Lost: 2x15-2x22

Lost Season Two ends with a rush of philosophical and pulpy genre action that propels things to a frenetic, over the top conclusion that is absolutely brilliant. After the really meandering, disappointing season one finale, this episode is a great payoff, opening up a whole bunch of new doors for the show, and providing some strong emotional payoff in the episode itself.

The final episode itself is great, but a lot of that is due to the momentum built up over the final few episodes of the season. The middle part of the season has a lot of issues, which bottomed out in the Charlie tries to the steal the baby three times episode. In general, there’s a sense of directionless for much of the season’s mid section, but starting with the arrival of Henry Gale, and Claire’s trip to the Dharma medical station, things start to rev up again, culminating in the double shooting in “Two for the Road.” I could certainly see something like Henry Gale being frustrating on a weekly basis, since it’s a lot of the same stuff week after week, but watching it on DVD, it works pretty well, and gives the characters such a huge aura that you feel his absence when he’s offscreen in the two episodes between “Two for the Road” and the finale.

I criticized the show for its slow pacing and constant lack of payoffs in the first season. I don’t need to know everything that’s going on, what frustrates me is when there’s no narrative or character progress. That’s when the tinkering around not answering questions gets annoying, think the season one finale where we spend three episodes wandering around the jungle to open the hatch, then don’t find out what’s inside. A lot of things happen, with strong emotional impact, so even though more questions are raised than answered in the season two finale, I felt totally satisfied with the episodes. I experienced something, and am eager to see where things develop.

As I said above, I think the show has two primary strengths, on one level, it’s a philosophical/psychological exploration of metaphysical ideas and concepts. On the other, it’s a pulpy adventure story, in the tradition of classic serials and more modern updates, like Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Watching this last batch of episodes, I was often reminded of Star Wars. One major thing was the large number of characters getting trapped in nets in a forest, but beyond that, it’s that sort of heightened genre world, where characters are always getting caught up in wacky new action scenarios. A lot of Return of the Jedi is a spin through various pulp scenarios, with the last minute daring rescues on Jabba’s sail barge, or all the forest chasing on Endor. Divorced from the future technology, you’re looking at the same basic structure as here on Lost, flinging the characters from one mortal threat to the next, always struggling to avoid capture from an omnipresent enemy.

Ironically, one of the toughest things for movies or TV to do is to capture the fun spirit of Star Wars in a way that really works. I love the adventure aspects of those films, but looking at awful movies like National Treasure makes it clear that it’s not easy to create meaningful character, and scenarios that are genuinely thrilling. Lost manages to be genuinely suspenseful and edge of your seat throughout that entire run of episodes. I think a large part of the reason for that is that it’s not trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, as most blockbuster films do. I think another huge advantage is that, though the show has a huge budget for TV, they can’t do the sort of CG spectacle that most blockbuster movies rely on for their thrills. As such, we get more character based conflicts and less random CG sets and obstacles. I love the location shooting grittiness of the action here, the dirty pier at the end, or the strange stack of pneumatic tubes in the jungle. It works really well, and keeping the Others offscreen for so long gives them an alien feel and a mystique that makes every moment they’re on screen exciting.

The Michael arc is what provides most of the momentum for the end of the season, and I think it’s really well executed. I like that he kills Ana Lucia and Libby because it gives real stakes to what he does. In theory, we support him trying to get Walt back, but isn’t there another way he could have done it? We may know the characters on the island well, but realistically, how much of an attachment does Michael have to any of these people? He hasn’t known them that long, and if it’s them or his son, he’s going to choose his son. And, I think this is actually a case where the flashbacks worked well, because it sets up Michael’s feelings of inadequacy about his role in his son’s life. ‘Miss Clue’ seemed just like Walt’s mother’s wife when she asked him what his son’s first words are. His failures in the past are what motivate him to be so brutal when it comes to getting Walt back. He just wants off the island, and he doesn’t care what happens to the others.

Fitting in a show with so much psychological grounding, this seems like a classic prisoner’s dilemma scenario. Michael can betray his fellow ‘prisoners’ on the island, and escape, or choose to defend them and risk being stuck there. Unlike the vast majority of people on the island, Michael does desperately want to leave, and that’s what motivates him to make the call. The Hatch video implies that the entire island could be designed as a psychological experiment, and the Others are likely watching what the castaways do as part of their research, assuming they are part of the Dharma Initiative.

I also really like that they chose to end with such a downer scenario, and a classic Manichaean break, calling into question everything that’s come before. Henry declares that “We’re the good guys,” and in their minds they are. No one thinks they’re bad, and I’m sure we’ll find out the reasons for their choices later on in the season. There’s a heavy emphasis on good and bad during Henry’s imprisonment, with the implication that children are unsullied and worthy of saving, while people who’ve sinned in their past, like Sawyer, Kate and Jack do not. Was Henry lying when he told Locke that he was coming to get him, that Locke was chosen? It’s hard to say, Henry was all about manipulating people, but it would fit with what we’ve heard so far. Why do the Others have to assemble this group of ‘good’ people, what’s their master plan? That remains to be seen.

The one person we know was taken by the Others is Rousseau’s daughter, Alex, who has grown up to be an assistant to Tom and the rest of the crew. She doesn’t buy into the mythology in the way that the rest seem to, hence her release of Claire and generally nicer attitude to Michael. The primary question that lingers for me is the connection between the Dharma experiments that we see discussed in the film and video, and this group of people. Are these the researchers who started with the DeGroots and Alvar Hanso? Have they all gone native? I’m sure this will be addressed in upcoming episodes.

The second Hatch video, shown in “?” raises some more questions about the nature of the Dharma experiment. The video implies that the Hatch and the button are all an experiment in exploring human nature, while this recording is the real work. Desmond later raises the idea that the opposite is the case, and based on the events we see in the finale, that’s a more believable claim. The giant pile of pneumatic tubes in a field also supports the notion that this observation is the real fakeout. The question that lingers here is what is the ultimate purpose of the experiments, and why did the system break down? Why aren’t people being replaced every three weeks? Are the stations meant to experienced linearly? In that case, this is video number 5, what does 6 hold, the real truth about the island? I love the production value of the video, and also the use of old technology.

There’s something so alien about the pneumatic tube in our world. I think that stuff like the film texture, or that early 80s VHS aesthetic feel so much stranger than something that’s a straight up period piece because they exist on the fringe of our memories. I experienced that world and that technology, but it exists in memory. Seeing it emphasizes the vast changes our world has undergone since that era, and also gives both Hatches a strange suspended in time quality. To live in the Hatch is to lose all sense of the outside world, to become a cog in a strange machine.

We see that dramatized in the flashback story with Desmond. I thought that the flashbacks would become absolutely exhausting by season two, but I think the producers generally managed to integrate them into the stories better. Less typical flashbacks, like the Desmond one, or Michael’s trip to the others are always exciting to see. And, even though Eko’s “Miracle” flashback doesn’t really tie in that much to what’s going on, it’s not egregiously bad. Even the Ana Lucia stuff in “Two for the Road” worked fairly well since it was both intriguing on its own terms, made strong use of Jack’s dad, and raised the question of Jack’s missing sister. I don’t typically like the tendency to make random characters related to each other, but I could understand why they might choose to make Claire into Jack’s half sister, as a way of tying the baby more directly into the goings on of the main cast.

Anyway, the Desmond flashback was a highlight of the season. The early stuff with him on the mainland works pretty well, though I think having Libby be the one to give him the boat is an excessive use of interconnectedness. But, the scene with him and Penny at the track is really strong, and lays the emotional groundwork for the end of the episode. It also informs Desmond’s actions in the first episode of the season, when he speaks to Jack.

The show may be very frustrating at times, but I deeply respect it for being so committed to building a very involved and intricate universe, and letting you piece moments together. There’s the expectation that you’ve seen every episode, and know everything that’s happened. I like that, I want shows to be as ambitious and smart as this, to span time and space and do challenging things with character. I don’t think it’s in the pantheon of the greatest shows, but if TV goes downhill in future years, it’ll be a prime example of “Golden Age TV,” a show that’s huge in scope and complexity and extremely demanding. But, as with all things, the more you put in, the more you get out of it.

Once he reaches the Hatch, Desmond teams up with Kelvin, aka Clancy Brown from Carnivale. He’s a great actor, so I was happy to see him again after his role in the Sayid flashback, but I’m not quite sure it was necessary to tie him in with a previous flashback. Again, that’s something that works in some stories, but can just feel a bit excessive. I suppose one of the ideas is to show the interconnectedness of the world, with a six degrees of separation kind of thing, but it seems like in this case, it always gets down to two degrees.

The depiction of their life in the Hatch was really well done. I love the concept of the button, and the philosophical questions it raises. It’s a metaphor that can be read in many ways, isn’t everyone who works a corporate job just pushing buttons for someone, out of fear that their life would fall apart if they don’t. We’re all bound to our specific situation by the fear that if we don’t do what we’re supposed to, our worlds will end. To push the button is to have security and the knowledge that things will remain the same, and the hope that our efforts are meaningful, even as we can never know for sure that they are. To not push the button is to walk into uncertainty, it could mean freedom, but it could also mean the destruction of all the comforts we hold.

And, the longer you serve that master, the more insane you get. Kelvin’s death, shot against a gorgeous alien rockscape, leads to the first Hatch incident, the one that apparently brings down the plane in the first place. I think that fits pretty elegantly into the mythology, and ties Desmond into the overall scheme of things even more. Knowing he brought down the plane means that he wasn’t wasting his time by pushing the button the rest of the time, but it also means that he’s responsible for the suffering of all these people.

The arrival of Desmond on the boat also raises a lot of questions. He speaks of the world as a kind of video game landscape where, no matter how far you sail, you’ll always wind up in the same place. I think bringing a boat to the island raises a lot of questions about using it for escaping instead of attacking the others, but to enjoy the show, you have to accept that these people don’t behave like normal people would on a desert island. They apparently don’t want to leave, and also don’t have to worry about running out of food or resources. In that case, the boat provides a nice opportunity to bring the action to a third front, and give us a glimpse of that mysterious statue foot.

After a season of buildup, Locke decides that he doesn’t want to be manipulated anymore by malevolent father figures, be they his actual father or the Dharma Initiative, and decides to let the timer run down. A lot of this seems to be motivated by his decision to trust Henry, and the subsequent revelation that Henry played him. If Henry could so easily manipulate him, how can he believe anything? Desmond seems to go along with it, until he realizes that it was the Hatch’s electromagnet that brought down the plane, and his faith is vindicated.

This is illustrated in the flashback that crosses over with Locke’s pounding on the Hatch from season one. Here, both Desmond and Locke reach out to a higher power for some kind of evidence that they’re on the right path, and are vindicated when they each receive the sign they need. The implication seems to be that there may be no omniscient god, rather god is manifested in the disparate connections between all of us, of people being there for us when they need to be. That would fit thematically with the flashbacks, and explain why characters continually pop up in each others’ pasts, a self-sentient social network that supports people when they need it, and drives them to the points in time that they have to be.

The entire faith vs. reason argument that drives so much of this season comes down the basic question of whether our lives have a purpose or whether they’re just random. And, that’s ultimately a subjective one. We can see happenstance as unlikely chance, or we can view it as divine direction. Eko sees the hand of God in his exile on the island, a chance to atone for his past, while Jack sees only a problem to be solved. I like the idea of the island as this kind of divine entity, perhaps that’s why the Dharma Initiative chose it, the chance to build a new world where everyone gets what they need.

In choosing not to push the button, Locke is seemingly abandoning his faith, but perhaps he’s actually transcending in his faith, reaching out to the island for advice on what the next step of his journey is. The button counts down and in a really exciting sequence, the magnet activates and pulls everything towards it. I love the weird ultraviolet light and odd sound of the Hatch pulling everything in. It’s a bizarre mix of religious and scientific experience, and in the end, it would seem that Locke’s faith has been vindicated, and his doubt will be the end of him.

But, then we get the final piece of the Hatch, the failsafe self destruct. I think for the VCR generation, that was raised watching the same movies many times over, certain elements of genre movies, like Star Wars, take on a kind of religious significance. In ancient times, myths grew out of stories that were told over campfires, spread among people. The images in those myths had a potency that tapped into subconscious human needs. I’d argue that things like these weird scientific facilities, and buildings collapsing while a hero struggles to hit a self destruct button have that same kind of subconscious resonance for the present day viewer. Nothing in this episode directly references Star Wars, but it draws on that same kind of genre mysticism that touches me on a deep subconscious level.

That’s why I’ll continue to defend the latest Indiana Jones movie, even as popular opinion shits on it. I think that the confrontation with an alien force, and the equation of that alien force, the pulp fiction of the 1950s, with the religion of past generations was as perfect a summary of what Spielberg and Lucas have done as anything in their work. Sure, there’s issues with the rest of the film, but to miss the thematic significance of that image, and the self reflexivity is to misunderstand a lot of what those two men have put into the cultural consciousness.

Here, we get a kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark scenario, where a divine presence is brought into the world, and our heroes are confronted with evidence of that divinity. In this case, the divinity is housed in the electromagnetic structure of the Hatch. I loved the juxtaposition of Penny’s voiceover with Desmond turning the key and in that moment transcending into pure white. He has reached the end of the world, and it’s his love that will carry over.

From a narrative point of view, I think the self destruct on the Hatch kind of comes out of nowhere, and raises the question of why they just didn’t destroy the Hatch in the first place, rather than set up this elaborate system and risk another Incident. But, I still think the moment works, in the same way that the deus ex machina finales of Doctor Who do. The scene is such a powerful experience that it transcends narrative and becomes a kind of pure sensory immersion, in many ways the highest aspiration of any film, to take you into its world and make you feel what it wants you to.

The season ends with much in chaos, Locke, Eko and Desmond are seemingly dead, the hatch is destroyed, Jack, Sawyer and Kate and captured. But, on the mainland, someone saw that electromagnetic incident, and Penny is going to seek a way back to Desmond. How does she know to look for electromagnetics? That’s still unclear, but it’s a suitably intriguing final moment.

Well, as you can probably guess, I loved this finale. I think it was easily the strongest episode of the series, reaching a kind of pulp nirvana in those final moments, fusing the philosophical and genre into a perfect mix. I’m sure there’s still some ups and downs to come, but I’m loving where the show’s at right now.

Lost: 2x03-2x14

I’ve now caught up to where I stopped watching Lost the first time, and am zipping along, heading off into the uncharted territory of late season two. At this point, I’m really liking a lot of elements of the show, but some frustrating stuff is cropping up as well. But, in light of what I’ve heard about later seasons of the show, I’ve got faith that it will all work out for the best in the end.

Let me start by jumping back to what is easily the high point of the series so far, the Dharma Initiation video in “Orientation.” Those three minutes are just pure joy for me, hitting so many of the themes and motifs I love in fiction, in a really alien way. Watching it feels like a message from a time capsule, and the glimpses of Hanson and the DeGroots are really intriguing. I want to know more about the Dharma Initiative, what kind of experiments did they do, where did all their utopian dreams go wrong?

I think it’s both a testament to the quality and density of those three minutes, and something of a knock on the rest of the show, that I’m left with more to ponder and want to know from that piece than from everything else that’s going on. I don’t deeply care what happens to any of the characters on the show, but I want to know about the Dharma group and their world and reality. The added bit that Eko brings doesn’t really tell us anything new, I’m looking forward to the discovery of the other stations and the other videos.

And, annoyingly, there’s been very little development of things out of that film in the roughly ten episodes that have followed. That’s okay when there’s interesting stuff going on, but frustration sets in when the stories don’t work. I suppose that’s true with any TV show, but because of the structure of this one, the frustration can become particularly pronounced. Narrative progress in the present tense can be very slow because we’re always looking back to the flashbacks.

That works great in an episode like “The Long Con,” where Sawyer’s flashback is emotionally engaging, a great little short story in its own right, and when juxtaposed with the island story, makes both more interesting. But, an episode like “One of Them” is really problematic because we’ve got an interesting story in the present, and a flashback that’s both totally redundant thematically to what’s happening in the present now, redundant to what we already saw in the first season present, and redundant to both earlier Sayid flashbacks. We get it, he tortures people and feels bad about it, but sometimes has to do it. The point is made, move on.

Was anyone really watching that episode really caring about the Sayid flashback? I don’t think so, and thus watching the show becomes something of a masochistic experience, where you ‘suffer’ through boring stuff in the flashbacks, and the drawn out pace of stuff on the island, to get to those moments of greatness like the orientation video. I think the major thing that makes me like the series more now, and be more forgiving of its flaws than when I watched it the first time is the knowledge that it will go to some more interesting places, and that a lot of this teasing will pay off in interesting ways. I’ve heard vague things, and they all really intrigue me, and make it easy to sit through the tedious stuff.

I think in a longterm series, you sometimes need that knowledge that things will get better. The Babylon 5 pilot is downright bad, but knowing that the show would get better made it easier to stick with it. Buffy was the same way, I don’t think I’d have made it through season one watching it live, but hearing how much people liked it, I stuck with it, and grew to love it. Watching Lost in season two, there was no clue where it would go, or if things would develop in interesting ways, and that magnified all the flaws.

I still think that the stuff with Sayid and Sharon’s death is a classic Joss Whedon, but done badly. When Sayid breaks into tears with Henry Gale, the moment doesn’t work because I don’t emotionally buy into their relationship. It seemed more like they were pretty casual, getting together simply because they’re on a desert island together. I think he’d be really troubled by it, but I don’t think it was ever true love, so much of his arc post her death doesn’t make sense.

The creators acknowledged, via Ana Lucia, that the desert island scenario is pretty sexy, and people should be “hittin’ that” all over the place, but things still seem pretty chaste on the island. There’s a morning after Sun and Jin thing, but how has a guy like Sawyer not been with one woman during the 50 days he’s been on the island. Now, maybe him and Kate did get together at some point during their flirty haircut phase, but it’s not made explicit, or really implied. I’m not saying the show needs to either just feature a lot of random sex, or a lot of soapy relationship, but realistically, people would get together in that situation, and I think you’d see more couples like Charlie and Claire were during the early days of the season. But, again, that seemed really chaste. It’s a potentially interesting area of human interaction, and I’d certainly rather see people developing relationships in the present than more flashbacks.

But, a lot of enjoying the show requires forgetting about what you want the show to be, or what normal human behavior actually entails. This isn’t a show about a realistic experience of what it would be to be stranded on an island. I’d love to see that show, but this isn’t it. This show is essentially a horror/adventure show about a group of people who have been brought together to battle an outside malevolent force known as the Others. It’s a lot like The Stand in that sense, and accepting that interpretation of the series makes it easier to just go with the flow and enjoy things for what they are.

I will say that early season two, the endlessly replayed hatch scene aside, moved pretty snappily. Having two fronts of action made it easier for the narrative to progress, and gave things more drive. Now that the two camps are united, there’s not the same sense of forward momentum, and a lot of characters feel superfluous. What is Eko doing that Locke doesn’t? What is Ana Lucia doing that Jack doesn’t? They haven’t been used in really interesting ways.

Things reached their nadir during the Charlie baby kidnapping episode, which just totally didn’t work, and featured the worst sort of TV dream sequence, the one with a really obvious meaning that feels falsely surreal and nothing like a real dream. I love dream sequences when done right, as in The Sopranos or Buffy, dream sequences that probe a character’s subconscious and build a world within their head. But, the dream sequence here is just giving motivation to smooth over illogical plot points.

It turns out I hadn’t stopped watching at 2x09, it was Charlie’s baby kidnapping fiasco that did it. Watching the first half of the season, I was like, “why’d I stop? This is good stuff.” Watching Charlie in a diaper, I understood why I stopped..

All of this is a way of saying that the show is as frustrating as ever at times, but I believe in it, and am enjoying it. I think the Sawyer double cross episode was fantastic, and did a great job of giving some edge back to a character who’d gotten soft. Was the ranch dressing frog subplot in the next episode necessary? Not really, but I’d prefer that to a flashback because it actually forwards our understanding of the character. The key issue about the flashbacks with me is it doesn’t let the character grow, it locks him into a psych 101 kind of idea that you’re doomed to repeat the past ad infinitum.

The Henry Gale thing looks good as well, and raises a lot of potentially interesting questions. But, I’m still left wondering when will we finally get another piece of film to peruse? Will there be an episode that’s all Dharma Initiative films? Can Marvin Candle narrate every episode, like Rod Serling? Only time will tell.

On Twitter Now

Like many others, I’ve finally added another piece of web 2.0 hardware to my arsenal, Twitter. Head over to @patrickmeaney if you’re interested in adding me and seeing what I’m up to on a regular basis.

The major issue I have with Twitter is that I feel like it cuts dialogue down to even less than it is in the blogging world, until everything’s just a soundbite without any content whatsoever. There’s not much room for substance in 140 words, but I do enjoy getting updates from various celebrities and some people that I actually know. I think it’s a good tool, probably a bit overhyped, but it’s a fine addition to the RSS feed in terms of absorbing a lot of information quickly.

X-Men Forever #1: "Love and Loss"

X-Men Forever #1 came out this week, the much discussed return of Chris Claremont to the X-Men status quo he left in 1991. I considered his entire first X-Men run a satisfying single work in and of itself with an ending that while not totally satisfying does make thematic sense and carries a feeling of finality. But, I definitely wanted to see Claremont continue on from that era, he created a universe that was perpetually renewed and reborn, and could run forever, so why not pick up again and try to take it another sixteen years.

I think most people have the wrong impression of the way that Claremont’s original run worked. Seen today, it’s broken down into greatest hits moments, with heavy emphasis on the Byrne era and Dark Phoenix, and the occasional branch into the later crossovers, or the Paul Smith era. That’s a consequence of the way the run has been collected, but it reads best as a single work, rising and falling over the course of the entire sixteen year run. The series has many distinct eras, but they flow seamlessly from each other, and the real joy of it isn’t in the individual parts, it’s in looking at the big picture, and seeing the characters subtly grow and change over the course of the stories. Storm going punk in the 170s may seem like an abrupt character change, but it’s actually the physical culmination of eighty issues of character development to get her to that point.

As such, I think it’s hard to judge Forever on the first issue. Claremont isn’t like Grant Morrison in the sense that his single issues are so dense and endlessly debatable that each one is an event, his work is all about letting stories develop over time. As such, this issue is largely about laying out a bunch of potential storylines and setting up the dynamic that the team will function under for the foreseeable future. Though narratively, the issue is one big fight scene, he manages to lay down a lot of character threads that will likely be developed as the series progresses. I don’t think it’s as satisfying a first issue as say, Batman and Robin #1, but I think it does the work that’s needed to do to set the stories in motion. You don’t read a Claremont story for the first issue, you read it to watch something develop over time.

I’ve seen some people criticize the book’s premise as self indulgent and confusing. But, I think it’s actually a lot easier for a new reader to pick up this book than a random issue of Uncanny. And, considering these are Claremont’s characters, you could argue that the more recent eighteen years of stories are the alternate universe, and this is the real continuity. I don’t think that this is the book Claremont would have made then, being written in 2009, it’s always going to exist in relation to the stories told in the interim. But, I think it gives Claremont the sort of freedom he used to have in the 80s, the freedom to make real change, and that’s what excites me about the book.

It’s a tricky thing in serial fiction to make you feel like these are the ‘real’ versions of the characters, and that the things that happen to them have actual consequence. Morrison did it with his X-Men, and Claremont certainly had that in the 80s. I think it’ll take me a couple of issues to get into the universe of this book, but I feel like the characters are the ones I knew, and that’s a good sign going forward.

Particularly with the twice monthly schedule, I’m eager to watch the story develop and see what Claremont can do. I don't read that many comic books as monthlies, but I do like the routine of having something to look forward to on a Wednesday. Hopefully the book will be successful enough to sustain itself for a while and give a nice bookend to Claremont’s thirty-five years on the X-titles.

And, in a bit of self promotion, look for a little trailer for my Claremont/X-Men documentary shortly. Once I get the time to cut something together, I’ll put it online so you can see what Chris and his collaborators are looking like today.

Lost: 1x13-2x02

My journey through Lost has continued, bringing me through episodes with some of the series’ best moments, and also some of its most frustrating. The thing that makes the show so annoying is the fact that it’s consistently about 10% genius, 40% good 10% bad and 40% frustratingly drawn out events. Never is that more evident than in the three closing episodes of season one, and the first two of season two.

Let me start with the genius parts. I think the decision to not reveal what was in the hatch in the season one finale was a major mistake in many ways, but the payoff that we finally got in the second season’s premiere was well worth the wait. I love the little world they build in the first few minutes of the episode, giving you huge insight into the day to day life of Desmond, the hatch’s occupant. And, the use of the joyous “Make Your Own Kind of Music” gives everything a surreal feel that works perfectly.

“Make Your Own Kind of Music” powers the other great moment of the premiere, Jack’s delirious journey through the hatch in search of Locke and Kate. The sequence reminded me a lot of the finale of The Prisoner, where “All You Need is Love” blares as Number Six rushes through this bizarre government facility. The filmmaking was great, and the energy reaches a huge peak as the episode ends, and we realize that Jack has met this guy before, brother.

Those two sequences were great enough to make up for a lot of the weaknesses along the way. Season two, at least in its first episodes, maximizes a lot of what’s great about the first season, and what’s frustrating about it. The first season finale is a really problematic episode, paced so slowly you’ve got to figure they left absolutely nothing on the cutting room floor.

I don’t have a problem with slow pacing if it makes sense. The launching of the raft takes a lot more time than you’d expect for a TV show, but it works, giving a real majesty and scale to what’s happening. You believe that this is a critical event in the lives of all involved, and slowing things down lets you really get into the emotion of the moment. These are all their hopes and dreams, sailing away, and in their wordless expressions, we get such insight into how Sun and Jin are feeling. The score magnifies the emotion, and it’s a totally satisfying moment.

However, other than that, “Exodus” is all teasing and no payoff. I think the backhalf of season one is actually pretty solid in terms of developing character and giving us interesting stories that reveal a lot about who the people are in the present, and push them forward. I don’t even think the pacing or flashbacks are that problematic, since they generally work together well. There’s nothing as egregiously mismatched as Charlie’s copy machine vomit story.

Then, “Exodus” comes along, and what should be the culmination of all we’ve seen so far becomes a really limp, drawn out set of episodes that don’t really accomplish anything, the raft story excluded. Part of the problem is structuring the episode around multiple flashbacks, which works at times, like in the Michael and Walt stuff, but then you get a five minute scene of Hurley running to get his flight, which takes you out of the world of the island, and defuses any tension or narrative momentum that’s been built up over the course of the episode. I don’t have any intrinsic problem with that Hurley flashback, it’s a fun scene, and would be great on a deleted scenes section of a DVD, but in the context of the episode, it just detracts from everything else that’s going on.

Film is about casting a spell over the audience. Writing, acting, editing, it’s all about drawing you in and making you believe that what you’re seeing on this screen is ‘real,’ making you feel what the characters feel and experience specific situations and emotions. The goal of this finale seemed to be to build up the threat of the others, through the dual storylines of Jack and co. trying to protect everyone, and Rousseau stealing Claire’s baby. The opening sets up some tension instantly and draws you in to the threat, but from there on, the episode goes so slowly, and has so many digressive flashbacks, you lose the sense of any threat. And, a lot of the character behavior hinges on the idea that there is an immediate threat, so the whole Locke/Jack conflict doesn’t work as well it would if we felt the ticking clock element.

There’s one really good payoff in the episode, and that’s the others stealing Walt and blowing up the raft. I suppose the point was to subvert expectations and have the others pop up where we least expected them, which works in that story, but which also means the rest of this three part episode winds up being a lengthy journey to nowhere.

I watched the whole first season of the show live as it aired, and after the ending cliffhanger, I decided I was done with the show. The entire episode is structured around opening the hatch, to not actually show what’s in the hatch means that we have no payoff at all in the episode. It’s fine if you can watch the next one a day after, but as a season finale, you need a bit more to make it an emotionally satisfying conclusion. And, it wouldn’t bother me so much if the episodes themselves weren’t so absurdly slowly paced.

Now, I don’t want to say that slow pacing can’t work, or that de-centralizing the narrative is by necessity a mistake. On a show like Buffy or Six Feet Under, the characters were so fully drawn, it was nice just to spend time with them, and there wasn’t as big a concern about storyline payoffs. Here, very few of the characters are particularly deep, which means that the narrative has to hold more weight. I think all the Sun and Jin stuff is fantastic, and the Michael and Walt stuff here is great too, I care about those characters. Then, Jack and Locke are interesting in their connection to the thematic development of the series, setting up the faith/reason dichotomy which is made concrete in the title of the second season premiere. It’s a good dynamic, and works.

But, centralizing events around those two characters means that a lot of the other people on the island are left without purpose. The show at the beginning seemed designed to show a cross section of people put together, now most of the ‘civilian’ characters are not doing much, and the populace exists as a device to put Locke and Jack in conflict. People like Charlie, Claire and Shanon really don’t have much to do anymore.

The character who suffers most is Kate, who exists as a wedge to exacerbate conflict between Locke and Jack. It frustrates me to see Jack not let her carry the dynamite for no apparent reason, other than the fact that she’s a woman. It’s a not so subtle sexism that is never really addressed by the show, and diminishes her as a character. Already, most of the female characters are pretty weak, and taking away all her agency makes that even worse. When she says she’s going down the hatch with Locke, it’s not about her action, it’s about Locke winning in his fight against Jack.

It also bothers me that everyone seems so scared of the hatch. On one level, yeah, it’s a mystery on an island with a lot of bad stuff. But, if you’re in the jungle with no hope of escape, a man made structure would seem like the best thing you could hope for, a chance to get back home. I guess I fall on Locke’s side of the argument, believing that things will work out, and not fearing the unknown.

But, in general, I think the show improved in the second half of the first season, and though they’re very frustrating on some levels, particularly the almost tauntingly slow move into the hatch, the first two episodes of the second season open up a whole new realm of stuff for the show to deal with, and I love all the Dharma Institute stuff, from the mysterious button to the Shining like perfectly labeled food pantry.

And, I really like the questions raised by Desmond’s previous conversation with Jack. I’ve heard vague discussion that time travel becomes a factor in the later seasons, and I would guess that Desmond travels back in time after leaving the hatch to go meet Jack at the stadium a few years back, and create a time loop that leads to Jack going to the island in the first place. But, no spoilers on that.

So, I’ll press on. I watched through 2x09 originally, so I’ll soon be in uncharted territory.

Batman and Robin #1

Morrison and Quitely’s Batman and Robin isn’t anywhere near as profound or majestic a work as their recent collaboration, but it is a really fun comic, that sets out an interesting new status quo for the characters, a shift in approach for the next chapter in Morrison’s great Batman novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed the issue, I think there’s a lot of great stuff in there, but I’ll admit that it didn’t move like the over the top insanity of Batman RIP. What the issue does best is set up a really strong world and a new outré threat for the characters. A lot of that change in feel is due to Quitely’s art, which feels so much cooler and futuristic than the Tony Daniel art on RIP. It’s a new pop world, which needs a different Batman and Robin.

Morrison’s economic characterization is a large part of what makes him so great as a writer in comics specifically. He tells everything we need to know about the Dick Grayson/Damien dynamic from their brief interactions with each other. Damien sees himself as the real heir to the Batman identity, and is supremely self confident, while Dick expresses uncertainty about taking on the identity of his legendary mentor. But, it’s not done in a really emo way because they’ve both got a job to do, and that takes priority.

I admire the artistry of the opening action sequence, or the cool cut away view of their Gotham apartment building, but it wasn’t until the ending that the issue really took off for me. The introduction of The Pyg is really creepy, bringing a horror movie vibe to this otherwise rollicking adventure. Morrison described the series as David Lynch directs the 60s Batman TV show, and that’s the sequence where I really felt that coming to life. This is the same doofy theme villain with a gang of identical henchmen you’d see in the series, but with a creepy twist to it that makes it really disturbing.

The first part of Morrison’s Batman was largely about confronting the horrors within. Everything that Doctor Hurt did to Bruce was designed to send him down a self created spiral of insanity, to destroy Batman’s ability to be Batman. In the series, every criminal that Batman fights is really a prismatic reflection of his own confrontation with death, his own thogal. Hurt is designed to be a deliberately ambiguous worst nightmare ultimate enemy for Bruce. So, he may be Thomas Wayne pretending to be the Devil, he may be the Devil posing as Thomas Wayne, either way, he’s the worst threat that Bruce could imagine.

Morrison played with the idea that Bruce was really the one behind the Black Glove, creating an enemy so strong he could never defeat it as a way of preserving his own purpose. The whole thing was that kind of bizarre psychological journey, and I loved it, but I still respect the change in approach he’s going for here. It’s almost like the change in the identity of Batman necessitates a kind of back to basics fighting crime approach. I’m sure things will become more twisted and psychological as it goes on, but for now, I enjoyed this issue as a fun romp.

Though, I’ll admit the most joy I got from the whole thing was seeing Doctor Hurt holding the keys to Wayne Manor on the teaser page. For whatever reason, that character totally resonated with me. I love his outfit, I love his over the top lust for destruction, and I’m eager to see him come in contact with this new Batman and Robin.

X-Men Documentary

I’ve mentioned earlier on the blog about my in the works Grant Morrison documentary project, but that’s not the only comics documentary in development. I’m also working on one about the history of the X-Men, with a primary focus on the first Chris Claremont run. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to get the chance to film with Claremont, Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti, the three people who presided over the X-Men during its rise in popularity during the 80s. The three of them hadn’t been together in over ten years, and we were lucky enough to be there to film the reunion.

I’ve written a lot about Claremont on here, so it was pretty surreal to be sitting there, watching the three of them talking about working together on those stories, and how they came about. It was really fun to see them talking, particularly when they went through a box of stuff Ann had that had all kinds of artwork from the era, including a bunch of original Art Adams pages, which were just beautiful.

I don’t know that there were any huge revelations, but as someone who loved reading those books, there were a lot of interesting stories detailing specific aspects of their intentions and what happened. But, more than that, it was interesting to hear about the spirit of Marvel at the time. It sounds like it was a really fun place to work, and less of a corporate entity than today. There’s always a tendency to romanticize the past, and I’m sure people like Bendis and Quesada could reminisce in the same way twenty years from now, but the Marvel they described doesn’t sound like the one that exists today.

I’m going to cut together some sample footage and put it online soon, probably not as elaborate as the Grant Morrison trailer, since we don’t have as much footage to work with, but something to check out.

And in terms of the next step in documentary production, we’ve got a few things lined up. In a couple of weeks, I’m heading down to Wizard World Philadelphia, and we’re going to shoot some stuff there for both Grant Morrison and the X-Men projects. Then, in July, it’s out to San Diego Comicon, the mecca of fandom. I’m excited for that, and hopefully we’ll get to interview even more interesting people.

Lost: One More Time

TV used to be the most mass of mass media, but in the past ten years or so, it’s splintered into niches. And, with the rise of the internet, there’s a subset of people who support a bunch of ‘quality’ shows. If you believed the internet, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire and Arrested Development are the most popular shows of all time. I’ve seen most of these internet buzz shows, and loved them. For the short list, refer to shows that get weekly recaps at The House Next Door. As I make my way through Breaking Bad, I think I’ve seen every show that they do weekly recaps for. But, there’s one major one I’ve never finished, one that’s one of the most discussed shows in the blogosphere, Lost.

As I’ve mentioned on here before, Lost is a show that I’ve tried a couple of times, I watched the first season live, then ‘cancelled’ the show. After hearing how great season two was, I decided to watch again and saw about ten episodes before giving up again. The show always sounds amazing, like exactly the sort of thing I want to see, but there’s always a mess of structural issues that prevent me from enjoying it. That said, once again, hearing vague things about this most recent season that sound amazing, and after some solid recommendations, I was thinking about giving it another shot. Then, watching JJ Abrams’ Star Trek film turned me around on him, and I decided to give the show one more try, and watch it all from the beginning.

As of now, I’m twelve episodes in, and liking it, but also still feeling a lot of the issues I had with it the first time through. I first watched the show on a 13 inch TV, or my computer monitor back in college. Now, I’ve got a 58 inch HDTV, and the thing that really jumped out was how great the show looks. The locations they have are gorgeous, and put pretty much any other show on TV to shame. Even when the stories aren’t working so well, there’s some really nice stuff to look at, and the show is always shot in an exciting way.

My central complaint about the show the first time through was the narrative structure, with its reliance on flashbacks to develop the characters. For the first few episodes, I was like, why did I hate this so much? The first Kate flashback is a solid story, and “Walkabout” is still great, even knowing the end twist. Those stories do a great job of setting up the mindset of the characters, without trying to resolve everything in a neat little short story structure. Jack’s flashback works really well also, because it’s just a sketch, not an attempt to tell a whole story, and it’s a nice contrast to his persona on the island. That said, that episode is where the flashbacks start to fit a bit too neatly into the events on the island, it’s one thing to parallel the stories, but the more implicit the parallel the better.

Things go awry in the first Sayid and Sawyer flashback episodes. Sawyer’s doesn’t work because of an ending that takes away all his edge, and makes no sense. We’re supposed to believe a hard edged con man not only leaves the $160,000 he stands to make, but also his own $140,000 simply because a kid walks into a room. If he’s conning rich wives, I think he’s conned families with kids many times before. The story would have worked just as well, if not better, by having him still take the money, thus giving him somewhere to grow on the island.

Sawyer is a problematic character because he’s meant to be a morally ambiguous badass, but winds up coming off like the Fonz, a network TV idea of a bad guy, one who really has a heart of gold. At first, he seems to recognize there are no rules on this island, and he can control things if he wants, but after the lame flashback story, and his inevitable capitulation to Jack and crew, he becomes a paper tiger, with no real spine. Sawyer/Jack/Kate is a riff on the classic Spike/Angel/Buffy archetypal triangle, or the bad boy vs. good guy for morally ambiguous girl, but Sawyer is not as legitimately dangerous as Spike.

And, most of the flashbacks feel kind of same-y. The person is going along, something bad happens to them, they feel bad about it, story ends. Particularly as we enter the second round of flashbacks for characters, the flashback segments feel so unnecessary and just take away from the real reason for watching the show. The flashbacks do reveal some character details, but I’d rather see that development happen in the present, in conjunction with the forward motion of the narrative.

Now, you could argue that all these criticisms are actually part of “the plan.” The reason so many of the flashback stories feel similar is that this group of people were all chosen for a reason, they all have pain in their pasts that need to be resolved in some way on the island. That’s what’s hinted at in “Raised by Another,” where the psychic ensures that Claire was on the plane. And, perhaps there will be some mindblowing revelation that will place all the flashbacks in a new context, and make it clear why time was spent on them.

But, that gets to the core problem with the Lost viewing experience. The show is based almost entirely around questions. Why are they on the island? Who are the others? What’s in the hatch? And, that makes the actual in the moment viewing experience almost less important than the speculation about where things are going. The flashbacks are problematic because they detract from time that could be spent on present day character development that would flesh out more about people feel about their new lives on the island. I’d rather see fifteen minutes of people just living their lives in a new way each episode than spend time on the flashbacks.

And, ultimately, the answers to these questions don’t matter. A TV show is about the experience of watching it in the moment, and I think the writers here sometimes forget that. Even if it does piece together wonderfully, will my retroactive enjoyment of these episodes make up for the frustration in this moment. There’s a line between an investment in a series and just wasting your time. I enjoy the show enough in the moment to persevere, but a large part of that is my curiosity to see what happens in the newer seasons, which sound great.

Lost is all about making you ask what happens next, while I think the best TV shows are more about the why than the what. But, I’m going to stick with it, and see how things develop. I am eager to get past the episodes I’ve seen and see what went down from the backhalf of season two on.

Top Ten Grant Morrison Works

Since everyone’s doing it, I figured I might as well jump into the fray and offer my own Grant Morrison top ten list. It’s not definitive, but this is how I feel about the stuff now…


10. Batman - To speak what may seem like a heresy to some, Morrison’s Batman before Tony Daniel are some of my least favorite comics of his, but starting with the three part torture chamber arc, the run took off into some of the most exciting, darkly psychedelic Batman stories ever told. I totally loved All Star Superman, which was released concurrently, but it was so remote and perfect, it was at times hard to even engage with. Morrison’s Batman is a lot messier, the art is nowhere near Quitely, but it was in some ways more exciting, full of weird concepts and surreal moments that brought the character to new, surreal heights. And, I even think Daniel worked for the story being told. His generic Image style only made it even more surreal when Batman rocked the purple and yellow costume, or Bat-Mite made an appearance.

9. Animal Man - Animal Man is another slow starter for me. The first four issues are really weak, and the mid section takes a while to get going, but the final ten issues or so are right up there with the best stuff Morrison’s ever written, emotionally devastating and surreal, the perfect epitaph for phase one of Morrison’s career.

8. Marvel Boy - Midway through The Invisibles, Morrison segued out of his subdued 80s style into a glamorous pop world, and Marvel Boy was all about bringing that pop approach into the Marvel universe. It’s his best collaboration with JG Jones, full of wild ideas, and really great energy. This is the purest dose of Morrison ever to drop in the Marvel U.

7. All Star Superman - This is in a lot of ways the most well realized Morrison work. The art is perfect throughout, and reading it, it’s hard to believe that a story this definitive could be getting released in the present day. It feels like this story always existed, it’s the greatest Superman story in the characters’ entire seventy year publishing run. Issue #10 in particular is a masterpiece.

6. We3 - This work is a perfect collaboration between Morrison and Quitely, each innovating new methods for telling stories in comics. It’s a technical marvel, but the real strength is the emotion. I don’t even like animals, and this really got to me, it’s one of Morrison’s simpler stories, but perhaps his most emotionally potent.

5. Kill Your Boyfriend - A concentrated dose of teenage rebellion, KYB riffs on films like Natural Born Killers and Badlands, while also serving as a meta commentary on The Invisibles. Unlike a lot of GM’s work, it hews closer to the rules of our world, and the characters are recognizable as the kind of people you might meet, or might have been. I first read it at 17 or so, and it tapped perfectly into this need for rebellion, while at the same time criticizing that violent rebellion. And, the Bond artwork is just sublime.

4. New X-Men - I love a lot of Morrison’s DC work, but I think I’m at a disadvantage there because I didn’t grow up reading or loving those characters. I got to know them in his JLA, but there was no inherent change to reading about Martian Manhunter or the Huntress. The X-Men were the characters I loved growing up, and Morrison’s work on the title is the perfect collision of his philosophy and the soapy character based plotting that typified Claremont’s finest work on the title. The art has its ups and downs, but I think it’s the most satisfying of any of Morrison’s long runs on a major superhero title.

3. Seven Soldiers - This is the book that made me love the DCU, and it’s the core experience of this work that helped me appreciate JLA, 52 and Final Crisis. Seven Soldiers is structurally unlike anything else I’ve read, this book is the next evolution of the interactivity of The Invisibles. Fully understanding the book requires detective work to piece the disparate pieces of narrative that are spread across the seven miniseries. I love bits about all of the individual series, but Zatanna in particular was the one that just blew me away, and in four issues made me totally understand and support this character. And, it’s also got some of the best art of any GM work, with each individual artist perfectly complimenting the story they’ve been chosen to tell.

2. Flex Mentallo - Why does Morrison spend so much time writing superhero comics? The answer’s in here, it’s because they’re out there somewhere, trying to move us forward into a better world, and the only way they can talk to us is through the comics. Simultaneously riffing on the complete history of superhero comics, serving as an alternate world biography of Morrison, and a delirious acid trip origin story for the entire universe, this is the definitive statement about why superheroes matter, and what our fictional heroes have to say about our society. It’s also one of the most surreal reading experiences you’ll ever have. And, Quitely instantly proves why he would become Morrison’s most valued collaborator with his dazzling art. Every other superhero comic he’s ever written

1. The Invisibles - No question here. It’s not only my favorite GM work, it’s my favorite work of fiction period. It’s a living, breathing entity that burrows into your mind in a way nothing else can. Morrison has talked a lot about how he lived the events that went into the book, and hearing him talk, it’s clear that even calling this a work of fiction is a bit off. It’s fiction in the way a dream is fiction, a heightened reflection of the world around, mixing real events and fantasies into something totally unique. It’s a great action story, it’s a great character story, and it’s a great mindbending piece of philosophy. The Invisibles changed my life, without it, and played a role in many key decisions that led me to the place I am right now.

1. The Invisibles
2. Flex Mentallo
3. Seven Soldiers
4. Kill Your Boyfriend
5. New X-Men
6. We3
7. All Star Superman
8. Marvel Boy
9. Animal Man
10. Batman

Cannes News

I’ve been following a bunch of news out of Cannes, and despite both films’ mixed receptions, I’m still very excited to see Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, and particularly Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void.

Because he took so long between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, I think people had time to iconicize his first films, and build them up to such a level that no new movie could match them. I think Kill Bill is such a joyous rush of a film, and even a lesser work like Death Proof is full of great moments. He creates unique worlds with his movies, and is one of the few filmmakers where I feel like he’s focused on appreciating every moment of the movie, rather than just telling the story.

Because TV has become such a better means of delivering a longform narrative, cinema has to redefine its place, and do something that even the best TV shows can’t, and that’s make every single moment of the film something interesting. Does Basterds do that? I’ve got no idea, but I’m excited to find out.

But, I’m more excited for Noe’s Enter the Void. I think Noe is one of the two most significant filmmakers since the French New Wave. The other is Terence Malick, who took the de-centralized narrative of 50s art cinema and amplified the emotional engagement through incredibly sensual cinematography and voiceover. Malick’s style was elaborated on by Wong Kar-Wai, and though their films feel similar to each other, they’re totally unlike anyone else’s out there.

Noe certainly draws influences from previous filmmakers, Kubrick in particular, but his films are more radical than pretty much anything in Kubrick’s filmography, the ending of 2001 excepted. Kubrick was obviously a brilliant filmmaker, but Noe, in Irreversible, and it sounds like in Enter the Void, pushes the medium in more radical directions. The thing I love about Irreversible is the way that everything in the film is designed to make you feel the emotions that the characters experience. The spiraling camera and incessant score are all there to put you in a state of mind. The film itself is a drug trip, designed to alter your state of consciousness.

I read reviews where people criticize the narrative or call the film self indulgent, and those are perhaps valid criticisms, but I think they miss the point that, for me at least, a film that is as radical as something like Irreversible is always going to be preferable to a “solid” film that doesn’t try that hard. It’s not easy to innovate like Noe did in that film, but if you’re going to invest the time and money needed to make a movie, at least have something new in mind stylistically.

I want an experience from a movie. I want to be challenged and think in a different way. And, not enough films try to do that. So, even if Enter the Void is a failure, I commend Noe for creating a film where even just reading about it is more exciting than a lot of movies you see. I hope it plays here sometime soon, the New York Film Festival in October is probably the best hope.

Grant Morrison Documentary Trailer!

As I mentioned earlier, I’m currently working on a documentary about Grant Morrison. We shot some stuff last month, and are heading out to San Diego to shoot at Comicon in July. The film is still a ways off, but the first trailer’s gone live on the Sequart Youtube channel. Watch it now…

Dollhouse: Season One

Tonight, we got the announcement that Dollhouse has somewhat surprisingly been renewed for a second season. I was thinking it could go either way, so I wasn’t shocked, but still, for a show that was expected to be cancelled from the moment it was announced, it’s nice to see. More Joss Whedon on TV is always good. And the renewal seems as good an excuse as any to talk a bit about the show, and my mixed feelings about the first season.

Watching the first few episodes, there was the knowledge that even Joss wasn’t totally happy with what the show was doing, and the promise that things would click down the line and really come together. The show definitely improved as it went on, but I also think it remained victim to the same basic issues that were there in the first few episodes, and there in the very premise of the series itself. Most genre shows have a basic conceit that we accept as part of the premise, and if you don’t buy into it, you’re not going to enjoy the show. Watching Buffy, you accept that vampires exist and this girl slays them. People who say things like how can this 100 pound girl beat up men twice her size miss the point of the show.

But, I think nitpicking is more apt in Dollhouse because the show hinges so heavily on the conceit for all its content. In Buffy, the show was never about the vampires, it was about a group of people. And, most shows are that way. The conceit of any series exists as a way to look at life in a different way. Buffy and Six Feet Under are very similar shows in terms of characters arcs and emotional content, despite the seemingly radical differences in premise. But, Dollhouse is very much about its premise, nobody has an ‘ordinary’ life, everyone is connected the Dollhouse in some way, and that makes it hard to relate to any of them.

That’s probably because the show isn’t about ‘growing up’ or ‘family’ or ‘getting older,’ which is what the vast majority of shows boil down to. It’s a show about the Dollhouse, and though the dollhouse has a lot of different metaphorical applications, I find a great deal of distance between the subtext of the show and the text. The show is fascinating on an intellectual level, and I’ve read some great analyses of it, but great art, and particularly great TV, functions on a combination of intellectual and emotional stimulation.

It’s the connection to the characters that makes TV great. I don’t think the vast majority of TV matches the production values or artistic precision of film, but I think in the past ten years, the best of movies can’t even come close to what the best of TV has done. On Buffy, the production values were frequently questionable, but because the characters were so well drawn, I didn’t care. Here, without the emotional connection, all the weaknesses of the show are magnified.

And, I think the season finale is a great example of that. While it’s probably the best episode of the run, it also felt a lot like the weakest Buffy season closing battle, the fight against Adam in “Primeval.” Like with Adam, there’s a lot of nattering on about becoming a god and stuff like that, but ultimately all of that is just thematic layering. It doesn’t have any ties to our emotion. The emotion of the finale should have come from Echo’s confrontation with her ‘true self’ Caroline, but because we don’t really know Caroline, or care about Echo in a deep way, the moment doesn’t quite work. We’ve seen glimpses of Caroline, but not enough to really be concerned about her survival.

Now, you may say that this scene was fantastic because of the way it looked at the self. Are we our mind, or are we our body? Where does the soul reside? Can you put a soul on a hard drive? Those are the questions that arise, and it does work really well as an illustration of that dichotomy, but it doesn’t hit on an emotional level. Even after twelve questionable episodes, the first season of Buffy closed on a more satisfying note with her death and resurrection to battle The Master.

I love thematic and philosophical questions as much as anyone, but I don’t think they alone make a work interesting. Evangelion raises a ton of philosophical questions, but it ties them into character psychology and uses the emotion as a way to illustrate its philosophical considerations. The same is true of The Invisibles, which is as thematically dense a work as out there, but it’s matched up with the over the top pop imagery, and very real emotional content that makes you feel things, not just think about them.

Ultimately, I think the show’s problem is that it totally abandons what Whedon does best, building characters. With no really relatable characters to draw on, the weaknesses in his work become more apparent, chief among them the fact that his shows just aren’t that great on a filmmaking level. Don’t get me wrong, Whedon himself has directed some of the most well constructed TV episodes of all time, chief among them Buffy’s “The Body,” “Restless” and “Once More With Feeling.” These are episodes that just light up the screen and take full advantage of what cinema can do.

But, much as I love them, the fact that an episode like “The Body” stands out so much is an indicator that the show just isn’t that well made on a week by week basis. It’s shouldn’t be so special to have an episode that uses filmmaking techniques to enhance the presentation, that’s what every episode should do. Of course, when Buffy started airing, TV was very different from what it is now. Then, you didn’t get good filmmaking on TV. But, things have changed a lot since then. Shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men are absolutely gorgeous, and shot in a way that’s just great filmmaking. On a lower budget, Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica both have a very strong visual sense and consistently produce beautiful images.

Dollhouse feels like a syndicated action series from the 90s a lot of the time. It’s hard to say exactly what it is, but it just doesn’t work visually in the way those shows do. It feels like a show with not that much of a budget, and in the finale, that was definitely apparent, particularly when the climax consists of people running around a power plant and not really doing anything.

That’s not to say there’s no memorable filmmaking. I loved the Blue Velvet homage with Alpha and Whiskey dancing around the man they were cutting up, it looked great, and felt very cinematic, but not many images jump out like that.

That may not sound too positive, but I did enjoy the show. I think it worked on some levels, and with Joss writing it, the sky is the limit. But, I do think they need to rework the premise a bit, and find a way to create more relatable characters, or to push the ones they do in more extreme directions and explore what being that kind of environment does to a person. Why would DeWitt or Boyd commit their whole lives to this organization? That’s a question that’s never really been answered, and could be a great source of drama and character growth.

But, I do think on a key level, the series is flawed because the premise is too specific. It’s about what it’s about, and doesn’t have the room for emotional relatability that the best show premises do. Now, yes, Dollhouse is about our image conscious society, and how Hollywood creates roles and how our self image is created, but all that is meaningless without an emotional link. And so far, that link isn’t quite there. Perhaps it’ll happen in season two though, I’m glad we’ll get to find out.

How to Watch TV

Over the past ten years or so there’s been a seismic change in the way we consume serialized comic books and TV. Thanks to the rise of trade paperback collections and season DVDs, a lot of viewers are forgoing the initial release and choosing to ‘binge’ on a series after it’s been going for a long time. This can cause issues when a series doesn’t have the support to carry it along during its initial run, but it also leads to a dynamically different experience of the work in question. Some of my favorite TV shows were watched on DVD, and the switch from DVD to weekly release can be pretty jarring.

Side note, it really annoys me when people continually say things like “I don’t understand how they could cancel Arrested Development,” when of course they didn’t watch the show until several years after it aired. Maybe that’s why it was cancelled, since no one actually watched it when it was on. The same is true for Freaks and Geeks, Firefly and countless other shows. These are all great shows, but the reason they were cancelled is because people didn’t watch them.

Anyway, I watched all of How I Met Your Mother’s first four seasons over the past couple of months, and caught up to the point that I could watch the last few episodes live as they aired. When I started the show, there seemed to be a vast world of episodes out there for me, almost four full seasons to go through. I’d read online commentary where people complained about certain episodes, and I was like, chill, it was a decent episode, largely because when you watch a couple episodes at a time, the weaker ones are quickly forgotten and it’s the good moments that linger.

It’s a totally different experience watching a show on a weekly basis. With Battlestar Galactica, I watched the first two seasons in one go, and it wasn’t until I neared the end of season two that I realized there was a good long run of clunkers in there. Because I was just watching the episodes, the individual quality didn’t stand out as much. You see things more in big picture terms. When I watch the show on a week by week basis, each episode was a much bigger deal, and had to not only succeed on its own terms, but also move the overall narrative forward in some kind of meaningful way.

Watching How I Met Your Mother in short succession, I think I got more into the show than I would have watching it week by week. When I watch an episode now, what stands out is how slight the 22 minutes feel. I watch it, but it’s not quite enough time to draw me into the world. I still enjoy the show, but I don’t feel that same connection to it that I did watching a whole bunch in a row.

I think the shows that benefit most from viewing in rapid succession are weaker shows because they become more of a habit. I watched three seasons of Rescue Me in a row on DVD, but quit watching after watching the season four premiere live. Not having the next episode directly available made me realize, I just don’t really care about this show, and I have no particular reason to watch the next one.

I think that in many ways great shows benefit from having a week between episodes. Watching The Sopranos on DVD, it’s almost too much, you don’t realize the full impact of what the show’s doing because you’re racing to get to the next thing. Watching it weekly, you can savor each episode, and really examine what’s going on. The show is rich enough to support that kind of reading. I watched seasons five and six live, and was still really connected to the show, always anxiously awaiting the next episode. But, at the same time, I found the first part of season six much more satisfying on a DVD rewatch. ‘Kaisha,’ the season finale was incredibly frustrating when faced with the prospect of a year without a new episode. On a rewatch, I could appreciate the episode for what it was, and I now see it as a series standout.

Ultimately, I think you get the most out of a TV series when it becomes a hugely important piece of your life. When The Sopranos or Six Feet Under or final season Angel or The Wire were on, a new episode was always a high point of the week, and would leave me eagerly awaiting the next one. But, a lesser show isn’t going to have that kind of commitment and is more just sort of there when watched on a weekly basis.

What is the conclusion? I think watching episodes in rapid succession dulls out the extremes of a series. Your perception is of the whole rather than of the specific pieces, whereas watching a show on a weekly basis, you fixate more on individual elements. And, I think there’s a component of speculation that you don’t get when watching a show all in one go. I pondered and read countless Battlestar theories watching it air live, and someone watching on DVD won’t have the experience.

That said, ultimately a great show is a great show. And, when you watch seven seasons of Buffy is a few months, that can become your life in a way that watching the show weekly never could. I loved watching Buffy all in one go, but at the same time, I would have loved to have seen it live, and I’ll never have that chance.

Wolverine: Origins and Pocket Continuity

I saw the new Wolverine movie over the weekend. Short review is it’s not a particularly good movie, but not as bad as others have been saying. In general, I found the Bryan Singer X-Men movies really overrated, I think it’s really hard to capture the essential appeal of X-Men in a feature film. Chris Claremont was Joss Whedon before Joss Whedon existed, and in the same way that Whedon’s work is most interesting as it sprawls and complexifies, the essential appeal of the X-Men is those long running, convoluted narrative arcs, and the sense of family that develops with the characters over time. You just can’t get that family feeling in a two hour film, certainly not one that’s got to cram in the studio mandated action sequences.

I don’t think Wolverine is as strong as any of the previous three X-Men films, though it’s less glaringly nonsensical than X-Men: The Last Stand. I think the project was flawed at a conceptual level, Wolverine works better as a contrast to the more straitlaced X-Men characters, or as a mentor to a younger member of the team. In this film, as the only hero, everything that makes him unique, the rage, the questionable moral code, is dulled since he’s got to try and tone down Sabretooth and the other crazy mercenaries he works with. I’d have much rather seen a Wolverine film that takes place after the other X-Men movies and follows him and Rogue to Japan, or him and Kitty Pryde on some kind of mission.

But, the film isn’t really that interesting on its own merits. What struck me watching the film was how nebulous continuity is in the context of these ongoing superhero narratives. There’s some obvious departures from comics continuity, having Logan and Victor as brothers, having Gambit save Scott on Three Mile Island, but that sort of thing bothered me less than a lot of stuff that was drawn from the actual comics. I don’t like the idea of Wolverine as someone from 1845, or the notion that he fought in all these wars. I also don’t like the idea of the bone claws in general, I think it ruins a lot of what makes the character who he is. But, these are things drawn from the comics themselves, wouldn’t not having the bone claws violate continuity?

I’d argue that there’s a kind of continuity that supercedes the general accepted continuity, and that’s what I’d call ‘pocket continuity.’ Pocket continuity is essentially the idea that you build your own little universe within the Marvel or DC universe as a whole, and you determine what’s in and out of continuity. It’s somewhat along the lines of hypertime, which said that all stories were true, but the better ones are more true because they’re more enduring. But, in this case, it’s more that you pick and choose the aspects of continuity you like, and decide not to mention the ones you don’t.

Grant Morrison is one of the prime people behind this. Final Crisis ostensibly draws on the entire history of the DCU, but most of its continuity is drawn from Morrison’s own works, or the Jack Kirby Fourth World stuff. Morrison built his own conception of the DCU in JLA and Seven Soldiers, and he goes back to that in FC. Beyond his own work, he draws on the stories he likes, the Kirby stuff, some Geoff Johns Green Lantern material, and discards a lot of the material from Countdown or Death of the New Gods that didn’t mesh with his desired continuity.

I can understand why people get touchy with this. To pick and choose the elements you like can invalidate the notion that this is a linear universe. But, I think it makes for better stories, and a more manageable reading experience. You don’t need to have read seventy years of comics to get Final Crisis, just Morrison’s twenty years of DCU work. Doing this makes for a more auteur centric comic, and a more artistically satisfying one.

Even on Batman, where Morrison made a big deal about the fact that every story happened, it was largely about him picking out the stories he liked from the ‘50s, and drawing on those to tell his own story. You don’t have to read every Batman story to understand it, you just have to read the ones that Morrison decided to bring into his own continuity.

Chris Claremont is another writer who did this, crossing the X-Men over frequently with other books he was writing in the 70s and 80s. He built a little universe where characters like Sabretooth and Mystique floated freely around books that he scripted. Only occasionally would he bring in events from the Marvel Universe as a whole, but if he’s writing Misti Knight or Colleen Wing, they’re fair game for the X-Men.

To go back to the Wolverine movie, I, like every other reader, have built my own vision of who Wolverine is. It’s largely based off the zen warrior Wolverine of mid 80s Claremont and Grant Morrison’s run on the title. This is a guy who’s largely conquered his beserker rages, and is a more self aware character. I found a lot of Joss Whedon’s take on the character a bit off at first, because it deviated from this mode for a more animal, violent Logan. But, I’m sure a lot of people thought that was more true to the character than Morrison’s version.

What I will say is that even though the bone claws are in continuity for the comics, they felt off throughout the whole movie. My conception of Wolverine’s backstory isn’t the one in Origins, film or comics miniseries, it’s of a regular Canadian guy who became a government soldier than an X-Man, not a guy who fought in the Civil War. I don’t think the Origin miniseries is a strong enough story to survive in hypertime, it lacks the visceral power of Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and I’m guessing a few years down the line, it may be retconned away.

That’s the thing I love about the concept of hypertime continuity. It takes into account the reality of superhero writing. In an ever evolving narrative, things don’t necessarily need to be proven false to move out of continuity, they just need to fade away. The good stories stick around, the bad ones fade away. That’s probably why virtually every X-Men story is still riffing on Claremont’s run, or Morrison’s, they’re the people who told memorable stories, the vast majority of 90s writers, not so much.

The Spirit and Female Superheroes

I watched The Spirit on blu-ray a couple of days ago. The film was enjoyable enough, bouncing between some really strong, fun material that was baffling in the way only current era Frank Miller can be, and some scenes that just didn’t work at all. I think it’s totally understandable why the film bombed, and was poorly received, but for me, it was more exciting to watch than most movies out there.

Reading a bit about the film, a lot of people are knocking Miller for his objectification of every single female character in the film, a trope that goes back to his comics work. Miller definitely falls into many standard men writing about women tropes, the virgin/whore dichotomy and identifying a woman by her ass before her face, as well as dressing most of the female characters in a variety of fetishized outfits. But, at the same time, the narrative action in the film is largely propelled by the female characters, and they invariably take center stage over the rather blank slate hero, The Spirit. The Spirit actually does very little, he is bounced between various other characters who define him, be it Ellen who draws him to a normal life, Sand who pulls him towards adventure or even Silken who tempts him towards evil. Essentially, The Spirit himself is placed in the role traditionally held by women in action movies, of being a pawn the other characters use as an excuse to fight each other.

Now, that’s not to say that the film doesn’t have some problematic thoughts on gender roles. The Spirit flirts with everyone he encounters, and is able to have a climactic kiss with Sand, then walk right over to Ellen and be cool with her, even as he flirts with Morganstern at the same time. And, you could argue that the entire film is Miller putting various actresses he finds attractive in outfits he likes and making them fall in love with a blank slate male protagonist. But, in lavishing so much attention on them, they control the film, in a way you very rarely see in a superhero movie.

I’d argue that the film becomes its own kind of feminism, a distinctly male brand of feminism, but valid nonetheless. It reminds me a lot of a Russ Meyer movie, where female characters are presented as objects of visual pleasure, but also become dominant actors in the narrative, and control the movie, lording their power over generic beefcake men who have little personality and no say in how the movie proceeds. Look at the film’s climax, it’s really about Sand vs. Silken, The Spirit and The Octopus are just there to backup their female associate.

Yes, like a Russ Meyer movie, there’s a heavy emphasis on showcasing the beauty and particularly the tits and ass of the female characters, but does doing so invalidate the agency of the female characters? I don’t think they’re particularly fully realized characters, but no one in the film is, you certainly know more about Sand than you do about Denny.

I’d argue if this movie were directed by Joss Whedon, people would look at it very differently. In the same way they can overlook the way he dresses Echo in everything from schoolgirl to dominatrix fetish because Whedon is a self professed ‘feminist,’ they would hail the strong female characters at the center of the narrative, and write off the photocopying an ass bit as just having some fun, or presenting a character with a strong sense of her sexuality. Because Whedon makes such a big deal about being a feminist, it’s a lot easier to accept the contradictions of his work, to accept the fact that a high school girl is presented in a sexualized fashion throughout the first three years of Buffy. Or, look at River on Firefly, a mentally challenged teenage girl who is consistently sexualized throughout the series. Because Whedon is a feminist, it’s okay, but if Miller did the same character, people would find it objectionable.

Now, admittedly tone is a big part of this. Whedon’s work is much more self aware, and pokes fun at its own indulgence, even as it still gives you the pleasure of that indulgence. People don’t seem to realize that ever since Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller has been messing around with the ultra-serious image he had in the 80s and 90s. To criticize All Star Batman, or this film, by calling it self parody, is like criticizing Airplane for having jokes, and not treating its aircraft disaster story seriously. He’s intentionally pushing things to the point of total insanity, and when it works, it’s a lot of fun to read.

More generally, I find it interesting that this film gets so much criticism for the presentation of its female characters, when it’s one of the only recent superhero films to have a female character who’s anything more than just the girl waiting at home, worried about her hero boyfriend. Who’s a more interesting character, Sand Serif or Pepper Potts? Silken Floss or Rachel Dawes? The Dark Knight is a particularly notable offender, using its female character as an excuse for the men to fight, then killing her off to motivate the final act of the story. She’s a cipher, existing solely for plot purposes, with no will or agency of her own. As in many recent films, she’s given her own job, but essentially she’s just there to support the man she’s involved with.

A large part of the problem stems from the fact that there aren’t that many compelling female characters in either the DC or Marvel universes. Thanks to the efforts of Grant Morrison and Greg Rucka, there’s more than there used to be, but they’re still not the brand name characters that can headline a film. Still, I’d love to see Renee Montoya as The Question pop up in a Batman film, or see some kind of standalone movie about Zatanna.

Over at Marvel, there’s a lot of great female characters in X-Men, but very few in the Marvel universe in general, where most of their movies take place. Is The Wasp the best we can hope for in the Avengers movie, a woman who’s best known for being a victim of spousal abuse? In the X-Men though, there’s a ton of great female characters, largely thanks to the effort of Chris Claremont, who much like Joss Whedon, has created a lot of really strong female characters, some of whom are fetishized, but no more than the male heroes were in his run.

Claremont most importantly manages to have a wide variety of female characters in his X-Men run. There’s the Earth Mother goddess type, Storm, there’s the everyday girl Kitty Pryde, the powerful and dangerous Phoenix and many others. Jean Grey or Storm are probably the most well known female superheroes beside Wonder Woman.

The X-Men movies never made Storm really work as a character, and Jean existed largely as an excuse for the Logan/Scott rivalry. There haven’t been that many great female superheroes on screen. The best presentation to date was Catwoman in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. The film has an underlying feminist subtext, but melds it with the narrative such that it never seems preachy. And, the dynamic between Catwoman and Batman, Bruce and Selina, is consistently interesting and challenging. She’s the character with most of the agency, the one who defines their relationship and her own identity. He’s the one who just wants to settle down with her in a big house and have a family.

Again, the character is presented in a sexualized, fetishy way, but I think there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. She’s a fully realized character, who dresses that way for a reason, it’s a means to express something within herself. She becomes a kind of grotesque parody of the sort of “bad girl” that men want. Men want a “bad girl” who’s just bad enough to still be controlled by them. It’s the illusion of a dominant woman. She subverts that by then pushing things further, to the point that her power becomes dangerous to the male order that’s trying to control her.

Compare her role in the narrative to Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight. Selina controls things and actually pushes the narrative forward for her own ends, not just to get together with whatever man she’s interested in. And, though it’s far from the film Batman Returns is, that’s what the women of The Spirit do as well. So, even if you're to say that The Spirit is just pandering to men with its parade of hot women, isn't it better to see hot women who can actually do something and have their own lives, than hot women who exist just to support the male hero?

Caprica: "Pilot" (1x01)

As much as I was excited to hear that the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica was picked up, I had some major reservations. The series is both a prequel and a spinoff, two of the trickiest works to do. The big issue with either of these is that for all the audience you’re attracting by association with the parent work, you’re cutting off potential new viewers, who are already behind in their knowledge of the story universe. And, you’re invariably going to leave some fans of the original series unsatisfied, since you’re not necessarily giving them the things they liked about the original series.

In terms of production circumstance, Caprica is reminiscent of Crusade, the Babylon 5 spinoff that aired shortly after the main series’ conclusion. Crusade, while not an outright awful series, suffers from pretty much all the problems a spinoff can have. Its premise was stuck in Babylon 5 continuity, and based on a TV movie starring the Babylon 5 cast, but it featured no actual Babylon 5 main characters in the show, giving fans and new viewers the worst of both worlds. In addition, the show never really staked out its own identity. Babylon 5 had defined itself as a space series that wasn’t Star Trek, Crusade was like Star Trek in the Babylon 5 verse.

On top of these spinoff issues, Caprica has to deal with the problem with prequels. The Star Wars prequels started the prequel phenomenon and are also exemplary of the problem with most prequels, they’re generally about watching pieces fall into place. Good stories drop you in at the most interesting point, and let things develop from there. If this time was so interesting, why didn’t the original series start here? The people behind the X-Men franchise are just baffling in their choice to do two prequel movies rather than go forward into the future. We all know what will happen to Caprica, why bother watching this series?

Well, thankfully the pilot totally wiped away my doubts about the shows purpose and quality with a standout pilot episode that managed to fit nicely in to the pre-existing BSG universe, but still carve out its own style and feel. The military aspects of BSG were never my favorite, so it was refreshing to be able to explore the issues of identity and humanity without getting bogged down in action scenes every few minutes. This is a more cerebral, introspective show, one that feels very much drawn from the world we live in today. That connection to our world was one of the best things about BSG, and this one draws even more on the beats of everyday life, the struggle to find meaning in a world where awful things happen.

One of my all time favorite film openings is Miami Vice’s drop directly into a nightclub, and I loved the similar opening here, as we instantly find ourselves at an over the top bacchanalia of sex and violence. The DVD only release gives us a bit more nudity and violence than the series itself will likely have, and I think that added bit makes it clear how far this place goes. This is a world without rules or moral consequences, where people can kill and fight and do all the things they secretly want to do, but society won’t allow them to. Why would you spend your time in boring school when you could be doing this?

I think it’s key that Zoe, Lacy and her friends go to an elite prep school and are so wealthy. These are the kind of kids who have no worries in the world, who can do whatever they want, and that’s why they go so far. It’s also why they burn out on it the quickest. They’ve been able to get anything they want in the real world, and now they can have anything they want in the virtual world, Zoe needs a more substantial transgression against authority, and that’s where the notion of the one God comes in.

It’s interesting to see the scene with the investigator and Sister Willow, where the notion of a single god is portrayed as something to be terrified of. In a world with many gods, there is no central authority, morality can be subjective and slippery, a conglomerate of different voices. One god means one truth, and that can also mean an inability to accept other viewpoints.

The episode’s greatest strength is the mood, and the way that the filmmaking establishes this series as its own world. It draws on the style of BSG, but I was instantly engaged on an aesthetic level. Because the show was shot so well, and created this mix of surreal and hyper-real, I was totally engaged through the exposition. It wasn’t a question of waiting to get to the good part of the story, just the images of the club and the world alone were interesting enough to hold my attention.

Once Zoe died, the show took a more contemplative turn, the energy of youth replaced by the regret and sadness of an older generation. Watching Daniel’s excitement at discovering new technology, we can see what inspired Zoe. The two of them are very similar, and it took her death to make him realize that.

That said, the show wasn’t perfect. I think the mob lawyer stuff could lead to some weak standalone episodes in the future. And, the transition of Zoe to cylon was a bit goofy. I think the major question is what is the show about on a weekly basis. Though this is a far better pilot than Dollhouse, I think it’s similar in that it’s got a lot of interesting ideas, but not necessarily a clear narrative drive forward. I’m interested in seeing them continue to explore the universe, and the world of the holo-club and the disconnect between that decadence and the more restrained surface world. But, if it’s just going to be mob drama and stuff like that, I don’t think it’ll work as well.

But, I was very impressed by this episode. It’s a really strong pilot, with a clear identity and sense of place. The cast is great, the production value is pretty high, and I’m eager to see what happens when the show continues in 2010.

Doctor Who: 'Planet of the Dead'

This Easter’s Doctor Who special was, much like the Christmas special that preceded it, a mildly entertaining, but ultimately hollow hour, primarily because of its disconnected feel from the overall narrative of the series. One of the trickiest things in long form serial fiction is making a story feel like it matters. In the case of Who, we know that Tennant is going to regenerate into someone new at the end of these specials, so they serve as an extended curtain call after the massive season four finale.

The primary issue with this episode is that it’s totally without context, and gives us no real reason to invest in it beyond the specifics of what happens on screen. The series gives us a lot of seemingly disconnected standalone episodes, but there we at least have the evolving relationship between the Doctor and companion to keep our interest when the story proper lags. In the case of this episode, we know that the world isn’t going to end, that they’re going to close the wormhole and all will be reset. So, it’s the same exact emotional beats as the Christmas special, leaving us with a sad Doctor alone, with only an ominous warning at his future as any sort of overarching narrative.

I think it’s less true of the old series, but in the current incarnation, the core of the show is the relationship between the Doctor and his companion. Much like The X-Files is ostensibly about scary stories, but is really about the relationship between Mulder and Scully, the various adventures serve as a device to let us get to know the Doctor and his companion better. Each season is defined largely by the chemistry between that specific Doctor and his companion, and without the companion to work with, these specials feel a bit hollow.

That’s no knock on Tennant, who’s as enthusiastic as usual. It’s more a consequence of the fact that no one’s really waiting to see these stories. I’m really curious to see the finale for Tennant, and to see stories with the new Doctor in the Moffat era, but this episode is just a place holder.

The Grant Morrison Documentary

I haven’t posted in a while, but fear not, the examination of important issues in comics and culture has not stopped! The reason for the hiatus has been that I’ve been out in L.A. working on what’s pretty much my dream project, a documentary about Grant Morrison. So, over the last week, we shot three days with Grant, talking with him during an interview that he called the longest interview he’d ever done. That interview will form the base of the documentary, which will also include some footage of stuff that I shoot as subjective interpretation of the stuff he’s saying, images from the comics, and hopefully some additional interviews with his collaborators and things like that.

It’s a pretty strange thing to meet the guy who’s pretty much been my idol since I first read The Invisibles seven years ago. How can the reality of the man possibly live up to the image I’ve built up in my head? To some extent, the answer to that question is the core of the documentary. There’s been so much written about what Morrison was going through during The Invisibles, but I had very little sense of the life he’d been living since the series ended, and I think we found out the answer to that. He’s not the crazy drug taking magician of the 90s, he’s a different guy now, and finding out who that person is is a big part of what the doc is about.

I don’t want to go too in depth about what we talked about, since that’s what the documentary is for, but I can say that the interview process was pretty interesting. I would ask a question, and he’d typically talk for five to ten minutes, then we sort of organically moved to the next topic. He answered a lot of questions I’d been wondering about, including such random current ones as the purported 80 page Seven Soldiers script and the exact identity of Doctor Hurt to more general stuff like a look inside his much vaunted notebooks.

I had a great time doing the filming, and I think the man lived up to the image I had of him in my head. He wasn’t exactly as I imagined, but in the transition from myth to human being, the magic lingered on. Anyone who can talk for six hours and leave you wanting more has a way about him. And, between a literal translation of his work like Key 23 and work inspired by his like Universal Traveler and The Third Age, I think I can make some really interesting visuals to match his words.

The documentary’s going into the editing room now, and I’d expect to see it released sometime in 2010. I’m really happy with the way everything we shot turned out, and am looking forward to getting in there and cutting it up and making something as challenging and exciting as one of his comics.