Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (a movie review post)

It's been a long time since I was actively collecting and reading comics -- the 90s, in fact -- so I missed out on Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen and all of that. I keep up enough with the comics world to have a vague idea of what's going on, so I knew of their existence, but I've never read any of their comics. Spider-Ham, on the other hand... Well, I'm sure I have some Spider-Ham issues around somewhere. All of that to say that I really had no special knowledge going into this movie. All you need is the basic Spider-Man origin of a teenager being bitten by a radioactive spider (and the movie will fill you in on that much) to be able to sit down and enjoy this movie.

And there's no good reason for you not to enjoy this movie. It's full of humor and warmth and action and danger and humor. It will touch your heart. Unless your heart is full of gristle and is three sizes too small.

This includes those of you out there saying, "Not another Spider-Man movie!" because this is not just another Spider-Man movie. Sure, "Spider-Man" is in this movie, but the movie is about Mile Morales, not just another Spider-Man. Which is not to say that Miles is not a Spider-Man, because he is, but this isn't just another movie about Peter Parker, though it's that, too.

The thing I find most curious about Spider-verse is the choice of the Kingpin as the main villain. He's not a character you see much around Spider-Man anymore, despite his origin in The Amazing Spider-Man #50. Well, okay, as I already said, I don't read comics much anymore, so what do I know? Well, what I know is that Kingpin made a major shift over to Daredevil in the late 80s/early 90s and has supposedly been tormenting Murdock since then. And maybe the Punisher.

None of which is to say that Kingpin is a bad choice. He works well as the villain here, for reasons I won't say because they're a bit spoilery.

In fact, the whole movie works well, so much so that I want to see it again. And so do my kids, so that was a triple win.

There are a lot of... I suppose people would call them Easter eggs, but I think they're more like "in-jokes." Whatever you call them, I did notice that there were things that I laughed at that my kids didn't because they don't have the Spider-history that I have. Also, they didn't notice that they missed anything, so it's not impactful on the movie watching experience if you don't know anything about Spider-Man.

All of which is to say that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse is a great film and a must-see for any Spider-Man fan. And, if you're not a Spider-Man fan, you should probably see it anyway, because it really is a very good movie. Touching and heartwarming and all of that.

eBay and what I'm selling this week (6/25)

Refer back to this post for the background.

Here's what I have going this week:

Yes, that's the first appearance of Deadpool. I know you want it. You can find it here.

Are you guilty? Find it here.

Or do you have fear?

Or have you gone COSMIC?

All that plus GI Joe comics, more of all those comics above, plus Mage Knight, and Lord of the Rings figures!

Go get some stuff!

Let's Talk Marvel and Netflix

The key to Marvel's success has always been integration. That was the heart of Stan Lee's original vision for the "universe," a place where all heroes (and us) existed simultaneously and, therefore, could interact with each other in one cohesive existence. It was a radical new approach to superhero comics (and one that DC still has not figured out, having had to relaunch their entire universe as recently as 2016, the second time they've done that this decade). Marvel has continued to model this initial idea throughout their history, carrying it into the MCU and to their various Netflix series.

And, yes, I know I'm a little late to the whole Netflix game (as far as reviews go), but I don't watch a lot of TV and never binge, so it takes me a while to get through these shows. However, now that I've finally finished The Defenders, I figured it was time to weigh in on the MNU (Marvel Netflix Universe); as such, this will be more like thoughts rather than any kind of review.

Let's go in order:

Daredevil: Overall, I thought Daredevil was great. It has the gritty feel of the Frank Miller era of the character with all of the struggles that come with that. They gave the series the right feel to make it believable as existing just beneath the MCU, beneath in that what's going on with Daredevil and his associates is beneath the notice of the "bigger" heroes dealing with global issues. And Charlie Cox is great in the role.

They also managed to avoid what was probably the biggest potential pitfall of introducing Daredevil as a character: the Hand. Despite the fact that this is a superhero show, this isn't the 80s anymore, and a secret organization of ninjas is actually less believable than a Norse god with a flying hammer or a guy who turns into a big, green rage monster.

What they didn't do well was the Kingpin, which is why I have to say the show is "overall" great and not just that it's a great show. Vincent D'Onofrio is wretched in the role, a whiny man-baby. Maybe it's not his fault; I'm not familiar enough with him as an actor to know if it was him or the writing or directing. What I know is that the Kingpin of the TV series is a pale reflection of the Kingpin of the comics, and I hated him. Not in a good way. It made me wish for Michael Clarke Duncan; now, there was a real Kingpin.

Then there's the Punisher... What a controversial character for our time. For all times since he was created, actually. The Daredevil/Punisher conflict is classic, and they did a great job with the introduction of Frank Castle and making him an appropriate anti-hero to go along with Matt Murdock.

Jessica Jones: A good, solid series. I like the character, and Krysten Ritter does a great job with her. David Tennant was fantastic as Kilgrave, as fantastic as D'Onofrio was un-fantastic. Of course, I'm also biased as Tennant goes: He was the second best Doctor ever. It was also nice to see the re-emergence of Carrie-Anne Moss.

But I don't thin they handled the story as well in this one. Strong start, wobbly finish. Don't ask me what about it; I don't, at this point, remember. Look, mind control is a powerful ability, maybe too powerful for what they were working with. It just felt like some of what they were doing toward the end of the series was... a little tenuous at best.

However, Mike Colter was great as Luke Cage, and I thought it was cool that they introduced him in this series.

Speaking of
Luke Cage: I wanted to like this show much more than I actually ended up liking it. Which is unfortunate because, as I said, in Jessica Jones, Mike Colter was great. And, actually, again in The Defenders, he is great. But in his own show...?

Okay, to be fair, I don't think it's him, because the problem was with all of the actors, which means, probably, the problem was with the director. Everyone had this slow, overly enunciated speech, so much so that it was distracting and felt unnatural. It's not at all how Colter delivered his lines in either Jones or the Defenders, so it was something specific to the Cage series. Erik LaRay Harvey suffered from it the most. He became unbelievable as a villain.

And he was already unbelievable as a villain, which is not to say that he was precisely unbelievable, but he was so cliche -- the out-of-favor half brother -- as to be unbelievable.

None of which is to say that I didn't like Luke Cage, but, by the time I got around to watching it, so many people were talking about it as if it was the best thing ever that I expected more out of it.

Having said all of that, Simone Missick was great as Misty Knight, though that was countered by Mahershala Ali being wasted in his role.

Which brings us to the apparently reviled Iron Fist.

I'm going to admit that I don't really understand the intense negative reaction to this show. It feels like one of those things that everyone decided not to like before they actually watched it, the reverse of everyone deciding they loved Luke Cage before they actually watched it. It's not that I don't understand that on the surface the show looks like just another rich, white super hero but, really, Iron Fist is much more nuanced than that. Which I don't want to get into because I'm not defending some white superhero.

The story is solid, and it leans on the origin of the character from the comic, just as Luke Cage, and all of Marvel's properties have so far, and I like that about what Marvel has been doing. They give the fans of the characters from the comics a thread to connect them rather than reinventing the character as something or someone s/he never was.

So, yeah, I liked the show.

And, man, I really want there to be some kind of Power Man and Iron Fist series, even if that's not what the call it.

Hmm... also, they really develop the Hand in the Iron Fist series which sets us up nicely for
The Defenders: Once again, Marvel shows us that they are the masters at taking disparate threads and drawing them together into one cohesive story. It's nice to see all of these characters come together, and not just the heroes, the side characters, too. In fact, it's the side characters who, in many ways, breathe real life into all of these series: Claire Temple, Foggy Nelson, Karen Page. Stick.

I like Stick.

Also Trish Walker and Misty Knight. I don't want to make it seem like it's only the Daredevil side characters I like. They just came first and have woven themselves through many of the other series as well, especially Claire. And Rosario Dawson is really good in the role.

So they pull all of these characters together and manage to mostly avoid the cliche "hero meets hero and so must fight"... but, well, where that does happen, it really works. Really. And that's all I'm going to say about that because I don't want to be all spoilery for anyone who is farther behind than I am.

So they pull all of these characters together to, of course, face off against a menace that no single one of them could handle alone. They do it well. The first half of the series is brilliant. Which brings us to the only weakness of the series: This conflict has been building and building through several of the other individual series and, then, it's just... over. It felt too abrupt to me. Too quick and easy. Not that it was easy, but... Yeah...

It's probably just me.

But, overall, still great. I'm looking forward to more.
Of all of it.
I can't wait to see where it goes and what other characters come in.

What Marvel is doing with Movies and TV is actually kind of amazing. The kind of thing that was said could never be done because the audience would never go for intricate, in depth, long term stories. I think it was probably just the (old, white) executives who couldn't understand intricate, in depth, long term stories. All I can say is that it's about time.

Jurassic World (a movie review post)

The first thing I want to say about Jurassic World is that it was much better than I expected it to be. Much. I liked Jurassic Park well enough but the sequels were... well, they were less than good. None of it inspired high expectations from a movie that has the appearance of being nothing more than a car on the Chris Pratt star train. Which is nothing against Chris Pratt, because I've been a fan of his since season one of Parks and Recreation.

Since we're already talking about Pratt, let's just continue to do that. Pratt was fine. Good, even. But it wasn't a part that called for Pratt, and he didn't do anything to make it his, not like with Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter Quill is inseparable from Chris Pratt, because Pratt made that part his. The most that the part of Owen Grady called for was for Pratt to be "a badass," or at least to look like one. He pulled that off, but it didn't take any particular acting skill.

Bryce Dallas Howard, on the other hand, does show considerable skill as the aloof Claire. It's not a role I've seen her play before; though, to be fair, I haven't seen her in a lot. Still, I think she did a good job as the woman trying to be in total control. Of everything.

The one I was really impressed with was Vincent D'Onofrio. I kept looking at him and wondering where I'd seen him before and just couldn't put my finger on it. I had to look up that he's the Kingpin in the current Daredevil series from Netflix. The two roles are widely divergent and, while I think he is the weak link in Daredevil, I now think it's because of some combination of the writing and directing rather than him just being a poor actor.

For Jurassic World, the kids prove to be the weakest element. Neither of them are completely convincing, though I think it's due at least in part to weak writing. Like the scene where Gray unexpectedly breaks down comes out of nowhere and is included just to make explicit something the writers had failed to be previously explicit about. Also, Zach's interest in girls. Which isn't odd except that they firmly establish that he has a girlfriend then repeatedly show him checking out other girls but that doesn't go anywhere have any impact on anything. It adds nothing to the story other than to muddle his personality.

Beyond that, the issues are only details, though there were two that bothered me more than the others. The first was the eggs hatching during the opening credits, which was completely wrong. Things that hatch from eggs hatch with their beaks and, if they don't have beaks, they generally have an egg tooth. Sometimes, they have both. The other thing was the kids getting one of the abandoned cars started, a 20 year abandoned car. I don't know much about cars, but I know enough to know that 1. car batteries don't hold a charge for that long and 2. even if they did, gasoline actually goes "bad." The idea that the boys, who had only ever helped work on a car once, could get one of those jeeps working was pretty much ludicrous.

BUT! Overall, it was a pretty decent movie and certainly worth seeing on the big screen. Despite Pratt not really being in a role that called for him, he was good, and his character was certainly the most interesting. Besides, the scene where he rides his motorcycle along with the velociraptors is almost worth the cost of the movie.

Tomorrowland (a movie review post)

It's always disappointing to me to see a movie getting panned before it's even been released. I don't mean people saying things like, "Based on the trailer, it doesn't look very good," or, "That doesn't look like something I would like to see." No, I'm talking about full on bashing before a thing has even been released. Some examples come to mind, all movies which under-performed due to extreme negative backlash prior to release: Waterworld, Daredevil, John Carter. Of course, then there's always a movie like (the most recent) The Lone Ranger to give proof to some of that pre-release backlash. [Maybe I shouldn't say that, though, since I still haven't managed to force myself to sit down and watch The Lone Ranger.]

It's rather unfortunate that it looks like Tomorrowland is going to suffer the same kind of fate, because it's quite a fun movie. The worst thing that can be said about it is that it's a movie with a message, but it's not overbearing with its message, not like Happy Feet which picks up some dead fish at the end and slaps you around a bit until you feel like you've been abused. No, Tomorrowland is a choice, a choice you get to make. And it's a fun ride to get there.

The other thing worth noting is that, all things considered, George Clooney is probably the weak link of the film. However, when you're talking about weak links, Clooney is one you'd probably want to have. The problem is that he's really only in the movie to be George Clooney but, then, he's in the movie to be George Clooney. I have to say, I don't think there's anyone better at being George Clooney than George Clooney, so that was a pretty good casting choice, all things considered.

Britt Robertson is great as Casey. She's spunky, headstrong, and equal parts amazed and freaked out by what's going on around her. I'm unfamiliar with her as an actress, though, so I don't know if this was just a role that fit her or if she did a good job in the part. Either way, she was good, and I'll be checking out more from her to see which is which.

Raffey Cassidy was also great. Great enough that you can figure out the thing about her from her acting before you're told the thing about her.

And Hugh Laurie was really good as Nix. I know (now) that he's the famed Dr. House, but I never watched that, so this was really my first experience with him, and I liked him. I'm not saying I'm going to watch House, but I am now interested.

Thomas Robinson was perfectly cast as young Frank. He's just all kid and optimism, and he was fun to watch.

There are a few logic holes in the movie (like Casey watching her future self do something in order to figure out how to do it (a thing I always hate)), but they are few and, really, not very big. Basically, you can explain them away (though you shouldn't have to explain them away, if you know what I mean).

All said, it's a solid movie and a lot of fun to watch. Actually, I think the biggest issue with the movie is not the movie at all; it's the trailer. The trailer doesn't really give you a good idea of what the movie is about, and what it's about is much better than what the trailer leads you to believe. It's certainly not a movie to pass up for no other reason than the bad hype it's getting., and it's a good theater movie.

Ninja Mutants: An Extended Review -- Part Three: A Cultural Phenomenon

Does it come as a surprise that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started out as a joke? I bet it doesn't to some of you. I think the joke was aimed mostly at Frank Miller, since much of the concept was based off of Daredevil, which Miller was doing at the time, and Ronin, which was Frank Miller's. There are other influences, but, really, those seem to be the biggest. The whole Foot Clan thing was a play on Miller's The Hand, which he created for Daredevil.

I thought it was a joke but not a particularly funny one. I had just started collecting comics seriously around the time TMNT first came out, not that anyone really heard about it at the time, since the first issue had a print run of only around 3200 copies. As Peter Laird said, "It was a goof." It was, they thought, a one-off. A gag. The evidence of that can be seen in that they, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, published it as an oversize issue, larger (much) than the standard comic book.

TMNT #1 is currently valued at around $4000.

But the first issue sold out, which lead to a second issue... and a third... Within a year, the Turtles, the gag, had become something so much bigger than Eastman and Laird could ever had imagined. It had taken over their lives. Three years after the debut in 1984, the Turtles were on TV, and Eastman and Laird were busy trying to run a multi-million dollar company, something neither of them had ever dreamed of. Or were exactly happy with. Laird quit drawing, the one thing that had always been a source of happiness for him. Eventually, Eastman sold his rights in the company because he wanted to do things not related to the Turtles.

That's an interesting irony, that Eastman sold his share, because he's the one that has ended up keeping his fingers in the Turtles pie, so to speak, although it's Laird that owns the company and all of that.

By the end of the 80s, the Turtles had become a thing. A rather big thing, in fact, spawning all sorts of copycat titles about things like Radioactive Hamsters and who knows what else. I was busy trying to avoid them. All of them. Rather unsuccessfully since I did a lot of working with kids during the summers. The Turtles were everywhere!

But I didn't have my first real encounter with them until my freshman year of college. I was doing a lot of painting miniatures for money at the time

and someone approached me with a request to paint a set of Turtles miniatures. [I wish I had pictures of those, but, alas, I do not.] They were pretty cool, actually, and it was $$$, so I took the job. Which required research. No, seriously! I had to know how to paint the various characters, not all of which were the Turtles. The miniatures were based off the original comics and had figures I was unfamiliar with. Even April was unfamiliar since, originally, she was a lab assistant (to an Evil Genius), not a reporter.

Which is kind of the point. Eastman and Laird didn't have any plans for the Turtles when they created that first issue of the comic series. When it took off, they made stuff up as the went, just trying to keep up with demand (and failing). What happened was that the Turtles underwent many, let's say, "creative re-boots." When they licensed them out in the mid-80s for the cartoon series, the origin was re-done and April became a reporter. When the work became (quickly) too much for Eastman and Laird to keep up with, they allowed other creators to put their own spin on the Turtles which resulted in many alternate stories and ideas (like one with the Turtles set in medieval Japan). They even had to bring in another creative team at one point to do a completely separate series just to fill in the gaps in the continuity of their own series.

The end result of all of this is that any time the Turtles have changed formats, they have been re-imagined. There is no definitive origin for them, not any more. Maybe not ever. Probably, though, the one most people are familiar with is what came out of the hugely popular cartoon, the one I thought was too dumb to sit through. [I'm just glad my kids have never wanted to watch it!]  In fact, most of the negative reaction to the current Bay movie is that the movie owes more to the comic books than it does to the 80s TV show. Perhaps that's why it didn't bother me. The movie, despite having 6' tall, talking turtles, is not cartoonish, and I liked that.

The important thing, though, is something that began as a joke 30 years ago is still here. And not just still here like it's over moldering in some corner somewhere; it's still a pop culture force. I have to say, that first issue, which I did finally read, was pretty brilliant. All of the early issues were. It was a great parody of comics, the same container of radioactive goo that created Daredevil also giving rise to Splinter and the Turtles. It wasn't quite as silly as I thought it was, after all. Okay, the cartoon was silly, but that comic series was... well, it was something new.

Obviously, people liked it, because the Turtles are still here.

Do We Really Prefer Author's Preferred?

Roughly ten years ago, American Gods was released. The book won a lot of awards in a lot of different categories leading Neil Gaiman to believe that people don't really know what to make of his book. Having been such a big deal, the publisher wanted to release a special 10th anniversary edition, and Gaiman requested that he get to put back in about 12,000 words that had been edited out of the first edition. The publisher agreed, so we now have an "author's preferred text" edition of American Gods. I want to read it.

Why? I really don't know. It's not rational. Despite having thoroughly enjoyed it the first time through (and enjoying Anansi Boys even more), I've had no desire to go back and re-read it. I don't do a lot of re-reading (mostly because there are too many books I haven't read for the first time, yet), so the thought of re-reading Gods had never entered my head. But, despite reviews that mostly say there's nothing significant added back in, and despite the fact that it's been so long since I read it the first time that I wouldn't recognize any changes, anyway, I want to read this new edition. Even Gaiman says, based on how well the book sold, that his editor was probably correct in having him cut the 10,000+ words, but, yet, he wanted them back in the book. So, even though the book might actually be better for the lack of a dozen thousand words, I want to read the book that Gaiman intended it to be before the publishers and their editor got a hold of it.

It's not just Gaiman, either. I'm a sucker for any author's preferred edition of a book or director's cut of a movie. I have an innate distaste for someone coming in from the outside and imposing their view upon an artist. Any artist of any sort. Because who's to say that an editor's opinion will actually improve the work? Not that I don't understand the necessity of editors. Especially in movies. And in writing. I mean, you need someone with a different perspective to come in and ask questions sometimes. "What does this mean?" "What's happening here?" "How did we get to this part over here from where we were over there?" Things the author may miss because they exist in his head, and he can't see that he left a piece out for everyone else. But all of that is different from the specific type of editing I'm getting at. The part where someone comes in and says "change this" or "this is too long, cut this stuff out" or... well, there are too many ors.

 Maybe that's why I like Kevin Smith so much. He does it all himself, and his movies, for better or worse, really are his movies. He writes them, directs them, edits them all to his own vision. I appreciate that.

But does my preference for the author's (or director's) original vision translate to the culture at large? Actually, I think the mass of population really doesn't care. As an audience, we tend to pretend that this whole editing process doesn't happen. We like to believe that what we read is what the author intended for us to read. What we see is the director's vision of how the movie should be and not the studio's vision. But, then, there are a lot of movies out there with director's cuts options, although, mostly, those are just aimed at people that already own the movie and like it enough to double dip so they can see the differences between the two versions. I know I'm guilty.

Still... at some level, I think people do care. When they stop to think about it. If given the choice, people will pick the author's vision over the publisher's vision (or the director's vision over the studio's). I have a lot of supposition here, but what I know is that they keep releasing director's cuts and (to a lesser extent) author's preferred editions. They wouldn't do that if people weren't buying them, right? Right? I suppose the real question is who is buying them? Or maybe that doesn't matter.

I suppose my point lies somewhere in here: people don't read. Half of American adults do not read books. At all. Only about half of households buy even one book a year (some buy more, but that other half doesn't buy any). Even of college graduates, half of them will never read another book after graduation. And here's where it really makes me start to cringe (and this is based on memory (I couldn't find the article again)), only about 1/3 of adults in the USA consider themselves to be readers, and most of them (a huge most) will only read one book a year. One book. In a whole year. I have a hard time with this. Then, again, I have a brother who has never finished a book in his entire life. The closest he got was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn during high school, but he didn't finish it before the test, so he didn't finish it. Yes, this means he hasn't read my book, The House on the Corner, and I'm not expecting that he ever will. At any rate, these are the people that will say things like "it was too long" as a reason for not finishing or not ever picking up a book.

And, yet, this is the target audience for editors when they say, "Hey, your book is too long." Or "If you want more people to buy your book, you need to change x, y, and z." Why do we try to tailor books for these people? These are not the people that are buying most books. Certainly not the people reading most books. Remember that 50% of households and how they buy only one book a year? 50% of those books will go unread. These are not the people going back to buy the author's preferred edition.

The people going back to buy the book for a second time are people that read. And I don't mean one book a year people, I mean people that read. [I did try to find a statistic for people that read more than, say, 3 books a year, but I continued to just find more and more data about how 50% of Americans don't read at all. It got depressing, so I quit looking.] My impression is that most readers, when they find a story they love, want it to keep going. So, yes, when an author's preferred edition comes out with an extra 10,000 words, they want to read it. It may not be rational, but the desire is there.

To be completely honest, I haven't experienced an author's preferred edition that was really worth buying the book twice for, but I would have preferred to have had the author's version the first time. And I've only seen one director's cut of a movie that I thought was a significant improvement over the original: Daredevil. But, then, I liked the original; I just like the director's cut more. In fact, if I'm going to have a super hero movie on in the background, the director's cut of Daredevil is my choice. But, with most movies, it's nothing more than an interesting comparison. And, unfortunately, the director's cut of Highlander II did (very) little to improve it, even if they did cut out all mentions of Zeist. The main "improvement" of an author's edition is that it allows the reader to stay immersed for a greater length of time. Maybe that's all the improvement that's needed? Certainly, that's the reason that supplemental texts to The Lord of the Rings continue to be released. Lovers of Middle-Earth just want more of it. And Tolkien's publishers told him it was too long. (Not to mention the extended cuts of the movies.)

At the core, especially for Americans, I think we all want to see what the author intended for us to see. Maybe, MAYBE, more people would read if we let authors write their own stories instead of letting editors and publishers tell the author what they think the author should be writing. We certainly couldn't do worse. We have so many people saying "this is what people want," "this is what you need to write," "this is what you need to make" that everything is the same and no one wants any of it. Okay, that's not precisely true, but the things that really make it are the things that people that "know" said would never work. Like Harry Potter. People want to see the vision of the author (or director) for the story, not what the publisher (or studio) believes people want to see (I could go into Sony's insistence on the inclusion of Venom in Spider-Man 3 and how most people feel about that movie, but I think we just assume that conversation and skip it).

The fact that we have people that are willing to go back and buy what is essentially the same product twice so that they can experience a story the way the creator of the story intended it to be experienced says a lot to me. Primarily, it says that publishers should allow authors greater creative freedom. Publishers should stop trying to make everything fit into specific molds. Authors are good enough at following the popular route on their own that they don't really need any help from publishers in that. Or, you know, maybe it's all a scheme from the publishers... edit books down to fit arbitrary criteria so that, later, they can release the author's preferred text and make money twice. Don't laugh. I wouldn't put it past them!

Deleted scene:
In the spirit of the whole author's preferred text idea, I'm going to share a paragraph that got cut out. It's a good paragraph, but my post changed directions about halfway through, and, when I went back and re-structured the whole thing, the paragraph really didn't fit back in.

 Books, as they've been for at least the past many decades, are not the work of the author. Not just the author, at any rate. Yes, the author writes the book, but, once a publisher agrees to publish the book, it becomes subject to editing by the publisher. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. By all accounts, many of the people we view as the greats could never have been published without the assistance of one or more editors to get their manuscripts into the kind of shape that would enable an audience to read said manuscript. I think it was Faulkner (although I may be misremembering) that was notorious for turning in piles of pages with just one or two words on them each and no way of knowing what order the pages belonged. Maybe that, in the end, explains his stream-of-consciousness writing.

There you go. A rare deletion from me. Rare because I don't often go back and completely re-write. I'm pretty good at knowing where I'm going when I start writing, but this post fooled me and changed directions causing me to have to go back and start over. However, it does give me this opportunity to include this cut bit even if the post is a day later than I intended it to be.

He could be the shark!

All right pop culture fans, it's time for another pop culture edition! So grab a bowl and fill it up. Remember, pop culture always stays crunchy in milk! Or, if you don't want milk, sprinkle it with some Parmesan. Try it!

Over the weekend, I finally saw the movie The Town. It fell just short of the arbitrary $100 million blockbuster mark, so it was a solid success for Affleck, who starred in, directed, and co-wrote  the film. Just a quick summary as this post is not really about the movie. The Town is about a bank robber who doesn't really like what he does. Avoiding spoilers, the film is about what happens to him when he falls in love. Affleck does a great job of pulling off the anti-heroic role, and I was reminded several times of his role in Good Will Hunting, which he also co-wrote. The power of his performance can be summed up in this: as we were nearing the end of the movie, my wife said, "I don't want anything bad to happen. I know that bad things are going to happen, but I don't want it to."

It's good to see Ben Affleck "back." Not that he hasn't been "back" for a while, but The Town was significant in that, if it had failed, all the work he's done since the whole Jennifer Lopez thing may have been for naught, and he may have been stuck in supporting roles for, at least, the foreseeable future. By the way, if you haven't seen it, and you probably haven't, go out of your way to see Hollywoodland. There is one good thing that came out of the Lopez affair, it made Affleck more picky about the projects he's become involved in.

For my part, I never quit liking Affleck. Yeah, yeah, I hear you out there, now, "of course, you say that, now," but, really, my view has always been that the negative backlash against him (especially for something that had nothing to do with his acting) was stupid. And the worst part is that it damaged more than just him. Daredevil, which is one of my favorite superhero movies (and great to just have on in the background while doing other things), got an incredibly bad rap for using Affleck, although the worst thing most people could say was that Affleck doesn't have blond hair. Seriously? That's all you can come up with? Speaking as a comic book person, Daredevil was a great adaptation and stands solidly with Spider-Man and Iron Man. Then, there's Jersey Girl.

Jersey Girl might actually be Kevin Smith's best film. It's touching and sweet and real. And Affleck shines in it. But no one saw it. I mean, not only did it have Affleck, but Lopez has a (very) short-lived role. And, of course, Smith fans wouldn't watch it because it was such a departure from his "normal" work. What's with that? Slam a guy for only ever doing the same kind of thing, but, when he tries to do something different, slam him for not doing what he's always done? How's that okay? It is possible that the majority of Kevin Smith fans will never like Jersey Girl, because it doesn't deliver the thing that makes them like him to begin with, but that doesn't make it a bad movie, and it's no excuse for everyone else who shunned it for no other reason than Affleck was the star at a time when he wasn't popular because of whom he was dating.

At any rate, it's good to see Affleck back in the seat of respectability. He's a great actor. And he has a great smile. I cannot say otherwise: 1. because it's true 2. because my wife loves it. I'd love to see Affleck and DiCaprio in something together. Oh, the title! I wish I could remember in what interview Kevin Smith says that, but he's talking about Affleck's acting ability. I think it's in something related to Daredevil; although, it's not really important. Smith says that Affleck can do anything. In fact, he says, he could be in Jaws... as the shark!

To tie all this into writing, which, no, I don't have to do since this is an all pop culture post, but I feel like making this parallel. Sometimes, the hard times, although they seem really bad, at the time, can force good results. Affleck had to start accepting projects that would be good for his career, not just good for his bank account. Writing can be like that. Sometimes, as writers, we have to look really hard at what's good for the story, not just what feels good to us. And, sometimes, if we want other people to read what we've written, we have to look at what is appealing to the larger audience, not just at what is appealing to us. And that can be the hardest thing.