Innocent Bystander

Our Halloween tradition...

Spooky Spooky Wolf Boy from Gary Sassaman on Vimeo.

Here's our "Halloween Tradition," the return (or rerun, your pick) of our first--and only--video production, "Spooky Spooky Wolf Boy." Inspired by a dumb little figure I bought at a card store two years ago, this is his third appearance here (one more and we have to start paying residuals). If I still went trick-or-treating, I'd totally go as Spooky Spooky Wolf Boy, but that would entail some serious planning, and I don't think I have it in me. Or on me.

What I'm Reading: Watching the Watchmen by Dave Gibbons

Dave Gibbons' exhaustive look at his co-creation (with Alan Moore), Watchmen, was one of the most eagerly awaited books of the year for me. When you couple it with design work by Chip Kidd (along with Mike Essl, both deemed important enough to list as co-authors on the jacket), Watching the Watchmen became something I couldn't wait to see. Both Gibbons and Kidd appeared on a special panel at Comic-Con in July to discuss the making of the book.

Well, now it's here, and it's a damn impressive book. If ever there was a single comics series worthy of such introspection, coverage, and belly-button gazing, Watchmen would be it. Since Alan Moore is pretty much mute on the topic (other than to say he doesn't want to talk about it), it's left to collaborator and artist (and letterer) Dave Gibbons to have his say. Luckily, he kept just about everything he ever drew on the book (except the original art, which he sold outright once the books were published...go figure).

Gibbons' dedication to holding onto every scrap he ever doodled on is commendable. Just about every thumbnail for every issue is published here, on a chapter by chapter basis (each chapter corresponding with one of the 12 issues), plus cover roughs, concept sketches, even a quick glance at Moore's original voluminous script. Gibbons is also a good writer, easily and handily recounting his recollections of the process of collaboration and how they knew early on they were onto something big, and more importantly, different. So did DC.

The book is, of course, handsomely designed. There's maybe a bit too much of extremely light pencil work, but that, in and of itself, is pretty fascinating. There's a bit from colorist John Higgins, an important collaborator, which includes an impressive side-by-side comparison of the computer recoloring produced by WildStorm, under Higgins' supervision, in the early 2000s. The whole book was pretty much produced in England, with Moore, Gibbons, and Higgins passing things back and forth, and then Dave mailing it off to the States, a juggling act made even more impressive by the fact that Watchmen was produced pre-fax machine, pre-email, pre-FedEx. (Moore's scripts were sent to Gibbons via taxi when necessary, at the cost of about 100 1986 cabfare dollars.) Gibbons' most fascinating bits are when he talks about getting non-comics people to read the book after it was published in graphic novel form (something the title is a bit of a pioneer of). 

I'm not sure something like Watchmen could--or more importantly WOULD--be published today by a big company like DC Comics. Witness Moore's tussles with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in recent years. Under DC management in the 80s, including Dick Giordano, Joe Orlando, Len Wein and Barbara Kesel (the latter two the editors of the project), Moore and Gibbons were pretty much given carte blanche to produce the series, as is witnessed by their little UK assembly line. Moore has taken his League (drawn by Kevin O'Neill) and moved it to Top Shelf, where his Lost Girls was also published to great acclaim. In March of 2009, Watchmen hits the big screen in a film directed by Zack Snyder. They said it couldn't be done. Many said it shouldn't be done. Either way, a whole new set of people will be "watching the Watchmen" in the coming year (and reading it, too: DC has reprinted the graphic novel collection in record numbers of a million new copies). Gibbons' fine new book serves as a guidebook to an original comics series which can never be changed, no matter what they do to it on the silver screen.

Netflix batting average continues to crumble like the stock market...

I've been striking out lately with my Netflix selections. As such, I've been watching my enjoyment level crumble like my 401k. It's not a pretty sight...

Especially when one of the films is You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Adam Sandler's big summer movie. There's a reason that word "mess" is in the title. The Zohan (Sandler) is an Israeli super-spy, skilled in all means of spycraft. He's also an irresistable ladies' man, who longs to just be a hairdresser. That's a funny premise, and Sandler certainly does his best to pull it off, but the end result is almost indecipherable at times--seriously, I almost turned the subtitles on, I had such a hard time understanding the accents. This unfunny and unruly...yes, mess...of a movie makes fun of Jews, Arabs, spy movies, hairdressers, Jews, soda, Jews, and also people of the Hebrew persuasion. By the time the climactic fight scene occured--almost an hour and 45 minutes into a film that shouldn't have been longer than 90--I had lost interest and kept it turned on as background while I finished rearranging my bookshelves. I've never really "gotten" Sandler, and the only two films I've liked that he's been in are Spanglish (which was also way too long) and the quirky Punch Drunk Love, both of which are pretty much un-Sandler films (not his typical fare). As for the Zohan, why was I not surprised to see Judd Apatow's name come up as a writer during the credits?

Speaking of Apatow and his "fun factory," I also had the misfortune to pick Forgetting Sarah Marshall as a Netflix DVD and found this to be another unfunny film produced by him. What happened? Anchorman was funny; The 40 Year Old Virgin was great, Superbad was cute...since then it's been ever-diminishing returns. This one is about a sad sack TV music composer played by Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) whose TV star girlfriend Kristen Bell (playing herself, basically--only the name has been changed) breaks up with him. To gain some distance and composure, he packs himself off to Hawaii, only to encounter her there at the very same hotel he picks, along with her famous British rocker new boyfriend, played by the wonky Russell Brand. Hilarity ensues, or at least that must have been the theory on paper. The script is written by Segel, and is about as funny as his nude scenes, which seem like a tragic cry for help. Segel is too much of a big doofus to take seriously in anything and the film--again--drags on and on, while he finds true love in a comely hotel clerk played by Mila Kunis. This one is almost painful to watch at times, especially the parts with the Dracula musical. With puppets, no less.

I had never seen Martin Ritt's adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Starring Richard Burton, the "it" actor of the moment (1965) and created during the height of not only the Cold War, but also the initial James Bond craze, Spy is from the novel by famed thriller writer John le Carré. It's an interesting--if someone talky--film that's the anthesis of a Bond movie, then and now (although I will admit the Bond of today is a bit closer in tone and realism). Burton plays spy handler Alec Leamas who is set up by his superiors to seem like he's defecting to the Soviets. What really is happening is the hope that the move will set up a Russian spymaster for a fall. It's an engrossing movie, shot in stark black and white (the Cold War looks best that way), and Burton is superb in it. But it's also a downer of a film and won't make you one bit nostalgic for the Berlin Wall or anything to do with good ol' Red Communism.

Finally, there's the one true gem in this pack of four films, a real pleasant surprise. It's the French (yes, FRENCH! who knew?) spy parody OSS 117: Cairo: Nest of Spies, a pleasant and funny spoof that takes place in 1950s France and Cairo. Jean Dujardin plays the titular hero, trying to expose a group of terrorists in Egypt. Dujardin looks like Connery with a big nose pasted on, and his character Agent 117, is a cross between Bond and Inspector Closeau, with a decidedly French accent on the latter. He's not as smart as he thinks he is, but he's also not the clumsy fool Closeau was. There are some great moments in this movie--especially involving chickens--but I don't want to give too much of it away. For those of you with an aversion to sub-titles, stay away (or give it a chance, if you're feeling particularly daring). I promise it's a real treat.

What I'm Reading: The DC Vault by Martin Pasko

I'm a little uncertain about what the purpose is of a book like The DC Vault. With DC's 75th anniversary in a little over a year (2010, if you go with 1935 as being the start of the company), I'd think that a major history of the comics publisher would be in the works. The DC Vault, while a handsome looking package, isn't a major history. It feels more like a giant puff piece, something to give to shareholders and the media. While I'd love a warts and all history of DC, something big and impressive, this isn't it.

The purpose of the "Vault" books--this one was preceded by both The Marvel Vault and The Star Wars Vault last year--is to give the reader a kind of interactive experience. Some of the "treasures" from the DC vault are presented as facsimile items, bound into the notebook style book in plastic sleeves, so the reader can take them out and examine them more fully. I'm sure the thought behind this is that it's like seeing and touching the real thing, but the realization of this thought makes for an awkward package. The book is basically a binder (albeit one you can't open the rings on), and once you take the book out of its packaging and cardboard inserts (placed to protect the pages), it's hard to manage. I'm not convinced that the "interactive" nature of the project is worth the hassle of the sleeves and the binder format. I'd just as soon see them printed on the page.

And as treasures go, this isn't a very impressive compilation. Some of the stuff includes sketches, a few other odd publishing ventures (a Superman/Tim booklet, a "Great Cleveland Fire" pamphlet, a fold-out of an address change), a Christmas card by the ubiquitous Alex Ross, amongst other ephemera. The coolest thing is a working JSA decoder wheel, the rest is nice, but forgettable. In fact the whole package almost seems like an afterthought, like a "well, Marvel did it, so now we have to, too" kind of deal. And at a pricey 50 bucks, that's not a good feeling.

The text is written by Martin Pasko, a former DC writer, and while it provides the basics, there's at least one glaring omission. While Watchmen--DC's next big movie on the horizon--has a two-page art spread, it's barely mentioned in the text, just in passing as being a more adult title. I'd think DC would want to make some hay out of the fact that it's probably the best-selling graphic novel of all time (isn't it?--anybody know for sure?), not to mention an eagerly-awaited movie debuting in March of next year. (In DC's defense, The Vault debuted about 2 weeks before Dave Gibbons' Watching the Watchmen, so maybe the plan was to let that book be the final word on the subject.) There's also at least a couple of Bizarro-world assertions by Pasko that mar the book, for me at least. At one point he says that before the reprinting of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, "most graphic novels had appeared in an 11" x 15" format." Huh? 11x15" is just 2 inches shy of original art size. I don't recall ever seeing anything published like that, save the Marvel Tryout Book. He also says that newsstand owners used to strip the cover off of comics and return the actual COMIC BOOKS to distributors. I think it was the other away around...they actually stripped the top quarter of the cover--the title--and returned that to the distributor for credit as unsold. That's why so many 3/4 cover books were floating around back then, sold by unscrupulous retailers for 2 or 3 cents a book to second-hand and other stores which sold them for a nickel.

Some of the coolest things in the book--from this comic fan's standpoint, at least--are Irwin Donenfeld's sales charts, the way he kept track of how certain titles did. Donenfeld's entire methodology rested on covers, and while 2 separate charts are produced (shrunk down from what must have been large originals), there's no explanation as to what the numbers mean or how he tracked sales with them. You can guess that the percentage in red is the sell-through number, but an explanation would be welcome. (However, that might just be TMI for the casual reader).

You may want to wait a year to make a trip into this "Vault." Last year's Marvel Vault is down to $19.95 on Amazon, and that's a steal.

Heroes is My Own Worst Enemy...

New episodes of both Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy air tonight on NBC, and I'm on the cusp of dropping both from my "must-see TV" list. Last evening, I watched last week's recorded episodes, an important factor in my viewing regimen these days, because--quite frankly--neither show deserves a full hour of my precious time, me being all busy these days solving the problems of the economy (step one: investors need to stop talking about the "fears of a recession;" we're in a recession NOW, asshats).

I don't buy the theory, postulated by magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, that "serial" dramas like Heroes suffered the most from the writers' strike earlier this year. If that argument includes the writers are a disgruntled bunch having a hard time getting back into writing after getting a basically crappy offer from the producers, then I'm more inclined to buy into it. But if it's just the standard "the show has been gone for too long" theory, no. Bad writing is bad writing.

Heroes has too many characters. Even when it was new, it had too many characters. The two most expendable--now and then--are Greg Grunberg's Matt Parker and Sendhil Ramamurthy's Mohinder Suresh. Parker is the least well-defined character in the bunch, and Mohinder has always been just someone there to explain the unexplainable.

But for my money, it's also time to put up or shut up with what has become the Laurel and Hardy of the series--and NOT in a good way--Hiro (Masi Oka) and Ando (James Kyson Lee). We had a glimpse of "Future Hiro" in the first series. Since then, all the promise this character showed then has been pissed away into comic relief. This year, once again, they also serve the dual purpose of exercising my finger on the fast-forward key of my remote.

Even during the second season, as the show continued to introduce new "heroes," the fans complained...it seemed like the producers heard them. Now we're into "Volume Three: Villains" and what do we get? EVEN. MORE. CHARACTERS. A whole slew of lame bad guys, most of them ripped off, power-wise, from existing comic book baddies. Annoying speedster Daphne (Brea Grant, seemingly a clone of Kristen Bell) is the Flash; Eric Doyle (David H. Lawrence XVII, yes, THE 17th!) is the Puppet Master; even newly revived daddy Petrelli (Robert Forster) is the Parasite. At least give us something original.

I think we all want to see the same thing on this show, the thing that we loved about the first season: this group of disparate people, drawn together by their shared uniqueness (pardon the oxymoron), fighting together against a common menace. I know it takes time to set that up, but I don't see that happening this season. With all the back and forth in time, all the added characters, all the changing of sides (Sylar is a good guy now? That move metaphorically castrates the character in one searing swoop; Peter is good AND bad; Mohinder is turning bad, but who cares?), there's barely enough space left to run the commercials. And oh, yeah...Milo Ventimiglia's over-the-top acting this season is bad enough...stop with having two of him on screen at the same time, please.

What's the solution? Beats me. It seems to me this series had it down pat in the first season. Then they got smacked by their own success and visions of spin-offs and syndication and licensing danced through their heads. I'll give the show another couple of weeks...but I don't know if I'll make it to the end of this "volume." The way the show is going, that word has a different connotation, a much more weighty one.

NBC's new Monday night series is My Own Worst Enemy starring Christian Slater (for the record, I am enjoying Chuck again this year, but I don't have much faith in it lasting too much longer). This is a spy drama which must have been pitched as True Lies meets Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The True Lies DNA is evident: The schlubby sidekick, the super-agent with a hidden second life, involving a loving wife and kids (Seriously--who cast the son? He looks like the offspring of the gardener.). It's an interesting premise: An assassin hidden inside a person. Slater is both Edward Albright and Henry Spivey, controlled by a chip implanted in his brain. Henry is the good guy, Edward the trained killer, turned off and on by a shadowy government agency (headed by James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard). Only the chip is broken and Henry and Edward exchange places at the worst possible times. You'd think hilarity--or at least hijinks--would ensue, but so far it's been Henry coming back when Edward has to kill/torture/maim someone, and Edward being around when it's time to perform husbandly duties with the comely wife of Henry, played by the comely Madchen Amick.

How many times can they do this? I'd have a much better time watching this knowing it was a finite series, with a definite ending, like the BBC's excellent Jekyll. I mean, where is this going to go? It's been on TWICE, and it's pretty much the same ol'/same ol' both times. And while Slater is a likable enough actor, I just don't think he's the guy for this job. I'm going to give this one more try--tonight--and then it's goodbye to both Henry and Edward. I guess I could say I'm of "two minds" on the show right now, but that would be TOO easy.

The week ahead...

I have to travel this coming week up to San Francisco for work-related duties, and then I'll be staying for a few days next week for some R&R. I just had a week off at the end of September, but I'm a firm believer in taking every damn vacation day I'm offered (no cashing out) and then some.

I'll be missing a major event here on Tuesday, Nov. 4, and I'm thankful for that. Election Day turns into Erection Day in downtown San Diego, as her holy sluttiness, Madoona (sic), comes to Petco Park for a concert. I have never--and never will--get her, and I'm glad to be the f*ck out of Dodge when she brings her dog and pony show (don't laugh--I'm sure she'll get them on stage at some point, I'm just scared to death what she'll do to them once she has them up there) to town. I find it odd that she'll be doing a concert that night--shouldn't she be "rockin' the vote" or some such? But I guess that only applies when we're voting for her. (As for that "other" event on Tuesday, Nov. 4...yes, I've already voted. Twice now.)

San Fran in fall is supposed to be lovely, and I've never been there this time of year, so I'm looking forward to it. It's the only west coast city that even remotely reminds me of New York, and it's much cheaper to fly to and stay in. I have a favorite hotel right off Union Square which is nice, clean, safe, and relatively cheap (hey, it's only money, right?). And maybe the cash value of it all won't be on my mind as much as it was in NYC, not being in the seat of America's greed.

Anyway, posting may be light for the next 2 weeks, although the computer is making the trip with me (it's demanding its own room, or at the very least a separate bed...I'm considering couples' counseling). So there may be photos...and some writing...or none at all. Stay tuned to find out.

My "new" place...

(File this under WAAAAAY too much information.)

Somewhere around Wednesday of last week, I decided to change my apartment around. Its layout has been the same for a few years now, and while comfy, it needed a change. And more importantly, so did I. Having just signed a new one-year lease a month ago, I wasn't going anywhere soon, but I still wanted that "new apartment" feeling.

I have a very tiny place, only 505 square feet, and like a lot of people, I have grown into it. Even though it's a studio, it's divided into 2 distinct areas, a living room and a bedroom (minus any kind of wall in between). Over the past few years, I've amassed a nice little collection of original comic art; a few pages from comic books, one cover, a color sketch, and 4 daily comic strips and one Sunday. They've been framed for a while now, but remained propped up against bookcases. I wanted a non-sunny wall to hang these pieces on, and that means the living room side. I also wanted to center my TV set across from my couch, the only seating in the living room (previously it was in the corner, a non-sweet spot for an HDTV that counts on you looking at it pretty much straight on for maximum effect).

So it came down to a simple game plan: I was going to flip the 5 "big" bookcases on the living room side of the place with the 4 "small" bookcases on the bedroom side. Sounds easy, right? Yeah, well there just happens to be a TON of books on them, so that part was a bit daunting.

Like a lot of things for me, once an idea is planted in my head it festers a bit and grows into a plan,  then quickly becomes an obsession. So Thursday I came home from work and started to attack the place. By 1:00am, I was pretty much moved.

And the next day I could barely move. Turns out I was using muscles I didn't know I had...I feel alternately like I was in a 15 round bout with Mike Tyson (and I lasted oh, about 30 seconds, most of it running away from him, no doubt) or like I've been raped by Cossacks (or, at the very least, run over by their horses).

Anyway, today I finished hanging the art so now my life is complete, and you know what...it does feel like a brand new place. Here's a photo of the new living room:

That's a floor to ceiling window on the left side, and the kitchen counter on the right, with my big blue sofa in the foreground.

Please don't come and rob me.

Friday Foto #49

Upper West Side, New York.

To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

That was then, this is now...

On the eve (well, almost...3 weeks and counting) of the premiere of the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, I rewatched Casino Royale for the umpteenth time last evening. It's out again, this time in a brand-spanking new special edition on both Blu-ray and regular old DVD no-ray. Does it look better? I dunno...you can judge that. I just know I could probably watch this movie once a week for the rest of my life and be happy with my viewing choice (or lack thereof).

But it took an additional viewing of another Daniel Craig movie, Layer Cake, to finally realize what that undefinable "thing" is that makes Craig such a perfect 007. I was amongst the nay-sayers when he was first cast three years ago, clucking my tongue with such pithy sayings as "it's James BOND, not James BLOND."

Craig is certainly the best actor the Bond producers ever hired to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent. Sean Connery had both danger and charm, Timothy Dalton had Shakespearan experience (fat lot of good it did him--his 2 outings are among the worst Bond movies ever), Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan were both lightweights (although Brosnan has gone on to make some good movies, such as The Matador and The Thomas Crown Affair), and Lazenby...well, Lazenby would have made a great Bond in still photos (he was, after all, one of the world's highest-paid male models when he was plucked form relative obscurity to replace Connery). Craig brings to the role a harsher edge, a world weariness, and a more pronounced sense of menace. At one point in Casino Royale, M (Dame Judi Dench) calls him a "blunt instrument," a direct quote from Fleming.

But that undefinable extra "thing," that subtle push came to me while watching Layer Cake, Matthew Vaughan's British gangster film, where Craig plays a drug dealer, albeit one with a bit of a conscience. Watching him strut his way through the London underworld, it hit me like a thunderbolt: Daniel Craig is this era's Steve McQueen.

Seriously. There's a passing physical resemblance, the blondish hair and the blue eyes. McQueen was certainly a "prettier" actor; Craig is, to be polite, a bit homely. But beyond the physical similarities, there's that one peculiar trait that separates them from everyone else: an innate sense of cool. McQueen was the epitome of cool in the '60s and into the '70s, and is still regarded as such to this day. Craig embodies that trait now. Part of that is the pedigree that comes with playing 007; you HAVE to be cool to carry it off, and a mantle of coolness is certainly thrust upon the current Bond. But while Craig is a far better actor than McQueen, they both have that presence, the one that makes the women swoon and the guys wish they were him. Both those qualities play in equal measure in Bond, both on screen and the printed page.

McQueen could have never played James Bond. He was too American, too white-bread, and a fake British accent would have been ridiculous on him. Yet take a look at him circa 1968, in the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair, then watch Layer Cake. If there are two cooler stars lurking anywhere else on screen, let me know. But in the meantime, enjoy the fact that Craig not only makes one of the best Bonds ever, he also carries on the tradition of movie star cool started 40-some years ago by a bloke from across the pond who carried himself quite the same way.

Captain Kirk is upset...

Today I learned that William Shatner is upset that George Takei didn't invite him to his recent wedding. Last week I learned that William Shatner was upset with J.J. Abrams' explanation as to why he--as Captain Kirk--wasn't included in the new Star Trek movie.

In each case, Shatner's response has been to answer via a new-found love of home movie-making, fully embracing the YouTube generation's video verite style of expression. You can see his thoughts on Takei's wedding by clicking here. But we've learned that his Abrams and Takei videos are just the opening salvo in response to people he feels have wronged him...

Coming soon are a number of similar clips including:

• Shatner's 17-minute harangue against his paperboy, whom he refuses to name but calls "petty" and "evil" for missing his porch with his daily delivery at least "two or three times a year."

• A 20-minute rambling diatribe against Leonard Nimoy for always "raising his damn eyebrows at everything I said on that show."

• Shatner goes live outside of a Von's supermarket to lay in wait for the bag boy who "deliberately and with malice aforethought" placed a quart of milk on top of his eggs, only to learn the boy's parents had picked him up hours earlier.

• Shatner speaks for an hour and 15 minutes about his "borderline psychotic" cat, Mr. Snuggles, who "willfully and maliciously" meows at him to be fed on a twice-daily basis.

This may just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg, folks, especially since it's apparent that Mr. Shatner has now figured out how to switch his phaser from "stun" to "point, shoot, and upload." It's starting to look like my Captain, dear Captain, may have been beamed up a few too many times.