Moving the posts

I'm moving, sort of. I've shifted most of the material here to my other Blogger bloggy-blog-blog, The Weird Turn Pro (http://proweirdo.blogspot.com/). The main reason: the name. "The weird turn pro" is an apt description of what I had been doing with the blog--namely, showing off my writing--and the moniker "Doctor Bippie" is a little tougher to explain.

Doctor Bippie will stay in business for now. It will probably be a spot for linking to interesting sites and cultural phenomena, and maybe the occassional critique or commentary.

If you've come here as a result of having received my business card, the stuff you want to see--writing samples and such--is probably at The Weird Turn Pro.

In any case, I hope I'll see you around the 'sphere.


thanks for paying attention

Article: "Attack of the Supersized Comic Book" (Chesapeake Family Magazine)

My first print article, about graphic novels in education and mainstream culture, has been published in Chesapeake Family Magazine. It's pared down from a slightly more ambitious--and probably unreadably florid--effort. I am nonetheless proud of it. I'm grateful for the opportunity provided by Chesapeake Family and its editor, Kristen Page-Kirby.

So check it out, and chime in. Comments will be slipped into pH-neutral melamine sleeves and allowed to appreciate in value.

thanks for paying attention

The Hulk is back

The Incredible Hulk review is back up here, and at the Movie Tuesday index.

Movie Review: The X-Files (Chesapeake Family)

My review of The X-Files: I Want To Believe is now up on the Movie Tuesday Blog.

Comments will be waved at from a rowboat. (Watch the end credits and you'll understand.)


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The Dark Knight: Some Scraps

Sometimes in my rapture I write a tad more than I should. What follows are some bits and pieces I'm a little proud of that couldn't possibly fit into my little 600-word confection.

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The look of the movie adds much to its exploration of the blurry boundaries between light and dark. Batman prefers to work at night, of course, gliding through the negative spaces of Gotham's sprawl. But a fair part of the action takes place during business hours, in the spare, rectangular domains of financial and civic power. Nolan and his production team juxtapose night's hard shadows with a flat, gray light that seems to coat rather than illuminate. It hums from the drop ceilings of government offices or oozes in through the windows of ivory tower boardrooms. Not even the Batcave escapes the quotidian glare. With Wayne Manor under renovation, Batman is forced to hide his toys in a single football field-sized room buried somewhere in the inner city. Lined with fashionably polished concrete and lit with bands of fluorescent light, it resembles a huge empty desk drawer. But who has time to decorate?

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The Joker wants our fear. He has no beliefs, no allegiances and no agenda. He knows exactly what he’s doing but scoffs at the notion that he has a plan. “Nobody panics when things go according to a plan,” he coos, adding, “even if the plan is horrifying.” It’s one of many instances where the ostensibly simple and silly comic-book world echoes the murky complexities on the other side of the theater walls. A look inside the mind of this fictional hyper-terrorist just might remind the audience of the thorny thicket of our own continuing response to terror, and of the hard lesson that crazy men who want to kill us may not be half as frightening as sane men who want to watch us lose our minds.

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At two and a half dark and stormy hours, the film might have benefitted from some trimming. Not fat, mind you; the movie is all muscle. But there are some pretty long stretches of dialogue, and much of what would otherwise have been subtext finds its way onto someone’s lips eventually.

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Oh, how I do love the sound of my own voice.


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Movie Review: The Dark Knight (Chesapeake Family Magazine)

My review of The Dark Knight is now on Chesapeake Family's Movie Tuesday blog. This movie kicked ass. I have way more than 600 words to spill over it--I'll see if I can't get some of them in a dustpan and find a spot for them here.

Comments will be disarmed in one fluid motion while I simultaneously kick a guy in the chest.


thanks for paying attention.


A note on where things can be found:

The Chesapeake family site architecture now has each new review appearing on the Movie & DVD Reviews index page, with a list of links to previous reviews immediately following the current one. As reviews get bumped off the index page, it looks like they're assigned URLs using the following protocol:

http://www.chesapeakefamily.com/index.php/Movie-and-DVD-Reviews/Movie-Tuesday-Movie-Title-Each-Word-Capitalized.html.

If for some reason a review is no longer being linked on the Chesapeake Family website, I'll find a way to make them available here. It remains to be seen what the SOP is on that.

Thanks again for paying attention.

Movie Review: WALL-E (Chesapeake Family Magazine)

Feel free to check out my review of WALL-E for Chesapeake Family Magazine's Movie Tuesday blog.

Comments will be cooed at in an adorable robotic tremolo.

Due up is The Dark Knight, scheduled for Tues. July 22.


thanks for paying attention.


A note:

The website has been redesigned--a tabbed drop-down menu of blog categories is now accessible at the top of any page (mine are all in Movie and DVDs.) The mere prospect of comments, whether they materialize or not, will make sleep difficult.

Movie Review: The Incredible Hulk (Chesapeake Family Magazine)

Here's the link to my review of The Incredible Hulk for Chesapeake Family Magazine's Movie Tuedsay blog: http://www.chesapeakefamily.com/index.php/20080630238/Blog-General/Movie-Tuesday-Incredible-Hulk.html. This link may change--I'll try to update it if and when it does.

Comments won't like me when I'm angry.

Next up should be WALL-E for Tuesday, July 8.


thanks for paying attention.

Movie Review: Speed Racer (Chesapeake Family Magazine)

Here's a link to my review of Speed Racer for Chesapeake Family Magazine's Movie Tuesday blog: http://www.chesapeakefamily.com/index.php/20080512204/Blog-General/Movie-Tuesday-Speed-Racer.html.

This one came out a little clunky--as with most things I slightly botch, I blame sleep deprivation. Nevertheless, verdicts yea, nay or meh will be sheepishly accepted.

The next one should be The Incredible Hulk, on Tuesday, June 17.


thanks for paying attention.

Mr. P Recommends…

This is a little something I used to send off with my seniors on their last day. One year, some students had asked what I read in high school and what I liked, so I put together a list, then annotated it--perhaps as a final dash of salt in the wounds of students trying to escape homework once and for all. In any case, here are a couple of entries I made.

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Books

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
When I was a freshman in college my sister, still a sophomore in high school, sent me a hard-bound copy of Franny and Zooey as a birthday gift. It rang like a bell in my brain for weeks. I have since accepted that my little sister is never wrong about books.
In two separate novellas we are introduced to two of the unique siblings Glass. Only Franny could have a legitimate existential crisis over a pair of frogs legs, and only her brother Zooey could help her find her way by summoning their dead brother Seymour for a transcendental pep talk. If you were a precocious child or a searching adolescent, after reading this you’ll likely follow the Glass family to the ends of the earth.
Salinger’s prose is perfection, his style inimitable—but, boy, did I try. To this day, no one (except my father, and maybe David Letterman) has had a greater effect on the way I speak.
By the way, Salinger is still alive today (as far as we know), holed up on a farm in New Hampshire where he receives no visitors and stubbornly persists in not publishing; he hasn’t released anything since 1961. Making contact with him has become a modern literary Quest for the Holy Grail. If you ever end up meeting him, you will have earned the extra credit to end all extra credit. C'mon, I dare you.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve, “translated” by Mark Twain
You’ll recall we read a bit of this during the Virginia Woolf unit, as a springboard to a discussion about gender and voice. But I hope it became clear that, while Twain plays on and derives humor from some familiar gender stereotypes, this is in no way a one-joke piece. If anything, the book’s “gimmick”—the translation of previously undiscovered texts direct from the Garden of Eden—provides it with the fuel for genius. The man and the woman, while playing their traditional, stereotypical roles to perfection, also happen to be the first of their sexes. As a result, Adam and Eve are able to play out the battle of the sexes unhampered by the cultural baggage of gender politics (including that of Twain’s era, more than a century ago) is set aside. They are freed from blame for their behavior (at least for a time), and thus we readers are freed from having to blame them. After all, it was not them but their types that became stereotypical.
And so Eve and her reluctant mate emerge as so much more than mere caricatures. Instead, they can be seen and enjoyed as two young people in a new, uneasy relationship not only with each other but with the universe and their creator. Adam’s exasperation with (or obliviousness to) Eve’s complexity, which would thud rather than resonate in any well-heeled romance, only strengthens our desire to see Eve win him over. And she does—at a price.
As the book jacket of this edition reminds us, the Diaries represent the only instance in Twain’s prolific career where he narrates in a woman’s voice. And I can honestly say that Eve is one of the most compellingly sweet and deliciously complex female voices I’ve ever read. This book is a tiny gem—well worth a trip to the library or bookstore.

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
Good movie, better book. Everyone says that, but there’s a reason they do.
Guys will especially enjoy this. As for the ladies, well… All I can say is, Yes, this is the way we think. And I’m sorry.