the heart of the watchmen

okay...

so the watchmen came out on the same weekend that my play went up.
so i couldn't go.
then i got the flu.
which lasted, like, a week and a half.
then my dad got the flu.
(since i'd made him read the book twenty years ago, we wanted to see it together.)
week and a half for him.
so we didn't get a chance to get out and see it until last week.
thursday, in fact.
a matinee.


overall, i dug it a lot.
visually, it was stunning. and stunningly accurate.
zack snyder--a man who obviously held the story in the same high regard we all do and poured a great deal of love and energy into the film--accomplished what hollywood (and most of comicdom) long said couldn't be done. he made a (good) watchmen movie.

if you haven't seen it, i'll warn you now that there might be a SPOILER or two between here and the bottom of this section. (i worked so hard to avoid mention of the movie in magazines and on tv--and matt's blog--until i saw it.)

the casting was great and i "felt" the characters. they all did a great job of bringing each of them to life. these actors obviously read and studied the source material. (although i do think that the acting was somewhat melodramatic and "comic book-y"--it could have been played a little straighter.) the story unfolded very close to that of the original and i realized as i watched the movie, that, in all my many readings of the graphic novel, i've memorized it and was able to anticipate what would (or should) be coming next. and while the "new twist" in the tale to present a new and (supposedly) more character-centric ending was interesting...man, i really woulda liked to've seen the giant squid.

the thing that kinda jarred me was, oddly enough, right at the beginning. one of the rules of storytelling is that somewhere right in the first chapter, you establish your environment, your world, the stage that you are going to present your story on. faced with the daunting task of trying to cram a 12 issue graphic novel into a three hour movie, zack snyder used his opening credits to present us with a dazzling montage recounting the "history" of the watchmen world, a maybe too-fast-to-take-in barrage of images depicting the original minutemen (here called the watchmen to avoid confusion), the devolution of "the hero", the fascist presidency that was going into it's fifth term, the keene act. a great use of time and a fantastic parade of images, but...it lacked heart. that's kinda what i felt about most of the movie--i know that zack snyder put all of his into it, but i only ever felt that i was watching a movie. he did a great job of establishing this world, but i never felt welcomed into it.

that said, i can't wait to see it again. and might go tonight.
and i'll pick up the dvd and watch those opening credits over and over...


but, that's me.
i'm usually very easy on movies--if i did movie reviews, i'd give everything five stars.
but with comic book movies, i'm much more...critical, more hardline.
ask craig, he'll tell you.
(don't get me started on batman begins...)







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here's an awesome choopie sketch that i got from artist, nikos koutsis, artist on abacus comics' "the imaginiaries" and colorist on erik's "savage dragon"! nikos will be doing a perhapanauts back-up story for us in the near future!...



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here are the
answers to the
"five for friday"

1. what is the name of the little dog listening to the phonograph in the famous RCA logo?

nipper

2. and what is the name of the painting that that image is taken from?

"his masters voice"

3. what popular american sitcom was based on the uk hit series "til death us do part?"

all in the family

4. who played chandler's father on "friends?"

kathleen turner

5. which superhero is seen or referenced in every episode of "seinfeld?"

superman


have a nice day!
smell ya later!
todd