Leap | Film+Television+Comics | Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

He that is everywhere is nowhere. (Thomas Fuller M.D., Gnomologia, 1732)

The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939)

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound... (Adventures of Superman, ABC, 1952)

Superman hasn't always been able to fly. Once upon a time, back in Joel Siegel and Jerry Schuster's original stories, he was only capable of super-leaps. He was also a fairly ruthless bastard in those early days. In a strip from 1939, he terrorizes a stool pigeon by dangling him over the city. "Hm-mm! I wonder if we could jump all the way to that building?" Superman asks the poor fellow, adding, "Did you ever wonder how it would feel to fall a great distance and be CRUSHED TO A PULP?"

Needless to say, Superman gets the information he's looking for.

With hindsight, it's disconcerting to see such a well-loved character starting out life as a bullying Übermensch. The clue's in the name of course, but it's difficult not to be a little shocked by lines like, "Cracking your head like an eggshell will be a messy job, but if you insist on being stubborn..." In these first comic-strip outings, the Man of Steel was Spring-Heeled Jack bestriding the earth, a colossus in red underpants.

Over time, the rule-book was rewritten. Now Supes could fly, continuously and without rest. He could even leave the Earth's atmosphere, venturing out into the depths of space in search of his lost homeworld. And with this upgrade came a new source of imagery. He wasn't just a Nietschean avenger anymore; he was an angel. He could look down upon the world from a God's eye view.

It's fair to say that these grandiose ideas were sublimated for most of the strip's early life. But when the character came to be adapted for the motion pictures, the imagery of flight fed upon this crucial metaphor. So too did the achievement of flight, with the technical challenge of its representation becoming a crucial selling point. It's no surprise that the blockbuster hit of 1978 (in which Christopher Reeve filled out the lycra) used the language of faith in its tagline: "You'll believe a man can fly."

Even the earliest screen incarnations emphasized the character's dominion over the skies. In The Mechanical Monsters (1941) and The Bulleteers (1942), two of the Fleischer Studios' brilliant Superman cartoons, striking sequences show our hero soaring above the city, then zipping down into action. Very soon, the Fleischer cartoons recruited Superman into the war, reigning down death on stereotyped Japanese troops.

It was the Fleischer cartoons that first gave Superman flight. The animators, quite understandably, decided that super-bunny-hops looked clumsy onscreen and so adjusted his super-powers accordingly. The majority of the cartoons were rotoscoped, a process that traced the movement of live-action footage onto the hand-drawn cells. Rotoscoping flight, however, was too complex, meaning that the animated flying sequences took on a looser, malleable aspect. With form came plasticity.

For many years, animation remained the only method of picturing flight. Superman's first live-action outing, Columbia's 1948 15-part serial starring Kirk Alyn, switched to animation footage whenever take-off was required. In the more accomplished Adventures of Superman TV series (1952-1958), George Reeves flew on wires, usually against matte shots or back projection.

Budgetary restraints meant that the same shots of Reeves flying were used in each episode, but this creates an interesting sub-textual resonance. The repetition of the same special effects sequences heightens our awareness of their mechanical reproduction. Flight becomes routine and ritualized, making Superman's intervention into each episode a true deus ex machina. On the backlots of Metropolis, the focus is always upon the characters of the Daily Planet newsroom, and the way that they enact B-movie tropes. Episodes frequently end with Clark Kent winking at the camera, as though acknowledging a tacit contract - Superman as shared joke.

The first hour of the Christopher Reeve Superman stands up pretty well today as an attempt to place the character in a pulp-screwball tradition of Americana. It also presented the most sustained religious allegory the franchise had seen so far, with Marlon Brando incarnating a dubious Heavenly Father. The knowingness of the script often worked against it, however. In what must be one of the most cringe-worthy sequences in American film, Superman's first flight with Lois Lane became a soupy Freudian ballet. The movie's tagline cuts both ways - this really has to be seen to be believed.

In the final scene of the movie, Reeve circles the Earth and passing the camera, smiles at us. It's a reassuring moment, a promise that flight is no longer a joke and that omnipotence is benign.

In a post-9/11 world, this omnipotence becomes problematic. Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2006) attempted to negotiate the character's inefficacy through a period of absence, with his return marking a reinvigoration of the American spirit. But the film ended up seeming glum and sour. Brendan Routh's Superman is castrated, a father without access to his son, doomed to watch over a world that needs him but cannot accommodate him. The final shot repeats Reeve's circuit around the Earth, but omits the smile to camera.

Flying as a metaphor for loneliness? Tiresome stuff - I think I prefer Nasty Superman. Now, where was I? (reaches for Siegel and Schuster) Ah yes, Superman is clawing at a villain's face: "This nose would look perfect, mounted above my mantle piece!"

Marvellous.

Nicolas Pillai

Film Editor

Puppy Killed Then Lives Again; Dolphins Save Stranded Dog

A puppy euthanized by veterinarians has risen from the "dead."

The black-and-white pooch was one of five young dogs "put to sleep" Saturday at a shelter in Sulphur, Okla., News 9 in Oklahoma City reported. Each dog was checked and confirmed to be dead, then the 3-month-old and his four siblings were placed in a trash bin.
On Sunday morning, an animal control officer looked into the bin and discovered that the one pup somehow survived.
"He was just as healthy as could be," Scott Prall told News 9.
The puppies were selected to be euthanized because of illness, as well as overcrowding due to limited shelter space in the state, said Amanda Kloski, a veterinarian in Oklahoma who has been caring for the puppy since his resurrection

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/02/2011-03-02_euthanized_puppy_rises_from_dead_seeks_new_home.html#ixzz1FUFy0zrp
 
Dolphins save Doberman Pinscher stranded on sandbar


MARCO ISLAND, Fla. (Newscore) - A Pennsylvania woman on vacation in Florida took a tip from two dolphins to save a lost Doberman Pinscher that got stranded on a sandbar.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/state_news/030211-dolphins-save-doberman-pinscher


And that, my friend, is the good news of the day.

Leap | Listen | Jump

For me, learning to play pop songs is less an artistic endeavour, and more my own personal way of working out whether or not I like the thing. If I can get my hands buried deep into the chord progressions whilst forcing my larynx into the right shape for singing the song, then the song stands the test.

Often, in stripping a high-production behemoth of a song into an unplugged nugget, I find some strange poetic beauty locked in the lyrics of the ephemeral hit. Sadly, this was not the case with Van Halen's Jump... but it still ties in nicely with our leap theme whilst giving me an occasion to show you lovely silky people my new electric piano. I hope you enjoy it, anyhow.



Phil Brown
Poetry Editor

Leap | Introduction | A Thinker's Jump

 

Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.

Cliff Fadiman

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

Anthony Trollope

Creativity has often been associated with the act of leaping - the blind jump leading to a discovery, the by-product of some alchemy springing forth or a time-travel onwards. Considering it's a leap year, this week we give you 'Leap'.

Style Crush: Marion Cotillard

I have always been in complete awe of how cosmoplitan French women can bring together an outfit with such style and flirty insouciance.  They always look so damn cool with an air of "what this? I just threw it on!".  But it's convincing and it always leaves me wondering what their secret is to making everything they drape their bodies in so sophisticated.

One such French woman is the actress, Marion Cotillard.  I'll always remember looking at the coverage of the 2008 BAFTAS when Marion Cotillard picked up the Bafta for Best Actress from under the noses of Keira Knightley and Julie Christie.  To add insult to injury, she also blew everyone else out of the water on the red carpet.  She wore a short, sequined Chanel number with flowing details (shown below), making everyone else seem stuffy, including Dior-clad Keira Knightley, who is 10 years her junior!  It shouldn't have worked in theory but on Marion, she carried it off beautifully with a defiant confidence.

Marion has a wonderful knack of being able to wear very sexy clothes without ever being vulgar or looking trashy.  She seems to wear expensive clothes in a casual way that makes them look cool.  Her hair is never overly structured and always has a soft wave or laid back feel.

Take probably the most famous of all French designers and fashion institutions, Chanel. French women don't dress head to toe in the stuffy woven-wool skirt suits. They give the designs a fresh, quirky and modern twist that highlights the timelessness of the classical fashion house.  A quote I always remembered and kept in mind was spoken by the French actress, Clémence Poésy, who starred in the film 'In Bruges':  "It's important to be yourself. What you wear reflects what you are, so you need to be strong enough on the inside to ignore what the fashion gurus say you should wear on the outside."

So what is that je ne sais quoi that the French seem to have?  Well, I reckon it could just be the confidence to be who they want to be.  The reason they come across as so cool is because they don't care what anyone else thinks about their fashion choices.  I think that more and more, us girls in the UK are catching up in the cool stakes though with alot of French women citing Kate Moss, Alexa Chung, Sienna Miller, Emma Watson and Keira Knightely as fashion icons/inspirations!

Since we are on the subject of Marion Cotillard though, I thought I would share these images I found of her from Russian Tatler magazine looking A-mazing!

What do you think of French style?

Loads of bloggers have been raving about the new nail polish shades from the Spring collection available at Estee Lauder and I just wanted to show you one of the ones I now have in my collection in case you were thinking of treating yourself.  It's always handy to see what the polishes look like when they have actually been applied to nails (mine are real by the way).  This is the Wild Storm shade which is a pearl gunmetal grey...

I love Estee Lauder nail polishes because they dry really quickly so there's less chance of smudging the polish within the first 5 minutes.  I can't tell you how much that annoys me when that happens!  If it's a bad smudge, I actually have to remove it all off the nail and start again...I told you I had OCD problems!ha ha.  I love the EL polish bottles because to me, they look like little ice cubes!  These polishes also have great slimline brushes that make it really easy to apply the product with precision.

Have you picked up any of the Spring collection EL nail polishes? Which ones are your favourites?

Lucas

Titel: Lucas
Genre: Komedi/Drama/Romantik
Land: USA
År: 1986
Regi: David Seltzer
I rollerna: Corey Haim, Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, Winona Ryder

Handling: 14-årige Lucas blir förälskad för första gången när han träffar den nya tjejen Maggie. Men snart får han även uppleva hur ett krossat hjärta känns när hon faller för en av hans få vänner, Cappie.

Omdöme: Jag är lite svag för 80-talets ungdomsfilmer då de oftast har bra stämning och är nostalgiska. Så är även fallet här där en väldigt lovande, smart och driftig kille, som dock har få vänner och ständigt blir mobbad av skolans fotbollskillar, blir förtjust i en ny tjej på skolan. Hon är trevlig mot honom och de börjar umgås. Han är 14, hon 16. Men hon ser honom bara som sin vän medan hans hjärta bultar snabbare när han är nära henne. Så när hon faller för kaptenen i fotbollslaget, en av få som är snäll mot honom, brister det för honom.



Corey Haim spelar Lucas och gör det på ett övertygande sätt. Han må inte göra någon jätteprestation, men han är verkligen Lucas och det i sig är bra gjort. Tjejen Maggie spelas av Kerri Green som är en söt tjej som man lätt tycker om. Det är även trevligt och småmysigt under filmens första hälft då Lucas och Maggie umgås och hittar på saker tillsammans. Men under andra halvan tar filmen en lite annan riktning när Cappie (Charlie Sheen) får större utrymme och Maggie blir intresserad av honom. Den där trevliga och mysiga känslan försvinner lite helt enkelt.



Rakt igenom filmen bibehåller man dock den där sköna 80-tals känslan som delvis musiken lyckas bygga upp, men det är lite av varje som gör att man stundtals njuter. Filmens handling blir tyvärr lite sämre under andra halvan vilket gör att det inte håller hela vägen. Gillar man den här typen av film tror jag ändå man inte blir besviken, men det finns många andra bättre i genren som jag hellre ser om.

3 - Skådespelare
2 - Handling
4 - Känsla
3 - Musik
3 - Foto
--------------
15 - Totalt

Betyg:
IMDb: 6.6

Wider Reading | Twenty Minutes With Charlie Sheen

Mr Sheen, as he arrived for our interview.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our 8th-season-Two-And-A-Half-Men star Charlie Sheen while he was out promoting his latest self-consciously insane rant for the benefit of delightedly ironic hipster Internet viewers and waging his war against Warner Bros. I asked for thirty minutes; I was told that I could have twenty, and was informed that further time with Charlie Sheen could cause me to 'burst like an over-ripe raccoon'. Twenty minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to interview Charlie about one of the most important events in the Internet's stupid giggling adolescent history. The following is a transcript of our remarkable discussion.



Jon Ware: Mr Sheen - thank you for taking time out of your demanding schedule.


Charlie Sheen: My pleasure - the content of your request seemed like something I should carve out a few minutes for.

Jon Ware: I should point out that your film, Hot Shots! Part Deux struck a comical chord in me that I hadn't felt for quite some time. The recreation of the boat-fight from The Guns of Navarone was loving and funny in the best traditions of scattershot spoofery.


Charlie Sheen: Thank you, Jon - big fan of Silkworms Ink, by the way.


Jon Ware: Sir, I can't imagine when you'd have the time to read it.


Charlie Sheen: I like to sit back with the laptop on Sunday mornings. The literary articles and sardonic spoofs really take my mind off the tabloid headlines. (He glances at his watch) Not to be abrupt or rush you, but you have 19 minutes left.


Jon Ware: I'll take that as an invitation to cut to the chase. Sir, in 2009 you created an imaginary screenplay in which you confronted Barack Obama for twenty minutes with evidence that could have been said to imply that Dick Cheney planned the tragedy of 9/11 in an attempt to create excuses for Western invasions in the Middle East. In this scenario, Mr Obama considered himself a fan of the programme Two and a Half Men. He listened to your theories politely and, while no conclusion was reached, he left with your folder of 'evidence' under one arm. Sir, it was not the conspiracy-theory content of the screenplay so much as the tone, which belonged to a Hollywood thriller in which the conspiracy theorist hero could well have been played by a young Charlie Sheen (Martin Sheen could have played the President), which suggested not only that you were a fantasist, but that you were very much uncertain of your own identity.


Charlie Sheen: Uncertain of my own identity?


Jon Ware: That you were playing a part, sir. That you were revelling in your own persona, just as you now revel in describing yourself in a deliberately absurd, almost abstract sense to the world's press.


(At this point one of Sheen's two girlfriends comes up and whispers in his ear. Sheen nods and checks his watch again as the girlfriend takes up her position again, directly in front of the doorway, behind me.)


Jon Ware: (Producing a folder) I'd like to present to you a few case studies, sir, if I may. The impact of Internet collective thinking on celebrity. 'Memery', if you will.

Charlie Sheen: You've come prepared, Mr Ware.


Jon Ware: I always said it's better to over-prepare, Mr Sheen.

Charlie Sheen: In that respect, you're a little like my ex-wife.


Jon Ware: I'll take that as a compliment, sir.

Charlie Sheen: As you wish.


Jon Ware: Case study number one - Keanu Reeves in 2010. His last film had been When The Earth Stood Still, an immense critical flop. He was mocked for his lack of emotion in various roles - treated as a caricature, of sorts. He was photographed sitting on a bench looking sad - and the Internet world reacted. It began to make fun of him in a gentler, more inner-circle way, creating viral art of him. Stories abounded of his apparently endless charity. He became another caricature - 'Sad Keanu' - but it was a happier identity, and to some extent it appears to have pleased him. Compare this to Chuck Norris, however, case study number two-


Charlie Sheen: No disrespect, Mr Ware, but I have to ask - what is it you were implying?


Jon Ware: Aside from one possible case of seriously unpleasant behaviour, Mr Sheen, with regards to your assaulting Brooke Mueller, you have also behaved in recent decades in the manner most likely to cause the reactionary tabloid press to howl about you. Tellingly, in the film Being John Malkovich, you played up to this, appearing 'as yourself' as an entertaining yet boozed-up, wild-eyed, sex-addicted mess. In Two and a Half Men, you appeared as a boozed-up, wild-eyed, sex-addicted mess...named 'Charlie'. The point of the vehicle, as far as I can tell, was that this was supposed to be charming.


Charlie Sheen: In 'Men', I was an 'entertaining' boozed-up, wild-eyed, sex-addicted mess.


Jon Ware: As you wish. My point, sir, is this - ratings for the prematurely cancelled 'Men' have shot up. And while many online are, indeed, mocking you, how many of them have also recently used your name in conjunction with the Reevesian term 'awesome'? 8 million Google results, Mr Sheen, for 'Charlie Sheen awesome'. Not including similar results.


(I hand him the folder.)


Jon Ware: Your caricature has altered, sir. With some well-chosen, colourful wordplay about warlocks and sabres, you've very nearly gone from being an anti-Semitic Mel Gibson into a Keanu Reeves. You've become an insider - even if not everybody thinks you're in on the joke. Because the fickleness of the Internet - and its willingness to pick up whimsical fashions and popularities and run with them ad nauseam - is almost as important as its possibilities for communicating truth. Frankly, Mr Sheen, if Muammar Gaddafi appeared on TV wearing a big top hat, a monocle, and raving about blue Smarties, he'd pick up a lot of Western Internet fans who worship irony above all. Because post-modernism is striving towards a new law - fashionably ironical action with serious consequence. Christ, I wonder how many people were momentarily charmed by the sheer absurdity of his moment with the umbrella and when he ranted about Nescafe - charmed enough that the horrific implications of his words became...unreal. We live in an age when we make our clowns kings, Mr Sheen.


Charlie Sheen: Of course. The Mayor Boris Johnson effect. But tell me, Mr Ware - having read your blog, I understand that you're presenting this scenario as part of your wider concern with the deteriorating effect irony (your favourite literary technique) can have upon culture and even politics when it becomes a fad spread collectively by those disenchanted with the current system and detached from any care for its well-being. Because this is a topic you've brought up, like, a bajillion times before. But is it not counter-productive to attempt to address this serious issue while yourself using irony?


(A curious sort of silence passes between us.)


Jon Ware: (a little sadly) Mr Sheen, it's the only language I was ever taught.