Review: Crowded House at the Somerville Theatre

Rather than attempt to be coherent, I’m going to do this in a more stream-of-consciousness style, because I’m still buzzed and not interested in making sense. First, I want to thank the Swami for indulging my need to go to both shows, even though they were on a Monday and Tuesday, because I really couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d missed one.

First night (setlist, although see below for more details): We were up in the front part of the balcony, but I wasn’t about to complain because I damn near missed out on getting any tickets at all. (Foolishly gave up a pair of orch seats right at 10:04 on sale day and then couldn’t get anything for an agonizing fifteen minutes.) It’s not like the venue is huge, either, so you’re never that far from the action.

Funny thing is that I thought the show started out kind of low on energy, although we got some songs I really enjoy (“Everything Is Good for You” and “Say That Again,” for example). And they’re workshopping new songs, which is something special that I’ve never seen with the Crowdies before. But then things really took off. We got absolutely scorching versions of “When You Come” (which Neil had to interrupt because he thought he was going to sneeze, heh!) and “It’s Only Natural,” with Nick at one point cheerfully abusing a tambourine like a madman. And the encores kept the energy level high, with a great version of “Fingers of Love” featuring one of Mark’s magisterial solos.

And then—chaos! Neil actually agreed to attempt someone’s impossible request of “Mary of the South Seas,” which he has obviously forgotten almost entirely. He sang the chorus a couple of times while the rest of the band looked quizzical (Mark did his soldierly best to accompany on harmonica). Then Neil started thinking about all the songs he’s written that mention names. So he played “Lester,” “I Love You Dawn,” and “Hello Sandy Allen” while calling chord changes out to Nick. Then somebody yelled for “Log Cabin Fever,” which Neil again did his best at. (Unlike Neil, I remember the second verse, dammit, but I was too far away to yell it to him.) At this point I was thoroughly falling out of my chair. During the rockout end of the song, Neil was playing alone, then said “You know it’s all in E, boys,” and the rest of the band finally joined in—though of course it did not resemble the actual song. Then we got the insanely obscure “Evelyn” and a bit of “Iris,” and finally the whole awesome detour was capped off by a full and gorgeous version of “Catherine Wheels.” What else can I say!

Actually, I should mention the night’s theme of Sharks, which is a kids’ game where you try to make it across a room without touching the floor. I’ve been informed that it’s nuts that I hadn’t heard of this game, but apparently the Kiwis have come up with something entirely original. And it led to a fair amount of silliness, which is another reason to love seeing these guys live.

Second night (see discussion thread here): I figured it would be hard to live up to that first night, but they still put on a great show. I also had the best seats I’ve ever bought for a show in my entire life, second row center section. The ticketing gods smiled upon me that day, and I am grateful.

They stuck to the set list this time, but the best thing about CH is that they can do a second show with hardly any overlap. I’m a huge fan of the unpredictable set list. As for songs, there’s never any reason to regret hearing “Private Universe,” and they did a kickass version of “Chocolate Cake.” But the highlight for me was “Whispers and Moans,” which I truly thought I would never hear in person. Ohhhh yeah.

It feels very, very weird to not be at a Crowded House concert tonight. And what a treat it was to have two shows in a row. Considering that I went from 1994 to 2007 without any live CH, but have seen four shows in the last ten months, this is just what a fan needs. Whoop!

(Postscript added on edit: I should also mention that Mark, in his suit and tie, looks more and more like an English teacher rocking out on stage. I also spotted Nick and Mark on the sidewalk shortly before show two, but managed to keep my cool [i.e., chickened out] and didn’t bug them. Another opportunity to look like a crazed fan avoided.)

Abandon all hope

I was clearing out old emails at home the other night and came across a good discussion we had on the Elvis Costello mailing list back in 2006. The question was, what books have you abandoned reading? Now, I have at least one good friend of steely resolve who finishes everything she starts, no matter how painful the experience. I, on the other hand, have a lot less resolve—okay, let’s be honest and say hardly any. Unexpectedly, though, my abandoned list is not that long, since I don’t start a lot of books that I’m not sure I’ll be interested in.

The following list is in no particular order.

Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
This one is not surprising in the least, although it’s mildly surprising that I tried to read it in the first place. I first heard of it in grad school, because it’s the subject of a (very dull) scholarly article written by a proponent of the Russian Formalist school of literary analysis (yeah, that sounds just about as dry as it actually is). The book is actually fairly entertaining, especially given that it was written nearly 250 years ago, but is so meandering and plotless that it finally lost my interest. It might have been easier to get through if I took some kind of recreational mood-altering substances.

Idiot, by Fedor Dostoyevsky
Another bad decision motivated by grad school. I was supposed to read it before my comprehensive master’s exams, but never managed it. A later attempt was also foiled when I quickly lost any interest in any of the characters, and couldn’t find a plot to speak of. I was surprised by my abandonment, though, because the other Dostoyevsky I’d read was actually quite good. If you want to give the Russian classics a go, I would recommend you try Crime and Punishment, which was way, way more engaging. Actually, start with Gogol—that cat had a sense of humor, unlike any of his fellow countrymen.

Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The third in my trilogy of grad school-inspired miscalculations. I don’t even remember a single thing about it. Did I get past the first page? I think I did. I would definitely recommend Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich instead, if you feel that you must.

The Bostonians, by Henry James
Whoa, was this one a crashing bore. I don’t think I made it past the first scene where a bunch of tiresome people say dull things in someone’s salon. Considering how much Boston gets your heart pumping, what with the gale-force winds and insane drivers, this book should have a lot more going for it. This was my first and last attempt at Henry James. I will not make a weak Dave Chappelle joke here.

Dune, by Frank Herbert
Admittedly, I pulled this one off my brother’s shelf when I was too young to really have a crack at it, but the first page was all I got through. Heck, even the Bible knows that you put all the dull genealogy a few chapters in so that you give the reader a chance to get interested. For whatever reason, I never went back. Doesn’t stop me from making postmodern, ironic references to the sandworms, so I figure it’s win-win.

Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
I put these on the list even though I have actually finished them, simply because it’s remarkable to note that I made two attempts in my youth to get through all three, but got stuck both times at the end of Two Towers. Frodo and Sam get separated in Shelob’s lair, and then for some reason I failed to pick up volume three. For all I knew, Sauron got the ring and nuked everyone’s ass back to the First Age. Then again, I was too young for these, too; for example, it was only during the recent revival of Tolkien and my first adult read of these books that I realized that Strider and Aragorn were the same dude. Rest assured that I’ve now finished these easily, and got all the way through Silmarillion as well. Boo yah!

Review: Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that Larry Sanders was the best comedy show on television, ever. But I do know that it is true. I think I first became aware of this universal truth near the end of the show’s run, around 1996 or 1997, when I managed to watch the entire series without much trouble thanks to the relentless rerun policy of HBO.

What can I say about Larry Sanders? If you haven’t seen it, then your life is that much grayer than it could be. It had that vibe you get when you’re playing the piano and your fingers just happen to strike the best sounding chord ever. Or you’re playing tennis and you aren’t overthinking things and hit the most incredible shot you’ll ever hit. At that point you sit back and think, well, that was a moment of greatness I should savor, in case it’s the only one I ever experience. I’m not kidding, Larry Sanders was just like that.

So it’s long been a source of deep suffering that only the first season has been released on DVD. (And frankly, the character of Larry’s wife is so uninspiringly obnoxious that there’s some definite suffering involved in watching that season anyway.) There’s been a lot of speculation about why there haven’t been any other releases, among them the idea that all the musical guests are complicating the licensing process, or the ridiculously acrimonious lawsuit that was pending between Garry Shandling and Brad Grey. (Can I just say for the record: Brad Grey is a hangnail on Satan’s littlest toe.) But regardless of the reasons, the world has remained cruelly deprived of a DVD compilation of the entire series. And for chrissakes, you can buy the full run of freaking MacGyver, how is it possible that Larry Sanders remains incomplete?

But at last, last year I found out (thanks to Lifton over at WFW) that Shandling had finally crossed some kind of Rubicon and was putting out another DVD. I finally got it for Swami for Xmas, and now that we’ve watched the whole thing I can give it a proper review. Not to be deliberately turbid, but here are all the adjectives I could use to describe it: good, bad, great, transcendent, disturbing, depressing, essential, heart-wrenching, and completely awesome. I could come up with a few more if I thought about it a little longer, I’m sure, but I doubt the exercise is helping any of you understand what I mean.

What’s the big deal? Well, this is by all accounts the last DVD we’re ever going to get, so that automatically casts a poignant light over everything. It’s bad enough when great things come to an end, but far worse when someone tells you that you’re not even going to be able to experience the whole of the greatness again. (And here I must mention the travesty that it’s not for lack of technology, or some kind of tragic force majeure, that’s keeping us from seeing this stuff—after all, the laws of physics have permitted us to view any episode of MacGyver we might desire.) True, with this four-disc set you get over thirty of the episodes, many of them with deleted scenes and some with commentaries, but dammit I want them all.

Nevertheless, this is one fine set. Of course some fantastic episodes are left out, but a damn lot of great ones are included. You also get several audio commentaries, individual interviews with just about all of the cast, lots of deleted scenes, and a few incredibly weird interviews that Shandling did recently with some of the people who guested on the show. (These are weird mostly because Shandling appears to be the single most neurotic and uncomfortable person on earth, although he’s also one of the funniest goddamn people I’ve ever seen in an off-script situation.) And the fourth disc is a huge amount of material just about the final episode, which is all well worth it. The only disappointing thing I found, besides the fact that some of the cast come across in their interviews as not very bright, or self-absorbed, or sometimes both at once, was that the reunion with Shandling, Jeffrey Tambor, and Rip Torn was a heavily edited letdown—after watching the three of them kick ass all over the place in the show itself, I was hoping for something more there. (Geeky sidenote: Before I ever saw Larry Sanders I already knew of Tambor from Max Headroom, man did I love that show.) If it’s possible, this DVD set has actually caused me to become an even bigger fan of Larry Sanders now than I was before.

But I hope I don’t come across as insane when I argue that there’s something far more important to be gained from this DVD than just having a bunch of the episodes handy at last. There’s a larger message to be grasped that addresses my earlier metaphor of that perfect piano chord or tennis shot. As you learn about the process of making the show through the audio commentaries and the interviews with cast, and as you learn a little more about Shandling through the interviews he did with various friends, you are invited to face an essential fact about human achievement: It’s never easy. Even that piano chord wasn’t actually easy, considering the hours of playing, listening to music, training of muscle memory, and all of the other factors both mundane and important that made it possible for your fingers to hit those keys at that precise moment. It wasn’t easy to make that show, to write jokes that are still funny today, to create and inhabit characters that seem so perfectly real, to stick cameramen in closets and on rollerblades to get shots that make it feel like you’re in the room when it’s all happening. It wasn’t easy for Tambor to be Hank Kingsley, or Torn to be Artie. (Well, it was probably easier for Rip, but still not all the way to truly easy.) I admit I’ve never watched recent shows like the Office, which also purport to be showing you real or realistic people and situations, but I doubt they would be possible without the groundbreaking work of Larry Sanders to build on. And it was work, definitely work.

What a great series, truly. I sincerely hope “never” doesn’t really mean never, and we get the full run someday. In the meantime, go get this set (or at least borrow mine) and as Hank says, get ready to have a good time.

Movie review: Superman Returns

It seems prudent to reveal all my biases first, before I dive into the actual review of this movie. It also might be helpful to explain why it’s taken me over a year to see it, which is very much a related topic. Thanks to X-Men and X2, I am now pretty firmly committed to that particular universe as serving my comic needs. Heck, I didn’t even know I had comic needs until those two movies kicked my ass. (See more of my ramblings on this topic here.) I’m also a little too young to have been impressed by the 1978 Superman movie that jumpstarted the current culture’s interest in the dude; in fact, I’m young enough to find Superman and his world pretty painfully dorky. More on that last point later.

So that takes care of the “I’m not a fan of Superman” portion of this review. But given that Bryan Singer brought me X-Men nirvana, you’d think that would have spurred me into the theater. Aha, not quite. Recall that X3 was originally going to be under Singer’s direction; recall that Singer jumped from the project, voiding his deal with the studio, to direct SR; recall that X3 under hack director Brett Ratner was a major disappointment to me. (Did I ever give you all my lengthy rant about X3? Searching through my blog I think I haven’t. I might have to rectify that sometime.) So I was feeling pretty ill disposed to Singer’s decision, and feeling apathy to the whole Superman idea, ergo there I am not going to see the movie.

That brings us to last Saturday night, when the disc was finally shoved into the player. I was nearly a tabula rasa, although I found myself recognizing Supermanalia in the dark reaches of my memory as I watched: oh yeah, I remember Jimmy Olsen, yep, Daily Planet, right, the Fortress of Solitude. In fact, it turns out that I had a pretty good grasp on what I needed to know in order to enjoy the movie, although not quite enough, perhaps. It turns out that this is a sequel, not a reinvention, and so there is some assumption that the story line continues from the last Superman movie back in the 1980s. (Upon checking the IMDB, by the way, I find that Superman IV is the very definition of Suck, and I wonder if it would be better for humanity to pretend it never existed, rather than tack the current movie onto the end of the chain.)

Enough of this screwing around, you cry, is it a good movie?? Yes and no. Let me take care of the “no” part first. Superman himself is the largest hindrance to movie goodness, in terms of generating what I need from plot and characterization. As my pal kaskasero always says, he’s too goddamn perfect. Strong plots and characters require conflict, and the truth is that Superman doesn’t have a lot of room for it. He has only one flaw, the weakness to kryptonite, and that gets pretty tired when you have to bring it into every confrontation with the bad guys. One of the strengths of the X-Men, and Spider-Man, for that matter, is that they’re inherently flawed or vulnerable (even Xavier, who has to get knocked out of commission almost immediately in every conflict or else nothing gets going), often psychologically, which means there’s a lot you can do if you want to make things difficult—and interesting—for them. With Superman, you kind of feel sorry for Lex Luthor, because that guy is nowhere near an irresistable force trying to push on that immovable object.

This movie does some work to show us a weakened Superman and therefore an actual conflict, but the solution boils down to pulling the kryptonite thorn out of his paw and then he’s back to being, as the Tick is fond of saying, nigh invulnerable. He also doesn’t seem particularly deep psychologically, never really confronting the new developments with Lois and her tyke. Speaking of the Lois Lane family unit, by the way, I was glad to see that James Marsden got a decent amount of screentime, considering that Cyclops’ woeful underuse in X3 is one of the reasons why that movie was so frustrating.

To sum up the negatives, then, Superman is inherently a somewhat flat character that doesn’t end up very compelling, and the movie’s plot was too thin to sustain itself around him. Kevin Spacey did a great job as Luthor, but he didn’t have a lot of room to work with. He was kind of a bad dude, but as far as villains go his world domination plan was thin, and I think the Joker does a better job of projecting true sociopathic malevolence. This all dovetails with my frustration that Superman’s world is too simplistic, too unreal, as if it’s never grown up. Part of that is the annoying PG-13 rating these comic-book movies always try for, but part of it is the fault of the Superman concept.

And here’s where I should remark on the dorkiness I referred to earlier. I’m sorry, but the cartoonish red and blue tights just don’t work on the modern screen, although I recognize that the alternatives are nearly impossible to imagine. (Batman benefits immensely from the forethought of his dark outfit, doesn’t he?) And is it just me, or is it darn difficult to imagine Superman and Lois feeling actual, passionate love for each other? Even though they’re ostensibly adults, they’re still trapped in a world that’s imagined for children. The X-Men have managed to transcend their immature, adolescent beginnings and turned into adults, wrestling with moral ambiguity and imperfection just like us poor slobs in the real world. Maybe it would help if these damn movies would go for the R rating. Of all people, Wolverine deserves to say “fuck” more than a few times. On the other hand, I can almost imagine a plotline in Superman where Luthor tries in vain to force him at kryptonite point to say “fuck.” Supes would certainly find a way around it; he’s so clean he practically squeaks.

But as I said earlier, there are some positives. Even though the movie was very long and often extremely slow moving, I found myself entirely caught up in it. This is where I reaffirm my unconditional love for Bryan Singer and his team’s visual artistry. They do such an amazing job of showing the viewer everything you might want to see, with camera angles and movement that naturally draw you into scenes. This is very much unlike some directors, who cut around so fast that you can’t figure out what the hell you’re looking at, which is disorienting and alienating, and leads you to wonder whether they’re trying to hide something by being deliberately sloppy. (Here I must cast an accusatory eye at Gladiator.) And everything looks so damn good, colors and lighting are rich, and Metropolis has a Deco splendor that makes me want to move there tomorrow.

Singer probably could have done a better job in terms of economy, though; one of the strengths of his X-Men movies was that he was able to give us insight into such a large cast of characters with a minimum of lines and screen time. (Although I will comment that Cyclops got shafted, even in X-Men and X2, but what can he do when Wolverine’s the center of attention?) Here, we didn’t have that many characters, but they’re still fairly flat. Time was spent on things that probably didn’t need it, like Superman’s convalescence at the hospital, and the plot hardly had time to ramp up before it was actually over.

Anyway, I think Singer did an amazing job with a very, very small amount of actual movie. For his next trick, it looks like he’ll be trying to convince me to go see a movie with Tom Cruise in it sometime in 2008. Good luck with that, Bryan.

Movie review: The Prestige

It’s been a long time since I went to a movie and walked out immediately wanting to see it again. (Maybe Kung Fu Hustle?) This was one of them. I’m not going to go into plot details, because there are a lot of surprises and I don’t want to spoil any of it. But I will tell you that this was one of the best constructed plots I’ve seen, every performance was excellent (due to my various biases I’m obliged to spend a whole paragraph later on one particular actor; see below for that), and there wasn’t a single moment where I looked at my watch. I also ended up thinking about it for the rest of the weekend, which is rare because I often slip into an irrational funk after seeing movies.

(By the way, over here I promised Frantix at some point that I’d deliver my verdict on The Departed, but in truth I was so lukewarm about that movie that I couldn’t really motivate myself to write a review. That is review enough, I think. Well, while I’m on the subject, I’ll just say that the performances were excellent, but the plot was botched in the last quarter of the movie and therefore I was terribly disappointed. Leo deserves Oscar consideration, though.)

In a rare girly moment for me, I must confess that this movie led me to believe that the best job in the world is probably designing costumes, and this film was a showcase for some great ones. There’s nothing like the Victorian era for waistcoats, ascots, corsets, and hats of various shapes and sizes. I wonder what the line-item in the budget was for top hats, for example. Christian Bale should be firing his agent, because he got majorly shortchanged by being stuck in prison greys for a large portion of the proceedings. I also loved the set dressing. Can you imagine being in charge of something so major, in that everything you do is on display and captured forever on film, but so minor, in that few people probably ever notice the vases on the shelf behind a character while he’s talking? It’s kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.

And now, the promised/threatened paragraph on Hugh Jackman. The first thing to say is that he has appeared in some of the most awful flicks that have ever been imposed on humanity (here of course I’m talking about Swordfish and Van Helsing, yikes). The next thing to say is that I’m nonetheless incredibly biased in his favor because of the X-Men movies. (That’s 1 and 2; let’s imagine that 3 was scrapped after Bryan Singer left.) But after that full disclosure I think it’s safe to report that the dude can act. Even in some very tense emotional scenes, he really pulled it off. Look, I got through almost the whole paragraph without mentioning that there is a shirtless scene (insert fangirl swoon here).

But I’m tiptoeing around the major points of discussion because I want you to see the damn movie, not read my effusive ramblings on it. Go. Go, already, if only so I can discuss the plot with you afterwards. And buy an extra ticket for me so I can go again.

Book review: Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

This review will address two themes: ST geekery, and a more sober discussion of life and adulthood and all of that self-reflection schmack.

First, some geekery. I must begin with full disclosure: I am a huge Trek fan, and have been since I was 8 or 9 years old (I was always Captain Kirk in the role-playing I did with my friends—yes, even at that tender age I was domineering). In fact, I recently unearthed a calendar from 1984 among my possessions where I had written in which TOS episode aired each day. Now that’s some good blackmail material.

When TNG started up, though, I was going through a phase of Geek Denial and didn’t watch it. Actually, I’m not sure I even knew it was on; 1987–88 was a particularly crappy time in my life. It wasn’t until the fourth season that, under the influence of roommate Marc, I started watching ST again. It’s probably for the best that it happened that way anyway, considering that the first two seasons were fairly awful, and seasons 3 and 4 were excellent. Anyway, let’s just say that I am now and shall always be deeply in love with TNG. I think it’s the best ST series by far. Some obscure cable channel has been re-running them lately, and I find it damn near impossible to keep from watching them every night. (One of the greatest hours of TV ever was on the other night, in fact, when they showed “Family.”)

Despite all the love, though, I thought (and pretty much still think) that Wesley Crusher was the biggest L0ser in the known galaxy and I always thought his character was completely lame. (I shall not weigh in with my opinion of his eventual fate, except to roll my eyes.) Steve and I nicknamed him “The Weasel,” and lo there was much mockery. Things remained in this state for the entire decade of the 1990s and the early years of the 2000s.

Then, a few years ago I discovered Wil Wheaton’s blog. I don’t remember how I found it, or what I expected, but I ended up spending a fair amount of time poking around. I do recall the first realization that struck me: he and I are about the same age. Since I had watched the early TNG episodes only in reruns, I always assumed I was older. We also have both played a hell of a lot of Nethack. Other than that, I noticed his writing style was engaging, and he wrote pretty openly about his family and whatever was going on in his life. He seemed like a real person, rather than some 2D, glossy celebrity. The fact that he had his own presence on the Web, all done himself, was cool. And the site was damn popular—every post had comments numbering in the dozens at least, so clearly the dude was writing something interesting. Then it dawned on me: Wesley Crusher might not be cool, but it was distinctly possible that Wil Wheaton could be cool. They were, like, orthogonal and shit.

So last Christmas I found myself asking for Just a Geek, which he was plugging on his site, and so I got it. Fast forward to last month, when I finally took it off my huge stack of planned reading and cracked the cover.

Suffice to say, I devoured the whole thing in a few sittings. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that it’s a narrative of Wheaton’s struggle to come to terms with his past as Wesley Crusher. Somehow over the course of his time on TNG, he went from successful child actor to starving adult actor, and at the same time he suffered a fair amount of rejection from people at Paramount and the convention circuit as they treated him far worse than the other regular cast of the show, even after the series ended and everyone could be considered former cast members (Wheaton had left partway through season 4).

But the message is larger than that. When Wheaton hits his late 20s and early 30s, life gets pretty nasty and complicated as he has to confront the fact that acting might not ever pay the bills again. I think many people can identify with this arc, since I think for many of us our career path, determined by choices made in college or grad school, will at some point naturally start to reach a lull (or smack into what turns out to be a brick wall). So Wheaton’s struggle to confront this, and his eventual success in overcoming everything that was holding him back, is engaging reading and inspiring to those of us trying to avoid the same traps. Even though this isn’t All About Me, I would also humbly point out that his own blogging and book-writing have provided some of the impetus for me to get off my ass and finally create this blog.

All of this, plus a few hilarious anecdotes about TNG and some warm recollections about his fellow cast members, made this book a very satisfying read. In terms of design, I thought O’Reilly did a good job even though it’s not their usual fare. I especially dug the sans-serif typeface they used for Wheaton’s quoted blog entries. (That was an obligatory warm comment about O’Reilly, should they take an interest in hiring me—hint, hint.) I might not ever give The Weasel the time of day, but Wheaton will definitely get the Fingers of Rock if the opportunity ever comes up.

Book review: V for Vendetta

Was it only a couple of years ago that my bookshelf had a mere one or two comic books among all the holdovers from my Russian literature degree? Now there is at least one foot of shelf space devoted to the things. If I had to characterize turning thirty a few years ago using a single metaphor or meme, it would be that of Humility: realizing that all kinds of things I used to scoff at (flared-leg pants, comic books, fitted t-shirts, Kashi cereal, Green Day) are worthy of respect. I’ve even confessed in the dark of night that there are songs by Steely Dan and Elton John that don’t completely suck. Did I just write that?

So anyway, comic books. Or graphic novels, if you like. Something I always considered to be the domain of lonely teenage boys who were compelled to draw or just gaze at the impossible women that they could never date. (Never mind the fact that stereotypical comic-book women are probably structurally unsound to begin with, and therefore inherently undateable.) So what happened? The aforementioned Humility, I suppose. Well, that and Bryan Singer. Despite all of my mixed feelings about 20th Century Fox and their handling of the X-Men (I’ll save that for another rant, as it’s a lengthy one), I’ll say that Bryan Singer directing the first X-Men movie was a smart, smart decision. And it was a brilliant move to make an X-Men movie that stripped away all the candy-colored comic silliness of the X-Men, much like ST:TNG rose so far above the campy beehive hairdos of the original Star Trek. It meant that I, a self-confessed female, actually could get into the movie and the characters, and come away without feeling too geeky. (Of course, I recognize that using Star Trek metaphors is the apotheosis of geeky and I should just shut up and face the music, but never mind.) Plus, Hugh Jackman is a damn good Wolverine, even if he’s several inches too tall (I leave it to the hardcore fanboyz to give a damn about that kind of crap.) And for the lova Pete, you put Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian in a movie and it more than makes up for the non-acting of Halle Berry! So the X-Men movie made me think, hey, there are decent stories behind all that cheesy spandex and HH chest measurements. And so comic books, and graphic novels, began to trickle into the house.

I should also give credit to Frank Miller’s Sin City, whose artwork and anti-superhero characters showed me that there was more to the genre than good vs. evil and fights on the moon. So he gets a paragraph all his own.

Then Raoul gave Steve Watchmen by Alan Moore. Goddamn. The book threw me into a depression for weeks (nothing like bleak, late-1980s cynicism to make you feel like hanging yourself instead of celebrating the holidays—I recommend reading it in, say, June), but the complexity of the story and the characters earns it the coveted label of literature. Never mind that the thing is done with pictures—excellent, cinematic pictures—if that’s going to cause you to write it off, then your mind is closed, baby.

After that, the small trickle of pebbles became a real rockslide. I started picking up some X-Men trade paperbacks, although I have yet to find a series that doesn’t smack too much of The Silly, or have lousy artwork, or some unholy combination of the two. Then League of Extraordinary Gentlemen invaded the house and kicked all sorts of ass. Let’s all pretend that there was no movie made of that masterpiece. Bone even showed up, my reading of which is the only thing that has prompted strangers to speak to me on the bus (despite my strong vibe of leave-me-the-fuck-alone).

And now at last I’m ready to talk about V for Vendetta, which I just finished last night. As with Watchmen, it’s a thick slice of 1980s-style paranoia, which is all right by me. In my universe, post-nuclear fascist dystopia is always in style. And speaking of style, despite the book being over 20 years old I don’t find too much that’s dated about it, except perhaps the art. The colors are very weak, like a faded page of comics from the newspaper, and lines are not particularly sharp. I don’t know if that’s because it was done on softer paper or not, but it’s striking if you’re used to the sharp color and smooth paper you find in recent trade paperbacks. The art also often feels quite cramped, and you do often find yourself straining to see more detail in an individual panel to figure out what the heck is going on. I don’t know if the art was shrunk from a larger size, or if the claustrophobic panels are supposed to metaphorically reflect the stifling fascism of the society portrayed within, but either way it’s not deal-breaking. (Dig my rationalization, though.)

Regarding substance, I was curious to see how the book differed from the movie, which I saw first. (And by the way, thanks to Vendetta the Wachowski brothers have regained a small measure of respectability, all of which had been lost as soon as the second Matrix movie came out.) There are certainly differences, and in many cases the movie is an improvement. Regarding the book, the character of Eve is problematic, in my opinion. She’s profoundly weak; even after her transfiguration into V’s protégé she doesn’t come across as possessing the brash spirit or intellectual promise that you’d think V was looking for. I’m glad that Natalie Portman’s Eve had more going for her. In the book I found myself wondering why V bothered with her, since it didn’t appear at all certain that she would ultimately have the strength to do what he needed her to do. And one must recall that it was complete chance that she was the one whom V rescues at the beginning of the story—I suppose that’s where suspension of disbelief comes in, to ease the jarring shift of her character’s development.

In the obligatory feminist portion of this review, I must point out that the women come off very badly. There’s the calculating bitch, the spineless wife, and the helpless victim—not a lot to go on in the Fem Pride department. But truthfully, once I change out of my feminist superhero costume and return to my mild-mannered self I see that the men are just as petty, pathetic, and pathological. So I conclude that Moore’s not a misogynist—he’s a full-fledged misanthrope. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

So to sum up, I think if you are going to hold your nose and grudgingly read only one Alan Moore graphic novel, read Watchmen. If you’re more comfortable with your inner geek, or if you have a soft spot for dystopian novels, read Watchmen, but read Vendetta too. Ave atque vale!

By the way: Here’s a good biography of Alan Moore.