Weekend Entertainment Pursuits, Part II

[bryant]

Wanted sucked rocks. Here’s a list of the good:

• Set pieces: the skyscraper assassination, the sunroof bit, the keyboard across the face.
• Angelina Jolie’s performance, which was surprisingly nuanced and subtle, especially at the end.
• The Russian thriller-verging-on-horror aesthetic: the knife fight in the denoument.
• Timur Bekmambetov bringing in his

Comments

[dariusk]

It takes some serious skill to start with a Millar property and then make it *worse*. (And I loved Red Son, just everything else he's done has left me underwhelmed.)

[dariusk]

Did you know that Grant Morrison gave Millar the idea for the ending to Red Son? It made so much more sense when I learned that, because honestly when I finished the book I was thinking, "Wow, that is some Grant Morrison caliber writing right there."

[dariusk]

Heh, I'm willing to forgive all if the writing's good. I haven't followed any of the big "event" books he's been involved in (a clusterfuck, from what I understand), but All-Star Superman is shaping up to be the best Superman story ever written. We'll see how he ends it in issue 12.

[bryant]

Millar bought into his own hype right around Red Son. His runs on Flash and Swamp Thing were pretty good, and Flash #134 was just great. (I had to look up the issue number. I'm not that bad.)

I blame either the Ultimates or Authority. Probably Authority. Ellis has a lot to answer for.

Hm. I think the comic was worse than the movie, though. The movie isn't soaking in racism, and there's at least an attempt at underlying morality as opposed to pure "we're better so we rule."

[dariusk]

I was just re-reading Ellis' Authority. So good. And I stopped before the trade switched over to Millar. Read it once, don't need to read it again.

[bryant]

Are you reading his Freakangels? It's kind of grabbing me -- lots of his sense of wonder without quite so much of the shock for shock's sake that's permeated his Avatar stuff.

[dariusk]

Yes, Freakangels is probably my favorite thing of his I've read recently, with the exception of Fell, which is just awesome and hits that sweet spot of humanity+shock that I loved in Transmet.