Let's Review

I feel as though I've seen and read a fair number of things recently without really saying much about them. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to say something, I'll now offer my thoughts on a few books and movies:



Hellboy 2: The Golden Army -- Probably the most visually inventive movie you'll see this year (if you see it.) The opening sequence with marionettes, in particular, is really impressive. The movie also makes a real effort to be funny. The original was good looking but there wasn't much of anything that resembled comedy. In this sequel, I laughed out loud several times. It seems that Guillermo Del Toro, the director, is now feeling his power as an acclaimed, Oscar-nominated director and, therefore, has the confidence to put silly physical comedy (Hellboy slapping a demon across the face repeatedly cartoon-style)in his films. For anyone who is a fan of fantasy or comic books or who has an appreciation for folklore, I'd recommend this one.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril -- I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I wrote about my anticipation for it here and it pretty much lived up to my hopes. It was fun, light, well-written, and it made me feel smart for recognizing all the famous person cameos (Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman, the Hulk, the Marvel Universe in general, makes an appearance as a plucky news vendor. L. Ron Hubbard, creator of Scientology, is a primary character.) It's not GREAT LITERATURE by any stretch, but it was entertaining.



City Primeval: High Noon In Detroit -- This was my first Elmore Leonard novel. For those of you who don't know, Leonard is one of the country's preeminent crime writers. He's published dozens and dozens of novels and had his stories turned into films - 3:10 to Yuma, Out of Sight, Get Shorty, etc. He's a Detroiter and I was interested to see his take on our fair city. It was kind of a thrill to recognize streets and places in the book. The protagonist is introduced in Carl's Chop House which is just a few blocks away from where I work. The police station, 1300 Beaubien, is around the corner from Suzanne's work. That kind of stuff is fun for me because I'm a literary nerd like that - but the book overall didn't do a whole lot for me. Leonard is as good as everyone says when it comes to dialogue and he does live up to his personal rule of "If it sounds like writing, rewrite it." It's remarkably sleek writing but, in the end, the protagonist was just too opaque and cool for my tastes. When it ended, it was over and that was it. No resonance, you know?







Atomic Robo -- This graphic novel collects the first six issues of the Atomic Robo ongoing series. The premise: "In 1923, Nikola Tesla's career is in its twilight until he unveils a robot with automatic intelligence -- Atomic Robo! Granted full American citizenship in return for his participation in a top secret military operation in 1938, Atomic Robo goes on to found Tesladyne -- a think tank dedicated to exploring the fringes of scientific inquiry. After decades of dealing with all manner of weirdness, Atomic Robo and the so-called Action Scientists of Tesladyne have become the go-to defense force against the unexplained." It's a blatant rip-off of Hellboy's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense and about a dozen other stories and tv shows - nevertheless, I really liked it. The primary thing that sets it apart from Hellboy or most episodes of the X-Files is that it's funny and sometimes silly. There were several points throughout the book that I laughed out loud. Most comics don't do that so it's a big plus in my book. Maryn and Avery are also big fans. They enjoy Atomic Robo's battle with the giant ants most of all. Just last night Maryn informed me that, after Jeff Smith's Bone, AR is "my most favorite comic of all."

For the record, here is an excerpt from an interview with Scott Wegener, the creator of AR, that I liked an awful lot: "As far as what Brian and I are doing with Atomic Robo, it’s pretty simple. We both love good old fashioned action movies, we both enjoy a good laugh, and we both love a well crafted movie, book, or comic that can laugh at itself. Unless you're making the comic book adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank you can probably afford to dial it down a bit, and not take yourself too seriously. Comic book professionals should be taken seriously, but we should also keep in mind that we're not curing cancer, or protecting Democracy here. . .

Another thing that irked us and we wanted to say something about with Atomic Robo, is the "dark and gritty" garbage that seems to be the norm in comics these days. Okay fine, one or two anti-heroes are great. They spice things up. But these days EVERYONE is dark and moody, and worse than that, cynical. But y'know what? Pop a Zoloft and grab some hand grenades, because we're not doing that with Robo. We're going to fight evil robots, giant ants, and Stephen Hawking, and we're going to do it without miles of lame character introspection, and we're not going to de-construct a two-issue story into a nine-issue story.

So basically we just want to make a comic book that is fun. Remember when comics were fun? There's a little something in Robo for everyone I think. I have a wife who fell out of love with comics years ago, and a young daughter who is starting to get into them. One of my goals has been to make a book that my wife and daughter could enjoy as much as I do. So it makes me REALLY happy at cons when women and young girls come to our table and tell us they really enjoy Robo. There are two things that I love about that. The first is how easy it was -- we simply refuse to draw our female Action Scientists in Kevlar bikinis and we don't objectify them -- they are on equal footing with their male counterparts. The second is that while we are conscious of the desire to attract readers of both genders we don't angle the book to men or women specifically. We make a book that People might like."



Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. It's big (544 pages) but surprisingly insubstantial. As the title suggests, it tracks how the Sundance Film Festival and the company Miramax affected the world of independent cinema from the 1980s until the present. It's gossipy more than anything else. Story after story about what terrible people the Weinstein brothers(founders of Miramax) are, how cruel they are to their employees, what emotional infants they are. After a while it just got repetitive and didn't seem to go anywhere. The Sundance angle more or less disappeared in the last third of the book. It was okay. Interesting but not terribly useful. I'm glad I bought it for six bucks on the Barnes and Noble clearance rack.

The Dark Knight -- Yes, it was good. No doubt. Is my life changed? No. But it was good. Heath Ledger does steal the show but everyone else does a good job as well. Every choice the director made seemed geared toward setting the film in a real world. Even in the last film, there was the vaguely sci-fi looking monorail/elevated train thingee superimposed over downtown Chicago. This time around, there's none of that. Gotham looks like a real city. Casting Maqgie Gyllenhall as Rachel Daws brought a lot more maturity and intelligence to the role than what Katie Holmes could provide. Maggie G. seems like she could actually be a lawyer whereas Katie only seemed like a spunky college freshman doing her level best to play a lawyer in a college production of John Grisham's The Firm. Having seen it now, I'm surprised no one has really mentioned Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two Face. I knew Dent's character was in the film but had no idea he would become the villainous Two Face in it. Nor did I know what a cool, convincing job Eckhart did. Nor was I prepared for how utterly creepy and effective his Two Face appearance was. It looked really gross and cool and I was impressed.



That's all the news that's fit to print on the nerd media side of things today. I'll be back later on with an update on my mom's health and a few other thoughts. Stay tuned.