Arts & Entertainment – Page 58

Hey, I remember that show!

Last night ABC aired a new episode of their series “Lost.” Apparently it’s about a bunch of people marooned on an island or something. Watching it, I was reminded of a series that ran two years ago, also coincidentally called “Lost.”

In last night’s episode, though, everyone was acting strangely out of character. Not five minutes in, and Locke is actually chastising someone else for not exchanging information. Later, Kate asks Rousseau a question about something that happened very recently, and, amazingly, she got a complete answer. People made a plan to do something, told each other about the plan, and then actually accomplished it. Not once, but twice!

Charlie and Desmond were, of course, completely annoyingly evasive throughout most of the episode, but that’s to be expected, since Desmond’s still relatively new and Charlie’s still relatively a total dick. But by the end, Claire reveals, “Desmond told me everything.”

The flashback wasn’t just repetition of stuff we already knew (everyone suspected Claire’s parentage, but it wasn’t confirmed), but real character-building stuff that resonated with the theme of the episode; it didn’t just repeat the theme of the episode outright. Nice to see an episode say, “Claire is consumed with guilt and self-doubt, and because of frequent abandonment, has trouble trusting people,” without having Claire say, “I’m consumed with guilt and self-doubt. And also, because of frequent abandonment, I have trouble trusting people!”

All that, some duplicitous behavior on the part of Locke, a pretty creepy death scene (with an explanation!), and a little clever twist of intrigue at the end!

And did you notice how I’m not still bitching and moaning about their quickly killing off a mysterious character that showed so much promise from a Boba Fett-style fleeting glimpse on a security monitor several episodes ago? See, “Lost” guys, it’s easy! Just keep making solid episodes where stuff actually happens — they don’t all have to be show-stoppers — and a lot of your whiny fanbase will stop complaining about all the loose ends and details, and just get back into the action. We’re easily placated by competence.

Neko on a Hot Tin Roof

or, A Rickshaw Named Desire I rented Onibaba (Demon Woman) because a website recommended it to fans of Yokai Monsters and Kwaidan, two movies about Japanese ghosts and monsters. Plus, it’s got a big demon on the cover!

The truth is that, except for the last twenty minutes or so, it’s not about obakemono at all, and it isn’t what I expected. But it’s one hell of a movie.

It’s unlike any other Japanese movie I’ve seen, contemporary or otherwise. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s what would happen if you had a Japanese New Wave director take sets and costumes from a samurai movie and make an interpretation of a Tennessee Williams play. With maybe some John Steinbeck and William Faulkner thrown in.

The story is set near Kyoto during the warring states period, and it deals with a woman and her daughter-in-law living in poverty because of the war. The war has ravaged the land and made farming impossible, so they’re forced to murder dying samurai from the battlefields, loot the armor and weapons from the corpses, and sell them for food. Things become even more complicated when a neighboring farmer returns from the war and attempts to take the place of the daughter-in-law’s dead husband.

Onibaba is very much a 60s movie; despite its setting, it’s aggressively modern in its style, editing, music, characterization, and subject matter. There are all kinds of film tricks which come across as tedious and pretentious in other movies, but work perfectly here. Long shots of nothing but flowing grass perfectly convey the idea that civilization has been squeezed out and overtaken by wild nature. Jump-cuts and super-imposed shots give everything a surreal feeling and perfectly capture scenes of people overtaken by passion.

The characters are portrayed as being genuinely destitute and desperate — hairy, filthy, and generally nasty. There’s a lot of breasts and ass to be seen, and even though it’s sexual, it’s not erotic. That’s because they’re living in the most primitive conditions, and also because one third of the breasts belong to an old woman, and most of the ass is that of a dirty, hairy, male war deserter. It was still nice to see a movie showing characters not as “movie-peasants,” carefully arranged to have just the right amount of muck about them, but in true squalor.

Some of my favorite scenes are the ones in which the daughter-in-law runs across the fields at night to meet her lover. Kaneto Shindo filmed the scenes in silence except for the sound of cooing pigeons; in the movie, you can’t quite identify the noise, but get the subliminal impression of surreal urgency and passion. In an interview with the director included on the disc, he points out that he used pigeons because they’re “known for their fecundity,” which adds another layer of meaning to an already effective gimmick.

What impressed me the most is how well the film* conveyed its message, even to those not receptive for it. After watching the interview with Shindo, I realized that I’m a lot more of a prude than he is. Still, I got the message of the film completely, on an almost instinctual level, and I was surprised to hear him describe the process — everything he claims he tried to do with the movie, worked. It’s more like a film you understand than a film you watch.

The movie is about sex. Or more precisely, it’s about people as animals as opposed to products of society. The characters are living in a state of nature at the beginning of the story. Our protagonists are quickly established as murderers, but they’re not the villains. They’re only doing what needs to be done to survive. The war is described several times as a general’s war, a product of the cities — it’s causing the terrible conditions for the peasants, but giving them no benefit. So in the movie’s logic, the protagonists’ actions are justified.

It’s not until the horny newcomer arrives on the scene that the conflict starts. Suddenly, the concerns are societal concerns — jealousy, fear of abandonment, repression, guilt. And it’s only after the mother feels threatened (and unsatisfied in her own lust) that she begins to talk about sin and religion. Not as a means of finding the truth, but as a means of repression and control.

I’ve read some online reviews that describe the movie as showing what happens when people are reduced to their primitive state, but I think that’s just a shade on the simplistic side. It shows societal constructs as just that — man-made constructs, separate from what’s needed for our existence. In Onibaba, the murder of invaders and sex outside of marriage aren’t sinful; the only true sins are jealousy, repression, guilt, and the lust for power and control. I believe a better message to take from the movie is that we’re never completely removed from our “primitive” state, and we should never lose sight of the distinction between what we want and what we need.

* After a year of film school, I resolved never to use the word “film” or “cinema” to describe movies — my token battle against pretension. I’m making an exception in this case, because everything Shindo attempts to do, works, and it works almost like poetry.

Update: One other thing I wanted to mention: I’ve read a few reviews online that translates the title Onibaba as “The Hole,” but that’s incorrect. (It means “Devil Woman” or “Demon Woman” or just “hag”). But the hole, the first thing introduced in the movie and a symbol revisited almost as frequently as the flowing grass, is an important character. In the story, it’s where the two women toss the bodies of their victims. In the movie, it gives an ever-present sense of danger and dread, and also of course represents hell. But hell in a very practical sense — not just a place of punishment for sinners, but the place where everything that’s no longer needed is cast away.

How many Spartans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Plenty of stabbin' goin' on I’ve got to admit I was biased against 300 from the start, because I don’t like Frank Miller. I don’t like his art, and his writing only works for me when he sticks to one or two of his strong areas.

And I can never tell where he’s coming from — he always strikes me as being completely humorless and devoid of self-awareness. Everything of his I’ve ever read has been locked in adolescent male comic book-reader fantasy mode, without ever maturing past the “fuck yeah!” moments. I’ve got no problem with bone-crushing awesomeness for its own sake, but when you’re in your late 40s and still making stuff that doesn’t seem to serve any higher purpose than making 14-year-old boys say “RADICAL!” then it just smells like arrested development.

But for all I know, he totally gets it, and there’s a level of depth there that’s just way, way too subtle for me to pick up on. I loved the SinCity movie, even though I hated the comic books, because of the visuals and because it seemed to hit exactly the right tone: it was purposefully, gleefully brutal and over-the-top pulp.

300, though, is your standard, straightforward ancient war movie. Lots of guys slapping each other on the back, talking about honor, making speeches about freedom, then commence with the stabbin’. There’s not a lot of new material covered in the speeches, so the movie makes sure to repeat each one at least twice. King Leonidas shouts out “For Sparta!” and variants so often, at times I thought I was watching a high school football movie.

The Spartans themselves are portrayed as a kind of cross between neo-conservatives, smug libertarians, and Klingons. Even though they’re ancient Greeks, they make a point of mentioning that it’s those pansy-ass Athenians who are into the buggery. The Spartans are all about reason, not anything fruity like Gods or philosophy, and everybody in the government is corrupt, easily bought, and slow to act. And of course, the only honorable death is a warrior’s death. Unless I mis-heard it, at one point a character actually says, “Freedom isn’t free.” The whole message of the movie is basically the lyrics to a Hank Williams Jr. song; I kept hoping that Leonidas would confront Xerxes and shout, “This is no rag; it is a flag!”

Now, that’s not to say the movie’s completely without irony. Most obvious is that it’s easily the gayest war movie I’ve ever seen. Leonidas makes a dismissive comment about the “boy-lovers” in Athens, then spends the rest of the movie with the rest of his buff pals wearing nothing but capes and leather briefs, their hairless chests on display like well-buttered dinner rolls. Nothing exactly wrong with that; I’m just sayin’.

And for a movie so gung-ho hell-yeah this is a MAN’s war, dammit!, it’s overwhelmingly pretty. Astoundingly so, in places. Every shot is perfectly composed; I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie where I so frequently and consistently said “wow” when seeing a new visual. Not even Sky Captain had as many “wow” moments. Now granted, a lot of it had the feel of a Skittles commercial. And the bit with the Oracle, while interesting, reminded me a little too much of a Calvin Klein ad. But more often, I was reminded of Jacques-Louis David, in particular the shots that seemed straight out of Oath of the Horatii. For imagery alone, it’s genuinely stunning.

As for the action scenes, I was underwhelmed. The first couple of battles are great, but it all quickly gets monotonous. The problem is that nobody does anything particularly clever, so it’s just wave after wave of disposable Persians getting stabbed by a bunch of indistinguishable Spartan guys. They do all they can with film speed changes and Matrix-style spin-cam tricks to make it seem like something different is going on, but the fact remains that you’re watching two hours of a bunch of dudes defending a canyon.

And Leonidas’ little maneuver at the end was just plain dumb. I guess it was supposed to be deeply poetic or something, but just didn’t make sense, didn’t work in terms of story, and showed nothing other than that Leonidas can’t aim for shit.

Now, I’m always bitching about how moviemakers have gotten too preoccupied with being hip and post-modern that they crank out shallow, irony-laden nonsense. So what’s wrong with an earnest, straightforward action war movie with some great visuals? Does the touchy-feely San Francisco anti-war liberal only complain when the movie doesn’t agree 100% with his politics?

Well, there’s some of that, I’m sure, but I think I would’ve enjoyed the movie more if it just hadn’t been so shallow and juvenile. How cool would it have been if it actually had something to say to measure up with how great it looks?

The best song of the BOSTON band of all the times

John Scalzi’s blog passes along the story that Boston’s lead singer died on Friday.

He also passes along some damn lies, saying that the band’s “moment is over.” Spoken like a guy who never played Guitar Hero.

Or, for that matter, never heard Boston. There are very few “perfect” pop/rock albums, and Boston is one of them. Even if it didn’t have the spaceship on the cover, it starts out with five songs that knock it out of the park, only letting up with “Something About You” at the end. And it doesn’t hurt that “More Than a Feeling” works both as a single and as the intro to a classic album; I thought that’s what album-oriented rock was all about.

I’m listening to “Foreplay/Long Time” right now, which starts with the trippy prog-rock organ opening and transitions to yet another of the album’s 10,000 unforgettable hooks. “The moment is over?” Are you high?

So here’s Boston living their moment:

And proof that the moment’s not over yet. Playing this song in Guitar Hero (note: this isn’t me, of course; I can’t get to “Expert” yet) is nothing short of transcendent:

Flight 180 Part 2: The Pile-Up

Seems like every time I make an effort to meet Hollywood halfway, they slap me down. Last night I watched Final Destination 2, and it used up all my good will towards idiotic consumer entertainment product.

In this case, Flight 180 Part 2: The Pile-Up is a better title. Partly because they mention Flight 180 even more than the first movie did, but mostly because you watch the thing and can’t help thinking about piles. In both the flaming, irritated hemorrhoid sense, and the big pile of crap and cliches sense.

I have to admit I’m impressed, but only because they somehow managed to cram every single thing that’s bad about sequels into one movie. They completely abandon any notion of subtlety. Even worse, they spend so much time beating you over the head with the “rules” of the movie, only to abandon them towards the end. (Apparently two people can get killed simultaneously, out of order, as long as one of them is a star from the first movie who really, really wants to get out of this franchise).

The only thing I can say in the movie’s defense is that there are two pretty effective death scenes — indirect death by airbag, and garroting by flying barbed-wire fence. But even that they screwed up, by putting them back-to-back with absolutely no sense of pacing. Earlier, they make an attempt to emulate the Rube Goldberg-style death from the first movie, but blunder it on several counts: it happens too early in the movie to be satisfyingly tense or surprising. And since they’ve already done it, the overly-complicated set-up later in the movie, with gas leaks and PVP pipes and cigarettes and airbags, loses any sense of tension. Plus, any tension in the scene is lost because you can’t stop thinking, “Who the hell comes home from buying a computer, then immediately takes his shirt off and starts frying up fish sticks?”

You can’t even enjoy it as a stupid horror movie, because it’s so aggressively stupid, it drains all the horror out of it.

I know nothing about the behind-the-scenes goings-on of this franchise. But I have to wonder if the reason Morgan & Wong came back for the third movie is because they saw this one and realized, “maybe ours didn’t suck as bad as we’d thought.”

Death be not too proud for focus testing

So long, Stiffler! I watched Final Destination a while back, and I enjoyed it just fine. It’s perfect for all your young-people-getting-killed-in-gruesome-ways needs.

I suspect that this is one of those cases where waiting for the DVD is hundreds of times better than seeing it when it first came out. For one thing, the opening works as well now as it did on release, if not even better. If you follow pop culture at all, you have to at least heard of Final Destination, and you probably heard the premise, as well. (A premonition warns people off a doomed plane flight; Death comes back to take the ones who were predestined to die.) Knowing the premise added a separate level of tension to the beginning of the movie, since it wasn’t playing out as I’d expected it to. I must’ve spent the first 30 minutes saying to myself, “But I thought the… but wait… no!”

Even better than that, though, are the commentary and other special features. I found out some stuff I hadn’t known going in — it was originally intended as a pitch for “The X-Files,” and coincidentally ended up being produced/directed/written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, writers and producers for that series as well as “Millenium” and “Space: Above and Beyond.” But what’s most memorable is Morgan’s sad-sack, defeatist commentary throughout.

Now, I’m not a fan of kicking a guy when he’s down, and it’s just not cool to make fun of a guy for acknowledging he’s made something lousy. But I’m making an exception for two reasons: first, because I don’t think it’s lousy. It’s really an above-average horror movie. The death scenes are increasingly clever and surprising, and paced well in the script. It’s better than Scream at the post-modern self-referential thing, because it’s not as clumsy and obvious. The characters don’t just talk about the gimmick; the gimmick is baked into the plot. The characters know they’re marked for death, they even figure out the order in which they’ll be killed, and the killer isn’t some predictable serial killer, but the unseen hand of death itself. It’s a lot more clever than anything wallowing in late-’90s irony.

And the second reason I’m making an exception is because Morgan’s commentary is so hilariously over the top in its disappointment. Almost immediately after introducing himself, he starts in ragging on the movie. If you use chapter-skip, you can’t go more than few seconds at each track without hearing him make a comment to the effect that the scene didn’t work like they wanted, or it was a rip-off of something else, or that it wasn’t what they originally intended, and they could’ve done it better.

It continues to the deleted scenes, alternate ending, and a couple of documentaries. One of the documentaries is about New Line’s focus tests for the movie, and how the ending was changed as a result. It was clearly done to appease somebody, as New Line representatives keep making very tactful comments about how it’s necessary to protect an investment, and to let audiences be the judge, and how when you’re making movies with multi-million dollar budgets, art must be carefully balanced against commerce.

There are a couple of segments with Morgan, and he describes the original title and ending, what they saw during focus tests, and how they came up with the new ending. A typical quote: “Steven Spielberg doesn’t have to do focus tests. But we’re not Steven Spielberg.” If I’d been editing the documentary, I wouldn’t have been able to resist superimposing Glen Morgan’s head with Eeyore’s.

So yet another Hollywood movie gets dumbed down for the sake of the lowest common denominator in the audience, right? Not quite. Providing all the alternate and deleted scenes on the disc shows that the changes were universally for the better. Much, much better.

The original title was Flight 180. Apparently film execs thought that it sounded too much like Airport 77 and such, so they chose the title Final Destination. Not only is that an infinitely better title, it worked a lot better with sequels than Flight 180 Part 3: The Roller Coaster would have.

And the original ending, that was full of intelligence and hope and a beautiful artistic statement on what it means to be alive? Suuuuuuuucccccckkked. It’s not just that it’s a dull, overly drawn-out, and out of place ending for a suspense thriller; it’s that it’s hard to believe it was made by the same people who did the rest of the film.

Everything in the first 45 minutes of the movie has the mark of a group of people who know exactly what movie they’re making, and why it’s cool. The original ending seems like a desperate attempt to bring meaning to a movie that doesn’t need to “mean” anything. It’s not a case of dumbing down a piece of art in order to give the people what they want; it’s a case of being true to the rest of the work of art and not trying to turn it into something it’s not.

It’s a well-made franchise movie, with an undercurrent of intelligence and comedy, that makes you jump and laugh in all the right places. And it’s disappointing that they didn’t realize that there’s value in that, and that it doesn’t need to be anything more. I still haven’t seen Final Destination 3 yet; apparently Morgan & Wong weren’t burned by the first one so much that they wouldn’t come back for a sequel. I’m looking forward to seeing it and finding out if they still “get it.”

And one more thing: after the episode of “Lost” called “Not in Portland,” I read a bunch of stuff on the internet saying that the show had ripped off Final Destination. At the time, I thought that was just typical internet wankery — the same as saying George Lucas “ripped off” The Hidden Fortress, when the movies have next to nothing in common. Now that I’ve seen Final Destination, though, I think the internet definitely has a point. The scenes are eerily similar, although the movie has a much-appreciated splash of blood on the passers-by. I’m not feeling charitable enough to say that “Lost” was making an homage.

An Evening at the Improv

In case of viewer backlash, all operatives should stall as long as possible. Do the “Lost” guys seriously expect anyone to still believe they’re not making it up as they go along?

I feel like a joiner, seeing as how it’s fashionable now to rag on “Lost,” but there’s just so much material there. They try stunt casting, and the best they can dig up is Cheech. Their heart-warming what-it-means-to-be-alive episode just covered old material and worse, dragged out one clunky in-joke after the next like a late-series episode of “Moonlighting.”

But this week’s episode “Enter 77” was just plain annoying to those of us who’ve been fans of the series. Everybody acted like a caricature of himself. Sayid is haunted by his past as a torturer, and resolves never to do it again. Even though he’s already come to the island, tortured somebody, and started wandering out of remorse — he’s not going to do it again, starting now.

And Locke, who used to be an interesting, endearing character, so stubborn in his need for an order to the universe that his faith in mundane routine set up questions about the nature of what it means to be human — now, he’s a videogame-addicted monkey who just can’t resist pushing buttons. Even when he’s supposed to be guarding a dangerous prisoner who’s already shot one of the group.

And those Dharma Initiative guys love to code up voice-mail systems for communications networks and urgent fail-safes against an attack, that only become available after you defeat a “grandmaster-level” chess program. (But considering that Locke beat the thing twice in the time it took Sayid and Kate to search the basement of a small farmhouse, maybe that’s not much of an issue).

But worst is the way they’re handling the new characters. Is this the way they’re going to tie up all the loose ends they’ve left dangling? By killing them, blowing them up, or pretending they didn’t happen? Creepy mysterious eye-patch guy looking into a security camera from a so-far-unseen hidden post with lots more tantalizing secrets for the castaways? Let’s go blow the place up without getting a good look, and then (from the looks of the previews) get rid of the guy two episodes later.

The mysterious woman who was set up to be the mastermind of The Others, conducting experiments on telekinetic Walt and running a mysterious primitive camp at the edge of the island? Give her one line of intelligible dialogue, then shoot her dead.

Not that anybody on this show would ever take a minute to actually read the Dharma Initiative handbooks they found — not when it makes so much more sense to just ask recalcitrant people and get inscrutable half-answers — but even if they wanted to read them, they’re all blown up now. It’s just as well; if the rest of the show is any indication, the books probably just contained an index of questions that led to blank pages.

And for yet another week, “Heroes,” the show it physically pains me to like, came up with a winner. How did things get to this state? I’ve got a theory, but it’s not a happy one.

What really got me into “Lost” at first was the notion that it was combining the best of “low art” and literature. It was a mash-up of philosophy and conspiracy theories, comic books and Kipling. It was evidence you could take all the twists and turns and explosions of an exciting TV series and present them in a way that didn’t make you feel as if you’d gotten stupider just by having watched. They frequently mentioned their admiration for Stephen King, and it was a good fit, I thought. He’s proudly populist, referencing rock songs in his novels, giving folklore an urban update and a literary thrust (e.g. haunted houses + alcoholism, witches + outcast teens). And with “Lost,” I was so happy to have numbers stations and polar bears and psychics all mixing together with free will and the question of faith versus science that I was confident something big and meaningful was always just over the horizon.

For all its bluster and pomposity, “Heroes” doesn’t have those pretensions. There are no lofty goals there. They’ll say that it’s all about character and ordinary people in extraordinary situations, but it’s not really. It’s pure plot, with a healthy dose of action and gore and effects, and just enough soap opera to keep you engrossed. It’s all formula. And it’s all working, possibly because it doesn’t aim higher.

You don’t think about the plot holes, or people acting out of character, or weird gaps in time and space, because the show doesn’t ask you to think. I’ve no doubt that there are fansites and wikis out there poring over the details in the show, looking for hidden meanings and symbols and easter eggs, but it’s all overkill. Everything is right there on the screen, which is where it should be. And the biggest difference is that I really believe them when they say that they’ve planned out the entire first season, and they know exactly where it’s headed.

One Duuuuuhhhhhrrrr

Every year I think it’d be just awesome to go to the San Diego Comic Con, because I’ve never been to the city or to the convention. And every year I go to Wondercon here in San Francisco, and it kills every desire I have to go to a large gathering of nerds ever again (until the next year, when the cycle starts anew).

Now, I’m aware that I’m a nerd myself. I’ve got no illusions to the contrary. But what the hell, people?

I blame society. For decades we’ve been conditioned to believe that nerds are endearing. Noble, even. We’ve seen countless movies and TV shows telling us “celebrate your individuality” and “be yourself.” This is horrible advice. The lesson to be learned is “be an improved version of yourself.” One that doesn’t act like a complete turd during Q&A sessions with B-list celebrities. One that doesn’t obsessively latch onto an artist as if they were your best pal. One that is familiar with the concept of personal space. One that bathes on a regular basis.

There comes a point during every panel at the Wondercon, where they open the floor up to questions from the audience, when those of us in the audience who were raised with a sense of shame and propriety have to listen and wince uncomfortably. There were several times over the past weekend when I wished I could secrete a chitinous shell so as to protect myself from the blast wave of awkwardness that overtook the room.

If it’s not the guy who hyperventilates when talking to Hilary Swank about her plague movie, it’s the douchebag who, due to an unfortunate upbringing and a series of humiliating events in high school and the internets, decides it’d be a good idea to rag on Ali Larter at a panel about the new Resident Evil movie. (And it pains me to draw attention to the aforementioned douchebag, since he’s probably done vanity Google searches to see how he’s become a weboblogosphere celebrity seeing as how he totally stuck it to the chick from “Heroes,” so let me point out again: he’s a loser, nobody likes him, and he got booed away from the microphone).

What’s annoying is that I’m supposed to feel sympathy for these people, seeing as how I’m more or less one of them. But I’m old school nerd, yo. I was raised before you had your blinkity internet tubes and weblogs and comment boxes, before you could find dozens of other people who felt just as passionately about Who’s The Best Green Lantern as you do, and before you could anonymously and effortlessly tell an artist directly how much you think he sucks. I think the sense of shame and social outcast-ed-ness is essential to being a functional nerd in modern society. There’s not much in the world that’s more annoying than an arrogant geek.

You could totally tell that the convention was in its third day, because the security people had gotten more testy and argumentative. What was “hey look at the wacky kids with their costumes!” on Saturday morning had turned into “GO IN THIS DOOR. THIS DOOR. NOW.” by Sunday afternoon. They were beaten down. They had succumbed to the raw power of social ineptitude.

See, now I’m an obsessive fan of Hellboy and Mike Mignola, myself. So when I found out he was signing stuff at the show, I went to everyone I knew there and told them repeatedly that he was singing stuff, then stood in line, bought a print, got to the front of the line and realized I didn’t have anything interesting to say, so I immediately turned and left. Lowest possible level of awkwardness, he got a few bucks for a print, I got blog material, win-win. That’s how I roll.

After the show, I went to the Comedians of Comedy concert, believing that it’d be a palate-cleanser after a day of Wonderconery. What the hell was I thinking? A concert in San Francisco with Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn on the same day as a big comic book convention. It attracted one of the few things worse than the arrogant geek — the geek who’s convinced he’s a hipster. I stood in line before a crowd of such people for about an hour, listening to their conversation and willing myself to develop the ability to stop their hearts using the power of my mind.

(The show was fine, but apart from the hilarious Maria Bamford, nothing spectacular. Mostly material I’d heard before. The crowd kept shouting out requests during Oswalt’s set, like “Black Angus!” and “TiVo!,” which seemed to be missing the point of a comedy show. Patton Oswalt is better than any comedian I’ve ever seen at making his entire act seem completely spontaneous, but doesn’t it kind of ruin the joke if everyone knows you’ve heard it before? At least I inadvertently met a friend at the show.)

Before I sound completely misanthropic, I should point out that I had a good time overall. There were the annoyances, but the bulk of the people there were just trying to have good, goofy fun.

And I learned something! I went to the Telltale Games panel on Sunday, to hear them talk about the Sam & Max games, and learn from their new friends they’d made in the audience. It was the first I’d heard about what kind of schedules they’re working under, and the process for doing the music (I hadn’t known, for example, that Jared Emerson-Johnson, the composer of all the music, had also done all the voices for the big musical number in episode 4). The thing that continues to impress me about the Sam & Max games they’re doing is how many people they have that just “get it,” from the voice acting and direction to the animation to the set design to the music, they understand what’s supposed to be funny and how it’s funny. It’s rare to find. And since the panel, I’ve been listening to the theme to Sam & Max’s sitcom over and over again.

Lovely Golden Ointment

Still buried under work at the moment, but for the sake of updating:

I’d heard about TV cook Nigella Lawson, and how her schtick was basically food as barely-disguised metaphor for sex, but I had no idea how intense it was until I saw this clip of her making Chocolate Hot Pots:

By the time she says, “It’s warm, but I know I have pleasure ahead, so I’m willing to bear the pain now and dive right in,” I’m at her mercy, as if she were some Chocolate Pot-bearing Mata Hari. I’d be willing to divulge state secrets. I suspect if she made curry rice, I’d be willing to shoot one of my countrymen. Even when she talks about a “carapace with all this goo underneath,” it still somehow sounds unspeakably sexy.

The bit at the beginning says it’s rated “TV G”. I think not!

Me gusta la música

The best performance in pop music is Merry Clayton’s solo in “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones. The part where her voice cracks may be the best moment in pop music history.

And there you go. I don’t know from writing about music. You want Lester Bangs, go to a different blog.

Me gusta las películas

I’m not enjoying my theme week anymore. As much as I love giving out my unsolicited opinions (and in the list form my OCD craves, no less), I’m tired of writing a novella about it every night.

So here I’m taking the Livejournal/MySpace route and just listing

My Favorite Movies

Name your own in the comments! Or tell me where I’m wrong! (Bonus points for using words and phrases like “populist” and “popcorn summer blockbuster” and “dumb-ass”). Or just say “THANKS FOR THE ADD!!!!!”

Me gusta los libros cómicos

I thought I had more to say about comic books, but once you get past the fact that I’m 35 years old and I still read them, there’s not a whole lot more left to say.

I’ve gotten several collections recently that I’ve enjoyed the hell out of, so they go into the list of

Best Comic Book Collections

1. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli
I don’t like any other thing that Frank Miller has ever done, but this is my favorite comic book. Go figure.

2. Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom by Mike Mignola
There’s only so many different ways I can say that Mike Mignola is a genius. He’s such a brilliant artist, that it’s almost unfair his stories are so good. I’ll admit that 90% of the time, I can’t even figure out exactly what’s going on in a Hellboy story, and it doesn’t matter — he gets the mood, the pacing, the congolomeration of folklore and mythology, and the snatches of dialogue so dead-on perfect. B.P.R.D. is a lot better at plotting, which in a way is to its detriment — the stories just feel “smaller” somehow. The Right Hand of Doom gets my vote just because it has the story Box Full of Evil.

3. Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
When Garth Ennis took over the book, he completely made it his own, and this is one of the best stories ever, comics or otherwise. Plus there are plenty of Pogues references. John Constantine makes a deal with the devil to cure his own lung cancer, with a genius twist at the end.

4. The Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Matt Wagner, and others
What happens when Lucifer abandons Hell. This was the storyline that got me back into the series after I’d given up on it.

5. The Collected Sam and Max: Surfin’ the Highway by Steve Purcell
Steve Purcell is my hero.

6. Fables: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leialoha
This series is about storybook fables (Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella, etc) living in exile in the “real” (they call it “mundy”) world. From what I’ve seen, it’s the best ongoing comic running. It took me a while to get into it, because the first collection is a pretty weak attempt at a mystery story set on top of an engaging premise. It takes off with the second storyline, though, and it’s completely engrossing. It’s funny, shocking, scary, violent, sad, and surprisingly fast-paced.

Willingham could’ve taken the easy way out, and just had characters like Goldilocks and Snow White having sex and shooting guns and tried to ride through on “edgy” street cred. And there is plenty of that, but it always takes it a step further, and builds a really engaging and surprising story on top of a predictable concept. Plus, Buckingham’s art is just perfect for the story. The biggest fault I have with it, and it’s kind of a nitpick, is that the characters suffer from Kevin Smith Syndrome, in which all people, no matter their age, sex, education, intelligence, history, or background, all speak like chubby white college-educated pop culture junkies in their early 30s.

7. The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa
A ridiculously exhaustive tribute to Carl Barks’ Scrooge McDuck comics, this book traces the life of the character based on small, off-hand references throughout the earlier stories. And it may be sacrilege to say it, but I enjoyed it even more than Barks’ stories. (And I think Barks’ stories are fantastic, which tells you how much I liked this book). It just amazes me to see someone putting so much care and detail into something that relies so heavily on such corny jokes.

8. DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
The story really doesn’t do all that much for me. But the art kicks so much ass, you can’t help but like it. The premise is all of DC’s Justice League heroes recast in the 50s Cold War era.

9. Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner with Sam Kieth
An 80s “urban” retelling of the King Arthur story. It seems a little juvenile and dated now, but at the time I first read it, it was astounding.

10. Essential Fantastic Four: Volume 3 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
I was never a fan of Marvel, so all I knew about their comics and characters were from cartoons, and the bits that rub off just by nature of being a comic book fan. It’s always just been understood that Jack Kirby was one of the greatest comic artists there was, so I accepted that without ever really being sure why. When you look at these issues, you can totally see why. He’s got the cosmic power dots, and the 50’s-era white guys with overbites, and the chicks with swingin’ bobs, and the crazy space helmets, and the Silver Surfer and Galactus. Just like you can’t appreciate a movie just by looking at stills, you can’t appreciate Kirby drawings without seeing them in the context of the whole story. I can’t explain it; it just is. And also, as pandering, sexist, and shameless as the writing of these comics are, you can’t deny that they’re just plain fun. I feel like I understand for the first time why Fantastic Four was such a big deal.

Honorable mention goes to Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker, which would’ve been forced me to drop something from 1-10, but I can get away with it because it’s a “graphic novel,” not a collection. The real number 11 would’ve gone to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume 2.

I didn’t include Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, on purpose. The Dark Knight Returns, I’ve never liked, at all. And Watchmen is a great comic like Citizen Kane is a great movie — sure, I can look at it and see how meticulously set-up everything is, and how it’s full of allusions and references and literary influences, and how the design of it all some perfect construct. But I don’t like reading it at all. It’s clever, but doesn’t feel at all real to me. The plot, especially the resolution, is kind of weak.

Now, the most fun comics collections I’ve read recently are DC Showcase Presents: Teen Titans and DC Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups, both by Bob Haney. You’ll see lots of things describing his writing as being “wacky” or “over-the-top;” better descriptions would be “batshit crazy” and “shamelessly pandering.” And it’s all awesome. You can tell with Fantastic Four that Stan Lee was having a lot of goofy fun with comics, but Haney just takes it to the next level. When you’ve got some free time, do a blog search for Bob Haney and read about some of his master works. It’s really what the silver age of comics is all about.