Sun, 07 Dec 2003
Love at Century's End
Moulin Rouge could have been
a pretty good movie. It wasn't. It could have been a great musical. It wasn't.
As it was, it was a pretty okay musical.
How could it have been a pretty good movie? Easy. Take out all the song and
dance and replace it with spoken scenes to convey the same mood and information.
It then becomes a pretty interesting story about a love triangle between an
ambitious actress who is unknowingly dying of consumption, an idealistic
writer and a villainous powerful man, set against end of the century frenzy.
How could it have been a great musical? Harder, but still doable. Take out
all the songs which are covers. Write original songs and let the cast show
their obvious singing talents with songs they can make their own.
But. That's not what this movie was. This movie was a hodge-podge of pop
music, flashing costuming, overdoses of dancing and camp staging and
fun with CGI. Distracting at best, off-putting and annoying at worst, this
movie was disappointing for me mostly because of what it could have been.
posted at 12:49 PST (-0800)
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Blackadder Goes Forth
War is hell.
World war is mass insanity.
Blackadder in world war is delightful.
Sort of.
So this season of
Blackadder focuses on World
War
I,
the Great War. A time of bleak and horrifying pointless death and thus
perfect backdrop for black humor.
It returns several favorites from season two, including
Rik Mayall as Flasheart, this time
an airborne fighting ace;
Miranda Richardson, barely
recognizable out of her Queenie costume; most excitingly,
Tim McInnerny
returns as a regular, no longer the foppish Lord Percy Percy but now the
vindictive and high-strung Darling.
Now, this changes the dynamic. With season two, the only season I've seen
before, Blackadder was thwarted by the impersonal malice of the monarchy and
clergy as well as the bumbling of his henchmen. Here, he's actively being
persecuted by the flunky of his superior. Which changes the flavor and
causes me to root more for Blackadder. Not only is he twenty yards from men
who hate him impersonally and have large munitions, he's under the command of
someone influenced by a personal antagonist of his.
There's quite a bit of fun with Baldrick's bodily secretions, and sex and
money remain the comedy elements they've always been, but the dark humor is
substantially more dark for the setting and the end of the season was bleak
and sobering for me. If you watch this on DVD, be sure to check out the
footnotes, as well.
posted at 12:40 PST (-0800)
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Everything's All Right
I know, everyone has already seen Jesus Christ Superstar. But I never had. I hadn't even
heard more than one song from it. I'd heard people rant and rave about it for years without having any especial interest in it. I had quite enough of
Jesus when I was a kid.
That said, the songs in this are infectious. It's a week since I saw it and I'm still singing snippets from it. I saw the
1973 version so I can't compare it to other versions. I've never seen it on stage.
If I were able to carry the part off, I really liked the songs and role of Judas Iscariot. My second choice would be the Caiaphas with Herod a close third.
I'm more the Herod look and sound, I suppose. Casting in general on this was
amazing, specifically that of Jesus, Judas, Mary and the Caiaphas. On several
occasions, I forgot they were acting and got caught up in the narrative.
The framing of it, with the crew taking a bus out in the desert, doing the show
and then leaving at the end [all save one] was a nice touch and helped invite me
in beyond the fourth wall. I was caught up by the tale and enjoyed myself
immensely.
No response here to this interpretation of the martyrdom of Christ; if you really
want someone else's opinion, ask a Christian. But if you want some catchy songs
and absorbing acting, this is pretty spiffy.
posted at 12:21 PST (-0800)
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Sex High
So if you've known me for any length of time, you'll have realized I like porn. Pr0n, erotica, smut, et cetera. This includes comic books of what is laughably
termed an 'adult nature'. Don't get me wrong, these are quite often awesome, hilarious, titillating and stunning. But I was far more in to them long before
I was legally termed an adult.
Probably my favorite artist is consistently Michael Manning and I've got most of
the books of his from nbm Amerotica. The latest to fall in to my hands is
In A Metal Web II. It appears to be part of a sequel to Hydrophidian, itself a sequel to
The Spider Garden.
So, the question you want answered first is: is it hot? If you like black and white fetish sex of beings of ambiguous, fluid gender, yes. Yes, it is.
Less important questions:
- Does it make sense? Not really. But aside from Tranceptor, none of his works make much narrative sense.
- Can I enjoy this book without reading any of the others? Of course. You're not reading it for the story.
- Is there anything other than kinky inhuman sex in this book? Yes. There is some political intrigue, some involuntary drug use and some
alien tek.
- Who is this book best for? Someone who likes sex and coloring books, though the paper stock is lousy for crayons. If the binding is
similar to past Manning books from the Amerotica line, after four or five readings, pages will be coming out, suitable for marker coloring and putting up on
the refrigerator of your mum's house.
- Is there anything to not like about this book? It's too short. It feels like the thinnest of his Amerotica work.
If you've read Spider Garden and Hydrophidian and [one presumes] In a Metal Web, you'll probably want this. If you're asking yourself, "Why have I never heard of
this Michael Manning fellow?" you're better off picking up Tranceptor, first, or even Cathexis. The former is a co-created work of science fiction with pony
girls and lethal psychic hot chicks which possesses the present flaw of being the only work of the story, and the latter is a collection of short stories
which possesses the flaw that they make no sense, though they're awfully pretty to look at and usually a good litmus test for his stuff. If you find them
hot, you'll enjoy much of the rest of his work.
posted at 10:34 PST (-0800)
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Grave Repercussions
Before I get in to the rest of this review, I want to make sure you realize that if you read this one, you shouldn't just read it.
Look at the artwork on 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call. Look at every freaking panel, follow the stories happening only in pictures, see how the
pictures and words play together. The dialogue is strong, meaningful, impacting. But the dialogue is only half the story. The expressions of characters
reacting, the small events that twine around the centerpiece, it's exquisite.
Now. Gushing aside. Years ago I picked up 100 Bullets #1 and flipped through it and had such a visceral reaction that I put it on my pull list and I
kept getting it in single issues for years. But I never again read it. I couldn't tell you why. I suppose it was a lower priority than my job or the
people I spent time with or the ways I wasted my time. During my renewed efforts to convert my single issues to tpbs, I picked this trade up and now I
am very, very sorry that I didn't actually read 100 Bullets in all that time I was buying it.
I like dark, twisted, noir stories where the happiest possible ending is surviving another day of your shitty life. That's what this title offers.
There's a sinister conspiracy underneath, alluded to from the beginning of this book, but that's not the story I'm reading. I'm reading about the choices
between family and honor that Dizzy Cordova faces. I'm reading about Lee's attempts to win back the life that was stolen from him. I'm reading about
people trying to do right up to their waist in a sewer. It's never easy but it's often poignant.
This tradebound collects the start of the series [the first five issues and a story from Vertigo: Winter's Edge] and is a visually rewarding, emotionally
compelling read. No super-powered goofs in spandex, here. Just realistic people facing tough choices and armed to the teeth with the ability to do
physical and emotional damage to themselves and those around them. Go read this one. Don't wait like I did.
posted at 09:52 PST (-0800)
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There Ain't Worse Than Me in All of Hell
Sooo, if you've jumped in to Preacher late, buying up later tradebounds or not even read it yet, just had someone recommend it to you [and here it belatedly
occurs to me that I owe Dan Wojcik a debt of gratitude for first telling me I had to read Preacher; thanks, Dan!] you will at some point
wonder what the hell is going on here. Ordinarily I would recommend one start at the very beginning, read until the end, and then you'll know as much as
you're going to know about what the hell was going on there.
Barring annotations, of course.
But if you think you want to read Preacher but don't want to commit to hunting up the first tpb, you might want to start with the fourth, Preacher: Ancient History.
The book collects three stories, originally published as Specials. So they're not part of the published run of Preacher, proper. But they are part of the story.
In point of fact, these are Story Before the Story works. So you don't need to have read them. You can get the meat of Preacher off the run itself. But if you
really want to crack open the bones and suck the marrow, here's a good thick femur of it.
It's got Saint of Killers, the biography of that ominous presence. Reading this won't spoil any of the regular title for you and it's awfully pretty to look
at in parts [and gory in places, sometimes the same places] and has some nice riffs on the fictional West colliding with the genuine West. A fun read.
It's got the Story of You-Know-Who, which is prettier to look at, but more revolting to think about, if one has reached the Kids These Days stage of life.
A tale of squandered youth and bad decisions and climbing up out of the wreckage of one's own life. Charming in places but not as interesting for me as Saint of
Killers. Yes, I really am recommending a story about cowboys over a story about teenagers. But that's okay, you get both for the same cover price.
Additionally, you get the gem of the piece, Good Old Boys! Now, if you read Preacher, you already know and hate Jody & T.C. in equal measure to adoring those
lovable inbred muppets of gleeful immorality. They're funny and disgusting and this story is about them meeting up with a girl in trouble and her would-be
protector. There's lots of brutality, lots of over the top mayhem and lots of laughs. I just love rustic perverts and this story has at least two of them.
Read this one if you don't know anything about Preacher and don't want to commit to the regular run without knowing something about it or if you've already
read the regular one but ignored the Specials. It's full of death and, in the last story, sex.
posted at 09:36 PST (-0800)
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Fall of the Snob
Here's a good, dark comic book full of grubby successes and glorious failures. Hellblazer: Fear and Loathing.
You can find itemized summaries of the nerdy details on the web, though the
page is theoretically about Swamp Thing. The continuitypages seem to be one of the few good
resources for people late to the comic reading game, so I'm glad for the work presented there.
But I didn't know any of the things documented there before I read this comic book and after found them out, it doesn't really change my sense of
this comic book. Hellblazer: Fear and Loathing is a nice set of stories. I think the core story line here is about the degradation of the
angel Gabriel. It might not be. The core story line might be about John Constantine's failure to maintain his romantic relationship and subsequent
descent in to despair. But there are other story lines which cross over these two threads with flourishes and fancies.
There are themes of family and friendship and disappointment, with bits of magic to remind you this is a fantastical narrative, not some kind of
soap opera, that you're reading. Angels get laid. Swamp Thing accelerates the growth of a pot plant. There's a talking rabbit, a disappearing
lesser god, an immortal bastard gets his head chopped off. That kind of thing.
In the final assessment, it's a fun book with a pretty look but if you haven't heard of Hellblazer by now, you're probably going to have more fun
reading Preacher. If this were your first exposure to Hellblazer, you might think it's all about failure and despair. That wouldn't do.
posted at 09:13 PST (-0800)
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