There are certain people for whom, no matter how good a film Watchmen is, it will not be good enough to meet their expectations. I am not one of those people. I was lucky enough to see Watchmen at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin on Feb 23 with a preview audience.
Going in, my expectations had to be met based on one standard: taming the beast. Other than epics like Anna Karenina or perhaps the Bible, Watchmen seemed perhaps the hardest piece of western literature to adapt to film because of its intricacies and layers. Could you tame the beast and make a film that was still Watchmen and only trim fat, not muscle, bone and sinew?
This film is Watchmen, the same comic book/graphic novel you fell in love with and which nearly every nerd and geek alike sees as a sort of password or shibboleth – “Oh, you’ve read Watchmen? You’re one of us.” Zach Snyder and his team of screenwriters tamed the beast and kicked ass in the process.
They left in every iconic moment, every scene you’ve wanted to see in full motion rather than as a pane of Dave Gibbons’ artwork, every phrase of dialogue you’ve wanted to hear. (There was a cheer when Kovacs proudly yells in the jailhouse mess hall, “I’m not locked up in here with you, YOU’RE IN HERE WITH ME!!!”) Every Alan Moore project that has been raped in the past is hereby redeemed. The adaptation is just that good.
So, this is an excellent adaptation of the source material, which is the first question every has asked me so far about it. The second question almost always is “Did they have the part where….”
Here is a quick answer to all of those that I have been asked so far:
Breaking News! Remember back in December, when I was having a daily conniption due to various midnight memos and parting shots from the outgoing Bush administration? Particularly troubling was former EPA administrator Stephen Johnson’s decision to reverse the landmark Bonanza decision. Well, now Johnson’s reversal has been reversed.
Last November the EPA’s governance board ruled that its regional office had been too hasty in approving a new coal-fired power plant in Bonanza, Utah because the plant didn’t include carbon dioxide emissions or control techniques in their permit application. The Sierra Club helped secure this victory by filing a suit against Utah’s Deseret Power Electric Cooperative for not controlling carbon dioxide. Their argument was based upon the landmark Massachusetts v EPA case, which required the agency to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. But then at the last minute, outgoing Stephen Johnson issued a memo reversing this decision and saying that the EPA should ignore CO2 emissions when permitting new coal fired power plants.
But REJOICE, for this morning the Sierra Club reports:
Washington, DC: President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today took the first step toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. EPA, under the new leadership of Administrator Lisa Jackson, granted a petition from the Sierra Club and other groups calling for reconsideration of an unlawful, midnight memo issued by former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal plants. EPA announced in a letter to the Sierra Club that it will publish a proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register and seek public comments on the decision in the near future.
Today’s decision is consistent with a previous ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) in the Bonanza case, which found that there was no valid reason for the Bush administration’s refusal to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired power plants. The so-called Johnson Memo sought to unlawfully overturn that decision.
Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund filed suit against the Bush administration to overturn the Johnson Memo. That litigation will now be put on hold as a result of today’s announcement.
Okay, so the EPA hasn’t officially nixed the memo, but they are posting a proposed rulemaking (to nix it) and inviting public comment. Not too shabby for a Tuesday.
The decision to grant the Sierra Club’s petition says a lot about the EPA’s new direction and leadership under Lisa Jackson.
Said David Bookbinder, Chief Climate Counsel for the Sierra Clubin a press release this morning,
Today’s victory is yet another indication that change really has come to Washington, and to EPA in particular. This decision stops the Bush Administration’s final, last-minute effort to saddle President Obama with its do-nothing policy on global warming.
Not only does today’s decision signal a good start for our clean energy future, it also signals a return to policy based on sound science and the rule of law, not deep pocketbooks or politics. Lisa Jackson is making good on her promises to bring science and the rule of law back into the center of the decision making process at EPA.
I’m always intrigued by CSPAN’s list of best and worst presidents, probably relating back to my days in AP History (thanks, Miss Mackay!) and so would like to throw my two cents in.
So, here’s my list. Thoughts? Someone you think I ranked too high? Too low? And while my first instinct was to put ol’ 43 in the bottom 5, I just couldn’t. Close, but until we see if Iraq was more or less foolish than the Compromise of 1850, I’ve got to rank Fillmore lower. I also couldn’t rate him lower than his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Franklin Pierce.
However, why is everyone so down on William Henry Harrison? Sure, he died after only a month in office, but that makes him old, sickly, and stupid– not necessarily a bad president. He was just… not there.
And if I had to rate Obama so far, I’d rate him right below Andy Shepherd, Jeb Bartlett and David Palmer along with the other fictional presidents. Time will tell.
CSPAN’s list is here for comparison
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Theodore Roosevelt
6. Harry S. Truman
7. Woodrow Wilson
8. John F. Kennedy
9. Dwight D. Eisenhower
10. James K. Polk
11. Andrew Jackson
12. James Monroe
13. Ronald Reagan
14. Lyndon B. Johnson
15. Bill Clinton
16. John Adams
17. James Madison
18. George H. W. Bush
19. Gerald R. Ford
20. William McKinley
21. John Quincy Adams
22. Grover Cleveland
23. William Howard Taft
24. Jimmy Carter
25. Calvin Coolidge
26. James A. Garfield
27. Zachary Taylor
28. Benjamin Harrison
29. William Henry Harrison
30. Martin Van Buren
31. Richard M. Nixon
32. Chester A. Arthur
33. Ulysses S. Grant
34. Rutherford B. Hayes
35. Herbert Hoover
36. John Tyler
37. George W. Bush
38. Millard Fillmore
39. Warren G. Harding
40. Franklin D. Pierce
41. Andrew Johnson
42. James Buchanan
First, a confession. I was one of those people who didn’t watch Firefly when it was on Fox on Fridays back in 2001. Of course, this was in the days before TiVo and DVR and I did, at the time, have somewhat of a social life. So I was part of the problem, and missed the boat on Firefly and was one of the reasons it was cancelled before its time.
And so we promise: NEVER AGAIN!!!
Fox’s new Sci-Fi Fridays promise to bring some oompf back to Fridays and maybe even give a reason to stay home… or at least watch it first thing Saturday morning.
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES – Episode 2-14 “The Good Wound”
When we last left our band of continuity-changing time travelers, we found that John Connor’s girlfriend, Riley, was actually brought back from the future by Derek Reese’s rogue lover AND she freaked out and attempted suicide. Then Sarah went off trying to solve the mystery of the “three dots” with help from a trans-sexual internet sleuth, leading to a warehouse in the desert where she was shot by an unknown assailant, after which time Sarah begins to black out, seeing a silhouette of a Skynet gunship flying across the sun. It’s been a long few months since this, and I have been much anticipating the return of the excellent show. It does not dissapoint.
So our show opens with Sarah in the hospital, and John and Derek in another hospital looking after John’s girlfriend. Both patients, of course, go rogue and disappear from their respective hospital beds. Sarah, true to form, kidnaps a female doctor and convinces her to perform the surgery on her to remove the bullet still in her leg. This was by far the most intriguing storyline of the week, as Sarah continues to hallucinate, this time speaking to slain hero of the original Terminator film/John’s father, Kyle Reese.
Meanwhile, we’re also checking in with former FBI Agent James Ellison, former Terminator known as ChromeArtie reborn as “John Henry.” John Henry has discovered fighting Japanese robot toys and prefers ball-and-socket joints to hinge joints like his elbows and knees! He has also learned how to use the internet, leading him to some interesting discoveries about Agent Ellison and information that intrigues Carolyn Weaver, leading her to go on a T-1000 rampage.
And this brings me to my only complaint with this show. As anyone who knew me back in 1995 – 1999 could tell you, I had a huge crush on Shirley Manson of Garbage. While I love her music, I don’t know what people were thinking with this decision which I can only assume was an attempt at “stunt casting” (unless rumors of Shirley’s supposed prowess in…. uh, can I say this?…. “oral gratification”… contributed to her casting). So, my main question is, if she’s a T-1000 made of liquid metal and can assume any form, why the form of Shirley Manson? In any case, this must stop ASAP. Carolyn Weaver must die and be replaced by a better persona for our T-1000 to take [bring back Robert Patrick for a spin?].
3 ½ stars (out of 4) – “This is the noise that keeps me awake\ My head explodes and my body aches! PUSH IT!!”
DOLLHOUSE Episode 1-1 “Ghost”
If I had a crush on Shirley Manson, there are not enough John Donne poems written to explain my feelings for Eliza Dushku, who I first fell in love with as Faith, the evil vampire slayer on Joss Whedon’s Buffy. In the first ten minutes of the show we are more or less introduced to the basis of the show: people rent out male or female “dolls” imprinted with, well… whatever you want. So we see every fanboy’s wet dream of a weekend with Eliza Dushku, or ECHO, as her “Active” is named, included kinky sex, a motorcycle race, a birthday party, and dancing in a dress that if it were any shorter this show would need to be on FX instead of Fox. Joss, as writer and director of this (supposedly extensively re-written and re-shot pilot) obviously knows where his fanbase is and delivers them a big hunk of red meat early on.
The rest of the show much less so. We are introduced to a some glimpses of backstory which are somewhat less intriguing (promise but no real payoff), Echo ends up dressed up as the hot school librarian, like at the beginning of some 80’s hair metal video, but then never then becomes the hot librarian who lets her hair down and starts partying with the guys from Skid Row. That’s ok, because the plot clips along a decent amount.
We also get cameos from other Whedonverse actors such as Amy Acker, whose scars on her face show she has a backstory and whose “featuring” and not starring role probably means a quick death sometime this season.
We are also introduced to to FBI Agent Paul Ballard, who seems like a cross between Fox Mulder, searching for a possibly fictional “Dollhouse” with little more than faith to go on, and John Steinbeck’s “Curly” from “Of Mice and Men”- a little guy with a big plan who can kick your ass pretty well anywhere from here to next week. A villain? Probably not, but a foil certainly.
My only real complaints are the episodic nature of this show so far (granted, one episode, but still). It reminds me of the first season on Buffy or Smallville, where it was kind of the “monster of the week.” This also feels somewhat un-Whedonesque in that I hardly laughed once. The same Joss Whedon who used to write for Rosanne and was hired to punch up scripts like X-men or Toy Story needs to get hired to punch up these scripts. Of course, I may be asking too much- can this show be everything to everyone? Well, the premise would answer, “Yes” so I will be patient.
Next week we get a confrontation between Echo and Agent Ballard, which should prove fun. It also looks like Alpha, undoubtedly the first of the Actives who has gone rogue and on a killing spree, is taking an interest in who Echo was before she came to the Dollhouse. So are we.
