Month: July 2010

Monday various

  • RIP, Harvey Pekar.
  • So you’ve heard about this new Wonder Woman costume, right?

    It’s as if the people designing her new look didn’t want to make a decision about who she is as a hero. And this is the basic problem – a superhero costume projects an idea, and no one knows what the idea of Wonder Woman is. She was conceived to be the original, iconic female superhero, but seventy years into her history, no one quite knows what a genuinely powerful superheroine should look like or what her story is. It’s sad, but because there have been a hell of a lot of interesting women, and women characters, to think about since 1941.

    I’m not too impressed by it either. [via]

  • Worst comic book origin story ever?
  • Noel Murray revisits Warren Ellis’ Planetary and Kurt Busiek’s Astro City:

    I like Planetary a lot. I think it’s some of Warren Ellis’ and John Cassaday’s best work, and when I read it, I definitely feel their affection for the characters and concepts they’re subjecting to deeper scrutiny. But Planetary feels more like a memorial—a eulogy. Planetary exhumes old bones, while Astro City leads its readers through a living, thriving community, populated by improved versions of what came before. Planetary makes me sad for what might’ve been; Astro City makes me appreciate what is.

  • And fianally, Darth Vader may have had psychological issues. Noooo! [via]

The weekend ends

Tomorrow, I start my summer hours at work, meaning I have to be in the office at 8:30 and can’t expect to leave until 5:15. But, because I do that from Monday through Thursday, working an additional forty-five minutes each day, I get to leave at 1 PM on Fridays. Ask me if I think it’s worth it on Friday — and again when I go back to normal hours in early September. I can’t oversleep any mornings, and I’ll have to rush to make my train every evening, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, there’s not much to report. The weather was lovely here today — a little hot perhaps, but a far cry from yesterday’s heavy downpour. I drove out to Huntington to join friends for our weekly writing group, then home to have dinner out with my father. (My mom and he attended a party for one of her coworkers, then she had to go to work for a few hours.)

And that’s really about it. These weekends go by so damn fast, don’t they?

Song of the day

Our home phone has been down since yesterday’s thunderstorm. I put in a service request through their automated system, but the problem is almost certainly on their end, and we’re almost certainly a very low priority for them. I guess there’s always cell phones and Skype. (I have both, almost never use either.)

So, apropos of that, here’s an old favorite from Electric Light Orchestra, “Telephone Line.”

Weekend with the dragon tattoo

Saturday went by much, much too quickly.

It rained for most of the afternoon, and I spent it mostly playing with the dog and watching TV or reading. I feel bad that I wasn’t able to mail out issues of Kaleidotrope this weekend, though I did finally mail a copy of issue #8 that I’ve been neglecting to for a little while now. (A very little while. I’m usually good about that sort of thing.) I just wasn’t going to be able to have all them printed, folded, stapled, enveloped, and mailed. Next Saturday, fingers crossed!

Last night, I watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (on Netflix Watch Instantly), which I think I liked about as much as I did the book. Which is to say that I liked some of it quite a lot, particularly Noomi Rapace’s fearless portrayal of Lisbeth Salander, but found the rest of it a weird mix of padded tedium and gripping (if inelegantly structured) whodunit.

It’s also funny that so much has been made of how the translated title, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is inaccurate, that Laarson’s original, Män som hatar kvinnor (or Men Who Hate Women), is more apt. And it’s true, the book is more about misogyny (and family secrets) than about Lisbeth. Her tattoo gets mentioned, briefly, but it’s hardly important, and she’s hardly the main focus of the story. And yet if you take her character out of the book — and out of the movie — you’re not left with much else that works. Certainly nothing that’s half as intriguing. Rapace is riveting every time she’s on screen; but every time she’s off, you notice. And while the movie streamlines a lot of the book — for better and for worse — it’s still two and a half hours long. Laarson’s title is more accurate, but it’s boring and underlines what doesn’t work; the English title is misleading, but it focuses in on what’s best about the book.

The movie also had what I think is a pretty big spoiler for the next two books. I say think, because I haven’t read them yet. (I may at some point, but it won’t be immediately, even with the second movie now playing in the US.)

Apparently, there’s also a TV show (starring Rapace) in Sweden. I’m a little dumbfounded by the mass appeal of the books, but there’s something there.