My own self

When The Wealth of Nations was first published in March 1776 David Hume wrote to his old friend in terms of the greatest praise, while qualifying his hopes by remarking that 'the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular'. Strahan, Smith's publisher, wrote very much in the same vein when commenting that the sales of the book had been much more 'than I could have expected from a work that requires so much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose'.

- As rendered on page 11 in Andrew Skinner's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations Books I-III

Well, that was a pleasant surprise.

"Your country needs you!"
"I'm Canadian."

I originally had low expectations to this movie - X-men 3's fault, that - as it looked like it'd just be another "Hugh Jackman on posters and tons and tons and TONS of unnecessary mutants with flashy powers and so many plots that none of them have time to set themselves up before the movie's done"-thing, only a prequel to add to the lame. The trailers lifted my spirits only marginally - it seemed like a decent action movie, but not much else, and honestly, trailers tend to make movies look way better than they are, so if that's what the trailer made it look like...

Then people started seeing it, and huh, impressions started getting back to me that it was "okay", "rather good", "fun" and "worth the ticket". Adjusting my expectations up to thinking it would be what the trailer promised - good easy action - I went off to the cinema. Which I would have done any way, I'm a sucker for a comic book movie franchise, but I went off with higher expectations than I, er, expected. Meaning it's-going-to-be-completely-okay ones.

Well, it met those, and even went a little beyond them. As I suspected, this tragically hurts the good old X-men 1, seeing as Wolverine makes their brutish, quiet, brainless Sabretooth completely out of sync with the oddly compelling performance Liev Schreiber gives in the part in the prequel. And I do mean oddly, because this is a guy who acts and moves like he's a bear-panther hybrid and should by all rights feel like a much more cheesy Wolverine-rip-off. But no, he's actually very interesting, and brings a strong presence to his every scene. Kudos, Mr. Schreiber.

As for Wolverine himself, suffice to say it's the one thing I can never agree with Scrubs' Dr. Cox on, as I quite like Hugh Jackman. This movie is no exception. He gets a lot more to do here than in X1 and 3, though - as one should obviously expect.

My fears of a jungle of excessive mutants... is oddly placated. They are there by the scores, but they never pretend to have bigger parts then they do (unlike X3), and they never get in the way of the main plot (again, unlike X3). So, yeah, they could've limited themselves a bit more, but honestly, they didn't need to. Surprising, but impressive.

Other than Sabretooth and Wolverine, the big show stealer here is surprisingly not Gambit, who Marvel finally manages to put up on the big screen, but Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool. Which is odd, as his appearances in the movie are short indeed. I hear rumours that this movie's success might spawn two further spin-offs, and that one of them would centre on Deadpool. His few scenes in Wolverine makes me think that could very well work. (The other spin-off would be a Wolverine 2, set in his Japan-years. Sounds like fun too. Sadly, I'm hearing little of their long-planned Magneto-movie, which would be worth at least three Wolverine-movies in my book. Here's to hoping, though!)

Speaking of Gambit... I'm torn. Taylor Kitsch wasn't bad or anything, but... the roguish charm just didn't really register, and where is the delightful French accent? Mostly, I felt they wasted an opportunity to make the character shine and sparkle. Too bad. A Gambit-spin-off would've been lovely, but I doubt they'll be able to make one based on this. Wasn't at all bad, but wasn't at all memorable either.

The plots - again, compared to X3 - are awesome, because there is only one. Which helps, like, tons. It allows them to focus on it, pump it for emotion when they should and for action when they can, and even makes room for a little twist or two along the way. The plot also ties (mostly) neatly into the X2-plots concerning Stryker, Wolverine and Weapon X, which is of course a huge help considering X2 is awesome. It also really helps justifying the "X-men Origins"-piece of the title - this really does feel like a prequel to the franchise just as much as it does a standalone Wolverine-movie.

All in all, I'm very pleased. It was funny, it was exciting, and it even had a few pretty emotional character moments. When your main complaint is that it made a flat and boring character in X-men 1 look out of continuity because he is cool and engaging here, you know you're holding a bad hand of flaws to point out. There's even an in-universe sort-of explanation for that, as Sabretooth's mutation supposedly makes him more feral and beastlike with every passing year (as is even hinted at in the movie, considering how his character develops). Also, no offense to Danny Huston, he does a fine job, but doing William Stryker after (and at the same time before) Brian Cox is a tough job, and the character doesn't have quite the impact here he did in X2, despite his large role and presence. Still, he's more than adequately interesting. And my only other nitpicks would spoil too much of the movie, so those you won't hear 'cept if you ask in the comments.

This movie certainly isn't a Great movie, but it just as certainly is very good and very entertaining for anyone who's remotely interested in this type of superhero action and/or would like a pretty solid dive into Wolverine's past that doesn't clash much with the existing movies. Several times it even adds to them.

8/10

Still, in many rural areas [of China], including Anxi County, a resident whose first child is a daughter is allowed to have a second. Having a third child, however, can mean steep fines as high as $5,800 and other penalties that include the loss of a breadwinner’s job.

A boy, by contrast, can often be bought for half that amount, and authorities may turn a blind eye if the child does not need to be registered as a new birth in the locale.

In some cases, local officials may even encourage people desperate for a son to buy one. After their 3-month-old son died, Zhou Xiuqin said, the village family planning official went to her home and tried to comfort her and her husband, who was compelled to have a vasectomy after the birth of the boy, their second child. “He said, ‘Don’t cry, stop crying, you can always buy another one,’” Ms. Zhou recalled.

- "Rural China's Hunger for Sons Fuels Traffic in Abducted Boys",
by Andrew Jacobs for The New York Times, April 4th 2009.

I think I was ten. Possibly eleven. The globalisation and centralisation and all that jazz that we people on the fringes of civilisation (i.e. "people who doesn't live in, or within an hour's drive from, cities") blame all our problems on hadn't gotten particularly far yet, and thus we still had a video rental shop in my hometown. (Technically we still do - there's one shelf of DVDs at the Narvesen and three at the local gas station - but I'm talking a proper one, with an entire shop filled with nothing but videos for rent) On a whim, I think, and probably because I loved the book, I had my dad check out the first VHS with episodes of an animated series simply marked as "The Jungle Book". It was Norwegian-dubbed - except for the opening credits, which were in English, and the title-text on screen, which was French. As I grew older and wiser and realised the animation-style was Japanese (but not so old we had The Mighty Internet to answer All Questions You Might Have About Anything) I remember this utter salad of languages and cultures peeking through confusing me a little.

Anyway, I obviously liked it. Why else would I be writing this post? And so, some nagging was applied, and my dad rented me the next installment next week. And so it went. It quickly turned into a contract of sorts - if I was good one week, I'd get to rent the next installment next week. I was usually good, seeing as I didn't have a backbone back then either, so I liked this arrangement.

All good things must come to an end. I don't recall if it was the shop running out of VHS'es or if they simply didn't translate more of them to Norwegian - or even if the shop went bankrupt already back then - but somewhere about halfway through the show, I ran out of videos to rent one way or another. Since then, I've been looking for them.

A couple of years later, I found one for sale somewhere. The second VHS-tape, annoyingly with three of the episodes I'd liked the least on it. I bought it, of course, it was better than nothing, and for that decision I will forever be grateful, because in hindsight, the main plot on that tape is probably among the best the show ever had. It didn't have Shere Khan, though, so twelve-year-old-me didn't particularly care for it...

It would take many years before I found the next one - yes, literally the next one, it was tape number three. I believe I might have been fifteen at the time. The shop, of course, also had tape number two, but no other ones. Gritting my teeth at the combined luck and misfortune, I bought it, only barely wrestling myself to not buy their copy of the second tape just to have a backup for my own - and joy! It was an awesome collection of three episodes among which two were among the favourites I could remember from when I was younger.

This was all I would have for almost a decade, despite looking for these tapes wherever I went. True, I did whilst still in my early teens stumble over some German-dubbed episodes I hadn't even seen before on some channel - possibly Nicelodeon - that my grandparents got on their satelite dish. But seeing as I didn't speak German, it only served to tease me further. Two years after high school, however, I was nearing twenty years of age and had just moved to Bergen some months before. A video rental right next to where I lived was finally paid a long-postponed visit - and lo! It had Jungle Book-VHS'es. Three of them.

Tapes 2, 3 and 4.

I mean, seriously, at this point I figured someone was having a costly laugh at my expense. At this rate, I'd find them all by my 254th birthday, at that point having re-found that blasted tape number two seventy-three-thousand times. Asking the guy behind the counter if they had any more and getting an expected no, I rented tape number four, and went home to watch it. It was nice and all, but hardly Awesome. Not comparable in quality to the two I already had, and that wasn't just my by then incredibly nostalgic committment to those two tapes talking - these were simply weaker episodes. Still, I was just so happy to have found ANYTHING. I considered re-renting it to bring it home to my parents where there'd be two VHS-players so I could copy it - anything to not lose the thing again. But then the video rental apparently finally realised that nobody had sold VHSes for four or five years, and put their stock of such out for sale.

Miracles do still occur, you see. They're slimy and hard to spot, but they do occur.


Joy upon joy, I now had three tapes. Of the, what, fifteen or so I remembered. I never stopped looking for them online, though, but couldn't find anything in either Norwegian or English. Finally, I found someone who'd put the very first two episodes with English dubs out on YouTube. But that was sadly it.

But then! Out of nowhere! Some silly shop in Italy, of all places, decided to start selling them with Italian AND English dubs on. I had to pay through the nose, but this last December, for my own 24th birthday, I got the entire show.

It's in English, and as all Norwegians my age with a pseudo-geeky bone in their bodies know, English dubbing is on the whole horribly, horribly inferior to Norwegian. They never dare to actually act their lines, these English voice actors, and the few times they do it's so overdone it just sounds out of place. So, sadly, it was not as enjoyable as the voices I grew up with would have been by far, rewatching this.

But that's one laugh I'll let the trickster gods of fate have, and happily. I got to rewatch the entire show this December. All the way to the end that I never saw before. Corny voice work can't take that away from me. (Even Fox can't take that away from me, and gods know they've probably tried.)

I seriously never thought I'd get to finish this show. While the Dream of finding them with Norwegian voice work will probably still go unrealised, this is as good a silver medal as it gets.

So, what did I think? It was alright. Some plotlines and characters are really deep, and the show does a surprisingly good job (just like I remembered!) at staying true to Kipling's original work whilst adding a score of characters and nuances, and removing some of the really dark stuff. The save-the-environment-vibe of the late eighties is impossible to escape in this show, though, and this is very annoying. Luckily, you don't notice it much in the episodes without humans in them, and those are by far the best ones anyway. The score, the drawings and the characters are the ones I grew up with, and that probably coloured my imagination more than any other single thing I've ever experienced. (That includes Disney and Tolkien. I know. Freaky.) The ending is thoroughly unsatisfactory, by the way, but that's just like Kipling's own ending. I get the whole journey-to-manhood-thing. But who can hear the story of Mowgli and not wish he'd stay in the jungle at the end? Bah.

I have it now. The only feeling of joyous nostalgic closure that's ever come remotely close to this was when Wesley chose the lie and Angel decided he kinda wanted to slay the dragon. And I only had to wait for that one for five years. This took almost fifteen.

Thank you, Italy.

I have it now.

Never underestimate the capacity of other people to let you down.

Dexter Morgan, domesticated psycho- and sociopath, ended season 2 with a breaking of the leash: his adoptive father who taught him how to survive was in truth disgusted to witness it actually happening. If his father was disgusted by his own teachings, why should Dexter follow them? Dexter's conclusion in the second season finale was to follow the code - but under his own judgment now. Season 3 explores Dexter doing just this - seeing what he can do that wouldn't previously have been alright within the strict letter of the code, but without breaking the spirit of it.

I was skeptical to this season, I freely admit that, and I was right to be so. While season 1 has an immense intensity in the duality of a new, strange protagonist who killed people without mercy or guilt keeping the viewer on edge and this same protagonist's past coming back to haunt him in ways even more merciless and cruel, season 2 replaced this by having our by now viewer-accepted protagonist slash antihero be chased by his own friends. In other words, while somewhat eased off in comparison to the first one, there was plenty of intense stuff there as well. I saw no way for season 3 to keep this intensity going for a third year - and truly, it did not.

Don't get me wrong - in every single other aspect of the show it's still just as great. But what was the truly captivating part of Dexter to me was the edge-of-your-seat intensity, and this just isn't recaptured like one could wish. Having expected this, though, it wasn't much of a let-down, and the season as a whole has both entertained and engaged me.

The manifold ways Dexter's laxer (but in other ways still iron-hard) grip on his code is explored this season is very interesting indeed. Without spoiling what his decisions become, he's confronted with questions such as a mercy-kill, the morality of an accidental kill, and whether or not to kill someone truly depraved despite them not having really killed anyone themselves. And that's just on the who-to-kill-side of the code. Just as important is the part about not letting anyone in, because this is the season where someone tries to make a friend of Dexter, and Dexter is put in the difficult position of choosing whether to try to be a friend in turn.

This potential friend is the popular Assistant District Attorney, Miguel Prado, played brilliantly by Jimmy Smits. I can't praise this guy enough for this role. I had a pretty uninterested view of him after his relatively straightforward character on The West Wing and his low-profile part as Leia's adoptive father in the Star Wars-prequels, but he truly impressed me here, following neatly into the line of stellar Guest Star-spots after Christian Camargo in the first season and Keith Carradine in the second. This character, and his interactions with the still impressively portrayed Dexter, is what made this season for me.

The subplots about the supporting cast were for the most part interesting too, in particular I am always thrilled to see Angel get plotlines and Debra's new detective partner was actually both funny and interesting. Dexter's family life is also rather interesting this season, following up nicely the improvement this side of the show saw in season 2.

All in all, it's as good as I'd dared expect, but not as incredible as I'd hoped. I can honestly say, though, I think they did great with the situation they had to play from after last season's ending, and I'm looking just as much forward to season 4 as I was looking forward to this one last summer. Of still ongoing shows, I believe the only one I love more than this one is Battlestar Galactica, and this is saying a lot.

There are many opinions about most authors, but Terry Goodkind and his fantasy novel series The Sword of Truth is probably more divisive than most. Many love his books almost unconditionally, and many hate them outright. The reasons why are easy to see on both sides. (And there is no specific spoilers of anything major in this post, you can read on with relative safety)

You see, on the one hand, Goodkind has a deft ability to paint a rich, colourful universe where the fantasy archetypes are many and common but frequenting in versions distinctly Goodkind's own. There is something truly entoxicating about this for me as a reader - it is at once familiar and new, at once predictable and surprising, to explore his world and his characters. Add to his ability a capacity for plots that sometimes make quite interesting segues, an excellent ability to convey the beacons of hope still shining whilst pounding gruesome acts onto the narrative with horrific pathos, and a knack for writing quotable dialogue, one shouldn't have too much problems getting into the mindset of the stalwart Goodkind-fan.

Then you have the other hand, and I dare say, it's equally blemishing as the former is good. The following paragraph will thus be longer, because while what is good is easily described in a sentence, what's bad usually begs context and explanation to a much larger extent.

While Goodkind does indeed flesh out his world impressively, there is a spontaneity to it that sometimes makes it feel as though certain elements are thrown in haphazardly. This adds to the rich fairy-tale-like flavour of the world, but often get at a mood-wise odds with the increasingly logical and structured universe we're shown as the series progresses. This is a minor point, but it can be quite annoying at times to have a painter who can inexplicably make his drawings come to life in one book, and then have very strict rules about how to become a wizard and how wizards use their magic in another. The difference between the magic of a wizard, a sorceress and a war wizard is explained in complex detail, but the sorceror and the witch-woman is thrown in without further nuancing.
Another point in Goodkind's disfavour is the lack of originality to his main plots. Yes, the defender would as I did in the previous paragraph point out a quite excellent ability to make up for this with often quite well done twists, turns and variations along the way, but the fact remains that when you strip it down, Goodkind's plots are very, very simple and predictable. There is the hero, there is his old and wise yet amusing and quirky mentor, there is his bonny lass (who, whilst very much a capable protagonist in her own right, all too frequently gets in severe trouble which requires rescuing), and there is the big horrid villain. He's also been accused of copying Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and while some things are indeed of baffling similarities, it's always struck me as silly to claim he took them from someone else. Why would he? When you show the capability to construct and write thousand-page-narratives, why would you need to mimick the name of a prophecy or an organisation of female users of magic? Far more likely I find this to merely be a product of two authors writing at approximately the same time, in approximately the same style, in approximately the same genre. The conventions are clear, and they both use them thoroughly. When that happens, you will end up with similarities. But Jordan never copyrighted the magic sword or the powerful group of witches. (He might have copyrighted the concept that they should all have annoying personalities, though, I should look that up...)
The third, and by far greatest problem with Goodkind's writing is his very strong ideological and philosophical standpoints. It is his right as an author to place these in his work, and I see no issues with that. The problem enters when it obstructs the narrative. His earlier books didn't suffer from this - the messages were there, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, but they were still messages you read through and from what happened. In more recent years, likely due to increased popularity and thus laxer editing enforced by his publishers, Goodkind has slowly slipped more and more outright preaching into his stories. Speech-giving by characters only work so often, and after a while, it kills the pace of the story. For people who disagree strongly with the messages given, then, it also becomes harder to look past or interpret differently for those who would wish to do so. I'm sure that Goodkind's somewhat arrogant demeanor in interviews and ridiculous claims such as him not writing fantasy at all, but something somehow grander due to his political agenda, have only strengthened such negative reactions. Many people, then, quite intensely dislike Goodkind's series of books.

Me, I quite like them. At times, often in recent books, I find his preaching to be annoying, unnecessary and demeaning to his characters, but there is no denying that the sheer zeal Goodkind puts into his writing due to this opportunity for him to share his enthusiastic propaganda, that zeal sometimes puts a fire in the story that would probably not be there without it. Yes, it sometimes goes horribly wrong, and that's a shame and poor writing from his side. (More importantly, since they're usually things easily fixed, they're bad editing from whomever is supposed to keep his artistical whims a little under control) And yes, I agree with virtually nothing in Goodkind's hardcore individualistic view of the world. But no, I don't see this as purely a problem. The end of his sixth volme, Faith of the Fallen, is wonderously emotional for me to read, and this is exclusively due to the amount of idealism and outright propaganda for his own way of seeing the world Goodkind filled that story with. In other words, this is a valid point against much of his work, and certainly one of the strongest reasons he'll never be among my favourite authors. But it doesn't automatically remove the fact that behind it, there is often a surprising amount of quality - especially in the earlier books when the propaganda was still toned heavily down. To me, the good sides of Goodkind's books are stronger, bigger, better than the bad ones, and unless his writing degenerates completely, I will keep reading and looking forward to the new volumes for as long as I have time to read fiction. Not as my first, second or third priority. But somewhere down the list, well above the books I think that "well, one day, if I have time, I'll read those" when I glance at, there you'll find Goodkind, and he's not going anywhere.

So where am I going with all this? Well, ABC is out with a TV-series that is based off of these stories(for now, obviously, limited to the first book), and today I watched the double-episode pilot.

My expectations were rather low. Sam Raimi is listed as the creator, and while he might have spawned occasional brilliance in his day as well as being responsible for the awesome Spider-man 2, there is no denying this man has touched a lot of cheese as well over the years. In my head, Raimi's cheese combined with the controlling influence of Goodkind could go nowhere truly good.

Well, as of yet, it hasn't - but it hasn't gone anywhere bad either. Because there is virtually no cheese at all. Sure, there's cheese if you consider the mere fact that there is a main villain, a budding hero, a damsel in distress and a mysterious old wizard running around on screen, but if they hadn't had that, this would have been a horrid trip away from the source material that nobody in their right minds would have approved of. Just because something's been done so often that the mere thught of doing it again seems like such a clichè it gets called corny and cheesy from the get-go doesn't mean it can't be done well. I've seen nothing so far that makes me think these guys won't do it well. Thus, in my opinion, no cheese here, except for a few overly dramatical uses of the score and one special-effects-shot that was a little over the top. That's it, and in an hour and a half of televised high-budget fantasy, that's nothing to fret about at all.

Beyond the lack of cheese, as well as a (much more expected) lack of the obvious propaganda of Goodkind's later books, there was one additional pleasant surprise. Of course the plot would be changed to fit the new medium, but I expected (as one tends to do) all such changes to be exclusively bad. Most were. However, two of them were very good indeed. Allowing us to see Kahlan's sister in the beginning is an added incentive to care for Kahlan's character and mission that made the series start off at a better note than it otherwise would. The second one is bigger, and shapes the plots of both the first two episodes; one of Kahlan's hunters survives and becomes a tangible, human threat on the "safe" side of the border.

For each of these two good changes, there were a good dozen bad ones, some of them somewhat understandable, somewhat less so. Not to spoil anyone who have not read the books nor seen the pilot (it does surprise me that you still have the stamina to read this if this is the case, by the way) I will not go into detail on antyhing so changed that is plot-related. Suffice to say that I have no idea why the part of memorizing the book couldn't have been included, as it is probably the main clever twist to an otherwise straightforward narrative in the original. On the less plot-related changes, especially annoying was the inexplicable choice to have Darken Rahl's hair be black rather than light blonde (probably to avoid making Craig Parker look like he did as Haldir in the Lord of the Rings-movies, sigh), and his men from a seemingly quite dark, medieval society rather than the sandy, light country of the books. I chalk this up to somebody's decision that hey, people won't get that they're evil if they don't have dark hair and live in poorly lit castles.

The characters were well done, to a one, even if the plot moved far too quickly for any of them to ever have any particularly interesting or cool scenes. In lieu of this, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much screentime was given to characters such as Chase, Michael and George. Zedd, my favourite character, was well enough done, and by the fairly renowned actor Bruce Spence, but he was never given a chance to sparkle with the little things that makes his character awesome in the books. If things such as that is allowed to happen as the series progresses, it will gain a lot more favour in my eyes.

So far, so good. I'm not impressed, but considering my very low expectations, I must admit to a certain feeling of reassurance. This probably won't be an awesome TV-show, but it won't make the books look too bad, and it might even get pretty good in its own right as it gets a few more episodes to stand on. It also might not, but no reason not to stay positive has been shown me yet, so I prefer to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, as a huge fan of the first book of this series, I'm a viewer highly prepared to pick apart every little weakness I think could have been avoided, and a viewer who at the same time knows the basic outline of every little bit of the plot before it happens. In other words; the good stuff is expected, the bad stuff not. Making a favourable impression on me should be pretty hard for these guys, and yet, I did not dislike it as the pilot came to an end. Some things bugged me greatly, of course, but nothing happened to make me outright angry or disappointed. I will be quite interested to now follow and see this show develop into something that will actually make an impact on me - either by disappointing the small hopes I'm now allowing myself to feel, or by satisfying them by becoming genuinely worth my while.

A very strong 6.5/10 with a clear potential to reach both a 4 and an 8 within few more episodes.

Carl Sack: Did they give you a reason for seceding?
Alan Shore: Yes. They want to hold some neglected truths to be self-evident. Isn't it exciting?

- Episode 4x20: Patriot Acts


In season 4, Boston Legal returns slightly to form after the overall somewhat disappointing third season. The introduction of John Larroquette as Carl Sack works splendidly as the straight man to the others eccentricities as well as a strict but loving father-figure replacing Rene Auberjonois' Paul Lewiston who only guest-stars in one episode this season. Three other new characters are introduced - this turns out to be one too many, the show can't find time for them all despite having booted out several of the regulars from earlier seasons. Especially Whitney Rome (played by Taraji P. Henson) gets no place on the show, and is edged out by Saffron Burrows' Lorraine Weller and especially Tara Summers' Katie Lloyd. The latter in particular is a very good addition to the cast, from the get-go showing a great chemistry with Christian Clemenson's Jerry Espenson who is bumped to regular this season, but Lorraine's distantly amused persona is also a welcome new dynamic.

The season goes a good bit lighter on the meta-jokes than season 3 did, especially initially, but they are in no way gone, and are phased back in as the year progresses. The politics that came closer to centre stage in season 3 than it had been before are still very much a focal point, but maybe somewhat less so. Of course, the main focus of the show remains the Shore-Crane-friendship, and it is glorious.

However, Shore is much too little of a jackass. It's really a shame how much his biting persona has been watered down since season 1. There are moments where we again see his ice-cold self come out, but they are so rare and few between it's quite sad. Still, when it for once happens it is amazing and gratifying.

The show demonstrates with this season that its still very good, and still have the potential for many years of quality left. Especially their ability to portray strong, character-focused episodes is as good as ever before, or even better than. The episode where they bring back Schmidt's Alzheimer-ridden father is quite superb, for instance.

All in all, a season that solidified my loyalty to the show with consistant levels of quality but without completely blowing me away with unexpected levels of awesome. I am looking very much forward to watching season 5 - though, sadly, I hear it might be the last this show gets. If so, at least I'm grateful for having gotten to follow the ride.

The only difference between a dream and a nightmare is how big your balls are, bitch.

- The Fox

So, seeing as I was planning on watching the loose movie adaptation of Wanted in the cinema in the upcoming week, I figured I'd give the original graphic novel a try first.

The premise was interesting, and the artwork by J. G. Jones was easy on the eyes. Seeing as it's additionally written by Mark Millar, I had rather high expectations to this, considering what I've read of his work before. Millar's DC Elseworld story Red Son featuring a "what is Superman landed in Stalnist Russia?"-premise was amazing, his recent major Marvel event Civil War was actually very good for a mainstream superhero giga-crossover, his original run at Ultimate X-men was exhilarating and often quite moving, and The Ultimates, especially the second installment, is simply awesome.

Thus, I must say, this was quite the disappointment. With Wanted, Millar is doing his completely own thing, writing with his own characters in a universe he made up himself. It's ironic, then, that one of the main strengths I see in the book is actually the ofttimes clever way he alludes to mainstream DC and Marvel characters and continuity. (Sadly, it often goes horribly wrong and just comes off as stupid or juvenile, like for instance his imitation of Scarface and Two-Face) In particular characters like his Mr. Richter deserves credit for being a funny and charismatic villain reminiscent of characters like Batman's "Black Mask" or Cap's "Red Skull", but not exactly like either of them nor a stupid parody. Another excellent character is Doll-Master, a character blatantly ripped off of DC's Toyman, but much more interesting and charming than Toyman ever was. Still, you're more often than not left sitting with the feeling that this'd be a lot more interesting if it had the original characters instead of Millar's homages, parodies and copies.

The plot of this comic, without spoiling more than your average blurb would, is that a normal pushover wussy office rat learns his father was a supervillain and willed him a fortune on the condition that his son learned to be a supervillain too, being trained by a secret society of such. The story is actually quite intoxicating, sucking you in, making you want to read on, see what happens next. The problem is that what happens next is (almost) never particularly interesting beyond making you want to see what happens after that again.

The reason for this is that Millar's created an interesting world for the story, but plotted it along the life of a main character totally devoid of any form of charisma, allure or even agenda for me as the reader to get excited about. All he does is kill people. There's no elaborate planning, no finesse, no charm, no interesting and complex motivations. The character simply has no draw to him, there's no... je ne sais quoi, nothing of interest. Just a hell of a lot of potential for interest that keeps you going. But by the end of the book, the potential's gone unrealized and the character's more boring and unappealing than ever. It doesn't exactly help that he's drawn to look like Eminem.


A little more spoilers from this paragraph on, if you're phobic you should skip to the last one. What happens, you see, is that our main character becomes a remorseless rapist sociopath. Fair enough. Why? Because he can, because the world's always screwed him over and he figures he can now screw it back. Fair enough again. How? By doing stuff like killing random people in the street. Alright. Also fair enough, I suppose. And then what?

Well, and then nothing. That's the problem. Wanted is the story of how a boring wuss became a boring bully. That's all he is at the end of this story. A rich, remorseless, super-powered bully with no intelligence or charm to his actions, nothing to keep the reader connected to him.

Oddly, Millar seems to think I'd somehow envy this guy. The story ends with the protagonist breaking the fourth wall, addressing the reader, accusing him of having as empty a life as he had in the beginning, and that reading about others doing things like he's been doing in this story is the illusion used to fill up the meaningless drone life. I suppose it's intended to make me feel provoked, or insulted, or maybe make me reconsider some priorities or something. All it does, honestly, is make me go "fuck, this man is stupid." If anyone in this story wanted to tell me a line like that, it needed to be one of the heads of the five families, or possibly Doll-Master. Heck, even the protagonist's father, whom he turns into an almost identical replica of, was a little bit more interesting than the guy we've been following throughout this. All the ending leaves me with is a feeling of "this was it?" I read five issues to get to the point where character-development as a concept is non-existent, the only interesting characters are killed by the most boring ones, and then one of the boring ones claim that my life is empty compared to his? Really Millar, Fredegar Bolger had a more interesting role in The Lord of the Rings than Wesley Gibson had here.


Thus, I'm sucked through five issues of action, constantly feeling as though the cool moments, the truly awesome entertainment, are all right around the corner. But in the end, all I'm left with are secondary characters who for the most part were more interesting in their original DC incarnations, stupid plot-devices like when Sucker doesn't know when 24 hours have passed since he did something but the protagonist who wasn't present at the instance somehow does standing in for what should be genuinely cool character moments, and a main character who was a million times less interesting than the badguys he fought but just as morally reprehensible, giving me no reason to root for him whatsoever. I know the movie is supposed to make him into more of a hero, but honestly, I've kind of lost all the drive I had to watch it.

Smaller sets would be awesome. Way overdue, albeit far better late than never. Mythic rares probably isn't a very good idea, but if the maths as Rosewater lay them out indeed work out, it shouldn't be more difficult getting one than any given Lorwyn-rare in the smaller sets, and it does appeal to my inner Vorthos.




But a LAND replacing a common in every expert-level booster? That's effectively dropping one card from every pack I buy while putting just enough lands there that new players will be annoyed for not having enough of them to play with anyway. I'll feel like I'm being flipped every time I browse through a pack and see those lands.


Seriously? A basic land?!



I'm too old for this nonsense.

I give you - with great sadness - the Signs of Modern Norway:





The beauty; gone. The charm; gone. The identity; gone. The soul. Gone.


All that remains are traffic signs. Anonymous traffic signs for anonymous traffic with anonymous people with anonymous lives in an increasingly anonymous country.



Damn them all.

Well, watching that "Season 4 Pitch" on the last Veronica Mars' box-set was a very bittersweet experience... heavy on the sweet, though. 'Cause wow, here's a whole brand new 12 minutes of Bell-starring Thomas-made Veronica Mars-scenes, and I had no clue they even existed! Basically, it's the teaser/first act of a hypothetical season 4 of the show, made to try to convince the network of renewing the show anyway after the cancellation.



'Course, it didn't work, but bless their hearts for putting it on the DVDs.


(Oh, and folks, strong suggestion, watch the "pitching season 4" before the "presentation"-featurette, because the latter uses the same scenes, but out of order and in between interview-bits and will thus spoil this golden opportunity to watch a quarter of the closest we're likely to ever get again to a VM-episode...)

Guess what I just found out!

I'm happy - not psyched or anything, but happy - about this. If nothing else because it will let me see Smaug on the big screen.


And Smaug, ladies and gents, is cool.


Peter Jackson not directing but producing sounds... vaguely promising, I guess. (Why mess up something that works?)


I'm intrigued by the whole (obviously run on the moneymaking incentive) decision to make it into two movies. Where'll they chop it? A slow-paced start in Rivendell in the second movie? Beorn, maybe? Right before Mirkwood? IN Mirkwood? After Mirkwood? It would kind of make sense, actually, to make the first movie about the journey and the second about the dragon and the war, but I suspect the second movie would be stretched very thin if that's the case. Oh, well. I guess we'll see. In three years or so.

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall;
and down will come baby, cradle and all!

- Traditional nursery rhyme

The six-ep "Heroes: Origin" has been put on hold indefinetly.

With the exception of "Angel", "Firefly" and maaaybe (but, in lieu of the weaker third season, probably not even) "Veronica Mars", I've never felt more horrible about approaching the end of a show. Ever. And I've seen a ton of them.



I'm dreading when I, an hour's time from now, have no more "Deadwood" to look forward to; save hoping and praying for those two maybe-slightly-possibly-hopefully-could-be-television-movies.


Sigh.



So. Onwards, to the final episode. "Tell Him Something Pretty", it's called. I hope they will.

...be very afraid.

Huh. So this wasn't half bad.


After all the badmouthing this movie has on its rep, including from Mastah Whedon himselfest, I expected it to be way, way worse than this.

It was actually a pretty decent flick. Brilliant by no means, but... it was entertaining.

First and foremost due to what remains of Whedon's original idea, I'd suspect (and see traces of - though I'm nowhere near arrogant enough to actually suggest that I can pinpoint what off Joss' original stuff remains and what doesn't, so you won't be gettin' examples. Suffice to say, you can see Joss' hand in this much like you could in Disney's Atlantis and Toy Story.) Second, Luke Perry. He's really funny and captivating in this movie, for instance is the scene where his buddy comes back as a vampire hovering outside his window downright awesome. His character is basically the proto-Xander, and I quite liked him. Third, Rutger Hauer. That's right. The villain could've been less cheesy, the scenes where he's exchanged with a stunt double could've been less obvious, and the plot he was put in could've been (way) better. But seriously, it's Rutger Hauer. You can put him in a monkey suit and have him throw bananas for twenty minutes and he's still awesome.

Same goes for Donald Sutherland, though apparently, Joss got quite fed up with him in the movie. (He won't stop dissing the guy online, that's for sure) Supposedly he changed his own lines to the worse, made changes that made no sense, and was a general jackass on set. But still, while I do not doubt at all that his part could've been miles and miles better if Joss had been in control, there's no denying the guy and the character is a big part of what carries this movie. As Joss at some point's said:

Some people didn't notice. Some people liked him in the movie. Because he's Donald Sutherland. He's a great actor. He can read the phone book, and I'm interested. But the thing is, he acts well enough that you didn't notice, with his little rewrites, and his little ideas about what his character should do, that he was actually destroying the movie [...]

And as the devout little fanboy I aspire to be, I'll take his word for that. ^^

Kristy Swanson in the lead role was okay. Compared to SMG, of course, she falls dreadfully short, but honestly, who wouldn't. In some scenes she's even quite good.

What detracts from the movie, mainly, is a somewhat weak plot, overly cheesy villains (like Paul Reubens' character, through no fault of the actor's as far as I could tell), and choosing to go with the silly instead of the captivating and scary a great deal too often. (There's next to none of the excellent switching between truly exhilaratingly tense scenes where you're at the edge of your seat and sudden moments of hilarious comedy that's so trademark to Joss' work on TV.) They do bring the silly, though rarely at the level of funny the show used to have, but they never really bring the ensnaring plot and characters which pulls you into the story.

Still, a fun, okay watch, and not stinky like I thought it'd be. A weak 6,5/10.