Movies

Another year, another Lego Lunar New Year set that's already sold out. I just got the Lego catalog in the mail, and multiple sets are all sold out on the website. I guess everything was bought for Christmas already.

I watched West Side Story again so that I could see the opening that I missed when I was late. It was still hard to follow without subtitles, so I only learned afterward that the Sharks were singing the Puerto Rico anthem to the cops and the Jets after the first fight. I still don't know what changed Tony's mind to go to the school dance since he already heard from Riff that they were already planning to rumble. I did see, though, a parallel between Chino, begging Bernardo to let him join the Sharks, with Anybodys begging the Jets to let him join. Chino didn't want to be the smart one who went to school and worked hard; he didn't feel useful, like he was helping protect his community. Meanwhile, Anybodys wants to be accepted as a guy, but the Jets dismiss him and still call him a girl. However, by the end of the movie, the Jets finally start to accept Anybodys and tell him "good job." Too bad that the gang will be destroyed by Riff and Tony dying, let alone the neighborhood getting demolished to build Lincoln Center. Well maybe, if we follow how Romeo & Juliet ended, we could imagine that the leftover members of the Jets and the Sharks might make peace and be friends. Except for Chino, who will go to prison for killing Tony. Just the kind of fate that Bernardo was trying to keep him from, by making him go to school and stay out of the gang. Yep, a tragedy just like Shakespeare.

As for new movies, I recently saw The 355 and mostly liked it except for how the villain was unkillable. Even when he was poisoned, it wasn't fatal. To be fair, the women spies also survived painful fights and shootouts that should have caused major injuries. I could also see right away that a character who supposedly died was just faking death and would return later. Still, it was kind of fun to watch.

Tainted Legacy

Wonkette has a history article about The Goddamn Pinkertons, in their role as anti-union thugs. Of course I do know about this history, but this is a good synopsis and timeline. It confirms that Allan Pinkerton is a fucking hypocrite who started out as a Chartist in Scotland before immigrating to America and betraying all his former working-class principles to work for corporations and robber barons. (I read a fictional novel about Pinkerton once that blamed Allan's sons, not Allan himself, for the anti-union cases they took.) Loomis even casts doubts on whether Pinkerton's spies even really helped the Union much in the Civil War.

About the only good part of Pinkerton's agency history is Kate Warne and the department of women detectives she ran. What case histories I have read her participating in were mostly murders and robberies, rather than this violent anti-union stuff. But she died young, and I read conflicting reports about when Pinkerton's sons disbanded the department. In any case, they continued their father's penchant for strikebreaking long into the 20th century.

In 1915, Arthur Conan Doyle based part of Valley of Fear on the history of Pinkertons investigating the Molly Maguires. He viewed the Pinkertons as good guys fighting criminals, and John Douglas aka Birdy Edwards is based on James McParland.

In my own unfinished novel, I'm trying to have a young Sherlock go to America to be a Pinkerton operative for a year before quitting and returning to England to become a consulting detective. He realizes that the Pinkertons aren't really "investigating" and "solving" cases so much as standing around spying for weeks and months, hoping to get criminals to confess their crimes. That's what turns him off and makes him create his own career. (Of course, ironically, Holmes will do an undercover spying investigation in His Last Bow to protect England from Germany.)

Black Icons

This year, it seems that Black History Month has come early, or maybe it will stretch out to cover both January and February, so they won't be just relegated to the shortest month of the year. Not only is Maya Angelou being featured on a U.S. quarter, but Barbie is making an Inspiring Women doll of Ida B. Wells. Plus ABC is showing Women of the Movement about Mamie Till-Mobley, and an accompanying documentary called Let The World See. (I missed the 1st week of the documentary, because I wasn't aware of it until afterward.) Hopefully the ABC series will be successful and they'll be able to do other Black women in later seasons. Meanwhile, The CW has a new Black superhero series called Naomi, which is also premiering. I watched the first episode but am not sure about its slow pace, and how many characters speak in riddles. I want to see Naomi discover her powers.

Also, because Sidney Poitier died recently, various TV networks are running marathons, and I see a showing of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner scheduled at my local movie theatre this weekend. There's apparently also a documentary called Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism, which I'll try to see too. I remember that in school one of my teachers showed Poitier in Lilies of the Field, (I don't remember why) and I liked it, but I don't remember seeing any of his other movies. Nevertheless he has a reputation of dignity and grace. I know that some people did criticize Poitier for playing too-perfect characters who were too respectable... safe and nonthreatening to whites. In fact you can see a brief argument about Poitier in Lee Daniel's movie The Butler, where the parents are trying to relate to their activist son, who instead mocks his parents for making a hero out of Poitier. Those criticisms aside, Poitier was groundbreaking and opened a door for other Black actors later who could play more realistic characters with flaws.

This Monday will be MLK's birthday, but I'll be working that day, as I often work holidays. My company did make Juneteenth a holiday as well. My hope is this will be a better year, with more justice.

Encanto

I finally got around to seeing Disney's Encanto, and I liked it a lot. It's still weird getting used to Stephanie Beatriz's natural voice, but the family story was very good. It takes place in some enchanted hidden village in Colombia but otherwise is very vague about time and place. After getting frequently lost in the Spanish dialogue in West Side Story, I was happy to have subtitles for Encanto. It's not just for Spanish; I use subtitles for English-language shows all the time.

The songs were great, but I loved "Dos Oruguitas" the most; it's sung in Spanish in the film, but later sung in English during the end credits. It's a melancholy ballad about two caterpillars trying to stay together, but the world changes and they have to be separated; it's a metaphor about Abuela losing her husband Pedro and having to hold the family together since then. It's so beautiful.

Meanwhile, I signed up for a trial of Paramount Plus, hoping to be able to access previous seasons of The Equalizer and other CBS shows, but apparently you only get access to the current season. I don't think that upgrading to premium gets you the access either. I think you just get to watch without ads and download episodes offline. Well, at least, their Smithsonian Channel has a lot of historical shows on several topics. I've discovered America in Color, in which they colorize a lot of old news footage and personal home movies to give you a fresh, immediate view on decades past. They even had footage from Greenwood before the massacre. It's very eye-opening. America's Hidden Stories also had a tale of General Casimir Pulaski, who may have been female or intersex. He lived as a man, but his remains found in his tomb looked female, so researchers investigated the DNA, and they had an intersex activist Hida Viloria speaking on the subject too.

Around the World once again

So far, I like the new Masterpiece version of Around the World in 80 Days with David Tennant. In the first episode, they are hinting at some new backstory for Phileas Fogg, because he receives a postcard with the nasty message "Coward" on it. He also has other postcards, and his fellow Reform Club members refer to some previous trip that he failed to take. I suppose they will revisit and explain this later. The writers also soften Fogg because he doesn't fire his old valet over just a wrong bathtub temperature, as in Verne's book. Instead, Fogg just leaves old Grayson at home to take care of the house, while he hires Passepartout to accompany him on the world tour. (Passepartout has his own reasons for engineering himself into the job; he's had a fight, and people have called the police on him. So it's a sort of echo of Jackie Chan's version of Passepartout who was the bank thief, hiding out with Fogg.) So far, there is no bank thief or Scotland Yard chase in this show; they didn't need the contrived plot device for this version.

Anyway, Passepartout and Abigail Fix get backstories too, to give them more dimension. I was pleasantly surprised that this version followed precedent from the Pierce Brosnan version, by including the Paris Commune in the show. Ten years ago, Passepartout's revolutionary father died by firing squad, so he left France to travel the world.  His younger brother Gerard has carried on the political torch of their father. Gerard and his comrades brought about the short-lived Commune in 1871, but the current French President Adolphe Thiers betrayed them and ordered armies against them last year. So Gerard and company are plotting to assassinate Thiers in revenge. I'm not sure I understand the history, but it is refreshing for the show to go political, rather than just include pretty Parisian scenes. With Passepartout being a Black Frenchman, I wonder if the show will address racism such as what we saw on Netflix's Lupin. Abigail Fix certainly addresses issues of feminism; she's the daughter of a newspaper editor, and she's trying to have a real career as a journalist. She talks herself into chronicling the journey and is smart enough to notice that Passepartout is hiding something. After all the drama of the assassination attempt, the trio finally take the obligatory balloon ride. (Verne's novel never had a hot air balloon ride, but every adaptation since the 1956 version with David Niven has added this picturesque detail.) I can't wait to see more drama unfold.

ETA: I mixed up the dates that brother Gerard mentioned. Why does Gerard only call him "brother" or "Passepartout"? Doesn't he have another name? In the book, it was Jean I think.

Happy New Year!

Well, 2022 is finally here. Texas was unseasonably warm for a while, but now the temperature has dropped into the 30s. Chilly! I'm glad I keep coats and extra shoes in my car for unexpected emergencies.

Meanwhile, there is a new adaptation of Around the World in 80 days on PBS. Huzzah! It's apparently going to be a miniseries on Masterpiece, starting tomorrow night. It stars David Tennant as Fogg, and it looks fun.

I have read Verne's book as well as enjoyed the previous TV shows and film versions. Looks like Passepartout is Black this time, and they have changed Inspector Fix into a woman reporter like Nellie Bly (who did a real globetrotting tour). That seems like a good idea to make the love interest different; as I said in my previous post, adapting Princess Aouda brings up uncomfortable things like the Indian "suttee" ritual, which would be better left behind. Plus, I always found Inspector Fix following Fogg to be contrived, so hopefully this Abigail Fix will be an improvement.

I wonder what name-dropping and guest cameos we'll get on the world tour. By making Passepartout Black, the writers seem to be acknowledging that history is more diverse than Hollywood's whitewashed period dramas traditionally depict. I hope so.