Radiant Comics

I am interrupting my regularly scheduled blog to bring you another piece on a movie. I had something else I wanted to write about but then I went and watched “The Departed”. It’s been getting rave reviews and for the first two thirds of the movie they are deserved. But the last third of the movie was jaw-droppingly bad. My mouth was literally open and I kept saying “Huh?” for the last half hour or so of the film. Dry mouth was setting in. I won’t ruin the movie for those who haven’t seen it and who might agree with all of the raves it’s getting. But here is a short recap with no plot spoilers. Just some generalities.

The basic plot of the movie is Leo DiCaprio is the undercover cop and Matt Damon is the undercover criminal. They are trying to find and do away with one and other. It’s a bit more subtle and nuanced than that but there’s the one sentence “high concept”.
The first thing that bothered me is that there was this little subplot about them liking the same girl. Leo and Matt didn’t know about each other and the girl was a psychiatrist (yes, she wrote prescriptions) who worked for the police so it was almost believable. I was willing to overlook that little bit of moviemaking conceit because the rest of the movie was excellent.

Then came the last half hour. Realism was thrown out the window and my willing suspension of disbelief came crashing down. Everybody started acting like brainless movie characters and not like the smart people they were in the first two thirds of the movie. It turned into a sit-com without the comedy. Well, the comedy was there it just wasn’t intentional. It was a sit-dram. If even one character stopped and thought about what he was doing, as they were all doing earlier in the movie, the movie could have ended half an hour sooner. Instead we have a series of coincidences, smart guys suddenly acting stupid and a key character going on vacation for two weeks. Seriously, at the climax of the movie when he is needed the most a key character, instead of sticking with the case he has built for a year, is sent on a vacation.

You know that old cop movie cliche where the cop “doesn’t play by the rules” and pisses of his captain so the cop is forced to take time of? The cop never actually take time off and works on the case “on his own time” until at the end of the movie he captures the bad guys and everything is okay. It’s the plot to “Beverly Hills Cop” and plenty of other films. In “The Departed” the cop in question actually takes the time off! That’s because if he was still on the case he would have figured out who the mole was in ten seconds. But they had a half an hour left in the movie so off he went. We don’t need him. He’s just the key to the whole investigation.

The ending was like an episode of “Three’s Company”. If someone had just said, “Lucy is the name of the dog and not a girl Jack is banging in his room” than a whole side splitting episode of misunderstanding and mirth would never have happened. Acceptable in a comedy but not in a gritty drama.

To further expand the sitcom theme I think the only way this ending would make any sense is if all of the movie actors were replaced by the characters from Seinfeld for the last half an hour. I see Kramer in the Nicholson role, Jerry in the Damon part, George as DiCaprio, and then we can fill out the rest of the cast with all the wacky people from the Seinfeld world. Puddy and Newman hanging around as cops or criminals would be amusing.

I’m going to mention “Murder by Death” for the second week in a row. At the end of that movie as Truman Capote, the villain of the piece, is telling all of the detectives that they didn’t solve the mystery correctly he comes down on them for their bad mystery novel tricks. One of the tricks he chides them for is introducing characters in the last chapter who “weren’t even in the book before”. Hence cheating all the people who were trying to figure out the mystery of ever being able to do so. I was reminded of that line when in the last ten minutes of “The Departed” a previously unseen and unmentioned character shows up, has a pivotal role, and then goes away. All in the space of two minutes! Sure maybe he was around in the background for a bit but he was unnoticed and unimportant until his nonsensical goofy actions were required. It just made me go wha?????

By the end of the movie I was ready for some zombies. Really. If at the climax of “The Departed” zombies had showed up and started eating people I think it would have made more sense. Near the end of the movie a character was opening his apartment door and I thought, “A zombie popping out right now would top this movie off just right”. Maybe in the special edition.

Oh, and by the way, there are certainly no crime scene investigators in this world because the crooked cop was just making up stories that made no sense to describe what happened when various dead bodies showed up. One look at the blood spatter and every character on CSI would say, “He’s lying”.

It never ceases to amaze me how many bad movies are out there. Sure the law of averages rules the world and therefore not everything can be good but the volume of bad movies is incredible. I doubt people start out to make bad movies. I read a comic book series, one of the “Concrete” stories by Paul Chadwick, about the making of a movie and how everyone starts out with the intentions of making a good movie but then things just happen. A bad movie is a result. The story was based on some time Chadwick spent in the movie industry so I figure that is how a lot of bad movies get made. They can’t be made on purpose. Can they?

The first bad movie I saw this week was Open Water 2. I saw Open Water just a couple of weeks ago and was ambivalent about it but it is a quantum leap ahead of this one. I know it’s just a sequel to cash in on the success of the first one and I expected it to be bad but it was so Hollywood predictably bad.

Open Water 2 has a lot in common with Blair Witch Project 2. You may have liked Blair Witch or Open Water or you may not have but either way they were both small budget, outside the mainstream movies. They were different and quirky and not made by the big business movie machine. How do you make good sequels to such singular movies? I don’t know and neither did the film makers. They made crappy ones.

Open Water was a “based on a true story” account of a couple left behind in the middle of the ocean after a scuba dive. To up the ante Open Water 2 is a “based on a true story” account of a group of people stranded in the ocean. They weren’t quite stranded; they jumped in the ocean without lowering the yacht’s ladder and couldn’t get back on the boat. Yes, there was an episode of “King of the Hill” with the same plot but our cartoon friends managed to get back on the boat in half an hour. Once again proving cartoons are smarter than people.

What made the the first Open Water interesting was the film makers’ efforts to capture what a real couple might go through if stranded. Open Water 2 was more like what would happen if six (or was it five or seven, eh who can remember) bad movie characters were stuck in the ocean. Movie characters ain’t people that’s for sure. And did I mention there was a crying baby on board the boat? Nothing increases the tension like an infant in peril. Like they are really going to kill a baby in a movie.

The rest of the movie was filled with our heroes doing really dumb things to put themselves in even more danger. They couldn’t just tread water they had to fight amongst themselves. The highlights included: two of the guys fighting over a knife and one of them accidently being stabbed. Another guy swimming down to recover something (I can’t even remember what) and then panicking and bashing his head on the boat’s propeller as he surfaced. I think there were some floatation devices accidently destroyed also. I watched the second half of the movie on fast forward so I’m unclear on all of the dumb things they did. But don’t worry the baby was saved.

I guess it is inevitable that a big budget Hollywood movie would lose all of the outsider stuff that made a low budget film interesting but couldn’t they at least try? C’mon, a crying baby on board? Did they have to use the cheapest trick in the book?

The second bad film is the Black Dahlia. Any similarity with the actual case is purely coincidental. This movie could have no association with that famous murder and be exactly the same. Except it’s easier to market a film about a famous case. There you go.

I watched about the first third, payed little attention to the next third and was baffled by the ending. The movie is really about two cops and their careers plus a girlfriend. She’s the girlfriend of one of them or both of them it was hard to tell because boredom kept me from caring about their strange relationship.

And the ending, ahhh… One of my favorite comedies is “Murder By Death”. A picture that spoofs all the great celluloid and pulp detectives. The ending of “Murder By Death” has each detective, having just survived a murder attempt, confront the would be killer and reveal the killer’s master plan. As each detective speaks the explanation gets more convoluted and wacky (including Peter Falk, as Sam Spade, being “In disguise, in disguise, in disguise” noting how many layers were in the plan). I think “The Black Dahlia” lifted this ending. Only they took it seriously.

In the final scene first one person would enter the room and explain what happened and then another would and then another. I had long since stopped paying attention to the sleep inducing plot and all the different explanations of “what had really happened” only made for comedy. This movie begs for the MST3K treatment.

It’s a wonder anyone goes to the movies. I certainly prefer to see them on TV so I can ignore them easier.

It’s not easy being a kid. Do you know how I can tell? There is always a lot of crying in a kid’s world. Sure they are crying over kid stuff but it is as important to them as our grown-up stuff is to us. Maybe more so. We have the freedom to make our own decisions. Kids don’t. A lot of times their only recourse is feeling bad.

If you saw a grown-up cry as much as a kid does you’d say, “There goes one sad person”. A lot of times kids’ tears aren’t real. They’re just for show so they can get something out of someone but a grown-up’s tears are often used for the same purpose. No difference there. Kids may use the tactic a little more frequently but the genuine crying is more often also. There’s just a lot of crying going on.

One incident made me flash back to my own youth and a feeling only a child can have. A couple of years ago I was at a BBQ with friends on a nice sunny day. The kids were all running around the yard and having a good time. Then it was time to leave. The first child who’s turn it was to leave just started crying. He didn’t want to go. He was having fun. That is such a childhood feeling. You’re playing and having a great time and then mom or dad say it’s time to go. What? Staying equals fun. Going equals no fun. It doesn’t even matter where you are going and if there might be fun there too because there if fun here and now. A child understands a bird in the hand better than an adult. But you gotta go and all you can do is cry over the lost fun. Fun is always at a premium. I remember it well. It’s not easy being a kid.

Everyone says that being an adolescent and going through puberty is hard but I didn’t have a really hard time with that. Maybe because I still have all the same problems and have just grown used to them. I, like most, couldn’t talk to girls as a teenager because who knew what to say? It was paralyzing and frightful and meant that I wasn’t one of the cool kids but I didn’t like the cool kids. They were jerks. I never wanted to be like them. It’s less of a problem not being cool when cool and you are enemies.

I had nothing going on as an adolescent and that is the key to talking to girls: convincing them you have something going on. You don’t actually need anything going on just the appearance is fine. Girls appreciate the effort and don’t mind being lied to in a good cause. At least until they grow up then they get a little more pissed off. By the way, the best thing to have going on is money. It’s pretty obvious but still doesn’t get mentioned so much because we love our illusions of romance.

Just like my fifteen year old self I still don’t have much going on. It’s just that now I know what to say to girls. Yet, it is too Pavlovian for me and I find that paralyzing and frightful too. I don’t like dancing on the strings of social roles. So I prefer to say the wrong things to amuse myself. It makes me giggle. It doesn’t do much for my romantic life though.

I seem to have avoided most grown-up problems. By grown-up problems I don’t mean health, financial, or dealing with sudden death problems. These suck at any age and aren’t related to how old you are. I see grown-up problems as twofold: kids and marriage.

With kids the problem isn’t always a specific one. It’s a general one. I think it can be summed up by one phrase, “What the hell do I do now?” Yes, that is what a parent says to himself when he realizes that he is now responsible for a life that he just made. And the kid didn’t come with an instruction manual. It’s up to the parent to figure out everything that is right for this kid. That is a lot of figuring and there are plenty of times when you don’t know if you’re getting through at all. Oh, and you have to not kill the kid in the process. This is very important. Being that I have no children I missed out on this problem.

The second adult worry is how not to strangle your spouse. I think this is harder for married couples with no kids because kids can spread out some of that strangling impulse. It’s not all directed at the spouse. The more often you have to remind yourself not to strangle someone the more likely you are to remember it. At least that is my hypothesis.

You’ve married this person and now you have to be with them every morning and night for the rest of your life. Once again there is no instruction manual. You have to learn how to lead a full rich life and not make out with other women who are perfectly willing to. I recommend to all you guys that you pretend like you have nothing going on. That is hard to do because guys are so used to doing the opposite but you have to try. At least there is no crying going on.

Crying. Yeah, it’s not easy being a kid.

Here is my second update on joining the Illuminati. I haven’t joined yet. Still no membership has been offered to me. No one has even admitted to me that they are in the Iluminati. I have an excellent, I tell you excellent, plan for world domination that is just going to waste. I’m beginning to wonder if these “enlightened ones” are all that. If my secret plan were put into effect with the right backing and manpower we could take over the world in five, six years tops. The Illuminati have been around for what? Over a hundred years? What is taking them so long? Slow and steady is one thing but they’ve had a hundred years. I am not very impressed with their whole “taking over the world” racket at all. I think they are playing us all for suckers.

By my thinking any “take over the world” secret society should just disband after 30 years of failure. It’s okay to pass down you world domination plan to your kids. But your grandkids? You know the generation gap will be too wide by then and your grandkids will think your world domination plans are quaint and old fashioned. Any “invisible government” lacks continuity after a few decades. Too many of the old timers die off and too many of the new guys come in with their own ideas. There are probably significant changes to the plan every ten years. So that would be the time span for “taking over the world” success. After a dozen years just give up.

I also have to figure that world domination secret societies skew a little older in terms of their members’ ages. It takes a while to establish yourself in the world and then a secret society has to notice you and think you will be good for the cause. It is sort of like winning that genius grant I hear about (I should have one of those too, you know). Twenty year olds don’t get in. I estimate the youngest members are in their forties. This gives a secret government a fairly short window of effective operating. They’ve got to get things going quickly. World domination waits for no one.

Another way the Illuminati could go is to make membership hereditary. This would provide continuity but not much effectiveness. History has taught us that leadership is a hit or miss affair in any royal lineage. Plans go wrong when incompetent members inherit parts of the plan that they just can’t pull off. I suspect there might be some of this happening with the Illuminati because the have been around for so long and have so not taken over the world. Someone’s idiot kid screws the pooch every few years and they have to clean up the mess. Start all over because of some dumb cousin.

Then there is the fact that the world is a big place. One has to take this into account. It is not easy to take over all of it. Where do you start? How do you cover it all at once? If these Illuminati have been around a hundred years then maybe their plan is too old and slow. But still, we have cars and planes now so what’s up with these Illuminati? My plan takes bigness into account. You could say bigness is all over my plan. But I’ve teased you enough because you will never get to hear my plan. It’s a secret plan, after all, and I can’t just go blabbing it on the street corner. But, believe me, if it was ever put into effect you’d say, “Dude, that was such a sweet plan”. And you’d hope I wouldn’t crush you under my heel.

I think I am going to have to start my own secret society bent on world domination. It sounds like a big job because I am friends with not even one captain of industry. My plan needs some pretty big resources. You can’t cheap out when enforcing your will on the world. Most plans go wrong because of undercapitalization. Everyone knows this. So if there are any captains of industry or venture capitalists out there who want to take over the world drop me a line and I won’t mention it to anyone. “Secret” is the first word in “Secret Society”.

I bought some new pencils today. A pack of twelve 4B drawing pencils. 4B is the designation for how soft the graphite in a pencil is. The scale goes from 9H which is nearly as hard as a rock and leaves a light grey line to 9B which is so soft that the graphite almost leaps from the pencil point onto the paper creating a dark line. The H’s run from a single H up to nine H’s with all the numbers in between (H, 2H, 3H, 4H, 5H, 6H, 7H, 8H, 9H)and the B’s the same (B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B, 7B, 8B, 9B). Though the sevens through nines of both H’s and B’s are rarely seen. A 4B is one of the softer pencils and I like it on paper and a 6B on canvas.

Sometimes a job calls for a certain pencil. For instance you would never do mechanical drafting with soft B of any kind. Too messy. I think mechanical drawing is mostly computerized now anyway. So pencils might not even be a the right tool for that job.

Pencil choice is generally personal preference. And it is a tough personal preference to settle on. It takes more self discovery than you would think. That is because art education, even beyond school, is based on the “critique”. Which often leads to no self discovery.

Critiquing someone’s art work should consist of:

1) Looking a the art and determining what the artist is trying to do or say.

2) Giving the artist advice on how to reach the goal he is aiming for.

That rarely happens. What normally happens is:

1) Someone looks at an artist’s work.

2) That someone tells you how he’d do it.

This is where pencil choice comes in. When someone tells you how they’d do it the “it” they are talking about is really a specific technique. You might think you are getting advice on drawing but really the advice is on a specific drawing technique that you may or may not be suited for. It may not even be suited for the work that is being critiqued. The advice is about the person giving the critique and not you. So instead of learning to draw better you end up trying a specific technique usually with a specific pencil thinking you are learning to draw better. You’re not. If the pencil or technique is not suited to you as an artist you may end up struggling and not knowing why. That hurts more than helps. It’s not easy being a young artist. There is a lot to learn and confusing “drawing” with “technique” doesn’t help.

All of this emphasis on critique and looking for mentors is, of course, because artists, young and old, dream of learning the secret to drawing. There is no secret but that doesn’t stop us from dreaming. We all know that if we could just learn that secret we could draw exactly like DaVinci. If we listen to one more critique, read one more book, listen to one more lecture, or see one more museum show we just might discover the secret. This can make it harder to find the right pencil for you because you’re always trying to find the right pencil for DaVinci.

Pencils are such a basic tool that they are often overlooked. A lot of artists don’t give much thought to their pencils and end up using whichever one that they were told to use by someone they respected who gave them a critique. If they would just try some others their work might improve. Mine did when I finally started using the soft B’s. Those pencils were frowned upon by a lot of cartoonists and comic book artists (a field I’ve wallowed in) as impossibly messy and difficult to ink over. Both those assertions are true but there are ways around them. You have to find all the ways around conventional pencil wisdom yourself. Critiques have a lot of conventional wisdom in them.

Some people even find it odd that anyone would give it any thought at all. But no one finds it odd that a person would have a favorite hammer or baseball bat or any other tool that people use every day in other fields. You wouldn’t expect a bowler to pick up just any old ball and roll his best. People even have their favorite pickup trucks that get the job done. It’s the same with pencils. They just all look the same.