Cats In Review

Day 85: You might be misled into thinking I was showing off some of the newest kitty prints I've picked up for my next quilt, but in fact, I'm going to be reviewing a couple of movies (you can probably guess what one of them is). I am not a frequent movie-goer, so the fact that I actually went to the theater to see three in the last month is nothing short of amazing. First of all, I saw "The Rise of Skywalker" right before Christmas and...well, it went in the same niche as all the other "Star Wars" films, i.e., "been there, done that, don't need to do it again." It was disappointingly (but not unexpectedly) thin on plot and long on attempting to blast your eardrums out of your head. The second film I saw in the theater was "Fantastic Fungi" which I reviewed a few days back. It was not what I had expected, and fell woefully short in the science department in favour of the drug culture. Next came "Amadeus," which I had not seen previously and viewed on DVD. I was appalled at the blatant and unforgiveable fictionalization of Mozart's life (or Salieri's, rather), and although the costumes were showy, my fiber-Fascist's eye squinted harder and harder with every fold of undisguised polyester. The immaculately dressed wigs were equally bad, obviously synthetic. I will say that the music redeemed the film, but I cannot attribute that to any skill on the director's part. It was, after all, Mozart's work. I was shocked to learn that "Amadeus" took numerous awards. I though it was a piece of utter shash.

And now we come to "Cats," which I'd been looking forward to since seeing the early trailer. Having read a number of reviews, I was ready to be disappointed yet again but, like a dose of bad medicine, I was determined to get it over with, so I drove into Puyallup this morning to catch the earliest showing and was one of four people in the theater. After half an hour of truly obnoxious previews of things no one in their right mind would want to see, the movie started. With the critiques in the forefront of my mind, I immediately found fault with the CGI fur and muscle movement (think primitive Dreamworks), but the cats were so charming and so well-portrayed that my disbelief suspended itself with no particular conscious effort on my part, and only occasionally when the scale of cats vs. scenery was overly different from one scene to the next did I think about the technical flaws. That said, I wish the computer mavens had studied how real cats' ear muscles work (all 32 of them). The singing and dancing was superlative, and Grizabella's magnificent presentation of "Memory" had me in tears. I do think that the storyline might be lost on anyone who hadn't seen the musical or read the book ("Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"), but I found the film version easier to follow than the play. Maybe I'm just feeling contrary, but "Cats" rescued the winter movie season for me. Go figure.

Schizophyllum Commune, Split-Gill Fungus

Day 81: Park colleague and friend Yonit invited me to join her for dinner and a show to celebrate the New Year, and appropriate to the occasion, we first took a walk on the Grass Lake Nature Trail near her home in Olympia. True to form, I was stopping at every tree to look at lichens, scanning the surrounding woods for invasives, and carrying on with my typical running commentary along the one-mile loop. As we came back into the clearing at the trailhead, Yonit pointed out where a local group has been working on restoration. My eyes were immediately drawn to a white bracket fungus on a short alder stump, certain I knew what it was even from a distance of fifty feet. Sure enough, it was Schizophyllum commune, Split-Gill Fungus. The colony was well-established, so I broke off on bracket in order to show Yonit the split gills, a reproductive mechanism which I believe is peculiar to this genus. The gills open or close depending on humidity levels, thus husbanding the spores inside until enough moisture is available for them to thrive. Some experts believe that the species was introduced into Washington when infected wood was transported commercially, however the Schizophyllaceae are known world-wide with S. commune being one of the more common species. To me, this raises the question of "introduction" versus "range expansion," and I am more inclined to side with the latter option, particularly where it concerns a very prolific and adaptable fungus. But where do we draw a line, scientifically speaking? How many Scrub Jays must appear in an area previously populated only by Steller's and Greys before they are considered to have expanded their range for whatever reason (habitat loss, new food sources, etc.)? The biosphere is not a static place; it is a living laboratory. As such, it was addressed somewhat superficially in "Fantastic Fungi," the film we saw later in the day.

Brought back for another run at the Capitol Theater, "Fantastic Fungi" drew full-house crowds when it was first shown, and I have to say that the packed theater seats yesterday surprised me. It wasn't until we were about a third of the way into the film that I realized the draw was not so much curiosity about the fungal network (although that was covered rudimentarily by the film) but an interest in a specific genus, the Psilocybes. Almost a third of the documentary was devoted to the use of psilocybin, both recreationally and medically. Other "medicinal mushrooms" were covered as well, notably Turkey-tail and Lion's-mane. While the latter is easy to identify, it is relatively uncommon and I was saddened to see it being promoted as a healthful collectible. Turkey-tail, on the other hand, is not so easy to identify reliably, and while no one is likely to poison themselves by making teas of its look-alikes, the popularity of it as an alternative medicine could lead to over-collection of other shelf fungi as well as Turkey-tail itself. Based on the comments overheard from the row behind us, I got the impression that very few people in the audience had come to learn more about the fungal Kingdom and in fact probably couldn't have told a Chanterelle from a Morel if they'd been presented them side-by-side. That said, the time-lapse photography was beautiful if repetitive, and showed a range of things including fungi, sprouting seeds and flowers opening from bud. However, I was profoundly annoyed when in the middle of a sequence about mushrooms, the cinematographer had elected to include a time-lapse of a slime mold in its plasmodial form. There were no captions, so the uninformed might have assumed it was mycelium. Mycelial connections were only superficially explained, but magnificently illustrated in animated graphics. That said, I could have done without some fifteen minutes or so which were devoted to the hippie-style kaleidoscopic mandalas which were supposed to demonstrate the high attained from psilocybin. Both Yonit and I had expected the film to be more scientific and although some interesting points were made about the interconnectedness of all things via fungi, it struck me as being largely a promotion for one man's business venture. Still, the visuals were beautiful, and if I didn't learn anything in particular, at least I was entertained.