Quick Review: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Walter Chaw is correct here in his one-star review, that points out the small Burton-esque side-details are much more intriguing than the centerpieces of the movie.

I'd add that the first half of the movie is generally weird and interesting in a way you usually don't get from YA novels. Florida is shot in a banal, over-saturated way that gives it a whole hyperreal aesthetic reminiscent of the Prequel Trilogy, but also mumblecore classics like American Beauty and Garden State. The main parent is fundamentally broken in a way that isn't cliche or dismissive. And the first few appearances of Eva Green's Miss Peregrine are very disturbing in an overly-possessive mother type way: she will plan every minute of your life every day, to keep you young and innocent forever, and is dismissive of any part of her personality that does not relate to raising children. It's creepy and the whole thing comes together make it seriously questionable whether the protagonist Jake should or would want to stay in this fantasyland.

But then the bad guys show up and everything is off to YA cliche-dom. Of especially disappointing note is that there is a scene (in a Tim Burton movie) where: a skeleton army fights eldritch monsters in an amusement park, and it is drab and unexciting, completely lacking in the phantasmic horror you would expect.

Warcraft: Legion of the Underclass

Okay, a break from TV week to discuss the latest World of Warcraft expansion. Specifically, the top level zone Suramar. Suramar is fucking fantastic.

Seinfeld and God

Seinfeld was the most successful sitcom of the 90's, and has since been denounced as one of the most morally bankrupt pieces of art of the generation. The "show about nothing" to many critics became "nothing matters."

This is completely wrong, and instead Seinfeld provided a valuable contrast between morality and ethics, two words often used interchangeably but importantly different.

Ferrante and Reading

Wow, this entire saga about Elena Ferrante insisting on being anonymous so people read her work rather than the ineffable person behind her work says some pretty brilliant things about Ferrante.

It has become natural to think of the author as a particular individual who exists, inevitably, outside the text—so that if we want to know more about what we’re reading we should address that individual, or find out everything about his more or less banal life. Remove that individual from the public eye and, as O’Rourke says, we discover that the text contains more than we imagine. 

Aaaaaaand the literature review industry has just turned Ferrante's anonymity into an object of fetishization itself, to have an idol to discuss (and reel in horror at the violation of) rather than discussing the text of her books.

Daredevil

Marvel's Luke Cage came out this week. I don't want to review it without a chance to think about it for a while, so instead let's talk about the first of these Marvel-Netflix shows (where they released an entire season at once, and based in the Marvel cinematic universe (MCU)) : Daredevil.  It is much moodier, darker, and more visually interesting than an MCU movie (or Agent Carter or Agents of SHIELD), and so in that way it is more like the DC movies we see coming out (Dark Knight, Batman vs Superman). (In contrast, the Flash show might as well be part of the MCU.) 

Love, Actually

Christmas is almost here, and you know what that means. It's the season of thinkpieces about the controversial British romcom "Love, Actually". No, really, the movie is a perennial battleground, whether you love it or hate it. Let's talk about LA - and why it evokes such strong, opposing reactions - now so you have something to link to when arguments about it come up on your dashboard.

Crystal Society Heads Up

For those of you who like rationalist serial fiction, you may want to read Crystal Society. The author just announced the release date for Book 2 (January), so this came to mind. For when you've finished (go ahead, we'll wait), or those who have already read it, here's a quick thematic head-check below the fold: