In the past few years I’ve seen plenty of remakes and re-imaginings of old 80’s shows and movies that meant so much to me growing up.  Some of them have been bad (The A-Team earlier this year, I’d put Star Trek into that too, but whatever), some of them have been really bad (Knight Rider) and some of them have been eye-bleedingly bad (The Bionic Woman – okay to be honest, KR and BW are pretty much equally aweful, but the Bionic Woman was just so completely without joy that I had to rate it worse).  Objectively it should be hard to rate these properties for someone like me because I remember the originals with pride.  Yet the properties have been so objectively bad that that has frankly, never come up.  Which brings me to Tron Legacy, which, going in, I was rather nervous about.  I’d heard the script was mediocre at best.  And, of course, my first reaction was, upon hearing that it was being made a couple of years ago, “Brought to you because no one demanded it, Tron Legacy!”

(More After the Break!)

All that being said, when I saw this film on IMAX in 3D on Monday, I think you can color me suitably impressed.

The story is rather simple.  Flynn (Jeff Bridges reprising the same role from the firs Tron) has been stuck on the Grid, the digital world he created for the past  twenty years, trapped there by a digital tyrant that as delusions of grandeur.  Flynn’s son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund) now twenty seven and still missing his father after twenty long years gets a page (okay his father’s ex-buddy gets a page from him and forwards it on) from Flynn telling him to come to his old office.  Baby Flynn does so and gets himself stuck on the Grid, which has become a quite dangerous place for Users over the past twenty years.  So starts a journey to get out with some weird digital life/savior stuff thrown in for good measure.  Also the character of Tron is there; I mean it’s a movie called Tron, so therefore Tron has to be in it right?  Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath, you don’t see much of him, and like the villain, the character is non-existant and impenetrable.

The movie is legitimately fun, with some well filmed action and very cool visuals.  Actually, I want to talk for a moment about the visuals.  In a movie like this, you kind of expect it hang on tooth and nail to the digital revolution that has transpired over the past twenty years, especially after the visual extravaganza that was “Avatar”.  I kind of expected the whole thing to be green screened.  But it wasn’t.  Much of the sets were actually built, which, upon careful review, worked really really freaking well.  It lent an air of credibility to the world, and it seamlessly integrated the completely computer animated to the actual built sets to the point where, unless I was looking at Jeff Bridges de-aged face (which you do quite a bit of – his normal face too, but whatever), I couldn’t tell what was completely animated what wasn’t.  Hell, even Jeff Bridges de-aged face looks a hell of a lot better than Patrick Stewart’s face did in Wolverine Origins (oh God, why, why God, why?) and that movie had the benefit of not showing you Patrick Stewart’s current face in shot-reverse-shots (okay, I just gave away something – the villain is a de-aged Jeff Bridges.  Trust me , I haven’t given away anything you wouldn’t be able to figure out five minutes in).  In addition I can’t say enough about how good the 3D looked.  I was wearing these obnoxiously oversized glasses for the whole movie and once my brain adjusted, the 3D was completely seemless with the bits shot in 2D (and were presented that way).  It says a lot about the quality of the cinematography when the 3D feels that natural, and I haven’t seen anything like that for a while with the current run of every other movie being in 3D.

So that was the good, and I need to talk for a moment about the bad.  First of all, really most of all, the biggest problem with this movie was the absolutely atrocious script.  With some scripts there are things I can point to that it did well and things it did badly.  Succeed in dialogue, fail in plot arc.  Succeed in characterization, fail in realizing the universe as a whole.  This script was just a whole lot of fail.  It was bad.  The dialogue was filled with moments like this:

FLYNN

Stay here.  I’m going to knock on the sky.  Listen to the sound.

That wasn’t the exact quote, but it was close.  Flynn spoke in platitudes and it’s a testament to just how charismatic Jeff Bridges is that he made the line borderline work.  The dialogue felt like it was written by Orci and Kurtzman (it wasn’t, it was written by Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis and others) at their absolute worst (Transformers 2 – which against my credit I actually enjoyed) as opposed to their best (Fringe).  The characterization of anyone not played by Jeff Bridges felt kind of forced or flat (okay, there was the minor character of Zuse that was a whole lot of fun too) and I couldn’t tell if that was a script issue, a directorial one or an acting one, but considering the material they had to work with I’ll let it pass.  And even worse than that the story was remarkably impenetrable for a movie about two guys essentially trying to get out of prison.  There was a moment where the younger Flynn is saved by Quorra, Flynn’s disciple, (played well by Olivia Wilde, only she wasn’t asked to do anything) and she tells him “All your questions will be answered”.  And then he meets the older Flynn who explains all of it and I was still like, “Wait, what?  Why?”  That, my friends is not a good sign.

Then there was the moment at the end where there’s a plane chase where something happens that made me say, in a completely silent theater, “Wait, What?  The hell?”  everyone laughed.  I couldn’t tell if it was with me or at me, but whatever.  And then there was the villains motives.  I’m sorry, did I say motives?  I mean Deus Ex-Machina.  It felt like a villain because someone was telling him to be one instead of having any real reason.  He was seeking perfection, but I’m not really sure how he thought the world he created was perfection.  There’s some strange religious stuff in there too that never quite ends up where the writers seemed to want it to.

Whatever.

Would I suggest you see the movie?  Sure.  It was solid fun and it was actually a solid sequel to a film who’s original wasn’t amazing either (even though it was really fun).  Would I pay 20 bucks to see it in IMAX and 3D?  Well, I didn’t.  I was invited.  And I’m glad I was.  In fact, the first thing out of my mouth when my friend asked me, “What did you think?” was “I’m glad I didn’t pay for it.”  But I’m also glad I saw it, and like that same friend said, “I liked it more than I didn’t.” which in the age of crappy 80’s remakes and reimaginings is all I can ask for.

So take your kids, take your grandparents and chew on popcorn and turn off your brain (to some extent) because this is a fun, completely harmless and bloodless, ride.

I want to like this show. I mean a show about a fairly ordinary family who gains powers and then must deal with the consequences. I’m the guy loved “Unbreakable”. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is there’s a lot here that’s wrong for this show.

The set up is rather simple. In the first episode the family goes on a bonding trip down to South America where, on a plane tour of the Amazon, they crash in a wicked storm. When they return Stateside Jim (played by Micheal Chiklis), a police artist, finds out he has super strength, invulnverability, and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. His wife, Stephanie (Julie Benz), a research scientist.    Their kids are Dapne (Kay Panabaker) and JJ (Jimmy Bennett), a telepath and a new super genius respectively.

The father wants to be a super hero, while the mother wants them only to be safe and normal again. There’s things that the show does well. The reverse set up of the high successful woman and her less successful but professional husband is interesting and well done, reminiscent of Picket Fences in that way. The self doubt the son exhibits is also well done and meaningfully held over from his days as someone far from smart.

Yet with all that being said there’s a lot that this show does badly, and some things that are borderline offensive. First of all, the gender politics between Jim and Stephanie are rather annoying. I understand that Jim and Stephanie are going through a rough patch as the show opens, yet the camera, and the writers seem to want to make the viewer identify with both sides of the marriage. Jim feels unfulfilled and only starts feeling good about himself when he starts saving people. She, on the other hand, is totally against that and only wants to get rid of their powers. In fact, she hates it every time he uses his powers, yet will use her super speed to do anything that she deems necessary. She makes the kind of unilateral decisions in the marriage that, if it were the husband making them, would only be deemed as toxic. I understand her worry since they don’t understand what gave them their powers and what not, but during the scenes that deal primarily with their relationship Jim is the only one ever giving up anything to succeed. In fact it’s only when Stephanie can use her super speed to be anywhere she needs to be that she starts putting any thought at all into her family. This is the female equivalent to father knows best and at best it’s foolish to have that kind of gender politics go into a marriage that you’re supposed to be rooting for in this day and age. It’s a different medium and a different format, but I can’t help but think of Unbreakable when comparing these relationships. That was a breaking marriage done well, because both sides were equally wrong and equally right.

Then of course there was the last episode where Jim had to have his black friend teach him how to dance because he couldn’t feel the rhythm. That’s right, let’s make fun of the white guy who can’t feel the beat, but it’s okay because his black friend can teach him how to groove! I’m not usually someone to bring up the race card, but come on!

There are a lot of ways that this show uses comic book logic well – the hand waving of Jim not being identified by the perps he’s bringing in, the hand waving for the collateral damage to buildings and streets as he leaps and bounds everywhere are both done very well in that they only pay the barest of lip service to it. And I like that. But falling into the company Stephanie is working for being evil (among other things) is just annoying. And not to mention that if she was the star researcher that they established her to be she would more likely be on the inside instead of on the outside of their conspiracy when the show began.

But I digress.

This show could have been the first season of Heroes on a smaller scale and more tongue-in-cheek. Instead, it only hits the low marks later one, getting too early and too deep into apparent conspiracy. So 3 episodes in all I can give it is a MEH, capitalized and bolded.

For those of you who don’t know, “Sons of Anarchy” deals with an outlaw motorcycle club with many chapters in the US and abroad; the show itself focuses on the original chapter who’s full name is Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original, or SAMCRO (pronounced Sam Crow). It all takes place in a fictional California town that SoA essentially runs by paying off the cops, and keeping rival gangs and certain drugs off its streets. They do, however, run guns, and run protection for local truckers. The main character is Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the VP of SAMCRO and the step son of it’s current president Clay Morrow (Ron freaking Perlman) who may have just been responsible for the death of his father. Oh and his mother, Gemma Teller Morrow (Katey Segal in a bit of inspired casting) figures into this heavily as well. If this plot line sounds somewhat familiar, it should. It’s freaking Hamlet. With motorcycles. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Season 3 begins right where season 2 ended – Cameron Hayes (Jamie McShane), ex-IRA has kidnapped Jax’s son in retaliation for Gemma’s supposed murdering of his own son (she was framed by an FBI agent named June Stahl, played by Ally Walker). If that sounds complicated it is. The first episode continues to follow the plotline as SAMCRO tries to find Jax’s son, Jax slowly falls apart isolating himself equally from his girlfriend (and mother of his child) Tara (Maggie Siff) and from his brothers in arms. This is all going on while Gemma is on the lam in Oregon trying to escape the false murder charges – she also remains unaware of her grandson’s abduction.

The show works because it doesn’t let itself be purely defined by its shock value. Indeed there are very few scenes of actual violence per episode – not to say that this show isn’t violent. In three seasons there has been a gang rape, multiple homicides – some of them brutal – and other things. The show is actually best defined as a soap opera punctuated by scenes of graphic violence. This attention to emotional complexity and depth let us understand and even relate to the violence in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise. When Jax, at the end of the first episode, brutally beats one of the perpetrators of a drive by shooting that wounded multiple people including a child, it doesn’t pull any of the punches that you might find in another series. It’s more than just the bloody beating – it’s the sickening sound effects of the beating as well. Its shocking and it should be, but by knowing his motivations the beating becomes evidence of his love for his family, Tara and his brothers than just a crazy man overcome by grief. We can tell that because of the character’s, and the camera’s focus on his wife and the young boy who was wounded.

Like the “Sopranos” (and I don’t mean to say that the show is of this quality) the show makes monstrous acts by monstrous people recognizable because it couches them in completely recognizable terms. It’s somewhat eerie that the complex relationships come off as more understandable than some of the programs that devote themselves to it (Claire and Phil Dunphy from “Modern Family” I’m looking at you!). The tension and even growing trust between step father and son – even though Clay is an undeniably malevolent figure – or even Clay’s relationship with Gemma. The show lets these people do monstrous things and then acknowledges that they are capable of love and devotion. It’s that attention to detail that makes the show so morally interesting. We relate to these people in a way that makes us ask if we would do any differently given the same set of circumstances.

Also, Ron Perlman is freaking awesome.

Fringe

So here begins my update of the new season after taking a month off from my blog. This was, for of course, a lot of reasons that I just won’t get into now. However, I begin this new season appropriately with reviewing an old favorite of mine – Fringe.

I don’t think I need to say that this was one of my favorite shows of the past two seasons. Smart dialogue with amazing character and solid acting provide the backdrop for some great sf horror plots. And of course, a handful of bad ones as well. The end of last season left us with Olivia trapped in the other dimension with Alter-Olivia sent to spy on the original one. This sets me up to be very worried about this season.

Why? Because I personally hate stories about mistaken identity, because frankly, they’re unbelievable. And in a show about alternate dimensions and swarms of mechanical butterflies that can cut people up, having character plot lines that are believable are very important; it grounds the show in reality. So this season with Peter pursuing a relationship with Peter, I find it very hard to believe that Peter could not notice that Alter-Olivia is not HIS Olivia….especially since he’s dealing with alternate dimensions anyway.

The first episode of this season starts with Olivia in the alternate dimension with Olivia being kept, against her will, in a mental institution being conditioned to remember Alternate Olivia. To become Alternate Olivia. She breaks out because Olivia is awesome and so begins her journey through Alternate NYC in an attempt to get home while being pursued by that world’s Fringe division.

There are two things that stand out here: I really like the alternate Fringe division, because they’re not bad guys. It creates a great moral quandary where you’re rooting against them but they’re really, in this world, the good guys that are being manipulated.

By the end of the episode Olivia is entrenched in that world’s fringe division, and we switch to the first world with Peter, Walter, and yes, the other Olivia.

This is where the problems come in. Anna Torv is a good enough actor to portray the two different characters with enough differences that they’re distinct and yet similar. Yet its those distinctions that make them obvious to the viewer (and not just because we know it’s there). Put it this way: I’ve known twins – I’ve taught twins – and while you can’t always tell the difference when just looking at them, you can tell the difference just by hearing them speak.

The problem of course isn’t that it’s happening, but how long it promises to happen. And given how the first, and to some extent the second, episode went, this promises to go on for quite some time, alternating between the two worlds.

In a show about super intelligent people trained to watch for patterns, that’s somewhat hard to take.

In other news I wrote this chapter to improbable music (Vienna Teng songs) but somehow it seemed to work.  One of these days I’m going to list what I wrote each chapter to, but right now is not the time.  Now is the time for sleep.  Lots of it.

Chapter Twenty Four
Guilt

My friend Alan – Elijah told you about him – once told me in his flat in London that I was a woman without a conscience. In Boston he told me, after everything that had happened there on the Dark Roads, that it was the first time in my life that I had ever felt guilt. He was wrong of course. I am many things, but one of them isn’t a sociopath. There are things that I’ve done tshat I regret. There just aren’t many of them. But the first time that I can remember feeling guilt was here in New Orleans. When I think of Santos, I feel guilt.

Perhaps I shouldn’t. It is, after all, not my fault what happened to him. Santos was an adult, and the decisions he made were his own. Would he have made them without me? No. But that is an accident of fate, and not an accident of my being there.

I am justifying it of course. I might not have been responsible for the actual decision but I paved the way for him. I was permissive, and for a man who likely hadn’t seen much in the way of permissiveness (from his religion, from his father) the idea that he could do anything must have been intoxicating. And whatever this was, his telling me that it could get him to talk to the dead must have been impossible to turn down.

His father stood in my doorway a storm on his face. I did not fear for my life. He was a priest, and he was a good man. But this was his son, and I while I knew he could never hurt me, I feared for what I would have to do to him should it come to that.

“There is a monster underneath the church.” I was still shaking but I wouldn’t show it. Part of me wanted to leave this place, and leave whatever had come from below free reign. There’s always a part of me that wants to shirk responsibility for things like this. But I owed a lot to this Pastor. And I owed a lot to Santos.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.” And so I did. Not everything of course. What I have told you is far more comprehensive, but I had no intention of justifying my Godless nature to a man of God. But I told him of what lay below the church, in the grave that had been made there for the people of the town when it had almost destroyed itself. I told him about the doorway and about what we saw buried there below the world.

It wasn’t on the Dark Roads back then. It was buried, yes, but it wasn’t lost. Not yet. And then I told him about the Black Angel.

For a long time we sat silently watching each other. “You are telling me my son is responsible for…” He couldn’t even say it. I couldn’t blame him. “You’re telling me I have to perform an exorcism on my son?”
I looked into his eyes and I feared what I saw there. “No. I’m telling you I don’t know anything yet. But I will.”
“Get out.” He told me. “Get out and never come back.”
I got out. But I came back.

“Here. Drink.” She put down a glass full of rum before me and I drank after a moment. Drinking seemed to be Vivian’s answer to everything that ails you, or at least the first step. When I had shown up, she hadn’t even asked. She just knew. Vivian was never stupid, and she knew the murder that had happened in the town. And given her warning she knew more than that. That was why I had come to her.

“We have to find him Vivian. I’m afraid he’ll kill again.”
She looked down at me where I sat, and shook her head. “He’ll kill again. Or his body will.” She spoke in her soft accented voice that was beautiful, but now troubled. “Because he is not what he was.” Her eyes met mine, “Ask what you will.”

I drank down the rest of the rum, and pushed the glass away. Alcohol couldn’t save what troubled me. “We went below. Where you told us not to go, and we…Santos found something there. There was a doorway. It wasn’t hard to find. A place like that, with all the unremembered dead, it remembers. And we followed the memory. There was a place there, hidden away. And Santos found something there. A black angel. I don’t know more than that. I haven’t been back, but he has. And I fear for what he’s done.”

She sat down across from me and stayed silent for a moment. Then she poured some rum out for herself. “The boy is dead. Or he’s lost to us. We are not getting him back.”

“Vivian, you know what was down there. You must tell me.”
She cradled the rum for a moment, then put it to her lips and drank. “This thing. Thing black angel. It is murder. It is death. It was born out of murder and violence and it is what it knows. And it is old. It haunts this place. You have heard the stories of what has come before. The first settlers of this place woke it before, and this town was almost lost. They drove it out. Set this whole town on fire, and closed up the earth on top of it. We built a church where it lay because they thought something that evil could not stand in the face of God.”

I remember back in London when I met Alan, I would tell him (and this was years later, when I wouldn’t remember what had happened here), “Everything has a spirit Alan. The world has a memory, and every act of kindness, and every act of life, and death is remembered. And when these memories are strong enough they are born into life.” What Vivian had told me wasn’t something I hadn’t known before. I would have been close to ninety years old back then. I didn’t live to ninety without knowing a thing like that.

Beverly was built on a place with a history of violence. The original Americans knew it. The first settlers in Beverly knew it. And now I knew it too.

“It promised him his mother Vivian. Santos let it possess him.” And I prayed that he didn’t understand it’s true nature before he did. “And these spirits you speak of, aren’t known for their intelligence.”

“The young ones aren’t. This is not a young spirit. This is an old thing. An ancient thing. Likely even it doesn’t remember how it was born.”

I took a deep breath. “All right then. How was it stopped before?”

And Vivian told me the tale.

They burned the town, but they bound the spirit under the church. Whether the place had any power because it was a church is irrelevant. It had power because they believed it did. They razed the town to remove it’s presence, all except where they buried their dead under the iconography of the church. There the pastor bound it and banished it. And in it’s place the built the town again, starting with the church.

Spirits like this feed, like everything else. This thing fed on death and destruction. It knew it in the same way that Elijah knows roads and driving and I know sacrifice. This thing was old, but it was not at full strength; it had just awoken. And we would have to put it back to sleep.

Vivian went with me to the church. It was almost night, and the evenings had gotten cooler. The town must have watched us in fear, the devil woman and I walking through the streets, towards their house of worship. We were convinced that the hardest part of this would be convincing the pastor to help us. At least I was. I think Vivian had her doubts. I think she has her doubts still.

To this day I don’t know what Vivian told the Pastor. When we arrived, the sun was just setting, and she told me to wait in the parish while she went to the rectory. I waited with the stone angels and the stained glass for what felt like an eternity. I was frightened I realized.

After some time Vivan returned, with this strange expression on her face, like she had seen something that had horrified her. It was strange to see her in a church. I don’t think she’s been back inside one since that day.

“He wants you to come.” She told me. “He says you should not be inside this place.”

I managed a weak smile at her, and followed her back out, leaving the stained glass and the angels behind me.

There’s this strange half light that I’m sure you’ve seen when twilight comes. The sun is not quite asleep and the light is still gasping. That kind of light can play tricks, and the shadows are everywhere and nowhere.

The rectory itself was lit by candlelight, and Vivian’s hand grasped mine as we walked closer. Something was wrong; but when I looked to her she wouldn’t tell me. “You must see for yourself.” She said. And I was afraid.

I climbed the steps up to the door with my heart in my throat. Vivian walked in first, without knocking, and I walked in behind her. There were candles everywhere, and the scent of burning wax pervaded the house. Sitting at the lip of the stairs was the Pastor, his head dipped in prayer, and little whispers escaping his lips praying that God would forgive us all.

He looked up as we walked in and he looked like a broken man. “Upstairs,” was all he said, and it sounded like a growl. I looked to Vivian the question I wanted to ask, but she just shook her head. The pastor barely moved aside to let us through. We climbed the stairs and it felt like a march to an execution. I was sick, because part of me knew what we would find up there. We would find Santos. I just didn’t know how we would find him.

And then I saw him.

He was strapped to the bed, spread eagled like some kind of grotesque kill someone had posed. The shadows of the room writhed and twisted as the candles flickered throughout the room. His arms and wrists were tied to the bed posts, a limb for each one. The book that he was almost never without sat on the nightstand next to him, open to some passage in the new testament.

There were cuts on his face that bled out onto the sheets, and his wrists were red and scoured as he had twisted trying to remove the bonds. The blood itself was almost black, as if the shadows had mixed with the blood; but that might have been the strange light of the room.

And plunged deep into his chest was a wooden crucifix.

When I first walked in I thought him dead. He should have been dead. But his chest was rising and falling, and his lips moved as if he were praying, but I knew it wasn’t that.

“The Pastor tied him up. He tried to perform an exorcism.” I hadn’t even asked Vivian to explain. But I knew why she hadn’t told me. I would have to see something like this for myself. “It wasn’t the first one he’s done. So he says. But halfway through the rite, he said Santos got free, and took the cross. Said it was the only way he could control it. Plunged it right into his chest.”

It stunned me. I’d assumed that Santos was lost, and that this thing was just using him as a shell. That it could co-inhabit…let’s just say at that time I didn’t know something like that was possible. But Santos was fighting. He’d tried to kill himself, and he’d chosen as his tool the iconography of his religion. He was still breathing. It didn’t seem to be enough.

And all of a sudden Santos gasped, and it was like he was sucking up all the air in the room. Then he was still.

But he wasn’t dead, because with his eyes closed, he spoke out into the night. “I was wondering when you’d come. Why don’t you make a man out of me. You have me on my back.” His voice was like a monsters, and more-so, because the voices was Santos’. I wanted this thing gone from the world.

I looked to Vivian. “It’s time to finish what the Pastor started.”

The links willl be up later, but int he mean time, here’s chapter 23

Chapter Twenty Three

Who We Say We Are

The thing I let into my house wasn’t Santos.

It looked like him. It sounded like him, and it used his body almost as well as he did. But it wasn’t Santos. And I didn’t know that when I let him in.

I’d been considering how to speak to Vivian. It wasn’t guilt; I’m far too self involved for that emotion. But neither did I want a long monologue about how I had been in the wrong to go down below. My vision told me what you likely already know – that the Black Angel, whatever it was or whatever it signified, was responsible for the terrible murder. And I had let it loose.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that Santos had been the first one there. Because as smart as Santos was, and as interested in the mystical he’d become he was, at best, innocuous. He was the young man with the bible.

Except when he showed up at my door carrying a plate of scones. That should have been my first clue that he wasn’t what he was. The bible was Santos more than anything else in the world. That thing is who he is and he would find anyway of carrying it.

But I was distracted by my own troubles, and I never noticed that my own troubles were his.

It happened like this:

There came a knock at my door, and I was still in recovery from my vision even though it was just a day later. I had expected the knock to come, for surely Santos would have questions about death now that it was thrust in front of his face once again. But perhaps he needed to find his own solace in death from the mouth of a holy man instead from the mouth of a heretic.

Once I saw it was him, and saw that it was scones in his hand instead of pitchforks or pitch-soaked clubs, I opened the door to let him inside. He had a smile on his face, which struck me as strange. A man had died not a day before and here he was smiling, not a trace of darkness on his face.

“Good morning Miss Chevalier, we had some extra that I thought you might like.” Santos had always been a gentleman towards me. Naïve even. But never in the few months I had known him had he ever felt the need to bring me food. Still, I was hungry and hunger overcame my ability to think. Besides, these are fairly major character clues in hindsight, but fairly minor details at the time. And I had greater thing on my mind without thinking why Santos might be at my door with scones.

“Come on in,” and I stood out of his way to let him. I was dressed for the day, but I hadn’t put on my gloves. The scars on my arms showed, and he barely took a look at them.

He sat down at the table and looked around. I kept the house there fairly spotless and there wasn’t a shred of evidence in sight that I dabbled in anything that a woman of the time wouldn’t. This wasn’t his first time here but he acted as if it was. It was then that I began to suspect something.

I walked to the stove to put on some tea. The heat of the day had come and gone, but I was still sweltering. “What bring you here?” I smiled at him, “Scones are nice, but I can’t imagine it was just the scones.”

I sat across from him at the table and he just stared at me from his seat for a moment. Then he sank down into the chair, as if it were more comfortable than it was.

“Is there life after death?”

It was a strange thing for a Christian to ask. The entire religion seems founded on the fact that there was a life beyond the flesh and that it could survive long after the flesh. It was also uncharacteristic of the types of questions he’d asked since making my acquaintance. He was interested in the occult, and interested in what I believed, but here he was asking for guidance.

And I remembered what his father told me. And what I promised him.

“Yes,” I answered after a moment. “I believe. I’m not sure what it is, or what it is like. But I am sure of its existence.” It seems somewhat hypocritical to be both a user of magic – or whatever this thing is we use – and a skeptic. Those skeptics exist of course. So yes, I believe. I’m just sure that what I believe isn’t what you believe.

He tapped his right hand on the table, and my eyes went to it. He seemed agitated, as if he were fighting something. “This is about what happened to Mr. Girard?”

He was unfocused for a moment, as if I surprised him with the question, then he snapped back. It was ever so slightly eerie and I began to get the feeling that Santos was not who I was talking to. “Yes. In a way. This is about what happened to Mr. Girard. Do you know what happened to him?”

“I have a theory. But I will not speak about it here. Say it plainly, why are you here Santos?”

He sat back, and popped a scone into his mouth. “What if I told you I found a way to talk to those who have died. That there is life after death?”

And that was when I began to worry. My hairs stood on end, and I stared at him in disbelief. Santos was a fast learner. Faster than I was. Likely faster than Vivian. But he wouldn’t be that far along. Not yet.

Talking to the dead isn’t impossible in the same way that traveling between the stars is not impossible using only technological means (or for that matter even magical ones). It’s not impossible, but neither is it all that practically possible. What had brought me here were the rumors of Vivian speaking to the dead, and Santos had been with me when we spoke about what it meant that he was talking to his mother. You must understand, because this will be somewhat strange for you.

Spirits do exist. Remnants of things or people that used to exist. Imprints. Sometimes these imprints can even tell you things, such as Santos’ mother’s song. There have been times that you can even interact with them. But these aren’t the things that you knew in life. These are what they leave behind. These are the things that they can’t take with them. Talking to the dead was what Vivian wanted to do, and her starting place was steeped in tradition, some of it Voodoo some of it other things. But it wasn’t talking to the dead, at least not yet.

And Santos knew this, because I had explained it to him.

I leaned forwards. “What are you talking about?”

He stood and smiled at me, and the smile wasn’t his. The face was his, and the body was, but it wasn’t his, if that makes any sense at all. Remember Ray. Remember what you said about him when you walked into his office and there were dark things there with you. Remember what Ray looked like by the fire. It wasn’t and it wasn’t. This was what Santos was. “I found a way to do it. Under the church. I found a way to talk to the dead.”

It was then that I noticed something that was missing. His book. He’d come over to talk to me about the spirits of the dead and he’d left his bible.

I stood slowly, and stared down at him. I know that I have a presence when I choose to exercise it, and I stared lightning into this thing before me. “You are not him,” I said quietly. “You use his body and you speak in his voice but you are not him.”

Santos merely smiled, and I noticed the shadows on the opposite side of the room. They were moving. The shadow the bed gave lengthened and seemed to become wet and glistening. I writhed like it had life. It writhed like it was losing life.

“He came to me. He came to me at night after you were asleep. He came to me despite your warnings to not go in alone. Because the first time we were there I spoke to him. I whispered things into his ear. You cannot speak to the dead, perhaps. But I can. And these things I promised him. And these things I promise him still. And I promise you the same things. I promise you salvation.”

There is a myth of the sorcerer’s apprentice, who dabbles with forces that he can barely understand. It isn’t completely a myth of course. Throughout history there have been many who died before their time learning things they shouldn’t. That I have not become one of them is surprising to me. It was because of this that while I had shown Santos many things, I had never actually shown him how. This thing seemed to not have the compunctions I had.

“You killed Mr. Girard. You tore out his throat and drained him dry. You cut him up and you touched his blood.” I stood up, and backed away. “Begone from here.” I snarled, “Begone before I banish you.” My hand flashed to a knife on the counter and I held it to my arm to spill my blood in my defense.

“I’ve killed many people. Santos, you see, thought him lonely, for he had lost his entire family. He was so sad. So I brought him solace, and he dances with his family now. I see him. So does Santos. Will you?”

His words were like knives. This was some devil, but he had not a honeyed tongue. Likely it had gotten to Santos with tales of seeing his mother again. It had worked, for here was Santos before me.

“Begone monster. You are not who you say you are. And you are not welcome here.” And then I did spill my blood, and Santos was dragged screaming out of the room.

It would not have worked with a creature of God. It would not have worked with Santos. The thing that stood before me wasn’t Santos anymore.

He stood outside my door for another moment, shocked and seemingly angry. “I came from underneath, under stone and steel and souls. I came from underneath where I was bound. But I shall not be bound again, and I will be mighty with or without your help. For I am murder, and I shall be your savior.”

His laugh as he walked off haunts me to this day.

Now wait, let me backtrack to how the film starts. “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” is directed by Edgar Wright of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” fame. It is based on a comic book – actually one of the more interesting ones to come out in the last few years – but you don’t need to have read it to enjoy the film. Pretty much right as the film begins you can understand that this film has it’s own internal logic to it, which you can tell even before people start flying around fighting and bursting into quarters when defeated. There’s an old saying that you should be able to tell what’s going on in a film on the strength of the visuals; without any of the dialogue. While that’s true here, it’s also true that the film has very few narrative breaths. What I mean by that is you’re not given much time from scene jump to scene jump to orient yourself into the setting and the characters. They just throw you in for better or worse, and it leaves you breathless even before the meat of the action has begun. This is mostly a good thing, yet I could see how it could throw people off if you don’t buy into that storytelling logic right away, or at least soon enough that you’re not dizzy by the time Ramona Flowers comes in.

Okay wait, let me backtrack again. The story of Scott Pilgrim is actually a very simple one. Scott, the title character, is the bassist of the band Death Bob Om, and he’s a little bit of a loser. The movie lets there be no doubt about it. And he’s played by Michael Cera who has cornered the market on playing young awkward geek characters. See “Juno”. See “Arrested Development”. Actually, see them both because they’re damn good films. Anyway, Scott sees this girl with pink hair one day in a dream, and then sees her for real one day. By chance he asks her out and she accepts and their first date ends fairly satisfactorily for Scott.

But this is when things start to get complicated. Ramona, it turns out, has a league of 7 Evil Ex’s that want to do battle to the death with Scott if he is to continue going out with her. If you feel that it comes out of the blue reading this review, you’re right. But visually there’s been a lot of references to video games – especially video games of the 8-bit variety – so it’s not completely out of left field. But it is supposed to be visually surprising and it is.

Each of the Evil Ex’s has amazing special powers, and, seemingly by merit of dating Ramona, Scott does as well. At least enough so that he can fight. What’s so incredible is that the movie never actually explains it (well, okay save for that one ex who gained his powers by being a vegan); but this has its own kind of charm.

I don’t really feel that I can, or should, talk about the rest of the narrative of the film without giving stuff away. And I don’t really want to, because, despite the inherent insanity of the narrative there are still a lot of surprise laugh out-lout moments that I don’t want to spoil.

What I can talk about it just how well this film was shot. I mentioned in my review of the A-Team that American movies frequently don’t film fight scenes well to be completely accessible. This is not true of Scott Pilgrim. Wright got some advice from Quentin Tarantino on how to film fight scenes, and it shows in the best possible way. The scenes are well edited, and shot wide enough so that there’s never any explanation about what exactly is going on. In a film where suddenly people are flying towards each other or conjuring electric monsters from their keyboards this is amazingly important. What’s perhaps even more impressive is, in a film with 6 – 7 successive fights things never get visually boring. Each fight is dynamic and different enough to keep things interesting without getting stale. Instead I found myself looking forward to watching each fight because each one was kind of like a mini-game in a video game. It is fun, it’s diverting, and its absolutely essential to the plot.

Ultimately Scott Pilgrim has a much higher buy-in than, say Iron Man 2. But in it’s own way it is just as enjoyable and just as good once you make that accept the inherent insanity of it. While I don’t think that the movie will be liked purely across generational lines, I do feel that it will play best with the 25 – 40 crowd if only because we’re the group that grew up with 8 bit video games. The nostalgia factor should keep us coming back if not for anything else.

Ultimately if you watched the trailer and liked what you saw, then you should go see this film. If you watched it and thought “WTF”? , then this film is clearly not for you.

Acting: B+/A- Honestly there wasn’t any acting in this film that wasn’t pitch perfect. On the other hand there wasn’t any particular role that forced the actors outside their comfort zone. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s jut not A+ material.

Directing A- Thoroughly enjoyable and a great mix of narrative and fight choreography. No one thing is over done and once you buy in, the film has near perfect rhythm.

Production: A+ The film looked absolutely gorgeous.

(More after the break)

The process was actually a ridiculously easy, if extremely tedious, one. It worked like this: you needed to arrive sometime in the two days before the mass audition takes place to receive a red wristband (and whoever is arriving for moral support can receive a green one) that you cannot take off until you have that first audition. If it sounds annoying, trust me it is.

Once you have the wristband, they tell you to show up the day of at the IZOD center between 4:30 and 5:00 am to stand in line. If this is your first time doing this, trust me, don’t do this. Well, unless you want to show up in a cat in the hat outfit (or a Supergirl outfit, or a Joker Outfit) and you want to get on camera. Do yourself a favor and don’t do this. They do it so they can get footage of crowds, but showing up early does nothing to ensure you have an early audition. Why? Because you audition in the order of seat number, and your seat number is determined by when you arrived to get your wrist band. So, really showing up early is purely for their benefit and not yours. Which we should have known. But we didn’t so, we got there at 5:35am, a little later than we wanted to. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. We waited for a couple of hours before they opened up the IZOD center to seat us. That’s when we found out we were seated up in the top section. The IZOD center packs about 20 thousand people at full capacity. We were, I’m guessing, somewhere between 11 thousand and 15 thousand there. Probably closer to 15 thousand. My brother and I were seated next to another pair of twins from Vermont, rather coincidentally. The first two hours were about riling up the crowd. Constantine something or other came out, tried to sing Queen’s Bohemien Rhapsody, where we found out he was no Freddy Mercury. Then Ryan Secrest came out and we figured out that he’s probably as fabulous as a human male can get. Okay, well, he’s not. That would be David Bowie, but still.

Then the started the auditions. Which took forever.

We got there at 5:30 in the morning, and my brother finally auditioned at 6:02 where he sang for 10 seconds before they cut him off and told him it was a no. If you think that sounds like a maddening day you would be wrong. It was excruciating (okay, not really. But it was hellishly annoying). It wasn’t, however, all bad. I don’t know what it was like in the lower bleechers but it was a feeling of high camraderie up there in the nosebleeds. We got to know the twins pretty well, and in front of us sat a fifteen year old boy and his mother. We talked, and we got to know each other all day. Out in the concourse, there would be random singing circles that just started for seemingly no reason other than people wanted to hear each other sing. There were women a row over who would stop everyone who walked by and have them sing something. It reminded me a little of a music building on a college campus. Well, okay, on college campuses you don’t get impulsive singing circles, but you get the drift. It was like everyone knew each other, even though almost none of us have seen each other before, and we won’t likely see each other again.

All in all, it was a worthwhile experience, and one that I wouldn’t care to repeat. My brother ended up singing the opening lines of Audioslave’s “I am the Highway” which he does quite well. I would have preferred that he at least start with the refrain, and he tentatively agrees post fact.

About the only thing I can tell you going in if you want to audition is the only thing I knew going in. If you go don’t expect to be picked up. I heard so many men and women who had voices that could rival if not surpass the previous AI winners, which only cemented the idea that American Idol doesn’t care how good a singer you are passed a certain point. Because, let’s face it, not everyone they get can sing (I mean past the point where they get people who have no hope and they’re just being taken because it would be funny to watch them on camera), but they get others because they have a great stage presence, or other reasons. Besides, from a purely numbers stand point you’re not likely to get selected anyway. There were as I said between 11k and 15 k people here. They took somewhere between 50 and 200 to go onto the second round. So, you’re not likely to get through that first bit. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and they’re not lying to you when they say it’s not a judgment on you as a person or a singer.

Am I happy I was there to support my brother? Yes. Would I do it again? No. Would I suggest that you do it if you’re want to have a breakthrough? Yes. But don’t plan around it. If you go, go for the experience, go for the fun, and go for the camaraderie. For the most part it was a positive experience.

But we weren’t all that loud, we were just this side of proud and it was certainly Idle, just not the Idol they were necessarily hoping for.

The concept of the show is a fairly simple one. In the first episode we meet Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon), a hard ass Boston police detective in the homocide division. The other title character, Maura Isles is a coroner, Rizzoli’s best friend, and the plays the role of the straight man. The ads will tell you that together they solve crimes, but that’s not entirely true. The detective work is done all by Rizzoli and her team of detectives (a former partner, and a current partner who can’t stand the sight of a dead body); and this is refreshing. They don’t try to shoehorn the coroner’s role to be more than it is (can anyone say “CSI”? Or “Bones” for that matter?).

In many ways this show is rather run of the mill. Rizzoli is a hard ass detective who’s damaged from a former case (which is handled pretty well in the first episode). Isles is a scientist in the Brennan mold (from “Bones”), in that she’s fairly incapable of normal human interaction. Yet, it’s the show’s attention to detail that make the character’s pop. Isles is always dressed to the 9′s, as aware of fashion as she is human anatomy. This is coupled with Rizzoli’s lack of a romantic life (and her decision to never marry), and her home life, which is complicated by her brother also being a cop. While they have all the hallmarks of run of the mill characters, there are also some differences. Rizzoli is playful where a male character just wouldn’t be. Angie Harmon’s performance is spot on, bringing the tough business like demeanor she perfected on Law and Order and mixing it in equal parts with a sense of humor.

And why this show wouldn’t work on network? It allows them to use bad language when bad language is warranted. They don’t go overboard with it – and if they did it would be absolutely distracting. Instead, when Rizzoli is following an FBI agent that is stonewalling her she utters, “But this is bullshit!” it feels absolutely natural. I didn’t even notice that they wouldn’t have been able to say it on network television- something that programming on HBO still hasn’t figured out how to accomplish. There was also a portion where Rizzoli and Isles are lying next to each other talking about how to make the FBI agent romantically notice them and one of them say “Why can’t we just show him our tits?” Something else that they wouldn’t be allowed to say on television, but it colors the show as just this side of naughty without being completely distracting.

The show still has a long way to go, but so far it follows the mold of TNT shows – they’re good solid programming that allows you to sit on your couch with some popcorn and just lets you enjoy yourself for an hour. There’s something to be said for programming that doesn’t always deal with the big issues.