Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra

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I’m starting to feel like the Marvel Ultimate universe is suffering from some of the same bloat that, over decidedly more years, plagued its original line. Or maybe I’m just very picky about what I think should count? It’s no secret that I never really got Daredevil or Elektra: the movies were iffy at best, and Daredevil’s appearances and plugs in the stuff I’ve read from the ’60s never really convinced me about the wrongness of my initial impression.  Still, I’m nothing if not an inveterate completist, and having once found this book, it was inevitable that I’d eventually read it.

Sadly, nothing about Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra really changed my opinion in this new age. Although I’m not familiar with either character’s origin story, the plot here was predictable and, frankly, performed much better in the third season of Veronica Mars, without any super powers in evidence. Actually, check that: I do like that neither character appears to have super powers. If the stories are continued somewhere down the line, that could turn into an interesting twist on the rest of the Ultimate universe. But on the whole, the story was muddled. Elektra’s vengeance motives were clear enough, and essentially the strongest part of the story despite the cliché. Her relationship with Matt Murdock seemed both forced and rushed, and ultimately without point; but so did the majority of his presence in the story.

I am forced to admit to a lack of surprise, since that matches my experience of the two characters in the movies as well. I’m sure I’ll read the Elektra-specific sequel too, but for now I’m going to disregard the claim of Volume 1 on the cover, because this book is 5 years old, and volume 2 is nowhere to be found. I guess that means everyone agreed with me?

One last point: the book also included an issue of [non-Ultimate] Daredevil, in the middle of a run and in which nothing of any particular interest happened. However, the art and lettering were extremely experimental in, unusual for me to claim, a good way. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time!

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Game of the Year Edition

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I know objectively that I finish a goodly chunk of games each year, and that I could even demonstrate this via the method of counting back on the tag. And that this does not even take into account the many games I play partially but consistently fail to finish with. Nonetheless, it’s always a bit surprising to me when I do finish one, even one that’s a solid year old by now. Which, okay, is misleading: Call of Duty 4 only took me a couple of dedicated afternoons, and I didn’t start until this past month. Plus, I’m still nominally in the middle of Grand Theft Auto IV[1], and I’m actively about a third of the way through Dead Space. I play stuff, honest!

Aside from spending the money, one of the things that held me back from CoD4 so long was the Modern Warfare tag. For whatever reason, I convinced myself that removing the game from World War II meant there would be a lot of cool new weaponry, sure, but no plot to hang it from. To the contrary, it was as affecting as many war movies I’ve seen, and far superior to anything the franchise has previously put out. Russian and Arabic terrorists with nuclear capabilities, if you’re wondering, but it’s a couple of the characters that really make it pop, plus one incredible scene in which you don’t use a single weapon.

The multiplayer looks like it would be really fun with a sufficient number of players, but at the reduced amount we can usually pull together on any given Monday night, Halo 3 remains the clear champion of that aspect.

[1] Where “the middle” doesn’t appear to have scratched the surface in reality, plus I’m reaching the point where, without a conscious pushing of myself, it will fall by the wayside. I blame this at least in part on the giant pile of new games I want to play: Gears of War 2. Far Cry 2.[2] Saints Row 2. Fallout 3. Left 4 Dead. Even Resident Evil 5, if it’s out early next year as I’ve heard. (And I really need to finish RE4 before that!)
[2] Why did they split it into two words for the sequel, I wonder?

Lucifer: A Dalliance with the Damned

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In this third volume of the Lucifer series, story pieces are beginning to fall into place. Lucifer has finally gotten what he’s always wanted: a chance to show up his God by forming a Creation of his own, and doing it better. Better is a nebulous concept in this context, but I think that’s as it should be; clever though the Lord of the Morning Lightbringer is, I doubt he really understands the jealousy and resentment tangled up in his motivations here. Meanwhile, as usual, all creatures great and small scheme against him, up to and including an unsurprisingly jealous God and a possible rift with his constant companion from all the way back to the Sandman days.

Mundane events continue apace as well: many beings are drawn toward Lux, Lucifer’s former nightclub and current gateway to the new Creation; the ever-intriguing Elaine Belloc finds herself in dire straits; and aspects of Hell are explored in the titular A Dalliance with the Damned. As has reliably been the case thusfar, the most interesting themes in the series deal with humanity and free will. How might demons and humans react to a damned soul elevated to equal status within Hell’s hierarchy? How might Adam and Eve have reacted to the sole edict, “Do not worship me. Just be free.”? What might tempt them in such a circumstance?

I can tell this series is just beginning to pick up steam, and it has a doozy of a potential endgame. In theory, Carey may be attempting to settle an irreconcilable difference between two almost equivalent beings with diametrically opposing viewpoints of The Way Things Ought To Be. I’m not prepared to actively compare it with Gaiman’s Sandman, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a worthy successor.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

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Sometimes, despite the odds, two people manage to find each other. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a movie about that.

Well, and about music that you are nowhere near cool enough to have ever heard, being played at places that you are nowhere near cool enough to be allowed into. If either (and especially both) of those elements appeal to you, I’m pretty sure you’ll like it. I did.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

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What is the deal with[1] Hollywood releasing identical movies within weeks of each other? Like Deep Impact and Armageddon that one year, or Volcano and Dante’s Peak that other year? In fairness, I should say that Zack and Miri Make a Porno is really nothing at all like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, but the titles are ridiculously similar for having come out in the same month, is all I’m saying. Why does that happen so much?

Anyhow, I saw them out of order, mostly by virtue of skipping movies for a couple of weeks. At least I got *that* out of my system! What happens with Zack and Miri is that they’re penniless waifs living out their post-high school existences as the best of platonic friends, when they realize that, hey, there sure is a lot of money to be had in the sex industry! So they wander town in search of a wacky gang of characters such as you might find in a Kevin Smith movie, or maybe a Seth Rogen movie, and having once gathered them, they proceed to make a porno![2]

Oh, wait, though, it’s not that simple. ‘Cause, they’re friends forever yet sexually compatible, and finally changing their relationship like this is bound to have repercussions, right? Hence: drama! It’s like a marriage between the talky portions of Chasing Amy and the comedy sensibilities of Mallrats. I definitely liked it, but it’s probably Smith’s weakest script in some time, aside from the Affleck movie that I’ve completely forgotten other than its existence.

[1] In case you are wondering, no. I do not sound like Seinfeld.
[2] I bet you did not see that coming.

Ultimate X-Men: Return of the King

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Sadly, I’ve already written this once, and some strange combination of unfamiliarity with the machine I’m writing from and a copy/paste failure conspired to eat it, right after I’d finished everything but the html. This is, as you might imagine, lame. If I had not liked the current Ultimate X-Men as much as I did, the review would probably have been hurt by this turn of events?

Luckily, though, I did like Return of the King. For one thing, I think Mark Millar is finally getting better at writing about things that are interesting, but I know for a fact that he was helped by a return to the roots. That’s right, as the title indicates, Magneto is back with a vengeance. And since the X-Men are on the run from a government who (justifiably?) blames them for his return, there’s not much of anyone who can put a stop to his latest plan to rid himself of the pesky homo sapiens once and for all. I’m saying: way cool.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Crossover

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If it seems like ages since I’ve hit the Ultimate Fantastic Four series, that’s because I’ve been trying to get all my other series into balance so I can be on pretty much the same volume number in all three and not have to think as much about where I am in any given one (and with the fourth slot reserved for short term series, if you care). Having gotten back, I was immediately struck again by how very much I hate the current artist. Luckily, the rest of Crossover was pretty good.

Mark Millar has his hands all over Marvel’s Ultimate universe, it seems, and I’ve had extremely positive reactions in some instances as well as pretty negative reactions in others; in this case, I am cautiously optimistic. He helped his case with extreme pandering, admittedly. The book starts off with zombified Marvel superheroes[1], and then it dovetails into a story about the Submariner that seems to be predicated on the idea that he genuinely is as much of a pretentious git as I personally find him to be, thoroughly unlikeable in every way. The only downside is that both stories fly by too quickly to really get involved in. Which, upon reflection, was one of my more minor complaints about the previous volume, also [partially] penned by Millar.

The book wrapped up with a reasonably effective *dun-dun-DUN* moment that might have been more effective still if I had caught the intended reference. On the bright side, it definitely worked for your “new” reader here, which at least partially indicates that their attempts to be accessible to whole new generations are succeeding.

[1] Apparently from an alternate universe largely identical to the modern version of the comics I was reading from the ’60s, back before I got too busy to do so.

The Bonehunters

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It’s true, I’ve been reading the same book for the past month. Which, wow, this is not traditionally my way. I guess I’ve been actually that busy, on top of, of course, how very long the book is. And make no mistake, The Bonehunters is yet another extremely long book in Steven Erikson’s extremely long fantasy series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Despite the apparent lessons of the ’90s, this is not a warning. For one thing, he has consistently released a new book every year, and now has only two left to complete. For another, this is pretty much better than any of the doorstop series you may be thinking of right now. It feels like it might be objectively better than any of them, but I’m not quite prepared to go that far.

The Bonehunters wraps up a lot of the plotlines from the first two books of the series in order to clear the way for the rapidly approaching confrontation between the Crippled God and those who oppose him. Of course, the sides aren’t as clear as that sounds; there are a lot of people whose side is still unclear or undecided, and many more whose side is unclear to them as characters although not to me as a reader. And sure, that’s part of what makes the series continue to be dense at best and actively confusing in its ever rarer worst moments; but at the same time, it’s one of the series’ greatest strengths. There are almost no unlikable characters! Writers talk about the fact that there are no people who consider themselves to be “the bad guy”, but these are among the only books I’ve read that really manage that self-image over such a large cast, and also among the only books that manage to make almost every character compelling, whether noble or base, ascendant or tragic.

I’ve said before that I want to reread the series because it has been so dense and so long, which together conspire to make me think I’m missing things. And I probably am, but not enough to take away from my exceptional regard for each book as I read it. All that said, though, I found a new reason to want to reread the series: it’s pretty much my favorite story-arc being published today, and maybe period. (I have pretty high regard for a couple of episodic series too, but that really is a different genre entirely, in terms of commitment.)

The Gardens of the Moon. Pick it up. Trust me on this one, even if it seems implausible as you read it. You’ll thank me later.

Max Payne

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What I loved about the video game Max Payne, aside from its playability, was the noir element. They played it very straight, enough so to be clear that it was done from love of the genre, but they played it so far over the top that it was parodic and hilarious at the same time.[1] When you get down to it, that’s what makes a good game: something that’s as fun to watch as it is to play.

It’s for that reason that I was excited to see the movie Max Payne. The previews covered all the old territory, enough to make me want to play the game again too.[2] And in the end, I think it was the high expectations that were the failure. The noir was in there, but not nearly enough to suit me. The videogamey elements were mostly good rather than laughable, though there were bits near the end that, um, not so much. And the plot was perfectly serviceable, but rarely moreso.

In short, Detective Max Payne has obsessed over the murder of his wife (and child?) for the past two years, despite any real leads. He’s drifted away from his partner and his wife’s friends, despite their best efforts. But with help from vengeful assassin and (of course) femme fatale Mona Sax, the case is about to break wide open. It won’t cost Max anything much, either. Just his career, the lives of most anyone close to him, and quite possibly his soul.

Honestly, it really was good, if you disregard the inevitable video game moment. But it wasn’t cheesy enough to be awesome in that sense, and it wasn’t quite what I was looking for as a serious flick. Alas.

[1] Kind of like Brust’s treatment of the Three Musketeers series.
[2] I mean, I won’t on a PS2 from seven years ago when I have this many new games floating around, but another sequel would be fantastic. Maybe even an updated remake?

Quarantine (2008)

There is an extent to which horror movies are in a rut. They mostly fall into three types right now: Japanese horror in which ghosts of small children with blank faces, badly maintained hair, and black eyes rush out of closets or wells or otherwise enclosed spaces to destroy your soul; torture films in which reasonless men capture vacationing teens and gradually vivisect them, usually without consequence and with no more than one survivor; and apocalypse horror in which some event has turned the world (or our diseased and dead brethren and sistren) against us. Frequently, these types will borrow tropes back and forth from each other. And of course there are movies coming out that play against these types, such as the Saw films. But the rut is visibly there now, over a decade beyond when Scream first invented the post-modern horror film, pulling the genre back from the brink of irrelevance.

The good news, though, is that the rut is nowhere near played out, and still provides far better quality than at any point since the 1970s.[1] If anything, the cross-pollination between the types is improving things and keeping no one rut from getting all that deep. All of which is the long way around to mentioning that I saw Quarantine last week, I suppose, but the state of the genre is often on my mind as I think about what I have to say in these reviews. It’s undeniable that I’m excited to be seeing so much good quality coming out after I spent the ’90s in a video store wasteland being mocked mercilessly by all the people around me who weren’t able to see the potential I was so certain was there.

But, yeah, Quarantine, which as it turns out snagged tropes from across both aisles, was mostly a cross between the apocalypse type and a less common but very influential type I haven’t got around to mentioning yet, the camera-is-a-character type. Y’know, Blair Witch or Cloverfield. A plucky local-market TV reporter[2] is on overnight assignment in a fire station when a 911 comes in about a woman screaming and otherwise behaving bizarrely in an apartment building. Fire and police are dispatched, with the camera doing ride-along duty, to discover all the inhabitants milling around, confused over the late night and the fuss. And just when they realize that things might be more dire than a mere disoriented elderly woman can account for, they also discover that the entire building has been sealed off, with nobody allowed to enter or exit upon threat of lethal force. And then the phones are jammed. And then, things start to go horribly wrong.

The one downside I should mention is that Quarantine is far more interested in the ride than the destination. This doesn’t really bother me much, because the confusion, sense of betrayal, and mounting-terror-as-character-study of the handful of people who are more than cardboard cutouts are more than enough to keep me happy. And although the movie eventually provides something akin to answers, that move is very cursory and unlikely to satisfy anyone who needs a Reason behind Events.

Anyway, I guess it’s like I said back at the beginning. This is well-trodden ground, and it has nothing much new to offer. But what it offers is certainly entertaining and still manages to pull in enough disparate elements to not feel copied, unlike the bad days of the ’80s that nearly killed the genre in the first place. Although I could wish someone had handed the reporter chick a paper bag at some point, or possibly a calming slap. ‘Cause there are a number of minutes of hyperventilating that are impossible to listen to, regardless of how realistic the action might be. I’m not sure what that number is, and it might vary from person to person. But it is at least two minutes shorter than the number portrayed by this otherwise delightful little film.

[1] Which, okay, sounds unimpressive, but then again movies in general haven’t been around all that long, so calling this the Silver Age of horror to the Golden Age of the ’70s really isn’t such faint praise as it might look at first glance.
[2] Who you hopefully know as Deb Morgan from Dexter.