Modern times, empty wallets

So Bob Dylan's coming to Australia and New Zealand for the first time in four years, and reborn Dylan fan that I have become in the last year or two, I knew I had to buy myself a ticket for the Auckland show in August. 'Cause, y'know, the man is 66 years old now, and who knows if he'll come this way again? That coupled with the fact that his last disc, the jaunty "Modern Times", was one of my favorite albums of last year and IMHO his strongest in a long time. And I beat the scalpers to land tickets for the 25th row in the brand new Vector Arena! I just won't think about what the ticket cost.

Sadly, I had to make a choice here – because it turned out The Shins were also coming to Auckland in early August for a show as well. (See - we may be far away but we're on the touring circuit!) But as ticket prices for live music are so hideously expensive here, I had to really force myself to choose one or the other as we really are trying to save cash for the housing fund. I've actually seen both the Shins and Dylan live before – the Shins in 2002, Dylan in 1990 – but when it comes down to it, Dylan is Dylan, innit? Sorry, Shins. I'll see you next time when my wallet is heavier. And Bob, I'll see you from the 25th row in August. Play "You Ain't Going Nowhere" for me, will ya?

Notes from Sydney, Part 3

Ah well, a bit disappointed not to have more comments on my Sydney travelogue to date (I know, I'm an attention whore, but hey, aren't all bloggers? Validate me!), but here's the third and final installment for those who're interested…

We arrived back from our Blue Mountains train trip well and truly knackered, but there was still a fair amount of sightseeing to fit in during our final two days in Sydney. Saturday morning we were off early to the Sydney Aquarium, which Peter zipped merrily around for nearly two hours. Excellent displays of platypus, Australia's colorful fish (think Finding Nemo in live-action) and a harrowing shark tank you could walk through. Following that, the wife and I alternated some shopping trips and traded off minding the boy. Lots of folks from New Zealand actually go to Sydney specifically to shop, and things are definitely a good bit cheaper here – not quite U.S. Wal-Mart cheap, but there's an enormous selection, too. (If downtown Sydney really reminded me of anywhere in the U.S. I've been, it had to be New York City.) Loaded up on the books and CDs and clothes.

Saturday night, I ended up actually going to a show at the world-famous Sydney Opera House. While there on my tour Thursday, I'd found out that one of my favorite cartoonists, Seattle's Jim Woodring, was that weekend putting on a musical/animation and performance art showcase at one of the Opera House's smaller theaters, the Studio. I figured I couldn't pass up a chance to see something at the Opera House that wouldn't set me back a couple hundred bucks for a ticket. If you're not familiar with Woodring's art, it's like a surreal combination of Disney and Dali, dream-influenced, often pantomime imagery that is subtly creepy and often staggeringly beautiful. It's not for everyone, but his "The Frank Book" is a hefty gem of a book that shows off his truly unique style. At the Opera House, Woodring was launching an Australian tour with a show that combined Japanese-created animations of his art, slide shows and live music soundtracks, and his own performance art narration to his artwork – plus a Q&A. Quite a unique event, and dazzling to see some of his art come to life. Some of it veered a little too hard into experimental for me (particularly one guitar player whose "soundtrack" gave avant-garde a bad name; it sounded like he spent the entire time tuning up), but it was generally a terrific evening. And how queer it was for an American living in New Zealand to travel to Australia and see a cartoonist from Seattle?

On Sunday, our last day in Sydney, we had to get out on the gorgeous harbour and enjoy the scenery. (I think we saw perhaps two clouds during our entire time there, and the weather was a good 15-20 degrees warmer than Auckland has been.) We had the choice between Sydney's famous Bondi Beach or Manly Beach, but we picked Manly as you had to take the ferry to get there. The harbour is honestly one of the finest I've seen in the world – unlike, say, San Francisco, the ugly cranes and container ship traffic are nowhere to be seen (they're in Botany Bay further south), so it's all houses, skyscrapers and blue, blue water. Once we arrived in Manly, I felt like I'd ended up back in California – it looked just like Santa Monica, with a boardwalk, lots of shops and a huge, white-sand beach that gradually filled up with beach bunnies and surfers throughout the morning. Considering this was the seasonal equivalent of late November in the U.S., it still seemed like summertime – witness the bikini-clad volleyball players. We wished we'd brought our swimming togs as it was actually warm enough to take a dip. A fine place for a picnic Sunday lunch and people-watching. (Don't imagine moving there though – an article in the Sydney Herald pointed out the average house price there is AU$1.8 million!)

The ferry trip back to downtown Sydney was one of the more amazing sights we'd seen – that famous harbour view, Opera House, Harbour Bridge and all, was populated by literally hundreds of sailboats out enjoying the day. Remarkable, because at 9 a.m. or so when we went over to Manly the harbour was essentially empty. The ferry was practically threading its way through all the boats out on the harbour. Sigh. I wish I was a sailing man.

We finished off Sunday with some more shopping and bopping around, and I polished it all off with a visit to the excellent Australia Museum, which had some superb stuff – a massive, colorful mineral collection, and tremendous Aboriginal history displays (including one that had a fascinating look at the last tribe of Aborigines to be "discovered" by the white man – in 1984!). Lots of that strange, beautiful Aboriginal art, too, with its hallucinogenic images of the "Dreamtime."

I have to toss in a plug here for some of the excellent books I've read about Australia recently, including Jan Morris' opinionated and trivia-filled "Sydney," which I read while in town; Bill Bryson's hilarious "In A Sunburned Country," and another book by Tony Horwitz, the outback hitchhiking epic "One For The Road" – plus Robert Hughes' legendary look back at the nation's earliest convict history, "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding."

Considering it's only a 3-4 hour flight away, I'm quite hoping we'll get to Australia again in another year or two for a visit – perhaps up to explore Brisbane and Queensland, perhaps, or over to Melbourne? After all, it's a big country, and there's a lot to see.

Notes from Sydney, Part 2

One of the things I wanted to do during our trip to Sydney was, ironically enough, get out of Sydney a little bit, capture a glimpse of wild Australia. We couldn't exactly do a Jeep journey into the outback with our limited time, but fortunately, a day's trek to the mighty Blue Mountains were an excellent sample of Aussie woodlands.

Sydney has a superb mass-transit system, and all we had to do Friday morning was step onto the trains, head to Central Station and catch the line bound for faraway Lithgow, a few hours west of Sydney. It was a fine train trip as we slowly moved out of Sydney's massive suburban sprawl, and rose in elevation up through a gently rolling eucalyptus forest that reminded me a lot of where I grew up in California's Sierra Nevada. We arrived in the touristy town of Katoomba after about a 2-hour ride, where we caught a double-decker tour bus that we'd bought tickets for as a package with the train ride – it went on a 30km loop around the area and you could get on and get off whenever you wanted. It all turned out to be a nice way to see some scenery while dragging a 3-year-old along and not having a car.

And the mountains were worth seeing. Katoomba perches on the edge of a huge canyon that showcases immense forests, giant limestone cliffs and in the distance, the blue eucalyptus-generated haze that gives the mountains their name. The Blue Mountains start about 70km west of Sydney, and for the first explorers, they formed an impenetrable wall keeping them from exploring the rest of the country (which they foolishly imagined to be lush and green. Hah hah! Foolish explorers!). It took more than 30 years for the first settlers to "break the barrier," which I always thought a little wimpy of them – until I actually saw the mountains. Imagine these gigantic cliffs and canyons stretching on into the infinite – and crossing them without cars or airplanes. (Peter's favorite sight: the cable car spanning over two sides of the canyon.)

We took a nice kilometer or so walk along the very edge of the canyon (which had fences for most of the walk, but we still had to keep a very tight grip on Peter during it all) over to Echo Point, which features a Grand Canyon-esque panorama and the distinctive rock formations of the Three Sisters. An Aboriginal busker blowing on a didgeridoo completes the Aussie vibe (note the ultra-modern water bottle though).

We also took a nice hike down into the canyon a little bit, as far as we could safely with Peter, viewing the Leura Cascades (a very gently sloping waterfall) and the Australian bush, including some gorgeous red parrots. Sure, it wasn't exactly heading to Darwin – tourists from all over the world head to the Blues every day – but standing on that canyon rim staring out over the gum trees without a house in sight, you can still kind of imagine what Australia must've been like, 250 years ago now. I'm already counting the days till I get a chance to explore further into the abyss.

More Blue Mountains photos up on our Flickr page!

Next: Wrapping up our Sydney adventures, a surprise appearance by Jim Woodring, and a day at the beach! Plus, bikinis!

Notes from Sydney, Part 1

...All right mates, we're back from our Australian holiday and I'm ready to write something about our trek down under (well, down-er under-er and a little to the left of New Zealand, I guess). Sydney is magnificent, and a fantastic place to spend nearly a week. I'm totally infatuated with Australia now and ready to hop on a dingo and blow a didgeridoo. But lest I gush too much, here's a look at the first couple days of our trek – and there's more photos up on our Flickr page with more to come, too!

Some dimwit dude (ahem) booked our flight out of Auckland for 7 a.m. Wednesday; which of course meant we had to get up around 4 a.m. to get to the airport two hours before we took off; which meant that by the time we got to Sydney, with a 2-hour earlier time zone, we had been up since 2 a.m. that day. Urk. In any event, we were rather fried after the 3-hour flight, and somehow stumbled out of the airport and onto the subway (whee! I love subways!) into downtown Sydney, where we'd booked what turned out to be a fantastic, quiet Travelodge hotel tucked in the middle of the downtown business district.

After recuperating from the flight for a little bit, the three of us toddled out to explore the town, walking down to the world-famous Sydney harbour and the Circular Quay, home of the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge and more. The Opera House is one of the most famous sights in the world, and didn't disappoint on first viewing – it's an astoundingly alive creation by Dane Jørn Utzen. While smaller than I'd imagined (like most such things), the sharp angles, vivid shades of white and ivory and kind of geometric feng shui created by the building are fascinating. It's a building that looks different from every angle, that's assertive but not aggressive. It's like a broken set of china cups, yet it's somehow harmonious. After a stroll around the outside of the Opera House and the adjacent Rocks district (some of Sydney's oldest streets, where the first convict settlers lived), we were worn out and ready to crash after a very long day.

Day two was more Opera House goodness – First thing in the morning, I took an hourlong tour of the building, while Avril and Peter went to wander the Botanic Gardens. Getting inside the Opera House, it may not be quite as immediately gripping as the outside, but it's still worth seeing. Architect Utzen actually left the project in a huff before the interior was completed, so it's kind of a mish-mash of heavy-duty industrial design, some purely functional performance space, and occasionally gorgeous rooms like the wood-lined, gigantic Concert Hall (which unfortunately they don't let you take photos of, but you can see it here). It's all impressive, but save that Concert Hall it doesn't have the imposing shock of the exterior. Later that week it turned out I'd go back for a performance at the Sydney Opera House, more about which in another post.

Then we had lunch in the Rocks district and walked up onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge, another of those iconic Aussie sights. I only walked about halfway out onto the bridge (which is much shorter than you might think), but it's a dazzling view. I also watched the bridge climbers moving like ants along the top arch - people climb up there on tour groups all day long, apparently. We'd see big groups up there of 20-30 people, all tethered to safety lines. I don't know - I had a pretty good view of the harbor anyway from the bridge just at street level, and imagine you'd have to be pretty confident in heights (and strong winds) to want to walk up to the top of it! (You can see them clustered next to the flags in the photo.)

That afternoon, we journeyed over to the Australia National Maritime Museum, showcasing all things naval. An excellent commemoration of Australia's considerable sea legacy, it included fine exhibits on the early settlers, plus lots of history on Australia's Navy, a submarine replica and more.

And finally it was on to one of the true highlights of our trip – stepping aboard legendary Captain James Cook's boat, the Endeavour. All right, not the real Endeavour, but an excellent, seaworthy replica boat built about ten years ago that is a stunning evocation of life nearly 300 years ago. The Maritime Museum includes several boats and a submarine moored outside to tour, but Endeavour was the only one we had time for, and one I've long wanted to see. Cook's voyages – the first European to see New Zealand, most of the Pacific, Bering Sea and more – are like the dictionary definition of "intrepid exploration," as the man mapped much of the unknown world in the late 1700s. Getting a chance to see the space he and his crew spent three years in was remarkable – talk about tight living! The replica was tricked out just as it would have been in 1788, even with botanist Joseph Banks' samples and notebooks laid out on his desk.

Below decks, the crew slept in hammocks tightly together, and the ceiling room is rarely over 5 feet tall (at one point dipping under 4 feet). Even the captain's quarters were barely the size of most people's closets today. But at least he had a door, a luxury most of the crew didn't. Above decks, you stand with countless masts and ropes and imagine what it would've been like, sailing into the unknown so long ago. A most excellent historical stop in this living time machine of a vessel. (I highly recommend Tony Horwitz's book "Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before," which combines a history of Cook's travels with Horwitz's funny and informative tale of actually sailing on this modern Endeavour replica.)

Next: Up into the Blue Mountains!

Where I spent my weekend

...So I spent most of my weekend perched 20 to 40 feet above the ground, helping some friends put a new roof on their house before winter sets in. This is not my usual forte – I figure I earned 100 manliness points for this act, which raises my total manliness points to a whopping 123. (I'm not known for my handyman skills but at least this weekend I neither injured myself or my partner, and nobody fell off the roof to the ground far far below.)

In any case, the family and I are off for our trip to Sydney in a day or two, so there'll be no posting until we get back with full details of our Australian adventure. G'day, mate!

Music reviews: The Stooges & The Arctic Monkeys' latest

The Stooges, The Weirdness
The Weirdness is the first Stooges album in nearly 35 years from one of the most lionized bands in rock. Iggy Pop has gone on to a decent solo career, but the most cutting-edge time of his life was in the molten thrash-punk of the Stooges, who recorded three classic albums before calling it quits. Now, Pop has reunited with brothers Ron and Scott Asheton to see if that old fire can be summoned up again by men close to getting Social Security. Is The Weirdness anything like the old Stooges? Of course not - good lord, Iggy Pop is 60 years old now, and you can't expect this band to thrash and blast about quite like they did when they were young 20-something punks. So change your expectations accordingly, and The Weirdness is an enjoyably sloppy mess that rocks hard.

Unfortunately, Iggy's voice has gotten weaker and thinner (it's noticeably strained in a few tunes), but it's still got echoes of the sleazy croon of yore. Time hasn't tarnished the stomp of guitarist Ron Asheton (whose barb-wire riffs help save this album) and his brother, drummer Scott Asheton, while Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE fame steps in on bass to replace the late Dave Alexander. Producer Steve Albini gives it all a bone-dry, clattering feel. It's like overhearing a band jam in the garage. The Weirdness clearly aims to be the opposite of high-profile, slick band reunions – it feels like it was knocked out in a night or two, and it takes the feral chaos of the old Stooges and reduces it into a kind of Tourette's syndrome geezer rock. All that said, I still find this album rawly appealing.

But with winkingly juvenile lyrics like "My dick is turning into a tree," or "My idea of fun / is killing everyone," it's impossible to take The Weirdness seriously. And I don't think you're supposed to. It's garage punk by dirty old men, taking more than a hint of its sound from the decrepit modern-day Delta blues like the late R.L. Burnside. The lyrical stupidity doesn't always work – rhyming "Dalai Lama" and "baby mama" in "Free & Freaky"? Oy. While the haze of time has leant the Stooges' original three albums the gloss of hipster-approved perfection, they too were gritty, raw and sloppy albums by dirty young men. (The endless drone of "We Will Fall" on their 1969 debut comes to mind.) There's always been an element of amateurism to the Stooges.

While it rattles along, there's high points on The Weirdness, like the title track where Iggy summons up his deep Bowie voice for a churning anthem. Goofily inane "I'm Fried" roars with a fire close to the Fun House-era Stooges, while "The End of Christianity" aims to piss off liberals and conservatives alike. The Weirdness might not rise to the level of classic, but neither is it an embarrassment. Don't expect the sinister menace of the 1960s Stooges, but something kind of like a greasy old man ranting away in an alleyway with a mean backing band. If that's your bag too, this Weirdness might be for you.

Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmare
The UK music press takes band hype to interstellar levels (every band is the biggest thing since Jesus), but last year's hot pick, the Arctic Monkeys, actually lived up to the accolades with a stinging, hook-filled first album. The pop-punk Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am Not was more of a cult hit in the US, but it broke records in Britain, becoming the fastest-selling debut in British history. And heck, it deserved it a lot more than, say, Oasis – the Monkeys crafted a potent stew of punk rhythms and ennui-filled lyrics, capturing the feeling of the MySpace generation.

Now a year or so later, here's the follow-up, Favourite Worst Nightmare – get out your carving knives for the sophomore slump, right? Well, record #2 doesn't kick you in the bollocks the way the first record did, red-hot with its own fresh immediacy. But the Monkeys (barely a member over age 21) still smash together influences like the Clash, Green Day, The Streets and Blur into a bitter stew that is cynical but never hateful, often surprisingly insightful and consistently rocking.

Frontman Alex Turner's wiser-than-his years vocals snap and crackle with a cynical bite. His light-speed lyrical delivery, influenced by hip-hop, is faster than ever, almost like a cockney auctioneer at some points. But there's also a newfound wry romanticism to Turner's voice this time round, although let's not start calling him Michael Bolton – unless lines like "do me a favour and break my nose" make your heartstrings tickle. In another tune, he sighs, "true romance can't be achieved these days." The music rockets along with an adrenalized momentum with the knife-sharp dueling guitar lines by Turner and Jamie Cook and skittering drums by Matt Helders. It slows down for a few ballady-type numbers, but generally the mood is even more amped up than the first record.

What is missing is some of the lyrical specificity that in Whatever made you feel like you'd lived through nights with the band. The telling details of life in the band's native Sheffield are gone for a more global view. Yet the best numbers on Favourite crackle with empathy and contempt all at once, like the lover's kiss-off "Flourescent Adolescent" or the bouncy fame's-not-all-you-thought tune "Teddy Picker" (with witty one-liners like "the kids all dream of making it /whatever that means"). With their second album, the Arctic Monkeys prove that they're managing to overcome the hype to build up an actual career.

Meanwhile, in the world of paying journalism

...So if you're interested in seeing a sample of some of that freelancing I'm doing lately, here's a pretty decent-sized piece by yours truly that appears in today's Weekend Herald (New Zealand's largest newspaper) -- a profile of the CEO of the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand. Cheers!

Kia ora koutou kua haere mai nei*

Kia ora, ko Nik ahau! Ko wai koe? He paatai? Ka pai!

...And well, that's about all the Maori tongue I can spin off at the drop of a hat after two weeks of Tuesday classes.

Translation: Hello, my name is Nik. What's your name? Any questions? Good!

I'm taking a 10-week night class on "te reo" ("the language") - NZ's second official language – a free class, which is sponsored by the government in an effort to spread the language to as many as possible. The Maori, although only about 15% of the population, are hugely influential in the modern culture of New Zealand. If you've ever been to New Zealand, Maori is pretty inescapable, with a lot of Maori words in everyday use, or used for many of the place names; public signs are in both English and Maori, and there's also a Maori television network (you haven't lived until you've seen cartoon Bible stories dubbed in Maori). It's interesting to compare it to Spanish in the U.S., which is definitely not officially encouraged. Of course, the Maori arrived in Aoteorea (literally, the "land of the long white cloud") at least 500 years or so before the pakeha ("white man"), so it is an entrenched part of the culture here.

I've never been much of a languages guy – a smattering of French and German in high school and college. French ended with me being booted from class by a teacher who had it in for me, and I never quite progressed enough in German to be fluent. Maori, though, is totally different from all those European languages, and that's part of the allure. A big difference is the vowel sounds (we spend lots of time chanting ah-eh-ee-oh-oo), and it has only 20 or so letters (including such non-English ones as "wh" [pronounced "f"] and "ng" [pronounced like the noise cartoon characters make when embarrassed – "nggggg!"]). It's got a musical, kind of clattering sound alien to the ear, and is based on a Polynesian culture us U.S. folks know next to nothing about.

So far, it's pretty cool. There's about 20 or so of us in the class, from native kiwis to Americans like me and even some Swiss and Venezualan. Rodney, our teacher, does lots of singing (there's a celebratory, ceremonial aspect to a lot of Maori, including ritual karakia ("prayers") and more). I doubt I'll leave the class able to rattle off Shakespeare in Maori, but I'll definitely get a better picture of what te reo is all about.

*"Greetings to you all who have arrived here to this assembly"
**The picture of the Haka (the ferocious traditional Maori posture dance, sometimes called a war chant) has nothing to do with the class so far, but it sure looks cool.

Movie review: 'Spider-Man 3'

"Part III" movies don't usually fare too well with folks – I'm thinking "The Godfather Part III," "Superman III," "Batman Forever," et cetera. "Spider-Man 3" is certainly coming in for a surprisingly strong amount of bashing, but y'know what – forget the pundits and fanboy nitpickers. While not quite in the same league as the first two movies, maybe, this dyed-in-the-wool webhead fan found "Spider-Man 3" an action-packed summer movie romp that still keeps the characters in mind at center stage. If it tries to do a little too much with its triple villain storyline, it mostly pulls it off – in its very excess, "Spider-Man 3" is consistently entertaining.

I think what keeps "Spider-Man 3" afloat is the same steady hand of director (and co-writer) Sam Raimi, who's helmed the entire trilogy, and the returning cast. It makes all three movies feel like a single story to have this consistency.

Is it perfect? No – there is an awful lot going on. Sure, the Venom plot could've been an entire movie on its own, but I kind of liked the pack everything in go-for-broke feeling of this flick, as Peter Parker's entire life careens out of control. Raimi pulls this chaos off a lot better than, say, the godawful "Batman Forever," which also crammed in several villains, a new sidekick, love affairs, etc., but came off as pop-colored cornball kitsch. Character is king in these movies, despite some great action sequences and special effects.

My random thoughts (SPOILERS ahoy, of course):
The good:
All right, so the movie is balancing three major plotlines at least (and that's just the villains) – yet for most of its running time, Raimi is a master juggler as he zips around the tales. The final act is a bit rushed (and you can practically feel the strain where, rumor has it, the studio forced Raimi to include Venom in the film), but it really does all tie together pretty nicely in the end.

OK, so this movie is basically about Peter Parker's ego and its rise, fall and redemption. And thanks to a plot device that introduces his "dark side," Tobey Maguire has a heck of a lot of fun with "evil" (or perhaps "ego") Peter Parker. Raimi balances the nasty acts of Parker with the silly, pushing the envelope in how over-the-top he can go with his behavior. Was the "disco Peter" stuff ridiculous? Of course – that was the point! Parker's a nerd, so when he becomes cool he's still going to be a cool nerd, isn't he? I had fun watching Maguire break out of the "noble suffering Parker" mode for a few scenes, and thought he brought a nice barely-contained rage to these sequences.

I loved James Franco's Harry Osborn in this movie (the underrated Franco has also been a bright spot in the previous flicks). The arc of his character is a tragic one, and in lesser hands might strain credulity, but Franco really sells the character's personality changes throughout.

Thomas Haden Church is a terrific Sandman – in that silly striped shirt, he looks exactly like the comic character. While he turned into too much of a muddy King Kong ripoff in the final act, I thought the effects used to bring Sandman to life were remarkable (particularly in the "birth" sequence, which attained a haunting beauty).

The not great:
Unlike some, I do think Topher Grace gave a mighty good show as Eddie Brock/Venom, and think the movie script considerably bettered the character's tangled comic origins (some of the disappointment by fans seems to be that Venom isn't precisely like he was in the comics; having never considered him one of my favorite foes, I don't mind that he is a little underused). I love Brock here as Peter Parker's twisted mirror, a Spider-Man without soul or conscience; as opposed to the steroid freak, inconsistently motivated comic goon Venom became (the superb Madgoblin has a two-part essay series looking at how the comic Venom's potential was lost, by the way).

All that said, it was just too long in the movie until Venom appears, and his story feels very rushed. Grace packs as much scenery-chewing as he can into his limited time, but another 15 minutes or so could've fleshed this arc out and kept the same action-filled four-way battle at the end. There are some very awkward transitions into the final act (The overwrought television camera crew narration, very lazy storytelling, was my least favorite part of the film). Venom and Sandman's abrupt alliance also feels very forced.

I kinda fell in love with Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane in the first two movies (the final shot of her in "Spider-Man 2" might just be one of my favorite movie moments), yet it felt like she phoned it in on this one. Her conflicts with Peter Parker weren't as organic as they might have been, and she often seems glaringly self-absorbed. Although she was really a minor role in this movie, Bryce Dallas Howard's Gwen Stacy was enjoyable eye candy – fans shouldn't go in expecting anything much like the comic character, though.

The ugly:
Isn't it a little absurd that the climax of all three of these movies revolves around Mary Jane getting kidnapped?

There's no real elegant way to do an "alien symbiote" entrance into what's been a kind of earthbound series, but the meteor from the sky was clumsy – if a nice nod to old-school monster flicks like "The Blob." I might've liked to see the symbiote be the result of a science experiment instead, though.

So why does Peter Parker spend half these movies without a mask on? It got rather ridiculous in "Spider-Man 3," but y'know, I thought about it, and actually, it makes a lot of sense from a moviemaking angle. That mask is hardly very emotive, and even Marlon Brando couldn't deliver a great performance shackled by it. While it looks awesome in the comics, there's a reason that Maguire keeps ripping it off in the films – it's the only way he can really act in a scene (I know some folks think he's a little too stoic an actor, but he works for me). There was an awful scene in the first "Spider-Man" with Spider-Man and "Power Ranger" Green Goblin having a heart-to-heart talk, yet you didn't see a single mouth move during the scene. So awkward as it can get, I can understand the "Amazing Mask-less Spider-Man" being so prominent in these movies.

Like I said, though, quibbles aside, I had a fine time at "Spider-Man 3," which I'd give a strong "A-/B+." I'd have to say these three together make the finest superhero trilogy we've yet seen (with "X-Men" following close behind, I think). A "Spider-Man 4" is probably inevitable, but part of me wishes they wouldn't think about it without Raimi, Maguire and even Dunst. Through the highs and lows, they have defined Spider-Man on screen, and without 'em, I'm not sure I'd like what I'd see.

...Signed, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Peter

Just a brief note that I'll likely not be posting any more this week … it's all full-on with a big freelancing assignment to work on, my first Maori night class starting, Playcentre and pub visits and of course most importantly, tickets to the Auckland premiere of "Spider-Man 3" on Thursday night. All or most of which will probably be the subject of future blog posts. And I really just wanted an excuse to post this picture up.