My two line review of Inception:

The Matrix and What Dreams May Come had a baby, raised it on a steady diet of heist movies a la Ocean’s Eleven, and let it play with that nice neighbor boy, Dark City. See it, then scrape your brain offa the theater walls.

“Blessed is The Meek, for it is really pretty.”

How long has it been since we’ve talked webcomics here? Couple of weeks, now? Too long!

Let’s talk The Meek, by ambitious web comicist Der-shing Helmer. Helmer is not only a trained biologist, a tutor, a student and a self-taught artist, but is also undertaking the daunting task of mounting a fully colored graphic novel online with a tightly set schedule. Also, he’s all of 24 years old.

How is that graphic novel? Aside from being sumptuously colored, emotively written and cleverly plotted, it’s also damned compelling. The Meek follows a young woman raised in the wilds who has been sent to the world of powerful men and vast kingdoms to save her world.

Granted, that’s a little vague as far as synopses go, but thus far we’re only two chapters into the story. Still, those two chapters are uniquely intriguing and gorgeously wrought, and have certainly hooked a sizable—and vocal—fanbase in just a few months. For the impatient, Helmer has posted the Meekipedia, which is (you guessed it) a searchable encyclopedia of characters, terms and events in his fantasy world. Helmer has clearly spent an inordinate amount of time building this world and plotting the tempestuous events that will unfold deeper into The Meek, and his care should be applauded.

With so much on his plate, Helmer occasionally misses updates or posts pages late—and quite understandably so. Knowing that the comic updates rather slowly is useful: it’s a good strategy to wait a few weeks and months and read the story a few pages at a time, rather than piecemeal. Things are ramping up and getting quite exciting, so head over and see what The Meek is all about!

9’s Sackboys Are So Much Empty Burlap

As promised, the Cloudherders did indeed see 9 last weekend. Why the delay in a review? Because the three of us were dismally disappointed: so much promise, so many problems.

Let’s not mince words: the screenplay is terrible. The ending makes no sense and is thematically separate from the rest of the plot. The voice acting is nothing special. The characters aren’t spared a second for development. And an entire world is presented to the audience without so much as a minute of context.

All of that said, it is visually one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Little thought seemed to be given to the plot and pacing, but countless hours of work were clearly spent on the design. The little mechanical characters that populate the post-apocalyptic world of 9 are a joy to watch as they perambulate: each has its own individual design—made of materials such as sackcloth or pinstripe linen—and their expressive eyes blink like contracting camera shutters. (The problem is what happens when they open their mouths.) The mechanisms they create to navigate their very big, very tumble-down world are an inventive jumble of scrapyard junk, and their armor and weapons are the bones and feathers of small creatures.

But, it’s hard to see the incredible creativity of the design and meticulous animation when yet another chase scene breaks out (what is this, number six? seven?) and it all becomes a blur of motion and crashing music. The plot, showing so much room for originality, is highjacked by any number of fantasy/sci-fi cliches and doesn’t pause for any reflection between action scenes. What happened to this promising movie on the way to the theater? Did someone decide it needed to be dumbed down, explosioned up, faster and louder? Whatever happened, I’d be curious to see a director’s cut of this poor, limping mess, and see if any more exposition or soul was actually presented at some point.

World building fail.

The Unfortunate Devolution of Zap Mama

Zap Mama was once one of the freshest, funkiest Afropean band out there. Comprised of multitalented and multihued women from Africa and Europe, the a capella group functioned under the direction of lead vocalist, Marie Daulne. Experimenting with polyrhythmic singing straight out of the Congolese forests, their early work was a wonderfully funky and creative wake-up call*.

And then everything went to crap. Want to see how? Observe their timeline of tragedy…

Here are the covers of their earliest albums:

These are released in the early 90s without almost any instrumentation or polish, and primarily in French. The album focuses on the chorus; trading rapid-fire lines, building complex multilayered harmonies, weaving nets of interlocking breathing. The band photos are simple and straightforward: all the singers on equal footing, dressed in an interesting motley assortment of hippie-ethnic clothes, eschewing any pop-glamour veneer.

In the years ahead, Zap Mama makes some changes to their sound—adding an instrumental band, some electricity and some hip-hop crunch along the way—and becomes a major international force. The polyphonic singing on their earlier work plays beautifully with the hip-hop rhythms on 1999’s A Ma Zone, making it a bonafide hit worldwide. Truly global music. The cover to that (arguably pinnacle) album:

Band leader Marie Daulne is now a little more front-and-center, but depictions of the other ladies are still lively and present. The style is far more modern, but their quasi-tribal make-up hearkens back to their roots as a primarily “ethnic” sounding band.

The release of Ancestry in Progress in 2004 marks a definite move towards American-sounding R&B with bits of rap thrown in, and a heavy leaning on English. Still possibly classifiable as “world music,” it could also be billed as a genre-bending hiphop or soul album. 2007’s Supermoon makes no bones about it: the polyrhythms are out the window, guest stars pop up on each song, and any pretense of African/European world music subsumed utterly by uninteresting soul and funk rhythms. The remaining members from the original line-up are no more than back-up singers for the ever-spotlit cat-like croon of Marie Daulne, and nowhere is that more evident than on both covers:

2009, and the release of ReCreation. Six albums and fifteen years after that first album cover. And now? The only Afropean thing about the band is the name, the only hint that the album isn’t some big studio’s newest concoction to make money.

The rest of the band, gone. The styling, divalicious. The production values, stratospheric. Say a fond farewell to the original Zap Mama that came from the fusion of French, Belgian and Congo personas and musical inspiration, that billed itself as an exploration of the female voice and of global citizenship. Instead, meet the next disposable, unmemorable cd that will grace the counters of a thousand Starbucks worldwide.

ReCreation? Try DeMolition.

*: (If anyone is interested in hearing their work, please let me know and I will post something. I know, a music post with no music? This was just a rant, waiting for years to happen.)