Lost, "The End": "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape"

As someone who's watched every single episode of Lost since the still-amazing pilot and recapped the series' entire fourth season for another blog (and never got paid for writing those recaps--as Chris Rock would say, what kind of gangster shit is that?), I'm still processing the events of Lost's lukewarmly received and sometimes frustrating series finale. I wasn't expecting the finale to answer every remaining question about the series' mysterious goings-on. How could it do so in one episode, even with an extra half-hour? I just wanted a finale that gave proper farewells to the characters and brought the goods action-wise like those eps when Sayid busted out his badass breakdance fighting moves, and "The End" delivered in the character and action sequence departments. But was all that time spent in the sideways universe during the final season worth it? I don't think I'm completely satisfied with the reasoning for the sidewaysverse. That whole business with the giant cork didn't make much sense either. Bullet time:

-My favorite recurring Lost theme was the conflict between a man of science (Jack) and a man of faith (Locke). The final season resolved that conflict beautifully, with Jack finally accepting Locke's beliefs in the specialness of the island and dying the way he wanted to (which was seeing his remaining friends leave the island safely) in a pitch-perfect final image that referenced the pilot's first moment and showed how much of an influence the Watchmen comic had on Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof.

-I'm glad Ken Leung's Miles, the character who provided the above one-liner about duct tape, lived to see another day. Bloggers like angry asian man and DISGRASIAN were disappointed that their favorite pair of Lost characters, the supercouple of Jin and Sun, was offed in "The Candidate" (some have even cried racism over the demises of the Kwons and Sayid), but I think the death of Miles, the show's sole Asian American regular and one of the few APA guys in prime-time who's neither a martial arts expert nor a coonin' buffoon, would have been a bigger letdown. (Speaking of Asian stuff, spoken-word artist Bao Phi wrote a nice post earlier this season about Lost's huge Asian American following.)

-I was also jazzed to see Miles' fellow freightie Lapidus alive after the submarine debacle in "The Candidate" because Jeff Fahey, who was underused on Lost but served as great comic relief whenever he did get screen time, is a master at making something out of nothing, ever since his laconic turn as the eccentric title hero of ABC's short-lived '90s procedural The Marshal. One of the reasons why the Star Wars prequel trilogy was an epic fail was because it lacked a Han Solo-esque figure who would wittily comment on the mystical goings-on and serve as a relatable audience surrogate. I like to think the Lost creators took notice of that flaw in the prequels, so they gave us not just one Han Solo-esque foil, but four: Sawyer, Miles, Lapidus and the not-as-cynical-or-snarky Hurley.

-The sci-fi geek in me who enjoyed all the time-travel material during my favorite Lost seasons, four and five, was disappointed that neither the nuke in "The Incident" nor the island's funky science was the reason for the sidewaysverse. The afterlife angle pretty much shot down my theory that Desmond or some other character with extraordinary powers created the sidewaysverse to hide his friends in there from the homicidal Smokey. On a superficial note, Sidewaysverse Kate looked slammin' in that black miniskirt.

-So Hurley and Ben are basically Mr. Rourke and Tattoo now? I bet the new island protector begins each morning by greeting everyone else with "Smiles, everydude, smiles!"

-Since when is Shannon the love of Sayid's life? I thought he was into Nadia. Whatever, man. I'm sure the Sayid and Shannon shippers got their panties wet that night. God, I hate that term "shippers." Other terms I hate are "squee" and "bromance." All those terms should be taken out back and shot and given a burial like the one Rick Rubin gave to the word "def" when he removed "Def" from the name of his label American Records.

-Yes! Lt. Van Buren is cancer-free! Woops, wrong series finale.

Some factoids about The Palace: Theatre of Crud, Chapter 5--for the one or two readers who actually give a shit

I modeled Chapter 5 of Theatre of Crud after an actual panel from Watchmen (located on page 18 of the 1986 miniseries' fourth chapter, "Watchmaker," a.k.a. the Dr. Manhattan flashback issue, to be exact).


However, I drew the feature film version of Laurie Jupiter instead of the original Dave Gibbons interpretation of Laurie because the Malin Akerman version is far more attractive and has a better-looking crimefighting outfit. It really brings out her ass.

There are only two things the Watchmen feature film did better than the original comic: the climax, which doesn't include a ridiculous-looking squid, and Silk Spectre II's fashions. The outfits worn by Silky in the comic would have been constantly mocked by the alternate Earth's equivalent of Go Fug Yourself.


"This pantsuit with the front pockets. Is she supposed to be a cobbler? Does she have an awl in there?," snarked Carr D'Angelo in a Comic Book Resources recap of the miniseries. "I do love Gibbons as an artist but he really doesn't draw sexy women."

Just like how Silky's fugly pantsuit didn't make it into the 2009 movie, there were tons of gag ideas I wrote down for Theatre of Crud but ended up not drawing. They included "Rich Little impersonators," "Steampunk Kanye" and "A Teabagger gets teabagged by a teabagger, or as Studio Ghibli calls it, Pom Poko." I drew a strip in which Joe, who's wielding a Filipino knife, kidnaps Rush Limbaugh, but I wasn't satisfied with it.

The Palace: Theatre of Crud, Chapter 5

Rattle and hurm: My Watchmen movie soundtrack (if I got to pick out the songs)

Even though the Watchmen feature film doesn't hit DVD and Blu-ray until July, I want to look at one of my quibbles with the much-discussed box-office dud: its not-very-imaginative soundtrack.

It's rare to see a comic book that comes with its own soundtrack. Lalo Schifrin composed some themes for his son Ryan's Devil's Due comic Spooks, Rob Schrab picked out several songs or themes from movies like The Empire Strikes Back to accompany pages of Scud: The Disposable Assassin, and of course, eight years before Schrab introduced the indie rock-and-John Williams-scored Scud, Alan Moore's groundbreaking Watchmen quoted from "All Along the Watchtower," "Neighborhood Threat" by Iggy Pop, "You're My Thrill" by Billie Holliday, "Sanities" by John Cale and "The Comedians" by Declan McManus, international art thief. Moore made diegetic use of "Neighborhood Threat" (Dan Dreiberg's lonely walk back to his apartment) and "You're My Thrill" (the Owl Ship tenement rescue sequence).


(A complete list of the tunes that Moore's Watchmen referenced was posted by Shawn from thus spake drake, who notes that "The chapter and title uses [in which lyrics by the likes of Cale and Bob Dylan were quoted], while they work lyrically with the story, don't necessarily correspond musically with the tone of the comic, so they're best as a reference and not a literal backing track.")

The British comics author's song references captured quite well the anxiety and sadness of the paranoid times Moore's screwed-up superheroes lived in. So what does Zack Snyder--who said he wanted to be as faithful to the DC miniseries as possible, save for a few exceptions like the omission of the big-ass squid, which pissed off the most hardcore Watchmen fanboys while I had no problems at all with the squidless climax--do with the song soundtrack for his adaptation? He keeps key songs like "All Along the Watchtower" and "You're My Thrill" but omits other tunes from the comic and sprinkles the soundtrack with tired and overused existing songs like Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence."

"Ride of the Valkyries" was a clever choice for Apocalypse Now's copter attack sequence. But thanks to countless movies and shows with Wagner-scored Vietnam War sequences like Watchmen, I now wish I could hop into a time machine to 1978 and kill Francis Ford Coppola so that he never puts "Valkyries" on his Apocalypse Now soundtrack.

Who did they hire to be the music supervisor on Watchmen? The narrator of The Wonder Years? Steve West from Radio Nigel or the music supervisor from BBC's Ashes to Ashes would have been a better music supervisor. Snyder's existing song choices in the Dawn of the Dead remake, my favorite Snyder movie, were far less hackneyed (Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around," Richard Cheese's cover of Disturbed's "Down with the Sickness"). I'm an Elvis Costello fan, so I'm bummed that Snyder's Watchmen omitted "The Comedians," even though it comes from what Costello considers the worst album of his career, Goodbye Cruel World. However, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," which was referenced in the comic's fake Adrian Veidt cologne magazine ad, was perfect for Watchmen's main title sequence, my favorite title sequence in a 2009 movie so far.

I was listening to Prince's "Sign O' the Times" on my iPod earlier today, and I thought, "Man, I would have put that tune on the Watchmen movie soundtrack and swapped selections like 'The Sounds of Silence,' '99 Luftballons' and 'I'm Your Boogie Man' for some lesser-known '80s tunes," so here's the track listing for my alternate Watchmen soundtrack:

1. Nat King Cole, "Unforgettable"
2. Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
3. Prince, "Sign O' the Times"

Sure, "Sign O' the Times" is from 1987, not 1985, the year when most of Watchmen is set, but in the story's alternate universe, I'd like to think Prince came out with Sign O' the Times right after Purple Rain instead of Around the World in a Day.

4. Iggy Pop, "Neighborhood Threat"
5. Philip Glass, "Pruit Igoe & Prophecies"
6. Killing Joke, "Eighties"
7. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, "The Comedians"
8. The Clash, "White Riot"

A reviewer at Wired's Underwire blog says he would have preferred a tune by the L.A. punk band the Minutemen--also the original name of the Watchmen characters' team--instead of "I'm Your Boogie Man" for the '70s protest sequence. I'm not familiar with the Minutemen, so I'd go with "White Riot," which is often mistaken for being a skinhead anthem. ego trip's Big Book of Racism wryly describes it as the song in which "Class of '77 punk's finest are sick of colored folks hogging all the revolution."

9. The Police, "Walking on the Moon"

I would have used "Walking on the Moon," which is sung in the comic by a nervous soldier who sees Dr. Manhattan teleport himself away, or "You're My Thrill" instead of "99 Luftballons" for the Dan/Laurie diner scene.

10. Billie Holliday, "You're My Thrill"
11. Devo, "Jocko Homo"
12. The Rolling Stones, "Worried About You"(*) (instead of Leonard Cohen's ubiquitous "Hallelujah" during the movie's much-maligned--but not by me--sex scene)
13. Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Happy House" (for the prison sequence)
14. XTC, "All Along the Watchtower"

Jimi Hendrix's cover of "Watchtower" will always be my favorite version of the Dylan song, but let's face it, the Hendrix version is overused these days. Because of Watchmen's '80s setting, I would have picked XTC's 1978 version.

15. Time Zone featuring John Lydon & Afrika Bambaataa, "World Destruction"
16. John Cale, "Sanities"
17. Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"
18. Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan" (the IMAX version, which was the version I saw, cut this song from the end credits and ran a sped-up version of the credits because the movie was already too long for IMAX exhibition)

And I would have shown way less schlonggage from Nuclear Smurf and I would have adapted Watchmen into a miniseries for HBO or FX instead of a feature film that's both too long as a film in the theater and too short as an adaptation of such a dense and literate piece of comics writing, but those are discussions for another post.

(*) Self-pimpin' time: "Worried About You" and "World Destruction" can be heard during A Fistful of Soundtracks' "F Zone" block of existing songs that have been used in films and shows. "The F Zone" airs Mondays at 4am, 9am and 3pm, Wednesdays at noon and Fridays at 5am, 9am and 3pm on AFOS.

About a Pinoy (Part 2)

Previously: Part 1.

Note: This is the second half of a bio I wrote about myself for my user profile at a Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology creators' wiki on Wetpaint.com. I wrote this list a few weeks before I saw The Dark Knight, which would have wound up on the list had I seen the movie beforehand. Watchmen wouldn't have made the list though. I have mixed feelings about that film.(*)

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5 FAVORITE SCREEN ADAPTATIONS OF SUPERHERO COMICS


1. Batman: The Animated Series

Highlights: The revamped origins for Mr. Freeze and Two-Face, the early conflict between Batman and the police, the spectacular animation and Shirley Walker score during "Feat of Clay, Part 2," the Gray Ghost, "Harley and Ivy," Batman's hatred of It's a Wonderful Life, Kevin Conroy's performances in "Robin's Reckoning, Part 1," "Perchance to Dream" and "I Am the Night," the "death" of Batgirl, the Dark Knight Returns segment (and Joel Schumacher-bashing) in "Legends of the Dark Knight."

Worst moments: "I've Got Batman in My Basement," most of the episodes that were animated by AKOM (the worst of the many overseas studios that collaboed with Warner Bros. on B:TAS), Nightwing's mullet.

2. Batman Begins

Highlights: Wally Pfister's awesome cinematography, the realization during the Iceland-posing-as-Tibet sequences that this Batman wasn't going to be stagebound like the other films, Christian Bale's acting during the "party's over" speech, the excellent supporting cast, Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow's minimal dialogue, the lack of puns, "Do I look like a cop?!"

Worst moments: Why another love interest? Batman/Bruce has fuckbuddies, not soulmates. His one true love is his work.

3. Iron Man

Highlights: Robert Downey Jr.'s ad-libs, the Altman-esque dialogue, the performances by everyone in the cast, the character interplay, the evolution of the armor, Pepper saving Tony rather than the other way around, the final line before the closing credits.

Worst moments: Yinsen is essentially a rehash of the Magic Negro, despite a good performance by Shaun Toub.


4. Justice League Unlimited

Highlights: The Cadmus arc, the sight of Batman trying to buy a cup of joe inside a coffeehouse to stay awake, the Justice Lords, the jabs at Bill O'Reilly, Green Arrow's evolution from skeptical outsider to team booster/conscience, the guest shots by Joss Whedon alumni, the Question's secret love for teenybopper music, the Ultimen, the sight of Wonder Woman tucking the Atom into her cleavage, the Superman/Captain Marvel battle, the writers' clever way of getting Michael Rosenbaum to temporarily play his own character from Smallville.

Worst moments: The Batman Beyond retcon, the mostly forgettable pre-Unlimited first season, the wonky CGI in the opening titles during the pre-Unlimited seasons, the absence of a B:TAS-style full orchestra.

5. Spider-Man 2

Highlights: Ock's hospital massacre, the fact that Peter has a crappy apartment, the J. Jonah Jameson scenes, the "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" montage, the el train sequence, Tobey Maguire doesn't cry too much in this one.

Worst moments: The Ock character was better fleshed out in Michael Chabon's early draft before it was script-doctored.

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(*) During the sequence in which Dan Dreiberg gets a visit from the beans-craving Rorschach in his kitchen, the IMAX theater where I saw Watchmen experienced technical problems, and the projectionist had to stop running the film for about 15 minutes. The audience went apeshit, but they calmed down when the theater staff apologized and announced that they would offer re-admit passes to everyone at the end of the Watchmen screening. Luckily, the 15-minute interruption didn't ruin my enjoyment of the film.

Here are the things I love about Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' anti-superhero comic: the brilliant opening title sequence--the lesbian twist on the "V-J Day in Times Square" photo was the coolest and funniest part--and Jackie Earle Haley's fierce performance as the crazed Rorschach. I also think the film's modified climax works better than the rather screwy psychic squid master plan in the comic.


But the film has pacing problems--it feels rushed, resulting in a film that plays like a two-hour-and-40-minute theatrical cut of a 12-hour network TV miniseries. For instance, you don't get enough of a sense of the impact of Veidt's actions, which Gibbons hauntingly captured in the final chapter of the comic. (Will the extended cut that Snyder has planned for DVD and Blu-ray rectify the pacing problems?) I also don't like the wonky CGI for Veidt's genetically engineered lynx Bubastis and some of the hackneyed music choices, like "Ride of the Valkyries" during Dr. Manhattan's attack on the Vietcong. The lack of Elvis Costello on the film's soundtrack--the comic quoted Costello's "The Comedians"--kind of bums me out.

I like what AICN's Alexandra DuPont says about the Laurie Juspeczyk character. DuPont always thought of Laurie as "Karen Allen feisty--you could see how she was the sort of fiery woman who would attract powerful men despite her '80s-coke-queen exterior." Had Allen been a couple of decades younger, she would have been a better Laurie/Silk Spectre than Malin Akerman, who's too young to be playing a world-weary ex-"costumed adventurer." Also, I would have preferred Heroes' Jack Coleman as Dan/Nite Owl--he's the right age for Dan, plus Hollywood ought to hire Coleman, the best actor on Heroes, more often. But Patrick Wilson did a fine job and was more subtle than I expected as the washed-up, nerdy Dan.

God, I let this footnote go on too long. The end is nigh.

Hurm, it's a mystery, Charlie Brown: Why are there two Watchmen/Peanuts mash-ups?

As the release of the Watchmen movie approaches, here are two different Watchmen/Charlie Brown mash-ups I just recently discovered on the Web.


I would have added Silhouette Peppermint Patty to the team portrait.


Nineteen years after writer/artist Jeff Parker drew the clever "Who Watches the Watchnuts" spoof for a 1989 issue of the now-defunct Comics Scene magazine, cartoonist Evan Shaner created a similar mash-up. It turns out Shaner wasn't aware of Parker's earlier cartoon (he was only four years old when the issue came out). While Shaner's mash-up is also amusing, the Van Pelt siblings as the Comedian and Silk Spectre is an image I'd rather not think about. Ewwww.

[Via Parkerspace]