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Microreview [Comics]: The Underwater Welder

The Meat

Very seldom does a comic grip you from the get go and maintain its hold throughout the entire book.  The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire accomplishes just that.  This poignant story about fatherhood, childhood and family will keep you glued to the pages until the conclusion.  To save you time, just go buy this book now.

Anyone who has read Lemire’s work (Sweet Tooth, Animal Man) understands his ability to connect his characters with the reader.  I often felt that Jack was peering right at me as if seeking my approval for his actions.  It didn’t feel that I was simply reading a comic; it felt as if I was there with him and often found myself speaking to him. 

The Underwater Welder is a story about Jack, an underwater welder who works off shore on a rig.  His wife is very pregnant and he is embarking on his last trip out to the rig before the little one is due.  On one of his dives he is profoundly moved by a mystery he discovers and struggles with his past, his present and his future.  Lemire weaves a masterful story that keeps you guessing and questioning what is real.  Damon Lindelof likes it to a great Twilight Zone story and I couldn’t agree more.

Lemire’s artwork once again stands out.  The eyes of his characters always are effective at emoting and the unrefined lines help maintain the shroud of the unknown and effectively keep the reader on the edge of his or her seat. 

I was worried, I laughed, I cried, I enjoyed the Sweet Tooth Easter egg.  I guess what I am trying to say is I enjoyed this book.  As a father I felt truly connected to the story and it is currently my favorite book of 2012 (Sorry My Friend Dahmer). It is refreshing that small publishers like Top Shelf allow creators the freedom to embark on endeavors as unique as this one.  Go buy it know!  It is even available on Comixology!

The Math

Objective Score: 9/10

Bonuses: +1, for the Sweet Tooth Easter Egg

Penalties: -1, for making me cry

Nerd coefficient: 9/10, “very high quality/standout in its category”

Microreview [film]: La Jetee

The Meat

Chris Marker died last week on his 91st birthday. The French experimental filmmaker, artist, and documentarian is best known -- especially since its Criterion DVD and Blu-ray release -- for his 1962 short film La Jetee. It's one of the more influential sci-fi films out there that relatively few people have seen. In 27 minutes, it tells a story about time travel set in a post-apocalyptic Paris. We spend time underground in the shelters that the survivors have made for themselves to avoid the nuclear contamination on the surface, we return to the past of the 1960s, and we go ahead to a distant future to see what lies in store for mankind.

And we do it all in still photographs.

Chris Marker's favorite film was Hitchcock's Vertigo (you can see over here the appreciation I wrote about that one after it was named the best film of all time, also last week), and echoes of Hitchcock's meditation on memory and obsession, which was made four years earlier, pervade Marker's sci-fi short film. You could even argue that in many ways, Le Jetee tells the same story as Vertigo, but through a sci-fi lens, in the same way Forbidden Planet is generally considered a sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

But La Jetee's real accomplishment is a lyrical and emotional evocation that is as close as anything I've ever seen to actual visual poetry. My experience of La Jetee is like my experience of T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings. On an intellectual level I understand what's happening -- what the words and images literally mean -- but I cannot consciously account for the emotions they evoke. To try to analyze it and tear it all apart would be to rob the work of its magic. And there is a tremendous amount of magic here.

The Math

Objective Quality: 7/10. Somebody basically gave Marker an old Pentax camera and a nickel and said "Here you go, kid. See if you can make a picture." So if you can see some of the photo matte work here and there, it's forgivable.

Bonuses: +1, because Terry Gilliam re-made La Jetee in 1995 as 12 Monkeys; +1, for the still photos, because it would not have been as nearly as good as a live-action film; +1 for the profoundly French quality of the narration ("Memories are just like other moments. They are only made memorable by the scars they leave behind.")

Penalties: None.

Cult Movie Coefficient: 10/10. Mind-blowing/life-changing/best ever.

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]

Microreview [TV]: Breaking Bad, S05E04

The Meet

Walt's a gansta. And treating your wife with respect is not necessarily gansta. At least the Geto Boys never mentioned it as a prerequisite.

This week's episode, "Fifty-One," focused on two women: Walt's wife Skyler and Lydia, the Madrigal middle manager and methylamine source for the outfit. Their associations with crime has caused them to live in fear. They epitomize being stuck between a rock and a hard place. For Skyler, the rock is Ted Beneke's crippling while Walt is her hard place. For Lydia, it's the DEA's investigation [rock] and Mike's dead mackerel eyes [hard place].

For all Breaking Bad's brilliance, female roles has never been really a strong point. The female characters have often been little more than stereotypes: Marie as the materialistic self-absorbed sister, Jane as the conniving junkie girlfriend, Carmen as the beautiful Latina assistant principal. The character of Lydia falls in line with this: an uptight, hysterical, maybe crazy mommy-with-a-nanny corporate go-getter. Her behavior in this episode plays to this type. Unsurprisingly, she's not very capable of being a crook. Granted she manages to pull one over on Jesse, but that shouldn't be all that difficult.

But, Mike is a tougher class of criminal. He's already given her one pass -- due to his soft spot for kids -- but he doesn't want to make the same mistake twice. “That's what I get for being sexist.” 

The only reason why Lydia makes it to the end of the show is because Walt joing Jesse in voting against killing her. Not because he now finds murder distasteful, but because he wants to keep the methylamine flowing. Walt likes being the boss and earning like one. And he's not going to let anything cause his new-found bosshood to be "ramped down." Not even a paranoid yuppie.

Skyler has been the only real onrunning female character on Breaking Bad. Last week I called her a bitch. Well, I almost did. This week, I have had a change of heart. Anna Gunn turns in yet another stunning performance. Her mock suicide at Walt's birthday dinner, her fruitless attempt to outwit Walt, her silent smoking. Dammit, they managed to do what they haven't since season 2. They got me to care about her. They went further: I want her and the kids to escape Walt. Or for his cancer to come back. If Gunn doesn't win the emmy...

Walt. He's on a downward spiral, made all the worse now that he's now embraced a self-image as a crime boss. When he puts on his old Heisenberg pork pie hat at the beginning of the episode, he looks no less ridiculous than he did during that first meeting with Tuco in season one. The only difference is that then he was clearly scared; that hat was a pathetic way of covering this fear. Now, he's no longer scared. When he sees himself wearing his hat, he sees not a man in over his head. He sees only a gansta. He sees the boss.

If Bryan Cranston doesn't win an emmy...

Last night I had an argument with a fellow sociologist over which was the better show, Breaking Bad or The Wire. I am pretty unapologetic: while I absolutely loved The Wire, I think Breaking Bad is simply a better show. The Wire may have been more realistic, but it's realism was often too heavy-handed and preachy -- as is most art with a message. This realism often got in the way of character development, with only a handful of exceptions -- D'Angelo, Bodie, Prezbo and the kids from season four. Breaking Bad may be less realistic as a crime show, but it's much better as a dramatic show. We settled our argument by agreeing that The Wire is sociological, while Breaking Bad is psychological, at its heart a character study -- even if we're pretty much only studying Walt, Skyler, and Jesse.

I still think it's a better show.


The Math
Objective Score: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for making me care about Skyler; +1 for the return of Heisenberb

Penalties: -1 for yet another weak female character

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, "an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

[An explanation of our non-inflated scores can be found here.]

RAIDERS OF THE LOST MEME: 1999

It was late December 1999. Bill Clinton was still President of the USA. Boris Yeltsin was still President of Russia. People had jobs, you didn't have to take off your shoes at the airport, a hotmail address was still kinda okay and it is thought most people were preoccupied with the mythical doomsday event "YK2," widely thought by contemporary observers to be imminent and unavoidable.

Recent archeological evidence, though, points to a society that produced crude, yet oddly compelling memes--some, even, would say these ancient works of art contain an authenticity lacking within our modern society. We here at the University of Nerdopolis will let you decide for yourself.

EXHIBIT 1:

The Hobbit trailer: I'll sit through 3 of these

Roman thinks Fantasy is Bullsh*t

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