The League Watches "The Spirit" So You Don't Have To

I just finished watching the 2008 film "The Spirit" on OnDemand, and I think its safe to say... it's not very good.

Written and directed by comic superstar Frank Miller, its curious to consider how the movie wound up the way it did in the first place.

Eisner first launched The Spirit as a roughly 8 page weekly newspaper insert pre-World War II, trying to find a way to get away from the superhero fads and other things he didn't like about the conditions at many comic publishers. The strip ran for years, and attained great popularity, retaining cult status among a certain breed of comic aficionado, seeing occasional revivals and reprints.

Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City) became friends with Will Eisner at some point, and the two put out a book of interviews and discussions, which I actually bothered to read a few years back. While Miller may idolize Eisner, the two have very different approaches to character and storytelling.


from some Spirit reprints

Following the groundbreaking success of Dark Knight Returns, Miller did some work in Hollywood, including screenplays for Robocops 2 and 3. However, the adaptation of Sin City by Robert Rodriguez, which maintained the look and panel-by-panel pacing of Miller's work, and cited Miller as a co-director, opened new doors for Miller on a much bigger scale than what modern comics affords. Paired with Zack Snyder's adaptation of Miller's original graphic novel, "300", someone in Hollywood felt that Miller could handle his own film project. And Miller, it seems, received the approval of the Eisner's to let him handle Will Eisner's most popular character for a big screen adaptation.


would have been totally cutting edge if he hadn't done this already

It should be mentioned... there was a 1987 television movie of "The Spirit". I missed it. I had a basketball game or band concert or something.

Oddly, Miller more or less abandoned the look, feel, story and everything about the comics that makes them interesting, and inserted a sort of sci-fi/ fantasy take on the events from the comics. Miller's worldview permeates the movie, with the Sin City look overwhelming Eisner's gritty but still friendly cartoonish feel to a stand-in for a North Eastern City, circa 1940ish that The Spirit seemed to perpetually inhabit.

Further, Miller doesn't bother to ever even make a nod to the kind of groundbreaking work Eisner did in page layout and as a master of his craft in managing the comic page.

The Spirit comics became often much more about the crooks and the stories around the people in the comics other than The Spirit, something in the manner of a lot of cop procedurals. The Spirit was cool, two-fisted and had a peculiar relationship with luck, but that was more or less a wink and a nod as a storytelling device. Tracking the past of Sand Serif, Wild Rice, or even a toy machine gun was much more likely to fill the pages of a Spirit story than following Denny Colt around.


The Spirit is a Peeping Tom

I do think its kind of a neat idea to include a handful of the femme fatales of the Spirit comics into the movie. After all, Eisner loved drawing women and found many-a-way to set them up as the equal to The Spirit (not entirely common in strips of the time). While I felt that the movie could have used P'Gell, I didn't get hung up on it. It would have been worth exploring, however, how and/ or why The Spirit of the movie engaged all women as sexual objects when the back story suggested the opposite.

I find it puzzling that Miller would have been such a fan of Eisner's work, routinely complained about how Batman is portrayed on the screen, and then saw fit to take Eisner's creation and manhandle it. That doesn't begin to get into the problems with pacing and story telling that Miller runs into (let alone technical issues such as camera placement and that every shot in the movie looks as if Kevin Smith were DP, selecting mid-range, static shots that don't ever seem to move). One has to assume pride or ego are the culprits here, but I have no idea. I'd have to hear more from Miller.


a good reason to watch the movie, but not good enough

Miller's sense of humor may also not jive with that of his own movie. The Looney Tunes-like fight sequence at the beginning seems less funny and more like a dip back into the post-Adam West-era of comic movie making where nobody seemed to be able to keep a straight face if they knew the source material were a comic.

Scarlett Johansson seems just happy to be there, even if she is rightfully lost as to what is actually going on. Eva Mendes is a lovely woman, but there are places where even in this mess, she seems a bit out of her depth. I do give credit to Gabriel Macht for probably being as solid a portrayal of Denny Colt as you're likely to get. And I can only hope that the set makers could keep up with all the scenery chewing Samuel L. Jackson was responsible for as The Octopus.

All in all, I'm not even sure its a renter. The look is no longer experimental, as we've seen it elsewhere to better effect. The pacing is grueling and the whole thing just feels like maybe someone should have stepped in and stopped this mess before they ever rolled video.

Movie Meme: Last Ten Movies I watched.

Calvin from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool wants to know what the last ten movies I watched might have been. I can only remember back so far, but let's try this. I assure you, there are probably three or four in here I'm not remembering.

In something approximating reverse order from last night backward:

1) Supergirl
2) Burn After Reading
3) Bolt
4) Superman III
6) Star Trek
7) Star Trek: The Motion Picture
8) Wolverine
9) The Incredible Hulk (it was on cable, plus... Liv Tyler)
10) Slacker

I watch a lot of stuff on Cinemax, which in spite or its reputation, actually has the better movie selection, but not the original programming one gets with HBO. So there were probably a few movies in there I missed.

Editor's Note: I also watched the movie "Role Models" in there, somewhere.

Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart

Let's wrap up what's become Bonnie Tyler week with a League Super THX to Randy for sending me the Literal Reading of the video for Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

Supergirl the Movie

It's been a long while since I tried to watch "Supergirl: The Movie". I've not actually ever made it all the way through the movie, at least in one shot. Except for the last time, when I had the flu, was running a 102 fever and was drifting in and out, and wasn't sure what might have been an hallucination.

The important thing to know about Supergirl is that it was produced by the same Salkinds who produced the first three Superman movies, and largely reflects what would happen if they were left to their own devices. The movie faired poorly enough that it is rumored that its part of why DC more or less retired Kara Zor-El/ Linda Lee from the DC Comics Universe for about two decades. I don't know if I buy that story, but it didn't mean that comic dorks didn't actually TELL Supergirl star Helen Slater that somehow she was responsible for the death of Supergirl in the comics (that's not cool, ya'll).*

The movie has some curious sponsorships, such as Popeye's Chicken, A&W Rootbeer and maybe Schlitz Malt Liquor. It also features several celebrities slumming it for the fun of being in a corny superhero movie, one would assume. Peter O'Toole plays some sort of wizard of a lost Kryptonian city (Argo) that retreated to "Innerspace" when Krypton exploded. Or something. Mia Farrow appears as Allura, Supergirl's mother. And Faye Dunaway headlines as "Selena", the villainness.


Supergirl declares that she is going to find out why the chicken bucket dinner crossed the road.

None of the stars of the original movies are in Supergirl, except for Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen. There's some very Bronze Age-ish reason cooked up as to where Superman is during the duration of the film (he's off planet working out an alien peace treaty). Most likely Lois wasn't going to appear as Kidder wasn't getting along with the Salkinds at the time of the shooting. And... a pre-Max Headroom Matt Frewer appears as one of the first two people Supergirl meets on Earth. Who promptly attempt to rape her (it's a fun movie for kids!).

Like Superman III and IV, the writers, director and producers of the movie envisioned none of the same sense of scale or American myth-building or representation that the first two Superman films attempted to embody. The whole thing feels vaguely under-thought out and not taken very seriously for a major motion picture, but in the wake of the success of the recent era of comic movies, its easy to forget that until Tim Burton produced Batman in the late 80's, most people felt their comic book movie job was to make an episode of the old Batman TV show.


Supergirl ponders a future in which she will star in no sequels.

The people in the movie are all oddly plain looking, in an after-school special sort of way that would never happen in a movie these days.

The big-scale heroic acts of the movie include Supergirl putting out a tire fire and stopping runaway construction equipment. Which all occurs far further into the movie than you'd probably guess.

By the time the movie hit the screen (I wouldn't see it until years later, possibly on VHS... I have no real recollection), Supergirl had moved well past the demure sweet-16 year old that had first appeared in Action Comics 252. She was, by the 1970's, a sort of kick-ass undergrad who frequently got wound up about social issues of the day. The movie plays up a bit more of the "I'm a good girl" take on Supergirl, without quite the same creepy factor that a lot of the earliest Supergirl stories contained.

As the demure and reserved Kara Zor-El, Helen Slater is fine, I guess. She looks exactly right in the suit, she seems to be the only one taking things seriously, and if you were going to have that brand of Supergirl, then you could do a lot worse.**

I'm going to go ahead and say it: This is a really dumb movie. It features whole scenes in which they seemed to neglect to actually put in the big budget movie monster, a comparative scene to the "can you read my mind" sequence in which Supergirl first knocks out her paramour, then carries him around the world in a bumper car. And the central conflict seems to stem from Supergirl and Faye Dunaway both wanting the sexy lawn-guy.

In many, many ways, it makes just no sense, and fits in with the Superman mythology in only the slimmest of ways.

While normally I'd really appreciate how some folks persevere no matter what obstacles are in their path, one sort of feels that once the producers couldn't land Christopher Reeve for the movie, that should have been a sign to call the the whole thing off.

The movie has a weird, kind of goofy fantasy movie ending that makes not a lick of sense and features a detailed puppet of something that may be THE DEVIL. Ya'll, I do not understand what I just watched.


*Supergirl would become one of the internet's most fetishized objects. Her return to DC Comics circa 2005 would be marred by a costume redesign and storytelling that seemed to reflect that fetish far more than celebrating the history of the character. In the past year, writer Sterling Gates managed to rehabilitate the character, but the costume is in deep need of a redesign.

**Slater went on to feature in other movies such as "The Secret of My Success", "The Legend of Billie Jean" and much more. She recently appeared on Smallville as Lara-El, Clark's birth mother. Let us just say that she has aged rather well since she wore the cape. And, these days, I think most comic fans agree that Slater is probably the best thing about the movie and celebrate her as part of the whole weird, mixed-up world of Super-fandom. She appears at signings, etc...

Palatschinken

My new hero:

13 year old Kennyi Aouad in the 2009 Scripps Spelling Bee.

All of these kids are amazing. Seriously. They all give me hope that I rarely get when I deal with 13-year-olds in the wild.

But Kennyi brought pro-sports-like sideshow personality to the competition. And when he got the word wrong in round 11, he felt he needed to reassure the audience (and himself) that it was okay, and he'd tried his best.

I don't often apply the word "moxie" to spelling bee competitors, but Kennyi has it by the truckload.

alas, he was taken down by the word "palatschinken". Yeah, I'd never heard it either, but it seems to be some sort of pancake-like item

A few scattered items

Conference is Done

So I don't know why I hadn't thought much about it until last week, but I suddenly realized I was going to MC the conference I was "running" this week. So I more or less spent the past day and a half intro-ing all kinds of presentations.

Luckily, my team is super-awesome, so I was able to let them handle the administrative stuff this week while I wore a tie and ran around hoping nothing went wrong.

That's more or less over now, so now tomorrow is making sure I follow up with everyone who wanted to chat.

I guess we'll be doing this again next year.


I know how Ray feels



the strip.

Not Clear on the Concept

ABC is creating a sort of future-looking faux-documentary that portrays Spaceship Earth in the year 2100. Probably to save money, ABC has employed Flash cartoons.

In an attempt to be hip/ edgy/ what-have-you, they're describing what they did as a graphic novel. See here.

I find it hard to believe that nobody at ABC knew that a cartoon isn't the same thing as a graphic novel, and I think if they didn't think that the term carried some sort of cache of legitimacy vis-a-vis some mistaken notion regarding "grittiness", they would have... not done that.

The term "Graphic Novel" is largely considered to have been coined by master of the comics medium, Will Eisner, when he began putting out his first long-form work, such as "A Contract With God". Yes, it was intended to add legitimacy to work in a medium usually considered to be for children and the illiterate. Eisner was by no means alone in his efforts, but I'd focus on him here as what ABC has missed that Eisner knew, that the comic page/ sequential art is not the same thing as the animated program or the cut between scenes in film or video. It is its own medium with its own tools for expression.

A graphic novel is a complete comic work (often with multiple chapters) told with a beginning, middle and end. It is, basically, a novel in the sequential art form. And that basically means a series of static images, in which multiple actions are understood to occur in a single panel, or it may capture a single moment in linear or non-linear time. The space between panels (and this is the difference between comics and cartoons) is part of the storytelling, as the reader fills in the space or makes connections between the panels on their own. It isn't moving pictures with voice over and music.

A comic (or graphic novel) is not, ABC, a cartoon. Nor is it, WB, a Motion Comic.

Nor are, Hollywood, all comics a graphic novel. While it works terrifically well as such, Watchmen isn't even really a graphic novel. Its a collected, 12-issue series.

I understand the impulse, but I don't call your TV shows "a moving picture" or "talking painting" or "acted out book". So, you know... just try a little harder.

It looks neat, though. Depressing, but worth checking out.

Nothing on TV

Seriously. At least the Spelling Bee is on. And at this stage, how bad can you feel for the kids who lose? They're at the nationals for, chrissake.

Mom in Kenya

So... The KareBear is off to Kenya. She's with a church group, and they're going to be fitting people with glasses.

No, I have no idea how it works, but there you go.

I'm incredibly proud of KareBear as she's wanted to take part in some sort of mission work since high school. Sure, it could be argued that she's more than fulfilled that goal in her own backyard, but I think this was a particularly specific way she wanted to do it.

Most impressive is that she's decided to do it alone. The Admiral and KareBear are two peas in a pod, so I was a bit skeptical about how this would work if The Admiral remained at base, but so far, so good.

Wishing her the best of luck.

No Post Wednesday Evening

So here's Darwyn Cooke's portrayal of Wonder Woman. And, no, don't waste your bullets.