LOVE AND ROCKTOBER: THE ROUND-UP. Sean Collins's complete month-plus of posts about some of the greatest comics ever made... plus a "where should I start?" section. If you keep hearing about Love and Rockets and want to know whether the hype is justified, this is where you should go.

BLOOD OF PALOMAR:

And although biology is obviously among Beto's primary concerns, destiny is the operative word. I don't think the Palomarians have the ability to escape the way the Locas do. Not all of them need to escape, mind you--there's a lot of really warm and adorable and hilarious and awesome stuff going down in Palomar--but whatever walks alongside them in their lives is gonna walk alongside them till the very end.

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GHOSTS OF HOPPERS: Sean Collins's second review post in "Love and Rocktober"--his month-long series about Jaime and Gilbert (and sometimes Mario) Hernandez and the incredible comics they created--is even better than his first one. Comics vs. time, memory vs. death, backstory vs. change. Check out his posts... and read the comics.

STILL RECOVERING from an amazing trip filled with logistical snafus (goodbye, cell phone) and wonderful visits with family, but distinctly unfilled with sleep. Tomorrow, expect at least three posts: a very quick report from All That Skate LA 2010 (short version: !!!!!!!!!!!), a brief review of Wesley Hill's Gay Christian Whatnot book, and a clarifying post about marriage and iconography, which is also a post about Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage and is not a post about gay marriage.

In the meantime, why not check out Sean Collins, who has designated this month "Love and Rocktober"? He's doing a series of posts on the amazing comics series, and if you've ever wondered what the hype is about, Sean might be a good guide since he was a tough sell at first.

And I never meant to blogwatch, all I had was the will to survive...

Wow, it's been a while since I've done one of these.

Balkinization: The only book by a Supreme Court justice you will ever need to read.

Mark Oppenheimer notes that he is blogging a lot more now, so if you liked his profile of me in the NYTimes you might check him out. Yale, religion in America, and whatever other bees roost in his bonnet.

Sean Collins has a great tribute to the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. I'd forgotten those amazing titles. "Somebody Fell from Aloft"... shiver.

And I know posting has been sparse at MarriageDebate, but after midnight I'm going to put up just a cornucopia of links on everything from breaking the cycle of divorce to "America's one-child policy" to why you should not have a baby with a dude you found on Craigslist.

I am still going to reply to John Corvino. This week has been difficult (and I could use your prayers, if you pray). Stay tuned....

FOUR SWIFTLY TILTING PLANETS: My thoughts on the new Battlestar Galactica, over at the spoilerous blog. I mostly agree with Sean Collins's takes on the series, which you can find here, here, and here, so this post will basically ignore anything he said with which I agreed. Makes my job easier!

(I did not watch any of the supplemental stuff or extended episodes, nor did I watch the "webisodes," nor did I watch The Plan nor any of Caprica. I liked the series a lot... but man is mortal.)

Oh life looked so rosy in the blogwatch,
But I'll be a friend and I'll tell you what's in store...

Belated Halloweenery edition.

Camassia on Synetic Theater's Dracula adaptation. I strongly second her belief that Synetic should've stayed wordless; the best moments of the production were all dance, from the snaky vampire women to the eerie invisible horse. (That horse really should NOT have worked--it should've evoked memories of Monty Python members banging coconuts--and yet the amazing lighting work and the actor's total commitment to the moment made his galloping seem terrifying, not silly.)

Dresden Codak: 42 Essential Third-Act Twists. FOOD STARTS EATING PEOPLE.

Pumpkin Gutter: This may be the most fabulous thing ever. Iron Pumpkin, embryo pumpkin, American Gothic pumpkin, braces pumpkin, scary eye pumpkin, tarantula pumpkin... there's something here for everyone (in the Addams Family). Sadly, I forget where I found this.

Sean Collins: Reviewing Al Columbia's Pim and Francie:

But moreover, these scary stories and disturbing images are all so gorgeously awful that they appear to have corrupted the book itself. They look like they've emerged from the ether, seared or stained themselves partly onto the pages, then burned out, or been extinguished when the nominal author shut his sketchbook and hurled it across the room or tore up the pages in terror.

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Plus, he reviews Paranormal Activity. While he ended up with a different overall stance on the movie than I did, I really liked a lot of his review, e.g.:

...For some reason, the lights being flipped on and off really got me. They weren't flickering--something was walking around turning lights on and off. Not only was something else present in the house, it was basically using the house the way we would--only it was nothing like us in nature or intent. I dunno, that creeped me out pretty bad.

But best/worst of all were the two scenes where somnambulist Katie got out of bed, turned to face it, and just...stood there, for hours and hours. That's pure automaton Freudian uncanny, of course, and a monumental horror-image par excellence. ...These are actions that really have no inherent emotional or psychological content whatsoever. They're purely neutral. But when you have no idea why someone's doing them, even totally neutral actions can become sinister, almost intolerable.

(whole thing--plus comments-boxing!)

Basically, the buzz around PA has made me really want to rewatch The Blair Witch Project--especially since I am in the minority who really liked the Heather character!--so that's probably good.

I tapped her on the blogwatch and said, "Do you have a beau?"
She looked at me and smiled and said she did not know...

Camassia: A correction, re: sincerism! And a post about revenge and divergent views of authority.

Sean Collins: "Is it too much to ask for horror art to inflict emotional damage?"

(I think I'd also add a category for horror art which provokes teshuvah/repentance. Some horror I've seen and loved does neither for me--Suspiria is amazing, just incredible art, but I don't think it "traumatized" me in the way Sean means, nor did it provoke any change in my behavior. But a lot of other movies--Vertigo, obviously, but also Ringu and Barton Fink--seem to me to have the potential to provoke a change in self-understanding which wreaks itself through the emotions, but beyond them, into actions.* Anyway, yeah, I get behind Sean's cri de coeur!)

(*If you think you hear a faint echo of my disagreement with Sean about the ending of Eyes Wide Shut, you're right. On the other hand, I think Sean could have easily rebutted my points in that disagreement by saying that the movie itself has the capacity to provoke teshuvah, whether or not Tom Cruise's character actually ends up there. I think that's true, and it's a very strong point against that aspect of my criticism of the movie.)

Also, this comic sounds like it might echo intriguingly against "Keela, The Outcast Indian Maiden," which is the only Eudora Welty story I really love.

VJ Morton has a huge raft of reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival. I've added at least three movies to my Netflix "save" queue on his recommendation, and will be keeping my eye out to see if any of them open in theaters down here.

SEAN COLLINS IS ALL OVER THE SMALL PRESS EXPO! And so are other people! And so am I!

BETHESDA, Y'ALL. 9/26 - 9/27. I can't do stuff on the Saturday until maybe 1 pm or so, but after that, I will get Human Fly all over this thing.

If you love indie comics and other stuff that is awesome, why not drop me a line so maybe we can do like a big lunch or something? I hear Bethesda has the occasional eatery despite being located beyond the bounds of civilization.

"THANKS FOR YOUR HEART, BART." I loved Barton Fink from the very first shot, where the yellow(ed) wallpaper becomes the site of horror. Here are some thoughts on why this movie completely works for me in every moment (whereas The Big Lebowski, for example, is smarter and perhaps more essential, yet sloppier--they're both totally awesome).

First of all, Sean Collins is right as usual in saying that this is a horror movie. In fact, it's very close to an exercise in writing "If the movie of The Shining were funny." It's also a horror-comedy beating up on the idea that art is ethics, which is intensely awesome and right. Sean's review is fantastic and touches on several aspects I don't talk about here. I don't think I disagree with anything he says.

The hotel wallpaper is such a great starting image, basically because it's not what Sean calls the "monumental" horror image, something there which shouldn't be there--think of the twin girls in The Shining, or the wicker man in eponymous. (Argh, it's been years since I read Sean's fantastic essay, so if he incorporates this concept I apologize.) Instead, the horror of the wallpaper is the horror of something which really should be there in a cultural or ordinary-experience sense, something expected... and yet, in some other, emotional or metaphysical sense, still shouldn't--something which still isn't right. The normal course of the world is disruption.

And there are tons of other horror motifs throughout the movie--the use of music and sound effects, for example, is totally horror, and so is the hideous sticky dew of the peeling wallpaper. And in some sense you can say that the whole point of the movie is that even if you think you might be in a satire--and how awful is that, as a realization?--it's still even worse, because you're really in a horror flick. That I think is a fairly profound statement; and true.

More stuff about this movie.... I realize that I'm basically not rational about it, because it happened to employ one very specific symbol which shook my heart. Barton is a NYC playwright who gets hijacked by Hollywood. He checks into an adorably stereotypical hotel, with outlandish jungle palms and a knowing desk clerk and a duelling-scarred elevator man. (I really liked how this movie employed stereotypes without ever considering itself superior to them. Cliches are fun... and not random; they hook into some real anxieties here, even while being desperately overdone.) He goes up to his room. He sits down at his typewriter. He looks up.

And then he sees this photograph.

It's a picture of a pretty young lady sitting on a beach, looking out at the sea.

I can't even tell you what this thing means to me. It is so close to my own personal map of longing, of what George Orwell in 1984 calls "the Golden Country"... of the shores of Sans-Souci. It's what King Haggard means in The Last Unicorn when he says, about unicorns, "The first time I saw them, I thought I was going to die."

The moment I saw that photo I pretty much knew I was in thrall to this movie. And in fact, that photo turns out to be really important, used in really smart and complex thematic ways. (Check it out in the final scenes with Charlie Meadows, for example--his head is right up against the picture frame. And of course the finale uses this photo in a way I loved, even though I don't really understand it.)

There are probably other things I could say. I loved the exploration of a specifically left-wing Jewish horror, in which art-as-ethics suffered three distinct defeats:

1) The ethical artist really doesn't listen; his art is self-absorption. (This is really explicit in the text--"I could tell you stories," Charlie says at least three times, but Barton never asks about them; "You don't listen!" Charlie yells, at last. If the movie weren't funny this would come off as really heavy-handed, but I think the charming presentation and silly physicality--pus dripping from cotton-swabbed ears--makes it totally work. Plus the fact that the alternative presented, art-as-escapism, is equally awful!)

2) There are times when we experience moral vertigo, when "the right thing to do" is unclear, estranged, and horrifically far away. (This, and the point below, are I think big parts of why the "Bill Mayhew"/Faulkner cliche-fest is important.)

3) And after that, even when we regain some sense of morals, we still must confront radical evil--a kind of evil which makes all the talk of ethics ring hollow, where the question isn't, "What do I do now in order to be human?" but, "Why should I keep trying to be human, or to be anything at all?"

Also, it's funny. So nu, not as funny as The Big Lebowski ("Say what you like about National Socialism--at least it's an ethos!")... but still a good time at the popcorn house. And your laughter grants the movie its authority.

THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND: What kind of Cat'lick dyke would I be if I didn't ask for your prayers for our beloved Bea Arthur? Deadpool and I are mourning this sweet lady; Sean Collins provides the best summary of her unique charm.

Her ability to acknowledge her flaws but power past them made her the perfect foil for Rose's naivete, Blanche's narcissism, and Sofia's provincialism, all of which she parried with her own trademark characteristic: bullshit-deflating sarcasm. As The Missus put it last night while we were discussing Dorothy, "They took the 'straight-man' character and made her funny.'"

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THE YELLOW EYES OF FRANCIS DOLARHYDE: Sean Collins posts about an Entertainment Weekly list of "twenty scary movies"; I infest his comments-box. Also includes my recantation re: "The Thing."

Post titled because of how thoroughly Ratty freaked me out when I'd just finished reading Red Dragon and she said, "Look behind you!" MOST GULLIBLE, yes, I know.

THE OLD DARK HEARST: Two points on re-watching Citizen Kane: 1) The fashionable consensus now is that it's overhyped. I suppose if you mean that it's not the best movie ever made, then okay. But it is about as good as The Bride of Frankenstein--and if you know me, you know that's very high praise. It's a terrific, engaging movie, and it's not Orson Welles's fault that you already know about Rosebud. I'll go ahead and say that even though it rips off and cheapens Heart of Darkness (I owe that connection to Ratty) it still attains a weird tinsel greatness of its own.

2) Perhaps more interestingly: Val Lewton's Seventh Victim is a horror movie made with the techniques of noir. Citizen Kane is the opposite. From the spooky old-dark-house opening to the extreme camera angles to the Chute de la Maison d'Usher-ish sequence with the jigsaw puzzle, this movie is made like a horror film where the monumental horror image is the poster of Kane's face. (Not Kane himself--he isn't the monster at the end of this book.)