If you’re into comic-book movies (and who isn’t these days?), you’ve probably already seen the clever “Hi, I’m a Marvel …” videos (parodying those increasingly annoying Mac/PC commercials) circulating around the Internet. They started a couple of months ago, but have been getting more and more attention lately, what with the release of Spider-Man 3. Anyway, it’s funny stuff.  

But the best humor always carries with it the cold bite of hard truth. To wit: Why is Marvel kicking DC’s butt so thoroughly in the superhero-movie sweepstakes?

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A poll conducted by ESPN and ABC News finds that 52 percent of baseball fans hope Barry Bonds doesn’t break the home-run record of 755 set by Hank Aaron in 1974. No surprise there — if there’s a more polarizing figure in any sport these days, I’d be hard-pressed to name him or her. The poll also finds that black fans are more than twice as likely as whites to root for Bonds — 74 percent to 28 percent. And 37 percent of black fans believe Bonds used steroids (compared to a whopping 76 percent of whites).

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Spider-Man 3
Sam Raimi, USA, 2007
Rating: 2.8

There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch from several years back that kept popping into my head during Spider-Man 3. It’s one of those Inside the Actors Studio bits with Well Ferrell, and to hammer home the impression of host James Lipton as a bombastic toady, guest host Tobey Maguire plays Dustin Diamond – that’s right, Screech from Saved by the Bell – as a developmentally arrested man-child whom Lipton, of course, treats like royalty.

Whether intentionally or not, Maguire pretty much recycles that performance for Spider-Man 3. The actor did a pretty decent job of conveying Peter Parker’s nerdy likeability in the first movie, but here he portrays Parker as a kind of cinematic descendent of Forrest Gump and Lennie from Of Mice and Men. His doughy features arranged into a constant mask of childlike wonder, he spends the first third or so of the movie walking around in a cloud of dopey obliviousness.

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The Watchman
Robert Crais
Simon & Schuster, 2007
Rating: 4.2

After years spent chronicling the exploits of wisecracking detective Elvis Cole, Robert Crais finally turns his attention to Cole’s enigmatic partner, Joe Pike. Just as Crais’ last two Cole novels, The Last Detective and The Forgotten Man, explored that character’s psyche and back story in illuminating detail, The Watchman peels back the curtain to provide a look at the inner workings of his tightly controlled friend. And just as those books (and non-Cole works like Demolition Angel and The Two-Minute Rule) did, it showcases Crais’ ever-evolving skill as a crafter of compelling character studies as well as urgently paced thrillers. In fact, after more than twenty years, it reveals Crais at the peak of his powers in both arenas.

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From the Baffling Ideas That Just Might Work Desk comes news that Antwan “Big Boi” Patton of OutKast is set to collaborate with the Atlanta Ballet for a work to be performed next April. According to the ballet company’s site, it will also include artists from Big Boi’s Purple Ribbon label. I’m sure it’ll be interesting (being an Atlanta resident, I’ll probably go).

But one shudders to think of the ramifications should this become a hip-hop trend. Anyone for ballet versions of The Blueprint or Kingdom Come – or even The Grey Album? An interpretive dance program based on Get Rich or Die Tryin’, a la the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp musical Movin’ Out? Or worse yet, a new reality show where Flavor Flav auditions dancers for his new modern dance troupe? “Hit me up with a pas de deux, boy-ee!”

By now you’ve probably heard that Courtney Love intends to auction off the effects of her late husband Kurt Cobain. In a recent interview she described her house as “a mausoleum” and says she still wears Cobain’s pajamas to bed. “How am I ever going to go form another relationship in my lifetime wearing Kurt’s pajamas?” she asks.

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From the It Was Only A Matter of Time Desk comes a report that a book collecting Sting’s song lyrics will be released this fall, entitled (simply enough) Lyrics by Sting. “Over time, the meaning of a song can continue to reveal itself,” his lordship says in a press release. 

Nothing against Sting’s body of work, seriously, but I think we’ve pretty much absorbed everything there is to be mined from grandiose lyrics like those to “Synchronicity” (parts one and two) or “Russians” or “Love is the Seventh Wave” or “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” or … you get the idea.

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(Editor’s Note: This post marks the debut of another new feature, Now Playing, in which we here at Shaking Through World Headquarters highlight whatever we’re listening to at the moment. Enjoy.)

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians’ 1991 effort Perspex Island supposedly has something of a “bad reputation,” at least according to the All Music Guide, perhaps because of its unapologetic pop ambitions. Rubbish. Sure, producer Paul Fox buffs some of the songs here until they’re sparkling with studio perfection, but so what?  All the better to enjoy the breezy, rollicking “Oceanside,” the the horn-fueled sugar rush of “Child of the Universe,” the bubblegum melodicism of “So You Think You’re in Love” and the subtly insinuating “Vegetation and Dimes” with the clarity they deserve.  Read the rest of this entry »

Civil War
Mark Millar, Steve McNiven
Marvel, 2007
Rating: 3.0

Civil War: Amazing Spider-Man
J. Michael Straczynski, Ron Garney
Marvel, 2007
Rating: 4.3

As its individual issues hit the stands in pamphlet form last year (and earlier this year), the episodic nature of Marvel’s massive Civil War event helped add to the excitement.  By now you’ve heard the set-up: The New Warriors, a team of C-list superheroes with their own reality TV show, engage some super-powered fugitives in a battle that goes horribly wrong when the villain Nitro detonates, killing hundreds and destroying a large part of Stamford, Connecticut.

The first two chapters, especially, are a doozy. The tragedy sparks community outrage leading to the passage of a super-powered registration act, which splits the hero community down the middle and sends Captain America on the lam to head up a resistance movement. In order to persuade other heroes to sign up, Iron Man convinces Spider-Man to unmask on live television. Sounds like a rip-roaring yarn, doesn’t it?

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Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright, UK, 2007
Rating: 4.1

The key to enjoying Hot Fuzz, the British cop comedy by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (the team behind the 2004 cult hit Shaun of the Dead) is to understand that it is not, strictly speaking, a parody. Yes, many references are made to big-budget Hollywood cop films (particularly Point Break and Bad Boys II), just as it was impossible to ignore the nods to George A. Romero’s zombie movies in Shaun of the Dead. But while there is some gentle nudging of the audience’s ribs concerning police-movie clichés, deconstructing the genre is not its sole (or even its main) purpose. Audiences who pay exorbitant ticket prices expecting a merciless evisceration of a genre overripe for parody may be disappointed by the explicit fondness Fuzz shows for its inspirations (yes, even Bad Boys II).

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