five.  (Spoilers ahead for “The Day of the Doctor,” the preceding minisode “The Night of the Doctor,” and the novel Engines of War.)

I think Eight point Five can be best characterized by his first interactions with the Moment.  Perceptively, she asks why he walked so many miles before priming the weapon and speculates that he didn’t want the TARDIS to see.  In this observation, more than any Doctor-numbering retcon, we learn how Eight point Five has drawn a curtain over himself.   He knows what he has to do, he knows how horrible it is, and in a particularly human flash of emotion, he’s trying to shield the eyes of his magnificent time-space ship from it.  He shies away from the light.  He wants to be alone with the weight of what lies before him.

This follows beautifully from “The Night of the Doctor,” in which sweet, vibrant Eight at last stops running from the Time War.  This decision comes in perhaps the most brutal way it could have:  a would-be companion, horrified to be in the presence of a Time Lord, chooses to burn in her crashing ship rather than let him save her.  Thanks to some strong-arming by the Sisterhood of Karn, the Doctor finally admits he can’t stay above the fray.  As the Sisters note, the universe is being torn apart, and it has to end.  He has to end it.  And in order to do so, he has to end as well.  He has to steel himself against the task at hand and become someone who can bear it.  “Make me a warrior,” he begs as he prepares to put away the mantle of Doctor.  Just as Eight point Five retreats from the TARDIS, Eight has to be alone before he can regenerate into this new, harder man.  When the Sisterhood tells him it will hurt, he’s glad of it.  He wants it to tear through him, he wants it to eat him, and with the coming role he’ll have to play, he wants to start his penance early.  His final words are farewells to the memories of companions he’s known.

However, in light of Eight’s sacrifice and the through-line that carries into “The Day of the Doctor,” there are two things I can’t get behind (to be fair, only one is really canonical, but still.)  First, there’s the glimpse “The Night of the Doctor” gives us of Eight point Five’s earliest moments.  It’s clearly not a contemporary John Hurt; instead, it’s archive footage of a decades-younger Hurt in a previous role.  The implication is that Eight regenerates into a fairly young man who spends hundreds of years fighting the Time War – it would have to be centuries for Eight point Five to age so much – before coming to “The Day of the Doctor.”  This is supported by Engines of War, which follows a single adventure of a battle-weary Eight point Five.

I hate that Eight point Five joins the war for so long.  The whole point of it being him instead of Eight or Nine (besides the aforementioned Moffat-related reasons) is that he has to physically become someone else to end the Time War.  That’s why the Sisterhood helps him, so he’ll spare the universe the endless warring.  It’s why Eight point Five regenerates at the end of “The Day of the Doctor” without any wound:  his job is done.  To take this small, intensely personal story from “The Night” to “The Day” and insert multiple centuries in the middle disrupts the flow.  Eight point Five wasn’t born to fight.  He was born, very specifically, to bring the fighting to a close, and the details of that first image and Engines of War, to me, go off-book.  Tsk, tsk, show.

Relationship Spotlight: Zoë & Wash (Firefly)

Wash and Zoë are a great example of my fondness for established supporting couples that stay largely in the background.  They get some focus, and some drama, here and there, but for the most part, they just carry on doing their thing and being awesome.

At the start of the series, Zoë and Wash are both the only existing couple on Serenity and a somewhat unexpected couple.  On the ship, they serve entirely different functions.  Zoë is Mal’s number two, an extremely competent former soldier who protects them stoic efficiency.  Wash, meanwhile, is a masterful pilot with a sardonic attitude and a mouth that’s often a step or two ahead of his thoughts.  Their respective positions often place them on opposite sides of the action – Zoë goes out on the crew’s sketchy jobs while Wash stays on the ship and waits to hear that she’s all right – and their respective temperaments make them a less-than-obvious pairing choice.

And yet, they fit together wonderfully.  Each looks after the other in their own way, no one brings Zoë into herself like Wash, and any shore leave they get usually starts with sexy fun times and ends with cheeky pillow talk.  They both give their work the attention it deserves (in the long run – Wash sometimes takes some doing to get there,) but their greatest priorities are definitely one another. 

One thing I really appreciate about them is that Zoë is the tough, fighting one and Wash isn’t, and he’s not the least bit concerned about that.  By which I mean, he does worry about her safety, and his biggest clashes with Mal come when he thinks Zoë is too often sent into dangerous situations.  However, there’s really not a sense that he gets in a snit over the fact that his wife is stronger than he is.  That’s a thread that works its way into a lot of pairings involving strong women, particularly those whose most apparent strength is physical and combat-related.  It somehow seems to become the woman’s fault that her partner feels emasculated.  Generally, it’s an unfortunate plotline at best; even if it’s addressed well, it’s a tired device, and it sometimes resolves depressingly with the woman trying to “hold back” to spare her partner’s feelings.  But with these two, we don’t get that.  Instead, it’s something that Wash loves about her.  He admires Zoë’s toughness, her calm in a crisis, and her superb fighting skills.  If anything, he finds it a turn-on.  Zoë loves Wash’s capability as well – her most overt come-in to him is just after a highly-impressive piece of expert flying.

I also like that there’s no real sense of a triangle between Wash, Zoë, and Mal.  There is one episode where Wash is openly bothered by Mal and Zoë’s connection, and he does make a comment about unresolved sexual tension while under serious duress, but when it comes down to it, it’s not about romantic jealousy, perceived or otherwise.  Rather, the conflict is born of several threads that don’t get trotted out as often.  Since Mal is the captain, Zoë’s devotion to him is essentially devotion to her job, and Wash worries that she puts their work above everything else.  Mal and Zoë are also old comrades from the war; as such, they’ve been through experience together that Wash can’t relate to, and he feels left out of their bond.  And, as I’ve said, Wash worries about Zoë’s well-being whenever she goes out on a job, and he fears that she follows Mal too willingly into danger.  All of that is more complex than any sort of triangle, and I love that, if the show needed to address Wash’s feelings about Zoë’s relationship with Mal, it took that less obvious route.

The Grandmaster (2013, PG-13)

This movie came nine years after 2046, Wong Kar-wai’s last Chinese film (true, only six years after My Blueberry Nights, but I have a hard time counting that as one of his.)  It was also the first film of his I saw on the big screen.  With all that behind it, it falls slightly short of my anticipation, and it also feels a bit un-Wong-like, but it’s still quite something.

One departure is its basis as a true story:  The Grandmaster follows Ip Man, the expert martial artist who went on to teach Bruce Lee.  Not that the film focuses on Lee, instead exploring Ip’s life before, during, and after WWII.  His craft comes of age in the 1930s, when kung fu in China divides along geographic lines.  Ip is a southern artist, and the film is marked by his encounters with Gong Er, the daughter of the renowned northern grandmaster.  Like all of Wong’s works, the story flows, river-like, between ideas, rather than following a more traditional three-act plot. 

On the kung fu front, this movie makes me wish I knew more about it, because I think I’d find the film much richer if I did.  It contemplates various schools of the art, with some fights set up like tutorials – half lecture, half demonstration.  As such, the action is fastidiously choreographed to reflect the particular affiliation of each artist, undoubtedly a feast for any kung fu enthusiast.  (Be warned, this also means the action can be slow at times, either interrupted by explanations or literally slowed down to emphasize the craft.)  That said, it’s uniquely gorgeous.  The fighting is by turns educational (Ip’s demonstration of Wing Chun’s eight kicks,) picturesque (the opening fight in driving rain,) and emotionally-charged (the climactic scene of Gong fighting beside a train.)  It also highlights Wong’s ability to imbue anything with romance.  I don’t just mean “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” romance, though there’s definitely some of that.  I mean a startling sense of beauty that almost aches, an electricity in the air binding the characters together through individual paths.  Movement, colors, and music saturate the film, nearly overwhelming in its intimacy.  It’s this type of romance that distinguishes it as a Wong film.

The story itself, less so.  I already mentioned that it does maintain Wong’s usual meandering structure, but overall, it feels much more “written” than many of his films.  Most of the time, the actual words in Wong’s movies are a stylistic blend of incredibly precise, everyday-poetic voiceovers and long scenes of rough-hewn improvised dialogue.  Here, the writing feels a lot more preplanned; the dialogue contains plenty of carefully-formed “golden phrases.”  Don’t get me wrong – it’s lovely, but it’s not what I expect going into a Wong film, and that means it doesn’t quite capture my normal experience of watching his movies.

At this point, it doesn’t quite feel like a Wong movie if Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s not in it, and he’s superb here as Ip.  His quiet performance is uniformly wonderful, all intent observation and understated emotion.  As Gong, Ziyi Zhang gives a performance I’ve never seen from her before, very brittle and controlled, but brimming with unspoken passions that bubble over when pressed.  Chen Chang, who worked with Leung (and Wong) in Happy Together and Zhang in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, makes a small appearance as a kung fu expert.

Warnings

Tons of sumptuous kung fu action, some smoking, brief drug use, and a little swearing.