Culturebloggin' again

I realized I've been very bad about the cultureblogging lately, but lemme see what I remember.

TV:

Don't know if I've mentioned it but I've been watching Flight of the Conchords on HBO. It's about these two guys from New Zealand who are in a band and living in New York. They go about their lives trying to make it and mostly failing. Every now and then they break into absurd parody songs in various styles. The season starts off a bit slow, but the episodes have gotten progressively funnier. The newest one had Jake and me almost falling out of our chairs. TV-links it... trust me.

COMICS:

-The Astonishing X-men #1-18 - This is the X-men series Joss Whedon has been writing. Basically, it makes you acutely aware of the fact that Joss Whedon was born to write X-men comics. I've generally found X-men comics these days unreadable as there are too many characters and the plots are too convoluted. Whedon brings it back to only a few core X-men: Beast, Wolverine, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Shadowcat, and a character whose entrance is too great for me to ruin in this silly blog. Whedon reminds us that ultimately, X-men is about a bunch of people struggling with everything that people struggle with plus strange mutant powers that sometimes seem more like curses. I would argue that even people who don't like comics will like this one.

-52 Volume 1 - I've been saying how terrible I find a lot of DC stuff lately, but this one is great. And not just because one of the guys I work for was the editor before he left DC. It's a mystery story, with four or five mysteries going on at once, and the pacing is flawless. I can't wait for volume 2, even knowing that it'll eventually all lead to Countdown, which I can't stand.

-Batman: Year 100 - Batman + Blade Runner + 1984 = Awesome. It's totally sci-fi, but also one of the most realistic takes on Batman that I've seen. Paul Pope just nails it from the totally realistic batsuit to the "huff" speech bubbles he gives Batman after he beats up the badguys. Bonus points for making the whole thing about how Batman's real power is his myth rather than anything he actually does.

MOVIES:

Well, I just saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I liked it. None of the Harry Potter movies are really completely self-sufficient, but I thought the acting was fantastic and it was directed with a certain artistry. The plot was streamlined not just to get all the key plot points in but with an eye toward thematic cohesion, and that counts for something in my book.

One thing I thought was interesting is the way they choose to portray wand combat. It's not a very easy thing to make visually stimulating, so the big battle scene at the end alternates between all sorts of influences. One moment Sirius and Harry are fighting Deatheaters and the camera moves back for a wide shot; it's suddenly a fencing battle with the characters moving like they're thrusting and parrying. Next thing you know Voldemort and Dumbledore are facing off in a room full of columns, which are chipped by stray blasts just like those columns from the Matrix. The wands have become machine guns. It seems a little bit all over the place, but I think it works. Magic should be a mishmash of all different sorts of combat, so the scene feels right, at least in my opinion.