| Don't freak out. |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|04:11 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning", Smashing Pumpkins | ] |
I'm not sure what to think yet.
I liked 300 fine for what it was, but it's not something I'd ever make an effort to watch again. I don't know how Snyder's style will ultimately work with the ultra-grittiness that is Watchmen; it might be too slick, too shiny. But there were moments...the owl-ship...Rorschach speaking the famous words aloud...damn. It's really happening, isn't it?
EDIT: YouTube had to take it down, but it's up at io9 and a bunch of other places at the moment, and will be going live at Apple at midnight. |
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| "And here we...go." |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|01:46 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The music from the trailer, when the Joker is clapping and the truck flips... | ] |
“It will be the greatest film ever made.” – Deniz Cordell, Summer 2007
The time is very nearly upon us. In just shy of sixty hours, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight will land in theaters with a seismic thump in thousands of midnight screenings all across the country. Demand for these screenings has been so high in some areas that theater owners have added 3AM and, in a few cases, 6AM screenings to meet it. I have never once heard of a thing like that, in all my years as an amateur observer and critic of the film industry.
The quote from Deniz above was occasioned by the release of the initial teaser trailer to The Dark Knight last year. Mind you, this trailer did not show actual footage from the film – simply a voiceover of a conversation between Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) and his butler Alfred (Michael Caine), delivered on top of a gradually revealed Batman logo that shuddered and oscillated before dissolving away into blackness. That was all both he and I needed. Following Nolan’s rejuvenation of the Batman film franchise with 2005’s brilliant Batman Begins, a peculiar sensation started to overtake me as I considered the possibilities inherent in a sequel, the premise of which was explicitly established in the closing scene of Begins, when Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) presented Batman with the calling card of a new criminal in town: a joker playing card. I started to think through the ramifications of what Nolan could do with the cast he had assembled, the budget he would undoubtedly receive after the massive critical and financial success of Begins, and the grounded aesthetic he had established, all driving towards one common goal: giving us the greatest full-motion Batman-Joker showdown of all time. And I would chuckle, sometimes.
As much as I love Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, it is flawed. It’s not really a Batman movie. It’s a Tim Burton movie that happens to be about Batman, and barely at that. Poor Michael Keaton, while certainly the second-best of the cinematic Caped Crusaders, is overshadowed throughout by Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Except Jack wasn’t really playing the Joker, either. He was Jack as the Joker. And that’s fine. I like Jack Nicholson. I like his screen persona, I enjoy his performances, and he made the most of the material he was given to work with.
But I’ve known for years that the film possibilities of the Batman-Joker rivalry had not yet been given their definitive embodiment. The dynamic that has been established between them over the years, perhaps best embodied in such seminal works as Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth, is one of the most dramatically rich veins in American literature. If you can get past the costumes, what you have are two incredibly damaged men, two sides of the same coin, who are fixated on showing the other the error of their ways. In the Joker, we see the terrifying possibilities of what Bruce Wayne could have become, while in Batman we see what the Joker might have been if his intellect were not so marred by insanity. The intensity of their rivalry should be the motor behind any live-action incarnation, not merely a backstop to pseudo-Expressionist visuals and pop-guignol theatrics as it was in Burton’s film.
After seeing Begins, I knew Nolan could be trusted to at least make an attempt at this, because Begins was first and foremost a Batman film that happened to be made by Christopher Nolan. His fiercely proficient style was all over it, of course, but it never got in the way of the story. Years passed. A release date was established: July 18, 2008. Casting choices were made: Maggie Gyllenhaal would replace Katie Holmes as Assistant DA Rachel Dawes, Bruce’s love interest, and Aaron Eckhart would be DA Harvey Dent, a rival for Rachel’s affections who eventually becomes the villainous Two-Face. And the Joker himself would be played by…Heath Ledger. An odd choice, to be sure, one which caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth among Internet fanboys. The more I thought about it, however, the more sense it began to make. Anyone who has seen Brokeback Mountain cannot deny the man’s talent. He had always seemed to take his craft very seriously, even when toiling away in the heartthrob ghettos, and I was interested to see what he would do with what could prove to be one of the great screen villains of all time. Soon, word began to get out about Ledger’s performance, and the first full trailers confirmed the rumors: Ledger was gone. This was the Joker, brought to life, anarchy incarnate trying to tear his way right out of the movie and into reality.
My brother Andy said to me a couple of weeks ago that he has been waiting to see The Dark Knight since the lights went up in the theater the first time he saw Batman Begins, and few days have gone by since that he hasn’t thought about it. I readily agreed with him. I’ve been getting hyped up for this for months, and while it’s possible I will be disappointed, I’m not too worried. The reviews from advance screenings have been almost universally superlative, from the hyperbolic excesses of the staff at Ain’t It Cool News to the more measured but still vaunted praise of more mainstream critics. Oscar nods are being bandied about for Ledger, Nolan (both for Direction and with his brother Jonah for Screenplay), and possibly even for Picture. In a supreme act of will, I will not be seeing it until Saturday evening, so that I may enjoy it in the company of Mme. Manson. I will, of course, be sharing my thoughts in this space as soon as possible thereafter. If you have access to an IMAX theater, I suggest you make use of it, as apparently it’s just absolutely jaw-dropping. But act soon – tickets for this weekend are still going fast. |
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| Trailers |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|02:54 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | the Sanctum | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Jeremy", Pearl Jam | ] |
O my brothers, it's been a devilishly long time since I posted here. Been very preoccupied. To wit: I moved to Brooklyn and am living in my own apartment for the first time ever. I'm working for the same publishing company, in a different division, and am scripting my first comic-book miniseries, which will be published online and via print-on-demand just as soon as I find someone to draw it for me. More on that as it develops, but for now, back to the movies.
Summer blockbuster season has begun in earnest. The big story, of course, is Iron Man, which passed $300 million domestic this week and earned every penny of it. I myself have seen it twice, and I recommend that you hie to the most proximate cinema if you've somehow missed it for this long. The rest of our major fare, however, has been somewhat underwhelming. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a well-intentioned mess, but a mess nonetheless. The Incredible Hulk was entertaining, but nothing special, more notable for its implied establishment of a shared Marvel film universe via the cameo of a certain armor-wearing industrialist than for its own story. The Happening...well, isn't. This week we're being treated to a one-two combo of anti-humor with Get Smart and The Love Guru, which are apparently mediocre and appallingly bad, respectively.
Luckily, we've got good stuff coming up for the rest of the summer.
Next Friday, June 27th, we've got two wildly different films of interest. The first is Pixar's latest piece of brilliance, Wall-E, which according to early reports is astonishingly beautiful and the best work yet out of the studio with the best track record in Hollywood. Also hitting theaters next week is Wanted, loosely based on the Mark Millar graphic novel of same name and directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Day Watch) in his English-language debut. Millar is a bit hit or miss for me, but I did enjoy this comic, and while the film diverges pretty far from the book's storyline, it keeps the basic premise and Millar is apparently ecstatic with it. Bekmambetov is a lunatic (the good kind), and Night Watch is one of the most unique-looking action films I've ever seen. I don't know if this will rank as a "good" film, but it's damn sure going to be incredible to watch.
The following weekend is, of course, the Fourth of July, so there aren't any major releases. The one thing you might want to catch between the barbecues and fireworks is Gonzo, a new documentary about the founder of gonzo journalism and personal hero of mine, Hunter S. Thompson. The doc is narrated by Johnny Depp, who played a character based on Thompson in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and remained close friends with the man until the his suicide in 2005. Advance word is good.
July 11th brings us Guillermo del Toro's first new film since Pan's Labyrinth, and continues his trend of alternating smaller, art-house pieces with Hollywood blockbusters, although he manages to keep his inimitable style intact no matter how large the stage. Hellboy II: The Golden Army, yet another comic-book adaptation, is the sequel to del Toro's 2004 cult hit. I love Hellboy, I loved the first movie, and I'm wicked excited for this. Del Toro is going to be relocating to New Zealand in the near future to begin work on The Hobbit and an as-yet unnamed film bridging the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. While this further delays work on his long-awaited adaptation of Lovecraft's The Mountains Of Madness, I can't be too mad, because...well, he's making The Hobbit.
I can't think about what's coming out on July 18th for too long, because I start to bleed from the eyes in excitement. The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, seems poised to depose that film as the best Bat-movie of all time. Due to his untimely demise, Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is already the stuff of legend, and from all of the footage I've seen and anecdotes the rest of the actors are putting about, no one is going to be disappointed. Almost overshadowed by the Ledger situation, however, is the return of the first film's sterling cast, with the exception of poor brainwashed Katie Holmes, who has been replaced by the infinitely superior Maggie Gyllenhaal. Christian Bale is easily the best live-action Batman/Bruce Wayne we've ever had, and having him bounce off of Ledger and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey "Two-Face" Dent promises to be amazing.
As if July wasn't awesome enough already, the 25th brings...I can't believe I get to type this...The X-Files: I Want To Believe. Less-than-memorable subtitle aside, The X-Files is my favorite TV show of all time, and the prospect of seeing Mulder and Scully together again gives my geek heart palpitations.
August, as usual, is the dumping ground for stuff that the studios want to get out in the summer but aren't sure what to do with. Producer Judd Apatow (Superbad) brings us Pineapple Express, a stoner action-comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. If that trailer isn't enough to convince you, I don't know what I can do for you.
August 15th has what looks to be a return to form for Ben Stiller, getting him back into R-rated comedy where he belongs. Tropic Thunder casts Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. as extremely pretentious Hollywood stars making a Vietnam movie who get dumped in the jungles of Cambodia with actual guerillas. Hilarity ensues. For completeness' sake, I must mention that Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the pilot for the forthcoming animated TV series, will also be released to theaters that week. I've ceased trying to predict the quality of Lucasfilm product, however, so you're on your own.
August 22nd brings the last release of the summer proper that I'm looking forward to, the Steve Coogan vehicle Hamlet 2. Just...watch the trailer.
Things to keep an eye out for this fall? The Coen Brothers, recent Oscar winners for No Country For Old Men, bounce back with a more comedic joint on September 12th with Burn After Reading. Then, on September 25th, D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) and Shia LaBeouf reunite in Eagle Eye. Also that week, Sam Rockwell stars in Choke, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club). The extremely stylish looking fantasy film City Of Ember drops on October 10th.
Christmas brings us a couple of gifts. Frank Miller, creater of the Sin City graphic novels, directs The Spirit, based on the popular character created by Will Eisner, the man who basically established the visual grammar of comic book storytelling. Last but certainly not least, David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club, Seven) and Brad Pitt team up yet again for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, which looks to be quite the change of pace for Fincher.
Thoughts? |
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| He rolled a natural 1 on his save vs. heart attack! |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|01:30 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sad | ] |
My (obscure and in-poor-taste) joke aside, this really sucks. Gary Gygax, the man largely responsible for creating Dungeons & Dragons, has died at the age of 69. As horribly, horribly geeky as tabletop roleplaying is (and it is), it's a hobby that means a lot to a great many people, myself included, and it wouldn't exist if not for Gygax and the rest of the Lake Geneva crowd, not to mention the indirect influences that he had on the video-game and fantasy-film industries. A sad day for gamers worldwide.
EDIT: How many people are responsible for bringing an entire hobby/lifestyle into being? How many people create something that has brought hundreds or thousands of hours of enjoyment to millions of people over a span of four decades? Without D&D, there probably wouldn't have been the resurgence of interest in heroic fantasy in the late '70s that revived the popularity of The Lord Of The Rings and created an audience for the thriving fantasy publishing industry that exists today. No World Of Warcraft, Final Fantasy or (insert your favorite video game here), no Magic: The Gathering, no tabletop roleplaying at all, at least in the form we know it today. People who might not otherwise have been able to endure the isolation of adolescence found an outlet and a means to socialize that were otherwise unavailable. Damn. |
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| Post-Oscars |
[Feb. 25th, 2008|10:17 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", Nirvana | ] |
Got my ass kicked last night, re: my picks. Only 10 out of 21 correct predictions, a horrific 48% accuracy. In my defense, I also had three "should wins" that in fact came away with the victory, so that improves things slightly.
Good Things: Four wins for No Country For Old Men, three for The Bourne Ultimatum. An almost-complete shutout for Atonement, which was nominated for eight awards and walked away with only Best Original Score. Good acceptance speeches: Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Diablo Cody, Marion Cotillard, Glen Hansard, the Coen Brothers. Best Acceptance goes to Tilda Swinton, after her fairly surprising win for Best Supporting Actress. Props to Jon Stewart for bringing Markéta Irglová back on to finish her speech. Props to Stewart in general for shepherding a very odd broadcast (post-strike, with a bunch of movies that many people haven't seen or even heard of...)
Bad Things: The writing and structure of the show, which suffered greatly from the limited time-frame and the inclusion of various poorly assembled clip montages left over from the backup-plan show. Every single one of the songs from "Enchanted", although I always like to see Kristen Chenoweth doing, well, anything at all. The fact that there were only so many awards to go around, so they couldn't give more to There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. The repeated cutting-off of acceptance speeches by the orchestra; maybe they could have given these people accepting their once-in-a-lifetime honor a few more seconds and cut some of those dumb montages, hmm?
All in all, not a bad ceremony, I thought.
What else is new? I was in New York City on Saturday to take a written exam (basic reasoning, general knowledge and personality assessment) for the DGA Assistant Director Training Program. I won't find out if I advance to the interview phase until the end of March, so wish me luck. A trailer for the new X-Files film was shown at WonderCon this past weekend; I watched a bootleg filmed from the (wildly enthusiastic) audience and felt all warm inside. (The X-Files is in constant competition with Buffy as my favorite TV series of all time.) Kara returned from a week in the wilds of Vermont, and we dealt with spraying hot water pipes in her basement, watched Twin Peaks and Michael Clayton, laughed at each other a lot, and were generally insufferably cute. It is difficult to be as hateful and wretched as I like to make myself out to be when I'm so happy, damn it!
Apropos of nothing: an excellent quote from the blog of Peter Watts, whose newest novel Blindsight blew my mind at least three times:
"I find it astonishing that our society should treat religious faith as though it confered [sic] some kind of exhalted [sic] all-purpose free pass, instead of as a neurological disorder."
I should probably do some work. |
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| Harlan Ellison on the End of the Strike |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|09:11 pm] |
HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:
Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.
And I voted NO on accepting this deal.
My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…
THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse’s asses who kept mumbling “lessgo bac’ta work” over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.
My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out. It gave away the EXACT co-terminus expiration date with SAG for some bullshit short-line substitute; it got us no more control of our words; it sneak-abandoned the animator and reality beanfield hands before anyone even forced it on them; it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot. The WGAw folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day.
And I am ashamed of this Guild, as I was when Shavelson was the prexy, and we wasted our efforts and lost out on technology that we had to strike for THIS time. 17 days of streaming tv!!!????? Geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?
You deserve all the opprobrium you get. While this nutty festschrift of demented pleasure at being allowed to go back to work in the rice paddy is filling your cowardly hearts with joy and relief that the grips and the staff at the Ivy and street sweepers won’t be saying nasty shit behind your back, remember this:
You are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another.
Please excuse my temerity. I’m just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards.
I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant.
Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison |
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| "Julius Caesar" at the A.R.T. |
[Feb. 13th, 2008|10:42 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | bemused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "My Body Is A Cage", the Arcade Fire | ] |
Given the amount of time and energy I've expended in the production of theatre, which far outstrips the equivalent I've spent in other artistic fields if only in terms of concrete achievement, I have written surprisingly little about it.
I love theatre. While my greater passion is committed to filmed and print media, there is a certain energy inherent in live performance that cannot be captured in other contexts. As my small income and less strenuous schedule since graduation have allowed me to indulge other hobbies more extensively than I had in recent years, so too have I seen more plays and musicals than normal in the last several months.
Last night, Kara, her friend/my acquaintance Samson and I went to see the American Repertory Theatre's production of "Julius Caesar", directed by Arthur Nauzyciel and starring Thomas Derrah as Caesar, Jim True-Frost as Brutus, Mark L. Montgomery as Cassius, Sara Kathryn Bakker as Portia/Calpurnia, and James Waterston (son of Sam, aka McCoy from "Law & Order") as Mark Anthony.
I am moved to write, but I don't know where to start. My familiarity with "Caesar" is minimal -- I read it once, years ago, saw a very experimental production last year at Brandeis and am, of course, generally acquainted with the historical events upon which the play is based. On my personal hierarchy of "Important Shakespeare", "Caesar" falls on the second tier of dramas, alongside "Othello"; that being the case, I have not made the time to re-read it, although I think I might now. While I may be overlooking something, I didn't detect any major cuts to the text, and I think that was one of my biggest problems with the staging, but I'll get back to that.
Overall, I didn't like it very much. It was incredibly overdetermined, every moment clearly directed to within an inch of its life. The vision being delivered was very clear, but I felt as if Nauzyciel had little sense of scale. There was virtually no variation in tone, leaving little opportunity for someone who is not hugely familiar with the text to discern the particular relevance and gravity of each scene. The pacing also contributed to that; it was three hours and ten minutes long, and it felt like it, particularly the first half. The dramatic pause was used and abused until my brain started shutting down and pushing me towards a sleep state as a defense mechanism; this was most egregious during the long dialogues between Cassius and Brutus. Most of the dialogue throughout was delivered facing out to the audience, and the lengthy conversations between these two were exercises in frustration. The stentorian, almost Shatnerian choices that were made caused me to laugh out loud at several moments where laughter was not exactly appropriate, and sigh in exasperation just as frequently. I have to applaud Nauzyciel for clearly getting exactly what he wanted out of his actors, but I question the wisdom of those wants.
That being said, there were also moments and elements that I loved. A note of explanation: this particular staging drew heavily on American pop culture of the Sixties -- Warhol, jazz, black suits and skinny ties, etc. There was a live jazz trio on stage, providing a Greek chorus and neutral witness to events. Witnessing and watching were also clear concerns of Nauzyciel's -- aside from the jazz trio, Lucius sat downstage left for most of the show, a mute observer of the action. Literally mute, mind you -- he was played as deaf, and signed all of his lines. Something going on there about "hearing no evil", I think, but a little obscure nonetheless.
Things I liked, right. The design was phenomenal. Sets were minimal, with much of the space defined by the backdrop: a giant photograph of the A.R.T.'s house, empty, mirroring the seats in which we sat. Smaller (but still giant) versions of this photograph flew in at points to define other spaces, along with gauzy white drops. The ambiguity of our place in the proceedings and the relation of the media explosion of the Sixties to the political process, while just as heavyhanded as everything else in the production, were intriguing nonetheless. The sound design, mixing period music, modern indie rock and bizarre industrial/ambient noise, was also fantastic. The more I think about it, the more I think the intent of the first half was to blast the audience's brains into a rarefied conceptual space in preparation for the second half. While still somewhat stilted, the play's second half was noticeably tighter and moved at a more reasonable clip. The trade-off was that it went to some places that get more bizarre the more I think about them. The height of these were the war scenes during Act V. The entire stage was bathed in red light, and an actual 1964 Cadillac was flown in, suspended vertically by steel chains midstage left of center -- never to be commented on or interacted with by the actors. I immediately thought of Kennedy, but your guess is as good as mine.
The finale of the show, after Brutus' death, was probably my favorite part. The characters on stage popped some champagne and began to celebrate, including Brutus. Then, the entire cast, living and dead, minus two of its older members and plus a girl in blacks and headset who I assume was the ASM, engaged in a group number that involved signing along and then dancing to Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right". They then bowed to the empty house depicted in the backdrop and left stage, returning to wheel on six large white boxes (twelve by twelve square, two or three feet deep?) that had been on at the top of the show, reversing them to reveal Warholized images of a statue or bust of Caesar. As the jazz trio played a final number, there were vague movements upstage that could be glimpsed between the boxes -- Portia dancing with someone, socializing going on, etc. The jazz trio finished up, Decius Brutus stepped downstage of the boxes for a moment and made some sort of general indication of approval, and then the cast reassembled (joined this time by the trio) for their actual bow to the audience.
Nothing about this show was subtle or understated. They were hitting us over the head with the parallels they were trying to draw between Roman and modern politics, the efforts made to spin scandal into success, the "meet the old boss, same as the new boss" phenomenon, the tendency to ignore the actual problems in favor of gladhanding over some nominal victory, etc., and there's nothing I hate more than having a message shoved down my throat. Many of the actors, with the notable exceptions of Derrah and Kunal Prasad's jazzy beatnik Soothsayer, were clearly reciting Shakespeare rather than speaking dialogue. Be that as it may, there was a lot here to like or at least think about, including and especially the inexplicable but somehow appropriate final sequence I described above. If you think you'll be able to sit through the first half, I'd urge you to go see it and make up your mind for yourself. |
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| Good News/Bad News |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|02:53 pm] |
Good News:
- Having already finished their next feature, Burn After Reading and commenced work on another, A Serious Man, the Coen brothers have a third new project in the pipeline: an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
-With the writers' strike almost certainly over, ABC has picked up several of its series for next season, including a 13-episode order for this past year's best new show, Pushing Daisies.
Bad News:
-Legendary indie comics scribe Steve Gerber died.
-The Tolkien Trust is suing the hell out of New Line Cinema. The Trust, a charitable organization that administers the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, says that the contracts they signed with New Line entitled them to 7% of the returns from The Lord Of The Rings films. To date, they have not seen one cent - not surprising given the creative accounting endemic in Hollywood and the abject failure of New Line to put out any successful films since The Return Of The King. This is not, in itself, bad news; I hope they smack Bob Shaye around like a bitch. I just am afraid that this will delay or scuttle the filming of Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit films.
-In related news, 20th Century Fox is suing Warner Bros. over Zack Snyder's Watchmen, claiming they have held the rights to adapting Alan Moore's legendary graphic novel since the late '80s. I don't know why they waited until this late date, when much of the filming has taken place; it's not like this was a low-profile project. Moore is probably doing a mystical watusi in a cave out in the middle of a peat bog in celebration. |
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| Deadwood |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|01:50 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | pusher | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  good | ] |
David Milch’s 36-episode chronicle of a lawless mining camp in 1870s Dakota Territory is the best television show you’ve never seen. Broadcast by HBO from 2004 to 2006, Deadwood works on a level that network TV never even aspires towards, merging sterling writing, impeccable production values and a powerhouse acting ensemble to create a brutal, haunting meditation on a society forced to become a civilization. The first season introduces audiences to the camp and sets up the conflicts that will boil throughout the show three-year run, as former lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) arrives to open a hardware store. Bullock quickly discovers nothing is that simple in Deadwood, as he is drawn into the web of intrigue, greed and murder surrounding the series’ central figure, saloon owner and unofficial leader of the camp Al Swearengen (Ian McShane). Swearengen is one of the most memorable characters to ever grace the small screen; the writing staff and McShane come together to create a profane, uncompromising, searingly insightful figure who uses his knowledge of both his own and others’ limitations to great effect as he works to preserve both his own authority and the camp’s anarchic nature for as long as possible. Much of the first season revolves around the conflicts between Bullock and Swearengen, although in any given episode there are three or four subplots percolating away, all deftly juggled by the creators and the other players in the large cast. The focus of the second and third seasons is more expansive, as Bullock and Swearengen are forced into alliance against the outside forces that threaten to bring the camp to its knees.
Any description I can write here will not do justice to the consistent level of excellence on display in this show. In three seasons, there is not one weak episode, and the few flawed moments are overshadowed by the brilliance that surrounds them. My focus on Bullock and Swearengen above, for clarity and brevity’s sake, means that I have to give short shrift to the dozens of other fantastic characters and actors: rival saloon owner Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe), dour surgeon Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif), alcoholic trail guide Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), sniveling hotelier and “mayor” E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson), widowed mine owner Alma Garret (Molly Parker), Swearengen’s head henchman Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown)…I could go on, and on. From first to last, the creators do not give ground or take the easy way out once, leading characters to tragedy and celebration not because they deserve it or because the audience demands it, but because that’s life. That’s what happens. Sometimes, the innocent are cast down and the wicked exalted, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. You get the sense that you are only watching excerpts from these people’s lives, that they continue to exist between the frames and will go on long after the last fade to black – the fiction becomes a reality of its own.
Deadwood is readily available on DVD or via BitTorrent; I encourage you to throw it on the Netflix queue or download the pilot. You won’t be disappointed. Please be forewarned that Milch’s style lends itself to rampant profanity and graphic violence – because again, that’s what happens. |
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| On this bitterly cold morning... |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|09:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  irritated | ] |
The WGA Negotiating Committee punked out and caved this weekend, shaking hands with the studios on a shitty deal instead of showing they meant business by forcing the cancellation of the Oscars and the ad upfronts. Unless the membership, most of whom are understandably desperate to go back to work, votes the deal down, the strike will be over this week. Three months of relatively effective striking, rendered all for nought when they blinked at their moment of greatest leverage, assuring a deal that barely improves in any arena and leaving them in a worse position for further negotiations when the contract is up in three years. Super-good.
Roy Scheider, the actor best known for playing the lead in my favorite film of all time, Jaws, died over the weekend.
Did I mention it's unbelievably cold? |
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| Media of the Moment |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|11:34 am] |
| [ | music |
| | "Dig For Fire", the Pixies | ] |
Movies:
Eastern Promises, Hellboy (Director's Cut), Stop Making Sense, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac
Prose:
Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness In The West, Cormac McCarthy
Brasyl, Ian McDonald
Come In Alone, Warren Ellis
Writers On Comics Scriptwriting, Mark Salisbury
Comics:
Black Hole, Charles Burns
Finder: Sin-Eater, Volume I, Carla Speed McNeil
Whiteout and Whiteout: Melt, Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber
Music:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (Film Cast Recording)
Bossanova and Doolittle, the Pixies |
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| Oscar Nom Day! |
[Jan. 22nd, 2008|10:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | pleased | ] |
Good morning children! Today is one of my favorite days of the year -- Oscar Nomination Day! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 80th Academy Awards this morning in Los Angeles, and I must say I am more pleased with their selections than usual. I will discuss my personal quibbles below, but on the whole, I think this is very representative of the sterling body of work done in American film this year. Now, without further ado...
( Pat's Oscar Predictions, 2008! ) |
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| 2007 In Review, Pt. 3 - Film |
[Jan. 4th, 2008|05:37 pm] |
2007 was a great movie year in general and for me personally. Tons of awesome material was released, and I far exceeded my record for theatrical viewings. I saw 37 different movies in a theater this year, of which 34 were new releases; in chronological order, they were: Dreamgirls, Pan's Labyrinth, Children Of Men, Zodiac, 300, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Spider-Man 3, 28 Weeks Later, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End, Knocked Up, Ocean's Thirteen, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Live Free Or Die Hard, Transformers, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Sunshine, Rescue Dawn, The Bourne Ultimatum, Superbad, Hairspray, 3:10 To Yuma, Stardust, Eastern Promises, Michael Clayton, 30 Days Of Night, No Country For Old Men, Beowulf, Southland Tales, The Mist, The Golden Compass, I Am Legend, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street and Juno. I also saw three older films in a theater: Labyrinth, Aguirre The Wrath Of God and the Final Cut of Blade Runner.
Narrowing down my Top 10 was a challenge, but I didn’t have as much trouble ranking them as I anticipated. Also, please note that this list reflects my own personal biases, and I saw many well-made films that did not strike as much of a chord with me and thus did not make the cut. That said, I feel confident that this is a good representation of the best that cinema had to offer in 2007, so read and enjoy.
( The roundup! ) |
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| 2007 In Review, Pt. 2 - Books And Television |
[Jan. 2nd, 2008|02:08 pm] |
One of the best parts of no longer being in school is all of the time I have to myself. Outside of my day-job, writing articles and my weekly gaming night, I don't have any commitments - no papers to write, no rehearsals to run. I spend my weekends in Waltham, and my weeknights in Stoneham, and basically all I do is read, watch TV and go to the movies. All. The. Damn. Time. It is, um, fucking awesome. I have read more books of my own choosing this year than I have in I don't know how long. Thus, it is with great pleasure that I can deliver to you - my Top 10 Books of 2007! Not all of these were published in 2007, but they were all new to me.
( The list! )
Part 3 of my 2007 round-up (Film) will be coming on Friday, after I attend a sneak preview of There Will Be Blood on Thursday. (Ha!) |
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| 2007 In Review, Pt. 1 - Personal |
[Jan. 2nd, 2008|10:20 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | optimistic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Big Old Me", the Young Leaves | ] |
2007 was a very good year for me. Not to say that everything that happened to me was itself good - in point of fact, some of the most unpleasant experiences of my life happened in 2007. Rather, the aggregate totality of the events of 2007 amounted to a great deal of positive change in my life. To wit:
1. I became the first Hume (tied with my two-weeks-older cousin) to graduate from college.
2. I fell in love, hard, and have not yet come anywhere near hitting bottom.
3. I finally, irrevocably and gratifyingly closed the book on a friendship/emotional entanglement that has been a source of great psychic unrest for ten years. To be fair, I did not do the book-closing myself, and was very angry about it at the time. The more distant I get from it, however, the more thankful I am that it happened, and the happier I am to be rid of the other party.
4. I salvaged a close, healthy friendship out of another situation that could very well have turned into a sequel to item 3 were it not for the patience, maturity and understanding of both parties.
5. I had my writing published in a couple different webzines - unpaid, but largely unaltered and apparently well-regarded by the editorial staff at both publications.
I can honestly say that I have not felt better about myself, the direction my life is heading, or my relationships with friends and family...ever, actually.
Resolutions!
1. Get my driver's license.
2. Move to New York City.
3. Find a artistic collaborator and publish at least one comic online or in print.
4. Complete a full-length screenplay to a level of quality that would make me comfortable with showing it to someone. |
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| Media Of The Moment - Christmas Edition |
[Dec. 26th, 2007|10:45 am] |
The holidays are one of my favorite times of year for many reasons, not least of which is that it's when I acquire much of the media that will sustain me in the months to come. This year was no different!
DVDs
On the film front, I received 2001 - A Space Odyssey (Two-Disc Special Edition), Alien (Two-Disc Collector's Edition), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition), Edward Scissorhands (Widescreen Anniversary Edition), Pan's Labyrinth (New Line Two-Disc Platinum Series), and The Fly (Two-Disc Collector's Edition), serving to plug some truly gaping holes in my collection.
The big-ticket items, however, were two complete series sets. The first was a gift to myself last week, the Angel Complete Series Collector's Set, in a lightning sale on Amazon for the low, low price of $64. As of this posting, it's currently on sale for $69.99, from a list price of $139.99 and a normal Amazon price of $99.99, so you may want to grab it. From my parents, I also picked up the truly massive X-Files Ultimate Collection, which includes all 201 episodes and the movie, as well as various documentaries and collectibles (poster, comic book, etc.) Between these and my acquisition of the Carnivale, Farscape and Twin Peaks sets over the past several months, I may never watch a contemporary TV show again.
...All right, that's a lie.
Books
Receiving books as gifts affords me the opportunity to try out writers with whom I am unfamiliar, but have seen recommended on the blogs of writers I like, or occasionally reach via browsing on Amazon ("If you liked this, you might like this...") That manifested this year with Peter Watts' Blindsight, Ian McDonald's Brasyl, Matthew Hughes' Majestrum, Karl Schroeder's Sun Of Suns and Jay Lake's Trial Of Flowers.
Of course, there's something to be said for the tried and true, so I also got Comics & Sequential Art by Will Eisner, The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, The Steampunk Trilogy by Paul Di Filippo and Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan. Eisner's book is supposed to be essential reading for anyone who wants to create comics. I've been on a huge Stross kick since last year, when I read his collaboration with Cory Doctorow, the novella Appeals Court. I moved immediately to his new novel at the time, Accelerando, available at that link for free download. He's had another two novels published since then, so I've jumped between those and catching up on his back catalog. I've gotten in to Di Filippo's short fiction in the past few years; this book collects his loosely-connected steampunk trilogy, probably his most famous work. Morgan wrote a trilogy of SF noir novels that I absolutely adore, and while this book is unrelated to that setting and protagonist, I'm still psyched to read it.
I'll be doing a 2007 Film Year In Review soon, which will be slightly thrown off by There Will Be Blood not releasing outside of New York and LA until mid-January, but we shall persevere... |
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