The Wild Wild West

When I was a kid I hated this show or more exactly I remember hating this show when I was a kid because in fact I otherwise have no memories of it. Watching the first disc of Season One the opening credit sequence is familiar but pretty much nothing else so who knows how many episodes I actually watched (& certainly not the Will Smith movie). I rented this disc partly because some recent reviews hooked me on the Western aspect and even more the proto-steampunk angle, even if the show does seem to have been too mindless to really matter much in that regard. The first four episodes are mildly amusing though without much of the sf or parody that supposedly characterized the show once it got going. These are straight James Bond-inspired stories with a bit of tongue in cheek (the producers manage to get Robert Conrad shirtless in all four stories) though the fourth episode ("Night of Sudden Death") is so bad you wanna go all MST3K on it. Nothing to make me want to rent any more, especially when there's so much other TV on DVD to go through not to mention actual movies....

Two oddities worth mentioning. Each episode runs almost exactly 50 minutes. Was there really only 10 minutes of commercials per hour in 1965? And during one episode there's supposed to be an explosion behind a man coming down off a gangplank. Thought I noticed something about it so went back and did a freeze-frame. Sure enough, for about three frames they had scratched out the image around the man's figure, apparently to give the impression of a white explosion behind him. It looked more Brakhage-esque but if nothing else was certainly a cheap special effect.

"Blog on, my little honeybees"?

I'm nothing if not behind the times and so just now saw the piece Anthony DeCurtis wrote a little over a year ago about blogging. There's been a stream of mostly pointless controversy about political blogging for a few years but just recently we've seen people like Michael Dirda and Richard Ford knocking literary blogs even while admitting that they don't read them. DeCurtis not only has that same proud ignorance but is surprisingly condescending, mainly because he's making the assumption that bloggers write for the same reason he does which is apparently only the money. (Resulting in a line like "And maybe it's a function of growing up working class, but I've never had any particular enthusiasm about working for free" which is just plain offensive when he's not trying to grab a moral high ground, as if most bloggers were trust fund babies.) If he had read more (any?) blogs then DeCurtis would have seen that almost none are done for the money. Even blogs from well-known writers rarely seem like they're doing anything for the money no matter what the real intentions may have been. Maybe it's just the "working" in his claim - where he thinks writing is work and money necessarily attached, most bloggers are just having fun or filling that old writer's need to, y'know, write.

The end of 52

DC’s 52 came to a close and I couldn’t help but think it was something of a mis-guided experiment. The various stories would have been much better served by either rotating miniseries along the lines of Seven Soldiers or simply a 12-issue mini. The much-promoted “real-time” component where each issue was a week of story-time and if it was Halloween or Christmas in our world then it would also be in 52 turned out to be mostly irrelevant if not just ignored. Some issues seem to cover only a couple of hours and others just one day or two but overall there was barely any sense of an epic, year-long story. Of course this may be just because they (meaning writers, artists, editors, the whole shebang) had constant trouble creating focused stories. Now I’m by no means a believer that a story has to be linear and conflict-driven but it took weeks for any sense of storytelling to sink in and even after 52 issues the whole project is far more diffuse than it should have been. Perhaps because the stories didn’t really intersect (another argument in favor of linked minis) but also because there was a large amount of padding. Admittedly that’s some of my favorite moments—Super Chief!—but after a while I just wanted most of it over with. We already knew that Luthor’s everyman project wouldn’t last and I wasn’t remotely curious why not.

Random comments:

* The Steel story was the weakest; the Montoya/Question the strongest. The Dibny thread was mostly tedious until the payoff but I doubt that it will improve if I ever re-read this. And I never had much interest in Booster Gold until this but will pick up at least the first issue or two of his new series.

* The Chinese superheroes were a mistake. In an interview Morrison claimed to have done research into Chinese culture but he must have been using 1950s childrens books considering how cliched and unimaginative these were.

* The back-up features were unbelievably bad. Did nobody read these beforehand? The early history was deadly dull and the following two-page bios couldn’t possibly be of interest to anybody who knew enough DCU background to read 52 in the first place. Now, two pages of annotations? That’s an idea. (The closest would have been Douglas Wolk’s blog at http://52-pickup.blogspot.com/ though I only read a few of them.)

* With a weekly and various artists it’s a shame they couldn’t have allowed a bit more variety in the art. It was all fairly standard-issue stuff.

* Couldn’t help but wonder if the One Year Later jump was inspired by Alias (TV not Bendis) or even 24 (TV again not Bendis)(wait Bendis doesn’t have anything called 24 does he?)(apparently not). And of course I also can’t help but wonder how uncooly cool it would have been to have an issue based on the mid-section of To the Lighthouse that just showed various objects and places but no characters.

* I’m still mad about the whole World War III fiasco. I picked up all four issues because the clerk at the comics store said it was necessary to read them after #50 but before #51 only to discover that they’re merely an expansion of #50 and of little interest even at that. Admittedly she said she hadn’t read them and that she was only passing along info so I don’t blame the clerk. It was DC who botched this, as well as hiring the world’s dumbest marketing person to design nearly identical covers for all four issues.

* Can’t tell if it’s just that comics journalism attracts poor interviewers or the 52 crew closed ranks but nearly every interview about the project was pure fluff.

* The deliberate leak about the multiverse was a miscalculation though it did keep me wondering how it would happen. (Poorly as it turned out & I’m not the only person who could make little sense of it.) Still, this is a Good Thing if used with any brains at all. For one thing I’m all for sending the entire Marvel Family out of the regular DCU where their innocent goofiness never really fit. I had some hopes that some current OYL titles—most notably anything about the Justice Society—would turn out to have been back on Earth 2 after all this time but I guess DC decided that was a bit too much Clone Saga/Bobby-comes-out-of-the-shower undercutting of fan expectations.

* One result of the disaster that was Infinite Crisis was that I cut back the number of titles I was reading and 52 only confirms that I won’t be picking up Countdown unless there are some kind of rave reviews that make it sound like anything other than a half-baked promotional device.

The anniversary

Last month was five years since I started this blog and the plans were to give each reader $100 but, alas, I missed the date. Maybe in 2012. In those five years I've probably posted enough for one year of a daily blog. Knew I'd never be able to post every day or probably every week but I have mostly posted once a month. Just call it an experiment in time perception.

Making Movies of Themselves

A piece in the March 15 Variety about a new Sherlock Holmes franchise claims the studio wants it done "the same edgy way that Christopher Nolan has reimagined Batman". Too bad it wasn't Nolan who reimagined Batman; he and co-writer David Goyer basically watered down and repackaged the comic book version for mass consumption. And unfortunately "comic book" has such a connotation of dumbness and simplicity in our culture that it's hard to get across the point that the comic book Batman has more complexity, depth and even, at time, the aura of genuine art than any film version so far. So much was based on The Long Halloween with the best parts about Dent removed, though understandably.

Just as out of touch is another piece that basically claims critics should be cheerleaders for studio films. The writer spins it more as the critics being out of touch but really that's not true and if every critic on the planet slammed the highest grossing film doesn't in the least invalidate them.

Wordplay & The Aristocrats

I just now saw Wordplay but The Aristocrats about a year and a half ago when it was first released and haven't written about it until this post. The reason I'm combining them is that they share the same flaw of almost no historical curiousity and both could have benefitted greatly from the help of a real journalist. For The Aristocrats this is a serious but not crippling flaw but it nearly sinks Wordplay.

Start with the more interesting film. By now anybody reading this will know what The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza 2005) is about but what seemed so odd to me is that there are a few references to the origin of the joke and some urban-legend-ish stories about it but almost nothing concrete. Interviewees mention a few times that it originated in vaudeville which is clearly wrong; there's absolutely no way the joke as it currently exists was used in vaudeville and probably not even in burlesque. There is a possibility that it was a vaudeville joke with a different center section but whether or not that's the case nothing in the film shows that the slightest attempt was made to research this. There are vaudeville historians, books and even people with long memories but none are consulted. I find it just as easy to believe somebody in the 50s made up this joke and then claimed it was from a few decades earlier. For instance, Phyllis Diller mentions the first time she heard the joke and the obvious questions are when? Who told it? Where? Do you remember how it went? What was the second time she heard it? The film just presents some rumors, a few of which--such as Michael O'Donogue telling it for a full hour--are clearly lies. Similar lack of documentation with the story that the joke was commonly told only among other comedians and not in public. Again, there's little to support this even though most reviewers accepted it as fact. There are reports (not in the film) that Buddy Hackett told it during a public performance in the late 50s and also several years later during a commercial while taping The Tonight Show. I don't know whether these are actually true or not but are certainly plausible enough that this should have been addressed.

A problem that cuts closer to even what the film is actually trying to do is that the joke is presented intact so few times. There's a lot of talk about this being like jazz where different comics improvise in their own styles on set changes so there should be much more presentation of that. Instead there is a composite telling, a few more or less straight renditions and then some eccentric or unusual takes (mime, cards, reversals, etc). Hiding comic invention is not the best way to celebrate it. There are also some odd choices. The Onion staff has no business being in here and are just embarassing. Chris Rock clearly was chosen only for marquee value since he contributes nothing to the film. A few others seem chosen just because they're filmmakers' buddies.

Wordplay (Patrick Creadon 2006) is like a Sunday newspaper feature that's amusing but leaves little lasting mark. Creadon and co-writer/producer Christine O'Malley seem more fascinated by the celebrities they've hooked and the mostly uninsightful remarks from the other crossword fans than any serious or even quasi-serious exploration of crosswords. Admittedly the celebs are mostly pretty solid with Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton being good interviewees (while the Indigo Girls really need to fade away so we don't have to put up with them any more) and the non-celebs fairly personable. Daniel Okrent, though, is the one that should have been given far more screen time. He has the most insights and the least fluff of perhaps anybody on screen. He's the one that claims musicians and accountants/number people do the best because they're trained at recognizing patterns, which whether strictly true or not does point at something ignored otherwise in Wordplay. That's the idea that solving crosswords is somehow related to intelligence. Sure it does take some smarts and at least a basic education but more important are crossword experience and such factors as this pattern recognition. At least they didn't bring up the old idea that crosswords increase vocabulary which can be easily disproven. As dubious as I am of expert opinion in documentaries this one could have used a little bit of the context they could provide about puzzle solving in general or language use or even obsessions. (My guess is Creadon & Co wanted solvers to be normalized and not freak show material.)

But that's where the lack of historical or almost any other perspective comes in. There's some mention of the NYT's first crosswords editor and how she made them popular but that's about it. Who actually invented them? Were they popular everywhere or just New York? How popular? What were some sample clues from that time? How have they changed over time? But then the film is so exclusively about the NYT that it wouldn't be surprising if the Times funded it as a promotional tool. There's also no mention made of British-style crosswords or if there are other varieties. And little about the mechanics. How are puzzles solved? Do people memorize words like Scrabble players do? What exactly makes for the different difficulty levels? What about people who can't complete them in a few minutes? What do they get out of these? These latter solvers are the ones that would make the bulk of the readership but I don't think a single one is interviewed and except for letters to the editor go mostly unrepresented. One of the best segments is actually in the DVD's deleted scenes which is a handful of puzzle creators describing specific puzzles. This is fascinating nuts-n-bolts stuff even though I'm still curious about the finish of constructing a puzzle: Anybody can do the opening but what does it take to make it really work. Another of the best sections is when we see the start of a puzzle being constructed then a montage of the various interviewees solving that same puzzle.

This leads into the worst decision in the film: the tournament. I'm sure if you asked Creadon & Co. they would say they were lucky to have such an event to tie it together but really this is a very undramatic tournament and not simply because it's not visual. There are no playoffs (anybody can enter), there's no training and it seems too reliant on luck. In other words, just not very competitive at least for people outside the event and while it's easy to feel that the winner of the Scrabble tournaments is one of the best players in the game these crossword contestants just seem like people who had the spare time to head to the tournament. But there's something American about preferring to watch horse races than thinking; after all that's how elections are now covered and even something like weekly film box office rankings when in fact there's no real competition (since only a handful of films have even a remote chance at the top spots). Wordplay ends up more or less as a first half of interesting fluff and a second half of seriously tedious tournament coverage.

Marvel's Civil War

I was going to write about Civil War next week when the last issue of Front Line appears but the whole thing ended up so silly that I couldn't wait. Because after everything that's happened, after the big ideological debates (more below), after all the bad blood, the deaths, the damage, the flagrant violation of the Constitution (looking at you there Mr. Iron Man), well let's see…. Captain America just quits. Yep, that's right, just quits. I think this can be seen two ways. Either Millar & McNiven (plus their editors) had an idea for the ending they were too clumsy to pull off or they're just too incompetent to have been allowed near a project like this. Let's just ignore the fact that Cap is a WW2 veteran and would have known perfectly well that collateral damage is inevitable. Even in that case there's no build-up (possibly going back a couple of issues) or emphasis on just how much damage (which really just looks like any other superhero rampage). Cap just screams at civilians holding him, looks up and then decides to quit. Can anybody spell "anti-climatic"? And if it was such an obvious decision then shouldn't many on his side agreed instead of, let's count, NONE of them? Oh, and then we have Reed's exposition letter to Sue (which really should send her straight to the arms of Namor) that doesn't really explain much. Did the heroes that given amnesty still have to sign up for the Act? I would guess so but that seems quite odd. After all this nothing seems quite resolved. Just what was the point of the cheesy, out-of-place Reed-Peter dialogue "Amazing"/"Spectacular"? Or the deux ex imperius appearance of Namor, which would be completely unexplained if you hadn't been following the tie-ins? How did Ben suddenly appear in just the right city block halfway around the world from where he was last seen? And why bring Clor back? Just bad writing all around. (For a funny synopsis check out Civil War in 30 Seconds at http://the-isb.blogspot.com/. There doesn't seem to be a permalink but it's for Feb 21.)

There's a saying that's more clever in its original form but goes something like: Most stories have two sides and in a melodrama one side is right but in a drama both are. The original promotions and interviews for Civil War promised the drama, that idea that both sides would be right. It would have been a tricky approach since if superheroes actually existed in any kind of real-life world there would certainly be something like the Registration Act, if not quite so heavily governmental then at least something resembling deputies or tighter legal controls. But 60+ years of superhero comics have created the opposite thinking and while it works fine for those stories if there's going to be any genuine balancing of the two approaches then there will need to be more emphasis on how reasonable registration is (whether or not this particular form). As it happened Marvel never really pursued that. By the infamous issue 4 the pro-registration side were already the bad guys. I've still never seen any decent explanation about the new Thunderbolts which still seems hideously out of character for pretty much everybody (even though Ellis' series is off to a good start on its own terms).

As it turned out this must be the first big crossover where all the really interesting stuff appeared in the tie-ins and the main series was more or less botched. Front Line has been pretty solid even if issue 10 was mostly filler. Tie-ins at New Avengers (especially the Luke Cage issue), the Spider-Man books, Black Panther, Captain America and some others have generally had the real conflict and power that Civil War itself doesn't. An exception is probably Fantastic Four which never satisfactorily explained Reed supporting registration (this is the guy who a couple of years ago invaded a foreign country, ignored all U.S. government responses and nearly started an international war). This series just felt like the writers wanted to split the Four and just did it arbitrarily, not having any good way otherwise.

Something that nobody will care about in a few years is how Marvel also really fumbled the production. Yesterday, the owner of my comics store pointed out that this had been seven issues in eleven months and by its nature delayed several other series, most notably the Spider-Man books (he said there had been nine ASM issues in the past year). In other words, Marvel's inability to keep to schedule--and this is hardly the only such book--directly impacted stores' finances. The main response from Marvel has mainly been that McNiven should be given the opportunity to keep the series consistent but really even the story would benefit from having been done on time instead of greatly drawn out.