Here's a real "d'oh" moment: Writer in the Sept 20th Entertainment Weekly calls mini-CDs a "truly original idea" despite the fact that EPs have been around for at least four decades and that the mini-CD name itself at least one decade.



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Retired e-mail sig file:



Violinist Bauer-Lechner on Mahler:

"The first thing he composed on paper at the

age of six was a polka, to which he added a

funeral march as an introduction."

I saw Dracula 2000 some time back but have just now discovered notes for a review (of sorts) that I intended to write. Never did but here are the notes:



Elaborate Abbey vault and defenses but the back wall is a publicly accessible tunnel/sewer that takes only seconds to blow open.



Does London have no building inspectors?



Does Van Helsing have a body disposal service to get rid of the thieves' bodies?



Pilotless plane apparently flies from London over the southeastern US without being disturbed.



All the police and invesigators immediately pack up and leave a crash site with only two local reporters left.



Super hetero vampire who hypnotizes women but not men.



Exactly how did Selena get Van Helsing's retina and handprint?



What was the point of the leeches? How did any get inside a sealed coffin?



Why not just encase the coffin in concrete? Concrete inside steel?



The film is set during mardi gras but there are almost no mardi gras activities. During the final scenes the streets are almost deserted.

You may have already heard of Rich Kowlowski's Three Fingers but thought I'd point it out in case you haven't. It's a graphic novel (published a few weeks ago by the cool people at Top Shelf) that mimics a film documentary about the dark history of toons. It follows the story of filmmaker Dizzy Walters and his discovery of the talented toon Ricky Rat (like Who Censored/Framed Roger Rabbit toons are real creatures) as they become incredibly popular and the rumors and politics that followed. It's a mildly interesting concept that is certainly tightly done and with one part that'll have you watching cartoons differently, at least for a week or two. The whole thing is certainly of more interest to animation buffs than casual viewers.



Still, I don't think it's entirely successful: For one thing that "behind the scenes" genre doesn't translate entirely sucessfully to comics; for another the dark truths are a bit too predictable (base motives are pretty much the only ones displayed and the racism issue was done better in Roger Rabbit, not to mention the X-Men); and finally the close parallels to reality--Warmer Brothers? Buggy Bunny?--are distracting more than revealing, though the identity of one mysterious witness is a laugh-aloud moment. (And the attack on Walt Disney is tame compared to the genuinely disturbing one in Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, a major part of the novel completely omitted from the timid film version; gee wonder why?). The characterizations are also a bit too obvious: Bunny as a Saturday Night Live "thespian," a German-accented cinematographer, etc. If Kowlowski has a good grasp of film and animation history it's not obvious. He confuses the end of WWI with 1921 (though that may just be sloppy writing), doesn't seem to understand what "feature" means, and doesn't really go beyond the Disney/WB continuum.



A mild recommendation with reservations. (For highly recommended "dark" rethinkings of pre-existing fictional characters try T.H. White's Once and Future King, David Thomson's Suspects and Gregory Maguire's Wicked, all first-rate and the White one of the dozen greatest novels I've read.)

Andrew Calcutt & Richard Shephard Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (1998) - Not really much of a guide: It's filled with errors; most moderately well-read people will only find a few authors they haven't known before; and it's almost completely lifeless. Apparently some of the big names (Joyce, Kafka, Stephen King) are included for the sole reason that most browsers will likely have heard about them; you could make a case for cult status of such writers but Calcutt & Shephard don't even try. In fact, their entire idea of "cult" is a little odd. The idea by nature is ambiguous but they seem to go with anything they can claim is edgy (whether true or not is another question; that "edgy" is the status quo yet another). The number of inarguable cult writers in this book is pretty slim. But what dooms the book to irrelevancy is that Calcutt & Shephard are themselves not much in the way of writers. Their descriptions are vague and formless, making most of the authors discussed sound much the same. It seems quite likely that Calcutt & Shephard haven't actually read most of the work under "discussion," especially when they try to balance opinions of critics about the author (C&S always use the word "critic" to indicate somebody with a negative opinion). Even more embarassing, they place inordinate emphasis at times on what novels have been filmed than the actual novel.



Here are some cult writers that would have filled out the book:



RA Lafferty

Harry Stephen Keeler

Count Potocki

James Blaylock

Alan Moore

W. H. Hudson

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Urquhart

Patrick O'Brien

H. Rider Haggard

Raymond Federman

James Branch Cabell

Gerard Nerval

Petrus Borel

JC Powys

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre

Howard Waldrop

Thomas De Quincey

William Hope Hodgson

Superman: Our Worlds at War Book One - Since I wasn't paying attention to comics last summer I missed this big crossover event which normally isn't something to regret. But reading about the repercussions of this made it sound like something of possible interest. Oops, wrong. This tpb collects ten issues focusing on Superman and it's an opaque, haphazard mess. Much of the narrative is twisted simpy to put Superman into fighting situtations which is annoying enough but the writers generally don't even bother to make clear what's happening in the overall story. Maybe long time readers already know who Imperiex is (four syllables, sounds like Galactus) but there just seems to be a lot of punching and explosions for no real reason. (& it's oddly squeamish: Topeka is "nuked" but the aftermath mostly looks like just a really rough riot.) At one instance, the entire JLA just appears seemingly from nowhere. The artwork even contributes to the confusion: Aquaman's "death" turns out to be nothing of the sort; he simply vanishes from his armor though the art obscures this fact just as surely as the writers did about who Aquaman was fighting and why.



But it gets worse. Two entire issues thread their stories with the texts from the Gettysburg Address and Roosevelt's speech to Congress on Pearl Harbor. It's hard to know whether to be amused by the desperation of the creators grasping at anything that could make their third-rate tales seem exciting or to be appalled at the hubris revealed. Apparently the writers felt their lives lacked enough ridicule and humiliation.



But then in the final pages you get hints that the story might be pulling together into an exploration of Superman facing some kind of real moral choices. But somehow I doubt that.

Time to play catch up again:



Men in Black II (Barry Sonnenfeld 2002) - You know it's going to be trouble when Sonnenfeld doesn't even bother to parody the opening TV show but instead just creates some pseudo-Plan 9 never-world episode. Even worse it just shovels out backstory. Then the whole thing gets worse. I'm wondering now if what we thought was Sonnenfeld's subtle talent was merely luck.



Company Man (Peter Askin & Douglas McGrath 2000) - It's probably politically repugnant to place the Bay of Pigs invasion as a comic misunderstanding rather than the deliberate choice of power-hungry men but this is a pretty amiable satire which if it does lack much real bite is at least, uh, amiable. And actually funny more than it should be.



Stiff Upper Lips (Gary Sinyor 1998) - A comedy made by people with no sense of humor. Oh, a couple of the actors appear to have tongues roving in cheek but probably the combined behind-camera talent couldn't come up with a single gag for a Leno monologue if they tried. And try they didn't: Their idea of a joke is a railroad station sign reading "Ivory's End." Why couldn't the folks from Minority Report prevent these kinds of crimes?



Reign of Fire (Rob Bowman 2002) - Very nearly a genuinely great film but in the end it settles for being a quite good one. It's also one I wished was a novel because the accumlated detail of the changed culture and personality reactions would be well worth exploring. But we'll settle for a bleak drama with unhinged characters, great sfx and a top-notch helicopter-dragon-parachutist battle.



The General (John Boorman 1998) - Tedious, very tedious. Worse, it appears that the source material had real potential. (I watched the B&W version, not the desaturated color one.)



From Russia With Love (Terence Young 1963) - Since I've never seen most of the early Bond films--probably being not a Bond fan of any kind has something to do with that--a couple of years ago I got the idea of watching them all in order. I found a letterboxed tape of Dr. No but the film was so bad and the difficulty of tramping out to the one store with letterboxed tapes didn't appeal much so the idea was dropped. Now I can rent them all on DVD easily so the idea is back in swing. From Russia is a bit more interesting than the first film (I particularly like that it doesn't seem to have occured to the filmmakers that Bond comes across as a tossed-around doofus with little control of his actions) but it's still about 20 minutes too long. The DVD has a decent making-of documentary.



Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan 2000) - If I'd read a description beforehand I'd mark this down as pointless art but the film turns out to be far better, more like an actual art film disguised as a genre rethinking. (In fact it's not really a rethinking: compare to Alan Moore, Brian Bendis, Keith Giffen, Greg Rucka, etc to see why not.) Almost perfectly controlled, Unbreakable resonates in unexpected ways.

Who was the fifth "fifth Beatle"?



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Windtalkers (John Woo 2002)



A conversation. We thought a bit of editing afterwards would make it more clear but instead seems to have only made it non-conversational.



Lang: Well it's taken a few years but Hollywood has finally crushed John Woo.



Julie: Oh, you're just bitter because there's no sex in your violence.



Lang: No, think about it: Anybody could have directed this film. Somebody once said directing a Marx Brothers movie was just being a traffic cop and isn't that true here? Line up the actors and make sure they won't be hit by the explosions. Then give 'em a few moments of down-time to prove their humanity.



Julie: That doesn't bother me. After all, isn't that what all the best directors do? Trust the material and the actors? Of course the problem here is that the material appears to be a script from 1950 only recently discovered. You got your racist, your Greek, your Swede, your Catholic, your generic American, etc. Actually I guess two lapsed Catholics count for one.



Lang: Right. I read some review that complained that Woo as an Asian should have been more sensitive to the portrayal of Japanese who are mostly faceless hordes here. But is it racist of me to point out that Japanese often are portrayed negatively in Hong Kong films? The Chinese Connection is the best-known but you've seen as many as I have. I'm not saying anything about Woo in particular because I don't know, but this doesn't really surprise me.



Julie: Well, I always amuse myself at films like this by imaging other ways to make it. What if the Navaho were the racists? Or Nicholas Cage's character but contrary to Hollywood standards he never reforms? Or Cage becomes too good at killing other Marines? How about filming the entire first battle in long takes, possibly even with a stationary camera?



Lang: Now you're just planning some indie film. There have to be things you could do that still would have been within the boundaries of Hollywood action films, if that's not too snobby.



Julie: Probably.



Lang: Anyway, I might have made more of the soldiers suspicious of the Navaho--subtly but clearly refusing to eat with them, expressing surprise they know the rules to poker--but eventually many (certainly not all) would become friendly of one but not the other. Or that officer who gave Cage the medal: He shouldn't have been confused or taken aback but completely confident and presented as a good, intelligent guy. Those are the people who institutionalize racism.



Julie: How much could you have gotten away with anything like this? Most filmmakers have a deer-in-the-headlights approach to race. They just freeze and say the same things everybody else has.



Lang: I particularly like a trick Christopher Priest used in some comics he wrote where a black character speaks perfect English to whites/authority figures and slang/"street" to other blacks. You'd think this would be pretty obvious but it apparently went unnoticed by many people who complained Priest doesn't know how to write black characters. Which maybe he doesn't though you'd think his actually being black might help.



Julie: Aren't you putting too much emphasis on race, though? This is supposed to be an action film, not The Defiant Ones.



Lang: I don't know. You started this. Isn't race an important element of the real life codetalkers' story? Why else were they not recognized for decades?



Julie: But in a way the movie is hardly about codetalking. That's just a plot device that could almost have been anything. Even in the movie it almost is nothing else considering how little any of this is explained. I've read bits about it over the years and had the impression that Navaho was used because there were so few speakers and because since it wasn't related to any European or Asian language it couldn't be understood. Just look at the scenes where they give out bombing co-ordinates. Why couldn't those have been in English? The Japanese undoubtedly knew what the artillery would be targeting: themselves.