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Thoughts on writing and publishing, and the various sources of entertainment...
A weekly column by Abel G. Peña, best known for his Star Wars work.
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THE PHILODOXER for 09/10/2006
Batman, Twain, and Turgenev: The Week in Review
It's been a productive week! I made it out the UCLA Writers Faire, checked out my first NASCAR race, and managed to squeeze in some terrific cross-media entertainment. Here's the run down:
Batman: The Long Halloween
What can I say about this graphic novel except that after hearing so many good things about it, I was disappointed. Unfortunately, The Long Halloween felt like a lot of gloss over a story that only made moderate sense in retrospect. It's too bad too, since Two-Face is one of my favorite Batman villains. I swear, it's one of the funkiest ironies that a character called Two-Face is so often written one-dimensionally.
The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)
I've always been fascinated by stop-motion animation and especially the bizarreness of claymation. Yeah, big fan of Gumby.
So I remember catching a little bit of The Adventures of Mark Twain as a kid before getting too creeped-out to keep watching. But recently coming across the movie on TV again for the first time since then, I cautiously decided to give it another chance. I now dub thee eighties classic.
Like claymation, I've always felt a certain attraction to Mark Twain's stories, and this movie builds a meta-fictive narrative around Twain's body of literature. In the movie, Twain's beloved characters Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher meet their maker, Twain, who is determined to commit suicide by sailing a steampunk ship into Halley's Comet! Strange children's fair to be sure, but pretty kick ass as an adult. I now found the "Mysterious Stranger" sequence that was the last straw for me when I was ten eerily mesmerizing and easily one of the tale's best parts.
I'm actually somewhat dumfounded this movie even got made. Kudos to director Will Vinton and writer Susan Shadburne.
Nothing Sacred
I try to catch a few plays a year, and of all the playhouses I frequent, the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is probably my favorite. The place is snazzy without being too pricey, and regularly features terrific if not outright groundbreaking theatre. The last play I saw there was the post-modern sequel The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler written by Jeff Whitty. This time I caught George F. Walker's slightly tamer Nothing Sacred.
Adapted from Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons in 1988, this award-winning play focuses on 1860s Russia in a time of serious social upheaval. Walker's adaptation comes off as fresh and thought provoking as the arrogant anti-hero Bazarov (he's a nihilist, dude) takes center stage leading the charge toward what'll eventually become Bolshevik Russia.
Nothing Sacred's playing till October 8, so try to make it out. For children of the 80s, it might help to mention that Khrystyne Haje, a.k.a. Head of the Class's Simone, has a nice role in the show. Oh yeah...
That's all folks! See ya next week!
- Abel
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Discuss this column with me in World Famous Comics' General Forum and at Pop Culture Bored.
Also, visit my website at www.abelgpena.com.
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