It's March and I've Been Diligent.

So I just started a Goodreads page today and will probably review most if not all of the books and media I read. There will be links, going both ways. Anyway, to kick off my reviews, I will post everything I watched or read in February, with commentary:

Film

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

This is probably my least favorite Seijun Suzuki Film. It's not bad, but nowhere near as exciting or innovative as his other films. Still worth watching.

Branded to Kill (1967)

This is considered Suzuki's best film. It's also the film that got him fired from Nikkatsu. The studio told Suzuki that "[his] films make no sense, and therefore no money." It's easy to see why this was not popular with them. Suzuki's eccentric directing style was on full display in this film and it might be worth watching twice to better understand the narrative. Highly recommended.

Youth of the Beast (1963)

What an awful translation of the title. Wild Youth would be just as accurate and far less clunky. This gripe aside, maybe my favorite Suzuki film. The plot is fairly straightforward: an ex-cop infiltrates the Yakuza and avenges a friend's death. However, his dialogue and directing elevate this Japanese gangster film into something more. Harder to find than his other films, but worth the search.

Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

I'll be honest, I rented this title because of the title. It's only after the fact that I learned François Roland Truffaut, the director, was part of the French New Wave and wrote the screenplay for Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. A must see for anyone interested in noir mixed with highly stylized, realistic directing.

The Big Sleep (1946)

I watched this because they didn't have Chandler's novel at the library. A great example of the hard-boiled detective story, even if it's never clear how the story fits together.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Two words: Humphrey Bogart.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't been said. Pure entertainment.

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Jim Jarmusch may be my new favorite director. I'd call him the American Samuel Beckett. I thought I recognized Richard Edson's character. After the movie I picked through my vinyl collection and found Sonic Youth's first album. Turns out, Richard Edson was their original drummer. Makes sense, considering the crowd Jarmusch ran with (CBGBs No Wave Lower East Side, late 70s early 80s). Another plus, Jarmusch studied poetry under Kenneth Koch, one of my favorite poets.

Pierrot Le Fou (1965)

My favorite Godard film. A perfect blend of experimental film making with narrative. Funny and shocking, all the time.


Comics

Daredevil #504

A pretty tame ending to Andy Diggle's premiere story arc on the series. I do have to say I was pretty underwhelmed, but I did just read all 125 issues back-to-back. The series seems to have lost some of its subtlety that Ed Brubaker and Brian Michael Bendis employed so well.

Daredevil #505

The opening issue of Diggle's second arc. Fairly repetitious, a lot of flat dialogue. Gorgeous art though. I'm curious to see where Diggle takes my favorite comic/series.

Criminal #3

Ed Brubaker is probably my favorite comic book writer. It's great that he's still doing noir, and every single issue has been a perfect mixture of dialogue and action. Also, the guide to international in the back of every issue is a huge plus, as is the ad-free format.

Criminal #4

Awesome.

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 1

Frank Miller only draws these issues, so the storytelling is typical 1970s fare. However, Miller shows how a good artist can take a fairly flat storyline and make it exciting by controlling how the reader interacts with the panels.

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2

This is the entire reason why Daredevil has become such an iconic character. The series was on the verge of cancellation, but because of Miller's writing and drawing, it became one of the best selling Marvel books. The art is executed with perfect control and the storytelling is still fresh even today.

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 3

I was very excited to read this after the spectacular second volume. However, this installment was kind of a letdown and I think Miller had exhausted his ideas for the character toward the end of the series. It might also be due to the fact that Miller only wrote these issues, so much of the subtlety of the earlier volumes was lost. Still, it does collect the best single issue of his entire run, "Roulette".


Novels

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

I was very excited to read this at the beginning. Excellent dialogue, vivid scenes, and very surprising, violent action. Toward the middle I began wanting just a little more description. I feel that this basically reads like a screenplay without stage directions and by the time I reached the end I just wanted to finish it.

Savage Night by Jim Thompson

My first foray into straight-forward, genre fiction in years. Very spare prose and masterful dialogue. I'm still scratching my head over the ending.

Hebdomeros by Giorgio De Chirico

In a way, this felt like an extended John Ashbery poem. The scenes are reminiscent of the aura of De Chirico's paintings. My favorite "Surrealist" prose work.

The Memoirs of Giorgio De Chirico

I read this for a paper and and presentation I did on Chirico. While some of the moments are fascinating, I found De Chirico's egocentricity to be unbearable. Seriously, his head was as big as Andre Breton's.


Poetry

Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip

My favorite book of poetry I've read this year. Gertrude Stein and Susan Howe intersect to show the reader what happens when words fail and the story that can't be told must be.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land*

Why haven't I read this guy before? Seriously, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Lautremont have nothing on Cesaire. The oscillation between haunting prose and rhapsodic poetry creates a breathtaking reading experience. I'll definitely be revisiting this book in the near future. On a side note, I found a political flyer from the French elections in my used copy. It has a picture of Cesaire on it and I'm led to believe that the previous owner of this book was in France when Cesaire was running. I searched the Internet for it, but nothing came up.

Solar Throat Slashed*

Not as as good as Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, but still enjoyable. My favorite new poet.

*From the Collected Poetry of Aime Cesaire.

Currently reading: The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, The Double Dream of Springe by John Ashbery, and Personae by Ezra Pound.

Captain America Tea Bags Libs Before He Tea Bags You

In what has to be one of the most surreal controversies about comics ever, a recent issue of Captain America has enraged the Tea Party Movement for its depiction of anti-tax protesters as white supremacists. While it never explicitly names the Tea Party (the protesters in Captain America No. 602 belong to a group known as "The Watchdogs"), someone noticed the signs in the comic were strikingly similar to those seen at Tea Party protests. Since then, Marvel Comics has apologized and explained that they used signs from anti-tax protests not to draw a parallel between The Watchdogs and the Tea Party Movement, but to add a sense of realism to the comic book. I'm not going to discuss whether or not these answers are genuine or not, as there are plenty of other blogs out there that have already done so; rather, I'm going to underline the absurdity of this entire situation.

Comics have long used current events as the basis for their plots and story lines. In the 1950s, Superman revealed his secret identity to McCarthy to dispel doubts that he and the Justice League were really a Communist group seeking world domination. Though the paranoia and absurdity of that situation certainly parallel the political climate during McCarthyism, it could hardly be called realistic; this is, after all, the same medium where getting bit by a radioactive spider or covered in toxic waste leads to superpowers instead of cancer.

This is not to say that comic books haven't portrayed certain groups of people in a negative way; plenty of books have been written on how comics perpetuate gender and racial stereotypes, and many of those comics are still on the market. For example, in one of the issues collected in Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Volume 1, Aquaman states, "While we don't have a permanent chairman--when it comes to cleaning time, we all agree Wonder Woman is the boss." Still, this isn't as much of a blatant attempt at misrepresenting women as it is a reflection of the sexism of that era, just as Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil's Green Lantern/Green Arrow run reflects the political conscience of the 1970s by addressing topics such as environmentalism, the American Indian Movement, and drug abuse. Likewise, the protesters in Captain America No. 602 represent the disillusionment with the United States Government that so many have felt in the last decade; namely, how it spends its tax money.

The Tea Party's claim that they're being misrepresented hinges on the ability to identify the slogans in Captain America No. 602 as belonging to the Tea Party Movement. If the reader can't do so, then the audience is reading a comic book where Captain America clashes with white supremacist, anti-tax protesters. Even if you can identify them, you have to believe this is a conscious, subliminal attempt to defame the Tea Party Movement. Since we live in a era where accuracy in the news is less important than pushing a political agenda, it seems more plausible that Marvel would outright identify the group if they wanted to push anti-Tea Party propaganda

The only thing that even makes this comparison between the Tea Party and The Watchdogs possible is Marvel's admittance that they borrowed political slogans from actual Tea Party protests. Other than that, The Watchdogs have about as much in common with the Tea Party as Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds does with World War II. The people who are seriously enraged by this comic are of the same mentality as those who boycotted Tarantino's movie because it didn't accurately represent history. In both cases, that was never the intention; the author picked a historical event and then deviated from the facts to tell a story. To take such obvious fiction seriously is as absurd as trying to interview some protesters you saw in a comic book.

Links:

Yahoo!

Fox

Washington Times

CBS

note: It's interesting that the Fox story uses this as a launchpad to attack Captain America writer Ed Brubaker's politics, since he's not the one who made the decision to include the Tea Party signs.