It took two weeks, but yesterday afternoon I finished reading Under the Dome, Stephen King’s 1,060+ page magnum opus about a small town which suddenly finds itself trapped underneath an invisible force bubble.

Many articles about the novel have cited its similarity to The Simpsons Movie–in which a glass dome is lowered over Homer’s city of Springfield–but the idea is older than that. In Arch Oboler’s 1966 3-D film The Bubble, aliens sealed a trio of travelers in a spooky community populated by pre-programmed townfolk.

And, when you get right down to it, it’s your basic Twilight Zone concept: trap a group of people under mysterious circumstances and watch them turn on each other. It’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” writ large.

While Under the Dome covers some of that familiar “Maple Street” ground–our tendency to look for enemies amongst our neighbors–it’s really about the cruelty of crowds. A collective may commit atrocities that would never occur to a single person. The specter of Abu Gharib haunts the memories of the book’s lead character, an ex-soldier named Dale Barbara.

The story is set in the near future during President Obama’s second term, but it appears to be looking back to the Bush/Cheney administration. King evokes its incompetence and venality in the personage of Chester’s Mill’s ineffective First Selectman Andy Sanders and the power behind the throne, Big Jim Rennie.

Rennie proves that one need not resort to aliens or vampires to peer deep into evil. A scripture-quoting hypocrite, he studiously avoids bad words (“clustermug” is a favored substitute) even as he sows terror, commits bare-handed murder and operates the largest meth lab in the country. One of his verbal tics is to suggest, with each new death under his watch, that the deceased is now sitting at Jesus’ table eating pork chops and/or peach cobbler. By the end of the book, Jesus needs to add several extra leaves to that table.

Big Jim pursues power without purpose. His drug business has brought him millions of dollars, yet he has no ambitions beyond lording it over his small community. He sees the Dome as an opportunity to make his dominance permanent, backed up by a newly-minted police force composed of the town’s worst thugs.

I’d originally thought that Under the Dome would be a portrayal of the long-term effects of life with ever-diminishing supplies and a breakdown of the old social order, and I’d still like to read that book. Instead, King’s working under a much-accelerated timeline. Chester’s Mill is a (literal) bomb waiting to be set off, and it takes only days for everything to go to hell.

The story is frustrating at times. Rennie is one of those bad guys with an uncanny knack of being three steps ahead of the good guys. Our heroes are woefully disorganized, with an unfortunate tendency to confront Big Jim one at a time. Not a good idea, especially if he’s in arm’s reach of his golden baseball.

If I have one disappointment with Under the Dome, it’s that there’s never a big showdown of ideologies. We don’t find out how the community at large reacts once the wheels begin coming off Big Jim’s Hummer. This is a story in which good perseveres because it runs for the hills once the shit comes down.

While there aren’t any true monsters here (except perhaps for a few ghosts), there are a pair of hideous creatures. Junior Rennie is unknowingly in the final stages of brain cancer which turns him into a killer and necrophiliac. Then there’s the self-styled Chef who runs the meth factory, a cadaverous character who sees God’s work in every crystal.

There’s also at least one mythical creature among King’s vast cast. The publisher of the town paper is an allegedly dyed-in-the-wool Republican who drives a Prius and appears to value facts and reason over Rennie’s appeals to base emotion. But hey, I guess I can allow the author one completely unbelievable idea.

Don’t go Under the Dome expecting the truly unexpected. When it comes to the nature and purpose of the invisible bubble, King tips his hand relatively early. The answer is one which would’ve seemed familiar to Rod Serling.

That said, it’s an engrossing book. It’s only easy to put down because it’s so damned heavy.

Dave Books reviews, Stephen King, Under the Dome

So, I spent part of my vacation day at the theater watching 2012.

Don’t look at me like that. I’ve seen what you do with your time.

Yes, I knew going in that it was nothing more than disaster porn. But hey, I grew up in the days of Irwin Allen. I saw Earthquake in Sensurround. I watched Shelley Winters drown again and again. And goodness knows how many times When Worlds Collide aired on WGN-TV’s Family Classics. Someone’s mother dies of cancer? That’s heartbreaking. Millions of people perish in a fiery abyss? That’s entertainment!

Of course, there was also the Roland Emmerich factor. To be charitable, the man’s work isn’t known for intricately plotted scripts and deep characterizations. Yet I enjoyed Stargate and yes, Independence Day. (Shut up about the computer virus, already. It was a fun movie and I don’t care.)

In the end, my desire to see the earth burn won out over the scars I’ve carried since Emmerich’s Godzilla remake.

The disaster porn portions of 2012 were great fun, but unfortunately the rest of it was more Godzilla or The Day After Tomorrow than Independence Day.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. Yes, the “end of the Mayan calendar in 2012″ thing is bullshit. Doesn’t matter. I read Silver Age comic books; I’m not all that worried about scientific accuracy or spurious folklore in my popcorn flicks.

Fortunately, aside from a few “the Mayans knew this was coming” references, the 2012 apocalypse apocrypha doesn’t come up all that much. For the most part, 2012‘s scenario owes more to old-timey sci-fi disasters like Crack in the World or the aforementioned When Worlds Collide. Rising temperatures within the earth’s core buckle the crust, causing colossal earthquakes, subsidences and tsunami.

The disaster scenes, especially the harrowing flight through a collapsing Los Angeles, are an E-ticket amusement park attraction. That’s not a criticism. But they definitely have the feel of an out-of-control Indiana Jones ride.

Now, that scene in the trailer with John Cusack’s plane staying just ahead of cracks in the earth and falling debris? Pretty much the whole first half of the film is like that. Cusack barely escapes L.A., then barely escapes Yellowstone, then barely escapes Las Vegas. His character has an impenetrable shield of script immunity. Nothing is gonna stop him surviving the end of the world and reuniting his broken family.

I found it amusing that I’ve been to every one of the U.S. locations marked for destruction. Santa Monica? Check. Hawaii? Check. It was like my most destructive vacation video.

I got a kick out of the audacious and ridiculous disaster scenes. I’m pretty sure that I spotted the Pope being crushed in the collapse of the Vatican.

But when landmarks weren’t going splat, it was rough going. The whole John Cusack and his estranged spouse and her new husband angle played out in the most pedestrian manner possible. And with few exceptions–notably a cameo by Woody Harrelson as a pickle-eating conspiracy theorist–there wasn’t a lot of humor. I like Cusack, but in terms of cocky heroics, he’s no Will Smith.

Plus, did I mention that is was 158 minutes long? (When Worlds Collide was 83 minutes.) Just when the whole thing seems to be wrapping up, there’s an entire third (or fourth) act where they’ve got to pull the thing out of the thing before the other thing hits a really big thing.

It should not be a spoiler that John Cusack survives. Never mind that it would’ve been more dramatically appropriate for him to die in defense of his former family and their New Dad, or that it would’ve been somewhat unexpected for a big star like Cusack to be ground between two enormous gears. (Modern filmmakers forget that Gene Hackman–the star of The Poseidon Adventure–went down with the ship.)

This is a Roland Emmerich film. And that means that not only does Cusack make it to the credits, so does the dog.

Dave Movies 2012, disaster porn, reviews, Roland Emmerich

Amidst all of the hoopla over NBC giving over five hours a week of prime time to Jay Leno, another story has been largely lost: the (creative) resurgence of the Peacock’s Thursday comedy lineup. If anything, it’s better than ever; even back in it’s “Must See TV” days, NBC’s Thursday inevitably had one series that was simply placeholding. There’s no Jesse or Veronica’s Closet here.

Now, none of them are “hits,” even under the greatly diminished expectations of today’s broadcast industry. The biggest audience success is The Office, which pulls down a 5 rating on a good day. And, despite all the awards and the post-Palin buzz surrounding Tina Fey, 30 Rock is nothing like a mass-audience appeal show. (In fact, the running storyline this season has the show-within-a-show trying to hire new talent in an attempt to win over “real America.”)

Unfortunately, the two newcomers–Community and Parks and Recreation–aren’t doing even that well in terms of Nielsen numbers. Yet for me they’ve made Thursday a night on which I can anticipate the laughing off of my ass.

(One caveat here: I am not a fan of The Office. I know people like it, but neither version of the series has ever done a thing for me. I checked out a few early episodes because of Steve Carell, but it comes from the school of comedy that depends on awkward pauses and cringe-worthy moments.)

Community is built around Joel McHale–a comedian Vic and I have enjoyed as the host of E’s The Soup.–but I think that the real strength of the series is its ensemble. McHale plays a lawyer who has to go back to school after his dodgy college degree is invalidated. Smitten with a hot, young thing named Britta, he creates a fake Spanish study group in an attempt to bed her, but the group soon takes on a life of its own. It becomes, if you will, a community.

I like how it takes a bunch of random people who would normally have no reason to hang together and bounces them off each other in unexpected ways. In addition to McHale’s semi-skeevy Jeff and aforementioned lust interest Britta, there’s divorcee Shirley, ex-football star Troy, film student/savant Abed, brainy Annie and elder weirdo Pierce.

Pierce is played by Chevy Chase, someone I’d long ago written off as a once-funny asshole. But here he reminds me of what I liked about him in the first place. And, to my surprise, he can still pull off a pratfall.

I must admit that I’ve become rather fond of Alison Brie as Annie. No doubt that some of that is wish-fulfillment; her character is exactly the sort of girlfriend I longed for back in high school. But I like that she’s been able to throw off the shackles of simply being “the smart one” on the show. A recent episode had her as an all-too-willing enabler of an experiment in psychological torture to which only Abed was immune.

Abed is the breakout character of the show, a milder version of Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. Like Sheldon, he appears to be living with Asperger’s, but unlike him, he seems to be a keen student of character. Last week’s episode hinged around his strangely prescient student films based on the lives of his fellow study groupees.

Also, he makes a great Batman.

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Meanwhile, Parks and Recreation has turned from a fluttering Office-wannabe into the night’s most dependable comedy. During its short test-run last season it didn’t generate a lot of laughs, but I could at least see the potential there.

Like Community, I was drawn to the show by the presence of someone I’ve liked elsewhere: Saturday Night Live star Amy Poehler. Poehler’s character, well-intentioned deputy director Leslie Knope, has been toned down a lot this season after initial episodes played her as intensely-focused yet clueless. She’s become much more self-aware and therefore more sympathetic, even as she’s continued on her tireless crusade to turn the local dumping pit into a children’s park.

The show has a great deal of fun lampooning small-town politics, with ferocious turf-battles fought over the likes of zoning permits. Pawnee, Indiana is a place with a rich history of institutionalized racism (decorated with such hilarious WPA-era murals as “A Lively Fisting“), where everyone acknowledges that the library is “evil” (its librarians are notoriously vicious schemers).

Here again, Parks and Recreation benefits from a strong supporting cast, including Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford, who adopted his unlikely, white bread moniker because he didn’t think his given name of Darwish Sabir Ismael Gani would get him far in politics. He’s the office sleaze, but there are hints of heart lurking underneath.

And, as with Alison Brie over on Community, I like Rashida Jones as Leslie’s friend Ann. Rashida is the daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton (of The Mod Squad), and she’s easy on my bleary eyes. She’s also pretty funny, even though she’s more of the straight woman to the more broadly comic characters.

The funniest of these is Ron Swanson, played by former University of Illinois grad Nick Offerman. (He graduated in 1993 according to Wikipedia; that’s four years after I started work here!) Swanson’s deadpan minimalism masks his inner absurdity. He moonlights as saxophonist “Duke Silver;” has a thing for dark-haired women and breakfast foods; and has two ex-wives and a mother all named Tammy. (One of the Tammys is Offerman’s real-life wife Megan Mullally, who recently played the wicked head of the Pawnee library.)

I could do without the series’ employment of the fake-documentary style used by The Office. That sort of thing works fine in a one-off like This is Spinal Tap, but for an on-going series it starts to grate after a while. I mean, really, there’s been a film crew following around Jim and Pam for five years?

While both Parks and Recreation and Community continue to struggle in the ratings, hopefully NBC has enough other problems that it will be patient with them. For me, at least, they really are Must See TV.

Dave TV Alison Brie, Community, Parks and Recreation, Rashida Jones, reviews

The third episode of V continued a solid streak so far. It’s not as gripping as the original ’80s miniseries, but that had the advantage of being constructed as a one-time “event,” not the first four episodes of an ongoing weekly show. It could afford to tip its hand early. V Mark II has been slower to build, but I do have the sense that it’s going somewhere.

One aspect of the show that I’ve enjoyed more than I expected was the addition of the infiltration angle. Sure, the “aliens secretly among us” bit has been done many times before, but here it ratchets up the danger of starting a human resistance against the Visitors. The sense of paranoia in episode two was palpable.

Tonight’s installment managed to surprise me three times. Two instances involved twists that–while they weren’t “lizard baby” awesome–I certainly did not see coming. Bye bye, Wash!

The third surprise was the unexpected adoption of the original show’s Visitor alphabet. It’s a nice callback for old school V fans. I wonder if they consulted my website?

Only one more episode ’til the show vanishes for a few months. Hopefully the word of retooling isn’t an evil portent. Apparently, filming doesn’t resume ’til January, so they’ve got plenty of time to work out the kinks.

Dave Sci-Fi V

This has been a rare, two-movie weekend for me. Last night Vic and I went to The Men Who Stare at Goats, and this afternoon I caught up with Paranormal Activity after a disastrously failed attempt on Halloween night in which a horde of loudly-talking, cellphone-texting underage kids drove me from the theater.

Now, I have seen more than my fair share of George Clooney movies. That’s mostly because of Vic; Clooney sits atop her “gimme” list. But I admit that I like him as well. (He’s not on my “gimme” list, but he is on my “if I swung that way” list.)

George has a bunch of positive attributes: roguish charisma, sincerity about parlaying his fame into making the world (specifically Darfur) a better place, and–perhaps most important–an inability to take himself seriously. He understands the limitations of fame and the simple truth that the people you treat like shit on the way up will be waiting for you when you come back down.

Clooney also makes interesting choices. He could’ve easily become a romantic comedy star, but he’s only made one (One Fine Day) since his breakout role on E.R. Instead, he turns up in all manner of quirky stories, quite often playing against type as someone either mentally deficient or bugfuck nuts.

Which brings me to The Men Who Stare at Goats, in which Clooney portrays one of the former members of a (real-life) clandestine, U.S. Army unit which was dedicated to developing psychically-powered super-soldiers. This semi-fictionalized adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book of the same name bops back and forth between modern-day Iraq and the early ’80s, as a reporter (Ewan McGregor) meets up with Clooney’s character in the present and delves into the oddball history of the “First Earth Battalion.”

I wish that it spent more of its time in hippie-dippie land. When it does, it fulfills the promise made by the trailers of a silly, satirical look at the military. But honestly, The Men Who Stare at Goats should have been titled The Man Who Once Stared at a Goat. Because, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve pretty much all of the goat-staring that it has to offer. The present-day Iraq material is okay, and–just as in real-life–does tie into the legacy of the “First Earth Battalion,” but the ’80s material is much more fun.

My other excursion to the multiplex this weekend was Paranormal Activity, the latest in the sub-genre of “found footage” horror flicks. While I don’t think it quite lived up to its terrifying reputation, it’s worth checking out if you’re into this sort of thing.

To be honest, I was surprised that The Blair Witch Project, which made nearly $250 million against an initial budget of about $25,000, didn’t immediately spawn a legion of knock-offs. The low entry level coupled with the possibility of a massive return on investment seemed likely to inspire a horde of would-be M. Night Shyamalans to spend their nights scaring the shit out of some amateur actors and capturing the results on digital video.

While I’m aware of a few such movies, the only one I can recall that was of much consequence was Cloverfield. And that one was really a mid-budget Hollywood flick masquerading as a cheap indie project.

Now comes the true Blair Witch successor. Paranormal was reportedly made for about half of Blair‘s already-minuscule budget. Seriously, I could’ve bankrolled this thing out of my saving account.

It shares the same handmade aesthetic and improvised dialogue, but outdoes Blair in one area: it actually delivers some on-screen spooky stuff. That’s not to denigrate the earlier film; it managed to be quite scary without ever showing a damned thing. Blair left you debating whether anything supernatural had occurred; Paranormal makes clear that some shit is going down.

The hauntings are quite minimalist, mostly simple, in-camera physical effects and banging on the walls. Yet it’s all the more effective for underplaying its frightful activities.

The storyline is reminiscent of this summer’s Drag Me to Hell, with a young woman (Katie Featherston as “Katie”) facing a demonic force which grows with each passing night. But this poor kid has to deal with something that Alison Lohman’s bank teller never did: a dick with a video camera.

Okay, to be fair, the “found footage” sub-genre demands that someone continue filming events long after the time that any reasonable person would’ve put down the damned camera. So, it’s not entirely his fault that live-in boyfriend Micah (played entirely coincidentally by Micah Sloat) is such a douche. Still, rarely have I found myself wanting to punch the camera on which the film was being shot. Micah’s douchebaggery goes well above and beyond the call, continually escalating the situation and generally making Katie’s life miserable with or without sinister help.

Now, it’s not a spoiler to say that things do not end well for Katie and Micah. The film open with a slate suggesting that it is being made available courtesy of the local police. Besides, another given of a “found footage” movie is that it ends in death and/or disappearance. If anyone was still around, no one would have to “find” the footage.

Reportedly, Steven Spielberg suggested the current ending of Paranormal Activity after championing the movie’s theatrical release. Having read about the various alternate endings (and viewed the original, which can be found online), I agree that the final cut is a big improvement. Yet, another alternate version involving a slit throat sounds even better still than the slightly cheap (CGI-enhanced?) “boo” with which the film now ends.

I found myself fidgeting a bit during the last reel, and feel that its already short 86 minute running time could’ve been trimmed to an even leaner 75 without losing anything. At the end of the day, I’d much rather see Drag Me to Hell again than watch Paranormal Activity a second time. Still, it’s nice that a horror film which depends more on suggestion and simple fear of the dark has succeeded over merciless torture porn like Saw VI.

Dave Movies Paranormal Activity, reviews, The Men Who Stare at Goats

Last night, after finally winning the three-day Battle of the Kitchen Faucet (see previous post about my new love of the hacksaw in solving stubborn plumbing issues), I settled in with my daughter “Liz” to watch the first episode of the V remake.

All in all, I was very pleased with it. It was respectful of the source material while offering some intriguing new twists.

The main characters weren’t direct copies of the originals, but several seemed to be analogues of the old cast. There was the slinky alien commander, the news reporter given the chance to become the Visitors’ chief propagandist, the kid who fell under the spell of the Visitor youth corps, and the alien sympathizer in love with a human. And my memory may be a bit fuzzy, but I recall that the Catholic priest in the old V: The Final Battle miniseries was originally written as a younger character similar to the one featured in last night’s pilot.

There was a sly joke about the familiarity of the “aliens parking their motherships over Earth’s cities” trope. A news report presenting “man on the street” reactions featured a pair of sci-fi geeks. Excited Geek: “Dude, this is Independence Day!” Surly Geek: “Which was a rip-off of any number of alien invasion predecessors.” (One of these predecessors was, of course, the original V.)

The first big difference between the old and new series is the addition of covert cells of Visitors that spent several years undermining Earth society prior to the arrival of the motherships. The original Visitors would’ve been unable to pull this off despite their human appearance; they had weirdly modulated voices and an aversion to bright light. I think that the change works, as it gives the series another faction to play with. There’s even a faction within that faction: Visitor infiltrators who have gone native.

Much has been written about the supposed anti-Obama coding of the new series, with its references to “hope,” “change” and “universal health care.” I didn’t find this to be pervasive. Science-fiction stories, especially contemporary tales which are intended to be social commentaries, inevitably draw from current culture. While you can find evidence to suggest the new V is a right-wing paranoid fantasy, it’s also stated up front that the reason that the world is in such a mess is that the Visitors have been ginning up “unnecessary wars.” Sound like anyone we know?

And at the end of the day, V is a show in which the good guys are terrorists. There’s no getting around that. The original series was literally “dedicated to freedom fighters.”

My only complaint is that it felt as if the producers were trying to fit too much into an hour. The ’80s miniseries took two hours to reach more or less the same point in the narrative. While I didn’t mind the accelerated pacing–we have, after all, seen all this before–it did bother me the main characters weren’t given the chance to uncover the secrets of the Visitors on their own.

Three-quarters of the way into the episode, an Exposition Guy showed up and told them that about the aliens’ covert activities and their true reptilian nature. I know that it would have been impossible to surprise the audience in the manner of the original miniseries. Most articles about the new series gave away the “space lizards” thing. However, I think it undercut the moment in which the characters got their first glimpse of Visitor scales by giving them fair warning in advance.

V is off to a good start, but it’ll be interesting to see if they can keep it up. Production of the series was shut down for several weeks for retooling, and while that’s not all that unusual, it’s a bit worrisome. And then there’s the weird way that ABC is rolling it out, with the first four episodes in November sweeps and the remainder coming after the Winter Olympics in March.

Dave Sci-Fi reviews, V

Hacksaw!

(Ask for it by name!}

Dave General about freakin' time, hacksaw!