Stop talking about comic books or I'll kill you...

I'm heading to Comicon. Posting to resume after I return!

Mo' money, mo' existential crises

You know, I think I know which song represents America's current mood, the mix of strange hopefulness and fear, of schadenfreude and bitterness.

"Whatever You Like" by T.I.

It's  a song about a handsome, charismatic stranger sweeping you off your feet and giving you everything you could ever want. The lyrics explicitly say that you'll never need to depend on anyone else, totally cut loose from the world around you. 

This song is made even more complicated by the video (which I can't find on Youtube at the moment), which posits the whole thing as a dream sequence, ending with the heroine resuming her duties at a demeaning fast food job with a free-loading boyfriend. T.I. positions himself as a man to make your dreams come true, but he won't actually act on that ability. The whole thing reminds me of the Mr. Show videos for Three Times One Minus One, in which the R&B duo's appearances are sentimental wish-fulfillment for the group, with the object of desire shoved back into her tragic life at the end of each video.

On top of this, on the album Paper Trail, "Whatever You Like" is sequenced to follow "Live Your Life", whose lyrics exhort people to live their life and not chase money or wish for a different life. Doesn't this sum up the great contradiction of the modern American dream? We all want to be an amazing unique success, but with that success conferred by shortcuts or outsiders and expressed in the most conformist ways.

And don't get me started on the cover versions. Weird Al's parody is a fairly straightforward transformation of T.I.'s melodramatic sentiments into a low-rent absurdity that ends up representing people's imagined fearful definition of the new "luxury". [I recently saw a Target ad which proclaimed a 19 dollar Target tie the "new power suit" and a vial of sunless tanner as the "new vacation". So our desires are transferred to acquisition, just on a more pitiful level striving to mimic the rich who can afford the real items. Why not establish our own ]

Meanwhile, Moby issued a cover version [see January 14th entry] that turns it into a piece of neurotic Euro-trash duet a la "Southside" or late '70's Iggy Pop. Our narrator sounds bored with his wealth and luxury, with the limitless opportunity paralyzing him. His relationship with his partner occasionally rises into some simulation of passion, but then pulls back from the emotion, finally sliding into inertia. They pull each other into a quicksand of meaningless sex and expensive liquor. The claims of "long as you got me you won't need nobody" sound desperate, as if each fears the other will abandon him/her for a meaningful life. It's luxury as a suicide pact, a downward spiral of consumption that will end in either spiritual or financial bankruptcy.

Yay, America!

This wooden Oooooh this is awful!

For discussion: Is King Henry VIII Shakespeare's worst play? If so, produce one memorable quote or moment. Cite specific productions as needed.

(I just started watching the BBC version produced by Cedric Messina and thought, "it's a bad sign when your prologue all but says, go elsewhere if you're looking for fun.")

Two updates in two days? This is not change you should believe in...

In a mostly "eh" week of comics, Secret Six #3 reminded me why I read monthly superhero comics.

After an acceptable but not overwhelming issue, our six supervillains, hired by a mysterious benefactor to retrieve former metahuman Tarantula and a Macguffin, find out what the Macguffin is. And suddenly, an issue filled with (seeming) non-sequiturs from supervillains on all the evil stuff they've done makes sense and a bunch of discussions/thoughts on redemption throughout the series take on extra narrative weight.  Simone mixes the mystical and noir elements of the DCU to great effect, 

If it wasn't rather heavy on DCU-continuity, I'd say it would be the kind of comic Eve Tushnet would love to read and discuss. It might still be, at that.

[SPOILER]

In a well-handled scene, tears trailing down her face, Tarantula reveals that the card she took was created by Neron, the DCU's version of the devil. Written on it in Aramaic is "get out of hell free."

It's adding a religious spin to noir. Instead of everyone wanting one big score or wealth or safety, everyone wants heaven. And they don't care what they have to do to get it.

And sometimes I feel that life's a movie/ but I don't like the film

So, all this talk of Kenneth Branagh directing Thor (which is an inspired choice for an action picture, but who thought Peter "Dead Alive/Meet the Feebles" Jackson would work out for Lord of the Rings?) has reminded me of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, where he stunt-cast the film to within an inch of its life.

Some of those choices worked out well (Charlton Heston as the Player King!), others barely registered (poor Gerard Depardieu as Reynaldo), and some were incredibly misguided [Billy Crystal as the Gravedigger ("and tell me, what's the deal with the Adam as the first gardener?"), Robin Williams as Osric?]. So in the spirit of William Shakespeare's Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, I have come up with a new game:

KENNETH BRANAGH'S [Blank]

The way you play Kenneth Branagh' s [Blank] is pick a stage play and come up with an ideal cast based on people outside the chosen genre. So if you're casting Antony and Cleopatra, no (primarily) Shakespearean  actors. Other than that, they can be anyone, living or dead, from any era of their career.  Of course, you can play fast and loose with that last part, but still, STUNT CASTING!

As the inaugural edition of Kenneth Branagh's [Blank], I present, 

Kenneth Branagh's Richard III

Richard III - Richard Baseheart played two fascinating psychopaths in the early part of his career for Anthony Mann (Robespierre for Reign of Terror, cop killer Roy Morgan for He Walked by Night) and it would have been great to see him essay one of theatre's most famous psychopaths at that stage in his career. I doubt he would have fallen into the campier vein that so often afflicts Richards.

Edward IV - Sterling Hayden (in his 1950s heyday) might seem an odd choice for a dying King, but in his best roles, Hayden was able to simultaneously embody solidity and fatalism. In Johnny Guitar, as a figure of denial and impotence helpless before Joan Crawford, in The Killing, a careful, reasonable man doomed to fail by human nature and coincidence. And Edward is supposed to be prematurely aged by years of relentless drinking and womanizing anyway. So slap some old age make-up on him and I bet he would have done well as a once-mighty warrior undone by guilt and his own over-indulgence. (P.S. No need to mention the impotence at the heart of Jack D. Ripper in Strangelove, is there?)

George, Duke of Clarence - one of my favorite renditions of Clarence was an incredibly flawed Chicago Off-Loop theatre production where the actor playing Clarence saw him as a weak-willed, burnt-out slacker who always relied on his charm to bail him out. Jeff Bridges is able to portray sons of privilege (Winter Kills, Iron Man) and burnt-out slackers (The Big Lebowski, for starters). Plus, he would add complete a trifecta of York kids who look powerful but all fail as men of strength in one way or another. 

Buckingham - when you've got a cold, chilling Richard, you normally need a Buckingham who is smart, charming with tinges of malice. I've always felt that Buckingham is best as an up-and-comer who thinks he's too smart to suffer any consequences for his actions. Gene Kelly in his prime could always balance cleverness with charm and moments of aching vulnerability, always useful qualities in a con man. At the same time, in films like It's Always Fair Weather and What a Way to Go!, he was able to delve into toxic levels of self-loathing, contempt and egotism that would be a near-match to Richard more private scenes.

Lord Hastings - Another theory on Richard's conspirators: Hastings is someone who's got to be ambitious but too weak to carry out Richard's worst acts. Eric Roberts in Star 80 did a terrifying job of burrowing under the skin of an incredibly unlikeable person who did awful things and making him pitiful without apologizing for him, a difficult task for any actor. Hastings is not as horrific, but there are similar issues of someone capable of doing manipulative acts of evil but still oddly naive.

Catesby - Lee Marvin always held the coiled intensity of a snake waiting to strike, even in old age, and I love the image of Catesby as an older retainer of Gloucester's, one who came up through the ranks in the War of the Roses by his bravery and cruelty. And Marvin always finds a way to own the screen whether he's on screen for five minutes or fifty.

 

Marquis of Dorset and Lord Grey - Relatively minor roles, but after all the time travel to Nineteen Fifty Something and morally conflicted people, I'll go with a game changer and pick James McAvoy and Simon Pegg. With the former, you'd understand why you'd need Richmond to come back (beyond the obvious bloodline issues), while the latter points out Elizabeth's annoying, unpopular family. Also, this Richard III shaping up could use some comedy that wouldn't be wack-a-doo.

Henry, Earl of Richmond - Christian Bale. And yes, he's already been in one Branagh Shakespeare history. But Richmond is a cipher, someone with connections to the throne but removed enough from the original fray to sweep in as a unifier. I don't know what else Bale can do, but he can play a cipher, the mask given human form.

And, since I don't want this to be a three thousand page post, onto the women:

Queen Elizabeth - Nicole Kidman. Because you should be able to see why people are annoyed by this nouveau rich aristo being Queen, while seeing how she could charm Edward into marrying her (no small feat when she was up against a French princess) and noticing the sheer cold steel in her spine that allowed her to hold her squabbling, fractured family together as long as she did. I don't think there's any question that Kidman is good at being alluring (in the psychological sense, not just the obvious aesthetic sense) while also being calculating and manipulative. Elizabeth shouldn't be evil, I should clarify, otherwise there is no point in that long scene with Margaret and the Duchess of York about teaching her to curse her enemies. But Clarence and company need someone who is off-putting, if only so we understand why everyone bickers and turns in on each other as Richard knocks them off one by one.

Margaret - Leslie Easterbrook, if only for Mama Firefly in Devil's Rejects. By this point in tetralogy,  the character has lost whatever claim to nobility (in all senses of the word) and merely possesses an epic hatred for the world. She is only queenly in her grotesquerie. And what are her confrontation scenes except slightly more elevated versions of Easterbrook's interrogation by William Forsythe in Devil's Rejects?

Anne - Anne needs to be both incredibly sexy and deeply conflicted about that. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain her acceptance of Richard on any level. She must be the first one to call herself a fraud if Richard is to succeed. Naomi Watts, in I Heart Huckabees and Mulholland Drive, did an excellent job of being pretty and charming, seeming innocent yet wrapped up in tons of neuroses and self-awareness. Richard has got to persuade her that she is guilty of Prince Edward's death (and it is an amazing feat), but she has to take the first step herself. 

Duchess of York - This is hard because the Duchess of York strikes me as resigned and quietly sad until maybe the very end of the play (where she denies Richard her blessing). I feel like she's got to have some strength (otherwise, how could she survive all her many losses and still try to comfort Elizabeth) but she's not a figure of rage. Can I propose (alternate reality) Jane Fonda? Ignore Monster-in-Law and Georgia Rule and pretend that the brilliant actress from Klute and the like somehow matured keeping that same sense of gravity. Her performance in Klute has to be a masterwork of subtle touches, a mix of resignation types stoic and suicidal, turning a stock character (a prostitute that needs to be protected and rescued) into a living human being with a mess of contradictions relating to issues of control and performance of self.

I'm calling this here because otherwise I'd be writing this post until Kenneth Branagh made Thor. However, I tag Leigh, Helen and Zev to carry on the meme, if they so wish it.