Good news, everyone! I've taught the toaster to feel love!

Also, Merlin series 2 will be hitting the BBC sometime this September. Which means that NBC and CTV should pick it up sometime next June. But, you know, you guys could air it by January, if you really wanted to (nudge, nudge).

Huzzah!

Reading Rainbow, 1983-2009

I'm not sure how long it'll take to process the idea that Reading Rainbow is officially off the air because no one will fund it anymore. Granted, I haven't watched that show in earnest since, I don't know, 1993, and haven't even caught it while channel surfing since, um, 2008 (hey, if you just happened to turn on PBS while LeVar Burton was having a storytelling adventure, don't try to pretend you wouldn't just happen to leave the TV on too). Getting the axe now makes this show only one year older than I am, and I'm quite attached to it. It's Reading freakin' Rainbow! How can it not be on the air forever and ever until LeVar Burton passes from old age and no one dare fill his hallowed shoes, like with Mr. Rogers or Mr. Dressup?

The rationale reported in the NPR article is that PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc., are finding they have to focus on funding shows which teach kids the technical process of how to read; that we no longer have the luxury of funding a show that teaches kids how to read in the Dead Poets Society sense. I can't cognitively grasp the idea that so many kids are apparently not learning the mechanics of reading in, you know, school, that 26 years of teaching kids why to read and how to love it has to be tossed aside like a bag of mouldy tangerines.

I'm speaking as an outsider here, because I never had a problem with literacy, I don't have a kid to teach, and I'm not a social scientist or think-tank researcher. My mom says I started reading off the page when I was 3, and my childhood is rife with memories of being told to put down that book and not read at the table, at the social gathering, at the...you get the drift. I know very well that there are a lot of terrible, completely ineffective teachers blighting the educational landscape who have screwed up countless lives and couldn't find literacy (or other subjects) with a hunting dog and a Ouija board. But where did I get that snappy line about hunting dogs and Ouija boards? Not from a book, my friends! From Babylon 5 ! Ergo, TV plays a critical role in teaching children insufferably witty, self-satisfied language skills! I think I've proven my point.

Seriously, though. How did such a huge country get so dependent on public TV as a source of basic primary education that the Powers That Be need to ditch Reading Rainbow just because it's not hooked on phonics?

Dark City

Dark City, an oft-mentioned sci-fi film by writer/director Alex Proyas (The Crow), is an odd creation that I am shocked to discover was made in 1998. With an overall sense of amateurishness and coloured by that undefinable but distinctly '80's sci-fi film style and appearance, I just assumed it was made shortly after Blade Runner by someone who thought that film was really cool and wanted to make their own noir dystopian flick but didn't actually understand why Blade Runner worked.

It's unfortunate, because at its core is an interesting story no one else has really explored on film: the idea that an alien hive mind not only knows it's a hive mind, but is deliberately trying to split itself in order to better its chances of survival. Unfortunately, Dark City buries that core deep under unsuccessful attempts at mystery. Appearing to have intentions (as its name suggests) of being a film noir, it opens with a man awakening in a hotel room accompanied by no memory, a dead body, and a pre-war New York aesthetic. He gets right down to searching for clues as to his identity, but of course is being pursued by both police and aliens who call themselves The Seekers and who can bend time and space. The problem is, the story wastes all its potential mystery and tension by not building a story to speak of, instead offering up boatloads of reveals too early and too often to make sense or have impact. Also bogged down by ridiculous villains, random nonsense (why do aliens who can kill with their minds pick knife fights? How did aliens allergic to both sunlight and water manage to harvest Earth in the first place? And other such intrigues.), and visuals that do nothing to support the story and seem to be entirely based on the idea that a films atmosphere can be created by setting alone, Dark City is a textbook case of what could have been.

Dark City would be worth watching if it were made when it looks like it was made, an earnest experiment in the early days of that sci-fi film style; as it is, it just comes across as something with either a misused sense of nostalgia or a refusal to learn and grow off of what came before. If you're hankering for something dark, mysterious, and sci-fi with a disturbing but coherent story that takes place in a stunning Art Deco city, go play BioShock.

Random Discovery: Sayonara

I actually saw the last five minutes of Sayonara (1957) back when we had a fantastic channel called Silver Screen Classics as our free cable preview. When I saw it at the library, I figured I'd get around to watching the rest.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by the man who wrote the similarly-themed Tales from the South Pacific, and directed by the same man who adapted that story into film, Sayonara opens during the Korean War with an exhausted flying ace being grounded and reassigned to Kobe for hazy reasons that mostly involve facilitating his marriage to a general's daughter. The son of a general himself, and a highly decorated officer, Lloyd (Marlon Brando) is a catch his fiancee Eileen's mother doesn't want to let slip away. When Eileen surprises him in Kobe, Lloyd is tired, depressed, restless from being grounded, and unafraid to admit that he'll marry her, but he isn't exactly crazy about her. Eileen isn't crazy enough about him to marry him under those conditions, and the two begin a distant, awkward dance as neither is decisive enough to blow off their engagement so hastily.

Also reassigned to Kobe for equally hazy reasons is one of the airmen in Lloyd's squadron, Joe Kelly (Red Buttons). Joe is thrilled about going to Kobe, because then he'll be with the woman of his dreams: a shy and gentle Japanese national named Katsumi. Stationed in Korea, with most troops taking leaves in Tokyo, despite the Japanese having been the enemy just six years earlier a lot of U.S. soldiers are finding love in ol' Edo. The army is not happy about it, doing everything in its power to prevent these matches. Lloyd is asked to try talking Joe out of marrying Katsumi, but is unsuccessful, and defying his country, his army, his friends, deadly stacks of paperwork, and the knowledge that Japanese nationals are denied entry to the U.S., Joe and Katsumi wed under the sullen eye of an embassy clerk...with Lloyd as their best man. Lloyd doesn't approve of the marriage, but as Joe's former commanding officer feels an obligation to honour the man's request. With Joe being his only real connection in Kobe, and having little else to do, Lloyd begins accepting regular invitations to Joe and Katsumi's home, and in the process begins learning that there are some very pleasant aspects to the new Mrs. Kelly's country and culture.

He also begins learning this outside the Kelly home by going to the theater. Slowly developing an appreciation for kabuki and dance revues, he quickly develops an appreciation for the star dancer of the Matsubayashi troupe, the stunning and mysterious Hana-ogi. When Lloyd finally scores a meeting with Hana-ogi under the guise of dinner at the Kelly's, he learns that she hates Americans because her family died during U.S. bombings. Gently reminding her that he lost a lot of friends to the Japanese during the war, Lloyd's pursuit of Hana-ogi begins in earnest. With Lloyd facing condemnation from the military and Hana-ogi facing condemnation from her countrymen, who don't approve of marrying Americans any more than the Americans approve of marrying Japanese, Lloyd remains stubborn and shameless as he tries to coax Hana-ogi out of her reticence. However, things start to unravel on all ends when an order making fraternization with Japanese women a court-martial offense comes on the heels of Joe (and thousands of other airmen in his situation) being ordered back to the States, where the army hopes they'll forget about the wives they can't enter the country with.

Consisting mostly of static dialogue and demonstrations of Japanese culture, Sayonara is a film that's more important than it is good. It's hard to watch even when nothing bad is happening on-screen, because Brando suffuses the whole film with Lloyd's restlessness and frustration over being removed from his squadron, and so the whole thing takes on a very uncomfortable atmosphere. However, Brando is always a treat to watch, and the earnest, quiet contentment Red Buttons brings to his character keeps the film breathing. For her gentle, mostly Japanese-speaking or silent performance, the actress who played Katsumi was awarded a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. There's a lot of solid acting in this film. There are also many interesting aspects to the story, aside from the racial integration plot. For one thing, Katsumi is not a woman for the audience to fall for, an exotic, classical beauty for whose love any man would put aside race like Hana-ogi is. She's quite plain, almost boyish, and Joe is head-over-heels crazy about her. In the context of era, I think this may be the single most important way in which the film conveys its message. Joe doesn't love Katsumi because she's exotic and sexy, though to him Katsumi is always the most beautiful women in the room. Joe loves Katsumi because she's a delightful, loving, loveable soul, and their story is captivating. Another interesting plot point is the demonstration that finding dishonour in marrying someone from a particular country goes both ways, and on top of that, Hana-ogi has a good reason why her marrying anybody would be dishonourable.

There are some pretty strong negative opinions of Sayonara floating around on the Web, mostly interpreting it as a cautionary tale about how headstrong women (like Eileen) lose their men, who only want docile women (like Katsumi) who slavishly cater to their every whim, as demonstrated by Joe and Katsumi's "shallow" relationship - to which, were I not so long-winded, my response would be "...what?" There's a point to which I can understand that analysis, as Joe and Katsumi are shown to fall in love and marry before either of them can speak a word of the other's language, which can easily seem unwise or based on lust. However, marriage in that context is also a logical conclusion to the idea that a person is defined by their actions, a popular concept touted on most any program on U.S. or Canadian network in which interpersonal relations are a factor, and a regular feature in Western cinema spanning such diverse fare as District 9, The Rock, Get Carter, Unforgiven, The Iron Giant, Iron Man, Heat, Hellboy, Spider-Man, and any romantic comedy or Disney film you can name (are you trying to name one that doesn't apply? You must have some time on your hands). As well, the idea that the marriage in question is shallow and baseless is subtly but decisively countered in the film, as we're shown Joe and Katsumi's relationship continuing to grow and thrive after they gain verbal communication. And calling the marriage shallow based on the way it ends, as many do, would necessitate applying the same criticism to most if not all of Shakespeare's tragedies while also ignoring what a common conclusion it is in Japanese storytelling. Mostly, though, I think to view Sayonara as a cautionary anti-feminist tale is to miss its message of understanding cultural differences, as servant actions are an integral part of the Japanese tradition and not limited to female roles. This is briefly demonstrated in the film in the scene where Lloyd learns how to serve and drink sake. In the context of this particular story, condemning a cornerstone of Japanese culture as backward or misogynistic seems rather ironic, though I suppose interpreting Katsumi's servience as an anti-feminst fantasy isn't suprising considering how many of the sacrificial servant themes of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai were stripped for its beloved American redux, The Magnificent Seven. Does that make service a literally foreign concept?

Sayonara is kind of a boring film, but it is an interesting story. And there are some weird and telling things about the atmosphere in which it was made that add to the interest, like how Audrey Hepburn was the first choice to play Hana-ogi (she refused, saying it was a great script but it would be ridiculous to try passing her off as Japanese), or how the only male Japanese character in the film is played by everyone's favourite late, great Mexican, Ricardo Montalban (is it an indication of foreign women being considered exotic and sexy but foreign men being a threat, or was the role first offered to a non-Japanese actor, who in this case accepted it?). Should you come across it, it's a pretty good diversion for when you're doing something boring that doesn't let you look at the TV, like the dishes; a revealing slice of the recent past.

District 9 (Is The Cat's Pyjamas)

Hey! Guess what! I actually saw a movie less than five years old!

I'd been looking forward to Neill Blomkamp's feature-film debut, a sci-fi that lives up to the overused terms "gritty" and "visceral", since the first trailers came out. For one thing, a sci-fi film not re-making or based on something famous or cult-famous is kind of a novelty these days; for another thing, I'll admit that while I'll always love Star Trek and Babylon 5, I prefer my sci-fi hard and, um, "gritty".

On absolutely no level did District 9 disappoint. I'd even go so far as to say it was worth the $30 (two tickets and bus fare) that it cost my husband and I to go see it in the theatre.

Set in present-day Johannesburg, District 9 seamlessly combines conventional film style with faux-documentary footage to put a genuinely fresh face on the fugitive's story. In the early 80's, after three months of silent waiting, the South African government decided to board a giant alien spacecraft hovering over Johannesburg, and found a legitimate humanitarian (?) crisis - heaps of weak, sick, starving aliens amidst heaps of alien corpses, and removed the lot of them into a refugee camp that quickly degenerated into a slum. The citizens of a freshly post-apartheid Joburg found themselves forced to deal with a truly alien populace while still not really having solved less complicated things like race or tribe relations. The government found themselves with a political and military dream, a refugee population whose treatment only a few fringe NGOs cared about and who brought with them a substantial weapons arsenal. Unfortunately, Prawn (as the people have named them) technology is bioengineered, meaning in theory that only a being with Prawn DNA can use a Prawn weapon. But that hasn't stopped the humans from trying to figure away around that.

Enter Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a goofy, sensitive field agent for Multi-National United, a para-governmental/military body (a fusion of the ATF, INS, and FBI, kind of) created for the purpose of dealing with the Prawns and dissecting their technology. In spite of MNU's vigilant population control, the Prawns have increased in number, and the local are done putting up with these creepy, smelly, wierd, resource-consuming refugees so close to the city limits. The film opens as a documentary on Wikus' big day: he's been appointed to head up the eviction and relocation of the Prawns to a new tent camp two hundred miles away from the city. One of the refugees turns out to have a shack full of contraband technology, and when Wikus accidentally takes a facefull of strange liquid, he starts to sicken and soon one of his arms doesn't match the other - in other words, he begins mutating into a Prawn himself. In MNU's eyes, he's not a sick man but an invaluable resource packed with the DNA that will finally allow them use of Prawn weaponry, and the order is given to harvest him in a manner resulting in his death. Wikus manages to escape, but pursued by MNU agents, physically transformed into an object of hatred, and faced not only with arrest warrants splashed across every TV but accompanied by the propaganda that his mutation is the result of having sex with aliens, this desperate, terrified man has nowhere to go but District 9. He logically assumes MNU won't look for him there, and also that since Prawn technology has begun mutating him, surely the Prawns will know how to restore him. Fortunately, there is a Prawn (known as "Christoper") who can help him, the one whose shack full of contraband landed Wikus in this mess in the first place. Unfortunately, there's always a "but"...

This is a serious film. It's dark, it's strong, it's visceral, and when it's gory, it's gory. It's also one of the best films I've seen of any genre, and left me happy for hours, high on that glee that comes from being exposed to excellence. For starters, the story never stops making sense. When Wikus and Christopher hatch and execute a plan to raid MNU headquarters for a key piece of technology, it makes sense, because although like most field agents Wikus spends most of his time at a desk doing paperwork, field agents in his kind of field should all be trained how to raid a building - and on a much smaller scale, we see him do it twenty minutes earlier while serving eviction notices. In other words, his slow transformation into a Prawn isn't accompanied by a sudden, out of character transformation into a badass. He's a beauraucrat, sure, but Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell do away with the caricature of the beaureaucrat-as-idiot, instead portraying the paradox of the "other side" of being a special agent. A lot of reviews for District 9 describe Wikus as becoming sympathetic to the Prawn's plight due to his transformation; I can't say I saw that at all. Over the sixty-odd hours of realtime the film chronicles, Wikus is a desperate, terrified man, and it is that desperation and terror that drive him. He doesn't develop a new concern for the Prawn's problems, he's understandably consumed with his own, and in his desperation is willing to screw the one Prawn who can help him in order to end his nightmare. Wikus is a blessed anomaly of an action movie protagonist. He's a happy and sensitive goofball with a shy smile, merry eyes, and a habit of making little arts-and-crafts presents for his wife who also oppresses, murders, and displaces refugees in a similarly guileless fashion, as it's just a job that keeps everything running smoothly - and anyways, they're not even human. Far from being a wallflower nerd, he's outgoing and incredibly confident, the pros and cons of which the story brings into play. He's a beaureaucrat, aware and fond of regulations, and as befits someone in his position he is intelligent and resourceful. However, he's not uncommonly intelligent, and as his father-in-law ominously foreshadows, "he's never been very strong" - and that's not a reference to how much Wikus can bench-press. Without giving too much away, let's just say he doesn't produce a sudden act of redeeming heroism in the final reel. Not an evil man, but driven by desperation and terror - and, in that final reel, guilt and pragmatism - he is neither hero nor anti-hero. He's a character instead of a caricature, and so his actions are worth exploring as hypothetical "what would I..." questions in ways that those of the Final Reel Hero aren't.

In interviews prior to District 9's release, director Neill Blomkamp - who grew up in post-apartheid Johannesburg, but moved to Vancouver in his late teens and has his first official IMDB credit for CG animation on Stargate: SG-1 - stated that he had no intention of making an apartheid film, that District 9 should not be read as such, and that the setting is simply where he grew up. As an artist, I can say that the single hardest thing for an artist to accomplish, the thing most of us strive for, is to lay down a specific intent for a project, make it, and then hear people indepentently identify your work as having that intent. Blomkamp succeeded in making the film he wanted to make - connecting District 9 to an apartheid allegory would require imagination well beyond my limits. Instead, the social subtexts present in the film are current and unpopular ones: the plight of unwanted refugees, abortion, the eating of people for their powers. There's a running subplot in District 9 wherein a Nigerian shaman and warlord are constantly after Prawns because they believe that if they eat certain body parts, they will gain the ability to use Prawn technology. I don't know how serious a problem this is in Nigeria in particular, but it is a long-standing real-life issue in many African countries, and one that's not a popular concern for Western activists because since shamanism - i.e. cultural religion - comes into play, there's this warped idea that it would be culturally insensitive to rally against the practice (or racist to even suggest that shamanism is still practiced, period). The National Post's Vanessa Farquarhson demonstrated this in her review of the film, writing how this seemed "offensive" in a film about "respecting different species, cultures, and ethnicities." Unfortunately, in the same day's Post, the back page of the A section was almost entirely devoted to an article about how albinos in Tanzania are being abducted, dismembered, and murdered because many Tanzanians believe that eating albino parts will grant them special powers. Also, I really didn't read District 9 as having much to do with tolerance. It's a great story with many facets and subtexts, but it's not about racism or insensitivity. While racism and the existence of refugees are usually connected, they're still two very different problems, and if it's necessary to view District 9 through the lens of social commentary, the plight of (unwanted) refugees would be its primary message. But at its core, it's just a fantastic, sufficiently deep, gripping story about a desperate man on the run who's willing to do a lot in order to get his life back.

It also provides some great fictional food for thought. What were the Prawns doing so far from home in the first place (Christopher infers it takes at least a year of realtime to travel between Earth and his planet)? You don't go on sightseeing trips with hundreds of thousands of your countrymen and a huge weapons arsenal. Why are Christopher and one friend the only Prawns who seem to know how to repair their technology and fly their vessels? Is the rest of the flight/command crew dead? Did the other Prawns kill them, and is that why Christopher and his friend have kept their rebuilding of the command module from the rest of their people? And then there are the questions of the end of the film regarding what promises Christopher will keep, and what he'll do next. Because what's said and shown in the film is logical and satisfying, these questions are interesting daydreams to bandy about over a slice of pie rather than frustrating gaps in the story.

Of course, fantastic production, etcetera, etcetera. It looks great, and it's fantastic to see a new director with a background and formal training in CG animation know the limits of that medium. Produced and funded by Peter Jackson - thank you very much, sir - , District 9 is perhaps the smallest, cheapest film visually supported by the fine men and women of WETA Workshops who, though having an excellent CG department, are best-known for their models, miniatures, matte paintings, weapons, armor, and other "tangible" special effects. These disciplines combined produced things like the only alien I've seen that looked so terrified and dismayed, I actually felt its terror and dismay - that made aliens characters instead of aliens. On less than a third of the minimum budget projected for the Halo film Universal understandably denied a director with no proven return on that kind of investment, District 9 is one of the most visually satisfying, realistically engaging sci-fi flicks I know of. I mentioned early on that it has its fair share of gore - but this is an instance in which the term "its fair share" is truly applicable. There's nothing over-the-top or out of place, and it contains the only non-exploitative dismemberment I've ever seen on film. The decapitation and dismemberment of an important antagonist used as a regular, logical cause of death, filmed in the frame's background, and not for shock value? Neill Blomkamp, you amaze me.

Floating around the 'net is a short film Blomkamp made to show Universal what his Halo would look like. It's an impressive demonstration, and with District 9 garnering not only critical acclaim (nice, but not essential) but a strong box office (absolutely essential), I doubt I'm the only one who would be shocked if Halo is made with anyone else at the helm. And after seeing District 9, a film about aliens in Johannesburg that doesn't talk about apartheid and isn't over the top with the stuff it does talk about, I'd trust Blomkamp to make a Halo that wouldn't be stupid about the trilogy's religious zealot story. A mature filmmaker and proven artist making a movie of a great game that actually has a story to back it up?

BRING IT!

(And also go see District 9.)

I Am Squeegee Man! Do You Sense Its Power???

I prefer to think of "B-list" actors as "working actors". They're the guys you recognize because they spend so much time in front of the screen, be it large or small, and they're able to spend so much time there because they can't command A-list salaries. And because working actors are constantly, um, working, they have a lot of practical opportunities to hone their craft...and wind up turning out more consistently enjoyable and varied performances than some A-listers I could name. When the B-list gets together en masse, you know you're in for a quality time.

My favourite comedy to date is the Marx Brothers Duck Soup. Seated shortly below it, hovering somewhere in an amorphous blob with UHF, The Wrong Guy, The Big Lebowski, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz and The Court Jester is one that may make you say, "I've never heard of it": Mystery Men.

Based on a middling-popular Dark Horse comic series, made before comic-book movies were cool, and boasting a cast that reads like a B-list almanac, Mystery Men doesn't sound like a recipe for success. Judging by how few people I know who've seen it, it wasn't. A spot-on parody of the superhero genre, Mystery Men follows a trio of B-list, part-time superheroes as they fight mostly for the right to be considered legitimate superheroes. Champion City already has a resident superhero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear, spoofing Batman), and he keeps the streets clean by himself. When the streets get too clean, CA's popularity and product-placement revenue start to dwindle, and he organizes the release of his asylum-bound arch-nemesis so that things can get exciting again. Unfortunately, after seventeen years in the nut house, Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) is ready for him, and it's up to Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller, before he was famous), The Shoveler (William H. Macy), and The Blue Rajah (Hank Azaria) to free the Captain from Casanova's clutches. As The Blue Rajah bitterly observes, there are never any evil trios (they're all about the travelling gangs), so to even the playing field the gang starts recruiting. Winding up with The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), The Spleen (Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Ruebens), The Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell, the only unfamiliar face in this crown), and being taken under the leadership wing of the terribly mysterious Sphinx (Wes Studi), bonding, mis-flipped toggles, and general hilarity ensue as they plan and enact a series of assaults on Casanova's castle.

I would go so far as to call this film brilliant. Almost every line of dialogue is quotable on its own merits, the production looks like a comic book (always a nice touch), and did I mention that the cast also includes Eddie Izzard as one of the leaders of Casanova's main gang, The Disco Boys? This film works because the cast rises to the occasion of earnestness, embracing their characters, delivering their lines in straightforward manners, and quietly reveling in all the ridiculousness that can be mined from the world of superhero comics. Few films boast such solid acting and direction whilst simultaneously providing a laugh a minute (lllliterally). I've watched this one upwards of ten times since it first came out - the dialogue makes it a great thing to have on in the background whilst cleaning or doing homework or something else tedious that prevents you from looking up at the screen too often but doesn't take a lot of mental effort.

I also may finally read the source comic, if the library has it, because I'm curious to see if the social commentaries hinted at in Mystery Men (the film) are more pronounced in Mystery Men (the comic). The core trio - The Shoveler, The Blue Rajah, and Mr. Furious - represent particular social archetypes: respectively, the blue-collar family man, the older guy who lives with his mom, and the late twentysomething (or early thirtysomething) loser with a dead-end job and little else. For something more blunt, the Invisible Boy is under the "care" of a father who can't concern himself to acknowledge the kid's existence. And it may be more than coincidence that The Disco Boys just happen to have two leaders, one white and one black, in charge of a gang that bases itself on a style and genre inseparable from the decade when race relations in American really started to take off. So I wonder...

Not to say you should watch Mystery Men with the mindset of something serious. But watch it you should - it's stupendously good for a laugh.

Let's Make A Deal

Near the end of his life, master storyteller Will Eisner (The Spirit) wrote a graphic novel called A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories that is very famous in the right circles. And I have absolutely no idea what to make of it.

I'm starting to notice a trend in books written by great authors shortly before their deaths (not including those who died young or suddenly), namely, that they're...strange. Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune, for example, or Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Like A Contract With God, these books are more heavily weighted towards saying something than they are towards telling stories, but what they have to say is cryptic to me. I like speaking with old people, and especially hearing sermons from people who are close to dying of old age, because they're usually very interesting. Important, too, with the weight of so many years behind their words and lessons.

But these books...in particular the Eisner one since I just read it yesterday...there's a trend here, but a trend of what, I have no idea. I should perhaps keep it in the back of my mind to read this stuff when I'm in my twilight years - maybe then I'll understand.

John Constantine, Hellblazer

With comics so easily accessible at no cost, why not read 'em all? Adapted into a decent Keanu Reeves film a few years back, Garth Ennis' John Constantine, Hellblazer: Rake at the Gates of Hell is a standard-setting volume. The final act of the Constantine story, it boasts incredible layout and perhaps the best use of the comic medium that I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's also shockingly immature, uncessarily vulgar, unremittingly oppressive, and its plot can be summarized as, "life's a bitch and then you die, unless of course some random homo ex machina* kills Satan and cures your lung cancer in the last panel." Sometimes stories read out of sequence make me thirst for the rest of the tale (case in point, Hellboy); Hellblazer is not one of those. Boring, I can handle. Stupid, I can handle. Boring and stupid? I may be unemployed, but I've still got better things to do. Watch the movie, for example.



*Don't get your vapors all fluttered, this isn't some weird slur against homosexuals, it's just a joke riffing off deus ex machina. In Latin, which this is, homo means "human", or "man". You're thinking of the Greek homo, which is the one that means "same", and it's kind of ironic if you think about it that that particular word has been co-opted to only have one understood sense or meaning.

Because some things must not be kept to oneself...

...but their media connections are tenuous at best.

To deliberately misquote the NRA nut from UHF: Coincidence is for wimps and Communists.

It's Howdy-Hellboy Time

When it comes to the importance of books, in the popular consciousness comic books hover somewhere between Harlequin romances and novels based on video games. Sure, if you turn them into a graphic novel, then they matter - do you ever wonder how literary culture would would regard Alan Moores' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Tim Sales and Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween, both of which begun as regular comic issues, if they weren't later published in graphic novel form? And, of course, some graphic novels are genuine graphic novels, intended to be such from the beginning, and those are also regarded popularly as a respectable form of literature. But what happens when a story arc spans a collection of diverse short stories, many of which are stand-alone, thus making graphic novelization impossible...but you bind them into book format anyway?

Well, for one thing, you get the "library volumes" of Mike Mignola's landmark series Hellboy, a book which taught me for the first time in twenty years of reading what people mean when they speak of books as mystical objects; how they were encouraged to read after becoming entranced by a book's physical qualities. Looking (and weighing) like the love child of an encyclopaedia and an atlas, Hellboy Volume 2 is a stunning thing, a black-bound creature with no dust jacket and a cover bearing only its title, byline, and a small matted illustration from a fan favourite story contained within. It's so heavy it makes me grunt when I pick it up. With gorgeous glossy pages too thick to flip idly, the sort you feel guilty about leaving fingerprints on...well, there are books, like the dinky little paperbacks I buy because they're cheap and easy to read on the bus, and then there are books. Hellboy Volume 2 is the latter.

And the good news is, it's not just pretty on the outside. Having spawned one spin-off that I know of, a small army of tributes (Mike Mignola lets other writers/artists publish Hellboy stories), and two solid films by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), Hellboy as drawn by Mignola is famous for a groundbreaking art style that relies heavily on clean lines and black. As written by Mignola - I stress this because I have not been impressed with the Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D., which he doesn't write, or the tribute volume I've read - it's also a great, thoughtful story about nature, choice, predestination, and a guy who more or less defines the phrase "loveable curmudgeon".

Opening its story during the Second World War, Hellboy is the story of a little red fellow with horns and a giant right fist who falls into Allied hands after entering Earth courtesy of a supernatural Nazi experiment gone awry. Taken under charge of the U.S. Bureau of Paranormal Research and Investigation (B.P.R.D.) and adopted by one of its agents, Hellboy grows up far quicker than the average boy and is soon engaged as a field agent himself. Hellboy is based on the short story format, and those short stories are in turn based on existing Old World folk stories both famous and obscure (but mostly obscure). It does, however, have several overarching story arcs, the most prominent being that of who - and what - its main character is. The dictionary definition of laid-back, Hellboy spends somewhere between twenty and thirty years unconcerned and uninterested in why, for example, he was born in Hell and has a gigantic and very powerful right fist that doesn't match his left, as he dispatches supernatural evil on behalf of the B.P.R.D. in a very "all in a day's work" way. In that same manner, he loves his adopted father fiercely, is protective of his friends and colleagues at the B.P.R.D., and has a large soft spot for Howdy-Doody (hey, he grew up in the late '40's) and cats. Wry without being hip, an oddly likeable mix of difficult child and grumpy old man, Hellboy is a great character to build a series around. It's Mike Mignola's treatment of Hellboy's nature, however - and the supernatural in general - that makes the story a far better read than your average demon-based comic, spin-offs and tributes included.

As a general rule, the difference between high-quality, mature supernatural fantasy and crappy, immature supernatural fantasy hinges on the respect the author has for his subject matter. People who write this stuff with a low belief in or respect of the supernatural can still turn out a quality product, but one that's also invariably stupid (Joss Whedon's Angel is a good example of this). One big thing that sets Mignola's Hellboy apart from other comics with the word "Hell" in the title, for example Garth Ennis' John Constantine, Hellblazer, is the fact that Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. get along and work in conjuction with the Church. Hellboy has genuine friends and mentors among the priesthood, and his lady friend Liz, also a B.P.R.D. agent with supernatural powers, is a nun in her spare time. Even better than this is that, as far as the Hellboy I've read, Mignola doesn't make the Church a "good guy" character by twisting it into a popular, politically correct something it's not - it's one of the Good Guys on its own merits.

Hellboy may be a put-off to many readers on the basis of its name alone. Well, as they say in showbiz, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it. At its core, Hellboy is the story of a fallen creature born that way who deliberately works on a daily basis to reject his nature and become something better. It's a redemption story, but a strange one as Hellboy turns out to be the literal son of Satan, his real name being Anung Un Rama, the Beast of the Apocalypse, destined to be the Great Destroyer. Even after he learns this, though, he continues to live as he's been living, and what's especially appealing from a storytelling perspective - and indicative of the author's maturity - is that Hellboy doesn't waste time whining about how it may all be hopeless in the end. He just does as he does, grinding down his horns every morning and choosing to live as his adoptive father taught him, rejecting (and actively slaying) evil.

I believe it was Buechner who wrote that the world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a wordly language, or something like that. What sealed the deal for me becoming a Mike Mignola fan was the last story in Hellboy Volume 2, "Box Full of Evil". Due to Hellboy's nature and power, assorted forces of evil both supernatural and earthly are in a constant state of attempting to reclaim him for the Devil's purposes, and this is what motivates the villain of "Box Full of Evil". Though he severely injures Hellboy, he is unable to turn him, and so sets about attempting to claim the nature of the Beast for himself. As Hellboy awakens blind on a supernatural plane, a creature there asks him, "Who are you, boy? What is your name?". Mentally defeated and crushed, Hellboy replies that he is Anung Un Rama. The creature summarizes who Anung Un Rama is and demands to know, "is that who you are?". Hellboy says no, and the creature responds, "then that's not your name, is it?" Hellboy is the story of someone who takes on a new name in rejection of the person their old name belongs to. It is written that when we come under the protection of Christ's salvation, we are born again, become someone different, and start life anew. And what is one of the first things that happens after you are born? You are given a name. "Box Full of Evil" touched me in a very deep and secret way, and I doubt I'll ever read it without bursting into tears as it slams home the heart of God's grace.

If nothing else, Hellboy Volume 2 sparks some interesting thoughts on the size of books versus their perceived value, and what an anomaly this volume is in that regard...but that's a story for another day.

Lamentations 3. How Mysterious.

In a horse-powered sleigh at the top of the town
sun coming up paints the snow all around
with rose light
In front of the house where I'm supposed to be born
I don't think I'm ready to walk through that door just yet
To be one more voice in the human choir
rising like smoke from the mystical fire
of the heart

The wind that blows through everything
sweeps out the halls of my heart when I sing
to you
It carries the moon and the stars and the rain
Carries the seagulls and carries my shame
away
Spins me around, stops me running away
from all of the things I've been waiting to say
But don't

Here
Is bigger than you can imagine
Now
is forever

Sun coming up paints the snow all around
Rose on the roofs and the trees and the ground
And the stream
In my dream
Messenger wind swooping out of the sky
lights each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope
With hope



- Bruce Cockburn, "Messenger Wind" (You've Never Seen Everything, 2002)

Barry Lyndon

There are some things people do just for the sake of being able to say they've done them; reading War and Peace, for example, or Proust. The cinematic - and less time-consuming - equivalent of this is watching Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon is a Seven Years War period drama famous for being lit almost exclusively by natural light (i.e. sun, moon, and candles), and also for being just over three hours long and rather unpleasant. A lot has been written about Barry Lyndon, the tale of an Irishman of no consequence who believes it's his destiny and right to be a gentleman and embodies the philosophy of the ends justifying the means, but since a picture is worth a thousand words - indeed, this film is one of the more obvious extensions of that belief - let's just say that Barry Lyndon can be summarized as follows:

No, really. Actor Ryan O'Neal holds that exact expression for the majority of the film, and it pretty well says everything there is to know about Barry. However, to put that in context:



The story of Barry Lyndon, at least as I interpret it from Kubrick's interpretation, is that of small people in a big world. Barry is a man of no consequence who believes he should matter in a material way, but even those who are of consequence in his society come across as insignificant here beside the grandeur of the setting. And it's not an issue of props and furniture - there are plenty of period films with lavish interior sets. I wonder if Kubrick's reliance on natural light was partly meant to emphasize how small one man is on the stage of the Earth. In Barry Lyndon, the settings are more alive than the people. Many critics of this film slam its use of detachment, and its characters are detached, cold, at arm's length from the audience, pitiful blights on a gorgeous backdrop. However, I suspect this is a large part of its point. The film includes a narrator, who fills in crucial information that's not shown and tells us exactly what's going to happen before it happens, further contributing to putting Barry at arm's length by serving as a sort of Greek tragedy Chorus. It's an interesting story that reverses the familiar tale of the nobleman who perpetrates bad behaviour because he believes his position is his divine right, and eschews the other familiar tale of the common man who strives to rise to nobility by being, well, noble.

I have very mixed feelings on the work of Kubrick's that I've seen, and was expecting this film would be little more than a good-looking exercise to slog through, so I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and how I was consistently engaged instead of bored. However, at the same time, it is little more than a good-looking exercise, the film version of a person who's as devastatingly gorgeous as they are shallow, and it's obvious why many think it's the most boring film ever conceived. It's also an extraordinary production, and I always come away from those feeling good even if the content has left me sobered. Kubrick was notoriously miserable to work with, but those who acted under him gave him what he wanted in the end, and with relatively little dialogue for such a long film, more is said with understated looks than by anyone opening their mouths.

The strangest thing for me was that I felt Barry Lyndon to be just that: understated, matter-of-fact. I accept that many will find that feeling to be odd, at the very least. I felt this film to be more focused on presenting a story than proving a point, yet it had a very strong point to make about human shallowness - it's sort of like a hopeless and nihilistic version of the book of Ecclesiastes. Since it makes profound comments by presenting a protagonist and world that are completely vapid, it's one strange but effective moviegoing experience. The end result for myself was that this film said what it had to say without having the moral/thematic kick in the teeth of stuff like Spartacus or Dr. Strangelove, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a part of me that would absolutely watch it again, for example if a friend wanted to see it but didn't want to sit alone for three hours. However, using the paradox I've come to expect from Kubrick, Barry Lyndon takes its theme of small and insignificant people in a big world several steps too far, resulting in an unrelentingly nihilistic story that contradicts the effort and grandeur of its production by being meaningless for the sake of being meaningless. And while that paradox - lots of effort poured into saying nothing matters - may be Kubrick's point, and come to think of it is clearly present in his other work, it's just not my bag, man.

What else can I say? Interesting, gorgeous - one shot between scenes is that famous architectural painting recognized as the first to use proper perspective - and moving quickly enough to feel neither shorter nor longer than it actually is, Barry Lyndon may well become my favourite Kubrick film. But, hey, it's a Kubrick film, and his pacing and baggage aren't for everyone.

The Drive-In Channel

For someone who didn't grow up in the '70's, "exploitation film" is a mysterious and ambiguous term bandied around that has something to do with gratuitous sex and violence - but there's plenty of non-exploitation flicks that have that, aren't there? So what's the difference? Then Quentin Tarantino homaged the genre with Grindhouse (though one could say that all of his films homage exploitation films in some way), and I started to get a better idea of the difference between exploitation and plain ol' gratuity. I've only seen the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, and let's just say I saw and heard things that I never, ever wanted to see or hear Kurt Russell (or anyone, for that matter) say and do. I didn't expect anyone, not even Tarantino, to surpass his Kill Bill Vol. 2 in terms of, um, yuckiness (though I should state for honesty's sake that I appreciated that picture. I have my reasons.).

This month, our basic cable preview channel is The Drive-In Channel, and it turns out that those corny, innocent "enjoy a refreshing ice-cold beverage at our concessions stand!" commercials everyone knows to be associated with drive-ins are a very misleading representation of what's actually on The Drive-In Channel. In essence, it's 99% exploitation cinema, occasionally interspersed by said commercials, 70's short documentaries, The Incredible Hulk, and the odd Clint Eastwood western. And, it turns out, there is a very large gap between gratuitous sex and violence and the exploitation genre - "exploitation" is exactly what it is. I don't know how else to describe it.

Case in point: where else can you watch a film called Wild Women in Nature in the Raw, followed by Keyholes Are For Peeping, Goldilocks and the Three Bares, a film described as "a phone-sex operator suspects her artist boyfriend is killing topless dancers", and The Hooker Cult Murders, set in Montreal (holla!) and starring Christopher Plummer? (Who, while this hasn't affected my appreciation for him, I cannot resist herein referring to as Christopher Slummer. You walked right into that one, pal.)

The saddest thing in this whole business is that, when Quentin Tarantino made Death Proof, he was upping the quality of grindhouse cinema by inexplicable proportions. My advice? Stay far, far away from any film you've heard referred to as exploitation, and never, ever add The Drive-In Channel to your lineup.

I Wish I Made That Up Just Now

So, I finally grit my teeth, seized some integrity as a critic, and watched a little Defying Gravity.

You know how a lot of cartoons use that editing device of cutting sharply to one shocked or angry person, then to their nemesis, then back again, accompanied by the sound dum! Dum! Duuuuuuuuuuum!? Like on The Simpsons, whenever Maggie encounters the unibrow baby? I couldn't find a clip, but you know what I'm talking about. It's a common comedic device used to enhance ridiculous situations.

Episode 2 of Deying Gravity used that device to end a very serious, cliffhanger scene in earnest.

If I were you, I wouldn't believe me either. I guess I just have too much faith in humanity to think that someone would every use that for "serious" storytelling.

Also in this episode, the mission commander boasted to a girl that he ran a whole five kilometers that morning, as if this is piddling distance is supposed to be an accomplishment for a freakin' astronaut, i.e. one of the most physically fit people in existence. I can run five kilometers no problem, and I don't even work out.

Suffice it to say, my lack of faith in this program was not misplaced. It really is Grey's Anatomy in space.

The Twilight Samurai

After having been immersed in Japanese film since meeting my husband five years ago, I've come to the not unreasonable expectation that any Japanese film I come across is going to be horrifically tragic, have a horrifically tragic twist, or interrupt a comedic scene with something horrifically tragic, like a sudden violent death. What can I say, it's a very sober culture. This is not to say that I don't like Japanese film, quite the contrary. But I don't expect a pleasant evening out of one.

Imagine my surprise, then, at 2002's Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai). Regarded as the best of the recent samurai movies, The Twilight Samurai is set near the end of Japan's feudal era and tells the tale of a low-level samurai named Seibei. There's an idea in the West that the samurai were similar to contemporary soldiers, ie. that being a swordsman was a full-time job. In reality, with so many of them kicking about there were many tiers of samurai, and Seibei is such a low-level one that so long as his clan in not engaged in active warfare, he works for a pittance as a storehouse inventory clerk - think of him as being in the army reserves. Seibei is a widower with two young daughters and a mother suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's, and as his position doesn't provide enough to hire help - indeed, it barely provides enough for the four of them to live, as he remains in debt from his wife's medical care and funeral - he must go straight home every night to care for them and do housework, thus earning him the derogatory nickname "Twilight". It is a foreign concept to Seibei's co-workers that he can't ever go out drinking in the evenings; though being aware of his situation, they just don't get why he won't ever blow off his responsibilities just for one night.

Seibei's only true friend is a fellow samurai named Iinuma, who is of a much higher clan rank and social standing, and often away to Edo or Tokyo on business. On one trip home, Iinuma tells Seibei of his sister Tomoe's divorce. Tomoe's husband, a respected samurai captain, turned out to be an abusive drunk, and when this became clear Iinuma petitionned the clan for a divorce on her behalf, which was granted. Iinuma is wracked with guilt, as he arranged the marriage, having every reason to believe it was a good match. Seibei is wracked with guilt and inner conflict, as he didn't really love his late wife and always carried a torch for Tomoe, but won't pursue her because he (reasonably) believes their social situations are too different - her family is quite rich, and her standard of living would lower drastically if married to Seibei. And Tomoe's ex-husband, Koda, is wracked with anger, refusing to accept the divorce. Koda eventually shows up at Iinuma's house late one night, drunk, and challenges Iinuma to a duel, which Seibei accepts in his place in order to protect his friend's life and standing (dueling within the clan is forbidden). When Seibei defeats Koda without killing him, things start to change, though he does his best to prevent that. Meanwhile, since her return to Iinuma, Tomoe has been reacquainting herself with her childhood friend Seibei, and coming to his home every day to do housework, care for his mother and daughters, and help ease his difficult life. She loves him. He loves her. Throw in a little sociology, a little politics, and the newfound unwanted attention Seibei is getting from the clan leadership since the rumour of Koda's defeat has emerged, and hey! You've got a story!

And a very nice story it is. Neither sappy nor perversely tragic, The Twilight Samurai is a multi-layered, well-written, well-acted, well-paced, and all-around excellent and enjoyable film. The title is not only a riff on Seibei's nickname, but plays on the setting (the twilight of the feudal era) as well as the fact that he's not old by contemporary standards, but betting a bit old for starting over again in terms of love and swordplay. It's an interesting story for putting a man in what would typically be a story about how hard it is to be a woman: a single parent caring for children and and eldery parent while holding down a minimum-wage job. This, and the overall beauty of the film and story, reminded me very much of another Japanese drama that could have been very tragic but isnt: Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro. And you know, the pleasant, thoughtful experience of watching that picture was very much the same derived from The Twilight Samurai.

I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful this film is. It's profound without being oppressive or tragic, it's serious yet delightful. We got it from the library, but I look forward to adding it to our collection one of these days.

Desecrating the Classics: The Magnificent Seven

At dinner on Monday with our good friend Scott Peacock, he made a comment about how classic film critique is often built on the bias that classic film can do no wrong. In other words, it's very rare to hear someone denounce a classic film, or even one that's just old, and in my experience our Mr. Peacock's comment is quite astute. While I've enjoyed films both old and classic since I was very small, I have had some pretty extraordinary letdowns due to people gushing over classic pictures (see: Vertigo, My Fair Lady).

I want to make two things very clear: one, I like movies in general, and when they were made doesn't factor into whether or not I think a flick is good; and two, I'm cuckoo for Westerns. So it's no surprise now - though it was at the time - that The Magnificent Seven is kind of awful.

That's right, The Magnificent Seven. That huge Western with an all-star cast, top-rate director and production company, and incredible source material, that sits at the top of so many "Best Western Film Of All Time!!!" lists, including the AFI's, and that people rave over as if it's the greatest thing since Clint Eastwood. Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the film takes place in the American Wild West and tells the story of a diverse group of (seven) gunslingers who are hired by a Mexican village for protection from a bandit gang's regular visits. The story plays out in three acts: the group's formation, their preparations at the village/getting to know their enemy, and the final confrontation.

I really, really wanted to like this movie; in fact, I reasonably expected to based on its pedigree. I like The Great Escape so much that, as the class geek, I was able to sell my grade 11 world history class on this old movie no one had heard of to be the one WWII movie we could watch (there was a vote) - and not only convinced them it was good enough to watch instead of Saving Private Ryan, but actually had cool kids come to me privately afterwards and thank me for recommending it. Backed by the same production company and director as The Great Escape, and a large portion of its cast (including Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and - pardon me while I fan myself and sigh - Steve McQueen), and featuring an incredible score by Escape composer Elmer Bernstein, as a production it's solid. The cinematography is gorgeous, and production quality is high. However, it's also melodramatic, corny, boring, trite, and generally pretty lame. Made well after the American industry had figured out how to differentiate acting/directing methods from theater to film, The Magnificent Seven is bogged down by bad blocking, overdone writing, and hammy performances (though of course not from Steve McQueen, as Alvin Plantinga successfully proved in 1952 that a bad performance from Steve McQueen is an impossible condition. Okay, I made that up just now). This was very surprising to me because The Great Escape is such an understated production. I'm always astonished by the difference directing makes to enhance or reduce an actor's performance, and particularly shocking here is that the leader of the bandits as played by Eli Wallach (a.k.a. the Ugly from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) couldn't be described as "threatening" on a good day. It's a does-not-compute on the same level as Joel Schumacher managing to make Kiefer Sutherland's vampire motorcycle gang leader the exact opposite of badass in The Lost Boys.

I should also make it clear that I first saw The Magnificent Seven two or three years before watching the film it's a remake of, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and even then I knew The Magnificent Seven was trite. Even then, I couldn't find any reason to care about anything the gunslingers were doing. Having watched it again since seeing Seven Samurai - I wanted Corey to see it, so I could have the comfort of knowing someone else thought it was a crappy film too - has reinforced that significantly. None of the nuances of Kurosawa's story are present; all that tale's powerful themes of humility and sacrifice were stripped away. The killer is, it's a story that can actually translate well to American culture. Unfortunately, lessons on humility are replaced by cocky pride, sacrifice is replaced by either self-servience or sacrifices so small as to be insignificant. The cynic could say that is how to translate the story to this side of the ocean. This is one trite, trite film, made all the more meaningless by basing itself on one of the most meaningful films you'll ever find.

Ignore the "Best Western Ever" lists. Save yourself the time and disillusionment. If you want a good Western, go watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or For a Few Dollars More, The Searchers, The Outlaw Josey Wales, or if you like your movies recent, there's always Tombstone, Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, and Open Range. If you want a good The Magnificent Seven, go watch Seven Samurai - it's one of the greatest films ever made. If you insist on clinging to nostalgia and liking The Magnificent Seven because it's "classic", and this critique has made an impact on your blood pressure, then I beg your indulgence to go hide behind a wagon before you start throwing the rotten tomatos.

It's not that The Magnificent Seven is a complete load of crap, there are worse pictures by far. It's just that it's not good, it's really not good, and there's no good reason for that to have happened.

So Simple It's Complex

The Edmonton Public Library has a sweet CD collection, and when I go to the Whitemud branch it's rare that I don't yank one or two items off the soundtrack shelf. Film scores are a favoured genre for me; there's nothing like music that tells a story, and the right score supports and elevates a film beyond that medium's capabilities. It seems like the film composer's club is a very small one, with the same names popping up again and again, and I imagine its a much harder discipline to succeed in than regular composing. To use an analogy, buying a gift for yourself is easy; buying a gift for someone else, to suit their taste, style, character, contents of their home is a practice that most people dread because it's usually so hard.

This week's film score of choice: Howard Shore's haunting, dread-filled backbone of Martin Scorsese's The Departed. That (excellent) film is an American re-telling of a (very good) Hong Kong drama called Infernal Affairs, and is a cop story about corruption, unhealthy determination, and the impacts of going deep undercover for those with consciences (a cop infiltrating a gang) and those without (a gang member infiltrating the cops).

Shore's score is centered around Spanish guitar styles, in particular the tango, and the reason this matters it's pretty far down the list of sounds expected to prop up an American police/gang drama based on Chinese source material and set in the heart of Boston's Irish community. Somehow, incredibly, the score not only works but sounds right. It takes on Mexican qualities at some points, building off the film's Wild West aspects and perhaps nodding to the fact that The Departed is in many ways its own kind of spaghetti western. It maintains the unrelenting gravitas of the film's story all the way through, and that non-problem is the only problem with it. Bubbly, sexy, festive Spanish guitar is very accessible and easy to listen to on a regular basis; dark, corrupted, threatening Spanish guitar is not. Whatever the case may be, it's a fantastic album that succeeds because of Shore's ability to produce the ultimate creative paradox: the music is so simple its complex.

If very dark American-ish Spanish guitar isn't your cup of tea, you can still enjoy the work of Howard Shore. He's worked on just about every film genre you can name, as well as many familiar titles, and is probably best known for his work on The Lord of the Rings. Even if you don't like instrumental music, if you like music period you'd be missing out big time by not listening to at least one Howard Shore film score. He's our Maurice Jarre.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait: Merlin

A month ago, I found myself falling prey to a condition I castigate other for, because it often leads to the cancellation of a worthwhile production: judging a show based on its first handful of episodes. Sometimes, I forget that most shows need at least a season to find their legs.

In this case, the show in question is Merlin, an interesting take on the Camelot legend that has actually claimed the distinction of adding something new to the story. It's set before Uther Pendragon's death, with him on the throne and Arthur as crown prince, and young peasant Merlin as Arthur's servant and friend. An orphan, Merlin has been raised and educated by a now-elderly man named Gaius, who serves as court physician and is doing his best to tutor Merlin as the boy begins to manifest his magical powers. In an intriguing reversal of the "religion persecuting science" chestnut, Uther outlawed the use of magic early in his reign when the dangers of any random peasant possessing and using virtually unlimited power became clear. The practice of magic is a capital crime, but the series doesn't present Uther as a hotheaded villain who carelessly persecutes people "just born that way", for which I thank the writers - Merlin could so easily have been a cheap gay lobby allegory. Thankfully, it's more profound than that, giving Uther's decision a logic that's hard to accuse of being irrational or cruel.

By far the most interesting thing about this series is how it contrasts Uther and Arthur, and by doing so foreshadows the latter's doom. Where Uther is willing to make hard decisions for the greater good, Arthur makes his choices with all the passion, folly, and utter lack of regard for the future that one would expect from a teenage boy. Whether the series will have Arthur die young, never flinching from these decisions, or live to middle-age to witness the fullness of the destruction they'll cause, it'll be an interesting journey. Especially interesting is Arthur's definition of responsibility, as demonstrated in last week's episode when he berated Uther for not curtailing someone else's decision. One of the court knights, conducting his knightly duty, accepted a certain-death challenge thrown down to Uther, and Arthur regarded it as Uther's responsibility to overrule the knight's decision - and violate his dignity, and adherence to the Knight's code - and forbid him to fight. The rest of that episode made this scenario even more intriguing. Uther, with his years of experience, is a steady character who makes understandable decisions for the greater good; Arthur is an overemotional, textbook case of living in the moment.

Decision-making is at the heart of this series; an unexpected and engaging quality for a show whose main plot revolves around the persecution of people for possessing something they cannot choose to possess. Every episode to date deals with the choices people make when they convince themselves that they have no such freedom in order to justify actions that are typically dangerous or foolhardy. On top of that, the primary focus is on the choices parents make raising their children, and the choices their children make in response. If one were to make a drinking game for Merlin - and, as Canada's a year behind on airing this U.K. production, someone probably already has - the target phrase would be "I have/had no choice", uttered by Arthur and Merlin far more than by any other characters. Arthur in particular blurs the lines between compassionate choices and foolish ones with gusto, all the while provoking the audience to ask which sort of decision he's made, and what the consequences may be. The fact that the end of Arthur's story is common knowledge adds to the interest, as every week we see Arthur make and justify the choices that will ultimately lead to the fall of Camelot, and his death.

The big reason I've been so hard on this series, and had such a hard time being willing to sit through long enough to let it find its legs, is just that - I know how it will end. I expect much higher standards of storytelling and execution from productions whose endings are known; their journies needs to be very good in order to give me a reason to reach their foregone conclusions. Merlin certainly did not start out this way - the first six or seven episodes don't even get the "awesome crap" seal of approval, at least not where dialogue and drama are concerned. However, it's improved quickly and vastly. The talent in front of the camera played a large role (no pun intended) in keeping me watching. The core cast - Uther, Arthur, Merlin, and Gaius - is outstanding, with veteran TV actors Anthony Head and Richard Wilson anchoring the production as Uther and Gaius, respectively, and a pair of solid newcomers as Arthur and Merlin. Behind the camera, the production design is nice period work - even the castle's large luxury spaces, like Uther's throne room and Arthur's apartments, are quite small by other period's standards - and the writing has improved in leaps and bounds.

One thing Merlin is absolutely not, though, is standard Arthurian myth; if such a thing as an Arthurian purist exists, they will likely be offended by this show. For example, Guinevere is not nobility but a maidservant to Morgana (Morgan la Fay), here an orphan of noble blood who lives at Camelot as Uther's ward. Then there's Gaius, Merlin's mentor, a character new to the story. The origin of Excalibur is neither of the myth standards (but very interesting), and it would appear that unless Mordred is part fae, or conceived of magic, he is not Arthur and Morgan's bastard son. Though he could be, because speaking of strange conceptions, the circumstances of Arthur's birth are also not to standard. There's a surprisingly intriguing plotline involving the last living dragon. And, of course, there's the big kicker: that Arthur and Merlin are more or less the same age, growing up as boyhood friends instead of one being older mentor to the other. I think this is a great foundation to build the Camelot story on, because of the new dimension and direction it creates. And that is, at the end of the day, where Merlin finds its success. It holds the rare distinction of adding something new and good to and old story. The episode "Excalibur" actually managed to put a new take on the Black Knight story without evoking any ridiculous memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - now that, my friends, is impressive good TV.

I've you've missed the episodes up to now, CTV is airing them for Canada so you can probably stream them off their website. I support giving Merlin a chance. Here's to a second season.

When it comes to books, I don't read a lot of non-fiction. It's not that I'm not interested, but rather that the stuff worth reading tends to be non-conducive to being read in short spurts and easily interrupted - i.e., it's no good on the bus. Also, it tends to cost an arm and a leg. (But what book doesn't, these days? How I long for the good ol' days, when I could get mass-market paperbacks for $4.95...)

Anyways, I think I'm going to have to grit my teeth and settle in (eventually) to read Mike Sack's And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft. Why? Because in an interview in today's National Post, when asked if there was a common thread between the writers Sacks interviewed, he replied that most of them suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

This information intrigues me. It puts a new perspective on American TV humour. OCD enslaves those who suffer from it, making them unable to do things like leave the house until a piece of furniture is placed exactly right - which could take hours. That's strange, isn't it? And when people do strange things, it's common to mock them for it, or at the very least let off an innocent laugh. I can carry on a conversation with someone if the levels of water in our glasses aren't equal, but what if I couldn't, and were stripped of my ability to choose not to? I'd be a prime target for inadvertent humiliation.

Consider how many sitcoms base their laughs on someone inadvertently humiliating themselves: Seinfeld, Friends, The King of Queens, and Two and a Half Men are good examples of that. On Seinfeld, it was a regular gag that one of the main characters did something a new acquaintance found unorthodox, and thus wound up looking like a fool - and it was usually little things, like ordering a drink with no ice, or wearing a certain colour. Another regular source of laughs was how Jerry couldn't handle messy spaces, or items in his house being out of place. Remember the Friends episode where Joey buys a "European carry-all"? And basically every episode of Two and a Half Men? For me, the best part of Futurama is the hapless Dr. Zoidberg. Speaking of Futurama, cast member Maurice Lamarche played The Brain on Pinky and the Brain, which depends on the fact that, every week, The Brain will be foiled and humiliated as he fails to take over the world. The first four seasons of M*A*S*H, with lead writer Larry Gelbart - who is featured in And Here's the Kicker - are primarily comedy, the main source of which is Hawkeye and Trapper playing a cruel and humiliating prank on Frank and/or Margaret, or Frank's frantic obsessions and guilt complexes. An unreliable source alledges that Gelbart's preferred pseudonym, when he used one, was Francis Burns. The plot thickens.

The crowning example of a comedy based on that kind of humour is probably Tony Shaloub's Monk, an excellent show which is hands-down the most tragic comedy on television. Det. Adrian Monk suffers from severe OCD, and his compulsions are usually what's played for laughs...or are they? Monk often seems like it's daring us to laugh, because it also exposes Adrian's torment in his actions against the inherent humour of a middle-aged man with wet feet shrieking, in full panic mode, "There's ocean in my shoes!!!". That scene, from "Mister Monk is Underwater", is one of the funniest things I've seen on television. It's also incredibly sad, and the fact that it's so funny makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

In other words, I'm really excited about reading And Here's the Kicker, and am at this time kicking myself for forgetting about it when spending a substantial Indigo gift card yesterday.