• It's yer old buddy Andy again, and that means it's time for another week of AlterBadger
• The most widely talked-about novel of this year was undoubtedly Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom." Franzen is a slow writer; he hasn't written a novel since 2000's The Corrections, and before that was 1992's Strong Motion. Strong Motion is very good, The Corrections is mind-blowing. So interest was high; even Barack Obama purchased an advance reader's copy. And Freedom more than lived up to its own expectations. This is a sprawling, massive story stretching across several lives. It's also a deeply introspective novel, concerned with the very intimate details of the emotions which the characters trigger in each other, paying particular attention to the complex love-hate relationships they maintain. To describe the plot simply (it's too massive to describe in detail), it's about a married couple, their college-age children, and the people they love (who are not always necessarily each other), and why they stay together in spite of their obvious hatred. Arcing through all this is a sharp-toothed satire about population control and the destruction of the environment, which is a nice metaphor: we love and yet destroy the planet in the same way we love and destroy each other. It also speaks to the way we evince blind faith that we'll be taken care of in spite of our destructive tendencies. Freedom is a surprisingly difficult novel, due to the sheer volume of information that is covered, and the non-linear way in which it's presented. This is a book that requires a bit of dedication, but it is an undeniably great work. I do have to say with a little disappointment that I think I liked The Corrections a bit better. But on its own, Freedom is an excellent novel, and since Oprah snared it for her book club we can rest assured that there will be plenty of copies available to buy. And you can peel that little Oprah sticker right off, and tell everybody what an independent thinker you are.
• Another year has passed, and that means Woody Allen's new film "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is now in theaters. Woody has released a film nearly every year for the last forty years, while maintaining a level of quality that defines him as one of our great filmmakers. I happen to not be one of those people who says he hasn't done anything good since the 80s, but even his detractors would be amazed to see this new film. To start with, obviously the cast is good: Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, and Josh Brolin are the big names. Even beyond the big names, every other actor was pitch-perfect, a true rarity in film. But the cast couldn't shine if the characters weren't so perfectly written; Woody works hard to create real people with genuine emotions and problems, and it shows here. To talk about the plot is, again, difficult, it's too hugely complicated to describe briefly (the movie trailer really leaves you scratching your head). As a general theme, the characters are members of a family who all feel a sense of fate to their actions, an inevitability that things will turn out well for them, and they act with rampant selfishness to achieve their ends. Woody takes it further, though, neatly tying issues of religious faith and fate into the plot and showing that any kind of blind certainty in the future will lead to problems. It's wildly funny and satisfyingly dark, a true comedy for adults, another Hollywood rarity (I find most "adult comedies" are basically designed for seventeen year-olds sneaking in the back door of the theater to see titties). I almost always love Woody Allen films, but this one was especially good, and for me ranks as a must-see. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is in limited release, but you can check the film's website here for theaters in your area showing the film, and watch the vaguely confusing trailer as well. Meanwhile, next year's film, Midnight in Paris, is already in post-production, and the cast list will rock your world.
• Season 6 of The Office hit DVD last month, and I finally was able to rent all of it recently. I've said before that The Office is possibly my favorite television sitcom, and Season 5 was my absolute favorite season. So it was inevitable that eventually they'd let me down. Season 6 contained two major jump-the-shark events, a big wedding and the birth of a baby, and I have to say that the wedding was pretty good though not great, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the baby episode. Not because I like babies, but probably more because I don't. These shark-jumping episodes fortunately did not drive the main plot of the season, but unfortunately without them there wasn't a lot to latch on to. The series did continue to reflect some real-world recession issues, leading to a fairly major change that did prove to be quite interesting but somehow failed to provide a driving force to the plot. The interpersonal relationships were a mixed bag: some pretty serious stuff, but also some fluff. I can remember dozens of great moments and some really good episodes, but as a whole it never quite gelled into a cohesive, season-long story arc. On the other hand, we did get some awesome appearances from Kathy Bates. You win some, you lose some.
• For the past five years, the small press comics industry has produced an annual Best American Comics anthology, and I was lucky enough to rescue the 2007 edition from a clearance shelf. The comics are taken from small press books, minicomics, and webcomics, with the intent being to gather together the best independent, adult-oriented art and stories. Right off the bat you'll find that these are very attractive books; the quality of the paper and the ink are very high, and the book is FILLED with art (there's a comic on the inside of the dust jacket). So it's a well-produced package. Unfortunately, the first few stories are the bane of the independent comics world: autobiographical comics. Artists will always have a tendency to believe that their lives are fascinating to everyone. They are not. One minicomic spent several pages on a character ordering CDs through the mail, which the Department of Homeland Security would classify as unethical torture. But then the book transitioned to fiction and experimental work, and though experimental work is always hit and miss it was generally good, and the fiction was excellent (and yeah, even some of the autobiography was pretty good). For me the highlights included the work by Art Spiegelman (who wrote Maus, and here provides stories of growing up in the 50s), R. Crumb (quirky underground art and lots of fun), Jonathan Bennett (pigeons tearing at a discarded chicken bone, a neat metaphor), Kevin Huizenga ("what would I do if my wife suddenly died?"), Sammy Harkham (Jews in the Ukraine), Miriam Katin (Jews in Germany), Ben Katchor (weirdly fun stuff involving rich people who buy expensive shoes just so they can throw them away in front of their friends), Adrian Tomine (Asian men and their obsession with white girls), Gilbert Hernandez (the various and sundry obsessions men have with sex), the experimental artist C.F., and Dan Zettwoch's beautiful story of the 1937 Louisville flood. Naturally you can find all five Best American Comics volumes on Amazon (the 2010 volume just came out last month, and includes some of Crumb's Genesis, and also a bit of Scott Pilgrim...), and if you're ever wandering through a Borders like I was and you find one on a clearance shelf, do yourself a favor and buy it without a second thought.
• Last week I posted my list of Halloween movies. There were a couple on there that I hadn't actually seen yet, and now that I have I just wanted to mention them briefly. Zombieland is a fun, funny, and surprisingly warm-hearted romp through an apocalyptic America. The zombie-inflicted violence is minimal, confined mostly to the first few minutes (though violence inflicted upon zombies is plentiful). Most of the film is concerned with the relationship of four strangers working together to survive, culminating in an awesome final fight. Well done. Nosferatu, from 1929, is a creepy German silent film, shot in the uniquely visual Expressionist style of the time. Something about the quality of 20s-era cinematography feels very intimate and real in a way that today's highly-polished films lack; it looks like someone's old home movies, and that actually makes it substantially more unsettling. The plot can be a little hard to follow at some points, and of course some of it will feel cheesy to modern viewers, but the rich visuals make up for those defects, creating a beautifully eerie film. The Invisible Man brings together a cavalcade of bad actors from 1933. Seriously, there is some terrible overacting in this one. But the plot is quite good, suitably dark and actually very effective at conveying the panic that would result from an invisible man being on the loose. The visual design and cinematography are striking, not to mention the special effects which are terrific even by today's standards. A slight overabundance of comic relief holds the film back, but all in all it's one of the better classic Universal Monster pictures.
• Rank-o-rama! How would I rank the 6 seasons of The Office? Starting with the best: 5, 3, 4, 2, 6, 1. Though 2 might actually be better than 4. How would I rank the classic Universal Monster films? Best to worst: The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, The Invisible Man, Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon. Top five Woody Allen films? Hmm... Annie Hall, Match Point, Husbands and Wives, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Deconstructing Harry.
• This week's reading: Bram Stoker's Dracula. I read a bit of it back in 2008 and always wanted to get back to it. I guess after watching Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Nosferatu, and the first half of Vampyr, I was somewhat in the mood..

ADDITIONAL MASTER BADGER RECOMMENDATION: Now that you've seen Nosferatu, watch Shadow of the Vampire. Really, Netflix it right now.