Did DC commit hara-kiri with suicide squad?

Here we are, after Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, with another comic book ersatz-blockbuster bloodied by critics while running the gauntlet of marketing hype and fan expectations. As the mighty box office pronounces its own apparently victorious judgment on Suicide Squad, one can’t help but if wonder if DC/Warner Bros executives and filmmakers are starting to feel like Pyrrhus after his costly victory at the battle of Asculum. “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans,” the Greek general reportedly said, “we shall be utterly ruined.”

While not strictly a bad movie as the media would have us believe, Suicide Squad does suffer from a failing that consigns the film to a footnote in DC’s film universe rather than a milestone: a lack of ambition, which is all the more obvious in contrast to the acid trip promise of its marketing campaign and the relative novelty of its concept. It’s not just that Suicide Squad ends up subjecting its supervillainous Dirty Dozen to a rather banal save-the-world plot, but that it sets up promising ideas only to give us lackluster follow-through. The most obvious example of this rests in David Ayers split-personality direction. He starts us with half-an-hour of exposition delivered with a modicum of guerilla style (complete with cutesy graphic overlays), but then drops the guerilla and settles for the usual hum-drum once the plot gets going. A catalog of characters, even when livened up by Batman and the Flash, is no way to start a film – remember show don’t tell? – and abandoning the flourishes that might electrify an otherwise middling narrative is no way to finish a film. Suicide Squad should be edgy, but the tame results beg the question: what happened to the grit and harrowing pathos that David Ayers so capably delivered in the WWII tank drama Fury, with considerably more panache than he does here?

Perhaps it’s time to dispense with the industry’s obsession with realism – Marvel movies all look the same, and DC has so far relied on Zack Snyder’s moody aesthetic and Christopher Nolan’s urban pragmatism. Let’s have the idiosyncratic and unabashedly artsy approach Tim Burton used for his Batman films and Robert Rodriguez for his Sin City films. Or how about taking inspiration from Kerry Conran and his criminally underappreciated Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow?

Stylistic inconsistencies might be overlooked if Ayers had opted for a more sophisticated narrative approach. Off the top of my head, the film could have started mid-mission and used flashbacks to fill in the gaps. Or it could have more openly aped its inspiration, The Dirty Dozen, which provides a more plausible perspective of how a team of misfits could be forged into a cohesive unit capable of fighting a dire menace. It could have used stories of encounters with Batman and other heroes as a means of bonding the villains together. Heck, it could have just followed the path Ayers capably tread in Fury. There are any number of creative ways to tell the story, but instead we get as many empty promises as genuine pleasures, particularly in how characters are described versus how they are developed throughout the narrative. Joel Kinnaman’s Colonel Flag, for instance, comes across especially poorly; although described as the world’s best special-ops commando, he acts like a wishy-washy mop, a far cry from Lee Marvin’s Colonel Reisman. (He even hugs Deadshot at the end.) And Karen Fukuhara’ Katana, ostensibly Flag’s bodyguard, is described as not only the deadliest woman in the room but gifted with a soul-stealing sword that is depicted as little else than a good listener and a sharp blade. This all typifies the struggle Suicide Squad has in managing an ensemble cast; some characters get more attention than others, and only one – Jay Hernandez’ tragic criminal-with-a-conscience El Diablo – is given the opportunity to grow and change. Even the story’s major players – Will Smith’s Deadshot and Robbie Margot’s Harley Quinn – are kept in neutral. Essentially, Suicide Squad’s dramatic conceit is limited to the notion of forcing villains to act on behalf of the great thanks to implanted explosives. How the experience changes them, or reinforces their initial villainous proclivities, is yet another missed opportunity.

Strip away the film’s unrealized potential, and you’re left with a serviceable action movie that plausibly contributes to DC’s world-building and is punctuated by enthusiastic but unambitious character design. Will Smith is enjoyable as a version of his usual action movie personal, and Viola Davis offers us a terrifying and sociopathic Amanda Waller (creator of the Suicide Squad), but Margot Robbie especially sparkles as the psychedelically psychotic and homicidal Harley Quinn. Her gleefully off-kilter performance, however, is limited by the film’s refusal to emancipate Quinn from her definition as the Joker’s victim and plaything.  A telling scene is when the film’s supernatural antagonist offers the Squad their deepest desires in exchange for loyalty; Quinn’s wish is for a domestic bliss with a de-Jokerized Joker, which suggests that her innermost psyche is just as much an appendage to the Clown Prince of Crime as her body. In the comics, Quinn achieves an independence that doesn’t rely on the consent of men. The film, however, squanders a major opportunity to give her agency distinct from male expectations. And Clara Delevigne, as an archaeologist possessed by an ancient evil witch, gets even less than that.

On to the Joker, then, performed by Jared Leto. His version, a suitably deranged synthesis of Nicholson and Ledger generously seasoned with MTV and Miami Vice chic, worked for me. Where some complain that there is too little Joker in the film, I submit that there was too much. However deliciously menacing, and however much Leto and Quinn share a disturbing chemistry on-screen as the King and Queen of Gotham, the Joker is nevertheless locked into a “love” story that goes nowhere and takes away from other characters. Once again, the impression is that the filmmakers didn’t have the courage of their conviction, preferring to elevate the film’s most marketable elements at the expense of fully embracing the ensemble nature of its cast of villains forced to do good.

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Enjoy Star Trek Beyond, but for Smart & Fun Sci-Fi – Watch TV

What would Paramount’s Star Trek film franchise look like had they launched with Star Trek Beyond instead of J.J. Abrams’ slick counterfeits? We’ll never know how much better it would be, but at least we finally have a film that acknowledges the substance of Star Trek instead of merely grafting its modernized aesthetic onto generic action movie plots.

Star Trek Beyond is the trekkiest of the films set in the so-called “Kelvin Timeline,” mostly because unlike its Earth-bound predecessors it actually does go, if not quite boldly than at least with greater confidence, into the unknown to seek out new life and civilizations. Set mid-way during the Enterprise’s 5-year mission, it positions the series where it was meant to be all along: out in space. Although the planet hosting the majority of the film’s action is just routinely beautiful, the film makes up for it with the stunning Yorktown, a majestic starbase whose cityscape twists and loops on itself, Inception-style, and looks every bit the futuristic ideal of civilization Roddenberry’s Star Trek strove to represent.

Given the low standards established by the previous films, it almost doesn’t matter that Star Trek Beyond’s plot is ultimately revealed to be yet another revenge drama. The cast – always the new franchise’s strength alongside production design – is in its finest form, giving us an Enterprise crew worthy of representing the original thanks to focused and often funny script. (Yes, Spock’s romance with Uhura still grates. But it’s handled here with enough nuance to feel less like a stunt and more like a genuine relationship – and this is less critical than the surprisingly thoughtful interaction between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as well as the introduction of a pleasingly tough new character, Jaylah, played with smarts and sass by Sofia Boutella, and Shohreh Aghdashloo’s dignified Commodore Paris.) Justin Lin achieves a brisk and exciting pace for the film, revving up the action scenes and deftly managing spectacular special effects while also letting the film breathe during its character moments.

It does matter, however, that Star Trek Beyond remains mired in Paramount’s – and Hollywood’s – resistance to high-concept films, particularly in the science fiction genre, and preference for action to ideas. Like the recent glut of superhero movies demonstrates, there is the trend in the industry to look for conflict and drama only in situations involving violence and combat – a trend that has afflicted TV-to-film adaptations beyond Star Trek, like the Mission: Impossible series, as well as generally excellent higher-concept films like Edge of Tomorrow and Oblivion. Although very entertaining and a welcome throwback to some of the elements that made us fall in love with the Original Series, Star Trek Beyond presents us with a villain – Idris Elba under heavy makeup – reducible to a vengeful menace with an appetite for mass destruction. The idea that the Federation might meet opposition by alien races who view them as a colonialist rather than a cooperative force never gains traction as anything other than the stage on which yet another apocalyptic scenario is played. And in the end, just as Starfleet’s identity crisis in Star Trek Into Darkness’ somehow fit into the single character of Peter Weller’s warmonger, it boils down to a personal confrontation between Kirk and the villain.

Lacking a majestic sense of grandeur – which only Star Trek: The Motion Picture succeeded in achieving among all the Star Trek films – as well as well as grand and grandly executed ideas, Star Trek Beyond’s by-the-numbers action-adventure plot just doesn’t stand alongside Star Trek’s best stories – like “Devil in the Dark” and” Encounter at Farpoint,” to name two of many.

The lesson, then, is that the best science-fiction stories aren’t to be found in film but in television, which is rather sad given how different the cinematic experience is from the small screen. It comes down to economics, of course, and the cost of production that studios need to recoup even before profit is factored in. But what does it say that television, with its lower budget, can succeed at telling smart stories rooted in fiction about science while movies run the hamster wheel of exploding blockbuster action movies? If you’ve never done so, I suggest watching shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Odyssey 5, and FarScape.

There’s a vicious cycle at play, in that studios don’t typically present audiences with beautiful and smart science-fiction films (Duncan Jones’ Moon and films by Neil Blomkamp being notable exceptions), so audiences don’t get exposed to what is possible and, consequently, don’t demand better than the usual action movie formulas. Yet there is also a technical element, in that visually demanding film productions don’t seem to have benefited from computers to significantly reduce costs and make it easier to depict strange new worlds – worlds limited by imagination rather than budget.

Nevertheless, Star Trek Beyond certainly is fun. But I do wish people could see what the wonder and challenging social commentary science-fiction is really capable of offering.

Thank you for reading and supporting independent critical writing. It does take time and effort to write, so while all content here is provided at no cost to you please, if you enjoyed today’s article, share it via your favorite social media using the share button below.

notes from LACMA: rain room washes out, but del Toro lights a bonfire of imagination

Rain Room

Rain Room has been a bonanza for LACMA, its popularity prompting extended runs to accommodate the demand. After the hype, of course, comes the deluge after a brief wind-up in the waiting line. Admitted in small groups of 15 or so, patrons are led down a short corridor that opens up on the famous space itself, a large room illuminated by a single bright spotlight and dominated by a grid of falling water. Sensors detect the presence of people beneath the nozzles and switch them off accordingly. The experience, then, involves wandering through the grid surrounded by raining water while staying reasonably dry.

There’s fun to be had daring the sensors to fail, and of course it’s a dream setting for artsy Instagrammers. But essentially, it’s a toy, not unlike splashing around a park fountain. It might be tempting to see in Rain Room an oblique commentary on California’s drought, but forget it: Rain Room is a content-less experience. No music. No supplemental imagery. Not even space for contemplation, as there are too many people bustling about. Whatever artistic aspirations one might want to uncover, they are overshadowed by that dreary and dreaded question: is it art?

Ever since Marcel Duchamp obtained a urinal, flipped it upside down, cheekily named it The Fountain, and submitted it to the Society of Independent Artists for exhibition only for it to be hidden from view, the Art World has reacted to Dadaist acts of subversion by erasing their most fundamental provocation. The result is an unfortunate trend in contemporary art to define as art any “thing” that is placed in an art gallery.

The critical problem is this: art that simply serves as a blank surface onto which viewers can project their own meanings is, in my view, scarcely worthy of being considered art. Ornamentation, perhaps, but not art. To that essential dialogue between artist, viewer, and the artwork itself there should be some communicable concept; the joy lies in fixing or loosening this concept, that is, in framing a work’s meaning. The meaning doesn’t have to be clearly articulated or overtly define. It can be vague, suggested, or even deferred in a post-modern gesture. (Whether it can be refused altogether is the Dadaist question, but Rain Room doesn’t manifest a Dadaist sensibility.) You can make it mean whatever you want, but the experience itself is just water falling from the ceiling in a darkened room. As with LACMA’s Levitated Mass, a rock perched above a walkway, Rain Room’s impression is of a gimmick who distinction is its artificiality. Make of that what you will, and decide for yourself whether it’s worth paying for a ticket.

Tickets for Rain Room are $30 and must be purchased in advanced.
www.lacma.org

Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters

A view inside del Toro's Bleak House.

Designed to provide visitors with the impression of walking into Bleak House, del Toro’s Los Angeles Home, At Home with Monsters is a phantasmagorical exhibit well worth visiting. Much like LACMA’s Tim Burton exhibit some time ago, At Home with Monsters works to provide visitors with a richer context for the imagination of one of cinema’s most visionary artists. The salon-style exhibit is organized by theme, which makes the experience more personal than the usual didactic, chronological arrangement. But once exposed to the buffet of artefacts, however, curatorial concepts become less important than feeling of wonderment at the paintings, sketches, sculptures, books, maquettes, movie props, concept art and astonishing assortment of curios that span the mystical, the horrific, the beautiful, the macabre, and even the humourous.

The crowd of visitors jostling for a closer look at the exhibit’s many curios can be jarring, but don’t let it deter you: the prospect of exploring the vast catalog of Del Toro’s inspiration should boost your courage for getting close and personal. From idea journals, displayed next to tablets allowing visitors to virtually scroll through the impressively illustrated diaries, to video monitors with film montages, the exhibit immerses us in the influences that drive Del Toro’s art. It particularly highlights the synthetic aspect of the artistic process, the convergence of artistic and cultural forces absorbed over a lifetime that produce singular visions. As with Burton’s exhibit, biographical insights emphasize how Del Toro’s outsider perspective and its embrace of the bizarre and freakish ultimately serves as an affirmation of humanity.

A page from one of del Toro's journal.

At Home with Monsters even comes with its own “rain room,” a simulation of del Toro’s home workspace that takes its cues from Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room to provide 24-hour rain and thunderstorms. It is, appropriately, the space in the exhibit dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. But it also presents one of del Toro’s most potent insights: “The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7.”

A particularly refreshing aspect of the exhibit is its sheer lack of pretentiousness. Where we might ordinarily distinguish between high and low art, the sublime and the pulp, At Home with Monsters reminds us that the best art knows no class. And insofar as visitors leave inspired not only to look more deeply into life’s shadowy and creaking nooks and crannies but to embrace the creative impulse for themselves, then the exhibit triumphs as more than just a showcase for del Toro.

On display at LACMA from August 1, 2016–November 27, 2016

Tickets are $25 and include general admission as well as admission to At Home with Monsters and other special exhibitions.

www.lacma.org

While You're Visiting ...

While you're visiting LACMA, be sure to visit the contemporary Islamic Art exhibit in the Ahmanson Building as well as the Enigmatic Image, an exhibit on symbolism and other fascinating aspects of Indian art. Both are beautiful,fascinating and insightful.

quick review: deadpool

Here we go again with another attempt to shock the bourgeoisie, only this time the outrage is perpetuated on superhero films after years of Marvel formula. Are we really outraged anymore by crass humour, crude sex, or gory violence, or are we just being good consumers by buying into the marketing?

Deadpool adapts an intriguing metafictional anti-hero – 31st on IGN’s ranking of Top 100 superheroes – but like most of Marvel’s film output, it’s a mediocrity. The plot is a rehashed revenge-driven origin story, the settings are banal, characters not named Deadpool/Wade Wilson are either clichés, bland pudding, or punchlines with little humanity to them, and the raunchy rapid-paced humour is more often hit-and-miss rather than the hit-and-run it hopes to be. (T.J. Miller’s comic relief is particularly limp, but if you’re amused by the description of Wilson’s disfigurement as the offspring of two avacadoes hatefully fucking each other, dig in.) There’s nothing in its metafictional makeup – breaking the fourth-wall, self-referential humour – that we haven’t seen done better elsewhere (by characters named Ferris Bueller, for example). Not even the addition of two X-Men helps. Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s contribution is to be the butt of moody teenager jokes, while Colossus isn’t even allowed to win his own big fight let alone be more than Deadpool’s naively moral straight man. At least the romance between Wade Willson and Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa is sweet. Awwww.

If Ryan Reynolds, who made the film his passion project, wasn’t so well suited to the title role we’d have a plotless bore. But Reynolds carries the film like it was his birthright, partly due to his charm but also because Deadpool is the only character the filmmakers care about. It’s a shame that the film comes across as money thrown at a low-budget indie production. Tim Miller stages his action scenes with verve, but there’s nothing about his direction or Ken Seng’s pedestrian, colourless cinematography to thrill the senses. Deadpool has its moments – enough to be worth a watch if the trailer intrigues you, and the character has potential, but as far as this pool goes Marvel is swimming in the shallow end.

zootoopia and the culture war over diversity

Mulling over Disney’s magical Zootopia prompted me to check in with the American Conservative’s resident culture warrior, Rod Dreher and, sure enough, there was this gem with the pop-conservative click-bait title, “What If Diversity Is Our Weakness?” The article is essentially Dreher quoting a reader’s comment from a previous article, all the while channeling Nelson from The Simpsons as he points to the “left” and ha-has. The source of all this glee: a challenge to the cherished notion that encouraging interactive diversity will result in social harmony. But he cites no mere trolling from the unwashed commentariat. No; his citation is powered by a liberal political scientist from Harvard, Robert Putnam, whose research into diversity in 2007 yielded the counterintuitive result that diverse communities exhibited decreased civic engagement. People vote less, volunteer less, trust each other less in diverse communities compared to homogenous communities.

The rhetorical headline makes it clear that with diversity suitably chastened, Dreher is free (as if he wasn’t already!) to advocate for monoculture without being dragged down by liberal critiques of homogeneity (read: white, male, heterosexual). He can be perfectly happy in his very own little bubble – in his particular case a project he calls the Benedict Option where he can be insulated from anyone who doesn’t fit into his Orthodox Christian worldview.

But the results of Putnam’s research aren’t an end to the question of diversity; they describe, in fact, the very challenge diversity poses by its very nature and ubiquity. How, indeed, do we encourage the positive civic interactions capable of overcoming the dissociative factors at play in our multifaceted communities? How do we even sensibly define diversity in type (e.g. ideology, ethnicity, economics, etc.), scale (family, community, city, region, state, nation) let alone policy? The question is fundamentally personal; a matter of our approach to whether we approach diversity with curiosity, detachment or, in some vocal quarters, revulsion.

For an example, we could look to the controversy surrounding North Carolina’s law that bans ordinances denying discrimination against LGBTQ people and directly prohibits transgendered persons from using bathrooms according to their gender identity. The law is partly the product of dangerous misinformation and fearmongering about transgendered people (see Media Matters' debunking here). Broadly, however, it’s an expression of the religious right’s hostility towards LGBTQIA identities – e.g. sinful offenses to God, perversion of nature, heterosexual familial breakdowns. It can only be considered hostility when it isn’t enough to accept that legal doesn’t mean mandatory; to the religious right, what is deviant in their view must be forbidden to everyone.

It comes as a surprise that Zootopia, a Disney film, would offer a remarkably nuanced perspective on the challenges inherent in a diverse society, all the while delivering a crackerjack conspiracy thriller and buddy movie. The film’s creators previously offered us Frozen, a welcome call to girl power that nevertheless came across as glib and, worse, perpetuated Disney’s obsession with casting women as princesses. (What sort of subtextual goodness would have infused Frozen had its sisters been peasants?) That Zootopia dispenses with the fetish for aristocracy and instead gives us a proletarian view is a refreshing change on its own.

The film centers on Judy (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a rabbit whose keen sense of justice leads her away from carrot farming into the unlikely profession of policing – unlikely, because in Zootopia’s world small mammals aren’t generally considered physically matched to the demands of police work. A lesser movie would have dwelled in Judy’s challenges at the police academy, cataloguing every act of bullying and condescension from teachers and fellow trainees. But the filmmakers breeze through Judy’s challenges in an exciting montage that culminates with her proud graduation as the first bunny cop before launching into the film’s narrative. Unsurprisingly, being a trained and top-of-the-class graduate earns her no respect in the precinct to which she is assigned. The police chief, an imposing bull voiced with wonderful grit by Idris Elba, even assigns her to parking duty on her first day. It says a lot about Judy’s character that she commits herself to excel at the less-than-ideal assignment. She does excel, but by the second day we can sympathize when the job leaves her demoralized. Who wants to punish people for parking infractions and get abused for it?

The situation changes when she unwittingly helps a sneaky fox, Nick (voiced by Justin Bateman), pull a con on an ice cream store owner. She gets the upper hand on him quickly enough, but the stage is set for an oil-and-water partnership when a missing person’s case connects to a series of frightening incidents where Zootopia’s carnivores revert to their primal states. At stake: the civilizing influence that redefines the predator-prey relationship as one of peaceful co-existence.

Zootopia is exceptionally well-conceived and executed with superb voice work and animation, as funny as it is heartfelt, and inspiring for featuring a female heroine defined by her blend of kindness, toughness, and smarts rather than the usual romantic tropes. Cinematically, it’s one of the finest animated films in recent years solely on the basis of his rich characters a sophisticated narrative.

Layered interpretations aren’t necessary, of course, but when it comes to reading the film from a political perspective it stands out above the usual genre feel-good messaging by refusing to reduce its characters to stereotypes or allowing itself to be glibly mapped onto the conservative/liberal dichotomy. A lesser film would have sorted characters into unabashed racists and their victims, and the big villain would have been some sort of Trumpian blowhard. But every principal character is a nuanced mix of nobility, prejudice, wisdom, ignorance and righteousness of varying degrees. The difference lies in how each chooses to confront the legacy of a savage past: can predators evolve beyond their killer instincts? Judy and Nick – the rabbit and the fox – form a credible and touching friendship from a partnership of convenience, and in their relationship we have a positive, but by no means bump-free, response to the challenges of diversity. (It’s interesting to note that what separates them, more so than their species, is their positions as cop and criminal.) In the film’s startling villain, we find a destructive response, not unlike the rabid right-wingers who denounce Muslims and Mexicans, that illustrates how even understandable fears can upend empathy and moral reasoning.

Ultimately, Zootopia illustrates the take-away from Putnam’s research: we live in a diverse world, and whether we live well or succumb to conflict depends on our willingness to embrace that diversity and make it work. As the RNC convention demonstrates, with supremacists like Rep. King proclaiming that capital-C Civilization owes its success to white people, America has not freed itself from its legacy of racism. This is the context for culture warriors like Dreher, who fail to understand both the distinction and overlap between overt discrimination among individuals and the institutional discrimination of white heterosexual male privilege. In the end, though, it comes down to will. As reactionary conservatives and Trump’s New Republican Party – an expression of fundamental right-wing angst – prove, some people just don’t want to get along. A film alone may not change minds, but films like Zootopia that can deliver terrifically entertaining stories with nuanced cultural commentary go a long way towards fostering a better culture.

bar 9 and the art of coffee - no tips needed (at TFPO)

Bar 9 is my favourite coffee spot - great coffee responsibly sourced and crafted with care, friendly service..I interviewed Bar 9's co-owner about his no-tipping model in the context of a debate within Culver City over the minimum wage...

At the beginning of the year, Zayde implemented a no-tipping model in which the full costs of labor, sales tax, etc., are included in the price. The move represents a commitment to hospitality by removing the ambiguities and obligations associated with tipping and focusing instead on the whole guest experience. It also presents opportunity for baristas to devote themselves to their craft in a career with long-term prospects, a contrast to the typical short-term, part-time positions available in the average coffee chain. This beautifully manifests business that treats business owners and employees as co-producers, each taking pride in their work and cooperating with a shared passion for coffee culture and satisfying customers.

I caught up with Zayde to discuss his business model, coffee, and other Bar 9 news.

Now that we’re well into 2016, how’s the new no-tipping model working for you and your associates?

Our new hospitality-included menu has been ... READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

Ginna Carter Prevails in PRT’s Eccentricities of a Nightingale (at TFPO)

Review of the Pacific Resident Theatre's production of Tennessee Williams' The Eccentricities of a Nightingale

Misfit, freak, geek – whatever the description, it’s easy to see why Alma Winemiller, the delightfully odd and sassy bird who gives The Eccentricities of a Nightingale its title, was so loved by Tennessee Williams. Her indomitable spirit stands bravely against the condescending and conformist influences of a disapproving community. Today, we wouldn’t overthink the bundle of exaggerated mannerisms that is Alma, nor view her penchant for sitting in the park to feed and chat with the birds as a preliminary sign of lunacy. In turn-of-the-20th-century Glorious Hill, Mississippi, just as in many communities, the pressure to fit in creates ... READ THE REVIEW AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

playing catchup: a meditation for Orlando, and two play reviews (at TFPO)

I've been neglectful in updating the blog with what little writing I'm doing these days - I have a doctor's note if you want it.

So here's the latest since my review of those For Beginners books:

• Orlando: A Meditation for Loving-Kindness - Another day in America. Another mass shooting. Another grievous wound. The news will swell with posturing politicians, opiniated commentators, circular policy debates, and strident finger-pointing. Beating through the noise will be human hearts suffering over the loss of life. We will remember the victims. People with names. People targeted because of their sexual orientation. I have previously written about ... CONTINUE READING AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE
• The Existential Superhero Takes a Leap (theatre review of The Superhero and his Charming Wife) - Interpretative dance, moving platforms with gymnastics, video backgrounds, crafty props – these elements form the raw materials of writer/director Aaron Hendry and Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble’s imaginative and exuberant theatrical experience, The Superhero and his Charming Wife. But ... CONTINUE READING AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE
• A Lukewarm Dinner at the Odyssey (theatre review of Dinner at Home Between Deaths) - There comes a moment in Dinner at Home Between Deaths when it seems like the characters will sail into the bleak waters charted by Swimming with Sharks, the singularly unpleasant film starring Kevin Spacey and Frank Whaley. We are mercifully spared the pointless nasty cynicism, but the ... CONTINUE READING AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

Can two "For Beginners" Books Fight Racism? (at TFPO)

Although my review of Black Panthers for Beginners and Civil Rights for Beginners, within a discussion of race in America, is focused on "right-wing" racism, it would be worthwhile to examine how "left-wing" identity politics pose their own set of challenges in terms of achieving social justice. In brief, it seems to me that where right-wing identity politics are tribal, manichean, and absolutist, left-wing identity politics are more discursive and relative. The problem with this sort of postmodernist form of identity-conception is the tendency to favour the theoretical and symbolic over the empirical and practical -hence, the internecine struggle that tends to hinder unity among various identity groups.

Anyway, that's a big discussion in and of itself. The point still remains that the Republican party and its parade of grotesques remains the single biggest obstacle to having a rational discussion on the topic let alone implementing solutions that will genuinely help non-white ethnicities achieve social parity.

As always, these For Beginners books provide a valuable starting point, in this case by offering an accessible entry point to the history of the Civil Rights movement in general and the Black Panthers in particular.

My review at THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE.

on netflix: dimension-hopping with "parallels"

I came out of watching Parallels feeling the rush that comes with being exposed to high-concept science-fiction. A mysterious building that serves as a focal point for travelling between parallel universes? Yes, please! Years after Sliders went off the air – and failed to catch on with me given storytelling marred by behind-the-scenes production shenanigans, character switch-ups, and a series cliffhanger – now seems like a ripe time to revisit the concept with a grittier, hard-science approach.

There was every reason to be optimistic, as the show is the creation of Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom, the pair who delivered the underrated but fiendishly clever miniseries The Lost Room. Having already demonstrated a thrilling flair for handling space/time anomalies with a sci-fi perspective, I was curious to see how they would freshen up a familiar concept.

The good news is that Parallels is, overall, rather gripping. Unfortunately, it suffers from its ambiguous status as a movie slash series pilot slash digital product. With too many ideas crammed into 83 minutes, it doesn’t offer enough of a self-contained narrative arc for it to stand reasonably on its own, even as it sets pieces on the chessboard for the long game. Its last 10 minutes alone raises more questions and introduces more plot points than a cliffhanger, however intriguing and appetite-whetting, should be asked to handle without being frustrating and anti-climatic.

Disappointing to various degrees are the characters, which consist of a taciturn brawler, a dork, a blank, and a streetwise traveler who tutors the other three on the finer points of universe-hopping. Of the four, only Mark Hapka’s Ronan, a troubled lad who left his family out of guilt to get himself beaten up in underground fighting contests, can be measured out in more than two dimensions.  The savvy traveler, named Polly, stands out for her portrayal by the film’s strongest cast member, Constance Wu: pay attention to her as the gang travels from one Earth to another. As for the remaining members of the Scooby gang: the dork, played by Eric Jungmann, is a public defender named Harold who is positioned as a geek with occasional insight but is really there to shriek, panic, and irritate. The blank is Ronan’s sister Beatrix, an unremarkable character supposedly smart enough to be admitted to Princeton but who displays a shocking lack of thought or curiosity…but shrieks and panics almost as well as Harold. Thankfully, Jessica Rothe is less irritating than Jungmann.

And what can I say about the decision, yet again, to feature yet more white protagonists (all but one)? To the film’s producers: I sigh and shake my head in your general direction.

You would think that, in an age of comic books and sci-fi blockbusters galore, characters confronted with the weird would do more than stand around screaming about what happened. But no: the characters, except for Ronan, indulge a meltdown. And the lack of method and consideration? Sure, the characters will speculate and ask some of the obvious questions. Beyond that, however, they act like the protagonists of a horror movie: rushing into things without much forethought. Granted, they aren’t trained scientists…but shouldn’t they at least be somewhat intelligent and methodical in their approach to the unknown? Shouldn’t we expect more from a lawyer and a Princeton candidate? The weak characterization is a letdown given how Leone and Harkcom have shown themselves capable of delivering believably clever characters in unusual situations, such as Peter Krause’s cop protagonist in The Lost Room.

Still, in that rush to the end, the needs of the plot outweigh the integrity of the characters. There’s the inexplicable ability for a stowaway named Tinker to hook up a device to controls the Building…about which he knew nothing about until the Scooby gang stumbled into his world. Also: a surprising familial development should cause the characters to raise a serious existential question, but is simply cast aside in favour of getting to the next parallel earth.

The good news is that none of these shortcomings are insurmountable if Parallels does, indeed, become a bonafide series as its creators hope. Characters can be refined and deepened – their initial ineptitude waved off as shock and inexperience – while big, and not so big, questions can be allowed to breathe with the more relaxed pace of a series. In the proverbial big picture, none of the pilot’s limitations derail the effort to present a rich, intriguing, and intelligent variation on the many-worlds story. Although I’m wary when Leone states that the story that could be completed in 5 seasons, in part because of past history: The Lost Room, though self-contained insofar as its protagonist is concerned, didn’t come close to resolving its narrative and, years later, shows no sign of resuscitation – I do hope is given a chance. My optimism may be cautious, but optimism it is given the really fascinating premise and compelling world-building.

undead and (mostly) loving it

Pride, prejudice, and zombies...oh my!

It's interesting to visit Rotten Tomatoes and see the review spread for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The divergence in reactions, the mixed consensus, strikes me as typical of B-movies, which don't work by reasonable standards, but are fun to watch anyways with the right frame of mind.

So here we have mashup of Jane Austen and the zombie genre, and the result is like a well-seasoned dish; some will think its too spicy, others not enough, and yet others will take after Goldilocks. Where do I stand?

Find out by reading my review at The Front Page Online.

star wars: the fandom menace (at TFPO)

Review/discussion of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Let’s at least be honest and recognize Star Wars: The Force Awakens for what it is: Fan fiction. After the prequel trilogy failed to ignite the shining renaissance fandom apparently was expecting, the House of Mouse bought out the beleaguered Lucas and appeased the angry mob with the sophisticated pandering they’ve profitably cultivated over the years. And so, we are given a continuation that reveres the idea of Star Wars without Lucas’s supposedly pesky vision to derail it. Past films remain “canonical,” even the maligned prequel trilogy, but mostly as something to be seen through the rear-view mirror of a franchise accelerating forwards to a Lucas-free future. Like the now-discarded Extended Universe of books and comics, which operated with Lucas’s hands-off approval, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is Star Wars filtered through other people’s perceptions. READ THE FULL REVIEW AT THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE