The Return of Third Age Posts!

"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But, in the Year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope... for victory. The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5." -- Susan Ivanova

Well - THAT break was longer than I ever wanted it to be! "Third Age Thursday" was supposed to be a weekly post about Babylon 5, and particularly about the progress being made on Dreams Given Form, the companion guide to the show I'm co-authoring with Ensley F. Guffey. We tag-teamed on Wanna Cook?, a similar guide to Breaking Bad which was released in 2014 (available at fine booksellers everywhere!) and enjoyed the experience enough to look around for another project that would let us work together and settled on this one. And all was wonderful.

Until . . .

I won't say the Shadows ambushed us, but I had a health scare that put the entire project back a year while I recovered and poor Ensley did his best to soldier on until I could take up my share of the load. But we're both back and in fine fighting form!

In fact, we just turned in the draft manuscript for Season 3. (Wow - I just love that season!) Seasons 1 and 2 have already had their first turn through the Great Machine of Editing, so we're back on schedule. Well, we're back on our new schedule, at any rate. ECW Press (our publisher) has been exceptionally kind to us and we're looking forward to moving forward with this sizable project.

Keep in mind Dreams Given Form isn't limited to the five seasons of Babylon 5. No, sirree! We're covering that, sure, but we're also providing material on the official novels, movies, comics, and other canonical sources. It's a big project and one of our biggest challenges is figuring out how to do the universe of Babylon 5 justice without the book becoming a multi-volume set.

At any rate, today is a rare day off from watching, annotating, drafting, and screaming (that often accompanies the drafting stage for me) but I'm back at it tomorrow and I realized that I hadn't posted about the project in far - FAR - too long.

We're here. We're fans. And we're writing!

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I Saw the Light

The story of Hank Williams Sr. is interesting - he's widely considered one of the most influential American singer-songwriters of the 20th century despite his near-inability to either read or notate music. He had 35 Top 10 singles, and 11 of those reached the Number One position. All this happened in a remarkably short time, as Williams died at the far-too-young age of 29. He had great troubles in his personal life, beset by alcoholism (Roy Acuff once warned Williams of the dangers of his drinking, telling him that he had "a million-dollar talent, boy, but a ten-cent brain"), drug abuse (he self-medicated to deal with the severe, chronic back pain caused by his spina bifida), womanizing, and a host of other issues. His son would grow up to become Hank Williams, Jr. (better known as "Bocephus") and the third of that line is making quite a name for himself as well. Then there's Jett Williams, who was shuffled around like a marked card. Really, add mournful Spanish moss to this family and you've got a textbook definition of Southern Gothic.

All of this should make for a great, compelling movie. Yet it doesn't.

I Saw the Light boasts an amazing performance from Tom Hiddleston, who does his own, quite credible, singing, yet the film itself never manages to soar. Instead, it bumps along in a series of vignettes about increasingly-unlikable people. Audrey, his first wife, is played by Elizabeth Olsen as a spotlight-seeking shrew. Lillie, his mother, is played by the enormously-talented actress Cherry Jones, who never gets to to much beyond be overly protective of her boy.

The film focuses on the last six years of Williams' life, a time in which Williams was prolific, yet spinning madly out of control. His dream is to appear on the Grand Ole Opry ("the show that made country music famous"), yet he lacks the discipline to stay there, preferring to tomcat around and drink until the editing of this film could possibly make sense. I know that's harsh, but the structure of this film keeps any sort of tension or interest from building - scenes start and end without any rhyme or reason and new scenes begin without context. It's as if you're experiencing an alcoholic blackout - things happen and then something else happens, and you're pretty sure something happened in the middle, but damned if you can figure out what it was and no one's telling you.

Hiddleston is truly amazing, but he just can't save this. Rent it if you want to, but there's no shame in passing this one by.

In the meantime, listen to Hank. He's worth it.

Moral Courage & Dark Tones

Recently, I got hold of a copy of Trumbo, a film I had wanted to see during Oscar season (the film garnered Bryan Cranston a "Best Actor" nomination), but one that unfortunately didn't come around here. Dalton Trumbo is a fascinating man - one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to "name names" when called before the notoriously un-American House of Un-American Activities Committee, Trumbo went to prison for his silence, convicted of contempt of Congress. His writing abilities had given his family a comfortable life and, with his name on the blacklist (and firmly kept there by Hedda Hopper, here played by Helen Mirren in a dazzling collection of hats), his ability to support his family was seriously jeopardized. He resorted to working for fourth-rate studios, but couldn't overcome his inclination to write good movies, even under a series of pseudonyms.

It's a feel good picture, but in its well-meaning desire to show the pressure public figures were under to name names, it stumbles badly in making Edward G. Robinson (played here by Michael Stuhlbarg) a stool pigeon, something that he definitely was not in real life. Trumbo does a nice job in helping its audience feel the moral courage it took - not only for Papa Trumbo, but his entire family - to stand for their principles, which included the idea of economic justice. Yes, Dalton worked hard for that family farm and he didn't want to give it away. But was it so radical to say that the grips and script girls should earn enough to support their families? Make no mistake - Trumbo was a Communist, but he had no plans to overthrow the American government by anything other than the ballot box. He joined the Communist Party in 1943, when America was allied with the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi tyranny - and he was in no way unusual. Many, many Americans joined the Communist Party during the Great Depression through the Second World War. It was only after the war that the Soviet Union became our dreaded enemy and our government got all nutty about "Reds" in Hollywood. The film in no way makes Trumbo a saint - his worries about earning a living make him very difficult to live with - and the film takes some liberties and amalgamates some characters, but it is well worth watching.

Excellent performances here by Cranston and John Goodman as the King of Garbage Films add some levity to the material. (In fact, he's responsible for my favorite non-Dalton scene, which is excerpted below - I promise, it just gets better as the scene continues!) A special shout-out goes to Dean O'Gorman who plays a very young Kirk Douglas, the man who had a great deal to do with ending the blacklist by insisting that Trumbo receive actual credit for his rewrite of Spartacus. Sadly, the two Oscars Trumbo won for his screenwriting were for work done under other names. Perhaps you've heard of them - 1953's Roman Holiday and 1956's The Brave One. Trumbo was also the author of Johnny Got His Gun, one of the early winners of the National Book Award. (In 1971, he both wrote the screenplay and directed the movie version of this novel.)

Seek this one out - and enjoy watching John Goodman as Frank King decline to fire Trumbo, not for high-falutin' political idealism, but for far earthier reasons:

Also up this week is Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Zack Snyder attempts to do too much. He's trying valiantly to set up a Justice League movie and a standalone Wonder Woman film, and he seems to lose his way. I've objected to Snyder's handling of Superman before - his vision of the character is too dark and moody for my taste and I think a PG-13 superhero film featuring these iconic characters needs to remember that its target audience will feature many younger folks who aren't up on post-modern cinema theory. The film is ponderous and dark and the pacing seems off. 

Mind you, for all the grief Ben Affleck took when he was cast as Batman, I don't think he deserves the scorn that is being heaped upon his head. He's got some plywood dialogue to work with that really should have been script-doctored into smoothness ("Do you bleed? You will!" is cringe-worthy as is the use of a bathroom sink as a blunt weapon) but Affleck tries gamely. Often, character motivation is lacking in this film but after seeing Bruce Wayne trying to save ordinary people during the Battle of Metropolis, you understand at least some of his desire to stop Superman. (Also, I never knew that Gotham was apparently the Oakland to Metropolis' San Francisco. The things I learn.) For me, Gal Gadot is the standout as Wonder Woman, although her role is deliberately kept small. (Fantastic costuming throughout the film for her, too.) Diane Lane reprises her role as Martha Kent (she's also the sensible matriarch in Trumbo, by the way) and Holly Hunter plays a Kentucky senator who knows how to wrestle a pig.

I continue to be puzzled by Henry Cavill's Superman - this is one grim Man of Steel who can be pulled off-task all too quickly by threatening Lois Lane (played by Amy Adams, who deserves better). And really - the fact that both Supes and Batman have mothers named "Martha" is what bonds them? (And while the Bechdel Test is not a measure of a movie's quality, this film fails to pass it, despite having four large-ish female roles.) Also, Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor is just twitchy. Want to see how to do a thoroughly psychotic character? Tee up Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Kingpin in Netflix's Season 1 of Daredevil.

Many will disagree with me, but I found this film disappointing. It's too dark, the plot meanders all over the place, and certain key events just don't make a lick of sense, quite possibly because of editing that seems reminiscent of William Burroughs' technique of razoring lines of his poetry and then putting them together randomly. For me, Dadaism is interesting to gaze at, but it's not especially entertaining for several hours at a go. But hey - try it here!

Far from being the worst movie ever, SvB is certainly a rental.

Gods & Critters

So I recently took a bullet for the team and saw Gods of Egypt. "Meet Me at the Movies" is a show I enjoy doing and sure - I don't always like every film I see. But this - oh, the carnage! It was enough to make me wonder just what crimes I had committed in a prior life that caused me to suffer through this one. Perhaps I am a victim of the mummy's curse; I don't know. But this film is simply bad. As in MST3K or Rifftrax bad. The mythology is beyond muddled, the idea to have the gods be 1.5 times the height of humans is just off-putting, and the costumes are silly (especially those inflicted upon the women).

Gods of Egypt isn't even campy fun. (And with Geoffrey Rush as Ra, it could have been.) Chadwick Boseman as Thoth wants to have fun with it - and the man did play James Brown, so he can work a spangled costume - but the movie reins itself in when it should go full-on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Perhaps if it didn't try to strike a balance of snark and grandeur or maybe if it reveled in the sheer ridiculousness of itself - but no. The best - the absolute best - thing I can say is that this film is what you could suppose the love child of Transformers, Part Whatever and Clash of the Titans might be. (But without a kraken, so really - there's no point. There almost is, when you see giant scarab beetles pulling a chariot, but -- no.)

"Release the Kraken!" (2010)

Honestly, this film is just a mess. Director Alex Proyas proved with The Crow and Dark City that he can wrangle large, improbable stories (and he uses Rufus Sewell from Dark City in this trainwreck, but hopefully, people will forget that), but this one just got away from him.

There's no reason to see this.

However, Zootopia restored my faith, and not just because it features the vocal talents of Alan Tudyk (as a real-life weasel) and allows Kristen Bell to actually play a sloth. Zootopia could've just been a cute little tale of unlikely partners, but instead, I found myself seeing a touch more deeply into this one.

At its core, Zootopia deals with predators and prey. Animals have progressed to a point where everybody gets along (there's a hilarious school skit that opens the film to explain this - it's right up there with Scout-as-a-ham in Mockingbird), only maybe not everyone likes that idea. Hatred and fear do a great job of dividing folks, as we're seeing in the current run-up to the elections in this country. And yes, we can learn a few things from an ambitious bunny and a misunderstood fox. Go see this one - take the kids, and have a talk afterwards.

Also - be on the lookout for the Breaking Bad joke tucked away in the underground lab scene.

Comedy in 3 Styles

February is a strange month. Often, it's the dumping ground for films that studios can't quite figure out what to do with. There's usually a romantic-and/or-intended-to-be-sexy-and-risque film around Valentine's Day (last year, that was the godawful 50 Shades of Grey [no, I won't even link to my own rant about it; that's how bad it is] and, oddly enough, a niche filled by Fox's Deadpool this year), but little else of note.

Then there's this year. I've seen three films lately and they were all decent-to-superior comedies. Two were quirky, which probably explains their banishment to the February doldrums, but seek all of these out.

Buffy Bennet in Action

First up, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Yes, I know. It sounds ridiculous and it is. But this is a film that knows it's silly and revels in it. When Seth Grahame-Smith added zombies to Jane Austen's Regency comedy of manners, it was unprecedented (it has since spawned a rather bizarre subgenre of classic-meets-monster mashups). Bringing in zombies and ninja training to whist parties int he English countryside, you get Empire-waisted gowns concealing thigh dagger sheaths and a rarefied drawing room discussion of the superiority of Chinese over Japanese martial arts training. It's a fun romp, with some dazzling action sequences. And I especially enjoyed catching that Elizabeth, Austen's independent heroine with the rapier wit, has a name that is also the derivation of Buffy. Yes - Buffy Bennet was fighting the undead centuries ago! In short, a fun, although violent, parody that's worth a rental.

Ah, the Coen brothers. Those quirky talents behind Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and O Brother Where Art Thou? are back in the theaters with Hail, Caesar!, a film that is a lace-edged valentine to the studio pictures of the 1950s. If you're a fan of Turner Classic Movies, you'll howl through this one. If you're not into old movies, well - here's your chance to learn. Channing Tatum doing Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh on cafe tables is worth the price of admission alone, but you also get Scarlett Johansson as a foul-mouthed Esther Williams, and the astonishing Alden Ehrenreich as a singing cowboy who can do his own stunts who is inexplicably moved onto the set of A Place in the Sun. Oh, and there's Tilda Swinton as twin gossip columnists and George Clooney as Baird Whitlock, a handsome, thick-as-a-plank leading man starring in the studio's prestige not-at-all Ben-Hur movie. And Communists - all at the studio featured in Barton Fink, Capitol Pictures. The plot revolves around Josh Brolin, who is playing a studio "fixer" named Eddie Mannix (that was the name of the actual fixer at MGM, by the way) who is going about his day, putting out fires here and there while dealing with his Catholic faith. Faith is a strong element in this film - there's a hysterical segment as Eddie tries to get the official "OK to see" from a variety of clergymen (look for Robert Picardo playing a rabbi in that one) and there's a very subtle subtext about "working in the pictures" as being its own form of faith. Really, even if you don't get all the references, this is a must-see. In that regard, it's a bit like O Brother which takes on layers and layers of meaning once you know it's the Coen take on the ultimate road movie, The Odyssey, but is still enjoyable even if you don't catch all of that.

Then there's Deadpool. For quite a while now, I've been a "make mine Marvel and by that I mean Disney" girl when it comes to Marvel characters. Deadpool was a risk and a big one. But Fox did this one right. Ryan Reynolds is perfectly - PERFECTLY - cast as the wisecracking, nearly amoral "Merc with a Mouth" and Morena Baccarin is wonderful as the always blonde-tipped Vanessa (who will become Copycat and that's going to be interesting), who is bold, brassy, and a match for her true love in terms of raunch. Make no mistake on that score - Deadpool is rated "R" and deserves it whole-heartedly. Please do not take children to this movie unless you're willing to explain any number of sexual references and your kids can handle some graphic, up-close gore to boot. The supporting cast is marvelous and truly - they've done something special with this one. From the cheeky opening credits to the breaking of the fourth wall to the winking at the lack of X-Men in the Westchester mansion (and I hereby nominate this version of Negasonic Teenage Warhead for "Best New X-Man" and this version of Colossus should get special mention for sheer thickness of accent), this film is wonderful for those who like such things. I'm not even a Deadpool fan and I loved it an insane amount.

So - comedy of manners, parody of Golden Age Hollywood, or cartoon raunch. Whatever is your pleasure, it's at the local cineplex. Go now!