To Ray Bradbury

My favorite author is dead. Perhaps this is not such a sad thing, as Ray Bradbury lived a very long and full life, was much beloved and respected, and created many, many enduring works of fiction. My first major encounter with his writing was when I was about twelve, and borrowed the audiobook, "The Fantastic Tales of Ray Bradbury," from the library to help pass the time during a long car trip. I spent most of that trip becoming increasing entranced with Bradbury's stories. Each of the eight cassette tapes had a short story or two on each side, narrated by Bradbury himself. One of them, containing "The Illustrated Man" and "Marionettes, Inc," refused to play on my Walkman. However, after trying every other option in the house when we got home, it was coaxed to play correctly on my father's hefty old 70s era portable cassette player, about the size of a briefcase. I just had to keep holding down the Play button to counter one of the cassette spools being a bit stuck, which I did for the entire length of both stories, not minding a bit.

Bradbury wrote about October circuses and robot grandmothers and the terrible beauty of the planet Mars and its inhabitants. He wrote about being a boy in a small Midwestern town, about nightmare visions of the future, about monsters of every conceivable shape and size, from red-faced babies to totalitarian societies that would criminalize the act of taking an evening walk or owning a book. He's best known for his fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, but he also wrote nostalgic stories about American life and childhood. What made much of his work so distinctive was his ability to make any setting, any place feel wondrous and terrifying and full of unseen mystery. His short stories were anthologized in dozens of collections with titles like "R is for Rocket," "S is for Space," "The October Country," "The Illustrated Man," and of course, "The Martian Chronicles." The city library had several of these, but my junior high library actually had more of the older, more obscure volumes, which I happily devoured, along with "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "Fahrenheit 451," and "The Halloween Tree." Many of the short stories became the basis of the anthology series "The Ray Bradbury Chronicles," which was produced for television in the mid-80s.

As this is a media blog, I should talk about Bradbury's multiple brushes with Hollywood. He wrote for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and he wrote a single installment of "The Twilight Zone," though his own stories often seemed to embody the spirit of that show better than many of the actual episodes. Bradbury also wrote for movies, including the first treatment of "It Came from Outer Space," John Huston's "Moby Dick," and an unproduced sequel to "The Day the Earth Stood Still." There were several adaptations of his work, including "Something Wicked This Way Comes," François Truffaut's deeply troubled "Fahrenheit 451," "The Illustrated Man," the "Martian Chronicles" miniseries, "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit," "A Sound of Thunder," and an animated version of "The Halloween Tree," which I try to watch every year. None of the adaptations ever lived up to the books and the short stories, as it has proven very difficult to translate the richness of Bradbury's writing to the screen. Filmmakers keep trying, though. Remakes of two films, "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Illustrated Man," have been in various states of development for ages.

I regret that I never quite managed to meet the man. In the mid-90s, I remember reading about his yearly appearances at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, but the events were always hours of driving away, and Bradbury's appearances were so popular that there was no hope of getting tickets. By stupendous luck, I was in the audience for his final appearance at Comic-Con, but missed him at the book signing afterwards. I can't imagine what I would have said to him. Probably thank you. Thank you for Margot in the rain on Venus, and Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, and the dark Martians with their golden eyes, and every single member of the Elliott family, but especially Cecy and Timothy. Thank you for the catacombs of Mexico, the dandelions in Illinois, the African veldt in the nursery, and the empty mechanical house in the year 2026. And thank you for inspiring me to try writing myself, though it never amounted to much. Once I got into the habit, though, it proved very hard to stop.

Hail and farewell, my dear old friend. And rest assured that the best of you will surely live forever.
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Paging Dr. Lecter

Thomas Harris's Dr. Hannibal Lecter is one of the most popular horror figures of the past quarter century, and Hollywood has never stopped trying to capitalize on the fact. While he hasn't been subjected to the same glut of multitudinous sequels and reboots as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhies, Dr. Lecter has featured in five different theatrical films: "Manhunter" (1986), the Michael Mann film where Lecter was played by Brian Cox, Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), which won the Big Five at the Academy Awards, Ridley Scott's "Hannibal" (2001), Brett Ratner's "Red Dragon" (2002), which was both a remake of "Manhunter" and a sequel, and finally Peter Webber's much derided prequel, "Hannibal Rising" (2007).

Now Hannibal Lecter is coming to television. Not one, but two shows based on the characters in the Lecter series are in the works. Lifetime has "Clarice," about the early adventures of Agent Clarice Starling, to be produced by MGM. However, the project getting all the attention right now is "Hannibal," a different prequel series focusing on Dr. Lecter's days as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI, working with young agent Will Graham. If you're familiar with "Manhunter," this working relationship does not end well. Bryan Fuller is developing "Hannibal" for NBC, and the leads have already been cast. Hugh Dancy, is onboard as Will Graham, a good move for an actor who has been getting no traction in his film projects lately. The real surprise came yesterday with the announcement that Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, fresh from a Best Actor Award win at the Cannes Film Festival, will be playing our Hannibal the Pre-Cannibal. Americans probably know him best as the villain from "Casino Royale," but he's an excellent leading man known for intense performances.

Why on earth are we getting both of these projects now? Well, "Silence of the Lambs" was released in 1991, which puts it in the right timeframe for a nostalgic reboot. Keep in mind that we're also getting new "Sherlock Holmes," "Dallas," and "Beauty and the Beast" series, plus a "Sex and the City" prequel. And apparently that "Munsters" prequel is far from dead yet. I'm also guessing that what makes the main characters in the Hannibal Lecter series an especially promising fit for television is that they were all employed by the FBI at one point or another. The networks are always trying to find new angles on the standard crime procedural that has become more and more prevalent over the years. Having a secret serial killer as one of the good guys is certainly a strong twist, even if "Dexter" got there first. Clarice Starling would seem to be a perfect fit for Lifetime, which has been steadily moving into dramatic territory, as she's one of the only film heroines in law enforcement that anyone remembers.

Will people tune in though? NBC is taking a risk by letting Bryan Fuller follow the cable model, only producing thirteen episodes per season, which will be heavily serialized. The quality should be higher than average, but the trouble with cable shows is that they often attract smaller audiences than the network television model can afford to sustain. "Hannibal" will certainly benefit from the name recognition and the juicy premise. However, I can't help thinking about the last 90s blockbuster film turned NBC television procedural, "The Firm," with Josh Lucas. It certainly had ambition, good talent, and the production values were very impressive. It also got nowhere in the ratings, one of three NBC casualties of the Thursday 10PM slot last season. There's not much information available about "Clarice" yet, but I expect that a lot is going to depend on who gets recruited to fill Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning shoes.

And on that note, I can't wait to see whether Mads Mikkelsen is going to be able to pull off Hannibal Lecter. His involvement now has me very curious about the show, where previously I'd been ambivalent about its prospects. If all goes well, we may be able to add Hannibal Lecter to the growing list of television anti-heroes that have been at the center of so many great shows in recent years. I don't feel that there is any particular need to revisit Hannibal Lecter, but if the studio insists, I find this a much better alternative to more film sequels and reboots. We're long past the point where a television spinoff means low rent genre schlock like "Poltergeist: The Legacy" or "Friday the 13th: The Series" (a beloved guilty pleasure). If NBC can land Mikkelsen for "Hannibal," they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Crossing my fingers.
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"Game of Thrones" Season Wrap Up

Spoilers ahead for the entire second season, but not for any of the books.

I made a point of counting the number of separate strands of the "Game of Thrones" story we were following by the mid-point of this season, and I came to nine - one for each of the Stark children, including the adopted and de facto ones, plus the rest of the candidates for the Iron Throne, plus Danaerys Targaryen.

Some of these stories were clearly not as narratively weighty or yielded as much good material as others, but the show's creators persisted on stretching them all out to season length, with the exception of Renly's which ended abruptly, and spun off Brienne into her own storyline with Jamie Lannister. From what I've read, the highly fractured nature of the "Game of Thrones" books is one of its major weaknesses, and I wish that the television series would have acted to mitigate this more. There were several stories, like Jon Snow's, which would have had more impact if they had been consolidated into fewer episodes. And I can't count the number of times that the weekly check-in with Danaerys yielded no progression in her journey whatsoever. It was apparent that the creators were inventing more new scenes than last season, to help balance out the amount of time we were getting with all the different characters.

Sometimes this approach just didn't work. Easily the most tedious story this year involved Robb Stark and Talisa's battlefield romance, which was very forced and unconvincing. Talisa is probably the weakest character in the show right now, one of several women who were introduced this year to act as love interests and thankless foils to the men. There was a point late in the season when the show offered up multiple romantic and semi-romantic scenes, checking in with Rob and Talisa, Tyrion and Shae, and Jon and Ygritte, often in quick succession. At the same time, it was simplifying and reducing the more action-oriented aspects of many stories. I understand why this was important from a budgetary standpoint, as snuggling is generally cheaper to shoot than sword fights. However, the amount of gratuitous nudity got out of hand, to the point where "sexposition" has turned into a running joke among fans.

We did get the big Blackwater episode that showed full scale warfare, but viewers spent too much of this year having to wait out the more mediocre material that was filling in for content that HBO couldn't afford. This season was about the War of the Five Kings, a war we only got to see secondhand for the most part. The piecemeal nature of the storytelling also made it difficult to develop many of the characters and their motivations to the extent they should have been. Lady Catelyn's decision to trade Jamie for her daughters was set up very badly, and after investigating how it played out in the books, I have no idea why the sequence of events was changed. And I still feel I haven't seen enough of characters like Stannis Baratheon, Melisandre, and the Tyrells, who all figured heavily into the big plots this year. By the time the finale rolled around, the show dutifully checked back in with every major character in its roster, which meant an awful lot of rushing through a laundry list of climaxes and denoeuments, leaving some gaping holes in the narrative. Even the end of the Battle of Blackwater got tied up a little too quick.

On the other hand, the creators' tactics did help some storylines. Arya's scenes with Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal were a highlight of the season, though their relationship is a total invention. If I had to suffer the Stark boys' endless fumbling with the opposite sex, at least there was always the promise of Arya's tense verbal sparring with Tywin or Jaqen coming later. Theon's shifting alliances and bad decisions were handled right, though his storyline seems to have suffered some of he most significant cuts. He's such a despicable creature, but at the same time keeps growing more compelling to watch. Tyrion came the closest to filling in the leading man void left by Ned Stark, and Peter Dinklage got to improve on his impressive performance from last season. It's the reason why his romance with Shae is the only one that really works, and why the King's Landing segments were so strong all the way through this bumpy season. There was also a wealth of good supporting characters like Davos, Brienne, and Jaqen H'ghar that I'm glad we got to know. Others like Sansa, Joffrey, and Tywin Lannister have gotten ever better.

The production values of "Game of Thrones" continue to be fantastic. They added many new locations this year, but the quality never dipped. The CGI was used sparingly, but always looked feature-worthy. After last week, everyone was talking up the Battle of Blackwater, which was practically a full feature film's worth of expensive battle scenes, massive sets and props, lots of armored extras, and some nifty explosions to boot. It was very gratifying to see the show be that ambitious, but I can't help wishing that they could have spread their resources around a little more, to tighten up other places in the show. Robb's story could have used a battle, and Theon's story could have used a battle, and though she didn't need one to show off how badass she was, it wouldn't have hurt to see Arya get in on the action either.

While I found its scope admirable, the second season of "A Game of Thrones" never stopped feeling like it was setting up for something bigger coming later down the line. Aside from the Battle of Blackwater, there were no other major, definitive turning points that the show fully engaged with. The resolution of Theon's conquest of Winterfell was anticlimactic. Danaerys' stopover at Qarth shouldn't have taken more than half a season. Robb got married, but we won't see the consequences until next year. Jamie and Brienne are just getting started, and it took far too long for Jon's storyline to pay off. Out of the nine threads of the story, I came away satisfied with only a handful - Arya, the younger Stark boys, and King's Landing.

In the end I found the second season of "Game of Thrones" was a step down from the first, but I still think it accomplished plenty. I was always engaged, if often frustrated, from week to week. There's a lot of room for improvement, but also a lot of things that the show is already doing exactly right. I'll definitely be back for next year. I hear the third book in the series is going to be even more of a challenge to bring to the small screen, and I hope that the show's writers are up to the task. No matter its faults, this is the only place on television that delivers this kind of spectacle, and the only place in the whole media landscape that has done High Fantasy justice.

'Til next season.
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Canon v. Fanfiction

There's a Slate article that was posted yesterday about Before Watchmen, a series of prequel comics about the origins of the major players in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" universe. Alan Moore has made it clear that he does not approve of this, and while some fans are rejecting the new stories sight unseen, most have been fairly ambivalent. Everyone agrees that the move is a cash grab by DC, meant to capitalize on the higher profile of "Watchmen" after the recent movie version. Not many particularly care.

What caught my eye were the comments about fanfiction, first comparing a "Before Watchmen" cover image to "fan fiction detritus," and then suggesting that fanfiction was a more suitable avenue for this brand of derivative works than the "official" comics, and noting that Moore essentially wrote fanfiction himself with "Lost Girls." Cue multiple comments in the discussion section arguing the proper use of the term fanfiction, which I'm not going to reiterate here, because I've already had that argument and written those posts. Instead, I'm going to try to answer the question nobody quite managed to ask here - what makes a derivative work, a piece of intellectual property based off of a previous piece of intellectual property, a legitimate extension of the original? Where is the border between the canon work and the fanfiction? And what is the mechanism for granting that authority?

Well, you start with the original author first as the prime authority on their own work. If J.K. Rowling says that Dumbledore is gay, even though it was never stated anywhere in the "Harry Potter" books, then Dumbledore is gay. If she decides to anoint a new author to continue the adventures of the Potter kids, her word carries more weight than anyone else's. Film and television series, which are more collaborative mediums, often depend on a creator incorporating the work of others. There are only a handful television creators, for instance, who will write every episode of a show themselves, but if they retain creative oversight over the finished product, the show is still considered their work to a large degree.

However, you can't call something a derivative work until the original author is out of the picture. These days that's very common, as many creators of popular media don't have the rights to their creations. Legally, whoever controls the rights to the property controls the official canon, the right to add or change a story as their see fit. So DC can hire other creative talent to write "Before Watchmen" comics without paying any attention to the wishes of Alan Moore. When Bryan Singer made "Superman Returns," he chose to ignore the third and fourth theatrical "Superman" films and pick up the story after "Superman II," with Warner Bros' backing. In the case of comic book characters, they’re often passed around between so many different writers and artists, each making their own contribution, it’s hard to say who really was really the primary creator.

When most people think of fan fiction, they think of the amateur stories passed around online by hobbyists. However, what professional writers do when they work in one of these existing universes isn't any different, except for the money and the legalities. They're using existing characters and concepts to tell new stories. However, what the money and the legalities give them is immediate legitimacy because they also get the right to profit by the work's association with he original. Anything written for profit is taken more seriously than the stuff written for fun and self-indulgence, and the involvement of whoever is holding the rights, even if it's as licensor for a bad tie-in novel, will at least give the appearance of oversight. Something "official" suggests that there's quality control at work somewhere, that there is a protective gatekeeper acting in the best interest of your favorite franchise, Of course, most of the time it's really about exploiting a piece of IP to the fullest extent possible. Do you really think most "Spider-man" fans are all that excited about the new reboot?

Now when the rights holder and the original author clash over the canon, who wins? It depends in each case. J.K. Rowling’s reputation is such that she’d easily win out in the court of public opinion over any company that managed to wrest the “Potter” rights away from her, and try to launch additional sequels with a different writer. Her writing is so integral to those books, she is irreplaceable. However, there's hardly any fuss when Marvel plays musical chairs with the writers and directors of its "Avengers" universe movies, or make decisions about their content that any previous creative talent would disagree with. In the television world, fans raised a fuss when Dan Harmon was fired from "Community," but nobody blinked an eye when "Whitney" got a new showrunner.

The final arbiter is really the audience. They're the ones who draw a lot of the lines between what is considered canon and what isn't, who will challenge the authority of the people who control a beloved media property, and sometimes even the original authors. They're the ones who ignore lesser movie sequels, who pretend that "After MASH" and the third season of "Gargoyles" never happened, and are quick to remind you that Han Solo shot first, despite what George Lucas thinks. No amount of hype or marketing was enough to convince them that George Lazenby was meant to be James Bond, or that Halle Berry was Catwoman. The fans are the ones who care the most about what is and isn't canon, so it makes sense that they often have the most say over the matter in the end.

There are very few instances of something originating purely from the fans being incorporated into canon, because the amateurs and the professionals exist in separate universes to everyone's benefit. but it does happen once in a while. There's Derpy from the "My Little Pony" cartoon, "Figwit" in "Lord of the Rings," and Lt Uhura's first name. And of course that's not counting the number of fans who ended up writing for "Dr. Who" or "Batman" or "Star Trek" officially, with all the money and the legalities. You'll hear writers for many of these properties touting fan credentials these days, and for good reason. If the original author is out of the picture, and the motives of the rights holders are suspect, sometimes a derivative work can still be good and worthwhile if the new creator is significantly invested in it.

In the case of "Before Watchman," DC did one thing right. They put some of their best talent on the project, including J. Michael Straczynski and Brian Azzarello. You can argue that DC is disrespecting Alan Moore and that they're only doing this for the money, but nobody can say whether or not the miniseries are actually going to be any good. If the quality is up to par, and they're accepted by the fans, they'll become a part of the "Watchmen" canon whether Moore likes it or not. And if they're terrible, then the fans will reject them, like the "Psycho" sequels no one remembers, or "The Blues Brothers 2000," and we can all move on.
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A "Sopranos" Update

I’ve finished three seasons of “The Sopranos,” so I figure it’s time for an update. This will be pretty spoiler light. A long story short, I’m not enjoying the series much. I’m appreciating the hell out of it, but this is not a show I ever would have started watching on my own if it didn’t have the reputation that it enjoys. I’ve never been much of a fan of mob stories, or any of the related material. Watching “The Sopranos” has reminded my why.

The biggest problem I have watching the show is that I find it very difficult to empathize with any of the characters. I became disillusioned with Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) very quickly when the storylines began involving the criminal activities more and more often. On the job, Tony is a bully, surrounded by and enabled by other bullies. The occasionally feels guilty about ruining other peoples’ lives, but not badly enough to ever take the high road or do the right thing. I know that I’m supposed to be rooting for his redemption, alongside Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), but instead I’ve been quietly hoping that Tony will get what’s coming to him. Unlike other television antiheroes, he’s a bad man whose steps toward self-improvement and good mental health are only helping him to be a better criminal. On a moral scale, he’s been a bad nut from the start, and watching him indulge his vices, put out fires, and occasionally wrestle with a shrinking conscience only serves to make this more obvious.

This is not to say that Tony’s story is not well written, that Gandolfini’s performance isn’t excellent, or that the show hasn’t done many, many interesting things with the character. Even though I find myself caring less and less for Tony, I admire the world and the web of relationships that the show has drawn around him. My favorite part of “The Sopranos” is the part I suspect most of its really ardent fans dislike – Tony’s home life. His marriage to Carmela (Edie Falco) is built on lies and compromises, and it’s been fascinating to see how that works, and the effect that it has on each of them. The kids, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and AJ (Robert Iler) have seen their roles slowly expand, even though Meadow went to college at the start of Season Three, which would mean less screen time and reduced importance on most other shows. On “The Sopranos,” Meadow moving out actually puts her in a position to be more involved in the season’s big mob storyline.

The biggest strength of “The Sopranos” is this big cast of characters that it slowly builds up, familiarizing us with them gradually through the aggregation of many small encounters. It’s never predictable how any of the big, season-long storylines is going to play out, because so many different people are usually involved. As a result, it never feels like the smaller stories with side characters like Janice (Aida Tutrurro), Junior (Dominic Chianese), Christopher (Michael Imperioli), or even Charmaine and Artie Bucco (Kathrine Narducci, John Ventimiglia) are a waste of time, because everyone is connected so well in “The Sopranos” universe, and who knows which of them is going to be the next one to get in trouble, and maybe end up dead? They’re not always equally compelling, but everyone gets their moments. Even Christopher, whose brushes with show business were some of the worst episodes I’ve seen so far, can be great with the right material. The one “The Sopranos” installment I love without reservation is the famous “Pine Barrens,” where he and Paulie (Tony Sirico) literally get lost in the woods.

However, the more I watch these characters, fleshed-out and well-rounded as they are, the more ambivalent I am about their fates, and the more clinically I find myself viewing them. The only exception is Dr. Melfi, who is appearing less and less as time goes on. It's fun to watch the mechanisms of the mob stories unfold, but because I have so little emotional investment in anyone, the big events resonate as deeply with me as they probably do with other people. I'm surprised at how little I sympathize with Carmela and Meadow, who are such strong characters despite fitting some unfortunate tropes. I suspect a lot of the apathy comes from knowing too much about how some of these stories are going to play out, and not having the benefit of uncertainty regarding the fates of Tony and those around him.

Still, I'm hopeful for the second half. The first three seasons managed to spring some surprises on me that I didn't see coming, and the little moments of humor and humanity count for a lot. I can certainly see why "The Sopranos" is considered one of the best television shows ever made. The level of quality has been consistently phenomenal. But I'm never going to be one of those people who becomes a rabid fan or will watch the series multiple times. I'm glad I got to know all these characters, but I just don't see myself getting too attached.
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Ho Hum "Continuum"

It's frustrating when you have a show with all the right elements in place, except for one big, inescapable problem right at the center. The new Canadian science-fiction series “Continuum” is nothing groundbreaking, though its effects are a notch higher than what you usually see on television. Its premise is pure pulp – in a corporately controlled cyberpunk future, a group of terrorists are condemned to death but escape to the past, which is our present day. They accidentally bring a lone policewoman with them, Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols), who is intent on hunting down the convicts and returning to her own time. She quickly rounds up some allies, including a tech geek, Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen), who can appreciate all the spiffy advanced technology Kiera uses, and Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster), a police detective she cons into believing she’s a colleague from Portland.

So far so good, right? “Continuum” could be a lot of fun. It’s exactly the kind of high concept, techno-babble-heavy, cheesy sci-fi action show I loved watching as a teenager. However, that big problem I was talking about? It’s the lead actress, Rachel Nichols. She’s terrible. She has exactly two expressions, stoic and vulnerable, which is fine when she’s playing the one-woman army, but not fine when she has to interact with other characters. Kiera falls into the trap of being one of those morally upright, dedicated, professional women that we’re all supposed to admire for her skill and effectiveness, but who has no damn personality to speak of. She’s also a mother with a young son waiting for her in the future, which certainly gives her good motivation, but doesn’t automatically make her sympathetic or interesting. I tried to think of how Kiera might have come across differently if she were a male character, but I kept coming up with the same two descriptors – blank and humorless. A better actress could have made up for the deficiencies in writing, but I'm not optimistic in this case.

The plot has some interesting ideas, but I think the creators tipped their hands too quick, with all the harping on how the governments of the future are all controlled by corporations, and personal freedoms have been severely curtailed. It’s pretty much inevitable that at least some of the terrorists Kiera is chasing will turn out to have been the good guys all along, and Kiera will learn the error of her ways and switch sides after a lot of emotional turmoil about destroying a future she has a lot invested in. Or maybe not. The episode pointedly also offers up multiple theories of time travel, suggesting the possibility that Kiera’s intervention in the past may have created the future she came from. I don't think subtlety is going to be one of the show's big strengths.

What I did find impressive were the special effects, which feature lots of scenic CGI cityscapes, lots of augmented reality technology, and lots of little gadgets and crime-fighting apps that Kiera shows off over the course of the hour. Many of these are integrated into right into her uniform, which allow her to access funds from ATMs, to generate electric shocks, and analyze data with the results popping up on her sleeve instead of a computer screen. All fun stuff, all well-realized and integrated into the show. However, clothing and hairstyles don't appear to have changed much otherwise between 2012 and 2077, which dates it immediately. And considering how the show has been constructed, I don't see Kiera checking in too often with the future in the weeks to come. Well, a few glimpses of a certain mystery man played by William B. Davis aside.

Now "Continuum" and its leading lady have plenty of opportunity to improve. There have been some famously terrible pilots and even whole first seasons of genre shows like this, where it took a while for everyone to get their act together. While Nichols isn't inspiring much confidence right now, maybe some of the supporting cast will pick up the slack. The pilot didn't spend much time with the villains, if they are the villains, who could be the souce of more interesting material. I'm being harsher on "Continuum" than I probably should be because it does have a certain ambition about it and a certain potential that could yield some good television. For now I think I'd class it with shows like "The Cape" and "The Bionic Woman," that had good ideas but hit some major stumbling blocks in the execution.
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Okay, Let's Talk About "Kevin"

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a psychological horror film about guilt, about a mother whose teenage son has done something horrible. We first meet Eva (Tilda Swinton), living alone as a pariah in her small town, barely scraping by doing menial office work, and living in constant fear of her hostile neighbors and the rest of the community. Many of them are angry with her, and perhaps they have good reason to be.

Through flashbacks, we learn about her son Kevin, played by a succession of babies, dark-haired, unsmiling little boys, and finally the coolly distant Ezra Miller as a teenager. We learn how Eva and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) had very different parenting experiences with Kevin, who seemed like a perfectly normal child to Franklin, but was an unholy terror to Eva from the very beginning. As a baby, he would cry constantly, perhaps maliciously. As a toddler, he was sullen, unresponsive, and shunned Eva's attempts at affection. When he was older, there were power games and early signs of antisocial behavior. Was Kevin's abnormality due to Eva's harsh personality and early ambivalence towards motherhood? Or was there something more innately wrong with him? If so, where could the fault have come from, if not from Eva?

Directed by Lynne Ramsay, the film is a fever dream of painful memories that Eva sifts through in search of elusive answers, broken up by daily episodes of misery in the present day. The pace is often slow, and Eva's journey can be a bit meandering in the beginning, but it's all in service of a terrific build-up of tension that pays off with plenty of interest. By the time we find out exactly what Kevin did, the film is almost unbearably intense and emotionally harrowing. There are some particulars of the plot that are a little ridiculous if you think about them for very long, but Ramsay does a fine job of translating them cinematically, and making them work for the story on a thematic level. She also does a great things with the visuals, particularly the color red, which recurs throughout the film. Sometimes it appears in physical objects, and sometimes in abstract flashes, acting as a transitional element from past to present, from memory to reality and back again.

Then you have the performances. This is more exceptional work from Tilda Swinton, who plays Eva in two distinctly different states - first as the frustrated mother at war with a young son she is unable to connect with, and then as a haunted, guilt-ridden shadow of her formerly vibrant self. It's her work in the flashbacks that I found the most intriguing, because Swinton is so good at playing up the ambiguity of Eva's culpability. We're certainly sympathetic to her when Kevin behaves abominably, but there's a coldness to Eva that comes through at times, especially when she's trying to bargain and reason with a small child who is clearly not in a position to do either. I can't imagine the film without her at the center of it. John C. O'Reilly doesn't get much to do here except play another good-natured everyman, which he does here as well as he always does. Ezra Miller as teenage Kevin, however, was a good find. He manages to hold his ground with Swinton in several key scenes, and succeeds in making the audience question whether Kevin should really be considered the villain or the victim or both.

There has been no shortage of films about evil children over the years, but none as thoughtful or as effective as this one. The vital difference here is that the horror doesn't come from what Kevin does, or even from what he is, but from the possibility that the evil in him is a manifestation of some dark part of Eva. That's a far more awful thing to confront than demons or ghouls or a simple abomination of nature. Horror films - and for any parent, "Kevin" is definitely a horror film - rarely tap into these kinds of fears, probably because it requires navigating so much difficult emotional territory and asks so many uncomfortable questions. I don't think "We Need to Talk About Kevin" would have worked without Tilda Swinton's performance. And in other hands, it could have all gotten campy or trite very fast.

But between Swinton and Ramsay, "Kevin" is exceptional. It's easily the best horror film I've seen in ages, and one of the best films of last year, period.
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