Not A Good Time

...to be blogging tonight, as I have day job work to do, plus I went to the gym and need a shower before bed. Anyway...

Decent Memorial Day weekend. Had kids for half of it, which was great, and I also managed to eat better, not eat late except one night, and work out some. Oh, and I only had a couple glasses of wine. I'm trying to get in better shape.

Watched a lot of movies. Finally finished Half Nelson with Ryan Gosling--maybe I already mentioned this? It's a tough, mostly uncompromising film, though one could say the non-ending was a sort of compromise, as there had been little indication that the mostly likeable Gosling character would go straight and stop fucking up his life with drugs, or that his young-student-with-a-future would escape the lure of easy drug dealer money. I think I DID write about this because I recall something about naturalistic acting. Since I don't really read my own blog, that's even fewer readers than you might think!

The Naked City probably gets lumped in with films noir, but it's not. It's another curious Criterion Collection choice in that it's rather inconsequential and sort of corny, though still pretty entertaining. The Mark Hellinger (producer) narration is corny but probably a fresh jolt at the time of release, and "There are 8 million stories in the Naked City...here is one of them" is still one of the better opening lines for a film, at least among narrated ones. What the movie really is, is the prototype for stolid policiers like Law & Order, Law & Order: SUV and Law & Order: BBW (that new spinoff for black bisexual women). Kindly old fart dispatching youngsters to track down leads with good old-fashioned police work, gumption, and a healthy dollop of coincideus ex machina. It's well shot, though, I'll give it that. It would be tremendously expensive to remake today with all those set-ups and having to get permission for them.

The Illusionist is a nice, tidy romantic fantasy in lovely Vienna, with Edward Norton suitably brooding, Paul Giamatti suitably squirmy, Rufus Sewell suitably slimy and enraged, and Jessica Biel really pretty. It's a good film but pales in comparison to the superior and similar The Prestige because The Prestige has a number of twists, including basically doing a sleight of hand on who the protagonist and antagonists are, as well as a surprise ending that makes good sense and explains a huge chunk of the movie. Also, both male leads present challenges to each other. In The Illusionist, it's clear that no matter what happens, Norton will prevail, though there is some satisfaction when the partially corrupt Giamatti redeems himself. Also, the illusions in The Illusionist are total bullshit, absolutely impossible to achieve in that period, despite the use of some briefly seen, dodgy diagrams to explain them. The Illusionist isn't bad or anything, and it's somewhat unfair to hold it to the standard of another film, but there you go. The Prestige is better.

Also finally watched Children of Men. I agree with Steven Grant that it's extremely cold and unfortunately while I like that look visually--in fact the subtle effects make this a very believable 2027--it makes the film almost impossible to latch onto, emotionally. Sure, director Cuaron knows what he's supposed to do--there's a scene where Clive Owen overhears his friend talk about Owen's dead child that is intended to make the audience sympathize with and excuse his detachment, but it doesn't really work that well. Also, while I was fine accepting that in 20 years no one could explain why women weren't getting pregnant anymore, I wasn't so fine with not understanding just where Owen was taking this miraculously pregnant woman and what the people there were going to do with her. I don't need it all spelled out, but I needed more than I got here. It is great to look at, with very long, complicated takes, but that sort of makes me worried about Cuaron's future films. I hope he doesn't work on making them more elaborate and further getting away from the emotional meat of them. Hopefully Owen doesn't get too caught up in that kind of filmmaking, either.

Got another load of books I'm not sure when I'll read, including the first collections of FELL and CASANOVA, a Dr. Strange tpb I got more for Marcos Martin's art than BK Vaughan's story, though at first glance it looks unfortunately like Martin is getting less Cooke-ish and more Buckinghamesque, which isn't the worst thing but less appealing to me.

Also got a McSweeney's book, Comedy By The Numbers, which I read some of at the gym. Pretty funny, cynical would-be How-To book with an immense list of cliche' comedy bits you can theoretically insert into your everyday life, comedy act, or screenplay, including Death As An Entity, the Dick Joke, Druggie Humor (yes, I stopped at the D's) and more. Also looking forward to watching some of the 3 disc Tom Goes To The Mayor series, a very odd and short-lived Cartoon Network show exec produced by Bob Odenkirk with lots of good guests like David Cross, Brian Posehn, Tenacious D, Garry Shandling and, yes, more.

Finally, I interviewed Kyle Baker for that print edition of Comic Foundry, and it looks like it will be published after all. And yes, since I asked him, I've seen at least 3 Baker interviews, but I still think mine is different enough. For one thing, it's shorter! Seriously, it came out pretty good.