Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups: 'The Odyssey,' 'Batman: Dark Patterns,' More
What I've Been Into...
"The Odyssey" Yeah, yeah, yeah "practical effects."
The gray puppet cyclops and the gray puppet octopus-thingie in Christopher Nolan's latest overlong epic are impressive in an artsy-crafty sort of way, I guess. But they seem to be the main thing people rave about in conversations I've had/heard about this extremely overhyped film.
How about a practical script, or some practical direction?
Even though it's source material has been around for centuries, story-wise, Nolan's film is, in my view, a messy failure.
If it were just a mere series of perils to overcome (or run away from—Matt Damon and crew running away from various monsters in the film put me in mind of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"), the film might've been a fun adventure yarn in the Ray Harryhausen tradition. Yet Nolan, damn him, has tried to inject "meaning" into the proceedings. And that's where everything goes awry.
So far as I could tell, Nolan is not using "The Odyssey" to tell us about homecoming, love or perseverance, he's using it to talk to us about the horrors of violence and war. The film shares many parallels with his previous "epic," "Oppenheimer."
In the earlier film we see the title character faced with the devastation his creation, the atomic bomb, has wrought. In "The Odyssey," Odysseus gets the same uncomfy, constipated look on his face when he views the devastation of Troy, brought about, in part, by his secret weapon, a giant toy horse (practical effect).
Odysseus feels even worse when Athena, played by Zendaya, looks at him with a sad expression on her face. This, by the way, is the only thing Nolan gives Zendaya a chance to do in the entire film.
So, ok, weapons and violence are bad because they hurt people and make Zendaya sad. I can get behind that, but I don't think it required me sitting on my ass for three hours to understand.
It's also somewhat dissatisfying when Nolan undermines the whole works by having Odysseus kill an entire roomful of suitors at the end of the film, immediately after Athena/Zendaya, again, gives him her sad face. Doesn't he get it? Nope. And neither does anyone who thought this movie had something important to say.
It also must be mentioned that, in addition to Zendaya, most of the rest of the talented cast was given virtually nothing to do. Not Mr. Zendaya (Tom Holland), not Mrs. Odysseus (Anne Hathaway) nor the weirdly super-boring Calypso (Charlize Theron).
Robert Pattinson, as the villainous Antinous, at least got to look mean and nosh on some scenery. But the film's true (and nearly, only) highlight in terms of both performance and "practical effects" was Samantha Morton, who as Circe got to be sneaky and mean and also turn a bunch of guys into pigs. That was cool.
"Batman: Dark Patterns" by Dan Watters and Hayden Sherman. Bronze-Age Batman is the best Batman in my book: No extended Bat family; no fancy Bat armor or elaborate tech; no continuity/parallel universe nonsense. Just a guy in a flimsy costume fighting crooks and doing some detective work.
That's the model for this collection of a 12-part maxi-series well-written by Watters and amazingly illustrated by Sherman, who's innovative page layouts flow ingeniously throughout. This is an artist to watch.
We saw Batman in cahoots with Commissioner Gordon, with Alfred still around not sniping at Bruce, but helping him out. The action and setting are dark, but not ridiculously so, and there are some nice nods to more whimsical takes on the character, including a Shakespeare bust in the library that opens up at the neck to reveal steps to the Batcave.
Batman uses his brain nearly as much as his fists and faces scary, yet fairly realistic threats, including a serial killer, a serial arsonist and the Ventriloquist. The much-overused Joker is out of sight.
If you see the apotheosis of Batman as O'Neill-Adams and/or Englehart/Rogers, you'll likely dig it, too.
Quick Links:
Willamette Week: A Wilt Chamberlain-worn warmup jacket found by a Portland teenager at Goodwill has sold at auction for $89,600.
Digital Spy: Helen Mirren is starring as mystery author Patricia Highsmith in the upcoming "A Talent for Murder."
Hollywood Reporter: A "Robocop" TV series is in the works from Prime.
Retroist: Celebrating Colorforms.
AP: Scholars weigh in on "The Odyssey."
The New York Times: Netflix cut a joke by Whitney Cummings from its Mark Twain Prize special. Here it is: “I actually heard Trump may have even wanted to come tonight, but he couldn’t make it — he got caught in sex traffic.”
The Guardian: Writer/illustrator Raymond Briggs left his library of more than 1,000 books to his local Oxfam.
Smithsonian: Hollywood’s iconic Cinerama Dome movie theater reopens next year.
Speaking of the T.A.R.D.I.S.:
Comments
Post a Comment