Michael May's Adventureblog

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

2012-01-27T06:00:00.038-06:00

Though I've left out a lot of important details, there are minor spoilers for the first act or two of Underworld: Awakening in this post.

Well, I was right. Awakening takes place twelve years after the events of Underworld: Evolution, just enough time for Selene to have had a baby and for that baby to have grown into India Eisley. At least on paper. Eisley is 18, and though she can pass for younger than that, she can't pass for 12. That's just one of the problems with the Twelve Years Later timeline.

My biggest issue with it is that it reboots the world, derailing for a while the momentum of the story that Len Wiseman and Danny McBride were building in the first two movies. Not that there was a clear direction where the series should have gone after Evolution. That movie ended in a way that left the story possibilities wide open, so skipping ahead twelve years is as valid a choice as any. It's just that the world has changed so much between the two movies that it took me a while to catch up. And until I did, I felt like the film was cheating a little. Like they didn't know where to go next, so they punted. By the end of the movie, I'd adapted to the new premise and now I'm eager for more; it just took the whole first act to get me there.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, the change I'm talking about is that shortly after Evolution, humanity discovers the existence of vampires and werewolves and immediately goes to war on them. Martial law is declared, there's a huge Purge, and even Selene and Michael are affected. Selene is captured by the humans (led by Stephen Rea, the leader of a scientific think tank that's trying to cure/eradicate the supernatural) and Michael's fate is unknown for a while. Twelve years after her capture, Selene is woken from cryogenic sleep and initially believes that Michael was the one who rescued her. She quickly learns though that it was actually a young girl and that that girl is her and Michael's daughter.

A quick sidebar about Michael: I was pleased that they found a lookalike actor to play him in Scott Speedman's absence. I was afraid that Michael's fate would happen off-camera and we'd have to learn about it through exposition. So though there's not a lot of Michael in Awakening, there's enough to keep me from feeling cheated.

I won't reveal Michael's actual fate here, but as far as Selene is concerned, he's dead. The rest of the film has her struggling with her grief while also adapting to the knowledge that she has a daughter. Selene's never been all that emotionally demonstrative, so the best part of the movie for me is watching her deal with that. There's a cool, powerful scene where the daughter (she's named Eve in the credits, but I don't remember anyone actually calling her that in the film) is concerned that Selene is being cold towards her and Selene explains what's going on. That's the heart of the movie and it's enough character development for Selene to keep me satisfied until the next movie.

There's also some development in the world-building. Rea's think tank wants Eve back and as Selene tries to prevent that from happening, she teams up with some sympathetic cops and eventually uncovers Rea's true motives and a massive conspiracy behind the Purge. That revelation builds the engine that'll keep the series going for another film or two and as long as Selene continues to get the treatment she deserves as a character, I'm on board for the ride.

Fafhrd Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-26T18:00:00.003-06:00

[Comic Megastore]

Underworld: Evolution (2006)

2012-01-26T06:00:00.030-06:00

Though the movie's five years old and I don't think it's necessary to say so: spoilers for Underworld: Evolution below.

Underworld: Evolution continues the story of the first film in a couple of significant ways. I mean, as opposed to Rise of the Lycans, which just fills in details about a bunch of stuff you already know. It would've been easy to just remake Underworld and call it Underworld 2, but director Len Wiseman and screenwriter Danny McBride (not that Danny McBride) showed that they were more interested in building a longer story. So we learn more details about the history of the vampires and werewolves while also getting to see Selene grow some more.

There was a line or two in Underworld about all the vampires and werewolves being descended from one person (who also had a human son: the ancestor of Scott Speedman's character) and Evolution makes that the focus of its story. The remaining vampire lord, Marcus was the first vampire and when he awakens at the end of Underworld, the fracturing of vampire society sends him looking for his brother, William, the first werewolf. Apparently Marcus and Viktor were sort of keeping each other in check (presumably with the third vampire lord, Amelia weighing in on Viktor's side), so with Viktor and Amelia dead, Marcus is free to release William and damn the consequences. William is apparently mad and would destroy the world or something. The script is pretty loose with motivations, which is its biggest flaw. At any rate, unfortunately for Selene, she unknowingly holds the key (literally and figuratively) to William's location and Marcus is perfectly willing to kill her to learn it.

As she and Michael run from Marcus and uncover details about his plan (and about the mysterious man played by Derek Jacobi who's also tracking the situation for his own, secret reasons), they continue and build on the relationship they started in Underworld. There's still not a lot of chemistry between the actors, but I'm still willing to read that as their learning to trust each other. Not that they don't trust each other - they're clearly beyond the suspicious stage - it's just that neither is sure what to expect from their relationship. When something bad happens to Michael and Selene loses it, it's a nice bit of acting by Kate Beckinsale, but it seems over-the-top next to the lack of emotion she's shown about him up to that point. I'm not going to accuse Beckinsale of bad acting, so I'm gonna read that as her surprising herself by how much she cares about and needs him. By the end of the movie, they actually do feel like a couple, so Selene has learned to rely on Michael more than she did in the first film.

Selene also goes through a different kind of growth in Evolution. The movie's sub-title doesn't just refer to the evolution of vampire and werewolf society, but also to physical changes in Selene. It'll be interesting to see how Awakening deals with that.

More than that though, I'm curious to see how they're going to deal with Scott Speedman's absence. I would have liked another film with him in it to get comfortable with Selene and Michael as a couple before they're split apart, but I'm keeping an open mind about his not being there. Hopefully, that will further Selene's growth as a character in some way. I've avoided spoilers for Awakening (though I'll have seen it by the time this posts), but I'm curious about India Eisley's character and her relationship with Selene. There were far too many shots of Beckinsale's belly during Evolution's sex scene to just be about how gorgeous it is. She was totally pregnant at the end of Evolution and I suspect that Eisley is playing her daughter. That's not a spoiler; just my own theory. By the time this posts, I'll know if I'm right.

Emo Superman is emo

2012-01-25T18:00:00.002-06:00

Is this from Action Comics or Secret Hearts? Only the Groovy Agent knows for sure!

Underworld (2003)

2012-01-25T06:00:00.063-06:00

Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's post on Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is the final shot, which is basically the opening shot of Underworld laid over with some extremely spoilery dialogue from late in that movie. I don't like that ending for Rise. It's unnecessary to Rise's story and the only thing it accomplishes is reminding the audience that they didn't get to see Selene (Kate Beckinsale). And, if you're being introduced to these films by watching them in chronological order, it spoils a major plot twist in Underworld.

I do understand the desire to sneak Selene in there though. She's a great character and the journey she goes on in Underworld is a fascinating one. I have reservations about the romance between her and Michael (Scott Speedman), but I'm able to get past it if I read their relationship differently than love. There's not enough chemistry between them for me to root for them as a couple, but that wouldn't be a problem if not for their kiss. Other than that, they're just two people whose goals line up temporarily. The kiss suggests that they're developing feelings for each other, but there's a way of watching the movie where Michael represents something for Selene other than love.

As she's starting to question not only herself, but her entire culture, Michael is the one person she knows outside of her society and the long war that's been the center of her entire life. He's the only filter she has as she attempts to see the world in a new way, so of course she latches onto him. Instead of lack of chemistry, we're seeing reserve. Selene never lets herself be seen as vulnerable (except with Viktor) and Michael still doesn't really trust her, so they're not exactly opening up to each other. They're just in a place where they need each other, so they try that experience on with a kiss. But the movie's about a lot more than kissing.

It's about Selene's eyes being opened and her concept of who's good and who's evil being flipped on its head. Even if you've seen Rise of the Lycans and know who the good and bad guys really are, it's still interesting watching Selene go through that process. That - and the leather, and the eyes, and the butt-kicking - is what makes her a great character.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

2012-01-24T18:00:00.000-06:00

I've been re-watching the Underworld movies this week to get ready for Awakening (planning to see it on Thursday). Since I'm watching them in chronological order, I started with Rise of the Lycans; curious to see how it holds up on its own.

Though the blue color palette loses its effectiveness after a while, that's a feature of the entire series and otherwise the visuals in Rise are fantastic. The medieval setting is cool and the vampires have designed their castles and armor with style. It's also cool to see everyone fighting with bladed weapons. Watching that here makes it even cooler in Underworld when Viktor shuns modern, silver nitrate-filled bullets in favor of his sword. That comes across as an affectation unless you've seen Rise and can better understand his nostalgia for the glorious time when vampires didn't have to hide from humans.

The plot of Rise is pretty unnecessary. It basically expands a brief flashback sequence from Underworld, but what it adds are world-building details, some emotional weight, and action set-pieces, not story. There's nothing new to be learned that wasn't already revealed in the first movie. That's not really the point though. Rise is enjoyable for its mood and setting and its likable lead who, unfortunately, is not Rhona Mitra's Sonja.

After getting good and used to Kate Beckinsale's Selene as the main character of the Underworld series, it was difficult to see her lookalike sidelined so much in Rise. The trailers played up the similarities between the two actresses and characters - and Sonja is badass in this movie (I'm always a fan of Rhona Mitra) - but her role is essentially to end up in Lucian's (Michael Sheen) refrigerator, giving him motivation to start the Lycan uprising and push events towards Underworld. It was always going to have to be that way (again, Rise's story is outlined in Underworld), but it's disheartening to see Sonja so ineffectual in changing her world.

I enjoyed watching Lucian make the change from Viktor's lap dog to warrior and leader though. It's a fine way to spend an hour-and-a-half. I'm just sorry that Rise doesn't have a female character as strong as Selene. It's another reason to miss Kate Beckinsale.

8 Movies I Loved in 2011

2012-01-20T18:00:00.000-06:00

8. Attack the Block

Someone finally figured out that Huge Spectacle does not equal Good Alien Invasion Movie. What's more: this is actually a Great Alien Invasion Movie with awesome, inventive monster designs and characters I cared about. Making the characters likable was a special feat since the film tries hard (and succeeds) to make the audience hate them at first.

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

My only problem with this movie is that it means there'll be no more Harry Potter movies. A fine end to a great series.

6. Hanna

Not just an action movie about a girl-assassin. I love how artfully it was shot and how the butt-kicking is alternated with quiet character moments as Hanna adjusts to life around people for the first time.

5. Crazy Stupid Love

Not only made me laugh and turned me into a Ryan Gosling fan; it made me think about relationships and commitment in a new way. The most underrated movie of the year.

4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I made sure I was good and pumped up for this movie by watching every Planet of the Apes movie and TV show ever made, but that could have backfired had Rise not lived up to expectations. It did a lot more than that though. It may just be the best Planet of the Apes movie yet.

3. The Muppets

I'm a muppet of a man.

2. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Though I kind of quit posting about it, I never gave up my dive into old Sherlock Holmes movies this past Fall. I made it through six of the Basil Rathbone films, watched The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, sat through half of the 1922 John Barrymore silent film, and finally saw Season One of the Benedict Cumberbatch series. What I learned from all that was to be really patient with people's taking different spins on Holmes. Which is to say that Guy Ritchie's is not Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, but I enjoy him in the same way I enjoy Tony Stark and Jack Sparrow (which is to say: considerably). And now that I'm used to him, I very much liked watching him run around Europe trying to stop Moriarty from killing Watson and taking over the world.

1. The Adventures of Tintin

The best Indiana Jones movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark, the best dog since Benji, the best 3D since Avatar, the best motion-capture since ever, and the best pirate battle since...well, ever too, I guess. Sorry, Gore Verbinski.

John Carter Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-19T18:00:00.002-06:00

By Skottie Young. [Comic Book Resources]

12 Movies I Liked a Lot in 2011

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

20. The Lincoln Lawyer

I was in the mood for a legal drama and this is a straight thriller, but it's a very good one (a couple of plot holes notwithstanding). Matthew McConaughey is awesome in this kind of thing.

19. The Thing

I don't understand why people are confused about whether this is a remake or a prequel. It's clearly a prequel; it just hits a lot of the same beats that the John Carpenter version did. It doesn't do some things as well as Carpenter did (the monster test comes to mind), but it's still effective and the CGI monsters look better than most of Carpenter's practical effects. Also, the nerd in me loves how seamlessly the two films connect. They're really two halves of one movie.

18. Drive

The more I think about Drive, the more I like it. Even going into it knowing that it was an artsy thriller, it still took some time for the film to sink in and work on me. It's touching, horrific, tragic, and unconventionally heroic.

17. Horrible Bosses

Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis are all charming and likable in this, but they're upstaged by Colin Farrell and (I can't believe I'm saying this) Jennifer Aniston who are hilarious. Kevin Spacey is also good, but I've seen him play this kind of prick before, so it wasn't as surprising. The real show-stealer was Jamie Foxx. From his character's name to the way he sips his soda, he was the funniest character I've seen in a movie all year.

16. Bad Teacher

At last, a reason to like Cameron Diaz again. And it doesn't hurt that she's surrounded by some of my favorite comedic actors: Jason Segel, Phyllis Smith, Eric Stonestreet, Thomas Lennon, and (after this film) Lucy Punch and Justin Timberlake. Building a story around an unlikable character is a tricky proposition for me, but they made it work.

15. Super 8

I was a little let down by the ending, but otherwise this movie had a touching story, humor, some stereotype-breaking characters, and great performances by the kids and The World's Most Handsome Actor. It also took me back to the '80s and that's a place I always enjoy visiting.

14. Puss in Boots

I'm a little afraid to watch this again for fear it won't be as funny the second time, but I had a blast with this movie. Lots of swashbuckling and it's hilarious, especially for people who've spent much time around cats.

13. X-Men: First Class

I was very nervous about this one after they began announcing the cast and the massive number of mutant characters that are in it. I had X-Men 3 flashbacks. Surprisingly, it's a focused story with a specific point that it makes well. Awesome performances by James McAvoy and (especially) Michael Fassbender too.

12. The Three Musketeers

Not the weightiest adaptation of The Three Musketeers ever, but why should it be? Hits most of the main story beats while adding lots of steampunk and butt-kicking Milady. My only gripe (though it's a significant one) is that the Miladay/Athos relationship is changed enough to rob their story of its power. That's one of the best, most heartbreaking parts of the novel and I'm sorry it got left out. But I'm happy about the war-dirigibles.

11. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

From a story standpoint: the best Mission: Impossible movie yet. I miss Maggie Q though.

10. Captain America: The First Avenger

Lots of pulpy awesomeness and great performances by everyone. I'm not into the costume and I'm disappointed that the script doesn't give Chris Evans time to develop convincingly into the inspirational leader that I associate with Cap, but even if he doesn't feel exactly like Captain America to me, I still like this character.

9. Thor

This, on the other hand, felt exactly like Thor to me. Chris Hemsworth was perfect and the script wonderfully balanced the Earth and Asgard settings in an impressive way. The Thor comics I've read have rarely made that work as well. Certainly Green Lantern didn't with Earth and Oa. Thor had character development that reflected the comics and Natalie Portman made me believe why Earth might compete for his allegiance. Also: Kat Dennings stole every scene she was in.

17 Movies I Liked Okay in 2011

2012-01-18T06:00:00.000-06:00

37. The Eagle

The more I think about it, the lower on the list I think I should have put this. I love an historical action film and the Roman Empire had some great visual style, but I'm remembering that the story here didn't make any sense. That's the problem with making this list at the end of the year; I forget stuff like that. Still, my recollection isn't that I disliked it, so the visuals and action must have been pretty good? Maybe I just blocked out the worst parts. I dunno; you tell me. I'm certainly not watching it again to find out.

36. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

An intriguing drama with some great actors, but very, very slooowww.

35. Sucker Punch

Awesome visuals and set-pieces; confusing message about female empowerment. Hell, just confusing in general.

34. Beastly

Beauty and the Beast for the Twilight crowd. And me, apparently. Not exactly original, but I'm a huge sucker for that particular fairy tale and Beastly hit the right beats to make it work for me. Vanessa Hudgens doesn't give me a ton of reasons to believe Alex Pettyfer would fall that hard for her, but he's great in it and sells the attraction anyway.

33. Drive Angry

Great grindhouse schlock. Didn't exactly make me love Nicholas Cage all over again, but it's my favorite thing he's done in years.

32. Conan the Barbarian

I've seen the Schwarzenegger Conan movies countless times, but I don't hold the first one in as high regard as most fans do. In fact, I like Conan the Destroyer a lot better. Which is to say that my standard for this movie was pretty low and it met my expectations just fine. It's not a great movie and it's not everything a Conan movie should be, but compared to the rest of the sword-and-sorcery movie genre that exists in reality and not an ideal world, it's toward the top of that pile.

31. Our Idiot Brother

I loves me some Paul Rudd, but this is not his best movie. It's funny in parts, but the message is overly simple: that uptight women need to chillax like the bros.

30. The Adjustment Bureau

A good thriller marred by a rushed ending. Still, I love Matt Damon and I totally bought the romance between him and Emily Blunt.

29. Moneyball

I also love Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill (and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he's wasted in this movie). The game-changing formula that this movie is based on is fascinating; I just never got a great feel for what the movie is trying to say about it. Is it a good thing? A bad thing? A little of both? If it's a little of both, why does it matter enough to make a movie about it? The film works a little better as a drama about Brad Pitt's character, but even then I'm left unsure what it's trying to say and I've spent some time thinking about it.

28. The Green Hornet

I probably would have hated this movie had I been a Green Hornet fan, but I'm not and I don't mind its light-hearted approach. I allow myself one Seth Rogen movie a year so's not to get burned out and I enjoyed this one. Kind of wish I'd held out for 50-50, but oh well. This was fun, if dumb.

27. Fast Five

Speaking of dumb fun, Fast Five could have squandered the opportunity of putting Vin Diesel and The Rock in the same movie together. The cynical me actually expected it. But it didn't. Not only did it make the most of their screen time together, it built a storytelling engine that will easily (and interestingly) power this series for the next few movies. On the other hand, them dragging that safe down the street at the end was helladumb.

26. The Mechanic

I only have vague memories of the Charles Bronson original version, but what I do remember was handled more to my liking in this one. I know that's cryptic, but I'm mostly talking about the last five minutes of both movies. Anyway, a better-than-average Jason Statham vehicle, improved by the presence of Ben Foster.

25. Source Code

Nice scifi story. It didn't stick with me like a great movie should (maybe 'cause I figured out what was going on too early?), but it kept my attention and I rooted for Jake Gyllenhaal to figure out a way to save and end up with Michelle Monaghan's dead character.

24. Bridesmaids

Very funny and I like the meta-message it sent about gender equality in Hollywood films. I didn't buy into the romance like I was supposed to (mostly because I didn't like Kristin Wiig's character much), but it was still a funny movie with actresses I love and some nice heart.

23. Arthur

My friends who've seen the original tell me that I'm not supposed to like this, but - like with Green Hornet - I have the luxury of getting to judge it purely on its ability to make me laugh. Which it did. And the relationship between Russell Brand and Helen Mirren was awesome and touching.

22. Friends With Benefits

An almost perfect romantic comedy foiled only by a resolution as cheesy as those in the other romantic comedies it mocks. Between this and Bad Teacher though, I'm right on board the Justin Timberlake Is Awesome train now. I was already there with Mila Kunis, whom I've loved since That '70s Show.

21. Real Steel

Unambitious, but it does what it does - tell a sentimental story about a man's redemption, both to himself and to his son - really well.

10 Movies I Didn't Care For in 2011

2012-01-17T06:00:00.013-06:00

47. Immortals

It sure was pretty, but the story made no damn sense beyond the general outline of the plot. All form; no substance.

46. Season of the Witch

I really wanted to like this movie; partly because I wanted to see a spooky story about a lone warrior taking on the medieval church, but also because I wanted to like Nicholas Cage in a movie again. I can't talk about why I disliked this without going into spoilers, so I'll just say that I wasn't at all pleased with either the major plot twist or the way the climax was executed in general. There's some nice mood in this movie, but it supports nothing.

45. Killer Elite

It's partially disguised by the device of having an antagonist who's not entirely a bad guy, but there's no hiding that it's filled with cliché after action-movie cliché, starting with the former assassin who's new, peaceful life is threatened when he's forced to perform One Last Job. So many actors that I like - especially Yvonne Strahovski - wasted.

44. Tower Heist

There were a couple of hilarious moments that weren't spoiled in the trailer, so that's good. I even liked a lot of the characters; especially the ones played by Michael Peña and Matthew Broderick. But the hitch in the heist was lame and led to an unbelievable and unsatisfying conclusion. And though Eddie Murphy was funnier than he's been in a live-action film in years, this wasn't the role to spotlight his comeback. He's playing essentially the same function that Jamie Foxx did in Horrible Bosses, but Foxx was funnier. Way funnier.

43. Your Highness

So unfunny. The only redeeming quality is Natalie Portman's butt.

42. Unknown

Not anything like Taken, which is what it wanted you to think it was. Characters do things for no good reason and January Jones' performance is unwatchable. Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger are fun to watch together though and it sure was nice to see Aidan Quinn again, even in something like this.

41. The Ides of March

Great performances, but the movie's only message seems to be that Politics Suck. I already knew that.

40. Hugo

I feel guilty about putting Hugo behind Cowboys & Aliens, but let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Hugo presented itself as a steampunk story with a central mystery about an automaton and a secret key. That's the movie that I went to see, but it's not the movie that Hugo is. Hugo is a love letter to the history of cinema; a concept I can get behind, but not while I'm waiting for mystic doors to open and reveal an awesome world of clockworks and magic. I'm interested in seeing this again and re-evaluating it for what it is, but until then I'm stuck with disappointment.

39. Cowboys & Aliens

Some of my favorite fimmakers got together and hacked out this SyFy original movie. The low point in several people's careers. And yet, they're all people I love.

38. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I've already talked about this one at length, but the gist of my complaint is that it's cartoonish and doesn't follow through on the themes or characterizations from the first three films. What saves it is Penélope Cruz' complicated character and its just being a Pirates of the Caribbean movie with all the jungle/island/sea adventure that comes with that (even if it doesn't make a lot of sense).

1 Movie I Hated in 2011

2012-01-16T18:00:00.000-06:00

It would have been nice to round my list of 2011 movies off to 50, but I only saw 48. Slacker.

Like last year, I'm going to break them into categories by how much I enjoyed them, covering one category each day all week. Unlike last year, I'm not going to force 10 movies into each category, so some - like today - will only have one and some - like Wednesday - will have much more. Fortunately, I only really hated one movie this year.

48. Green Lantern

I try to find something I like in every movie and usually I succeed. And if I'm truthful with myself, there were things I liked in Green Lantern. I don't know that Ryan Reynolds is a great Hal Jordan, but I always like him, so having him in the movie is a good thing. Mark Strong made an awesome Sinestro and was probably the best thing about the movie.

The problem is that I didn't grow up with Green Lantern (probably because he wasn't on The Super Friends), so I don't have opinions about him now. The space police angle has a lot of potential, but I've never felt the ring and - perhaps unfairly - always picture Green Lantern using giant, green hands to do his dirty work for him. Frankly, I've always seen Green Lantern as sillier than most people see Aquaman. When I've read about him in Justice League comics, I've tended to re-imagine the effects of his ring so that it's less goofy. Mostly, I imagine it as a generator for a telekinetic force, because moving and manipulating things is how Green Lantern typically uses it.

Because of all this, I needed this movie to pull its own weight in turning me into a Green Lantern fan and it didn't do that. The flaws of the movie were so well-covered over the summer that I don't feel like anyone needs me to rehash them here, but this was always a movie that was going to start from behind for me and it never gave me a reason to change my mind about it or its main character.

The reason I hate it instead of just disliking it is because I want superhero movies to be awesome and there's no excuse for bad ones anymore. The makers of Green Lantern had every opportunity to observe what folks were doing with Batman and the Marvel films and create something that could at least get close to that bar. It ticks me off that they didn't even seem to try.

MLK

2012-01-16T10:27:00.001-06:00

I don't want to let the day pass without stopping to remember and think about Martin Luther King, Jr. He may not have searched for lost treasure, discovered ancient civilizations, or killed aliens in outer space, but he was one of the bravest men this country's ever known.

And he did fight monsters.

I was less than a year old when he died, but I miss him.

Re-posted from January 2008

Top 10 Songs of 2011

2012-01-13T18:00:00.003-06:00

10. "Indian Summer (Des Moines)" by Canon Blue

9. "Sutphin Boulevard" by Blood Orange

8. "You Were Never There" by Diego Garcia

7. "Helena Beat" by Foster the People

6. "We Sing in Time" by The Lonely Forest

5. "It's Real" by Real Estate

4. "Holdin' on to Black Metal" by My Morning Jacket

3. "Wetsuit" by The Vaccines

2. "Money" by The Drums

1. "Man or Muppet" by Jason Segal and Walter

The Goon Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-12T18:00:00.006-06:00

By Skottie Young.

I'm struggling with my schedule a bit yesterday and today, but hopefully I'll be back on track tomorrow.

4 Best New Shows of 2011

2012-01-12T06:00:00.005-06:00

4. 2 Broke Girls

Right away I need to explain why there are only four shows on this list and why one of them is 2 Broke Girls, an unfunny, racist sitcom. No...wait a minute. I can't explain that. Other than to say that I didn't give a lot of dramas a shot this year and most of the ones I tried (like Terra Nova and Ringer) weren't any good. I even gave up on Person of Interest, a show I expected to like a lot, but got bored by thanks to Jim Caviezel's deadpan performance.

So why am I still with 2 Broke Girls when it fails my one-and-only test for sitcoms: Make Me Laugh? It's all about the actresses. I just love Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs. I love their characters individually and as a team and I'm rooting for them like I would characters in a drama. It's weird, but while the show completely fails as a sitcom, I'm invested in the story of these two women whom life has taken a huge dump on and their quest to make things better. I just really wish I could laugh too, but hopefully Jennifer Coolidge's joining the show will help with that.

3. Suburgatory

This is far less a guilty pleasure. I started the show expecting a witty send-up of suburban life and that's what it is; just far less biting than I thought it would be. And that's good, because (and I say this as a city person) I generally don't like a lot of cynicism in my entertainment. The native suburbanites in the show are all weird, but they also have recognizable, human elements too; especially Dallas (Cheryl Hines), whose well-hidden loneliness is kind of heart-breaking.

The main characters, George (Jeremy Sisto) and Tess (Jane Levy) are also much less critical of their new environment than I imagined they'd be. I mean, they raise eyebrows and poke fun, but there's a nice balance between chuckling at the strangeness of suburban life and embracing the genuinely good things about it.

2. New Girl

I didn't even like Zooey Deschanel before this show (I'm the one), but her goofiness as Jess won me over. She really is adorkable. The guys in the cast are all awesome too, especially Max Greenfield as Schmidt (a douche who I thought would be my least-favorite character, but has quickly become my most-) and Lamorne Morris as Winston (who had an unenviable job in replacing the pilot's awesome Damon Wayans Jr, but - helped by some excellent writing - did so amazingly). I like Jake M Johnson too as Nick, but I'm already tired of the show's Will-They-Won't-They plot and he takes shrapnel from being involved in that. Even Hannah Simone's Cece is getting stuff to do and I've already got tickets on whatever the Schmidt/Cece 'ship is calling itself.

1. Revenge

Hands down the new show I look forward to more than any other. I probably look forward to it more than my old shows, even. At least until I get caught up with Justified. Emily Thorne (played by Emily VanCamp) is a female Batman. She's just as rich, just as smart, and just as driven; she just dresses a lot better and has a very specific group of bad guys she's looking to take down.

I hear people apologizing for the soap opera qualities of the show sometimes, but that's what makes it fun; especially Madeline Stowe as Victoria Grayson, the surprisingly sympathetic matriarch of the family that destroyed Emily's life.

So what are your favorite new shows of last year?

Hello, 2012

2012-01-10T18:00:00.002-06:00

I didn’t have time to do my usual year-end retrospective and New Year planning posts this year. We took a trip to North Carolina to see some friends and visit as many Blackbeard sites as we could find. Pictures are coming, but it was a great trip and we saw roughly the spots where the Queen Anne’s Revenge went down and where Blackbeard was killed. We also visited where his men were imprisoned before hanging, the town where he settled down temporarily when he went “respectable,” and the museum that holds the QAR’s wreckage. We even found time for a trip to the Lost Colony on Roanoke.

All of that took planning and doing, so that’s why we went into Cephalopod mode for a couple of weeks. I’d still like to do some Best of 2011 lists though, so if it's not too late, I'll work on those the rest of this week and next. I'll probably do music and TV this week and spend all next week on movies.

Even though I'm not going to do a long, Looking Forward to 2012 post, I do have one resolution for the New Year. I want to be much more spontaneous about the books I read and things I watch. I’m extremely list-oriented and new things that come out usually get put at the bottom of the list. This year, I’m giving myself permission to bump interesting things to the top of the pile. This is largely inspired by The Hunger Games, which I’m ashamed has taken me so long to get to. I wolfed that book down in two days over vacation and the sequels are on their way to me as I type. I want more experiences like that.

It seems that men like women warriors

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

Soon:

Conan, how can you be so wise and such a dork at the same time?

Captain Trueno Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-06T06:00:00.001-06:00

Special thanks to Adventureblog reader Jorge for this one. I love it when you guys send me this kind of stuff.

Atlanteans Hate Cephalopods

2012-01-05T06:00:00.002-06:00

[Diversions of the Groovy Kind]

Wonder Woman Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-04T06:00:00.001-06:00

By Cliff Chiang. [Robot 6]

Homer Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-03T06:00:00.002-06:00

Special thanks to Adventureblog reader Artem for sending me this one.

Uncle $crooge Hates Cephalopods

2012-01-02T06:00:00.001-06:00

Hydra New Year!

2012-01-01T00:00:00.003-06:00

What's your evil resolution?

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

2011-12-31T18:00:00.001-06:00

Hope it's as exciting as what Killraven's got planned.

Have a great night, everyone!

Naiads Hate Cephalopods

2011-12-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

By Jeremy Bastian.

This Gal Hates Cepahlopods

2011-12-29T06:00:00.001-06:00

By Pia Guerra.

Screaming Sweets Hate Cephalopods

2011-12-28T06:00:00.000-06:00

[Pulp Covers]

Deadly Blonde Wenches of Waikiki Hate Cephalopods

2011-12-27T06:00:00.001-06:00

[Pulp Covers]

Cephalopod Weeks!

2011-12-26T06:00:00.005-06:00

It occurs to me that I didn't show hardly anyone hating cephalopods this month. Or October for that matter.

It also occurs to me that I've got the next couple of weeks off work to enjoy the Week Between Holidays and go visit some pirates for New Year.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to catch up with tentacle-fighters while also doing some lazy blogging. And since I'll be at Blackbeard's hideout for part of that time, kicking this off with a Richard Sala Pirate Girl Hating Cephalopods seems like a perfect thing to do too.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.004-06:00

Taking the day off to go visiting with some friends.

[Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Guess who's coming to your rooftop tonight?

2011-12-24T18:00:00.006-06:00

If you'd like to read the story that goes with that cover, Four-Color Shadows has you hooked up.

Old Sinner: Christmas Classics (2010)

2011-12-24T06:00:00.019-06:00

Eureka’s Christmas Classics anthology (Volume 19 in their excellent Graphic Classics series) lives up to its name by including comics and illustrated adaptations of other Christmas stories and poems like “A Visit from St Nicholas” and the Sherlock Holmes holiday classic, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” It’s a great collection and I wish I was here to give it a full review, but let’s just focus on its lead (and cover) story.

Unlike the other comics adaptations we’ve looked at, Alex Burrows and Micah Farritor’s adaptation doesn’t spend any time on Marley up front. In fact, the scene we’re covering this year is done in three, dialogue-free panels over a page-and-a-half. The first page is a splash with an icy Victorian street. We know it’s cold because all the buildings have icicles hanging from them and we can see the breath of everyone on the street, but there’s no snow. And though text explains that it’s “The City of London, Christmas Eve, 1843,” there are no decorations to give the scene that feel. Except for the gray sky, the color palette is all brown, orange, and yellow, giving the street a rich, warm feel, but not exactly festive. I’m reminded of the gloomy opening of the 1935 film. We’re told it’s Christmas, but no one’s feeling it. This isn’t that kind of story. At least not at first.

The first panel on page two continues the mood. It’s another street scene, but more faces are in the foreground and it’s clear that no one’s happy. In fact, they look nervous and paranoid. There’s no clear reason for their fear, but the next panel takes us inside one of the buildings where an elderly man and his clerk sit, working silently. The dialogue will begin in the next panel when someone intrudes on their solitude, but for now that’s all we have.

Burrows and Farritor could be counting on readers’ familiarity with the story, but we’ve seen from a couple of other adaptations that it’s a reasonable choice to allow Scrooge’s personality and Marley’s death to come out in later dialogue. Scrooge and Cratchit’s coal argument is fun, but it’s not necessary to the sense of Scrooge as a despicable tightwad. That will come out shortly enough.

I might suspect that Burrows and Farritor trim this scene way down to save room, but this adaptation is 46 pages, about the same lenght as both Classics Illustrated and Marvel’s versions, give or take a page or two. Since those both take a couple of pages for the prologue, this version’s choice feels deliberate. It’s not as concerned with giving the reader the vicarious experience of reading Dickens as it is finding a new way to tell the story. Which is what I’ve come to expect from the Graphic Classics series.

This entry wraps up our 21 different adaptations of the first scene of A Christmas Carol. I hope it was fun, because I enjoyed doing it and am already looking forward to next year and the visit of Scrooge’s nephew. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it. Starting Monday, we'll do something different for a couple of weeks.

Only one more sleep 'til Christmas!

2011-12-24T00:00:00.000-06:00

[Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

The downside of Scrooge's transformation

2011-12-23T18:00:00.001-06:00

Read the rest at Wondermark and if you like that, check out the other Wondermark holiday strips over the years.

Old Sinner: Campfire (2010)

2011-12-23T09:59:00.000-06:00

I’m not fond of the art in Campfire’s line of adaptations and the first page of A Christmas Carol is a good example of the problem. Scott McCullar is the writer responsible for adapting the novel and he does a nice job with the opening scene. There’s a splash-page prologue with Scrooge standing in profile and Marley’s burial going on in the background behind him. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell from Naresh Kumar’s art if these are two different images or if Scrooge is attending the burial but is stand-offish about it. The text reveals that though Scrooge was Marley’s sole executor, friend, mourner, etc., he “was not so dreadfully upset by the sad event. Instead, he continued with business as usual on the very day of the funeral…on Christmas Eve.” Scrooge could be attending the funeral, but standing back from it, eager to get on to business. Or he could be out conducting business with the shadow of the simultaneous funeral looming behind him.

The introduction to Scrooge’s personality continues on the second page where we’re informed about the sign. McCullar’s text follows Dickens’ closely, but he’ll occasionally modernize the language or tone down its Victorian sound. He loses a lot of the humor that way, but not all. And it’s obvious that he intended for some of that to be picked up again in the art. For instance, McCullar doesn’t use the line about blind men’s dogs, but he wrote in a panel where a dog is in fact pulling its blind owner away from Scrooge. It’s not as funny as it could be because the dog’s overly intense eyes make it look like it’s chasing a squirrel instead of trying to get away from the main character, but I can see what McCullar was trying to accomplish.

The sign itself at first appears to be another problem, but there’s a way of reading it that could say something purposeful about Scrooge. Though the text explains that Scrooge didn’t paint out Marley’s name, the art makes it look like he’s tried to do just that. Scrooge’s name on the sign is bold and black; Marley’s is splotchy with the sign’s background color breaking up the black of the letters. Either it’s been half-heartedly painted over or it’s faded in a way that Scrooge’s hasn’t. Since the first option directly contradicts the text, it must be that Marley’s name has faded. But then why hasn’t Scrooge’s? In most adaptations, Scrooge and Marley’s names prosper or suffer together, but here it looks like Scrooge has spent some money upkeeping his side of the sign.

I don’t remember if I noticed this before, but Dickens never explicitly states that Scrooge kept Marley’s name as a way of saving money. That can be implied from the rest of Scrooge’s character, but all Dickens actually says is that Scrooge kept the name of the firm intact. Could he be proud enough that he wants his name legible? It’s impossible to tell from these couple of pages, but Kumar does draw Scrooge as tall and straight. He has a weak chin, but a strong mouth and piercing, intelligent eyes. If those traits are intentional, we’re seeing a haughty Scrooge in line with Alastair Sim and George C Scott’s.

By the bottom of Page 2, Scrooge is in the counting-house watching his clerk, who appears to be wearing some kind of half-blanket against the cold. The blanket disappears in the next panel where the clerk appears to be opening the coal scuttle. The text mentions that it’s cold and that the fires are small, but says nothing about the clerk’s wanting more coal. I imagine that Scrooge is meant to be glaring at the clerk as he goes for the scuttle. That would fit what McCullar tried to do with the dog earlier; letting the art tell significant parts of the story. In fact, the next panel has the clerk back at his desk, warming his hands at his candle, so this quick interaction between Scrooge and the clerk could have been clever and funny had the art been up to it.

Unfortunately, like with the dog, the art doesn’t do its share. Rather than glaring at his clerk, Scrooge simply appears to be engrossed in his work, so as far as we can tell the clerk got some coal (actually, you have to know already that that’s a scuttle he’s dipping into; you can’t tell otherwise) and then went back to his candle. It doesn’t make any sense.

Old Sinner: Jim Carrey (2009)

2011-12-22T06:00:00.064-06:00

Though there’s plenty to complain about in Disney and Robert Zemeckis’ 3D, motion-capture version of A Christmas Carol, there are some things it does right, too. One of them is the opening shot of a snowy, Victorian street through a window lit with a warm candle and festively decked with greenery and red berries. It immediately puts me in the Christmas mood without so much as a carol. In classic Disney fashion, the camera pans down to the window sill to reveal Dickens’ A Christmas Carol opening to its first page. It zooms to the phrase: “Marley was dead.”

The cheerful music turns sinister as the page quickly flips to reveal a woodcut of a dead man’s face; the jaw is tied shut with a kerchief and coins cover the eyes. As the woodcut morphs into the CGI corpse, it’s apparent that this version is following a similar tactic to Patrick Stewart’s by beginning at Marley’s death.

Jim Carrey’s performance as Scrooge is another thing the film gets right. He plays several characters in the movie and doesn’t do as well with any of the others, but Scrooge’s design and Carrey’s talent help disguise him in the lead role. Like Stewart, there’s sadness in Carrey’s eyes as he pronounces his friend dead. Unfortunately, the script doesn't support him very well. Pronouncing Marley dead isn’t really Scrooge's job, but for the purposes of the story we’re supposed to know that he knows Marley’s dead, so this is them getting that communicated. It’s a clunky way to do it though.

On the other hand, Scrooge’s look is another positive. It's sufficiently exaggerated and cartoonish that he doesn’t fall into the Uncanny Valley. He has a long, hooked nose and a pointed chin. There are unfortunate hairs on his nose to match the stubble on his blotchy face and the hair on his head is long and stringy. This is an ugly man, outside and in. Carrey accentuates that by playing him as having pulled completely inward. He doesn’t appear to care anymore what people think of him.

Unfortunately, most of the other characters aren’t just residents of the Uncanny Valley; they’re proud patriots of it. As soon as we see the undertaker and his apprentice, we’re reminded that this is the same filmmaker who brought us The Polar Express and Beowulf.

Scrooge signs the death certificate, but this isn’t a funeral. There’s no priest and no church; just Scrooge conducting business at the undertaker’s shop. Conducting it reluctantly too. He scowls at the undertaker when the man asks for payment and acts like a spoiled child being asked to surrender a toy to a playmate. It’s a funny bit of stinginess; not over the top like Scrooge McDuck’s, but I smiled. And I chuckled out loud when Scrooge then steals the coins from Marley’s eyes before the apprentice can seal the coffin.

On the street outside, Scrooge looks even more cartoonish. He’s impossibly thin, which works for him. He’s very much the stereotypical Scrooge, hunched and miserable with a perpetual, lonely glower. He doesn’t look sad about his partner’s death, but he does appear to be thinking. Probably about how he wants people on the street to leave him alone. He pushes through couples and when confronted with a group of carolers he stands and glares at them until they self-consciously give up their song. He grumbles about a couple of “delinquents” sliding behind a carriage (I mentioned all the sliding in these movies earlier, right?) and there’s a great instance of a blind man’s dog dragging its owner into an alley to escape Scrooge. As this goes on, music begins (an arrangement of “Good King Wenceslas”) and we get Jim Carrey’s name and the title of the movie before the camera lifts and takes us over the rooftops for a continuous shot that lasts the rest of the credits. St Paul’s makes its traditional appearance.

It’s an impressive sequence, making full use of the animation to take us inside buildings for peeks at holiday preparations or down alleys for a look at the city’s less fortunate residents. When the shot is from up high, it looks real enough that I forget I’m watching a fancy cartoon and marvel for a minute at the continuous shot and the camera’s ability to fly through the middle of a wreath. But then I see the people again and remember.

The sequence ends back on the street where Scrooge is scaring a couple of kids before entering his counting-house. The shot moves to the Scrooge & Marley sign that – again like Stewart’s – ages before our eyes. Still in its continuous shot, the camera moves down to Scrooge’s window and a caption reveals that it’s seven Christmas Eves later.

The film then cuts inside where Scrooge isn’t so much counting money as he is playing with it. Not merrily or anything; he’s just moving it around, picking it up, and holding it with the same sour expression that he’s had so far. In the adjoining office the clerk is trying to warm his hands on his candle.

He’s breathing heavily like you do when you’re freezing and you can see his breath. He takes a look at the padlocked coal scuttle and then the keys on Scrooge’s desk, but a glare from Scrooge stops him before he can even get up to try anything. It’s at this point that the door creaks open.

Marley and Marley

2011-12-21T18:00:00.004-06:00

From Scott C's Great Showdowns series.

Old Sinner: Classical Comics (2008)

2011-12-21T06:00:00.007-06:00

Classical Comics has a cool format for their adaptations of classic literature. They publish a couple of versions of the same story with the same art, but different text depending on your preference. For example, if you want to read Henry V, you can get the Original Text, the Plain Text, or the Quick Text. I'm usually an Original Text kind of guy, so that's what I picked up for A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel, but there's also a Quick Text version that I'd love to see because I'm almost as interested in what gets cut out of these things as how the material is handled that's left in. Oh, well. Classical skips the Plain Text version for this story, presumably because Dickens' English isn't as challenging to modern readers as Shakespeare's.

Like the Marvel adaptation, the Classical version (scripted by Sean Michael Wilson and illustrated by Mike Collins) begins with Marley's grave, but because it's a 160-page graphic novel, it has room to spend a whole page on it. Unlike Marvel's, this version doesn't open on the funeral, but with various shots of the church and its graveyard, ending with Marley's tombstone.

As the text moves to talking about Scrooge, there are several details of the old man interrupted once by the famous Scrooge & Marley sign at the appropriate place. Prolonging the drama of Scrooge's full appearance, we follow him towards the counting-house with him in silhouette and watch his hand unlock the door to his place. I like how when he goes inside, a dog pulls its blind owner across the street, illustrating one of my favorite passages in Dickens' portrait of the character.

Though this is the Original Text version, it is abridged. Dickens' comparison of his ghost story to Hamlet is the first thing I miss. That's disappointing. If they're going to cut that, then why not also cut some of the other text that's made redundant by the illustrations?

At least the art doesn't contradict the text in this one. There's a splash page of the exterior of the counting-house as the text tells us what night it is and describes the weather, but it's nice to see that - unlike Marvel's - it really is cold, bleak, and biting out.

Inside, we don't see the clerk's fire. The text describes it and lets our imaginations figure out what it looks like. I like that. The clerk stays seated through the description, holding his hands near the candle flame in one panel. We finally get a good look at Scrooge and do get to see his fire. It's small and hardly warming, but we can easily imagine a smaller one at Cratchit's desk. Nice job.

Another abridgment though is Dickens' line about Scrooge's predicting "that it would be necessary for [he and the clerk] to part." We're just told that Scrooge keeps the coal-box in his room and that appears to be all the discouragement the clerk needs.

Scrooge is drawn traditionally with a bald head on top and longish, white hair in back. He's thin and hunched over as he works. He looks angry, but he could just be concentrating. It's hard to get a sense of him through the art, but we've already had Dickens' description in the text, so maybe that's not so important.

It takes A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel five pages to do what Classics Illustrated and Marvel needed only a couple. That's because Classical is committed to using more of Dickens' text, but I'm not sure it's a great choice. A lot of the illustrations in Classical's feel like unnecessary padding in order to give the text time to catch up. Though Marvel in particular also errs in using text that it doesn't need to, it does that far less than Classical and moves a lot faster. I'm not even sure how much Classical's Quick Text version would improve the pace because they use the same art for both versions. I guess your eye would move through the panels faster without so much text to read, but there would still be a lot of unneeded panels.

Veronica's Christmas Carol

2011-12-20T18:00:00.001-06:00

It's not a long or true enough adaptation to add it to my list, but "A Christmas Story, or What the Dickens?" from Archie's Christmas Love-In is a fun, if predictable take on the story. Read the whole thing at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

Old Sinner: Patrick Stewart (1999)

2011-12-20T06:00:00.002-06:00

Patrick Stewart's version opens differently from any other I've seen. There's no London; there's not even any Christmas. It begins in the country with a hearse transporting a coffin on a dreary, sleet-filled day. The credits begin immediately and the film cuts to the two men walking behind the hearse. They're both unidentified at first, but one of them's played by Patrick Stewart, so...you know. He looks appropriately serious, but is that a hint of sadness in his eyes?

They reach a country church where other men wait. It's an austere bunch though; not like mourners at all. As the coffin is lowered into the ground, the name Jacob Marley can be seen on it as well as the years he lived: 1783 to 1836. It's cool that the story's told visually rather than through a narrator.

The priest is extremely formal as he officiates the burial. His opening remarks are appropriate too. "Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live and is full of misery." This is a miserable funeral on a miserable day for a miserable man. The priest continues, but his voice fades out as we get another good look at Patrick Stewart's still-unidentified character. His face - surprisingly, if you know he's Scrooge - is struggling with emotion. He wants to be stoic, but there's a quiver to his frown and he wobbles a little from side to side; unsteady on his feet.

As the priest's voice completely disappears, the action moves inside the church where Stewart is signing his name, Ebenezer Scrooge next to Marley's on the death register. This is something Dickens mentions in order to assure us of Marley's death in the book, but it's the only time I've seen it actually portrayed. Again, more showing instead of telling. Very nice.

Scrooge has a conversation with the priest and the other man who was walking behind the hearse, a fellow named Crump whose reason for being there is a mystery at first. The conversation is mostly small talk about Marley's being gone. Scrooge utters the line about being "dead as a doornail" and Crump wonders whether a doornail is actually "the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade." Departing from Dickens' thoughts on the subject (he liked the coffin-nail), Crump asks, "Why not a doorknocker?" foreshadowing Marley's appearance later.

Scrooge has apparently collected himself and is very practical. "Jacob's gone, and there's an end to it," he says. Well, maybe not so practical. He does call his old friend by his first name.

There's some additional discussion about the turnout. Crump notices that it's very poor for such an important businessman. The priest speculates that it's because it's Christmas Eve, but Scrooge seems genuinely confused by that. He also says that it was a grace that Marley was spared having to deal with grieving relatives at his bedside. During this, I suspect that Scrooge's practicality is actually the anger of grief. His brow is furrowed and his frown is pronounced, especially at the mention of Christmas as being any kind of a special day.

After a glass of wine, the priest tells Scrooge that he and Crump will leave Scrooge to grieve in silence. So Crump is apparently the undertaker and not an acquaintance of Scrooge's. Again, I like how this is left for the audience to figure out instead of revealing it through exposition.

Left alone, Scrooge stares at the register and tells Jacob that "the firm of Scrooge and Marley will miss your shrewd brain and keen eye," hinting that Scrooge's keeping Marley's name on the sign will be as much emotional attachment as thrift. He talks about the hard times the two of them have seen, pulling through and thriving "on the idleness of others." And he promises to keep the firm going and prosperous.

The film next cuts to the London skyline (no Saint Paul's, though) and in a shot similar to The Muppets Christmas Carol the camera pans down until we can see people hanging mistletoe through their windows and on down into the busy street where Scrooge walks amongst the hubbub. There's not a lot of the typical Christmas activity yet though. Children play in the streets, but there are no chestnut vendors or greenery on the shops. No one's wishing anyone a Merry Christmas.

Scrooge is very tall and erect, made even more so by his large top hat. He's neither powerful nor hunched over and miserable. He's just solitary. People don't scurry out of his way in fear like they do in other adaptations. They ignore him. And he ignores them too. It's a very lonely scene.

Eventually we start to see some geese hanging in windows and hear some holiday wishes. A few people even wish Scrooge a Merry Christmas, but he ignores them. When he reaches his shop, his clerk wishes him a good afternoon and helps him off with his coat. There's something in the way his clerk says, "Good afternoon" though. It's very gentle. Not fearful at all; just quiet. Almost concerned. Scrooge just grunts in return. A pitiful sound.

Outside, the "Scrooge & Marley" sign goes through a transformation, showing the passage of time. Those familiar with the story would be excused for thinking that the seven years passed between the funeral and London, but that's not so. They're passing now, as we watch. That explains the clerk's gentle concern too; Scrooge was returning from the funeral. As the camera stays on the now-rusted sign (we can barely see Marley's name anymore), we get the last of the credits.

The window of the shop is now incredibly dirty too. At first I thought it was soot from the street, but Scrooge's clerk is able to clean some of it off from the inside. The business - at least the appearance of it - is suffering from neglect. Scrooge clears his throat at his clerk, putting a stop to the impromptu cleaning.

The clerk reveals that he was looking at the sign and wonders aloud that if after seven years Scrooge will be removing Mr. Marley's name from it. That's a little weird for him to ask when he's been employed there for all of those seven years. Is this an annual request? Why pick now to ask it, other than to inform the audience about how much time has passed? It's a bit disappointing after the careful avoidance of exposition so far.

At any rate, Scrooge's response is that no, he's willing to let time continue to remove the name "at no cost to us." Which makes me realize that the shop's disrepair isn't neglect, but more likely a purposeful action on Scrooge's part to keep his promise to Marley. He wants the business to stay prosperous and keeping a close eye on expenses is one way he's going about it. It also disproves my earlier suspicion that Scrooge keeps the sign at least partially out of emotional attachment to it. There's no emotion in his face or voice as he talks casually about letting time remove Marley's name. Scrooge has apparently changed in the last seven years with the absence of his only friend.

Scrooge and the clerk get to work, but the clerk soon stops and goes over to the stove. He opens the coal scuttle and Scrooge stops him with a look. The clerk explains that the fire's going out, so Scrooge orders him to "Poke it, sir! Poke it!" The clerk does so and goes back to work, trying to keep his hands warm on his little candle flame. But Scrooge puts a stop to that with another glare.

The clerk is still quiet around Scrooge, but there's fear now too. Scrooge has become even more solitary since Marley's death. It's doubtful that his relationship with his clerk could ever have been characterized as warm, but now it's downright miserable.

Little Bad Guy and the Rubik's Cube

2011-12-19T18:00:00.002-06:00

Someone nice at Rubik's Cube asked me to consider sharing this. I laughed out loud at least once and appreciate who gets to be the hero, so here it is.

Old Sinner: Michael Caine (1992)

2011-12-19T06:00:00.040-06:00

The Muppet Christmas Carol opens with an overture of the music it'll feature throughout the movie, but there are some sleigh bells early on - and of course the name of the movie - to put you in the holiday spirit.

It also, like so many of the other adaptations, starts with the London skyline, including Saint Paul's cathedral off in the distance. As the credits and the orchestra play, the camera pulls back farther and farther, but instead of revealing the expanse of the old city it stays low over the rooftops, creating intimacy with the place. As the camera skims over buildings, barely clearing some of them, it creates a mystery about what's going on inside or in the street below.

Finally, the shot pulls down next to a roof and pans enough to reveal the street. It's a Christmas scene with lots of Victorian shoppers walking around and cheerfully greeting each other. The camera keeps panning though and on a low arch we see a small, frog-like creature eating a carrot. If you didn't already know about the Muppets, this would be your first hint that this isn't "our" London. The camera keeps moving down, getting us closer to the street, and we see a couple of pigs in Victorian clothing talking about their last meal while planning their next. (Sounds like post-dinner conversation at my parents' house, actually.) As the camera keeps moving, we notice that among London's human population a pig is driving a carriage full of talking melons, a dog throws snowballs at a frog and a chicken, and creepy monsters lurk on rooftops. All of this is apparently normal.

If you do know the Muppets, the first recognizable face is Lew Zealand who's on the street hawking his boomerang fish. Near him though are Gonzo the Great and Rizzo the Rat, running an apple stand. Rizzo's making it difficult by eating most of the stock, but the two stop arguing once they notice the audience. Gonzo welcomes us to the movie and claims to be Charles Dickens, something that Rizzo finds hard to believe. They argue about this until Rizzo tells Gonzo to prove his identity by telling us the story of A Christmas Carol, something that Gonzo is happy to do.

"The Marleys were dead to begin with," he says before being interrupted by Rizzo. There are a lot of interruptions in Gonzo's intro, with Rizzo playing the part of an audience unfamiliar with the story. He shivers at the creepiness of the death theme and expresses curiosity about the Marleys' surviving business partner. (We'll critique the decision to pluralize Scrooge's late partner another year.) Gonzo also identifies Scrooge's occupation for us: "a shrewd moneylender." Gonzo points him out as he comes around a corner and the music begins again.

"There he is," Gonzo says. "Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge." Michael Caine's version, mostly in shadow at first, stalks London's streets with the entitlement of an English Lord and the menace of Jack the Ripper. His black cloak snaps in the wind as he passes.

"Say," asks Rizzo, "is it getting colder out here?" He shivers again.

Scrooge strikes the cobblestones with his cane in loud raps. He doesn't need it to walk, but it succeeds in making him look powerful and important. Between it and the tapping of his shoes, he's keeping time to the music as a couple of human-looking Muppets watch him and begin to sing. Soon, the entire neighborhood is joining in, canorously complaining about how mean and nasty Scrooge is.

The song does most of the work of introducing Scrooge's personality, though Gonzo jumps in at one point with some quotes from Dickens. The song finally ends with Scrooge at his place of business, spinning towards the crowd so that we can finally see his face as he disperses the crowd with a glare.

"Humbug," he says; mostly to himself.

He enters the building and we linger on the sign next to the door. It still says Scrooge & Marley, but it's a nice sign. Scrooge is well-dressed too. Caine's version isn't such a miser that he's unwilling to show off a little.

After some more quoting and color-commentary by Gonzo and Rizzo, we join Scrooge inside where he confronts a customer. Behind Scrooge, Kermit the Frog scribbles away with a quill.

"Bob Cratchit?" says Scrooge. He looks bored by the shaking, fearful client. He points his cane in the unfortunate man's face. "Who is this?"

Cratchit explains that it's Mr. Applegate here to talk about his mortgage. Kermit's Cratchit seems unaffected by Scrooge's posturing. He pauses before the word mortgage, knowing what Scrooge's response will be and not really relishing it, but for the most part he keeps scribbling away. He's seen all this before.

Mr. Applegate begins to ramble on with excuses and apologies and requests not to be yelled at. Scrooge ignores him and lets him babble, going into his office to put away his cape, hat, and cane. When Scrooge is done, he says not a word, but returns to pick up Applegate - who's still explaining - and toss him into the street. During this, we see that Cratchit's not the only clerk in the business. There's also quite a large staff of rats who are considerably more nervous than Cratchit.

Scrooge tells Cratchit he wants to deal with the eviction notices for tomorrow. When Cratchit complains that tomorrow is Christmas, Scrooge says, "Very well. You may gift-wrap them."

The rats take the huge stack of notices and some slapstick ensues as Scrooge explains why Christmas is such a busy time for them. "People preparing feasts; giving parties; spending the mortgage money on frivolities." He's working as he says it; barely looking up. It's almost as if he's coaching Cratchit. Caine's is an arrogant Scrooge, so he obviously doesn't see Cratchit as a peer, but he does seem to think of Cratchit as a trusted employee. Or at least a valuable member of the team. "One might say that December is the Foreclosure Season." He looks up at Cratchit with an ugly smile. "Harvest time for the moneylenders."

At this point the rats encourage Kermit to ask for an extra shovelful of coal for the fire. Once he's broken the ice about it they jump in and explain how cold they all are, being pretty obnoxious about it. Scrooge snaps at them and asks how they'd like to be unemployed, roaring the last word. Any tolerance he shows the competent Cratchit isn't shared with the rats. They get all the venom that most versions of the story reserve for poor Bob.

When Cratchit observes, "I believe you've convinced them once again, Mr. Scrooge," Scrooge actually laughs. Partly because he's cowed the poor bookkeepers, sure, but it also looks like he's genuinely amused by Cratchit's dry humor.

I'm not sure I want to be talking about this yet, but one of the things that's most interesting to track from adaptation to adaptation is Scrooge's transformation. We've already started to notice the differences in portrayals of Scrooge's misery and I suspect that how Scrooge is introduced will affect the point at which he begins to change. I don't want to make any predictions yet except to notice that Caine's Scrooge - while in no way kind - starts with a bit of a leg up on the others thanks to his relative softness towards Cratchit. Having noticed this, I'd expect this Scrooge's biggest change to occur when he finally sees Cratchit's family. But it'll be a while before we see if I'm right.

I guess this is as good a time as any to mention that while this isn't one of my favorite Muppet movies, it is a solid Christmas Carol adaptation. A lot of it is played for laughs of course, but the essence of the story doesn't change and the movie makes some interesting choices to talk about. Cratchit is obviously more competent because he's being played by Kermit who always provides that kind of calmness in the midst of chaos, but it's also a legitimate way of interpreting the character. Such a fascinating contrast with David Warner's Cratchit from yesterday.

Old Sinner: George C Scott (1984)

2011-12-18T06:00:00.002-06:00

George C. Scott's version of A Christmas Carol opens not with a Christmas theme at all. There's a snowy, bustling, London street, but it's very foggy and there aren't enough decorations to immediately know it's Christmastime. The music is also ominous and we quickly focus on a horse-drawn hearse transporting a coffin. The people in the street move aside to let it pass and the men take off their hats in respect.

As the camera cuts to a closer shot to let us see the coffin up close, a narrator tells us, "Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of this story I am going to relate." It's a unique choice among adaptations, going for the spooky tone before introducing the Christmas elements.

Immediately though, we cut to a close shot of a squeeze box and the Christmas music begins, sung by street carolers. It's not the traditional "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," but either an original song or a very old carol that I've never heard.

On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring.
On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring.

Either way, it further prepares us for an unusual take on the story as the scene changes back to the earlier street shot - now without the hearse - and the music morphs into a triumphantly festive orchestral overture for the credits. As we read (George C. Scott's name, incidentally, comes before the title) the film cuts to traditional Christmas scenes: vendors selling hot potatoes, stores decorated with snow-trimmed greenery, children staring through windows at toy displays, and shoppers greeting each other with "Merry Christmas!"

Even after the credits stop, the Christmas music and street scenes continue. Now it's a band playing another traditional-sounding tune as children listen. But pains are taken to make the scene feel realistic. As hinted at earlier by details like the obscuring fog and the potato vendor (not chestnuts?), this version veers just enough from typical to give it an authentic flavor. It feels like real, Victorian London instead of a Hollywood version of it. Children don't just listen to the Christmas band, they blow in their hands and stamp their feet, freezing as they presumably wait for their mothers to finish shopping.

There are other, great details like a young girl counting wrapped packages as they're handed to her in a carriage. There's a cart loaded with holly for sale. A poulterer pulls down a still-feathered goose for a customer, forcing us to imagine the grisly work ahead in order to get it ready to eat. A man lights his cigar on an open gas-flame.

Watching all this from the window of a storefront labeled "Scrooge & Marley" is a man. We cut inside just as he turns from the scene and announces, "Seven years ago today..."

"What's that you say?" growls the voice of his unseen companion.

"Mr. Marley died. Seven years ago this very day."

The unseen man isn't impressed and orders his clerk back to work. Instead, the clerk heads to the fireplace and reaches for the tongs to add another piece of coal. That's when he says it.

"MISSSTER CRATCHIT!"

Alastair Sim will probably always be my favorite Scrooge, but George C. Scott is close behind him thanks largely to his ability to deliver those two words with such power and frustrated rage. Before we even see him, Scrooge is revealed as a man who feels put upon by the sheer incompetence of his employee. And we can't exactly fault him for it. David Warner's Cratchit is something of a goof-off: daydreaming out the window; not going immediately back to work when he's called on it.

As Cratchit explains that the fire's gone cold, we finally see Scrooge. He sits at his desk and sighs, putting his hands to his temples. Cratchit's given him a headache. "Come over here, Mr. Cratchit."

Cratchit dutifully walks over, seemingly clueless to what he's done.

"What is this?" Scrooge asks, pulling at his cuff.

"A shirt."

"And this?"

"A waistcoat."

"And this?"

"A coat."

"These are garments, Mr. Cratchit. Garments were invented by the human race as protection against the cold. Once purchased, they may be used indefinitely for the purpose for which they are intended.

"Coal," he continues, looking at the fire, "burns. Coal is momentary. And coal is costly." Scrooge, it appears, runs a green business. "There will be no more coal burnt in this office today."

There's one of two things going on here. One possibility is that we're supposed to be so familiar with these two characters that we're filling in the blanks on the interaction. Cratchit is the good guy; Scrooge is the bad guy. Poor Mr. Cratchit - as usual - gets no coal for his fire.

But based on the efforts already displayed at re-interpreting the story, I think the second possibility is more likely and that the roles are - at least temporarily - reversed. Cratchit is sort of lazy; Scrooge is simply a good businessman understandably exercising his right to try to get his money's worth from his hired man. Whether or not those roles will stick for the rest of the movie is something we'll have to see, but it seems to be the starting place.

This part of the scene ends with Scrooge's sending Cratchit back to work "before I am forced to conclude that your services are no longer required." Cratchit looks hurt as he obeys, but I have to admit that I don't feel completely sorry for him.

Old Sinner: Scrooge McDuck (1983)

2011-12-17T06:00:00.002-06:00

Mickey's Christmas Carol lets you know you're in for a Victorian Christmas story before it even shows you the title. It opens with the classic Mickey Mouse logo, only Mickey's wearing a top hat and scarf. Then the title cards begin, showing sketched scenes from the movie over a brown parchment-like background and accompanied by an original song, "Oh, What a Merry Christmas Day." The final illustration is the London skyline (complete with required St. Paul's cathedral) that then morphs into the first shot of the movie.

One of the coolest things about Mickey's Christmas Carol is that unlike a lot of sitcom versions where Fred Sanford or George Jefferson or Mr. Carlson are visited by spirits and learn Scrooge's lesson for themselves, Mickey's version doesn't have - say - Donald Duck learning to be less grumpy at Christmastime. It's a legitimate adaptation and everyone stays in character for the whole thing. We get our first hint of this as the camera pans down to a busy street where the Three Little Pigs carol next to a bell-ringing, Santa-costumed Big Bad Wolf with a collection kettle. This obviously isn't just a Victorian Christmas version of whatever world the Disney characters live in. These classic characters are playing other characters.

Scrooge McDuck stomps through the scene, intent on getting wherever he's going with as little human contact as possible. When he's asked by a homeless dog to give a penny for the poor, he lifts his cane and scowls, "Bah!"

He reaches his office where the Scrooge & Marley sign hangs, though "Marley" is scratched out. No expensive paint; just a cheap scrawling-through with a knife. This Scrooge is still cheap, but proud enough not to want folks confusing him with his dead partner. He pauses to look at the sign and lets us know why Marley's no longer around: "dead seven years today." Scrooge also reminisces with a chuckle that Marley "was a good 'un. He robbed from the widows and swindled the poor."

Though a legitimate adaptation, Mickey's Christmas Carol isn't a serious one. Scrooge's greediness is over-the-top and played largely for laughs. He's not a miserable Scrooge; he enjoys being miserly. As another example, we learn that Marley's will left enough money for a tombstone, but Scrooge pocketed that and had Marley buried at sea.

Inside the office, Scrooge catches his clerk (Mickey Mouse) about to put a piece of coal in the stove. Unlike the other adaptations, we learn right away that the clerk's name is Cratchit. He claims he was just trying to thaw out the ink, and sure enough there's an inkpot on the stovetop with an ice-covered quill stuck in the frozen liquid. Scrooge is having no excuses though ("You used a piece last week!") and orders the clerk back to work.

As Cratchit goes back to his desk, he musters courage to ask for a half-day off for Christmas tomorrow. Mickey's Christmas Carol is a severely condensed version of the story and this is the first example of that. In Dickens' story (and most of the adaptations), this conversation doesn't happen until later when Cratchit's getting ready to leave. The half-day is also unique to Mickey's version, but again it makes Scrooge's cheapness that much more over-the-top and ridiculous. As does Scrooge's agreeing to the time off under the condition that he'll be docking Cratchit's pay accordingly.

As does Scrooge's wonderful "Talk is Cheap" needlepoint that decorates the office.

As does the revelation that Cratchit's last raise was a ha'penny three years ago. When Cratchit started doing Scrooge's laundry.

This part of the scene ends with Scrooge's going to his desk to look over the books. In typical McDuck fashion, he ends up hugging his gold and cooing, "Money, money, money!" before the door opens to reveal a visitor.

Old Sinner: Marvel Classics Comics (1978)

2011-12-16T06:00:00.017-06:00

What made me think of Classics Illustrated yesterday was getting ready to talk about Marvel Classics Comics #36 from 1978. Marvel Classics was basically their version of Classics Illustrated with each issue adapting a different piece of literature from a wide variety of genres. They covered Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Black Beauty and The Iliad. The Christmas Carol issue happens to be the last in the series, but we won't let that give us a complex. If you want to read along, Diversions of the Groovy Kind has great scans of the entire issue.

The '70s were an exciting time for Marvel's readers with the publisher's exploring a bunch of new genres outside of superhero stories. But whether the genre was horror, kung fu, or blaxploitation, Marvel always managed to put a superhero twist to it. The result was heroes like Ghost Rider, Shang Chi, and Luke Cage. And while we shouldn't expect to see Scrooge crossing paths with Captain America or Man-Thing in this adaptation, I'm curious to see how much of Marvel's familiar style affects their interpretation of the story.

Scripted by Doug Moench and illustrated by various artists, it begins with a splash page showing Scrooge in bed; surrounded by the three Spirits. The text presents the "old sinner" description followed by the tease, "Then he met the Spirit." I'm reminded of The Stingiest Man in Town, which used a similar device to excite its presumably younger audience.

The story proper starts on the following page. In the first panel, Marley's coffin is lowered into the ground (shown from inside the grave, because it's visually more exciting) as the text informs us of Marley's death and his business relationship with Scrooge. It also borrows straight from Dickens the bit about Scrooge's being Marley's sole everything.

The next panel then has Scrooge leaving his counting house where "Scrooge & Marley" is clearly seen. Moench points this out in the text, adding the detail that at Marley's funeral Scrooge vowed to leave Marley's name on the sign, a scene we'll actually get to see in Patrick Stewart's version. When Stewart does it, it brings a sentimental element to Scrooge, but here it just makes him look foolish. Moench writes that Scrooge "solemnized" Marley's funeral by pledging to leave the sign alone, but since we don't get too see it, there's no reason to believe that he's serious. In the rest of the text, Moench follows Dickens' lead in mocking Scrooge, so while leaving the sign unchanged is a conscious decision of Scrooge's (in most versions, he seems to just not think about it), the only emotion attached to it is greed.

Scrooge is drawn younger than usual in this version. Maybe it's a coloring error, but there's a hint of blonde in Scrooge's hair. He's certainly grumpy and serious, but instead of looking elderly, he could be in his late middle-years. I'm not sure how this could affect the characterization, but we'll keep an eye on it.

The first page ends with Scrooge's walking through the streets of London as the text informs us that he's just as miserable as Marley was. A man on the street glares judgmentally at Scrooge as he passes.

Page two opens with another street scene, but without Scrooge. As a result, the people look a lot happier. Unfortunately, the relationship between art and text gets very sloppy here. Though there are no visible decorations or any sign of snow we're told that it's Christmas Eve and that the weather is cold, bleak, and biting. We're also informed that there is fog when there isn't any. The art in the next panel matches the text better, but goes too far the other direction. Moench lets us know that "Scrooge sat busy in his counting house" and sure enough, he is. I have to remember that I'm not reviewing this for the proficiency of its storytelling, but so far, it's pretty dismal.

Inside the counting house, we find Scrooge and his clerk working. There's also a quick panel of the clerk's trying to add some more coal to his fire. When I covered Dickens' text for this scene, I cut it off just before the coal argument, because I was trying to get just the introduction to Scrooge's character. In next year's section, Dickens goes inside the counting-house and the story actually begins, so I planned to include that with the opening scene of the nephew's arrival. Of course, movies and comics don't have the luxury of an introductory section, so they use the coal argument to show what Dickens spends several paragraphs telling us. The coal argument is often the only intro to Scrooge's personality that we get. Because of that, I should have included it in this year's discussion of the text. Next year I'll have to come back and cover some of these coal arguments again once we've had a chance to look closely at what Dickens wrote about them.

Old Sinner: Classics Illustrated (1948)

2011-12-15T06:00:00.018-06:00

I forgot one! I don't know how Classics Illustrated #53 slipped off my list, but it did and I need to come back and pick it up. It's the first of five comics adaptations we'll look at and since it's Classics Illustrated, it's arguably the most famous. George D Lipscomb wrote the adaptation and Henry Kiefer illustrated it. If you want to read ahead, the Dickens Christmas website has the whole thing.

All the scene-setting is done on a splash page that - by spoiling the rest of the story - reveals that it expects the reader to already be familiar with it. Surrounded by characters from the tale, including the Ghosts of Marley and Christmas Past, a prologue gives us a description of Scrooge's personality and reveals that his partner Marley is dead:

The immortal Christmas "ghost story" portraying the hair-raising experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge, a stonyhearted old skinflint, who lives solely to satisfy his own material wants and scoffs openly at the spiritual pleasures of his fellow-men.

His partner, Jacob Marley, a long time dead and buried, Scrooge carries on the business by himself, even though the sign above the warehouse still bears the legend, "Scrooge and Marley."

One cold bleak and biting afternoon, the day before Christmas, finds Scrooge at work in his counting-house.

One thing I've noticed is that Lipscomb introduces an overt assumption about the source of Scrooge's problem. Dickens lets us know that Scrooge is grasping and covetous, but doesn't say anything at first about why he's that way. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation by adapters and we've already noticed some differences in posture, which is really just another way of talking about Scrooge's presence. Some film Scrooge's are small and miserable men; others are imposing and proud. Lipscomb's "lives solely to satisfy his own material wants," which puts him more in the "proud" category. What's more, it means that Scrooge isn't a true miser.

It's going to be interesting to see how various interpretations mix and match these traits: pride vs misery; material indulgence vs extreme frugality. Scrooge is famous for being a miser, but do all adaptations portray him that way? Something to keep an eye on.

On the second page, the comic reveals that Scrooge and Marley has had a very good year before introducing us to Scrooge's unnamed, freezing clerk who wants to replenish the fire,

Kiefer's Scrooge looks like he should be introducing Tales of the Crypt. He berates the clerk for his age twice on the page; something that I've never seen in the character before. This Scrooge openly delights in his money, but envies youth. That's another strong motivation for him to be the way he is. And, I extrapolate, a strong motivation for him to change in the end. He doesn't have much time left to enjoy his wealth and resents it. The Spirits will reveal to him a way to get pleasure that also offers a purpose.

In the first panel of page three, the clerk returns to his desk to warm his hands on his candle and mutter about Scrooge. This clerk shows a cynical side that we don't see in other versions. He calls Scrooge an "old miser" (which is understandable given the circumstances even if it's not technically correct) and says that if he didn't have a family to think of, he'd leave Scrooge and "his wormy old books." These thoughts are interrupted by a sudden visitor to the counting-house.

Tim Hamilton's Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

2011-12-14T18:00:00.002-06:00

[Drawbridge]

Old Sinner: Walter Matthau (1978)

2011-12-14T06:00:00.050-06:00

In the '70s, there was no competing with Rankin-Bass for televised animation, whether hand-drawn or stop-motion. They were everywhere: from Christmas specials like Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town to classic literature like The Hobbit and their Festival of Family Classics series. So, it didn't shock me to learn that they also had their turn at A Christmas Carol. Their casting of Walter Matthau as Scrooge was a bit of a surprise though.

Rankin-Bass' wasn't the first to be called The Stingiest Man in Town. It borrows its name from a musical TV version that starred Basil Rathbone as Scrooge (which I'm gonna have to get and watch now). I don't know how Rathbone's goes yet, but the cartoon opens in the traditional, Christmas Carol way with snow falling over the Victorian London skyline. You can recognize St. Paul's of course, but Big Ben is also there to clue you in, especially if you're a younger viewer.

It should be interesting to compare this with Mickey's Christmas Carol. As with Shower of Stars and the Chuck Jones version, it'll be interesting to watch the cuts and see how they keep The Stingiest Man in Town short enough for TV (though this was an hour-long special, so they have more room than some of the others). I'm especially interested though in seeing how Rankin-Bass' version is different from Disney's, the only other animation studio putting stuff out with anywhere near the frequency and popularity of Rankin-Bass at the time. I'm very familiar with Disney's version and know that since its primary purpose was to entertain, they took some major liberties with the story. Rankin-Bass's adaptations of classics took liberties too and certainly sought to be entertaining, but they also had an educational component to them. Or maybe I'm mistaking schmaltz for a serious side. Either way, that should create a very different feel from Disney's.

Back to the story, the London skyline gives way to a Christmas street scene with carolers singing a typically upbeat Rankin-Bass tune in front of wreath-filled windows. I can't embed video for it, but you can see the first part of the special and hear the songs on YouTube.

Holly Ho!
Holly Ho Ho Ho!
Holly Ho! Holly Ho!
Sing a Christmas carol written long ago.

As they sing, the view changes to a large house, also decorated for Christmas. There's a fire blazing in the fireplace, the table is set for Christmas dinner, and presents fill the space beneath a decorated tree. Above the tree, the camera zooms in on a small, anthropomorphic insect who's dancing in the rafters and joins in the song. Any child of the '70s will immediately recognize the voice as Tom Bosley from Happy Days.

He wishes us Merry Christmas and welcomes us to "the merry household of the kindest and most generous man in town, Ebenezer Scrooge." He acknowledges our surprise at that title, but asks us to take his word for it. By way of credentials, he introduces himself as B. A. H. Humbug, Esq. Rankin-Bass may have sought to educate, but they knew their audience and loved to throw in friendly, celebrity narrators or cutesy animal sidekicks; sometimes - like here - both in the same character.

Humbug concedes that Scrooge wasn't always so jolly. As he explains how Scrooge used to be, the scene changes to another snowy, London street where children are building a snowman in front of Scrooge & Marley's counting house. Humbug quotes Dickens ("Now Marley was dead to begin with.") while explaining that Scrooge kept Marley's name on the sign because he was too cheap to paint it out.

Inside the counting house, Scrooge - looking very much like a bald, white-headed Walter Matthau - smiles and plays with his stacks of coins while his humble-looking clerk writes at another desk. The Humbug sings:

There was a mean and stingy man
Named Ebenezer Scrooge.
His heart was hard and cold because
He was the Devil's stooge.

While Scrooge sat down to count the gold
That his mind could never leave,
Young people in the square outside
Celebrated Christmas Eve.

If you've seen Rankin-Bass' The Hobbit, you're familiar with this tendency to suddenly insert snippets of songs here and there. It works better in The Hobbit though because that's what Tolkien did too. In A Christmas Carol, it's not without its charm, but it does get distracting.

As Humbug sings, Scrooge continues playing with and biting his money, stopping occasionally to glare spitefully out the window at the snowman-builders. As Humbug gets to "Celebrated Christmas Eve," they yell a Merry Christmas through Scrooge's window. That gets him up and to the door.

He shakes his cane at them and cries, "Away! Away with you and your infernal 'Merry Christmas!'" Rankin-Bass dialogue is nothing if not cheesy. And - as long as we're being critical - saying that Scrooge "cries" at the kids is an overstatement. Walter Matthau was never a particularly passionate actor and I'm afraid that's true here too. Instead of acting, he sounds like he's reading the lines to his grandkids from a book.

Calling Scrooge kind and generous isn't the only foreshadowing this production does. Immediately after Scrooge's chasing off the children from his store, we cut to his bedroom where he's checking under the bed with his candle before he gets in and covers up. Humbug quotes Dickens' "old sinner" passage and says that that's how it was "until that Christmas Eve when the ghost came." Cue the chain-clinking.

The first time I saw this version I thought that maybe they were going to skip over the entire first part of the story and go straight to Marley's ghost. Once you have an insect named BAH Humbug narrating your story, you get the feeling that the traditional way of telling this thing has kind of been left on the curb. But never fear. As Marley's shadowy figure forms at the foot of Scrooge's bed, Humbug goes into carnival barker mode. "Ladies and gents; boys and girls; a ghost story for Christmas: The Stingiest Man in Town." The music swells and the credits begin.

It's cheesy, but it's also a unique, fun, suspenseful way of opening the story. Sure, it spoils the ending, but it either assumes that you're old enough to know the end already or young enough that you may need some encouragement to watch this miserable old guy for an hour. And hey! There's going to be a ghost!

The credits play over more London skyline (now with the London Bridge, the Tower of London, and probably some other landmarks that I'm too dense to identify easily). An orchestra plays an overture of tunes we can expect from the production until we get back to the street in front of the counting house. Carolers, of course, are singing.

An old-fashioned Christmas
With snow falling hard
On scenery looking like
A pretty Christmas card.

Inside the counting house, Humbug keeps up the song for Bob Cratchit as Scrooge merrily plays with his money in the background.

An old-fashioned angel
On top of a tree
And candlelight shining down
On friends surrounding me.

Scrooge interrupts the song to yell at Cratchit for wasting time and threatens him about becoming "an old-fashioned pauper if you don't attend to your job" before fussing at him about using too much coal. There's nothing new about Scrooge and Cratchit so far in this version. Rankin-Bass' innovations are all about the narrative structure.The scene ends with Cratchit's changing the subject by looking out the window and noticing aloud that someone's coming.

George O'Connor's Marley

2011-12-13T18:00:00.004-06:00

I've had some Christmas Carol art links sitting in a folder for a while now, so I figure now's a good time to post them. This is George O'Connor's (Olympians) version of Marley's Ghost.

Old Sinner: Alastair Sim (1971)

2011-12-13T06:00:00.019-06:00

Though Alastair Sim of course played Scrooge in of one of the most famous adaptations of A Christmas Carol, what you may not know is that he was also the voice of Scrooge in Richard Williams' animated version from 1971. And if you didn't know that, you also didn't know that it was produced by Chuck Jones and won an Oscar in 1973 for best animated short.

"Now wait a minute," you might say. "How did it win an Oscar two years after it was released?" I wondered the same thing. Apparently though, it was created for TV and originally aired at Christmas in '71 on ABC. According to this Christmas Carol site, it was released to theaters especially so that it could be eligible for the Oscars. It won, but that led to the Academy's changing its rules so that nothing else originally shown on TV could win again.

It opens with threatening music, an impenetrable fog, and falling snow. The orchestra soon gives way to a children's choir singing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," but the arrangement still has a sinister air to it. The fog clears enough to show us the London skyline, dominated by chimneys and thick, black smoke. That gives way though to other Christmas-in-London scenes as the credits begin to roll. Saint Paul's Cathedral is in this montage of course, but what's most remarkable is the shaded-pencil style of the animation. It's dirty and messy, but also soft and lovely. Much like Victorian London at Christmastime.

The camera's still flying us over rooftops when the credits end and Michael Redgrave's narration begins:

The Place: London.
The Time: 1843.
The Season: That of jollity, of festivity and charity; holly and berries and good will to all men. With perhaps one exception. It is with this exception that we are concerned in our story. The exception is Ebenezer Scrooge.

The camera closes in on a single, lighted window in all the dark town. We go through and find Scrooge writing at his desk. He looks haughty; almost bored with what he's doing. There's a fade to black, then we fade back in to focus on Bob Cratchit, miserably trying to warm his hands over his small candle flame. Bob looks lifeless, sad to his soul, and utterly defeated. The two work in silence for a couple of seconds before the door opens and a visitor comes in.

Like with the Shower of Stars adaptation, this abbreviated version is going to cut out any preliminary getting to know Scrooge and let the characterization play catch up as the plot unfolds. I said about the Shower of Stars version that that's a logical cut, but it just now occurs to me that the also-short Mickey's Christmas Carol didn't do it that way. As we'll see when we get to it, Disney uses jokes to show Scrooge's stinginess, but also takes the time to reveal his personality (and let us know about dead Marley) before any visitors arrive at the shop. It'll be interesting to continue keeping an eye on these shorter versions and think about what they choose to trim, what they decide to leave in, and what that says about the themes they're highlighting.

Old Sinner: Albert Finney (1970)

2011-12-12T06:00:00.005-06:00

Albert Finney's Scrooge introduces the Christmas theme right off. Before any images appear, we're treated to the peals of Christmas bells that then segue into an original song, "A Christmas Carol," as a series of title cards begins. Leslie Bricusse wrote the screenplay and the songs (and got Oscar nominations for Best Original Song and Best Original Song Score). The lyrics go:

Sing a song of gladness and cheer
For the time of Christmas is here
Look around about you and see
What a world of wonder
This world can be
Sing a Christmas carol
Sing a Christmas carol
Sing a Christmas carol
Like the children do
And the joy and beauty
Oh, the joy and beauty
That a merry Christmas can bring to you!

The title cards are wonderfully illustrated by Ronald Searle, best known to comics fans as the creator of St. Trinians School (which was re-adapted for film not too long ago). The drawings are all of standard, Victorian Christmas scenes, but Searle makes them whimsical and fun. The last one morphs into the first live-action shot of the film as a man pushes a cart down a snowy, gaslit street.

Scrooge is the first adaptation with sound not to use "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" in it's title sequence, but it quickly makes up for that by having a quintet of Cockney kids sing it in the street. The carolers are more than background music too. After getting a sweet tip from the first house we see them at, they move on to Scrooge & Marley's, whose sign reveals them to be "Private Merchant Bankers and Moneylenders."

Inside, Scrooge is hunched over his desk, counting coins. Finney's Scrooge is more like Sir Seymour Hicks' than Mark McDermott or Alastair Sim's. He's a hunched over, crab-fingered, old coot. Distracted by the singing, he gets up, mumbling about "caterwauling" and "why can't they leave a man in peace?" In another time and place, he'd be the guy sitting on his front porch, shaking his cane, and yelling at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn. He's largely powerless and completely pathetic.

I love how when he gets up to shoo off the boys, he first grabs an empty drawer from the desk and uses it to cover up his money. Maybe he expects the wind to come through the door and mess up his piles, but I suspect that he's distrustful of the only other person in the room: his clerk. That's awesome and it hints that Finney's Scrooge is a character to be laughed at more than hated or pitied.

Not having a cane, Scrooge grabs a fireplace shovel before going to the door. I notice that - breaking away from the traditional argument about the coal - he has a small fire going. I also notice that his desk is right in front of the fireplace, blocking any heat from reaching the clerk. As Siskoid pointed out when I posted about this on the separate Christmas Carol blog, this Scrooge is more selfish than miserly. That's a fair, interesting interpretation of the character and doesn't change his core flaw. If anything, it highlights it more clearly. Scrooge's main problem in the story is that he doesn't use his resources to help others. That he also traditionally doesn't use them to help himself really just confuses that point.

Scrooge runs off the carolers with swings of the shovel and a good "Humbug" muttered at their backs as they laugh and run away. Coming back inside he's still mumbling about "young ruffians" and their "Christmas nonsense." He catches his clerk smiling at this and tells him, "Beware, Cratchit. You have a dangerous sense of humor."

Before Scrooge can get back to his desk, there's another knock on the door. Thinking it's the carolers returned, he storms back to the door, screaming as he opens it. But it's not the kids.

There's no mention of Marley yet.

Old Sinner: Teen Titans (1968)

2011-12-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

Though my original intention was to stick to more-or-less faithful adaptations of A Christmas Carol instead of spoofs or homages, this one's so ridiculously goofy that I'm adding it for kicks. It opens with the Teen Titans (still just Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, and Kid Flash at this point) sitting around their clubhouse and reading. Most of them have comics about their adult partners, but Robin's enjoying A Christmas Carol, something that he gets grief for that from his pals, Wonder Girl in particular. "That story's definitely ungroovy these days!" she says. "Who could believe in such uncool characters as Scrooge - or Bob Cratchit - all that old jazz?" Man, that Bob Haney could write some dialogue, eh, Daddy-o?

Robin caves to peer pressure and puts Dickens away in favor of the latest issue of Batman. Meanwhile, across town at a private junkyard (awesomely named Junk-O-Rama), proprietor Ebenezer Scrounge is arguing with his employee Bob Ratchet over the setting on the thermostat.

I tell you, if Haney's version of hep-talk was enough to make me rethink reading these stories (au contraire, it's so not), Nick Cardy's art would be enough to keep me around. Junk-O-Rama is a snow-covered playground of lost treasures that looks like it was designed by Tim Burton. The office, for instance, is in an old school bus with a functional smokestack sticking out of the side.

After Scrounge and Ratchet argue about the heat, they start in on whether or not Ratchet gets the next day, Christmas off. Since this is happening at the same time as the Titans' earlier conversation, it means that Wonder Girl, Aqualad, and Kid Flash were making fun of Robin for reading A Christmas Carol ... ON CHRISTMAS EVE! Who's your Scrooge now, you little punks?

Back to Scrounge and Ratchet though, if we're going to analyze them in the same way we have the other versions, Scrounge looks positively wicked. He's younger than Scrooge is usually depicted and has huge, pointed eyebrows and a hairstyle that suggests devil horns. Surprisingly, he's gentler on his employee than Scrooge usually is, going so far to address Ratchet as "my good fellow."

Not that their relationship is equitable or even pleasant. When Ratchet complains, he whines like a child pleading with his parent. "Couldn't we turn up the heat a little?" "But everyone celebrates Christmas!" And like a child, he's stronger in his objections when he's thinking to himself than when he addresses his boss.

Scrounge finally relents on the whole day-off thing as long as Ratchet gets all his work done before he leaves for the night. In fact, he's eager to get Ratchet out of the office and lets him leave early. As we quickly find out, Scrounge is up to something illegal and doesn't want Ratchet to know about it. This is a major departure from Dickens, but since it's a Teen Titans comic first and a Christmas Carol adaptation second, we're going to need some criminal activity to get the heroes involved.

What's going on is that Scrounge is leasing out part of the junkyard to smugglers. It's a crazy operation in which the smugglers import duty-free junk from overseas and then use a fancy ray gun to make it brand-new so they can sell it for a hefty profit. Of course, they could save themselves some shipping costs by just turning the junk already in Scrounge's yard into new items (or better yet, patent the technology and live comfortably off the profits), but that's not brought up. Ladies and Gentlemen: Bob Haney.

Unfortunately for the crooks, Ratchet's wheelchair-bound son Tiny Tom has come to the junkyard to visit his dad (not realizing that he's gone home early) and learns about the scheme. Tom tells Ratchet, who confronts Scrounge, who - no surprise - doesn't really care as long as the smugglers keep paying him. In fact, he threatens to fire Ratchet if he goes to the police about it and decides that Ratchet does have to work Christmas Day so that Scrounge can keep an eye on him.

We learn that Ratchet's a widower with no other kids to clutter up the story. He needs his job in order to buy an electric wheelchair for Tom, so he agrees to abide by Scrounge's decision. Tom, on the other hand, knows who he can go to without involving the police: The Teen Titans!

Tom comes back with the Titans a little later and they find the smugglers still there. Before they can catch the bad guys transforming the junk though, the villains are startled by another person in the junkyard. They fight the shadowy figure, but he beats them up and sends them running for their truck. With no evidence of any wrong-doing, the Titans and Tom decide to follow the stranger instead. He leads them to Scrounge's house.

Which is where we'll stop for this post. There are no nephews or charitable solicitors in this version, so it'll be a couple of years before we come back to it. Suffice to say that the shadowy stranger is a stand-in for a Dickens character, so we'll pick up this version again once the other versions have had a chance to catch up.

Comics You Can Dance To Interview

2011-12-08T18:00:00.010-06:00

Danny Djeljosevic and Nathaniel MacDonald at Comics Bulletin's Comics You Can Dance To podcast were nice enough to let Jason Copland and I crash their party this week.After the most awesome musical introduction ever, we talked for half-an-hour about Kill All Monsters: the history, the creative process, the influences, and balancing KAM with other projects (in my case, blogging and some other short stories I've got lined up). It was extremely fun and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. Thanks again to Danny and Nate for having us on.

I've kind of caught the podcasting bug now. I also just had a great time recording an episode with Tommy Hancock for his Genre Talk program about one of my favorite genres. I'll link to that when it's up and tell you more about it then.

Old Sinner: Fredric March (1954)

2011-12-08T06:00:00.011-06:00

This one's not a movie, but an episode from the '50s anthology TV series Shower of Stars. I'd never heard of that show, but according to Wikipedia it was a companion show to CBS' Climax Mystery Theater (most famous for its episode that adapted Casino Royale with Barry Nelson as an American James Bond). Climax focused on drama; Shower of Stars on musical comedy.

The Christmas Carol episode has a fantastic cast and I can't believe it's not more popular. Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) plays Scrooge, Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes, Son of Frankenstein, etc.) is Marley, and a very young Bonnie Franklin (One Day at a Time) is a young Cratchit. Also, the music is by Bernard Herrmann (The Day the Earth Stood Still, all the best Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock films).

It opens with a Victorian lamplighter igniting a gas lamp as carolers sing a Christmas song. Unfortunately - because it's quite beautiful - I can't find a YouTube clip of it, but the lyrics are:

On this darkest day of winter
Through the snowy woods we go
Gathering garland for our Christmas:
Holly, pine, and mistletoe.

We shall hang above the lintel
Mistletoe across the beam.
Holly sprigs shall brighten windows
While the steady yulefire gleams.

Here then in the silent forest-
Shapely, straight, and fair to see-
Grows the yule tree we have chosen.
This will be our Christmas tree.

As the carolers sing, they walk around a Victorian street and greet shoppers. It's a remarkable set - especially for live TV, which I assume this was - complete with a horse-drawn cart full of Christmas trees. Like I said, the song itself is lovely. It's sung by a young tenor soloist with each verse being repeated by a mixed quartet.

The carolers finish their song and move on, leaving us outside a bookstore. Inside, the bookseller shows his customer a volume and a close up of the spine reveals that it's A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The book opens while a full chorus sings the theme song again and we see the credits printed on the book's first pages.

The song ends and the customer buys the book. When he goes outside he's approached by two gentlemen with a ledger who ask him if they can "put him down for something." He enthusiastically pledges ten pounds, "a little better than last year." They all express their mutual delight, wish each other a Merry Christmas, and part.

It's obvious who these two solicitors are and - though I like how this is all set up - it raises a weird question about continuity by putting the finished story of Scrooge's adventure in the story before the events ever take place. The bookseller must have once been visited by a traveler from the future. Probably with a robot sidekick. That's what I think anyway, making this the best Christmas Carol ever.

We follow the two gentlemen to a storefront and the light flute music changes to ominous horns as we see the name on the door: "Scrooge & Marley." Clueless, the gentlemen check their ledger to make sure they have the right place and go inside.

Since Shower of Stars was only an hour long - including commercials - cutting out any introduction to Scrooge is an economical way of getting the story moving. The abrupt brass music is our first - and so far, only - clue that something's not right about this place. We'll have to wait until we go inside to learn why and find out anything about the old sinner who works here.

Old Sinner: Alastair Sim (1951)

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000-06:00

In spite of the extreme importance that Dickens places on Marley's death right away in his story, all the film versions so far have left Marley out of the earliest scenes. Alastair Sim's is the first to introduce him this soon.

From the beginning of the film we get a sense that it’s trying to mimic the reading experience. Ominous music plays as a hand pulls a leather-bound volume of A Christmas Carol off a shelf full of other Dickens work. The hand opens the book and we see the credits go by on the pages inside. To let us know it’s a Christmas story, the music eventually changes into, you guessed it, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

After the credits, we get a close up of the first page of the story with “Stave I.” (Dickens liked to be clever with his chapters, especially in his Christmas books. A Christmas Carol has “staves,” The Chimes is broken into "quarters" of an hour, etc.) A voice then begins to read an abbreviated version of Dickens’ opening, “Old Marley was dead as a doornail…”

When the narrator gets to the part about Scrooge’s signing Marley’s death certificate, the scene shifts to the Exchange where Scrooge is getting ready to leave after conducting business. A couple of other businessmen ask if he’s going home for Christmas, to which Scrooge replies that “Christmas is a humbug.” The men laugh rather smugly, enjoying Scrooge’s misery, but also seeming to admire him for the extent to which he worships at the altar of Business. He likes money so much that he resents Christmas for keeping him from making any. The two men are like Star Wars fans who make fun of the guy who spends all of his money on expensive statues and replicas, all the while secretly envying him his collection.

Outside the Exchange, one of Scrooge’s customers is waiting for him to plead for more time to pay off a debt. “Did I ask you for more time to lend you the money?” Scrooge asks. “Then why do you ask for more time to pay it back?” Scrooge demands that the man make payment by the agreed upon time or – Christmas or no Christmas – he’ll put the poor fellow into debtors’ prison.Though Scrooge is obviously a moneylender in this version, later scenes with the Ghost of Christmas Past will show that he wasn't always that way, but got his start in some kind of manufacturing. One of the things this movie does really well is show the transition from Scrooge the apprentice in Fezziwig's warehouse to Scrooge the financier, but I'm getting way ahead of myself.

For now, it's enough to know that Sim's Scrooge is cold and horrifying. He’s tall like McDermott, but even more imposing. McDermott wags his finger like a cranky old man, but Sim – while old – is vital. He has energy; every bit of it focused on increasing his fortune. He’s miserable, but he doesn’t know it. I think that’s why he’s my favorite.

The opening section of this film ends as Scrooge arrives at his office, chasing off some carolers singing “Silent Night” from in front of the building.

Old Sinner: Reginald Owen (1938)

2011-12-06T06:00:00.001-06:00

The Reginald Owen version of A Christmas Carol sets the stage with a title card (“More Than a Century Ago…in London…on Christmas Eve.”) over the London cityscape (including Saint Paul's, of course) accompanied by a men's choir singing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." It follows this with various scenes of Victorian people enjoying their Christmas. It's one of my favorite openings.

Whereas the 1935 version is immediately gloomy, I love that this one - rather than go right to wretched, old Scrooge’s place - provides contrast first by showing people having a good time and reveling in the holiday. We see shoppers and vendors and kids sliding on ice. (Pretty much every version of A Christmas Carol has an ice-sliding scene. I think I remember Dickens’ mentioning the sport briefly in the book, but it’s kind of amazing that so many film-makers included it in their versions.)

Into this scene walks a cheerful, young gentleman who joins the children in their sliding. He’s cheered on by a lame boy who’s watching the fun from the sidelines. The boy of course is Tiny Tim and he’s there with his older brother Peter. The gentleman puts Tim on his back for a slide, but gets accidentally bowled over by Peter in the process. Rather than getting angry about it, the gentleman good-naturedly announces that his only regret is that Peter broke his sliding record.

The gentleman learns that the boys are waiting for their father, Bob Cratchit, the clerk who works for Mister Scrooge. When he says that he’s on his way to see Scrooge himself, the boys ask if he’ll deliver a message to their dad. The gentleman asks why they don’t want to see their dad and they reply that it’s not him, but Scrooge they’re afraid of. He’s “not fond of small boys.” That’s when the gentleman reveals that he knows that all too well. He’s Scrooge’s nephew Fred and he experienced the old man’s wrath first-hand as a child himself. Embarrassed and afraid, Peter and Tim flee, but Fred grins and winks after them.

Like I said, I love the uniqueness of this opening. Without meeting Scrooge at all, we get a feel for who he is and what he does to other people. Technically, it’s a lot of telling instead of showing, but it works. Even though people are talking about Scrooge rather than letting us see first-hand how he is, it’s not like we’re going to be deprived of plenty of examples of Scrooge’s meanness in the rest of the film. In fact, this version of Scrooge will turn out to be one of the nastiest.

What this opening does do is give us a nice look at Tim and Fred, two of the most important members of the supporting cast. We learn everything we need to know about them by watching them interact in this scene. And we learn everything we need to know about Scrooge by listening to them talk about him.

Still nothing about Marley though.

Old Sinner: Seymour Hicks (1935)

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000-06:00

1935's Scrooge starring Sir Seymour Hicks opens with Dickens’ Preface to the story. Except for removing a couple of commas and spelling out Dickens' name (he signs the Preface with his initials in the book), it's exactly as Dickens wrote it. Here's the movie version:

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an Idea which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, Charles Dickens

December, 1843

I’m not sure why the movie opens with that other than to call Dickens to mind and maybe put the viewer in the proper mood, though it doesn't mention Christmas at all. On the other hand, the movie's already playing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" (the unofficial Christmas Carol theme song for most of the early films) over the credits and Preface anyway, so it doesn't need text to accomplish that goal. I’m thinking that the Preface is just flavor.

After the Preface we get a scene of snow-covered London as a sad, Salvation Army-style band plays “The First Noel.” You can tell it’s London by the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral in the skyline. That’s the landmark that most of these movies use in their opening shots. So there’s your setting: London at Christmas time and things are fairly gloomy.

We don’t learn about Marley just yet in this version either. Instead, like in 1910, we go straight into Scrooge’s office where the clerk is patting himself and trying to warm his hands over a single candle. When he finally decides to try and sneak some coal, Scrooge fusses at him and forbids it, making vague threats about firing the poor clerk. The clerk humbly puts on a scarf instead.

We don't learn the clerk's name yet, but we do find out that he's got a half-dozen kids to support: three boys and three girls.

Hicks’ Scrooge is hunched over at his desk when we meet him. Instead of imposing, he’s a small, pathetic-looking character with untidy hair. He’s only threatening because he controls the wallet. It’s not really fair to compare him to McDermott’s Scrooge, whom we’ve seen so little of so far, but Hicks doesn’t just look mean for its own sake. He’s convincingly miserable and I fully believe that he wants to share that misery with everyone around him.

It's interesting that though the literary Scrooge conjures up images like Hicks, the most memorable movie performances (Alastair Sim and Greorge C Scott, for example) portray Scrooge not as small and pathetic, but the way Mark McDermott did in 1910: a tall, powerful man. Not right away though. Our next Scrooge - 1938's Reginald Owen - will also be of the hunched variety.

Guys With Flame-Throwers Hate Cephalopods

2011-12-02T18:00:00.001-06:00

[Pulp Covers]

Old Sinner: Mark McDermott (1910)

2011-12-02T06:00:00.002-06:00

I love silent films for a few reasons, but one of them is that there’s such economy to the way the stories have to be told. For that reason, adaptations also tend to be really faithful to their source material. They don’t add a lot of extra stuff.

The first-ever adaptation of Christmas Carol opens with the intertitle: “The day before Christmas. Scrooge, a hard fisted miser, receives an appeal from the Charity Relief Committee.” The CRC doesn’t figure into this post, so we’ll leave it alone until later. In this version, all you really need to know about Scrooge is that he’s “a hard fisted miser.” After the intertitle, we see Scrooge enter his office and yell at his as-yet-unnamed clerk, adding to the unpleasant image.

Mark McDermott is a tall man and his Scrooge is an imposing character. That’s really all we can tell about him at this point. His height and posture doesn't mesh well with the image I form from Dickens' description of the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner," but I realize that Dickens is talking about character traits, not physical ones. The picture in my head is influenced as much by Gollum as anything Dickens wrote, but it's still difficult to look at McDermott and come up with "wrenching" and "grasping" as adjectives. I notice that the intertitle changes Dickens' "tight-fisted" to "hard fisted;" a more appropriate description for McDermott's presence.

Anyone familiar with the story can speculate that he’s fussing about coal-use, but it’s not clear yet in this film. All the movie lets us know is that he’s a “miser” and that he’s cranky. There's nothing in the visuals yet to suggest Christmas; just the intertitle letting us know what day it is. We also get nothing about Scrooge's business or Marley. Because of the film's short length, it's going to have to be economical about how it shares that information, wrapping it into other character interactions.

Wonder Woman: Power through submission; peace through war

2011-12-01T18:00:00.001-06:00

I'm not done thinking about this by a long shot, but I have some thoughts that I need to get down before I lose them. When I first realized that understanding bondage could be the key to unlocking the Warrior of Peace paradox in Wonder Woman, I knew that I was limited in my ability to figure it out on my own. I was thinking about domination and submission from a limited, traditional viewpoint in which the dominating person always holds power over the submissive person. It wasn't until Sarah from Geek Beaks pointed it out to me that I even considered the power of the submitter over the dominator.

Short of my actually interviewing someone who practices BDSM (something I've considered, but haven't done any work towards yet), she recommended that I read Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, which I'm going to do. In the meantime though, I've done some pre-work in thinking about ways that a submissive person holds power. That's what I want to capture before I move on to Carey's novels, Charles Moulton's Wonder Woman comics, or even more of Noah Berlatsky's posts.

The saying goes that forgiveness takes power from the person who's wronged you. Revenge takes resources, so when I set out to avenge a wrong against myself, I may feel like I'm taking control, but I'm actually letting someone else manipulate me. That's the closest I can get to understanding the power-through-submission paradox. Forgiveness feels like submission, but it's actually seizing power from the person who's wronged me. The most peace I've ever been able to achieve in my life is when I've been able to fully submit to the idea that I'm not the most important person in the room. And that peace is powerful, because no one can touch it. If it comes from a place of submission in the first place, no amount of domination is going to be able to take it away.

I don't know if this is what's going on in BDSM submissiveness or not, so I'm curious to learn more, but it gives me a place to start as I begin reading Moulton's comics. I'll be interested in seeing Wonder Woman's reactions to being tied up and dominated. If she resists, then I've got to rethink this. But the miscellaneous scans I remember seeing of these situations all show Wonder Woman as calmly accepting of her forced submissiveness. If that's her normal reaction, then I may be onto something. By allowing herself to be tied up, Wonder Woman gains power. How she gets free should also be interesting to see and think about.

Another question though is whether or not the power-through-submission paradox has any bearing on the peace-through-violence one. I need to do some research here too, but I think maybe it does. My wife helped me think a lot of this through, so credit where it's due, but there seems to be something to the idea that the people who are best at war are those least excited to go there. If that's true, does loving peace make you a better warrior?

Lots to think about.

Old Sinner: Dickens

2011-12-01T06:00:00.001-06:00

Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson

The first time I did this, I just summarized the opening paragraphs. This time, I'm borrowing Siskoid's strategy and presenting Dickens' original text in italics while I interrupt occasionally to make comments. Mostly I'll be figuring out what I want to look out for in the adaptations.

STAVE I: Marley's Ghost

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

According to my copy of The Annotated Christmas Carol, the "'Change" is the Royal Exchange, London's financial center. Scrooge's exact occupation is a source of some confusion between adaptations (is he in real estate? a loan shark? some sort of manufacturer or distributor?). Apparently, the April 1924 issue of The Dickensian declared Scrooge to be a "financier." In other words: a moneylender. That's the approach that most of the adaptations take, but we'll keep an eye on it as we go.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

One of the movies (Albert Finney's Scrooge, maybe?) actually substitutes the term "dead as a coffin-nail." I thought they were trying to be clever until I remembered that Dickens already made that joke.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

Dickens makes it really, really clear that Marley is dead. One of the things I love about him is that he's hilarious, thinking of about eighty different ways to drive home the point that Marley should not be up and walking around, all of them clever and funny.

We'll also want to pay attention to Scrooge's attitude about Marley's death and their relationship when Marley was alive. That's another point on which adaptations sometimes differ.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot - say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance - literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

I especially love this bit about Hamlet (hi, Siskoid!). Dickens apparently edited out a longer digression in which he goes off about Hamlet and what a weakling he was. He originally wrote:

Perhaps you think that Hamlet’s intellects were strong. I doubt it. If you could have such a son tomorrow, depend on it, you would find him a poser. He would be a most impracticable fellow to deal with; and however credible he might be to the family, after his decease, he would prove a special incumbrance in his lifetime, trust me.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

I imagine that the mention of the warehouse is why some folks think he must have been involved in producing some kind of goods. Unfortunately, The Annotated Christmas Carol is no help there.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

The first mention of Christmas. In the next section (Coming 2012!), Dickens explicitly states that his story takes place at Christmastime, but one of the things I want to watch out for in adaptations is how they announce that setting before we ever meet Scrooge. Dickens can spend paragraphs talking about Dead Marley and Miserable Scrooge before starting the story, but other media don't have that luxury.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

"Nuts" deserves some explanation, though it never comes up in the adaptations. Today, we say "nuts" as an exclamation of distaste. In Dickens' day, it meant something agreeable.

So, there are a few things we'll look out for in the adaptations' opening scenes.

How do they drive home Marley's existential state?
What does Scrooge do for a living?
How does Scrooge feel about Marley's death?
How is Christmas introduced as a character (because Dickens certainly treats it like one)?
How do the adaptations communicate Scrooge's personality?

Let's Try This Again: Covetous Old Sinner

2011-11-30T18:00:00.002-06:00

A couple of years ago, I started a second blog to take an in-depth look at everyone's favorite Christmas/ghost story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Similar to what Siskoid's doing with Hamlet, my goal was to pay attention to the way Scrooge's story has been interpreted and adapted to other media over the years.

I decided to make it its own blog because I thought that I might be stretching this one a bit by talking about it here. Two things have changed my mind. First, let's be honest: I stretch the boundaries of this blog all the time (if it even has any boundaries, which I doubt). Having a Christmas Carol theme month in December isn't all that different from taking the month of October to talk about Frankenstein.

More than that though, putting this project on its own blog just hasn't worked for my schedule. It's time consuming and whenever I had to make the choice between updating the Christmas Carol blog or updating this one, this one was always going to win. Still, it's a project that I want to see through, so bringing it here will help me do that.

The way this is going to work is that I’ll break the story down into scenes (or sometimes parts of scenes) and look at their translation to 18 different films, TV shows, and comics:

• A Christmas Carol (1910) starring Marc McDermott
• Scrooge (1935) starring Seymour Hicks
• A Christmas Carol (1938) starring Reginald Owen
• Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim
• "A Christmas Carol" episode of Shower of Stars (1954) starring Fredric March
• Teen Titans #13 (DC; 1968)
• Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney
• A Christmas Carol cartoon (1971) starring Alastair Sim
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978) starring Walter Matthau
• Marvel Classics Comics #36 (Marvel; 1978)
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) starring Scrooge McDuck
• A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott
• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine
• A Christmas Carol (1999) starring Patrick Stewart
• A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel (Classical Comics; 2008)
• A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey
• A Christmas Carol (Campfire; 2010)
• "A Christmas Carol" in Graphic Classics, Vol. 19: Christmas Classics (Eureka; 2010)

Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list. I started with my favorites, then added some that people have recommended to me and then threw in some others that just caught my curiosity. We can talk about the ones I left out, but I will say that Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol isn’t here because I hate it with a passion. It’s neither a good Christmas Carol nor a good Mister Magoo cartoon. There’s also no Scrooged or An American Christmas Carol or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. When I first started this, I tried to stick to more-or-less faithful adaptations, but even though I've since added Teen Titans to the list, I'd rather that be a fun exception and not have to figure out where I'm going to draw the line.

This is going to take years. Every December I'll talk about one scene; starting with Dickens' version, then looking at the adaptations of that scene in the days leading up to Christmas. I'm not saying that this is the only thing I'll be doing here all month - we'll have some People Hating Cephalopods and at least one Wonder Woman follow-up - but Scrooge will be the priority. Starting tomorrow, when we'll let Dickens introduce the miserable old sinner.

Stuff I Wrote: Hunt the Winterlands

2011-11-29T18:00:00.000-06:00

I contributed a story to this fantasy anthology. It's a shared-world anthology with all the writers creating stories in a harsh, snow- and ice-covered land. Mine deals with a tribe of Snow Elves (a race that I probably didn't invent, but have never heard of before), focusing mostly on a young mother and her talking baby. Only, just like human babies, Snow Elf babies aren't supposed to talk either, so it kind of freaks her out and makes her wonder if something horrible has happened. Which it kind of has.

Anyway, it's available on Amazon both in print and for the Kindle and I hope you'll check it out. If you don't feel like checking it out now, it's also in my store and there's a permanent link to that on the sidebar. Much thanks.

Wonder Woman: Thoughtfully twisted?

2011-11-28T18:00:00.000-06:00

As I've continued looking through Noah Berlatsky's Wonder Woman posts for revelations about her Warrior of Peace paradox, I discovered a troubling observation in his second article. In his first one, I was encouraged by a simple observation: "You can't show everyone how strong you are unless you are tied up and break free and dominate others." That's about Wonder Woman's strength-weakness paradox, not her warrior-peace one, but if we can resolve the strength-through-bondage problem, it shouldn't be much more difficult to resolve the peace-through-war one. Or at least get some good ideas about how to better talk about it. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. I knew it wasn't going to be, but Berlatsky confirms it in his second post.

"You can't show everyone how strong you are unless you're tied up and can break free to dominate others" presents the strength-weakness elements as opposed, which is an intuitive way of thinking about it. It suggests that to understand one, you have to also show the other. Like how we can't fully get what light does without first being in the dark, we see how strong Wonder Woman is by seeing her temporarily weakened. But that's not really how Charles Moulton wrote her. For Moulton, the two aren't contrasting opposites, but complementary halves of the same portrait. As Berlatsky says:

Moulton’s Wonder Woman is (ahem) bound up with his very particular set of fetishes and fantasies. Moulton made his stories about those fetishes and fantasies; that’s what he wanted to talk about, and in that context WW’s appearance (girly; uncovered), her tools (the magic lasso; the bracelets), and her contradictory image (powerful, but always being dominated) all make at least a kind of sense. His weird blend of feminism/misogyny (“I love strong women — tie them up so I may love them more!”) which means you can’t get the feminism without the misogyny, but also means you can’t get the misogyny without the feminism. In particular, the way and the extent to which Moulton presents and fetishizes female relationships seems equally tied up with his own sexual peccadillos (lesbianism is never very far below the surface here) and with ideas about girls supporting each other in a feminist or protofeminist way. Certainly, Moulton comics are far, far from the first thing I’d give to my daughter, but I can see why young girls might have found something to connect with in them. Women have power (they are so, so powerful!) and they love each other (oh, please, love each other more!)

I guess the point I’m making is that there’s misogyny, but it’s not gratuitous. Moulton has a vision. It’s not PC and it’s totally sexually twisted, but at least he’s thought about it. He cares about women. You can mock that, or argue with that, or even suggest that it might be better for everyone if he cared about women a little less, but at least there’s the sense that he’s paying attention.

What's troubling about that is that Berlatsky doesn't dig into it any deeper than that. (At least not in this post. I'm still reading.) He dismisses Moulton's portrayal of Wonder Woman as interesting, but "twisted." The feeling I get is that since it's crazy, we don't have to understand it. More than that, we probably shouldn't try to understand it. But while I get that, it's not satisfying. I suspect that if I can figure out how bondage and strength are related in Moulston's mind, it'll lead me to figuring out how peace and war could possibly connect in other Wonder Woman stories, which is what I'm really interested in.

So that's where I'm going in my next post. I don't know a lot about bondage, but I'll attempt to imagine how that fetish works and what it might suggest about Moulton's interest in strength and weakness.

Spider-Man Hates Cephalopods

2011-11-25T00:00:00.003-06:00

Read the whole, horrifying history at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T00:00:00.004-06:00

[From Sheldon Vella's Popgun, Volume 2 story, "Survival of the Festive."]

Minnesota cold...on Twilight

2011-11-23T18:00:00.017-06:00

Though you couldn't tell it from the theater crowds last Thursday, clearly I ended up in the right state. The other two places I've lived are considerably more enthusiastic about sparkly vampires than I am.

How does your Twi-hardness compare with your neighbors'?

[Infographic plundered from GoodReads]

Wonder Woman: What's up with the bondage?

2011-11-22T18:00:00.007-06:00

In this week's What Are You Reading? at Robot 6, I mentioned how much I liked Geoff John's distillation of Wonder Woman's mission into something easily applicable to any time or place. In her Golden Age origin, Wonder Woman comes to Man's World to fight Nazis, but when DC rebooted their universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths, that wasn't an appropriate motivation anymore. Johns restates it this way: "This place is filled with so many wonderful things, but there is also a darkness that lurks here too. One I’m going to fight. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why I’m staying. To fight."

Replace Nazis with Anything Evil and you've got a strong reason for her being here. One that makes a lot more sense than what I've always thought of as the post-Crisis mission of an Amazon warrior's being an ambassador of peace. That paradox never worked for me, so in my ignorance, I assumed it was something that George Perez came up with when he rebooted the series. It wasn't until last week that I read the latest post in Noah Berlatsky's series about Wonder Woman on the Hooded Utilitarian. In it, Berlatsky connects the warrior/peace paradox not to Perez, but to Wonder Woman's creators, William Moulton Marston and Harry G Peter:

Together Moulton and Peter created a comic that had self-conscious ideological and aesthetic content. They set out, quite deliberately, to reconcile and explore binaries involving fetish and feminism, submission and strength, peace and violence, masculinity and femininity.

It was the "peace and violence" duality that caught my attention, because I've thought about it a lot, but the others are fascinating too. And since my reaction to the Warrior of Peace paradox has been to dismiss it as stupid, I became very interested in what reconciliation Berlatsky's discovered in Marston and Peter's comics. So I'm reading his other posts on Wonder Woman in search of the answer.

I'm not far along in my search, but so far I've found this statement in his first post: "You can't show everyone how strong you are unless you are tied up and break free and dominate others." That statement raises more questions than it answers, but it's a start at bringing the ideas of strength and weakness together. This post of mine is just to introduce my study of Berlatsky's research, but my hope is that in reading the rest of what he has to say (and there's a lot of it), I'll be able to not only incorporate a problematic group of ideas into my understanding of what makes Wonder Woman tick, but also learn something about the nature of cognitive dissonance in general.

Stop-Motion Johnny Quest

2011-11-21T06:00:00.001-06:00

You've all seen this, right? It's been around for a while, but I just rediscovered it in a folder.

Johnny Quest was just slightly before my time, but I'm baffled about why I haven't binged on it yet. It's like everything I want in a cartoon.

George Lucas is to Star Wars as Han Solo is to the Millennium Falcon

2011-11-18T18:00:00.001-06:00

"I've made a lot of special modifications myself."

"No, no, no! This one goes there; that one goes there.”

"It's not my fault!"

"I just got a funny feeling, like I'm not gonna see her again." (Oh wait, I'm sorry. That one is the fans.)

Pulp Dames Hate Cephalopods

2011-11-17T18:00:00.002-06:00

By Pinturero.

Western Wednesday: Curse of the Wendigo

2011-11-16T18:00:00.002-06:00

The summary for Curse of the Wendigo doesn't sound like a Western at first, but look deeper and there are some strong connections. First of all, the Wendigo itself of course is a myth from the North American frontier. In this graphic novel - written by Mathieu Missoffe and drawn by Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead) - the man-eating creature is relocated to WWII France where Allied and German soldiers have to form a temporary alliance to battle the monster, but there the Western flavor reasserts itself in the form of a Native American soldier who's tracked the Wendigo from his tribe's home all the way to Europe.

I'm not sure when it's coming out, but it's available for pre-order from Amazon.

Is amusement bad?

2011-11-15T06:00:00.008-06:00

In Greek mythology, the Muses were the goddesses who inspired the creation of art. In verb form, to "muse" on something means to allow it to inspire you. In other words, to think about it or meditate on it.

Back to Greek again, when you add the prefix "a-" to the beginning of a word, it negates it. So "apolitical" means that someone isn't political, "asexual" refers to something or someone that isn't interested in sex, and "amoral" indicates a lack of morals.

"Amuse", then, involves the absence of thought or meditation. If something is amusing, it's just meant to be a distraction without engaging the brain in any way. And while I get that that can be attractive, is it ever good? Or should we seek out and lift up art that not only entertains, but inspires us and makes us think as well?

Good Night, Mr. Holmes (Ch 1-3)

2011-11-14T06:00:00.014-06:00

Carole Nelson Douglas’ series of Irene Adler novels begins with three chapters that take place during the last events of A Study in Scarlet. The first chapter introduces the first-person narrator, a penniless, homeless, recently dismissed shop clerk named Penelope Huxleigh. As she worries over where her life is about to take her, she’s rescued from a pickpocket and befriended by Irene Adler. Penelope is simultaneously horrified and smitten by the American Irene’s lack of care for English decorum. Her own adherence to it would prevent her from continuing the relationship, but Irene isn’t the kind of person who takes “no” for an answer. Though not well-off herself (she’s an out-of-work actress), Irene demands that Penelope at least take refuge in Irene’s apartment for the night.

In Chapter 2, the ladies travel to Irene’s home in a cab driven by none other than Jefferson Hope, the tragic murderer of A Study in Scarlet. He’s committed his crimes and retrieved the wedding ring mentioned in Doyle’s story, but hasn’t yet been caught by Holmes. He’s clearly very sick and offers a soul-cleansing confessional of his misdeeds to the compassionate Irene. Then, grateful for her kind ear, he gives her the ring before riding off and resuming his literary destiny.

Chapter 3 mostly features Irene’s helping an unwilling Penelope to exact revenge on the girl who got her fired from her clerk position, revealing in the process that Irene is an accomplished pickpocket. It closes however at Irene’s apartment with the two women looking over the newspaper and reading the story of Jefferson Hope’s arrest and subsequent death. In the process, Irene begins connecting dots between the story and Hope’s account of retrieving the wedding ring at 221B Baker Street. She begins to take an interest in the mysterious Mr. Sherlock Holmes who receives less credit in the paper than she imagines he deserves.

Though these opening chapters are only meant to introduce Irene to the knowledge that Holmes exists, I can’t help but feel Nelson Douglas missed an opportunity. In A Study in Scarlet, Hope retrieves the wedding ring from Holmes and Watson through the help of a secret, disguised friend whom we never learn anything more about. How cool would it have been to learn that that friend was Irene herself? I wonder if anyone else has written a story revealing more about Hope’s enigmatic ally. I’d love to read it.

The Sherlock Holmes Timeline

2011-11-12T06:00:00.001-06:00

I’ve never found a great, comprehensive Sherlock Holmes chronology online. Not one that includes significant, non-Doyle stories, I mean. Sherlock Peoria, Smart Remarks, and the Diogenes Club all have excellent ones for the canonical stuff, but I'm also interested in knowing where Nicholas Meyer's books fit in as well as series like Larry Millet's one about Holmes in the US or Carole Nelson Douglas' about Irene Adler. If a wider-ranging timeline exists and I’m missing it, please point me towards it. In the meantime, I’m going to create my own below.

While my intention is to include a good number of non-Doyle stories, there won't be any alternate-universe versions like the Twentieth Century Fox Rathbone films or anything else that couldn’t conceivably be the exact, same character that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about. I’ll include a permanent link on the sidebar so it’s easy to reference as I update it, but this will take a long, long time to complete. I’m not a fast reader.

Here’s what I have so far with links to my articles about each story as well as where to buy them on Amazon.

1881
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. [article] [Amazon]
Good Night, Mr. Holmes (chapters 1-3) by Carole Nelson Douglas [article] [Amazon]

Pulptacular!

2011-11-11T10:39:00.005-06:00

If you're a fan of adventure writing, you might be interested in my Pulptacular column at the New Pulp website. I think I mentioned the column here when I first started writing it, but it took me a while (and some great help from Mike Bullock) to find my focus for it. It's a different animal now and I'd love it if you gave it another look.

It started with a post about how inexperienced I am with pulp. Or at least, with the specific characters and stories that most people associate with pulp. I know the hell out of James Bond and Tarzan, but little about Doc Savage and The Shadow. For that reason, I've traditionally resisted calling the kind of fiction I like "pulp," preferring "adventure fiction" instead. It created a mental barrier for me in exploring the world of New Pulp. Though New Pulp encompasses a wide variety of genres and sub-genres that I'm interested in reading, it has deep roots in the classic hero-pulps that I'm most unfamiliar with. How was I supposed to write a column about that?

After talking it over with Mike, I decided to own my inexperience and make Pulptacular a column for New Pulp beginners. I outlined my plan of attack and went to work exploring the various New Pulp publishers from a high level perspective; creating a sort of primer to these companies and trying to figure out what each of them uniquely contributes to the New Pulp landscape. Many of the companies I've been profiling self-identify as New Pulp endeavors, but not all of them do. What's interesting to me is their shared love of adventure fiction and the extremely different ways they choose to express it. Some produce prose, some produce comics, and one group I talked to produces audio plays. Some reprint (or translate) classic pulp in new formats, some tell new stories with classic characters, and some create new characters inspired by the old ones.

Following is a list of the publishers I've talked to so far and if you visit the New Pulp publishers page, you'll see the list I'm working through for future columns. I hope you'll find it useful.

Airship 27 (new prose stories featuring classic characters)
Pro Se (new prose stories featuring new characters inspired by the classics)
Age of Aces (primarily prose reprints of classic air-combat stories)
Altus (prose reprints of classic adventure stories of many genres with a special love of Lost Civilization stories)
Black Coat (English translations of classic, French adventure stories; mostly prose, but some comics as well)
BrokenSea (audio plays ranging from original creations to fan fiction and straight adaptations)
Dark Horse (new comics stories featuring classic and new characters)
Dynamite (new comics stories re-interpreting classic characters for a new audience)

Evil Sea-Spiders Hate Cephalopods

2011-11-10T06:00:00.003-06:00

[Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Western Wednesday: Cow Boy

2011-11-09T06:00:00.003-06:00

Nate Cosby was the Marvel editor responsible for some of their coolest, all-ages comics. Thor: The Mighty Avenger, X-Men: First Class, Pet Avengers, the Marvel Adventures line, and the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young Wizard of Oz adaptations all happened under his watch. So even though he's doing some stuff for grown-ups lately, I still like to put him in that all-ages box and not let him out.

That means that I'm excited about the Western series he's doing for Archaia with Chris Eliopoulos (Pet Avengers) about "a 10-year-old bounty hunter determined to round up his entire outlaw family." It's also going to have back-up stories by folks like Roger Langridge, Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, Colleen Coover, and Paul Tobin.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

2011-11-08T06:00:00.003-06:00

From the earliest scenes in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death it’s apparent that the series has taken a turn for the better. Though the last couple of films (Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon and Sherlock Holmes in Washington) had figured out how to transport Holmes successfully into a spy setting, they were still spy movies and not the clever whodunits that I love Holmes for. Faces Death opens promisingly with a spooky, old, secret-filled mansion in Northumberland where the three squabbling siblings who own the place have converted it into a hospital for convalescing WWII officers.

The siblings’ bickering is mostly focused on the single sister, Sally Musgrave and her relationship with one of the patients, an American pilot. Controlling, older brother Geoffrey is vehemently opposed to the relationship and refuses to allow a marriage. Younger brother Phillip doesn’t seem to mind; he’s got other things on his mind, like how to get out from under Geoffrey’s bullying himself. I expected Geoffrey to get bumped off quickly, but the plot's not that simple. Instead, one of the hospital’s physicians, Dr. Sexton is attacked, suggesting a larger scheme than simple sibling rivalry.

Unfortunately for whoever’s behind the plot, Watson is also volunteering at the hospital and knows someone who may be able to figure out what’s going on. By the time Holmes arrives though, Geoffrey has been murdered and Inspector Lestrade called in. Complicating the case are a couple of scheming servants and the mental instability of some of the patients. There are also odd details like the village church’s clock striking thirteen the night before a Musgrave dies and a strange poem that’s ritually read at the funeral of Musgrave heirs. It’s all very weird and wonderful.

The poem and a couple of characters are borrowed from a Doyle short story, “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” in which a bizarre, ritualistic poem is revealed to be something else. That’s also the case in Faces Death, though the poem’s true purpose has changed slightly. In spite of the alterations though (and the twentieth-century setting), Faces Death feels like a real Holmes mystery, something the Rathbone series hasn’t done since Hound of the Baskervilles.

Panel Bound Interview

2011-11-07T06:00:00.012-06:00

Matthew Manarino from Panel Bound interviewed me about Kill All Monsters and the writing process in general, especially working with artists. He asked some great questions and I had a lot of fun.

If you like process stuff, the site has a whole series of writer, editor, and artist interviews with folks like Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun), Shane and Chris Houghton (Reed Gunther), Christian Slade (Korgi), and Brandon Graham (King City). That's some humbling company to be in, so special thanks to Matthew for inviting me.

The Awesome List: Now at Google Plus

2011-11-04T18:00:00.001-05:00

I used to run a feature here called The Awesome List. It was my attempt to linkblog adventure news from various media, but it got way too time consuming to keep up with. I tried using Twitter instead, but that didn't last very long. I like images too much and Twitter's just dull to look at. (Seriously, I accept that Twitter is a Thing and want to figure out how to use it well, but I don't actually like it. I admit though that may be because I don't know how to use it well.)

Google Plus is my answer. I don't see it stealing everyone away from Facebook, but it's extremely useful for sharing links in a way that looks cool and also allows me to comment briefly on them. If you miss the Awesome List - or just could use a daily feed of announcements about genre projects - I hope you'll check it out.

The Marquis Hates Cephalopods, Pt. 2

2011-11-03T06:00:00.002-05:00

We already knew this, but it's good to see that he's just that dedicated.

By Evan Shaner. [Thank to Admiral Cal for emailing me this one.]

Western Wednesday: Maverick Punch!

2011-11-02T06:00:00.001-05:00

Dorian's right. Some days, you just need pictures of James Garner punching cowboys. More at his site.

A Study in Scarlet

2011-11-01T06:00:00.026-05:00

With Halloween behind us, I need to catch up on some Holmes.

A Study in Scarlet isn’t a typical Sherlock Holmes story. For one thing, it’s longer, though Arthur Conan Doyle would try a couple of novels before switching to the short story format that served Holmes so well. Of course he’d also return to the longer format on occasion, but Scarlet has an extremely different narrative structure even from the other novels like Sign of Four and Hound of the Baskervilles.

As the first in the series, it takes a chapter or two to get to the actual plot, needing first to introduce Watson and Holmes to readers and each other. The mystery itself – a corpse with no visible wounds lying in a bloody room in an empty house – isn’t that complicated. In fact, stripped of the origin story and a long flashback sequence, there’s nothing more to it than you find in the short stories.

It’s the flashback though that’s most memorable and why I like the book. Holmes catches his man pretty quickly, but we don’t understand the killer’s motives until the narrative moves back in time and to North America where it becomes a Western, complete with a Clint Eastwood-like tough guy; his pretty, adopted daughter, and the nefarious cult that they find themselves living amongst. Doyle identifies the cult as Mormans, but later admitted that he based his portrayal of them on second-hand stories he’d been told. I’m not going to excuse that, but not being Morman myself, I’m able to overlook it. The villains could be any generic cult that uses fear to keep its members in submission.

In the middle of all that, there’s a romance and a thrilling escape. It’s a cool short story all on its own; made cooler by tying in to a Holmes mystery. My only criticism of it is that the English Doyle doesn’t have an ear for Western dialogue, so those characters sound a lot more stilted than I’m used to from cowboys.

Another hallmark of the novel is the way Doyle relates events that happen off camera. Since the story is told first person from Watson’s perspective, Doyle has other characters describe scenes that Watson wasn’t present for. He does that in a way that’s both problematic, but also pretty great. The trouble is that no one tells stories in as much detail (including exact dialogue) as Doyle’s characters do. But once you get past that, it’s a cool, vivid way to flashback.

Any difficulties I had with Doyle’s story though are resolved in Ian Edginton and INJ Culbard’s graphic novel adaptation; one is a series of Holmes adaptations from Sterling Publishing. One the advantages that comics have over prose is the ability to use pictures to convey vital information and Edginton and Culbard take advantage of that in an extremely effective way, allowing the drawings to flash back to old events while the narrator just tells his story – without dialogue – the way normal people do. Doyle’s unrealistic way is the more exciting way for prose, but comics can have it both ways; letting the narration sound genuine while the pictures keep the reader’s attention. And since there’s no dialogue in the flashbacks, there’s no weirdness in the way the Western characters talk.

A potential drawback for comics is that the art can be less wonderful than the pictures readers create in their heads while reading prose, but that’s not a problem here. Culbard’s done a lot of research and gets the period details right. His character designs are all interesting and accurate interpretations of Doyle’s descriptions. Lestrade and Gregson are often interchangeable in a lot of visual adaptations of Holmes, but they have very distinct looks here. Watson is middle-aged, but thin and has intelligent eyes. Holmes’ chin is a much larger and more square than I’m used to, but it’s consistent with Doyle’s description of its having “the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.” The famous hawk nose is also there, of course.

Beyond just getting the Holmesian details right, Culbard’s also got a fantastic eye for composition and how much detail to put into a panel without cluttering it up. The color palettes he uses are muted and simple, but beautiful. I especially love how he changes palettes from scene to scene: blues and grays for roaming London’s streets, a haunted green for the darkened murder-room; oranges and yellows for discussing the case by the fire. Seriously, the Sterling adaptation is as perfect as comics get and I can’t recommend it enough.

Scans all lifted from Good OK Bad's review because I'm too impatient to wait and scan the book myself.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Wolverine and the Missing Campfire

2011-10-31T06:00:00.113-05:00

Campfire's Frankenstein (2010)

Campfire's adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles wasn't particularly inspired and I feel the same way about their Frankenstein. But though there's nothing new here for hardcore fans of the Monster or comics in general, it wouldn't be a bad adaptation to hand someone who's curious about Frankenstein, but intimidated by the prospect of reading the novel. It's longer (and so, fuller in detail) than Steve Niles Little Books of Horror version and the art is closer than Fantasy Classics to what new readers might expect from the story. I certainly wouldn't recommend it over those books to people who are familiar with Shelley's tale and/or comics art, but for a novice audience, Campfire's version gets the job done.

Days Missing #2 (2010)

Based on an unproduced Gene Roddenberry concept, Days Missing is about an alien who watches over humanity and intervenes when necessary to make historical course-corrections and ensure our species' survival. In the second issue, the Steward visits the nineteenth century and prevents the creation of a real-life Frankenstein Monster. Mary Shelley's around to witness it and though the Steward erases her memory of it, she carries the experience in her subconscious until that night at Villa Diodati. Days Missing is a great series that represents the best of what Roddenberry was about.

Wolverine and the X-Men (2012)

This is cheating in a couple of ways. Not only is it not out yet, it's about a version we've already covered. I just think it's cool that as I'm wrapping up this series, Marvel's announcing the return of their version of the Monster to one of their major books. Not only that, but the book is an heir to the one in which the Monster (or a version of him) first appeared in the Marvel Universe. I don't know if the Monster's joining the team or just showing up for one story, but I'm excited to find out which.

And that finishes off this series. There were a ton of versions I left out, from the other version of Dracula vs Frankenstein (thanks to Mike DeStasio for emailing me about that one) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter to Bikini Frankenstein and Blackenstein. We could easily do another 31 Days of Frankenstein next year if we wanted, but this year's list gave me plenty of material to add to my reading list and viewing queue. Hopefully it did the same for you.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Do Not Build an Unwritten Graphic Treehouse

2011-10-30T10:50:00.011-05:00

My schedule got away from me the last couple of days of October, mostly because of Halloween. I'm very sorry about that. I'm backdating these last two Frankenstein posts to keep myself organized. Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Graphic Classics, Volume 15: Fantasy Classics (2008)

If you've never read one of the Graphic Classics volumes, you're missing out. Most of them are themed around a single author; many of them horror-related like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Recently though, they've produced some genre-themed volumes like Adventure Classics, Science Fiction Classics, and Gothic Classics. Each volume features one or two popular stories as well as adaptations of lesser-known works, so reading them is always an educational experience. And since editor Tom Pomplun always chooses fantastic, stylish artists, they're as fun as they are informative.

There are two Frankenstein-related stories in Fantasy Classics, both written by my pal Rod Lott from Bookgasm and Flick Attack. The first is a short prologue in which Rod and artists Mark A Nelson tell the story of that night at Lake Geneva when Byron issued his famous challenge that inspired Mary Shelley to create her masterpiece. The second - illustrated by Skot Olsen - adapts the novel itself.

Nelson's style is literal and gothic, but Olsen has a humorous cartoonish look that's surprising for such a dark story. As someone who's seen a lot of adaptations of Frankenstein, I found it refreshing, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as someone's first exposure to the story. It's meant to be a new take on the familiar tale, leading the reader to discover Fantasy Classics' more obscure stories like L Frank Baum's "The Glass Dog" or Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Unwritten #3 (2009)

The Unwritten is a comic book series about a man named Tom Taylor whose father wrote a series of Harry Potter-like books about his son, sort of the way AA Milne based Christopher Robin on his own boy. As an adult, Taylor makes a living doing convention appearances until events transpire to make him (and the world) question just how made up his dad's novels were.

By the third issue, Taylor is trying to learn more about his father's work and visits Villa Diodati, that Lake Geneva mansion where Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein and - not coincidentally - Taylor's dad wrote his novels. It was also the last place Wilson Taylor had been seen before mysteriously disappearing at the height of his popularity. The Monster doesn't make an appearance in the story itself, but according to Chris Murphy at Comics Alliance, there's a short, illustrated scene from Frankenstein and Unwritten uses the Monster as an analogy for creations that slip out of their creators' control, much like Wilson Taylor's books appear to have done. I've been wanting to read The Unwritten since it was first announced and Murphy's article has revitalized that interest.

Do Not Build a Frankenstein (2009)

An important book. You wouldn't think that this is a message people still need to hear, but mad scientists are pretty dense. Hope it finally sinks in.

The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror" (2003-2010)

I think the first time The Simpsons directly spoofed Frankenstein was Treehouse of Horror XIV when Dr. Frink revived his dead father to disastrous consequences. That wasn't the only time the Monster's appeared on the show though.

In the opening for Treehouse of Horror XX, he tries to terrorize Springfield with some monster buddies and gets made fun of for being too old-fashioned. He, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy get new, hipper costumes (the Monster dresses up like Spongebob) and head to the Simpsons house for a costume party before getting busted by their wives. He showed up again in last year's Treehouse of Horror XXI, again in the opening sequence, during a spoof of The Office that featured various monsters working at Monster Mifflin.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Big Book of Narcissa Malfoy vs the Wolfman

2011-10-29T14:21:00.003-05:00

Big Book of Horror (2006)

In 2005, Steve Niles teamed up with three different artists to create a series of children's books based on classic horror literature. He and Ted McKeever did War of the Worlds, he worked with Richard Sala to adapt Dracula, and his partner on Frankenstein was Scott Morse. They called the series Little Books of Horror and collected them the following year in a Big Book of Horror volume.

The Frankenstein adaptation is very faithful and from a writing standpoint, it’s my favorite in the series. There’s not enough room to include everything – the blind hermit’s gone, for example – but some of Niles' cuts make the story easier on kids. For example, I certainly appreciated for my son’s sake that the book doesn't mention that Frankenstein’s murdered brother was just a young boy. That doesn't change the focus of the story, it just tones it down a little for younger readers. It’s a great adaptation for kids and Morse's artwork is stylishly gorgeous.

Frankenstein (2007)

This British TV movie is another updating of the story to modern times. This time around, it's Dr. Victoria Frankenstein (played by Draco's mom from Harry Potter) who's performing the experiments, trying to clone seriously sick, eight-year-old William (her son, not brother, in this version) in order to create a ready organ donor for him. The experiments go wrong and the clone develops into a monster.

What's interesting about this version is that the gender swap isn't arbitrary. Lady Frankenstein did the same thing, but the point seemed to be the sort of feminist message that women could be mad scientists too. In this version, Victoria Frankenstein is neither as mad nor as irresponsible as her literary counterpart. She's unethical in the way she conducts her research, but with her son's life at stake, her moral lapse is something audiences can sympathize with if not endorse. And once she realizes the consequences of her actions - that she's accidentally brought to life a new creation - she takes responsibility for it and tries to nurture it.

Whether or not it's something that can be nurtured is another question. One that the film apparently (I haven't seen it) leaves unanswered. That's disappointing, because making a decision about that could have been a fascinating commentary on Shelley's novel. Frankensteinia has a round-up of reviews about it, none of which are promising.

(This version sounds close enough to Splice that I'm sort of sorry I didn't include that movie on my list, but instead of adding it, I'll just point you to my review of it. It's not a Frankenstein adaptation, but it's very much a Frankenstein movie. I ultimately didn't care for it, but it does some things very very well in the first two acts.)

Frankenstein vs the Wolf Man in 3D (2008)

This 20-minute film was created entirely on home computers and the animation reflects the limitations of that equipment, but it's very much worth watching. The Monster's look is all Universal, but his heart and intelligence are Mary Shelley's. That's a fascinating juxtaposition since the Universal version has almost always been portrayed as slow and stupid. The almost-exception to that was in Bride of Frankenstein when the Monster was beginning to learn speech, but that development was discarded when James Whale left the series. It's cool to see what might have been had they continued on that path.

The story in Frankenstein vs the Wolfman is very good too. It has the Monster teaming up with some other orphans to fight the werewolf who's menacing the town. It's a simple idea, but there's a lot of heart in it.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Seven Soldiers Forever Make a Sandwich

2011-10-28T18:02:00.000-05:00

Frankenstein Now and Forever (2005)

I've mentioned before my favorite line in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine; a rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other." There are a lot of themes in the book, but that's the one that speaks to me most, because it expresses a kind of profound loneliness that I suspect most people have felt at one time or another. I know I have.

Swiss cartoonist Baladi's Frankenstein Now and Forever is the story of a couple of lonely girls - roommates, but not friends - who live in modern-day Geneva, Victor Frankenstein's hometown. While struggling with their own feelings of monstrousness, the girls discover a discarded box with an old copy of Frankenstein in it. Though the Monster begins to haunt one of the girls' dreams and the other thinks it holds clues about a missing boyfriend, this isn't a supernatural story. It is however a horror tale. The horror is completely mundane and ordinary, but all the more frightening because of it. Highly recommended.

Seven Soldiers (2006)

There were several cool things about Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project, starting with the unique format of being a self-contained crossover that wasn't meant to drive up sales on existing titles or launch any new ones. It was a crossover event for people who were tired of the commercial cynicism of crossover events. And then there were the titles themselves.

All were enjoyable, but my favorite (you'll be shocked to hear) was Frankenstein. It wasn't the first time the Monster had appeared in a DC comic. That would be Detective Comics #145, in which Batman and Robin are transported to the past to help a time-traveling professor get out of the mess he's gotten into while trying to verify the truth of Mary Shelley's story. The Monster was resurrected in the '70s as Spawn of Frankenstein, a back-up series in The Phantom Stranger that eventually led to team-ups in the main part of the book and even a battle with Superman.

Morrison ignored all that though to create a new, pulp-inspired, monster-hunting version of the character who eventually joined SHADE (Super Human Advanced Defense Executive), a US government organization that assesses and contains supernatural threats. After Seven Soliders, the Monster made brief appearances in Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and Blackest Night before landing his own Flashpoint series, Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown. That in turn led into the current, New 52 series, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE by Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli. I also highly recommend that one, but for completely different reasons than Now and Forever.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (2006)

Actually a book of illustrated poems about the everyday troubles of being a monster (Dracula goes to the dentist, the Wolf Man cleans house, the Phantom of the Opera gets a song stuck in his head, etc.), but you see who gets the title and cover.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Reborn Creature from Blood Cove

2011-10-27T18:00:00.014-05:00

Frankenstein Reborn (2005)

You know you've arrived when The Asylum decides you're worth ripping off. And though you can't really "rip off" a public domain story like Frankenstein, SyFy's favorite studio decided it was worth adapting the year after Van Helsing, Hallmark, and Dean Koontz all did versions. Probably not a coincidence.

Like Wake the Dead, Frankenstein Reborn places the story in a modern setting. It makes some different choices from Steve Niles' version though, making Victor Frank older and using nanotechnology in the creation of the Monster. It's also got a heavy (and reportedly intentional) Hammer vibe going on.

Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove (2005)

Frankenstein vs the Creature from Blood Cove is a deliberate, black-and-white homage to the horror movies of the '50s. In it, crazy Dr Lazaroff first makes a Creature from the Black Lagoon-like gill man. When it escapes, the doctor figures that the only rational thing to do is to find and revive the body of Frankenstein's Monster, bend it to his will, and have the Monster attack the Creature. I haven't even seen this movie and I'm already sort of in love with Dr Lazaroff.

There also seems to be a werewolf, but I've got no idea how he fits into all this.

The creature designs are all pretty cool. I mean, they're all rubber masks and suits, but the designs are great, including the extremely Shelley-ready Frankenstein's Monster. I've got to see this one.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Wake the Fables of Doc Adams

2011-10-26T00:00:00.118-05:00

Fables #29 (2004)

One of the great things about Bill Willingham's Fables series is its ability to jump genres whenever it wants, like in this horror/war flashback tale. In it, the Big Bad "Bigby" Wolf leads a squad of WWII soldiers in a mission to take out some Nazis in Frankenstein's Castle. Turns out, the evil scientists are studying the Creature in hopes of making some monsters of their own. Bigby tries to stop them and Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man all over again.

Doc Frankenstein (2004)

In this series written by the Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix), the Monster lives through the end of Mary Shelley's novel, takes his creator's name, earns a degree, and moves through history as a fundamentalist-fighting liberal. Though the Wachowskis wrote it, Doc Frankenstein was actually created by Steve Skroce (who draws the comic) and Geoff Darrow (Hard Boiled, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot; also conceptual designs on The Matrix).

The series promoted itself as being about "the Messiah of Science who has returned to save our world from the Monsters currently running it." It's an interesting and valid take, if strident and on-the-nose.

Neal Adams' Monsters (2004)

Essentially Neal Adams' take on the Universal House movies, Monsters has Dracula coercing Frankenstein's nephew into building a new Monster by holding the man's fiance hostage. There's also a werewolf, but I don't want to spoil that part as it's one of the cooler bits in the story. It's not a perfect comic, but Adams' creature designs are cool and there's also a lengthy sketchbook section with examples of Adams' work on various horror films like From Beyond and The Funhouse.

Wake the Dead (2004)

Wake the Dead is Steve Niles' modern-day retelling of the Frankenstein story with extremely gruesome artwork by Chee. It's an interesting experiment in that it puts the story in a contemporary setting. My favorite part is that it keeps Victor as a college student. I usually forget how young he was supposed to be, instead thinking of him mostly as the Baron. The comic's set to be adapted into a film starring Haley Joel Osment.

Though it's bold, Wake the Dead isn't my favorite of Niles' adaptations of Shelley's novel. We'll get to that one this weekend.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Koontz's Van Gossing

2011-10-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Van Helsing (2004)

Ten years after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 2004 was the Year of the Monster. There are seven items from that year in this list (three movies and four comics) and I've got no recollection what the catalyst was.

Van Helsing should have been an awesome movie. It's got Hugh Jackman being all Hugh Jackmany, Kate Beckinsale kicking ass, and the Unholy Trinity of Movie Monsters all in the same film. But never underestimate the power of a lame story (Van Helsing is really an angel!) or director Stephen Sommers' willingness to use cheap CGI in inappropriate ways.

Its version of the Monster is a simple, raging brute, but actor Shuler Hensley went on to play a much more fun version of the character in the Broadway adaptation of Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein.

Frankenstein (2004)

I've mentioned some other, reportedly faithful adaptations this month, but Hallmark's version is the most faithful I've actually seen for myself. It's an excellent adaptation with only two flaws: William Hurt (Professor Waldman) doing a German accent and Luke Goss' Monster isn't hideous enough. He's very faithful to Shelley's description, but (cool scowl notwithstanding) the makeup department didn't create a believable reason for the other characters to be frightened by him. As I wrote when I first saw it, "he looked and sounded like a nice young man with a skin condition."

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein (2004)

When Dean Koontz helped create and then disassociated himself from USA's Frankenstein (with Martin Scorsese as an executive producer), I assumed it must be pretty terrible. Surprisingly, I liked it quite a bit.

Like Hallmark's version, the Monster's too pretty, but the concept is cool. Doctor Frankenstein - or rather, Shelley's inspiration for creating the character - is continuing his quest to create the perfect human and discarding any flawed creations along the way. When one of those creations goes on a killing spree, detectives Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg investigate, as does the mad doctor's original Creature (Vincent Perez).

When Koontz left the project, he teamed up instead with various writers to create a book series more in line with his vision (there's also a comics adaptation of that series). I still need to read those, because I'm curious to see what he thinks the flaws are in the filmed version and how he fixes them.

31 Days of Frankenstein: The Superman Mobster's Food Fight

2011-10-24T18:00:00.009-05:00

The Superman Monster (1999)

Pop culture's late '90s interest in Frankenstein collided with DC Comics' late '90s fascination with alternate universe stories in a cool way. In 1994, the year of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, DC published a Batman "Elseworlds" comic called Batman: The Castle of the Bat. I didn't include it on the list because I couldn't find a picture of the Monster from it, but it features a mad Bruce Wayne who - instead of becoming a creature of the night himself - resurrects his murdered father and makes him do it. It ends as happily as you'd expect.

[I also just remembered a mini-series called Frank from '94 from some of the guys behind Milestone. DG Chichester (Hardware) wrote it, Denys Cowan (Hardware) drew it, JJ Birch (Xombi) inked it, and Dwayne McDuffie (Static, Icon) edited it. I really need to dig those issues out.]

Castle of the Bat was quite successful (thanks in no small part to great-looking, painted art by Bo Hampton), so a few years later, DC did the same thing with Superman. The Superman Monster is actually the sequel to another Batman/horror-lit mash-up called Batman: Two Faces that uses the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic to make statements about Two-Face, Bruce Wayne/Batman, and even Batman/Joker. In that story, Perry White appears and briefly mentions a horror story he heard that took place in Bavaria. In The Superman Monster, he sits down with his pal Commissioner Gordon and - Capt. Walton-like - tells him the story he got from Viktor ~~Frankenstein~~ Luthor himself.

In this version, Luthor discovers the crashed ship from Krypton. Unfortunately, baby Kal-El didn't survive the trip, but Luthor resurrects him in an adult body (science!). Things go wrong of course and the Monster flees into the forest where - instead of a kindly, blind hermit - he meets a kindly, old couple named the Kants. Lois Lane also figures into the story as Elizabeth and the fun is watching writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning play out both the Superman and Frankenstein stories in a way that remains faithful to the major beats of both.

Frankenstein Mobster (2003)

I haven't read Frankenstein Mobster, but I've always admired the goofy wordplay of the title if not the character's hairstyle. Apparently it's about several ghosts (including a dead detective and some shady spirits who were chasing him) who get trapped in the body of a creature that a mafia scientist is creating to be the perfect hit man.

Frankenstein Doesn't Start Food Fights (2003)

The Bailey School Kids is a chapter-book series about a group of children who tend to see mythical creatures (vampires, Martians, mermaids, etc.) in the people they encounter at school. Though it's never explicitly revealed whether the kids are right or not, adults have found lessons in the series about letting your imagination run away with you and the dangers of stereotypes. In this volume, the kids imagine a large cafeteria worker with a green complexion to be Frankenstein's Monster.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Quaid in the House

2011-10-23T22:51:00.005-05:00

Frankenstein (1992)

I don't know if it's coincidental that TNT released
a "faithful" adaptation of Frankenstein the same year that Francis Ford Coppola introduced his version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. I kind of think not, but I've got no evidence to support that. Either way, Coppola's Dracula did a lot to renew interest in classic monsters, especially the literary versions. Even if the adaptations weren't as close to the original literature as audiences were led to believe.

Take TNT's Frankenstein, for instance. In it, according to the Stop the Planet of the Apes blog, Victor Frankenstein (Patrick Bergen) uses a process to create his Monster (Randy Quaid) that's not so much about stitching bodies together as it is cloning himself. This apparently causes a psychic link between the two characters that allows Frankenstein to feel the Monster's pain at the same time that it guides the Monster and helps him learn. Weird.

The Monster's look in the film isn't entirely faithful to Shelley's description either, but I do appreciate how he looks human enough that I want to root for him, but monstrous enough that I understand why people react badly to him.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

It's taken me a while to appreciate Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even now it's far from my favorite adaptation of that story. Though I'd never read the novel when I saw Coppola's version, the Dracula-Mina romance felt all wrong; far more intense and real than any version I'd seen before. It was upsetting that Dracula was portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic character and that Mina seemed to be genuinely in love with him instead of just under his power. I didn't know if that was true to the novel or not, but even if it was, I didn't like it. Of course, I eventually read the book and realized that, story-wise, Coppola was full of crap. I like aspects of the movie now, but not that part.

When Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was announced though, I was prepared to forgive. Frankenstein is my favorite monster story, Kenneth Branagh was one of my favorite actors and directors, and I'd had a crush on Helena Bonham Carter since A Room With a View. And I liked that they were getting as respected an actor as Robert De Niro to play the Creature. I don't think I'd figured out just how unfaithful Coppola's Dracula was yet, so my hope was that Branagh's film would be as faithful to Shelley as I thought Dracula was to Stoker.

There are things that I love about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Branagh strikes just the right balance between reprehensibly irresponsible and relatably pathetic. Bonham Carter's Elizabeth is rightly a far better woman than Victor deserves. Ian Holm is brilliant is Victor's dad, Tom Hulce is a charismatic Clerval, and Aidan Quinn makes Capt. Walton vital and interesting. I don't care for the Monster's bald look and De Niro's performance makes me pity the Monster more than relate to him (and relating to the Monster is one of my favorite things to do in a good Frankenstein movie), but he does deliver a chilling interpretation of my favorite line from the novel: "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."

Sadly, De Niro's performance and the inexplicable changes made to the story - especially around Elizabeth's fate - spoiled an otherwise beautiful film for me. In fact, it's only in the last year or two that I've learned to forgive Branagh and Bonham Carter for being part of such a disappointing project.

House of Frankenstein(1997)

For all the faults of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it did create an audience for other Frankenstein adaptations over the next decade, so I'm grateful for that. I remember being particularly excited that Universal was getting back in the monster game with a new version of House of Frankenstein.

Not so much a remake as a re-imagining, the new House kept the concept of the Monster's sharing the screen with a vampire and a werewolf, but didn't hold on to much else. I wasn't surprised that the werewolf wasn't Lon Chaney's Larry Talbot Wolf Man, but I still don't understand why they created an entirely new vampire character instead of the more recognizable Dracula.

The mini-series shares its title with an actual location in the story, a nightclub called the House of Frankenstein that's owned by the vampire Crispian Grimes. To make the name more appropriate, Grimes is displaying the newly discovered Frankenstein's Monster in the club, frozen in a block of ice. When the Monster inevitably escapes, he causes trouble for Grimes, who's already being investigated by the police for a series of bloody murders. Grimes happens to have a werewolf on staff in order to round off the concept, but he doesn't figure heavily into the story.

All in all, House of Frankenstein was a bitter disappointment. If we couldn't have a faithful adaptation of Shelley's story, it would've been nice to at least have Universal's bringing back the fun version, but this dark, overly serious take wasn't it. And the Monster - while square-headed and slightly reminiscent of the classic take - looked old and worn down, more Jack Elam than Boris Karloff.

31 Days of Frankenstein:Saturday Night Unbound

2011-10-22T08:35:00.000-05:00

Saturday Night Live (1987)

I'm not completely sure, but I think the first time Phil Hartman played the Frankenstein Monster on Saturday Night Live was in December of 1987. In the skit, the Monster, Tarzan (Kevin Nealon), and Tonto (John Lovitz) appeared on a talk-show called Succinctly Speaking. Nora Dunn played the host and offered a variety of topics for her guests to comment on as briefly as possible. Not a problem for these guys.

Nora Dunn: All right, Tarzan, let's start with you: Fire.
Tarzan: Fire good.
Nora Dunn: Mm-hmm. Tonto?
Tonto: Fire good.
Nora Dunn: All right. Frankenstein?
Frankenstein: Fire bad!

She moves on to bread and then the INF Treaty, which turned it into one of the only times (if not the only time) Phil Hartman ever cracked up and broke character on the show. Man, I miss that guy.

Anyway, the Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein bit was so popular that they became recurring characters.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

I've never read the Brian Aldiss novel and it's been a few years since I've seen Roger Corman's adaptation of it, but the concept behind Frankenstein Unbound is pretty cool. In it, a not-quite-mad-yet-but-getting-there scientist from the future (John Hurt) is accidentally sent back to the nineteenth century as a side effect of a superweapon he's been working on. There he meets not only Victor Frankenstein (Raúl Juliá), but also Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) who's become interested in the Baron's work. Lord Byron (Jason Patric) and Percy Shelley (Michael Hutchence from INXS) also figure into the story.

Unfortunately, the movie is extremely unsubtle in dealing with the theme of setting limits on the pursuit of knowledge. The literary Baron is too obsessed to consider whether or not he should be trying to create life. He's a selfish jerk, but he's not the sinister, mustache-twirling villain of Unbound who very much knows that he's playing God and is going for it with gusto. Likewise, the literary Monster is a tortured, emotionally fragile creature, not the stupid, homicidal brute in Corman's film. Everything is over-simplified, including having Hurt's character on hand to internalize the moral lesson on the audience's behalf.

Makeup artist Guiliana DeCarli came up with an interesting, truly monstrous look for the Creature. It's not one of my favorites, but it gets points for uniqueness.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Monster Squad Hospital

2011-10-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

The Monster Squad (1987)

By the late '80s I was older than the audience for funny takes on the classic monsters, but I have a lot of slightly-younger friends with fond memories of this movie. I was the perfect age to have enjoyed the 1976 Saturday-morning TV series of almost the same name (it was just Monster Squad; no "the"), but it was on against The Shazam/Isis Hour and my brothers and I were watching that instead.

The TV show was about Gopher from Love Boat fighting crime from his night job in a wax museum. He built a device to bring to life the statues of Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein and sent the trio out in a black van to fight supervillains.

The movie is unrelated to that. In it, the Squad is a group of kids who love the Universal monsters until they find out that they're real. Led by Dracula, the monsters are trying to find and destroy an amulet that can get rid of them permanently. It's up to the Squad to find the amulet first and save the world.

Tom Noonan plays the Monster (a Stan Winston take on the Universal design) as a creature who at first agrees to Dracula's scheme, but - thanks to being befriended by a little girl - switches allegiances and joins the Squad himself. I may have been too old for it when it came out, but with a nine-year-old in the house and the second-childhood that brings with it, this sounds awesome.

Frankenstein General Hospital (1988)

Another comedy, Frankenstein General Hospital is about Bob Frankenstein, the great-great-grandson of the original Baron, who's trying to perfect his ancestor's experiment in the basement of the LA hospital where he works. Thanks to the bungling of his hunchbacked assistant Iggy, he accidentally puts in the brain of a sex- and food-crazed teenager. "Hilarity" ensues.

One thing that does sound kind of clever about this is that it's all in color except for the lab scenes, which are in black-and-white. There's a pitiful in-story explanation for that, but it's still a fun touch. Otherwise, the film sounds uninspired, including the look of the Monster, which borrows heavily from Young Frankenstein.

31 Days of Frankenstein: The Bride of Sarandon

2011-10-20T23:16:00.000-05:00

The Bride (1985)

The Bride is sort of a What If sequel to James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein, the What If part being that there's no Elizabeth. That turns out to be a major difference.

The Bride of Frankenstein has always been a provocative title. Technically, Elizabeth is the title character, being the Baron's wife, but of course no one really thinks of it that way, not even the movie itself. The Bride is the creation that Frankenstein and Pretorius make (supposedly) for the Monster; Pretorius even explicitly calls her "The Bride of Frankenstein." Though audiences often mistake the name of the Monster for his creator, in the world of the film, there's no confusing the two. Pretorius isn't referring to the Bride as the spouse of the Monster; he's associating her with Baron Frankenstein himself.

The mundane explanation is that she's Frankenstein's Bride in the same way that the novel Frankenstein is Mary Shelley's book. She created it, so it belongs to her. That doesn't prevent my buying a copy though so that it also belongs to me. Creation doesn't mean eternal ownership. If that's what Pretorius means, then the Bride of Frankenstein can quickly become the Bride of the Monster.

But Pretorius is anything but mundane. He's perverse and I believe he said exactly what he meant about the new creature being Frankenstein's wife, even though the Baron already had one in Elizabeth. This is confirmed when the Bride chooses Frankenstein over the Monster, a move Frankenstein endorses by holding out his arms to her and drawing her closer. The whole thing is mercifully brought to a premature end by the Monster's blowing up the lab, but what if he hadn't? Would Frankenstein have chosen the Bride over Elizabeth?

That's a fascinating idea for a story and I wished The Bride would have gone for it. Instead, it takes Elizabeth out of the picture and allows Frankenstein (Charles, not Henry or Victor; played by Sting) to develop his relationship with the Bride (Jennifer Beals) without the mess of a preexisting wife in the mix. It's still messy though because of course the Monster (Clancy Brown) is still running around the countryside.

The Monster is your Victor (or, actually, Viktor) in this version and Brown does a great job with him. Head of makeup Sarah Monzani and her crew went with the bald look for him, a choice I understand (what with the brain transplant and all) even if I much prefer the long-haired look (for aesthetic as much as literary reasons). Viktor tries to get over his rejection by the Bride and succeeds for a while in the company of a circus-dwarf he meets named Rinaldo (named after the black-listed screenwriter of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and played by Time Bandits' David Rappaport). But when something happens to that relationship, Viktor decides he wants to give the Bride another shot after all. Meanwhile, Baron Frankenstein's natural selfishness has been getting in the way of his forming a meaningful relationship with the Bride.

It's not a flawless movie (Beals isn't particularly endearing, which she kind of needs to be as the romantic interest for both Frankenstein and Viktor), but I love the way it puts the romance back into Gothic romance, Brown and Rappaport have great chemistry, and Sting is a perfectly loathsome Frankenstein, as he should be. There are also appearances by Timothy Spall and a pre-Princess Bride Cary Elwes.

Frankenstein (1987)

I haven't been able to dig up much on this other than a thread on a classic horror film message board, but it appears to have been a televised version of the story for kids and may have even been filmed in front of a live audience. It's worth mentioning for a couple of reasons though. First, that's the most faithful-to-Shelley look for the Monster I've ever seen, but also: that's Chris Sarandon under the mask.

Which reminds me that I left The Rocky Horror Picture Show off my list, but you know...I'm okay with that.

31 Days of Frankenstein: Wrightson and Warner

2011-10-19T19:17:00.001-05:00

Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein (1983)

Bernie Wrightson drew the definitive, visual interpretation of Frankenstein's Monster as a spec project that he sold to Marvel Comics in 1984. He used only Shelley's descriptions and his own research for inspiration and worked on it over a three-year period in between other assignments. Despite its initial (and also it's most recent) publisher, it's not a comic, but an illustrated version of Shelley's novel with introductions by both Wrightson himself and Stephen King.

It was reprinted by Underwood-Miller (a scifi/fantasy small press that dissolved in 1994) as one of their final projects and again as a hardcover by Dark Horse in 2008. It's an essential part of any Frankenstein fan's library.

Frankenstein (1984)

This British made-for-TV movie is most notable for starring David Warner as the Creature, Carrie Fisher as Elizabeth, and John Geilgud as the old, blind man. It was shot on an extremely low budget, but it does well in spite of that. Warner is a sympathetic Monster who's horrible appearance is explained by his being burned by the electricity that brought him to life. You can watch the entire thing below.

By the way, this was my 3000th post. Yikes.