Reviews

Man, I was in a frustrated mood yesterday. Sorry about that. Lemme see if I can wean myself off politics for a bit with a contemplative bit on a TV show that strikes some interesting political chords. Last year, Salon told us in no uncertain terms that The Shield (original) was a right-wing love fest. Yeah, sure, Murdoch media empire, conservative arm of the media — sounded plausible. Still, a little while ago, the first season was released on DVD. The price was low, so I took a chance on it. ...

Things I learned from watching Mister Sterling tonight: Being a Senator gets you laid by the hot actress, plus if you’re noble and honest the sly fellow Senator from Nevada will still be interested in you for your mind. In a carnal way. Also, if you look agonized and persevere, you can write the letters. Even if you’re so poorly paid you have to live in a group house. Finally, Strom Thurmond is a Democrat from North Dakota. ...

I’ve sort of been putting off writing about Battle Royale on account of “Damn, I have no idea what to make of that.” But faint heart never won Oscar, or some such, so let’s see if we can make some sense out of the uber-controversial high school Series 7. First off, the brief summary: a class of Japanese high school students are brought to an island, given random weapons, and they don’t get to leave till only one is left alive. If they don’t get to that point within a few days, they all die. This is theoretically part of a program to deal with juvenile delinquency. Carnage ensues. ...

Phew. I finally hit the Warren Ellis run on Excalibur. After all the really bad stuff, it was a total breath of fresh air. Ellis’ work on Excalibur is not of the quality of Stormwatch or Planetary, but it is very good superhero work. Despite his current distaste for writing ongoing superhero books, I think it’s an excellent form for him. Working within someone else’s continuity must be a pain in the ass, but the challenge seems to bring out his ingenuity. ...

So here’s what happened. About a month ago, I picked up the four phonebooks of Essential X-Men on a whim. For those unfamiliar, phonebooks are cheap black and white reprints of old comic books. It’s one of the few ways we see long runs of classic comics kept in print. These were the first umpteen issues of Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men, including the Phoenix Saga, and they are darned good. I’d never read ‘em before. The energy of the writing is very engaging, and the plotting is solid and fairly complex. This is the X-Men before they got weighed down with too much continuity. Fun. ...

Joe Clark is annotating Pattern Recognition, bit by bit. This has the potential to be truly cool if he gets traction. (Via Boing Boing.)

I’m all about the public service announcements this long weekend. Today, I note that the new edition of Swordspoint includes several short stories set in the nameless city. And I’m sure you already knew there’s a sequel out.

Feeling pretty traumatized. The Claremont/Davis Excalibur is good, and the Davis sans Claremont stuff is all kinds of fun if you like that kind of thing, which I do. But eventually Davis goes away and it becomes all fill in authors and lousy art and X-Men crossovers. Conveniently, you can tell where the really horrendous stuff begins, because there are hologram covers. No kidding. I’ve never owned a comic with a hologram cover before. I feel kind of unclean.

Four or five episodes in, and by my reckoning, Mister Sterling has pretty much jumped the shark. Wasn’t much of a shark, at that. There was a lot of promise in the premise of a Senator appointed to fill out a term who turned out to be an independent, but it’s squandered by making him a Democrat in independent clothing. So far, other than a quick list of issues in the first episode, there’s really nothing about him that doesn’t follow the liberal line. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but don’t tell me he’s an independent thinker. Heck, his true blue Democratic staff anointed him as “the guy we always wanted to work for” last episode. ...

I was intending to have a busy movie weekend, but after City of God I really didn’t want to see anything else. I actually went down to the Copley Place to see Intacto, but it was sold out twenty minutes before showtime, so I punted to City of God. The Copley is a lousy excuse for an art house theater, but it was the only place in town showing Intacto; thus, I wound up in a cramped little bandbox with a floor that sloped up to the tiny little screen. Pathetic. ...