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Scene of the Crime (1999) #1
In the twenty years since Scene of the Crime came out (and I last read it), a couple things have become more clear. First, protagonist and narrator Jack is a bit of a narcissist, and the reason he’s loveless is because he was a lousy, possessive boyfriend. The way he talks about the female characters is a lot, especially since writer Ed Brubaker is doing a Raymond Chandler twice removed. I don’t remember Chandler being shitty when describing women. But it’s also okay because Jack’s a white guy private investigator from a cop family in 1999 San Francisco, so it’s not like he’s necessarily going to be a good guy. Not all the way.
The second item relates to Raymond Chandler and San Francisco. Jack’s case involves a missing little sister and San Francisco hippies. Scene’s a Chandler-esque P.I., but it involves late nineties hippies and the children of sixties hippies. So twice removed. It’s a fascinating San Francisco gem, partially if not primarily because of the gorgeous Michael Lark architecture art. Even without landmarks, Scene feels like a San Francisco detective story, a sub-genre of its own.
And just because Brubaker doesn’t recognize his narrator’s passive misogyny doesn’t mean it’s not well-written. It gets a little long towards the end when Jack finds the sister, and they go out to a Denny’s for a meet-cute. I remember really liking that scene when I was in my early twenties, which tracks. But the stuff where Jack’s explaining his backstory, which Brubaker and Lark set against an urban travelogue—it’s great. Very efficient writing from Brubaker, who seems to be trying to adapt the detective novel genre to the comic medium. Two, maybe three-page chapters, lots of exposition, lots of corresponding art, little bit of dialogue.
It works.
The talking heads is where Scene stumbles, though every time it involves a female supporting character, including Jack’s uncle’s girlfriend. Jack’s dad was a cop, killed by heroin gangs—they blew up his car, which partially blinded young Jack—and the uncle, Knut (adorable old man), raised him. Knut’s girlfriend refuses to marry him, despite having been with him for thirty years, because reasons. It’s not Brubaker’s fault, exactly. Not sure he’d have been able to make a comic at that time without these mistakes.
Anyway.
Awesome, moody art from Lark, compelling enough, engaging enough narration from Brubaker. The case is just getting started as this one wraps up.
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My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e02 – Nothing Concrete
This episode’s a mad-libs of murder mysteries; the victim’s found in a statue, one of the suspects is a billionaire tech jackass, and there’s an environmental angle in addition to a jealousy one. None of those items listed actually have anything to do with the actual motive. I forgot why the killer did the deed. I had to go back and look it up. And even then, I had to go over it another time because the motive’s slimmer than any of the red herrings.
And even though there’s a lot of guest star Craig Hall—as the dipshit billionaire—who thinks Lucy Lawless finds him irresistible, which gives Lawless plenty of opportunities to talk smack to her pals about him, the real story is Tatum Warren-Ngata. She’s a gamer and hacker friend of Ebony Vagulans, who went to Paris on mysterious business between last episode and this one. Vagulans has a couple of scenes, FaceTiming with Lawless from her very much not in Paris, France flat, albeit with an Eiffel Tower establishing shot. Warren-Ngata’s good and annoying in the right way to be a techy sidekick to Lawless, but….
I really hope Vagulans isn’t leaving the show.
“Murder”’s got another seven episodes, plenty of time to do a subplot for Vagulans, but also plenty of time to exit Vagulans. Maybe have her back for the finish. The show changed some regular cast between seasons one and two when the action moved from Australia to New Zealand, but it wasn’t like the first cop was anything too special. He’s no Rawiri Jobe, but Vagulans has been with the show since the start, and she and Lawless’s chemistry is a significant portion of the film’s charm. Like twenty-five to thirty-five percent. A lot.
So, concerning.
That worrying aside, like I said, Warren-Ngata’s good. It’s too soon to tell how she and Lawless will vibe, though.
The other suspects include Nisha Madhan as a sculptor who disagreed with the victim about environmental stuff, then Anna Jullienne as the victim’s assistant. They’re both solid, selling a lot in their exposition this episode. There’s not a lot of action, just a lot of Lawless going to different places and talking to the suspects.
The ending’s a mess, and Vagulans’s “vacation” is concerning, but it’s a solid episode otherwise. Lawless makes it enough fun.
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709 Meridian – 5×2 – Predator 2 (1990)
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Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021) s02e03 – Ghost
I didn’t understand what Eric Petersen was saying when he says, “Pal-o-ween;” I thought he meant Halloween, and then the dialogue implied he thought every month with a thirty-first meant that day was Halloween.
I figured out what had happened quickly, but it was strange because it wouldn’t not fit the show.
Petersen’s regular but not monthly Pal-o-ween events involve him and Alex Bonifer watching scary movies while Annie Murphy dotes on them. They probably make fun of her too. She’s not interested this month (I mean, is it set in August, it could be) because she and Mary Hollis Inboden have to go look at dead bodies. Murphy’s faking-her-death plan involves finding an identity to assume from a recent, unclaimed corpse. Her P.I., Tommy Buck, knows a guy who likes to claim unclaimed corpses. Inboden and Murphy have a hilarious discussion on that subject as they walk through the creepy, empty funeral home.
Murphy doesn’t tell Inboden going in, but sixteen years before or whatever, her father’s funeral was in the same funeral home, and that night was when she met Petersen (and Inboden) for the first time. “Kevin” makes a big swing with the flashbacks, which have the actors playing themselves with different hair and clothes, obviously, but no big make-up things. No CGI de-aging or youth casting. It works once Peri Gilpin shows up; she’s got a scene as Murphy’s mom, who berates Murphy after the funeral. And Murphy goes from the funeral home in reality—in the flashback, obviously—into the sitcom universe for that scene with Gilpin, which raises all sorts of questions.
It also makes the flashback hair and make-up approach “TV,” meaning just focus on the content and the performances. They’re memories, after all, almost entirely from Murphy’s perspective because Inboden doesn’t want to think about it. In the flashback, we see Inboden’s spirits fall, watching Murphy surrender to Petersen’s amiable influence. In the present, Bonifer’s having a breakdown about the whole thing—the whole thing being him assaulting Murphy, then Murphy and Inboden smacking him into reality from the sitcom universe—and forgets to go to Pal-o-ween.
There’s a subplot for Inboden and girlfriend Candice Coke, with Coke trying to involve Inboden in her life, but Inboden is still hanging with Murphy instead. Corpse-hunting beats game night. There’s some good material for Coke in this episode; she gets to interact with different people, not just whine about Inboden being friends with Murphy.
I still feel like the season’s a little unbalanced, with this episode the first to deal entirely with season two issues.
It’ll be fine. I’m just obsessing because I think “Kevin” might wrap up super.
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Dracula Lives (1973) #11
I had planned on opening bemoaning Dracula Lives only having two issues left just when the series has found itself again, but then I did some research and discovered it’s worse than the series just canceling. They’re not going to finish the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation here; there’s no more Lilith (more on her adventures in a bit). I wish I hadn’t looked ahead. However, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known where to go for the next (and temporarily final) Stoker adaptation entry.
There’s a reason reading monthly comics is a pain in the ass, even fifty years later.
Anyway.
This issue’s great, and I’m super duper sad there are only two more issues.
The magazine aspects of Lives are gone this issue; letters column, but no features—lots of ads. But the stories are all good. The art on the Lilith story’s a disaster, but if Lilith had been well-executed back in the day (writer Steve Gerber’s finding his legs fast), we’d remember it.
We’ll go in reverse order, starting with the Lilith story. It’s a long story, and Bob Brown’s pencils are terrible. They’ve got Frank Chiaramonte inking him, which is a choice, but then Pablo Marcos also has a credit, and even though I’m lukewarm on Marcos (or do I like him, it’s been so long since Lives had top-shelf artists), I was expecting the art to not be terrible.
But it’s terrible. Oddly, Brown’s pencils look like they were meant for digest size, not a magazine page, like seeing them smaller would improve things. Like the frequent lack of faces. Though the story’s all about there not being a face. Lilith’s human half runs afoul of some incel planning to do a mass shooting—no shit, in 1975–and Lilith takes over to stop him. Except there’s only so much she can do. It’s intense.
There’s some character development for Lilith and her human half. It’s good. The art’s an incredible problem, but the story’s good. I had wondered what was wrong with Gerber on the previous story, but he’s got it here.
The middle story is the Bram Stoker adaptation, and it’s a good argument Dick Giordano’s career should’ve been spent illustrating journals with accurate scenery. This portion of the adaptation is Mina and Lucy still at Lucy’s mom’s house, no suitors around, just Lucy sleepwalking around the English countryside. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s when werewolf Dracula assaults Lucy. Only there’s a whole thing about there being a stone chair and gravestone, and it’s the girls’ favorite spot, and it’s lovely. Gorgeous art from Giordano eighty-five percent of the time. It’s a delight.
It’s also where writer Roy Thomas (and, obviously, Giordano) get to do some adapting. Because they’re not doing werewolf Dracula, they’re doing (close to) Tomb of Dracula Dracula, and it adds some very interesting layers to the adaptation. Presumably. Dracula is just around this issue in the background.
I’m positive I read this adaptation (Marvel finished it in the aughts), but I don’t remember it being so impressive. Probably my bad (or it falls apart).
Then there’s a two-pager from Doug Moench and Win Mortimer, done sort of in a fifties horror style. Some European city’s problems with vampires over the years. It’s solid, with Moench finding a good tone for the exposition.
The first story is also Moench; he and artist Tony DeZuniga finish their “husbands vs. Dracula” story, which started in the last issue. Dracula has just thrown some widower into a pit—possibly the pit from Tomb, but also possibly not—and the guy quickly discovers it’s where Drac’s been keeping his latest vampire brides.
Including the hero’s wife.
What follows is horror action, with the hero coming up with a scheme to avenge himself while also saving the town or something. He also has a plan to save his wife’s eternal soul, which seems to be entirely in his head and the dialogue because Moench goes nowhere with that aspect (souls). The exposition’s a little overwritten, but who cares, the DeZuniga art is gorgeous. Great Gothic good girl art, fantastic horror trappings.
The finale’s a little bit of a miss, especially given the build-up, but it all works out. Especially since the comic goes uphill as it continues, with the Lilith finish graded on a different, Bob Brown-related scale, of course.
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Resident Alien (2021) s02e13 – Harry, a Parent
If “Resident Alien” keeps bringing Sarah Podemski back as a regular recurring, she needs to have some kind of name credit. Podemski plays Kayla, one of Sara Tommy’s cousins (or not); regardless, they’re both Native and interested in historical and cultural preservation, which is why Podemski’s important to Meredith Garretson’s new subplot. She and husband Levi Fiehler are at odds over the new resort, and he’s putting his foot down in a macho display, impressing no one.
Podemski figures in late in the episode, after the action moves to Alice Wetterlund’s skiing qualifier. She’s been getting antsy since last episode, taking too many painkillers, and being crappy to new boyfriend Justin Rain. She’s running low on painkillers and wants Alan Tudyk to give her injections at the race. Tudyk doesn’t want to help her, but she threatens not to give him churros, so he agrees.
But before Tudyk can juice Wetterlund before a competition, he and Sara Tomko have to go track down her mother, whose address appears in a first act deus ex machina for that very back-burnered subplot.
Then Elizabeth Bowen’s trying to get Corey Reynolds to stay in small mountain town Colorado and not move back to Washington D.C., even though he hasn’t asked dad Alvin Sanders for permission.
The main plot is Wetterlund’s competition, with Tomko’s parenting arc the main subplot. It ties into Tudyk’s newly revealed backstory subplot, which the episode otherwise ignores—intentionally, Tudyk’s not interested in it, not when he still doesn’t know the identity of the invading aliens. Garretson’s continuing problems with Fiehler (who’s more amusing when he’s unsympathetic, which I’d forgotten) and Reynolds’s moving plans pack the rest of the episode. It’s very full. There are at least two subplots the show’s ignoring this episode.
There’s also a big-name guest star in the opening titles. If you miss the credit, it’s a fantastic surprise; the scene’s set up on at least two layers, to be a surprise, so foreshadowing with the credit’s too bad. But even if you see the credit and are waiting for someone to arrive… it’s still awesome.
Some great acting from Tudyk, Reynolds, and Tomko. Gary Farmer’s got a devastating moment or two. Wetterlund does okay; it’s not an easy part this episode because she’s being self-destructive. Garretson’s better when Fiehler’s being a twerp too.
It’s not what I was expecting—“Alien” introduced a bombshell at the end of the last episode, didn’t do anything with it, and dropped another one here. They’ve got three episodes left, which might be enough to resolve some things, but they’ll have to get moving.
Thank goodness they’ve got the third season renewal already.
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X Isle (2006) #4
X Isle does not astound and get good this issue.
But, there were a few times I was actually impressed. The comic’s got terrible dialogue and middling plotting, but artist Greg Scott’s occasionally able to transcend the dialogue and make the action work. There’s a dinosaur versus human fight this issue, and some of it’s played for laughs.
It doesn’t end played for laughs; it ends played for cruelty because the ship crew—Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the sidekick, maybe Michael Biehn as the captain (or whoever would’ve been a Biehn-type in 2006 when they tried selling this as a movie)–are assholes and the bad guys.
But it’s a good dinosaur fight scene. Scott does an excellent job breaking out the action. Unfortunately, he does a hilariously bad job just a few pages later. See, last issue, the good guys (who are looking for the annoying college coed daughter) found a spaceship, and this issue explains the spacecraft and the island and the monsters and so on. But the bad guys aren’t with the good guys, so the bad guys don’t know about the spaceship.
Sam Jackson, Tim Allen, and the coed’s love interest are exploring the spaceship, and they think they’ve got it figured. It’s like a zoo spaceship, and it crashed, freeing alien creatures from across the galaxy on one island on planet Earth. No sign of Christopher Pike and Vina yet.
There’s a terrible gory action sequence in the ship. Someone covered in blood, someone gasping a last noise. Even if it weren’t for the script, Scott’s art would still be accidentally hilarious. It’s a comedy beat with a gore death.
If the rest of the comic followed suit, great. Sadly, it doesn’t.
Then at the end, the coed returns to whine, and I’d forgotten how badly Michael A. Nelson writes her dialogue.
Frankly, not much hope for the next and final issue with her back. But, whatever, almost done.
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Park Row (1952, Samuel Fuller)
Writer, director, and producer Fuller is very committed to the bit with Park Row. He almost pulls the film out of its spiraling third act with an audacious epilogue, which ties back into the opening, with its (uncredited) narration setting the scene. The year is 1886, the place is New York City, and there live the finest men in the world—the American Newspaperman. Emphasis on man. Row’s going to have some very interesting misogyny, but it always comes with enough to qualify it down to class commentary. Fuller never lets the film be too mean to leading lady Mary Welch because she’s the love interest too.
Plus, imagine if a dynamic, self-made man competed with Welch in business and ideology and eventually won her over to his side. Fuller gets away with a lot in Park Row and it’s always because he’s got the right lead—Gene Evans. Fuller takes almost twenty minutes to give Evans his first close-up, even though the movie’s narration hands the action over to him. He’s just a newspaperman, after all, he’s not the one making the story, just the one telling it. Except he disagrees with his paper swaying a murder trial against the defendant, putting Evans in paper owner Welch’s sights. The film doesn’t precisely explain Welch’s backstory, but it plays like she’s inherited the paper from a dead father and has been smartly trying to make money with the paper instead of reporting the news like an American Newspaperman.
There’s one scene where kindly old reporter Herbert Heyes gives Welch a startling dressing down, weaponizing the cultural misogyny against her. It’s intense and, like one of the love scenes, impressive what Fuller can accomplish given the constraints. He’s doing a costume drama about a newspaper, only he’s doing it as an action buddy picture. It’s not a Western; it’s a North-Eastern. Or something.
At one point, Evans drags a guy through the streets and beats the shit out of him against a Ben Franklin statue because Evans is righteous. He’s surrounded by an entourage who eagerly acknowledge he’s the next great American Newspaperman. But Fuller never lets Evans grandstand; instead, he focuses on Evans’s quiet idealism. Given Evans spends the first ten minutes of the film mostly just mulling over the chatter around him, the quiet bit works. Much better than when Evans starts talking to his newspaper.
The film would actually have been able to get away with some of that nonsense if the third act weren’t such a mess. Fuller douses all his goodwill in gasoline and lights a match in a few seconds. It’s an impressive capitulation; turns out Park Row didn’t have a third act, after all. The first act had Evans setting up the paper with his gang of newspaper and journalism enthusiasts, second act is the rivalry between Evans and Welch (with a great, Statue of Liberty-related subplot), third act is the rushed wrap-up then the film’s Brobdingnagian flexing finale.
Row’s obviously on a budget. They didn’t even have matte painters; instead, the backgrounds down the blocks are barely three-dimensional models. Beautifully made, not particularly realistic. The block and a half set is otherwise exceptional. Fuller and cinematographer John L. Russell frequently weave around the set, into buildings, out of buildings, and they’re having a ball with it. Initially, it plays to the costume picture angle, showcasing the sets and costumes (production design by Theobold Holsopple), then it distinguishes Row from that genre, then it goes all out action when Evans starts kicking ass.
Evans has some incredible dialogue to pass, and he manages it successfully; his performance is spectacular. Shame the part doesn’t keep up. Welch is uneven but rather good at playing sincere and thoughtful, which works to make up for it. She and Evans also have chemistry, even though they really shouldn’t.
In addition to Heyes, Evans’s gang includes Forrest Taylor as his financier, Neyle Morrow as his cartoonist, Dick Elliot as the newsroom editor, Don Orlando as the Italian typesetter who doesn’t read or write English, and Dee Pollock as the swell kid who wants to be an American Newspaperman. They’re delightful together. Oh, and Bela Kovacs. Kovacs is an inventor. Park Row isn’t about a newspaperman striking out on his own and struggling to find the right idea; it’s about the messiah of American Journalism just needing a blank check. The movie and Fuller are rabidly optimistic.
Park Row comes crashing down at the end, but Fuller builds something really impressive right up until then.
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Joe Versus the Volcano (1990, John Patrick Shanley)
Joe Versus the Volcano’s final punchline comes during the end credits when it turns out Industrial Light and Magic did the special effects. Volcano’s got terrible special effects, especially for an Amblin production, but for ILM to have done them? Yikes.
Now, the film’s an absurdist riff on sixties comedies, so the obvious artifice could work if director Shanley weren’t quite bad at both his jobs on the film (writing and directing) or if cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt were in on the gag. Goldblatt spends the entire film competently lighting it—even when Shanley’s misunderstanding of headroom becomes a near-universal eyesore—but he never does anything more. Goldblatt ably executes all Shanley’s bad ideas. It’s an incredibly qualified situation.
Volcano’s got several unsuccessful bits running throughout the entire film, starting with a recurring lightning visual. It’s the logo for lead Tom Hanks’s terrible job, it’s the path the workers take up to the door (see, thirties), and it comes back at least three more times. Shanley does a lousy job emphasizing it, but it’s also a weak sauce logo. While Bo Welch’s production design isn’t bad—Volcano’s a cross between Coen Brothers and Tim Burton—that lightning strike is awful.
The film starts with Hanks as an office drone at a medical supply company. Dan Hedaya’s his boss. Volcano’s one of those movies with a bad Dan Hedaya performance, entirely because Shanley’s really bad. And, at this point in the film, desperate to be John Patrick Shanley Coen.
The medical supply company makes anal probes and petroleum jelly. The movie makes fun of the idea of someone having something wrong with their butthole, so not zero chance Joe Versus the Volcano meant someone didn’t get the medical intervention they needed.
Fingers crossed some proctologist got revenge.
Meg Ryan, with a jaw-droppingly bad Noo Yawk accent, plays Hanks’s coworker, who he’s always crushed on but never asked out because he’s an office drone. He’s also got one hell of a mullet. Hanks gets a haircut later, and it’s like he’s playing two different people; Shanley’s not good at character establishing or development (Hanks actually just says he doesn’t have a personality, so don’t hope for one). Ryan does play different people, three of them. She’s the office mouse, a high-strung L.A. girl with substance abuse issues and another bad accent, then she’s the L.A. girl’s half-sister, a free spirit who wants to travel the seas.
Ryan’s usually likable, even when she’s bad. The third role, the free spirit, ought to be the best, but it ends up being the worst. At least the first two have impressive hair and makeup; the third one looks like she’s wearing a bad wig, and then she’s unconscious most of the time, waking up to fall for Hanks at just the wrong moment.
Because Hanks is dying. His new doctor, Robert Stack, gives him the bad news. So Hanks heads back to work, causes a scene, peaces out. The next day, weird industrialist Lloyd Bridges shows up with an offer—throw himself in a volcano on a remote island so Bridges can get mineral rights and Hanks can live like a movie millionaire until then.
The most successful part of the film is when chauffeur Ossie Davis shows Hanks how to live it up on Bridges’s AMEX card in Manhattan. And only because it’s Davis. Davis gives the film’s only actual good performance because not even Shanley can write so bad Davis can’t make it work.
After a day in Manhattan, Hanks heads to L.A. to meet Ryan #2; then, it’s off for an ocean voyage with Ryan #3. Amanda Plummer shows up for a scene and a half on the boat. She’s probably the second-best performance.
On the boat, Hanks and Ryan will be cute and weird as Hanks realizes the real way to live life is as a millionaire, and having to work for a living on Staten Island sucked.
The volcano stuff waits until the third act. Abe Vigoda shows up as a Polynesian-Jewish-Celtic chieftain. It’s worse than it sounds because Vigoda’s entirely hacky without being charming, and the island is a bunch of big, poorly shot sets.
It’s godawful.
Hanks is likable about thirty-five percent of the time, good five percent of the time, bad ten percent, lost the rest. Ryan’s often quite bad; whatever Shanley thought he was doing with “many women, one face” doesn’t work. Especially since Ryan never gets a part, just a caricature.
Besides Davis (and Plummer), Stack’s probably the most successful. Then Bridges. Shanley ought to be ashamed of himself for what he made Hedaya essay.
Joe Versus the Volcano undoubtedly has some bewildering behind-the-scenes stories, but who cares. Despite being desperately eccentric, it’s never an interesting failure.
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