My Missing Whedon: "Angel"

This morning I read all 3,040 words of "Angel by the Numbers" an essay by Dan Kerns, who started on Joss Whedon's vampire series Angel as Best Boy and worked his way up to Gaffer. I discovered the article through Whedonesque and I heartily recommend it. During the reading I consumed ½ a cup of coffee (I've successfully narrowed down my daily consumption to 2 cups!), ignored the urge to pee twice, and thought of 4 other television shows: my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which sits comfortable at #1 of my all time favorite tv shows), one-of-a-kind Firefly, fascinating but uneven Dollhouse, and the non-Whedon series Dexter because "Darla" (Julie Benz) was mentioned and I just watched the first three episodes of Season 5 and it's just not the same without her... (and maybe it's the kind of repetitive series that should've wrapped with Season 4?)

Buffy, Angel and Faith.

Before I move on to work on 4 pending articles, I feel the need to admit that I've only seen 19 episodes of Angel, despite seeing literally every other episode -- even the unaired ones including the aborted Buffy pilot where Willow was not Alyson Hannigan (!) -- of every other Joss Whedon series and all of his movie work, too! Hell, I've even seen that animated sci-fi bomb Titan A.E. (2000). I've never understood why I couldn't work up much interest in Angel as a series but perhaps it was the procedural stand-alone nature of the early episodes which are the bulk of what I saw. Maybe I was just angry that Buffy received only 1 spinoff and not 2 (At least twice a year I impatiently dream of a 4 season run of "Faith the F*cked Up Vampire Slayer"). Of the 19 episodes I remember only about 6: the one where Oz visits to give him the Ring of Amara, the one where Willow drops in to restore Angelus soul, and any of the times that Eliza Dushku stopped in for a little big city ass-kicking. You get the picture: Crossovers! I tried again 2 times in later seasons and could not understand what the hell was going on.

Review: "Fright Night"

Colin Farrell has something of a wolf's reputation as a celebrity and it serves him well in Fright Night, a remake of the 1985 vampire comedy, while playing a shameless monster. Yet, for all his rabid dog violence as vampire Jerry -- "a terrible name for a vampire!" --  the most adorable moment in his performance is positively kittenish. While stepping around a beam of sunlight during one action setpiece he hisses at it with instinctual annoyance. You can't scare sunlight away, dumb Jerry! It's a silly bit of actorly business but the new Fright Night soars whenever the cast or director are having a bloody good time.  Good times at the movies are as infectious as vampirism, though thankfully more common.

READ THE REST AT TOWLEROAD

I'm eager to see the original now that I've seen this. (Yes, it's true. I never have)

5 Frames That Accurately Describe Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" Sequel Plans

"Roy Batty" being Blade Runner and "Tyrell" being Ridley Scott, you see.

 This doesn't end well for Tyrell/Ridley.

Ridley Scott has never been able to keep his hands off his seminal scifi masterwork Blade Runner (1982) always smudging the prints with his restless dirty fingers. Though we'll always love him for making it it's going to be the death of him (artistically) if he proceeds with the sequel/prequel/whatever. The creation will turn against the creator. It's an inevitability.

Take Three: Max von Sydow

Craig (from Dark Eye Socket) here with another Take Three. Today: Max von Sydow

Take One: Hour of the Wolf (1968)
It goes without saying, of course, that a von Sydow Take Three wouldn’t feel right unless one of them was an Ingmar Bergman film. All three could’ve been, but the aim is to err on the side of variety whenever possible. They made 11 films together: The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Shame and The Passion of Anna are all classics. But Hour of the Wolf, in which von Sydow plays a painter losing his grip on his sanity, doesn’t always get the high mention it deserves. It contains some of von Sydow’s best work in any film, for any director.

With his handsomely regal face, von Sydow boldly dominates the film. His sinisterly unhinged stillness and almost unreadable presence cement the notion that he’s a tormented artist uncertain of his place in the world. He's visited by people, possibly demons in human disguise, who embody his trauma, his shame. In a possibly imagined, probably symbolic, but definitely surreal dinner scene von Sydow’s deathly wan countenance crumples in extreme close-up. His mind seems to deteriorate due to the inane banter of the chattering souls surrounding him. (No one said Bergman’s personal parables were cheery.) Von Sydow masters depression and disgust like breathing and underplays his scenes like a covert pro. With complete skill von Sydow does as much as an actor can to attempt to place the viewer inside his character’s brain.

Take Two: The Exorcist (1973)
I don’t think it’s via Jeez himself, but, Christ!, the power of character acting compels me... to write about Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist for this Take.

Demonic Possession and Demonic Behavior after the jump

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"The Runelords", "Game of Thrones" and the Problem of Endings

Longtime readers know that Nathaniel has a wee problem with addiction to fantasy literature. This proclivity is more masochistic curse than pleasureable blessing since fantasy literature is allergic to endings and there are few things Nathaniel likes more in storytelling than a brilliant finale. 

So last night I finished the first book of the The Runelords series "The Sum of All Men" by David Farland. I had heard that it would eventually be a movie so when my brother suggested I read it last month on my vacation, I gladly grabbed it for the airplane time. [Note: turns out the movie option ran out last year and Farland has the rights again.] The book concerns the young naive prince Gaborn whose quest to win the heart of a neighboring kingdom's progressive idealistic princess Iome is interrupted by an invading army of the Runelord Raj Athan who seeks to become "The Sum of All Men".

The conceit of The Runelords world is that, through magic rituals, people can gift their best attributes to others creating a stratified world where those in power are granted more and more of it as people sell their most economically viable asset to them be that beauty, strength, vision, intelligence, stamina (and everything else). It's sort of like the vampire economy that the USA is dealing with now as the rich and powerful decimate the weaker middle class in order to gain more and more and more (to infinity and beyond) for themselves to feed their insatiable greed and misplaced sense of entitlement. Never mind that once a Runelord has the strength of 1000 men, it hardly makes a difference to him if he has the strength of 1001... but it sure as hell matters to the weakling 1,001st man he's left behind in his greedy conquest. 

But let's not get into the ever-miserable discussion of the downward spiral of the actual world we live in. We're talking books and movies, the fake world we prefer to dream of!

Gandalf the Grey... no, WHITE. Most of the major characters in the book are those who have received "endowments" from others so they're all amazingly beautiful or super strong or what not; superheroes in medieval frocks and cloaks if you will. If they're not runelords they're wizards. The major wizard Binneman is basically Gandalf since he's very powerful, very wise, very old and his hair and wardrobe changes colors once he moves to the next stage of his power. But then, what wizard isn't Gandalf? He casts a long long shadow on fantasy literature.

More on Game of Thrones (with one major spoiler that's actually the absence of a plot development rather than a plot point) and The Runelords and franchise filmmaking after the jump.

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