On Monday, Stan Lee went to the White House, where he was awarded a National Medal of Arts. His reaction in an interview on Sunday was, "I wonder what took so long."* So do the rest of us, Stan! It's well deserved.
*In fairness, he followed that with "Say, 'He said it with a laugh' or I'll shoot you." God knows, we don't want to be on Stan's bad side.
Posted by Doug at November 18, 2008 2:54 AM
One thing that's already got me bugging is the choice to show Rorsarch's mask changing its ink splotches. In the comics, this happened every panel he was in (except for scenes set in the past), near as I can tell, but no attention was paid to it; it was a subtle detail designed to emphasize the character's mental instability and reference the idea that we all see different things in a Rorsarch pattern. Making it a literal aspect of the character rather than a metaphysical one strikes me as a poor choice, and the kind of mentality I fear will permeate the rest of the film.
In the Rorschach flashback issue (#6?) we're told that he made his mask out of a "Dr. Manhattan spinoff fabric", with shifting black and white liquids between latex.(*) So the changing patterns was intended to be literal. Indeed, some patterns recurred, giving Rorschach the equivalent of facial expressions -- for example, compare the pattern when Rorschach discovers the Comedian's closet to the pattern when he discovers Moloch's body.
(*)I've wondered for a while now how exactly Rorschach was meant to be breathing through such a fabric. I mean, he had the equivalent of a plastic bag over his head.
Apparently he wasn't meant to breath very well. He went nuts from oxygen deprivation.
Btw, I can understand not wanting to make the Watchmen comments on my blog, I suppose, but why are you making them in Doug's post on Stan Lee?
Btw, congratulations Stan, but all you need to know about the Shrub is that in the same breath that he honors Jesus Moroles and Olivia De Havilland, he also honors the Sherman Brothers, composers of "It's a Small World." Okay, that's unfair, buecause I like "The Jungle Book," and they also did the songs for "Chitty chitty, Bang Bang," "Snoopy, Come Home," "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh," and even "Little Nemo: Adventures in SLumberland." But W is leaving office, so I'll take a cheap shot where I can get it.
"It's a small world after all. It's a smaaaall world...."
Mike: That was an accident on my part, one I realized too late. X_X
Congrats to Stan Lee, by the way.
Mike, on the other hand, they gave us the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn musicals in the '70s, so the "It's A Small World" tag is perfectly valid.
I don't know. I've got a soft spot for the Shermans based on "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and much of their other work for Mary Poppins. I'll even go out on a limb and argue that "It's a Small World" isn't that bad a song as long as you don't have to listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . . and over . . .