Note: True Detective episode 3 will go up on Thursday. I haven't watched it yet.

My second video for Fandor went up a few weeks ago, but yesterday it was posted on the site itself. The reception so far has been very enthusiastic, which is certainly encouraging. Here is what I wrote about it:

It’s all in the eyes, and this case they belong to Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), a housewife-turned-saleswoman in Satyajit Ray‘s classic film The Big City. Her personal growth is charted through her gazes, whether they are exchanged with husband, customers, boss—or even her own reflection. Throughout The Big City, Ray uses eye contact to establishes familiarity, intimacy and shifting power dynamics; the story of the film is told through the way the characters look at one another.

And here is the video, along with a couple images...

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

The Asuka-Shinji odd couple routine continues, but no longer is it simply assertive Asuka vs. submissive Shinji. If the last episode witnessed Asuka blasting into Shinji's increasingly stable and secure personal universe, now it's her turn to adjust. Shortly after arriving in Tokyo-3, and being unofficially crowned the queen bee of the school (to the point where she can unbashfully refer to herself as "the gorgeous Asuka"), Asuka and Shinji are sent into their first official battle together. Just like their first engagement, improvised at sea, the life-and-death struggle is treated rather lightly, as a pretext for character growth and interaction. Unlike some of the earlier episodes, we don't really feel much is at stake here aside from the characters' egos (which in a teenage context, may be enough).

Initially, Asuka proves the top dog by impulsively lunging after the Angel and slicing it in half. Yet within seconds the Angel is reassembling and striking back - and then, in one of the episode's many clever narrative strategies, we view the aftermath in retrospect rather than real time: the two cowed pilots are presented with humiliating photos of their defeat, with the two Evas jutting out of the ground miles apart where the Angel has effortlessly blasted them. In front of these projected slides, the 14-year-old worldsavers bicker and for the first time we see Shinji standing up to Asuka, whose brazen arrogance rendered him mostly passive and silent in their previous outing. Now, her hotheaded aggression shown up in the heat of battle, Asuka's no longer able to batter Shinji into submission.

And so, just at the moment they feel themselves becoming enemies, they are forced to become close allies. Misato forces them to share her apartment, to dress in like fashion (80s girl workout get-ups, by the look of it), and dance DDR-style in perfect sync to audio-video prompts in the hope of perfecting their fighting instincts before the Angel's inevitable return. There's an interesting moment where Asuka throws aside her headphones in frustration and Rei steps in to demonstrate that perfect synchronization is possible - she and Shinji effortlessly match one another's movements, and an awed and frustrated Asuka vows to avenge this insult to her "pride."

As in the previous two episodes, Rei recedes in the background as a supporting character but after a one-shot cameo and complete absence she's at least something of a presence here. Mostly she serves as a foil for Asuka, who tries to introduce herself early on (to no avail) and is later intimidated by Rei's perfect compatibility with Shinji. For the first time, we are getting real evidence of Asuka's insecurity - particularly when she mysteriously appears in Shinji's bed in the middle of the night, apparently sleepwalking and talking in her sleep. He almost kisses her (the first time we've seen him respond to her romantically or sexually, after all her provocation) but backs off when she mumbles confused, pained feelings. Moving himself to the floor next to her, he grumbles to himself, "She's just a kid after all."

Of course in the end Shinji and Asuka achieve their perfect synchronization - well, almost. They defeat the Angel in the sixty seconds they're given, perfectly edited to a joyful Beethoven pastiche (the sound design of this episode is wonderfully creative and propulsive, from the score to the skittish sound of Shinji's tape player rewinding as Asuka's body rolls close to his under the sheets). However immediately after the attack is thwarted, the NERV staff are holding their heads in their hands and groaning, faced with images of the intertwined Evas and sounds of the adolescents bickering in embarrassingly personal terms (Asuka gets Shinji to admit he attempted kissing her the night before, and her hectoring voice is represented onscreen by an amusingly angry hologram). Though their relationship will darken and deepen overtime, it is here that the strangely compatible yet combative connection between Shinji and Asuka first makes itself heard.



Bob: Well, my first thought is something that builds off of what you said before, about Asuka's first episode being very "cartoony". this one kinda goes out of its way to top that one.

me: In animation, or personality, or both?

Bob: Basically we have a very loose treatment of physics throughout, mostly in a jokey manner. Say, the way that the Evas are both toppled over by the Angel, feet sticking way up in the air in water and land. Or the way that Asuka yells at Shinji on his screen or via a hologram, and in both cases she seems to be able to physically accost him without actually being next to him. It's like something out of a Looney Tune, and it helps put into relief the absurd lengths of the premise here.

me: I agree about the cartoonish tone. I noted that in this & the previous episode, the Angel attacks seem less "serious" than before - more a blatant pretext for (often humorous) character development & interaction than genuinely world-threatening events.

Bob: Yeah, this Angel, and many of the others that will come, has a much more deliberate, self-conscious feel to it. The attack and its nature are part and parcel with how artificial a lot of the show is, a pretext for character development. And here, watching it again, I was really impressed by how deftly it interweaves the parallel strands of Shinji/Asuka and Misato/Kaji, and how well the comedy masks the pretty deliberate intercutting.
I mean, we've already seen in the last episode how both Asuka and Misato call their guys "baka", and it's repeated here. And the scenes of Shinji about to kiss Asuka in her sleep and the two adults making out in the elevator is also pretty obvious (elevators and escalators are pretty omnipresent symbols throughout the show). But the way that the Misato/Kaji story intertwines with the kids and the main Angel attack (Kaji coming up with the plan) is a neat little touch, and Anno handles it nicely delicate.
I'm sure that MI can tell us more about the certain kind of scruffy anime male that Kaji represents. So far in the show he's such a caricature of rugged masculinity, but not one that's used for any comedy really. He gets to keep his confidence and not get made fun of at all, and often you see guys like him played as fools to some degree.

me: One thing that interests me about this episode is how we're kind of now on Asuka's arc, rather than Shinji's.
Unlike him, she begins on a high note with her victory at sea. But just as he has to rise from his lack of confidence, she has to fall from her overconfidence. And both had/have to learn how to relate to other people.

Bob: Oh yeah. This episode is really about Asuka finding a connection. We focus on her throughout the first stage of the mission. We see her hassling with Japanese customs of privacy. We see her pout when it seems Rei might get the mission instead of her.

me: The envy of Rei's synchronization with Shinji is a nice moment. Not least for how it finally lets Rei have a moment (however brief) after 2 episodes of non-existence!

Bob: Likewise here, when Rei synchs with Shinji perfectly, it makes Asuka's hurt reaction really sink in. Maybe she won't get to be a star of the show, after all.

me: Same time, Shinji's more of a character here than he was last episode where he played the most background role he's played yet. That said, I'm trying to think if we see him at all outside of Asuka's context. I don't think we do. Even if he's more of a co-player this time, we still see everything in relation to Asuka.

Bob: Well, that's part of the whole nature of the show from this point on. All of the kids are co-players, and that's part of the subject of the show. Socializing with others means you're not always the center stage.
The way that Shinji retreats to the background or middleground of this episode and the way that Asuka's place on the mission is threatened by Rei helps make this an episode that subtly introduces the idea of the kids' mortality in a way that previous episodes, even with more dire danger at hand, didn't quite. The math is there in our heads now that future episodes will capitalize on later.

me: What math do you mean?'

Bob: The mental math, I mean. Looking at this, it's easy to see some of it as foreshadowing of how these kids are pretty expendable to the adults.

me: Do you feel that's highlighted more in this episode than previous ones?

Bob: I mean that there's elements here that are subtle, but help introduce the expendability thing later on. Shinji is more receded in importance here, and Asuka's place on the mission isn't totally secure. Add those together, and it's easy to imagine how the show could've evolved (no matter what its plans were in production) with either one of them dying off without the end of the show in sight.

me: I think we get some of that earlier though, with Commander Ikari. Speaking of which - where is he, and whence (dramatically, narratively speaking) his absence? Notably, the last 3 episodes have felt less intense, anxious than the first 6.

Bob: I think it's mostly about that. Obviously it's possible to try and fill in the blanks and imagine what the hell he's up to vis a vis Seele and all the various plotting, but mainly him being gone just allows for a much lighter feel.
It lets the characters come to the forefront and allows us to not really think about the ongoing mysteries as much.

me: This feels like a very creative, clever episode in terms of how much of the information is presented and the visuals & audio are designed.

Bob: Yeah. And the level to which visuals are used informatively and expressively really highlights how well the animation is parcelled out. They have to scrimp and save in a lot of places. The way the episode begins with the two boys' photographs is a really clever way to reserve animation but still have something that works creatively.
A lot of Asuka's posturing expressions might be motivated by having cool design moments that still don't requite a lot of movement, but those bits also help draw out how "normal" she can look, and how vulnerable that makes her. It's kind of hard to see now so many years after she and the rest of the characters have become iconic, but those little moments in Misato's appartment stand out to me because in those bits she isn't the "Asuka" that we know of after years and years of fandom.

me: Which moments specifically?

Bob: An easy indicator for me is any moment where she doesn't have her trademark hair-pins-- I doubt we ever see her without them in the Rebuild films, where she's pretty much Iconic with a capital I. But more deeply, any moment where we see here genuinely vulnerable and hurt, rather than just a pissed off, sexed up version of Lucy Van Pelt-- her childish demeanor at the table when Misato lays out the plan, or how she runs off almost crying when Rei shows her up.

me: Anything else you want to say or point out about this episode?

Bob: "Both of You Dance Like You Want to Win" sounds like it ought to be the most awful dance-reality competition TV show ever made.


It is well-known fact that, for NGE's title sequence, Anno borrowed the design elements from Kon Ichikawa's movies. It is an image of white big letterings of Kanji characters against black background, informing names of casts and crews and the title of the episode etc. This design template was staple format for Kon Ichikawa's movies title sequence, which gave them distinctive style and atmosphere.

In each case, and especially for NGE, the use of the specific font (Mincho family), the big letters arranged in kinked geometry, striking contrast of colors, all contribute to cerebral deconstruction of "letters", Japanese Kanji. I believe this creates the sort of sense of detachment, distancing the graphics from meaning.

This graphic-design oriented approach to the title sequence reminds us of another great creator, Saul Bass. In his case as well, the use of specific font (typography) carried a substantial weight. A certain typography invokes a certain atmosphere, a feel, a context. NGE redefined such functions of graphic design elements not only in Anime, but also in pop culture.

The use of Mincho font is a cunning one. This set of font family is used in school textbooks for liberal arts, literature and history (as opposed to the use of Gothic fonts in math and science). I myself find Mincho font to be more literary, somewhat neurotic, definitely engaged.

I believe NGE was one of the earliest examples of total design coherence providing the feel of the world it is describing.

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

There is a certain mordant self-awareness to this episode's title, though it would be better called "Maybe Next Week." After the anticipation-charged debut of episode 1 and the memorable close of episode 2, episode 3 feels very much like a placeholder. In this it resembles "Who Goes There" from season one, with a crucial difference. That chapter of the investigation embraced its episodic function by telling a standalone story in the midst of its ongoing saga (in that case, Rust Cohle's infiltration of a biker gang, culminating in a memorable heist). I was frustrated by this decision at the time, wishing that the show would continue to focus on the big picture. But in retrospect, that approach is preferable to merely treading water, as "Maybe Tomorrow" does. The last line of the episode is that very title, as if the characters themselves know they haven't made much progress in learning who killed Ben Caspere - or, more importantly, hinting at why we should care.

The stakes of last week are almost instantly lowered, as most of us probably suspected they would be. Velcoro is not dead; he was sprayed with buckshot either as a warning or perhaps to make a show for the camera taping him while he "died." That camera, and the drive connected to it, were stolen while Velcoro was passed out, and he seems obsessed by what else they may have captured inside this possible snuff film studio. Velcoro, already souring on his corruption at the end of "Night Finds You" is now openly defiant of Semyon and less committed than ever to the police culture of Vinci. He begs to be taken off the job and is hesitant to sell out Bezzerides when his police press him for clues; likewise, while she calls him a "burnout" Bezzerides does not seem particularly keen on exposing him to her authorities (one of whom presses her to seduce information from him).

By the end of the episode Velcoro and Bezzerides' emerging camaraderie proposes an interesting twist on last season's buddy formula, both a repetition - like Cohle and Hart, working conditions subtly bond together these two very different people - and a variation - because unlike Cohle and Hart, Velcoro and Bezzerides aren't really being forced to get along; their bosses would actually rather they didn't. This is, so far, the most compelling angle True Detective season 2 has going for it: the intersection of interest and how individual loyalty often trumps institutional loyalty. I'm not sure if that's true, but it makes for pretty good television. We even get hints, in the preview for next week, that Velcoro and Woodrugh will have some of those legendary True Detective ridealong chats.

When Woodrugh bumps into Semyon in a club (the cool gangster easily stares down the "angsty cop," as a savvy hustler calls him) we are reminded that actually these four characters have not interacted too much yet. To the extent I am anticipating the upcoming episodes it is to see how these personalities play off of one another. None of these characters looks to be as singular or memorable as (obviously) Cohle or even the underrated Hart, but Farrell and Vaughn are doing their best to develop complexity with the oft-broad material they are handled while McAdams moves in the opposite direction, carving a complex, nuanced, and highly watchable interpretation of a character whom I suspect would feel much flatter and thinner on the page. Kitsch still struggles to hold our interest, but his role is the most one-note so it's hard to blame him.

Anyway, Woodrugh does get a bit more interesting this episode, due entirely to the interplay of his macho homophobia and the increasingly clear source of that homophobia. A meet-up with a war buddy suggests (well, pretty much outright states) that they had a romance in the desert and that perhaps Woodrugh is as traumatized by this memory as by the violence he took part in. And when he's tasked to question hookers, he realizes that he has much better luck with the male population than the females even though everyone in this episode assumes that his good looks will charm the ladies. I like how Kitsch plays this moment. If we're going to see the character inch out of the closet this season it may be due more to professional duties than personal commitment.

Likewise, Velcoro grows more sympathetic and seems more human when he's playing cop than when he's playing dad (or Semyon's hired thug). The dull stereotype of episode 1 is becoming a richer character when he stops trying at his family life and starts trying at his job. Semyon, on the other hand, seems less and less an efficient, professional criminal-gone-straight - still with one foot on the wrong side of the law but relatively likable. Instead he comes off as a ruthless, truly bad guy, ripping gold teeth out of his minion's mouths and, even worse, darkly threatening wives and children while leaning on businessmen he has helped. Vaughn, whom many worried would seem non-threatening in the role, is genuinely effective, translating his height into a threatening presence and his sarcasm into an intimidating viciousness. But his tongue still gets tied by the the verb-less street talk Pizzolatto crams into his mouth. Vaughn just doesn't seem like a man who rose from the gutter and he stumbles with some of the dialogue.

If I haven't spoken much about the case itself, that's because there isn't much to say. What do the characters discover in this episode? That Caspere liked to party, something we heard early in episode two and have been hearing ever since. Everyone the investigators talk to offers that same insight, over and over and over - the mayor's debauched son, the hustlers at a decadent nightclub, the pretentious director of a movie Caspere was funding (whose man-bun some have taken as a barbed reference to season one's director Cary Fukanaga). We get it. The man liked hookers, and - to quote Chauncy Gardener - he "liked to watch." It's possible I missed something, but I didn't feel the episode offered any new insight into Caspere's place within the corrupt ecosystem of Vinci, or the role of his sex life in his death.

The only real plot advancement occurs in Semyon's storyline, as one of his associates is found dead (though the men around Semyon are so faceless I couldn't remember who he was). Semyon also openly speculates that Caspere may have been killed by the Russian gangster who came to town in episode one and was skittish about deal-making even before Caspere showed up. Much of his screentime is spent with his wife, their relationship fraying from the stress of Semyon's business collapsing - and from his inability to impregnate her even through artificial insemination. This is a bit of a retreat for her character, who seemed to be more of a partner in early episodes and is now reduced to pouting around the house with baby issues. So far Semyon's story feels very disconnected from the rest of the cast, and as their interlocking relationships grow more compelling, that distance becomes a liability.

Many noirs contain impenetrable plots that are difficult to follow and/or not especially alluring in their actual mystery (municipal corruption is a constant theme of L.A. detective fiction). Instead, these tales rely on atmosphere and character to generate excitement. That seems to be what Pizzolatto is going for here, but the trophy wives stomping through mansions and set photographers whispering of decadent parties do not feel as fresh or interesting as the trailer-park madam or grieving bayou fisherman of season one. And Janus Metz Pedersen, taking over for Justin Lin, does not imbue any of these sequences with visual interest or an eye for detail. The one memorable scene is the episode's cold open, an Elvis impersonator (okay, okay - Conrad Twitty impersonator - ed.) writhing in the spotlight as a bleeding Velcoro commiserates with his father in a bar.

The surreal setpiece (which turns out to be a dream - a first for True Detective, if I'm not mistaken) is a clear nod to Tony Soprano's bold hallucinations on another HBO show, but the one eye-catching detail grows thin very quickly, and the location (that bar, again?) is fairly unimaginative. Its ability to spark our curiosity and inability to sustain it may unfortunately be reflective of the show itself. To achieve greatness or even satisfaction, True Detective needs character, atmosphere, and mystery. Right now it is barely coasting on only one of those qualities (the first - and that's due in large part to the performances). I didn't find episode three as disappointing as episode one, knowing roughly what to expect by now, but it also wasn't as promising as the best bits of episode two. I will say I enjoyed watching the episode as it unfolded but I never felt deeply invested.

I think episode four will be really crucial in determining what season two has to offer. Will it be just another routine cop show, with good actors and some interesting tangents to nibble on, or will it surprise us with something deeper and richer? We're approaching the halfway point and sad to say, the smart money is on the former. That's fine in and of itself. But at the end of season one I wrote that it was a tremendous kickoff for a great series, with the best yet to come. Specifically, I cited that arresting shot of Cohle entering Carcosa, his eyes just above the camera line, as a hint of what True Detective was capable of. I hope I was right, but am afraid I was viewing the beginning of the end.

The film begins in brutal fashion with the rape and murder of a serial killer's first victim (or so it seems). If the filmmakers - in this case director Tai Kato and his co-writers Haruhiko Mimura and Yoji Yamada - want to make sure we don't sympathize with this murderer, they couldn't have picked a much better way to open their story. And yet following the death of the victim, so far the only person whose face we have seen onscreen, we get several shots of the killer, Isao Kawashima (Makoto Sato), including one iconic close-up featured above. The trick of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho comes to mind. If our only possible protagonist has been removed, won't our allegiance shift to the next character we meet and/or spend a sustained amount of time with? Will this be true even if he is a cold-blooded criminal? In a way, the entire movie is a test of this thesis, with a few other troublesome twists thrown in for good measure.

This year (and a bit in past years) I have taken to reviewing mostly obscure films that I saw thanks only to Allan Fish and/or Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark. I, the Executioner, subtitled "Requiem for a Massacre," appears to be one of the most obscure of these. I first heard about it from Allan's 2010 review, which to date (at least until this is published) remains the only online write-up of this film. There are no comments on Letterboxd, IMDb, or MUBI - and information on Kato himself is limited, although he seems to be best-known for yakuza (Japanese gangster) films, a category that doesn't fit I, the Executioner with its lone wolf killer. Indeed, there is no mystery to the killer's identity, as it is revealed early on. The mystery of the film is in his motive: what connected the victims (five will be brutally slain over the course of the film, although not all of the murders are shown - and the first is by far the most graphic). And why does the suicide of a 16-year-old boy keep getting mentioned?

Another source of tension is the killer's growing interest in Haruko (Chieko Baisho), a young cook/waitress at the restaurant he frequents. Initially we are struck by her adorable mugging in the kitchen, but before long it's clear that she has her own dark side to contend with. Is Kawashima attempting to connect with another lost soul, or is he targeting her as a future victim? For a while, we may not be sure. But Kawashima also visits the home of the dead teenage boy, suggesting a more human side amidst his psychopathic killing spree. Meanwhile the manhunt draws closer and closer as the police quiz suspects and suss out connections between the dead women - whom we meet, before they die, sharing a secret we aren't privy to. Clearly they have some idea why they might be future victims, yet they don't want to share this knowledge with the police or with their husbands. What's going on?

As a thriller, the film weaves various threads together marvelously. And stylistically, it's a stunner, characterized by arresting off-kilter compositions, moody, flashy lighting, knife-like jagged cutting, and oversaturated flashbacks which place us in the tormented minds of the characters. But as a morality play, something it seems to strive toward at times, the film falters. Spoiler alert: Kawashima is slaughtering these women because they raped that teenage boy, leading to his shamed suicide soon after. An effective point is made about the characters' indifference toward sexual assault of men ("If it was my sister, I'd avenge all the rapists myself," one cop admits, "but if it was my brother?"). But this also feels like a flimsy premise on which to make a stand, especially given the viciousness of Kawashima's murders and the fact that his form of assault is far more common in reality than middle-aged women gang-raping teenage boys.

Is it unfair to apply reality to a fictional film? Perhaps, but the boldness of the film's role reversal invites such critiques, not to mention the use of rape as a tool of revenge against people who are less, not more, powerful than the protagonist even if they themselves abused their own power with the shy, provincial delivery boy. And making these victims rapists themselves ultimately provides a rather thin veil for the killer's misogyny ("Slut!" he hisses at one victim, an odd epithet to choose). This is especially true when we find out he murdered his newlywed wife thirteen years ago, apparently because she was cheating on him.

At its best, the film watches this character ambivalently, careful not to romanticize him too much. His manner is brusque and rude, even toward characters he ostensibly likes, and it's clear that he is primarily fueled by personal demons: the suicide was only a mere acquaintance whose unfortune death triggered a more deeply-rooted rage. The most interesting character in the movie might actually be Haroku, who killed her hoodlum brother five years ago and is serving a probationary sentence (perhaps because the judge knew how cruel the victim was toward his family). You might think this vengeful killing is what links her to Kawashima, but there's another possibility too. We are told that until she murdered him, she was her brother's greatest defender and so perhaps it is this that draws her toward Kawashima, another violent, offputting individual.

These dual, even contradictory, impulses - empathy and rage - are shown in much starker detail with Kawashima's actions. But it is through Haroku's eyes that we are able to potentially reconcile the contradiction. Both emotions have the same source: deep psychic wounds that cause us either to identify other people as fellow victims (or fellow victimizers), or define them (and ourselves?) solely as the enemy. Kawashima can't navigate this emotional deluge and allows himself to drown in it. Haroku, placing flowers on his grave at film's end, may be soaking wet (it's raining in the final frames) but she isn't running for cover. She's learned to exist in this storm and so she is the film's only real survivor and perhaps its only hero.

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

I thought this episode would decide True Detective's season two potential for me, determining whether or not I should have any expectations beyond standard cop procedural. After all, nearly halfway through the series nothing really big had happened so far - except for Ray Velcoro getting shot, which proved to be little more than a red herring tease. If episode four didn't introduce some juicy new material, or offer a mindblowing twist, I felt it would be time to accept that were not going to get anything on par with season one. Instead, I am just as uncertain as ever. The season still hasn't convinced me it has something more compelling up its sleeve than the conventional small-city corruption noir plot, and the characters remain potential - perhaps they are all just too reserved compared to Cohle and Hart. Nonetheless, for reasons both subtle (breathing room for character moments) and obvious (that catastrophic shootout in the last ten minutes), I'm not ready to dismiss the season's potential. I've already glimpsed some negative headlines, but for me this was probably the best episode so far - not to say it was great.

In a welcome surprise, Woodrugh becomes the most interesting character. After angsty brooding for three hours, he finally seems unable to maintain the facade. Endless teases about his homosexuality are more or less - pardon the pun - put to bed. The first scene finds him waking up in his friend's house (it looks like his war buddy from last episode) - out in the living room he faces morning-after caresses and the winking rhetorical question, "We put out some fires last night, or what?" Oddly, the dialogue and screen action still coyly evade a blunt depiction of what the tough-guy cop is repressing. If this is to reflect the character's own refusal to truly own up to his desires, than it's pretty effective; if Pizzolatto is still trying to make us wonder, it's silly; and if the screenplay actually has some other twist in store, then it's ridiculous. Kitsch finally is allowed to show a bit of Woodrugh's sorrow, and the character becomes poignant for the first time since we've met him. The discovery that his girlfriend is pregnant is the first twist all season that truly feels earned. It genuinely surprised me and suggests all sorts of interesting potential for Woodrugh's arc. Who knew this would be the most promising material of episode four?!

Velcoro, on the other hand, has taken an odd turn, enjoyable in the moment, perhaps a bit disappointing upon reflection (the jury's out). The first episode bluntly told us he would not simply be the flawed-but-essentially-good "angry man" archetype, but every episode since has been striving to make him just that, although his mellower mood makes it more palatable. Maybe this reinforces the wisdom of slowly unveiling Woodrugh's secrets, because Velcoro hasn't really had anywhere to go since he was shot, if not earlier. Nonetheless Farrell continues to really sell Velcoro, and his rapport with McAdams is subtly respectful and even affectionate in a very low-key, believable way (he also has a nice scene with Kitsch, although it's odd to see Velcoro becoming the serene moral center of this ensemble). I like that no romance has developed between Velcoro and Bezzerides, and hope that none will, even as we learn she's slept with several cops in her department. Bezzerides...I still don't quite feel that she's gotten her due. She keeps her head down and does her job, and that's partly what defines her persona, but it would still be nice to see her truly thrown as off-kilter as the other characters have been.

We learn more about Bezzerides' family in this episode, and discover that (surprise!) her father's New Age institution may have some links with Vinci's political corruption and Caspere's grisly death. A brief exchange between the shaggy guru and Velcoro is one of this season's few genuinely funny conversations; Bezzerides Sr., it seems, is deeply impressed by Velcoro's colorful aura which "takes up the whole room.""What do you think green and black means?" a genuinely befuddled Velcoro asks the disenchanted daughter, who scoffs, "I don't know...you're a mood ring?" Although there is still some questionable pontification (my eyebrow arched a bit at the "memories have us" soliloquey), this episode generally features a lighter touch with the dialogue. Maybe that's because Pizzolatto has collaborated with another writer (Scott Lasser) for the first time in True Detective history...although this is such a rare occurrence I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with something unusual about this particular teleplay. Maybe the violent, elaborate shootout that closes the episode in stark fashion?

The inevitable, and rather unfair, comparison will be with the one-take nighttime raid that closed episode four of the last season and naturally this scene can't compare. The gunfire is captured in more conventional fashion, and is a lot less imaginative in conception as well as execution (it's a raid gone wrong rather than a doubly-disguised sting operation in which a character has to both escape and take a hostage). Nonetheless, I found it terrifically effective and intense. The body count is quite ruthless - Nic Pizzolatto must really hate Metro-riding protestors given how many he executes in the space of a minute or two - but because True Detective has always tended toward minimal-but-suggestive violence this outburst of savagery is all the more effective (even the similarly high body count in season one's raid mostly consists of folks shooting at each other, rather than pedestrians caught in crossfire). And the concluding image - aside from a totally unnecessary freeze-frame - is a strong, and almost blackly comic echo of the first episode. Our three detectives are brought together again in a single frame, but this time it's because they are the only survivors of the carnage.

I imagine this convenient coincidence is going to get a lot of scoffs this week (along with the nearly video-game savagery of the civilian casualties, and perhaps the ethnic profile of the criminal gang). And I guess that's fair. But what has been troubling me so far about season two isn't that the show won't convince me, but that it won't make me care. I am not particularly concerned with how realistic or even believable this universe is, I just want it to be interesting; too often these episodes haven't generated the heat. This sequence had me paying close attention and wondering what would happen next. Likewise, the investigation became more intriguing for me this time as well. Velcoro and Bezzerides travel up to Fresno to check out Caspere's land deals and someone mentions spiritual gatherings "up north." I like the idea that maybe we'll get a wider view of California even if the little evil city of Vinci remains our focal point. One of the things that appealed to me about season one was the expansiveness of its geographical outlook, its idea that a local crime was just the tip of a statewide conspiracy. Still, this feels like something that should have been building much earlier. True Detective has so many balls in the air right now; it's frustrating that the previous episode devoted so much airtime to repetitious allusions to Caspere's perverted parties.

The awkwardly-titled "Down Will Come" may inch forward on the cops' investigation but now Semyon's storyline has stalled. Why are there two scenes, nearly in a row, of Semyon shaking down former allies - especially when we already had several last time? They begin to feel like filler after a while, repeating the same information, giving the same impression. The most generous interpretation is that these scenes formally echo the character's own wheel-spinning but that doesn't make for enjoyable viewing. It doesn't help that Vaughn's performance really seems to slip this time around. The passive-aggressive schtick, which was pretty effective when he first unveiled it in episode two, has become a dull routine - more annoying than intimidating. Semyon is substituting needling nastiness for actual authority and while this could convey his desperation and impotence, I'm not getting the sense that this is intentional. Instead, characters' reactions and Semyon's own lack of self-awareness suggest that he's still supposed to be threatening. Maybe director Jeremy Podeswa doesn't have Justin Lin's or Janus Metz's ability to coax intensity from the unusually cast performer.

The lack of Cary Fukunaga - or any continuous director - has been much commented upon in the past few weeks, especially in the wake of what has widely been perceived as a dig at season one's director (apparently parodied by the ponytailed, prickly filmmaker glimpsed in episode three). At this point it feels like a real liability even if, yes, most shows switch directors all the time. The writing certainly has something to do with this as well, but season two suffers from a real lack of consistency - especially with the characters. There is no sense of picking up where we left off; each episode begins anew and the actors certainly have nothing like the comfort in their roles that McConaughey and Harrelson evinced halfway through season one. As a result, Pizzolatto's writing comes off as less assured too. The end of this episode and the preview for next suggest that he is aping the structure of season one with an apparent resolution halfway through followed by characters struggling to figure out what's really going on. But the setup doesn't feel nearly strong enough for this sort of shift (for one thing, this bald dude who got shot in the street - I don't even know his name! - is no Reggie Ledoux). And a clean-shaven Colin Farrell has nothing on McConaughy's bedraggled 2012 visage when it comes to suggesting fallout from a case prematurely solved.

I honestly have no idea where this is going, and if I loved that feeling in season one I am uneasy with it in season two...because this time it doesn't seem like True Detective knows where it's going either. "Down Will Come" demonstrates that this season at least has the potential to go big and - maybe - go broad, rather than just meandering its way to a limp finish. Personally, I am fine with waiting till episodes seven and eight to get real breakthroughs and payoffs on the details of the investigation. Last season, episodes five and six were focused on character - putting its detectives in compelling situations and shining new light on their troubled personalities. That's where I hope the next two episodes of this season will invest their energies. Whether this can be done without the strong guiding hand of a single director remains to be seen.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

As every Hollywood romantic comedy has taught us, the ideal couple must bicker and clash before they come together. Although Asuka's and Shinji's entaglement won't necessarily follow such a clear-cut outline, they are at least true to this principle. And as is often the case in such tempestuous trysts, the female initially overwhelms and overshadows the cowed male. As "Magma Diver" begins, Asuka is still the new star of the show (three episodes into her arc, it's clear Anno is still far more excited by her presence than that of Shinji, Misato, or especially Rei). We see her shopping with her bemused and much older crush Kaji, who teases her about her obsession with revealing bathing suits (she's preparing for a school trip to a hot springs resort). Kaji isn't the only one teasing - the episode drops numerous hints that Asuka will soon be diving and swimming in something far less refreshing than spring water; and sure enough before long her trip has been cancelled and she has volunteered to extract an Angel egg from deep beneath the earth's surface. Is it really a spoiler to say things don't go well?

The first sign of trouble, as far as the teenage pilot is concerned, comes when her magma-proof suit is revealed: at the press of the button it balloons into a rolly-poly protective shell which may keep her safe but also makes her look like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man (or perhaps the bratty Violet Beauregard blown up into a giant blueberry). Humiliated by her appearance, she nonetheless demands to be given the duty - when Rei responds, Asuka slaps her hand away. If losing her figure is bad, losing the glory of a dangerous mission is far worse (Shinji, by contrast, glumly accepts but doesn't relish the - wrong - expectation that he would be tapped to capture the Angel). When Asuka drops, she boasts of her skills and fearlessness over the intercom, and only briefly worries about the consequences of failure (under Ikari's orders, the Angel, Asuka, and NERV would all be instantly destroyed to avoid a second apocalypse).

Initially Asuka succeeds, barely surviving the pressure, arriving at her destination (that would be floating in an endless field of underground lava) and entrapping the fetal Angel in its massive chrysalis. However, no NERV mission has yet been easy and this one will be no exception. Within moments, the Angel has birthed itself, attacked Asuka and withstood numerous counterattacks. For the first time in three episodes she's truly in need of rescue. Well, sort of - Shinji must drop a knife down to her Eva for use, but it's still up to her to use it. And so she does, stabbing the Angel relentlessly and then improvising when that's not enough. She destroys the Angel just in time, but as it distintegrates, it severs her tether to the overworld and, stunned, she begins to drop to her inevitable demise - until a giant hand grips her tightly and she looks up to see Eva-01. She smiles up warmly, the sarcasm washed out of her system, and this is the first moment of true, conscious tenderness between her and Shinji - even if mediated by the giant mechanical suits they wear.

If this begins as Asuka's episode, it climaxes (no pun intended) by focusing on Shinji who is aroused for the first time while eavesdropping on Misato and Asuka skinny-dipping near him in the resort they've finally arrived in, just over the partition. He blushes and dives underwater, humiliated by the unexpected experience (as is pet penguin Pen-Pen, whose comic presence frequently enlivens "Magma Diver" and also inspires a number of creative non sequitur shots). Again we have the fascinating contrast between the timid boy coming of age and the massive super-robot he pilots. Emcased in Eva-01, Shinji saves the world and the girl he's increasingly becoming attracted to. Stripped of that outfit (indeed, of any outfit) he can't even control his own body. Following this scene, the episode ends as Asuka notices Misato's scar, and the older woman casually acknowledges that its origin in the Second Impact, also alluding to Asuka's apparently dark backtory. There's a lot Shinji doesn't yet know about the women in his life - not only their outer sexuality but the inner suffering remains remote at this point.

The last episode forced Shinji and Asuka to collaborate and hinted at their mutual attraction for the first time. "Magma Diver" - while mostly avoiding either confrontations or connections - subtly deepens both aspects of their relationship. Professionally, Shinji openly saves Asuka (and for the first time she expresses something other than resentment, irritation, or jealousy toward him). Personally, his physical attraction manifests itself, but on a less bawdy level - his concern and care for her also emerge in his wordless rescue (there is no hint that he is diving down to rescue her, or even considering such a move; he's just suddenly there). In the end, it isn't just Asuka who is the magma diver of the title, it's Shinji. And so we begin to subtly shift back to his central perspective. Not that Asuka is going anywhere...



me: I'd make a "let's dive in" corny pun to start off, but really it wouldn't be any less obvious than the hints Episode 10 drops early on about where Asuka is headed. This an episode with a lot of foreshadowing. I feel like there's probably more significance to her deep-earth diving than I realize right now.
Out of curiosity is there a subgenre of action animes dealing with underground missions, or lava or anything? I get the weird sense that this episode is tying into some larger phenomenon. "Magma Diver" is such a specific title too, especially after some of the previous ones involving philosophical phrases and such.

Bob: Well, there's definitely a theme in anime of "the spa episode", which we get a teasing glimpse of here. Lots of shows have them, featuring the female characters luxuriating naked for the viewer and getting into over-the-top antics. We only get a bit of it here. A more prominent example would be something like "Tenchi Muyo."
As for "lava episode"-- I can't think of any really. There's a part of me that sees a lot of this as an inversion of some of the Bond instincts in the series-- instead of being a glory-girl sexy figure for the duration, Asuka is turned into Violet from Willy Wonka. Part of my thought here is mainly from the title-- "Magma Diver" sounds like a possible title from the cheesy hey-day of the sixties. And for how it's marketed to anime fans-- there are whole lines of figurine sets of the girls in their swimsuits loudly emblazoned with "MAGMA DIVER"-- makes it seem like it ought to be its own franchise, like "MOONRAKER" or something.

Murderous Ink: As far as I know, Anno borrowed its title from Sundiver by David Brin, though he admitted he had never read it. Since Japan is located on the 'Ring of Fire', volcanic activities, including earthquakes, are frequent and often drastic. These geographical characteristics must have been a basis for numerous myth, legends, and folklores involving volcanoes and inspired many contemporary artists to create their works on that theme. You may recall, for example, Kurosawa's The Bad Sleeps Well brings its most dramatic moment on the top of the volcano. Also, underground magma activities are always considered a mysterious source of nature. Even though I am not aware of any 'subgenre of action animes dealing with underground missions', many mysterious entities (from Godzilla to evil empire) have their origins in deep underground.

me: re: spa episode, I thought it was kind of amusing how the fanservice here mostly involves an inversion of the voyeuristic concept. It's really Shinji who is more exposed here (and even when the girls are sitting poolside, it is to expose physical and psychological scars).

Murderous Ink: What I find quite fascinating (not necessarily in critical way) is that no female characters in this story reacts to the 'fetus' of the Shito being developed in lava/womb just like other vertebrates. I don't think Anno was/is particularly sensitive to gender politics of post-political correctness world, and this series was well before such discussion was brought into literal and art criticism. So, its gender concepts or gender fantasies can be sometimes offensive or even ridiculous to our eyes (like embarrassingly outdated hot-spa antics you mentioned). Here, Misato, for example, has no remorse whatsoever to terminate the life of the fetus. If we consider her hatred toward Shito, maybe it is understandable, but no other character shows any emotion whatsoever, either. I am not saying they should, but I guess it must have never occurred to Anno that the role of maternity instincts might have brought an extra dimension to the story ... just a tiny fraction of Mia Fallow in Rosemary's Baby. I am quite certain that many women -scientists or not- would react or show intense interest in how the fetus is formed. Maybe I am wrong.

Bob: We get another inversion here with Asuka's crush on Kaji-- she keeps throwing all this attention to him, and he keeps treating her like a child, ignoring her. I thought it was interesting that here we see more of his spy-side for a little bit, while Asuka expects him to watch her "debut" battle. Using the light subplot of her teenage crush to mask his more serious subterfuge, the way he has to put on a false face to her, and everyone.

me: And it also paves the way for Shinji to swoop in unexpectedly and play the swashbuckling hero for the first time, rescuing the damsel in distress (albeit after giving her a shining moment of bravery & ingenuity). Most surprisingly (well maybe not considering how close she is to fiery death) she seems pleased. It's definitely the tenderest moment between them so far even if they have gigantic mechanical suits between them.

Bob: To an extent it's a continuation of something we had in the previous episodes-- in all of her sorties, she's been dependent upon Shinji in some way. In fact, that's kinda one of her major themes-- her coming to terms with how much she needs him (and other people in general) in order to get by.

me: But this is the first time we've seen such an overt rescue. Before they were working together.
Throughout the episode, mostly the focus is on her. And then he swoops in out of nowhere. And then of course we get that last scene with him. It feels like in this episode we're shifting our focus a little bit back to Shinji by the end, after 2-3 episodes in which Asuka was really the star.

Bob: Mhm. We get it bit by bit-- seeing Asuka react violently to not being allowed on the trip to Okinawa, while Shinji's blase, and seeing Shinji expect to be chosen for the mission, only for it to be Asuka. We can read into that either relief, or jealousy, or whatever.
The character building is there in bits and pieces. We learn Asuka's improbably some kind of a child genius, although it never really factors in the story, just another way for her to lord it over Shinji. And as much as she's infatuated with Kaji, she seems equally obsessed with getting Shinji's attention throughout (all her diving entries). This is a lighter episode. The lightest so far, even moreso than the dance one. It shows how much the show is playing with its format and trying out the episodic route after being so serial for 6 episodes before.

me: So you don't see this quite as much of a 6-episode arc as the previous one? Or just an arc of a different sort (episodic, as you say, rather than serial but still interconnected)?

Bob: It's less of an arc so far, and more of a variation on themes. Next episode will be a bit of a climax point with the three kids being forced to work together, and that will become one of the new themes that they'll work with.

me: Yeah, Rei is practically non-existent at this point.
Your description of the show as "light" makes an interesting point. They constantly harp on how high the stakes are on this mission - triggering a Second Impact, destroying all of NERV if there's a mess-up - but it does kind of seem like hype for what is relatively speaking (certainly compared to the first few missions and also the ones to come) a breather.
A few points to make before we finish: 1) This raises the question, on a show in which every single episode/battle could result in the end of the world - how do you preserve a sense of high stakes? I think especially as the series proceeds, it derives from the individual characters more than the global stakes. 2) I would have said previously that the Jet Alone episode was the most trivial or light, but actually that has some major reveals about NERV's mission whereas here - other than that glimpse of Kaji chatting up a stranger - we aren't really breaking new plot or character ground (except for the Shinji rescue thing, which is subtle). 3) This is probably the most provocative we've seen NERV be - here they are literally going into the Angels' territory rather than waiting for them to attack, and it isn't even framed as pre-emptive measure, but rather some kind of scientific exploration. It's the most blatantly aggressive we've seen NERV be yet.

Bob: Yeah. And their provocative move here has a slight cause-and-effect in the next episode, as SEELE becomes more of a threat, though somewhat unspoken. NERV's offensive posture here makes them more of a power that needs to be clamped down on.

me: This is a memorable episode in many ways, but perhaps not a particularly important one.

Bob: Like the last one, it does a nice job of making it look like any other anime, which is cool, for how it can just spin off of a theme and not have to always be about the master plot.

me: Do you think that serves a larger purpose as well? In terms of where the series is headed, if Anno even knew completely at that point?

Bob: I think this serves its place pretty much like the last one did. Next one will be a bit more progressive, though.

I don't usually blog on Thursdays (except for last week's delayed True Detective episode) but today is the seventh anniversary of Lost in the Movies, so what the hell. Plus I've long been looking for an excuse to post this cool picture from Celine and Julie Go Boating.

I don't have too much to say, just thanks for reading, viewing, commenting (or lurking), and especially for sharing my work with others over the past, um, 7/10 of a decade. If you're new to the site, or you've only read posts past a certain point, I encourage you to explore my archives through the following options (all fully updated as of today):


If you're still hungering for more commemorative content, and don't mind extremely excessive meta-musings, check out my 5th anniversary retrospective of the blog's history.

And perhaps most importantly, because this is about the future as well as the past, I encourage you to view my most recent work, Across the Threshold with Maya Deren, a short video essay juxtaposing images from Deren's wild avant-garde dreamscapes with the clever words of Arthur Eddington, a physicist who memorably framed the quantum reality of taking a single step.

I will be officially posting the video here on Monday along with some further commentary on the ideas that motivated it but for now, if you like it, share the Vimeo link.

The blogosphere has changed quite a lot in seven years (to the point where, with all the social media outlets and multiple fronts, I'm not sure it even makes sense to call it the "blogosphere" anymore). But we're still here, with much more to come.

The concept behind this video was inspired by the work of Martha Nochimson in the book David Lynch Swerves, which uses quantum physics as a prism through which to view David Lynch's later films.

"As with Eddington's threshold above, the Lynchian threshold is a passage between two perceptions of the same space, and a wake-up call for a fuller apprehension of our mind/body realities. ..."

"The Lynchian threshold, which appears when a troubled consciousness is forced beyond the perceived limits of reality, has the strangeness of dreams. But the experience is the essence of the Lynchian real, even if, like Arthur Eddington's subatomic image of entering a room, it has a distinctly fantastic aura. Eddington removes the blinders from our vision to reveal the alternate identity of a material world usually imagined only as a solid, stable place. Lynch does the same in his films. Thus, we can find a key to reading Lynch in the room Eddington imagines entering, even though it seems almost cartoonlike in its strangeness. Eddington is summoning up a scientific scenario, not a reverie. The familiarly solid shapes of floorboards are replaced here by the frightening (yet quasi-comical) indeterminacy of the behavior of the particles that make up the floor that Eddington would find if he looked at them in a laboratory. Clearly life is more surprising in the light of modern paradigms than it is when we wear the glasses of classical Newtonian physics, but it is no less real.

But Lynch and Eddington have different motives for surprising us. Eddington is attempting to provide a simple visible parable for complex theories developed by physicists. Lynch has much larger purposes in mind. ..."

"We must begin by talking about the shattering moments when Lynch opens up thresholds among the multiple levels of the material world for his protagonists. These moments take place when problems arise from which society does not provide an answer - when characters are struggling with impossible dilemmas or to create something new. ..."

"When they are driven outside those illusory limits, Lynch's protagonists are not only surprised by the behavior of things and bodies around them, they also experience a kind of isolation because they are propelled by events into radical conflict with the flawed and often punishing world of 'normal' transactions. ..."

 "...he himself contradicts the laws of classical physics by both being in two places at once and, at the same time, not being present at all. ..."

"Anyone who has contended with a self in turmoil, engaged in troubling conflicts with our surrounding society, or pushed the boundaries of his/her knowledge will, at least in theory, find that physicists' description of matter on a particle level evokes the experience of learning, discovering, and growing. Any profound revelation breaks up habit, and not in a lighthearted way; it can be a trauma akin to losing coordinates in space and time. Sometimes, and all teachers know this, the inability to deal with that kind of disorientation makes it impossible for some people ever to go beyond their limited comfort zones - that is, makes it impossible to learn, grow, and change. ..."

"entanglement ... multiple particles respond to stimuli as if they were one as well as many..."

"Superposition ... one particle ... in two places at exactly the same time - making it impossible to apply pronouns as we do in the ordinary course of things. The particle is both 'it' and 'they.' ..."

"...traumatic transitions and the interim space between two states of being are ... crucial part[s] of his narratives..."

"...a more important narrative goal is to move from 'here to here,' to see the moment of being in an expanded way. ..."

"...a full understanding of the 'here' would involve the scraping away of the surface of the now to arrive at the future, rather than a linear progression toward it."

Just yesterday I discovered "The Principle of Infinite Pains", an article by Maria Popova (h/t Nikki Walkerden) featuring quotations from the book Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film. Several of these quotes resonated completely with the sense I was getting of Deren's work in light of Eddington's words and Nochimson's research (while also, perhaps, providing subtle counterpoints). So let's end with the filmmaker herself. Again, the emphasis is mine, based on passages relevant to the video:

"This principle — that the dynamic of movement in film is stronger than anything else — than any changes of matter… that movement, or energy is more important, or powerful, than space or matter — that, in fact, it creates matter — seemed to me to be marvelous, like an illumination, that I wanted to just stop and celebrate that wonder, just by itself…"

"And, looking back, it is clear that the direction was away from a concern with the way things feel and towards a concern with the way things are; away from personal psychology towards nerveless metaphysics. I mean metaphysics in the large sense… not as mysticism but beyond the physical in the way that a principle is an abstraction, beyond any particulars in which it is manifest."

"[Meshes of the Afternoon] externalizes an inner world to the point where it is confounded with the external world. At Land has little to do with the inner world of the protagonist; it externalizes the hidden dynamic of the external world, and here the drama results from the activity of the external world. It is as if I had moved from a concern with the life of a fish, to a concern with the sea which accounts for the character of the fish and its life. And Rituals pulls back even further, to a point of view from which the external world itself is but an element in the entire structure and scheme of metamorphosis: the sea itself changes because of the large changes of the earth."

And finally though I'm not sure it's so directly pertinent to my present inquiry, I just love this (and suspect that it does have something to do with the larger point after all): 

"Last May I had an emergency operation; it was touch and go for a few hours there, and I came out of it with a rapidity that dazzled: one month from the date of that operation (I had to be slit from side to side) I was dancing! Then I actually realized that I was overwhelmed with the most wondrous gratitude for the marvelous persistence of the life force. In the transported exaltation of this moment, I wanted to run out into the streets and shout to everyone that death was not true! that they must not listen to the doom singers and the bell ringers! that life was more true! I had always believed and felt this, but never had I known how right I was. And I asked myself, why, then, did I not celebrate it in my art. And then I had a sudden image: a dog lying somewhere very still, and a child, first looking at it, and then, compulsively, nudging it. Why? to see whether it was alive; because if it moves, if it can move, it lives. This most primitive, this most instinctive of all gestures: to make it move to make it live. So I had always been doing with my camera… nudging an ever-increasing area of the world, making it move, animating it, making it live… The love of life itself… seems to me larger than the loving attention to a life. But, of course, each contains the other, and, perhaps, I have not so much traveled off in a direction as moved in a slow spiral around some central essence, seeing it first from below, and now, finally, from above."

UPDATE: I just discovered this fascinating essay discussing this very subject: "The Physics of Film: Quantum Mechanics in the Films of Maya Deren"

Within the past year, podcast after podcast has sprouted up to discuss Twin Peaks. Some, like Fire Talk With Me, are "introcasts" exploring each episode spoiler-free with someone who doesn't know what's coming up. Others, like Sparkwood & 21, analyze the series in-depth for the veteran viewers without worrying about giving away plot twists. Still others, like Twin Peaks Rewatch, mix the formats by following an episode-specific discussion with a short spoiler section at the end to look at the big picture. Meanwhile, the original Twin Peaks Podcast, which concluded several years ago (at a time when it could, remarkably, take that title because there were no other podcasts on the subject!), has been offering stray episodes with various Peaks commentators sharing anecdotes and insights into the show - and during their original run they also sported numerous guest hosts and interview subjects (including co-creator Mark Frost and beloved actress Kimmy Robertson).

Twin Peaks Unwrapped offers several of these approaches simultaneously. One host, Bryan Kozaczka, is new to the show (and struggling not to jump ahead, though fortunately he has avoided spoilers for the central mystery). The other, Ben Durant, has been watching Twin Peaks since it first aired in 1990 and guides his co-host through this universe with passion and expertise. The podcast also incorporates details gleaned from records of the show's ratings and interviews from the old-school fanzine Wrapped in Plastic...whose publisher, John Thorne, will be interviewed in an upcoming episode. Indeed, in addition to episode-by-episode coverage the podcast has already paused to interview many Twin Peaks personalities, including Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks author Brad Dukes, Welcome to Twin Peaks curator Pieter Dom, and the Log Lady herself, Catherine Coulson.

I was quite honored to join this august company when Ben and Bryon invited me onto the first season as well as my own video series, Journey Through Twin Peaks. The resulting interview runs ninety minutes and covers the genesis of my videos, anecdotes about where Lynch and Frost were coming from, the strengths of Frost's vision in the first season, the early episodes of the second season, the various supernatural possibilities of Bob and the owls, Bryon's speculations about who killed Laura Palmer, and more:

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. All the President's Men (1976/USA/dir. Alan Pakula) appeared at #93 on my original list.

What it is• Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) - "Woodstein" as they're affectionately/condescendingly called by their Washington Post superiors - are onto something, and they know it even if no one else does. Then again, maybe they don't; they're hungry pros, keen for the kill, and it almost doesn't matter if the story they're chasing is a chimera or a genuine pot of gold. As it happens, it's the story of the century - a bungled break-in at Democratic headquarters in the foregone-conclusion '72 election which just happens to be a smoking gun with the President of the United States' finger on the trigger. Yet the true pleasures of their pursuit are to be found in the small details: the long wait in the secretary's office broken through by Bernstein's clever phone-in; the endless door-to-door rejections by intimidated witnesses, overcome when the duo finally asserts itself instead of letting frustration take over; the grudging, acerbic respect offered by their casually tuxedo-wearing socialite boss (Jason Robards) when the report they've broken their backs on just barely proves itself worthy of his attention. The film ends with the understated denouement of the decade - typed pronouncements of who was arraigned, arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned, climaxing with the resignation of Richard Nixon in August of 1974, several years after the enterprising reporters were first clued in to the Watergate burglary. Yet this cataclysmic climax is after-the-fact, and the real thrill is in the chase itself; the stakes and scale of the political scandal is just icing on the cake (albeit particularly tasty icing, especially as we draw closer to the conclusion and Hal Holbrook's enigmatic Deep Throat clarifies the risk they run). If ever a movie celebrated the pure thrill of hungry professionals on the hunt, it's All the President's Men.

Why I like it•

The protagonists of this film are reporters, but they could theoretically belong to any profession which requires its practitioners to make their own luck and enjoy the risks they run and rejection they entail in the pursuit of success. I've had plenty of goal-oriented jobs, including sales, fundraising, and census enumeration, and as such can't help but glory in the affrontive chutzpah and endless curiosity of Woodward and Bernstein as they calmly force their way into living rooms or cajole inadvertent confessions out of phone conversations. But I saw this movie long before I'd held such jobs, and loved it just as much then, so my affection transcends personal identification. Put simply, Pakula's film is one of those stories that glories in the intricacies of work and it matters little how familiar one is with the particular profession - the details are so juicy that one's swept up regardless. There's also the thrill of the movie's perversely cinematic style: a movie based primarily on verbal exposition (artfully managed by William Goldman's glorious screenplay) nonetheless manages to cultivate such a moody, absorbing visual atmosphere - Gordon Willis' evocative cinematography, Robert Wolfe's subtly enticing montage, and George Jenkins' endlessly naturalistic and thus fascinating production design create an all-encompassing onscreen world which draws its power from the suggestion of a dark, detailed universe extending beyond the frame. I don't know exactly what director Alan Pakula was on to in the mid- to late-seventies but he created some of the most alluring thrillers of all time and he remains underrated to this day. Ultimately, all I can say is this: put All the President's Men on during a quiet afternoon or unoccupied evening and I defy you to turn it off. There are few films more absorbing in the history of the medium.

How you can see it• All the President's Men is available on DVD from Netflix.

What do you think?• Is All the President's Men the best thriller of the seventies? Does its power rely in large part on the draw of the Watergate scandal? Can Hollywood still make a film as relevant and timely as it could in '76 (this film came out less than two years after Nixon resigned)? Do the clearly-influenced political/contemporary thrillers of the 00s and 10s - including the obviously admiring Aaron Sorkin's series and films - live up to this film's legacy? Do we need to identify with Woodward/Bernstein's moral position to enjoy their hunt? Do you relate to/sympathize with the duo's methods and drive? Can you think of other films that so deftly couple a brilliant screenplay with such an assured visual style - or do you disagree with that approach? While it's not actually included in the film (having been revealed long after the Post struck gold with its initially quixotic Watergate quest), what do you think those missing 18 minutes of Nixon's tape concealed?

Over a year ago, this video was assembled for my own purpose (not originally intended for public viewing): I was planning an anthology of 7 short films. I figured each film would be shot in a different room of a house, echo a different genre, feature a character of a different age, include visuals inspired by a different Catholic sacrament, take place at a different time of day, use a different style of composition, and incorporate themes or visual/musical atmosphere from a different historical era. Before developing the individual stories, I created this montage to see all of the elements in play. Naturally, the concept was so schematic that I never got very far with it! The project was eventually abandoned. Nevertheless, I enjoy some of the musical and visual juxtapositions in this "guide video" and decided to upload it to my Vimeo channel. It's fairly random and obscure, but absorbing enough if you enjoy this sort of thing.

After the video, I've included pictures and brief explanations for each category for those curious about the intended structure. I'm not 100% sure why I was compelled to upload this, except that I have a soft spot for juxtapositions of wildly different yet congruent material, and I enjoy the schematic nature of the progression (especially the historical music and clips).




Each short would take place at a different time of day, which would impact both the look (light coming through the windows) and the events (since a character would be sleeping in the night short, returning after a night out in the dawn one, etc).



Each short would feature a character in an older age group than the one before. Alongside the time of day, sacrament, and (more abstractly) associated historical era this would add a sense of progression as the shorts unfolded, making them feel like they were part of a larger narrative framework. The characters alternated between female and male.



This was one of the more obscure elements, which I never fully figured out before abandoning the project. The intention was not to overtly include a sacrament in each short, but to have each short include a motif or theme associated with one of the sacraments. So for example the guilty teenager would realize there was a presence on the other side of the one-way mirror (confession), the dancer would attempt to feed the sleeping man (communion) and so forth. Many of the connections never really became clear to me - a good example of how choosing structural gimmicks before determining narrative can be more of a handicap than a help.



This was the very first motif I established when coming up with the idea for this "feature" made up of separate shorts. The idea of setting each short in a different room (of the house I was living in at the time) seemed to turn a necessary limitation into fruitful discipline, and the rest of the conceits followed this. The order of the rooms was determined by how their layout within the house. I shot each of these little video clips on my phone at the same time I was taking those exterior still shots to establish the time of day. Had I always planned to share this montage, I might have taken care to avoid the low resolution and shaky movement of these clips (which makes such a jarring contrast with beautifully-shot scenes from classic films...), but oh well.



One of the most obvious and attractive conceits was the idea that each short would fall within a different genre. The genre conceit actually fueled the conception of many shorts, alongside the Jonathan Lethem stories I was adapting in some cases (having discovered he was one of the few authors to offer material nearly for free). This is also one of the few categories in which the elements don't naturally fall into a particular order, so I had to decide which genre to match up with which time of day/room/historical era. Horror went well with nighttime, the documentary approach fit my small little dining room, and the melancholy imaginativeness of the Romantic era called for animation, which would probably have been pretty basic considering my budgetary limitations.



This was my favorite of the seven elements, and also the most vaguely determined! I loved the idea that each of the shorts might match up to a different era in Western history, from the dark ages to the present. However, this would be more a matter of mood, theme, and atmosphere than direct setting (i.e. all of the shorts would seem to take place in the present not medieval times or the Enlightenment, etc). This would be an element I used as a guide for myself, but which would not necessarily be apparent to the viewer. I never totally figured out how this would work, and maybe this more than anything established the project as a pipe dream. But I'm still kind of fascinated by the potential for loose allegory here, however pretentious. It was also fun matching up genres with historical eras, some of which were obvious (noir with the modern age, horror with the dark ages), while others were more intuitive (musicals with the Renaissance) or even somewhat paradoxical yet "right" to me (medieval with sci-fi). The clips to represent these eras were taken from the British documentary Civilisation, one of my favorite films/miniseries and a big influence on how I divided up the eras in the first place. Best of all - for the purposes of this montage anyway - the different eras determined the musical score for each section, establishing a distinct mood despite the cacophony of clips.



For the final category, I thought it would be an interesting exercise, if also a damningly dogmatic limitation, to shoot each short with a different formal emphasis. Here is where the schematic obsession of the whole "7 Rooms" idea became perhaps most ridiculous. That said, it was fun determining seven distinct styles of covering a scene, and then finding clips from my collection that represented these approaches, even if it wasn't particularly helpful. The narrowness of this concept pretty much torpedoed any last hope that this project would ever see the light of day. Also contributing: practical considerations as my living situation changed, competition from other projects (both film ideas and blogging work), and finally the fact that, as with most of my brainstorms in the past few years, what began as a simple cost-saving conceit had developed into a concept too ambitious to actually realize. Onto the next idea...

My regular YouTube series begin with the first entry in The 3 1/2 Minute Review. Appropriately enough, it covers Neon Genesis Evangelion, the anime TV show I've been writing about every Wednesday on this site (and will continue to discuss for several months). Not an anime fan? Great! You're actually the person this video is intended for, although of course I hope those who already admire Evangelion will enjoy it too. In less than four minutes, I recap my initial experience watching the show, from initial doubts, to growing interest, and finally captivation as the second half of the series hit its stride. There are no plot spoilers, though I do include images from late in the show. At the end of the video, there's a brief preview for my next video (the first entry in my Side by Side series). Although yesterday I missed the mark by a few minutes, from now on every new YouTube video will go up every other Sunday. As for the next 3 1/2 Minute Review , you can expect on November 1 (which happens to be my birthday). If you are wondering about its subject, at the risk of giving too much away I'll say that if you think something is missing from the following video it isn't missing - it simply deserves its own independent 3 1/2 minutes of glory.

The 3 1/2 Minute Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion has also been uploaded to Vimeo.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

I was going to begin this entry with the comment, "This is where Neon Genesis Evangelion goes off the rails, in the best sense possible." Before doing so, a little internet research turned up the fact that, indeed, this is where the series began to depart dramatically from the original series script - in part based on Anno's own interest in psychology following a period of depression. If the previous episode returned us to character study after a long stretch focusing on action-packed Angel battles, "Splitting of the Breast" fuses this character study with the larger, overarching sci-fi context. The result is one of the strongest episodes yet and, as I was originally inclined to write, a feeling that the self-contained world of the show - with its ever-battered but ever-resilient NERV infrastructure, characters whose flaws and strengths we love in equal measure, and hinted-but-not-quite-explored atmosphere of intrigue and treachery - is starting to disintegrate.

The episode begins, innocuously enough, with shimmering water in a bathroom (subtly setting up the watery shot near the end, when Shinji is rescued from the Eva after a near-death experience). Shinji, Asuka, and Misato banter in their Odd Couple quarters, and then we're off to another Eva test in which Shinji scores off the charts. Misato praises him, Shinji's confidence starts to build, and Asuka alternately mocks his accomplishments and expresses her frustration by punching a locker. Her arrogance is growing transparent; at one point later she will even shout revealingly at Rei, "I don't pilot the Eva for the praise of other people. I do it because I want to be able to praise myself!" Her self-esteem is extremely low, and her boasts are an increasingly thin cover for this weakness. Soon they won't even be that.

When an Angel attacks - our first in three episodes - Shinji volunteers himself for the front and charges it with impatience. Like Asuka, this shallow form of assertion is not enough and he's swallowed by the Angel's shadow, which turns out to actually be the Angel itself. Ristsuko, who has been cheerful and teasing all episode, turns cold and professional, telling Misato that rescuing Shinji is not their priority. They must focus on retrieving Eva-01. Misato responds by slapping Ritsuko (a moment nicely emphasized by a chopper roaring through the background) and the cool technician breaks, scowling at her peer and then warning ominously - after a long pause (this episode's hectic first half nicely underlines the extended silences of the second) "Misato, trust me."

And then we are inside the "Sea of Dirac," the extradimensional world within the Angel/shadow. Shinji begins to suffocate and as he does so, he is confronted by his own insecurities - obviously this "shadow" Shinji is confronting is metaphorical as well as literal. Shinji's inner voice (or the Angel, or the Eva, speaking through him?) tells painful truths: "There's no way you can live by linking just the enjoyable moments like a rosary." Compared to what will come, this is actually a relatively brief metaphysical encounter, but it's still a shock to the system. As Shinji prepares to die, a ghostly feminine figure hurls out of the abyss, embraces him, and thrusts him forward. The Eva then punches its way out of the Angelic sphere floating above the "shadow," in a truly awesome shot which echoes the "berserker" scene in the first episode but seems to frighten NERV officials even more.

Touchingly, Misato doesn't even try to hold back her tears when she hugs an exhausted Shinji in the pilot's seat - he tells her he only came back to see her again (at least that's the implication of his rather enigmatic "you"). Cmdr. Ikari (yet again conveniently absent for his underlings to display both their personalities and their executive decision-making - impotent or interrupted in this particular case) and Ritusko mutter to one another about the Eva's increasingly ambiguous true identity: "Are the Evas really on our side? They may hate us?" Shinji meanwhile wakes up in the hospital to find both the usually aloof Rei and an embarrassed Asuka attending to him. As the support system underneath these teenagers starts to give way, they will have only each other (and the increasingly emotionally-committed Misato) to rely upon. Will it be enough?



me: Remarkably, I've never read the Eva entry on Wikipedia until now. It's pretty informative.
Apparently this was the episode where Eva went dramatically off-script, in part because Anno wanted to focus more on the characters' psychology than was planned.
Good God but the more I learn about the series, the deeper its parallels appear to Twin Peaks.

Bob: Right. A big part of that is probably aided by the fact that Anno storyboarded this, and most other episodes. Animation tends to be driven as much, or more, by its storyboards than scripts. For instance over here, I don't know how many Looney Tunes actually had scripts from the first stage. Guys like Chuck Jones would storyboard and keyframe things out, maybe writing dialogue along the way-- but they composed it visually first, I think.
So, it'd be easier for Anno to go off script here than it would be for most live action people. Also, besides the animation budget issues which we keep talking about, there's the fact that Anno and his crew wanted to eschew some of the cliches inherent in sci-fi that they might've had originally.
There's an interview somewhere where Kazuya Tsurumaki talks about how they wanted Shinji's conversation with the Angel to be something other than a generic sci-fi thing, complete with him imitating a cheezy voice. Instead, it becomes Shinji talking to himself.

me: You've mentioned this is your favorite episode, or at least high among your favorites. Why?

Bob: I think that if I had to say one reason, it would be that in this episode you have about a dozen things reaching a head all at once. The Angels manifest their most bizarre form yet, something that seems to defy the laws of physics and takes their abstract nature to an even higher plateau. Anno's direction is pushed more and more into an avant-garde spirit, not only with the sequence where Shinji communicates with the Angel, but everything up to and after it as well-- his framing and composition are just......as abstract in the suspenseful stuff leading up the Shinji's capture as the "Third-Impact"-y stuff during it. Moreover, almost every character seems to have a major arc pivot-point here-- Misato goes from wanting to chew Shinji out to bawling over his safety; Rei has a moment of lucid wisdom with Asuka; Ritsuko has to answer (or at least offer telling silence) to Misato's distrust; Asuka has at least two or three different character arcs at once it seems, and it's hard to even fathom how many for Shinji.

me: What are some of the compositions that specifically stand out to you?

Bob: Everything in the build up to Shinji being taken, as the Evas play hide-and-seek with the Angel. Anno does a great job of putting you in the action by fragmenting things just enough so that putting them off center, at the edge of frames as they're hiding behind buildings, the Angel peeking out from between things. Remarkable especially because it takes up such a small part of the episode. He could've built a whole set-piece out of this (especially the bit where Asuka's cord gets caught between buildings......it's almost like he's building the grammar of what the rest of the action will be). But instead it's just a dodge, and the plausibility of how that action could carry the episode makes Shinji's capture feel so much heavier.

me: Speaking of the buildup - I noticed that this time we jump right to the Evas in action. No boarding or launching scenes. It's like the last run of episodes set us up well enough to know all the mechanics of Eva-Angel battles. Now we're thrust in to the implications.

Bob: Yeah. Allows them to save time that can be better spent on all of the weirdness that follows, or even the domestic comedy at the front of the episode.

me: Anything to say about the animation in this episode?

Bob: Well first of all, we have to acknowledge that the copy we have here is of significantly lower picture quality. Unfortunately, Gainax lost the negative for this episode, and had to resort to a dupe print. Which really sucks, for such a pivotal one.

me: Wow, I was wondering about that. The colors seemed less sharp than usual.

Bob: Yeah. It really disappoints me here because there's so much that's being done visually. You can especially see the drop-down of quality when you just look at the preview of the next episode-- everything's so fucking sharp and vibrant Anyway, having a largely static Angel means that there's a lot of character animation here, and a lot of it goes to Asuka, which helps sell all her character moments. We see more of her frustration with losing to Shinji in the synch-rates from her movements in the locker-room. We can see more of her frustration earlier in the extra keyframes her body language gets as she's chewing him out for apologizing all the time.
The moments that stick out most of all for me however are when she's yelling at Rei in the early stages of the emergency situation-- her face is engulfed in shadow, but the blues of her eyes remain striking clear. There's something scary about that, the real heart of danger inherent in trying to act calm during a crisis.
And then there's the cartoonish reaction we see of her when Rei leaves Shinji's room, revealing that she was waiting outside his door as well. This is where the drop-down of picture quality really bugs me, because it's so interesting to see a moment like that done in the light pastel colors reserved for the hospital moments. It's an exagerated reaction, but in a more subdued, realistic hue-- Shinji's reaction to laugh feels really earned there. It captures the volatility and sweetness of youth.

me: Well, you touched on a few things I was just thinking. 1) While you were typing that (and before I read it) I was choosing that exact same shot of Asuka's face in shadow as one of screen-caps for this entry. 2) I was also just thinking that, despite the drop-down in print quality, the animation seems much more detailed here than in recent episodes, especially in terms of facial expression.
As for Asuka's face being in shadow, the whole episode of course uses literal shadow as a metaphor for the classic Jungian "shadow self."

Bob: For Shinji especially, but even for her. It makes you question the certainty with which she always blusters through everything. She's insistent upon shouting down Shinji when he's gone almost as if she needs to convince herself that he'll be there in the end for her to yell at.

me: You're right about Asuka. We've gotten hints, but if I'm not mistaken this is the beginning of her downward trajectory in which her kinda lovable arrogance starts to just plain seem pathetic.
And I love that line, which I mentioned in my intro - "I do it because I want to be able to praise myself!" She says that like it justifies her, but it's actually so revealing.

Bob: Yeah. And the crisis moment gives it a nice context that allows us to appreciate it without it taking over the whole episode.

me: Indeed, this is an escalation of the process of looking at the shadow side of NERV & the world we're presented w/ as being the "good guys."

Bob: I think this is the first time that we've gotten a confirmation that the pilot is expendable here. Ritsuko wants to give him some more time, but still, he's expendable.

me: One interesting thing I've learned is that the series was modified following the terrorist attack on the Japanese subway system in the 90s. They wanted to make it less cavalier about violence than they had originally planned.
Hm. Not sure about Wiki's sourcing on that though. The attack was in '95 and the footnote is for a (not-online) article from 1991. But I'm sure it impacted them somehow. That was a pretty big event for Japan.

Bob: Well they always do a good job of showing the consequences of violence. But that might be a reason why we've gone a few episodes without really having a lot of Angel action, why that's downplayed in favor of the psychological stuff.
Also-- here's an episode where traditional combat doesn't even work against the Angel. Everyone's guns fail to hit the target. Shinji winds up bursting out from the Angel, and I can't stress this enough, in a way that defies normal physics. He's traveled through a fucking wormhole, there.

me: Shinji's encounter inside the Sea of Dirac feels like a real breakthrough moment for the show. And I feel like compared to what's to come, it's just a taste.

Bob: Absolutely. That's why I think that the previous taste we got of the experimental side in the SEELE episode was kind of a feint, covering the budget limits. Here, we have the first real dive into the weird stuff, and it's handled with a nice amount of ambiguity, as will the next similar moment. Shinji's encounter is something like a sensory-deprivation tank scene out of Altered States.
There's a legitimate question as to how much of this is him talking to the Angel, or himself. The striped shirt that his younger "self" wears is a tell that this is the Angel, but it's still kinda up in the air.

me: Why does that tell it's the Angel?

Bob: The striped appearance of the Angel.
I think that Anno or or Tsurumaki have talked about this.

me: Rei has an interesting part in this episode.
In quite a few ways.

Bob: Yeah. We see her automatic instinct to stay in the field and protect Shinji-- Asuka has the impulse too, but Rei is the one who voices it concretely.

me: She confronts Asuka, appears by Shinji's bedside (this was an unusual scene but we'll get to that in a second), and when Ritusko and Cmdr. Ikari are talking about "the truth" of the Angels, Ritsuko says "If Rei and Shinji were to find out the Eva's secrets, they'd never forgive us, would they?" Which is odd because up till now, Rei has been subtly implicated as knowing about "it," whatever "it" is. But suddenly she's identified as being in the dark, with the other young pilots, instead of being enmeshed in NERV's intrigue.

Bob: Yeah. And Asuka's left out of it, though we'll see that she has her own psychological, tortured hang-ups outside of NERV's master plotting.

me: Yes, further and further outside.
As to that hospital scene what do you make of Shinji's reaction to Rei's line, "Well, that's good for you"?

Bob: I suppose that's a reaction to seeing anything other than a robotic unemotional response from her.

me: Which is funny because it's still said very coolly and distantly.
But it's almost like the fact that she is there watching him speaks for itself.

Bob: Yeah. Same thing with the brief glimpse we get of Asuka at the door-- all we get out of her is "oh shit, he saw me!". In both cases, we get a scene that looks like nothing in terms out outward emotion, but for either character is a huge leap forward.

me: Any other thoughts on the episode?

Bob: Actually, right at the same scene, when we see Asuka hiding behind the wall, from the outside-- it's a kind of repeat of the battle, when Shinji was hiding his EVA behind the buildings looking at the Angel.

me: Misato has a strong episode here. We REALLY see her shifting from the cocksure commander to someone who unapologetically cares more about the piltos than the mission.Especially as she starts to wonder what that mission really is.

Bob: Yeah. And one thing that stands out for me here is how she and Asuka are joined at key moments-- the domestic side, where they seem to be forcing different ways for Shinji to handle himself ("stop being so self depricating!""it's just his way!"), the fallout from her saying "You're Number One!" (the whole episode is really the aftermath of inflating somebody's ego, and then confronting that ego), and even when Shinji is rescued at the end ("weren't you going to chew him out?").It's especially neat how Anno buries the lede there with comedy-- we laugh at how Misato's gone from wanting to yell at Shinji to bawling over him being okay thanks to Asuka's puncturing the moment, but it also disguises how we don't necessarily know who Shinji was talking about when he said "I just wanted to see you one more time"-- Misato or Asuka? Or somebody else, assuming it wasn't even someone physically present.

me: Yes that's a very cryptic comment.

Bob: Something else worth noting-- I think that the moment when Shinji's mother "meets" him in the Eva is something that happens early on in the manga (which Sadamoto did based on the anime while in production). So I don't know what came first there-- I think it's probably something intended for the anime that was used earlier in the manga, but worth checking out.

me: That was a really great moment. Sometimes when sci-fi tries to do "character" moments it comes off very generic. Think Leo's backstory in Inception.But here it really works. I think in part because we've gotten to know these characters over 15 episodes. The exploration of their inner lives feels earned instead of just an empty signifier.
And they've held so much back that now when it starts to be released it's really significant.
Same is true of Asuka in upcoming episodes.

Bob: well the problem with Inception there is it's actually obscuring the more interesting story-- Leo's wife. I'm more intrigued by the woman who got lost in a dream and really wonders what side of the mirror she's on, not the husband who's left in her wake.Yeah. And here we're just starting to see the threads come apart for someone like Asuka, who's really coasted for a long time as a pretty but bossy character, a similar type to Lucy or Peppermint Patty from Peanuts. Here, we get to see some of the facade crack-- sometimes it's when we see her face in shadow by eyes bright blue, unable to hide in the dark, and sometimes it's when we see her hiding outside Shinji's door, just on the edge of trying to make a connection.

me: How about Ritsuko here?

Bob: Well, with Ritsuko we get another one of those "symbolic slap" moments.

me: Any other thoughts?

Bob: "It still smells like blood"-- what does that sound like to you?

me: His hand? What do you make of it?

Bob: Out, damn spot.

me: What is he guilty about?

Bob: I'm not sure it's guilt, really. Remember, one of the big plot points of that play is whether or not somebody is "of woman born", and this was an episode that obliquely connected back to the mother, here.However, it does help signal that NERV, as a whole, is an institution built on some rotten backstabbing and guilt, and that eventually they're going to get their own downfall.
I mean, it's also just a callback to the smell of blood from the EVA, and his growing distrust in that. But remember all of the ships named after Shakespeare plays.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Emak-Bakia (1926/France/dir. Many Ray) appeared at #92 on my original list.

What it is• A dream, a vision, or - as the introductory title puts it - a "cine-poem" made up of various images, many distorted (as usual in photographer-turned-filmmaker Man Ray's famed oeuvre). Some of these images are immediately identifiable: a goggled driver behind the wheel of a motorcar, various women opening and closing their eyes (one with surreal painted eyelids), a man making himself up as a woman in the mirror. Others represent familiar objects, skewed - an electronic sign isolated in inky darkness, overlapping flapper legs emerging from an auto, double-exposed fish swimming across one another's images. Finally there are those inscrutable abstractions, shapes and points of light growing and shrinking, fluctuating in shape as well as size, suggesting unexplored dimensions in our known universe. Together these approaches evoke the world of a sleeper caught between dream and waking, in which recognizable objects take on strange proportions and images from the everyday are cast in bizarre and evocative lights.

Why I like it•
Like all works of modernist art, created in an era nearly a century past and yet more advanced and exploratory than much of what we experience today, Emak-Bakia seems to belong to both past and future simultaneously. There's something strangely moving about this ability to blur the meaning of time, and it's especially strong in experimental works of cinema. That is to say, because it was born at the dawn of modernism, the medium feels slightly schizophrenic: even as it was establishing its own rules of classicism (as all new mediums must), it was violating these by branching out into abstract approaches seizing other, much older arts at the time. Perhaps that is why Ray's film evokes such a beautiful sadness, a sense that we are witnessing an alternate reality which was barely explored. Or maybe this sadness is due to the historical awareness of how fragile was the world this film represents, sensitive souls in Europe caught in the confusing undertow of the interwar yeas, reeling from the bloodshed before and rushing toward an even more terrifying cataclysm to come in which outsiders would be particularly vulnerable. Then again, the emotional afterglow of Emak-Bakia could be down to something as simple and anachronistic as the DVD score by Paul Mercer (produced by Bruce Bennett), stirring and haunting on the Kino Avant-Garde collection on which I watched this. Regardless, these are intellectual bubbles rising to the surface as I struggle to gather my thoughts for an informal review. The essence of Emak-Bakia is an emotional response evoked by the cascade of images, beyond words - that's why Ray made it a movie after all.

How you can see it• Emak-Bakia is available on YouTube and in the Kino Avant-Garde collection from Netflix. While this is my first review for this site, I discussed it briefly in a comment on Wonders in the Dark. A very short clip from it is included at 1:50 in the first chapter of my "32 Days of Movies" video series, "Dance of the Silents".

What do you think?• Has the avant-garde been overlooked and underprivileged in film histories? Who is your favorite avant-garde filmmaker? Do the abstract images of Emak-Bakia and other experimental movies evoke particular associations in your mind, or do you enjoy them more as visual music? If you don't care for these types of films, what is it about them that you find lacking? Is Man Ray's film work as strong as his photography? What other artists do you feel did or didn't make the transition to film well? What are the advantages and pitfalls of switching between mediums?

As summer rolls to an end I find myself in the awkward position of having numerous upcoming posts in the works, but none ready for today. A couple are still awaiting publication in other venues, including a guest post on Welcome to Twin Peaks (discussing my Journey videos) and a YouTube posting of my video collaboration with fellow essayist Covadonga G. Lahere on Jacques Rivette's Out 1. I am also working on a new video for Fandor, and after that will be preparing more videos both for Fandor and for my new YouTube/Vimeo series (next up, a side-by-side analysis of how Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion take their viewers for their respective wild rides). I will also be speaking with the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast again soon, this time about the killer's reveal, and that episode will probably go up in early November, when they've finished their coverage of the early second season. And of course, my Neon Genesis Evangelion episode guide and Favorites series (which resumed two weeks ago) are written ahead of time and waiting in my backlog to go up as usual on Wednesdays and Fridays, respectively. So there's a lot on the table, but nothing ready at the moment for my weekly Monday post.

Luckily, the timing is perfect for a status update. In the past week, I finally joined Tumblr - something I've been considering since 2013, but never got around to. The image-heavy rotation is perfect for me, and I've been using the new site to re-share images and videos I've posted in the past, offer new screen-caps or random stills that catch my eye in the present (either from my own selection or by reblogging other Tumblrs), and keep track of my work elsewhere, always with an eye-catching image. I've found it to be a lot of fun, and more than a little addictive, and I hope you'll follow me on there too. It's a great way to both keep track of my work and immerse yourself in my favorite "dancing images" - as this very blog used to be called when it was born in Ye Olde Internet of 2008. Speaking of which, Wonders in the Dark just celebrated their own 7th anniversary and 3,000th post - so hop over and wish them well. As Sam mentioned, and I discussed in the comments, traditional blogs are no longer the hot spots they once were with forms like Facebook, Twitter, and yes, Tumblr, taking over. But blogs still remain the best venue for in-depth commentary and for keeping track of the activity scattered over many different ventures. As such, I think the most active, engaging, and diligent ones will be around for a while yet.

Finally, in other good news about other sites, platforms, and venues, my video 7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me has officially become my most popular creation online (also my video She Would Die for Love, chapter 25 in the Journey series, is now available in Canada, where it was previously blocked). About ten days ago 7 Facts hit 16,500 views, surpassing my top blog posts (most of which had much longer than 7 Facts' nine months to amass their views). And since then it's already amassed close to another 1,000 views. These may not be rock star numbers by others' standards, but I'm extremely grateful for them. Some of my favorite posts or videos have struggled to reach even miniscule audiences, and I'm proud of those too, but if I had to select one work to be my flagship, it would probably this video - created to communicate context and appreciation for an underappreciated film which has only begun to get its due in recent years. If you haven't watched it yet, here's Lost in the Movies' #1 work, 7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me (spoilers, obviously):


Thanks for reading, sharing, watching, and otherwise interacting with my work, and here's to a busy autumn.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

Neon Genesis Evangelion constantly reminds us that it's about childhood...and adulthood, how the two categories overlap and yet stand worlds apart. This tangle spreads far beyond the usual confusions of adolescence. The children are exploited and endangered (to put it mildly) by their elders, forced to grow up too quickly. And the adults, burdened with professional responsibilities far beyond their youth, seem unable to establish any true stability in their personal lives. But if the adults deal with its confusion through bureaucracy and suberterfuge, emotionally distancing and isolating themselves from the outside world, the children have not yet learned these skills. This is their weakness - and their redemption.

Evangelion has frequently used the interactions of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei to demonstrate this double-edged sword, and that trend continues in this episode. Shinji can earnestly clean up Rei's room one moment, and blush with shame when he's teased for bickering with Asuka. For all her brashness, Asuka too blushes when Toji clucks about them being a married couple. And there must be something in the air, because Rei's cheeks grow rosy when she discovers Shinji cleaning her room. She stutters, "Thank you?" and later lies in bed asking herself why she expressed gratitude, something she has never done even with the senior Ikari. These teens wear their emotions on their sleeves: they are as exposed in public as they are shielded inside the Eva.

In addition to these familiar social fumbles, episode 17 emphasizes two other characters: the "fourth child" of the title, Toji, elevated from sidekick to potential Eva pilot, and class rep Hikari, whose hectoring style gives way to a blatant crush on the indifferent jock. These students face adult responsibilities, ranging from piloting a colossal military weapon all the way to cooking meals for several siblings, but they greet them without guile, even if the usual adolescent challenges leave them speechless. The same cannot be said of the actual adults in this episode, who are only beginning to reveal - or discover - the web in which they are entangled.

We open with Misato being questioned by the bullying, intimidating SEELE group. When she tries to question them, they immediately shut her down. Kaji continues to cagily reveal his cards, telling Misato that the Marduk Institute, which supposedly screens for the "proper" 14-year-old pilots, is a front for NERV (suggesting that the science used to justify this child labor is corrupt). Their exchange is testy, a mixture of aggressive flirtation, distrustful professionalism, and conspiratorial camaraderie. But at least it's an exchange. Ritsuko, on the other hand, keeps to herself: only we hear her thinking about the danger of the Evas and observe her dark, silent, dare-we-say jealous reaction to Cmdr. Ikari's enthusiasm for Rei. Secrets are everywhere in this episode: in fact, we're never even told who the "fourth child" will be (though it's impossible not to guess by the episode's end, or even its beginning for that matter).

Perhaps most chillingly, the NERV squad reacts with near-indifference to the disappearance of their own second branch, when thousands of lives are wiped out (or at least unaccounted for) in an instant. Is this another Sea of Dirac? Did the installation of an S2 engine destroy Eva-04, wiping out everyone and everything in their vicinity? (This event is what leads to Eva-03's transfer at the end of the episode, presumably with Toji as its prospective pilot.) NERV seems more concerned with the machinery than the personnel; Misato brushes the whole incident off as a lesson. Understandably a cataclysmic apocalypse, years of grim discipline, and the exhaustion of intense warfare have made even the most honorable souls of this organization ruthless and guarded in their interactions, large and small. We could ask if the children of this world face the same fate but a better question might be whether they survive long enough to find out...



me: A quiet episode, although unlike some of the earlier quiet episodes it's clearly setting the groundwork for something big.

Bob: Yeah. It's certainly a catch-your-breath episode after the last one. Which is interesting because the last one, Splitting of the Breast, is really kind of an overture for this whole arc.
The past few episodes have definitely been very much about linking the Angels and the human mind. When the Angel in Lilliputian Hitcher hacks into the Magi, it's essentially hacking into the mind of Ritsuko's mother. That whole episode really cements a lot of imagery linking brain and technology, which comes back again when we see Rei in the tank.
And then there's the whole crux of the Splitting of the Breast episode, the Angel trying to commune with Shinji, which is something the SEELE people are really concerned about. The Dummy Plug represents something in common with these things-- a focus on the human mind.

me: Yes, and the opening scene with Misato addresses this question of what the Angels know - or want to know - about the human mind though I don't think it plays out so much in this episode.

Bob: Well, it isn't what the Angels know about mankind, but the shared interest they and NERV have. What NERV is doing with the Dummy Plug is similar in spirit to what the Angels were doing.

me: The dummy plug is - ostensibly anyway - a simulation of the human mind, right? So in that sense it poses a different problem than the idea of Angels wanting to reach the human inside the Eva. It's supposedly moving in the opposite direction, right?

Bob: To an extent, yeah. The Dummy Plug is meant to replace the human pilot. But remember, it's all about connecting the human software to Eva/Angel hardware. And it's not for nothing that in the past few episodes we've gotten more confirmation that the Angels and the Eva are essentially one and the same.

me: But with the Dummy Plug the IDEA (or at least how it's presented) is that the human mind is being replaced rather than connected to, right? Or am I missing something?

Bob: You could say that the Angels may be trying to create a more holistic bridge between themselves and humanity, while NERV/SEELE have always been trying to kind of hotwire themselves into the Angels for their own purpose. That's what the Evas are, really-- an ugly bio hack.
And really, the Dummy Plug isn't even a copy of the human mind-- it's a copy of a copy.
It's just showing how the Angels are doing it naturally, holistically, while humanity is really trying to force it. That's what Instrumentality is in the long run-- forcibly engineering a strange and terrible new aeon, to quote Crowley, I think.

me: In some ways, Toji and Hikari are the main characters here.
You mentioned at one point in the past really not caring at all about Toji's character. Do you still feel the same about him (and, I guess by extension, Hikari)? 

Bob: Sorta? I mean, he's a character who seems to function best in others' stories. Even his best characterization, I think, is his devotion to his wounded sister, which is usually lost whenever Misato walks by and turns him into an erection with legs.
Beyond that, his role here is going to quickly turn into his real purpose in the rest of the series.
I do like how they sort of ingratiate him into the story by having him join Shinji at Rei's apartment. It's sort of an initiation ritual for the Eva pilot.

me: I actually thought Rei had more of a role in this episode than Asuka. They almost had to struggle to find her some business this time around. A real change from her very long streak of being center stage.

Bob: To an extent. They lean heavily on her Kaji crush to provide an excuse for her to find out who the Fourth Child is.
I like how they handle it, though. She has to force herself to put on a cute face to go meet him. She has to try and play up to the "Asuka in Kaji" that she thinks he would like. As opposed to simply being herself, which she always is with Shinji. 

me: It's well-done, just a surprise that her role has suddenly become so flimsy. Makes a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things of course. She made a big splash on entry but increasingly she is realizing she isn't so important in the scheme of things...a great blow to her self-esteem.

Bob: I love the cut from "the married couple" Shinji and Asuka yelling to Ritsuko's "married couple" cat salt and pepper shakers. The series always has some great cuts like that.
There's a lot of emphasis on dreams deferred in this episode. Asuka gets another brush off from Kaji. Hikari gets a brush off from Toji. Kensuke isn't gonna be the next Eva pilot. Toji is, but probably doesn't want to be. 

me: A lot of brush-offs...and a lot of blushing.

Bob: Something that I thought of while watching the other episodes is how there's never really any clear indication of where the Angels seem to come from. You just kinda assume they're from space. But every time an Angel appears, they seem to just materialize out of nowhere. They seem to come from the sea, more often than space.
In that sense, the location of the US base [close to "Area 51"] is more of a substantial clue than just casual genre toss off.

me: Great point. The one with the giant eyes comes from space. But otherwise yeah just boom! There they are.

Bob: Though I'm always rather partial to the idea that the Angels aren't an entirely alien thing, and that they're more akin to spiritual beings from myth. They occupy a different material plane entirely, and just shift onto ours when the time comes.

me: Sounds a bit like the whole Twin Peaks thing. Are they interdimensional creatures appearing to our eyes in human form, are they essentially divinities/gods - spiritual energies personified, are they manifestations of the human psyche given independent life, or are they from that wacky planet of creamed corn?

Bob: I'm also reminded of the way some writers treat the Cthulhu mythos. Are they from another planet, or another dimension? Are they truly aliens, or Gods? And of course, it's no coincidence that the Second Impact begins in Antarctica.

me: This episode is pretty economical. Especially in the beginning, or maybe that's just where it struck me most. Visually economical I mean. Or not even economical really, just very spare.

Bob: Spartan. Kubrick is a big influence.

me: You don't think it's a budget issue this time?

Bob: Well, in Rei's apartment it is, sure. And in some repeated shots throughout. But this is also an episode that's mostly just building up to the next one. So it can afford to restrain itself.
One thing that's purposefully spartan, I think, is the Dummy Plug itself, to bring things full circle. It looks very utilitarian. You have no idea what it's for, what it's going to do. It just looks like a different plug.

me: One of the themes that struck me here is the contrast between the adult & kids' worlds. Obviously that's a persistent theme of NGE (as well as, at times, the surprising overlap between them - inasmuch as the kids are shouldered with heavy responsibilities, and the adults are often irresponsible in personal if not professional matters). But in this episode the contrast seems especially stark. All the blushing flirtation among the students, their emotional forthrightness, contrasted with the cagey withholding, bartering, and bureaucratic doublespeak going on with the NERV folks. Maybe the contrast is even more stark because we hardly ever see the kids in their Evas, whereas the adults are always on the job.

Bob: I think the deepest scene there is when Shinji seems to break through to Rei, saying thank you to her. It's a neat intersection of it all, because she's both a child and adult, and it's really the closest anyone's gotten to her so far.

me: Misato factors in as NERV commander here but not so much as a bridge between the kids & NERV, right? Other than a couple remarks, one in the beginning, one when they're performing tests. It seems like there's a lot of separation between the generations this time.

Bob: And yet we get that scene with Kaji and Shinji.
Maybe he's the most immature of them. Maybe he's the one who's really able to connect with people the most, which makes him the best one to talk to Shinji right now. And maybe it's just the usual TV trope of mixing and matching characters to see how they interact, especially with the sped up timeline here.
What's interesting is how that scene really helps make Shinji a main character here. This episode is really part one of his latest arc, which continues in the next two.

me: Do they ever actually say Toji is the fourth child in this episode? It's obvious from the first time the concept comes up, and by the ending it's more than obvious - but is it ever actually seen/spoken?

Bob: No, it isn't.

me: It's a nice technique, makes us feel the pressure on him - and a bit of an atmosphere of doom - in perhaps a more distinct way than if it was just addressed point-blank.
Plus it contributes to the idea that maybe it doesn't matter who the fourth child is - especially now that we know the Marduk Institute is a sham.

Bob: Right. Any one of those kids could be it. If there was any criteria for him being chosen, it's probably some kind of emotional hostage taking with his sister as a bartering chip.

me: Remind me: what exactly is SEELE's "perceived" relationship to NERV?

Bob: Ha, God I really have no idea.It doesn't help that their letters don't actually stand for anything.
Long story short, SEELE is in charge of NERV.
NERV is ostensibly a UN agency. SEELE, I dunno.

me: And apparently Misato knows this. It's just interesting to think she's had no real involvement till now and all of a sudden these creepy weirdo old guys with bizarre hairdos and voices and different color lighting around them are asking her all these questions and ordering her around...If she wasn't having a crisis of faith before, she will be now!

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Faust (1926/Germany/dir. F.W. Murnau) appeared at #91 on my original list.

What it is• Faust (Gosta Ekman), an aged alchemist, hovers over his books and contraptions in a narrowed, clustered abbey. When a plague spreads through his village - depicted as a billowing black mist rolling through the steeples and gabled rooftops like a diseased avalanche - the doctor despairs of a cure and sells his soul to the devil for the good of mankind. Meeting Mephistophales (Emil Jannings) at the proverbial crossroads, he'll eventually sign a contract in blood. Sure enough, his healing powers increase - but so does his horror of crucifixes, leading the ungrateful villagers to discover his secret and stone him out of town. From there he embarks on a whirlwind journey, regaining his youth and soaring on a magic cloak to foreign lands where he will seduce princesses, brood atop volcanoes, and eventually depart for his beloved home for a romantic springtime interlude (chasing his beloved Gretchen - Camilla Horn - in a dewy glen) which will predictably be all too brief. Tragedy, misunderstanding, and betrayal ensue. Did the alchemist seal his doom with his crimson signature, or will love conquer all in the flames of martyrdom? Faust, F.W. Murnau's last film in Germany, is an Expressionist masterpiece - all iconic, exaggerated figures and fog shot through with beams of light and craggy, crooked sets - but it finds time to savor the human moment as well as go for the grand effects.

Why I like it•
I first saw Faust during a screening without any musical accompaniment. The show was a double feature with The Last Laugh (which I had already seen) and I hesitated before buying the ticket, wondering if a silent film screened without a score would be too alienating. It turned out to be just the opposite: one of my most immersive cinematic experiences. Without the distraction of a tinkering organ or bellowing orchestra the bold images blasted me from my seat. I also savored Murnau's ability to shift tone and style without blinking an eye...after the expected gothic gloom of the opening, we end up cavorting with the comely Gretchen and Janning's mugging Mephistophales in a light-hearted romp. This recalls Murnau's similar tonal shift in Sunrise (who could predict, opening with a murderous melodrama set in the countryside, that we'd be laughing at a drunken pig in a modern nightclub halfway through). The film is also a technical tour-de-force, with imaginative innovations jostling one another out of the way impatiently: superimpositions, exaggerated angles, eyes gleaming out of the darkness, characters looming gigantic over vast cityscapes...there isn't a boring image from start to finish. Jannings also offers up a memorably garish Mephistopheles, assisted by costume changes ranging from a gargoyle-like devil in the sky to a stringy-haired cackling hermit to an absurd swashbuckler part-Dracula, part-samurai (his outfit, poses, and especially his exaggerated grimaces remind me of a Japanese woodcut). Faust may be my favorite German Expressionist film because it's weighty without being heavy, and stylized without being lifeless. While I admire and respect the best of Expressionism, not all of it appears as viscerally dynamic or enthusiastically lively to me as Murnau's work, and he remains one of my favorite early auteurs.

How you can see it• Faust is available via streaming and DVD from Netflix. It is also on YouTube in its entirety.

What do you think?• What is your favorite Expressionist film? Your favorite Murnau? Have you seen other versions of Faust, and are there any you prefer? Is Jannings' often comically over-the-top performance too much or the perfect counterpoint to the film's early and late doom and gloom? Do you notice any elements William Dieterle, who plays Gretchen's brother, borrowed for his own Americanized Faust tale, The Devil and Daniel Webster which he directed in 1941? Some have criticized the middle sections - do they detract from the overall picture or do you agree with me that it provides a pleasing offset to the tragedy and melodrama elsewhere? Do you find you prefer silent films with a musical accompaniment or truly silent? Have you watched any sound films without the soundtrack - and what was the experience like?

Another week, another status update! I had hoped to have my first "Side by Side" video, covering the interesting similarities and differences between Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks up today (this was previewed at the end of my last YouTube video). However, by yesterday afternoon I could tell it wasn't going to be ready in time and rather than rush it I decided to delay it for a week. I also wasn't able to create a new post in time, even though (just as with last week) I have several waiting in the wings. In fact within a few weeks I will probably have a queue of relevant posts waiting to get published, all of which will have to patiently wait their turns! But here we are today, empty-handed.

The past few weeks have been somewhat tiring even when they weren't busy (perhaps because the weeks before were busy, and rather stressful). Indeed this whole year has been a classic "best of times, worst of times" scenario. On the one hand, my online work - led by the Journey Through Twin Peaks series - has never received a more healthy, positive response (even to the point where I was able to receive compensation for my work for the first time in years, and more reasonably than ever before). On the other, my offline life has, if anything, regressed. Many non-online work opportunities evaporated, I'm having to re-figure out my future in my early thirties, and the past couple months have been stressful as extended family members and family friends struggle with health issues.

Normally, I wouldn't bother to mention that stuff on here but with the second status update in a couple weeks, maybe it's worth noting. Anyway, I'm really gratified for all the appreciation readers and viewers have offered for my work - sometimes it seems that when things in the real world are going poorly, the virtual world swims up to make me feel better. And anyway, who's to say what's real and virtual anymore?! Thank you for the views, likes, and comments, and I promise next Monday I'll be back in action (and of course, the usual Evangelion and "Favorites" series posts will go up this week on Wednesday and Friday).

In the meantime, I've placed a temporary announcement on my YouTube channel that will go up within the hour (stay tuned). You can also read an interesting discussion I had, about Twin Peaks as an anime show, on Tumblr. And there's lots of other stuff ready to swoop in and fill up this blank spot as well: a collaborative video on Jacques Rivette's Out 1, a video examining two time periods side-by-side in Louis Malle's documentary God's Country, a guest post on Welcome to Twin Peaks describing my Journey videos, and of course numerous daily visual updates and cool reblogs on my new Tumblr. Until then, I plan to enjoy a fun, relaxing Labor Day and hope you do as well.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

We pick up exactly where we left off...the Eva-03 is on its way, and Toji appears morose. Wonder why? Everyone but Shinji seems to know who the next pilot will be, even as the show half-attempts to keep the audience in the dark. We are never explicitly told until the end of the episode when we see Toji's half-dead body extricated from the wreckage. This could have been a powerful reveal, but the hints are telegraphed too many times beforehand. Nonetheless, Shinji's stunned reaction hits home as does the NERV staffers' shock and horror as a routine test turns into something else entirely (c'mon - how many tests end up routine in Evangelion?). This crew, seemingly unshaken by the disappearance of thousands in the previous episode, is deeply disturbed when they must turn their firepower on one of their own machines...and the young boy piloting it.

By now we are officially into the final third of the series and the emphasis is on demonstrating the ambiguity and complexity of Eva warfare. No longer are we certain about the division between good guys and bad guys...nor about the division between Eva and pilot. On the one hand, both Toji's Eva - due to the Angel - and Shinji's Eva - due to the Dummy plug - trap their pilots inside as helpless hostages. But is that all there is to it? Does Toji's anxiety about piloting an Eva "activate" the Angel inside? Certainly Shinji, for all the responsibility he feels, has no power over his Eva in the finale (that's made about as explicit as possible) but there is a fascinating ambiguity about who actually is in charge.

The Dummy plug is explicitly linked to Shinji's father numerous times: through cross-cutting, Cmdr. Ikari's vocal commands, and even Shinji's own screaming, outraged accusations. Misato is MIA, knocked unconscious by the activated angel and after a notable absence, the senior Ikari is back in charge. Coldly if necessarily issuing ruthless orders, Cmdr. Ikari turns the Evas on their corrupted compatriot, demands that Eva-00's arm be severed even though Rei is still synced, allows his son to be strangled while badgering him to fight back, and finally takes over the Eva completely, forcing Shinji to watch as his own machine batters its fellow Eva. But if the plug is associated with him, why when does its label read "Rei"? What's really going on here?

Rei herself is subtly humanized throughout the episode. In her revealing conversation with Toji, she essentially admits to caring about Shinji. Later when she is ordered to fight the Angel/Eva, she easily acquiesces and we shudder to think how calm she can be about slaying a classmate. Before she can pull the trigger, however, an unexpected inner voice speaks up to recognize that Toji is still in there. This is the moment that Eva-03 leaps towards her: does her concern open her up to attack? Asuka is also ambivalent. Realizing Toji is going to be the next pilot, her emotions fog up and she is more pensive than bratty. Although she is usually very professional in battle, she is especially somber this time. Suspiciously, her communication cuts out right as she's about to tell Shinji what everyone else already knows.

After many episodes of action-packed Angel attacks, with fast cutting and intense music, Evangelion realizes that blasting us with kinetic/visceral thrills is not going to impress. Instead it wisely goes for an intense, dread-inducing buildup. Eva-03 slowly marches hrough the countryside towards its peers, recalling the comic gait of JetAlone. This time there is no Cheshire cat grin, only a tiger's toothy maw as the predator approaches its prey. When the action arrives, it is sold not so much by the pyrotechnics but by the terrified gasps of the bridge crew. Although I would prefer if we didn't even know who was in there at all, the fact that we never actually see Toji inside (his presence is left to our imagination during the bloody battle), makes the intensity even more grim. Everywhere onscreen in this episode, omnipresent on the series going forward, is a sense of "My God, what have we gotten ourselves into?"



me: How did you feel about Toji this time, given that you're not that keen on his character? Did you find the climactic battle lacked potent drama?

Bob: Not really, because the important dilemma of the episode isn't really that Shinji doesn't want to kill Toji. It's that he doesn't want to kill anyone. I kind of wish that we didn't know at all who the pilot was before the reveal, though I suppose Anno teases it out as much as he possibly can. Shinji himself is in the dark, and I suppose if you aren't paying attention you might be, too. 

me: Yeah it bugged me that they don't explicitly tell us yet it's made so blatantly obvious from the very beginning of the previous episode. And then hammered in again and again. I don't think it's possible for anyone, even the most lackadaisacal viewer, not to catch on...
But I wish it was. That could've been a pretty effective reveal.
I wish they could've found a way to do that without making the pilot stuff so obvious. Like just have him going through a dark time, maybe starting a few episodes earlier and also not build up so much suspense about who the pilot will be. Just oh by the way, there's a new pilot. 1 or 2 scenes speculating about it and then almost like we forget and then - bam! - it's Toji. But, 20/20 and all that. 

Bob: Yeah. I mean, they have to make it sort of obvious so Toji himself has an arc, so he isn't purely a lynchpin in Shinji's plot. That's the humanistic side of the show. We see that he's more than just Shinji's friend, more than collateral damage. He's caught up in his own story with Hikari, his sister, etc. When I watched the scene where he's remembering how he hit Shinji, it struck me how he really could die here, and he's had a significantly developed arc here.
And at the same time, if the show went longer, it would be very easy to imagine him as a true Eva pilot, long term. The same way you have musclehead Gundam pilots, etc.

me: That said, I found the actual battle sequence surprisingly powerful. NGE tends to go so kinetic with its confrontations, especially as the show carries on, that the slow boil works really well to build a sense of dread and import.
I think we've brought this up recently, how with every Angel battle getting more and more high-stakes and dramatic at a certain point the anxiety level drops. How does one overcome that? By scaling back, I guess. And an Eva makes a great Angel as it turns out. Plodding along like it's JetAlone and then bam striking out.

Bob: Scaling back-- that's a great observation. It's also very fitting, theme wise. Misato is becoming more and more suspicious of the Evas and NERV, so why not turn one of the Evas into an enemy, itself?
You'll notice that the animation in this scene even recalls the first two episodes. Its movements both mimic the way that Unit 01 jumps when it goes berserk, and the way that the third Angel lifts itself from the ground. It's echoing both.

me: I noticed the silouhettes called back to some of those early battles too.
In fact - come to think of it (and this is a really cool connection) - the shot in which the rescue is arriving and the Evas are frozen in a crouched position is very similar to the one in which Shinji's Eva ran out of power immediately after killing the angel. Except in that episode, he had just saved Toji's life. In this one, he may have killed him. 

Bob: It's similar, but not really all that close. 

me: Yeah, the shot's not similar compositionally but it's the same idea. Eva frozen in the middle of violence. Except first time it's violence to protect Toji, second time the opposite.
It's a nice way to remind us how far we have traveled from the battle between good and evil with NERV on the side of the angels (pardon the pun and lower the case).
This is the first time Gendo Ikari has been in charge for a while, isn't it?

Bob: I think it is. That's a very big thing, too. Even in the Operation Yashima episode, we only really see him approving Misato's plan.
He's also there in the Day the Earth Stood Still episode, but he's so active you don't really see him as the commander as much there. 

me: The relationship between Evas and pilots is interesting here. On the one hand, it gets blurred with Shinji feeling so responsible for what his Eva has done. On the other, both Shinji & Toji seem to end up as prisoners of the Evas, hapless hostages of the machinery and whatever the fuck else is going on there... 

Bob: One thing that struck me was how much Nerv is essentially victimizing all the pilots in this episode. We know clearly that Toji, Shinji and Rei are all victimized (Toji as the pilot of an Eva that becomes an Angel, Shinji for having his agency robbed when the Dummy Plug is invoked, Rei for her Eva's arm being amputated in battle), but it's also sort of implied that Asuka may have been cut off by command, and not the Angel, as she was just about to say who the pilot was. 

me: Yeah that's part of the episode's power. We don't really know what the dummy plug is yet, but boy is it ever associated with Shinji's father.
It gives it extra drama and psychological resonance, making up for the fact that Shinji isn't REALLY the one to attack Toji (which could be seen as a little bit of a cop-out). The fact that his father simply overrides him and basically launches a vicious attack which his son can't prevent, even though he's ostensbily piloting the machine, works pretty well as a metaphor.
And of course we get Shinji's conversation with Kaji about his dad, shortly before. 

Bob: Another great metaphor for disassociation. We already had that with the Eva going berserk before, and even with the way Shinji sleepwalks through his training. So many of Shinji's big accomplishments are really all divorced from his conscious mind. The biggest one so far was him basically giving into death in the Sea of Dirac, spurring... something to go berserk again.
On a symbolic level it's all about giving into the id and unleashing your full, uncensored self, without the ego getting in the way. 

me: Divorced from his conscious mind, yes, but this one feels different because the Eva is really totally separated from his control, conscious or subconscious. His father invades almost as an alien force taking over. 

Bob: Yeah. This one is something happening contrary to his active, conscious will. It isn't something that can be any part of himself, really. The others are more ambiguous.
me: I guess you could say Shinji's mother corresponds with his Id whereas his father corresponds with the Ego. Fairly obvious way to split it, but the series does well with it I think.
Or Superego maybe would be the better term.
Overriding the instincts completely.

Bob: I also want to underline... and this is just personal opinion, not really a studied thing... that I think there's a difference between the pure Freudian unconscious and what you might call the more Jungian dream subconscious. The unconscious are those urges we're genuinely not aware of unless we go into a fugue state. The subconscious is something that we can gain access to in dreams, which the Sea of Dirac episode really hammers in on. There's no dreams to offer a sieve here though. It's more schizophrenic. 

me: Yes, I think the difference between Freud and Jung is another great way to analogize the conflicts on this show. Maybe personal unconscious vs. collective unconscious - the self as a collection of nervous tics and compulsions and the self as something much bigger than the conscious individual.
But yes, you have these hyperconscious, super-controlled attempts to access & manage these unwieldy Evas and then slowly the prospect emerges of something else, a more synchronous and fluid possibility.
Have you read about earlier plans for how Eva was supposed to unfold? I think you said the manga gives a good indication of this.
I read that Anno got heavily into psychoanalytical concepts halfway through the series, personally, and that it changed course at that point. So it would be interesting to compare the plan with what actually unfolded and tease out the differences that way.

Bob: It gives some idea...? I think Sadamoto abandoned that at some point. I have to read it in full. But you can find outlines for the original plan, I think.

me: It's interesting how the Angel/Eva-03 attacks Rei right as she contemplates Toji inside, one of her most human moments.

Bob: Right. Especially since she's been connecting with Toji more in these episodes. It implies another transcendental connection between the humans and the Angels.
The scene between Asuka and Hikari feels like an eerie echo of it, as well. Especially interesting that, I think, this is where we first get a glimpse at that sandbox that will be such a big symbol later on. 
I also think it's interesting that Asuka shows no interest in Kaji in this episode. Like without Misato to compete with, he's not on her radar as much.

me: There are some super-exaggerated reactions early on speaking of the Asuka/Hikari scene. Asuka's then and Misato's earlier. Kind of interesting they go that route when later everything will be somber and nuanced.
The reaction shots in this are great. This episode is really a great example of how to sell the stakes in a given sequence by the characters' reactions.That plus the pacing (since there are strong reactions in some other recent episodes, namely Sea of Dirac).
There's fantastic feeling of dread here. The "sinking-in" of oh my god, what are we about to do...Something else - the previous episode highlights the idea that the pilot of the Eva doesn't really matter. This one makes me wonder, though, if it does. Would the Angel have taken over the Eva if Toji hadn't been the pilot? Did something about him going in there, with all his ambivalence about piloting, "activate" it?
It's making me think of Twin Peaks a bit though. How the divide between spirits and humans can at times seem really sharply defined/delinated, at others much more vague & psychologically-based. You get that here with the Evas. I always find the latter more compelling from a character standpoint.

Bob: It sounds reasonable. If they'd committed more to Toji as a center for an episode or two, we really could've seen this explored. 
But I think it's pretty clear this was going to be the next Angel. It's implied that it really happens when you see that little spark as the transport heads into the cloud.

me: Hm, didn't notice that. Like that was the moment the Eva got "infected" maybe? 

Bob: The choking-- for the first time, I think, we're really seeing an Eva and Angel fight without any weapons at all. It's as pure and brutal as hand to hand combat can get. Visceral, too. Shinji gets choked, then he chokes and snaps the neck of the Angel. 

me: Well what about Sea of Dirac though? 

Bob: True. But I don't even know if you can call that "combat" so much. And it's so transcendental what happens-- Shinji is swallowed by the shadow, then comes out in the spectral body, tearing his way out? It's brutal and bloody, but it also goes out of its way to defy the laws of physics. It's much more of a mind-bender scene than an action thing.

Bob: This is almost wholly, purely physical. We even see more of the blood and guts int he Eva than ever before. 

me: Yeah THAT was pretty far out. You really think of it as a machine, mechanics despite all the sync stuff (and whatever they call the fluid they're steeped in - can't remember). But you watch that and it's like this is a real flesh-and-blood creature.

Bob: Yeah. I mean, we've seen that there's an organic base as far back as the second episode, but still. 

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


It is quite a fascinating discussion about Toji and Shinji. I always felt Toji's character had descended from the earlier Anime, those from 80's, while Shinji's character was much more relevant to the contemporary audience in '95. Though Toji was much more subdued, less energetic and sometimes more thoughtful than the hot-blooded, loud and frequently self-righteous characters in the earlier action-oriented animes, he was still drawn in the fashion of the convention, and the acting style seems to evoke those heroes. I don't think he was killed off (so casually) as a metaphor (i.e. the end of the hero anime etc.), but his death certainly has the eerie feel.

Especially Toji's dialect (Kansai-ben) is a direct anti-thesis to everything in NGE world view. NGE was about Tokyo and its surroundings. Actually, the dialect Toji's voice actor speaks is not even remotely close to the authentic Kansai-dialect, and that means something. In general, Kansai-ben is associated with comedians and entertainers, since the majority of Yoshimoto comedians speaks it. But Tokyo is the place where serious business is going on, not only in commerce but also in government and particularly in all the machinery of bureaucracy. So is the world of NGE. It is so serious, lacking in humor, and always somber. Some fans made the video with all the characters in NGE speaking Kansai-dialect, making fun of the dead seriousness of the series, which went viral sometime ago. It is a rather gruesome fact that the Kansai area, especially Osaka city, has been losing the financial and commercial momentum for the last two decades, slowly eroded by the Tokyo-centric cultures. So, the death of Toji may seem symbolic, today.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Cria Cuervos (1976/Spain/dir. Carlos Saura) appeared at #90 on my original list.

What it is• Ten spots down the line (La Vieja Memoria appeared at #100) we have another Spanish film from the seventies, exploring "that old memory" of the Spanish Civil War. But whereas the post-Franco documentary could openly address the conflict and the subsequent forty-year repression, Carlos Saura's simultaneously lucid and dreamlike fiction film is more cryptic, allusive rather than allegorical. Ana (Ana Torrent, in one of the greatest child performances of all time) is an orphan, along with her two sisters - yet she appears more haunted, particularly by the loss of her mother (Geraldine Chaplin), than her siblings perhaps because she witnessed her mother's suffering more closely. Then again, the sensitivity probably stretches further back - at one point, the family maid (Florinda Chico) reveals that Ana clung to her unnamed parent even in the womb, and the doctors had to use forceps to deliver her. The little girl continues to commune with her mother via a mix of fantasy and memory, delivered in the same limpid, straightforward key as the rest of the film. Ana's affection does not extend to her late father, whom she (perhaps mistakenly) believes she has poisoned as revenge for her mother's sadness, illness, and death. Nor does it extend to her aunt Paulina (Monica Randall), whose well-intentioned but grating discipline and attempts at affection she spurns. Just as Spain was preparing to shake off the Franco regime (the dictator himself was dying as the film was shot) and undergo an uncertain transition into a centrist democracy, Ana and her sisters struggle against increasingly desperate discipline, both cherish and fear their increasing freedom and aimlessness, inquire curiously about their family history. And at film's end they prepare to enter the wider world, less nostalgic and romantic, but also less morbid and melancholy.

Why I like it•
First of all, I'm a sucker for anything having to do with Spain's political history - the ideological struggle of the thirties is deeply fascinating, as is the subsequent regime's strange isolation and idiosyncrasy in modern Europe. But in some ways that's icing on the cake - as the above description makes clear, the connections are loose and ambiguous rather than explicit and Cria Cuervos' primary appeal is psychological rather than political. Its depiction of a family haunted by unspoken loss and painful confusion is powerful, as is the palpable anguish concealed by its placid surface (revealed only in the moments of music, particularly the catchy pop ditty "Porque te vas" which you'll be humming before the film ends). Torrent's performance is wise beyond her years, or perhaps a useful reminder that years aren't necessary for a grasp of the dysphoria adults often forget children can feel (indeed, they often feel it more acutely than the adults around them, who've grown numb with time). In a way, the scenes with the three siblings - the middle being our protagonist - remind me of E.T. with their playfulness, savvy engagement with the adult world, and escape into fantasy. In a sense, both films even end with a resurrection which sets the moral order back on even keel. Here, of course, there is no extra-terrestrial to redeem the broken home; they will have to find their own way in the noisy streets outside their claustrophobic villa.

How you can see it• Cria Cuervos is available streaming on Hulu and on Criterion Collection DVD from Netflix. A clip from the film appears at 6:35 to close "Pray For Us Sinners", a chapter in my "32 Days of Movies" video series.

What do you think?• Do you see the similarities between Cria Cuervos and other films about children - particularly the element of fantasy? What other child performances rank with Torrent's? How does the film relate/compare to Torrent's previous film, The Spirit of the Beehive, which also uses fantasy to relate to Spain's 20th century experience - or to Pan's Labyrinth which did the same recently to worldwide acclaim? Are the scenes with Geraldine Chaplin as a grown-up Ana the girl's childhood imaginings or is the story really to be seen as an adult flashback? Have you see any of Saura's other films; if so, how do they relate/compare to this one? How does the analogy between Ana's family and Spanish society break down in your eyes?