"Accomplishments"
At home: It's quite clear that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a Tina Fey production - it's pretty much the same kind of comedy as 30 Rock. In other words, no real straight man, everyone's a sketch comedy character allowed to live and evolve (but also forced to react to their own stupid lines); a fondness for silly wordplay; and a follow-through on absurd elements that make its reality diverge from our own (like the stuff with the robots). And quite a few 30 Rock alumni, with Jane Krakowski as part of the cast, playing to type sending up the privileged and disconnected (it isn't Jenna Maloney, but I was still shocked when she said "camera" correctly). Kimmy is Ellie Kemper trading on her guileless Office persona, a girl who was kidnapped by a cult leader and lived in a bunker for 15 years, but somehow never lost her positive spark. Kimmy actually outperforms 30 Rock by having some strong thematic underpinnings. All the characters are in fact having to escape their own "bunker", usually self-made prisons that make them stuck in time or in a certain reality. Kimmy, living for others more than herself, is a catalyst for change in all their lives and no matter how silly it gets (and it gets real silly), there's a lesson there about what you're sending out into the world.
Two years after Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, we get to catch up with the characters in the interactive movie Kimmy vs. the Reverend. Pretty fun. In a way, it's of a piece with the Sliding Doors episode of the final season, though this time, there are multiple what ifs and you're in control. Getting the branching function to give you ALL the content isn't easy - took me about three hours - and it's possible I missed a few stray lines because there are call backs coded into certain sequences that might depend on early choices. An easy one to miss (thanks for the tip, internet) is this: Try to skip the intro music when Netflix invariably asks. I never do because I love the Kimmy theme, so I needed to be told. Though entire subplots can be changed, the main story leads you to an inevitable ending (just how perfect the ending is does depend on your choices though - I got the perfect one first by asking "what would Kimmy do"), with Daniel Radcliffe effortlessly added to the cast as Kimmy's fiance. A romp that doesn't really feel necessary, though if you're interested in the title's conflict, it does make for extra closure on that front. A lot of returning faces, but they don't really advance the way the star does.
An Olympic favorite, Cool Runnings is sadly flatter than I need it to be. Very loosely based on the Jamaican bobsled team, considered absurd at the Calgary Olympics in 1988, it keeps he bare bones of the true story to just narrowly avoid hitting every sports movie cliché. Yes, fish out of water, making good when no one believes in you (in fact better than the actual team's performance), a redemption arc for John Candy's coach, and a story of sportsmanship and integrity. Throw in a Bond villain jerk bobsledder for good measure. That's fine. It's definitely a MOVIE. But as long as you're going to create all-new characters to take the place of the original participants (I wonder how they felt about this total fictionalization of their lives?), you might want to punch things up a little, because it still feels like a standard biopic (this happened, then this happened, then this happened). There are some good moments, but it mostly feels safe and ordinary, when it's not being outright manipulative (which is really the only reason to use the actual crash footage). What does make me smile is thinking that Eddie the Eagle is also happening somewhere at those same Olympics - this was before athletic snobbery crushed any opportunity for these kinds of stories.
Books: Back at university, as a lark and because I was friends with the professor, I took a print-making class. My first project was evaluated as having shades of Hieronymus Bosch (not in style or ability, but in basic approach I guess). And I think it's that prof who handed me Walter Goring's Jérôme Bosch: Entre le ciel et l'enfer (Bosch: Between Heaven and Hell). Goring rejects the fashionable idea that the Medieval painter was a proto-surrealist and sets him squarely in his time and place. Though imaginative and demented, his images aren't from dreams. In context, we understand him to be an allegorical artist, working within (and updating) the artistic movements of his day, his imagery derived from symbols the Medieval Christian would have been able to understand, visual puns and so on. It's an interesting read that draws the reader's attention to parts of the painting they might not register (there's just so much to look at), but the real value in the book is the reproductions of Bosch's works, including surviving sketches. In fact, this has been on my shelf for 30 years and I've opened it often, but never read it until now, quite content to just peruse the pictures. Having done so, however, the paintings I used to skip over have become more interesting and won't be so easily glossed in the future.
Soldiers, collecting the first 5 issues of Paul Grist's all-color Jack Staff series at Image (so Volume 2, the black and white stuff published at Dancing Elephant Press came first) makes for a pretty odd read in this format. Since every subset of characters involved in a pretty tangled story occurring in two time periods enjoy their own splash page every issue, there's an awful lot of stop, recap and go in the trade. It's not just that we're being told over and over again who Jack, Becky Burdock Vampire Reporter, etc. are, but the sequences usually retread the last few seconds from the previous issue, for each character. I do like Grist's art a lot. Became a fan of his when he was doing Kane, where I thought of him as a more cartoony Frank Miller, really adept at playing with light and shadow. Jack Staff looks nice in color and I still like Grist's sense of design and action. We're thrown into the deep end, in a superhero universe that comes ready-made, but it's too quick a read. Better in singles, waiting on a monthly schedule. As a collection, it tries one's patience with redundancies.
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