New Series: The Invisibles

So, I've decided, in the interest of writing something every day, this blog needs a project. Something to keep me coming back every single day, and which will be interesting to me, if no one else. So, I've decided that, every day for the next 59 days, I'm going to be discussing, reviewing, and analyzing one issue of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

For those who don't know, The Invisibles is a comic series, published by Vertigo from 1994 until 1999. Morrison started on it after finishing his run on Doom Patrol (a team of crippled people, led by a crippled man, fighting crippled villains - Morrison didn't invent that premise, he just realized how weird it was), and it still probably stands as his magnum opus. Morrison is best known these days for playing in other people's sandbox - New X-Men, All-Star Superman, Final Crisis, Batman - finding new, weird, inventive spins on existing characters. The Invisibles is its own universe, and that means that it's a place where Grant can get really, really weird.

On the surface, The Invisibles is the story of good vs. evil, about finding enlightenment. At times, it mimics the structure of Campbell's Hero's Journey and magical initiation. Up on the surface, it's pulp - kick-ass bald men with guns and fetish masks shooting horrifying monsters that want to cut off your dick and rape your brain.

That's just the suit it's wearing, though, the mold it's been poured into. Quoting GM in the column at the back of the first issue:

"- a comic about everything: action, philosophy, paranoia, sex, magic, biography, travel, drugs, religion, UFOs... you can make your own list."

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional reviewer. I'm not even a particularly GOOD reviewer. But I love this book, and I wanted to examine why. These posts may be inaccurate, stupid, completely wrong. But here goes. Down the rabbithole.

...And so we return and begin again.

Five movies you haven't seen, that maybe you should see? I don't know.

BLOG!

Having written two blogposts in the last year on this thing, and having taken one of those down on the grounds that it was 'stupid,' I've decided that there's no choice. I've got to break some boundaries. I've got to hit a homer. I've got to do what no man hath dared to: I'm going to write a LIST OF MOVIES I LIKE.

But not just movies I like! That wouldn't be pretentious enough. No, this is a list of movies I like... That YOU, the Unwashed Masses, haven't seen. So, with one cry of my catchphrase (BLOGS IS LIKE BACON AND EGGS!), let's get started.

BLOGS IS LIKE BACON AND EGGS!


5 (We are starting from the lower parts of the list, and then proceeding mathematically in a direction): Primer


Primer is a movie about how people are assholes. Two guys invent a time travel box, and then they are assholes with it. The time travel operates on "Futurama" rules, which is to say, you are going to think your time-double is an asshole and beat him up.

BUT SERIOUSLY. Primer was made for couch-cushion money and looks it. The acting is naturalistic (bad), there are NO effects, special or otherwise, and the movie is intentionally confusing. It has exactly one thing going for it, and that is that the guy who wrote, directed, scored, and starred in it thought really, REALLY hard about time travel before he made it. And hence, the movie is AWESOME.


It is free on the Youbtubues, and you should watch it.


IV (I DON'T SPEAK LATIN BUT I COUNT IT): Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

This is a movie about how people are assholes. The specific assholes here: MURDERERS.

Behind the Mask has the dumbest premise ever: Hey, what if slasher killers were real? What if a new one was getting ready to start? It would be awesome to make a documentary about that, right?

RIGHT. I know I threw you when I called the premise dumb earlier, but it actually makes for a great, smart movie. Most of the credit for that goes to the guy playing the titular (tee-hee) Leslie Vernon. He is charming, bouncy, hyper, like a young Jim Carrey, except that one seeks to destroy happiness and joy and the other one just wants to kill people do you SEE WHAT I DID THERE

The movie examines all the cliches of the slasher film, except this time from the killer's point of view. There is a lot of pseudo-philosophical nonsense about the purity of the "Final Girl" and the power of phallic objects, and it completely works as a mockery of the self-serious analysis of the horror genre. This isn't "Scream," where Halloween is a movie we've all seen, this is a world where Mike Meyers is a known murderer, and the movie gets a lot of fun out of the idea that this is a "tradition" that the character is entering into.


The most interesting stuff happens when the movie flirts with reality. The documentary crew is watching, even in a few cases, helping, Leslie prepare to brutally murder several people. This whole part would fall apart without Nathan Baesal, who plays Leslie. His gleeful energy makes it really easy to get into the spirit of what he's doing, and makes it all the more disorienting when it falls away and you can see the killer inside.

This movie is so good, I stopped shouting jokes while writing about it. You should check it out. BUTTS!


¡Tres! (HOLA AMIGOS YO HABLO FRENCH): In The Loop

This is a movie about how people are assholes.

Did you know that America and probably England are at war right now? Not with each other, but with tear. Tear apparently lives in Iraq and Afghanhisthan(?), because those are the places we invade and blow up and etc.

In the Loop is a funny fictionalized story about how we started killing all those people we killed. A bumbling (everyone in this movie is either bumbling or yelling) British minister (like a priest but with gov'ment) says that war is unforseeable. This causes him to become the center of what, for the sake of politeness, I will call a political shitstorm.

The Chief Shit-Weather-Wizard and Yelling King is Malcolm Tucker. The conflict between him and the minister is the basic one of the whole movie: Everyone in power is either evil or useless. A few of the characters are evil AND useless, so at least they are being represented.


This movie produces two kinds of laughs (man, that's a lot of duality going on around here. Note to self: am I enough of a bullshitter to throw the word Manichean in here without seeming like an asshole), a Manichean divide between humor types. One kind of laugh is "OMG that was some incredibly amazing swearing LOL," which is fair, because this movie has the best, funniest swearing in the world. The other kind is "Oh God I have a horrible suspicion that this movie is more accurate than not I had better laugh so no one notices me killing myself ha ha ha haaaaa."

It is very gud I liked it a lot.


2 (MANICHEAN!!!!!) Southland Tales

This is a movie about how people are assholes.

I will now, in a single paragraph, attempt to describe Southland Tales to you. Spoilers follow. Let me just reaaaach over for my bottle of Malort and my capslock...

OKAY SO THE ROCK PLAYS THE ROCK EXCEPT HE HAS AMNESIA AND WALLACE SHAWN PLAYS AN EVIL WIZARD IN A CAPE AND HE HAS HARNESSED THE TIDE TO MAKE FLUID KARMA WHICH IS BOTH A DRUG AND AN ALTERNATE FUEL SOURCE AND HE MAKES OUT WITH BAI LING AND OH GOD JON LOVITZ HAS SILVER HAIR AND HE MURDERS PEOPLE AND THEN QUOTES PHILIP K DICK WAIT DID I MENTION THE CGI CAR COMMERCIALS WHERE THE CARS FUCK LIKE LITERALLY ONE CAR EXTENDS ITS TAILPIPE LIKE A DICK AND PUTS IT IN THE OTHER CAR'S VAGINA SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT PLAYS IDENTICAL TWINS WHO ARE ACTUALLY TIME CLONES (SPOILERS) AND THE ROCK CONSTANTLY OSCILLATES BETWEEN PLAYING A CHARACTER FROM THE SCREENPLAY HE WROTE WITH SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR (PORN STAR!) AND A SCARED LITTLE KID WHO TWIDDLES HIS FINGERS AND THEN JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE STARES INTO THE CAMERA AND LIP SYNCS A KILLERS SONG AND THERE WAS A NUCLEAR ATTACK ON TEXAS AND NOW THE DAD FROM DONNIE DARKO IS A REPUBLICAN SENATOR AND THERE ARE CAMERAS EVERYWHERE, MAN, THEY'RE WATCHING YOU AND THERE IS AN UNDERGROUND INTERNET RUN BY KEVIN SMITH IN OLD MAN MAKEUP NOT TO MENTION THE CLIMAX TAKES PLACE ON A MEGAZEPPELIN WHERE THE ROCK DECLARES THAT PIMPS DON'T COMMIT SUICIDE AND BOOGER FROM REVENGE OF THE NERDS TALKS ABOUT A RIFT IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION AND WHAT THEY DID WITH IT (DIRECT QUOTE: WE SHOT MONKEYS INTO IT) AND CHERI O'TERI IS KILLING PEOPLE AND IT'S AN APOCALYPTIC POLITICAL SATIRE SCIENCE FICTION COMEDY ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD.

The first time I watched Southland Tales was the closest I've ever felt to losing my mind.


Neo: Zero Effect

This is a movie about finding grace in a world where people are assholes.

This is another one of those movies where the stats say it should be crap. A first-time writer/director making a modern-day tragic-comic loose adaptation of Sherlock Holmes with Bill Pullman as Holmes and Ben Stiller as his Watson? Come on.

But the film makes its case from the first moments and never lets up. The opening scenes are a beautiful bit of character building. Steve Arlo, played by Stiller, meets with a nervous potential client and begins to sell him on why he needs his employer, the mysterious detective Darryl Zero. He speaks of a man of complete secrecy and total professionalism, capable of unraveling the most devious schemes with a few seconds of careful observation.

This scene cuts back and forth with another, where Arlo, at a bar with his friend, endlessly bemoans the weirdness of the freak he works for. Rude, incredibly awkward, helpless in any interaction not directly related to his work, Zero is painted as an irritating, paranoid near-psychotic. And the joy of the movie is that both scenes are shown to be fundamentally true.

I have never regarded Pullman as an amazing actor, but he wears the skin of Zero extremely well. When on the case, we're in his head, listening as he narrates to himself the art of his work as he delves into an intricate blackmailing plot. At the same time, we seem him run Arlo ragged with weird demands and intense, whiny neediness. He's that strangest of things - a likable, vulnerable asshole.

His interactions lead him to a woman named Gloria Sullivan, played by Kim Dickens. Maybe it's just my predilection for short-haired women, but Dickens gives an amazingly strong, sexy performance. She's our Irene Adler - less film noir femme fatale than honorable opponent, and the romantic elements introduced with her character give Zero's a chance to expand beyond quirks into an actual person.

So yeah. A funny, emotionally satisfying, interesting mystery story, with an engagingly fucked up Holmes and a uniformly strong cast. I love this movie. You should find it, if you can.


SO MUCH EARNESTNESS POOP FART LIST OVER

Lex and Bruce 2

Two characters. Both are extremely successful businessman, usually depicted (when not dressed for mayhem) in expensive suits. Extremely ambitious. Troubled childhoods. And both, through years of hard work and obsession, have pushed themselves to the limits of what the human body and mind have achieved. Neither has superpowers, and both have complicated relationships with a non-human who, by a quirk of birth (and parentage, which is not the same thing here) has dwarfed everything they have ever done. One is, more often than not, this alien's greatest friend. The other is his most hated enemy.

There's an idea that every great hero, at some point, has to fight himself. Some shadow version who reflects his strengths and especially his weaknesses, which must be overcome to show that he understands himself. Comic books, with their love of presenting themselves as modern mythology, embrace this idea all over the place. Batman, whose obsession and trauma push him to the edge of human endurance, grapples constantly with a laughing clown who is, essentially, the avatar of madness. Green Lantern has the fallen corpsman Sinestro (who has of course spawned an entire shadow-corps of fear-based psychotics). Hell, the Flash has a recurring character literally named "Reverse Flash".

Superman is not immune to this trope. Doomsday, the hulking monster that killed Supes back in the '90s, is Superman's raw force unleavened with mind or compassion. And of course there's Bizarro, the backwards Superman. Bizarro's interesting because he's usually presented as a kind of tragic, ineffectual figure. It's almost as if Superman is so good that even his imperfect, backwards copy absorbs some of that inherent good. And of course, there's the fact that a true, "shadow" Superman would be able to do so much damage that he'd wreck the story-telling universe. Superman, as Grant Morrison has put forward at times, Wins. He always wins, because he is Superman. (Morrison, of course, has actually written a shadow Superman, the bullying, cruel, hateful Ultraman who plays the "Token Evil Teammate" role in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond). Trying to reflect that "winning" quality would be hard to do without a) wrecking the universe) or b) making the villain seem ineffectual (although it would be interesting in the context of the question: Does Superman win because he is perfectly good, or are those two qualities separate? But I digress).

Where was I? Lex and Bruce? Right.

Lex Luthor, Superman's most iconic foe, is NOT a Shadow. Lex is human where Clark is alien, weak where he is strong, utterly self-centered where he is compassionate almost by definition. Lex is humanity denying outside salvation. He is vain and he hates feeling powerless. He is also an extremely intelligent, ambitious, successful businessman. He often bemoans the fact that, if not for Superman, he would rule Metropolis without question, and he makes a compelling case.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne has spent years turning his body and mind into the perfect crime-fighting weapons. He has unlimited resources, but has sacrificed family and love any number of times in order to wage his crusade. Unlike Superman, he doesn't fight out of compassion - he fights because he's taking a kind of extended, operatic vengeance on the very idea of crime.

And when compared to Superman, comic writers do everything they can to make him as cool as The Man of Steel, or cooler. When the two fight, Bruce seems to win more than Clark does. Makes sense because a) massively more powerful person winning every time is boring, but b) also because there's a part of us that WANTS to see him win. He's the underdog, and he's us. We want to see a human win, but it can't be Lex Luthor, because he's the bad guy (and the conventions of the medium say that the good guys always win), so Bruce wins for him. It's still a brilliant HUMAN defeating the "perfect" man.

Bruce and Lex are both humanity at the very edges of what they can reach. Superman is comforting because he's "The Man of Tomorrow," the perfect people we could eventually be. He's a dare to be better tomorrow. Batman is an indictment, because he's the man of today. There's a sneer, buried at the heart of the character - if you cared enough, if you were willing to work hard enough, you could have been this good, too. And every time we refuse the help of someone who's "better" than we are, every time we care more about ourselves more than others, every time we get scared that the world has left us powerless and that fear makes us do something selfish or stupid, well, that's Lex. He's the man of today, too. We can pretend he's the man of yesterday, of course, that we've left him and his big green and purple armor behind us. But he's going to keep popping up.

Huh. I appear to have accidentally divided Superman, Batman, and Lex into a sort of pseudo-Freudian trinity. That wasn't the intent when I started this, but it seems inescapable: What we might be someday, what we could be today, what we are right now. Maybe it comes down to this: Lex Luthor wants superpowers, lusts after them, would kill hundreds and thousands to get them. I know the feeling, if not the extreme of the desire. Batman could care less - he has accepted and modified himself, instead of lusting after external power.