Category Archives: television

Quick Hits from History

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In reverse chronological order:

Super Bowl XLV (2011) made me very happy, because I am descended of Packers fans and grew up watching a bunch of terrible Packers teams stink up the league, interwoven among which were the Super Bowl XXXI winners and Super Bowl XXXII losers. This winning team also contains SJSU alum James Jones at wide-out.

True Grit (2010) was delightful. Everyone in it did yeoman work.

Heavenly Intrigue (2004), is a non-fiction book that posits that Tycho Brahe’s murderer was none other than Johannes Kepler. Every argument is circumstantial and they take a Discovery Channel like approach of speculating wildly based on very little scientific evidence, but there is at least some reason to believe that Brahe may have died of Mercury poisoning, and the excerpts from Kepler’s diaries paint him as at least an asshole, and possibly a crazy person. Still, the book was neither particularly convincing nor particularly entertaining, so I’d give it a miss.

The Chronicles of Narnia (1950’s) is very well known, and all I want to say here is that I read the books so that I would be caught up for the Dawn Treader movie, and was a little underwhelmed. There’s much more to say and I may indulge that impulse soon, but for now, I will remind young readers that it is foolish to lock yourself in a wardrobe, or I guess to shut yourself inside a fridge or the trunk of a car, if you live in present day America and don’t have a lot of heavy wooden wardrobes lying around. Maybe don’t shut yourself in one of those wardrobe boxes you get from the moving company.

Moby-Dick (1851) Starts strong and moves along pretty fast for the first 30 chapters or so, but gets into some weird digressions and becomes somewhat… overwrought towards the end. Everyone knows it as a story about a man who wants revenge against the uncaring forces of nature, and it is that, but what actually makes Ahab unlikable isn’t his mania, it’s his grandiose speech. That said, there is not a hint of whale dick in the book, which I found refreshing. I kept expecting it lurking around every corner. I’m sure that says more about me than anything, but since no one but spam-bots ever see this page, I’ll let it slide unedited.

More about Baian

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The Baian the Assassin, Vol. 2
The Baian the Assassin, Vol. 2

Some time ago I got and watched Baian the Assassin volume 1, and I wrote that I was, shall we say, less than impressed. Then a funny thing happened: I got a gift certificate to Amazon.com. So I picked up Volume 2. Volume two was better, so I got volumes 3 and 4. Last night I finished volume 4 (which comprises a single, double-length episode). Over the course of the series, it is transformed from a sort of buddy assassination drama to a weird man crush these two assassins have on a young samurai, and their concerted efforts to keep him from becoming an assassin himself. It ends up being a curious proposition, because Baian, despite saying every time that it is information an assassin doesn't need in order to operate, uncovers that his target is a real slime ball worth assassinating. In a sense, you never see any people killed who don't have it coming, which really weakens his "this life is a kind of hell" argument.

I still wouldn't pick it up while there were outstanding Zatoichi volumes, but I suppose it isn't the worst show ever to air on TV.

Baian the Assassin, assorted others

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Baian the Assassin, Vol. 1
Baian the Assassin, Vol. 1

Baian the Assassin is a television show from the late eighties/early nineties in Japan, set in the Edo period, about an acupuncturist who has a side business as an assassin. He's definitely an anti-hero (one of the actions he takes in the very first episode is pretty shocking), but still, he finds himself drawn into the backstories of the people he's going to assassinate for the episode–always with the suggestion that it is rare and unprofessional to ask questions about the victim–which goes a long way to presenting him as something more ethical than a regular run of the mill hired killer.

It isn't bad, but I'll tell you right now: if there are still gaps in your Zatoichi collection, either the movies or the TV shows, pass on this for now. You get two episodes in the first volume here, and although that works out to something like two-and-a-half hours, that's not much for the price you pay. The quality is also pretty iffy, shot for television, direct to video, and it shows. Ken Watanabe as Baian is… competent, but the role doesn't give him a lot of room to act. His sidekick is actually more compelling, in my opinion.

This weekend I also picked up a couple of early Court and Spark records, Ventura Whites and Bless You, which are good, but won't make you forget Witch Season, and also Get Him Eat Him's Casual Sex demo. I would have signed them.