Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope

A couple days ago, I re-watched Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope in preparation for seeing Rogue One in the cinema.  This isn't the usual type of post I write here, but I noticed something about the sets.

Over the summer, I watched a panel from Star Wars Celebration 2016 titled Star Wars Archaeology in which it's mentioned that design elements in the Star Wars movies are re-used.  For example, the set of the Death Star corridors was filmed from different angles to give the impression of different areas.  Re-watching A New Hope recently, I found something else that was re-used.

Near the beginning of the movie, stormtroopers blast through the door of the rebel blockade runner:

Here's a close-up of the door:

This same door (orange now instead of white) appears again in Mos Eisley.  Right before Luke sells his landspeeder, R2-D2 and C-3PO hide behind this door when more stormtroopers come walking down the street:

Here are those two screenshots side-by-side:

Cast Away

This post contains spoilers.

Back in May, I watched Cast Away for the first time, and I noticed a clever bit of framing.  After Chuck has been rescued from the island and learns that - in his absence - Kelly has gotten married and started a family, he goes to visit her.  She invites him inside, and he leans on a sort of bookcase as she makes him coffee.  Over each shoulder is a picture; one of her wedding and one of her family:

Because of the way this shot is framed, with a picture over each of Chuck's shoulders, there's a visual representation of the burden of all that he missed out on while he was stranded.  It's as if he has to bear the weight of Kelly's marriage (to someone else) and her family (which he's not a part of) on his shoulders.

Grimm - S4E21 - Headache

This post contains spoilers.

I noticed a couple things about this episode, and when I re-watched it recently, I found a couple more.

To some degree, this is also in the previous episode (and perhaps even in some before that), but it's very noticeable in this episode that Juliette is wearing a coat that is much darker than ones she usually wears:

The darker color seems to represent the darkness involved in her accepting and even reveling in being a Hexenbiest and in her joining forces with the royal family.  She's become a literal turn-coat.

She takes Prince Kenneth on a tour through the house she used to share with Nick, and when they get to the bedroom, she reaches out and touches the dresser drawer in which Nick keeps the ring with which he proposed to her:

There are a few other touches like this in the episode (like the slight hesitation before she tells Kelly to come in) that seem to indicate the old Juliette within her new Hexenbiest-self.

Meanwhile, Renard is being taken over by Jack the Ripper.  In one scene, he looks at himself in the mirror, which seems to spur Jack's taking over:

I think using mirrors to show a dual nature is a relatively common feature, but it works well here.  Like the original and the reflection, there's Renard himself, and then there's Renard as he is when Jack the Ripper takes over.  Using a mirror to illustrate this is particularly evident when - in a later scene - Jack the Ripper writes on the mirror with the blood from Renard's phantom wounds:

Finally - and this is just a minor point - when Nick and Hank find that Wu has been taken by Renard/Jack the Ripper, Nick calls dispatch and says, "I need to track patrol car 421."  421 is the number of the car, and this is season 4 episode 21.  Using the season and episode number in the episode itself is a common conceit in Grimm, but usually it's done in an apartment or hotel room number.  Here, there's not even a visual component.

Grimm - S4E16 - Heartbreaker

Originally, for this episode of Grimm, I had a vague idea about a visual element and its connection to the particular Wesen that the episode features, but after re-watching it recently, I revised that notion, noticed a lot of new things (many just in writing this post), and realized that what I thought was an error in my comprehending dialogue actually illustrates some character traits.

There's a lot in this episode.

First, I have a few points for which a short summary about the Wesen in this episode is critical.  When Nick and Hank talk to Monroe and Rosalee about the murder they're investigating (for which they - and Sergeant Wu - suspect Wesen because of the rare toxin involved), Rosalee posits that they're dealing with a Folterseele.  "They're kind of classically tragic.  Always beautiful, always deadly."  They woge when someone is attracted to them, and - as Monroe puts it when Hank compares it to "the old Frog Prince story" - "Yeah, but you kiss this frog, your face blows up and you die" because of the toxin, which works as a defense mechanism.

Until writing this post, I hadn't lookt into the name of this particular Wesen.  Seeing Folterseele in the closed captioning, I recognized Seele as German for soul, but I had to look up Folter.  Die Folter is the torture.  I think Folterseele is supposed to evoke something like tortured soul, although gefolterte Seele is a more accurate translation.  In any case, it perfectly encapsulates this Wesen.  They keep to themselves to avoid effecting this defense mechanism.  As Bella Turner (the Folterseele in this episode) explains later: "You don't know what it's like to never be able to experience love.  Never feel the touch of another person or be able to touch them."

This brings up what should have been obvious to me when I first watched this:  Bella's name also describes the Folterseele's situation.  Bella means beautiful in Latin.  Half of Rosalee's "Always beautiful, always deadly" description of Folterseele is literally in Bella's name.

Turner is part of a bicycling group, which I think the writers employ as an updated version of a spinster.  Merriam-Webster recently had an article about the origin of the term, explaining that unmarried women were poorer and that spinning wool was one of the few jobs that they could acquire.  Instead of spinning wool, the spinning here is the spinning of bicycle wheels:

To further connect the two ideas, in Bella's apartment, which is shown only briefly, there's a bicycle wheel positioned in such a way that it resembles a spinning wheel:

The Turner part of her name also seems to play into this.  There's the literal turning, referring to spinning wheels, but there's also a more metaphorical turning involved.  At the end of the episode, she drinks a sort of potion that Monroe and Rosalee made in order to prevent the secretion of the toxin.  In a way, she's turning away from being a Folterseele.

The other interesting thing I noticed in this episode pertains to the Royal Family story line.  Prince Viktor was recalled to Austria in the previous episode, and his replacement Prince Kenneth arrives in this episode.  Rispoli (the assistant who asserts he's "loyal to the family, not to any particular member") tells Adalind that she should change into something more appropriate than a bathrobe for Kenneth's impending arrival.  Adalind asks, "Prince Kenneth?  Do you know him?" to which Rispoli answers, "By reputation."  He ushers Adalind into a room to change as she asks, "What's he like?"  In the few seconds it takes for Rispoli to close the door before he answers, I understood this as "What is he like?" both times I've watched the episode.  Because Adalind just asked, "Prince Kenneth?  Do you know him?" her question has the sense of "What kind of character does he have?" or "What kind of person is he?"  In her dealing with Prince Viktor, Adalind started to be a little manipulative, so here it seems like she's asking Rispoli about Kenneth's strength of will, to see if she can wrap him around her finger too.

However, Rispoli's answer changes how Adalind's question is understood.  He replies, "Results," which renders her question as "What does he like?"  To some degree, this shows the same quality in Rispoli's character that his assertion of family loyalty illustrated earlier in the same scene.  He has the mind-set of a servant who wants to please his superior, so he knows Prince Kenneth's preferences, despite knowing him only "by reputation."  While Kenneth hasn't even arrived yet, his coming reveals traits in these two, already-familiar characters.

Grimm - S4E14 - Bad Luck

This post contains spoilers.

After a couple months of hiatus (because I've been busy), I've continued re-watching season four of Grimm.  I noticed what I think is a subtle reference to Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit in episode 14 - "Bad Luck."

At the very beginning of the episode, a boy named Peter is murdered.  Peter is a Willahara, and a Leporem Venator hunts him down to cut off his foot, which is believed to help with fertility.  As Nick explains to Hank and Wu after seeing Peter's mother woge, Willahara are "rabbit-like" Wesen:

The name Peter and being a rabbit is common to both, but in reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit, I found something else.  Mrs. Rabbit tells her children, "You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor."  In the show, Peter's father also had an accident (which appears to have been orchestrated by the Leporem Venator to acquire the father's foot too).

Most of the show is based on the fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, so it seems likely that Potter's tale, which has some similarities, was used as inspiration for this particular episode.

Grimm - S4E11 - Death Do Us Part

I'm still re-watching season four of Grimm.  Recently, I re-watched "Death Do Us Part," remembered something I noticed when it originally aired, and found something new.

There's a murder at an abandoned house (with the same MO as two earlier murders in the same house), and Nick and Hank talk to Mark Wilson, the detective who investigated the original case.  He explains that he thought it was a love triangle.  "During the investigation, we learned Patty Donovan was having an affair with her husband's co-worker, Theo Hinkley.  Well, Theo probably thought Patty was gonna leave Stetson for him.  But Patty decided not to, so, Theo figured if he couldn't have her, no one could."  And then he says, "Shakespearean, ain't it?"

I'm not sure how much stock I would put in his "Shakespearean" assessment, but what I thought interesting about that line is that isn't not the only Shakespeare reference in the episode.  Or at least I don't think so.

Two scenes later, Nick gets into bed with Juliette and asks her, "What are you reading?"  To which she replies, "A book."

That same literal answer is in Shakespeare's Hamlet.  In Act II, Scene II, Polonius asks Hamlet, "What do you read, my lord?" and Hamlet replies, "Word, words, words."  (II.ii.209-210).

There doesn't seem to be much in-show significance, but I think it illustrates that the writers were indeed thinking of Shakespeare.

The new thing I noticed in re-watching it recently is that the same effect from "Wesenrein" (S4E9) returns.  At the end of this episode, when Juliette goes to visit Henrietta, her face is multiplied as the camera looks through a pane of glass with bevels at the edges:

As it did in "Wesenrein," it indicates how Juliette is starting to splinter between her normal self and her new hexenbiest self.

Grimm - S4E10 - Tribunal

I recently re-watched the Grimm episode "Tribunal" and remembered something that I noticed when it first aired but had forgotten about.  Sergeant Wu is still learning about Grimms and Wesen, and before he sees his first woge (knowingly, at least), Hank talks to him.

Hank says, "You have to be ready for this," to which Wu responds, "And by ready you mean off the deep end?"  In his answer, Hank mixes metaphors:  "There is no shallow end in this pool.  This is not something anybody can wrap their head around until they have no choice but to get on board."

To some degree, having those three different descriptions (a pool, wrapping heads around, and a train) indicates the confusion and "other-ness" associated with knowing about the wider world of Grimms and Wesen.  There's no simple comparison to be made.  Like Hank tells Wu:  "You have to get a place where this is a new normal."

Grimm - S4E9 - Wesenrein

This post contains spoilers.

Recently, I've been re-watching season four of Grimm, and I noticed something in episode nine - "Wesenrein."

At the end of the previous episode - "Chupacabra" - Juliette discovered that the headaches and nausea she's been experiencing were portends of her becoming a hexenbiest.  Episode nine continues where episode eight left off, right after this discovery.  Juliette starts to call Nick but stops the call before it goes through and then looks at herself in the mirror:

Because of the bevel in the mirror, she appears to have two faces, so her new nature is visualized.  There's Juliette, and then there's the hexenbiest that she's become.

Later, after she woges again (or, more accurately, nach sie wogt wieder), the glass in picture frames breaks, and the mirror shatters.  When she looks at it this time, her reflection also appears shattered:

Again it's visually demonstrated how her turning into a hexenbiest has affected her and will affect events later in the series.