Visual Media

It’s been seven years, and well, the finale wasn’t what I expected.

Of course, I’d be disappointed if it was.

That said, it was phenomenal.  Loose ends were tied up, while many threads were left open, presumably to imply that, after all that has happened tonight, life in Farmington will still be going on tomorrow.

I suppose the most jarring aspect of this episode was the amount of space and silence employed.  It’s rare for this show to breathe, but there were several moments of that here.  In fact, there are several minutes of it.

For a show like this, a minute is an eternity.

The Last Unicorn is something of a lost classic. I saw it on its original release in 1982, and it had a huge effect on me as a child. It led to a years-long love of fantasy novels, particularly Tolkein and Terry Brooks.

Several years ago, a friend brought it up in conversation, and we decided to try and find it on video. It turned out it had been out of print for quite some time. It’s since been re-released, and it’s seen several versions on DVD, none of which you should consider buying.

Lots of bandwidth-sucking images ahead. Consider yourself warned.

I finally finished the Melancholy of Suzumiyu Haruhi, and what a ride it was. It still remains to be seen if this show will ever see a stateside release, but judging from reactions and sales in Japan, it would seem very likely.

Here’s hoping Manga doesn’t screw up the localization.

The scene pictured above is a dream sequence, which, depending on who you ask, either saved the world or completely re-wrote it into one strongly resembling the one preceeding. Besides, it’s more of a red-herring, since the whole show was aired in an arbitrary order, and this is actually the fourth episode.

And since it was a “dream,” it doesn’t affect the characters’ relationship significantly (as much as it might have affected reality as a whole).

At least that’s my take. Opinions vary.

Confused yet? Good. That’s part of the fun with this. If you follow the order that Kyon gives in the end credits, you’ll get something close to the “chronological” order (which makes sense, since Kyon is the “logical” center of the plot), but in its own way, the series takes on a different life if you watch it in broadcast order.

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Season 8 of the Simpsons is out on DVD. This was really the liminal season; the cracks had begun to show as far back as Season 4, and after this, the show took a real downturn, from which it hasn’t recovered.

The series started out as a great family drama/sitcom, and its strength was in the interplay between the characters. After a few years, it started dredging its comedy from abstract situations and gimmicks, and the characters became cardboard cutouts going through the motions over and over again.

One of the most annoying devices was the use of unessential guest stars. John Glenn was utterly wasted, as have been several sports figures and celebrities, many of whom just happened to have been available and shoehorned in when a given episode was being scripted.

Early cameos like Dustin Hoffman (as Lisa’s substitute teacher) and Danny DeVito (as Homer’s lost brother Herb) brought real charisma to their episodes, but bringing in R.E.M.

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I grew up on Chris Claremont’s X-Men. The book struck a chord with me, and soap-opery as it was, it was much better than the silly fare most companies were churning out. Claremont took some of the strangest people imaginable, breathed life into them, and made the reader care.

Somehow that all lost focus in the late 80s when Jim Lee hijacked the book. Throughout the 90s, it was a total mess, with a revolving door of mediocre writers and artists who really had no feel for the characters. Every now and then, I’d pick up a copy out of nostalgia, but the books were filled with ridiculously muscled (or ridiculously endowed, in the case of the female characters) ubermensch who seemed to be distinguished from each other by their names only.

Sales dropped, and Marvel started a “let’s throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks” approach.

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Futurama never stood a chance on network television. Sure, it was created by Simpsons creator Matt Groening (and billed as such), but it never got much of an initial push by Fox, and after a few episodes, it got relegated to the usual Fox treatment: it was regularly pre-empted, its schedule was shuffled on a regular basis (making it impossibe for even diehard fans to catch), and its promotion dwindled to zero.

This is what I despise about Fox. They’ll throw a ton of money at anything (sometimes good), but if they don’t see the dividends immediately, they doom it to a slow death by obscurity (sometimes bad). This same treatment sank other worthy shows, like Firefly and the Family Guy.

It’s interesting to note that the latter two shows found an unexpected and vibrant second life on DVD. Firefly became a cult hit after its demise, and fan reaction was such that Joss Whedon was greenlighted to make a feature film, Serenity.

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Okay, there are spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, skip the rest of this review. All I’ll give away is the obvious: everyone you don’t see in the original trilogy dies here. Horribly. This isn’t a fun movie, but yes, it’s worth seeing if you have any interest in Star Wars.

You’ve been warned.

Of course, it opens with a huge space-battle. Like so many other things in the prequels, it looks great, but in context, it doesn’t serve any real purpose, and there’s no sense of urgency or risk. Seriously, cut out the whole battle/rescue sequence, and the plot doesn’t falter a bit. It’s just there as a huge, loud and confusing overture. Count Dooku shows up, and promptly gets cut down by Anakin. Again, no emotional investment whatsoever. No,”you cut off my hand, now it’s payback,” no witty banter from the Count, just a flashy lightsaber battle and off with his head.

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The third and final Star Wars prequel comes out next may, but Lucasfilm has released the trailer. I managed to snag a copy, and it looks interesting so far. What’s odd is that the first half is comprised of footage from earlier movies, including a voiceover of Obi-Wan’s original description of Vader’s origin to Luke in A New Hope. I suppose it’s to bring audiences up to speed, and to make the connection.

If the horrible travesty of Phantom Menace hadn’t rattled my faith in Lucas, I might be looking forward to this movie with a bit more anticipation, but now I’m only mildly interested. I wasn’t too impressed with Attack of the Clones, either, but I went to watch it because, well, it was Star Wars, dammit, and I was supposed to at least give it a chance.

If nothing else, the first two prequels were visually astonishing, and this looks no different.

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Just felt like I’d get that out of the way for the last three people on earth who haven’t been reading Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-men. Not like I’m spoiling anything, since Marvel chose to run with a variant cover that splashes it right out there for everyone to see.

I grew up on the X-men, specifically Claremont’s run in the mid-to-late ’80s. The book was unlike anything out there, with a strong, well-developed cast of believable characters who just happened to live in the most unlikely of circumstances. They fit somewhere between the bland superhero comics that DC were churning out and the more grim “adult” segment market. The X-men were outlaws in the eyes of the public, but by their own standards, they were protectors of a world that despised them even as it depended on their help. They were freaks who bonded together not just out of a need for survival, but as a family of sorts.

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