Catherine Hardwicke's "Twilight"

Stephenie Meyer's life-sucking stranglehold on the best-seller lists mystified me for a very long time. I'd gone into reading the "Twilight" series with my populist enthusiasm, only to be shocked at how LITTLE there was in that thick ass book, at how ridiculous its romance was, and particularly at how the book managed to be at once derivative AND completely ignorant of its sources. Hadn't Meyer ever read Bram Stoker, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Richard Matheson or seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or even indulged in the thousands of Buffy descendants like Anita Blake or Rachel Morgan or Sookie Stackhouse? What about vampire movies? "The Hunger"? "Fright Night"? "Near Dark"? "Underworld"? "The Lost Boys?" "Vampyros Lesbos"? Tee-hee! "Nosferatu"? That Werner Herzog!
GODDAMNIT, hadn't she seen "Blacula"?
And didn't she understand that after years of variations and deconstructions, you have to come to the vampire table with a NEW twist? Offer us MORE, not LESS?
The answer to all those questions was a big fat NO, by the way. She's a good girl who has never seen a rated R movie, and who's steered clear of vamp lit so as "not to be influenced." Of course that's what lots of writers claim when someone points out their unoriginality: "Oh, that thing I ripped off? Never heard of it." But I believe Stephenie- I know she wouldn't bear false testimony. She really does seem ignorant of her competition in the field.
The story of "Twilight", btw? Spoilers and all? Ok, new-in-town Bella Swoon meets the dreamy guy Edward Colon. Edward Colon tells him to stay away from him, because he's a bad boy and he's trouble and he really wants to suck her but he mustn't. This creepy posessive bad guy routine has unfortunately been too successful with idiot girls for far too long- (who then wonder why her bad boy is burning cigarrete butts on their face when they burn his dinner? "He was so bad at the beginning! How could things turn out this wrong?") Anyway, Swoon is madly in love with Colon because he's dreamy- not funny, smart, interesting, or passionate or even all that mysterious. Just "dreamy". They gaze into each other's eyes. Touch hands timidly. Roll around in the grass. RIGHT. The Abstinence Rally crowd cheers for this creepy inhuman behavior, while the little girls daydream about Edward going at their necks, abstinence be damned. Oh, then a vampire even less scary than Edward shows up to kill Bella. And Edward kills the bad vampire.
Clever plot twists? 0.
Clever plot? 0.
Any cleverness at all? 0.

In its simplistic approach, its absurd belief that this story has never been done before, Meyer only got credits for innocence. It was almost as if someone had decided that "Lost" was pretty cool, but it had too many characters and plot twists and mysterious incidents. Why not write a story about a plane that goes down on an island, and the only two survivors are Jack and Kate, and there's nothing weird about the place, and Jack and Kate don't have sex even thought they're alone, they just split a coconut and gaze at the sunset, and then a helicopter comes to save them and it ends? Wouldn't THAT be fresh?

But now I get it! The simplicity IS the appeal. There is no story or anything to get in the way of its character's repressed sexual angst. This is exactly what it feels to have natural sexual urges but be told by some Church authority that you mustn't. And Meyer tapped into that, much to Mammon's delirious triumph.


ABOVE: Must. Get. Monkey. Off my Back.

Ok, so how's the movie itself? As good as could be expected, enjoyable even. I'm a fan of Catherine Hardwicke's first two films, "13" and "Lords of Dogtown", and she brings a deft touch to her work with teenagers and subcultures. In fact, the scenes in which Bella (Kristen Stewart) interacts with her friends at her new high school, and then with the beautiful small town of Forks, Washington, have a nice naturalistic touch that serves to ground some exceptionally bad action scenes. And I mean BAD. Hardwicke's discomfort with that part of the material is communicated to the audience, particularly in a hilariously dumb "fast vampire baseball" scene that unfortunately is not even MEANT to be funny. Hardwicke makes you wish she'd just been filming a documentary about small town American high schools, and not this purple extravaganza.
Robert Pattinson plays Edward. Inferior though he is to Kristen Setwart, he gets away with our attention because he's not the type who "tries to act", and she is, and sometimes it's strained. He simply makes faces- looks like he's drunk a batch of bad AB- and altough technically bloodless he compensates with so much hair gel that his spiky -do qualifies him to star in a Japanese RPG.
As mentioned before, there's nothing special about Edward other than his looks. He's lived 120 years and in all time that he's not amassed any kind of wisdom or knowledge or telling vocabulary. He creeps into Bella's room and watches her sleep for nights on end. HMMM, CREEPY, WRONG AND ILLEGAL- besides, didn't you hear you had to be INVITED? Bella is such a beat down Mary Sue that after being given a speech like: "I can't trust myself around you. I just want to lick your blood. But I'm BAD, you hear me, I'm BAD! I have killed people!" Bella: "I don't care! I will always love you forever and a day!" You don't care he's a killer? Jesus wept, bitch, have some SELF-ESTEEM!

This all goes to show what I've always sadly known. If an ugly guy sneaks into your bedroom and watches you sleep, he's an evil pervert and you call the cops. If Robert Pattinson sneaks into your bedroom and watches you sleep, you're turned on and let him explore his eroticism.

John Dickson Carr's "The Three Coffins"

"Remember, remember the Fifth of November"- (Feeling "V for Vendetta"-ish)


A vampiric man in a Guy Fawkes mask- two seemingly impossible murders- and Dr. Gideon Fell (the lay Father Brown) harrumphing and amusing himself as he sets apart the real clues from the red herrings. They don't write them like this anymore, people don't puff at their pipes while saying things like: "Look here, old fella, are you saying that the murderer is one of us? Why, I never!" What a loss! John Dickson Carr's "The Three Coffins a.ka. The Hollow Man" is widely considered the best locked room mystery ever. I concur. If the classically styled mystery isn't puzzling you enough, the lecture on "Locked Room Mysteries" given by Dr. Fell towards the end is worth the proverbial price of admission.

CHAPTER 61: INQUIRIES

This night, which according to Dumas has been as fertile as that Kate+8 woman, has taken us from St. Denis to Muette to the Rue Coq-Heron to the Rue Plastriere to Rue Morgue Avenue. (It's like one of those Fodo's Travel Guides in here.) Madame Dubarry, whom we've abandoned for so long you might forget she's played by Anne Hathaway so I'm reminding you, has been up to the usual no-good seduction of Louis XV (Robert de Niro) at her palace in Luciennes. In particular, she's trying to stifle the influence the Choiseul family (and the Prime Minister played by Tom Wilkinson) might have over the Dauphiness, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst).
"De Choiseul is too old for the cute, M.A. too cute for the old," says the King. "He can't get up quickly enough to talk to her, she can't sit down long enough to listen to him."
"Oh, I chuckle at your phraseology," says Dubarry, not chuckling at all.
"I'm actually concerned about the dauphiness; I'm not sure if the Dauphin is, er, up to making her happy."
Madame Dubarry frowns: "Why this concern?"
"During all these parties, the Dauphin has been staring at pretty much everyone BUT his new wife."
"But... don't you think she's very lovely, sire?" (GUYS, for your own reference: THIS IS ALWAYS A TRICK QUESTION- the King knows this.)
"Who, Marie Antoinette? Oh, I've barely noticed. I suppose. If you're into the jailbait look." Good answer. "Now, that Mademoiselly de Taverney, THAT'S quality material." BAD ANSWER.
"Oh, is she very lovely, this Mademoiselle de Taverney?" Madame Dubarry whips out a black book with a skull on its cover, makes an annotation.
"Lovely? Ah, pbbbt, I dunno, no, not at all."
"But you just said..."
"I was saying that I can see how IF I liked that kind of woman, I would like her."
"But you DON'T like that kind of woman? What kind of woman is that? Surely you've observed her closely then."
"Dash it, my dear, you know I'm half blind, all I say is that her general shape was more interesting than Marie Antoinette's. I'm talking general SHAPES- like triangles and spheres. Mademoiselle de Taverney has good spheres. That's all. And those Taverneys-Maison-Rouge are an honorable family, a great addition to the court."
Dubarry is shooting little lightning bolts at "sire", but manages a smirk and says: "Well, I suppose it's good the Dauphiness surround herself with pretty young things instead of old creeps like DeChoiseul."
"No, no, no," the King rushes out with fingers on his ears, "me no wanna hear no politics!"

It's become morning with all this pillow talk. As soon as the King has disappeared from Madame Dubarry's palace, she goes into a small boudoir where Chon (Evangeline Lilly) has been waiting for news.
Chon: "My dear sister! May you smile upon all your fans! The Dauphiness has invited us for dinner!"
Dubarry: "Big triumph. I've accomplished nothing tonight. I need chocolate!"
Little Black Zamore (Gary Coleman) promptly appears.
Dubarry: "HURRY! My chocolate! I'm in a mood! Run!"
Zamore affects dignity: "Me governor now. Governor do not run."
Dubarry: "Governor gonna run, or Governor gonna get whipped."
(Listen! Times were different! I'm just the abridger!)
Chon: "Aren't you the morning person."
At that moment, the Viscount Jean DuBarry (Gerard Depardieu) smacks the door of the boudoir open: "Je suis arrivee, mes cheres!"
Chon hugs him a little too enthusiastically as pro forma, whispers: "Don't talk to her until she's had her chocolate."

Zamore returns with a tray of steaming goodness, and Jean begins to pour himself some when Madame Dubarry snatches it from his hands and guzzles it without flinching: "Oh, nectar of the African gods! Yes. Yes. I am functional now. And you two bastards, you see me here suffering and you mock me."
Chon: "Why are you suffering, sis, I don't understand? Do you need money?"
Madame Dubarry: "Bah, I always have plenty of it."
Jean: "So lend me 100 bucks."
Madame Dubarry: "Kiss my ass. And stop drinking my chocolate, you parasites!"
Chon: "Why are you such a meanie today? Is it because the King won't get rid of De Choiseul?"
Madame Dubarry: "Aren't you the detective? What else is new?"
Jean: "Is it because the King has been neglecting his duties to you?"
Madame Dubarry: "Closer."
Jean and Chon exchange a look. Jean sighs: "Ah, so the king has a crush. And on Mademoiselle Taverney. Is that it?" Slurps some chocolate loudly.
Madame Dubarry: "You KNEW? And you sit there, you fat lazy cow! I should rip your ugly sleep-crusted eyes!"
Jean: "On the contrary, I haven't slept. I've been helping you all night and all morning. I've been doing... inquiries."
Madame Dubarry: "I do not appreciate the suspense! Talk!"
Jean: "I've found out where Mademoiselle De Taverney is staying. A little bribing of a coachman- for which I expect reimbursement. She's staying in a little house in the Rue Coq-de-Heron, next to the Hotel d'Armenonville."
Madame Dubarry: "Oh, darling Jean! And here I was about to spill hot chocolate on your usually worthless crotch! You've saved us! But now we need to find everything we can about this little hussy, who she sees, when, how, if she gets any letters... Understand, we need her thoroughly ruined if we're going to keep enjoying the best hot chocolate ever."
Jean: "WEEEELL. I suppose the next step would be to install a spy nearby, no? Luckily, I've arranged for THAT too. I've rented an apartment in the Rue Plastriere- there are all these buildings that have windows that look on the back of Mademoiselle de Taverney'sgarden pavilion. I said I was renting it for a young widow. Chon, how would you like to be a young widow?"
Chon: "Dreamed of it ever since I was a little girl!"

And SO Chon heads out to an all too familiar neighborhood, all the while reasoning: "This Taverney girl isn't a true country girl if she hasn't been shacking up with a rustic for some time now. We need to find this coarse lover, alert her father, start a shotgun wedding, and then the King is not going to meddle with a married hick girl." Chon may be getting a little ahead of herself, but you won't be if you've concluded that a) she's staying in the neighborhood where Jean Jacques Rousseau lives, b) she's bound to encounter her fleeing ex-protegee Gilbert soon, and that c) as soon as the "young widow" arrives at her new apartment along with her maid Madame Sylvie, she makes sure to peer through the blinds of her window at the garden pavilion.
And sees a curtain move in an opposite window.
And sees her prey, Andree de Taverney, unwittingly peek out from behind the curtain, still in her sexy PJs.
It's peep show time again- but this one could turn out to have some serious consequences.

"Skins" Series 1

'Oy there, you sodding pillocky buggers! Fancy a spot of teenage angst? You should. Go watch "Skins" now.


I like Tony. I think I KNOW Tony. Tony looks like a young Tom Cruise, his business is risk. When cheerleaders go down on him, he props an open Sartre book on their foreheads. Multi-tasking! Guys don't like Tony- they see right through his egotistical powerplays, call him a sociopath beind his back, and plan to do a mediocre job when they wash Tony's car for him. Oh, and girls? They HATE Tony, you should hear what they say of him when they get together! "That little shit! DISGUSTING SEXIST SCUM! Why, next time we sleep with him, we should totally scream someone else's name on purpose, just to show him what's what!"


And of course I know Tony's "official" girlfriend, Michelle- or "Nips" as he calls her. (If you own somebody, give them pet names.) Michelle is uncertain if she likes him, but she knows she really loves him, and walks about in a tolerant daze as he cheats on her, ocassionally directing her considerable anger at everyone BUT him.


And Sid? PBBBT, of COURSE I know Sid. Sid is Tony's best "friend"- in so far as a willful shit like Tony has friends. Sid is, NATURALLY, in love with Michelle, bristles at how Tony treats her, but also knows that Michelle only deigns to talk to him at all BECAUSE Tony has allowed him in "the circle". Sid is too busy being toyed with by Tony and pining for Michelle to notice that there's a beautiful but unstable girl called Cassie that would do anything for him.


Yes, Cassie. LOVE Cassie. An anorexic, hallucinating, endearing kook, and an ocassional source of wisdom. Cassie persists in making her love known to Sid at the risk of her own sanity.

Who else is there? Anwar (Dev Patel, the dude from "Slumdog Millionaire"!) Anwar is an observant Muslim (are there many UN-observant Muslims?) Anwar knows what the rules are, and although he's more than happy to bend a few, (especially when it comes to Russian lumberjills) he also knows that homosexuality is an abomination, and that's that. Too bad his best friend Maxxie is like, super gay. There's Jal, a talented musician who's overlooked by her father. There's Chris, who's having a "Dawson's Creek" affair with Angie, his FIT instructor.

If the cast of "Skins" sounds like a bargain-sale of teenage cliches, well, it's meant to. But the intelligence and humanity behind the series- and that engaging, lovable cast- give a fresh feel to show. You will care about these stereotypes, and besides, are you sure you weren't a pretty big stereotype in high school yourself? "Skins" captures that moment in time in which personalities are being formed and uncertain youth aches to fit into molds that the world around them can endorse or disenfranchise or WHATEVER- as long as it notices they EXIST.

Oh, and there's drugs and Monty-Python-like detours and some of the soddingest cursing ever, and a lot of snogging and NUDITY (only explicit in the over-18 characters, so rest your concerned outcries). How do they get away with it?!? Deeee-lightful.

Some Mild Spoilers, but you MUST SEE the cover of Cat Stevens'- er, Yusuf Islam's- "Wild World". It ends series 1 of "Skins", it's exactly as out of nowhere as it looks, and it's also hella moving in context.

Skins - Wild World
Uploaded by omiKASE - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

I TOTALLY MISSED IT!!!

But HALLUCINA just celebrated its 1000th post!!!--- Three posts ago.
N**** WOOT! RESPECT DAH EFFECT!!!

To celebrate I just indulged in the absolutely frivolous reading of Marvel Comics' digital Eminem/Punisher Merger.
(Had to happen, right?)
'S no joke!

Could Big Pun be out to ice the mother-raping Rapper? Is Slim Shady capable of bustin' caps on the Skulled One? Will the cover of the "Relapse" CD be blatanly shoved in our faces?

Clive Barker's "Hellraiser- The Collected Best Volume 1"

Dean Koontz wanted to cash in on horror so he could buy his Golden Retriever a Golden Doghouse.
Stephen King wanted to get horror accepted as mainstream.
Clive Barker wanted to get horror accepted as HIGH ART.

Predictable, were the results.


That there is a 'Collected Best' of the 1989-1992 "Hellraiser" comic book, (as opposed to a full on re-issue of the short-enough series), suggests that there were some huge lows in the series. If the quality of this selection was truly representative, then I've vastly underrated the "Hellraiser" universe. Many of these stories would have fit neatly into "The Sandman", including the Neil Gaiman-Dave McKean collaboration about a crossword-puzzle lover who solves his way to hell one clue at a time. Other great contributors: Alex Ross, Mike Mignola. Overall, a very very nice set I'm sad I hadn't noticed earlier, although the stories all tend to pull in the same direction- DOWN!!! Mwahahaha.

James D. Stern- Adam Del Deo's "Every Little Step"

If I know my ex-thespian crowd, (and I do) another likely upcoming Susan Boyle release is "What I Did for Love".


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(The shiver that ran through my spine at the idea of finding out what Susan Boyle does for love was so seismic it actually broke that last keyboard.)


If you want to see REAL talent, involving amazing artists who sweat and transform their bodies and their worlds for their craft only to break themselves again and again against the shore of auditioning indiference and insane competition, watch the great documentary "Every Little Step". Chronicling the casting process for a 2006 revival of "A Chorus Line"- which itself chronicles the casting process for a Broadway show- this could almost be too meta for its own good if the themes of the original didn't just reverberate so fluently. Here we see real struggling dancers trying to become fake struggling dancers, and the editing is so compelling that you might as well be watching an alternate "Chorus Line". In that sense alone it's a better document of the classic show than the infamous 1985 flop version by Sir Richard Attenborough with Michael Douglas- (bad, but not as awful as its reputation. But still bad.) If you don't know "A Chorus Line" from "Shrek the Musical", I can best sell you "Every Little Step" as a tremendously moving and well-edited reality TV show- you meet the prospects, learn their stories, see them perform, root for the ones you like, and have your hopes crushed or rewarded. The structure is familiar, yes, but this is smarter and it only sucks 90 minutes of your life instead of dozens of television hours. And you must watch for the scene in which reality and fiction are blurred during an audition. When an actor gets emotional during a casting confession about how much he wants this role, both the audience, and the seen-it-all casting gods are driven to tears. And then everyone's startled to realize that he's just repeating THE SAME OLD LINES FROM THE GOSHDARNED SCRIPT- you just got so caught up in the moment you FELT IT WAS REAL.
It's truly as magical a moment as any achieved by CGI this summer.

To recall that the chosen few will simply get to be part of an undistinguished, anonymous show for ONE number is the tragic irony, and yet that's what makes "Every Little Step" inspiring: it celebrate the lives of the people who are busting their asses just to blend in on a chorus line.

It Ain't Over 'Til

I used the Hallucina search engine three times in disbelief, but it's true: I have not once mocked Susan Boyle. The fact that it may be too late doesn't deter me. I'm like Eminem, still hung up on Nick Lachey and XTina. (XTINA 4 LIFE!)



Ok, so I won't belabor the obvious commentary on Boyle: people are retarded, it's all a staged collective pat-in-the-back at how great we are for allowing ONE shitty-looking everyday human being into our sights before we quietly cart her away to die her lonely life in some "Keeping Up Appearances" British corner.
I feel BAD for the woman, naturally, being gawked and made-up and toured around like she's a mynah bird or the last remaining Tasmanian.
I feel bad for how Simon Cowell humilated her coyly: "You're a hot little number, aren't you? It's alwas the shy ones!" This woman could be your MOM, asshole. She's not a six year old to be condescended to.
I feel bad for the admiring gasps of the pretties in the crowd: "She was fat and her hair a joke- who knew she could be HUMAN and speak and stuff?!?"
I feel bad for the idiocy of it all. How we can as a PLANET- you can't even blame this one on American Idiots- act SHOCKED at the discovery that ugly fat ladies can sing?!? Have you morons ever heard of a little something called MOTHERFUCKING OPERA?!?

But enough for the bullshit hypocritical phenomenon, (when she makes three successful records I'll take back my words and assume you all ACTUALLY DO ADMIRE HER SINGING, instead of being just amazed that someone even uglier than you is famous.) I now turn my ire at the woman herself. Her big second song? "Memory." Now I understand EVERYTHING- now only is she ugly, she's also the most boring, predictable lump of clay ever. How long did it take for that hidden gem to pop into her micro-brain? I'm reminded of the only funny part of Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl", when the Ben Affleck character has to take his daughter to the talent show and EVERY SINGLE LITTLE GIRL choose "Memory" as her song, and so he has to sit through like 19 awful renditions. I love "Memory" without shame- but, you know, once or twice, not ALWAYS.
So what's Boyle's next song going to be?
I'll bet a little finger, (not mine, someone else's) that this lady's inevitably awful album is going to contain covers of one or ALL of the following obscurities:

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
"Yesterday"
"Tomorrow"
"On My Own" (eeeeewwww, I really hope not.)
"Music of the Night."
"Don't Cry for Me Argentina"
"You'll Never Walk Alone"

Mark me words, kiddos.

Patric Lussier's "My Bloody Valentine 3-D"

There is a scene in the first episode of the fourth season of "Lost" in which Hurley (Jorge Garcia) is staring at the two-way mirror in a police station. The mirror reveals to him a (silent) underwater scene, and a deep sea diver that sinuously swims towards the window, extends a hand, cracks the police station's mirror, and makes the ocean burst into the room. It's vicerally jolting- it makes you jump- and it's not even remotely on 3-D.
Patric Lussier's "My Bloody Valentine" IS in 3-D, but not a single one of its many "in-your-face" scares worked on my home-theater system. These scares involve pick-axes on your face, and... Actually it's not very varied, just a whole bunch of pick-axes on your face. As a fan of 3-D innovation who bristled at Roger Ebert's old-fog-land remark that 3-D is just a distraction, I hated to agree in this instance. This movie might have given me slightly less of a headache in 2-D (the bi-color system HAS TO GO), but I cannot imagine any compelling reason to watch it WITHOUT the 3-D sights.
This is the kind of movie so un-engaging that it gives you plenty of time to wonder WHY it's so unengaging. I mean, one of the most universal facts about the human experience is that if some shit jumps at your face, you get scared and close your eyes and duck and stuff. It overrides everything, including the knowledge that your Stooge-loving friends don't actually INTEND to gouge your eyes. You blink!
So why was my mind wandering as sharp nipples and menacing flames and steely knives and...yes, lots and lots of pick-axes... flew at my face? Snobby horror theorists might propose that horror movies function based on your involvement with the characters, they suggest that you care so immensely about Jamie Lee Curtis's survival that you become afraid. Therefore you can't be scared by this flick because the only competency of these "actors" is that they're good at supporting nice heads of hair before the cameras.
I never bought that theory fully. I've been scared shitless millions of time by the unimportant fates of non-descript showering blondes, indiscreet janitors looking into the wrong closets, and random doofuses that sit in their couches and don't turn their heads when the door behind them opens in a sinister creak: "Abbie? Is that you? What took you so long in the attic? Why are you breathing so loudly? Oh, I see, you're giving me the silent treatment! Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to turn and see why your shadow has gotten so large and is looming over me..." *strings, machete going down repeatedly, blood spurts*
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is one of the most frightening movies ever made, but I'll bet you can't remember the names- THE FACES EVEN- of any of Leatherface's victims. (Yeah, nice try, looking at IMDB doesn't count.) I'm not worried about what might happen to the "involving characters", but that it might happen to ME. And although I can see myself wandering into the wrong gas station in a shitty Southern town, (hell, done it plenty), I can't see myself partying at the creepy mine where people get routinely slaughtered every Valentine's Day.

ABOVE: WELL, you had it coming!!! Why the hell were you pressing your face against the door when you knew he was going to do that?!?

Jensen Ackles from the CW's "Supernatural", and Kerr Smith (gay Jack from the WB's "Dawson's Creek") star in this dull remake, and that only made me sad for the glory days of Kevin Williamson and the "Scream" trilogy. Remember how FUNNY and WITTY those movies were- on a curve? Which in turn made me sadder.
"My Bloody Valentine"'s dialogue is of this sort. "This shit is scaring me!" "Join the club." AND, twenty minutes later: "I'm so scared of this shit!" "Me too, join the club." If that seems to you some sort of self-reference, or parallelism, or a plot clue, bless your innocent soul. It's just that writers forgot they'd used the cliche previously, and used it again.

But hey, it's 3-D!

Having a MEMORIAL (green) DAY with Evan Rachel Wood. And Billie Joe Armstrong. And Stephen Sondheim! Only in Hallucina.

If you've been coming 'round Hallucina ways, you know Evan Rachel Wood is much beloved here. I've had a jail-bait-crush on her since "Once and Again" and I applauded her breakthrough role in Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen" and have followed her through her breakthrough role in "Pretty Persuassion" and her breakthrough role in "The Upside of Anger" and her breakthrough role in "Down in the Valley" and her breakthrough role in "All Across the Universe" and... You get the point. Why exactly hasn't she BROKEN THROUGH all those break-throughs? I don't get it. I'm about to watch her in what's probably another wonderful, breakthrough performance in "The Wrestler". You don't hear enough about people wanting to cast her in "Night at The Pirates of the Somalisean: The Quest for the Storm Flag of Doom in 3D". She has the canniest, most tasteful resume of any young actress. Why isn't she universally beloved? Is it because she dated Marilyn Manson?
Maybe it's better this way. Her making nice small movies.

Ok, in honor of Memorial Day, go watch Evan Rachel Wood in
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" from Green Day's "rock opera" "American Idiot".
--- DEPARTING, UNEXPECTED RANT.

Like pretty much everyone alive in 2004 I LOVED "American Idiot" but I HATED how OVERRATED it was. Let me explain. A rating is how you stack up amongst your peers. And EVERYONE called "American Idiot" a rock opera. But it's NOT a rock opera. "Tommy" is a rock opera. "Jesus Christ Superstar" is a rock opera. "Rent" is a rock opera. I'm not being snobby. Just want things clear. And it's not hard to make something a rock opera, and it's very easy to make a horrible rock opera, but a rock opera needs characters and situations while "American Idiot" only has names and atmospherics. "American Idiot" is not like "Tommy"- the lazy comparison- it's much more like "The Wall." It's a CONCEPT ALBUM. I'm not putting it down, I'm defining it correctly. "American Idiot" ranks good as a concept album: it's passionate, melodic, entertaining, topical, themes come in and out, and you get a vibe that it all fits together even if the lyrics would make Stephen Sondheim- (or really, any competent lyricist)- sigh.

Imagine!

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG:
"I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge
and
Read between the lines"

STEPHEN SONDHEIM: "Stop stop stop stop. Please. STOP. You don't rhyme "line" with "line". And you you don't use "LINES" again in the next stanza. It's asiNINE. It's not FINE. I deCLINE to assist you in this mockery of lyricism. The words should make sense, be witty, define character while conveying ideas and playing with language."

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG:
"Oy, I 'ope you're not mocking me, ass'ole, I'm just writing whatever because it's about confusion. Are you stupid?"

STEPHEN SONDHEIM:
"Yes, yes, clearly it's me who's guilty of stupidity, and clearly it's me who affects a cockney accent despite being born and bred in California."

BILLIE JOE ARMGSTRONG:
"You're all right, old man."

As a rock OPERA, "American Idiot" ranks very low, because no one really knows much about Whatsername or St. Jimmy or Jesus of Suburbia or what they're DOING, which isn't much. But that said, they ARE making an ACTUAL rock opera out of "American Idiot", and it's Broadway-bound and all that punk jazz.

Jon and Kate + Hate

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Jeremiad ahead, be warned.

I guess that was the wrong side of the bed to wake up on. I'm randomly pissed at cable television, at "reality celebs", at our decision to lemmingize our way into idiocy.
I KNOW, lemmingize isn't a word, but, what can you expect? I watch TVconstantly- I even do it online these days- and I used to do it for a job too. Discovery, the History Channel, TLC, etc etc, hour after hour. "But surely your intellect must have been stimulated by all that knowledge about animal behavior, the lives of great historical figures, the latest scientific break-throughs!" You say this because you come from 1991 or something. You haven't seen cable recently.

The coloring in breakfast cereals obviously made us all retarded, and cable execs, recognizing this, "shifted programming strategies".

American Movie Classics used to be a place for "Casablanca". Now they show "Catwoman". That may be American, but it's not a Classic, and it's just vaguely a Movie.
MTV's newer employees are encouraged to wonder about the meaning of that cryptic M- their bosses themselves don't know. There are a few theories about how it may mean "Mediocre" or "Mindnumbing" or "Moronic", but only Kurt Loder knows the ancient tale of what it once signified, and he carefully guards the secret.
Bravo was once a channel for theatrical performances and small indie movies and Kieslowski retrospectives and it was clearly aimed at some niche market of college-educated Jewish homos, until they figured out there was a huge untapped market of illiterate all-American homos that just wanted to see "Fashion Runway Apprentice Bitch-Slap Time!"
A&E once meant Arts & Entertainment, I shit you not. Now it stands for "Alcoholics and Exterminators."
The History Channel people found out that there were only too many ways to re-wrap a Hitler biography. Let HISTORY vanish into the haze of ignorance, the world is 2000 years old and Jesus had a pet dinosaur named Fido, but never mind that, let's just watch ghost-hunters and peek at the exciting, secret thoughts of ice road truckers. You know what their secret thoughts are? "FUCK, I wish the FUCKING coloring in FUCKING breakfast cereals hadn't made me so FUCKING retarded that I had to become a FUCKING ICE ROAD TRUCKER!"
Even the CARTOON NETWORK now has live action reality shows: a "Survivor" knock-off and a "ghost-hunting" series. What the hell are we throwing at our kids?!? Where is the parenting watchdog censorship council when this crap comes around?!? We're worried kids might be psychologically destroyed by the sight of breasts, which are REAL AND HARMLESS, but we don't mind sending them out to some creepy old house to investigate ghosts, which are NOT REAL, BUT STILL KINDA SPOOKY? What's with this ghost-hunting trend anyway?!? You can't go "ghost-hunting" anymore than you can go "gryffin-spotting"!!! Even supposing that there are such things as mischievous tormented paranormal entities trapped between dimensional planes or something (and my brain winced at allowing that much) YOU CAN'T HUNT THEM! They're not DEER! They're uncatchable GHOSTS! That's the whole point! Aaaaugh, that's not even my gripe. My point is I saw live action on the Cartoon Network and I wanted to cry. CARTOONS! I WANT TO SEE CARTOONS IN THE CARTOON NETWORK! It's that simple!

Discovery no longer wants you to discover. TLC doesn't care if you learn. Look at this Jon and Kate shit.

This woman is famous for... what... having a really stretched vagina? Why do we all allow ourselves to allot so much energy to gossiping about people we'll never meet when there are real friends to backstab? I sympathize with this long-suffering Jon fella, who looks like he didn't know what his attention-grabbing Martha-Stewart-wannabe virago of a wife was signing him up for. (Yeah, I know that sounded sexist, but so's your mama.) OF COURSE the guy wants to sneak away and flirt with some other woman, or blow a sailor, or just have a moment to breathe in a bar somewhere without having to think about the EIGHT ANNOYING KIDS, the WIFE WHO BELITTLES HIM CONSTANTLY, and the CAMERA THAT GOES UP HIS NOSE EVERY TIME HE OPENS A DOOR! I'm surprised the dude hasn't just broken down and massacred the whole lot, I know I would have.
And yet this is what's going on homes all over America: "SHUT THE FUCK UP Kathleen, Amy-Brandy, Wynette, Aiden, Tyrone, Brad-Damon, Kathleen Jr. and Applebee's! Ma and Daddy Number 3 are trying to watch 'Jon and Kate + 8' to learn us some PARENTING!"

*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*


There, I feel much better now.

J. J. Abrams' "Star Trek"

The inner Trekker in me was overjoyed. That's a VERY inner Trekker, mind you. Try as I might, my nerdiness never embraced any of the Treks fully- too martial and static. And honest, I tried, I put myself through a LOT of ST I wanted to fast-forward through, I strained nerve cells hoping for Vulcan ears to grow, but it's like lesbians say: "You don't have to like Melissa AND Ani AND the Indigo Girls. You don't have to do it ALL."
The more invested can, have and will comment on each and every frame, so I can only say that Abram's version is clearly the best Star Trek movie ever, and if it's not the best Star Trek product ever that's just a matter of it being a summation and not an originator. It's hard to dislike by any viewer not bearing grudges, hard to conjure the gruesomest Romulan snorting that it departs from Gene Rodenberry's vision, or the least interested snob not admitting this is as fine a Hollywood entertainment as one can demand, a two-fisted eye-dazzler with no overt blows to anyone's intellect and a cast that could smack a smile of recognition even on someone who still thinks Chekhov is a celebrated master of the short story. They will know better after this is over.

Wisdom Should Cum in 3's, I Realize Belatedly.

Porn Wisdom #3

Sure, having some creep splooge on your face at his L.A. mansion can be degrading, but being Catherine Zeta-Jones also has its benefits.

UGH, that joke's like ten years old! I'M SO SORRY! I couldn't decide between Adam Lambert or Miley Cyrus! God, I SUCK! Let me start again.

Sure, having some creep splooge on your face at his L.A. mansion can be degrading, but being on porn also has its benefits. It's high paid and comes with the ocassional orgasm. Don't you WISH! Is that very much more degrading than waiting to be scalded by the French Fry machine? Than saying: "Please, thank you, come again" to so many uncaring strangers that being "pleased" and "thankful" become unfathomable concepts, and only that "AGAIN" and "AGAIN" and "AGAIN" has any resonance? Than having to rely on "tips" because your boss has decided that since you MIGHT get tips, he's just not going to pay you that much? Than having each precious day of your life unquestioningly given to that ever re-loading Facebook page and that computer screen that is most assuredly making you cancerous, while fretting over the idea of your inevitable down-sizing?

Are you positive you haven't been pretty degraded yourself?

Then again:
"An honest (blow)-job embiggens the smallest man."
-attributed to Hans Sprungfeld, which is incidentally MY porn name.

The Year... So Far... in Pop Crap Radio

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I lent my ear to my local neglected top 40 radio station to see what bitching tunes today's hep cats are digging. I was a little disoriented because I didn't hear that super topical song from Neil Young about the eco-friendly battery in his car- I guess a huge hit like that must have gotten overplayed and they were resting it for a while? I did hear a lot of fascinating car-insurance ads and this joke:
"Nostradamus predicted that a black man will reign in America... When pigs fly! And now we have Barack Obama and swine flu!"
GET IT??? Swine FLU? Swine FLEW?!?
HAHAHA! The stitches from my recent vasectomy came loose when I heard that one!

And then they played that new song by 303 or something. (I live in the 305, so they must be neighbors!) They played it three times in an hour so I got to memorize the HILARIOUS lyrics that go:
"Be quiet, girl,
Who knows where my taste went
So do the Anne Frank
And show me your basement!"

Has the BLOODHOUND GANG finally met its match? I like stuff like that. It's not at all offensive, and also historically informative. Lest we forget.


ABOVE: "C'est si, n'est pas deux douches!"

Then they played Lady Gaga's undeniably adventurous cover of Kenny Rogers' "Poker Face", which was awesome and which almost sounded different from her OTHER hit, "Just Dance".

ABOVE: Is that Lady Gaga? Sasha Grey? Is Lady Gaga Sasha Grey's musical alter-ego? Is Sasha Grey Sasha Fierce's porno alter-ego? The plot thickens!

Next something really inspiring hapenned on my local station, (which I will call Z-89.2 DA BOMB! to protect the identity of all involved): two highly functional but obviously challenged young men were allowed to expound their views on the "American Idol" results. Downie Syndrome #1 contended that Adam Lambert had lost because he was GAY. Downie Syndrome #2 replied that Downie Syndrome #1's MOM was gay. DS #1 wittily replied: "SO'S YOUR MAMA!" DS #2 said: "That didn't make sense. None of your opinions make sense. 'American Idol' has been FULL of phenomenal fags. Justin Guarini! Rubben Studdard! Daughtry! Clay Aiken! And that Jordin Sparks dude is pretty effeminate too, if you ask me!" Then DS #2 wittily replied again: "SO'S YOUR MAMA!" Then DS #1 sighed: "I keep on telling you, you don't make any sense! Back to music that is DA BOMB!" (SFX: explosion sounds, jingles, Martin Luther King speeches, sounds of women having orgams.)

ABOVE: "1 is the loneliest number. Then two is pretty lonely. Three is not as lonely, but still lonely."

And the piece de resistance was Britney Spear's cryptic gem "If You Seek Amy". Much like Dylan's mid-60's lyrics, a passing listener could misunderstand the brilliance and assume it's gibberish: "All of the boys and all of the girls want to if you seek Amy?" This puzzling non-sentence could not be assembled by a human brain, and it can't be repeated without wincing at its imbecility. Which led me to two theories about this song:
1)SWEDISH PRODUCERS... Or at least someone not familiar with the intricate concatenation of English verbs and nouns.
2) MAYBE THE AWKWARD STRUCTURE HINTS AT A CODE! The words are not supposed to make sense, but rather hint at something. I pondered this long and hard. An anagram? Nooo, not even a team of cunning linguists could get Britney to understand the concept of an anagram. An ACRONYM? Still too COMPLEX. Ten it STRUCK ME! To understand a mental baby, you must THINK like a mental baby: You have to SOUND OUT the nonsensical title of the song! "If-You-Seek-Ah-Meee!"
Try it, Dear Imaginary Reader. Sound it out.
Indeed, Britney has written a devastatingly self-aware poem in which she pours out her own emotions about her oversaturation and worthlesness. It's genious! She ANTICIPATES your feelings about the song and the reaction to it.
It's right there in her song: "If You'Re Sick O-Me"!
No "if" here, babe. We ARE sick of you, we really are.

Sasha Grey... And a bit about PORN... Which is What the Internet is For.

"Clinton of U.S Asks Haiti for Help."I must have lapsed into dyslexia because that's how I quickly misread a headline in today's local newspaper (it was something more logical, like: "Clinton Asks U.N to Help Haiti"). But for some milliseconds my addled brain was like: "Damn, we're asking HAITI for help? That's how you know you're fucked!"
TALK ABOUT BEING FUCKED...

Ok, that was an immature, roundabout way to bring up Sasha Grey. But the truth is, it's tough for me, I'm blushing a little. Loving your PORN can be an embarrassing thing to admit to! We're all hypocrites. I never said I was daring and honest and completely uninhibited. I'm a shy, conservative sort of fellow that wants to project a certain kind of dignified, asexual persona to his fellow human beings. Even that PICTURE of Sasha above is too coy. This one more accurately conveys who Sasha Grey is and how hard she works for her money:I STILL kept it PG- she could be helping a blind man with a stuck zipper!I didn't show you what you honestly want to see about Sasha Grey. It's not SAFE FOR WORK- See, if you don't put certain parts of the human body safely out of sight, hazardous fires can start in your office. IN any case, you can find out EVERYTHING YOU WANT about Sasha Grey- including the pigmentation of her cervix- if you feel so inclined. Put it to good use.

--- See, I know Sasha from before she was the most ubiquituous little tramplet since Jenna Jameson. I know Sasha from before she was starring in Steven Soderbergh movies, or being feted in Oprah, or being profiled for Rolling Stone, and before she was a a big attraction in South Beach at EXXXOTICA, the porn industry's annual convention, (which took place about three blocks away from my job). Back from before I (oh, so daring) asked her the age old question: "What's the difference between art and porn?" and she quickly replied: "Art is if you keep watching after you cum." Back from before she had gained the disreputable reputation of being that "artsy slut who explores the limits of pleasure and namedrops Goddard and Herzog and wants to empower sex-actors and present porn as a legitimate, positive business, and make avant-garde porn with storylines and characters and..." (In short, the sort of thing that pretentious, cogniscient 21 year old starlets who took "Intro To Film" and "Gender Studies 101" tell themselves to rationalize the soreness in their assholes.)

Yeah, I knew Sasha when she was nothing more than a skinny little cock-hungry ass-licking girl, back when it just a dirty DVD and ME- a normal, warm-blooded American male. Or rather sort of normal, sort of warm-blooded, sort of American, mostly male.
THERE, I SAID IT. I'VE CONTRIBUTED TO HER FAME, AND HAVE ENJOYED HER PRODUCT.
And if you're not a hypocrite, you've been similarly assisted by Sasha and the like at critical points in your life. COME ON, YOU HAVE THE INTERNET!!!

Ok, so I'm human. I've watched porn. How do I fall on the national addiction scale? WELL. I've seen enough porn that I can go: "Hey, it's that guy who looks like Dave Barry! Again!" But not enough to KNOW or CARE what the dude's name is. More than some, less than most? I'm ocassionally bothered by my Catholic guilt. I like to think that I watch the kind of porn that, if God were looking over my shoulder and He coughed loudly to announce HIS PRESENCE, I could turn and say: "Hey, YOU are the INVENTOR. These people are just the MARKETERS!" And He would have to reply with: "Touche, touche." It may be all good, but I have a few simple porn-watching rules I hope are sensible and keep me in the realm of morality:

1- Gagging is fine. Vomiting is not. The only body fluids I want to see relate to sex. No snot, blood, or shit. Maybe a little pee, but just a little.
2- The girl should not technically be still a GIRL. I'm extremely lenient on this one, but she should have at least an operating driver's license. Conversely, she should be young enough that she still remembers how to operate a car.
3- NO CRYING. And no Eastern European girls who blink desperately at the camera and spell out messages on their breasts with cum: "SAVE ME! I'M IN A MOSCOW BASEMENT AND THEY FEED ME CAT FOOD!"

Basically, I came for a mea culpa- I get Sasha Grey's mainstream explosion, and I get her porn appeal. She's a cute girl who reminds you of a girlfriend- or of someone you WISH had been a girlfriend. She's fresh looking, not too tainted by it all- (although she will find that looks soon pass, unless her big screen dreams work) and she seems coherent and determined. For porn. We're grading on a scale here. I remember the first time I saw a scene of hers being bothered by how extremely ON YOUR FACE she seemed. Unlike many a woman caught on these things, she WANTED YOU TO REMEMBER HER. And she did jump out of a crowd of flesh one doesn't want to engage too much with.
I'll watch her in Sodenbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience", but- won't I be disappointed that I may see LESS of her than I already have? So ambivalent about this.

---

A FEMALE friend once shared with me her bits of porn wisdom, and I have come to embrace them.
Porn Wisdom 1: "Porn is great and useful. Kind of like a hammer. A hammer is great when you need to nail something, but after that, it's kind of ugly, and best kept in a drawer out of sight."
Porn Wisdom 2: "If the actress is looking at her partner, she's actually in it for the sexperience. If she's not looking at anything much, she's just in it for the money. But if, like Sasha, she's looking straight at the camera, she has a PLAN."


Ok, WELL, no beating around this bush. I'm not like those Rolling Stone pussies. Here's Sasha.

Oh, it's still technically SFW. Risque, but SFW. Did your office burst into flames, Dear Imaginary Reader? Next time we'll discuss more family friendly stuff, like the "Blues Clues" episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven!"

"Supernatural" Season 1

I sho' be a sucker for a good horror show, and the CW's "Supernatural" should have roped me in way back when- what WAS that monstrous gooey blob keeping Brother Dean's hair all stiff like that? But it didn't until now. Anyway, this all American tale of two lovers traveling through America- hold on... They're BROTHERS, I keeps on forgetting, maybe that "Brokeback Mountain" got to me with its gay agenda, but these here fellas look they have shared many a motel room and unsuccesfully prayed about their weaknesses, if you know what I mean, and they sure shun the female presence. Even though producer McG maintains the proceedings slick enough, and even though the first season has ocassional appearances by "Dollhouse's" Amy Acker and "Watchmen's" Jeffrey Dean Morgan- who's daddy to the incestuous twosome- I warn ya: "Supernatural" is kind of like Scooby-Doo in reverse, (everything has a perfectly illogical explanation) and the "horror" is of the PG, heartland variety. "I could tell the girl wasn't getting into prayer hour. There sho' was a Demon in her! Maybe she was a CATHOLICK!" As the Winchester bros/hos travel down 666 Americana, they encounter the kind of creepsters you can expect to along the roadway, you know, your Wendigos, your Bloody Marys, your Candymans, that sort. It's not awful looking and if it adds more girlies and more funny stuff I might totally make me some waffles and watch out for season two after all. Several years too late.

"Sherlock Holmes in America" (Edited by Martin Greenberg, etc.)

Sherlock Holmes is kind of like Jesus:
He was killed off by his Creator and then brought back to life and even though it all happened a very long time ago and far away, he refuses to go away, and we've all sort of gotten used to it.
They both have clueless friends following them around and chronicling their adventures.
Although both are a little prudish, they both have a controversial relationsip with one particular woman they're veeeery close to.
They both had awesome catchphrases: "Elementary, My Dear Watson"/ "Et tu, Judas?"
Like Jesus, they keep on making movies about Holmes- (there's a new one with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law coming up! Egregious? Awesome? Inevitable?)
And just like Jesus, some even claim that he made it to America- which is where this all-too-reverential collection, "Sherlock Holmes in America", fits. There are some mid-tier mystery names here (Matthew Pearl and Steve Hockensmith) providing some solid additions to Holmes' adventures- all in the states, more than one in Mormon Country (as to tie in with "Study in Scarlet"). It's a nice visit with everyone's favorite Baker Street resident, for fans anyway. I can't imagine very many mystery writers not having at some point or another played around with a Holmes pastiche or parody in their youthful heads.

Oh, and let's call a spade a spade: Holmes was waaaay better at the violin than Jesus.

Greg Rucka's "Queen and Country" Volume 4: "Blackwall"

"Blackwall" begins with a sex scene and what has to be some of the dirtiest dialogue I have ever read in a mainstream comic- but it's in French so it's all kosher. Let's just say someone puts his doigts up someone else's cul, and it's caught on camera, and it's all part of a big industrial blackmailing plot that will have Tara Chase spending some time in Paris and will help her find the resolve to break up with office-romance/emotional-liability Ed. Ah, the loneliness of the spy looks better than ever in J. Alexander's drawings, which have more of a "mature", sketchy look than Leandro Fernandez's sharp cartoonizations.

Bob Dylan's "Together Through Life"

Among the hundreds of qualities I listen for in Bob Dylan's music, "tenderness" rates pretty low, somewhere above "awesome guitar solos". But of course he CAN be tender, as he is in "Life is Hard", one of "Together Through Life"'s many rewarding tracks. "Life is Hard" sort of sounds to me like it's meant to be in the score of a Woody Allen movie. Bob Dylan and Woody Allen are not necessarily names that leap magnetically together outside of my head, but they would probably relate to each other more than either of them supposes. Allen famously pokes fun at Dylan in "Annie Hall" (he missed the Dylan concert because his racoon had hepatitis) but, to me they're pretty much twins separated at birth. Less see, they're both genious little Jews with fake stage names, they're both prolific icons working well into their 60s, they've both documented their divorces through their similarly allusion-heavy art, they've both wrestled with religion, they're both totally annoying to people "who don't get them", or, more kindly, think that "yeah, they both can come up with good lines, I just like it better when someone ELSE says/sings them."
I can see them unwitting old soul mates, awkwardly being forced into conversation at a premiere by a giddy Scarlett Johansson- a recent common muse. At first, they're just kind of sizing each other up...


Scarlett: "OMG this is my dream come true I can NOT believe this is happening! Ok, ok, ok, you guys are gonna be my senseis, right? Tell me, what do each of you have to say to sum up life??"

(Both answer instantly.)
Dylan: "IT'S ALL GOOD."Allen: "WHATEVER WORKS."

The two chuckle, surprised.
Allen: "Erhh, hmmm, I guess I, you know might as well admit that, hmmm, I probably should have listened to that 'Blonde on Blonde' thing! It's just I hear "Blonde on Blonde" and I think Aryan porn, which, uh, now that I think about it might have its benefits."
Dylan: "No, man, I did see one of your movies, that one about the guy who wanted to play like Django Reinhardt, I got that soundtrack even."

And Scarlett Johansson slinks away ...

P.S.: Conventional wisdom says that since "Together Through Life" surfaced so relatively quickly after "Modern Times" it must be "lesser", a throw-away, but it's a warm party album that has actually been getting more repeats 'round Hallucina shores than "Modern Times" ever did. Go hear now!

YES CAROLINE YES!

DOLLHOUSE RENEWED!!!
It looks like all those candles I lit for St. Jude finally paid off. See, you gotta have FAITH!
Also, my condolences to the victims of the devastating fire at the Diocese of St. Jude's fire. As I told the detectives, I was nowhere near the scene when it hapenned.

CHAPTER 60: THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

WARNING: This one has some DISTURBING STUFF. Also it's a LONG, HEADY ONE, but I think Dumas makes it worth our while.Or I'm making it worth your while. Or both. Or neither. You decide. I'm too intrigued to care!
Having said goodbye to the Cardinal de Rohan and peeked into the room where Lorenza is sleeping, Joseph Balsamo extinguishes the furnace, (a cloud of smoke shoots out of a conduit into the Paris night) and puts the Cardinal's receipt in a black morocco case. "Handy piece of paper." Three quick, exasperated taps make him lift his eyes to the ceiling. His master and mentor is calling. Joseph takes a long iron rod and taps the ceiling in response, then moves an iron ring in the wall, and lo and behold, something very much like a hidden elevator detaches itself from the ceiling, and descends to the furnace room. Joseph steps into the lift, presses another bottom and up we go to the heavyside layer to meet Althotas, (played, if your mind goes back like fifty chapters, by Richard Harris).
Althotas is a Geekier Gandalf, a Dumber Dumbledore, who's in an Eureka state, sitting in his armchair-with-wheels, dwarfed by the leaning towers of cryptic manuscripts around his desk, and possibly goofed up on the vapors spewing from row after row of colorful test tubes. "The Mad Scientist" (TM)'s lawyers are in a flurry, because Althotas is IT.

Balsamo: "You tapped?"
Althotas: "I did, Acharat, I have tapped into the universe, I found..."
Balsamo: "You found..."
Althotas: "What humanity has been searching for, what alchemy has been building up to!"
Balsamo: "Yes, how to turn everything golden. Didcha sneak a look at that furnace downstairs? We've got enough gold to turn King Midas green."
Althotas: "GOLD? You think this is about money? Child, you offend me!"
Joseph: "Ah. So what you have found is this elixir of life of yours."
Althotas: "YES. Of LIFE. Of ETERNITY."
Joseph casts a look at the many scrolls with scribbled equations: "It looks almost like the same formula you've been trying all this time. The one that didn't work.'The elixir of Aristaeus, twenty grains; balm  of Mercury, fifteen grains; precipitate of gold, fifteen grains, essence of the Cedar of Lebanon, twenty-five grains.' Pretty familiar."
Althotas: "Ah, but there is one addition! The catalyst! The last three drops of the life-blood of an infant!"
Balsamo: "Oh, well, now, what is more fashionable than bleeding infants? I must have tripped over three of those on my way here. How exactly do you plan to get the last three drops of blood from a BABY?"
Althotas: "I dunno. You figure it out."
Balsamo: "You've gone nuts!"
Althotas (while licking the back of a GRATEFUL DEAD HAPPY BEAR stamp): "I am so sane right now that every atom in my body is dismissing its shrink."
Balsamo: "To get the LAST three drops of blood of a baby you have to KILL a baby!"
Althotas: "Yes, A CHUBBY, CUTE BABY! The cuter the better!"
Balsamo: "I won't do it! This is really horrible!"
Althotas: "Three years ago, when we needed dead infants for the ceremonies in the Congo, you found plenty of them!"
Balsamo: "Those were AFRICANS, their mothers couldn't feed them, they knew about magic and worship and sacrifices, it's part of their culture. But we're in PARIS. Civilization. Different rules."
Althotas: "Acharat! A baby, black or white, is the SAME THING. There is no difference. It's what the horrible world rams into their head that transforms them into slaves or kings, not the color of their skin. Skin doesn't matter."
Balsamo: "The point is we're not in the Congo. And I can't GO to the Congo. I have business here."
Althotas: "Oh, yes, your conspiracies! How IS that whole 'Overthrowing Western Civilization' going?"
Balsamo: "I've made advances. I've taken over the greatest poet, thinker, and atheist of the age. He's joined the freemasons at the lodge I established in the old monastery of the Jesuits, in the Rue Pot-de-Fer."
Althotas: "This man have a name?"
Balsamo: "Voltaire."
Althotas: "I used to have a cat called Voltaire, he used to twirl in the air grasping at unseen planes of existence."
Balsamo: "You're really high, aren't you? Anyway, I am also about to have a conference with the man who wrote "The Social Contract."
Althotas: "That man has a name also?"
Balsamo: "Rousseau."
Althotas: "I used to have a dog called Rousseau, he used to lick his ..."
Balsamo: "Look, if you don't know who Rousseau or Voltaire are, it's because you're obsessed with the writings of Alphonso X, Raymond Sully, Peter of Toledo, and Albertus Magnus."
Althotas: "Ah, those are the only men who ever REALLY lived, who actually devoted their energy to the great question: 2 B or NOT 2 B"
Balsamo: "Well, they're in the past. Using Voltaire and Rousseau, I intend to make myself master of the present, and then give the future a kick in its butt."
Althotas: "It is a dumb country that's moved by philosoper's ideas instead of facts."
Balsamo: "On the contrary, their intelligence will overpower reality and create change. People are ready for the new. The overhtrow of the monarchy will create universal freedom, and happiness."
Althotas: "Foolish child, first off, tell me how you plan to achieve this happiness. Second, you might want to define what happiness is."
Balsamo: "Very well. Here's my plan. It's BRILLIANT. The ministry is at this moment a rampart for the monarchy, the last defense of the ancient delusion. The philosophers support the ministry because the prime minister is himself a philosopher. So when the ministry is overturned, everyone will cry havoc, the dogs of war will be let slipped, mayhem will be wrecked, things will be locked and loaded, etc...Because the philosophers will fight with parliament, the ministry will persecute the philosophers, and dissolve the parliament, then there will be judges, nominated by the king, and the judges will defend the royalty, naturally, so then the philosophers will be at war with the judges, calling them, correctly, lackeys, unjust, corrupt, by then the parliament will be united with the philosophers, and the middle class will follow the parliament, and thus the monarchy will be crushed to atoms."
Althotas stares at him for a while, then says: "200 years from now there will be a graphic-novel-turned-movie called 'Watchmen' that featured a similarly preposterous world-peace plot that goes like 'heads-will-roll-in-sacrifice-but-long-lasting-peace-will-follow.'"
Balsamo says: "I'm not sure who's making less sense here, me or you. Do you think the fumes from your experiments might have something to do with it?"
Althotas rolls his wheelchair forward so that he's threatening to leave little tire-tracks on Balsamo's boots, and says:"Child, suppose you do manage to create this utopia of 30 million free Frenchmen. And then one morning one of those free Frenchmen who's just a tiny bit stronger and smarter than the rest kind of looks around and realizes: 'Hey, maybe some people are FREER than others. Like ME. I don't belong with these mutts!' Remember that big dog we had in Medina? Remember that one time he ate the rations of all the other dogs?"
Balsamo: "Yeah, but all the other canines ganged up on him and ripped him apart the next day."
Althotas: "Because they were dogs! Men are dumber than dogs. Let me see, Caesar Augustus, and not even craning the neck too far back, Oliver Cromwell- he had his share of the Roman and English cake, and he ate it too."
Balsamo: "These men you speak of are mortals, they die. They rule a country, and they will do good even to those they have oppressed, simply by having changed the rules of the game. They will have to rely on the people- the people as equals- not the equality that denigrates, but the equality that lifts men ever higher. FREEDOM! EQUALITY!"
Althotas: "CHILD! Freedom and Equality are ENEMIES... Why is mankind so BLIND to this when framing utopias? You may have FREEDOM, but then every man and woman will diverge into their entirely diferent personas, no two alike, always colliding, their world views ever contrasting. Or you may have EQUALITY, but then expect opression, and distrust of the new, and the stultifying silencing of the artistic and the different. Oh, Acharat, Oh, Joseph, that I have wasted thirty years teaching you, and you come to me with infantile tales of anarchy or communism! Men being EQUALS? Before death? When one may die three days into life and another at 30 and another 100? NO. There is no equality until there is triumph over death. Be honest. Are you or I the equal of the coarse workman who munches on bad bread and piles up rocks and has no thoughts beyond a possible escapade with a drunken whore at the end of the week? No. We'll only be equal when we're immortal. We'll only be equal when we are GODS."
Balsamo: "Immortality is a fairytale, a wisp o' will."
Althotas: "Yes, a wisp o' will, like steam, like steam propelling an engine, the engine of a train cutting through continents, or a submarine cutting through oceans, or an aeroplane cutting trough the clouds, or a space shuttle escaping Earth's atmosphere."
Balsamo: "Some of those words haven't even been invented yet!"
Althotas: "My point precisely!" (cough break) "You think that just because it hasn't been discovered, we won't ever discover it? Or, what's more amusing, don't you think that the things that we will discover HAVEN'T BEEN DISCOVERED ALREADY? We just FORGET. Think of the Biblical patriarchs, who lived up to 800 years; Think of the invulnerable Achilles. Have you been brainwashed into thinking the Greek Gods were just a 'myth'? They were VERY REAL, and strode this planet centuries at a time. We've just... forgotten. But now I am THIS CLOSE TO THAT. And all I need is..."
Balsamo: "Three drops of baby blood, yes, I heard you the first three hundred horrific times. I'm not going to do it."
Althotas: "WHAT?"
Balsamo: "I won't! It's a crime! They're going to hang us! Which unless you're very very very sure about that elixir, would be rather counterproductive."
Althotas: "Come now, be logical! Those brutes out there make wars and shed gallons of blood, the blood of grown people, people stuffed with dreams and experiences and possibilities and personalities, carelessly, every day, at wars, at games, at duels, over trifles and reputations precious blood is spilled. And they rejoice at the violence, and encourage wars! But then they recoil when the death of one more undeveloped, unwitting fleshbag would mean the salvation of millions, of future generations? Surely mankind isn't that stupid! Please open up your mind, humor an old man as he does a bit of math. I'm going to play fair."
Balsamo: (sighs) "Fine, but please back the wheelchair a bit."
Althotas: "So you want France to be free and equal."
Balsamo: "Yes, and you said it was impossible."
Althotas: "No, hold on. I told you I don't believe in impossibles. I'm playing fair."
Balsamo: "Very well."
Althotas: "First, France isn't isolated England, where they already went through these growing pains, you copycat you. France is in the middle of Europe, kind of like the liver is in the middle of a man. And its culture reaches out to its neighbors. So say you want to mess with someone's liver- that's the sort of thing that takes some doing, say twenty years of abuse, and what the liver feels, Germany, Italy and Spain feel too. Let's say your twenty year war in France with ripples in those countries kills four million people. That's a fair assumption. Each of those have 17 pounds of blood in them. WELL, that's 68 MILLION POUNDS OF BLOOD, which you're about to shed for your purposes. I want 3 drops. Who's the Mad Scientist(TM) here?"
Balsamo covers his eyes with one hand, and then gives an evasive: "Well, but if we at least were 100% sure that the dead baby thing would work..."
"Are you 100% sure that overthrowing the monarchy and killing four million people will bring peace and happiness to the world forever?" Says Althotas, munching on his beard.
Balsamo: "Ugh."
Althotas rolls his wheelchair by a table and picks up a scalpel: "Do you believe in death, child?"
Balsamo: "Yes. I mean it IS real. We can't get over it."
Althotas: "Are you afraid of it?"
Balsamo: "I have grown used to it. All of human pretense, ending in corpses. If there is a God, it is Death."
Althotas: "No, if there is a God, it is a Dog."
Balsamo: "Huh?"
Althotas: "God is just dog backwards. And putting this dog backwards is what you will do."
Balsamo: "What dog?"
Althotas: "THIS dog." The wheelchair comes to a stop in front of a TERRIFIED LITTLE PUPPY THAT HAS BEEN COWERING IN A CORNER OF THE ROOM ALL ALONG. "Put him on the experiment table."
Joseph is shaking as he picks up the equally quivering thing. "Don't give me puppy eyes, I can't bear it." He sets the dog on the cold table and it naturally begins to howl.
Althotas: "This dog is howlingly alive, wouldn't you say? Now bring down that glass bell, and that air pump, and put the dog under the receiver." (Joseph obeys.) "And now I press this switch, and a vacuum is created, the air is sucked out, and our little friend is... oooh... unfortunately our little friend is no more." The dog has indeed ceased to be. "I hope that didn't seem too cruel, did it? Killing the doggy for conversational purposes? He didn't suffer much, this was a very good kind of way to die."

Joseph: "You're going to bring him back to life, right? Put the air back in. All good. Any minute now? Right? Please?"
Althotas: "No, there are POINTS to be made here, Acharat. I want you to be convinced this dog has expired. I want you to take this scalpel, and, be careful with the larynx, but divide the dead dog's vertebral column."
Joseph: "You're one sick son of a bitch, do you know that?"
Althotas: "Hurry, Acharat, cutting him will put him out of his misery in case he's not TOTALLY dead!"
Joseph: "If Marie Antoinette could see me now." He cuts, he slices, it's gross, he holds back his own vomit. "Happy now?!?"
Althotas: "I want YOU to be happy with the fact that this is animal is not current, it has kicked the bucket, it has popped its clogs."
Balsamo: "YES! Nothing can bring him back!"
Althotas: "Nothing but..."
Balsamo: "God?"
Althotas: "Sure. But what would you do if this little fella here opened his eye and looked at you?"
Balsamo: "You mean AFTER I vacated my bowels?"
Letting out a triumphant, gleeful, malevolent, whack-a-daisical laugh Althotas reveals a machine composed of plates of metal separated by dampers of cloth, with a basin for water: your basic DIY electro-shock kit.
Althotas: "Which peeper do you want to blink, left or right?"
And the wigging wizard proceeds to apply electric jolts to selected parts of the corpsified canine's anatomy and indeed producing all sorts of reactions: an eye opens, an ear perks up, the right hip in, the right hip out, the right hip in and it shakes all about.
Joseph misses the last part of the hokey-pokey because he's hurling all over the laboratory. Wiping a little bit of puke off his lips, he recovers himself enough to say: "Stop it. This kind of victory over death is nauseating and fictitious. Let's suppose that your elixir worked, and could make that dog live eternally- what if some psycho of your caliber cut it up or wounded it? Did you think about that? Little zombie dog pieces all over town? Or what if..."
Althotas: "There's a LOT of what ifs, that's what I'm working on the basics. I can bring the dead to life, for instance. But only for a while. Oh, and I can keep the soul from escaping the body via wound, by closing the wound up."
Balsamo: "Right."
Althotas: "No, I'm serious, look" and without much ado, the old man grabs the handy scalpel and STABS HIMSELF IN THE ARM-His plasticky flesh isn't very responsive, though, it takes a while for a bubbly bit of blood to squeeze out.
Balsamo: "Sick son of a bitch!!! Have I said that enough?!? Sick son of a bitch!!!"
Althotas: "It's because you're like Doubting Thomas, such an skeptic!" The old man sprinkles a solution at the stabbing site: the blood stops flowing, the flesh contracts, the wound heals.
Balsamo exhales and says: "WELL. There IS after all a reason why I carry your carcass around, why I let you lecture me, and why I obey all your sick puppy-snuff whims. You are," he bows, "kind of a brilliant prophet."
The old man blushes: "Oh, what couldn't I do if I made it to three hundred years! Or imagine a thousand! Oh, Acharat, help me, then, give me back my youth, my body, the freshness of my new mind, and you would see me give rise to a new kind of people, GOOD people, people who DON'T have to kill puppies, or wage wars, or overthrow corrupt governments, people who understand that it is better to live and help and love one another than to destroy each other."
Althotas has beatific tears in his eyes.
Joseph says: "I believe you. That's why I'm here after all this time, master. I have faith in your dream, I believe that with God's help we can build a new..."
Althotas: "Stop yapping already and bring me that frigging baby!!!"

"Murderous Schemes" (Edited by Donald Westlake)

I've been sick as a pig- the perfect time to get hopped up on some Theraflu and recall the simple joys of curling up with a good detective yarn. "Murderous Schemes" has a nice batch of the masters (and mistresses) of the genre. Agatha Christie with her Mrs. Marple, Raymond Chandler and Sam Spade, Dorothy L. Sayers with Lord Peter Wimsey, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe - the critically acclaimed side-by-side with the popularly beloved, divided by categories such as "Come Into My Parlor", "I Confess!", "Locked Room", etc.
OH, AND JOHN DICKSON CARR! I was reminded of my love for Carr by two selections here: one of Carr's own Bencolin mysteries, and a hilarious parody called "The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr", by William Brittain, in which the killer plans an elaborate, perfect locked room mystery, except for one teeny weeny all important detail:
(SPOILER)
To make a perfect locked room murder- YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER TO LOCK THE DOOR.
Is it Carr's classical style- puzzle and plot above characterization- that make him scarce in libraries and bookstores these days? I can't remember many mystery thrills like the ones I had when encountering Carr's "The Black Spectacles" as a child.

CAROLINE, NO

Where did your long hair go?
Where is the girl I used to know?
How could you lose that happy glow?
Oh, Caroline, no.

This is one of 'em tunes that makes me cry buckets.

Baz Luhrman's "Australia"

Baz Luhrman's "Australia" is the year's most underwhelming- or is it underrated?- epic. I'm so mixed-up about it, because this is as grandiose as movie-making gets. We hadn't seen anything like it in ages- this is Luhrman's "Gone With the Dingo", his "How The Wallaby Was Won", a Cinemascope spectacular that you're going to love- or hate- for exactly the same reasons: it's a comedic wink to an old tradition that's also heart-felt and wildly romantic- if you buy into it. Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman are STARS in the classical manner: when their faces are on soft-focus you can't imagine them NOT meeting in an amazing kiss that will bring tears to your eyes. This is truly a very good movie, Luhrman's masterwork, in the sense that here he has put all of the quirky touches that define him into his most coherent, emotionally rewarding vision yet. Of course it has flaws, but the flaws on a Baz Luhrman movie are like the feathers on a parrot! Without them, the thing would look very wrong! Unfortunately, there's a reasonable explanation for why audiences stayed away in droves. This movie is exactly like the outback: incredibly beautiful, but also kinda empty and, at two hours and forty-eight minutes, sort of a hassle to go through.

Billie Wilding's "Some Like it Hot"

Hollywood's "romance comedies" are an interesting phenomenom! For every good one like "Tootsie" or "Sweet Home Alabama" there appears to be an endless stream of meet-cute situations, buffoonish complications, and OF COURSE, some sort of romantic resolution at the end. But fans of the stuff love to laugh and get involved with these entirely fictional relationships, and no one can tell them otherwise!One reigning king of this genre is a heavily-accented Jewish immigrant called Billie Wilding, who also made "Irma La Douce" and "Sunset Street." The first one is about a cop who puts on a FAKE MUSTACHE to fool his prostitute girlfriend into hiring him as a john. GREAT PLAN! The second one begins and ends with a talking corpse in a pool. How is THAT for laughs? Anyway, the supporters appear to love his stuff, so he's back at it with "Some Like it Hot".There's bad and there's good. The bad is that this movie is EXACTLY TWO HOURS LONG, as though a romance comedy could support such length! The good is that you don't have to take it- hell, a flight to Miami might take you about as long.And while we're at it, does any romance comedy needs to begin by making allusions to something as grim as the Valentine's Day Massacre? Real people died that day- of course, the possibility of actual human pain escape Wilding and his like.The movie is about two musicians on the lam who dress up as women to escape the mob. Joe/ Josephine is played by Tony Curtis, who suffers the indignity of having to wear women's clothes AND a sailor's outfit at one point, as though Wilding were bent on stripping all of the masculine appeal out of his virile star. Jerry/ Daphne is played by Jack Lemmon, the most unconvincing "drag queen" to ever have his ugly mug plastered on the screen, and I'm counting Divine in there.Then there is Merlyn Monroe, who ends up befriending "Josephine" but falling in love with "Joe" (despite herself, natch) and escaping on a boat with him after he discloses to her that he's just a musician in drag. Merlyn is a fat idiotic blonde who is so patently high during most of the movie that every line sounds like it was fed to her via heroine needle."Some Like it Hot", just like "Irma La Douce", attempts to involve issues of gender among the madcap zaniness, and, to give credit where it's due, female tweenagers might think it has something interest to say about cross-dressing and "romance". That's the kind of tweenagers who still believe human beings tend to fall in love and pair into couples, but of course, wouldn't know what to do with a REAL MAN when he tries to explain to them that collecting dead women's lingerie is a perfectly normal part of grown up sexuality. But then those tweenagers should never be allowed to watch a movie with this many sexual references in the first place.And wait until you catch Wilding's "English-as-a-second-language" attempt at "comedy"! "The ship is in ship-shape shape." I'm not making that up, it's right there on the screen. Maybe Wilding was trying to rip-off Woody Allen's wordplay, but it just makes me wonder if one should maybe pass some sort of competency test before being allowed to write scripts for Hollywood.
The issue here is that Wilding, stealing heavily from German Nazi practices, comes across as a hatemonger who continually punishes his characters for the apparently unforgivable mistake of having cross-dressed! For their sin, watch them be almost killed by gangsters in an unfunny display of violence again and again- or worse, watch Jerry end up with an ugly old man, who on the final scene announces that he is planning to anally violate Jerry. The message here is clear: Crossdressers and gays must be punished relentlessly!
Of course Wilding wouldn't know a thing about the real intricacy of human sexuality anyway, engaged as he is in all sorts of wardrobe-switching tom-foolery. This is the kind of movie where everything gets conveniently sorted with a boat ride to the horizon. Overlong, unfunny, and hectoring us with homophobia, at least "Some Like it Hot" ensures we won't be bothered with any of these "romance comedies" for a a veeery long time. Still it makes me wonder: why can't Hollywood give us movies that are perfect?

------

THERE, Lane, now you know what it feels like when someone ignorantly attacks what you love!!! :-p We're even.

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HOLY SHIT, I'm INSANE. I gotta let this go.

Greg Rucka's "Queen and Country" Volume 3: Crystal Ball

Melon-breasted super-heroines might be all that Anthony Lane sees if he casually flips through the third volume of Greg Rucka's "Queen and Country". It IS kind of a distracting element, the way Leandro Fernandez' artwork suddenly turned Tara Chase into Lara Croft. His choice of angles and sharp-features in the board-room discussions are dead on, though. I even love the big noses. "Crystal Ball" was written after September 11. (Yeah, I know, September 11 never hapenned, it was a paranoid's fantasy staged in a Hollywood set. There are no destructive armies out there. There are no wars or fascistic powers out in the world creating military horrors. No, that's comic book stuff. At least Anthony Lane hasn't seen any war, busy as he is at the opera, looking down on those recalcitrant crypto-Nazi Wagnerians! Puccinni is clearly superior, duh!) OK. DAMN. I need to leeeeeet go. Breathe in, Out. Serenity now. Anthony Lane later.Anyway!
"Crystal Ball" still makes for a thrilling, topical spy story, a la LeCarre. Lots of inter-office bureaucratic stand-offs, lots of acronyms and ripped-from-the-headlines suspense. In a "Black Sunday"-like plot, terrorists plot to release Sarin Gas during a FIFA match, and inter-office romance adds poignancy to the situation. Tara realizes that if she gives in to co-worker Ed Kittering's flirtations, (which she wants to), she will care about his safety in an entirely different emotional plane.
(It's so cute when Ed is caught lovingly staring at Tara's vacant desk! "Do you and the DESK need some time alone?") Ah, the heart wants what it wants.

BLOG IN TWO PARTS: Second. WORST. WATCHMEN. REVIEW. EVER.

If you're interested and have read "Watchmen" and/or seen the movie and are somewhat familiar, read Anthony Lane's review. Don't blow a gasket in the process, if possible.I usually like (not love) Anthony Lane's reviews, but this one is exceedingly bad in almost every possible way. The problem is he fakes it and pretends to know things he doesn't know. Line by line he gets things wrong. (He also carelessly commits a cardinal sin of movie reviewing, he gives away the movie's plot twist without warning.) He takes personal digs at an author, Alan Moore, he has clearly never read. He continuously confuses the author (who has disengaged entirely from the movie-making process and withdrawn his name) with the director, (Zack Snyder). He mistakes a groundbreaking deconstruction of a genre with a typical example of the genre. And thankfully comes across looking like an ass.Ok, you've read the Lane review by now, right? Here's a sentence by sentence explanation of the fuck-ups. I'm in ITALICS.
"The world of the graphic novel is a curious one."Which you don't remotely understand.

"For every masterwork, such as "Persepolis" or "Maus", there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks." Nice predictable name-dropping. Maybe you read "Maus". "Persepolis"? Eh, you saw the movie. As for the rest of the line, a) you clearly haven't read a single comic book written after 1980 and b) Alan Moore KNOWS THIS. "Watchmen" is a DECONSTRUCTION of those things.

"Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match." That "stuff". GREAT. At least you got the Wagner comparison right, you snob. Alan Moore's work is very Wagnerian, Leif Motifs and all.

"One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' and 'V for Vendetta'." Nice! Digs at Moore's physical appearance! Imagine if one wrote a book review that went like: "One such lord of the "literary novel" genre is a neurotic, big-nosed Jew named Philip Roth." That would be it for their New Yorker career, I guarantee it!

"Both of these have been turned into motion pictures; the first was merely an egregious waste of money, time, and talent, whereas the second was not quite as enjoyable as tripping over barbed wire and falling nose first into a nettle patch." Actually "League" sucked much more than "V", which was by no means a horrible movie. The fact that he didn't mention the mediocre adaptation of "From Hell" suggests he didn't even look too far back. Can't blame him on that one.


"In each case, the cry from readers was that the movie was doomed by its treacherous departure from the original; Moore distanced himself from both productions, and he has done so again with the new adaptation of 'Watchmen.'"Would he have sounded so condescending about that horrible Demi Moore movie adaptation of "The Scarlet Letter"? "Fans of that Hawthorne guy claim this movie's boring story about Puritans or something is bad because it changes the ending."

"The bad news about "Watchmen" is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation."HMMM, it's the adaptation of a MASSIVELY DENSE EPIC. Hell, watching the fast-moving motion comic takes something like 5 hours! And it IS a major operation, just not the kind Lane implies. Would he sit there going like: "Man, this adaptation of 'Remembrance of Things Past' looks like it's going to be longer than an hour and a half. How come?"

"The good news is that you don't have to stay past the opening credit sequence, easily the highlight of the film. In contrast to all that follows, it tells its tale briskly, showing how a bunch of crime-fighters formed a secret club known as the Minutemen, who in turn were succeeded by the Watchmen. This entails a whisk through history from the nineteen-forties to the eighties, with shots of masked figures shaking hands with John F. Kennedy, posing with Andy Warhol, and so forth; these are staged like Annie Leibovitz setups, and, indeed, just to ram home the in-joke, we later see a Leibovitz look-alike behind a camera." Don't watch the movie! Walk out! I would suspect he did just that, but since he will soon tell the entire plot, I guess he sat through it. Oh, and YEAH, so unSUBTLE, that Annie Leibovitz thing! Because people at the movies are ALL going like: "OH, hahaha, look, it's CELEBRATED PHOTOGRAPHER ANNIE LEIBOVITZ!" What ivory tower landed on your head, Lane?


"But must we have "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in the background? How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice? And was Dylan happy to lend his name to a project from which all tenderness has been excised, and which prefers to paint mankind as a bevy of brutes?"THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH IS MIND-A-BLOWIN' ON LIKE 4 or 5 LEVELS. First of all, Lane has not read the book, which is riddled with Dylan quotes. That would be fine, you don't have to read a book to review a movie, but the problem is that Lane throughout IMPLIES that he's read the  book, which is- AND I CALL IT- a MAJOR LIE! He may have seen the book, he may have flipped its pages, but he did NOT read it. If he had, he would have noticed that "Watchmen" happens to OPEN WITH A DYLAN QUOTE. It's the very first thing you see! "AT MIDNIGHT, ALL THE AGENTS..." There are two or three chapters titled after Dylan quotes!!! Dylan ALREADY "lent himself". It IS very fitting that they chose that song! And, "oh, that old cliche of having superheroes listen to Bob Dylan." IDIOT! SECOND, if there IS a parallel to Bob Dylan in the world of the graphic novel, it WOULD BE Alan Moore. THIRD, "TENDERNESS"? Have you ever even LISTENED to Dylan? Dylan is a HARSH motherfucker, EXACTLY like Alan Moore, they share practically the same  world view. Where the fuck is the tenderness in "Like a Rolling Stone"? "Idiot Wind"? "Masters of War"? He probably thinks Dylan is some nice peace-and-love folk singer from the '60s. UGH.

"As far as superheroes go, two's company but three or more is a drag, with no single character likely to secure our attention: just ask the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four, or the half-dozen Watchmen we get here." WHAT?!? Oh, yeah, me either, no one can tell those X-Men apart, there's that flying girl with the claws, Wolfieleen or something? Who knows!

"There is Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a slip of a psychopath, his face often obscured by a bandagelike mask, on which inky patches constantly blot and re-form. There is Dan (Patrick Wilson), better known as Nite Owl, who keeps his old superhero outfit, rubbery and sharp-eared, locked away in his basement, presumably for fear of being sued for plagiarism by Bruce Wayne."! YEAH, Alan Moore probably hoped you didn't notice the Batman rip-off. It's not like he's WRITTEN SOME DEFINING BATMAN STORIES HIMSELF! OR... WAIT- COULD HE HAVE BEEN REFERENCING SUPERHERO CONVENTIONS CONSCIOUSLY? SINCE THIS IS A PARODY/HOMAGE? HMMM. I WONDER.

"There is the Comedian, real name Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whose tragic end, early in the film, we are invited to mourn, but who gets his revenge by popping up in innumerable flashbacks.  There is Laurie, who goes by the sobriquet of Silk Spectre, as if hoping to become a top-class shampoo; she is played by Malin Akerman, whose line readings suggest that she is slightly defeated by the pressure of pretending to be one person, let alone two."Ok, nice line about the actress there. Tee-hee. But as for "Silk Spectre": again, not only do the characters themselves mock this, do you get this is a PARODY/HOMAGE? Because I don't think you do.

SPOILER AHEAD!

"Then there is Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), who likes to be called Ozymandias. Goode played Charles Ryder in last year's "Brideshead Revisited" and I fear that, even as Ozymandias murders millions from his Antarctic lair, which he does at the climax of "Watchmen", Goode's floppy blond locks and swallowed consonants remain those of a young gadabout who might, at worst, twist the leg off his Teddy bear." OK, NO. HUGE REVIEWER NO NO. And it rightfully caused letters of complaint to the New Yorker. You do NOT casually give away the ending's plot twist AND the SURPRISING identity of the killer in this mystery without need or warning. You just don't. Sure, it shows how he just doesn't respect the movie, but it should have crossed his mind that other people might care.

END SPOILER


"Last and hugest is Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), who is buff, buck naked, and blue, like a porn star left overnight in a meat locker. Whether his fellow-Watchmen have true superpowers, as opposed to a pathological bent for fisticuffs, I never quite worked out, but this guy is the real deal. He was once a physicist, but, after an unfortunate mishap, he found himself reintegrated as a radioactive being, equipped to peer into the future, nip to Mars for the afternoon, and divide into multiples of himself for nuclear-powered group sex. I felt sorry for Crudup, a thoughtful actor forced to spout gibberish about the meaning of time and, much worse, to have that lovely shy smile of his wiped by special effects."'Gibberish' about the meaning of time? Maybe you just, hmmm, didn't understand Dr. Manhattan or contemplate the possibility that someone in a 'comic book movie' could be talking advanced physics?

"Dr. Manhattan is central to Moore's chronological conceit, which is that President Nixon (Robert Wisden), having used our blue friend to annihilate the Vietcong, wins the Vietnam War and, by 1985, the era in which the bulk of the tale takes place is somehow serving a third term. "Watchmen", like "V for Vendetta", harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex..."Awwww, look at that cute comic, trying to tackle politics like the grown-ups! And OH, those infantile 19 year old nerds who believe that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex! Silly kids! The government isn't involved in WARS! Everything is groovy! There is only wine and cheese parties and weekends at the Hamptons!

"...and whose deepest fear, deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation, is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along."Those infantile 19 year old nerds also only date dumb bimbos and are worried about the Warren Commission! HAHAHA! What 19 year old even KNOWS what the fuck the Warren Commision IS? HOW OUT OF TOUCH WITH EARTH ARE YOU, MAN?

"The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon."Again, attacking Moore whose books he's never read but about whom he makes all sort of assumptions (he must be some nerd who thinks girls have cooties and likes superheroes in tight costumes and Ka-POW! He probably subscribes to Maxim and not the New Yorker!

"The result is perfectly calibrated for its target group: nobody over twenty-five could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under eighteen should be allowed to witness it." Because again, this is a stupid wish-fulfillment superhero story for kids.

"You want to see Rorschach swing a meat cleaver repeatedly into the skull of a pedophile, and two dogs wrestle over the leg bone of his young victim? Go ahead. You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore's book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is Snyder's own embroidery."But he prolly LOVES, or pretends to love, Cormac McCarthy! Does he even begin to COMPREHEND what that rape signifies, the HORROR it's supposed to inspire, and which it does? How that rape reverberates through the story? How this is a story about forgiveness- and yeah- even TENDERNESS after all? Does the movie skip on Laurie's incredibly moving speech at the end, the summation of all that "Watchmen" hopes we can find in life? I hesitate to see if he reviewed "Irreversible" or "Blue Velvet"-both of those are ten times more cruel and callous than "Watchmen"- but, oh, that's DIFFERENT, those are ADULT movies, not this kid's stuff.

"You want to hear Moore's attempt at urban jeremiad? "This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children." That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard. Either way, it makes it directly into the movie, as one of Rorschach's voice-overs. "HMMM, WRONG, BUDDY. James Ellroy, who was pretty much a genre unknown before 1987's "Black Dahlia", may have stolen stylistic choices from 1986's "Watchmen", but not the other way around. SECOND, that's not 'Alan Moore's' voice "turned into one of Roscharch's voice overs". It IS Roscharch's deranged pulpy writing in his diary. Had Lane actually read more than the first page of Watchmen, in which it appears, he might have figured that out.

"Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like, or what pity should attend it."Well, if anyone knows pompous it would be Lane, so I defer to him on the matter. But that weirdly personal insult at the director- AND author whose book he's never read- WTF? That monster Alan Moore doesn't know what SUFFERING is? What the hell do you know about Alan Moore, buddy? 

"They are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race, a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity, to be bothered with lesser plights. In the end, with a gaping pit where New York used to be, most of the surviving Watchmen agree that the loss of the Eastern Seaboard was a small price to pay for global peace.""Watchmen" the book is full of characters, fully realized individuals who speak in a huge variety of voices and who cover as wide a spectrum of the human reaction to suffering as you can imagine. 'How VULGAR, to be concerned with the fate of the human race.' Well, they are superheroes, Lane, they're concerned with more than inserting their heads deeply into their own asses! Whatcha gonna do? And, a SMALL PRICE? I know you missed the whole point of the movie, but the ending you wonderfully RUINED for everyone is the result of cold, inevitable logic. Laurie is DEVASTATED by what happens- Roscharch wants to bring Ozymandias to justice. The price is HUGE, but those people die so that no one else ever has to. When you compare the prescient events in "Watchmen" with the REALITY of something like SEPTEMBER 11... AAACCKKK... Oh, wait, I forget! September 11 wasn't real, and the Iraq War isn't real, these are all the childish worries of 19 year olds who believe there is some fictitious MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Sorry, sorry.

"Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny..." Cheap misogyny shot! (Because there was a HORRIBLE RAPE in the story, see?) Moore isn't a misogynist. Laurie is the emotional center of the story, although I'm sure the reputedly unremarkable acting in the movie failed to convey that. Moore does come across as a misanthrope, because he's concerned for- and afraid of- a fascistic humanity that was then (and still is) stupidly hurtling towards its own doom.

...."Watchmen" marks the final demolition of the comic strip..." I'm glad he goes out with a suitably brain-damaged sentence that exposes his wide-ranging ignorance. Let's start with that 'comic strip' bit. "Watchmen" is in no way a comic strip, much like "The Illiad" is not a limerick. Comic strips are, well, just that, strips, containing a few panels- "Peanuts", for instance, is a comic strip. Far from being finally demolished, hmmm, I think the funny pages may be the ONLY part of the newspaper that people actually still USE. Neither I nor anyone else with operating cerebellums seems to have heard of either comic strips or comic books or graphic novels being "finally demolished" by the "Watchmen" movie. But if you're privy to some alternate universe news, do share. You came in expecting something FROM the funny pages, weren't you? "Marmaduke" or something less taxing for that closed little mind that doesn't get 'gibberish about the meaning of time'?"

"...it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?"

WHERE DID THE COMEDY GO!!!!

HAHAHAHA, wow, only someone who's never read "Watchmen"- and who didn't pay much attention to the movie- could end the review on that line.

Where did the comedy go, Lane?
Well, haven't you heard?
THE COMEDIAN IS DEAD.