I‘ve been cranky in today’s posts, haven’t I?  But I do still have a heart, the cockles of which remain capable fo being warmed, as they were by Mason Currey’s tender and uproarious reminiscences of watching Walker, Texas Ranger with his father.  Now, I know I normally talk about things like this in the context of how I missed out on them and discovered them years after everyone else.  But one of the only television shows I watched growing up was Early Edition (I really need to get my hands on those DVDs).  And Walker, Texas Ranger ran adjacent to it, so I ended up catching a fair amount of Chuck Norris proving, as Currey puts it, that “Precision karate kicks are, apparently, the primary means of law enforcement in Texas.”  I can’t remember, exactly, what I thought about the show–I was was more interested in the adorableness that was Kyle Chandler, and his relationship with a clever reporter with lots and lots of red hair.  I’d like to think that I recognized that Walker was ridiculous at the time, and that it fostered a deep and cheesy appreciation for on-screen absurdity.  But I think I was so far removed from understanding even the most basic formulas of cop shows and procedurals in general, that I couldn’t see how Walker diverged from them.  


Rather, I think Walker was one of the first things that helped ingrain a sense of ridiculousness as the default in me.  I like straight action movies, sure, but I kind of appreciate the absurdity that Starship Troopers wore on its sleeve.  I like trash, especially when it’s winkingly self-aware.  It’s my own version of Emily Dickinson’s admonishment to “tell all the truth but tell it slant.”  I like culture that doesn’t just capture the weirdness of the world, but that magnifies it.  Norris’ discomfort, lack of actual acting skills, and reliance on the martial arts stuff, and the fact that folks took this entirely seriously while it was airing for a long time, seem like a perfect example of that sublime oddity.

I mean, really, who on earth is still naive enough to believe that if a suitcase full of cash falls on your car, it came from heaven?

I’m annoyed by this.  It’s as if no one ever goes to the damn movies.  This is an unworthy follow-up to Star Trek for Chris Hemsworth, who owned the screen when he was on it (though the fact that he’s in Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon’s upcoming horror flick, redeems him slightly).  And Sean Bean is so transparently, cartoonishly gifted with the features to play a villain that it’s incredibly dull watching him mail it in on the strength of his shoulders and the lines of that face.  At least as Boromir, he had some tenderness and rage and love in him.  For that performance, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt when he works with decent directors in the Red Riding trilogy.  But laziness and stupidity like this vex me deeply.

I don’t actually hate the idea of Ryan Phillipe as Captain America.  I realize at this point nobody has any real idea whatsoever who’s going to pick up the shield, and so continuing to post about it is sort of futile.  But this particular bit of speculation gives me the opportunity to praise Breach, the fabulous, nervy thriller about the Robert Hanssen case that to my mind is one of the more criminally slept-on movies of the last decade.  Everyone in it, Chris Cooper, Laura Linney, and Phillipe are working at the top of their respective games:

And given that the movie’s bad guy is going to be Red Skull, I think it could do for Cap to be a little tense.

Is now several movies ago.  But it really is worth restating how fantastic Shrek was as a truly strange children’s book, and the fact that the movie franchise twisting that legacy has become a genuine monstrosity beyond what William Steig ever imagined:

If someone unworthy ever gets their hands on Abel’s Island (I don’t count the movie short with Tim Curry voicing Abel as an abomination), I propose we form a resistance movement.