The 18-25 demographic is shrinking

As I was watching, it occurred to me that this one seemed like a Pertwee or Tom Baker episode. It just felt like something from later in the classic series as opposed to the Hartnell era. There was a variety of locations around the airport and then add in the plane/spaceship and the big spaceship and you've kept those set builders very busy. Throw in some scenes out on the airfield and you have a rather extensive story world.

Sadly, Ben is absent for most of the story. Polly fares little better, getting more screen time only in the form of the alien that took her likeness. I guess the show's makers had given up on them by this time and had no interest in giving them a grand send-off. Instead, the Doctor and Jamie pairing gets an early run.

I watched the black & white animated episodes and the remaining 2 original ones. I must admit that I really like the animation. It may not be the most expensive, photorealistic stuff around, but it has a low budget charm just like the show itself. The grinning guy at the newsstand was funny plus I noticed a wanted poster with the Master's face on it.

Jamie gets in a wee snog with Samantha, a woman looking for her brother. What a stud! Leaving the originals (i.e. - humans) in those cars - not exactly the best hiding place, if you ask me. The animation meant the shots of planes and spaceships were better than what could be done back then. I also loved the detective with his omnipresent pipe. Did the animation ever show smoke coming from it or was that only in the surviving footage?

Overall I liked this story. Jamie is a fun character. I miss the goofy Doctor, though, especially the recorder playing. And I, for one, had no problem with the disguises. He's much more your standard Doctor here. That the aliens were taking young adults to be interpreted as a commentary on the youth culture of 1967? Hmm...

Troughton's first season is almost done and it ends with Daleks.

Building / Blocks: The Architecture of Chicago’s South Side

This looks to be a really neat look at the overlooked architecture of Chicago's south side. Host Lee Bey is a photographer and I believe he now writes a column for the Chicago Sun-Times.

With the Honey and Berries United: Elderberry Blackberry Mead by Wyldewood Cellars

When I was composing my previous elderberry mead review, I wrote under the impression that elderberries were on the obscure side of things, that the folks at Wyldewood Cellars were nearly alone in their love of the fruit of the elder plant and that, for most, they were simply something mentioned in a Monty Python movie.

One day after having posted that review, I was poking around my refrigerator for some sport peppers because I was in the middle of a Chicago dog marathon when I came across a bottle of elderberry tincture or some such thing. It reminded me of my impression that elderberry juice was de rigueur in natural health circles. It may not be, but it seems fairly common to me, at least, with multiple people I know taking it whereas it was nowhere to be seen a few years back.

It also occurred to me that elderflower liqueur was trendy. (I believe we have a bottle of St. Germaine that my wife bought in the liquor cabinet.) Although I am not a big cocktail drinker, I've heard tell of tasty concoctions that have elderflower liqueur in them from some folks who frequent bars that have a cocktail menu that reaches beyond Old Fashioneds and rum & coke. Plus I've seen articles about craft cocktails that mention it in local publications.

I then discovered the existence of the Midwest Elderberry Cooperative, a group that promotes the growing and selling of elderberries. Although the coop is out of Minnesota, it seems that there are some Wisconsin members. The coop notes, "Over 95% of the elder ingredients found in American made products are sourced from outside our continent."

In addition to touting the elderberry's taste and health benefits, they also promote the environmental benefits: "Perennial native elderberry supports over 60 native pollinators, holds soils in place, sequesters carbon and sucks up nitrogen." My guess is that these qualities are basically the exact opposite ones of corn and soy beans, the biggest crops in this country.

It appears that the humble elderberry isn't quite obscure as I had thought initially.

Joining it here are blackberries. Along with raspberries, they are the main members of the caneberry family. I see here that cloudberries are also part of the family and my wife came back with a jar of cloudberry jam on a recent trip to Ikea. In a blind taste test, I think I'd be hard pressed to distinguish between a blackberry and a raspberry. To my mind blackberries are sweeter and less tart than raspberries. And I have just began my investigation of the cloudberry.

I'd be unable to distinguish the colors of plain elderberry mead and this elderberry-blackberry combo stuff even if I had a really detailed Pantone swatch book that was the OED of colors. They looked indistinguishable. Still, they also both looked lovely having a deep ruby hue. It was clear and had no fizz. The aroma was much the same as well. It smelled like berries along with a large dose of honeyed sweetness and that same vinous scent.

(I should make things easy for myself and just do some cutting and pasting here.)

The mead tasted smooth with a heavy body full of sugars as it was very sweet. Again, the honey had a prominent floral taste to it and less earthy. That vinous thing was present in the taste as was a nice tartness. I think this stuff was a little less tart than the mead made from elderberries alone. Not dramatically but noticeably.

I found that the honey-berry sweetness lingered after swallowing and the tannins took a little while to kick in and add moderate dryness.

I greatly enjoyed this mead as I did the version without the blackberries. The differences are subtle with the main one being that this stuff is a tad less tart. As I noted last time, I prefer dry mead but Wyldewood has a knack for using tart fruits to keep high doses of sweetness from being overly cloying.

Junk food pairing: To honor the coming together of two berries here, pair this mead with Lay's Funyuns Potato Chips which bring together two vegetables dug up from the soil.

The Cold War Turns Hot

Yesterday my gamer friends and I dipped our toes into the world of Twilight:2000.

The United States and its western allies went to war with the Soviet Union in the late 90s. It is now 2000 and Operation Reset is launched to rid Poland of the Soviets. It fails disastrously.

So a few of us, the remains of a platoon, are in our Humvee trying to make our way to the German border to meetup with our remaining forces and regroup. But Ivan lurks with his explosive devices at the side of the road, there are friendly stragglers here and there, and then there are the locals whose allegiance is not always clear.

We ended the session just south of Ostrów Wielkopolski with some injured comrades in back and a need to find some water.

A really fun hex crawl. It's a Free League game and uses the same basic rules as Alien, which I loved. I am really looking forward to the next session.

The Will of the Women

The publicity I saw for Women Talking made it out to be like 12 Angry Men except the men are women and there are fewer than 12 of them. Still angry, though. It's an apt comparison. Instead of a jury deliberating the fate of a defendant, here we have a group of women deliberating over whether they and the other women (and girls and younger boys) of a Mennonite colony should leave it. You see, the women and at least some of the girls have been drugged and raped by some of the men of the colony. The rapists were arrested but now the colony's men have gone to the city to post bail for them and expect the victims to forgive them unconditionally. This leaves the women a couple of days to determine whether to stay or leave.

A group of women gather to deliberate and quickly the Frances McDormand contingent abandon the deliberations saying that they intend to stay as the colony is their home and they know nothing else. The remaining women are left to hash things out.

Pros and cons are weighed, fears for the futures of their sons arise, and apologies are offered as they look back at their time in the colony. The younger women let their passions loose more easily than the older women who try to keep the deliberations on course and whose comments add an occasional dose of levity.

Rooney Mara is Ona and her big eyes and warm face are the anchor here. She loves August, a man who had previously left the colony but has been repatriated and is now a school teacher, and he her. August has been enlisted to take the minutes of their meeting. He and Ona's shared affections stand in contrast to the attitudes of seemingly the rest of the men in the colony.

The centerpiece here is a group of smart, strong women trying to figure out their fate and the fate of dozens of others. But we also have a couple of symbolic characters. August may be a man but, tellingly, he did not go to town to help post bail. He is presented as being rather feminine. He is very meek and he cries. 

His counterpart is Melvin, a woman who was raped and lost her child. I forgot how it is phrased in the movie but she assumed the identity of a man after enduring the traumas. Changed her name, cut her hair, and began wearing suspenders. When Melvin was introduced, I thought she might be a kind of Tiresias figure who could lecture from both sides. But it turned out she became a mute.

While I think the Melvin-August duo was a lost opportunity to toss around ideas of gender, the fact remains that drama at the center of the story was powerful and moving.

Adrift on the Sea of Sorrows

 

 

Yesterday I finished listening to the Alien: Sea of Sorrows audio drama. I've never read the book so it was all new territory for me.

I'll be honest, I got very scared a couple of times listening to this tale. I mean scared on top of a general feeling of creepiness sinking in from both ears. The first couple of times I heard the plasma rifles being fired, I think my fight or flight instinct kicked in. A shiver went up my spine.

It's a sequel to Alien: Out of the Shadows, which was also adapted into an audio drama. Here, a few hundred years after the events of the previous story, Alan Decker is pressganged into service by Weyland-Yutani as he has some psychic abilities and somehow dreams about Xenomorphs despite never having heard of them. It's off to LV-178 and its trimonite mines to secure a living Xenomorph for the arms division of W-Y.

Stockard Channing is a creepfest unto herself as Rollins, the cold, uncaring Weyland-Yutani apparatchik in charge of the mission. Good lord, her voice gave me the heebie jeebies.

This is all standard Alien fare - no new ground is broken here, really. But it was a great scare. And it made me wonder what kind of story could be had that broke the mold. How do you make a good Xenomorph story and break conventions at the same time?

Burn bright through the night

After having watched a couple movies that filter existential angst through the eyes of donkeys that unceremoniously meet their demise and then the malevolence of the ugly tourists in Brandon Cronenberg's latest, I was in the mood for something more upbeat and affirming of life.

While I caught a trailer for Living a couple weeks back, it didn't really make much of an impression on me. However, when I heard that it was a remake of a Kurosawa film, I reconsidered. That Kurosawa film is Ikuru and, although I know of it, I've never seen it.

It is 1953 and Bill Nighy plays Rodney Williams, a taciturn mid-level(?) manager type in the Public Works department or ministry who is always clad in pinstripe suit and bowler hat. He has a coterie of much younger minions who report to him that seem a little afraid of their inscrutable boss. At home, he lives with his son, Michael, and his daughter-in-law, Fiona. The young couple tend to keep Rodney at arms length and are eager to get their hands on some of the money he has stashed away.

Upon receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Rodney heads to a seaside resort town that is completely unlike the one in Infinity Pool for one last hurrah before killing himself. (I assume this city was Blackpool because it's the only such place with arcades and whatnot that I know of in England thanks to Jethro Tull lyrics.) He is unable to do so and returns home determined not to live out his final days in quiet desperation.

Instead he helps out a trio of women who seek to have a bombed out building turned into a playground. They're lost in the ministry's bureaucratic maze and Rodney takes up their cause as his own. He also spends time with Margaret Harris, a young woman who was formerly one of his minions but left for an exciting career in the food service industry. There's nothing sexual between them. Rather Rodney, a widower, wants to spend a little time with a pretty young woman and perhaps absorb some of her vivaciousness so that his life may end on a bang instead of a whimper.

The plot here is straightforward and the movie is not particularly ostentatious stylistically so it's actors who get the focus. (One exception here is the 4:3 aspect ratio which evokes, along with the opening credits, early TV shows.) Nighy does a fine job of going from rather laconic and staid to someone animated by purpose with stops at pity and drunkenness in between.

While there is a certain formalistic simplicity here, there is still much food for thought. The bowler hatted figure is, for me, the subject of many a Monty Python sketch. I've always known it as something to be ridiculed. That came to mind when contemplating the movie's less than favorable commentary on government bureaucracy.

I also kept in mind that England (and Japan, for that matter) were very different places than the United States in 1953. The U.S. was ascendant with an emerging middle class eager to use fancy new appliances, eat at McDonald's, and consume consume consume. England, on the other hand, still had food rationing at the time.

Beyond these kinds of differences, the call to, well, carpe diem is timeless. The movie also implores us to live purposefully, to not be resigned to simply be carried along by tides but rather to tack our own course.

Living has more breadth of themes than depth, on the whole, although it does do some justice to the question of how to live. Despite this, I found it to be engaging and hopeful, the latter not being a part of my cinematic diet lately.

51.5 Years After

I see that a 50th anniversary edition of Ten Years After's A Space in Time is set to come out next month, about a year and a half late. Doesn't look like the vaults were plundered for this release and we instead get 3 surround mixes and a new stereo mix.

I recall buying this album back in the mid-90s seeking to find out more about the band whose only song to ever get on the radio was "I’d Love To Change The World".

A Space in Time turned out to be a rather eclectic album. While the band's affinity for the blues remains - hear "One of These Days", for example - but there's also boogie woogie rock'n'roll and a lot of well-crafted rock/pop songs built on a foundation of wonderfully melodic acoustic guitar of Alvin Lee. A favorite of mine is "Here They Come" with its brief psychedelic synth overture leading into a moody acoustic song that comes across as a bit symphonic and a bit like something from the soundtrack of a western. It finishes with a bouncy whistling section.

I believe that the above version of "I’d Love To Change The World" is the new stereo remix. To my ears, it sounds much like the original mix but everything sounds more up front.

Freezing! 1 February 2023

EO to Live at EO

The 120 Minutes of Sodom

 

In Brandon Cronenberg's third feature, we meet James and Em Foster who are on vacation at a resort on the shore of a nameless body of water in an entirely fictional country that is Third World or developing or whatever you call it these days. The resort is ringed by a rather tall fence that is topped with barbed wire. James befriends Gabi, a frenetic naughty dream girl. He and Em join Gabi and her husband, Alban, for a venture outside the resort compound.

James volunteers to drive the revelers home but he is not exactly sober and ends up hitting a local. This leads to his arrest. He discovers that the government makes liberal use of the death penalty but, in order to maintain good optics for tourists and generate a little income, one can pay to have a clone made who will take one for the team. But you have to watch your double being killed.

James takes the authorities up on the deal and is prepared to head home with an urn of his double's ashes but he instead is lured deeper into the Gabi's world which consists of her husband and a few other visitors to the country who form a band of ugly tourists. They are perverted and wicked. And rich too because they are happy to engage in all manner of vice and destruction and simply pay to have a double suffer the consequences as they gleefully watch.

I didn't know much about this movie walking into the theater and, for a while, it seemed as if it was going to simply be a twisted take on The Sheltering Sky. But it quickly went beyond twisted into hedonistic depravity. Mia Goth is great as the ringleader who is out for a thrill at any cost. I really enjoyed the dreamy, psychedelic orgies scenes as they were visually arresting.

A fun ride into the darkest recesses of our minds that thrills and horrifies. Cronenberg's best yet.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 75 - Prelude: That's no kolcache

(Head on down the road to the next entry.)

Comfort him

The kind folks at UW Cinematheque followed up their screening of EO with one of Au Hasard Balthazar, the 1966 Robert Bresson movie that provided the basis of the former film.

Here we get less donkey and more human drama. It opens with a boy named Jacques who baptizes our equine hero along with his sisters and the girl he has a crush on, Marie. One of Jacques' sister dies and he and his family move away from the town and Balthazar ends up being sent to a farm. Years later he returns to Marie who is now a willful teenager in "love" with the town bad boy, Gérard, while the donkey is passed from owner to owner.

If, as the presenter noted in his intro to Au Hasard Balthazar, Eo goes on an odyssey, then Balthazar is more of a Greek chorus. He appears less frequently than Eo, popping up to offer some contrast to and commentary on the hairless apes and their small town drama. Eo, on the other hand, is centerstage and it his journey that acts as an omnipresent glass mirror for the audience to see through, however darkly.

My own preference is for EO. I can appreciate Bresson originating the conceit and will admit that my heartstrings got tugged at the end as

SPOILERS!

 

 

we watched life slowly ebb from Balthazar.

But I found the small town drama to be largely inconsequential, with what I think of as the more trivial concerns of teenagers being given more weight than they deserve.

Snowbound, 28-29 January 2023

  

The Corona Diaries Vol. 74 - Postlude: Modern Day Warriors

R.I.P. Barrett Strong

Just read that Barrett Strong died today.

R.I.P. Tom Verlaine

Tom Verlaine died yesterday. Here's an early version of my favorite Television song, "See No Evil".

Out for a Stroll in the Snow

I took a lovely walk out at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center this morning as a light snow fell. Just perfect weather for a stroll.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 74: Down Highway 53 There's a Place Called Osseo

(late October 2022)

(Listen to the prelude.)

As happened last year, October rolled around and I found myself with a fair amount of vacation time to use before the end of the year. So I once again planned a trip up to the northwestern part of the state. And just like last year, my first destination was Osseo to meet a couple of friends from high school for dinner and drinks.

On the way up, I stopped at the Black River Falls rest area. It has a lovely scenic overlook a short walk from the parking lot. You go up Bell Mound and then take a boardwalk around it to the overlook.

 

The historic marker noted that the area was home to a mine owned by the Jackson County Iron Company and that the mine’s buildings and pit would be visible from the overlook. I looked and squinted and looked again but couldn’t see them. Later I realized that the marker dated to 1976 and that the pit mine was handed over to the county and had become Wazee Lake at some point in the intervening years. My Frau and I took a swim there back in 2009 and it is magnificent. Water clear as day. Most of the lake is rather shallow but the open mine bit is a genuine abyss and I am told that people dive there to get their certification.

A 30-mile drive north and I was once again in Osseo which lies in the far northeast corner of Trempealeau County. Founded in 1857, the origin of the name is lost in the mists of time but the best theory is that it comes from the name of a character in Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" which was published the previous year.

My time in Osseo last fall saw no shortage of rain and I abandoned my plans to walk a stretch of the Buffalo River Trail as the storms had left many large puddles. This year was dry and warmer, even if the sun wasn’t always shining. I parked, pulled my bicycle out from the back of my car and was off.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I hadn’t put on my shoes which didn’t have mesh sides and kept the wind out. While it was certainly warmer than last year, it still wasn’t balmy out. I cursed as it dawned on me that I had forgotten to pack my other pair of gym shoes and my boots. It seemed that I was destined to have cold feet on this ride.

Although it had rained the previous night, the storm wasn’t of biblical proportions so standing water was merely sporadic. But the crushed gravel wasn’t always firm and my tires sank in for much of the ride. Not deeply, mind you, but my legs did get a workout.

The trail is about 36 miles long and stretches from Mondovi to the west of Osseo to Fairchild to the east. It follows Highway 10, more or less, and is a former rail corridor. The railroad was built between 1887-1890 by regional lumber baron Nathaniel Foster. (I have once source giving his middle initial as G while another C.) Foster owned lumber yards in Mondovi and Osseo as well as Eleva and Strum, two towns which are in between those two. Originally called the Sault Ste. Marie & Southwestern Railway, it would become part of the Omaha Railway and finally the Chicago & Northwestern. The tracks were abandoned in 1975 and dismantled the following year. Eventually the Wisconsin DNR bought it and turned it into the Buffalo River Trail you see before you.

The DNR website explains that the Buffalo River was so named because early French explorers had christened it Riviere de Beeufs since the area was home to many bison back in the day.

The Buffalo River, which I remember being called the Beef River when I lived in the area, looks more like a creek as it wends its way from Osseo westward where it eventually meets the Mississippi River.

Although the river runs right behind my old high school, I don’t recall ever going to its shores while a student there.

I saw no other people on the trail but I did see a young buck who was probably sniffing around for a doe.

No doubt he’ll be running for dear life in a month or so when gun season opens.

Farther down the trail near Strum was this fine dome home. I did not expect to see the legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller in rural Trempealeau County.

When I got to Strum, my feet were rather cold so I turned around and headed back to Osseo instead of continuing on to Eleva, as had been my original plan.

I checked in at my hotel and took a shower before my next destination which was Burly N Bucks, a tavern which held the promise of beer, food, and good company.

It was a rather nice small town watering hole. I was impressed with the tap beer selection which included Leinenkugel’s from 30 or so miles up the road in Chippewa Falls as well as a couple brews from Sand Creek, again 30 or so miles away but to the south in Black River Falls. Not only was I grateful that there were some fine brews to be had, I also appreciated that the taps had a regional bent. Of course there was Spotted Cow but also Capital’s Wisconsin Amber. 16oz pours of Oscar’s Stout from Sand Creek were a mere $3.25, half the price you’d pay in Madison, I’d bet.

I was to once again meet my friend Jason and a newcomer, Brad, who was unable to attend last year because of his goofy work schedule. This time around, it was Nick who would be a no show.

We had dinner and chatted the night away. Brad and I hadn’t seen one another since 1990 and it was a pleasure to attempt to catch up on over 32 years of life. He seemed to be much like he was in high school, a bit aloof and happy to let others do their thing as long as they let him enjoy a modicum of solitude and the quiet of the country. In between reacquainting ourselves with one another and reminiscing about our high school years, we solved a few of the world’s problems and were flummoxed by kids these days.

Just like last year, no photos were taken. I don't know if this is because we're men, because we're Gen Xers who didn't grow up with smartphones or what. The thought of taking pictures never even occurred to me, although I'd like to show my Frau more examples of the type of people I grew up with.

I felt badly because I had intended to bring up some Nutkrack candied pecans again but completely forgot. On the other hand, Jason bestowed the gift of soap upon me with a couple bars from Chippewa Falls’ newest purveyor of soaps, Ope! It’s Soap. They were beer soaps with the Leinenkugel’s brand. I hope that this gift was not an indication of a hygiene deficiency on my part.

Unlike me, my friends had to work in the morning so we didn’t stay out too late. The plan now is to see one another more often than once a year. Something to work on.

I returned to my hotel, kicked back, and set out to finish the book that I was reading.

********

By all rights, I should have read it back in 7th or 8th grade but didn’t. I also neglected to do so in high school, although I did read Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” then. Several years ago I dipped my toes into the Twain waters once more when I read Letters From Earth. But never Tom Sawyer nor Huck Finn. Having finally read the former, I would say that I should have done so back in 7th grade.

While I enjoy Twain’s writing immensely, I couldn’t help think that it was truly meant for 12 year-old me. Still, there were some funny bits such the scenes in the church which poke fun at religion. I also laughed when Tom and Huck are planning to become rogues and Huck suggests they have orgies because that’s what bad guys do, never mind that he has no idea what they are.

I had a couple chuckles while reading it and am happy to have gotten this classic of American literature under my belt but it's not something I plan to return to.

********

The next morning I arose planning on investigating the remains of a town no longer on the maps. But first I made a trek over to Osseo’s general store, Stockman's Farm Supply & More, where I bought a pair of boots and some decorative Indian corn which now hangs in our dining room.

Impulse buy.

The previous night Jason had told me that someone had opened a gaming store in town recently. And so my next stop would be Boards & Bricks.

The store boasts a large selection of Legos, puzzles, board games, and a smattering of role-playing game materials.

I ended up buying a little puzzle of Madison.

At 500 pieces, we stand a chance of assembling it in one night and not having to let it sit out at the mercy of the cats.

Wondering how it was that such a fine store opened up in a very small town, I struck up a conversation with the woman behind the counter. She told that it was opened back in June by a gentleman who had moved to the area from Utah(!) and his dream was to own a gaming store. (I guess Mormons just aren't into Settlers of Catan, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) Well, he made his dream come true…in Osseo. I wish him the best of luck.

As we were talking, the woman glanced out the front windows. I followed her gaze and saw an older gentleman putting a couple of pies into the back of his car.

"I've seen people carrying pies all day," she noted.

You see, just 2 storefronts down was the Norske Nook, famous for its pies. It's a small chain (4?) of Norwegian restaurants scattered around the state. However, the original (OG, as the kids say these days) Norske Nook is directly across the street from the gaming store.

Puzzle in hand, I made my way back to my car and headed west. On the way out of town, I saw this sign:

All your needs taken care of in one spot.

On Highway 10, I ran into a sight I saw a lot of up north - tractors on the highway.

One thing I was not able to do in Osseo was stop in at the Northwoods Brewpub. They have a rye ale to die for but it’s not brewed year round so its availability is a total crap shoot. Oh well. The brewery is in a former condensery - a place where water is removed from milk to make evaporated or condensed milk - and the lovely old building makes for a nice spot to have a brew and a meal.

My next stop was to look at the remains of the long lost town of Hadleyville.

********

Bonus photo. I found another (inoperable) pay phone! This one is inside a little neighborhood grocery store in Madison.

His name is Eo he seems to understand

EO is a remake/reimagining of Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar. I've never seen Bresson's film so I cannot speak to the similarities/differences.

Eo is a donkey who goes from danger to danger, from predicament to predicament in a manner that reminded me of Forest Gump. It's not that Eo doesn't take matters into his own, er, hooves, on occasion as he does when he takes out a fence to escape a farm. But most of the time he is forced to navigate the vagaries of man-made environments and the caprices of human nature.

When the movie opens, our donkey hero suffers the indignity of being part of a circus act, though he is beloved by one of the other performers, a young woman. The authorities close the circus down and Eo is sent to a horse farm where he assists the horse trainers. These are not draft horses but rather show horses, I guess you'd say. The Adonises of the equestrian world.

We get close-ups of Eo's big brown eyes that may show the animal's weariness or may instead reflect the viewer's feelings. We get flashbacks of the woman from the circus petting him that tempt one to think the movie is showing Eo looking back with affection. But perhaps it was just "I like pets and carrots." Director Jerzy Skolimowski largely relegates humans to the background and instead we get intimate micro portraits of animals - we hear their breathing, horses whinny and neigh, wolves howl, a spider in close-up scurries up a strand of its web, and so on.

There are a couple people who show genuine compassion for Eo, more that show indifference to his plight, and others who are hostile to him as well as other people.

I really enjoyed the little touches that Skolimowski injected into his movie such as the scenes that are lit red and take on a tint of unreality. And then in one scene a gate seems to magically open, as if by Eo's will, to allow his escape.

I'm unsure of the movie's message, at least the one that isn't given to us via some text at the end just before the credits. Human beings both harm and heal Eo. There are wolves would eat Eo but other animals are content to graze. I suppose it shows that humans are animals just like donkeys but also have powers over and stewardship responsibility for creatures even if they simply want to stand around and eat grass.