Month: July 2013

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I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

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Grade: A

Why are the villains in stories so much more fascinating to us than heroes? A possible reason is because we have an easier time identifying with the villain as most of us aren’t particularly heroic ourselves. Don’t think for a second this is limited to fictional universes either. Nothing makes us happier than jumping on a real-life villain, or better yet dragging our heroes down into villainy so we can safely hate them. But it’s simple enough to state these facts, many people would be able to state what I just did and many additional people would agree with these sentiments. So then, back to the question of why. In I Wear the Black Hat, Chuck Klosterman, in a series of essays, attempts to offer some insights, though never answers because he accepts pretty quickly there are no perfect answers.

Anybody who has ever read Klosterman understands of his obsession with pop-culture. What sets him apart from some writers tackling the subject is that he’s highly intelligent and very funny, and gets that pop-culture works as a reflection of us rather than a gag that stands on its own. He goes up and down the pop-culture ladder, everywhere from sports to movies to comic books to politics, ridiculing as necessary but always turning a sympathetic eye towards his subjects. These references and allusions are mainly broad strokes, an effort to suck you in by wit and memorable references, used to reflect on his personal experiences and the nature of villainy in his own life. This makes for a remarkably intimate read when in the hands of lesser writers would feel silly and trite.

The specific topics include, but not limited to: comparing Batman with Bernard Goetz, Why OJ Simpson is really a villain (other than the obvious), why it’s basically required to hate The Eagles, and just why Andrew Dice Clay is still so looked down upon when acts just as vulgar as he ever was have become remembered as genius in retrospect. He also tackles Joe Paterno, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Machiavelli, and even, though very reluctantly, Hitler. These essays obviously vary in topic but all aim for a greater purpose, and succeed far more often than not. These essays are concerned with the public’s relationship with villains and at what point we can no longer forgive and forget. Why can some come back (Bill Clinton) but others will never be welcome (Dice).

The answer is not easy, to say the least, because villainy, or evil if you want to take a very narrow look at it, is complicated. Think about some villains in pop-culture. Tony Soprano, Randall McMurphy, Charlie Sheen, all of these guys, to varying degrees, do deplorable things that would outrage us if they invaded our personal lives, yet we root for them every step of the way. We love to read books about serial killers, and they actually do exist in the real world, but so few of us can relate to the personal fear of being hunted by a Ted Bundy that they seem fictional. Are we so fascinated with the darkness that resides in ourselves that we care more about Darth Vader than we do about Luke Skywalker? Chuck Klosterman seems to think so, and thankfully he’s willing to take it on himself, by (ahem) wearing the black hat for all of us.


Buy this book!

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Much Ado About Nothing

much ado about nothing

Directed by Joss Whedon

Starring Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg

Grade: B

How do you make a movie version of a Shakespeare play accessible to a mainstream audience? It’s a tough nut to crack. Most directors either make them giant dazzling spectacles, ala Romeo and Juliet, or they just accept that they have a very narrow, nuanced audience, ala Kenneth Branagh. The latter is probably the better idea because, let’s face it, the big commercial audiences just aren’t going to spend their days off sitting through Shakespeare. Don’t scoff at that, it’s just simply a reality, and it doesn’t really mean people are stupid either. Shakespeare, language-wise, is a little dated now, and not for everyone. Joss Whedon takes a different tactic in his Much Ado About Nothing. He strips it down, sets it in a very modern location (his own house and backyard), moves it at a brisk pace, and makes sure there are plenty of sight gags to keep the laughs coming when the language becomes too tough to sift through. The result is a bit uneven at times, but very enjoyable. I can’t say this movie succeeds in being the giant crossover-Shakespeare-mainstream hit, but I can’t say that it really aims to be either.

The plot, for those of you who don’t know it, is both as simple and convoluted as every damn Shakespeare play. Two couples, who have opposite views of romance and who the audience instantly recognizes that these people should be together even when they maybe do not, go through a courtship and marriage. Devious plots that come off as incredibly far-fetched in a modern setting, threaten to break the spirit of romance, but ultimately love conquers and all that.

Whedon casts his usual gallery of rogues in this adaptation. The two most recognizable names to non-Whedonites will be Nathan Fillion and Clark Gregg and neither of them disappoint. Fillion gets the biggest laughs of the movie easily as Dogberry, and Gregg brings the same charm to Leonato as he did to Agent Coulson from The Avengers. The two characters who get the most screen time are Beatrice (Amy Acker) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof), who are the pair that shuns romance and love and marriage while not realizing they actually love each other. They are both good in their roles but the main appeal will be for Whedon fans to finally see Wesley and Fred get their happy ending they were denied on Angel.

Overall, this movie is fun but is probably limited in its scope due to the fact that it’s a bare-budget rendition of a Shakespeare play filmed in a dude’s house. It’s clearly something that some friends did for fun rather than any commercial, or even artistic, related reasoning. It’s the kind of thing many of my friends would probably love to do but lack the multi-million dollar mansion and private funding to accomplish. In fact, probably the biggest thing to take away from this film is that Joss Whedon has a really, really nice house.

So this is not the movie that makes Shakespeare accessible to everyone, and was probably really just released with the knowledge that Mr. Whedon has such a built-in audience that it’s absolutely guaranteed to make some money. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, or a Whedon fan, see it. If you’re neither of those things, you can probably skip it.

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William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher

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Grade: B

At first the idea of combining Shakespeare and Star Wars sound, at best funny, and at worst downright asinine. But if you think about the fact that George Lucas famously, and openly, gutted every myth, fable, and classic story he could find to tell his epic, then why not team him up with the man who is arguably the most classic storyteller ever? In William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, author Ian Doescher does just that. Turning the original movie into a play and translating all dialogue, and stage directions, into iambic pentameter, this book is at turns inspiring and odd, brilliant and jarring, but always highly entertaining. I imagine the target audience is fans of the films rather than those enamored with The Bard, but that doesn’t cheapen the work Doescher put in here, mostly because in some respects it’s already kind of cheap. Though I don’t mean that as an insult, really.

You know the story, or at least you should, as a matter of fact if you don’t you should just leave and not come back on the internet until you know the story of Star Wars, so I won’t summarize it here. What you should know is that it plays with what we know of the characters, using information we won’t learn until the subsequent films to deepen the likes of Darth Vader and even R2D2. Some of the best parts of this book are when Doescher writes soliloquies for various characters. In addition to having fun with the Star Wars universe and the language therein, they provide us new insights into beloved pop-culture icons. Take R2’s aside in the opening scenes:

“Around both humans and the droids I must
Be seen to make such errant beeps and squeaks
That they shall think me simple. Truly, though,
Although with sounds oblique I speak to them,
I clearly see how I shall play my part,
And how a vast Rebellion shall succeed
By wit and wisdom of a simple droid.”

It’s not a new idea to suggest that the entire saga revolves around the droids, hell that’s kind of what Lucas intended for the first half of A New Hope, but it certainly is new to put such depth and motivation into R2D2. He always seemed cunning, but never plotting, if that makes sense.

The real draw of this book is to read some of the quotes out loud to your nerdy friends though. Here’s my advice on how to enjoy this book (well, read it all the way through of course because if you’ve read this far into the review you’re probably a Star Wars geek and you owe it to yourself to experience such an odd venture, damn it.): Get yourself a case of beer and some buddies, drink and open to a random page and start reading out loud. Everybody will enjoy themselves, and anybody who doesn’t isn’t really your friend anyway.

The downside of this book? There are two things. The first is simple: It’s kind of a novelty. I don’t doubt that Ian Doescher put a lot of effort into this, and I do hope that it’s successful enough for him to do the other two movies, but it’s ultimately going to be forgotten on the bookshelf in a matter of weeks. The second problem is maybe a bit more abstract. This book is going to inspire so many shitty theater productions of Verily, A New Hope that I already want to cut funding for drama programs throughout the country. Don’t believe me? It’s all too real and it’s already started. There will be some who take this too seriously and we’ll all suffer for it.


Buy this book!

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This is the End

this is the end

Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen

Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride

Grade: B

The Apatow-style comedy has a pretty simple formula. Get together a bunch of guys who either arrogant, hopelessly out of touch, or both, but make sure to make them loveable in their own flawed and shitty way, then put them in a situation entirely out of their comfort zone and let the actors improvise as much as possible. Plus, add a bunch of dick jokes. The lesser examples of this genre tend to forget two of those ingredients: the loveable part and the actors who are good at the improv bit. This is the End marks Seth Rogen’s directorial debut (actually co-directed with long time writing partner Evan Goldberg) and he knows the formula well. To mix things up, all the actors are playing themselves, well not really, they’re playing fictional versions of themselves, are in fact making fun of their own respective images.

The plot is this: Jay Baruchel is visiting Seth Rogen and they go to a party at James Franco’s house. Then the biblical apocalypse hits. Yes, sorry for the lack of spoiler alert, but if you’re really concerned with the plot twists of This is the End then I can’t help you. What follows is Jay, Seth, James, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, and Danny Mcbride all trying to survive. The variations of the characters are as follows: Jay is the hipster who resents all things Hollywood, Rogen is the small town good guy turned Hollywood elite, Franco is the clueless artist, Craig is the guy who projects an air of bad-assery but is really just as soft as the rest, Jonah is pretentious and fake, and Danny is the man-child only concerned with his own wants. McBride, possibly the best arrogant dick-joker this world currently has to offer, steals the show and once again lends credence to the idea that all movies would be better with Danny McBride involved. Yes, I mean all movies, I don’t mean that statement as hyperbole.

The movie gets more and more ridiculous as it goes and becomes something of a redemption tale, at least as far as these guys are willing to be redeemed. The term bromance has become far too overused, but that’s essentially what this film is, mostly being Jay and Seth, but Franco and Robinson get plenty of man-love moments too. Do we care about the characters? Not really, but we like them enough to enjoy their redemption, and enough to laugh at their shenanigans. This is not the best movie these guys have made together, though it’s certainly far from the worst.

I’m going to keep this review short because, well, what do you really say? It’s delightfully R-rated, McBride, Franco, and Robinson are all in top comedic form, and the movie never tries to be anything it’s not. Plus, seeing Michael Cera as the most obnoxious, coked out, entitled celebrity ever, is worth the price of admission alone. 40 Year Old Virgin it’s not, but it’s consistently funny and that’s all we’re really asking for.