The Factual Opinion

The X-Files Season 1

1993-1994
Created by Chris Carter
Starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson

It's really one of those shows that DVD was made for, isn't it?  After all, regardless of attempts at an overarching mythology, The X-Files wasn't really appointment television, even when it's ratings were at their zenith.  It was something you either caught in re-runs on FX when that network started up, or on cheap VCR tapes, so watching it, all of it, in order, seems like the way to go.  The flaws show up a little more readily--one is never going to watch this first season and not be almost totally repelled by Gillian Anderson's haircut, and marathoning episodes also means watching her get the shit beat out of her every other episode or so.  At a certain point, one begins to wonder if Chris Carter has some sort of twisted misogyny going on--cause he sure likes punishing his female lead.  As can be expected, the one-shot "monster of the week" episodes are hit or miss, but considering there's nowhere to turn these days for a straight-up Native American werewolf storyline, even weaker hours have a relative interest to them.  Besides the excellent cinematography (which is in part due to the noticeably low budget,) the relationship between the two leads is one of those rarely perfect choices--as could be evidenced in the later years, when Duchovny moved on to an interminable series of bad, bad choices, The X-Files foundation was built on these two actors, and the chemistry between them.  Even in these early episodes, with unwieldy dialog being spat out in long monologues and cliched voice-overs, the tension that exists between Scully and Mulder moves the show quickly through the paces.  When the stories start to lag, and no flashlight scenes and moody music can repair it, it's the back-up character actors that often bridge the gap--and what a large group.  Any fan of 24, The Wire or Deadwood is going to enjoy watching X-Files on an even nerdier adventure than they're already on: spotting their favorites chewing up scenery in scene-stealing roles.  Brad Dourif, Zelko Ivanek and "that guy who played Curtis Manning" show up, steal the viewers heart, and, more often than not, get killed in some gruesome (yet poorly lit) fashion.

Although the X-Files grew into something of a stronger metal in later seasons (and they ended up in anamorphic widescreen with a higher budget,) there's enough on Season 1 to make it worth a return.  The mythology that helped to crash the entire franchise headlong into a miserable disappointment was still a fresh, interesting aspect of the show, and the allegiance of Chris Carter's writing staff to creating good television is one that one wishes would serve as a goal of current employees in the field.  Yes, the Files have flaws--but nowhere do these become apparent in this gem of a season.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

The Lady Eve

Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1941
Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda

If one waits 56 years before they watch Hope Floats, will that make it seem like a classic film?  Because if you haven't seen The Lady Eve until 2007, you might be surprised to have (kind of) seen it already.  After all, regardless of it's pedigree (a respected director and talented actors) it is, even on deep analysis, nothing more than a romantic comedy.  Although it's age may put it among the Citizen Kane camp, this film shares the same DNA that created Kate Hudson's career.  Don't perceive a slight--The Lady Eve is, after all, deserving of the title "classic," and old movies don't have to be "important," "artistic" or anything else.  What is it that makes this a good romantic comedy?  What is it that Eve has that Forces of Nature didn't?  There's plenty of obvious answers having to do with a Bullock and a Ben--but is that it?  Is it just the charisma of Stanwyck and Fonda that makes the paper-thin plotting of Eve so much stronger?  Sturges is able to shoot the movie well enough, but it's not like one finishes Eve and cries out for the man to sit alongside Kubrick and Ozu.  He's a good director, a decent writer, and probably an all around fine gentleman.  But Eve ain't 2001, and it ain't Casablanca neither.

If you've read even the most brief synopsis of any movie regarding boys meeting girls, you can guess which directions Eve is going to go again--whether you enjoy it or not is solely going to be based on your willingness to jettison your intellect and cynicism and take a ride with Stanwyk, Sturges and Fonda.  Although it would be a bit depressing if you laughed out loud, and probably speak to a greater mental deficiency than we have any business examining here, you're more than likely to smile and feel all toasty in your guts during the 90 minutes it takes for these two to patch up their romance.  Unlike that feeling of self-loathing that will control your mind after watching Failure to Launch,  The Lady Eve is the sort of ephemera that'll make the love of your life proud to be around you.

Probably.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Summertime

Directed by David Lean
Written by H.E. Bates and Arthur Laurents
1955
Starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi

The answer to the "How much of a classic is Summertime" can be firmly dealt with by skipping straight to the love scene--a dropped shoe, squarely in the middle of the shot, and a excited, guttural sigh.  Cut to fireworks in the sky over Venice.  That's the kind of film one's in for--a straight ahead serious piece of entertainment, in Technicolor from 1955.  Hepburn is as angular as ever, all sharp edged bones draped in ugly dresses with a messy hairstyle--and as striking as one hopes all older actresses would have the maturity to become.  She's doesn't possess the type of heavy beauty that a Jolie jiggles, she's something far more intimidating: a creature who maintains a level of sensual attraction even as she actively repels it, throwing out chunks of her goofy language and overreacting to imagined slights.  In short, she's complicated and ridiculously honest in her portrayal of a lonely middle-aged, middle-income American tourist--and it's a brilliant thing to see.  In tandem with her performance is Rossano Brazzi, playing the kind of aging Lothario that all lonely spinsters hope to meet.  He's well-groomed, aggressively flirtatious and confident--and it doesn't hurt that he's handsome, either.  While the film is clearly going to follow the two as soon as they meet, and the ending is reliably predictable, anyone who turns to a David Lean piece and expects non-stop surprises needs to cut down on their Jack Bauer.  As trite and as cliched as the statement goes, it has to be said:

"They don't make 'em like this anymore."

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Cerebus Volume One

By Dave Sim
Collection Published in 1991, Originally Published in 1977
Published by Aardvark Vanheim

Cerebus is one of the most successful independent comic books of all time, right?  Or is it one of the most successful independent publishing ventures of all time?  Either way, it's the longest running comic series by the same author.  And it's one of the longest single fictional narratives in recorded history.

How bad do you want to read it now?  Knowing that it's author has been written off as a misogynist, that you're never (and by never we mean absolutely never) going to find anyone else who has read the whole thing, that it's never going to be widely popular, that you're probably not going to understand portions of it, you're definitely going to dislike entire books of it, and that anytime you give to it will never be returned.  And you may finish it and not find it rewarding in the least, except for a spirit of completion.  Isn't Epic Movie the number one movie right now?  Shouldn't you be leaving?

If you're interested, than you mine as well start here, with Book One.  And although random Internet critics might point out that the book never completely returns to the poorly constructed parodies of these pages, and any cursory exam shows that the art is never this bad again, and those same critics will say that you could actually go ahead and skip the whole book entirely and start with the much better (supposedly) second volume High Society and not miss much of a step, what's really the point?  After all, Cerebus is made up of 25 300-500 page volumes.  Why skip only one?  It's a stupid idea to try to read them all anyway, so why attempt to make the adventure only a tiny bit shorter? 

Yes, a few of the characters from Volume One will show up on a regular basis over the course of Cerebus 6000-odd pages.  Except for Jaka and Elrod, they don't make much of an impact that registers--as aforementioned, the majority of this volume is taken up with parodies, most related to sword and sorcery books like Conan the Barbarian.  (Although they don't feel like parodies--in essence, they seem like they're supposed to be taken seriously, something that was never that easy to do when the main character was a human douchebag like Conan, much less when it's a drunken asshole aardvark.  If anything, it almost seems like Dave Sim wanted us to enjoy this low-rent version of Dungeons & Dragons straight up, and it's only called parody now that he's proved to be a much better writer.)  By the close of the book, the stories begin to stretch over larger chapters, and they become much funnier, even when they cleave to close to becoming overlong jokes.  Although this first volume will do nothing to make one desire to read more, it does serve as a relevantly useful introduction to one of fictions most successful creations.  But if you're still interested in Cerebus Volume 2 at the close of this book's 500-odd pages, that's more a testament to advertising and recommendation: this book will have done little to warrant it.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Daredevil # 93

Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Michael Lark
Published by Marvel

It's never easy to start again.  The Daredevil series has put it's characters through hell for a while now, and although Brubaker has done an astonishing feat in picking up the book from the years of Bendis and Maleev, it's been brutally apparent that Marvel was eventually going to need the book to experience some kind of coda--some point where the ever fabled "new reader" could pick up the book and not wonder what had gone before.  Regardless of how well-written Daredevil has been, and it's been extraordinary, it stopped being a comic that didn't demand further exploration about forty issues ago.  Each issue, when taken by itself, spoke to a much larger idea--that's not a criticism, just as a later episode of The Wire or an out of context hour of 24 can be brilliantly entertaining, they always speak best in the larger context.  In many ways, this was the issue the Bendis fans had been dreading--the month were the comic finally, mind-bogglingly, was going to have Daredevil show back up in New York City and claim that he wasn't Matthew Murdock, the month when the genius move that initiated the whole book (the outing of his secret identity) was washed over and filed back on the shelf. 

It wasthat issue--and although that portion of the book, just as the reunion of the various supporting characters, was about as unbelievable as could have been expected, it was still treated soberly enough that one couldn't hold to much against Mr. Brubaker.  The secret identity is a meat and potatoes tradition, and any realist knew that it would have to return, eventually.  After all, Daredevil is a Marvel owned character, which means that while these are excellent times for it's creators, eventually, somebody who doesn't like the character is going to end up writing it, and somebody who can't draw that well is going to provide the pictures, and Daredevil is going to suck all over again.  That's the way mainstream comics work: they're rarely great, they're sometimes good, but they're usually bad, bad, bad.

In the final portion of this talk-heavy comic, one that only includes a few pages of costume-laden frames, the newly exonerated Matthew Murdock meets with his end-all arch-nemesis, Kingpin.  It's one of the strongest pieces of back-and-forth dialog that's ever made it into a super-hero comic, and it encapsulates what has made the transition from Bendis to Brubaker so well--both writers recognize that Daredevil works best when it's about one thing--the relationship between a hero and his villain.  Everything that's occurred in this book since they took over, can somehow be traced back to what these two men have done to each other--be it the murder of Murdock's one true love, or the attempted patricide that resulted in the outing of Murdock's identity.  As Brubaker makes abundantely, finally, clear, Daredevil the comic isn't about Daredevil alone--it's about what wrestling with evil does to one man.  More than ever before, the Daredevil comic on the stands today is the best possible example of what a post-modern, post-therapy comic looks like. 

It won't last forever--anyone with a years worth of monthly comic experience knows that.  Don't miss out.  On that note, a moment of grief should be shed for the closing of one of the more reliably entertaining books on the shelf, Legends of the Dark Knight.  With 214 issues of totally up and down quality, LODK was a reliable book that ignored the passage of taste and time and stuck to doing one thing: Batman doing stuff stories.  While it had more misses than hits in it's 17 year run, it was nice to know that once a month there would be a Batman comic that didn't care if your knowledge extended beyond "Isn't his name Bruce something?"  It will be missed--especially since its replacement, Batman Confidential, is about the best example of how to do a bad idea badly.

-Tucker Stone, 2007