• Black Panther (1998) #7

    Bp7It’s a good but unfortunate issue of Black Panther. Writer Priest is firing on all cylinders, while the art is a Many Hands mishmash of styles—the issue credits Jimmy Palmiotti and Vince Evans (washes for Evans). But there’s also additional help from Alitha Martinez and Nelson DeCastro. So the art never looks consistent for more than a few pages. Some of Evans’s washes appear to be over pencils. Somehow they took the fun out of Joe Jusko pencils.

    Good thing Priest’s got a killer story. The stuff with Everett K. Ross is starting to get tired. This issue has him roller-blading away from an enraged Bill Clinton, who’s chasing him through the White House with a hockey stick. This bit started last issue, but we still haven’t found out exactly what’s going on because Priest fractures Ross’s narration for dramatic effect. And comedic. Best for comedic.

    But we do find out something about why Ross is in such hot water. For the cliffhanger. Before the cliffhanger, there’s a resolution to the Kraven guest spot—with Kraven doing that whole “cut me, make me bleed” thing, and it’ll be wild if they do it in the movie. It’s not like there’s much else to Kraven’s character. He blathers on to Black Panther during their rematch about how much he always wanted to fight him and so on–Kraven’s exhausting, which Priest fully acknowledges and embraces.

    There are a couple weird moments to date the issue: Ross lusting after the teenage girl bodyguards, who change in front of him, and then Ross saying if he were “Black and gay,” he’d be into T’Challa. We’re seven issues in, and there’s still nothing more to Ross, which would be okay if Priest weren’t still relying on him. I’ve got a specious memory he’ll be gone soon, but it might also just be wishful thinking.

    Or maybe if they draw him like Michael J. Fox again.

    Or if the book could get its act together art-wise. The action scenes should’ve been good, and instead seemed entirely static. High hopes for next time… though I’m definitely not checking the creator credits beforehand.

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  • Silo (2023) s01e08 – Hanna

    This episode, “Silo” assumes a conspiracy thriller mode. Sheriff Rebecca Ferguson starts the episode on the run, only to pull one over on Common and his goons again so there can be an episode. She’s also going to find out who and who she can’t trust—despite some solid direction from Adam Bernstein, he totally whiffs the Hitchcockian reveal, which hurts the third act a bit. The show gets it back for the cliffhanger—“Silo” just got officially renewed, though supposedly AppleTV+ usually orders two seasons and then does the “renewal” notice when the timing’s right.

    I remembered more details from this episode—I think they seem familiar from that Wool comic adaptation—but I’m still real hazy.

    This episode toggles between Ferguson flashing back to the story of her mom, played again by Sienna Guillory, who died when Ferguson was young and played by Amelie Child Villiers. Iain Glen, of course, plays his character both young and old, managing to look older in the younger makeup than as an old guy. He just aged real well.

    And his accent’s a little better. At least good enough it doesn’t set Ferguson down any poor accent choices—hope she doesn’t forget how not to do the bad “Silo” accent between filming seasons one and two.

    Most of the episode is Ferguson trying to stay one step ahead of Common while remembering mom Guillory’s last days, while also trying to undercover the conspiracy around her. There are two levels of conspiracies, of course. The more immediate murder conspiracy, but also the conspiracy where they’re keeping the nature of reality from the citizens. This episode raises more questions than it answers, and I’m very curious about what’ll get pushed to next season and what’ll be revealed in the final two episodes of the season.

    There are just two to go, and the show’s still not done revealing the stakes.

    Good acting from Uche and Tim Robbins in particular. It’s probably Ferguson’s best episode, but it also doesn’t ask her to do much more than run around in an action movie while vulnerable. Maybe it’s the vulnerable part. Though they still don’t seem to know what to do with Avi Nash. If he and Ferguson are supposed to have sincere chemistry together… hope they work on it before next season.

    Bernstein will probably be back for the next episode—do all hour-longs now just do two episode blocks for each director or directing team—which is fine. This episode’s for bridging; it only runs forty minutes and gets Ferguson from A to B with some new knowledge to get her to C next. We’ll probably see C next episode. Though this episode suggests at least two more characters deserve point-of-view focuses.

    “Silo”’s almost entirely managed to climb after a rocky start. But they’re running out of time to make that somewhat disconnected prologue mean something. The show’s more than proven it can do compelling, but it hasn’t proven it can retroactively make the less compelling stuff meaningful.

    But for now, real good.

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  • Big News (1929, Gregory La Cava)

    Big News is a successful talking picture, meaning they do a good job recording the synchronized vocals. It’s not successful at really anything else, but the sound’s decent. Someone had the idea of keeping the number of actors low in most scenes, which helps with vocal clarity. Possibly too much because editor Doane Harrison and director La Cava hang on every spoken sentence. It’s peculiar—though not uncommon for the era—but News is early enough even the actors don’t know to mug around yet. They stand static, waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen next. It makes every conversation take twice as long as it should, and Big News is all conversation.

    The film’s a stage adaptation—and a stagy one at that—about newspaper reporter Robert Armstrong going up against speakeasy owner and heroin peddler Sam Hardy. Despite not hiding the speakeasy part of his business from anyone, the advertising editor at the paper—Louis Payne—thinks Hardy is entirely aboveboard. Armstrong’s just an angry drunk out to persecute the American entrepreneur—Hardy’s speakeasy is run out of his… restaurant, which advertises in the newspaper. The long pauses in News would be perfect spots for the actors to turn to the cameras and ask the audience if they’re buying this shit.

    But it’s Pre-Code, so you get to hear people say the word narcotics (and heroin, too; I’m nearly positive). Armstrong bickers with Hardy’s thugs about who’s got the more problematic profession, the newspaperman trying to report on thugs selling drugs to kids or the thug selling drugs to kids who has to be derided in the press. Though the cops aren’t happy with the newspapers either, since the newspapers don’t care about using any old surname for the Irish coppers.

    Surely second-billed Carole Lombard, Armstrong’s estranged wife and professional competitor, will come in and offer some life to the movie.

    Nope.

    Lombard’s just around to whine about Armstrong. She’s the better reporter, and she’s able to get home on time (even when they’re talking about her scooping Armstrong on an overnight story where she was reporting, and he was sleeping off another bender). There are shockingly honest scenes with Lombard and Armstrong’s news editor, Wade Boteler, about how she should divorce him because he’s a useless drunk. He just happens to be a worthless drunk who can get a great scoop now and again, making it up as he goes sometimes, so it’s lucky Hardy’s a hilariously bad Mr. Big. Not bad as in acting—Armstrong, Hardy, and maybe Boteler are the only ones who seem to get the acting bit of voice acting, though incredibly problematic (though potentially progressive) Ms. Lonely Hearts Helen Ainsworth is okay too. But Hardy’s an inept criminal mastermind who lets his ego destroy him.

    The bad performances are Charles Sellon as the newspaper owner, who protects Armstrong but not too far, and Warner Richmond as the assistant district attorney, who seemingly learned he was expected to speak about a minute before La Cava called “action.”

    La Cava’s direction’s a series of medium shots. I think only Armstrong and Hardy ever get close-ups. Lombard definitely doesn’t get any; the movie has no idea what to do with a lady in the picture, much less Lombard. I’m curious if the original play gave the character something to do.

    Oh, and then there’s James Donlan as Armstrong’s drunk reporter pal. It’s unclear whether Donlan has a job other than being drunk all the time and a bad influence on Armstrong. It’s an early enough talkie they haven’t figured out Donlan ought to be a great supporting performance. He’s not.

    Big News is only seventy-five minutes and somewhat worth the curiosity peek—Armstrong and Hardy would much more memorably team (for a scene) in King Kong; it’s an early misuse of Lombard, and there are some recognizable faces. Clarence Wilson plays the coroner; apparently, Lew Ayres is around somewhere. But it’s still really long for seventy-five minutes. That time can be better spent on the cast and crew’s other pictures.

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  • Spider-Man: The Con Caper and the Curse of Rava (1978, Tom Blank and Michael Caffey)

    In a more modern context, The Con Caper and the Curse of Rava take on additional depth. First, there’s convicted state or federal senator (or congressman) William Smithers. He’s a white guy who once upon a time gave Black woman Chip Fields her first chance in the early seventies after she would’ve spent most of her life living during the Civil Rights movement. So being Smithers’s trusted sidekick would’ve meant a lot.

    It’d sure be terrible if Smithers turned out to be a sociopath, just a charming one.

    In the second half—Caper is two episodes of “The Amazing Spider-Man” TV show joined together for syndication and home video, which is how “TV on DVD” worked until… DVD—but the second half’s big eyebrow raise is how the show manages to be shitty towards villain Theodore Bikel while lionizing capitalist imperialism. Bikel’s from Kalistan, which is presumably based on someone in the writers’ room—Robert Janes (which I swear is a pseudonym in something) gets the credit for Curse—but someone heard of Khalistan, a still unsuccessful (going 300 plus years now) attempt by the Sikh to get their own homeland.

    So, Curse is also a great example of how Hollywood media ransacked the cultures and histories of the entire world under the premise: Americans are too dumb to know, then they’re too dumb to care, then they’re just not watching the show–the great balance.

    Curse isn’t about Sikh homelands, of course. It’s about a cult of Kalistani dissidents led by dark pope Bikel (no, really, he’s the pope of the group) who want to steal their historical Rava statue—their god of destruction (while Rava’s scary looking, not cool, and buff, he’s also very male, even though—wait, am I getting made they didn’t use Shiva or something? Look at me retroactively enabling this shit).

    Anyway.

    The statue’s in New York City because the current Kalistan administration wants those American greenbacks, in this case, delivered (or couriered) by none other than Daily Bugle CEO and “Spider-Man” regular J. Jonah Jameson (Robert F. Simon). Simon’s dead wife was big into getting relics into their private blue blood museum, and he’s continuing the tradition in her honor. He’s a justified Karen in his imperialist looting.

    Bikel threatens museum guy Byron Webster with telekinetic feats, pointlessly witnessed by closest-thing-to-a-love-interest Adrienne Larussa. She’s not an actual love interest for Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond), but she fills the slot. She’s actually in an antagonist position for most of the episode.

    Half.

    Whatever.

    Even though they use South Asian visual imagery for some of the protesting cult members—the ladies, the dudes are all just white seventies hippies—Curse isn’t sure how to write this made-up fantastical religion, so they add this anti-Muslim bent to it. Like some of Bikel’s dialogue. It’s a lot.

    Even though Bikel’s barely in the episode. He’s a long-shot villain who stares at something until Hammond’s Spider-sense goes off.

    All right, now. We’re mostly out of ways Caper Curse ages horrifically. There’s obviously lots of veiled and unveiled misogyny, and general weird classism, but I think the specifics are done. Now for the problem of tying these two episodes together. Con is Fields’s episode; she even sings a song. But it’s about Simon trusting Fields—he’s a shitty blue-blood Karen in the late seventies dealing with all these damn kids and their TokTiks—even after Fields was wrong to trust Smithers. Fields has to eat a little crow, but most of it’s internal. And Smithers turns out to have really broken bad. Not just a little.

    But there’s also the Caper part. Everyone says “con” a lot; everyone says “caper” a lot. The writer—this time credited to Gregory S. Dinallo—wants to make sure the viewers in the audience who’d just learned to read title cards, know the episode’s called The Con Caper. It’s weird. The first half of Caper Curse is this seventies groovy with decent guest stars Andrew Robinson and Ramon Bieri as two prisoners who stage a riot in a ruse to get recently released and now prison reformer Smithers back into the prison. Only from the outside, obviously.

    Apparently, traditional spoiler rules do not apply to compilation TV movies. But since Caper is from season two and Curse is from season one, the whole premise is a spoiler for Curse. However, no one’s really in danger in Curse. It’s mostly about Simons being falsely accused, so they can have vaguely amusing scenes with Simons yelling at Hammond from his jail cell. Then Michael Pataki also gets all these weird scenes with Simons where Pataki’s got to be suspicious of Simons because he’s reporting seeing telekinesis stuff. Except Simons clearly said no to doing the jackass scene on film, so Pataki’s always talking about the report Simons gave. So Pataki’s got to say the silly comic book shit. And he hates it. It’s not a good episode for Pataki, but it’s his most sympathetic. Having to put up with Simons’s Karening is too far.

    There are some amusing changes between the episodes besides Pataki being gone in the first one (because he didn’t come back) and being around for the second. His replacement in season two is Ellen Bry, an annoying capable young woman who wants to hang out with Hammond for some reason. She works at another paper, so she’s also covering Smithers and the prison stuff. But Fields has a decently sized Afro in the first episode, which she doesn’t have in season one. She was very close-cropped in season one. Okay, wait, no… Fields’s hair can make sense.

    See, she cuts it after episode one, which is from season two, then it’s super short in the bridging addition—which takes place on a sitcom family kitchen set, and you can practically hear someone say “Action”—then it grows back a little for the second episode.

    Hammond’s hair is shorter in season two than in season one but even shorter than season two in the bridging scene. So it makes no sense. Also, whoever wrote the bridging dialogue either didn’t give a shit about Curse’s first act or was eye-rolling it.

    The first half’s totally passable late seventies mainstream groovy–so much music from Dana Kaproff. Everything’s got music. It’s awesome. Sort of. It’s fun. Or close enough to it.

    The second half’s basically “Spider-Man” doing “Ghost Story.” Even when Hammond’s got a powered supervillain like Bikel, we’re years from a live-action superhero fight. It’s as if it took Westerns ten years to have actual horses.

    The direct’s low middling. Technicals are competent.

    If there’d been a better second episode—because you forget the transition problems fairly quickly thanks to Curse looking completely and utterly different, including film stock—Caper Curse probably would’ve worked out? Curse is just an unpleasant episode. The B plot is Simons’s jail arc. Oh, and Hammond stalking Larussa and mansplaining to her. He’s a jackass.

    What a way to react to being kidnapped with your coworkers… growing your hair, digging out that suit jacket, buttoning your shirt, and being mean to people.

    I’d said these compilation pictures might be the right way to watch the ever-unavailable “Amazing Spider-Man” TV show, but I’m reconsidering.

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  • Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

    Quite appropriately, Everything Everywhere All at Once is all the things. At once. And more. The film’s a relatively simply told multiverse comic book action-comedy-family-drama-romance-horror story with time to do a traditional hero arc, then deconstruct it. The film gives stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan constantly changing roles as we meet various versions of them from across the multiverse. Everything takes it one step further, turning the momentum of meeting alternate versions of the same character (so alternate versions of the same performer but not the same performance) into a main story arc.

    Everything employs an interesting structure—three identified parts, with the first part ending on a cliffhanger and the third part more an epilogue. But there’s a three-act structure to the parts. So the stakes are entirely different in the second part than the first, even though the overall threat is the same—the multiverse is in danger, and only Yeoh can save it.

    Directors Kwan and Scheinert toggle through various styles in the film. Too many to count—while there’s an infinite number of Yeohs out there, the film only really asks the viewer to remember ten. Maybe not even ten. There’s an action movie Yeoh, there’s a family drama Yeoh, there’s an absurd romantic drama Yeoh, there’s a Wong Kar-wai movie Yeoh, and then a handful of sight gag universe Yeohs. In all these other universes, Yeoh’s somehow spectacular. There’s one thing she does better than anyone else.

    But Yeoh Prime’s one thing she’s better than anyone else at is being a failure. No matter what she tries, it eventually doesn’t work out. The film’s present action in the Prime universe is about Yeoh and husband Quan in trouble with the IRS—specifically relentless auditor Jamie Lee Curtis—at the same time, Yeoh has to take in her father, James Hong. Yeoh and Quan left China as rebellious young adults and came to the United States and opened a laundromat, where they never made enough money, but also never too little they gave up on it. Also, it’s Chinese New Year. Also, Hsu, as their daughter, wants to introduce girlfriend Tallie Medel to grandpa Hong as her girlfriend, and Yeoh’s not sure it’s the right time for Hsu to be herself.

    As Yeoh starts universe-hopping, she’s going to see how her life changed and how it didn’t, which exposes her to insights. What’s so wild—I mean, it’s already wild, it’s a Hong Kong cinema homage kung fu family drama absurdist comedy—but what’s also so wild is how the second part is then all about Yeoh taking agency and learning from those other lives. Everything is about the story’s protagonist taking an active role in how their story progresses.

    The first part has Yeoh and Quan together most of the time, with Yeoh’s relationship with Hsu providing a lot of narrative turmoil but not affecting the action. The second part flips that situation, partnering Yeoh and Hsu most of the time, but Quan’s consequentially bound to the narrative. It’s delicate and detailed, with the directors changing aspect ratios and cameras (or at least good filters) between the various different movies Yeoh finds herself in. Because it’s always a movie, and she’s just watching her life go by.

    Even as Yeoh Prime begins to realize her potential, one of her splinter arcs involves the “good guys” trying to keep her in a passive role. Or at least subordinate, even as she’s discovering she can break free from all constraint. Yeoh’s got a beautiful story arc, which she performs flawlessly. After all the big comparisons between universes in the first half, the film gets more subtle in the second. By the finale, it’s practically gentle, with almost indistinguishable–but still very distinct—differences between the universes.

    The film’s a technical marvel throughout, with cinematographer Larkin Seiple and editor Paul Rogers doing superlative work (in addition to outstanding work from costumes designer Shirley Kurata and production designer Jason Kisvarday). But there’s something even more special about the finale: Seiple and Rogers are no longer trying to wow with the audiovisual but lower the intensity so the performances take center stage. It’s subtle, breathtaking work.

    Phenomenal performances from Yeoh, Hsu, and Quan. Curtis is great too—ditto Hong—but they’re orbiting the stars, not doing these inconceivably gigantic character arcs. Quan gets a little less to do than Yeoh and Hsu, but his presence itself is enough to inform some of Yeoh’s arc. The scenes where she and Hsu really get to act opposite each other are mesmerizing.

    Everything about Everything comes together—the shifts in pacing, the sometimes over-the-top sight gags or references, not to mention Quan. While he doesn’t get the central character relationship, he does get the peripheral one, but he also gets to do a variety of other versions of the character. There’s his sexy WKW guy, there’s the action hero, there’s the concerned dad. Yeoh and Hsu give these momentous performances, but those arcs are part of the plot. Quan gets to do these different characters, and the oomph is in his performance, not the narrative momentum.

    That said, it’s obviously Yeoh’s showcase.

    The film’s a significant accomplishment for cast and crew. Everything’s an exhilarating, emotionally enthralling experience.

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