Garth Ennis, Keith Burns, with Jason Wordic and Rob Steen.
Forgive me if I’m being redundant or a bit obvious, but
nobody does war stories like Garth Ennis does war stories. Which is is also to
say that nobody else actually write these stories (well, almost nobody. . . ).
Johnny Red falls firmly within Garth Ennis' wheelhouse as a writer. It's the story of an RAF pilot stuck behind Soviet lines and pushed into a near no-win situation against the approaching German army. As such, it involves RAF banter, Stalingrad, bad commies, good comrades, the Nazis, and at least one decent Jerry. In short: It's a Garth Ennis war comic. (Also, it might fall within Keith Burns' wheelhouse, I'm not entirely sure. It sure looks like it does, though). What impresses me is that Ennis can still tell different stories and different kinds of stories using the same setting, the same tropes, and the same basic tools.
I’ve talked about this before with Fury (and probably
some other Garth Ennis comics somewhere. . . And Star Wars, come to think of it.
. .), but when it comes to World War II stories there are a few distinct
sub-genres* Though, that is distinctly different from sub-genres.
The ones that pop most readily to mind are navy movies,
resistance movies (Carve Her Name With Pride, Army of Shadows, Army of Crime),
POW movies (The Great Escape, Stalg 17, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence), tank
movies (Kelly’s Heroes, Fury, Sahara), and then, naturally, the plane movie
(Battle of Britain, 12 O’Clock High, Memphis Belle).** I talked about this in my first piece on Rogue One.
What is impressive about Ennis and his arististic collaborators (this
time, it’s Keith Burns, who, unlike a lot of modern artists, really nails the
grit and ugliness of the war) is that not only is he using certain settings and
tropes over and over again, but that even within these sub-genres, Ennis is
telling different kinds of stories.
My favorite of these is Enemy Ace. Enemy Ace takes its cue from one of DC's many ancient and under used properties from War Stories (which includes the Haunted Tank, The Losers, and Sgt. Rock). It tells the story of a classic Prussian officer (and WWI ace) who is forced out of retirement by the Nazis to fight a war that he doesn't like and can't win. If you can hunt down a copy of this book on the cheap, I
would highly recommend it. It also makes an interesting companion piece to Johnny Red.
It's also interesting to note that, while Ennis has never been short on enmity for the Nazis or the German armed forces in general, both Enemy Ace and Johnny Red demonstrate that he's capable of portraying the enemy with some semblance of nuance (even if it involves Ennis hitting the same basic tropes that he almost always hits).
Actually, scratch that, hunt down all of Ennis’ war books.
Between Keith Burns, Carlos Ezquerra, David Gibbons, Goran Parlov, and about a
dozen other of the best cartoonists in the business, you’re in for a treat. Or
an existential horror show. I mean, it’s a winner either way.
What was I saying about Johnny Red? Oh yeah. It’s good.
Burns nails the art and Ennis does what Ennis does (write war stories about capable men and women that don't put up with any bullshit). Johnny Red is part adventure story, part fighter pilot story, part Red orchestra, and, most interestingly, a paean to the men and machines that beat back the tide of fascism. It's a classic Ennis story and, along with Burns, proves why he's the best war writer in the business.
Not much more to say than
that. I mean, other than to remind you that Ennis is a goddamn treasure and it
kills me that he isn’t allowed to just make these stories at his own pace, at
his own time, whenever he wants instead of this depressing, piecemeal
situation. He does good work. His artists do good work. They’re making stories
that matter more than most comics matter. He should be rewarded for that.
Everyone should be.
*This is true of any genre. There is no such thing as a
static genre. These things move with time, with setting, with creators. With
Film Noir you move from the classic hardboiled period in the late 30’s through
the early 40’s, then, in the 50’s, after noir lost its allure in Americsa the
French, newly liberated discovered these films and made their own noirs (which
is wear the term comes from. Leave it to the French).
**I realize that I’m talking about movies not comics. Sorry.
That’s just where my mind goes with these things. Also, to talk about the WWII
comic over the past 20 years is to talk of Garth Ennis and his collaborators.
James Kislingbury is a writer, an artist, and a podcaster. If you like this well enough, then check out his Patreon or just do whatever.
(For the next few weeks, I'm going to be pumping out articles on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Originally this was going to be one, big essay, dropped all at once, but as time went on, it became unwieldy. This is what happens when you don't have an editor. Or deadlines. Anyways, here is a portion of my thoughts. It's also one of the more important points that needs to be made about Rogue One, as well. Not that anybody asked me. . . )
CARVE HER NAME WITH LASERS: Resistance, the Empire, and the DNA of Star Wars
The core of the Original Trilogy of Star Wars is based around the Second World War. As many other influences creep in (Flash Gordon, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Joseph Campbell, to name but a few), the iconography is clear. The language is clear. Star Wars is not just a war story, it's a World War II story.
Rogue One carries on that basic concept. It also, more importantly, moves it forward in several specific ways. Namely, Rogue One is based around a very specific kind of WWII movie. This is done deliberately and understanding where Rogue One comes from is to better understand what it's trying to say. At the very least, it can give you a better appreciation for the kinds of WWII movies that don't involve John Wayne hucking grenades at the Japanese (though, those are a lot of fun, too).
Instead, it rehashes the plots of about a thousand World War II and/or Western films in which a brave squadron — a Magnificent Seven, a Dirty Dozen, a Force Five — prepares to sacrifice itself in the name of a greater cause.
From the Imperial uniforms to the use of the word "stormtroopers" to ripping off shots wholesale from The Dam Busters and Triumph of the Will, the Big One is embedded in the DNA of Star Wars. What I find interesting about Rogue One is that it continues the legacy of Star Wars beings about WWII, but it also shifts that theme forwards in two ways.
One is the specific kind of WWII movie that Rogue One is drawing from. The second is that Rogue One is still about war, but it's moved forward into a different war (which is a point that I'll get into in a future entry. . . hopefully). Rogue One is a resistance movie. Even though it's science fiction, even though it belongs to a mythological saga, and even though it was created to pad out Disney's cash reserves, it belongs in the same pantheon as Army of Shadows and Carve Her Name With Pride* (though, admittedly, somewhere towards the back).
A New Hope draws from much louder and more bombastic World War II movies and events. It is as much The Battle of Briton as it is A Hero of a Thousand Faces. It even stars Alex Guinness who would probably be best known for his role in Bridge Over the River Kwai if it wasn't for George Lucas (to Guinness' chagrin).** It's a film that's much more rooted in more fun, more comforting war movies. That is in stark contrast to the kind of film that Rogue One is. By the nature of the genre that Gareth Edwards and his crack team of writers and producers chose, Rogue One has to be a different kind of film, even if it does share a common lineage.
Instead of pilots or soldiers, Rogue One is about resistance agents. Just as you could switch out most of Gold Squadron with anyone from 12 O'Clock High, you could pretty much swap out anyone in the eponymous Rogue One with anyone from Army of Shadows (except for the robot and Saw Gerrera, who is a character that I'll get to in the future, as well. . . ).
So, let's take a look at what makes a WWII movie into a resistance movie, and then let's see how Rogue One compares. Come on. Don't be shy. It'll be fun.
The protagonists aren't professionals.
First and foremost, resistance movies aren't about citizen soldiers. They're about people with their backs to the wall. It's about people that are either out to survive or people that are forced into a fight (which parallels films about collaborators, which is a whole other article).
That's exactly what Jyn Erso is. She doesn't have a choice. While the rest of her team kind of does, none of them are in a position to do the right thing. They have to do it or they'll die. Or somebody else will die. A lot of somebody elses. . . Even Rick in Casablanca fits this mold. None of these people want to be here. The drama comes from the fact that, unlike the American GI in WWII, there is no rear to fall back to. They have to be here, because:
The film takes place in occupied territory.
The enemy's ascendancy is a fait accompli. There's no stopping the invasion. It already happened. This is true of movies about Denmark, France, and Czechoslovakia (you could also get into Eastern Europe, but at that point, you're talking about partisans, which is slightly different. . . I'm getting off topic again. Sorry).
In A New Hope, as much as it takes place within the Empire, the main battle is on Rebel territory (Yavin IV, which appears in Rogue One, along with the B-roll of A New Hope). It also takes place on the frontier, which has Imperial soldiers, but you never get the sense that Tatooine is owned by the Empire. This never happens in Rogue One. They're under the Empire's flag from minute one. The Empire dominates every scene. Which leads to the fact that:
The deck is stacked.
Of course the deck is always stacked. Dramatically it has to be. It also has to be as a matter of course. The bad guys hold all of the cards. They can kidnap your dad, blow up a planet, put you to work in a slave labor camp. They're the Empire, fuck you. We have Darth Vader and a Dracula (we used to have two, but anyways. . . ). What do you have? That's right. Nothing. Fuck you.
The resistance (in this case the Rebel Alliance, not to be confused with the Resistance of The Force Awakens) doesn't have their shit together enough to put up an actual fight. As a result they have to chip around the edges. They have to recruit fighters. Assassinate important Imperial personnel. And when they do fight-- if they do fight-- it's an all-or-nothing proposition. This is true of both the command structure of the Rebels, as well as the individuals that have to go and do the actual dying and fighting.
And, speaking of fighting and dying:
People are going to die.
This isn't always true (I already mentioned Casablanca). But, it's usually true. Resistance members die. It's what they do. You can't build a cause without martyrs and you can't have martyrs without bloodshed.***
There is a lack of romance to a lot of these films. This is perhaps because many of these stories are based on real events. Carve Her Name With Pride is the most obvious example that I can think of. It's the real-life story of Violette Szabo, a British widow that was married to a French soldier. After her husband was killed in combat, she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive to help, as Churchill put it "Set Europe ablaze." She was caught in occupied France and summarily executed by the Germans. Not exactly blockbuster material.
The same goes for other resistance heroes (and secret agents) like Noor Inayat Khan (who doesn't have a movie. Guess why that might be).
In Rogue One-- spoilers-- everybody dies. That's because of who they are. They aren't Star Wars heroes. They're resistance members. You can't beat city hall. And you sure as shit can't beat the Death Star. But that's hardly the point. Which, leads me to the last qualification:
Sorry, but the good guys don't win.
Rogue One is firmly
planted in the tradition of Army of Shadows, Uprising, and
Carve Her Name With Pride. It takes its influence from those that fought the
good fight and lost. In these movies, our heroes don’t end up killing Hitler
(usually). They die and not just the veteran on his last tour or the machine-gun loader with a heart of gold or the guy with a girl back home. The heroes will die. All of them. Hard.
Again, this reflects reality (or, at least, the reality of film). For a lot of the resistance, victory wasn't something that they got to see. While equating Star fuckin' Wars with the real-life sacrifices of the men and women of various resistance organizations is glib, it does at least show that the writers behind Rogue One know what they're doing. Violette Szabo was killed. Noor Inayat Khan was killed. So were many others that don't have books or movies based on them.
These people died in the hope that others would outlive them and see their wishes fulfilled. They took risks and died so that somebody else could finish the fight. Rogue One isn't about victory. It's about hope. If there is an untapped vein of WWII sentiment it is that even in the darkest night, at some point dawn will arrive.
Another quote from Winston Churchill, that speaks to the end of Rogue One (and the beginning of Star Wars):
There is only glory in death. In myth. They don't build legends around people that stick around long enough to disappoint you. The real heroes are dead. In
that way Rogue One ties in with Joseph Campbell even more than the Original
Trilogy. It's a film that is not only about the legends that Campbell talked about. It's a film that is about the myths that we've built up around WWII. . . It might even be a film that's based around the myths that we've built up around George Lucas.
So, go watch some of these old movies (and some of the new ones) and let me know what you think. Or just skip over me and go watch Rogue One with a slightly new appreciation of the movie. Or, you know, the biggest war ever fought for human liberty.
There's another quote I saw today. It doesn't quite fit into all of this. Maybe it's the wrong place for it, but I couldn't pass it up. Because it has to do with how fiction can give us a key into wider experiences. We'll never fight in WWII, but maybe watching movies-- even fantasy films like Star Wars-- can help us understand what that's like. Even a little. That's important. That, arguably, is what art is about.
"I found myself better able to imagine what was going on in the lives of people throughout my presidency because of, not just a specific novel, but the act of reading fiction."
FOOTNOTES:
*Fun fact: Carve Her Name With Pride is one of Michael Caine's first screen roles. He plays a POW. He has no lines.
**I'm not sure what the cinematic parallels are for The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, but I'm sure I won't have to dig for long to find something. Funnily enough, the first movie I can think of that compares to the events in Empire is Dunkirk, which isn't even out yet. Huh. Then again, we also have Atonement, which features the Dunkirk Evacuation and that of course starred-- that's right-- Queen Amadala's stunt double. IT'S EVERYWHERE YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK FOR IT!
***Strangely enough, this made me think of the Zealots. Resistance movies are almost always WWII movies. This is a result of the fact that rarely in the past two-thousand years have white people (or white-adjacent, like the Jews) ever been in the position of being an underdog except in the case of WWII.
They were a resistance to an evil empire. And the more I think about it, the more badass I think the Zealots were. . . Not that anyone should get carried away about that sort of a thing.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
Also, there's a lot of crossover between movies about resistance and movies about spies. There are also a whole of differences that goes beyond what I want to talk about here. The one main difference that I'll make-- and this might not matter with Rogue One-- is that movies about resistance are almost all
Where as spy movies can take place during any era (and just about any era can involve spies), you don't often
Speaking of related sub-genres, I mentioned movies about collaborators and movies about partisans. Again, there's a lot of similarities and saying that one isn't the other is what the Dutch would call "ant fucking." It's almost too granular of a point, even for me. Even right now. But, since we're here, I think it's important to say why these films are different (if not how). This is simply because WWII, as being one of the most dramatic events in all of world history, is a rich and complex series of world events. To lump movies about the French resistance with movies about French collaborators and to then lump it in with Danish royalists and lump them in with Belorussian partisans is to run roughshod over the actual real-world events that these people went through. As important (or self-important) as films can be, they're often our view into a world that we don't understand. So, even though most people aren't ever going to see Lacombe, Lucien or Come and See, if they do, they can see them knowing that there's a lot more to world history and the human experience than The Guns of the Navarone (which, incidentally, is boring as shit).
Hold on, I’m looking something up. . .
Yup, some asshole used the phrase “Rogue One puts the WARS in Star Wars.” Fuck that guy. And fuck his editor. The weaklings.
James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and a collector of very specific arms and armor from 1941-1945. If you like this and want to support things like this, take a stroll on over to his Patreon. It supports his podcast and, in turn, supports him. Think about it, why don't you?
I know I'm late to the party on this, but I am excited for Fury.
In preparation for what I hope is a decent movie (consider the director's track record: End of Watch is supposed to be great and Sabotage, um, not), let's go over a pair of WWII tank movies that are worth seeing:
Kelly's Heroes has greatest straight up tank fight in cinema history. And that's mostly because it might be the only tank duel in cinema history (which just can't be true, can it?).
As a film, Kelly's Heroes is more on par with something like Catch 22 than The Dirty Dozen. Or Where Eagles Dare, for that matter. It's gleeful and irreverent, and it takes the second world war about as it does a clown with his pants down. Or maybe it just doesn't take WWII movies seriously? Either way, Kelly's Heroes is a butt-load of fun and a perfect encapsulation of what Hollywood thought of the 1960's counter-culture.
It's a movie that laughs at the kind of square-jawed heroes that populate 1940's and 50's war movies.Yet it's savvy enough to know that tanks are cool and that Nazis are bad and it's fun when these things are slammed together.
I won't spoil the ending, but the entire climax of the film is built around the idea that the Tiger tank is the baddest piece of machinery ever built and that a rag tag bunch of screwballs may not be up to the task. Then it gets weird.
Then there'sSahara (the Bogart one). While a tank (an M3 Lee) is central to the plot, it really isn't about tanks. It's about the men who ride in and on them. The tank itself is a piece of shit, but it's got a kind of can-do charm of a dog with three legs. It's also notable for including just about every single member of the Allied Forces in some capacity helping our heroic tank crew along the way (it also includes both Italian and German enemies, which is about as rare of a feature in a film as a tank fight).
Sahara survives as an interesting film for a few reasons. The first, and the most important being, it's a Humphrey Bogart movie. While not all Bogart movies are created equal (there's Casablanca and The African Queen and then there's Beat the Devil and Sirocco), a good Bogart film is a great reminder of just what a presence he was as an actor. (There's a reason he's Michael Caine's favorite actor.)
The second reason is that Sahara is a perfect example of "the kind of movie they don't make any more." It's a war film, but it's light and it's loose and there is no question as to what the good guys need to do. There's a clear line in the sand as to what good guys do and what bad guys do. While it is the kind of film that helped to build up the myth of World War II, watching it, even now, it's not hard to see why we see the war the way we do. Sahara paints a picture of a war that needs to be fought and is worth fighting for. And hey, that's not such a bad thing, is it?
So, before you see Fury, go see these movies. At least we know they're good movies. And if not. . . Well, screw you. You don't want Clint Eastood and Don Wrickles on a caper? You don't want Humphrey Bogart and Jeff Bridges' dad defending your freedom? Are you so joyless?
Anyways.
With no little retinence, I am excited about Fury.
Despite Sabotage. Despite Mr. The Beef and his almost certainly mentally ill antics. Despite having recently been burnt by another special effects driven WWII movie. Despite always getting burnt by having any sort of investment in anything, I am excited. And there's a lot to be excited for. The movie has a great lead, a director who has turned out at least one impressive film in his burgeoning career, and the technology exists to make the convincing and worthwhile tank that I that we deserve.
That is until somebody finally gets the guts to adapt The Haunted Tank into a movie.
James Kislingbury makes comics, hosts podcasts, and generally just does his thing. You can follow him on twitter, too.
"I'm the Most Acceptable at What I Do" Thoughts on The Wolverine (2013)
The Wolverine is pretty good. It's competent in all the right ways and even has the odd moment of brilliance sprinkled through out the narrative. There isn't anything that is terribly objectionable. Overall, it's as challenging as a cup of cocoa. And not even, like, Mexican hot chocolate, I mean plain ass, straight up hot cocoa. Maybe some whipped cream on top.
It's the definition of a movie you watch on cable because there's nothing else on.
My main problem with the movie is also kind of the charm of it. Japan is as much of a character in The Wolverine as anyone else and, like everyone else, that character is a cartoon. The world that James Mangold has carved into celluloid (or, from the looks of it, binary code), is less an NHK documentary as it is a series of knobs and cranks doling out exactly what kind of Japanese we're going to see and how much.
Over the course of the movie Wolverine
battles his way from a POW camp to fighting the Yakuza in modern day Tokyo to fighting ninja and then,
finally, a giant robot. It's literally every home grown bad guy Japan has to offer.
There was a time when all I knew about Japan and Japanese pop culture I gleaned from the pages of PSM. It's fun to revisit these things. It's fun to not have to think about politics or thousands of years of wood carving or tea ceremonies or whatever. It's a cartoon. It's simple, it's fun, and it doesn't need to be anything more than that.
Basically, Japan is The Wolverine.
But a few other things come to mind, such as how it treats Imperial Japanese soldiers and the dropping of the second A-bomb. Even in a movie that is as pop corn munchingly throw away as this one, it gives you something to think about. Or it at least tries, and that has always been the hallmark of the X-Men film franchise, which started with the Holocaust, for God's sake.
The Japanese Army's track treatment of their fellow man is well established. Anybody who knows anything about world history or World War II knows about how they treated civilians and natives and enemy combatants. If you don't, I'll be brief and tell you that they did not treat them especially well.
The Wolverine doesn't deal with those things. I doesn't need to. It doesn't even pay lip service to these things. At the risk of white washing history, I think it's a smart move on the part of the film makers. There's a couple of reasons for this.
The first one is practical. We have to spend two hours with this country (and almost exclusively this country, all but two of the leads, are Asian), so bringing up Unit 731 or bringing up "comfortwomen" or mass executions isn't going to make this narrative very palatable. Plus, it's a PG-13 movie. We don't need to see murder contests in a movie about a super hero vigilante trying to get his groove back.
When X-Men began with the Holocaust, it was a smart move. Maybe not in the best taste, but it was smart. It set up the plight of the mutant species (by showing both the specific plight of Magneto and by stating that the Final Solution is, in some way, analogous to the persecution of mutants). It also makes us sympathise with the villain of the piece, which, again, is one of the ongoing themes of the X-Men franchise.
Secondly, it goes against the spirit of the movie. In the opening minutes of The Wolverine, we see Wolverine in a hot box reminiscent of Bridge Over the River Kwai, but before that we see a Japanese officer freeing Allied (presumable ANZACs or Canadians) and waving off a guard from shooting them.
By doing this, it elevate the Japanese as more than brutal fanatics and it makes one particular Japanese man (who later turns out to be the villain) into a good guy. When the A-Bomb does detonate, it becomes less an instrument of punishment as it is a force of nature.
In these ways it also injects a kind of
basic human decency that is in keeping with the best of the series
(or at least just Days of Future Past). It's a smarter, kinder move than a movie like this needs and if only for that it makes The Wolverine a better movie than it has to be.
It isn't changing history, it's
choosing to deal with it in a different way. I like that.
And I can always watch Nanking if I want to be reminded of the actual facts. But sometimes I don't want to. Sometimes I just want to see a movie where a guy does what he does best and what he does ain't pretty.
The Wind Rises feels like a man's final movie. It's no secret that Hayao Miyazaki is a fan of aeronautics. You can see it in everything from Porco Rosso to Laputa to Kiki's Delivery Service. It is no wonder that The Wind Rises is the work he would choose to round out his storied career. It is a movie with a singular vision, one driven by a man with enough influence, talent, and respect to make exactly the kind of movie that he wanted to make. It feels like a movie a man would make knowing he would never have another chance.
It is also a movie so long and so dull that it can only be explained by passion of a single man at its helm. No group of people would willingly make a movie this listless without a genius at the helm. Even an accident would have made something more lively than what I saw.Knowing that makes this all the more the bummer.
Either in order to make sense of The Wind Rises or to keep my brain from shutting down, I started thinking about Dr. Zhivago. They're both historical films, they both share a grand scale, and they're both bound by doomed romances. Most importantly they are driven to complete a singular life's work. David Lean's film is also a movie where a great many things don't happen for a long period of time. If I remember correctly the climax of the film is Omar Sharif writing a poem in a cold house. It's not exactly helicopter explosion city.
Yet, Dr. Zhivago has something that The Wind Rises does not. David Lean's turn at a mystical artist has emotional stakes. It has conflict that is both personal and historical. It's a movie that is weighed down with a sense of doom from the very first scene (even if we don't know a thing about the Russian Revolution). Even if we do not care about the plight of a mystical poet and his failed romances, we do care about his family and the women he loved because there are horrible consequences lurking in the back of every twist of the plot.
The Wind Rises has none of this. It's a drama with no real stakes, which is to say that it is a drama with no drama.
Our hero sleepwalks from scene to scene until he overcomes each and every obstacle merely by sticking around long enough. By the end I am not left with a sense of Jiro's life or accomplishments. He moves from one scene to another with little connection between the two. Plot threads are forgotten. Others are half-heartily followed through on. There is no resonance, instead I am overwhelmed by the thought that like Jiro, I should have fallen asleep.
It's strange because the techniques at play in this film are not any different than Hayao Miyazaki's other films. With the exception of maybe Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke, most of his films do not have a sense of being driven forward. His movies tend to unfold calmy and quietly. Spirited Away in many ways does have a driving conceit at the center (the fear of losing ones parents and one's memory), but it also has one of his most incidental plots. It also might be his very best.
The idea of a film without a story, a film that is told in a seemingly lilting, meandering format is on perfect display in his first great film, My Neighbor Totoro. Roger Ebert's describes the movie as"is based on experience, situation and exploration—not on conflict and threat."
My Neighbor Totoro works because we are invested in the world. We're
invested in the characters. We want to see where they're going, even if
that means watching them do something as simple as plant a garden. Or wait in the rain. We are care about the movie because it's fun to look at, but we also care about the characters. It's a fully realized film that is bursting at the seams with life in its 86 minute run.
The Wind Rises rare bit of life occur in Jiro's lengthy dream sequences. It's telling that the most affecting moments of the film are those that are completely untethered from reality.
These dreams are moments of pure beauty. They remind you of the great talent that Hayao Miyazaki possesses. They show that his vision and passion can work together to deliver a kind of visual showcase that nobody else in film can. It was enough for me to think to myself "I think I love this movie" during the first twenty minutes of the film.
It was not to last. It does not last because the rest of the film gets in the way. Jiro's non-trials with plane building. His rather uneventful world tour. His romance that, after courting, has all of the passion of a bowl of fruit. We have moments of wonder sandwiched in between these long periods of tedium. And then we finally return to Jiro's dreams. Finally.
This isn't a spoiler, but the final scene, like the first scene, takes place in a dream. It is a scene where Jiro reconciles his dream with his reality. It is where the two concepts meet and he, we must assume, comes to another epiphany. This time, though, instead of thinking of how much I love Miyazaki and how much I want to go on a journey with him about planes and about the kind of men who want to fly, I am annoyed at how long it took us to get here. It is not a scene that is connected to anything that matters. It wasn't until later, that I thought about this movie and why I have taken against it that I realized that the dreams have to matter as much as the dreamers.
Slapping around what might be the last work of a great director doesn't lift my spirits. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but the older I get, the less fun slagging off things has become. I want things to be good. I want good directors to make good movies. Rambling on about how the emperor has no clothes is not the fun hobby that it once was. It's all of the fun of jousting windmills but without any of the idiotic nobility.
Looking back on the legacy of Hayao Miyazaki, I think he has the right to make a bad movie. If anyone is allowed to say whatever they want, good or bad, it is Hayao Miyazaki. He's earned it.
The Wind Rises seems like a movie shaped by passion-- Passion for the material, passion for the time, and a passion to say something that maybe his lighter films could not say. It is a shame that this passion doesn't translate into a better film.
The Wind Rises stands as a testament to the magnitude of Miyazaki's legacy, yet ultimately exists apart from it. Its rare moments of wonder only remind us just how wonderful of a career that he has had, of what a wonderful man he must be.
WATCH YOUR SIX, IT'S THE AD GAUNTLET
It is at this point that I open myself up to severe criticism. You can do so by visiting Old College Comics and buying one of the anthologies I worked on. For better or for worse, Hayao Miyazaki's fantasy works were huge inspirations for me and my silly viking comic.
I also do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses (for some reason) with my friend Cruz Flores. We recently shifted the format to be about one movie a week. This last week we discussed Goon. Next week will be. . . The Toxic Avenger. Ugh. I'm dreading that one. The Wind Rises will not be one of them, but I'd like to think that there will be a future podcast about one of his other films. You know, One of his good films.
(Author's Note: In preparation of a bit of writing on Hannibal, here's something about a show that I have previously ranted about. I don't think anyone listened that time either.)
Besides Foyle's War being a well made and well researched procedural set during WWII, it also very obviously draws from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
Speaking of brassy gals from the second world war, Agent Carter of Captain America, from her design to her character, is also cribs from the same source material as Foyle's War. Considering that Agent Carter is going to have her own TV show, you should get caught up on these things if you want to remain ahead of the pop culture curve. I say this for your own sake, not for mine.
To summarize: I have an essay in the works. Furthermore, Foyle's War-- which you can watch on Netflix and Amazon Instant-- is quite good. I mean, its wigs aren't as good as Downton Abbey's wigs, but then again, whose are?
Released in 1988, Grave of the Fireflies is the. . . I. . . Released in 1988, Grave of the. . . Grave of. . . nope. Nope. Can't do it. I can't. . . I just can't do it.
Good work, Cruz. Good birthdaying. You got me this shirt and that's pretty swell. And it would've been a great day if it hadn't been for the fact that I also recieved a package from the National World War II Museum containing a free book. I mean of all of the days to get a book to me, you had to choose the one where I got a book about how we fucked up the Krauts. Can't compete with that shit, buh. Just can't be done.
I also bought an aloe plant, but you don't care about that either, do you, Cruz? Didn't consider for a second that I was going to buy some nice indoor plants to make my living situation that much more livable. Did you? Did you, Cruz?
Now, is the museum in a seceded part of South Africa and does the book primarily concern itself with Hitler's
So, anyways, sure we're podcasting partners, admittedly. And, yeah, he gave me this sick manatee shirt, alright. At what cost, though? Will I ever know that true cost of the World War 2 now? I don't know. I'm wearing an awesome fuck ass shirt.
Good job, dick. Way to obfuscate history.
Also, posting something on Facebook and getting it for nothing in the mail makes me feel like a pornstar.
Speaking of which, Cruz and I released a new episode of White Guys, Square Glasses (which is barely even accurate or a show at this point). Listen to it. Tell a friend. Send complaints to WGSGshow@gmail.com.
Good night and God bless.
SERIOUSLY THOUGH: The book I received was The Guns at Last Light (which is the third part of the Liberator Trilogy which makes me think that someone is trying to backdoor their fantasy novel over the bones of
FUN FACT: Pornstar apparently still isn't a word! Neither is videogame! Some petition Obama about this shit. Seems like he doesn't have enough going on for my tastes.
Upon trying to chase the reaction to my entry on Young Adult, I decided to watch a movie on KCET'sClassic Cool TheatercalledGo For Brokeand crack wise like a shit bird until I got bored. PBS' Classic Cool Theater is a program basically designed to prevent the senile from getting riled up by tricking them into thinking that it's still 1951. It comes complete with a newsreel and a vintage cartoon, which means that my dad isn't the only person in the world who misses those things. Go For Broke, the program's feature for the week, is a propaganda film in favor
of Japanese-American soldiers in WWII, this whole movie feels like it's a
cunt hair away from a character going "Me so solly!" which would be way
out of line as that is a Chinese stereotype. It's a strange watch. What follows are the reactions I had between the point where I started the movie and the point where I gave up because I wanted to play the Leviathan DLC in Mass Effect 3--
There is a character with a ukelele. Apparently the 1940's had insufferable hipster, douchebags of all creeds and colors, too.
And apparently their commanding officer is an Aryan superman. Not sure if this is supposed to be ironic. Right now he's arguing with a doughy guy about how he doesn't trust the Japanese-American recruits. Want to bet if he changes his stance on them by the end or not? Alright-- Double or nothing, do you think one of them has to jump on a grenade for him before he sees the light?
Van Johnson is a dead ringer for a guy who would rape Captain America just for sport.
He doesn't trust the Japanese. I haven't heard the word "nip" get thrown out yet. Considering how often McHale's Navy seemed to use the word, I think it might mean I'm not paying attention.
Huh. Apparently a big chunk of the cast were actually in the 442nd. Daniel Inouye is strangely absent. Must have been busy.
Hmmm.
Anyways, off the top of my head there is Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back, as well as the guys who raised the flag on top of Mount Suribachi in The Sands of Iwo Jima. Nowadays I think that's sort of standard operating procedure (just about every action movie nowadays, it seems, comes with the approval and resources of some aspect of the DoD), but I can't think of the last where soldiers were included in a film and they weren't serving a purpose that other than an elevated stuntman.
Blacked out there a bit. Apparently the US Army has decided to flank the Italian Army by way of invading southern California.
Alright. Action. Rad. Some Germans are gonna get shot and that's almost never a bad thing in a WWII movie.
I can't tell if the German is firing a semi-automatic weapon or not. I'll put this on my giant, useless list of firearm errors that you'll find my suicide note sitting on top of.
This movie seems about as harmless as every other WWII movie before 'Nam. It needs, like, Jack Palance or maybe the guy who got killed in the Twilight Zone movie from Combat in it to round out the cast, though. Alright, the grenades went off a little bit too soon, but that was still a well put together piece of action. It actually looked like people might have been fighting in a war and not on a set somewhere in the foothills of Sunland.
Two of the soldiers are going to check a room in the bunker they just took. . . And a pot belly pig comes running out. I think that just about represents the tone and stakes of the picture overall. . . . I just now realized that this is a movie made in 1951 wherein a bunch of Asians killing a bunch of other white people. Chew on that one, Quentin. I can't help but think about Broken Blossoms. Now there's a movie that doesn't quite get why people keep calling it racist. It's like if a Ricky Gervais character went back in time and decided to that making movies was his calling. Then again at least Go for Broke has the common decency to try and hunt down people of Japanese descent to be in this movie-- and people who were veterans of the regiment in question, no less. Even Memoirs of a Geisha with all of its budget and prestigedidn't manage that. Speaking of Griffith, as much as there has been said about him over the years, I'll add this: I think he is most guilty of one of the white man's great follies, which is that he doesn't understand why the racist things he is going are racist. Other items in this category include: "What do you mean I can't say that? Rappers say it all the time!" or "I've got plenty of black friends" and "Why are they so angry all the time?" For further information on this subject consult your local dad! Now I'm actually wondering what the appeal of this movie is, because it carries none of the shame of DW Griffith's more odious works have. It clearly wasn't built with the intention of detached, ironic jerks like myself watching it (even if I was watching it on Classic Cool Theater which makes me think that even they are saying "Hey, isn't this a bit neat?"). It's trying to say something, which is that at a certain point and time a bunch of Americans with every reason in the world to give up rose to the occasion. That's why I was watching it in the first place. There's a reason nobody equivocates about the 442nd's legacy and it's not because they don't want to seem racist. I guess it's this combination of seeing a movie with sincere intentions, progressive intentions, too, and still have it be mired in tropes of the time. There are little bursts of things in this movie that you usually follow up with the thought of "Boy, that's a bit racist, isn't it?" yet it's about how great these men were and how important they were to the United States. It doesn't hurt the movies seems to be no better or worse made than a good chunk of the WWII movies I've seen from the era, either. It's just that this one happens to be about the Japanese can be Americans too and that must have been something of a bolt from the blue in 1951. (It should also be noted that Classic Cool Theater also just had an episode featuring a movie called Blood on the Sun, which definitely puts Go for Broke into relief. . . it also makes me assume that any movie featuring not white people on this particular program might not be safe. That might have been presumptuous.) (The introduction to this scene is embarrassingly bad, but good, goddamn this is a rad judo fight.) The legacy of the 442nd is one to be proud of, but maybe this movie is better at pointing in the right direction than being something to be proud of in and of itself. Alright. I'm bored. I'm going to go watch a better movie about WWII, one where the only time I think about race is because someone gave a dog an unfortunate name. (Go For Broke is also copy right free, so you can watch it all right here freely and legally.)
While I never finished The Pacific (my relationship with people with VHS and HBO was not what it was in the early 2000's), Band of Brothers is one of the best pieces of television ever made. It's a beautiful, lovingly made story about the greatest of the greatest generation. You don't so much watch a show as you get to know a great group of men-- a feeling that is only accentuated by meeting these actual men.
It wasn't sincere, it wasn't ironic, and it wasn't worshipful. It was a show that somehow was exciting and respectful at the same time. Despite all of the art and all of the choices made by the creators of the show, what you ended up with was a work of art that was somehow both realistic and mythological. As many WWII shows and movies as I have watched, Band of Brothers is the one that seems to nail the feeling of it being the way it was.
I'd be a liar if that show didn't reduce me to tears. I still get chills from the reveal in the final scene of the final episode.
I want to feel that way about a television show again.
And more than that I want to be Winters, who was a great character and a greater human being.
If you like comic books of a pleasing nature then you should already be buying American Vampire. I mean, if you're not, what are you, some sort of an idiot? It's got everything: Compelling characters, gross amounts of elaborate gore, cowboys, Stephen King, a loving rendition of recent American history, and wonderful art. Just because I liberated my first hardback from Borders when they were closing doesn't mean you
With all of that said, I just bought the third trade paperback. My local comic book store didn't have the second one in stock and not only did I not feel like waiting to buy them in order, the third volume is about Nazi vampires and Japanese vampire bio-organic weapons.
It's a great book, all told. There is a certain amount of spit in my eye, though, and I keep coming back to it. It is plaguing me.
I've found two glaring historical inaccuracies in the book. Naturally, they were about booze and guns.
INACCURATE FACT NUMBER ONE-- The mai tai is mentioned in the first arc. The mai tai was not invented officially (or named the "mai tai") until the 1950's when tiki themed bars were as common as people with jobs and crippling diet pill addiction.
INACCURATE FACT NUMBER TWO-- 2) One fellow is clearly using a Colt Python. While one of the coolest and most iconic handguns ever to exist, the Colt Python was not minted until, again, the mid-1950's, when handguns were as common as people with jobs and airplane pilots' mistresses.
Also, the book is about vampires and everybody knows the last vampires were killed by the Vatican's secret army in the mid 17th-century and those who were no vanquished fled to Outer Thule to bide their time and dream of the day when man would fear them once again.
Maybe the aesthetic he was going for was one slightly ahead of the times. Lord knows that's a common thing to do, especially in books that are as steeped in science fiction and fantasy as a book about the legacy of fucking vampires in the goddamn United States. Metal Gear Solid 3 had its hover chairs, so why not let American V-pire (as we all call it down at the comic mine) have its anachronistic booze and Dirty Harry guns?
Oh, also a helicopter appears in the book to save the day, but I'll let that one go, because what kind of a nerd gives a good goddamn about the history of helicopters?
And, now to consecrate my love of this book, of blood suckers, and of David Bowie references apropos of nothing, here is the opening of The Hunger-- which is perhaps the bluest movie of the time.
I finished the first installment of the Sword of Honor trilogy, Men at Arms, tonight.
The Brigadier himself lectured. Booby traps, it appeared, were proving an important feature of patrol-work on the Western front. the Brigadier spoke of trip=wires, detonators, anti-personnel mines. He described in detail an explosive goat which he had once contrived and driven into a Bedouin encampment. Seldom had he been more exuberant.
And here's another good one--
This war had begun in darkness and it will end in silence.
Neither of these quotes are a great review of the book's content or tone. If I had to describe it, I guess I'd say it's something like a British Catch 22, which is to say: More polite and, I don't know, British. Anyways, thanks to the book it reminded me of Lt. General Adrian Carton de Wiart and taught me what a thunder box was.
This looks like the singularly least fun New Wave film that ever was.
The color on those is rather amazing. Not that color photos during WWII surprises me (color footage does, though, I mean, come on, that's amazing), but the variety of color is strange. It reminds me of Kodak Kodachrome. That's probably because of each stock's respective age (and subject matter) and not because of their actual visual qualities. It's just amazing to see one color version of the past look so different from another version of the past, when each subject, each time over laps. I guess it's like seeing Technicolor versus black and white. Each film stock gives off a different feeling that I really can't put my finger on.
Either way, I'm stealing all of this for the WWII comic. This you can be assured.
