I'm not a huge horror movie person, admittedly, but I've been interested in seeing this one since I saw a short trailer for it last month. I'll freely admit that the idea of Martin Scorsese tackling a psychological thriller/haunted asylum story is intriguing, and I'm a sucker for period pieces, so sign me up, I'll give it a whirl. Then today when I was perusing my usual blogs on my lunch break, I happened across a piece of trivia I wasn't aware of: the screenwriter for it is a woman, Laeta Kalogridis. Okay, vaguely interesting, but I've never heard of her so I have no opinion one way or the other, really. Except that I am familiar with some of her work without even realizing it. It turns out that she worked with James Cameron for something like eight years on the script for Avatar, only she doesn't have a credit for it in the movie. Okay, I still haven't seen it, but from everything I've heard, even from people who liked it, that the script itself is no great shakes, it's the visuals and experience that make the movie worth watching. So hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but it's just one movie, and I don't know how much she had to do with the end result, right?
Turns out she also wrote Oliver Stone's epic, Alexander, too. I didn't see all of it, but I did catch part of it on TV when I visited Greece a few years back and despite it being the only thing on in English, I kept changing the channel because watching talk shows in Greek was more entertaining. But hey, maybe I didn't give it a fair shot, and it's not like the script is the be-all end-all of the end result of a movie, right?
So she also executively produced the TV shows Birds of Prey and the reboot of The Bionic Woman. I didn't watch the second, but I have yet to come across someone who did and liked it, and I tried so hard to like Birds of Prey when it was on, I really did. It just... wasn't good. Not even so bad it was entertaining, it was poorly handled on just about every level save for a few of the casting decisions. But hey, maybe she's a better writer than a producer.
She also worked on the Tomb Raider movie and Scream 3 in some unspecified capacity. Now, I will admit that I do own a copy of the Tomb Raider movie, but I also freely admit it's not a good movie. It's one of those guilty pleasure movies that everyone has where you love it against all better judgment and you're not able to explain why. Scream 3 I saw and I remember being bitterly disappointed in nearly all the way through.
According to IMDB, she also wrote the screenplay for Night Watch (the Russian movie, not the Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte movie from a while back), and Pathfinder (based on a Norwegian movie, this one is about a Viking boy left behind after his clan fights with a Native American tribe and later on becomes their savior in fending off more Vikings-- sounds vaguely familiar...), neither of which I've seen so I can't say anything about them. They might be good, I have no clue, but I have to say, so far I'm not impressed with her resume. I'm still going to see Shutter Island and hope it's better than the other movies she's written have been on average, but still, yikes.
Okay, so the blogosphere is probably alight with people yammering on about the Oscar noms from this morning, and while I certainly have my opinions (as my previous post makes no secret of), the fact is, I've hardly seen any of the movies up for the major awards this year. Some of it is due to a lack of enough interest, some is due to a lack of money, and some is due to a lack of time and/or availability (there's only one movie theater left where I live and their selection can be very skimpy when it comes to independent movies and certain subjects-- let's just say they didn't carry Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and likely will not carry A Single Man). To be fair, I still haven't seen any of the nominees for Best Picture from last year either, despite a Netflix subscription and two movie rental places at my disposal.
Getting back on topic, so while I can run around screaming that I want so-and-so to win such-and-such for whatever reason, the fact is, I've only seen Inglourious Basterds and Up for the Best Picture category, and Julie & Julia for the actresses and actors' awards. I feel a bit underqualified to be talking about these categories as a result. Instead, I'm going to be talking about my favorite category anyway, and the one from which I've seen the most nominees: the Best Animated Feature category.
First off, I have to eat my words from the other day: Up is indeed nominated for Best Picture. I am thrilled to see a second animated film make it to that category finally (the only other one was Beauty and the Beast in 1991), and I think it deserves to be there as much as anything else this year. So a big tip of my hat to the Academy for recognizing that it's not only a good animated movie but a good movie, period. Having said that, it won't win. I'm pretty sure Avatar's going to be taking that prize (why that isn't listed in the Animated Feature category is a little beyond me, but you can't win them all, I guess), and if it doesn't, one of the other live-action ones will. But it's okay, because it's also nominated for Best Animated Feature. (Has that ever happened before? I know the animation category is pretty new, and all, but I'm not sure I've seen even the Golden Globes double-book one movie for two different Best Feature awards like that.) So Up will win Best Animated feature, no real shocker there, and it is deserving. What's both frustrating and gratifying is that there are actually five movies in this category this year, and several of them are very good in their own right and I'd love to see them win, too. It's great to see more worthy contenders here at last, and there's even a diversity of media, too! In fact, I think for the first time ever, Up is the only CGI movie nominated, with two stop-motion films (Coraline and The Fantastic Mister Fox) and two traditional films (The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells), making for a nice display of the variety and diversity that animation can offer as a medium. I will say I'm surprised Miyazaki's Ponyo didn't make the cut. Seems like there could have been room for it somewhere in there.
While I know what movie will likely win, I'd still like to give my impressions of the other nominees, too, because I think they're very deserving of attention as well. Each one is unique and imaginative and skillfully made.
Clearly the frontrunner to take this one, since Pixar nearly always wins and it's also up for Best Feature. It totally deserves every award, ticket sale, and word of praise it's received. It's a lighthearted adventure, a nostalgic story, a tearjerker, a comedy, and a buddy movie all at once, and yet it never feels constrained by any of those categories, either. It literally is all of them at the same time, never moving jerkily from one idea to the next, and it's all wrapped up in this warm-heartedness that permeates every aspect of it. It manages to convey a lifetime in ten minutes and have it mean something to the people watching it, so we understand Carl's attachment to things like a mailbox and a painted wooden bird. The lesson he learns is one that the audience learns with him, instead of watching from a superior vantage point, already knowing the answer and just waiting for him to get there. It's a lesson a lot of us have a hard time accepting, and maybe afterward still don't want to accept. It challenges us there without ever feeling like it's condescending to us. Someone remarked that it felt more like a Miyazaki movie than any other Pixar movie had managed to do so far, and I agree there. That envelopment in a sense of nostalgia and sentiment that never seem cloying, that ability to literally create a world from nothing that still feels like it has life in it, the gentleness and the heartfelt desire to really create something of quality and emotion and meaning is all there, as it is in every Miyazaki film I've seen. I may complain about Pixar winning this category every year, but it's only because I think they deserve either better competition here, or to be competing for Best Picture. They deserve it.
I've blogged about this one before, but time hasn't lessened how much I like this movie. Henry Selick has a way of capturing an atmosphere and almost indefinable charm that I find lacking in a lot of other stop-motion (Wallace and Gromit being a big exception), and he really deserves a lot more recognition than he gets. Most people still think Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it gets tiresome correcting them all the time. Of course, I'm also partial to this movie because it's based on a book by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors since I was sixteen. Some things were changed for the film (like the existence of a major supporting character), but it's part of the process of adaptation from one medium to another, and I thought it was very well-handled and done with a lot of respect to the source material. One of the most distinguishing aspects of Selick's design style that I'm very fond of is little physical irregularities, like a mouth being lopsided. It makes the characters more interesting to look at without being distracting, and it adds a quirky charm to everything that I really love. I also love that he wasn't afraid to keep it creepy. My favorite movies when I was a kid were the ones with creepy or even outright scary moments in them, like The Dark Crystal (which I think I've seen in English once, since the only friend of mine who had it in my childhood had it taped off TV from Costa Rica-- I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I loved it anyway), The Neverending Story, and Return to Oz, which also features some of my favorite pieces of claymation animation. (Honorable mention goes to The Adventures of Mark Twain-- even though I didn't see it until I was much older, parts of it unnerved the hell out of me and it probably would have fit right in on that list.) I was personally glad to see a return to the kids movie with some teeth, since it always gave me the impression as a kid that something really was at stake in these stories, and what these characters were doing mattered. It made the triumph at the end mean more because they had something very threateningly real to overcome. That's very much the case with this movie, and I have to give a lot of credit to Terri Hatcher for her performance as both Coraline's mother and the Other Mother-- such subtle things she did with her voice that gave the animators a lot of room to get the acting just right to hit that balance of honey-sweet overlaying something terrible. I also love that all the women in this movie have a witchiness about them-- real witch, not "w-to-rhyme-with-b" witch. There are so many subtle touches in it, and I'm a sucker for detail, and I felt it was a wonderful adaptation of an equally wonderful children's book. Growing up, this one would have been an absolute favorite for me, the adventure/coming of age story I'd always wanted without having to superimpose myself on a boy to get it.
Okay, I have to admit, this is the only one in this category I haven't watched yet. I wasn't sure what to think of it judging from the one or two very short promos I ever saw for it, but I did hear from friends that it was a lot better than they'd been expecting, and was even downright good. It never came anywhere close to me, but it'll be on my Netflix queue as soon as it's available. On a side note, I really wish George Clooney would do more voicework, he's got what they call "a voice with character" in spades, and he has a great range of emotive capabilities to draw from. I think the medium would suit him nicely.
The Princess and the Frog (Pretty long, since I never got around to writing an actual review for it before.)
Disney finally returns to the media that launched the mega-conglomerate in the first place. I could not believe the short-sighted stupidity at play when they closed down their traditional animation studios after 2004's Home on the Range. I was ecstatic when I heard they were (finally!) reopening them after the merger with Pixar and Lasseter finally brought a little common sense back to the creative decisions. (Really, assuming that tepid ticket sales on the traditional animation movies with the booming sales for Pixar movies meant that traditional animation was dead as an art form is asinine-- evidently no one paused to consider that it was the stories that were lackluster, not the medium itself.) The directors in charge for this movie were Ron Clements and John Musker, the directing team behind The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet, which I felt was a pretty wise choice, as well as a symbolic one, given that Mermaid kicked off Disney's '90s renaissance and saved it from going under. The end result was pretty fine, a return to the traditional fairy tale stories that the company is known for, with some really beautiful animation (almost show-off beautiful in places) and the sort of charming, plucky, independent heroine that Ron n' John love to showcase. Bonus feature that the prince was also charismatic, charming, and cocky (an actual personality, something lacking in Mermaid's prince-- or most of Disney's classics, for that matter), and they both felt like a lot of work had gone into their development as individual characters, not just their designs. You could tell that they really wanted to get this one right, and in a lot of ways they did. The beginning was wonderful, the villain was incredible, the animation was absolutely lovely (and in places spooky), and it featured Jim Cummings doing his wonderful Cajun accent, which I'd only heard once before in a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie.
I loved that the heroine wanted a career, and I love that she didn't have to choose between it and her romance-- even if the romance part was incredibly rushed and sort of came out of nowhere and smacked me upside the head with its randomness 2/3 of the way through the movie. That really was the biggest beef I had with this one, was I did not buy the suddenness of the romance at all. It jerked me completely out of the movie and I found thoughts like "really? you've known her for a day!" to be very distracting for much of this part. I would have been totally fine if they'd implied more of a passing of time at the end, or if they hadn't set up such a constrained time limit for the action to take place in initially, or if there was some attempt to show that they had spent more than a day together before falling in love. But it was literally a day. And this wasn't one of the love at first sight relationships, either, it was one they were clearly supposed to grow into, so that just made it even more jarring.
The middle in general is a problem, since it seems to dissolve into random comedic relief elements for the sake of waking the kids up and filling space until the end. There's also a character here who seems to serve no real point to the story whatsoever (aside from padding things out and giving the leads something to do for the middle part) and while I get that she was supposed to be the representation of the "proper" form of voodoo in contrast to the villain's misuse of it for personal gain, I felt like giving her a gospel song and lots of Christian church imagery sort of undermined that idea. Oh, and there are some issues with astronomy at one or two points (the Evening Star is the planet Venus, not an actual star, for instance, and there's something that happens later on that sort of made my head explode a little) but it wasn't anything so major that I lost any sleep over it.
It does come back together at the end again, and there's a really wonderful dynamic between Tiana and the female supporting character whose name I have forgotten (but who may have been my favorite character next to the villain just because she was hilarious), as well as the prince, once we get past that really awkward phase in the middle and I was able to pretend they'd had more time to get to know each other. And yeah, there are subtle mentions of racism, and a contrast drawn between the means Tiana's family lives in and the means her friend, the rich, white debutante lives in. It's subtle enough to keep any nagging feelings of guilt at bay, and some things may be unrealistic for the time frame this is set in, but it doesn't try to sweep these problems under the rug, either. So, in summary, yeah, the movie has some flaws, but honestly, they didn't keep me from enjoying myself a great deal, and overall I was pretty pleased with it as a return to good ol' hand-drawn animation. It's probably the most flawed of the films in this category, but I think it does still deserve to be in here, and it's worth seeing.
I'm probably one of the very few people on this side of the Atlantic to have been able to see this one yet, and I was both very surprised and very happy to see it nominated. First-off, it's really, really beautiful. Astonishingly beautiful. Very reminiscent of a little-known masterpiece of traditional animation called The Thief and the Cobbler, by animation legend Richard Williams. It's done in that same 2 1/2-dimension style that's reminiscent of medieval art, and it draws inspiration from the Book of Kells and traditional Celtic artwork as well. There's a mix of magic and faeries and the old nature-worshipping religions of the British Isles and the Christian religion that was trying to stake its claim there as well. I never felt like it was disrespectful of either one and seemed to be leaning more towards the idea of mutual cohabitation and respect, which I always appreciate. There are definitely ideas under the surface here, and it never felt like it was pandering exclusively to a young crowd, nor did it feel like it was trying to exclude them. There are also interesting changes in perspective, between the way a young Brendan sees the events happening around him, and the way the adults do, and there's a wonderful sense of trust on the part of the filmmakers to allow audience members of all ages to consider both without pandering to either. There are some tense moments, and a few that I was really shocked to see in a film with such a fun and colorful design. There are more of those creepy/scary moments towards the end that I would have been afraid of but secretly loved as a kid, and again, it serves to add some real weight to the story and create a sense that something important is at stake. It's a stunningly beautiful film that probes some ideas that most kids movies don't like to, and there is a surprising intensity to some of the later scenes that not all kids are going to be comfortable with. But I like that the filmmakers took some risks, and I'm really happy to see it get recognized. I hope that means we get a DVD release soon.
Well, that's it for that category. I have to say, I'm really pleased with the diversity and quality of the selections this year, and I really, really hope it's a trend that continues.
I don't really get that into the Oscars. They tend to be awarded based on which nominee attends the right parties and schmoozes the right way, or which idea/cause is most popular at the time, rather than which one is truly the most deserving. I have to say, it is rare to find a nominee that's undeserving of recognition or praise, but the actual winners do tend to be based around political (and by this I mean Hollywood politics, not politics-politics) decisions instead of technical merits. So I don't tend to pay attention much unless a movie I particularly like is up for something major.
But that isn't to say they don't matter. To the average moviegoer, they don't really, people will see what they want to see regardless of awards. But to the people making films in Hollywood they do matter because not only does it bring them recognition and a certain status amongst viewers, but it opens doors to projects they might not be considered for otherwise. An Oscar win to executives can mean a certain bankability because suddenly people know who this person is and are more likely to be interested in a film from a familiar name. To the winner, it means a certain level of prestige, but more than that, it means being taken seriously. Of course, it adds pressure, because then they have to deliver something on par with something that successful or they risk being labeled a fluke, or even worse a hack with a lucky win. But you still get your name and your movie branded with the Oscar-Winner seal forever, and that's more than most people get.
But given that that's pretty much a constant, why do I actually care this year when I don't most of the time? No, it's not because Up might be be nominated for Best Picture (razzaflabbin' Best Animated Feature category... I learned my lesson after Ratatouille and Persepolis got their conciliatory nominations there in '07 instead of being able to contend for the "more serious" category-- and really, it does get a little boring when Pixar wins it every freaking year; not that they don't deserve to win it, but geez, they may as well just start calling it the Pixar Award), it's because a woman is going to be nominated for Best Director for only the fourth time ever. And she has a serious shot at being the first one to win it.
Out of 82 years and approximately 410 Best Director nominations, Katheryn Bigelow will be the fourth woman nominee, behind Lina Wertmuller in 1976, Jane Campion in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003 (none of whom won, I might add). This weekend, she won the Director's Guild of America award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film, and the DGA is an almost flawless match with the Academy Award for Best Director (according to what I've been reading, there have only been six deviations from DGA winners and Oscar winners). She is the first woman to win that award, too, and now she's the front-runner for the Oscar.
Now, to be fair, I haven't seen her film, The Hurt Locker yet. I hear it's very good, and I've been seeing snippets about critics lauding her very highly for her work, and her topping many of their lists for best director of the year. I haven't heard anyone saying that she's only getting attention because she's a woman, or that she didn't deserve to win the DGA just as much as anyone else that was up for it. In fact the only reservations about this I hear are from a few people who wish the film that got the possible first woman winner nominated was a "woman's" film instead of a "guy's" film (The Hurt Locker is about soldiers in the Iraq War-- an action/suspense movie). While I understand that sentiment and agree with it to a certain extent, 2009 was a phenomenal year for women-fueled movies, with Julie & Julia at $94.1 million, It's Complicated at $100 million, The Proposal at $164 million, The Blind Side at $235 million, and New Moon at $293 million, and all of them hitting in the last half of the year. Say what you will about any of them as films, the fact is, they were geared for women, starred women (two of them starring the same woman, who is over forty to boot), and three of them were even directed by women. New Moon's numbers were something like 90% female viewers (note: not fact-checked, am basing this on memory which is often faulty with numbers), making that even more astounding (most Hollywood blockbusters are split around 60% male and 40% female audiences, so even with "guy" films, women make up a significant portion of ticket sales). Normally a movie like that making that kind of money will be chalked up to a fluke by studio execs, who from what I've been given to understand by people in the know, like Nia Vardalos (writer and star of My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding) writing an article stating that during a movie pitch she was asked to switch the female lead to a man because "women don't go to movies", and based on the levels of contempt, vitriol, and venom that arose when NPR's Linda Holmes posted an open letter to Pixar asking why they hadn't yet made a film starring a female lead (which I blogged about early on here). This year, of all years, is the one that is making people notice because women are proving the execs wrong and proving that they do go to movies.
So I don't care if Bigelow directed an action thriller and that's considered a "guy" movie because there is plenty of proof that female-driven, made, and geared films are profitable and desired by women who want to see themselves reflected on the screen as much as the guys do. Bigelow did the job, she directed a really good movie from all accounts, and she deserves the award as much as anyone else up there. So yeah, I want her to win it. I want her to win it bad because it's one less glass ceiling in the world, because it's 2010 and women make up 51% of the population and it's about time, because I want that message to resonate with all those girls out there who might have talked themselves out of a directing career because it's so hard to be successful, because I want it to resonate with the studio execs, because I want it to resonate with everyone who considers the efforts, ambitions, dreams, thoughts, feelings, and lives of women as less important or meaningful than that of men, and I want it for me. I'm headed to film school in a few short years and yeah, I'd like to direct someday, and I'd for damn sure like to be taken seriously enough to be given the chance to succeed or fail at it on my own merits, not on the basis of my gender. An Oscar win won't magically make that happen, but it's a step forward, and that's what I care about.
I've never seen a film from director Mira Nair all the way through before, but if they're anything like this one, I'll add them to the list. There's a warmth and a tenderness to this movie that permeated every frame, and it captures the feeling of being slightly out of step with the world surrounding you. In that respect, it's similar to Persepolis, which I reviewed last year, and I suspect it's a very familiar story to immigrants and ex-patriots living anywhere in the world. Not only the first-generation immigrants, but the struggle of their children, often caught with one foot in one culture and one foot in another, frustrated that they are part of both and yet not wholly belonging to one. It's also a very skillful portrayal of two generations of a family, exploring the course of their lives in such a way that both are sympathetic even in their different perspectives. One of the people I viewed it with compared it to Zhang Yimou's To Live, and I think it's a fair comparison; though the family there didn't deal with relocating to a totally foreign culture, the film did explore the course of their lives during the major upheavals going on in China in the mid-twentieth century. It's in the exploration of the human characters that the films both plant themselves and through which the audience is allowed to explore something that they might never experience personally, but is still mostly universally understood.
The trailer for this movie is rather misleading. I saw it sometime last year and was expecting something very different, and I'm honestly glad for that. I love it when I can watch a movie and not be able to predict where it's going. There were instances where I did, and there were cinematic tip-offs about them, but they're pretty minor and they didn't detract from the experience of watching it. But really, overall, I think my biggest pet peeve about the film is its trailer (which isn't the film's fault, but the marketing department).
The impression I had was of a young interracial couple embarking on a journey to India to connect with the man's heritage and in the process discover things about his parents' lives from before he was born. That is not what the movie's about at all. It's much less trite and contrived than that, it's a much more personal story, and it doesn't indulge in the surface-level exotifying of the culture that the trailer seems like it might. At its core, it's about a family living their lives, stuck between two cultures, and in particular about the eldest son coming to terms with his identity as part of both. I think that Gogol (Kal Penn) is a central character, certainly, but I don't think he's the very center of the film. I felt like the parents, Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) were both equally as important and equally weighted. We see their lives first, get to know them a bit before they know each other, and then watch them grow into a loving couple, and then into loving parents. We understand the choices they make, we understand them as people first, and we never lose that insight even as the focus switches to their children. I found myself able to empathize, sympathize, and understand where both the parents and the kids were coming from, even as they clashed, and it was a wonderful thing to be able to see. The kind of perspective the film offers is one I appreciate more as I get older and marvel at how narrow and self-centered my focus was when I was a teenager and young adult. I think part of me is grateful when I see that in films because it reassures me that I wasn't the only one going through the same thing.
There are so many wonderful things to say about this film. I love that it doesn't vilify either culture-- Ashoke and Ashima come to America for opportunities for their kids, not because they're fleeing some terrible injustice in India; their son Gogol's WASPish college girlfriend is a nice, intelligent person with loving parents who cares for him, but just doesn't understand his family's culture enough to be there for him in the way he needs; his wife later wasn't a bad person, she just wanted something different than he did and they weren't a good match; Ashima's feelings of isolation aren't because of specific cruelty or insensitivity of Americans, but because she doesn't feel completely at home in the culture and misses India; Gogol's high school classmates tease him about his name, but he does have friends who stand up for him as well. There's no "bad guy" here, just the gentle friction of people trying to find their place in a society that isn't quite made for them, and their own ways of dealing with it. It's a very thoughtful movie, a carefully and even lovingly crafted movie with particularly warm and nuanced performances by Khan and Tabu, and absolutely beautifully shot. Penn does a fine job with his role, and it's a nice dramatic turn for him after the success of the Harold and Kumar movies, but it's Khan and Tabu whose performances shine here and drive the heartbeat of the film.
It's based on a novel with the same title by Jhumpa Lahiri, and I'll most likely end up reading it just to be able to spend more time with the characters. I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in Indian culture, or in beautiful film, or to anyone who has ever been part of a family.
Okay that wasn't even remotely clever, but I have a deficit of talent for naming things.
So probably no one who reads this knows that one of the first webcomics I ever read regularly, Dar!, ended recently. Not in a sad way, the author was just ready to move on, which is the proper time to end things as far as I'm concerned. But it got me to thinking about how many comics I used to buy and read every week from my local comic book store, how I haven't read any of them in years, and how many webcomics I still read and enjoy. So, in light of the fact that I should probably be doing something else with my time tonight, I'm going to give a brief rundown of my favorite online comics.
Dar! , by Erika Moen. Erika and I have been vaguely aware of each other online for probably close to a decade now, I think, which is probably why I've been as aware of her comic as I have been for so long. It's just an autobiographical comic about her everyday life, starting with her as a sophomore in college and ending with her life as of December 2009. It's pretty frank most of the time, which I admire, since a lot of people feel the need to 'pretty' themselves up for autobiographical work, but Erika seems to revel in her warts. It's often NSFW (that's Not Safe For Work, in case anyone doesn't know), and spends some time traveling down some dark corners as Erika goes through the upheavals of depression, wrestling with her sexual identity, finding love, breaking up, graduating, working, finding love again, wrestling with her sexual identity again, and the general ordeals of life. That makes it sound less funny than it was, and it was funny. Most of the NSFW content comes from the humor, with loads of "dick and fart jokes", as Erika puts it. And yet, it's even more interesting because she's so candid about her sex life and her bodily functions. It never felt like she was trying to shove it in anyone's face to make herself feel edgy, it's just how she shared what she found interesting or entertaining from her life.
Girl Genius written by Kaja and Phil Foglio, and drawn by Phil Foglio. I was aware of Phil Foglio's art long before I knew about this strip, since I spent a great deal of my adolescence reading Robert Asprin's "Myth" book series, some of which he illustrated. His style is very distinct and it might take some people-- more used to regular comics or manga-- a little while to adjust to it, but I think it's well worth the time investing in it. The series has been running for a number of years now, so there's a lot of story to catch up on, but it tends to go pretty fast once you get started. It's a gaslamp adventure series centering on a young woman named Agatha with a mysterious locket that gets stolen early on in the story. This seems to be a very bad thing, not because it held precious memories for her or was of particular monetary value, but because it seems that there is something inside Agatha that the locket repressed that may or may not be good to unleash. As the webpage touts, it's full of action, adventure, romance, and mad science, and it is chock full of all of them. But in a good way. It's a really fun series if you like gaslamp, or slowly unraveling mysteries, or fun inventions, some irreverent humor, large casts of characters, complex political schemes, and some good, old-fashioned Victorian melodrama. It's a lot of fun to watch Agatha go from a timid, unsure young woman into a strong, confident, take-charge young woman over the course of the story. And I love seeing the almost fugue states of creativity the Sparks (geniuses) in the story go into when they're really getting into their work. I've had days where I can relate to that feeling. (This also just won a Hugo award the the last year, which is pretty cool.)
Platinum Grit, written by Danny Murphy and Trudy Cooper, drawn by Trudy Cooper. It's hard to describe what this comic is about beyond the characters. There is a plot in the form of a slowly unraveling supernatural mystery involving a Scottish castle (relocated to Australia-- I think. it might be in Scotland) and some sort of family curse. The one whose family is cursed is one Jeremy MacConner, a talented physicist who's hopeless at talking to girls or having many friends. His cousin, Dugan, seems to be an homage to the Highlander series, as he's immortal, violent, and rather a bit of a prick towards poor Jeremy. Early on he and Jeremy duel for inheritance of the family castle, and has since randomly popped up in Jeremy's nightmares, but nothing else so far. Aside from nearly being killed by homicidal family members, Jeremy spends his time being abducted by aliens, being abused by his friend Nils, reading books on physics, being comatose, being assaulted by supernatural forces, and generally trying to stay alive. He also likes playing with his pet pig, Arthur.
Jeremy's friend Nils is the second in the trio of main characters, and she seems to spend most of her time either teasing him mercilessly (abusing him emotionally, more like), having one-night stands with random guys she meets out, being rather wacky and outrageous, and sometimes extremely drunk. Of course Jeremy has a crush on her, despite all the abuse she heaps on him, because she's just the sort of girl who can get away with doing that and he's the sort of guy who'll take it. She doesn't seem to be phased by any of the weird things that happen in Jeremy's life, she just takes them in stride and tends to get violent and weird right back at them.
Enter Kate. I'll be honest, I didn't really get into the story until she showed up in the sixth book. Of anyone in the story, she's the one I identify with most, and the anchor of sense and reason in a group of loopy characters and unusual happenings. Kate's a journalist, cynical, chainsmoking, sarcastic, witty, and a former roommate of Nils's. She picks Jeremy up on a roadtrip (he was left naked on the side of the road by Nils) and in the process gets dragged into his crazy world. She seems to have developed a bit of a thing for Jeremy and hates the way Nils treats him, though her issues with her go back much further than that, as the two have a prickly relationship from the get-go. She doesn't deal well with the weirdness and tries to ignore or rationalize it at first, which leads to several tantrums and a lot of tension on her part, but she keeps coming back to it because she just can't walk away.
It's fun to watch Cooper's art style evolve over the years and I have to say, she's really fantastic with not only drawing what's happening, but in setting a mood and pacing a story just right. Her 'acting' with the characters is great and they each have their own, very distinct personalities visually. And the mystery of what's happening with Jeremy's family is even more compelling because of the mortal peril he finds himself in so often. No one knows why it's happening or how to stop it, and neither do we, but we're so engaged with the characters that we really want the guy to be okay. Plus it's funny.
The Order of the Stick, by Rich Burlew. I haven't done a lot of tabletop gaming, just one stint several years ago as an attempt at bonding with friend who did it. I thought it was fun, for the most part, though I don't pine for it. But even without that brief exposure, I'd probably still find this comic funny. It's another long-running webcomic, but the art itself doesn't really evolve, since the characters have all had the exact same design since the first strip, save for their clothes. But it's interesting to see how the storyline and characters' personalities have evolved from being pretty simple into increasingly complex without becoming overly so. It's a spoof of/homage to tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, and it's less like the characters are occasionally self-aware (making references to saving throws and hitpoints) so much as they are the creations of someone playing the game and getting wrapped up in their character but still being aware that they're rolling the dice to see what happens. Or maybe the characters are self-aware, I'm not entirely sure, but it's beside the point. It makes me laugh, it's a fun adventure, and I love all the characters.
Shrub Monkeys, by Katie Shanahan. Sort of like Dar!, this is a (mostly) autobiographical comic, but it's primarily silly humor. Katie, or K.T., as she refers to herself, is an animator in Toronto and creates these strips with the aid of her younger brother "Shagster" and sister Hes. It's mostly humorous strips about KT's struggle with school and later work, hanging out with her siblings, roommate, or boyfriend, and basic, everyday life. Just punched up a bit with exaggeration, extremely silly faces, and a slightly warped sense of humor. She's another one whose work has steadily evolved over the years, and her background in animation is clearly beneficial to her layouts. Fun stuff in this one, I love seeing when she's posted a new one.
Hark, a Vagrant, by Kate Beaton. I'm fairly new to this, but I love odd, dry humor, and this has it in spades. I also love irony and satire. I need to start reading it more regularly.
I think that's about it, off the top of my head. Anyone else out there have webcomics to recommend? I'm always looking for ways to procrastinate.
(I wrote a big mash-up of my thoughts after seeing Sherlock Holmes last weekend, but I realized as I was finishing it up that I didn't want to post it anymore. So now you get the lazy post.)
From Dictionary.com:
"--noun sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence."
So this would be things like 'if you put your hand on a hot stove, it'll get burned' or 'don't run with scissors'. It implies a comprehension of cause and effect based on life experience. A normal adult would be expected to know these things, however children are often (repeatedly) told not to do them because they haven't fully grasped the idea of "effect" yet. These examples of common sense are ones that hopefully become adopted as children grow older and gain things like empathy and the ability to anticipate. 'Cause nobody wants to have to tell their 40-year-old brother to quit jumping on their new couch in his muddy hiking cleats.
There is another meaning to the term that most online dictionaries don't have (and it therefore falls into the arena of this blog-- popular culture), and it involves truth in contrast to commonly held beliefs. If you break down the term, "common" implies something that is widespread, ordinary, or shared by a group of people, and "sense". In other words, it's often used to describe an idea that is commonly held to be true amongst a certain group of people, regardless of the actual truth or validity of it. For example, the prevalence of what's called "scientific racism" in the United States prior to World War II-- the use of so-called scientific theory to explain why certain races were intrinsically superior to others and therefore deserved dominance over them. Here's an old illustration from Harper's Weekly "demonstrating" the supposed similarities between the Irish and the African races, and their contrast with the Anglo race. The caption is difficult to read, but the basic gist of it is that the Irish were descended from African people who had migrated up to Europe through Spain and eventually arrived in Ireland where they bred with indigenous people there-- who were "low types", descended from the "savages from the Stone Age"-- and were subsequently isolated from the rest of the world, no longer part of the process of natural selection, and therefore inherently inferior to the anglo race from the rest of Europe. It seriously says "made way for superior races" in the last line.
Now, clearly this has no bearing whatsoever in scientific fact (I love that the author evidently believes that there are races that didn't descend from the stone ages), and is an excuse to justify the "common sense" that Africans and the Irish were naturally inferior beings to white Europeans (who weren't Irish). Implicit in this is the "common sense" that Africans are inferior-- that didn't even need to be explained in the text, the author assuming the readers would already understand that as a fact. I have seen other illustrations that supposedly demonstrate how much closer Africans are to apes than other races are, but it's the same basic concept as this one focusing on the Irish. It's the presentation of speculation in an attempt to justify a personal belief based in the common sense of the time (that darker races were naturally inferior to lighter and non-Irish ones) with little to no basis in scientific evidence. (In fact, many scientists today believe that race is a social construct, not a scientifically quantifiable category.)
So to summarize, common sense can be a good, useful thing (don't try to talk while drinking a glass of water), but it can also stand in the way of critical thinking. If people in the past had adhered strictly to common sense ideas, those us us living today wouldn't know about plate tectonics, the age of the Earth, evolution, psychology, chemistry, physics, and countless other advances in our understanding of nature.
Well, another year and another decade have come and gone. I thought about trying to come up with some sort of nostalgic look back across one of them before 2010 came, but there were so many other blogs out there that said all I'd have to say and more. I don't have a good grasp of my walk through this decade anyway, it's like trying to remember every move you made in the middle of a drunken, off-the-cuff dance-- you know you were doing things, and maybe a few of them stand out, but in retrospect it was just this chaotic mess that somehow got you to where you are now. The best you can do is look back at it and be amazed at how far you managed to come.
So many people have done great retrospectives (check some of those links at the right hand of the page for a few), that I feel I don't have anything to add to them. So instead, on the first day of the new year, I'm going to look ahead to what I'm looking forward to. I have no idea what's coming down the pipe for me this year, but I do have expectations in a general sense.
1) Things will change. Change is constant and inevitable, and much as I dislike it at times, I don't think it's a good or bad thing in and of itself. It is what it is, and I'm the one who makes meaning out of it. The best way to get through it is not to fight it, but adapt to it.
2) I will be exposed to new ideas. These ideas are likely not new in the general sense so much as they are new to me. Or maybe they will be very old ideas that I've forgotten, or will see in a new way. Some I will like, some I will not. But they're all a valuable part in my learning to grow beyond the state I'm in now.
3) I will look back on the ideas I had and the things I've said now with a slight sense of embarrassment. At least I hope I will. If I've got everything figured out now, I've got some very boring decades ahead of me. I just hope I remember that even then, I won't have it all figured out either, and I hope that I'll have learned to be a little kinder to my younger self than I am now.
4) I will watch a lot of movies. Hopefully I will like some of them. I really hope that I love at least a few of them.
5) I hope that I will continue to meet people who challenge me, who inspire me, and who connect with me in some way. I also hope I can hang on to the people who put up with my quirks, my ego, and my insecurities. I feel like I'm in a very different place than I ever have been in my life, and in some ways it's exhilarating, and in other ways it's lonely.
And so this post has some relevance to the topic of this blog (and I feel less like a sappy blowhard), here are some trailers for movies I'm looking forward to, for various reasons.
I'm not a huge horror movie person, admittedly, but I've been interested in seeing this one since I saw a short trailer for it last month. I'll freely admit that the idea of Martin Scorsese tackling a psychological thriller/haunted asylum story is intriguing, and I'm a sucker for period pieces, so sign me up, I'll give it a whirl. Then today when I was perusing my usual blogs on my lunch break, I happened across a piece of trivia I wasn't aware of: the screenwriter for it is a woman, Laeta Kalogridis. Okay, vaguely interesting, but I've never heard of her so I have no opinion one way or the other, really. Except that I am familiar with some of her work without even realizing it. It turns out that she worked with James Cameron for something like eight years on the script for Avatar, only she doesn't have a credit for it in the movie. Okay, I still haven't seen it, but from everything I've heard, even from people who liked it, that the script itself is no great shakes, it's the visuals and experience that make the movie worth watching. So hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but it's just one movie, and I don't know how much she had to do with the end result, right?
