Star Wars: Frigging ewoks

And finally, The Return of the Jedi, in which Frodo destroys the Ring and Aragorn becomes a Jedi.

I remember the first time I saw it, a friend complained that Luke had gotten “all spiritual and shit.”  Not at all; he’s become a hero, and just in time, too.  The first trilogy can be seen as a three-part exploration of the process of becoming a hero, while the second is that of becoming a villain and also sucking.  I don’t know if it’s easier to be a hero, but it sure seems that it’s easier to tell the story of one.

Why does Luke’s story work?  I suppose because we need heroes, and we can imagine, at least, that all it takes is resolve, hard work, and a bit of luck– all things that make for a good story.   But a moral fall– though all too familiar– takes wisdom to analyze, and George Lucas just doesn’t have it.  (Ep. III worked as well as it did only because Ian McDiarmid sold his role– he made the seduction to the Dark Side seem possible, at least to Anakin.)

The structure is cleaner than the last movie.  First we gotta clean up the mess ESB left us in; then we go win the war.  It’s a reprise of the first movie to some extent– blow up the Death Star– but with a twist that allows the extended sequence on Endor.  The story follows David Mamet’s proscription for tense dramas: make it look like the good guys will win; then reverse it so it looks like they’ll fail; repeat.  Does a number on the cheap seats every time.

Two major flaws, and one minor one, foreshadow the problems of the prequels. 

First, the cuteness starts to get out of hand.  C3PO is hard enough to take; the Ewoks are just silly.  It’s fine to have creatures that invite underestimation; but making them into teddy bears just seems like you want to sell toys.  Note that Tolkien put all the cute stuff at the beginning of the epic, not the end.

Second, the simplicity of Lucas’s moral universe: everything comes down to families– a too-easy tool of the screenwriter.  It basically leaves the movies at the level of space opera; they can’t teach us anything about real empires, evil politicians, or the loss of freedom.  It contributes as well to a significant diminishing of Darth Vader as a villain here.  Luke says he “sees good” in him, but of everything that Vader has seen and done in the last decades, everything he’s done for the Emperor, it all turns on this Dad business. 

Plus, Darth Vader makes a great villain because he isn’t fey or over the top in any way– he’s dead serious, and he’s got style.  The Emperor by contrast is your standard orcish overlord; Vader is diminished by standing in his shadow.

And the minor point is that Lucas keeps trying to write romances and failing.  There’s no actual love story here; just romantic tension that happens because of convention– princesses are there to fall in love with.  It doesn’t really harm the original trilogy because it’s only a subplot, but romance is central to the prequels.

Scene by scene notes:

• “Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them”… Darth is so behind the times on effective management.
• Mark Hamill looks like a ’70s priest here, ready to revitalize Catholicism for modern youth.
• Droid torture?  That’s pretty low, I guess; also pretty weird.
• The music scene at Jabba’s place is a little too muppetty. 
• I totally fail to understand why Hutts drool for human women. 
• I’m not following why it’s a good idea to get Chewbacca into prison. 
• Ah, the famous fan service.  An embarrassing moment for all concerned.
• The Rancor is a good deal scarier here than in KOTOR.  Though it does help to have a light saber when you’re facing one.
• The crying rancor wrangler is a nice touch.
• The whole Hutt sequence is weird.  It’s a nice set piece, but kind of a distraction…. remember that Vader fellow? 
• Luke’s whole plan depended on R2 being in position?  Seems a little risky.  What if Jabba hadn’t bothered to take him along to the execution?  Still, his bravado is intriguing.
• Boba Fett turns out to be somewhat less badass than advertised.  It always felt to me like he was there to sell action figures anyway.
• Nice swashbuckling.  I like Luke here, even in his black Nehru jacket.
• “Bury your feelings deep down”… kind of an odd philosophy, especially for the ’70s.  Jedis can be a real bringdown sometimes.
• Lando is a general?  Did no one worry about his betrayal of Luke to the Empire?  All right, all right, that was so last movie, he’s a hero now.
• Never say “It’ll work!” if you’re a character in a movie.
• Sending one stolen shuttle in is bound to look suspicious.  The Rebels would never be good TF2 spies.
• The forest chase scenes are fun, but hard to swallow.  Going that speed, your reaction time just won’t be fast enough.  And it only takes one mistake to go splat.
• Teddy bears.  I don’t know about this, George.
• Did Lucas just read King Solomon’s Mines or something?  We’re suddenly in a ’30s Heart of Africa movie, complete with cannibal chiefs.
• Oh fuck me, C3PO is recognized as a god.  This is getting too twee for me.
• Carrie Fisher’s worst hairstyle yet, and that’s after the hair buns.
• “I’m sorry.”  “Hold me.”  Ergghh.
• When did Luke find time to have that suit tailored?  Still, he’s the best thing in the movie.  He actually has a character arc here.
• OK, the ewok on the speeder is kind of amusing.  The one who hits himself with his own bolas, not so much.
• The shields are up!  How entirely unexpected!  Next time, maybe wait for the hyperspace jump till Han tweets that he’s got the shields down.
• Wait, wouldn’t Luke get Light Side points for killing the emperor?  I don’t see that anger per se would pull Luke darkward.  The scene works as suspense but not as seduction– I don’ t believe for a minute Luke is tempted to join Mr. Emperor.
• The lassooed stormtrooper spiralling round the tree– ouch. 
• When did they have time to build all these traps?
• See, Luke loses his control– Darth found his weak spot.  Maybe the Jedi are right to downplay emotional attachments.
• Lesson for Sith Lords: maybe don’t suggest to your Jedi challenger that he replace your #2 while #2 is standing right there.  It’s bound to make #2 think about blocked career paths.
• The music at the end isn’t as horrible as I recall; I wonder if they changed it.  (This isn’t, thankfully, the edition with Hayden Christensen photoshopped in.)
• On the whole Ian McDiarmid actually did a better job in the prequels.  He’s a cackling old goat here– no hint about what might make evil seductive.
• They finally spelled Denis Lawson’s name right.

I checked out something in the Wookiepedia while writing this.  I looked into the trap, Ray.  Check out Han Solo’s biography… there’s enough events for about five human lifetimes there.  And really, despite their execrable management techniques, you have to hand it to the Sith for stick-to-it-iveness.  You just can’t put those guys away: every fifty years they’re back.  I do not, however, have to read about them any more.  For  me Star Wars is the original trilogy, plus KOTOR.

What about the new Bioware game?  We’ll see.

 

Star Wars: Darth on parade

On to #2, or #5, which as you may know is called The Empire Strikes Back.

Not the satisfying simple story of A New Hope, and that can be bad news for an adventure story; plus we’re now dealing with a trilogy and the second film pretty much has to get Our Heroes deeper in trouble.  But it’s never dull, there’s more money than ever to pour into the backgrounds and special effects, and there’s some very good bits.

It’s something of a chess game between the heroes (now divided in two parties) and Darth Vader.  Move, countermove, with the strategic goal changing or unclear.  Seen that way, some of the characters’ dumb decisions make more sense: sometimes people make bad moves.  Still, in general the Rebels seem to be quite a bit stupider this time around.  They don’t have a clear plan (much less a war-winning idea) unless it’s “get somewhere safe for awhile”, and even that rather taxes their skills.

More precisely Obi-Wan, though dead, does have a plan: get Luke trained as a Jedi.  Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that movies don’t do well… all they can really do is show key moments… study, practice, and spiritual awakening aren’t very cinegenic.  A book could describe Luke’s struggles much more convincingly.

The Force is essentially treated as magic, and I’m going to start sounding like a Kevin Smith movie if I worry too much about how it works.  Some creators can get away with completely unexplained magic (Neil Gaiman has a gift for this), but in general, narrative demands that we understand what the limits are– otherwise every use of magic comes as a cheat.  So far Lucas plays– well, more or less fair, in that major uses of the Force are foreshadowed by earlier ones.  

It’s not exactly a deeper movie, though it’s more complicated.  It’s a bit more bruising, as some bad things happen to the heroes and they’re not resolved… but then, it’s really part 1 of a two-part story.  So, more on that later.

On to scene by scene observations…

• The romantic banter is pretty embarrassing.  The writers should have  studied screwball comedy.  Han doesn’t come off as a lightly bantering rogue; he sounds like an egotistical dick.
• “The chances are 725 to 1″… you’re a help, C3PO. 
• Han, why not ride up right next to Luke?  It’s very theatrical to walk the last bit of the way, but you know, you have to drag him that much farther.
• The initial scene, though full of adventure, is completely disconnected from the rest of the movie… we’re not even going to stay on Hoth. 
• Darth’s voice has lost that British edge; he just articulates very precisely.
• There’s no nonsense this time around about Vader being “the last of your religion”, someone an Imperial general might mouth off to.  He’s entirely in charge.
• The Walkers… come on.  A victory of set design over common sense.  Any number of things could topple these things.
• X-wings have hyperdrives?  I guess so!
• When you have these pretty models you want to show them all off; but surely space fleets will be more like WWII naval battles, in which enemy ships rarely actually sighted each other. 
• I also don’t buy tiny little asteroids zipping by the big ones.  A belt this dense couldn’t last for long.
• The bickering is cute– I like Han being sometimes a step ahead, sometimes a step behind events.  The romantic bickering, still stupid.
• The first scene with Yoda is still hilarious.  (Though the joke would be entirely spoiled if you already know who he is from the prequels.)
• Han’s kissing Leia is decidedly retro.  No means no, dude.
• Vader’s conversation with the Emperor doesn’t cohere with the prequel either.  Or with the Big Reveal later in the movie, for that matter.  Neither party has any need to hide who “Anikin” is.
• Lots of fog = can’t see the studio floor!
• Leia is supposed to be feisty, but she’s really kind of a bringdown.  She represented an advance 30 years ago– she does pick up a blaster rifle now and then.  But by today’s standards she has to spend too much time as a passive love interest / kidnapping target.
•  So what does Mr. Asteroid Worm live on?  Oh never mind.
• If I’d managed to move the ship with the Force but not lift it out, I’d be pretty stoked.
• Vader believes in fear as a motivator.  How’s that work out for you, Darth?
• When the Falcon lands, it activates little tiny jets.  Why, when it’s almost infinitely maneuverable?  They’re obviously not strong enough to slow the vessel.
• “Don’t give in to hate”… huh, Obi-Wan?  Impetuousness, maybe.
• It’s dramatic and all, but why design the carbonite sandwich to leave 1/3 of the victim hanging out of it?   If nothing else, you won’t be able to stack your victims.
• I can buy Han foolishly believing that Lando will help out.  But it looks like Obi-Wan was right– this was not a smart move on Luke’s part.  The story isn’t so much the Empire striking back as the Rebels striking out.
• The light saber duel is about a thousand times better than Obi-Wan’s in the last movie.  Somebody hired a fight choreographer.
• Hint to heroes: don’t disengage the light saber while walking around searching for the bad guy. 
• I’m not sure how to take Lando.  He does one nasty betrayal, then suddenly turns into a good guy.  I can’t work out a psychology for him such that his actions make sense.
• Luke seems to deal pretty well with losing his arm… perhaps light sabers neatly cauterize the wound.  He has an awfully snivelling reaction to learning about his father, though.
• Three times the hyperdrive doesn’t kick in.  Look, this isn’t rocket science.
• Uh oh, this looks like bad news for Admiral #3.  No wait, he survives for now.
• The final shot of the galaxy is neat, but I’m afraid an actual galaxy seen from that distance would be an enormous disappointment.  We see bright images of galaxies because we expose the film for hours at a time.  Look at it this way: the Milky Way is so dim that we can barely see it in these days of omnipresent street lights, and we’re in it.

 

Star Wars: Hope not so new anymore

So I decided to watch the original Star Wars trilogy.  This was with some trepidation, because though some youthful entertainments hold up (Peanuts, Pogo, Narnia, Mad), others do not (Isaac Asimov, Archie).  I was ready for layers of cheese, and the awfulness of the prequels.

But no, Star Wars is pretty good.  The set design, creatures, and special effects all hold up well— better than most video games, in fact, despite what Lucas later thought about CGI.  Most of the stuff that seemed cool then— hovering cars, light sabers, the holographic chess set, Darth Vader— still does today.  And the film was a real advance in showing its futuristic technology scuffed and dirty; it looked lived-in.

The story is remarkably simple— it’s all foreshadowed in the opening crawl.  Empire has big weapon; Rebels have stolen plans but lost them; they recover the plans; they destroy the big weapon. It functions perfectly well as a standalone story.

Lucas is fortunate with both his characters and his actors.  They’re archetypes— the innocent, the rogue, the mentor, the evil lord— but that just means they’re the sort of thing that have worked well for storytellers for eons.  It’s certainly not great art, but it’s good entertainment.

The rest of this posting consists of the notes I took while watching.

• First flyby of the imperial ship is still cool.  Though Red Dwarf exceeded it in sheer hopeless size.
• Rebel uniforms: dumb.  Cops + vests + teardrop helmets.
• Darth has kind of a British accent?
• The KOTOR droids are nowhere near as varied as those in the scene on the crawler.
• The first part of the movie is decidedly weird— focussing on two droids, one we can’t even understand, in nearly incomprehensible settings.  Intriguing though.
• Luke looks so young.  (Mark Hamill was 26, but he looks 19.)
• KOTOR also has an “Anchorhead”, 4000 years before?  In general KOTOR does nothing to make that lapse of time believable.
• Something that hasn’t held up so well: Luke’s ’70s hairstyle.
• Pretty funny to hear Darth Vader told off by a general.
• Alec Guiness looks like he’s having a great time.
• “It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs!”  Oh, that ship.  Moral: always look up your technical terms before abusing them.
• Greedo, the Rodian, looks pretty plastic.  I watched the original, of course, where Han shoots first.  As he should— he’s a rogue, dammit.
• “I recognized your foul stench when I was brought aboard.”  A particularly excessive Lucas line… though to be fair, it would pass unremarked in the sort of serials and novels he grew up on.
• The explosion of Alderaan (and the Death Star later) is pretty cheesy.  Whatever process ILM was using looks good for ships exploding; not so good for planet-size masses.  (The little sparks and dregs disappear off the screen in seconds; a quick calculation suggests they’re moving about 28 million km/hr.)
• Jedi training is uncomfortably close to the exercise of charismatic gifts.  “Use the Force… trust your feelings”… could you be more specific, jerkface?
• At least twice the adventurers leave the droids alone, despite knowing that one is containing the most important bit of data in the galaxy.
• You can tell this isn’t a video game, because they don’t need passcards to get through any of the doors, all the way to the detention cells.
• “We’re all fine now.  How are you?”  …probably the funniest line yet
• “You, my friend, are all that’s left of their religion.”  That doesn’t exactly fit in with the overall mythos… after all, we now know that Mr. Emperor Dude is a Sith Lord.
• Um, why did you take off your helmets before the firefight?
• Worst garbage disposal system ever.  And really, what are they doing in the cell blocks that they need to dispose of bricks, metal rods, and muck?
• Han running yelling at the troopers, then running back madly, is pretty funny.
• Luke’s blaster rifle technique is completely unconvincing: he thrusts it forward with each shot like a kid playing with plastic guns, and apparently doesn’t need to aim.  Han is only slightly more convincing.  Only Leia holds the guns like they’re weapons.
• The climactic sword fight is pretty bad.  Alec Guiness holds the light saber like a Punch puppet.
• The Millennium Falcon looks pretty good… better than the Ebon Hawk in KOTOR.  Designers like to add fancy doodads on their models; the MF has just enough detail to look good, not enough that it looks unaccountable.
• Leia’s hair buns: very regrettable.
• Is the rotating chair in the gun turret really necessary?  I guess their video screens are crap, but all the moving parts are an invitation for things to go wrong, and I’d think you’d get dizzy.
• “You think a princess and a guy like me—” “No.”  It’s the facial expressions that make lines like these work.
• All of a sudden we’re in a WWII movie.
• Did the Death Star designers anticipate that people would fly into their trenches like that?  It seems so, since they bothered to put in laser turrets.  The turrets seem to do zilch, though.
• Last scene: finally Leia gets a better hairdo.  But the medal awarding scene is fairly cheesy.  Still, unlike say LOTR (the movie), the movie wastes little time on denouement.
• Conlang quibble: how can “Chewbacca” possibly be a word in a language that sounds like animal growls?  So far as I could see his speech didn’t contain a single stop.

 

Movies to see

We saw a few movies lately and you should see them too.

Dim Sum Funeral– a Chinese-American mother dies and her four squabbling children have to endure each other for a traditional week-long funeral.  Naturally they learn more about each other than they wanted to (though, as the film was made by Canadians rather than Europeans, this turns out not to be as grim as it sounds).  Features the cutest lesbian couple ever.

Sita Sings the Blues– Nina Paley’s Flash-animated melding of the Ramayana, ’20s blues singer Annette Hanshaw, and her own personal story, the common theme being the inscrutability of love and heartbreak.  Absolutely delightful.  One of the highlights is the narration, provided by three modern Indians who half-remember the story.  Sita and the blues go together surprisingly well; Nina’s personal story remains perhaps too mysterious.

The Soloist– The true story of an LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, who befriends a homeless street musician, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, who studied at Julliard but was torn apart by schizophrenia.  I was expecting something soppy, but it’s nicely hard-headed, portraying the columnist as a bit of an asshole (though a well-meaning one), and not skimping on the musician’s dysfunctionality.   An attempt to visualize the music is a bit risible, but fortunately doesn’t last long.    Lopez’s original articles are quite interesting and offer more nuance than the film (e.g. explaining in more detail why treatment can’t be forced on people).

 

Saving the world with fist and gun

Saw Quantum of Solace over Thanksgiving.  What you want to know as a Bond movie consumer is:

a) Is Daniel Craig cool as Bond? 
b) Are there quant. suff. of high-speed chases, dramatic fights, exotic locations, depraved villains, and shaggable women?

Don’t worry; the answer to both questions is a solid yes.  And as an added plus, there are naked women in the title sequence again!

But I have to say, this was one incoherent flick.  Besides a few mentions of Vesper Lynd, there’s no evident connection to the last movie.  I’m sure the screenwriters had some in mind; they just didn’t care to fill us in.  A perfect example (and a spoiler, so watch out): at the end of the movie, the main villain says something like “I’ve answered all your questions about Quantum.”  But we didn’t see either the questions or the answers.  Clearly, there was no intention for the viewers to have questions or need explanations at this point; that is, there is no plot. 

Events seem reasonable enough as they happen, but they make no sense if you think them over.  The villain is making a play for Bolivian water resources… come on, that’s like Dr. Evil’s demand for one million dollars.  In La Paz, Bond is dissatisfied with his fleabag hotel and moves to a luxury hotel– despite theoretically being on his own resources, and despite the last movie’s considerable effort to establish this Bond as more of a thug than a socialite. 

What the moviemakers did focus on was the relationship between Bond and M.  And that works. (Well, if you accept the basic premise of Bond films, that a lone superagent can solve our geopolitical problems.  But if you’re watching a Bond film you accept that, at least for a couple of hours.)

The first half-hour or so shows off some rather neat technology, notably a tabletop monitor supporting multiple touch points, as well as some use of Bond’s PDA that make him, for once, seem like he’s actually part of a global intelligence organization.

 

Woody in Barcelona

Woody Allen is still making movies, did you know?  Last night we saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which sounds like a working title that never got replaced.  It’s not bad, essentially a sex comedy (with nothing but kissing) charged up by good actors and hot Mediterranean colors.

No matter where Woody goes, he never seems to leave 1955.  His main characters are naive, rich Americans seduced by European hedonism… at least here they don’t talk about the death of God.  Everyone lives Woody’s version of the good life, which essentially consists of reverently viewing art (nothing past 1960 please), then going out to eat.  We get to see some art made here, at least– quick knockoffs of 1950s action painting.  Everyone has money, but disdain is tossed at the work (especially the boring networking) necessary to make it.

Strangely, Woody seems not quite to have realized that Catalan and Spanish are two different things.  The Americans talk about learning or fail to learn Spanish; the natives speak Spanish; the soundtrack features a bouncy song about Barcelona sung in Spanish.  One of the girls is doing a thesis on “Catalan identity”, which seems to mean nothing but Gaudí (d. 1926); she also adores “Spanish guitar”.  The painter they meet is referred to as Catalan but comes from Oviedo.  I guess they don’t have Wikipedia in 1955.

 

The Machine starts and stops

Wall-E is, as you’ve undoubtedly heard, charming… Pixar has the most enviable winning streak of any movie studio… yet another group that should have been entrusted to do Star Wars prequel.  It’s also a wicked satire of American life (a lot harder-edged and wittier than, say, the recent New Yorker cover on the politics of fear).

What’s curious is that this is at least the third appearance of this particular satirical trope: people becoming the fat, spoiled slaves of their machines.  Apparently this is what our civilization worries that it looks like or might become.  Before this was “Blobs!” in the very first issue of Mad (1952); and that in turn was based on “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster (1928), whose first paragraph describes the protagonist as “a swaddled lump of flesh”.

 

OSS 117

The Reader, I think it was, advised that the spy movie parody to see this year was not Get Smart but the French film OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies.  So we gave it a try.  I haven’t seen Get Smart, so I can’t directly compare.  OSS 117 pretty much covers the ground, however.  (Ironically, it’s based on a non-parody series of French spy novels that predates James Bond, featuring an American of French descent.)

The film’s hero is Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117– suave, good-looking, and the absolute model of fatuity.  The actor, Jean Dujardin, nails the required attitude: he may be stupid and sometimes goofy, but he believes in himself utterly.  American comedians generally can’t do this: if we do parody it’s over-the-top and knowing; we don’t like to look like idiots.  (At the same time, 117 isn’t quite as stupid as Johnny English.)

The look of 1960s spy flicks are very affectionately re-created, down to the film stock, cheesy establishing shots, and fakey rear projection.  There are some nice meta-jokes, such as 117 waking up in bed, hair dissheveled, and running his hand once through his hair to comb it immaculately, and an agent who is employed solely to report to his superiors exactly where 117 is, till they get sick of it and eliminate him.

The jokes are a little skewed by American tastes.  Some are silly in an inspired low-budget way (such as two spies throwing chickens at each other), some strange and subtle, such as a scene where some suspicious character toss around gnomic, absurd statements at each other as a sort of existentialist one-upsmanship.  A lot of the humor comes from pure embarrassment: 117 is so insulting or condescending that the other characters don’t even know what to do with it.

It doesn’t always work, but it’s fun.

 

Indiana Jones and the Synopsis of Dread

This about says it all:

http://www.the-editing-room.com/indianajones4.html

Of course, I still liked the movie.  I kind of wonder if people who are outraged at the movie saw the originals when they were 13-years-olds and didn’t realize that “cheesy” was registering as “awesome”. 

 

Indiana Jones and the CGI Monsters

Here’s a bad idea: read a bunch of these mini-reviews and rants on Indiana Jones:

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/26/indiana-jones-and-the-great-divide/

I kind of understand, but mostly despise, the frequently expressed idea that “it’s just a fun movie, what is wrong with you for analyzing it?”  Since when is obsessive fan analysis wrong?  Very likely the people who say this have something else they will analyze for hours… sports, for instance.

I liked the movie a lot… and given George Lucas’s bent for ruining his own franchises, that’s more than could be expected.  It’s good pulpy fun, which attempts now and then to sketch in something more meaningful: a swipe at anti-communism (a nice touch in a movie whose villains are commies); a respect for teaching; a rekindled love affair; a lost son.  This technique might have fallen flat, as it did in the Star Wars prequels, but it was just good enough here.  (To see what I mean, compare Mutt Williams with Jar-Jar Binks.)

Some people seem really bothered by the aliens.  I’m not sure why; if you’re going to age Indy then you end up in the ’50s, and in pop culture that was the decade of aliens; it would’ve been jarring to send him back on ’30s style mythological quests.  And ever since Velikovsky and Van Daniken, there’s been a link, silly as it is, between archeology and aliens.  I don’t know; the same people often enjoy both fantasy and sf, but many want to put up some kind of hard barrier between them.  (Admittedly the design of the alien is horrible.  ’50s aliens were actually better than those thin, big-eyed things that infest modern pop culture.)

I liked Indy being older and crankier, though of course, this being an action movie, he ends up being more of a badass than his whippersnapper son.

My wife was bothered by the absurdity of the Latin American references, especially the mix of Inca, Nazca, and Maya elements.  Well, that just joins a bunch of other goofy elements (psychic commies, plexiglass skulls that attract gold and gunpowder, or for that matter Indy’s complete absence of archeological technique).  Plausibility has never been the series’ strong suit.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.