Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

Southern Blvd, The Bronx
Originally uploaded by geminipoet

I am up in the Bronx where the people are fresh. Enjoying shrimp ceviche with my family and taking pictures like a mad man which has prompted my brother to chide me (“Yo, quit it. You’re acting like some tourist.”)

I think the craziest looks I’ve gotten was when I was posing for a pic in the Projects. (“Does he know where he is?”)

More pics with some more insights later.

And to all my NYC Peoples: You should come to my feature on Sunday. All new work and much fun will be had. Word!

Let’s go, you know a flower that grow in the ghetto
Know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows
Its got love for the sun, that’s where I’m comin from
• Talib Kweli

What better way to celebrate the Summer of the Graphic Novel (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Wanted all getting strong critical reception and making $120M+ at the box office… if you like you can add Hancock since it’s only a question of time before he has his own real comic book) than to check out the two most highly anticipated comic sequels of the year? Well, how about we check them both out on the same night!

Which is what Barb, Sunny, and I did. We didn’t plan it out that way but it worked out great since we were able to stay in the theater and avoid the long lines of fans waiting for the midnight debut of Dark Knight.

Big Red Strikes Again
The first installment of Hellboy introduced me to the full origins of Mike Mignola’s signature creation and Guillermo del Toro’s fine filmmaking which combined to make a great comic-to-film adadption.

Hellboy II delivers on del Toro and Mignola’s warehouse of fantastic characters, mix of fairy tale and modern soap opera, and fascinating human personalities with paranormal abilities. This comes out best in Doug Jones awesome portrayal of Abe Sapien who only got B time in the first movie. Abe is slick, fun, and endearingly charming even through all the layers of latex and makeup. Equally engaging is Johann Krauss, a mix of the Lost in Space robot and living spirit who matches up just fine against Hellboy. The opening sequence with John Hurt going over the legend of the Golden Army is pretty awesome with the toy characters acting out the initial sequence.

Sadly, Hellboy recycles too much of the angst from the first movie and doesn’t give the returning characters a space to move around, an opportunity wasted in the hidden city of “freaks.” All this equaling an awkward and choppy movie, definitely not the del Toro we’re used to.

Not a great sequel but not a bad one either. I’m sure del Toro will make amends in Hellboy 3—the ending practically screamed that—but we’re going to have to wait till after he finishes the Hobbit films.

Batman: Year Two
Last year I was hotly anticipating The Dark Knight but even then I was focusing less on Heath Ledger’s Joker and more on Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent. My suspicions turned out to be correct thanks to some early good reading as The Dark Knight writers and Christian Bale are all fans of one of my favorites modern graphic novels— Batman: The Long Halloween.

Bottom line: This is the Godfather II of all comic films, the rare sequel that builds and surpasses on its predecessor. My friend Claire argues that this film can’t stand on its own, and she’s right in that it’s a comic book movie and it’s meant to build on the original film. In that respect, it takes Batman Begins, the film that saved the Bat franchise and gave back film audiences a mythos they could love, and jumps our character to the next stage of his development.

Here’s the deal, if Batman stays the superhero and Gotham’s prize defender, we’ll be stuck on the treadmill that lead to Schumacher’s Bat-Trash. Christopher Nolan goes to the heart of the Batman and manages to transform him into the pariah and social outcast he really is while having moviegoers cheer and applaud the pathos.

As for Ledger, he delivers an amazing performance and becomes the Joker in every way possible. All this would live up to the Oscar hype except for the fact that Aaron Eckhart’s transformation from Harvey Dent into Two-Face trumps Ledger easily. He goes toe-to-toe with Bruce Wayne, Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and the Joker without breaking a cinematic sweat. If anyone deserves an Oscar, it’s Eckhart.

The only flaw in Nolan’s Batman is that he has yet to deliver the World’s Greatest Detective, the one who outwitted everybody in the campy TV show and the one who beats out all the other superheroes in the DC Universe. Nolan’s Batman is all gadgets but little smarts, and that’s ok considering this is only his second big adventure. Hopefully we can see more of the Detective in what is sure to be a third film. The questions we have to munch on is:
Who’s the next Bat villain? (I’m hoping it’s Catwoman.)
Can Nolan make a movie that’s even better than this one? (I have faith he can.)
And how soon can I get a ticket?

All my life I’ve seen sneakers on wires hanging over the City but damn if I know what it means. I’ve heard a couple of theories but never anything 100% concrete. And so I think it might be time to explore this question a little further in some poems, maybe even some short fiction. Of course, all of this fits right into Anywhere Avenue but it may also fit into a new chapbook project.

Yeah, and that’s my long way around the block way of sying that I think I’m going to jump into a new project.

Now, if anyone who’s reading this would love to drop YOUR personal theories of sneaker on telephone wires/power lines I would be happy to read ’em.

At the Edge of the City

I toss my sneakers in the air
   and catch a telephone line
to broadcast my stance—
   to stay steady
to my crew,
   to stay steady
to my word and bond—

   to keep the City
fresh and fly
   with a quick step
and a glide,
   and rock steady

in the face of the
   piked air flare
of the dawn.