Thursday, June 28, 2012

How long until...

... Mittens starts campaigning against activist judges?  And how obscene an amount of money will he be able to raise to run ads about the evils of activist judges because those same judges decreed that he's allowed to do as much of that as he can?

... The Obamas are getting it on in the Lincoln bedroom?  Ain't no sex like just-changed-the-shape-of-nation's-moral-and-financial-priorities sex. 

... Republicans remember that the mandate was originally their idea?  And suffer a stroke trying to figure out how to campaign on that without riling up the colonial cos-players they've so eagerly grabbed their ankles for the past three years? 

... CNN acknowledges this?  You know, just to clear the air. 

... we find out how many uses of "fuck" will show up in Scalia's dissent?  Over/under is 6.5. 

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A Quick, Stupid Thought

How well do you think a baldly cynical presidential candidate could do if they changed their name to "America?"  You know, the kind of person who thinks far enough in advance that he'd do it some time in his twenties (I went to school with such people--they exist).  Think of the slogans:

"America 2012."   

"Americans For America."

"Vote America!" (the brazen disregard for punctuation would probably generate enough Internet chatter to warrant a full media cycle of talk by pundits, who would then declare that America had just won the media cycle)

"Be pro-America." 

"Don't be anti-America." (seriously, how would the opposing candidate attack--or even present a simple opposing view--without opening him/herself up to accusations of being "anti-America?")

"Help Defend America." (when the scandals hit).

Even someone who did it just prior to entering the race (basically advertising the cynicism in big, neon lights) would surely benefit a little from the confusion in the voting booth when people see "America" on the ballot.  I'm not saying someone named "America" would have the election in the bag, but it's gotta strip off a few percentage points.

And given the escalation of cynical stunts the last few election cycles, I'm thinking this will be a logical step at some point.

Decision 2028: America (D) vs. America (R) 

Monday, June 25, 2012

The Art of Fielding

"Literature could turn you into an asshole... it could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your critical faculties."
Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

One of the reasons baseball works as a metaphor for life is that baseball contains long stretches of inactivity (some call it boredom), punctuated with brief, spectacular moments that are often tricky to explain.  It's these latter moments that keep us coming back to the ballpark and carrying on through our day-to-day lives.  This presents a problem, however, when trying to describe life in an entertaining way.  Boredom is unforgivable in story-telling and inexplicable moments put the teller on a knife-edge; suspension of disbelief is one thing, but stray too far and people cry "deus ex machina."  This is why the better baseball stories use the game as a device to set events in motion, without being the focus.

Chad Harbach successfully manages this balance through most of his debut novel, The Art of Fielding.  It's appropriate that the team at the center of the action--the Westish College Harpooners--is made up of good-to-great players, most of whom will never play ball again after college; the diamonds they play on are little more than weigh stations.  Fielding chooses to depict the feel of baseball rather than the game itself--mostly depicting the minutiae of the everyday lives of the students and faculty members at Westish. 

Until the end of the book when, like any great ball game, some highly dramatic elements are needed to bring events to their close and, perhaps, give the audience something to remember.  The problem is, as discussed earlier, this doesn't work as well in story-telling.  The revelation of a character's death toward the end of a fraught, fast-paced game (which is described well but is, again, wrong for the medium--constant reminders of the score, outs, men on base, all necessary and part of the fun of the game, bog down the story) seems contrived for the sole purpose of amping up the drama and adding artificial weight to the ending.  In most stories, this wouldn't be such a big deal, except Harbach had been doing very well 'till then. 

For most of Fielding's 500+ pages, Harbach beautifully constructs not just the fictional Westish College, but its Herman Melville-centered mythology as well.  He presents a series of characters--four third-person narrators rotating like a, well, if you know baseball I don't need to say it--that all fit so naturally at Westish it's hard to imagine them anywhere else.  Most of them don't think of baseball much at all, except as the distraction it's always been meant to be.  For a few others, baseball is one mildly significant aspect of their lives  Only one, Henry Skrimshander, views the game as not even the defining aspect of himself, but as his whole life.  This kind of obsession, naturally, lends itself to self-destruction, a fate that Harbach foreshadows early:

"After the game ended, you couldn't carry your game-time emotions out into the world--you'd be put in an asylum if you did--so you went underground and purged them."

The rules and temperaments of baseball don't apply outside the game.  Mike Schwartz--who recruits Henry to Westish and someone for whom baseball is but one spinning plate--is a guy who understands this and though the demands he puts on himself are not without their own toll, his basic hardiness keeps him rolling on.  Poor, unprepared Henry on the other hand is, for reasons not explored as thoroughly as they might be (at 500+ pages, something has to give), unable to grasp this.  He functions in the non-baseball world well enough, but only because it's a bridge from game to game and season to season.  Thus, when it's mysteriously taken from him, he collapses into himself, unable to recognize or want help.  Then, when he's unexpectedly granted his dream of going pro, he opts to abandon it and to remain with at Westish, where all is familiar and his dream can be safely that.  Henry's life is at its best when it's nothing but the long moments of inactivity punctuated by the vanishing sublime. 

The trouble is, Henry takes a while to get there.  As though running out of steam while rounding third, Harbach has trouble balancing the half-dozen subplots of Fielding.  These subplots are all mostly good, but are clearly in need of one another, sometimes having trouble moving forward under their own power.  When Henry disappears from his team and his friends, the suspense of where he's run off to is riveting, but I couldn't help but think that the mini-mystery was good only while it remained a mystery--that we'd find him and the answer would underwhelm.  Sure enough, Henry's been off, being typically quiet Henry, minus the baseball.  True to character, but a bit mundane.  So it goes in the last third of Fielding.  Each of the subplots enraptures at times, but drag at others.

That disappointment has much to do with the fact that Harbach does so well through the first half of Fielding.  And without doing something inorganically (and laughably) explosive, the story was headed toward a kind of petering-out.  These characters that aren't always likable--but are almost always relateable--will carry on afterward (minus one).  There are no big revelations and no one has all the answers at the end.  Some characters have excelled and are better people for their struggles while others will spend a bit longer in their respective ruts--smarter but with their brightest moments behind them.  Not even Westish College athletics, having succeeded beyond anyone's most unrealistic hopes, can be sure what happens next.

But that's the ebb and flow of baseball.  And isn't good baseball always more about the journey than the final score? 

Grade: B

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Life In Hell

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-- Matt Groening

Matt Groening ended his Life in Hell last week.

No, wait.  Sorry.  He ended his long-running comic strip Life in Hell last week.  I never read a lot of the strip, outside of the stuff I found in the collected editions in the kind of bookstores that never would've sold LIH had its creator not also been the co-creator of The Simpsons.  Indeed, if not for The Simpsons, I never would've known about it at all.  I was raised too far away (in both time and space) from the epicenters of the alt-weeklies that provided an understanding home for Binky, Bongo, Sheba, and Akbar and Jeff.  Even if I had been an adolescent/early-adult in the eighties in a town like Chicago or Seattle or L.A., I still probably wouldn't have been with-it enough to delve into them much.  Unless perhaps I stumbled upon them in some dusty comic book shop.  But who knows how long I would've stuck with them without a regular, pointed fix?  It's only now, as the age of those physical stores passes, that huge numbers of us are able to absorb this kind of darkly incisive and borderline subversive work as easily as we do (time and space are not excuses anymore).  And let us not forget how lucky we are for that. 

That's the beauty of the Internet, satisfying niches with large enough demand to make them shine for a brief, effervescent moment but are so small as to be unappealing to the publishers and producers that ran an ancient media era (and tenuously cling to their control still) and would therefore have hardly existed.  Life in Hell would go over just as well today as a web-comic as it did in the alt-weeklies 34 years ago.  The Oatmeals and the XKCDs that owe no small credit to Groening's sensibilities and influences would be endlessly compared to LIH, sometimes positively, sometimes not.  But LIH was accessible only to a few and at that time, that meant a kind of quality control you would never expect from mass-seen works, even if you sometimes got it.  If James L. Brooks hadn't been living and working in L.A. in the eighties (though I'm not sure where else an acclaimed film producer would be living), he probably never would have seen LIH.  In which case, he never would've called Groening in to pitch a TV show.  And without that pitch, we never would have gotten LIH's greatest legacy: the institution to which modern television and Internet humor in general owe their greatest debts. 

I have a lot to say about The Simpsons.  No, really, a lot.  That formless, word dump of a post about a hypothetical Justice League movie?  That was nothing compared to what I could write about the show that partly raised me (the first Tracy Ullman shorts aired just months after I was born).  There are very few topics you can throw at me that I can't somehow relate to one Simpsons moment or another.  I've established close, long-lasting friendships on an initial foundation of Simpsons quote-fests. The Golden Age--that's seasons 4 through 8--still informs sizable chunks of my philosophies on politics, religion, morality, writing, comedy, pop culture, and loads of other things I probably don't even realize.  And it's sad decline over the last decade-plus taught me the pitfalls of hero-worship and (along with the Cubs) how to love something while not letting that thing wholly define me, how to accept the imperfection of the things I love.  That probably sounds sad to people who weren't raised on The Simpsons.  And that's fine.  I'm sure whatever icon they were raised on is almost as good as mine. 

Those are thoughts better saved for their own post or posts.  There will always be more time for a show that's primed to go for a few seasons more, making for a psychologically satisfying 25... and no end in sight.  That's nine fewer than LIH had in its run.  I suppose that's something to think about, when I complain about how long The Simpsons has stretched itself.  But if I thought that the final episode of The Simpsons could buck the trend of the last ten seasons or so and be as true (and, therefore, poignant) to its original incarnation as the last edition of LIH was, then I probably wouldn't have a lot of reason to complain.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

How You Do a Justice League Movie


Because it's the sort of thing I think about when my wife is out of town, I was musing over the potential Justice League film that I've talked about some previously.  The project is almost entirely speculation, of course, even on the part of Warner Bros.  But given that they have about 1.4 billion reasons in favor, it's hard to imagine they won't give this a serious shot.  And, if it's going to happen, I'd prefer WB to not rush it for the sake of money.  If there's anything to be learned from what Marvel did--and what Christopher Nolan is currently doing for WB--it's that when you put time, heart, and soul into the work and focus on making the best, most entertaining film you can, the audiences will come.  And when you try to just put something out there for the sake of doing it, well... WB/DC Comics already know something about that. 

There was the TV pilot they did in the late '90s--you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.  Seriously, see how long you can make it.  It's hard to believe that this was just 3-4 years before X-Men and Spider-Man ignited the superhero movie era, after which time WB appeared ready to press their luck again, with an eventually-aborted venture titled Justice League: Mortal.  Never heard of Justice League: MortalLucky you.

But with Avengers steamrolling box office records, WB will gladly forget all that came before, and can hopefully learn from those missteps.  Of course, there will inevitably be accusations of copycatting Marvel, but a good result can and will overwhelm those criticisms (however valid they may be).  To combat the pitfalls of the kind of rank opportunism WB/DC could embrace, it needs to do a JL movie as organically as possible, with the same kind of care Marvel took, using its own formidable cast of characters (and in some ways, more formidable, the League featuring DC's finest, while Avengers left out the likes of Spider-Man and Wolverine, who were properties of other studios).  Those characters just need to be established and, in some cases, re-established.  So, at the risk of invoking the cruel wrath of the fan-fiction gods, here's how I would propose setting up a Justice League film (not that WB has ever asked me, regardless how many angry letters I write them): 

Next year's Man of Steel is the key.  Though director Zach Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan have said that this version of Superman exists on his own terms (Nolan has said similar about his Batman, but more on that later), WB won't let something as trivial as a couple of statements from the creative heads stop them--for better or worse and we're focusing on better here.  Unless MOS is an out-and-out failure at the box office, it will be the first step toward the larger movie universe and that's fine; unlike Batman, any version of Superman is perfectly compatible with the League--and any JL franchise would merely inherit the tone Snyder sets in MOS.  And so long as WB doesn't push Snyder to do things he's not comfortable doing, I don't predict any significant protest from him.  If the studio senses good hype from the set, they could recommend something like the post-credit scene in Iron Man (which would've led to nothing if that film had flopped).  A throwaway line about the discovery of an island of amazons back in the '40s, or a six-foot bat flying over Gotham is all you'd need and you can run with that later.  Supes has his own problems, of course; issues of relateability and relevance in a stranger, harsher, more complex world that seems to have passed by the Big Blue Boy Scout.  But that's Snyder's problem.  If he can't address those issues, it's back to the drawing board and JL itself could get lost in the redrawing.  But if Snyder can make the character relevant and make people want Superman again, we'll have an Iron Man effect, where a throwaway scene is seized upon and driven full speed to a new franchise, turning Henry Cavill into this universe's--this generation's--Superman. 

Wonder Woman has long always created problems for writers and fans alike.  From her creation as a psychologist's outlet for BDSM fantasies, to her days as a kung-fu expert, to heated discussions about leg-wear, she's never seemed to break out as she should.  As part of a group (ala Kingdom Come), she works fantastically, allowing writers to emphasize her fighting abilities and leadership skills, while downplaying her often wooden, unapproachable nature.  But as one of DC's Big Three, she deserves her own spotlight and, frankly, if they can't do her right, they shouldn't be bothering with the more problematic members of the League at all.  Something Joss Whedon ran into while working on his Wonder Woman script was that Diana simultaneously has too much mythology and too little.  A lot has to be done to set up Themyscira and the amazon race and all the little things that make up Wonder Woman (bracelets, lasso, lazy stabs at a token feminism, etc.), while separating her from a public awareness that's stagnated since the 70's TV show, and hasn't been allowed to stretch and grow much since.  And yet, how many Wonder Woman villains can you name?  Exactly.  Whedon's script, along with a couple of others, plopped her into WWII, pitting her against the Nazis.  An intriguing conceit, but Captain America: First Avenger kind of took that novelty for its own.  I recommend taking a cue from Brian Azzarello's current run on the Wonder Woman book and playing up her roots as part of Greek myth: illegitimate daughter of Zeus and straight-up demi-god.  The Greek pantheon is relatively accessible to most audiences and can still provide a draw of sorts.  And once Greek Gods are shown to be a thing, superheros seem pretty natural.  And vice versa.  Yes, Thor already covered some of this territory (one more reason DC should've been working on this years ago), but by making Diana interact with and protect denizens of Earth from her crueler cousins, she becomes a protector of Earth, refusing to join in the gods' gleeful tormenting of humankind or stand by indifferently, as the amazons often will.  That's what makes her a hero, every bit as much as (and sometimes more than) Superman's gentle-heartedness and Batman's money force of will.  And as a hero, she should get to wear pants

Green Lantern is likely out.  That is, Ryan Reynolds' Green Lantern is likely out.  In fact, Hal Jordan may be out altogether.  But, if some of that famous Film Studio Selective Memory can be harnessed for the power of good, we might get to have our cake and eat it too.  We can retain the mythology established by the Green Lantern film, because that was one of the few things the movie did reasonably well (that and Mark Strong's Sinestro, which we can also keep).  But now we'll have John Stewart as the Green Lantern of Earth, a changing of the guard that can be explained in a scene or two.  Stoic enough not to whine and moan about his responsibilities--as Reynolds' Jordan was wont to do--but with enough distrust of authority to give him an edge that most Lanterns lack, Stewart can deliver the intrigue and excitement of the space opera story that Green Lantern failed to give us.  Depending on how much time and money WB is willing to invest, they could even give Stewart a solo movie to establish his credentials, but given the current baggage of that franchise, it might be easier to let him establish his footing in JL first.  If Stewart takes off with audiences, he can even be reunited with Hal Jordan in a post-JL Green Lantern movie, hopefully with a better result. 

Perhaps even more than Green Lantern, the cool-factor of The Flash's powers is easily overshadowed by how hard they are to explain without sounding stupid.  For non-comics fans: he basically manipulates the laws of physics.  Using that, one can do a Dr. Manhattan-esque morality play, examining the life and psychological state of a man who can move fast enough to alter history and who's own powers sometimes threaten to obliterate him.  At least, that's the route I'd take.  Not all characters will require a solo movie first.  As with John Stewart, Barry Allen (I'm open to arguments for Wally West), may need to wait and see what kind of reaction he gets in JL.  If the reaction to Avengers' Hulk (featuring a new actor in the role, as a follow-up to a movie that relatively few people saw) is any indication, there's something to be said for not forcing too many of these characters down audiences' throats.  Some will need to be established on their own terms, but guys like Flash can wait for a testing-of-the-waters, so to speak.  If it works, then WB's stumbled into a new franchise. 

Martian Manhunter is out.  I know there are J'onn J'onzz fans out there, but in a cast already full of aliens and demi-gods, a green dude in a stupid costume (even by superhero standards) with powers all-too similar to Superman's might be a bit more than WB is willing to risk.  And I don't blame them (remember how well aliens worked for them in Green Lantern?).  Maybe for a sequel.  For now, there are other options...

Yes, Geoff Johns turned around common conceptions about Aquaman in a humorous way with the New 52 reboot.  And yes, Aquaman looks great when Alex Ross draws him like this.  But preaching to the fan-boy choir (made up of fans and people who want to be fans) and Alex Ross (who could paint a dry, pale booger hanging from someone's nose and it would be tempting to make a movie about said booger) aren't going to be enough to convince the everyday public that he's useful beyond the ocean and is anything other a joke who talks to fish.  The Super Friends created much turmoil and its legacy remains painful to many.  Those injustices will be healed in time.  However, as with J'onzz, let's not bite off more than we can chew.  He's out. 

Green Arrow's fate will depend on the reception of his new CW show.  Similar to Superman's situation in MOS, if Arrow doesn't catch on, we move on and forget all about Ollie Queen in this universe (for now).  But if it does become even a Smallville-level hit, then why waste an established and moderately popular character?  Of course, that's a lot of "ifs."  The guy playing Queen is Stephen Amell and I'm not familiar with anyone else involved either.  Not that that's a death sentence, but it's probably not best to rely on the success of someone who makes mainstream fans say: 1, "so, he's like Robin Hood?" (best case scenario), 2, "so, like Batman but not Batman?" (medium scenario) or 3, "so, like that guy in Avengers?" (worst case scenario).  He's probably out.

That leaves one last best choice.  When DC launched the New 52, they replaced J'onzz's role in the League with Cyborg, recently promoted from Teen Titans.  Cyborg's greatest advantages tie into his weaknesses: He's not very well-known, but he also doesn't come with the baggage that some of these characters do; he's almost a clean slate with which a writer/director could create banal crap, but could also write a new classic character.  Cyborg would also be a good in for the audience.  In a cast of gods and aliens, a relateable character--like a teenage-kid that's suffered a traumatic accident and come out of it a superhero--is a necessary and easily forgettable element.  Add to that what could be a unique look (there a thousand places this translation to screen could go wrong, but that caveat that applies to every paragraph in this post) and the League may have the grounding it often desperately needs.  Yes, grounding, from a character named "Cyborg"--moving on

What's that?  You say I've forgotten Batman?  Well, I haven't.  And fuck you for assuming I ever would.  The League needs Batman, both for in-story reasons (Bruce Wayne's finances, Batman's coordination skills) and to draw interest (people kinda like Batman).  However, he's sometimes had trouble proving that he fits into the League.  And Nolan's films haven't helped that image with their "de-powered" Dark Knight.  Someone who has that much trouble defeating Joker (and being forced to tarnish a part of himself in the process) probably shouldn't be going into battle against Darkseid.  But Nolan's franchise will be done after this summer, at which point WB will start anew.  And I have to think that they will do it with an eye toward JL.  While my reasoning on this will require a blog post unto itself (which I may well do after The Dark Knight Rises), I count this is as a good thing.  Nolan has given us a better series of films than Batman fans ever had a right to hope for.  Let's leave them be and try something different.  We survived Batman & Robin--we can survive anything.  Start the new franchise with Batman well-established in Gotham and confronting a slightly more fantastical plot (think the old Animated Series, which meshed gritty street drama with more than a few outlandish elements).  Suddenly it doesn't look quite so funny when Superman appears, floating above one of Batman's rooftop brooding sessions.  And with Batman League-ready, the sequel writes itself with a Tower of Babel story, demonstrating why he belongs in the group (albeit in the scariest way possible).

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  There's still the join-up story to consider...

Another time.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Why Are You, Adam Sandler?

Posts have been a bit rare 'round here lately.  I've been working on a longer piece I hope to have up in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I'm going to recommend Steven Hyden's recent article at Grantland.com (a site I'm reluctantly coming around to liking) exploring Adam Sandler's long journey from the naive yet charming man-child we loved in Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison to the more aimless man-child we tolerated in Waterboy and Anger Management to the obscenely-wealthy-and-not-giving-a-shit man-child we wanted to retire in Grown-Ups, Jack and Jill, and, now, That's My Boy.  One might argue that he never really gave a shit.  As Hyden points out, it wasn't never so much that he said funny things--he just said them in a way that was kind of funny (compare to Will Ferrell, who, at the top of his game, usually managed/manages both).

And it's not as if Sandler's not aware or can't do better (Funny People provides proof enough against both).  He just has a good thing where he gets paid millions of dollars to play versions of himself in different careers in films that are filmed in his own mansion.  Guy's one step away from not even having to bathe and making bank for it.  I'm not going to blame a guy for grasping onto that.  But I can begrudge the ratio: there's nothing wrong with popping out an expensive turd once every few years in order to bankroll smaller projects that aren't putting food on the table.  Sandler seemed to be on this path at one point, but a quick glance through his filmography of the last decade shows that this has not been the case.  There was Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People, demonstrating that he has the ability and at least some of the interest to put some effort into his movies.  But on the vastly heavier side of the scale, we see the likes of 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard remake, Click, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Grown Ups (which is apparently getting a sequel?), Just Go With It, That's My Boy, and writing and producing credits on Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star and I don't care if Sandler thinks it's fair to include it--he lost the high moral ground when he attached his name to that one. 


All of which leads me back to my original question: Why are you, Adam Sandler?  And why do you insist on making us sad?

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

"Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

A sub-heading on MSNBC's front page today read, in part, "With just five months until Election Day..."  A few qualifiers in there, but the headline isn't the point.  Nor is the First Read post to which it links (I'll note that the body of the FR post changes the line to "With less than five months until Election Day...").  It's the wording.  "Just" five months to go; "less than five" months to go.  Like it's right around the bloody corner.  And as though the conventions themselves--once the beginning of the campaign proper, in a more halcyon era--didn't begin for another ten and a half weeks.  You know what five months is?  It's the better share of a human pregnancy.  It's a little longer than a typical college semester.  It's about a third as long as the NBA playoffs. 

That FR post, by the way, uses its own basketball analogy--talking about Romney wanting to "run out the clock."  Using that analogy appropriately, however, we'd have to say that it would be like a team deciding to run out the clock in a close game early in the third quarter.  This is part of the Horse Race--if pundits talk about the campaign as though it's a real sporting event, people might start to think it's as exciting as a real sporting event.  "If we phrase this as though this thing is headed for its final stretch, people might get excited."  And that leads to ratings and page hits.  Hopefully. 

In addition to being a lousy and stifling way to interpret democracy in action, Horse Race coverage also leads to confused analogies, like the above.  It might be tempting for a team coming out of the locker room after the half to slow things down, give your guys some time to breathe.  No sense risking a close game.  But what happens when the other team starts running all-cylinders offense in an attempt to pull away?  Their speed may eventually drown out your patience.  You try defense, but eventually you have to put your own points on the board.  Soon enough you're trading shots in a game that remains close.  Of course, the analogy falls apart again, because in a game that remains close throughout, you can probably expect the crowd to remain interested and loud throughout, as well.  But they aren't

That's because most people aren't paying attention yet.  The die-hards and the pre-committed and those (like myself) with the time and the masochistic interest, we're absorbing the ups and downs, much as they are.  We track all the gives and takes, until we forget.  Barring one candidate suddenly becoming Spider-Man or another candidate found feasting on the bones of Benjamin Franklin, we'll all stick with the general election choices we made back in 2011 or before (even given one of those scenarios, partisans will surely make excuses as to why their first choice is still best).  The undecideds, however, will sit out until sometime around Columbus Day, when we'll get to hear them hem and haw for weeks on end.  Because when they look at the two parties doing nothing more than throwing insults and forced, underwhelming October Surprises at each other (because the parties themselves ran out of shit to say back during the primaries), those undecideds will, to paraphrase Orwell, look from donkey to elephant and elephant to donkey and it'll be impossible to say which is which.  Despite the parties being as politically polarized as they have been in generations, many people view them as fundamentally the same.  It's part of the reason they don't get involved until crunch time, which itself is what creates the polarization to begin with--with only the politicos controlling the inter-election periods and only the Horse Race-media defining the terms, moderation becomes a handicap.  Or at least an inconvenience. 

But eventually the undecideds will be forced to choose.  Or stay home.  And only then will it all be done.

And then it'll be just four years until the next election.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Prometheus

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.  

The first Alien and its sequel, Aliens, are both excellent films that strive for different things.  Ridley Scott's original plops us into a spaceship--which could well be a large one, but when space is finite and you're running for your life, it'll always feel too small--and lets the eponymous character go to work in the cramped dark, preying on the terrified passengers one by one.  We never get a great look at the xenomorph and its only after all these years of action figures and lesser sequels that we know what the crew of the Nostromo is running from; the scariest monster, of course, is always the one that your mind creates for you.  Its follow-up would have to up the ante in order to sell tickets, so the franchise wisely went in a different direction.  James Cameron turned Aliens into more of a para-military action thriller, because since we (and main character Ellen Ripley) now know what we're dealing with, terror must be sacrificed for suspense in order for interest to remain.  And it does. Alien reveled in the mystery, Aliens abandoned it before it got too boring. 

Prometheus, Scott's return to the Alien universe, goes back to the mystery--and brings loads of it.  The crew of the Prometheus search for the creators of human life and the reason for that creation: there's hardly a more compelling subject, is there?  Prometheus was never going to answer that question and that's alright because how could it?  No, it actually bothers me more that, after so much effort in setting up the question, it hardly attempts to answer it before introducing a second question: why would our creators apparently want to destroy us?  And then it fails to answer that question, too.  We start with one question and finish with two, with nary a hint that could facilitate even a discussion, or allow our minds and imaginations to play with.  There's a difference between the unresolved and the unexplored. 

On the unexplored front, Michael Fassbender's robot character (Fass-bot?), David, was the most hyped performance of the film.  And that hype is justified.  He keeps the audience guessing with his own series of educated (if childlike) guesses about actions and reactions; he has no interest in why--as the humans in the film and the audience do--but lots of interest in what.  The trouble is, we get very little of the what and why of David.  Lots of "what's all this, then" and no "by Jove, I think I've got it" moments.  When he poisons Holloway with a substance he found in the wrecked ship, is it because Holloway was being kind of a dick to him?  We've been told David has no soul, but can he still pick up on dickishness?  And is he then programmed to respond with even worse dickishness?  But why have that substance prepped and ready to hurt someone with in the first place?  Why bring it aboard and not tell anyone--not even the father figure, Peter Weyland, from whom he is apparently receiving orders?  (By the way, no film is hurt by adding more Guy Pearce.  Just saying.)  Or is this one of those "move the plot forward" moments where it's briefly necessary to forget about motivations and qualifications.  We get a similar moment with the biologist, Milburn, screwing around with Slimy Tentacle alien, but at least that leads to some satisfying horror and promises more to come.  We also never care about Milburn--or mohawked geologist Fifield--the way we want to care about David, despite his lack of humanity. 

Along with Peter Weyland, we have Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers, who possesses the same cold detachment as David, but with a more obviously human basis for that.  Her motivations are better fleshed out than David's: a corporate employee overseeing the financial boondoggle of its founder (who also happens to be her father, I guess).  But for someone who has such personal stake in the journey, she sure is good at maintaining that cold front.  Why not let everyone in on her own reservations and make clear with everyone just what is supposed to happen and what they can/should do if... oh, never mind--look at the giant pale alien!

This leaves us with the main character, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, about whom I have no complaints, in large part because she does her damnedest to drag some answers out of the muck.  The only overtly religious character, her perspective might be a good one to check in on now and again--perhaps using her atheist boyfriend Holloway as a counterpoint before he's poisoned and eventually char-grilled.  But the film can never quite get 'round to doing that.  There's too much else to contend with and Shaw gets the short stick to go with her messy and painful surgery. 

I give some points back to Prometheus because I always like when a film (and a major blockbuster especially) tries to have ideas.  But to go from "pretty good" to "great," the film must make good on those ideas and establish them beyond those first "what if's."  What ground Prometheus might make up for by being a big, idea-teasing film never comes together because we're all too aware of this larger universe and the possibilities it contains.  It's impossible not to think of Prometheus' predecessors.  The best sequels work on their own terms, enhanced by the existence of the original, but never relying on what came before.  Ridley Scott can say that Prometheus shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak," but he seems to spend an awful lot of time setting up elements from the first movie, even giving us a good long glimpse at a xenomorph (albeit an adorable adolescent version), the likes of which he teased us with but never allowed in the first film.  The first two Alien films stood on their own and answered their own questions.  Prometheus, wanting to grapple with much larger questions and more interested in what came before than it is in itself, never stands up under its own weight.  What chance does it have with the added weight of two beloved entries in the genre? 

Grade: C+

Thursday, June 7, 2012

In Brief: Ray Bradbury

I think it's because I was never as into sci-fi as many of my friends were that I never got as into Ray Bradbury as those same friends.  In my years of a more intense kind of dystopia-fanboyism, I always felt compelled to shrug at anyone who put Fahrenheit 451 in the same league with 1984 and Brave New World.  It was good, but somehow lacked the thorough societal examination that I thought the others had done so well; or just one man's cranky, if accurate, rant against television--part of a tech-suspicious philosophy he held on to to the last.  As that part of my life faded--and as I started to recognize that Asimov was probably the most accurate predictor of the future (Huxley took silver in that race, Orwell the bronze)--I still thought of Bradbury's opus as an also-ran. 

But one of his short stories has managed to stick with me for several years.  Because it's a short story and because it's relatively easy to find and because you were probably forced to read it in high school, too, I won't recount the details of A Sound of Thunder, which doesn't have the weight of Fahrenheit, but remains lodged in my brain much more tightly.  Not for the dinosaur-hunting (though that alone might have done it), but for his simplifying of the concept of time travel and alternate timelines, a topic that many writers often seem to want to make as complicated and unapproachable as possible.  That simple, almost reductive, embrace of the complex that usually turned me off to his work (while endearing millions of people more reasonable than I), actually served to draw me in and direct me to the heart of the idea: the interconnectedness of all things and the humor, tragedy, romance and horror that are part and parcel with that connection.  And though the ending of A Sound of Thunder was probably more of a funny idea to him than a warning to us, it contained an important tie-in with his philosophy about life being "too serious to take seriously:" it's probably not worth the analysis we're inevitably going to give it.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Yeah, I'm a Little Excited


This weekend, Prometheus will take some sting out of the waiting for The Dark Knight Rises.  But it won't do anything for the fact that the summer's main event is still a little over six weeks away.  And there are posters and banners everywhere.  And the new TV ads already running.  And the sizzler reel shown at the MTV Movie Awards (which WB has already asked several sites to take down, so I won't link here) that was just... beautiful.  I didn't think anything would top this trailer.  And for sheer foreboding, it probably didn't, even if it did give us a hint of a gorgeous new Hans Zimmer score, which tells me we'll be getting plenty of stomach punches.  But it did add dashes of humor and action for those not so into heady films, and also demonstrating that this movie is going to be packed.  We've seen loads of footage and still know so little about what's going on.  How is all this going to fit in one movie? 

That's where the reveal of the run time come in--a staggering 2 hours and 45 minutes, which is at least 15 minutes longer than I thought WB would allow.  But, then, I'd watch a six-hour Batman movie, so I might not have my thumb on the pulse of the mainstream here.  And now the news that tickets will go on sale on Monday, so I'll have my ticket in less than a week's time and I'll have to keep that thing pristine for about 46 days (no, I will not wait until opening day to get my ticket--like some loser).  And I will look at that ticket every single day, perhaps occasionally caressing it gingerly, waiting for it to either let me see TDKR on July 20th or make me Batman, whichever comes first. 

One day at a time...

*Along with the news that WB/DC may actually be moving ahead on that Justice League movie.  We already knew TDKR was the end of this series, of course, but the more I hear about the future of these movies, the more I think about the implications of that.  And as I do, I'm less inclined than I was six or seven months ago to shrug off the idea that anything is possible.  Well done, Nolan. 

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

CNN, Tone-Deaf

So as my time-off wound to a close, I happened to catch this story on CNN.  You can watch it yourself, but a quick summation: Harvard MBA grad Joe Mihalic racks up $90,000 in student debt and pays it off in about seven months.  Impressive by most any standard.

But.

The thing about getting into a Harvard master's program is that someone who does is likely to have relatively significant means in the first place.  And even someone who had to take advantage of every scholarship they could find under every rock they could hoist is likely to come out of it with advantages that students from non-Ivy's don't usually have.  Mihalic says on his site that he "started a job with a modest income (relative to my banking and consulting peers) in the tech industry of Austin."  You may have noticed the use of "relative" there.  Mihalic admits to spending $1,300/month on "entertainment" before he got his act together.  He bought a house, furniture for the house, two cars, and a motorcycle.  His worries were that he wouldn't be able to start a family, or a business, or acquire a business and turn it around.  This was two years out of school.  Mihalic may have had a lot of student debt (more than the average student), but anyone who thinks he had anything else in common with the average student is fooling themselves. 

In the nation of Horatio Alger there's always someone eager to intentionally miss the point of any argument and change the discussion by playing the "stop belittling the successful" card.  But this is not about Mihalic.  Sure, he had means and resources most students could only dream of, but he responsibly put them to good use (eventually) and dragged himself out of the debt he acquired.  I truly mean when I say: good for him.

No, this is about CNN and it's pre-commercial break teaser about "learning a lesson or two" from Mihalic (and following up with a pithy "good lesson for us all" at the end of the interview--who is "us all" and how do I join them?).  Just a day or so before launching their hours-long Jubilee flogging (hosted by outdated British caricature Richard Quest and possible accessory to illegal phone-hacking Piers Morgan), CNN's midday programming deigned to tell soon-to-be and recent graduates that all they need to do is buckle down and acquire the resources of a Joe Mihalic.  No wait, they couldn't even be that honest.  Instead, they set up an insulting chart with five recommendations for reducing debt, based on Mihalic's plan:
  • Got a roommate (I may be out of touch, but isn't this standard for most college and post-college students?)
  • Didn't go out to eat (one I admittedly don't follow as much as I should, but given how much Mihalic says he was doing this after grad school, I have to imagine that he racked up more significant food bills than most)
  • Took a second job (sure, right after I nab that first job)
  • Sold unnecessary items (can I keep one of my cars and my motorcycle?)
  • Planned free dates (see the thing about going out to eat)
In fact, some of Mihalic's strategies sound decent: dump the 401K, forget about savings (by the way, he had apparently accumulated some $30K in savings--just like all other recent college grads).  These might be extreme methods, but remember that in your twenties, student debt is rather more daunting than retirement planning.  More importantly for CNN: these suggestions wouldn't look so nice and inoffensive on the graphic.  It is Saturday afternoon, after all, can't do anything too heavy.  And heaven forbid they examine why college is so expensive in the first place or why debt amnesty pushes never seem to go anywhere.  No, just show them a clean cut kid who did the implausible and gloss over the privileges he had to both earn and inherit first--that'll let us tell those brats that "it can be done so they should stop complaining."

Young people aren't watching anyway, right?  Yeah, fuck 'em.