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Wednesday, May 07, 2003 ( 5/07/2003 04:49:00 PM ) Bill S. “NATURE LAUGHS LAST” – Of the myriad comic book movies announced for this year, the one I’ve least anticipated is X-Men 2. Saw the first ‘un, of course, and while I wasn’t bored watching it, I can’t say I was totally wrapped up in it either. Sure, X-Men had beaucoup character and story to introduce – but so did the first Lord Of The Rings chapter, and that puppy moved. X1, on the other hand, just sat there, most damningly in its rote Good/Bad Mutant showdown at the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never especially been an avid X-addict: the original Lee & Kirby series was a decent start, but compared to their stint on Fantastic Four (where the team had several years to stretch the material), it never fulfilled its promise. When Chris Claremont retooled the group – adding former Hulk villain Wolverine to the mix and making the cast more multinational, I was only fitfully interested. Perhaps I was the wrong age for ‘em, but arcs like “Dark Phoenix” (Jean Grey turns into godlike baddie – a plot that’s been replicated too many times since) didn’t work for me. Too strained; too contrived. These days, Marvel’s X-books are a cottage industry by themselves. I’ve sampled a few – including Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men and the first year of the Ultimate book – but have limited working knowledge of all the presentday fannish minutia. So I had that strike going against the movie, too: part of the fun after all, with a flick like this lies in picking apart the difference ‘tween source comic and finished film. And so it was a more-than-pleasant surprise to find myself actively enjoying X2: X-Men United. Unlike the first outing, director Bryan Singer and collaborators put together an action film with a fully fleshed conflict. After squandering so much screen time in the first flick with back story, Singer just jumps into the action and assumes the audience has all memorized their X-Men DVDs (not a bad assumption to make for the opening weekend crowd, at least). So when we see the liquefied Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), we know something is fishy long before the figure gives us a conveniently revealing flash of mutant eye coloring. The film’s basic plot is straightforward. Fanatical Army guy William Stryker (Brian Cox) is out to eradicate all mutants. Using a scantly explicated brainwashing drug on captured mutants Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Kurt “Nightcrawler” Wagner (Alan Cumming), he strives to foment war between human and mutant, first by sending agile teleporter Nightcrawler on an assault against the president, then by kidnapping kindly Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and some X-kiddies from Xavier’s School for Gifted Youth. Left to fend off Mutant Apocalypse: returning grown-ups Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Jean (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry); half-formed students Rogue (Anna Paquin), Bobby “Iceman” Drake (Shawn Ashmore) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford); plus ee-vil mutant allies Magneto and the shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos). Outside of fan-fave Wolverine’s kung-fu battle against adamantium-laced peer Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), the best action sequences belong to the putative bad muties: brainwashed Nightcrawer’s bravura attack on the Oval Office, Mystique’s infiltration of Stryker’s underground lair and Darth Pyro’s tantrum pyrotechnic display against an unfortunate squad of Boston cops. (The latter comes across as especially vicious since the poor humans on the receiving end have no way to fend off the flames.) All the other major characters get their brief CGI setpieces (neatest one visually is a series of tornadoes that Storm creates to discourage a pack of pursuing fighter jets), but most of it looked pretty rote. Only time Scott “Cyclops” Summers (James Marsden) really gets to cut loose, he’s been brainwhipped into attacking his lover Jean. And then there’s poor Prof X: captured early in the pic (along with Cyclops), mentally reined by a “neural inhibitor” and victimized by Stryker’s son, a brain-controlling mutant who looks like he’s been lobotomized by Ron Popeil. Attempting to trick Xavier into activating Cerebro, the laser lightshow gizmo (am I only one who expects to hear Dark Side Of The Moon every time they turn this thing on?) that tracks both norms and mutants, the brain-swaying Stryker Jr. creates an imaginary version of the school and pretends to be a helpless li’l girl mutant. Watching this scene, I admit I momentarily got my franchises confused. Didn’t I see a bit like this in the first Star Trek: New Generation film? I thought, wondering if Whoopi Goldberg was gonna show. What I kept waiting for was a moment when our wheelchair-bound headmaster finally shrugged off these puissant attempts at mental manipulation and (figuratively) stood up for himself. Didn’t get it, though. Like the elder faculty in the Harry Potter movies, the main thing wise adults exist to do is get rescued and tidy the mess afterwards. I don’t recall the Professor X of the early comics being so consistently ineffective, but as I said I haven’t been keeping up with X-book continuity all that faithfully, so he could just be growing old. For our heroes, the biggest pleasures come in the small character moments: the Jean/Logan/Scott triangle, Rogue and Iceman struggling to hold their hormones in check, Nightcrawler explaining the iconography that’s been engraved all over his body, Mystique making a morph-filled play for Wolverine, the mutant kid who stays up all night remote controlling the teevee with the power of his mind. If much of the first flick served as a reminder that small moments were insufficient in a genre flick sans an adequate threat, the new entry shows how these same smallish bits can enhance a storyline with a decent ratio of menace. Never thought I’d write this, but Singer and co. have actually got me anticipating X3 now. . . # | ( 5/07/2003 09:45:00 AM ) Bill S. FIDDLE . . . FIDDLE . . . FIDDLE . . . – A bit of a relief to read that Pete Townshend’s child-porn charges have been dropped. But how does being placed on a national registry of sexual offenders mean you’ve been “cleared”? # | Tuesday, May 06, 2003 ( 5/06/2003 06:12:00 AM ) Bill S. IN THE PROMISED LAND – First few times we watched Manchild on BBC America, I’ll admit my wife and I did it with a certain amount of fannish scorn. This, we thought, is the show that Anthony Stewart Head’s been doing instead of steadfastly playing Rupert Giles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer? What was he thinking? The show’s advanced p.r. didn’t help matters any: a Brit male version of Sex And The City? Excuse me while I head for the study. I’ve got no use for the NY girlie version of Sex, so why would I want to see the same stuff acted out by a bunch of fortyish London guys? Watched a few entries from the first season, anyway, but outside of a few small moments, I found little reason to abandon my original stance. Becky, on the other hand, cheerfully bought the eye candy presented by Head and the show’s narrative lead, Nigel Havers (best known in this country as a handsomely privileged young Olympian in Chariots of Fire) – she’s a sucker for tweed. Manchild tells the story of four well-to-do Londoners, friends since childhood, who are struggling with the male midlife thing. Stockbroker Terry (Havers) is our guide – divorced with an adolescent son who he frequently feels in competition with – an exceedingly unreliable narrator given to pronouncements about the glories of middle-aged maleness; orthodontist James (Head) is considerably less self-assured (first season showed him struggling with penile dysfunction); art dealer Patrick (Don Warrington) is more eccentric and affected, while “deck king” Gary (Ray Burdis) is the only one of the bunch still married (to his childhood sweetheart). All of the actors are fine in their respective roles, but for me the most interesting is Burdis’ Ray, who’s both drawn and discomforted by his mates’ irresponsible lifestyle. As with HBO’s sitcom, each episode focuses on all four characters, typically tying their respective plotlines in the end through some thematic statement made by the narrator. But where Sex And The City’s Carrie brings her journalist’s eye to overviews we’re meant to take somewhat seriously, Terry’s monologues are more often self-serving shite. Self-deception is great fodder for comedy, of course. But in Manchild’s first season, at least, creator Nick Fisher seemed to be spending so much time establishing the parameters of his anti-heroes’ middle-aged foolishness that he didn’t have room for the jokes. Recently, though, BBC America has begun broadcasting the series’ second season, and either I’ve grown more attuned to the show’s rhythms or it’s gotten more comically wicked because I find myself looking forward to it now. Last night’s ep – a riff on The Odd Couple that had James temporarily moving in with Terry – was a particularly funny entry. (As eye candy bonus for my sweet wife, both Havers and Head brandished their nekkid butts dressed in nothing but an apron. Honestly, what can you do when your spouse starts shouting catcalls across the living room?) I may still harbor lingering ill will over Rupert Giles’ abandonment of Sunnydale for the rain-soaked British Isles, but I suppose Anthony Head could be doing worse. (He could, as he was before Buffy, still be playing third banana to long-haired amateur detective Jonathan Creek.) And with Buffy nearly over – and Head’s proposed limited-run Giles series apparently in limbo – it looks like Manchild is the place where I’ll be watching him. Just go easy on the ass shots, guys. . . # | Sunday, May 04, 2003 ( 5/04/2003 08:34:00 AM ) Bill S. SINGIN’ AROUND THE MAYPOLE – (If the following piece reads a bit more scattered than usual, please be assured that this was almost intentional. If nothing else, it should provide insight into the way my pop-addled brain fires. . .) Picked up a copy of Brit guitar rockers’ eponymous debut disc, The Coral (Columbia) a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been keeping it in regular rotation for the spring. The Liverpool group favors guitar sounds, mysterioso organ fills and lyrics that wouldn’t be out of place on a late sixties psychedelic platter. If sometimes the effort comes across a bit too arch (e.g., “Simon Diamond,” which sounds like something the bass player for a garage band would’ve contributed just to show girls that he, too, could compose a song), most of the disc works just fine, thanks. Even like the way the band breaks its faux reggae song, “Shadows Fall,” with a jaunty horn riff that reminds me of early Mothers of Invention. Like most new releases these days, the disc also has a pair of videos snuck onto the disc. I have mixed reactions to this practice: I play a lot of my music at the computer, running it through the p-c, and I really hate it when a disc tries to take over my computer with a lot of Macromedia screens and such. (Every once in a while, it’ll freeze my ancient computer.) The Coral’s album, thankfully, doesn’t do that. To get to the videos, you have to seek ’em out. Of the two videos proffered, the more interesting is for the exceedingly radio-friendly “Goodbye,” which has a bee-sting guitar riff like something you might’ve heard from – oh, I don’t know, the Electric Prunes, say – and a happily pointless bridge with a launch countdown and Who-ish power chords. The video places the band outside in the English countryside and keeps cutting away to a group of frolicking types in medieval garb (Oh no, this isn’t the Safety Dance, is it?) We see a girl bedecked in flowers and a white gown being led toward what turns out to be a large wicker statue of a man. As the music grows more ominous and frantic, the film geeks in the audience realize: we’re watching a video remake of The Wicker Man! The 70’s cult film is a personal favorite of mine. Written by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, Hitchcock’s Frenzy), the flick saw limited play in the U.S. at the time of its release, in part, because it was being marketed as a horror film. (Oooh! A man made of wicker: pretty frightening, but only if you’re subject to panic attacks in Pier One!*) In reality, it’s more a mystery thriller bound in the trappings of a somewhat warped theological debate. The flick concerns Scottish police sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward at his most self-righteously tight-assed), who is sent to a small island off the coast to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan. The devoutly Christian Sgt. Howie (first time we see him, he’s singing hymns in church) is taken aback by the populace of Summerisle: this agrarian community is composed of even more devout pagans, who believe that the ongoing practice of their religion is responsible for the success of their most successful export, Summerisle Apples. Much of the film’s first two-thirds are devoted to Howie’s reactions to these happily unchristian folk: exemplified by the assertively sexual innkeeper’s daughter (Britt Ekland, who does a provocative naked dance to tempt the sergeant) and the island’s Lord (Christopher Lee, playing his usual creepily majestic self). In one of the movie’s funnier moments, an appalled Howie witnesses a school lecture on the phallic meaning of the Maypool then barges into the classroom to chastise the teacher for teaching such “filth.” The titular Man turns out to be a statue that is burned, caged animals within its torso, as part of a ritual spring harvest sacrifice. The movie does not end happily for our stalwart investigator, but it also remains ambiguous about the ultimate fate of the Summerislians, too. The Wicker Man unfolds at a deliberate pace. Shaffer and director Robin Hardy are less concerned with scaring the audience than with unsettling them. Fans of more traditional horror pics are frequently disappointed with it, but if you’re willing to get into its procedural rhythms (and accept a soundtrack that is packed with traditional British folk music), the movie is engrossing. Gotta admit that the sight of Chris Lee in drag is disconcerting, though. The pic’s available in video and DVD formats. But if you’re looking for it, make sure it’s the 103 minute version (there are shorter editions available which, for instance, have Ekland’s dance snipped – and what fun is that?) This time of year, my wife and I try to watch the flick at least once: have never played it on Beltane (a.k.a. May Day), but one year we did sit down to it on Easter Sunday. There aren’t a lot of flicks out there that so clearly dramatize the conflict ‘tween Christian and Pagan – and give the edge to the latter. Wonder if that’s what drew the psychedelicized Coral (or their viddy director, at least) to the movie? *Okay, so Kirstie Alley is plenty damn scary. # | Saturday, May 03, 2003 ( 5/03/2003 03:18:00 PM ) Bill S. PUNCHLINE RUINING FACT CHECK – Actually, after I wrote the previous post, I spent most of the afternoon in the backyard picking up broken branches and mowing the lawn. # | ( 5/03/2003 01:07:00 PM ) Bill S. FREEBIE FEST – It’s windbreaker weather on this year’s Free Comic Book Day, but I’ve foolishly left my jacket at home. I’ve gotten out of the house earlier than usual this Saturday to make it to the opening of Acme Comics – hopefully, to beat the crowds, since the event has received front page play in our local newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph. The comics shop is one of two situated across the street from each other in downtown Normal, IL. (talk about an embarrassment of riches!) but it’s the only one that has chosen to play up the event. As I pass the store, sharking for a parking space on cramped Beaufort Street, I see that they’ve moved the store’s trade paperback racks out into the sidewalk. The better to make room for the freebie hunters. When I hit the store, it’s five minutes after opening – and Jim and company are still frantically pulling piles of comics out to display on a table, apologizing to the line of parents, kids and unshaven fan types about the delay. Nice to see a decent-sized crowd, I think. Last year, Acme was stuffing extra copies of the Ultimate Spider-Man #1 reprint into customers’ bags for weeks after the fact. I get in line behind a father and his pre-school boy; the former asks a store worker what among the display is appropriate for the child, while the latter is bedazzled by the bounty of garish covers all around him. Recommended freebies: Donald Duck Adventures, Batman Adventures and Courtney Crumrin – though Kochalka’s Peanut Butter and Jeremy is inexplicably skipped. Staff also point out a Transformers comic, but apparently the kid isn’t into giant robots. What character does the boy really go for? Flash! he happily announces, which makes sense to me. What full-of-beans kid doesn’t at least partially relate to the Fastest Man Alive? When I reach the table, I decide to just take titles I haven’t read already, skipping Marvel’s reprint of Ultimate X-Men and Oni’s Courtney Crumrin (which I've already reviewed in its trade paperback incarnation). Wind up with something like thirteen books, anyway, though I don’t hold out much hope for some of ‘em. (The cover to Future Comics’ Metallix, for instance, is just plain ugly!) Still, the Alternative and Slave Labor samplers look promising, and I’m curious as to whether there are any similarities between Oni’s Skinwalkers and the Tony Hillerman novel of the same name. Also spend some money, of course. (I can’t go into a bookstore of any type without opening the wallet.) Using my regular shopper’s discount, I buy a copy of the X-Force hardcover, which reprints Peter Milligan & Mike Allred’s full run on the title up to the point it changed to X-Statix. I’ve read about half these stories already, but on this X-Men weekend it seems apt to fill out the full run of the only X-title I’m regularly reading. Besides, buying the book eases the irrational guilt I’m feeling about grabbing all those freebie titles. Drop my booty into the car and sally across the street to see how competitor Metropolis Comics is doing. The shop is considerably less packed and for good reason. It doesn’t even have a sign advertising Free Comic Book Day in its window, and when I go inside to purchase a copy of Image’s Jack Staff (unaccountably missing from Acme’s stock), the clerk just offers me a free comic from a box of store overstocks. As a shop, Metropolis has always seemed more marginal than Acme, even within the loose entrepreneurial yardstick of comic book merchandising. Where the latter is brightly lit and typically filled with customers, the former is more, well, subterranean. I look through the clerk's offerings, grab a copy of an “Elseworlds” Batman book by Mike Mignola (t’would appear to be a Lovecraft pastiche). Only when I get home do I notice that the book is second of a three-part mini-series. Aargh, burned again! I arrive back from my excursion about an hour after I left. It’s eleven o’clock, and I’ve got the rest of a brisk, gorgeous, sunshiny spring day ahead of me. Think I’ll stay inside and read some comics. # | Friday, May 02, 2003 ( 5/02/2003 06:20:00 AM ) Bill S. THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE COMIC – A few more books that didn’t vanish from my short-term memory right after I finished reading ‘em: Batman #614 (DC): See where Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee’s Disney ride through the Gotham Universe is topping the pre-orders, but to date I can’t see what the fuss is about. Only spiffy thing that scripter Loeb has done to date is to introduce a Previously Unseen Figure From Bruce Wayne’s Past, convince us that he’s the hidden villain behind the goings-on, then kill him off mid-story. Gotta admit that fan art fave Jim Lee is not to my particular tastes: he takes the sculpted body thing to a level that leeches his figures of personality, but unlike a Rich Corben, you never get the sense he’s getting any kicks out of doing so. Biggest misdemeanor: after Cooke & Allred’s provocative redesign of Selina Kyle, Lee (and inker Scott Williams) manage to drain all the kinky sexiness out of her, making the character look like a muscular Amelia Earhart, not a slinky reformed cat burglar.Other books briefly noted: Namor #1 (Aquafan Tegan nails this ‘un, which gives us a nekkid young boy Namor who appears on an American beach in the 1920’s – and not a single period prude pops up to say anything about it!); Marvel: The End #4 (found myself wondering how Neilalien took this installment, which briefly kills off then revives Doc Strange and the rest of the Defenders) and Amazing Spider-Man #52 (anybody else struck by the similarities between this and Bruce Jones’ recent Captain America mini-series? Have Marvel’s writers been passing 'round a DVD of Casino or something?) More when I’ve got enough to comment about. # | Thursday, May 01, 2003 ( 5/01/2003 10:39:00 AM ) Bill S. AN APOLOGY – The management wishes to offer its sincere apologies for the threatening tagline and gratuitous use of the f-word that appeared in the previous posting. Clearly, the author is an impressionable type who should not be exposed to the corrupting influence of bands like the Cramps. We currently have him on a strict regimen of Enya CDs for the rest of the week. Again, we apologize to anyone who may’ve been offended by today’s review. (We see that Bill has also posted this same piece on the Blogcritics site. But since they’re all a bunch of foul-mouthed gits over there, fuck ‘em!) # | ( 5/01/2003 08:36:00 AM ) Bill S. PAGING DR. F. – The back cover to the Cramps’ newest foray into psychobilly dementia, Fiends of Dope Island (Vengeance), tells the tale. Our heroes are posing and glowering menacingly at the viewer, all blackened eyes and bad-ass retro costumes, gold drapery behind ‘em like something out of David Lynch’s lavatory. It’s the same background the group used for 1986's A Date With Elvis, which makes perfect sense since it’s pretty much the same album, anyway. Hell, the Cramps have been reworking the same record ever since their first long-player, Songs The Lord Taught Us, debuted in 1980. Those of us who love the band’s brand of psychotronic psilliness won’t complain: it’d be like beefing because Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead all have the same basic plot. “So what?” the answer goes, “it’s what I wanna see/hear!” Cramps fans know what to expect by now: revamped Link Wray instrumentals and record junkie obscurities, Ivy Rorscach’s ear-scraping gee-tar fuzztones, Lux Interior’s inbred tone-free Saturday afternoon horrorshow vocals (he growls as much as he sings), lyrics emanating from some late-nite drive-in speaker of your mind, echo chamber production. It’s all part of the show, and if some of these elements have since been overplayed by scores of wannabe Rob Zombies, the Cramps arrived there first – and they did it with purer elements: deranged rockabilly (Jerry Reed’s “Oowee Baby” gets the patented Cramps treatment here) and Pebbly garage punk (“Hang Up”), all-but-forgotten crudities closer to the roots of real rock out-there-ness than any punk or metal band could’ve imagined. “I want to stay out of trouble, but trouble is too much fun,” Lux snarls on “Dopefiend Boogie,” mere moments before he denies contemplating stealing your stereo. Elsewhere, he’s calling on “Dr. Fucker M.D.” (helpfully parenthesized, “Medical Deviant,” in tribute to a cheesy Italian cannibal flick) for two weeks worth of pills, hiccoughing psychotically and announcing that he’s “Elvis Fucking Christ,” dedicating a crude electric blues cut to John Agar, and admiring some sweetie out of a Russ Meyer exploit-flick by proclaiming that “She’s Got Balls.” All the while Poison Ivy keeps on strummin' them junk guitar riffs, proffering feedback and engaging in the best sustained psychedelic freak-out (“Wrong Way Ticket”) since her advantageously inept work on the band’s premiere single, “Surfing Bird.” The Cramps are primarily the Lux & Ivy Show, though the strength of their albums has also waxed and waned with their shifting rhythm section. Without strong bass-&-drums, this swampy play-acting can grow plenty sludgy, but happily, that isn’t the case with this outing. Returning drummer Harry Drumbini and bassist Chopper Franklin ground the album and keep it from oozing too deeply into the googoo muck. “You can go to Devry Beauty School or get a job,” our rockin’ anti-savior sez. “Or you might join a devil cult o’ some evil heart throb like me. . .” In these benighted days of molded American Idols, of forced piety and patriotism, the Cramps’ brand of z-pic sleaziness and keep-it-simple r-‘n’-r throbbery are just what Doctor Fucker ordered. . . (Yeah, I know that closer was predictable – you wanna make something of it, bub!?!) # | |
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