I promise this is my last post about pop-media frivolity.
I’m not sure how I feel about V for Vendetta, either. I think that when the Wachowskis have a decent plot to work with, they turn in solid product–for example Bound, which was throughly enjoyable and did not abuse the Joey Pants. And V for Vendetta is one of my favorite graphic novels: sharp, suspenseful, and chock-ful of violence: a postapocalyptic Jacobean revenge play.
They also seem to have switched in Hugo Weaving for Keanu Reeves, and Natalie Portman for Carrie Anne Moss. Stephen Fry is also in this movie, which casting choice I choose to read as a good omen.
So I think it’ll be good (pretty please, God?).
Speaking of fanboy wankery–and things named V–remember when I name-dropped Zack Smith a few days ago? He’s an artist who does all these ink-and-watercolor pictures, mainly portraits of women. They’re very beautiful. Anyway, he decided, utterly without prompting or compensation of any kind, to illustrate every page of Gravity’s Rainbow. (Go look; they’re also very beautiful.) Gravity’s Rainbow. Is that not the most pretentious thing you’ve ever heard?
I think I’m gonna go paint a picture for every page of Ethan Frome.
I’m mixing equal parts hope and trepidation with regards to V.
I dearly love the graphic novel. It was in many ways a formative influence since I read it when I was in my early teens and I am now an anarchist myself.
But how the hell do you do that story justice on the screen?
I hope it is good but I worry. A lot.
(P.S. I also love Stephen Fry, mainly for his Melchitt on Blackadder. Old BBC kicks ass).
Logic dictates that it’ll blow chunks, but I’m seeing it anyway.
Zack Smith – is this the fellow who has done a lot of work with some of the models from the SuicideGirls website? Yes, those paintings are absolutely remarkable.
I know this is gonna sound stupid, but… they set it in the “future”
I realize that, when written, it was set in “the post apocalyptic future” but for the year 1997. Alternate Histories are nice, y’know.
I’m gonna leave alone for now the deeply deeply misogynist elements of V (because it’s a deep seated valid criticism of a graphic novel that I love so very dearly) but I fear it will suck. Suck like Ultraviolet.
I fear because I remember the second matrix movie (never did see the third)
and I like Pynchon. don’t you make fun of me! just because I read thick, indecypherable post-modernist tomes, enjoy Surrealist art, and drink tea like it was going out of style doesn’t make me pretensious! nor does my occational affectation of non-native slang, my top hat, sword collection, or use of a cane model umbrella.
don’t you mock me, you… philistinic gwailo. I’m gonna go read The Invisibles.