Originally published at relevantmagazine.com
Direct link:  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/tv/blog/23370-the-walking-dead-review

The Walking Dead: Review

Alex Wilgus

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Comics need to be on TV and not in the movies. AMC’s latest TV series, The Walking Dead, is an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic book by the same name. The pilot, which aired last Sunday and is on again this weekend, was an excellent debut and a wake-up call to the reality that comic book adaptations are lost on the silver screen. Yes, there have been a few bright spots (Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, Iron Man), but for every inspired comic film there have been a good deal more horrible ones. The element of comicdom that has never been treated properly is its serial format. This misunderstanding is perpetuated by comics’ recent (unfortunate) renaming as “graphic novels.” A novel suggests a carefully crafted narrative. It stands alone, beginning, middle and end. Novels translate well to film because of this neat cohesion, but comics do not because comics are serials, not novels. To make an effective comic book movie, one must truncate an entire series—oftentimes hundreds of issues—into one single story. Modern comic book movie formula: stay true to the characters, write a new story.

The problem is, the best comics to be written in recent years privilege plot over character and most of them don’t feature a single recognizable superhero. The great Alan Moore’s delightfully subversive comics have seen his genius mangled onscreen time and time again, though not for lack of effort. The context is just not right. The Wachowskis produced V For Vendetta and, in the process, asphyxiated a brooding, claustrophobic intrigue with 21st-century nihilist action-film blandness. Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was bloated with hyper-visceral sensationalism, obscuring the comic’s muted, literary tone. Making a feature film out of a modern comic series is like shoving a square peg into a round hole.

In truth very few comics are written as long standalone stories. One twentysomething-page issue will come out every month, continuing a long running story. It’s a format that has its origins in Dickensian pulp fiction and classic radio drama. Most of those "graphic novels" you see in paperback on the shelves at Barnes & Noble are actually collections of individual monthly issues. Buying a comic in trade paperback (as it’s known in the industry) is like buying a season of a TV show on DVD. The original format, however, is serial. Each issue concludes with the promise of the next, and the better the series, the harder it is to wait. That should sound familiar to fans of network hits like 24, Lost and Heroes. 

The Walking Dead marks the first high-profile experiment in bringing comics to the small screen and it is a resounding success. AMC is the perfect habitat for a serial story whose tone ranges widely from horror to tragedy to rollicking adventure. Robert Kirkman’s original idea in writing The Walking Dead was exactly why a movie version would never have worked. Kirkman was always irked by how zombie films had a huge setup but tended to end arbitrarily after some pseudo-climax. Even Romero’s legendary films could only find proper catharsis in metaphor or Twilight Zone-esque social commentary. Kirkman would be the first to admit he owes much to Romero, but The Walking Dead takes a different route through the undead wasteland. It is meant to be an expansive chronicling of the lives of people caught in a zombie apocalypse that wouldn’t just end when it’s convenient. It’s the Lonesome Dove of zombie tales and it’s still continuing today. Frank Darabont, director of a couple of little adaptations you may have heard of—The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile—is aware of the breadth and serial structure of Kirkman’s epic, and according to an interview with the A.V. Club, is having as much fun making the series as we are watching it:

“As far as the deliberate pace of a show, can I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do. … You can hold a shot, thank God, and I’m finding that such a pleasure, because I do love moments that breathe.”

Comments like this are gumdrops to a comic book fan like myself. Just when it seems like nobody understands you, that comic adaptations will forever be locked away in shallow eye-candy reels and geek homages, Darabont and AMC come and sweep you off your feet. There have already been some changes from the comic series, but they are only detours (and welcome ones so far). Even with a TV show there can’t be a one-to-one correlation between the comic and the screen, but Kirkman’s story is already much more in focus on AMC than it could ever be in the movie theater. It’s all summed up in the network’s blessed catchphrase: “Story Matters Here.” Nerds rejoice! One of the best comics of the past decade is finally in capable hands and zombies have regained a foothold in the pantheon of high pulp art. Perhaps HBO will take notice and Brian K. Vaughan’s masterpiece, Y: The Last Man, can get the same loving treatment. One can only hope. 

The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC at 10/9c.

'Red Hill' Review w/ Kerry Armbuster

Originally published at www.filmspotting.net 10/17/10
Direct link: http://filmspotting.net/reviews/spotlight-reviews/609-red-hill.html

Red Hill

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Sunday, 17 October 2010 00:27

Kerry and Alex discuss "Red Hill," which recently played at the Chicago International Film Festival and is slated for a limited U.S. release Nov. 5. Kerry:  It’s a familiar story: After moving from the city to give his wife some peace and start a family, a young cop (played by True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten) starts his first day of work in the quiet town of Red Hill by (literally) walking into a one-horse town.  What comes next could best be described by Matty and Adam as a ‘very bad day’ movie.  Taking both from revenge thrillers and the classic American Western, Australian writer-director Patrick Hughes’ debut feature "Red Hill" mixes genre conventions with a few modern ideas thrown in.  Alex, did Red Hill kick in the door with guns blazing? Alex:  Well, there was certainly a lot of gunfire, but I have to admit that I wasn’t really compelled by much of it.  I am typically a fan of the kind of genre-bending that Hughes attempts in this film.  The setting is a modern-day Australian town, but the story is a classic western.  It’s a similar project to Rian Johnson’s "Brick," a traditional film-noir set in a California high school.   I like seeing everyday locales transformed into mythical backdrops for epic stories, throwing reality to the wind in favor of heightened drama and excitement. But there were a lot of missed opportunities here. The theme of this film for me is “not enough.”  The bad guy isn’t bad enough; the gunfights aren’t tense enough; the stakes aren’t high enough. I think it was the lack of character that made this film hollow.  The actors do a decent job with their parts, but there’s little in the script to turn them into fun characters. They are archetypes, which is not in itself a bad thing. A character need not be something completely new to be compelling, but it is a bad thing when a film rests on the laurels of its genre and asks the audience to assume a character’s motivation rather than showing it onscreen.  I felt like this is what was going on too often in "Red Hill."  Instead of really fleshing out these characters, we just get some fairly shallow, thematic dialogue that refers to each characters’ archetype  (Shane’s wife calls him ‘cowboy’).  Even if you’re depicting a familiar world, it still needs to be built from the ground up, defined and redefined. Kerry:  I do agree with you about the characters being hollow.  In particular, bad guy Jimmy Conway certainly plays like a poor man’s Anton Chigurh.  However, I did have fun with this movie.  It is by no means high art, but I don’t think it is trying to be either.  Filled with incredibly implausible character decisions, pulpy violence, and heavily borrowed references to classic westerns (bordering on just plain silly), I was pretty entertained for the most part. And while much of the movie is extremely predictable, I did appreciate some of the ideas Hughes put out there that I wasn’t necessarily expecting going in.  I appreciated that in such a violent movie there is a central character who continually uses his brain over his gun.  Kwanten’s Shane Cooper could have been much more interesting for me had this been developed a little more.  In addition, the Jimmy Conway character brings up issues of racism and how it is portrayed in film and our national history in an incredibly accessible way for those who want to read into it.  I certainly wasn’t expecting that kind of social commentary from this type of genre film, and I didn’t feel too hit over the head by it either. Unfortunately, this film did lose me by the final showdown.  Needing more development in some of the characters, as well as higher stakes, it was hard for me to invest in some of them.  I think this struck hardest with Old Bill, the police chief.  By the time the final shots are fired, I was well out of the story and ready to go. Patrick Hughes not only wrote and directed "Red Hill," he also produced and edited.  It is certainly his baby, and I have to wonder if a little collaboration might have helped smooth out some of our issues... Alex:  Wow, I was absolutely beaten to death by the social commentary.  I think it squelched the very last attempt at making this guy a real character.  Attaching a character to a social issue doesn’t in itself make me care.  I need a little more humanity than that.  I need to care about the character first as a human being and then the director has the power to comment on whatever he wants. We also get two separate explanations of Conway’s backstory, the second one being completely redundant.  A cardinal sin in moviemaking: Don’t tell me something I already know, especially not in a montage. I think I’m griping at this movie so much because I really like the premise, and I wanted to love this film.  This kind of genre-bending is exactly what I think more movies need to have.  It has the power to show people that some stories really are timeless and can still be a lot of fun.  On the upside, there were some good set pieces and some lovely photography.  I liked the setting of the town a lot.  The film had just the right look and feel.  There were also some very fun scenes here and there, like Conway’s introduction.  I also thought most of the actors deserved kudos, particularly Steve Bisley as Old Bill.  At the beginning I totally loved the character and was ready for his personality to be a really weighty pivot point for the story, but then he’s given such a straw-man part. I do think that Hughes strikes a good tone with this movie.  He never strays into Tarantino B-movie kitsch or comic book hyper-reality.  This film is not an homage to classic Westerns; it really is a Western.  The world of Red Hill is one that can stand on its own.  It achieves the same smooth mixture of genre form and original setting as Debra Granik’s "Winter’s Bone" did earlier this year (a true film noir set in rural Missouri).  It’s too bad that the script was so milquetoast. Kerry: I guess you won’t be coming over for a Rambo marathon then?  I thought there were times where "Red Hill" strayed into B-movie kitsch, and that is where I tended to have the most fun. There is nothing straight-faced about killing someone with a boomerang, or that certain four-legged ‘character’ that shows up about an hour in.  It is just ridiculous, and I got a few chuckles out of it.    Alex:  It’s true that the film is fun, but I really don’t think Hughes was going for ridiculous.  "Red Hill" is not overly serious but it’s also not making fun of itself.  I’d place it squarely in "Brick" and "Winter’s Bone" territory, rather than the Tarantino/Rodriguez ‘camp’.  Hughes lovingly bakes the Western genre into his story rather than cutting-and-pasting it jokingly.  I feel like there was a real attempt to make this world and these characters three-dimensional.  I do applaud Hughes for not taking the easy ‘self-conscious genre piece’ route that treats its stylization as a high art excuse to trot out a bunch of action figure characters, write shoddy dialogue and call it an ‘homage’.  "Red Hill" isn’t an homage; it’s at least trying to be the real deal and it almost succeeds. Kerry:  There are a lot of things that don’t work in "Red Hill": There were plenty of wasted characters; the villain’s backstory really did get redundant; and the score was occasionally jarring.  It isn’t as masterful as "The Proposition" or last summer’s "Animal Kingdom," but I would have no problem recommending "Red Hill" to genre fans.  I take it you won’t be recommending it to anyone anytime soon? Alex:  Probably not.  I like what Hughes attempts, but he just doesn’t quite get there.  Still, I think it’s a step in the right direction toward what genre filmmaking should be. "Red Hill" has a lot of heart and Hughes proves that he has a love for the genre and not just an infatuation with style.  I’ll be interested in what he does next.

'Catfish' Review w/ Kerry Armbuster

Originally published at www.filmspotting.net 9/28/10
Direct link:  http://filmspotting.net/reviews/spotlight-reviews/599-catfish.html

Catfish

Tuesday, 28 September 2010 16:25

Spoiler Warning:  This review discusses in detail a film that hinges almost entirely on your complete lack of knowledge about its story.  If you have not yet seen "Catfish" then we do not suggest you read on until you have.  Kerry and Alex think it’s worth your time. Alex: “Don’t let anyone tell you what it is.”  That’s the tagline that you’ll find on all official marketing regarding “Catfish”, the enigmatic documentary from Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost.  The story about Ariel’s brother Nev and his online relationship with an attractive girl, according to the filmmakers themselves, should be entered completely blind.  On their account, “Catfish” is an experience that is worth dodging every synopsis and online blurb of information about their film.  The only way to see “Catfish” is to see it for yourself.  Kerry, does this film merit tiptoeing around all secondhand information to walk into it blind?  Was it an experience that you found rewarding? Kerry: I have been finding the more frequently I walk into a movie blind with no expectation the better opportunity I have to be truly surprised and excited by something, though I am not sure I can say I walked into this one completely unaware.  I had seen the preview for “Catfish”, and being marketed as a cautionary and suspenseful tale of the dangers of social networking, I did pretty much know going in that things would not be as they seemed.  Schulman and Joost decide to document Ariel’s brother Nev’s online relationship with a family in Michigan Nev has never met.  Nev is contacted by the youngest daughter, 8-year-old Abby, with a painting she had made of one of Nev’s photographs that was featured in a newspaper, and Nev slowly befriends much of the family via Facebook.  Eventually a romantic relationship develops online with Abby’s older sister Megan. Knowing Megan would ultimately not be whom she claimed, suspense builds over the first hour of “Catfish”, and I am almost embarrassed to say how much I was into it.  It plays like a horror film (there were moments where the men sitting next to me could barely contain their squeamishness) until the big reveal, and the audience and Nev get to see who this family really is.  At this point, all the marketing and suspense pretty much falls flat.  We are led where you would have expected without all the dramatization and hype-- a lonely woman desperately trying to escape her reality and cling to the life she wishes she had.  In an age where kids are constantly warned of the threats of the internet, and where our connection to each other can so often bring so much disconnect, the questions raised after this point seem much more interesting to me than any gasp the marketing of this film was so adamantly after. Alex: I see what you’re saying, but I didn’t feel quite so duped.  Catfish plays out like a good This American Life episode and the state of knowing nothing about the conclusion is important to its progression.  Yes, I’d say the marketing was a little overblown, but I will point out that we live in a society in which information is immediately accessible.  You have to actually cause people to intentionally keep themselves in the dark instead of trusting them to experience a story as it is meant to be experienced.  I could have logged onto wikipedia and read this movie in a 350 word synopsis.  In fact I probably would have, maybe even accidentally if I wasn’t so conscious of the filmmakers’ desire to keep me in the dark.  It’s a bit of a sham, yes, (maybe even as much as Angela’s facebook ruse) but it’s necessary to force the public to experience a story as it’s meant to be told. That said, I actually thought the film itself played out very well.  It captured that kind of schoolboy sense of fun and fear that drives those sorts of investigative journeys.  I remember one time in college sitting in my dorm room with ten or so other guys and seeing a bright green flash of light on the horizon.  We kept seeing these weird green flashes until finally we all just hopped into our cars and drove toward it, not knowing what it was.  Before realizing it was just a downed power line I remember feeling being both scared and exhilarated and I think this movie really captures that spirit very well.  Of course, once we actually meet Angela, the tone changes considerably.  The fun is over and the filmmakers have a difficult job continuing their movie without embarrassing their subject.  Kerry, should this movie have been made?  Was it respectful or exploitative? Kerry: That is an interesting question, and I asked myself the same thing.  There is so much here that I think could have informed a really interesting piece of fiction, but as a documentary there are ethical questions that I think needed to be asked.  I noticed that after the guys meet Angela they reassess their game plan and intentions in the car.  Joost is quick to point out that they do not want to be malicious; they want to make sure their intentions are empathetic.  I give the filmmakers credit for sticking around and trying to understand what was really behind everything, but it really felt like they had to have seen something like this coming when they committed to make a documentary about a correspondence with an 8-year old girl.  They had to have known there was something strange in this to pick up a camera in the first place.  I think they had made their decision from the beginning and exploitation was inevitable. What really troubles me about this is that I don’t know if these people really learned anything from their experience.  Did Angela learn anything, or did the entire country just get to watch her embarrassment?  The other issue is Nev:  he plays the victim throughout much of the encounter, but very little is asked of him.  In the end, we are informed that Nev is still friends with Angela via Facebook, but does that really mean anything? Alex: Yeah, ethically, this film is a bit of a question mark.  Nev doesn’t really seem like the kind of guy who would get too caught up in an online relationship in the first place, so I was a bit skeptical as well.  You’re right, the filmmakers are very careful to be respectful and I’m still not sure if they succeeded fully, but I do feel a bit hypocritical pointing this out because I have to admit I was totally taken in the whole time.  I wanted to find out what was going on and blow the whole thing wide open just as much as Nev did.  I had this feeling that if I had been in their place, I would have done the exact same thing.  When they were arguing about whether or not they should drive up the driveway to ‘Megan’s’ house, I was gripping the chair thinking “do it!  do it!”.  I was totally engrossed by their journey.  Were you? Kerry: Yes, there may have been some questionable decisions made along the way, but I was enthralled.  This was partially due to the swift pacing.  (Special thanks to editor Zachary StuartPontier.  I am sure all those hours of shaky video footage were a lot to handle.)  Another thing that kept me involved was the infectious honesty in Nev and the filmmakers when they were onscreen.  They didn’t seem to edit themselves too much.  We get a really great cringe-worthy moment, when Nev shares some of his sexts with ‘Megan’ while wearing his retainer.  The filmmakers are good at making fun of the situation, but we also get to see them stand back and try to understand the things as they become more complex.  While I wish that Nev’s brother and Joost would have taken the time to ask more questions of Nev, there are parts of himself he reveals in these moments that I really appreciated, but I think he could have revealed more of what the experience really meant to him. Alex: I do want to give a shout out to the film style, I thought this was one of the prettiest homemade documentaries I’d seen in a long time.  I usually really hate shaky cameras but I could detect a real intentionality behind much of the footage in this film. Kerry: Are you serious?  So much of the footage was incredibly horrible.  I did notice it got better when they were in Michigan.  They must have brought out the nice cameras for that.  Maybe it’s just the film student in me talking, but I thought this film looked awful. Alex: But I loved all the shots of Google Maps and GPS screens, I thought it really pushed how digitally saturated our world is which really was the point of the film, I thought.  It was really haunting. Kerry: We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.  Bottom line:  The questions this movie raises are probably not what the filmmakers intended.  By the end I was too involved in wondering if the filmmakers were justified in pursuing Angela.  The uncomfortable question ‘should this movie have been made?’ was far too present on my mind.  The concern I felt for Angela was not really connected to the portrait the film paints of her, it was rather because she was onscreen at all.  The ethics of this film stuck out a little too much for my tastes. Alex: But did have fun watching it? Kerry: Yes, I had a lot of fun.  Is that bad? Alex: If it is then don’t feel too bad because I’m right there with you.  While I do think the filmmakers walk a close tightrope between the fun of making a film and accidental exploitation, I had a great time walking it with them.  I think I empathized with the filmmakers because I knew they were having so much fun making this film.  I could see myself in that exact situation and I thought they did their best at really altering the tone of this film dramatically once Angela was found out and making it all about her.  There is an inherent current of regret running through this film.  Angela’s regret is there, but I could also detect some regret on the filmmakers’ part.  All of a sudden their little scavenger hunt is not so fun when real people are involved and I think they understood that by the end.  I do understand your point, Kerry.  It would be a very unpleasant shock to find your online boyfriend on your doorstep toting a camera.  If this movie is a cautionary tale at all, then I think its message is actually: “watch out who you flirt with online, he could be a filmmaker!”  I hope that Angela’s life is not harmed but improved by the film.  I sympathized with her and felt that the film gave her proper dignity.  I know there are going to be a lot of different opinions about that, but I actually felt like it did me some good to see into Angela’s life and learn from it and her connection to Nev. Kerry gives this film a semi-guilty thumbs-up.  My thumbs-up is less reserved.  Catfish is a really good time, particularly exciting for a documentary and surprisingly controversial at the end. Catfish is now playing in select theaters nationwide.  It opened Friday in Chicago at AMC River East and in Evanston at The Cinemark Century 12.

'Kisses' Review w/ Kerry Armbuster

Originally published at www.filmspotting.net 8/30/10

Direct link:  http://filmspotting.net/reviews/spotlight-reviews/587-kisses.html

Monday, 30 August 2010 14:51

Filmspotting contributors Kerry Armbruster and Alex Wilgus christen their debut column with a discussion of the new indie film "Kisses." Alex: “Kisses” is a brief film (75 min.) about two young Irish children (a boy and a girl) who escape their abusive families and strike out on their own in urban Dublin.  Director Lance Daly attempts to tug intelligently at our heartstrings, discover innocence in a modern wasteland and provide an affecting romance that captures the magic of first love.  Kerry, does he succeed?  Were you touched by the odyssey of these two children?  Did it awaken your slumbering inner child? Kerry: Daly did ultimately succeed for me, despite a few reservations.  I think his success here was due to the performances of the two children, Kylie and Dylan, played by Kelly O'Neill and Shane Curry.  We follow what feels to be their last moments of childhood, and their uninhibited honesty is what makes this film worth watching.  So much of what happens to these two characters rides on our belief in their relationship, and for me, perhaps the greatest solace in a film as bleak as “Kisses” is the fact that these two people have each other. Alex: The film ultimately worked for me too, but only just.  Maybe it's because I'm a total sucker for kid-centered films (I'm a strangely huge fan of Agniezka Holland's “The Secret Garden”), but I rooted for them all the way.  I believed their relationship and I really enjoyed watching them together.  You’re right about their unabated honesty being the center of their connection.  Their love is kindled by the fact that they have no illusions.  It's the fact that there is no filter between these kids and the harshness of the world that is so heartbreaking; their struggle to preserve that pure puppy love that they have for each other is very compelling.  Still, there was something slightly vacuous about the film.  Can you touch more on your reservations?  I think they may help me to understand why I wasn't totally entranced by such an affecting story. Kerry: I had two main problems:  its style and its stakes.  First, I think Daly had a lack of confidence in either himself or his audience.  The musical choices were unnecessarily heavy-handed.  The final scene of the film comes to mind right away.  It is supposed to be the emotional crux of the film, but the overloud soundtrack just ruins the moment.  It really could have been the best scene in the film but instead comes off like a music video.  Furthermore, the use of Bob Dylan and his music seemed a bit forced for me.  I’m a die-hard Dylan fan, but there is something a little too on-the-nose about playing "Shelter From the Storm" as Kylie and Dylan escape to Dublin on a boat. I also had real trouble staying engaged in the actual journey of this film.  The film starts out in black and white, stressing the harsh reality of their home life, and as the kids escape to Dublin, color slowly begins to seep in.  I couldn't help but draw comparisons to the "The Wizard of Oz."  Like Dorothy, Kylie and Dylan escape their homes, but while Dorothy's mantra becomes "There's no place like home," Dylan and Kylie find their home in each other.  The problem here is that we never actually see them finding each other.  The film begins with Kylie rescuing Dylan from his angry father.  It’s just too obvious that they’re going to be together.   Their emotional connection is so strong from the get-go that that I never really questioned what these two would do for each other.  The journey that follows their escape seems superfluous. Alex: It's funny that you say that parts of it were like a music video.  I was thinking the exact same thing.  I think a good 45% of this film is music montages.  Yes, the Bob Dylan theme was pretty ham-handed, and it was a distraction from Kylie and Dylan’s great chemistry for the sake of throwing in some existential themes. The film’s style is a little too thick, and the music and scenery distract from the story more than it enhances it.  It's possible that Daly is showing off his directorial skills, but much of the film comes off looking like one of those Levi's Jeans commercials.  The color work didn't distract me too much, but it didn't really affect me either.  It was an effect that didn’t pack any kind of emotional punch and was just shy of irritating.  I just thought "oh, the color's changing" and went right on watching the kids. I wish that Daly could have let us just spend time with Kylie and Dylan as they quested around Dublin instead of bringing the visuals and the soundtrack to the fore so often.   I do have to disagree with you about their journey though.  I didn’t think it was superfluous at all.  I was engaged in it all the way through; I just wished that we could see more journey and less music video. The stakes of the film is not exactly whether or not the kids will end up falling in love, but whether or not Dylan will become like his father.  You spend the whole film in the back of your head knowing that these two will have to go home.  The question is what will become of them when they do.  All the dialogue about Dylan planning to kill his father and Kylie talking him out of it feels like childish banter, but on another level it's evidence that Dylan's soul is still embattled.  Will he choose love or violence to deal with his problems?  Kylie’s soul is intact, but her body is at risk.  The kids have been damaged in different ways and it’s up to them to save each other. Kerry: Interesting.  I had thought they were different from their parents from the beginning because they were so emotionally involved, but maybe Dylan's path is more open-ended than what I originally perceived. That perspective definitely makes me appreciate the storytelling a bit more, but it didn’t really catch my attention.  It seemed like Daly was too busy making Bob Dylan references. Alex: Well, I do think the film's stakes are far from obvious and, again, Daly could have spent much more time on the story than on the music and the scenery shots. But the journey did ultimately work for me.   I could be reading more into it than is actually there. It looks like we’re largely in agreement on this one. The kids' performances are very strong and Lance Daly is certainly capable of spinning a heartwarming tale and coaxing strong performances out of young children (though there are moments when it's a little shocking to see these young actors in such mature situations).  Like its cousins “In America” and “Once,” “Kisses” takes a Hallmark Channel premise and treats it delicately enough for it to actually tug at the heartstrings.  SUMMARY Daly’s successes outweigh his missteps and I think we'll both be interested to see what he does next. I am particularly looking forward to seeing Shane Curry and Kelly O'Neill on screen again.  Theirs are talents not to be wasted.

The Unwritten Review

The Unwritten

Alex Wilgus

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The comic series by Mike Carey has a lot to tell us about the stories we all share—and how they tell us the truth.

If you are like most people, you have never seriously read a comic book. You flipped through one once or twice, probably on the recommendation of one of your pop culture-savvy friends whose taste you may even respect, but you just can’t bring yourself to pull one out in public. It’s understandable. You’re a grown-up now. You watch AMC and read McSweeney’s. But comics have grown up too, and if you consider yourself a contemporary aesthete, Mike Carey’s monthly series The Unwrittendemands your attention.

The story centers around the disappearance of the author of a series of wildly popular fantasy novels. The “Tommy Taylor” series (a thinly veiled facsimile of Harry Potter) has become a worldwide sensation. Our hero, also named Tommy Taylor, is the author’s son and the real-life inspiration for his father’s fictional character. Things take a turn for the strange when Tommy discovers his birth certificate has been forged and his childhood photos are not actually pictures of him. As Tommy begins to realize he actually may be his father’s brainchild come to life, he enters an odd world where fiction is very real and your survival may depend on what you remember from your high school English class.

In broad strokes, The Unwritten is Harry Potter meets The Da Vinci Code with the meta-awareness of Mad Men. Writer Mike Carey has cooked up a genre-blender with a seemingly infinite amount of styles, homages and themes. After all, the entire history of literature is a pretty deep well to draw from, and each issue has more literary references in it than an episode of Reading Rainbow. In fact, if the dialogue didn’t contain so many curse words (yes, this is a comic book, but it’s certainly geared toward adults), I would slap the little PBS Educational/Informational logo on the cover and hand it to my little sister. In the so-far-printed 13 issues, Carey has managed to incorporate fantasy, horror, nationalistic literature, children’s literature, medieval epic, Dickens, Kipling, Twain, Milne, Wilde and Shelley (Mary, not Percy), which is fitting since The Unwritten is a story about stories.

In each issue, Carey pushes the same bold message: human life is determined by stories. In one issue, a killer raids a meeting of horror authors and is able to predict where each of them chooses to hide based on the “genre conventions” of their own books. In another, Frankenstein’s monster appears in the flesh and monologues about his estrangement from his creator, all the while looking knowingly at an image of Christ. Each issue cleverly portrays the way stories frame and often dominate our existence. On Carey’s account, science, religion, philosophy and government all rely on stories and are stories themselves.

The book brings up Christianity more than a few times, and though I don’t expect Carey to write in a full-blown revisionist history of Jesus (a la Dan Brown), he clearly gives the Gospel credence as one of the most infectious stories of all time. Even the characters’ foul mouths pay its influence tribute. “Jesus [expletive] wept!” one character exclaims. Certainly Carey would not miss the implications of such a story-laden event. Weaving the concept of story into the fabric of our reality is a potentially friendly philosophical project for Christians. In a science-dominated culture, a story, even one that accounts for an actual event, is an unverifiable vessel of truth because of its inherent subjectivity. Carey’s point is that subjective or not, stories are an inescapable component of reality and this is a refreshing perspective for those of us who stake our claim to truth on a big book of stories. The series’ tagline seems laden with religious significance: “Stories are the only things worth dying for.”

The only thing this series has standing between it and mainstream success is the fact that it is a comic book, but this is just what makes The Unwritten such a unique experience. Peter Gross’s art is well researched and mutates stylistically as Tommy travels through the worlds of stories. Gross’s artwork is as important to the story as Carey’s writing. The Unwritten is a comic book for a reason. Film, literature and art are all explored inThe Unwritten, and the graphic/literary hybrid layout of the comic is the “happiest medium” to realize them all in one place. Alas, the only way to ensure a comic will be noticed on a wide scale is to adapt it into a movie, provided it’s a good one, and considering Hollywood’s track record, they might just ruin it forever.

Many attempts have been made to distance comics from their juvenile connotations. In some bookstores they have been renamed “graphic novels,” and writers add in a heavy doses of vulgarity and violence. But whether or not the medium has "grown up" is beside the point. The real question is, what has it grown up into? The Unwritten is proof that the comic medium is capable of more than just an overgrown adolescence (like the “Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons). Its ingredients are different from television dramas, movies and novels, but comics like The Unwritten deliver a unique way to do what humans have always done best: tell a story.

The Unwritten is an ongoing comic series. So far, 13 issues have been released, and the second collected volume (issues 6-12) of the series is scheduled to be released on August 17.

Originally published on www.relevantmagazine.com 8/10/10
Direct link:  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/books/reviews/22513-the-unwritten

Caprica Ep. 5 Review

CAPRICA: EPISODE 5 “THERE IS ANOTHER SKY”

  

Comments (1)

Written by Alex Wilgus on March 2, 2010

What’s the point(s)?  America is an MMORPG.

After I wrote my first article, our illustrious Editor-in-Chief suggested I continue updating on Caprica and the progression of its social commentary.  I admit I was a bit under-confident that the show would continue its socio-theological commentary in earnest; that it would placate wider appeal at the expense of good thought.

After episode 5 aired Friday I am still repenting for my lack of faith.  Capricacontinues its steady march into even testier religious waters, striking deeper at America’s Modernist core.  The show’s allegorical environment plus its refusal to allow even one of its characters to assume the mantle of ‘villain’ may serve to soften the blows the writers are dealing toward the modern establishment, but the provocations are obvious if only ye have eyes to see and DVRs to record.  This column is meant to make Caprica’s peculiar brand of social commentary as plain as this philosophy major can possibly make it.

SEMI-SPOILER ALERT:  Though I don’t really like describing plot twists in detail it’s probably best that you watch the episode before reading this.

Episode 5 is a game-changer.  The big (and beautiful) reveal is a new area in V-World called New Cap City.  It skirts close to being a re-hash of The Matrix except in this iteration there is no narrative of mental slavery and redemption.  Instead people live in the digital world to play ‘The Game’, a contest without rules or objective.

Tamara:  “What’s the object of the game?”

Gamer:  “It’s a mystery.  It’s almost like figuring out the object of the game is the object of the game.  But we think it’s about getting things that convert into points like money or weapons.”

Sound familiar?  The parallels to addictive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (or MMORPGs) are plain.  Tamara’s advice to her gamer friend to unplug and “be something” out in the real world could seem like a quick and relevant ‘moral to the story’ but the symbolism runs deeper.

The people of real Caprica and the gamers in New Caprica are in the same existential boat.  Caprican society does not believe in God, but gods; not in moral imperatives, but freedom from obligation.  Driving every character on the show is an unshakable need to connect with something beyond their present experience in order to give their lives meaning.

Joseph Adama returns to his traditional rites, Daniel Graystone reaches farther into the digital haze of artificial intelligence.  Though they both risk the public labeling them insane, neither one is content simply ‘playing the game’ of society, and it will be interesting to see where each man’s path to meaning leads him.

Getting points (money) or weapons (power) do not satisfy the objective.  The answer can only come from someone or somewhere beyond the present experience.  In this light, there are no ‘evil’ or ‘good’ only the distracted and the awake.

The scenes with Tamara and the Gamer are laden with existential meaning.  The way he stares at his collector full of ‘points’ and exclaims with wonder “It’s gotta mean something” is an affecting picture of the middle class American.  It doesn’t matter what your ‘points’ are (money, health, sex, power, etc.), there seems to be a common idea that getting enough of them will reveal the meaning of existence, the object of the game when in fact the only object is to get out.

Now replace Caprica with America and New Cap with World of Warcraft and you have the exact same situation.  We are all ‘players’ out here in the real world and none of us are (by law) allowed any authoritative clue as to what the objective is.  We are charged with finding it out for ourselves.  We have effectively turned our world into a big MMORPG (and we wonder why WoW is so addictive).  If escape from New Cap is Tamara’s raison d’etre, then our own must be the promise that “There Is Another Sky”.

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Originally Published at www.parcbench.com 3/2/10

Direct Link:  http://www.parcbench.com/2010/03/02/caprica-episode-5-%E2%80%9Cthere-is-another-sky%E2%80%9D/

Caprica Review

WHY YOU NEED TO WATCH ‘CAPRICA’

  

Comments (3)

Written by Alex Wilgus on February 22, 2010

Name me one piece of popular American film in the past decade to intelligently explore the subject of religion.

Kingdom of Heaven?  Nope. Expelled?  No.  Religulous?  Heavens, no.  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?  Warmer, but no.

Today, theology is the last thing the entertainment industry wants to deal with in any kind of intelligent way.  It’s difficult to find one popular TV show or film that explores religion in any form other than abject villainy.

To find the epicenter of theological inquiry in modern entertainment one must dive beneath the mainstream and descend into the world of fanboys and comic conventions.  For all the diverse achievements the past ten years of film and television have produced, the only focused exploration of the religion in modern society was a contemporary remake of a failed 1970s television show called Battlestar Galactica.

Spaceships and robots, you say?  Are these really the proper metaphorical tools for exploring humanity’s longest held institution?  Perhaps not, but however little intellectual legitimacy you feel comfortable giving the science fiction genre, Ronald D. Moore’sBattlestar indeed went where no popular television show dared venture.  It spun a deeply theological narrative that is more than worthy of repeat viewings and armchair conversation.

Now, SyFy–the Sci-Fi channel’s sleek new brand name–is airing Battlestar Galactica’sprequel, Caprica.  The series replaces spaceships with a sprawling city and trades military battles for family conflicts.  The title is the name of the capitol planet of the thirteen human colonies.  Earth is out of the picture, as original BSG fans know well, and each of the thirteen human planets has its own distinct culture and identity.

Caprica sets a rich metaphorical stage for modern America while planets like Tauron and Gemenon are looser amalgams of third world cultures.  Because Caprica takes place in a sort of American alternate reality, it is freer to explore touchy subjects like religion and terrorism behind a thin allegorical veil.

The show begins by setting up Caprica as a society drunk on its own prosperity.  It is the paragon of democracy, in which even divine power is shared between a pantheon of gods.  When a member of a rebellious monotheistic cult miraculously succeeds in creating an artificial intelligence, tragic events are set in motion that bring together a diverse group of people and force them to reconsider what is right, what is wrong and what is possible.

So far, the heart and soul of Caprica’s drama and philosophizing is a robot.  The creation first true artificial intelligence (or ‘Cylon’) is chronicled in detail in the show’s two-hour pilot.  Creators Ronald Moore, David Eick and newcomer Remi Aubuchon succeed in finally bringing A.I. into its proper thematic habiliment:  the religious.

The ‘creating life’ motif has been slathered onto plenty of other human/robot stories, butCaprica is the first to actually place God at the center of its mechanics.  In the show, a true A.I. is finally created by a monotheistic cult that credits the one true God as its source of inspiration.  This is not a mere plot device.  It is clear that someone on the creative team had done his homework.

Creating A.I. is impossible without a specific kind of miracle:  the miracle of language.  One need not come from a religious heritage to agree with this.  There has not been one successful attempt in the history of science at either creating language or teaching an animal how to use language.

The problem is methodological.  Scientists assume language to behave in much the same way, like a computer code that can be deconstructed and replicated.  It turns out that language is nothing of the sort.  It is more of an epiphany than an evolutionary process.  One cannot build consciousness; it happens usually all at once in a human child.

The closest anyone has come to describing the experience in detail is Helen Keller in her autobiography.  Because she could neither see nor hear, her ability to recognize language was severely slowed.  But after a month of vain behavioral learning (Helen holds doll, Helen spells ‘D-O-L-L’, Helen gets treat), the leap of consciousness was made all at once while standing at a water pump.  Keller recounts the experience:

“Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

There is no way to prove that this moment was God’s inspiration acting upon Helen’s consciousness but over a century later, there is still no way to prove that it was otherwise.  Evolutionary scientists are powerless to explain the event.  The thing just happens, all at once, catastrophically, like a great flood or a pillar of fire illuminating the mind.  Sometimes it’s best to call a spade a spade.  It’s impossible to talk about the creation of artificial intelligence without talking about God and the good people behind Caprica know it.

I wouldn’t count on the storyline to support Judaeo-Christian theology–or any theology for that matter–to the letter, but do expect Caprica to fearlessly examine religion, the only subject that the entertainment industry has kept taboo.  Battlestar Galactica was profoundly interested with religious questions though its answers to those questions remained ambiguous to the end.  Caprica will likely follow suit, which is not at all bad thing.  If anything it’ll just be nice to watch a show that doesn’t automatically assume faith to be the same thing as psychosis.

In many ways, Science Fiction is the best-equipped genre to explore religion today.  It allows the audience to re-consider the mysteries of the universe by wiping away the haze of our spiritually disinterested society through all manner of fantastic (but not usually improbable) catastrophes and weird alternate futures.

The genre’s cult status is actually rather fitting considering how many people take God seriously these days.  I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that being religious in modern times is, well…geeky.  I’m always reading the same books over and over again, always coming back to uncomfortable subjects that nobody wants to talk about, obsessed with stories about some other world and the ash on my forehead makes me look like a Klingon.

No matter.  I shall soldier on.  I shall continue to attend church on Sunday and on Fridays I shall select Caprica on my DVR, go into my upper room and ‘play.’

Originally published at www.parcbench.com 2/22/10
Direct link:  http://www.parcbench.com/2010/02/22/why-you-need-to-watch-caprica/