11/22/63

You know how I was recently talking about running out of Stephen King books? Well, now it’s actually happened. I’m sure he’s still writing something, but there are no more plans floating around in the world for when the next one will come out. I have read an entire canon.[1] This particular book is his take on the big time travel questions, like “What would happen if you went back in time and killed Hitler?” or “What if you killed your own grandfather before he met your grandmother?”[2] or, predictably in the specific case of 11/22/63, “What if you saved Kennedy?”

Naturally, of course, the book proceeds to be only partially about that. Mostly, it’s about an (only slightly nostalgia-tinged) trip through the late ’50s and early ’60s filled with the same ratios of horrible and wonderful people that exist everywhen and with the consequences of impossible choices. What King gets right (really, what I think he always gets right and is least appreciated for) is the characters. They are always painfully honest and painfully real. Nobody, not even the wifebeater who apparently[3] shot the President, comes off as irredeemable. And nobody, not even the man who plans to give up five years of his life just on the odds that he can prevent the assassination and that doing so might make the world better, is faultless. Typing it out, that sounds trivial and necessary in any worthwhile story, but I guess I am more talking about the unflinching way he portrays the horribleness that lurks in the best people and the basic decency and love that exists in the very worst people.

What he gets wrong? I mean, obviously I’m going to trust his historical research, because I don’t have that kind of time. The other things are towards the end of the book and are pretty subjective. Also, due to their placement, they are spoilers, but I still want to talk about them, so see you in the first comment!

[1] The most trivial of internet research has revealed the preceding statements to be untrue. But after April? Nothing.
[2] Why would you do that? That’s stupid.
[3] No spoilers!

Immortals

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Later, I saw the big 3D event movie of the season, which balanced its time between being in your face with 3D actiony combat (not ever over the top, though …well, I mean, the 3D wasn’t; the action very explicitly was, over and over again) and feeling very naturalistic, enough that I had to pause and think about whether there was a 3D image in front of me. Not unlike real life, you understand. So that’s probably good, right? Or I’m jaded, like I said earlier. Definitely one of those.

Immortals pits Theseus against rampaging conqueror Mickey Rourke, in the hopes that he can stop Mickey from unleashing the titans who would then destroy humanity and the gods alike. (They are grumpy for having been trapped all this time, you know?) Normally, the gods would just smack Mickey down like they used to do, but apparently somewhere along the way hubris became more socially acceptable or else the gods learned about the Prime Directive. So it’s up to Theseus and his plucky peasant know-how and his tragic, revenge-inducing backstory to save the day. Of course he’ll be assisted by a number of rapidly dying allies and Sexina the Oracle, because this is after all a Greek mythological quest movie, and that is how they roll. To preserve an air of mystery, I will not spoil the presence or absence of a minotaur somewhere along the way.

But seriously, everything is pretty (though perhaps a little monochromatic) and lushly over the top, like a peach that’s just gone overripe and this is more bad than good, except without the sexual connotations of that particular metaphor. If you like things that are Greek or things that make limbs roll or things that make heads explode, either watch this one, or travel 18 months along the timeline and watch the next / previous one, because really, this is the kind of movie that comes along once in a lifetime. If you are a betta.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

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I saw a couple of 3D movies over the course of my weekend, and I’m coming to the conclusion that they need to reduce the markup. It’s not that I have the thing where it looks bad to me that so many people seem to have, it looks fine. But the thing is… it looks fine. It looks normal. I am perhaps jaded? But I sometimes have to pause and remember that what I’m watching is actually 3D, except for the times when they are going out of their way to make it obvious. On the bright side(?), the latest Harold & Kumar sequel went so far out of its way that it might have come all the way around to accidental 3D hyperbole.

As far as the flick itself, you know what you expect from the boys at this point, I reckon. But, in case, here is what you should expect: Cheech & Chong for the new millennium, complete with gratuitous T&A, more drug use than you can shake a stick at, random violence, and an outsized version of Neil Patrick Harris. And of course we get all of these things in abundance, plus they… well, they don’t learn the true meaning of Christmas, but they do learn a valuable lesson about friendship, family, and responsibility. Honestly, the presentation is a lot better than that sounds, but then again, it would be. The people behind this movie grew up with afterschool specials, of course they’re going to subvert them in entertaining ways!

As far as the Christmas theme? It’s still not as good as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, because, how? But it’s the only other Christmas-themed entry in an ongoing series of movies that I would bother to recommend to people. Probably because of how irrelevant Christmas-as-a-theme really was in the scheme of things; it was setting, at best. So no worries on that account. And anyway, there’s a WaffleBot, which would be worth the rest of the movie all by itself, probably even if it had felt cloyingly Christmasy.

Ultimate X: Origins

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There are two serious upsides to the new Ultimate X book that came out last week. (And man, do I ever hope it’s a series rather than a one-shot.) The first is pretty obvious, really: the whole “all mutants are terrorists and must turn themselves in to the government or be shot on sight” decree that followed Magneto’s destruction of Manhattan means that lots of characters I am invested in have been flying way under the radar for months, and it’s nice to start getting an inkling of how they are doing. The second has more to do with timing.

Put simply, Origins with its implied (and fulfilled) focus on new growth in the Ultimate Universe was a really nice (and needed!) palate cleanser after recent painful events. Truth be told, I think this book really happened before the latest Spider-Man storyline, but I could not be more relieved to read a small, personal story now. That story, I suppose I should mention, revolves around the last few free mutants on both sides of the fence built by Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr starting to band together and figure out what their role in the new, infinitely more dangerous-to-them world will be. Lots of new characters, sure, but lots of familiar faces too, and nearly every one of them was a surprise. (It didn’t help, of course, that I remembered only a fraction of the Ultimatum’s massive death toll. Yay, Wikipedia!)

Cycle of the Werewolf

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I’ve read all the Stephen King books, right? Weirdly, I had not! (I mean, there’s a non-fiction book from the early 80s about the state of the horror genre that I will probably never read because it is incredibly dated at this point. But we’re not counting that one.) Because there’s this tiny book, as full of illustrations as of text, that I somehow avoided for the past twenty years of reading everything else the man has published, and in real time for over half of that period. (Except for the one that’s due out on Tuesday, I mean. ‘Cause, you know, it’s not here yet.)

Cycle of the Werewolf feels very similar to the kid-book version of ‘Salem’s Lot. Very few of the characters get a great deal of screen time, because the town of Tarker’s Mills is really the main character. And of course it’s impossible to avoid noticing the vampire / werewolf parallel. Even though it feels like a kid-book and probably reads like one for the most part (a couple of exceptions push it up to PG-13 effortlessly), the illustrations would almost certainly keep you from letting it pass as a bedtime story. That said, if you take it as a kid-book written for adults, it’s a pretty decent short story, and let me tell you, the implied Three Little Pigs joke is worth the whole thing, even if I hadn’t liked it otherwise.

Paranormal Activity 3

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Sure, the movie too, but there is something downright unsettling about silent closing credits. Of course, maybe that’s only true if the movie was unsettling first. It’s cool, though, Paranormal Activity 3 was. Remember how there was a demon afflicted family in 2006, these sisters who had boyfriends that liked to film the creepy stuff that was going on around them and they made vague references to similarly creepy things that happened to them when they were kids?

Well, that’s a fact. If anything, stuff was sufficiently creepy as to make me wonder if I should go back, watch the original two films, and try to find continuity errors, because seriously, these people lead severely fucked up lives that they maybe should have been willing to talk about a little bit more, maybe to therapists and exorcists? It wasn’t as good as either of those movies, alas, but really I’m completely a slave to the first person camera horror genre at this point, so I’ll see it no matter how bad I expect it to be or, indeed, am told it is by trustworthy people. Still, now that I have squandered any shred of credibility, I nevertheless thought this was pretty good.

[EDIT from 2021: Confirmed, this does not especially well fit the continuity of the first two movies at all. Unless you account for brainwashing, which is pretty plausible to be honest.]

Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man

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There just aren’t any words. Which I suppose I’m going to have to get over quickly, all things considered. It’s just that I haven’t been hit this hard by a character’s death since, well, every time I re-read The Fires of Heaven.[1] But there’s still almost nothing to say. I mean, I can’t talk about the plot, because the title (frankly, the last several titles) gives away far too much as it stands, and anything I might add to plot details after that would take away even more strongly from the experience.

But then again, Moiraine’s death didn’t hit me nearly as hard the first time, because of the shock, so maybe they knew what they were doing. (Maybe not, too, because I’m sure it wasn’t broadly announced on the monthly schedule. Still, all I can go with is what I was given, you know?) The upshot of all this? I do have words, but they are not really that different from the words I already had. Peter Parker is an astoundingly brave and moral character who improves everyone around him, and this book tells… you know, it doesn’t tell a powerful story. It simply tells the latest chapter in an incredibly powerful and almost certainly wildly underrated story. I think it also makes a huge mistake, but I suppose that remains to be seen.

[1] Also, Joyce in The Body[2], but that’s not the same thing, my sadness is for the ones she left behind, not for her loss itself.
[2] Unlike The Body, I didn’t cry. But I bet I would if I ever read through these books again. It absolutely hurts.

The Hunger Games

A forthcoming movie announcement led to a few people (my former roommate decidedly not among them) raving about The Hunger Games trilogy, which I had never heard of before that moment. This is understandable, since it’s written under the auspices of the young adult section of ye olde bookestores, which I have not often entered in this post- Harry Potter world. But all the same, a dystopian future America with hidden secrets in which teens are randomly selected every year to compete in a fight to the death, all so that the Capitol can flex its muscles over the 12 districts? It’s like someone watched Battle Royale and decided to rewrite it so that backstory would make sense. Obviously, once someone got around to telling me about it I wanted to read it for myself!

Anyway, the upshot is that while I learned all about the Hunger Games themselves[1] and a fair amount about Katniss Everdeen, our narrator-heroine, I did not learn very much yet about the hidden secrets of the dark future. But that’s cool, I have two other books where that can happen, and in the meantime the book was just compulsively readable. Of course, it had a few problems as well, though I hasten to add that none of them dampened my interest one bit. It’s written mostly in present voice, although it dips into the past for flashbacks and history lessons. I thought that would turn out to be a problem, but it’s not so bad, I’m just not used to seeing it. The other, larger problem, is that Katniss is sometimes jaw-droppingly oblivious as a direct result of her overabundance of natural suspicion[2]. I thought this would break the character, and it may yet, but not so far; because, so far, it has been at least as much hindrance to her as it has been benefit, and it turns out I’m interested in reading about characters with flaws that actually affect the progression of the story. As long as she either fixes herself or eventually gets badly hurt, I will have no complaint here either in the long run. (And it’s not like that suspicion of hers is unjustified, given her world.)

So, cool setting, cool plot, interesting narrator, and if the rest of the characters were just a little beyond two-dimensional at best, well, that didn’t bother me through the voice of this particular narrator. It might in the movie, but then again, the characters in the movie might have more depth. All that matters for now is, y’know, this was a pretty good book! I should find the next one, eh?

[1] Enough to make me wonder how they can adapt this young adult book as anything but an R-rated festival of violence without changing a lot of things during the Games themselves. I shouldn’t care about that, but, well, you saw the Battle Royale reference earlier, right?
[2] Well, okay, and a third problem, not so much for me but maybe for you if you are not in fact a teenaged reader, which I expect you will not be if you’re reading this particular review, is the occasionally awkward “Who do I really like, if anyone?” or “What will my first kiss be like?” folderol that when you get right down to it are the only parts of the book that felt like they were aimed at a young adult audience, and I almost wonder if they were conceived after the fact to get the book into this particular… genre? That doesn’t seem like it should be the right word.

50/50

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Meanwhile[1], I saw another movie tonight! It’s because I’ve been kind of way behind on them, y’know? Horror is just about all that’s left to me at this point[2], though there are a couple of interesting things on the horizon. 50/50, on the other hand, was pretty much an interesting thing on the opposite horizon, only showing in a handful of local theaters by now. So it’s good that I caught up to it in time!

Especially good because of how it was, you know, good. I cannot help but draw a comparison to The Road. Just as that novel was a meditation on the end of the world, this movie was (when not being funny, which it also managed quite well, but really, can you expect less from Seth Rogen at this point?) a meditation on the end of the world writ small: really, can you see 50% odds of beating the cancer in your spine that you didn’t know you had until earlier today as anything less than the end of your world? The fundamental difference between that book and this movie is, of course, the presence of hope. There are dark moments, horrible people, and of course lame Hollywood misunderstandings about the way the world actually works, because, despite anything going on in the plot or theme, that’s how Hollywood rolls. But put all that aside, and there’s still an undercurrent of fundamental hope. I guess what I’m [still] saying is that it doesn’t matter how either story turns out; what matters is what the road was paved with.

[1] The game is still on, in extra innings now. It is really hard to think about other things, much less write them.
[2] He says, as though complaining. Ha!
[3] This review is complete, and the game is still going. I guess, if you are a historian with extremely limited access to first- and second-hand documentation, you will never know how the 2011 World Series turned out, Dammit.[4]
[4] Don’t start with me about how footnote 3 wasn’t referenced. Seriously. You can go fuck yourself.

Superman: Red Son

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The upside to that random Frank Miller book I read today is that it broke up my otherwise back-to-back Mark Millar readings. (Although, of course, if they’re pronounced the same (as I suppose), it’s like a threepeat. Which is really a terrible word, so I hope it’s instead mill-are as I’ve always said under my breath when typing it.) I’m not sure what I would have read if I had planned ahead, but the graphic novel that happened to be sitting in my car, still uncategorized after my last trip to Recycled Books in Denton, was Red Son. And I’ve been wanting to read it for ages anyway, so there was really no question of anything like worrying about it not being one of my ongoing non-superhero series and therefore out of order.

The conceit, if the title does not make it obvious, is that Kal-El’s ship landed on the other side of the planet, where he was found by collective-farmers and raised as a Communist before developing superpowers (as one does) and becoming Stalin’s darling. And then, of course, the story proceeds.[1] There’s not a lot more I want to say, because things go in extremely interesting directions that should not be spoiled, but I will say that it presents one of the most compelling versions of Lex Luthor I’ve ever seen. And despite my avoidance of DC Comics, I follow really a lot of Superman stories on film. So.

One downside: I cannot find it in me to entirely approve of Superman having as strong of a moral center without having been raised by the Kents. I comprehend how that’s wildly unfair to millions of possible parents out there in the early twentieth century world, and especially to somewhat fewer millions of Soviet parents. Nevertheless, it’s a thing.

[1] Not that you can tell from where you are reading, but I have been paused for a very long time because the incredibly compelling Game Six of the World Series has distracted me from typing for a while. I’m not sorry or anything, just documenting.