Pop culture is such a weird beast. It’s hard to begin to list the places where I might have heard or seen bits of this film. (A print in a catalog? A clip in a PBS documentary?) But somehow Dracula says “Children of the night — what music they make,” and you know it’s a famous line, an iconic delivery. The vampire seductresses come in through the mist in their trailing white gowns and shot is inescapably familiar. I was surprised by how many tiny moments like that the film held.

On the other hand, other things caught me entirely by surprise, despite knowing the book fairly well. Who would guess that Harker and Renfield could be conflated like that? (Anyone, obviously, who’s seen the movie in the seventy-plus years since it was made, yes.) That amused me quite a bit, as it’s a thoroughly pragmatic move. No need for Harker’s long captivity, escape, and illness, and the audience is already clued in to what’s going on with Renfield. On the other hand, it leaves movie-Harker a flimsy, two-dimensional character who has nothing to do but pick fights with Dr. Seward as they try to protect Mina — here, Seward’s daughter, as the Hollywood broom sweeps away subplots and minor characters.

Mina’s transformation from book to movie is even more sweeping. A character Van Helsing praises as the paragon of womanhood becomes a petulant girl who can’t be reasoned with. That was easily my least favorite aspect of the movie, and I’m tempted to tag it as a very early-Hollywood sort of move, but I don’t begin to have the data to support that. I know that the complete lack of incidental music is typical of the period, though. Interesting how that changes the pace of a film! Without it, scenes with little dialogue seem rather slower.

It doesn’t seem fair to make fun of special effects from the ’30s, but I have to admit that we did chuckle at their giant bat flapping on the end of its string. It made me think of the Count’s bats on Sesame Street. One bat! Two bats! Three bats, ah-ah-ah-ah! On the other hand, I love what you can do with mist and shadow on black and white film — so evocative, so pleasantly creepy. Where scenes between the human characters often tended toward high camp, the vampires were fabulous. Vamps belong in a world of black and white, I think.

What I’m really referring to is Harry’s chat with new Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour, in which he calmly gets to the heart of what Scrimgeour is slyly asking for, responding that he is “Dumbledore’s man, through and through.” (It’s a very adult moment, especially compared to the throes of teenage angst we see in the previous book.)

The gradual development of wizard politics throughout the book is a strength of Rowling’s storytelling. The reader’s understanding of what’s going on outside Hogwarts follows that of Harry and his friends as they begin to pay closer attention to politics — which I think is an honest depiction of being a teenager. But like many subplots, wizard politics don’t show up on the big screen.

Half-Blood Prince sticks to the bare bones of the Dumbledore plot, the Draco acting suspiciously plot, and the romance plot; one we see pretty much in full, one is severely cut, and one is actually expanded past what we get in the book.

Not surprisingly (since it involves a great deal of exposition), Harry and Dumbledore’s exploration of Voldemort’s past gets chopped down to two memories: the one at the orphanage that was in all the previews, and the vital but edited memory of Slughorn’s. I also say “not surprisingly” because many of their other excursions down memory lane serve not to further the plot of this book so much as to set up the next one: what sort of objects would Voldemort turn into Horcruxes? Presumably this knowledge will be hand-wavingly imparted to our protagonists in the next movie.

Occasionally, though, the lack of all that exposition gets the movie into trouble. This is a small example, but there’s a weird bit of business at the point where Harry brings Dumbledore Slughorn’s true memory. After they see it, Dumbledore says, “Horcruxes!” as though it’s a new idea to him rather than a confirmation of his suspicions. Um, what? Gaunt’s ring is sitting there on his desk, and a moment later Dumbledore announces that he knows where to find another Horcrux, so this clearly can’t be news to Dumbledore, not really. I don’t know whether to call it a script problem or to blame Michael Gambon for continuing to futz up one of my favorite characters, but it’s an awkward moment.

In contrast, a favorite who makes the page-to-screen transition with wonderful authenticity is Evanna Lynch’s Luna Lovegood. She’s beautifully batty and I love her to bits. Another of my favorite parts of this book is Harry asking Luna to the Christmas party — which doesn’t quite appear, though there are a couple of moments between them that approximate it, and I appreciate that.

I was also impressed by Tom Felton this time. He’s always been around, but they gave Draco considerably more to do this time than he usually gets — and scenes with things like nuance and ambiguity, to boot. More than just another round of “You think you’re so great, do you, Potter? Well, my father…” and so on. Nice.

…Which is more than I can say for the obligatory romance scenes. Lavender Brown was amusingly over the top, though I could have done without her hysterics in the hospital wing. Vast preference for the book’s way of handling it, in which Harry tells Ron to stop pretending to be asleep when Lavender comes to visit. It’s not as cinematic, I suppose, but that was a laugh and this was a cringe. In the end, I was glad that Ron and Hermione didn’t quite get together, given the awkwardness that was Harry and Ginny. Stilted dialogue and no chemistry whatsoever. Ick.

Worse yet was the burning of the Burrow scene in which everybody runs through the fields. I started to wonder if the movie was so tired of being Half-Blood Prince that it decided to be Signs for a while. It’s not that I mind putting in a scene that isn’t in the book; I mind that there was no set-up and no follow-up for it. One shot of distressed Weasleys watching the fire, then no mention of it ever again. No sign that Ron or Ginny were worried about their family or wondering where they would live, nothing. If taking the scene out of the movie impacts nothing, it doesn’t belong there in the first place.

Draco’s plot had a little problem along those lines, too. He spends the whole year working on that cabinet so that he can bring Death Eaters into the castle… for them to do nothing. He had an entourage. Spiffy. Steve Kloves, there is a little problem with your story logic being missing.

The end of the movie didn’t have the benefit of an epic battle or a grand funeral for Dumbledore — we had to make do with a crowd of grieving students and professors raising their lit wands in tribute. A reasonable move, I thought, given constraints of time and budget. Return of the King earned its half-dozen endings; this one, not so much.

I did appreciate, though, that this movie was allowed to end on a less than cheerful note. I think every one of its predecessors has closed with happy, uplifting music and (often) a cheesy generalization about We’ve always got each other, or Everything’s going to change now. I can’t quote the last line, but in context, I’m going to rule that as a good thing.

But Pug ran across the theater’s web site earlier this week, and sure enough, they’re a second-run theater, and they play all sorts of things beyond Rocky Horror.  And this week they were playing Watchmen, which we hadn’t seen yet, so we went.

The theater is an empty place on a Tuesday night, the lobby dark and cavernous.  Walls plastered up and down with old movie posters.  You could have a long game of “I spy the poster for such-and-so” in that lobby.  You’d be sitting on fat red sofas and armchairs scattered around the lobby, or maybe perched on the stairs leading up to… the projection rooms, I assume.  I don’t know why the staircase was in the middle of the lobby.  There were signs apologizing for air conditioning problems in some of the theaters — from the fan in the back of ours, we assumed we were in one of the afflicted rooms.  But there were few enough people there, it didn’t even get unpleasant.

And the movie itself?  Read on…

Despite my other geeky tendencies, I don’t really know comics.  Mostly I rely on Liz or Elf to put nifty things like Fables in my hands from time to time.  Movie promotion was the first thing that I really remember hearing about Watchmen, but given the level of interest in the geek quadrants of the internet, I borrowed a copy of the book and read it around March.  Point here being that I’d read the graphic novel recently, but that I’m not a long-time fan with long-held opinions of the characters and the story.

I acknowledge this as my failing, and admit that it’s probably why I didn’t see most of the nitpicks Elf made when she saw the movie a couple months ago.  I agree that I expected a deeper, more resonant voice to come out of Dr. Manhattan, and that they should have cast a second actress to play the older Sally Jupiter.  And Adrian Veidt was simply not at all what he looks like in the comic.  And oh my, what was up with the Pinocchio nose they put on the actor playing Nixon?  But otherwise, I thought the casting and the acting ranged from fine to spot on.

And overall, I thought the film’s tone and sensibility were an admirable translation of the graphic novel.  Dark, gritty, and pessimistic to the core.  I loved being able to notice the way they designed shots to mimic panels from the original.  I was impressed that even the pacing of the movie followed the graphic novel so closely — something I think critics noted, and not always favorably.  Certainly this didn’t move with the speed of most superhero or action movies.  But isn’t part of the point of Watchmen to deconstruct the genre conventions of the superhero story?  It’s not a linear story about how Spiderman defeats Doc Ock; it’s an exploration of the characters’ poor messed up little psyches.  Despite the cuts made for time and The Plot Change (you know, since there was really only one), I felt they were able to layer a lot of that in there.

Speaking of The Great Plot Change, I’m not sure whether it simplified matters or confused them.  Certainly I’m not clear on exactly what caused all those blue glow-y explosions, except that it was supposed to be something only Dr. Manhattan could do, and that they kept talking about tachyons.  On the other hand, I suppose it allowed them to cut out all the backstory of Adrian’s genetics program and the disappearance of all the various artists and slot in the already-established Manhattan. And given that he then decides to leave Earth entirely, framing him for the catastrophe only makes it more reasonable that he would rather just move on.

Overall (and I don’t know if this means it failed, succeeded, or merely that it did a good job of mimicking the book), most of the problems I had with the movie were problems I also had with the book.  Some of them are silly details like Laurie’s hair and shoes — visually striking, yes; perfect for your foe to exploit, hell yes.  And surely some of our merely human superheroes should have been experiencing some exposure problems, being as they were sporting clothes suitable for New York… in Antarctica.  (Laurie and Rorschach, I’m looking at you.)  I liked and disliked the same characters I liked and disliked in the book, and it left me with the same uneasy sense that this is not how it should have to be.

Because yes, the pessimism in Watchmen bothers me more than a little.  Some of it can be chalked up to Rorschach’s narration — poor messed up, mentally twisted Rorschach with his bizarrely Puritanical ideas about sex.  (Can’t stand him.)  And part of it is that Watchmen is so thoroughly a Cold War story — and as an ’80s baby, I don’t remember knowing anything about the Cold War until well after it was over.  I never lived with the impending threat of nuclear annihilation that shadows all the events of Watchmen.  Perhaps that gives me the privilege (unearned by me, but I have it nonetheless) of a certain amount of optimism.  (Which is not to suggest that the political problems in Watchmen have no resonance in the world today.  On the contrary, I wish they didn’t.)

But the narrative doesn’t allow us to write off all of the darkness on nutcases like Rorschach, and it positively insists that turning one or more of the world’s major cities into sacrificial alters would lead to some degree of world peace.  That’s bad enough, but it turns a deep shade of irony when coupled with the assertion made by various characters throughout the film that human nature is what it is, and will never change.  (And I agree, but not quite in the way that they mean it.) Which is to say, what’s the point?  History will cycle around and we’ll be here again.  And then there are the disturbing undertones of that last scene in the newspaper office, complete with the ambiguous splatter of ketchup on the smiley face shirt.  Are we to see this as a better world:  at the beginning of the story, that splatter is blood; now it’s only ketchup?  Or is this an ominous sign, indicating that Rorschach has posthumously re-opened the whole can of worms?  I tend to see the latter — it’s more in keeping with the tone of the story — and I don’t like it.  We didn’t have a nuclear war in the ’80s because (as the song says) the Russians love their children too:  I am not inclined to believe in Veidt’s kind of big, peace-bringing, sacrificial gesture.

And I’d say the Trek community was overdue for a Good One, so thank you, Great Bird of the Galaxy.

My biggest worry about this film was that the characters would seem like strangers.  That it wouldn’t feel like Star Trek and that the whole effect would be laughable.  But while there were a few moments when my suspension of disbelief was stretched a little far (space diving?  magic unfolding sword?), on the whole, I couldn’t be more pleased.

All our old friends were recognizable, despite having new faces, and they acted and spoke the way one expected them to.  Kirk is a reckless adventurer.  Spock is logical, conflicted, and is quickly developing a martyr complex.  McCoy doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with space travel.  And so forth.  The instant – but not unconditional – bond between Kirk and McCoy worked, and the gradual development of their relationship with Spock unfolded well.  None of it, mind you, quite the way I pictured it, but it worked and was consistent with the characters, and I liked it.

And I always love it when the other recurring characters get to come out of the shadows a bit.  Uhura got to show her chops at xenolinguistics.  Chekov has apparently become a boy genius – not too much of a stretch, since in the original series, he sometimes fills in for Spock at the science station.  (Although… I do want to know what a seventeen-year-old who isn’t Wesley Crusher is doing on the bridge of a starship.)  And Simon Pegg’s Scotty was a lot of fun, though I had trouble looking at him and thinking “Scotty” instead of “Simon Pegg.”

Some of the accents were a little… interesting.  Simon Pegg and Anton Yelchin probably had more authentic accents as Scotty and Chekov than their predecessors ever did, and though Chekov’s was a little strong, I thought the effect was charming.  McCoy’s accent seemed to come and go and never sounded quite right to me, but given that Karl Urban is a New Zealander, and was otherwise wonderful, I’m willing to give that a pass.

For those who would prefer to avoid spoilers, I’ll hide everything else behind the cut, but I do recommend reviews of the film from NPR and the New York Times, neither of which give away anything you won’t have gleaned from the trailers already.

Hie thee away spoiler-phobes, ’cause here we go.

In every interview I’ve read with the writers of this film, they’ve been coy about whether to call the movie a “reboot” of the franchise or a “prequel” or what, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand.  It’s neither.  I think what the movie does is to take the original timeline, acknowledge it (through the presence of Nimoy’s Spock), and then present a time travel story in which – shocker here – the aim is not to “fix” the timeline back into what it was before.  The aim is merely to keep the universe in recognizable condition and save as many lives as possible.  So it’s the same Star Trek, but not quite.  When Russell T. Davies brought back Doctor Who in 2005, his twist was that the Doctor now seems to be the last of his people.  J.J. Abrahms has brought back Star Trek, but has wiped out the planet Vulcan, and Amanda Grayson along with it.  New dynamics and new storytelling possibilities are ready to unfold.

So TOS episode “Journey to Babel” couldn’t happen in this universe – no Amanda (!!!), and no 18-year quarrel between Spock and Sarek.  “Balance of Terror,” which first introduced the Romulans, and in which it was a shock to find that they look like Vulcans, is also pretty much kaput.  But in a meta storytelling sense, who would want them to re-do all the old stories?  They all happened – they’re what made Nimoy’s Spock the man he is – we had no indication that changing his past was changing his memories.  They happened, and there’s room for more stories.  That’s good enough for me.

And it’s not that canon and continuity have been thrown out.  Kirk is still attracted to Orion chicks.  Sulu is the man you want in a sword fight.  Of course the guy unlucky enough to space jump in a red suit is the one who doesn’t come back.  Spock quotes Sherlock Holmes, Pike ends up in a wheelchair (though mercifully without becoming a quadriplegic), and all the familiar catchphrases are here, from “I’m a doctor” to “The engines canna take any more!” to “Set your phasers on stun” to “Fascinating.”

Happily, Abrahms and his team have added to the mythology of Star Trek as well as taking away.  It’s eminently fitting for Kirk, who never seems to feel comfortable except in space, to have been born in a shuttlepod, in the midst of the sort of space battle that will come to define his career.  And Spock, who, under the effects of a space virus in “The Naked Time,” wept for his mother, who had a son who could never say he loved her – what was the final straw that led young Spock to pummel the other boy?  Insulting his mother.  And just as we were presented with – have always been presented with – a Kirk and a Spock who are ying and yang, I loved seeing the contrast between the young conflicted Spock and the older Spock who has learned how to live in his skin.

And despite my distress over the fate of planet Vulcan and Amanda Grayson, they got the Vulcans right.  We heard about the control and mastery of emotion, not the absence or purging of it, and we were reminded that they do this in the first place because they know as a people how dangerous their strong emotions have been to them in the long-ago past.  And loss has clearly mellowed Sarek with a quickness:  his quarrel with Spock has either ended earlier in this universe, or it never happened.  I wasn’t crazy about Ben Cross as Sarek – I thought he didn’t have the gravitas Mark Leonard used to convey – but I did think the final scene between Spock and Sarek was lovely.  Controlling emotions never means one doesn’t have them.

Speaking of love, the relationship between Spock and Uhura was a little… weird.  I feel like I shouldn’t be okay with it, but  I think I mostly am.  Mostly, I’m vaguely shocked by the implication that Spock was breaking the usual taboo (and I assume such a rule would be in place at the Academy) about relationships between an instructor and a pupil.  But I’m also more than a little amused that Uhura chose Spock over Kirk (not an uncommon indication of being a geek girl).

It’s not a perfect movie.  There’s plenty of room for nitpicks.  I want to know why McCoy seemed to spend the same three years at Starfleet Academy that Kirk did – clearly, he had already gone to medical school, so was officer training taking three years?  (And if not, why was he still in the red cadet’s uniform?)  Pug wasn’t happy with the portrayal of the science of black holes.  If you want to find all the little holes and faults, you won’t be disappointed.  But I was pleased enough by the tone and feel of the movie, and happy enough that they got the characters right, that I’m willing to handwave some of the details.

The writing was good and the cast were note perfect.  I want them to go make sequels.  Or better yet, a new TV show.  Now, please?

Harry Potter is also aging, though — the first book came out in the States ten years ago this September.  To wring a few more rubles out of the franchise celebrate, Scholastic is issuing an anniversary edition with a new cover.

UK bookstore Waterstones has been putting together a book of stories so short, they can fit on a large index card.  Most entries, apparently were gathered through a competition, but they also invited entries from well-known authors — including J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Tom Stoppard, and Margaret Atwood.  The JKR card was a snippet of a story about James and Sirius.  As the original has now been sold (proceeds to charity) for massive amounts of money, you can read the text here.

Warner Bros. continues to be over-protective of HP.  Seriously, guys.

Another story with castles (but no wizards):  California man from the Netherlands builds his own.

– Impressive, disturbing, and a dark sort of tribute to American capitalism:  we present the Wal-Mart virus.

– By this point, I think most of you have seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  (And if not, it’s still available on iTunes; DVD to come out sometime soon.)  Shockingly, Pug and I thought it was fantastic, and still go about humming about freeze rays and Bad Horse.  Goodness knows it got a ton of media coverage, but I offer a couple of my favorites:  The Dr. Horrible oral history, because it amuses me, and the NPR piece, because I’m impressed that they picked it up.

– The fourth book in the Twilight series, which has been enjoying popularity among those inclined towards YA vampire-romances, came out this weekend to Potter-like midnight release parties.  I know that at least a couple of you have read the books and enjoyed them — and that at least a couple of you have read the books and offered your critiques on them.  I haven’t read any of them, but I thought this Salon article offered what seems to me like some particularly insightful commentary on them.  (And while we’re at Salon, the same writer had some worthwhile notes on Harry Potter 7.  Naturally, it’s an article from a year ago, but I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows, so I enjoyed that one as well.  I think she’s pretty fair about Rowling’s strengths and weaknesses.)

– And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (remember A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ?) passed away this weekend.

Later: Woah!  They’re making a Gatchaman movie?  Carmen, did we know about this?  I don’t really expect this to be what you would call… good, but Cartoon Network ran a dubbed version called G-Force that my brothers and I enjoyed when I was nine or ten, so it might get a few nostalgia points.

Well, now that’s six unrelated topics.  Or five.  Oh well; the title sounds better as it is.

Watch it here: the Tube of You.
Or read it here: the NY Times.

Or hear the puppets from Avenue Q deliver the same message (well, roughly, with added cheese!). I did get to go see Avenue Q on Tuesday — the house was packed, and it was huge fun. Knowing the soundtrack meant that I knew about 75% of the show, but it’s still funny and watching the puppets is a lot of fun. See? (YouTube again.)

Moving back to the campaign for a moment, I’ve been amused by these for the last few weeks: The original Obama version and the parody, a McCain version.

As long as we’re wandering around, let’s add the 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies. Ending with…2001??? Heh. Am also amused that Mel Gibson makes up almost a third of the list. Though of course some of these are really good movies (but I’ll never understand the appeal of 2001. Sorry, Sir Arthur. Be at peace).

To end on a totally random note, here are two photos that aren’t mine:
Everyone is Irish. No, really. Everyone. (I was not at this parade, but this is hilarious.)
And I just love the angle on this one. You can picture me here…all the time.

First, an editorial I particularly enjoyed about NASA, Star Trek, and the presidential campaign: The Next Space Frontier. While exploring the final frontier is hardly a high priority for our next president, it’s nice to see that the three front-runners all express support for the space program. (There are links to specifics within the editorial.)

And a few items that make you feel good about the Star Trek movie due out in summer 2009:

• In an interview with the Australian Herald-Sun, Simon Pegg (cast as Scotty) said with regard to whether the film will be “serious science-fiction”:

  Very much so. It’s not at all ironic. It’s not a jokey take on the original series. It’s a faithful and loving installment in the ongoing mythology of the show.

• Leonard Nimoy (who will be in it) seems to be very pleased about it. So does Nichelle Nichols (who is not).
• And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer (fyi, video begins when the page loads). It makes me happy.

And hey, look what happens when I ignore the Harry Potter news sites…the seventh movie is actually going to be the seventh and eighth movies: they’re splitting Deathly Hallows into two films. This means that Half-Blood Prince will be released next Christmas, Deathly Hallows, part I a year later, and Deathly Hallows, part II the following summer.

Now go eat some pie! I plan to!

xkcd honors Gary Gygax.

The strength and challenge of this show is that it is so closely based on the cult-favorite film. The very mention of swallows and the first hint of a French accent got huge laughs long before a punchline was even suggested. But though some scenes are almost verbatim from Holy Grail, the story has been slightly restructured so that it can be a musical! (jazz hands!) Scenes from the movie that feature Random Person #53 become scenes about the knights — Lancelot and Robin are in the “bring out yer dead” scene (and then go off to enlist as Arthur’s knights), and the “help, help I’m being oppressed” peasant is transformed by the Lady of the Lake into Sir Galahad.

The Lady of the Lake turns out to be (A) everywhere, (B) Guinevere, and (C) a huge ham! Most of her songs are very meta-theatrical — she has three versions of “The Song That Goes Like This,” in which she explains that it is time for the lover’s duet that ends with a kiss or the torchy ballad or what have you. And naturally she marries Arthur at the end to fulfill that box on the formula checklist (no ambiguous semi-ending this time!)

Of course the Camelot dance sequence is still there, but much bigger! …And Camelot is basically Vegas. Best use of coconuts: Arthur joins a row of tap-dancing knights, but instead of dancing, he just sticks out a foot and Patsy does the taps! Clever.

I was also intrigued by how they pulled off some of the stunts, particularly ones that involve the loss of limbs! The Black Knight was very barrel-chested and if you watched closely, you could see him wriggle his arm out of the sleeve and into his armor — then the arm detaches, with a handful of red ribbons trailing out for blood. Other arm was the same — Arthur and the Knight positioned themselves so that both of their sword hilts were close together, so Arthur was actually holding both swords while the Knight got his real arm out of the way. But for the legs, they moved to the corner of the stage I couldn’t see (my philosophy of seeing more shows by buying the cheap seats occasionally backfires — though more less often than you might think), so I have no idea exactly how they did the legs.

A completely different sort of stunt: the Lady of the Lake had this fabulous dress that started out blue with white trim, and when she barely shrugged her shoulders, a layer of fabric flipped around to turn the gown into her white wedding dress!

After the curtain call, the audience was invited to join in a reprise of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (shamelessly stolen from Life of Brian and inserted into the beginning of Act II with more tap dancing knights!), complete with lyrics projected onto the many clouds hanging from the flies! I had a blast.