Who is eating the Watchmen?

I've posted a few times in recent months about the comic and movie Watchmen. Those posts were the main course. Here, courtesy of the Baixa Gastronomia blog, is the dessert, a chocolate cake with yellow icing, a chocolate smile and a blood stain of strawberry sauce, in the manner of Watchmen's signature blood-streaked smiley face.

Click on the Baixa link for the recipe. It's in Catalan, but you'll figure it out. Blogger Mar Calpena provides a synopsis in English. (Hat tip to Briciole, for its continuing mix of crime fiction, food and Italian lessons.)

Now it's your turn. What foods suit your favorite crime writers?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

I am watching the Watchmen

A narrative strand in Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen traces the sociopathology of the character Rorschach to his traumatic childhood. In one scene, Rorschach (when he was still a young boy called Walter Kovacs), is accosted by two bullies. He grabs a cigarette from one and grinds it into the attacker's eye.

The movie version, which I saw this evening, alters the scene. In the film, Kovacs kicks his attacker in the nuts, then bites out a chunk of his face.

What do we learn from this? That in the moral world of 2009, a movie can depict nuclear annihilation, graphic dismemberment, boiling cooking grease flung in a man's face, a pregnant woman shot dead at point-blank range, a man burying a meat cleaver repeatedly in another man's skull, and a blue mutant in full frontal nudity — as long as it does not appear to condone smoking.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Watching "Watchmen" and other Alan Moore movies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rival studios say they have resolved their battle over the release of Watchmen.

The release of the superhero flick had been in doubt for months as 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. sparred in federal court over who had proper rights to the film. The studios say it will be released as scheduled on March 6.

(Read more here.)

Here and here is some of what I thought about Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen. I understand that Moore has distanced himself from films based on his work. Having recently discovered Moore, I'll probably see Watchmen. But I hope it's not just an orgy of special effects, though the story offers ample opportunity for a moviemaker who has money to spend on this sort of thing.

OK, Moore fans: What do you think of movies made from his work? From Hell, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen come to mind. What have I missed?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Alan Moore makes the familiar strange

Remember that line about making the familiar strange? There's a witty example in Watchmen in which Jon Osterman has returned from the accident that dematerialized him and become Dr. Manhattan, able to dematerialize himself and others.

The trope of a man gaining super powers from an accident and becoming a costumed crime fighter will be familiar to anyone who has read a Marvel comic. In author Alan Moore's world, however, the transition is not direct. It takes image consultants, government handlers, cooperative media and a willing public to create Dr. Manhattan, a notion that amuses Osterman/Manhattan's wife to no end.

"I mean," she says, smiling widely, "you wear an old double-breasted suit for that photo session, and next thing, everybody's talking about its fashion significance! Can you imagine?"

Can you imagine? Next thing, people will be taking seriously what U.S. presidents, presidents-elect and their wives wear.

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P.S. Alan Moore is British, so I'm not becoming cool or changing my focus or succumbing to hype for the upcoming Watchmen movie. Moore fits right in here at Detectives Beyond Borders.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008