Whether you’re fortunate enough to still be in touch with your sense of wonder or
have lost it and thought it never to be regained, I beseech you: See Hugo.
Directed by Martin Scorsese from John Logan’s screenplay, based on Brian Selznick’s acclaimed book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo runs 126 minutes. About 120 of those minutes are pure cinematic nirvana. I’m almost mad, yet also strangely relieved, that no matter how many films I see as this stacked season progresses — and no matter that it’s difficult to compare movies of wildly different styles, aims, and approaches — I’ve clearly seen the most fascinating, most captivating movie of the year... unless, almost ironically given their subject matter, The Artist ends up matching it.
cover to Green Lantern: No Fear
I should have saved last week’s post on Fringe’s crimson revision of DC Comics’ emerald adventurers for today. Migraines and other obstacles have put the squeeze on this piece. But it’s only St. Patrick’s Day for 18 hours more at most anywhere on the planet, so in the spirit of my green-themed posts from 2009 and 2010, here’s another one.
I really need to write about Fringe more often. A couple of friends have been urging me to do periodic if not weekly reviews, but that’s almost certainly not in the cards. While I’m hoping to publish at least some thoughts about what’s happened on the show since my first major post on it this time last year, soon, right now I just want to finally clear my metaphorical desk of several images that have been on the docket to share for nearly that long.
The week after I finally got that piece up, Fox aired one of Fringe’s best episodes — confirming Peter Bishop’s origins and blowing the show’s mythology wide open. “Peter” was a flashback to 1985, with awesomely retro opening credits; it showed the Walter Bishop of the standard Fringe universe spying upon the denizens of a parallel universe whose history and technology were slightly divergent from the familiar but which was inhabited largely by close counterparts of Fringe’s Earth. Later in the season Peter Bishop returned to the alternate universe in the present day, and in Part Two of May’s season finale “Over There” we saw some intriguing framed comic-book covers in his room.
The first time I saw a Charlton it totally freaked me out.
I was in the stockroom of my grandparents’ main store, circa 1976. Devoted mostly to supplies and inventory, the stockroom also included a private office and a small lunch/break area with countertop, seats, and refrigerator. My sister and I spent many hours being kids in that stockroom — great for climbing and hiding — as well as reading or drawing in the office.
On this day, forever etched in my cortex, a comic book appeared on the break table. I’m pretty sure that I saw it upon entering through the back door, which opened from a parking lot and delivery area into the stockroom with the break area immediately to the right. Everything slowed down as my mind excitedly registered “Whoa!” and then sped up a heartbeat later as the next visceral thought formed was “Yikes!”
This is what confronted me:
On St. Patrick’s Day, so they say, everybody’s Irish. A large number of folks back in Wildwood, NJ, were at least partly Irish year-round. I went to synagogue with kids named MacDonald.
Irish hero Shamrock’s introductory panel in Contest of Champions #1 © 1982 Marvel. Plot: Mark Gruenwald, Bill Mantlo, Steven Grant. Script: Mantlo. Pencils: John Romita Jr. Inks: Pablo
Marcos & Bob Layton. Colors: Andy Yanchus & Pat DeFalco. Letters: Joe Rosen.
At one corner of Pacific & Lincoln was Shamrock Café, only a café in the sense that it was a pub that served coffee with Irish whiskey. Shamrock was owned by a family alongside whose two youngest daughters, twins, I walked to and from Crest Memorial in kindergarten and first grade. Their house was on the way to mine, and often I’d linger for milk, cookies, and maybe an episode of Ultraman.
