The Culture Beat

May 16, 2010

The Faces Left Behind

Filed under: Uncategorized — Alex @ 9:58 pm


Now for something completely different from the usual Culture Beat topics. A few weeks ago I had the chance to re-enter a world I grew up in and see faces I hadn’t seen in a generation. An uncle, my mother’s youngest sibling, died after a short illness and I drove from West Palm Beach where I now live, to Valdosta, GA, the small southern city I grew up in. Fifteen miles above the Florida line, it was as deep in the South as you can be before, going into the Florida peninsula, you continue downward until you move out of the south into something like the colony of culturally northeast where so many New Yorkers and other “northerners” now live full or part-time. The last time I had lived in Valdosta was in the latter half of the 1980s before moving to other parts of the southeast like Virginia, Tennessee and Atlanta.

When I got to the funeral home, I arrived with some trepidation; would there be faces of folks I’d known in my childhood who might remember me but I not recall them? My family was pretty well-known throughout the town so that this was a common experience–being greeted by a friend of my parents but awkwardly trying to recall who this gracious person was talking to me. Anyway, the funeral home was full of people lined up to meet my uncle’s surviving family, a testament to how loved he was. I soon met a man who I last known as a classmate in high school. He’d stayed to sell insurance, probably the family business, and though recognizable, showed the advance into middle age, his dark hair now thinner and grayer. He, of course, recognized me immediately and was as warm as ever. I saw a cluster of people across the room speaking to an older couple and someone reminded me that it was Mr. Wiggins who lived with his family a few blocks from my house. He must be in his 80s by now but his big smiling face and gracious manner was as strong as ever. What is it about insurance salesmen in small towns?

I knew there must be more people I knew and who must know me and wished we could all be wearing name tags like we were at some high school or family reunion so that we could quickly catch up–indeed, during that visit and the next day during the funeral, I felt eyes on me as they sought to recall from the recesses of memory just who I and my brothers were. These ghosts of forty or more years past haunted me the next few days as I pondered the choices of my life.

View Larger Map
(Embedded here is one of the many beautiful moss-shaded streets in Valdosta–follow the arrows for a little tour.)

Like a lot of Americans, I have mixed feelings about my hometown. Because it’s where you grew up, it’s the primal scene of your social orientation. I’ve used the word “gracious” more than once because that is the culture of southern middle-class people. One woman at the funeral reception saw me standing around talking to no one and struck up a conversation where she mentioned being a bridge partner with my mother–she initiated the conversation simply because she was a nice person who delighted in recalling the pleasantness of past associations. She wasn’t talky, she simply knew how to make a person relaxed and welcome, a pretty common trait that make “southern hospitality” so distinct.

I left Valdosta in my mid-twenties to follow my vision of serving God with a missions organization elsewhere in the country. I met my wife during this time; she’s from Illinois and when I introduced her to one of my southern gentlemen relations, he remarked as how the Lord could bring me together with a Yankee. I’m not saying it was provincial thinking, but it did sort of capture the nature of living in a certain small area all of your life and how remarkable it is when someone ventures out into a larger world. I left because I believed I was pursuing a vision and a purpose that couldn’t be found in the small world of my youth. My brothers did the same, leaving to live in other parts of the south and must have felt the same strange sense of wonder and stirred memories at the world left behind.

For this was the world that might have been if I had been more content and settled–these folks have the experience of being in the same community all their lives, of seeing friends and family grow, age, mature, struggle and be upheld by local bonds. I, on the other hand, have moved quite a few times as my vocational needs determined. I’ve met many good people but my ongoing relationships are not many and are spread out across the country and maintained by e-mail and occasional phone calls. Can I say who has the better deal? Should I?

I will. I wouldn’t have met my wonderful wife of over 25 years, nor had exposure to the ideas an opportunities I now enjoy in a larger world of ideas and vocation that allows me to contribute immeasurably to the minds of many young people. It’s axiomatic to say that each choice we make forecloses others, and the longer we move on, the narrower our options until one day we look back and wonder, not with regret, but curiosity, what might have been.

May 12, 2010

Summer Movie Kick-Off: Iron Man 2

Filed under: Movies,Uncategorized — Alex @ 4:18 pm


The kids aren’t out of school yet but the onset of the summer movie season, having crept back to make room for earlier releases, scores a box office touchdown with the sequel to 2008′s superhero funfest Iron Man, with Robert Downey Jr. The original film was a nice alternative to the brooding darkness of the Batman films and the angst of Spider-Man. Downey’s Tony Stark was an flippant, eccentric weapons developer who grows a conscience when he discovers that his business partner is selling his company’s high-tech munitions to the country’s enemies and invents the ultimate corporate suit of advanced armor in order to personally clean up the mess. When the movie ended with Stark revealing his true iron identity to a press conference, the audience knew that the wild times were just beginning.

And the sequel picks up a few months later as Stark/Iron Man has, in his words before a meddling Senate hearing, “privatized world peace” with his Iron Man technology, which he refuses to share with the US military. But the wily Stark of course must begin the movie with both outer and inner challenges to confront and we soon see both: the vengeful son of former Stark employee is using Tony’s arc reactor technology to turn himself into the supervillain Whiplash while Stark himself faces the slowly increasing toxic effects of an element used in the personal arc reactor that powers his heart and the Iron Man suit. More so than in the long-running (since the 1960s) comic, Downey’s Tony Stark is a complicated hero, often his own worst enemy, who must face father issues, and his own inability to connect to those closest to him, Girl Friday Pepper Potts and military liaison James Rhodes.

The filmmakers took a chance that the actors’ appeal and interaction would keep audiences interested during the middle part of the story that has less action than you might expect as the various plotlines play out and converge in a predictably explosive and exciting climax. There’s nothing much in the movie to talk about as one sits during the closing credits–no great themes or ambiguity to stimulate debate, just a romp of a comic-book story. But as in the first film, those True Believers who sit through the long credit sequence are rewarded with a glimpse at what Marvel Studios are cooking up next so stay and you’ll get the full value of your ticket.

April 26, 2010

St. Jack of the Lost Island?

Filed under: Faith Issues,Television,Uncategorized — Alex @ 11:23 pm

This week, there is no episode of Lost, so let’s take this moment to contemplate yet another way in which the singular series opens itself to interpretations resonant of a life of faith. Anyone who’s read much from discussion boards or blogs of the endlessly analyzed show knows that there are elements that plainly encourage ponderings of its religious and philosophical symbolism. Heck, every viewer knows of the faith (represented by John Locke) and science (represented by Dr. Jack Shepherd.) is one of the Lost‘s main oppositions. We’re not exactly sure what the faith is in, or toward except that Locke believed in the healing or redemptive power of the island (until he was murdered, that is) and that Jack was a thoroughgoing materialist.

But as the final season winds down, the poles have symbolically reversed. The smokey thing that has assumed Locke’s form rejects any belief in any special qualities of the island that has been his prison (“It’s just a damn island,” he declares as he strives to gain his escape. But Jack has also shifted his attitude profoundly. After spending most of four seasons striving to lead the castaways, then escape the island, he learns that he was wrong to leave and returns a different man, no longer sure of much of anything anymore, except that somehow, he was meant to be on the island. He allows others, like Sawyer last season, to take the lead until he became convinced that exploding Jughead, the nuclear warhead, would interact with the island’s strange electromagnetic power to somehow change everyone’s destiny and avoid years of pain.

Dr. Jack examining his reflection in the Sideways world.
But even that seemed uncertain as the new season began in February. The first episode began with Jack on Oceanic 815, as if nothing had happened to cause its crash. When he goes to the plane’s restroom though, he stares at his image in the mirror with a looks of confusion, as if something isn’t quite right. And so have others in what was soon known as the Sideways world of familiar characters who never crashed on the island, which alternates with the same characters continuing their captivity on the island. Which is real? Both? Neither?

Jack seems to have the most developed character arc as he now watches events transpire on the island and no longer tries to control them. When, in last week’s episode, after sensing that staying on the sailboat with the others on their way to Hydra island was repeating a mistake, he literally took a leap of faith and stepped off the boat to affirm that the island wasn’t finished with him and he must stay–even though he wound up back in the hands of the Fake Locke. (If you haven’t seen the series, then you must be totally confused by this and I recommend renting the first five seasons and the online sixth season eps before continuing.)

So to return to the applicability of the narrative to faith issues, I was reminded of a certain castaway while reading a passage from St. Augustine Confessions yesterday. See if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky.

Imagine a man in whom the tumult of the flesh goes silent, in whom the images of earth, of water, of air and of the skies cease to resound. His soul turns quiet and, self-reflecting no longer, it transcends itself. Dreams and visions end. So too does all speech and every gesture, everything in fact which comes to be only to pass away. All these things cry out: “We did not make ourselves. It is the Eternal One who made us.”

I don’t wish to overinterpret this, but I think of Jack when I read this. He has allowed his soul to stop striving to force things to happen. He knows he doesn’t know everything, in fact, he knows very little, but he does know that he’s on the island for a reason and needs to stay. This reminds me of the attitude of the writer of Psalm 131:2:

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

If EW’s Lost commentator Jeff Jensen is correct (go here and scroll until he gets to where he tells us what he thinks Lost is about) that the show is about illustrating the crises that religious faith addresses, then there will be all sort of applications one can make of such parts of the series that will not definitive as to what is really going on, do provide compelling images of the struggles that people experience while going through dark nights of the soul and wrestling with angels. Well, that’s my two cents of how this fascinating show speaks to my inner pilgrim. We’ll see if Jack’s journey pays off and his faith is rewarded.

April 13, 2010

The Doctor is In, Again

Filed under: Television — Alex @ 12:02 pm


American media companies aren’t the only ones who have successfully relaunched pop culture franchises, such as Batman, Transformers and Battlestar Galactica. The BBC series, Dr. Who originally aimed at family audiences when it began in 1963, and running till 1989, was brought back on the air in 2005 as a filmed hour series with much higher production values. What didn’t change was the essential nature of the title character, referred to only as “The Doctor,” an eccentric, proccupied, cosmic-level genius often dressed with what looks like clothes out of your grandparents’ attic. He’s also an alien itinerant from a race of Time Lords and thus, though appearing human, has two hearts and is exquisitely attuned to the turning the galaxies, planets and time itself. And another thing, when his body is struck with some mortal blow, he can regenerate himself into a new body or a total of 12 regenerations, which each appear to be a different person with personalities differences unique to that regeneration.

The first Doctor (the different versions are known by their sequence), played by William Hartnell, fit the general stereotype of the absent-minded scientist, irascible and cunning with his white hair and formal, antiquated attire. Always accompanied by usually human companions, for audience identification, the Doctor traveled in his time machine, the TARDIS (time and relative dimension in space) a marvelous machine that outwardly appeared to be a blue police call box of the early 1960s but inwardly was a vast interstellar vehicle for moving through time and space. The show really caught on with the arrival of the Daleks, a scary race of robotic beings looking like more sinister versions of R2D2 and intent on exterminating their enemies, meaning anyone but themselves. The complete quirkiness of the program with its cheap sets and old-fashioned cliff-hangers became popular so that the show continued for over twenty years, going through a series of regenerated Doctors and offering actors a chance to bring their own contribution to an ageless character.

In 1989, with no firm support from BBC executives, the program had faltered in its direction and appeal leading to its cancellation. The series continued in the public awareness through home video of the years of episodes and audio productions of new episodes of past doctors but it took a new BBC regime to see the potential for a relaunch.

What was immediately striking about the new Doctor Who series was that it had truly entered the 21st century world of digital effects, high production values and enhanced characterization. Just as other rebooted heroes were examined more in-depth, like Daniel Craig’s James Bond, the Doctor was now more vulnerable, his need for companionship more apparent despite his seemingly insouciant demeanor. The episodes are also much faster-paced and dramatically richer than in the past with plot threads weaving in and out of episodes as in other high-concept television narratives.

The general direction of actors cast has been to make the Doctor gradually younger and thus more likely to appeal to a broader audience. With the 10th Doctor, played by David Tennant, the series reached the height of its popularity, as the sneaker-clad protagonist raced down corridors and across planetscapes in his hair-raising battle against evil aliens and monsters. After five years, Tennant decided to leave which once again challenged producers with how to cast the character that would continue audience attachment. The result was Matt Smith, a twenty-something who will bring his own interpretation when the new season begins on BBC America this Saturday the 17th. I imagine most fans have wondered what the BBC will do when Smith eventually leaves, to be replaced by number 12 leading to an eventual decision what to do when the thirteenth Doctor’s run is up. Christopher Eccleston, the actor who relaunched the franchise lasted only one year, announcing his departure early in his run so producers must be thinking about such contigencies.

One last comment: Many time travel tales in popular culture involve changing the past or repairing a mistake made when someone goes to the past, as in Back to the Future. I think Dr. Who is unique in that the character doesn’t change anything in history that he knows is set. He simply arrives at a certain time and place, is plunged into a dangerous situation, and works to stop evil machinations, because he knows that certain things in history aren’t determined and that’s where he can interfere. (Yes, Who fans, Tennant’s Doctor famously broke that rule in his last season, in “The Waters of Mars,” and was soundly rebuked for it. Thus, if you’re tired of the usual paradoxical headache-inducing time travel stories, consider a voyage in the Tardis starting this Saturday with a new Doctor.

April 5, 2010

Crises on multiple realities

Filed under: Comics,Movies,Science,Television,Uncategorized — Alex @ 1:37 pm


This is a big year for alternate universes in pop culture. Where to begin? Last summer’s movie hit Star Trek rebooted the franchise by positing that a Romulan villain’s trip to the past that caused the death of the future Captain Kirk’s father, radically changed history. But it wasn’t by obliterating the long history of the Enterprise and its crew but by creating an alternate time stream with the same characters having different first meetings but still winding up together for some yet unwritten adventures.

And the J. J. Abrams sci-fi series Fringe, offered a mind-blowing revelation of a parallel universe impinging on the one of the main characters. But viewers of Abrams much more infamous series, Lost, are now experiencing alternate reality whiplash as the new and final season has left behind the series famous flashbacks and flash forwards to “flash-sideways” where we see the series’ characters living in a world in which Oceanic flight 815 never crashed on the island. Viewers are now asking which is the real world? Both? Neither? This picture of Jack Shephard in the Side-ways world suggests the parallel nature off his predicament.

It’s important to note that all of the above are part of Abrams’ Bad Robot productions with many of the same writers and producers using these concepts to create mind-bending tales whatever their understanding of or commitment to specific scientific theories.

Last night I watched JLA: Crisis on Two Earths, the latest in Warner Bros. direct-to-video movies featuring superheroes of the DC universe. The concept of multiple realities, based on the theory that every human choice creates a new universe, thus leading to a “multiverse” of infinite earths, feeds the concept of such stories. Despite the current vogue, the concept of parallel universes that are to some degree different from our own has spawned tales long before the 20th century. But instances of the science fiction thread discussed here can be found in television at least as early as several episodes of The Twilight Zone of the early 1960s and in the famous Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror,” wherein Kirk finds himself on a different, barbaric Enterprise with a goateed Mr. Spock.

Comics got into the act when in 1961, DC Comics offered “Flash of Two Worlds,” the “Silver Age” tale of the original speedster, Jay Garrick, from the comics “Golden Age” of the 1940s, meeting the new Flash, Barry Allen, who had been the instrument of DC’s rebooting of its superhero stories by re-inventing classic characters in an updated form. To account for characters of the same name who didn’t live in the same world, DC borrowed the alternate reality concept and posited that the Jay Garrick earth was slightly ahead, history wise, of Barry Allen’s earth and that many of the same characters had their versions in each world. Thus we would see more and more DC characters re-introduced into current continuity as inhabitants of “Earth One” often crossing over to or being visited by their counterparts on “Earth Two.”

Eventually there were two Green Lanterns, Atoms, Hawkmans (Hawkmen?) and others each with their distinctly different costume designed that sent young readers’ brains spinning with wonder and delight. Periodic expansion of the concept led to the discovery of other earths, one with an “Crime Syndicate” that had evil counterparts to Superman, Wonder Woman and others and resisted by its lone hero, Lex Luthor in a topsy turvy reversal.

Eventually, by the 1980s, DC had accumulated so many characters and parallel earths that it did a major housecleaning with its historic 12-issue series, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” which saw the elimination of the multi-verse into a single universe. That tradition of dimensional crossovers is the basis of JLA: Crisis on Two Earths. The Batman criminal counterpart, Owlman (voiced by actor James Woods) does a surprising dive into philosophy by surmising that an infinite number of worlds created by choices makes human free will pointless and humanity insignificant. Thus it would be no crime if he was to set off a superbomb that will destroy the multiverse–just because he can. This isn’t the first time DC animators have delved into modern philosophy. In this YouTube clip from the Justice League series, titled here “Sartre and Superman,” the original evil Lex Luthor advises an android seeking purpose for his life, to go all existential and create his own purpose. Owlman shows his fidelity to his nihilist beliefs in the movie’s climax. This and a well-executed story lifts the movie out of simple bash and crash beat ‘em ups.

Ultimately, none of these stories is meant to prove the reality of quantum physics. Writers just love to explore the dramatic story potential of parallel lives intertwining. Indeed, many are meditations on the consequences of human moral choices, again reminding us of the significance of our actions and the power of imagination.

Note: Soon after posting this, my buddy Thom Parham, also known as the “DCU Continuity Cop,” let me know of several errors of names of the complex DC history, which I’ve since corrected and for which I am grateful.

March 28, 2010

Show Biz Bits: Theatrical 3-D Revolution?

Filed under: Movies — Alex @ 7:51 pm


Occasionally there are a cluster of news items, usually at my favorite entertainment media site, Studio Briefing, that demand a series of comments. This week saw that happen and what follows is my gloss on those items. So read the linked item and then my comments.

What Goes Up Will Never Come Down
Like the cost of health care, movie ticket prices have risen consistently over the decades, and just like the new health care bill, no measures will lower the long term rise consumers will pay for either commodity. With the new higher pricing of 3D theatrical features reported here, the transformation of theaters into premium venues for enhanced experiences continues. There are several threads here.
1. Avatar cemented the public’s interest in 3D films and it was confirmed by Alice in Wonderland‘s incredible box office. Now with even more 3D films arriving, including How to Train Your Dragon and Clash of the Titans, audiences seem to want to watch any movie that offers in-depth immersion. The higher cost of such technology is the ostensible justification for the ticket price increase, and as the article says, this is a test of what the market will bear.
2. The long-rumored demise of movie theaters in the age of digital home theaters seems dispelled as DVD and Blu-Ray discs sales remain flat or decline. I don’t yet grasp why this has happened since to me, a moderately priced or even low-end system is a long term better value than theatrical showings to enjoy features. I’m not yet sold on video-on-demand which is supposed to be the next big thing in home entertainment. But theaters have found a new way to keep audiences coming to the box office for entertainment and I really am happy that the public aspect of movie consuming looks viable even if I only go for the films I absolutely must see upon their release.

The article’s reference to the “DVD/home entertainment” as their core business is a reminder that for many years now, it was home video that was the most profitable revenue stream for studios–it appears we are seeing a change in public preferences–the new entertainment equation for the consumer, in the middle of a deep recession and high unemployment, is choosing premium ticket purchasing at least for their 3D movie venue. Will this lead to more high end spectacles described above that will dominate theaters, or will 3D trickle down into non-special effects-driven films?

3. The scramble to find theaters for all these new 3-D movies will only accelerate the conversion of more theaters to new technology, often with high-def digital projectors (one model of which appears at the top) downloaded via studio encryption, sort of like home video on demand. IOW, soon you’ll be watching a very expensive version of home theater, rather than celluloid prints, or traditional film in your local multiplex. But as this item shows, it will be a while before digital 3-D projector arrive in sufficient numbers and so 3-D celluloid prints will be shown on traditional projectors as a stopgap until then.
4. More Than Movies: In a related story following this one, not only are feature films fighting for 3-D screen space, next month the NCAA finals will also be wedging themselves into theaters for 3-D presentations of games.
5. In concluding this item, I must say that I still don’t get excited about 3-D as a real innovation. About 20 minutes or so into Avatar, I almost stopped noticing the sense of depth, or the different focal planes just seemed flat to me, like watching images in a kid’s Viewmaster, thus not really truly rounded three dimensional objects. A great story, in 2D, if well photographed and edited, will always beat a mediocre or bad story in 3-D.

March 12, 2010

Once was Lost, Now is Found?

Filed under: Television — Alex @ 8:27 pm


This is my first post on Lost since the sixth and final season began in February. I’ll assume those reading this are familiar with the epic series’ dense storyline and mythology of airline crash survivors facing strange perils and their own tragic histories on the weird island that seems in control of their fates. The endgame that started in the two-hour February season premiere has continued in bringing to a head the conflicts that will gradually be explained by season’s end. Here’s my take:

The ensemble cast is seperating into two camps–each aligned with the two entities we saw at the end of the fifth season–Jacob, the white-shirted inhabitant of the statue’s base, who long in process weaving of a tapestry with a blessing from Homer’s Odyssey seems a metaphor for his working towards redemption of those who will work out their salvations on the island, and his counterpart, the Man in Black, who has been seeking a loophole in their arrangement that will allow him to destroy Jacob and leave the island. Now that the Man in Black has taken the form of the deceased John Locke and revealed himself to be the Smoke Monster, various commentators have given him amusingly appropriate names: Flocke (for fake Locke), the Locke-ness Monster, Smocke, etc. He’s seemingly the death principle, an avenging force who has taken various forms over the years, and had seduced John Locke into believing in the positive purpose of the island when in fact, he was setting Locke up for his own purposes until he had conned Benjamin Linus into killing the hapless seeker so that he could take his form and lead Linus to Jacob where the oft-rejected Linus could be induced to kill Jacob out of yet another seeming rejection.

The divided cast will soon either be in one camp or another. Flocke has already recruited Sawyer, broken-hearted and angry at himself at losing Juliet, Sayid, infected with growing evil after his revival in the tainted Temple pool, Claire, looney as a goony bird after abandoning her infant son Aaron in the 4th season and determined to kill Kate when she learns that Kate raised him for three years. Each has been promised their hearts’ desires by Flocke in Faustian bargains that seemingly damn them. After the Smoke Monster gains entrance to the temple, and destroys the remaining dwellers, Kate follows Smoky’s group not out of any bargain but apparently because there’s nowhere else to go and she remains an uncommitted wild card.

Those in Jacob’s camp are Hurley who can see Jacob’s ghost who gives him often cryptic instructions that involve getting Jack to follow him to an ocean cliffside lighthouse where Jack discovers a mirror device where Jacob has watched him from childhood. Jacob has left Jack to discover his own purpose for his complex and manipulated life and seems to have come to a level of faith in the most current episode where he confront the mysteriously long-lived Richard Alpert on the Black Rock. Richard, believing himself betrayed by Jacob, and knowing he cannot end his own life, asks Jack to light a fuse and blow him up. Jack knows that if he himself is a candidate of Jacob’s, he also cannot die until he fulfills the reason he was brought to the island and proves it by staying with Richard as the lit fuse burns out before igniting the explosive.

The person most in need of redemption, if that can be rated, is Benjamin Linus, the ratty, manipulative former leader of the Others who finds himself the most manipulated by Smocke and now condemned to die by Jacob’s vengeful servant Illana who orders him to dig his own grave before she puts him in it. When Smocke appears to Linus and tells him he can take over charge of the island if he follows his instructions, another recruiting tactic, Linus follows his directions to run to where a rifle is waiting and grabs it to turn it on the pursuing Illana but instead of shooting, he makes a wrenching confession of how he had chosen power over his daughter Alex’s life and been seemingly rejected by Jacob and that he was going to Smokey’s camp because “he’s the only one who will have me!”

Illana amazingly graceful response was, “I’ll have you,” stuns Linus and he follows her back to camp, broken and apparently on the road to redemption. The chief of Lost’s sinners fate looks more hopeful now.

I haven’t even gotten into the “Sideways” world that has replaced the series’ flashbacks and flashforwards with a seemingly alternate universe where not only did Oceanic 815 land safely in LA, but that the characters’ histories were different before the trip. We’ve seen John Locke a much less desperate man, more reconciled to his loss of his legs and engaged to be married. Jack Shepherd reconciles with his teenage son and now Ben Linus, a high school history teacher, opts to help Alex Rosseau, one of his brighter students, get into Yale rather than blackmail his way into the principle’s chair. Only Sayid’s Sideways fate is uncertain–will he always be a killer?

We still don’t know who Jacob and Smokey are or actually represent and why the island is whatever it is, but the most satisfying element in Lost is seeing characters make sometimes surprising choices, sometimes purely on faith, that will pull them out of their self-created hells or else secure a worse fate. These images of forgiveness and costly grace are some of the best tales of redemption in popular culture in our times.

February 21, 2010

Reboots in Multiple Franchises

Filed under: Comics,General Pop Culture,Movies — Alex @ 11:15 pm

The ongoing saga of Hollywood’s recycling of once-profitable movie properties continues. Earlier this month, Niki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood reported that the brilliant Christopher Nolan would oversee the script for a new Superman film while also beginning work on the next Batman screenplay. The director whose vision revived the Caped Crusader’s movie career in Batman Begins and trumped that with The Dark Knight seems just the guy to rescue Superman from the dead end he faced after the unsatisfying Superman Returns. I trust he understands that Bats and Supes are characters with completely different tones and sensibilities and won’t be tempted to darken the Man of Steel but find a way to make the first superhero soar again. And yes, though I’ve expressed doubt whether there was any way to top The Dark Knight, especially without the return of Heath Ledger’s Joker, I’m certain Nolan’s earned the right to try, after a couple of years to ponder a sequel.

The other big news in reboots comes from Television Without Pity which reports that plans are in the works to bring back Daredevil, Mission Impossible, and Riddick. Let’s take each in turn:

Daredevil: After Mark Steven Johnson’s overly ambitious letdown of Marvel’s sightless superhero in 2003, a new take would have to rethink the bad idea of telling all of old Hornhead’s greatest tales in once compressed feature. Think franchise instead of one-shot and the next film should pace itself to tell just one great story at a time. This, by the way, is a character that could benefit from Nolan’s approach to noirish style–for decades Daredevil has been the champ of Marvel’s mean streets, an almost self-made hero like Batman, except instead of cool toys, he’s got supersenses.

Mission Impossible: I’m agnostic on this property since I’ve never watched one of the films, so distasteful was the original concept of replacing the covert team caper approach of the television inspiration with a star vehicle for Tom Cruise. I utterly disavow any interest in anything but a fresh approach to the original concept.

Riddick: I saw the first of the two films, Pitch Black, which was a pretty good sci-fi B-film that helped launch Vin Diesel’s career, but skipped the hyper pretentious Chronicles of Riddick. I imagine this is part of Diesel’s comeback course, so good luck to him.

I believe one of these linked articles makes the point that those holding the franchises on superhero character are reviving them mostly because their permission to use the characters is based on either exploiting them in films or losing those rights–thus, besides the potential for profitability, studios don’t want to lose the millions possible for a job well done.

February 4, 2010

Comics Relief: Superheroes Go Towards the Light

Filed under: Uncategorized — Alex @ 2:05 pm


This winter both Marvel and DC are taking their superheroic characters through dark times. As I discussed months ago, the two premier comics companies have been stuck in ever darker big crossover stories that have shaken up their respective universes. Marvel has just finished up its “Dark Reign” saga wherein the evil Norman Osborn (aka the Green Goblin) has used his high security chief position to persecute the true heroes, particularly fugitive Tony Stark, creator of Iron Man, whom he beat into an inch of his life to obtain important information contained in Stark’s brain. Stark currently lies in a mentally “disassembled” state, having deleted his intelligence and memory to keep Osborn from obtaining the info. And Osborn’s forces have attacked Thor’s mythical home, Asgard, in the current “Siege” crossover that is supposed to wrap up years of previous ongoing crossovers. During this period Steve Rogers, Captain America, was arrested, assassinated, and recently resurrected only to step aside and let his erstwhile sidekick, Bucky, continue on as the Star Spangled Avenger, deflating his much anticipated triumphant return. Never one to resolve a crisis, Marvel fans could be understood for wanting a little more fun and escape from these exhausting megastories.

Things are hardly better at DC which is in the second half of, depending on when you started counting, eight to twelve month cosmic catastrophe, “Darkest Night.” After the previous crossover, “Final Crisis,” saw the murder of Bruce Wayne’s Batman, or maybe his banishment to some other time and place where he was last seen painting a bat shape on a cave wall. Since then, the long-anticipated “Darkest Night” centered in the Green Lantern titles but encompassing the DC universe has seen the rise of “Black Lantern” rings that seem to resurrect fallen heroes and villains as murderous cadavers in an overpowering assault against the living, a sort of DC zombies epic. All of this is quite, er, dark, in fact it is the blackest night yet seen, as even some living heroes have had their hearts ripped out before rising again as Black Lanterns. Bleak enough for you?

All of this devastation going on in the superhero world raises the question of why so much horror and doom? Most comics fans were drawn to the genre as kids enthralled by the fantastic tales of adventure and heroism by spandex-clad characters whose valiant efforts against evil helped form their earliest sense of morality. The short answer to why today’s comics are so dark is that many of these same readers grew up still reading these books and required that their heroes “grow up” as well by becoming more brutal in their wars against evil and seeing darkness in their own hearts birthing. In fact, the “grim and gritty” mode of superheroism has been with us since the mid-1980s when it was launched by the success of mostly two graphic novels, Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. The more the “realism” increased, the less fun comics were, an exchange that seems to have held ever since.

While many would argue that it was necessary for comic book superheroes to face the complexities of life, a notion that made Marvel Comics the powerhouse that it became, continually darkening superheroes has had the effect of discouraging entry by the kids who were once the main readership. Thus we have swapped the caricature of the square-jawed and somewhat simplistic caped hero for the now equally cliched tormented and flawed grim avenger.

But maybe things are about to change. Both companies have announced that after their current Gotterdamerungs run their courses, late spring will bring a rebirth of heroic adventure and fun. DC has previewed the dawn of “Brightest Day,” the sequel of sorts to “Darkest Night” adding symmetry to the play on the stirring Green Lantern oath:

In brightest day, in blackest night
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might
Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!

Some comics observers are skeptical that DC’s oft-promised lightening up will really stick this time but if for no other reason, it’s a smart marketing move to contrast with the death and misery of the last six years. And the new era is supposed to include the return of Bruce Wayne, with or without his bat cowl.

Similarly, Marvel’s coming “Heroic Age” will focus on their biggest heroes, which I’m hoping includes “reborn” Steve Roger’s Captain America, now currently sidelined after his anti-climactic return from the dead. It’s one thing to decide to tell brighter, more adventuresome stories–there’s a skill to this kind of storytelling that may have been forgotten after so many years of angst. Writers for the upcoming new stories would do well to look at a recent example of classic superhero storytelling by a master. Veteran Mark Waid’s run on The Brave and the Bold , featuring Batman and Green Lantern among many others, is now collected in two volumes, was thrilling, funny and respectful of the genre without embalming it. This is the kind of return of brave and bold storytelling that I’m looking for.

January 23, 2010

Preparing to Get Lost One Last Time

Filed under: Television,Uncategorized — Alex @ 9:25 pm

Fans of the groundbreaking ABC series have, depending on the depth of their devotion and available leisure time, numerous ways to indulge in their favorite series as they await the Feb. 2nd season première of Lost‘s last season, the one in which their patient waiting for answers will be rewarded with some sort of grand explanation of the island’s many mysteries. I absolutely love the series but, perhaps by temperament, have never immersed myself into the vast ocean of website, plot minutiae or peripheral activities spun off by ABC. But I hope to pursue my own line of research of the series as an exemplar of what I call the television Maxi-Series, a dramatic program with an intended ending and thus a limited numbers of episodes, rather than the typical rolling episodes until the series expires creatively and ratings-wise. So here are some ways to prepare for the last chapter, volume or whatever you want to call the last season of one of television’s most magnum opi.

Readers of this blog will recall my love and appreciation for Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff “Doc” Jensen’s brilliant “Totally Lost” blogs that at least double the pleasure of the show. Jensen, one of the magazine’s most energetic followers of pop culture, is also highly intelligent and continuously delves into the more esoteric theories, mythologies, philosophies and scientific ruminations to offer highly entertaining interpretations of the show’s meaning. During last season’s his EW colleague Dan Snierson joined Jensen in an online video series that riffed on the current plotlines and was screamingly funny. I look forward to the guys’ return to the small computer screen.

But meanwhile, Jeff’s latest theory, on the island as a place where addictive behavior of various characters may perhaps find healing, currently the lead piece at Totally Lost, ponders the series’ redemptive theme, and Jensen’s Christian faith again serves him in understanding the need for healers, like castaway Dr. Jack Shepherd, to look at the mote in his own eye before he can truly help others.

Speaking of redemption, I teach a class at Palm Beach Atlantic University called “Redemptive Storytelling in Television and Film and I used this video last year since it encapsulates the various situations from which so many of the characters need redemption.

Another place to look for those wanting very in-depth discussion of whole episodes, there’s “Lost in Translation,” a blog by Shawn McEvoy, Senior Editor of Crosswalk.com. His blog appears at the same place mine is carried, theFish.com. He’s currently going through every episode “looking specifically at Christian/religious themes, other important or interesting concepts, literary references, and the theory that it’s largely been about a game in which someone has won, and someone has… LOST.”

Finally, there’s the ABC Lost site full of clips, interviews and entire episodes to help you get up to speed for season six. Soon we will begin to see just what will become of these complex and compelling characters as they deal with the new chessboard they will find themselves on after Juliet hit the “reset” button on the nuclear device.

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