Phlogiston

Given my previous post, genre is suddenly at the forefront of my mind. And one genre I love is the caper movie/show. Two new caper shows just started in America: Heist and Thief. I’d originally thought to say something more in depth about the pros and cons of the two shows, especially given how similar they sound. But there isn’t any point as Heist seems to have been already cancelled, and two articles say better and at greater length than I was prepared to go into as to why Thief is very much worth watching and Heist is not. The Mercury News’ article gives the best side-by-side comparison, and the Jam! article reinforces it by roundly slamming Heist.

The short version is: if Thief comes to a television screen near you, watch it. It’s good. If Heist does, don’t bother.

Last month The Observer had a wonderful article on the new “Teen Noir”—specifically, Veronica Mars, one of my favourite new TV shows, and forthcoming movie Brick.

With its highly stylised dialogue, hardboiled talk of gats and hop, shamuses and reefer worms, Brick breathes new life into the teen movie. As depicted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brendan is an adolescent Marlowe, all world-weary attitude and well-placed punches—when asked by one character what he intends to do now his plan has been rumbled, his response is the deadpan: “Stand here and bleed at you.”

Similarly, a recent episode of Veronica Mars saw Veronica, who was manning a drinks stall, ask the show’s anti-hero: “What’s your poison?” The response, “emotionally unavailable women”, echoed Bogart/Bacall dialogue from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

It’s hard to describe Veronica Mars, and in previous posts I’d opted not to; I feared any description I gave would make it sound like Nancy Drew, when in reality it’s closer to something by Chandler or Hammett, just layered on to the world of American high school with its gangs and cliques, the stylised hard-boiled dialogue transcribed into teen slang. It’s genre-bending on a Buffy scale, and it’s surprising how well it works. (I admit I was very sceptical when I first heard about Veronica Mars last year, and it took me a couple of episodes to settle in to it, unlike Buffy and Firefly—another genre-bender, cowboys in space—which hooked me immediately.) The important thing is that the noir protagonist has to be an outsider who effortlessly outsmarts the socially and economically advantaged, mired in moral turpitude as they are, and who is constantly exposed and vulnerable to the violence of the bottom feeders vieing for a way out of their social ghetto, and those themes translate surprisingly easily into the world of high school. Perhaps the most brilliant twist of the genre-bending in Veronica Mars is its gender-bending—with the private dick now being dickless in the shape of Veronica (and what a nice shape), the femme fatale is converted into an homme fatale: Logan Echolls, one of the best characters to ever grace the small screen.

Last year Veronica Mars was named the best new show of the year by the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly and Brick won the Sundance Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision. You can read more about Veronica Mars at fan site Mars Investigations. IGN also has an interview with Enrico Colantoni who plays Keith Mars—Veronica’s dad, erstwhile sheriff of Neptune, and now private investigator.

Just a quick post on two really nice interviews I came across. The first is Rolling Stone’s interview with Kiefer “Jack Bauer” Sutherland. I’d really like to go out for a drink with that guy. The second is Backstage’s interview with Seth Green, who sounds like he is one hell of a smart cookie despite moving to Hollywood at age sixteen and who has a work ethic I can only dream of.

I woke up this morning groggy and slightly hungover, switched on the interweb and the first thing I read is that Iyari Limon has a new girlfriend. <pause class="penny-drops"/> WTF? A girlfriend? Girlfriend? <vader>Nooooooooooooo</vader>. She can’t be. She’s meant to be going out with me. Me I tell ya, ME. <sob/>

A better man than myself would probably want to wish her all the best.

My friend James, a newspaper man of the Walter Burns variety (think Walter Matthau, not Cary Grant), is always sternly telling me how the Internet, blogs, RSS feeds and the modern world in general are killing newspapers, and when they’re dead and gone we’ll all be sorry because there will be no more editors, lawyers, and large corporations checking that their greedy, vested, corporate interests will be respected facts are straight, and there will be no more investigative journalism, breaking stories (more commonly known as sifting through celebrities’ bin bags), or reliable sources of information (because everything on the internet was just, you know, made up).

Well it seems that he may not have been overstating his case. On Saturday (otherwise known as April Fools’ Day), the fairly well-known movie news site JoBlo posted an April Fools’ joke that Kate Beckinsale had been cast as Wonder Woman in the forthcoming Joss Whedon movie. Now there were certain tell-tale signs that the story was a joke (not least that Whedonites, the most terrifying fandom on the planet, would have burnt cinemas to the ground before watching Kate Beckinsale butchering Whedon’s dialogue): such as quoting Whedon—a well-known feminist—talking about actresses offering to “blow him” for the part, or that Beckinsale was obviously going to have to have a “boob job”. But perhaps the biggest give away was the article ending thusly:

Whedon […] said that he would even take part in the site’s annual April Fool’s Day gag this year, which was a nice thing of him to do, especially since that’s what you’ve been reading this entire article. That’s right, every word is untrue, folks … gotta love the Internet!

Now I’m the first to admit that it wasn’t the funniest April Fools’ joke I’ve ever seen. But it was fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain that that’s what it was. But that didn’t stop those geniuses at World Entertainment News Network carrying the story as fact. One of the most notable subscribers of WENN’s news feed is The Internet Movie Database who carried the story, and from there on hundreds if not thousands of sites carried the story too, either directly from WENN or via IMDb. And like Chinese whispers, as the story was reprinted it became more and more detached from any semblance of truth and factuality. For example, InTheNews.co.uk printed this:

English beauty Kate Beckinsale is said to be fronting the race to be appointed the lead actress in the new Wonder Woman flick.

Director Joss Whedon and co-writer William M Marston, director of the 1976 original, are believed to have been impressed after meeting the British babe and could be about to offer her the role.

Beckinsale, star of Van Helsing and Underworld, has also recently reaffirmed her desire to land the part in the upcoming comic book movie.

“I want Wonder Woman right now,” she said. “I’m not holding my breath, but I’m crossing my fingers and toes and praying.”

As Simon on Whedonesque pointed out, William Marston (the original creator of Wonder Woman) died in 1947, so I don’t think he was directing much in 1976, and certainly wasn’t going to be having much of a say in the casting of the new movie, and the quote about “crossing my fingers and toes and praying” was actually said by Charisma Carpenter.

So, this is a sorry state of affairs. But the Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. Just as sites were regurgitating this without bothering to check any original sources, and in some cases adding a few extra falsehoods of their own, those brave souls at Whedonesque charged in with the sword of truthiness, and JoBlo issued a statement. Meanwhile, the story continues to be reprinted around the Internet. And, only a day late, quick on the uptake as ever, has finally made it’s way into the UK press, still equally devoid of fact. Congratulations, The Sun! (What was that you were saying about newspapers vs. the Internet, James?)