I’m behind the eight-ball on this one, I know.  Movie-related web-sites across the web have been showering praise on this small-budget Swedish vampire film for the past two years, but I only recently got around to seeing it.  It’s just as terrific as I’d heard.

Oskar is a twelve-year old boy whose parents are separated.  He doesn’t seem to have any friends, at least not any that we see, and he’s terribly bullied by a trio of boys from school.  Oskar likes to hang-out by himself in the courtyard of the building where he lives with his mother.  One night, he meets a girl, Eli, who has just moved into the building.  The two form a gentle friendship.  Of course, once we see Eli’s father/guardian Hakan murder a man in the woods and drain him of his blood, it’s clear that Eli hides a terrible secret.

That plot could easily describe a film that played into a whole lot of dumb, horror-movie cliches, but I was delighted that nothing could be further from the truth.  Director Tomas Alfredson, working from a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel) has crafted a surprisingly gentle, tender film that is at once sweet and chilling.  Let the Right One In unfolds through a series of small, quiet scenes.  It’s a very still movie (though that stillness is punctuated by a few moments of intense violence).  The way the camera lingers on the frozen, snow-covered landscape reminds me in some ways of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and also in the way the M. Night Shyamalan was unafraid, in his early films (like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) to let a quiet long shot tell the story.

All of this would be irrelevant were not the film’s two leads, Kare Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson as Eli, so spectacularly good.  There is no over-acting to be found in this film.  Both Hedebrant and Leandersson are able to express a world of character through their small, underplayed facial expressions, often without speaking a word.  (Or when, as is often the case in real life, the words they are speaking fail to convey what’s really going on in their hearts and minds.)  Whenever I see great performances by child actors, I always credit the director as much as the actors themselves, and so kudos to Mr. Alfredson for drawing such restrained, naturalistic performers out of his stars.

I am not a big horror fan, but Let The Right One In quickly won me over.  I’m so glad to have finally given it a shot.  It’s hard to believe that one could describe a vampire movie as tender, but this one is.  I must also add that it has one of the most powerful final scenes of any film I’ve seen in a long time.  I thought I had the film figured out, but that final scene hit me like a ton of bricks.  It causes the viewer to completely re-evaluate one of the main relationships in the film, and I must admit I’ve been thinking about it ever since seeing it.  It’s hard to shake.  Wonderful.

(A note when watching the DVD or blu-ray.  I strongly suggest setting your disc controls so that  you watch the film in the original Swedish, with the subtitles set to English: Theatrical.  Let the Right One In was originally released to disc with notoriously terrible English subtitles.  You can click here for the full story. That has been corrected in later versions of the DVD/blu-ray, which contain the subtitle option English: Theatrical.  You want to be sure to buy/rent a version of this film with those subtitle options, and trust me that they’re the ones to watch.)

I was a fan of 24 from the very beginning.  However, despite my long-held allegiance to the show, I have not once regretted my decision to sit season eight out.  I had become so frustrated by the show’s descent into endlessly recycled story-lines (to a degree that verged on self-parody) that I felt it was time for me to move on.

But having followed the travails of Jack Bauer since his very first really bad day, I couldn’t resist tuning back in for last night’s series finale.

Even though I hadn’t watched any of season eight so far, it only took me a few moments to figure out what was going on.  24 is never that complicated, and it was pretty clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.  In some respects, I think I probably enjoyed the events of this installment more than I might have had I had to sit through the previous 22 hours of circular storytelling and familiar 24 tropes of moles in CTU, double-crosses, assassinations, and Presidential moral conundrums.  It’s sort of like tuning in to the final few minutes of a close-score basketball-game — I can get a lot of enjoyment from the tense final minutes without having to have watched the whole two-hour back-and-forth that got us there.

I found myself quite enjoying the first hour of this two-hour finale event.  There were some great tense sequences, such as Jack’s kidnapping of Pillar (and let me say that it was a pleasant surprise to see Dollhouse’s Reed Diamond) and President Taylor’s manipulation of Dalia Hassan.  It was interesting to see how far President Taylor had slipped towards the dark side since I’d last seen her, and it’s always fun to see Jack when he’s in full-on Righteous Hand of Vengeance mode.  I felt like this was the fun, fast-paced 24 that I’d loved years ago.

Unfortunately, things slowed down significantly in hour two.  I had no patience for all of the silliness with the data-card that everyone was after, and Chloe seemed unusually hapless (particularly considering that she somehow seems to now be in charge of CTU).  Most problematically, though, was how quickly Jack got taken off the board.  After his confrontation with Chloe, he’s completely passive for the rest of the hour.  I can’t say I thought that was a wise narrative choice for the final hour of this action-adventure series.

I don’t want to spoil every detail of the ending, but to me it was a big let-down.  It felt like a series finale, not a season finale.  Yes, Jack is in a difficult spot when the hour draws to a close, and he’s forced to make a tough sacrifice and say a poignant good-bye.  But somehow this felt much less momentous than many of the previous season finales.  Yes, I know that a 24 movie is in the works, so there was only so much finality that the writers could bring to this final episode.  But still, I think they needed to try a lot harder to find an ending that felt more like an ENDING to the eight-year saga of Jack Bauer.  C’mon, raise your hand if you don’t think that Jack and Chloe will be reunited soon in the 24 film?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I was also expecting some attempt, in the final hour, to have some sort of reflection back on the series as a whole.  I thought maybe we’d see a familiar character or two (I was really holding out hope to see Mike Novick or naked Mandy), or perhaps to see Jack in a situation that somehow brought things full circle to where the series began.  No such luck.  That was more than a bit surprising, and more than a bit disappointing.  It feeds into what I was just saying about this episode feeling far more like a season finale, rather than a SERIES finale.

I enjoyed this two hour episode.  It certainly wasn’t as head-bangingly frustrating as I had often found 24 to be, these past few years.  But as a finale to this once-great television series, and as an episode that I’d hoped would bring a little bit of closure to the struggles of Jack Bauer, it fell short.

Dammit!

So that’s it.  We’re done.  ”The End,” the epic-length two-and-a-half-hour finale of Lost that aired last night, was a magnificent episode.  It was pretty much everything that I could ask a series finale to be: both a thrilling, emotional episode on its own as well as a wonderful capstone to the series as a whole.

Too bad it comes at the end of one of the most disastrously terrible seasons of a previously-great show that I can remember.

Spoilers obviously lie ahead for the finale of Lost, gang, so be warned!

The Lost finale reminded me of everything about the show that I used to love.  From start to finish, “The End” exuded a narrative confidence that has been sorely missed.  A two-and-a-half-hour finale could very easily have been a bloated, indulgent exercise, but I found the episode to be exquisitely paced.  Yes, they took their time with the story, but I felt this was worth it in order to give all of the wonderful reunions in the sideways world their due.  The writers cashed in every single chip they had in terms of the audience’s investment in these characters, but I thought those moments paid off phenomenally well.  It was delightful to see so many of the familiar faces return, and each reunion felt like a powerful emotional payoff to six seasons of storytelling.  (But where were Michael and Walt???  More on this later.)  And those slow, emotional beats were well-balanced by some terrific, tense sequences on the island.  (I thought the take-off sequence aboard Ajira 316 was particularly compelling.)

Yes, the exact nature of the sideways world was left vague, but that is the kind of narrative vagueness that I have no problem with.  I don’t exactly understand whether that universe was intended to be a glimpse at what awaits us all after death, or whether it was (as Christian Shephard seemed to hint) something magical that was somehow created by the collective unconscious of all the castways.  Either way, I don’t really understand why the characters didn’t immediately remember who they were — why they each had to somehow be “woken up.”  But, you know, I don’t really care.  J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t precisely explain the nature of the Gray Havens in The Lord of the Rings, and it wasn’t necessary for him to do so.  What was important here at the end of Lost was the idea that, somehow, all of our characters got a taste of the happiness they’d all been chasing — and that we, the audience who had invested in those characters, also got to taste that happy ending.  That the ending was tinged with the bittersweet — since the show made clear that this alternate universe was NOT the “real world,” and that these characters were all dead — only made the ending more powerful to me.

But the vagueness that I DO have a problem with — and the reason why I was so crushingly disappointed by season six — is the show’s complete and total failure to answer so many of the questions that the writers had posed over the course of the first five years of the show.  Take a gander at my long list of unanswered questions that I put together before the start of this final season.  Here now at the end of the show, the vast majority of those questions remain unanswered.  That is a colossal failure of storytelling, and I’d go so far as to call it a betrayal of the show’s fans.  This isn’t one or two lost threads in the overall tapestry of the show.  These are MAJOR mysteries that the writers spent episode after episode building up, only to abandon.  What was so special about Walt?  What caused the infertility problems on the island?  Was there ever an infection on the island?  (And if not, what was up with the quarantine signs on the hatches, and the inoculations that Desmond & Kelvin gave themselves while pushing the button in the hatch, etc.?)  What is the meaning behind the numbers?  I could go on.

Even more frustratingly, there were so many times during season six when the writers actually brought up many of those old mysteries — only to rub our noses in their refusal to answer our questions!  The writers found a (clever!) way to bring the story back to the mysterious Room 23 — only to fail to tell us anything more than we’d already guessed about the origin and purpose of that weird Dharma room.  We see again Ben’s secret closet and the mysterious way he was able to summon the smoke monster — but aren’t given any answers as to who set up that system or why the smoke monster would ever want to do the Others’ bidding.  We see flight attendant Cindy again — but are given no information on why she was kidnapped by the Others, what she’s been doing for the past three years, why she seemed to be completely turned to the Others’ cause, etc.  We hear the word “infection” pointedly referred to over and over again (several times, in particular, in last week’s penultimate episode), only to get no further answers as to the true story behind the infection on the island that may or may not have existed.   Again, I could go on and on.

Twisting the knife further, season six introduced a number of new mysteries that went absolutely nowhere.  What was the story behind the Temple-dwelling Others?  Who were these people?  What was their connection to the Others we knew?  How did they have special knowledge about Jacob and the Man in Black?  What was the nature of the magic pool?  How did it change people?  Was Sayid really altered by his resurrection, or was that all in his head?  When/why/how did Claire wind up in the pool (as mentioned by the Dogan)?

But most damningly of all, season six failed to offer up any clear answers for us about the major underlying story-point of the entire season: the feud/contest between Jacob and the Man in Black.  Yes, we got the episode-long flashback “Across the Sea,” but that came WAY too late in the year, and completely failed to give us any of the key answers we needed in order to invest in this season’s stories.  Why couldn’t the Man in Black leave the island?  How is it that Jacob could, and why/when did he decide to do so?  When/why/how did Jacob’s “contest” with the Man in Black begin?  What was the nature of the oft-mentioned “rules” of that contest?  Why did Jacob allow himself to be killed by Ben?  What did his dying words “they’re coming” mean?  If the Man in Black could “possess” any dead body on the island, why did he have to go to so much trouble to engineer Locke’s death off the island?  What was the Man in Black’s plan to leave the island?  What did he really need the castaways for?  Without really understanding any of what was going on between Jacob and the Man in Black, I found it impossible as a viewer to invest in any of the season-long back-and-forth machinations of the smoke monster/Locke and those forces arrayed against him.  (And weeks later I am still seriously pissed by Allison Janney’s line in “Across the Sea”: “Every question you ask will just lead to another question.”  What an insulting slap-in-the-face comment to all the fans who have the unmitigated gall to actually expect the writers to resolve some of the mysteries they themselves created.)

The finale fell victim to this narrative weakness, in that even here in the final episode we got zero information as to: What caused the Man in Black to decide to use Desmond to destroy the island?  (If he knew/thought Desmond could do that, why did he throw him down a well a few weeks ago?)  Why did Desmond decide to pull that stone cap out of the pool of white light?  (Why didn’t Dez just sit and do nothing after being sent down that waterfall?)  Why was Jack so convinced that Desmond couldn’t destroy the island?  (Just what did Jack think would happen when Dez went down that hole?)  The idea that Desmond unplugs the island and so almost destroys things, and Jack saves the island by replugging the hole, is pretty stupid.  And that we don’t have any information about the cave or the light or really any other island or Jacob/M.I.B-related things totally undermines what drama MIGHT be able to be drawn from that macguffin.

But circling back to the finale itself — other than that silliness with the light and the hole and the plug, I really did enjoy the heck out of the episode.  To me, a series finale is all about how satisfied I am, as a viewer, by the places in which our beloved characters wind up.  I think the writers handled this really well.  I’ve already commented how much I enjoyed all of the alternate-world reunions, but I was particularly touched by the Claire-Charley scene.  (Though did anyone else laugh at how clean Kate’s hands were five seconds after delivering Claire’s baby???)  I also loved that Daniel and Charlotte got a small moment (those are two characters who I had no reason to expect would get any screen-time in the finale, and I LOVED that they too got to reunite).  On the island, I loved that Hurley wound up as the next Jacob.  I loved that he was the one character to finally show some kindness to Ben (and I loved Ben’s reaction to Hurley’s offer).  I liked that, after six seasons of who-will-she-wind-up-with soap opera, Kate chose Jack in the end.  I was very pleased that Lapidus and Richard hadn’t actually been killed off, and I loved that they made it off the island.  I liked Richard’s white hair.  I liked Miles’ faith in duct tape.  I liked seeing the Elizabeth again.  I loved the long-awaited return of Vincent.

And I absolutely adored the final scene — and in particular, the final shot — of the episode.  What a wonderful way to bring us full-circle to the opening scene (and the opening shot!) of the premiere episode.  So many little attentive details in those final moments combined to evoke the beginning of the show (such as the reappearance of the shoe on the bamboo stalk… and attentive Lost fans couldn’t forget that Jack had a pain in his right side when he first awoke in the premiere).  And that last shot — what a great payoff to all the eyeball openings that we’ve seen throughout the run of the show.  Just perfect.

Really, the only major piece of character resolution that bugs me has nothing to do with what we saw in the finale — it’s that I’m still sore over the deaths of Jin and Sun on the submarine.  Sayid’s self-sacrifice felt right to me, but killing off Jin and Sun right after they’d finally been reunited felt needlessly cruel of the writers — particularly when one considers that they have a now-orphaned child off the island.

Actually, as I think about it, the deaths of Jin & Sun aren’t the only major character story-lines whose resolutions (or lack thereof) irritate me.  Let’s all take a moment to lament the exclusion of Michael from the finale — as well as the complete and total pooch-screw that is the story of Walt.  Walt was a major character in season one, and even after his disappearance from the show, we heard over and over again about his special abilities and his special destiny.  And then we never heard from him again.  So disappointing.

There’s no question that the dismal season six has significantly impacted my over-all opinions about Lost.  It’s hard for me to recommend the show to anyone — or to consider ever re-watching it, myself — knowing at the lack of resolution of so many of the show’s key story-lines and mysteries.  Maybe my feelings will soften with some distance.  But for now, my disappointment still runs deep.  Still, I was thrilled by how much enjoyment I got from the actual finale episode itself.  I’m so pleased that, in its final two-and-a-half hours, the Lost that I had loved made a triumphant return.  I only wish a fraction of that quality could have been found in the other sixteen hours of this final season.

And with that, this epic saga — and my engagement with it — is over.

See you in another life.

I know I’m turning into a bit of a broken record regarding the continuing series of animated DC Universe DVDs, but I can’t really help it.  I’m really enjoying the direct-to-DVD series so far, and I certainly understand that I should count my blessings that these unique and well-made animated projects exist at all.  But I’m still waiting for one of these new animated films to truly hit the ball out of the park.  These films are great, but none yet rival, say, the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm from 1993.

Which is not to say that the latest animated film, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, isn’t a lot of fun — it certainly is!  Based on a variety of different comic book story-lines, this film has some fun with the idea of alternate universes existing parallel with the main DC universe.  Lex Luthor flees one-such alternate world, where alternate versions of the Justice League members have banded together to form the Crime Syndicate and take over the world.  Luthor — actually fighting on the side of good in that universe — determines that his world’s only hope lie in heroes from another universe entirely — our Justice League.

It’s a pretty familiar set-up, but what follows is a fun, tightly-paced action adventure in which Superman, Batman, & co. are forced to confront darker, more ruthless versions of themselves.  There are some nice character beats, and several terrific action sequences.

The voice acting — as is par for the course in these Bruce Timm-supervised DC animated productions — is top-notch.  Hark Harmon (NCIS, The West Wing) is Superman, William Baldwin is Batman, Chris Noth (Mr. Big from Sex and the City) is Lex Luthor, and Vanessa Marshall is Wonder Woman.  Portraying their adversaries are Brian Bloom as Ultraman, James Woods (so many great movies, including Casino and Once Upon a Time in America) as Owlman, and Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) as Superwoman.

Despite those great actors, though, I must confess that I miss the voices from the original animated Superman, Batman, and Justice League TV series.  It was GREAT having those core original actors (Tim Daly, Kevin Conroy, and Clancy Brown) back for the last DC animated DVD, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (read my review here), and I missed them in this installment.  This was particularly the case because this film isn’t a direct adaptation of a specific comic book story — in fact, of all the DVD films, this adventure feels the most like it could have been an extra-long episode of the Justice League series.  This isn’t a surprise, because on the special features it is revealed that writer Dwayne McDuffie had originally written this adventure as a Justice League episode!  (Attentive viewers can clearly see how this adventure could have fit between the 2nd season of Justice League and the start of Justice League Unlimited – we see the retrofitting of the Justice League’s satellite headquarters, we see the main team make the decision to incorporate other heroes into the League, etc.)  So all the more reason for the original voice actors to have been used.  Oh well.

The word Crisis has a strong meaning in the DC universe.  It has come to indicate important, universe-shaking adventures.  Crisis on Two Earths, while a fun film, doesn’t quite live up to the weight of the Crisis title.  In many ways, it feels like a tease for a greater adventure to come.  (Even the title – Crisis on Two Earths, rather than, say, Crisis on Infinite Earths — the famous DC universe-wide crossover series from 1986 — indicates that this adventure is something of a prelude.)  I do hope that the story-lines begun this film are followed-up on in future DVDs.  It would be absolutely amazing, for example, to see Bruce Timm and his talented team of collaborators take a stab at adapting the seminal Crisis on Infinite Earths series.

Hope springs eternal!

I should also comment that the DVD has some decent special features.  There’s a fun documentary called DCU: The New World which spotlights several of the big DC crossovers of the past few years.  (Though I thought it was a little bizarre that the doc didn’t spend too much time talking about the classic Crisis story-lines, on which this DVD film is loosely based.)  But the best special feature is an additional short film featuring The Spectre.  Done in a really snazzy, almost-retro style, this extra feature was a TON of fun.  Props to the filmmakers for choosing the always-great Gary Cole (Crusade, The West Wing, Pineapple Express) to voice the title character.  I hope to see more of these additional short films, spotlighting other DC Universe characters, on future DVDs!

Yesterday I began writing about the terrific comic book series Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.  I’ve had great fun, over the past few weeks, re-reading the series since the very beginning.

Volume I:

I have no idea what prompted me to pick up issue 1 of Powers ten years ago.  I think I might have previously read a collection of Mr. Bendis’ series Jinx, and maybe I recognized his name on the comic.  Or maybe it was the dynamic, eye-catching cover by Mr. Oeming.  Either way, I have a distinct memory of reading the first issue while sitting and waiting at my barber shop, and being completely blown away by this exciting, dynamic new type of comic book.

It was a kick to go back and re-read those early issues, now a decade later.  They hold up remarkably well.  It’s clear, right from the beginning, that Bendis and Oeming were a powerhouse team, and that they had seized on a really unique, engaging concept for a series.  But it’s also fascinating to see how dramatically both men’s styles have changed over the years.  The early issues are VERY dialogue-heavy.  Mr. Bendis has always been known (and rightly so) for his dialogue, and it is very common for him to cram far more dialogue into one of his issues than can be found in most comic books.  However, the early issues or Powers are literally drowning in word balloons.  Now, that’s not a criticism.  The dialogue is phenomenal, and is a huge part of what gave Powers its distinct feel.  But as the decade has passed I think Mr. Bendis has grown a lot more confident in his collaboration with Mr. Oeming, and more willing to let the images stand on their own to tell the story.  It’s also interesting to see Mr. Bendis’ reliance, in those early issues, on incorporating a lot of police lingo into the dialogue, without any explanations as to what the terms mean.  I remember noticing that right away when first reading issue one.  I thought it was cool, and that it helped with the you-are-there sort of realism that Mr. Bendis was trying to create with his stories.  I think it is another mark of Mr. Bendis’ growing confidence in his skills, and in the series, though, that those sort of things faded away as the series progressed.

Mr. Oeming’s drawing style was also quite different, back in those early issues.  It’s neat to look back and see him experimenting with his page lay-outs (using multiple panels, large blocks of black space, etc.), and even more-so with the way he drew characters and especially faces.  One can see his Powers style coming together in the early going.  It’s a testament to his skill and talents as an artist that Mr. Oeming has continued to experiment, and to tweak his style, as the series has progressed.

There are a lot of highlights in volume I of Powers (issues #1-37, published between 2000 and 2004).  The original Who Killed Retro Girl? arc (issues #1-6) kicks the series off in style, and really sets the style and tone for the book.  Issue # 7 is a great one-issue story (a rarity for Powers) in which something really really horrible happens to comic book writer Warren Ellis.  Issue #18 was the first (of many) times that the roof was totally blown off the series.  It’s carnage on a super-heroic scale, and this is the issue that really showed me (and everyone else!) that Mr. Oeming could pretty much draw the fuck out of just about anything.  (Sorry for the bad language — I’m writing about Powers, I can’t help it!)

But, for me, the stand-out story from volume I is the “Forever” arc that closed out the volume — issues #31-37.  These seven issues span all of human history.  They peel back the layers of Christian Walker’s life and tell the secret origin of the Powers universe.  To call this story epic would be an understatement.  This arc also contains the infamous monkey-fucking issue (#31), which really cannot be described in words.  There’s never been an issue of a comic book quite like it, and I feel safe in saying that there probably never will be.

Volume II:

After the “Forever” arc, Powers went on hiatus for a little while and then re-launched as volume II.  The series also switched publishers — while volume I was published by Image Comics, volume II (and volume III) were published by the Icon imprint of Marvel Comics.  Volume II consisted of issues #1-30, published from 2004-2008.

Over the years I’d gone back and re-read the issues of volume I a number of times — but most of the issues of volume II I’d only read once, as they were originally published, so it was a lot of fun to revisit these stories.  I really didn’t remember most of these issues all that well, and I was pleasantly surprised by the richness of the story-telling.  (Frankly, my memories of volume II were colored — and not favorably so — by the series’ increasingly erratic shipping schedule as the volume progressed.)

While volume I focused on Christian Walker (and culminated in an epic re-telling of his origin in “Forever”), volume II put the focus squarely on Deena Pilgrim.  The spunky detective goes through some tough, tough times, and it is relentlessly compelling to watch her go further and further down the rabbit hole with each issue.  By issue #11, when Deena does something really, really bad (and Mr. Bendis opens the letters column by declaring “Shit!  We wrote ourselves into a hold this time, didn’t we??”) it was clear that this series was descending into territory rarely covered by mainstream comic books, and that there weren’t going to be any easy solutions for detectives Walker and Pilgrim.

Highlights of volume II include issue #2, that brings back a character from the very first issue of volume I in spectacular fashion; and the afore-mentioned issue #11, an almost dialogue-free issue in which Deena crosses a line you never thought she would cross.  I absolutely adore the “Cosmic” arc (issues 13-18), in which the universe of the series expands even further.  I loved the introduction of the Millennium, and the introduction of Heather Anderson, and I thought that the stand-up comedy framing device was really clever.  The final arc of volume II, “The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time” (issues 25-30) is, like “Forever,” a show-stopper.  For that arc, the series expanded to a new format in which most issues had about 40 pages, and each successive issue seemed even more intense and boundary-pushing than the next.  Many long-running story-lines came to a head (including one of the mysteries of the series raised way back at the very beginning of volume I) and, once again, the series’ status-quo changed dramatically.  This arc’s combination of earth-shattering super-heorics with intense, character-driven drama encapsulates everything I love about the series.

Volume III

After the publication of issue #30, the series again went on hiatus so that the team could get the book back on a regular publishing schedule.  Issue #1 came out a few months ago, and so far 4 issues have been published.  Volume III is off to a bit of a shaky start, though.  Mr. Oeming has altered his style yet again, but I must say that I’m not caring that much for his new, looser style.  Characters seem to be drawn differently from panel to panel, and sometimes are oversimplified to the point of grotesquery.  (As an example take a look at issue #4, pg 19, panel 1.  Walker is on the roof with his arms spread wide — but look at the ridiculous shape of his arms and hands.)  I’m also not connecting that strongly to the new story-arc.  The idea that there was a Rat-Pack-like group of superheroes back in the ’60s is a neat idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired.  I think the depiction of Walker in the ’60s is very out-of-character with the Walker we’ve known.

But despite those concerns, I have been such an enormous fan of the series to this point, that Mr. Bendis & Mr. Oeming have certainly earned my faith and my trust.  There is no doubt that I’m on-board to see where volume III takes us.

It was GREAT fun re-reading this whole saga from the beginning, and it’s really exciting that the story isn’t nearly over yet.  Powers is one of the great comic books out there — check it out.

Detective Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim investigate homicides that involve super-powered individuals.  But what does it mean to be a cop in a city filled with super-heroes?

That is the deceptively simple premise for Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming’s comic book series Powers.  With the series celebrating a decade of its existence, and just a few months ago beginning to release volume III of its run, I thought it would be fun to re-read the entire series from the beginning.  I’ve been reading the series since the release of issue 1 back in 2000, and it has remained one of my favorite comics throughout that time.

Brian Michael Bendis has found great success writing and drawing a number of black-and-white crime books (Jinx, Goldfish, Torso) and also, over the past ten years, writing mainstream super-heroes for Marvel Comics, where he has become one of their pre-eminent authors guiding Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, and the Avengers franchise (among others).  But, to me, Powers remains his most potent creation.  This fusion of street-level noir, crime stories with a world filled with super-heroes has proven to be an incredibly elastic concept through which Mr. Bendis & Mr. Oeming have been able to tell all sorts of stories over the past decade of the series.

There are few writers working in comics — or, frankly, in any artistic field — who can equal Mr. Bendis’ facility with dialogue.  This man can capture the way people really speak, and right from the beginning this enabled him to draw the reader into the world of homicide detectives.  This realism provides a key counterpoint to the idea that these detectives work in a city where super-heroes and super-villains live and fight — it grounds the series, and the characters.  Mr. Bendis has also never been afraid to push the boundaries of what can be done in a creator-owned work.  Powers is profane, and it is violent.  Characters have sex, and characters are brutally murdered.  But it’s rare that any of that feels indulgent.  It’s all part of Mr. Bendis and Mr. Oeming’s creation of a universe that feels “real” — where serious shit can and often does go down.  In that vein, the two men aren’t afraid to turn over the apple-cart of their series.  In a mainstream Marvel or DC book, creators are obligated to, for the most part, maintain the series’ over-all status quo.  Not so in a creator-owned book like Powers, and Mr. Bendis and Mr. Oeming really push that freedom to its limit.  The series has changed direction WILDLY at several points, so far, in its run, and quite a few of the original cast of characters are not longer to be counted among the living.

Mr. Oeming’s simplified drawing style might, at first glance, feel like a bizarre match for Mr. Bendis’ noirish street-level stories.  But I think it’s clear to anyone who reads even a single issue of Powers that Mr. Oeming’s style is, in fact, perfect for the series.  He has created a distinct visual style for Powers that separates it from all the other books on the shelves.  He’s a tremendous story-teller.  With just a few lines or shapes, Mr. Oeming can create a whole world for his characters to inhabit.  And speaking of his characters, he designs phenomenal, distinct characters.  There’s never any confusion of who’s who in a page by Mr. Oeming!  Oeming is a unique talent, and it’s thrilling to see such a distinct style — so different from what one would see in most Marvel or DC books — utilized by a mainstream comic series.

One of the best parts of Powers — and this has been the case since its very first issue — is the letters page(s).  A letters page used to be found in the back of every comic book published, but these days the internet has rendered letters pages virtually extinct.  But in Powers, not only do most issues include pages of letters, but those letters pages are sometimes the most entertaining part of the book!  Mr. Bendis’ snarky, obnoxious, hilarious answers to the array of weirder-than-weird letters that he prints are a riot.   He also reprints all sorts of other fascinating materials such as Q & A’s with the book’s creative team or interesting threads from his message boards.  Then there’s the “No Life” section, in which Mr. Bendis waxes poetic about the movies, TV shows, music, video games, etc. that he’s loving that month.  These letters pages are classic, and serve to make each issue of Powers feel like a unique, complete package, with so much more to offer than just the comic book story itself.

The newly-begun volume three of the series (which re-launched with a new issue #1 — and issue # 4 was published as of this writing) is a nice place for new readers to jump on — but my recommendation would be to go back to the beginning and pick up the Who Killed Retro Girl? trade, which collects the series’ first six issues.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more thoughts upon my re-reading of the entire series!

After re-watching Albert Brooks’ film Modern Romance a few weeks ago (read my review here), I decided the time had come to revisit some of his other films.  I started by tracking down Lost in America, his 1985 film that, somehow, I had never seen.

Mr. Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film, with Monica Johnson) stars as David Howard.  After failing to get a promotion at work — one that he’d been working towards for years — he tells off his boss in spectacular fashion (the explosion is just as much fun as you might think) and gets fired.  So he convinces his wife Linda, played by Julie Hagerty (Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!) to quit her boring job as well.  They sell their house, liquidate their stocks, buy a Winnebago and set out to roam America and find themselves.  Unfortunately, their first stop is in Las Vegas and, after only one night, they’ve lost all their money.  Left with only $800 to their name, David and Linda have to try to find jobs in the small, midwestern town in which they find themselves.

In my humble opinion, Albert Brooks wrote and directed far too few films.  So it was a great delight to get to discover, for the first time, an Albert Brooks film that I’d never seen.  Lost in America certainly isn’t my favorite Brooks film (that would be Modern Romance), but there’s a lot to appreciate here.  There’s a lot of comedy today that wrings laughs from awkward, painful moments (the original British The Office comes to mind), but Mr. Brooks was pushing those boundaries thirty years ago.  For a “comedy,” there’s a lot of real, human moments to be found in Lost in America (and in all his films, really!).

It’s clear from the film’s opening scene — a slow, slow pan through David & Linda’s home, while a Larry King interview with film critic Rex Reed plays on an out-of-sight radio — that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker with great skill.  It’s a very meta choice to start one’s film with a lengthy monologue from Rex Reed talking about films, and it indicates that Mr. Brooks was after more than just a few yuks.  Lost in America tells the story two people who both find themselves trapped in their lives — trapped by their go-nowhere jobs, by the expectations that they put upon themselves about what they “should” be doing, about the house they “should” be living in, and so forth.  It’s a situation in which, one presumes, many middle-class folk find themselves in at one point or another in their lives.  There’s a strong aspect of “wish-fulfillment” in the plan that David and Linda hatch to take all their money and “drop out” of society.  It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a film.

Mr. Brooks, as always, is a riot.  The man plays “neurotic” like nobody else.  His first scene in the film — in which he lies awake at night consumed by worries — is a classic.  But Brooks’ character in this film also shows a little more backbone than some of his other roles.  When he’s denied his promotion, David Howard doesn’t just meekly take it — his built-up frustrations explode in a movie-stealing scene.  Brooks has a terrific connection with Julie Hagerty, a gifted comedic actress who, I feel, has been sadly under-utilized in the three decades since Airplane!. The success of the film rests on our attachment to these two “normal” working Americans, and they make a great screen couple.

What prevents me from loving Lost in America is the ending.  For a movie that seems based in a “wish-fulfillment” premise, I found the film’s denouement to be surprisingly downbeat.  (Interestingly enough, I made a similar comment about the ending of Modern Romance.)  According to the film, it seems there is not, in fact, any way out of our worker-drone lives, and that’s a surprising conclusion for a comedy to come to.  I applaud Mr. Brooks for not bowing to standard movie conventions.  But at the same time, it means that aspects of Lost in America aren’t really that much fun to watch!

Still, I do love a movie that blazes its own path.  Albert Brooks has always had a singular voice.  I wish he’d made more films, but I am thankful for the ones we have.  Next week, I think I’ll take another look at his 1991 film, Defending Your Life…

See you soon!

I entered season six of Lost with enormous enthusiasm.  After re-watching the first five seasons on the show, I had gained a newfound respect for the wonderful, overall tapestry of the show, and I was beyond excited to see those myriad story-threads get pulled together over the course of the final season.

That didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped.

A few days late, last night I finally had a chance to watch the series’ antepenultimate episode “Across the Sea.”

I don’t, frankly, really even know where to begin.

But looking back, I’ll remember this as the moment when I gave up my last embers of hope that the show would reach anything resembling a satisfying conclusion.

Instead of dissecting the flaws of the episode, let me direct you to this interview with the two show-runners, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, conducted by the great Alan Sepinwall (who has just started a new blog over at Hitfix.com).

I have been reading and listening to interviews with Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse for years now, and they’ve always struck me as funny, intelligent men who really knew what they were doing in charting this weird, complex show.  But now their comments just make me sad.

This is great — some classic Seinfeld moments rejiggered as a trailer for a weepy movie:

Thanks to my buddy Ethan K. for sending this my way!

This made me laugh:

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (In 60 Seconds)

I’m always chasing after that perfect cinematic experience — the rare movie where everything just seems to magically click, and I walk out of the theatre totally jazzed by what just unspooled before my eyes.  I felt that way when I saw the first Iron Man. I was really blown away by the confidence with which director Jon Favreau and his team (headlined, of course, by the amazing Robert Downey Jr.) pulled off their exciting, engaging, and all-around FUN first installment.

Best of all, while that first movie was certainly a complete story all its own, it ended on a terrific high-note that promised fertile stories ahead — Tony’s spur-of-the-moment “I am Iron Man” admission in the final scene of the film, and the end-of-the-credits button that introduced Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury (played by Sam Jackson, who was the visual model for the character in Marvel’s “Ultimate” universe created about a decade ago) and made mention of the “Avengers Initiative.”  I walked out of that theatre unbelievably pumped for the stories to come, and when Marvel announced, about a week after Iron Man’s opening, their plans for future films based on Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man 2, all of which would build to a movie-version of Marvel’s super-hero team The Avengers, it was clear that an extraordinary venture was underway.

But that venture was fraught with risk.  Both Thor and Captain America seem like characters who work great in comic books but would be fiendishly difficult to pull off believably in a movie version.  And while most of the key creative players behind Iron Man were returning for the sequel, well, I probably don’t need to list for you the many, many sequels that have been colossal disappointments, unable to capture the magic of the first installment.

Alright, already, so what did I think of Iron Man 2?

Mr. Favreau and his team have crafted another fun, engaging installment of the adventures of Tony Stark.  They haven’t reinvented the wheel.  They haven’t turned over the apple-cart in the way that makes some of the truly great movie sequels so notable (The Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath of Khan, The Dark Knight…).  I didn’t walk out of the theatre with that same tingle that I had after seeing the first Iron Man.  But that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t very good.

Robert Downey Jr. proves that his perfection as Tony Stark in the first installment wasn’t a fluke.  He’s once again phenomenal, totally magnetic whenever he’s on screen.  I was pleased that the filmmakers resisted the temptation to trim any of Stark’s rough edges — Tony is just as much a pompous egomaniac here as he was in the first film.  But in an endearing way!  Likewise, Gwyneth Paltrow is just ridiculously likable as Pepper Potts, the woman responsible for keeping Tony’s life in some semblance of order.  Much was made of the re-casting of Tony’s friend James Rhodes, replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle, but I was pleased how well Mr. Cheadle fit into the role.  Five minutes into the film, and the re-casting is forgotten.  (Though I thought the “it’s me, deal with it” joke was unnecessary.  Too on-the-nose for my taste.)

One place where many, many super-hero sequels have stumbled is in the temptation to over-stuff themselves with too many new (usually villainous) characters.  When I read that this film was going to introduce two new villains — Whiplash and Justin Hammer — as well as the Black Widow, AND was going to feature Nick Fury in a larger role, I was a bit concerned.  Luckily, all of those new characters were very well-done, and integrated smoothly into the film.  I never felt that the narrative was bending under the studio’s need to sell new toys like some other failed superhero sequels I could mention (cough Spider-Man 3 cough).

Mickey Rourke is a lot of fun as Whiplash.  Mr. Rourke plays Ivan Vanko, a Russian thug/physicist who’s been nursing a planet-sized grudge against the Stark Family due to his belief that Tony’s father Howard Stark stole the arc reactor designs created by his (Ivan’s) father.  Rourke puts on a pretty crazy Russian accent for the role, which teeters just on the edge of ridiculous, but he brings enormous charisma and menace to the part, both of which help him create an intriguing, eminently-watchable character.  Also, I could listen to him say the word “bird” all day.  (Apparently, so too could the filmmakers, since he says it about a hundred times during the film.)  When Vanko’s first attempt to kill Tony fails (a thrilling attack during a car-race that is deliriously well-executed by the special effects team), he gets recruited by industrialist Justin Hammer.  Hammer is sort of a failed version of Tony Stark.  Well, not “failed,” really, since he is a wealthy supplier of weapons to the U.S. Military.  But as rich, smart, and successful as he is, he is less rich, less smart, and less successful than Tony Stark.  Hammer is played by Sam Rockwell, who imbues the character with bucket-loads of smug arrogance.  Rockwell’s off-kilter mannerisms are a good match for Robert Downey Jr.’s own particular brand of fast-talking mania — and also for Rourke’s quiet, hulking danger.

Then there’s Scarlett Johansson.  She is terribly miscast as the Russian super-spy Natasha Romanoff (I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more American looking and sounding actress than she), but she’s actually not bad in the role (even though she’s way afield from the original comic book character).  She does quiet inscrutability well, and except for one off-key moment (her childish pout storming out of Tony’s office at one point late in the film) she’s well-used in the story.  She also looks ridiculously good in a tight black cat-suit, so there’s that.

The action in the film is tremendous — a nice quantum leap ahead of what we saw in the first film.  I’ve already mentioned Vanko’s attack on the car-race, which was stunning, and there’s also a lot of chaos in the film’s final thirty minutes which is filled with great stuff.  Watching Iron Man & War Machine face off against thirty Hammer drones was thrilling — a fast-paced, energetic sequence that was a good capper to the story.  As in the first film, I have absolutely no idea what effects were handled practically and what were CGI — the blending is seamless, and really helps to sell the reality of the world being created.

So what doesn’t work?  At the end of the day, why don’t I feel that this film was as across-the-board successful as the first film?

Well, despite everything that I enjoyed, there were a number of aspects of Iron Man 2 that didn’t sit quite right with me.  They boil down to three main failings.  First, there weren’t really any surprises in this film.  The story was pretty by-the-numbers, and doesn’t really tread any new ground for the characters.  One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to presume, from the ending of Iron Man, that the sequel would focus on Tony’s having to adapt to suddenly being an in-the-spotlight super-hero, and that he’d have trouble dealing with that.  That’s exactly the story that we got, and it unfolds pretty much as one would expect — Tony arrogantly assumes he can handle all of the responsibilities he has taken on, which of course he can’t — so bad things happen and then he learns a valuable lesson.  That’s a pretty simple character arc, and not so dissimilar from what he went through in the first film.  Pepper and Rhodey don’t fare that much better — both characters feel like they’re being put through the same motions that they went through in the first film as well.  Pepper is put off by Tony’s boorish behavior and self-destructive tendencies, so she separates herself from him, but they make up at the end.  Rhodey is put off by Tony’s boorish behavior and self-destructive tendencies, so he separates himself from him, but they make up at the end.  Both story-arcs are predictable, and I sort of feel like we already danced that fandango with those characters in the first film.  (I was also a little bummed that Pepper — whose relationship with Tony was such a dynamic, central aspect to the first film — pretty much drops out of the story for the middle of the movie.)

The second major problem of the film, for me, is the way that the narrative takes the simple way out of all of the story’s conflicts.  The made-up element in Tony’s chest is killing him?  No problem, Tony will just invent some new made-up element to replace it.  Actually, strike that, he doesn’t even invent it, he just finds something that his father already invented.  Speaking of his father, I had assumed that Ivan’s grudge against Howard Stark had a basis in fact — that Howard HAD in fact screwed over his Russian partner.  But no, Nick Fury shows up to tell us that that’s not the case, Howard was really a great guy.  We know that Tony had a complex relationship with his father, and we assume that his father cared more about his work than he did for him.  But here’s a film-strip from twenty years earlier in which Howard looks straight at the camera and tells his son that he really loves him.  Come on!  It’s all very silly, and too easy.  Wouldn’t Stark’s conflict with Vanko be more compelling if Vanko really DID have a legitimate reason to hate the Stark family?  Wouldn’t the Stark family dynamics have been more interesting if his father really WAS a cold prick?  And what was even the point of introducing the plot-thread that the device in Tony’s chest was killing him, if Tony is able to solve that problem lickety-split once he’s given some magic secret info from his father?  And don’t even get me started on that.  The secret new element was hidden by his father in a model he built years earlier?  A HUGE model that apparently has been residing in Tony’s office all this time except that we never saw it in the first movie?  Weak.  Weak in the extreme.

Which brings me to the film’s third major flaw — there was really no sense of threat or danger to the proceedings.  I really respect Mr. Favreau and his collaborators for not imitating The Dark Knight and going all grim-and-gritty with their story.  I LOVE that they were able to preserve the sense of rollicking fun that the first film had.  But I do think this film would have benefitted from giving Stark some stronger adversaries, who would have presented him with a real THREAT.  It’s clear from the scene where we first meet him that Hammer is no intellectual match for Stark — Stark is clearly ten steps ahead of him, and humiliates Hammer at the Senate hearing.  But think of how much differently the movie would have played had Hammer been the one to embarrass Stark at that hearing.  Then we would have known, right from the beginning, that Stark was facing a dangerous man who was a real threat to him — and that threat would have hung over Tony for the rest of the movie.  But by going for a laugh during that Senate hearing sequence, I think the filmmakers undermined themselves.  Same goes for Whiplash.  Early in the film, Whiplash fights Iron Man — and gets beaten.  Then we spend the whole rest of the film building towards their rematch when — surprise, Whiplash gets beaten again.  If we learn in the first act that our hero can defeat the villain, there’s really no tension to be found in their third act re-match, is there?

Those are my most major problems with the film, but I have other complaints too.  It was nice to see Agent Coulson again (played by Clark Gregg) — I was worried that having Director Fury in the film would mean that we wouldn’t see Coulson — but he’s introduced only to tell us, in his next scene, that he’s been reassigned, and he exits the film.  I also didn’t understand how, when we first see him, he makes a big speech to Stark about how he’ll do whatever it takes to keep Stark confined in his home — and then five minutes later we see Stark in his car and driving away, with no one from S.H.I.E.L.D. making any attempt to stop him.  Huh?  I was also confused about how the events in this film square with Tony Stark’s cameo in last summer’s The Incredible Hulk.  In the scene in Hulk, it seemed like Stark was fully on board with Fury’s Avengers project — but in this film, it seems that S.H.I.E.L.D. is keeping him at a distance because they consider him a liability.  That doesn’t seem to jive .  I was also bummed that Jarvis wasn’t that heavily featured in this film.  I thought he was a wonderful creation in the first movie, and I completely loved the relationship that he/it had with Tony.  But in this film, Jarvis doesn’t have much do do other than spout a little exposition here and there about blood toxicity and new made-up elements.  That was a disappointment.  I’ll also mention how bummed I was that the 10 Rings organization, so subtly built up in the first film (and clearly connected to the classic Iron Man villain the Mandarin) was not mentioned at all in this movie.  I understand if the filmmakers weren’t ready to feature the Mandarin in this installment, but it would have been great to see that organization referenced (or at least to see even just ONE character sporting one of their over-sized rings) to keep that story alive.

OK, I’m starting to nit-pick, and I realize that.  But I think if the over-all story had worked more successfully in my eyes, those smaller problems wouldn’t be bothering me to the degree that they are.  But let’s not focus too much on the negatives.  There is still so much that I really enjoyed about Iron Man 2 that I haven’t mentioned yet:  I loved that Happy Hogan got more to do in this film.  I loved Garry Shandling.  I loved Stan Lee’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.  I loved Iron Man’s fight with War Machine in Tony’s cliff-side home.  I loved Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury.  I loved the references to trouble in the mid-west.  I loved the choice of actor picked to portray Howard Stark (I won’t spoil it here).  I loved the look of Whiplash in his final confrontation with Iron Man & War-Machine (something that was, impressively, kept out of all the trailers).  I loved loved loved the way the filmmakers took the silly 1960’s comic book notion that Tony Stark kept his Iron Man suit in his briefcase, and turned it into a stunningly cool moment.

Iron Man 2 is a fun film, and over-all it is a successful second installment of this franchise.  It’s not a classic movie sequel, and it doesn’t surpass the first film.  But it’s a good time in a movie theatre, and it’s much more fun and intelligent than much of what passes for big-budget summer films these days.  I remain very excited for the expansion of the Marvel movie universe in next summer’s Thor and Captain America, and to The Avengers in 2012.  And hey, I’d love to not have to wait until 2013 for an Iron Man 3!

It’s funny — although I acknowledge that Peter Bogdanovich is a significant, influential director, I must admit with some embarrassment that I’ve seen very few of his films.  Many of his ground-breaking films from the ’70s remain, as-yet-unseen, on my lengthy “to-watch” list: The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, etc.  I actually know Mr. Bogdanovich more as a knowledgeable film historian (his audio commentary on the DVD of Citizen Kane, for example, is magnificent and enlightening) than I do as a director.

But I’m a big fan of a film that he made in 2001, The Cat’s Meow.  The film is based on Hollywood whispers (”the whisper told most often”) about the events of a fateful boat cruise hosted by legendary media mogul William Randolph Hearst in 1924 that (might have) resulted in the untimely death of director Thomas Ince.

As the film tells the tale, W.R. Hearst invited an assemblage of show-biz folks (and a few gossip-writers) to join him on a yacht cruise in celebration of Mr. Innes’ birthday.  One of the guests was Charlie Chaplin (played by comedian Eddie Izzard), who may or may not have been involved at the time with Hearst’s very young starlet wife, Marion Davies (played by Kirsten Dunst).  (Of course, Hearst’s relationship with Marion Davies was most famously depicted — not in a positive light — in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which resulted in Hearst’s attempts to block that film’s release.)  Though the weekend was supposed to be a fun getaway, it seems that almost every guest on Hearst’s yacht arrived with their own agenda.  The fun of the film is in watching these powerful Hollywood personalities bounce off one another, as each guests’s true ambitions bubble just below the surface.

There’s a lot of humor to be found in the film, although it shouldn’t be mistaken for a farce.  The Cat’s Meow is actually a pretty sad story — this boat cruise did not have a happy ending for many of its guests.

Mr. Bogdanovich assembled an interesting mix of actors for the film.  I really enjoyed Eddie Izzard’s performance as Chaplin.  He doesn’t really look like Chaplin, but still, the casting is inspired.  Izzard really nails the charisma of Chaplin, without falling into mimicry.  It seems to me that Kirsten Dunst isn’t that well thought of as a serious actress, but I thought she was terrific here as Davies.  Unlike Mr. Izzard, she really does look the part — and she brought a surprising amount of soul to the performance.  (You’ll have a lot more empathy for Marion Davies when watching The Cat’s Meow than when watching Citizen Kane!)  Edward Herrmann (whom my wife was excited to recognize as Richard Gilmore from Gilmore Girls) knocks it out of the park as W.R. Hearst, and I also really enjoyed Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Men in Tights) as the unfortunate Innes.  The man can play smarm.

The film was adapted by screenwriter Steven Peros from his play of the same name.  In many ways the film feels like a play, which is a strength and also a weakness.  The Cat’s Meow is very tightly plotted and tightly written, and it’s a joy to watch these actors move in and out of scenes exchanging snappy patter with one another.  There are also, unfortunately, some scenes that feel very “stagey” where the acting & delivery of dialogue just doesn’t work.  These moments just felt “off” to me — and once I realized that this film had been adapted from a play I understood why.  They’re moments that I could definitely see working in a theatre, but just didn’t play in a movie.  But thankfully, those off moments are few and far between, and most of The Cat’s Meow works like gangbusters.

This isn’t a GREAT film, and it surely pales before Mr. Bogdanovich’s earlier work (which I someday hope to see!).  But it’s a film that I’ve really dug both times that I’ve seen it on DVD, and it sits proudly on my DVD shelf.  If the cast and subject matter interests you, it’s definitely worth a shot.

There’s a great article about Mel Brooks up at Boston.com, because his musical Young Frankenstein is coming to Boston for a two-week run.  I was disappointed by Young Frankenstein when I saw it on broadway, but this brief piece about one of our comedic legends is worth a read.

Here’s a fascinating article about the many different versions of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.  I’m a big fan of this groundbreaking film, and I’d love to see the newly-restored 147-minute version.

One of my very favorite web-sites, thedigitalbits.com, has posted a very informative interview with DVD Producer Michael Pellerin.  Mr. Pellerin has been involved with the DVD releases of The Lord of the Rings since the very beginning, and he has some fascinating comments on the recent blu-ray release of the trilogy as well as the material that Peter Jackson has been saving for the eventual ultimate blu-ray super-duper box set.  (Can’t wait for that!)

Speaking of Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings, December 2012 needs to hurry up and get here already!!!

Artist Ron Miller has created a series of breathtaking images entitled the Eight Wonders of the Solar System.  Gorgeous.

I am starting to believe that Ridley Scott is actually going to make the Alien prequel that has been rumored for years.  Mr. Scott spills a lot of beans in this interview with MTV, although it was the folks at HitFix that revealed that he’s actually planning to create TWO prequels.  OK, color me cautiously intrigued.  I’m excited to see Ridley Scott return to the Alien universe for the first time since 1979, though as a rule I think prequels are stupid.

Here’s a great profile of comic book genius Jeff Smith.  Bone is one of the masterpieces of the medium (if you haven’t read it — you really must), and I’m really digging his new series Rasl.

Star Trek geeks: check out this incredible opening movie from the 2009 FedCon Science Fiction Convention.  This gorgeous 4-minute short film, created by Tobias Richter, features an action-packed sequence featuring the U.S.S. Kelvin & redesigned U.S.S. Enterprise from J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek film.  Pretty awesome stuff.  (Though I still hate the redesigned Enterprise…)

Speaking of Star Trek, I am giddy with excitement over the next batch of episodes in the phenomenal fan-film series Star Trek: Phase II.  (I’ve written before about Phase II here, and here is my review of one of their recent episodes, “Blood and Fire.”)  There’s a great series of teases for these upcoming episodes up at Trekmovie.com, including the revelation that these mad geniuses are planning on including Arex (the three-armed and three-legged Enterprise helmsman from Star Trek: The Animated Series) in an upcoming episode.  I.  Can’t.  Wait.

I am in  awe.

We’re only two days away now from seeing Iron Man 2, and I am just about dying with anticipation.  To whet your appetite, here’s a hilarious introduction by Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. to a special sneak preview at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas.  (Feel free to skip the review posted below the video clip if, like me, you want to go into the flick totally unspoiled.)

As with Death at a Funeral (which I reviewed last month), The TV Set is a film that I’ve been wanting to see ever since it was released.  It was one of those films that sounded really interesting to me, and was very well-reviewed, but I just never got around to catching it.  I keep a little notebook with a long LOOONG list of all the movies that I want to see someday.  Any time I read about a film that sounds interesting, I add it to the list.  I’ve been very busy lately, but I’m really happy that I’ve been able to cross some great films off of that to-watch list lately, thanks to Netflix!

The TV Set stars David Duchovny as Mike Klein, a TV writer.  Mike has written and sold a script for a new TV pilot called The Wexley Chronicles, and over the course of the film we follow the process of casting and filming the pilot from Mike’s well-liked script.

I am a big fan of television, and as a result, The TV Set is difficult to watch at times.  That’s because this film dissects, with surgical precision, why so much television is so terrible.  Written and directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) and produced by Judd Apatow, the film is based on Apatow and Kasdan’s experiences making the brilliant-but-quickly-cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks.  Over the course of the film we, along with poor Mike, watch with horror as the network takes his script — which they liked because of its originality — and, through a thousand small compromises that they force Mike to make, set about to eliminate all of the project’s uniqueness in order to create something that will offend no-one and appeal to the widest audience possible.  The process is summed up in an awkward confrontation between Mike and the network head-honcho Lenny (Sigourney Weaver), in which she tells him flat-out: “originality scares me.”

The cast is superb.  Duchovny is perfect as the talented but also sort of sad-sack Mike.  We can see, in his eyes, the quiet desperation with which Mike is trying to hold on to his vision for the project, and the anguish that each little compromise causes him.  Sigourney Weaver kills as the tough, take-no-prisoners Network boss Lenny.  She is a riot, and to describe Lenny as a formidable presence would be a grand understatement.  Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower from USA’s series, and perfectly cast but then stranded by the execrable Fantastic Four movies) plays Lenny’s right-hand man Richard, brought over from England to head up the network’s TV development.  Whereas Lenny only cares about the bottom line (making money), we can see that Richard does want to make good television, but it’s quickly apparent that he can’t and/or won’t stand in Lenny’s way.  Judy Greer (Arrested Development) is Mike’s agent Alice.  Her insistence of trying to make it sound like two people are agreeing when clearly they are in total disagreement is hysterical, and, it seems, typical for Hollywood.  Fran Kranz (who I only recently discovered as the nutty Topher on Dollhouse) plays Zach, the bad actor cast in the show’s lead role at the network’s insistance, over Mike’s objections.  It’s tough the play “bad acting” without slipping into over-the-top silliness, but Kranz nails the performance.  Lindsay Sloan is also great as the female lead of the show who is forced to try to act opposite Zach.

I could keep going!  There’s Justine Bateman as Mike’s pregnant wife Natalie!  There’s Lucy Davis (Dawn from the original British The Office) as Richard’s put-upon wife Chloe!  There’s M.C. Gainey (Tom Friendly from Lost!) as the grumpy lighting-man on set!  There’s Philip Rosenthal (show-runner of Everybody Loves Raymond) as a network exec!  The ensemble is amazing, and every character has a small moment to shine over the course of the film.

I said that The TV Set can be tough to watch at times, and that’s true — but in the best way!  The very qualities of The Wexler Chronicles that Mike is fighting for — that there can be great comedy out of uncomfortable moments, that a show can have rough edges, that not every character needs to be likable, and that an audience won’t turn away even if some unhappy things happen to the characters — are also present in The TV Set.  Sure, Mr. Kasdan and his teams could have played down some aspects of Mike’s suffering as he watches his project unravel.  That might have resulted in a funnier, easier-to-digest film, but it also would have been a film that is much less interesting.

The TV Set is a great film.  It might not appeal to everyone — there’s a lot of inside baseball to be found here, and if you’re not interested in how the sausage is made — that is, the behind-the-scenes processes of  how TV shows are actually created — then this might not be the film for you.  But I found the film to be fascinating — and also very, very funny.  And also very sad.

It’s worth your time — check it out.  And thank the stars above for the few TV shows that actually wind up being GOOD.