The Halfway Point: Ed Brubaker's Angel of Death and Watchmen

Hey y'all, we're at the halfway point in the online series Angel of Death; five down, five to go. If you haven't started watching yet, now is a pretty good time to start: there are about 45 minutes currently up on the Crackle website and there's around 45 more minutes of mystery remaining. :D

The unfortunate thing is that the show isn't available outside the US. Why that is, I couldn't tell you, but you can send your tweets of frustration to Chad over @crackledotcom...just don't take it out on him, it's not his fault. He's just the poor guy who got stuck fielding the fans' ire.

I'm still loving every second of it. The cinematography, the editing, the score (which gets stuck in my head now, yeah), the direction, action, and performances. Great stuff! If you have any interest in watching a hitwoman develop a conscience and seek some down, dirty, gritty vengeance, check it out!!

I'll post the final wrap up in five days.

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Watchmen was directed by Zach Snyder and comes from the venerable comic book by Alan Moore. Okay, okay. I hear the comic fans yelling at me already. It comes from the Graphic Novel by Alan Moore.

I should preface this by saying, I haven't read the Graphic Novel of the Watchmen. I went into this as blind as I did for 300 and V for Vendetta. I cannot comment on accuracy of detail or storyline, but I can say that I wasn't confused, I had no questions, and I went out the next day and got the collection so I could get the full effect.

While the running time packs a wallop at two and a three quarter hours (three with trailers), and you feel every bit of it, there's absolutely nothing that could have been cut. To lose any part of what's in there would have been to lose the story. While aficionados of Watchmen have told me that there were parts from the book that they really missed, they LOVED the movie, so I think that says something.

There was nothing in the movie that stood out to me as being terrible. The music was strange, though. Lots of sixties and seventies anti-war songs, two Leonard Cohen songs (one of them is "Hallelujah" which, I'm sorry, but Jeff Buckley sang it so much better and I normally hate covers), and several previously used Philip Glass tracks (one was from The Hours, if you can believe it.) I didn't hate the music, I just thought it was weird...

All of the performances rang true for me and it's always wonderful to see Matt Frewer so it's a score there. There was a rumour going around that Jackie Earle Haley, who played Rorschach, would be taking up the fedora and glove of Freddy Krueger so I paid extra special attention to him. If the rumour is true, based on his performance in this flick I think he can handle it. However, I heard that he just booked a pilot. If he's booked a pilot, there's little chance he's playing Freddy. Next rumour please...

I've never seen his music video work, but I have seen Zach Snyder's films (Dawn of the Dead, 300, and now Watchmen.) they're all beautiful, brutal, exhausting, intense, and well-directed. I think he did a great job under such daunting pressure from every sector of the business from the studios down to the people who would lay down their cash to watch the flick. I don't think the film, and his work on it, will disappoint anyone (except the critics, hahaha!)