Long-lost media

It's been a while since I've mentioned the media that has been entering my brain and life.

So let's take a look at some of the highlights of late...

Inglorious Basterds - Tarantino is a wild director, willing to throw himself entirely into whatever style of filmmaking happens to be holding his attention at the moment.

In this one, he subsumes his typical patter heavy with pop culture references in favor of a film that spends much of its time in French, German, or Italian, forcing the audience to follow along through the subtitles. There are few funny moments in the film other than those that are delivers in the Appalachian drawl of Brad Pitt's outstanding turn as a character that is far more supporting than lead - in spite of what the previews suggest.

This is a period piece, an exploration of the motivations of men and women at war - not in an active, fighting war as you see in Saving Private Ryan but in a far-from-the-front war of Nazi occupied France. The star of this war show is Christopher Waltz as Standartenführer Hanz Landa, a highly educated Nazi nicknamed "The Jew Hunter". It is his decisions around which the entire film turns, creating the female lead's motivation, allowing the climactic scene to take place, driving the film toward its surprising - to me, at least - finale.

The film is excellent, probably Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction - though I enjoyed Kill Bill more. The lunacy of Brad Pitt's titular Basterds and the serious tone of the rest of the film balance each other well, and the glimpse into the British high command is a refreshing diversion from the main plotline.

Other than one moment of modern music - David Bowie's "Cat People" - the film is an outstanding period piece, a chance for Tarantino to fully subsume himself into a movie the way that Spike Lee has learned to do along the way from being the angry young man to a great director.

I'm thinking that Quentin may be on his way to being able to do the same.

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Love is a Mix Tape - This one was tough.

He says it right there in the first chapter. His wife - the main character of the book - dies. She dies in the first chapter, but then in chapter two, we've flashed back to the author's childhood when he hasn't even met his future widow yet.

I was all okay with the book even through that opening until I found out that it's not a work of fiction. It's the tale of Rob Sheffield (Rolling Stone editor/writer) and his first wife, with whom he fell in love over music. It's also Rob's story of how music - and mix tapes in particular - were important to his formative years.

It's the story of a lost tradition. (Hell, I made an 8tracks playlist for tomorrow in like five minutes while I took a break from writing these reviews.)

It's a story for people of about my age and a little older (Sheffield has me by nine years), for people who understood the record store in High Fidelity, for people who spent hours sitting Indian style next to a boombox or a tape deck, for people who were thrilled when they finally got a double tape deck that would auto start when you hit one deck, for people who have ever loved.

It's a hell of a book.

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Was Superman a Spy? - Yes, he kind of was. Or at least, he did what the government asked a couple of times.

If you're a comic book fan, this will be a moderately interesting read. It's a book - that's really a blog called Comic Book Legends Revealed - in only the loosest sense of the word in that it's a bunch of words on a bunch of pages.

The biggest problem here is that - as a succinct review points out - the book began as a blog and still reads as a blog - a series of at best loosely connected writings from the author. There is only a loose attempt to connect the disparate parts into coherent chapters and themes.

Some of the legends are interesting but many of them aren't legends that I'd ever heard or that I really ever cared about.

For diehards only...

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Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? - This, on the other hand, is an absolute classic in the field. It's a knock it out of the park, grand slam of awesomeness in the face of what clearly had a lot of chances to be dreck.

Neil Gaiman's ode to the silver/modern/golden age Batman as well as to Alan Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is framed as Batman watching his own funeral, seeing the villains take one side of the aisle and his Batman Family take the other - Catwoman getting to choose her side and open the tale by telling her story of how Batman died.

Throughout Catwoman's telling - and the entirely different tellings from the other characters - Batman's disjointed voice is seen to refute all of the tales of his death, speaking to an unseen, unidentified, female narrator. Batman refutes Alfred's tale of hiring former actors to keep a depressive Bruce Wayne busy and hopeful. He refutes Robin's tale - told in four panels - as well as those of a dozen other characters who get only a panel or two to tell their tale.

Here there be spoilers - highlight to read

And in the end, we learn that Batman hasn't died because he never can die but that he must always die.  To quote HeroesOnline...

The story ends with Bruce Wayne coming to the understanding that he is Batman, he is destined to be Batman and the only way Batman’s story can ever end is with his death. But…. the story can never end.

Regardless of how many times you re-invent the character, one thing will always remain: Batman is at heart a boy’s revenge fantasy. He must always succeed because he is stronger and smarter than every other human. He can overcome any adversity and win the day for the greater good--just like a hero should.

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But Gaiman makes it clear that this is not going have a happy ending. Batman will not retire to suburbia like Superman. Martha Wayne’s joy cannot equal Superman’s wink; hence the original feeling of anger and disappointment.

But Gaiman is reaching for something more, something richer, something darker and something that is NOT happy. Batman is the absolute dark reflection of the Christ figure. Instead of dying for our sins—which the previous 40 odd pages publicly offered the readers—Bruce Wayne is destined to remain alive in tragedy and torment to entertain us over and over and over.

No matter who is drawing him, no matter who is writing him, no matter who fights temporally for the right to wear the cowl, Bruce Wayne will always be the little boy kneeling in a filthy alley surrounded by blood and bodies and a broken strain of pearls. Forever.

Bruce Wayne is in hell and God help us, as readers of his exploits, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This isn't the death of Batman. This isn't the final battle, the last throwdown with the Joker.

This is a wake, a look back, an exploration of the Batman mythos.

Even though we all know that Bruce Wayne will be back with us someday - maybe in a year, maybe in five years, but he'll be back, this is one hell of a Batman story.

Gaiman does it better than anybody else ever could have.