Brad's Week in Dork! (3/16/14-3/22/14)

Most of this week has been spent in a fidgety state of anticipation.  Marvel Studios (THOSE BASTARDS) decided it was just peachy to screen Captain America - The Winter Soldier to the online critic community a month out from the public release, and my Twitter Feed has been abuzzing with copious spurts of geekgasms.  If you believe the hype then Captain America 2 is not only better than The Avengers (a feat I personally would find astronomically astounding), but the single greatest comic book movie ever made.  That certainly cannot be true, and I'm immediately attempting to temper expectations on the homefront.  But that is oh so hard for us dorks, right?

In an effort to distract myself from the social media blitzkrieg, I've made it my mission to complete Ed Brubaker's Epic Run on Captain America that began in 2007 with The Winter Soldier, and completed in 2012 with the oh-so-lackluster Hydra Island business with co-writer Cullen Bunn.  That's a crap ton of comics, and I've only completed the first 25 issues, but I think it's a goal this dork should have no problem accomplishing.  And I'm not the only one in this apartment excited to see Chris Evans crush some (Red) Skulls.  As we did with Wes Anderson (more on that later), The Wife & I are making our way through the entire Marvel Studios canon.  We've already brushed through the Iron Mans & The Incredible Hulk, and this week saw Marvel go all-in with the comic book crazy in the first Thor film.  Taken on their own these movies range from "ok" to "pretty good," but when you look at the Universe Building getting done as well as the climactic whiz bang wow of Joss Whedon's The Avengers, I cannot help but love each and every building block in the series.  Here's hoping they can keep this spandex ball rolling.

But enough of that super hero silliness!  The rest of the week saw another totally badass screening at The Alamo with Dirty Harry, Veronica Mars crawled her way back into our Marshmallow hearts, Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neal unleashed their latest fanboy apocalypse with The Roses of Berlin, and yes, Wes Anderson delivered what is possibly my favorite film in his dollhouse universe.  I really am stunned at the degree in which I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I hate to leave a theater spouting the superiority of the latest work above all previous past efforts, but it's an enthusiastic urge I find difficult to stifle here.

The Grand Budapest Hotel:  Having recently watched every single film from Wes Anderson in chronological order, I can safely say that I've enjoyed all of his movies to one degree or another.  Picking a favorite is tough (The Life Aquatic & Fantastic Mr. Fox will probably be locked in a death struggle for some time), and even my least favorite movie (Moonrise Kingdom) found its way into my Top Ten Films of 2012.  Haters accuse the director of arrested development - the Father/Son theme drummed to death, the stagnation of style, the twee aesthetic.  However, as we left the theater Sunday evening, The Wife compared his films to the Baroque era.  Anderson is variations on a theme; his career so far has been an attempt to work/rework and perfect his technique, and I am hypnotized by his craft.  The Grand Budapest Hotel certainly dabbles with the Father/Son issue once again, but what I found myself gravitating towards was what the film's framing device says about the importance of storytelling to the human experience.  A young woman sits down at a grave to read a book...an author struggles with his introduction...an old man tells his story.  Ralph Fiennes gives a career best as the profane Gustave H, a concierge who stuffs his basest urges to sleep his way into prosperity.  Never mind the World War grinding its wheels all around him.  Anderson has dabbled with violence and tragedy in the past (Machetes in Aquatic, severed tails in Mr. Fox), but he brings real darkness to his pristine workshop and it clobbered my emotions.  The Grand Budapest Hotel demands a rewatch real soon, I'm guessing next week, but if it is not at the very top of my Top Ten Films of 2014 I will be very, very, very surprised.  And probably utterly elated since that will mean this year will go down as one of cinema's finest.

Dirty Harry:  Kicking off that vigilante spirit that eventually climaxed in a dozen crappy 80s wannabe Death Wishers, Don Siegel's Dirty Harry is a beastly statement on the public's frustration with perceived runaway crime.  Clint Eastwood is Judge Dredd, a San Francisco police detective who rips free from political red tape to blast his way through the scum of the city.  Loosely based on the unsolved Zodiac killings, Andrew Robinson's Scorpio sniper holds the city hostage from the rooftops while Harry beats the streets below.  Killer vs Killer.  Eastwood is super cool TNT with his elbow patches, sunglasses, and .44 Magnum.  As much as I love The Man With No Name, it's' really in Harry Callahan where the mancrush solidified.  Who doesn't love righteousness?  Law & Order?  F-That.  He's the badguy.  Shoot the badguy.  Clean up the streets.  Black & White Justice, that's the dream.  Or a deeply troubling fantasy for good ol' U-S-of-A.

The Dead Pool:  When I got home from The Alamo on Tuesday night, I was not done with Harry.  Jumping over the first three sequels, I chose The Dead Pool for my followup because it was the first film I ever saw starring Clint Eastwood, and therefore it holds a very special place in my heart.  It's not a good movie.  And it's a terrible Dirty Harry sequel.  But it is fun as all hell.  When Jim Carry's Guns & Roses lipsinker cokes out in his movie trailer, Harry Callahan is called to solve the case of Celebrity Threes.  Gorehound Director Liam Neeson is prime suspect number one, but does he have the know-how to construct an army of remote control car bombs???  Yeah, what the hell is going on in this movie?  Dumb, dumb, dumb, and the Dirty Harry schtick is wearing thin.  "You know what that means?  You're shit out of luck."  Not quite "Feelin' Lucky Punk" is it?  But dang it, The Dead Pool still makes me smile and I would certainly shill out some cash for another senior citizen Harry flick.  Come on Eastwood, you gotta another Harry in you for sure.

Thor:  Here is the film that made The Avengers possible.  The God of Thunder.  How do you make that work in the world of Iron Man?  You avoid the God issue by transforming Asgardians into immortal aliens.  You snatch this space age Shakespeare play and drop them into Middle America for a lighthearted romcom with explosions and hammer fights.  Job well done.  The stakes may be low, the scope may be tiny, and the budget is certainly lacking.  But Chris Hemsworth embodies The Mighty Thor in the same way that Christopher Reeve WAS Superman.  Tom Hiddleston is a breakout star as the trickster Loki, and Natalie Portman acts the hell out of Golly Gee WonderLUST.  Marvel Studios sells us on one of their whackiest creations, and not only does it pave the way to The Avengers, but also The Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and The Inevitable Crusade of D-Man...ok, that last one might not happen, but here's hoping.

Captain America (1990):  Oh, hey you, Marvel Movie Haters...HOW DARE YOU CRAP OVER JOSS WHEDON'S THE AVENGERS!!!  "It's not as good as the comics!" Blah, blah, blah - SHUT UP!  You don't know how great you've got it.  You weren't there in the trenches of Direct-To-Video Hell like us oldtimers.  You don't remember Nick Fury - Agent of SHIELD, The Punisher, or this miracle of crap.  But now thanks to the wonders of blu ray and the good folks over at Shout Factory, you too can experience this "film" from master craftsman Albert Pyun.  However, if you squint your eyes and if you're in a MST3K kinda mood, then this very shoddy Captain America is actually a good deal of fun thanks to its puttied Red Skull straight off the set of Star Trek Voyager, and The Captain's baffling rubber ears.  Ronny Cox guest stars as The President of the United States, and Ned Beatty is his four-eyed cub reporter hungry for a good story.  So you know...squeal like a pig and enjoy!

Veronica Mars:  It's been what, seven years since the final season of Veronica Mars aired on television?  I really enjoyed that first season, the second season was ok, and I could never finish the date rapey college years.  As much as the people of the internet screamed for more, I was good.  But then came kickstarter, three million fanboy/girl dollars, and a mad marketing campaign.  The Veronica Mars movie is solid.  It's like an extra long episode of the tv show.  Veronica ditches Piz and her high paying job to head back to Neptune for a high school reunion and yet another murder case involving bad boy Logan.  I can't get too excited about it, but I can't crap over it either.  It's fine.  I'd watch another.  That's bout it.

Captain America - The Winter Soldier Omnibus by Ed Brubaker:  Sooooooooooooooo gooooooooooood.  Robert Kirkman's Invincible is my all time favorite Super Hero Comic Series.  But Ed Brubaker's Captain America run is my all time favorite Marvel Super Hero Comic Series.  And I initially refused to read it back in 2007.  Bucky Barnes, back from the dead?  Hell no.  You don't resurrect Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, Bruce Wayne's Parents, or Bucky Barnes.  That's law.  And yet...Brubaker breaks it with so much damn class that fanboy history be damned.  Retcon away sir!  Brubaker's run on Cap is a noirish spy thriller involving a demonic leftover from The Cold War, and heaps of sinister espionage.  The first half of this book is damn near perfect.  It opens with the apparent assassination of The Red Skull by a shadowy agent from Soviet Russia called The Winter Soldier, who has now fallen under the control of villainous businessman Alexander Lukin.  Where The Skull is involved so is Steve Rodgers. Captain America's investigation leads him through various A.I.M. laboratories, hand-to-hand combat with Nazi goon Crossbones, and another horror of domestic terrorism.  And it climaxes with a face to face assault from long ago sidekick James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.  The back half struggles a little as Brubaker tries to integrate Marvel's Civil War Event.  I've seen such tie-ins handled much worse, but it certainly feels like you're missing some serious plot if you don't read Civil War in accordance with the back half of the Omnibus.  The Death of Captain America cliffhanger though...that will certainly send you into the next chapter quickly.  If all you know about Cap are the movies then you seriously owe yourself to at least read the two-part Winter Soldier storyline.

American Hustle:  I was reading some review or some tweet or some something that said that the best thing to ever happen to American Hustle was not winning The Academy Award.  Now the film is free to just be a film and not worry about that Oscar baggage.  It's a little pompous, but I get it.  It's certainly Scorsese-lite, but I think time will distance it from those comparisons, and eventually you'll just be able to watch it as the fun time at the movies that it is.  It's a fantastic bit of performance - been too long since I've seen this Christian Bale.  He takes a character that should be an utter scumbag, and makes him a sympathetic little sadsack of a conman.  Bradley Cooper is hilarious as the FBI tool desperate for recognition, and Amy Adams is - god damn - a freaking monster of manipulation.  Last year I gave Cate Blanchett my Best Leading Female Performance, but this second watch has me seriously questioning that decision.  That scene between her & Cooper in the Disco Bathroom Stall is scary, scary, scary.  And it makes this movie a must watch for me.

Nemo - The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin J O'Neal:  Spinning out of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a direct sequel to Nemo - Heart of Ice, this latest dip into the pantheon of literary & cinematic history revels in the worlds of Fritz Lang's Metropolis while peppered with the evil of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.  If that doesn't get you jazzed, nothing will.  It's 1944.  The Daughter of Captain Nemo & Broad Arrow Jack has been taken hostage by Hynkel's forces, and it's up to the crew of the Nautilus to storm Berlin and rescue the child.  It reads quickly if you want to, but I'm already desiring a second trip with the aid of Jess Nevin's essential annotations.  LXG proves time and again that being an English Major and film fanatic is super cool.

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughan & Niko Henrichon:  I closed out the week with the 22nd meeting of The Ultimate Justice League of Extraordinary Graphic Novel Book Club.  Wow.  I can't believe we've been doing this for almost two years.  Crazy.  I love it.  In those nearly two years we've only read one author more than twice and that's Brian K Vaughan (Y The Last Man, Saga, & Pride).  Each one of those books grabbed a positive vibe from the majority of the crowd.  Everyone seemed to dig Pride, and I cannot disagree.  It's a solid fable based on the "True Story" of a group of lions that escaped the Baghdad zoo during the second Iraq conflict.  It's a brutal little tale with an obvious message.  War is hell.  People suck.  Why do we do this to each other?  Brian K Vaughan is preaching to the choir.  Personally, I would have liked a little more story, a little more character.  As is, decent book with some freaking gorgeous art from Niko Henrichon.  I want more of this guy.  I need to track down every bit of art he's done and consume it.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/9/14-3/15/14)

    On Sunday morning, I finished up Brian K. Vaughan’s Pride of Bagdad, the next selection of the graphic novel club.  I liked the art a lot, but the actual story was a bit obvious and pretty bare bones.  Not bad, but not something I’d ever need to read again.  But then it was off to the races on what ended up being a pretty busy week (including my ranty letter to the makers of Star Wars).

The White Queen:  Considering it’s from Starz, this show is shockingly classy.  Sure, it’s full of nudity and violence, but it’s far less crass and exploitative than Magic City or (shudder) Spartacus.  It tells some of the story of the War of the Roses, with a focus on the women involved in the story.  Though women, particularly when seen through the lens of Victorian and consequently early 20th century histories, have often gotten either a bum rap or completely ignored, the idea that women and men do not share a common history is idiotic (why I’m against the idea of ‘women’s history,’ as opposed to ‘women in history;’ to separate one from the other is to miss the point of it all), and the idea that major historic events didn’t involve women is illogical and counter to common sense.  I like that this series shows the active involvement in the changing politics these women take, while not trying to somehow take away from what the men were doing.  You often see in more female-centered history-based tales, not the building up of women, but the tearing down of men (making them stupid, sex-mad monsters, in much the way male-centered histories of the past tried to cast women as either docile or dangerously predatory [akin to the virgin/whore problem]), so this was a welcome and refreshing aspect of the series, with men and women being shown as all the shades of gray one would expect in reality.  Early episodes were a touch wonky, in part because they brought in a bit of the supernatural, which I found off-putting.  I’m assuming that’s from the novels(?).  It wasn’t needed, and distracts from the more interesting, real story.  And I think adding the magic to the female characters lessened their power as humans, by giving in to that old idea that women can only succeed through magic, manipulation, or subterfuge.  Overall, it’s not as well done as some history based shows, and some of the cast is a challenge to get behind (Max Irons, I’m looking at you!…and I wish I wasn’t).  Still, it’s mostly good and worth checking out, and series lead Rebecca Ferguson is darned good.  If this is the direction Starz is headed, who knows.  Maybe one day they could rival HBO in quality programming.  I’m not holding my breath, but maybe.

The Last Days on Mars:  This film has everything it needs…except a good idea.  The production design, the cast, the music, the setting.  It’s all great.  The film looks fantastic.  But once the central idea is revealed, it turns stupid and never looks back.  Now I can add this to the lengthening list of should-have-been-better Mars exploration films, like Mission to Mars and Red Planet.  All of them have good things going for them, yet all of them are failures, because of bad scripts or poorly conceived ideas.  And this film fits right along side.  I can not stress how annoyed I was upon realizing just how lame the central struggle would be.  There was a grimace, followed by a lot of head shaking, and at least one ‘oh, no.’  Please, film makers.  Please.  Don’t do this again.  It works in a movie like Ghost of Mars, because nobody is going to Ghost of Mars for a serious science fiction film.  It doesn’t work here.  Maybe one day we’ll get an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars that will live up to its potential.  Until then, I guess we’ll just get a bunch of this crap.

Donnie Darko:  This is a movie that really blew me away the first time I watched it.  It broke my brain in all the best ways, stayed with me for years.  But I have to admit, I don’t feel the same awe and wonder I once did.  Watching it again, I still find a lot of things to like in the film, and there are some excellent bits.  But I see more of the ‘first film’ syndrome than I noticed before.  Still a must for fans of the surreal and challenging.  But perhaps not the modern classic I’d have once named it.

Von Richthofen and Brown:  This Roger Corman WWI movie is surprisingly good, with lots of excellent flying footage.  The acting is uneven and there are some technical issues.  But for one of his more serious efforts, it’s a winner.  The star really is the flying, though.  And a lot of that is gorgeous.

The Grand Budapest Hotel:  Wes Anderson makes a very peculiar sort of film, and he does it very, very well.  This time around he taps into the Golden Age Hollywood madcap comedy films, with plenty of World War II and Cold War allusions.  It’s wistful and nostalgic for bygone eras, but not cloying.  It’s also delightfully crass, and typically surreal.  The by now trademark Anderson artificiality is on display, enhancing the old Hollywood vibe in the sets and backdrops.  The cast is awesome, and it’s so nice to see Ralph Fiennes doing comedy again, and playing someone so dashing (if sleazy).  I love that this movie revels in the wonder and visual craziness of the very medium.  It’s not naturalistic.  It’s not realistic.  But it gets to some truths, even while reveling in its fantasy world.

    Saturday was a crazy danged day.  I assisted Satnam on the set of the film he directed from a script I wrote.  It’s been a danged long time in the works.  I first conceived the idea as something I thought I might be able to do myself, building the ‘set’ in a closet in my old Brewer, ME apartment, about ten or twelve years ago.  Only one cast member, and no camera movement.  I thought I could handle that.  But cameras were too expensive and I had no skill or knowledge of how to do it.  Still, I liked the idea.  Some time after I moved to Virginia, I met someone who expressed interest in filming it, someone with skills and resources.  But it never materialized.  Lots of talk, but no action, and nothing happened.  But after assisting Satnam on a previous film, he said he was looking for another project, and I mentioned my idea.  He liked it enough to want to read my script.  Well…I don’t know what happened to it.  I’m sure if I go searching through my old disks, I’ll find it.  But, I didn’t want to.  So, I sat down and re-wrote it.  And that was it.  A few re-writes, a search for an actor, our fumbling attempts at set construction, finding other professionals to help us out with sound and make-up.  And then filming.  To say I was a ball of nerves is an understatement.  It’s kind of amazing to see words you wrote being spoken by an actor on a set.  I would not be heart broken if I had to do this for a living.

    Now that the movie is in the can, the editing and post production and all that starts up, and I don’t have anything to do with that.  So, it’s on to my next project, prepping for next weekend’s Call of Cthulhu game.  Most of the heavy lifting was done for the first session, so now it’s going to be a lot of details, extra bits, and such.  And then of course, to get myself psyched up and ready to go.  Though it may not be, I could see this being the final session of this game/story.  It might go on to a third or fourth night, depending on how their investigations go, and how deadly things get.  So I'm trying to think ahead for what folks might want to do next.  I think this group would be best suited for something light, fast paced, action and mystery packed, with plenty of room to roam.  I'm still thinking.

-Matt

Comic Review: Saga Volume 2

    Sometimes, I just don’t get other people.  Look, taste is taste.  I get that I like things that others don’t like.  I get that others like things I don’t like.  But sometimes the disconnect, especially when it comes to people with whom I share similar views, is rather profound.  Many science fiction fans, for example, put Terminator 2 on their list of best sci-fi films.  Huh?  Getting past it being a shallow remake of the first film, it also manages to do all the things everyone hates about the Star Wars prequels, nearly a decade earlier (read: make everyone and everything cool into someone or something stupid and lame).  This struck me again when I picked up the first trade of Saga.  Here was a comic being hailed as one of the best new series, as a great science fiction epic, etc.  Well, everyone who said those things is wrong.  Not saying they can’t like the book, but they’re wrong to claim it as a) good or b) good science fiction.  And as I read the second volume (for a graphic novel club), my bafflement at the love and my general distaste for Saga crystallized.  What Saga is, is not a grand science fiction epic.  It’s a bland retelling of Romeo & Juliet, filtered through years of wink-wink snarky Joss Whedon dialog.  This feels like something a teenager would scribble on the back of her English Lit notebook after discovering Piers Anthony.  It’s like Jewel poetry turned into a comic.  And this from the guy who wrote one of my all time favorite comics, Y: The Last Man.  I don’t get it.

    In skimming the first volume again, as I prepared to read the second, I was struck anew by how uninteresting most of the characters are.  The introduction of The Will and The Stalk made me wish the story would immediately change directions, dropping the sappy love story and turn instead into some science fiction adventure tale.  Alas, by the end of the first volume, one of the only interesting characters to come along was dead.  In volume 2, the other interesting character quickly gets tied up in a creepy anime-vibe storyline I’d rather not dwell on.

    As my comment about the 16 year old girl might indicate, I found this whole thing to be quite childish.  There’s even a lot of ‘shocking’ stuff, that feels like it was thrown in by an adolescent in the hopes of getting a reaction (see: the film career of Lars Von Trier for an example of this on a larger scale).  I was not shocked, but mildly annoyed by obvious stunt writing.  And the narration.  The narration.  Ugh!

    I’ve read worse comics.  Astonishing X-Men, Young Avengers, etc.  These are worse.  But I’ve read few things that make me more angry.  So much wasted talent on such a juvenile and hackneyed series.  And people are eating it up?!  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.  It’s like when I tried to watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory, and I felt like I was being punked.  Certainly it is not one of the most popular shows on TV, right?  Someone is was having a go.  Alas, it is popular.  And Saga is, unaccountably well received by people who otherwise seem to have a functioning sense of taste and quality.  I don’t get it.

(edit: After the group discussion, I understand more of the reasons why other people like the comic.  From its exploration of parenthood to the 'fun' things it does.  I can't join in on the love; and I am glad I don't have to read any more of it; and I still don't think it's one of the best comics out there.)

Saga Volume Two
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Fiona Staples
Publisher: Image
ISBN: 978-1-6070-6692-7

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/1/13-12/7/13)

    My Criterion insanity started to wrap up this week.  Not that I’m done.  But I’m done with focusing on them as much.  And I saw two more movies that are making this year’s Dorkies look less depressing.  I might be able to craft a top ten that I feel good about now.  And a month ago, that wasn’t the case.  Also this week, I finally took the plunge and put out an official inquiry to some folks about starting up a regular roleplaying game.  Come the new year, I’m going to stop just talking about it, and try to do something about it.

Bottle Rocket:  You can see a lot of hints of the weird artificiality Wes Anderson would become known for in his later films.  I think budget probably had a lot to do with it not being more odd.  It’s the tale of a bunch of idiots who want to be big time robbers.  There’s a cute romance, lots of awkward, and interesting music choices.  Again, you can see the Wes Anderson we all know forming in this early effort.  I’d been led to believe that this one wasn’t very good, but I found it charming and fun.

Little Miss Sunshine:  “You don’t speak because of Friedrich Nietzsche?…Far out.”  Extremely unhappy people come together in the ways that families do.  Then they all pile into a VW van for a road trip…’cause that’s a good idea.  The movie is full of awkwardly funny moments, but there are just too many, relentlessly bad things that happen to these people.  By about two thirds in, credulity had been expended.  It kind of has a turnaround near the end with a big F-You people with sticks in their ass.

The X From Outer Space:  With the success of Toho’s Godzilla and similar giant monster sci-fi films, several other studios attempted to get in on the racket.  Though the fun science fiction vibe of movies like Atragon and Battle in Outer Space is still there, the quality of monster effects is nowhere near as good as Toho films.  It’s weird watching a kaiju movie where it probably would have been better without the kaiju.  The story of the space explorers was more interesting than the rampaging bast.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell:  Were the Japanese pioneers of modern horror?  Was it in 1960s Japan that the idea of making a cast of awful people do the stupidest things possible in order to force the plot along was birthed?  This movie is evidence.  There’s some cool stuff, but everyone is so danged dumb that it’s hard to feel for anyone.  I kind of want them to get bone-snatched.  I like the end, and some of the nasty effects.  However, at the end of the day, the whole thing is kind of meh.  One particular complaint I have though, is the use of war photos.  I find the use of any stock footage or photos depicting real tragedy/death to be in poor taste, and this movie does do it.

The Scarlet Empress:  A crazy fantasy version of the rise of Catherine the Great, this movie is kind of dull when it comes to plot, but fascinating when it comes to performance and production design.  To say the sets and props are over the top would be a disservice to Sylvester Stallone.  They’re straight-up nutty.  I knew I was watching something different when it cut to the queen sitting on her throne, and it looked like something Ming the Merciless would have found a bit much.

Heaven Can Wait:  A funny, witty comedy that starts with a life-long lady’s man walking through the gates of Hell, to get his just deserts from probably the sweetest Satan in cinema history.  Satan is charmed by the old scamp, and decides to hear his life’s story.  From growing up a spoiled young man with an eye for pretty faces, our hero becomes something of a lothario.  He does try very hard to settle down with the amazingly beautiful Gene Tierney.  There’s plenty of fun, witty, wacky adventures at hand, and the film manages to talk about a lot of stuff, without talking about it.  The Hayes Codes were fully in effect by this point, after all.  It’s all quite charming.  The only nitpick I have is with the costume design on aged Tierney.  They put her in what may be the single ugliest wig/hairstyle I’ve ever seen.  It was distractingly stupid looking.  It looked like something a pseudo-Goth neo-pin-up wannabe would think twice about.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones:  Brooding runway models battle crappy CG in this teen-fic crap fest.  No cliché is left un-mined.  Typical 16 year old girl pseudo-Goth hooker crap.  I work with books for a living, and the last 15 years or so have seen a huge increase in so called ‘teen’ fiction, which for the most part seems to actually be traditional romance novels, mixed with supernatural elements, and written by the equivalent of fan-fic writers you might stumble across in a Star Trek slash fiction fan page.  Rarely having the decency to put a new spin on an old story, they simply regurgitate the same boring plots with the same boring characters.  Change the term ‘shadow hunter’ to vampire or worse, highlander, and you’ve got any of a number of other insipid teen tales.  To top it off, CGI has somehow allowed terrible looking effects to get a free pass now.  Everything in this film looks like crap, but the werewolves are just pathetic.  We’re talking An American Werewolf in Paris awful.  The film is also over two hours long and the second half feels much, much longer.

Ew, ew, ew!!!

    On Thursday morning, I finished the second volume of Saga.  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.  Everyone seems to love this comic.  I don’t get it.  It feels like it was written by a 16 year old girl who can’t stop watching Joss Whedon shows.  I’ll have to see what the group thinks of it at the next meeting of the graphic novel club.  Am I going to be the only negative voice?

    Before heading in to DC on Thursday night, Brad had me try an Irish scotch called Laphroaig.  It tasted like licking a hospital, and I wouldn’t recommend it.  If you soaked an ace bandage in anti-bacterial, then siphoned some rubbing alcohol through it, you might approach the taste.

The Great Beauty:  I am not a Federico Fellini fan.  Not at all.  But there are things in his work that I like.  With The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino has made a clearly Fellini inspired movie that captures those things I like, without getting too much of what I don’t.  It’s funny; it’s charming; it’s sad.  And surreal, quirky, ugly, and uncomfortable moments abound.  But it’s also nostalgic and beautiful.  Lead actor Toni Servillo is devilishly charming.  And the orgies of decaying flesh he surrounds himself with are lavishly unsettling.

Shogun:  This mini-series made quite a splash when it hit the airwaves back in 1980.  I was too young to be watching something like that, but I still managed to see a bit of it, and the bit I saw always stuck with me.  Seeing it in full all these years later, I can see why people were so into it.  But at the same time, it is way too long.  Richard Chamberlain is super-dashing as the sailor who gets stranded in Japan, and must learn the ways of this strange land in order to survive.  An amazingly Japanese cast (yes, even in 1980, it was unusual to get Japanese actors in Japanese roles…Oh, wait, it still is) does a fine job.  It looks good for a TV production.  There’s simply not ten hours of interesting material.  There’s a reason things are ‘lost’ when books are adapted.  A movie should take the essence of a book and tell a story; this film felt like they tried to get all of the plot-points in, while missing the essence.

Thor: The Dark World:  On a second viewing, this movie is still quite fun, but not nearly as tight as the first outing for the Norse god of thunder.  It’s still amusing, but lacks the light comic touch of the first.  The action is pretty good, the story is OK, but it doesn’t seem to build the universe a great deal.  Still, I’d come back every couple of years to watch another Thor adventure.  It’s still the best of the Avengers solo films.

A Field in England:  To use a cliché, this film is not for everyone.  The plot is rather simple.  Some men, deserting the battle field, find themselves in a field, meeting up with a ogre of an Irishman.  Mayhem ensues.  But the devil is in the details.  There’s lots of ugly, gritty, wallowing in the mud humor, along with some grim violence.  There are kaleidoscopic sequences of drug fueled madness, and moments of serine beauty.  If you like films like Valhalla Rising, Beyond the Black Rainbow, or Marketa Lazarova, you may find something in this.  If you like your movies straight forward and easy to watch, move along.

    I guess that’s it.  This next week looks like more madness.  As we’re getting closer to the end of the year, there are finally some good movies coming out.  My next couple of weeks are going to be madness.  Plus, there’s the meeting of the graphic novel club.  Yikes.

-Matt

Comic Review: Y: The Last Man Volume 5

    Dang it.  I am not, by nature, an emotional man (other than anger).  But this book kicked my emotional ass.  Maybe even harder this time than when I first read it 5 or 6 years ago.  Here are the final revelations and final resolutions.  And it’s rough.  Yorick isn’t the same he was five years earlier, when all the other men kicked it.  And the women have changed a great deal along the way as well (those who have survived).  The whole world has changed…sort of.

    I don’t feel right talking about the plot points of this volume, as this is where the various story threads all come together.  But man, Brian K. Vaughan doesn’t let you have what you want.  It’s compelling, and it works.  But it’s so danged harsh.  So danged harsh.  The last chapter/issue just destroys me.  It’s beautiful, uplifting I guess, but so, so darned sad.  Gah.  Just read it and then we can talk about it.

    I’m glad that the final volume is primarily illustrated by co-creator Pia Guerra.  I know that schedules for comics can be very grueling, and that fill-in work is often needed.  And Goran Sudzuka did an excellent job on this series, maintaining the style and tone very well.  But it felt right to have Guerra back for the end.  The last chapter/issue is especially good.  Like the rest of the series, it’s not flashy or in your face with style.  But it’s so tonally right for the wistfulness, the melancholy, the nostalgia.

    So, yeah.  There are a lot of reasons Y is among my very favorite comic series.  It’s a good story, well told.  It has a bunch of cool characters and never quite goes where you expect.  But it has something else.  It’s one of the few pieces of literature that can pull genuine tears out of me.  It makes the chunk of coal that rests where my heart should be ache almost like I had the real thing.  I am not, by nature, an emotional man.  But you wouldn’t know it as I write this, still wiping at the corner of my eye.

Y: The Last Man Deluxe Edition Book Five
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Pia Guerra
Publisher: Vertigo
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3051-7

-Matt

Comic Review: Y: The Last Man Volume 4

    The fourth hardcover of this apocalyptic epic spends a lot of time looking into the pasts of our various players, seeing 355’s origin, Dr. M’s childhood, and even Alter’s twisted rise to power.  After years, the manless world is reaching a kind of emotional breaking point.  Some women have begun the difficult project of reestablishing civilization; trade, communication, war.  But others have lost all hope, descended into drugs, murder, sex, and illusions.

    It’s a hard world, and Yorick seems to have finally come to terms with it, with himself, with the things he’s done.  But 355 may finally be cracking, her iron exterior may have a weakness after all.  And Dr. Mann, she’s falling apart with the possibility of having to face her past, her family, and her guilt.  Japan provides a strange backdrop for Yorick’s search for his missing monkey, and there are plenty of interesting characters grasping for power.

    Pia Guerra is largely absent in this volume, with most of the art being done by Goran Sudzuka.  But he manages to keep the style established by Guerra.  Other than frequent full page panels, there is virtually none of the all too common panel over-design, where style gets in the way of story.  The art and the design simply let the story unfold.

    The story is building to its eventual climax.  The board is set, the pieces are all coming together, and soon, the moment will come when answers will be had, blood will be spilled, and the fate of the unmanned world will be decided, discovered, or created.

Y: The Last Man The Deluxe Edition Book Four
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Goran Sudzuka, etc.
Publisher: Vertigo
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2888-0

-Matt