Nick's Café Canadien

Straight from the BBC:

Star Wars video prompts lawsuit

Ghyslain Raza became known as the “Star Wars Kid” after a video of him using a golf ball retriever to emulate the light sabre slinging tricks of Darth Maul was posted on the net.

The video was hugely popular and some people even added effects to make the golf ball retriever look and sound like a light sabre.

But the public exposure of the clip proved a burden for Mr Raza, who has been through psychiatric care to cope with his unwanted publicity.

…

The lawsuit says that Mr Raza has had to endure harassment and derision from his school mates and the general public because of the publicity that the clip received.

It also says that Mr Raza is undergoing psychiatric care to cope with the publicity and reaction.

Lawyers for Mr Raza are claiming compensation of 225,000 Canadian dollars (£100,000) from the four boys who allegedly stole the video and put it online.

Personally, they really should put this kid in Episode III. He’s a martyr of the fan community, the first of the millions to be caught in the act of Star Wars fantasy.

This, contrary to popular belief, is not me. But in case you’re wondering, it is what I do on my spare time.

A bit late in the reporting, but nonetheless, here is the greatest and most exciting piece of literary news I have heard in a fair while:

Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon has signed on with Dark Horse Comics to publish Michael Chabon Presents…The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. The quarterly comic anthology will feature characters created by Chabon in his critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Set primarily in the late ’30’-s and early ’40’-s at the birth of the comic book industry, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay tells the story of two young men who create a popular comic-book character known as “The Escapist.” The Dark Horse anthology will present tales of the Escapist and his cohorts set in the style of various comic book eras from the 40’s through today. Chabon will guide the direction of the series as well as contribute to writing original stories. Other artists and writers will be announced in coming months.

Read all about it here – there is a nice piece of promotional art there as well.

I am nothing even remotely close to a comic book aficionado, but this announcement has me wetting my pants with anticipation. Why? Well, for starters, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is arguably the best piece of contemporary literature I have ever read, for reasons that would fill several essays. Among the most vividly-written scenes in the piece are the respective origin stories of The Escapist and Luna Moth, comic book sequences inked with words alone; the panels leap off the page, and if they evoke one reaction, it’s exactly what Sammy Clay said upon the genesis of his creation: “I wish he were real.”

Suffice to say, an actual comic book of The Escapist is a dream come true – that is, if handled properly. Considering the extent of Chabon’s direct involvement, it is reasonable to expect it to live up to his grand vision.

And if you haven’t read Kavalier & Clay, then what are you waiting for? Go get it!

Rowan Atkinson’s performance as the title character of Johnny English is among his better work. The film itself is not.

There is no doubting that the former Mr. Bean is a gentleman’s Jim Carrey, a master of physical comedy, and it shows as he plays the role of a bumbling, incompetent secret agent. Atkinson is the primary draw of the film and its solitary heart and soul; true to form, he delivers fine comedy that acts as a magnet for laughter. He plays the role with a total lack of debonair suavity, and proves himself the perfect anti-Bond. His delivery of verbal humour is similarly commendable, and hearkens back to its Blackadder zenith.

Unfortunately, that is where Johnny English starts and ends. It is in effect a solo performance, or maybe not enough of one, as everything other than Atkinson’s comedic moments is completely forgettable. The screenwriting team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the pair who worked on the last two James Bond films, does well enough in constructing the occasional witty snippet of dialogue for Atkinson to deliver, typically relying heavily on well-executed dramatic irony; however, not as much can be said in the way of story. One does not expect a showcase of Atkinson’s talents to string an evenly-paced plot together, but low expectations do not excuse the paper-thin transitions from joke to joke, which often go on far too long. Whenever Johnny English is offscreen, the movie is a thundering bore. Even John Malkovich’s appearance as the uber-Frenchman Pascal Sauvage, over-the-top accent included, is a gag that gets very old very fast.

Most of the blame can be laid directly on director Peter Howitt, whose impressive curriculum vitae features such highlights as AntiTrust and Sliding Doors. What Johnny English lacks is a sense of style, an atmosphere of pulpish cool – elements critical to what it aspired to be. The movie almost never feels like a spy flick; we are only led to believe it is because we are told. In addition to being funny, a comedy movie – especially one of a spoofy nature – still carries the responsibility of being a movie. English is one of the many films that neglect this requirement, and does so much to its own discredit. There is very little that separates it from merely being television fare.

The moral of the story is that Atkinson alone is not enough to sustain an hour and a half on the big screen, let alone the ticket price. Actually, theoretically he is – but Johnny English is such a mishmash of clearly identifiable good parts (with him) and bad parts (without), you really couldn’t tell. English is enjoyable, but only in bursts, and it never comes close to demanding silver-screen presentation as a necessity. We learn nothing new about Atkinson as a performer, and there is far too much extraneous material that gets in his way. Until someone knows how to make use of him as the star of a feature film, his television work, with its thankful brevity and superior knack for timing, will suffice. He is an actor best described as silly and fun, but more often than not, this movie is silly and stupid.

There is a veritable plethora of cartoons I watched as a child whose titles I don’t remember. This is mostly due to the fact that in addition to your standard repertoire of Inspector Gadget, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tiny Toon Adventures and Darkwing Duck – not to mention Golden Age relics like Rocky and Bullwinkle – a good number of them were Japanese productions overdubbed in Cantonese.

Naturally, through the power of the Internet, I managed to dig some up. Some of them were relatively easy to find, most notably Doraemon, which, as it turns out, is pretty much the biggest hit in the history of Japanimation. However, the majority of them are more obscure than a zyzzyva, which is why I was pleasantly surprised today when I actually found one of the shows I followed most closely.

As I discovered, its title is Pro Golfer Saru, and there also exists a video game of it for the Famicom (the Japanese equivalent of the NES) which is still busy preserving its legacy.

Now this was one heck of a show. The entire plot revolved around a golfer kid who marginally resembled a monkey, and whose quest was to become the best golfer in the world, by way of entering the most ridiculous tournaments – waylaid, of course, by some evil shadowy bad guy I can’t remember whose raison d’être was to set him back. Naturally, he was also aided by the assistance of his trusty caddy crew, about which I remember nothing except how among them there was one kid with swirly glasses.

The courses made the show, as they featured the most exotic and imaginative locations. This was a matter of avoiding not sand traps, but bottomless chasms shrouded with fog. At least one episode found our hero making his way across a narrow land bridge over the billowing plumes of fire of an erupting volcanic plain. Every chapter of this story culminated in a grand climax where he wound up for his Super Shot, and the best way to describe it is this: think of the fiery shot in Shaolin Soccer that rips the pitch to shreds. Now imagine that with a golf ball, and you’ve got it.

Japanese cartoons are weird, man.

Now available for ordering at NSA Word Gear and Amazon is the Franklin Scrabble Companion, basically an electronic version of The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, Third Edition (OSPD3) that was published in the mid-1990s. Though it was before my time, the Franklin for the OSPD2 had a stellar reputation in its day for being the ultimate portable anagramming companion – cheap, pocket-sized, and feature-rich.

The new Franklin is of questionable utility, however. At 5″ on each side, it is a considerably larger model, only slightly smaller than a compact disc. It includes the one-line definitions of the OSPD3, but its use of that dictionary as a hard-wired word source is its greatest drawback. It is unsuitable for tournament play, as it omits the same 167 playable “offensive words” as the OSPD3, which are included in the actual tournament word source. Furthermore, word is that the next round of changes to the Tournament Word List is slated for as early as 2005.

As a product geared towards the casual living room player, the Franklin does show some promise. It eliminates the need to physically flip through the dictionary for challenges and definitions, even if this simultaneously removes one’s ability to scan the dictionary casually looking for neat words. In doing so, it removes the nuisance of the print version’s pseudo-alphabetical sorting and grouping of inflections. Whether or not this is worth $49.99 USD is a different question entirely. One has to wonder about the marketing strategy behind it: do people who don’t play at clubs and tournaments actually study words rigorously? Is there really a market for this? There might be – after all, some tournament gurus still lug an OSPD3 around for the definitions alone, and the book seems to sell rather well; as of this writing, its Amazon.com sales rank is a whopping 351.

But as far as electronic Scrabble aids go, the consensus among competitive players is that Paul Sidorsky’s freeware LAMPWords for Palm OS is far superior. Using a display that is not confined to one line, and filled with LeXpert-esque lookup and list creation features, the only overhead is that you need a Palm device to run it, and the only drawback is the lack of definitions. But LAMPWords is most prominently superior because of its versatility, in using downloadable software-based dictionary files. It’s adaptable to future revisions and lexica used outside North America (I refer specifically to SOWPODS here), and any errors are easily patched.

Director Stephen Norrington must be truly extraordinary: somehow he has managed to make The Pagemaster look like a tour de force of literary studies.

A more appropriate title for Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be Cliff Notes: The Movie, though that hardly does justice to the film’s absurd superhuman ability to take characters out of eighteenth-century literature remembered for the complexity of their tales, and water them down to one-note, one-joke self-parodying caricatures that are more like Pokémon than people. We see Allan Quartermain as the poster-headlining retired adventurer, played by Sean Connery in his best what-kind-of-lines-are-these look. The Invisible Man (Tony Curran) is invisible. Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) is somehow immortal by way of the peculiarity with his portrait. Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) is the brute strength of the team when in his egregiously outfitted Mr. Hyde form. A certain Special Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West) inexplicably shows up from America and delivers “witty” wisecracks about the British. When you begin to describe characters by a single trait or ability as if they were merely weapons, you know there’s a problem.

Conceptually, the idea of uniting iconic literary characters and making use of their special powers – the novelty behind the comic book on which this film is based – is something with great cinematic potential. It would ideally play out like a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure of fiction rather than history, only serious and bullet-ridden. The problem is that James Dale Robinson’s flaccid screenplay acknowledges that the heroes of the piece are pre-established, and uses this as an excuse for forgoing any degree of coherent exposition.

But it was never intended to be anything more than a thrilling adventure movie, right? At least we could expect it to deliver on its promises to be high-octane visceral escapism? Nope. The League wants to be campy fun at every turn, but ends up as merely campy. The fight sequences are for the most part choppily edited; one early conflict switches characters and fights every second, moving from close-up to close-up, lacking any degree of continuity. The way these battles were staged, they must have looked really good live on set; however, they are muffled by poor editorial choices rather than amplified, as they should be.

A similar complaint can be made of the overall look of the film. Given The League’s comic book roots, the Batman-esque gothic darkness of the sets and costumes is one of its high points. The way the production looks on the screen, however, is a different story. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen seems to misunderstand that the effect of darkness is most expressed with the contrast between light and shadow, and goes solely for the shadow. I suppose this is in line with the movie’s apparent philosophy that the audience should not have any idea what is going on, but this only highlights (pardon the pun) Conrad L. Hall’s superior work in Road to Perdition as the textbook on how to light a dark graphic novel adaptation. Granted, comparing Laustsen’s work in The League to Hall’s pedigree is akin to juxtaposing crab apples and Florida oranges, but that does not change the fact that the commendable design values go to waste.

With more coherent editing and smarter photography, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could have been great, despite a horrendous screenplay. Add a better script and it could be marvelous, though it would be a completely different movie – namely, a watchable one. It has a lot going for it: the production design, a talented cast that does what it can, and most of all, the concept. There are even some very cinematic moments in the film, the briefest flashes of brilliance, as in a pivotal scene when our heroes listen to a staticky recorded message from the villain, which is shot like a grainy vintage reel. The unveiling of the movie’s Standard Diabolical Plan is the best-edited montage of the entire piece; it is a pity that the rest of the movie never comes close to that level of achievement.

For The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the nail in the coffin is that it is not even a whole lot of fun. It’s a bad movie, but not quite farcical enough in its badness to merit watching in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, or disastrous enough to leave permanent and visible scars to show your friends afterwards, à la 1998’s The Avengers. It fails because it is the worst kind of disappointment: one with tremendous promise. Even the League of Nations was a greater success.