Category: review

Unabashed Plug: Conversations with ADD


Alan David Doane (pictured at left) is a mensch. Now, for those of you not down with your Yiddish, mensch means a person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose.

Or you could say, ADD is a PITA, which means pain in the tookus. I mean that in a good way. As Christopher Allen describes him, Alan is an agent provocateur.

ADD was one of those young people who were customers of FantaCo, the comic book store/publishing empire where I used to work in the 1980s. Subsequently, ADD became a noted blogger in the comic book realm. This week – September 1st, 2009 – marks the ninth anniversary of his Comic Book Galaxy’s original launch, and “approximately the tenth anniversary of my beginning to write about comics online,” he noted.

To mark the occasion, he has released his third eBook, Conversations with ADD. It is nearly 300 pages long, and “contains nearly four dozen interviews, including cartoonists, writers, artists, publishers, editors, comics retailers and bloggers.”

I had the chance to look at a preview copy, and I got to read interviews with some of my favorite creative people, including Peter Bagge, Howard Chaykin, Tony Isabella, Denny O’Neil, Harvey Pekar, and Walt Simonson, along with the ever-enigmatic Dave Sim. There’s a piece on Earthworld Comics owner J.C. Glindmeyer, who really DOES do Free Comic Book Day right, as I can attest from personal experience.

There is even a brief interview in there with a historic relic, yours truly. I should note that it’s largely ADD’s persistence that got me to blog about old FantaCo stuff such as the counterfeit Cerebus or the Fantastic Four Chronicles, so you can partially credit (or blame) him.

ADD’s POV comes through in his questions without overwhelming the interviewee, a delicate balancing act. Of course, many of the subjects have their own strong personalities, so the resulting interaction can make for a lively piece.

These interviews span the entire last decade, which in part gives a snapshot into the comic book market over the period.

As Mark Evanier likes to say, Go See It!
***
Since I’m plugging things:
The Vermont Monster Guide by Joseph A. Citro, illustrated by Stephen R. Bissette
Harvey Pekar: Conversations, edited by Michael G. Rhode
From the Wall Street Journal: Spider Mouse? Marvel/Disney Mash-Ups for True Believers. Analysts applauded Disney’s offer to buy Marvel, announced Monday, saying that the move would help the company make inroads with boys.
But were they expecting Gooflactus?
We do know that Hitler is ticked. And the fandamentalist internerds are all whiny.

Photo stolen from Fred Hembeck. Probably taken by Lynn Moss.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: District 9


An odd thing: Carol and I had secured a babysitter. OK, scratch that; Lydia does not like the term “babysitter”; she IS five, after all. We’ll go with “child sitter.”

Anyway, Carol and I could not agree on a movie. She wanted to see The Time Traveler’s Wife, which reviewed poorly (36%) on Rotten Tomatoes and got a thumbs down from our babychild sitter. We considered that Carol would see TTW while I would go to watch Food, Inc., which she had already seen. But Alison, the child sitter, who’s going to be a junior in high school in the fall, and an avid movie goer, pushed HARD for District 9. “It’s really good. It’ll make you think.”

As it turned out, District 9 was playing at the Madison Theatre, our local movie emporium, well within walking distance, at 1:30, which meant that we had time not only to see a movie, but to go to the Curry House beforehand for Indian food – extended date!

As it turned out, we were the ONLY people in the theater for that showing. I must say the previews were making me nervous. They were all approved for a general audience, but all were pretty intense. Sorority Row, a prank gone wrong/revenge from the grave flick; Final Destination 3-D; Law Abiding Citizen with Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx which at least seemed to be about something, and Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, which looked to be goofy, albeit bloody, fun.

Finally, District 9. It was cleverly developed as quasi-documentary about these aliens whose ship hovered…wait, here’s reviewer Amy Biancolli’s description:
“The aliens are bipedal, exoskeletal and vaguely crustacean, with lobster claws that snap from their midriffs and tentacular, writhing mouths. South Africans call them ‘prawns.’ They speak in gurgling clicks — subtitled for our convenience, but understood perfectly well by the humans who’ve been oppressing them for the past two decades. We meet one such oppressor early on, a smiling drone named Wikus Van De Merwe (…Sharlto Copley…) who’s responsible for moving all 1.8 million aliens into a new encampment hundreds of kilometers outside Johannesburg.”

Ms. Biancolli is loathe to reveal too much, as am I. But a few points:
*It addresses South African ghettoization of the “prawns” – it’s hard to miss the comparisons with apartheid – without being a screed
*The wuss Wikus is a great example of the Peter Principle in action
*The important introduction of the Nigerians makes it a lot more than a “good guys vs. bad guys” dynamic
*It touches on how easily the media can be manipulated

One other not so small point: The movie becomes, in an almost cartoonish way, terribly violent by the end, like Robocop on steroids, by which point one is already so invested in the story that one has to stay until the surprisingly satisfying end.

The clever structure of this movie, ultimately a science-fiction drama/shoot-em-up, may not be for all viewers. I can imagine some being moved by the set up but disappointed by the last half hour of blowing stuff up. I for one bought the transition.

So the child sitter was right; I’m STILL thinking about issues brought forth in District 9.
ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: 500 Days of Summer


I took off from work on Thursday, in part so I could complete the split movie date thing my wife and I do. She saw 500 Days of Summer a couple weeks back and thoroughly enjoyed it. I…well, three days in, I’m still running it through my head.

The movie has been described as a romantic comedy; this would be a stretch. Certainly the guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is interested in romance. But the woman of his dreams (Zooey Deschanel) just doesn’t believe in that stuff.

500 Days (Variety and Roger Ebert aren’t using the parentheses around 500, so I’ll opt out too) evokes a lot of other movies. Evokes them pretty well too, though perhaps too much “on the nose.”

There”s a scene that uses a Hall and Oates song that is clearly inspired by a scene in a John Hughes movie. The song title from the Hughes film even appear in the lyrics of the H&O tune. On the other hand, I enjoyed it – a lot, actually – for what it was.

Likewise, there seems to be an homage to the movies of Woody Allen from the 1970s. But not only did the split screen work, it was quite reminiscent of my real life.

Finally, it is stated that the female in the movie totally misreads the ending of The Graduate, and it is actually that final scene on the bus, complete with the Bookends Theme by Simon & Garfunkel, that, in retrospect, 500 Days pivots on.

It just feels that all of these elements plus the cute-at-first-but-eventually-annoying time shift dynamic didn’t always feel like the same film, as though it were being made by a guy stitching a bunch of music videos together. Yet through it all, it did speak truthfully, it played fair, the characters were believable, even though the female lead was (intentionally) less than accessible. There was no deus ex machina.

Read Roger Ebert’s four-star review:
Some say they’re annoyed by the way it begins on Day 488 or whatever and then jumps around, providing utterly unhelpful data labels: “Day 1,” “Day 249.” Movies are supposed to reassure us that events unfold in an orderly procession. But Tom remembers his love, Summer, as a series of joys and bafflements. What kind of woman likes you perfectly sincerely and has no one else in her life but is not interested in ever getting married?

Then look at the less than favorable one from Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal:
Marc Webb’s bright bauble of a boy-meets-girl comedy is a rueful tribute to the wisdom of hindsight (if you want to be philosophical); an elaborate exercise in deconstruction (if you want to be trendy), a postmodern mishmash (if you want to be uncharitable), a cautionary tale about the perils of projection (if you want to be psychological) or, if you want to be as clinical as the film finally decides to be, an exhaustive and exhausting dissection of a relationship that was never all that promising in the first place.

Thing is, I totally agree. With BOTH of them. A blogger who seemed to like it called it “treacherously twee.” So go see the movie. If you’re like 88% of the critics, you’ll enjoy the film. But if you don’t, I’d understand that too.
ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Julie & Julia

My goodness; Carol and Roger not only went to the movies, but saw a film playing in its first weekend! We got a babysitter and went to see the only film playing at the Spectrum in Albany, our favorite movie theater, we could agree on. (To be fair, Carol’s already seen a couple of them.) Actually had to briefly stand in line.

Julie & Julia is writer/director/co-producer Nora Ephron’s clever intertwining of two true stories: the coming of age of Julia Child, a bored American housewife in Paris after World War II, with Julie Powell, a frustrated would-be writer who works in a New York City agency to help those affected by the events of September 11, 2001. Julie worships Julia, the cookbook author who made French cooking accessible to Americans, and starts a blog to track her Child-like efforts/obsession.

The strength, and perhaps the weakness, of this movie is that Julia Child is played by the incomparable Meryl Streep, who quickly disappears into this role. Entertainment Weekly already says this year’s Oscar is Streep’s to lose; I haven’t seen that many other movies in 2009, but this is a bravado performance, steeled by great support from Stanley Tucci as her husband. Tucci, BTW, appears in the possibly greatest foodie movie of all time, Big Night; Tucci and Ephron are foodies in real life. I also enjoyed the brief turn by Jane Lynch.

So the more modern story suffers by comparison because it features Amy Adams, who costarred with Streep in Doubt, but shares no real scenes here. Adams is a fine actress, but her somewhat whiny story and the attendant acting by her, Chris Messina as her husband, and others, were not as interesting, or nearly as funny.

I should note, however, that the more historical tale had some built-in advantages. When Paul Child suggests to Julia that she could be on television, she laughs. The audience laughs too, in part because they know that Julia eventually DOES appear on the small screen.

Some critics suggested they had difficulty keeping track of which time period the story was in; my wife and I had no such difficulty. Others wished that it was more about Julia and less about Julie, if at all; the reality that with a mere history of Child, the viewer would miss some insights about Julia that Julie exposes to us.

So, I recommend the film. If I did stars, it’d be 3 out of 4; grade would be B+.
***
A 10-minute Streep interview. Interesting how an agent provocateur’s comments and response to same took over. He said – I assume it’s a he, “There’s a reason why old fart and over the hill actresses aren’t in great demand–because no one wants to see them! Let’s compare: Meryl Streep vs. Angelina Jollie? Not Meryl! Or, how about Meryl Streep vs. Scarlett Johanson? Not Meryl here either! One more shot: how about Meryl Streep vs. Megan Fox?” Evidently talking about something other than acting. Even Megan Fox, in the EW cover story, noted that her acting skills are nascent.
***
Carol and I once saw Stanley Tucci at Capital Rep theater in Albany several years ago. Can’t remember what we saw, but I was close enough to say to him, if I had had the nerve, “Loved you in Murder One and Big Night.” But I didn’t; so it goes.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Up

On Sunday, July 5, I realized that I hadn’t seen a movie since late April, So I looked at the listings for the Spectrum, my favorite theater and discovered that Up, the new Pixar flick, was in its final week. Reluctantly, the wife and I agreed to the split movie date, which involves one of us going, then later that day or soon thereafter, the other one attending. The first cannot reveal anything other than a generic thumbs up or thumbs down. The flaw with this, besides the inability to share the moments in real time, is that on at least three different occasion, the first person went, but then the second couldn’t for some reason; I know I got sick once and never saw a film Carol saw and liked.

Anyway, I opted for the noon showing of the movie, in 2-D. First up, the previews. I really would like to see the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Ponyo; great voice lineup in the English translation, including Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White. And surprisingly, I think I’d like to see the new Harry Potter film; I suppose, having seen only the first one, I should catch the subsequent ones beforehand.

The short is Partly Cloud. It was pretty much a one-joke bit, with lots of old Warner Brothers cartoon violence. I enjoyed it less than some of their previous efforts, though at least I learned about procreation.

Then the main event. I must say that I got caught up (i.e., became a little verklempt) in the whole backstory of Carl and Ellie; as others have noted, she looks quite a bit like Elastigirl from The Incredibles. Indeed, there was also a documentary style that also borrowed from that earlier Pixar film.

Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) finds a reason and the means to uproot himself, and his home along with it. But he is not alone. Will Carl get to South America, as he promised Ellie they would?

The rest I don’t know how to describe without spoiling it except there is a character who looks a lot like Kirk Douglas but is voiced by Christopher Plummer who has a major role. Also dogs; lots and lots of canines, not all of the friendly kind.

I previewed this in part to see if this would be the first movie Lydia, the five-year-old daughter, will see in the movies; it will not. If we see it on video later, the pause and fast-forward buttons will be used at least a couple times. Now other kids may react differently, but I know my child.

This was a good Pixar film. It had more depth in the characters than I would have imagined. And the house is definitely one of the characters. Yet part of the problem, I realized, had to do with little things – continuity problems regarding some important plot details – that distracted me. But it was most definitely worth seeing, and I’d give it an A- or B+.

Did I mention that I was the ONLY person in the theater? One might think I would have appreciated the private screening, but I like to hear where others laugh and gasp and cry; but for the size of the screen, I might as well have been home.
***
Little girl’s last wish: to see ‘Up’. Tip o’ hat to Jaquandor.
***
I check Rotten Tomatoes now and then, because I love seeing, for instance. The Hangover (78%) rate better than the more prestigious Public Enemies (65%). Up, BTW, got a 97%
***
Today, Ringo Starr turns 69. Please don’t send him anything to sign; he’s too busy.

ROG

ROG
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