The Yawn of the Titans

Every generation, it seems, feels the need to put its stamp on the ancient myths handed down to us. But one wishes that the storytelling tools of today were placed in the hands of our Hellenic forebears. What might Homer had done with the IMAX format in giving us the Iliad? What would Euripides have done with CGI giving us Medea? What would Aristophanes have done with 3D giving us The Clouds?

The easiest answer is that they would not have given us the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake. Indeed, one strains to wonder why Ray Harryhausen's last great stop motion epic, made in 1981, needed to be remade at all. In all probability, it was Sam Worthington's fallback vehicle in case Avatar didn't go so well. All things considered, after Avatar, Titans could only come up short, which it does.

The first problem is that there is barely any coherent narrative. There is a struggle between men and gods. There is a struggle between Zeus, played by Liam Neeson (who has had better roles), and Hades, played by Ralph Fiennes (who has had better roles). There is the obligatory and incoherent long journey through distant lands, the juxaposition of which makes no sense geographically (think 10,000 B.C.). There are the battle sequences. And there is the love interest, Io, played by Gemma Arterton.

Nobody is particulary well served by this story, because, well, there isn't much story. The 1981 version was an amalgamation of the stories of Perseus and Belerophon as the winged horse Pegasus assists Belerophon in his battle with the chimera, after being born of the blood of the Medusa, having been beheaded by Perseus. In the original myth, Perseus gets around wearing the winged shoes of the god Hermes. This version of Titans is a sequence of CGI events periodically rendered in a 3D environment and there seems to be no good reason for the use of 3D as a storytelling device. And the most obvious nod to the original falls flat.

There is a truly subversive idea embedded in this film. The idea is that there truly is a struggle between a creator and his creations and it is a struggle that has happened before. It is an idea that humans can overthrow their divine forebears, a punishment for their bad management of the universe. But the idea requires more than director Louis Leterier can muster. It is something that requires the surer hand of an Aeschylus or an Aristophanies and is at best given a bad venue in this loud and overdone film. Pick up Bulfinch's Mythology or Edith Hamilton's Mythology instead.

Poster's Note

Ladies and gentlemen. I do apologize for the lack of postings. This has proven to be a much more intense season professionally than I had anticipated. I am also in dire need of Internet access and computer upgrades at home. 

I am also in the process of re-examining how best to use this blog in concert with my other sites, and thus tying together the various strands of my sizeable Internet footprint.

Be that as it may, there are postings in the offing and I expect that this site will experience a revival in the near future. In the meantime you can keep up with my postings to Twitter.

That is all. You may now return to your regular program already in progress.

Reality show wannabes gone wild

A New York Times headline asks the question "What Do You Want to Hear Obama Say?" Ostensibly, the question is about his expected plans for the War in Afghanistan. What we REALLY want to hear though is that President Obama is sending Michaele and Tareq Salahi abroad to star in their brand new reality series "Survivor: Afghanistan." They've made themselves darlings of the talk show circuit after upstaging the Prime Minister of India at an official state dinner, to which they invited themselves. But don't call them party crashers. Instead, call them defendants. It seems a lot of people want a piece of these two. As recognition hunger expands to all points thanks to cable TV's need for content, expect things to get much worse before they get better. One can bet though that this is one couple that's going to get voted on the island -- as long as that island is Cuba.

The Hunger Games

In the beginning, Katniss Everdeen, is not exactly the most likeable protagonist one could want. But, then again, her world is not exactly the best of all possible worlds either. It is a future in which the world in general, and North America in particular, has been dramatically altered by a series of disasters.

The new world is made up of Twelve Districts. It used to be thirteen, but a revolt led to the cataclysmic world of “The Hunger Games.” Every year, for the past 75 years, the surviving districts are required to offer up two tributes – children: one boy, one girl -- to play in the nationally broadcast to-the-death gladiatorial games, which are held in the Capitol.

This is a world in which reality TV meets the life and death struggle of the Roman coliseum. But it’s also an updated version of the story of the minotaur. Suzanne Collins has done a lot of homework on survival and hunting which makes Katniss’ skills quite convincing. Collins also has a sense for the distinct separation of her protagonist’s experience of the games and that of her audience, which becomes terribly clear at the end of the book. Collins’ use of Roman names for capital residents also lends the book a quality that is distant from our experience, which helps make us relate to Katniss when she arrives at the capital.

The book was originally published in 2008, but was recently released in hardback with its sequel, “Catching Fire.” The book does have its weaknesses. The first of which is the contrivance that brings Katniss and her fellow tribute, Peeta, together during the games, only to be withdrawn at the end. Bringing the characters together naturally, without the MacGuffin would have made their act at the end of the Games stronger and more poignant. The second problem is her use of mutants. Genetic engineering seems to have come a long way in Panem. There are a lot of mutant animals running around, and one sometimes gets the sense that like the Gamemasters, Collins has used the mutants to push the action along when maybe other options might have been considered. And while the book certainly doesn’t eschew violence, the horror at the heart of this exercise seems to be missing.

But these faults are not fatal. The Hunger Games are a strong exercise in speculative fiction that draw together the strands of what currently exists in our popular culture and blends them with a mythological narrative. The ending leads directly to the sequel, Catching Fire. And while Katniss may start out as unlikeable, you can’t help but hope she’ll bring the whole thing down, taking the Capitol and President Snow with her.

Bad Parents - no biscuit

The boy and his balloon incident has apparently been determined to be a publicity stunt according to Larimer County (Colo.) Sheriff Jim Alderden, a hoax that didn't even stand up to scientific scrutiny if anyone had thought to bother about it while it was happening. Nobody has been arrested yet, but charges may be in the offing. The charges may include three felony charges - conspiracy between the husband and the wife to commit a crime, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and an attempt to influence a public servant - and a misdemeanor charge - filing a false report. Apparently it was the television interviews that did the family in.