Greg Rucka: Better Know a Blogroll Link, Part 2

One of my current favorite comic book scriptwriters, novelist-turned-comics author Greg Rucka penned "Crossfire," one of the strongest segments from the new direct-to-DVD animated feature Batman: Gotham Knight. (This anthology film, like many other anthologies, is uneven, but it's an intriguing anime take on Batman. It stars the voice of Batman: The Animated Series' Kevin Conroy--my favorite of the screen Batmans--and it's set in the continuity of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.) "Crossfire" marks the first screen appearance of a Rucka creation, Detective Crispus Allen (voiced by ex-CSI cast member Gary Dourdan), and it centers on Allen's ambivalence about Batman and his vigilante tactics.

Allen's the character on the left who's talking to Lieutenant Gordon in this stylish shot from "Crossfire":

The stalwart Gotham City cop, a family man who transferred from the less scummy streets of Metropolis, was one of several characters who functioned as the audience surrogate in Rucka's brilliant but cancelled discontinued-by-the-creators DC Comics title Gotham Central, a Batman spinoff that was told from the point of view of Gotham police detectives. "I like writing stories about how Batman looks to the guy who is working 9 to 5," said Rucka while he promoted Gotham Knight, which devotes two segments to Batman's effect on ordinary citizens like Allen. I was such a Gotham Central fan that I cheered when Allen first appeared on-screen during "Crossfire." (Here's something else that has made me cheer: Rucka has reunited with his former Gotham Central collaborators Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark for the current "Other People's Problems" arc of Daredevil.)

Allen's Gotham Central partner was Detective Renee Montoya (the female cop on the far right of Lark's cover from Gotham Central #1), who was created by Paul Dini and Mitch Brian for Batman: The Animated Series. Rucka gave the previously one-dimensional Montoya an interesting backstory: she's a lesbian who was disowned by her conservative family, and in later issues of Gotham Central, corruption within the GCPD and difficulties in her private life caused her to hit the bottle. Rucka has an affinity for introverted, world-weary female protagonists who smoke and drink a lot, as evidenced by his Montoya revamp and a couple of his creator-owned projects, the espionage series Queen & Country (another favorite comic of mine) and the Whiteout graphic novels. The latter creator-owned project has spawned an upcoming Kate Beckinsale movie version of the same name (the same movie in which Beckinsale demanded a nude body double because she doesn't like the way her arse looks--WTF?).

In a Las Vegas City Life interview, Rucka explained his attachment to these everyman and everywoman protagonists: "I like writing strong women characters, sure. But it's because I prefer heroes who don't have it easy. With every protagonist, there's always an internal battle going on in addition to the external battle. Sometimes I think the internal battle is more interesting than the outer one."

Secret Agent on SomaFM: Better Know a Blogroll Link, Part 1

There haven't been any new entries in this neck of the Interwoods for a while because I've been busy with comics scriptwriting, and last week, I was going to post an update about a new episode of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series that I was this close to writing and recording (it'll involve the "Roar" theme from Cloverfield, monster movie scores and the work of the late monster movie effects whiz Stan Winston), but my new preamp seems to be broken, so I'm saving up to get another preamp, which means I have to delay the episode.

Also, there are weeks when I run out of topics to blog about, like last week and this week, when the only topic I can think of discussing is the links on my blogroll. So to keep this blog staying fresh, here's the first installment of "Better Know a Blogroll Link."

My favorite Internet radio station, the SomaFM channel Secret Agent, bills itself as "the soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For spies and PIs too!" Like A Fistful of Soundtracks, Secret Agent streams selections from film and TV scores, but its focus is on cues from '60s spy flicks and shows from both America and Britain, giallos, poliziottos and '70s Eurotrash softcore porn.

The station's playlist also includes out-of-print tracks ("I've Got My Spies on You" by the Pills), instrumental hip-hop ("Stem/Long Stem" by DJ Shadow), vintage library music cues (Neil Richardson's "The Riviera Affair," the theme from WOR-TV's "4 O'Clock Movie," as well as Ocean's Thirteen's opening studio logo music) and more recent Burn Notice-esque tunes with a stylish or dangerous vibe (the kickass Skeewiff remix of Bitter:Sweet's "Dirty Laundry," which I want to pony up some cheese for if I ever make an action show or flick and I need some great lesser-known tunes on the soundtrack).

To make this groovetastic playlist even more enjoyable, Secret Agent intersperses with its tunes soundbites from all the pre-Daniel Craig 007 movies ("That gun. Looks more fitting for a woman." "Do you know much about guns, Mr. Bond?" "No. I know a little about women.").

My favorite Secret Agent track of the moment is "99," a 1966 novelty song performed slightly off-key but endearingly by the original 99 herself, Barbara Feldon. I never get tired of hearing "99," even though Secret Agent has put the track into heavy rotation lately because of the Steve Carell/Anne Hathaway movie version of Get Smart (the original series was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid back in the '80s).

I log on to Secret Agent whenever I want to block from my ears any outside noise, particularly a loud summertime cricket, which I recently had the pleasure of killing with a barbell, and nearby car stereo bass. My condo is a cool place to live, but it's located right beside a busy overpass, which isn't exactly as helpful as the music from Secret Agent whenever I have to concentrate on writing.

Several AFOS listeners who are illustrators, graphic artists or cartoonists have told me they listen to my station for inspiration, whereas my station of choice whenever I need inspiration is Secret Agent. I write dialogue to the sounds of Secret Agent in my thick Sennheiser headphones. I go to bed to the sounds of Secret Agent. I murder noisy crickets to the sounds of Secret Agent.

George Carlin (1937-2008)

I was so busy trying to come up with intentionally lousy cop movie dialogue (for a fake movie trailer that's part of a graphic novel script I'm working on) that I didn't learn about the following sad news until late at night.

"George Carlin Dead at 71."

The first thing I thought to myself after reading the news were seven certain words.

I'm more of a fan of Carlin's later, angrier albums like You Are All Diseased and Complaints and Grievances than the breakthrough routines from his earlier hippie period. Some longtime Carlin fans find his later period to be one-note or problematic, but several of my personal favorite Carlin routines, like the anti-House of Blues rant, emerged from this later era ("If white people are gonna burn down black churches, then black people oughta burn down the House of Blues"). (I hate to admit it, but prior to his '90s and '00s stand-up albums, my first exposure to Carlin was his thankless role as a Time Lord a time traveler from the future in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.)

As a tribute to this brilliant comedian, all Morning Becomes Dyspeptic episodes that feature excerpts from Carlin's albums will be streamed all week long (except on Friday, for complicated reasons that have to do with the MBD announcer's prerecorded outro on Friday editions). MBD airs every weekday at 1am and 8am on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.

And unlike my old college radio show where I played excerpts from my favorite comedy albums in between hip-hop breaks--but the station's daytime airplay rules required me to edit out all the comics' profanity--all of Carlin's routines during MBD are uncensored. Just as Carlin would have wanted.

"Where's the polar bear, Jon?"

First-time Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac cracked me up when he compared the Clinton/Obama rivalry to a Lifetime movie starring Joanna Kerns and Meshach Taylor. Jon Stewart also cracked up from hearing the words "Joanna Kerns and Meshach Taylor," but he held it together.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. Michael started working for the Others, or NAMBLA.

Even-numbered Indiana Jones movie curse? (Part 2)

"Screenwriter David Koepp looked at all the film's previous drafts, and kept what he felt were good ideas. He tried not to make his work a 'fan script,' avoiding any trivial references to the previous films. He noted that the story would have to acknowledge Ford/Jones's age, and also aimed for the mix of comedy and adventure from the first film, trying to make it less dark than the second film and yet less comic than the third film." [IMDb]

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on opening day, but I kept my thoughts about the movie to myself until now. The Crystal Skull screenplay sounded great on paper. So why doesn't most of the movie live up to the above IMDb description of what Koepp was intending to do?

From the opening credits to the all-practical, CGI-free motorcycle chase, Crystal Skull holds promise. It acknowledges Dr. Jones' age, and there are some clever, witty touches that must have been Spielberg's ideas: the suburban neighborhood that's revealed to be a bomb testing site, Indy's anxiety about turning into an anachronism, which is reflected in the McCarthyism references and the film's only great CGI-created image--Indy gazing up at the mushroom cloud--and finally, a brief diner brawl straight out of a '50s B-movie. Spielberg's current favorite cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, filling in for a retired and now-blind Douglas Slocombe, is even faithful to the legendary Slocombe's bold, crisp pre-CGI cinematography from the previous Indy installments. But then the film moves to the jungle and lets the fakey CGI take over, allowing Kaminski to resume his trademark washed-out color schemes from later Spielberg films like Minority Report and War of the Worlds. The washed-out cinematography works for those more somber films but not for an Indy adventure. All it does is worsen the artificial, soundstagey look of this installment.

Crystal Skull goes downhill once Indy starts to deliver tedious exposition about the skulls to his new sidekick Mutt inside the mental asylum. My eyes glazed over like they do whenever I struggle through reading the opening scroll of The Phantom Menace. From there, the film abandons much of what was wonderfully established in the first half, particularly the references to the Cold War era and Indy's age. If it weren't for the 1957 setting, the rest of the movie could be set in 1987, for all I care. Indy, who utters a certain Star Wars catchphrase for the first and hopefully last time in the series, turns into an infallible superman (this is where the hand of Raiders co-writer Lawrence Kasdan is sorely missed--think of the self-deprecating lines he could have given to this older, frailer Indy). A potentially exciting sword duel between Mutt and Natasha Fatale 2.0 that was obviously shot against a green screen devolves into a rehash of the similarly green-screened light saber fights from the last two Star Wars prequels. The action is disrupted by a lame, overly cutesy Temple of Doom-ish interlude involving a Tarzan-like Mutt and monkeys with greaser hairdos. It's all evidence that Lucas' hand dominated the film's second half.

The best part of the second half is the too-brief interplay between Harrison Ford and his Raiders leading lady Karen Allen. "I don't know how Allen and Ford feel about each other in real life, but boy do they look thrilled to be back together in the movie. At any rate, Indy and Marion are clearly thrilled... It's the rejuvenating moment we've been waiting for and then...nothing comes of it," notes blogger Lance Mannion, who effectively sums up the merits and weaknesses of Crystal Skull in his post.

One of the gazillion Indy clones that have emerged since Raiders better captured the spirit of that first Indy installment than the current real thing. After he co-wrote Last Crusade, the late Jeffrey Boam went on to co-create The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. with Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse. That cult show--a winning mash-up of Boam's own Indy sequel and the '60s Wild, Wild West--integrated extraterrestrial-related intrigue into a period setting more entertainingly than Crystal Skull does.

The last thing I wanted was a retread of Temple of Doom. The second-to-last thing I wanted was a schizophrenic Indy installment, and that's what Crystal Skull is.