via positiva

Totally apropos of nothing, today's Something Positive delivers on a twist I've been totally rooting for for what feels like eons. Knowing the way the story goes, it'll probably end in tears and depraved midgets and propane explosions, but for now I can whoop and shout.

I love Dinosaur Comics.

Quite a while ago, Dark Horse Comics rolled out the first few chapters of a faithful graphic novel adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds. I haven't been keeping track, but it's finished now and will soon be availlable in a nicely bound hardcover edition. They've kept the online version intact, though, along with a spiffy collection of downloadable goodies. I think I'll always prefer Alan Moore's version, nestled into a six-issue story arc for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but this version is prettty cool.

This weekend, Jason and Steph and I saw A History of Violence.The movie's premise is promising. It's based on a high-quality graphic novel, a distinction that seems to be the new badge of edginess for hip young directors. It's getting rave reviews from critics in high places, and its complement of A-list acting talent gives it instant credibility.

The film tells the story of Tom Stall, an all-American dad in a small town whose diner is robbed by two sociopathic thugs. A switch flips, and he saves the lives of his coworkers and customers with a startling display of brutal heroism. He's an instant town celebrity, of course, and the diner's business booms. But there's something unsettling, something off-kilter, about this gentle churchgoing man with a wife and two kids killing would-be robbers with reflexive efficiency. His eyes say it all: there's something more under the surface, and he's tormented by it.

Sound promising? It is. But A History of Violence never delivers. All the complex themes and challenging questions are left as an exercise for the viewer while the film zooms in for an extended closeup of the blood and the screams and the bruised thighs and the spilled brains of brutal sex and violence. It'd be a shame, after all, to spend valuable screen time exploring the nature of man or the morality and ethics of violence when you could just show, say, Tom inexplicably raping his wife or closeups of someone's jawless face gurgling.

This is a film based on a graphic novel in the worst possible ways. It reminds me how easy of a ride most graphic novels get: they're considered deep if they even hint at moral complexity, but few are ever expected to do the hard work of exploring those themes in the actual work itself. In this way, A History of Violence also reveals precisely what's rotten at the core of the comic and graphic novel industry that spawned its story in the first place.

I'll be writing more shortly -- it'll have spoilers, so if you really want to see the film, don't click any farther.

Life's going good these days. Last night after work, Catherine and I had Steve, Jason, and Steph over for hanging-out and pizza and assorted catching-up. It was fun stuff, though we were thwarted in our attempts to watch a movie when Comcast's On-Demand service went down. There was a startled moment of "Did I forget to pay my bill?" followed by, "Wait, everything else is working..."

Couldn't sleep afterwords, so I spent some time tinker-tinker-tinkering on the One Hundred Words site while Catherine watched a Campion mystery. The site is finally migrated over to Drupal, with the comic browsing interface in a rough but usable state. As it evolves, I'll probably be posting mre. Someday, Jason and I will have new content as well. Heh.

Riding into work on my bike this morning, I realized with a start that the breaks didn't work. Apparently something had jostled around and one of the cables had unseated, and the brake handles were flapping loosely when I squeezed them. Not good, sirs. Not good at all. Some close examination after I coasted to a stop revealed the problem, and I tinkered with the cable anchors until I could fit everything back together. I feel strangely cool, having fixed the problem with my bike. I didn't even have to Google!