Or this could be called “Slay Belle.” So this is the convergence
between Dolly Parton, country music star, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Dolly Parton rocketed to fame with her hit song “9 to 5,” which
was the centerpiece of the 1980 movie of the same name. She became famous not
only as a country singer, but as a symbol of what nowadays is called female empowerment.
Then there is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the TV
series that jumpstarted the subgenre knows as urban fantasy. Were there some
urban fantasy novels before Buffy? Sure. But it was the Buffy
series that made urban fantasy an overwhelming subgenre in novels, movies, and
TV shows.
So how did that happen? It turns out Dolly Parton was an
uncredited producer of the original movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s
right. And Dolly’s company financed the TV series. It was Dolly Parton behind
it all the time!
But what if Dolly hadn’t done that? See my post What if Buffy had Never Been? to see how life as we know it would be different. Meanwhile,
you can see every season opening for Buffy below, including the musical
episode.
No, not the second most expensive property on the Monopoly boards
that a lot of you are undoubtedly using. Parkplace was the first high rise in
Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle. I remember eating at a Japanese restaurant there
a few times. The new name for the area is Kirkland Urban, with a couple
buildings of equal size built next door to Parkplace. Now that construction
work has been allowed to resume, Parkplace has been torn down.
All that was left of it this past Wednesday was a pile of
rubble. I took a picture, but it was too blurry to use. It reminds me of how
the old Totem Lake shopping mall was torn down.
All is not lost. See what one of the new features of
Kirkland Urban is:
A few hundred years ago, Siyama is a small village in feudal
Siam. They are about to be attacked by thousands of warriors who kill everyone
in their way.
After the local Buddhist monk performs a prayer ceremony, three
young people show up, dressed strangely and traveling in a metal vehicle. They
say they are from the future and do not know how they got there. The Buddhist
monk assures them to not be concerned about the future. He forecasts they will return
to the future during an upcoming moonless night.
The three young people have unusual skills and tools, and
they decide to help the village in the days they have left. Can they possibly
make a difference?
Siyama: Village of Warriors is a movie that keeps one’s
attention, partly because of the historical panorama, partly from the compelling
story of three young people trying to help in what seems to be a hopeless
struggle. Ana is a female doctor and an Olympic-level archer. Gift is a female
history major who knows martial arts. Boat is a male student who is . . . got
no idea.
These three students do things that seem puzzling to the
villagers but make sense to us, the viewers: Ana wants hard liquor to disinfect
wounds and needs needle and thread to sew them up. Gift looks at the cliffs towering
over a narrow path to the village and wants lots of gunpowder. Boat tries to
solder together parts from the car to make amazing weapons. We end up really
rooting for them.
The movie has some disadvantages. Neither the students nor
the villagers are that surprised at their arrival. Most of the battles take
place at night, so it is often hard to tell who are the good guys and who are
the bad guys. And the special effects for the final climax are kind of
embarrassing.
Still, if you want to see some Buddhist science fiction, Siyama:
Village of Warriors is a nice change of pace.
In the past few years, the Seattle area has seen explosive growth
in the rabbit population. I happened to walk by one on the lawn of the
condominiums where I live. When I went inside and came back out with a camera,
a couple of other guys were moving stuff in to a unit, kind of noisy. I was
surprised it was still sitting there, eating grass placidly.
It didn’t care that a human was pointing an object at it. I
didn’t want to spend too much time near it, because I don’t want it to get more
used to humans than it already is.
A solitary man walks on streets through neighborhoods for
the simple pleasure of it. A police car accosts him and wants to know why he is
walking.
Ray Bradbury wrote The Pedestrian in 1951. He set it
a century forward from when he wrote it, but it feels eerily true today. I strongly
suggest you look it up online or find it in a collection of his short stories.
It is so short, it almost qualifies as flash fiction.
Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a twenty year-old child of privilege.
Having successfully arranged a match for her beloved governess, she now
proceeds confidently as an expert in matches. She definitely wants what is best
for her friend Harriet (Mia Goth), who is a person of low circumstances. When
Harriet receives a proposal from a farmer whom she loves, Emma steers her away
from him. She wants Harriet to marry up from her situation.
Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), Emma’s brother-in-law, looks
askance at Emma’s presumption. He lectures her more than once that she is being
arrogant, and even has prejudices (in a positive way) about some son of privilege
whom they have never met, but who is due to visit.
Emma and Mr. Knightley keep locking horns. Is Emma doing the
right thing for Harriet? How will this turn out?
This is the third version of Emma that I’ve seen.
(Yes, Clueless starring Alicia Silverstone is a reimagining of Emma,
but it doesn’t count.) My favorite has been a 1996 version starring Kate
Beckinsale. Readers familiar with the book by Jane Austen say this is the most accurate
version, and besides, I think Kate Beckinsale is the loveliest woman in
Hollywood. I saw a different 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow, but hardly
remember anything about it. The one with Kate Beckinsale has the lowest
production values, but it was filmed inside real stately manors, with all the
darkness and cramped camera angles that implies. It feels authentic.
I wasn’t going to see this year’s Emma because I was
put off by the opulence of it. Jane Austen occupied the lowest rung of the upper
class, and the Kate Beckinsale version stays faithful to that. The new version
with Anya Taylor-Joy is set in a much higher level of Regency society, which
put me off.
But I saw it anyway. Yes, this is a higher strata of
society. The incredible wealth of the mansions is hard to feature. The actions
of the menservants as they obey every whim of Emma’s father look comical. And
this was the first movie I’ve seen that shows what it looks like for the nobles
to have their servants dress and undress them. (A couple of rear end scenes
were brief.)
Somehow, this year’s version won me over. Emma is usually
portrayed as an incredibly vain, arrogant woman who only changes when her folly
comes crashing down on her. In this version, there is an underlying sweetness
to her that grows, especially in her unending friendship with Harriet. In all
three versions, the dance scenes at the ball are the emotional nexus of the story.
I have to say that this year’s version had the best dance scenes I’ve seen in
any Jane Austen movie. I mean it. The best. Even better than in Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies. (Yes, that counts as a Jane Austen movie.)
So whether you’re a Jane Austen fan or not, I recommend this
most recent version.
P.S. Emma is shown playing a small piano and singing. I was
pleasantly surprised to see in the end credits that it really was Anya Taylor-Joy.
Some moron on NBC said that Seattle is a “ghost town”
because of fear of the coronavirus. A lot of us are going online to disprove
that. On Saturday, I went to the Bellevue Square mall. (Bellevue is the most
populous suburb of Seattle.)
Here we are:
I didn’t focus in any farther to avoid showing people’s faces.
Plenty of people milling around, shopping, eating in the restaurants.
I will say the janitors were visible, wiping down the
handrails and other commonly touched areas. The mall has no reason to desire
bad publicity. Here’s one of their major tenants:
As I’ve noted before, they’ve achieved a slacker kind of
cool vibe. Perhaps I should have said hipster.
Last Sunday I noticed that one of the tall trees on our
church property looked like it had been split in two. It came to an abrupt end
where fresh wood was showing. That part of the ground was blocked from my angle
as I approached the building, but I could see the tips of some branches
sticking up. I hoped it hadn’t hit the building.
Then from inside, it looked like this:
click to enlarge
That wasn’t even the half of it. Did I mention it was a tall
tree? It was mostly on the roof.
I was amused when a couple young girls ran up in the parking
lot, then were stopped by the yellow tape on their side. Then I was told the
tree had fallen just an hour before. If it had fallen sometime later, families
would have been walking on that sidewalk to get to church.
If you can’t think of something to pray to be thankful for
at a moment like that, something’s wrong.
I watched as men on the roof chainsawed off huge
chunks and threw branches down.
This was on a table of snacks. One woman said if you can’t
figure that out, you deserve what effects they have on you.
In other news, water is wet, and vacuums suck.
The following picture is kind of the opposite of obvious.
Notice how the Revival Sermons of Jonathan Edwards is displayed between the females
from the Batman series and Wonder Woman.
Click to enlarge
Jonathan Edwards is famous for his sermon, “Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God.”
