Some random stuff I watched or read in the last few days. Just to get the hang of this blogging thing.
[Movie] Batman BeginsNow this wasn't horrible, but by no means the best superhero movie ever. The plot was rather thin, especially the microwave-device in the train part, which could have been lifted straight out of the 60ies TV series. Nolan didn't show Batman full frontal very often for a reason: the costume pretty much sucked. Bale gave an excellent Bruce Wayne though. Rather nice supporting cast, especially Caine and Hauer stood out. Gotham sucked, Burton's gothic vision was so much more compelling and grand than the bland city we got here. Overall a passable movie, but also a missed opportunity for true greatness.
[TV Series] Coupling, Season 2
The British one, of course. A comedy series about six Londoners and their sex lives, mostly. Season 2 contains some of the best episodes of the whole series, with "Her best friend's bottom" as an absolute highlight. Captain Subtext. Genius! And Jeff's antics are pure comedy gold, he steals every scene he's in.
"I've got the key to the gates of paradise but I have too many legs!"[Book] The Scar (China Miéville)I first encountered Miéville's writing when I bought
Perdido Street Station after reading a favourable review somewhere or other. I loved PSS to bits, it's one of the best fantasy books I've read in a long time (maybe I'll talk about it at length some other time), so buying its successor was a no-brainer.
The Scar continues very loosely where PSS left off, focusing on the character of Bellis Coldwine, who played a very minor role in PSS. The book focuses on areas of Bas-Lag far away from the city of New Crobuzon where PSS was set and takes a bit of time to get really moving. But when Miéville hits his stride, everything comes together nicely.
His mad ideas are still there, from the giant Avanc to the really scary anophelii he gives new insight into the workings of Bas-Lag which he seems to have plotted out in meticulous detail. Much of the charm of the book comes from the hints it makes to places like High Cromlech, The Gengris or concepts like possibility mining. The book ends in typical Miéville fashion, but on a more optimistic note than PSS did.
Miéville tends to take tired fantasy clichés and twist them into something which would work in the real world. His protagonists are no heroes, his heroes are not noble but calculating and cold and his villains aren't motivated by evil but necessity and economical gain. Especially the absence of classic hero-figures can be a little jarring at first, Bellis is just so damn inactive and gets played by everyone, it just doesn't mesh with what we've come to expect from fantasy-heroes. But that makes it even more compelling for me. Great book. Go buy.
[Comic] The Losers - Trifecta (Andy Diggle, Jock)The first two Losers collections,
Ante Up and
Double Down introduced the Losers, a CIA special forces team, and their mission to hunt down the man called Max who fucked them over years ago in Afghanistan. Trifecta finally shows us how the Losers were betrayed by Max and ended up thought dead.
Diggle writes the comic equivalent of an action movie, but with brains. And Jocks designs are simply beautiful. The covers of the single issues are among the best on the market right now and the interiors are not far behind. Unfortunately Ale Garza steps in as a fill-in artist on two of the issues in the collection. Mind you, he's not bad, but he's no Jock. The collections ends with a mean cliffhanger, which leaves me cursing myself for not reading the singles. Very good stuff indeed, so no surprise that it's selling shit-all apparently.
