The Book of Maev

I’ve been mulling over my Amy-goes-to-Mexico fic, and I’ve run into a snag.

Basically, I cannot work out what the long term effect would be on Selina’s situation.

In the original LAWR story, Selina’s attempt to pimp out Amy is what finally crystallises the opposition to her. Not because it’s the worst thing she’s done (I think we can agree that stealing an election and returning Tibet to brutal oppression are probably worse), but because it’s so egregiously awful.

But for a variety of reasons, if Amy goes to Mexico, I think the Selina-pimping attempt never happens. She’d probably limp on to the end of her presidency - just about - but lose the primary campaign to either Danny Chung or Kemi Talbot (I’m guessing - I never worked out who would win the primaries in the original story, as it wasn’t relevant).

What happens to Dan in this scenario, I don’t know. He’d still want the senate seat, but no one’s going to give way to him if he’s just another wet-behind-the-ears Congressman. Without the assumed gravitas of having been VP, the party would have no particular reason to support him.

Anyway…I guess what I’m saying is…would people mind if the new story finishes at Dan’s election to Congress, and leaves the wider political story untouched?

*no spoilers*

On the one hand, this is a gorgeous, gorgeous film. Spielberg really is a master of composing shots - there are some stunning, characterful shots in the film, and in a way that isn’t distracting, but enriching. And he knows how to use light (albeit, there was a touch too much lens flare for my taste) like almost no one else (maybe the Coen brothers?)

But…at the same time, there are moments where it feels like he’s descending into self-parody, which is rarely a good sign about an artist.

My main take away is that Spielberg must have been a huge X Files fan back in the day, because this really does feel like a big budget X Files episode (with a touching faith in the power of journalism that the X Files lacked).

Colman Domingo has such a wonderful speaking voice - rich and smooth as clotted cream. Stop casting him in sci-fi slop and give him some Shakespeare to sink his teeth into (or Tennessee Williams or Oscar Wilde or I don’t know - something with serious lyricism).

On the other hand, whatever is going on with Emily Blunt’s face is really distracting to watch (though it makes a certain amount of sense here, given the character’s profession). It really stands out whenever she’s on screen with Josh O’Connor, who has a normal, lived in, natural looking face.

I love her in comedy roles - few actresses can deliver a cutting line as well as she can - but whenever she has to play serious emotion she reverts to this extremely mannered, breathy, ‘awed’ tone that gets on my nerves.

Colin Firth with blue eyes is honestly one of the most unsettling images in the entire film. It just looks wrong.

Like, Mexico thrashed South Africa pretty soundly, but I suspect there is much worse to come. (Though hopefully with less stupid fouling - the South African players should be ashamed of themselves, because two red cards in the first game is embarrassing).

Anyway.

I’ve been a bit dubious about the film ever since I heard they were filming in Scotland (a place of stunning natural beauty, but it doesn’t look much like anywhere on the Mediterranean). And casting Matt Damon, the most American looking actor in history… Odysseus should be a chancer! A cute hoor, as they say in Ireland. He’ll pick your pocket and have you thank him for it!

None of that says Matt Damon to me. I like him, but nothing about him says charming rogue. (Which is worst, casting him as French in the Last Duel, or Greek here?)

(I don’t immediately know who I’d cast - Wagner Moura springs to mind, but maybe that’s just because I loved the Secret Agent)

Anyway, I saw some post that Lupita Nyongo is playing Helen and Clytemnestra (why that would be I’m not sure, I don’t think Clytemnestra is part of the Odyssey?).

And I would just like to make it 100% clear that as far as I’m concerned Clytemnestra Did Nothing Wrong.

Agamemnon Had It Coming (several times over), and he’s only lucky she didn’t make it more painful.

Amber Midthunder gave such a powerhouse, leading lady, heroine performance in Prey, but in this she just comes across as obnoxious. Not to mention Anna Sawai, who is supposedly brilliant in Shogun (I haven’t watched it), and is an utter bore in this.

And don’t even get me started on the other young ‘uns in the cast, because they are uniformly dreadful.

Kurt Russell (and his son, to be fair) are giving a masterclass in the power of actual film star charisma, because he is the only character that comes across as a recognisable human being. I’m assuming this is due to decades experience acting in terrible films.

Should they not have been able to tell if her arm was removed posthumously? Or if it had been frozen at some point? They find the arm - which looks pretty ‘fresh’ for lack of a better term - and seem to take it as confirmation that she died two years before, and I can’t figure out why the question isn’t asked.

My unpopular opinion about Hannibal the TV show is that it ultimately falls victim to the same syndrome that Thomas Harris suffered from when writing Hannibal the book. What makes Red Dragon and the Silence of the Lambs such compelling reads is how grounded they are in many ways - they’re very close to being police procedurals (written at a time when that kind of police work was little known), but with the operaticly grotesque character of Lecter hovering around the sidelines, throwing everyone and everything off course. The juxtaposition of the mundane with the almost supernaturally evil gives the story a really fantastic source of dramatic friction.

Point being, for all that I enjoy the tv show (a lot more than Hannibal the book, it has to be said), when it shifts Hannibal out of that position, and into the role of romantic interest, the whole story structure collapses in on itself. It’s somewhat more plausible for Will Graham than for Clarice Starling, but the notion of either of them being ‘in love’ with Lecter is so outlandish that the characters have to be broken down (and the world around them has to be broken down) in ways that don’t feel possible for any actual human being. (My suspicion is that for both of them, the likely endpoint of the relationship is, just like Miriam, winding up abandoned and minus a limb or two, if they’re lucky).

It’s kind of like the insistence on turning Dracula into a romantic hero, which I also think breaks the moral structure of the book (but I’ll spare you all my Dracula rant).

Hence I love the first two seasons of Hannibal, and have pretty limited patience for the third. (Possibly the fact that we no longer get scenes in Hannibal’s beautiful office-library is part of that).

Anyway, Anna Chlumsky is so, so good as Not Clarice Starling in Hannibal, I always wish we got to see more of her before things get worse. She brings this very precise intelligence to the part - you really do feel that Miriam is a force to be reckoned with.

And, not for nothing, but it takes some doing to come into a show, act only against Laurence Fishburne and Mads Mikklesen and not only hold your own, but create an indelible impression.

They use Chlumsky’s size quite interestingly, I think - she’s dressed in a way to make her look bigger (the polo shirts!) right up until she walks into the room with Lecter, and we see that she’s wearing extremely high heels. In the moment when she’s being strangled, she almost looks like a doll he’s playing with. (A depiction that is rife with gendered overtones, I must admit).

Amy Brookheimer is all simmering intensity, raging anxiety forcibly tamped down into an effort at stillness - but Miriam Lass moves like someone who has more confidence in her own capabilities, more secure in moving through the world. It’s why I’ve always enjoyed how physical a performer she is.

Side note - the backstory here is that Lecter was, at some point, an emergency room doctor. I’ve watched enough medical dramas to find that very unlikely - it just seems like such a messy medical speciality for someone so fastidious.

Hugh Dancy definitely needed that scruff they gave him in this - without it, he’d look about 14.

But, I have a separate appreciation for Daredevil, in that it is one of the few pieces of American pop culture about Catholicism that actually feels Catholic.

Like, Catholicism can pretty weird and wacky at the fringes, but in a very distinctly different way from what you get in the various Protestant faiths. And yet, so many depictions of Catholicism produced in America (or maybe the Anglosphere as a whole) feel like they’re projecting the worst excesses of evangelical Protestantism onto the Catholic Church.

The most recent Knives Out movie was pretty strong example of this, but think about how often the medieval church is depicted as corrupt (which, look, it almost certainly was, but not more corrupt than the various forms of feudal government in Europe - the church at least tried to restrain violence). Or, even better how frequently the Catholic Church is blamed for witch trials in pop culture (which is a cultural phenomenon that has just as much to do with early modern Protestant literalism as anything the Catholic Church was doing).

One of the few pleasures of recent years has been watching American ‘converts’ to Catholicism be slapped in the face with what the Church actually preaches. No, you cannot believe in the death penalty, no, your ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus is not the most important thing, yes, you should seek out social and economic justice, etc etc.

I’m not even Catholic, but like many Irish people I have a vexed relationship with the Church (maybe when they apologise to all the women and children they abused and give them actual compensation, maybe then I’ll change my mind)…but I can respect the intellectual consistency.

The shout of relief I just gave.

It has been a long time without any good news on the international politics front.

Pausing to note that I have never understood why there isn’t a bakery in JFK airport*. New York bakeries (bagelries isn’t a word, is it?) are special…like patisseries in Paris, or bento boxes in Japan.

I would totally buy a dozen bagels every time I flew out of New York, and so would a lot of people, I’m sure of it.

(*admittedly, not the most baffling thing about JFK, which has to be the enraging public transport situation. Boy oh boy are you in bad shape when Dublin Airport has better transport options than you do. Dublin Airport doesn’t even have a train!)

It’s finally available over here, and I had watched episode 1. And since multiple people on here asked me about it, I figured I’d shared my thoughts.

The ER DNA in this is very, very obvious, and not just because of Noah Wyle (though having a mental patient complaining about being stuck with needles accost him in the first five minutes was diabolical, as if I need reminding of that TV trauma). It doesn’t quite have the adrenaline rush that the best of ER managed, but presumably that will come in time.

I had to go A&E about eighteen months ago, thanks to a minor (but painful as hell) accident - and all I could think watching this was how much nicer the hospital in the TV show was than the one in real life. (I knew I hadn’t seriously injured myself when the doctor stuck his head round the door for approximately 50 seconds and left me to the nurse).

What an implausibly high-cheekboned bunch of people work in that hospital!

I hadn’t realised that 90s floppy hair style was back in fashion, but Dr Langdon (I think?) was rocking it. Good for him, though he seems like a prick (in the grand tradition of Jordan Catalanos everywhere).

I like the actress playing the chief nurse. Very credible no-nonsense demeanour, with a streak of dry humour.

There were at least two actors in this whose voices I recognised, but couldn’t quite place - the hospital administrator/perpetrator of evil who sounded really like the actress who played Brianna Barksdale in The Wire (though she didn’t look like her…maybe it’s new hair, or maybe they’re from the same town?). And there was an old white man whose voice also rang a bell - my brain is saying from True Blood, but not a character I can remember.

I hate when this happens - I have a good memory for voices (much better than for faces, I have to say) - it’s going to itch away at my brain until I remember where I saw them.

White men shouldn’t get fades.

There’s just something seriously unappealing about the combination of black black stubble and paper white skin.

I know it’s not fair that the exact same haircut will make a black man look dashingly handsome, while on the average Irish man it makes him look like someone who’d glass you in a pub.

But you know, life isn’t fair.