When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers. The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation.
A few more thoughts on The Watchmen re-read
I’ve gotten quite a bit further through the funnybook masterwork that’s on everyone’s minds this week, and I have a few more thoughts.
- I don’t care for Alan Moore. I respect him somewhat, but like? No. From his creations, and from what I’ve seen him write editorially, my opinion is that he takes himself too seriously, he’s too angry, he’s too screed-prone, and … just, no. He’s too much made of things I don’t like. I appreciate that a lot of people whose opinions I generally agree with (Gaiman) like him, but … no. Not today. (Heck, Neil likes the Dresden Dolls, too — the man’s not perfect.)
- Part of my reread is informed by a far better grasp of political beliefs than I possessed at the time of my first reading. That helps me appreciate what Moore’s trying to do a bit better, but it doesn’t make me like those parts of the story any more.
- Rorschach is (intentionally) the worst distillation of every hard-line conservative xenophobic 2nd Amendment disciple I’ve ever met; the sort of people I’ve spent the last year arguing with on an almost daily basis. He sucks the joy out of every panel he’s in for the first half of the book. Perhaps Moore does something genius in creating someone I dislike intensely and – very slowly and very slightly – bringing him back to a place where he can be a guy you can almost root for. OR… Moore was just really really angry for the first four issues or so, and he finally calmed down enough to start dealing with the narrative.
- The New Frontiersman isn’t a parody anymore; it’s mainstream right wing media. I watched Sean Hannity ‘interview’ Ann Coulter on Faux News last night — by comparison, the New Frontiersman is weak sauce in the Barking Moonbat competition. The fact that it lacks punch isn’t Moore’s fault — he’s writing about the future, a role in which everyone is an inaccurate haruspex — his predictions about electric cars outstrip our achievements, but his joke right-winger paper has been far surpassed.
- Nixon as president for life is not remotely as terrifying a concept as the President we endured from 2001 through 2008. In the one scene he’s been featured, Nixon displays a level of reason and maturity that puts W to shame. Again, like the New Frontiersman, what America DID to itself it worse than what Moore imagined we might have done.
- The interstitial pieces in the book are utterly wasted on me. Utterly. The sections of the autobiography, the newspaper clippings; even and ESPECIALLY the pirate-story that the kid is reading beside the newspaper stand, whose narrative gets intermixed with what’s going on on the street? I skip all of it. It all either bores or annoys the hell out of me. I challenge anyone to point out a page or panel I’ve skipped that substantively adds to the story in any way that I didn’t already pick up from the ‘real’ story, in context.
- With that said, once we get into the middle of the book, things really start to cook. The characters are more engaging, the narrative more … umm … present. After thrashing around his studio with a claymore for the first quarter of the book, Moore takes a breath, looks around, and starts constructing a really amazing piece of art out of the shattered bits lying around the room. The story doesn’t get any lighter, but it does clarify quite a bit, in a cooking sense.
- There are large chunks of the thing that I feel could be lifted out whole cloth — which would, in their absence, not only leave the story unharmed, but actually leaner, healthier, and more accessible. That said, this book inarguably deserves to be on the Desert Island list of anyone who has even the slightest amount of respect for stories told in this medium. It’s a hell of a yarn, and a pioneering effort. I’m totally roped in at this point, hanging on each new page, and I can’t wait to enjoy(?) the depressing, down-beat ending.
- Also, I’m very much looking forward to the movie. (If only because I’m pretty sure they had to cut out the pirate story.) As I read, I keep seeing panels from the book that look exactly like the scenes from the previews. Even from that, I can tell they nailed it. It’s too bad that Moore himself will probably never watch it.
Attention Browncoats
NASA wants your opinion in naming the International Space Station’s Node 3 – a connecting module and its cupola – before the two segments travel to space and are installed on the orbiting laboratory.
Cytherea Rose – Firefly Music Videos
Want a good laugh?
Go here. Grab the Weird Al Yankovic/Firefly video “Your Horoscope.”
High-larious.
The holiday movie-watch concludes, and the winner is…
Juno, by a landslide.
Don’t misunderstand: I thought I Am Legend was a wonderful adaptation and update to the original story, well-acted and scary; Sweeney Todd was a horrid delight; and even Golden Compass was an enjoyable romp (kudos to Meera, I think, (or De) who summed it up as ‘great frosting, white cake’).
But for sheer joy of watching, truly laugh-out-loud moments that made me cover my mouth to keep everyone else from losing the dialog, heart-warming, heart-wrenching, touching, smart, true film making? (With perhaps the best soundtrack I’ve heard in years as an added bonus.)
Juno. Number one with a bullet. I highly, highly recommend you go see it, if you have the means.
Catanification, Paint, Revisions, Champagne, and a battering ram named Grond
As I may have mentioned, I got most of the expansions available for Catan during the holidays, and we’ve had a chance to play a couple times since then.
Current tally:
– me: 1
– kate: 1
– champagne: 2
I hope everyone had a happy New Year’s Eve Arbitrary Calendar Event Celebration. We had Kaylee, so the evening was a relatively quiet one spent at home, working on a Super Secret Web Project, and then curled up on the couch to watch the extended director’s cut version of Return of the King until well into the night (Denethor was taking a flaming header off Minas Tirith when midnight rolled around).
There are worse ways to see in the New Year.
Tomorrow, it’s back to the grindstone, not to mention a new agently-originated series of revisions for Hidden Things. Evenings, I suspect, are going involve more work on the kitchen/family room project, which ended up being much more involved than we’d anticipated. More on that (with videos!) later.
Movies? We’ve got movies.
So in the last few days we’ve seen Sweeney Todd and the Golden Compass — both adaptations of works designed for another medium.
My personal opinion? Sweeney Todd was wonderful and entertaining and totally at home on the screen. The Golden Compass was annoyingly reminiscent of the fourth Harry Potter installment — short-shrift summary, like a visual cliff notes version of the original text.
Now, I’ve heard from folks who haven’t read the book, saw the movie, and really enjoyed it, so perhaps some of my impressions comes from having seen the whole cloth the shortpants suit was cut from, but that’s my impression — they could have done better than they did. I was particularly annoyed by an unnecessary inclusion toward the end of the movie that actually introduced a fairly obvious plot hole that doesn’t actually exist in the book it’s based on. That’s just sloppy.
Still: armored bears, Sam Elliot, and clockwork technology — there’s a lot to like in what you get. (Even with Nicole Kidman and her distracting plastic face getting in the way.)
Movies: Oh yeah, that’s what I forgot to do this weekend.
Though, in talking to the locals, it doesn’t sound as though I could have gotten into a showing anyway.
I am Legend opened this weekend to record-breaking attendance. This TOTALLY NON-HOLIDAY MOVIE was the highest-grossing December release of all time, and the biggest opening week movie for Will “Mister Fourth of July Blockbuster” Smith.
I read the book a few years ago and really believe it deserves to be listed as one of the great genre classics. I can’t wait to see the movie next week when Kate gets into town.