Fake-out title again!  I am quite the crafty one.

Well, my rent went up, I got no sleep, and I attempted to board the subway this morning using what turned out to be a Best Buy gift card.  On top of these indignities, I was forced last night to watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the second time.  The second! The reason is complicated.*

The bottom line is, tonight I am in need of some comfort and refinement.  A glass of wine and some august British crime.

Based on my childhood, I ought to have read Brat Farrar much sooner, but you know how time gets away from us.  I grew up watching a PBS televised adaptation of it an absurd number of times, because I was young and it was familiar.  It aired on that Mystery! program — remember it?  It was hosted by Vincent Price and had the intro sequence created by Edward Gorey?  (This increased its cool factor immensely; Edward Gorey is inherently cool.)  Anyway, this particular feature starred the notably attractive Mark Greenstreet in a dual role.  Mark had first set the world aflame playing a bellboy in “Family Ties Vacation,” and he went on to make an equally big splash in a Vidal Sassoon commercial, if memory serves.

But now, the book.  By Josephine Tey.  The atmosphere hits the spot: classic English countryside, riddled with ponies and such.  Here you are:

photo credit: BinaryApe

I won’t give anything away, but the story, told in proper British fashion, involves the impersonation of a long-lost twin.  Hence Mr. Greenstreet’s dual role.  This meant that we got to enjoy the visual splendor of 1980s split-screen technology.  I recall one scene in particular, when one Mark Greenstreet had to bump into the other Mark Greenstreet and shove him aside; we were all terribly impressed.  (Our mouths formed little
O shapes; that’s how you could tell.)

I’m enjoying the novel, and I’d wager the film could easily — and pleasantly — be remade for general audiences.  Ms. Tey does have her devotees, after all.  Now, there was a dreadful rumor several years back that just this thing would happen, and that the role would go to Ben Affleck.  Given the elapsed time and the fact that the story demands a leading man who can pass for age 21, I think we may be out of the woods on that one.  Please, everyone . . . share in my relief.

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* A saving grace: I watched Indiana the second time with RiffTrax accompaniment.  If any of you are/were Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans and are not aware of RiffTrax, you would do well to correct this.

P.S.  Wholly unrelated: there is a show on tonight called “Extreme Poodles.”  I have no choice but to record it.

I’m an astrologer, for God’s sake, so I actually go farther out with my intelligence than most people.

- David Palmer, True Beauty

Entertainment Weekly recently revealed its selections for the 100 best characters (from apparently any form of fictional entertainment) of the last 20 years.

Some of these were vibrantly appropriate, life-affirming choices (e.g., G.O.B. Bluth, Tracy Flick, Corky St. Clair). And some, of course, were preposterous pigslop (e.g., Vivian Ward, Shrek . . . Maximus? Really, guys?).

Still, I had fun reading through them, and I inevitably found myself mulling those whose exclusion outraged me.  And then I thought, Say, I have a blog . . . I can make my own danged list.

Suckaz.

Here are 15 characters I feel are worthy of “best” status.  To be a good sport, I shall stick to EW‘s time line: the last 20 years.  Sadly, that means no Nigel Tufnel, no Owen Meany, no Wembley Fraggle, no Old Man Parker, no Edmund Blackadder, no Alex. . . . ) No problem.

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1)  Max Fischer

Truly a goldmine.  Such complexity, yet such subtlety!  Such love!  Such hate!  The piranhas!  The bees!  It took plenty, I’m sure, simply to conceive of someone like Max. To write for him was a whole other level of uncharted brilliance.  And Jason Schwartzman’s finishing twitches are what make the young man legend.

Max can handle being left off the EW list, though.  He wrote a hit play and directed it, so he’s not sweating it either.

2)  Arturo “Arty” Binewski

I knew virtually nothing about Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love when I bit it off, so to speak, and I was thoroughly slapped around by the experience (in a good way, inasmuch as that’s possible).  For that, I have Arty to thank.  No small feat to design a character with no arms or legs and turn him into a sinister, disturbing, Machiavellian force of nature.  The tenets of his cult of Arturism alone rocket this flipper-baby onto my list.

3)  Montana Moorehead

Celeste Talbert is a menopausal hag.  Let’s see more of Montana Moorehead!

Speaking of Machiavellian.  This one just makes the cut, chronologically, and phew! Where would we be without this sugarplum?  I know where Jeffrey Anderson would be — he’d be playing Willy Loman in front of old farts eating meat loaf! Chewing and slurping and spitting out their pits!  Only through her unique brand of shrill sticktoitness can Montana move mountains and bring folks together.  Frankly, I don’t understand why Cathy Moriarty hasn’t been cast in everything since this movie came out.

4)  Benjamin Linus

John Locke got the EW nod, as you may have noticed in the image above.  And while I in no way impugn his introspective journey, nor Terry O’Quinn’s elegance in portraying it, I’ve got to award the match to Ben when all is said and done.

(And, as of last month, it is.)

5)  Sean Connery (SNL Celebrity Jeopardy incarnation)

The day is his!

6)  Sara Goldfarb

Anyone who can watch Requiem for a Dream without feeling an overwhelming urge to call his or her mother is just . . . well, you must have a heart of titanium, my friend. All the way around, this is a stunning adaptation of Hubert Selby’s already stunning novel. More to the point, though, witnessing Ellen Burstyn’s disintegration in this film is one of the most torturous cinematic experiences I’ve ever had — but ’tis such a beauteous torture, a glorious agony, to shield our eyes against the feeble seeping of Sara’s dignity and maternity.  It is, to this day, a major pebble in my shoe that Ms. Burstyn did not receive the Oscar that year.

7)  Patrick Bateman

I’m rather amazed, I must say, that EW bypassed this one.  Too controversial, perhaps?  I am thinking particularly of the literary incarnation, of which the onscreen Patrick is a mere shadow.  Page after page of obsessive, narcissistic psychopathy, punctuated by ruthlessly detailed product inventories, restaurant reviews, and the occasional doctoral dissertation on an ’80s pop legend.  Or human slaughter.  That, sir, is a memorable persona.

8)  Mary

Some of my movie-buff friends may not agree.  But I have long found the diminutive focal point of Party Girl to be fairly transfixing.  She’s just so . . . all over the place, in a way that I doubt was fully mandated by the screenplay itself.  Hence my mild hero worship of/girl-crush on Parker Posey.  I forgive you, Parker, for You’ve Got Mail. I do.  Let’s just learn from it and move on.

9)  Walter Sobchak

EW gave it to The Dude, and I’d be the last person to disagree.  But Walter is just too good not to get his own back-pat.

10) Suzanne Stone Maretto

My opinions of Nicole Kidman have swung dramatically over the years.  I think she’s very good, yet for some reason, I often don’t enjoy watching her in things.  Clearly this is my issue, not hers, and she should not trouble herself with it.  But I abso-tively enjoy watching her in To Die For, a delightful treat that far too few people have embraced.  Personally, I think the problem is the unfortunate combination of the title and the artwork, which are in cahoots to make this look like a cheesy, formulaic Basic Instinct replica.  Not so, I say!  This movie has a lot of genius to it, and an outstanding cast . . . and Kidman just plain owns her sensational role.

(A quiet shout-out to Joaquin’s Jimmy Emmett — also a deeply memorable character.)

11)  Bret and Jemaine

Don’t get huffy; the EW list had some multiperson entries (Mulder and Scully, for example).

I came close to handing this one to Murray Hewitt, in honor of his perpetual, raised-eyebrows earnestness, but it seemed wrong not to recognize the show’s more iconic elements.  I’m not claiming that the lovable idiot has never been done before, nor that it has never been done in a pairs format.  But so many things work in this particular pair’s favor: the accents, the fish-out-of-waterness, their invariably mild delivery, their gentle tolerance of Mel, the sideburns, the animal sweatshirts, and — most important — the music.  It gives these two the opportunity to “come at” their characters in as many ways as they like.  The more they step out of character in the songs, the more they reinforce their characters in the not-songs.  There.  Meditate on that one for a while.

12)  Kirk Lazarus

There’s nothing about this individual or Robert Downey, Jr.’s portrayal of him that isn’t freaking brilliant.  The fact that Justin Theroux played a part in bringing Kirk to life just makes me love him more; I’ve had a thing for Theroux since Mulholland Dr. I’m not surprised Downey did not get the Oscar (can you imagine the uproar if Heath had lost out to someone in Tropic Thunder, for crying out loud?), but it made for a nice little pipe dream that he was nominated.

13)  Piscine “Pi” Patel

Another one I’m surprised EW skipped, given the sensation that Yann Martel’s book caused at its release.  But it’s been a while since I’ve found a character who was so intellectually engrossing.  Damn the cliché of loving this book — I loved this book!  And I loved Pi himself, and I rooted for him unconditionally.

14)  Shelley Levene

I’d wager that Glengarry Glen Ross is not for everyone (real estate sales don’t really constitute that summer-blockbuster premise, if that’s your thing).  But it is for me, and the hapless Shelley was just a joy to pity.  Pacino’s Ricky Roma definitely gave me the biggest hoot, but he lacked Shel’s tortured complexity, his layers of despair.  O Jack Lemmon, we miss thee.

15)  Lucille Bluth

Believe me, I am grateful for Gob’s inclusion in the EW list.  In no respect do I pooh-pooh that.  But at the end of the day (my brother will be so annoyed with me for using that phrase), Lucille is my inspiration.  She is a virtuoso of character composition!  She is the Seaward!  She’s thirsty!  She’s in rehab!  She doesn’t care for Gob!  She baited the balcony!  She has a rape horn!  She gets off on being withholding!  She doesn’t know what Jimmy Kimmel Live is, nor does she care to find out!  You can find her in the hospital bar!

The first week in a post-LOST world.  A haunting silence closes in all around me, with narry a Hurley-bird to break it.  However shall I amuse myself?

(No, they weren’t dead the whole time; you missed the point.)*

I feel duly mournful.  Still, lots to do, so let’s get back to work.

Here we stand in a world newly refascinated by Alice in Wonderland. And why not — these classics are always cyclical (turn, turn, turn).  I’m game, of course, particularly when Tim Burton gets involved.** And I am happy to use it as an excuse to adhere to a theme for a while.  So, I checked out the “Almost Alice” album inspired by the new feature.  (This was fairly simple to do, as I won a copy in a giveaway.)  And I enjoyed it, even though my copy arrived damaged:

Hate crime?  We’ll never be sure.

I have checked out the SyFy miniseries.  I even watched it more than once, which had nothing at all to do with Andrew-Lee Potter’s Hatter being cute as all hell; I don’t know why you ask.  And I decided that reading the actual Lewis Carroll novel was a little too obvious, but then realized that it was, in fact, too obvious not to do it.

Overall, the style is a bit too heavens-to-Betsy for my taste, but again, I’m a team player.  Marvelously imaginative.  My hopes for something a tad darker are answered when I stumble upon this trilogy:

Now, I haven’t spent much time in the world of graphic novels, so this is a valuable experiment for me either way.  But it’s certainly delightfully dark.  The man has blades that come shooting out of various parts of his body at a moment’s notice.  It’s almost as exciting as when that dude in Night Watch tore out his own spine and used it as a sword. Further, when I first acquired my copy, I opened it at random, and this was the first panel I saw:

I think it goes without saying that I was pretty excited to get started.

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* I considered doing a full post on the subject of LOST, but it just felt like overkilling the overkill.  Suffice it to say that I liked it.  I was moved.  And besides, no one needs me to point out that the producers should have been far better prepared for David Malcolm Kelly’s resplendent efflorescence into manhood.  No one needs me to point out the potential incongruity of having Michael, the World’s Most Shat-Upon Man, be punished for eternity after killing two people, while Ben — the island’s own little Pol Pot — simply has to help little Alex get into college, and probably nail her mom, and he’s practically on deck to scamper into the next world.

** Can we please get Tim Burton and David Bowie to collaborate on something hefty soon?  That nice, long-overdue sequel to Labyrinth, perhaps? I know Jareth has no power over Sarah and all, but couldn’t he rustle up some power over Kiki?  Or Juanita?  Or Floyd?