Scandal At The Parkade

My friend Sarah told me that she wanted to see, uh, Wanted. I had seen the comic, and my curiosity was piqued, even if I wasn’t impressed by the coarseness I got just by flipping through the pages. Eventually, I saw the trailer for the film, and was very disappointed until reviews started popping up saying that it was a guilty pleasure, and not just a pile of trash.
Based on this, I decided to whet my appetite by reading the comic book. I enjoyed it overall, as there were some cute ideas, but there were some over-the-top elements including a talking penis and a monster made of shit. It’s definitely a power fantasy of the highest order, giving greatly into everyone’s hidden desire to murder, maim, and steal everything you can. You see, it’s all about supervillains, not superheroes.

Now, it’s probably pretty hard to create a new cast of characters these days without them resembling characters somewhere in the multiverse of comics (note The Vulture and Sunfire in the pic); so it looks like Millar decided really to not create completely original characters, especially for minor characters, and some of the more important B characters seem to be pastiches of common enemies and themes. I did notice before reading the section on Wikipedia about it, that the gangs of villains largely resembled the rogues galleries of Batman and Superman, some of which are particularly obvious. Especially considering some of the themes of a changed world, it seemed possible to enjoy them almost as analogues to those villains, similar to reading Marvel’s Ultimates, or What If? story-lines.
It’s a good idea for 6 issues, but I lost some interest in issue 5, and issue 6 is pretty much an aftermath. I hear that the movie differs significantly, and whether or not that’s for better or worse, I don’t know, but I’m willing to give it a shot. If Sarah changes her mind, maybe I’ll go with Joe or Robert.

X-Files is this week! Waugh!

Ever a fan of the comic book movie, I headed out to see the new Batman movie. Well, first I listened to Bat Macumba by Os Mutantes to get in the mood. After a quick resolution of ticket issues, me and Alicia and Joe all went down to the movie. Bob was supposed to join us, but fandan-went his tickets, and he and Sarah had to see it in some other theatre. Robert was awl in nyc, and didn’t make it either. In fact, a whole slew of steers, compeers, and queers were in rank at the cinema. It could’ve been a spectacle in either direction, but it wound up being pleasantly isolate.
Joe and I hoped to purchase some bucket masks and Joker them up some, but there aren’t too many party stores open past 11 pm.

Heath Ledger is amazing in the movie, his intermittent presence, his dialogue, his posture and mannerisms, were dead on. Err. Since I wrote that accidentally, I’ll keep it. Really though, he’s the high point of the movie.
A surprise appearance by The Scarecrow had me quite excited, since he’s one of my favorite rogue’s gallery figures.
For a summer blockbuster action movie, it kept me pretty guessing; a few specific tricks in the movie are quite enjoyable in retrospect, because they allowed a great evocation of emotion that would otherwise be impossible, and tied you better into the film. There’s a lot of great psychological elements that I wish were fleshed out just a bit more though, which probably could’ve happened since the movie is over two and a half hours long. Luckily, there really wasn’t any point though were I felt like it was dragging on, at least as a whole.
The “Batman voice” was something that I wasn’t amazed with, but it rarely infringed on enjoyment. The only big negative is that for a movie so oriented on this hard-boiled dark underbelly of crime and super-villainy, there were a lot of bad puns regarding Two-Face, mostly prior to him becoming the villain. On the humor point, like with most movies, I think each time I laughed, nobody else was laughing.
Also noteworthy, I’m not huge into spectacle, but the fights and explosions mixed with the complexity of parts like Joker’s escape balanced out splendidly.

There was a trailer for Watchmen during the previews as well. Unless your computer has the same ailment as mine, you can watch it here. I believe every scene in there, at least that I remember, directly corresponds to the comic. This might be a good thing.

X-Files is in less than a week!