Babylon : An Indictment of Empire and a Celebration of Cinema

So I saw Babylon last Sunday night.  Twice.  I saw the 6:25 show and then picked Kalie up and went right back for the 10:35 show.  If Tinseltown had still been open after that, I’d’ve seen it a third time.  I can’t tell you the last time I saw a movie and then went right back in to see it again just because I loved it.  Sure, I’ve purchased multiple tickets in advance for “big” Marvel or Star Wars movies on opening weekend but to see a film back-to-back just because I fell in love with it?  It’s been ages.  Babylon’s three hours and nine minutes long, too, so with previews I was at the theatre for seven hours.  And I loved it!  Not a single second dragged and I saw so much more to appreciate my second time through.  I’ve read a lot of wildly divided opinions on Babylon in articles and across social media – people seem to either adore it or think it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen – and any film which is so polarizing intrigues me.  Last night I caught the 8:25 show, and now with three viewings under my belt, I wanted to write a bit about why I love Babylon so much.

Note, spoilers for Babylon will follow but the film’s ending won’t be discussed.

Childhood Fears I Prepared For…Which Ended Up Never Factoring Into Adulthood

New Year’s Eve tends to bring nostalgic reflections and hopeful projections.  Tonight, no matter how hard the year’s been, it seems we always find some warm, nostalgic feels for what’s come before.  And no matter how hard life may feel in this moment, it seems we always find some excitement for what lays ahead.  If our last year was more beautiful and joyful than not, well all’s the easier to touch those bright reflections and projections.  I’m not sure why.  If I was to hazard a guess (which I feel I should as I brought all this up), I’d say it’s because – deep down – we are fundamentally hopeful.  We want to find reasons to celebrate, to believe.  New Year’s Eve is as good a reason as any!  While I’ve never been one to buy into the magic of tonight and the promise of tomorrow too much, I do enjoy a reason to be nostalgic and hopeful as much as the next person :).  So, in the spirit of the night, I figured it would be fun to get way nostalgic and look back at a few childhood fears I spent ages preparing for, only to find they were problems I’d never encounter in adulthood (well, at least not yet).

Star Trek Edition: The Great Fandom Swap!

with Nancy of Graphic Novelty²

Friendship is wonderful, isn’t it?  It can lead you to do all sorts of things you’d never do on your own.  I’d start listing examples but, c’mon, then we’d be off on a tangent (a beautiful, nourishing, and entertaining tangent to be sure!) which could fill pages.  Let’s cut to the chase!  My friendship with Nancy of Graphic Novelty² – my oldest, longest, and dearest blogging friend – has led to an historic first.  I, Michael John Miller, author and operator of the blog My Comic Relief, am writing about Star Trek for the very first time.  You see, Nancy loves Star Trek and I’d never seen a single episode of Star Trek (only the JJ Abrams films).  I love Doctor Who and Nancy had only seen a few episodes in passing.  So, in the name of friendship, AMAZING THINGS, and blog content, we did our first ever Fandom Swap!  Eagerly sharing what we love with the other, Nancy chose eight episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (her favorite iteration of the show) for me to watch and I gave Nancy eight episodes of Doctor Who. 

No, I Haven’t Seen That Show Yet. Here’s Why.

I’ve often heard it said we’re living in the era of Prestige Television (or Peak Television, if you prefer).  Regardless of the terminology, there is the general sense among people who think, write, and talk about these things that the 21^st century has seen the rise of a Golden Age – if not The Golden Age – of Television.  The caliber of what’s being offered on TV is generally considered to have risen.  There are more “high quality” shows generating more critical acclaim than ever before.  The line between “TV star” and the once-more prestigious “movie star” is blurring.  In fact, these TV shows with shorter seasons, renown casts, and complex storytelling, are often touted as six (or ten (or thirteen)) hour movies, broken up into smaller installments.  You couple this with the rise of streaming services (and the accompanying “streaming wars” where each service tries to outperform the others to earn your subscription fee) alongside the culture of binge-watching and our experience of television’s been transformed.  It is a remarkable time to be consuming such content and the excited query, “Have you seen [fill-in-the-blank-show] yet??” drives our pop culture conversations like never before.

The thing is, my answer is almost always “no.”  Like 9/10 times it’s “no.”  And here’s why.

Saga and the Revolutionary Power of the Opposite of War

Comic books are a vast medium.  Every genre you can imagine can be found between the covers of one comic or another.  While often seen solely as the setting of superhero stories, there are horror comics, memoir comics, true crime comics, comic adaptations of classic literature, fantasy comics, sci-fi comics, comic adaptations of films, YA comics, comics about history, comics which continue the runs of favorite TV shows, and on and on.  The comic medium truly has something for everyone.  And, as someone who’s loved comic books for nearly forty years, I don’t care about any of those other stories XD.  I’m sorry!  But I don’t!  Bring me my superheroes!  I have novels and movies and TV shows and short story collections and memoirs and nonfiction books for all those other experiences.  When I open a comic book, I want my Marvel heroes, my DC heroes, and nothing else.  Except Saga.  I want Saga.  I want all the Saga.  Saga is the brilliant, blazing, beautiful exception to my rule!  With sixty issues released and forty-eight still to come, Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Fiona Staples (artist) have created a masterpiece of love, family, loss, trauma, trial, and healing…while also telling one of the most poignant antiwar stories I’ve ever read.

Jurassic World: Dominion – Considering the Legacy Sequel and the Advent of My 40th Birthday

A few weeks ago Kalie and I went to see Jurassic World: Dominion.  Heralded as, “The epic conclusion of the Jurassic Era” (*cough* for now *cough*), it’s the latest in the long line of legacy sequels.  Like every film from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens to Halloween (2018) to Terminator: Dark Fate to Ghostbusters: Afterlife to The Matrix Resurrections to Scream (2022), this film saw the new Jurassic World cast – Chris Pratt (Owen Grady), Bryce Dallas Howard (Claire Dearing), and Isabella Sermon (Maisie Lockwood) – come together with the legacy Jurassic Park cast – Sam Neil (Dr. Alan Grant), Laura Dern (Dr. Ellie Sattler), Jeff Goldblum (Dr. Ian Malcolm), and BD Wong (Dr. Henry Wu) – and several new allies – DeWanda Wise (Kayla Watts) and Mamoudou Athie (Ramsay Cole) – to face the latest dino-adjacent threat from scientists so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should.  I really enjoyed the film and, somewhat surprisingly, it got me thinking about my birthday and how excited I am to be turning forty.

This piece will have the mildest spoilers for Jurassic World: Dominion, only discussing a general overview of the plot points which put the narrative in motion at the beginning of the film.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife 2 – “Nostalgia is Going To Kill Us”

The blog’s been extra quiet lately as I’ve been writing my book (ahhhhh! yay!) but I decided to give myself a night off from book work tonight.  Why?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  I could read for pleasure.  I could enjoy watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and then go to bed early.  I could spend the whole night with the Doctor.  All of those would be excellent uses of my night.  However, instead, I’m using it to vent a little frustration.  You see, Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies and one of my all-time favorite storytelling universes so when I recently read Jason Reitman’s plans for Ghostbusters: Afterlife 2 I had FEELINGS.  As is so often the case, this piece was born in a conversation I had with Jeffrey (of The Imperial Talker).  The title of the piece – Nostalgia is going to kill us – was his exact quote when I told him of the sequel story.  I couldn’t agree more so I was super excited when he said I could nick his observation for this piece.  Shall we dive in?  Are you ready?  Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh…let’s go.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call – Honoring the Ghostbusters Legacy

Making a sequel to Ghostbusters (1984) is tricky.  Ghostbusters is one of few perfect movies.  Everything about it works!  It was one of my all-time favorite movies when I was five-years-old and it still is now at thirty-nine.  Already a fan of the cartoon show, my world was forever changed when my uncle gave us a VHS tape on which he’d recorded a Ghostbusters movie with real people in it from HBO.  I was a little thrown (at first) as they looked different and I am 99.99% sure it was what scarred me and made me scared of dogs all through my youth (as they constantly refer to the demonic forms of Zuul and Vinz Clortho as “dogs”) but none of that really mattered.  It was love at first viewing and it’s the only movie from my youth I still watch multiple times a year.  It spawned three sequels – Ghostbusters 2 (1989), Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), and the new Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021).  One I loved!  One disappointed me.  And one was a straight up traumatic experience.  With thoughts of Ghostbusters: Afterlife fresh in my mind, I felt it’d be fun to discuss which is which!

Ghostbusters: Afterlife – A Trailer, A Mixed Bag of Emotions…

Obviously I’ve been eagerly awaiting the trailer for writer/director Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife to drop.  The original Ghostbusters (1984) is my all-time favorite movie.  I not only watched it all the time as a kid but I still watch it all the time as an adult.  It’s consistently been bringing joy to my life, and I’ve consistently watched it multiple times every year, for over thirty years!  I don’t have that relationship with any other film – not Avengers, not (500) Days of Summer, not any of the Star Wars movies.  Also, I enjoy Ghostbusters even more as an adult because now I get all the jokes!  So not only do I love this movie but it keeps getting better for me.  Of course then, when I heard Reitman was making “a direct sequel” to his father’s iconic 1984 film, I was intrigued.  So much could go right!  But so much could go wrong too.  Now the trailer’s here and I’m feeling…lots of things.

The Four Comics I Can’t Live Without

A few years ago, when I was counting down to my hundredth post on this site, I profiled the four comic books I’d found since my return to reading comics which had become indispensable to my reading life.  These were the comics that, even if I stopped collecting comics again, I couldn’t imagine putting down.  They showcased, for me, the best of what a comic could offer while doing things I never imagined a comic book could.  They were (in the order I wrote about them in my countdown), Marvel’s Ms. Marvel, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, IDW’s Ghostbusters, and Marvel’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.  Thinking of those titles now, I can still feel the burgeoning excitement and awe that accompanied my return to comic reading.  They also make me think of impermanence.