What I Did On My Summer Vacation (part 1)

Despite efforts, the blog has fallen into a classic summer lull. Oddly, the lull was not borne of my annual “I’m too drunk in the sun to type” excuse. The oppressive heat and lack of funds moderated my summer shenanigans somewhat this year. That doesn’t mean there weren’t great times and enlightening cultural experiences but these things were less frequent and more intimate then in summers past.

This being the first day of autumn, I thought I would play catch up and hash together a random list of cultural morsels that nourished me through the summer heat.

If summer 2010 had a recurring iconography it was cephalopodic in nature. The cultural interest in all things tentacled transcended the previous subcultural preoccupations with Tentacle Hentai (yeah, I’m unwilling to dig for link there) and Lovecraft's Great Old One Cthulhu into a quirk of the zeitgeist more abstract and harder to pin down.

Personally the main agent of this tentacular assault was China Mieville’s excellent novel Kraken. Kraken is an immersive work of urban fantastic. Set in modern day London, it’s plot centers around the theft of the preserved specimen of a giant squid from the British Museum an act that exposes a hidden culture of peculiar cults and practitioners of esoteric arts that thrives beneath the city’s surface. My absolute favorite moment in the novel is an argument that breaks out between an evil animate back tattoo and The Sea (minor spoilers: The Sea always wins). Appropriately, I read the novel on the beach and with plenty of The Kraken: Black Spiced Rum. Kraken Rum is tasty tar-flavored (in a good way I swear) liquor that awakens a peculiar form of nautical madness in he who dare partake of the sweet black liquid (also it makes a wicked Dark & Stormy).

I’m not usually one for summer movies, but I thought Inception was as good, if not better than, the hype. You couldn't say that about a lot of movies this year. I also really enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I think both films re-purpose the classic big Hollywood thriller. Inception brings the metaphysical subtext to the forefront and uses CGI shock and awe to find new methods of insight into the internal life of its characters. Dragon Tattoo takes the exhausted 1990s suspense thriller (think cleverly titled Morgan Freeman / Ashley Judd vehicle based on novel by famous author) and scrubs it clean of cliche and patronizing sentimentality. The film actively works against your generic preconceptions, thereby knocking the viewer off guard and opening up space for her to be thrilled and terrified again.

On Netflix, I was recently hypnotized by The Red Riding Trilogy. The pace and texture are absolutely engrossing but it is so very bleak. I feel like I haven’t quite figured out what makes it such an enthralling experience yet. I’m trying to get up the bottle to watch it all again.

The best thing on television this summer has yet to come to the US. Moffat and Gattis Holmes for the 21st century, Sherlock, is one of the most intelligent and exhilarating pieces of television in recent memory There is a wonderful mix of original Holmes spirit and mythology with invigorating modern narrative and visual styles. The acting is first rate, you cannot take your yes off of Cumberbatch’s Holmes for fear of missing some lovely nuance and yet Martin Freeman, as an Afghanistan veteran Dr. Watson, more than holds his own, adding depth to a show that could easily become one dimensional and shticky. Sherlock premieres on PBS in the US end of October. I cannot recommend it enough.

I also love Brian Cox’s new science series Wonders of the Solar System. Cox’s excitement for science is wickedly contagious. The show does a amazing job of moving from the very small, personal and even mundane to the unfathomably large. Wonders is the perfect title for the series. When at it’s best, it instills in you a palpable feeling of wonder for the immensity of the universe that you may not have experienced since you were a child.

I don’t read many comics these days. The shelf space for non-super hero, original pulp comics has shrunk considerably but there are still a few wonderful gems to be discovered. Best of the lot as far as I’m concerned is Brandon Graham’s King City. Graham’s world building vision and attention to minute detail generate a thoroughly immersive alternate reality. There is an energy and a surreal flavor to KC that reminds me of classic Milligan and McCarthy books from the 80s. While the visual style re-purposes manga and European influences into something totally unique.

Ba and Moon’s Daytripper is personal favorite as well. Daytripper manages to be both narratively light and nimble and still pack a very powerful and personal emotional punch. I think this is the product of both the creators unique visual storytelling abilities and the ingenious narrative device that hinges the individual stories together (I’m not going to spoil it for you, you’re going to have to read it yourself)

The full color, Marvel published, return of Casanova has been a joy. If possible, i may love the book more now than the first time around. My friend J.B. Love’s Boondock Saints two-parter with BS’s creator Troy Duffy, In Nomini Patris is a filthy, fast paced, romp, that takes the condensed essence of what makes the films so much fun and adds a fine layer of depth to the Bros. MacManus mythos (the title returns with another limited series, The Head of the Snake,next month . Some serious grime and grit can also be found in Kody Chamberlain’s Sweets, an atmospheric crime procedural set in New Orleans. With two issues out so far Sweets lured me in with gorgeous art and a subtle narrative pace and then left me wanting more. Thankfully the next issue is due out in a few weeks.

[I’m going to put a pin in here and pick up tomorrow with the summers best music.]

Stray Thoughts on Rebirth of a Nation

I finally manged to catch the theatrical version of Paul D. Miller / DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation at MOMA last night and at the end of the day it seems like a missed opportunity for Miller. To be fair I'm going to assume that the performance piece is significantly more free and interesting then the stultified for dvd version we saw. The inane voice over and ham-fisted introduction and prologue sections really hurt the overall product. The narrator is either pointing out what is blatantly obvious or making intelligence generalities or overreaching inferences. The project was to remix the original silent film in order to draw out and deconstruct the racial supremacist imagery and ideology embedded in it. If you need to explain to the viewer what they are seeing, or draw out connections to the present day, then it project has failed and should have been taken back to the editing room. I'm not certain Miller's film isn't capable of standing on its own feet, it probably is, but in this presentation it's never given the chance.

Once you get through the intro and tune out the intermittent narration things get better. The score, the work of Spooky in collaboration with Kronos Quartet is pretty haunting and subtle. It works best when it is counteracting the action on the screen, creating moments of still anticipation where there would be dramatic builds and feelings of emotionless syncopated progression where the original film would have crescendos. That said, I really wanted there would be more slicing, dicing and re-contextualizing of the original film. I wanted further use of the digital effects which appear so sparingly and with such little conviction or courage as to render themselves ineffective. It's only in the climatic five or so minutes that the "DJ as Director" lets rip and begins using focusing and perspective effect in connection with the inserted digital graph lines to deconstruct the nuanced textures of race and power at play within the scenes. If the entire piece was worked over in this manner I think it would be much more provocative and insightful. Instead the film reads more like a paired down and re-scored version of the original than a insight fueling deconstruction.

What's most interesting to me about Griffith's original Birth of a Nation is that it's really the first American movie blockbuster. the film is encoded in to the very core DNA of the US Summer Blockbuster and main stream film as a whole. Griffith's stylistic tricks used to elicit extremes of emotion in large audiences are part of movie history and I don't believe you can separate those theatrical devices from the sexist, racist and classist ideologies that underpin the film. I wish I had and encyclopedic knowledge of film, because I'm certain one could trace many of the racially charged shots in Griffith's film throughout the history of movies. That idiotic/menacing black-faced grin repeated endlessly throughout Hollywood's cannon right up to the present day. I think that would be more telling, more informative to the present moment, than the timid deconstruction that has ended up on the Rebirth DVD.