So, the question was going to be is DARK KNIGHT the best comic book movie ever made?
But it seems that the real question is whether or not it is the best MOVIE ever made. As I’m writing this, IMDB says it is with an average score of 9.5 vs. THE GODFATHER’s 9.1!
Well, it’s certainly the most ambitious comic book movie ever made. The movie runs two and a half hours and yet there are edits that seem jarring and transitions that are inelegant. Clearly Nolan was having a hard time putting all the movie he wanted into the film. The film never slows down. Many buildings blow up, there are a couple of car chases, numerous fights, daring rescues, and even a couple of shots of Batman standing on some architecturally improbable perch while brooding down at the city. But it’s not all action. No, far from it. In addition to the large supporting cast from the first movie, two major characters and a few minor ones are introduced, Gordon gets an enhanced role, there are several subplots all going at once and everyone gets a character arc. It’s been said that this isn’t just a good comic book movie, it’s a good movie PERIOD. That much is true. As a movie, it’s the best comic book movie ever made.
But that doesn’t really answer the question of whether it’s the best comic book movie.
Thematically, it’s certainly a very ambitious movie of any genre. Just as HEROES has introduced the mainstream television audience to some of the structural aspects of comic storytelling, here Nolan has introduced modern comic thematic sensibility to the mainstream movie audience. Thematically the film deals with chaos vs. order, the law of unintended consequences, the politics of affecting change even when it’s change for the better, and perhaps more than anything the idea that how you deal with adversity is the essence of your character. Ironically, heavy themes fit comic book movies. Since the characters are iconic and representational, they easily become avatars for larger ideas. Each character has had a disastrous event in his life, every character is deeply scarred, all have dealt with this in different ways.
The movie is about testing each the resolve of each way of dealing with tragedy. Each character is understood through his or her personal concept of morality and what rules they subscribe to. In this view, the Joker becomes both control group and experimenter, testing the rules of the other characters while apparently subscribing to no rules himself. Batman is his direct counterpart. There is no other character less likely to change or break his rules. Like the Joker, Batman’s rulebook has no respect for society’s mores but are instead completely internally derived. He cannot disobey them because they ARE him. Lucius Fox is almost as imperturbable, being willing to lose his job without regret for doing what he thinks is right. Gordon is a cop willing to break cop rules in order to avoid changing his ideas about right and wrong as well, but he has other concerns. Rachael thinks the legal system gets to make the rules for people. And Dent is the most labile both in that he is a believer in chance as a prime motivator and by being bi-polar himself, thus having two sets of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.
Where each of these people draw the line, and whether they will cross that line, is what this movie is all about. Nolan knows that this is the essence of drama; the human heart in conflict with itself. The movie is shot as a stylized police procedural. The motivations and conflicts take center stage. There just happens to be a guy in a flying rodent suit, and the ultimate scary clown running around in it.
The movie is long. And I mean LONG. I don’t think a comic book movie has ever gone over two hours before and this one’s a long-for-any-damn-movie two and a half hours. But even at that, it feels rushed in a couple areas. It also has an obvious second-act feel. (To paraphrase William Goldman, the second act is when you get your characters into as much trouble as you can.) You walk out of this movie with a feeling of melancholy the way you left THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The movie was great but the ending was kind of a downer. There are more conflicts at the end of this movie than there are at the beginning and while both of the major antagonists are in custody they very much alive. This implies a third movie that would actually continue the story of the Joker and Harvey Dent. Unfortunately, the death of Heath Ledger precludes our ever seeing what he would have done with another go at the role. I wonder if this will derail the storyline or if they will recast? It’s going to be a hard act to follow, but they recast Rachael so it’s not unprecedented.
What is there left to say about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker? There’s been talk about a posthumous Oscar nomination, which is very possible, but I don’t think he’ll win. Johnny Depp should have one for the first PIRATES movie and didn’t for the same reason. Hollywood just isn’t ready to hand out best actor to such an unconventional part. But just like Depp in PIRATES, Ledger is mesmerizing. When he’s on the screen you can’t look at anyone else. In latter day comic style, he takes a character and re-imagines him as something recognizable but unique. Here the Joker is the ultimate mad scientist, if you consider psychology a science. To him, everyone is just a lab rat. So he devises little tests- blow up one or the other, save one or the other, unmask or be responsible for countless deaths. At one point he makes a deal with organized crime in Gotham for half their assets, then burns the money in front of them just to see their reaction. But Ledger doesn’t play it clinically at all, Instead his Joker is true lunacy. You never know exactly what he is going to be. One instant menacing and the next almost pitiable. Ledger’s performance alone would make the movie worth seeing- astonishingly nuanced and frightening. And like no other Heath Ledger performance I’ve ever seen before.
Purists may fault the lack of an origin story for the Joker but that’s actually the way the Joker was introduced in the comics. The origin story came later. In fact it’s a nice inside running joke that the Joker tells everybody a different story about how he got his scars. And you have to admit that when Nolan recons something he puts some thought into it. Likewise, it seems far more likely that the Joker’s cheeks were cut to simulate a permanent smile than that being dropped in acid would freeze your face that way. The only other real retcons are small, Gordon’s promotion and bringing Dent closer into the supporting cast.
And that supporting cast is as excellent as we would expect. In addition to Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine, this movie adds Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent and Maggie Gyllenhall as the absent Kate Holmes as Rachael Dawes. Nothing to detract from the overall excellence here.
So is it the best movie or comic book movie or is it the reinvention of cinema? I don’t know if it’s any of those. But it is the most ambitious movie, comic or otherwise, of the year so far. And as soon as I post this I’m going to go see it again.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
SCIENCE- Last weekend's Tanker Spill on I-40
Over the weekend we had a semi crash a couple dozen miles from here which closed down I-40 for over a day. I thought I’d put on my Mr. Science cap and explain what all the hub-bub was about.
The tanker was full of a substance called Titanium Tetracloride. This is a liquid metal that’s used in an intermediary step in making solid titanium metal of the type you find expensive cell phones, I-devices, and laptop computers (as well as aircraft parts and medical implants). Titanium has the highest strength to weight ratio of any metal and is corrosion resistant, even to hydrochloric acid (more about that later).
A little basic chemistry explains why this is so dangerous that TDOT had to close the interstate down for a day. I’m going to try to keep this as simple as possible because I find chemistry to be a little like algebra- we all had to do it once, but that was long ago and far away. Also because chemistry is one of those things that get real deep pretty fast.
Basically Titanium Tetrachloride or TiCl4 (pronounced “tickle” and a lot easier than spelling it out) is primarily used to make titanium metal and pigments. It used to be used for skywriting and smoke screens but isn’t much anymore for exactly the same reasons you don’t want a tanker of it busting all over your interstate. It’s odd because it’s a liquid metal at room temperature. This is a property of the way it to bonds to the chlorine to form a polymer. Vanadium Tetrachloride is similar. Both these molecules have the same arrangement of 4 (or sometimes 3) Chloride atoms around a metal center. Titanium has 2 electrons in it’s outer shell and Chloride has seven. Now I know what you’re thinking. The most stable arrangement is 8 electrons in the outer shell. This means Ti wants 6 and Cl wants one. Aren't chloride bonds supposed to be more like NaCl, where Sodium has 1 electron and Chlorine wants one? And the answer is yes. That’s what makes this stuff so dangerous. It can lose that chlorine very easily. When you want to make titanium metal out of this stuff you just pass some magnesium (Mg) through it and you wind up with magnesium dichloride and titanium. And Magnesium also has only 2 electrons in it’s outermost shell, so it’s hardly a great match. But give that chloride something that really suits it and it’s going to bug out in a hurry. Like hydrogen, for instance, which has one electron, making it a perfect match. And lets say that hydrogen is attached to some oxygen, which with 6 electrons in it’s outer ring is a perfect match to pair with the titanium and fill both their outer shells with 8 electrons.
Did I mention it was raining Saturday?
This is exactly what they do to make titanium oxide for dyes. In a factory that’s fine. But all at once, out in the open?
The worst case scenerio, I guess, is an explosion with hydrochloric acid clouds and acid rain. Titanium and Chlorine are so anxious to pair with Oxygen and Hydrogen that the result is a chemical bomb. After the explosion what you have is titanium oxide (harmless enough but bad for the enviroment if dumped on the ground in tanker loads), and HCl which is usually incorrectly referred to as hydrochloric acid. HCl has to combine with water to actually form hydrochloric acid. Of course if there were any water in the vicinity the HCl would rapidly dissolve in it.
Did I mention it was raining Saturday?
So there you have the reason, chemically, that having the interstate access from Nashville to Knoxville all day long on Saturday and evacuating 164 homes and businesses and thousands of people was a good idea. All because of some simple chemistry.
The tanker was full of a substance called Titanium Tetracloride. This is a liquid metal that’s used in an intermediary step in making solid titanium metal of the type you find expensive cell phones, I-devices, and laptop computers (as well as aircraft parts and medical implants). Titanium has the highest strength to weight ratio of any metal and is corrosion resistant, even to hydrochloric acid (more about that later).
A little basic chemistry explains why this is so dangerous that TDOT had to close the interstate down for a day. I’m going to try to keep this as simple as possible because I find chemistry to be a little like algebra- we all had to do it once, but that was long ago and far away. Also because chemistry is one of those things that get real deep pretty fast.
Basically Titanium Tetrachloride or TiCl4 (pronounced “tickle” and a lot easier than spelling it out) is primarily used to make titanium metal and pigments. It used to be used for skywriting and smoke screens but isn’t much anymore for exactly the same reasons you don’t want a tanker of it busting all over your interstate. It’s odd because it’s a liquid metal at room temperature. This is a property of the way it to bonds to the chlorine to form a polymer. Vanadium Tetrachloride is similar. Both these molecules have the same arrangement of 4 (or sometimes 3) Chloride atoms around a metal center. Titanium has 2 electrons in it’s outer shell and Chloride has seven. Now I know what you’re thinking. The most stable arrangement is 8 electrons in the outer shell. This means Ti wants 6 and Cl wants one. Aren't chloride bonds supposed to be more like NaCl, where Sodium has 1 electron and Chlorine wants one? And the answer is yes. That’s what makes this stuff so dangerous. It can lose that chlorine very easily. When you want to make titanium metal out of this stuff you just pass some magnesium (Mg) through it and you wind up with magnesium dichloride and titanium. And Magnesium also has only 2 electrons in it’s outermost shell, so it’s hardly a great match. But give that chloride something that really suits it and it’s going to bug out in a hurry. Like hydrogen, for instance, which has one electron, making it a perfect match. And lets say that hydrogen is attached to some oxygen, which with 6 electrons in it’s outer ring is a perfect match to pair with the titanium and fill both their outer shells with 8 electrons.
Did I mention it was raining Saturday?
This is exactly what they do to make titanium oxide for dyes. In a factory that’s fine. But all at once, out in the open?
The worst case scenerio, I guess, is an explosion with hydrochloric acid clouds and acid rain. Titanium and Chlorine are so anxious to pair with Oxygen and Hydrogen that the result is a chemical bomb. After the explosion what you have is titanium oxide (harmless enough but bad for the enviroment if dumped on the ground in tanker loads), and HCl which is usually incorrectly referred to as hydrochloric acid. HCl has to combine with water to actually form hydrochloric acid. Of course if there were any water in the vicinity the HCl would rapidly dissolve in it.
Did I mention it was raining Saturday?
So there you have the reason, chemically, that having the interstate access from Nashville to Knoxville all day long on Saturday and evacuating 164 homes and businesses and thousands of people was a good idea. All because of some simple chemistry.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
BOOKS- The Anthology at the End of the Universe
Douglas Noel Adams died about six months before the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. It would have been interesting to see what effect that event and subsequent related events would have had on his writing. But we’ll never know. As it is, we were left with the five book Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy, a couple of Dirk Gently novels and THE MEANING OF LIFF (a book explaining strange place names) as his legacy. These books are mostly rooted in the world and politics of the 1970s and 80s.
But, you say, those books are Science Fiction.
Or, you say, those books are comedic.
Or, you say, who is Douglas Adams? (In which case you should just stop reading right now, dust off your internet surfing eyeballs, put on some pants, get in your car, and go directly to your closest bookstore to buy everything ever written by the man. The COMPLETE HITCHIKER’S GUIDE is a recommended omnibus edition which includes all five novels, a short story starring Zaphod Beeblebrox, comes with a nice leather binding- no doubt made from the skin of sentient cows that feel there is no greater use their integument could be put to- and is the approximate size and heft of a concrete block.)
It’s strange that there isn’t more humorous science fiction. When at their best both disciplines hold a funhouse mirror up to reality to let you see aspects that are usually tucked away from superficial examination. But both disciplines are notoriously difficult, making the fusion of the two at least difficult squared. Attempts had been made prior to the Hitchhiker’s Guide and since. Asimov tried comedy in a SF setting a couple of times. Fredrick Poul and Cyril Kornbluth made it a staple. Neil Gaiman has tried it and Terry Prachett has made a career out of it. But it’s hard to imagine anyone who could find as much comedy, pathos, insight, prescience, commentary, or downright laugh out loud humor per page as Douglas Adams.
The BenBella SmartPop book THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE reminds us of this. It also reminds us just how much of a genius Doug Adams was. In one of the introductions to a Harlan Ellison anthology, Stephen King complements Harlan by saying that his voice is so strong that after reading Ellison’s work he has to be careful not to write like Harlan. The analogy he makes is that he’s like cottage cheese placed too close to something stronger in the fridge. The cottage cheese takes on the smell and taste of the strong odor it has come in contact with. It’s not that King is so malleable, it’s that Harlan’s voice is so strong that it overpowers the reader. I understand this since I have to be careful not to draw like Neal Adams after I’ve been looking at Neal’s work. His vision is so strong that it starts to superimpose itself on my own view of the world after being around it. Likewise Douglas Adams. Easily half the essays in the BenBella book SOUND like Doug Adams. I don’t even know if it’s conscious on the part of the writers. I hope it’s not, since if the writing is intended as pastiche it’s kind of lame. I think it’s actually that after re-reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide these writers are simply taking on the smell and taste of a stronger voice they have sat too close to for too long in the fridge.
Ironically, this happens more in the first half of the book and the more enjoyable essays are in the first half of the book. Right off the bat Mike Byrne nails the prescient yet completely relevant nature of much of Adams’ humor. He sights a passage by Adams where the evolution of radio controls develops from buttons and knobs to being controlled by mere gestures- requiring the listener to sit stone still while listening to avoid changing the program. Byrne is especially aware of this phenomenon because he is a PhD in psychology specializing in ergonomics. He immediately follows up this fictional situation with two real world scenarios that came years after it was written but that verify its veracity. First he mentions car stereos that have remote controls not because the face of the unit is out of reach but because the faceplate is so complex as to defy navigation in a moving car. Then he relates an experience with an early text editor that had such an arcane command structure that typing “edit” at certain points would delete the entire document (E-edit, D-delete, I-insert, T-the letter “t” which made the one level undo command superfluous). Anyone who lived through the transition to Windows 95, which moved the MINIMIZE, MAXIMIZE, and CLOSE to the upper right hand title bar of a window knows what I’m talking about. Adams had glommed onto a basic tenant of modern life a good dozen years early- that as systems become more complex, their usefulness seems to diminish. Any user of a piece of software through numerous generations is familiar with the idea that with each iteration new features are added yet old problems are never fixed. Byrne explains this as well.
Explanations abound in this book. Explanations of the significance of the number 42 (but none of why it is only 6x9 in base 13- an affront to basic number theory and bilateral symmetry at the same time), how quantum foam and loop-surfaces and semiotic (semi-odd? Ick!) explanations for towels can jibe in Einsteinian four-space, how Adams influenced computer science for two generations, why Wikipedia was an outgrowth of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, why you can read both the holy trinity and Zen Buddhism into the books, how everything you need to know you can learn from the trilogy (quintology?), why the human race is anything but “mostly harmless”, why it’s a bad idea for a woman to wear a transparent tee-shirt that says “Don’t Panic” on the front (mind you this was published before Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is little that mammals will panic over more than exposed mammary glands), why Adams’ writing is mired in an era that rejected 17 years of Labor party rule in Great Britain for the Margaret Thatcher/Ronny Raygun paradigm, and the most re-told joke in the whole volume:
“You know,” said Arthur, “It’s times like these, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t listen.”
THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE is one of the best of the BenBella SmartPop books in spite of the fact that it falls flat half way through. I’ve said before that the worth of these books is directly proportional to the worth of the subjects covered and here is the exception that proofs the rule. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a soaring pinnacle in humorous SF and a rarely equaled accomplishment in either genre separately. But even half a book dedicated to such a worthy tome is better than a whole book dedicated to a lesser accomplishment. This book stands at the top of the SmartPop heap with BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED so far.
But, you say, those books are Science Fiction.
Or, you say, those books are comedic.
Or, you say, who is Douglas Adams? (In which case you should just stop reading right now, dust off your internet surfing eyeballs, put on some pants, get in your car, and go directly to your closest bookstore to buy everything ever written by the man. The COMPLETE HITCHIKER’S GUIDE is a recommended omnibus edition which includes all five novels, a short story starring Zaphod Beeblebrox, comes with a nice leather binding- no doubt made from the skin of sentient cows that feel there is no greater use their integument could be put to- and is the approximate size and heft of a concrete block.)
It’s strange that there isn’t more humorous science fiction. When at their best both disciplines hold a funhouse mirror up to reality to let you see aspects that are usually tucked away from superficial examination. But both disciplines are notoriously difficult, making the fusion of the two at least difficult squared. Attempts had been made prior to the Hitchhiker’s Guide and since. Asimov tried comedy in a SF setting a couple of times. Fredrick Poul and Cyril Kornbluth made it a staple. Neil Gaiman has tried it and Terry Prachett has made a career out of it. But it’s hard to imagine anyone who could find as much comedy, pathos, insight, prescience, commentary, or downright laugh out loud humor per page as Douglas Adams.
The BenBella SmartPop book THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE reminds us of this. It also reminds us just how much of a genius Doug Adams was. In one of the introductions to a Harlan Ellison anthology, Stephen King complements Harlan by saying that his voice is so strong that after reading Ellison’s work he has to be careful not to write like Harlan. The analogy he makes is that he’s like cottage cheese placed too close to something stronger in the fridge. The cottage cheese takes on the smell and taste of the strong odor it has come in contact with. It’s not that King is so malleable, it’s that Harlan’s voice is so strong that it overpowers the reader. I understand this since I have to be careful not to draw like Neal Adams after I’ve been looking at Neal’s work. His vision is so strong that it starts to superimpose itself on my own view of the world after being around it. Likewise Douglas Adams. Easily half the essays in the BenBella book SOUND like Doug Adams. I don’t even know if it’s conscious on the part of the writers. I hope it’s not, since if the writing is intended as pastiche it’s kind of lame. I think it’s actually that after re-reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide these writers are simply taking on the smell and taste of a stronger voice they have sat too close to for too long in the fridge.
Ironically, this happens more in the first half of the book and the more enjoyable essays are in the first half of the book. Right off the bat Mike Byrne nails the prescient yet completely relevant nature of much of Adams’ humor. He sights a passage by Adams where the evolution of radio controls develops from buttons and knobs to being controlled by mere gestures- requiring the listener to sit stone still while listening to avoid changing the program. Byrne is especially aware of this phenomenon because he is a PhD in psychology specializing in ergonomics. He immediately follows up this fictional situation with two real world scenarios that came years after it was written but that verify its veracity. First he mentions car stereos that have remote controls not because the face of the unit is out of reach but because the faceplate is so complex as to defy navigation in a moving car. Then he relates an experience with an early text editor that had such an arcane command structure that typing “edit” at certain points would delete the entire document (E-edit, D-delete, I-insert, T-the letter “t” which made the one level undo command superfluous). Anyone who lived through the transition to Windows 95, which moved the MINIMIZE, MAXIMIZE, and CLOSE to the upper right hand title bar of a window knows what I’m talking about. Adams had glommed onto a basic tenant of modern life a good dozen years early- that as systems become more complex, their usefulness seems to diminish. Any user of a piece of software through numerous generations is familiar with the idea that with each iteration new features are added yet old problems are never fixed. Byrne explains this as well.
Explanations abound in this book. Explanations of the significance of the number 42 (but none of why it is only 6x9 in base 13- an affront to basic number theory and bilateral symmetry at the same time), how quantum foam and loop-surfaces and semiotic (semi-odd? Ick!) explanations for towels can jibe in Einsteinian four-space, how Adams influenced computer science for two generations, why Wikipedia was an outgrowth of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, why you can read both the holy trinity and Zen Buddhism into the books, how everything you need to know you can learn from the trilogy (quintology?), why the human race is anything but “mostly harmless”, why it’s a bad idea for a woman to wear a transparent tee-shirt that says “Don’t Panic” on the front (mind you this was published before Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is little that mammals will panic over more than exposed mammary glands), why Adams’ writing is mired in an era that rejected 17 years of Labor party rule in Great Britain for the Margaret Thatcher/Ronny Raygun paradigm, and the most re-told joke in the whole volume:
“You know,” said Arthur, “It’s times like these, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t listen.”
THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE is one of the best of the BenBella SmartPop books in spite of the fact that it falls flat half way through. I’ve said before that the worth of these books is directly proportional to the worth of the subjects covered and here is the exception that proofs the rule. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a soaring pinnacle in humorous SF and a rarely equaled accomplishment in either genre separately. But even half a book dedicated to such a worthy tome is better than a whole book dedicated to a lesser accomplishment. This book stands at the top of the SmartPop heap with BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED so far.
Monday, July 14, 2008
MOVIES- The Hurricane
THE HURRICANE (1999) has been playing on Universal’s High Definition channel. It’s an uplifting story about a man hounded by racism and unjustly framed for murders he didn’t commit, who bears his incarceration with dignity and eventually is given justice. Denzel Washington turns in one of the finest portrayals of his career as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a professional boxer who spent over twenty years in prison for murder. While the character is noble and charming, there is also a barely concealed froth of anger and bitterness, mercurial lability, and lethal danger. Washington also carries off the task of showing a man from his late teens to his 50s without difficulty (partly owning to a year of training prior to the role). The supporting cast do a fine job but this is Denzel’s movie every step of the way and the scenes without him seem like a framing device for the real drama that happens when he is on the screen. He was nominated for Best Actor for this role but lost to Kevin Spacey’s astounding performance in American Beauty.
In addition to Washington, the other hero of HURRICANE is the director, Norman Jewison. Jewison is that rare kind of Hollywood director who can do almost any type of material. Coppola bombed his attempts at a musical, Scorsese has only made one left handed attempt at comedy, Ivan Reitman found drama a bit of a stretch.* Yet Jewison has done successful movies in all these genres and several others. A partial list of his films gives you an idea: Other People’s Money, Moonstruck, The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, And Justice for All, Agnes of God. Even the SF classic ROLLERBALL. HURRICANE isn’t really a departure for him, but just as Denzel Washington brought his best game, this is perhaps the finest job Jewison has ever done (he thought so). There are evocative scenes which rely purely on direction for their narrative force, such as the camera continually returning to the single naked light bulb in the hallway outside Carter’s cell in solitary or the numerous close ups on Washington’s eyes to allow us to read the actor’s emotion. Carter’s retreat into his internal dialogues to protect himself from the lack of human contact in solitary is plainly conveyed without any character ever having to explain it in blatant expositionary dialog. The fight scenes are brief but have a real veracity. In fact, Jewison is able to imbue the entire movie with a kind of verisimilitude that allows us to get involved with the story and the characters.
The writing is also fine, though short of excellent. Despite a little narrative jumble at the beginning, where the scenes jump between three time periods and places, the story is straightforward and the dialog is often witty. However, the script is also the biggest failing of the movie by far. As a rousing tale of a man who is dealt a bad hand by life and overcomes great hardship, it’s fine. As an actual biography of Rubin Carter, it’s full of terrible distortions and outright falsehoods. In their rush to canonize their title character, the writers reduce the tale from true drama to mere melodrama. In the movie, Carter escapes from his juvenile institution and joins the military. Years later he returns home as a veteran who has learned to box while in the service. He is wildly successful but has the World title stolen from him in a blatantly racist decision. He is arrested the night of the championship fight, at the top of his professional career, by a cop pursuing a personal vendetta against him. Never is the audience given any reason to doubt his innocence of the crime of which he was accused. He then spends 30 years behind bars, bending the prison to his will, before a group of advocates unearth evidence that proves the entire case against him was a frame-up.
The problem is that almost all of that is that it is outright lies. Carter escaped from Juvie, but was returned when he was dishonorably discharged from the military after four courts martial in his first 23 months. His loss to Joey Giordello for the title was not even considered to be close by most observers of the fight, let alone a racist robbery (Giordello won a suit for defamation against the filmmakers). And it happened over a year before the arrest. In the time between that title bout and the murders Carter had lost almost half of his fights was no longer considered a contender. The movie makes Carter’s innocence a given, but he was found with a shotgun and pistol in his trunk that matched the weapons used in the crime. The movie goes on to show that he was convicted twice but omits that he was released for four years prior to the second trial and that there were black jurists who voted for his conviction the second time. Or that several people who had testified for him in the first trial recanted their testimony and said that Carter had convinced them to lie. Or that Carter had failed a polygraph prior to the first trial and refused to retake the test prior to the second trial.
Roger Ebert was asked about the incongruity of making a biopic of a possible killer into THE HURRICANE. He reportedly replied that if you wanted to learn about a man’s life from a movie about him you would be just as well to ask his grandmother. Both sources are biased. This is nothing short of the kind of cop-out that allows Hollywood to go on making shitty movies by saying that they are Hollywood and don’t have to bother to get it right. It’s the same kind of arrogance that allows a producer to buy the rights to a classic like I, Robot and then use that title and the author’s name to guild the steaming pile of shit they produced rather than adapting the source material. But that’s just the movie industry’s disdain for the consumer and the fiction they bastardize. Here they are dealing with real people and real events and instead of doing something meaningful they make it into a children’s story.
The ambiguity of real life is lost. Never are the good guys allowed to be anything but good and noble, or the villains anything but evil racists. This has nothing to do with “adapting for the screen”. It’s easy to imagine that the movie would have been far better if the audience had been allowed to make their own judgments about the guilt of Ruben Carter. Denzel Washington tried to bring the ambiguity of the character into his portrayal but that was subverted by the writers attempt to make a simpleminded morality tale rather than an actual biography. Go ahead. Make that movie. But don’t use real people’s names and real events. Any biography, yes- even when it’s a movie, has a certain responsibility to be factual. Just because everything is for sale in Hollywood doesn’t mean that reality is a whore to be purchased and used however you want. Go ahead and see THE HURRICANE, enjoy Denzel’s masterful performance, revel in it’s life affirming message of justice, and then remember that it’s all bullshit and that the only way to be given a fair shake in this world (whether you are guilty or not) is to be a cause celeb of the people with money and power and to fit their agenda. That is the real lesson of THE HURRICANE.
*For those of you wondering. Coppola did ONE FROM THE HEART, Scorsese did THE KING OF COMEDY, and Reitman did LEGAL EAGLES. None of which set the box office or the critics aflame.
In addition to Washington, the other hero of HURRICANE is the director, Norman Jewison. Jewison is that rare kind of Hollywood director who can do almost any type of material. Coppola bombed his attempts at a musical, Scorsese has only made one left handed attempt at comedy, Ivan Reitman found drama a bit of a stretch.* Yet Jewison has done successful movies in all these genres and several others. A partial list of his films gives you an idea: Other People’s Money, Moonstruck, The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, And Justice for All, Agnes of God. Even the SF classic ROLLERBALL. HURRICANE isn’t really a departure for him, but just as Denzel Washington brought his best game, this is perhaps the finest job Jewison has ever done (he thought so). There are evocative scenes which rely purely on direction for their narrative force, such as the camera continually returning to the single naked light bulb in the hallway outside Carter’s cell in solitary or the numerous close ups on Washington’s eyes to allow us to read the actor’s emotion. Carter’s retreat into his internal dialogues to protect himself from the lack of human contact in solitary is plainly conveyed without any character ever having to explain it in blatant expositionary dialog. The fight scenes are brief but have a real veracity. In fact, Jewison is able to imbue the entire movie with a kind of verisimilitude that allows us to get involved with the story and the characters.
The writing is also fine, though short of excellent. Despite a little narrative jumble at the beginning, where the scenes jump between three time periods and places, the story is straightforward and the dialog is often witty. However, the script is also the biggest failing of the movie by far. As a rousing tale of a man who is dealt a bad hand by life and overcomes great hardship, it’s fine. As an actual biography of Rubin Carter, it’s full of terrible distortions and outright falsehoods. In their rush to canonize their title character, the writers reduce the tale from true drama to mere melodrama. In the movie, Carter escapes from his juvenile institution and joins the military. Years later he returns home as a veteran who has learned to box while in the service. He is wildly successful but has the World title stolen from him in a blatantly racist decision. He is arrested the night of the championship fight, at the top of his professional career, by a cop pursuing a personal vendetta against him. Never is the audience given any reason to doubt his innocence of the crime of which he was accused. He then spends 30 years behind bars, bending the prison to his will, before a group of advocates unearth evidence that proves the entire case against him was a frame-up.
The problem is that almost all of that is that it is outright lies. Carter escaped from Juvie, but was returned when he was dishonorably discharged from the military after four courts martial in his first 23 months. His loss to Joey Giordello for the title was not even considered to be close by most observers of the fight, let alone a racist robbery (Giordello won a suit for defamation against the filmmakers). And it happened over a year before the arrest. In the time between that title bout and the murders Carter had lost almost half of his fights was no longer considered a contender. The movie makes Carter’s innocence a given, but he was found with a shotgun and pistol in his trunk that matched the weapons used in the crime. The movie goes on to show that he was convicted twice but omits that he was released for four years prior to the second trial and that there were black jurists who voted for his conviction the second time. Or that several people who had testified for him in the first trial recanted their testimony and said that Carter had convinced them to lie. Or that Carter had failed a polygraph prior to the first trial and refused to retake the test prior to the second trial.
Roger Ebert was asked about the incongruity of making a biopic of a possible killer into THE HURRICANE. He reportedly replied that if you wanted to learn about a man’s life from a movie about him you would be just as well to ask his grandmother. Both sources are biased. This is nothing short of the kind of cop-out that allows Hollywood to go on making shitty movies by saying that they are Hollywood and don’t have to bother to get it right. It’s the same kind of arrogance that allows a producer to buy the rights to a classic like I, Robot and then use that title and the author’s name to guild the steaming pile of shit they produced rather than adapting the source material. But that’s just the movie industry’s disdain for the consumer and the fiction they bastardize. Here they are dealing with real people and real events and instead of doing something meaningful they make it into a children’s story.
The ambiguity of real life is lost. Never are the good guys allowed to be anything but good and noble, or the villains anything but evil racists. This has nothing to do with “adapting for the screen”. It’s easy to imagine that the movie would have been far better if the audience had been allowed to make their own judgments about the guilt of Ruben Carter. Denzel Washington tried to bring the ambiguity of the character into his portrayal but that was subverted by the writers attempt to make a simpleminded morality tale rather than an actual biography. Go ahead. Make that movie. But don’t use real people’s names and real events. Any biography, yes- even when it’s a movie, has a certain responsibility to be factual. Just because everything is for sale in Hollywood doesn’t mean that reality is a whore to be purchased and used however you want. Go ahead and see THE HURRICANE, enjoy Denzel’s masterful performance, revel in it’s life affirming message of justice, and then remember that it’s all bullshit and that the only way to be given a fair shake in this world (whether you are guilty or not) is to be a cause celeb of the people with money and power and to fit their agenda. That is the real lesson of THE HURRICANE.
*For those of you wondering. Coppola did ONE FROM THE HEART, Scorsese did THE KING OF COMEDY, and Reitman did LEGAL EAGLES. None of which set the box office or the critics aflame.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
MOVIES- Star Trek so far
Have we slunk so low already that we’re doing lists? What’s next? A CHIRISTMAS CAROL adaptation?*
So I catch Star Trek III: the Search for Spock the other day on the Universal HD channel. (Made back in the days when they had the common decency to number sequels the way god intended. I’d watch the Harry Potter movies but I can’t figure out the order they come in.) I’ve probably seen it as many times as the characters in FREE ENTERPRISE (1998) have but I hadn’t seen it in HD yet so I gave it a roll. The movie was a revelation in many ways after all these years. It was the first ST movie directed by Leonard Nimoy, who would go on to direct STAR TREK IV: THE JOURNEY HOME, the highest grossing of all the Star Trek films. It was the follow up to the Louis Mayer opus STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, which had taken the franchise from failure to victory. It was the first time the Enterprise has been destroyed (a cliche for the series, both as a bluff in the Original series, and as an actual thing in the movies). But it set me to thinking. Now that the series is over and in anticipation of the release of JJAbrams’ (Lost) reboot of the franchise, how do the movies actually rate? So…a list. I’ll talk about the individual movies later, probably as I get to see them in HD so I can approximate as closely as possible the original viewing experience. But now is the time for an overview of folks interested in the series that might not have seen all the movies.
In order of quality/merit/satisfaction. (Starting with the last and working up to the best is a gimmick.)
1. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
Nicolas Mayer’s reboot of the franchise. Mayer was unfamiliar with the Star Trek mythos; so he sat down and watched all 79 original episodes. This was the result- an outsider’s view that did almost as much to encapsulate what we know as the best of Star Trek as Gene Coon did. Action grows out of motive and motive grows from character. Kirk deals with middle age and learns of a son he never knew. McCoy continues as his emotional conscience. Spock pays the ultimate price. The greatest starship battle before or since in a Star Trek movie. This one has everything.
2. STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
Nimoy takes the helm as director and lauches a new career for himself. In fact, this is perhaps the best directed of the series, along with #2. The supporting cast gets at least one scene each and good lines are distributed widely. The mind meld scenes are done perfectly. And Nimoy is even able to wring the best performance out of Shatner that he would give in the entire series (perhaps in his career). While not as good as Mayer’s Horatio Hornblower in space, the most nuanced Star Trek movie ever made.
3. STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME
In the tradition of THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, ST scores its biggest box office bonanza with this lighthearted romp through contemporary San Francisco (pre cell phone and iPod). While the campier aspects are what it’s remembered for (Nuclear Wessels) the real treat is the timing Shatner and Nimoy have in the comedy bits. As good as anything the true comedian of Star Trek (Brett Spiner, did I really have to tell you?) would ever do.
4. STAR TREK I: THE MOTION PICTURE
Also called “Where Nomad Has Gone Before” and “ST: The Motionless Picture”. Originally maligned for being too slow, then overly praised in the DVD director’s cut re-release on DVD (it was a couple more special effects shots- the critics had been bitching about it being too special effects heavy to start with!?!). I stood in line on December 7th, 1979 to see it. And it was glorious. When the film opened and those Kingon ships flew toward that immense cloud a cheer rose up from the crowd. Then as each character made his first appearance, another cheer. Plus we got to see the size of the Enterprise for the first time. But it IS too slow, it DID steal the plot from an old episode, and the characters are underused.
5. STAR TREK GENERATIONS (ST VII) (Unfortunately they gave up on the Roman numerals when they fell out of vogue. Shame, that.)
The Original Series and The Next Generation, together again for the first time. (And for the first time I know of, this Yogi Berra-ism is literally true. ST:TNG (The Next Generation) had met several of the characters from ST:TOS (The Original Series) but had never met Kirk.) This was the point where the torch was handed to the youngsters (such as they were). It also had a good villain in Malcolm McDowell and a decent McGuffin for a Star Trek Movie.
6. STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
Nick Mayer makes another Star Trek film. And this time he attempts that ol’ Star Trek relevance trick (you know, the one that gave us Frank Gorshin with his face painted half white and half black). Kirk and Spock witness the end of détente with the Klingons but nothing interesting is really said about turning points in history. Instead we get the “old warriors hate peace” bromide with a silly mystery tacked on and a detour into Klingon jail. BTW, the “undiscovered country” in Hamlet isn’t the future, as Mayer frequently said in interviews, it’s death.
7. STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (ST VIII)
This is almost a tie with #6. Nothing is egregious but nothing is really interesting. The biggest mistake this movie makes isn’t giving us a completely retconned view of Warp Drive pioneer Zefram Cochrane. (In the original series we meet Dr. Cochrane as a clean cut 1960s astronaut type in his mid to late 30s.) The biggest mistake is overplaying the Moby Dick allegory to the point that it makes the Paradise Lost references in ST II look subtle in comparison. Riker and Troy get a couple of good comedy bits and Data learns about sex (allegorically) from the Borg queen (ick).
But it’s worth it to hear Zefram Cochrane, just having been told by the TNG crew that he’s about to change the course of human history more than any man since the invention of fire, says, “So you’re all astronauts, on some kind of star trek?”
8. STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (IX)
Just another TNG episode. Picard finally falls in love with an age appropriate woman, but it’s doomed anyway. David Warner enters into competition with Mark Leonard (in TOS) and Jeffrey Combs (DS9, Enterprise) to be the first to portray every species in the ST Universe.
9. STAR TREK: NEMISIS (X)
Picard clones, dune buggy chases, and a big surprise at the end (yawn). Only notable for being the last ST movie they will ever do featuring TNG (until they re-cast the roles in 40 years). My own perfect version of this movie has the Romulans and the Klingons both growing Picard clones and artificially accelerating their growth to be Picard contemporaries. The Klingon Picard is played by Sir Ian McKellen and the Romulan Picard is played by Sir Ben Kingsley. In the ensuing conflict, the two knights quickly subdue the commoner Stewart, and then set about to rule the universe together. There is a real story arc here, so whoever hands out contracts for Star Trek Novels- CALL ME.
10. STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER
Just as Mayer’s WRATH OF KHAN was almost so good that it surpassed the franchise, this is, by a wide margin, this is the worst ST movie ever! Shatner takes over the director’s seat and embarrasses himself badly. There are blue horses (the number of horses in a ST movie is directly proportional to Shatner’s influence), aliens playing pool on flooded pool tables, Uhura fan dancing, and the crew meets god- AGAIN. In the book Star Trek (Movie) Memories, Shatner offers a plethora of reasons why the movie was doomed. He leaves out the fact that he was only mouthing those words for all those years without ever having a clue what science fiction was really about. This one is only good for a laugh.
Well, there it is. We’ve gone from the Original Series to the Next Generation and stand on the cusp of The actual Next Generation of Star Trek. The franchise is about to be taken over by people who not only didn’t work with Roddenberry at any time, but weren’t even alive when that first episode aired on NBC over 40 years ago. I was personally disappointed when Michael J. Straczynski didn’t get a chance to implement his ideas for the series, but we’ll see what J.J Abrams has up his sleeve.
* The phrase “jump the shark” has entered the popular lexicon as the point at which a television series (or any series, for that matter) passes a point of no return in quality. The phrase is based on an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie was supposed to jump his motorcycle over a shark tank. Actually I always thought there was an earlier indicator of when the when a television series had the wheels come off the wagon. And unlike “jumping the shark” this signpost is ubiquitous and specific. I call it the Dickens Horizon. It’s when a series does an adaptation of Dickens A CHRISTMAS CAROL for its Christmas episode using their own cast for the parts. EVERYBODY has done this and it’s NEVER interesting. But it does show that the series has completely run out of creative juice.
So I catch Star Trek III: the Search for Spock the other day on the Universal HD channel. (Made back in the days when they had the common decency to number sequels the way god intended. I’d watch the Harry Potter movies but I can’t figure out the order they come in.) I’ve probably seen it as many times as the characters in FREE ENTERPRISE (1998) have but I hadn’t seen it in HD yet so I gave it a roll. The movie was a revelation in many ways after all these years. It was the first ST movie directed by Leonard Nimoy, who would go on to direct STAR TREK IV: THE JOURNEY HOME, the highest grossing of all the Star Trek films. It was the follow up to the Louis Mayer opus STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, which had taken the franchise from failure to victory. It was the first time the Enterprise has been destroyed (a cliche for the series, both as a bluff in the Original series, and as an actual thing in the movies). But it set me to thinking. Now that the series is over and in anticipation of the release of JJAbrams’ (Lost) reboot of the franchise, how do the movies actually rate? So…a list. I’ll talk about the individual movies later, probably as I get to see them in HD so I can approximate as closely as possible the original viewing experience. But now is the time for an overview of folks interested in the series that might not have seen all the movies.
In order of quality/merit/satisfaction. (Starting with the last and working up to the best is a gimmick.)
1. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
Nicolas Mayer’s reboot of the franchise. Mayer was unfamiliar with the Star Trek mythos; so he sat down and watched all 79 original episodes. This was the result- an outsider’s view that did almost as much to encapsulate what we know as the best of Star Trek as Gene Coon did. Action grows out of motive and motive grows from character. Kirk deals with middle age and learns of a son he never knew. McCoy continues as his emotional conscience. Spock pays the ultimate price. The greatest starship battle before or since in a Star Trek movie. This one has everything.
2. STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
Nimoy takes the helm as director and lauches a new career for himself. In fact, this is perhaps the best directed of the series, along with #2. The supporting cast gets at least one scene each and good lines are distributed widely. The mind meld scenes are done perfectly. And Nimoy is even able to wring the best performance out of Shatner that he would give in the entire series (perhaps in his career). While not as good as Mayer’s Horatio Hornblower in space, the most nuanced Star Trek movie ever made.
3. STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME
In the tradition of THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, ST scores its biggest box office bonanza with this lighthearted romp through contemporary San Francisco (pre cell phone and iPod). While the campier aspects are what it’s remembered for (Nuclear Wessels) the real treat is the timing Shatner and Nimoy have in the comedy bits. As good as anything the true comedian of Star Trek (Brett Spiner, did I really have to tell you?) would ever do.
4. STAR TREK I: THE MOTION PICTURE
Also called “Where Nomad Has Gone Before” and “ST: The Motionless Picture”. Originally maligned for being too slow, then overly praised in the DVD director’s cut re-release on DVD (it was a couple more special effects shots- the critics had been bitching about it being too special effects heavy to start with!?!). I stood in line on December 7th, 1979 to see it. And it was glorious. When the film opened and those Kingon ships flew toward that immense cloud a cheer rose up from the crowd. Then as each character made his first appearance, another cheer. Plus we got to see the size of the Enterprise for the first time. But it IS too slow, it DID steal the plot from an old episode, and the characters are underused.
5. STAR TREK GENERATIONS (ST VII) (Unfortunately they gave up on the Roman numerals when they fell out of vogue. Shame, that.)
The Original Series and The Next Generation, together again for the first time. (And for the first time I know of, this Yogi Berra-ism is literally true. ST:TNG (The Next Generation) had met several of the characters from ST:TOS (The Original Series) but had never met Kirk.) This was the point where the torch was handed to the youngsters (such as they were). It also had a good villain in Malcolm McDowell and a decent McGuffin for a Star Trek Movie.
6. STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
Nick Mayer makes another Star Trek film. And this time he attempts that ol’ Star Trek relevance trick (you know, the one that gave us Frank Gorshin with his face painted half white and half black). Kirk and Spock witness the end of détente with the Klingons but nothing interesting is really said about turning points in history. Instead we get the “old warriors hate peace” bromide with a silly mystery tacked on and a detour into Klingon jail. BTW, the “undiscovered country” in Hamlet isn’t the future, as Mayer frequently said in interviews, it’s death.
7. STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (ST VIII)
This is almost a tie with #6. Nothing is egregious but nothing is really interesting. The biggest mistake this movie makes isn’t giving us a completely retconned view of Warp Drive pioneer Zefram Cochrane. (In the original series we meet Dr. Cochrane as a clean cut 1960s astronaut type in his mid to late 30s.) The biggest mistake is overplaying the Moby Dick allegory to the point that it makes the Paradise Lost references in ST II look subtle in comparison. Riker and Troy get a couple of good comedy bits and Data learns about sex (allegorically) from the Borg queen (ick).
But it’s worth it to hear Zefram Cochrane, just having been told by the TNG crew that he’s about to change the course of human history more than any man since the invention of fire, says, “So you’re all astronauts, on some kind of star trek?”
8. STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (IX)
Just another TNG episode. Picard finally falls in love with an age appropriate woman, but it’s doomed anyway. David Warner enters into competition with Mark Leonard (in TOS) and Jeffrey Combs (DS9, Enterprise) to be the first to portray every species in the ST Universe.
9. STAR TREK: NEMISIS (X)
Picard clones, dune buggy chases, and a big surprise at the end (yawn). Only notable for being the last ST movie they will ever do featuring TNG (until they re-cast the roles in 40 years). My own perfect version of this movie has the Romulans and the Klingons both growing Picard clones and artificially accelerating their growth to be Picard contemporaries. The Klingon Picard is played by Sir Ian McKellen and the Romulan Picard is played by Sir Ben Kingsley. In the ensuing conflict, the two knights quickly subdue the commoner Stewart, and then set about to rule the universe together. There is a real story arc here, so whoever hands out contracts for Star Trek Novels- CALL ME.
10. STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER
Just as Mayer’s WRATH OF KHAN was almost so good that it surpassed the franchise, this is, by a wide margin, this is the worst ST movie ever! Shatner takes over the director’s seat and embarrasses himself badly. There are blue horses (the number of horses in a ST movie is directly proportional to Shatner’s influence), aliens playing pool on flooded pool tables, Uhura fan dancing, and the crew meets god- AGAIN. In the book Star Trek (Movie) Memories, Shatner offers a plethora of reasons why the movie was doomed. He leaves out the fact that he was only mouthing those words for all those years without ever having a clue what science fiction was really about. This one is only good for a laugh.
Well, there it is. We’ve gone from the Original Series to the Next Generation and stand on the cusp of The actual Next Generation of Star Trek. The franchise is about to be taken over by people who not only didn’t work with Roddenberry at any time, but weren’t even alive when that first episode aired on NBC over 40 years ago. I was personally disappointed when Michael J. Straczynski didn’t get a chance to implement his ideas for the series, but we’ll see what J.J Abrams has up his sleeve.
* The phrase “jump the shark” has entered the popular lexicon as the point at which a television series (or any series, for that matter) passes a point of no return in quality. The phrase is based on an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie was supposed to jump his motorcycle over a shark tank. Actually I always thought there was an earlier indicator of when the when a television series had the wheels come off the wagon. And unlike “jumping the shark” this signpost is ubiquitous and specific. I call it the Dickens Horizon. It’s when a series does an adaptation of Dickens A CHRISTMAS CAROL for its Christmas episode using their own cast for the parts. EVERYBODY has done this and it’s NEVER interesting. But it does show that the series has completely run out of creative juice.
Friday, July 11, 2008
MOVIES- The Bucket List
What saves THE BUCKET LIST from maudlin sentimentality is that it never allows itself to be maudlin or sentimental. What makes it worth seeing is the chemistry of the two leads. Jack Nicholson is an impish scalawag with lots of money and not much else to show for his life. Morgan Freeman is an auto mechanic with an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia and a kind of zen patience. Let’s face it, not what you’d call a stretch for either actor. These two wind up sharing a hospital room when both are diagnosed with cancer. Finishing treatment they decide to spend their last few months crossing items off their Bucket List- things to do before they kick the bucket.
Watching Nicholson and Freeman is a joy. The script is full of wit that flows easily out of character. And director Rob Reiner keeps the attention firmly on the leads knowing that any flourishes by him would just undermine what he has to work with. I even found the ending genuinely touching in spite of knowing that both the leads were under a death sentence from the first few frames. The movie is a delight. It resists going for the cheap gag (most of the time) yet is full of laughs. It pulls at your heart without making you feel that you’ve been manipulated. It’s a sweet trifle. A well made movie with nothing really to say. And it doesn’t seem to care. You could find far worse ways to spend a couple of hours before you kick the bucket.
Watching Nicholson and Freeman is a joy. The script is full of wit that flows easily out of character. And director Rob Reiner keeps the attention firmly on the leads knowing that any flourishes by him would just undermine what he has to work with. I even found the ending genuinely touching in spite of knowing that both the leads were under a death sentence from the first few frames. The movie is a delight. It resists going for the cheap gag (most of the time) yet is full of laughs. It pulls at your heart without making you feel that you’ve been manipulated. It’s a sweet trifle. A well made movie with nothing really to say. And it doesn’t seem to care. You could find far worse ways to spend a couple of hours before you kick the bucket.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
MOVIES- Meet the Spartans
Meet the Spartans is a wonderfully funny movie if you think that bucketloads of fake bodily fluids being sprayed on people is the essence of comedy. Also if you think that a man pulling off his nipple is funny. Or if you think it’s so funny to make a pop culture reference that you don’t actually have to make a joke.
The people who keep making these stupid comedies should just stop. Stop. Now.
And yes. I rented it and watched it (on Blu-Ray, no less) all the way through and I’m ashamed.
The people who keep making these stupid comedies should just stop. Stop. Now.
And yes. I rented it and watched it (on Blu-Ray, no less) all the way through and I’m ashamed.
MOVIES COMICS- The Incredible Hulk
The HULK isn’t as bad a movie as I thought it would be. In fact, for a Hulk movie, it’s pretty good. The film seems to take it’s inspiration more from the 70s TV show than from the maligned Ang Lee movie from a few years ago. Personally, I didn’t hate the Ang Lee attempt. His big mistake IMHO was the comic book panel visual motif he attempted (distracting), that the script went in a thousand different directions (uneven), and the whole daddy subplot (with Nick Nolte looking like his DUI mugshot). But Ang’s Hulk looked more the Hulk from the comics and he did the things the comic book Hulk does (pitch tanks over the horizon, take mile long jumps across the desert) and that’s what I had come to the theater to see. The new movie tries to bring things down a notch and explore Bruce Banner’s dilemma that whenever he gets excited he passes out and when he wakes up he’s surrounded by a bunch of broken shit and people are bleeding all over everything.
I’ve never particularly liked the Hulk as a character. It’s a blatant rip-off of Dr. Jeckell and Mr. Hyde and other than hulking out and smashing stuff the character doesn’t have anywhere much to go. Over the years the writers of the comics have tried to deal with this in various ways and pretty much failed. We’ve seen green Hulks and grey Hulks (who cares), dumb Hulks and smart Hulks (defeats the purpose), tortured Banners and maudlin Banners and outright batshit crazy Banners (all dull as hell). All trying to hide the fact that the character is a one trick pony with a one line vocabulary. I don’t even think you can even make the tired old case that the character is a metaphor for youthful identity crisis since most teenagers saddled with this problem would acquire a wardrobe of tee-shirts that said “Don’t Make Me Angry” across the front and “You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry” across the back. Needless to say, school bullies would give them a wide berth. (The tag line does wind up being the source of a pretty good joke in the new movie though.)
These problems were exemplified by the doggedly repetitive formulaic episodes of the TV series. Tell me if you’ve heard this one- David Banner hitches into town, runs afoul of some local problem, winds up getting the shit kicked out of him by somebody, turns into a giant green bodybuilder with a bad haircut, returns the shit kicking to sender with interest, and catches a ride out of town. Tune in next week. Same Hulk time. Same Hulk channel. Same fucking plot.
The new movie follows the current idiom of trying to take the situation seriously (as opposed to camping it up). Edward Norton is talented enough to give some real chops to Banner’s internal struggle and is shown doing the stuff anyone else would do in the situation, such as learning meditation so he quits being such a hothead. (No one in the Marvel universe has heard of Lithium, I guess.) As a result, his Banner is a pretty cool customer even when being chased through the streets by military commandos. Nothing wrong with Eric Bana but I don’t think he’s in Norton’s league as an actor. Liv Tyler pouts and her lips look appropriately bee stung, but I’m never going to buy the idea that she has a PhD. But she’s here to look good and she does (in this case Jennifer Connelly WAS better). The sex scene is good, especially the part where Banner comes to afterward and has to shower what’s left of her off the front of him. William Hurt makes a fine Thunderbolt Ross but so did Sam Elliot and like all the supporting cast the character is about as deep as a soap dish. Tim Roth also does a pretty good job but his character is also only a molecule deep and it’s never explained why he’s in the military but doesn’t shave.
Aside from the cast the big thing the new Hulk movie has going for it is pacing. Things never seem to drag and even the obligatory King Kong interlude is kept mercifully short. There are a smattering of jokes that are don’t draw attention to themselves, and a number of call backs to previous incarnations such as the TV series (a practice started by Raimi with Spider-Man and becoming de rigeur in Marvel movies). Stan’s cameo is impossible to miss in this one and Lou Ferrigno has a cameo too (Bill Bixby is unfortunately no longer with us).
So I’m left where I started. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. If you don’t have a decent home theater movies like this are best seen at the multiplex. And, in spite of the character being a grab bag of cliches in the first place, the acting, script, and direction make this one worth seeing. Hell, he even gets to say “Hulk SMASH!” at one point.
I’ve never particularly liked the Hulk as a character. It’s a blatant rip-off of Dr. Jeckell and Mr. Hyde and other than hulking out and smashing stuff the character doesn’t have anywhere much to go. Over the years the writers of the comics have tried to deal with this in various ways and pretty much failed. We’ve seen green Hulks and grey Hulks (who cares), dumb Hulks and smart Hulks (defeats the purpose), tortured Banners and maudlin Banners and outright batshit crazy Banners (all dull as hell). All trying to hide the fact that the character is a one trick pony with a one line vocabulary. I don’t even think you can even make the tired old case that the character is a metaphor for youthful identity crisis since most teenagers saddled with this problem would acquire a wardrobe of tee-shirts that said “Don’t Make Me Angry” across the front and “You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry” across the back. Needless to say, school bullies would give them a wide berth. (The tag line does wind up being the source of a pretty good joke in the new movie though.)
These problems were exemplified by the doggedly repetitive formulaic episodes of the TV series. Tell me if you’ve heard this one- David Banner hitches into town, runs afoul of some local problem, winds up getting the shit kicked out of him by somebody, turns into a giant green bodybuilder with a bad haircut, returns the shit kicking to sender with interest, and catches a ride out of town. Tune in next week. Same Hulk time. Same Hulk channel. Same fucking plot.
The new movie follows the current idiom of trying to take the situation seriously (as opposed to camping it up). Edward Norton is talented enough to give some real chops to Banner’s internal struggle and is shown doing the stuff anyone else would do in the situation, such as learning meditation so he quits being such a hothead. (No one in the Marvel universe has heard of Lithium, I guess.) As a result, his Banner is a pretty cool customer even when being chased through the streets by military commandos. Nothing wrong with Eric Bana but I don’t think he’s in Norton’s league as an actor. Liv Tyler pouts and her lips look appropriately bee stung, but I’m never going to buy the idea that she has a PhD. But she’s here to look good and she does (in this case Jennifer Connelly WAS better). The sex scene is good, especially the part where Banner comes to afterward and has to shower what’s left of her off the front of him. William Hurt makes a fine Thunderbolt Ross but so did Sam Elliot and like all the supporting cast the character is about as deep as a soap dish. Tim Roth also does a pretty good job but his character is also only a molecule deep and it’s never explained why he’s in the military but doesn’t shave.
Aside from the cast the big thing the new Hulk movie has going for it is pacing. Things never seem to drag and even the obligatory King Kong interlude is kept mercifully short. There are a smattering of jokes that are don’t draw attention to themselves, and a number of call backs to previous incarnations such as the TV series (a practice started by Raimi with Spider-Man and becoming de rigeur in Marvel movies). Stan’s cameo is impossible to miss in this one and Lou Ferrigno has a cameo too (Bill Bixby is unfortunately no longer with us).
So I’m left where I started. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. If you don’t have a decent home theater movies like this are best seen at the multiplex. And, in spite of the character being a grab bag of cliches in the first place, the acting, script, and direction make this one worth seeing. Hell, he even gets to say “Hulk SMASH!” at one point.
COMICS and MOVIES- Superman vs. Hollywood
While I was a little disappointed in BenBella’s THE MAN FROM KRYPTON, Amazon recommended a couple of other books on the man of steel that were even better. The best of their selections was a book every fan of Superman should read. Jake Rossen has written the definitive book about Superman’s history, not in the comics but in mass media. SUPERMAN VS. HOLLYWOOD starts with the 1941 radio serials (which started just a couple of years after the character’s creation) and goes all the way through to Superman Returns. In the introduction Mark Millar says that he thought he knew the story of Superman on film but he learned several things that were new to him while reading the book. Likewise, before starting the book I was familiar with several decades of Superman film mythology. I had watched George Reeves in black and white on my television when I was just a child. I had sat in a crowded theater (three friends and I were ushered into seats far apart because the theater was so crowded) watching Christopher Reeve give life to the character. I own the “making of” for the 1979 movie. I had rented the Max Fleisher short cartoons in the early days of VHS. I watched the Chris Reeve sequels and followed the first couple of seasons of LOIS AND CLARK, saw some episodes of the Bruce Timm Superman, and followed the development of Brian Singer’s reboot of the franchise. I thought I knew a lot about the history of the character on film. Boy was I surprised! Millar is absolutely right. There is seldom a page that doesn’t include a revelation!
Did you know that, for instance, One of the first Lois Lanes on radio (there were three) was Rolly Bester, wife of Alfred Bester who was writing Green Lantern at the time? That Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Kryptonite were invented by the radio writers, not in the comics? That Kevin Smith did not just have numerous meetings with the Warner Brothers brass as recounted in his AN EVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH but actually wrote two complete scripts? That the Tim Burton-Nick Cage reboot SUPERMAN LIVES was going to feature a superman with a new costume, a heavy reliance on gadgets (to please the toy makers), and would fly with the aid of a jet pack? (!) That the first season Superboy of the 1988 series was fired because he was arrested for DUI, violating his “morals clause” (at the same time that he was asking for a 20% raise)? (It isn’t mentioned in the book but one local rumor circulating at the time in Orlando, where the series was being made, was that he was also a little too conspicuous at The Parliament House, the largest gay club in town.)
Superman even destroyed the KuKluxKlan! Really! Seems that in 1946 writers for the radio show were fed information by Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the Klan but had little effect since so many southern politicians and policemen were Klan members. The writers used this information to broadcast Klan secrets in a two part episode where Superman fought the racist organization. Seems that after this, Klan membership, especially among younger people, started to dwindle.
I could go on and on with fascinating stories from the book but instead you should just link over to Amazon and buy it. It is extensively researched, well written, and just plain hard to put down. Most highly recommended to any comics fan.
Did you know that, for instance, One of the first Lois Lanes on radio (there were three) was Rolly Bester, wife of Alfred Bester who was writing Green Lantern at the time? That Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Kryptonite were invented by the radio writers, not in the comics? That Kevin Smith did not just have numerous meetings with the Warner Brothers brass as recounted in his AN EVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH but actually wrote two complete scripts? That the Tim Burton-Nick Cage reboot SUPERMAN LIVES was going to feature a superman with a new costume, a heavy reliance on gadgets (to please the toy makers), and would fly with the aid of a jet pack? (!) That the first season Superboy of the 1988 series was fired because he was arrested for DUI, violating his “morals clause” (at the same time that he was asking for a 20% raise)? (It isn’t mentioned in the book but one local rumor circulating at the time in Orlando, where the series was being made, was that he was also a little too conspicuous at The Parliament House, the largest gay club in town.)
Superman even destroyed the KuKluxKlan! Really! Seems that in 1946 writers for the radio show were fed information by Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the Klan but had little effect since so many southern politicians and policemen were Klan members. The writers used this information to broadcast Klan secrets in a two part episode where Superman fought the racist organization. Seems that after this, Klan membership, especially among younger people, started to dwindle.
I could go on and on with fascinating stories from the book but instead you should just link over to Amazon and buy it. It is extensively researched, well written, and just plain hard to put down. Most highly recommended to any comics fan.
MOVIES- Earth Girls Are Easy
EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY is a science fiction film in exactly the same way that THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW is a horror movie. And it wants to be ROCKY HORROR so badly. It’s the same type of Rock musical- satirical, silly, and Southern California all the way. But it’s ROCKY HORROR by 80s MTV culture instead of 70s counterculture. And so it’s not ROCKY HORROR at all.
But it’s still interesting in a sort of not-as-bad-as-I-remember-it kind of way. The swipes at SoCal culture are dated, the songs are abysmal, and the whole thing is terribly juvenile. But the direction is sprightly, the musical numbers are staged well, and the performances make the material watchable. And there are even a few genuine laughs hidden in there. For instance when a child at a gas station is yelled by by his mother, Michael McKean (playing the fortyish burnout surfer dude- swimming pool man) yells, “Leave home kid.”
But at best it’s a trifle. Notable more for it’s trivia surrounding its characters than for any cinematic accomplishment.
Some of the trivia is sad. Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum wasted the height of their careers on this movie. They had finished THE FLY two years earlier to rave critical and moderate box-office acclaim. And by the time EARTH GIRLS was released Gina had already stared in another surprise genre hit,Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE, and would be up for an Oscar for her supporting actress performance in Laurance Kasdan’s THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (also released that year). Both would go on to star in bigger movies and bigger roles; Davis would headline Ridley Scott’s THELMA AND LOUISE and also star in Penny Marshal’s A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN with Tom Hanks. While Goldblum would turn up in roles in even bigger movies such as JURASSIC PARK and INDEPENDENCE DAY. But the beginning of the 1990s saw their divorce and the end of the 90s didn’t see them much at all. After the blockbusters it seemed casting directors had Jeff Goldblum fatigue. And lets face it, what had started as a unique delivery quickly became a self-caricature. Davis, OTOH, married Rennie Harlan and his influence killed her career like cyanide. ‘Nuff said. Hasn’t been in a hit movie since.
The movie was really a vehicle to launch the career of Julie Brown (an MTV favorite) but instead was the place that Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans would get the notice of the public. Carrey would also get the notice of Wayans, who introduced him to his brother Keenen Ivory Wayans. It just happened that said brother was trying to get a TV show called IN LIVING COLOR launched. The show wound up being home to both for several years and also wound up making both famous. Wayans would work in movies steadily during this period but Carrey didn’t really do much while working on IN LIVING COLOR. However, after leaving the show Carrey would make two movies in 1994 that would launch him into A-List status- ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE and THE MASK. Damon Wayans would eventually get his own TV show, which would break the mold (set by Tim Allen and followed ever since) of the sitcom man of the house being a retard that his wife and kids had to constantly save from virtually infinite stupidity. Both would still be viable actors to this very day. Julie Brown, on the other hand, is now a question for Trivial Pursuit.
I caught this on cable in SD the other night so it was the worst possible way to see a movie that depends so heavily on its visual presentation. It was a good reminder why movies transferred to television by the “pan and scan” method are so disappointing. There are multiple scenes where either a reaction shot is lost or the camera has to jump frenetically from one side of a composite shot to the other to cover both sides of a conversation. An artificial two-shot where once there was a master. You don’t have to have graduated from film school to know that such major changes must matter.
But really, here, they don’t. This is a movie built around the master shots, not the coverage. A director trying to move into a new medium by attempting what every new director has attempted since Orson Welles. To show the old folks how it’s done. That’s why the loss of the wide screen matters in a movie shot during a time when video was driving everything, and most directors were being careful to compose shots that would translate to the conventional home screen and it’s 4:3 aspect ratio. MTV was also trying to find its way; as its original paradigm of being a video version of traditional radio was aging badly. In spite of all this, director Julien Temple would follow the path of Davis and Goldblum rather than Wayans and Carrey. For the rest of his career he would direct more music videos and produce long form music video and compilations. For all intents and purposes his movie career was over. And it may have been a loss. We’ll never know. All that we can say is that EARTH GIRLS could have easily been an embarrassment if not for his ability to give the audience a pastiche of the right style with enough new flourishes to keep it from being silly. Camp is perhaps the hardest form of comedy to do correctly. Here Harlan does it almost effortlessly.
I’m not recommending that you hunt out EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY on Netflix. It really isn’t worth that kind of effort unless your favorite movie is ROCKY HORROR or your favorite director is John Waters. But if you come across it some lonely evening, it might be worth a look.
But it’s still interesting in a sort of not-as-bad-as-I-remember-it kind of way. The swipes at SoCal culture are dated, the songs are abysmal, and the whole thing is terribly juvenile. But the direction is sprightly, the musical numbers are staged well, and the performances make the material watchable. And there are even a few genuine laughs hidden in there. For instance when a child at a gas station is yelled by by his mother, Michael McKean (playing the fortyish burnout surfer dude- swimming pool man) yells, “Leave home kid.”
But at best it’s a trifle. Notable more for it’s trivia surrounding its characters than for any cinematic accomplishment.
Some of the trivia is sad. Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum wasted the height of their careers on this movie. They had finished THE FLY two years earlier to rave critical and moderate box-office acclaim. And by the time EARTH GIRLS was released Gina had already stared in another surprise genre hit,Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE, and would be up for an Oscar for her supporting actress performance in Laurance Kasdan’s THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (also released that year). Both would go on to star in bigger movies and bigger roles; Davis would headline Ridley Scott’s THELMA AND LOUISE and also star in Penny Marshal’s A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN with Tom Hanks. While Goldblum would turn up in roles in even bigger movies such as JURASSIC PARK and INDEPENDENCE DAY. But the beginning of the 1990s saw their divorce and the end of the 90s didn’t see them much at all. After the blockbusters it seemed casting directors had Jeff Goldblum fatigue. And lets face it, what had started as a unique delivery quickly became a self-caricature. Davis, OTOH, married Rennie Harlan and his influence killed her career like cyanide. ‘Nuff said. Hasn’t been in a hit movie since.
The movie was really a vehicle to launch the career of Julie Brown (an MTV favorite) but instead was the place that Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans would get the notice of the public. Carrey would also get the notice of Wayans, who introduced him to his brother Keenen Ivory Wayans. It just happened that said brother was trying to get a TV show called IN LIVING COLOR launched. The show wound up being home to both for several years and also wound up making both famous. Wayans would work in movies steadily during this period but Carrey didn’t really do much while working on IN LIVING COLOR. However, after leaving the show Carrey would make two movies in 1994 that would launch him into A-List status- ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE and THE MASK. Damon Wayans would eventually get his own TV show, which would break the mold (set by Tim Allen and followed ever since) of the sitcom man of the house being a retard that his wife and kids had to constantly save from virtually infinite stupidity. Both would still be viable actors to this very day. Julie Brown, on the other hand, is now a question for Trivial Pursuit.
I caught this on cable in SD the other night so it was the worst possible way to see a movie that depends so heavily on its visual presentation. It was a good reminder why movies transferred to television by the “pan and scan” method are so disappointing. There are multiple scenes where either a reaction shot is lost or the camera has to jump frenetically from one side of a composite shot to the other to cover both sides of a conversation. An artificial two-shot where once there was a master. You don’t have to have graduated from film school to know that such major changes must matter.
But really, here, they don’t. This is a movie built around the master shots, not the coverage. A director trying to move into a new medium by attempting what every new director has attempted since Orson Welles. To show the old folks how it’s done. That’s why the loss of the wide screen matters in a movie shot during a time when video was driving everything, and most directors were being careful to compose shots that would translate to the conventional home screen and it’s 4:3 aspect ratio. MTV was also trying to find its way; as its original paradigm of being a video version of traditional radio was aging badly. In spite of all this, director Julien Temple would follow the path of Davis and Goldblum rather than Wayans and Carrey. For the rest of his career he would direct more music videos and produce long form music video and compilations. For all intents and purposes his movie career was over. And it may have been a loss. We’ll never know. All that we can say is that EARTH GIRLS could have easily been an embarrassment if not for his ability to give the audience a pastiche of the right style with enough new flourishes to keep it from being silly. Camp is perhaps the hardest form of comedy to do correctly. Here Harlan does it almost effortlessly.
I’m not recommending that you hunt out EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY on Netflix. It really isn’t worth that kind of effort unless your favorite movie is ROCKY HORROR or your favorite director is John Waters. But if you come across it some lonely evening, it might be worth a look.
Friday, July 4, 2008
MOVIES- Jumper
Jumper seems, on the surface, to be an uninspired fantasy that’s part Jaunting from Bester’s The Stars My Destination and part attractive young people doing bad line readings. The plot has the same relationship to reason that psychoteleportation has to physics and Haden Christensen has to acting. (I can’t wait to see him try to wrap his high school play delivery around William Gibson’s technobabble.) The movie is only interesting if you consider “jumping” as a metaphor for epilepsy which during the middle ages was thought of by religious folk as being possessed by devils. That this is the subtext of the movie is further evidenced by how much time the screen is taken up by bright flashing lights, loud noises, and that apparently only epileptics in the midst of seizures were employed as camera operators.
COMICS- The Man From Krypton
More on the SmartPop books published by BenBella press.
While Batman is one of the most popular characters in comic books, the other crown jewel for National Periodicals is Superman. It’s hard to understand the affect Superman had on comics and popular culture. The character is a true icon. And his iconic status has been reaffirmed by every generation that has passed or remains since the first time Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster were first able to see their creation in print in 1938.
I have a special affinity for the character, I must admit. My best friend has the same sort of affinity for Batman. We often have discussions like the ones in the book about the various strengths and weaknesses of the two characters. I was always bigger and stronger than the other children while he had to bare the scars of the loss of a parent while he was still a child. I identify with Clark Kent and his struggle to fit in among people he has to be careful not to hurt. I identify with his feeling of being alone in a crowd because he is so different.
All the more reason that I was a little disappointed in this particular BenBella book, THE MAN FROM KRYPTON. It’s not the fault of the folks writing the essays contained in this book. They dissect Superman with the same kind of aplomb that the writers in the first book I discussed, BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED, apply to Batman. There are chapters devoted to Superman’s creation, his early years, the Mort Weisenger era (where we get most of our ancillary back story for the character- variously colored kryptonite, Jor-El with a sunburst crest on his chest, Supergirl, Superboy, Krypto, etc.), his mythical progenitors (everything from Samson and Gilgamesh to King Arthur), the effect Max Fleisher had on the character in his early years, the John Byrne reboot, even the inherent problems with writing a character so powerful. All of this is fodder for the SmartPop gristmill, but somehow misses the point. To me, at least. I don’t think the fault is with the writers of the book. The fault, I think, lies with the current paradigm of the last son of Krypton.
The only Superman series to really deal with the problems of being Superman (and, let’s face it, drama is all about problems and therein lies the rub) is SMALLVILLE. And while it is touched upon here, it is from the point of view of messianic views of the hero and his relationship to his future enemy, Lex Luthor. You can’t blame the authors for dealing with the way the character has actually been portrayed rather than the way that the character SHOULD have been dealt with. Kurt Busiak did a better job showing us the heart of the character in his first issue of ASTRO CITY than over 60 years of Superman scribes have been able to. (Except for a single story by Alan Moore. WHAT DO YOU GET FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING is such an extraordinary Superman story that even the creators of the Justice League cartoon had to adapt it.) Even the first Superman movie showed the character through his limitations better than the comics have (or rather than it would have if Lois had died rather than allowing him to turn back time by spinning the earth backwards or whatever he did- a plot contrivance even Weisenger wouldn’t have allowed).
I’m not saying that THE MAN FROM KRYPTON isn’t worth reading. It is still a wonderful book for anyone interested in the character. The purchase price alone is justified by the inclusion of Larry Niven’s 1967 short story MAN OF STEEL, WOMAN OF KLEENEX. I’m just saying that for anyone who is looking for the true heart of the character, it hasn’t been written yet.
But there is a book that gives the reader great insight into the character of the last son of Krypton. It just isn’t a BenBella book. But let’s save that for tomorrow.
While Batman is one of the most popular characters in comic books, the other crown jewel for National Periodicals is Superman. It’s hard to understand the affect Superman had on comics and popular culture. The character is a true icon. And his iconic status has been reaffirmed by every generation that has passed or remains since the first time Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster were first able to see their creation in print in 1938.
I have a special affinity for the character, I must admit. My best friend has the same sort of affinity for Batman. We often have discussions like the ones in the book about the various strengths and weaknesses of the two characters. I was always bigger and stronger than the other children while he had to bare the scars of the loss of a parent while he was still a child. I identify with Clark Kent and his struggle to fit in among people he has to be careful not to hurt. I identify with his feeling of being alone in a crowd because he is so different.
All the more reason that I was a little disappointed in this particular BenBella book, THE MAN FROM KRYPTON. It’s not the fault of the folks writing the essays contained in this book. They dissect Superman with the same kind of aplomb that the writers in the first book I discussed, BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED, apply to Batman. There are chapters devoted to Superman’s creation, his early years, the Mort Weisenger era (where we get most of our ancillary back story for the character- variously colored kryptonite, Jor-El with a sunburst crest on his chest, Supergirl, Superboy, Krypto, etc.), his mythical progenitors (everything from Samson and Gilgamesh to King Arthur), the effect Max Fleisher had on the character in his early years, the John Byrne reboot, even the inherent problems with writing a character so powerful. All of this is fodder for the SmartPop gristmill, but somehow misses the point. To me, at least. I don’t think the fault is with the writers of the book. The fault, I think, lies with the current paradigm of the last son of Krypton.
The only Superman series to really deal with the problems of being Superman (and, let’s face it, drama is all about problems and therein lies the rub) is SMALLVILLE. And while it is touched upon here, it is from the point of view of messianic views of the hero and his relationship to his future enemy, Lex Luthor. You can’t blame the authors for dealing with the way the character has actually been portrayed rather than the way that the character SHOULD have been dealt with. Kurt Busiak did a better job showing us the heart of the character in his first issue of ASTRO CITY than over 60 years of Superman scribes have been able to. (Except for a single story by Alan Moore. WHAT DO YOU GET FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING is such an extraordinary Superman story that even the creators of the Justice League cartoon had to adapt it.) Even the first Superman movie showed the character through his limitations better than the comics have (or rather than it would have if Lois had died rather than allowing him to turn back time by spinning the earth backwards or whatever he did- a plot contrivance even Weisenger wouldn’t have allowed).
I’m not saying that THE MAN FROM KRYPTON isn’t worth reading. It is still a wonderful book for anyone interested in the character. The purchase price alone is justified by the inclusion of Larry Niven’s 1967 short story MAN OF STEEL, WOMAN OF KLEENEX. I’m just saying that for anyone who is looking for the true heart of the character, it hasn’t been written yet.
But there is a book that gives the reader great insight into the character of the last son of Krypton. It just isn’t a BenBella book. But let’s save that for tomorrow.
MEDIA- Why $4 a Gallon Gas is Good
Just in case you had any naivete left about what passes for “news” from the “media”, Time magazine gives you 10 reasons why $4 gas is a good thing. To keep you from having to plod through Time’s glacial website for almost a dozen pages for almost twice as many short paragraphs with superfluous generic pictures, I’ll give you the 10 reasons quick and dirty.
1. jobs sent overseas return home.
2. the four day work week
3. Sprawl Stalls
4. Less pollution
5. More frugality
6. Fewer Traffic delays
7. Cheaper Insurance
8. Less traffic
9. More cops on the beat.
10. Less Obesity
So let’s get this straight. You won’t have cheap food and manufactured goods because of the brake on globalization. In addition to spending more for everything, your home energy bills will go up much faster than the rise of inflation because your employer is only letting you work four days a week- causing a spike in much more inefficient residential energy consumption. Because of all this you may have to give up owning a car entirely and move back into the city. This will offset how much more you are spending to live by relieving you of both the time you spend tied up in traffic and the amount you spend on car insurance (not to mention car payments, oil, tires, etc). Luckily the cops will be on foot as well so the city streets you and everybody else are walking should be safer (just don’t get robbed on the next block over). In addition you will be healthier, thinner (a combination of the extra energy requirements of your walking lifestyle and the price of food), and the skies will be bluer.
Gosh! We should have thought of this years ago! Who knew that not being able to afford gasoline would bring a human utopia?
1. jobs sent overseas return home.
2. the four day work week
3. Sprawl Stalls
4. Less pollution
5. More frugality
6. Fewer Traffic delays
7. Cheaper Insurance
8. Less traffic
9. More cops on the beat.
10. Less Obesity
So let’s get this straight. You won’t have cheap food and manufactured goods because of the brake on globalization. In addition to spending more for everything, your home energy bills will go up much faster than the rise of inflation because your employer is only letting you work four days a week- causing a spike in much more inefficient residential energy consumption. Because of all this you may have to give up owning a car entirely and move back into the city. This will offset how much more you are spending to live by relieving you of both the time you spend tied up in traffic and the amount you spend on car insurance (not to mention car payments, oil, tires, etc). Luckily the cops will be on foot as well so the city streets you and everybody else are walking should be safer (just don’t get robbed on the next block over). In addition you will be healthier, thinner (a combination of the extra energy requirements of your walking lifestyle and the price of food), and the skies will be bluer.
Gosh! We should have thought of this years ago! Who knew that not being able to afford gasoline would bring a human utopia?
Thursday, July 3, 2008
COMICS- Batman Unauthorized
Before my internet access debacle I had premised a number of reviews of the BenBella SmartPop series. Here is the first.
…
BenBella books puts out a series of trade paperbacks (those are the ones the size of hardcover books but with laminated card covers rather than covered cardboard) on pop culture topics. Called the SmartPop series, each of these books features a series of essays on a subject by a bullpen of writers from areas as diverse as psychology to physics. (With a liberal dose of writers, mostly from the science fiction genre.) The books cover such topics as comic book heroes (Superman, Batman, the X-Men), popular television (NYPD Blue, Alias, House), genre television (Farscape, Star Trek, Buffy and Angel), genre movies (Star Wars), and other various related subjects (such as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books).
There are few things I love more than spirited discussions by very smart people on completely irrelevant topics. So when I found the BenBella books I bought a half dozen and tore through them. They are highly recommended but vary according to the depth of the subject material. I don’t want to give away too much but thought I’d bring up a few of the topics discussed and add my own thoughts.
BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED was the first I read and remains one of the better ones. The book is edited by Denny O’Neal, writer and editor of various Batman titles since the 1970s. There isn’t much about the character that isn’t covered. Topics include psychological speculation about Bruce Wayne, an excellent exploration of Bill Finger’s involvement in Batman’s creation (often credited to Bob Kane solely for reasons discussed in the essay), why Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns is a rather grotesque fascist take on the character (Duh- see my Picasa mock up of a poster for Dark Knight returns staring Clint Eastwood), and would Superman and Batman really be friends. Arkham Asylum is targeted as being the real reason there are so many cuckoo supervillans in Gotham. Robin’s place in the mythos is considered in depth (far more so than Robin- The Boy Target as Miller once postulated or even the current Miller rationalization in All Star Batman). Seemingly nothing is left unexamined, even how much it costs to be Batman to be Batman, or even how the orphan Bruce Wayne learned the facts of life.
Let’s back up there for a minute. Alex Bledsoe writes a short essay imagining how just such a thing might happen using the characters of Batman and Alfred from each of the main movie franchises. The idea is that since Bruce is entering puberty and the only male figure around is his faithful family retainer, well, who’s going to explain the facts of life to him. I was afraid that his essay, TO THE BATPOLE, was going to be tasteless but it turned out to be one of my favorite chapters. Episode one uses the Batman mythos from the 1960s television series (with Alfred played by the Shakespearean actor Alan Napier) and episode three details Bruce having “the talk” by imagining the characters as defined by Michael Caine and Christian Bale. All three are inspired but the gem of the bunch is his parody of the Bruce and Alfred from the first Tim Burton Batman movie. Personally I think the Batman\Bruce Wayne split personality has never been done better than Michael Keaton did it and Bledsoe gets the vocal cadences of the characters perfect. Let me share a bit with you.
What is there left to say? This is a must-own for any Batman afficianado and an interesting read for anyone who loves comics. Buy this book!
Tomorrow we tackle the SmartPop book on Batman’s counterpart, Superman.
…
BenBella books puts out a series of trade paperbacks (those are the ones the size of hardcover books but with laminated card covers rather than covered cardboard) on pop culture topics. Called the SmartPop series, each of these books features a series of essays on a subject by a bullpen of writers from areas as diverse as psychology to physics. (With a liberal dose of writers, mostly from the science fiction genre.) The books cover such topics as comic book heroes (Superman, Batman, the X-Men), popular television (NYPD Blue, Alias, House), genre television (Farscape, Star Trek, Buffy and Angel), genre movies (Star Wars), and other various related subjects (such as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books).
There are few things I love more than spirited discussions by very smart people on completely irrelevant topics. So when I found the BenBella books I bought a half dozen and tore through them. They are highly recommended but vary according to the depth of the subject material. I don’t want to give away too much but thought I’d bring up a few of the topics discussed and add my own thoughts.
BATMAN UNAUTHORIZED was the first I read and remains one of the better ones. The book is edited by Denny O’Neal, writer and editor of various Batman titles since the 1970s. There isn’t much about the character that isn’t covered. Topics include psychological speculation about Bruce Wayne, an excellent exploration of Bill Finger’s involvement in Batman’s creation (often credited to Bob Kane solely for reasons discussed in the essay), why Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns is a rather grotesque fascist take on the character (Duh- see my Picasa mock up of a poster for Dark Knight returns staring Clint Eastwood), and would Superman and Batman really be friends. Arkham Asylum is targeted as being the real reason there are so many cuckoo supervillans in Gotham. Robin’s place in the mythos is considered in depth (far more so than Robin- The Boy Target as Miller once postulated or even the current Miller rationalization in All Star Batman). Seemingly nothing is left unexamined, even how much it costs to be Batman to be Batman, or even how the orphan Bruce Wayne learned the facts of life.
Let’s back up there for a minute. Alex Bledsoe writes a short essay imagining how just such a thing might happen using the characters of Batman and Alfred from each of the main movie franchises. The idea is that since Bruce is entering puberty and the only male figure around is his faithful family retainer, well, who’s going to explain the facts of life to him. I was afraid that his essay, TO THE BATPOLE, was going to be tasteless but it turned out to be one of my favorite chapters. Episode one uses the Batman mythos from the 1960s television series (with Alfred played by the Shakespearean actor Alan Napier) and episode three details Bruce having “the talk” by imagining the characters as defined by Michael Caine and Christian Bale. All three are inspired but the gem of the bunch is his parody of the Bruce and Alfred from the first Tim Burton Batman movie. Personally I think the Batman\Bruce Wayne split personality has never been done better than Michael Keaton did it and Bledsoe gets the vocal cadences of the characters perfect. Let me share a bit with you.
“Michael Gough, in serving the needs of Michael Keaton in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) (we will completely ignore his stints with Val Kilmer and George Clooney under the aegis of Joel “Man-Goat” Schumacher), gave us an Alfred whose main task seems to be compensat-ing for his employer’s frequent absentmindedness. In fact, he is so in tune with Bruce that he can anticipate even where his master might set down a champagne glass during a crowded party This Bruce Wayne is so preoccupied with thoughts of his alter ego that when left entirely to his own devices, he simply sits around in the dark waiting to be summoned by the bat-signal. Only in costume does he become focused, certain, and relent-less; in his civvies (or skivvies), his mind is always a million miles away
It seems unlikely that this Bruce Wayne would consciously seek out Alfred at the onset of puberty Instead, the loyal manservant might enter the main sitting room, where young master Bruce would be sprawled on the couch, legs askew, watching TV, and absently exploring his new pri-orities. After all, this Wayne Manor was a dark, grim edifice filled with shadows into which a vengeful young man would later vanish, only to emerge, Mr. Hyde-like, as a walking shadow himself. Why wouldn’t the adolescent Bruce forget which room he was in, and presume privacy?
Suitably appalled, yet ever the loyal servant, Alfred would most cer-tainly avert his eyes and say, “Master Bruce.” Pause. “Master... Bruce.”
“Huh? Oh... hey, Alfred. What. . . .h....” Young Bruce might be a bit surprised himself to be so flagrantly improper.
“Hey, wow… where did that... wow.
“Master Bruce, I believe it’s time we had a talk.”
“A talk. You mean about . . . oh! Yeah, I guess . . . sure.” Bruce would sit up, hands clasped, elbows on his knees, ready to listen.
Another pause. “Your trousers, sir?”
“What? Oh. Sorry” Zipping sound.
Alfred would stand beside the couch, hands properly folded behind him. His eyes would focus on some point in the middle distance. “Wayne Manor is your home, sir. You may conduct yourself as you like. But I fear your pen-chant for distraction may one day do you a disservice.”
“My ... oh! Yes, you . . . yes. I see.”
Alfred would choose his next words carefully “Master Bruce, do you understand the concept of puberty?”
“Puberty, ah ... yeah, I mean . . in class we ... so . . . sure.
Alfred would at last meet Bruce’s gaze. “And do you realize you are experiencing it right now?”
Bruce might look down at his lap. “Huh. That explains it.”
“Indeed. Do you wish to discuss it?”
“Talk about it? I don’t ... could . . . talk about it?”
“Yes. It can be a confusing time, and with your father gone, I thought you might need a sympathetic ear.”
“An ear? Oh ... you mean to listen with. Well, I guess . . . sure, if... sure.
Along pause might fill the room.
“You have to begin, Master Bruce,” Alfred might point out.
“Oh! Okay, uhm... how long does it get? I mean last. How long does it last?”
“It is a permanent change, I’m afraid. Eventually you should be able to control it, but for awhile it may be quite a distraction.” Pause. “Master Bruce?”
“What? Oh—distraction. Yeah.”
“I’m certain we can find some medical texts to explain the exact bio-logical mechanisms involved. It brings with it a set of responsibilities of which you should be aware.
“That might be good.”
“And if you would like to discuss it further. . .
“No, that’s all right, Alfred, I ... thanks.”
“At any time, sir.”
This Bruce Wayne would compensate for his physical slightness by designing body armor and an array of gadgets that made him appear larger and more intimidating. Was this also a compensation for some-thing else? Only Vicki Vale and Selina Kyle know for sure. ...”
It seems unlikely that this Bruce Wayne would consciously seek out Alfred at the onset of puberty Instead, the loyal manservant might enter the main sitting room, where young master Bruce would be sprawled on the couch, legs askew, watching TV, and absently exploring his new pri-orities. After all, this Wayne Manor was a dark, grim edifice filled with shadows into which a vengeful young man would later vanish, only to emerge, Mr. Hyde-like, as a walking shadow himself. Why wouldn’t the adolescent Bruce forget which room he was in, and presume privacy?
Suitably appalled, yet ever the loyal servant, Alfred would most cer-tainly avert his eyes and say, “Master Bruce.” Pause. “Master... Bruce.”
“Huh? Oh... hey, Alfred. What. . . .h....” Young Bruce might be a bit surprised himself to be so flagrantly improper.
“Hey, wow… where did that... wow.
“Master Bruce, I believe it’s time we had a talk.”
“A talk. You mean about . . . oh! Yeah, I guess . . . sure.” Bruce would sit up, hands clasped, elbows on his knees, ready to listen.
Another pause. “Your trousers, sir?”
“What? Oh. Sorry” Zipping sound.
Alfred would stand beside the couch, hands properly folded behind him. His eyes would focus on some point in the middle distance. “Wayne Manor is your home, sir. You may conduct yourself as you like. But I fear your pen-chant for distraction may one day do you a disservice.”
“My ... oh! Yes, you . . . yes. I see.”
Alfred would choose his next words carefully “Master Bruce, do you understand the concept of puberty?”
“Puberty, ah ... yeah, I mean . . in class we ... so . . . sure.
Alfred would at last meet Bruce’s gaze. “And do you realize you are experiencing it right now?”
Bruce might look down at his lap. “Huh. That explains it.”
“Indeed. Do you wish to discuss it?”
“Talk about it? I don’t ... could . . . talk about it?”
“Yes. It can be a confusing time, and with your father gone, I thought you might need a sympathetic ear.”
“An ear? Oh ... you mean to listen with. Well, I guess . . . sure, if... sure.
Along pause might fill the room.
“You have to begin, Master Bruce,” Alfred might point out.
“Oh! Okay, uhm... how long does it get? I mean last. How long does it last?”
“It is a permanent change, I’m afraid. Eventually you should be able to control it, but for awhile it may be quite a distraction.” Pause. “Master Bruce?”
“What? Oh—distraction. Yeah.”
“I’m certain we can find some medical texts to explain the exact bio-logical mechanisms involved. It brings with it a set of responsibilities of which you should be aware.
“That might be good.”
“And if you would like to discuss it further. . .
“No, that’s all right, Alfred, I ... thanks.”
“At any time, sir.”
This Bruce Wayne would compensate for his physical slightness by designing body armor and an array of gadgets that made him appear larger and more intimidating. Was this also a compensation for some-thing else? Only Vicki Vale and Selina Kyle know for sure. ...”
What is there left to say? This is a must-own for any Batman afficianado and an interesting read for anyone who loves comics. Buy this book!
Tomorrow we tackle the SmartPop book on Batman’s counterpart, Superman.
PERSONAL- Back to the Blog
Well, two entries for the month of June. Not my fault this time. I finally got sick of paying Charter Cable for malfunctioning equipment, bad service, high prices, and a complete inability to fix any of the above despite dozens of phone calls and attempts.
I’ve loved technology and been an “early adopter” starting back when audio was called Hi-Fi and stereo was a new technology. When the IBM PC was introduced I had already owned a few computers. My first videogame was PONG and my first VCR was a JVC 6800 Vidstar. (Their first 4-head design- with a wired remote control!) I owned a few Laserdisc players, a couple of Betamax machines, a first gen CD player (with two whole disks to play on it), and at least one of virtually every new technology since. I’m no stranger to technologies that require a lot of savvy from the user and sometimes don’t work anyway.
I even had cable as soon as it was available in my area. But for the last several years I had DirecTV. I found them to be reliable, easy to deal with, and decent value for money. But the grass is always greener and I decided to try Cable again for the sake of price, faster internet service, and because I was frustrated with the slow roll-out of HD.
My local cable company is Charter Communications. They SUCK. I originally ordered two HD DVRs. I never got the second even after a year. When first installed my premium movie channels were not enabled and my cable modem didn’t work. Fixing this took three phone calls. Charter cares so much for their customers that they don’t even list their local phone number in the phone book. Once I spoke to someone in the Philippines, another time someone in Nova Scotia. When my first bill came I had been charged for the Internet connection and movie channels even though it had taken two weeks to get them running. Another call to customer service and I was given a new balance to pay. When the next bill came it showed that I hadn’t paid the balance in full and still owed for the first two weeks of Internet and HBO even though I thought that I had straightened that out. This prompted yet another call. That’s when I found out that when you call Charter they don’t seem to write down what the conversation was about. They had no record of my adjustment in the first bill even though I could tell them whom I had spoken to and when the conversation had taken place. I eventually wound up paying for something I didn’t get because it was obvious that they weren’t going to budge.
The first DVR I got didn’t work. That one got changed to one that worked intermittently. Finally a firmware update was supposed to fix the problem and enable the USB connection for the addition of an outboard hard drive. This was welcome news since the I had been used to the Phillips TIVO for DirecTV, which had about 30 hours of HD space. The Charter DVR only had about 10. So I immediately bought a 500 GB drive and hooked it up. The result was that not only did the new drive not work but the machine started to refuse to record intermittently. Disconnecting the HD didn’t help but did allow me to learn that the DVR had reformatted the drive so that it was now useless. That unit was replaced with yet another HD DVR (my third in 6 months).
After that the DVR worked, but only after a fashion. The software was full of bugs. For instance, if you had four things scheduled for the same time it wouldn’t allow you to select which ones you actually wanted to record. Once it had assigned a program to a particular tuner, it was an either-or proposition. And if you wanted to cancel all 4 recordings it would enable at least one anyway. (Low storage space and the inability to cancel recordings- there’s a winning combination for you.) In short, while my HD TIVO had been reliable, intuitive, programmable, and had adequate storage and simply the best interface I’ve used in a new technology, the Charter DVR was none of those things. What it was instead was, in a word, frustrating.
And yet, calling on the patience I had cultivated as an “early adopter” I hung with them. Numerous calls to customer service during this period resulted in a new DVR (which worked- mostly), a 500GB doorstop, and a tentative truce with the company. Then two things happened that would be the last two straws.
First my bill went up 50% after my introductory period ended. I had expected this and wasn’t bothered by it. Or rather I should say that I wouldn’t have been bothered by it. But then my Internet service started being troublesome. After getting the thing turned on, my Internet connection had been cable’s saving grace. It was fast (nowhere near as fast as advertised, but Internet connections never are) and relatively reliable. But suddenly I started to be unable to access the Domain Name Server. I did what I could do. I rebooted the modem. This worked sometimes but sometimes it didn’t. So I called Customer Service. They told me to reboot the modem. Another call prompted a service call. In the meantime the service went up and down intermittantly. When the tech came by the service was working so he told me that they had been “having problems in this area” and did nothing. Then the service went out again.
That sound you hear is the fracture of dromedary vertebrae.
Let’s wrap this up. I called them to get a final balance and have my service cut off. I couldn’t explain to the rep that cable is paid in advance so I only owed for half the current month (she got snippy but still missed the point). I took my equipment apart and took it to the local office where I was told that my service was still working in spite of my request for cut-off by the person I spoke with (she got snippy but missed the point). I walked out of there and drove directly to a local DirecTV dealer and then to the local phone company.
So I’ve been without television (you can’t pick up a terrestrial broadcast in my area without a considerable antenna) and internet access for the last 20 days or so. For those of you considering a Luddite lifestyle all I have to say is that, for a voracious reader such as myself, loss of TV is no big deal but loss of internet access is a problem. I used to keep an extensive library of reference books and almanacs. Nowadays I use the net for reference. Being without a fingertip reference library was the thing I hated the most.
But I’m back. I’ve got a backlog of blog articles but rather then dump them online I’m going to dole them out as I can format them. Hopefully that will allow me to supply a constant stream of useless information to add to the ocean of useless info of which the Internet is mostly comprised.
Sorry I’ve been gone. Glad to be back. Don’t buy Cable.
I’ve loved technology and been an “early adopter” starting back when audio was called Hi-Fi and stereo was a new technology. When the IBM PC was introduced I had already owned a few computers. My first videogame was PONG and my first VCR was a JVC 6800 Vidstar. (Their first 4-head design- with a wired remote control!) I owned a few Laserdisc players, a couple of Betamax machines, a first gen CD player (with two whole disks to play on it), and at least one of virtually every new technology since. I’m no stranger to technologies that require a lot of savvy from the user and sometimes don’t work anyway.
I even had cable as soon as it was available in my area. But for the last several years I had DirecTV. I found them to be reliable, easy to deal with, and decent value for money. But the grass is always greener and I decided to try Cable again for the sake of price, faster internet service, and because I was frustrated with the slow roll-out of HD.
My local cable company is Charter Communications. They SUCK. I originally ordered two HD DVRs. I never got the second even after a year. When first installed my premium movie channels were not enabled and my cable modem didn’t work. Fixing this took three phone calls. Charter cares so much for their customers that they don’t even list their local phone number in the phone book. Once I spoke to someone in the Philippines, another time someone in Nova Scotia. When my first bill came I had been charged for the Internet connection and movie channels even though it had taken two weeks to get them running. Another call to customer service and I was given a new balance to pay. When the next bill came it showed that I hadn’t paid the balance in full and still owed for the first two weeks of Internet and HBO even though I thought that I had straightened that out. This prompted yet another call. That’s when I found out that when you call Charter they don’t seem to write down what the conversation was about. They had no record of my adjustment in the first bill even though I could tell them whom I had spoken to and when the conversation had taken place. I eventually wound up paying for something I didn’t get because it was obvious that they weren’t going to budge.
The first DVR I got didn’t work. That one got changed to one that worked intermittently. Finally a firmware update was supposed to fix the problem and enable the USB connection for the addition of an outboard hard drive. This was welcome news since the I had been used to the Phillips TIVO for DirecTV, which had about 30 hours of HD space. The Charter DVR only had about 10. So I immediately bought a 500 GB drive and hooked it up. The result was that not only did the new drive not work but the machine started to refuse to record intermittently. Disconnecting the HD didn’t help but did allow me to learn that the DVR had reformatted the drive so that it was now useless. That unit was replaced with yet another HD DVR (my third in 6 months).
After that the DVR worked, but only after a fashion. The software was full of bugs. For instance, if you had four things scheduled for the same time it wouldn’t allow you to select which ones you actually wanted to record. Once it had assigned a program to a particular tuner, it was an either-or proposition. And if you wanted to cancel all 4 recordings it would enable at least one anyway. (Low storage space and the inability to cancel recordings- there’s a winning combination for you.) In short, while my HD TIVO had been reliable, intuitive, programmable, and had adequate storage and simply the best interface I’ve used in a new technology, the Charter DVR was none of those things. What it was instead was, in a word, frustrating.
And yet, calling on the patience I had cultivated as an “early adopter” I hung with them. Numerous calls to customer service during this period resulted in a new DVR (which worked- mostly), a 500GB doorstop, and a tentative truce with the company. Then two things happened that would be the last two straws.
First my bill went up 50% after my introductory period ended. I had expected this and wasn’t bothered by it. Or rather I should say that I wouldn’t have been bothered by it. But then my Internet service started being troublesome. After getting the thing turned on, my Internet connection had been cable’s saving grace. It was fast (nowhere near as fast as advertised, but Internet connections never are) and relatively reliable. But suddenly I started to be unable to access the Domain Name Server. I did what I could do. I rebooted the modem. This worked sometimes but sometimes it didn’t. So I called Customer Service. They told me to reboot the modem. Another call prompted a service call. In the meantime the service went up and down intermittantly. When the tech came by the service was working so he told me that they had been “having problems in this area” and did nothing. Then the service went out again.
That sound you hear is the fracture of dromedary vertebrae.
Let’s wrap this up. I called them to get a final balance and have my service cut off. I couldn’t explain to the rep that cable is paid in advance so I only owed for half the current month (she got snippy but still missed the point). I took my equipment apart and took it to the local office where I was told that my service was still working in spite of my request for cut-off by the person I spoke with (she got snippy but missed the point). I walked out of there and drove directly to a local DirecTV dealer and then to the local phone company.
So I’ve been without television (you can’t pick up a terrestrial broadcast in my area without a considerable antenna) and internet access for the last 20 days or so. For those of you considering a Luddite lifestyle all I have to say is that, for a voracious reader such as myself, loss of TV is no big deal but loss of internet access is a problem. I used to keep an extensive library of reference books and almanacs. Nowadays I use the net for reference. Being without a fingertip reference library was the thing I hated the most.
But I’m back. I’ve got a backlog of blog articles but rather then dump them online I’m going to dole them out as I can format them. Hopefully that will allow me to supply a constant stream of useless information to add to the ocean of useless info of which the Internet is mostly comprised.
Sorry I’ve been gone. Glad to be back. Don’t buy Cable.
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