A true marvel...

It's been a few years since I read the original graphic novel release of Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, and this past week I picked up the 10th Anniversary Edition of Marvels in tribute of, well, ten years since its original publication, I guess.

The original series - which takes up just over half of this volume - is a wonderful tale of the early times of the Marvel universe as seen through the eyes of a photographer who observes the events unfold as a non-super powered observer. He finds himself passing on an opportunity to report on World War II and instead stays in the New York City of the Marvel world, watching the Sub Mariner and original Human Torch migrate from terrors to heroes to objects of national pride and back again. The same photographer, then, finds himself tangential to nearly every significant event in the history of the Marvel world - the invasion by Galactus, marriage of Reed and Sue Richards, introduction of the X-Men, and even death of Gwen Stacy.

Through the outsider position of Phil Sheldon - the aforementioned photog - we see how normal people viewed their world after the introduction of the people he comes to call Marvels. He goes through the very believable emotions of alternately loving and fearing the superbeings, feeling himself to be inferior to them, wondering where his world would be without their help an hinderance, through acceptance and rejection of all they do for and to his world. The story is a very human take on the Marvel world, and it's one of the best-written comics of the last dozen or so years.

This really is a modern classic.

The 10th anniversary edition adds some background information, behind the scenes kinds of stuff to flesh out the volume. The original scripts aren't much to see as nearly all the dialogue is in the final product anyway. The story proposals are interesting in that they show what other scenes might've taken part in the story, but they're far from necessary. The one-page commentary on each issue is excellent and provies some good background on what Ross and Busiek were working on and considering as they produced the graphic novel. Following the scripts is a full production of nearly all the newspaper stories that appear in the panels - fully-written stories that ened up being reproduced too small for legibility in the final product. And the extra material ends with a collection of much of the artwork that Ross produced for the volume that ended up in Wizard magazine or other press kits. Ross also provides a key to many of the cameos that he included throughout the work - from Lois and Clark to Ross's father to even Busiek himself.

The extended anniversary edition is good and worth the extra bucks to a collector who is looking for an archival edition - along the lines of the recently-released Watchmen: The Absolute Edition - but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. The original Marvels is outstanding and a wonderful combination of perfectly-melded artwork and storyline with Ross's hyperrealistic art supporting Busiek's amazingly humanistic tale.

Another from Alan Moore

Alan Moore is amazing. His works are among the greatest in the modern superhero genre - Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and others.

And this isn't his finest work.

That last statement is the equivilent of saying that DaVinci's latest work has a chip on the brow. Only this isn't DaVinci's latest work, it's one that's nearly twenty years old and that we've managed to see the reprecussions of now, and it's just this very last bit that lets me be okay with this graphic novel.

The basic plotline is that the Joker has decided to drive Commissioner Gordon crazy by crippling his daughter - who the Joker doesn't know as Batgirl. If any other author took a swipe at such a major character in the DC universe, the results would have been disasterous. With Moore's pen, Batgirl became more than just a wasted victim. In the years that followed this novel, Barbara Gordon became Oracle, a great character in the DC universe.

After maiming Barbara Gordon, Joker kidnaps the Commissioner, and Batman has to rescue the old man again. The action is good, the art is well done, but the resolution of the story just doesn't seem to fit with the tone of the rest of the work. It is only this resolution that is the chip in the master's work.

This imperfect work should be read by comic fans - particularly of the DC universe, and it is a quality work, but it's a notch below Moore's greatest works.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Decently Warm Embers

It's rested a few days now since I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which puts me still five times behind one of my students, I think. I'm guessing that five days of wait time is enough for me to drop a decent review. So, here goes...

The movie's good. It's not great, but it's good. Let's get that out of the way right off the bat.

The first two films in the series were honest, truthful, soulless adaptations of the books. The third film, then, took the feeling of the books - the joy and excitement, played a little looser with the details, and turned them into a great movie. The Goblet of Fire ends up partway between the two extremes. In this film, the writers and directors have taken a 700+-page book and eliminated many of the storylines that makes for a rich, exciting, deep, wonderful book and streamlined it into a reasonably tight two-and-a-half-hour film.

The film is so tight, in fact, that the events in the film roll one into the other without much in the way of the quiet moments that make so many great films. The events of the Triwizard Cup are beautifully filmed, really well coreographed, and nicely adapted. And they fit together like Lego blocks - each one expertly made, each one very well locked into the next, but there isn't a lick of space or air between them.

Instead of the quiet moments of character development that we have throughout the book - filled with subplots like SPEW and the vela - we get well done events but not much connecting them. Instead of the long stretches between trials in which the competitors had to do research, we have trials running into the next trial.

It's a good film, it really is. But it lacks the spirit of a great film. If you've read the books, you'll see this film and the next two when the arrive to us. If we're lucky, we'll get another Prisoner of Azkaban.

I've gotta make a confession...

A while back, I read the first volume of Astro City by Kurt Busiek. This week, I finished the second volume Confessions. Where the first volume had a series of unconnected stories, this volume has a single story followed through all but the last issue in the volume. In the major storyline, we see a young man become an apprentice hero to The Confessor - a catholic-themed hero who protects Astro City. Through the eyes of the newly-apprenticed Altar Boy (seriously, his name in the book) we see the quandry as a local politician becomes frustrated with the heroes and eventually outlaws them all together. But, of course, things aren't quite as they seem.

The writing is again outstanding in this volume, if a little heavy handed with a moral by the end of the tale. Astro City continues to take archetypes of superheros and to turn them on their head to make commentary on what we always have known as heroes.

And, admittedly, the introduction by Neil Gaiman is worth the price of admission here.

The lone issue not a part of the major story arc is also a nice one as a man finds himself dreaming of a woman who he has never met, knowing more about her than he could possibly know. It is a beautiful homage to the changes wrought constantly by comic writers in major event maxi-series such as Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Astro City is one of the best comics in production today, and you'll certainly be seeing reviews of the rest of the graphic novels as time and library schedules allow. Next up, Family Album.

Better even than the movie...

I know, shockingly, I'm going to say that a book was better than the movie based on it, but it's just fully the case here.

It's been two weeks since I saw Shopgirl the film version, and it still rings true in my mind, a beautiful, fleeting glimpse into the life of a beautiful young woman and the two men who pursue her.

In the novella, Martin's first foray into serious foction (as opposed to his few plays and collections of essays), Mirabelle is a beautiful glove-saleswoman at Nieman Marcus in Beverly Hills, barely making ends meet and keeping her depression at bay. In the course of the story, she meets and dates (sort of) Jeremy - a slacker character whose - well - character is much more well fleshed out on the written page instead of on the big screen. Mirabelle turns her attentions then to Ray Porter, a wealthy man trying on women instead of doing what he claims to be doing - looking for love.

In the book, the motivations and thought processes of all three main characters are presented in such beautiful, vivid detail by an omniscient narrator who makes only brief appearances in the film version, that I found myself much clearer on why things were happening, why characters did what the did, why feelings were moved aside or felt by each person in the story. We even get some background on Lisa - the rival-in-her-own-head to Mirabelle, the perfume girl who tries to steal Ray Porter away - moving her into a real person instead of the dropped in anachronism that she appears to be in the movie.

The movie was very true to the book - predictably as Martin wrote both - but was simply a telescoped version of the novella, combining details, omitting side stories for the sake of the visual and story flow. The resulting product is a beautiful film that feels like we missed a few details here and there, and had I read the book first, I probably would have been disappointed by the movie. Reversing the directions, however, I found myself amazingly happy with both, as the book adds so much to the story that the movie had left out.

I did listen to the book as read by Martin, and his reading is excellent, capturing the nuances that I assume he intended better than another reader could have. Martin truly is turning into a renaissance man, something that I simply couldn't have predicted based on his early comedy.

Looking ahead...

Yeah, because I have all the spare time in the world, I decided to flip through Amazon.com's upcoming releases in the music department. Here are the ones I'm gonna need to at least check out at some point (with some annotated comments):

The Body Acoustic - Cyndi Lauper

Caught her on The Today Show this weekend and heard her do a beautiful version of "True Colors". I'm guessing that was to promote this new album

Greatest Hits - Blink 182

I'm at best a casual fan of Blink, so this might be right up my alley.

Life Aquatic Studio Sessions - Seu Jorge

Beautiful renditions of David Bowie songs by Jorge populated the soundtrack of Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou which was a beautiful film. This might be worth it to hear a little more.

Whispering Pines - Richard Manuel

First member of The Band to leave us, a beautiful voice. No clue what his solo work was like, but his group work was enough to make me curious.

The Original Bootlegs - Tori Amos

Seriously? 12 cds of Tori Amos? I like some of her earlier stuff (up to and including most of Boys for Pele but 12 cd's? I'm curious.

29 - Ryan Adams

His third release of the calendar year sees (apparently) Adams back in solo form. He's one of my favorites, so I'll buy pretty much anything he puts out at this point.

Separate Ways - Teddy Thompson

First album from son of the great British guitarist was really pretty. Teddy's got a voice closer to the beauty of his mom's but with the guitar chops of dad. Nice combo.

Remix Album - Beck

Beck's approaching the "I'll buy anything he puts out" stage of artist love for me. I see two odd albums with very little detail listed as coming out in December for him, and my interest is piqued.

Guerolito - Beck, again

Another album listed but with no more details. I'm intrigued. (An update - thanks to Kyle, I found out that it appears the two Beck cds are one in the same. Details can be found here, though it sounds like it might not come out 'til January.)

The Aristocrats (soundtrack)

With clips from the movie?

Lost in Translation?

Far and away, my two favorite Adam Sandler movies are the ones that most people wouldn't call Adam Sandler movies at all: Punch Drunk Love and - seen for the first time last night - Spanglish.

In Spanglish, Adam Sandler plays a man whose life is thrown into turmoil by thwo developments - first, the hiring of a Spanish-speaking housekeeper, and second, the reviewing of his restaurant with four stars from the New York Times. Throughout every development in his life, Sandler's chef continues to be a good, decent man doing his best to keep his life together. His wife loses her job and begins to freak out, doubting herself and looking for any new way to prove her worth to herself. His restaurant places more demands on his time as its popularity grows by leaps and bounds. And he finds himself attracted to the strong, generous, beautiful new woman in his life.

Throughout the film, Sandler plays his character with quiet dignity, only occasionally showing cracks in his facade, rarely letting the pressure get to him, but never quite giving in to the obvious temptations, either.

Sandler's performance is uncharacteristically restrained, showing only a small amount of typical quirkiness and broad comedy that he often shows in his more typical roles. Tea Leoni gives a great performance as his wife whose world seems to be falling apart around her, and Cloris Leachman and newcomer Sarah Steele round their more minor characters into great additions to the film.

But the heart of the film comes from Paz Vega in the roll of Flor, the Mexican housekeeper who learns English so that she can begin to live on her own in her new world, and Shelbie Bruce, her daughter, who finds herself torn between the two world of her mother's culture and her new family's wealthy world.

Again, this film turns into a story between two people - but it is hard to know whether the relationship between Sandler and Vega is more important or between Vega and Bruce. THe pull between the desires of a woman for a man and a mother for a better life for her daughter define this film. And the schanllege between the two makes for a beautiful film.

I do feel duty-bound to mention, however, that the film is not without its critics. Some reviewers have brought criticism of Spanglish for its casting of a Spanish actress in the roll of Mexican housekeeper - citing perhaps Anglo stereotypes of what Mexican beauty should be. Others have also pointed to the lack of understanding of the Hispanic side of the story due to the filmwriter's lack of understanding of the struggles that Hispanic immigrants have to undergo in their attempt to balance assimilation and cultural pride.

I am, admittedly, not able to empathize with the plights of Hispanics in such situations, and hence I do not see the criticisms myself. I did, however, see a beautiful film that tells at least one version of the story.

Simple, small beuaty...

Shopgirl left me with a feeling similar to one I had when I saw Lost in Translation and Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In all three films, my judgement of the value and my enjoyement of the film turned quite quickly and late. For a majority of all three films, I saw them as a lightweight, nicely made film for most of the movie and then, at the climactic scenes - or just before - my idea changed, and all three became wonderful.

In Shopgirl, we see Claire Danes's main character open the film as a thoroughly unassuming salesgirl in Saks Fifth Avenue (who paid a boatload to change the location of the story from Nieman Marcus in the novella). She has no real love life, no job prospects, nothing to speak of in her life. Until she meets two men at about the same time. One is Jeremy - slacker epotimized, slovenly, drifting, without prospects, and the other is Ray - millionaire divorcee who flies from Seattle to LA on a whim. Neither man is right for her, but she makes her choice and stays with that relationship - that we learn quite quickly is doomed - for much of the movie, passing the other man off with a phone call.

By the end of the film, she has undergone pain and growth, learning - according to the film, at least - what is important about love. And she has found the man of her dreams.

In writing about the film, I find myself having difficulty capturing the simple beauty of the performances of Steve Martin and Claire Danes in the two lead roles. Both play perfect versions of characters with great emotional depth, feinting toward each other and away with equal skill and incredulty of the other's true feelings, and in the process leaving us with a truly believable picture of a relationship between them. The acting is superb, and the film does little to distract us from this pairing which dominates the film.

It is in the small moments between Martin and Danes that the film truly shines, showing depth to their relationship, depth that neither is quite able to capture or develop as characters. When the inevitable comes between the two, it seems natural and real because of the groundwork that both have laid before.

The only sour notes in the film come from the transformation of Danes's other beau - Jason Schwartzmann's slacker turned success because of an offhand comment made by Danes early in the film. We catch glimpses of his transformation, but his ugly duckling emerged so fully formed from his changes that we are left stunned at what a man will do to win the love of a good woman. My wife found the transformation quite believable and questioned only Schwartzmann's financial wherewithall by the end of the film. I found the change harder to swallow.

Neither of us liked the brief dalliance by Schwartzmann's character with the fourth lead - and a throwaway character in my eyes - played by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras.

All in all, I loved Shopgirl, but from waiting even a few days to write this review, I find the the beauty is fading quickly in my mind, slipping away like the most ephemeral of dreams. I don't know that the film will have a great staying power the way that Martin's other love of mine LA Story will, but for those couple of hours, I was enchanted.

Seen a good book?

Jon Scieszka is a treasure. He's an entertaining professional author who has written some amazing children's books: The Frog Prince Continued, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Math Curse, The Time Warp Trio - series, The Stinky Cheese Man, Science Verse, and many more. He also has begun an initiative to get boys reading more - something he holds close to his heart, apparently.

In this book - Seen Art? - Scieszka tells the story of a character gone to meet his friend Art on the New York street corner that houses the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA - as so many of the book's characters call it). In looking for Art, the main character is pointed out many examples of Art - or at least what the others in the book think of as Art - including some of the greatest works of the modern art movements, all of which are featured quite prominently in the book. The main character makes no judgements but rather just questions why everyone keeps pointing out the various artworks to him instead of helping him find his friend.

As an adult reading the book, I found the one-note joke got old. I understand, his friend is named Art, but he's being shown Art. It's funny for the first couple of pages, but it doesn't hold up for the entire book.

The real treasure here lies in the beautiful reproductions of the famous works of art that would serve as a wonderful introduction to young children whose parents or teachers were hoping to expose them to a little Art without trekking to NYC.

If you're a parent of a small child, buy the book, hand it to them, read it with them, discuss what Art is.

If you're a childless adult, grab this book at the local bookstore (or even better, museum gift store - free Cincinnati Art Museum all the time) - flip through it, and buy it for a friend's kids.

If you don't know any of those "breeder" folks, put it back on the shelf.

Welcome to Astro City!

There's no way I can do this collection justice.

Kurt Busiek - writer of Marvels and Invincible - crafted an entire world, rich with totally original characters, all of whom have full backstories even if we don't quite know them all just yet. And in Astro City, Busiek explores the more - I'm trying to avoid the term realistic because Busiek in his introduction points out isn't right - human rather than super-human aspects of his world.

In the ever-growing pantheon of greatest superhero graphic novels and/or series, Astro City deserves a place right alongside Watchmen and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and a few others.

Some much more in-depth and detailed reviews:

• The 11th Hour
• The Friday Review
• TheLogBook

And I've already requested the three other Astro City collections: Family Album, Confessions, and Tarnished Angel.

Weekly music reviews...

David Grisman is one of the true masters of modern bluegress and acoustic music, and his record label Acoustic Disc has become a great resource as both preservationists and revivalists. This - their fifth Acoustic Disc Sampler - is a treasure of acoustic swing jazz - some of Grisman's finest tunes and more traditional folk music - including the standout tracks "On the Wind and Rain" and "Talking Hard Luck". It's not a wholly complete album because it is a sampler, but many of the tracks chosen here are outstanding. It's a beautiful look into what is much deeper and should be explored much more thoroughly.

Ah, those were the days. I was running the board at WNAS - my high school radio station - and we'd just gotten the first major label album by the Kentucky Headhunters. "Dumas Walker" was a great single, all over country radio and very different from anything else out there. If only they'd had another single as great to follow it up. Instead, they tried recapturing the glory and fun of "Dumas Walker" and covering some of their favorite songs - "Oh Lonesome Me" and "Ballad of Davy Crockett". The Headhunters didn't have a very long career at all - not in the public eye, anyway - and their Greatest Hits. They are - or perhaps were, I'm not really sure - the equivalent of the greatest bar band around - never going to have more than a song or two of their originals but always able to do a kick-butt cover of just about anything they wanted. The album's great fun, but they weren't a great band.

Short...funny...

Before Were-Rabbit today, we got to see an eleven-minute short The Madagascar Penguins star in a Christmas Caper.

The only online review I can find slags the short, but I think it's unfounded slagging. I thought Madagascar was hilarious and incredibly well done, and this is a chance for some minor characters to get decent screen time. It's a short; they're funny. Enjoy it.

I'll admit that I was surprised by the short since I hadn't heard a lick about it in advance, but I did enjoy it, as did my wife and mother-in-law (who hadn't seen Madagascar. It's good stuff...

Slow starts...hilarious finish...

Okay, so I at one point in the first third of the movie, my wife had to lean over and poke me to stop me from snoring, but it'd been a late night last night.

Went with the wife and mother-in-law (birthday weekend for both) to see Wallce and Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit down in Newport after a lunch from the the hofbrauhaus. I'd seen a number of Wallace and Grommit films before and enjoyed most all of them - not spectacular, but cute and entertaining. This film started out worse - slow pacing at the beginning - but ended up way better than any of its predecessors.

The story opens slowly with W&G taking care of the local vegetable growers from some of the cuter, more personable rabbits seen in movies in a long time. Wallace's inventions are taken at face value here as it's a long-established trait from the previous films and shorts, and the film doesn't really kick into high gear until - as is typical - one of his inventions goes astray, creating a were-rabbit that terrorizes the townfloks.

Once the were-rabbit makes his first shadowy appearances, the movies shifts into high gear with homages to The Fly, King Kong, Frankenstein, The Exorcist, The Matrix, and even Strangers on a Train. The humor turns a little broader with some of the baudiest jokes I've seen in an Ardman production - though they all appeared to go right over the heads of the children in the audiences. The action got livelier, and the scares got much scarier - necessitating a trip to the hallway for a couple of the younger theater-goers (I'd steer clear for any kids younger than five or six, depending on your kid).

All in all, the movie left me with a great feeling and saw adults and children in the theater trading hearty, loud laughs - sometimes at the same time, sometimes not. It's a great movie - and the beginning's probably engaging enough for the youngsters to grab onto more quickly than I did.

One of the best kids' movies I've seen this year, and one of the funniest two-thirds of a movie I've seen in a long time.

(Karlen concurs, and my mother-in-law absolutely loved it.)