The screenplay explores Hensons's far more experimental side, being closer to Time Piece or The Cube. The story - such as it is - finds our unnamed protagonist (that's him on the cover there) awaking in a western town only to get the bum's rush out of town with little in the way of supplies or instructions other than that he has a ten-minute head start and that he'd better run.
Run to where? Run from whom? That is only hinted at as we see an eye-patch-wearing man pursuing with leisurely confidence behind the protagonist. Character development is thin as is linear storytelling. The man's identity is never revealed, nor is any of his background. The identity of the pursuer is hinted at but only barely revealed in the end. Where are we? How did we get there? What are the rules in this magical place? No clarity is provided, and eras, locations, rules of physics are all mutable to the exploration of the man's quest.
As a piece of linear storytelling, this is a miss entirely, but that's not what the book seems to aim for. Instead, we find ourselves rushing along with the man, swept up by the gorgeous artwork and the artist's use of very non-linear comic page layouts.
The story's progression is episodic and fractured, just as is the man's memory and understanding of his new world.
It's not one I'd want to own, but it's certainly one that I enjoyed 'reading'.
As a library book, however, I found the scope simply to be far too daunting. The idea of actually reading a book of this magnitude - 960 pages with photos of about half the buildings - was far too overwhelming for a three-week period. I ended up flipping through, finding a few buildings that really interested me, and treating the book a bit like a checklist of 'been there, seen that'.
The book presents the buildings in chronological order broken up into eras from "Ancient World to the Renaissance" through post-modern times. Each era is presented without a discussion of the major trends of the era - something I would have found helpful. Instead, the buildings are shown with a one- or half-page essay of each and a label of the style, architect, location, and year of completion.
I would love to have seen more of the actual buildings, but I don't know that I would enjoy owning the book.
In case you're curious, my conquests from the full list...
- Colosseum - Rome. Italy
- San Miniato al Monte - Florence, Italy
- Salisbury Cathedral - Salisbury, England
- Florence Cathedral - Florence, Italy
- Palazzo Vecchio - Florence, Italy
- Florence Baptistery - Florence, Italy
- Uffizi- Florence, Italy
- Basilica of St. Peter - Rome, Italy
- Craigievar Castle - Aberdeenshire, England
- Colonnade of St. Peter - Rome, Italy
- Culzean Castle - Ayrshire, Italy
- Royal Albert Hall- London, England
- Glasgow School of Art - Glasgow, Scotland
- Casa Milá- Barcelona, Spain
- La Sagrada Família - Barcelona, Spain
- Fox Theatre - Detroit, MI, USA
- Chrysler Building - New York, NY, USA
- Empire State Building - New York, NY, USA
- Rockefeller Center - New York, NY, USA
- Pentagon - Arlington, VA, USA
- Italian Chapel - Orkney Islands, Scotland
- Indiana College Life Insurance Company Building - Indianapolis, IN, USA
- Sears Tower - Chicago, IL, USA
- East Building, National Gallery of Art - Washington, DC, USA
- United Airlines Terminal, O'Hare Airport - Chicago, IL, USA
- Aronoff Center for Design and Art - Cincinnati, OH, USA
- Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art - Cincinnati, OH, USA
- Walker Art Center - Minneapolis, MN, USA
- Centre Pompidou - Paris, France
Of course, I hadn't actually read any of the Blue Beetle or Atom stuff, so I didn't have much of a leg to stand on in my complaint - not that it's ever stopped me before, of course.
Here's the first volume of the newish Blue Beetle series which sort of introduces Jamie Reyes and his retconned blue scarab thing which turns into armor that he certainly doesn't understand at the beginning of the volume. I say 'sort of introduces' because little is clear a the beginning as the series came out of DC's 'One Year Later' event which dropped the heroes into a world where the readers had no idea what happened in the past, lost year and revealed bit by bit in the subsequent issues.
The idea was dumb.
Luckily, this series is actually interesting enough that I've gone ahead and requested the other five volumes of the since-cancelled run from PLCH. The setting of El Paso is an interesting choice and makes for natural inclusion of young, Hispanic characters, something that I assume DC was making as a conscious choice to bring in a different market than the typical, middle-aged white guys (like a certain ChemGuy).
The inclusion of a strong magic-theme left me cold and a bit confused as characters popped in and out of the series with cryptic and never-fully-revealed comments about Jamie's scarab's magical background. The exploration of Jamie's powers - he doesn't know what the armor/scarab is going to tell him or make him do, and he often struggles to maintain control of the armor - is interesting but needs to fade away soon if I'm going to see this all the way through.
Worth a read...
It's the weird, stupid mix of goth/romantic and faux science that just annoys the crap out of me, and this is just shy of steampunk in my eyes.
I appreciate the creation of Gotham as a character, a city with a rich history of madness and families guiding the creation of both an underclass and a privileged class that looked to help the underclass with their money, sort of the Carnegies of the DC world. Here we see the Waynes, Elliotts, and Cobblepots (?) as the three guiding families whose legacy - bridges and skyscrapers reaching to the heavens - are being tainted and revenged by the descendants of the architects whose designs were made into those 'Gates of Gotham'.
There's some interesting stuff, particularly Dick Grayson's finding of his way as the new Batman (has that entirely disappeared in the New 52?) and worrying about whether he can replace Bruce's knowledge of the city, but in general, this is forgettable.
The covers, however, are highly memorable. It's a shame that they weren't included in the trade.
Sadly, though, I stumbled upon these panels in searching for the covers. What the hell, folks?
He's going to have to slip into playing a different kind of action hero pretty soon.
Good stunts, fun locales, pretty girls...it's lesser than the first two MI's, but it's still a fun enough lark.
Jeremy Renner is a standout here. His star is very rightfully on the rise between the forthcoming Bourne Legacy and the already released Hurt Locker, Avengers, and this flick. He's the real deal, folks. My advice is to see just about anything he's in.
Chemistry Imagined by Roald Hoffmann - This man is the real deal - survivor of the holocaust, Nobel prize winning chemist, host of World of Chemistry, science popularizer, general stud.
When I saw that he had a new book out, I headed to the PLCH catalog to find check it out. Sadly, it's not in their catalog just yet, but this volume was. Since I'm always on the look out for books that might fit the parameters of my ongoing extra credit project, I'll pick up and skim just about any quasi-chemistry book.
This, however, isn't what I was looking for. The book's short (mostly two-page) essays are quick musings rather than somewhat deeper explorations or applications of chemical ideas.
Ah, well...we'll always have World of Chemistry...
Mister Wonderful by Daniel Clowes - This man is a laugh riot. Every page is full of hilarious gags and japes.
...or it's a 'love story' from the master of depressive comics.
Yeah, that's more like it.
Luckily, Clowes does a great job here of not falling to hopelessly into downerville, saving himself moment by moment with glances into a possibly redemptive outcome - which thankfully does come at the end of the book.
Give it a try.
I'm not hitting any detailed reviews here because there's just not that much to say that hasn't been said in more detail than I'm willing to offer up. Check Comics101's review for a good deal...and Ashleeta Beauchamp's take on the Banner-Stark relationship.
The short of this is that if you've seen all the lead-up flicks - Thor, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America (ignore the Hulk stuff, really) - you're gonna go see this one, and you're not going to be disappointed in the least.
- The action is a blast.
- Loki totally works as the bad guy.
- The two just human folks hold their own.
- The Hulk is the best Hulk that we've seen on screen - in spite of the fact that Norton did a fine job.
- Stark and Banner are the best characters here.
- Captain America's appropriately wooden but heroic.
- Scarlett Johansson doesn't ruin the thing and looks pretty throughout.
- We get a teaser for the next Avengers. (I have no friggin' clue why anybody leaves before the credits of a Marvel movie at this point...c'mon, folks!)
- Fury is marvelously controlling and starting to lean a bit further toward his Ultimate universe persona of living in the morally grey areas.
- I'm thinking Colby Smulders is going to be a fine replacement for Agent Coulson, though I'm really sad to see him go.
Plus there are a few points of laugh-out-loud funny in the flick.
Go see it.
(And let's cut the crap about this being the best comic book movie ever. Nolan's pair so far are both better because there's a theme there. This is widescreen comics translated appropriately and brilliantly for the big screen, but it lacks the gravitas that's required to top Nolan.)
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