A couple of disconected thoughts about The Watchmen

This most likely will not make sense unless you’ve read the book an seen the movie.

1) In the book, Ozymandias was so driven by his Utopian vision, and his megalomaniac vision of himself as bringer of this utopia, that he slaughtered half of New York to make it a reality. In the movie, Ozymandias is so driven by megalomania, and the Utopian vision that justifies it, that he slaughters half of New York. It’s a subtle difference, but I much prefer the book on this count. It makes Ozymandias more human, and thus more frightening.

2) In the book, Dan “Nightowl” Dreiberg and Laurie “Silk Spectere” Juspeczyk, seem like lost souls who find meaning in the costumes they wear, and when they have sex in the Owlship, it’s one of the few points of human connection in the books dark vision. In the movie, Dan and Laurie seem like overgrown children who find escape from themselves in the costumes they wear, and when they have sex in the Owlship, it seems like a pathetic juvenile masturbation fantasy come to life. It’s one of the darkest moments in the film. I guess that the film in this respect is far more successful deconstruction of the Superhero myth, but a meaner work.

3) The people and their dramas around Madison Square Garden provide a nessesary counter wight to the rest of the story. If Watchmen is about the futility and danger inherent in our myth of the hero, it needs the power and nobility of everyday life, the quiet nobility of the psychiatrist, the cab driver strugling with herself, the power of these stories in the face of their extermination, to avoid decending into bitterness and cynicism. The movie, which is without them, is much much weaker for it.

Can’t get no sleep…

when you sleep with sheep.

Lonesome Polecat from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, sung by Rose Polenzani, Rose Cousins, Jennifer Kimball & Anne Heaton. Some thoughts:

1) Those harmonies. Fucking hell.

2) Can you believe that people used to actually spend money making music videos? This has got to be better than, well, maybe not Human Behavior but at least A Total Eclipse of the Heart and I bet smoke machine costs  in that video were  more than this videos entire budget.Vidographers everywhere must be thanking their lucky stars they can type and know how to use EXCEL.

3) The Ukulele is everywhere lately. It’s like it’s the year of Uke.

Secrets! Secrets! Secrets!

We are the end of the age of memoir. At this late stage, no matter what high points the genre it has reached in the last two decades, nobody can deny the cheap carny vileness it has also sunk to: the artists canning there own guts and placing them on shelves to be sold like pickles, the audiences car crash licking vampire blood lust, the labels that don’t match up to whats in the tin.

And yet, the desire to bring what is inside oneself out, to shine light on what what darkness is in there, is too powerful for mere post modern self awareness to bury. The challenge for the modern artist is how to do the work of memoir while disarming our self awareness about all of the intestine packaging and chrome tonguing being engaged in. The genius of Guy Madden’s “97 percent true” silent film Brand Upon The Brain! is the way he uses the anti-naturalist film techniques and silent movie pastiche to provide just this balm to his post modern audience as he gloriously disembowels himself.

Women singing into their webcams: An occasional series

There’s just something about the about the human voice, about music,  about the feeling of intimacy that the webcam creates by virtue of it’s size and proximity to the singers face. Something about their hunger, their human-ess, the occasional flat note or flubbed chord, their bodies untouched by MAC mascara or plastic surgery. Something about the bedrooms and living rooms and kitchens where they sing. Something about them,  I just can’t look away.

Smoke and Mirrors, one of a series of Stephen Merritt covers, performed by “Rabitta1”. She engages in winking, ironic play at being sexy, like a grad student in comparative literature going to a Halloween party dressed as a french maid.  There’s more than a hint of musical theater to her as well, with her themed outfits and Bernadette Peters worthy facial expressions.  There is a beauty and earnestness in her voice, however, that no amount of winking at the audience can hide.

Kind of like Merritt himself.

Note: Embeding in this video is disabled. Click on it to be taken to it’s youtube page.

I am your father

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and its sequels are the most important movies of the last ten years. The movie’s artistic failure, in particular the way George Lucas’s direction and dialogue turn some of the most highly regarded actors of the era into living cardboard stand ups, forced everyone, fans and film industry alike, to rethink what they wanted from the effects laden summer action blockbusters that had dominated Hollywood since the original Star Wars had people lining up around the block to see it, almost a quarter century earlier. In the wake of the final three Star Wars movies, especially the financial under performance of Attack of the Clones in comparison to Lord of the Rings, a far better film that had a similar fantasy action popcorn pedigree, the film industry realized that writing and characterization mattered, not just to the film goers who watched dramas in December, but to those who went to see explosions in June as well.

This drove the film industry to change and take risks, which it normally dreads like a writer’s strike. Without the specter of The Phantom Menace, would anybody have put a Director of small budget art house thrillers in charge of the new Batman franchise? Or thought that we might want to see James Bond feel something? Or that an actor like Robert Downey Jr. might consider Iron Man to be something other than an opportunity to show his superiority to the source material? The Phantom Menace may have been a terrible film, but as moviegoers, we are all richer for it’s failure.

Future Listening! of the past

Of all the albums I have once owned, and then resold, lost, or misplaced, I miss DJ Towa Tei’s Future Listening! the most. The first solo album from the former member of Dee-Lite, Future Listening! was a perfect slice of Bossa Nova flavored chill out techno, perfect for making out or coming down (Or, in my case, as a soundtrack for English homework). There were no shortage of hipsters in the mid 90’s appropriating “square” music genres of the 60’s, and the vast majority of them couldn’t fetch Henry Mancini’s martini olives. In comparison, Tei’s love of the genres he samples shines through and lends an warmth and relateability to this album that sets it apart from the hollow kitsch of the lounge revival, or the sterility (ironic, for music designed for meeting people to have sex with) of much dance music.

Video of the song Technova, from Future Listening! behind the jump.

How do you solve a problem like Alyx?

Computer controlled side kicks are fraught with both game balance and technical challenges. Make the sidekick too weak, or provide it with dysfunctional AI, and the player feels resentment, rather than affection, for a character they must constantly babysit. Make the sidekick too effective, and the player feels like a passive participant in their own game as the “sidekick” does most of the work. Add in the game industries track record of sexism and adolescent sexual attitudes and you have, in Half Life 2’s Alyx Vance, the potential for a truly awesome failure.