From A Library: Ultimate Origins TPB

Ultimate Origins #1–5 by Brian Michael Bendis and Jackson Guice

The basis of this story is at the heart of a big problem in comic books: EVERYTHING has to be connected. Despite having the scope of the Ultimate universe to do anything, there is still the urge to have the paths cross of everyone in the stories and connect at different points. Here, Nick Fury and Logan were soldiers in the second world war who did a bit of thieving on the side; Peter Parker is orphaned by Bruce Banner hulking out when he first takes the super soldier serum, based on the blood of Fury, who was the first successful test of the serum before Steve Rogers; Magneto freed Logan, who was the Canadian attempt at the super soldier but they kept him to experiment on him when they mutated his genome and accidentally created the first mutant (although how did Xavier get created if Logan is Mutant Zero? Are all mutants a result of this? It's not clear). I'm not saying that all the interweaving of stories back on themselves is bad, but why does comics have an unhealthy obsession with it?

Bendis does a good job – he constructs plots well (as long as they're not sprawling, over-long crossovers) – devoting a chapter to the Fury/Logan creation, creation of Captain America, the start of the Xavier/Magneto friendship, the creation of the Hulk, and the final chapter about the end of the Weapon X programme/Xavier and Magneto's friendship/explanation of the 'Watcher' probes being investigated by the Fantastic Four in the present day (and ending, rather annoyingly, with the start of the next story, as Rick Jones is turned into the herald to help with the new world order of superheroes and supervillains).

Guice has a specific style- it looks like a modern Joe Kubert to my untrained eye – which works well in the in the sections set in the past, but seems out of sync for the modern-day scenes. For some reason, the faces and clothes look wrong: there is a double-page spread when the Watcher probes appear all over the world and Peter Parker's face looks like it is being distorted through a circus mirror, or the clothes on Sue Storm on the last page of issue 4, where her costume looks like ill-fitting pyjamas (it looks rather ridiculous). He copes well with Bendis' over-reliance on excessive dialogue balloons (it would have more impact if it was used more sparingly), but the art looks quite muddy and muted, full of browns and dark greens and greys.

This is a strange and slightly unnecessary story that is enjoyable without being satisfying – did this really make the Ultimate universe more cohesive? Who cares? I know I don't ...

Notes On A Film: Red Cliff

I like the films of John Woo; even though his last Hollywood films were woeful (Windtalkers, Paycheck, Mission: Impossible II), there is still the deranged madness of Hard Target, Broken Arrow and the marvellous Face/Off. But it was the Hong Kong ‘heroic bloodshed’ action films that, while dated, I still love and first made the connection. The Killer is perhaps his best but it was Hard Boiled that brought him to my attention. And so things come full circle: Woo has gone back to China and Tony Leung, star of Hard Boiled (with Chow Yun-Fat, who originally down to play the same character in this film), is star of Red Cliff.

Based on the events of the Battle of Red Cliffs in Chinese history, this is a film that was originally a four-hour epic in China but released as a 150-minute film in the West. The story is more familiar to Chinese audiences, but it doesn’t matter to Western audiences: the story is explained and the storytelling is clear so you know what’s going on. There are elements that are similar to Woo themes of old: two characters with similar traits developing friendship under adversity, loyalty, honour, doing the right thing. It is epic: the battle scenes at the end are the equivalent of 2,000-year-old Chinese Saving Private Ryan fight scenes, showing the horror and bravery in equal amounts. The reviews all talked of ‘a return to form’ for Woo – I prefer to think of it as the form never left, he just didn’t have the right material to enthuse his passions and skills. In Red Cliff, he definitely has: there is a sense of something bigger and more important behind it (the battle is a turning point in Chinese history) and yet he is able to bring out the smaller moments of the main characters interacting, helped by the excellent acting, especially by Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro, who develop a real rapport.

The extremely condensed plot: the Prime Minister (portrayed as the bad guy) coerces the Emperor to allow him to eliminate warlords by convincing him they're rebels. The warlords of the southern and eastern provinces form an uneasy alliance to battle against the Prime Minister's army. The two chief advisor/strategists to the warlords, Zhou Yu (Leung) and Zhuge Liang (Kaneshiro), form strategies to counter his army: they defeat the Prime Minister's vanguard army, but it then becomes a battle of navies at Red Cliff, with the enemy camps on opposing sides of the water, in preparation for the final battle.

There are some excellent strategies developed in the story (such as the plan to collect 100,000 arrows from the enemy), although the lead characters are aware of the results of their actions. The fights scenes brutal and epic, there was an excellent piece of misdirection that I didn't see coming (something rare when you've watched a lot of films) but I was still happy about the reveal and the fact that it was a surprise, and this was the first film I can recall where the outcome of a battle was predicated upon meteorology (although I found it a little difficult to believe that their weather predicting could be so accurate: they could state it to the hour? We can't even get the weather right for the next day here in the UK).

This was a really good film, enjoyable and well done; John Woo showed that he can still direct a very impressive epic that was spectacular yet intimate, modern yet old-fashioned. Here's to hoping he does more films like this.

Rating: DAVE

[See here for my film rating system]

TV: FlashForward

This may be an easy play on words that has probably been said before, but: I wish FlashForward would flash forward. I want to know what happens but I’m not enjoying the process of finding out via the weekly television show.

FlashForward was hyped like crazy before it came onto Five (there were adverts for it in the cinema before the trailers). In one respect, it deserved some note because it is the first time that a UK terrestrial channel is showing a US next to its US transmission from the start – Heroes had a time delay before the BBC started showing the first series and only went close to air date with the second series. (I wonder how Five will cope with the breaks in schedule, where the US repeats an episode? I can’t see British audiences taking to that). But it’s strange for the UK to have something hyped before we internet-savvy genre types have heard good things about it from the US bloggers. An adjustment, then, to discovering something together (without resorting to illegal torrenting methods).

FlashForward has a great idea – the entire world blacks out for just over 2 minutes and there is a vision of what people will be doing in 6 months’ time. That’s a lovely sci-fi concept, which also has interesting themes for examination – what is fate? Is everything predetermined? Can we escape our destinies? What do we do if we know the future? So I am interested in the mystery and how things are going to pan out.

But – there had to be a but – the process of uncovering the mystery is not as interesting as it should be. In discussing it with my lovely girlfriend, the conclusion we arrived at was that the characters aren’t characters, they are just ciphers for the plot. There is no connection with any of the people involved, despite the situations in which they find themselves – they are basic sketches of limited depth who represent a small facet of the story. For example, Joseph Fiennes – an actor with some range – is relegated to a single expression of pain throughout, to represent the pain of knowing the future and wanting to change it. And that’s all. The closest we come to vaguely interesting are John Cho as an FBI agent who didn’t have a flash forward and discovered he will be dead by the 6-month time frame, and Brian O’Byrne as the former alcoholic who saw his dead soldier daughter alive in his flash forward. Apart from that – nothing. We see a relatively major character throw himself off a building to change his flash forward, and we don’t feel a thing for him; that’s a failure on the part of the creators (David Goyer and Brannon Braga). We should care more about the characters as well as the mystery to invest our time in this fiction.

Compare and contrast: at the same time as watching FlashForward, we were watching the first few episodes of True Blood and already we know the characters and care about them. Is it just because Alan Ball is a better writer than those on FlashForward? Both are based on books (but deviate from them); both have a non-mainstream concept as the driving story engine (sci-fi concept and vampires); both have a large-ish cast. True Blood is engaging; FlashForward isn’t.

Compare and contrast: the first season of Heroes (when it was good, before the last episode ruined it). A non-mainstream concept with a large cast of characters and a central mystery, but they made it work, despite how it ended, and Heroes handled the worldwide aspect better (although still not brilliantly; a fault with US productions, unfortunately).

I still want to stick around for the mystery in FlashForward – I think it’s interesting and has great potential – except the creators aren’t making it a lot of fun at the moment. I wonder if I'll bother coming back after the 'extended' break ...

Author event: Jasper Fforde

I’ve had the pleasure of attending author appearances in smallish venues – I saw Terry Pratchett in a small hall somewhere in Canterbury back in the early 1990s, and Neil Gaiman (promoting the novelisation of Neverwhere) on the second floor of a Waterstone's in London in the mid-1990s (back before either of them required a ticketing system to prevent a mob scenario). I can now add Jasper Fforde to that list, after attending his appearance to promote Shades of Grey on the third-floor gallery in Foyles on Charing Cross Road.

The event was ticketed, despite Fforde not selling in the same amounts as Pratchett and Gaiman, but I had booked them back in December, so I was able to drag my girlfriend along to her first author appearance (she is a big fan of the Thursday Next series after I foisted them upon her), smug in the knowledge that we would get into the ‘sold out’ event (bit of a misnomer – nobody paid for any tickets, so there was no selling involved).

I don’t know how many people the room packed in – about 100? – but it wasn’t too cramped and we could all see Fforde easily (and hear him clearly with the PA system). Fforde was as funny, educated, charming and engaging as you would expect from reading his novels or his website. He talked about the writing of his latest novel, his first ‘proper’ novel as he calls it – a completely new scenario with his own creations and nobody else’s – and he read out various sections of the new book to illustrate his thinking and the development of the world. It was a very interesting insight to the creative process and into the brain of Fforde.

After about 30 minutes of Fforde talking at us, he opened the floor to questions, something he encourages because it helps him see how people are reacting to his books. He was asked questions that led him to talk about how envisioned Thursday Next (he based her on the female aviators – they just went out and did it, not as a feminist act, but just because it was there), and how a film of the Thursday Next books wouldn't work because of the nature of books is about reading itself (and, anyway, it would have to be a television mini-series for each book), and how the Nursery Crime Division books were written before Thursday Next (and how he had written the first Thursday Next story in third person but found it wasn't working, so he changed to first person, with the exception of the flashback chapter, which he realised that it wouldn't work in first person). It was really informative and Fforde was funny and honest and personable, and the hour was up far too quickly. If you're a fan of his books, then I urge you to see him in person if possible.

From A Library: It's A Bird

By Steven T Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen

I'll get to the point: this is a quite beautiful graphic novel that you should read. Seagle uses a semiautobiographical tone to tell a story that is about the creative process, the analysis of Superman and what he means (this is a Vertigo book, so it's legal for all this Superman talk without using a stand-in), the nature of relationships (particularly with parents) and the effect of a disease on people and those around them. That he manages all of this and tell an engaging story is a testament to his skill. He has the perfect collaborator in Kristiansen – he's not a traditional comic book artist, and he employs one style for the narrative but different art styles for each of the one-/two-page Superman analysis pages intersperse throughout (according the notes, he employed 21 different art styles).

The book is about Steve, a comic book writer who is offered the job of writing the Superman comic; he doesn't accept immediately, saying he needs time to think about it because he doesn't 'get' Superman (the analysis pages are his notes on his thoughts on the different aspects and interpretations of the character). While he is thinking about what it means to write Superman, he is also dealing with family issues: the knowledge of the presence of Huntingdon's disease in his family and how it hangs over him, which affects the relationship he has with his girlfriend and their future together. This is a very dry basic description of the story itself, but it doesn't do the book any justice. It's a really special book that is absorbing and personal, yet makes you think about the nature of a comic book character and the influence on popular culture. It's lyrical and beautiful and thoughtful, and it's something you have to experience for yourself, and I thoroughly recommend it.

Uncanny X-Men: Lovelorn TPB

Uncanny X-Men: Lovelorn (#504–507 + Annual #2) by Matt Fraction, Terry Dodson (Mitch Bruweiser/Daniel Acuna)

Can my thoughts on a book be considered unbiased if I got the book cheap in a sale? I’m not sure, but it’s a factor in the discussion. I read some of Ed Brubaker’s X-Men comics but that’s about it since Grant Morrison’s run for recent X-Men stuff. I will always have an affection for the mutant books – I grew up on the Claremont run – but I don’t really think about them any more.

My reason for trying this: Matt Fraction was part of the team that bought us The Immortal Iron Fist, which was amazing; Terry Dodson is a fabulous artist, especially for superhero books that have women in them; I was curious and it was cheap (I am honest, if nothing else).

There’s a lot going on in this trade paperback – the X-Men are now based in San Francisco, Colossus is getting over heartbreak by punching Russian mobsters (NB: it's a ridiculous coincidence that the gangster in San Francisco was the same man in Peter’s home town threatening his father), Beast and Angel are looking for super scientists to solve the mutant problem, Scott and Emma are still going but with interesting tweaks to their relationship, ex-mutants are turning up at the compound looking for refuge. However, it's all rather enjoyable and feels modern and new, which is how it should be with the X-Men. It’s drawn beautifully by the Dodsons (did Fraction deliberately do the issue in Cyclops’ mind with all variations of women he’s ever looked at just for the Dodson art?) and Fraction has a nice feel for the mutants, and I love the little data dump beside the first appearance of the character; it’s a cool touch.

The annual wasn’t as quite as enjoyable – Mitchweiser’s art is a bit scratchy, Acuna’s smooth art in the flashbacks is all right but verges on the cartoony in place, and the story seems to be a justification for plot developments in Dark Reign, something I haven’t been following.

Summary: overall enjoyable, and I’ll take a look at the next book (unless it’s all Greg Land art).

Notes On A Film: Synecdoche, New York

I think that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a great film (I was pleasantly surprised when it was ending up on so many of those premature Best Of The Decade lists), and Being John Malkovich and Adaptation are two of the most original and smart films I’ve seen. Therefore, Charlie Kaufman directing his own script is an automatic ‘must see’ film, even if you have to look up definition of the word in the title to find out how it describes the film itself.

The only trouble with trying to capture thoughts on this film is that I don’t think I have the capacity – I’m not a stupid person, I’m well educated and well read, but I felt that I missed a lot of what was going on because I haven’t read and seen all the same things that Kaufman has. To condense my ramblings: I liked it, it was thought provoking, but I don’t have an urge to see it again.

The film's idea is an intriguing one: a theatre director gets a grant to make a play; he decides to make the play about his life, but trying to capture the entirety of the concept of his life to make it as realistic as possible, with the actors he casts as himself and other members of his life effectively playing the roles all day, every day. The size of the project increases exponentially, as the amount of detail required to capture a life in a play runs out of control.

The actors (in the film) do a good job: Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great choice for the central character, and there is able support from Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Tom Noonan, Michelle Williams and Dianne Wiest, among others. The interactions between different people and how they are different people themselves is a great actorly concept for them, and Kaufman seems to be happy to work with such a large cast on his first film. He does a good job at directing, although he’s not a great visualist, which might be expected.

There is weirdness, obviously: Morton’s character lives in a house which seems to be constantly on fire; Hoffman’s relationship with his wife and daughter is particularly odd; the project he’s working on seems to expand to a life-sized replica of New York in a warehouse, which seems to have unlimited funds and goes on for ages without actually putting the play in front of an audience. However, there are some nice moments in it: there were several scenes which showed Hoffman ageing and wondering where the time had gone, something we the audience feel but in a different way, which feels exactly like those moments in life. It feels like Kaufman is trying to get down the concept of a life in the limits of a movie by including these little time capsules, where you feel life slipping away from you.

The film is unusual, and I wouldn’t necessarily call it entertaining, but it was interesting, with an odd sense of humour and it left me thinking about it well after the film had ended.

Rating: DAVE

[See here for my film rating system]

TV: Defying Gravity

Defying Gravity shot itself in the foot with tagline of ‘Grey’s Anatomy in space’ – you can’t afford to have such a negative start to a television series in the current TV climate. It’s tough enough to survive without an inaccurate description creating inaccurate perceptions before the show even starts, which would explain why the series was cancelled after only 13 episodes. This is a great shame because Defying Gravity was shaping up to be a very interesting programme.

The series was inspired by the 2004 BBC drama-documentary series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets, and was a co-production between the BBC (which would explain why we in the UK were able to see the entire 13 episodes, unlike other territories), Fox Television Studios, Omni Film, Canadian Television Network and SPACE, and German broadcaster ProSieben (which explains the international flavour to the cast, even though it feels ostensibly American). It was about the six-year mission of eight astronauts (four men, four women) travelling the solar system on the spaceship Antares, set in the year 2052. Episodes would switch between the mission itself, with instantaneous contact with Mission Command back on Earth, and flashbacks to five years before the mission, when the astronauts were being selected, as well as flashbacks to the previous mission to Mars, which had gone disastrously wrong.

The first episodes tended to emphasise the relationship aspect of the drama and the interactions of the characters over the story itself – there were hints of the central mystery and the reason for the mission, but nothing more. It was only later in the series, around episode 7, that the real heart to the story was explained – and that was when it got interesting. The mission is about Beta, a mysterious alien artefact (an alien? God? Something else?), its effect on the astronauts, and the collecting of its ‘siblings’ from each planet on the solar system (which was the real reason for the first mission to Mars). The last two episodes were the best of the series, as the crew reaches Venus to pick up the next artefact, and the relationship between chief engineer Maddux (Ron Livingstone) and geologist Zoe (Laura Harris), an important part of the story so far (soap opera alert: they had had a fling, but his vasectomy had reversed, so she became pregnant, but aborted the baby because she wanted to be on the mission; however, the abortion had gone wrong and she had a hysterectomy and the relationship had been strained ever since, even though they still had deep feelings for each other), became central to the action.

This relationship helped the series because it was believable and you wanted the characters to get together; this was not the case for a lot of the other relationships in the story. For example, the biologist Jen was married to Rollie, the cap com who had been mission commander, but she had previously been involved with Ted, who replaced Rollie as mission commander (I should have put in another soap opera alert). The trouble is, you don’t believe in any of those relationships at all, or in Ted’s marriage to Eve, the woman with secrets who works for the corporation behind the mission and has executive power of decision in the mission based on her connection to Beta. If you are going to emphasise the relationship angle of your drama, making them viable would seem the healthy option.

It’s a real shame that this series won’t get to wrap things up – if you see the notes from the creator at this website, you'll get an idea of what could have been – because it was good to see a well-done show in space (the CGI was good and production values were high, enough to make you feel that the story was set sufficiently far in the future) that was about capturing a mainstream audience. Also, it had a good idea behind it that was setting up interesting discussions about religion, the human need for beliefs, the ability of humanity to achieve the impossible, and facing your demons. But it was not to be: a good sci-fi programme was cancelled before it got the chance to show its true colours; at least we got to see all 13 episodes in the UK on BBC Two (even if they did push them to late night and show double episodes of the final four).

Comic Book Shop: Fantastic Realm (Number 9 In A Series)

Is an hour too long a distance to travel to buy half-price comics and graphic novels from a comic book shop that is going out of business? Is 8am too early to get up on a Sunday morning to do this? Should I feel guilty and a little sleazy for saving money on comic books through people who love comic books but haven’t succeeded in the cut-throat world of retail?

These questions and more were going through my mind as I journeyed on the tube to Finsbury Park on 8 November 2009 to the big sale at Fantastic Realm, the most recent addition to the London comic book scene and also the most recent victim of these economically difficult times. I first heard about them earlier in the year in a post by Dom of London Loves Comics – I had meant to visit them as part of my series on Comic Book Shops of London but they had succumbed to financial pressure before I got off my lazy arse and visited them. Dom discusses the reasons behind it in another post, which, if true, are very sad indeed – it would seem that the American parent company screwed them over.

Despite the ghoulish atmosphere of picking clean the flesh of a corpse (enough with the metaphor), I was not the only person to descend upon Fantastic Realm. I arrived a few minutes after 10am, when the shop was opening specially for the sale, but the locusts were already there – one locust beating me to the only copy of Agents of Atlas TPB that I had really wanted (bastard; he even had to think about it when he picked it up – if I'd been there 30 seconds earlier I could have had it, and I know I wanted it). It’s only a small shop but there were a lot of people crammed in there, standing over each other in an effort to get the best bargain. There were some trade paperbacks but the shop was mostly comic books – they even let us into the back room to go through the long boxes there.

It was in the long boxes you could see the evidence of where things had gone wrong – you would see packs of comics in a Mylar bag but, instead of set of issues covering a story arc in a series (as Gosh! do in their downstairs section), it was identical copies of the same issue. This was usually first issues – there were entire boxes full of the same first issue (I’ve never seen so many copies of Jenna Jameson’s Shadow Hunters) – and it was depressing, unless you really wanted 100 copies of the first issue of a new Marvel series, suggesting the allegation was true that the store was the dumping ground for unnecessary orders for the purpose of getting special variants.

Even though the shop wasn’t big and the stock not extensive, I still managed to spend 2 hours in the shop without being aware of the passage of time. I can be like that when shopping and it was nice to see trades in a sale – when I went to the closing down sale for the Borders on Oxford Street, they had already removed all the trade paperbacks/graphic novels before letting anyone through the doors. I managed quite a haul – five of the Brubaker Captain America TPBs, Dead Girl, Fantastic Four: True Story, Uncanny X-Men: Lovelorn and Fantastic Four: Dark Reign, plus all but three issues of the recent Agents of Atlas series, the Final Crisis: Superman Beyond issues and a few sundry comics, all for £50. I tried to make myself believe I was helping the owners out by buying this haul, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was ripping them off and smiling at their misfortune. Still, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, or some other cliché; RIP, Fantastic Realm.

Notes On A DVD: Punisher War Zone

From good Punisher to not-so-good Punisher, which is ironic considering how much this film took from the Ennis Punisher run ...

I'm amazed that they made a sequel to the underwhelming (and missing the point) Thomas Jane-starring version, especially as they seemed to have ignored it completely, returning to the original 'origin' for Frank Castle of a former Special Forces husband and father whose family is killed by the Mafia.

The film starts out like an issue of Garth Ennis' Punisher comic book, which is a good thing – the Punisher kills a load of mobsters in a house – but then the film gets it wrong by deciding to 'create' Jigsaw as a villain for Punisher to fight. Dominic West hams it up as Jigsaw, which seems at odds with the tone of the rest of the film. Ray Stevenson looks exactly like the Punisher of a Timothy Bradstreet cover, and acts like a man who has had everything taken from him, devoid of emotion. This is appropriate, but it highlights the fact that the Punisher himself is not supposed to be an interesting character; it's got to be the story around him that has to be intriguing (e.g. see Ennis Punisher stories).

The film takes a lot from the Ennis run (the IMDb Punisher War Zone trivia page for the film lists all the characters who were taken from various Ennis arcs and other connection) – we even get Detective Soap – but unfortunately Punisher War Zone turns into a 1980s action film, with two damsels in distress to rescue, a villain with a personal vendetta against Frank, a large building full of faceless criminals for Frank to kill (and what a stupid and pointless bit of plotting to collect a large group of homogeneous henchmen to be slaughtered), and some 'emotional resonance' for the story (oh dear). The only differences are the CGI blood – there is a lot of it; the best way to describe the film is 'squelchy' – and the excessive levels of violence (Frank stabs men in the head, breaks the neck of a Mafioso's wife after beheading the Mafioso in question, shoots off a leg of a faceless henchman – you get the picture). I guess the Punisher doesn't work in a standard three-story arc Hollywood film; I wish they'd actually read the Ennis stories rather than just taking the surface aspect of extreme violence.

Rating: DA

[See here for my film rating system]

From A Library – Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley Forge

The Punisher #55–60 by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov

I started reading Garth Ennis' Punisher Max series in the comic books but I stopped after a year when I realised it would read better in trade form, especially as Ennis seemed to be deliberately writing six-issue arcs. I still haven't got round to completing my collection, so it's perhaps a little strange to jump to the final story in Ennis' run (but it's not as if Frank Castle was going to die at the end). However, I couldn't resist when I saw it in my library, and I'm glad I did.

This is an absolutely brilliant book. Ennis looks at the Punisher's time in Vietnam, via extracts from a book about a solder who served under Frank but who died at the location of the title: Valley Forge. This book transcends the concept of a vigilante in a superhero universe and is a story about men who've seen what the world is actually like and the realities of war and the effect it has on people.

The Punisher is being targeted by a group of generals in the US army, who are close to retirement with high-paying consultancies lined up, but were in charge of organising a terrorist attack on Russian soil that involved the CIA, Frank and Barbarosa (all of this from earlier Ennis stories). Frank has a tape of a CIA man implicating the generals, so the generals need it dealt with; they get a colonel (who volunteers for the job) and his unit to take down Castle. However, there is more to the colonel than he is letting on ...

The prose in the memoir – which is excellent; I could easily read an Ennis novel/factual book any time soon – has the author, the brother of the soldier who served under Frank, researching the people who were left behind and had a connection to the last assault on Valley Forge, and talking to the relatives of those who died. It also explains (to me, at least; I'm not a great history buff, I have to confess) how the Vietnam war started, due to bad intel on a supposed attack on US warships, which is fascinating stuff.

The art is amazing. Parlov draws Frank as a big guy in the right way; he draws all the other characters as completely separate individuals, from their body shapes, sizes and faces, so you can easily distinguish the generals and the Delta team trying to take down Frank. The artwork is moody and dynamic, with great camera angles to tell the story, and he has the ability to draw menace in the face using the eyes alone. Superlative stuff.

This is an incredible comic book; it looks at the effect of war and the way people profit from it, all in the context of an exciting thriller story. Ennis continues to amaze with ability to tell a story, especially when it comes to his obsession with war and the people who fight them. Coupled with a fantastic artist, this is so much more than 'just' a Punisher comic.

Notes On A Film: Brüno

Would Brüno be a funnier film if Borat hadn’t existed? Would Brüno have been made if Borat hadn’t been so successful? I ask because the film can be summed up by the sentence: Brüno is funny but it’s not as funny as Borat.

(I thought I'd reviewed Borat on this blog, but it appears I have been remiss – no surprise there – but I thought it was really good, and would haven given it a rating of 'DAVE' [yes, I'm so vain I named a film rating system after my own name].)

Borat was a very good film; even though there were the staged elements where Sacha Baron Cohen’s television reporter mocked ordinary Americans unaware that they were being used for a comedy film, it holds together as a film and works because the naïve but sympathetic idiot character of Borat isn’t being deliberately horrible to common folk. It is also incredibly funny – I couldn’t remember laughing so uncontrollably in the cinema for a long time. Hence, it was only right that Cohen be allowed to make more films, and so we have Brüno.

The only problem now is that Cohen is more recognisable (although he is hardly obvious as Brüno – he looks very different, and handsome, as the Austrian blond model) and his MO – pretending to be shooting a documentary in character – means that he has to search harder for targets. Also, he has to do things that are different to Borat, or be accused of duplicating his success with a different character. Unfortunately, this means that comedy scenes become much shorter because it is more difficult to keep up the sustained humour in the situations (there are lots of cuts in each scene to find the funniest line or reaction, some scenes lasting less than a minute, and there must be miles of film on the cutting room floor where they tried to find the best stuff), thereby affecting the flow of the film. Also, the funny stuff isn’t so much funny as ‘I can’t believe he just did that’ funny, such as the scenes of Brüno having sex with his tiny Thai boyfriend, or the adopting an African baby and calling the child a traditional African name – OJ – on an American talk show with a predominantly African American audience, or the finale where he starts making out with his former assistant in the cage fighting ring, as the audience gets violently angry with this display of homosexuality. This isn’t quite the same reaction as actual belly laughs, although it’s still enjoyable to a degree. (But I have to admit that the shaky footage of Harrison Ford shouting 'Fuck off' in his gruff voice at Brüno when he tries to interview him coming out of a restaurant is hilarious.)

The forced stuff sticks out more than in Borat – the bit at the swingers party somewhere in deepest America, where Brüno ends up in a room alone with a woman who looks rather blatantly like a porn actress (with her plastic breasts and shaved pudenda) who starts whipping him, feels so obviously staged and worked out, especially when he falls out the window in a supposedly unplanned fashion – meaning that you are taken out of the reality of the film. The other problem is the character of Brüno himself – someone so self-centred, vain and shallow (he wants to be the most famous Austrian since Hitler) is rather annoying and hard to empathise with, unlike Borat, thus losing an important element necessary to make this sort of film work. This is impressive when you consider some of the appalling behaviour of the real people in the film – the ignorance of the charity PR consultants who don't know the name of foreign countries, let alone where they are, when advising which charity Brüno should use to seek fame, or the parents of child 'actors' agreeing to allow unbelievably offensive things to be done to their children, as long as they get on TV.

The shock element of some scenes provides some truly hilarious moments, but the film doesn’t feel like a narrative, just a collection of sketches, meaning that the film can’t climb the heights of its predecessor.

Rating: VID

[See here for my film rating system]

Comics I Bought 27 August 2009

Batman and Robin #3
This is a gorgeous comic book – Frank Quitely provides that dirty edge to his beautiful looking people that's amazing. The first panel alone is great. When Robin escapes from Professor Pyg ('You just redefined “wrong”.') and the fight scene begins, the action just leaps off the page – dynamic and exhilarating, but dirty and real yet comic booky at the same time. Grant Morrison provides Quitely with a great tale but also putting some of his trademark weirdness into it, something which feels very at home in the world of Batman (even if it is actually Dick Grayson). Really good comics.

Detective Comics #856
From one corner of the Bat-universe to another, and there is another connection: the writer was the initial draw in both books (as well as the artists) but the art is the dazzling element in each. JH Williams is on simply stunning form here – from the different styles to distinguish between Batwoman and Kate Kane, to the brilliant design of the action and the panel layout (the double page spread in the middle, with the musical notes across the top, a panel across both pages to set the scene, bookended by angels, then the dialogue panels underneath, is just great, followed soon after by the double-page spread of Kate dancing with Maggie Sawyer, which is equally amazing). He really is taking it to another level. In the Second Feature, the Question story is turning into a good noir tale, but has the only sour note so far – Greg Rucka has Renee captured but she isn't just killed by a bullet in the head; no, she's put into the boot of a car that is dumped in a river. That's just weak; you don't believe in tough guys who do the equivalent of 1960s Batman deathtrap. The only irritating part for me.

Herogasm #4
Now that we've got past the orgies and silliness of the first three issues, we can get down to the entire reason for Herogasm to act as a mini-series outside of The Boys: we learn about how Vought-American made their move via Vice President Vic on the days of the attacks, from an agent who was guarding Vic but didn't like what he saw or had to do. Garth Ennis reminds you what a good writer he is, telling his story through dialogue but not explaining everything so you, the reader, have to pay attention. For some reason, the art (by 'John McCrea and Keith Burns' – I can't tell the difference on the pages) doesn't seem up to the tone of the book; I don't know if it's the style or the colour, but it takes an edge off the intensity of the drama unfolding.

Usagi Yojimbo #122
And, finally, something completely different in tone and texture: Stan Sakai brings yet another excellent instalment in the adventures of everybody's (well, the few of us who have the good taste to buy the books) favourite rabbit ronin. And he even includes a picture puzzle on the back cover for extra entertainment value. The story is classic Usagi – after being attacked by a gang out to avenge their boss's death at Usagi's hand, he falls off a cliff but is taken in by a poor family and tended too by the daughter. The parents don't want him to stay, but the girl nurses him back to health. The parents visit the town to sell their wares, but learn of the danger of having Usagi in their home, so return to cast him out. He leaves, but returns when the gang arrives to get him, killing them because he owed them a debt for looking after him (but taking no pleasure in what he does). Sakai tells these tales with such precision and economy of art and dialogue – he's had plenty of experience with his 25 years of telling Usagi stories – but it's still a joy every time.

Looking Forward To Geeky Things

To pause for a moment from looking backwards over the months of not blogging, I wanted to take a quick look forwards at things I’m anticipating (and will probably blog about in the future).

Lego Harry Potter
I love the Harry Potter books and films. I love the Lego video games. This is a match made in heaven. My girlfriend and I are going to enjoy the hell out of this when it comes out (as long as it doesn’t have as many glitches as Lego Indiana Jones 2).



Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Mario Galaxy is just sublime. It is a joy, pure, unadulterated glee in video game form. Jumping, spinning, being a bee, flying, ice-skating – we recently re-explored all the worlds again, and it was just as much fun the second time around. With all new worlds, I can’t wait for this.


Going to the cinema – a lot
The preview sections of film on various magazines/websites (see here for Empire’s preview of 2010) are always a shiny treasure trove of potential gold; the end result may not match the anticipation, but I’m always optimistic (unfortunately) despite evidence to the contrary. This year has a nice selection of films that appeal, with comic books providing the source material: The Losers, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Kick Ass and Iron Man 2, and the new Christopher Nolan film Inception providing the top five in my list of things to see.


Steve Moffat on Doctor Who
I mentioned my anticipation of Steve Moffat's tenure as showrunner of Doctor Who when I talked about the final Russell T Davies/David Tennant episode. Not only did Moffat write some of the best individual episodes in the previous series, but he is also funny, which is something that's important. I was a big fan of his Coupling sitcom – it was not only genuinely funny but it was also heartfelt and poignant when it needed to be; he was also playing with fractured storytelling even in a sitcom (I remember the episode where the story was moving back and forth in time around a moment, witnessing it from the perspective of different characters; it was amazing for a sitcom). I'm still to be convinced by the haircut of Matt Smith, the new Doctor, but good writing will easily distract me from that.

A new era of comic books?
Siege is supposed to be bringing an end to the umbrella crossovers dominating Marvel, and Blackest Night is leading into Brightest Day at DC – can we be witnessing a time when good comic books can shine without company-wide events? Some really good books have blossomed from these crossovers (Incredible Hercules, the unfortunately cancelled Captain Britain and MI:13, Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man), so it will be nice to see them flourish on their own with the weight of their companies behind them, rather than hyping their bloated events. If not, well, there will always be good books in their own right: I’m looking forward to more of The Unwritten, more Stumptown, and potentially a new Batwoman ongoing series by Rucka and Williams (their Detective Comics run of the origin of Batwoman has been amazing), to name but a few.

That's enough positivity for now. Back to looking at the past tomorrow.

TV: You Have Been Watching

I have mentioned previously my adoration of Charlie Brooker in print (Screen Burn) and on TV (Screenwipe, basically Screen Burn on TV; Newswipe, a mocking and angry look at news; Gameswipe, an intro to video games but with humour), so I was very happy with You Have Been Watching, his mainstream panel show all about television on Channel 4. As the host, he was warmer than his other shows but also spontaneously funny while allowing the guests to operate.

It started shakily with the inclusion of Jamelia as one of its first guests (who knew nothing about TV and wasn’t funny), but the show went from strength to strength when the guests were people who were actually funny and knew about TV (such as David Mitchell, Frank Skinner, Frankie Boyle, Phill Jupitus, Richard Herring and Ben Miller). It was also nice to see funny women, such as Josie Long and Grace Dent (TV critic for The Guardian), on the show being funny and smart – this show wasn’t a male-dominated atmosphere all about scoring points like Mock The Week and seemed more inclusive and welcoming.

The show tended to mock that week’s TV but it also included looks into the archive (the last episode was devoted to 1990s shows about sex), and was very funny and worked well – it’s not really a panel show, just a vehicle for people to be funny about TV. It also looked at some of the more bizarre television on offer; my favourite was Deadliest Warrior, which recreated fake battles between historical combatants, such as a samurai versus a Viking. The most insane recreation was the IRA versus the Taliban – I can’t believe this actually existed as a genuine programme.

Brooker, who first hosted a TV programme (admittedly on the little-seen BBC Knowledge) in 1998, was awarded the Best Male Newcomer award for 2009 at the British Comedy Awards for You Have Been Watching. I’m sure he saw the funny side …

These notes may be about a programme that was on many months ago, but I can claim topicality based on the new series of Newswipe starting on BBC4 this Tuesday. Just goes to show you that failing to stay current doesn't really matter.

Notes On A Film: Public Enemies

Michael Mann has made some good films: Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Collateral (I’m not sure about Ali); hell, I even liked Miami Vice. The prospect of Mann making a film based on the true story of John Dillinger, with Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent tasked with bringing him down, was something to relish, and I remember the hype for the film before it came out. However, having seen it, I can’t say I remember the film itself with such clarity.

Although the film is not a completely accurate depiction of the life and death of Dillinger (see the Wikipedia page for a list of departures from fact), it does follow the broad strokes of the heyday of the notorious bank robber and the FBI hunt. This should make it an exciting and interesting film, with two very enjoyable actors in the main roles. Depp is very good but there is little on screen to indicate the greatness of Heat (by which all Mann films, especially ones about criminals, will be judged); the film is just there and doesn’t sizzle.

I thought Billy Crudup was very good as J Edgar Hoover (it’s good to see him getting regular roles – I always thought he would be huge after Almost Famous, where he was fantastic, but it never happened – and this is in stark contrast to Watchmen for different roles) and Marion Cotillard is good but wasted in the role of Dillinger’s girlfriend.

The most divisive element of the film was the decision to shoot on HD – Mann shoots a good film and it is technically excellent and well done, but there is something incongruous about seeing a period piece on digital. I know I shouldn’t be bothered by such a trivial issue, but it kept causing me to jump out of the film because it didn’t look right – there are lots of hand-held shaky shots, tracking jerkily with the characters, which is something I associate with the hectic nature of modern life, rather than the supposed slower pace of yesteryear (which is probably a misconception on my part). Add this to the lacklustre story, and the feeling that the film isn't as good as previous Mann efforts, and you’ve got a film that's just all right – perhaps with some distance in the future, it can be revisited, but for now you’re left feeling a little nonplussed.

Rating: VID

[See here for my film rating system]

From A Library: Ed Brubaker's X-Men

I like the work of Ed Brubaker. I enjoyed reading the X-Men books growing up. Brubaker has written some X-Men stories. Therefore, I decided to read them. That makes sense, doesn't it? Let's have a look (with thanks to the library for providing all the TPBs).

Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire
(Issues #475–486) Art by Billy Tan, Clayton Henry

This is a huge book and a huge story – a year of comics – devoted entirely to the single aim of setting up Vulcan, the third Summers brother introduced by Brubaker in Deadly Genesis (my review), as the new emperor of the Shi'ar Empire. And that's about it. The art is split between the two artists: Tan does the X-Men character stuff (nine issues), Henry does the Vulcan issues. Both do good work – Tan has a nice grasp on the X-Men, with the possible exception of Xavier (he can't seem to get him right), and is very much in the Image style, harking back to Silvestri, which is appropriate for the X-Men; Henry is quite different, like a muscular Kevin Nowlan, but equally talented.

It's an odd group of X-Men: Nightcrawler, Warpath, Darwin, Havok, Polaris, Rachel Grey and Xavier. I may be familiar with the mutant universe, having read a lot as a teenager, with a recent dip back into the waters for Grant Morrison's run, but it's still an unusual selection. Because the story is essentially a space story, we meet the Starjammers along the way (it's obligatory for them to show up in an X-Men space story), and Vulcan fights the Imperial Guard, to add extra nostalgia. Lilandra, Deathbird and D'Ken are also present and correct, so we get all the Chris Claremont X-Men space cast.

The story feels odd – I don't know if I'm too used to Brubaker doing crime/espionage/noirish stuff, but the space opera stuff doesn't have the same ring to it. The story seems to be an elaborate building up of the Vulcan character, a bit of retroactive continuity that doesn't have the same weight or organic quality as Brubaker's excellent reintroduction of Bucky in the Captain America book. The story ends up with a particular strange collection of X-Men (Havok, Polaris and Rachel Grey) staying in space with Lilandra and a couple of Starjammers, which seems a weird splitting of the team. Perhaps I'm not the intended audience, but the trade paperback contains, among other things, an interview with Brubaker where he effectively defends his choices of characters, suggesting that I'm not the only person who made this observation.


Uncanny X-Men: The Extremists
(Issues #487–491) Art by Salvador Larroca

I remember the Morlocks from the first time round, so it's nice to see Brubaker bring them back. However, the story, which involves Masque and a group of Morlocks organising a terrorist attack on the subway (deforming faces of norms due to M-Day), is all predicated on prophecies of The Book, written by a character called Qwerty, who saw all futures and their consequences. I really don't enjoy stores based on fate or prophecy or destiny; they tend to annoy me, especially when they are really detailed predictions (such as the fight scene with the Morlock group and Warpath/Hepzibah, in which the Morlocks know exactly what is going to happen). It seems lazy but excessive at the same time – does that make sense?

Larroca uses an interesting art style (is Photoshop involved?), so there is a strange lifelessness to some of the characters, and the lack of detail (Ben Grimm wears a checked shirt with no crease or wrinkles that would appear normally – it looks odd) and the different facial appearances for the same characters are off-putting. He is at least an equal opportunity fetishist: he loves to draw Storm's bottom in her costume, but he also draws men's bums with the same detail, so fair play to him.

The book is all right but not particularly great. It's well constructed, except for shoehorning Storm into the narrative – she's not part of the book now she's married to Black Panther, but she's needed for historical reasons of being a leader of the Morlocks. I just didn't feel any connection with it on an emotional level, even the burgeoning relationship between Warpath and Hepzibah.


Uncanny X-Men: Divided We Stand
(Issues #495–499) Art by Mike Choi

Now this is old-school X-Men – two stories occurring simultaneously: Scott and Emma having fun in Savage Land before coming to San Francisco to help Warren; meanwhile, Logan, Kurt and Peter go to Russia to visit the graves of Peter's parents, where they get into a fight in a bar (of course) and then kidnapped by the Russians responsible for the country's mutant agents. Brubaker balances these plots really well, and he has a good handle on the characters: Scott is interesting, Emma is in love (in a good way); and the old-school trio of Logan, Kurt and Peter (hitting my nostalgia zone) are great together, funny and connected and experienced, and I loved the way he had them handle themselves in a fight. The dialogue feels right, the story progresses logically and inevitably in a satisfying manner. This was the first story where it Brubaker's X-Men connected for me.

On the art side, Choi has a simple and clean line to his artwork, with a strong storytelling approach. His characters feel like people despite the Photoshop ambiance. It's important to get the X-Men right, and he does a good job; I love the hippy X-Men, particularly Scott and Emma, and he also handles the other trio in action.

The move to San Francisco (harking back to an old story) makes sense, so I've got no problem with it. The only problem I had was the lack of fact-checking: someone should have told Brubaker that Scott knows all about Celestials – see the Louise Simonson X-Factor stories.

Having read two years' worth of his X-Men stories, I'm not sure Brubaker will be remembered for his run on them – he's a talented writer but I don't think his sensibilities suited the nature of the book. The closest he came was in the Divided We Stand collection; I'm all for creators trying new things and not be pigeon-holed, but this is not to the calibre of Criminal, Sleepers, Incognito or Captain America.

Batman: The Brave And The Bold

I’m sure I loved the Adam West Batman TV series when it was repeated during my youth, with the colourful characters, the silliness, the catchphrases and action. However, I have to confess that I don’t have any love for it any more – I now think it’s silly and stupid and childish. You can probably blame Frank Miller – his Batman: Year One storyline was the catalyst to changing my view of who the character of the Dark Knight is (a troubled man who dedicates himself to conditioning his body and mind to the ultimate degree to undertake a physical and mental battle for no reward) and how it jars so intensely with the jolly Batman with his shark-repellent Bat spray.

This viewpoint alters the way I enjoy the portrayal of Batman now, which means that the happy Batman of Batman: The Brave and The Bold seems oddly anachronistic. Paul Dini has gone back to the Dick Sprang era as the inspiration for this Batman: square of jaw, blocky of chest, occasional smiling. This means we have a Batman who flies around in his Bat-plane or goes underwater in his Bat-sub, who makes jokes, who fights aliens on the other side of the universe.

This feels strange to me, but it is necessary for the premise: each episode sees Batman team up with a wide variety of DC characters, some from bizarre areas of the DC universe: avoiding Superman, but including Aquaman and Green Arrow as semi-regulars, the series has seen Plastic Man, Red Tornado, the Atom, Guy Gardner, the Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, the Outsiders, Doctor Fate, Deadman, Adam Strange, Jonah Hex and even Bat-Mite appear. It is this aspect that appeals to me; I love seeing obscure DC comic characters being animated in a mainstream cartoon (even if it is sometimes difficult to explain them to my girlfriend). I hope that it inspires new generation of kids to discover and enjoy the richness and diversity, and keep the comic books alive.

The stories are light and fun but not afraid of having occasional dark moments in them, but the action scenes can have a very illogical feel to them – villains capture Batman but don’t unmask him and then put him in death-traps – which rob them of any emotional resonance. Still, I was impressed when they put the new Blue Beetle in an early episode, enough that I almost forgave them for offence to science in the episode with the Atom where they were inside a human body and used a white blood cell as a horse (by the annoyingly bombastic version of Aquaman they use in the show). On balance, I'm happy to see the show and its spotlight on the rich diversity of characters, even if I don't necessarily enjoy the mechanics of the episodes themselves for the most part.

Comics I Bought 20 August 2009

In which I continue my thoughts on the weekly purchases made during my unintended blogging hiatus. Only two comics for this entry, so it should be quick.

Ex Machina #44
In which we learn about origins of The Great Machine. Sort of. In the 2004 part of the story, Bradbury is trying to get rid of the white box, before it does something to the reporter he's hiding it from, while Mitchell Hundred learns more about where his powers came from, via a machine calling itself a member of the Seraphim, indicating the presence of aliens from another dimension preparing for an invasion, using different colours for various aspects of the preparation, including white ... This is building to the finishing line now, explaining things and laying the groundwork for the finale, something I'm looking forward to – Brian K Vaughan and Tony Harris have created a good comic book that I've enjoyed immensely, and I'm glad it will be a story with a definite ending.

X-Factor #47
I think this issue was where I began to lose some patience with this storyline (which now feels to have been extended just to reach issue 50). The story just keeps on going and going and going, with only the dialogue and characterisation to entertain. We do get a reveal (Peter David has been enjoying doing that in this series), as we find out who Cortex is (just after seeing the ugliest panel of Monet ever – I know she's supposed to be really angry about being possessed, but Valentine De Landro makes her look hideous, practically Klingon), but it loses its punch if there are too many reveals. Perhaps this might read better in a trade, sitting down to absorb it (if you'll pardon the pun) in one sitting, but it drags in the monthly reading. I don't know if it's the rise of the story arcs to be collected in trade that is responsible, but the extended storyline reminiscent of the old days of multi-threaded plots interweaving over many months, even years (see Chris Claremont on the X-Men), seems so much harder to do now. David has had a good attempt at it here, but it's been tough going.

Book: The Magicians

This was the book that nearly made me overcome my reticence to blog – wanting to share my thoughts on this novel and how much I enjoyed it almost roused me from my blogging slumber. Almost. Still, better late than never.

I can’t recall the last time I bought a book based solely on a single review, and a review that was incomplete as well: Kurt Busiek talked about it after he was only halfway through the book, and I knew I had to buy it. I mean, even though Busiek is most well known for his superhero comics, he knows a thing or two about magic – he wrote the wonderful Arrowsmith mini-series (alternate world First World War with magic) and he wrote The Wizard (although I’ve never read it).

The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater, an extremely intelligent Brooklyn teenager who is going to an practice interview for Princeton; however, his life changes when he ends up at the entrance exam for Brakebills College of Magic, where he learns that magic is real and that he can perform magic. Quentin had always loved the Fillory series of children’s fantasy books, ‘written by Christopher Plover in England in the 1930s’ (a thinly veiled Narnia series), and now he has discovered the concept of the reality of the fantasy. The book concentrates on Quentin’s introduction to magical studies at the exclusive (only 20 students allowed each year) boarding college, hidden away from non-magical people in New York state, and the term spent at Brakebills College South (in Antarctica – a great section of the book). Along the way, there are normal student activities – relationships, drinking, cliques, magical games, sex – but all in context of magic. Then, having graduated as magicians, the question of what happens next, especially when you can effectively do anything, has a profound impact on their lives, especially one of their number arrives with a magic button that can take them to Fillory …

By the end of the first chapter, I knew I was going to like this book – the clear, elegant prose and the sense of magic evoked in the story were utterly absorbing and left me with a huge smile on my face. There is also the idea behind magic: magic is very difficult, you have to be really clever to do it, and then there is the mundanity of practising and learning required to actually succeed. This is in contrast to the Harry Potter stories, where anyone seemed to be able to do it, if they were born with it (even muppets like Crabbe and Goyle) – is this a reflection of the different nationalities and approaches? JK Rowling and the British obsession with class (‘pure bloods’ vs ‘mudbloods’) rather than Lev Grossman and the American obsession with achieving success through hard work if you have the talent. Grossman directly references the Potter novels (mentions of quidditch and Hermione’s facial magic incident), which is an interesting side note, but uses the fictional Fillory instead of Narnia, mainly because he wants to use the cast and setting in the second half of the book and subvert the notion behind the original fantasy world.

This isn’t ‘Harry Potter for adults’ – that’s just silly soundbyte shorthand – but a coming of age novel that loves fantasy but imagines what happens when there is an adolescent/older sensibility involved. There is intelligent thinking of what magic is and what it can do, there is humour and there is darkness. Grossman has a strong voice of his own in which he feels completely confident telling his story – I love that sensation of reading something new from a relatively new author that feels like he’s been writing like that for ages. I was absorbed throughout – I read this on my commute and was disheartened when I heard the tube announcement that I was arriving at my destination – even with the more thoughtful ending, which has ramifications for our protagonist after the adventures he undertakes (which is how it should be – someone should be changed by the trials of the journey of a story). I probably annoyed my girlfriend going on about it before I lent it to her, for which I can only apologise – I really enjoyed this book and wanted to share it. Highly recommended.

[Some official websites for the book were created, and I had to share them:
http://www.brakebills.com/ (click on 'About the Garden')
http://www.christopherplover.com/ (information about the imaginary author)
http://www.emberstomb.com/ (for fans of the Fillory novels)]

Notes On A Film: Terminator Salvation

As mentioned previously, I'll be talking about the films I saw in the cinema while I was not blogging. I saw roughly a film a week, even before I stopped blogging. I used to call these 'reviews' but I think I was flattering myself (although I'll keep the 'film reviews' tab for old time's sake). These will be notes of my thoughts on the films.

I know I’m in the minority, but I rather liked what the story accomplished in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines – it brought the story to the end we knew would happen but didn’t believe they’d actually show on film. The action was a little derivative of the first two films, but it’s not as awful as everybody makes it out to be. So, a fourth film seemed nothing more than an exercise in money-making.

For me the worse part of Terminator Salvation is that the story was disrupted by weakness on the part of the director (and not for his directorial skills – I’m not jumping on that overcrowded bandwagon). In interviews, I read that Christian Bale was asked to play Marcus (the actual Terminator in this film, played by the Australian Sam Worthington – his accent tends to pop out when playing the angry shouty scenes. An aside: where has Worthington come from that he’s been cast in three huge blockbusters [Terminator Salvation, Avatar, Clash of the Titans]? His acting isn’t particularly great, so does he fit the look that casting directors need for ‘hero’? Or is it just his fee?); Bale said no, but then said he was interested in playing John Connor. The interview then said that McG readily accepted but his comment was that had to rewrite the script to take into account that big star Bale wanted to be in his film. The implication is that the Connor role was smaller in the original draft, and that they beefed it up so that Bale would have more screen time. This ruined the balance of the film: the title obviously suggests that the salvation belongs to the Terminator character of Marcus (a murderer on death row who becomes the first infiltration Terminator who still believes himself to be human); this story is weakened by making it half of the film. The film now has to contend with the unnecessary emphasis on Connor, someone who isn’t inherently interesting because he has to be this incredibly heroic figurehead. This means that the film becomes something a Terminator film should never be: boring.

My other problem with this Terminator film (apart from the question someone once asked: why don’t the robots use biological weapons?) is that, when you are in the future with all these robots, the fleshy humans look weak and useless next to all those endless robots and their big guns, so the war looks so completely one-sided as to make the resistance a joke. It takes away from the drama by making the conflict so impossible to overcome, no matter what we are led to believe.

The film is just plain strange. It’s weird seeing Helena Bonham Carter in this (what is it with talented Brit females being the cause of future disaster? Her and Emma Thompson in Legend), it's weird seeing Bryce Dallas Howard wasted as John Connor's wife in a practically non-existent role, it's odd seeing Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the Star Trek film) as Kyle Reese. The only good thing about the film: the actress Moon Bloodgood has the greatest name in world.

Just please, don't let them make another ...

Rating: DA

[See here for my film rating system]

Film Notes: Eurotrip

I have lots of current films to talk about (about twenty films, give or take), but I had to get this off my chest first. I'm ashamed for having seen this movie, so I hope this is a lesson for you.

I thought this might a sufficiently fluffy film to pass the time because it was a Dreamworks movie. However, I didn’t know that it was produced by the people who made Road Trip and Old School (they market-researched the name so that people would make the connection, apparently) – it’s as if they thought, ‘We’ve made a rubbish comedy for the college crowd and a rubbish comedy for the post-college crowd; we need a rubbish comedy for the pre-college crowd – we don’t want to discriminate.’

The film is about Scotty, who is dumped by his girlfriend (Kristin Kreuk, who is playing around with the lead singer of a band: a hysterical cameo from Matt Damon, taking a day off from filming The Brothers Grimm, which was filming in the same city, Prague) – this leads to the one decent joke of the film, which is the song by the band, ‘Scotty doesn’t know’, all about them and how stupid Scotty is. Scotty decides to go to Berlin to visit his German pen pal who, in all the time they have been communicating, has neglected to reveal that she is a girl – how unbelievably stupid is that for the basis for a film? I don’t know much about the pen pal system, but I would have thought there was a selection process. And wouldn’t she have wanted to practise her English, rather than using German all the time? This is not a good start to a film.

Scotty goes with his best friend (stupid and horny) and they end up in London, where they talk about there being ‘no drinking age’ – is this stupid, ignorant or deliberately ironic? So, being in a pub (with the name spelled wrong), there are ‘soccer hooligans’ – Vinnie Jones embarrassing himself as the head of the Manchester United Fan Club. Surprisingly, seeing as the majority of Man Utd fans are not from Manchester, this is the most believable part of the film, despite none of them actually wearing an official Man Utd t-shirt (just plain red t-shirts) or scarf or any proper merchandise. Having ‘amusingly’ ingratiated themselves into their affections, the next thing our two Americans know is waking up in a bus in France – what about passport control, you say? Did they take a double decker on Eurostar or the ferry? Apparently, this is not important …

In France, they meet up with their friends, the twins: the dull nerd and the sexy girl (played by Michelle Trachtenberg, aka Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; here, she is trying to shrug off the good girl image by doing a sex comedy without showing her breasts but at the same time being an object of sexualisation, such as bending over as the camera lingers on her bottom, or a close-up of her chest in a sexy top, or in a bikini with the camera in slow-motion). They try to get into the Louvre, but the queue is hilariously long and they end up having a fight with a robot mime.

After this, they decide to go around Europe before going to Berlin. They end up on a train with a middle-aged gay Italian men who fondles the boys – why are gay men automatically seen as pervy near-paedos? – which is allegedly hilarious. They go to Amsterdam: the stupid horny bloke ends up in a sex dungeon where he is anally probed by Lucy Lawless; the dull nerd gets a blow job in a backstreet where he mugged at the same time; Scotty and Michelle Trachtenberg eat hash brownies with no hash. This is, again, allegedly hilarious.

With no money, they hitch but, without being able to speak German very well (despite the pen pal), they end up in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, which is incorrectly depicted as a poverty-stricken dump (why couldn’t they pick a correct location?). The alleged hilarity here comes because their dollar and eighty cents is worth millions of the local currency, so they are treated like lords and ladies. Aren’t poor countries amusing? Even though are seemingly in a war zone, they still end up in a ‘super nightclub’ in the same town – Michelle Trachtenberg is chatted up by a bloke who schmoozed her in Paris station, because everyone knows the dream of every 18-year-old girl is the attention of a sleazy older man. It turns out the sleazy old man owns the club – because rich people own clubs in war zones – and he wants to have sex with her because he is a bisexual adulterer, like all French men are, n’est-ce pas?

After this, they get a lift back to Berlin (apparently passing the Black Forest, even though they are nowhere near it) only to find that Scotty’s pen pal has gone to Rome and she will leave there soon after. In discovering this, we have the most tasteless joke – the little brother of the pen pal paints a little black moustache on his upper lip and goose steps in the background: Hitler jokes that aren’t jokes are so funny, even now …

So, even though they don’t have passports, they are still able to get on a plane to Rome and arrive in an hour, thus adding completely impossible trips to the litany of errors. In Rome, despite the Vatican being one of the most heavily guarded locations in the world, they are able to get into the Pope’s apartments, burn priceless objects and furniture, and get themselves recognised as the new Pope – all allegedly hilarious. Scotty gets to shag his German pen pal in a confessional booth, which is very romantic for your first time, and seems to lasts surprisingly long time for a permanently horny virgin moron. To complete the happy endings, the dull nerd becomes a writer for a tourist guide, and stupid horny best friend and Michelle Trachtenberg have sex in the plane toilet on the way home. Hurrah.

This is bad. Embarrassingly bad. I couldn’t decide if it is a work of subversive genius masquerading as a rubbish sex comedy, or a deliberate send-up of American stereotypes of foreign people, or if it’s just bad in a very ordinary sense. The three guys responsible for this have done stuff for Curb Your Enthusiasm; they wrote and co-directed this (they chose one name out of a hat for the DGA rules) and their lack of experience shows.

The movie was filmed entirely in Prague – the CGI of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower are laughable – which defeats the purpose of it being a trip around Europe if they can’t be bothered to actually go the locations in Europe themselves. It is also a sex comedy that is neither sexy nor funny; the showing of breasts is done particularly absurdly. At the start of the film, stupid horny bloke jumps into a hot tub with a girl in a bikini; she covers her breasts from his letching but he persuades her stay in the tub, and then he says she has a mark on her chest that she needs to rub off – somehow, he gets her to take off the top that was protecting her nakedness she shyly protected initially in order to get the imaginary mark. I understand that stupid people are necessary in comedy, but not after a display of some intelligence. It’s just a juvenile man’s dream of what they wanted to happen when they were growing up, and is rather sad.

The worst aspect is the lack of research and the attempt to make it authentic – the lists of errors on Wikipedia and IMDb are really funny – which shows an insulting attitude on behalf of the filmmakers. I just wonder what would be said if we non-Americans made an offensive film about US stereotypes (hmm, how was Borat received?). I’m deeply saddened and depressed having watched this.

Rating: D

[See here for my film rating system]

Comics I Bought 13 August 2009

Told you I had lots of comics to talk about, but only two for this week:

Fables #87
Bill Willingham has the entirety of fiction to use in Fables, so it should be no surprise that he has plenty of stories to tell after his long-form narrative of The Great Adversary. However, it's still rather pleasant to see he can keep coming up with stories that are interesting to read. This is the first long storyline after The Great Fables Crossover – this is a five-issue arc called Witches – and it's good. After the great unbinding of Fabletown in Manhattan, the Business Office is missing; the door that connected it is missing within the office and Bufkin (and Frankenstein's monster's head) need answers from The Mirror, who tells him that, in addition to huge numbers of ghosts, imps, sprites, fairies, changelings and more, there is a powerful genii and Baba Yaga are free in the Business Office. Willingham also takes time to catch up with Frau Totenkinder (and the group of Fables witches), Bigby and Snow, their kids (who've learned a thing or two from their 'cool uncle Jack') and those in charge on the Farm. This is a great issue (especially after the 'Please Read Jack of Fables' story). And Mark Buckingham keeps up his good work on art (I've only just noticed that the two mainstays of Fables are 'ingham's – is that weird or is it just me?)

The Unwritten #4
The first arc of The Unwritten comes to a finish – it even has the word 'Conclusion' at the end of the story – but that is such false advertising, there are grounds for litigation. It is definitely just the first chapter in a bigger story. However, that doesn't stop it from being really good – clues to Tommy Taylor's past, clues to what his story is about, a villain (with a working wooden hand) killing the genre authors, the head of the former housekeeper turning into word-liquid, and a cat with wings arriving on a tree as Tommy is arrested for the murders. There is a lot going on in this book, rich with detail and possibility, and definitely no end in sight. It is a really interesting book, with an interesting idea at its heart. Mike Carey is doing great stuff, Peter Gross is producing some lovely art, including different styles – I hope that this becomes the next Fables for Vertigo, if only so that we get to see how this turns out. An aside: is this the reason why The Unwritten comes out in the same week as Fables? To create a link between people who buy the books? Or am I clutching at straws? Whatever – it's a good book and you should be buying it.

Comics I bought 6 August 2009

Lots of catching up to do with my weekly comic book purchases, and the week I'm talking about today was one where I bought a lot of comic books, so let's get on with my thoughts.

Astro City: Dark Age Book 3 #4
Wow, this is taking too long. The delays haven't helped but this story keeps on going and going and going. And the Royal brothers still don't get to exact their revenge. And I don't get all the references to Marvel comics in the 1970s that are being filtered through these stories. Even rereading this, I wasn't drawn back into the story; I feel detached from the events occurring. I still don't like Brent Anderson's art anymore. I'm so demanding, aren't I?

The Boys #33
I enjoy The Boys, even if occasionally it seems like Garth Ennis is just being a little vindictive to superheroes. There is a purpose to it all – this is Ennis we're talking about – but it sometimes doesn't feel it in the single issues. John McCrea still doesn't feel like he's the right artist for The Boys, even though his work on Hitman would suggest he's perfect; maybe Darick Robertson has stamped his identity on the series too much, so nobody can create the same atmosphere for the mix of superheroes, satire, the serious stuff and characterisation.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #27
When did Buffy become boring? How can a series about vampire slayers and werewolves and magic be so dull? And the decision they've taken is too remove the magic? I was so happy to see a comic book series of new, Joss Whedon-directed, in-continuity Buffy stories; the early stuff was great. What happened? Is it the difficulty of doing a television series in long-form comics? Or is it the writers not 100% comfortable in comic books? Whatever it is, I'm losing the enthusiasm for the book I once had. I'm still in it for this season, but I won't be buying the individual books when the recently announced Season 9 hits our stores in the future.

Doom Patrol #1
Reasons I bought this comic: I like Keith Giffen's writing; I want to support the idea of value for money (in the idea of Second Feature, eight pages of extra story for the extra dollar); I want to see the JLI team back together (Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire). I'm not particularly into Doom Patrol (apart from the Grant Morrison run, obviously) or the Metal Men, but I can be persuaded to care about them by good storytelling. In that respect, Giffen does some new things with Doom Patrol, experimenting with techniques to reveal plot and backstory in different ways. It's not a straightforward first issue – it never is with Giffen – but there's something to the story and the characters that makes me want to come back for more. Matt Clark does a good job on art – I don't know if Giffen wrote it that way, but he sticks to a grid structure for the most part, and he is able to cope with all the Giffen chat and the action scenes. In the Second Feature, the magic is back: the JLI team weaves some comedy superhero thrills out of the Metal Men. A silly story, lots of dialogue, beautiful and expressive art, a new running joke (nobody knows anything about Copper, the new robot in the team) – it's all wonderful stuff and makes you wonder why it isn't a full-length story.

Frankenstein's Tomb
Warren Ellis writes another one of his unusual but interesting 'graphic novellas' for Avatar. This time, it is the story of Mary Shelley meeting her creation, the monster, in Castle Frankenstein (which is actually a real place – I never knew), where he explains some aspects of the future to her in relation to the book she will write. Even though it may seem more like an illustrated essay of Ellis' thoughts on the research he has done on Shelley and her famous novel, it comes together to be more than just that – it becomes a meditation on the act of creation itself from the point of view of the writer (but also could be applied to other artists). Fittingly, the art is in black and white by Marek Oleksicki – I liked it, with a clear and sharp line and plenty of moody atmospheric backgrounds. Is there anyone else who is doing such variety in their creative output as Ellis? I don't think so, I'm glad that he is.

Irredeemable TPB #1
Even though I like Mark Waid's writing and the idea (essentially, 'What if Superman turned evil?'), I didn't want to try a $3.99 series based on a few positives – I am a nervous chap like that. However, Boom Studios decided very sensibly to bring out a cheap trade paperback (four issues for $10, equivalent to £7), as well as issue 5 for less than a dollar. I didn't go for the single issue – once I start a series in trades, I stick with the trades – but I did pick up the first trade. And I'm glad I did – this is a very interesting and enjoyable examination of the premise in a universe where characters can be killed. Which is something that happens in the first few pages. The Superman analogue here is The Plutonian, who is killing his superhero friends and has destroyed Sky City. Some heroes have survived and are trying to discover all information on The Plutonian to find a way to stop him. It is extremely frightening to see Superman turn evil – the power, the intellect, the devastation – but Waid also examines why this could have happened. We see the Lois Lane analogue turning from him when she finds out that The Plutonian, who is her boyfriend, announces to her that he is also her work colleague Dan Hartigan. We see The Plutonian destroying Singapore after the UN representatives were pledging themselves to him, and giving the hero Mr Qubit the choice to save ten people out of millions because 'That's what it feels like.' Chilling stuff. I don't have much to say about the art (I rarely do) but Peter Krause does a good job – he reminds me of Brent Anderson a little, before his work went a little downhill for my tastes, which adds to an Astro City feel already evident in the analogue approach to the story. I'd prefer to see cover artist John Cassaday do the interiors, but that could be said about a lot of books, but Krause is a good artist, a good storyteller, and I'm not distracted from the story by his style. I'll definitely pick up the next trade to see how the story continues.