OK, so this is about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of — Star Wars fans worldwide are uniting on a project to re-make the original film (A New Hope), 15 seconds at a time.  Fans can claim individual 15 second moments of the film, recreate them in whatever for they desire (re-enactments, animation, etc.), and then the whole thing will ultimately be strung together.  Wild.  Click here for all the details on Star Wars Uncut, or just watch this bizarre trailer below!

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

After watching Julie & Julia with my wife Steph recently (you can read my review of the film here)  I was interested in learning more about Julie Powell, so I tracked down her Julie/Julia Project blog and her current blog (since she ended the Julie/Julia Project blog in 2003, with only one additional post in 2004 after Julia Childs’ death).  Both blogs were  fun to read through after having seen the film.

Not a week goes by, it seems, that I don’t read about Ridley Scott being attached to yet another movie-in-development.  I’m not the only one who’s noticed, it seems.  Check out this helpful guide: Know Your Ridley Scott Projects That Will Probably Never Happen.

I am an enormous Beatles fanatic.  Thus it is really painful for me that I have not yet had an opportunity to sample the newly remastered versions of all of the Beatles albums that were released last month.  Scorekeeper from AICN’s detailed run-down of each Beatles album, and how the new versions match up against the original CD releases from 1987, has only further whetted my appetite.

CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) has been running a ridiculously entertaining series of posts entitled “Bad For Us, Worse For Them.”  What is it about?  Let me quote from their intro: This is a list of forty deaths in cinema, twenty of which that have a profound affect on the viewer whether by the sheer tragedy of it, how emotionally impactful it is, or how it is a catalyst for a real descent in the progression of the story. The other twenty are deaths that go beyond the call of duty, not because they’re cool or really well executed FX, but because they are just knee-capping in their immediacy, brutality, or simple visceral impact. Kills that will probably leave a mark.  The whole list is fantastic, but I was particularly pleased to see that Spock’s death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan merited inclusion.

Here’s a great piece from DVDActive.com (one of my favorite DVD/Blu-Ray web-sites) that calmly and methodically dissects everything wrong with X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  I will not be purchasing this film on DVD.  One viewing was more than enough for me, thank you very much.

I love the film scores of James Horner.  His score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite scores of all time, so I was very excited to read this article from Movie Score Magazine that previews his work on James Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar!

Click here to check out a trailer for the new film from the director of Donnie Darko, called The Box. As I’ve commented here before, it looks just like a classic Twilight Zone story.  Can’t wait.

Speaking of trailers, the new full trailer for Toy Story 3 (that those of us who caught the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3-D double feature got to see on the big screen) is now on-line.  Check it out:

Toy Story 3 Trailer in HD

Trailer Park | MySpace Videos

If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, then I don’t know what to tell you!

The fourth film that we showed at this year’s EZ Viewing movie-marathon was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and we wrapped up the evening with Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run).

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – We screened Star Trek II two years ago at EZ Viewing II (the year I highlighted my favorite movie sequels) and Star Trek III last year, so how could I not complete the mid-series trilogy by including Star Trek IV in this year’s EZ Viewing??

Following Kirk and crew’s mutiny and theft of the Enterprise in Star Trek III in their attempt to find and revive Spock, the opening of Star Trek IV finds Kirk and Co. still stranded on Vulcan, preparing to face the consequences of their actions. The Enterprise has been destroyed, and they don’t know if they have careers in Starfleet to return to. Spock is alive, but struggling to fully piece together his memories and personality. But the gang is spurred into action when a mysterious alien probe threatens all life on Earth, seeking a species of whales that has long-since been extinct.

Star Trek IV was, until this year’s new film by J.J. Abrams, the most financially successful of all the Star Trek movies. And it was by far the most popular outside of hard-core Trek fandom. If you’ve seen only one Star Trek film, this is probably the one you’ve seen. There are a number of reasons for that, I think. This is a much more accessible film than most of the other Star Trek movies. Much of the story takes place on Earth (in what was the present day when the film was released back in 1986). There’s a pretty simple (but still compelling) hook to the story – go back in time to find humpback whales – that I think is easier for general audiences to grasp than a lot of sci-fi elements of aliens, politics, etc.

The environmental message, I think, also enabled this film to be successful with a broader-than-usual audience. Many of the episodes of the original series dealt with difficult issues (such as racism, class struggles, involvement in foreign countries, etc.) – sometimes subtly, sometimes not. But the allegorical nature of classic Trek was sort of abandoned by the film series (not entirely mistakenly, in my opinion) in favor of more exciting action/adventure. Star Trek IV, though, gets back to those sorts of ideas, and that added a depth to this particular endeavor (bet you thought I was gonna say enterprise) that captured people’s attention.

Finally, Star Trek IV is by far the lightest, in tone, of all the Trek films, and I think people found that to be very appealing. After all the death and seriousness of Star Treks II & III, Star Trek IV is really just a romp – the producers set out to make what is pretty much a Star Trek comedy, and to a fairly surprising degree they succeeded. It’s a pretty funny film. (As opposed to, oh, I don’t know, the wince-inducing attempts at humor in the dreadful Star Trek V.)

OK, I’ve talked about why general audiences responded to Star Trek IV in far greater numbers than the other films – but what do I think of it? I think it’s great! I do tend to prefer my Star Trek to be SERIOUS (which is why II and VI and my very favorite Trek films – and don’t think that I won’t be showing VI next year, by the way!!), but Star Trek IV is so much fun that it’s very hard to resist.

Here’s what else the film has going for it, that I haven’t mentioned yet:

I. This is the only other Star Trek film that Nick Meyer, who wrote and directed Star Trek II and Star Trek VI (hmmm, didn’t I just mention that those two are my very favorite Trek films??) was involved in. Meyer scripted almost the entire back-in-time portions of the film — which makes up about 3/4ths of the movie, at least. (His first line is the film is the wonderfully snarky “Judging by the pollution content of the Earth’s atmosphere, we appear to have arrived in the latter half of the 20^th century.”) And Meyers’ involvement clearly shows in the final product. He has an understanding of – and love for – these characters that is unmatched, and he gives every character a key role in the unfolding story. He is also able to very effectively include a LOT of humor without turning the film into a farce (cough Star Trek V cough).

2. This film is unique among the Trek films (and frankly, among sci-fi and adventure films in general) in that there is really no villain. There is the threat of the alien probe that sets the story in motion, but that’s it. There’s also no fighting and, unless I’m mistaken, not a single shot is fired (by any starship, or by any character) in the entire film. Pretty neat.

3. Although this film was designed to be easily accessible to Trek newbies, it doesn’t dumb itself down and ignore previously-established Trek continuity and character arcs. Quite the contrary, the film is filled with little touches that long-time Trek fans can appreciate, such as the continuing involvement of Sarek, Spock’s father (and the callback to the father-and-son’s decades-long feud which was a major story point in the Original Series episode “Journey to Babel”). I also am always tickled by the opening scene where the Klingon ambassador angrily swears to the Federation Council that “there will be no peace as long as Kirk lives.” That scene has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie. But its presence shows that the filmmakers were interested in exploring the repercussions of Kirk & co.’s actions in Star Trek III (rather than ignoring them, which would have been the easier choice)… and, of course, there is terrific pay-off to that moment two films later, in Star Trek VI.

Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run) — I reviewed this film not too long ago on the site, so you can click here for all the details.

So that was EZ Viewing IV!  Can’t wait until next year!

The third film we screened at EZ Viewing IV was A Mighty Wind.

A Mighty Wind is another fine film that I have a distinct memory of seeing for the first time (when I caught a sneak peek here in Boston) – although I have seen it many, many times subsequently!!

Businessman Jonathan Steinbloom (Bob Balaban, so great as wimpy NBC executive Russell Dalrymple in Seinfeld) decides to put together a memorial concert for his father featuring as many of his dad’s favorite folk musicians as possible. As he sets out to recruit the “talent,” what follows is a delightfully bizarre and wonderfully entertaining tour through the universe of folk music and the many, um, let’s say “quirky” folks who inhabit it. The world of folk music isn’t something that was necessarily crying out for parody – but that might be part of what makes A Mighty Wind so memorable.

The “mockumentary” format has become a bit overused in recent years, but there does not exist a greater master of the format than director/writer/actor Christopher Guest, and in my mind A Mighty Wind is the pinnacle of his work. (Let the debates begin!!) Much has been written about the improvisational manner in which Guest and his actors find the characters and the shape of their films – the result is a film that is filled to the brim with indelible comedic performances. And what an ensemble of actors Mr. Guest has assembled: Harry Shearer (the voice of Ned Flanders, Montgomery Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Rev. Lovejoy, Dr. Hibbert, Rainier Wolfcastle, and so many more on The Simpsons) , Michael McKean (spreader of a vicious rumor about Larry David on last season’s finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm), Eugene Levy (American Pie), Catherine O’Hara (SCTV), Jane Lynch (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Role Models, Talladega Nights), Parker Posey (Superman Returns), Fred IWillard (Anchorman, Wall-E), Ed Begley Jr. (The Pineapple Express, hairless Stan Sitwell on Arrested Development), Jennifer Coolidge (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me), Larry Miller (a familiar face from so many comedies, but I’ll always think of him as the overly forward doorman on Seinfeld), John Michael Higgins (Walk Hard, deadpan attorney Wayne Jarvis on Arrested Development), Paul Dooley (spymaster Enabran Tain on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and so many more.

There are so many pleasures to be found in this film. The fanatical happiness of the New Main Street Singers. The reunion of Spinal Tap (Shearer, McKean, & Guest), albeit now in the form of a group performing an entirely different form of music! (Though who wouldn’t have killed to hear the Frontiersmen cover “Big Bottom??) Fred Willard’s catchphrase. Ed Begley Jr.’s constant use of Yiddish. The flashbacks to Jonathan Steinbloom (Bob Balaban)’s sheltered youth. Eugene Levy’s Shatner-esque pauses. I could go on!!!

I’ll be back here tomorrow to discuss the fourth and fifth films from this year’s EZ Viewing!

The first two films shown at EZ Viewing IV (my annual movie marathon) were: Star Wars: A New Hope — The Adywan Fan-Edit and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

What is the Adywan Fan-Edit of Star Wars?  It is, bar none, the very best version of the first Star Wars film (I refuse to refer to it as Episode IV) that I have ever seen.  FAR better than the DVD version released by Lucasfilm in 2004, and far better than ANY of the other versions that have been released on DVD/VHS/or any other home-media format.  I wrote a lengthy piece about this fan-edit last year — click here for all the details of this amazing fan-edit.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – Director Guy Ritchie has had a hand in some sub-par films recently (although his latest project, Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., looks promising), but we shouldn’t let that cloud the greatness of his debut feature.

Four friends Eddie (Nick Moran), Soap (Dexter Fletcher), Tom (Jason Flemyng, seen most recently in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Bacon (Jason Statham, who these days is a big action star in films like The Transporter) find themselves deeply in debt to East End gang-boss Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty) after losing a fixed card game. Rather than lose any fingers to his menacing enforcer (Vinnie Jones), they concoct a scheme to steal the money from another group of thieves who are themselves planning to rob a small drug-dealing operation. Things don’t go well, of course, and events quickly spiral completely out of control.

I still remember the first time I saw this film. I was blown away (and still am, to this day) by the deftness with which Ritchie juggled an enormously complex plot filled with scores of bizarre characters whose stories would weave in and out of one another. Most of all, I was dazzled by the wonderful, rat-a-tat dialogue which was so funny and so distinct. The word-play comes fast and furious, and the cockney slang that all the characters breathlessly spew out gives the film a flavor all its own.

In his review from 1999, Roger Ebert described this film as “Tarantino crossed with the Marx Brothers.” That’s a wonderful description, and pretty accurately assesses the way the film combines a noir-ish crime-caper plot with a madcap sense of humor and whimsy. This film is a riot.

Check back tomorrow for more EZ Viewing IV fun!

This past weekend my wife Steph and I hosted our fourth annual EZ Viewing movie marathon!  (Click here for more info on last year’s EZ Viewing III.)

This year’s selection was:

Star Wars: A New Hope — The Adywan Fan-Edit

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

A Mighty Wind

Star Trek IV

Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run)

A fun mix, huh?  So, why did we settle on those particular movies?

Check back every day this week to find out more about my love for each of those five films!

My faith in the continuing DS9 saga is restored!

Last week I week I wrote about my disappointment with how the spectacular DS9 novel series has sort-of petered out over the past few years, but after reading the other DS9 novel published this year, Una McCormack’s spectacular The Never-Ending Sacrifice, I am again reminded about just how amazing this series can be.

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is a sequel, of sorts, to the intriguing second-season DS9 episode “Cardassians.”  In that episode, an elderly Bajoran man arrives on the station with his adoptive son, Rugal, a Cardassian child who was left behind when the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended.  Allegations emerge that the Bajorans are raising Rugal to hate his own kind, and when his actual father arrives on the station, relieved that the son he believed dead still lives, the Cardassian government demands that Commander Sisko turn the boy over to them.  It’s a complex episode that fleshes out a lot of the show’s back-story — including a look at what went on during the Cardassian occupation and the reasons for their withdrawal (indeed, this was the episode that revealed that the Cardassians’ name for the station was Terok Nor), as well as a lot more about the deceitful web of Cardassian politics (including more information than we’d learned at that time about Garak and Dukat) and how life on Bajor was proceeding after the Cardassian withdrawal.  Despite all those great qualities, though, I was always troubled by the ending of the episode.  After all that build-up, Sisko’s decision is revealed in the closing moments in a simplistic commander’s log (it’s as if the writers just ran out of time and realized that they had to end the episode), and I couldn’t believe that Sisko actually decided to take the boy from his adoptive parents, with whom Rugal had expressed a clear desire to stay.

It was an episode that demanded a follow-up, but none ever came during the seven-year run of the show.  Luckily, Una McCormack has stepped in to fill that void.  The Never-Ending Sacrifice follows the life of Rugal from the moment he was taken by his Cardassian father-by-blood, Kotan Pa’Dar, back to Cardassia Prime, all the way through the tumultuous events of the series and through the post-finale series of novels as well.  Ms. McCormack has masterfully woven together the intimate story of Rugal’s young life with the epic tale of the rise and fall of Cardassia.

Both aspects of the story are extraordinarily compelling.  Rugal is an interesting protagonist.  Following the events of the episode “Cardassians,” I expected him to be depicted as an angry, hateful young man because of his forced separation from his adoptive Bajoran parents.  And, indeed, there is much anger in Rugal as depicted by Ms. McCormack.  But she also shows us his intelligence, his gentleness, and above all his surprising equilibrium even when caught up in extraordinary galactic events.

I also really enjoyed Ms. McCormack’s depiction of the larger story of Cardassia.  She has written almost exclusively about Cardassia in her work for Pocket Books so far (in the novel Hollow Men, set during the 6th season of the show, as well as the terrific novella The Lotus Flower from Worlds of Deep Space Nine volume 1) and she continues to flesh out that world and its culture, history, and politics here.  She also has great fun in weaving Rugel’s story in and out of the galactic events that we saw transpire over the course of the show.  She connects a lot of dots and addresses a number of plot points that the show was somewhat vague on.  (I particularly enjoyed the way she fleshed out exactly how the Detapa Council managed to seize control of the government from the Central Command, and what happened to that government once Dukat arranged the alliance between Cardassia and the Dominion.  Those events were all hinted at by the DS9 writers, but the details had always remained tantalizingly unknown, at least until now.)

There are a lot of other fun references and appearances by familiar faces that I won’t spoil here.  Well, OK, I will tell you that, of course, a familiar former tailor makes an appearance.  His answer to the question “Did you try to pretend Tora Ziyal was still alive?” is absolutely heart-breaking, and one of the most haunting things I’ve read in a novel in quite some time.  (It’s also a great testament to the power of the Deep Space Nine story as a whole, and all the wonderful work by every one of the writers, actors, and craftsmen involved in that series, that a small reference to events like that from the series can carry such emotion and meaning.)

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is an outstanding piece of work, one that fits well into the larger continuing Deep Space Nine story-line but that is also a perfectly complete tale all on its own.  Magnificent.

(Oh, and I also have to give Ms. McCormack props for the absolutely perfect title, a lovely reference to one of my very-favorite Bashir/Garak conversations.)

Last week I wrote about some of the great comics I’ve read lately.  That list was just scratching the surface!  Here’s some more fantastic stuff that I’ve been enjoying recently:

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt and BPRD: 1947 - The Hellboy saga continues in these two new wonderful mini-series.  In Hellboy: The Wild Hunt, things are coming to a head for the big red guy.  Cut off from his old friends and comrades in the BPRD, and hunted by the newly-resurrected Queen of Blood, things are looking grim for our hero!  Last month’s issue (#6) was jam-packed with astonishing revelations about Hellboy’s origin that I never saw coming, but that I thought worked absolutely PERFECTLY.  Meanwhile, BPRD: 1947 takes us through a rollicking tale of the second year of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense as Professor Bruttenholm struggles against vampires and a lot of other weirdness.  The Hellboy universe has really richened and deepened over these last few years, and I am really excited to see where things go from here.

Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man — The relaunch of Brian Michael Bendis’ take on Spider-Man (three issues have been published as of this writing) continues just where the previous 133 issues (plus a handful of annuals and other specials) left off.  Young Peter Parker must juggle his, um, interesting love-life with a boring job at a fast-food joint (since he lost his job at the Daily Bugle following the devastation of NYC in the truly awful Ultimatum miniseries) with, oh yeah, his crime-fighting escapades as Spider-Man!  Mr. Bendis is well-known for his witty, true-to-teenaged-life dialogue, but I think his real strength is the depth of characterization he brings to Peter Parker and all the rest of the extraordinarily numerous cast of this comic.  Mary-Jane, Flash Thompson, Aunt May, “Kong,” Kitty Pryde from the X-Men, Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four (and it is almost embarrassing how much more interesting Kitty and Johnny are here than in their “home” comics) and many more characters are all brought to amazingly real life in these pages.  I’ve been following Bendis’ run on “Ultimate” Spider-Man and I’ll be with the series until he leaves.  Spider-Man has never been done better (in my comic-reading life-time, at least!).  My only small complaint: I’m not quite taken with the overly stylized work of new series artist David Lafuente.  Let’s see if it grows on me any more after a few more issues…

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower — I fell way behind on this series of mini-series, adapting and expanding upon the back story of Stephen King’s seven-book The Dark Tower opus, but I was finally able to catch up last month.  Breathtakingly gorgeous art by Jae Lee combined with a wonderful epic fantasy yarn by Peter David & Robin Furth (working with Mr. King) make this a compelling comic book indeed.  Large amounts of extra credit for the terrific back-up features.  In addition to the main story, each issue is filled to overflowing with lengthy text-pieces that flesh out the extraordinary world that Stephen King created, interviews with the various creators involved with the book, and lots more.  (My only complaint is that Jae Lee was absent for the most recent mini-series, The Fall of Gilead, and the book was not the same without him.  I’d have preferred that they delayed the release of that mini-series so that Mr. Lee could have illustrated it, maintaining artistic continuity across the entire series.)

Batman and Robin — Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s latest partnership is this bizarre, violent, madcap new take on Batman and Robin.  But this isn’t the Batman and Robin that you might be familiar with.  Following the recent dramatic upheavals in the DC universe status quo, former Robin Dick Grayson has taken the mantle of the Dark Knight, with Bruce Wayne’s long-lost son Damian (who Bruce fathered to Ras Al Ghul’s daughter Talia in the long-forgotten but recently returned-to-continuity graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon from 1987 by Mike W. Barr & Jerry Bingham).  The characterizations and plot-lines don’t quite jive with what’s happening in the other Batman titles these days, but who cares.  Mr. Quitely’s gorgeous, distinct illustrations have always served as the best conduits for Mr. Morrison’s out-there storytelling, and this book is no different.  My complaint, as with the Dark Tower series, is about the shift in artists: already we’re having fill-in artists after only three issues??  Sheesh!!

Batman: Streets of Gotham — Speaking of Batman, I’m also thoroughly enjoying this book written by the great Paul Dini (one of the key creative forces behind Batman: The Animated Series, which stands in my mind as my favorite version of Batman in ANY media) and illustrated by Dustin Nguyen.  I’ve been a fan of Mr. Nguyen since his great run on Wildcats 3.0 with Joe Casey, and his work here is absolutely stellar — from the wonderfully evocative water-color covers (issue #4’s cover featuring the horrifying Mr. Zsasz was a particular stand-out, though shame on whoever is responsible for the placement of the logo which makes it very difficult to see that Zsasz is standing under a silhouette of Batman) to his stylized work on the interiors.

Doom Patrol — Full disclosure: my friend Liz Gehrlein edits this book, and she’s the one who encouraged me to sample this new series (which I might not otherwise have picked off the racks myself).  I’m quite glad I gave it a try.  It’s got a sort-of retro feel filled to the brim with classic comic book super-hero escapades.  In contrast to the “decompressed” storytelling that has become very popular over the last several years, each issue so far has been jam-packed with exciting story.  Extra props for the magnificent Metal Men back-up feature that reunites two extraordinary talents: Keith Giffen and Kevin Maguire.

Superman: Secret Origin — I wasn’t sure that I would be interested in yet another take on Superman’s early years, but Gary Frank’s terrific cover prompted me to pick up issue #1, and I’m glad I did.  Mr. Frank’s art is, of course, spectacular.  He is able to combine really emotive faces with extraordinary detail in his rendering of people’s clothing, cars, and other background details.  I also found myself intrigued by the way writer Geoff Johns mixes and matches various ideas and iconography from various different versions of Superman.  There’s the crystalline Kryptonian technology from Richard Donner’s Superman movies; there’s the endearingly pre-Crisis look to the spaceship that brought Clark to Earth; there’s the heat-vision-as-metaphor-for-puberty idea from Smallville; there’s the depiction of Krypton as being divided up into various guilds that has been a big part of the New Krypton stories running through all of DC’s current Superman titles over the past year; and, of course, there’s the last page, which firmly establishes that young Clark took on the identity of Superboy while still living in Smallville.  (The only bit of cheese in this big melting pot that I wish had been left out?  The Gregory Peck-looking Jor-El from Adam Kubert’s run on Action Comics with Mr. Johns from 2007.  Mr. Kubert is a magnificent artist, but that version of Jor-El never did it for me.)  Still, a really enjoyable debut issue, and I eagerly anticipate the rest of the series.

I’ve been reading about Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s deservedly beloved children’s book Where The Wild Things Are for a long time — years, now — and I am so thrilled to be able to report that the finished film which has finally been unveiled for the world to see is every bit as wonderful as I could have hoped.

Quite a lot has been written about this film’s torturous path to the big screen.  A few weeks ago I posted a link to this lengthy piece from the New York Times that charted the almost decade-long journey of Mr. Jonze to bring this film to life.  I remember reading the post from CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under development) that the Times article refers to in its opening paragraph.  Click here to read that article, from February 20, 2008, in which Devin Farici broke the story that executives at Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures were seriously considering abandoning Mr. Jonze’s version and entirely reshooting the film.

Thank the movie gods that that moment of crisis for the film came and went, and Mr. Jonze was able to bring his vision to completion.

The result is a delightfully unique, idiosyncratic film, truly unlike any other childrens book adaptation I have ever seen.

The film is enormously epic, a visual feast, but it is also astonishingly intimate.  Right from the very beginning (with the wonderfully messed-with opening titles which lead into Max’s wild rumpus with his dog), Mr. Jonze puts the viewers right in the face, and the mind, of young Max.  Max (played by Max Records) is clearly a very imaginative, creative little boy.  He also seems to be extraordinary lonely and, like any nine-year-old who doesn’t yet know how to express all of the feelings roiling around inside of him, he is prone to terrible outbursts.

This early, pre-Wild Things section of the film is an intriguing — and very, very clever — elaboration upon Mr. Sendak’s original book.  In Tim Burton’s film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he added a flashback that fleshed out Willy Wonka’s backstory (a sad childhood with his terrible father) that I felt was ridiculous and completely out of place.  But these early scenes with Max, in which we get to know him and understand his situation and why he feels the way he does, are wonderful and, I would argue, totally critical to the film’s success.  We need to understand who Max is, and why he is ultimately driven to run away from his family and escape (for a time) into fantasy.

What makes this early section of the film work, is Mr. Jonze (and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers)’s care to avoid any sort of schmalty manipulation of the audience.  These early scenes perfectly capture the well-known story-telling dictum of “show don’t tell.”  There are no voice-overs or lengthy speeches to explain everything to us; there are no flashbacks, and frankly, there is no exposition whatsoever.  Instead we are able to learn everything we need to know from a series of sad vignettes that we see unfold as we watch a tough afternoon and evening in the life of young Max.

These early sequences are a;sp enhanced by a wonderful group of actors, such as Catherine Keener and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Mark Ruffalo, who inhabit this look into Max’s home life.  But things begin and end with the amazing Max Records as Max.  It seems to me that child actors rise or fall based on the skill of the director working with them (let’s just say that I don’t fully blame Jake Llyod for his terrible performance as young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I), so I think Mr. Jonze and young Mr. Records should share equal credit for the amazing work on display here.  Suffice it to say, Max’s performance is astounding.  He is able to bring vibrant, sometimes painful life to this young boy who, unlike many movie kids, behaves and more importantly THINKS like a nine-year-old boy really would.

I mentioned above that, right from the beginning, Spike Jonze is able to put the audience right up into Max’s face.  There’s some incredible hand-held camera-work to witness here that allows us to tumble along with Max as he runs and jumps and yells when he is hyper or angry, and Mr. Jonze also displays a fearlessness in putting the camera right up in Max’s face during the still moments, so we can see in his face and in his eyes how he is processing and reacting to all that is happening around him.

I can’t believe how many paragraphs I have already written in this review, and I haven’t even mentioned the extraordinary achievement of how the Wild Things have been brought to life.  Amazing, wonderful, astounding — descriptive words fail me!!  Devin Farici’s post on CHUD mentions that one of the major problems facing the film, back in 2008, was that they had filmed everything live-action with Max and actors in enormous suits (created by the Jim Henson creature shop) with the intention of using CGI to enhance the expressionism of the creatures’ faces, but that that was proving to be fiendishly difficult (and expensive!).

I’m not sure if Mr. Jonze and his effects artists came up with new technical ways to ease the challenges facing them, or if they just buckled down and carried out the tough work, but either way the result is astounding.  First of all, the design of the creatures is amazing — they really look like Maurice Sendak’s drawings brought to three-dimensional life!  The highest compliment I can pay the designers is that the Wild Things look exactly the way I had always imagined them.  And while I am not certain precisely how the final effects were ultimately achieved, the blend of CGI and live-action works marvelously well.  It’s a powerful testament to the skill and artistry involved that, watching the film unfold, I had no clue as to what was CGI enhancement and what was just the original Henson suits.  The creatures look alive — and more than that, they look and feel REAL.  There wasn’t a single moment when I found myself drawn out of the film by thinking “oh, that’s clearly a CGI shot.”  (There were a few moments, when the creatures were jumping around, that looked pretty clearly like wire work, but I didn’t mind.  There’s something so great about seeing some old-fashioned wire-work in a movie these days!)  And the environment in which the Wild Things live and run and play doesn’t feel like some otherworldy, created-in-a-computer place — it looks and feels just like real rocks and real forests and real sand dunes (which of course it is).

I also found myself entranced by the expressive eyes of the Wild Things.  Again, I’m not sure when I was watching CGI and when I wasn’t, but the finished effect are just wonderful.  The final ingredient, of course, is the voices.  James Gandolfini is perfect as Carol, the Wild Thing who embodies Max’s untrammelled emotions, and his tendency towards expressing his feelings of sadness and loneliness through destructive action.  He is heartbreakingly tender and also very, very dangerous.  As I was watching the film, I immediately recognized Catherine O’Hara’s voice as the dour Wild Thing Judith, but it wasn’t until the closing credits that I realized that Forest Whitaker and Chris Cooper were two of the other voices, all of whom are terrific.

Spike Jonze has said that he felt he cracked the script of Where The Wild Things Are when he came upon the idea of having each Wild Thing express a different aspect of Max’s personality and emotions.  As with everything in the film, this is skillfully done.  Jonze’s approach to the Wild Things’ personalities  (along with the very specific, different designs of each creature) is effective in giving each creature a distinct identity in the film.  (No Transformers-like problem telling the characters apart to be found here!)  And in this aspect of the film, too, Jonze and his team stick to the dictum of “show don’t tell.”  There’s no scene where someone explains to the audience “You see?  Each creature is a different aspect of Max’s personality and emotions!”  No, the filmmakers trust that we’ll figure this out on our own, as the film unfolds.

I’ve been writing for a while now, and I haven’t even scratched the surfaces of the film’s pleasures.  (Like the marvelous score!!  I hope that someone will write a detailed look at the film’s music was created, because I’d love to know more.)  As I sit now and reflect on the film that I saw, I keep thinking of other little moments and details that I really loved.

In the 2008 CHUD article mentioned at the top of this piece, Devin wrote that the studio executives were worried because they found this adaptation of a childrens book to be “too weird” and “too scary.”  Well, the finished film is indeed scary in parts, and it is also thoroughly weird.  So those executives were right on the money in their assessments.  But what made them sweat was exactly what, to me, makes this film so w0nderful.

This is not a film for everyone.  It is DEFINITELY not for little kids, and I can see where some might find it boring.  (Jonze & Eggers’ refusal to fall into any typical movie narratives — character A does x and then learns a clear lesson — means that, for some lengthy stretches during the film, there isn’t too much that actually HAPPENS.)  Of the friends that I went to see this film with this weekend, only one of the three of us (me!) seemed to really like it.  But judging from the reviews, and from my own reaction, this seems to be a film where the people who like it REALLY REALLY LOVE IT.

If you’re a fan of intelligent, adult movie-making, do yourself a favor and go watch the film and see for yourself.

Deep Space Nine remains, by an order of magnitude, my favorite of the Star Trek series.  Not surprisingly, then, it was the terrific DS9 relaunch of novels set after the series finale (which I wrote about in depth here) that rekindled my interest in (and love for) Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels.

But after the publication of David Mack’s phenomenal novel Warpath in April, 2006, the DS9 relaunch series hit something of a snag.  Warpath ended on a brutal cliffhanger, bur for whatever reason the next installment in the series, Fearful Symmetry, wasn’t scheduled to be published until a year later.  Unfortunately, it was actually over TWO years until that next novel was finally published (written by Olivia Woods, a different author than the one originally announced) in July, 2008.  Fearful Symmetry wound up being one of the shortest DS9 novels published (in the relaunch series, at least), and then we all had to wait still another year for the next novel: The Soul Key, also written by Olivia Woods, released this past August.

Such a long a wait put a lot of pressure on The Soul Key.  Things were exacerbated even more (in my mind, at least), when, a few months ago, Pocket Books released their schedule of novels for 2010.  Only one DS9 novel was included, and according to the description it will be set several years after the events of the entire DS9 relaunch series of novels, so that it can be a part of next year’s “Typhon Pact” Next Gen crossover story.  That sounds like a cool novel, but one that will be much more about the post-Destiny Next Gen stories as opposed to all of the DS9-centric stories of the DS9 relaunch.  So it might be another two years at least before more actual DS9 proper novels are published.  All of that means that Ms. Woods’ two novels (Fearful Symmetry and The Soul Key) could conceivably be the only new DS9 relaunch stories published for FIVE years.

That means that The Soul Key would have to be really magnificent to live up to all of the expectation placed upon it.  Sadly, it is not.

Although not as short as Fearful Symmetry, The Soul Key is still a fairly short novel — and it feels even shorter than it actually is.  That might be because, while there is a lot of PLOT covered in this novel (we do, at last, get some resolution to several of the story-lines that have been running through the past several DS9 novels, which means the last several YEARS of my life), there doesn’t seem to be a whole heck of a lot of depth to the proceedings.  Many of the great previous DS9 novels really explored individual characters (like Garak in A Stitch in Time) and/or explored in detail the situations that certain characters found themselves in (such as, just to pick a recent example from Warpath, the page-count Mr. Mack expends to involve the reader in Ensign Tenmei’s experience as a captive of the Jem’Hadar soldier Taranatar).  I didn’t really feel that depth in The Soul Key — the story moved along at such a brisk pace — boom, boom boom — that I didn’t really feel like sufficient time was spent focusing on any of the events that occurred.  There’s nothing wrong with fast-paced story-telling — that can make for a really exciting, action-packed novel (as Warpath was), but to me it almost felt as if Ms. Woods was just in a rush to get some of these long-running story-lines resolved already.

I also felt that Ms. Woods spent way too much time in the first half of the novel filling us in on the back-story of the characters and situations (particularly that of the two Iliana Ghemors).  This back-story is interesting stuff, but I really felt that it should have been included in the previous novel, Fearful Symmetry, whose raison d’etre seemed to me to have been the filling-in of important backstory before the story-lines moved forward.  I have no idea why some of this important info was left out of Fearful Symmetry.  It’s inclusion in that novel would have helped Fearful Symmetry feel like more of a complete story, and it would have left more room in this novel for the events depicted herein to be fleshed out more.

So… is there anything that I liked about Fearful Symmetry?  Well, yes.  There is a lot of exciting action here, and there is (as noted above), some nice resolution (finally) to some long-running story-lines.  Most of the major DS9 players have a role to play in the proceedings, which I appreciated.  In particular, I’ve been really enjoying the continued development of the created-in-the-novels character of Elias Vaughn, who gets some more tough breaks here.

I was also happy to see that, as the novel reached its conclusion, we got some tantalizing hints that other long-building DS9 story-lines (such as the emergence of the mysterious and dangerous Ascendants) had not been forgotten.  (And — small spoiler alert!! — I was quite surprised and pleased to read about the return of the Even Odds to the storyline.)  Who knows when the DS9 saga will continue (in addition to the lack of DS9 in the 2010 schedule, Pocket Books’ Star Trek line has been in upheaval recently with the firing, within the past year, of the two editors primarily responsible for shepherding the Trek novels: Marco Palmieri and Margaret Clark), but the final pages of The Soul Key give me hope that the same story-lines and questions that are on my mind are also on the minds of the Trek authors, and that we will see these stories continue (and reach a hopefully compelling conclusion).

I just hope I don’t have to wait too many more years!!

Pocket Books did publish one additional DS9 novel this past summer, albeit one that didn’t directly connect to the main story-line: The Never-Ending Sacrifice, by Una McCormack.  Was I more satisfied by that novel than I was by The Soul Key?  Indeed I was!!  I’ll be posting my thoughts on that novel next Friday.  For now, have a great weekend!

I’ve written a few pieces, recently, about some of the great comic books that I’ve been reading lately.  (Click here for my thoughts on 100 Bullets, and here for my reviews of three recent graphic novels adapted from the short stories of Alan Moore.)  What else have I been reading lately that has tickled my fancy?  I’m glad you asked!

Filthy Rich, by Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos — After finishing 100 Bullets, I was eager to check out some more work by Brian Azzarello.  Luckily, this original graphic novel had just been published, so I snapped it up.  Richard “Junk” Junkin used to be a football star.  Now he sells cars.  Not very well.  When Junk’s boss asks him to work as the bodyguard for his spoiled, party-going daughter, Junk find himself swept up in the world of the young and the rich that he is at once envious of and disdainful of.  Not surprisingly, things don’t go well.  Mr. Santos’s black-and-white artwork has a bit of a cartoony, Bruce Tim bent which one might think incongruous with a gritty crime story, but I quickly found myself loving his detailed, quirky illustrations.  There are a lot of characters in this story, but under Mr. Santos’ sure hand I never found myself confused as to who-was-who.  This is a great, street-level gritty story (an Azzarello specialty), and if you’re looking for a break from comic book super-heroics, this is worth a shot.

Frankenstein’s Womb, by Warren Ellis and Marek Oleksicki — As noted above, last week I wrote about three Alan Moore graphic novels published by Avatar Press.  But that’s not all that Avatar has to offer.  Last month I had the pleasure of reading this recent graphic novel (or “graphic novella,” as it is labelled on its cover) written by the enormously talented Warren Ellis.  The year is 1816.  Mary Wollestonecraft Goodwin, her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont are traveling across Europe.  In Germany, they come across a strange and deserted castle.  Castle Frankenstein.  This wonderfully weird and quite haunting tale of where Mary Shelley REALLY got the idea for her famous novel is one of my favorite things I’ve read this year.  Mr. Ellis’ clever (and quite grim!) script is perfectly supplemented by Mr. Oleksicki’s incredibly detailed, evocative black-and-white linework.  Absolutely wonderful.

Incognito, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips — Taking a break from their stellar crime series Criminal, Brubaker and Phillips bring us the story (told in six issues) of former super-hero Zack Overkill.  After his twin brother (and fellow super-villain) was killed, Zack served as a secret witness against the head of his criminal organization, the Black Death, and went into a super-villain version of the witness protection program.  Given a drug that eliminates his super-power, Zack is set up with a new name and a dead-end job (working as a file clerk) and instructions to blend in… to become part of society.  But making peace with his new life as a normal worker-bee proves to be extraordinarily difficult for Zack, who craves the excitement of the life he lost.  When he discovers that getting high counter-acts the powers-robbing drugs he’s been taking, he’s over-joyed — but quickly finds himself caught between his handlers (of whose strict rules of parole he’s in clear violation), and his former super-villain comrades (who aren’t so happy to discover that he’s still alive).  Spectacular art by Mr. Phillips (a man whose style I’ve come to admire more and more with each new project) and an extraordinarily compelling, human script by Mr. Brubaker make this gritty, noir take on super-villains a must-read, and a worthy reason for them to have temporarily put their masterpiece Criminal on hold!

Kick-Ass, by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. — Totally juvenile and also an outrageous amount of fun, Kick-Ass tells the story of a lonely, comic-book-loving kid named Dave Lizewski, who one day starts wondering how it is that nobody has ever tried to be a superhero before.  ”Why do people want to be Paris Hilton, and nobody wants to be Spider-Man?” he asks.  So he sets out to become a superhero.  Telling you anything more about what happens to Dave would be ruining all the fun, but be prepared that Kick-Ass is extraordinarily violent (and not a little profane, to boot)!  John Romita Jr. is one of the very best comic-book artists working today, and it’s great to see him cut loose with this “hard-R” material.  His work has such life to it!  I can easily understand why this is being made into a movie (directed by Matthew Vaughn  – you can read more about the Kick-Ass film here).  My only criticism?  The book has seen some major, major delays.  (My understanding is that the first story-line is scheduled to run eight issues, but only seven have been published so far, and the wait has been very, very long between each of the last several issues.)

The Nightly News, by Jonathan Hickman — This six-issue limited series was published in 2006-07, but I’ve only recently gotten around to reading it in its entirety.  (After really enjoying the first two issues, I decided that this series would be best read all at once, so I decided to hold off on reading the rest of the individual issues until the entire series came out.  But once I’d stopped, it took me a while to get back to it.)  But I’m really glad that I have, because this series is truly a unique creation.  It’s an incredibly detailed, anarchic critique of multiple aspects of today’s modern American society, focusing on the mega-conglomerates that control our access to information and shape our consumerist society.  Hickman also find time along the way to question the way our schools are run, the way behavior-altering drugs are proscribed to children, the push-pull dance of influence between media and government, and much more.  I must also comment on the wonderfully intricate lay-out of the comic itself.  This isn’t a conventional “x number of panels per page” comic.  Mr. Hickman has woven his illustrations and text together with all sorts of tables, graphs, and other details into an information hodgepodge that is unlike anything I have ever seen in a comic book before.  This cutting-edge design works beautifully with his themes that deal with the ways our lives are shaped (and controlled) by the information we have access to.  Mr. Hickman has been getting a lot of work lately from Marvel Comics, but this is the project that brought him to their attention, and it is worth yours.

Last week I had the pleasure of taking in a double-feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, re-done in beautiful 3-D.  What a glorious time in a movie theatre!

It seems that 3-D is really starting to be embraced by the studios.  There have been a number of big 3-D releases in the past year, with a LOT more on the horizon.  (Personally I’m looking forward to James Cameron’s Avatar and, further in the future, Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson’s collaboration on Tintin.)  I’ve skipped most of the recent 3-D films since they really didn’t interest me.  I did see Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (from 2007), and while the 3-D was cool, it still made my head hurt at times, and the film itself (minus the excitement of the 3-D effects) was entirely forgettable.  After that I stayed away from 3-D films until I saw Pixar’s Up this summer (read my review here), which was magnificent.  The film itself was wonderful, and the gorgeous visuals were only enhanced by the beautiful, immersive 3-D.

Pixar’s big release for summer 2010 will be the long-awaited Toy Story 3, which will be presented in 3-D.  To build some anticipation for the film, Disney and Pixar have re-done the first two Toy Story films in 3-D, and released them to theatres for a limited 2-week engagement this month.

Even without the 3-D, it was an enormous pleasure to re-watch those two films.  I really liked the first Toy Story, and I was bowled over by Toy Story 2 when it came out — I thought it was endlessly clever, quite effectively emotional, and also totally hysterical.  The Toy Story “Toy Box set” (containing both films plus a third disc filled with special features) was one of the very first DVDs I ever bought, and I watched Toy Story 2 several times those first few years.

So while I know Toy Story 2 really well, it had been quite a while since I had last seen the first Toy Story.  I was really pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up.  There are moments when it is clear how far Pixar’s animation has progressed (the fur on Sid’s dog, for instance, is pretty much just a solid shape, as opposed to the dynamic fur effects we’d see later on with Sulley and the Abominable Snowman a few years later in Monsters, Inc.), but over-all the animation holds up wonderfully.  The characters move naturally and — more importantly — really feel ALIVE as opposed to being just nicely-rendered CGI constructs.  This is helped by the genius voice-casting.  Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are absolutely perfect in the roles, and their relationship is the heart of the film.  While Toy Story may be a simpler tale than the more elaborate and emotionally complex sequel, it is still gripping almost 15 years later.

Which brings me to the profoundly amazing sequel, Toy Story 2.  From the astounding opening action-adventure sequence with Buzz Lightyear (which is chock-full of gorgeous imagery and wonderful jokes, such as the battery-shaped “source of Zurg’s power” to the Also Sprach Zarathustra chimes emitted by the holographic steps Buzz jumps on in Zurg’s lair) right through to the very, very funny fake out-takes that play over the closing credits, this film fires on every cylinder.  The story is remarkably complex, filled with interweaving narratives and some surprisingly sophisticated story-lines.  The tragic nature of the limited time that Woody and the gang have to be enjoyed by Andy before he grows up and discards them is laid bare, and the film doesn’t provide any easy answers to that dilemma.  And Jessie’s lament, set to the song When Somebody Loves You, is as powerful a two-minutes of animation as I’ve ever seen (perhaps only equalled by the opening scenes of this year’s Up).  Despite those tough issues, there is also an extraordinary amount of humor in the film.  The voice-cast is really let loose, and it’s the side characters (including Wallace Shawn as Rex, John Ratzenberger as Hamm, Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, and Jim Varney as Slinky Dog, not to mention all the new additions to this sequel including Estelle Harris as Mrs. Potato Head, Kelsey Grammer as the Prospector, Joan Cusack as Jessie, and Wayne Knight as Andy “the chicken man”) who really make the film.

All of which brings me to the new 3-D.  Wow.  As with Up, this isn’t gimmicky, in-your-face 3-D.  (This is hardly surprising, as these films weren’t originally designed for 3-D.)  Instead, the 3-D effects are used to create an expansive, immersive environment.  While it might be an exaggeration to say that you, the audience member, feel as if you’re right there amongst the characters, the 3-D does serve to open up the visual world of the story to a remarkable degree.  It’s the highest compliment that I can pay the artists and technicians involved to say that after a few minutes I completely forgot about the 3-D effects, and just found myself carried along by the films.  I am also happy to report that I didn’t experience any annoying 3-D-created headaches, despite watching two complete films back-to-back wearing the 3-D glasses.

I wish more studios would re-release classic films to be enjoyed again on the big-screen.  It was a great pleasure seeing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 again, and the wonderful new 3-D enhancements to both films were just the icing on the cake.

It’s become a bit of a tradition that, each summer at Camp Ramah in New England, we kick off our Staff Week at the beginning of each summer with a silly video that introduces our first program (which usually involves some sort of elaborate competition between the counselors of each division).  We’ve taken to doing parodies of movies or TV shows.  This year was our most elaborate video yet — a parody of Lost that was created by Ethan Linden, Davey Rosen and myself.

There are a few Ramah “in-jokes” to be found within (such as a reference to Yehuda Gubani and camp’s new eruv), but I still think y’all might get a kick out of this:

I’m particularly proud that we were able to get Lost’s signature eyeball shot in there!!

At the end of our Staff Week program, we showed this 45-second epilogue.  This is for the true Lost fans out there!

Heh heh heh.  Pretty proud of that joke.  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Last month I waxed poetic a bit about the groundbreaking comic book work of writer Alan Moore, and I reviewed a recent interview/retrospective of his career, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore: Indispensible Edition, by George Khoury, published by TwoMorrows Publishing.

I commented, at the end of my review, how the highest compliment that I could pay that project was that it made me want to drop everything and go re-read all of Mr. Moore’s great comics!  Well, I didn’t quite have the time to do that, but I did have the pleasure recently of checking out three relatively new works by Mr. Moore, published by Avatar Press.

Over the last several years, the fine folks at Avatar have been republishing some hard-to-find early works by Alan Moore (such as A Small Killing, which I really need to get my hands on).  Even more interestingly, they have also published several original comic book versions of some of Mr. Moore’s short stories.  Anthony Johnston is credited as having done the adaptations (at least, all the ones that I have read so far), and they are quite marvelous.

I was a bit worried, at first, when I read that these new graphic novels (which I’ll call graphic novels, even though in his interview in The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, Mr. Moore was somewhat critical of that term) were merely adapted from Mr. Moore’s works, as opposed to having been 100% scripted by him.  But Mr. Johnston (along with all of the artists involved) has done a fantastic job of bringing Moore’s stories to the comic book page in a pure form.  The collected edition of Hypothetical Lizard (about which I’ll write more in a moment) contains Mr. Moore’s complete novella at the back.  After reading the comic, I had a great deal of fun reading the prose story while constantly flipping back through the comic to compare and contrast Mr. Johnston’s adaptation with Mr. Moore’s original piece.  The adaptation was PHENOMENALLY faithful.  This isn’t some Hollywood project where the names and basic premise are the same and everything else is different.  No, almost every scene and line of dialogue from Mr. Moore’s story was preserved — everything had just been shaped into comic book form.

OK, here are some more specifics on what I read:

Hypothetical Lizard — This was the longest of the three works that I read.  (It was originally published in four issues.)  This incredibly fantastical tale is set entirely within the confines of the House Without Clocks, within which dwell a variety of unique men and women, all of whom are prostitutes.  In the first chapter we are introduced to a young girl named Som-Som, who is beginning the long and terrible journey necessary to prepare her to become a lover of wizards.  At first, I thought this tale would be Som-Som’s story.  But she merely serves as the witness to an even more terrible drama between the beautiful and mysterious Rawra Chin and the actor he spurned, Foral Yatt.  The world of Hypothetical Lizard is a world where the magical and fantastical is commonplace, and one of the most interesting aspects of the tale (and a hallmark of Alan Moore’s work) is the way he slowly sketches in tantalizing background details of this world while telling his story.  If I have any complaint, it’s that after spending so much time with Som-Som in the first chapter, I expected her to be much more of a central player during the rest of the story.  But that’s a fairly minor quibble.  The grey-washed artwork by Lorenzo Lorente and Sebastian Fiumara is lovely, setting exactly the right tone for this dark tale.  (I must particularly complement Mr. Lorente’s work in the first chapter.  His attention to detail in the backgrounds and attire of all the characters really brings the world of this story to life.)

The Courtyard — Federal Agent Aldo Sax specializes in anomaly theory, drawing connections from the obscure details that most others overlook.  He is undercover in Brooklyn, investigating a gruesome series of murders all carried out in a similar fashion, but with no apparent connections between the victims or the perpetrators.  Aldo’s investigation takes him to Club Zothique and suspected drug-dealer Johnny Carcosa, but the grim world of drugs and satanists that Aldo finds himself dredging through turns out merely to be the cover for something much, much more horrifying.  This is a terrific tale, an engrossing detective story that turns into something else entirely.  There’s a lot of Lovecraftian lore referenced herein, and while I am sure I only got a small fraction of those references, that didn’t stop me from throughly enjoying this dark, dirty little story.  Artist Jacen Burrows has the most “comic book” style of the artists on these graphic novels (using what looks like traditional pen & ink line-work, as opposed to the gray-scaled washes of Hypothetical Lizard or the fully-painted artwork of Light of Thy Countenance), but that is in no way a criticism.  Quite the contrary, Mr. Burrows’ work is fantastic.  Every panel is filled with a terrific amount of detail, from the exterior scenes set in the grimy streets of Brooklyn to the interiors of Club Zothique and Aldo and Carcossa’s appartments.  There are also some magnificent double-paged spreads towards the story’s climax (whose content I will not spoil here), that I could look at for hours.  This is a disturbing story, make not mistake, but one that is terrifically well-told.

Light of Thy Countenance — In the opening pages of the story, we are introduced to Maureen Cooper, a bartender at a dive bar.  But she’s not real.  She’s a fictional creation, a role played by television actress Carol Livesey.  But what happens to Maureen when the TV show on which her character appears is cancelled?  Light of They Countenance is my favorite of these three graphic novels (although I loved them all).  It is a truly unique creation — a look at the development of television and its increasingly insidious effects on our lives, told from the point of view of — wait for it — television itself.  It’s a brilliant idea, and with television as our guide we are taken through a fascinating journey.  Felipe Massafera provides the fully painted art, and it is absolutely gorgeous.  His work is jaw-droppingly stunning, and it brings a powerful realism that grounds the rather fantastic story definitively in our real world.  A tremendous achievement.

If you’re not a big comic book fan, and you’ve never read anything written by Alan Moore, then you certainly want to start with some of his justifiably most-famous works:  Watchmen, V For Vendetta, or From Hell.  But if you’re familiar with those astounding graphic novels and want to dig a little deeper to discover more works from the master, then you should not miss these fine stories published by Avatar.  They are proud additions to the Alan Moore spot on my bookshelf!

Here’s how not to get me excited about a film: start it off by trailers for Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself, Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster flick 2012, Rob Marshall’s latest musical Nine, and about five other movies that you could not pay me enough to go see.  Ugh.

Luckily, our feature presentation of Julie and Julia turned out to be rather more entertaining than those dreadful trailers.

Julie and Julia is adapted from “My Life in France,” Julia Child’s posthumously published autobiography, and “Julie & Julia,” New Yorker Julie Powell’s book about her attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s famous cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 365 days.  The film intercuts the stories of the two women as they each find themselves through cooking.

We first meet Julia Child (Meryl Streep) living in Paris in the 1940’s.  She is married to Paul (Stanley Tucci), an American diplomat, and trying to decide just what she “should dooooo” with her time.  Make hats?  Play bridge?  Her love of French food prompts her to take a cooking class, which she quickly masters.  Gradually she comes upon the idea (working with two fellow chefs) to create a cookbook of French recipes designed for Americans, and the movie charts her multi-year struggle to write, and then find a publisher for, this lengthy tome.

We first meet Julie Powell (Amy Adams) living in Queens in 2002 and working a terrible cubicle job (which seems to involve dealing with insurance claims from the families of 9/11 victims).  Looking for some sort of direction, she seizes upon the idea of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook and blogging about the results (her Julie/Julia blog project).

Both lead actresses in this film are quite magnificent.  Meryl Streep absolutely nails Julia Child, starting with that distinct voice and including the way she carries herself — her Julia dominates every room that she’s in.  I’m not quite certain how much this “with malice towards none” depiction of Julia squares with the genuine article (and indeed, it’s hard to square this version with the Julia who later in life was dismissive of Julie Powell’s blog, a moment seen in the film only from Julie’s perspective), but Mrs. Streep certainly captures how I have always imagined Julia based on watching her on TV.  As for Amy Adams, she is, as always, a delight, whether conveying Julie’s quiet desperation, early in the film, sitting at a table with her far-more successful college chums, or her great delight all the times we see her getting one of Julie’s recipes just right.

I’ve read a lot of critics (including A.O. Scott of the New York Times) write that Streep outshines Adams in the film, and that as a result they were far less interested in the 2002 Julie segments than they were in the 1940’s Julia parts.  My wife Steph and I felt quite the opposite: we liked the Julia bits, no question, but found ourselves far more engaged with the Amy Adams and the Julie storyline.  (In his review, Mr. Scott writes: “Ms. Adams is a lovely and subtle performer, but she is overmatched by her co-star and handicapped by the material.  Julia Child could whip up a navarin of lamb for lunch, but Meryl Streep eats young actresses for breakfast.  Remember Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada?  … Neither do I.”  Hmm, sorry to disagree, Mr, Scott, but I DO remember Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada!!)

Julie and Julia isn’t what I would describe as a GREAT, must-see film.  To be honest, it’s not really my type of movie at all.  But it is a quite pleasant story, lead by the film’s terrific two lead actresses and a nice group of supporting actors.  It’s nice to see a movie, every now and then, about fairly happy people (in a separate article in the New York Times, they make quite a big deal about the uniqueness of this film’s depiction of two fairly strong, happy marriages) who wind up being successful at what they choose to pursue.

And if you enjoy cooking, that will only add to your enjoyment of this film.  Francis Ford Coppola has commented that he always tried to include a recipe in each of his films (most famously the scene of Clemenza making sauce in The Godfather), but boy oh boy does this film outdo him.  I walked out of the theatre with at least a dozen dishes in my head that I want to try cooking!  Time to track down a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” for myself!

I know some people who can’t stand to see a movie a second time — they think “been there, done that, I’d rather see something new.”  I certainly don’t have anything against seeing something new, but I’m also someone who loves seeing movies for a second time — and, if it’s a good movie, seeing it many more times after that!  (I’m the same way with books, comic books, etc. — I love re-reading stories that I enjoyed multiple times.)

I find that my feelings upon watching a film for a second time often vary wildly from the experience of seeing it originally.  I can absorb the film without all the baggage of hype, my anticipation, etc.  I can also more accurately judge the movie for what it is, rather than what I had hoped it would be or was expecting it would be.

During September I had a chance to take a second look at three films that I really enjoyed during last year’s Oscar rush of films (in late December 2008).  Did my feelings about them change, for better or for worse, upon a second viewing?  Read on!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — read my original review here.  Benjamin Button was one of my very favorite movies from last year (it ranked as no. 6 on my list of my favorite films from 2008) and, if anything, I was even more in awe of it the second time around.  The film is magnificent.  It is one of those special collaborations where every single element works just perfectly, from the gorgeous sets and costumes, to the jaw-dropping visual effects (that create fully-realized environments from France to Russia to a tug-boat in the middle of the Pacific, not to mention the completely convincing creation and de-aging of Benjamin Button himself that is as wonderful a combination of makeup, prosthetics, and incredible CGI as I have ever seen), to the wonderful performances by Brad Pitt (who proves in every film he’s in why he is so deserving of his movie-star fame), Cate Blanchett, and a wonderful array of other talented actors.  Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) knows how to incorporate cutting-edge visual effects into a film without ever letting those effects overpower the film, and he knows how to tell a deeply emotional tale without ever veering into schmaltz.  As I said: magnificent.  (I also had the fun of watching this film on Blu-Ray, and let me say that my jaw was on the floor at the clarity of the images, the colors, everything.  As the enclosed booklet notes, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was created in the digital realm without ever being output to a film element and transferred,” and as such, it looks absolutely astounding on Blu-Ray.)

Frost/Nixon — read my original review here.  This was another of my favorite films from 2008 (it ranked as no. 9 on my list of my favorite films from 2008), and, as with Benjamin Button, it’s a film that I think I enjoyed even more on a second viewing.  Although the film looks great, its success rests not on any visual flourishes or special effects, but rather solely upon the great performances of the assembled actors.  This is a drama in the best sense of the word — most of the film is just conversation, even before we get to the centerpiece conversation of David Frost’s historic interview with Richard M. Nixon.  As such, this is a film that could very very easily be dreadfully boring.  Instead, it positively crackles with energy.  Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are absolutely dynamite as Frost and Nixon, and they’re surrounded by a wonderful ensemble that includes Matthew Macfadyen (Tom Quinn from MI-5, Mr, Darcy in Pride & Prejudice), Oliver Platt (who has had so many great roles, but he’ll always be White House Counsel Oliver Babish to me), Sam Rockwell (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Heist, Galaxy Quest), Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, Mystic River, and a million other films), Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, The Prestige), and Toby Jones (who played Truman Capote in Infamous).  My good friends over at The Informed Voter (an excellent political blog that you really need to check out) recently commented that “after watching Frost/Nixon on dvd the other night we were both left feeling, if not sympathetic, certainly a bit sad for Richard Nixon. This is possibly the highest compliment we can pay Ron Howard (director) and Frank Langella (Nixon): viewer empathy for a man who played an instrumental role in botching Vietnam (and Cambodia) policy and who disgraced the Presidency like no other, well, that is an accomplishment.”  Couldn’t agree more!

Valkyrie — read my original review here.  Critics weren’t very kind to Bryan Singer’s film upon its release, although I quite enjoyed it.  Perhaps the key to my enjoyment was that I saw it as a gripping heist film, rather than a deep WWII drama.  I still enjoyed it upon a second viewing, although since I already knew how every beat played out, I found myself a little less enthralled.  Despite that, I remain of the opinion that it’s a fine film.  Say what you will about him, Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men, Superman Returns) is a terrific director, and the film is filled with a lot of fun visual flourishes.  (A lot of credit for this must also go to Mr. Singer’s regular collaborator, editor extraordinaire John Ottman.)  It also has a ridiculously amazing cast that includes  Kenneth Branagh (Dead Again, Othello, Hamlet) , Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Hot Fuzz, Pirates of the Caribbean II & III), Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom, Batman Begins, Michael Clayton), Thomas Kretschmann (Peter Jackson’s King Kong), Eddie Izzard (”cake or death?”), and Terence “kneel before Zod” Stamp.  Then there is Tom Cruise.  I can’t quite heap the praise on his performance that I did for Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, but Cruise does a fine job here and certainly isn’t nearly as terrible as everyone has been saying.

Have a great weekend, everyone!