Lots of comic books over break...

Trying for quick hits here because I've been reading a bunch of stuff...

Superman/Batman: Supergirl is a pretty comic book - drawn by Michael Turner of Aspen and Withcblade fame. The storyline sontinues to work well with the alternating and intermingled internal voice-overs between the two lead characters providing a nice glimpse into their differing but ultimately similar thought processes. The storyline's simple enough - Supergirl's back, Darkseid kidnaps her, Superman/ Batman/ Wonder Woman/ Big Barda rescue her, Darkseid tries to get revenge. The pacing's a little quick as it moves sequentially through three or four major locales with little transition among them. The battle scenes are good, the dialogue's good, the art's good. High quality stuff from an excellent ongoing series.

Next volume in the series is Superman/Batman: Absolute Power - another time travel tale with villians from the future coming back to change their future world for the better. Another solid outing from the cooperative series that seems to be mostly out of continuity, letting us glimpse possible futures and possible pasts based on all sorts of butterfly effect kinds of things.

This one's only to be read by long-time DC readers, though, as there are a bunch of references throughout the volume to DC history that might not be appreciated unless you've been with the DCU for a while now. I especially liked the last page as the older Superman (or Earth 2's Superman perhaps) fades into the Wahtever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow Superman. Kind of a nice nod, but one that won't be appreciated by newbies. Sorry, Googs...

Now, if we could just get these two heroes together for a movie or something...

Spider-Man: Quality of Life is crap. Poor, predictable, easy to see coming storyline. Freakishly wasp-waisted villian is hired byh evil corporation to kill Friend of Spider-Man. The only thing worth mentioning here is that the entire mini-series was done by computer rendering. That makes it interesting but not good, and it certainly isn't good.

Spider-Man: Until the Stars Turn Cold isn't bad. The artwork's a little more cartoony than I'd choose, but the dialogue's snappy and well written. It's a part of Spider-Man comics that I've always enjoyed - the little smart-alleck throw-away line from Peter either when he's wandering the cityscape looking and thinking or if when he's in the middle of a fight with his most dire villian. It's the thing that redeems the otherwise dour Peter Parker (heck, nearly his whole family has died or been kidnapped a dozen times, and every villian seems to know who he really is). This volume's from the time when PP and MJ were separated with her out on the left coast trying to act in movies. It's an interesting dynamic that really holds this volume together.

The Incredible Hulk: Big Things isn't much of anything at all, really. Artwork: not so good. Conclusion to long, confusing storyline that I didn't follow: not rewarding at all. Blech.

The opposite of its title...

Two quick tapes of Steve Martin's Pure Drivel left me with a lot to recommend.

The book is a series of short essays, some of which would qualify as satire some of which pretty much as pure - but thoroughly entertaining - drivel. Nearly all of the essays are humorous - the lone exception being "Lolita" - and spot on. The writing is excellent and lets Martin show off his talent for coming up with pretty wacky ideas and stretching them just far enough to be entertaining.

The NYTimes has posted the first couple of essays on their site for your perusal, and a Steve Martin interview at compleatsteve.com lets Martin explain some of the essays himself. Not every essay works perfectly, but there are enough that are great that it makes for an easy read - or listen, if you prefer.

Not your everyday action flick...

Unleashed is really two movies, both of which are very well done. The combining of the two, however, is where the film falls short of excellence. Luckily, the reach of the filmmakers - which does exceed their grasp - is high enough that they've ended up with a good film.

The set-up is simple enough. Bart, played with great violence and vigor by Bob Hoskins, is a small time criminal with a unique and effective weapon that he uses to collect the money owed him: Danny the Dog. Danny - Jet Li - is a man that Bart has raised from childhood as an ultraviolent dog. When Danny's collar is on, he's passive and blank; when his collar comes off, he beats people senseless or even kills them, all at Bart's command. At the end of the day, Bart throws Danny back into his cage under the floor in Bart's office/warehouse.

The first third of the movie takes place in this world, allowing Li and fight coordinator Wu Ping to show some impressive fight scenes with a very mindless and merciless fighting style designed for this film. The fight scenes are filmed without many cuts, allowing Li's excellence in martial arts to show through. The fight scenes are truly excellent and impressive.

Then comes the other half of the movie, the dramatic birth of Danny as a human being through the open family of Morgan Freeman and his step-daughter. The two take Danny in - following a hit that allows Danny to wander from the assumed dead Bart - and let him take the slow steps to becoming a person instead of a dog. The family dynamic that emerges works well as Danny's totally blank slate is allowed to explore the world and learn what is happening around him. This part of the film works well, too.

The problem comes when the two halves of the movie have to come together a couple of times later in the film. The two halves work well, but the merging of the halves is a bit abrupt.

This is a good film. It's a good attempt to create a dramatic film with action fitting into the storyline. It's far from a perfect film, though the two parts are excellent separately. If you're a fan of martial arts films, give this one a try. I'd head more toward Li's film Hero for a perfect blend of the dramatic and martial arts.

On an interesting side note, the film was released as Danny the Dog in most non-US markets, the second film by director Luc Besson to get this retitling here in the US.

Mel Gibson is nuts...

Mel's got another new film coming out - directed by, not starring - and it seems that he's snuck a couple of frames of himself into the teaser trailer. Check it out for yourself over here if you don't believe the accompanying picture. It's about 3/4 of the way through the trailer. Very strange...

...or is it marketing genius?

Four from West Chester...

Well, it's time to see to the finest graphic novels (of the superhero genre and that I hadn't already read) that the West Chester branch of the Middletown library had to offer...

Spider-Man: Down Among the Dead Men is the first collection from what must be the umpteenth new Wallcrawler series Marvel Knights: Spider-Man but if they're going to keep the talent of Mark Millar and the Dodsons and Frank Cho on the book as regulars, it's not going to the last.

The storyline's pretty standard far for Spider-Man. A relative is captured by some villian who knows his secret identity. Spider-man questions whether to give up his life as a hero. Spider-man has to look to other super heroes for help.

Nothing revelatory at all there, but at least it's well done. The artwork's clean and attractice (admittedly, in a bit of a fanboy way for the two female leads). The dialogue's well done between all involved. The characters are strong and well-defined. And the story's engaging, even if the touches of humanziation for the villians is done a little thickly in this - and the below-reviewed - volume.

I don't know that the world needs another Spider-man story in this vein, but it's not a bad vein to mine. The only disappointing bit here is that there's not a resolution to the mystery of who the big bad guy is. Which leads to the next volume.

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Marvel Knights: Spider-Man continues with the Venomous collected arc. More of the above same leads still to no definitive conclusion. Here Spider-man (Peter Parker, in case you're one of the apparently three people left - including Marvel Universe characters - who don't know his secret identity) continues to search for his missing relative while trying to stop other criminals.

Very standard stuff, and the revalation of who the major bad guy is seems to be taking a l...o...n...g time coming...I'm admittedly curious, or would be if I hadn't read some of the sites I'm linking to, about who the major bad guy is, but I'm starting to loose patience. Luckily the artwork and dialogue are well-enough done - particularly for the relationship between Peter and MJ - that I'm willing to hang around for a while longer.

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Super Friends was a crappy cartoon that has spawned dozens of crappy tribute websites. I love it, admittedly, because it's from the golden age of cartoons - which is pretty much whenever the viewer was four or so.

The Super Friends collection gathers together semi-random issues from the all-ages comic that I remember from my childhood. As a novelty act, they're wonderful. I remember two or three of these issues very fondly and probably read them until they absolutely fell apart in my hands as a child. As a comic book - in retrospect - they're not great comics. They're simplistic and enjoyable, but they're not great.

Clearly, this is something printed for people of about my age who have a bunch of disposable income. In which case, why didn't they reprint all the issues? Why just cherry pick some of the issues at seeming random?

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This is what I get for lying around on my back all day long. Four graphic novels to review.

I dig the Ultimate Universe, really do. It's the first truly successful relaunch of either of the major companies, if you ask me. The post-Crisis DC world isn't right, and we're paying the price for it now, but the Marvel Ultimate Universe keeps enough of the traditions while not making any development sacrosanct.

The third volume of Ultimate Fantastic Four N-Zone sees the crew returning to the N-Zone still hoping to undo the transformations of Mr. Fantastic and The Thing (Sue and Johnny like their new powers and don't want to be returned to normal.) In the N-Zone, the Four meet up with a fairly powerful, tricky creature who seeks to return to their universe (the N-Zone universe is near final entropic death). As a science geek, I kinda enjoy that this series admits the weirdnesses inherent in having an invisible girl who can still see yet deals with real scientific ideas like entropic death of a universe.

This series is fun stuff. Good artwork, the right amount of humor balanced with nice action sequences. It's one of the better ones being put forth right now. It's not perfect or marvelous, but it's pretty good stuff.

A decent enough ride...

Before today's debilitating back spasm kicked in, I checked out the pretty good but simplistic story of Che Guevara before he became Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries.

I know almost nothing of Che Guevara - whom we meet as Ernesto Guevara, nearly finished medical student. Probably couldn't have told you in which country he made his big mark or even what his political background really was. I recognized the iconic picture from dozens of posters and t-shirts, but that's about it.

From this movie, however, I learned that he was a brutally honest man who set out on an 8000 km journey across South America on which he found himself becoming more sympathetic to the plight of the indigenous people who were being subjugated to the more affluent Spanish and Portugeuse wealthy class. And he had a good, funny friend who went with him for the journey. That's about it. It's a simple film...pretty, fairly light-hearted for the most part, and simple. And it's been getting pretty good reviews.

But apparently, there's a lot more to the story than what we see in the film. Taken strictly as a travelogue, the film is pretty and well filmed, showing nice imagry of simpler people contrasted (a little heavy-handedly at times) with the decadence of more modern, more civilized people of Latin America. The two lead actors are both very personable, something referenced frequently in most reviews.

What we don't get, however, is much depth of character. This isn't a road movie in which the two leads get into a string of wacky, quick adventures with some thread to tie them all together - there's too much depth in some scenes for that. This isn't a buddy film in which a relationship between two friends is explored - the two don't relate so much as (the closing credits tell us) they happen to be two lives travelling parallel paths for a while. It's not a philosophical movie - there's not actually much talking about the injustices that are hinted at, rather we get lots of silent brooding and quiet contemplation over effective imagry. It's a bit of all that but not enough of any of them to make a great film. It's a good one, but it's not as great as some reviewers have made it out to be.

As Roger Ebert writes, this movie "belongs to the dead-end literary genre in which youthful adventures are described, and then "...that young man grew up to be (Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, Rod Stewart, etc)."" If the main character didn't grow up to be someone famous, this movie wouldn't exist. The story isn't that great. It's okay, it's fun to ride along for a while, but it's not great.

And clearly, it doesn't show all the sides of the man who would go on to become Che. Many folks view him as a brutal, hardline communist, not as the caring, brutally honest man we meet in this film. The truth is, as it often is, complicated. Find out something for yourself. I plan to, and if the movie prompts at least that, it's done some good.

Cultural relativism...

My suspended viewing of Soul Plane brings me to some questions of cultural relativism.

My first responses are that this movie is awful, horrible, painful, stupid, and offensive to pretty much every possible race and ethnicity, and I can say that most critics that I can find online agree with me.

Clearly, however, the movie is not written by, nor aimed at someone with the same background as I have. It isn't aimed to entertain a midlle-class, German-English-Cretan-Polish descendant, with graduate school experience, and because of that I wonder whether I'm the most qualified reviewer for this film. I remember when I was in college taking an anthropology course and discussing the issue of whether someone from outside a culture can judge the actions and values of those within that culture. I don't know whether I am qualified or should judge this film, but I do know that I hated it and found it probably the most poorly-written, poorly-conceived, offensive film that I've seen.

Slick, smooth, a little cold...

Day four of winter break, and I'm four movies - currently suffering through the horror that is Soul Plane - into my journey. It's been a good break so far...

Today's first movie was The Ice Harvest with John Cusack. It's a dark movie and not always a funny one. It's a pretty good modern film noir, something that John Cusack hasn't dropped for us in a long while. He's been a little trapped with the light-hearted romantic comedy, but this is a good return to dark form for Cusack.

We open on Christmas Eve with Cusack and Billy Bob Thorton making off with $2 million from Cusack's boss and the two planning their getaway on Christmas morning. The boss gets wind of things and sends a knee-breaker to check on things. The evening is spent by the two trying to avoid and then take care of the knuckle-scraper.

And then we meet the femme fatale that makes this a true noir. She's a doozy, twisting the two leads around her finger.

In the end, then, the bad end unhappily and the good unluckily. Some folks were pleased with the turnout and others really weren't. I enjoyed the ride.

Continuing the short shots...

From the West Chester Public Library I grabbed a book that turned out to be a whole lot shorter than I'd expected: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a quick one - one tape long and not even a complete second side at that - which turns out to make sense because it's a collection of 90-second shorts that Vonnegut wrote for WNYC, an NYC NPR station. In the book, Vonnegut transcribes after-life interviews that he conducted from near-death experiences guided by the titular physician.

It's not the finest thing that Vonnegut's written, but I don't think it's meant to be. It's quick, light-hearted (for the most part), and funny.

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I didn't grab the version with that little sticker in the bottom corner because I wanted to have the Beastie Boys' Solid Gold Hits to play at school. I'm a big fan of the Beastie Boys, and as such, there's probably no reason for me to pick up the album. It's got fifteen hits from the Boys but no new or rare material for fans - even the DVD (which I declined) doesn't have anything too rare since they've already released a collection of their videos.

The album is very good. It's got great songs all around, and there's a lot to be said for that if you don't already own all their albums. And, heck, if you don't own the Beastie Boys albums, go out immediately and get the full, vulgar version of this one since it's a quality greatest hits collection. If, on the other hand, you've already got their stuff, give this a pass unless you want the clean versions to take to school and play so you won't lose your job.

Oh, and the cover picture is a classic.

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Just to keep the Matrix a rockin', I threw the original Weezer album into the player. It's been a decade or more since the original release of the disc that's come to be known as the Blue Album since Rivers and the boys have come out with a green self-titled album. I haven't had a chance to pick up the deluxe edition (with a bunch of b-sides on the second disc), but the full original album still rocks amazingly well. It's got a half dozen songs that could've been charting hits, and there isn't a bit of filler on the cd at all.

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Randy Newman is a national treasure. He is one of the finest songwriters of the past half century (if not full century). His skills range far and wide, from wholesome songs ("You've got a Friend in Me") to movie scores (Avalon) to racial commentary ("Rednecks" and "Sail Away") to comedy ("It's Money that I Love" and "Political Science"), and he ia amazingly adept at every genre.

On The Randy Newman Songbook, vol 1, one of my favorite of his albums, with Newman playing and singing his songs solo, stripping them back to just his voice and a piano. These aren't his greatest hits - though some of his best-known songs are here - but rather the songs that he seems to enjoy most, that he wanted to look back at. BY taking away his sometime sacharine arrangements, we are left to enjoy and laugh at Newman's words which are absolutely amazing.

He's a phenomenal artist, and if this really is the first of a promised three-volume set to be eventually released, I'll definitely be picking up the others when they appear. This is one of my favorite albums right now, and it's always high on my playlists.

What's a three for?

Stopped by Borders yesterday and took in a half dozen graphic novels while doing some Christmas shopping.

I remember the One Man Army Corp from a guest spot in DC Comics Presents - to which I had a subscription as a kid. He was a butt-kicker with a mohawk, the kind of superhero who was to be remembered. Somewhere along the line, however, OMAC seems to have gone by the wayside - probably during the original Crisis. In The OMAC Project mini-series leading up the the Infinite Crisis event, we see a paranoid Batman again setting into motion another plot to keep his fellow leaguers in check that goes awry. (C'mon, man, take better care with your secret plots.)

The storyline is based on a lot of comics history (recent history, admittedly, but history) that isn't really explained, so this probably isn't the place for a newbie to be dropped in, but I'm getting the feeling that such is gonna be the case throughout Infinite Crisis with tons of references back to the original Crisis and events that happened because of it. The touches back to a funnier time for the Justice League as well as a couple of Batman characters - Sascha and CHeckmate - who haven't had a lot to do for a while. For that reason, I give you warning.

The series is, however, thoroughly entertaining, balancing very nice fight sequences with story exposition back at the Checkmate headquarters. The use of Maxwell Lord as badguy works well here even though he's using his power to nearly take out the absolute best and brightest that DC has to offer, and the sentient computer badguy works well.

To get what's happening with Infinite Crisis, this is apparently the one series that absolutely has to be read - other than Identity Crisis, probably.

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Also grabbed Day of Vengeance - another of the lead-in mini-series to Infinite Crisis. This one doesn't seem to lead into anything terrifically important, and it's taking advantage of some of DC's lesser lights - using only one Big Gun (Captain Marvel) who seems to matter. I admittedly skimmed this as little was there to catch my attention. If you're fan of DC's continuing machinations with the Spectre (who I haven't really enjoyed other than in Kingdom Come), then this'll be a big one for you since he kicks some major butt, but otherwise, the artwork left me cold (lots of black), and the storyline didn't do much for me either (Spectre and the Wizard Shazam have at it while Eclipso takes over a bunch of people).

I'm curious how this is going to lead into Infinite Crisis, but it's a much lesser light than The OMAC Project

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I've been hearing a lot of good stuff about the new She-Hulk series, so I grabbed hold of her second collection Superhero Law on a lark and was very pleasently surprised. It's a well-written collection with a very light-hearted tone. There's some really nice references back to Marvel Universe events that even I can remember - especially the use of the Champion that I remember fondly from a comic of my childhood. She-Hulk is currently working - as her alter ego Jennifer Walters - in a law firm specializing in superhero law that leads to a lot of hilarious situations such as using a local comic book store as a legal resource. She seems to be one of the only characters who is aware of her situation as a comic book character, which leads to some great jokes about continuity and how the entire universe seemed to forget about some events but that they can be remembered once comic books dealing with them are read.

This was a really good, funny, quick, enjoyable read, one of the best light-hearted books of the past few years. I'll be hunting down the first collected volume as well.

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Ok, back a little later today with some more reviews including some cd's of the past week and a short book from Kurt Vonnegut.

Taken for a ride...

Unless you're a fan of the books (or any of the iterations of the storyline), there's not much reason for you to check out The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I have to admit, for full disclosure purposes, that I've read and owned all of the books (five in total) at one point or another. When I was in middle- and high school, they were fun reads. Now, however, they've been made into a pretty boring film that is going to be of interest only for those of you who've already read the books and want to see how they've been translated onto the big screen.

The film is not a literal translation of the books, as the books were not a literal translation of the radio play on which they were based, so there are a number of my favorite moments from the books that didn't make the movie, and some characters and events in the movie that weren't in the books. Many of the same throw-away jokes are there, admittedly, but most of them fall flat in the film version because they simply don't have the time for the semi-pointless, comedic exposition that the book used to such effective ends. I found myself enjoying a number of jokes in the film only because I knew the backgroun and remembered the rest of the joke - untold on the screen - from the book.

Reviews have been mixed at best. My advice is to skip the film - at least for now - and to not bother with it until you've read the series of books (though you can honestly skip the fifth volume in the series anyway - it stinks - but do read through the first four because the fourth book is easily the best.)

A tough look at a tough topic...

The first weekend of Christmas break - or Winter Break, as I think we're supposed to call it - saw me at the earliest showing of Syriana.

It's an excellent but very difficult film, one that requires pretty much undivided attention to follow the interlocking plots, and it's one that I feel I need to see a second time in order to fully understand everything that happened in the film.

The film Traffic has been referenced in a number of the online reviews that I've read, and it's a fair comparrison as the two films were written by the same screenwriter and both have the same style of showing bits of a half dozen plot lines, all of which would come together near the end of the film but that begin as disparate elements. In Traffic, however, the filmmakers chose to differentiate the stories via the use of color filters. Syriana does not provide even that helpful trick for us.

Instead, we are dropped into the middle of each of the stories with little introduction or explanation of who the players are or what their goals and motivations are. This leaves us feeling confused at first - a feeling that does not entirely dispell itself even by the film's resolution - which seems to be widely regarded as the filmmakers' plan. The characters in the film don't seem to know the connections and ramifications of their actions but can only see their small part of the puzzle, so we are supposed to have the same feeling. Because I wanted to see this film, because I want to try to understand the issues involved in the complexities of the Middle East, I'm willing to go along for the difficult and confusing ride. My biggest complaint about the film, however, is that many folks will not be willing to go along.

This is a complex and excellent film that tries to communicate - but not to explain - a complex set of relationships and problems. If the filmmakers were to make things a little easier to understand, their message might make more of a change in the world. These are, after all, important issues.

Quick and graphic...

Three quick runs-through of graphic novels that need to go back to the library tomorrow. If I haven't mentioned it yet, lemme give a massive and thankful shoutout to PLCH. They are a godsend.

First up is Robin/Batgirl: Fresh Blood a cross-over of two issues each from the ongoing Batgirl and Robin series. It's a story to follow up the War Games arc (which I thought was awful, but another time, perhaps) that sees Tim (Robin) and Cassandra (Batgirl) head to Bludhaven (there's a missing umlaut, so sue me) to take over where Nightwing left off protecting the Haven. (A quick shoutout to whoever created Bludhaven as it's turned into one of the most interesting new areas in the DC universe.) Robin heads out to get away from Batman, clear his head, and try to keep from going as dark as the Dark Knight. Batgirl heads out because she's Batman's errand girl sent to take care of Robin and to learn how to be more human, to watch the world instead of just being the best fighter in Batman's world.

Batgirl and Robin, of course, team up on their first case in Bludhaven, and the dynamics between the charactgers is pretty well done with the artists and writers doing a pretty decent job fleshing both characters out. The case itself isn't a great one (Penguin trying to take over Bludhaven, using Blockbuster's stuffed body as a prop), but the character interaction works well enough, and Cassandra continues to be written as a character who has no peer when it comes to fighting prowess. It's impressive to read.

My lone beef with this collection is the inconsistent artwork. Two sets of artists are working here (one from each series) really throw off the tone, and even within individual issues the artwork seems to vary more than it should. Excessively cartoonish in some issues and more realistic in others, the switching becomes disconcerting.

Good collection, good story, not great. Poor artwork - especially the cover of the TPB.

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Look, Wolverine goes to Japan in Wolverine: Soultaker. Shocking! Stunning! And he has to fight zombie ninjas.

The artwork isn't good. The story is boring and moves along too quickly, too easily, no challenge. Not much to see here, folks. Move along.

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Superman: The Man of Steel Vol 4 continues the paperback-ization of John Byrne's reboot of the Superman title following Crisis on Infinite Earths. The series is, as a whole, very strong with Byrne doing a nice job staying true to the character but resetting what the editors at the time didn't feel the need for - in this particular volume, Superboy. For anybody who wants to understand the modern mythos of Superman, this is needed reading as it finally gets rid of the glitch that was created by Crisis and its aftermath when it was decided that Superman hadn't been Superboy even though the Legion of Superheroes wouldn't exist without him.

The artwork and storyline is strong through the middle 2/3 of the book - with the first issue being a weak, stand-alone not incolving the Superboy plot. Nothing awful, just not a great issue. The final issue, then, is also a stand-alone, and is crap. The artwork's by a different artist, and the issue suffers because of that.

The middle story arc - the deletion of Superboy from the DC canon - is important reading and very well done. It references the near-invulnerable level of power that Superboy (and the pre-Crisis Superman had as well) as opposed to the more limited powers that Superman was briefly given post-Crisis

Good stuff.

Perfect adaptation of the movie...

Or rather the movie appears to be a picture perfect adaptation of this graphic novel.

Since I enjoyed the movie Sin City, I thought I'd give the original source material a chance. It took a while (like nine months) to get the copy since I'm a cheapskate who waited 'til my number came up at the library.

Reading the comic - technically titled Sin City: The Long Goodbye - was a bit anticlimactic for me. It's excellent - pretty much everybody agrees - but the movie was such a letter for letter, panel for panel adaptation that I knew the plot, the words, the images even of the comic. This doesn't mean that the graphic novel is any less spectacular, just that it's less of a revelation because I knew and had seen the whole thing recreated perfectly for me by Robert Rodriguez. The movie is excellent because the source material is excellent.

Sin City is wonderful film noir on paper with nothing but stark black and white images that shock and stun and amaze the reader. It's awesome and harsh and certainly not for the young kiddies out there or the faint of heart.

True quality stuff.

Not quite in the pantheon...

Superman: Godfall is gorgeous and confusing.
This is Michael Turner's first foray into the DC world, and is also a fanboy's dream. Turner has been drawing gorgeous comic females for a decade or so now in his more regular titles Aspen and Withcblade, and this Superman trade will do nothing to disuade his admirers.

The basic plotline (as though that really matters to many who pick up Turner's work) has Superman trapped in the bottle city of Kandor but believing that he is really living on a surviving Krypton. Turns out that he's been brainwashed into believing this so that some deluded Kandorian (whose name begins with an L - imagine) can steal his powers. She takes his powers and heads to Earth to take her rightful place in the pantheon that perviously held The Superman, her God. Superman, of course, then has to rescue the world from her wrath and from another Kandorian who views him as a killer because of events that he accidently perpetrated in the city.

Weird.

And it's all because of some storyline about Braniac 13 taking over Metroplois and sending Superman into the time stream to force Brainiac 12 into building Brainiac 13 (???).

Weird.

And it turns out that the bottled city has evolved at a different rate of time than the world around it.

Weird.

But the artwork is gorgeous. Brilliant colors, detailed, ultra-modern designs for the buildings and scenery in Kandor/Krypton. Fantastic figures (of the men and women) throughout.

It's a dream to look at and a nightmare to read. Enjoy the visuals, folks, and ignore the wackiness of the Godfall storyline.

Not as high as you might think...

Sky High is cute, admittedly. And it's wholesome - with a quality message of acceptance of others, even if they're less super than you are. But it's a bit of fluff, nothing more.

The plot is simplistic - child of world's two greatest superheroes goes to superhero school and begins as friends with the sidekick/dork crowd. He gets his powers, switches tracks to hero, gets new girlfriend and friends, forgets his old friends, has to save the world with the help of his old friends who accept him back and turn out to be pretty heroic. Nothing original or revolutionary here, and I found most of the plot twists (who the true bad guy is, for example) pretty predictable. Things were a little cut and dry and formulaic for my tastes.

My guess is that kids who haven't seen Can't Buy Me Love and a half dozen other teen romantic comedies will be entertained, as the movie does a nice job of keeping the plot moving along, interspersing nice notes of parents with expectations of their kids, standard freshman-in-high-school-gets-swirly jokes, main-character-gets-popular-and-forgets-his-friends events, and even an obligatory unintended-party-with-cool-kids-gets-out-of-hand scene (a la Risky Business but with far tamer results).

It's cute. It's colorful (great visual sense identifying the kids and characters without going too far over the top), but it's essentially a kids movie that didn't play higher for me.

Most critics seem to feel pretty much the same way - good, far from great.

The big three...new again...

A number of artists and writers have taken on the task of defining aspects of the relationships between DC's three greatest superheroes - Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Of late, the relationships among them have become the focus of the entire DC universe through the Identity Crisis and then Infinite Crisis miniseries, shattering the trust that each held in the other.

Trinity looks back on a non-canonical first meeting between Wonder Woman and the other two and turns out to be an outstanding reflection - both in plot and art. Matt Wagner has produced a near-definitive take on the three heroes, capturing the escence of their personalities wonderfully while still allowing each to be heroes. We get internal monologue - which I often find a weak writer's way out, but that works wonderfully here. We get beautiful lines and emotional colors. And we get a great trio of villians to provide adequate foils that don't overpower the true heart of the story which is the relationship building - complete with missteps and feints - among the three heroes.

My review would pale, however, next to those that others have written. Check out the reviews, and then grab the book from your local library...You won't be disappointed...

• from Comic Book Galaxy
• from Rambles.net
• from the Fourth Rail - issue 1 issue 2 a preview
• from SupermanHomepage.com

Pretty incredible...

Computer animation - particularly from Pixar - becomes more and more impressive with each release. Toy Story was an amazing picture - full of amazingly realistic characters and jokes that played on adult and kid levels. And things got better with Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo, but I'm going to say that I think The Incredibles is the most phenomenal production yet.

The artwork is outstanding - near photo-realistic in a number of scenes, particularly with cloth and water imaging making giant leaps and bounds over previous films. For one early scene in an elevator, I watched the scene three times, zooming in each time to try to see any flaws with the clothing. The picture looked like it had been filmed and then had animated heads added in. Later, the characters nearly crash into the ocean, and the sights of the water and waves breaking around them is stunningly realistic.

If the animation were all that there was to recommend the movie, though, it'd not be nearly the equal of the other Pixar productions. Instead, the story is phenomenal. It plays on so many different levels for both kids and adults. It's a tribute and pastiche of James Bond movie cliches - with the evil hideout in the middle of a volcano, the monorails moving people around a secret island base, rockets launched from the volcano, villians who give monologues instead of taking care of the hero, even the soundtrack has a bit of Bond-theme at times. But the heart of the film is a superhero family gone underground after the American public turns on them. In the end, though, the story is really about whether we should hide our special abilities from the world around us so that we don't frighten and offend others who either might not be as special as we were or at least special in different ways. The characters discuss whether to show their abilities or not, and the major villian - a voice perfect Jason Lee - plans to eventually turn everyone into a Super so that nobody will be super anymore.

It's a great film, truly one of the best made in the past years, and there isn't a person out there that it isn't appropriate for. Truly an incredible effort by all involved...

Pretty polished, actually...

Astro City by Kurt Busiek is quickly moving into the modern classic genre as one of the best semi-ongoing superhero series of the new millenium. This is the fourth collection of the tales of Astro City, Tarnished Angel, and it shows no signs of slowing down the excellent storytelling that Busiek is putting forth in his marvelous, original world.

The story opens as Steeljack - formerly the Steel Jacketed Man - is being released from prison and doing his level best to live the straight and narrow life but finding difficulty as an ex-convict with a world-renown and un-disguisable appearance. A couple of straight jobs fail, and Steeljack finds himself drawn into being a protector and private eye for the city's less savory characters who are being hunted and killed by an unknown assailant. In revealing Steeljack's attempts to reform himself, Busiek takes turns through a number of new histories of the characters in the volume, dabbling in the styles of modern comics as well as silver and even golden age adventures through Steeljack's rememberances.

It is this last part that makes the continuing stories of Astro City so rewarding. This volume lets Busiek add more characters to the already amazingly detailed and varied world that he has crafted - and lucky for us, still is crafting. The author's notes at the end of the collection provide a nice glimpse into the creative process as Busiek shows some of the sketches that lead to the development of the characters along with allowing a few comments about what he wanted each character to be like and to harken back to.

The story itself is a pretty good one, full of redemption and downfall, blurring the lines between some of the heros and villians of Astro City. It's a nice noir arc for Busiek and a welcome addition to the Astro City line. I'm eagerly awaiting the third graphic novel - Family Album - which is supposedly waiting for me at the library. If the snow stops, I'll grab it tomorrow afternoon.

Not his best...nor his worst...

Just finished up Michael Crichton's Airframe - a novel about a woman's chase to find out what happened in a deadly air incident on a plane that her company built.

Honestly, it's pretty typical Crichton. If you like most of the rest of his books, you'll probably like this one, as well. It had a fairly tight plot with the dangers and twists - union troubles, internal company espionage, circling media - coming closer and closer, boxing her into a corner as the story moved along. It was a little slow to build, as the details of the airplane industry took some slogging to get through and the character took a while to engender much sympathy from me. She's not a horrible person, just a little - as one critic mentions - wooden at times. By the time all of the nooses had been tightened, the story did turn out to be pretty gripping, and I found myself wanting to listen to the tapes just a little while longer to get to the end.

My biggest gripe is that the eventual revelations didn't seem to be in the least predictable. In a good suspense story, I like to know that there were clues along the way that might have let me know what was coming. (Fight Club - both book and movie - did a great job of that.) I this novel, however, Crichton kept all of his cards a little close to the vest for my liking. I'd have liked a little more to have been revealed instead of having the lead character look at something and comment "That was when it all fell together" without giving us even a glimpse into what she'd just seen.

It's not bad, it's not great. Good, fluff read...

If you're gonna pick a Crichton instead, might I recommend Prey - but do stay away from Timeline

Continuing the musical quick hits...

Kingston Trio's Greatest Hits is one of those things that I remember fondly from my childhood. My mom was and old folky who tells stories of missing college classes because the weather was nice and the call of the guitar and the open lawns of campus were too much for her. I love the clean harmonies and folky feel of the Trio - clearly the most acceptable of the first wave of folk music, with their matching outfits and easily parodied style - and I still enjoy listening to their music - especially "MTA", "El Matador", and "Everglades".

Continuing in the folksy vein is the Pete Seeger tribute album Where Have All the Flowers Gone: Songs of Pete Seeger. The Appleseed label has taken some of the greatest folk songs of all time - all written by Seeger - and hands the duties to a number of quality artists - all of whom seem to over sing and over produce their choice of songs. The recordings are nice and well made, but they all seem to miss the feeling that I have for Seeger's music. I hear acoustic instruments played well but simply when I think of Pete Seeger, and many of these songs simply are not that. It is, however and sadly, the only place on CD that I can find a copy of "All My Children of the Sun" by anybody at all. Anybody know where I can find the Seeger version on CD? Anywhere?

Then there are the folk compilations - I've barely started listening to Washington Square Memoirs - but I have finished up listening to the first three volumes of Troubadours of the Folk Era - a horribly named collection of some of the finest songs of the folk era (whatever that term means). I'd especially recommend the second volume with wonderful tracks from Fred Neil, Tom Rush, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Tim Buckley, Phil Ochs, and others.

Yeah, it's folk week here at My Musical Radar, deal with it. I also took some time to listen to John Prine's The Missing Years. It's another folk album borrowed from mom's collection. (I went in over Thanksgiving and came back with some stuff to listen to.) This is one of Prine's strongest late career albums with songs like "Jesus: The Missing Years", "All the Best", and "Everything is Cool". Other than "Jesus", there isn't anything as wonderful as "Lake Marie", but there are still some very good songs here - almost all of which include Prine's trademark humor and acerbic wit. He's a singular songwriter with a voice that nobody else has ever been close to.

Wilco isn't folk, so at least there's that. Kicking Television - their new double disc live album is a good record of what a Wilco live show is like. I was lucky enough to have seen them here in Cincinnati this past fall at the Taft Theater. If you saw Wilco live on their last tour, this is a perfect reproduction of that concert. Wilco's live act isn't anything even remotely resembling a jam band as they look to simply reporoduce what they've put to disc. It makes for a great, rocking show, but a less than spectacular live album. Good for fans but probably not going to make new fans.

Far from folk is the soundtrack to the film Orlando. It's only got one proper song - the brilliant "Coming" by Jimmy Somerville - but it's got a number of haunting and moody instrumentals, mixing semi-classical instrumentation and looping, electronic sounds. The soundtrack as a whole is excellent, and it's quickly moving into my most played list.

We'll close today with a quick recap of Tift Merritt's Bramble Rose. I'd first given her second album - tambourine - but couldn't get through it because her voice just sounded whiney to me, but this debut album seems much more pleasant and stronger to me, opening with the excellent "Trouble Over Me". The reviews all suggest that Merritt is a newly-born, fully-formed artist, and I can't argue with that because this is one of the finest debut albums in any sort of Americana singer-songwriter vein that I'm heard in a long time. Merritt clearly deserves all the praise she's getting, and I'll be giving her second album a second listen after hearing this one.

That's enough for now. Soon I'll be finishing up Michael Chriton's Airframe and will be reviewing that and the Astro City collection Tarnished Angel

More musical quick hits...

More and more quick hits about cd's that I've heard of late...most of them borrowed from PLCH...

Up first is Kanye West's College Dropout. Picked this up on the basis of snippets heard in the previews of Jarhead - looking for the song "Jesus Walk With Me". That song does have a great beat and rhythm, though the bulk of the album isn't my thing. I liked the first half dozen songs but eventually found the anti-education and pro-drug/drug dealer tone not to be to my likings. Reviews are strong, however, so I'm guessing that if the genre is more to your liking, you'll like this example.

Next up is Prairie Wind by Neil Young. Every review seems to feel the need to mention that Neil nearly died before/during the recording of this album. Thanks for sharing. Maybe it'll make me more charitable toward this album which seems to continue Neil's slide into late career irrelevance that's been going on since either Weld or Harvest Moon. At this point, his albums are reviewed in reference to his past albums. This one keeps being referred to as the third in a trilogy with Harvest Moon. Where that album, however, was composed of original, quality songs throughout, this newest Neil album finds him borrowing phrases and tunes from his old, great songs - something that has begun happening with more frequency of late. Weirdly, I find myself pining for the 80s Neil that got sued for making non-Neil albums. His late 90's 'til now output has been decidely uninteresting and boring. Neil's moved off of my must-buy list.

Borrowd dwightyokamacoustic.net from mom because I enjoy the CD. It's nothign revalatory from Dwight, but it's a nice acoustic reworking of some of Dwight's greatest hits. He's got a nice twange and callback to the rockabilly/outlaw country artists of the past. Sort of a similar album to John Mellencamp's Rough Harvest which I also recommend - in that an artist takes a look back at his catalog - also makes me think of John Prine's Souvenirs album, which I haven't yet checked out.

Standing alone in good company...

Don't trust the trailer. If you do, you'll think it's a sappy, crappy movie. It's not.

Now, it's not a perfect movie either, admittedly, but it is a good, sweet, funny film that comes close to being an excellent film.

The basic plotline is that Sports America - a fictitious magazine along the lines of Sports Illustrated is bought out by a larger corporation, leaving the job of Dennis Quaid's fifty-one-year old executive in limbo. Quaid's eldest daughter (the inredible Scarlet Johanson) has just announced her intentions to transfer to the much more expensive NYU, and his wife has just informed him of her surprise pregnancy - not a great time to find that your new boss is twenty-six year old Topher Grace, and that he's eager to fire people to impress his bosses.

For the first two-thirds of the film, things roll along marvelously. Grace's out-of-his-element character becomes the heart of the film and begins an unintended romance with Johanson after his wife - the very ice queenish Selma Blair - leaves him, leaving him with nothing on which to focus other than his job. Quaid sees the new boss firing people he cares about, stripping the magazine that he helped build, and rocking his world even though he can do nothing to stop it because he doesn't want to endanger his job. Everything works for all characters concerned - the story works.

(Warning: spoiler coming)

And then the final act comes. Teddy K - the corporate raider who has bought Sports America - comes to visit. Dan pipes up but doesn't lose his job (?). And then Teddy K leaves - taking his company and going home. It's as if the entire movie never happened - Dan gets his job back and hires everybody who was just fired. Luckily everybody learns a little something along the way. The only resolution I cared for was that of the relationship between Grace and Johanson's characters. That worked. The set-up of the rest of the ending, though, didn't quite work. It was nice, it was feel good, but it didn't quite make sense.

(Warning: spoliers done now.)

So, it's not a great movie, but it's a really good one. And it's enjoyable. And it's even decently family friendly. And it might be a new type of film or just a failed third act - depends who you read. Either way, it's got Scarlet Johanson, so at least it's got that going for it, right?