Notes On A Film: The A-Team

I'm going to admit it up front: I rather enjoyed this film. I'm not saying that it's perfect by any means, but it was an entertaining way to spend two hours in the cinema. There were laughs, there was spectacle, there were explosions, there was characterisation, there was fun. Admittedly, there was also excessive editing, excessive noise, silly plotting and a feeling that this was a 15-rated film masquerading as a 12A, but on balance the positives outweighed the negatives. Just.

Because of the Orange ads running in front of all movies for seemingly for ever, it felt that you had already watched The A-Team film, what with seeing the flying tank scene week in, week out. But there are sufficient diversions to keep you amused. The film starts as it means to continue: at speed, noisily and not bothering to make that much sense. The getting the group together at the start almost has the feel of the old-fashioned Bond pre-sequences – a quick example of the sort of stuff you're going to get and the manner in which it will be delivered. Then with a quick 'Eight years and eighty successful missions later', we're into the story – effectively, The A-Team Begins. [An aside: we're getting a lot of origin stories at the moment, aren't we? Is it because franchise is the new king of cinema, and the proven formula of 'how it all began' is the easiest hit for 'give them what they know'?]

The story itself – some stuff about the being Iraq and treasury plates and lots of money and things going wrong and the A-Team being wrongly imprisoned and then going out to clear their name – is mostly irrelevant; it's just there for the film to exist. It's there to allow for the outrageous flying tank scene or the rather nicely plotted heist scene (where the action and the planning are shown flitting between each) or the huge climax with implausibly big action (and rather a lot of CGI). Joe Carnahan directs with crazed abandon, hurtling the story along and throwing everything into the mix. He suffers a little from the excessive editing disease that has infected action cinema of late, meaning that some scenes lose their power by the fact that they happen too fast. However, he does a good job and approaches the film with the right tone of stupidity and fun that the material needs.

The other important aspect of the film is the team itself – they distinguish what makes this adaptation of the television series worth doing in the first place. For all the goofiness of the show that I watched as a youngster, we kept coming back for Hannibal, Face, BA Baracus and Murdock. In this respect, they get it half right: Quinton Jackson as BA may look the part, but he doesn't add anything else to the character (and his voice sounds a little high, although I probably wouldn't say that to his face); Liam Neeson may look the part, but he can't do comedy, which is an element required for that charm that George Peppard had. On the plus side, Bradley Cooper has the required easy-going charisma and grin for Face, and Sharlto Copley (so good in District 9) is a lot of fun playing it over the top as Murdock; these two successfully bridge the balance of channelling what was good about the original characters but doing their own thing with it.

There are some other good things I enjoyed, such as the nice reveals that show thought behind plans for the action (such as the final escape set-up), or Patrick Wilson as the creepy CIA man, but there were also things that I didn't enjoy, such as Carnahan thinking he can put himself in a small cameo in the film and thinks he can get away with it (he can't, and he should nip that in the bud before he goes completely Tarantino). But I enjoyed it: I had fun and I won't turn it off when it comes on television in three years' time.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Irredeemable TPB 2

Irredeemable #5–8 by Mark Waid and Peter Krause

Although the story can be summed up in the phrase 'What if Superman turned evil?', there is more to the story of the Plutonian and his murderous spree, killing millions of innocents as well as most of his former friends. It examines the idea of morality in the seemingly rigid boundaries of a superhero comic book, based on the Silver Age notion of 'If you get superpowers, you become a hero'. It also allows for Waid to play around with some of the standard concepts in traditional superhero comic books, something he does very well.

In this collection, which starts with a wonderfully chilling scene that ends with the phrase, 'This has been a pre-recorded message. Sleep tight.', the remaining heroes are trying to locate the Plutonian using the Modeus robots created by Mr Qubit. There is some poking fun at the notion that black superheroes only end up with electrical powers, but there are more serious scenes as we get some more back story of the Plutonian, learning about the Children's Plague incident and his role in it, and what happened when Samsara found out about it, and that the Plutonian's citadel is in the middle of a volcano (very Silver Age). There are also the levels to which Plutonian has obsessed over Bette Noir, who is now married to Gilgamos but hasn't told him about it. However, the best aspect of the story concerns Cary (Charybdis) after the death of his twin, Scylla, for which I have to say: well played, Mr Waid.

I'm becoming accustomed to Krause's art on this book – it is not flashy or particularly modern, but it does the job very well, giving the book an atmosphere that harks back to the Silver Age but without losing modernity. There are no 'wow' pages to dazzle or detract from the story, but this serves the book well because the story is the focus here, as Waid plays a delicate game of doing a story he could never do at either of the two big mainstream publishers. The only thing I would wish for is that the trade paperbacks collected more issues – it is clear that Waid is not writing for the trade in specific arcs, because the books just finish at the end of another issue of the comic series, so Boom! could easily collect at least six issues in a book instead of just four. But perhaps I'm just greedy ...

Chew TPB 2: International Flavor

Chew #6–10 by John Layman and Rob Guillory

The thing about Chew that makes it even more special is that it is not afraid to keep on taking the story further. It's pretty unusual to begin with – Tony Chu is a cibopath, someone who can pick up psychic impressions from anything he eats, who works as an agent of the FDA, now the most powerful agency in America after a bird flu epidemic killed millions, making chicken illegal. But Layman doesn't stop there in this new collection: he brings back Chu's old partner, who now has robotic parts on his face and chin; a USDA special agent has a 'specially trained rat named “Jellybean” equipped with miniature cameras and parabolic microphones for surveillance'; there is a 'cibolocutor', a man who communicates solely through cooking; and there is fruit that, when cooked, tastes exactly like chicken but is actually from outer space. This is the sort of stuff that comic books do best.

The book isn't all about the wonderful craziness – Layman has interesting characters and well-plotted storylines. The cast are funny and odd and strange and intriguing; the dialogue has a rawness and a reality and a unique feel to it; and the story takes unexpected turns that keep you wanting more. It's bizarre and oddball book, but in all the good ways, and I'm really glad that it exists, and it was wonderful news when it won the Eisner award for Best New Series.

The other important contribution to the book is the art of Guillory, which suits the tone of the book perfectly; his art style, which feels like a mixture of Ben Templesmith and Jim Mahfood, creates the ideal reality for the balance of oddness and realism can exist without clashing. His people all look like complete individuals, none more obvious in the difference between Chu and his older brother, even though you can see the similarity. Together, these two artists make such a good book that it's enough to tempt me to buy the individual issues, just so I can get the story quicker.

Don't Make Me Angry; I Can't Write When I'm Angry

I'm not going to be sharing my thoughts on recently consumed pop culture this evening. Nothing on comic books or trade paperbacks or films or television or novels. I'm not even going to dredge up some old writing and post it in place of more topical content.

The reason? I'm angry. I'm angry about being angry about something completely insignificant and pointless.

It's a really silly thing, so trivial and utterly worthless that I'm angry about the embarrassment of the incident of anger. And I can't write angry.

One of my many failings as a writer is my inability to channel the strong emotions and powerful feelings into any type of coherent and legible text. I don't like writing when I'm angry or sad or despairing or devastated; I feel that I have to approach whatever topic I'm considering from a dispassionate stance. This is possibly due to my training as a scientist, but I want to talk about a piece of art that someone has created through hard work with some respect for that process. So I can't write when I'm actually angry.

This doesn't mean that I don't write about something that has angered me – there are many posts based on irrationally strong reactions to a piece of pop culture (I am a geek, after all) – but I still have to wait until I compile my thoughts.

I'm going to sleep off my anger and hope to feel more reasonable tomorrow morning, so that I can write again.

Cartoons On British Television Redux

Just over 2 years ago, I wrote about the meagre offering of regular animated superhero series on free-to-view television in this country. With the recent the school summer holiday, where cartoons are used to pacify the kids for a while in the morning, I thought it was time for a revisit to the theme (although I did talk about Batman: The Brave And The Bold earlier this year, so it's practically a regular feature).

The PVR was working overtime because CITV had a three-cartoon slot, which featured four series: Fantastic Four, which was replaced by The Batman, Justice League, and The Legion of Super Heroes (why don't they use the hyphen that the comic book does? Do they think kids can't handle it?). The Fantastic Four is something I watch solely for the more obscure corners of the Marvel universe they include in it, because it's certainly not for the pointy-chinned antics of main characters – I'm amazed Johnny and Sue haven't punctured themselves with their spike where most people have a jaw.

The Batman is better drawn than Fantastic Four but it would seem that they haven't bought the later series because they only showed the episodes BEFORE the arrival of the Justice League (they appear in the final moments of the two-parter where the Martian Manhunter helps Batman stop an alien invasion, which made me think it was a particularly harsh test to allow Batman in: why the hell didn't the Flash and Green Lantern help out with an alien invasion that was looking like it was going to destroy the world? No, leave it to the non-powered human. Don't join, Batman – they sound like a bunch of dicks). I'd really like to see those episodes without having to resort to YouTube.

The Justice League suffers from a similar problem in that ITV have only purchased the rights to show the first season – I'd love to see Justice League Unlimited, but that doesn't seem to be on the cards. But Justice League was hampered even more by the fact that it was only one season over and over again, and they messed up the showing it: the first episode of the three-part opening story (based on the invasion by the White Martians) was on one day and then the next was five episodes into the series, and they never showed the remaining two episodes in that story. CITV obviously think that kids don't notice such jumps in logic ...

The best part of this mini-festival of superhero cartoons was seeing The Legion of Super Heroes on television rather than a computer screen. I have the fondness for the Legion, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see them animated, which is probably the best medium for them. The strange choice was the characters they decided upon to be the regular cast: Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, Brainiac 5 (who is a robot for some reason), Phantom Girl, Timber Wolf and, most bizarrely, Bouncing Boy, who is the comic relief. Cosmic Boy shows up later on, Chameleon Boy becomes a regular in the second series, and there are small appearances from the likes of Colossal Boy, Karate Kid, Ferro Lad, Shrinking Violet and Dream Girl, and cameos from the likes of Sun Boy, Element Lad, Tyroc, Blok and Ultra Boy. There was even an entire episode devoted to the Legion of Substitute Heroes. This was one of the pleasures of the series – the huge cast of the comic book turning up in various disguises. I liked the animation style, even though it had flashes of manga tics in the first series.

It wasn't all enjoyment, however; the novice Superboy of the first series was a little tiring (although he wasn't Superboy in the second series, perhaps due to legal reasons). The trouble of having a large cast in a cartoon meant that most of them were fairly one-dimensional. These niggles were small in comparison to the two main problems with the second series: Superman X (or Kell-El) and Imperiex. The 'crap' Superman as I dubbed him (or the 'evil' Superman as my girlfriend dubbed him) was just plain annoying – a clone of Superman who was immune to kryptonite from the 41st century who was trying to save his time from the villain Imperiex and ended up coming back with the Legion to the 31st century to stop him. Every time he was on screen was pretty painful and his character was just a depressing irritant. But he was a joy compared to the villain of the second season, Imperiex. A bluff, loud, stupid, pointless character with a generic 'I must take over the universe because that is what I do' raison d'etre, he was the main source of stories and so you couldn't avoid him. I thought he was an embarrassing and silly villain who made no sense for the series; it was only when I used the power of Wikipedia that I discovered that Imperiex had been created by Jeph Loeb in the Superman comic books, and suddenly everything was made clear.

Despite this abundance of awfulness, I was sad to learn that there were only two seasons of 13 episodes each – the breadth of stories that could be told with the Legion means that we're missing out on some good cartoons. But I'm used to that living in the UK ...

Notes On A Film: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Breaking my routine by talking about a film I have seen in the same week – I thought I should get in to the habit. The other reason is that this film has playing again and again in my head, providing me with continued joy after the credits rolled.

I've only read one of the Scott Pilgrim books by Bryan Lee O'Malley (see here) and, while I enjoyed a lot of aspects of it, I didn't love it the way a lot of people do. However, I really loved the film, I can't wait to have it on DVD to watch it again to get all the jokes, and it makes me want to go back and read the rest of the series. Does this make me a hypocrite?

The story is slender: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a 23-year-old slacker in Toronto who is the bassist in a band, is immature and dumb but somehow endearing, who is chastely dating a 17-year-old school girl called Knives Chau as a rebound a year after the painful end of another relationship. He sees and falls for Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Wanstead), an American, but doesn't immediately break up with Knives, and discovers that he has to fight Ramona's seven evil exes if he is going to date her. But the bare description of the plot isn't what the film is about: it is a joyous explosion of visual delight streaming across your eyes and stimulating your synapses with wonderful information overload, leaving you giddy with happiness and fun.

Just about everything about this film is perfect for it: the cast, the humour, the computer game fight scenes, the plethora of jump-cut gags (like Scott putting a hat on when people comment on his hair), the silliness, the over-the-top-ness of it all. I'm sure the music was good, which is important for a film which is about a band trying to get a record deal and interacting with lots of musical types, but the sound at the cinema I watched it was really bad, so I can't be sure. The great thing about the film is the way that it is able to capture the unreal sensibility that feels fabulously real: Scott has these fights that defy gravity, punching opponents into piles of coins, able to do martial arts even though he's a skinny dweeb, flaming swords coming from his chest, but you don't question it because Edgar Wright sells it so completely.

Wright is the perfect director for this: his kinetic camerawork, the ability to cope with humour and action and surreality and drama and conversation, adding caption boxes to explain aspects of the story, yet keeping it all real. The ghost of Spaced hovers in the background – the training on that series was perfect for this film. As Simon Pegg tweeted, 'It is the closest thing you will ever see to a third series of Spaced.' It's so manically edited, Wright needed two editors on the film – they must have been exhausted – but it's not because he's trying to hide any problems with the film, but rather highlight the magic and hyper-reality of the feelings of the characters, as the computer game visuals reflect the connection to something more real for them.

I could list all of my favourite bits (Chris Evans as Lucas Lee and the trailers for his films; Brandon Routh as a vegan who has gained psychic powers because through his dietary choice; Ramona fighting with a massive hammer; any of the fight scenes) but that doesn't do the film justice. There are some weaker aspects – I didn't get quite the same enjoyment from musical fight scenes as the computer game ones; I thought that the condensing of the story turned the focus entirely on Scott, meaning Ramona isn't as fully realised as in the book – but that's just the nitpicky of a geeky type. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is a funny, kinetic, exciting, even moving film about growing up and taking responsibility, told in the style of a computer game-addled brain. In a good way.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Comics I Bought 29 July 2010

Time for the final week of comics from July, which brings me even closer to my goal of discussing comic books in the week they actually arrive (and I run out of things to write about. Possibly). Let's talk comic books.

Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #4
Is this mini-series the most fun Batman mini-series ever? Bruce Wayne making his way through different times – what's not to love? In this issue, it's cowboy Batman, as the silent loner (but no guns, of course), as he encounters Vandal Savage again, as well his evil descendent Doctor Thomas Wayne, and gets shot by Jonah Hex at the end of the book. There are lots of nice bits as Grant Morrison plays connect the dots with Batman history and adding his own additions. The only slightly negative aspect is Georges Jeanty's art, which doesn't live up to the high standards of the previous three artists – he was a late replacement for Cameron Stewart, so he does a good enough job but it's a little inconsistent and I would have preferred Stewart.

Fantastic Four #581
I've been having a lot of problems with Jonathan Hickman's last few issues of Fantastic Four, where nothing has been happening and there's no sense of drama or tension that you hope for in a comic book. This issue actually has plot and a story and a reason to read it: Reed Richard's father goes back in time to Reed's time in college, asking for his help in the Great Hunt, a cruel idea on behalf of Immortus 600,000 years in the future to eradicate all Nathaniel Richards from existence. Now, that's got my attention. They even have to ask for help from Victor Von Doom, and end up in a collapsed chronopolis in the future – I finally want to read more. It's such a refreshing change, my head is still spinning. The other bonus is that they got Paul Neary to ink Neil Edwards' pencils – I've been complaining about the shoddiness of Edwards' for a while now, so this is a fantastic improvement: it's sharper, it's stronger, it's cleaner, it's just better. I even liked the cameo of Professor Heinz Wolf as Reed's professor of philosophy (a very British in-joke). Hurrah for a good comic book.

Usagi Yojimbo #130
Stan Sakai has a lot of fun with this issue of Usagi Yojimbo, the first part of 'Return To Hell', where he has Usagi and Kato return to the town where they first met to sort out Boss Higa, the man who wronged them and took over the town – he has Usagi playing the tough guy to scare off some of the huge number of thugs hired by Boss Higa, and it's really funny. He also shows a deft touch showing a connection between Kato and Ayaka, the woman who runs an inn and who knew Kato from the previous story; it's a lovely piece of storytelling, as you'd expect from Sakai. The issue ends with Boss Higa shouting, 'Kill them!' to his goons at our unarmed heroes – I want the next issue NOW.