Kevin Smith's "Daredevil: Guardian Devil"

Catholic guilt lays heavy, HEAVY, on Daredevil's "Guardian Devil" storyline, which refueled the character in the late '90s. There was the question at the time if Kevin Smith could write comics. He was perceived as a resourceful, transgressive potty-mouthed indie director as opposed to the play-it-safe, commercially-minded hack he's perceived as now (it's even more apparent because he's unsuccesful at that commerciality. Nothing as sad as pop music that isn't popular.)
The consensus now is that he's much more in control of his direction when writing comics than when making movies.
"Guardian Devil" has been criticized for aping Frank Miller's "Born Again" Daredevil storyline (which I haven't read yet) but it's only natural that Smith would base his first major superhero storyline on someone else's succesful structure. What's here works, and is ocassionally very moving. Daredevil is placed in charge of a child who might be the Antichrist, and all of the character's religious preconceptions serve to deliver him up to a (surprising) villain, as his world crumbles around him.



SPOILERS: Mysterio, the smoke-and-mirrors orb-headed Spider villain, has cancer, decides to have one last hoorah. Spiderman not being available, Mysterio creates a needlessly intricate set of hoaxy circumstances meant to drive Daredevil to madness. The contrivances are a little too much: if Mysterio didn't have cancer at first, he would have gotten it from the stress of setting up something this ridiculously elaborate. There's a cute baby who may signal the Apocalypse! Longtime bud Foggy Nelson becomes a murderer! Karen Page has AIDS! (This was actually shocking when it happened despite what my exclamation point suggests. But then we learn it was fake-AIDS. But hey, long-time enemy DD enemy Bullseye kills her anyway!)
Religion is rarely treated in mainstream comics- although morality is about ALL they deal with. (Does anyone know Batman's religion? Spiderman's? A church-on-Sundays Superman would seem very silly, all-American as his upbringing was. There ain't no aliens from Planet Krypton in the Bible.) Smith's Catholicism might seem a little too upfront to non-believers or Christians of other denominations, who might not place as much import on Catholic imagery or sacraments like confession, but he balances the dollops of nun-delivered lectures with humor and skepticism. After all, all the Heavenly signs along the way turn out to be chemically-induced. This is an above average story, and if there's a problem here, it's the same as in Smith's movies- there's not enough visual thinking, too much rests on the writing.
But that's good, engaging writing, and Karen Page's final letter to Mr. Matt Murdoch had me teary-eyed.

Lynn Okamoto's "Elfen Lied"

ABOVE: "Yeah, hmmm, we'll program this in between 'Spongebob' and 'Avatar: The Last Airbender.'"

The first seven minutes of the premiere episode of "Elfen Lied" may well be the most startling opening of any manga series ever. A girl, naked aside from the helmet in which her head is trapped, advances through blue-plated corridors, casually dismembering soldiers-for-hire by manipulating the enviromment around her. This alabaster disaster is relentless and literally dozens of people are beheaded by her subtle motions, even characters who we have foolishly been led to believe might be cast members for the long run.

Watch a horribly edited-but-nudity-free version on You Tube. You'll miss the best/ worst moments but at least you'll get the idea that it's not Pokemon.



The rest of the series can't quite match that height of dread.
"Elfen Lied" (that would be "Elf Song" in German, not a questioning of Elven veracity) gets its unique tone from tweaking the venerable manga/ anime "harem" genre. You know, the one in which a guy is "forced" to live with beautiful, strange, alien women prone to dropping their towels on the way to the hot tub. Our young man usually tries hard to maintain his threatened chastity while keeping his frequent nose bleeds from damaging the Japanese moral infra-structure.
"Elfen Lied" just adds cruel dismemberment to the mix, (along with expected Japanese lost-in-translation non-philosophy a la "Is a human really a human if his spirit is like a leaf? Are we trees or whispers in the storm?")
This is an endorsement, by the way.
But that beginning? Nothing quite matches it in the series.

Watch the lovely Latin Mass meets Klimt meets Hentai opening- there is artsy nudity, be warned.

R.I.P Dennis Hopper

Wow, I try not to have a morbid blog, but this Death character is a prolific bastard. Dennis Hopper now. An early exposure to David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" explains about 68% of what's wrong with me.

R.I.P. Gary Coleman

Huh. Gary Coleman just died. I'll never be able to hear "It Sucks To Be Me" from "Avenue Q" in the same way. Another actor in the Super Abridged Marie Antoinette Saga dies! (After Heath Ledger!) And so, the curse of the SAMAS' begins.



Oh, heck, one last time. I wouldn't let taste interfere.

"Lost" Facebook Status Updates

Sayid Jarrah wishes to be your friend.
Sayid Jarrah: has done terrible things.


Sun Kwon: has started a garden on FarmVille.



Ben Linus: wants you to join his gang, The Others, on Mafia Wars.

Juliet: wants to split a coffee with @James Ford.
Juliet: is now listed as deceased.
James Ford: SON OF A BITCH!

John Locke: is now listed as deceased.
John Locke: is now listed as Smoke.



Claire Littleton has become Infected! Click here to avoid becoming infected too!

Hugo Reyes: Dude.
Hugo Reyes: suggests you become a fan of Dharma Initiative Ranch Dressing.

Jack Sheppard > Kate Austen: We have to go back!



Desmond Hume: 4 8 15 16 23 42
Desmond Hume: keeps using the wrong computer to update Facebook. Sorry.

Jacob and ______ have updated their relationship status to brothers.
Jacob and ______ are no longer listed as friends.

(All courtesy of my friend Jorge Montes, who should be doing "Lost" comedy for a living.)

OMG OMG OMG! Heather McElhatton

OMG OMG OMG I am a squealing little girl right now jumping in my ICarly PJs.



Soooo I love this Choose-Your-Own-Adult-Adventure book called "Pretty Little Mistakes" and it took me two years to realize that the author read my review and put it up on HER BLOG.
And she said "kisses"! KISSES! *swoon*
Look forward to the sequel, "Million Little Mistakes," involving a lottery win and, I imagine, a million wacky endings.
And dollops of urbane wisdom.
Take that, Mary Higgins Clark! You think you're too good to comment in my blog? Line up!

Serious for a Moment

Dear Imaginary Reader:
In my hurried quest to inform and perhaps remind you of items that have long lost any interest to the general populace, I am oftentimes forced to ignore the ticking march of current news, but do not mistake this for a lack of social acuity or a willful political myopia. Indeed, I often spend nights crafting elaborate parodies of Arizona's immigration law (you know, Dora the Explorer being exposed as a coyote for poor Maya and Miguel, while Handy Manny has been relocated to Sonora)- but then I get distracted by those Gogurt packs that have two flavors in one (is that not brilliance?) and by the time I get to it someone else did the same obvious jokes elsewhere.


ABOVE: Maya! Miguel! One of you gets a VISA and a future in broadcast journalism, the other one a burro and an early gang-related death. You guys choose.

Let me therefore clearly state my views on a wide-range of current events.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Sucks.
LAWS AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Sucks.
BP OIL SPILL: Sucks.
TERRORISM: Sucks.
WAR ON TERRORISM: Sucks.
MICHAEL SAVAGE: Sucks.
MICHAEL MOORE: Sucks.
MICHAEL RAPPAPORT: Sucks, but still underused somehow.
DON'T ASK DON'T TELL: Sucks.
SOUTH KOREA and NORTH KOREA: (I forget which one is "the bad one," so they both suck.)
JUSTIN BIEBER: Adoraaaaable!

Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan" Volumes 5-6

It pains me to say this, and Spider Jerusalem might seek bloody ebola-bullet retribution, but there's a definite spinning of the wheels in "Transmetropolitan"'s 5th and 6th volumes, "Lonely City" and "Gouge Away." Two volumes dedicated to Spider's increasingly seething hatred for the ruling Smiler is much too much. A riot waaaay too similar to volume one's, provoked by the police (again) has some genuine excitement in it, but the storyline is too diluted, and the moments of genuine futuristic wit are rarer than in the past. Skip the stand-alone moments if you're pressed for time and not yet capable of bending the fourth dimension with a little will power. Also send me $19.99 (+20.95 shipping and handling) and I'll mail you my pamphlet on how to amplify your electromagnetic mind-waves using cutting edge quantum research THEY don't want you to know.

Semi-Mute Acknowledgments

-Hot Chip's "The Warning," "Made in the Dark," and "One Life Stand."
Notice how interested they are in showing you the the underlying structure of their music- also not afraid to pile sentiment on top of beats.



-The Bird and the Bee's "Interpreting the Masters, Volume 1: A Tribute to Hall and Oates."
Hall and Oates has fully undergone the ABBA cycle (from "Kinda Cheesy" to "Masters") I do wish this had been longer. Only 9 tracks?? No "Adult Education"?!


-Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry."
Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? It's really "Taxi Driver" with a cuter haircut.


-Tom Mix's "Human Centipede."
This was fairly disgusting when it wasn't boring.

"Lost" Finale

I'm all talked out on this one, but...
*sniff sniff sniff*
The Sawyer-Juliet reunion was worth the six years.

Shakespeare Ain't All Dat: "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" is as inaccurately titled as Shakespeare's latter "Happy Times at Elsinore Castle." "The Two Assholes Who Go to Milan" would be waaaay closer to the mark. The first gentlemen, Valentine, hates women. The second one, Proteus, hates women and hates Valentine. Then there's this servant, Launce, who hates women, hates Valentine and Proteus, but PARTICULARLY hates Jews.

It all begins when Valentine bids farewell to his good friend Proteus and gets the hell out of Verona. Proteus lags behind because he's in love with Julia. Julia gets a letter from Proteus and reacts in ways that defy all known logic, which incidentally is how everyone behaves in this play.
JULIA: "Love letter from Proteus. Eeew, I don't want to see it, I hate him. I do love Proteus though. Give me the letter! What are you doing giving me that letter? I'm illiterate and you know it! Here, I'll keep the letter anyway because I'm madly in love with Proteus. God, Proteus is SUCH an idiot! Let me rip the letter to pieces. Wait, why did I do that?? Now I can't read it!"
After many proclamations of everlasting love from Proteus, Julia agrees to give it up to him- which moment is choosen by Proteus to ALSO get the hell out of Verona to go after Valentine. A naturally confused Julia stumbles into boy's clothes, and ALSO ALSO gets the hell out of Verona to go after Proteus, meaning the only people actually left in Verona are Romeo and Juliet.

Far far away from Verona, Valentine has fallen in love with Silvia, the daughter of the Duke of Milan. Being the grateful guest he is, Valentine conspires to elope with Silvia. As soon as Proteus catches up with his Best Frenemy Forever in Milan, HE proceeds to forget all about Julia and fall for Silvia too. Valentine confides to Proteus he means to steal Silvia away. Proteus promptly runs to the Duke of Milan, rats his BFF out, and has Valentine banished.

In yet another scene that highly departs from logic and likelihood, Valentine wanders through the woods and encounters some bandits.
BANDITS: "Thine purse or thine life!"
VALENTINE: "Thou knowst I have no dough. I have been exiledst from Milan."
BANDITS: "Awww, us too. That tyrant Duke! All we did was killst a couple of people."
VALENTINE: "The bastard! I killst someone too!"
BANDITS: "Hey, thou seemst like a gentleman, all right. What about if instead of robbingst thee, we make you our KING?"
VALENTINE: "Makes as much sense as anything else in the play."

Interruption for a VULGAR AND ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT "Marmaduke"-like bit involving Launce and dog called Crab who pisses everywhere.



Back in Milan, Julia has caught up with her boyfriend Proteus. Seeing her, Proteus is all like: "Hey boy! You look real pretty! Wanna be my 'page'?" With Julia's help, Proteus goes on badgering a disgusted Silvia. (It's hard to tell what's creepiest: Proteus' wooing of Silvia or Julia's stalking of Proteus.) Silvia flees Milan, Proteus goes after Silvia, Julia goes after Proteus. In a marvel of plotting contrivance they all run right into the bandits now led by Valentine. What happens then is... well, see for yourself.

VALENTINE: "Proteus! You're running after Silvia?!? I thought you were my BFF!"
PROTEUS: "I'm going to RAPE HER!"
VALENTINE: "Awww, you must really like her. I wouldn't get in your way. Go ahead and RAPE HER!"
PROTEUS: "Nah, not if you're going to make it sound so sordid. I'll just have sex with this little boy who's been following me around."
JULIA: "I'm actually your ex-girlfriend in drag."
PROTEUS: "That's somewhat of a disappointment. I suppose I could still have sex with you if I place a bag over your head and call you Silvia."
JULIA: "Oh, please do! God knows I have no self-esteem!"

And they all hug and live happily ever after.

Dr. Johnson considers the play to be "the Bard's finest bromance."

The Rolling Stones' "12X5"

Again, the Stones perform a nice set of R&B covers.
Most of "12X5" was recorded at the fabled Chess Studios (located at "2120 South Michigan Avenue," as an instrumental here reminds us). The kids were vocal about their allegiances, and one imagines the in-house likes of Muddy Waters giving a good natured smirk to the humbled Brits who now wanted to sing the blues.



We're conditioned to expect long creative gaps between musical output, and consequently expect a change in direction, some sort of sonic furthering, but in "12X5" the band is producing in the same mode as before, the one they would pretty much stick to until "Aftermath." What with the vagaries of British/ American publishing, tracks become interchangeable in these first efforts (the idea of an 'album' was then, as now, only of interest to a few sophisticates). There's two classics here: "Time is on My Side" and "It's All Over Now," pointing to their "I'll get you, girl- but that doesn't mean I'll like you" philosophy, which would soon become more overt. Those grand moments are backed by a surprisingly polite cover of "Under the Boardwalk" and more Chuck Berry love in "Around and Around." At this point in time, Berry had no real competition from the whelps. It's hard to tell from the pendulous bags under Brian Jones' eyes (which he used to smuggle hash past the authorities) but they had just come out of their teens. Let me put it this way: JAGGER HERE WAS YOUNGER THAN KEVIN JONAS IS NOW.


ABOVE: "Doctor, my eyes!"

Shakespeare Ain't All Dat: "The Tempest"

Yeah, try pitching this one again, Shakespeare:
"Mysterious island full of supernatural secrets! Passengers crash on it and it's all some big elaborate battle of good vs. evil, and there's a monster and an underwhelming finale."
Come closer, so we can slap that smart 17th Century Elizabethan beard off your plagiarizing face. Oh, and this Prospero lead? Douche-ville! He enslaves natives, puts hedgehogs under Caliban's feet for his own amusement- but when it comes to the ACTUAL bad guys he's all like: "Revenge! Never mind, no revenge, I forgive you all. This play was a big teasing waste of magical energy."
We'll ignore the witchcraft and the gayness that is Ariel, but what's with the pervert lines? "This ship is leaking like an unstanched wench"? Not in MY school library, you don't!




Get your Efrem Zimbalist Jr. here!

Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Although it features talking foxes and Willem Dafoe, Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mister Fox" is considerably more family-oriented than "Antichrist."



Not that kids will get much from it: This is an adult story, for adult sensibilities, and its pain-staking animation methods will be lost in kids waiting in vain for the foxes to fart. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is based on a snappy Roald Dahl story, but as imagined by Anderson and stop-motion great Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Coraline") it's sort of an existential counterpart to Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows," and it similarly alternates between wacky antropomorphic hi-jinks and meditative segments.
The titular Mr. Fox (George Clooney) was once a chicken thief whose domestic duties have, well, DOMESTICATED into an urbane newspaper columnist (that's like a blogger, children!) His wife (voiced by Meryl Streep) is rightfully concerned that Mr. Fox might back-slide into old habits. His son (Jason Schwartzman, on loan from the SAMAS) feels "different" and wants some sort of parental acknowledgement from the distant rogue.
The movie ponders: What is a fox without a chicken between its teeth? Soon Mr. Fox is dragging the entire animal kingdom into a clever plot to ransack the chicken farms nearby, confronting his fears, creating marital disputes, and digging himself (and co.) into a corner, all for the sake of indulging his instincts.
In the process, reassuringly, he rediscovers the value of family. And teaches us how to cuss whenever the cussing need arises.



Dysnfuctional families, whether those linked genetically or those forced into geographical proximity, are Anderson's subject matter. His meticulous attention to production design gets him the critical praise; the mix-lover's soundtracks get him the (faux) hip factor- here it's the Beach Boys he favors; but what makes him a fancy schmancy "auteur" it's his recurring interest on how people who routinely annoy each other can still, somehow, find something to cherish in that bond.

"Lost" Season 6- Minus the Finale

Thought I would note I've faithfully followed the last season of "Lost," which might be a first given my twin inabilities to a) follow TV schedules and b)let go of things. (I refused to watch Season 7 of "Buffy" until some five or six years had passed and I'd come to terms with loss.) How has Season 6 fared? Some intense sideway sliding, marred by lots of getting characters from point A to point B to blow things up- the ABC way to assuage impatient viewers being a good explosion. There's been two particularly revealing episodes that bravely stood alone with movie-like intent, ("Ab Aeterno" and "Across the Sea") and sentimentalism aplenty ("Everybody Loves Hugo" and "The Candidate"). Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse have made much of how "Lost" has swayed from "reason" toward "faith" ("reason vs. faith" being one of the stupidest false arguments of modern conversation, something like pitting "the metric system" vs. "laughter".)
Of course, what they REALLY mean is that they can't possibly think of a realistic ending to "Lost" (who could?) and they're going with the Deus Ex Machina. I bet you ten coconuts that the finale will involve the cast (living and dead) tearfully colliding on a beach illuminated by the otherwordly "Light of Goodness," with soothing closure provided by Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" in the background.
Perhaps not the last, but line up the coconuts, just in case.

Sight UnSCENE! Week of May 17

"Robin Hood"- HALLUCINA: "Here we are with Russell Crowe! Back to the merriment of Sherwood Forest, and this time the Hoodman sports a bit of an Irish accent."
RUSSELL CROWE: "Bollocks! Where do you get off?!?"
H: "I just thought I could detect sort of a brogue."
RC: "Mate, you're cruising for a bootload to the wallaby pouch."
H: "Scots, maybe?"
RC: "That's it, ya bloody wombat! Irish, says he. A sodding Mick he calls me." (angry storming off)
VERDICT: In retrospect, the accent is Welsh from Pembroke.



"Letters to Juliet"- Amanda Seyfried seriously needs to stop playing girls named Sophie who find love when in Rome or Venice or Greece or Kabul or wherever. VERDICT: I mean it.



"Just Wright"- At last, those daring pioneers of aviation, Orville and Wilbur Wright (Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson) get their own wacky romantic comedy! They fall in love with Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) and discover that, sometimes, the heart must crash before it learns to soar.
VERDICT: Watch for the cameo by Will Ferrell as a coke-snorting, baby-stealing Charles Lindbergh.



"The Human Centipede (First Sequence)"- In glorious 3-D! The first part of a projected trilogy by video-game movie auteur Uwe Boll, "Centipede" finds a futuristic army of dinosaurs in planet Aphrodite as they try to steal the Box of Time that will allow them to go back to pre-history to stop the meteorite that caused their extinction. Even though they're not extinct if they're alive and in the future doing that. Look, don't think about it too much. Concentrate on the scene where the horny triceratops puts the moves on a topless Tara Reid, who triumphantly returns to the big screen. (Well, it goes straight to the Sy-Fy Channel.) There are no actual centipedes in the movie, because Boll felt that would be too crass and literal.
VERDICT: No, actually, this is about girls getting surgically stitched together ass-to-mouth and then the one in front has to take a shit and it goes through all of them and it's too fucking gross to even think about.

HAPPY NIGHTMARES YOU ALL I LOVE YOU BYE BYE

Should Actors with Theh Gay Play Straight Characters?

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I try to keep abreast of the news- hahahaha, I said "a breast" and laughed which signifies both that I'm straight and 14 years old, which makes me totally competent and objective to throw in two cents into this Newsweek non-fray.
So, I dunno if you darlings heard this

(oh fuck that sounded gay, let me change that)

So, I know you homes and dudes would never read no f***n' Newsweek THEATER REVIEW but there was one such column in which writer Ramim Setoodeh reviewed the revival of the musical "Promises, Promises," based on one of my all time favorite romantic comedies, Billy Wilder's "The Apartment."

(And no, even though it sounds about right, Billy Wilder is NOT the name of a gay porn actor, but maybe it is, how the hell would I know, do I look like I would watch gay porn, what, I'll scar your face n***a!!! I'M ALL MAN!!! I'l f**k you up if you insinuate otherwise, and I'll enjoy it!
No wait, I WON'T enjoy it...)

ANYWAY, the musical features actor Sean Hayes in the old Jack Lemmon role. Midwesterners might best recall Hayes as the extra-flaming guy from "Will and Grace." The reviewer said something to the effect that Sean Hayes plays a straight guy like LeBron James plays the cello (that is, badly)- which sounds to me like a perfectly accurate assesment. NATURALLY, this has the entire cast of "Glee" (and their boyfriends) shrieking about "homophobia," ensuring lots of press for an otherwise unmemorable revival of a Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach musical that was "just ok" to begin with- (although it did produce a classic in "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," which you can hear below in its Elvis Costello version from "Austin Powers 2.")



Let's face facts: no one going to see a musical starring Sean Hayes and (now) featuring "I Say A Little Prayer For You" and "A House is Not a Home" expects anything BUT- as "The Flinstones" would have it- "a gay old time." No one's there sitting there thinking: "HMMM, this Dionne Warwick tribute medley is somehow not masculine enough."
But I'll say one thing in defense of this Ramin dude.
He's not a homophobe. He's a THEATER reviewer. You can't be a homophobe and a theater reviewer. One doesn't have deadly peanut allergies if one has a job licking the conveyor belt at the processing plant. As a matter of fact, Ramin Setoodeh IS gay.
I'll say this other thing: what's going on, gay peeps? There's talk about boycotting Newsweek now? The writer is writing the truth. He didn't write a "damaging, needlessly cruel, and mind-blowingly bigoted piece," as "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy put it. Setoodeh wrote a fluffy piece in which he said what everyone knows.
You gonna punish him for it? Sean Hayes is NOT a convincing straight guy. If Sean Hayes had been playing a gorilla unconvincingly, wouldn't it be the reviewer's DUTY to point that out? Did everyone actually bother to READ the fluffy enough article? Because it's even-handed, and as pro-gay as anything you might expect outside of "The Advocate."
"Oh, it's different, I only meant free speech for people who SAY THE THINGS I WANT THEM TO SAY!"
Come on, with a big wide world of frothing homophobes to contend with, you're going to choose the FAGGY THEATER REVIEWER FROM NEWSWEEK to put in the pillory?



It's unfair, specially since he's hardly alone. Ben Brantley, the New York Times theater reviewer whom no one would ever call homophobic, also points out in his review of "Promises, Promises," in a kindly way, that "(Hayes') relationship with Ms. Chenoweth’s Fran feels more like that of a younger brother than a would-be lover and protector." It's clearly an issue.

To conclude: The reviewer is wrong in his thesis that NO gay actors can play straight- many have and many can- but he's right that if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. He shouldn't be punished for his honesty. I'm pretty sure every damned "straight" guy in "Gossip Girl" could start fires if the DJ puts on Lady Gaga, but I don't care because Chuck Bass is a bad-ass mother, and I believe him when he's pawing at Blair Waldorf. What an actor needs to do is convince me about characters- their personal sexual life is irrelevant IF THEY CAN DO IT; if they CAN'T CONVINCE ME, then it becomes an issue. I never dug the sitcom "Caroline in the City" (which was not as terribly written as you think) because a very gay-seeming guy was supposed to have straight feelings, and he couldn't pull it off, and it was a sad charade.

This whole issue was perfectly tackled and parodied in this Mad TV sketch which I love. Kids: "Mad TV" was an underrated '90s show which had one of SNL's problems- reliance on grating recurring characters- but in its heyday could be far funnier than SNL. Nobody cares to remember it that way because it was always billed as a cruder rip-off. True, but its parodies in particular were very good, and better crafted.



Now back away from poor Ramin Setoodeh.
-
Alright, one for the left-wing wimps, one for the right-wing assholes: You guys were picking on Roger Ebert the other day?!? He has MOUTH CANCER, you jackwipes!!! What the hell is wrong with y'all?!?



(Just now, the 1968 Broadway Cast of "Promises, Promises" ranked as 608 on Amazon's list. I bet a few days ago it ranked somewhere around 28739202.)

Stevie Wonder's "Live at Last"

It's a sort of outrage that 2009's "Live at Last" is Stevie Wonder's first official concert video; just because he can't see doesn't mean he shouldn't be seen. Filmed at the 02 Arena in London in front of a decidedly Anglo-Saxon, unfunky, but ecstatic crowd, "Live at Last" is a joyous thing, as one would expect. Even when simmering racial, religious and social frustrations motivated him in the '60s and '70s, it's mostly joy that the man is able to communicate. It's a bit of a bullying joy, of course, but when it involves his band and the fans so effectively, who could care? If Stevie Wonder had been born today we would have ten thousand "when I consider how my light is spent" self-absorbed blindness ballads, but when listening to his hits in the back-to-back format of a concert, I was once again struck by how little blindness and how much there is of "light," "sunshine," "seeing," "visions," and "eyes" in Stevie Wonder's songs. Stevie opens with Miles Davis' "All Blues" on the harmonica- and Stevie is one of those greats who gave an instrument a new, instantly recognizable voice: Hendrix, Clapton and Santana would be some of the other rare transformers. That harmonica doesn't come up a lot during the set which has all your favorites, ("Superstition," "I Wish," "You Are the Sunsine of My Life," "Sir Duke,") but when it does, you listen. Here's a band that emphasizes the Latin funk elements (three percussionists!). Here are some wonderful back-up singers: one of them is Aisha Morris, Stevie's daughter and the inspiration for "Isn't She Lovely." She IS. Here's an audience that is maybe all too eager to sing along. This is a great party, and not without its moving moments; in particular, a live rendition of "Overjoyed" that left me in tears. Love that it's live at last.

Ponson du Terrail's "Rocambole: The Mysterious Inheritance"

Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail was a pretty exciting, very terrible writer of feuilletons, (those cliff-hanger-happy, highly-sensational serials that dominated 19th century French publishing, and I still adore with a nostalgic passion.) Du Terrail's sizeable stake to claim is the never ending "Dramas of Paris" series, better known as the Rocambole books, which gave our language the term "Rocambolesque"- as in "a pretty unbelievable adventure." "The Dramas of Paris" is intended as an imitation of Eugene Sue's "The Mysteries of Paris"- (no shame: few novels have aged so bad critically and been so endlessly influential. Alexandre Dumas' "Les Mohicans de Paris," Emile Zola's "Les Mysteres de Marseille," Paul Feval's "Les Mysteres de Londres" all have similar intentions- and Michael Chabon's "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" winks at that origin.)
But Rocambole took on a life of his own as the prototype for characters as diverse as Fantomas, Arsene Lupin, Raffles, the Shadow, and Batman: a master criminal who is so much more interesting than the goody-two-shoes wagging fingers at him from the lawful side of the fence, that, in time, Rocambole becomes the heroic, resourceful solver of crimes.



In the very first book, ("L'Heritage Mysterieux,") Rocambole is an afterthought, appearing about 40 chapters in as a 12 year old rascal. He remains 12 for about four chapters, but he's so immediately likable that Ponson du Terrail realizes 12 is too young, and hoping the reader is too excited by the plots and counterplots and counter-counterplots to notice, decides to make him 16 years old instead.
Like I said, terrible writer, perhaps France's answer to Bulwer-Lytton in the pantheon of popular disasters. (Famous gaffes: "Her hands were as cold as those of a snake's"; "With one hand, he raised the dagger, and with the other, he said..."; "She flashed her smile at his like a mirror's"; "The Count shot three times, first at the villain's head and then at his forehead.")
The major sin in this first volume is the horrible naming: the prefix Ker is attached to so many unrelated things you would think the rest of the alphabet had gone on strike: There's a Kergaz, a Kerloven, a Kermor, a Kermarouet and a Kermadec.
But it's all oh so fun, a good old yarn about the struggle between the noble Armand de Kergaz and his dastardly half-brother Sir Williams, with a plot convoluted beyond re-telling but told at such-break neck pace that one can only reflect on how bloated today's novels tend to be. Feuilletons are bloated with EVENTS, sure, but at a sentence-by-sentence level they MOVE.
Out of all the machinations, one character emerges along with Rocambole lively enough to earn themselves sequel-time: that's Baccarat, the beautiful, repentant escort-with-a-heart-of-argent, who, at the end of the first volume, we see kneeling in a prieu-dieu and dressed in novice's habits. Girls that hot don't stay nuns for long, not in du Terrail's ever flexible world.
Let's see what the next novel, "The Club of the Jack of Hearts," has in store for Rocambole and Baccarat.

The Rolling Stones' "England's Newest Hitmakers"

While we're in the Sympathy for the Devil department:



Sometime back a dejected, heart-broken friend told me she was in her basement room with a needle and a spoon, and I flew into intervention mode: "No, don't do it, don't let the white dragon take you, it's not worth it!" She was like: "It's a Rolling Stones reference, you retard," and I realized that while I have pretty much every chord the Beatles produced grafted in my audio center, I'm a Stones ignoramus.
Granted, ignorance of a band as huge as the Stones is relative, and it means I only know their 50 biggest hits or so, but what about all those album tracks? I intend to fill the gaps with a methodic listen to their catalogue beginning with their "insecure R&B covers" period and "England's Newest Hitmakers."



The story, at least in its U.S. incarnation, begins with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and a very much alive-and-lively Brian Jones (the band's visionary at the time) doing a triple cover knock-out: a classic version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," a geographically rousing "Route 66," and a sexually voracious take on Willie Dixon's "I Just Wanna Make Love to You" that explains why the Beatles looked like mop-topped wimps by their side. The rest, although always competent, sort of fades into an oldies-but-goodies mist: this includes Chuck Berry's "Carol" and Rufus Thomas' "Walking the Dog" which are better in the hands of their originators. The Stones do sneak in "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)," an underrated early attempt at songwriting that is not half bad and nods to girl-group infatuations.

CRITERION: Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist"

"Chaos Reigns," warns us the Fantastic Mister Fox Who Chews His Own Guts in one of the more family-friendly moments of Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," a movie which caused some sensation at Cannes, as per form. (Some filmmakers have intended audiences, and Von Trier's is "people at Cannes who I can shock.")



The fox, along with a crow and a doe, (a deer, but a female deer), are the "Three Beggars," (an unexistent constellation symbolizing "grief, pain and despair".) If you expect Von Trier to tell you the nuances of distinction between those feelings, or how exactly the animals correlate to their names, or what they have to do with specific moments in the film, forget it: you've taken the bait and are getting a mouthful of hook.



What exactly IS "Antichrist" about? It's not "The Omen." Altough it's very unpleasant viscerally- Von Trier doing Takashi Miike- it's not particularly shocking from any religious point of view. Von Trier abandoned his original intended plot of twist of revealing the Earth was made by Satan and not God in favor of... well, I couldn't tell you what's going on at the end.
Here's what I (kind of) know: In a poetic opening scene, a couple is making love while their unattended baby falls off a window. The woman
(Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing the Unvirgin Mary with a fearlesness that makes you worry for her subsequent mental health) climaxes as her baby dies. Her therapist husband, (Willem Dafoe, whose face alternates between the sharp lines of clinical detachment and agonizing pain, and is the suffering Joseph to her feminine fury), decides to take the grieving mother to a cabin in a forest called "Eden" where he begins to nag her about "confronting her fears", while withholding the affection (and reassuring sex) she so desperately craves.
If anything is clearly and directly attacked here, it's psychotherapy. Von Trier reputedly was in a depression during film-making, and so must have heard enough nonsense about confronting fears and play-therapy to justify half the atrocities in this movie.

SPOILERS-
(What horrors are you in for? Let's cut to the good bits: the woman drills a Passion-like hole through the man's leg; then drops a log on his dick; then jerks off the erect penis into a bloody ejaculation; then clips off her own clit with a pair of scissors. I gotta say, no Saw movie got that far; the spirit here is not too far from torture porn.)
END SPOILERS



Why "Antichrist"? Here's my very unofficial conclusion: a true Antichrist would not be a counterpart to a Christ, but the complete absence of that Christ. Hence, the angelic baby dies in the opening scenes, creating a void of, well, grief, pain and despair. An Antichrist would be the negation of salvation. Hence this Garden of Eden becomes a forest of nightmares.
It's that what it REALLY is about? *shrugs* Issues of feminism are raised- as the woman begins to doubt the value of her research on gynocide. She begins to understand WHY women would be hated- in a world in which women give life, and life is a horror, it's only logical. "A crying woman is a scheming woman," goes the movie's best line (so good I ran for my Shakespeare concordance) but I don't even trust "Antichrist's" obvious conclusion: that women are crazy, unpredictable bitches. Probably true, (kidding, ladies!) but I doubt that's what's intended. To say Von Trier is a mysoginist misses the mark, as usual when the term is bandied about; Von Trier is a misanthropic prankster, and women are just one of the many many things he hates, (probably far below "movie-goers," "puppies," and "himself.")
Like many film-makers who return once and again to religious doubt and mockery (I'm thinking people like Bergman, Bunuel and Fellini), Von Trier thinks at heart like a nice Church boy, and is beholden to the imagery of theology. (Compare that to a truly non-religious creator, like Shakespeare, to whom religion is just one more exhibit in this world's crazy pageant.) With that much religion, that much emphasis in strict systems and symbols, he can't help but sound as logically muddled as your average preacher. Life evades systems with a consistency that is systematic on its own.
But even when his theology is unsound, Von Trier is an essential creator of visuals. If your stomach consents, "Antichrist" is worth a look, although be warned: it's more fun talking about than actually looking at.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

In honor of Mother's Day, today's scheduled post about dead babies and their neglectful, grieving mothers will have to wait.
Until then:

"Swamp Thing" Volume 2 Before Alan Moore

Although the seeds had been planted in Volume 1 of "Saga of the Swamp Thing", Volume 2 veers away from monster encounters and tries to create a conspiracy mythology that makes the X-Files seem timid, with a wide supporting cast. Martin Pasko was in charge of the series before that Alan Moore "game-changer" of an entrace.
(I used that horrible "game-changer" term once. If you catch me at it again, punching is allowed.)


Above: I like how the Swamp Thing is blinging it in this pic.

Pasko begins grounded in some sort of reality as the Swamp Thing sets out to protect- or possibly kill- a psychically gifted girl named Karen Clancy who may very well be the Antichrist. Realistic, ain't it? But things get progressively weirder, and so does the artwork, which begins to look like a product of the DT's. Amorphous tumors crawl with their bone antennae reaching out, acid swirls bathe the backs of scenes and melt across panel divisions.
Then, with "Odd Ends," Moore shows up and swiftly eliminates the Swamp Thing as we know it.
The best is yet to come.

"The Best of Poison: 20 Years of Rock"

Talking about brain hemorrhages!

What with lead singer Bret Michael's recent brain troubles, which I still say can be traced back to getting his head famously bumped at the Tonys, I was bracing myself for some critical re-evaluation of Poison.
But no. Despite some honestly fun songs, ("Unskinny Bop," "Nothin' But a Good Time," "Talk Dirty to Me" and "Fallen Angel") these guys are still best represented by this Simpsons moment. (Blame the Spanish audio on those good Fox folks.)

Dick Clark: "Here is Whitesnake!" Guy #1: "We're not Whitesnake, we're Poison!" Guy #2: "I thought we were Quiet Riot." Guy #3: "It says here we're Ratt."
Meanwhile the guys from Warrant cry for having been left out of that bit.

And, honest, "Every Rose Has its Thorn" would have failed any SAT analogy test. "Every rose has its thorn like every night has its dawn"? Since the rose is good and the thorn is bad, wouldn't it be 'like every dawn has its night'? And "thorn," "dawn" and "song" must be the saddest trio of non-rhymes ever contrived.

Charlotte Gainsbourg's "IRM"

The sounds of MRI machines back-up up the title track in Charlotte Gainsbourg's "IRM" (that would be 'Imagerie par Resonance Magnetique'). In movies like Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There," Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep" and Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," Charlotte Gainsbourg has been such a consistently fine actress that most of us are convinced she's a hot seductive presence, despite her being sort of fugly. Let us persist in this illusion, of course.



Supposedly, "IRM" is a haunted response to a brush with death which led to tests for a brain hemorrhage.
If only it didn't sound like Gainsbourg had been left in a coma. This is all too sedate an affair; Beck's attentive, tasteful production is designed to melt into the background of a hipsterish adult soiree. There's nothing to rile you up here, nothing to convey Gainsbourg's fear of death or conversely her excitement at life.
Her voice is no help: a sulky chanteuse that doesn't sing about love or sex is fine, but she has to sing about SOMETHING, and "IRM"'s lyrics are lacking, which I blame Beck for: he seems to have lent Gainsbourg some of his typically aloof, random observations instead of bothering to translate her experience into English words that fit both her experiences and her Gallic musicality. (Notice how "Le Chat Du Cafe des Artistes" offers more intricate storytelling than the rest of the thing.) It's not that the songs are bad, (although "Vanities" borders on boredom). There's good stuff here: The title track, "Master's Hands," "Greenwich Mean Time," "Trick Pony," are certainly decent songs, and "Heaven Can Wait," which brings Beck to the front, is rowdy by comparison. Great video by the Keith Schofield cooperative, I should say, though.


But this is "baguette-down-the-boulevard-on-a-lazy-Samedi" music, no doubt, pleasant enough, but so soothing they should be playing it inside MRIs across the world.

Sight UnSCENE! Week of May 4

"Iron Man 2"- In a futuristic, gang-ridden Detroit, police officer Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller) dies on duty and is brought back to like within an iron frame as Ironmancop, a terror to hoodlums. Watch out for Miguel Ferrer as a bribeable sleaze, and for "That 70's Show" Dad Kurtwood Smith as a gum-chewing baddie. VERDICT: Red Forman at the meth warehouse= priceless.



"Furry Vengeance"- After the shooting ends on "Dr. Doolittle 4: Eddie Murphy is Out, Eddie Griffin is In," the animal cast is unceremoniously dismissed without being given the junket swag promised in their contract. But the little critters got big nuts, and they ain't taking it with their tails between their legs! They strike back by kidnapping amiable studio doofus Brendan Fraser and burning him to a crisp in a nearby furnace. VERDICT: Does anyone recall Fraser's halcyon days, when he was starring in cool stuff like "Space Jam 3: Michael Jordan Is Out, Jordan Sparks is In" and "Alicia Silverstone is Alive, Totally"? I feel so sad for him.


"A Date-Nightmare on Elm Street"- America's third or fourth sweetheart, Tina Fey, is caught on a blind date with 'Office-ial' funnyman Steve Carrell- but when she accidentally takes an overdose of Ambien, it will be an uphill battle to tolerate Steve's self-aggrandizing stories about the "Get Smart" remake. Can she stay awake long enough to find true love, or will she descend into a DATE-NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET? VERDICT: About as good as Wes Craven's charming "The Last House on the Left in the Prairie."


"Babies"- A movie so boring that if you go see it with a date, you'll inevitably end up making your own baby in the otherwise deserted theater. I mean, some of these babies are FOREIGN! It's hard enough to understand a real American baby! VERDICT: The African baby does have some interesting suggestions about how to best harvest solar power for agricultural purposes.

"Oceans"- Just as boring as "Babies," but the dialogue was even more incoherent, I thought. VERDICT: The poor man's "Ocean's 11."