Monday Miscellania 8/24/09

Another roundup of randomness:

Travel Reading: Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter. Stark (a.k.a. Donald Westlake) wrote a lengthy series of crime novels featuring his brutish but deadly smart thief, Parker (no first name) before he died last year at the age of 75. Before he died, however, he gave permission for comic book writer/artist Darwyn Cooke to adapt his first Parker Novel, The Hunter, as a graphic novel. (The Hunter had previously been adapted twice for the big screen--once as Point Blank with Lee Marvin, and again as Payback starring Mel Gibson.)

The world of The Hunter is pure pulp, populated by tough-taking guys adept at using their guns and fists, and women who are treated with little more than contempt--they're hookers or betrayers or objects of scorn to be used and nothing more. Cook obviously loves noir--anyone who's read his runs on Catwoman or The Spirit could see that--and is religiously faithful to Stark/Westlake's words, providing gorgeous images to illustrate this dark, disturbing, ruthless world without making any concessions to political correctness.

I love Cook's artwork--always have--but anyone with even a modicum of respect for women might want to approach Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter with appropriate caution.

Last Movie I Saw: Actually, I saw two movies over the weekend: Inglourious Basterds, and Post Grad.

The latter is a lighter-than-lightweight comedy starring Alexis Bledel (formerly of TV's Gilmore Girls and the two Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies) as a college graduate who has a hard time finding and keeping a job, despite the support of her wacky family (Michael Keaton as her dad, Jane Lynch as mom and Carol Burnett as grandma), and has romantic entanglements with her platonic male friend (Zach Gilford) and the hunky Brazilian across the street (Rodrigo Santoro). The movie is as unambitious as it sounds and features my new least-favorite movie trend, killing a pet off for "laughs" (it wasn't funny when I saw it happen in Drag Me to Hell and Easy Virtue, and it's not funny here). Talent gets wasted as well, especially Lynch and the usually great J.K. Simmons as Gilford's grouchy dad.

What makes Post Grad not only watchable but pleasantly amusing (pet death scene excepted) is Bledel, She's so smart, charming and heartbreakingly beautiful that it's damn near impossible not to like her. Post Grad may aim low, but it mostly hits its marks.

The same can't be said for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which aims considerably higher, but falls considerably short.

I've long since wearied of Tarantino's references to other movies, both overt (direct mentions of G.W. Pabst, Emil Jannings and Leni Riefenstahl, among other notables of German cinema) and covert (many songs lifted from other soundtracks, including at least four title themes, and this film's title itself, a bastardization, if you will, of a 1978 B-level World War 2 flick starring Fred Williamson).

What came off as a stylistic tic back in the heady days of Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown (two of my all-time favorite movies) now seems more like a creative crutch. I'd long hoped that Tarantino would stop winking at the film geeks in his audience and just tell his own story on his own terms. Now I realize he may not be capable of such.

That's not to say Inglourious Basterds is void of moments of greatness. The opening scene, with SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) hunting for Jews on a French dairy farm, is terrific--Landa is intelligent, charming and calm, and consequently all the more menacing. And the closing scene has arresting imagery, including a laughing woman's face projected onto the billowing smoke of a burning theater.

But in between? I did something I've never done in a Tarantino film: I glanced at my watch. Frequently.