It's gonna take a Superman to sweep me off my feet

[alexsarll]

...which title I pick not just because the song's been stuck in my head since Saturday's Prom Night, but because the first issue of Grant Morrison's 'Superman Beyond 3D' is the comic I was hoping and expecting Final Crisis would be. Only in one spread does the 3D effect have quite the same mind-twisting force as it did in the Blazing World scenes of Alan Moore's Black Dossier, but even if for the rest of the issue it's just a gimmick then hey, 3D is a pretty cool gimmick. And this...this is what I want from a Grant Morrison Event. Dead worlds! Limbo! Dr Manhattan with the serial numbers filed off! Cross-time lunacy and alternate heroes and giant crashing spaceships and only Superman left to save the day. It's as if Levitzseid has got Grant enchained at the heart of his monstrous engine of destruction, perverting his mighty Morrison powers in the furtherance of DC's Anti-Fun Equation...but Grant's too good to go down without a fight, and so by some ludicrous contrivance freed an aspect of himself to write a good Final Crisis comic.
The second best comic of last week, incidentally, was the conclusion to Book One of Warren Ellis' Doktor Sleepless. Just when I was worried we were getting a Planetary-style loss of focus, it turns out that the mysticism and the techno-evangelism have a perfectly sensible reason for being in the same book. I think we were perhaps meant to come away from the book with the idea that Doktor Sleepless is not the hero after all; personally, I'm backing him all the way.

Speaking of mad science: never mind the cure for cancer - isn't unlocking telomere structure the first step on the road to immortality in the Fall Revolution books?

Finally got round to watching Brokeback Mountain on Sunday - yes, I know, I fail at gay. I was a bit puzzled at first; I was expecting it to be one of those manly American buddy movies where you're thinking guys, just bone already - except then they do. But whether this was intended or not, I really didn't feel any chemistry off them until it happened. Which worked, I think. As did the scenery, obviously; I'm sure if that hadn't been so beautifully, expansively shot then the film would never have been able to cross over to the extent that it did. I wasn't convinced by the flashbacks - I thought they upset a flow which was otherwise brilliantly established - but otherwise, it's just such a well-judged film. Details which don't sit right at first (are the women being deliberately established as deadening forces, in the manner beloved of misogynist homosexuals?) come clear in time: it's not that the women are dead hands, it's that society is. A homophobic rural society especially, but not exclusively; even if Jack and Ennis had settled down somewhere nice and friendly just outside San Francisco, the mere fact of domesticity would mean what they had couldn't stay as pure as it was when it was born up on Brokeback Mountain.
(For another consideration of how uneasily passion sits in a mundane world, consider My Zinc Bed, which features excellent performances from Jonathan Pryce and Paddy Considine, and a rather strange accent from Uma Thurman. Of course, neither of these made me cry a fraction as much as Kiki's Delivery Service; I already know how malformed this world is, it's seeing the contrast of what a decent one would be like which breaks me down)

Comments

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'd assumed that this, like Porco Rosso and even Howl to some extent, were set in a non-specific not-quite-Europe, but the IMDB trivia page is very specific about Kiki at least:
During the production phase, Miyazaki and his artists traveled to Sweden to research for the film. The photographs they took of Stockholm and Visby, formed the basis of the fictional city of Koriko. The city also contains elements of Lisbon, Paris, San Francisco, and Milan.
The story takes place in an alternative 1950s Europe where WWI and WWII never happened. Miyazaki has been quoted saying that the fictional city of Kokiro has one side on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the other on the Baltic Sea.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

An ideal mid-size city, sure - but the capital would need at least a little London.

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

i dont know why but i just wasnt all that touched by kiki's delivery service. i mean its a nice story and has its sad moments like when she cant speak to jiji but overall the story doesnt touch the highs and lows of nausicaa, laputa, princess mononoke, spirited away or howls moving castle. i know it predated a few of them but even totoro as a similarly young film was more dramatic. maybe i am just easily underwhelmed.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

No, it's not Totoro, but what is? And part of me prefers those earlier, gentler Ghiblis to the later stuff where it's more conventionally plot-driven. They feel more pristine - like Wodehouse, they make almost no concessions to the outside world.

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

i actually agree. everything from princess monokoke and earlier is great. lots of nature and principles of its beauty which i love. the line in laputa "Take root in the ground, live in harmony with the wind, plant your seeds in the Winter, and rejoice with the birds in the coming of Spring" and it sums up my feelings of the early ghiblis.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I can see why Spirited Away was the big crossover hit, but as is so often the case, for myself I would much rather have done without the audience identification character and just been plunged into the otherworld.