Movie Time!

A list of movies I'm certain I saw in theatres up to around age 20. I'm not including movies I saw as matinees at the Broadway Theatre, because they were somehow more informal, though often better movies. Same goes for drive-ins. Same goes for the second-run theatre in downtown Saskatoon in the early 90s, the Paradise? In approximate chronological order:

The Rescuers
Fantasia
Bambi
Cinderella
Return of the Jedi (twice)
A Fine Mess
Mannequin
Moon Over Parador
Cadillac Man
Bird on a Wire
Air America
Batman
Thelma & Louise
Regarding Henry
Three Men and a Little Lady
Lionheart
Paper Mask
L.A. Story
Last of the Mohicans
Night and the City
Blade Runner
The Good Son
Dumb and Dumber
Pulp Fiction (twice--maybe three times)
Seven (or is it Se7en?)
Broken Arrow (twice)
Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud
Mission: Impossible
The Man Who Knew Too Little

5 Simple Rules for Filming My Superman

They did it. They finally did it. Damn them all to hell, they did it.
They cast the role of Superman in the Zack Snyder take on the Man of Steel that will be filming in Vancouver this summer. I dunno, some British guy. But I guess that means that they're actually going to go ahead and make a Superman movie for the 2010s.
Okay, look, I thought Snyder's Watchmen was a joylessly pedantic adaptation that mostly missed the point of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons series. Patrick Wilson was pretty good as sadsack superhero Dan Dreiberg, but then I'm a sucker for sadsack superheroes. I do respect Snyder's high regard for art direction, but come on, dude, even Tim Burton always ties his eye-candy to his movies' themes.

Snyder will be at a disadvantage here, compared to his previous comic book adaptations. Both The 300 and Watchmen were based on graphic novels (in Watchmen's case, it was a 12-issue series that was subsequently collected in the graphic novel format) that Snyder clearly used as storyboards for his film. But there is no Superman graphic novel. Oh sure, there are graphic novels that tell stories about Superman, but what's the greatest Superman story? What's Superman's Dark Knight Returns or Year One (both of which have been pilfered by Chris Nolan for his Batman movies). Where's Superman's "Death of Gwen Stacy"? Which story, in Superman's nearly 75-year history stands out as the perfect distillation of Superman's essence? There are certainly some popular favourites, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" and the unimaginatively-titled "All Star Superman" come to mind. But it's unlikely either will be directly adapted for Snyder's talkie.

For one, so soon after Superman Returns, I don't think anyone is eager to have the word whatever in close proximity to the character. Second, "Whatever/Tomorrow" is a Supermanic Götterdämmerung, a Last Days of Chez Supes, that imagines an ending to Superman's story. That's no good for a big budget sequel machine. Third, who wants another round of Alan Moore whinging about what's been done with stories he wrote a generation ago?

All Star Superman, in its full glory, could be adapted as a trilogy of films. There's certainly enough story there. But that's not going to happen, since an animated adaptation will be coming straight-to-DVD (or whatever format things go straight to these days) sometime this year.

Interestingly, All Star Superman also concerns the final adventure of the Man of Steel. Most superhero mythos find their most iconic stories in characters' Secret Origins. But a great part of Superman's appeal is his endurance, his reliability, the longevity of his exploits. Superman was not only around for my childhood, and my parents' childhood, but also my grandparents' childhood--or at least their early adolescence. Of course, my daughter is already a Superman nut. And so it goes. We take Superman for granted, and it's generally good that we do. That's the kind of character he is. When writers seek to affect poignancy within a Superman story, it's more often than not his demise that drives home his significance. Ever since 1961--in a story written by Superman's creator, Jerry Siegel, no less--DC Comics has been wringing pathos and bathos out of sending off to arm-wrestle Great Caesar's Ghost. Like Lex Luthor says, "cry your hearts out, folks!"

But Zack Snyder probably won't kill Superman. Not in the first movie, at least. I get it, and mostly, I support it. Here are five things I would like Snyder to keep in mind as he constructs a new Superman film:

1. Do Not Stare Directly Into the Superman - One of the best developments in the Superman mythos is that his incredible powers are derived from our yellow sun. This isn't just pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, this is poetry. Like the sun, Superman, as a concept is huge and nearly all-powerful. It's from his light that all other superheroes get their resonance. It's too much! You hear things like, "Superman's too powerful, it makes him unrelatable," a lot. That's a load, but, hey, no one says your audience has to relate to or identify with Superman. That's what his supporting cast is for. Filtering Superman's light through the lenses of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen allows for all kinds of depth and resonance and all that stuff that changes readers (or viewers) into fans.
2. Lois Lane, Spell It Right - When was the last time there was a great Superman movie? Well, that would be the last time there was a great Lois Lane. Margot Kidder gave us a Lois Lane that was as potent a character as Superman. Why would a man with powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men fall so hard for a mere Earth woman? Because she's everything he hopes he would be without those powers: fearless, devoted to ideals like justice and truth and driven to make a change. This is your most important casting decision. Off the top of my head? Rashida Jones? Who else? Parker Posey? Why not?
3. Superman is an Archetype - You know what kind of story you should try to tell with Superman? A big one. Lay on the metaphors, bring on the allegories. Get operatic! Superman doesn't just have ideals, he is an ideal. Let Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, or even Kick-Ass play to our insecurities, they're great at it. Let them explore the darkness within, let them be complicated heroes on a journey to discover and define their own morality. But Superman will not work as an antihero. Yes, he may brood over the loss of his entire planet, a culture and family he'll never know. He may, in private, question whether he's up to the task of saving the world. But Superman must be super. He must use his powers and abilities for good, for that is his greatest power, goodness.
4. The Best Superman Story is All of Them - Remember what I said in the last rule about telling a big story? Forget it. Don't tell a big story. Tell a million little stories. One of many reasons there are few great superhero movies is that comic books are a serial medium. Comic books have traditionally translated better to episodic media like radio and television where characters aren't expected to develop at the same rate (if any) as they would in film or a novel. Of course, movies have become more episodic over the last dozen or so years. Nonetheless, Superman is impervious to character development like his skin is impervious to bursting shells. Again, this is why he has such a great supporting cast (especially Steve Lombard!); they grow and change and suffer because Superman can't. They are the workhorses of the serial melodramas that Superlore is built on.
5. That's Why They Call Him Superman - You can't put Superman into a grim, cynical world and force him to navigate the shifting ethics of uncertain times--outside of an origin story, that is. Whatever world Superman inhabits has got to be a greater, more optimistic place than this one right here that we live in for one simple reason: Superman lives there. He's the best at what he does, and what he does is very nice. A genuinely super Superman must change the course of humanity's destiny merely through his power of super-influence.

mp3: "Laughing With You" by Marcellus Hall

And then Lois says, "You've got me. Who's got you?"

Look, I need to say upfront that Lex Luthor is a genius. An evil genius, sure, but nobody's perfect.
So when some guy on the Internet says that Christopher Nolan is the wrong guy to revitalize the Superman movie franchise, I say to myself, well, that guy's no Lex Luthor.
When news broke that Nolan had been hired to shepherd the Man of Steel back to glory, I wasn't thrilled, but not because I didn't think he was up to the task. My worry is that the silver screen version of superheroes could become as homogenized as their comic book counterparts.

TANGENT: This condition was institutionalized at DC Comics last week with executive shuffling that names Geoff Johns Chief Creative Officer. As recently as 2004, you could find a wide array of storytelling in the DC Universe. You had the moody police procedural of Gotham Central, the anything-goes super-soap opera of the early run of Superman/Batman, and the fearless cartooning of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man. If you bought an issue of Detective Comics starring Batman and an issue of The Flash, you could count on each comic having its own tones and rhythms. Then, beginning with Identity Crisis and continuing on from Johns's well-intentioned disaster Infinite Crisis to his current thuddingly-dull Blackest Night, the whole line became this dour, depressing series of catchphrasing and limb-rending. END TANGENT

C. Robert Cargill, however, thinks that, much like Lori Lemaris, Nolan is "wrong, wrong, wrong" for Superman. And he was kind enough to break it down to five reasons, all of which are based on the pretty insulting assumption that Nolan only knows how to make one kind of film. As if a Nolan-driven Superman movie will feature Jor-El and Lara taking Kal-El home from the opera when all of a sudden a man comes out of the shadows and blows up Krypton, unwittingly giving birth to Superman's neverending war on opera.

1. According to Cargill, "Superman ISN'T a dark hero." Really? He's the last survivor of his entire species. If the deaths of millions, probably billions, of people and the destruction of an entire planet isn't a dark subject, what is? Batman lost his parents and became a pouty creature of the night. Superman lost his whole freaking planet. Brood on that, Bats.
2. "Superman isn't a detective," says Cargill. No, he's just a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. Nothing sleuthy going on there, no sir. Especially not from that very un-detective-like Lois Lane, who, as a nervy dame with a nose for news, never finds herself in over her head in situations that might as well be lifted right out of the noir textbook. Nope, nothing like that to see here. And since when is Nolan a detective filmmaker? Batman Begins and The Dark Knight succeed largely as science fiction films dressed up as crime thrillers. Certainly The Prestige is full on sci-fi, and at its heart, so is Memento. The Prestige and Memento are both exactly the kind of stories that used to feature in Superman comics back when Superman was the most popular fictional character on the whole planet. Thanks to his frequent contact with futuristic sorceresses and Red Kryptonite, Superman was always losing his memory or discovering imperfect duplicates of himself.
3. "They're throwing out the current continuity," Cargill mentions. I actually can't find any reference to Nolan in this "reason why Nolan shouldn't oversee the new Superman film", so I'm tempted to overlook it. Also, because it's a stupid reason. Also, because hopefully filmmakers will recognize that they've been telling Superman's origin for the last 10 years or so on Smallville and just tell a good Superman story.
4. "Nolan is great on story, but terrible on staying true to its history," Cargill claims. By now, I'm not sure if Cargill has ever seen a Christopher Nolan film, or any film at all for that matter. Nolan, like Tim Burton before him, excels at creating style and atmosphere, setting an appealing and intriguing tone for his films. The storylines and plots of his films tend to take a backseat to tone and theme. That's not the worst flaw for a filmmaker to have, and it's consistent in his films.
5. "Superman is science fiction," Cargill says. "Nolan is real world." This seems to be the same reason as #2, but what the heck. Cargill's got Nolan here, since Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight were all faithful adaptations of true stories. Cargill notes that Nolan's upcoming film Inception is science fiction, but dismisses it because nobody knows if it will be good or not. Unlike his Superman movie, which Cargill knows will be bad. Cargill also proves that he hasn't seen Superman III in this paragraph, which is too bad, because I think he'd like it.
Stayed tuned for an upcoming post where I'll outline ways that a new Superman movie could be awesome (regardless of who's involved), including my top secret idea for a 30th Century Bromantic Comedy co-starring Lar Gand and Jo Nah.

mp3: "All This Trouble" by the Fugitives

The Batman Who Stares At Goats

Okay, so you've got Batman, Obi Wan Kenobi (2.0), Lex Luthor, the Dude (or Tron, if you'd rather), T-1000, and Jimmy James all in one movie, based on one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Randy Newman fans. All that's missing for 100% Pure Emmet Bliss is Clark Johnson!

Speaking of which, here's some new music from Montreal's Elephant Stone, led by former High Dials bass/sitar player Rishi Dhir. Their self-titled debut is due out May 5, which is sooner than you think.

mp3: "The Seven Seas" by Elephant Stone

In this job you gotta be able to howl at yourself, or else you die inside.

I don't know if I've ever seen a Kate Winslet movie, but I know in my heart of hearts that she's never been as good in a movie as Melissa Leo was in Frozen River. And I'm not just saying that because I love Homicide. Which I do.

Frozen River is one of those small, flawless movies, like In Bruges or The Visitor, that quietly goes about its business of being a damned fine movie. It deals in the small truths of people doing their best to make through this world and into the next, all the while trying to take care of their own without losing too much of themselves.

Andre Ethier is like those movies. I've written about him before, and don't have a lot to add, except that sometime in the last few months, likely late 2008, he released a new album, Born of Blue Fog, which is the follow up to On Blue Fog, released on Blue Fog. No fanfare, no tour. Just an album. Just one hell of an album.

It's interesting to see the reactions to the just-published review of Saskatchewan's Needle Exchange Program. Sask. Health Minister Don McMorris would like to see a higher rate of rig return than the 90% they're reporting, which is a pretty freaking high return rate. I think he--and, in turn, the L-P Editorial Board--is just looking for something, anything to complain about in a report that seems to show success, both in terms of public health and public finance, through following harm reduction models. I'm curious about the report's finding of cocaine and morphine as SK's top substances. The "poor man's speedball" of Talwin & Ritalin has traditionally been associated with Saskatchewan, particularly among the too-often overlapping First Nations and prison populations.

mp3: "Polynesian Beach" by Andre Ethier
mp3: "Flash in a Bottle" by Dead Heart Bloom

Iron Man blasts his repulsors at Batman!

We watched Charlie Bartlett on the weekend. A pretty good flick overall, but what I really liked in it was Robert Downey Jr. The guy makes sitting in a chair running a remote controlled boat fascinating. Then I happened across this interview where he takes some potshots at The Dark Knight. Sez R2D2:

"My whole thing is that that I saw 'The Dark Knight'. I feel like I'm dumb because I feel like I don't get how many things that are so smart. It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved 'The Prestige' but didn't understand 'The Dark Knight'. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

Now, if anyone can get away with sass like that, it's him. As much as I thrilled at TDK (and thrilled even more anticipating it), there's no question in my mind that R2D2 & Jon Favreau's Iron Man was a vastly superior movie. In the same interview, Downey credits Iron Man's success to it being what he calls "a very simple movie." Yeah, but most of all it was a boatload of fun. TDK has a lot going for it, it's a nearly operatic melodrama draped in gravitas and explosions--and really, is just as accurate a representation of where Batman comics are these days (ie, take themselves dreadfully serious) as Adam West's joyous Batman was in the 1960s. But Iron Man captured the magic of thrillpower with an infectious glee.
What's really got me psyched about the Moviehole interview, though is R2D2's comments on his upcoming Sherlock Holmes flick:

"He's a bare knuckle boxer, a martial artist and a complete weirdo which is why I said I'd love to do this."

HUZZAH!

mp3: "Dollar Signs" by Snailhouse

Almost forgot!

Most excellent new video from The Dark Knight! Though I must say, I'm pretty much at the point where I don't wanna see anymore until I see the full thing. And, yea, though I plan on watching it for the first time in Vancouver with my own special lady, I'm gonna be in Regina in the first week of August for a wedding, and will probably be ready for a second viewing by then.

Magic Beans, Indiana Jones, Rambow & Son + Commissioner Gordon

ITEM: If you've ever done any freelance, work-for-hire, or contract work in the creative field (and I mean the field of creativity, not "creative services"), you should have a look at Bryan Lee O'Malley's excoriation of the ol-buddy-ol-pal legalese manga publisher Tokyopop is using in their new talent search. Yee-ow. I've signed quite a few freelance contracts in my day, and I can only remember one that was even close to being that exploitative.

Most of the contracts I've worked on were pretty straightforward and basically said, "you deliver this work, we pay this money" and first rights and all that jazz. But this other contract, for a company I'd already heard some pretty sketchy things about, had some interesting terms which I eventually came to understand meant that I wasn't getting paid beyond the initial signing fee. I shoulda negotiated an hourly rate or at least billed 'em for meetings.
It's not a very exciting story (as I just learned when I wrote up a draft), so let's just say I've been hosed by a bad contract with a nebulous definition of deliverable.

ITEM: Another video from the 90s showing a politician's true colours.

ITEM: It's almost here. Can you feel it? It's like 1989 all over again. Indiana Jones, reminding us that we're none of us as youthful as we were in 1981. And me, half interested in Indy, but mostly I've got Batman on the brain.

My sister and I went to see the new Indy the other night (we also saw the first one together at the drive-in--I was 3 or 4 and bored enough by the first half hour to fall asleep. I saw it again a couple of years later on VHS and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.). I've got nothing to say about it that Roger Ebert didn't say better. Sausage.

The movie I've seen lately that really threw me back to those pre-adolescent days was Son of Rambow. More or less, that was what my childhood was like, only I was both characters in one. I was friendless, daydreamy and out of step with my peers at school like Will Proudfoot, and I was friendless, unruly and bullheaded like Lee Carter.

All of these movies (along with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk) are just appetizers for this summer's main cinematic event: THE DARK KNIGHT (aka Batman Continues To Begin)!

Yes, I loves me some Batman. In all of his many incarnations, from chummy Adam West to Neal Adam's "hairy chested love god" to the crypto-fascist anti-hero of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Back. He is among my top five favourite fictional characters. The others would be: Jim Rockford, Lt. Columbo, Det. Meldrick Lewis, and, most importantly today, James Gordon of the Gotham Police Dept.

Typically known as Commissioner Gordon, in some of his best appearances he's Lieutenant, Captain, or just plain civilian Jim Gordon. Probably the best Jim Gordon story of all time is also one of the best Batman stories of all time, Batman: Year One. That's Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's update on Batman's origins for the 1980s. In it, we're treated to parallel narratives as both Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon come to Gotham and take on, in their own ways, a city rotten with crime and corruption. Bruce Wayne's journey into Batman is partly a riff on 70s action staples like Taxi Driver (there's even a scene in the first chapter where Bruce Wayne dresses up like Travis Bickle) and Death Wish. The Jim Gordon narrative, however, is a little juicier, and reveals a more complex and nuanced side to Frank Miller as a writer than he decides to show us these days. Frank Miller's (hopefully) satirical takes on machismo aside, I'm actually very conflicted about my Batman-obsession, and Miller's portrayal of Gordon in Batman: Year One justifies that.

Where Batman is fervidly driven in his crusade by personal tragedy, Jim Gordon represents a more tempered view. Gordon is a cop, paid and trained by the municipality of Gotham to uphold the law. Batman is ultimately about revenge, even if only on a metaphoric level. He is punishing all criminals in the absence of the actual gunman who killed his parents for taking his family away from him, for taking his childhood away from him. Bruce Wayne's time, effort and money might be more effectively spent attacking the root causes of crime and lobbying for stronger gun control measures. But the young boy who watched his parents gunned down before him has the overriding need to actually, physically punish criminals. Gordon, meanwhile, serves the actual ideal of justice. Though the mechanations of those who would subvert and pervert justice bring the fight into Gordon's own home, for the most part, he's an impartial officer of the law, following due process and the Constitution.

Batman: Year One even raises, if subtly, the possibility that Gordon could have weeded out Gotham's rampant corruption without Batman's help, and maybe even wouldn't have paid such a high personal price for it.

Further reading: Batman: Roomful of Strangers by Scott Morse

mp3: "Batman to the Rescue" by LaVern Baker
mp3: "The Escape" by Burgess Meredith

Small world, about the size of a poppy seed

Last night I watched Greg and Gentillon, an admirable little film that finally brings some much-deserved glory to Aylmer, Quebec. It's a mockumentary about a small town comedy duo that sets out to conquer the Big City. My jaw nearly dropped when Gentillon went for a guitar lesson and was met by none other than Keith Carman! If you've ever spent any amount of time in the shallow pool that is the Canadian music press (and I think I mean that in a good way), you've probably crossed paths with Carman. His writing has appeared in notable mags like Exclaim! and Chart!, and probably lots of other places as well. He also plays guitar for a kick-ass rock and roll outfit called Maximum RNR. Mostly I knew Max RNR's other guitar playing Keith, Keith Maurik, who was at one time (and maybe still is?) a publicist for Epitaph Records. Despite the fact that they look like total scuzzbags, the two Keiths of Maximum RNR are actually some of the nicest folks you'll ever want to meet.
Keith Maurik is in a few scenes in Greg and Gentillon, but Keith Carman has a pretty large role, in which he not only shines, but gets across the exact impression I got of him the one time I met him face to face (when Max RNR played the Gaslight Saloon in Regina a few years ago): a sincerely nice guy who plays really loud music.

mp3: "I Hate the Cold" by Maximum RNR

Aside from making Keith Carman look good, and providing lots of laffs (especially the fight in the alley), Greg and Gentillon also, surprisingly, made Toronto look really good. Not as good as the Scott Pilgrim books make it look, but, hmmm, Toronto. It's a city that looks not bad. Of all the outdoor scenes in Hogtown, it only rained once. Something to think about.

In the meantime, Vancouver's not so awful. Unless you count the staggering housing costs and consequential epidemic of homelessness (an aside, Frances Bula's City States blog at the Vancouver Sun website is pretty great). But the Black Angels are coming on June 10, and they're bringing the Warlocks! The Black Angels' new album Directions To See A Ghost is out today for your digital downloading, and will be in finer record stores on May 13. If you liked Passover...

mp3: "Science Killer" by the Black Angels

finally, an update on some bands we've previously covered here at ABWAWBA:

Jesse Matheson and the Midnight Snacks will be releasing their brand new CD Pleasure Pounds this Saturday, April 19 at Rime in Vancouver.

The Fake Fictions will be releasing their brand new CD Krakatoa this Friday, April 18 at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.

If you can make it to both shows, you are well on your way to awesomeness.

Coming Soon: SCOTT PILGRIM THE MOVIE!

The first thing I do when I wake up in the late morning is check out the Hollywood Reporter to see if one of my favourite TV stars is teaming up with one of my favourite movie directors to make a filmic adaptation of one of my favourite comic book series. Today I hit the jackpot!
Mr. Michael Cera (of Arrested Development, and other things) is in "final talks" to play the title role in the Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) take on Bryan Lee O'Malley's inconceivably brilliant graphic novel Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.

mp3: "Untitled Composition by Scott Pilgrim" (aka "Scott Pilgrim's Sad Restaurant Song") by Matthew Seely

A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.

In the course of my adolescence, there were maybe five movies that I could not get enough. One was Taxi Driver. Another was Roadside Prophets. Two of them were Alex Cox's Repo Man (original and edited for TV "melon farmer" edition). The fifth was another Alex Cox flick, Straight to Hell, probably the greatest terrible spaghetti western ever.
Multiple internet places are now reporting that the long-fabled Repo Man sequel is on its way. Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday hits next month, but it won't be coming to yr local multiplex. Just yr local comic shop.
To be honest, I'm not really getting my hopes up for this. I mean, Otto (now mysteriously renamed Waldo) is not really what made Repo Man so awesome. It was all about the supporting cast, Harry Dean Stanton especially, but also Sy Richardson, Dick Rude, and Tracey Walter. Plus, the whole point was that it was a totally kick-ass punk rock cheapo movie.
Another movie I watched as a teenager that had less of an effect on me was Permanent Record, a grim teensploitation feature starring Keanu Reeves and Lou Reed. I remember picking up the soundtrack to that on cassette for, like, 99 cents in the mall. The soundtrack, compared to the movie, was pretty freaking fantastic. Side A was entirely Joe Strummer & the Latino Rockabilly War. Side B was mostly melodramatic college rock snooze tunes, and pretty wicked Lou number called "Something Happened", that was at least as good, if not better, than Mistrial.
But the Strummer stuff was wild and fantastic. Noisy rock better times eight than latter-years Clash. "Trash City" (featured below) was easily the best track, but the instrumental "Theme From Permanent Record" was also exactly the kind of song that was everything great about Strummer. I was quite surprised how few mentions Strummer's output with the Latino Rockabilly War got when Strummer was duly eulogized. For that matter, Strummer's killer performance in Straight to Hell was barely mentioned either. I remember feeling like this integral part of my coming-of-age had been Stalinized.

mp3: "Trash City" by Joe Strummer & the Latino Rockabilly War
mp3: "Straight to Hell" by Steve Ketchen & the Kensington Hillbillies

I never wanted 2 be your weekend blogger...

It's not that I have nothing to say lately, it's just that I've been saying it in other ways. Been reading and writing. In the last week or so I've read three full novels, worked on my masterpiece(meal) and started a short story that I'm really excited about. Believe it or not, but it was inspired (sorta) by my weekend viewing of Balls of Fury. Not really, more like inspired by the credits. I also saw Persepolis, which I liked about million times more (Nicole says she liked it even more than she liked Juno, and she liked Juno a lot), but didn't inspire me, except in the way that all things I like inspire me to try to be really good at something.

So I'm in between novels right now. I just finished The Bookmakers by Zev Chafets, an excellent caper-ish (if writing a novel can be a caper) farce very much in the spirit of Carl Hiaasen. Before that, I whizzed through It's Superman! by Tom De Haven. Before that, I reread the absolutely fantastic The Prisoner of Guantanamo by the excellent Dan Fesperman (who has a new book coming out soon--it's already out in the UK!).

I'm sitting on Pest Control, by Bill Fitzhugh (from the library) and Jonathan Lethem's Gun With Occasional Music (from co-worker Timmy). I'm not sure if I'll actually read either one, but I should at least make an effort. Pest Control, at least, looks fun. The Lethem book, howev, I dunno. I tried and failed to get through Fortress of Solitude, and I read and mostly enjoyed Men & Cartoons, but I don't know.


Here's some songs that I have been enjoying lately. The Parkas track is really old, like nearly four years come and gone, but I put on their first album the other day, and dammit, it's excellent. The other two are by the Rural Alberta Advantage, who are apparently from Toronto and will be playing all over Eastern Canada over the next two months. I don't even remember where I heard of them, probably CBC Radio 3, but it doesn't really matter anymore, cuz I hear them all the time when I close my eyes now.


mp3: "Giants in My Field" by the Parkas

mp3: "Don't Haunt this Place" by the Rural Alberta Advantage

mp3: "Sleep All Day" by the Rural Alberta Advantage

Subtext in Supertown

Three things have got me thinking rambly about stuff (stuff that I spent way too much time thinking w/o any stimuli anyway): 1) Wade's comment on my post about the JLA movie, 2) another Douglas Wolk article, this time about two books looking at Jewish themes in superhero comics, and 3) Roger Ebert's late review of Spider-Man 3.

Wolk says in his second paragraph "superheroes are loaded with subtext—that’s sort of the point of them" and basically nails what I've been narrowly missing in most of my comics thinking over the last four years. I had more or less replaced subtext with metaphor--a subtle distinction, but a key one nonetheless. Over the last year and a half, I've been stealing ideas from David J. Skal's The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror and jamming them into comics stuff. Specifically, I've been thinking about how superhero comics reflect the culture they're produced in, the way that Skal says early horror films processed the traumas of the First World War.
It's the kind of thing that's most transparent in the Golden Age comics, when Superman was still a fresh idea, warm and malleable desipite skin impervious to a bursting shell. As Wolk notes in his Nextbook.org piece (which sorta dovetails with my thoughts on Chris Knowles's book Our Gods Wear Spandex), Superman reflected the immigrant experience of the early 20th Century. But he was also tied up in Rooseveltian ideals (both Teddy's Strenous Life manliness and Franklin's New Deal sense of fairplay and optimism). Tom De Haven's curiously good 2005 novel It's Superman exploits this aspect of Superman's secret origin by sending young Clark Kent on a coming-of-age adventure against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

Over the last couple of years, in tandem with their Showcase Presents line of black & white, mostly Silver Age, reprints, DC Comics has been publishing a Chronicles line of full-colour reprints of Batman and Superman comics in chronological order, starting with their first appearances in the late 1930s. I picked up the first three volumes of each Chronicles series, expecting to be mostly impressed by the Batman stuff and mildly curious to see if Superman was as much of a creampuff in the 30s and 40s as he was in the 50s (and pretty much through to the present day) (though Superman himself is something of a douchebag in the Silver Age stories reprinted in the Showcase Presents line, the scenarios are wonderful). Lo and behold, it was Batman, that weird avenger of the night, who came across as the sort of benignly bland, square-jawed authority figure that Superman is so often accused of being. Superman, meanwhile, in his earliest adventures, was a total badass. Smashing slumlords, forcing fat cat tycoons to visit the unsafe mines they profit from, and fixing a college football game. Okay, I'm not exactly sure how rigging college sports fits in with the rest of his social activism, but the point is that for a brief period, Superman was more interesting than Batman (Batman was actually an even bigger douchebag than Superman in the 50s and 60s--without the benefit of Curt Swan, Al Plastino and Wayne Boring art! Sure the Infantino stuff is pretty good, but for the most part, the Showcase Presents Batman volumes are kinda dreadful).

I'm not sure when Superman stories started being lame, but I suspect it was around the time Batman stories stopped--the late 60s when Neal Adams started drawing the strip. During that period (which, coincidentally, also featured lots of Neal Adams covers, if not interior art) Clark Kent left the Daily Planet to become a TV anchorman for WGBS. The thing was, during the late 60s and early 70s, you could still read excellent Superman-related stories in Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (whose title character was the Scott Pilgrim of his day).

--I like how I'm writing here as if I was reading comics in the 50s, 60s, and 70s--

I don't even know what my point is anymore. I've been writing this since last Friday and I've just learned of the death of Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker in the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight. Filming has wrapped on TDK, so this grim news shouldn't affect the eventual movie we'll all see in the theatre the weekend it comes out, but it will probably affect the marketing of the film.

Regardless, it's a shame and a waste. Even though the cause of death isn't yet known, there's no good reason not to say this: Don't do drugs. And if you can't not do drugs, don't do them alone. Most overdoses don't need to be fatal. Immediate medical treatment, simple first aid even, will save lives. If you're going to do drugs, have 9-11 on speed dial. Stay alive. Stay alive long enough to figure out a way to get off drugs. Like Smog says, "No matter how far wrong you've gone, you can always turn around."

I've gone so far off track here, I might as well close this post. I'll try to come back to some of the ideas I wanted to put out here (talking points: Green Arrow as successful Batman proxy; Shazam! as failed Superman proxy; the untapped filmic potential of DC Comics' second and third tier characters; the importance of supporting casts; Clark Kent vs. Peter Parker; etc.) in future posts.

In the meantime, the Black Mountain album, In the Future, came out today. It's awesome, and also makes me kinda sad. It's awesome because it's a brave and bold epic of chug-o-mystic rock. It's sad because it means I probably won't be seeing drummer Josh Wells around for a while as the band tours the world. I like Josh, he's got a great sense of humour. So here's a track from the new alb, which just happens to have previously appeared on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack.

mp3: "Stay Free" by Black Mountain

The Justice League of America has finally met its match

Variety reports that the JLA has been brought down by the WGA (at least in part). The live-action flick was reportedly going to begin filming this spring with a rumoured cast of teenaged no-name TV actors, and rapper Common in the role of Green Lantern (which GL is anyone's guess).

The script, by a former scribe of Touched by an Angel and Nash Bridges, was apparently deemed unfit by the Warner execs, and with no writers available (some sort of strike, I guess), the project is dead in the water.

Which is good news for both comics fans and movies fans, because the movie looked like it was going to be shit-tay.

I've become increasingly hostile to the idea of superhero movies-qua-superhero movies. Superman Returns was such a frivolous movie (though not as frivolous as the Richard Donner cut of Superman II) which I felt really had nothing to say and no reason for existing other than Warner felt they had to something with their property. This was made all the more unsatisfying by the fact that the film was made by the same person who had kickstarted the superhero movie renaissance with two potent X-Men flicks.

Batman Begins, on the other hand, was pretty much the antithesis of Superman Returns. It had a purpose, it had a vision, it had Gary Oldman. It wasn't just a superhero movie (a meaningless descriptor if there was one, which nonetheless applies perfectly to Superman Returns). It was more of a 70s cop/vigilante movie, really, closer in theme to The French Connection or Taxi Driver than Super Friends. And this summer's The Dark Knight looks like it can only be more awesome.

The point? I dunno. But there's also going to be an Iron Man movie this year, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Robert Downey Jr. Like Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Iron Man has the chance to be something more than a story of a man and his cape (Iron Man doesn't even wear a cape). I'm kinda excited to see it. Here's the trailer.

mp3: "Iron Man" by the Bad Plus

2008 will be awesome at the movies

EDIT: I thought I had posted the Hellboy 2 trailer, but I don't know what went wrong. Check out the official site or this Guillermo Del Toro fansite for the goods.

Yeah, so 2008 is gonna be rad for movies. Of course, you already know about The Dark Knight (if you can find it, the leaked "prologue" heist scene they're showing with some Will Smith movie is pretty intense and sets a gnarly 70s cop flick tone that I am really hoping they sustain throughout the movie). Here's the trailer for Hellboy II. Other movies I'm desperately looking forward to (though, admittedly, my heart beats mainly for Batman) include: Drillbit Taylor, Run Fatboy Run, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Little Piece of My Childhood Still Intact After Three Mediocre Star Wars Prequels, Kung Fu Panda, Incredible Hulk, Get Smart, did I mention Batman Begins 2?, Pineapple Express, and Where the Wild Things Are.
Aside from The Dark Knight, though, what I'm mostly looking forward to are the movies I haven't even heard about yet that will surprise and dazzle me.

HEY CLOWNS

Why so serious? (at press time, only Albuquerque remains up for grabs)

Happy Halloween, here's a quintet (and maybe a hidden bonus track, since the J-man's scavenger hunt has been scooped up by bigger dorks than you or I) of seasonal traxx to darken yr doorway.

MP3: "Death of a Clown" by the Kinks
Mp3: "Reflections of the Marionette" by Two Gallants
Mp3: "Cat Claw" by the Kills
Mp3: "Changing" by Witch
Mp3: "The Change" by Tony Joe White

I Have Precision Autumn

leafblowerman1
Originally uploaded by emmetmatheson

Things I did on the long weekend:

saw Rob Zombie's Halloween. Saw it at the Rio, which is the place to go if you're going to a see a movie. For some reason, despite Jamie Lee Curtis, I've never liked the Halloween movies as much as, say, Prom Night, The Fog, or This Night I'll Possess Your Soul. The whole Michael Myers as unrelenting killing machine concept (IMDB calls it "indestructible villain" and includes Moby Dick as an example) means that they're usually just a series of chase sequences with brief respites of psychobabble from Donald Pleasance. The overwhelming doom and gloom of the best ones (you know which ones I mean) make me claustrophobic and anxious. Which, y'know, is the whole point I guess. I just don't like feeling claustrophobic and anxious. But Nicole obviously does.

Zombie's remake is gratuitous in its gore, unilluminating in its revelations, the subtext is writ large and everything is generally Rob-Zombiefied. Instead of the more quietly scary suburban origins of the Carpenter version (and nearly all the classic teen-slasher flicks of the late-Cold War era), this time Myers comes from a more obviously troubled family. His stepfather is a lout and his mother's a stripper (but she has a heart of gold, naturally, and is played RZ's wife, a former exotic dancer, naturally). Young Michael looks like a tiny Kurt Cobain might've. In fact, he looks like Bobby Hill dressed up like Kurt Cobain for Halloween.

So there's this grim Columbine-ish backstory, where before there was none. Malcolm McDowell (who for some reason, I keep miscasting in my memory of The Limey instead of Terrence Stamp, and therefore overestimating his awesomeness) brings none of the pathos or urgency to his role that Pleasance did. Scout Taylor-Compton (sounds like walkie-talkie code) in the Jamie Lee Curtis likewise pales in comparison.

By this point, you're probably thinking that I didn't like the movie, but you're wrong. I liked it just fine. Micky Dolenz (best known as "Arthur" from the animated series The Tick or possibly for singing "Last Train to Clarksville") as a gun-shop owner was awesome, and with the smell of fall in the night air, a scary movie hit the spot.

Speaking of hitting the spot, we also hit my favourite Italian restaurant on the weekend. Vita Bella Ristorante might not be the most popular pasta joint on the Burnaby part of Hastings, but it should be. Briefly, it's f$%!ing nice. It wasn't until after we'd ordered, that Nicole and I realized that we'd each chosen the dish the other had last time we were there. That meant salmon and avocado penne for me. F$%!ing nice. I don't mean to sound overdramatic, but by the second bite of this rich and sumptious dish, all the tension my shoulders had accumulated over the work week was g-o-n-e. I've never eaten duck before, but Vita Bella's signature dish is a linguini fumate that's sooo tempting, as is nearly everything on the small, but dignified menu. A nice wine list and warm front of house staff, too.