Deadwood and its Secret Fourth Season

I finished watching Deadwood yesterday, a show I constantly enjoyed, but didn’t love in the way that a lot of others did. The third season in particular was brilliant, with the looming menace of Hearst throwing the entire camp into chaos. While I would love to see the promised, but unlikely to happen TV movies, I don’t think it’s quite true that the series had no conclusion. The last episode resolved the Hearst arc, and featured the pull between civilization and the wild that’s been the key motif of the entire series. Yes, it’s more of an Angel go out in battle ending than a definitive conclusion, but I don’t know that any conclusion would have been truly definitive.

Still, conclusion comes in the most unlikely of ways, and, as Milch himself has said, you’re always telling the same story. John From Cincinnati functions as a kind of Earth 2 Deadwood, taking the same character archetypes and central narrative focus, but flinging it a century forward to the present day. The last season of Deadwood put our heroes in conflict with the standardizing force of corporate America, the beginning of a process that continues to this day. It’s notable that as the series begins, the entire JFC crew has been devastated by their encounter with a large corporation that mined their talent and discarded them when it was used up. The Deadwood camp formed around the gold deposits in the town, the community in JFC grows up around the Yosts’ talent.

So, let’s imagine that Hearst had mined all the gold in the camp, then he’d leave and there’d be nothing left but the sort of messy ruins that we see on JFC. How do you rebuild from that? That’s the question that haunts all the characters in JFC, tormented by trouble in their past they have slipped into isolation. On Deadwood, we saw characters pulled out of their lonely isolation and form a community. The third season is all about the crystallization of the bonds in response to an outside threat. JFC has the same central theme, but it treats it in a different way.

In Deadwood, it is the need to survive that forces the characters to unite. Alone in the wild, they are all in peril, like Sophia in the first episode. Brought into a community, they each find their place and gradually form a functioning civilization. By the time of JFC, it’s pretty easy to survive, there is no longer the necessity to band together to survive, but isolation has thrown the characters into depression. That’s why John appears. John is a literal incarnation of the force underlying all of Milch’s work, the force of community that draws people together and allows individuals to become something more through collective effort. Whatever John’s origin, that’s what he does, he brings people together.

John From Cincinnati even offers a solution to the Hearst conflict, with Stinkweed standing in for Hearst. Rather than trying to beat Linc at his own game, as I assumed they would at the start of the season, Butchie and his crew turn Linc to their side and wind up in control of the corporation. The force that threatened to destroy Deadwood is now under the control of the people. Corporations have a huge amount of power, and harnessed for good, they could remake the world. That’s the scenario Milch offers at the end of John From Cincinnati, the destructive forces turned to positive ones.

Ultimately, that’s what I loved about John From Cincinnati. Amidst all the grittiness, there was a real light and hope. This was a show full of joy and happiness, about characters overcoming their problems and coming together. But, because he made it hard, he made it real, it felt genuine. The essential appeal of Milch’s work is this notion that everyone has a place and can be accepted. The characters in Deadwood certainly suffer, but they all have a group of people to support them.

What of the characters? The most obvious parallels are where the same actors reoccur. Milch doesn’t cast them against type, Freddie the drug dealer is what Charlie Utter probably would have been in today’s world, associated with the same vagrant underclass. Same for Trixie and Jerri, she wouldn’t be a whore in the present day, but she has the same power. Obviously, these parallels aren’t the same thing as actually seeing the character arcs resolved, but if you want to understand where the series was going, just consider John a 130 year jump into the future.

It’s frustrating that a lot of people who loved Deadwood seemed reluctant to engage with JFC, when it was as close to a fourth season as we’re going to get. Milch’s new cop series for HBO probably won’t have the same sprawling ensemble cast, he’ll probably reign himself in a bit after two cancellations.

As for Deadwood itself, those final moments were full of tension and in some respects, certainty. The community has asserted itself, and Hearst leaves on their terms. I do think it’s a bit of an anticlimax, that he all of a sudden decides to leave, but I love when a show goes out on crazy tension, and this was like that. I would love to see the movies, but the show feels more about day to day life in a singular moment, and hopping through time to get ‘resolution’ for the characters might deprive us of the show’s real central character, the camp itself. I suppose my dream fanboy Milch project would be some kind of crossover between JFC and Deadwood, where characters hop through time and see the effects of 130 years ago on the present. But, I’ve probably been reading too much Crisis on Infinite Earths.

There's Only One Sun

This film dropped out of nowhere for me. I was going around online, saw a link to it on Youtube and figured I’d check it out. Ten minutes later, I was once again in awe of the greatest filmmaker in the world. Making what’s ostensibly an advertisement for a flatscreen TV, Wong Kar-Wai delves back into the robot world of 2046 and spins another dizzying tale of identity and ennui under gorgeous neon lights.

If I was to ask someone to make a short film for me, I don’t know that they could make something perfect for this. It consists almost entirely of elements that I love. For one, Wong Kar-Wai is directing, with a ton of his signature elements in place. The voiceover ponders identity questions and lulls you into a moody haze, perfectly complimenting the music and visuals to build atmosphere. Watching Wong Kar-Wai movies always makes me want to use voiceover in my own work, since he pulls it off so effortlessly, these beautiful words flowing from the characters.

The plot revolves a female robot operative who poses as a blind woman to track down a man called The Light. The story doesn’t really matter though, it’s really about the desire she has, to see him even after he’s gone. The light is secret, and she can only find him in her memories, represented through the screen. Much like the jukebox in Fallen Angels, the TV screen here becomes a center of erotic desire. The woman is practically fucking the TV at the end of the ad, literally trying to get lost in her memories. This ties in with the themes in all his work, 2046 in particular. That work was all about living in memories, and the inability to deal with the present.

A lot of the sci-fi ideas from 2046 crop up here. We’ve got those amazing shoes that light up when they touch the ground. Those shoes alone have more style than pretty much every other film I’ve seen this year. Nobody makes his characters look as glam as Wong Kar-Wai. I love the red trenchcoat, and the black outfit the woman’s wearing when sitting on the bed. Even the odd future headcovering at the end works. And, the hair style is fantastic, looking like 1920s Edith Manning from The Invisibles, the hair has a kind of plastic quality. She’s gorgeous, in a specifically Wong Kar-Wai kind of way.

But, it’s not just the woman who’s gorgeous, the cinematography here is just so lush and moody. Even on a crappy Youtube video, you get lost in it. The neon lights and colors seem to hang in the air, palpable mood. I love those halls filled with neon colors and the out of focus shadows drifting through them. Combined with the same haunting songs from 2046, and we’ve got a lost chapter of that movie.

It really frustrates me that we’ve never gotten a definitive DVD, with deleted material from those future segments. The robot story with Faye Wong is my favorite thing in any Wong Kar-Wai movie. As this film shows, he approaches the genre in a really unique way. He turns it into an allegorical playground for emotion. The odd characters maximize the feelings involved, turning individual romantic conflicts into emotional drama that plays on the nature of humanity itself. That’s what the genre at its best can do, and Wong Kar-Wai has proved himself the heir to classic 70s sci-fi cinema.

It had been a while since I’d seen new Wong Kar-Wai material, and this one just popped out of nowhere to dazzle. It’s a perfect short, and I really hope to get a DVD quality version at one point so it’s even easier to get lost in.

I'm Not a Cyborg, but That's OK

Park Chanwook is one of the best filmmakers working today, and in his past two films, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, he told stories that melded endlessly inventive visual storytelling methods with operatic emotional content to create enormously entertaining and affecting films. But, the Vengeance trilogy is over and his new film, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK is more of a whimsical comedy. It’s an interesting movie, with a lot of great stuff, but doesn’t quite pull together in the way those two films do.

This film is like a slightly twisted Amelie, with a similarly eccentric female main character and the same tentative romance between two damaged people. It’s largely the central character, Young Goon, and Su-Jeong Lim’s performance that’s make the movie work. She is funny and keeps a realism and humanity going through the various ridiculous things that happen. The moments where she talks to various appliances, particularly the first scene with the vending machine, are really funny and also emotionally real. She sells you on the delusion that this girl believes she’s a cyborg, to the point that it becomes almost real. You don’t want her to learn that she isn’t a cyborg, and grow out of this at the end, you want her to succeed at being a cyborg.

Park has a lot of funny bits with the cyborg thing. I love when she licks batteries for dinner, and the opening sequence, where she charges herself is both disturbing and funny. The most visually stunning sequence occurs with the intercutting of her shock therapy treatment and a fantasy of her in a cyborg incubator.

The emotional high point of the film is near the end, when Il-Sun constructs a “rice-megatron” for her, and proceeds to install it. Here, the fantasy becomes real because making her believe in the rice-megatron would save her life. It’s hard to watch her get fed through a tube, hard to watch Il-Sun’s anxiety when she won’t eat. You want her to accept his salvation, but lurking behind is the fear that she’ll snap out of the trance, call him on the ridiculousness of the device and reject it. When we finally see her eat, and can see the gears through her chest while Il-Sun hugs her, that’s a perfectly executed moment.

But, the film suffers a bit from lax pacing. In Lady Vengeance, Park took time out to tell various stories about the female prisoners. That worked because we knew who our central character was and what she wanted. Here, the central character is less active, so the various digressions to explore other random characters wind up fracturing the narrative. If you cut out 15 minutes of that stuff, you’d have a really tight, emotional story focused on Il-Sun and Young-Goon. That’s the story I wanted, but for a good chunk of the film, it’s lost amidst the messy subplots that ultimately don’t go anywhere. Park seems to love telling these short stories, but with the exception of the woman with mythomania, they’re empty quirk without the emotional resonance of the main story.

The other major issue for me was the ending sequence. The rice-megatron’s success was the perfect emotional moment to go out on. The subsequent lightning rod scene had its moments, but the movie sort of ended without any real closure for the characters. There’s no reason for that to happen, in light of the fact that we already had the perfect closure. So, that scene winds up just feeling superfluous.

Strangely enough, the guiding narrative drive behind this film is also a drive for vengeance. However, it’s treated almost as a parody. Here, the need to get revenge on the white ‘uns turns Young-Goon into a cyborg. The conclusion of Lady Vengenace indicated that the search for vengeance strips people of their humanity. That’s reinforced here, Young-Goon is at her most cyborg when she reveals her finger guns and shoots the hospital staff. But, the film’s whimsical tone means it never reaches the deep emotion that Oldboy and Lady Vengeance did. The final moments of Lady Vengeance are devastating, when she plunges her face into the cake in a gracefully falling snow. Nothing here reaches that power.

But, even Park slightly off his game is still better than almost everyone else out there. The film is consistently visually inventive and really fun to watch. Everyone has some lesser projects in their catalogue, and I think it was necessary to lighten up a bit after the vengeance trilogy. So, the film is a success, but not a masterpiece.

The Forever People #4

I got the second Fourth World Omnibus a few days ago, and after reading one issue, I’m once again in awe of what Jack Kirby’s doing here. Forever People #4 continues the exploration of fascism and societal complacency that began in the previous issue’s story about Glorious Godfrey. It’s a startingly effective critique of society, illustrating how people can be so easily distracted from the awful things going on in the world.

The issue’s conceit is that the Forever People are trapped in an amusement park that’s actually designed by DeSaad to torture people. This sort of concept has produced a myriad of awful stories, like say, every single story involving Marvel villain Arcade. There, the amusement park was just an excuse for goofy visuals and inane death traps. Here, the major reveal of HappyLand is decidedly more sinister. The caption asks “Who among us would rush to aid the victms of this cruelty—when the sights we see and the sounds we hear are bright and joyous? For are we not in Happyland?”

When you look at an issue like this in light of what Kirby experienced in World War II, it becomes almost oppressively sinister. The people are so easily distracted by the attractions here, they don’t notice the screams of their fellow citizens. He uses a sci-fi device, the “master scrambler” as an allegorical representation of the way that we let empty pleasures obscure the darkness around us. Look at America today, no one wants to look at the real horrors of Iraq or Guantanimo Bay, it’s easier to live in Happyland.

The issue is notable for the fact that it spends more time with Darkseid than it does with the Forever People. We’re made to understand his view of things, most notably in the amazing scene where Darkseid walks among the people, at home in the crazy world of the amusement park. The adults have been hardened to sublimate their fears, and just accept his presence without mention. Only a child, who has not yet been numbed by societal coping mechanisms, recognizes the real evil in him. Darkseid understands the way adults have consigned evil to children’s stories, accepting only the surface of what they see.

The rest of the issue focuses on the various tortures of the Forever People, in each case, the fun that the park visitors are having is converted in pain and fear for our heroes. The implicit message is that the distractions we indulge in to avoid the pain out in the world is letting dark leaders pursue their own agendas. One need not stretch things far to connect this story to today’s political situation, and a war that exists in the shadows, deaths happening far away while we’re all in Happyland, giddily unaffected.

It’s interesting to see Kirby’s radical belief in the power of freedom. People today generally write off that generation as conservative believers in a set social order. But, Kirby clearly believes in freedom and change and progress. This issue, and the previous one, are deeply affecting critiques of fascism and the way that leaders can make people oblivious to the awful things going on around them. I used to wonder how people could go along with the slaughter of an entire religious group during the Holocaust, but looking at America today, it’s not that the people went along with it, it’s that a few leaders were deeply committed, and everyone else just didn’t care enough to stop them.

While these issues have some goofiness, I don’t think that should obscure the very real, important points they have to make. This is a perfect example of using genre conceits as a way to illustrate very real world points that would come off as preachy if they were presented in a real world context.

And, amid the darkness, we still have hope, in the form of Mother Box. If the anti-life equation is total control and the loss of individuality, Mother Box is the human spirit, it cannot be destroyed by Darkseid, it will escape and live on, and eventually lead to freedom. That is the direction humanity is moving in, and it is only through our fight against the darkness that we can become strong enough to accept a better destiny.

52: Volume 3

After thoroughly enjoying 52: Volume 1, I had a few issues with the direction of the series in Volume II. The tightly focused character threads started to slip, and more and more obscure DC characters were layered on. However, this Volume, which moves the story into its final act, is a lot tighter and more emotional, taking the characters through a variety of really wrenching moments and providing some moments of crazy Morrisonian genius. The series still has its issues, but it’s so entertaining and addictive, they don’t really bother me. There’s a whole bunch of plot strands running through these issues, let me tackle them one at a time.

The stuff with the mad scientist island didn’t grab me for the first couple of issues. The concept was good, but the execution was a bit off. However, over the course of these issues we get more development and an increasing level of insanity. The craziest thing here is Egg Fu. The very concept of this character, a giant evil egg, is so ridiculous, and here he’s turned into a legitimately menacing villain. The highlight is the Thanksgiving dinner issue, but pretty much any moment with Egg Fu was gold.

Along with this, we get some great stuff with Will Magnus and Veronica Cale, journeying on opposite trajectories. Will starts out as the only one on the island with a conscience, but is forced off his meds, off towards insanity. This is a classic conundrum, the character whose medicine strips him of his genius. The insanity and the genius are wrapped up in each other. Veronica Cale is more interesting, at first a gloriously immoral femme fatale, she is humbled by an encounter with the gods they summon. In the moment she summons them, you can see her enthusiasm turn to fear, recognizing the reality of what she’s done. I’m guessing things won’t go well for her in the next volume, as her creation gets out of her control.

Arguably the major plot thread of these issues was Charlie’s gradual journey to death. This was really well executed, making good use of the real time format. We could witness him succumbing to the illness, the cold reality of cancer intruding on the fantasy world of these characters. This was some sad stuff, full of really nice moments between Renee and Charlie. I like the way they brought Kate Kane in, and the closing journey to Nanda Parbat was suitably epic.

As Renee trudged through the snow, the story moved beyond traditional narrative and became an allegorical representation of her state of mind at the time. She’s pressing on through this endless white expanse, getting help from no one, unwilling to admit that Charlie is going to die, there’s nothing she can do about it. In the end, she collapses and gives up, he passes on, and she accepts it. The journey doesn’t make that much sense from a reality based point of view, but as a metaphor for her mental state, it’s perfect.

I also loved the intercutting of the New Year’s Eve countdown in the hospital room with Luthor cutting the powers on the Everymen. While the Everymen storyline, particularly the Steel and Nat stuff, was by far the weakest storyline, that was a really powerful moment. They broke out of the grids used throughout the series for a wide expansive intercut double page spread, gradually pressing towards the tragedy of all these superpeople falling to Earth. It was great to have Phil Jiminez cameo for the aftermath, a tragic descent for these would be heroes.

Thematically, the Everyman Project is tough to fit in with Grant’s recent work. In his last JLA storyline, World War III, he empowered every citizen and they all flew up to fight with the heroes. It was a wonderful moment, illustrating humanity’s potential. In Seven Soldiers, we witness a lot of ordinary people struggling to be extraordinary, to be heroes. There, a group of wannabes gets murdered by the Sheeda in the first issue. Those characters were more obsessed with the idea of being superheroes then with doing the work that goes into actually being a superhero.

For Morrison, and the genre in general, the goal is to maximize your potential. Batman is doing as much as any human can, training his body and mind, and using technology to be the ultimate crime fighter. In All Star, Superman does more, he is beyond simple interpersonal conflict and seeks to move the world forward. In Seven Soldiers, the characters all struggle through a series of obstacles that forces them to grow and in the end, their unique talents help them to defeat the Sheeda. The characters in #0 all rush into battle without training, their goal is to be a superhero first, to do good second. In Morrison’s worldview, heroism is all about responsibility. It can be fun, but it’s also a burden to carry. The real heroes are the ones who can carry that burden, and risk their lives for others. It is not about doing violence, frequently peace is the better route.

Considering his focus on evolution, you’d think Grant would embrace Luthor’s Everyman Program as an easy way to move humanity forward. But, in the end, the Everyman Program is proven false. I’m not sure how much input Grant had on this decision, and there’s also the fact that the DCU can’t just have anyone who wants to being a superhero, however, I do think what happens here fits in with the portrait of heroism Morrison’s been creating. Like Gimmix or Sally Sonic, these characters just want power and fame, they’re not committed to living with the responsibility of their powers. That’s what we see in the dichotomy between Nat and the other members of Infinity Inc.

Did the story have to go this way? I do think it would have been cool to explore more of the way that ordinary people reacted to the program. However, it does fit. There was an inevitability to the end of Everyman, and at least this conclusion fits it within GM’s worldview. There is danger in accepting power from an unreliable source, the greatest strength comes from within. That’s not to say people couldn’t have done great things with these powers, as Bulleteer did after having power forced on her, but in this case, they made a deal with the devil, and the devil doesn’t play fair.

It’s interesting looking at this Lex Luthor in light of the Luthor from All Star Superman. Both are obsessed with Superman, desperate to compete with this ideal even though they never can. One of the best scenes here is the moment where Lex has Clark completely at his mercy, but asks only about Supernova, mixing the chance to bust Clark once and for all. He is motivated by jealousy and lust for power, not the need to do good. That seems to be the problem with all the Everyman heroes, they’re doing it for selfish reasons.

Elsewhere, we get major development for the space heroes. Lady Styx didn’t work that well for me, partially because we get the random cosmic civilization that doesn’t really mean anything to me. Much like the Shiar in X-Men, there’s just a whole bunch of people with no definition or grounding. The bigger problem is that Lady Styx feels like a retread of Gloriana from Seven Soldiers, she’s got the same color palette and world conquering tendencies. Her death is a bit quick, I’d rather have seen her stick around to menace the DCU, or perhaps build her up as more of a threat so the payoff when she’s defeated is better.

While I have issues with the handling of some of that stuff, I did really like the fight against her. Lobo gets provoked and finally snaps out of his pacifism in a fun, over the top scene. What really makes it work is the connection between Kori, Adam Strange and Buddy. I like the way that Kori wears his Animal Man outfit, and the moment where Buddy yells out that he believes in his family moments before Adam flies in shooting is one of those perfect blends of action and emotion that Morrison does so well. These three are a great team, and it’s sad that they’re separated when Animal Man dies.

I hadn’t heard about Animal Man dying in the series, so I was figuring this wasn’t going to stick. It bothered me to do another resurrection, so soon after bringing back Booster as Supernova, particularly after the great emotional stuff involving his wife’s sadness and Kori’s tears. However, that trepidation was all wiped away with the return of the yellow aliens from Morrison’s Animal Man run. They were like the Seven Unknown Men of that series, agents of the authorial hand in the DC Universe. I’m curious to see where Buddy goes from here, is it another metatextual journey? Side note, I really have to reread Morrison’s Animal Man.

The other big storyline focused on the Black Marvel family, and their struggle to be accepted by the mainstream superhero community. This storyline is primarily interesting for the way it illustrates the impact that point of view makes on audience response to a story. The Black Marvel family is almost saintly in what they’re doing, and I’m totally behind them, but the world just won’t listen. They can’t accept the idea that Black Adam has reformed, and consequently, set out to sabotage them. The ambush sequence is really effective, building a lot of momentum to the moment where Osiris flies right through one of the assassins. This is what would happen if people with unlimited power, but little training or discipline were let out into the world. The whole storyline brings back memories of Miracleman, and I’m guessing we’re heading into the dark stages soon. They are exiled from the world, and Black Adam can only stay saintly for so long. It’s hard to watch the cruel march of impending tragedy.

Perhaps the most Morrison of all the issues was Ralph Dibny’s trip to Nanda Parbat. Ralph’s been through a lot, and his stuff is generally entertaining, though rarely a highlight of the series. However, under the guidance of the perfectly named Accomplished Perfect Physician, Ralph goes through the same kind of transformative experience that Barbelith offers. It is revealed to Ralph that “There is no death. Death is an illusion of being in time.” Rama Kushna goes on to say that “No Love is wasted. No love is lost in time.” This all ties in with the Invisibles idea that all time exists simultaneously, so even if someone is dead, the moments they lived still exist. So, even though Sue is dead, the love they shared still exists and can never be destroyed. It’s nice to see this sort of conceptual stuff appear in a series that’s mainly concerned with exploring variations on the superhero narrative. My guess is, Ralph will be taken outside of time and get a chance to relive some moments with Sue, and come to terms with her death through that experience. We also get some meta discussion of writers and an end being written. Will this tie in with Buddy’s storyline? We shall see.

Finally, a brief discussion of the Batman issue. Personality as something we can put on and take off is key to Morrison’s work. Bruce Wayne has been wearing the Batman fiction suit so long it has become him, but the suit has been corrupted. In this issue, he kills that Batman and plans to rediscover the core of what was underneath. It’s a cool concept, and it’s nice to see Bruce getting a moment in the series.

That said, it’s a joy to read a DC book without the big three, or most of the really powerful heroes in general. Much like Seven Soldiers, this book digs into less prominent corners of the DCU and creates real characters out of minor figures in other books. There’s some really interesting people and concepts here, and I like how the ensemble structure takes us between them. I could see how it would get frustrating waiting weeks for a plot you like to return, but read in trade, I’ve got no real complaints about the way things are progressing. While I would have loved the weekly reading experience, there’s definitely advantages to the trade. I’d love to see “the band” come back for another weekly series like this, but it sounds like Morrison wouldn’t be up for that. Still, this is a wonderfully fun book full of crazy concepts and exciting characters, everything that a superhero book should be. I can’t wait for the fourth and final volume.

Dissent is The Essence of American

The US has been through a lot of awful stuff over the past few years, but this week brought what I’d consider the most ridiculous government legislation so far, the condemnation of a MoveOn.org ad which criticized General Petraeus. There’s a number of reasons this really bothers me, more than all the other shit that’s been foisted on us by Bush and his crew, and this incident as much as any other sums up why the Bush team is still so powerful, and why the Democratic party is such a pathetic bunch of cowards who won’t really change anything if they’re elected.

Back in 2006, I wrote: “The critical thing after 9/11 was the construction of the idea that to not support American aggression was to be anti-American, to oppose Bush's policies was to be a traitor. This was evident in the Dixie Chicks controversy, how could having a difference of opinion mean being anti-American? Isn't the whole point of freedom having the option of doing and saying whatever you want? But as constructed by Bush, it's an us vs. them, the "free world" vs. the axis of evil.” Since then, there’s been a massive erosion of support for Bush, the vast majority of people are incredibly dissatisfied with the way the war in Iraq is going, yet no one is standing up to combat the Bush administration.

The Democrats got elected on the promise that they would end the war, however, they’ve done absolutely nothing. Now, the president’s veto power means they can’t do whatever they want, but that’s not an excuse to do nothing. They should be passing bills cutting funding for Iraq all the time, and forcing Bush to veto them, put the responsibility for every American death firmly on Bush and whoever voted for that legislation, where it belongs. Of course, the Democrats are so incredibly pathetic, they can’t even censure Bush for his execution of the war. It’s pretty sad.

But things got sadder this week when we got this condemnation of an ad. I don’t understand how people running a nation that was founded on criticizing exiting order can legitimately be angry at a group for criticizing the handling of this war through an attack on the man handling it. It’s absolutely perplexing to me, and I’d love to hear someone try to defend it as anything other than pure politics. The Republicans are absolutely shameless to call this ad disgusting, but have no problem with the tens of thousands of people that George Bush killed with his war in Iraq.

But, the saddest thing for me is that Democrats not only voted for the condemnation, but actually tried to expand its reach and further diminish free speech. It’s unbelievable hypocrisy to criticize MoveOn for attacking Petraeus after the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry, but condemning those attacks three years after the fact isn’t going to do anything. Where the fuck was the attack on Republicans then, particularly when Bush was attacking anyone who attacked his “military service.” That’s one the greatest testaments to their patheticness, even when their candidate actually fought in the war, they lose the military cred.

Now, I think running from Kerry’s anti-war record was a huge mistake. The protest movement in Vietnam was one of the proudest moments in our nation’s history, a moment when people tried to fight back and not just accept the will of the government. Kerry was a hero for that, not for his service in Vietnam. The soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam are not heroes, they are victims. Bush does not care about the soldiers, he does not support them and he does not respect them, nor do any of the Republicans who sent them into war for no good reason.

But, that’s just my opinion. Would I condemn someone who thought otherwise? No, and that’s why anyone who voted for the condemnation will never have my support again. I can’t respect someone who says it’s wrong to criticize the military because that is not wrong, sometimes it’s the only way to create change. No institution in this country is above critique because no institution is perfect, and they never will be, we always can be better and we should strive for that.

Inherent in conservative politics by its very definition is the notion that things should remain the same. Because so many conservatives believe our nation is going downhill morally and socially, they respond to politicians who talk about the good old days and traditional values. Guess what, the good old days never existed, the moments they lionize were marred by racial prejudice and suppression of groups based on their gender and religion. We’re still far from perfect, but I’d rather see politicians who imagine a better future, and fight for that.

It’s unbelievable that some of the people in power remain in power considering the stupid things they say. I hear people say evolution doesn’t exist, that’s patently wrong, I thought we cleared the issue up in the 1920s. How could you trust someone who denies the existence of evolution to run our schools? And, evolution and God are not mutually exclusive, the way I see it, evolution is the engine designed to make us all better. Look at 2001: A Space Odyssey, evolution is moving us closer to godliness.

Beyond that, it’s hard to believe that people making hate speech against gay people can remain in office. Humanity’s destiny is towards acceptance and unity, we’ve knocked down a whole bunch of divisions, and prejudice based on sexual orientation is the next to go. The politicians who don’t support gay marriage today are the ones who would have supported slavery and the oppression of women years ago. It’s the same belief in a new guise, and soon, this barrier will fall like others in the past have. We are destined for greatness, but need to overcome these temporary obstacles.

The problem is, the Republicans still control the game. That’s why criticizing the military is analogous to treason, it’s the same as the Dixie Chicks controversy from a few years ago. They want to make dissent with the party line un-American, when in reality, dissent is the essence of America, and even the essence of the Christianity they all value so. Jesus was a revolutionary who upended social order, just because something has become an institution doesn’t mean it must lose the spark of change that ignited it. That is the core American and Christian value, not the imagined values of a time that never was the Republicans present us with now.

But, because they control the game, everyone is pushing towards the right. Democratic candidates refuse to really oppose the war, when in reality they should be fighting it hard. People hate the war, but this small group of extremists has captured our government and the idea space in America. Democrats must define themselves in relation the Republican values because they don’t really stand for anything. I’ll freely admit that, but it doesn’t mean we can’t dream of something better. Hate and fear have possessed our politics, and no one is willing to fight it with love and progress. Republicans would have you believe they are an oppressed group fighting for mainstream values against a small bunch of extremists who control the media and cultural dialogue. That would be hilarious if it wasn’t actually being said, Bush and his crew are the extremists, completely out of touch with the mainstream.

Sadly, most Democrats don’t really do anything. They are cowered by the brilliant attacks Republicans threw at previous candidates. Bush ran in 2000 on responsible fiscal management and a refusal to go on nation building military expeditions, but it’s Kerry who was tagged as a flip flopper. Once that tag was on, there was nothing he could do to combat it because everyone has slight variations in belief over time, that’s evolution. But, that adaptation was characterized as weakness.

This inaction is enforced by the fact that it feels like average people can’t do anything to enact change. No march or petition is going to stop the war in Iraq, and I get the distinct sense people can’t do anything but laugh at the situation, hence the popularity of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. But, laughing at it isn’t going to make it go away, and until a really dynamic, exciting leader comes along, we’ll have to just wait for time to change the game and push the Bush agenda away. But, with ridiculousness like Rudy Giuliani’s sudden belief in guns for everyone and the constant use of 9/11 as justification for everything, that could be a long time.

Bionic Woman - "Pilot" (1x01)

The Fall TV season is upon us, and over the course of this weekend, I’ll be posting a bunch of articles about the shows I’ve watched so far. To date, I’ve watched two new shows, Reaper and Bionic Woman. One was pretty good, one was pretty shitty. Which one was which? Read on.

I’ve heard a lot of mixed things about Bionic Woman so far, but the presence of Battlestar Galactica producer David Eick and Katee Sackhoff is enough to earn at least a sample, and I think the first episode was solid, far from perfect, but good enough to earn at least a few more episodes. It’s tough to watch a show when it first airs because you have no context for what it will become. When I watched Buffy, the show was already over, and I knew to stick with it through the weak first season because it was going to become something better. Same for Babylon 5, there’s no way I would have made it through that first year on TV, it was only the knowledge that it would become better that got me through the dark times.

But, with a new show, you have no idea what it’s going to become. Bionic Woman could become the next great show, and grow beyond this solid, but unexceptional pilot. Or it could run one unremarkable season and be cancelled. Plus, inherent in the enjoyment of any pilot is a fear about what the show will become. If they do too much story in the pilot, where does the show go? A pilot’s goal is to get you to the next episode, and in that respect, this one is successful.

I’ll start with what works here. As almost every review said, Katee Sackhoff owns this show. She’s saddled with some really cheesy lines, but she just sells them, through a curiously zen villain delivery. She’s not the sparkplug of rage that Starbuck is, she’s more a coiled operative, fueled by fury that remains beneath the surface. Every time she came on screen, I was happy to see her, and even in the final fight scene, which is supposed to mark our heroine’s birth, all I could focus on was Katee’s Sarah.

That fight scene was exemplary of a lot of other things that worked about the show, primarily the visual style. Like Galactica, this is a very dark, gritty looking show. It doesn’t have the full on documentary flavor of BSG, but it manages to make ordinary cities look just as oppressive as the cramped confines of the Galactica. There are a lot of iconic visuals in the pilot, none more so than Sarah’s anime villain style hair when she’s standing in the rain on the roof top. Looking like Cowboy Bebop’s Vicious, it was a perfect visual moment. Even her “Time out, time in” speech didn’t ruin it. It was weird seeing her so made up earlier, but I could go along with it, even with her 80s Drago’s wife in Rocky IV style hair near the start of the pilot.

You may have noticed that I haven’t written at all about the actual central character of the show. Jamie is put through so much here, it becomes impossible to relate, that she would go from ordinary person to bionic woman in one episode strains credibility. Wouldn’t it make more narrative sense to have her get beaten by Sarah here, and then train for a rematch over the first few episodes of the season? Now, she has nowhere to go, she’s already proven she can fight Sarah, and we have nowhere to go with their conflict. Getting beaten so thoroughly would also give her more motivation to join the organization, she’d need them as much as they’d need her.

A bigger issue is the lead’s total lack of charisma. It’s magnified next to Katee Sackhoff, but it just makes me wonder why the coolest character can’t be the center of the show? I guess they don’t want the moral ambiguity of Sarah at the center, but I feel like that’d be a better show, or possibly a split lead.

The dynamic between Jamie and her boyfriend reminded me a lot of Grant Morrison’s Bulleteer. That was about a disturbed guy who wanted to turn him and his girlfriend into superheroes. He used an experimental procedure and encased them both in metallic power goo, which accidentally resulted in his death. Alix, the heroine of that series, had an inherent conflict in the fact that this was done to her against her will. That conflict is present here, but it’s less vexing, she had no legs at all, so wouldn’t you rather have bionic ones than no legs. It feels like he gave her a gift, admittedly an initially disturbing gift, but she really has no downside here. It’s better to give your character a lot of internal conflict, and I just don’t see that here.

Also inherent in Alix’s story was a meaningful discussion of male power over women, which is the theme here, but in the most obvious way. If you looked up idiotic in a video dictionary, you’d find that scene with the girl in the car right next to it. As with Buffy, the female empowerment is inherent in the premise, when someone outright voices the theme, it feels goofy. Plus, I’m not sure what the empowerment is here, a male run organization is using her power to do their work, could one read this as an allegory for child birth, men using a woman’s unique gift to forward their own agenda?

Regardless, I’d like to see some of the pervy insanity of Alix’s husband come in here. Does Jamie’s boyfriend have some kind of odd sexual thing for her new bionic self? Sadly, they make it clear that all her women parts are intact, but wouldn’t it be crazy if he said that they built her a new bionic vagina, and he likes that a lot more than the real her? There’s already a clear violation of her body, why not push that further and explore the way people perceive her as an object? That’s what Bulleteer did so wonderfully, that was a pretty much flawless treatment of the concept here, and I hope to see some of those themes appear here.

Sadly, it looks more like we’ll be dealing with villain of the week, Jamie stopping them for the organization, while dealing with some overall conspiracy and cheesy personal drama. That could work, but I really hope to see the layered plots and character growth of BSG emerge as the series goes on.

But, I liked the show a lot more than most TV pilots just because of the visual style. The shots popped and it felt exciting and new. Even something like Heroes, which featured great effects, never innovated in terms of shots. This had a very specific visual language, and it just felt cinematic.

In terms of music, the show made some great and some dodgy choices. It felt like a violation to use Sia’s “Breathe Me,” Six Feet Under owns that song, it should never be used in another film. No matter how good the scene, it’s not going to top Claire’s drive through the future. The Explosions in the Sky style track that cropped up occasionally, notably during the fight scene, was great, but I would have liked it to build more, not just pop up all of a sudden. That was my major issue with the music, every couple of minutes, a big track would come in. That drew attention to the music, I think layering it throughout and varying dynamics would have worked better. You build that guitar track, then crescendo it where you want the impact to be.

So, there’s a lot of flaws, but I’ll stick with it. It looks great, has a killer Katee Sackhoff performance and enough other interesting stuff to keep my attention. We’ll see where it goes.

Death Proof

One of my biggest filmgoing regrets of the year is the fact that I never got to see Grindhouse. I was still in school when the film came out, and it wasn’t playing at the theater near Wesleyan. Time passed, and when I return to New York, it was only playing at one theater. I kept meaning to go down and see it, but soon it had vanished, and with it my chance to experience the full theatrical spectacle intended by its creators. I’m assuming the film will turn up on DVD at some point, but for now, I’ll have to make do with the DVD of Tarantino’s Death Proof, the extended cut.

It’s odd to read so much about the reaction to a film before getting to see it, and my expectations for Death Proof were definitely colored by what I’d read. While someone going into Grindhouse probably would have been expecting pure action spectacle, I was aware that it was a talky film, centering on two separate groups of women. Going in with those expectations, I loved the film, parts of it more than others, but I do think it’s a worthy addition to Tarantino’s oeuvre.

Unlike a lot of people, I think Tarantino really came into his own with his past two films, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. While I love Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, they’re not as accomplished and cinematic as the latter two. Jackie Brown in particular is one of the most underrated films of all time, almost always left out of discussions of his work when it is in fact his most emotional and mature piece of filmmaking. On the DVD, he describes that film as a hangout movie, one where you’re watching it to spend time with the characters rather than following the story, Death Proof is much the same.

My favorite part of Death Proof is the opening hour, following the first bunch of girls during their night on the town in Austin. Tarantino can write dialogue like no one else, and it’s a joy to just watch these people talk and be together. You’re given access to their social world, and during the sequence in the bar, it feels like you’re sitting at the bar, watching the happenings. My best compliment to those scenes is that they made me really want to go hang out in Austin. I wanted to be a part of that place for real because it was so vividly depicted here.

Throughout the film, there’s perfectly chosen music cues, provided by the fetishistically adored jukebox. My favorite music moment was cutting from T. Rex to melodramatic music to show our character’s emotional state, then back out to the T. Rex. You don’t need to know the background of that drama, it’s all conveyed in the moment. It doesn’t even matter that the story goes nowhere beyond them getting killed, it’s all about enjoying the moment.

I won’t lie, a large part of the enjoyment of that segment came from spending time with Vanessa Ferlito, who’s absolutely gorgeous. The lapdance sequence was fantastically sexy without ever really showing anything. I would have been happy to just stay with those characters up at the lake and not even have any violence happen. This was a Russ Meyer feel to the sequence, Faster Pussycat in particular.

But, a happy weekend at the lake was not in the cards for our heroines. The death sequences, first Rose McGowan’s and then the fourpeat of car destruction were intensely nasty. Tarantino called the film a slasher film where the car is the killer, but those sequences go beyond the slasher film by making this something utterly real. You could be driving along and ripped apart like that. The reality of the car chase later in the film made it feel more dangerous than any CGI perils. I particularly like the poking fun at CGI when Stuntman Mike is talking about how they do car chases in movies.

The second half of the film drags a bit because it’s largely more of the same, and those characters don’t feel as realized as the first half’s crew does. I also didn’t like the move from grainy 70s style to the clean look of today. I really preferred the quirky cuts and scratches of that opening segment. It’s not that the second half is bad, it’s just you’re going to be less forgiving of a seven minute dialogue sequence halfway into a film than you are near the start.

When we do get to the action, that also drags a bit. The car chase is exhilarating at times, but needed about a minute cut out to maximize the thrills. That said, there were a whole bunch of fantastic moments throughout, and I loved the way the movie ended, so sudden and abrupt. That had a real exploitation flavor, you do the violence, then you end the movie.

On the whole, I loved the movie. The first half is straight up brilliant, the second only drags in comparison to the superior first half. But, I think it got a bit of a bum rap, and will hopefully be more appreciated on its own. I’m going to have to give it a couple more watches to see just how good it is, but right now, I’d say it’s the best film of the year.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I got a screener DVD of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a show I’d heard good things about, but never checked out. It’s an FX comedy that at this point is primarily known for the fact that Danny DeVito is in the cast. DeVito is by no means the main character, but he fits into the ensemble well. The show isn’t great, but it’s funny enough.

I heard someone describe the show as “Seinfeld on crack,” which is something that would make a great pull quote, and is a decent description of the show. Like Seinfeld, the show is about four self absorbed single people in the city who have various wacky adventures over each episode. But, being an FX show, things are rawer than Seinfeld, and the comedy is more out there.

For example, the first episode features three plots, one in which two of the characters find a baby in a dumpster and decide to turn him into a child star, two other characters find interesting stuff at the dump and gradually become like homeless people and finally one character who poses as a hippie to sleep with a girl. It’s a densely packed show, with some interesting visual stuff. That episode featured a striking montage set to The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” that was both funny and filmically engaging. I laughed a bunch of times during all the episodes of the show, though there were some ups and downs to the episodes. An Invicible parody didn’t work as well as that first episode.

Throughout, there were some things that annoyed me. While I really liked the rawness of the cinematography, the happy 50s style music was tiring, and didn’t feel fresh at all. At times, the show moved into Family Guy style random comedy. Because the characters are so self absorbed and go into these flights of fancy, there’s no real emotional underpinning to the comedic universe. So, the episodes work or don’t work entirely on the laughs from this week’s plot. The best comedies, like HBO’s recent Flight of the Conchords have real emotion underlying the comedy. That show has moments that were just as fantastic, but you always felt the characters were emotionally real, and that makes it funnier.

But, that’s my personal taste in comedy. Most of the comedy I like comes out of real world situations, not the absurdity of this comic universe. But, a lot of people do love comedic works that take place in their own bizarre reality, like this one. It is far stronger and genuinely edgy than something like Family Guy, and I’m guessing this is a show that’s going to break out as word of mouth builds. If nothing else, it’s really easy to watch a bunch of episodes in a row and be consistently entertained.

Jack Kirby's The Fourth World Omnibus: Volume I

A while back, I read the black and white trade of Kirby’s New Gods, and enjoyed it, but didn’t fully embrace it. I couldn’t get past some of the goofy writing and dated style. But, I did enjoy it enough to pick up the new hardcover omnibus of the Fourth World stories, and I’m really glad I did. Seen in the context of the overall Fourth World narrative, New Gods itself makes a lot more sense, and I get a whole bunch of other great comics. This book is so full of ideas and pop fun it makes today’s writers, in any medium, just look lazy.

There are four different series collected in the volume, and I’m going to go through them one by one. It’s astonishing to think of Kirby not only writing, but also drawing, four series at a time. I feel like he’d have no time to focus on anything else, all his mental energy must have been expended filling these pages with the succession of crazy stuff we encounter. These comics aren’t like today, where one idea can fill a six parter, each new issue brings with it a new story, new concepts and frequently new characters.

The series that introduced the Fourth World was, strangely enough, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. Reading this series, I can see exactly where Grant Morrison got his inspiration for All Star Superman. While it lacks the cosmic scope of All Star, this series features the same relentless energy of progress, battling against the dark forces seeking to hold back humanity. Throughout all the series, the central thematic idea is progress versus restriction, as embodied in the life vs. anti-life struggle. This is also Morrison’s central theme, and, one could argue, the central theme of humanity’s existence!

All these series emerged directly from a cultural moment that still determines much of our way of thinking, the 1960s counterculture. It’s a shame that Iraq didn’t produce a genuinely forward thinking anti-war cultural movement in the way that Vietnam did. There were definitely some issues with the 60s counterculture, but it was critical in changing the way art and society were perceived. Things have fractured so much that it would be tough for anything to make that same impact. However, at least those people believed in something more than ironically recreating twenty year old fashions.

Both Jimmy Olsen and The Forever People center around the struggle between a forward thinking gang of young people and an entrenched power system. The best thing about Jimmy Olsen is the way that Superman is used to show the merits and failures of existing power structures. He struggles to understand the way Jimmy and the Newsboys work because he’s from an older generation. However, Jimmy also fails to recognize that Superman does have a lot of merit, and is working in his own way to push things forward.

The opening issues directly engage with this counterculture moment when Jimmy becomes head of a biker gang and discovers a hidden society of hippie scientists called the Hairies. Some people would probably say that the series is dated because of its counterculture emphasis, however I’d argue that its immersion in the moment makes it an even more valuable document today. This book helps us understand what was going on then, and we can use what Kirby has to say about that moment to examine the world we’re living in today. Plus, I really love that 60s moment that this work came out of, and I’m glad to travel back there.

Jimmy Olsen, unlike the other titles, uses very ordinary characters as a contrast to a crazy world around them. In the New Gods or Forever People, the characters are used to the craziness of the Fourth World. Here, each new weird thing is a source of wonder and joy, and the things that Kirby brings out are pretty wondrous. There are so many crazy things going on here, cloning, travel through alternate dimensions, genetic manipulation, Goody Rickles, each issue had me smiling at the new stuff Kirby came up.

Artistically, my favorite thing was Kirby’s photo collage pages, where he superimposed the drawn characters onto weird backgrounds. The first time I saw it, I literally gasped, it’s something I hadn’t seen before in comics, and it felt like the trip beyond the infinite in 2001. Later, there’s a great sequence where the characters engage in a collective hallucinatory experience with a machine that converts radio signals from space into music. It’s really trippy and so very counterculture. I love the utopian feel of this sequence, of these characters connecting in this way.

Jimmy Olsen is my favorite of the series so far, it’s so much fun, it practically jumps off the page, and things keep picking up, as in the first part of the Don Ricikles two parter, which closes the volume. This is so nonsensical, the idea that there’s a Don Rickles doppleganger named Goody Rickles who works at the Daily Planet. It makes no sense, but you’ve just got to run with it and enjoy the craziness. I think Kirby’s closing teaser for the next issue sums up “Spine-Chilling! Blood-Freezing! Heart-Stopping! For many lives hang in the balances-when a strange question is answered. Will the real Don Rickles panic??” It’s the sort of thing that’s easy to dismiss and laugh at today, but if you engage with the material, this is really groundbreaking stuff.

Forever People was my second favorite series. This engages with a lot of the same themes as Jimmy Olsen, focusing on a bunch of young people going along, trying to fight Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips. The first couple of issues take a while to get going, it’s with issue three that the book really hits its stride. My major problem with the first two issues is the reliance on Infinity Man. He’s the superhero who forms when the Forever People combine. He’s basically invincible, and as a result is pretty boring. I like the thematic idea of these five people joining together to become something bigger, but Inifnity Man is just a generic hero, and doesn’t actually seem to be a fusion of the other characters. Of course, the characters aren’t particularly defined, so it would be hard to incarnate them all in one being.

Kirby’s greatest strength is his ideas, and I think that’s part of the reason that Jimmy Olsen works so well. We know who Jimmy is, we know who Superman is, and he can use those archetypes to riff on the themes he’s interested in. The other titles feel more intellectual and idea based because we don’t know the characters that well. I’m not as engaged in the emotion of the story, the emotion I usually get is joy or awe at the ideas that Kirby’s putting out. But, I’m not that concerned about the characters themselves. Of course, in the twenty-two page comic format, it’s difficult to develop characters. So, if Kirby can keep bringing great ideas and fun stories like this, the lack of fully developed characters isn’t a huge issue.

Issue three, “Live vs. Anti-Life,” tells the story of Glorious Godfrey, a revivalist hooking people on anti-life. The issue opens with a quote from Hitler, a bold decision, but it earns the right to draw on history like that by writing a story about the dangers of subscribing to a mass ideology like Nazism. Kirby fought in World War II, and it’s interesting to think about a guy from that generation embracing so thoroughly the ideology of the counterculture, connecting their fight for increased freedom to his fight in World War II.

The story focuses on a wave of attacks from anti-life believers, who are trying to restrict individuality and knowledge. They burn books, claming that “You need know no more than the proper things,” and gather at a revival beholden to the empty words of this false prophet. The story’s focus on the way religion can be used to negative ends is particularly relevant today, when we’ve got out own Glorious Godfrey preaching the gospel of anti-life in the White House. This is a perfect example of using crazy genre concepts to tell a story that is extremely relevant. Darkseid, like Bob from Twin Peaks, can be seen as both a fantasy villain and an incarnation of the darkness in all of us. He is seeking to create a strict order without the mess of individuality. That’s what Anti-Life is, putting people in a societal box and never letting them do what they really want, to be a nation of zombies.

In Morrison’s Mister Miracle, the anti-life equation was used to put Shilo Norman through a series of crazy alternate lives, each their own form of prison. He was aware of the sadness, but unable to do anything to stop it. It’s a brilliant reinvention of the basic concept we see here. Reading this volume makes me appreciate just how much of Seven Soldiers is inspired by Kirby’s work. The Guardian and the Newsboy Legion are drawn from the pages of Jimmy Olsen, and Mister Miracle is Morrison’s tribute to Kirby’s work, spinning the archetypes in a different, fascinating direction. I really need to reread that series when I finish the fourth omnibus.

If Kirby were writing today, I think he would see George Bush and his crew as the incarnation of Darkseid and anti-life in this world. They seek to create a world where their belief is the only acceptable one, calling anyone who doesn’t agree un-American. Luckily, the people have largely turned on them, but not enough. They’re still doing damaging things, and enmeshing us further and further in destructive conflict. Just this week, there was the absolutely fucking ridiculous senate condemnation of moveon.org. How is the senate wasting their time criticizing legitimate free speech? How the fuck can these people even go on when they’re more concerned with a one page ad in the New York Times than the thousands of people who’ve died in Iraq? The entire Senate, both Democrat and Republican, is shameful for not heeding the will of the public and getting us out of this war. But, it’s that same drive we see in the issue, the attempt to control people and vilify anything outside of what they want, that’s putting our nation in peril today.

For me, it’s this genre stuff that really tells us about the world. Real life doesn’t have the individual drama of sci-fi. That’s why Battlestar Galactica is a more compelling examination of Iraq than any movie that’s actually about Iraq. It engages more with the ideas and underlying issues than with specifics of the moment. You couldn’t do a movie about sympathetic heroes blowing up an Iraqi police graduation, but you can in BSG. Genre provides a disguise, but it engages with these concepts all the same. Works like The Fourth World and Star Wars instill in the reader a progressive mentality, and give you an idealistic charge that is lacking from all but the most compelling real world stories.

Yes, it may seem ridiculous to talk about this work in that way. It’s goofy comics, right? Yeah, on some level, but the ideas are there and they infect your brain and change your world. That’s what Morrison’s work has done for me, and Kirby’s too. Ideas have power, and works like this open your mind in new ways.

That pretty much sums up my feeling on the book. New Gods and Mister Miracle are both good in their own way, but I’ll cover them more when I talk about Volume II, and also talk some about the intriguing interweaving of concepts through the different books. That Volume’s on the way and I’ll be reading it right after I finish 52 Volume 3.

My Emmy Nominations 2007

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Tell Me You Love Me - "Pilot" (1x01)

“It’s not TV. It’s HBO” was one of the all time great marketing campaigns. Over the course of the 2000s, HBO cultivated a brand of quality artistic television that was backed up by a string of fantastic shows. The Sopranos is arguably the definitive artistic works of this decade, while Sex and the City and Six Feet Under made similarly dramatic cultural impacts. However, they’ve struggled recently, and new series Tell Me You Love Me takes the network further and further away from what made it succeed in the first place.

The “It’s not TV” marketing campaign was always built on a falsehood. The thing that made HBO shows great was that they were TV, just done better than we ever thought it could be. The Sopranos’ appeal hinges on the same character attachments that draw us to something like Friends, but those characters exist in a morally ambiguous universe. Still, the ongoing, character based narratives used a lot of the same tropes of soap opera. In serial television, the essential question you want the viewer to be asking is “what happens next?” If everything’s working right, the viewer’s going to immediately want to see the next episode of the show, to settle into a rhythm and become a part of the social network the characters exist. TV is always about comfort, you know what to expect and are happy when you get it.

That’s why Love Me is problematic, it’s a TV show that feels more like a movie. After watching the pilot, I feel the story is complete, I got a window into these peoples’ lives, and have no particular interest in what happens to them after this point, presumably it will be more of the same. And even if things do change, I don’t particularly care about the way that they do. This feeling is a result of the fact that the pilot is such a sealed universe, each of the couples exist in their own universe, with no other concerns than their relationship. That can work for a movie, which is limited to a small scope of concern due to its run time. Throw another half hour on this pilot and you’ve got a solid indie feature.

However, TV lends itself to larger concerns. At the core of nearly every TV show is the creation of a social network. I’ve been watching a lot of Milch, so that’s at the fore of my mind, but it’s also true of Buffy, Twin Peaks and even The Office. TV is all about people who aren’t the same thrown together for some reason, be it they live in the same town or they’re a family, and forced to interact with each other. The reason that high school is so much better than college for TV shows is that in college, you’re not forced to be with people you don’t like. That is the heart of television drama, people dealing with other people that they don’t to deal with, and learning that maybe they’re not so different after all.

Even though a lot more ostensibly happens in this episode than in the vast majority of John From Cincinnati episodes, it feels empty because there’s no larger happening. John had such a strong sense of place, and a constantly advancing scope and direction. The first episode was not a satisfying piece in and of itself, but it’s not meant to be. A TV pilot should be full of loose ends and narrative strands that can be picked up in the future. Part of the reason that critics are so frequently wrong about which fall pilots will become great shows is that the pilot is a whole different beast. The Studio 60 pilot was fantastic, but it had virtually nothing to do with the monotony that dominated each episode.

Love Me is so concerned with being unlike TV, it misses much of what makes good shows work. Even in cinema, there’s usually some linkage between narrative strands in a multicharcter ensemble drama like this. I’d imagine the creators thought that it would be cheesy or pandering to have all these characters know each other in some way, but that would make it a potentially much stronger show. Six Feet Under could just as easily have been about three troubled people, but by putting them in the same family, we’re given a context for their interactions. Episodes would go by where they were all separate, but our knowledge of them was informed by the moments where they were together.

So, even if it was something like having two of the characters work together or know each other somehow, I think that would help unify the series. Yes, it would be a bit “TV” and perhaps considered a cop out, but sometimes conventions exist for a reason. I’ve read some other online reaction, and most people don’t seem to like the show, largely because the characters have such a limited universe, with no apparent ambitions beyond what they are as couples. Now, I’m sure their worlds will be fleshed out as time goes on, but other than David and Kate, I have no context for who these people are. The only characters I really cared about were David and Kate, primarly because we understood the world they came from, the pressures they faced and how that impacted on their relationship. That’s an interesting thing to look at, the struggle to balance the outside world with the interior one of the relationship, the sublimation of individuality to couplehood. That’s great stuff, but it only popped up in one story.

The ‘realistic’ photography doesn’t work as well here as it does on Friday Night Lights or Battlestar Galactica, primarily because we’re so distanced from any sort of emotion. We watch the characters, but aren’t involved. I think the creators would argue they want to avoid the phony sentimentalism and emotional string pulling of other dramas. But again, those conventions exist for a reason. Real life is boring, and random scenes presented without any sort of context or narrative push are not inherently entertaining. There’s some great moments in the show, but we never engage with the characters, we remain observers.

Well, it’s taken me longer to get there than any other review of the show ever, but that brings us to the sex scenes. In interviews, Cynthia Mort said she wanted the sex to flow organically out of the narrative, and just be part of the film world, not a big deal. That’s an admirable goal, but as the media reaction shows, this attempt to just have the sex there led to the sex being the only thing people talk about. Because we already feel like observers, during the sex scenes, there’s no emotional impact, you’re just watching thinking, “are those balls? I wonder how they pulled this one off.” The only sex scene that really worked for me was Palick and Caroline during the dinner. We didn’t have to see the actual biological happening, focusing on the characters in the moment was much stronger. I’d agree that the classic TV obscure the breasts somehow sex scenes don’t work, but there’s a wide gap between not being goofy about covering stuff up and actually showing everything. I think we’re still so unaccustomed to seeing sex that appears to be actually happening, faked or not, that it takes you out of the movie, the complete reverse of the creator’s intention.

You’ve got to wonder who’s making the decisions over at HBO. This wasn’t a bad show, and I’ll give it another couple of episodes, but it’s also not something I see catching on. As a movie, this would be an indie hit at best, on TV, I don’t see it doing much, and the early viewership figures back that up. The best HBO shows were like the best of 70s Hollywood cinema, accessible, brilliant, mainstream entertainment that makes other so called ‘mainstream’ stuff look embarrassingly bad. Lately, HBO has pushed in a more arty direction, which I respect. It produced John From Cincinnati, which was catching on and growing an audience before its cancellation. That was a masterpiece, and I think it had the potential to one day have wide appeal. This, not so much, it’s just not any fun, and it bothers me that both John and Deadwood died, while this show gets greenlit. It shouldn’t be an either or thing, but looking at HBO’s lineup, it just makes no sense to have let go of either of those shows.

So, I’ll give this another look next week, but for now, I’m not particularly impressed.

Top 20 TV Shows: Updated for 2007

In the midst of a golden age of television, it's time to update the list of my top 20 TV shows, made a year ago. There's been some changes, here's the new list:

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Up 1)
2. Twin Peaks
3. Six Feet Under
4. The Sopranos
5. Cowboy Bebop
6. John From Cincinnati (New)
7. The Office (UK)
8. Angel
9. The X-Files
10. Freaks and Geeks
11. Arrested Development
12. Gilmore Girls
13. Battlestar Galactica
14. Babylon 5 (Up 2)
15. Friday Night Lights (New)
16. Seinfeld
17. Samurai Champloo
18. Deadwood (New)
19. 24
20. The Prisoner

Now, let me tell you why things have changed.

Bufy over Twin Peaks

I rewatched the whole of Twin Peaks after the second season DVD box set came out. It's still a brilliant show, with moments that are better than anything else to ever air on television. However, there were also some weak moments, and my overall impression of the series didn't match the feelings I had for Buffy. Buffy was the perfect blend of challenging intellectual content and just plain addictive storytelling. The best TV shows are like an addiction, you just need more, and never did I need more more than when I was watching Buffy seasons five and six. So, it ascends to position of best TV show of all time.

John From Cincinnati

Is it too soon to call it the sixth greatest show of all time? Perhaps, but right now, that's the way I feel. The show challenged me to think in new ways like no other show ever did before, and it also had wonderful character arcs. Great moments from the show, like John and Shaun's return from heaven in the last episode, were among the best TV moments of all time. I loved each episode so much, and watching it unfold was a joy.

Other New Shows

Friday Night Lights easily earned a spot, with a debut season that ranks among the best all time. It could easily go up another couple spots if the second seasons matches the first's quality. Already, I was debating putting it over B5, however, for now, B5 gets the edge. One of the tricky things about a list like this is choosing the criteria. Should I base the ranking on the show at its best, or an average of its whole run. Right now, I decided to go with my feeling about the show, which can be hurt by late season screwups. An average episode of Friday Night Lights is much better than an average B5, however, B5 has the scope of a five season story that FNL can't match just yet. The other new show is Deadwood, which is great, but not quite up there with the all time best shows.

So, that's the update for this year. Next year, I'll return and see what new shows are worthy of the list, and whether there's some shift among the old ones.

Why Comics Matter

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is the odd coincidence that the two most forward thinking, outside the box writers in any medium, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, both work in comics. I’m not saying they’re the best writers around today, though you could certainly make the case. It’s more that they are writing in a different way, engaging with bigger issues about the nature of humanity and the role of the artist in the world than other writers. I don’t think it’s so much that other writers aren’t capable of it, it’s that other media aren’t suited to deal with the kind of stories that Moore and Morrison like to tell, as film adaptations of Moore’s stuff clearly shows. Comics is a medium uniquely suited to conveying crazy ideas, for a number of reasons, both intrinsic to the medium and stemming from its culturally ostracized position.

Right now, few media have as little respect as comics. Sure, some alternative comics get respect, but the adjective comic book is generally used to refer to works that lack substance and are solely about action or thrills of the mindless variety. Now, a lot of comic books do lack substance and are worthy of the adjective, but they’re not any dumber than the vast majority of Hollywood films, just as formulaic and tethered to old concepts on an endless cycle of ‘reinvention.’ Plus, readers of comics, inherently referred to as ‘fans’ are considered socially inept and obsessively interested in pointless, bad stories. Again, this isn’t a wholly inaccurate characterization, but no one’s criticizing sports fans for being so interested in games that ultimately have no impact on their lives. Certain types of fandom are socially acceptable, others aren’t, that’s just the way things are.

Back in the French New Wave, a new generation of film directors sought to liberate film from its bourgeoisie concerns, this idea that a ‘quality cinema’ is one based around literary masterpieces and historical happenings. They put cinema on the streets, in the now and that led to a wonderful vitality and inventiveness wholly lacking in what was previously hailed as the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. The vast majority of works that are lauded in our culture are ones that stick to that same old bourgeois set of interests, socially relevant movies done in a classical style. Crash is a classic example of this, as are previous recent best picture winners like A Beautiful Mind or Million Dollar Baby. What do these movies really have to say? What do they contribute to our lives, to our dreams? Not much, they may entertain and emotionally engage, but they don’t really do anything more than tell a good story. That’s what most people want from their entertainment, and it’s a valid pursuit, but it’s far removed from what the best works of Morrison and Moore do.

The thing that the best comics, and even the bad ones, do is engage with ideas and craziness in a world that’s run more by imagination than the limits of reality. I’ve been reading the Kirby Fourth World Omnibus and loving it because even though there’s some clunky dialogue, every page has some crazy concept and each issue a series of mind blowing set pieces that just put a smile on your face for their sheer insanity. What Kirby has done in that book is immerse himself in a very different reality from our own, and by writing the crazy stuff as normal, he forces us, reading from our regular reality, to stretch our minds and move into this new world.

That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about stories, experiencing a world that’s different from our own. It’s a large part of what makes Star Wars so enduring, there’s no tires to our reality, we’re just dumped in a different world and figure it out as we go. So much fantasy and sci-fi stuff spends the entire movie explaining the rules of the universe, Star Wars just let you catch up as you go along. What makes superhero comics special is that Marvel and DC stuff all becomes a part of a pre-existing larger universe. We understand who Superman is and what he can do, and we also accept that this is a world where scientists can clone a whole bunch of tiny Jimmy Olsens and set them loose on Superman. The story’s own kinetic vitality allows us to make that jump and just enjoy it.

Movies are usually best remembered for their stories, book for their characters, I’d argue that comics is the medium of ideas. The combination of words and pictures is generally considered the ideal way to convey information to people. More than any other medium, comics are able to break down complex ideas into an easy to understand model. That’s why Moore chose Promethea as the medium to explain his version of the Kaballah, and why Morrison chose to process his abduction experience through The Invisibles, and in the process create a work that function as a whole new cosmology.

A large part of this is the control of time that the reader has in comics. In movies, the time we spend in any given moment is controlled by the filmmaker, in books, we pretty much read straight through at the same pace, but comics invite a variety of readings. You can zip through, reading the captions and glancing at the pictures, or spend a lot of time absorbing the detail of the art and thinking about things. In The Invisibles, I would frequently spend a half hour reading an issue, taking the time to process everything along the way. That’s longer than it would take me to read 22 pages of prose.

This gets to the core idea of what the best comics do, present compressed ideas that can expand in your mind after the read. Comics are at a major disadvantage next to other media. You’re paying $3 for roughly 15 minutes of entertainment, not a very good deal. Compare that to a 45 minute TV episode you get for free. Comics can’t be as good as TV, they have to be much, much better. I always find it odd that people would consider it praise to call a book like Gotham Central as good as Law and Order when it would take three months and $10 to get from Gotham Central what we could get for free from Law and Order. Comics can’t be as good as TV or movies, they have to be so much better that they overcome the cost of the material.

Reading a Morrison comic, the actual read is a small part of the process. With Seven Soldiers, I would read an issue, then write it up, ponder its significance to the overall meta narrative of the project, consider the themes it explored in relation to Morrison’s other work, and frequently flip through again after reading some online commentary. That comic made me think so much, it was clearly worth whatever I paid for it. It was more than just an adventure story, it was a concentrated assault of ideas that possessed my brain and forced me to think in new and different ways.

As much as I love the medium, no film or TV show has done what Morrison’s work or Moore’s work has done, and that’s completely alter my perception of the world. Both The Invisibles and Promethea focus heavily on the notion that fiction is just as powerful as reality. I had previously had a strict distinction between stories and reality, viewing movies as great entertainment, and even great art, but ultimately nothing more. After reading The Invisibles, I recognized the ability of fiction to dramatically change one’s perception of reality, of the characters to take on their own lives and reality. That view of fiction is something you rarely see in TV or movies. There’s stuff like Adaptation, which plays meta games, but nobody just throws meta stuff out there and then moves beyond it like Morrison and Moore do it in those two works.

Beyond that, comics just generally have a lot more freedom to indulge in craziness. There are surrealists in film, David Lynch comes to mind, but generally, he’s more interested in playing with mental perception and internal craziness. Comics in general don’t play structural games like he does, they just pile on weird stuff. As someone who’s been reading comics for a long time, it becomes easy to forget just how odd some of this stuff is. Claremont’s X-Men, the top selling book at the time, was full of just totally insane concepts ranging from the Phoenix itself to Storm being reincarnated in a space whale to the myriad alternate universes and odd characters.

This summer, John From Cincinnati was constantly maligned for its inexplicable odd characters and strange concepts. If you’d been reading comics for a long time, you’d just accept that John is weird, has some supernatural powers and can suddenly appear in their lives without notice. That’s a large part of why I loved the series so much, that it just kept piling on crazy ideas, that it really made you think. Like Morrison’s stuff, it’s a work that starts on the page, but really lives in your head. The works I really love are the ones that inspire a million different story ideas of my own. These kind of works are open ended, full of possibilities, and they can catch things in your life that inspire new ideas.

Ultimately, that’s why comics are important, because it’s the one medium where crazy ideas can flow and people just go along with it. Morrison is one of the best selling writers, but take this stuff out of comics and it’d all be avant grade. There’s something about these images on a page that frees people to deal with crazier stuff. Kirby’s stuff may be awkward at times, but it’s also a lot more exciting to read, and inspirational than a more ‘competent’ work like The Queen, or whatever work is a ‘quality’ film now. People who haven’t read comics aren’t as prepared to deal with odd ideas, and don’t have the same endless imagination that many comics readers do have. Sure, a lot of people end up just wanting to do the same superhero stories they read as a kid, but for others, like Morrison, like Darren Aronofsky, comics produce new ideas and exciting concepts that shape their creative output and open up new doors of perception.

In all the rush to do more realistic superhero takes, like Heroes, we’re losing some of the inherent craziness of the form. That’s what I hated about Batman Begins, the goal seemed to be to make becoming Batman a sensible decision when, in fact, dressing up as a bat and fighting crime is deranged and crazy. The best stories engaged with this nuttiness, and the attempt to make superhero movies and comics respectable leads to a loss of some of their best qualities. Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo as a manifesto, calling back the insanity to superhero comics, but now backed by the emotions of adulthood. That’s why his stories are the best out there, because they are simultaneously filled with the crazy adolescent inventiveness of the medium in its early days and very real emotional lives for the characters. Look at Flex or Zatanna and you’ll see exactly how comics, how stories, can be manically inventive and heartbreaking and joyous at the same time. Now, the other mediums just need to catch up and change what normal is in fiction.

The best comics force people to briefly visit a universe with different rules and different possibilities. If we can look at a fictional universe that way, it's not such a jump to think that our own reality can change and be filled with the same wonder of these stories.

X-Men: The End: Book One: Dreamers and Demons

Chris Claremont’s X-Men: The End sounds like a dream project for a lot of people, myself included. After being so rudely jettisoned from the book he made into a legend back in 1991, he failed to make much of an impact since his 2000 return. Has time passed him by, or is the marketplace just different? This project, the hypothetical last X-Men story, would seem to give him free reign to create something interesting and unique, to finally wrap up the story he started in X-Men #94. Now, I’d argue he already gave us the perfect X-Men: The End story, back in Fall of the Mutants, when the X-Men sacrificed their lives to save the world, and changed peoples’ view of mutantkind in the process. But, the series has obviously gone on, and now we’re back for more.

Because this is such a long series, I look at it more as something like the Morrison run than a real ending, a creator given the freedom to make changes and do what he wants with the book. I went into the series with modified expectations based on the generally negative reaction the book received from critics as it ran. I think that helped me enjoy it more than I otherwise would have, but by the end, I really started to agree with the criticisms, mainly that there’s way too many characters and too much cosmic space stuff, taking the focus away from both the characters and the thematic heart of the X-Men.

That said, I really enjoyed the first two issues. While it was frustrating to start with Aliyah, Bishop’s daughter, and her adventures in space. Much like the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me opening, it’s annoying to have to go through this seemingly unrelated prologue before getting to the meat, but when we finally do get to the appearance of the Phoenix, it’s a dazzling moment. The Phoenix emission brings all the characters together for a central event, like the frogs in Magnolia, a way of connecting the many different pieces of this massive narrative.

That worked well, as did the next issue, in which we catch up with a bunch of different characters and see where they are at this undetermined point in the near future. I love the scene with Gambit and Rogue breaking into some facility, it’s fun and energetic, with beautiful art from Sean Chen. Throughout, Chen makes things look great, it’s a really slick, epic production. I also liked the fact that Wolverine and Storm wound up together. Claremont always played the two of them as close during the post Mutant Massacre days, when they led a team of new recruits. It was implied they were friends with benefits then, and this plays that out to its logical end.

The tough thing about the book is that it features such an absurdly huge cast. It feels like Claremont threw every single character that ever appeared in an X-book in here. Now, I’ve read every single issue of Claremont’s original run, the Morrison run and a bunch of New Mutants and X-Factor, but even with that I found it hard to keep up with the barrage of characters. When 90s era people show up, I get a bit tripped up, and that particularly hurt me with the issue that focuses on the cast of X-Force. I recognized Boom Boom from X-Factor, but the others were all early 90s Lielfield crew.

The first three issues are fairly tight despite the many characters. Sinister is the central villain, he’s got a scheme against the X-Men and it’s centered around Jean Grey. There’s a few running subplots, but it’s manageable. However, as the book goes on, it just becomes tough to keep track of. The aforementioned X-Force issue was really tough to follow, and having to go on Wikipedia to identify the characters takes out any emotion the story had.

It was nice to see Maddy Pryor back, but unfortunately this was lame villain Maddy Pryor, drawn in a way that didn’t look like the character. Eventually it turns out that she, like many of the random people in these last few issues, are warskrulls. This trick gets old, and though I was thankful for it here, it didn’t work elsewhere. If this is The End, let’s play things out to their logical ends and put the real characters in jeopardy, don’t hoax, dream or imaginary story me.

Though things get a bit convoluted in the back half, the end of the last issue brings things back together. The destruction of the mansion, conveyed in a double page spread with the lone caption “They saw it in Washington” is extremely effective, and will hopefully give all the characters an excuse to come back together.

It’s interesting to see how Claremont created a new version of the X-verse, cherrypicking elements from across the mythos. There’s obviously a lot of his stuff in here, but plenty of Morrison too. Scott and Emma are together, the junk sentinels return as does the focus on the school side of things. One of the most interesting things for me is the meta commentary in the captions. I’m not sure who’s supposed to be talking, but each issue begins with a narration that talks about the X-Men. Technically this is talking about the characters within the world, but it feels meta. The most notable one for me was the idea that people forget there are people behind the myths, a reference to the way they are now seen more as a brand than as characters.

I’m curious to see where things go. The first three issues had me hooked, but things slipped off since then. Still, if he tightens things up, or at least clarifies where the narrative is going, this could be a great farewell to the X-Men. If nothing else, it’s nice to see Claremont able to sculpt the entire universe again, and not be subject to the random whims of nonsensical editorial decisions like Decimation. With his health in decline, Claremont may never write a core X-book again. So, even if this isn’t really the end for the X-Men, it could be his final major statement in the universe. I hope it lives up to what’s come before.