Masters of the Universe

It's a He-Man movie, right? And I was at the exact target age of the original, animated TV series that existed primarily to sell action figures. I don't remember whether I or my brother ever had any of the action figures. It was the kind of thing a pastor's family never had money for. But it didn't cost us anything to watch the TV show (rabbit-ears TV and whatnot). It was the kind of mindless fun that went down easily between getting home from school and dinnertime, or maybe it was Saturday mornings. I don't recall. But we dug it, and we also enjoyed the 1980s cult film featuring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and the great Frank Langella as Skeletor. The whole family had a ball with that. Langella's makeup reminded my dad of someone powerful (at the time) but not particularly nice, and the nickname "Skeletor" became our little family joke whenever that person came up in conversation. Money can't buy that kind of fun, which is a good thing because we didn't have any.

But enough about the 1980s. Well, almost enough. Did you know that the earth teens who served as point-of-view characters in the 1987 movie were played by Courteney Cox, a.k.a. Monica on Friends, and Robert Duncan McNeill, a.k.a. Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager? Could anyone be a better Evil-Lyn than Meg Foster, she of the almost see-through blue eyes? Or did you know Man-At-Arms was played by the police chief from Hill Street Blues and the Sorceress by the head nurse from St. Elsewhere? Or how about the principal from Back to the Future playing a detective? Voyager's Maje Culluh played the one-eyed villain Blade, and the movie also featured widely credited "little person" actor Billy Barty and My Three Sons alum Barry Livingston. The movie was crazy with people you'd remember from back in the day, and you don't even remember it, do you? Well, do you?

So the 2026 reboot was meant to be another terrible franchise movie, and I'm afraid the box office will probably suffer from that perception. But the movie isn't terrible at all, and the people spreading the rumor that it sucks, sight unseen, are the ones who suck. There, I've said it.

It's a really fun movie that doesn't take itself one whit more seriously than it ought to. It allows its hero to be heroic without going overboard with "He-Man" machismo. And let's be honest, Nicholas Galitzine looks great in that loincloth. Joining him in the cast are Camila Mendes (Riverdale) as Teela, not so much a girl-boss as a tough cookie who gives young Adam (as He-Man is known at home) just the push he needs to become the hero Eternia needs. Idris Elba plays her dad, Duncan a.k.a. Man-At-Arms. A mercifully unrecognizable Jared Leto plays Skeletor, and choose whichever of those two modifiers you like, it applies because he doesn't suck, for once. Yes, children, even Jared Leto being in it doesn't ruin this movie. Although at times I had a hard time understanding his lines (about 20% of what he said flew by me, uncomprehended). I guess it's tough to read lips when the person talking at you has a skull for a face. Also featured are James Purefoy (Rome, The Following) as Adam's hard-driving royal father, Morena Baccarin (Firefly) as the Sorceress, and the previous He-Man, Dolph Lundgren, in an important cameo. Also, Kristin Wiig provides the voice of a lovable battle robot.

While it runs a little long, I didn't have a problem with this film's pace. It establishes how Adam ends up on earth, trying to fit into a corporate life that stifles his identity as the lost prince of Eternia, and what it costs him to keep looking for the Sword of Power that went missing when he escaped from Skeletor's clutches as a child. The action goes into near-nonstop gear after he finds the sword in (of all places) a comic book store, and an other-worldly beast comes hunting for him. Of course Teela whisks him back to Eternia and the race is on to save his world from the post-apocalyptic horror Skeletor has been imposing on it. The adventure has bizarre and sometimes just slightly ridiculous heroes and villains, wacky battles that skew haphazardly all over the boundary between sword-and-sorcery fantasy and high-tech spacecraft-and-aircraft science fiction. It has a talking tiger. It has tons of cyborgs with such enhancements as extendable necks and iron fists. It has a magical maguffin that turns out not to be where the magic is really at. And in addition to some knockout battle scenes, it has laughs and high spirits and an undeniable dose of sex appeal.

Lo, the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Adam almost kisses Teela, but she friend-zones him just in time. Awkward, but sexy and funny at the same time. (2) Adam's "I think I just died" scene, and what he learns from it. (3) The wild aerial chase through the Eternian forest after Teela, Duncan and Adam escape from Skeletor's dungeon. The joy you see on Adam's face during scenes like this (another example is how he laughs as Teela's ship enters hyperspace, earlier in the movie) kind of makes the movie. This isn't a "Don't look for a smile here, I'm too busy to have fun" hero like, for instance, Black Panther, with all due respect to the memory of Chadwick Boseman. This is light entertainment and it doesn't forget it. Honorary Mention: Adam's coaching by the soul-crushing chief of the human resources office where he works, until he doesn't. It would be so much better to find a magic sword and become a generational hero in a world like Eternia, wouldn't it?

593. Hymn of Reproach

This hymn has been cooking on my back burner for a good long while. I thought about turning it into a paraphrase of the Reproaches from the Good Friday liturgy, but that didn't really stir my creative juices much, so nothing materialized until I decided to go back to my initial idea, which arose while listening to a Sunday sermon I know not how many weeks ago. The tune I have in mind is NUN LASST UNS DEN LEIB from Georg Rhau’s Geistliche Gesänge, Wittenberg, 1544, best known in connection with the burial hymn "Now lay we calmly in the grave."

Unholy age, hear my reproach:
Beware the Judge's swift approach!
Do now, ere He convenes His court,
Acts that with penitence comport!

Think you the world t'ward Jesus turns,
Grows and progresses, upward yearns?
Lo, hist'ry proves the flat reverse:
Each epoch wickeder and worse!

Think you the faithful will arise
To better all before God's eyes?
Open your own, and take concern:
Can faith endure till He return?

Think you God's Word somehow complies
With reason? Mark how man denies
The very words He pledges plain:
Repent and hear His Word again!

Think you Christ's suffering and blood
Suffice not for all sinners' good?
Spew out faith's bane, uncertainty:
His sov'reign will declares you free.

Think you His Spirit's calling voice
Completes or answers your free choice?
Let grace assure your doubting heart
Which ere all worlds set you apart.

Think you, in floods of peril dark,
Your quav'ring faith will be your ark?
Would that the water Jesus pours
Float it from sin to safer shores!

Think you the bread and cup we share
Are merely signs of mystic fare?
Think but how Jesus would emboss
Upon our flesh His lively cross!

O people, see the ages' wreck!
Away, heart hardened, stiffened neck!
The incense of repentance burn;
Watch, pray for Jesus' swift return!

The Breadwinner

I went to see The Breadwinner last night in the local movie theater, under protest. I never expected it to be a good movie, but nothing else that I wanted to see was materializing, and I just needed to go out. So I saw it with super-low expectations and the only surprise I can report is that I actually made it through the whole thing. I seriously entertained the idea of walking out as early as four minutes into the movie, and at regular intervals throughout. It had some cute moments but it didn't exactly elicit belly laughs.

The movie is about a dad, played by standup comedian Nate Bargatze, who has to shift from being the breadwinner (the top Toyota salesman in his city) to a stay-at-home dad to three girls when his wife sells a share of her spiffy invention to one of the sharks on Shark Tank. Of course he's dreadful at it, and he doesn't actually get better. The disaster gets worse and worse, and it isn't just bad luck. It's bad character.

As a comic actor, Nate Bargatze lacks a certain something. Perhaps the best example is the scene where he gets his nose hair waxed. I had seen trailers for the movie that left in footage of his reaction that the movie wisely edited out. A talented comedic actor would have made the audience laugh. Bargatze? Crickets. If the aim of comedy is to make you squirm with discomfort and feel that people like you, as a group, are being treated as lame-ass morons, this movie succeeded brilliantly. I didn't like Nate's character and I wasn't particularly fond of the characters playing off of him.

The movie features Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember) as Nate's wife, Zach Cherry (Severance) as his boss, Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) as a rival salesman, SNL cast members Colin Jost and Will Forte as a (cough) rival house-dad and an incompetent roofing contractor respectively, and Brett Cullen (Lost, The West Wing) as Nate's dad who mostly helps out by eating pistachios and napping on the couch. And of course, the sharks as themselves. For what it's worth.

If any Three Scenes Made It For Me, and I did after all stay to watch the whole movie, it would have to be (1) Nate goes back to his dealership after assuming stay-at-home-dad duty and finds that Mr. "The Pecs Get the Checks" has already replaced him as the top salesman. (2) The youngest daughter's pet horse goes ape and destroys the house. (3) The Über Eats driver imagines himself as a member of the happy family – though this type of joke (also involving the roofing guy) has already been played several times.

For me, much of the pleasure of watching this movie came from the subversive thoughts that arose within me, imagining it ending with Nate getting divorced and losing visitation rights of his girls. I'm just a vindictive swine. But it would be a more believable ending than what the movie gave us. And I hasten to add that the closing credits featured excerpts from Bargatze's stand-up, on which the movie was apparently based, and that was no funnier. If anything good comes out of this movie, let it spare us further unfunny comedies based on Nate Bargatze's unfunny comedy.

Backrooms

I have given a lot of thought to this review, and it keeps coming down to four simple words: What. the. actual. f*ck.

When I went to the movies today, I was thinking about watching three horror flicks in a row: Backrooms, Obsession and Passenger. I mean, if you're going to return to the horror genre after many years away, why not go back in a big way, right? Well, by the end of this movie I'd had all the creeps I could absorb on one occasion. And that includes the trailers (one for an upcoming Insidious movie was particularly hairraising). I don't even know how to describe this movie. It's unlike anything I've seen before, for sure. It's an impressive directorial debut by Kane Parsons, based on his own web series. It apparently made back its entire $10 million production budget in a single day, a Thursday preview. And if your question is whether it's scary, let me just say ... It's like a nightmare. No, a nightmare within a nightmare. Nested nightmares all the way down. The kind of nightmare from which you struggle to the surface, only to find yourself inside another nightmare. And after doing this several times over, it turns out to be not even your nightmare, but somebody else's.

It's a movie in which unhappy people find their way into a strange place that brings their unhappiness to a horrific pitch. Central to it are the manager of a failing furniture store – you never once see a customer in it; at one time he tells his assistant manager that she can open the store and she's like, "It's already open" – who is seeing a shrink to deal with the character problems that have led to him being alone in life, and the shrink who carries her own burden of disturbing childhood memories. They're played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, respectively. With a minimum of other speaking characters, it creates a mindscape of florid insanity out of what seems like a bland, windowless, labyrinthine office building that Ejiofor's character literally stumbles into through an invisible doorway (like walking right through a wall) in his store's basement showroom. He later describes it as a place that contains all places that have ever been, badly remembered; designed as if by a being who had never seen a building before but to whom one had been described. And it has evil things in it. Or maybe he's the evil thing? Not sure that makes it less horrid.

I'm going to get right to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me before I get too close to bedtime to have any hope of getting to sleep tonight. (1) The awful results when Ejiofor tries to recruit his assistant manager and her boyfriend to help him document the strange place he has discovered. (2) The shrink tells her patient off, screaming that he's to blame for all the unhappiness in his life and not for the reason he thinks, and that there's no point in trying to change; she can't help him. Just when it seems like the nightmare might be about to end, it turns a corner into an entirely new nightmare. (3) Reinsve's desperate struggle to escape. Does she succeed? Does she? Does she? DOES SHE??? Well, that was a topic of debate that I overheard spilling out of the theater into the adjacent shopping mall after the movie ended. I'm not sure I buy the explanation one filmgoer was trying to give the other. All I can say, in the last analysis, and with as much seriousness and eloquence as I can muster, is: What. the. actual. F*CK!

Pressure

I looked up the movie showtimes in Detroit Lakes, Minn., about 45 minutes away from where I live, and lo, this movie was starting in 46 minutes. One showing only. I hopped in my car on a beautiful Memorial Day afternoon and made it just on time for what must be a sneak preview of the film, which is supposed to open next Friday. I saw it with exactly one other person, a random lady who couldn't stop gushing about how good it was, afterward. I had never heard anything about it before but based on a two-sentence synopsis and the poster, I couldn't not go to see Pressure, a movie about the meteorologists whose weather forecast led Gen. Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower to move the date of D-Day from June 5 to June 6, 1944.

Sound like riveting stuff it does not. But actually it's a very absorbing film, featuring Brendan Fraser in a performance as Eisenhower that blazes with power (but also a little tortured self-doubt). A couple of times his image on the screen hit me and I thought, "I'm actually looking at Eisenhower." You know, for about two seconds. Alongside him are Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag, Ripley) as a Scots meteorologist named Stagg, Chris Messina (Julie and Julia) as the American expert named Crick with whom he butts heads, Damian Lewis (Homeland) as a Bernard Montgomery who all but orders Stagg to give the D-Day invasion a rosy forecast and then throws a screaming hissy-fit when the evidence doesn't support that conclusion, and Kerry Condon as Ike's Irish aide, Kay Summersby.

So, Stagg shows up at Ike's headquarters five days before the initial date set for D-Day (June 5) and receives orders to present a forecast by the following morning. Crick, who has advised Ike on his African campaigns, wants to present a calm, sunny outlook based on similar conditions in a couple of previous years. But Stagg is like, "Weather systems don't repeat. We need to go where the data takes us," and the data takes him to a dire forecast that would spell disaster for the invasion. The word "pressure" takes on multiple meanings as these men, and Ike and Monty, and more, feel immense pressure about a gambit that could win or lose the whole war against Hitler's Germany. But also, you know, barometric pressure. Plus, there's a subplot in which the hospital where Stagg's very pregnant wife has gone to deliver the baby gets bombed and nobody can tell whether she survived. Kay rightly tells Ike that if he keeps being too hard on Stagg, he could crack.

Anyway, I drove home from D.L. thinking about how this movie could almost be produced as a stage play, though I couldn't make out how the scenes at the beginning and end – the first revealing that Mrs. Stagg is preggers, and the second revealing her fate and that of their baby – could be told any way but cinematically. Like, the camera can choose to reveal her baby bump only when Stagg turns back for a final look at his wife, before leaving for Whatsit's House; whereas an audience at a stage production will spot it as soon as the lights come up. Likewise, the camera can bring the Mrs. and Stagg Jr. into focus only when Stagg himself sees them, but again, there's no hiding them in a live performance from stage left, stage right and the nosebleed seats. At least some of the audience will know before it's expedient to the storytelling. But between those bookends, I thought, the drama could have played out on a stage ... and now I read that's exactly how this film started out, as a stage play by David Haig.

I'm very honored to have gotten an early look at a movie that, in the U.K., won't be officially released until September. Memorial Day was a good day for it. The gravity of the sacrifices that must be made to fight against world Fascism, and the importance of sparing lives from being spent in vain, wasn't lost on even such a commander as Ike, who also had to put up with a subordinate (Monty) who openly sneered at his lack of battlefield experience. Also, it isn't every day you see a war film in which the crucial turn of the plot happens when, in the middle of singing "All Creatures of Our God and King," a worshiping congregation's ears catch the sound of a rainstorm rolling in. Not to take anything away from the grueling images of the initial carnage on Utah and Omaha beaches, but the turning point of this movie is really when Stagg finally declares Crick's theory to be a load of horseshit and Ike believes him. Well, that and what happens when the two rival weather guys finally put their heads together and give Ike an alternative.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The scene in which Stagg finally raises his voice in front of Ike's general staff, convincing him to call off the plans for June 5. (2) Kay asks Ike if she can drive to the hospital to see if Mrs. Stagg made it through, and Ike says no. And, putting her in her place, "Dismissed, lieutenant." Despite a hint of some tenderness between them (from her to him, at least), the movie doesn't have the bad taste to insinuate that they were actually a thing, and if it came close to lighting that flame, this moment efficiently snuffed it out. (3) The words Stagg says as Ike is about to storm out of the room: "The Germans will never see it." And finally, when asked if he's absolutely sure, Stagg says yes.

Two Movie Reviews

A couple weekends ago, I found time to see The Sheep Detectives, a film whose title tells you exactly what it's about. Yes, a flock of sheep solves the murder of their shepherd, helping the inept local constable spot clues he otherwise would have missed. Despite not being the brightest of species (in fact, they have a way of forgetting things they find too painful to think about), they are aided in the case by one ewe's particularly keen mind, a certain ram's wisdom (he's the exception to the rule about being able to forget), the courage of the black sheep of the flock and the outcast, winter lamb's observant mind.

Playing human characters in the movie are Hugh Jackman as the murder victim, Nicholas Braun (Succession) as the town cop, Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White and Royal Blue) as a reporter who offers to help solve the case, Molly Gordon (Theater Camp) as the shepherd's daughter who becomes a suspect, Tosin Cole (Doctor Who) as a rival shepherd, Hong Chau (an Oscar nominee for The Whale) as an abrasive inkeeper, and Emma Thompson as an estate lawyer. Meanwhile, on the voice cast side (as various sheep) you'll hear the voices of Patrick Stewart (Star Trek, The X-Men), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld, Veep), Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd), Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones, The Worst Witch), Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso) and Laraine Newman (an original cast member of Saturday Night Live).

The sheep characters are beautifully portrayed by I know not what movie magic; I'd rather not dig too deeply and find out they were all CGI. There are some belly laughs, a lot of wit, a wonderful variety of characters and heartfelt relationships, some very sad and touching moments, and of course the adventure the sheep have, with their whole interesting way of viewing the world. As for the mystery, which is the main thrust of the storyline, I had kind of guessed whodunit at an early stage and wasn't terribly surprised to be proven right. But you decide for yourself if it's a stimulating mystery.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Sebastian, the solitary ram who low-key keeps the other sheep safe, tells the story of how he became part of the flock. It's a very moving moment. He has another, but I won't spoil that for you. (2) The town cop finally figures out what the sheep have been trying to tell him, and solves the case. (3) When Lily, the hero ewe, finally realizes the error of the sheep's little way of forgetting painful subjects, but can't stop the flock from pulling the wool over their own eyes. Pun intended.

My next trip to the movies, some week ago or so, was to see In the Grey featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill and Cavill's The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare costar, Eiza González as the leaders of a group that operates in a legally gray area, for example, to collect a $1 billion debt owed by a vicious crime lord. Rachel (González) flexes legal muscle to pressure Salazar to cough up, while Sid (Cavill) and Bronco (Gyllenhaal) lead a six-man team to infiltrate and sabotage Salazar's operation on an island where he basically owns the police force, to say nothing of a small private army. Then they just have to protect Rachel and, not if but when things go pear-shaped, facilitate her escape. Much of the movie is devoted to their preparation to do this, but as the saying goes (I know, I've quoted it often), no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Gyllenhaal and Cavill have an interesting chemistry. As Sid, a.k.a. "Capt. Sensible," Cavill is cool, stoic, unflappable and methodical. As Bronco, Gyllenhaal is flamboyant and mouthy, given to improvisation and emotional outbursts. In one scene the pair pretends to be a married couple and when, later, Bronco sends Sid off (to get himself arrested so he can case the local jail) with an "I love you," you're suddenly not sure it was a ruse. But machismo is all over this movie. Even the women are tough (Rosamund Pike plays a hard-bitten executive with their client). Carlos Bardem, Javier's brother, is here as Salazar. Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones) plays Salazar's security chief, and his lawyer is Fisher Stevens of hilarious Short Circuit memory (and also an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker).

The movie is written and directed by Guy Ritchie, on whose uneven output I've commented before (probably in my review of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare). Based on how much fun I had watching this, he should keep making things with Cavill and González, preferably also with Gyllenhaal, ideally playing the same characters, if he can manage to extend the franchise without, well, sucking. Because as I've mentioned in previous reviews, when he's on his game, he makes brilliant pieces of entertainment ... and when he's off, it's [choose your favorite expletive] disaster. He's definitely on in this movie.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Preparing to extract Rachel from the bar where she stops for a cold one after bearding Salazar in his den. They know the heavies are going to make a move, and the build-up to the inevitable action-fest is exquisitely suspenseful. (2) Just when you think they've gotten away from Salazar, the bad guys catch up with Rachel. Uh-oh!! (3) The whole rear-guard action as the team escapes from Salazar's island for the last time, including once again an action scene that doubles as a suspense extravaganza. Will they get the traps they set in the "Banana Pie" sector to work on time? Will the last good guy make it out of the villa alive? Will Bronco, Sid and Rachel make it to the boat when there's a helicopter chasing their buggy? It doesn't just deliver explosions. It makes you scoot forward on your seat, chewing on your knuckles.

Duplicate Puzzle Non-Tutorial

You might be thinking, "One (or two) of these things is not like the others." But actually, quite the opposite is true. In this picture are four pairs of 3D twisty puzzles, each of which is exactly the same puzzle. On the far left are the Super Ivy Cube (at front) and the Rex Cube, corner-turning puzzles that I've discussed before. They look a bit different from each other but aren't. Don't let Super Ivy's gentler curves fool you. Other than the fact that it turns more smoothly and with less propensity for locking up on you, or even shedding pieces that can only be snapped back into place through frustrating struggle, its solution is exactly the same as the Rex.

The second pair, from front to back, are the Eight Petal Cube and the Redi Cube. Unlike Rex and Super Ivy, I didn't order them knowing they were the same puzzle. I bought Eight Petal expecting it to be something else; I must not have looked very closely at the image on the website where I ordered it, or else I wasn't reasoning clearly about it. But yes, it does exactly what Redi does, only with more gracefully rounded cuts between the moving pieces. It moves very smoothly – they both do, really – but the Eight Petal Cube is smooth-turning to a fault: to the point where you have to be careful how you hold it or you'll turn it by accident, and where turning it just the way you intend can be tricky when it's trying to turn two or three different ways at once.

Second from the right, at front, is the good ol' 2-Cube, a.k.a. Rubik's Mini Cube. Hard to believe, but that strange object behind it, called the Magic Eye Cube more because of its eye motif than for any actual resemblance to a cube, is essentially the same puzzle. When it arrived last week or so, I was flummoxed for a minute before I could work out how the pieces were supposed to move. I actually pulled up a video tutorial and only had to watch about 5 seconds of it before I realized what my problem was: Magic Eye's corners are inverted. Concave. So that bit of cube facing forward in the picture is actually the same green, orange and white corner as the top front corner of the 2x2x2 next to it. Once you realize that it's flipped inside out like an optical illusion of a cube where the corners poke inward instead of outward, solving it exactly like a 2-Cube becomes possible. And oddly satisfying, with the guts exposed to view. Except when the layers lock up, which they do if you try to twist it while everything isn't perfectly aligned.

Finally, yes, we have a banana. I couldn't resist. And I've scrambled it and solved it, so I can verify that it scrambles and solves exactly like the 223 cuboid at front right. A few of the pieces (especially the corner pieces at the back of the banana) are similar in size and shape, but not so similar that you can't tell when they're not in the right place. Transferring the cuboid concept into banana form does generate some shape-changing oddness, and forces you to reason not so much from color but from the shape you're trying to restore, which piece needs to go where. But remember your algorithms. I mean, it's just two steps plus a couple of final cases, remember?

So, there are no new procedures to demonstrate this time. No tutorial necessary! And therefore, since shooting pictures of a sample solve is low-key a pain in the butt, I'm not doing it. Have a banana. Go outside and touch grass. Feed some ducks. And see you later!

Capybara Rescue

I just dreamed that I came home for lunch and found my brother Ryan sitting in an armchair, watching three capybaras napping on a greasy blanket on the couch.

I say to him, "There seem to be three capybaras on the couch." He says, "I know." I say, "Why are there three capybaras on the couch?" He says, "I saw an ad that (name of community) Capybara Rescue was having a fostering program and I thought it sounded great." I said, "Sure it'll be great, until the living room starts to smell like an Iowa feed lot." Then I woke up mad at my brother.

The truly daft part about this dream is that I don't actually have an armchair.

Now to see if I can get back to sleep again. ...

Art: Photo by Karoly Lorentey, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

592. Prayer for Mistreated Ministers

For my friend and brother, Alan Kornacki Jr. Art: Window in the Apse of St. Ignatius Church, Chestnut Hill, Mass., photograph by John P. Workman, Jr., licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Tune: LOB SEI DEM ALLMÄCHTIGEN GOTT by Johann Crüger, †1662, the tune to "Great God, a blessing from your throne" in Lutheran Book of Worship, "Not always on the mount may we" and "O Paschal Feast, what joy is thine" in Service Book and Hymnal. Or whatever.

Remember, God, Your children's need!
Stand watch, we pray, upon Your seed:
Your living and abiding word,
At work where it is preached and heard.

Uphold, dear Christ, the men You call
To speak Your truth to one and all.
Through their reproof our steps correct;
Put what they promise to effect.

Look, Lord! How Satan sows his tares
And sets out stumbling blocks and snares
To hinder, if he can, the feet
That carry news of comfort sweet!

Look how this age's tyrant tries
To curb Your word, preferring lies,
And what devices he has brought
To set Your servants' work at naught!

Look how false brethren daily rise
To do what seems right in their eyes;
How some, who churchly power claim,
Betray those branded with Your name!

Before their strength is fully spent,
Bid every help to them be sent;
Let even us, with spirit bold,
Mistreated ministers uphold.

For if no trusty heralds go,
Lord, how can we Your tidings know?
Inhale the prayers the faithful burn,
The incense of our heart's concern!

The Devil Wears Prada 2

Did I see The Devil Wears Prada 2? You betcha. On Thursday night, when it debuted in my small town's local theater. I had seen the original, of course. All of 20 years ago! The year before I started this blog! So I have no record of what I thought of the first movie at the time, but I remember it well enough. You see, I was working for a magazine back then. In fact, I was the executive assistant to the editor. I was basically a guy version of Andrea "Andy" Sachs, except I was nowhere near New York. (That was the year I first visited the city, though.) And it wasn't a fashion magazine.

As for my then-boss ... well, it wouldn't be politic to say much about that, except that he is also a guy, and not a fashion maven by any stretch. But I got a lot of what Andy was struggling with, and I learned a lot of the lessons she had to learn. It gave a certain kick to my viewing experience. And then, I guess also like Andy, I moved on from the magazine job to other things and eventually ended up as a journalist. Even, if I may say it, an award-winning one; though again not on anything like the level we find Andy working at in the early scenes of this film. I'm still writing for a newspaper, in fact. I haven't been cashiered out. The company I work for did lay off a few folks during some lean times, but most of us are still working. But yeah, I am also acutely aware of the predicament that print media and independent journalism are in. Our industry is changing. It's going digital first and, for some outlets, digital only. The perception that a newspaper career is a thing of the past holds the kind of currency that, when I was catching up with some cousins at a family funeral a couple years ago and I told them what I do, they scoffed: "How do you still have a job?" Screw you very much, guys.

So, in this 20-years-later follow-up to what might be Meryl Streep's most popular role – Runway editor Miranda Priestly – her ex-assistant Andrea comes back, played again by Anne Hathaway. Andy was actually moments away from accepting a major journalism award when she and her entire editorial team got sacked, via text. But Runway isn't faring much better. Now an online-only magazine, it struggles with public credibility. So the publisher brings on Andy as the new features editor in a last-ditch attempt to right the ship. Of course Miranda is as unsupportive as she could possibly be, but Andy gradually proves herself and works her way into her boss's confidence, only to see one new crisis after another emerge as a new owner, and potentially another one after that, threatens everything they have built.

Synopsis aside, it's a fun adventure among the jealousies, snobberies and treacheries of the fashion world. There are plots within plots, and Andy really doesn't earn Miranda's confidence until she hatches one of her own. There are delicious surprises and moments of pure cringe. The deeper Andy gets in the fashion world, the more whatever she wears looks stunning. (Whereas a lot of the high fashion displayed in the movie's magazine shoots actually comes across as ridiculous.) There are some brilliant lines (One of my favorites is "Bridges that I have burned, light my way"). Even after a good 20 years of experience doing serious journalism, Andy still has a lot to learn about figuring out what her job is and how to do it. And the film doesn't fully commit to painting Miranda as the devil; it softens her, or softens toward her, I think even earlier than the first movie did. Nevertheless, Streep still has it, and Hathaway does too.

Stanley Tucci, although noticeably older now, still plays Miranda's faithful doormat, a fashion director who has been passed over for promotion too many times to count and now steers a tricky course between being a warm mentor to Andy and a ruthlessly unsympathetic reality check: "Ah, poor girl! She actually has to work things out for herself!" Emily Blunt is back as another former assistant to Miranda who has gone full Cruella deVil, working in the luxury retail industry. Kenneth Branagh puts in a turn as Miranda's husband. Lucy Liu and Justin Theroux play a super-rich ex-couple – his half being hands-down the most obnoxious person in the movie. B.J. Novak of The Office and Lady Gaga (as herself) are also in it.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) After Emily makes a catty remark about her eyebrows, Andy looks anxiously in the mirror, then snorts: "They're just eyebrows." (2) The new publisher summons Miranda to a lunch date in the cafeteria, it is suddenly apparent that she didn't even know the building had one; she's never even been on that floor. (3) Miranda is always being restrained by her current executive assistant from saying the kinds of things that H.R. frowns upon these days, but can't help letting little enormities slip out – like the line, in criticism of a story pitched by one of her editorial team, "May my suicide be quick and painless." Then, catching her assistant's hairy eyeball: "What? At least I didn't threaten to kill someone else."

The Chosen, Seasons 1-4

Someone at my church loaned me the DVD set for Season 1 of this show, which dramatizes the gospels of Jesus Christ, and I enjoyed it so much that I went looking for more of it on disc. I saw a five-season boxed set available online for more money than I wanted to pay, but then I glanced at a shelf at Walmart and there were seasons 1-4 for considerably less. So I got the set and binge-watched Seasons 2-4, and this is what I think about it.

First, the show has a great cast, plays out on beautiful locations and has terrific production values. When it's hits, it hits hard, with big-picture faithfulness to the biblical witness and emotional beats that left me sobbing more than once. It also, unfortunately, embellishes the canonical story with fictional scenes that, I suppose, are intended to fill in gaps in the story and carry forward the parallel stories of Jesus, his followers and their families, the Roman authorities, and various Jewish people ranging from ambivalent supporters to deadly enemies of Jesus. Some of these extra scenes, more and more as the series goes on, feel to me like unnecessary padding and is sometimes downright dull, whereas the parts that emotionally grabbed me were pretty much all biblical material.

I gather this show started with a pilot that the creator, Dallas Jenkins, made as a video for his church, and the series developed from there, all crowd-funded. In a message Jenkins inserted into the Season 1 video set, he says he planned the show to get through Jesus' entire ministry, death and resurrection in eight seasons, but I think it's been trimmed down to seven seasons since then; five have been filmed so far.

The pilot, "The Shepherd," is a version of the Christmas story according to Luke 2, from the point of view of a lame shepherd who (in the film, not the gospel) is miraculously healed when the angels announce the Messiah's birth. I'd like it more if you actually saw and/or heard the angels' announcement. But you see a good deal of the potential for the series in this brief film.

Season 1 covers Jesus' ministry from healing the demon-possessed woman we will know as Mary Magdalene to Jesus' encounter with the woman at Jacob's well in Samaria. A broad thread running through this season's eight episodes is the Pharisee Nicodemus' recognition that Jesus is the Christ, which pays off with some of those powerful emotional moments I mentioned before. It also shows part of the process of Jesus' calling his 12 disciples, starting (when we first meet him) with "Little James" and Thaddeus, then collecting Andrew, Peter, "Big James" and John as well as Matthew the tax collector. It depicts some of Jesus' early, non-public miracles, such as healing Mary and filling the fishermen's nets, then moves on to his public miracles like changing water to wine at Cana (making a disciple of Thomas, a wine merchant) and healing the paralytic let down through the roof of Zebedee's house. It gives us Jesus' rooftop conference with Nicodemus (John 3), with his "For God so loved the world" statement and discussion of being born again, and he finally heals Simon (Peter)'s mother-in-law before leading his first half-dozen disciples to Samaria.

Like I said, the whole Nicodemus plot line sent me into fits of tears. Erick Avari, whom you may recall from such movies as Stargate, delivers a powerhouse performance as a man torn between following Jesus and remaining rooted in his scholarly position. Other cast members you may recognize are Yasmine Al-Bustami of NCIS: Hawai'i as Ramah, Thomas' woman friend and later fiance, Kirk B.R. Woller as Roman Centurion Gaius, Brandon Potter as the Roman praetor of Capernaum and Jonathan Roumie as Jesus, an actor I first spotted in Solo Mio; he also played an evangelist in Jesus Revolution.

In Season 2, Big James and John get their nickname "Sons of Thunder" when they ask Jesus to destroy some hostile Samaritans. Moving on from Samaria to Syria, Jesus makes disciples of Philip and Nathanael – the latter in another one of the scenes that gets me choked up. Conflict simmers between the disciples, particularly between Simon Peter and Matthew, whose background as a tax collector he particularly resents. In Jerusalem, Jesus heals another paralytic, the one who has spent years waiting for a chance to crawl into the Pool of Bethesda when its waters are stirred, and this gets the attention of Simon the Zealot, known as "Z" in this series and depicted as the second paralytic's estranged brother. Z, kind of a kung-fu disciple, follows Jesus and appoints himself as security chief.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, a lot's going on among the Pharisees, with a couple of them investigating Jesus' activities and looking for a pretext to file charges against him. Their attitude in general seems to be to take offense at everything. I don't remmeber if it's in this season or not, but at one point a Hellenized Jew shows up at the temple to inform on Jesus and before he can get five words out of his mouth, the Pharisee questioning him gives him the what-for for wearing damask, a blended fabric, which isn't kosher. These stooges catch up with Jesus as he and his disciples are coming away from a big sermon and various miracles, and when one of them takes that hoity-toity tone with one of the witnesses, he shames them with a statement like, "He's healing us, and you're just tearing us down" – a moment that creates a spiritual crisis for one of the Pharisees, in what may be the most emotionally powerful non-canonical moment in the series.

Season 2 wraps up with preparations for Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, an occasion that brings Judas Iscariot into his circle. Season 3 introduces us to Jairus, a sympathetic synagogue offical whose daughter Jesus will eventually raise from the dead. Jesus sends the disciples out on a mission trip, two by two; he preaches at the synagogue in his hometown and is violently rejected by the townsfolk; he heals Veronica, the woman with a discharge of blood; he responsds to questioning by John the Baptist's disciples, offending the Pharisees once more; he heals a deaf-mute man; and he concludes the season by feeding the 5,000.

Season 4 depicts the birth and death of John the Baptist, with Paul Ben-Victor (Entourage, The Invisible Man) playing Herod. Simon confesses Jesus is the Christ and receives the name Peter. Richard Fancy, Elaine's boss on Seinfeld, appears as Caiaphas the high priest. Matthew and Peter are reconciled. Jesus heals the man born blind, but when the local praetor goes spare during a small-scale riot and stabs Ramah, Jesus doesn't heal her; her death becomes a sore point with Thomas. Jesus begins foretelling his death, and he heals the new praetor's (previously a centurion) son. Judas starts pilfering from the disciples' funds. After visiting Lazarus, Mary and Martha at Bethany, the group barely escapes being stoned in Jerusalem. They travel back to Bethany for Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead, further upsetting Thomas. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus' feet with costly perfume, which causes a Pharisee who earlier started sympathizing with Jesus to break with him and hardens Judas' resolve to betray him; and with a bit of preparation, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey.

So far, season 1-4 of The Chosen. I've left out an awful lot, but this is enough of a synopsis to give you an idea of how the show is progressing. It looks like Season 5 stretches out Passion Week from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Sunday to his arrest in the garden on Thursday across eight episodes, which further suggests that Season 6 will be eight hours of Jesus' being tried, crucified and buried and Season 7 will cover from his resurrection to his ascension.

Whether or not it turns out that way, I have no complaints about the show except that, increasingly as it progresses, the plot drags as supplementary material is added to the biblically witnessed teachings and works of Jesus. My complaint isn't that it's doctrinally incorrect or tonally out of whack, just that it gets a little boring when it isn't laser-focused on what Jesus did and said – for when that focus is there, it's dynamite. Nicodemus' tears as he hid around the corner, at the end of Season 1, declining to follow Jesus on his travels, and the way Shmuel the Pharisee's world drops out from beneath his feet when Leander (I think that's his name) rebukes him for tearing down when Jesus is building up, are two exceptions – cases when something the show reads into the narrative hit hard. There's so much biblical material and I think focusing on that would be more to the show's advantage when it's actually the most gripping stuff.

Three Things That Made It For Me, as a TV dramatization: (1) Matthew being depicted as more or less Charlie Eppes from Numb3rs, with some additional OCD tics and possible signs of being on the autism spectrum; his characterization is a highlight of this fictionalization, with character growth as he breaks with his Roman protector, reconciles with his estranged parents, reconnects with his faith and becomes an evangelist. (2) John, also an evangelist, depicted as working out the opening of his gospel while sitting shiva for his brother, Big James. (3) Little James, depicted as suffering from a partial paralysis that Jesus never heals, and learning to bear this affliction faithfully despite the evidence all around him that he could indeed be healed. Yeah, yeah, there's a love story between Simon and his wife, and there's all the drama surrounding Thomas and Ramah, and of course I love the Nicodemus storyline in Season 1, and Z asking after Simon becomes Peter if that means he can have his name back and everybody in unison answering, "No," is legit hilarious; these are touches that show that faithfulness and a vivid imagination need not be kept apart. But sometimes the faithfulness is moving in and of itself.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3

I was there when Happy Days jumped the shark. A little grade-school kid watching from a parsonage living room in Nebraska, via a signal captured by an aerial antenna that could be disrupted by as little as an air popper making popcorn in the next room – I almost said a microwave oven, but we didn't have one of those until the next parsonage – and when my little brother and I hung on everything the Fonz did. And later, the Duke boys and the Knight Rider. If you get what I'm saying, you know what kind of boys we were. But even we weren't so oblivious that we didn't recognize, when the Fonz literally jumped a shark (on water skis), what kind of proverb was in the making. And now I have lived to see a Star Trek series that I thought was very promising, in the first season or two, jumping so many sharks it was like skipping rocks. It could be argued that the selachid vaulting started in earnest with the penultimate episode of S2, "Subspace Rhapsody," where technobabble turned the Enterprise crew into the cast of a musical revue with plot and character points underscored by song and dance numbers.

And yet the show goes on, and the jumping of sharks continues regularly throughout this third season, and there are still two seasons of this series to come. Considered alongside the direction Picard and Discovery took in their final seasons, and the notoriously bad Star Trek: Section 31 TV movie, and the dismal failure of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in one season flat (though a second season is still being produced at exorbitant expense), this almost suggests that somebody hates Star Trek with a holy passion and is purposefully augering it into the ground. Exhibits follow.

The season opens with "Hegemony, Part II," concluding the cliffhanger from the end of Season 2, in which several principal characters and a whole bunch of colonists were taken prisoner by the Gorn. This is actually one of the season's stronger episodes, with the Enterprises skirting the edge of violating a treaty with the Gorn to rescue the captives, while back in sickbay, Capt. Pike's girlfriend, Capt. Batel, receives an infusion of Number One's genetically modified Illyrian blood to help her combat the growth of Gorn eggs inside her body. This sets up a story arc that continues throughout the season.

"Wedding Bell Blues" features Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords as a version of the original series' capricious god-child, Trelane ("The Squire of Gothos"), and a voice cameo by John de Lancie suggesting that he might be a Q. It also introduces Cillian O'Sullivan as Roger Korby (TOS's "What Are Little Girls Made Of?") as Christine Chapel's new squeeze, a medical archaeologist. In this adventure, which definitely revs the speed boat engine if not actually jumping a shark, Spock is the first person who notices when Trelane, disguised as a bartender, changes reality to allow him and Christine to be a couple, then gets mad (like, threatening-people's-lives mad) when Spock and later others resist being played with like toys. It's kind of a fun episode, but it sets a pattern for this season of tampering with the show's characters, tone and genre every second or third episode – the kind of thing that can be a highlight of a season when it happens once every 26 episodes, but that destroys series continuity when it happens three or four times out of 10.

"Shuttle to Kenfori" is a "Star Trek does The Evil Dead" episode, in which Pike and M'Benga encounter zombies, basically, while searching an abandoned science lab for a flower that is supposed to help Batel with her Gorn problem. Of course the zombie outbreak has something to do with the flower, which does some kind of genetic jiggery-pokery, which rather paints M'Benga as a bit of a mad scientist and also, thanks to a Klingon character who hunts him down for revenge, reveals that he really did murder that Klingon ambassador in S2. He's a really morally compromised dude, and as Dr. Bashir's Little Sickbay or Horrors in DS9 so frequently demonstrates, the cure can be worse than the disease.

"A Space Adventure Hour" hits the ramp so hard that the water skier escapes from orbit, with La'An trying out a prototype of what (in the TNG era) will become standard equipment on a long-range starship: the holodeck. Why isn't it a thing before then? Behold: in trying to solve a pulp mystery, La'An gets stuck in the holodeck with no exit and no safety protocols. Meanwhile, characters in the whodunit wear faces of Star Trek principals, playing an over-the-top parody of TOS cast members and creatives. It's a surprisingly on-the-nose and not very kind parody of original Trek.

"Through the Lens of Time" is another horror episode, in which a young nurse named Gamble (recurring throughout the previous episodes of the season) takes it on the chin in a truly ghastly way while other characters, including Korby and Ortegas' younger, documentary filmmaker brother Beto, become trapped in what at first seems like an ancient, alien temple, but that might actually be something much more dangerous. Just thinking of Gamble getting his eyeballs fried out, then walking and talking like a living man even after his life signs cease, gives me the heebie-jeebies the way certain episodes of Doctor Who did. (Remember the one where you had to check whether somebody had a shadow or not?)

"The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" finds Lt. James Kirk thrust into his first command when the U.S.S. Farragut gets attacked by a huge vessel that has the terrifying ability to open its jaws and, like, eat the Enterprise. Like, "Star Trek meets Mortal Engines." Assisted by some Enterprises who had beamed across to help before the chomp went down, Kirk struggles to find his footing in this crisis, but maybe the most memorable thing about the episode is who the scavengers turn out to be. It's kind of disturbing.

"What Is Starfleet?" is Beto's documentary, which at first seems very negative about the space force his sister serves in. It doesn't help Starfleet's optics that the Enterprise has been conned into assisting some alien scientists in what turns out to be an act of aggression against a neighboring planet and, also, involves the enslavement of a magnificent space creature. The remarkable thing about this episode is how much deleted material is preserved on the DVD; it could have been a feature-length installment.

"Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" is the episode teased before Season 3 debuted, in which Pike, Uhura, Chapel and La'An take a modified version of the alien serum that restored Spock's Vulcan half in the S2 episode that most egregiously pissed me off ("Charades"). This allows them to temporarily become full-blooded Vulcans, which somehow magically alters their entire personalities (to say nothing of their hairstyles) despite none of them having ever undertaken the years of meditation, philosophical indoctrination and mental discipline that makes Vulcans the ice-cold SOBs they are. As ludicrous as it is, the episode makes a tiny, feeble attempt to explain this – something about how their Vulcanness really reflects Spock's perception of Vulcans – so it should come as no surprise to him that they are absolute, racist jerks who constantly remind Spock that he isn't even fully Vulcan. They basically become all of his childhood bullies. And then they just refuse to change back into humans at the end of the mission which, itself, isn't all that important for this story. Also oddly, La'An kind of becomes a Romulan. This is the kind of nonsense that Star Trek indulges in from time to time and that never fails to make me furious. As funny as this episode is in some of its details, it's built on a science fiction concept so stupid that it's unbearable to think about. In terms of shark jumping, this is the ski jump that launches the Fonz straight past the heliopause, into the interstellar void.

"Terrarium" is the episode that strands Ortegas on a moon, orbiting a gas giant on the wrong side of a wormhole, with a Gorn. There, despite her Gorn-related trauma (cf. "Hegemony, Part II"), she has to learn to make friends with the enemy in order to survive, while back on the Enterprise, it's a close-run thing whether the crew will be able to rescue her before either the wormhole collapses or they have to leave on a crucial mission. The Metrons (cf. TOS's "Arena") play a role in this, which I think is the biggest flaw in an otherwise all-right episode.

"New Life and New Civilizations" ties up the season as a whole, and particularly the plot threads regarding what Batel has become since she became fused with Gorn young'uns, Illyrian blood and that chimera flower from Kenfori, and what Gamble became on that planet with the temple-that-wasn't-really-a-temple. Before she commits herself to an eternity standing guard over a galactic demon prison, Batel and Pike share a lifetime together a la TNG's "The Inner Light," in what is maybe the most moving passage in this entire series to-date.

So, as I said, this show pulled increasingly steep shark jumps at least three times, and yet it goes on. I hear Season 4 will have an episode where the main cast gets turned into Muppets. So they're not done shooting the shark tank. Nevertheless, here are Three Highlights of This Season for Me – I won't say they "made it for me" because in the overall balance, I don't particularly care for this season of Trek, despite a couple of bright spots – (1) Patton Oswalt, as "Doug," a Vulcan who has embraced human behavior and who has somehow become irresistable to Number One, riffs with Spock in a series of hilarious outtakes. (2) "Terrarium" with its "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" theme of coming to a mutual understanding with your enemy, really represents what Star Trek has always been about. (3) The season finale's "Inner Light" interlude, which gives Batel and Pike the gift of a lifetime together that they can never really share. It hits emotionally, really hard.

Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2

I've fallen way behind on my reviews of TV seasons that I watched on DVD. So here's a quick catch-up, starting with my favorite: Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2.

The second and, alas, last season of the animated series Prodigy is a breathtaking document of the Trek establishment's mixed-up priorities. This show should have been the one that kept going for years and years. It is, in my opinion, the best recent Star Trek series – my dad, who's been a Trekkie since the original series first aired, is of the same opinion. And it's definitely, hands down, the best animated Trek show ever. But it got canceled after only one season, and Season 2 only exists because it was in post-production at the time and there were contractual commitments, etc., etc. So, at least we got this. It's not perfect, but it's darn close.

The show continues the adventures of a group of misfit kids who, in Season 1, escaped from a slave planet on board a time-displaced Starfleet ship that they found deep in the mines. You may recall how they ended up becoming Starfleet cadets after saving the Federation from a disaster partly of their inadvertent making. Now we find cocky would-be captain Dal, science genius Rok Tahk, "percussive maintenance" specialist Jankom Pog, noncorporeal alien in a mechanical suit Zero and indestructible, verbally incomprehensible but increasingly anthropomorphic blob Murf joining a mission on Admiral Janeway's crew on a souped-up Starship Voyager, on a secret mission to find the missing Chakotay, while Gwyn tries to convince her people, the xenophobic Vau N'Akat of the planet Solum, to be open to first contact with aliens.

Naturally, everything goes disastrously wrong. In the season's two-part premiere, "Into the Breach," the meddling cadets prematurely take a ship through a time wormhole, inserting themselves into the wrong page of history. And though Gwyn connects with a kinder, gentler version of her Diviner dad, named Ilthuran, she faces a relentless enemy in the treacherous Ascentia, who is willing to mess with the fabric of reality to achieve her fanatic aims.

The season continues with "Who Saves the Saviors," in which Gwyn faces Ascencia in a ritual contest while the other cadets meet Chakotay in the Diviner's jail, inadvertently letting him escape in the Protostar in a way that disrupts the whole timeline and threatens Gwyn's very existence. "Temporal Mechanics 101" is about the cadets' efforts to rescue Gwyn, turning their ship into a time machine and taking her back to the Voyager. "Observer's Paradox" finds the kids struggling to understand mysterious messages telling them to stay together and "find me." In "Imposter Syndrome," they create holographic copies of themselves to cover for them while they sneak off on another ill-advised mission. Hilarity ensues. In "The Fast and the Curious," the kids are taken captive by a sentient computer that forces them to compete in a dangerous race, an encounter that leads to Zero's containment suit being disabled.

"Is There in Beauty No Truth?" introduces a planet of Medusans (Zero's people) who have found a way to assume bodily form. They offer Zero a chance to experience physical senses, but the gift comes with strings attached – like, his body will die if he ever leaves the planet. In the two-part episode "The Devourer of All Things," the kids learn that the sender of those mysterious messages was spacetime Traveler Wesley Crusher, and that their entire reality is threatened by terrifying monsters called the Loom who devour anything displaced in time. In another two-parter called "Last Flight of the Protostar," the kids find Chakotay marooned on a very strange planet with the Protostar, minus its warp core, and they work out a way to get it flying again.

"A Tribble Called Quest" finds the kids looking for a warp core ingredient on a planet infested with giant, carnivorous tribbles. In "Cracked Mirror," they find their way back to the Voyager, only to find it split between multiple, alternate timelines – including a Mirror Universe where Janeway and Chakotay are evil. In the two-parter "Ascension," Ascencia attacks Protostar and Voyager and is revealed to be holding Wesley captive, torturing temporal technology out of him to prepare a final attack on Starfleet. "Brink" is about a rescue mission to save both Wes and Ilthuran from Ascencia's clutches. "Touch of Grey" finds the kids threatened by a Loom that Ascencia has captured and enslaved. And the two-part episode "Ouroboros" ends the season, and the series, with the climactic struggle between Ascencia and everybody else, always with the Loom threatening to erase their entire reality.

That's super-oversimplified, but I highly recommend watching the whole season. There are frustrating bits where the characters, particularly Dal, seem to be letting you down, but bear in mind that in a half-hour episode format, all this is part of a larger, serialized story and the characters show real growth. Cast members include everybody from Season 1, plus (increasingly) Robert Beltran returning as Chakotay, Robert Picardo as the Doctor (from Voyager), Jason Alexander and Daveed Diggs as Janeway's bridge officers, Michaela Dietz as Vulcan cadet Maj'el, Ronny Cox as Admiral Jellico (reprising his Next Generation role), Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Billy Campbell as one-time TNG character Okona, Eric Menyuk as two-time TNG guest The Traveler, and real-life science educator Erin Macdonald as a holographic version of herself.

It's tragic, I say, that this show didn't get the recognition it deserved as the strongest of the past decade's crop of Trek series, and that it couldn't go on longer. The characters' growth and chemistry together is lovely to witness. The dialogue is good. The stories are excellent. It's top-quality science fiction, structured for a Nickelodeon, kids' network audience but, perhaps as a consequence of that, highly satisfying for viewers of all ages. It's full of the optimism for the future that glows through the classic era of Trek, from the original series through Enterprise, and it makes good use of legacy characters without taking away from the hero kids' role in the forefront of the cast.

It has terrifying monsters, fiendish villains, rogues, creepy-crawlies and breathtaking, alien vistas. The Loom! The eels and leviathans on that sand planet with the vapor seas! Those bitey tribbles! That good-for-nothing Okona! That sentient computer with its deadly race course! Not to mention the Kazon and of course, Ascencia. It has characters who come to a tragic end, characters who suffer unimaginable agony, characters seen at their worst (such as the Bizarro versions of Janeway and Chakotay) ... but it also has people of all colors (including purple), sexes (including none) and body shapes (including none) aspiring to make the universe a better place for everybody. It's funny. It's a bit mind-bending, with all that temporal mechanics stuff. And it's a thrill ride from start to finish.

To put a point on it, here are Three Things That Made It For Me: (1) Putting life back into Chakotay after he's spent years marooned on an eel-infested sandbar. (2) Zero's heartbreaking taste of corporeal existence and what it costs him to sacrifice it for his friends. (3) Hard as it may be to believe, Wesley Crusher's role, suggesting some pretty interesting adventures he must have had since becoming one of those nearly omnipotent Travelers. Once again, this two-season series has my full endorsement.

591. Psalm of a Restless Night

A loose paraphrase of Psalm 6, titled "To the chief musician, with stringed instruments, on an eight-stringed harp." Not coincidentally, I wrote it around 2 a.m. Art: Child at Prayer by Eastman Johnson, c. 1873, public domain.

My bed dissolves in tears;
With sweat my pillow swims.
All night I groan with restless fears,
With vain designs and whims.
My eyes are sore with weary grief:
Lord, chasten not my unbelief!

Rebuke me not with ire;
Have mercy! I am weak.
Restore the bones Your holy fire
Has well-nigh brought to break!
Restore my soul—O Lord, how long?
Return with Your salvation strong!

For in the grave's dumb sleep
Who, Lord, will sing Your praise?
In death, who will remembrance keep
Of all Your gracious ways?
Depart from me, iniquity!
I cried, and God gave ear to me.

The Lord indeed has heard
My heart's despondent prayer:
He gives His never-failing word
To shoulder all my care.
Let all that troubles me retreat:
Before me stands the Mercy-Seat.

P.S. Here's an original tune to go with this hymn.

Fuze

Earlier this weekend, I drove a two-hour round trip – not in the usual direction – to see one of only two movies playing in my wider area that I was interested in seeing. It was a matter of timing whether I chose Over My Dead Body, a black comedy-action movie about a married couple trying to kill each other, or Fuze. Because I wanted to drive home in daylight, and OMDB's only matinee showing started too soon after I knocked off work on Friday, I ended up seeing Fuze.

It's not a coincidence that Fuze, besides being the title of this movie, is the British spelling of the part of a bomb that Wile E. Coyote lights before running for cover. You know, what we in the U.S. spell f-u-s-e. According to a screen card at the end of the film, it's also supposedly a charity that disarms bombs, but I can find no evidence that this is a real thing. In this movie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Anna Karenina, The Fall Guy) plays a U.K. Army major who heads a bomb disposal unit that gets called in when a construction dig in London unearths what appears to be an unexploded World War II bomb. Before his team can begin trying to disarm it, a whole square mile of London has to be evacuated – except for a gang of crooks who, right on cue – I mean that, as if they've been expecting an unexploded bomb to force the evacuation that day – seize the opportunity to drill a hole in the wall of a bank vault. The crooks include, no surprise, some shady characters, played by Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator Salvation) and Theo James (Divergent, The Time Traveler's Wife) among others, who get away by the skin of their teeth and then immediately turn on each other, all while one of the Army major's underlings plants an official seed of doubt about the bomb actually being of WW2 origin.

Double crosses, brutal violence, fast-moving police work and even faster-moving crooks escaping form the tissue of this movie, with characters switching which side they're are on (like, good or evil) in a manner that I guess was meant to be surprising or keep you guessing but that I saw coming from high orbit. I actually groaned to myself: "Don't tell me this guy is ... " But let's not spoil it for those of you who want to guess for yourselves. The only real surprise that kept me on the edge of my seat was whether the criminal masterminds were going to get away, and get rich. Your suspense is whether it's the kind of story where the crooks end up dead, or in handcuffs, or maybe getting away with their skin mostly intact but losing all the loot, or is there a "happy ending" for the bad guys and are we supposed to (cough) "stop your crying, it's a sign of the times" (sorry, Project Hail Mary) or will the movie actually try to sell us a reason to sympathize with them? Like, are the villains villains or not? Or are just some of them villains?

I'd like to say the movie settles these questions in a satisfying manner. However, what I walked away with, or rather drove away with (super conscious of what a long drive it was), was thoughts like, "What was the point of (spoiler redacted) doing such-and-so when he could have saved him having his hand smashed with a pipe wrench, or being shoved into the trunk of a car, or having a plastic bag pulled down over his head," etc., etc. – decisions that led to betrayals and vendettas and imminent danger of death and, for some characters, actual death, all of which (spoiler redacted) could have spared himself without costing him anything. But oh, well, it made the second half of the movie exciting and the pacing was such that you really had to be jaded with fast-paced excitement to even think these thoughts. But I thought them. And it took me out of the story, I'm sad to say. Also, the movie's narrative structure kind of falls apart at the end, explaining all the stuff that it couldn't explain to you earlier without spoiling its own surprises in a "10 years ago" epilogue, which in my opinion is a sign that the writer(s) didn't properly think the thing through.

There were, however, sufficient things that made the movie for me to enumerate three: (1) Aaron Taylor-Johnson's alpha-stud hunkiness, which actually hits a stratospheric level in the scene where he reprimands his too-curious-for-comfort underling for taking unacceptable risks. You see in his eyes a combination of tender concern for a pipsqueak who's really, objectively, a pain in the ass, along with a tortured remnant of some past trauma about which the characters who know him have been dropping whispered hints. You know how it goes. He made a mistake in Afghanistan and some people died – his people. The writing is obvious, indeed hackneyed, but ATJ's acting is legit. (2) Gugu Mbatha-Raw, playing a police superintendent, being so good at her job that it would be astonishing if the crooks got away with it, which I won't say whether they did or not. (3) Those end-of-the-movie titles, one of which delivers really disappointing tidings of what one of the main characters did with himself later on ... then goes, "Just kidding." Whew! An honorary mention: The army bomb disposal squad's alternative to saying "break a leg," which sounds grossly insubordinate when that pipsqueak corporal says it to his immediate superior. I guess when your job is disabling high explosives, you can do without words of encouragement like "Do your best" or "Good luck" but ... "Don't be shit"? Really?

Catechesis Warm-Up Songs, Part 6

The sixth and final "chief part" of Luther's Small Catechism addresses the Sacrament of the Altar, a.k.a. the Lord's Supper, a.k.a. the Eucharist, a.k.a. Holy Communion, a.k.a. The Mass. Luther's question-and-answer structure divides nicely into four units, which doesn't necessarily mean it will take that many classroom sessions to cover it, but I'm providing a hymn for each of the four anyway. It's a weighty subject, worthy of considerable meditation. So here are some songs that I hope will help prepare young minds for such a meditation. ART: The Last Supper by Jaume Huguet, 1470, public domain.

587. What Is the Sacrament?
Tune: ARFON, Welsh
(cf. "Chief of sinners though I be" and "What our Father does is well" in Australia's Lutheran Hymnal)

Cup of blessing which we bless,
Bread that harbors righteousness,
Be for me the highest good:
Jesus' body, Jesus' blood
Sacrificed, now seal to me
God's forgiveness, full and free!

Reason finds it grossly strange
That Christ would such meal arrange,
Giving that to eat and drink
From which dainty minds must shrink:
His true body, His true blood,
In and under earthly food!

But His word cannot be torn.
His Passover vow is sworn:
Holy flesh bared to the bone,
Veins laid open to atone.
Would you see your debts erased?
Hear His promise; open, taste!

God spoke on that festal night,
Pledging pardon and delight
In the bread that harbors love,
Vintage drawn from heav'n above:
God's own body, God's own blood,
Served in perfect servanthood.

588. What Does the Sacrament Do?
Tune: HERR JESU CHRIST, MEINS LEBENS LICHT, Leipzig, 1625
(cf. "Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my Light")

O Flesh that purified the flails
Which tore You, Hands that blessed the nails
Which pierced You through, stretch out to me:
Your healing touch shall set me free.

Probe deep in me, corrupt and sore;
Uncleanness can abide no more.
With blood that seasoned vulgar wood,
Make white my stains, my foulness good.

Come, not to heart and soul alone,
But even to my flesh and bone:
My mouth with Your atonement feed,
That all my members may be freed.

And if I thus am reckoned pure,
I may count my redemption sure:
For where God's peace and pardon dwell,
Life and salvation camp as well.

589. How Does the Sacrament Do This?
Tune: O JESU CHRISTE, WAHRES LICHT, Nürnberg, 1676
(cf. "O Christ, our true and only Light")

Ask you how can it all be true
That our Lord's Supper claims to do?
Only keep Jesus' words in view:
"Given and shed to ransom you."

Strange things God says, let none deny:
Yet not one error, not one lie.
His word turns none and naught to yes
And reckons faith as righteousness.

Knowing that Christ does not deceive,
What He declares therefore believe,
And for His sacrifice's sake
Of His last testament partake.

Partake, believing, and obtain
That which no pow'r of yours can gain:
Forgiveness, drenched in offered blood;
God's very body, giv'n as food.

Then with that bread and in that cup,
A blessed fellowship you sup:
Communion with the saints above,
United in the Savior's love.

590. Who Receives the Sacrament Worthily?
Tune: MERTON by William H. Monk, 1861
(cf. "Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding")

Fasting, outward exercises,
And such discipline are fine:
Yet belief alone comprises
Worthiness with Christ to dine.

Some, who have His pledge forsaken
And His presence here denied,
Still have of this feast partaken
And eternally have died.

Christ is present, irrespective
Of what those who sup believe;
For His promise is effective:
What He pledges, we receive.

But the benefit is given
To the eater who perceives
In this bread the King of heaven,
Hung between two earthy thieves.

Yea, the cup of joy is ladled
From the blood He spilled for all,
When the Bridegroom's head was cradled
In a myrrh-anointed pall.

To His testament's believer
All things broken are made whole,
Faith alone the blest receiver
Of His promised PAID IN FULL.

Let us then with care and pleasure
Eat and drink what Christ declared,
That we may enjoy the treasure
That His kindness has prepared.

Catechesis Warm-Up Songs, Part 5

Part 5 of Luther's Small Catechism, at least the version used in my corner of Lutheranism for instruction in the faith, has to do with the Office of the Keys (the power to forgive and retain sins) and confession and absolution. So, as these two hymns emphasize, Christ at work through means, through men to whom He has delegated such wonderful authority, and sinners finding comfort for their burdened consciences. Basically, the nitty gritty of the gospel as Lutheranism faithfully teaches and confesses it. ART: Christ giving the Keys of Heaven by Peter Paul Rubens (†1640), public domain.

585. The Office of the Keys
Tune: TALLIS' CANON by Thomas Tallis, 1565
(cf. "All praise to Thee, my God, this night")

Christ gave the Office of the Keys
To set tormented souls at ease,
And flouters of the Law to spurn
Till in repentance they return.

We thank You, Lord, for calling men
To loose our sins; for surely when
They pardon us, we may believe
That Your forgiveness we receive.

Just so, we praise Your holy mind
That binds as well the sins they bind:
For he who on his own strength leans
Should fear indeed Your earthly means.

Through such means, Lord, toward us You reach:
Through hands that serve, through mouths that teach;
Therefore Your gifts, our Savior dear,
And You Yourself are always near.

586. Confession and Absolution
Tune: EVAN by William Henry Havergal, 1846
(cf. "Oh, that the Lord would guide my ways")

Cast off, O Lord, my heavy pall,
Sin's agonizing weight!
Oh, come, my Hope, my Life, my All:
Your pardon I await.

Unto Your servant I confess
The sins I know and feel;
Whate'er remains, let grace address,
Though it be dire and real.

And when he speaks the freeing word
My wounded conscience craves,
Help me believe what I have heard:
Your word that heals and saves.

Catechesis Warm-Up Songs, Part 4

The fourth chief part of Luther's Small Catechism, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, is divided into four units. Here's a warm-up song for a class session on each unit. I don't know if this part of the instruction course will necessarily require four sessions, but I'm just going with how Luther structured the material. Use or skip whichever ones you like, if any. ART: 12th century baptismal font in Väte Church, Gotland, Sweden. Photo by Helen Simonsson licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

581. What Is Baptism?
Tune: ALLE JAHRE WIEDER by Johann C.H. Rinck, 1827
(“As each happy Christmas“)

Praise the Lord, who sought me
When I was astray,
And in truth begot me
In a wondrous way!

I was in baptism
Reborn from above.
God has healed the schism
’Twixt me and His love.

Scripture, never lying,
States what here occurred:
His own hand applying
Water and the word.

Water and the Spirit,
Put another way,
Soaks me in Christ’s merit,
Puts my sin away.

Ah! What joy, what pleasure
God’s dear child to be!
Praise Him, who such treasure
Freely gives to me!

582. What Does Baptism Do?
Tune: SAELIR ERU TRÚADIR, Bohemian, 15th cent.
(“And then the Savior turned“)

Christ blessed us as He bled,
With pardon sighing;
He bowed His blameless head,
For sinners dying.

Now is death’s curtain torn,
New life unveiling.
The risen Christ has sworn,
His truth unfailing:

The baptized He will save;
Be then believing,
Despite the yawning grave
This hope receiving!

For what He says is true;
His word has power,
From when He washes you
Till your last hour.

Sin, hell and Satan quail;
Death shrinks before Him.
For Jesus does not fail;
Let all adore Him!

583. How Does Baptism Do This?
Tune: WIR HATTEN GEBAUET, German folksong, 1823
(“When Christmas morn is dawning“)

O Jesus, You submitted
To baptism here on earth,
Who had no sin committed,
No guilty ache to nurse.
Thus baptism You have fitted
With pardon and rebirth.

Bare water is invested
With Your almighty Word;
The Spirit, who once rested
Upon the deep, has stirred
A living faith, attested
By promise poured and heard.

Your washing recreates us,
The old makes fresh and new.
God’s Breath regenerates us;
The Father’s voice speaks true:
As heirs He designates us,
As dear to Him as You.

Your grace thereby is giving
A gift beyond compare:
All we have done forgiving,
New tasks You now prepare.
We shall not die but, living,
The works of God declare.

584. What Does Baptism Signify?
Tune: ST. DENIO, Welsh
(“Immortal, invisible, God only wise“)

How blessèd a rest, shared by all the baptized,
United in death, yea, and buried with Christ!
From sin we are freed, our indictment erased,
At peace with our God, in His bosom embraced.

What life now proceeds, only Jesus has seen:
It will be like His, as our death too has been.
In pleasing perfume and pure garments arrayed,
We walk in His light, on His promises stayed.

And now to the Father, and now to the Son,
And now to the Spirit, from all ages One,
The all-wise, all-powerful Ancient of Days,
Now and to all ages be glory and praise.

The Faraway Inn

The Faraway Inn
by Sarah Beth Durst
Recommended Ages: 14+

Calisa needs to get away from New York for the summer after her junior year in high school. She just caught her boyfriend cheating on her, and lying to her, and she needs time away from anything that reminds her of him. Nursing her heartbreak, she travels to her great aunt's bed and breakfast in the Vermont woods, only to be told she can't stay. Auntie Zee, whom she hasn't seen since she was a little girl, is pretty brusque about it. And the place looks like it's about to fall down.

Fighting back against being sent straight home, Calisa makes herself useful. She cooks. She cleans. She helps the groundskeeper's son, an unnervingly cute boy named Jack, about whom the least thought the better because a rebound relationship totally isn't what she needs right now. And little by little, the place starts looking better, and the handful of eccentric guests seem a bit happier, and Auntie Zee says less and less about sending Calisa back home. And also, Calisa starts noticing weird things going on around the place. Weird things like, maybe, magic. Magic like, maybe, doorways doing double duty – closets one day, portals to another dimension the next. By the time she cottons to the lizard who imprints on her actually being a dragon, and the front hallway having both a magic mirror and a magic teapot in it, and the guests including a dryad, a wizard and a sea witch, Calisa is perilously close to discovering why the Faraway Inn is failing and what she can do – has to do – if it's going to continue being a refuge, an excape, that people from all kinds of strange places really need.

I've read a few of Sarah Beth Durst's many books, including one of her cozy fantasies, The Spellshop. And I've dipped my toe into the cozy fantasy genre just often enough to pick up on one of its persistent themes, as sure to show up as octopus imagery in steampunk: representation for alternative identities and family structures that rule this cultural moment. I feel I owe it to faith-oriented families who are concerned about what the character of the material they share with their children to send up a mild Adult Content Advisory about it. But it's mild, perhaps because this is Durst's first foray into YA cozy fantasy, which (in her afterword) she designed around the idea that teens, too, sometimes need a safe place to escape to. Also mild, but worth mentioning, is an Occult Content Advisory because, well, Calisa and her auntie are witches and there is some magic in the book, albeit of the "only in a fantasy novel" variety.

The only other advisory I want to post here is "You may feel like you've been here before." I mean, if the idea of a B&B being a nexus of interdimensional portals gives you a sense of déjà vu, it's true that I've also reviewed Clete Barrett Smith's "Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast" trilogy and Cerberus Jones' "The Gateway" series, which are based on closely adjacent concepts, though skewing a bit more toward science fiction. When Calisa walks through a portal, though, she isn't traveling to a different planet; just a different "realm," whatever that means. Also, the kids in this kids' book are a bit older – old enough to have a romance brewing between them that could be fun to read about, if you're a kid of a certain age and aren't grossed out by kissy stuff. It's a warm, comforting, kind book with no dramatic stakes beyond whether some people will end up happy. And it has a point-of-view character who makes jaw-dropping discoveries, not only about what's going on around her, but about the power within herself.

Sarah Beth Durst's other titles include The Girl Who Could Not Dream, The Shelterlings, Spy Ring and The Warbler, as well as going-on-three sequels to The Spellshop including one, due out next year, called The Magical Cheese Emporium. Even if there's no other incentive to catch up on my reading, a title like that ought to do it.