Reay Jespersen

Ok… people… friends… brothers and sisters… work with me here. I’m seeing more and more of this, and it’s driving me nuts.

It’s really not hard: generally speaking, when you’re talking about a single group of people, you refer to them in the singular form.

For instance - to get right to the most common phrasing I see this used with - it’s not “Metallica are playing here tonight”. That’s using a single name, Metallica, with a plural verb, are. You don’t say that a group are playing; it’s that a group is playing. So it’s properly said that “Metallica is playing here tonight.” It’s the same as the way you’d say, “the choir [singular name] is [singular verb] performing” or “the army [singular name] is [singular verb] going to Toronto because the mayor thinks Torontonians can’t shovel a bit of snow for themselves.”

Another common mistake: “the staff are coming to the kitchen for birthday cake”. A staff is a single group of people with a singular name. Thus, “the staff is coming to the kitchen for birthday cake.”

A group is referred to as a plural when the name of the group itself is plural:
“The geese [plural name] are [plural verb] coming back north again.”
“The Police [plural name] are [plural verb] playing here this weekend.”
“The Smurfs [plural name] are [plural verb] three apples high. Also, annoying.”

Point being, a group of individuals with a collective, singular name will almost always get a singular verb. A group with a plural name will almost always get a plural verb. There are going to be some exceptions, I’ve no doubt - this is English, after all, and what’s English without exceptions to every rule? - but it’s a simple enough rule to go by and arguably even more trust-worthy than “i” before “e” except after “c”.

I get that English is difficult. I’ve heard some say it’s the most difficult language in the world, doubtless attributed at least in part to those very ubiquitous exceptions I mentioned. It even seems to be tricky for some folks who grew up with it as a first language, which is odd, given a childhood and adolescence of schooling and exposure to learning it. And singular verbs for singular groups are both key and learned early on, so where does it go once people reach their teens and adult years? Why do the fundamentals become lost for some; too many, and I daresay perhaps a growing number?

To wrap, let me just as that you please try to use proper grammar, especially if you’re involved in any kind of publishing or broadcasting. It really does matter, it makes you (and your company) sound more intelligent and professional than if you get it wrong, and it will save me from totally losing my mind.

It’s 1985.
Over the years, America has had a number of costumed heroes in their midst - everyday people who dress up to protect their identities as they fight crime. A handful of these heroes have collected into organized groups, the most recent of which, including members from an earlier group, is called the Watchmen. After some members had been called upon by (still-reigning) President Nixon to help America in times of war, masked criminals were made illegal.

Cut to the current day, when nuclear tensions between America and Russia are at an all-time high. Someone has killed the aging Comedian, the gun-toting, violence-loving member of the Watchmen. Enter fellow Watchman Rorschach, a man of extreme social and political beliefs whose face remains unknown even to fellow members, always hidden behind a shifting, blotted mask. He believes that the killing was something more than just a grudge. Someone killed the Comedian for a bigger reason. While the theory is played down by his former partner Nite Owl, it’s underscored when another Watchman, the god-like Dr. Manhattan, chooses to remove himself from Earth after he’s confronted with having been the cause of cancer in past companions. Then Rorschach himself is set up, framed for murder and caught by police; not only finally unmasked taken out of action, but put into a prison with a lot of people he brought to justice. And as he fights to survive, we and two other Watchmen - Nite Owl and Silk Spectre - realize that he’s right: someone is taking out masked heroes, maybe to get them out of the way. Something’s going to happen. Something big.

Having waited twenty-odd years for this story to jump from the comic page to the big screen, fans of the published version certainly won’t be disappointed by the movie. It doesn’t capture everything that the comic portrayed - forgoing the subplots of the pirate story-in-story and its vociferous newsstand man tie-in, as well as the literary excerpts found in the comic - but instead focuses purely on the main storyline. The widely publicized comment from Terry Gilliam that the Watchmen was unfilmable isn’t disproven here, because what we see on the screen isn’t everything that’s in the comic. Nor could you likely capture everything that’s in the comic in a movie while still keeping the timing realistic and maintaining viewer interest. As featuring just the main story goes, however, the movie does an excellent job.

The performances are generally top-notch. Billy Crudup beautifully captures the detached Dr. Manhattan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a great Comedian, Patrick Wilson is very well-suited to Nite Owl, and a tip of the hat to Jackie Earle Haley as an absolutely perfect Rorschach. Haley doesn’t top Heath Ledger’s Joker as my favourite comic movie support character (it’s arguable no one could), but he isn’t too far off the mark. He puts in a flat-out excellent performance.
Less impressive, unfortunately, were Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre - she looked great but lacked a bit of passion, fading into the background a bit - and Matthew Goode as the brilliant and dangerous Ozymandias, who plays a role which simply felt bigger than his charisma could carry.

The music in the movie makes its presence known. Clearly the choice had been made to have it help both the feel of the story - the 80s pop reminding us when this is all taking place - as well as certain scenes, such as the subtlety of having “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” playing softly in the background when Ozymandias is confronting top drawer business icons about his intent to devise a way to give the world free power. The music isn’t always on the money - Jimi Hendrix’s classic “All Along The Watchtower” makes an appearance during a jail riot setting, arguably both too precisely apt and totally out of the 80s context - but it’s generally quite well done. It marks the first time in years that I’ll probably hunt down the soundtrack on CD to at least see what it features, if not buy it.

For all its exceptional execution, however, the Watchmen isn’t perfect. The effects, for one, were generally very well done but at times seemed like effects. As movie-goers know, the best effects are the ones you don’t notice, and here, for all their fine detail, they unfortunately made themselves obvious at certain points. A few times, Dr. Manhattan seems wholly superimposed on the background, wrinkles in aged heroes played by younger actresses look artificial, and the overhead reveal shot of Ozymandias’s Antarctic retreat looks every bit like the miniature version that was shot.
Also, for what’s generally done as a story where the real world is dark and troublesome and these real people in costume are standing up and trying to protect the public that hates them anyway, Nixon was portrayed as borderline cartoonish, complete with oversized nose and never assertive - at one time buffoonish - presence. That aspect totally lost the heavy feel of a looming threat of doomsday which was so integral to the feel of the comic.
And finally, what will likely be the biggest point of contention for comic lovers, is the much-buzzed-about change at the end of the movie. I’ll not spoil it for those who’ve read the comic but haven’t seen the movie (or who have now seen the movie but haven’t yet read the original story), but suffice to say it’s an aspect which purists will certainly have an issue with. For me, it was an unneeded change but one which, if they were going to make the change anyway for their own reasons, was handled very well. It essentially takes an alternate route around one aspect of the story and brings it back around to wrap same way anyway. As an aspiring writer, I can appreciate the craft and execution used to manage that so well, even if I don’t understand why it was done.

All told, Watchmen is a very well made movie adaptation of one of the most - if not the most - significant comic stories ever written. They didn’t set out to put everything in the original story on the screen, but instead stuck to the story that moviegoers would most want to see. And in that, combined with some exceptional acting and genrerally great effects, they certainly succeeded admirably.

If you’re a comic or superhero fan, it’s simply must-see.

So I’ve got a lot happening these days, creativity-wise.
Along with the usual writing projects I’m pecking away on, Jackie and I have teamed up with some friends to work on one creative outlet - a potential money maker, if we can get out collective asses in gear and actually put the idea in motion - and I’m working with another friend on a comic strip idea. Not a comic book, mind you, but a 4-panel strip like you find in the Comics section of newspapers.

It’s kind of cool because I’ve never worked in that format before, which always interests me. It’s a pretty specific discipline. Having written up a couple dozen by this point, though, I think I’m getting the feel for them.

The friend’s name is Eric Kim. He’s got a pretty cool website that showcases some of his work, and he’ll definitely bring a professional level to the artwork which my stick figures just wouldn’t get.

I’ll post a link when the strips start showing up on his site.

Meanwhile, I’m just trying to find a balance among all these things, plus life and a job, and writing away…