A Tale of Two Movies

Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in]
Dir. Tomas Alfredson

Watchmen
Dir. Zack Snyder

It happened to be just coincidence that I saw these two films on the same day. It took a while for my town to finally get the elusive Swedish vampire film, but it was worth the wait. Every city in America was blanketed with showings of Watchmen, however, as its ubiquitous marketing made plain.

There are some similarities. Both traffic in plenty of horror, supernatural abilities and unusual sexual tensions, but I don't think I could link too much more. Let the Right One In utilizes subtlety and silence, inviting the viewer to sort things out for herself, to fill in the information only hinted at through the narrative. Images tell the story. Watchmen assaults the senses with violence, music and color as only a big budget American movie can do. Doubtless this will presage its success. But it's the Swedish film that will reward repeat viewings and a place of honor in any cineaste's collection.

Let the Right One In introduces us to Oskar, the bullied dweeb who has a peculiar penchant for collecting stories about gruesome murders. He secretly longs for bloody revenge on the boys who torment him daily in school. The sudden appearance of Eli, the ragged girl who looks to be his age, seems a hopeful addition at first, but there's her apparent invulnerability to cold (she perches on the snow covered jungle gym at night) and her "father's" inefficient forays to collect blood.

I love a director like Alfredson who appreciates silence, who allows the actor's bodies to do a lot of the speaking. Kåre Hedebrant who plays Oskar gives a stellar performance with nuances the best method actor would envy. His curious but surreptitious examination of Eli when they first meet shows how exotic a girl is up close—let alone a vampire, for we're sure at once that's what she is. It's a credit to John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel and screenplay that there's much more to the tale than that. There are layers of meaning and confusion that we often get only in glimpses (one of them you will miss if you blink at the wrong time). First Eli tells Oskar, "I can't be your friend," then proceeds to become just that. When Oskar haltingly asks her to go steady with him, Eli asks, "What if I'm not a girl?" We think we know why she asking that, but again things are more complicated than they seem. There's a telling scene when Oskar visits his father; when a "friend" arrives the easy bonhomie of two men drinking together provokes ripples of unease suggesting there is much more to the story of his parent's divorce than we first suspected.

Lina Leandersson inhabits Eli with perfect assurance and an amazing chameleon ability. Her health fluctuates depending upon her blood supply and the physical changes are harrowing, but no more so than her face and eyes. "I've been twelve a long time," she finally tells Oskar and we believe it completely because Leandersson makes it true.

All the cast is superb: the affable bunch of drunks help vary the tone from the tense school scenes. The long-suffering Håkan, played with a subtle and dogged world-weariness by Per Ragnar, will break your heart. All the child actors are completely natural and believable, which makes the typical hothouse American child actors seem all the more saccharine in contrast. A balance of humour and horror (there are some gruesome chuckles) works perfectly. The final scene achieves an extraordinary moment of both tender sweetness and ultimate horror when we see the future.

In contrast the bombast of Snyder's film assaults every sense. Overly reverential to the source, in the way visually-oriented directors are. I think of Alex Cox's Sid & Nancy which painstakingly re-created Sid's performance of "My Way" while it ignored simple facts about the family of Nancy Spungen (no video to recreate, I guess). It overlooks the fact that the popularity of Watchmen has little to do with the mostly banal superhero story told and everything to do with the innovative embrace of everything that the comics medium can do with storytelling. As many fans have noted previously, the best way to make a version of Watchmen would have been a miniseries or multi-part DVD (it will be released that way eventually, but without the vision that would make it work—yes, irony that Snyder was hailed as "visionary").

I did give a bark of laughter in the opening sequence when the coffee mug hurled by the Comedian knocked off one of the numbers on his hotel room door, leaving a "300" behind. But the sequence -- like just about every one in the film -- went on too long and had little to recommend it. Bad wigs and terrible make-up abound, as if Snyder's winkingly telling us, "we all know it's fake anyway." You will no doubt have heard that the title sequence, a witty run through the back history of the superheroes, is the best part. It is.

The film is slavishly reverential to the comic when change would have been a good thing: often dialogue that works in a still comics panel does not work when spoken by breathing humans. Ridiculous costumes look even more ridiculous when they're three-dimensional. Everything went on far too long. The worst actors: mopey boy Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan -- the voice of a god-like being should not sound like an emo star -- and Malin Akerman seems to be unfamiliar with human emotions (true, the wig and stupid outfit did not help).

Jackie Earle Haley did a decent job as Rorschach as did Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian. It seems telling that that the two most immediately unlikable characters came off best -- perhaps it was because the actors had something to do. The rest of the film was filled with too loving visual vistas, bone-cracking violence and overbearing music. It was assaultively irritating and incredibly tedious.

Worst sex scene ever? If not, it's certainly in the running for most embarrassing. I suppose if all you ask of a film is visual spectacle, then you'll be happy with this one. I need more.

Swamp Thing vs. Dream

Last November, somewhere on 2nd avenue in New York, my friends and I were trekking along to see Neil Gaiman interviewed by Chip Kidd. It was the 20th anniversary of the SANDMAN series, and for me this was a pilgrimage since Gaiman happens to be a favorite author. So wind was kicked up my skirt when my friend said: "I don't really see what the fuss is. SWAMP THING did it first and no one is celebrating it."

It was his opinion that Gaiman had picked up a few tricks and reaped the rewards for it. I’m not zealously literate when it comes to comics but I've read most of Moore's comics: THE LOST GIRLS, V FOR VENDETTA, EXTRAORDINARY LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, and WATCHMEN, and never really imagined putting Gaiman and Moore in together like that. However, the closest I had come to encountering SWAMP THING was on a glass-bottomed boat ride in Wakulla Springs. I couldn’t argue, so I ignored the blasphemy and thought nothing more of it until I saw this at my local comic book store last week:



Vertigo has begun re-releasing Moore’s THE SAGA OF SWAMP THING in hardcover. The first book was released two weeks ago and binds issues #20 (when Moore took over) through issue #27. My friend’s comments resonated in my skull, so I shelled out the cash and buckled down in my recliner.

I wasn’t disappointed. In the books above, Moore’s work has a lot of world-building, which in and of itself is remarkable. In SWAMP THING, the world is pretty much the Louisiana bayou and that simple setting allows the characters to more develop their psyches.

I have two favorite things about this series so far. The first is seeing how Moore completely overhauled the previously flailing Alec Holland storyline by deconstructing the Swamp Thing’s composition. He’s made of planarian worms that ate his dead body and retained the memories of Alec Holland. It turns out that Swamp Thing is not who he had identified himself with, and the painful memories he had held on too were just fodder.

This brings me to my second favorite thing: Existential exigency. Once the Thing-That-was- Holland realizes his life has been a sham, he sets out to reclaim his humanity, to forge a new identity as not a human trapped within in seaweed, but as an individual sentient being.

In the midst of all this discovering, the Swamp Thing has to contend with mad plant-like scientists who want to destroy humans, and evil corporations that want to harvest Swamp Thing’s mutation.

Steven Bissette and John Totleben’s art is wonderful, as always. Their panoramas of the swamp are detailed and hold tons of tiny creatures that seem to appear suddenly even as you stare straight at them. An effect that quickly and authentically conjures southern swamps perfectly.

This was only Book One, and I am debating waiting on the next hardcovers. Vertigo has no mention of when Book Two will be coming out, and I am tempted to go for the readily available paperback editions because I want to finish the saga now. But, even without finishing the series I feel I can address my friend’s Gaiman reckoning. If the overarching theme in SWAMP THING continues—the existential exploration—I would safely say that Gaiman did not borrow from it. While the two series tackled the big elephant in the room that eighties comics seemed to be contending with--the three dimensional character--Gaiman and Moore achieved it in different ways.



In the SANDMAN series, Gaiman seemed to be tackling universality and his character’s psychology was not driven so much by existential questioning, but a Jungian, mythological hubris. Sandman and his family all have archetypal duties that they have to fulfill, and their interaction with the humans they act on pose their inner conflict. There is not one point (that I can recall) where any of the Eternals doubt who they are, or what their purpose is. They may become disgusted at their inability to love like humans, or regret their inability for many emotional freedoms humans have, but never do they have an identity crisis like the Thing-that-was-Alec Holland.

Without a doubt, Gaiman was influenced by Moore, but if SANDMAN is considered more successful, more widely read than SWAMP THING (which I’m pretty sure is not true) it may have to do with how dreams make people feel and how existentialism makes people feel. The former, no matter how disturbing, transports you to another place. The latter inevitably makes you question yourself, and I think that makes people uncomfortable and hesitant to return to the reflecting pool, as swampy as it may be.

Interesting follow-up fodder:

A vintage KNAVE interview of Alan Moore, written by Neil Gaiman.


Vertigo has the first issue of THE SAGA OF SWAMP THING available for download.

Review: Born Standing Up

As the current ads for the latest Inspector Clouseau film demonstrate, there's a lot wrong with Steve Martin. Why anyone thought that it was possible to step into Peter Sellers' chameleon shoes is a mystery: the latest installment features the unfortunate presence of the once-funny John Cleese (I admit that I am certain he can be funny again—his web presence suggests as much, but follow his tweets or his blog and forget the films), the too-good-for-this-earth Lily Tomlin and the always wonderful Alfred Molina and yet, I could not be paid sufficient funds to see it (get to four digits and I will reconsider).

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life gives a little insight into the mystery behind the often enigmatic Martin. There's a lot of fascinating details in the book, but it also tantalizes by cutting off just when you get to the good parts—and in so doing, tells us a lot about the real Martin. I do not envy those who have tried to get close to him.

To say he had a stunted upbringing would be to oversimplify: a stern father who resented his eventual success, a mother who idealized the movie star life, it all seems too clichéd. But add to it something that very nearly sounds like a kind of autism or Asperger's into the mix and it almost makes sense. When Martin finally moves away from his nearly silent home at eighteen, he says, "I rarely called home to check up on my parents or tell them how I was doing. Why? The answer shocks me as I write it: I didn't know I was supposed to." He leaves the response at the end of a section without reflection, but it seems peculiarly telling.

Likewise the rest of the slim volume caroms between insightful dissection of comedy and weirdly remote interactions with people. He waxes rhapsodic about his love for Stormie Sherk, later Omartian, a fundamentalist Christian author and musician. She got him to read The Razor's Edge and he found a deep love of philosophy through it, but their relationship fizzled without the artifice of the nineteenth century costumes they wore at the Bird Cage theatre at Knott's Berry Farm. Even when laid low by a panic attack, Martin approaches it intellectually. He says of his incipient terror at nightfall, "I suppose I was too practical to have such an inconvenient phobia." It's all so dispassionate—and fascinating, if a bit disturbing.

You can track his development of the anti-comedy comedy, to remove all semblance of the traditional punchline repertoire. It's a fascinating journey but without all the human details that make a gripping story. There's no there there. The historical details fit awkwardly into a narrative that has many friendships but no friendliness. His final nostalgic visit to Knott's Berry farm pokes at the missing element, a humanity that seems leeched from the narrative and perhaps, one suspects, from his life.

Martin devotes almost no time to the high crest of popularity he rode in the seventies, when I saw him in a huge arena at Michigan State. Once he figured out the secret, he seemed to lose all interest in the success he created. In a sense I can understand that: the puzzle once solved is no longer fascinating. But while Martin claims that those years in stand-up gave him a sense of the crowd and its laughter, crap film projects like the painful Clouseau series make me wonder what he hears in that echo. He's not bullet-proof. Maybe a few stand-up sessions might jog that memory.

Borderlands Bonanza

About two weeks ago I attended the Borderlands Boot Camp. This is a genre-centric writing workshop where novice writers can study for three days under horror masters like Mort Castle, Tom Monteleone, Gary Braunbeck, Douglas E. Winter, Elizabeth Massie and F. Paul Wilson, to name a few. I've wanted to blog about the experience here, but I did not want to hype it up or turn it into a dear diary post. So I've spent the past week and a half mulling over what was the most important aspect of Borderlands, and it's that you'll get a new asshole. Painful, yes, but entirely necessary.


Writing is a lonely and insular activity. This cerebral isolation allows writers to live in their heads, making it easy to miss fatal flaws despite countless edits. The most important thing for a new writer to learn is how to get out of her skull to look at her story. You do this by dissecting the "creation," looking under its skin to scrutinize its plot, point of view, grammar and style, and dialogue. Sometimes you don't want to see the bloody organs, but the Borderland instructors force you too. They read your manuscript, make diligent notes, and itemize what sucks without blinking an eye. They'll also tell you what works. Pure unadulterated feedback. You will be ripped for tense change, dialogue tags, world building, verbosity, sparsity, pacing, manuscript formatting and a million other nits and nats. Once you've been ripped though, you'll never forget it. In fact, you begin to find these same flaws in best selling paperbacks. Most importantly, now you see them in your work. That horrible manuscript you stared at for six months suddenly seems salvageable.

To find out more:
http://www.borderlandspress.com/workshops_2010.html

"The Graveyard Book" wins the Newbery

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be raised in a cemetery? Neil Gaiman’s latest children's tale, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, explores just that. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s THE JUNGLE BOOK, GRAVEYARD follows the development of Nobody “Bod” Owens, an orphaned baby who escapes his house while his family is murdered and wanders into the neighboring graveyard (which is only referred to as “the graveyard”). The ghosts of Bod’s family follow him to the cemetery gates, but cannot enter because spirits are only allowed where their bodies are interred. So, the dead mother appeals to the cemetery residents to protect her vulnerable baby from their murderer. The graveyard adopts him, grants him “the way of the graveyard” and raises him as the dead’s own.

Bod ages with each chapter, creating a lovely structure where each episode reads like a short story while building onto the novel as a whole. Like most precocious and lonely children, Bod gets into many threatening situations--from an antagonizing babysitter to kidnapping goblins--but most from the living who want Bod dead.
I’ll resist specifics, because the novel was a swift read and filled with subtle nuances and surprises that my enthusiasm could ruin. But the book is light enough for children and dark enough for adults.

For more information on Neil Gaiman: www.neilgaiman.com

Review: Warhol, Rothko and Bacon in London

Recently I made a whirlwind trip to London that allowed me to gorge my eyes and ears on banquet of art that filled up the early winter emptiness of my head with a mad swirl of invention. First up, I hit the Andy Warhol exhibit, "Other Voices, Other Rooms" exhibit at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre. The guidebook lists its contents as "21 films, 1 clouds installation, 40 screen tests, 6 videos, 42 tv-episodes, 16 drawings..." and on and on. I'd never really thought about the direct link between Warhol and Capote, but it's impossible to miss in the midst of this exhibit. That shared hunger for absorbing the rich and famous drove them both and, one might predictably say, cost them both a lot, but what's amazing to see in this jumble of time capsules and ephemera as well as the completed work is just how rich a vein they both mined. Rather than a shallow wallow in pursuit of acceptance (not that it wasn't that as well) there's an endless fascination for what fame is and what people will do to achieve it (almost anything sometimes).

The hunger seems to be at an all time high at present, which amazes me. I'd love to be able to make loads of money with my writing, but I'd prefer that people express no interest in the person behind the words (besides, I am incredibly dull, always talking about the blackness of black pudding, for instance -- you would be bored) and have no interest in being interviewed on chat shows (yes, I am peculiar that way). Warhol had a genius for touching that hunger in others and expressing it in often macabre and funny ways. You know the celebrities he invented from the talented folks like the Velvet Underground to the more ephemeral "stars" like Edie, Candy and Holly. You already know them, they're the super stars. The surprising things were the tv soap project which was very funny even though it was little more than bickering, and the fun snippets that filled the tv-scape and the simple delight of the Silver Clouds installation -- mostly because there was a window so you could watch other people go through the room. They tended to just push the mylar balloons out of the way and walk into the gift shop (the latter surely the capstone of the exhibit). They missed out: playing with the giant balloons was a delight, though. Too many adults just can't play.

Saturday was Rothko day at the lovely Tate Modern, my favorite museum. The turbine room was filled with bunk beds and monstrous thingees as part of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's TH 2058, but as many reviews had said, it was better in idea than execution. I liked the giant dino skeleton, the big spider, and immense apple core, but it wasn't quite enough. Scale alone isn't enough (big is big, though). I'm not sure what was missing, but it never really affected emotionally and that's a miss.

How was Rothko? Amazing, utterly amazing. Repetition and variation -- things that obsess me, too -- are keystones of his later work. As Rothko said, "If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again." Immenseness of scale and depth of color -- so many of his paintings had been brought together for the first time. It's hard to write coherently about these works. They're hypnotic. Rothko's paintings strike directly into my subconscious. I don't know many painters like that.

The exhibition focused on his late work and the series painted for -- and then withdrawn from -- the Seagram building. Honestly, what were they thinking? Who could eat with those paintings hanging overhead? How could such intensity allow you to break your gaze away? The huge middle room where eight of the Seagram murals were hung was always chock full of people and murmuring conversation and still all I could do was stand there with my mouth open, staring. Prams everywhere, children running around and all I could think was, why? I realise people want to expose their kids to great art, but some of these late paintings are so intense and despairing it seems cruel.

Rothko tends to be one of those painters you either love or hate. I adore him. I've spent hours in the Rothko room at the Mod, written stories there, and filled my head. I've experienced the cool calm of the Rothko chapel, a little oasis in the middle of Houston. For others, the canvases are simply color splashed across a surface. In an exhibit this big, you can really see the amazing variety even within sequences of similar colors and the layering of paint and color that show the process Rothko worked so patiently to achieve. Absolutely stunning and a singular chance to see many of these works in one place.

Sunday was Bacon day, so I headed over to the Tate Britain in the cold cold drizzle (it always seems to rain when I go over Pimlico way). I had expected wonders from the Rothko exhibit, but I hadn't quite realised how much the Tate had gone all out for Bacon, including a bunch of talks (none while I was there, alas!), study days, a symposium and family events including "Bend it Like Bacon" where you could try to recreate the figures in the paintings and "Bacon for Beginners" where young artists would look at Bacon's beasties and then create their own. How can you tell it's not an American museum? No, no, not because it's publicly funded (although that's a giveaway, eh?). It's because that session was labeled "for under 5 years." Despite the recent panics over knives (admit it, it's a panic), there's still a willingness in Britain to let children do scary things WHICH THEY LOVE! I remember it well.

The exhibit is enormous. The layout is odd as you find yourself in cul-de-sacs wondering whether you've reached the end, only to peer around the corner of the room you already went through and find there's another room you haven't seen on the other side. The rooms bear names like "Apprehension" and "Crisis" and "Epic," stark labels that the paintings match. If you only think of Bacon as gaping grimaces and tortured flesh, this exhibit serves as a reminder of all the variations through which Bacon passed and offers many surprises, from the 1933 crucifixion which hints at all the early paintings destroyed to the unexpected whimsicality of a sudden spray of water which seems to splash right out of the frame among his late work. There is a reel of BBC interviews that show Bacon murmuring with erudition in that silky voice which always seems so at odds with the frank violence of much of his work. Wonderful! There's also a fantastic exhibit catalogue -- highly recommended.

Review: Bad Line by Reticents

Bad Line
Reticents (Paul Hamilton, Gavin Murphy, Andy Thomson)
www.reticents.co.uk

My first introduction to UK band Reticents (not "The") was their 2007 disc OOJIMAFLIPS, which was passed to me by their drummer, Paul Hamilton (co-editor of the book HOW VERY INTERESTING: PETER COOK'S UNIVERSE AND ALL THAT SURROUNDS IT which I reviewed in UATW 4). To my considerable relief (well, it's always nerve-wracking evaluating friends' works) it was a brilliant CD, chock full of witty lyrics and catchy hooks. From the opening paean to football superstar George Best ("Even at my very worst, I'm Best") to the hypnotic buzzing of "Bee Sting Lips" and the touching heartbreak of "Old Timers' Disease," the disc rocks and rolls and works its words into the brain like a cheap drug. The DIY-look cover did the project a slight injustice, suggesting a slapdash approach that the music's craft belied.

Their latest CD, BAD LINE (2008), couldn't be more different in that respect. The cover images are arresting. The candy-slick red makes the black and white pop and the faux underground map provides a novel way to convey the writing and production credits. The whole project is more sleek than the previous efforts, providing a step up in production values and all-around sound. From the clanging chords of "If Only We Could" that open the disc, it's a fast ride that clocks in at about 35 minutes, but still satisfies. A lot of this is due to the rambunctious tone of the music, from the callous "Nothing Personal" to the clanging "Hall of Blame" and "Blue Shirt," the latter a spirited attack on our tendency to overlook the person behind the uniform ("How would they know? They merely flirt / Let's put our hands in the fire -- let's get burnt") and features some really brilliant drumming.

I have a soft spot for "Carrier Bags," a tribute to "gentleman of the road" Bronco John, the panhandler who nonetheless hung out with the likes of Peter Cook and Peter Sellers. The grinding guitar opening is a perfect accompaniment to the well-knit words conveying the lost life of this iconic tramp, who slept rough yet died with £5,000 in his carrier bags:

The lampposts are bending over
They're listening to what I say
Eyeballs in every letterbox
Watching, hoping I'll walk away

Following this upbeat downbeat song with the plaintive power chords of "Who Needs Luck?" seems to imply "everyone" (and fair enough). The guitar clangs much more on this third CD than the first two; "Missing Person" even finds a plaintive note in the grind as they wail through a tale of every parent's nightmare. If you begin to suspect there's a connection here -- yes, it's true. Visit the band's website and you'll find a link that reveals the narrative behind the songs. While this is an example of the oft-dreaded "concept album," there's no reason to fear. The teen narrator's disjointed tale isn't essential to appreciating the disc, but it amplifies the connections, in particular augmenting the sequence of "I'd Dial for You"/"They Died with their Phones On," which link together a surprisingly melodic barrage of ring tones and improbable rhymes ("multiple sclerosis" and "deep vein thrombosis") into an effective collage. While it always reminds me of the Paddington crash (news stories reported how phones rang in the wreckage for days afterward), it also speaks to the distancing and isolation that ubiquitous communication has not bridged. Like the spoken word cut "The Long Haul" on OOJIMAFLIPS, this sequence pushes the boundaries of what 'mere' pop songs can be and signals a band ready to take chances with form and expectations.

The CD ends by revisiting tunes: a softer acoustic version of "I Got You All Wrong" introduces a note of melancholy missing from the initial version and a sassy reprise of "Nothing Personal" with female vocalist puts the callous shoe on the other foot. If this leaves you with a slightly depressed feeling, I think that's deliberate, although a trifle unfortunate. I find myself at times preferring OOJIMAFLIPS to BAD LINE, despite its more uneven qualities, because I'm a sucker for good lyrics and I think those on the former CD are better or perhaps simply more playful ("If you love me blow up Parliament / raise an army, bring down the government. / Take me where the rainbow ends / and buy me an ice cream cone"). There's also a deleted first CD, GRASSHOPPER, which has perhaps the most blisteringly vitriolic break-up song ever, "Happy Birthday to You," which features the refrain "Enjoy the present, return the past / Happy Birthday, darling -- I hope it's your last." This is a band that does bitter very well.

Great lyrics, catchy hooks, and three CDs in as many years: there's a lot to like here from a band with a winning sense of humour and plenty of ambition. Visit their website or MySpace page for lyrics, photos and a couple of goofy-fun videos.