And we're back.  Took last week off from writing this because I had literally nothing to talk about.  There I was, hadn't finished any books, hadn't watched any films... a grim week in Badger Town. 

Starting in the world of film:  Colin Firth starred in a small film in 2009 called A Single Man, and it's a must-see for anyone with a sense of empathy and a soul.  It's based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, who also wrote the original fiction that Cabaret was based on (Cabaret is one of the few movie musicals I actually like).  It's directed by, of all people, a fashion designer named Tom Ford, so right away you know that the film is going to be intensely visual.  And that it certainly is.  One of Ford's tricks that I particularly loved was his use of color.  He would shoot a scene through a drab, grayish filter, but then when a character experienced a pleasant sensation or intense emotion, color would suddenly bloom onto the screen.  It was a nice way of conveying emotion without words.

The plot is concerned with a man, George Falconer, whose partner of 16 years recently died in a car accident.   It follows a day in George's life, which also happens to be the day that he has chosen to be the LAST one of his life.  We watch him go through his preparations, see him saying goodbye to old friends, watch him say to his students and neighbors all the things he's wanted to say for years.  Ford's directorial style takes some getting used to (there was one scene that I thought was supposed to be a memory, and it was some time before I realized that it had taken place in the present...), but he's much clearer than a lot of deliberately opaque indie-film directors I've seen.  You'll need to pay attention, but you should never feel lost.

Beyond its interesting arthouse style, the film resonates with genuine emotion and sadness, and a weird sense of humor.  I always love a storyteller who knows how to bring together humor and sorrow, which are much more linked than we realize.  The character work is just excellent, very realistic.  As with Cabaret, Isherwood was also concerned here with the collision of gay rights with other minority groups (and how different minority groups can tend to surprisingly NOT work together), but while the film invests a little time in discussing the politics of power and minority rights, it's more concerned with the emotional core of George's situation.  More than anything, it's the story of a man with a broken heart, miles and miles from home, whose partner's family wouldn't even allow him to attend the funeral.  The ending is a bit unexpected, but it's the ending that makes the most sense.  Life can be a beautiful thing, but we can't always save each other from its tragedies. 


On the novel front, I finally finished Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities.  Bonfire is a social satire on a grand scale.  It's about a white upper-class alpha male, Sherman McCoy, who gets involved in a case of manslaughter in the South Bronx.  The result is a clash between high society and its lowest, poorest, most oppressed element.

That's just a high-level description of the plot, though.  The book is 690 pages, so it's not really so much a "clash" as it is a Victor Hugo-esque hit-by-hit description of an epic war.  We enter the criminal justice system of the Bronx, the boredom of its District Attorneys and their fervent hope that someday they'll get to prosecute a WHITE defendant.  We see the tabloid press versus the "legitimate" press, and how their tactics remarkably coincide.  There are upper-class parties where no one will talk to Sherman McCoy as he flounders on Wall Street, but suddenly once he's in the news he's everyone's favorite person.  There's the black community of the Bronx, led by a charismatic "Reverend" who is no more looking out for his community's interests than the denizens of Park Avenue are.  These are just the elements, to try to describe the actual plot would require me to type until my hands fell off.

What's most interesting here is that there are no saintly characters.  In the fight between the white community and black community, Wolfe pulls absolutely no punches, showing the saints and the sinners on both sides (which our well-honed white guilt would ordinarily tell us not to do).  All of the main characters are manipulators of the public, and the public itself comes off as both the greatest villain of the piece or the greatest victim.  In terms of its main characters, though, the novel is mainly concerned with white people, and at times a queasy feeling sets in that Wolfe might be more than a bit racist.  But it's important not to confuse racism with the PORTRAYAL of racism:  Wolfe is very blunt about how his white characters feel about the blacks and Latinos, and he's equally blunt in demonstrating that, by and large, black people in New York in the 1980s were poor and poorly educated, because that is exactly how the white power structure wanted them to be.  Black neighborhoods were, regrettably, areas of violent crime and high drug usage.  The 1980s were really not a good time for minorities of any kind, and Wolfe doesn't hide that.  (And while there have been improvements, this is still a pervasive problem in America today)

For what is essentially a satire, Wolfe keeps things surprisingly grounded.  The majority of the book is very realistic and very well-researched, and only at a few points does Wolfe launch off into the intentionally-humorous territory favored by most satirists (unfortunately, his sense of humor tends to lean toward slapstick... and he's really bad at slapstick).  Satire doesn't have to be unrealistic in order to be absurd.  Sometimes reality is more absurd than anything else.

The size of Wolfe's cast makes the plot feel a little scattered throughout the first third of the book, but it all ties together in the end quite nicely.  The ending itself is a bit strange, in that it doesn't bring the story through to its ultimate endpoint.  But though we may not know exactly how everything will turn out, we know the important part.  We know that everyone will get what they... well, not quite what they deserved, but they will all get what they earned. 

Had some awesome return-to-television moments this week.  I finally got my hands on a copy of Futurama Vol. 5, featuring the gang's Comedy Central debut.  I was happy to see that the movies were not ignored, and that this series picks up right where "Into the Wild Green Yonder" left off.  Unfortunately, the first few episodes were mostly devoted to getting any new viewers familiar with Futurama's characters and concepts, and weren't quite up to snuff because of that.  The humor was also more tailored to a Comedy Central audience, which is to say it was pretty juvenile ("Pubic" Library, singing boils, a two-headed goat throwing up into a hot tub...).  But after some initial hiccups, things got a lot better very quickly.  There are some absolute gems in this season, and it's safe to say that Futurama is now back in fine form.

But the best TV-related part of my week was seeing Parks and Recreation finally return for its third season.  I'd be surprised if NBC renews it for a fourth, given the obvious lack of support, but if good shows stayed on television then it wouldn't be television, right?  Thursday's episode was a triumphant return (if you want to make a great series even better, it never hurts to add Rob Lowe to the cast), and this will be a series I watch every week on www.hulu.com (along with Community and The Simpsons).  Netflix subscribers can also stream the first two seasons of Parks and Rec online (the first season is okay but mercifully very short; you'll see what I'm talking about if you make it to Season 2).

Rank-o-rama:  I mentioned Cabaret, so what other film musicals do I actually like?  Moulin Rouge, absolutely.  Peter Blake's Victor/Victoria.  Funny Girl, and Ms. Streisand's other classic, Yentl.  Fiddler on the Roof, that one's good.  And Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera.  I was sad when Gerard Butler became a stupid action hero, because he was actually an awesome Phantom.

After reveling in the sadness of A Single Man, I was thinking about other movies and TV episodes that were relentlessly sad.  I Am Legend is probably one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen.  The scene near the end of Toy Story 3, where they're all in the dump, sliding toward the fire... even when you've seen the thing already, even when you know they're going to make it out, it's still a hard scene to watch.  The Body, from Buffy Season 5.  That was one of the best episodes of a TV series I've ever seen, and I don't have any desire to ever put myself through that again.  But number one on this list is absolutely and without a doubt Futurama, Jurassic Bark.  The one where Fry finds the fossilized remains of his old dog.  I can not watch the ending of that episode.  I absolutely can not watch the ending of that episode.

American Film Badger:  We're up to #10 on the AFI lists, and let's see what we'll be talking about today... on the 1998 list, the #10 slot goes to Singin' in the Rain.  This was #5 on the 2007 list, so I'd discussed it before:  I like the setting, I find the stuff about early film to be a lot of fun and endlessly fascinating, but the musical numbers serve absolutely no purpose beyond derailing a perfectly good plot.

As for #10 on the 2007 list, that slot belongs to another pointless and painful musical, The Wizard of Oz.  I talked about this one earlier too.  It's a stupid, stupid movie, bolstered by strong special effects and set design that elevate a real piece of crap to the status of a well-made piece of crap.

Since those two were repeats, let's go ahead and look at #11 too.  #11 on the 1998 list is Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life.  You know, putting aside its preachiness and all the stuff about angels, I really do like this one.  The Depression and post-Depression eras produced some wonderfully honest and moving films about living through difficult circumstances, and the story of George Bailey searching for something to live for and finding someone is genuinely touching.  Because that is why we're on this earth, to help each other and to get each other through the day.

#11 on the 2007 list is a personal favorite, Charles Chaplin's City Lights.  This is probably Hollywood's last great silent film, and one of the best comedies of all time.  Chaplin was a romantic and a cynic at the same time; he believed the world was a cruel and heartless place, but that individual people were capable of acts of great love and kindness.  His films encapsulated the plight of the downtrodden, and the ability to find hope and peace by coming together against the odds.  This really came to a head in his next film, Modern Times, which depicted a staggeringly cruel word of machinery and labor disputes, with a hopeless couple caught in the middle of it.  Film director Preston Sturgess would later retaliate against the kind of socially-conscious comedies that Chaplin and Capra produced, his theory being that the role of comedy was not to comment on the world, but to provide laughter and entertainment that allowed filmgoers to escape from the world.  American filmmakers really took that theory to heart, and never since have they produced the kind of loving yet wounded comedies that Chaplin  made so well.

This week's reading:  Finally got a little extra money and used it to grab some comics that I've been behind on, including the end of the Ultimatum saga (and the first six issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, which is a lot like the TV show only bigger and without any bad actors).  So naturally I had to dig through my stacks and pull out the entire Ultimatum saga and all the major events leading up to it, because if I'm going to read the ending I might as well read the whole story.  Still reading at this point, and then once I'm done I'm be able to talk intelligently about a comic book storyline that everyone else already read and has completely forgotten about.  And won't I be the cool one then?