Dexter

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

Ok, so you know there are some things you really, REALLY want to like? Sometimes you’re lucky. Sometimes it’s the food that blows your mind, the book that changes your life, the movie you’ll see again and again, the tv show you buy your friends on DVD. And sometimes you try as hard as you […]

Ok, so you know there are some things you really, REALLY want to like?

Sometimes you’re lucky. Sometimes it’s the food that blows your mind, the book that changes your life, the movie you’ll see again and again, the tv show you buy your friends on DVD.

And sometimes you try as hard as you can, and there’s just nothing there.

I just finished season two of ‘Dexter‘.

Now, almost everyone I know has asked me if I watch it. They all insist I’ll love it, that it’s exactly my thing. And for two years now, I’ve been meaning to watch it, anticipating a macabre, black story, violent, dark, gory and funny.

I had half season one on my tivo and lost it due to a mishap, and then figured I’d catch it when season two ran; then I missed season two for some reason. Finally, after several other shows, Dexter came up in my netflix queue. And I expected to love it.

I didn’t.

The thing is, I really really tried. Because there’s so much to love. Michael C Hall is turning in the performance of his career, and he’s got a strong (if wildly uneven) cast behind him. The writing shows moments of brilliance (or at least vast cleverness); Dexter’s monologs in season one are so clever, and delivered so well, that it feels like a thing of rare brilliance when we hear Hall’s narration.

The first couple of episodes show enormous promise. The premise is fantastic and perverse; the serial killer working as a forensic blood spatter analyst, and killing ONLY bad guys who’ve escaped justice. It plays with the notion of hero; is he batman? is the the punisher? or is he ted bundy with a badge and an elaborate ability to rationalize?

What’s wrong isn’t simple. The show has so many high points. But it seems to match every high with lows.

The best of the cast – Jennifer Carpenter, James Remar, Julie Benz, C. S. Lee, David Zayas, Mark Pellegrino, and in season two, Keith Carradine (and of course Hall) all turn in fantastic performances. Even some of the slightly off-peak performers – Erik King, Christian Camargo, Jaime Murray – are decent enough, and carry the roles, sometimes shining. The trouble is, they’re bogged down by awkward, wooden performances by actors like Lauren Vélez and Judith Scott. The bad performances wouldn’t stand out that much in a great show, but in a show that keeps reaching for mediocrity, they are a hugh problem.

And then there’s the writing. Now, some shows are terribly uneven from episode to episode because shows are, usually, written by some sort of round-robin. So one episode will be terrific, and one weak or clumsy. The dialog tells it; check out any recent season of CSI to see what I mean about alternating good and bad dialog.

Dexter is different. Scene to scene the writing will go from great (Dexter’s own internal monolog) to clunky and awkward, sliding randomly in between. In some scenes in the first season, it seems like different characters each have their own writers.

The real problem, though, is plot. Because the show never comes close to taking this fantastic idea and making it shine. Instead of a dark, avenging angel story, or a beauty and the beast story, or a super-hero story, or a monster-within story, we get a very weak cop show, with one incredibly clever character who talks a lot about how he’s a monster, but never really acts like one.

At first it seems clever; dexter’s notion of who he is, is at odds with what we see. But after a bit it looks like the writers are not doing this on purpose, they just don’t know.

The same can be said of the back-story with Dexter’s father training him, in effect, to be a weapon. It’s brilliant in concept; what he does is exactly what espionage organizations do, finding amoral but trainable sociopaths, and teaching them single-minded loyalty and all the skills of murder. Yet after we watch Dexter trained to be an amoral, heartless killer, he doesn’t act like one, he acts like a wise-cracking marvel hero with a secret identity.

I won’t spoil it for those who have not watched season one; I will say, though, that if you have not worked the ending out for yourself by the eighth or ninth episode, you’re just not trying, and if ANY surprise reveal actually surprises you, you are smoking too much fucking pot when you watch teevee.

The second season was widely rumored to be better. I held out high hopes. Because while season one was deeply flawed, it was also deeply clever, and peopled with good characters and some very appealing actors.

Alas, it’s like they took what worked and jettisoned it, keeping what was wrong. Then they added in stupid plot twists, retcon-like devices, and worst of all, made key characters suddenly start acting stupid.

The season arc is based around Dexter’s cache of bodies being found, and the man-hunt for an un-known killer. Trouble is, we’ve been shown and told that Dexter is fucking brilliant, the best of the best, so good he’s un-catchable. In season two we find he’s been stashing his kills neatly wrapped in bags, all the parts together, in fifty feet of gin-clear miami water, in an area where scuba divers often dive.

The list of what’s wrong with that makes me grind my teeth. I am a better killer than that, and I’m just sitting on my couch.

It only gets worse from there. Dexter makes a list of stupid choices, and key characters suddenly change mid-season, whenever it’s convenient for plot devices. Dexter, it seems, can no longer kill, and the later, finds a twelve-step is enough to stop him from killing. This effectively neuters his character, AND is a 180 turn around from who he was in the first season.

Ok, there are high points. Keith Carradine as Frank Lundy could carry his own show; he’s that good, both actor and role. Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter’s sister Debra, chews up her role. She was a high-point in season one, and she runs with it, turning her character into a sweet, fucked up, sexually dynamic, foul-mouthed dynamo. She’s incredibly *real*, in that she seems so sweetly fucked up, that you want to love her, and she’s so goddamned sexy that you want to take her clothes off and love her a lot more.

And then there’s Jaime Murray as Lila. Ok, she’s not the best actress in the cast, not by a long shot. But she makes up for it, at least early on, because the character is so good that it works. She’s incredibly sexy, wild, crazy, intense, sweet. She is a character out of my own writing, and I was almost instantly in love with her, and all the more every time she flashed her pert little breasts. She’s just as hot as fuck, and I wanted to leap into the teevee and take her.

But of course, the season starts wrong and makes good headway toward really-far-wrong. Characters make stupid choices, police work is done incorrectly, dexter makes mistake after mistake (things that just don’t make any sense). Plot lines – like the new replacement Lieutenant and her cheating boyfriend – are just filler. And in the second half, things flip-flop with certain characters that make no sense, while being utterly, painfully predictable.

At the halfway point, I knew the ending. I kept hoping I was wrong, and groaning every time they made another ‘surprise’ reveal.

The trouble, really, isn’t that the show is bad. It’s that it is so close to being brilliant. Cast, characters, concept, half the dialog, all very good, some incredible. But it’s a fast car with no driver; no editorial point of view, no meaningful story arc, no clear idea of who these people are or what story is being told. It’s fucking amature.

It could have been amazing. It should have been, really. But it’s not. It just barely nails ‘good’.

I’m afraid to watch season three. I think it’s only Michael C Hall and Jennifer Carpenter that will bring me back. He’s that good, and she’s just incredibly, sweetly fuckable.

I’d HIt That – thoughts on the VEEP candidates

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I haven’t really commnented much on the presidential election. It’s not that I’m apolitcal. On the contrary, I care a great deal. It’s more than i’m so cynical about it, I have a hard time not loathing everyone and everything involved. In short, i think desire to be an elected official should disqualify people from […]

I haven’t really commnented much on the presidential election.

It’s not that I’m apolitcal. On the contrary, I care a great deal. It’s more than i’m so cynical about it, I have a hard time not loathing everyone and everything involved.

In short, i think desire to be an elected official should disqualify people from holding such positions.

The other thing that troubles me hugely is the role religion plays in this country’s politics. This isn’t how the founding fathers envisioned this country (do a little research; most of those guys were atheists, or close to it). America is headed backwards and picking up speed in terms of reverence for religion. That, frankly, is the biggest problem I have with Obama; otherwise, he seems a sound and compatant choice. He’s a smart guy, and seems to have some resonably good ideas; more importantly, he strikes me as someone who’s going to stop and ask questins when he’s on ground were he doesn’t know what to do.

The problem is, though, that religious people often include mythological beings in those queries, and worse, those who claim to speak for mythological beings. The last thing I want at the head of this country (or any country) is people who consult personal delusions and charlatans before making choices that effect my life.

IN short; religion has no place in government. Period.

That said, we’re still a religious country, and that’s not showing signs of being cured in the near future. So any vote is for least bad, not ever for good or best.

Now, i’m not getting into a debate on republican vs democrat. In short, they’re sides of the same coin, both telling lies and pretending to have evidence, while really both operating on purely philosophical grounds.

I side with the democrats for one reason; they’re not as far wrong as the other guys.

My own personal politics are closer to anarchist than anything else; I do not, fundamentally, believe in rules. IN some ways I’m closer to libertarian, but not to what passes for libertarian in american politics (because that version of libertarianism is really more-right-wing-than-right-wing, and has nothing to do with the core ideas of libertarianism as a philosophy).

So I vote for Democrats because they’re closer to my own politics than the other guys. But I vote for them while swallowing bile.

But that’s not really the whole point of my post. I really meant to open a dialog on the recentlly annouced VEEP choices.

Personally, I was ready to vote for Joe Biden in the primary.

When I looked at the field, I made a few quick choices. My thinking was, anyone here was a better choice than anyone on the GOP ticket – because of the influence of religion and far-right-wing thinking in today’s GOP. Anyone who wasn’t republican was ok with me, so we had one singular choice to make; who was most electable. I knocked off Hillary and Obama because – all else aside – I didn’t think the middle of the country was ready to vote minority or woman. So I felt we were handicapping our chances. I then ticked off anyone who was too far left, too far right, or boring.

I was left with Biden as a pick. He’s a hell of a speaker, knows how the process works, has a father-figure look I felt was going to fit well with an angry country. And he’s not afraid to go against the grain. Is he ideal? No. But he looked like the best of the pack to me. Alas, he dropped out before I ever gota chance to vote.

People have bagged on Obama for a ‘safe’ choice. But I think it’s insane to make any other kind. Obama needs to get elected; this isn’t about making a statement, depsite what people like to say. It’s about getting morons out of the white house. It’s about halting the erosions of freedom and economy the bush administration has caused. It’s about turning things around, socially and politically, after nearly a decade spent striving for a new cold war.

This isn’t about the first back man in office; this is about ending the carnage.

So Biden brings several things. First, he’s strong where Obama is weak. He’s experienced, he’s smooth, he’s got the experience of an insider with the attitude of a rebel. He’s someone you can see taking over in an emergency. Is he ideal? No. See above. He wanted to be president; he’s religious. My rules say he should be disqualified on those things alone. But we’re not geting a chance to vote for Richard Dawkins, so we have to select from what’s available. In my opinion, Biden is the best pick Obama could have made, both politically and in terms of leadership ability once they get there.

But how about McCain’s pick, Sarah Palin?

And I admit it; this is why I started this entry.

Have you ever in your life looked at a VP candidate and thought, sit on my lap and call me Daddy?

Miss Wasilla 1984.jpg

Ok, so I’m trying to think of her in political terms. I’m trying to look at her as the Ms President when McCain strokes out (which he’s going to do, you know it). And there’s a lot to hate; anti-abortion, pro-creationism, anti-gay-marriage. She’s pretty much right down the line wrong-headed right winger.

But all I can think of is, wouldn’t those lips look great wrapped around my cock, and I wonder how she’s look bent over my desk with her hands cuffed behind her back.

I’m puzzled, then, about what McCain was thinking. Did he just want to get into her panties? Because I get that. Or was he thinking the swing voters are all going to swing their dicks over this his way if he has a fuckable veep?

Was he thinking se’s going to attract the Hillary vote? Because she’s no Hillary. Hillary’s fans have two left feet and two left hands. And I don’t know that your average american woman wants to look at her president and say, wow, she’s hotter than I am.

I’m not sure he thought through how this Barbie Doll is going to play to voters. And I really am not convinced that a conservative fem-bot is what the country wants one heartbeat from the presidency. Obviously, I have a bias, but thinking as objectively as I can, I’m just not seeing this as a wise political choice.

But damn – wouldn’t she look nice all done up in leather?

EDIT: thanks to Wonkette for dubbing her GILF back in December 06, and my man Bacchus of ErosBlog for modding that to VPILF, which just rocks. AND! He says there are rumors of nekkid pictures of her floating around. We can only hope they surface, for both political and, um, personal reasons.

Good Cupcake, Bad Cupcake

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I may be in love with the wearer of this tattoo. Or the artist who did it. Or something. Click the image for a bigger version. Tattoos byAmanda Cancilla and feet belong to Alicia (dig the toenails). Found on All Things Cupcake via a random search for cupcake images.

I may be in love with the wearer of this tattoo. Or the artist who did it. Or something. Click the image for a bigger version.


_albums_ll104_GreenEyedLillies_goodandevilcupcakes.jpg

Tattoos byAmanda Cancilla and feet belong to Alicia (dig the toenails). Found on All Things Cupcake via a random search for cupcake images.

Y SO SRS?

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

This is a thing of pure brilliance. I’m not sure where it comes from though I imagine a 30 second google would tell me (click for full size).

This is a thing of pure brilliance. I’m not sure where it comes from though I imagine a 30 second google would tell me (click for full size).

101-1.jpg

b-b-b-bad

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

Come on, you know you want to play with my knob. Admit it! I’m still filtering ideas about a full custom shift knob; there are too many great ideas, and I don’t wanna rush because then I’ll have a better idea the day my first one arrives, and need another. I found Bruce at Koolknobs […]

Come on, you know you want to play with my knob. Admit it!

rattle.jpg

I’m still filtering ideas about a full custom shift knob; there are too many great ideas, and I don’t wanna rush because then I’ll have a better idea the day my first one arrives, and need another. I found Bruce at Koolknobs can make ’em out of printed material also so I can use original artwork emailed as well as physical objects.

I’ve also considered using a MacRae clan badge, or even a piece of tartan fabric (I have a kilt sample in MacRae Red).

Too many ideas. Hence, I’m getting the above rattle-snake knob, because you know what I am?

B-b-b-Bad!

(sing it with me now)

one without so much ferret

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I’m only posting this because I’m sick of looking at those stupid fucking ferrets.

While I certainly have plenty to talk about, I’m actually way too aggravated – not to mention fatigued – to be all that eloquent.

It’s just been one of those weeks at work. The ones where everything breaks and you get caught holding the bag for crap that’s someone else’s fault. You know the kinda think I mean, you know you do.

In our case, it’s a combination of tool problems, pilot errors, and impossible expectations, coupled with new management and executive personnel who haven’t quite figure out that mean team are the Ghostbusters and Team America and Winston Wolf all rolled into one. Oh, they’re figure it out after a while, but not ’til after they try to manage us for a while (and when I say manage, I mean et in our goddamn way).

Oh, and there’s that choice to double our workload, now, with no resources and no ramp time, and no budget. Thank You Sir, May I Have Another.

But nevermind. I just want those ferrets gone.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what to have embedded in one of these incredibly cool custom-made shift knobs for my car. I can’t decide if i should take one of my skull rings (one of the ones I like the least), or if I should get a flaming spade from my friend Carlos from Sinners in. Or maybe some kind of pin that says elvis if I can find the right one (I want something in silver script). The guy can also embed stuff like pins or badges or even something like a poker chip or a spade cutout from a playing card.

Too many choices. And I’m open to ideas. I don’t wanna spend a shit-load of money though ’cause I’m already spending too much on crap for this car (it’s that kinda car)

There. Now at least we’re somewhat ferret-free.

crested wave

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

Does it ever seem like somehow, without anyone planning it, blogging just sort of ended? I look over the list of blogs I generally follow (almost to a one they’re friends blogs, though some only after I began to follow as a reader), and on by one, they’re quitting, going on extended hiatus, moving, or […]

Does it ever seem like somehow, without anyone planning it, blogging just sort of ended?

I look over the list of blogs I generally follow (almost to a one they’re friends blogs, though some only after I began to follow as a reader), and on by one, they’re quitting, going on extended hiatus, moving, or just sort or dying of attrition.

Is it just my circle? Have we just sort of all spent our wad, as it were, all at the same time? Or is it everywhere?

Maybe a wave just crested; to mis-quote Hunter S Thompson, maybe we’re at that place where the wave finally brakes and rolls back.

Or maybe we’re just all too busy; we’ve built a debt of wasted time and now we need to pay, working harder for all the time we spent blogging about the work were were not getting done.

I’m not sure what it is; but it seems to be going on everywhere.

Maybe it’s that we’re so over-saturated with outlet. Facebook, myspace, meebo, bebo, flickr, fetlife; twitter and jaiku and plurk and pownce, orkut and friendster, okcupid, adult-freind-finder, livejournal, and a hundred more college boys are hacking up now.

We have so many places to talk about ourselves, that no one can ever find each other; and when we do, who can read it all?

Or maybe it’s me; maybe I’m just tired of reading and not writing. Because, egotist that I am, I cannot read a blog when comments are off, cannot browse a forum unless I’m signed on to post. Maybe my own failure of output deadens my desire for input.

Yet, still, I see blogs ending all around me, writers closing doors vocally or silently. It means something, even if I’m not sure what.

What’s interesting, though, is that I suddenly feel motivated to create. And I know, this time, exactly why. Several friends from other sites have, lately, happened upon my fiction; and their interest, their feedback, sparks my desire, sparks my writer’s voice. I remember why i did this.

I’ve never been that kind of artist who creates for the act of creation, then destroys of gives away. I’ve never been the un-signed artist who leaves beauty scattered behind. I create, simply, because it feels so very good to give that gift to someone. It is, almost exactly, like the engendering orgasm; that moment of power, control. I am, completely and utterly, in control of your pleasure and pain, and I see/feel/hear it.

It isn’t simply the joy of creation; it’s the joy on control, the joy on causing joy.

I like to think, given the tools, and the solitude, I would create. Mountain top, or dungeon cell, or lonely island, I would create to create. But in truth I wouldn’t. I’d do what I’ve been doing the last two years; I’d start, and then I’d start again, and then I’d start again, and never finish. Creating for no one is masturbation with no orgasm, it’s cooking food no one will eat.

Art should be for arts sake, we like to say, but I cannot find my creativity there. I find it in my audience.

My hope – and it may be in vain, because time is never on my side these days – is that an audience of only one, may be enough.

Who knows, though. Maybe flood-gates will open, not just for me but for all of us. Maybe we just need something to write about.

The Dark Knight

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

So let’s get a couple things out of the way up front. First, Heath Ledger’s Joker is a thing of brilliance. Utterly mad, completely evil, frighteningly real. This is a performance that might have gotten oscar nods if he were still around; it will certainly get them now. He steals the film. Second, I have […]

So let’s get a couple things out of the way up front.

First, Heath Ledger’s Joker is a thing of brilliance. Utterly mad, completely evil, frighteningly real. This is a performance that might have gotten oscar nods if he were still around; it will certainly get them now. He steals the film.

Second, I have a major Batman bias. I’m a huge superhero comic fan; I grew up on ’em, collected all the major Marvel and DC titles in the seventies and eighties. So I have very strong image about who batman is and how he should be portrayed. This makes it hard for me to be objective about reviewing any movie about batman, because they’re never my batman.

That said, The Dark Knight manages to do just about as good a job as anyone has ever done with Batman on the screen. Yet, they fundamentally still miss the mark.

Bringing Batman to the screen is difficult. Partly because there’s a lot of baggage (the sixties tv show skewed how we see batman to the corny and campy; Frank Miller’s Batman skewed our view the other way, to the dark and hard and disturbing). Partly, it’s difficult because our studios (and DC comics) have a singular idea of how a hero should be portrayed. I think every one of the modern Batman movies has suffered from this, and not one of them has yet ventured into new territory. They all reek of artistic compromise.

Add to this the fact that Batman, even for superheros, is particularly absurd. No super powers, a weirdly silly outfit, a reliance on impossible technology. It’s hard to portray a guy in a bat suit with ears and not make him look silly, even if we don’t include nipples and tights.

Dark Knight manages to get it mostly right. They strip the suit down til it looks like something you could actually fight in, they give us some plausible idea of how one man mages all these bizarre inventions, and (with back story from Batman Begins) they’ve given us a character with with enough of a crazy streak that the obsession and the bat images make sense.

They’ve also given us a very strong cast. Ledger is amazing; he will give you nightmares. I can see this man walking around in real life, he’s that convincingly insane. Never before has the joker seemed so completely believable as a homicidal, sadistic lunatic. Aaron Eckhart, while not turning in the kind of absolutely inspired performance Ledger brings, is still terrific. This guy keeps getting better ever time I see him. And obviously, with actors like Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman involved, the cast just keeps hitting (though Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance is oddly lackluster; I absolutely adore her, though I kept wanting to slap her and say *wake up!*).

The action scenes are all look great, the fights are well choreographed, the effects are mostly terrific.

So what’s wrong with it?

That’s a hard one; my bias about Batman aside, something’s missing. But I’m struggling with what.

I wanted the the entire thing to have more zip. I wanted the dialog to sparkle. I wanted to care about the characters. While the dialog was ok, and there were some decent one liners, most of it has a journeyman feel, like it could have been from any action film. I wanted a breathless pace; there were too many pauses to build character, and then not enough to do for the actors when they had space to act. They were playing characters, and because they’re all good, the characters seemed real. But it felt like padding.

The middle of the film is mainly driven by Bruce Wayne’s soul-searching over having killed people; to me, this rang utterly false. The core of the character, to me, is that he’ll do whatever the fuck it takes to bring down the bad guys, even be one himself. He will kill, he will break laws, he will sacrifice. What he won’t do is stop. The beginning and end work; but when Wane starts to fuss about wanting to inspire people, it feels like they’ve forgotten who they’re making a movie about (who is this, fucking Spiderman?)

The film was also oddly bright. One expects Batman films to be dark and shadowy. Gotham is a gothic nightmare of a city. What we got was downtown chicago, with no attempt whatsoever to make it look like anything else. I assume this was to give the film a sense of realism, but the effect was of lazy film making and average cinematography. Worse was that they chose to put Batman in full, harsh light in much of the film, which just makes the bat suit look silly. Batman needs a sense of menace to make him effective; a rubber rodent head doesn’t do it. The less you show of Batman, the more effective he is.

This isn’t to say I disliked the film; it’s easily the best Batman to date. But the fact that it reaches higher in some ways, perhaps, points out the deficiencies. It’s quite a good film; but it could have been a great film. It misses the mark on greatness. That’s a shame, because Ledger’s performance is truly great, and deserves to be in a movie that stands up to it.

Now, as to the batman I want to see, one only needs to look to Frank Miller’sDark Knight Returns to see my vision of Batman.

The Batman I want to see isn’t a hero; and that’s where Hollywood always fails. They want to portray a darkly heroic, misunderstood figure. They err in casting mornful, broody types (when they don’t cast George Clooney, anyway). What they wind up getting is a batman who looks self-involved and sulky.

Batman, my version of Batman, is crazy. Something in him broke when his parents were killed, and he’s spent his life on revenge; not on one person, but on everyone, everywhere, who commits a crime. He doesn’t care about laws, honor, morals. The irony is that he’s become who he’s fighting. He’s a killer, a sadist. Yet, he’s an agent for good, doing what needs doing. He knows he’s down in the mire with the criminals, he’s sacrificed himself to what he thinks is greater good, though he’s driven by an obsession with revenge.

His alter ego isn’t a light-hearted playboy; he’s a dark, brooding recluse. More Howard Hughes than Tony Stark.

I want to see someone cast who can play batman as a semi-psychotic villain. Imagine Alan Rickman; imagine if Heath Ledger could have turned that air of craziness into a batman portrayal. Bale could have done it (he does crazy so well). But the part needs a villain at it’s heart, not a hero. Batman isn’t a hero; he’s a bad guy who’s on our side, and THAT is what every single movie portrayal misses.

My complaints about The Dark Knight are colored this, to be sure. But my real issues with it are not that it isn’t my batman; it’s that they so nearly turned out a great film. They missed by *that* much, and that’s frustrating, because they almost had it.