New Light on a Delicate Subject

Posted on July 9, 2023 by JC

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris
Vintage (Reprint), May 21st, 2013 (originally published in 1964)

This began as a post related to a previous post on The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and my commentary on the Michael Crichton novel Rising Sun. When I began writing however, I have more to add and so am classifying this as a review. As I believe I’ve said before, I do not pretend to be an expert on Japan. I am not fluent in the language and certainly can’t claim an academic credentials in any aspect of the countries language, culture or history. I just share observations as someone who has lived among the Japanese and read reasonably widely of their literature and history — though never in a rigorous way. Ivan Morris (whose work I have covered before), was an expert and so his opinion carries a lot more weight. This should be kept in mind for what follows.

As a short general review, The World of the Shining Prince is an absolute and unqualified recommendation to anyone who is studying or has enjoyed reading The Tale of Genji. It is only limited by being written when the only full translation* that existed was Arthur Waley’s and there are now three additional English translations not discussed in this work. That the edition above was published just a few years before the fourth English translation and almost fifty years later demonstrates its continued relevance despite this. I do recommend you skip the introduction by Barbara Ruch though which is less about the subject than it is herself.

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The Full Degeneracy

Posted on July 4, 2023 by JC

As I’ve mentioned before, I have become increasingly conscious of just how inappropriate much media is. This usually happens when I re-watch something I saw when I was young and notice a lot of things I thankfully didn’t notice as a child. Two good recent examples are Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future. The former I found shockingly crude and completely inappropriate for children but that is exactly who it was marketed to. The latter wasn’t necessarily marketed to children but it is generally considered a family film and includes coarse (and blasphemous) language as well as sexual innuendo. The interactions between Marty and his teenage mother in particular should be considered more disturbing than they generally are.

There is an increasing collective consciousness of just how degenerate the world has become. This is often mistaken for the immediate present as if all this has only suddenly happened. Some people act as if sodomy and especially transvestitism only began getting heavily promoted a decade ago. In reality, it has been in front of us for a long time as I noted with the 1990s comedy Mrs. Doubtfire. The absurd comic premise covers the darker intentions of the filmmakers — and they absolutely knew what they were doing. Even then, there were far more obvious films such as The Crying Game (which I’ve not seen and never will), and Boys Don’t Cry which were far more explicit in their intentions.

The subject of this post is The Full Monty a British film from 1997 which is many degrees worse than the examples I’ve already mentioned. So much so that it is amazing to me now that adults of the time so easily overlooked all this. I did see this film multiple times when I was a teenager but even if I hadn’t, it was advertised on prime time television and the premise was not hard to guess for the casual viewer.  

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Dashing Sky Pirates: A Short Anthology

Posted on June 30, 2023 by JC

Crimson Skies by Eric S. Nylund, Mike Lee, Nancy Berman & Eric S. Trautmann
Del Rey, October 1st, 2002 

Of late, I’ve been reading a number of swashbucklers and related media and I’ve become particularly interested in fictional sky pirates. These are found in a number of mediums including the 1996 The Phantom film which I mentioned in a previous post. The usual setting is the early age of flight where sophisticated aircraft weren’t restricted to large corporations but open to anyone with the technical skills and passion. As aircraft became more advanced, (and government regulation caught up), this quickly limited the amount of people who could be involved though there is still a healthy community of light aircraft enthusiasts today. There are also a number of other examples that come to mind such as the 2004 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (which I only remembered existed as I began this post). Also Sega’s Skies of Arcadia role-playing game which has a fantasy/anime style setting though I’ve not played it.

One largely forgotten example of sky pirates is the short-lived Crimson Skies series which began as a tabletop game but is better known (at least to me), for Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge on the original Xbox. I reviewed this game years ago and was interested in the tie-in book which while cheaply available in the United States, was prohibitively expensive to ship. I found a cheap enough copy earlier this year though and decided to bite since it kept coming to mind and I was already on a pirate binge. 

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It’s immigration, stupid!

Posted on June 23, 2023 by JC

Australia is in terms of landmass, a very large country but the population has always been relatively small and as of writing is somewhere north of twenty five million people. If you don’t include Alaska, it is comparable in landmass to the continental United States which has a population that is now getting close to four hundred million. There are also much smaller countries in Europe which have much higher populations than Australia. This leads to the misapprehension by the geographically ignorant that Australia can support a much larger population than it currently has. This requires willfully ignoring that most of the continent is a desert wasteland and prone to drought and that both our water supply and agriculture requires careful management. In my lifetime alone, there have been multiple serious issues in these areas and the next one is just around the corner. The population is now close to double what it was when I was born and against the wishes of the majority of Australians — is to continue to get bigger.

The major issue affecting all major population areas at the moment is the shortage of available housing and when this is discussed in mainstream media; the possibility of reducing immigration is rarely even brought up. Yet this is the main reason for the serious housing shortage and the quickest way to solve it would be to reduce immigration.

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Hideo Kojima and Michael Bay

Posted on June 17, 2023 by JC

This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for at least ten years but never did. This is mostly because I didn’t feel I had my thoughts together enough to get my point across — and I may yet fail in the attempt here. Though I think my purpose can be understood by the title alone if you’re familiar with both names.

One is a famous game designer and the other a famous film director. The former is considered a genius by many who play, write about or produce lengthy “video essays” about video games. The latter is considered a hack by many film critics but his films are generally financially successful and popular with general audiences. This difference in appreciation by critics in the two mediums matters because the style and themes both use in their works are very similar and nobody could reasonably deny that Kojima has taken obvious inspiration from Michael Bay films as well as plenty of similar films— particularly in the action genre. Yet, one is considered a genius in their medium while the other is considered a hack. Is this reasonable? 

No, it isn’t.

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Women and Politics

Posted on June 3, 2023 by JC

I was inspired to write this post because of the recent news that Lauren Boebert a recently elected politician to the House of Representatives from Colorado, USA has filed for divorce. She is relatively young (at least younger than me), and has four children. That she is likely also controlled opposition is irrelevant for the purposes of this post but I can’t resist mentioning it. Though for the purposes of this post I will assume that Boebert and the two other women I am to mention are or were genuinely committed to political change in the United States and not just looking be famous and/or enrich themselves. Continue reading →

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The Best Comic Film Adaptations

Posted on May 29, 2023 by JC

Films based on comic books have been around for at least half a century but have become both a lot more common and popular in the last twenty years. So many have been made in this period that there is now a measurable decline in interest; though there are still plenty getting released. I have never been a big comic book reader but I have read one from time to time and loved X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman when I was growing up — especially through their respective television shows. I have also been interested in the various film adaptations starting most memorably with the 2000 X-Men film. This film is where I would date the beginning of the widespread adaptation of comic book films though you could easily quibble with this as for example: Blade predated this by a few years.

This post is going to cover eight films based on comic books that I really enjoyed. I am putting them in order of release and am only including one film from each franchise to avoid doubling up. I am also strictly choosing films based on comic books and not films based on franchises that have also been comic books or any other variation like that. The origin of the character or franchise must be originally from a comic book to be included and I don’t think I’ve made any mistake in the ones I’ve chosen.

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I am not a man of my time.

Posted on May 21, 2023 by JC

In my journals, must be more mindfult to write “I am very racist and homophobic, I am a religious extremist” so nobody comes along later and misrepresents me of says “he was a man of his time” @conan_esq

A little while back the above post was made by Conan, Esq which is the twitter handle of Alexander Palacio. I have linked to a couple of his articles before and also read the first two of his Sword and Sorcery Series Ashes of the Urn and I will review these after the forthcoming third is published. This is all by way of introduction though and the purpose of this post is in response to the tweet above. Continue reading →

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The Continued Relevance of The Abolition of Man

Posted on May 14, 2023 by JC

By chance I picked up a copy of The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis recently and decided to re-read it. If you’ve read it, you would know it is a quick read and I had it finished in a few short sittings. I believe the first time I read it, I was on a binge of Lewis’ work and so I didn’t recall much about it. I have also heard it brought up a few times recently so I wanted to take a second look based on this alone. What follows will be a few quotes that jumped out at me and some commentary. I’ll be light on the latter as it is a short enough read for almost anyone and I can’t put anything better than C.S. Lewis can. 

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A Tale of Two Conans

Posted on May 7, 2023 by JC

Conan – Blood of the Serpent by S. M. Stirling, Titan Books, December 6th, 2022

Last month I reviewed The Siege of the Black Citadel by “The Legend” Chuck Dixon. I mentioned in the review that it was the first I had read that wasn’t written by Robert E. Howard (excepting comics). I expressed that I was reluctant to read stories by other authors because I didn’t believe they could live up to Howard’s work but that Dixon came very close which is high praise.

Late last year, the first new Conan novel since 2011 was published by Titan Books some months before Dixon’s new story was out. This is written by S.M. Stirling who has been a published author since the 1980s though I hadn’t heard of him until now. Blood of the Serpent is written as a prequel to what is probably Howard’s most recognised story, Red Nails and indeed, the events are so closely tied that it is included at the back. When I noticed my library had a copy, I thought it would be worth reading to compare with both Howard and Dixon.

It wasn’t but read on as I elaborate.

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