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And speaking of DR. HORRIBLE...
Y'know, ten minutes in, I was already composing my LJ entry. I was already thinking of how I was gonna have to write in, "Oh fucking hell, all right, fine, you win, DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG is utterly delightful." Try as I might, I couldn't help be won over by virtually everything involving the title character and Captain Hammer. But not because of Joss being Joss, but rather... well, I'll get to that in a second.
But then, halfway though around part 2, I started realizing I wanted to bash in my own head/mind. And again, not because of Joss being Joss, and how his style generally makes me want to tear out my eyeballs and shove them in my ears... but because I realized that I hated Penny. I hated her acting, I hated her singing, I hated pretty much everything about her. I kept waiting for Joss to make her more interesting, to give us a character twist of some kind...
... shit, y'know what? Much as I hate the trademark Joss Whedon Spunky Female Characters, *that* would have been a vast improvement over what she was here: a typically boring and boringly typical ingenue.
Now, first of all, I think the ending is perfect.
But it could have been... perfecter.*
Really, after hearing how controversial the ending was (considering my how entire f-list has been consumed by Horrible-Mania befitting the show's mastermind, "perfect" was the immediate judgment that popped in my head. And yet, did anybody else really like Penny? If most others felt the way I did, then the ending kind of loses some of its emotional power.
I mean, really, as it is, that ending is kinda the most satisfying out there. I dunno, maybe if I did like her more, it would have been more distressing, and would have felt more like typical Whedonesque cruelty in storytelling. As it is, it's just tragic enough to feel slightly meaty but satisfying enough that I don't feel depressed.
But I dunno. Maybe it should have been more.
And ending which should be more powerful and tragic feels, honestly, like the best ending under the circumstances. And while I still love the ending, I can't shake the feeling like it could have been more. No, correction, the knowledge of how it should have been more.
That said, how many of you fans of DR. HORRIBLE don't watch THE VENTURE BROS? Because you need to. It's one of the very best shows on TV right now, I absolutely shit you not, and my dislike of Joss was overwhelmed by my love of VENTURE BROS and THE TICK (as well as musicals, but as musical numbers went, they were cute but little more).
I mean, really, I *know* VB is a cartoon, and I *know* it's not Joss, but it's brilliant and I would love to see the day when the latest VB episode gets talked and raved about as much as a delightful bit of entertaining fluff from the "Master." Especially with supervillain/henchman exchanges such as this:
MONARCH: I hated him so much, I just... I just wanted to kick his ass! I wanted to build a machine to kick his ass! I wanted to create an empire to house the machine to kick his ass!"
HENCHMAN NUMBER 24: Then by god... LET'S GO TAKE A DUMP IN HIS POOOOOOOL!!!
And on top of being hilarious, they're increasingly pulling off rich character depth and even poignancy on a regular basis. So, yeah... watch VENTURE BROS now.
I can probably guarantee that it's better than DOLLHOUSE will be.
*See, folks! I can talk in cutesy Whedonese as well! Aren't you amazed? WHY AREN'T YOU AWESOMED BY ME?!
But then, halfway though around part 2, I started realizing I wanted to bash in my own head/mind. And again, not because of Joss being Joss, and how his style generally makes me want to tear out my eyeballs and shove them in my ears... but because I realized that I hated Penny. I hated her acting, I hated her singing, I hated pretty much everything about her. I kept waiting for Joss to make her more interesting, to give us a character twist of some kind...
... shit, y'know what? Much as I hate the trademark Joss Whedon Spunky Female Characters, *that* would have been a vast improvement over what she was here: a typically boring and boringly typical ingenue.
Now, first of all, I think the ending is perfect.
But it could have been... perfecter.*
Really, after hearing how controversial the ending was (considering my how entire f-list has been consumed by Horrible-Mania befitting the show's mastermind, "perfect" was the immediate judgment that popped in my head. And yet, did anybody else really like Penny? If most others felt the way I did, then the ending kind of loses some of its emotional power.
I mean, really, as it is, that ending is kinda the most satisfying out there. I dunno, maybe if I did like her more, it would have been more distressing, and would have felt more like typical Whedonesque cruelty in storytelling. As it is, it's just tragic enough to feel slightly meaty but satisfying enough that I don't feel depressed.
But I dunno. Maybe it should have been more.
And ending which should be more powerful and tragic feels, honestly, like the best ending under the circumstances. And while I still love the ending, I can't shake the feeling like it could have been more. No, correction, the knowledge of how it should have been more.
That said, how many of you fans of DR. HORRIBLE don't watch THE VENTURE BROS? Because you need to. It's one of the very best shows on TV right now, I absolutely shit you not, and my dislike of Joss was overwhelmed by my love of VENTURE BROS and THE TICK (as well as musicals, but as musical numbers went, they were cute but little more).
I mean, really, I *know* VB is a cartoon, and I *know* it's not Joss, but it's brilliant and I would love to see the day when the latest VB episode gets talked and raved about as much as a delightful bit of entertaining fluff from the "Master." Especially with supervillain/henchman exchanges such as this:
MONARCH: I hated him so much, I just... I just wanted to kick his ass! I wanted to build a machine to kick his ass! I wanted to create an empire to house the machine to kick his ass!"
HENCHMAN NUMBER 24: Then by god... LET'S GO TAKE A DUMP IN HIS POOOOOOOL!!!
And on top of being hilarious, they're increasingly pulling off rich character depth and even poignancy on a regular basis. So, yeah... watch VENTURE BROS now.
I can probably guarantee that it's better than DOLLHOUSE will be.
*See, folks! I can talk in cutesy Whedonese as well! Aren't you amazed? WHY AREN'T YOU AWESOMED BY ME?!
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See, I've watched a couple of VB episodes, and it's precisely this kind of humor that puts me off it.
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How about a gay Sean Connery adventurer who goes into a diabetic coma after drowning his sorrows in (and it's really best to say it in Connery voice), "A whole box a Mallowmars and a YOO-HOO CHASER!"
... no? Curses, ah well.
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Hell, I get impatient during low-humor scenes in Shakespeare: "Yeah, yeah, farts, sex, pooping, whatever, get back to the plot." I understand their function, but I don't actually like them.
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Come on. Supervillains, comic geeks, and Gustav Holst. What's not to love?
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I guess, "This is a big evil guy whose minions aren't very competent" kinda got old after, I dunno, The Kentucky Fried Movie. Not without a little extra punch.
It's not that it's animated, but something about this particular type of animated show bugs me. The whole, "We're going to kinda improv for a while, take out the bits that look sorta funny, and then stick some crummy animation over it because nobody likes radio"... I didn't like it when they did it on Dr. Katz, and maybe that just bleeds over.
The music gag at the end was NOT like that, and it worked for me. The actual dialogue sounds like a bunch of guys who are funny on occasion put in front of a microphone and told they have to be funny RIGHT NOW.
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It really does benefit from following what they do, how they lay out the groundwork and build upon the world, as it really is a world-building storyline. After season one (more like only the first 3/4ths of season one) you can't really just tune into a random episode and see what the big deal is. Know what I mean?
That's where the "extra punch" is. Looking back at that clip and trying to imagine watching it out of context from the series, I realize that one wouldn't know why the Monarch is dressed like that, the details of his escape, exactly why his hideout is sideways, why the hell he went to prison in the first place... it's all these plot and character bits that have built up to get to that point. Not to keep flogging a dead horse, sorry.
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I've only caught Venture Brothers on occasion, and inferred that the things that don't work wouldn't work if I saw any more of it. That's a problem with series TV: when your time is limited, you don't necessarily want to watch the first N hours (hours!) of set-up. If you get caught right it's all worth it.
I'll stick some on the Netflix queue and see what happens, though. I'm always looking for something worth the trouble. I've got a queue with over 100 discs on it but I'm really not all that enthused about most of it.
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Part of my Whedon frustrations is how closely it ties to the fandoms of everything else I like. I've long since resigned myself to the fact that if I ever hope to have a geek girlfriend, she's gonna love Joss and/or Harry Potter, and there's nothing I can do about it (I tell myself, "At least it's not anime...").
At the same time, there's often so little crossover from those fans into the spheres of things I follow, the things that give me as much joy and thrill as Joss' work does for them, and especially when these people are people I care about, it's increasingly doubly-frustrating.
Sigh. I know this isn't the topic, but forgive me, I needed to get it off my chest. Lord knows it'll be back on eventually, but for now...
And really, I don't know if you'll ultimately be won over by VB even if you do make it to the second season, especially to the episode where that clip originated. Did you like THE TICK? Because if so, that's the thing to keep in mind to get your foot in the door (the show is done by TICK writers, with the occasional episode by TICK creator and FIREFLY/ANGEL writer Ben Edlund). Go into it expecting a PG-13 rated TICK by way of JONNY QUEST, keep expectations low, and just let it go from there.
I will say that Season One definitely does not go to the levels that truly made me a devotee, but that the episodes to especially watch out for in terms of standouts are "Tag Sale--You're It!" and "Trial of the Monarch," just off the top of my head.
Oh ho boy, pally, I hear that; I keep maxxing out my Netflix queue, and the majority of films there are ones that I've told I *should* see, rather than what I especially want to see.
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I read the book, and it was somewhat more amusing.
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I'm hard pressed to think of anything I saw since I became an adult that I'd be willing to watch twice, which seems to be the absolute minimum requirement to say you're a fan of something.
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What did you think of WATCHMEN, btw?
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I liked Watchmen. I'll admit that I cheated: I skipped to the last issue about halfway through. That's a "me" thing, and I prefer it that way. I like catching the inside jokes on the first pass.
That kind of storytelling will, I suspect, play even better in the film than in the book. There are more tools you can use (sound, lighting, tempo) to indicate the shift in time, and I won't find myself missing the story in the first six panels trying to figure out where the hell I am.
The thing one might expect me to say about WATCHMEN, especially in the context of this conversation, about over-simplicity of views on vigilantism... nope. It didn't even occur to me, as I was reading it. Because it was telling a much more interesting, personal story at the time.
As opposed to say, BOONDOCK SAINTS, which inspired me to go on a mission to track down its smug writer-director and break his fingers to prevent him from ever writing again, for the good of humanity. (I also vaguely recall that the film found cruelty to animals funny, which gets my hackles up.)
WATCHMEN found a remarkable sweet spot, just different enough from reality to allow it to engage that sci-fi "what if" aspect without wandering so far that it entered "who cares" territory.
I'm really looking forward to the film. I think it's the glimpses of Doctor Manhattan that really get me: they're "right".
I suspect I'll try to read it again, after seeing the film, and that's actually rather high praise from me; I don't have time to read anything twice. I'm hoping that I won't find it worse on a second reading. So many things that look thought-provoking actually turn out to be shallow, with shadows giving the illusion of depth. But this one seems to have deserved a good deal of the praise heaped on it.
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Anyhoo, WATCHMEN. I'm really glad you liked it, and that it did strike those chords with you. I wonder what you'd make of V FOR VENDETTA? I've found that when it comes to those two books--generally considered Moore's masterpieces--most people adore one and dislike the other. For me and Alan, we're firmly on the side of WATCHMEN.
And that's a great observation on the "more interesting, personal story" aspect. There have been a lot of superhero satires and deconstructions in WATCHMEN's wake, most of the loud, crass, broad, and ugly ("Hey, guess what? Superman's a rapist! Brilliant!") that as I've started to reread WATCHMEN, I see all the crap it inspired. And yet, even at the start, there are hints that there's something deeper going on here. Similarly, I have wondered if the ideas of WATCHMEN, once considered profound, don't also basically amount to Freshman Philosophy 101 (not to mention that I wonder how much--if any--of WATCHMEN suffers from that damn "illusion of depth"). But the more I read, the more I'm reminded of that personal aspect, and how that's the real key and heart to the story that holds everything together.
A comic writer named Chuck Dixon recently said of WATCHMEN, "It is a brilliant tour-de-force of comics storytelling and features a great example of Moore's greatest talent; the ability to let his readers congratulate themselves for being smarter than they are." I've been pondering that one lately.
While I'd normally sputter, "You SKIPPED?!" you might actually be in an ideal place to revisit the book after you see the film, if that's when you choose to revisit it. For my part, I'll say that I've started reading it again, like I do every year or two, and was honestly surprised that there were still things that I hadn't caught before. I think there are enough levels and layers that some become more relevant to one as they get older. That's pretty damn cool.
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I also had no idea that people would be divided between WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA. I agree with Dixon's comment, but it risks being too glib; there's more to Moore's writing than that.
The most interesting thing about WATCHMEN, I think, is the way the reader participates in the telling: it's about comic books. Vigilantism is only the surface meaning (and a Phil-101 at that), but our fantasies _about_ vigilantism are more interesting. Going through the history of comic-book heroes is the history of the readers.
It's the places where the reader actually DOES have to apply himself, like the implicit connections between Comedian in Vietnam compared to the Superman/Captain America World War II stories, that make the book really work. And the more identifiably human early BATMAN starting in "Detective Comics". They kind of had to put that back, after an age of heroism brought on by WW II jingoism, and it did so in oddly clunky ways. WATCHMEN is a pretty good story, all by itself, but without a cursory knowledge of the history of comic books you're missing the real story.
(It doesn't hurt that I just picked up Alan copy of "Golden Age Tick", to put me in mind of it. Perhaps I was more tickled by that than I should have been, because there was a period-looking cryptogram in one issue containing something like ZZZ.WERJDCNRLKDFKJNCN.ULK, which is such a giveaway and anachronism that it made me laugh.)
Both WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA used a nonlinear style that in my opinion works better in film than in comic books, and it worked out about equally well for me in both. I've said it before: I think that there are a lot of pacing cues and other language bits in comic books that I don't understand.
The page puts extreme strictures on storytelling pacing, and that's a problem for me. For what it's worth, I thought WATCHMEN did a better job of using that than anything I've ever read. That may have less to do with WATCHMEN than the fact that I read other books first.