Wanderlust (2012)

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Wanderlust is really a pretty standard by the numbers married romantic comedy. (New relationship romantic comedies have different numbers.) Couple run into difficult situation, get frustrated with each other, end up in unrelated extreme fish out of water situation, determine how to integrate that into their relationship, inevitably growing closer in the long run but probably further apart first. Hmmm. Upon reflection, steps one and three can happen independently of each other, but one of them as well as steps two and four are mandatory.

So, why do you care about this particular one? Well, you may like Paul Rudd and/or Jennifer Aniston. Or, like me, you may have some small experience with the hippie commune that was the fish-out-of-water aspect of this particular romantic comedy. I’ve never lived in a permanent hippie commune, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve spent enough time in the temporary ones to immediately recognize that whoever wrote this movie understands the concept pretty darned well. So, I found it to be incredibly true and therefore incredibly funny.

Also, there are naked people. (In a hippie commune?? GASP.)

Marvel 1602

51vtf1JzwOLYou know what I hadn’t done in an exceptionally long time? Read a comic authored by Neil Gaiman! Luckily, Marvel 1602 exists to fill that precise gap, and now I’ve done so again. (But I am not convinced any other new ones exist, so that may have just been the end of that. Alas!, if so.) Imagine, if you will, the waning days of the reign of Elizabeth I of England. Only, over the past 50 or so years, important people are being born, people you would expect to be born almost half a millennium later, if you were familiar with the “Marvel Age of Comics”. So there you are in 1602, reading about the Queen’s personal physician and naturalist, one Doctor Stephen Strange, and her spymaster, Sir Nicholas Fury, and a school for certain gifted young people run by a Carlos Javier, and, well, really a lot of other names you’d recognize from the 1960s, if you had been reading these comics then, like me.[1] In fact, what few names there are missing would be spoilers to reveal by their very absence.

Into that unexpected cauldron, we need only add mysterious weather harbinging the end of the world, and Virginia Dare, the first English immigrant born on American soil, lost in our history along with the rest of the Roanoke colony but somehow alive in this apparently altered timeline; and voila, instant Gaiman mythology, complete with meditations on predestination and sacrifice. It was interesting to learn that Virginia Dare is a highly mythologized character in her own right; I remember in the vaguest way learning about her existence in school, but not that she had drawn much focus in American folklore since. I wish to learn more, and particularly welcome any recommendations; my only source of book recommendations right now is to poke through the Wikipedia article.

Other than to approve of and recommend 1602, though, there’s not much else I want to say. There are lots of good twists, and not knowing about them in advance was a lot of my fun. But I will say that Gaiman’s use of spiders in and around Peter Parquagh constituted one of the largest literary teases it has ever been my pleasure to witness. There are a handful of sequels, none by Gaiman of course, and I own / will read one of them soon. I hope they are at least pretty okay, because I do want to know what happens next, yo. I just also want what happens next to be non-lame.

[1] Okay, but’s it’s a close approximation of true!

Chew: Taster’s Choice

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Aside from Unwritten, the other new first-graphic-novel-in-a-series that I have been loaned is Chew, about a police detective afflicted with cibopathy. In the extremely likely event that this term means nothing to you, I’ll tell you something similar to what the second page of the first issue tells you: apparently, there are people who place food (or whatever) in their mouths, and the act of ingesting gives them psychic information from whatever it was they ate. Like, if it’s an apple, they’ll know things about the harvest grove and the local pesticides, or if it’s a burger, they’ll know things about the cow’s life and probably its violent demise, or, well, if it’s a person… you could learn all kinds of things, couldn’t you?

Against this potentially cannibalistic premise[1], we have the life of poor, sad Tony Chu, who to add insult to injury can only eat beets if he wants to avoid getting psychic backwash. He is a cop, tasked with enforcing the federal edict outlawing chicken. And trust me, the drug war metaphors are so thinly veiled that I spent the first couple of issues feeling insulted that someone would choose so facile a soapbox to preach from. But then things got more and more bizarre, and while I can, as of the end of the first book (Taster’s Choice), accept that there’s actually something going on behind the whole bird flu / outlawed chickens thing[2], I also can’t make up my mind if I care. It looks like everything that has happened is important, but almost none of it seemed connected, each piece to another, in this particular book. And when my main character hates his life this much and the plot is this disjointed, it’s hard to find something to grasp onto to bring me back for a second book.

We’ll see, I guess?

[1] Spoiler alert: yep.
[2] Not to mention some justification for it, instead of just “not drugs, lol, chickens” like I really believed was going on at first.

Chronicle

You ever see Akira? I haven’t, but I went to see Chronicle on the strength of it completely reminding me of the version of Akira that’s in my head. That worked out pretty well for me. See, there’s this disaffected teen with a camera, and he wanders around filming everything, like disaffected teens with cameras in movies do. (Well, okay, also like skeptical husbands and best friends and film students and, okay, pretty much anyone in the last 15 years who has ever had a camera in a movie.) And he even meets a blogger chick with her own camera at a party, but before you have time to realize how tragically underused she’s going to be, even before he gets a chance to consider being into her, she starts flirting with his cousin instead.

Which doesn’t really leave a lot of conflict, just 80 minutes of emo misery, right? Well, no, but only because he and his cousin and his cousin’s class president friend find a hole in the ground that leads to a glowing macguffin that gives them all, y’know, powers. And then they start figuring out how to use their powers, and how to use their powers to change their lives. And then, you know, other things happen. Good psychology, good superheroing, good primary cast, mediocre supporting cast (with one infuriating exception), really good use of multiple cameras (considering the context), plus also it’s set in Seattle, if that has any relevance.

It’s not a great movie, but it’s a pretty good one, and considering this is February? It’s close to great after all.

Mockingjay

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I had been given appropriately low expectations of the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy. Expectations such as that I would really despise the Mockingjay herself, narrator Katniss Everdeen, and that the focus shift from dystopic public combat to rebellion also marked a loss of focus for the story as a whole. And you know… those things certainly have some truth to them.

Katniss isn’t a combatant in the Hunger Games anymore; instead, she’s the public face of the rebellion, which has caught fire just as predicted, which would be more okay if only one of her two possible boyfriends wasn’t the public face of the government against which they are rebelling. And things just get worse for her from there. It’s still an interesting world, and I still cared about what happened to it, but Katniss is never so compelling as when she’s in the arena fighting for her life against all the other tributes, and sure enough, those days are over. Plus, a year and a half has gone by, and the fact that she not only still hasn’t come to any kind of conclusion about the third of the story that is her love life, but actually keeps escalating the frequency of her lashings out against each of them and in fact everyone else in her world instead? It makes it really hard to believe she’d keep inspiring love from some people and loyalty from so many others.

Still, there’s a book here either way, because not learning a conclusion to the rebellion is untenable, and because people don’t have to like their Mockingjay personally to see her utility as a symbol. And her fate in that regard was inevitable, if only because the people watching her on TV can’t read her thoughts. To answer the obvious question,  the conclusion was satisfying; it’s just hard to read a book with a narrator that has grown mostly unlikable, especially if she isn’t locked in mortal combat often enough to mask what I didn’t like about her.

Unrelated prediction: the movie will succeed or fail on the strength of their Haymitch actor alone. That guy? He’s compelling.

Duke Nukem Forever

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I have not and almost certainly will not sample the multiplayer, but without further delay, here are the things that are good about the Duke Nukem game that only came out 12 years later, and in so doing has done more than anything to support the idea that we will in fact mostly all be dead in 11 months:

1) The graphics are really pretty okay. Sure, some of them add to the discomfort of c) below, but by and large, they are entirely modern. And since they had special bonuses of footage from previous versions when they thought they’d be releasing by 2000 at the latest, I can assure you that’s a relief.
2) There were occasional in-jokes at other shooters, not quite to the level of parody most of the time, but I still appreciated them. The moreso, I expect, because of how little I appreciated any of the other humor.
3) The gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect it to be, which, cool, that’s all I was looking for anyway. The days of FPS innovations are mostly over.

Here is what was wrong with Duke Nukem Forever:

a) Load times between levels are 60-90 seconds. Load times between levels at all is pretty egregious in this enlightened age of seamless travel, but that much delay? Horrible and a half. Plus also, it takes just as long to load to the spawn point after you die, which is twice as bad. I know that they know time passed since 1999, because I’ve seen the graphics updates. So, man, what the fuck?
b) You can only carry two weapons at a time. I guess, okay, that everyone does that now, or at least limits you in some way, but this game hearkens back to the “choose your weapon from 0-9” school of thought, and if they’re going to stay so “traditional” in other ways, why screw me here?
c) The misogyny. I thought I knew. I thought, okay, there will be some uncomfortable interactions with strippers that would get a real person kicked out of an actual strip club, and there will be more girls in alien cocoons asking to get killed and you kind of have to because if not aliens burst out of them and they die anyway, but now there are aliens to fight, and I didn’t love that in Duke Nukem 3D, but still, it was a callback to Aliens, and it was uncomfortable there, so, okay. The reality, though… so, there are still cocoon girls, but they aren’t world-weary and in pain, begging to be spared what is to come. They’re bemoaning how much jäger they had last night and how they feel funny as a result. Plus also, I think he kind of ruined the idea of getting a blowjob while playing video games for me. It never seemed so one-sidedly ooky in my head. Perhaps it’s because in my head there aren’t twins, and even if there are, I’d have the capacity to call them something other than “Babes”, especially when addressing them.

Stopping alien invasions at the Hoover Dam is fun, it is. But, I reckon probably not worth it, y’all.

The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

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The first thing to say about Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity is that it is undeniably a rip-off of Harry Potter. The second, more important thing to say about it is that while the first thing I said is not particularly true, I do have the sense that Mike Carey was trying[1] to pull off a comfortable homage before he yanked the carpet out from beneath the reader’s feet, in much the same way that The Wheel of Time rips off Tolkien for about 100 pages. Which is to say, I have started (and more importantly, will be continuing) a new graphic novel series, this time on loan to me instead of on loan from me. Still, I may well buy them too, ’cause, they’re good.

Unfortunately[2], I don’t really know enough to say where The Unwritten is going as a series. I know it is playing with the role of literature in life, in a mysterious and (to me, but I’m a sucker for lit-as-pop-culture) exciting way. I know that the main character is a little boring right now, in the way that characters who stand in for the audience always are, but I am extremely interested in two of the secondary characters and also I trust that Tom Taylor will coalesce into a real person once he gets his feet back under him[3], so that doesn’t bother me right now. And I know above all that I want to know more. Plus, perfectly satisfactory art if you care about that kind of thing. The introduction by Bill Willingham of Fables fame (while overselling the book to the point that I got halfway through it before I was sure if I was in or not) indicated I should know who Peter Gross is, but I don’t. Possibly you do?

[1] and I daresay succeeding
[2] at least in one sense, completely awesomely in another
[3] After all, Carey pulled the rug out on his audience-stand-in at the same time he did the audience, pretty much by definition.

Underworld: Awakening

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I had to rewatch Underworld first, plus also read a Wikipedian summary of Underworld: Evolution, because it turns out that my review of that movie didn’t tell me a damn thing about what happened in it. Which I think is more good than bad, but in the moment it was decidedly inconvenient. And then I still didn’t have to watch the third movie, since the other two already explain in flashback everything that happens in it. Between a wholly retreaded plot and no trace of Kate Beckinsale in skintight leather, I really can’t figure out what someone was thinking when they made it. But the upshot of all this is that I was able to go into Underworld: Awakening without being confused at all. Mind you, probably none of it was necessary, since they had a brief synopsis at the beginning of the movie, as if to acknowledge that not everyone has the films readily available and it’s been like six years since one that mattered.

I guess what made me think I needed to watch them in advance was previews that talked about Kate’s vampiric Selene having been imprisoned for twelve years, and I couldn’t really remember anything like that. Well, it turns out that it’s because there was no such imprisonment; instead, the movie starts off with Selene and Michael Corvin on the run in the aftermath of humanity discovering the existence of vampires and werewolves and reacting, well, predictably. And then she gets captured, and then twelve years pass, all in the prologue of this movie. So, oops. Still, Underworld is not a terrible movie, so it’s not like I am filled with regret. Anyway, she eventually gets free, as implied by the time limit on the imprisonment, finds her leathers and then starts looking for Michael again. I suppose Scott Speedman is holding out for the next sequel, because there were lots of sidetrackings that happened, including some kind of big conspiracy! Which is about all there is to say about that without spoilers, but I’d just like to add that this, as with the first and probably the second movie, was not terrible. And also, I really kind of dig ruthless Selene. (Not that she was chock full of ruth before, but I’m confident there was some there, as how else to explain the contrasting dearth today? (Well, okay, yesterday is when I saw the movie, and the series is set in purposefully non-specific modern day, anywhen from 1990 to 2020.))

The Adventures of Tintin

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You know that guy Tintin? Because The Adventures of Tintin definitely assumes you do. Anyway, I gathered that he’s a reporter who has accidental adventures, I guess? I also gathered that he’s significantly smarter than everyone around him, except for his dog, who is as much smarter than him as he is than the other people. This is irritating only because he should be smart enough to notice how smart the dog is. But I digress.

So this guy Tintin goes on the slowest adventure ever, accompanied by his dog, a few model ships, the descendant of a sea captain, the Perils of Alcoholism, oh, and some bad guys, because they want the treasure (probably) too. Perhaps objectively, or perhaps because I had been given miscalibrated expectations, the movie was just way way way too slow for me to maintain interest. That said, there’s a five or ten minute sequence in Casablanca[1] that was worth the price of admission, if perhaps not sitting through the rest of the film.

Or, maybe if I knew and therefore cared more about Tintin, the rest would have worked out? But mainly I just wanted the dog to take over. And, while I’m here, the animation was pretty dang okay. More realistic than not, but no uncanny valley moments. So that, at least, was entirely awesome.

[1] Well, I think so? Probably Morocco anyway. I forget.

Ultimate Hawkeye

Like Ultimate X and Ultimate Fallout, Ultimate Hawkeye is serving as a bridge to the latest realignment of comics in the Ultimate universe. I don’t think of it as a reboot precisely, although perhaps I should, because no continuity has been jettisoned. (Well, that’s not entirely true, I should reserve judgment on the Spider-Man question.) Plus there’s just a whiff of backstory on Clint Barton, who really hasn’t had much happen to him (besides be a consistently reliable superhero) since his family was murdered one of the times the Ultimates were betrayed from within. Although I think I have been underrating this Hawkeye up ’til now, simply because it’s easy to do that to someone who isn’t flashy or wearing a weird purple costume in favor of just being predictably competent. Which is to say, I found a new appreciation for him in the book, and what more do you need?

But, and here’s where the bridge thing comes up. Because Hawkeye (along with some assistance in the second half of the story, but I won’t spoil things by saying from whom) is sent to a fictional alliance of southeast Asian countries who are being attacked by superhumans. You know, like happens kind of all the time these days. Of course, before you’re halfway through the first issue, he has uncovered a conspiracy to remove the X mutation from humanity and simultaneously create an army of similar folks (probably stronger if no less predictably powered) with a secret formula, only it blew up in basically everyone’s faces and is quickly turning into a big, world-changing event. And Nick Fury explains to him that (save the forthcoming assistance), Hawkeye is on his own, because there are two other, much bigger and more important, problems that he, the Ultimates, and the Avengers have to deal with instead of helping out with this thing. Details to come in upcoming Ultimate Marvel books, it is implied, but seriously? This is the sideshow nobody cares about? I fear I may be in for some major-league exhaustion from these stories, if they’re as all-action and no-time-for-character-development as I am reading in, between the lines!