I held back posting this photo on May 1 -- everyone knew. If you didn't, you're sound asleep. Sleep on.

Mission is Not Accomplished, of course. And I'm not just referring to the Iraq War, or the war in Afghanistan, or the War on Terror. What the present architects of our nation have brought upon us -- whether intentionally or not simply no longer matters -- is the End of the Empire. We have seen the clear signs -- Hurricane Katrina is still the most devastating and visible landmark, though most continue to ignore it, just as we're right this moment ignoring the silent, invisible, inexplicable devastation of the honeybee hives presently underway. We are amid the process; we can ignore or deny it, but it is happening. The May 1st photo is a mere moment in that process, but a vital one nonetheless.

I put it to you that what we are amid is nothing less than the eve of the collapse of the Empire -- a major change in US history, unprecedented and certainly unlike anything the present generation has experienced or even entertained, outside of dystopian sf.

An essay well worth reading (thanks to Jean-Marc for steering this link our way):

"Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US" by Dmitry Orlov

"My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the "Collapse Gap" – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War..."

Get ready, folks.
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Still, teaching must go on. We must draw. Yesterday's CCS Drawing Workshop was a two-part affair, building on last week's two-part session: last week, we were visited by botanical illustrators

Bobbi Angell

and Susan Riley, both making the old drive from Marlboro to White River Junction, VT, a drive I know well. Bobbi and Susan presented a two-hour workshop on observational drawing of plant life, which most of the freshmen jumped into with enthusiasm, though it'll take time to build the observational skills essential to the task(s). Bobbi and Susan were terrific.

After that, we spent 90 minutes or so constructing a cardboard city -- a miniature, but for that fairly expansive: about 10' x 9' x 3', with a faux mountain overlooking the village like something out of a Guy Maddin film.

For yesterday's session, both were followed up with:

DRAWING WORKSHOP -- May 2nd -- PART ONE
(1 PM - 2:45 PM)
BRING ALL DRAWING SUPPLIES YOU NEED for OUTDOORS DRAWING

Building on last week’s session with BOBBI ANGELL and SUSAN RILEY, we are spending the first part of today’s session DRAWING OUTDOORS. I have lots of WOODS behind my house -- it’s all yours to draw in until 2:35 PM!

THEN -- leave Bissette house at 2:45 PM, reconvene at the VERIZON BLDG., DOWNSTAIRS at 3 PM for PART TWO of DRAWING WORKSHOP.
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EXERCISE TWO, May 3, 2007 - Drawing Workshop!

Composite Cityscapes

This is a two-step process of drawing an imaginary cityscape from a constructed miniature -- our cardboard city -- and then customizing your drawings referencing from the real buildings, streets and sidewalks of White River Junction. You should end up with three drawings, completed in either pencil or ink, depending on your preference. These should be tight drawings, suitable for use in a comic, as illustration, or as tight reference.

1. ROUGH OUT no less than THREE city areas from any view -- and please, choose three different observation points (from above, from street level, etc.) -- modeled from the constructed miniature.

Be sure to use lighting to rough in the forms of the structures and a cohesive light source; we have enough lights for each group to create its own light source, or move them as needed once one group is done.

These roughs should have no surface details -- no windows, doors, signage, fire escapes, etc. -- beyond what the constructed reference provides.

Be inventive, be imaginative -- this doesn’t need to be a ‘realistic’ contemporary city, as much as an environment that looks ‘lived in’ and seems believably three-dimensional in construction. Perspective can be roughed out -- this is not an exercise in perspective per se.

2. The three roughs will now be ‘fleshed out’ and COMPLETED from LIFE REFERENCE in and around our White River Junction neighborhood.

Open your eyes, and complete your miniature-referenced buildings, streets, etc. with the details of LIFE. Add building textures (wood, brick, stone, glass), add attached structures (fire escapes, building signs -- including those painted ON buildings -- canopies, etc.), doors, windows, sidewalks etc. to create three fully detailed, rendered city scenes.
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I followed up with a short talk, which essentially said the following:

Building on today's Part Two session, though this was a tight exercise timewise, the principle is simple:

If you need to create a convincing urban scene, however small the town (e.g., White River Junction) or metropolitan the city (e.g., Tokyo, New York, Chicago, etc.), create a simple miniature for yourself using cardboard or board -- just to create the building forms, which you can then light for shadows -- then 'wrap' a more realistic or representationally convincing detailed street scene around those forms.

Photo reference is invaluable in this process --

check out a standard Google search for city street scenes

and extend the exercise in your sketchbook to fully grasp the principle -- pick a city to reference, and turn your original cardboard city roughs into an imagined street from a specific city.

This, after all, is what theatre set designers, special effects creators, miniature experts (still used for movie special effects, amusement park rides using '3-D' holographic imagery, like the Universal City Back to the Future ride, or for CGI creations for films, games, etc.), and many artists do.

In comics, this is the kind of thing Gerhard used to do for Cerebus, Herge for Tintin, Richard Corben for his comix and comics stories, etc. -- construct models (usually out of matte board or a similar stiff, cutable board) of specific settings, interiors and exteriors, and use them for reference in creating their drawn panels and pages. I used to visit Dave Sim and Gerhard in their Kitchener, Ontario, studio, and Gerhard occasionally constructed very detailed miniature reference 'sets' for portions of Cerebus -- especially if it was an interior set (like Rick's Tavern) or exterior that would be in play for an extended portion of the narrative.

I know this seemed a 'play' session, last week and this, but don't underestimate the value of the lesson, and the principle. It may serve you well in the future!
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OK, off to work. I have a heady morning with the seniors, and a relaxing afternoon savoring two back-to-back sessions with Ivan Brunetti teaching.

Ah... until the Empire collapses, we will draw. After the Empire collapses, we will still draw. We may eat dirt, but we will use our spit to draw with it. It's what we do.

Have a great Thursday.

Imagine That Newt is Orange...

...and then click over to

Bob McLeod's Rough Stuff site to read about this vintage Bissette/Totleben collaboration, our first painted Swamp Thing cover art.

Then, at your local comics shop or via

this link, pick up a copy immediately of Rough Stuff #4, featuring the interview with John Totleben and pencils section by yours truly.

George Khoury's interview with John is truly excellent reading, and (per usual for Rough Stuff) illustrated with some jaw-droppingly gorgeous reproductions of John's pencils for covers, story pages, pinups, concept drawings, etc. John's recollections about our Swamp Thing days are, also per usual, dead on the money right -- though I'll post some comments (in the way of additional info, in part since George asks John about my end of things more than once) later this week, as time permits. In any case, get your hands on Rough Stuff #4, and pronto!

I'm speaking in Stowe, VT tonight at 5:30 at

The Helen Day Art Center; here's the particulars.

Maybe see one or two of you there? I'm working all this morning there at the art center with three groups of regional high school students (11th and 12th Grade) drawing comics -- fun, fun, fun! I dig these sessions, and some pretty lively comics come about as a result.

Ya, I know, it's late notice. Heck, I've barely had time to post anything this week, and this bull run (between CCS workload and WRIF final prep) will continue thus into Friday. As time permits, though, I'll try to catch up.

The Virginia Tech rampage is the fresh national horror; but this has had me wincing over the past week:

One thing to keep in mind as you hear/read the increasingly bilious crap pouring out of President Bush's mouth this week: You know, if President Bush would just finance his war the way every other President in US history tends to -- within his annual budget -- instead of keeping it "off the table" with his bullshit sideline funding via emergency spending measures, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this dilemma. He alone is responsible for this, however much he stridently says otherwise. He is refusing to "fund the troops."

The Congress is, at last, holding him and the Pentagon accountable (literally) for this war funding, and it's Bush's strategic burying/sidelining of the real cost of the war that led to this present showdown. The pork is a false issue -- the real issue is Bush, Cheney, et al set up this situation by never honestly funding this war, thus falsely cooking the annual books. It's Bush's own fucking fault -- however much he blisters the Democratic Party with his mounting rhetoric (and it was Republican votes that landed much of the pork attached to the war bill, BTW, so don't buy into that line of crap, either).

OK, there's other stuff to get into.

More later this week!

He Asks for Patience...

Happy Fourth Anniversary of the Iraq War, one and all. Four years ago this morning, I was arguing with trigger-happy fans on the now-defunct Kingdom/Swamp boards, furious over the war's launch. "You've got your fucking war," I posted, prompting mucho heat from those who wanted war, but didn't want to fess up to war mongering.

Everything those of us who opposed this war said would happen before it began has not only come to pass, but every reason we gave for not launching war has proven to be valid. The only lies that have been uncovered were the always-dubious reasons to go to war -- lies, lies, and more lies.

And on this anniversary,

sans irony, President Bush

asked for patience this week.

Four years since he ignored all calls for patience with the inspection process,

since he recklessly plunged our country and our allies and Iraq (and the world) into this maelstrom of violence,

since he ignored all calls, pleas, protests for patience, diplomacy, due process,

since ignoring reality to pursue his own insane agenda, heedless of the consequences (save the fantasy he and his compadres fabricated), he asks for patience.

In preparation for this momentous call for patience, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow patiently

told CCN's Ed Henry to "zip it,"

a demonstration of Snow's impeccable, Fox-News-cultivated tact you can see here for yourself.

Of course, the momentous occasion of the anniversary has resulted in this event being downplayed (CNN's own immediate followup, to Ed Henry: "Ed, if it weren’t such a solemn day we could do about five minutes on that whole zip it exchange, but because of the the anniversary, we will let it go at that..."), though it is the most succinct summary imaginable for the rampant arrogance, hubris and power abuse that led us down this bloody path.

Fuck these clowns; their arrogance is at last being challenged by the inevitable toll of reality -- not their manufactured reality, but reality -- and time.

May it all crash down around their ears without taking the rest of us out.

Happy fucking anniversary, U.S. of A.

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U R Invited!

I'd be remiss not to mention, after the attention I gave to Frank Miller's invite to yours truly to attend the NYC premiere of 300, the fact that Jeanine Atkins and Peter Laird invited Marge and I to this week's Massachusetts premiere/preview of the new CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature. Alas, it's timing (late afternoon) didn't jive with Marge's or my work schedule -- especially given the additional hour the drive entails for us now, living further north up I-91 -- but the invitation is greatly appreciated!

As with 300, reckon we'll (or I'll) see it with the rest of the country.

Former Mirage Studio compadre, Cowboys of Moo Mesa and Bog creator, and all around sweet guy Ryan Brown also sent the invite, here, to a parallel TMNT event in Ohio; again, distance prevents our taking advantage of this, but such is life.

[It was great to hear from Ryan, in part because of Bog -- I'm making some plans that (if Ryan approves) will bring some new life to Bog after a number of years laying fallow, as bog-beasts do at times. More on that later, after Ryan and I can talk...]

It's been fun, too, seeing the anticipation among some of the Center for Cartoon Studies students for this new TMNT movie. I've no idea how it might be impacting on Peter, Kevin or the remaining Mirage crew, but a whole generation that grew up on the Turtles will soon get their shot at seeing this new take on the now-venerable heroes of their childhoods that played such a key role in their own lives. I hope to attend one of the opening night shows, if only to see what the audience is like, and how they react.

It's fascinating to me, personally, how little of any substance has been written about the Turtles phenomenon and Mirage Studios in particular. It's the great untold story of comics in particular and the pop culture in general, and it's one well worth someone telling one day, in all its ups, downs and compelling human dimensions.

_________________

"Frank Miller invites you to attend a screening of 300 IMAX on March 8, 2007 at 7:30 pm at Lincoln Square IMAX 1998 Broadway, NYC. Please see attached invitation..." (visible here, now that the event itself is safely past)

By now, most of you will have seen 300, so I feel it's appropriate to post my own views on the film later this week. I caught 300 opening weekend locally with some of my CCS student/compadres; though it was a 4:45 matinee, the theater was packed.

It's been somewhat amusing to see, too, the ripples, including the

expected backlash against the film's caricature of history, Persia and its implications given current strained US/Iranian relations (or non-relations) and the Bush-fomented nuclear standoff,

and this petition against (chuckle) Warner Bros. prompted by ire against the film and all its stands for in the minds of those infuriated by its existence.

In the opening volley of the Iranian outrage directed against 300 visible to us stateside,

Siamack Baniameri wrote, "300 depicts King Xerxes as a fat homosexual and Persians as deformed and stupid monsters similar to what the Orcs looked like in The Lord of the Rings. Spartans on the other hand are revealed as rocket scientists trapped in bodies of Greek gods with comic book bravery and constant worry of losing their beloved and hard-earned "freedom and democracy" to the damn Middle Easterners."

Well, almost.

Xerxes is in fact presented as power-body-sculpted as the Spartans, except he's got all kinds of "shit in this face" (Tarantino Pulp Fiction speak for facial adornment) and moves and speaks with the narcissistic bisexual/homoeroticism Mel Gibson assigned to the gliding devil of his Passion (of the Christ) (which, by the way, was staged with techniques stolen from Mario Bava's '60s horror films). This is especially funny in the context of the Greek/Spartan homosexuality that history proper designates as part and parcel of their culture (and warrior classes); as Bob already pointed out in his comments to this blog, the macho elements of 300 are as homoerotic as anything mainstream American cinema has yielded since -- uh, Alexander, which was just over a year or so ago.

And the Spartans hardly come across as "rocket scientists", though those bods are clearly Greek classical in their perfect pec-and-ab (CGI-enhanced) refinements: the Spartans, in fact, come across as reckless warriors. In his graphic novel, Frank Miller made a point of adhering to the Spartan mode of warfare he made key to his narrative (the reason for the rejection of the hunchback as fit warrior material); for the film, director Zach Snyder adheres to Frank's stated reason for said hunchback's rejection -- then shows his Spartans time and time again dispensing with any reasonable strategic advantage to indulge more vain-glorious onscreen posing and mayhem, however vulnerable it might leave them. It's stupid, really, resulting at one point in a supposedly tragic death (a decapitation that looks as patently phoney as any seen in the post-CGI revolution; Snyder should have called in Tom Savini or the KNB crew) that is risible, neutering the consequences of any conviction. So, if I may be so un-PC blunt, from fag-boy Xerxes to dumbo Spartans, it's all a CGI cartoon, as so many action films are today.

Let's face it, we're in a pepla revival -- pepla being the Italian Hercules-inspired wave of muscle-man movies that flooded international movie screens and TV screens in the late '50s and the '60s [PS: see Tim Lucas's comment on this post, below -- and note his correcting my initial post misspelling of pepla, which I indeed, off the top of my head, misspelled pebla first time around; oops!]. And 300, the movie, is a fucking great peplum, and as ridiculous as any of 'em. Instead of Carlo Rambaldi rubber monsters, we get CGI orcs (and yes, they do come across as orcs in the film, and have no corresponding source in Frank Miller's graphic novel); instead of paper mache rocks and fog and Spanish beaches, we get CGI-created fake cliffs and oceans.

But "history proper" has little, if anything, to do with the kind of full-blown pepla -- a permutation of the fantastique more than historical epics per se -- imagery and kinetics 300 the movie revels in, any more than it informed Ridley Scott's Gladiator (which was and remains a much better film, but more on that later). For that matter, the ignorance most critics betrayed last week about 300's source material says a great deal: compared to director Zach Snyder's slow-mo celebration of machismo, violence and war, Frank Miller's 300 is a model of cunning storytelling economy and restraint -- and by far the more focused, successful creation.

Here's the most insightful and pragmatic analysis of the international 300 situation I've read to date,

from the online Payvand's Iran News (posted March 9th, "The Persian Empire Strikes Back"), in which Iranian author Darius Kadivar places the pre-release anger in its proper contexts.

This is essential reading; Kadivar ultimately poses the core questions, "What is more shocking: To be depicted as Villains in a film that is supposed to be anything but a history lesson about an event that took place 25 centuries ago? Or, To be associated to an entity that exists no more that is the Persian Empire itself ever since its removal by a widely popular Islamic Revolution that put an end for ever to what its supporters considered as an evil and corrupt institution?"

He continues, "What the controversy about this film reveals as in the case of Oliver Stone’s movie Alexander is that the Persian Empire, with or without its King or legitimate heir, still exists in the minds of all Iranians and probably transcends even political convictions. It probably has more to do with our own Ego ( justified or not ) or is it a Freudian sense of self preservation and of our role as a nation in the History of Mankind?"

More to the point, Kadivar asks, "Do we as viewers have [to] adopt a partisan attitude towards a film we have not even seen?"

This places the initial controversy, in Islamic terms, within the realm of the overreaction to the pro-Islamic Mohammed: Messenger of God (which, despite it's being pro-Islamic and a film by a devout Islamist, prompted violence in mere anticipation of its premiere), and in Christian terms in the arena of the pre-release outrage fomented by Monty Python's The Life of Brian, Jean-Luc Godard's Mary, and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

And that, my friends, is meat for another post, later in the week.

Now, given the fact the film has been widely seen, the outrage has only escalated, as the boxoffice for the film soars. So it goes with such controversies, by and large, though 300 had its own exceptional pre-release buzz (triggered in part by those ravishing trailers, the most effective in recent memory).

I gotta run --

Have a great Tuesday!

Cine-Ketchup: Hannibal Dining

But first:

"Bush seeks 8,200 more troops for wars;"

or, How Do You Say No to a Man Who Never Learned The Meaning of the Word?Center for Cartoon Studies :: View topic - CCS Photos

Poppa and Momma Bush clearly never taught our Prez when he was a tot the fundamentals of right, wrong, 'yes' or 'no.' George don't wanna hear 'no,' George don't hear 'no,' George will go to South America to ignore 'no' and act like 'no' is 'yes.'

George wants what George wants, come what may.

Congress better grow some nanny-nuts and learn to say and mean 'no' to George, and make it stick, and fast.

With this news, we're further into Vietnam in the 21st Century than ever before.

OK, as promised in the title today -- a more personable serial killer and war criminal, wholly imagined and unreal:

* Hannibal Rising (2007) - Author Thomas Harris and executive producer Dino DeLaurentiis bring their ongoing Hannibal Lecter franchise to its most recent fruition, a prequel detailing Hannibal’s back story. As I’ve detailed elsewhere (in my Video Watchdog review of Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, a film I quite love), Harris’s career has been perversely defined by Hannibal, an almost Frankensteinian dynamic between creator and creation that emerged from the character’s compelling supporting role in Harris’s novel Red Dragon to the pop boogeyman stature Lecter was elevated to with Silence of the Lambs, the bestseller and Academy-Award winning boxoffice blockbuster. Hannibal was and remains a brilliant creation, an ideal fusion of Dr. Fredric Wertham and the good doctor’s real-life patient Albert Fish: a progressive, astute psychologist & psychiatrist who also happens to be a cannibalistic serial killer. Thus, via his best two novels (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs) and their original film adaptations (Michael Mann’s Manhunter and Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs), Harris evolved the atavistic, almost primal boogeyman archetypes of the ‘70s and ‘80s (the Ed Gein-inspired Leatherface, the non-cannibal Michael Myers of Halloween and Jason of the Friday the 13th sequels) to a whole new and much more terrifying threshold. Hannibal, forever fixed in the popular imagination via Anthony Hopkins’s Oscar-winning incarnation of the role, transcended the procession of Leatherfaces, Michaels, Jasons, Freddies and Pinheads to pluck a collective nerve that was both more adult and more primal: the patriarch as devourer, the vengeful father as uber-ogre, the cultivated carnivore capable of not only peering into one’s deepest fears but articulating and manipulating them, to his own needs, driven by a frightening but admirable personal aesthetic and ethical code (initially defined in his complex relationship with FBI agent Clarice Starling in Silence and its sequel, Hannibal).

This is profound stuff, really, but it’s no surprise it has eluded Harris’s grasp a bit: as a novel and a film, Hannibal alienated many readers and viewers (though, again I must note, not I), and Dino’s decision to remake Red Dragon (making it the first movie ‘prequel’ of the series) only diminished the franchise (Brett Ratner was the wrong director for the project; it's a dim shadow of Mann's Manhunter, at best). Hannibal has since held Harris’s creative life in thrall, a blessing and a curse, and Hannibal Rising extends this (with Harris’s co-producer and screenplay credit asserting his control over cinematic franchise as well as the novels) retroactively, if you will, by chronicling the future serial killer’s traumatic childhood and teenage years.

What made the man, it turns out, is very much a series of generic lock-step conceits: in the mode of The Shadow, Frank Miller’s then-innovative retooling of Marvel’s Daredevil, and a multitude of pop icons (including Batman) since, Harris provides Hannibal with a revisionist grounding in Asian cultural disciplines of spirit and samurai skills via a widowed aunt (the lovely Li Gong of Farewell My Concubine, 2046, Memoirs of a Geisha, Miami Vice, etc.) who took him in after young Hannibal survived a Jerzy Kosinski-like WW2 childhood (e.g., The Painted Bird) and post-war orphanage maturation. This semi-familial relationship blossoms into incestuous possibilities the film teases but never explores (I’ve yet to read the novel), prefering instead to (as in The Shadow, Miller’s Daredevil comics, et al) apply this revisionist, superficial samurai discipline to Lecter’s serial killer roots. We see these skills -- built upon lethal survival/predatory instincts evidenced in the glimpse Harris provides of teenage Hannibal’s Dickensian orphanage years -- progress from exacting revenge against a French butcher (Charles Maquignon) for an insult against his aunt/lover to calculated, full-bore vengeance against the ragtag band of Russian rogues who cannibalized his younger sister on the Western front.

This tragic motivation for Hannibal’s taste for human flesh was evocatively sketched in Hannibal (the novel, not the film); it is fully visualized here, as tastefully as possible (lest you fear a Hollywood-sanctioned companion to Herman Yau’s unflinching The Untold Story, 1996). This is all revealed in the film’s deftly executed first act, wherein 8-year-old Hannibal (played by Aaron Thomas) is most traumatically orphaned, whereafter we follow young adult Hannibal (very well played by Gaspard Ulliel) and his subsequent struggle with the traumatic memory -- recovered piecemeal not because he had suppressed the horrific reality, but to coax forth from his unconscious clear mental pictures of the men responsible for his sister’s fate. In these sequences, Harris, director Peter Webber and their cast and crew excel; make no mistake, Webber mounts Hannibal Rising with the same eye and ear for nuance, period and detail he brought to the lovely Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) -- no slumming here. Ulliel (previously seen by American audiences in De Pact des Loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf, 2001, and A Very Long Engagement, 2004) is a most compelling Hannibal throughout, inhabiting the role with authority belying his youth, spiced with neatly observed correlations to Hopkins’s definitive claim on the adult Lecter role. Amid the borrowings of the distinctive ways of moving and looking Hopkins brought to the role, Ulliel particularly manages Hopkins’s cool, reptilian opacity without affectation, which keeps his Hannibal from seeming a mere sadist or lunatic. It’s only once the imposition of the faux-Eastern philosophical and (most important) samurai conceits appeared that my involvement as a viewer faltered. Still, I cannot consider this a lapse or failing, per se. Harris and Webber and their fine cast handle these confections with efficiency and precision: the allure of the basement alter, mask and the sword, Lecter’s corruption of the samurai code into his personal vendetta, etc. Sadly, the film doesn’t deflate as much as it too readily shorthands (what are, after all, profound cultural and religious belief systems), and my detachment was not, I hasten to add, due to the “desensitizing impact of cinematic violence” non-argument media critics and analysts love to embrace, but rather to the over-familiarity with the water of the communal pop well Harris chooses to dip into here. This Eastern-tinged origin story is so over-familiar, via The Shadow, Daredevil, Batman Begins, Kill Bill, etc., and has been so neatly satirized for a full generation by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that my reaction would seem universal and inevitable. After all, this seems quite out of step with the Hannibal Lecter backstory hinted at in previous novels and films; it raises as many clumsy questions as Harris, presumably, thought it would answer.

Thus, the character’s previously displayed rarified knowledge of psychological and psychiatric science (refined, no doubt, via professional experience and medical practice -- he is, after all, Dr. Hannibal Lecter -- as well as a university education) and deep love for art, drawing, European cities, fine wine, and even rarer culinary delights (his appetite for ‘long pig’ notwithstanding) is subsumed by a young adulthood steeped in, uh, ninja assassin techniques? Well, roll with it, if you can. Auntie disapproves, but she loves her fine young Hannibal, and thus Hannibal Rising eases into its true groove -- Hannibal’s systematic investigation of and assassination of the men who killed and ate his little sister, and his pursuit by a dedicated detective (Dominic West, now onscreen in 300) with his own post-WW2 atrocity obsessions to slake.

This potboiler builds a strong head of steam by the end of the second act, and worked quite well for me as a film -- it’s a polished 21st Century horror movie revamp of Nevada Smith (1966). Henry Hathaway’s Steve McQueen vehicle was a staple of my youth, essentially a sort of Grand Guignol western in its day, deterministically detailing its obsessed young hero’s vengeance with a cruel streak many found disturbing (though that would soon seem pale alongside the stronger Guignol of the spaghetti westerns soon to open stateside). Hannibal Rising adheres to that tradition to its graphic conclusion, punctuated throughout (like Nevada Smith) by effective characterizations and setpieces. As in the best '60s westerns, the men Hannibal so relentlessly pursues are marvelously cast and played, led by Rhys Ifan (Notting Hill, Enduring Love, etc.) as the amoral commander and Richard Brake, Ivan Marevich, Goran Kostic, Stephen Walters and Kevin McKidd (a very nice turn, here, from the Scot in Trainspotting, Dog Soldiers, etc.) as his soldiers, all of whom have settled into various niches of safety after the war. Again, this is more evocative of the 1960s Western revenge films than, say, revenge-horror-films like The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971, which provided the narrative and thematic template for Se7en and the Saw series). Thus, young Hannibal shares Nevada Smith’s and his ilk’s appetite for their victim’s agonies: as in Nevada Smith, the violence essential to Hannibal savoring his revenge is disturbingly intimate and personalized, the whole of the carnage ritualized, which was also true of the best and worst of the Italian revenge westerns.

This aspect of Hannibal Rising hasn’t, to my knowledge, been noted by any other critic writing about the film, though it’s as central to its focus and purpose (and formula) as, say, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) was to David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999). I think everyone has, as with Hannibal (which was a marvelous, passionate, demented love story), quite missed the point. This makes for a slickly-done, sumptuously mounted and most satisfying revenge tale, though not the horror or Hannibal film many seemed to wish for -- choose your poison. For me, save for one key caveat (Harris's opportunistic adoption of the samurai trappings), Hannibal Rising is a solid piece of work, and one well worth revisiting once it's on DVD.

Have a great Sunday, one and all!

Oh, Christ!

Hang on to your crosses,

producer James Cameron and director Simcha Jacobovici are about to rock the Christian boat, big time.

Cameron is holding a New York press conference today, at which he will reveal three coffins, supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary, and none other than Mary Magdalene.This is either going to prompt incredible outrage or simply be dismissed as a publicity stunt -- only time will tell.

Just a heads up, folks, for your Monday morning coffee.

Cine-Ketchup, Monday Installment

Three remarkable documentaries and one long-suffering cat this morning, and I hope it's a good one for you...

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* Euthanasia (2006) - Where's Toonces, the Driving Cat when you need him? This sardonic 17-minute short from writer/director Adrian Grenier (of Entourage) isn't for all tastes, or audiences. Two teenage girls (Hannah Mets, Stella Maeve) dash out for a 15-minute joyride, savoring the freedom one of them having just acquired her driving license brings; distracted by futzing about with plugging in their music, the neophyte driver accidentally runs over the family cat -- and thereby hangs (literally) the tale/tail. Paul Mantel's animatronic cat puppetry manages to be realistic enough to be agonizing, cartoony enough to be funny, but cat-lovers will simply flee the theater, especially as the mayhem escalates. And oh, does it ever escalate.

The ditziness of the teens confronting this situation is sadly believable, but rest assured a couple of guys wouldn't have handled it much better (though they'd have likely just backed over the cat to put it out of its misery). The Official I Hate Cats Book indulged similar sadism for laughs, but thanks to Skip Morrow's cartooning skills there was a comfortable distance kept from the implicit sadism; a similar subject rendered this naturalistically is a tough act for some to stomach. Sick puppy that I am, I laughed, though. Four times. Score, Adrian!

* Iraq in Fragments (2006) - This didn't win the Academy Award it was nominated for (it was Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth's evening in the documentary field), but don't let that sway you for a moment. James Longley's intimate, three-part portrait of the current situation in Iraq lives up to its title, as we spend time with Sunni, Shiite and Kurd individuals, each in their own corner of their war-torn country. The view, however, is from the ground, sans polemics other than those manifest on the streets, in garages, in the city centers and mosques.

The first and third chapters are from the perspectives of children: a barely-literate Baghdad 11-year-old boy repeating 1st Grade for the fourth year in a row, fatherless (his father was imprisoned under Saddam's regime and disappeared) and under the casually brutal dominion of an employer the boy speaks highly of, but who berates and humiliates the lad; the final chapter focuses on the handsome son of an elder Kurdish shepherd and farmer intent on his studies, but the teenager is soon resigned to working as needed so that his father (who supports the US intervention, as it has improved the Kurds lot) doesn't have to -- and on the boy's best friend, who works in the nearby brick kiln. The second, central chapter presents a disorienting & harrowing snapshot of the southern Shiite region, rallying for elections even as devout Sadr followers enforce repressive Islamic law at gunpoint, seizing, blindfolding and imprisoning 'outlaws.'

Amid the turmoil, Longley captures glimpses of the Iraqi view of America, via street conversations, TV reports overheard in cafes, and the occasional onscreen conversation. "They took out Saddam, but brought in 100 new Saddams!" one man exclaims; the Kurdish farmer content to live out his remaining years praying in mosques notes, in a despairing but accurate parable, that "God is on the side of the winner," whoever or whatever that may be. Longley's meditative, poetic exploration of post-2003 Iraq through the faces, plight and eyes of its people is inherently fragmented, but the often breathtaking collision of an unexpected intimacy with the breadth of its scope cannot be overstated. A quiet intensity builds, rises, and never subsides, despite the relative placidity of the third chapter. The smoke from the brick kiln fires evoking those of the first chapter's burning buildings and ruins: the storm, it seems, will never end. Necessary viewing.

* Manhattan, Kansas (2006) - Filmmaker Tara Wray returns to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas for a cautious reunion with her mother -- and with a personal agenda. I think this is an excellent film, and emblematic of its current breed of documentary-as-self-therapy, and hence significant.

We're clearly amid a generational shift in documentaries, and thus far this kind of introspective, exploratory work has been reserved for only those with some measure of celebrity on either end of the generational lens: non-celebrity offspring dissecting relations with celebrity parent(s), or vice-versa (most often the former). Tara Wray has neither in her court, only her reckless, fearless determination to reunite and confront the troubled relationship with her estranged mother using the camera as her shield and her sword. Thus, the implicit compact with the audience most documentaries rely upon -- the illusory 'cloak of invisibility' the camera indulges, a voyeuristic window and scalpel -- is inherently denied: Tara makes it clear onscreen, in monologue to the viewer and dialogue with a therapist, what she is doing, why, and what she hopes to accomplish. The resulting intrusive intimacy essential to the whole of Manhattan, Kansas therefore serves a very different function from that usually reserved for documentaries: unlike, say, Ed Pincus's seminal Diaries (arguably, the wellspring of this entire genre), Tara is not so much observing her own life and that of her family as willfully using the camera as mediator, where no human mediation would likely function. Unlike An American Family (the second wellspring, the PBS docu-series about the Loud family that opened this can of worms for the masses), there's no pretense of clinical distance or objectivity; and unlike almost all others of its current breed (e.g., Tarnation, Tell Them Who You Are, Hand of God, 51 Birch Street, etc.), Tara is not trying to uncover or probe any secret aspect of her life or that of her mother. She's seeking to reconcile the visible, remembered life with her mother, seeking some common ground as an adult for the raw, loose ends of a difficult childhood and teenage relationship.

Unexpectedly, the path she sets upon proves to have a cumulative, positive impact for both Tara and her mother -- thus, the creative impetus that fueled this project, and Tara's unflinching decision to act upon that impetus and persevere, resulted in real, visible change in their lives, together and apart. This refutes the illusory passivity of the camera most documentaries are still dependent upon fostering. Could anyone but an amateur, working on her first film, have accomplished this?

The final edit crystallizes this process beautifully, retaining the key moments captured amid the days worth of footage shot (the visit to the geographic center of North America among them, though we don't realize that until the final act). If I had any doubts about the quality of this effort, the introspective passage in which Tara picks her way through the ruins of an abandoned high school gym while sorting out her own intentions put my fears to rest -- but not my ongoing dis-ease with the nature of the film itself. The discomfort this arouses is essential to the process as well as the intent and content of the film, though that unease may be too great for some.

These documentaries continue to revolve around seeing/showing/sharing that which we feel should not be seen/shown/shared, emotional terrain between estranged mother/daughter or son/father that formerly were privileged, private. There's no resolving this conundrum: at its best and its worst (e.g., reality television), the genre thrives upon, and is indeed built upon, transgressive intrusion into, and revelation of, that very real, personal space. If filmmaker and subject/parent invite, permit or tolerate the intrusion, what are we to do as viewers? Indulge, explore or retreat? The choice is as personal as the films.

This is an ideal companion feature to Shot in the Dark and 51 Birch Street, particularly Adrian Grenier's Shot in the Dark (see following review). They are perfect compliments, in terms of gender (mother/daughter, father/son), dynamic (present parent/absent parent), and filmmaker orientation (non-celebrity/celebrity), and both are first features, by young filmmakers based in NYC exploring their roots in mid-America with parents who'd embraced alternative lifestyles in the '70s -- there's much rich material to be explored here.

* Shot in the Dark (2002) - A pleasant surprise, indeed, and a neat piece of work all around. Director & actor Adrian Grenier and his pal Jon Mol construct this documentary around Adrian's search for his absent father, John, who he hasn't seen in 18 years. As they drive closer to the planned birthday reunion, intercut with interviews with Adrian's mother, family and circle of friends, questions over who his biological father might really be emerge, along with exploration of who his 'real' father was (Boris, who raised him with Adrian's mother, aggressively posits himself in that role), and what father/son relations can be, should be, and too often are.

What emerges also functions as concise autobiography, biography and a semi-parody of its genre (given the clever double coda, "Reunion: Scene One" and "Reunion: Scene Two"). It's all compulsively watchable thanks in part to Grenier's onscreen charisma and celebrity. Jon's candid rapport with Adrian keeps subject and context in perspective: when Adrian (and the film) somewhat romantically muses over the possibility of his having been a "love child" of two briefly 'in-love' hippy parents, Jon candidly says, "maybe it was just -- they met and boned." Maybe so. Nevertheless, the emotional and real-world ripples (entanglements, estrangements, self-exile, etc.) were and are quite real, and Grenier is unabashed about keeping himself, as the flesh-and-blood incarnation of that consequence, center stage. He remains in playful but genuine confrontation mode until he can sort out the reality of his birth and his parents's relationship. He laughs openly at the conceit of the film's concept and title ("...that's all I am -- all I am is a shot in the dark..."), but there is much that is sad and touching here, too, sans pretentions.

This is a fascinating companion piece to Tara Wray's Manhattan, Kansas; together, these offer a pretty remarkable portrait of the current culmination of this vein of autobiographical documentary genre. Both are at times too painfully self-introspective, too intimate; what's compelling, though, is how utterly discomforting either the complete presence (in Manhattan, Kansas) or absence (in Shot in the Dark) of the primary parent is to the now-adult child -- and to the audience/viewer. This is undeniably primal stuff Grenier and Wray are tapping at considerable risk and with considerable courage. There is no comfort zone, and that is clearly characteristic of this genre, and perhaps this generation of filmmakers. The contrast between father and son, mother and daughter relations is compelling, as is the contrast between non-celebrity (Tara) and celebrity (Adrian) in this milieu; one cannot help but wonder, for instance, if the on-camera reconciliation with the once-antagonistic stepmother in Shot in the Dark would have occurred sans Adrian's celebrity. In Manhattan, Kansas, that simply isn't a factor.

But the ever-present factor, of course, is the intrusion of the camera, the filmmaking process, in these streams of life and lives now preserved and shared on video -- and that, I dare say, is the meat of an amazing and increasingly necessary discussion.

That's all for today. Have a great Monday, one and all...

Blocks & Cine-Ketchup (Pt. 2)

So,

For the second time in two weeks,

Republicans senators halted progress on a nonbinding resolution opposing Bush's recent decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

As the latter link/newsstory notes, "Republicans blasted the Democratic leadership for refusing to allow a vote on an alternative that ruled out any reduction in money for troops in the field." This now comes down to funding a war that the President has kept funding issues diverted from for six years.

Another day to remember, another example of Republican democracy at work -- remember next election, and be sure to vote.

____________

Cine-Ketchup, Part 2:

* 51 Birch Street (2005) - "When it comes to your parents, maybe ignorance is bliss," director Doug Block says at one point amid the revelations of his parent's past in the documentary 51 Birch St. This is, literally, the real-life version of The Bridges of Madison County: Doug and his two sisters, while helping their father clear out the Port Washington, NY suburban family home after his remarrying a mere three months after their mother's death (and over 50 years of marriage between the parents), find their mother's extensive diaries, and therein a doorway to her most personal secrets and the reality of their married life. Cinematically, this works quite well, with the nonintrusive but effective score by Machine Head a real plus (so few documentaries use music well). Block does a solid job with the film, which builds to a conclusion that may or may not work for viewers (I didn't find it dishonest, per se, as some have), arriving at some measure of peace with his dead mother (via a dialogue with her best friend: "What a relief for someone to really know us...") and his father (one on one), but I must say I find Tara Wray's Manhattan, Kansas (2006) the more powerful and memorable recent film of this type (to be reviewed later this week).

* Antares (2005) - This Austrian/German feature is narratively structured like Mystery Train, Go!, Crash, etc. and a bit like Closer: in a single city apartment complex, the lives of three couples intersect in unexpected ways, each linked to one another by various (or a single) 'collision' point -- literally, in the case of the framing moment, punctuated by an unexpected car accident. These lives all cross orbits amid their respective struggles with loneliness, the core theme of the film, and the manner in which director Götz Spielmann orchestrates these narratives is surprisingly engaging and affecting. Eva (Petra Morzé) is a nurse, wife and mother juggling a superficially "happy" home life with a torrid affair with a visiting businessman (their first sexual encounter is very explicit, as it must be to convey her passion and sexual satisfaction from these furtive hotel-room couplings); a restless young woman working as a check-out girl in a local market is consumed by suspicion and jealousy & convinced her fiance Marco (Dennis Cubic) is cheating on her -- and he is, with: a recently divorced woman whose abusive ex refuses to let go, bullying and threatening her (and, eventually, others) as his barely-repressed rage and libido simmers dangerously to a boiling point.

The contrasting behaviors of these couples is the meat of the film: Eva's family listens to Schubert and life seems to revolve around their loving affection for their teenage daughter; the dysfunctional dynamic between Marco and his girlfriend, Marco and his lover -- the former pretending to be pregnant, the latter with a young son relegated to being ignored when Marco shows up for fleeting fuckfests, and a pawn between mother and abusive father when troubled Dad shows up. Spielmann deftly juxtaposes and interlocks these turbulent lives, staging their moments of juncture with convincing versimilitude, culminating in the final act's satisfying (for the audience, not the characters) coda. Eschewing melodrama but not drama, the rhythms of daily lives are succinctly portrayed, as are the sudden eruptions and displacements that shake them. This is a truly adult film, sadly overlooked; note that the explicit sex scenes between Eva and her lover (onscreen fellatio, copulation, cunnilingus) may be problematic for some US viewers.

* Colma: The Musical (2006) - Writer/lyricist/composer H.P. Mendoza's ode to being 18, just out of high school, and negotiating the treacherous limbo between teenager and adult in a multi-ethnic cultural limbo sans coherent roadmaps or rites-of-passage is a bracing and engaging musical. Colma is a real city, with more dead residents than living: it's San Francisco's graveyard suburb, a genuine 'dead end' for some, which is the crux of the film. From its opening number, this is fueled by & focused on its two male characters, Billy (Jake Moreno), a amiable but callow aspiring thespian enjoying an immediate measure of success (in regional theater) that goes to his head, and Rodel (Mendoza), a profoundly unhappy gay poet living with his repressive single father (his brother is in prison) and tied to but feeling imprisoned by friends and place. Their closest mutual friend is Maribel (L.A. Renigen), loyal friend and party girl eager to stretch her wings; she is introduced as an equal player but soon relegated to the sidelines, never becoming a fully-fleshed character in and of herself. This isn't so much a shortcoming of the film as a fact: the bonds and tensions between Rodel and Billy, some articulated/dramatized, others not, are the real meat of the story. Mendoza's Rodel steals the show from his first number: prowling toward the audience singing "Colma Stays," with his body coiled, his face registering all the rage and sorrow he bottles up (and subsequently dispenses only via his caustic digs), Mendoza/Rodel is the most compelling presence on the screen.

Mendoza is the best new musical talent I've seen translated to film since John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and Bruce Arntson and Coke Sam's Existo, with a couple of standout (but not showstopping) numbers packing real power -- the quietest numbers, truth to tell (Rodel and Maribel/the dancers in the graveyard and "Crazy Like Me" are memorable). The musical elements are tightly integrated, character driven and/or propel the narrative, and all but a couple (the bar "Cupid" number seemed contrived to me) resonate, moving with naturalistic style and grace. Director Richard Wong used Colma, CA locations throughout and canny but judicious use of split-and-multiple screens reflects a sharp directorial intelligence at work; at one point, understated staging punctuated with a perfectly timed intrusion of split-screen works wonders. Rodel's situation (as a gay teen outed by a vengeful ex, beaten by his father and thereafter shuttling from floor to floor in friend's rooms) is familiar (My So-Called Life, anyone?) and sympathetic but never played for easy melodrama or pathos: Rodel (as a character) and Mendoza (as an actor/singer) see to that.

This music has really stayed with me -- prompting me at last to

visit the Colma: The Musical website and buy the soundtrack CD. Check it out!

And, if you get the chance, check out this film!

Have a great Sunday...