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Iron Man is a great movie for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the action sequences and pyrotechnic displays. Ultimately, though, the themes go deeper than this, and the informed viewer can sense their complexity beneath the surface of the film. Behind the character story of a young Playboy taking [...]

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Alex in Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park"

Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" is a movie on the edge of experimental, just narrative enough to be engaging, but artistic enough that it might make you scratch your head a bit. As with Gus Van Sant's other movies, like "Elefant," it's about tortured youth and disillusionment. As a cinema experience, as much as it seems obtuse and existential, it probably has something really worthwhile to say to us about the way we're experiencing the world.

It's hard to pin the central theme down to anything in particular, because the story revolves around the life of the main character and portrays it in a number of ways: mundane, terrifying, and romanticized. At times, Alex is a detached, understimulated teenager; at times, he is a pragmatic actor with opinions and agency; at times, he is a dreamer adrift in his own head. At the turning point of the story, he is a frightened, paralyzed victim of circumstance, and a fallible human who has to deal with a range of unintended consequences.

A good deal of the film focuses on the filler between the important moments in Alex's life. We often accompany him on his walks to and from class, and we often gaze for extended scenes into his eyes as he looks at somebody sitting next to him. The attention given to these minutiae makes it seem, at times, like the whole movie is an account of Alex's denial and avoidance of the tragedy he witnessed. This aspect is what makes Ken Fox of TVGuide.com call the film "Dostoyevskian." Read in a certain way, it's a study of guilt seeping into everyday life in subtle ways, like "Crime and Punishment" so long before.

This definitely doesn't adequately describe the movie, though. At certain times, Alex seems to have a real, believable teenagehood and agency, even apart from the psychological burden he's bearing. For much of the film, his words are credible: he gives a good reason for being at Paranoid Park, and a believable reason for breaking up with his girlfriend, and he seems to care about his friends. We're also introduced to his dream world, fantasies of skateboarding shown in grainy slow-motion shots, and this doesn't seem to be a shallow facade created simply to cover up his guilt and fear. If his life is already empty and detached, is there even anything for a tragedy to suddenly "upset"?

Ultimately, the film becomes an exercise in misdirection: the dramatic moments are offset by the long, slow lingering shots, and the core emotional crisis is wrapped by a sort of existential crisis of teenagehood, equally poignant, but much more common.

Van Sant's strength, as a filmmaker, is to allow the viewer to decide where the emphasis must lie. Is Alex's detachment a symptom of his guilt? Is he distracted by tragedy, or by his dreams of skateboarding, so rudely interrupted by violence and death? Is the accident the defining moment for Alex's personality, or is it merely a strange tangent, a litmus test for his level of distraction and alienation from the world?

This confusion -- the loss of any reliable yardstick for judging what’s important and what's just filler -- is the problem for both Alex and for the audience, and on a day-to-day basis, it's also the problem for all of us. Between mass media sensationalism, partisan politics, and the difficult daily tasks of managing households and working in a busted economy, we're all dealing with misdirection, and we all face the possibility of detachment and alienation. You can't deal with all the variables, all the time, and we have to figure out what defines us, whether it's the big disasters or the daydreams and walks down the hallway.

Creating a suspenseful narrative is a challenge. Creating a suspenseful narrative that still refuses to give the audience definitive closure or an easy access point ... that's the accomplishment that makes "Paranoid Park" a unique experience.

I love movies that inspire a positive reception, and then a backlash, and then an anti-backlash. That's the sign of a film that's getting under our cultural skins, and the big winner in that regard, neatly wrapping up 2007, was "Juno," a smart little film that positions itself somewhere between the emotional uncertainty of "Garden State" and the juvenile self-discovery of "Superbad."

The controversy over "Juno" – specifically over whether it's a good or a bad movie – is coming from many directions, including Roger Ebert, who called it his favorite movie of the year, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, who calls it the "smart, hip human comedy you've been waiting for all year," and (across the fence) Jim DeRogatis, a critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, who says he hated the movie... apparently citing his experience with teenagers, feminism, and movies in general. DeRogantis in particular critiqued the film by way of its soundtrack, locating a hip insincerity in both the music and in the portrayal of the characters.

Of course, the anti-backlash responded, quite right, that reality is too fuzzy for a movie to be blamed for its lack of documentary accuracy. They also responded that there are, indeed, kids out there who, even at sixteen, are smart and unreasonably wise about their lives and their situations. I feel enough has been said about the film's respect for "reality" (note the scare quotes), and about its soundtrack's appropriateness to the characters portrayed. I'd prefer to look at the film from an aesthetic point of view, and to read it as a critique, rather than reading it in terms of hipness or accuracy.

What distinguishes "Juno" as a critique -- specifically as a character critique, with a special emphasis on age, maturity, and gender -- was its ability to interrogate our assumptions by playing to them and then breaking them back down. If you're like me, you may have reflected on the characters halfway through the movie, and the film may actually have seemed a little sexist. By the time Juno was confronting Bleeker about going to the prom, the archetypes had been set up: all of the primary males (Bleeker, Mark, and Dad) were even-tempered, respectable, admirable characters in the classic "good guy" mold. Juno, Vanessa, and Bren, the three primary female characters, were all being set up as slightly neurotic, volatile personalities, and they seemed framed to cause whatever looming conflict was about to materialize.

Didn't you feel, at first, that Vanessa was a bit of a neurotic yuppie, oppressing Mark's perfectly reasonable desire for freedom? Didn't Bren seem a little overbearing and snappy when she declared to Juno, "He's married! There are some boundaries that you just shouldn't cross?" It was subtle, but the film was establishing some gender expectations through its gendered characters, including Juno herself, who pulled a little bit of an emotional freakout on Bleeker in the hallway. If it had taken its plot in the most conventional direction... if it had followed up on these expectations... it would have been a tragically stereotype-affirming film, a la "Hitch," Will Smith's masterpiece of gender stereotyping.

But that's not what happens. I won't discuss plot details, but by the end of the film, "Juno" turns from a batch of established roles into a critique of those roles. Not every stereotype is fully overturned, but the characters work out differently than we were led to expect, and the ambiguity of their dynamic -- especially the dynamic between Mark and Vanessa -- leads us to a greater appreciation of Juno herself, a smart, controlled feminine character, wise beyond her years, but still in need of space and freedom to grow.

It may be worth noting that the pregnancy, and all its attendant issues of birth control, hardship, and stigmatization, was peripheral to the real substance of the film. The feminist question isn't addressed in terms of womanhood and creation. Rather, it's addressed in the portrayal of females both mobilizing and undermining their gender roles, and especially in its main character, who is the kind of rounded, admirable female that's still tragically rare in entertainment media.

Depp and Carter in "Sweeney Todd"

This season's non-standard holiday masterpiece was definitely "Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street," a fascinating piece of cinema directed by Tim Burton, who inherited the story from playwright Stephen Sondheim. It's certainly a hit among critics, whose reviews, collected on RottenTomatoes.com, are an impressive 86% positive. This is especially surprising for a film that's so gory and cynical it could be considered a juvenile slasher of a movie.

I agree with the positive reviews, but it's important to look at the levels of achievement that make the film good. I think the first level, and what you might call the hook, is the show's complete unexpectedness. A gothic London tale, offered right at the height of the holiday season, may scream "A Christmas Carol," and even more, it's a musical, so it's saddled with some of the most debilitating stereotypes in the culture industry.

Burton, with the help of Sondheim's glorious script, manages to turn both of those expectations on their heads, and this is what attracted many of the positive reviews from critics. The film's unflinching gore and complete cynicism fly in the face of both Christmas and musical theater, and the film allows its audience a horrific insight into the marginal possibilities of both media. The artificial (sugarcoated) fantasies of the Christmas season and musical theater are the perfect meat for Burton and Sondheims' grinder.

But anybody can make a shocking little film, right? Claws on a cultural chalkboard don't make a movie really good, nor worthy of overwhelmingly positive reviews in the press. I'm of the opinion that Burton's vicious approach was a good way to get attention, but that the film's merit lies elsewhere.

This merit -- the substance that makes the story worth thinking about and appreciating -- is really in the thematic levels beneath the absurdly bright blood and Depp's howling rage. The characters' stories, including Toby's, Ms. Lovett's, Anthony's, and even Sweeney Todd's, are actually about finding hope in a totally hopeless world. In Sweeney Todd's case, it's the hope of complete surrender to darkness. In Mrs. Lovett's case, it's unrequited love, and in Toby's, it's the gratitude of a son for a mother. If those violent desires aren't enough for us this Christmas, we're even given the innocent love of Anthony and Johanna, which perseveres while the hatred around them collapses upon itself.

This is where you find the short-term merit of this hard-hitting musical, and it's where you find the merit in tragedy in general. The darkness of a fallen world is the perfect background for the spark of hope that every individual must find, even if it's a bit twisted. So Burton and Sondheim have built a powerful piece of cinema on a foundation of classic principles ... first, by ripping us away from the spirit of the season and the medium ... and then, by bringing us back to it just enough to make it a profound experience.

Ian Curtis isn't happy in Corbijn's "Control."

I've seen two biopics in the last two months, and you may not have heard of either of them. The first was "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and the second was "Control," Anton Corbijn's biopic about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis. I’m starting to feel like personal ambition is a dangerous thing.

Make no mistake, there's something interesting going on with these biopics. Outside of Hollywood mainstream, where Russell Crowe's uplifting endings and the old civil rights struggles are still dominating, there's still an appetite for interrogations into success, psychology, and the lives of folk heroes that we may take for granted. The cinematography in Jesse James was unbelievable, and its rendering of a lonely, desolate Wild West was inspiring. Curtis's biopic was less beautiful, perhaps, but profoundly affecting. The Village Voice pointed out its stark portrayal of a dying Manchester (they're probably more qualified to speak about that than I am), and I was particularly shaken by the shadow of dangerous uncertainty that hung like smoke around Ian Curtis's personal life. In a way, it was on the opposite trajectory of "A Beautiful Mind"... where Crowe's John Nash confronted his shortcomings and overcame them, Sam Riley's Ian Curtis invited problems into his life, and then couldn’t avoid being crushed by them.

These are good pieces of cinema, especially if you're interested in the cinematography and the psychological drama. However, they're not for everybody. Both biopics were long and slow, more concerned with scenery and subtle pauses than with action or narrative thrust. They were afflicted with art film syndrome, where the ambiguity ultimately gets in the way of the mass appeal. I congratulate them on their intense treatment of their subjects, but there's another step to be taken.

And I'm seriously hoping that "I'm Not There" will take that step. Bob Dylan's forthcoming biopic isn't Hollywood fluff – there's something surreal and dangerous about casting six different actors into a single role. The use of alternative races and genders is an additional sign that this film is going to be daring in its storytelling technique, and I'd like to hope that it's also sensitive to the quirks and dimensions of its subject.

So "I'm Not There" may match "Jesse James" and "Control" in terms of cinematic experimentation... but in contrast to those films, it may have the playful, encouraging tone that makes it a contender for mass appeal. This is what I hope for, as a devoted member of the consumer masses. "I'm Not There" has a chance of taking the style and boldness of the recent indie biopics and making it palatable to a larger audience.

So I wait, huddled over Apple Trailers, hoping for the best.

John Guyton, main character

"The Nightly News" has been getting a lot of press, apparently, and for good reason. Jonathan Hickman's graphic novel, which I finished over the last couple days, is a bold experiment in both style and content. Its storyline is designed, as much as illustrated, relying on entangled compositions, simple color schemes, and high-impact graphic art; it presents its themes brutally, without flinching or shedding a tear. Parents be warned: there is a lot of wanton murder between its covers.

The story, originally presented as six issues, is about a cult of victims of the modern media who shed their humanity and their propriety in order to kill journalists and news people. The protagonists, who are also the perpetrators, are neither explicitly condoned nor condemned... if there is anything "heroic" about them, it's simply their brute single-mindedness. The depiction of their crimes has the exhibitionist quality of a forbidden fantasy exposed, like Nabakov's "Lolita," or "The Boondock Saints."

One of the more interesting devices in Hickman's design is his use of asides, including infographics and obvious references to real people and speeches. The schematic and annotated stylization lends the book a certain authority, even as it's clearly a work of fiction, with no pretensions of being a manifesto or an instruction manual. It's not making a specific argument, but the stylization lends some weight to ... what?

Ultimately, I do see an argument in "The Nightly News," and though it's not an argument I would condemn (i.e. it's not an incitement to hatred or murder), it's one that deserves our attention and some caution on our part. This argument is in the story's framework, its depiction of the news media as a behemoth of corruption and maliciousness. The narrative is built entirely on the assumption that reporters and news outlets are spiteful and morally repugnant, and it's not science fiction or alternate history. The story is interesting, and even appealing, because part of the reader believes in this sick world of evil corporate news.

And I think, more and more, the citizens of this country do distrust mass media journalism, and everything they hear from it. It's a perspective characteristic of both the left ("media consolidation") and the right ("the liberal media"), and in a lot of cases and a lot of ways, it's justified --- as in, for instance, Bernie's recent post on the fate of the evening news. Ratings and income prompts sensationalism, short-sightedness, laziness, and alarmism, and as often as not, I'm with those who suspect the news media of falling victim to all of these at once.

But in the eyes of "The Nightly News," reporters and their employers aren't just lazy or greedy. They're downright malicious. One reporter in the book claims that "We destroy people without fear of retribution or litigation. It's what we do." According to the graphic novel's extensive end-notes, this quote is related to (and perhaps lifted from) the Page Six scandal of 2006. This is an uncompromising, confrontational portrayal at the heart of a cynically brilliant work of art.

Beyond the compelling story and challenging artwork, there are questions to be answered: are we ready to see our headline pushers as heartless criminals? And if so, are we right about them?

William Gibson's new novel, released Aug. 7

Of all the authors to forecast trends in tech culture, I think William Gibson has proven one of the more interesting. He released a new book recently, entitled "Spook Country," and from my early foray into its pages, I can already see that it's iconic Gibsonesque writing wrapped around something very topical.

When I think of William Gibson, I always think of "Neuromancer" first. Gibson's mid-80s cyberpunk masterpiece introduced countless adolescents like myself to his textured, hyperkinetic writing style and the bombardment of references he inflicts on the reader. His writing has changed since then, but it's still a slipstream of imagery and cultural references, infused into the prose so effortlessly that you can get through half a page before you realize you no longer know what he's talking about.

Back in the 80s, "Neuromancer" was an important work for another reason. In it, Gibson heralded one of the major threads of culture in the 20th century: the colonizing of the digital world. "Neuromancer" was one of the first novels to introduce the idea of virtual reality, a spatial metaphor for disembodied information, and this idea became central to the technological trends of the 1990s. We were mapping a digital terrain, creating "communities" online, envisioning the TAZ as a digital construct, creating flowcharts and diagrams, and generally making information look like its own self-contained universe.

This disembodied world was accessible through monitors and keyboards (and, for Gibson, neural interfaces). For those formative years of the Internet, our real bodies were stuck at computer terminals, and we just traveled by way of the signal. We didn't seem to miss the outside world all that much; after all, "Bringing it to your door," "From the comfort of your own home," etc. were taglines of the dot-com era. That was the world that "Neuromancer" helped premeditate.

Now, "Spook Country" is considering a new trend.

At least in so far as I've read it, "Spook Country" is focused on the emerging ways in which data can enter and interface with the physical world. At the outset of the novel, Hollis Henry, the protagonist, is investigating a type of art that is rendered on a screen or in a viewport at an actual physical location. River Phoenix's death, projected in three dimensions at the actual location, through the magic of GPS and mobile technology: we're no longer going into the network to find the data. The data is coming back out to find us.

And I think Gibson isn't too far out ahead of the rest of culture. Bringing digital interaction into the real world is a particularly salient theme at the moment. Wi-Fi hotspots are giving us a new variable to consider when we choose our coffee shops; the global village is following us to the beach via the Blackberry. The iPod and the iPhone are letting us use our hands in a more intuitive, kinetic way, harnessing the power of gesture for interfaces. According to tech genius Jeff Han, there's more on the horizon.

And then, of course, there's the Wii, a wildly successful experiment at the intersection of the real and the virtual. Your living room – the real space where you live – proxies for the virtual space where you're imagining yourself. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, you open doors by pulling handles back, turning them, and putting them back into place. According to rumor, the device will let you emulate a light saber in the upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" (which has an unbelievable trailer, by the way).

Gibson's vision of enriched reality is the result of real technological trends that are converging on our era. He's not writing sci-fi any more; he's speculating about things that will be able to change our minds, our cultures, and our lives.

"3:10 to Yuma" hit theaters last weekend, a full-frontal assault of gritty old Western bravado. I vastly enjoyed it, because I’m a big fan of atmospherics and muscular cinematography, and this film offered plenty of both. It was two hours of intensity, a drawn-out display of excessive masculinity, and it does justice to the Western genre.

Logan Lerman and Christian Bale as William and Dan Evans

Yes, masculinity: the gravitational center of the themes in Yuma. There's hardly a feminine element in the film, and the views and versions of masculinity swirl around in a weird emotional stew. From the violent insecurity of Ben Foster's Charlie Prince to the idealistic sidekickery of Doc Potter (Alan Tudyk), there's hardly a side of manhood, both traditional and non-traditional, that isn’t on display.

In some respects, Yuma shows a progressive, complex side of the masculine personality. The patriarchies and personal moralities end up breaking down, upsetting a cluster of well-rendered characterizations the film had been establishing, so that at times, the audience gets a glimpse of the fragile heart of cowboy manhood. In this sense, it reminded me of "Falling Down," another complex look at moral neuroses (and another gritty action movie), and this association compliments both films.

Still, there’s something scary lingering in the central theme of Yuma: the relationship between violence and fatherhood. As the character of Dan Evans (Christian Bale) develops, the critical viewer may realize that his whole claim to fatherhood rests on his wartime achievements, or the lack thereof. His fatherhood is competitive, and his son calls on him to prove himself by being an alpha male. The call to courage, sounded by William Evans, masks a desire to confront every problem as a war.

The themes of victory and defeat, binding father and son to a shared struggle, could have been timely, had they been addressed more critically. After all, the preeminent American prodigal son is fighting to complete the war that his father started. Unfortunately, the Iraqi outlaw isn’t quite ready to get on the train, or even to have a polite conversation with the United States. Also unfortunate: that "3:10 to Yuma" didn’t really offer much to fathers who don’t want to prove themselves in gunfights.

This shortcoming is excusable, since "3:10 to Yuma" is tied down from two directions: first, by its reliance upon the original material; second, by the Western mentality inherent to its genre. It works beautifully on the screen. I just wish we weren’t reenacting it in the White House and on the prairies of Iraq.

In a glorious explosion of media cross-pollination, Dark Horse Comics has partnered with MySpace to bring an online series of comics to social network pedestrians. I found it in an ad on MySpace’s front page, and I’m shocked I hadn’t heard of it before then. After all, it was announced more than a month ago at the San Diego Comic Con, and one of the first representative writers is the infamous Joss Whedon.

The idea here is that Dark Horse is resurrecting Dark Horse Presents, an old anthology title dedicated to showcasing pilot comics and new talent. Like the original series, the online version brandishes a solid arsenal of artists and some solid work from new authors, like Brazilian twins Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. The MySpace page brags that future issues will include work by other important authors, including Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame, who’s been a personal favorite of mine for a number of years now.

Besides being incorporeal, there’s something important that differentiates this collection from the standard comic title: it’s free. Even the old Dark Horse Presents comics, along with comparable titles from other companies, like Marvel Fanfare, were sold at cost to readers. Now, in the interest of promotion and brand recognition, Dark Horse has decided to offer these titles to an unlimited number of readers at no charge.

In a world of information, running at such a high supply and demand, cost-benefit analyses become complex tasks. Does Dark Horse ultimately profit from giving away the work of Joss Whedon and Rick Geary? Presumably, they do, because even the most diehard fan usually won’t take it on faith that a corporation is committing to a long-term loss.

But cynicism will have a tough time finding a foothold. There's not much room for a subversive motive in offering free comics, beyond the simple desire to encourage participation and float new ideas before a base of fans. This may be a bit of prosumerism -- letting the fans do some work for you in filtering promising investments from duds -- but that’s not exactly insidious.

I'll do a quick review of the comics from last month, just for the record. I definitely recommend "Safe & Sound", which is a well-rendered little heroic vignette; if you value the five minutes it takes to read it, I’d suggest staying away from "Samurai", which leans too much on clichés for an idea that has been done better. The other two comics, created by the big names -- Whedon and Geary --- have the telltale characteristics of those personalities, and they’re worth reading, but they wouldn’t prompt any loyalty from me as a reader.

And now that the new issue is up, you can look for yourself, and discover a whole new collection of fresh graphic storytelling.

And it seems that this kind of feedback is all Dark Horse asks for in return for these digital dispensations. It’s good to be living in the era of cheap distribution, when our opinions and engagement alone are worth an investment by a major publisher. The day has come: even in an industry of hungry consumers, there may be such a thing as a free lunch.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that John Ashbery, an 80-year old poet, is slated to become mtvU’s poet laureate. Ashbery is a freeform postmodern writer who’s received a number of awards, and mtvU is Music Television’s college network. Once again, we see the arts and the mass media ("commercial" and "entertainment" media, the "culture industry") coming together in ominous ways.

Reactions have been mixed. LL Smooth J of Gloss sounds thoroughly cynical about it, and he makes a convincing case for his skepticism. It’s tough to trust MTV when they claim to support literary culture, and it’s especially tough when you account for the absurd financial arrangement between mtvU and Ashbery. The laureateship is apparently unpaid, and Smooth disapproves:

Unpaid. Viacom has $25.75 billion in market capitalization and the poet, who is 80 and still has a day job, is going unpaid. Even the music companies aren’t giving MTV their content anymore. Ashbery’s getting worse treatment than the 22-year old coffee gofers.

This seems to be the arts' tragic destiny. It’s not much of an economic game any more… the people who are trying to innovate are paying for it out of pocket, and they’re often pursuing a thankless passion in the shadow of a short-attention-span culture with anti-intellectual tendencies.

This is an overgeneralization, of course. There’s still esteem for the artist in our culture as a whole… every year, a few artists are funneled into the hands of economic agents, where they’re treated as badges of authenticity. From NASA’s recruitment of Laurie Anderson as its “artist in residence,” to the New York Metro’s “Arts in Transit” program, to this Poet Amnesty project of mtvU’s, there will always be a positive association with the arts. Unfortunately, cultural esteem doesn’t count for much in a 20th-century neo-liberal economy, and the arts are too long-term an investment for companies to subsidize.

So it seems like artists these days are forced to trade their “authenticity” status for the scraps of recognition offered by a public post. I could rail against the short-sightedness of runaway capitalism, but that’s nothing you haven’t heard before. Instead, I’ll lean on a truism that I trust: artists may have to work hard to support their creative impulse, but even if the last poetry book goes out of print, there will always be artists.

And viewed from this angle, isn't it at least remarkable that MTV, a powerhouse of mass entertainment, is making a nod to the artistic culture that's made its success possible? Even if mtvU’s motives and approaches are a little dubious, at least they’re offering an old poet the chance to connect with a new generation of “hipsters” and student appreciators, the primordial ooze where tomorrow’s poet laureates are gestating.