Monday, August 25, 2014

Ranking the Batman Movies

So I've recently ranked the Superman movies, the Avengers movies, and the X-Men movies.  Now, let's do the Batman movies.

If you'll recall, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Batman (1989)--With Jack Nicholson playing the Joker.  I saw it in the theater and have seen it at least once since then and found it still quite watchable.  Great stylized Gothic set design, great cast, dark but not gloomy and with just a little bit of camp.

Batman Returns (1992)--Danny DeVito as the Penguin.  This one is nearly unbearable to sit through.  Dull and dark--I don't mean tonally, although that too.  I mean visually, it's like watching a play in a closet.  Some of the action scenes you literally can't tell what's going on.

Batman Forever (1995)--This one is not half bad.  It got terrible reviews and I haven't run into anybody else who likes it, but really, I think Jim Carrey as the Riddler was an inspired choice.

Batman and Robin (1997)--I caught this on cable a few months after it came out and could not finish watching it.  So terrible.

Batman Begins (2005)--Probably my personal favorite.  The Scarecrow is truly creepy.

The Dark Knight (2008)--Another great one.  But you don't need me to tell you, this one got all kinds of good reviews.  If anything, a little too intense--you're really wrung out by the end of it.

Dark Knight Rises (2012)--This might have gotten the coveted blue text if it'd been 15-20 minutes shorter.  Some great scenes but just goes on and on.

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Iron Man
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Iron Man 2
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

What I'm Reading: Ungifted

Ungifted, by Gordan Korman, is a humorous book for middle schoolers.  It stars Donovan Curtis, a born trouble-maker, an eighth-grade smart-aleck who cuts class with his two buddies, the two Daniels, to play pranks and escape sitting in boring classrooms.

He gets in more trouble than even he can handle, however, during the school pep rally for a big basketball game. The statue of Atlas bearing the globe, which stands in front of the school on a hill, is practically begging for a smack with a big stick, and Donovan is just the delinquent to provide one.  To the horror of Donovan and the delight of the two Daniels, that jars the giant metal globe loose and it rolls down the hill, shatters the glass doors to the gym, and bounces across the gym floor, sending basketball players and fans scattering. Luckily, no one is hurt, but the district superintendent happens to be standing outside the gym and catches Donovan red-handed.  He drags him to the administration building where he writes Donovan's name down on a handy piece of paper and promises he will call his parents later that evening.

After he sends Donovan home, he hands the list of new students for the district gifted school to his assistant and rushes off to a meeting.  When he returns to his office later, he searches frantically for the sheet of paper with that kid's name.  What was it?  Dave?  Doug?  The piece of paper has to be in the office somewhere!  Meanwhile, on Monday, Donovan finds himself transferred to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction.  He's as surprised as his teachers, but the Academy seems like a good place to lie low until this whole thing blows over.

The rest of the book involves Donovan attempting to fit in at the Academy.  The Daniels let him know the superintendent is searching for him at his old school, but if can keep himself enrolled at the Academy he realizes the superintendent will never think to look for him there.  Since, his parents could never afford to pay the costs of fixing the gym, he really tries to do well in his classes for the first time in his life, going so far as to join the robotics club.  It's obvious from the beginning that he'll never match the academic prowess of his driven, high-IQ peers at the Academy, but Donovan and his nerdy new classmates gradually discover that he may be gifted in his own way, and does indeed have something to contribute.

I think any middle-schooler would really enjoy this book.  I probably wouldn't recommend it to adults, unless they were specifically looking for a humorous middle-grade book, but I don't think an adult would be bored by it either.  It's fast-paced and very funny--I laughed out loud several times at the various situations Donovan gets himself in, and chuckled at nearly every page.  It also provides a nice message about the different talents and strengths everybody has, even if they aren't obvious to others, and not to assume you know what's happening in another person's life.  It's not preachy, though; it presents its message in an organic way, with Donovan, the least likely of heroes, proving to be just what the Academy was missing, while by the end of the book the Daniels and a number of Donovan's nerdy new classmates reveal sides of their personalities one wouldn't have suspected at the beginning.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

What I'm Reading: God Emperor of Dune

Over the past couple years, I've been re-reading what at one time were my favorite books ever, Frank Herbert's Dune series.  In a previous post, I decided that my estimation of the series had fallen a few notches since high school, due largely to the stilted dialogue and a somewhat overwrought writing style.  Nevertheless, the world-building and cool concepts still left me with an overall positive impression.  This time out, I'm reviewing the fourth book in the series, God Emperor of Dune.

This book jumps forward 3,500 years (!) from the events in the previous books, where we had last seen Leto II, rightful heir to the galaxy-spanning empire, physically combining his body with the sandtrout (precursors to the spice-producing sandworms on the planet Dune) that would provide him with near-immortality, though at the cost of his humanity.  At the opening of GEoD, the symbiotic relationship with the sandtrout is well advanced, with only Leto's human face and hands left, embedded at one end of a massive wormy body.

Politically, Leto Atreides has come to totally dominate life in the galaxy.  The sandtrout provide his human brain with massive doses of the spice, giving him visions of the future and memories of humanity's past, while his control of Dune allows him to regulate the flow of spice to the rest of the galaxy, and his Fish Guards, an all-female army who worship Leto as a God, are feared across the empire.  All the great organizations of the previous books are highly curtailed--the Spacing Guild is little more than an intergalactic bus service, the Bene Gesserit religious order is a fraction of its former size, the technology-building Ixians and body-cloning Bene Tleilaxu severely circumscribed in their ability to act.

Under Leto, the galaxy is under an enforced peace and war has not been seen for generations.  But his reign has a deeper purpose as well, for in his visions he saw that humanity was on a path to die out.  By carefully manipulating the various strands of social, political, and religious life in the empire, Leto means to avoid this and guarantee humanity's future, what he calls his Golden Path.

Nevertheless, all is not well.  A new clone of Duncan Idaho, the swordmaster to the Atreides, has recently arrived on Dune (Leto has a new one grown every time an old one dies--keeping a piece of the old days around) to take command of the Fish Guards, and this new Duncan is highly skeptical of God Emperor Leto and his total control of human life.  The daughter of Leto's major domo, Siona, is leading an underground rebellion against Leto on Dune itself.  Finally, the Ixians have sent a new ambassador to Leto's court, Hwi Noree, a beautiful and sensitive woman bred specifically to appeal to Leto's long-dormant human side.  These characters and their plotting and machinations bring Leto's millenia-long reign to a crisis point.

This book is quite different from the first three in the series.  For one thing, many chapters are structured something like a Platonic dialogue, with Leto using his vast store of experiences and knowledge to lead a character via deep conversation to a new way of thinking.  I get the feeling he's something of a stand-in for Frank Herbert himself, providing Herbert's views on religion, morality, and human nature, rather like Jubal Harshaw in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.  Despite that, the action in the book moves along fairly briskly, and Leto is such a fascinating character that these long conversations don't drag.  At least they didn't for me.

Another difference is a strong undercurrent of eroticism.  Leto's vision for his Golden Path requires him to manipulate human breeding, weeding out the brutal and the slow-witted, and selecting for the creative and physically hardy.  However, his ethos leads him to avoid forcing people to act whenever he can, instead convincing them his way is best or otherwise maneuvering them to make his preferred choices.  A repeated theme involves his efforts to get certain characters to notice the physical attractions of other characters, thus leading them to mate with the right partners for Leto's program.  Oddly, I didn't remember this aspect of the book at all from when I last read it 20 or more years ago.

It's almost impossible for me to imagine someone coming into this book cold and reading it through to the end.  A reader would really have to have read at least one or more of the previous books in the series to have a prayer of understanding it.  Yet, it's so different in tone and content from the previous books that I would think many Dune fans might also be repelled by it.  Personally, upon this re-read, I find it rivals Children of Dune as the best in the series, with thought-provoking themes and compelling characters (still a lot of stilted dialogue, though).  Overall, I can't recommend it generally, but for a reader who has some familiarity with the Dune universe and isn't afraid of a science fiction book pretentious enough that this reviewer can see parallels with Plato's works (not that Dune fans aren't familiar with pretension...) this makes for fine reading.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Ranking the Superman Movies

All right, we've done the X-Men movies and the Avengers movies, let's do the Superman movies.

As before, the ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Superman (1978) (rewatched it recently and found it still excellent)
Superman II (I've seen it a number of times over the years and it's one of my favorites)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984) (I haven't seen this since the mid-1980s but my siblings and I must have watched this on videotape about a dozen times--so it can't be too bad, right?)
Superman IV
Superman Returns (2006) (not bad, but kind of bland)

Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Iron Man
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Iron Man 2
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Superman IV

Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)