Noah asked me why I didn’t like the LOTR films, then added that he didn’t see the Narnia films because they sounded bad. For me that raises the question of how the Narnia films sound different than the LOTR films, aside from having little English kids in the cast. It’s still a lot of fantasy and swords and an epic clash between the deformed and the comely.

I get the same thing sometimes when I see a big Hollywood film that’s meant to be a blockbuster but flops. Sometimes you can tell they won’t make it, either because no one was on their game or because somebody with power made exceptionally strange decisions (Hudson Hawk, the magnificent Wild Wild West). Other times I don’t really get why the movie is singled out as being so bad. Ishtar, for example, strikes me as unusually good; I love Elaine May, and Warren Beatty gave one of his few decent performances. The Deep Blue Sea, which is about supersmart giant sharks, seemed like all the other big-monster action films. Maybe it was so run of the mill that people made it a scapegoat for the tons of other product they had sat through.

Then there’s Batman and Robin. I really can’t tell why it’s worse than the other Batman movies, by which I mean the ones that started with the Tim Burton film and ended, I guess, with Batman and Robin. I saw Batman and was pretty indifferent, tried to watch the second film and walked out, missed the third one. Then I saw Batman and Robin and was again indifferent, except that it had Uma Thurman in it and she was funny and looked great. Otherwise the movie seemed like all the other body-armored, black-metaled, big-shot-supporting-cast Batman footage I had seen.

I’m told Batman’s armors had nipples that time around and that it made a difference. Still doesn’t seem like much, though.

So the critical principle mentioned in this post’s title would be: If you liked all that other shit, what’s the matter with this shit?

As an almost relevant side note to Noah’s thoughts on the space trilogy, it turns out that Disney doesn’t want to produce any more Narnia films. The first one did great, the second did half of great, and Disney doesn’t want to see how the third will do. (Hollywood Reporter by way of The New Republic.)

I saw the first one and liked it ok, I think. I might have fallen asleep. But it wasn’t as bad as the Lord of the Rings films, because those were longer and noisier. Worst of all were the new Star Wars movies. It’s like Peter Jackson entered into a compact with George Lucas to rid the world of CGI through aversion therapy.

The Reporter says Hollywood is losing interest in fantasy epics because The Golden Compass did so badly. Good.

I have a review of C.S. Lewis massively underrated Space Trilogy up on Culture 11.

But why is it comforting to be insignificant? Isn’t insignificance at the heart of the fiction of Wells and his heirs? Isn’t man’s nothingness at the base of the horror in Wells or (for example) in Lovecraft? At first that seems to be the case, but when you look closer, it’s less clear. In The Time Machine, for example, what terrifies and disgusts the narrator is not the absence of man, but his presence — the hideous hopping creatures which, in more and more degenerate form, populate the far future. Frankenstein’s monster is horrifying not because he isn’t human, but because he is. The gothic tradition on which much of sci-fi rests is about doubling; about recognizing one’s own twisted visage in the face of infinity. The supposed evolutionary ruthlessness, the acknowledgment of the “truth” of man’s insignificance, is, in these books, a kind of ruse. The real emotional power is in man’s proliferation; man is everywhere, inescapable. The future does not create the sci-fi writer; rather it is the sci-fi writer who creates, in his or her own image, the future.

I was thrilled to get a chance to write this. The Space Trilogy is one of my favorite works of twentieth century literature, period. Peter Suderman, the arts editor at Culture 11, very kindly agreed to let me write the piece, and to pay me for it, though there’s no discernible news hook for it anywhere in sight. So thanks, Peter.

Obama’s words of advice to a reporter after the president-elect ordered a “tuna melt on 12-grain bread.” So wise, so true. And The Politico, in reporting this, headlines the story “Obama Bristles as the Bubble Closes In.” It seems Obama also took his kids to “a nearby water park” without bringing reporters along.

My wife’s an Angelina Jolie fan, so we rented Wanted — and, oy, big mistake. We watched maybe 30 minutes and that was all we could stand. You can really tell it’s from a comic-book — it has the white, male, nerdy angst thing down cold. Except, where the point with Spider-Man was always that Peter was at least somewhat likeable, the hero here is just whiny and despicable and boring. The by-the-numbers transformation into incredible assassin who bends bullets is thunderingly dumb, and the whole super-hip visuals and urban coolness thing is more or less utterly undermined by the fact that the whole schtick has been stolen wholesale from the Matrix.

This is definitely one of those movies, too, where the wish-fulfillment is all about some nerdy schmo getting with (or in this case, just being somewhat near) incredibly hot babe. They can’t even seem to get that right, though; at least in the first quarter, Jolie’s hardly on screen, and by the time you’ve watched that, you don’t want to watch anymore. I guess I just don’t quite understand why you’d have Angelina Jolie in the movie, and then spend most of your time following this relentlessly boring, whiny guy. You’ve got someone on screen with actual charisma, for god’s sake. Couldn’t we just watch her? Why not have her be the depressed nobody who turns into the amazing assassin? Surely that (or anything really) would have been better than this.

The holidays gave me the opportunity to do a little bit of drawing for the first time in a while. You can see the result on the Flaming Fire illustrated Bible website.

This review ran in Bitch Magazine a while back.

Point of No Return
Shareefa
(DTP/DefJam)

You know Shareefa is real because she keeps telling you that she went to prison. Also, she has a skit in which some random radio doofus earnestly asserts that her songs come “from the heart.”

And once you get past these irritating authenticity claims? Well, as it happens, you’ve got a top-notch R&B record without any of the self-conscious stiffness that usually dogs those obsessed with their own sincerity. Shareefa has a low, slightly raspy voice which drips soul, and the productions are excellent. Many of the songs are genuinely old school — “Phony” and “Assumptions” do the Philly Sound almost better than Gamble and Huff themselves; “Hey Babe” has a gorgeous horn motif right out of a Stax ballad. The Rodney Jenkins-produced “Need a Boss,” on the other hand, with its unrepentantly gimmicky stutter, is clearly of the oughts. And then there’s the Chucky Thompson-helmed “Eye Wonder,” which splits the difference with a deep, menacing throb I’m sure they would have concocted back in the day if they’d had the production technology. (Hard to believe this was the guy responsible for much of Mary J. Blige’s wack, over-rated early output.)

Lyrically, there aren’t many surprises — we’ve got cheating, no-good men, and a hard-knock life. We’ve got (of course) a song about her man in prison. And we’ve got “How Good Luv Feels,” about what the title says. But if you’re afraid of a few clichés, you’ve probably given up on pop music altogether and are busy listening to Beethoven. Shareefa may not be as real as that, but when she makes music this great, I can’t hold it against her.

People Who Should Listen to This Record and Just Go Home, Please: Macy Gray

If Put In Prison, This CD: Wouldn’t care. It’s just a piece of plastic, y’know?