I Wanted To Believe
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

It pains me to write this, and not just because I love The X-Files.  I was anxious for this movie to be a success, because I really wanted there to be more in the series.  But, judging from the fact that there were about 10 people in the screening I saw today, a Saturday afternoon on the film's opening weekend, I don't think this movie is going to be breaking any box office records no matter what I say about it.

From this point on, I'm not going to hesitate to mention SPOILERS.  That's because I don't really think there was much of anything in the film worth keeping a secret.  Interviewed about the secrecy surrounding the film, Chris Carter has compared it to preserving the surprise of a Christmas present.  You can feel it, he basically says, you can pick it up and shake it, but it ruins the present to open it before Christmas morning.  Let's take that metaphor a little further and imagine that, after weeks of waiting and months of excitement and anticipation, the present turns out to be socks.  Then let's imagine that they're really ugly socks.  And they're used.  They have holes in them.  A homeless guy owned them before you.  Oh, and a cat pissed on them.

That's sort of what The X-Files: I Want To Believe is like.

Coming home from the theater, I was trying to think of whether or not there was an episode of the show that was worse than this movie.  I mean, no matter how great the show was it's inevitable that out of 200-ish episodes they had some junk.  I thought of the first season episode Space, and that really weak season 9 episode Lord of the Flies.  Space, though, at least has the excuse of having come before the show really hit its stride, and Lord of the Flies, while pretty dreadful, had some clever ideas and failed mostly because of its execution.  Neither episode, though, ended with a shot of our heroes in a rowboat vacationing near a tropical island, and a bikini-clad Scully waving at the camera.

Go back up and read that last sentence again.  No, really.  I couldn't have made that up.

I don't even think the shot was supposed to be funny.  The film fails so completely that this is what it genuinely thinks passes for a happy and/or charming moment.  As for the preceding two hours of tedium, they're not much better. 

The plot contrivances used to bring Mulder and Scully back to an FBI case make so little sense in the context of the series' ending that it might have been better if they just didn't bother to acknowledge what had come before at all.  Scully, after nine years of witnessing proof of the paranormal, is reduced again, for some unknown reason, to harping at Mulder that solving this case isn't going to help him find his sister, even though he believes his sister is dead and he happens to, in this particular instance, have some pretty convincing evidence of another character's psychic visions.  The visions received are nothing that extraordinary and even pretty skeptical, level-headed people in the real world will sometimes entertain the possibility of these types of things occurring.  Scully, who in a season 9 episode witnessed a man telekinetically levitate people and transform the interior of his house, also through his psychic powers, into a recreation of the set of The Brady Bunch, now, with several lives at stake, doesn't think it's worth spending a day or two talking to this possible psychic because she feels there's a chance he might be lying.  This is after, as Mulder points out in a half dozen scenes of hollow, repetitious dialogue, she asked Mulder to get involved in the case in the first place.  Forget about the plot not making sense for a minute.  They really couldn't do better by these characters?

The other characters aren't handled any better.  We're treated to two new FBI agents who have no personalities to speak of and barely any plot function, and a cameo by Skinner who shows up well after it's too late for him to save the movie and then has about five or six lines of dialogue.  Then we have the undeveloped bad guys about whom we learn almost nothing save for the fact that two of them are gay and married in the state of Massachusetts.  At least I think they are, but it was hard to tell if the line was a joke.  Billy Connolly, as a disgraced priest who is now having the psychic visions I mentioned above, is probably the film's sole redeeming factor and, taking a one-note character and using him to make five or ten minutes of the movie watchable, proves that he can do great work with just about anything.

The plot centers around-- Really, I'm not making this up either-- the attempts of one of the bad guys to find a new body for his husband, who has been severely injured while trying to kidnap a woman for one of the bizarre medical experiments that they conduct in some sort of trailer park.  No, really-- still not making this up.  Apparently, they're part of some sort of group of mad scientists who spend their days sewing extra heads onto dogs.  This part of the story is actually based on real experiments I've heard of that were done at one time to discover how long it was possible to keep a severed dog's head alive without its body.  That could be an interesting starting point for a story, I guess, but the film completely fails to use its potential.  The body the random bad guy finds for his husband, to add a bizarre sort of antiquated homophobia to the film's long list of flaws, is a woman's body.  'Cause gay guys want to be like women, right?  Why else would they sleep with men.  Duh.  Oh, and, in a twist that I guess is supposed to give meaning to the visions of Connolly's character, injured-body-gay-bad-guy was molested as a child by the priest.  Why else would somebody be gay, if not because they were molested, right?  Duh.

The portions of the movie that aren't taken up by Mulder and Scully sleep walking through science vs. faith debates recycled from season 3 of the show (Or gay mad scientists sewing things onto each other) are mostly spent on an endless and completely non-paranormal subplot about Scully having to decide whether to give a patient, a child with a terminal illness, a treatment that may or may not work, but-- cue hand-wringing-- is really painful.  Yeah, the show has been off the air for about six years, and that's what they've come up with.

Right now, I'm fighting the urge to put my nine seasons of X-Files DVD's on Ebay.  I'm trying to remind myself that they're still the same DVD's that they were yesterday.  It's just that now it hurts a little to look at them.  I glance at the shelf, and I can't help seeing Scully in a rowboat, in a bikini, next to an also half-naked Mulder.  She's waving at me.  Somehow, it feels a lot like she's flipping me off.

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Like I’m Something
Category: Art and Photography

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East River String Band
Category: Art and Photography

Last year, I bought a record player and decided to start getting some of my music on vinyl.  Apparently, that wasn't yet obscure enough for my taste as, pretty soon after that, I started getting interested in 78's and blues and jazz from the '20's and '30's.  A big factor in that was probably my growing interest in R. Crumb, who is a pretty well known aficionado of that type of music.  Anyway, I felt like drawing this band and they do awesome, entertaining versions of some of those songs.  That's R. Crumb sitting in with them in the picture above, second from left, and he did the art for one of their albums.  Their Myspace can be viewed here , and the music is totally worth listening to!

8:41 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The Third Option
Category: Art and Photography

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The Dark Knight
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

I've spent a lot of time wondering what it must have been like to be in a theater in '77 and watch that Star Destroyer fly over your head for the first time, and then to sit through the rest of the film that followed.  The sense of being totally surprised, blown away, knowing that you're sitting through what will be one of the defining film experiences of your life and, not only that, but the sense of being part of an event, a phenomenon in the culture that people will be talking about for years to come, maybe telling their kids about.  I've wondered, too, what it must have been like to be in one of the original audiences for Psycho when that shower curtain flies open and you find out that you aren't watching the movie you thought you were at all.  Stuff like that.  Moments when something really changed.

With the possible exception of the post where I listed my favorite films, I haven't really used this blog to talk about things that aren't related to my art, but I am now because I feel like, this Friday at 12:01 a.m., I had something like what those people watching Star Wars in '77 had.  Yeah, The Dark Knight really is that good.

It's more than just how good the film is, though.  In a way, I feel like I've been waiting 19 years for this movie, and some people have been waiting much longer.  I have vivid memories of the first Tim Burton film being out in theaters, but I didn't actually see it then.  I saw it on a VHS tape some time later.  What I remember is it being this thing that everybody was talking about; there were posters everywhere, the Batman insignia was omnipresent, the toys were all over and in the front of bookstores there were mocking displays with copies of The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke piled high.  I say, "mocking," because, while pretty much everybody else I knew had seen the movie, my mom had decided that it was too dark and scary and I, being six or seven at the time, was too young to see it.  It's a decision that I don't necessarily disagree with, but I sure remember being plenty bitter at the time.

What happened, though, was interesting.  In the absence of the actual film, my mind took the scattered images, TV commercials, fast food toys and whatever else it was exposed to, and filled the void with ideas of its own.  I formed a lot of my own opinions about this fascinating world of dark vigilantes and colorful, psychotic super villains that the film, although I loved it when I finally saw it, never quite lived up to.  The comics, when I started reading them, never quite lived up to it, either.  Everything always seemed close, but not quite how I would have done it.

I think a lot of other people, too, through the various incarnations of Batman, have felt like it's close to what the character conjured up for them when they were young and their imaginations were filling in the blank parts, but not quite there.  That's what I think is so powerful about this new film for people.  Resolutely adult and fiercely intelligent, The Dark Knight manages to be every bit as surprising, scary, and enveloping as these places and characters were to us when we were six.  This film is nothing less than the entire genre of comic book movies finally being what the people who watched them always hoped and suspected that they could be.  Not almost, not just nearly, but finally there.

Is it that Batman film that I would have made?  Not really.  It's somebody else's, for sure, but it's every bit as good.  It's not, "A great comic book movie,"-- it's just a great MOVIE.  No qualifiers required.  Up until now, when people ask me what my favorite comic book movie is, I would either say Ghost World or Sin City.  Notice that neither is a super hero movie.  When they ask me what my favorite super hero movie is, I would usually say The Incredibles.  That's because, to some degree, most super hero movies can't help but feeling like a product-- the end result of somebody at a studio saying, "Hey, look, this Superman thing is selling a lot of funny books.  Maybe those same people could buy movie tickets!"  It never really felt like a director or writer had a story they wanted to tell, and those characters happened to be the vehicle for it.  Not until really early in the morning this last Friday.

Heath Ledger.  What can I say about his performance that hasn't already been said by much more effusive writers.  Yeah, he really is every bit as good as people have said.  And did I mention scary?  Yeah, fucking scary.  The best comparison I can think of is the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.  What reminds me of that other performance is the sense of dread created by the actor.  They both create, in a precise, economical fashion, a character whose every appearance onscreen creates a tension in the viewer because you know something horrible could happen at any moment.  They also both create characters so complicated and intelligent that you can't look away.  I like to think that, if Ledger hadn't died, the praise for his performance would be just as enthusiastic.  I think it would still be very well received, but I also think that, the better something is, the stronger an inclination people have to tear it down, if only to be contrary.  Rather than create more praise than he deserves, I feel like his death created a situation that reduced the backlash factor out of respect.  I think it earned the performance the recognition it absolutely deserves.

Which brings us back to the cultural phenomenon factor.  I've seen the film twice now and, both times, a large portion of the audience stood up and clapped as the credits started to roll.  When the dedication mentioning Ledger came up, they clapped again.  There was at least one point during the film, too, where the clapping, laughter, and gasps of amazement were so unanimous that you couldn't even clearly hear what the characters were saying for thirty seconds or so.  I can't remember another time when I've seen a movie with an audience that was so totally involved for the duration. 

Recently, I've actually started to dislike seeing films with large audiences because they're so damn rude.  Between the talking, the cell phones, the babies crying, and the inappropriate laughter at things that were never meant to be funny, I start to get incredibly irritated.  I didn't have a problem with that at either screening of The Dark Knight, though.  I've seen the Star Wars prequels at their midnight debuts, and I've seen lots of films in small theaters and art house films in expensive neighborhoods, but I've never experienced a whole audience as completely involved in a film as people have been with this one.  It's what I imagine people must have been like in '77, holding their breath as that endless spaceship flew over their heads.

I'd speculate that another reason for the involvement people are having with this film is the shockingly acute ways in which it taps into our current cultural dreads and preoccupations.  Star Wars, of course, is considered to have owed much of its success to flying in the face of the cynical zeitgeist of its time.  The Dark Knight, on the other hand, uses every bit of what the world is facing these days and brilliantly transforms it into pop entertainment, demonstrating a profound insight on Nolan and his co-writers' part as to what exactly makes these characters and super heroes such a vital part of our collective experience and our modern mythology. 

During World War II, Batman and Superman were fighting Nazis, and in the Fifties he went loopy for space aliens and Alfred moved out to be replaced by Aunt Agatha who created a more wholesome and centered (Read: heterosexual.) environment at Wayne Manor that reflected what was considered our consensus cultural aspiration at the time.  These characters are templates onto which we can project our concerns, values, and hopes, and they can change with us to be about what we're about.  Nolan realizes this, and has used them as templates not only for his individual artistic temperament but also for the deepest insecurities of the entire culture.  Simply, he's touched a raw nerve.

Is it a perfect movie?  Not really, but it's pretty damn close.  Even the things that bothered me a little bit on first viewing made much more sense the second time.  It's a movie that doesn't stop to explain itself to the viewer.  It assumes you're smart enough to keep up, and it doesn't waste dialogue spelling out things that you should be able to infer.  It rewards close attention and multiple viewings.  Does everybody like it?  Nope, of course there are already some negative reviews appearing, and there are people, some sixty-odd years later, who just can't get over the fact that the main character dresses up as a bat.  It's their loss, really.  The really silly part is that they seem to think it makes them look intelligent and superior to point out the surface oddities and ignore everything that lies beneath.  I don't think there's actually a film that everybody likes.  You can find plenty of people who hate Citizen Kane, who hate City Lights, Dr. Strangelove, Pan's Labyrinth, pretty much anything.  Their loss.

What else is left to say.  Thank you, Christopher Nolan!  So many people have said this about this film that it's becoming a cliché, but it's true:  the bar has been raised.  Let's just hope that we have some other directors out there willing and worthy to try to jump it.

9:53 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

I Got Nothing
Category: Art and Photography

If you're curious about the sandwich stuff, read the comic Anything at All, by Eric J. Peterson here: http://www.thecomiconline.com/ .  If you're not curious, read it anyway!  The Myspace page for the comic is here .

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My Progress (My Sketchbook Year, Part 10)
Category: Art and Photography

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One More (My Sketchbook Year, Part 9)
Category: Art and Photography

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Another One (My Sketchbook Year, Part 8)
Category: Art and Photography

Continuation of my, "Guys who I think are cute," thing.  As a quick explanation, this particular guy labels the photos he has of himself on Myspace with names like, "Morning Jonesy," "Porch Jonesy," "Karate-Chop Action Jonesy," and so on.  This particular drawing happens to be from the photo that he had captioned, "Kickback Jonesy," so that's where the writing on the side comes from.

There you go, another one of life's burning mysteries laid to rest.  Next up: "Why do people die?"

8:33 PM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Cute Guys (My Sketchbook Year, Part 7)
Category: Art and Photography

As I start to bring this sketchbook review to a close, I'll counterbalance the somewhat pretentious tone of the last few posts by admitting and presenting the rest of what my sketchbooks contain: drawings of guys I think are cute.  Sure, I could claim that I do these as portraits, and that's true, to an extent.  I do want to do a series of portraits of all sorts of people, famous and from my personal life, who are important to me for various reasons.  When I sit down and pick something to draw, though, what seems to become the top priority for me?  Yeah, people I think are cute.

So, here are a couple drawings, and I plan to post some more in the near future.

3:44 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment