HOUSE!

And we're in! We are home-
owners. And, pictured to the left, the home we now own.

We closed on Thursday, painted two rooms Thursday and Friday night (among other things), and the move day was Saturday.

The movers arrived at 8am on the dot, loaded the contents of our apartment into their truck and dropped it all off at the new place by 2pm. Nice turnaround. Some scuffs and dings here and there, but that's moving.

We've made a nice dent in the unpacking, the faucet for the washing machine has been replaced, the cracked window panes replaced, the garage lights fixed, the phone and cable and internet all connected. There's still plenty to do, not least of which is to flush-mount these ceiling fans so I quit braining myself against them, but I think we've set a good pace.

Some things I like: Unlocking the door of my house and walking in. The quiet. The space.

Some things I don't like: I now have to mow a lawn. The low sinks, fans, and clearance on the garage doors, all of which demand I stoop, bow and duck. Also, the guy across the street who flies the Confederate flag off his porch on the weekends. Not sure we're going to hang out.
Those aspects aside, the wife and I are both pretty happy with it. Yay, house.

Charlie Brown: Monster

A friend and former roommate of mine posted a link to this image from artist Tim O'Brien this past week on Ye Olde Facebook and I thought it was awesome and I wanted to post it up on the Inanities. This painting was done for a friend of the artist's who was having a show entitled "Monsters." This painting was O'Brien's entry. A counter-intuitive but perfectly appropriate selection, and beautifully executed. I love the wisp of hair and the ink-black eyes -- it's so faithful to the original but completely freakish.

if you're interested, this is a link to his blog, where O'Brien posts a lot of his magazine illustrations as well as a lot of cool inside dope on the ins and outs of being a fairly big-shot freelance illustrator. For instance, Time magazine called him up because they wanted a Sotomayor painting for the cover. He had 24 hours. He ended up doing three different paintings as options. Guy works fast.

In Big Move news, the apartment's getting empty of stuff and full of boxes. Closing's on Thursday, move day is 2 days later.

Anyway, I have a 75th and a 30th birthday party to attend this evening, and still a bit of packing to do, so I'll have to leave this blog entry with that.

"Public Enemies" Review Fail, Impending Home Ownership News

I tried not long ago to write a post about Michael Mann's "Public Enemies," but I couldn't stay awake long enough to write more than a few cogent sentences about that movie. It was well-done but slow. And if you thought Depp's Wonka was a tough nut to crack, Depp's Dillinger is even more impenetrable. He loves his girlfriend (Marion Coutillard) at first sight and, well, that's, kinda it. That's his character. So I guess I'm not going to write about that movie. Sorry Michael Mann. I know you were checking the blog everyday to find out what I thought of your movie, but I can't give you more than what I wrote.

Two interesting things I discovered about Michael Mann while gathering some info for my failed "Public Enemies" post:

1.) Public Enemies is only Michael Mann's 10th feature film. Feels like he's done more, doesn't it?
2.) Early in his career, Mann directed "The Keep," a very cool horror movie from 1983. I had no idea. Now Mann and I are buds forever.

* * * *

In other news, the wife and I are very close to purchasing our first home. The inspection happened on Friday and only very minor issues were discovered. Some electrical outlets don't work, stuff like that. We sent our request for fixes this morning and the seller's already agreed to repair those few things, so we're on our way.

If all goes well, we'll close on the 23rd of this month, and, with luck, move right out of our apartment and into the house. Which would be quite something as we only put an offer on it 6 days ago.

The house is a green, sturdy beast sitting on a corner lot way back in an established neighborhood. Twenty-two years old, it has a good-sized front porch, a high-ish deck out back, and a pleasing copse of shade trees clustered near the front steps. If (knock wood) all goes to plan, we'll be the proud owners of a house in Kennesaw, Georgia. It's a good house and we're pretty excited about it.

So if there's a drought of posts in the next few weeks, it won't be because I'm super lazy, which is usually why there's a drought of posts, but because we'll be getting up out of our apartment and into a house. The Inanities will limp on!

"Drood"

You know it's been a while since I wrote a post that pretty much no one who frequents this thing would have any interest in. I think it's about time I put up one of those.

In other words, time for a book post. This time I'll be blathering about Dan Simmons' latest horror novel, "Drood", the follow-up to his popular horror novel "The Terror."

One thing "The Terror" and "Drood" have in common is that they both had the good fortune to be published by Little, Brown and Company, who have in their employ one of the best inside dust-jacket-flap copy writers I've encountered. For those of you who've read and enjoyed a scary book, I defy you to read this copy, and not instantly want to read page one of "Drood". I'd almost rather read a book by this guy/gal than the book her/her flap-writing goaded me into reading.

Well I picked "Drood" off the circular bestseller table at B&N, read the inside flap, promptly laid that 780 pg mother down on the counter, plunked down my Chase card and took it home. It was a while before I finished it as I was at the time deeply in the throes of torturing myself with a modern classic, and knew if I started something fun I'd never pick up the classic again. But as soon as I got done with that, I got right into "Drood" and finished it middle of last month. I'm sad to say I was left baffled and disappointed by the book.

The story is set in the mid-late 1800's, when Charles Dickens has already published his most famous works and is at the peak of his fame and creative powers. His friend, novelist Wilkie Collins, is the narrator of this tale, and it starts with Wilkie relating to the reader the details, as told to him by Dickens, of the train crash (referred to throughout the novel as "the Staplehurst disaster") that very nearly killed Dickens. It is in the gruesome aftermath of this accident that Dickens first meets the mysterious Drood, a pale, scarred, eyelid-less ghoul in a top hat who seems to glide rather than walk. Dickens relates how Drood seemed to attend to those still dying from their injuries, but all who were visited by him, died minutes later. Once home in London and ostensibly safe, Dickens enlists friend Wilkie to track down Drood and get a better sense of the creature.

This first section of the novel is gripping. Here Simmons is able to conjure a pervasive feeling of dread while grossly magnifying the excesses of the Victorian era into a hellscape worthy of Bosch. We visit London slums so dangerous only an armed policeman can lead a person safely through. Once through, however, we discover an even more dangerous slum beyond where even armed policemen won't dare go. This is good stuff. Opium dens, wild children, Egyptian fiends all abound in a place called Undertown, and so long as Drood remains the focus of the book, Simmons can't miss.

Unfortunately, Simmons isn't so interested in Drood as that darn flap copy might lead you to believe. Once the hunt for Drood (at least the hunt as we understand it) ends with the narrator alone in the lightless sewers, no wiser than he was when he'd first descended, stumbling blind looking for the surface, the novel enters a more psychological phase. Here Simmons asks the reader to kindly forget about that mysterious and frightening Drood fellow, whose name doubles as the title of the doorstop you're holding, and let us take a few hundred pages to see what makes this laudanum-addicted narrator/novelist Wilkie Collins tick.

This new mystery isn't quite so compelling.

Though Wilkie Collins is interesting enough as a character, he is an addict, and if anyone reading's ever seen an episode of "Intervention," you know how strong the urge can be to reach through the screen and slap an addict. The character of Wilkie Collins often provokes a similar reaction. Self-interested, self-involved, rarely bothered by his conscience (which, while weak, does exist) and worn down to not much at all by his jealousy of Dicken's professional success, Wilkie's an unpleasant person. As the novel progresses there are Drood interludes which are effective and bring the book back on track, but none can be entirely believed, experienced as they are by a man perpetually high on opium. As time passes, Wilkie's bad traits seem to get worse, which may or may not be a sign of an infernal interference in Wilkie's mind, though Simmons does not answer this question with any certainty. And even more than putting the reader in the hands of an increasingly loathesome (and unreliable) narrator, it is this unresolved quality of the book that may be its primary flaw.

Throughout "Drood", Simmons devises a series of hair-raising mysteries. What exactly IS the thing in the servants' stairwell in Wilkie's estate? Who is this creepy doppelganger Wilkie dubs "the Other Wilkie" that haunts him and sometimes writes whole pages of his novels for him? And though the answers may reside somewhere in the novel's 750 pages, the meandering writing and almost compulsively repetitive prose stylings (certain phrases, like "the Staplehurst disaster" for example, occur again and again and again -- referring to it often, he never calls that key incident anything else), don't indicate a literary depth best plumbed by multiple readings. And worst of all, the key mysteries of this novel are, if this reader's accurately comprehended the text, essentially dashed aside in a shocking, unsatisfactory confession that serves as the story's climax without firmly tying up the biggest loose end of the whole story. The denouement only serves to leave other, lesser mysteries similarly unresolved.

A book critic wrote of "Drood" that an excellent thriller lived somewhere inside of it; 3 or 400 pages cut out and reworked could result in something more worthy. Though I know that by this he means that if Simmons had focused on Drood and Dickens and Wilkie's hunt for him through the "Great Oven" of London, "Drood" would have been much improved. But given the tone-deaf third act of this book, I'm not at all confident that even if Little, Brown had handed the two-shoebox manuscript back to Simmons with the direction to whittle mercilessly, he wouldn't have found a different way to underwhelm with the ending. First half = good times. Second half = not worth the time. Which is too bad, as the premise for this book is killer and should have produced a much sharper thriller.

New Leviathan Computer, and a New Passel of Movie Reviews

I finally got a new computer over the weekend, and this is what I picked up. That's right. I've finally come over to the other side.

So far so good. The screen is frickin' giant, for one which is good. But at 24" I kind of have to strain my neck to look up at it (and that's not really an exaggeration), but it's bright and crisp and lovely. All day at work, I wanted to be home with it.

But anyway, so I've got a blog-enabler again, and so here I am again.

I've seen three movies since my last entry, so I thought I'd give each a brief run down and call it a post.

1.) Year One. The thing that excited me most about this one was the fact that Harold Ramis directed it. As you know, he did Groundhog Day, a modern classic and one of those rare comedies that hasn't aged over the years. But I forgot that for every Groundhog Day, there are a few not-so-great movies, like, say, Multiplicity. No one's really thinking too much about Multiplicity these days, and I'm thinking in a couple weeks, no one's going to be thinking too much about Year One. Wasn't really bad. But it didn't try for very much. Mucho Libre, I thought, was a very bad comedy, but I think it only attained 'really bad' because it was really trying for something grander, which is darn admirable. Year One isn't aiming for anything higher than the comic stupidity of Caveman, that Ringo Starr starrer. I actually saw Caveman as a double feature at a Texas drive-in in 1981. They'd paired it with Clash of the Titans , so it was oddly fitting I'd see another goofball comedy about prehistoric hijinx at another drive-in theater 28 years later.

Year One stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as a hunter and gatherer respectively, who embark for some reason (not sure why because I was visiting the facilities when this was explained) onto a search for some dumb thing or another. Not worth recounting. But Oliver Platt is a genius in this movie. Who knew that guy was so damn funny? Not sure it's worth sitting through the rest to see how funny Platt is, but if you'd rather, you can take my word for it.

2.) Land of the Lost. This was the 2nd bill in our double feature. For me, much funnier than Year One. Will Farrell's got some hilarious moments in it (like when he mouths the words "F**k you" to their ape friend Chaka, for whom he has a weird, pathological hatred for), and Danny's given some room in this movie to be really funny, but if anything was holding this movie back, it was that it was based on a TV show that no one actually had a whole lot of nostalgia for in the first place. Probably because it wasn't a very good show. So, kudos to Brad Sieberling and the writers and Will and Danny and the British chick who seemed very nice for making a decent movie out of some sub-par source material. (Special note: Be sure to keep an eye out for a Ben Best cameo.)

3.) Away We Go. Was really not looking forward to this one, but wifey wanted to go and Lord knows I deserve to get dragged to some movies for all the movies I drag her to, so away we went to Away We Go! (And there you have my Gene Shalit moment. No more of those, I promise.) Actually, very good. Written by McSweeney's kingpin and (sigh) pretty good writer Dave Eggers and his wife, also-novelist Vendela Vida, and directed by Sam Mendes, Away We Go is either a.) a movie that is trying very hard to be a generation-defining movie, or b.) a movie that actually kind of defines a generation. Or at least part of it. Still not sure on that point, but I'm having some trouble kicking it out of my head.

John Krazinski and Maya Rudolph play Burt Farlander and Verona de Tessant, a young couple with a baby on the way. They live in a ramshackle house out near Burt's parents (in what looks like Wyoming or somesuch) and both work from home. He sells insurance over the phone, and she's a medical illustrator. When Burt's parents (a very funny Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels) decide to forego the whole grandparent thing and move to Antwerp for 2 years, Burt and Verona find themselves unmoored to any particular geographical location. They decide to shop around for a new city to put down roots and this search provides the basic structure of the film. They visit friends and relatives all over the country and so the film gets chopped into little vignettes about where other young- thirty-somethings find themselves 9 years into the 21st century. The film becomes a kind of examination of different types and intensities of unhappiness, and what feel like basic truths are uncovered but without seeming corny, self-righteous or preachy. Not an easy trick. The secondary roles are done uniformly well by actors like Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan and Paul Schneider (who's just plain good in this), and the tone, which is so important a part of this movie, hits that quirky, real, bittersweet funny/sad sweet spot that a lot of movies are looking to hit but often don't.

So, in other words, pretty darn good. Mark that one a recommend.

Since I'm not so good with photos yet on this thing, I'll just stick with the one computer image at the top and call it a night.

A Photo From the Beach

To make up for my photo-free reference to my beach vacation in yesterday's post, I'm including a photo my brother took of me (and my dad in the bg) that captures some of the feel of the week. Sitting and reading was the order of the day, which suited me fine.

If you look, you can see on my right arm the weird streak of paleness shooting through sunburn. I had a few of those. I've never tanned great, but I never used to tan in splotches and streaks. Weird.

The book my dad's reading is "Gone Tomorrow" by Lee Child (the latest Jack Reacher novel, I'd finished it the day before), and I'm reading "The End of Overeating" by David Kessler. I was hoping I'd find directions on how to get rid of the also-pictured gut without exerting a single foot-pound of effort or eating so much as a calorie less. Alas, no luck.

Back from Vacation! Movie Reviews! No Accompanying Photos!

Hey y'all. Sorry for the totally weak blog action of late. I feel like I just put that "Road" post up and it's actually been about a month. I should just put dead blog on this thing and save my dignity, but I'll keep on keepin' on.

From May 30th to June 7th I was in Florida with my family for a big ole vacation. No email or cell phone or Facebook or internet at all for a week. Just sitting in a camp chair under an umbrella that sometimes launch out of the sand and fly, reading new Jack Reacher, looking up periodically to confirm the Gulf was still there, and taking ladylike sips from canned Corona Lights (because they won't let you take bottles to the beach, understandably). I've never really been on a proper, take-time-off-work vacation before, and it was pleasant and relaxing and all of that, but I had to concentrate to keep from turning it into a sad countdown to a return to the workaday. But I think I did all right on that score.

I've seen a shitload of movies since last I posted. Here's a rundown:

1.) Star Trek. I think JJ Abrams is trying very hard to be the next Steven Spielberg. I wouldn't say he's got the chops to do it, I don't see that yet, but he's sure got Stevie's ambition. This movie was almost disturbingly tailored for the broadest possible audience. Fuzzy sidekicks, slapstick humor at every turn, even Tyler Perry was thrown into this thing to give it the best possible chance to succeed at the box office. And even with all of that calculated mainstream profit-driven thought pushing its way into this movie, it works. They made a fun movie that, to my mind, is as fun and mindless as Star Trek IV was, and Star Trek IV was pretty good. I'm not sure I'm into the whole alternate Trek universe thing Abrams started here, but the actors are all appealing and I'm interested to see sequels, so I guess everyone's happy. Except the haters.

2.) Terminator 4: Salvation. For the first 2/3rd of this movie, Terminator 4 rocks it as hard as T2 ever did. It even brought JD Salinger out of seclusion! The shots! Camera locked on John Connor from ground, to helicopter, to airborne helicopter, to downed helicopter, no cuts. The sequence! You know the one I mean. The one that begins with the giant terminator attack on the gas station hideout and ends with Marcus scudding across the surface of the canyon river. That was good enough to make me forgive McG a.) his name, and b.) Charlie's Angels 2. Unfortunately, after John Connor and his black friend successfully field test the signal on the big hunter-killer, the screenwriters apparently suffered massive head-trauma but kept writing through the pain. McG, clearly not knowing his writers had been close to blacking out with life-threatening concussions when they wrote the 3rd act, just shot what had been written. He's a director, not a writer! How was he supposed to know the ending was so bad? And so, in the dumb 3rd act, John Connor walks into SkyNet city without a.) a single problem, or b.) a moment's suspicion about how he's walking into SkyNet city without a single problem. Worse than all of that, it just gets boring and lets the audience out of the story too much. But even with the weak ending, T4 is still a worthy addition to what I thought was a dead saga, and makes me interested to see more.

3.) Up. What a downer! An uplifting animated film about an old man coming to grips with the death of his wife? And his own impending death? What? Kudos to Pixar for keeping it different, and not letting any received wisdom about what an animated movie can or should be dictate which films they make, but this movie was sad, y'all! But besides that, Up is more of the same Pixar genius. Brilliant animation, brilliant shot selection, brilliantly drawn characters. There were some moments where whimsy crossed the line into sheer ludicrousness (dogs flying biplanes?), but I'm just not especially enthusiastic about lump-in-the-throat movies made by people who've set out to get people to cry, and I kind of think they did with this movie, more than any other Pixar movie to date. But even with all that said, I'm not sure I'd want them to have changed any of that stuff. It was all very well done, but just not what I'm down for these days. Or should I say... up for?

4.) Drag Me to Hell. Stephen King used to run-down a spiral of diminishing returns when writing horror novels. First, if you can get it, go for terror. If you can't get that, try for horror. If not that, go for a cheap shock. And if you can't get any of that, "go for the gross out." I think Sam Raimi knew right off the bat he wasn't going to get any of the first three, probably had no intention of attempting to get them, and focused his energy on the gross out. He doesn't do too badly on that score, but it's kind of a low bar he set for himself. Drag me to Hell was more of a diverting exercise -- a chance for Raimi to show himself and his fans that 3 Spider Man movies hadn't killed the Evil Dead in him -- than a real honest-to-God horror film. Things I liked: 1.) Allison Lohman. Easy on the eyes. 2.) The cinematography. The colors were really popping and it managed to capture some of that LA-sunlight quality that seems to elude other filmmakers. 3.) the last 10 seconds. Not in a gut-level way -- it's not emotionally satisfying -- but intellectually it makes sense. I wish the set up for the ending hadn't been so obvious though.

5.) The Hangover. Funny stuff. I never felt I was travelling on the same current of humor as this movie was, but it had a good number of laughs. I liked the Rain Man shot a lot, I liked the shot in the taser class where the kid gets up to tase Zach and it goes into slow-mo, and I liked the easy comraderie. The tone was good too, which is an easy thing to discount but always hard to get right. And the photo montage at the end is, of course, genius. But I'm not thinking right now that this is an amazing comedy, just a really competent one.

I'd add some photos to pretty this beast up, but it's late, and the Man demands I return to work tomorrow.

"The Road" Trailer Hits

Not a great trailer, but gets the job done. For one, I don't really like the "Day After Tomorrow" vibe at the start of this thing. McCarthy spent about a sentence dealing with the whys and wherefores of the end of civilization, but the trailer makes those concerns seem paramount. Comes off looking cheap and over-CG'd. The delay in getting this into theaters also worries me a bit. But there are enough hints that the dread and terror and hope McCarthy conjured so effortlessly in the novel made it into the movie that I'm excited about this one.

"The IMAX Experience" is Not IMAX

I GOT INTO A CONVERSATION with one of my 3 bosses at work back in March and told him I was going to see "Watchmen" in IMAX. I was driving about an hour from where I live to see it on the big screen.

He said, "I think there's an IMAX right up here." He told me about the local AMC theater that now, apparently, had IMAX and it was, in fact, much closer than the one I'd been driving to. I had my doubts about my boss's claims. When they installed the IMAX projector into the Mall of Georgia Regal theater up in Buford, GA, many years ago, it made the front page of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution because they'd had to lower it into place with the aid of a helicopter because it's e-goddamn-normous. (And also not a lot of interesting things happen in Atlanta, despite what you may have heard.) I hadn't heard of anything like a big-time installation of and IMAX projector happening out near where I work.

This morning, my boss comes up to my cube and says: "You know that theater over by the mall? It does have IMAX. My wife went into the Joann's that's right next to the theater, (I don't know what they do [at Joann's] -- I guess they make things?) Anyway, I went in and asked if they had IMAX there and they said, yes they did."

I was still dubious, but if an employee said they had IMAX, maybe they did. But the IMAX theater was just ... hidden somehow. When there's an IMAX theater in a multiplex you damn well know it because the screen is, like the projector, e-goddamn-normous.

Well, now I know what the disconnect is.

IMAX is now putting their brand on NOT-IMAX screenings. Here's a helpful comparison. The big rectangle is the size of an actual IMAX screen, the kind I drive an hour to watch movies on. The smaller one is the size of the screen AMC and Regal and IMAX are saying provide "The IMAX Experience":



As you can see, it's total bullshit. A scam.

Aziz Ansari, the guy who plays the smarmy middle eastern dude on the new NBC comedy "Parks and Recreation" (alongside NCSA SOF alum Paul Schneider), got tricked into seeing a faux-IMAX movie ("Star Trek") and paying regular-IMAX prices. He blogged about it.

I'm a big supporter of IMAX, I think the actual IMAX experience could establish a new foundation for moviegoing that could keep theaters in business and profitable for another 50 years -- but this diluting of the brand by going after unsophisticated moviegoers is low, completely needless, and will ultimately backfire.

Anyway, something to look out for and tell others about.

Latest SNL Digital Short

This was kind of gross, but also kind of funny. Not so funny that I'm banging down people's doors trying to get them to watch it, but funny enough to try out Hulu's embed functionality for shits and gigs.

(Also: From this clip, it is now indisputable: Susan Sarandon has de-aged 4 years since her last movie. Brilliant plastic surgeon or pact with the devil?)

In the Tank

Man do I like our President.

When I'm feeling more ambitious than I do right now, I'll write up a really insight-free report card for our President in his first 100+ days, with plenty o' bloviation on the policy choices of this very young administration. But having worked like crazy during many of those 100 days and, thusly unable to devote as much attention to politics as I did during my unemployed days (or even my non-comic-drawing days), I'm just enjoying sitting back and watching this guy work: dazzling during press conferences, reversing dumbshit policies enacted over the last 8 years with a stroke of the pen, and, every now and again, really seeming to enjoy being President.

A story like this is a good example: Obama and Biden heading down to a local burger joint. In this case, it's a place called Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington, Virginia.

I'm not so naive as to think Obama doesn't know how appealingly down-to-Earth this photo-op makes him look (which, from an image-management point of view, probably helps tamp down on feelings in some quarters that he's too aloof or "arrogant"), or that it wasn't a response to last weekend's Republicans-Strategize-at-a-Pizzaria photo op. But I'm also not so cynical as to think the man a.) doesn't like a good burger as much as the next guy, or b.) doesn't think that going to a neighborhood burger joint in a presidential motorcade makes the experience that much cooler.

Anyway, I enjoyed this "news" story and thought I'd share.

Briefly

Quentin Tarantino loves Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns". From the New York Times Magazine article: "I am a big fan of ‘‘Returns.’’ I’m working on what is now a 20-page review of that movie, and I’m not done yet. "

Who doesn't love a really really long movie review?

Also: this makes me want to rewatch that movie.

Stephen King News, in Brief

Three tidbits of Stephen King news, listed in descending order of likely interest from this blog's readers. All of my news comes from this site.

1.) When "Lost" wraps up, (which I think happens at the end of next season), J.J. Abrams (director of Cloverfield, Star Trek) and Damon Lindelof aim to begin work on bringing Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series to the big screen. Seven books... seven movies?

2.) This Sunday's "Family Guy" is devoted to Stephen King. This from the network's description:

Sunday, May 10
FAMILY GUY (9:00-9:30 PM ET/PT) – “Three Kings” – Season Finale

"After Peter discovers the writing of Stephen King, he imagines his family and friends in three of King’s most famous works. First, Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland and Joe – as 12-year-olds – travel along a railroad track on a journey of self-discovery narrated by Richard Dreyfuss (guest-voicing as himself). Second, Brian is injured in a bad car crash only to be “rescued” by his “number one fan,” Stewie. Finally, Cleveland and Peter become fast friends in prison."

"Family Guy"'s gotten better (and weirder) each season (culminating in the episode where Peter discovers the joys of the song "The Bird's the Word" -- this episode very nearly killed me), so I'm really looking forward to this one. The show's not afraid to make an obscure cultural reference, so it'll be interesting to see how "inside" McFarlane gets with his King jokes.

3.) November sees the release of King's newest novel entitled "Under the Dome," the description of which sounds as if it were inspired by 2008's "The Simpson's Movie":

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mills, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

This thing's 1,120 pages and comes out November 20th.

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

I saw "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" on Friday night, and though it wasn't the worst summer movie I've seen, it was the worst comic-book movie I've seen. I've been a big Wolverine fan since I started reading comics, but this movie made me forget what I liked so much about his character.

He's a guy with claws that can cut through anything, he's older than dirt but still looks like a ripped 40-year old, and he can never die. Somehow this movie managed to make all of that seem really boring. Part of that might have been because in the first part of the movie, when he's teamed up with his brother, Victor (aka Sabretooth, played by a genuinely menacing Liev Schrieber) and a bunch of other mutants, Wolverine is easily the most useless member of the team. He's got frickin' BONE claws. What's a guy going to do with those? Stab a guy? Isn't a guy with two big knives instantly as qualified as Logan to be a death-dealer?

Wolverine never gets too much cooler than a fairly ineffectual guy with 6 jagged compound fractures. Hugh Jackman does what he can to keep the character he originated interesting (and by the way Wolverine was 10 times cooler in his first scene in "X-Men" then he is in this whole movie), but isn't helped by a muddled, goofy script by David Benioff and Skip Woods. But if you're a motivated director, you can make a shite script look really cool if you know how to shoot action scenes and understand how special effects work. Unfortunately, Director Gavin Woods is so-so to not-very-good on action, but absolutely clueless with special effects. I think there's a whole reel in this movie that could serve as a clinic in how NOT to do green screen work.

"Wolverine" suffers from the same guiding philosophy as last year's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull": CG makes everything better. The result was lots of fakey effects and glaringly bad green screen work. But bad as "Crystal Skull" was on this score, "Wolverine" makes "Crystal Skull" seem like "Aguierre: The Wrath of God." People want to see real people doing real things in real places, but there's precious little of that in "Wolverine." Even Logan's CLAWS are digital -- worse, they look like digital claws. And because the special effects are so bad, a $140 million dollar movie looks like it cost half that much.

I think Gavin Hood, like a lot of non-comic-reading folks, doesn't "get" Wolverine, and, I suspect, never cared about doing a "Wolverine" movie right. The results, sadly, speak for themselves.

But since it made $87 million over the weekend, Fox will wrongly view Hood's film as a success, (just as they will wrongly view Snyder's "Watchmen" a failure), Hood will get to direct/ruin another big-budget studio film, and Fox will likely foist more sub-par "X-Men Origins" movies on filmgoers. If many more of these disappointing comic-book films are released, I suspect the current trend of comic-book-to-film adaptations will fizzle out before some of the great properties have been translated to the silver screen.

New Saturn Images; Also: Shapes and Their Crushing Recurrence

Some new images of Saturn and its surrounding moons taken by Cassini were released recently and they're pretty stunning. The Boston Globe's got a crisp, nicely captioned set of photos that kind of make astronomy cool again. Well, for a few seconds and then it gets nerdy again.

The image to the right is from Saturn's "high north" and it was taken from a distance of 336,000 miles. Each pixel represents 18 miles (let that blow your mind for a second).

A lot of the images are powerful but this one really struck me. Looking closely at it, all the roiling storms on the surface of the planet, I thought it looked a bit like this photo:


I'm just continually struck by how the same patterns and shapes show up again and again and again on a sliding scale, all the way from the tiniest speck of atomic matter, to a nautilus shell, to the most macro view of the entire universe. And here the same spiral shapes showing up here on the surface of gas giant Saturn. Something about that brutal consistency absolutely everywhere is both reassuring and kind of deflating.















In our deepest explorations of space, will we ever find the legendary schlazz'shlorg shape? Or just more of these spirals?

Yeah. More spirals.

Don't Let Ben Linus Read to Your Children

Michael Emerson plays Ben Linus on "Lost". Ben's the 2nd coolest character on the show, right behind John Locke, and he's been getting more and more airtime since he was introduced in season 2 because the producers know genius when they see it.

The reason he's cool, even though the show he's on is getting, sadly, less cool, is because he seems to know what's going on on the island even though no one who's been watching the show for the last 76 years does. We all envy him because he probably doesn't have to watch any more episodes to find out what the eff is going on.

More than that though, I like Michael Emerson because JJ Abrams and the "Lost" crew wrote a great, mysterious, continually-surprising character, and Emerson nails the role every week. Part of what makes him an actor you can't help but watch is his brilliant use of voice. It raises creepy to new levels.

And he uses that voice to great effect for this awesome bit on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", reading a children's rhyme in his patented creepy-genius voice. If they were casting "Silence of the Lambs" right now, I guarantee this guy would be in the lead for Lecter. Anyway, good stuff. Made me laugh.

"Watchmen" [2009]

[Spoilers below.]

It’s been more than a month since the film adaptation of “Watchmen” came out (Mar. 6^th), and I’m still thinking about it. The film, adapted from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel of the same name, is compelling and thought-provoking in the same ways the comic was, but the movie’s still banging around inside my head for other reasons. One reason in particular, and I wasn't expecting this, is the question is raised for me: When adapting a story into film, how faithful is too faithful?

Starting out with that question might make it seem I was disappointed with the movie, but I loved this thing. I think director Zach Snyder did an incredible job adapting what a lot of people thought was not actually filmable. When he wasn’t filming the comic, panel by panel, he was expanding the scenes, letting them breathe. The first scene, where a shadowy assassin murders the Comedian, was not depicted in the comic as it happened, but visited only in glimpses of a past event. Snyder lets us see it, and he’s smart to do it. The murder of the Comedian is a grabber.

Now I loved every frame of “The Dark Knight”, but I think after “Watchmen,” we have to give credit to Snyder – he directs fight scenes exceptionally well. As a contrast, take Christopher Nolan's approach to superhero fight scenes. Where Nolan seems reticent about showing a guy in a superhero outfit fighting, Snyder films the two combatants in the first scene (and a few others) full frame, no quick mid-punch edits, with the actors placed far enough from the camera so we can see one fighter strike, and the other dodge. Snyder allows the actors to communicate something about their characters through the fight choreography. First, we see that these guys are definitely superheroes, or as much like superheroes as the "Watchmen" world allows two non-irradiated/disintegrated men to be. Their fists land like hammer strikes and move in blurs. The shadowy assassin’s moves are precise, forceful, and relentless, a bit like a gymnast’s. The Comedian fights like a guy used to winning bar brawls, but strong as he is, he’s no match. For the assassin, it seems personal somehow. Why else does he take his time so? Draw out his victim’s pain? It’s a brilliant scene and pulled me right in.

The opening credit sequence is probably the most creative thing Snyder’s done in any of his three studio movies. Period. Showing us glimpses of historic moments in superheroing past, the hyper-detailed credit sequence is not just poignant and visually arresting, it’s a marvel of efficiency. The credit sequence sets up the complicated alternate reality of real-life superheroes in two and a half minutes. A director with less talent might have taken considerably more time to lay the same foundation. And Snyder’s use of Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” works perfectly here, underscoring the feeling of sadness and loss that permeates the story.

Because Snyder’s song choices are usually so pitch perfect and unexpected, (and the use of the Dylan song here is no exception) I was surprised in a few instances at some obvious, ham-fisted music queues that pop up here and there during the rest of the film. Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” for the Comedian’s funeral? It was so on the nose emotionally, its effect was almost comic. Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for Dr. Manhattan’s appearance in Vietnam seemed similarly lazy. Surely, there must have been a subtler way to evoke “Apocalypse Now” then to use that same damn song Coppolla used. One critic who saw the film asked for a moratorium on the use of “Hallelujah” in films indefinitely, and I second that. It was cool when I first heard it in “Shrek," but listening to Leonard Cohen's weird cover of it while Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have superhero sex made me wince.

For a good while, the film settles into the deliberate-pace set by the comic. We meet the members of the now-defunct “Watchmen” years after they’ve disbanded (by government order), and we lay out the essence of the plot: someone may or may not be killing off the old Watchmen one by one.

First, fantastic casting all around, but the best bit of casting has to be Jackie Earle Haley’s turn as the psychotic crime-fighting detective Rorschach. His despairing, defiant final moment in the Antarctic snow is one of my favorite bits of film acting I’ve seen in a long while. Patrick Wilson does great work as Nite Owl, nailing the broken schlub with some fight still left in him, and Malin Ackerman’s work as Silk Spectre was a pleasant surprise – I hadn’t expected anyone to pull off what I thought was a fairly thin character, but she does excellent work here.

The only actor I had an issue with was Carla Gugino, whose work I usually like. When she’s playing the young version of her character, Sally Jupiter, AKA the original Silk Spectre, she’s great. But when she has to play the elderly Jupiter, she comes off like a poor man’s Lea Thompson in “Back to the Future 2” – the not-quite-right make-up also does her no favors. I found her performance in these scenes distracting and was the movie’s only acting/casting misfire.

In his brief appearance as pre-Dr. Manhattan physicist Jon Ostermann, Billy Crudup does some interesting work and makes me want to see him do more movies, but his performance really takes a backseat to the groundbreaking CG work they did to create Dr. Manhattan. In my mind, he is the most convincingly human CG character created to date. Crudup's physical performance was recorded using motion capture and what you see on-screen is entirely CG. When he is blue, he is an animated character. The first time I saw it, I had no idea. I thought it was crudup in blue makeup. For me, “Watchmen” represents the first time a film has broken the CG actor/real actor barrier. We’re not traveling towards an actor-free movie future at any great rate of speed, but we’re making some incredible leaps in that direction, and Dr. Manhattan is one of the biggest yet. Seeing the film a second time, I was able to see some slightly-off, not-quite-human movements here and there, but only because I was really looking. I'm surprised I haven't seen more written about this achievement.

But getting back to my original question, "How faithful is too faithful?" I've been feeling schizophrenic thinking of an answer, at least as it applies to "Watchmen.". On one hand, I feel grateful to Zach Snyder and the crew for having such respect for the comic that they wanted to bring Moore and Gibbon’s brilliant story to life in film as faithfully as they could. Costumes, set design, make-up, lighting, FX, it was clear in every scene that everyone involved in the production of this film was working their asses off to recreate the graphic novel. The original comic is brilliant, so seeing film artists strive to re-create a work I love was exciting to watch. And, really, what did I have to complain about? In an air-conditioned IMAX theater with ice-cold Diet Coke in hand, I got to watch Dr. Manhattan fly across the surface of Mars in his crystal palace-ship. I got to see Ozymandius beat the hell out of the Comedian and then throw him out of his apartment window. I got to see a heartbroken Rorschach commit suicide-by-demigod.

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder if Snyder’s overriding reverence for the original text was a form of laziness, or worse, a kind of artistic apathy. Comics are a visual, almost filmic medium, and they lend themselves to filmed adaptation pretty well. But, realistically speaking, what were the odds that every component necessary to make “Watchmen” a successful comic book was also present to create a successful film? At times as I watched the film, and saw that they’d brilliantly recreated this or that panel, the entire film began to seem less like an attempt to transfer the power and philosophical depth of the original into a new medium, than it was a show of technicianship; an act of cinematic stenography. By simply filming the comic, only interpreting it into a different medium with a minimum of adjustment, it was as though he were saying, "I don't get really get it, and I don't see what you nerds are all on about with "Watchmen", but here it is just how you want it. Now do me a solid and see it four times so I can make something I'm into."

But then the other voice interrupts this line of thought to remind me that a panel-by-panel recreation of the comic was pretty much what I wanted, and I likes whats I gots. So these two opposing ideas warred in my head and continue to do. I will concede that this film challenges my former way of thinking about adaptations which is, in short, that the harder a filmmaker works to make the film as much like the source material as he can, the better the film will be. But now I’m starting to think that what I used to think was so cut and dried, might not actually be so.

Which brings me to the one moment in the film that Snyder deviated most sharply from the original comic; a moment that also happens to be the most important in the story: the mass murder that ends the threat of nuclear Armageddon and ushers in a new era of peace. Let me briefly lay out the two endings:

In the comic, the plot Rorschach and Nite Owl uncover (famously, just 35 minutes too late), is fellow Watchman Ozymandius's plan to bring world peace by convincing the citizens of Earth they are under attack from giant, Lovecraftian, squid-like aliens. He would do this by teleporting a giant, living, man-made monster with a giant brain cloned from a powerful human psychic directly into New York City. The teleportation would kill the monster, and the resulting psychic wave would kill millions of people in the city.

In the film version, Zack Snyder and his creative collaborators changed the ending so that the plot Rorschach and Nite Owl uncover is Ozymandius' scheme to bring world peace by convincing the citizens of the world that they are under attack by Dr. Manhattan, thus bringing the nations of the world together to fight a common enemy. Ozymandius would achieve this unity by setting off a series of bombs whose blast signature would exactly match that of Dr. Manhattan. The explosions would kill many millions.

I understand why Snyder thought he had to change the ending. To a certain extent, I even agree with the choice. It would have been a major risk to take with a) one's career, and b) a $65 million dollar film already targeted fairly narrowly at comic nerds like myself, which was a risk in and of itself. It's one thing to pull off a cinematic treatment of a naked glowing blue man with white eyes, but quite another to make the above-described squid ending seem anything less than the most expensive acid-trip ever filmed. I'm not sure if I were in Snyder's shoes I'd take that bet either.

And though the film's climax is less batshit crazy than Alan Moore's squid ending, it is, to me, a less effective ending.

The reason, in my view, that the squid ending in Watchmen is so powerful, is because it was so perfectly disorienting. We've only just had Ozymandius, AKA Adrian Veigt, lay out his hyper-expositional plot for his former compatriots before we're faced with the result of that plan's execution. Nite Owl even laughs at the ridiculousness of Veigt's masterplan, telling Adrian he needs psychiatric help.

But then it happens. The ridiculous plan occurs. No matter how weird and goofy his plan may have been, the instant millions died it stops being funny. Six splash-pages of people dead everywhere. Secondary characters we've followed throughout lay in the street, felled by a giant special-effect. Reading the rest of the book went so much faster than what had come before because the squid-caused slaughter is so weird, so impossible, the carnage it wreaks so incredible, that you take in the rest of the story in a daze, working to take in the reality of what happened the same way the people of the world "Watchmen" is set in are struggling to take it in.

It's a brutally effective moment in the story, expertly arrived at and expertly executed, and I think Synder missed out on an opportunity to attempt something similarly bold. I think the mistake was that Snyder opted for a rational and comprehensible ending where something irrational and incomprehensible was called for. What Hunter S. Thompson said about life, I'd apply to the ending: "it never got weird enough." A manmade psychic squid's as good as anything else to get this effect, but if Snyder wanted a safer way out of this cinematic pool of quicksand Moore set up for the poor soul brave enough to attempt to film “Watchmen,” I wished he'd taken a different tack than the ending we got. All told, aside from some of the film's aforementioned missteps, this was a great movie and worthy of the comic it was based on. After having seen it twice in theaters, I'm excited now to see the 3-hour plus cut on Blu-Ray.

ADDENDUM:

Back when "Watchmen" has just come out and a blog post about the movie was actually relevant, Craig Moorhead posted up some questions he had about the movie after seeing it. You can go to that post here (and see some other readers answer those questions) here: Craig's "Watchmen Questions" Now that I'm finally writing my month-and-a-half-late "Watchmen" post, I'll add my answers here:

1. Which was better, the book or the movie or the animated book/movie?

The book.

2. Do you think it would’ve been better if Snyder smoked as much opium as Alan Moore?

Good question. Maybe a bit of opium would have made him decide the squid was worth fighting to keep in the movie.

3. Did Patrick Wilson make the character of Daniel even better than it was in the book?

Yes.

4. If you had cut the movie, how long would it be?

1 hour longer.

5. The ending didn’t really add up, did it?

Sadly, no.

6. Which movie had better characters: Slumdog Millionaire or Watchmen?

Watchmen. But I wasn't that big a fan of "Slumdog", so I'm biased.

7. How great / weird is it to see Kelly “Moocher” Leak making such a strong comeback? Really, there was nothing between ‘Maniac Cop 3′ and ‘Little Children’.

His is a fantastic story. Just proves that if you've got talent, you're never really out of contention to play in the big leagues. I hear he's going to be the new Freddy Krueger, which is great news.

8. How did you feel about the JFK bit in the credit sequence?

Oh yeah. It made me sad and uncomfortable. But a great addition to that credit sequence.

9. Did you find the letters from the filmmakers to be lame or spot on?

Lame only in that they were a bit on the whiny side, but I pretty much agree with everything they're saying.

10. Lee Iacocca seriously took a bullet between the eyes, didn’t he?

He sure as hell did. All two people who in the audience who knew who he was didn't know if that was even worth a titter.

I plan to beat the dead horse that is "Watchmen" a bit more in future posts. So, you know, watch for those.

A Blogger Emerges from His Drawing Cave

And I'm done!

Well, with this section anyway. More may come. It only took 3 and half months of nights and weekends (and quite a bit of focused procrastination) to create 7 whole pages of a comic book from one Mr S.H.'s script, but I think they turned out all right.

The story so far, in brief, is this: a a boy's house is demolished by a tornado. In the wreckage he finds a glass eye. He and his father go to their church to sit out the storm, which continues to threaten, and the boy discovers that when he holds the glass eye he can see things, frightening things, happening elsewhere. In the page below, the boy has spotted an old woman who may be the owner of that glass eye.






















So with this project finished, the blogging should increase.

Next up, "Watchmen" review/thoughts/bloviation.

"Where the Wild Things Are" Trailer is Up

And page 8 is finished. So close to the end.

Anyway, The trailer is up finally for Spike Jonze' upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book "Where the Wild Things Are." Here's another instance of a trailer's song perfectly suited to the visuals, Arcade Fire's brilliant "Wake Up" playing over some striking imagery. (The trailer houses right cranking some of these trailers out right now are, I think, creating consistently brilliant film art. I know in reality these guys are just re-using what other artists have created, but the trick of distilling a 2-hour film down into a minute and a half and, on occasion, evoking an emotional response sometimes more powerful than the film itself is able to, is a real feat.)

The way through the creative thicket has been torturous for Jonze and this film. Early test screenings haven't gone very well, audiences complaining the child isn't sympathetic for instance. I'll be interested to see if Jonze has managed to craft a winning film out of what some had written off as an unsalvageable mess.

The trailer shows clearly that they've managed to do a lot with what is, at heart, a short children's picture book long on imagery and short on plot or incident. And as trailer's go, it's very well done. But I'm not racing out the door to buy tickets for this one based on this. It seems like it might be one of those muddled movies that doesn't know if it's for kids or adults and ends up aiming for some muddy middle ground that alienates both audiences. And with rare exceptions, movies that have this difficult a time getting from the first day of shooting to theaters rarely turn out to be successful films. But I'll keep my fingers crossed.

New Comments on Old Posts

Good news: I'm nearly done with my drawing project. I'll be finishing page 8 of 9 tonight and tomorrow. With luck I'll be finished with page 9 by the end of the weekend and into the corrections and and touch-ups and polishing early next week.

Bad news: I'll probably be blogging a lot more very soon.

I wanted to post up a quick blog for two reasons.

1.) Heath posted "Dead blog" in the comments. His occasionally writing this doesn't prompt me to write a new entry every time I see it, but it does work some of the time. So here you go.

2.) I got two comments on random old posts within one 24-hour period. I'm going to throw them up here right now because it's a super easy blog post, and because these comments are very nearly interesting.

a.) First, the shorter one, posted up at 6:27 this morning on my "Chronicles of Riddick" review from way back in the day:

"The Chronicles of Riddick is a story that made a lasting impression on me.
Went to video rental shop and saw the title and decided to give it a try...and good lord was i surprised??
After seeing the movie went back to the shop to rent the Pitch Black. The both movies were shockingly good that I had to buy both DVD's in DVD store. I put it in a same category of epic proportions movies such as The Lord of the Rings. Can't wait to see the third sequence of Riddick in theater and then buy the DVD again to finish my collection.
Vin Diesel is just too damn good actor. Tony"

b.) And here's the other, posted up at 4:25 this morning on my "Dark Knight" blog where I try and get at who might be the villain for the third Batman movie:

Ok, I have thought about this long and hard and the villain I think the main villain in the next Nolan Batman movie should be…(drum roll please)…the Penguin. Yeah, I know a lot of people out there are against the Penguin, and I know Chris Nolan has stated that he believes the Penguin would be one of the harder villains to pull off, but I humbly disagree. Bare with me as I list the reasons why I think he would work and why I think he is one of the best, most unappreciated Batman foes, as well as counter some familiar criticism about him:

1) He is realistic: The thing about the Penguin, like almost all of Batman's Golden Age foes, is that technically he his not a super-villain - he is an arch criminal. And there is a big differenced between the two. A super-villain is just the evil version of a super-hero, someone who possesses powers and abilities beyond us, while an arch-criminal is a specific type of criminal in the real world but shown in a larger than life manner. Catwoman is the femme fatale/cat-burglar writ large; Joker is the psychotic anarchist criminal; Two-Face is the idea of victim turned criminal; hell, Batman isn’t even a superhero in the original comics or Nolan’s series, he is a classic pulp masked vigilante, more akin to the Shadow, the Spider, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro than Superman or Spider-Man. The Penguin fits right in there with that same vibe, since he represents the professional, organized criminal (with an added touch of being flamboyant and stylish). Having said that, it makes it easier for me to believe that a flamboyant gangster with an gun hidden in an umbrella fits Nolan’s universe more than a man with a freeze gun or a woman who can control plants does.

As an arch-version of a gangster, have the Penguin be the new crime boss in Gotham. With all the chaos that the Joker caused, it wouldn’t be that hard to believe that the underworld would be turning to someone to bring order and help them reorganize, and I could even see the normal citizens and politicians of Gotham support him. After the fall of Saddam in Iraq, chaos reigned in Iraq and one of the big fears amongst our politicians and military experts was that the people of Gotham would turn to a strongman and dictator preferring tyranny to anarchy. Same thing happened in Germany after WWI when Hitler rose to power. Well, after Batman smashed the mobs to only have the Joker fill their void; I can easily see the people of Gotham saying they wouldn’t mind a strong organized crime boss keeping the crooks in line – they might still have crime but at least the wouldn’t have anarchy. And from such roots tyrannies are built.


2) He is both dangerous and intelligent: The Penguin in his early history wasn’t nearly as ridiculous or as incompetent as he is now. In his first couple of appearances he killed people, maybe not as often as the Joker but he definitely had a ruthless streak. He also was the first villain to actually escape from Batman and outsmart him. The Joker got busted by Batman in all of his first appearance (or at least appeared to mysteriously die), but not the Penguin; an actual running theme in all of Penguin’s early stories was that he somehow managed to escape. This only stopped after the editorial staff demanded that the Joker stop killing people and the Penguin stopped getting away because they felt it showed that crime did pay.


The other thing about being intelligent means he plots. He has his own goals and ambitions which do not always involve Batman. What realistic plots could Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane or Deadshot have? I mean, Bane and Deadshot would have only one goal/plot – kill Batman. Doesn’t really give the screenwriter’s much to work with. The Penguin, on the other hand, would want to pull of crimes, become the boss of Gotham AND kill Batman (or at least neutralize him). Plenty of more material for the screenwriters to work with.


3) “But isn’t he ridiculous and corny?”: He was not nearly as cheesy as Joker was in the late 40’s through the 60’s. Sure he used trick umbrellas, but Joker was doing just as corny things, like having his own utility belt or trying to have a contest with Clay-Face. And while Joker was allowed to be updated and modernized, for some reason the Penguin has been forced to stay in same old character-mold when Burgess Meredith did him. That would be like letting the Caesar Romero interpretation of the Joker be the definitive one.


However, if I can offer a suggestion to help make the Penguin relevant again, it would for him to lose the top hat and tuxedo (or at least not wear it all the time). When he originally appeared that was the clothes of choice for a sophisticated gentleman going out on the town, but not anymore. He should be dressed in sartorial splendor by today’s standards, wearing Armani and Brioni suits, with Seville Row shirts and an expensive Burberry coats, and replacing his cigarette holder for expensive cigars. I mean if Lex Luthor can get a makeover and not have to wear the lab coat or the grey smock he wore when he first appeared, why does the Penguin have to so fashionably out of date?


And yes he has a funny name and appearance, but who says criminal masterminds have to be scary looking? I mean, look at the history of the mob in the U.S and you’ll see that most crime bosses had funny nicknames and were not that intimidating looking: Tony The Ant, Joey the Clown, Murray “the Camel” Humphreys, Vinnie the Chin, etc. Crossed them, however, and you’d be wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of Gotham Bay. Make the Penguin a short, sartorially aware crime boss who earned his nickname because of his walk (imagine Vito from the Sopranos) and uses an umbrella as a cane just like how some people use a putter as a cane.


And the thing about the Penguin is that he supposed to be underestimated. It is the reason the umbrella was chosen as his weapon – it serves as a metaphor for the Penguin’s character and nature. Like his umbrellas, the Penguin appears as something completely harmless and even mundane, but also like his umbrellas it actually conceals something very deadly that people completely underestimate. The umbrella doesn’t have to be outfitted with a hundred different weapons, just the ones he had when he first appeared – a concealed blade and gun (plus it is weighted to be used as a bludgeon).


Besides, who says ridiculous looking people can’t be powerful or scary? I mean, the world was terrorized by a short little Corsican in the early 19th century, and in the 20th century an Austrian painter with a Charlie Chaplin moustache and a tendency to yell comically during rallies became the greatest villain in history.


4) Go back to the basics: Just like how Nolan only used those elements from the Joker that would fit his version of Batman, so could Nolan cherry pick through the Penguin and only use those elements that mesh with his vision. I mean, Nolan pretty much discarded anything about the Joker post 1940’s, getting rid of the entire Red Hood origin and focusing only on his first couple of appearances. Well, the same could be done with the Penguin: hell, his real name of Oswald Cobblepot wasn’t revealed until 1981 in DC Comics Blue Ribbon Digest, along with his origin of being a rich kid raised by an over protective mother. For 40 some years he wasn’t hampered by that ridiculous back-story and tacky name, but instead was just a sophisticated criminal who had an interesting nickname and gimmick (umbrellas and birds). That leaves you plenty of room to reinterpret him.


Like the Joker, they should avoid an origin story and have the Penguin entire as a complete character. And also like the Joker, it should be a story about the rise of the Penguin (similar to his very first appearances in the 40s). The Penguin appears, is underestimated by even the other criminals, and before anyone knows it he is the head of crime in Gotham City.


5) “But the Penguin isn’t a physical threat for Batman”: Many people will say that the Penguin would not be as intimidating or as dangerous as the Joker, and wouldn’t scare the audience as much as the Joker did, or have them view him as a big enough threat. I have to say yes and no to that idea. Yes, on a personal one-on-one basis the Penguin is not going to give Batman as good as fight as the Joker, but than again the Joker wasn’t that much of a physical threat to Batman either. The Joker in the Dark Knight mostly challenged Batman’s belief system, not his physical safety. Also, who says that a great villain has to be a physical threat? I mean, Goldfinger and Blofield are probably Bond’s greatest challenges, and they are no matches for him physically. Same with Moriarity, Sherlock Holmes arch enemy, and Superman’s foe Lex Luthor.


Plus, why should the Penguin be required to fight Batman one-on-one? If the Penguin truly is a criminal mastermind he would avoid confronting the Dark Knight any way he could. Why fight a master of martial arts? Instead, a smart crime boss would instead have henchmen and minions fight Batman, and some of those guys could be pretty tough. Think of Bond movies where the main villain always had one or two really tough henchmen who served him.


Or look at gangster movies like the Godfather or the Untouchables, where the big boss isn’t always the toughest guy out there. Vito and Michael Corleone are not fighters like Sonny, but ruthless crime bosses who command killers like Luca Brassi and Al Neri. Sure they are capable of killing people, but usually by being cunning and taking people by surprise. They are not soldier’s however (excluding Michael’s stint in the marines, of course) but manipulators. The same with Al Capone in the Untouchables: he might bash someone’s head in at a meeting, but that doesn’t display his toughness as much as his willingness to kill and be ruthless. He isn’t dumb enough to take on Elliot Ness himself, but instead sends his own killers such as Frank Nitti against him and his Untouchables.


Instead of having the Penguin physically confront Batman, have some of his henchmen confront the Caped Crusader. Amongst his servants could be a who’s who of tough-guy character actors: Chuck Zito, Danny Trejo, Kimbo Slice, Tyler Mane, Brock Lesnar, etc. Plus, who is to say the Penguin has to be the only villain in the movie? I mean, I could easily see him harboring hatred for both Batman and a female cat burglar who won’t bow to his rule, or him having a couple of tough enforcers that work for him (maybe one who is a “deadshot with pistols and the other has a rare skin disorder that makes him look like an alligator or crocodile).


6) The Penguin could represent a new type of villain and be more relevant: The Joker (and Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul) are basically metaphors for terrorism and the anarchistic, nihilistic forces out there. And since 9-11 that has been the public’s biggest worry. But since the collapse of the economy I believe people will have find someone new that they hate more, and that is CEOs, the heads of Wall Streets and politicians. Basically, all of the powerful people who they feel control their lives and they are powerless to stop because they are too rich and connected. And the Penguin can represents those forces much better than any other Batman foe could. Just like in the 50’s and 60s in such movies as Underworld USA and Point Blank, where the underworld used as a metaphor for the corporate world, so could the Penguin be used to represents the heads of businesses and the hedge fund managers who manipulate the government for their own profit.


And like the Joker who had a philosophy why he did all of this (he was a nihilist who wanted to throw Gotham in anarchy), the Penguin would be a man who believes everyone has a price – even Batman. Sure, sometimes the price isn’t money, but if you find the right leverage anyone can be bought. Think Don Corleone, “I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” The Penguin is the ultimate businessman.


7) And finally, look at the fake 1940’s Orson Welles’ Batman trailer on youtube. How can you say he doesn’t work as a Batman foe after looking at Edward G. Robinson’s “version” of the Penguin:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5tJGfZsgc


Sorry to ramble on, but I am a big fan of the Penguin and think he has been getting a short end of the stick by Nolan and others out there.

Posted by Thomas to Crane's Inanities at 4:25 AM"

Obviously, I didn't read all of that, but just from what I skimmed through, the dude makes some good points. Even though the idea of Penguin as the main villain in a Christopher Nolan Batman movie seems laughable on its face, it doesn't seem so implausible if you look at it.

Anyway, the hiatus ends soon.