It's been two weeks or so since
No Country for Old Men, and the movie has stuck with me like few of late. It's been getting
really strong reviews, and they're totally deserved. It's an outstanding film that doesn't pull any punches whatsoever.
The tale opens with a man finding a couple million dollars and taking it home. No excitement in his world, just a very matter of fact admission to his wife that he's got two million dollars in the case and that she shouldn't ask where it came from.
But no found money that big comes without a trail behind it, and this trail is nothing but death courtesy of
Anton Chigurh, an absolute force of nature who simply cannot be stopped. Everyone who steps in Chigurh's way dies. There doesn't have to be a reason, there doesn't have to be hope.
Everyone dies.
That's the movie, and that's the note that the movie leaves us with as Tommy Lee Jones comes to in the end. No one gets out of this life alive. This is no country for old men...
Thankfully the movie is subtle enough to not have a character spout that line anywhere in the film - something that I was constantly worried about, but the Coen Brothers stear clear of any sort of convention or expectation.
This is easily the best film that I've seen this year, full of emptiness and sorrow and action and absolutely gorgeous scenery that plays every bit as huge a part in this film as does Josh Brolin, the lead character.
We got around to finishing up the third and final season of
Deadwood - one of
Time's
100 Best TV Shows.
There wasn't anything in this season to make me rethink that Deadwood was one of the best series made in the past couple of decades. All it did leave me thinking was that it's a crime the stories weren't able to be wrapped up. Apparently the creators of
Deadwood finished up the third season fully expecting to make a fourth season or a movie or two to wrap up the plots, but that never came to pass, and it looks now like it never will.
In this season we get the full realization of the plots that have been coming for two years - Swearengen and Bullock's burgeoning combined leadership of the camp, Hearst's demands on and dislike of the camp, and the coming electrions. The vulgarity and violence so prevelant through the first two seasons may actually be ratcheted up a notch as we get horrific fights going so far as to pluck a man's eyeball out in the muddy street.
Deadwood isn't for the faint of heart, and it's not guaranteed to be 100% historically accurate, but it
is was outstanding. Rarely have we seen historical figures brought this brilliantly to life, scripted with lines as impressive and poetic as any that Shakespeare himself ever crafted, bloodying their hands in the much of the Earth and of each other so masterfully.
The end is undeserved and leaves many threads untied, but this is not a show to avoid just because no final resolution was ever told. What we did get was amazing.
Fables spins off with a solo tale of Jack Horner ditching the safety and security of Fabletown in favor of crossing the US doing what he does best - glorifying himself and passing the time by having a bit of fun with the ladies.
In
The (Nearly) Great Escape Jack finds himself taken to the Golden Boughs Fables retirement home, a place where the librarians lock up Fables and throw away the keys, allowing the rest of the world to slowly forget about them, a situation which eventually robs the Fables of their power. Jack's appearance shakes the place up as he is unwilling to allow himself to be cowed to the head librarian's wishes, trapping himself in the retirement village. Jack, of course, attempts to break the residents free, plotting with fascinating characters such as Sam and the Pathetic Fallacy - one of the more creative Fable creations in the series.
Willingham's magic spreads succesfully to this series - though
some reviewers might disagree - while taking a more light-hearted tact. Where the main series has become a giant, monolithic tale heading toward some kind of massive battle between the Adversary and the displaced Fables,
Jack lets Willingham tell a more light-hearted story, lightened without the weight of the need to keep the plot moving, and it's refreshing. Not that I don't enjoy the monolithic tale of
Fables, but every now and then it's more fun when the
X-Files tell a stand-alone story instead of keeping the plot moving.
The artwork is solid and the story engaging. This is certainly a worthwhile addition to the canon. I look forward to the continuing tale as well as the release of
The Good Prince back in main book.
Ultimate Spider-Man continues to impress me, stripping the series of the weight of continuity that has been building up for decades and writing a fresh tale of the teenage Spider-Man. This has allowed the author - Brian Michael Bendis for the entirety of the collected run so far - to take touchstones of the main continuity such as Marvel Knights and Clone Saga in these volumes and redesigning them, keeping some elements but entirely recreating others.
Where the Clone Sage was a disasterous joke in the main continuity but is rewritten in
its Ultimate version as a throughly engaging tale of SHIELD and another, more mysterious governmental agency's plans to deal with what could eventually be a renegade Spider-Man. Turns out taht they've taken a sample of Petey's blood and have played with the DNA creating a half dozen different varieties of
Spider-Man.
There are a few moments where the tale's flashbacks become a bit wordy - a scene with Pete's dad, comes particularly to mind - but the rest of the tale is very well told, as is the Ultimate version of
Marvel Knights in which we get a team-up of Moon Knight, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Iron Fist, Shang-Chi, and Doctor Strange with the express purpose of exacting a final revenge on the Kingpin.
Daredevil brings the team together in the middle of night to plot the killing of Wilson Fisk, and things get hairy for Spider-Man in particular as he is captured and tortured by Fisk. In the end, however, it's Spider-Man who is the lone voice of heroic reason amidst the darkness that the other Knights appropriately head toward.
The Knights are a group of heroes with street-level fighting powers. Other than Doctor Strange - whose appearance here and with this group seems a very odd and incongruous one - they fight with their knuckles on a level that street thugs can relate to. They aren't, for the most part, flying above the fray taking on cosmic-level threats as the Ultimates and Fantastic Four are, and that gritieness fits beutifully with the Knights tale.
On the sidelines, the relationship triangle of Pete, MJ, and Kitty Pride continues apace following the Pete-MJ reunion at the end of the Clone Saga. I am, admittedly, a little disappointed that the Pete-Kitty relationship doesn't seem to be taking permanent hold as I thought that adjustment from main to Ultimate universe was a great addition. The tale works for the most part, however, so I'm willing to let Bendis wander with this one for a while.
The Ultimate universe continues to be strong, and
Ultimate Spider-Man is the rightful flagship of this continuity, one that I enjoy so much more than I do the
Marvel-616.
Lest you think that everything in the past few weeks has been outstanding, I turn to
Batman: Secrets of the Batcave which has almost no reason to exist. It's a
collection of self-contained tales detailing various aspects of the Batcave - the trophys, the intruders, and the origins of the cave.
There is no connecting story, and many of the tales come from the very early Batman stories, tales that I, admittedly, don't much enjoy. We get glimpses of where the giant penny comes from, the time when a young runaway stumbled into the cave, and lots of other minutia that are best relegated to trivia.
For the neophyte Batman fans, this might be a useful collection, but it bored me.
For $10 at my local Target store, I picked up a double disc of
Grosse Point Blank and
High Fidelity.
I've seen both of them and love them to death, but after watching
Grosse Point Blank this weekend, I was reminded of how outstanding a film it really it. It's a marvelous character sketch of a man lost in his world, trying to change but knowing that he is who has made himself into.
It's hilarious throughout much of the game, but there are glimpses into the mind of Cusack's main character that allow you to see more of him than almost any other character than Cusack has ever put to film.
Countdown to 1000: 8 still coming...this thing is really gonna happen, folks...stay tuned, ya monkeys...
