Reflections of Reality

I've been watching PBS's new reality show, Texas Ranch House. This is the newest in a series of "House" shows. The first, "1900 House" was a British production that was supposed to see if a modern family could live as they did 100 years ago. It was very popular and spawned both English and American follow-ups.

The set-up of the original 1900 House was very artificial. The family was supposed to live as if it was 1900 but they had no outside world to interact with. The husband adapted best. He was allowed to continue with his job as a military recruiter. The kids continued with school. The mother, on the other hand, found herself trapped in the house, worrying about dust bunnies. One insight was that the mother, a very modern woman, could not bear to keep a servant.

For the follow-up, the producers came to America and created a small community on the frontier called "Frontier House". This one featured three families including a newly-wed couple. A lot of the show was about the rivalry between the other two families.

Back in England, they did "Manor House", a recreation of an early 20th century country house complete with servants. Not surprisingly, the people living as lords found it a much easier existence than the servants. In fact, they had a couple of scullery maids quit.

The next American one was "Colonial House". This was their most ambitious. They created an small 1630s settlement complete with governor.

There were a couple of other English ones that I found unwatchable. One was about living in London during the Blitz and the other had something to do with the courting rituals of the upper classes. Both were too entrenched in British culture to play well in America.

Which brings us to the current one.

Since seeing the original shows, I have found out more about what was going on in the background. It turns out that the producers have been influencing the show in order to have a more interesting storyline. For example, in Frontier House, at the beginning a couple of women confessed at the last minute that they had sewn secret pockets into their skirts for cosmetics. It turns out that this was the producers' idea. Much of the rivalry between the two families was stoked by the producers who came through the settlement prior to the filming.

I've talked with people peripherally involved with Colonial House. They said that the producers were interested in the reactions of the people, not the 1630s experience. It showed. In fact, I suspect that several of the participants were cast specifically to produce conflict.

One example is the governor and the minister. The man appointed governor was an ordained Baptist minister in real life. The man appointed to be the minister was a professor of divinity. The producers probably expected religious conflict between these two. Instead, they became very close.

Where there were sparks was between a militant atheist and the colony. I am not sure why someone who refuses to attend a church service would sign up to be part of a 1630s Puritan settlement but I am sure that this is what got her accepted to the show. Plus we got glimpses of her skinny-dipping.

This desire for conflict is common on reality shows. I saw the Mythbusters in a live show over the weekend. They said that during the first two seasons their producer tried to stir up anger between them. American Chopper was a hit and the producers figured that they needed to imitate the conflict in that show.

Which brings us to Texas Ranch House. The social dynamics are similar to Manor House. There are two camps. One gets to tell the other what to do but is totally dependant on them to make the show a success. In this case we have the Ranchers, the Cooke family, and the cowboys. The Cookes employee the cowboys and keep demanding respect. The cowboys feel, with cause, that all of the real decisions come from Mrs. Cooke. Also, Mr. Cooke feels the need to micro-manage and Mrs. Cooke refuses to look at the job the cowboys are doing as a whole. Instead she looks at what they did as it relates to her.

The foreman, Robby, is an experienced cowboy and the other cowboys have a great deal of respect for him. The Cookes feel that this undermines their authority.

Mr. Cooke's mind is easily changed. He will agree with his wife about something, talk with Robby and agree to something else, then change again after being brow-beaten by his wife. This frustrates Robby who feels that once you have said you will do something you have given your word and should not lightly change it. Did the producers know that Mr. Cooke would have so much trouble asserting his authority or did they just get lucky?

Then there is the servant, Maura. She describes herself as having a strong rebellious streak and has competed in equestrian events. So what did the producers do? They cast her in a role where she had to watch others riding constantly and was to answer to everyone. So is anyone surprised that a great deal of conflict centered around her?

So, what's the point of all this? Do the producers stir up conflict to get us to watch in the hopes that we will learn something about history? Or is the historical angle there just to stir up conflict?

Since this is a distorted view of reality, should we just stick to watching Lost?

UPDATE - After watching the final episode, I lost any lingering respect I had for the Cookes. After getting less than he wanted for his cattle and a bad deal with some Indians, he descided to get his own with the cowboys. He offered to sell them horses but his opeing price was twice what he had paid. Worse, he had previously agreed with Jared, one of the cowboys, to sell a horse at a good price. Instead, he informed Jared that the Indians had stolen his horse and it was now Cooke's.

Mr. Cooke should have counted the transaction with the Indians as a cost of doing business instead of trying to recover his losses at the expense of one of the cowboys. Or he could have offered to split the difference with Jared. Worse, when Jared objected to the deal he ended up firing Jared and giving him a half hour to clear off of the ranch. This part was his wife's contribution. Mrs. Cooke suggested that she and her daughters weren't safe around Jared.

Furious at how Jared was treated, the rest of the cowboys quit. When the evaluation team went through a couple of days later the descided that this would have meant that the Cookes would have lost the ranch the following year.

The producers were probably thrilled at how the show ended but it sure turned bitter for the participants.

Civil War

Marvel's summer cross-over event is Civil War. The premise is that the government decided to force superheros to reveal their identities to the government and become supervised government agents. Those who do not will be hunted down and imprisoned. The idea is interesting. In real life this would probably happen. After all, you cannot just buy a gun and start hunting down evil-doers. If you do and you keep your identity concealed, you will probably be hunted down yourself. If you give your identity, you will most likely end up in court at some point.

 

Bounty hunters are probably the closest thing to super-heroes and even they are operating under some restrictions.

 

Of course, things are more complicated in the Marvel Universe. Many heroes have special status - they are a foreign head of state, they are from a different world, etc.

 

But regardless of the issues involved, I have no intention of trying to follow every part. I cannot afford it. According to Wikipedia, there are 74 official Civil War comics including four miniseries and two one-shot comics. In addition, there are seven issues in the "Road to Civil War" series including a one-shot. That's 81 comics at $3 each or $243 for the entire series, assuming that none of the specials cost more than the standard price.

 

This is why the comic companies love cross-over events. They are trying to get people to buy more comics. That's also why I don't like them. They interrupt normal continuity in favor of marketing.

Graphic Novels

TCS Daily has an article about graphic novels. Among other things, it points out how much comic book readership has fallen. In 1945, half the country read comic books. Now, the top seller moved 140,000 copies. According to a talk by Steve Englehart, when he was writing in the 1970s, he was told that 200,000 sales was the magic number. If a comic sold fewer issues than that it was cancelled. That means that no comic book today is as successful as any 1970s title that wasn't cancelled.

Go back a decade to the height of the Silver Age and Superman and Batman could sell as many as a million copies.

This is one reason that comic cost so much. But then, the cost hurt sales.

According to the article, the solution to all of this is the graphic novel. These have a lower cover price and you get a complete story, something that most comics no longer do. In fact, many plot arcs are obviously produced as a serialized graphic novel.

Book stores are much more open to graphic novels. They don't expire like comics do so they get wider distribution.

Also, "graphic novel" doesn't carry the stigma that "comic book" does.

Is this the salvation of the industry? I don't know. Book stores themselves are being squeezed. Between Walmart and Amazon, traditional book stores have lost a lot of market share.

I will admit that I have re-read a few of my favorite story lines as graphic novels. Just trying to assemble the individual issues can be a pain otherwise.

Dr Who

Britain started seeing new episodes of Dr. Who last year but, typically, it took until last month before they showed up in the US on the SciFi channel.

For those who don't know what I am talking about, Dr. Who was a long-running science fiction show on British television. It started in the 1960s and finally wrapped up in the 1990s. The main character is called the Doctor. He is a Time Lord, traveling in time and space with a tardis which looks like a 1960s police call box. The tardis is larger on the inside than the outside and contains living areas, stores of clothing, and all sorts of useful stuff. Unfortunately, it is not very reliable. It often turns up in the wrong year or place.

The original show was able to run so long because the Doctor, who is not human, can regenerate. If you kill him he comes back as a different actor. I think the show went through seven or eight different Doctors during its original run.

The most popular Doctor was Tom Baker. While some Doctors were grouchy, Baker's version was nearly always up-beat. Originally, only the Baker version was broadcast in the US and it was a revelation when fans discovered that there had been three previous Doctors. This turned into a bit of disappointment when fan actually saw the early episodes. While the special effects in the Baker version were cheap, the effects in the 1960s consisted of special lighting. In fact, it took some time before the tardis was even introduced.

After an absence of more than a decade, the Doctor is finally back. Surprisingly in a show that was out of production for so long, it feels just like the old show. The new Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, has the same energy that Baker had. The effects are cutting-edge (for television) but still manage a bit of cheesiness.

Then there is the Doctor's new assistant. Like Sherlock Holmes, the Doctor always has to have an assistant to explain things to. This is usually someone from modern-day England and most often a woman. Note - there has never been a hint of sexual tension between the Doctor and his assistants. Even the current one, Rose, is indignant when someone suggests that she and the Doctor have a relationship.

A few things have been updated. The Doctor accidentally brought Rose back a year after they left instead of a few minutes later. She found her mother had been posting "missing" signs and her boyfriend was under suspicion. That never happened in the original.

A recurring set of villains in the original series were the Daleks - a sort of high-tech fire hydrant, These were a bit of a joke. they were supposed to have conquered Earth in the future but they couldn't climb stairs. In the new series, the Doctor found the last Dalek in a collection of alien artifacts. After the Dalek was revived (of course), he showed why his kind was dangerous. He had a force field and could levitate up stairs.

It was always understood that there was some sort of life-form inside the fire hydrant. We finally got to see one after Rose convinced it that it felt good to stand in the sunlight.

Fearing type-casting, Eccleston has already left the series. His replacement and the actress who plays Rose have both been signed through the third season.

Healing and the Hatch - more Lost blogging

We just finished a low-key but important character arc for John Locke. During the first season and half the second season, Locke was normally calm and collected. He had good reason to be. From the flashbacks we found that he had been confined to a wheelchair and led a rather pitiful life. His past was full of abandonment issues. His father betrayed him and the love of his life left him because of his father issues. His had a boring job, supervised by someone half his age. His pleasures came from fantasy - war games and phone sex. He had tried to go on "walkabout" to test himself and been turned down because of his legs.

Then he crashed on the island and found that he could walk. The island became his walkabout. He tested himself and found that he was everything that he had hoped. With noting but a hunting knife, he could kill a wild boar or make a cradle.

He found the hatch which hinted at new mysteries.

Then things got frustrating. Locke and Jack started having problems. Locke found that he couldn't trust Jack and both were taken in by Sawyer.

Then they inherited a prisoner calling himself "Henry Gale". Gale very subtly sewed a few seeds of dissent, asking if it was alright for Locke to make decisions without Jack's approval. Locke got frustrated.

Then came the lock-down. While Locke was trapped, Gale went through the air vents. The alarm went off then everything went back to normal. At first Gale said that he entered the code and pressed the button. Later he said that the hatch was a joke and that the system reset on its own.

This bothered Locke. In addition, he totally lost control of Gale. Rather than being Gale's jailer he now has to ask permission (which can be denied) to see Gale.

There was always the possibility that the hatch is a fake - nothing more than a test to see how long the creators can get someone to press a button. If Gale is to believed (a bad assumption) then the hatch is a fake.

On top of everything else, Locke was hurt and has to use crutches. He almost ended back in the wheelchair.

His walkabout seemed to be nothing more than a trick and he was back where he started. He left the hatch, intending to let the alarm go off and do nothing.

Then he talked with Rose. We learned from her flashback that she had been dying from cancer and was healed by the island. She reminded Locke that they both knew that the island heals. That part is no hoax.

The next time we see Locke his calm is back and he is reconstructing the diagram he saw during the lock-down. He believes again.

Rose and Locke don't know it but the island healed Jin, also. Prior to coming to the island he couldn't father children but now Sun is pregnant and swears that he is the only possibility.

Jack continues to shoot down Kate whenever she gets romantic. She thanked him for taking her along to meet with the Others. He replied that she was there because they didn't want her - they had her and gave her back. She still stole a kiss when they were both trapped in a net.

One of the show's running gags - whenever it looks like these two might start getting physical, something happens. This time Michael reappeared.

As leaders go, Jack is pretty poor. Kate withheld information from him because he kept her out of the loop. Hurley made the same complaint earlier. Add in the friction between Locke and Jack, Sayid working Gale over against Jack's wishes and Jack's failure at organizing an army and Jack's leadership looks pretty poor.

Several people on the island have had visions of one kind or another. Jack's dead father led him to the caves. Boone had a vision of his sister being taken by the monster. Hurley saw an imaginary friend from his time in a mental hospital. Shannon saw Walt talking backwards. The island may heal the body but it is tough on the mind.

Finally, the diagram that Locke saw showed six labeled hatches with a seventh labeled with a question mark. So far we have seen three hatches - Locke's hatch, a long-abandoned one, and a recently abandoned medical hatch. Do the Others know about Locke's hatch? Do they know about all of the other hatches? How are they related? There's enough there to keep the show running for at least another couple of years.

Kong

Writing in Slate, Stephen Metcalf offers some reasons why the new King Kong bombed.

Cooper's original isn't simply racist. In fact, the opposite could be argued: Where Ingagi played upon white America's deep fear of racial mixing, King Kong took that race fear and converted it into an allegory for civilization in all its discontents. For Cooper, Kong wasn't a surrogate for black people, with "black" as a virtual synonym for savagery and uncontrollable sexual urges. No, Kong was a symbol—a clunky one, but a symbol nonetheless—for the anti-social alpha male, with all his animal desires and animal jealousies, residing in each of us. Thus Cooper made the death of Kong a tragedy and converted a degrading fear into an ennobling pathos. Now, to the degree this conversion worked, it worked because in 1933 memories of the Victorian world of gentlemen adventurers were still living memories, gorillas had been exhibited only scarcely in the West, and because white people still primally feared black people. Racial and sexual fears may still be depressingly persistent, but they no longer lie so near the surface of American life. Without those fears to play off, Jackson appears lost.

Ignoring the question of how a movie that grossed a half billion dollars world-wide could be called a bomb is Metcalf's analysis of the original accurate? No, not even close. Accodring to Metcalf, the movie only worked because of the period it was released. By that reasoning, the original should bomb today and the remake would be a hit in 1933. We will never know about the latter but the original still resonates today.

I first saw the original around 1974. at that time, I did not fear black people nor did I remember Victorian adventurers but the movie still worked for me. It also worked for Peter jackson who grew up in New Zeland and first saw it in 1969. The parts up to Kong's first appearance are dated and a bit silly but once Kong takes over, the movie is timeless.

Metcalf does have one good point. In the original, the Carl Denham role was directly inspired by the director, Merian C. Cooper. Cooper was an adventurer who made animal pictures. when Denham talks about needing a girl in his pictures or being his own cameraman, he is releating incidents from Cooper's own career. In the original, Denham is larger than life, willing to take chances that often turn out badly. In the remake, Denham is more con-man than director, bringing down anything he touches.

But that's only one problem with the remake. Another problem is the fight with the bugs. It goes on far too long and it doesn't move the plot. A similar scene was cut from the original. Jackson should have taken that advice.

The biggest problem is that the original is not a love story. Ann Darrow feels nothing but fear of Kong. She's still suffering Post Tamatic Shock when Kong is revealed to Broadway. As Kong tears his way through New York we feel shock as his victims pile up. We don't feel much sympathy for Kong himself until he is pitted the against the airplanes - a foe he cannot touch. Instead of trying to save him, Ann escapes to the arms of her human lover.

Note - this was a recurring theme in the classic monster movies. The monster pursued an unwilling heroine, often to him doom. Looked at this way you can see why Kong was so popular. Where Dracula flits arounds as a bat, Frankenstein's Monster lurches, and the mummy shuffles, Kong goes out in public. Not only is Kong unafraid, he kills anything that gets in his way, even an elevated train.

Jackson transformed Kong from a monster in the city to an endangered species trying to get back home. That's why one showing was enough for me.

Ice Age 2

Ice Gae 2: The Meltdown was the #1 movie for the weekend taking in over $70 million. It was the best March opening ever and nearly double what the original movie brought in. In the meantime, what did the critics recomend? Slither which came in at #8 with $3.7 million.

That puts Ice Age as the third biggest animated film opening weekend (it's tied with the Incredibles but ticket prices have gone up since then).

What happened? Probably two factors. The first is that the original movie and Robots were both well-made, entertaining movies. The other factor is that nearly everything else released this year stank. Ice Age was the first movie released this year aimed at the entire family where the movie-goer had an expectation of seeing a good movie.

And it is good. While both Ice Age movies are road films featuring three mismatches animals puncuated with mini-shorts featurig Scrat, the squirrel/rat, the two movies have different plots. They also have diferent supporting casts. This is important. Too often a sequel either puts the stars in a completely different situation or puts them in the same situation along with all the extras.

The original had three animals who didn't really like each other forming a friendship while racing to return a human baby to its tribe before witer set in.

In the new movie, the three are friends who have to excape a valley before it is flooded. Each of the anomals has his own personal growth but the movie doesn't hit you over the head with it. Manny the mamoth has to get over the death of his family. Diego the saber-tooth tiger has to get over his fear of water. Sid the sloth has to earn some respect.

Along the way they are joined by a family of possums, one of whom looks a lot like a momoth. The possums are almost as much fun as Scrat. Almost but not quite. Scrat's quest for the acorn would make Chuck Jones jelous.

The creators, Blue Sky, have shown that they have a vision of their own. Pixar goes for more serious, character-driven plots. Dreamworks does lighter ones with lots of topical references. Blue Sky aims somewhere in between. Their movies are lighter than Pixar's but without the constant topical references. It makes for a nice change of pace.

"Lost" Connections

Everything on Lost seems to be connected. In last night's episode, we see Locke inspecting a house for Sayid's missing girlfriend. We also find out that his father is a con man.

Now - think about con men. Sawyer is one and has spent much of his life looking for the con man who caused his parents' death. What are the chances that Locke's father isn't that con man?

Various spoilers:

It is no surprise that Gale isn't really Gale. He acted too suspicious. Why make Locke and Anna Lucia swear to protect him no matter what unless he knew that he might be discovered? They threw us a curve ball by showing us the balloon before he asked for this promise but it was still a telling request.

A few episodes back (with all the reruns, I forget how many), Sawyer conned Jack and the others. This week, Jack repaid him. Jack knew that when he gave Hurley advice on playing poker, Sawyer would take it as a challenge. Jack pulled the same trick later, forcing Sawyer to bluff rather than fold in front of an audience.

Jack is the leader who no one follows. Hurley complained about not being in the loop but jack is right - there is no loop. None of the principals follow him. They do what they think is best. Sometimes it is the same as what Jack wants but often it is not. This includes big things like moving off of the beach (what ever happened to the settlement at the water hole?) when Kate and Sayid refused.

Jack is also an untrustworthy leader. He breaks his word. He did it to Kate when he took the dynomite and to Locke when he promised not to open the weapons locker without consulting Locke.

This is the second or third time Kate made it clear that she was available and Jack turned her down. She was clearly impressed by the poker game. She fluffed her hair and started to follow Jack to the bunker "for a shower". A lot more was implied. Jack poured some cold (muddy) water on this and offered to escort her back to camp, instead. Jack probably didn't want her near Gale.

Back when they first found the water hole, Kate asked if Jack was checking her out. Had he said yes - who knows. Instead he showed that he wasn't even thinking of her.

Answered questions:
The bunker was running out of food. Now we know how it was resupplied.

Unanswered questions:

Sawyer asked Jack why he didn't play for the guns? Jack said that when he needed the guns he would have them. Does he mean that he is sure he can manipulate Sawyer or that when he needs the guns it will be so obvious that Sawyer agrees?

What triggered the "event" in the bunker? At first it seemed like something was shorting out but there was a lot more to it including the hidden map on the blast door. Since the PC showed a command prompt first, this probably triggered it. Did "Gale" do something to start this? Did Michael or one of the others start it from a different bunker? Is it part of a timed routine to test the people on duty in the bunker? We still don't know if the button does anything or if it is a test to see how long someone will push it on faith. Is it is a test, then the whole lock-down could be a different test.

A lot of other bunkers showed up on the map. We already know of three, two of them abandoned. How many are there? They seemed to be in a circular pattern.

That balloon was not big enough to cross the Pacific. doing that takes a gondola the size of a garage and a huge balloon to lift it. Was the balloon they found part of a re-supply drop? And where did the real Henry Gale come from?

Finally, We know that Hurley was institutionalized but we don't know why. From the preview, it looks like he is going to have a relapse.

New Costumes

Recently Spider-Man got a new costume. He is now a part of the Avengers and is living in their tower along with his wife and Aunt May. Tony Stark took a special interest in Peter and, when his supply of spare costumes ran out, made him a new one. The new one is red and gold (like Stark's Iron Man's armor) with scanners and armor. It even lets spidy glide for short distances.

Depending on how you count it, this is Spidy's third or fourth costume. His original costume is rather striking. It is unusual in a few ways. The back is completely different from the front. Where the front has a small black spider on red, the back had a large red spider on blue. The sleeves have red stripes along the top with webbing and he is not wearing trunks. All if the full-head mask and the under-arm webs and you have a very striking costume.

Every so often Jack Kirby's heirs revive Kirby's claim that he created Spider-Man instead of Lee and Ditko. The costume, all by itself, refutes this claim. Kirby's costumes were usually simple and either left the character's head uncovered or had a simple helmet or mask. What's more, Kirby's characters almost always had trunks, even the Silver Surfer. As the Watcher's gown grew shorter, you could see some trunks peaking out from under.

Anyway, with the exception of the under-arm webbing which most artists didn't want to draw, Spider-Man's costume stayed unchanged until the Secret Wars cross-over. This was comic's first big cross-over event and every character or group came back different in some way (or had a major change while Secret Wars was going on). In Spider-Man's case, he came back with a black and white costume (different from the one from the Spider-Man 3 still).

Of course, this turned out to be a symbiont who eventually became Venom so that didn't work out well for Peter. It worked out great for sales, though. Venom was very popular.

During the period between Peter separating from the symbiont but him returning as Venom, Peter alternated costumes between the old red and blue and a cloth version of the black and white. Once Venom made his appearance, it was back to the original suit for good.

During the clone wars, Peter lost his powers and retired. His replacement started out as a new hero, the Scarlet Spider, but switched to Spider-Man fairly quickly. His suit was based on the original but given a slightly edgier look. It also was front/back symmetric.

So, how long will the new costume last? I'm betting it will not be long, mainly because of the marketing that went into the old costume.

Not that other Marvel heros haven't changed costumes. Iron Man has gone through three major changes and lots of minor ones. His original suit was clunky and iron grey. He quickly painted it gold and a few months later replaced it with a red and gold version. This was the standard for decades. After a major plotline, he came up with a new gold and red version that has set the standard since.

Other heros' costume changes didn't last. Both Dr. Strange and the Sub-Mariner changed costumes in an effort to prevent cancellation. Neither effort succeeded and both characters went back to their classic costumes when they were revived.

Dr. Strange did switch from a plain blue to a fancy red cape back when he was in the back of Strange Tales and this change took.

Daredevil did a similar change. His original costume was outright ugly - yellow tights with black trunks and muscle shirt worn over. It probably threatened his identity since it had to have been designed by a blind man. After a dozen issues and a couple of years (many Marvel comics started as bi-monthly) he quietly changed to a black costume with red highlights. Wally Wood, the artist who designed this costume was thinking of a velvet shirt he owned. Later artists changed it to a straight red costume.

In the 1990s, in a bid to increase sales, Daredevil switched to a grey, high-tech costume. Fans hated it. The writer kept insisting that, by calling the costume "memetic" it made it cool. All the readers cared about was that the "man without fear" was now hiding in a bulletproof suit.

Henry Pym has probably changed costumes and identities more than anyone - so much so that I'm not sure what to call him. He started as Ant Man in a red and black costume. At that point, he could shrink and talk to ants. In an effort to increase sales, he was changed to Giant Man and could both shrink to ant-size and grow to 12 feet. His costume was redesigned at this time although this seemed to depend on the artist. His base costume was red with blue trunks, gloves and boots. As Ant Man, he had a couple of large circles on his chest and some stripes over his shoulders. As Giant Man, the circles were dropped, sometimes looking like suspenders and sometimes like a big black "Y". Eventually his costume was redesigned again by adding a blue over-lay to his chest and helmet. A few issues later Giant Man was cancelled and replaced with the Sub-Mariner (who was given a costume in the late 1970s to increase sales).

Pym came back a year later in the Avengers as Goliath in a yellow and blue costume. For some time he was permanently 10 feet tall. When he regained his ability to shrink and grow he switched to a red and blue version of the same costume. Even later, he changed identities completely to Yellowjacket in a yellow and black costume.

After a divorce, breakdown, disgrace, further breakdowns he became Doctor Pym - sort of a take-off of Doctor Who with an overcoat full of miniature inventions that he could make grow. Pym resumed a couple of previous identities before retiring along with the Wasp who only held one identity but, for a long time, changed costumes with every appearance.

Lost and B5

Lost is beginning to remind me of Babylon 5, and not in a good way. There are several comparisons I could make - both have intelligent scripts with a continuity that promoted character developement. Both have Mira Furlan playing an intense character from a different culture (France and the planet Mimbar). Both have story arcs that hint bigger things are coming.

But that's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of all the damn reruns.

Most shows are shot out of sequence in order to build an inventory of episodes. It usually takes longer than a week to produce a new TV show so they intermix new and inventory episodes. This makes continuity a problem which is why most shows limit changes to the continuity to specific months, usually a sweeps month.

Babylon 5 was run on a different basis. Episodes were normally shot in the order they aired. The few exceptions had extra effects and needed additional time for rendering. With no inventory, they would air what was ready then go into reruns, air some more episodes, etc. To make matters worse, the distributor felt that they had to save the last couple of episodes of the season and air them just before the next season. This meant that they could not be rerun (at least not until the next season). With 52 weeks to fill and a couple of episodes subtracted from reruns, that meant that other episodes were run three or four times.

And that brings us to Lost which has just rerun the pilot and two other 1st season episodes for the third or fourth time.

The networks seem to have abandoned the long-standing tradition of a fixed schedule. Instead all but the most popular shows vanish from the schedule for months at a time so that special, limited-run shows can have a slot. While this helps the network pump up their ratings during sweeps month, it has the long-term effect of separating the audience from the full-season shows. It also means that a show that does not vanish from the schedule is caught short of episodes.

The one good thing to come from this - we can go back and look for inner significance in details we originally missed.

In the show they aired a week ago, I just now caught an in-joke. In a sub-plot Sayid and Shannon are trying to translate some French notes. Shannon finally realizes that the words are song lyrics written over and over by Dannielle. The joke is that, while the song was written in 1960, it was used in the closing credits of Finding Nemo. The plot of the movie, a parent trying to find the son who was separated from him, echos Danielle who is still hoping to find her daughter.

Oscar Aftermath

The Oscars have been presented. There was only one surprise in the entire ceremony - Crash beat Brokeback (two surprises if you count Jon Sterart's performance but I'll get to that later). Every other major award went to the person it was expected to go to. Even the ratings went as expected - the second lowest ever.

Looking over the results, there was no trend. Of the six big awards (best picture, director, and four acting awards), no two went to the same picture. Only the best actor was even in a nominated movie. Then there are the technical awards - art direction, sound, etc. A big winner pics up several of these. This year they mainly went to Narnia and Geisha (three each).

This raises a few big questions. Did any of the nominated movies really count as "best"? Was the best movie of the year snubbed in the nominations? Should Walk the Line, Narnia, Geisha or some other movie have been nominated? Or was it just a really bad year for movies?


As for Jon Stewart - the best hosts, the ones who are invited back, are stand-up commedians who have a solid film career. Think Bob Hope or Billy Crystal. Stewart's specialty is political satire. His film roles have been bit-parts in bad movies. He doesn't even live in LA. He's from New York and he's only known for a basic cable show. What were they thinking making him host?

There's always next year. Maybe this year will produce a good movie to nominate.

Oscars - Who will win? Who cares?

Brokeback is going to win best picture and best director. Everyone knows it? So why are there rumors that Crash will win? It's partly because Crash's studio is mounting a marketing campaign but I think it mainly comes down to ratings.

The Oscars is a long boring show. It always runs long. It gets its highest ratings when either a very popular picture is likely to win (such as Lord of the Rings) or when there some real controversy about which picture will get win.

None of this year's nominees are popular. Brokeback has a box office gross of around $75 million. Figuring $8-$10 admission (probably closer to $10 since it mainly played in big cities for half its run) then fewer than 10 million people have seen it. In a country with a population of 300 million, that means that fewer than 3% have seen it. If only the people who saw Brokeback watch then the ratings will be a disaster. Even if everyone who saw all five movies watches and no one else, the ratings will be terrible.

So the powers that be came up with some drama. Crash had a last minute surge and could win after all.

Does Crash have a chance? Not likely. It wasn't even supposed to get a best picture nomination. It took the slot that was supposed to go to Walk the Line which did have a shot at best picture.

About the only real drama is if the Oscars will be a clean sweep for gay-themed movies or if Reece Witherspoon will get it. I don't plan on watching just for that.

Darren McGavin

The actor Darren McGavin died over the weekend. Most news services listed a quick biography for him but they left out some important accomplishments.

I became a fan of McGavin during his short-lived series The Outsider. McGavin played a seedy ex-con turned private detective. This was 1967 and the tv networks were trying to reflect reality better than before. In the opening sequence, McGavin's character was shown drinking milk from the carton before realizing it was sour. This "life can be sour" image typified the show, but it was a footnote in a long list of roles that McGavin played.

In 1970, McGavin played a Marine drill sergent against Jan Michael Vincent's hippy draftee in Tribes. This was a cult hit during the height of anti-war feelings. McGavin had the difficult part of making a tough marine still seem sympathetic.

Two years later he was in Nightstalker. Most of McGavin's biographies mention the series but none of them mention the original movie. This is a major oversight. The series is a cult-classic but the movie was something else - it was an event. It scored the highest ratings a made-for-tv movie had ever recorded, a record which stood until Roots.

McGavin played Carl Kolchack, a seedy reporter similar to the detective he had played in The Outsider. The plot involved a serial killer in Las Vegas and the authorities' attempts to cover it up. Along the way it turned out that the killer was a vampire and Kolchack was the only one to believe. Considering the subject matter, it is not surprising that the producer was Dan Curtis who's soap opera, Dark Shadows, had just ended.

McGavin made one more classic, A Christmas Story which is probably the only memorable Christmas movie made in the 1980s. In the two decades since it was made, Christmas Story has achieved classic status. A good bit of this status is due to McGavin's over-the-top portrayal as the "old man".

Creating a Classic

The first time I read Lord of the Rings I was struck by how the tone changed when they reached Rivendel. Tolkien's son published all of the fragments and early drafts that his father went through while writing the novel. After reading this I understand what happened.

The Hobbit was so popular that the publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien wasn't sure. He felt that he had done about everything he could with hobbits but he tried anyway. The plot was a problem. Bilbo was supposed to have lived happily ever after which precluded further adventures.

Tolkien started by writing the Long Expected Party. He was vague about who was holding the party and why but he liked it. Originally Bilbo was holding the party before going off in search of more money or a wife or both. Later he and his wife had gone off and his son, Bingo, was throwing the party. Bingo became a nephew instead of a son and in some versions Bilbo threw the party and in others Bingo did. By this point it was clear that it was Bingo's story but Tolkien had no idea what that story would be.

At first Bingo was going off in search of gold and adventure. The ring got mixed in with it in a fuzzy way - possibly it made the owner want to go looking for dragon gold.

Regardless, the party was held by someone for some reason and Bingo departed with some friends. They didn't get very far before they realized that they were being followed and hid. Their pursuer was a figure covered in black so that not even his nose could be seen but it turned out to be Gandolf.

Scratch that. Tolkien immediately changed it to something worse. He wasn't sure what, yet nor was he sure how many riders there were. At one point the dark riders were barrow wights.

By the time they met Tom Bombadil and made it to Bree, Tolkien had worked out that the riders were wraiths and that they were after the ring for some reason.

Bree was a town of hobbits. Even the mysterious ranger they met was a hobbit - Trotter - who wore wooden shoes. They never found out but Trotter was a long-lost cousin of Bingo's.

Bingo was attacked at Weathertop and they finally made it to Rivendel. Bingo recovered and it was time for some revelations.

Except Tolkien didn't have them. He realized that it was time to figure out what was going on. While he was at it, he realized that he had too many hobbits so Bree became a village of men with a few hobbits, and Trotter the hobbit became Strider the man.

While he was at it, Tolkien changed the group of hobbits. He considered renaming the main character "Frodo" but he was too used to "Bingo".

Where Bingo had been accompanied by three young and interchangeable hobbits before, he cut that down to a pair of younger hobbits and added Sam Gamgee.

The ring became THE ring. The seven dark riders became nine nazgul.

There had to be some sacrifice on Bingo's part so he still had money but he had to leave the Shire because of the ring. There had to be a reason for him to go (Gandolf would never have left him if he had known that the Nazgul were abroad) so Gollum was brought into the plot. Bilbo was given a reason for handing over his ring.

Things were shaping up.

Lost Agenda?

Is Lost pushing an agenda? It never occurred to me until a few weeks ago when the local TV writer complained about the baptism episode pushing religion down our throats. This caught me totally by surprise. To me, the episode was "Charlie goes crazy, has visions, and totally screws up." That it ended in a baptism was a minor plot point. Lots of people are baptized and you expect that on an island with a priest (sort of) that this will come up.

Granted one of Charlie's visions had some religious significance but the others didn't. My bigger question was if he had kept his word and had not broken open any of the statues or if the visions were drug-induced?

The next new episode was straight-forward, Sawyer conned everyone with Charlie's help.

Then we come to the Sayid episode. [spoiler] The backstory is how Sayid came to be a torturer. During the first Gulf War, the Americans needed to know what happened to a downed flier. They found out that Sayid spoke English and sent him in as translator, except we discover at the end that the commanding officer speaks perfect Arabic. What the Americans needed was someone they could outsource torture to.

The situation was a bit contrived. The Iraqi officer was not only uncooperative, he was also responsible for using poison gas on Sayid's family, not that coincidences are unusual in Lost. One of the soldiers was Kate's adopted father.

The outsourcing of torture has bee an issue in recent months which makes its inclusion in Lost questionable. The other question is what we are to make of it? Should we be outraged at the trick that the Americans played on Sayid? Should we look at this as an example where someone needed torture even if we are not allowed to do it? Or did they simply toss it out as an example of what happens in war?

It has been noted that Americans are often outraged in principal about torture but we expect our TV and movie heroes to do whatever it takes. This appears to be such a situation.

A few other observation:

Jack is a losy leader. He cannot be trusted. Not long after agreeing with Locke that neither would open the safe without consulting the other, Jack broke his word. If Jack could be trusted then Locke would not have felt the need to move the guns. Jack also broke his word to Kate about who would carry the dynamite. He is ready to start a war with the others but is not ready to torture a possible other to verify his identity.

It appears that you have a few seconds to press the button after the counter counts down but something was happening. We saw hieroglyphs and it sounded like the blast doors were closing.

Sayid blames the others for Claire's death. He was also conducting a poor interrogation. This may be because he was rushed but the proper way would be to ask lots of questions while taking notes and keeping the prisoner on edge. If the prisoner was lying then his answers would not be consistent.

Speaking of the prisoner, Henry Gale, I think that he was lying. Crossing the Pacific in a balloon is not something that you do for a lark. It is very difficult and dangerous. It can only be done with a high-altitude balloon and a pressurized gondola. Gale didn't mention that. You also have to have a ground crew constantly tracking you since chances are pretty good that something will go wrong. Also, when asked how he became rich Gale answered that he was into mining. Minnesota Mining (aka 3M) is the state's best known business. That seems like word association.

Finally, Sawyer does not get along with the island's wildlife. First a wild boar messes up his camp and pees on his stuff, then a tiny frog drives him crazy. Chances are that the island will get him back for crushing the frog.

LoTR to Kevin Bacon

There is a theory that if you take everyone you know and everyone they know, etc. then by the sixth iteration you have included everyone in the world. This is known as the Six Degrees of Separation. There is a related trivia game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This says that you can take any actor and by linking everyone he has stared with and everyone that actor has stared with, eventually you get to Kevin Bacon.

Here's the link for the Lord of the Rings.

The original novel inspired a wicked parody, Bored of the Rings. Instead of hobbits, this had boogies who were often petty criminals. Strider the ranger became Stomper the Lone Ranger. You get the idea.

The two authors of the book went on to found the National Lampoon in 1970. This was such a success that it spun off a few stage productions. The ensemble cast from this and National Lampoon's managing editor went on to found Saturday Night Live.

Which eventually had Kevin Bacon as a guest.

Side note - best line from Bored of the Rings. During the guessing game with Gollum, Bilbo asks what is in his pocket. He then pulled out a gun and shot Gollum.

"He would have finished him off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It's a pity I've run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel..."

Oscars

It's been a long time since I posted to this blog. Time to get things rolling again.

Back in November I said that the best picture Oscar wasn't worth following. I was correct. After nine week and constant publicity, Brokeback has taken in around $60 million. It made its production costs back a long time ago but these days movies have to break $100 million to be considered popular. None of the other nominees have done any better. Everyone knows the Brokeback will win big, hardly anyone saw any of the nominees. No one cares. The ratings for the Oscars will be dismal. Jon Stewart will get the blame.

The bright spot is the best animated movie spot. Previously CGI has dominated this award but this year all of the nominees were hand-animated one way or another.

I admit, I goofed when I was making my prediction. I forgot that Howl's Moving Castle was released this year or I would have included it in my nominees. I haven't seen it but I have seen others by the same director. Based on that, I don't think that it should win, mainly because many of the concepts do not translate very well. It may not be multicultural but I think that American awards should go to movies easily understood by American audiences. The contents can be challenging, but not puzzling.

Wallace and Grommet are the favorite based on past performance with Howl coming in second. Both directors have won Oscars before.

I'm still pushing for Corpse Bride. Wallace and Grommet is light-weight and not as funny as it should have been. Corpse Bride dealt with more adult issues - does someone have the right to happiness even if it ruins someone else's happiness and should a woman define herself by marriage? Add in some issues about duty and promises and you have more meat than most live-action movies.

Besides, Corpse Bride just looks better than the others.

The Golden Age of Sydication

WB and UPN are merging which will probably leave a lot of stations without programming. This may create a new market for syndication. It's worth looking back at the last time this happened.

For decades cities were limited by the FCC and the channel selector of the TV. Channels 2-13 had separate clicks on the main VHF dial. For channels above that, you set the main dial to UHF and tried to find the channel on a second dial. It was difficult and you needed a different antenna to get acceptable reception.

The VHF stations were dominated by the big three networks - ABC, CBS and NBC. UHF was usually a weak PBS station. The few independent stations showed reruns of old shows from the big three and British TV, talk shows, and inexpensive productions such as Solid Gold (top music countdown with scantily clad dancers).

A very few independent shows were produced such as Space 1999. Hour-long shows seldom lasted more than a season and never more than two seasons. The main exception was the Muppet Show.

In the 1980s, the FCC loosened up restrictions on how close stations could be to each other and how many stations a metropolitan area could have. This created a large number of independent stations.

The first wave of independents was signed up for the fledgling FOX network. FOX built up its programming a bit at a time starting with a show about a werewolf then expanding into Sunday night and adding more nights over a few years.

This left a lot of prime time hours to fill.

At the same time the success of the Star Trek movies convinced Paramont to bring the show back. Gene Rodenbury agreed but only if he was free of network restrictions. Star Trek the Next Generation was born as a syndicated show proving that an independent production could match the production values of network TV.

This was only the beginning. As FOX expanded its programming the FCC allowed a second wave of independent stations, all looking for original programming.

This is what I refer to as the golden age of syndication. Hours of new programming was produced each week. Most of it was fantasy/science fiction based. Costs were cut by using unknown actors, shooting on location instead of building sets, and by shooting in other countries. Still, the results were entertaining and sometime exceeded anything seen on network TV. I don't remember any unwatchable shows among them.

The very best were Star Trek and Babylon 5. They boasted production values and special effects comparable to feature films and intelligent writing. These were shows that made you think.

Other shows like Highlander (immortals who fought each other with swords) and Forever Night (a vampire detective) were entertaining action shows.

Then there was Hercules and Xena. Even though some of the plots were pretty serious, the shows were campy fun and very popular.

Then Paramont and Warner started their own networks, sucking up the independent stations. Without prime time slots to fill, stations were not able to pay as much for syndicated shows. At the same time cable stations started producing their own original content, often aimed at the same fantasy/sci-fi market.

The powerhouse syndicated shows ran down and ended. No new ones took their place. The age of syndication ended.

The New World

John Smith spends most of The New World wondering around with his mouth open as if he is trying to figure out what just happened. After seeing the movie I know just how he felt.

According to reports, director Terrence Malick works by shooting lots of improvised scenes, then decides on a plot during editing. That would explain a lot of the movie. It doesn't flow, it moves in fits and starts, sometimes disjointed. For example, a battle between the colonists and the Indians seems to start over three times with the colonists losing each time. We have no idea how the colonists survived. Occasional voice-overs inform us what is happening. In most cases the accompanying visuals are unrelated. For example, at the end we are told that Pocahontas has died. This is followed by a shot of an empty bed, trees, and Pocahontas splashing in a pool.

The real Smith was a shameless self-promoter. Colin Farrell's version is quiet and introspective. We are a half hour into the movie before he says anything (not counting voice-overs). Things just happen to him. He is told to lead an expedition to find Powhaten. He is captured and armed warriors appear with clubs raised. Pocahontas saves him and spends lots of time wandering through the wilderness with him. He returns to Jamestown and a couple of malcontents make him president. In his one act of assertiveness, he orders a well to be dug. When he declines to take Pocahontas prisoner he is unelected (Jamestown not only had secret ballots, they seem to have had secret elections). Later he is told that the King has ordered him to map New England and he is told to go fufill his ambition.

The focus shifts to Pocahontas who has been disowned and no longer has a name because she helped the English (strangely no one ever says "Pocahontas"). Smith left orders that she be told he died a couple of months after he left. She takes an English name and starts wearing dresses. John Rolf courts her and she has a child with him. (Very quickly - she manages to go from holding Rolf's hand to playing with a baby in one scene change.) Through it all she still mourns for Smith.

Rolf and Pocahontas are summoned to England where she meets Smith again and realizes that she loves Rolf. Then she dies.

The high point of the movie is the cinematography. The wilds of Virginia are shown in all their glory. Extra credit goes to the movie for actually filming near Jamestown. The costumes are good, except for Smith's grey shirt, and the sets satisfied Jamestown's chief archeologist.

At 2 1/2 hours, the movie could improved by drastic cuts. One friend commented that he had never seen a movie shot in real time before. Even at that, the movie is fifteen minutes shorter than what premiered in December. Another half hours of cuts, some tightening up of the plotline, and it might not be half-bad.

Countdown to 1980

A couple of interesting things on That 70s Show. One is that they are back in 1979. The credits have always included a license plate with a year sticker on it. Previous episodes this season have left the year sticker blank leading some to believe that the show already made it into the 1980s. The 79 sticker put that rumor to rest.

More interesting, Jackie mentioned that her TV show was interrupted by a news special on "some hostage crisis." The big hostage crisis, the kidnapping of the US embassy staff by Iranians, started Nov. 4, 1979.

Not that this matters much. Without the character of Eric and Kelso the show suck and will not be renewed. The only question is if the last episode will take place Dec. 31, 1979.

Eko & Charlie

A little Lost-blogging.

This week's episode was a masterful example of misdirection, almost as good as the first Locke episode. It appeared that the episode was about Mr. Eko. After all, the flashback was about him. He was in nearly every scene. It wasn't until the last shot that we realized that it was really a Charlie episode.

Major spoilers ahead.

The events as we see them are:

Claire tells Eko that Charlie must be religious because he carries a statue of the Virgin Mary with him everywhere. Eko breaks it open showing that it contains heroin.

Charlie is fishing and singing when Eko approaches him and demands that Charlie show him where the statue came from. Charlie tries to put it off but Eko is insistent.

Claire confronts Charlie about the heroin. Charlie says that he was just holding on to it to "feel safe", a common action among recovering addicts. To show his sincerity, he throws away the drugs.

At first Charlie tells a straight lie. He points to a broad tree and says that it is where he found the statue. Eko is not fooled.

Next Charlie says that he is lost. This is reasonable considering that he was led to the plane the first time. Eko makes him climb a tree to get his bearings. While Charlie is in the tree the monster appears as a cloud of smoke. Eko faces it down. Charlie tells him that
he spotted the plane and leads Eko to it.

While Eko is burning the plane we see Charlie pick up another drug-filed statue. Later, after Claire has thrown him out, we see him burying it. Is he getting rid of it out of shame? Nope, he's adding it to a stash.

Now that we know that he has a stash we can see what was actually happening.

Claire was wrong. Charlie wasn't carrying a statue around with him. He was transporting several statues from the plane to his cache.

Charlie was probably acting so happy and singing because he had taken a hit earlier.

When he tried to put Eko off, he meant to sneak back to the plane and gather as many statues as he could.

It was easy for him to throw away the drugs in front of Claire. He had more.

He lied about where he found the drugs and being lost in order to hide his source. Eko facing off the monster unnerved Charlie so much that he stopped playing games.

Claire was right to throw him out. A drug user cannot be trusted. Charlie was already lying to people.

We got all of that about Charlie. In contrast, everything we learned about Eko came from the flashback.

A few other thoughts:

We already knew of five people with violent background but Eko is the worst of them. Even Sayid feels remorse but we saw Eko slit peoples' throats without blinking. When he killed one of the Others, he took a 40 day vow of silence but showed no remorse. He does show love.

Does the monster attack based on fear? Locke once faced it but when he tried a second time it dragged him into a pit. Did he have a moment's fear?

The Apple II cannot start communications but it can respond to someone else. Probably it is acting as a dumb terminal.

When Jack saw the screen it was blank, even through Michael had been communicating with Walt. Did Michael simply hit the power switch while we weren't looking?

Spider-Man's Worst Moments

Spider-Man has had a long and generally good run but there have been some points that should be dropped into a black hole. Here are a some of them:

The death of Gwen Stacy. When Stan Lee left the strip and Gerry Conway took over it was felt that Peter and Gwen's relationship had stagnated. The solution - kill Gwen and replace her with a stagnant relationship with Mary Jane Watson. Shock value is not a substitute for good writing.

The clones. The issue after Gwen died, Conway killed off Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. Not long after that a skinny green character called the Jackal started trying to kill Spidey. This turned out to be Peter's only named college teacher, Professor Warren. Warren produced clones of Peter and Gwen. The Peter clone was killed and the Gwen clone left.

The death of the Hobgoblin. In the 1980s, Roger Stern decided to bring back some of the excitement of the Green Goblin. The Goblin appeared for years before we found out who he was. Stern had a plotline where someone found a stash of Goblin equipment and used it to become the Hobgoblin. Stern kept this new villain's identity a secret, even from other writers. He actually was thinking of a fashion designer Mary Jane was working for but later writers planted clues that the Hobgoblin was Ned Leeds. Then, Leeds turned up dead, killed during a German spy plot. They had to have an issue where a new Hobgoblin explained that he had assassinated Leeds for the costume. Much later Stern wrote a limited series wrapping up the plot.

The return of the clones. The presumed-dead spider-clone returned. Then a clone of the Jackal returned. Then hordes of clones appeared. Peter decided that he was the clone and retired. His replacement turned out to be the clone and Peter came back. Like a copy of a copy, the clone plotline just got worse.

Aunt May marrying Doc Ock. In the first Spider-Man annual, Peter's girl friend, Betty Brant, and Aunt May were captured by some of Spider-Man's enemies as bait. ay never quite figured out what was going on and was impressed with the nice, cultured Doc Ock. Gerry Conway expanded on this, first having Ock take a room as May's boarder then propose. It turned out that she had inherited a Canadian breeder-reactor that Ock wanted access to.

The death of Aunt May. Marv Wolfman invigorated the strip in the late 1970s but, as part of this revival, he killed Aunt May. I doubt that anyone bought it. It was an anti-climax when she reappeared, a prisoner of the man who had killed Uncle Ben.

The return of the Green Goblin. At the end of the clone plotline it turned out that Norman Osborn had not died. He had just gone to Europe. He also got a lot richer and more powerful than previously shown. This violated one of Stan Lee's basic rules about death - if you see a body then he's really dead. The premise was bad. The execution was bad. I stopped reading the strip.

The second death of Aunt May. Once again, it didn't take. Don't kill a character unless you mean it. This was part of the return-of-Osborn plotline. Notice how these bad plots sort of build on each other.

The death of Mary Jane. Somewhere in the return-of-Osborn plotline, Mary Jane decided that she couldn't take being married to a superhero. When Peter kept doing heroics she left him. Not long after Peter started talking about how she must be dead. Why? There was no body. The real reason was that editors decided that a single Spider-Man was more interesting than one who was married. After the first movie came out, they had to bring Mary Jane back.

Bad Year for Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder is mainly known for three movies - The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (plus two movies where he played second bananna to black stars - Blazing Saddles and the Silver Streak). Two of those movies were remade in 2005. In both cases the production values and expectations were much higher.

I just saw the new Producers last week and the original Willy Wonka last night which gives me some insights on Wilder's career.

Anyone who has seen much of Wilder knows that he is not a great actor. anyone who has seen The World's Greatest Lover knows that Wilder can be really awful.

Watching Willy Wonka I was noticed that the character was not really going anywhere. In the remake, Johnny Depp plays Willy as someone obcessed with making chocolate but who is afraid of people in general and children specifically. Wilder just plays that character as a Gene Wilder character.

I first saw The Producers after seeing Blazing Saddles and I was dissapointed. It seemed like it should have been funnier. It was like a Shakespearian commedy = Wilder and Zero Mostel were doing things that should have been funny but most of the laughs just weren't there. The remake fixes that. The plot has been revised a bit and musical numbers added. The acting and staging are still pretty close to the stage version which helps a lot. Some things will get a laugh on the stage but not on the screen. I saw one critic complain that they hadn't "calibrated the performances up" for the big screen but I disagree. That would have made the movie overblown instead of funny.

Both Johnny Depp and Mathew Broderick are real actors, able to play completely different characters. This just points up the problems in Gene Wilder's version even more.

Good thing no one has talked about remaking Young Frankenstein.

Kong vs Kong

How does the new Kong stack up against the original? Peter Jackson make a lot of choices when He made his remake. Some worked, some are questionable.

First an aside - comparisons between Kong and Lord of the Rings box office are dumb. Lord of the Rings was the first live-action adaptation of the 20th century's most popular novel. Kong is a movie from the 1930s that has been reshowed multiple times. It was remade in 1977 plus the Japanese gave the character a good going over in the 1960s. There was even a Kong cartoon show on Saturday morning. LoTR had a lot of pent-up demand. Any demand for Kong came from Jackson's treatment of LoTR. Jackson himself was fairly obscure prior to LoTR. Given all that, Kong has done pretty well but was unlikely to equal LoTR.

Notice that no one bothered to compare Rent with Chris Columbus's Harry Potter box office.

Back to Kong.

They could probably have cut an hour out of the remake and we would never notice. It would still be longer than the original with deeper characters. This could be the first director's cut DVD with less footage than the screen version (but I doubt it).

In the original, Kong was a giant ape. In the remake he is a giant gorilla. I liked the ape better. But using an unknown species of ape, they could give Kong what ever characteristics they wanted.

The modern Kong moves and acts like a gorilla.

It's a lot easier to sympathize with the ape version. He looks a bit more human. The scene of modern Kong shaking Ann while looking the other way must have been based on modern gorilla behavior but it reminds up how inhuman Kong is.

A book on the natural history of Skull Island shows a Kong who looks much more like the original. I'm betting that his look changed during production.

In the original we never find out what Kong does with his sacrifices. In the modern one we find that he plays with them until he gets tired of them then he drops them into a pit to die. No wonder the Fay Wray version screamed a lot.

In the original the two don't bond. Kong is still stripping Ann's clothing and sniffing it a few minutes before she escapes. She has good reason to be afraid. We aren't sure why Kong is so interested in her but he got her scent on the island.

In the remake we know that he liked her vaudeville act. We don't know why she bonds with him. Was it the shared sunset? The fact that he saved her from the T-rex pack? The original Kong saved Ann but it was probably more territorial than caring.

I could have done without the insect pit. It added nothing to the plotline and it went on too long.

The remake added some new characters but they died or vanished from the plot when Kong was captured. They could be cut an no one would notice.


Upping the fight from one T-rex to three was fine but then they made it a three-part fight - on top of the cliff, in the vines, and at the base of the cliff. This was excessive.

Why did the T-rexes want Ann so badly? They were snapping at her while she was in Kong's fist.

Ann trying to save Kong on the Empire State Building seemed like it was straight from the 1977 version. That is not a good thing.

In the original, Denham was a straight-shooter but things went bad. In the remake he was a walking disaster area.

The cast in the remake was really good.

Some movies look better in black and white. Kong looks better in color. Because of the rear projection used for the special effects the original was lots of shades of grey. The remake is gorgeous.

What Happened to the Boxoffice?

Every week we see another story about how box office attendance is down from last year. No one seems to have a clue why.

I do and it's rather obvious. People are playing more computer games so they don't have the time or money left for as many movies.

This happened a few years ago with music. CD sales dropped. The recording executives insisted that it was the Napster Effect, even though the first few years that Napster was in business, CD sales went up.

If they thought about it, they would have expected the rise in sales. Every year the recording companies spend millions of dollars promoting new music. This includes paying stations to play new songs (this is legal as long as the station gets the payoff instead of the DJ). If you hear a song often enough it becomes familiar and you want to buy it. Napster did the same thing for the recording companies and it did it for free. Yes, you could get a hold of new music for free, but it was likely to have been ripped at a low bit-rate. People who really liked the music bought the CD for the better quality audio.

despite a lot of whining, the recording companies were doing great. Then they got hit by a broadside. DVDs suddenly caught on and three new gaming systems were introduced. On top of that, CD singles were discontinued and the price of new CDs went up.

It is an iron law of economics that there are only so many entertainment dollars available. Recording executives don't think of themselves as competing with movies and games but they do. Once your money is gone, it's gone so you have to prioritize your purchases.

It's been happening again. Shared universe games like World of Warcraft are very popular. New game platforms are out. Plus new games are being released for all game platforms and many of these are movie tie-ins. This directly affects the boxoffice because teenagers get to choose between going to see a movie again or playing a game based on the movie. If you are playing Kong you are not sitting in the theater and you spent enough money to go see Kong again (or to see another movie) 5-6 times.

On top of that, DVDs are cutting into theatrical revenues. In order to save on advertising, they have pushed the time between theatrical and DVD closer together. The hops is that you will remember the publicity campaign from the theaters when the DVD comes out. Some movies are now out on DVD before they are out of second run - around three months for a B-movie.

This has happened before. When radio started playing records they thought that it would be the end of recording. They thought the same thing when it became easy to record music off of the radio. TV and the VCR would doom studios.

With all of these there have been adjustments. Radio turned out to be a medium for selling records. Studios produce TV shows. VCR and DVD sales can make the difference between profit and loss. Licensing fees from games are now big business.

Theaters have been hurt. 70 and 80 years ago it was an even to go to a theater and they were big opulent places. They got smaller and plainer until the 1990s when larger screens and more comfortable seating became a selling point.

There's no turning back, though. Things change. Movie audiences continue to move on to other forms of entertainment.

Kong (the original)

Wednesday night they showed both the Original King Kong and the 1970s re-make. I watched the original (surprise). This was the full-uncut version with natives being eaten and Fay Wray's dress torn off. That was the first version I saw of the movie in an art-house showing around 1974. It's only a few seconds of film but it does change the feel of the big ape.

What is interesting to me are the special effects they used.

The primary one is stop-motion animation. Kong and the dinosaurs are models that were moved slightly and photographed frame by frame.

Then they had to mix the animation and live-action. The process of masking a figure and adding it to a different shot was known then. I spotted it in a couple of shots in Kong. It is fairly easy to recognize since the added figure often has a white border (in early TV blue-screen they had blue borders).

This is an expensive and time consuming way to combine shots. Most of the movie took the easy way and used rear-projection. When Denham and company are attacked by a Stegosaurus, they were standing in front of a screen with animated footage projected on it from the rear. Unlike today's green-screen acting, they could see what was going on, at least some of the time.

Other shots were done the opposite way. They filmed Fay Wray being held by a mechanical arm and pulled pieces of her dress off (probably with wires), then projected this onto a small screen with the model of Kong in front of it.

For extra texture, they also used a lot of matte paintings. I think that I heard that Kong was the first movie to make extensive use of mattes.

They did have a full-sized head that could change expression. They also had an arm and a foot. They used tricks like having Kong look through one window using rear projection while the full-sized arm came through a different window.

When Kong picked someone up it would be an animated character just like Kong himself.

While this technique was effective it had some drawbacks. One was that the rear projection adds a flat, washed out look. Also, it meant that the actors and models always stayed on different sides of an invisible wall. One review of the current movie mentioned this without seeming to understand why it was so.

One other technical problem - every time they moved Kong his fur got out-of-place. They tried to comb it back like it had been but they were not always successful. In a couple of places Kong's fur ripples.

A couple of things really stand out about Kong. One is the amount of screen-time the effects got. Later stop-motion movies were shot on a tighter budget and schedule and had to limit the effects.

The other thing is the attention that went into giving Kong a personality. Sometimes he is angry. Sometimes he is curious. After killing the t-rex he picks it up and works the jaw. He seems to be surprised that the snapping jaws are now slack. The same thing happens with the long-necked thing that Kong fights in the cave.

This personality is so effective that, even after he rampages through the city, you still feel bad when they shoot him.

One thing that will be missing from the new version - in 1933 the Empire State Building was only a few years old and biplanes were still new - as new as the smart-bombs used in the first Gulf War are to us today.

The 1970s version tried keeping Kong in the present. It was a mistake. A 25-50 foot tall ape (he changed scale between Skull Island and New York) was a challenge to 1930s police and even to biplanes. There was no question in the 1970s that helicopter gunships could kill him.

By putting Kong back in the 1930s, the world is primitive enough that Kong is a menace but the story becomes a period piece.

Winter Alligators

My wife was looking up the lyrics for Winter Wonderland and noticed this verse:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the alligators knock him down

Snowman attacking alligators in the fronzen winter? This is interesting. The song is only 70 years old. You would think that there would be a standard version. I Googled it and found surprising variation but mainly in the one line. For example, there is this version:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kids knock him down.

Ok, that makes a lot more sense than alligators but it doesn't scan right. You need four sylables and this only has three. The singer is left having to stretch "kids".

This one works better:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kiddies knock him down.

This one is probably worse

In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the all the kids knock him down

This works:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown.
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman.
Until the other kids come knock him down.

And this is the worst grammar yet:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kid is knocking him down

This is the only version to change the second line. Plus we are back to alligators:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a Charlie Brown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
Until the alligators knock him down.

You're a good snowman Charlie Brown. Here is one that replaces Parson Brown with Charlie Brown and has Lucy knock him down:

Chorus:
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he is charlie brown
he'll say: are snoopy?
we'll say: no man
but we'll let ya know if he's in town

later on
we'll conspire
as we dream by the fire
and face unafraid
the plans we have made
walking in a winters wonderland

Chorus:
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
and we'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until mean old Lucy knocks him down

This one uses "children" instead of "kids" to get the right number of sylables. That fits fine but it changes an earlier line:

Later on, we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
Your face won't have reigns
The place that we made
Walking in a winter wonderland

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman
Until the other children knock him down

Every other version has this line as "To face unafraid, The plans that we've made"
This one avoids the problem by repeating the Parson Brown verse a second time. This one does the same thing but it also substitutes "Possum Brown" for "Parson Brown".

And finally, this one must have been transcribed from the recording. It is outright garbled with an entire line missing:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
We'll pretend that he's parts and brown
We'll say no man but you can do the job
When you're in town later one we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
Were facin' no frame
The plans that we made
Walkin' in a winter wonderland

A Charlie Brown Christmas

USAToday has a frontpage story on a Charlie Brown Christmas and how it almost didn't air.

Looking back 40 years it is difficult to remember the position Peanuts had in contemporary culture. The idea of kids having problems and acting like adults was new and fresh. No one else was doing anything like it.

Peanuts is partly a victim of its own success. It had so much influence on other comic strips and media that we forget how groundbreaking it was. Even so, it was still the best of its breed right up through the final strip.

40 years later this is still one of only four original, lasting Christmas stories. Two of them are endlessly remade - A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. The other two, Charlie Brown and Christmas Story, are lightning-in-a-bottle stories that would fail if they were remade.

It's ironic that both Charlie Brown and Christmas story are children's stories but they are about opposite ends of Christmas. Charlie Brown is looking for meaning in Christmas and finds religion. Ralphie is just after presents. What makes these two stories so memorable is their unforced earnestness.

Charlie Brown could have come across as preaching but it does not. Christmas Story could have been boring or silly. There have been dozens of Peanuts specials and movies and other adaptations of Jean Sheperd's works but, outside of the Peanuts Halloween show, none of them worked as well.

note 1: That 70s Show did a subtle takeoff of a Charlie Brown Christmas with Eric directing the church Christmas pageant. The same episode also inserted Kelso into a claymation Christmas special.

note 2: Darren McGavin who played Ralphie's father also stared in Nightstalker. Not many actors can boast that they were in two so dissimilar cult favorites.

Too Old?

During his talk last weekend, Steve Englehart antioned several times how difficult it is for him to get work as a comic writer. I have heard Marv Wolfman and Len Wein say the same thing. To modern editors, these guys are over the hill - too old to work.

Englehart's response is that his Batman comic exceeded expectations by 250%.

It's not a pleasant thing for me to hear that these guys are too old. They were the new guys who started at Marvel around 1970. They are just a couple of years older than I am. My own profession of computer programming has been laying off workers over 50 so this attitude is widespread, but I'm writing about comics here.

Let's go back a few decades to when Marvel was born. By current reasoning, it must have been young turks who created the classic characters.

Stan Lee was born in December, 1922 so he was nearly 40 when he created the Fantastic Four. His co-creator, Jack Kirby, was born in 1917 so he would have been close to 45. Spider-Man co-creator, Steve Ditko, was a youthful 35.

Jump forward a decade and you find these men at the top of their game. Lee was writing the Silver Surfer, his favorite creation. Kirby had just gone over to DC and created his 4th world series. Ditko never managed to match Spider-Man's impact but he still was writing as well as drawing his own books.

How sad if these men had been forced out of the industry when they were at their creative peak.

In the 1980s Ditko complained that "everyone wants Ditko but no one wants Ditko." He meant that everyone wanted a "Ditko-like" artist but they considered Ditko himself over the hill.

Englehart, Woldman, and Wein all sold a lot of comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Wein especially created several popular characters such as Wolverene, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Swamp Thing. There is no reason to think that they lost that talent.

How to Run a Comic Book Company

I was at a question and answer session with Steve Englehart over the weekend. He was one of the new generation of writers who entered the field in the early 1970s. He is best remembered for his run on Batman but he started at Marvel and wrote a lot of their titles at one time or another. A quick list includes, Captain America, the Avengers, the West Coast Avengers, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, the Hulk, Master of Kung Fu, Captain Marvel, Hero for Hire, the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four.

I remember him as a good writer who was at his best writing individuals and his worst writing teams. He also pushed the envelope in story telling. I think that he was the first to write an issue where the characters did nothing but talk (his last Avengers) and one where the title character never appeared in costume (one of his Batman issues).

He had a few clinkers, too. Rumor is that he overused Kang the Conqueror so much that Stan Lee himself ordered Englehart to kill the character. He took Captain America's partner the Falcon and changed him from nice-guy Sam Wilson into petty crook "Snap" Wilson.

In the Q&A session, Englehart stressed how much things have changed since he entered the field. He was given Captain America with no other instructions than to keep it creative and to sell at least 300,000 copies a month.

Now a writer has to come up with a proposal which works its way up and back down the editorial ladder before he can write anything and an issue that sells 20,000 copies is considered a success.

So, were things better back then? The fact that they could sell so many more comics implies that they were but it gets more complicated.

The distribution channels have changed completely. Up through the 1960s comics were sold at news stands, drug stores, and grocery stores. News stands don't exist any longer. Drug stores no longer carry comic books and few grocery stores do. Most comics are sold through specialty stores that grew up since the early 1970s. The target audience is now much older with a large percentage being adult.

There is also a lot more competition than there used to be. Video games are a big factor. No one in the mid-1970s thought of Pong as a replacement for a comic book but many current games feature really great animated versions of superheroes. Why read static comics when you can actually control characters?

So the comics have consolidated and editors have been put in charge of protecting the franchise. Has this improved comics? Probably not.

Englehart gave the example of Batman. For the last five years or so he has been over the edge crazy. When Englehart did his Dark Knight limited series, DC made some projection on how it would sell. The actual numbers were 2.5 times projections. What was different? Bruce Wayne was back and got a girl friend. Batman was no longer crazy, just driven. DC pulled the entire Batman line and gave it to a different editor to establish a new direction based on Englehart.

Ok, so an editor's direction can hurt a title, but surely he can save it from some of the cliffs that writers went off in the 1970s. One of the best (worst) examples of a writer going off on a dumb plotline was Gerry Conway's Spider-Man clone. It started when Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, came back from the grave. She turned out to be a clone grown by his biology professor who had also grown a Peter Parker clone. It was dumb.

So what did Marvel do in the late 1990s? They brought back the clone along with a clone army grown by the biology professor's clone. They even told us that the clone was the "real" Spider-Man and the two switched rolls for a year. Of course, it was all part of a formula. You set it up so that the hero was dead or powerless and ran stories about how difficult it was for his replacement to take over. Then the hero would return. It already happened in Iron Man, Green Lantern, Thor, Superman, Batman, and Captain America.

So, keeping tight editorial control doesn't keep bad plotlines from happening.

I'll have more to say about Englehart's talk in future posts.

My Brain Hurts

Last night Bravo was showing a repeat of Happy Days Reunion. Think about this for a moment. In 2005, I was watching a show produced in the 1980s about a show in the 1970s which was supposed to be taking place in the 1950s.

Now if they could just work That 70s Show in somehow the universe would implode.

Speaking of Happy Days, by coincidence earlier yesterday I came across the Wikipedia's definition of Jumping the Shark which is probably Happy Day's lasting contribution to modern culture.

If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to an episode where the Fonz was water skiing (in his leather jacket) and jumped over a shark. This is considered the moment when the show officially changed from being about the Cunningham family to it being about the Fonz's stunts. The term is now used to denote the point when a show abandons its original premise and suffers a loss of quality. In many cases this also leads to the show's cancellation. In other cases the show was headed for cancellation and producers tried to breath some life into it by introducing a major change. There are also cases where a show continues after one or more major character left by adding new characters and making others more prominent.

This brings me back to That 70s Show. The show centered around high school-aged Eric Foreman, his family, and his friends, particularly his relationship with the hot girl next door.

Supporting cast members have floated in and out over the years but the show always had a core of eight actors. Now two of them left and a new lead character was added. The show still has some laughs but the premise is really strained. The show has been stuck in 1979 for years. The actors are now 5-10 years older than their characters. Everyone graduated but most of them still spend their time hanging out and getting stoned in the Foremans' basement, even though Eric is long gone.

This is a prime example of a show that has jumped the shark but was not allowed to die a graceful death.
The official Jump the Shark website lets you vote on when (if ever) a show jumped the shark.

The Last Lost

"What, is Shannon going to get hit by lightning?"

I asked my wife this about 57 minutes into last week's Lost. About a minute later Shannon was shot. Big surprise.

After three weeks of telling us that the next episode would be the most talked about of the year, it was kind of a dud. What would have been a big twist - killing a major character - was given away in the ad.

It's not like it was a surprise. Before the season started the producers announced that a major female character would die. Right there it narrowed it down to Shannon and Claire. Neither has a major story line going. I suspect that both were originally included as unlikely survivors on a deserted island. We had the spoiled rich brat who did nothing and the pregnant woman who could not do anything.

Now that we are in season two, it is no longer a deserted island so the original reason for including them has passed.

A case could have been made for keeping Shannon. Fans of her brother could still see him in flashbacks and it would complicate things even more if the survivors had to raise a baby on top of everything else.

Ultimately though, Shannon was an unlikeable and unliked character. Even a flashback showing her not inheriting her father's money didn't help much. I suspect that her step-mother was right. The ballet internship wouldn't have amounted to anything in the end.

Still it would have been a much more powerful episode if the ABC publicity people had kept quiet about it.

Best Picture (Animated)

Ok, the year isn't even over yet but I'm going to go out on a limb and make some predictions for best animated picture. As far as I know, all the likely candidates have already been released so I can make a year-end prediction in November.

Then I can worry about starting Christmas shopping.

There are five obvious candidates for the nomination, the CGI films, Robots, Madagascar and Chicken Little and the stop-motion films, Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromet: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Only three can be nominated. Wallace & Gromet seems like a shoe-in. Shorts featuring the same characters have already won two Oscars. I think that Corpse Bride will also be nominated on the basis of its stunning visuals.

That leaves one slot for the three CGI pictures. I haven't seen Chicken Little yet but all of the reviews complain that much of it is unconnected gags. That seems consistent with the previews. I don't think that it will get a nomination.

Madagascar and Robots are both fun movies with rather thin plotlines. Of these, I think that Robots has the stronger plot. Also, it is a much greater technical achievement. One of their goals seems to have been to out-do Pixar in complexity of animation. Madagascar, on the other hand, looks like it was done on the cheap. My daughter, the computer animator, says that they took some shortcuts in the animation.

So, our nominees are Robots, Corpse Bride, and Wallace & Gromet.

I don't think that Robots will win. There just isn't enough plot.

Wallace & Gromet has a really good chance given their previous wins but it is really a kids movie. There are asides for adults but the movie is aimed at kids.

Corpse Bride is harder-edged. While the lesson in Wallace and Gromet is that hunting is bad, the lesson in Corpse Bride deals with women being independent rather than depending on a husband. Also, the visuals in Corpse Bride are much better.

Corpse Bride gets my vote but I will not be surprised if Wallace and Gromet wins.



note: I'm getting a lot of spam comments so I now require registration. I may have to turn off comments completely.

Beyond Death

The current issue of Action Comics (staring Superman) features a guest appearance by the Spectre. It is a combination Halloween issue and tribute to Jim Aparo. It is also full of plot holes.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how death is represented in the comics. DC has two main dead heroes - the Spectre and the aptly named Deadman. Both died and were sent back by a greater power. The power that sent the Spectre back is, I believe, a voice.

Deadman stayed on earth due to Rama Kushna. Rama was originally inspired by eastern religions but was later rewritten.

In the 1960s, there was a character called Nemesis who was also a ghost. He came from ACG which is better remembered for Herbie.

Nemesis had a view of the afterlife in keeping with watered-down Christianity. Saint Peter's current stand-in manages the gate to heaven and has say over who can return. Nemesis's powers were a cross between Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost - flight, strength, invisibility. He was weakened underwater. Like many heroes introduced in the mid-1960s, he didn't last long.

Spectre is more complicated. At first he was just a superhero, first in the 1940s and 1960s. Then he became the spirit of vengeance in the 1970s. By the 1980s he had become the ultimate force for good and the universe's last defense against the Anti-Monitor in Crisis. In the 1990s it was explained that he was an aspect of God. Then he retired and Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, got the job. Recently Jordan was brought back to life so who knows where the Spectre in Superman came from.

Deadman is a much more ordinary ghost. He is invisible and intangible. At first he seemed to walk everywhere but later he began flying. Since he cannot touch the ground (or anything else) anyway, he must have always been flying.

What Deadman could do was posses people. A trained acrobat and a good fighter, he often possessed people in order to save them. While there have been several attempts to revive the character, none have been satisfying. His best appearances were in his original series in the 1960s.

Interestingly, both Deadman and the Spectre were drawn by Neil Addams during their runs in the 1960s.

Marvel's view of death has always been more complicated. They've never shown the line of people waiting to be judged at the gates of heaven. In fact, Stan avoided the subject. When he did address death, it was because the death goddess, Hela, was near. The Silver Surfer's enemy Mephisto (a Satan stand-in) wanted the Surfer's soul and ruled an underworld full of mis-shapen creatures. Were these the tortured dead? Demons? Creations of Mephisto himself? We never found out.

We did get a hint. At one point, Mephisto sent the Flying Dutchman to fight the Surfer. It was made clear that the Dutchman was a special case. At the end he moved on to an unspecified afterlife.

In the early 1970s, the Comic Code changed and Marvel launched a line of supernatural heroes and villains. Many, like Dracula, were dead but nothing was said about the afterlife.

Around the same time, death became a supporting character in Captain Marvel. Embodied as a silent woman, she was the companion of Thanos. Because of his special relationship with death, Thanos has returned from the dead a few times.

Adam Warlock died and went to heaven, sort of. His soul was taken into a powerful gem along with his girlfriend and others. This is atypical.

I believe that in the 1980s Marvel's writers decided that when you die, any of several death gods can claim your soul which, in turn, gives them greater power. They can only hold souls for a limited time then they go on to a final reward (or are reincarnated).

While several marvel characters have returned to life from the dead or come back as a supernatural creature, none of their heroes are ghosts.