Rhythm and Gravy

I’ve been putting my new Netflix subscription to good use. I think that watching Heroes on “real” TV would have driven me nuts; it keeps you constantly fired up to see what happens next. It’s bad enough when an episode ends, or worse, when you finish a DVD and have to wait for the next one to arrive.

I just made it through season one, all too quickly. The ending was unfortunately anticlimactic, given how much it was built up, but with the strength of the characters and the general feel of the show, it didn’t matter too much. Heroes manages to bring together most of what I’ve ever liked about comics. They do a great job of with settings which have the surreal feel, but retain their realism, as if they hired set designers from both Sin City and Driving Miss Daisy. They avoid the traditional “underwear pervert” superhero. Instead, their heroes are conflicted, confused, disillusioned, or (in the case of Masi Oka’s Hiro) inspired by their powers.

Of late, graphic novels are starting to make printed comics hip (as opposed to “popular”) for the non-nerds. This show seems to be doing that for TV.

For a sci-fi novel, there’s not much sci-fi in this book (one ambiguously immortal character named root being the exception). Cryptonomicon could be better classified as nerd-fi. It speaks to Neal Stephenson’s talent that my decidedly un-nerdy, quasi hipster cousin is loving it — it’s just a really good yarn, in which the nerdy characters are in touch with their bad-ass sides, the bad-ass characters are in touch with their nerdy sides, and the protagonist gets the girl.

I re-read it for what must be at least the fifth time last month, and it’s managed to stay engaging, which places it way up there with my all-time favorites.

For some odd reason, both Blockbuster and West Coast Video moved out of Squirrel Hill in the last year, leaving my with no convenient movie rental place in walking distance, which is a bummer for me this weekend since all the folk are off visiting family this pre-holiday weekend and I’m here until Monday morning. In addition, it seems like it never occurs to us to borrow DVDs from each other; instead, we pay four or more bucks to see something that our neighbor might lend us for free, with no late fees. Towards that end, I intend to list the movies I own on this site (see Movies, in the sidebar), with reviews. If you want to borrow any of them, let me know, maybe we can swap some movies..

I’ll start with Roman Coppala’s CQ.

It’s the story of Jeremy Davis, an American guy in Paris in 1969 who is brought in as director of a struggling pulp sci-fi film in order to finish off the problematic ending. The film beautifully captures his earnestness as he works on his own personal film project, titled ‘69-70′, and the way it transfers to his work on moon base, communist rebel leader, and beautiful astronaut/spy code-named Dragonfly. His struggle to finish the film is paralleled by his struggle to finish his auto-documentary, in which he must resolve his feelings for his temperamental French girlfriend and his fantasies involving Dragonly, and later the actress playing her. We also get a great perspective on the 1960’s Franco-American futuristic design aesthetic exemplified by movies like Barbarella.

I’ve always fancied in myself an ability to engage in the fantastic while staying firmly rooted in reality, which is exactly what this movie does, and is why I appreciate it so much. This movies leaves me with a great appreciation of the people in my life who seem blinded by their own imagination, but manage to walk determinedly where they want.