Movie Review: Batman - The Dark Knight

My God, where does the time go? Seems like I turn my back for two seconds and a whole month goes by. July's been pretty crazy for me, so much so that I ended up skipping the usual "season premiere" review that I usually do (to recap, it's currently "Middleman", "Weeds" and "Burn Notice"). But things'll get quieter after Monday, so I expect to be back with some frequency then.

In the meantime: "The Dark Knight". The quick verdict is that I liked it a lot, but I didn't love it. I'm not going to review it at any great length because it's being swarmed and picked at like a roast beef at an Oprah Winfrey picnic, but here are some of the good points and flaws I picked up:

* It's been an unfortunate tradition that whenever you get the Supervillain Team-Up in comic book films, it never quite works on a thematic level. Going all the way back to "Batman Returns", the Penguin and Catwoman were equally captivating, but they're both targeting very different aspects of Batman: he goes after the mask, she wants the man behind the mask. I'll skip over the Schumaker films (for obvious reasons), but "Batman Begins" had the same problem: the Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul had little to no common ground. Venom and Sandman in "Spider-Man 3"? Nope. Phoenix and Magneto in "X-Men 3"? They try, but Phoenix is written as so aloof and detached from what's actually going on that any link is utterly meaningless. This is the first film I can recall where the bad guys are broadly dealing with the same themes and issues, and it's a nice touch.

* Much has been made of Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, and to be fair, he certainly does offer an interesting interpretation of the character. A bit too serious for my tastes, to be honest - this Joker doesn't tell too many jokes - but disturbing? Absolutely. It helps that unlike Burton's version, we don't know anything about the character's history: he walks into the opening scene fully-formed, ready to make his move, and to paraphrase the infamous Alan Moore story "The Killing Joke", if he has a past, it's multiple-choice (of course, in Moore's story, we pretty much do have a clear, reliable telling of the Joker's origin, which sort of undoes the point - perhaps one reason why Moore is so critical of that particular work). I do, however, appreciate the emphasis on the Joker's strategic capabilities: his schemes reminded me of Timothy Zahn's character Grand Admiral Thrawn, from the "Star Wars" novels - a mastermind whose actions are like circles within circles, and the heroes are constantly being blindsided. It's quite entertaining to watch that sort of multi-tiered plan unfold. At the same time, he's not infallible, and the moment he hinges his plan on a random factor, it all collapses.

* I think the reason I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I could have is because it felt very, very fast. The pace is just a touch too accelerated, despite the fact that the film clocks in at around two and a half hours. I kept wanting the plot to slow down for a moment just so the viewers (and the characters) could catch up, because what I noticed was that most of the secondary characters really don't have room to grow: Alfred's presence is minimal, Lucius Fox has some entertaining moments but is left mostly where he's at, Rachel... well, Rachel's problematic for reasons I'd rather not discuss in case someone's reading this who hasn't seem the film. And while an attempt is made to give Bruce a real ethical dilemma, not enough screen time is devoted to his possible options and their consequences - so when it looks like he's going to make this huge, dramatic gesture, there's not enough gravitas attached to really draw us in.

So that's about it, more or less. A solid, entertaining film, but I hesitate to heap the sort of praise and adoration on it that others have.

Book Review: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Alan Moore once made a very insightful comment about nostalgia in fiction: as a dramatic device, it only works if the past that's being yearned for is truly lost. He was talking about comics specifically, about how nostalgia frequently fails in the mainstream because the past is always being regurgitated and nothing is ever really gone for good. Unsurprisingly, Moore's point is valid - if Jean Grey had never come back, every remembrance of her would be much more poignant, both for the characters and the readers.

It's that type of nostalgia which lies at the core of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Marquez's novel treats time as a spiral, where you're slowly spinning further and further away from the center, yet it's the same line throughout.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a truly phenomenal text, invoking a kind of soft magical realism that never intrudes on the human drama unfolding in each generation - weird things happen in Macondo, these things are acknowledged to be unusual, but the business of everyday life keeps people from losing their grip on reality (until, of course, everyday life ends in the last part of the novel, at which point reality just packs its bags and leaves Macondo behind). Conversely, some of the best scenes in the novel are dramatically effective not because they aren't realistic, but because they are - the train station massacre is chilling precisely because it's so easy to imagine that it could actually happen.

I should note that while I only read the English translation, said translation was fluid, almost lyrical in its sadness and beauty. Language is a part of how the story works as well, because there are points where sentences just go on and on, inexhaustible, very much like the characters themselves.

On the most basic level, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is about the House of Buendia, both literally and figuratively. We follow six generations of the Buendia family, each a faded echo of the previous one, with the house itself as an additional character of sorts: it too changes and evolves and degrades over time. It's a massive, sprawling narrative that goes backwards and forwards in diegetic time, representing entropy on the smallest, most personal scale, every system breaking down in its turn.

It actually reminded me of Matt Wagner's "Grendel": both stories present a multi-generational tale that depicts the nature of identity as being partly hereditary - just as Hunter begets Christine who begets Brian, all of whom are Grendel, the recurring names in the Buendia family (Jose Arcadio and Aureliano, and various permutations of these two) seem to carry with them a fraction of the namesake's identity. Both stories are fundamentally about erosion, about how time wears down even the invincible, and Orion may rule the world but Jupiter III will lose it, just as Ursula's death leaves the Buendias to a much less worthy matriarch, and it all goes downhill from there.

The difference has to do with time, and the way each author depicts time. For Wagner, time is decidedly linear: Grendel changes as the centuries pass, but it's not a cyclical process, nothing of the past Grendels carries over to the next "host". In Marquez's novel, time is both linear and circular: the years have a clear degrading effect on the house and the people living there, but so many characters are stuck repeating the lives of their ancestors: Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Ursula may not know that they're following the exact same path as Aureliano Jose and Amaranta, but we know it, and more importantly, other characters in the novel know it too. This becomes clearest when Aureliano goes to visit Pilar Ternera, the only character who survives from the start of the novel almost to the end of it: "There was no mystery in the heart of a Buendia that was impenetrable for her because a century of cards and experience had taught her that the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle." Things keep coming full circle over and over again, and it's tragic because the story never ends well, not for a single member of the Buendia bloodline, and those characters who escape the loop just disappear (Sofia, Remedios the Beauty, Petra).

It's a beautiful, heartbreaking novel, one that blew my mind repeatedly. A must-read!

First Impressions: The Middleman

What an odd show.

Discovering "The Middleman" was something of an accident; the pilot aired a few hours before the fourth-season premiere of "Weeds", which I'd been anticipating for months. Since I'm trying to keep an open mind during the new TV season, and with most of my favorites on hiatus until September, I figured I might as well kill some time waiting for the Botwin family comeback. No expectations, no prior knowledge of either the comics or the works of Javier Grillo-Marxuach in general.

My initial reaction to "The Middleman" was pretty similar to my reaction to "Pushing Daisies" - it's so eccentric, so off-the-wall that at first glance I just don't know what to do with it. The pilot was certainly well-constructed: the dialogue was fast-paced and clever without dissolving into gibberish, the plot managed to cover exposition and a typical "case file" adventure (intelligent apes taking over the mob in the name of world domination), the acting was decent (though... Matt Keeslar? Really? The guy who couldn't muster a variant facial expression during the most heartbreaking scene in "Urbania"?), and it manages to avoid being too on-the-nose with its self-awareness.

Basically, the pilot won me over, at least for the time being. In my opinion, it could go either way here - I certainly believe Grillo-Marxuach and his team can come up with enough entertaining scenarios to keep the weirdness going, and they're sticking to the shorter seasonal format (around 13 episodes or so), but I think a lot will depend on whether a larger storyline will emerge; if I have one criticism of "Pushing Daisies", it's that the episodic format probably would've bored me had the series gone on after nine episodes. But that's something we'll have to re-examine mid-season.

Quick-Shot Movie Reviews

Madea Goes To Jail: Tyler Perry's plays always feel like two very different stories fighting for control of the screen/stage. On the one hand, Madea is a very amusing character, and her antics provide plenty of comedic moments; on the other hand, there's this whole layer of obnoxious Christian proselytizing and saccharine melodrama that you're apparently meant to take quite seriously. It's a schism that's impossible to reconcile, because the tone of the Madea scenes is very light and entertaining and then you're brought down to baby-mama-drama and accepting Jesus' love. The end result, for me, was much like "Diary of a Mad Black Woman": fast-forwarding through most of the movie looking for the funny parts (read: Madea's scenes).

Corrina, Corrina: One of the less interesting Whoopi Saves The Day films, part of a whole sub-genre where Whoopi Goldberg plays a wise-cracking outsider who enters a hopeless situation and turns it around for everyone, like a '90s version of Mary Poppins. I'll admit I have a soft spot for "Sister Act" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash", but "Corrina, Corrina" doesn't quite do it for me: Goldberg's performance is too sedate, the other characters are dull, the story takes a last-minute leap into romantic territory that would've been better left unexplored. And you wouldn't know it from "Veronica Mars", but Tina Majorino was one scary-looking moppet. Brr.

Pump Up The Volume: This would've fit in nicely when I did that "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"/"Dangerous Minds" comparative review, because it's an interesting middle point in the continuum. Thematically, the conflict is still between teenagers and an actively oppressive authority, as it was in "Ferris Bueller", but that movie was about individual rebellion. "Pump Up The Volume" prefigures "Dangerous Minds" by making that rebellion a collective experience, and we're still years away from bringing any ethnic context into the mix - it's still very much the white suburban middle-class kids who declare war. On that level, though, on the brink of the shift where unity becomes fragmentation and The Enemy becomes other teens, this film does the job well.

The Conrad Boys/Shelter: Broadly speaking, these movies both tell the same story, which is why I'm reviewing them together: a teenager has been saddled with heavy responsibility and has to choose between obligation and love. Of the two, I think "The Conrad Boys" did a better job with the story because it's more complex - appearances can (and do) deceive, Charlie's options aren't quite what he thinks they are, and most importantly, the choice is precisely that: a choice. By picking one, Charlie forfeits the other, and that's good drama. "Shelter" falters in this sense because not only is Zach's dilemma external (someone else is forcing him to choose), he ultimately walks away with everything he wanted. For obvious reasons, that's a less-compelling take on the story.

Diana's Adventures In TV Land: Battlestar Galactica S3

It took me a bit longer than expected, but I've finally completed the third season of BSG.

The New Caprica storyline was an excellent exercise in dismantling the cast, taking them apart to see what makes them tick. Jammer's weakness, Starbuck's flirtation with insanity, Adama's guilt, the horror of Fat Apollo, Tigh's determination... we'd seen these things before, in smaller quantities, but New Caprica really strips the characters down to their most basic attributes. Our heroes are humiliated, beaten down, and contrary to expectations, some of them never really recover. In fact, it splits the people very decisively, between the resistance of New Caprica and people who were either seen as sitting on the sidelines or actively helping the Cylons, and this division goes all the way to the end of the season and Baltar's trial.

Jacob at Television Without Pity made an interesting comment about New Caprica: the characters get what they want, in the worst possible way. I think he's absolutely right - Kara's desire for a family is perverted by Leoben; President Baltar is rendered utterly powerless; Six gets her boytoy back and he's not quite what she remembered; the refugees have their new world and it's a living hell. This extends to "Unfinished Business" too, because Lee also gets what he wants, and he would've been better off without it.

After all that human drama, you'd think we'd finally left the mumbo-jumbo behind. Then we get to the Algae Planet and the Temple of Five.

It's the same thorn in my side each time: the religious aspect comes off as an attempt to push the plot forward in the absence of more realistic or complex mechanisms. Someone gets a vision or hums a song or follows a bouncing ball, and boom, we've reached the next part of the story. Or some never-before-seen quasi-Biblical text just happens to metaphorize exactly what's going to happen. It's bad enough on New Caprica when an "oracle" basically tells Three all about baby Hera, or the whole Eye of Jupiter thing where the Final Five Cylons are introduced in some huge and mythic way that gets deflated in a major way at the end of the season, but they finally crossed the line for me in "Maelstrom".

You see, until that episode, the metaphysics were a distraction on the level of plot, but somehow the characters managed to work around it: Roslin is no less compelling as a "prophet", Six's proselytizing doesn't keep her from playing mind games with Baltar. But "Maelstrom" is a huge emotional moment for the cast, the violent climax of a major character arc, and any real resonance is smothered beneath a layer of vague ramblings about "destiny", which is shorthand for "yeah, we don't know either, but give us some time and we'll think of something." That was just not cool.

I confess that by season's end I was sick and tired of Baltar: the bug-eyed neurotic routine had played itself out, and I think he lost the charisma that made him such an effective counterpart to Roslin. But the trial was interesting, because the writers managed to steer me into agreeing with Lee. Baltar is many things - a coward, a pompous jerk, a moron despite his intelligence - and he made decisions that cost thousands of lives. But legally, technically, in the ways that matter when you're thinking about shooting him in the head? He wasn't a traitor. He didn't order the colonization of New Caprica knowing that Gina had summoned the Cylons. He didn't give Caprica-Six access to the Colonies' defenses knowing what she was, and what she'd do with the information. Is he to blame for the tremendous loss of life? Yes, but indirectly so, and that doesn't justify killing him.

Anyway, much like last season, we also have a Worst Episode Ever in "The Woman King", which - if possible - was even lower on the scale than "Black Market". Over-the-top, superficial shlock that somehow turns Helo into a saint despite oversympathizing with the Cylons to the point where Roslin writes out a check addressed to him in the amount of Reality. I think there's been some deviation from the general direction with Helo, because it's one thing to love Sharon despite her being a Cylon, it's quite another to see all Cylons in the same light, especially after New Caprica (which, as Roslin rightly points out, Helo never experienced).

And finally: the Final Five. Spoilers ahoy, but... okay. Let's take them one at a time. Tory? Sure. Works for me. Sam? A bit harder to swallow after "Downloaded", but I can still suspend disbelief enough to buy it. Tyrol? Now we're having problems. Sure, there were those two minutes where he suddenly starts thinking he's a Cylon, but the whole point of that was to illustrate the very human fear that It Could Be Inside Us. Making him a Cylon after all not only messes with that, it detracts from Hera being the Special Little Hybrid That Could (because Cally's pregnant within a year of them getting together), it also screws up the whole dynamic that he had with Boomer.

And finally, Tigh. This is where it all falls apart for me. Setting aside the fact that no machine could handle that much alcohol, Tigh was one of the most flawed, conflicted, human characters on the show. He was also one of the few with a shared history reaching back into the pre-history of the show (ie: he and Adama were friends for thirty years). Retconning him as a Cylon is just too implausible.

It just doesn't work, not really, despite assurances from the writers that the Final Five are "different". It's certainly convenient that they don't seem to follow the same rules as the rest of their kindred, for reasons that aren't even remotely apparent, but... "meh" is pretty much all I get out of that.

It was still a good season overall, because the aspects I regularly enjoy - the politics, the action, the drama - still overpower the juju, but I'm starting to worry that the metaphysical storyline is becoming more and more prominent; it'd be pretty disappointing for the last season to get totally lost in pseudo-spiritual nonsense.

Diana's Adventures in TV Land: Battlestar Galactica S2

Broadly speaking, the second season of "Battlestar Galactica" is divided into three arcs: Kobol, Pegasus and New Caprica. I'll be tackling them in that order.

The Kobol storyline (episodes 1-7) continues from the end of the first season - the Fleet has been divided between an imprisoned Laura Roslin and Colonel Tigh (replacing the incapacitated Adama). Things spiral out of control very, very quickly, and on that level it's a very engaging story. Until Kobol comes into play again.

I've mentioned that I find the metaphysical/religious aspect of the series somewhat incompatible with the realistic tone established in the miniseries - it's certainly valid to explore a human religion based on the Olympic Pantheon, but when we're expected to take millennia-old prophecies as "real" in the sense that they're informing where the story's headed... well, honestly, this isn't "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It's a little too convenient that every plot development has some pseudo-Biblical context that confirms its significance.

However, if the Kobol arc's good for anything, it's demonstrating a particular talent of the BSG writers: character death. There's a tendency to give minor figures like Elosha and Crashdown just enough screen time that when they die, it means more to us than an anonymous Redshirt.

Somewhat surprisingly, once Kobol is left behind, the religious subplot is abandoned as well, and the status quo snaps back to early season 1. Now, I was personally pleased with that particular development, but on the other hand, Kobol takes up a third of the season and ultimately doesn't amount to anything beyond vague foreshadowing.

Episodes 8 and 9 ("Final Cut" and "Flight of the Phoenix") serve as a sort of prelude to the next major arc. They're a good example of enjoyable filler, and Tyrol naming the Blackbird after Roslin got me all misty-eyed. It was also nice seeing Lucy Lawless again, especially in such a subversive role.

The Pegasus arc (episodes 10-17) kicks off with the Admiral Cain trilogy ("Pegasus" and the "Resurrection Ship" two-parter), an easy pick for my favorite episodes thus far. Everything that's good about BSG, that works for BSG, is distilled in "Pegasus", an episode which asks (and answers) an interesting question: what if Adama had abandoned the Fleet at Ragnar at the end of the miniseries, to go off and fight Cylons? What would the show be like without the civilians bringing humanity to the military machine? Helena Cain (another revised female in the mold of Starbuck, Roslin and Boomer) isn't a monster, she's Adama taken to a logical - if frightening - extreme, someone with no greater cause to serve than war. She's who Adama would have been, had he not met Laura Roslin. Remember that Roslin's first question to Adama was whether he planned to stage a military coup and declare martial law - Cain would have said yes in a heartbeat. And we can see this so clearly in her dehumanization of Gina, not very far from the way Adama sees Sharon #2. So all in all, I found Admiral Cain to be a fascinating and compelling character, and I'm sorry she was written out so quickly; on the other hand, the New Caprica storyline simply wouldn't have worked with her.

"Epiphanies" follows the "Resurrection Ship" two-parter, and... okay, here's my problem with that episode: Laura Roslin should have died. Don't get me wrong, she's my favorite character in the series, and I honestly think the show would be a lot weaker without Mary McDonnell's acting chops. But part of what makes Roslin so compelling is that she's on borrowed time, and she knows it, and she does her best to do as much good as she can for as long as she can. Naming the Blackbird after her was a way of acknowledging that, the hope that she'd given them, but after all the "dying leader" prophecies and the progression of her illness, to cure her cancer with a blatant deus ex machina was incredibly irritating, especially since the New Caprica arc was going to overturn the status quo anyway.

The Pegasus arc also bears the distinction of featuring the worst episode of BSG I've seen: "Black Market". If I step back - way, way back - I can see the motivation behind this story: we've had episodes dealing with the realistic difficulties facing refugees, such as water shortages and low morale, and it makes sense that we'd take a closer look at economy, trade and the eponymous "black market" in this context. The problem is that it's not "Battlestar Galactica". It's "Sin City In Space". "Black Market" reads like someone just copied phrases out of the Frank Miller handbook - we have a gold-hearted hooker mommy and an evil kingpin and an antihero tortured by his past, and it's so transparent you just can't take it seriously. Worse yet, the antihero in question is Apollo, of all people, and the plot necessitates not one but two major retcons to his history in order to make it work. And when your plot dictates and rewrites the characters, rather than the other way around? Yeah, that's made of fail, as they say.

Fortunately, "Black Market" is just an anomaly, as the rest of the Pegasus-related episodes ("Scar", "Sacrifice" and "The Captain's Hand") are consistently high-quality. "Scar" deserves special mention for its use of continuity (ie: the hints that Scar is the same Raider Starbuck lobotomized in "You Can't Go Home Again") and Starbuck's painful disintegration; the timing seems a bit off, because all the scenes of Starbuck being denied permission to return to Caprica during the Cain trilogy were cut, but if you take that into account it works fine.

The season wraps up with the New Caprica storyline (episodes 18-20), in which everything falls apart in a very permanent and spectacular way. "Downloaded" gives us the Cylon perspective for the first time, following Boomer and Baltar's Number Six lover (who, as it turns out, is not the Virtual Six he's been talking to) after their respective deaths. This leads us to the two-part finale, "Lay Down Your Burdens", and a rather shocking twist: halfway through the last episode, we're catapulted a year into the future, crystallizing the new status quo in a way that makes total reversal utterly impossible. Everything changes in the interrim that we don't see: whole interpersonal relationships flourish, characters get married or promoted to unexpected heights, and I throw up a little in my mouth because Lee Adama puts on forty pounds and he looks horrible. It's change, in its purest and most real state, and that's something we don't get often enough in serialized fiction.

Overall, the second season meets, and in some cases exceeds, the standards set by its predecessor. On to season 3!

Season In Review: Supernatural S3

Once again, I find myself giving Eric Kripke credit for thinking outside the box. "No Rest For The Wicked" is likely the most shocking season finale I've ever seen, because the last ten minutes of the episode so boldly defy conventional thinking. I'll be vague for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but familiarity with the medium and its tropes leads you to expect that certain situations will always be resolved in certain ways, because "that's how things work". So it's quite jarring when those same situations are resolved differently (or aren't resolved at all, as the case may be).

I've mentioned before that I think the writers' strike had some positive fallout; given how badly "Heroes" was spiraling out of control, I shudder to think what might've happened if they'd gone on for the full twenty-two episodes. And since "Supernatural" tends to cluster the plot-centric episodes around the beginning, middle and end of the season, I doubt losing six episodes had any impact on the storyline beyond cutting out some filler.

And filler was a major problem this season, moreso than in previous years, because this storyline had a time limit attached to it: having sold his soul to resurrect Sam, Dean is given one year to live before he's dragged off to Hell. While he's determined to wreak as much havoc on the supernatural world as he can, Sam's obsessed with finding a way to break the deal. Meanwhile, loose threads from previous seasons are wrapped up rather neatly (Gordon Walker gets his due in "Fresh Blood" while the FBI and Agent Henriksen are finally dealt with decisively) and new characters - Bela and Ruby - are thrown into the mix.

Kripke was ultimately true to his word, at least where the lack of romance was concerned: Bela and Ruby were both antagonists to the Winchesters, frustrating our heroes at every possible turn. Bela even got a bit of pathos for her final appearance, though Ruby's twists and turns became so convoluted that it just didn't work for me. Still, as a way of momentarily breaking Sam and Dean away from their usual back-and-forth dynamic, both characters worked out just fine.

On average, this season was more or less consistent, quality-wise, with its predecessors: there was a lot of repetition with the boys' interactions ("I don't want to die"/"I'm going to save you") in lieu of character development, because at this point there's really nowhere left to go with them so long as they're cut off from a larger social network (whatever happened to Ellen anyway?). Episodes vacillated from "eh" to "good": the Gordon episodes were well-written, "Mystery Spot" was a highly amusing take on time loops, and "Ghostfacers" was a cute callback to the wannabes from season 1. Other than that, pretty much par for the course, and that's not a bad thing.