Over the course of (several) fine Belgian beers (Rochefort 10 ftw!), we started talking about Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight. Now, what you have to know, straight off, is that while we’re good buddies, he and I rarely agree on anything related to either music or movies. We both like music in general and good music in particular, but we have very different definitions as to what that exactly means.

So, Heath Ledger. The Dark Knight.

I didn’t love the movie. I’ve read many people claim that the reason it’s so great is because Christopher Nolan, moreso than directing a good superhero movie, managed to make a good movie, overall, but I’m not sure. See, I think that what really happened is that Nolan managed to make a good crime movie out of superhero material, because I can’t agree it was overall a good movie; it’s at least twenty minutes to half an hour too long, the final twenty minutes to half an hour of which seem composed of a philosophical treatise on the nature of good and evil telegraphed through dialog to the audience because Nolan suddenly got scared his audience hadn’t picked up what he was saying. Still, I will admit I originally thought it was badly structured, but I’ve since realized it’s not, that the plot turns when it’s supposed to for the most part (given 3-act structure and 140 minutes, the first plot point should come about 35 minutes in, with another midpoint beat and then a second plot point, each coming 35 minutes after the previous).

Also: when did Two-Face debut? In the comics, I mean. He’s been around at least long enough that Tommy Lee Jones played him nearly a decade ago, but yet he lasts, like, fifteen minutes in this flick? Wtf? I suppose it’s possible Nolan was lolzing us and will bring Two-Face back for The Dark Knight Returns or The Dark Knight Again or The Dark Knight Lightens Up a Bit, Because, Seriously, Why So Serious?, but either way, I think Nolan blows his villain load by using two who merely serve as thematic foils to Batman/Bruce Wayne, rather than any story use.

Because I think that’s the problem I have with the Joker (and with Ledger’s portrayal of him). While he claims to both want chaos and have no plan (and I realize that his claim of the latter probably serves the former), I think that the two villains clash in a way that the Scarecrow and Liam Neeson didn’t in Batman Begins. The first movie was about Batman and how he foiled the plans of Neeson, whose subsidiary was the Scarecrow; this movie is not just about Batman anymore. It’s about Gotham City and heroes and good and evil (as Nolan seems to want so dearly for us to see). It’s almost like Nolan had the exact opposite problem as the brothers Wachowski: while the second two Matrix movies probably should have been combined into a single flick, Nolan probably should have taken his time with this story and let the second installment become two.

(which, too, would have solved the problem Warner Bros. now faces, because, sorry to be callous about it, but who’s going to play the Joker now?)

Can the Joker desire chaos but have no plan? I’m not sure it works both ways, but given a little more fleshing out, Nolan might have proven it can and does. As it stands, though, the problem with the Joker is that he’s merely the foil or the anti-self or the whatever-opposite of Batman. He’s reactionary, really, and I’m trying to come up with great characters who have been solely reactionary but not really succeeding. He wants chaos, but only seems to want chaos because other people have plans he doesn’t like.

(of course, the major argument there is there’s no such thing as order, anyway, given that the natural tendency of all things is toward disorder/entropy. Had the Joker taken any science courses, he might realize that life exists despite chaos, in which case he might file for unemployment by reason of redundance)

Given all that, Ledger arguably did the best job he could with a somewhat otherwise limited role; I’m not sure he’s the only reason The Dark Knight wasn’t a typical superhero movie, but he might have been. That and his premature death are, I think, a large part of the reason his performance has gotten the acclaim it has. Which might seem cynical or even callous, I fear, but the thing is, I keep thinking of his performance in Brokeback Mountain. Now, I didn’t like Brokeback; in fact, I shut it off after fifteen or twenty minutes, because I was bored out of my skull. And I think that The Dark Knight, despite its flaws, is a movie far superior to Brokeback if only because the latter commits the cardinal sin of movies, which is that it’s not at all entertaining, but still, I watch Ledger as Joker and I just don’t think his performance there is nearly as good as he was in Brokeback Mountain. In Brokeback, he wanted something (namely: Gyllenhaal) but yet restrained himself, and in that restraint is all the subtlety and craft that I thought the Joker lacked. The Joker seemed wall-to-wall Id. Creepy thrift-store drugged-out rockstar more likely to front an emo band, sure, and entertaining to at least the degree you expect him to be onstage lamenting about how nothing actually has meaning, but just being crazy-villain guy seems to require little effort. I mean, in some ways, it strikes me that his role was of the just-add-alcohol variety; skip all the inhibitions and the performance executes itself.

Do I think he’ll win (not that you asked)? I don’t know if it’s important, at this point, if only because I think there’s too great a disconnect between good movies and critically acclaimed, award-winning movies. And why do I think that?

Because the one thing my buddy and I could agree on, over those fine Belgian beers, was that Ironman might well have been the best movie all year, and Robert Downey, Jr. has always knocked every performance he’s ever given straight out of the park. I mean, the fact that he doesn’t have an Oscar yet is nearly as big a travesty as that Zodiac went completely ignored last year, and if he got one this year for being “the dude playin’ the dude disguised as another dude,” I wouldn’t argue. I’d say he could then dedicate it to Ledger, but didn’t Daniel Day-Lewis already do that last year?

All that said, I might also just be bitter. I still wish Nolan had cast Christian Bale as the Joker, too, because I think that would have been awesome.

(crossposted to Mightygodking.com)

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Also worth remembering: that tomorrow is not so much a victory as an opportunity. That it is not nearly so much a culmination as it is a beginning. My greatest hope for the coming Obama administration is that it will help to remind us that the struggle hasn’t ended and may never be over, and that its burden is on our shoulders. That we shall not be lifted lest we lift each other up.

“Forgive that they teared down my soul
Bless them that they might grow old
A dream that’s forgotten may know
That it’s never too late.”
-”Madagascar,” lyrics by W. Axl Rose.

I mean, it should be, shouldn’t it?  “By getting more electoral votes than the other guy.”

I was, until I then read them, after which I felt decidedly less interested.

I admit I used to be into the Globes and the Oscars. I watched them every year during college. I generally recall very little about the winners; I remember the year Roberto Benigni stepped on Spielberg’s head as he made his way up to accept his acting award for Life is Beautiful, beating out the likes of Edward Norton (American History X), Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan), and Sir Ian McKellan (Gods and Monsters). He didn’t, unfortunately, beat Joseph Fiennes, who was basically the only person not nominated for Shakespeare in Love even though he was, in fact, Shakespeare in love. The only thing I remember about the Globes is the year Jack Nicholson gave part of his acceptance speech (As Good As It Gets, I think) out of his ass, a la Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

So, this year’s Globes nominations.

I’ve seen precisely none of the movies nominated for drama, and only two nominated as comedies: Burn After Reading, which I wish somebody had burned after editing, and In Bruges, which actually ended up being one of my favorite films all year. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in the titular Bruges, which is a city in Europe, and it’s odd and weird and surreal and extraordinarily off-beat but never overly so, and plus written and directed by Martin McDonagh. McDonagh is a critically acclaimed playwright, but never once does it show through. Usually, I’ve tended to notice that movies written or directed by playwrights, or even based on plays, tend not to be able to disguise their roots (I’m looking at you, David Mamet. Especially House of Yes, which I thought less of as a movie than as someone just recorded the theatrical performance); In Bruges busts that wide open, and it’s actually rather terrific. Farrell gives the kind of performance that he should have become known for ages ago, rather than . . . well, what exactly was he known for, besides partying and Bullseye?

It is, ostensibly, a crime movie; Farrell and Gleeson play hitmen, but there’s actually very little in the way of actual crime in the movie. Its events occur after a particular job, so it’s more like they’re on vacation. I’ve heard some people expecting a Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels have been disappointed, which makes sense as it’s not at all like Barrels, but it’s certainly a great between-crimes movie on its own. It’s subtle and even moving while still managing to be pretty fucking cool.

Besides that single movie, however, the rest of the Globes’ movie nominations are less interesting. I’m interested in both Revolutionary Road and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but in neither case am I rushing out to see them, obviously. I’ve heard great things about Langella’s performance in Frost/Nixon, but the movie itself remains named after a guy interviewing a president during the 70s: meh.

Robert Downey, Jr., gets nominated for Tropic Thunder, which I shut off after twenty minutes because it was kinda dumb, but totally ignored for the totally rad Ironman, while Heath Ledger picks up his all-but-handed-already-to-him nomination for The Dark Knight. I mean, they basically filled the entire rest of the supporting actor category with also-rans; Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder? Novelty at best, and no one’s yet ready to forgive Tom Cruise for the past few years, which is a damned shame because Valkyrie looks completely rad. Ralph Fiennes and Philip Seymour Hoffman get the other nods, and I don’t call them also-rans because they’re not both extremely terrific actors, but rather because everyone just seems to want to give Ledger a posthumous statue for a performance that was certainly good but by no means great, and which lacked all the subtlety, technicality, and craft he brought to, say, Brokeback Mountain and even 10 Things I Hate About You.

WALL-E gets its nomination for animated feature, of course. I keep hearing people fawn over it, but they often seem to have forgotten its second half, which: not very good. Some mention the physical comedy of it, which seems a bit of a stretch given that it’s a CGI movie starring a robot, but which I’ll go with because the first half of the movie, which is pretty much dialogue free, is rather excellent. Technically virtuoso, even. Pretty amazing. And is Fred Willard the only live-actor to have ever appeared in a Pixar movie? Because that’s pretty rad. Otherwise, I mean, I liked it, but I didn’t love it like I loved The Incredibles. Still, I know they set out to accomplish different things, and both managed to mostly achieve it. I guess I just can’t get past WALL-E‘s second half and the flaws that really come out there, whereas I thought The Incredibles was note-perfect. Also: I’m totally ready for Bolt. That looks awesome.

Television . . . confession: the sole reason I’ve owned a television during the past decade was to play my Playstation 2, last year. Besides that: not much in the way of need.

Still, I do manage to catch some great stuff; lately, I’ve been loving The Mentalist, and of course I can’t wait for Supernatural and House to return. Were it up to me, the cast and crew of House would sweep the whole category, while Supernatural would win the comedy category (which it’s not, exactly, but it is genre, which seems to be what “comedy” means in the context of the Globes). And besides, I mean, I’ve seen The Office, Entourage, and Californication, and House is way funnier than any of them.

Still, come Monday morning, I’m sure fewer people will be talking about who won what than about what zany thing Jack Nicholson did. He’s always good for something zany, isn’t he?

Reals: Real Life Superheroes On the Rise Really.

Links to Rolling Stone and the Times Online to discuss real-life superheroes.

By which they apparently mean people who got dressed up for comic book conventions but forgot to take off their costumes (not that you’d want them to). If there were a weight or age limit on spandex (there should be, except for functional purposes), these people would exceed them.

Then again, makes me think. I mean, I’m a reasonably in-shape guy. And I’ve got lots of training. Maybe I should come up with a costume and a name. I think I would just hope people would call me Awesome. It’s better than “That Short Guy with the Vigilante Complex,” which should be TMed, I think.

They (the costumed vigilantes/”superheroes”) attribute their cause to Obama and his call for “active citizenry,” to which I just want to say: don’t blame him. Seriously. Ain’t even in office yet.

Axl Rose’s favourite books | Books | guardian.co.uk.

What would Axl read, indeed.  Somehow his list of four (?!) books surprises me a little, at least given the presence of Dick (whom I’ve always found a little weird) and Stephenson (whom I’ve always found a little baroque).

The article fixates on the similarities between Rose and J.D. Salinger, basically on the whole “reclusive genius” thing.  Me, I just like that someone’s saying Rose is a genius.  Too often, I think, people who create extraordinarily popular work are looked down on, which has never made sense to me; people acknowledge the Beatles are geniuses, but Stephen King is not?

NB- I would love to somehow get The Prodigal Hour into Rose’s hands.  That’d be so rad.

Here’s Jamie Kennedy (who, coincidentally, produced the documentary):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITBfwhp8XMY]

Jimmy Carr does it extraordinarily well. Here’s one:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woKSSwxnFmM]

And here’s another:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_8oaimyDpo]

But it’s not just comedians. Here’s Kevin Smith:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou2mVnElp6c]

And even Bill Clinton pwning some idiot “9/11 truth conspiracy theorist”:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdtTccXcThE]

I mean, seriously. Some people are just douchebags.

Thing is, Heckler turns out to only ostensibly be about heckling; over the course of interviewing Jamie Kennedy, Carrot Top, and Bill Maher (among many others), it slowly became a rumination about criticism. In doing so, it raised some terrific points about critics and their relation to, for lack of a better word, “art,” and especially about the way the Internet has changed things. It featured appearances by writers from CHUD.com and Giant magazine and questioned the idea of random dudes commenting about cinema. Kathy Griffin made an analogy between Internet commenters and hecklers, which I thought was apt, except for one crucial difference:

At a comedy show, the comedian gets to be face to face, even if across a room, with the person.

On the other hand, the Internet allows a degree of cowardice when someone like Shecky Gangrene or, as is most often the case, Anonymous wants to crap on somebody. I swear, I’d often heard quotes attributed to Anonymous before, but the Internet exponentially increased Anonymous’ body of work, which is mostly restricted to little more than saliva-spattered vitriol. I’ve rarely seen Anonymous actually be supportive; usually Anonymous uses the old “I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to be honest with you” to make personal attacks and mostly horrifying comments they’d never make in real life to someone’s face.

And while I’ve never gotten altogether much attention from Anonymous because I’m just a mostly unknown writer still making his way in his work, any attention from Anonymous can feel like too much. Most of the negativity I’ve encountered has come from Anonymous (who most often really, really doesn’t like me). Anonymous most often believes that the ends justify whatever means it is necessary to use, and frequently makes the case that anyone who has earned any degree of spotlight whatsoever must grin and bear it because it comes with the territory and one must develop thick skin.

To which I say: bullshit.

Bill Maher and Dr. Drew (ftw) address it best in the documentary by making two points: first, honesty does not excuse douchebaggery (that’s Dr. Drew), and second, as Maher notes, entertainers can’t develop thick skin. We need some degree of sensitivity because that’s our role in the culture we need to be part of.

Which I think is an awesome point.

The documentary is well worth checking out. Here’s the trailer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvZNSLFO72k]

I think my favorite part was the segment dedicated to director Uwe Boll, who challenged his critics to boxing matches and summarily beat the shit out of them. It’s absolutely hysterical to watch as the movie switches back and forth from idiot bloggers making asinine comments like “No, I’ve never watched one of his movies, but I’ve heard their awful” to selfsame bloggers falling to the canvas, culminating in a shot of a twenty-ish blogger lying on the curb, post-fight, wearing a tank top with Sharpie-written “Hi, Mom!” on its back while puking into the gutter.

Apparently, the Rock Gods heard my plea, and Rolling Stone has a review of Chinese Democracy, which will be out in a couple of weeks. David Fricke uses “Was It Worth the Wait” to lead but never really gets around to his own question, so I will:

abso-fucking-lutely

Chinese Democracy is an epic, sprawling CD that epitomizes for albums what some dude once said about novels; that they’re long fiction with flaws. Chinese Democracy (from what I’ve heard) isn’t flawless, but what great art is?

And yes, I’ll call it art. It’s a term I usually eschew, because most of the time I think it’s pretentious at best and absurd at worst, but I think it’s excellent for what it is. It’s not Beethoven’s 9th, but it is, approximately, Rose’s 5th, and it is absolutely excellent for what it is. It’s loud and blunt and rocking with little restraint, and that’s very much why it’s magic.

via Chinese Democracy : Guns N’ Roses : Review : Rolling Stone

So yah, got to look me up some of those.

Dude’s won a bunch of genre-type awards: a Stoker for best first novel and a Shamus. And two of his books have apparently come with soundtracks, which is totally awesome (note to self: what is the soundtrack for my writing?).

Connolly recently posted a great blog on the old argument concerning ‘genre’ fiction versus ‘literary’ fiction. It’s well worth reading just to enjoy the pretension of some writers. I mean, holy shit, you think it’s a joke some writers think the way he portrays, and then you meet those writers who not only think that way but even speak that way, and you know for a fact those are the same damned annoying writers who appropriate agent/editor panels at writing conferences to ask deeply personal questions about their deeply personal pet projects and who believe the publishing world is totally against them because it’s a covert and Cabalistic cadre of secret societies and secreter handshakes one can only break into if one compromises one’s ‘artistic integrity.’

He makes a lot of points I agree a lot with, but the money one comes toward the end:

I believe that art and craft are not mutually exclusive. One works at one’s craft, and one hopes that, along the way, art may possibly emerge. Even if it does not, one can still take pride in the fact that one has done one’s best.

Because, seriously, totally

A lot of it was wrapped up in my feelings about September 11th. I realized that before, but watching Obama’s acceptance speech drove it home. I’m only 30 and ain’t been alive long, arguably, and missed some major cultural milestones. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think any man has walked on the moon so long as I have been alive. The sixties are full of a lot of cultural imagery that will only ever be grainy footage to me; JFK and RFK and MLK. I came in at the tail end of the seventies, and missed free love and freer sex. While I enjoy the Beatles music in some ways, I still don’t see what the big fuss was about, and by the time I came around, Elvis was gone, too. I enjoy few movies made before 1980, Star Wars being the most notable example.

Still, the other night, watching Obama accept the presidency, I thought of what I have seen. I saw a black man become president of the United States, and while I know that racism is in many ways still alive and perhaps too healthy in America, I think it’s the surest sign there’s hope.

I remember this, too:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtYdjbpBk6A]

Which was in 1987. Two years later, in August 1989, 28 years and one day after it was constructed, that wall came down:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYXbJ_bcLc]

I think a lot of us had that feeling first thing Wednesday morning, just after midnight.

The end of one era, and the beginning of a new one.

(I’ve just realized, too, that 28 years and three days after I was born, I left for USC. That’s kinda neat)

Because the other momentous thing I’ve seen during my lifetime is something that too often hurts too badly to talk about too much. A few weeks ago, I caught the premier for Life on Mars, a show by which I was singularly unimpressed save for a single moment:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zyPEL_2LGE]

I often feel like that day started a time of corruption and incompetence carried through 7 long years. Seven years during which America lost internationally most of what reputation it had, invaded countries it had no right to attack, ‘defending freedoms’ it had already taken away anyway.

I don’t know what Obama will do, nor what he will change. I don’t know that he will be a good president. But I think he has both dignity and integrity, two things the office of the presidency have been sorely lacking for a long, long time (and not just during this past administration. I like Clinton, but dignity and integrity are not words that come to mind when he does), and I feel comfortable enough with the next four years (at least) in his hands.

I don’t think much will change for a while; Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Berlin Wall didn’t fall the day after Mr. Reagan challenged Mr. Gorbachev. Then again, September 12th, 2001 saw the sun rise on a world completely changed from the one that had existed just 24 hours before, so who knows?

I don’t. But here’s the thing:

While I don’t remember much about the morning of September 11th up to, say, 8:50 or so, it is because that day at that point in my life was unremarkable, which means it was a good morning. It was a morning on which I woke up a little later than I wanted, brushed my teeth, walked a block up to the PATH station at Journal Square. It was a morning I walked from Herald Square at 34th and 7th to my office at 40th and Madison, and if I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary during that several block trek, I will claim it was a good one, because those walks were, back then. They weren’t all sunshine and roses, of course (not many rosebushes on the streets of Manhattan), but after that morning, those walks were different, and they disappeared all together several weeks later.

I cried when I watched Obama’s acceptance speech, just like I cried when Hillary Clinton spoke at the DNC. I cried when I watched McCain concede. Not because I was so happy, though there was that, but because I was feeling something with which I had been unfamiliar for so long. I watched the polls and results with hope but also with caution, and even posted over at Making Light that I would believe it only when he took the oath of office.

Because the thing is, when you’re so scared, when you feel so beaten down, when you get so wound up and anxious, if you feel that way long enough, it can be hard to give it up. Watching Obama speak, I started to give it up. I started to let the sun shine in again. I started to feel myself open again, and that’s something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Watching Obama speak, I started to realize that things might not always be so dark as I felt they were.

Then again, I also know that I may well be projecting my personal feelings onto those of the country as a whole. I took this election more personally than I took the one in 2004 because I’ve changed in the years since. In 2004, I was working as an assistant editor and living in my parents’ basement; this just a couple of years after I had graduated college with all the promise in the world and gotten a great gig at a prestigious advertising agency. In a way, I think I felt I was going backward if I ever felt much at all, because I know at times I was going just to go, doing just to do, coasting through to get by. This year was personal because I don’t feel that way. I’m working and living and doing. I’ve stopped waiting around for life to happen and started to make things happen, and I think I projected some of that feeling onto the election. I think I felt as though, since I was changing, the world should, too, somehow, in however small or large a way.

I think, too, I felt ready.

I don’t know what the future will hold. I don’t know what tomorrow will be.

But just the hope of it makes me smile at the possibility.

For now, that is something. For now, it is enough.