Apparently, I’m near my limit for disk use on the site, and it may be because of a strange glitch with image uploads. I’m trying to clean it up behind the scenes, but if things suddenly go a bit awry… Well, I’m sorry, I’ll have made a terrible, terrible error. Hopefully, all will go relatively well and I’ll be back to posting here again soon(ish).
The True Meaning of Christmas Programming
From an abandoned opening for a Time.com piece:
It is, as we’re told so many times during the month of December, the most wonderful time of the year. And yet, there are many who don’t enjoy this holiday season, with all the colorful ephemera that it brings — people who are left cold by stories of Santas and sleighs, or songs with choirs, bells and/or unrestrained sentimentality.
In times past, those people have fallen victim to parody and insult, being satirized as unenlightened Scrooges or miserable Grinches in exactly the kinds of stories that they’d find little use for, if not outright disdain. It’s been a strange response; a childish one, in some ways, akin to thumbing the nose and responding “Well, it wasn’t meant for you anyway” with a pout.
You can understand the impulse behind such a reply — it’s hard not to be defensive when someone criticizes something that appeals to the child in you, after all — but nonetheless, there’s something uncharacteristically cruel about it. If the holiday season is supposed to be one of inclusiveness and kindness, then making fun of those who don’t agree with you behind their backs is surely the kind of thing that should earn you a lump of coal from the jolly fat man with the white beard and fur-trimmed hat.
10 Worst Suggestions for Superhero Movie Casting
Written for Newsarama for its Top 10 slot, this never got published because it was just a little too tongue-in-cheek for its own good. Nevertheless, I kind of liked it.
No matter what you think of the idea of Ben Affleck as Batman, we can all come together to wipe some relieved sweat from our collective brow over the fact that, yes, the Justin Bieber is Robin rumor turned out to just be a hoax. After all, Hollywood has a history of coming up with some really, really bad casting ideas based on whoever’s hot at the time, as anyone who remembers Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze can attest to (or, for that matter, Halle Berry’s Catwoman).
True, not all of these bad ideas make it to the final movie — if you think Jim Carrey was a terrible Riddler in Batman Forever, just be glad that Michael Jackson, who was attached to the role earlier, didn’t get the job — but seeing the uproar the Biebster caused with his Robin tease got us thinking: Who else would be entirely unsuitable for a part in a superhero movie — but is famous enough for studios to consider them nonetheless? Here are ten worse case scenarios.
Jason Statham is Alfred
It’s not unrealistic to think that Ben Affleck will need an Alfred when he appears in the sequel to Man of Steel as Bruce Wayne/Batman. If producers decide to follow in the tradition of Geoff Johns and Gary Franks’ Batman: Earth One, then the new Alfred not only has to be English, he also has to be a man of action — who better to fill that role than Statham, whose name is synonymous with the words “Surly English Action Hero That You Don’t Want To Give Too Much Dialogue To”?
Admittedly, at 46, Statham is arguably too young to play the role of Alfred, but that’s what make-up is for. Give him some extra wrinkles and he’ll be fine.
Donald Trump is Thanos
Having, uh, conquered the worlds of real estate and reality television, it’s easy to imagine that Trump would be looking for a new challenge — and, given his history (and ego), it wouldn’t be surprising if he turned his attention to the biggest movie franchise out there right now, and the biggest villain in the biggest movie franchise.
The idea of Trump taking on the role of mad titan Thanos has its charms — yes, he’d have to wear a helmet and therefore his trademark hair would not be visible to audiences, but just imagine the screams of pleasure from audiences as he blasted Captain America with the Infinity Gauntlet while shouting “You’re fired, Captain America!” in Avengers 3.
Paula Deen is Amanda Waller
It’s true that the casting of Deen — the controversial former Food Network star best known these days for her racism and particularly unhealthy recipes, in that order (Seriously, that’s a lot of butter) — as Waller would cause more than a little upset in fan circles. After all, Waller fans have only just gotten used to the new, thin version of the character, and Deen’s body shape might cause dissonance from her comic incarnation (Oh, and she’s white, too).
Consider what Deen would bring to the role, however: Like Waller, she’s a powerful woman, used to being in charge and bossing people around while being generally disliked by those around her. Like it or not, Paula Deen is Amanda Waller — except for all the ways in which she isn’t.
Keanu Reeves is Hank Pym
When you think Keanu Reeves, chances are you immediately think of Neo, the sci-fi savior he played in The Matrix trilogy — or, perhaps, you remember him in the Bill and Ted movies, or Johnny Mnemonic, or even (sudder) Constantine. Clearly, this man has a background in genre movies that should make him a shoo-in for any Marvel or DC movie you could imagine.
Imagine him in the role of Hank Pym, AKA Ant-Man, and marvel (pun intended) at the way with which he could bring the tragic, heroic character to life with his vast emotional range and utter believability as a genius scientist who could invent a size-changing formula! Think of the variety of facial expressions that he could offer as he talked to ants for the first time! This is an idea whose time must come.
Kanye West is Mr. Fantastic
Fact #1: Kanye West is one of the most well-known people on the planet right now, thanks to a musical career that has included six solo albums and a collaboration with Jay-Z, as well as a clothing line, restaurant chain and relationship with Kim Kardashian that keeps him in the tabloids. Fact #2: In the world of the Marvel Universe, Reed Richards — AKA Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four — is also one of the most well-known people on the planet, thanks to being Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four.
Simple science therefore demonstrates that West — who has, surprisingly, yet to make his big-screen acting debut — knows exactly what it’d be like to be Mr. Fantastic in a way that most people could never experience, making him uniquely placed to play the character in Fox’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie reboot. Plus, come on: Could Kanye really pass up the chance to call himself “Mr. Fantastic”?
Beyonce is the Scarlet Witch
The idea of a new actor joining the Avengers cast for 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron has to be daunting. After all, the other actors have all been through the experience of the first movie’s mammoth success already, something that would make it hard for most newcomers to empathize with. If only there were someone who had experienced amazing success herself who could step into the role of Wanda Maximoff, AKA the Scarlet Witch… Oh, wait.
The artist formerly known as Sasha Fierce has, after all, already appeared in movies — who can forget her classic The Pink Panther remake from 2006, or the fact that she was in DreamgirlsEither member of Daft Punk is the Vision
Let’s face it — sometimes, you need to go left-field in your casting choices to get attention for your movie. That’s a lesson that Joss Whedon already knows, which lead to the announcement that James Spader would play Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron a few weeks back (as well as his surely upcoming announcement of Beyonce as the Scarlet Witch). But what if he went even more out there for a surprise casting announcement?
We don’t know that the Vision will make an appearance in Age of Ultron yet, but it’s certainly not something that’s outside the realm of possibility — So why not ask one of French electronic duo Daft Punk to play the character? It’s a perfect crossover moment: They already pretend to be robots, so it wouldn’t be a great stretch for whichever one took the gig, and just imagine how great the soundtrack they’d inevitably produce as part of the deal would sound.
One Direction are Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade
The success of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in last year’s Avengers movie almost guaranteed that we’ll see another Hulk movie at some point soon, despite many denials of such a plan. You can understand why Marvel would be shy about the idea — both solo Hulk movies so far have been flops in the grand scheme of things.
That’s why adding in pop phenomenon One Direction is a no-brainer — their very presence would guarantee the kind of box office success that made their concert film win the box office battle of Labor Day weekend. Also, having them play Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade would allow Marvel to finally bring in the fan-favorite character (and his underage posse) to the cinematic universe once and for all. It’s a win-win!
Miley Cyrus is Captain Marvel
Some might say that Cyrus isn’t the first choice to play Carol Danvers, the hard-nosed former US Air Force pilot turned super hero and Avenger, being only 20 years old and, you know, a Hannah Montana veteran instead of someone who flew planes for a living. To those people, there’s just one thing to say: You’re missing the obvious.
First off, working for the Mouse on a property like Hannah Montana is just like being in the military, as anyone who’s been through either experience will surely tell you. Secondly, Cyrus has been working for some time to try and alter her public persona from teen idol to something more mature and developed, meaning that she’s primed to stretch herself on a role such as Danvers. And thirdly and most importantly, she’s already got the hair, and that’s the most important thing. Cyrus for Marvel? You know it makes sense.
Lady Gaga is Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is the kind of iconic role that is almost terrifying to try and fill. What woman has the kind of self-belief, confidence and standing to step into the boots — once bright red, now dark blue for some inexplicable reason — without feeling just a little bit worried that she won’t live up to the expectations of millions of fans around the world?
Perhaps a woman like Strefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta — better known to the world as Lady Gaga. She’s ideally placed to be a modern Wonder Woman, having already adopted an alternate identity, been named as one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes Magazine and one of the world’s most influential figures by Time. She even shares Wonder Woman’s love of humanitarian causes and self-empowerment and (as can be seen by her stage outfits) has no fear of dressing up in ridiculous and revealing outfits for her work.
Warner Bros., it’s understandable that you’re overwhelmed by the potential of the Wonder Woman property. Just give the role — and creative control of the entire project — to Lady Gaga. She’ll take care of everything for you, and make sure that no-one ever complains that there’s no Wonder Woman movie ever again.
This Time, We Can’t Lose
I read, awhile back, that today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Elliott Smith. I’ve written (many times) before about how much I love Smith’s music; I found it around the time that XO was released, at which point his combination of melancholy, melody and devotion to both the Beatles and Big Star seemed tailor made for me. I saw him live once, during his tour promoting Figure 8, and he was everything I wanted him to be — passionate, loud and funny, and with a band that could convincingly bring his music to life in a way that translated the things I adored so much in the recordings.
Up through his death, he was a figure that was amazingly important to me — my go-to answer if someone had asked me who my favorite musician was, and someone that I listened to constantly, much to the complaints of Kate, who didn’t like the sound of his voice. These days, I listen far less often; there was a point the other week when “Kings Crossing” from From A Basement On The Hill came on the shuffle of my iPhone, and I realized that it’d been months since I’d last listened to him. I’m not sure if it’s that I’m no longer in the kind of emotional place that he resonates so deeply, that I’ve simply moved on for other reasons, or something else, but I felt guilty when I realized how long it had been.
Nonetheless, Elliott Smith remains someone whose work is endlessly essential to me on some core level. His way around melody, harmony and lyrical ambiguity is something I treasure still, and wish that others would be able to play with as effortlessly as he made it look. If only he’d had a happier life, and was still around.
“Listen, The Sky Will Sing this Song as it Burns Up All The Memories”
This song has been in my head ever since I saw Mirah perform it with the Portland Symphony this past weekend, for two reasons in particular. Firstly, the bridge(?) melody that starts at 0:58 and the way it acts as counter to everything around it but also manages to amp up the expectation and tension before the strings crash back in, and secondly, the lyrics “And I’m so number one that it’s a shame, a shame/That you let other numbers in the game.” I have no idea why, but those lyrics seem so perfect to me.
I don’t pay enough attention to Mirah’s lyrics, which is a shame; I’m too often smitten by her melodies and her arrangements (“The Dogs of B.A.”! “Country of the Future”! Both have such wonderfully overwhelming arrangements, can you blame me? This one, too — that bass line at 3:38 that acts like a tuba), but she has a wonderful way with words that I need to recognize, too.
Embarrassed By My (Not-So-Young) Youth, Part 23
In a moment that’s oddly fitting — or, at least one that’s demonstrative of my weeks these days — I ended up being too busy to remember that this past Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the start of Fanboy Rampage!!!, the blog that started me down the road to my current career. I’d meant to do something to mark the anniversary, but could never quite work out what that something would be, which says something about the weird way with which I regard the blog now.
My feelings towards it are complicated but mostly affectionate, if only because it’s FBR that directly led to Newsarama and to io9, from which everything else followed. Without that blog, without that shamelessness and self-righteousness and everything that came from it, I wouldn’t be where I am today, etc. But, man. That that was 10 years ago makes me feel weird, both in the sense of “I’m so old now,” and also “I was as old as 29 when I started it?”
Happy Belated Birthday Rampage!!! You know I love you really.
That Would Be Something
I’ve been on a “Paul McCartney’s solo career immediately after the Beatles” kick lately, after realizing just how much I’d underrated his work on those last couple of Beatles albums. There’s a lot happening in McCartney in particular that feels just weirdly important to the music that I’d grow up loving, if that makes sense — it’s both throwaway (The number of instrumentals! “Junk” appearing twice!), yet some of the arrangements (especially “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Singalong Junk”) are just perfect. It’s so much more influential than I’d realized, I think.
(It’s also one of those albums that makes me wish I had any musical talent; I wish I could something like this album, in so many ways.)
One More Thing
The first draft for a thing for Time that ended up being rewritten from scratch and, bizarrely, about an entirely different television show altogether (although, if/when it goes live, you will see mention of Columbo in there).
***
Somehow, more than four decades after the fact, I have become entirely addicted to Columbo.
It’s tempting to point to Netflix as being at least one of the causes for my current quasi-need to watch old, more-than-a-little hokey television crime shows made even before I was born. After all, if it wasn’t for their ease of availability — The first seven seasons of the show are right there for the streaming right now, each episode featuring at least one familiar face wildly protesting their innocence despite their being the guilty party — I doubt that I’d currently be in the predicament I’m in, spending at least a couple of evenings a week watching Peter Falk bumble his way through investigations.
Of course, Netflix has all manner of material on offer that I’ve yet to end up hopelessly hooked on, so I can’t throw all of the blame in that direction. I should also blame the Nerdist Writers Panel and whichever guest talked about the series in hushed, reverential tones (I’ve long forgotten, sadly). It was, she said, a great example of American Class War fiction, with the working man constantly unraveling schemes of those who consider themselves above not only the laws of the land, but morality itself. Hearing that description, how could I do anything but watch the pilot episode?
What I found when doing so was something that seemed so unusual and curious that I went into the second episode almost immediately after, thinking Well, they can’t keep this up all the time, only to find out that, not only can they, they do. The more episodes I watch — I’m midway through the third season already, appallingly — the more I marvel at the way in which Columbo is, in many ways, the murder mystery show that can’t quite help but contradict the genre over and over again.
Let’s start with the most obvious break from the norm: There is no mystery in this murder mystery, with each episode showing the murder in its opening act. That changes the shape of everything that follows in ways that aren’t even immediately apparent; not only is there no need for the viewer to try and guess the murderer’s identity, but showing the murderer and murderee interact straight away removes any need to waste any more time later on with exposition regarding motive. Furthermore, Columbo also does away with the traditional red herrings as the cops track down dead lead after dead lead, because again: We already know who did it, so why bother?
It’s also a show that happily ditches another important detective story tradition, by removing the cult of personality surrounding the detective. As viewers, we have no idea who Columbo is, any more than the murderers do. Sure, he talks about his home life a lot, but the one thing that the show makes clear over and over again is that Columbo will do or say anything to get people to lower their guard. For all we know, his wife is as fictitious as his bumbling persona and scatterbrained forgetfulness. We never go home with him after the case is over, so we have no proof about anything that he’s saying.
But how could we follow him home after the case is over when every episode ends with the arrest of the murderer? It’s a weird storytelling choice, and one that I keep coming back to again and again. On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense — Each episode opens with the murder and closes with the murderer being discovered; there’s some sense of symmetry there– but, at the same time, the viewer is robbed a particular sense of closure as a result. No scenes of everyone else laughing and reassuring us that they’re going to be okay in this show; the bad guy gets caught, but everything else is left unknown and up to the viewers’ imaginations.
It all adds up to a show that should be cold and far less likable than it actually is. I find myself wondering, with increasing frequency, what Columbo would be like without Peter Falk in the title role, and suspect that the answer is “a show that would’ve been cancelled in its first season.” There’s so much about Columbo that pushes against everything that has been proven, over and over, to “work,” and yet it works nonetheless. There’s a lesson here that should be remembered by everyone in television: When you have someone so charismatic at the center of your work to win the audience over so effortlessly, it’s a license to play with everything else without anyone even noticing.
Behind The Scenes, Part 23
I feel like my subconscious is making some kind of religious suggestion with the pattern of these files on my desktop.
(All of these are stories that are finished and submitted to various places — I keep them around in case I need to go back and check something before they go live. Normally, they go inside the “Stories” folder you can see on the top left, but I hadn’t gotten around to that yet.)
I’m The Most Important Guy in This Bestiary
Got myself a copy of Alec: The Years Have Pants from the recent online sale from Top Shelf Comix, and read through it last night — it reminded me how weirdly important Eddie Campbell was to my development both as an artist back when I was in art school, and as a writer. There’s something remarkably amiable and offhand about his work, as if he’s effortlessly just sharing something with you, that I strive for even now with non-work writing (and, usually, fail). Thinking about my shortlived late ’90s diary comics — honestly, created as somewhere between decompressor and way to have another sketchbook full of something for my final year of the BA (Hons) program I was in — I can see Eddie Campbell’s fingerprints all over them, alongside (slightly less obviously) those of Kyle Baker, Evan Dorkin and Nick Abadzis.
I don’t have those comics now, for the most part — I got rid of almost all of my student work when I moved to the U.S., because it meant less to move and I was trying to travel light to save money — but I think about them sometimes. For some reason (Perhaps a Facebook posting that reminded me that it was 20 years since I matriculated for art school, holy crap), I’ve been thinking about that whole era of cartooning and writing and everything recently. Somewhere out there, there’s a me who kept doing all of that stuff. I wonder what happened to him?
(Image above from Graffiti Kitchen, one of the stories in the Alec book; probably my favorite, and possibly my favorite comic of all time.)