Couldn't finish it.  Made it halfway through the last season of Angel before my enthusiasm finally just gave out.  I hopped on Netflix Instant Play, watched the episode with the puppets and the one with Spike and Angel in Rome, and that was that.  Maybe I'll still watch the series finale, though... I saw a bit of it when they aired, and I know it ends with the cast surrounded by enemies and facing certain death.  Now if I could just see them EXPERIENCE that certain death, that'd be even better.

I didn't expect 10 Items or Less to be too great, either, but I was wrong about that.  10 Items is a terrific indie comedy from 2006 starring Morgan Freeman (who basically plays himself, though he's never named in the film).  While researching for an upcoming role, Freeman finds himself at a rundown hispanic grocery store in a poor neighborhood in California, with no way to get home.  A cashier takes pity on him and decides to help him get home, and in exchange he takes it upon himself to try to improve her life.

It's hard to describe the film without making it sound cheesy, and maybe it is a little bit, but Freeman's warm humor and humanity are on full display here, and it turns this genuinely funny comedy into something more.  When Freeman went into the poor neighborhood, I expected to see something along the lines of Bulworth:  gritty depictions of harsh life, gangs, drugs... director Brad Silberling made an interesting choice though, and instead of going for the visceral he depicted the quiet desperation of the lower-middle class, something not as splashy but more universal, not as heartbreaking but more pathetically sad.  This is about a woman who nearly skips a job interview because she can't go to Target to buy a new shirt, who has to beg to borrow her own car from her ex-husband.  As tragedies go, these aren't comparable to those in, say, The Bicycle Thief, but that doesn't make them any less tragic to the people experiencing them.

As I said, what really shines throughout the film is Morgan Freeman, who seems to carry a warm conviction that everyone is worthwhile and worthy of love.  He's extremely charismatic, and engaging with everyone, and I really get the feeling he's not so much playing a role here as just being himself.  But for as upbeat and inspirational as Freeman is, he's not condescending.  This isn't a film about how your dreams will come true if you believe in yourself.  This is a film about hard work, and how some things will happen and other things won't, but if you stop working then you stop living.  A good message, and a realistic one.

It's a truly loveable film, and well worth seeing.

On the other end of the happiness spectrum, we have The Children's Hour, with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine.  This is another film from director William Wyler, whose The Best Years of Our Lives I positively reviewed a while ago.  It's from 1961, which you'll want to keep in mind as I describe the plot:  the film takes place at a private girls' boarding school run by two women.  One particular little girl, spoiled and rich and spoiled, misbehaves constantly and is always finding herself at odds with her headmistresses.  While home on vacation, she decides to do whatever is necessary to avoid going back, and she tells her grandmother that she saw the two headmistresses kissing each other but that, innocent little girl that she is, she doesn't understand what that means.

Of course she knows exactly what it means, and things spiral downward from there.  The film boldly portrays the malicious homophobia of the WASP gentry, and shows how much even a simple rumor could absolutely destroy two people's lives (and let's not pretend the same situation couldn't happen the same way today).  It also repeatedly calls into question the supposed innocence of children, in fine Lord-of-the-Flies fashion.  In short, it's not an easy film to watch.  This is dark, horrible stuff, but enthralling.

This is not a film about homosexual issues, though (the word "lesbian" is never once used in the script).  The characters all treat homosexuality as an abhorrence, as a dark mental disorder, and there's no one to suggest that it might be normal.  Toward the very end, there is a scene that acknowledges that homosexuality is not a choice, and this was dangerous enough for a 1961 filmmaker to say.  The discussion of homosexuality itself goes no further, but what we have in its place is a vivid, dark portrait of raw hate.  Audrey Hepburn plays her part well as always, but Shirley MacLaine is transcendent (not many actresses at the time had the guts to realistically portray a truly disturbed person, but MacLaine does it here and in The Apartment with fury and gusto).  Most of the other actors unfortunately can't keep up, and the balls-to-the-wall 60s soundtrack shatters subtlety at some points (film soundtracks are, generally, my least favorite part of the cinematic experience).  This, and just the overall darkness of the piece, make The Children's Hour impossible to love but very easy to appreciate.  One Netflix reviewer said it was so hard to watch that they couldn't even make it to the end.  And I don't think I'd be spoiling anything by saying it doesn't end well.

I had never seen all of Amadeus, and that is a problem that I was able to remedy last week.  If you're not familiar with the basic plot of Amadeus and/or live in a cave, it's about the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his greatest admirer/most bitter enemy, Salieri.  Salieri was the court composer of Vienna, celebrated in his time and absolutely forgotten today (his operas appear to be entirely absent from the Metropolitan Opera's repertoire).  In this version of events, the film being widely regarded as not at all historically accurate, Salieri recognizes Mozart's genius but does everything in his power to destroy him, because he can't stand the thought of such a young and wild man being so gifted (this portrayal of his character is evidently true).

The first forty minutes of the film suffer from some really terrible pacing issues, the plot galloping along so wildly that it leaves a fair bit of confusion in its wake.  But once it settles down to its main purpose, the story is told brilliantly, full of emotion and humor and gorgeous music.  The music is used to fantastic effect, framing sequences, revealing inner monologues, and sometimes even telling the story itself.  It surprises me that this is based on a play, because I have trouble imagining it as one.  As a film, it's grand and spectacular while never betraying its emotional core.

Really wonderful acting, too.  Really, really, wonderful.  And a fantastic depiction of Viennese fashion, most wig-and-pantaloon historical epics are afraid to show the real absurdity of what these people actually wore.  Amadeus portrays Vienna's elite in all their bizarre powdered glory, and it's something to see.  Anyway, what else can be said about it, you've heard of it, you know it's a classic.  A fine lesson on classical music and opera, and a hell of a lot of fun besides.

Finally moving from film to literature, let's talk about Tai-Pan. Tai-Pan, as you'll remember if you've been paying way too much attention to me, is the second book of James Clavell's Asian Saga, the first book being Shogun.  Shogun was a good book with a lot of problems; Clavell set out to explore the totality of Japanese existence circa 1600, and as a result he ran afoul of some truly horrible pacing issues, where the book raced along and ground to a screeching halt all at the same time.

Tai-Pan is a much tighter affair.  The story concerns the founding of the British colony of Hong Kong, and the merchants and military men who settled there.  Particularly it centers on a man named Dirk Struan, and for god's sake never tell anybody that you're reading a book with a character named Dirk Struan.  One bad name choice aside, Straun is a strong character, tough and intelligent and devious without being cold-hearted.  The Chinese government wants him out, the British think he's wasting their time with Hong Kong, and his rival merchants want him dead.  Struan's story is classic adventure, with pirate attacks, secret plots to overthrow the Chinese Emperor, sea battles, desperate races against time to save a life... it's a tightly-paced story, a whirlwind, which is not something one often finds in a 700+ page novel.

Like Shogun, the story is based off of real people and real events, but names and circumstances are changed to allow greater freedom to explore the world of China in 1841.  Unfortunately we don't see as much of China as we see of Japan in Shogun; aside from a few settlements, China was absolutely closed off to foreigners at this time.  There are a number of Chinese characters in the story, and we gain enough insight into the Chinese mind and lifestyle to gain a decent understanding of their culture, just not quite as much as I hoped.

Still, if I have to sacrifice some expansive knowledge to gain a perfect plot, so be it.  I understand that Clavell is mainly interested in the points of conflict between Europeans and Asians, and if China was mostly closed to foreigners then that has to limit the scope of the conflict.  In these points of conflict, Clavell is as usual very even-handed.  The Chinese are better than the Europeans in some ways, the Europeans are better in others.  Clavell is neither a grizzled flag-waving patriot nor a doe-eyed Japanophile who automatically assumes that everything Asian is better.  Clavell stays objective throughout, and this is definitely one of his best qualities.

But okay, here I am calmly analyzing a fast-paced and truly wonderful adventure story.  How do I portray the excitement?  (Did I mention there were pirates?  Who doesn't love a good pirate story!)  It's hard to convey, so let me just reiterate again that this is a 700+ page book, and it never at any point feels slow or dragging.  Clavell is relentless in putting his hero through his paces, and he accurately portrays all the danger and constant risk involved in the enterprise.  The characters feel a bit one-dimensional when they're introduced, but as the story progresses they're rounded out beautifully.  Even after 700 pages, I was sad when it ended.  I wanted to read more of them.  I wasn't ready to say goodbye.  And the ending is truly perfect, the absolute culmination of Clavell's two main points:  that life is all about luck, good or bad, and that it would take something truly beyond human to destroy a man like Struan.

Lately I've really found myself wanting to pick up another volume of Essential X-Men.  I have the first four volumes, and Marvel has released nine in total.  There's really no way to describe the X-Men in the 1980s.  They were phenomenal, and unlike anything that had ever been published before.  They are the only reason that Chris Claremont still has a job writing comics 20 years later.  Back then, before the X-Men became a huge established franchise, he could and would do anything with them, and it was awesome.

TV-o-rama:  What TV shows am I watching right now?  Making my way through The West Wing, of course... season 4 of Mad Men, which is still as good as ever... been watching some old first-season episodes of Cheers, and they're pretty fun for an old sitcom, some episodes are better than others and I'm definitely looking forward to Frasier showing up... Seinfeld is still as ludicrously fantastic as I remembered... and of course I've been working my way through The Simpsons again, because yeah, it's The Simpsons... in terms of new shows, I watch The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation every week, and I also watch Community but lately I can't work up too much enthusiasm for it.  Some episodes are beautifully done and emotionally striking, and others are just ironic, detached parodies that provide a few solid laughs but feel vapid in the end.  They seem to be settling into their new role as a pop-culture commentary show, and that's a departure from the much more grounded and satisfying first season. 

This week's reading:  I'm already a third of the way into the 1200-page brick of a book that is Clavell's next volume, Gai-Jin.  It brings together plot threads and themes from Shogun and Tai-Pan, bringing to a close the pre-modern era in Asia before European influence became pervasive.  I've been looking forward to this one since the first time I read Tai-Pan a few years ago, and I'm finding that 1) I'm glad I waited and read Shogun first, and 2) it was worth the wait.

Look, I just can't do it. I don't care if they are only a dollar an issue at the used book store, I can not bring myself to buy the official Angel Season 6 comic book series.  I just can't do it.  Just can't.  Can't, can't, can't.

But I did finally finish James Clavell's historical novel Shogun, and I'm on to the next volume of the Asian Saga, Tai-Pan.  What can I say about Shogun?  I don't know, it's kind of hard, because I really liked the first half of it, but the second half kind of dragged for me.  And when the second half of your book is the same size of most authors' entire book, that's a bit of a problem.

So, plot:  John Blackthorne is a British sailor who ends up in Japan with his crew.  But he's smarter than the rest of his crew, which earns him the attention of the local daimyo, eventually landing him in the hands of one of the country's most powerful daimyos, Lord Toranaga.  Toranaga is currently at war with his rival Ishido, who leads a coalition of other powerful daimyos looking to seize absolute control of the country, under the guise of protecting the seven year-old legitimate heir of the nation's power structure from harm.  Toranaga sees that Blackthorne can be useful in his battle as he seeks to protect the Heir and keep his own power, and he begins to glean knowledge from the Englishman while manipulating him (and the rest of the country) like pieces in chess.

The novel is based off of actual historical occurrences and people, but the characters' names are changed, which wisely allows Clavell to branch off from the historical record and give the characters adventures beyond what their real counterparts were known to have had.  And this is really where Clavell shines, in giving us the fullness and complexity of feudal Japan.  This is a man who does his research, and his world-creating is peerless ("What about Tolkein and HIS awesome ability to create a world from nothing?" Shut up, nerd!)  He also possesses fine clarity, an ability to not only explain the complicated relationships and circumstances, but to explain them clearly.  He does the same thing with characters, so quickly and easily establishing who the characters are and what their position is that I rarely, rarely found myself forgetting who anyone was, a major triumph for a book with probably 60-75 characters.  I will say, though, his descriptive powers do not include clarity of setting and action.  I found it absolutely impossible to picture Osaka castle, or figure out where anyone was standing on a ship at any point, the battle scenes were a mess and the earthquake scene was even worse.  I was lucky enough to have a first printing of the book, with a map of Japan on the inside covers; paperback owners may want to have an atlas handy.

Clavell obviously knows here that action is not his strength, and so he fills the book with manipulation and political intrigue.  For a popular fiction book, there is a LOT of intrigue in here, and it helps raise the intellectual bar.  But it's this very feature that also drags the book down.  The first half of the book is a fine balance of action and intrigue, and the plot clips along marvelously with excitement and suspense.  But around the second half, one particular plot development requires that Toranaga's plans hit a wall for a while... and for hundreds of pages, the action is stalled.  Every time that something almost happens, something else immediately happens to keep that first thing from happening.  And that is a really frustrating read.  When we finally get back to Ishido's territory the balance is struck again, and though the ending is low-key it's still very well done.  But for some time the novel drags its feet.  What really hurts Clavell is that he gives absolutely no sense of the passage of time.  Schemes fall apart seemingly minutes after they begin, new schemes are put into motion by something that happened either days or seconds ago.  With no indication of how much time is passing, it's impossible to tell when any event is happening in relation to anything else, and in a story of intrigue, a timeline of events is very important.  Otherwise it just feels like everything and nothing is all happening at once.

I wouldn't call these problems "bad writing," though.  I think Clavell just wanted to write his first epic novel, and the thing honestly got away from him.  Tai-Pan (which I did read before, several years ago), is shorter and tighter, and I don't remember it having these weird pacing problems.  I'm looking forward to the future novels of the series, but Shogun itself felt like a bit of a letdown.  And it's a shame, because most of it is really very good.  Putting its plotting problems aside and remembering all the good moments and intricate detail that ran all throughout (even when it was slow, it still had good parts), I think I can safely say I liked it.  Just didn't like it nearly as much as I could have.

It's been a while since my last AlterBadger review, so I have a few movies stacked up.  Let's try to give at lest a little attention to those worthy few.

The Best Years of Our Lives was shot after World War II, and concerns the lives of several veterans returning home from the front, only to find that it's nearly impossible to get back to their daily lives.  What surprised me is that, for a film made in the 40s, it's a surprisingly realistic story, told quite well.  Director William Wyler is practically a human factory for classic Hollywood films (Roman Holiday, The Heiress, Ben-Hur, The Children's Hour, How to Steal a Million, Funny Girl), so I shouldn't have been too surprised.  But genuine emotional realism is hard to find in the forties, and this dark and somber film absolutely delivers.  Of course there is some melodrama, and some heartfelt swelling music, and some really bad acting, but there's also some really good acting to balance it out, particularly from the female characters who are actually allowed to act like real human beings for a change.  It felt more like a novel than a Hollywood film, and portrayed men in uniform with an honesty and evenhandedness generally lacking from the time period.  The film won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and I'd say it was well-earned.  Fine emotional drama, overall very well done. 

My Fellow Americans is a 90s comedy with Jack Lemmon.  But surprisingly, it's better than every other 90s comedy with Jack Lemmon.  I really found myself enjoying this one.  Lemmon plays a former Republican President.  He and a former Democratic President, played by James Garner, become aware of a dirty scheme being perpetrated by the current President, and they set out to bring him down, as they run for their lives from government forces.  Predictably they find themselves among "real Americans," and what you'd expect is that the real folk touch their hearts with their real ways, and teach them a lesson about America.  But that doesn't happen.  Oh no, Americans are some really, genuinely fucked-up people, and that message runs right along side-by-side with any portrayal of "real America."  It's a twisted odyssey across a landscape of idiots and angels, and Lemmon and Garner are just absolutely perfect at their roles.  They play very well off each other, and off of everyone else.  It's still 90s fluff, but in the very best way.  I liked it.

Re-watched Monty Python's Life of Brian.  Still as good as you remember.  Though a little less time could have been devoted to the Biggus Dickus jokes...

Also re-watched one of my favorite 90s Woody Allen films, Bullets Over Broadway.  John Cusack, a man born to star in Woody Allen films, plays a playwright who desperately needs funding for his play.  So naturally his producer finds a financier... only problem is, it's the mob.  A mob doll is shoehorned into one of the play's roles, a play that is already suffering from being turgid and overly intellectual.  When the doll's bodyguard steps in and helps to rewrite the play, Cusack's character finds himself the toast of the town... for a play that he didn't even write.  Now completely enmeshed with the mob, he has to find a way out, while trying not to sacrifice any artistic integrity that he has left.  There's so much great stuff, it's hard to describe it all here: the writer's affair with an older actress, the reedy-voiced ingenue and her dog, the leading man with his food addiction who finds himself a little too attracted to the mob doll for his own good, and the doll herself, one of Woody's favorite actresses, Dianne Wiest.  Wiest is just absolutely hilarious in her role, with perfect delivery, and Cusack is even better.  The biggest compliment I can give this film is that I honestly can't think of anything bad to say about it.

Also got my copy of (500) Days of Summer in the mail from Netflix, and since I just watched it I can give it a longer review.  Yes, this would be by director Marc Webb, whose name alone certainly qualifies him to direct a Spider-Man movie, and that is exactly what he's doing right now.  I actually put this movie on my queue many, many months ago, before his spidery hire was announced, and I'm not going to launch into a discussion of whether, based on this, he could make a good superhero film.  Because really, it's impossible to judge that kind of thing.  Who would have thought the director of Elf would make such a good Iron Man movie?  Who would have thought the director of Iron Man would have made such an appallingly shitty Iron Man 2?

So, the basics:  Tom is a sensitive young man.  Summer is a free-and-easy young woman (yes, her name is Summer; you didn't think the title would be a metaphor or something, did you?).  They begin a relationship, and the story of their relationship lasts for 500 days.  The film makes the smart choice to tell the story in a non-linear way (with a helpful counter telling us which day we're on at any given point), so that even amongst the budding thrill of new romance, we know that things will eventually go wrong.  And thank god, because the budding new romance is really pretty cheesy.  I seriously almost turned the thing off after 20 minutes.  The film doesn't start getting interesting until its second act, when things inevitably start to collapse.  The thing is, two people falling in love isn't an interesting story, anybody can fall in love, that takes nothing.  It's why they don't STAY in love that tells you something about the characters and the world they live in (that world being Los Angeles, which they mention once about forty minutes in, though given how much they talk about the nature of their city it's really kind of an important point).

So what do we learn about the characters?  Well, Tom is really sensitive.  Like, a lot.  And he's kind of an asshole toward women, but I don't think I was supposed to think that.  And Summer is free and easy.  She represents a sort of hyper-male fantasy:  she puts out quickly, she watches porn, she's had sex with other girls, she wants to keep everything "casual," she's openly affectionate in public, she wears dresses and bows in her hair, she expresses few opinions on topics other than love and sex... the film makes it very clear early on that what we're dealing with is not an accurate representation of "the truth," but a stylized presentation of Tom's memories.  So really, it makes sense not to present the characters realistically, but it ends up making them very uninteresting to watch.  I understand it's a stylistic choice, but it also means I don't give a shit about these people.

Webb gamely plays with the film, throwing in plenty of weird camera tricks and effects and fun moments; the highlight of the film (featured prominently in the trailer) is a massive outdoor dance number celebrating Tom's sexual conquest, complete with an animated bluebird alighting on his shoulder.  Webb has a strong presentation, and even the quieter emotional scenes are, at times, genuinely moving.  There is a real sobriety apparent in the scenes following the characters' break-up.  The script, unfortunately, can't keep up, either in quirkiness or sobriety.  Its definition of quirkiness is to throw in enough alternative music references to choke a very large horse, which Webb gleefully accents with a metric ton of gratingly similar folk-rock tunes that blare with music-video dominance over the scenes.  It would be nice to actually hear what the characters are saying underneath the music, but on the other hand that would mean listening to the actors, who themselves can only really only be described as "pretty good."  It must be hard for an actor to be expected to depict emotional reality in an unrealistic way but still with a hint of realism, especially when the characters are only capable of two emotions each.

The film's saving grace is that it did have SOME real emotional impact nestled amongst the schmaltz.  And, unlike some romantic comedies, it does have some really great comedy.  There were many moments that were truly, genuinely funny.  Funny enough to compensate for its shortcomings?  Yeah, but not really.  Look, this is a hotel movie:  if you're in a hotel, and you don't have anywhere to be for a while, and it's on HBO, it's well worth your time.  You'll like it, you'll have fun.  Should you run out and rent it?  There are definitely a lot of other movies you should see first.  (500) Days of Summer is a small-budget film aimed at teenagers, and any time you have that, you're looking at quirkiness over quality.  And Webb's visual quirkiness will get him a lot of jobs, and anyone who wants to make a film that's "a little different" will call him (or Tim Burton, but Webb will be so much cheaper to hire!).  And he'll produce many quirky films with neat little visual stuff that looks good in the trailers, and that'll be his career for the next ten years.  Unfortunately, quirkiness ultimately can't make a whole film, and it doesn't here either.

American Film Badger:  And we're at #16 on the list, so let's see who we have...

#16 on the 1998 list is... All About Eve.  My god, that is a wonderful film, just wonderful.  An actress at the top of her game is shadowed by a younger actress who seeks to replace her.  Creepy, atmospheric, and with very fine acting.  One of the very best American films ever made, no question.

And on the 2007 list, the #16 slot goes to... another Hollywood drama, Sunset Boulevard.  This was #12 on the 1998 list, so let's see what I had to say about it then:  "This one's a very dark comedy, where a washed-up actress becomes obsessed with a young screenwriter who uses her mansion to hide out from debt collectors.  It's Hollywood satire mixed with psychological thriller, shot in beautifully moody black-and-white.  It's no secret that the main character dies at the end, the movie opens with him floating face down in a pool.  How he gets there is the story."  Yep, that sums it up.  I've seen a few Billy Wilder films, and I've got to say, he's one of the best.

This week's reading:  I think I already mentioned it, but that'd be Asian Saga book #2, James Clavell's Tai-Pan.  All about opium trading and capitalism in Hong Kong.  I'm interested to read about China after spending so much time with Japan.

Dear Fox Network:  I enjoy watching The Simpsons every week.  Actually, I WOULD enjoy watching The Simpsons every week, if it were on every week instead of every two to three weeks, whenever it conveniently fits in between sporting events and animal attack specials.  In short, I hate you all, and please have the decency to donate The Simpsons to NBC.

So, in movie land, I recently saw David Mamet's 2000 film, State and Main.  It's about a movie studio that heads to a small town in Vermont to film a movie (because they were kicked out of New Hampshire...).  As the screenwriter struggles to adapt to the circumstances beyond his control, and the directors and producers struggle with actors undergoing religious conversions and pedophiliac tendencies, things predictably spiral out of control.

Okay, so, it's a movie about Hollywood and making movies.  Pretty much any movie about Hollywood and filmmaking can be summed up in a single sentence:  god, what a horrible experience this is for everybody, we're all selfish assholes and we love money but not ourselves.  Why does anyone actually put themselves through this hell?  Because there is so god damn much money to be made.  And this is the plot and premise of every movie about movies, and it's the same thing here, but no matter how many times this plot is used (hell, I just wrote up Incident at Loch Ness last week), it's generally very entertaining.  There is just an endless amount of hilarity to be reaped from this storyline.

David Mamet (who wrote and directed the film) is also a cynical realist playwright, which means we have some cynical realist stuff here.  The loveable small-town townsfolk don't come together to warm our hearts and change our cynical Hollywood mindset (see Frank Oz's In & Out), they get sucked into it and become just as greedy and obsessive.  Most Hollywood films seem intent on trying to convince us that celebrities somehow operate on a different mental plane from "real folk," but as Mamet points out that's not even remotely the case.  We're all selfish assholes.  They just have the money to show it.

The cast is generally very good:  Alec Baldwin, William H. Macy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Phillip Seymour Hoffman... what's surprising and a little disappointing is that as good as the actors are, Mamet really doesn't get the most out of them.  A lot of their performances feel a little flat, not bad, but just not in top form (though Macy and Parker still manage to knock it out of the park most of the time).  Hoffman is especially bad, which is unfortunate because he's kind of our main character.  But it's not entirely Hoffman's fault, Mamet doesn't give the character a lot more personality than "sensitive and nice."  Writers, I suppose, will always tend to see other writers as the saintly hero of the story.

So one character I didn't really like, out of dozens populating the film.  These movies are always ensemble pieces, and Mamet fills the screen with a great mix of people:  the local city councilman looking desperately for some issue to boost his political career; the production assistant whose wife is giving birth and no one else cares; the mayor and his wife, and their elegant Victorian house which they're far too proud of; the local bookseller who, when asked if she ever wants children, replies "I never saw the point of them;" a persistent pothole on Main Street that provides a lot of visual jokes; and of course the Jewish agent, and a leather bag filled with $800,000 in cash so that someone will show her breasts on film.

Overall, a lot of fun.  I enjoyed it, but I wonder how much more enjoyable it would have been if the main character hadn't been so bland.  It occurs to me now, thinking back over it, that every scene I remember loving either did not feature the writer, or involved him in a minimal way.  Writers, let us all agree to acknowledge each other as human beings with real emotions in the future.  Okay?

Thanks to some awesome deals at mycomicshop.com and the dollar comics bins at Half Price Books (I LOVE YOU MYCOMICSHOP.COM AND HALF PRICE BOOKS!!!), I was able to bring myself some comic book joy this weekend.  I only had just a few issues from the Ultimate Comics line (Ultimate Marvel as it is known post-Ultimatum), and I was able to add more, along with a few more issues of Buffy Season 8.  So this weekend I re-read all the ones I have, Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and 2, Ultimate Armor Wars #1-4 (the complete miniseries), Ultimate Avengers #1, and 4-6, and Ultimate Enemy #1 and 2.

What's interesting to me, and why I felt the need to comment on it, is the evolution of the line following Ultimatum.  Back when the line was introduced in 2000, sales for Marvel Heroes books were pretty much horrific.  Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, Fantastic Four, these were all genuinely terrible books, and sales were awful.  X-Men was terrible too, but it still sold well.  The Ultimate line was created, then, to reimagine and reintroduce those characters to new readers, presenting the classic characters and stories in a new light.  Now, ten years later, every book on that list has been completely revitalized and is selling great (well, great for a comic book).  The mainstream Marvel Universe has had a serious shot in the arm.  So does the Ultimate line have a reason to exist anymore?

Ultimate Comics is a new deal, then, renamed not purely for the sake of the obvious bump in sales that any series gets from re-launching, but also for its new mission statement.  The line's initial ads carried a tagline, "There are no rules," and that sums it up pretty well.  Though there were still many classic characters to go around (this is Marvel, after all), each of the books I read also featured brand new characters with no analogue in the Marvel Universe.  That's new, because even though the old villains were usually changed beyond recognition, you still didn't often see new characters.  Some of the stories are based loosely on classic storylines, but most are all-new material.

I'm glad to see the line is resisting any sense of staleness.  I personally didn't feel any sense of declining excitement, but then again I don't have fifty years' worth of Marvel stories crammed into my head, so I was a good audience for the material.  For anyone who's been reading Spider-Man since the late 80s, on the other hand, Ultimate Spider-Man probably did feel redundant.  Now a reader who buys both versions of the character will really get something new.  Of course, with Ultimate Avengers having only five issues until its end, and Ultimate Spider-Man running a story boldly titled "The Death of Spider-Man," it's possible that in a year's time those readers will be back to one version again.  I guess it's hard to re-introduce characters to an audience that already knows them better than their own family.

One thing strikes me as funny, though.  As Ultimate Comics wanes away from its original intent, this years DC published Superman:  Earth One, a book set in modern times, re-introducing the character of Superman.  And it sold like crazy.  So maybe the Ultimate concept isn't so close to death after all.

One of the most famous films of the European canon is The Bicycle Thief.  Released in Italy in 1946, the film examines the economic disaster of post-WWII Italy, and the hopelessness of its poorest inhabitants.

The plot is actually fairly simple.  A man is unemployed, but is then offered a job where he needs a bicycle.  He had one, but he pawned it some time ago.  He returns to the pawn shop with his wife, where the pawn the sheets off their bed for the money to get the bicycle back.  On his first day of work, the man's bicycle is stolen, and he and his son begin an odyssey through the streets of Rome to find the stolen bicycle and bring it home.

This fairly simple plot serves as a framing device for a series of small moments that depict the absolute desolation of Italy's poor.  A pawn shop packed to the ceiling with sheets and blankets that people have sold; a church that refuses to feed the poor until they finish attending the religious service; genuinely helpful police officers who are nonetheless held back by their own impotence; scenes of child labor; and so on.  There are a lot of moments that stick in your mind.

What makes the film so famous is that it is so unflinching (especially for 1946).  These are not the joyful poor of It's a Wonderful Life, these are not the penniless citizens who come together and find hope and peace through each other's love.  Because that is, as the Italians might say, la horseshit.  The Bicycle Thief depicts genuine poverty with a genuine eye.  These people are miserable, their lives are desperate.  At no point are we comforted into thinking that everything will be all right for these people.  It won't be.  Also of particular note is that the film never resorts to melodrama or theatrics in order to dredge up a few tears (aside from a bit of soundtrack music, but it's not overbearing).  The facts are presented plainly, with no manipulation to make them seem worse than they are.  In the last ten minutes we are finally given a view of the city's middle class; it's a surprising encounter, because up until this point we've only seen the poor, and it's seemed as though everyone is poor.  The sudden and surprising contrast makes the ending more striking.

What surprised me, though, is for how depressing and stark and beautifully made the film is, it didn't really connect with me on an emotional level.  Intellectually I appreciated it, and I felt the requisite amounts of pity for the characters, but I never really felt empathy with their sadness and their desperation.  Maybe it's the effect of subtitles and poor film stock that lend a feeling of unreality to the realism.  Frankly, the actors aren't the best, and that probably contributes to.  But it might also be that the desperation is so complete and all-encompassing that I simply can't relate.  I don't know that feeling.  It's so deep and so disastrous that it's impossible to say what it feels like unless you've been there.

American Film Badger:  We're at #15 on the lists, and on the 1998 list it's good ol' Star Wars again.  I think I talked about Star Wars more than enough when it showed up on the 2007 list, so let's move on... #15 on the 2007 list is 2001: A Space Odyssey.  2001 was a collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick to make what had never really been made before:  a good science fiction film (this was 1968, so, you know, before Star Wars...).  And it is good, it's creepy and tense and very visual, and the ending is just intensely confusing if you don't read Clarke's novel version (which is really outstanding book, actually).  It's been a few years since I've seen it, but I remember liking it.  Always liked Clarke's book series a bit more, though.  I think the problem for 2001 is that it's tremendously innovative and unique for its time.  No one had made a really serious and well-constructed science fiction film before.  Now we have Star Wars, and Alien and Aliens, and The Abyss, Terminator 2, and Firefly/Serenity, and every other Star Trek film... "good" sci-fi is more plentiful, and so while it's easy to like 2001 today, it's hard to really appreciate just how revolutionary it was.  Suffice it to say, none of those other films would have existed without Kurbrick's phenomenal work.

This week's reading:  The continuing saga of Shogun.  John Blackthorne just found himself doomed to die in a Japanese prison!  How will he escape?????

Sorry for the delay here.  This thing was supposed to auto-publish at 7 this morning as usual, and today it decided not to.

Sometimes you really can't go home again.  In 2006, Streetlight Manifesto recorded a new version of the 1998 album "Keasbey Nights."  I own that re-recording, so last night I was thinking, "I've never heard the original.  I should have the original version, you always want to have the original, right?"  It turns out that you don't.  Sometimes there really is a reason that things are re-made.  Sometimes being the original doesn't make it better.

It really did sound terrible.  Oh my god.  So, so terrible. 

But now let's talk about a work of art that needs so remake, which is Robert Graves's 1938 novel Count Belisarius.  Graves was a British author with a reputation as an expert in Greco-Roman literature, history, and mythology.  He was a poet, a novelist, and a translator (I've read two of his translations, Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars and Apuleius's The Golden Ass, both excellent).  He's primarily known as the author of the Claudius novels (I, Claudius and Claudius the God), which can generally be found on every "best books of the century" list.  Those two novels absolutely floored me when I read them, the absolute best historical fiction I have ever read in my life.  Shortly afterward, I saw a copy of Count Belisarius in a library, and though it took me some time to hunt down my own copy, I'm now very happy to have it.  It would be hard to be as great as Claudius, but this comes incredibly close.

Belisarius was a Roman general, born in 499 CE (I should point out that this is all rigorously based off of actual events; like any work, its accuracy is debated by historians).  By this point, the Roman empire had relocated to the East, the capital now lying at Constantinople, Rome and Italy all but abandoned to the Goths.  Christianity had taken root as the official religion of the empire, though pockets of pagan belief still remained.  And in fact, a good amount of the early portion of the novel is concerned with Christianity as it existed then.  Graves had an odd relationship with Christianity (Time magazine called his novel King Jesus "heresy"), and he gleefully digs into the sniping and sectarian infighting of the religion, the seemingly senseless divisions that resulted in executions and wars.

But for the most part, this is a military history.  The first major description of a battle didn't really grab me, it was confusing and I didn't understand the terminology... I expected that I would very quickly lose interest in this aspect of the book, but I should have known that Graves would pull me back.  As the novel progressed, his descriptions of the wars became perfected, his language and detail very clear.  It's very emotional at the same time, very suspenseful.  The siege of Rome, especially, is a highlight of the novel, with the desperation of the Roman soldiers and the suspense of the battle making this very detailed account of warfare even better (this is the crucial element that separates historical fiction from non-fiction:  fiction is equally concerned with the intellectual and emotional states of the people involved, and it must portray its characters as well as it portrays its action).

For all its warfare and religious discussion, the novel remains grounded around Belisarius, a military mastermind who is remarkable not only for his fighting skill but for his compassion toward his own men and toward the enemy.  Also remarkable is his service to the emperor Justinian, an incompetent leader who hates Belisarius for the glory of his victories, who trusts in God more than his military and pays dearly for it.  Justinian's persecution of his general brings a roller-coaster element to the story, filling it with emotional highs and lows, and making our hero's victories feel even more triumphant.  The last three chapters of the book are beautifully written, as Belisarius is continually stripped down to almost nothing by the vengeful emperor, and comes back each time to save his people.  I wouldn't call it "inspiring" (generally when an author aims for "inspiration" they just come off as naive and idiotic), but there's something like it here.  When the people of Constantinople rally around Belisarius as their hero, you can definitely relate to their feeling.

It's always hard to talk about good novels, and even harder to talk about great novels.  How do you convey greatness, how do you really convey to another person the incredible quality of something you've just read without resorting to hyperbole?  I really loved this book.  It pairs very well with Claudius, one depicting the origins of the Roman Empire and the other depicting its struggle to survive in a changing world.  Some will find its narrative style off-putting; it's written like a Roman novel, a bit rambling, a bit non-linear.  If the novel were discovered hundreds of years from now in a clay pot with its cover and copyright information missing, it could very easily be mistaken for an English translation of an actual Roman book.  It might be an adjustment for some readers, but it's an immensely rewarding experience in the end. 

A few years ago, screenwriter Zak Penn directed a mockumentary film called Incident at Loch Ness.  Zak Penn is of course known for writing several Hollywood hits, among them X2.  In the mockumentary (in which all the characters are actual people though the events are made up), he claims to be tired of churning out Hollywood trash and desires to make a real, intelligent independent film.  Naturally, it doesn't work out that way.

Penn enlists the aid of a famous German director, Werner Herzog, to direct his film, which Penn himself will produce.  Coincidentally, at the time that Penn begins to make his film, filmmaker John Bailey decides to make his own film about the life and work of Werner Herzog.  We see the action through Bailey's lens.  Penn wants to make a film about Loch Ness, and Herzog is intrigued by the project, seeing it as an opportunity to understand what it is that makes people so willfully believe in the impossible.  Penn's motives, despite his own statements, are far less intellectual.

The initial scenes feel like fairly straightforward documentary, but once the location changes to Scotland things start to get absurd, and ridiculously funny.  There's a lot to laugh at here, and a lot of commentary on the battle between art and commercialism.  Penn's bikini-clad sonar operators, matching expeditionary jumpsuits, and remote-controlled Nessie "reenactments" provide some nice moments, much to the irritation of Herzog.  As the shoot drags on, cynicism sets in, and Herzog's film begins to fly completely toward the absurd, with Penn firmly taking control.  But then things start to go really wrong, and a sense of genuine terror sets in.  The reality of the documentary film style is, to me, infinitely more frightening than slick Hollywood filming (which is why I could NEVER watch Paranormal Activity).  Penn pulls it off well.  The film as a whole vacillates between situational comedy, suspense, and intellectual analysis with expert ease.

If there's one complaint I have, though, it's that the film has some serious pacing issues.  Penn takes the expedition from bad to worse so quickly that when the characters vocalize their complaints about the disaster their production has turned in to, it feels like rickety storytelling; Penn does a little too much of telling us the situation instead of showing us.  At a little less than 90 minutes (minus a few additional scenes hidden in the credits), the film probably could have used another 20 minutes, and a generous bit of trimming from the first 15 minutes.  I enjoy a good "sense of impending doom," and I need to be given time to actually feel it.  Penn plows the plot along before the emotions really have time to register.

But the film's shortcomings fortunately don't outweigh its positive aspects.  Penn himself makes a wonderful villain for the piece, playing the role of the Hollywood sleazebag without resorting to over-the-top satire.  Herzog is a great point-of-view character, endearing and intelligent and adventurous, but too trusting for his own good.  The elements of terror are left just a little vague, leaving the viewers to draw their own conclusions about what really happened out there on the water (though if you pay close attention, I think most of the answers are there).  It's well worth seeing, and most of the pacing issues I described are really evident only in the beginning and the middle.  By the end, the real Zak Penn has a good handle on his film, even as the fictional Zak Penn becomes lost in a maelstrom of his own design. 

Read another August Wilson play over the weekend, called Joe Turner's Come and Gone.  To review, Wilson was an African-American playwright who wrote ten plays, one taking place in each decade of the 20th Century, describing the black American experience of the past hundred years.  Joe Turner's Come and Gone takes place in the 1910s.

To briefly describe the plot:  Seth Holly and his wife Bertha run a boarding house in Pittsburgh.  A mysterious stranger named Herald Loomis shows up and takes a room.  He has a tortured past, having been held in a state of slavery for seven years by a man named Joe Turner.  The real inspiration for Turner, Joe Turney, was described by blues musician W.C. Handy in his autobiography:  "It goes back to Joe Turney (also called Turner), brother of Pete Turney, one-time governor of Tennessee. Joe had the responsibility of taking Negro prisoners from Memphis to the penitentiary at Nashville. Sometimes he took them to the "farms" along the Mississippi. Their crimes when indeed there were any crimes, were usually very minor, the object of the arrests being to provide needed labor for spots along the river. As usual, the method was to set a stool-pigeon where he could start a game of craps. The bones would roll blissfully till the required number of laborers had been drawn into the circle. At that point the law would fall upon the poor devils, arrest as many as were needed for work, try them for gambling in a kangaroo court and then turn the culprets over to Joe Turney. That night, perhaps, there would be weeping and wailing among the dusky belles. If one of them chanced to ask a neighbor what had become of the sweet good man, she was likely to receive the pat reply, 'They tell me Joe Turner's come and gone.'"

Against this horrific background comes Herald Loomis.  The play is actually focused very little on Loomis himself and mostly portrays the other characters' reaction to him.  He only really gets two major scenes, and they're scenes consumed with the mystical/spiritual forces that Wilson would occasionally slip into his otherwise realist dramas.  This hearkens back to African tribal culture, where life and mysticism were not so divided.  As a metaphor it all makes perfect sense, but it plays strangely on the stage.  To me it came off as unsettling and a little melodramatic (it works much better in The Piano Lesson) though one could argue that maybe it's supposed to be unsettling, as this is ostensibly a clash between blacks trying to fit in with white culture and blacks trying to fight it.  I'm used to magical realism, but the proportion of magic to realism here is just too small, so when the magic does appear it feels out of place.

Wilson generally works with a lot of characters and a lot of elements, and his plots can be pretty free and loose because of that.  It works for his style, and it's very effective, but here it gets away from him a little.  There are a lot of very interesting themes here on sex, slavery, and submission, but they don't quite come together, and when they do the binding feels a little forced.    

Much opera fun was had last week as I saw two productions of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (or "The Marriage of Figaro," as the Ohio Theatre advertised it because people have actually HEARD of that).  This is the first time I've actually seen an opera twice (once on DVD, once live), and it's an interesting experience.  Opera reviewers review productions, not the opera itself, and you really can't get a perfect idea of a production's merits or defects until you've seen it before.  Also, you really enjoy it more the second time:  operas contain stories and music, and though the music is primary, it's hard to enjoy it if you don't have a good grasp on the story.  Seeing it the second time, you can focus a little more on the music.

And also, hooray for supertitles.  Whoever came up with the idea of giving live opera its own set of subtitles, that person is a wonderful genius and the best person on earth.

Of the two productions I saw, the live one was really the best.  The DVD was good, but I felt the acting and singing were generally better in the other production.  Not to mention, Kultur has a really obnoxious habit of not properly subtitling their DVDs, especially when more than one person is singing.  But it's the only DVD that Netflix had of this opera, so you take what you get.  The actual opera is very funny, with very quick and exuberant music... but I do recommend reading a synopsis first, because it gets a bit complex.  Worth seeing if you ever have the chance. 

Another opera I enjoyed this week was Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos.  A very dark story, set in Spain during the Inquisition and Spain's rule over the Netherlands.  Themes of religious persecution dovetail nicely with the plot of a man in love with his own mother-in-law, though they could have dovetailed a bit better.  The format of opera can at times necessitate some ropey plotting and more surface-oriented storytelling... but at the same time, there's Wagner.  So, really, you can do both.


The music is gorgeous, very dark and somber and rich.  It strongly imparts a feeling of dread from the very beginning.  Well, almost from the beginning.  There are actually two versions of this opera, one written in French, and a later, revised version written in Italian.  The French version has some extraneous scenes, one of which is at the very beginning, and unfortunately that's the one I saw.  I believe the Met uses the Italian revision (actually, I think they use a revision of the Italian revision), so I hope to see this year's production when it hits DVD.  I've heard good things.

American Film Badger:  Right, where are we... #14!  14 on the 1998 list goes to Some Like it Hot.  Here's director Billy Wilder again (his Sunset Boulevard was #12), and this is really one of the best American comedies ever.  Two talentless jazz musicians witness a crime, and to evade the mobsters they have to dress up as women and join a group of touring musicians.  It's one of those plots that could either be very good or very bad... and this one's very, very good.  Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are great in it, and Marilyn Monroe is well above her average level here.  Just a classic, hilarious comedy, with one of the best endings in the history of film.

And on the 2007 list, #14 goes to Psycho.  Really, you're telling me Psycho isn't as good as Vertigo (#9)?  Okay... I guess.  There are some alternate dimensions where that may be true.  Anyway, what can I say about Psycho that hasn't been said?  It really is that great.  The suspense is that perfect, the cinematography is that gorgeous, the shock of the main character meeting her grisly end halfway through the film still holds up... just a perfect and perfectly made film.  It's Hitchcock, there's a reason he's the best. 

This week's reading:  A few years back, I read James Clavell's Tai-Pan and I loved it.  I immediately got my hands on the other five books of his Asian Saga.  Well, this week I was reminded while reading Count Belisarius of how much I really enjoy not only classics but also good historical fiction, and since I had never gotten around to reading the Asian Saga... well, there we are.  Six books, a total of over 6,200 pages.  The first book in the series... Shogun!

So I probably won't have any new books to review for a while... I'll be sure to pop in reviews of some old favorites and recent reads while I'm consuming this massive tome of East-West relations.  It's huge, but god is it worth it.

You know what the best part is about getting Angel Season 4 Disc 6 in the mail from Netflix?  It means you're done with Angel Season 4 and you never, ever have to watch it again. 

But the great SantaBadger that is Netflix also brought something good to my house, in the form of Warren Beatty's 1981 film, Reds.  This is the true story of two journalists, Jack Reed and Louise Bryant, who became involved in the Russian Revolution.

Beatty directed and produced this film, as well as starring in it (alongside such incomparable actors as Dianne Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Maureen Stapleton), and I was drawn to it because I had such a positive response to another of Beatty's films, Bulworth.  Not to mention the fact that Reds was nominated for a metric crapton of Golden Globes and Oscars (and won a few, too).

The story is historical fiction, augmented by interview clips from people who were actually there (the film was released in 1981) and who knew Jack and Louise.  The two writers begin their relationship in Oregon before Louise goes to New York to join Jack and live the romantic life of a writer.  The problem is that while Jack is already an established professional, Louise is not, and though she has talent she's never really found anything worth writing about.  She becomes obsessed with independence, refusing to be merely Jack's girlfriend (or, after they get married, merely his wife), insisting that she have her own identity.  This becomes the central theme of the film, as Jack and Louise swing between independence and codependency, and the difficulty of being both a solitary human being and a selfless lover.

In New York the two become involved with various radical liberal movements, and both become increasingly infuriated with their status (Louise as a powerless woman who can do nothing but follow her husband, Jack as a mere journalist who reports on the world without changing it).  Louise goes to Paris and eventually becomes a war correspondent (World War I), and after becoming desperately lonely Jack follows her.  He convinces her to go to Moscow, where the Russian people have revolted against the war and declared a revolution.  There, the two rekindle their relationship in an atmosphere of hope and change, and both finally find their roles, Louise as a news correspondent reporting on the revolution, Jack as an active agitator working to bring communist ideals to America.

Upon returning to America, the couple are consumed with reform and revolution.  But then Jack is forced to return to Moscow due to political infighting within the American communist party, and he finds himself trapped there.  The Russian communist party is also falling apart:  dictators have seized control and refuse to hand things over to the people.  Lies and propaganda swirl, and political maneuvering becomes the primary goal of a party that was supposed to represent the antithesis of the American system.  The strong desires of the politically powerful begin to outweigh their need to do good for their own people (so there's that conflict again between individuality and selfless love, and the story of Jack & Louise dovetails nicely with the backdrop of the Revolution).  When Louise sets out to find Jack, the two have to scour the entirety of northeastern Europe to find what they've lost.

It's no surprise to find that the history of the Russian Revolution joins together so perfectly with a tortured love story.  After all, it's been done before with Doctor Zhivago (which was even more idealistic about love and even more cynical about the Revolution.  Russian perspective versus American, I suppose).  It's a fairly perfect narrative theme for storytellers to use, and Beatty uses it to strong effect here.  If the film has one major flaw, it's that he doesn't dig into his narrative symbolism quite enough.  Like most historical fiction, the reportage of facts is absolutely paramount, and speculation about the emotional or intellectual state of the characters is unacceptable.  They never really quite get to feel like real people.  Another flaw is its insistence on ending the story when Jack Reed's own story ends.  There are a ton of other characters in this film, we don't get to know about them?  But of course Warren Beatty is playing Jack Reed, and therefore Jack Reed is of primary interest.  Louise Bryant does appear in a great number of scenes, and her personal life and feminist issues have a strong impact on the film; it's a little bizarre that we don't get to learn more of her life post-1920 (she only lived for 16 more years, adding 15 minutes to a 195-minute film couldn't possibly hurt that much).

Still, I have to say I liked Reds a lot more than most historical fiction I've seen, a genre which is generally very dry and prone to vast leaps through time without providing explanation of what happened in between, a genre that typically offers as little explanation as possible of important history figures and events because that would mean the writers would actually have to do more research (I speak of films only, historical novels are a different animal entirely).  Reds was much easier to follow and much more relateable than the vast majority of its ilk, and though I didn't love it I did really like it.  I've always had an interest in fiction concerned with communist Russia, and this was a thoroughly fascinating portrait of the time, but also a heartfelt treatise on sacrifice and the value of self. 

American Film Badger:  We're up to #13, and on the 1998 list that brings us to... The Bridge on the River Kwai.  Haven't seen it, unfortunately.  Here's how Netflix describes it:  "Director David Lean's sweeping epic is set in a World War II-era Japanese prison camp where British POWs are forced to construct a railway bridge as a morale-building exercise. Yet the real battle of wills is between a "play by the rules" British colonel (Alec Guinness) who's dedicated to the project and his American rival (William Holden), who vows to destroy it."  Won a Best Picture Oscar and six others, and apparently is a superlative character study.  I don't usually get too worked up over WWII films, but I did like the novel King Rat, which was also set in a Japanese prison camp... so I should probably give this one a shot.

#13 on the 2007 list is another war movie... Star Wars, muthafucka!  I do have to say, of the six or seven Star Wars movies out there (do we count Clone Wars?), the original is still the best.  I know this is sacrilegious to most nerds, who consider Empire Strikes Back the best (as a kid, Return of the Jedi was actually my favorite)... but after watching them again, I've got to go with the original.

And why does Star Wars endure so well?  Why is it not only the greatest sci-fi film of all time, but one of the greatest American films period?  The standard explanation is usually something about how it encapsulates other mythologies (knights, princesses, dudes in armor, also movie westerns...), and that might explain why it's likeable but not why it's so loved.  What I loved about Star Wars when I was a kid is that for every thing we saw or heard on the screen, there were nine other things that we only briefly glimpsed, or heard about only in oblique references (remember the magic of wondering what the Clone Wars might be? or what Darth Vader looked like under the mask?).  There was an entire universe behind what we were seeing, and it inflamed our imaginations, sparked fantasies about what might be on other planets, what might have happened in the past.  Unlike the world of Star Trek or Lord of the Rings where everything was fully explained and detailed and elaborated on ad nauseum, Star Wars was a series where so much was left up to speculation, and a play session with Star Wars action figures could be home to wild flights of fancy.

That all died, of course, ten years ago.  I remember the early nineties, when the first licensed Star Wars novels and comics came out, and they were so fucking exciting.  Speculation and fever dreams ripped across the pages, and in some way they were better because they weren't official continuity, because at any point Uncle George could come along and wipe them out.  It was a shared experience of acting out our dreams.  But then the prequels came out, and the lines of history began to be filled in.  The novels became rigidly structured and semi-canonical, now a firm part of an expanding continuity rather than a scattershot sampling of wild possibilities.  The Clone Wars turned out to be infinitely less interesting than anything the fans could have dreamed up, and Anakin Skywalker turned out even worse.  Now various franchises seek to fill in the last remaining gaps of time (Knights of the Old Republic, Force Unleashed, Star Wars: Legacy), all bound by the strictures of Uncle George's playbook.  It's just no damn fun anymore.  It's just become a franchise like anything else, it's like DC Comics, it's like Star Trek.

But even now, even though I have no interest in the Star Wars franchise as it currently exists, when I watch the old movies or play LEGO Star Wars II or look at my old action figures, I still feel like I'm eleven years old.  I feel like a world of possibility is opening up before me, and I can pretend that it's 1993 again, and all I have are three movies and an epic imagination. 

This week's reading:  Still working on Robert Graves's historical novel, Count Belisarius.  Ancient civilization... crazy!

AlterBadger would like to reiterate that it does not eat children, though it has strongly considered it.

This weekend I rented Tim Burton's 1994 film, Ed Wood.  Like everyone else, I've seen a lot of Tim Burton films.  Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, Batman, Batman Returns, Nightmare Before Christmas, Planet of the Apes, probably some more that I can't think of... and Burton can be pretty hit and miss for me, I think the more commercial he tries to be the more he achieves a preponderance of style of substance (Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka or whatever the fuck it's called...).  But Ed Wood is Burton at his absolute, staggering best, all the goth pretensions and stylish costumes stripped away to find one director telling the story of another, one of the most popular directors in America portraying the true story of the worst director of all time.

Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood, the man who would go on to direct what many consider the worst film ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Ed loves movies, he loves them so very much that he'll do anything to make them, sacrificing any sense of quality just to get something on the screen.  Depp portrays him as being very genuine, perfectly capable of fooling himself into thinking that his horrifically bad movies are actually good.  The film also unflinchingly depicts his opportunistic side, as he manipulates financiers, cons people into acting for him, steals from the studio... the only person he never seems to manipulate is his friend Bela Lugosi, a washed-up actor that Wood tries to save with every fiber of his being.  This is a very complicated person being portrayed (made even more complicated by his love of wearing women's clothing...), and Burton and Depp handle that complicated portrayal beautifully.

That's one of the things that really grabs you with this film, is how well-acted it is.  Depp is luminescent as Wood, and won a Golden Globe for his portrayal, but Martin Landau is absolutely flawless as Bela Lugosi, and won an Academy Award for his work.  Sarah Jessica Parker is a lot of fun, and Bill Murray steals the show every time he's on camera.  And these are just the names I know, the rest of the ensemble cast was just as great as the leads, and Burton did an unbelievable job of finding people that looked and sounded like the actual people involved.  His attention to detail in this and in his recreation of Wood's films is absolutely uncanny, and it's fortunate that what is so obviously a great labor of love was backed by actors who could really deliver.

Burton made an interesting choice in that he generally avoids any pretense of realism throughout the film.  Scenes are shot in black-and-white, with swooning cinematic music and intense camera shots, with the occasional burst of hammy acting.  In other words, Burton shoots his film about the 1950s as if it were a film from the 1950s.  And it actually works, because the circumstances and the people are so bizarre, so much larger than life, that to try to shoot the film as a piece of realism would feel inappropriate.  It also makes the film a lot funnier.  This is absolutely hilarious stuff, as opposed to what it could have been.

And make no mistake, this is a movie that could have very easily been depressing as hell.  Burton could have played it as the tragic story of a washed-up loser with no talent (Wood eventually did become an alcoholic, his film career mostly centered around making low-grade monster/porno movies).  But instead he chose to make a cynically inspirational film, a film about the power of living out your dreams, as told through the lens of a man who failed spectacularly in doing just that.  It's a weirdly ironic tone, and it works.  Burton ends the film well before trouble really sets in for Wood, stopping the story right after the premiere of Plan 9 and Wood's proposal to his girlfriend.  When the credits begin to roll, you know that Ed Wood never achieved anything with his life, but you kind of feel like maybe you could. 

After watching Ed Wood, naturally I had to track down an Ed Wood film.  The obvious choice is Plan 9 From Outer Space, which has such horrific production value and a hysterically thrown-together plot that it is quite possibly the worst film ever made.  But Netflix had the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Bride of the Monster on Instant Play, and given the choice between watching crap and watching crap with hilarious commentary... I went with MST3K.  While not as low-rent as Plan 9, Bride of the Monster was every bit as senseless.  I really have no idea what the fuck was going on for most of that thing.  It was just awful.  Wood's reliance on stock footage is fully in evidence here, and it really does end with the most pointless explosion ever put on film.

As a bonus, the MST3K crew are in top form here.  Really, one of the funniest episodes I've seen, though Revenge of the Monster is still my favorite.

Finally, after battling with other Netflix subscribers, I got my hands on the final disc of the final season of The Tudors.  Some day I'll go back and rent all the seasons in order, so I can finally watch them without the detriment of time lapses and low disc availability.  I look forward to it, because that really was a hell of a series.

Season 1 was just beautifully done.  Depicting Henry as a young man of great.... shall we say... appetite was a strong choice, and created a character that really set up a nice contrast with the character of the final season.  The first season also set up the main plot point of the entire series, which is that Henry may have been the sovereign lord of England, but he was very susceptible to manipulation.  At every point throughout the series, Henry's decisions are the result of forces that he thinks he controls, but that really control him.

And the final scene with Cardinal Wolsey still gives me chills.

Season 2 continued the strength of the first.  It was nice how Anne Boleyn was played as both a sympathetic and unsympathetic character at the same time, a crass manipulator who eventually lost everything because of crimes she didn't even commit.  This season also saw the height of the English Reformation, a religious movement entirely propelled by the desire for a separation from Rome, and completely lacking in any distinct religious doctrines.  It's interesting to see how floundering the movement was, how torn it was between Catholicism and Lutheranism, how it hated and sided with them both at the same time.  It definitely makes theocracy look like the worst type of government imaginable, a natural (and true!) point of view for an American show (but also true!).

Season 3 is where things started happening quickly, as Henry plows through wives so they can get through them all.  This is also where we see the first major rebellion against the monarchy, and it's terrifying to watch as the peasant revolution is torn apart.  This is also where the show's creators really show that they have a plan for Henry's wives, and they ensure that each wife is very different and represents a different situation.  Jane Seymour is his one true love, Anne of Cleves is a political marriage of convenience.  It keeps things interesting, and keeps it from being a soap opera.  It's very somber, too, as Henry experiences his first real loss, and it changes him from the angry young man of the first two seasons.  This is probably also the most political season, as forces gather to take Lord Cromwell down.  Still, the fast pace is a change from the first two seasons, and it's not really a positive change.  I would have been perfectly happy with one wife per season.  It would have allowed the series to breathe.

Season 4 starts off very strong with Katherine Howard as Henry's wife.  Henry used to be the young, sensual man married to the older woman, and now the roles are reversed, which the writers use for maximum effect.  These are some of my favorite episodes, as Henry becomes more embroiled in politics while losing control of his marriage.  Unfortunately, Katherine's downfall happens to quickly, taking up just one episode, and then it's on to Catherine Parr, who is... well, honestly kind of boring.  The last few episodes contain Henry's military campaign against the French, the infighting at court over his succession, and of course a final evaluation of the Reformation, which at this point none of Henry's subjects really understand, but they all know that whatever the king says that's what they'll do.  The final episode was beautifully done, and a real surprise since I didn't think they were going to take the story of Henry's life quite so far.  Some vaguely lifeless episodes leading up to it, but it ended well.

So in the end, a great series, not without its moments of imperfection, but still miles above most of the series that populate the Showtime lineup.  Is it historically accurate?  Mostly, from what I've heard, not perfect but better than most.  The events may not always line up exactly with history, but I think what's more important is that the general mood and the themes are accurate.  We do get a real sense of what it was like to live through those times.  And they were nice times to visit, but I sure wouldn't want to live there.

Just a few words on Marvel's Ultimatum series, which I finished this week.  I love the Ultimate Marvel line, as is well known.  I consider it to be the pinnacle of what superhero comics can achieve (yeah, you heard me, Watchmen.  Suck it).  So the Ultimatum series itself was a bit... jarring.  The first two or three issues were strong, dealing with the reality of what it would be like if a supervillain actually succeeded.  Dark, dark stuff, and very strong.  But then it just kind of finishes as a deck-clearing exercise, killing as many characters as possible before the final page.  The violence just becomes numbing and over-the-top (Wolverine is even killed twice, just to really nail that effect).  What saves Ultimatum is not the main series, but the tie-ins.  Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and Ultimate Fantastic Four all turn in really strong arcs (especially Fantastic Four) that expand on the main miniseries and offer the emotional impact that it was lacking.  Reading the entire crossover all together, I felt like I was reading a story.  Reading just the miniseries felt like I was reading a plot summary of another story, written by an eight year-old who likes exploding heads.

American Film Badger:  What am I on, here... number 12?  Okay, so, Number 12 on the 1998 list is Sunset Boulevard, by one of the great American comedy directors, Billy Wilder.  This one's a very dark comedy, where a washed-up actress becomes obsessed with a young screenwriter who uses her mansion to hide out from debt collectors.  It's Hollywood satire mixed with psychological thriller, shot in beautifully moody black-and-white.  It's no secret that the main character dies at the end, the movie opens with him floating face down in a pool.  How he gets there is the story.

And on the 2007 list, Number 12 goes to... The Searchers.  Okay, I haven't seen this one, but I've heard of it.  I want to say it's an old revisionist western, one of the first to depict the old west as it would have really been, as opposed to the typical glorified cowboy movies of the time.  According to Netflix, I'm remembering right:  After his entire family is viciously wiped out, hardened war veteran Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) embarks on a long journey to find his only surviving niece, Debbie (Natalie Wood), who has been captured by hostile Comanche Indians. Director John Ford's richly scenic -- and controversial -- Western also stars blah blah blah.  Apparently pretty good stuff.  I should probably see that at some point.  Something good for anyone who liked True Grit.

This week's reading:  Count Belisarius, a novel of the sixth-century Roman Empire by the esteemed British author and Roman expert Robert Graves.  One of those books that I'd started reading once before and never finished for some reason.  That happened a lot while I was living in Cleveland... this is the third book I've picked up that I started reading in Cleveland and never finished.  Something in the air there...

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?