We really should be watching more of the work of Wim Wenders and this tight package that is almost as perfect as the days it portrays is a good reason why. It’s such a neat confluence of exactly the elements that we tend to like in cinema: very sparse dialogue that relies on visual storytelling, a protagonist working a mundane job with a rich, inner life, and a positive attitude towards life. It does cheat a little I feel as I doubt that the daily routines of a real-life toilet cleaner even in Japan is this stress-free and Wenders’ musical picks alone carry so much emotion, but this really is one of the best films I’ve watched this year.
This is one of Lars von Trier’s best known films so it was always necessary to watch it at some point. It’s also one of his most accessible works as the director takes great pains to ensure that the audience understands exactly what is going on and what he means to say. I don’t much care for the psychosexual elements but it wouldn’t a von Trier film without them and it probably wouldn’t have as much shock value. This portrayal of a harsh version of Christianity doesn’t do the religion any favors but I think it’s more honest than the sanitized version we usually get and that’s a credit to this film.
This anthology horror film by Masaki Kobayashi consists of four separate stories and clocks in at three hours. The stories are all adapted from Japanese folklore, which explains why some are likely variations of stories everyone has already heard of. It’s rough going at first as it looks very much like something shot on a stage and the plot is just too predictable. But then I noticed that stories steadily improve in sophistication and even production values and started to appreciate the film better. I won’t say the film looks that good as you have to make a deliberate effort to buy into the stagecraft but it does some make bold artistic choices. The selection is overall quite good, representing a broad spectrum of traditional Japanese ghost stories.
Not much in the way of science news. I suppose the Nobel Prize announcements have a way of overshadowing things.
Easily the most headline grabbing news this month is the announcement by a team in China that they have successfully cured a patient’s type 1 diabetes with stem-cell therapy. They took fat cells from the woman, induced them to behave as pluripotent stem cells and used these to create islet cells, the type of cells that create insulin in the pancreas. These were then injected back into the woman’s body between the skin and the abdominal muscles where they successfully engrafted. They claim that the woman no longer needed insulin injections around two and a half months after the procedure and remained so for a year afterwards. They’ve since tested this on two other patients and results are still pending. It’s an exciting result but it is still just one person for now and I found it weird that this woman is now apparently producing insulin from a part of her body that is not her pancreas?
The next article is tough to understand, especially when it keeps using the term phonon laser and you don’t know what that means. This video from the always excellent Sabine Hossenfelder uses an easier to understand term for what they are: sound lasers. It’s not a new idea but it’s been difficult to get a sound source to achieve the required amplitude increases that remain coherent for long enough. This team uses the familiar approach of trapping a metallic ball with lasers but they also use an alternating electric field to amplify the sound vibrations inside the ball. The results are apparently impressive even though the experimental setup currently exists only in a vacuum and doesn’t actually create a beam as it opens a brand new field of possibilities.
Finally, here’s one that I debated over including as it seems a little petty but it’s sound science and publishing it called for some courage. It examines the habit of gossiping among women and how it is used as part of intrasexual competition. In particular, it finds that although most people dislike malicious female gossipers, it is possible to frame the gossip as an expression of concern for the person being talked about. This reduced the negative social effects on the gossiper while being just as effective in harming the social reputation of the person being talked about.
I’m not sure I’ll ever watch anything else by director Luigi Comencini but I thought it might be worthwhile to experience at least one of his so-called pink neorealism films. It’s a lighthearted romantic comedy set immediately after the Second World War and stars Gina Lollobrigida, one of the most famous Italian sex symbols. This is another film that will never be considered great but it is an exemplar of the best entertainment available then. Lollobrigida sizzles onscreen from her very first appearance and she even sings excellently. I do note that it shows the male lead as well as many of the other male characters acting very lecherously with no condemnation against them whatsoever. I’d consider that an indictment against Italian culture of the era.
This closes out the trilogy by Whit Stillman that I started years ago with Metropolitan and really, I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s still about young adults being self-important and clumsily falling in love, this time in Barcelona, Spain under a cloud of anti-Americanism. The fast patter of the dialogue Stillman appears to favor is familiar and there is a certain charm in his characters. But I can discern no meaningful heart in it and the attitude of both mocking the bourgeoisie and yet wholeheartedly embracing it is just grating when there is no real payoff to the dichotomy.
The investigative genre is notoriously hard to implement as a video game. Any detective story must necessarily be written by the designers in advance, so how to meaningfully use deduction as a gameplay mechanic? One way is to constrain the scope of the investigation in a specific way so that the game can easily verify if the player is correct. This is how the excellent Return of the Obra Dinn does it. I thought I’d see how this game about a murder investigation set in a very strange world did it. Unfortunately while the story is well-written, with multiple suspects and lines of investigation, the mechanics are nothing special. It’s all about thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny of the island to collect all the clues. I enjoyed the world and the storyline but it doesn’t feel like a true investigative game to me.
