Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/12/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018)

Cast: voices of Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoë Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber, Chris Pine. Screenplay: Phil Lord, Rodney Rothman. Production design: Justin K. Thompson. Film editing: Robert Fisher Jr. Music: Daniel Pemberton.

The theory in physics that there are multiple universes has also entered the realm of works derived from the imagination. So far, it's largely used in talking about science fiction and comic books -- that is, we haven't yet begun to talk about the Shakespeareverse, the Dickensverse, or the Faulknerverse, among other potential realms of fiction -- but it's now commonplace to refer to shared fictional universes like the "Marvel Universe" or DC's "Arrowverse," in which all the various comics, TV shows, and movies are assumed to coexist. Hence the emergence of a "Spider-Verse" in the Oscar-winning animated movie in which various avatars of the webslinger created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko appear together. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a colorful, hyperactive movie that may cause some of us not steeped in the lore of comic books confusion and headaches. But it's pulled off with a good deal of verve and wit.