That having been said, I’m going to be taking the next few weeks off to try to reconfigure the site into something more in line with what I’d like it to be. We’re going to be implementing new aspects to the site that just won’t work with how it’s being run now so it’s time to make a few upgrades. I’m sure you all will be happy with the changes that are coming.

Here’s to a great 2012!

Batman : Noel is a pretty good little graphic novel. Lee Bermejo does double duty on writing and art, though Charles Dickens should get a writer credit seeing how this is a pretty direct adaptation of A Christmas Carol even if they didn’t use the title. The story centers around Bob, a lowly runner for the Joker who has a chance run-in with Batman who in the context of this story exemplifies the persona of Scrooge. They really play up the “Batman is a bastard” angle here. I have to say that it’s not the sort of Batman I normally enjoy reading. Too dour, too tied to Frank Miller’s insanity and grumpiness. It would have been a complete turnoff if not for the fact that it was done to serve the purpose of the narrative. I mean, we’re all familiar enough with Dickens’ work to know that he’ll have a change of heart in the end.

The fun of Noel is in Bermejo’s use of Batman’s cast of characters to fill slots in the Dickens lore and the beautiful artwork that he does it with. Say what you will about the book, it is hard to deny that the artwork is anything less than stunning. The layouts, the finishes, the colors…all of it comes together to create something that truly pops. If you were to show this to someone who doesn’t read comics regularly, you can bet your sweet ass they would be impressed. It is some of Bermejo’s best work. It’s vibrant and eye-catching in a way that his work in something like Joker wasn’t. While that artwork was still impressive, it was a muddy, dark blotch. It was too dark to truly impress. Here you get a real feel for how good Bermejo really is.

I admit that the pricetag is a bit hefty for the story content, but it’s a good read and something that I’ll probably pull out around this time each year just for a lark. I would say that’s enough to give it a hearty recommendation.

RATING: 7/10

That having been said, I have seen the original film adaptation and felt that all of the problems with the book were still present on film and that it was highly unlikely that they could be fixed without a major overhaul. When talks of the remake started popping up I wasn’t interested simply because of my problems with the novel and the original adaptation. I figured that a remake wouldn’t help those problems and that the film wouldn’t be worth my time. Then I found out that David Fincher would be involved and that the cast included Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, and Stellan Skarsgard. I was starting to think that perhaps there could be something there of interest to me. I heard rumors that the script by Steve Zaillian deviated quite a bit from the source and that Fincher would be doing a true “adaptation” rather than a direct translation from book to screen. I began to put my trust in a film that I could be forgiven for dismissing.

Then the trailers started to hit and I’ll be damned if it didn’t look like a real Oscar contender of a film. Fincher had seemingly crafted something stunning in terms of texture and mood that hooked me in and really made me want to sit down and watch with an open mind. I went in willing to give the material a fair shot and be proven wrong in regards to my feeling that the story was a dull, plodding mess that strove for intricacy but collapsed under its own sense of grandeur and intrigue.

I will say that this adaptation has mood and texture in spades. It is a well made film. It’s crafted and acted in a way that really is quite amazing. Rooney Mara gives a performance that really showcases her range and subtlety and Daniel Craig does a great job handling the part handed to him. The problem with the film, once again, is that the story is a muddled, dull, and honestly not-that-interesting mess. The narrative is extremely disjointed in the first hour and a half and by the time Craig and Mara finally pair up I had pretty much lost patience with the flow of the story. If someone like Fincher who did such an amazing job weaving the narrative of a film like Zodiac has trouble with something as pedestrian as this you know there’s a problem. The film really did not need to be as long as it ends up being and calling it a slog is being a bit generous. As an acting showcase it’s quite interesting but as an overall film it’s a disaster.

Fans of the novel will probably be pleased with this American adaptation but I can’t muster much excitement about it. I had hoped that Fincher could pull together the parts that did work in the novel and weave them effectively into a manageable film but what he released is a choppy, disjointed, over-long mess and I can’t really say that it was worth the money it took to make with the original Swedish version doing everything this one did. The only difference is a perceived upswing in production value and I do think that Craig did a better job in his part than his Swedish counterpart (who incidentally played the villain role in Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol and didn’t really bring much to the table there either).

Sad to say, this was a real disappointment, even looking through the lens of my initial low expectations. Hopefully Fincher will put out something with the same sort of zing that The Social Network had before getting locked into the sequels for this because I’m almost certain that my sentiments will not be echoed by the majority of people who will see this and consider it cinematic gold.

RATING: 4/10

Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed this entry far more than any of the other films in the series. I guess number three comes closest. I think that the direction Abrams took the franchise and the followup work done by Brad Bird here on the fourth film is closer in line with my sensibilities than the first or second installments. I liked the first Mission Impossible and still regard it as a solid action/thriller. The second one kinda flew off the rails. I don’t hate it the way some folks do but I don’t think that it really worked. Part three was a damn good movie, and though JJ Abrams directing was a little shaky it did an admirable job of getting the series back on the right track.

Ghost Protocol shifts a little bit in style but retains much of JJ Abrams sensibility. Not surprising considering he stayed on as a producer. The film still hinges on the team-based operations that were jettisoned in MI2 and brought back to the forefront in part three. This time around we get much more of scene stealing Simon Pegg, as well as the added bonus of Paula Patton who looks a lot like Rashida Jones and I think my feelings on her are pretty well documented, and Jeremy Renner coming in and doing a bang-up job all around. Based on the trailers and online speculation I was prepared not to like Renner’s inclusion and was fearing that his purpose would be utterly cliche but the film wisely avoids all of that and instead works on molding him into the dynamic in a way that doesn’t feel forced. He adds something different to the group much in the way that Cruise, Pegg, and Patton do. They all have distinct character traits and each serves a function. I rather enjoyed that.

I have to say that never once was I bothered by Tom Cruise. Every once in a while in a film he’ll do something that completely takes me out of the moment and ruins the effect. Here he does a good job of reminding people why he rose to prominence as a leading man in the film industry in the first place. Despite all of his faults, he can hold a film together quite well and this is definitely a return to form for him. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed one of his movies so this was a nice change of pace in that regard.

The real star of the film however is Brad Bird, who has an eye for shooting action scenes unlike any other working director. His sense of direction doesn’t have the limited scope of his peers due to his long-standing work in the animation field. This being his first time working in live action I would have been prepared to overlook any sense of awkwardness he may have had behind the camera but he really knocked it out of the park. The only sequence I will question his judgement on was the chase through Dubai set during a sandstorm. In theory it seems like a cool idea but on camera you can’t really see too much and the kinetic energy of the moment gets lost in the confusion. That minor gripe aside, the film is spectacularly framed and a beauty to behold on an IMAX screen.

I would say this is probably your best bet for a good time in the theaters this December. Tintin looks promising but could swing either way and I doubt people will be seeing Dragon Tattoo for a lark. Best to slap down some money for this and enjoy yourself with a big fat grin on your face.

RATING: 8/10

Firstly, I need to point out that they really went forward with the Holmes/Watson “bromance” this time around. They don’t really keep it in the subtext anymore. It’s just plain text. Holmes’ dismay at Watson’s getting married and their parting of ways leaves him jealous like a scorned lover and the interaction between the two is quite entertaining. Jude Law has never been one of my favorite actors, I can’t seem to recall anything he’s done that has really stayed with me but his turn as Watson is thoroughly enjoyable and his chemistry with Robert Downey Jr. is remarkable. Downey has taken some flack for his portrayal of Holmes but by now everyone should be able to accept that this version of the character will act in a particular way and Downey does it quite well. He pulls off the eccentricities (which have been dialed up quite a bit here) and handles the myriad of disguises perfectly. He’s given us a version of the Holmes character that may not be one hundred percent in line with Doyle’s canon, but something that was extrapolated and molded from that vein.

Next I feel the need to point out that the villain this time around is Professor Moriarity. I think a number of folks were disappointed he didn’t have more of a presence in the first film. Here Moriarity is played by Richard Harris’ spawn Jared with great gusto and an authentic sense of menace. Harris’ Moriarity is the sort of villain that could save a much lesser movie. His performance is absolutely stunning and I would not be surprised if this film wound up getting Harris any number of new roles. He has had some choice performances in the past, and is supposedly equally impressive in his role on TV’s Mad Men, but I do believe this is the largest scale he’s ever worked on and he nails the role dead on.

There are some issues that stumble the film from time to time. Noomi Rapace, so well known for her vivid portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty dull and lifeless for the majority of the film. I’m not sure if it was a language barrier issue or something else entirely but she was pretty much a dull void. An attractive dull void, but still a hiccup in the otherwise stellar casting department which also included Stephen Fry as Sherlock’s brother Mycroft who had a tendency to steal whatever scene he was in. Then again, this is Stephen Fry we’re talking about. That’s to be expected. There are also some minor pacing issues and sometimes the film feels a bit slow between action beats, which seems like a horrid complaint to levy against a Sherlock Holmes film because there shouldn’t be that many action beats to begin with. But framed within the context of the film itself, the gaps are pretty apparent.

On the whole, it’s equally as good as its predecessor and I personally enjoyed it a great deal more based solely off of the escalation in Holmes and Watson’s interplay as well as the back and forth between Holmes and Moriarity. It isn’t a perfect film or a great adaptation in any regard but it is one of the better crafted action/mystery films of the year and I doubt many people will find much not to like about it unless they walk in with a pre-established vendetta.

RATING: 7/10

AVENGERS X-SANCTION (MARVEL COMICS) # 1

Oh Jeph Loeb, we meet again. This time he managed not to make my eyeballs bleed with rage, so let’s chalk that up as a win. I was fully expecting Red Hulk to sodomize Cable or something equally batshit insane to happen. I know that he doesn’t have the same leeway with the 616 characters that he did when he wrote Ultimatum but I still can’t get that out of the back of my mind when I pick up one of his books.

This issue seemed a little light for the first issue of a major event comic, but that having been said it is the sort of style folks have come to associate with Loeb following his Hulk run, which had a similar sort of pacing and tone. The McGuiness art certainly doesn’t help to distance the two. I feel like this is going to ultimately be an utterly disposable piece of event overload but seeing how it’s only going to be four issues long I can’t complain too much. Fear Itself seemed to last forever so a quick little mini-event might be refreshing in the end. I can’t say. Maybe I’ve just been bludgeoned by Marvel’s books so effectively that my brain has turned to mush and I’ll just buy whatever they tell me to.

Me am Marvel Zombie. Take my money. *sigh*

DOCTOR WHO (IDW) # 12

There really isn’t much to say about this particular issue other than it features the art talents of Mr. Paul Grist of Jack Staff fame and the result is a charming almost entirely dialog free story featuring the eleventh Doctor making the Christmas rounds with Santa in the Tardis. It’s cute, it’s breezy and I enjoyed the heck out of it. If you’re a Who fan it’ll probably hit you right where it needs to. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something as a stocking stuffer for younger kids looking to get into comics or sci-fi. It’s just plain nice.

I really don’t know what else I can say about the book. It’s a little on the light side but that is just part of the charm. I hope you’ll give it a try.

THE RAY (DC COMICS) # 1

I was going to pass this one up. I won’t lie, it didn’t seem like anything that begged to be read. That seems to run counter to my usual feelings about the Palimiotti/Gray writing team but there was a feeling of generic blandness to it in the previews I had come across and so I had planned to let this one pass me by. But the thing is, I DO know that Palmiotti and Gray rarely turn in merely passable work and I owed it to myself to read the book because if nothing else it filled a niche that the new DC lineup seemed to have missed out on. I’m certainly glad I did for a myriad of reasons. First and foremost, the writing team has given us a hero who is aware of hero tropes in a way that makes for quite a refreshing read. The inner voice of this new character doesn’t seem like any other hero on the stands. There is a uniqueness to him that I have to applaud, especially considering that I was afraid the title would exemplify the polar opposite. Some of that has to be due to the fact that he’s not another anglo-saxon hero living in a major metropolis. Here we get a Korean-American dating a Hindu woman who works as a lifeguard while living with his hippie flower-power parents who has his powers thrust upon him and deals with it in a way that seems utterly realistic and runs organically with the rest of the narrative.

The art by Jamal Igle is quite good, as it usually is, and readers should find themselves pleasantly surprised by how good this book is. It really does come out of left field and shatter expectations. Please go give this one a shot. It will send a message to DC that these types of stories still have an audience. People on the ‘net beg for books like these and yet the numbers never seem to add up. Hopefully this time around we can mark one in the win column for b-list heroes with stellar writing.

SACRIFICE # 1

Sam Humphries is something of an indy darling right now. His previous one-shot “Our Love is Real” made a real splash earlier this year and he’s following it up with a self-published book that has been garnering the same level of buzz. The book tells the story of a young man with some psychological issues (for lack of a better term) finding himself in the ancient Aztec world and caught up in the middle of a power dispute over the proper religious teachings that the Aztec people should follow. He also doesn’t want them to wind up getting slaughtered by the incoming Spanish, so he’s got that going for him.

The book is a complex and interesting read. I admit that I had to read it twice to get the flow of information down, but seeing how the version I read was digital and I don’t have a whole lot of experience reading in that format there may have been a bit of a learning curve element to it.

I would advise giving it a shot. This may be your chance to see the breakthrough work of an artist poised to really break out in 2012. I get a similar vibe from what I got off of Fraction during Casanova here and if that’s any indication of things to come Humphries is going to wind up on top sooner rather than later.

****************************************************************

That’s it for this week. Hopefully you will find something to enjoy there. I should have a review of Sherlock Holmes : Game of Shadows for you as well this weekend. That should be exciting.

As it stands I was able to finish it over the course of two sittings and was enthralled the whole way through. I make constant references to being a literature major in the university system but as a writer I don’t consider myself an author of “literature.” To me that has a tangible association with scholarly academia. I write fiction. More to the point, I write genre fiction. I began with urban fantasy, then went to sword and sorcery and my NaNoWriMo entry this year is a vampire action/noir. I’m not exactly Walt Whitman. But there is an art to writing genre fiction that some people possess and others don’t. Victor Gischler has that artform down. The Deputy is a dusty country-noir classic that feels like No Country For Old Men by way of Reservoir Dogs. There is a hard-boiled aggression to the prose that syncs up with the slow burn of the mystery behind what is going down in this dusty Oklahoma town and it makes for a fast-paced and compelling read.

I cannot recommend the book enough. It’s as strong an example of well written genre fiction as I’ve seen in a while. I even took it upon myself to grab a copy of one of Gischler’s earlier novel Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse which seems to be right up my alley.

So we’re clear on the spoilers then?

Good.

Can I just say that, from a structural standpoint, Walking Dead season two was an unmitigated mess? Here’s what I want to get out of the way. I don’t have a problem with soap-opera level drama. If the acting is up to snuff and the events unfolding are handled in a way that follows the basic tenets of narrative structure, I don’t really have a problem with heightened or manufactured drama. The central conflicts of this season; Shane’s feelings of rejection and his decent into pure id driven savagery, the theme of secrets and their destructive effect on society as presented by Lori’s pregnancy as well as the “walkers in the barn” scenario, the anguish over a missing child and the decision on how much time to spend searching, all of these things are fine concepts to mine in a television show.

So why did these episodes leave such a foul taste in my mouth?

I feel that I should point out that I read the hardcover collections of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead before the season started. That series, for the most part, moves at a breakneck pace that essentially forces the reader to turn the page because things are happening so fast that you don’t have an opportunity to be bored by what is unfolding. The story beats are handled well and the pacing never feels off, with a few exceptions. If there is one thing that they did not translate from page to screen, it is the idea of acceptable pacing.

Walking Dead season two is essentially hobbled by the fact that the drama, as engrossing as it may have been, is stretched so thin in an attempt to pad out the series to fit its episode run that it borders on the edge of making the series a tedious bore. In just about every episode there are perhaps five to ten minutes of simply amazing television. But the rest of the episode is filled with instances of drama being repeated in different scenarios in an effort to fill time. I don’t know how many times Shane and Lori had the same conversation. This goes for Herschel and Rick as well. They keep repeating the same beats on the same element of the story so many times that, I’ll be honest, the episodes tend to run together in terms of identity. There is nothing in any of the episodes that makes them stand out. Usually you can isolate a turning point, or a moment where the story takes a dramatic shift. This season has had those moments, but they become overshadowed by the poor handling of the fallout. Carl’s shooting at the end of the first episode loses its impact when for the next two or three episodes we’re treated to multiple scenes of Herschel explaining how dire the situation is and Rick and Lori obsessing about it. Later in the season we’re subjected to multiple repeats of the same conversation between Rick and Herschel about whether the group will be allowed to stay at the farm. The same reasons presented by both parties seem to be repeated incessantly. It dilutes the effect of the drama as a result.

This technique of repetition smacks of the high school student writing an essay and constantly repeating his points with slightly altered wording in order to pad his paper out to the teacher’s required length. It doesn’t make the paper better, it just makes it longer. That’s the nutshell problem of Walking Dead season two. The key elements of the show that actually worked could have cut the episode count from seven down to four. There are literally HOURS of runtime that amount to nothing more than unnecessary padding. I understand the need to build drama. That is not the issue here. The issue is the technique in which they attempted to foster tension that actually had the opposite effect.

Walking Dead is a good show that is smothered by bad elements. It is easy to understand the desire to stretch the material for television. The producers would have you believe it is because they want to exploit the ability of television to slowly build things over an extended period of time. I have no opposition to that idea. Other shows do it quite well. But you don’t get the sense of wasted dialog and padded narrative structure from shows like Breaking Bad. The mid-season finale ended on an excellent note, which is very smart because if they hadn’t hit a home run in the last few minutes of the episode it is doubtful that most of the audience would return next spring for the second half of the season.

Well, this Thanksgiving we have cause to celebrate because Jason Segel and Nick Stoller have written the ultimate love-letter to the Muppets and served it up to us as their triumphant comeback film. The Muppets is every bit as great as you would expect. What makes it so special however is why it works as well as it does. Everything I said in my introduction really sets the stage for why this latest installment is so amazing. The Muppets is a nostalgia trip for people like myself who grew up loving the Muppets in their many different forms. There is an introspective quality to the film in its examination of what Jim Henson’s creations meant to more than a few generations of kids. This isn’t just a good Muppet movie, it’s a good film. I will be the first to admit that while I absolutely love The Muppet Movie, it’s not really a good film, construction wise. That isn’t really the case here, as plotlines are developed and resolved fairly organically. At least as organically as they can be in a film populated by marionette puppets.

All of that aside the best part of the film is that it’s a truly fun romp. The Muppet spirit is alive with this movie in a way it hasn’t been in quite a while. The cameos, the bad puns, the self-aware humor. It’s all handled in a way that never fails to put a smile on the face of the audience. I was afraid that children who didn’t have the same attachment to the characters that I did wouldn’t enjoy the film but I was proven wrong by their excitement as they left the theater. I think this movie will allow for a whole new generation to fall in love with the Muppets and that alone is enough to make me happy.

Rating: 9/10