Time: An Agent of Change in Fictional Reality

This was a paper I wrote for a class called "It's About Time." The class was pretty bad, but the paper assignment was write about something that involves time, so I got to do this piece. Enjoy...

In works of fiction, the passage of time can change a character’s life, and travel through time can alter the world the characters live in. However, few works examine the nature of time itself. The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Watchmen by Alan Moore, use their fictional universes to explore the implications of the idea that time is not a uni-directional arrow, rather all times, past and present, exist simultaneously.

All works of fiction allow the viewer to experience time from a 4-D perspective, free of the linear flow of time that binds us in our real lives. The first read or viewing of a work is analogous to three-dimensional time perception. We are not aware of what will happen to the characters, and experience the work in a linear fashion, moving from beginning to end, much like we live our lives.

However, after this first viewing/reading, the reader can return to the work and view it with foreknowledge of what will happen to the characters. You can open a book to whatever page you want, or fast-forward a film to a specific moment, traveling freely though the time continuum. In doing so, you are able to experience time from a 4-D perspective, viewing all of time as one pre-existing continuum, with no past or future, just the present one chooses to experience.

There are works that deliberately alter the linear passage of time, such as the film Irreversible. In this film, events unfold backward, starting with what is chronologically the last event and eventually ending up at the earliest. Irreversible is the story of a woman who is raped, prompting her boyfriend to seek revenge. Revenge drama such as this has been the subject of countless films, however in reversing the sequence of events, director Gaspar Noe is able to alter the audience’s perception of the events that occur. The film opens with two men beating someone to death with a fire extinguisher, the brutality of the violence instantly disturbing. As we move back in time, we see the catalyst for their actions, the rape of Alex, and are able to understand why they murdered that man. But because we viewed the event out of the emotional context, we can understand that seeking revenge has only succeeded in destroying even more lives, the violence begetting more violence.

The film ends and begins with a title reading ‘Time Destroys All,’ and in the case of this film that’s certainly true. By the end (the events at the beginning) the lives of three main characters are completely shattered, a disturbing contrast from their happy, hopeful existences before these things occurred. The structure of the film encourages us to view these events outside of a traditional linear time continuum, the knowledge of what will happen in the future coloring our view of the past. Notably, though the narrative progresses backwards, there is no indication that the events occur in flashback, rather every moment is the present, we’re just shown things outside of the linear continuum.

If time destroys all, and certainly we are all headed for death eventually, the only way to overcome this destruction is to exist outside of time. Transcending the idea of time as an inevitable projection forward, we get to the idea that there is no past or future, instead all moments exist simultaneously, so that the past and future all already exist, and every moment that ever happened is happening now. This conception of time is explored in the works of two graphic novelists, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

It is appropriate that they have chosen the comic book as the medium in which to explore this view of time. Assuming all time exists simultaneously, the physical comic book serves a perfect representation of this. We can flip through the book and see each moment, frozen in time as a single panel, existing independently of the time progression that one experiences when reading the book. It is easy to go from the end of the book to the beginning, and travel back through time in the process. This means that even if a character dies at the end of the book, they still exist, we just flip to an earlier page and they are alive again. The reality is dependent on which moment one chooses to experience.

With The Invisibles, Morrison set out to make a series that would reveal the secrets of the universe, taking on material with a very broad scope. While working on the first volume, he had an “abduction experience,” in which he claims to have been taken outside of time and shown the nature of the universe. Morrison claimed “it was like Shakespeare’s just over there, and the dinosaurs are around the corner from him, but you can see them.” (Neighly, 241) This conception of time became central to the series’ cosmology, and Morrison used the book as a way to process the abduction experience.

Obviously, it’s impossible to verify whether this experience is a legitimate peak behind the curtain at the workings of time, a hallucination, or a story designed to build his image and sell more books. However, for the purposes of this analysis, it is useful in the context of how it influences the fictional universe he creates.

The abduction experience is the model for a sequence from the book’s second to last chapter, in which one of the characters, Jack, is taken outside of the linear time continuum. Removed from the limits of three-dimensional perception, Jack sees himself as a ‘timeworm,’ his motion represented by a trail of himselfs existing simultaneously at all moments in the past. This image is designed to simulate 4-D perception for the reader. If every moment is simultaneous, that would mean that a version of every person exists at all those moments in time, so one’s entire life could be seen on this line, a progression from childhood to adulthood to death.

The next panel depicts what Morrison claims to have seen, people from different eras of time pass each other in the same space. Essentially what these images show is one space at all times. So, we see someone from the present as well as someone from World War I and others, all represented as ‘timeworms,’ their past actions receding off into the background.

These panels also contain the crucial philosophical idea of the series, the notion that time exists to allow humanity to grow and better itself. Time is change and without the passage of time we would have no opportunity to improve ourselves. Time may destroy all things, but at the same time, it is only through the passage of time and destruction of the old that we can grow. This idea is conveyed in skewed 4-D speech, “Time is soil and for nourish larvae and grown in,” essentially humanity is in a larval state and it is only through the passage of time that we can evolve into something greater. (Morrison, 254) According to the series, the entirety of human existence is one time continuum designed to bring us to the point where we can make an evolutionary jump.

As a result, much of the series became concerned with issues surrounding time and perception, most notably the segments of volume two concerning the building of a time suit. At this point, we learn that one of the series’ main characters, Robin, has actually traveled back in time from 2012, using a timesuit constructed by Takashi, a scientist whose younger self she meets in the present. We see her in 2012, speaking to older versions of characters we know from the present, before she is sent back on her mission. They assure Robin that she will do well. Her mission is guaranteed to be a success because it has already happened.

So, in this conception of time travel, events can never be changed. Robin’s actions in our present will not alter the future because in the future they have already happened. This is different than something like The Terminator films or Back to the Future, where the use of time travel devices rewrites the present, essentially wiping out the world that the characters traveled from. In the cosmology Morrison constructed, this is not possible. Robin’s actions cannot alter the future because she is living in a future built through her actions. Since all time exists simultaneously, her actions in the past have already occurred.

This presents a question inherent in 4-D time theory. It has been a conundrum since the dawn of thought: do we have free will or our actions already decided? This is addressed in the final page of the series when Jack speaks directly to the reader refuting the entire question of free will. He says “there’s no difference between fate and free will. Here I am; put here, come here. No difference, same thing.” (Morrison, 285) Even if all of time is written, at some point, we make every choice and that means that when we pass through time, we are not following a plan, we are inventing reality with every decision. If all time is simultaneous, every action we take has already created a new world.

For Jack, the issue of free will is resolved there, but for Jon a.k.a Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, the power of 4-D perception alienates him from a linear world. Jon was an ordinary person transformed into a god-like being through a lab accident. Jack claims that fate and free will are the same thing, yet this would not be true if one was able to vie the future events. This is what John can do, he perceives all time simultaneously, so whatever moment he’s in the time continuum, he’s aware of the actions that he and others will take in the future. This locks him into a fatalistic worldview, summed up when he says “We’re all puppets, I’m just a puppet who sees the strings,” implying that no one has choice, we’re all just playing out a predetermined sequence of events.

Forced to live life with this perspective, he grows increasingly distanced from humanity. After Kennedy’s assassination, people ask him why he didn’t stop it. They cannot understand his perception. He does not see future events in the sense of something that has not yet occurred, he sees events that have occurred already and he has no choice but to enact the role that has been laid out for him. So, the very fact that Jon knows Kennedy will be assassinated means he is powerless to stop it
The most striking representation of Jon’s perception occurs in the fourth chapter. The chapter begins after Jon flees Earth for sanctuary on Mars. He sits staring at a photograph of himself before the transformation and though the chapter takes place over only a few minutes, Jon’s perception in these moments encompasses his entire life. Staring at the photo, he returns to the moment when it was taken, not the memory of the moment, but the moment itself. At the same time he is sitting on Mars, he is a child dreaming of being a watchmaker, he’s a physicist doing an experiment and he’s in Vietnam, fighting for the army. All the moments are the same for him, an infinity of simultaneous presents. Holding the photograph he counts down in his head to the moment when the photograph will fall and he will move on. He knows it will happen because it has already happened; his life is devoted to acting out predetermined events.

The storytelling here is striking because the interweaving of different times makes the reader experience the same sense of time out of joint. The moments blend together, all of them carrying a stark inevitability. Seeing Jon walk into the reactor, we know that it will result in him being transformed, and yet are powerless to stop it. So, the reader observes these events of the past in the same way that Jon lives the present. It is this feeling of imprisonment in time that distances Jon from humanity. He is more interested in the grandeur of Mars’ landscapes, in the stunning construction that brought them to life than in the insignificant tribulations of humanity.

The frustration that one could feel interacting with Jon is apparent in chapter nine, when Laurie is taken to Mars. Jon goes to her and says that they have an appointment, essentially he has seen in the future that at this moment they will come together to talk, and as a result, he goes to Earth to find Laurie so the conversation can occur. Similarly, he already knows what they will talk about, and tells her, and she commits to not fulfilling his plan, proving him wrong. Yet, unintentionally she does end up saying exactly what he said she would, foreknowledge of what she will do does not prevent her from still doing it. Speaking with someone so distant is difficult for her, his coldness a stark contrast to her emotional vulnerability at that moment. She rails at Jon, but he coldly tells her that this is just what happens, what she was always going to do, and the implication that she has no choice in the matter is an affront to her humanity. Existing outside of the uncertainty of human existence, Jon finds it difficult to connect with ordinary people.

The end of their discussion causes a major change in Jon. Laurie breaks down upon realizing that the man who raped her mother years earlier is actually her father and in this moment, Jon realizes that though humans may be trapped in these linear patterns, the series of events that must occur to create any given person are extraordinary. He imagines all the generations of people who would have had to meet at a specific time to bring about Laurie’s conception. He concludes that each human being takes such an improbable confluence of forces to exist that they are all miracles, and it is only the fact that there are five billion miracles walking around that makes us forget this fact.

So, Manhattan takes a renewed interest in humanity, recognizing, much like Jack, that even though everything is already written, with each moment we live we still write it. That’s the essential paradox of 4-D time theory, if all time exists simultaneously, that would imply that all our decisions have already been made, yet at the same, because there is no past or future, that means that every moment is now and every decision is critical. With each moment we have the chance to choose a new future, and it is these decisions to break from the expected and do something novel that can allow someone to reinvent their own reality.

At the end of the book, a tachyon generator causes John’s perception of the future to become unclear. Tachyons are objects that travel faster than the speed of light. According to special relativity, objects moving faster than the speed of light experience time distortion, so it’s logical that a prevalence of these objects would alter Jon’s perception of the future. (Encyclopedia Britannica) As a result, for the first time in years he experiences uncertainty, and exults in the fact that he does not know what will happen to him next.

This joy gets to the core of one of the major issues concerning the idea that all time exists and we just view it in a linear fashion. If this is true, that means that were we able to view everything simultaneously, as Jon did, we would lose the mystery and uncertainty of life. Jack is taken outside of time and shown how time functions, but he is not shown his own future. When he returns to linear time, he is aware of the fallacy of temporal perception, but is not able to perceive outside of it. For Jon, the fact that he can perceive all time is a curse, he is unable to be emotionally present in any particular moment, because he is always existing simultaneously in the future and past.

Existing in this timeless state would result in an inability to grow. It is only through experience that we can change, to already possess all experience and be aware of it at once would mean being a constant being, set in a specific mode of thought, as Jon was. But is there a way to have this long form view of time and also be connected to the world, able to alter events through choices?

This question is addressed in the events surrounding John a Dreams from The Invisibles. John was a regular person living a life in the linear continuum until he encountered a timesuit and was turned into a 5-D being. What is a 5-D being? To consider this hypothetical, we must first look at Morrison’s conceptions of reality. The characters in the book are two dimensional, but we exist in a three dimensional reality, and have the power to manipulate their time, see their entire lives in one moment. So, imagining that we are in the book’s reality, which exists as a 3-D space, a 4-D being would be one who had full temporal perception and the ability to shift between moments on the continuum.

So, when Robin wears the time suit, she is able to shift from a version of herself in 2012 to a version of herself in 1988. From her perspective, time begins with her birth in 1988 and proceeds until 2012, at which point she is sent back in time to 1988 as an adult, and then lives until 1998, at which point she is thrown past the end of 3-D time in 2012 and her consciousness is raised to a new level of awareness. However, viewing things from a 4-D perspective, Robin never actually travels through time, it’s essentially that two versions of her exist from 1988 to 1998. The original, child version of her is still there, growing up, moving towards 2012, but there’s also the older version. In New Mexico in 1996, Robin sees the younger version of herself from a distance, while Robin at 8 sees the woman who she would one day become. So, it’s not like she moved to the future then came back to alter the present, it’s that she was always there.

Anyway, this 4-D perspective would afford us the luxury to view things from outside of time. What would a 5-D perspective do? According to the book, it would allow someone to alter both time and space. When Robin goes into the timesuit in 1998, she is thrown into the future, beyond time, and the suit is refracted back to the Philadelphia church, in the form of a 5-D being, which John and King Mob come across in 1993. John is taken into the suit and is missing for most of the book.

Touching the suit, he became a 5-D being, someone who exists outside the context of individual identity.
One of the critical tenets of Morrison’s philosophy is the idea that humanity is in actuality one large organism, with each human being like a cell. However, because the cells have separate identities we are unable to function at their higher level, held down by the human weakness that keeps us separate. The entire purpose of our existence on Earth, of the existence of every person who has ever lived, is to move us closer to unification into this one larger organism, moving to a mass higher consciousness. Much like our body is composed of individual cells, which work together to create the person, each human would be part of a larger global entity.

Regardless of the validity of this idea, this goal is crucial to understanding Morrison’s construction of John as a being outside of time and space. When he goes into the timesuit, his identity as an individual is destroyed and he becomes essentially an agent of progress that exists as pure consciousness. John takes on a number of guises to interact with the characters and move them to the point where they will make the decision that will lead to humanity forward. The idea is that existence is a game with an ultimate objective, and John exists as someone who can manipulate the pieces to ensure that the objective is achieved. So, John shows Jack the structure of time in the guise of the blind chessmen, and this is what allows Jack to make the leap in consciousness that ultimately contributes to the 2012 event, and at the same time, John is wearing the guise of George Harper fighting alongside Jack a year later for the same goal.

So, unlike Manhattan, John a Dreams is not a prisoner in time, instead he is an agent taking on various personalities at different points in the continuum to bring about a desired end. He can see and experience all, but it does not contain him. He shapes how events will proceed through his actions. John actually has the ability to alter the future by moving freely through 4-D space, influencing the characters to bring about a desired goal. The best metaphor is to use is that of a writer. If a gun is needed in the third act of a play, it’s easy to revise the start and place a gun on the wall in the first act. John has the ability to move through time and ensure that the gun is present beforehand so it can fire when needed.

This leads us to the question of intelligent design, something that Jon also ponders. If all time already exists, was it shaped by some higher hand to bring about the world we live in now? Is time really soil for humanity to grow and flourish in, or does it just exist, our actions essentially meaningless. For Morrison, our actions do have a higher meaning; the suffering of humanity is a necessary step to make us stronger on our journey towards the jump forward. Moore’s view, at least in Watchmen, is that humanity is subject to time and as a result, we must simply enjoy the moments that we do have, the uncertain future proving our humanity

These works of fiction both explore the scientific and philosophical questions that arise from the idea that all time is simultaneous. Through the characters, the authors are able to convey their own philosophical musings on the nature of time and humanity’s place within it. While both work within contemporary scientific paradigms, they are each more concerned with the effect of theoretical physics concepts on individual characters. By choosing to present their philosophy within the medium of serial graphic fiction, each of the writers has chosen a medium that is uniquely capable of illustrating the points they seek to illustrate, and gives the audience an idea of what it would be like to exist outside of the linear time continuum.

Crusade: 1x09-1x11

Crusade continues in much the manner as it was going, with a mix of strong and okay episodes. However, I’m starting to lose patience with it, a few arcs keep me interested, but the fact that it isn’t going anywhere does affect the viewing experience. I’d imagine it was different for first time viewers, who had gone a year without Babylon 5, an episode like ‘The Rules of the Game’ must have been positively ecstatic, at last returning to the station where it all started. However, now, I was there a couple of months ago, and while it’s nice to be back, the nostalgia factor isn’t quite enough to make all the episodes work.

‘Each Night I Dreamt of Home’ does have an ace up its sleeve in terms of nostalgia factor, the return of Doctor Stephen Franklin, whose dramatic entrance is spoiled a bit by seeing his name in the credits. Still, it’s nice to have him back even if he is stuck behind glass the entire episode. His presence brings to the fore one of the issues with the series, we know that the Drakh plague won’t actually destroy Earth, we’ve already seen Stephen twenty years in the future in ‘Sleeping in Light.’ This doesn’t kill the tension, but it’s an out for the audience, we know the happy ending is coming, it’s just a matter of getting there.

The episode itself is pretty good, particularly the climax which cuts between a space battle and Franklin’s attempt to save the other guy. That said, the Drakh still look goofy here, not matching the darkness of their appearance in the latter days of Babylon 5. That guy who stuck the keeper in Londo was a scary dude, these ones, not so much.

I want to take a second to address the uniform issue. With this viewing order, they switch frequently, and it’s baffling to me that people seem to prefer the grey and red ones to the blank uniforms. The grey and red ones don’t look good, and even if the black ones were TNT imposed, they were a good choice. Maybe I’m confused with the different episode orders and people actually like the black ones, I know I do.

Anyway, ‘Patterns of the Soul’ is up next, an episode that reunites Dureena with some more of her people and gives us a guest appearance from Brian Thompson, a.k.a The X-Files’ Alien Bounty Hunter. This episode doesn’t work so well. They try to do good work with the planets, but ultimately they wind up feeling stagy, Battlestar Galactica’s tact of going out into the woods creates more convincing alien worlds. But, I don’t think there’s one shot in the entire Babylon 5 universe that was actually taken outside the studio.

I don’t really have too much to say about this one, these episodes all sort of blend together, even moreso than early B5 did. That’s largely because the plots are very similar, go to an alien planet that might have a cure for the plague, find out they don’t, move on. That’s the problem with the series, and even if they would cure the plague in season two, we’ve still got a bunch of similar ones here.

The final episode features that aforementioned return to Babylon 5. This was a fun episode, largely because we actually get some strong character moments, for both Lochley and Gideon and for Max. Lochley and Gideon are a lot of fun together, both totally committed to the job, but secretly wanting each other. Their relationship is a lot more believable than much of what we saw on B5, and it helps to humanize both characters. I’m assuming this would have been a major thread in the series, considering Tracy Scoggins place in the opening credits.

It’s good to be back on B5, even if this does end up feeling a lost Babylon 5 episode. That’s not a bad thing though, obviously it wouldn’t work long term, but checking in for an episode is great. I’d have liked to seen Dureena off ship, but the limited cast does allow for a closer focus on the characters who are in each episode.

So, with two episodes to go, I’m not expecting any sort of resolution. The show has a lot of potential, but being cut down so early meant that none of these episodes are leading anywhere. JMS is a writer who’s all about buildup, it’s possible stuff we saw here would pay off in great, unexpected ways. Certainly I wouldn’t have expected all the elements of B5 season to come back like they did, but we’ll never know. It’s not the fault of the people making the show, but it comes off as a kind of pointless viewing experience. But, as a way to ease out of B5, it’s nice. And, perhaps the Lost Tales stuff will bring back some lost Crusade plots. The issue isn’t so much a lack of resolution, it’s that we didn’t even get to the point where there’s plot points to be resolved.

Weekend Update

A New Blog Order

Well, as you might have noticed, The Invisibles blog series has concluded. I think it was successful, I learned a lot about the series, and had a lot of fun reading it through again. I was looking up some Invisibles stuff on Google and kept finding my own posts, so hopefully it will stand as a long term resource for people reading through the series. I'm going to make an index page for easy linking. Along with the end of The Invisibles, we're approaching the end of another long term project, the Babylon 5 blog series. I've got two more on Crusade and then one on Legend of the Rangers, then that's over. And, for the first time since November, I'll have no long term blog project. What this means is I can write up more films and general stuff, get back to the way things were before 2007. I know I have some people who haven't read The Invisibles or watched B5, and all I can say is keep the RSS feed, we'll be getting some more stuff of general interest coming up.

Concerts

Part of that will be a lot more concerts. I'll be back in New York starting next week, and have a bunch of shows lined up for the next couple of weeks. I can get into a bunch of shows free due to my Blog Critics writing, so I'll be able to go to even more than I normally would. Here's my upcoming agenda...

5/31 - !!! @ Studio B
6/1 - Cansei de Ser Sexy @ Irving Plaza
6/5 - The Pipettes @ Highline Ballroom
7/1 - The Polyphonic Spree @ Warsaw
7/4 - The New Pornographers @ Battery Park
7/20 - DJ Tiesto @ Hammerstein
8/9 - Daft Punk @ Coney Island

And I'm sure there'll be a bunch more in there as stuff comes up.

Series Enders

Two series that I've blogged about here in the past have come to an end, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, both have fallen from my esteem this season. Veronica never actually had that much of my esteem, I watched the first two seasons on DVD, where they flowed smoothly and had enough momentum to bring me to the conclusion. But, this year I lost track of things and stopped watching around midseason. I have no particular desire to see the rest, and am not sad to see the show cancelled. Honestly, you can't say they didn't give a chance. Any show that makes it to three seasons and doesn't catch on can probably go. And, this isn't a case like Arrested Development where it got awful time slot shuffling. They put it after the highest rated show on the network and it still didn't make it.

As for Gilmore Girls, I've seen through episode 16 of the season, and will likely finish it soon. But, it just doesn't feel like the same show without the Palladinos, and as such, the show I knew ended last season. I'm one of the few people who loved season six of the show, and I'd have loved to see where the Palladinos planned to take things. Oh well, at least the show had a good run. When I do finish it up, I'll write up the last couple and give some reflections on the series as a whole.

The Invisibles: Our Sentence is Up.

May 2002: I am seventeen, a junior in high school, I buy the first Invisibles trade, Say You Want a Revolution. I read it, and buy the next one soon after. In chemistry class, I look up reviews of the series from when it was released. ‘Best Man Fall’ hooks me, this series is something special.

November 2002: I finish the series, six issues in one night. I will spend the next six months processing what I read, spreading the series around and figuring it out.

May 17, 2003: I am with my friends Brian, Jon and Jordan. We have just seen The Matrix: Reloaded, and stay up late talking about the film and how it relates to The Invisibles. I have just finished high school, just read From Hell, I am full of ideas.

November 2003: We meet again, first time I’ve seen them since going off to school. We meditate, trance. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing something genuinely magical and profound. We talk about the series and life until 5 AM. This marks the end of the series’ possession of my consciousness. I still love it, and it impacts on me, but not in the way it did for a year after finishing it.

May 17, 2007: I finish reading the series for the third time. Those final pages still have a mystery about them, I am once again awed by what Grant has done with the series.

May 19, 2007: It’s my birthday. I am twenty-two years old. In ten days, I will graduate from college. I am writing the final post in my sixty post long analysis of The Invisibles. It goes like this…

Understanding The Invisibles requires a different approach than most texts, one that I don’t think most people are prepared for. I certainly wasn’t ready for what it would do to me, the way it would dominate my thoughts. I thought of fiction as entertainment, it can inspire you, but I never thought it could change you. This one did, but it also taught me that a lot of fiction is about what you put into it. The deeper you dig, the more layers you reveal. The first time through, I had to dig deep just to understand the series, to fit all the pieces together.

The second time I read the whole series, it didn’t make as big an impact. Part of it was that I had mythologized it in my mind, built it up as the greatest thing ever, and no book could live up to that, even the greatest thing ever. That’s why I chose to blog each issue this time through, so that I would reinterrogate the series, examine the pieces that baffled me the first time, and look at it close, like a first time reader. It’s been a lot of fun to do, and I think it’s helped me get a better understanding of the series, and its relation to who I am at this moment in time.

To wrap things up, I’ll take a quick jaunt through ‘And We’re All Policemen,” the short story that follows King Mob into the supercontext. This isn’t my favorite piece of The Invisibles, it’s basically an extended Gideon Stargrave fantasy, but one that lacks the condensed cool of the ‘Entropy in the UK’ stuff.

The entire universe we see here is generated in the moments between King Mob’s embrace of Robin and his submersion into the collective reality of the supercontext. This is what he paints onto his blank canvas for the farewell to his own individuality. In ‘Arcadia,’ King Mob claimed that their goal is to make it so that everyone gets the world they want. This is what that’s all about, everyone passes to the same supercontext, but they do it in a way that’s pleasing to them.

For King Mob, that fantasy is a hyperpop sci-fi world of beautiful women who can do anything he wants, media saturated in a liberated hypersexuality, total freedom to be pop and fun. Here, the authority figures are pompous and absurd, weird stuff happens and no one particularly cares. That’s just the way things are. And, as the world ends, giant models stalk the city and the world adores him, flashbulbs bringing about an apocalypse that ushers him into the supercontext, but not before one more moment with Robin.

It’s got some fun moments, but ultimately is a bit too media saturated to be enjoyable. You spend so much time reading these captions that you never get to settle into reality. Of course, that could be a reflection of what King Mob wants, and in that respect, more power to him. If King Mob’s fantasy ends in these flashbulbs, it’s likely that what we see at the end of 3.1 is actually Jack’s entry into the supercontext, just blank, snow falling and a return to Barbelith. He doesn’t have the same shallow desires as everyone else, he just wants to return home.

That’s where all the characters end, wherever you want them to, at least until the possible Invisibles followup book Grant’s mentioned a couple of time. I’d love to see all the characters one more time, in something along the line of Sandman’s Endless Nights. That book was ultimately not that satisfying, primarily because we didn’t know the Endless that well, so it was just a bunch of short stories. Those kind of reunion projects work best with developed characters, and there’s countless people in The Invisibles I’d love to see again. I’d love to see more of Jack and Fanny making their cell, I’d love to see more with Edith, particularly between the 20s and her old age, I’d love to see some Division X, some stuff with Mason and Robin in 2009. There’s a lot of stuff there that he could fill in, and from a meta level, it’d be interesting to consider the impact of the series on the world as a whole.

I think the great difficulty with applying the series to reality is the intrusion of 9/11 into our culture. That brought about this period of conservatism and us/them logic that we’re still struggling to overcome. Look at Bush, nearly everything he says is Archon rhetoric. Doesn’t he know that there is no war, those terrorists, they’re us, and the only way to beat them is to love them and make it so they’re not our enemies anymore. Look at the other perspective and try to change things, not erase them.

Much of Morrison’s post Invisibles work is concerned with exploring the post 9/11 world. The day glo optimism of this series and Flex Mentallo is replaced by the overwhelming confusion and trauma of The Filth. But, after the tremulous odyssey through The Filth, we find out that what we have to do is take the shit and spread it on our flowers. All that cultural pain can help us grow, that’s the message that’s always been in The Invisibles. And, even if we don’t make it there by 2012, we still are moving closer to the oneness of the supercontext.

Morrison’s two major works post Invisibles are New X-Men and Seven Soldiers. New X-Men is basically The Invisibles set in the Marvel universe, with the cutting edge people guiding society into a new, better world. Jean Grey is the Marvel version of Robin, and like Robin, she merges into a larger ultradimensional entity, the Phoenix force. New X-Men shows us another group that isn’t about war, it’s about rescuing the enemy, and everything concludes with a vast attack against old world order, clearing the slate for something new.

Seven Soldiers is a work that’s dazzling in its scope and ambition. It takes a lot of the meta exploration of The Invisibles, and filters it through various aspects of the DCU. The Invisibles was critical because it set up a framework to view Morrison’s work through. The concepts of The Invisibles help us understand everything that comes after, and in general, his post Invisibles work is more ambitious and challenging than what came before. Animal Man, while great, is fairly simple in its fiction/reality dichotomy. His world is written by Morrison, and Morrison saves him in the end. In Zatanna, she breaks through to this element of reality, but it’s only one piece of a much larger canvas. Seven Soldiers is brilliant, and features some of Grant’s best writing. It continues to refine his themes, clarifying the nature of the third path between two extremes, and keeping with the parent/child issues of The Invisibles. Every generation can choose its own way.

It’s amazing to think about just how much work Grant has done. Someone like Joss Whedon did three TV series, a huge body of work, but Grant has done seven significant ongoing series, and countless other minis. He’s putting out three new books a month, and rarely repeats himself. David Lynch makes one movie every five years, and uses the same themes and settings again and again. Morrison uses similar stuff, but filters it through so many different worldviews and genres. Seven Soldiers alone has more ideas than other writers have in their entire career. The sheer amount of new Grant work we have kind of spoils the audience, and it’s good to step back and appreciate the scope and ambition of his career as a whole.

One day, Morrison will be recognized as the brilliant writer and philosopher that he is. In the same way that Philip K. Dick has been given a critical reevaluation, people will look at Morrison’s body of work and see the best writing ever done in the medium. Not only is he a great storyteller, he’s also exploring philosophy and magic in a totally groundbreaking way. After reading The Invisibles, it’s impossible to read something like Nausea because Sartre isn’t giving us the pop cool to help the philosophy go down. His stuff isn’t going to stand next to Morrison’s shiny imagery and cool, progressive concepts.

Ultimately, the thing I love about The Invisibles is its positive creative energy. So much of our world is doom and gloom, people constantly complaining about the work they have to do, that their job sucks, etc. I say I have to go edit my movie, and people are like oh, that sucks. No it doesn’t! I love editing my movie, and I try to love everything I do. Stop bitching about your life, if you don’t enjoy what you do, stop doing it. Our world has so much wonder in it, and The Invisibles helped me to appreciate that. There is no value in knee-jerk cynicism. We can create any world we like, so take responsibility for yourself and start inventing something great.

The world as a whole might go to shit, but you can change the world around you, and spread that change. It’s what Grant did with the book, he invented the world he wanted and found himself living in it. Was he deluding himself, was there real magic at work? It doesn’t matter, magic is just a way of seeing things, of giving your life meaning rather than viewing it as a disconnected series of meaningless events. Everything has meaning because we can imbue it with meaning, and it’s only the oppressive old social order that can deprive you of that. But, they have no sway over you. Our world is open for the taking, we can invent anything we want and live it if we just believe and act to that end. They can’t hold us, our sentence is up.

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #1: 'Glitterdammerung!'

‘Glitterdammerung!’ is an issue of superlatives, the best issue of the best comic series ever, written by the best writer ever and drawn by the best comics artist ever. After the substandard art of the jam issues, it’s shocking to be back to the coherent universe of Quitely’s beautiful pencils, creating an entire future society in the space of these 22 pages. He owns the characters in their final appearance.

The thing I love about Quitely’s art is the way he renders space. A lot of artists can make beautiful pictures, but few can create fully functional 3-D environments for the characters to move through. There’s so much depth and reality in what he draws, you can spend hours just marveling at the page construction. And, I love the aesthetic of his art, the slightly grimy pop style he brings to the people, they may not be as pretty as Jiminez’s cast of models, but they’ve got a lot of character, particularly evident on the wonderful title double page spread. ...

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #2: 'The Invisible Kingdom: Part 3: The Moment of the Blitz"

‘The Moment of the Blitz’ is an issue that is in theory the climax of the entire series, but doesn’t really feel like it. There’s not much tension, and the moment where Jack defeats the Archon is unfortunately botched due to the art, but from a philosophical point of view, this issue is full of great stuff. And ultimately, it just feels alive with an approaching future. It’s a great issue, and a suitable finale to the series proper....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Holy Mountain

I’d been looking forward to seeing The Holy Mountain for a while now. Jodorowsky is a noted surrealist filmmaker, and gets a lot of comparisons to Lynch, add in the 60s counterculture aesthetic and this sounded like a film I would thoroughly enjoy. Unfortunately, the film is almost absurdly self indulgent, spending too much of its time on an obsessive challenging of the religious establishment, and not enough on the more interesting themes that occupy its second half. There’s a lot of really great stuff here, but the film as a whole only makes it to good.

The clear predecessor of Jodorowsky is Luis Bunuel. The Age D’Or, and Un Chien Andalou have much in common with the first half hour or so of this film, as Jodorowsky riffs on religious imagery with such classic sights as an army of plaster Jesuses and a transvestite Mary. Maybe it was a different time in 1973, or perhaps I’m just jaded, but this stuff doesn’t seem too shocking, and it doesn’t have that much substance. So, it’s ultimately a not particularly exciting opening to the film. Now, the first couple of minutes, where a monk shaves women’s’ hair off, that was striking, the plaster crucifix stuff, not so much.

I did enjoy the recreation of conquistadors with frogs, but ultimately this is just a bunch of images that have no particular connection to each other. Now, the images are amazing. Throughout the film, Jodorowsky’s creates this wonderful environments that are like nothing I’ve ever seen before, pop art words that you can get lost in. You could take any single frame of this movie and it would be a beautiful picture, a marvel of image and composition. But, unlike in the best films, these images don’t really gain anything from being placed in succession. Because there’s no emotional connection, or any sort of narrative build, most of the time it remains simply a series of beautiful images, and that’s not quite enough to be entertaining for 115 minutes.

I think the best way to improve this film would be to trim the beginning and start things up once the Thief meets the Alchemist, and is given his quest for immortality. That would give the film a drive and direction that was otherwise lacking. I’m not saying that a narrative is needed, it’s just we need some kind of throughline to guide us through this weird world. People criticized Lynch’s Inland Empire for being a nonsensical mess, but even if the narrative sometimes doesn’t make sense, we always have Laura Dern’s performance to anchor us in an emotional reality. The closest we get to a strong central presence here is the Alchemist, whose cryptic philosophical nuggets provide a kind of guidance to the themes Jodorowsky is exploring.

The film starts to pick up when we reach the segment with the people who represent various planets. Yes, it’s a bit goofy to have lines like “My name is Kel and my planet is Venus,” but I enjoy the trip to various odd fantasy worlds that each of these characters incarnate. There’s a lot of 60s countercultural ideas here, but people who say this film is dated ignore the fact that his points are still valid, we just stopped seeing their validity. Particularly relevant to today is the section about how the government uses the media to indoctrinate younger generations to hate specific groups, in this case, Peruvians. Also interesting was the cosmetics manufacturer, who made entirely new faces for people to wear. I love these concepts, and this chunk of the film was a succession of interesting ideas.

From there, they coalesce into a band of travelers and set out for the mountain itself. I love the sequence in the room that looks like an eye from above, where everyone burns their money and a replica of themselves. Much of Jodorowsky’s thematic concern centers around the transience of identity. Because he looks like Jesus, the thief is turned into a plastic Jesus. By burning that plastic representation, is he destroying his identity?

From there, it’s off the mountain itself. This section of the film features more weirdness, as the Thief meets up with a prostitute and a monkey, then abandons the quest. I suppose Jodorowsky’s point here is that immortality is best found in connections with other people. The lonely trekking existence of the group is meaningless next to the potential relationship between two people.

The film ends in a gloriously meta moment, as Jodorowsky orders the camera back revealing the artifice, and then says “Real life awaits us.” Having spent a couple of months reading The Invisibles, my obvious connection is to Morrison’s work. When he says “real life awaits us,” he’s talking equally about the characters, the audience and the actors themselves. The film is finished and all the people involved can leave this fantasy behind and go back to their real lives, as can the audience. Within the world of the film, the characters’ story is at an end, but they will now be carried off in the minds of the audience, out into our reality. It’s a strong ending, and feels right at that moment.

Ultimately, the film’s second half works really well, and this could have been a true masterpiece if Jodorowsky had tightened up the beginning and connected it to the overall theme a little better. I’m not saying it should have been a traditional narrative, rather having some kind of focus would have given us a better context for understanding the opening pieces. And, I can’t get beyond thinking that they’re just lashing out at religious icons for no particular reason other than shock value.

But, once the film gets rolling, he gives us a series of images, moments and ideas that rank among the most dazzling I’ve seen in cinema. It’s a deeply flawed film, but I’d rather watch a movie like this than a perfectly executed Hollywood film that doesn’t try to do much. I always prefer a self indulgent mess like this to a competent, but uninspiring film. The closest analogue to this film that I can think of in recent times is Funky Forest, a Japanese film that features a similarly surreal mesh of scenes and ideas. Even though you’re not going to see a lot of movies like this, it’s great that they’re out there, and I really respect Jodorowsky for making a film that is such a single minded vision.

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #3: 'The Invisible Kingdom: Part 2: Goodbye Rag'

We move closer towards the inevitable end with another strong issue, though one that suffers more from art related troubles than its predecessor. This issue is a classic act two, putting our heroes in jeopardy, at their lowest point before the great rebirth that will soon follow in issue 2. Of course, there’s never any doubt about whether they’ll win, by page 3, King Mob reveals that “I just saved the world.”...

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #4: 'The Invisible Kingdom: Part 1: Planet Stepford'

We begin the troubled final arc with an issue that isn’t actually that troubled. I remember the first time I read the art jam issues I was furious, the inexplicable changes in style made no sense, and were particularly tough to take after the wonderful consistency of Jiminez and Weston in Volume II. Why were we subjected to this awful mashup of styles, mostly from artists who didn’t make much of an impact on the series in the first place? While I’ve come around a bit on the concept, mainly because I’ve just accepted it as what is, the art jam remains frustrating. I think a better approach would have been to give the three biggest artists from the series’ run, Jiminez, Weston and either Yeowell or Thompson one issue each, or split up the story threads between them. The jam works okay when there’s a logic behind the art changes, it only falls apart when things shift within a scene, the continuity suffers and the emotion of the story decreases. Even Grant claims that it was a failure, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Sopranos - 'Kennedy and Heidi' (6x18)

SERIOUS MAJOR SPOILERS

The show surged back last week, teasing major developments and imminent changes. Little did we know just how imminent those changes were, fifteen minutes into the episode, one of the series’ central characters is gone, killed by Tony. I always doubted whether Chase would go the route of having Tony kill Christopher, it seemed so obvious, so melodramatic, and that’s why I love the way it happened here. Rather than being a big thing, the cinematic death Christopher would have wanted, it’s so simple, the car crash does most of the work, and Tony just has to finish the job.

The whole scene in the car was a deliberate callback to “Irregular Around the Margins,” in which Tony and Adrianna drove to get some coke, and wound up in an SUV flipping car crash. After last episode, I was surprised to even see Tony and Chris together, meeting Phil. Chris seemed so disconnected from that world at the end of “Walk Like a Man,” and once they get in the car, you can see how removed he is. It’s no coincidence that he puts on The Departed soundtrack at full blast rather than spend time talking to Tony. Tony referenced “Comfortably Numb” last week, it’s the feeling he’s had since coming out of the coma. He’s seeking some kind of thrill to jar him out of the boring world he’s living in, just as Christopher is using drugs because it’s just too hard to go without them.

And then the car goes off the road, Christopher’s messed up, and Tony finds out he’s using drugs again. Tony has always felt that Christopher was weak, his addiction made him a poor choice for successor, and given the chance to get rid of him in a clean, untraceable way, he takes it. It’s a chilling scene, no glamour, no grandeur, just a cold hearted murder.

Some people have said that their was no buildup to Christopher’s murder, which is completely off. To go on a digression for a second, I have to agree with Chase that some of the fans of this show are absolutely stupid in the way they view things, with people unironically insisting that Adrianna isn’t dead, or that the Russian is going to play a critical part in the end of the show. It’s not happening, beyond the fact that it would be an awful cheat on any show, it’s not Chase’s style at all. His storytelling is always clearly telegraphed, nothing comes out of nowhere.

Christopher’s murder has been elegantly set up the entire season, with his slump back into addiction, which Tony perceives as a personal betrayal. Another betrayal is his dalliance with Julianna, which Tony is reminded of here. The issue for Christopher is that he could never do anything to satisfy Tony, if he’s doing well, maintaining his sobriety, Tony does everything he can to sabotage that. When Christopher makes his movie, Tony is unhappy with that too, but when Christopher slips into addiction, he’s even more angry. If he does too well, Tony is jealous, if he does badly, Tony is disgusted with him. I would argue that Christopher essentially killed himself by proxy last week when he walked out of the Bing and shot JD. He wound up killing the one person who could actually help him out of the mob life.

When Tony sees that Christopher is using, all his issues from previous seasons come to a fore and he does what’s in his best self interest. The genius of this episode is that the rest of it becomes about Tony trying to justify what he did without actually confessing. The babyseat and tree story is the most obvious example, implying that Christopher could have just as easily killed his daughter. And then there’s a lot of subconscious stuff, as he tries to alleviate his own conscience. One of the strongest scenes is when he asks Carmela if there was a bit of relief in her voice when she found out Christopher died, hoping for a subconscious affirmation that he did the right thing.

Over that whole scene, we once again had the specter of Adrianna. It seemed possible that Tony would reveal what happened to her, or a version in which Christopher killed her, as a way of taking away Carmela’s pity for him. I had assumed that Adrianna’s murder kept coming up because it was going to play a critical part in either Tony or Christopher’s downfall. Now that Chris is gone, will it come back?

There’s been a general motif of Tony’s increased conflict between his guilt and his own self interest. In a dream, he tells Melfi everything he’s done, then worries that he might have said it in his sleep. Christopher is just one of many, and eventually he’s going to crack and reveal his secrets. He wants to talk to Melfi, he even might want to talk to the feds, just because it’s too much to keep everything inside.

That issue is magnified in this episode by the grief of everyone around him. Their sincere feeling is a mockery of the hollow within him. He would argue that they are all putting on a show, reinforced by his reference to Kelli as “a movie star.” He points out the hypocrisy of Chris’s mother’s grief, the fact that her feelings now are marred by the fact that she wasn’t there for him before. At least Tony was there for Chris through his life, it was her failure that turned him into an addict and forced Tony to kill him.

One notable thing about the episode is the fact that Tony isn’t so much guilty about killing Chris as he is annoyed that everyone else cares so much. The characters on the show have always been intensely selfish, but I don’t know that it’s ever been taken to this extreme. Much of this season has been concerned with tearing down the mythology surrounding Tony and exposing him for the murderous thug that he is. Some people see this as a betrayal of the previous seasons, but I think it’s consistent with what’s always been there. Tony is no less interesting because we see him this way, if anything, it’s fascinating to watch the pull in this episode, as we’re subconsciously aligned with Tony because we know what he knows. I had some real sadness after Chris’s death, but as the episode went on, I became more interested in the way Tony was dealing with his lack of feeling.

Concurrent with this, we get an interesting parallel story with AJ, a story that reveals that, contrary to what we saw last week, AJ is not his father’s son, he still has a conscience, and a naïve wish that everyone could just get along. I don’t think we’ve ever seen him, or Meadow, fully interrogate their upbringing, in the way that Carmela had to interrogate her marriage in the early years of the show. The critical difference between what AJ saw last week and what happened this week was that this victim was an innocent, a guy who was just riding along and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He can’t support that, and it forces him to reassess his initial infatuation with the mob life. Notably, he seems to have more of an academic interest this time, the combination of Israel/Palestine and Wordsworth pointing him to a moment where he questions the world he’s been immersed in. Tony had to kill one ‘son’ because he got lost in the world of the mob, but things are looking better for AJ. Now, that could change quickly, but the contrast between AJ’s real moral trauma and concern for those beyond himself, and his father’s thorough self absorption was very telling.

Tony heads out to Vegas, escaping to the West Coast in a sequence that deliberately echoed his Kevin Finnerty dream that opened the season. Coming shortly after Chris questioning him about his stop and smell the roses attitude, it’s clear that Tony is hoping to return to the place he was right after the coma. The first person driving shots echo the opening titles, implying that Tony is moving into an alternate universe. There, no one knows him and he can sit alone, drinking at a bar. If the Kevin Finnerty story was purgatory, this seems to be hell, with everyone utterly disconnected from the world around them, Tony mechanically throwing chips down the roulette wheel.

He meets Sonya, a stripper Christopher used to have sex with. He likely chooses to meet her as a way of finding some closure about what happened. If he can engage with this part of Christopher’s life, talk to someone who knew him outside of a world where piety and respect for the dead are valued, maybe things will get better.

I love that they had Tony take peyote, once it came up, I was really hoping it would happen, and I love what happened when he did. The show has always had a strong philosophical and mystical component, Tony’s dreams guide him on a kind of subconscious level, and the sense I got here was that he was in touch with some deeper level of the universe. That’s what allowed him to do so well at roulette, he was working beyond his conscious mind, and in that transcendence, he was able to move beyond the surface concerns that have plagued him for the entire series. The stresses that drove him into therapy in the first place came from his business and his family, here he disconnects from all that, and is able to just get lost in the moment.

It’s even more liberating when he wanders out to this endless desert and sees the sun blink, echoing the Costa Mesa lighthouse. I feel like every peyote trip needs to end in the desert, but maybe that’s just Grant Morrison’s Animal Man and The Invisibles talking. Anyway, Tony yells out “I get it,” and seems to have a moment of revelation.

What is it that he gets? Does he remember the Kevin Finnerty episode, or is it something else? I can’t say for sure, we’ll have to wait until the next episodes to find out what he means, but the implication is that he has seen beyond the limits of his identity, and perhaps found a way out of this life. The fact that he constructed the Kevin Finnerty world in his mind implies that he has a strong desire to escape his life, and in this moment, maybe he sees a way. He spent the entire episode disgusted by the charade that is his world, it is in his break from society that he found a moment of happiness.

The flashing light always seemed to indicate the presence of death, and maybe Tony has come to terms with his own mortality. He refused to give up his identity and go to the ‘Finnerty family reunion,’ but now that fear may be gone. He treated Christopher’s death so lightly, after the agonizing surrounding Pussy and Tony B. If it’s that easy to kill, maybe it’s that easy to die.

I loved this episode, it’s shocking and thematically dense, everything a good Sopranos should be. I’d imagine the Peyote trip will have a lot more to look at once it becomes clear where Tony is going in the final three episodes, in the same way that Kevin Finnerty is only just now starting to become completely comprehensible.

I’d always imagined we’d end the series with Tony in a kind of purgatory, not particularly happy, but trapped in a prison of his own creation. Now, I’m not so sure, this ending has such an exuberance and freedom, I don’t think Tony’s back at “Everyday’s a gift,” I think he’s closer to “Fuck it all,” but in a good way. He’s seen the pettiness and falseness of those around him, can he go back to a world that’s all a pageant? It’s unclear, all I can say is that I hope this mystical component of things sticks around for the rest of the series, and we go out on a weird, wonderful note, like this episode did.

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #5: 'Karmageddon: Part 4: Smile'

This issue feels like Grant took some acid, and wrote down whatever was happening on a stream of consciousness level. It’s got a weird feeling, but that works, the book has always been more than just a piece of fiction, it’s been a spell designed to affect your mind, and in this case, reading the issue is like taking a drug.

The issue begins with King Mob comparing reality to the repeated backgrounds used in cheap animation. This is a motif we first saw with Robin’s New Mexico picture, the same cloud existing at different moments in time. Later, he compares the whole world to “a thought thinking itself,” That’s what the whole book is, it began as something fictional, immaterial, and eventually started writing itself, in the sense that the characters forced themselves into certain roles that Grant couldn’t originally have foreseen. They started to think for themselves....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

Crusade: 1x06-1x08

Crusade rocks on with three episodes that are of pretty much the same quality as the previous ones. The show is much stronger than Babylon 5’s first season, but it remains hobbled by the fact that almost every episode has the same structure, and it’s tough to really care about the standalone situations introduced in each episode. But, on a moment by moment basis, it’s thoroughly enjoyable, and I’m going to be sad to reach the end of the show without receiving any kind of meaningful closure.

‘The Long Road,’ like all too many episodes, begins with a mysterious direction from Galen, which prompts him and Gideon to go investigate a mysterious small town. The setup here reminded me a lot of The Wicker Man, with its secretive town, and innkeeper’s daughter. Unfortunately, the story did not lead to Gideon being seduced by the daughter in the night while she bangs on his wall, nor did it lead to him dressing up in a bear suit and beating up some women. But, we have a guest appearance from Edward Woodward, star of the original Wicker Man movie. He looks a lot older.

Like a lot of Crusade episodes, this was a good story that didn’t quite have enough material to fill the whole 45 minutes. Like a lot of early Babylon 5, the story drags on a bit, either with an extended coda that spends too much time wrapping things up, or just a series of extraneous developments that don’t add to what we’ve already seen. It’s a lot harder to write a consistent run of satisfying standalones than a big arc, and a lot tougher for the viewer to engage with. We have no particular reason to care about this town, and in the end, it’s mainly interesting for what it reveals about our characters. Considering the technomages supposedly left the galaxy, we sure do run into a lot of them around. They seem to be the all purpose way to show that a story is meaningful.

Next up was ‘Ruling from the Tomb,’ which brought back Captain Lochley, finally justifying her place in the credits. While Lochley was never a critical character on Babylon 5, she seems to be a JMS favorite, cropping up in most of the TV movies, and also in the upcoming Lost Tales. While I think it’s a big mistake to put her in Lost Tales, as one of only two Babylon 5 characters returning, she’s a good fit here. Having a Sheridan or Delenn on would be overwhelming, in the same way that it was to have Buffy on the first season of Angel. She was sucha strong presence that I wanted to see their old dynamic played out, ‘I Will Remember You’ was more like an episode of Buffy than an episode of Angel.

Lochley’s interaction with Gideon is fun, particularly their discussion of Sheridan. He has become such a legend in the galaxy, ordinary people can’t understand him as a human being in the same way we do. That’s something they played with in the later years of Babylon 5, and it works even better here, when he’s not actually there to counteract that perception. Lochley knew him back before he was an icon, and is able to puncture the myth.

This episode features one of the typical standalone issues that plagued numerous Babylon 5 first season episodes, namely a mysterious character from someone’s past returns, bringing danger. In this case, it’s a character from Trace’s past, yet, Trace has only been in one episode, so we don’t really care that he had a religious affiliation in the past. I’m not sure if it’s a result of the screwy viewing order, but it’s odd that Trace just all of a sudden returns here, after not being seen since ‘War Zone.’

The religious guy falls prey to another classic JMS standalone problem, the generally wrong, but morally ambiguous character who forces the characters to assess some kind of universal debate, in this case the validity of religion. Gideon’s way of defeating him, by revealing that the plague will kill everyone within a year, would likely have some really bad consequences, like causing a panic on Earth. They never talked about that, how they would take back what he said. Wouldn’t you be suspicious that the government was trying to cover up the truth about the plague by claiming Gideon was just lying?

The stuff with Dureena and Max in the bar was fun, and gave some nice character shading to those two. They have a fun dynamic, Dureena has the most energy of all the characters on the show, and has the potential for a Londo like journey through moral ambiguity. However, I guess we’ll never see that.

And finally, we’ve got ‘The Well of Forever,’ another Galen gives a mysterious direction episode. This one also suffers from having about thirty-five minutes of content, and seemingly retreading some previous Galen stuff. The intent was clearly to make Galen more human by revealing this loss in his past, but it doesn’t quite work. It’s such an obvious way to build sympathy, it feels transparent. It’s also a bit of a copout at the ending, with a “Don’t do that again,” but no real consequences admonition by Gideon.

One of the interesting things here was more insight about how the Psi Corps has been restructured. That was cool to see, but again, we’ve got a trickery on the part of the Captain that lets everyone get what they want easily. I was talking about The Sopranos the other day, and realized that David Chase really hates his characters, but is fascinated by them. I think one of JMS’s problems is that he’s too in love with all his characters, and won’t let them do really ambiguous things. Everyone has to have pure motives.

The only characters he wrote who weren’t like that were Londo and G’Kar, and it’s no coincidence that they’re by far the best characters on either series. Morally ambiguous characters work because they make you want them to be better. If characters are always good, as in the case of Sheridan, you want to see them do bad things, and that works agans the moral universe of the series. It can be fun, as in Buffy season six, where I loved Buffy’s flirtation with darkness, but the closest we got to that here was Garibaldi’s season four arc, which was wiped out by the reveals at the end of the season.

With Londo, I always wanted him to do the right thing, and it was awful when he aided Morden in season two. The brilliance of his arc was to have him do the right thing for a brief moment, and then have everything go to shit by the end of the fifth season. JMS never put his human characters through that same kind of trauma, and the way this episode goes, it’s clear that the character he writes as good are given too wide boundaries, frequently getting too easy resolutions to their issues.

I’ll add that the visuals in this episode, and the series as a whole, have been fantastic. The effects made a big jump from Babylon 5, and make me eager to see what they bring out in The Lost Tales.

So, these episodes were strong, but no quite to great. The show has a lot of potential, and I would love to be proven wrong about these characters and their potential for moral ambiguity and complexity. Dureena is one of the more interesting people JMS has created, and Galen has a lot of potential if he moved beyond cryptic phrase sprouting guy and got real development. I’m eager to see more, it’s a shame there’s only five episode left.

Diggers

I got sent a screener DVD of the film Diggers a couple of days ago, a movie I was intrigued to check out because it features Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under, along with a bunch of other strong actors, including Paul Rudd, Maura Tierney and Sarah Paulson of Studio 60. The film has some strong moments, but doesn’t really distinguish itself from various other small town indie movies, like Garden State, Kicking and Screaming and others that follow a group of aimless twentysomething friends both attached to and eager to escape from their small town existence.

Along with the success of Little Miss Sunshine came a lot of discussion about the idea of the indie movie as a genre. If you liked Garden State, go see Sunshine. Now, it bothers me that indie movies are becoming locked into this mold of reality based stories about quirky characters. Thankfully, this film avoids excessive quirkiness, and instead dwells in a generally realistic world, at times oppressively so.

The film follows a bunch of clam diggers on Long Island in the 1970s as their business is being overwhelmed by the intrusion of a big company that’s restricting the waters. The film begins with the death of Hunt’s father, which forces all the characters to reassess their lives. Hunt has more artistic aspirations than those around him, but has no way of conceiving an escape from the town. His story was the best part of the film, including his relationship with Zoey.

Ambrose could be playing Amber Waves’ sister here, with her huge purple sunglasses, and long red hair. It’s a good look, but the character never fully develops. She avoids the indie cliché of pixieish girl who saves the hero from depression through her quirkiness, but the film never gives us enough substance to make up for the missed clichés. Zoey is a believable character, and we understand her, but we don’t quite care about her. Same for Hunt, I get his troubles, but I don’t particularly care about the way things go for him.



Part of the film’s problem is that the introduction of the characters is rather haphazard. There’s a whole bunch of characters and relationships aren’t made clear for a while. A funeral scene at the beginning of the film brings all the characters together, and we know they are separately, but aren’t sure how they relate to each other, who’s family and who’s friends, who’s got issues with who. Because we don’t know the characters, it’s tough to care about them, it takes about a half hour for the film to settle into a groove, for us to understand the world that it exists in.

It feels like there’s a lot of stuff deleted from this movie, there’s a bunch of characters who aren’t really developed, and subplots that don’t go anywhere. The movie’s pretty short, and I think it would have been worthwhile to either add some scenes back in, or tighten the focus to just a few characters. I suppose the goal was to do a portrait of the community, but that doesn’t work out so well.

The best scene in the film is a sequence at a bar near the end of the film, where all of the characters converge, the men and women flirt and the secrets they’re hiding come to the surface. It’s a really well constructed piece, full of fun moments, particularly the dynamic between Tierney and Paulson. By this point, we finally understand what’s going on with these characters and what they want.

I’m not one to demand character exposition normally, but this movie is so based around its characters, you need to understand them for it to work. The direction is there to spotlight the actors and the script, but the characters aren’t quite strong enough to carry the film on their own. Perhaps with a bit more energy in the direction, the movie could have worked. People have turned on Garden State, but that movie has a fine energy and well constructed shots. It’s all about providing the viewer with a true filmic experience, this is closer to a filmed play.



But, a run of the mill indie movie like this one is still a lot stronger than the vast majority of films you’ll see from the studios. The characters are complex and feel real, and the narrative is nicely minimalist, letting us enter the characters’ lives for a while, then drift on. It’s not a great movie, but it has its moments.

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #6: 'Karmageddon: Part 3: Six Minus Six'

‘Karmageddon’ rocks on with issue six, ‘Six Minus Six.’ Isn’t that zero? This issue has another slick cover, with a stylish image of Mister Six, but it doesn’t quite live up to the previous two issues. The stuff with Edith is quite emotional, but the issue feels a bit light, not quite as much material as in your average Invisibles. Still, I guess Grant wanted to concentrate on Edith’s farewell, and that’s well done.

Now, the Key 23 alien language experiment isn’t anywhere near as bad as other recent Helga stuff. It’s actually pretty interesting. The experiment is narrated by excerpts from her recordings. She talks about how using Key 23 to create bliss can be just as dangerous sas using it for violence. I didn’t consciously remember this part of the book, but that notion is quite similar to what happens in my own Key 23 film. There’s an interesting bit where she talks about “authors we read because they make us comfortable and always give us more just what we want.” This ties in with Grant’s idea of the lazy acceptance of everything around us, not challenging ourselves. I think it’s also a meta comment on harsh reaction to the third volume, to readers who were annoyed that he wasn’t giving them the same team based adventure of the second Volume. That certainly frustrated me the first time through, I wanted more of the same, but in retrospect, it was smart to push the boundaries. Particularly with Robin gone, we couldn’t do more of what Volume II did. That team does not exist anymore....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #7: 'Karmageddon: Part 2: Type Omega'

Morrison brings us another weird, great issue with the continuation of ‘Karmageddon,’ tying things tighter and tighter as we spin towards the conclusion. A quick note on this issue to start. A couple of months ago, I had this issue’s cover, Edith’s chess with death, as my desktop background, and the next thing I know, the computer crashes and won’t boot anymore. Was Death here the one who killed the computer? I’m not sure, but think twice before putting it as your desktop background....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Arcade Fire/The National @ United Palace

I started listening to the Arcade Fire back in 2005, when they were breaking big with Funeral, and I've been waiting to see them live since. They have such a superlative reputation, it'd be tough to live up to. However, for the most part they did, putting on a fantastic show that was marred by a couple of issues, only one of them actually their fault.

The major issues came from the fact that this was a pretty bad venue. The decor was nice, but it's tough to go to a show with seating after getting used to general admission. I actually had a GA ticket, and managed to get in on the bottom floor. There, I went and sat in a random seat shortly before The National started. There was barely anyone there at this point, and as they played, people filtered in, all accompanied by annoying staff people with flashlights, breaking the mood of the set. Now, with a GA setting, you don't have to worry about the new people coming in, but here, they keep distracting from the show, and I had the added trouble of being paranoid about getting thrown out of this random seat and sent back upstairs.

Anyway, I listened to a lot of Boxer and Alligator, and came to enjoy the albums, however they're not the kind of music that I usually really enjoy live. I like bombastic shows, with lots of instruments, or tightly constructed, dancable songs. The National's solid rock isn't instantly captivating live. i think the major issue here was that the crowd wasn't particularly into them, I was staring at that pipe organ, eager to get to the Arcade Fire's set, and The National weren't quite good enough to win me over here.

However, they did play a nice set, heavy on songs off Boxer. The band had an army of guitars arrayed across the stage, and occasional punctuation from some well placed violin. The highlights of the set were "Slow Show" and a scorching version of "Mr. November." They did their best, but ultimately couldn't compete with the looming specter of Arcade Fire. It must be tough to be an opening band, crowd reaction is such a crucial part of a show, and particularly in a seated venue like this, you don't even get the benefit of having your fans clustered in the front. I bet they'll do a much better job at their run of shows later this month, and I'll probably go see their free show at South Street Seaport later this summer. When I saw The New Pornographers open for Belle and Sebastian, I was a bit underwhelmed, but when they headlined, I was blown away.

Before going into the Arcade Fire set itself, I've got to talk about the way the staff ran the start of the set. A bunch of people had gathered in the aisles, and the entire first song was sent sending them back to their seats, I was a victim of this bouncing, getting thrown out of "my seat," and off to an aisle that thankfully wasn't too far back. However, throughout the entire first half hour of the set, people were still coming in. This is a major issue with seated shows, it feels a bit ridiculous that someone who can't even show up for the start of the set, two and a half hours after the listed doors time, should get to be up front. And, you wind up with a bunch of older people who aren't as into the show up front. I understand that the staff has to deal with this and keep order, but they frequently killed the mood. That's why it's bad to play a seated venue, or at least more venues should be like the Nokia Theater, which offers both seats and standing.

Setlist:
Black Mirror
No Cars Go
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Haiti
Black Wave
Neon Bible
Windowsill
The Well and the Lighthouse
Ocean of Noise
Antichrist Television Blues
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Encore: Keep the Car Running
Intervention

All this distraction took me out of the first two songs, "Black Mirror" and "No Cars Go." "No Cars" is my favorite song off Neon Bible, and I was a bit disappointed by the live rendition. I think it's impossible to live up to the recorded one played at ultra high volume. All the movement distracted the crowd, so people weren't as into the show as they would be later. I think that staff messing around really took the momentum away from the start, and it wasn't until midway through that people got really involved and the show picked up.

After "No Cars," they segued into a miniset with Regine in the spotlight. I hadn't realized how strong and unique her vocals were before, I heard that high pitched stuff on the record, but didn't connect it to her. She did a lot of cool motions on stage, particularly during "Anti-Christ Television Blues," and had a great pair of gloves. Not since Goldfrapp have I heard such a transcendent high voice at a live show.



Next up was a bunch of tracks off Neon Bible, starting with a great version of "Black Wave." Many of their songs ahve these moments where the music just takes off to a transcendent place, and you can just sort of drift in this atmosphere of sound. I love when they use wordless vocals over a sea of instruments, as in 'Ocean of Noise.'

While I prefer Neon Bible on the whole, I have to admit that Funeral's tracks were superior live. They offer more space for crazy drum banging and general insanity on stage. "Power Out" tore things up, my hands were practically sore from clapping so much, and the segue into "Lies" was phenomenal, that song was definitely highlight of the set, by this point the crowd was fully into the set, and I think everyone in that theater was yelling back "Lies! Lies!" as Win sang.

The encore went on, and ended with a stellar performance of "Intervention," and I was expecting them to do one more song, surely the show couldn't end without "Wake Up." The lights came up, then went back down, and I was like, okay, it's on now. I was hoping for a Bowie cameo on the song, but I'd settle for just the song itself. However, the lights went back up, and house music came on, and it was apparent we were not going to get "Wake Up." Now, that doesn't ruin the show, but it's my favorite song of theirs, and seems the most suited to full crowd singalongs. Now, maybe they're saving it for the next couple of shows, but still, I needed the song. I suppose this means I'll have to see them again.

So, even after all the hype, I was not disappointed by the Arcade Fire. They put on a fantastic show, and by the end, had the crowd completely captivated. However, I really wish I could have seen one of the Judson Church shows earlier this year. Most of the crowd seemed to know their stuff, but there were a couple of fratboy types behind who spent the entire show chatting up some girls and commenting on the fact that they only knew the three big songs. Why did these people go to the show, and is this the future of the Arcade Fire audience? Of course, on the other side were three people mouthing the words to every song, so it's not all bad. I wish I was still in New York later this week, I'd love to go to the Radio City show and see them again. Hopefully they'll make another visit before the summer's out.

The Sopranos: 'Walk Like a Man' (6x17)

After last week’s odd, substandard episode, the show roars back to full strength with the fantastic ‘Walk Like a Man.’ This episode continues the season’s focus on Tony’s two sons, AJ and surrogate Christopher, as each struggles to live with the legacy of Tony, in the same way that Tony struggles to live with the legacy of his predecessors. This entire season has been obsessed with legacy, and fathers and sons, something that’s been present in the series since the first episode. The mob is on the decline, so many of the characters feel that it is impossible to live up to the people who came before them. With each generation in decline, where will things bottom out?

This episode, much like ‘Stage 5’ was notable for the sheer amount of events that happened in the episode. While I get what they were doing with last year’s season, I think the show is stronger in this more compressed mode. The writers have the uncanny ability to express complex ideas and developments in a very concise way. There’s more to analyze from single scenes of The Sopranos than from entire episodes of other shows. I think the show’s best season was five, in which they focused primarily on standalone stories that all tied into the show’s mythology.

So, one week you follow Uncle Junior and have a story that sends the character through an entire arc, letting him recede into the background later in the season. But, none of these episodes are forgotten, for example, ‘Irregular Around the Margins,’ in which Tony and Adrianna nearly have sex, has cast a shadow over this entire season, laying the groundwork for the tension between Christopher and Tony. Things have never been since that episode, and it’s critical to understanding the way Christopher behaves here. He’s always looked up to Tony, and Tony has spent the entire series grooming Chris to be his successor. However, Christopher has never been certain about his role within the family, and that uncertainty crops up in this episode, where he feels nothing but disdain for the world around him.

Part of the reason people have trouble with the sixth season is the loss of Adrianna. She was the only character who wasn’t corrupted through her association with this world, and as a result, she offered hope that perhaps she and Christopher could leave this life behind and live a better way. After her death, the show returned with characters resigned to their world. Much of last year was focused on showing that these characters can never escape their imprisonment in this world, both because of outside forces and their own dependence.

Part of what’s been exciting about this year’s Christopher arc has been the return of hope, that maybe he’ll see the light and leave this world behind. I think the essential tension of the show is our hope that the characters will act better, even as we know that they won’t. I am hoping that maybe Christopher will get out, but that’s likely just a false hope. As the scene with JT shows, he’s not equipped to deal with people in the way that ordinary people do.

This episode is filled with images of generational transition, in the images of Chris and AJ, we can see Tony’s own evolution. Christopher is at the grill, his house now the site for family barbecues. Tony looks over him, offering suggestions about how to prepare the steak, but it’s clear that Christopher is taking on Tony’s role. Tony previously expressed concern about how with all the old people dying off, he is now becoming the old generation. Junior looks pretty out of it, and Tony is now the elder man at the barbecue.

It’s tough to watch Christopher continually get heckled for his sobriety, though I’ll make a quick note of the well placed use of Crazy P’s “Lady T” in the scene with Chris and Paulie at the Bing. As Christopher says at the AA meeting, Tony is the worst kind of enabler, something we’ve seen since season five’s “Cold Cuts.” The AA meeting scene doesn’t articulate anything we haven’t heard before, but it gives us a good insight into how Christopher is feeling right now. The scene on the stairwell was also deeply uncomfortable, but incredibly revealing. Christopher has not gotten over Adrianna’s death, his depression a worse version of what AJ is going through in the present. He is deeply resentful of Tony, something that’s been building since last year. Christopher keeps up the façade of a happily married man, but $40,000 of landscaping can’t cover up the troubles within.

The scene at the Bing is deliberately tied to a similar moment in season five’s “All Happy Families,” in which a slow motion shot of everyone laughing was used to show that Tony isn’t a beloved boss, they laugh out of fear. Here, Christopher attempts to say something meaningful, but no one will listen to him, and after Paulie’s joke crosses the line, he sees that none of them really care about him.

Christopher is caught in an unfortunate bind. He gets no sympathy from the people in the mob, who have no interest in understanding what he’s going through. However, when he goes to JT, he’s rejected because he’s in the mafia, in one of the rare moments where a character actually acknowledges what these people do, and the way that prevents them from making any real moral change in their lives. The scene with JT is full of tension, and split sympathy. Christopher is really in pain, and just wants someone to talk to. JT takes the by the book hard line the program encourages, but what Christopher really wants is just someone to talk to. I think back to Christopher’s acting class in season two’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” when he cries while acting next to someone playing his father. Here, he reaches out for a father figure, but finds nothing, betrayed by Tony and his other father.

During his ranting, he mentions a lot of things that are still in play, Ralph Cifaretto, Adrianna’s death, and the possibility of going into witness protection. He’s never been someone who’s deeply committed to the life, but could Chris really sell out the others like that? I think he’s at the point where he would, but I don’t think Chase would let him escape like that. Of course, it would be the ultimate betrayal to Tony, and even if Tony himself isn’t arrested, it could rip his crime family apart.

The death of JT was shocking, as was Christopher’s assault on Little Paulie. Clearly, we’re being set up with the idea that he’s unhinged and could do anything. There’s a lot of potential directions for this story to go, and even though Christopher props up that tree at the end, it’s clear that things aren’t all good with him.

Concurrent with this, we’ve got AJ’s story, which in the end brings him to a place where he could enter Tony’s world. That’s always been the great question mark of the series, what would become of AJ? Blanca gave him the drive to work hard and attempt a legitimate life, with her gone, he reverts to his malaise. In season three’s finale “An Army of One,” Tony asked Melfi, “What are we gonna’ do with this kid,” and it’s a question that’s echoed ever since. In season four and five, he was on the periphery, now he’s moved to the center.

The major issue for Tony is that he doesn’t know how to relate to people outside the world of the mob. He can’t help AJ with any suggestion but to numb his pain with strippers, drinking and anti-depressants. I love the scene where Tony cries at therapy, thinking about the legacy he’s passed on to his son. More than ever in this episode, we see AJ as the echo of Tony, getting drawn into the crime world of his father. Tony must have known what he was doing when he sent AJ to hang out with the two Jasons. Isn’t this the same kind of behavior that Tony resented when his father sent out to do his first hit? I think this episode makes clear why so much time was spent on Tony’s early mob experience in “Remember When.”

Seeing AJ involved in low level gangster violence was an odd experience. It’s been a possibility since the series’ beginning, but I was never sure if it would come to fruition. The question now is, is AJ going to continue to move in this world, and how will Tony react when he finds out what’s really going on? Seeing the gang of young guys beating up their debtor made the generational transition clear. Tony is on the way out, these guys are on the way up.

Tony is torn with his two sons, one moving closer to his world, the other further away. How will he deal with all this, and what will Christopher do? I’m eager to find out, and if nothing else, this episode makes clear that things are happening, the world is changing, and Tony’s generation will soon come to a close.

With such focus on Tony’s sons, there’s still one great enigma, and that’s Meadow. She’s back at home, hanging out with Carmela. That moment was the first time we’ve seen the family together, just the four of them, in a long, long time, I liked the silent look between Tony and Carmela, how happy they were to be united in that way. Meadow went on a “mystery date,” but we really don’t know much about what’s up with her. I don’t think she’ll play a huge role in the end of the series, but I feel like she deserves at least one more big storyline before the end of the show.

Still, even though there’s a lot of loose ends, I do feel like the show will be able to give us a satisfying conclusion in the remaining four episodes. Because Chase can compress such complex ideas into a brief amount of screentime, it won’t be a problem. This episode has me really excited to see where things go, and if nothing else, this season has reasserted the show’s position as indisputably the best thing on television.

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #8: 'Karmageddon: Part 1: Tantrika'

‘Tantrika’ is a really complex issue, recalling ‘Arcadia’ in both form and content. After the surprise return of Division X in the storyline, we go way back to check in with Marquis de Sade. I like the fact that Grant takes the time to do this, it makes it feel like the characters have lives that go on outside the page, the Marquis said he was going to start this kind of commune, but in how many books would we actually bother to check in and see how it’s going?

It’s a new age, and that’s reflected in the method communication. No more handwritten letters for Edith, it’s e-mail now. On the first page, she describes the similarities between the lives of the elderly and magicians. In Pop Magic, Grant talks about how the way to develop a magical consciousness is to see meaning in coincidence, look for the messages that the world sends you about your life. Edith claims this is also the way the elderly view the world. I like the way she describes the passage of time as you standing still and the world changing around you. That’s definitely how I experience, it’s like I’m always still the same age, just the people below me get younger and younger....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

Purple Rain

I got into the Purple Rain album recently, and that prompted me to check out the film. It’s by no means a flawless movie, but it’s got a lot of energy, and an incredible soundtrack makes it work.

I’m biased to enjoy this film because I usually like musicals, and I already loved the album, so 45 minutes of the movie are going to be entertaining no matter what’s on screen. The film opens with a performance of “Let’s Go Crazy” that’s staged with some odd cuts, and strangely made up people staring at the camera. It reminded me of Fosse, particularly the rapid cutting towards the end. The film sets its own visual style as things go on, but this song had a lot of All That Jazz in it. I’ve noticed that the really rapid cutting, as used at the end of the intro here, has gone out of style. In the 70s, that jarring style of cutting was all the rage. Lately, that extreme cutting has passed, likely because it calls so much attention to the artifice of film. Michael Bay or Tony Scott style rapid cutting works different, using a lot of kinetic movement with the cuts to give the illusion that there isn’t as much editing. Here, the editing is just right out there. It doesn’t always work, but I’d like to see this sort of cutting brought back occasionally, at times it can really serve a film.

The major issue with the film’s dramatic arc is Prince’s lack of skill as an actor. On stage, he’s passionate and overwhelmingly alive. Off stage, he comes off as somewhat robotic, never really connecting with the people around him. For a film designed to tell us his story, he seems very distant from everyone around him. I can’t think of a shot with him and his mother in the same frame. His distance from his parents made me feel like they never actually had the actors together at once, and had to shoot around that. I’m not sure why they chose to go this way, it kept us at a distance from what was going on.

And, from a narrative point of view, it’s hard to start with him already working at the club. I suppose they’re using Apollonia to do the story of new talent struggling to make it, but as it was, Prince’s arc was sort of nebulous. He’s confronted with some issues, and kind of resolves them, but he’s a rather nasty character throughout, so I was sort of torn. I wanted him to succeed, but at the same time, his treatment of Apollonia and the people in the band was so repellant, I wasn’t sure how to feel. The film really depends on your affection for Prince’s music, once he starts performing, you’re totally behind him.

The best musicals use the songs as a way to forward and resolve plot issues, and in that respect, the film is pretty successful. The performances manage to function as more than just setpieces, they comment on the narrative at the moment. ‘Darling Nikki’ is a great example of this, it’s unclear exactly what this says about his relationship with Apollonia, but it works great from a dramatic point of view. Similarly, his glare while watching her perform ‘Sex Shooter’ tells us everything we need to know about his jealousy.

Beyond the music, the thing I loved about this film was the ridiculous over the topness of their outfits. Everybody looks like a superhero. When Prince and Apollonia go out on his purple motorcycle, he’s wearing huge purple high heel boots, purple pants and a pirate shirt. She’s wearing a skin tight full leather suit. I’ve seen less ridiculous outfits in comic books, and these people are supposed to be in the regular world. Similarly, the production design on the store where she buys the guitar is fantastic over the top 80s. Some people would say that the look is dated, I see it more as some weird parallel universe where people once dressed like this. Prince’s sunglasses are another costume worth a mention, huge and very cool. I thought the costumes were great, you might not see me going around in knee high purple high heel boots, but if a costume can provide that much entertainment, someone made the right choice.

As I mentioned before, the odd staging of the scenes with Prince’s parents strip those scenes of much of their emotion. However, the end works really well. The whole movie we’ve been teased with Wendie and Lisa’s demo, the seed of ‘Purple Rain.’ With everything at a low ebb, Prince gets up and performs ‘Purple Rain.’ The camera barely moves, there’s minimal cutting, but it’s still an electrifying performance. Hearing the song at that moment, I’m totally sold on the emotion. The song itself is so epic, through sheer force of its power, it gives the movie a satisfying ending.

Yes, most of the plots aren’t resolved, but it doesn’t really matter. We wrap everything up with a great performance of ‘I would Die 4 U,’ an encore after the climax of ‘Purple Rain.’

So, this movie wasn’t exactly good, but I was thoroughly entertained. It reminds me a bit of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, where the music and enthusiasm behind the film make it a thoroughly entertaining viewing experience despite its flaws. I’d rather watch a movie like this than a professionally made prestige film that lacks passion.

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #9: 'Satanstorm: Part 4: Digging Up Beryl'

‘Digging Up Beryl’ is another crazy, time jumping issue like only this series can do. The whole thing feels like a drug trip, with time flowing from emotion to emotion, not in any sort of linear progression, the past and future mixing with fantasy and nightmare. It’s a really strong issue, and a nice conclusion this storyline, which is all about stripping off false personas and revealing the truth.

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 3 #10: 'Satanstorm: Part 3: The 'It' Girls'

There's a whole bunch of crazy stuff in this issue, as the characters get drawn deeper into the web of complexity that is this volume. The major themes here are the mutability of personality and the fictional nature of the "war," central themes to the series, but handled in a slightly different way here.

Six begins by comparing the thought reflecting ectoplasm to the war for the destiny of humanity. He's implying that the war shifts with our own changes in thought patterns, and is in fact not a war at all, but merely one entity containing different parts. Just as the ectoplasm isn't actually a naked woman, the war isn't actually two sides at all, it's just one entity that's not yet aware of its true nature. It's astonishing how many times Morrison sums up the whole series in a single quote throughout the book's run, and yet it still took me a reread and much thought to figure these things out. The comic itself is a form of initiation, the first time through, there are many baffling elements, on the reread, you are Invisible, know the game and are better able to understand all the pieces....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!