Asking the Wrong Questions

How much do I love the decision to split Veronica Mars 's third season into mini-arcs? Not only has the shift in format completely re-energized the show, it gives me three convenient stopping points from which to take stock of the show's progress. And, since I share producer Rob Thomas's fears about the likelihood of a fourth season, it's probably best to take advantage of the opportunity to do some guilt-free criticism while I still can. Before I get to the criticism, however, I'd like to reiterate that the show is re-energized. After a well-intentioned but deeply flawed second season, Veronica Mars is back in top form. The show's opening plot arc was tight, tense, and compelling. The characters, even when they made choices we couldn't condone or changed in ways we didn't care for, were vibrant onscreen presences (except, that is, for the ones who didn't get nearly enough air-time like Wallace, Mac and Weevil). There are, obviously, still some p...

Last spring, when I reviewed the short fiction nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, I wrote briefly about Kelly Link's novella "Magic for Beginners" (which won the former award, and scandalously lost the latter to a forgettable and humorless piece by Connie Willis). It was clear to me at the time that Link's story was one of the finest and most fascinating pieces of short fiction I'd read in quite some time, but it was with some trepidation that I said so in my Hugo and Nebula roundups because, as I wrote at the time, I didn't feel qualified to say why. Which is fairly typical of my reactions to a lot of Link's writing--I like most of her stuff, and I can see that her stories are sophisticated, with a hell of a lot going on under the surface. Most of the time, however, I really don't get what she's trying to say. A big part of my difficulties with Link's fiction has to do with the fact that I keep trying to read her as a fantasist, when ...

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh report on The Hobbit movie : Several years ago, Mark Ordesky told us that New Line have rights to make not just The Hobbit but a second "LOTR prequel", covering the events leading up to those depicted in LOTR. Since then, we've always assumed that we would be asked to make The Hobbit and possibly this second film, back to back, as we did the original movies. We assumed that our lawsuit with the studio would come to a natural conclusion and we would then be free to discuss our ideas with the studio, get excited and jump on board. We've assumed that we would possibly get started on development and design next year, whilst filming The Lovely Bones. We even had a meeting planned with MGM executives to talk through our schedule. However last week, Mark Ordesky called Ken and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on the Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was ...

The fall doldrums are finally clearing away, and there's been a surprising number of interesting films at the movie theatre lately (on the other hand, The Prestige doesn't seem to have an Israeli release date yet, and I strongly suspect I'll have to wait for the DVD). Missing from the list below is Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men , a film I liked well enough but have nothing to say about--which seems appropriate for a film that manages to be intelligently-made without being intelligent. Niall Harrison at Torque Control has a good review, as well as some links to others' thoughts. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - Bog-standard family comedy masquerading as an indie flick. It's hard to decide what's most remarkable about this film: the deft way it integrates an utterly conventional premise--the dysfunctional family learning to work together and appreciate each other--with enough quirky idiosyncrasies--the Proust scholar uncle who tried to kill himself when his...

The good news: according to two different sources, Veronica Mars has received a full season order. The bad news: the CW has ordered only 20 episodes instead of the expected 22. In the short run, this means Rob Thomas and his writing staff will have to scramble to rewrite the season's final plot arc, which will end up getting the least screen time--only four episodes. What really worries me, however, is whether this decision bodes ill for the show's chances of being renewed for a fourth season. Loving this show is not easy. Still, this is mostly good news.

One of the problems with Battlestar Galactica 's premise is that given the Cylons' opening gambit--the extermination of all but a tiny fragment of a civilization that once numbered in the billions--there was nothing, absolutely nothing, the humans could do that would measure up. Gina's mistreatment, all of the indignities visited on Sharon, Hera's kidnapping, Leoben's torture, the bombings on Caprica, old and new--none of them come close to evening the scale. For a show supposedly more concerned with exploring the darkness inherent in the human psyche, this was a major hurdle. Which is why, I suspect, the writers came up with the possibility of reciprocal genocide. Now, just to be clear: there's still a difference, and not a small one either, between committing genocide against an unsuspecting population who are barely even aware of your existence, and committing it against a species who has previously committed it against you, and who you know are dedicated to ...

A mere three books into a fantasy series which by now spans more than thirty, Terry Pratchett laid out the fundamental rule guiding the use of magic in his invented world, the Discworld: don't do it. Magic, in Pratchett's universe, is a toxic substance whose effects are highly reminiscent of radioactive waste (it is probably no coincidence that, at the time that he was writing the early Discworld books, Pratchett was employed as a publicity officer for a board overseeing three nuclear plants), with the added complication that, in concentrated amounts, it can rip through the fabric of the universe. As the Discworld series progressed, this internal story reason for not using magic gave way to a moral-philosophical argument, a transition which coincided with a shift of focus from one kind of magical practitioner--the wizards of Unseen University--to another--the witches of Lancre and the Ramtops mountains, led, however unofficially, by Granny Weatherwax. According to Granny (who m...

If you love "Calvin & Hobbes," you might not want to watch this video . (Via Crooked Timber )

Under Torch Wood: A Parody for Voices Separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations, independent of the judiciary, not voting in council elections, distinct from the Brownies, non-members of the AA, think iPods are rubbish, cancelled the milk, no TV licence. The conclusion seems spot-on, too. ( Via )

But have you seen these cool cover designs ? (If you haven't read the stories, check them out here . I'm not being very original, but my favorite is Margaret Atwood's entry: "Starlet sex scandal. Giant squid involved.")

The person who pointed out this article in The American Prospect , which examines the reactions of conservatives to Battlestar Galactica --first latching on to the show as an emblem of right-wing thinking in modern media (“The more I watch the new Battlestar Galactica series, the more the Cylons seem like Muslims"), and now recoiling in horror as it supposedly makes an ideological shift to the left (one fan 'took exception to the use of suicide bombings, which he said wouldn’t work against Cylons because “terrorist tactics only work against the United States and Israel because we’re too good to wipe all of them out”'), takes its author, Brad Reed, to task for not delving into the complexities of Galactica 's moral outlook, and for accepting unthinkingly the interpretation that these conservative fans attach to it. Which I think is a little unfair, as the focus of the article isn't Battlestar Galactica , but rather the alleged tendency on the part of right-wing p...

I seem to have found a tentative fix for the problems with the site's LJ feed. Right now, the solution seems to be to switch the RSS feed to short entries instead of full ones. I personally find this less convenient when reading other sites, so I'm going to keep looking for a better solution.

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers - the second Wimsey/Vane novel puts the two characters on a more or less equal footing, both in terms of their dominance over the narrative and in terms of their contribution to the investigation of the mystery--the murder of a professional dancer on a secluded beach. This is a more complicated story than Strong Poison , with a great many elements--eye-witness accounts, forensic evidence, common deduction--coming together to form a coherent picture of the murder like so many puzzle pieces (all the while, of course, Sayers is holding back the final, crucial piece). The result is clever, if at times too deliberately so--the timeline of events surrounding the murder is crucial right down to the minute, so Sayers makes all of the relevant characters compulsive about accurate time-keeping (three or four different characters take trouble to assure the detectives that they reset their watches every morning according to the radio clock, which, please)--to...

When I wrote about Russell T. Davies' 2003 miniseries, The Second Coming , I remarked that Davies and star Christopher Eccleston carried over a great many of the lead character's mannerisms and attitudes when they created the character of the ninth Doctor. Which, at the time, was rather amusing. Now that I've seen Davies' 2005 mini, Casanova (pretty good. Very funny. Not nearly as smart or as moving as The Second Coming , but then, what is?), starring David Tennant, I'm starting to worry. You see, Tennant's Casanova is the tenth Doctor. It's not just a matter of the actor repeating some physical tics (and anyway, I've seen Tennant in one or two other things and, while he many not have the greatest range in recorded history, he's certainly got more than one character in him). When Tennant reads his lines, you can see him wearing a pin-striped suit instead of gaudy, quasi-period dress. And those lines are thoroughly Doctor-ish: Casanova: I...

Those of you reading this blog off its LJ feed might have wondered why I've been so quiet this past week. Apparently, LJ thinks I'm fat. Neither of the entries I posted this week--a joint review of Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly and Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain , and an entry about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Heroes --have shown up on the feed, and the excuse seems to be that they are 'too big'. Yeah, I'm sure that's not going to keep causing problems.

I'm not a big fan of comics, and especially not the kind featuring superheroes, but even I took less time than your average studio executive to work out that if you're going to port superhero comics over to an audio-visual medium, cinema is your absolute worst choice. For more than half a decade (well, for several decades, but there's been a glut recently), some of the finest filmmakers in the business have been trying to crack the comic book film formula. Some of their results have been financially successful, others have been well-received by critics. With the possible exception of Pixar's The Incredibles (I say possible because I'm not convinced that it's entirely accurate to describe the movie as a comic book film, not because I don't think it's excellent), none of them have even approached the distinction of good cinema, or the even more elusive honor of faithful adaptations. Most importantly, none of them have managed to replicate the intricately ...