Angelophile (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angelophile) wrote2008-06-06 03:25 pm
angelophile) wrote2008-06-06 03:25 pm
News and reviews
Today's random quotes:
"You show that you really, really love someone by doing horrible shit to them and then killing them."
"It might not be adultery technically, but it sure feels like it. Forget wiping Spider-man's mind, you'd have to wipe ours."
"Bill Clinton is more faithful than Bay's Transformers."
Peter Crouch, asked on holiday with his model girlfriend Abbey Clancy what he would be if he wasn't a multi-million earning footballer. His response? "A virgin."
Other randomness:
Transformers 2's official sub-title? "Revenge of The Fallen"
Review time after the cut. Today, in comics, X-factor, Astonishing X-men, New Warriors, Uncanny X-men and X-men: Legacy. In books: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and in movies: Premonition.
Comicwise, last week saw me picking up a few books. Skimming through them:
X-factor - Kinda lost its way over the past few issues after a great opener to the storyline. Which goes to show that when Peter David focuses in on character he does great work. Issues where action takes precedence? Less so. There was one moment from Arcade that, if you didn't think about it too hard, was at least in character, unlike the rest of the arc. For some reason David didn't seem to click with the campness of Arcade's character. Disappointing. It's an X-force story that ran its course, ended and wasn't particularly interesting.
Astonishing X-men - Whedon's run finally comes to an end and unsurprisingly for those of us that called it eight or so months ago. The delays killed any sense of surprise there might have been, but honestly, who'd really be surprised? Whedon's humour and plotlines are stagnant, there's usually a fatal consequence for someone that's now at the point of inevitability instead of surprising. I'm just glad it's finally over, although I'll miss Cassaday's art. This book was worth picking up for that but, boy, Whedon can't plot comics. I hope his Runaways run wraps sooner rather than later so I can look forward to Terry Moore and Warren Ellis taking over that and Astonishing. There, at least, there might be a few surprises.
New Warriors - I don't think this book is long for this world, going by the sales figures, which is a shame because it's got many of my favourite second-stringer X characters in it. Unfortunately, we still have a problem with neither the characters appearances nor their dialogue ringing true to their previous appearances. However, I am liking the chemistry between Jubilee and Chamber, there's a real sense of old friends who've been teammates for years. And this issue saw Jono stepping up to the plate in a way he's not really done since he took on Omega Red back in the early days of Generation X. Some nice fire fights and some good character moments keep me reading, as well as the characters themselves, but I still consider this book to be a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Uncanny X-men continues to bubble along, but not really surprise. It looks gorgeous, still, because of Cho's art but this issue was a lull after some decent issues from Brubaker at last. It wasn't bad, just nothing particularly impressive. We found out who the mysterious "goddess" who's been turning everyone in San Fran into dirty hippies is, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus' Russian road trip continues but it was all a bit pedestrian.
Likewise X-men: Legacy. Mike Carey's been the best X-men writer for years, but stuck on what's effectively a Professor X solo book complete with anthology type flashbacks, he's not producing his best. His recent Beast story in the X-men: Divided We Stand one-shot was a highlight. Here, probing into Xavier's past with Gambit in tow, a few flashbacks and a predictable mystery, he's not firing on all cylinders. This is a definite case of a book being broken when it didn't need to be fixed. The art's nice enough, though and Carey's never anything less than solid but he can do so much better.
Books wise, I just finished reading Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", a great hard-boiled detective thriller that imagines an alternate history in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and European Jews settled in a region of Alaska. it feels a bit like "Fatherland", a detective novel set in an alternate present, in a wonderfully complex and believable political climate in which a simple murder leads to a far greater picture, layer building upon layer. It's got some wonderfully rich dialogue and prose which sets it above the average thriller, although the complexities of Jewish tradition are occasionally a little more opaque than might be wished and the ending, where all the threads tie together, is rather hollow, but there's plenty to enjoy and certainly plenty to provoke discussion. Onto The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay next.
As mentioned the other day, I watched the Sandra Bullock movie Premonition. An interesting idea where a woman wakes up one morning and is informed her husband has been killed in a road accident. She goes to bed and wakes up next morning to discover he's alive again. What follows is a rather Groundhog Day-esque thriller where the central character realizes she's living her life out of sequence, jumping from day to day, never sure if her husband is alive or dead, trying to unravel the mysteries behind his future death. Which is a quite interesting premise and Bullock gave it a decent stab, but twenty minutes from the end the whole movie comes completely unglued and gives one of the least satisfying conclusions to any movie I've seen. It also fails logistically - days don't tie up as they should do and there are literally some days where the husband's character seems to have taken a cue from Schrodinger's Cat and is both alive and dead at the same time. Sloppy writing and a deeply unsatisfying conclusion ruin what could be otherwise a decent supernatural thriller.
"You show that you really, really love someone by doing horrible shit to them and then killing them."
"It might not be adultery technically, but it sure feels like it. Forget wiping Spider-man's mind, you'd have to wipe ours."
"Bill Clinton is more faithful than Bay's Transformers."
Peter Crouch, asked on holiday with his model girlfriend Abbey Clancy what he would be if he wasn't a multi-million earning footballer. His response? "A virgin."
Other randomness:
Transformers 2's official sub-title? "Revenge of The Fallen"
Review time after the cut. Today, in comics, X-factor, Astonishing X-men, New Warriors, Uncanny X-men and X-men: Legacy. In books: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and in movies: Premonition.
Comicwise, last week saw me picking up a few books. Skimming through them:
X-factor - Kinda lost its way over the past few issues after a great opener to the storyline. Which goes to show that when Peter David focuses in on character he does great work. Issues where action takes precedence? Less so. There was one moment from Arcade that, if you didn't think about it too hard, was at least in character, unlike the rest of the arc. For some reason David didn't seem to click with the campness of Arcade's character. Disappointing. It's an X-force story that ran its course, ended and wasn't particularly interesting.
Astonishing X-men - Whedon's run finally comes to an end and unsurprisingly for those of us that called it eight or so months ago. The delays killed any sense of surprise there might have been, but honestly, who'd really be surprised? Whedon's humour and plotlines are stagnant, there's usually a fatal consequence for someone that's now at the point of inevitability instead of surprising. I'm just glad it's finally over, although I'll miss Cassaday's art. This book was worth picking up for that but, boy, Whedon can't plot comics. I hope his Runaways run wraps sooner rather than later so I can look forward to Terry Moore and Warren Ellis taking over that and Astonishing. There, at least, there might be a few surprises.
New Warriors - I don't think this book is long for this world, going by the sales figures, which is a shame because it's got many of my favourite second-stringer X characters in it. Unfortunately, we still have a problem with neither the characters appearances nor their dialogue ringing true to their previous appearances. However, I am liking the chemistry between Jubilee and Chamber, there's a real sense of old friends who've been teammates for years. And this issue saw Jono stepping up to the plate in a way he's not really done since he took on Omega Red back in the early days of Generation X. Some nice fire fights and some good character moments keep me reading, as well as the characters themselves, but I still consider this book to be a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Uncanny X-men continues to bubble along, but not really surprise. It looks gorgeous, still, because of Cho's art but this issue was a lull after some decent issues from Brubaker at last. It wasn't bad, just nothing particularly impressive. We found out who the mysterious "goddess" who's been turning everyone in San Fran into dirty hippies is, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus' Russian road trip continues but it was all a bit pedestrian.
Likewise X-men: Legacy. Mike Carey's been the best X-men writer for years, but stuck on what's effectively a Professor X solo book complete with anthology type flashbacks, he's not producing his best. His recent Beast story in the X-men: Divided We Stand one-shot was a highlight. Here, probing into Xavier's past with Gambit in tow, a few flashbacks and a predictable mystery, he's not firing on all cylinders. This is a definite case of a book being broken when it didn't need to be fixed. The art's nice enough, though and Carey's never anything less than solid but he can do so much better.
Books wise, I just finished reading Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", a great hard-boiled detective thriller that imagines an alternate history in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and European Jews settled in a region of Alaska. it feels a bit like "Fatherland", a detective novel set in an alternate present, in a wonderfully complex and believable political climate in which a simple murder leads to a far greater picture, layer building upon layer. It's got some wonderfully rich dialogue and prose which sets it above the average thriller, although the complexities of Jewish tradition are occasionally a little more opaque than might be wished and the ending, where all the threads tie together, is rather hollow, but there's plenty to enjoy and certainly plenty to provoke discussion. Onto The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay next.
As mentioned the other day, I watched the Sandra Bullock movie Premonition. An interesting idea where a woman wakes up one morning and is informed her husband has been killed in a road accident. She goes to bed and wakes up next morning to discover he's alive again. What follows is a rather Groundhog Day-esque thriller where the central character realizes she's living her life out of sequence, jumping from day to day, never sure if her husband is alive or dead, trying to unravel the mysteries behind his future death. Which is a quite interesting premise and Bullock gave it a decent stab, but twenty minutes from the end the whole movie comes completely unglued and gives one of the least satisfying conclusions to any movie I've seen. It also fails logistically - days don't tie up as they should do and there are literally some days where the husband's character seems to have taken a cue from Schrodinger's Cat and is both alive and dead at the same time. Sloppy writing and a deeply unsatisfying conclusion ruin what could be otherwise a decent supernatural thriller.