Concept: Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

So not too long ago I finally sat down and watched the direct-to-DVD Dragonlance movie that has so many fans bleating and bleeding not that long ago. It really sucked.

Dragonlance is the greatest paradox of the early TSR novels, because it satisfied many definitions of kitsch while also exhibiting the traits of a complex and nuanced artistic work. It was essentially a high fantasy recasting of the fall of the Roman Empire and rise of medieval Europe transported to a high fantasy setting. When a meteor strikes a sinful city, the result is an ocean the color of blood. This is set on a tiny continent sitting squarely in the southern hemisphere and the planet is orbited by three moons which endow magical powers. The gods are represented by constellations that disappear when the gods take on material form. In these aspects and more, Dragonlance established a more off-kilter allegory and theological inquiry than its genre or audience typically demands. It has always been both more compelling than other TSR lines, and more problematic.

These issues would have made a film version challenging with any amount of money. The project could've utilized its modest budget much better in a series of short cartoons (a la Nickelodeon's old Mysterious Cities of Gold perhaps?) or even as an HBO-style series. It could have paid for this perhaps by replacing the talented knowns with talented unknowns.

Even considering this, though, the film was bad. It attempted to combine Hanna Barbara-style animation with really really crappy CGI for the dragons and the draconians a la Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. The first forty-five minutes deployed the first hundred pages of the book at a well-edited clip, only to dissolve into incoherence right when things should have been getting good. I was able to occasionally lose myself (early on) in the craft of the writing, and in Kiefer Sutherland's admittedly spot-on Raistlin Majere. But there should've have been more drinking on my part. The movie was that bad. Too many compromises were made in all the wrong places.

I realize this critique is disordered. It is not nearly as disordered, however, as the film was.

It was bad.

Event: To Win a Pillow-Fight, Stuff Two Pillows Into One Pillowcase

It's a step in the right direction.

But make no mistake: it's a small small step. I was hoping that this was a committed attempt to ratchet up pressure. Senators are battle-hardened political campaigners, and if their successful political careers demand a sleepless night every now and then, I'd appreciate their playing the part to the hilt. How disappointing, then, that Harry Reid announced a break from 1 to 5 AM. These are the crucial hours of any all-nighter. They surround 3 AM, which Ray Bradbury described as the "soul's midnight" in Something Wicked This Way Comes. If this is political theater, then the Democrats didn't commit to their reading.

Robert Byrd knew how to bring the fight.

The problem is that when the Democrats get "tough" they're still far too "soft" by Republican Standards.

If you're going to force an all night session, then make it an all night session.

* * * * *

Of course, alan1 is always ready to supply a case in point. As I was drafting this post he emailed me, writing:

On election night, before the polls closed but after it was clear that the Dems were taking Congress, Trent Lott went on one of the network news channels and called the Dems a "lame duck" Congress, and explicitly (if I remember right) admitted to a "scorched earth" policy in which the Repubs would win back Congress in two years because they would have shut down the
government and blamed it on Democrats. He said this, on the record. So why is there confusion as to what is happening now? Why aren't there ad campaigns going on right now in which Trent Lott tells America that the Republican party has a pre-emptive policy of obstruction developed before
they lost power? Why isn't that video being played on the Senate floor?

Does anybody know why?

* * * * *

When I used to have Dungeons & Dragons slumber parties with my nerdy Flint friends, we'd also have a number of pillow fights. These weren't you're typical giggling kids jumping on a bed fights, though. We aimed for the head, and since we were all fighting at once, the faster you could drop numerous opponents, the more likely you were to win. One kid, Chris, had a decisive edge. He was larger, stronger, and slower than the rest of us, but he maximized his advantages by stuffing two pillows into one pillow-case. It gave him an added impact: two or three direct hits from Chris and you were down for the count. Of course, the fact that he started whacking us with pillows while we were asleep almost made him a bully, but it was all in good fun, and any way, the stakes are low.

Now the Democrats are a majority in congress, but they still haven't claimed the authority in congress in a meaningful way. They are debating Iraq deployment, so the stakes are definitively not low. This slumber party was Harry Reid's idea.

Couldn't he please stuff two pillows into one pillowcase?