MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A young girl must discover her own story in order to save those whom she loves.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Engagingly written, well paced, with magic that is often truly random and magical.
CONS: While coincidence and plot convenience may be intentional, it's still a bit eye-rolling.
BOTTOM LINE: This is a fun book to read, with lots of stories-within-the-story and characters you can root for.

The text on the cover says "A Shadowbridge Novel," but that would imply that you could read this as a stand-alone story. Don't! This is the second half of a novel started in Shadowbridge, and without reading that volume, this one will make no sense. In fact if you can, read them back-to-back. Neither of them is particularly long, and I can't quite make out what is gained by splitting this novel into two books other than more money for the publisher. Be that as it may, Lord Tophet brings the novel to a satisfactory conclusion, one which fulfills and improves on the promise of the first volume.

We follow the story of Leodora, daughter of the famed story-teller Bardsham. Her mentor, Soter, was a friend of her father's and tried to keep her hidden on an anonymous little island. However, one cannot keep true talent hidden, and he eventually follows Leodora as she heads out onto the spans, there to make waves with her own story-telling and to learn ever more stories. In the first volume she also picks up Diverus, a young man who is blessed by the gods with extraordinary musical ability (an interesting story in its own right)-the perfect person to accompany her on her journey. As the first volume closes, we get hints of some malign force hunting for her.

This volume opens up exactly where the previous one stopped, with no recap or summary. Leodora is being touched by the gods in the same way Diverus had been earlier, although to more subtle purpose. As the story progresses, she performs to enthusiastic crowds of hundreds, but always seeks out more stories. She and Diverus travel across worlds in search of more, but there are two stories that she needs more than any others-her own, and that of Lord Tophet. It isn't in other dimensions or upside-down worlds that her own story will be found, and she eventually makes her way back to the "real" world of Shadowbridge, from there to confront the menace that has been following her.

I complained in my review of the first story about all the coincidences needed to make the plot work. Often, that sort of thing is the work of a lazy author. I now suspect that Frost is playing a deeper game. It relates to the fact that Leodora's story-telling art revolves around puppets. She controls them, what they do, and how they are projected to the audience. Frost is making the point here that his characters are also puppets in his hands. All characters in stories are, and usually the story is stronger than the characters. As Terry Pratchett has pointed out in several Discworld books (Witches Abroad springs to mind), sometimes the story is so old and so strong that the characters have no choice but to follow its dictates. Frost tips his hand with repeated passages along the lines of: "...it was only then that he realized he was explaining situations, giving orders. Where the information came from, he had no idea." "He watched them climb out of sight, unable to explain to them why he felt compelled to linger when there was nothing to see. He couldn't have explained it to himself." Leodora herself recognizes this tendency: "We think we're acting upon our own whims and choices, but we're not. We're guided, ushered through the unseen pattern, some labyrinth or maze-like the world has all its spirals, we've each got our own." Leodora is Frost's puppet as much as the trickster character Meersh is hers. For some people this may be frustrating, as if seeing the author's finger on the scales is cheating. I liked it. Once I realized that it was something he was doing on purpose, for a specific effect, it was easy to appreciate it instead of becoming exasperated.

There is plenty more in this book to appreciate. The nested stories are wonderful, as they were in the first volume, and some of them are hilarious. The magic in this universe is much more capricious than magic is in some fantastic settings. Sometimes magic ends up being as predictable as technology, but not here. With one notable exception (needed to bring the plot to its conclusion), magic here operates by the whims of the gods. When Diverus was touched, the gods also dropped down what appeared to be Tupperware containers. In one of the stories a brother asks for incredible speed, and is gifted with magic shoes that look something like Nike Air sneakers. The gods can show up and affect things, or not, at any time, and things don't always work the same way for different people. I find this quite admirable, since in those fantasy universes where the magic is tamed and regimented, it often feels like I'm reading sf without the intellectual rigor.

Then there are the characters: the theatre proprietress, her animated and mute wooden puppets who used to be actors, the cargo-handling folks who live under the spans, all of these are interesting in their own right. They are only sketched in, but even their sketches are people you can care about. We also finally get the full explanation of why Soter has been such an ass through the entire novel, and it is intense. (Frost didn't go for one rather predictable "twist" that I was afraid he was going to use, and I appreciate the fact that he avoided that temptation.)

Finally there is the setting. In the first book we're introduced to Shadowbridge, where everyone lives on bridges that spiral out to infinity. You can either walk along a span from region to region, all with their own languages and customs or sail from one spiral to the next (Frost has a nice bit of semi-predictable magic in place to make this easier to work with). In this world there are islands, and the streets on top of the bridges, and the spaces beneath the bridges. It's a beautiful world to visualize. In Lord Tophet, we see a little more of that, but also of spans destroyed by the evil that hunts Leodora, as well as another world that seems to connect all the others in some odd way. It's a realm out of fairy tales, with its own peculiar rules, which reinforces the capricious and dangerous aspects of the magic.

What's the take-away from the novel? Generally, it's to take control of the stories that define you. Don't be trapped by them (Soter) and don't try to destroy/deny them (Tophet), but find the story that gives you what you need to get you where you want to go (Leodora). This is a story about stories and their power, and Frost has written a good one. However, it may be time to call for a brief moratorium on writers (story-tellers) writing about how awesome stories are. While stories of this types are often very good, since the authors sincerely believe what they're saying, after the fifth or sixth one the theme gets a little stale. A few recent titles off the top of my head: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt, Vellum and Ink by Hal Duncan, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson, and I'm sure anyone out there can come up with additional examples. (I realize not all these books are "recent," but I've read them all recently.) It's an even more popular theme in short fiction. The books I listed are all first-rate stories, but taken together one thinks it might be time to give the "power of Story" theme a little time off.

Be that as it may, Frost has written an enjoyable conclusion to his novel. He takes some things which could have been weaknesses in the first half and turns them into strengths. He builds upon the world he set up in the first half to show us even more of the world, how it is threatened and how it might be saved. The "message" may be a little self-help-y, but Frost wraps up the Story in a well-paced, adventurous, and readable package.

Horror movies are big business, after all, and no doubt Guillermo del Toro serving as producer will somewhat influence comic book artist-writer Troy Nixey’s directorial debut on “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.” (more…)

I regret that I haven't seen Guillermo Del Toro's "Hellboy" (2004) or "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" (2008), though De. Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" was my top movie of 2006. Andrew Tracy at Reverse Shot evidently isn't impressed with the Hellboys, and I say "evidently" because I'm putting off reading the whole of his review of the new one until I've seen it.

But that hasn't stopped me from relishing the first two paragraphs! Because Tracy is articulating thoughts I've often entertained but too rarely raised in public. He begins:

Talking faux-seriously about juvenilia has become a marvelous way to avoid talking seriously about the serious. The slew of hyperbolic, overheated critical rhetoric that follows in the wake -- hell, in advance of -- the latest high concept blockbuster is enough to make one gag. In these cases, critical investigation has by and large become a matter of repeating verbatim the films' stridently announced surface-level themes with some linguistic curlicues and intellectual tumbling tossed in.

But contrary arguments, even if they're wrong, serve an important purpose, assuming they're thoughtful and supported; they can help opponents question themselves and ultimately develop better cases. In that spirit, I recommend Patchwork Earth's review, which is thorough and articulate. (It's correct, too.)

My goal here is to raise some very specific complaints (very randomly) to prompt the film's many, many supporters to re-think their adoration of Christopher Nolan's sequel to Batman Begins. I'm not saying it's a bad movie; I'm saying it's a not-great (and probably not-good) movie.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, start with my broad (but brief!) overview, because the Spoiler's Creed is in effect here.

The really short version: I enjoyed the movie but found it painfully muddled, and a poor reflection of its makers' obvious ambitions and ideas.

Hong Kong. I liked Batman's vacation, as it took the Caped Crusader out of Gotham and put him in something approximating the real world instead of the comic-book universe. It's a fun contextual flair that I wish worked toward some greater good.

Alas, this much-maligned section exists for two reasons: to establish the spying-sonar gadget (more on that later) and to show that Batman Has No Jurisdiction. Both are bald attempts to equate Batman with the Bush administration; given the movie's mantra of "terrorism," it's hard to avoid the comparison.

Yet it's not a meaningful or appropriate comparison. The Bush administration is a regime with checks and balances within and outside the United States; that those checks and balances are tooth- and ball-less misses the point. Batman is a self-appointed dispenser of justice, and any governmental sanction is unofficial.

That aside, Batman has always ignored pesky rules, and the conundrum of rights pitted against the general welfare would certainly be appropriate thematic fodder. But the ideas are barely developed. When Lucius Fox objects to wide-scale surveillance of Gotham, his complaint is dismissed and deflated with the argument that it's really, really important to catch the Joker. One discussion wonders whether it's better to only pursue solid prosecutions against the mob or to have "clean streets" for 18 months; fuck the law, and let's go for clean streets.

The absence of strong and rational dissent sends a clear message. Perhaps I've politically misjudged Nolan and his co-writer brother, but they seem too thoughtful to so glibly endorse oligarchy and the disregard for due process.

The rating. Only the Cinema has praised Nolan for his restraint. It's a spirited defense, and it makes a good deal of sense outside of the context of the movie business.

But I refuse to believe that Nolan made an artistic choice to present his ample violence in a bloodless and largely implied fashion, because this must be true: The movie's financiers would not have accepted a picture that could potentially be rated R.

This seemed at best a minor challenge with Batman Begins, given that the primary weapon was a hallucinogenic gas. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, features the unpleasant business with the pencil, and improvised cosmetic surgery, and a primary villain whose weapon of choice is knives. Lots of knives. (And pocket lint, although I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish with that.)

Nolan does a mostly admirable job, except that at heart The Dark Knight should be an R-rated movie, and I think he knows it. Rather than delivering a PG-13 movie abiding by the letter and the spirit of the MPAA's silly rules, he seems to want to push the boundaries, punishing parents who take their eight-year-olds to see this. How much violence and sadism can I get away with?

This is admittedly a gut feeling, but it seems to me that Nolan was hell-bent on being a movie-ratings Batman, flouting the rules.

The death of Jim Gordon. Obvious and badly done, the faked death of Jim Gordon mainly makes us question whether Rachel Dawes is actually dead, which is a grave misstep considering that her passing should be the heart of the movie.

The boats. Ultimately, whatever optimism The Dark Knight exudes comes from this episode, in which people packed on two ferries are given the choice to (a) blow up the other boat, (b) wait for the other people to blow them up, or (c) in the unlikely event that both boats still exist when the deadline passes, wait for the Joker to blow up both boats, as he's promised to do. Both boats still exist when the deadline passes, and Batman claims to the Joker that this proves ... something or other — I think that people are good.

But this merely shows that the Nolans think people are stupid. If the choices are that half the people die, or everybody dies, any rational person would decide to blow up the other boat. And given an even more loaded choice — one boat of decent folk and one boat of bloodthirsty convicts — we're to believe that the good citizens of Gotham show their decency? Ignoring logic, their instinct for self-preservation, and their mob mentality? Bullshit.

And let's look beyond the actual outcome: The people voted to blow up the boat full of prisoners, and they would have done it had one guy had the balls to turn the key. We are supposed to feel good about humanity from that?

The primary problem here is the threat from the Joker to blow up both boats. Yes, that's in-character, but it undermines the obvious question of situational ethics, and the tension inherent in the predicament. Again, the threat of death to all makes the choice too easy; it should be a matter of who can turn the key first.

But what if there were no deadline? What if the "good ferry" had 20 people, and the "bad ferry" had 200? What would Jesus do? What would you do? I'm not sure how you'd set it up, but it would be difficult to make it more awkward or false.

Heath Ledger. I'm asking for trouble, aren't I?

Let me be clear: If Anthony Hopkins deserved an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs, Heath Ledger deserves one for The Dark Knight.

His performance is forceful, nuanced, entertaining, frightening, and fully developed. It also has such mass and gravity that it dominates the rest of the movie and, to extend the metaphor, throws everything else out of its trajectory.

This is a tough one, because the realization that Ledger was going to exert too great a force on the movie could only come once production was underway. And while re-writes are hardly uncommon, Nolan seems too meticulous, and the production was too expensive, to retool it so late in the game.

Bluntly, to accommodate his performance as the Joker, the movie would have to be significantly re-thought. Which leads to ...

Two-Face. As the idealistic, relentless DA Harvey Dent, Aaron Eckhart is convincing and compelling. As Two-Face, he's a pretty cool special effect, and is the de facto — and disappointing — denouement to the real show of the Joker.

The big problem is that the Nolans create and kill Two-Face as if they couldn't wait to be done with him. He's burned! He's angry! He's dead!

Harvey Dent seems more interesting to them than Two-Face, and he seems a better thematic match for Batman in his battle with the Joker, with his dedication to justice and order, his warnings to Gordon about trusting his bought-and-paid-for colleagues, and his apparent incorruptibility. So why not save Two-Face for the next movie? Duality is barely touched on in The Dark Knight, even though the marketing would have you believe otherwise.

Cutting out the Two-Face transformation would have necessitated scrapping much of the script, but it would have lent the project more focus. And it would have the added benefit of letting Maggie Gyllenhaal return.

Sound design. Ummmm ... wouldn't Two-Face have some speech impediment if his face looked like that?

Yes, that's nitpicking, but Nolan appears to want to ground his Batman movies in plausibility, and attention to detail is the only way to sell the silliness in such a way that it can be taken seriously.

The familiar. In a take-down of The Dark Knight, Keith Ulrich argues that coin-flipping Two-Face comes off as a low-rent Anton Chigurh. Ulrich was rightly criticized for forgetting that Two-Face's games of chance were around long before Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men or its film adaptation, but he's on to something. From Two-Face's coin to the Joker's Glasgow smile (Pan's Labyrinth) to the cell-phone-in-the-belly explosives (some variation of which surely has been used in a Saw movie), the motifs of The Dark Knight feel tired because of their familiarity from recent movies, no matter which came first.

Batman Begins wasn't revolutionary, but its approach was something we'd never seen in a Caped Crusader movie: a groundedness bordering on realism (for a comic-book movie). It was fresh.

The Dark Knight feels pretty stale.

Diabolical plans. The Joker is at his best in direct action. His first meeting with the mob is electric, as we feel his menace on a very personal level. He visits the mob on its own territory, and is in an obvious position of weakness. Yet he takes control with both quick, brutal action and smart, cunning words. The other standout scene comes when he's being held and questioned/beaten by Batman and the police, and it's evident that he has the upper hand. Through intimacy we discover him and revel in him. The movie's enduring prop will be a pencil, not the Batpod or some other gadget.

But the Joker has Big Plans, and the bigger they are, the less we see of him. The convolutions of plot and scenario in The Dark Knight reminded me a little of the Adam West TV show. That ain't good.

The evil plot in Batman Begins was simple, but three days after seeing The Dark Knight, I couldn't piece together a reasonable facsimile of the Joker's master plan. I'm not certain I ever understood it.

The sonar. An obvious work-around for a climactic action sequence that the filmmakers seemed to know beforehand wouldn't work without some sort of voice-over narration. So there's the Hong Kong detour to set it up. And beyond knowing that the people in the clown masks were the hostages, I still couldn't tell you what happened.

It almost seems that the Nolans worked really, really hard to address a storytelling problem, and their solution is so awkward that it comes off as lazy despite the screenwriting and technical challenges that had to be overcome to execute it.

It's akin to struggling to find the perfect word and writing around the problem with 236 collectively inferior words. There's ample evidence of both the effort and the failure.

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Culture Snob tags: Batman (4), Christopher Nolan (8), Superheroes (10), The Dark Knight (3)

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Using Batman Begins' epilogue as a jumping-off point, The Dark Knight finds Lieutenant Gordon's (Gary Oldman) warning to Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) about the threat of escalation manifested in the Joker (Heath Ledger), who emerges without a past or explanation with a single-minded, anarchic purpose. Let me tell you what you already know: Ledger is mesmerizing as the Joker, a Nietzschian force of nature worthy of mention alongside all-time great movie villains from Hans Becker to Anton Chigurh. An early scene where the Joker makes a pencil disappear elicited spontaneous applause from the audience, and deservedly so - it's impossible to take your eyes off Ledger whenever he's onscreen, and to attribute this to his untimely death is both crass and inaccurate. The hissing tongue, the Jimmy Stewart from Mars voice, the ugly-duckling way he walks in the nurse's uniform (probably my favorite moment) and every other detail he gives the Joker are more than a bag of self-conscious actorly quirks. Ledger's performance is a triumph of extremes that succeeds in making us believe in a villain who is both completely mad and frighteningly logical about his identity and purpose - when the Joker tells Batman "You complete me," we're left with the disturbing implication that in this round of good vs. evil, the bad guy has the upper hand.

This Joker provides more than enough conflict for one movie, but he's just the prime mover of Nolan and his brother Jonathan's marvelous, intricately plotted script. A bank manager (William Fichtner) complains that criminals used to believe in something; this Gotham is a city of dying ideals, and its good guys are measured by how they protect these ideals while still effectively doing their jobs. At the heart The Dark Knight is the contrast between idealistic D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, less showy than Ledger but just as effective) and Wayne (Bale, underrated for his subtle work here), who accepts his own corruption as a means to an end. The choices these two men, as well as Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, endearingly square), Dent's girlfriend/Wayne's former squeeze Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal - upgrade!) make are never simple, and Nolan doesn't provide us with easy answers. In a time when big-budget movies are designed to be as reassuring to an audience's assumptions as possible, it's sort of amazing that Nolan was able to make a superhero movie this complex. Gotham (as played, stunningly, by Chicago) is a labyrinth of moral ambiguity, and Nolan challenges us to question our own assumptions about heroism and decency in a way that couldn't be more relevant (I'm only beginning to process the film's many layers of meaning).

But while mine is one in a sea of raves for The Dark Knight, I was confused by the number of reviews that claim the movie is no fun. It's wildly fun, almost dangerously so since most of the film's most entertaining moments arise from the shock of how far Nolan lets his Joker go. Balancing dazzlingly executed action sequences with carefully composed emotional beats (Gyllenhaal's delivery of the word "Listen" kills me). It's exhausting in the end, to be sure, but only because it's such a complete moviegoing experience - immersive, visceral, technically perfect (DP Wally Pfister, editor Lee Smith and composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard all deliver their best work) and flat-out astounding. Nolan reveals an ambition unseen not only in most comic book adaptations but in most movies, period. It feels like his entire career has been building to this, as he reveals himself to be one of the great cinematic storytellers, and The Dark Knight an unqualified masterpiece.

The Hellboy sequel, starring Ron Perlman in the title role, and directed by Guillermo del Toro (”Pan’s Labyrinth”) even bested box office superhero Hancock - no small feat.

Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser landed in third place with $20.6 million, while WALL-E and Wanted rounded out the top five.

The universally panned Eddie Murphy vehicle “Meet Dave” somehow managed to earn $5.3 million and take the number seven spot.