by Jill Duffy
[Jill Duffy continues to look episode by episode at Twin Peaks, which she is watching for the first time. For more in this series, click the label at the bottom.]
Episode 4 in season 1 of Twin Peaks gets a couple of good laughs.
First there is Lucy watching Invitation to Love, the soap opera that is the show within the show. It’s a trashy daytime program that has momentary appearances, as we watch others watching it. This time, Lucy, the admin at the sheriff’s office is watching it while at the front desk. When she’s asked, “What’s going on?” (meaning, “What’s going on here in the police house?”) she rattles off the state of every character on the show. This one is in a coma. That one had her heart broken.
Second, there’s a scene in which slapstick Deputy Andy’s gun accidentally goes off because he drops it while he and the others are trying to sneak up on a hotel room.
Later, to correct Andy’s mishandling of the weapon, Truman, Andy, Cooper and Hawk go to practice their gun skills at the shooting gallery. Toward the end of that scene, Cooper fires a few rounds at the target, and when it’s retrieved, we see he’s only made four holes (meaning two rounds missed the target entirely) but all four are on the target sheet’s face. His response: “four through the eyes and one for each nostril,” meaning two of his shots were so precise as to go through the pre-shot holes exactly.
There’s a good deal of plot development in this episode, but much of it is not really catching my interest. Catherine, Josie, Horne, and god knows who else, are all plotting against one another to do something with the mill. Norma’s husband Hank is about to be let out of prison, and something is up between him and Josie, though we don’t know what. Meanwhile on the murder mystery front, the team discovers that they must track down a bird who may have been present when Laura was killed.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #177
[Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series see the toolbar on the right.]
“Sanction”
In Comics Creators on X-Men, Chris Claremont gives a few opinions on each of his artistic collaborators during his Uncanny X-Men tenure. His feelings on John Romita Jr.’s work for the series seem the least enthused, as he notes that the Romita of Uncanny was not yet the artistic powerhouse he’d become on other titles (e.g., Daredevil). Certainly the first few issues of Romita’s run seem a little clunky. The artist’s gritty, down-to-earth aesthetic (which first emerges in issue 179) is a stark change from the more fanciful, imaginative sensibilities of Smith, Byrne or Cockrum. That will turn out to be a great strength, as Claremont’s writing begins to get darker to match. But what we see here, in issue #177, is a writer and artist still getting a little accustomed to each other, never quite finding each other’s groove.
A 22-page story, “Sanction” wastes a ridiculous 12 pages on a dismally unimaginative scene depicting Mystique in training against Arcade’s X-Men robots. Romita’s choreography is stiff, and Claremont strains, but ultimately fails, to give Mystique a compelling first-person narrative voice. The one intriguing element is the reintroduction of the mysterious connection between Raven and Nightcrawler, yet Claremont doesn’t even bring it up again after this. Why spend so much time playing up that mystery only to drop it? One of the most frustrating loose ends of Claremont’s run.
Claremont will prove to be similarly sloppy with another idea introduced here: the Doug Ramsey character, introduced obliquely as Colossus’ potential rival for Kitty Pryde’s affections. Doug doesn’t even show up here – he is only mentioned. He’ll first appear on panel in forthcoming issues of New Mutants, where the romantic tension between him and Kitty is played up even more – only to be silently dropped from either series with no real payoff (other than a casual dismissal of the entire thing in New Mutants #45, years after the fact).
Ultimately the best thing to emerge from issue 177 is the scene wherein Lilandra, Corsair, et al finally depart Earth; the angst and hand wringing of various X-Men regarding the Starjammers’ eventual departure (“imminent” for 10 months now) had really gone on too long. It’s not surprising that these space-opera characters depart so quickly after Romita Jr.’s arrival, since they are somewhat at odds with his harder, more grounded artistic style. (Note that Romita Jr. also leaves Lockheed, another fantastical element, out of the series for several months – not until issue 181 does Claremont finally write the dragon back in.)
“Sanction” is inked by John Romita Sr., and while the father-son pairing is a fun idea (this is the only time it happens on an Uncanny issue), the older Romita has a very Silver Age sensibility that completely overwhelms the comic. There’s a clear sense at this point that Claremont is anxious to move forward into darker territory, while Romita Sr. is simultaneously brightening things up with a confidently old-school sheen. The cumulative result is 22 pages of material that’s stuck in neutral.
“Sanction”
In Comics Creators on X-Men, Chris Claremont gives a few opinions on each of his artistic collaborators during his Uncanny X-Men tenure. His feelings on John Romita Jr.’s work for the series seem the least enthused, as he notes that the Romita of Uncanny was not yet the artistic powerhouse he’d become on other titles (e.g., Daredevil). Certainly the first few issues of Romita’s run seem a little clunky. The artist’s gritty, down-to-earth aesthetic (which first emerges in issue 179) is a stark change from the more fanciful, imaginative sensibilities of Smith, Byrne or Cockrum. That will turn out to be a great strength, as Claremont’s writing begins to get darker to match. But what we see here, in issue #177, is a writer and artist still getting a little accustomed to each other, never quite finding each other’s groove.
A 22-page story, “Sanction” wastes a ridiculous 12 pages on a dismally unimaginative scene depicting Mystique in training against Arcade’s X-Men robots. Romita’s choreography is stiff, and Claremont strains, but ultimately fails, to give Mystique a compelling first-person narrative voice. The one intriguing element is the reintroduction of the mysterious connection between Raven and Nightcrawler, yet Claremont doesn’t even bring it up again after this. Why spend so much time playing up that mystery only to drop it? One of the most frustrating loose ends of Claremont’s run.
Claremont will prove to be similarly sloppy with another idea introduced here: the Doug Ramsey character, introduced obliquely as Colossus’ potential rival for Kitty Pryde’s affections. Doug doesn’t even show up here – he is only mentioned. He’ll first appear on panel in forthcoming issues of New Mutants, where the romantic tension between him and Kitty is played up even more – only to be silently dropped from either series with no real payoff (other than a casual dismissal of the entire thing in New Mutants #45, years after the fact).
Ultimately the best thing to emerge from issue 177 is the scene wherein Lilandra, Corsair, et al finally depart Earth; the angst and hand wringing of various X-Men regarding the Starjammers’ eventual departure (“imminent” for 10 months now) had really gone on too long. It’s not surprising that these space-opera characters depart so quickly after Romita Jr.’s arrival, since they are somewhat at odds with his harder, more grounded artistic style. (Note that Romita Jr. also leaves Lockheed, another fantastical element, out of the series for several months – not until issue 181 does Claremont finally write the dragon back in.)
“Sanction” is inked by John Romita Sr., and while the father-son pairing is a fun idea (this is the only time it happens on an Uncanny issue), the older Romita has a very Silver Age sensibility that completely overwhelms the comic. There’s a clear sense at this point that Claremont is anxious to move forward into darker territory, while Romita Sr. is simultaneously brightening things up with a confidently old-school sheen. The cumulative result is 22 pages of material that’s stuck in neutral.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Less is More
By Scott and Geoff (my comments are in the second half)
At the end of the day, I’m a minimalist. I like things short and sweet; I tend to cringe at novels that go too far past the 300 page mark or short stories that go much more than 20. I guess you could say I’m a big fan of economy. In fact, I think part of the reason I like comics so much is that they are the ultimate example of ‘Show Don’t Tell’ (this could be the minimalist’s credo). Last year, I finally got around to reading The Grapes of Wrath and I felt compelled to edit it, not only could the prose use some paring down (in a ten page passage, at least an entire page worth of words was dedicated to describing how Tom Joad was chewing his gum); more importantly, I thought it could probably go without the last 20 pages or so. I felt the same way about Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away.
More to the point, I recently purchased AC/DC’s Black Ice and I have agree with what many of the reviews have been saying: at 15 tracks it’s a ‘good’ album but, at 10 tracks, it could have been great. One of the biggest criticisms against The Dark Knight was that it was too long. There is a long list of artist who perhaps should have “quit while they were ahead.” Even the Beatles could be guilty of this sort of thing; George Martin once stated that he felt that The White Album would have been much better had it made into a single album. And it probably have been a much tighter album had it been edited down (don’t get me wrong; The White Album is one of my favorite albums and, personally, the ‘warts-and-all/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-approach’ is probably one of the reasons I like it… but it really is kind of a mess).
So, what are some of your favorite examples of works that outstayed their welcome?
Here are a couple of mine off of the top of my head:
The Strokes- First Impressions Of Earth: I actually love this album, but it’s three tracks longer than the other two Strokes albums and that’s exactly how many tracks too long it is.
Foo Fighters- In Your Honor- This double album was divided into a ‘loud’ and ‘soft’ disc (the ‘soft’ featuring acoustic numbers), a novel idea, unfortunately, most of the ‘soft’ disc was largely unmemorable. Simple solution? A single disc that includes only the best of the ‘soft’ disc.
(Note: Something that has largely contributed to this problem in music over the last 20 years is the advent of the CD. Before that, in order for an album to be a standard ‘single’ album, it could not go over 60 minutes; with the introduction of the CD that length has been bumped up to about 80 minutes. If you think about it, that 20 minutes is about how much needs to be cut off of most albums that are ‘too long’)
Wim Wender’s Until The End of The World – It’s been years since I’ve seen this movie but, from what I remember, the final act of the movie where they were trying to record their dreams needed to be a LOT shorter.
Ang Lee’s Hulk – I really had no idea what was going on the last 20 minutes of the movie…. And neither did Nick Nolte, apparently.
Death Proof- I like it better now than when I first saw it, but it still feels too long… the extended cut was entirely unnecessary.
[Like Scott, I am a minimalist in most of my aesthetic taste, which is why I prefer poetry to the novel for example. I would very much disagree with The Hulk -- the last 20 minutes were wonderfully subversive, as the Hulk cannot just punch WATER. But I think I cannot disagree with Death Proof. Death Proof is the one where I fall into a trap I hit others for: I like part of the movie so much (the end) it kind of overwhelms the rest. The Road, as you know, is my favorite example of a book that needed an editor -- it is much better as prose poetry than as any kind of story. There was a good 200 page novel somewhere in Don Delilo's Underworld, and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind needed some serious editing; Dark Knight too certainly. Moby-Dick on the other hand -- my favorite novel -- honestly could have been LONGER.
The key question on this topic is: Should we be more forgiving of movies such as Dark Knight because what is good about it is excellent, what is bad can be to a certain extent ignored? This seems to be what happens with most people I talk too, but I cannot give an A to a movie that has so much fat to trim, even if the lean is pretty well awesome.
Does anyone know about the fan edits of Phantom Menace, where someone made an alternative cut of the movie getting rid off the bad stuff, keeping the good stuff, and making Jar Jar talk in an indecipherable alien language so that his dialog could be rewritten in subtitles? I have always wanted too see it but am bad with the tech you need for finding and downloading semi-illegal stuff like that.
We are so close to a kind of editorial revolution where we will all be able to edit our favorite movies ourselves when they go on for too long. It could be like those "clean" Christian movies severely edited for content, except we could edit against self-indulgent bloat, rather than, say, violence or nudity. Think how great our bold new world of 50 minute summer blockbusters could be!
At the end of the day, I’m a minimalist. I like things short and sweet; I tend to cringe at novels that go too far past the 300 page mark or short stories that go much more than 20. I guess you could say I’m a big fan of economy. In fact, I think part of the reason I like comics so much is that they are the ultimate example of ‘Show Don’t Tell’ (this could be the minimalist’s credo). Last year, I finally got around to reading The Grapes of Wrath and I felt compelled to edit it, not only could the prose use some paring down (in a ten page passage, at least an entire page worth of words was dedicated to describing how Tom Joad was chewing his gum); more importantly, I thought it could probably go without the last 20 pages or so. I felt the same way about Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away.
More to the point, I recently purchased AC/DC’s Black Ice and I have agree with what many of the reviews have been saying: at 15 tracks it’s a ‘good’ album but, at 10 tracks, it could have been great. One of the biggest criticisms against The Dark Knight was that it was too long. There is a long list of artist who perhaps should have “quit while they were ahead.” Even the Beatles could be guilty of this sort of thing; George Martin once stated that he felt that The White Album would have been much better had it made into a single album. And it probably have been a much tighter album had it been edited down (don’t get me wrong; The White Album is one of my favorite albums and, personally, the ‘warts-and-all/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-approach’ is probably one of the reasons I like it… but it really is kind of a mess).
So, what are some of your favorite examples of works that outstayed their welcome?
Here are a couple of mine off of the top of my head:
The Strokes- First Impressions Of Earth: I actually love this album, but it’s three tracks longer than the other two Strokes albums and that’s exactly how many tracks too long it is.
Foo Fighters- In Your Honor- This double album was divided into a ‘loud’ and ‘soft’ disc (the ‘soft’ featuring acoustic numbers), a novel idea, unfortunately, most of the ‘soft’ disc was largely unmemorable. Simple solution? A single disc that includes only the best of the ‘soft’ disc.
(Note: Something that has largely contributed to this problem in music over the last 20 years is the advent of the CD. Before that, in order for an album to be a standard ‘single’ album, it could not go over 60 minutes; with the introduction of the CD that length has been bumped up to about 80 minutes. If you think about it, that 20 minutes is about how much needs to be cut off of most albums that are ‘too long’)
Wim Wender’s Until The End of The World – It’s been years since I’ve seen this movie but, from what I remember, the final act of the movie where they were trying to record their dreams needed to be a LOT shorter.
Ang Lee’s Hulk – I really had no idea what was going on the last 20 minutes of the movie…. And neither did Nick Nolte, apparently.
Death Proof- I like it better now than when I first saw it, but it still feels too long… the extended cut was entirely unnecessary.
[Like Scott, I am a minimalist in most of my aesthetic taste, which is why I prefer poetry to the novel for example. I would very much disagree with The Hulk -- the last 20 minutes were wonderfully subversive, as the Hulk cannot just punch WATER. But I think I cannot disagree with Death Proof. Death Proof is the one where I fall into a trap I hit others for: I like part of the movie so much (the end) it kind of overwhelms the rest. The Road, as you know, is my favorite example of a book that needed an editor -- it is much better as prose poetry than as any kind of story. There was a good 200 page novel somewhere in Don Delilo's Underworld, and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind needed some serious editing; Dark Knight too certainly. Moby-Dick on the other hand -- my favorite novel -- honestly could have been LONGER.
The key question on this topic is: Should we be more forgiving of movies such as Dark Knight because what is good about it is excellent, what is bad can be to a certain extent ignored? This seems to be what happens with most people I talk too, but I cannot give an A to a movie that has so much fat to trim, even if the lean is pretty well awesome.
Does anyone know about the fan edits of Phantom Menace, where someone made an alternative cut of the movie getting rid off the bad stuff, keeping the good stuff, and making Jar Jar talk in an indecipherable alien language so that his dialog could be rewritten in subtitles? I have always wanted too see it but am bad with the tech you need for finding and downloading semi-illegal stuff like that.
We are so close to a kind of editorial revolution where we will all be able to edit our favorite movies ourselves when they go on for too long. It could be like those "clean" Christian movies severely edited for content, except we could edit against self-indulgent bloat, rather than, say, violence or nudity. Think how great our bold new world of 50 minute summer blockbusters could be!
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Comics Out October 29, 2008
I did not get a chance to hit the comic book store this week -- although I know a Bachalo Spiderman book hit and I love all things Bachalo. Review, discuss, and recommend this weeks comic books and comic book news.
Is anyone else getting burnt out on comics? With All Star Superman done, and Casanova on hiatus, with no interest in Secret Invasion and Final Crisis getting on my nerves with fill in artists, I feel like I need more books to get really excited about. Tell me what I need to be getting.
Is anyone else getting burnt out on comics? With All Star Superman done, and Casanova on hiatus, with no interest in Secret Invasion and Final Crisis getting on my nerves with fill in artists, I feel like I need more books to get really excited about. Tell me what I need to be getting.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
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