Preacher, Vol. 4: Ancient History (3/5/10) Graphic Novel (1998 ***) Written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Steve Pugh, Carlos Ezquerra and Richard Case. This volume in the Preacher saga steps away from the main storyline and digs into the origins of the series’ supporting characters: The Saint of Killers, Arseface and Jesse Custer’s redneck uncles. This volume was enjoyable enough, especially its first story, but with this series I have an increasing sense that it’s not adding up to anything I’m particularly interested in. I originally bought these first four volumes used and on sale, and I can honestly say I got what I paid for. However, at this point I don’t really have sufficient interest in the series to order further volumes from Amazon.
Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (3/4/10) Netflix (2004 ***) Directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. A white female photographer teaches photography to some of the poorest children in India and along the way she attempts to change their lives for the better. I’m ashamed to admit that after the first few minutes I was tempted to quit watching. Chalk it up to white middle-class guilt if you want, but abject poverty is not something I want to watch for an hour and a half. It was really the photography angle that grabbed me and held my interest. During the course of the film, the viewer was exposed to each of “Auntie” Zana’s kids as individual photographers and it made me think about the nature of photography (and art) in a way I hadn’t thought about it for a long time.
Little Big Man (3/4/10) TV-TCM (1970 ****) Directed by Arthur Penn, screenplay by Calder Willingham, based on the novel by Thomas Berger, starring Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Richard Mulligan and Chief Dan George. Long before Forrest Gump ran across the landscape of the American experience, there was a man named Jack Crabb, who lived in the wild, wild, wild west. Once upon a time, when I was a younger man, this was one of my favorite films, and I watched it every couple of years. I had not watched it in a long time, and I’ll be damned if it does still hold up every bit as well as I’d remembered. Structurally, it’s a picaresque, like Don Quixote or Huckleberry Finn. But it’s also inevitably a product of the anti-war era in which it was made, and as such I imagine it would make a great double-feature along with another 1970 film, Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H.
Paper Heart (3/2/10) Netflix (2009 **1/2) Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, written by Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi, starring Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera. A quirky Asian female comic sets out to make a quirky documentary about the nature of love, and along the way she starts dating one of the hottest quirky actors of the 21st Century, Michael Cera. This film suffered from the same problem found a number of recent movies: It’s just too precious for its own good. The concept behind this film was essentially to integrate pseudo documentary material into a scripted faux documentary. I don’t think that concept was flawed, and the trailer was adorable, but the execution of the film was disappointing, particularly when it was painfully apparent that “real” footage was scripted.
Preacher, Vol. 3: Proud Americans (3/1/10) Graphic Novel (1997 ***1/4) Written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Steve Dillon. This volume finished the “Grail” story begun in the previous volume and concluded with a 2-issue exploration of Cassidy the vampire’s backstory. I was disappointed by Cassidy’s origin story, which was less interesting than what I would have hoped for. Having said that, Preacher is still an interesting series and well worth reading.
Adaptation (3/1/10) TV-Sundance (2002 ****) Directed by Spike Jonze, screenplay by Charlie (and Donald!) Kaufman, based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper and Brian Cox as Robert McKee. A quirky screenwriter lands an assignment and struggles with the source material until the fabric of reality threatens to collapse. This film was so self-aware of itself, and yet it still worked on an emotional level. If I had to say what the film is about, it’s about the relationship between reality and the structured version that exists on the silver screen, about the hoops through which a writer must necessarily go in order to create a cinematic story. Against all odds, breaking as many rules as it embraced, Adaptation worked. And it worked brilliantly.
Heathers (3/1/10) TV-IFC (1988 **1/2) Directed by Michael Lehmann, screenplay by Daniel Waters, starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty. Some teens solve their dissatisfaction with high school’s unfair social structure by committing murder. I saw this film when it was first released, and it’s even possible I saw it in the theater. But in 1988 I was already well past my high school years and even though some of my best friends (like Harold and Maude) are black comedies, something about Heathers bugged the hell out of me, and I didn�t like it much. Over the years, the film went on to become a Generation-X cult classic, and I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Watching it again, years later, I was disappointed to discover that the film still rubs my sensibilities the wrong way. Draw your own conclusions.
Road House (2/28/10) TV-KTLA (1989 ***) Directed by Rowdy Herrington, screenplay by David Lee Henry and Hilary Henkin, starring Pattrick Swayze, Kelly Lynch and Sam Elliott. Dalton is a bouncer who takes troubled roadside taverns and slaps ‘em upside the head and kicks ‘em in the kneecaps until they behave themselves, andthen he moves on to the next one. My terrible confession of the week: The main reason I watched this film was so I could better appreciate a running gag on Family Guy in which Peter Griffin kicks people, then says: “Road House.” Boy, the things I’ll do for cultural context. What surprised me was how damned entertaining and brutally archetypal this film was. It was so representative of a type of films made during an era in film history that it should be shown in universities and studied. It is that pure. “Road House.”
Preacher, Vol. 2: Until the End of the World (2/27/10) Graphic Novel (1997 ***1/4) Written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Steve Dillon. This book featured two stories: “All in the Family” and “Hunters.” Continuing the energy of the first volume, Ennis managed to crank up the outrageous dial, and some of the adult-oriented situations were pretty extreme. With this volume I got the sense that Preacher is one of those road trips where the destination is far less important than the company you’re with.
Preacher, Vol. 1: Gone to Texas (2/27/10) Graphic Novel (1996 ***1/4) Written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Steve Dillon. When the spawn of heaven and hell breaks loose, it’s up to a man of God, a female hit-man and a vampire to straighten things out. This is a fun series, with strong writing and art by Ennis and Dillon. This book definitely favored characterization over plot, and the character introductions seemed a tad bit engineered, but I didn’t as annoying as I initially thought I would. Mind you, the world of Preacher is definitely adult-oriented, and not for the timid.
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