[One of the things the comic book fans are talking about after the Watchmen movie is what will it look like to someone who never read the comic? Most of us are able to help it along a bit, with our knowledge of the comic book, adding layers of stuff to what is not really earned -- the embrace between the news vendor and his costumer during the blast for example. So I thought it would be fun to run this review.]
by Finsof72
Before starting I think it’s first necessary to inform any and all readers that I had not even heard of this Watchmen thing before trailers and hype started spreading throughout the internet like an unstoppable epidemic. Within a few months, the mass hysteria over the greatness that was to premier in theaters in March of 2009 was a little too annoying to ignore, so I researched it and discovered that Watchmen is actually a graphic novel by Alan Moore that most comic book readers put up on a pedestal right next to Halo and God. The novel involves colorful characters in costumes going around fighting crime and a secret plot against them all (according to Wikipedia). My reaction: so? It sounded to me like a typical, clichéd, stereotypical crime fighting story with nothing particularly interesting about it except for the fact that it takes place in an “alternate” 1985, where Richard Nixon still rules (I didn’t make that up). Despite my own personal questions about it, Watchmen apparently doesn’t have the same effect on most people, who revere it with the utmost loyalty and have been salivating over the film since it was announced. Naturally, I had to know what all the fuss was all about. I haven’t read the comic, like I mentioned before, but I did feel obliged to get in on the secret that everyone in the world except me seemed to know and go see the movie.
First impressions were positive. It’s always a good thing when a movie can completely dash all doubts about the stupidity of its setting right out of the starting gate. The film opens with a beautiful flashy montage showing the development of alternate history in which it takes place along with the opening credits that made me completely forget about its implausibility and pulled me into the story’s setting quite well. I was impressed. Good job, so far, Watchmen.
Then it goes south.
The story begins with the murder of a former superhero, who gets thrown out of a window by some guy dressed like a rejected version of the Joker. A fight preludes the death that’s complete with slow motion dramatics and loud sounds to cue hit points. It turns out that, according to Rorschach, a vigilante with a shape-shifting mask and the personality of that recently-divorced guy at the bar, has the feeling that there’s an underlying conspiracy to get rid of all former superheroes, who have been outlawed (think The Incredibles if they ended up in a Grand Theft Auto game). This sets off a chain of stories which are essentially all interconnecting origin stories that lead up to about an hour of present time “saving the world” stuff. There’s a blue God guy named Dr. Manhattan (I’m assuming that’s a really, really bad and obvious allusion to the Manhattan Project), this Batman wannabe who isn’t cool enough for bats so he dresses like an owl, a girl who wears the suit from Kill Bill, and maybe another one or two that were lost in the shuffle of goofiness that is the Watchmen.
Now comes the inevitable criticism, and it really stems from one thing: tone. Watchmen is a movie about guys who dress up in very, very colorful costumes and is supposed to deal with superheroes in the “real world,” which in itself is an oxymoron. It’s hard to take the film as seriously as it wants us to when you have giant blue penises swinging around and “Hallelujah” blaring when one of the heroes finally gets it up after saving people from a burning building. Add that in with the fact that it doesn’t even take place in the real world, it takes place in an “alternate” world, which again takes away the suspension of disbelief. The film tries to mix things that look like pieces of a MadTV skit or a Saturday morning cartoon with downright seriousness, something that was attempted before in Spider-Man 3, and look how well that turned out. If you’re going to try and put your superhero in a realistic setting (um…The Dark Knight) then make it a realistic superhero, not a giant fu*king God-like being who’s practically unbeatable and has a summer house on fu*king Mars!
The acting isn’t very good, and jumps around from overacting to underacting. For example, when Dr. Manhattan goes from a geeky scientist to blue Mr. Clean, he steps into some giant machine to get back his watch (Watchmen, get it?), he gets locked in, and the two scientists behind the glass window practically shrug their shoulders, showing very little, if any, dread for what’s about to happen. What the hell is the point of that machine, anyway? Does it have a practical purpose besides turning people blue? Then, later on, you have the Shakespearean overacting, like from Rorschach. I know he’s a moral absolutist and sees the world in black and white, but seriously, dude, you’re wearing the Invisible Man’s outfit and killing people with hairspray torches, crack a joke once in a while!
I hear an expression sometimes when I ask people if they liked a particularly movie: “It’s good…if you’re into that sort of thing.” I can’t think of any better way to describe this film than that phrase. Watchmen is a movie for people who like Watchmen the graphic novel. Just like U2-3D is a movie for people who love U2. I have no doubt that it remains faithful to its source material considering it runs longer than it takes to actually read most books these days; I don’t see how they could’ve left anything of significance out. It feels like it goes on forever, with the stories all winding down to a single 40-minute climax that would’ve been better suited for a mini-series on the SciFi channel.
Watchmen isn’t bad. It has enough action to keep you entertained, the effects may not be dazzling but they do the job, and Rorschach carries the film fairly well when the other characters don’t. Unfortunately it’s bogged down by its contradictory intentions, its silliness mixed with staidness, its confusing back stories and its unacceptable length. This results in what is no more than an average movie for those who aren’t already in love with its source. There’s nothing particularly horrible about it, but nothing great either. Most of the themes explored have been explored in movies many times over (this includes its ending, which really lacks any emotional gravity) and the effects aren’t anything revolutionary. If you love the original graphic novel, then I have a strong feeling you’ll love the film as well. To us, the mainstream, it’s just another super hero movie, but the people who worshipped the novel over 20 years ago I think will be satisfied by what it has to offer, and that it acts as a perfect companion to any previously established Watchmen collection. For the rest of us, it’s been there, done that, with nothing new to bring to the table.
Watchmen
Running time: 2 hours 43 minutes (there was a misprint at the movie theater I went to that read 1 hour and 43 minutes…imagine my bladder’s surprise)
[Some things I found interesting about this review: the observation that the plot is perfectly normal for a superhero book, seeing the Comedian as similar to the Joker, the fact that the movie makes you think of other movies in the shadow of Watchmen such as the Incredibles, and the notion that the oft quoted observation that this is what superheroes would be like in the real world is not quite right. I made a small edit to this post that is discussed in the comments.]
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #203
[Guest Blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s X-Men run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]
“Crossroads”
No one agrees on when the Silver Age of superhero comics ended, or what to call the age that succeeded it. Arguably the Silver Age of the X-Men ended when the original series was cancelled at the end of the 1960s and replaced with a reprint title. But in a lot of significant ways, when the series was revived by Len Wein in 1975 it very much continued the same sensibility that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began with. Most problematically, the conservative politics of the title characters were still in evidence. As Neil Shyminski illustrates in “Mutant Readers, Reading Mutants,” the X-Men’s counter-revolutionary stance was still in full force even as late as 1983, when the Morlocks first appeared. It’s not until 1984 that we begin to see Claremont grappling with the comic’s skewed sensibility, and in 1985 he finally begins to start realigning the comic’s sensibilities. Issue 199 – wherein the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants sells out to the establishment and the X-Men fight to protect Magneto, the quintessential mutant revolutionary – sees Claremont completely up-ending the comic’s Silver Age roots.
That all takes us to the aptly named “Crossroads,” which draws a line under the Silver Age X-Men and brings their story to a close. Tying in once again with Jim Shooter’s risible mega-crossover “Secret Wars II” (the first of its kind, and unfortunately far from the last), Uncanny #203 sees Rachel Summers, the new Phoenix, returning to the milieu featured at the end of Claremont’s first major X-Men storyline: the planet of the M’Kraan Crystal. In the earlier story (from issues 107-108), the original Phoenix drew spiritual and physical sustenance from the X-Men in order to heal the crystal and “save the Universe.” Here, the inverse occurs. Deliberately stealing life essence – even from members of the X-Men who don’t agree to the idea – Phoenix returns to the M’Kraan world. Unlike her mother, Rachel wants to crack open the crystal and destroy the universe, as a means of killing the omnipotent Beyonder.
But when Rachel’s awareness expands throughout the universe, and the X-Men’s along with it, she recognizes – with prompting from Storm – the magnitude of what she wants to do, and chooses to leave the crystal intact. This is Claremont once again attempting to redeem the infamous moment in X-Men history when Dark Phoenix murdered an entire planet. Here, Jean Grey’s daughter is deliberately placed in the position to murder billions, but intellect and compassion win out. Phoenix is redeemed, and Claremont’s X-Men saga comes full circle.
Loose ends do still exist, of course – the most immediate of which is the reference to the New Mutants having been wiped from existence, a large complication that is smoothed out in the final chapter of Secret Wars II and subsequent New Mutants issues. However, in a lot of key, crucial ways, the story begun in Lee and Kirby’s first issue has been brought to an end. Of the characters who appeared in that original story, Xavier has left the Earth to be with Lilandra (essentially married off and retired). Magneto now believes in Xavier’s “dream,” and has replaced Xavier as headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters. Four of the five original students have moved on, to be replaced by a new generation of kids wearing the Kirby-designed school uniforms. The fifth, Jean Grey, is dead, but her daughter lives on and has even succeeded in redeeming Jean’s final mistakes. (Actually, Jean is now alive thanks to John Byrne’s insipid ret-con published a few months earlier in Fantastic Four #286 – but in terms of narrative chronology, that hasn’t happened yet.)
As for the Wein/Cockrum-designed X-Men, well ... if the series did not continue past issue 203, they could have enjoyed a pleasant retirement in San Francisco, a city that we are told on Page 5 is apparently much more tolerant of mutants in general and certainly the X-Men in particular.
(Oddly enough, at the time of this writing, the solicits for Matt Fraction’s first issue of Uncanny X-Men read, in part, “What the hell is going on in San Francisco now that the Uncanny X-Men have relocated there? They’ve got a new Headquarters and a new status quo ...” Once again, a “new” development in the X-Men’s tapestry demonstrably has its seeds in Claremont’s work from decades ago.)
All told, this is where Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men ends happily. Matt Brady teased me a bit when I referred to issue 108 as the end of Claremont’s Act I. He’s right. If one were to apply a “two-act play” paradigm to the whole of Claremont’s entire run, then the end of the first act occurs right here, wherein thematic elements, plot threads and character arcs all come together in a giant cosmic event.
Having thus put everything together, Claremont will begin – in next month’s Uncanny #204 – to pull everything apart.
“Crossroads”
No one agrees on when the Silver Age of superhero comics ended, or what to call the age that succeeded it. Arguably the Silver Age of the X-Men ended when the original series was cancelled at the end of the 1960s and replaced with a reprint title. But in a lot of significant ways, when the series was revived by Len Wein in 1975 it very much continued the same sensibility that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began with. Most problematically, the conservative politics of the title characters were still in evidence. As Neil Shyminski illustrates in “Mutant Readers, Reading Mutants,” the X-Men’s counter-revolutionary stance was still in full force even as late as 1983, when the Morlocks first appeared. It’s not until 1984 that we begin to see Claremont grappling with the comic’s skewed sensibility, and in 1985 he finally begins to start realigning the comic’s sensibilities. Issue 199 – wherein the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants sells out to the establishment and the X-Men fight to protect Magneto, the quintessential mutant revolutionary – sees Claremont completely up-ending the comic’s Silver Age roots.
That all takes us to the aptly named “Crossroads,” which draws a line under the Silver Age X-Men and brings their story to a close. Tying in once again with Jim Shooter’s risible mega-crossover “Secret Wars II” (the first of its kind, and unfortunately far from the last), Uncanny #203 sees Rachel Summers, the new Phoenix, returning to the milieu featured at the end of Claremont’s first major X-Men storyline: the planet of the M’Kraan Crystal. In the earlier story (from issues 107-108), the original Phoenix drew spiritual and physical sustenance from the X-Men in order to heal the crystal and “save the Universe.” Here, the inverse occurs. Deliberately stealing life essence – even from members of the X-Men who don’t agree to the idea – Phoenix returns to the M’Kraan world. Unlike her mother, Rachel wants to crack open the crystal and destroy the universe, as a means of killing the omnipotent Beyonder.
But when Rachel’s awareness expands throughout the universe, and the X-Men’s along with it, she recognizes – with prompting from Storm – the magnitude of what she wants to do, and chooses to leave the crystal intact. This is Claremont once again attempting to redeem the infamous moment in X-Men history when Dark Phoenix murdered an entire planet. Here, Jean Grey’s daughter is deliberately placed in the position to murder billions, but intellect and compassion win out. Phoenix is redeemed, and Claremont’s X-Men saga comes full circle.
Loose ends do still exist, of course – the most immediate of which is the reference to the New Mutants having been wiped from existence, a large complication that is smoothed out in the final chapter of Secret Wars II and subsequent New Mutants issues. However, in a lot of key, crucial ways, the story begun in Lee and Kirby’s first issue has been brought to an end. Of the characters who appeared in that original story, Xavier has left the Earth to be with Lilandra (essentially married off and retired). Magneto now believes in Xavier’s “dream,” and has replaced Xavier as headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters. Four of the five original students have moved on, to be replaced by a new generation of kids wearing the Kirby-designed school uniforms. The fifth, Jean Grey, is dead, but her daughter lives on and has even succeeded in redeeming Jean’s final mistakes. (Actually, Jean is now alive thanks to John Byrne’s insipid ret-con published a few months earlier in Fantastic Four #286 – but in terms of narrative chronology, that hasn’t happened yet.)
As for the Wein/Cockrum-designed X-Men, well ... if the series did not continue past issue 203, they could have enjoyed a pleasant retirement in San Francisco, a city that we are told on Page 5 is apparently much more tolerant of mutants in general and certainly the X-Men in particular.
(Oddly enough, at the time of this writing, the solicits for Matt Fraction’s first issue of Uncanny X-Men read, in part, “What the hell is going on in San Francisco now that the Uncanny X-Men have relocated there? They’ve got a new Headquarters and a new status quo ...” Once again, a “new” development in the X-Men’s tapestry demonstrably has its seeds in Claremont’s work from decades ago.)
All told, this is where Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men ends happily. Matt Brady teased me a bit when I referred to issue 108 as the end of Claremont’s Act I. He’s right. If one were to apply a “two-act play” paradigm to the whole of Claremont’s entire run, then the end of the first act occurs right here, wherein thematic elements, plot threads and character arcs all come together in a giant cosmic event.
Having thus put everything together, Claremont will begin – in next month’s Uncanny #204 – to pull everything apart.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Watchmen (spoilers)
I teach my students MacBeth in my ENG201: Writing about Literature class, and I always like to play one movie in every class I teach -- it is a great morale booster and a much needed break in the middle of the term. I have many options with MacBeth, including a stripped down no frills Ian McKellen and Judy Dench on that is two hours and 45 minutes long. I have Throne of Blood, which is a seriously good movie and has a multi-culti advantage. I know Polanski's MacBeth is taken quite seriously, but when I played it I have to admit that I was a little bored, even though I knew better -- something about it felt over-long, over-serious. It lacked a certain punchiness. I teach my students that the study of literature should primarily be fun; my students find Polanski fun primarily because they seem to enjoy the hell out of his person back-story, being interested in all things lurid. (At their age they consider the huge number of horror movies coming out all year round to be just, you know, life, and not a product of a post 9-11 culture). But at the end of the day I always come back to this 2006 Austrailian movie that plays MacBeth as a kind of modern gang war with these guys with machine guns. This version of MacBeth cuts a lot of important scenes out, and the acting is not always great as they play it like a soap opera; a lot of the important lines and speeches, while there, kind of get drowned out in the bombast, and it is shameless -- playing the witches not as ugly hags but as goth school-girls who get sexy topless (as opposed to the gross toplessness of Polanski's). Some of Shakespeare's thematics get lost too -- you can hear them in the speeches, but lines, for example, in which MacBeth says he cannot kill Duncan because the angels will plead for him are too silly in the context of a criminal empire. But I have to admit I enjoy its trashiness: say what you want about the thing but at least it has energy, at least it knows how to have fun. And Shakespeare is Shakespeare and a good part of that greatness is always going to shine through -- especially if you know the source material to help the thing along a little, to fill in the missing bits.
The final fight scene in Polanski's MacBeth looks like this:
Where as the 2006 ends like this
In these two scenes are the difference between the Watchmen movie as it probably should have been and the Watchmen as it is. The Polanski fight scene -- you have to think that that is what Watchmen's movie fight scenes should have looked more like: meat hitting meat, sad men hacking away at each other. Zack Snyder is so attracted to violence he has to add kung fu punch snaps even to the scene of Rorschach attacking the schoolyard bullies AND had to have the kid, a young kid, just relish in the violence while committing it, just as the adult Rorschach will do, which blurs the point about where this monster came from.
Truffaut said that you cannot make an anti-war movie because movies cannot help but make war look exciting. I am wondering if the thing that makes Watchmen unfilmable is the fact that you cannot make superhero violence look anything other than sexy, at least because it requires a massive budget and budget means people who are not going to let you do violence in a depressing way. Rorschach is a character we are supposed to feel sorry for and repulsed by, but the Watchmen movie makes him as exciting as Michael Corlione in the Godfather, who was supposed to be similarly repulsive for following a similar code of ethics. On the page Rorschach looks petty and small. On screen, I wanted to cheer when he said "I'm not locked in here with you! You are all locked in here with me." He was pretty bad ass, and I enjoy badass. Watchmen the comic is not supposed to deliver that particular thrill, but the movie does, and how can I fault a movie for delivering a thrill?
In his New Yorker review Anthony Lane -- who, in a funny remark said that the actress who plays Laurie seemed like she had trouble playing one other person, much less two -- hated the movie and said that people under 25 will love the violence and people over 25 should hate it. In the theater I kept thinking of one of my favorite Quentin Tarantino comments: "people who do not like violence in movies are the same people who do not like dance scenes in movies." What I like about Tarantino as against Lane is that Tarantino -- the iconoclast as against Lanes stuffed shirt -- actually sees a connection between generations, sees how they value the same thing in different forms where Lane can only come up with something that feels like "Those damn kids!" I like dance numbers and aesthetic on screen violence, and as much as reviewers made fun of the Watchmen-fu overall I enjoyed it, even though it was obviously the worst kind of gratuitousness.
I can understand why a person might complain that the movie ruins the comic book as the violence for example, just goes against one of the key points of the original but I think in getting unprecedented numbers of people to read the comic, the movie gave back what it took in this respect, so I am not moved to take issue on this point. I feel more comfortable getting behind the idea that the Troy movie just kind of ruined the poem more than the idea that Snyder ruined Watchmen -- I see my students reading Watchmen, as they did not read the Illiad.
I enjoyed the hell out of the Watchmen movie in the same way I like the Australian MacBeth. It is a fun movie. It is fun to watch the comic up on a big screen being enjoyed by a big audience. The thing is quite well paced: Dark Knight felt like it too forever to get to the 2 hour and 40 minute mark because it was all one pace: DANGER! Watchmen slowed down between fights for moments of human interaction and the 2 hours and 40 minutes went by much faster. Those "human moments" need a comment. Slate took Watchmen to task for getting rid of all the regular joes like the newsstand guy and his customer, which Slate rightly saw as the point of the comic book. But I thought the story between Dan and Laurie was effecting enough that I felt like this story had a human center even if that poor girl was not the best actress in the world. (She was shockingly good looking, and, since I have no problem being called shallow, I will say that it made her bad acting easier to take). The scene at the end of the movie, in which the boy at the newsstand grabs the newsvendor as they die, is a little more complex to judge. The moment is of course not earned at all and I doubt it will be earned even in the director's extended cut, or in the Tales of the Black Freighter animated straight to DVD. But I could not help but use my knowledge of the comic book to flesh out the moment, and make it work.
Some random observations. The opening credits have been justly praised. I also liked the decision to have Dr. Manhattan go pants-less -- he is inhuman so why would he wear clothes except to pander to the masses. It is the kind of detail I would have expected to get screwed up in the movie -- it seems an obvious place for a test screening objection -- but they just went out and did it. The music for the sex scene was deeply weird, and bothered the hell out of me, and the actor playing Dan ran over one of the key lines in the comic where Dan decides to break Rorschach out of prison (Brad pointed this out to me). I did not like the actor who played Adrienne -- he was just deeply annoying, and totally failed to sell the idea that he was the smartest guy in the world. He seemed like someone in high school who thinks they are gay trying out a gay style they will not stick with. The guy who played Rorschach was surprisingly good and I found Dan surprisingly sympathetic -- name one movie at this expense level that features impotence as anything other than a comedy moment. The music must have been amazingly expensive, as my friend Alex pointed out. Many of the choices were a little obvious. The ending with the journal was unearned. The replacement of the monster at the end bothered me not at all.
At the end of the day I had more fun watching this than Dark Knight, because it was paced better: I would give Dark Knight a C+ and this a B. It is a mess and I would hardly hold it up as an example of great filmmaking; but to deny I had fun would just be dishonest, even if it makes me look foolish. I would recommend it to people only on this superficial level; as an intellectual thing, as a hunt to re-experience the craft and thematics of the book, avoid it I think.
There is a larger conversation to have here maybe, about how my values have changed in the last ten years. Ten years ago, when I wrote the Watchmen chapter of my superhero book that most people tell me is the best part of it Harold Bloom was the book I used to understanding a lot of my aesthetic experience. That has not entirely gone away but I find Robert McKee near me too, and a much more superficial attitude in which I look to see first if I am having any fun, and get into the thematics later if at all. Lane would call me immature -- he would put me in with the idiots under 25 who enjoy the aesthetics of fascist violence, something that is sticking with me as I just turned 30, and what could be more irresponsible than my being a little forgiving of the bad acting because I thought the bad actress was so good looking (Tim Callahan hated her wig; I loved it). Professional reviewers know how to have a more distanced impartial attitude, but I am not a professional reviewer and am not sure I want to aim for that kind of thing.
The final fight scene in Polanski's MacBeth looks like this:
Where as the 2006 ends like this
In these two scenes are the difference between the Watchmen movie as it probably should have been and the Watchmen as it is. The Polanski fight scene -- you have to think that that is what Watchmen's movie fight scenes should have looked more like: meat hitting meat, sad men hacking away at each other. Zack Snyder is so attracted to violence he has to add kung fu punch snaps even to the scene of Rorschach attacking the schoolyard bullies AND had to have the kid, a young kid, just relish in the violence while committing it, just as the adult Rorschach will do, which blurs the point about where this monster came from.
Truffaut said that you cannot make an anti-war movie because movies cannot help but make war look exciting. I am wondering if the thing that makes Watchmen unfilmable is the fact that you cannot make superhero violence look anything other than sexy, at least because it requires a massive budget and budget means people who are not going to let you do violence in a depressing way. Rorschach is a character we are supposed to feel sorry for and repulsed by, but the Watchmen movie makes him as exciting as Michael Corlione in the Godfather, who was supposed to be similarly repulsive for following a similar code of ethics. On the page Rorschach looks petty and small. On screen, I wanted to cheer when he said "I'm not locked in here with you! You are all locked in here with me." He was pretty bad ass, and I enjoy badass. Watchmen the comic is not supposed to deliver that particular thrill, but the movie does, and how can I fault a movie for delivering a thrill?
In his New Yorker review Anthony Lane -- who, in a funny remark said that the actress who plays Laurie seemed like she had trouble playing one other person, much less two -- hated the movie and said that people under 25 will love the violence and people over 25 should hate it. In the theater I kept thinking of one of my favorite Quentin Tarantino comments: "people who do not like violence in movies are the same people who do not like dance scenes in movies." What I like about Tarantino as against Lane is that Tarantino -- the iconoclast as against Lanes stuffed shirt -- actually sees a connection between generations, sees how they value the same thing in different forms where Lane can only come up with something that feels like "Those damn kids!" I like dance numbers and aesthetic on screen violence, and as much as reviewers made fun of the Watchmen-fu overall I enjoyed it, even though it was obviously the worst kind of gratuitousness.
I can understand why a person might complain that the movie ruins the comic book as the violence for example, just goes against one of the key points of the original but I think in getting unprecedented numbers of people to read the comic, the movie gave back what it took in this respect, so I am not moved to take issue on this point. I feel more comfortable getting behind the idea that the Troy movie just kind of ruined the poem more than the idea that Snyder ruined Watchmen -- I see my students reading Watchmen, as they did not read the Illiad.
I enjoyed the hell out of the Watchmen movie in the same way I like the Australian MacBeth. It is a fun movie. It is fun to watch the comic up on a big screen being enjoyed by a big audience. The thing is quite well paced: Dark Knight felt like it too forever to get to the 2 hour and 40 minute mark because it was all one pace: DANGER! Watchmen slowed down between fights for moments of human interaction and the 2 hours and 40 minutes went by much faster. Those "human moments" need a comment. Slate took Watchmen to task for getting rid of all the regular joes like the newsstand guy and his customer, which Slate rightly saw as the point of the comic book. But I thought the story between Dan and Laurie was effecting enough that I felt like this story had a human center even if that poor girl was not the best actress in the world. (She was shockingly good looking, and, since I have no problem being called shallow, I will say that it made her bad acting easier to take). The scene at the end of the movie, in which the boy at the newsstand grabs the newsvendor as they die, is a little more complex to judge. The moment is of course not earned at all and I doubt it will be earned even in the director's extended cut, or in the Tales of the Black Freighter animated straight to DVD. But I could not help but use my knowledge of the comic book to flesh out the moment, and make it work.
Some random observations. The opening credits have been justly praised. I also liked the decision to have Dr. Manhattan go pants-less -- he is inhuman so why would he wear clothes except to pander to the masses. It is the kind of detail I would have expected to get screwed up in the movie -- it seems an obvious place for a test screening objection -- but they just went out and did it. The music for the sex scene was deeply weird, and bothered the hell out of me, and the actor playing Dan ran over one of the key lines in the comic where Dan decides to break Rorschach out of prison (Brad pointed this out to me). I did not like the actor who played Adrienne -- he was just deeply annoying, and totally failed to sell the idea that he was the smartest guy in the world. He seemed like someone in high school who thinks they are gay trying out a gay style they will not stick with. The guy who played Rorschach was surprisingly good and I found Dan surprisingly sympathetic -- name one movie at this expense level that features impotence as anything other than a comedy moment. The music must have been amazingly expensive, as my friend Alex pointed out. Many of the choices were a little obvious. The ending with the journal was unearned. The replacement of the monster at the end bothered me not at all.
At the end of the day I had more fun watching this than Dark Knight, because it was paced better: I would give Dark Knight a C+ and this a B. It is a mess and I would hardly hold it up as an example of great filmmaking; but to deny I had fun would just be dishonest, even if it makes me look foolish. I would recommend it to people only on this superficial level; as an intellectual thing, as a hunt to re-experience the craft and thematics of the book, avoid it I think.
There is a larger conversation to have here maybe, about how my values have changed in the last ten years. Ten years ago, when I wrote the Watchmen chapter of my superhero book that most people tell me is the best part of it Harold Bloom was the book I used to understanding a lot of my aesthetic experience. That has not entirely gone away but I find Robert McKee near me too, and a much more superficial attitude in which I look to see first if I am having any fun, and get into the thematics later if at all. Lane would call me immature -- he would put me in with the idiots under 25 who enjoy the aesthetics of fascist violence, something that is sticking with me as I just turned 30, and what could be more irresponsible than my being a little forgiving of the bad acting because I thought the bad actress was so good looking (Tim Callahan hated her wig; I loved it). Professional reviewers know how to have a more distanced impartial attitude, but I am not a professional reviewer and am not sure I want to aim for that kind of thing.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
TV This Week: LOST, BSG, 24, Dollhouse
LOST. This is the third episode of LOST in a row that has been really good, and the rare LOST episode that is basically really happy too: Sawyer and Juliet find love, Juliet delivers a healthy baby, and those left behind find work and safety -- I feel like there has not been a feel good episode of LOST since Hurley wanted to fix that truck. The best part of the episode was Sawyer's conversation with Alpert. For years now these mysterious Others have known EVERYTHING. They walk up to our characters with detailed files on their entire life and all of them go "How can you possibly know that." For the first time here the tables are completely turned, as Alpert is amazed that Saywer knows about the bomb and the disappearing man who claimed to be the leader of the Others in 1954. (With the time travel stuff it seems pretty clear that the Others got those super accurate files from the castaways themselves 30 years before flight 815 went down). Like The Constant this episode had a really solid emotional core: Sawyer telling Horace that 3 years is enough to get over someone and then confronting him with Kate at the end was just good storytelling. I am a little troubled by some things: I did not like that we saw the statue from the back, because it suggests the front might be some kind of reveal -- and I cannot imagine how lame it would be if the face of the statue turned out out to be someone we know. And just as I was confused about the need to lie the whole "we have to get back to the island to save everyone" is feeling pretty thin right now since the castaways are not in the kind of perpetual hell we heard they needed saving from, AND we had to crash a whole other set of passengers to get back to these five people. And what happened to Rose and Benard and the other 815ers, if there are any left after the flaming arrow attack. Maybe that reveal is coming -- they all became others or something -- but no one seems even a little interested. I keep coming back to the fact that on the plane Ben said of the other nameless passengers "Who cares?" Which on some level is totally how I feel, which makes me complicit with him. Oh, and I adore the ticking bomb of the purge of the Dharma initiative.
BSG. All that remains is the two part season finale -- as little as 80 minutes of BSG or is one double sized? In any case looking back over season 4 I have to say I have lost a lot of faith in this show. The acting and character moments are so often great, and it was dramatic for them to lose Earth as a goal, but now it feels a lot like I am on that ship with the characters, all of whom seem to be waiting around for the series finale. Not having a goal sucks a lot of the forward drive out of a show, and just as the humans lost earth the Cylon "plan" that was appears at the front of all the opening credits seems to be non-existent. It seems like the final things the writers needed in place for the end was that Anders can jump the ship (thanks to the cylon goo, which failed to save the ship -- so this was its only purpose in the narrative) and the idea that Starbuck is the resurrection and the life, and also the harbinger of death. I remember when she crashed into that vortex and came out the other side with a new ship, reborn from her own death. Please tell me the fleet is not going to crash into something and be reborn with a new Battlestar Galactica on a clean healthy Earth. I am not sure what this show needs to end, but I feel like it is going to be something sudden now, like when 6 said "oh, and there is this resurrection hub, lets blow that up." A lot is riding on how this show sticks the landing.
24. The AV Club said about this episode "Probably the best way to view tonight's double-header 24, covering the hours from six to eight pm, is as a low-budget '80's action movie, something that Canon might've put together with Chuck Norris in the lead. It's not that surprising, and the story falls apart if you think about it much at all, but the shooting, yelling, and teeth-gritted seriousness do have a certain charm." Though I will agree that the debates over torture, so painfully loaded and illustrated, are pretty bad I thought this had a lot of charm. 24 has always been some kind republican fever dream about all the things they say threaten America happening, and all their suggestions for dealing with it working. People object to this on principle, and I certainly do not agree with the conservative party on these points, but I love how shamelessly 24 embraces it, and thinks that thought all the way to the end. This episode was STUNNING in that regard. A dozen African men, all very dark skinned, assault the white house and take down the whole thing in less than a hour; and as they kill random people a secret service men ALL the faces are white, and many are women. Even with Obama in the White House, this is the vision of terror they come up with. Amazing and ridiculous. The only thing that should happen in season 8 is Jack Bauer establishes himself as a "benevolent" dictator. You have to admire the sheer commitment to the concept here. This show is as American as pointless wars and SUVs.
Dollhouse -- I have the last two to talk about, but I have a more generally sense of what bothers me about this show. It was invented over lunch between Whedon and Dushku. I imagine that as the idea developed they must have said to themselves that this show was super-resonant: these beautiful men and women who are hired to become other people, but maybe the lose sight of who they are in the process, and forget where they came from -- and maybe the people that manufacture their identities and keep them happy do not have their best interests at heart. This is a show that seemed to have universal appeal over lunch in LA because EVERYONE THEY KNOW is involved in something like this: actors and actresses, producers, PR people, agents and so on. For the rest of us -- not so resonant themes. Mostly it is hard for me to get over the Saturday afternoon adventure series sheen over the whole thing -- as my friend Alex said, maybe this show would be better if they had not spent so much money on the set. Ultimately, the premise still bothers me as I cannot see how a place like the Dollhouse can be justified for reasons other than theme, but the Alpha plot has me interested and I am hoping that will kick into high gear with episode six.
BSG. All that remains is the two part season finale -- as little as 80 minutes of BSG or is one double sized? In any case looking back over season 4 I have to say I have lost a lot of faith in this show. The acting and character moments are so often great, and it was dramatic for them to lose Earth as a goal, but now it feels a lot like I am on that ship with the characters, all of whom seem to be waiting around for the series finale. Not having a goal sucks a lot of the forward drive out of a show, and just as the humans lost earth the Cylon "plan" that was appears at the front of all the opening credits seems to be non-existent. It seems like the final things the writers needed in place for the end was that Anders can jump the ship (thanks to the cylon goo, which failed to save the ship -- so this was its only purpose in the narrative) and the idea that Starbuck is the resurrection and the life, and also the harbinger of death. I remember when she crashed into that vortex and came out the other side with a new ship, reborn from her own death. Please tell me the fleet is not going to crash into something and be reborn with a new Battlestar Galactica on a clean healthy Earth. I am not sure what this show needs to end, but I feel like it is going to be something sudden now, like when 6 said "oh, and there is this resurrection hub, lets blow that up." A lot is riding on how this show sticks the landing.
24. The AV Club said about this episode "Probably the best way to view tonight's double-header 24, covering the hours from six to eight pm, is as a low-budget '80's action movie, something that Canon might've put together with Chuck Norris in the lead. It's not that surprising, and the story falls apart if you think about it much at all, but the shooting, yelling, and teeth-gritted seriousness do have a certain charm." Though I will agree that the debates over torture, so painfully loaded and illustrated, are pretty bad I thought this had a lot of charm. 24 has always been some kind republican fever dream about all the things they say threaten America happening, and all their suggestions for dealing with it working. People object to this on principle, and I certainly do not agree with the conservative party on these points, but I love how shamelessly 24 embraces it, and thinks that thought all the way to the end. This episode was STUNNING in that regard. A dozen African men, all very dark skinned, assault the white house and take down the whole thing in less than a hour; and as they kill random people a secret service men ALL the faces are white, and many are women. Even with Obama in the White House, this is the vision of terror they come up with. Amazing and ridiculous. The only thing that should happen in season 8 is Jack Bauer establishes himself as a "benevolent" dictator. You have to admire the sheer commitment to the concept here. This show is as American as pointless wars and SUVs.
Dollhouse -- I have the last two to talk about, but I have a more generally sense of what bothers me about this show. It was invented over lunch between Whedon and Dushku. I imagine that as the idea developed they must have said to themselves that this show was super-resonant: these beautiful men and women who are hired to become other people, but maybe the lose sight of who they are in the process, and forget where they came from -- and maybe the people that manufacture their identities and keep them happy do not have their best interests at heart. This is a show that seemed to have universal appeal over lunch in LA because EVERYONE THEY KNOW is involved in something like this: actors and actresses, producers, PR people, agents and so on. For the rest of us -- not so resonant themes. Mostly it is hard for me to get over the Saturday afternoon adventure series sheen over the whole thing -- as my friend Alex said, maybe this show would be better if they had not spent so much money on the set. Ultimately, the premise still bothers me as I cannot see how a place like the Dollhouse can be justified for reasons other than theme, but the Alpha plot has me interested and I am hoping that will kick into high gear with episode six.
Friday, March 06, 2009
U2 Review
by Scott
U2 achieved a sort of Rock N’ Roll Perfection with “Vertigo”; I’m not saying it’s their greatest song but, certainly, it is their best ‘rock song’: It has a tight groove a chorus that is both infectious and soaring at the same time and the riff, my God… that riff! I think in time it will be up there with “Start Me Up”, “My Generation”, “Sunshine of Your Love”, “Smells like Teen Spirit” and, dare I say it, “Satisfaction” in terms of greatest riffs of all time. To attempt to duplicate that would be futile or, at least, very lazy.
So, after two albums of straight ahead rockers and anthems, U2 have given us ‘No Line On The Horizon’; an album that abandons the straight ahead verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus arrangement (the one, two, three, fourteens of pop music so to speak) in favor of far more ambitiously textured music held down by a solid groove. It’s not that there are no choruses or hooks to speak of; they are just more subtle; they don’t soar or stick with you immediately so much as they are intended to grow on you over time. As I’ve pointed out before, the song that comes the closest to “Vertigo”, “Get On Your Boots”, makes a subtle and slightly off putting adjustment to that formula. Rather than giving us the soaring chorus that we are expecting, it gives us something that much more closely resembles a pre-chorus, not quite bringing us to the climax we are expecting. Using the formula above its structured kind of like so: verse, pre-chorus, verse, pre-chorus, bridge/breakdown, pre-chorus, ride-out. This coupled with the oddly cadenced refrain on the title track, makes for several songs that have a sort of anti-chorus.
More so than in any album the band has released since ‘Zooropa’, the rhythm section takes center stage. Adam Clayton is not a great bass player because of any technical ability with the instrument; he is a great bass player because he has an innate understanding of what makes a simple but sturdy foundation on which to build a song. It is his throbbing pulse that is the star of this album, some times bringing unity to seemingly chaotic arrangements. This along with the always steady drums of Larry Mullen Jr. give the band’s music a reliable anchor that allows Bono’s vocals and Edge’s chiming guitars to soar off to the stratosphere while, at the same time, providing enough space for producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (credited here the first time as co-songwriters with the band) to broaden the band’s soundscape with an assortment of strings, horns, keyboards and percussion.
With the rhythm section in the spotlight, Edge’s guitar takes more of a backseat than it has occupied on the last two albums. It isn’t that the guitars aren’t there, they are, in fact, almost ever present; it’s just that you tend to be less aware of them until Edge burst in with one of those unmistakable crystalline riffs or closes out a song with one of his trademark elegiac solos.
Lyrics are typically one of the last things that I tend to focus on with an album, at least in terms of their context. Initially, I’m more concerned with lyrics that ‘sound good’ rather than those that actually mean something. In many ways, this is perhaps the best way to appreciate Bono’s lyrics. After all, the man who once gave the Pope a pair of his ‘Fly’ shades isn’t one who is known for his subtlety. Occasionally, this can be cringe inducing to the uninitiated and, in all honesty, at their worst they can come off as the poetry of an overly precocious high school student. At their best, however, they possess a sort of divine naiveté and shamelessness (I use the latter term in the best possible sense). One of my favorite examples can be found on their last album, ‘How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’, in the song “Miracle Drug” Bono sings, “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head.” At first, it may seem a little precious but, when you really think about it, there is a sort of innocent beauty to statements like that.
My friends and I call lines like these ‘Bono Lines’ and he is able to get away with them because, as ridiculous or laughable as some might find them, HE believes in them. He admits as much in the song “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” when he says, “The right to be ridiculous is something that I hold dear.” My favorite track, “Breathe”, is definitely guilty of having a few ‘Bono Lines’: “We are people borne of sound/the sounds are in our eyes/gonna wear them like a crown” and “I’ve found grace inside a sound.” On the one hand, they’re a bit much but on the other hand aren’t they also kind of awesome? (another great line that doesn’t quite fall into this category is from the closer “Cedars of Lebanon” and says “I got a head like a lit cigarette”… I have no idea what it means as I have yet to put it into context but I think it might be my favorite line on the album)
One of my other favorite lines so far comes from one of three best tracks on the album, “Moment of Surrender” when he sings, “I was speeding on the subway through the stations of the cross.” Who or what is being surrendered to is unclear; it could be lover or it could be God. This lover/God dichotomy is not an uncommon motif in Bono’s lyrical canon. Songs where Bono could be singing about the relationship between two people could just as easily be seen as being about a relationship with God. “With Or Without You” was an early example but, among others, “Until the End of The World”, “One” and “Mysterious Ways” all play with the idea in some way (the last of those, “Mysterious Ways”, not only blurring the line between spirituality and sensuality but also plays with the concept of a distinctly feminine deity).
This isn’t an album that is going to win them any new fans; if you don’t like U2, you probably won’t like it. I can’t say that this is their “best album since such and such”, partially because I really loved their last two albums. What I can say is, that with those last two albums, individual tracks stuck with me a lot more whereas, with this album, the album as a whole sticks with me a lot more. And, in the end, isn’t that what a great album should do? The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Still, you have to admire their audacity. In an age where the album is supposed to be dead, U2 have, quite unapologetically, made one.
Best Tracks:
“Magnificent”, “Moment of Surrender” (possibly the most beautiful song they’ve recorded since “One”), “Breathe” (this slouching rocker where Bono’s vocals cadence similar to post-Beatles Lennon, is probably my favorite on the album)
U2 achieved a sort of Rock N’ Roll Perfection with “Vertigo”; I’m not saying it’s their greatest song but, certainly, it is their best ‘rock song’: It has a tight groove a chorus that is both infectious and soaring at the same time and the riff, my God… that riff! I think in time it will be up there with “Start Me Up”, “My Generation”, “Sunshine of Your Love”, “Smells like Teen Spirit” and, dare I say it, “Satisfaction” in terms of greatest riffs of all time. To attempt to duplicate that would be futile or, at least, very lazy.
So, after two albums of straight ahead rockers and anthems, U2 have given us ‘No Line On The Horizon’; an album that abandons the straight ahead verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus arrangement (the one, two, three, fourteens of pop music so to speak) in favor of far more ambitiously textured music held down by a solid groove. It’s not that there are no choruses or hooks to speak of; they are just more subtle; they don’t soar or stick with you immediately so much as they are intended to grow on you over time. As I’ve pointed out before, the song that comes the closest to “Vertigo”, “Get On Your Boots”, makes a subtle and slightly off putting adjustment to that formula. Rather than giving us the soaring chorus that we are expecting, it gives us something that much more closely resembles a pre-chorus, not quite bringing us to the climax we are expecting. Using the formula above its structured kind of like so: verse, pre-chorus, verse, pre-chorus, bridge/breakdown, pre-chorus, ride-out. This coupled with the oddly cadenced refrain on the title track, makes for several songs that have a sort of anti-chorus.
More so than in any album the band has released since ‘Zooropa’, the rhythm section takes center stage. Adam Clayton is not a great bass player because of any technical ability with the instrument; he is a great bass player because he has an innate understanding of what makes a simple but sturdy foundation on which to build a song. It is his throbbing pulse that is the star of this album, some times bringing unity to seemingly chaotic arrangements. This along with the always steady drums of Larry Mullen Jr. give the band’s music a reliable anchor that allows Bono’s vocals and Edge’s chiming guitars to soar off to the stratosphere while, at the same time, providing enough space for producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (credited here the first time as co-songwriters with the band) to broaden the band’s soundscape with an assortment of strings, horns, keyboards and percussion.
With the rhythm section in the spotlight, Edge’s guitar takes more of a backseat than it has occupied on the last two albums. It isn’t that the guitars aren’t there, they are, in fact, almost ever present; it’s just that you tend to be less aware of them until Edge burst in with one of those unmistakable crystalline riffs or closes out a song with one of his trademark elegiac solos.
Lyrics are typically one of the last things that I tend to focus on with an album, at least in terms of their context. Initially, I’m more concerned with lyrics that ‘sound good’ rather than those that actually mean something. In many ways, this is perhaps the best way to appreciate Bono’s lyrics. After all, the man who once gave the Pope a pair of his ‘Fly’ shades isn’t one who is known for his subtlety. Occasionally, this can be cringe inducing to the uninitiated and, in all honesty, at their worst they can come off as the poetry of an overly precocious high school student. At their best, however, they possess a sort of divine naiveté and shamelessness (I use the latter term in the best possible sense). One of my favorite examples can be found on their last album, ‘How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’, in the song “Miracle Drug” Bono sings, “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head.” At first, it may seem a little precious but, when you really think about it, there is a sort of innocent beauty to statements like that.
My friends and I call lines like these ‘Bono Lines’ and he is able to get away with them because, as ridiculous or laughable as some might find them, HE believes in them. He admits as much in the song “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” when he says, “The right to be ridiculous is something that I hold dear.” My favorite track, “Breathe”, is definitely guilty of having a few ‘Bono Lines’: “We are people borne of sound/the sounds are in our eyes/gonna wear them like a crown” and “I’ve found grace inside a sound.” On the one hand, they’re a bit much but on the other hand aren’t they also kind of awesome? (another great line that doesn’t quite fall into this category is from the closer “Cedars of Lebanon” and says “I got a head like a lit cigarette”… I have no idea what it means as I have yet to put it into context but I think it might be my favorite line on the album)
One of my other favorite lines so far comes from one of three best tracks on the album, “Moment of Surrender” when he sings, “I was speeding on the subway through the stations of the cross.” Who or what is being surrendered to is unclear; it could be lover or it could be God. This lover/God dichotomy is not an uncommon motif in Bono’s lyrical canon. Songs where Bono could be singing about the relationship between two people could just as easily be seen as being about a relationship with God. “With Or Without You” was an early example but, among others, “Until the End of The World”, “One” and “Mysterious Ways” all play with the idea in some way (the last of those, “Mysterious Ways”, not only blurring the line between spirituality and sensuality but also plays with the concept of a distinctly feminine deity).
This isn’t an album that is going to win them any new fans; if you don’t like U2, you probably won’t like it. I can’t say that this is their “best album since such and such”, partially because I really loved their last two albums. What I can say is, that with those last two albums, individual tracks stuck with me a lot more whereas, with this album, the album as a whole sticks with me a lot more. And, in the end, isn’t that what a great album should do? The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Still, you have to admire their audacity. In an age where the album is supposed to be dead, U2 have, quite unapologetically, made one.
Best Tracks:
“Magnificent”, “Moment of Surrender” (possibly the most beautiful song they’ve recorded since “One”), “Breathe” (this slouching rocker where Bono’s vocals cadence similar to post-Beatles Lennon, is probably my favorite on the album)
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