Has anyone else stopped frequenting Newsarama since they gave their site a facelift? The previous, clean and easily navigable design was user-friendly and to the point. The new design is just busy, with the images distracting from the headlines to the extent that I can no longer tell if there's an article I want to read just by scanning the main page. And if I do sift through the site with greater concentration, I find that their articles are much more Hollywood-oriented and a lot less comics oriented. It's like they're turning into Wizard Magazine.
If I wanted movie and TV news, I'll read imdb or Aint It Cool. I want comics news, damn it, and their site used to be my favorite source. Now it's Comic Book Resources for me... which, in all fairness, was always a close second.
Is that just me? Am I the only one?
Sunday, August 10, 2008
I'm a True Believer
At some workplaces, a guy on his last day gets a cake. At cooler workplaces, he gets a stripper. Me?
I get Stan "The Fucking MAN" Lee.
Crappy cell phone photo, but still... Thanks, Barnes & Noble.
I get Stan "The Fucking MAN" Lee.
Crappy cell phone photo, but still... Thanks, Barnes & Noble.
Earth X is Love
My last day at the bookstore ended a few hours ago. Weird to end a chapter in my life, but even more weird to consider 9 months working at a bookstore an entire chapter. The new job equals awesome, although I am still adjusting to having a regular weekly schedule and the stress of having my actions at work actually matter.
I was discussing Alex Ross & Jim Krueger's outstanding Earth X trilogy today with a friend and the rarely-viewed short film Ross included in a low-print run hardcover edition came up. I was bemoaning the fact that I had never seen the thing when, suddenly, out of the blue, something occurred to me...
Youtube.
Earth X is one of the greatest single accomplishments ever to come out of Marvel comics, tying together a mythology created haphazardly over decades by writers and artists with no master plan into a single narrative that, suddenly and brilliantly, makes everything seem to have been crafted for a reason. And that reason is Earth X. All the plot holes, all the out of character moments suddenly come crashing together into perfect sense in a tale that, on its own merits, stands as one of the most involving and dramatic storylines in all of Marvel canon. Universe X is a worthy follow-up, as is most of Paradise X (although its ending sure does seem rushed), but Earth X in particular is one of those rare books that I make a point of re-reading every year or two just to remind myself of how good comics, and superhero comics and Marvel comics in particular can be. Just remembering the scene where Peter Parker teaches his daughter the importance of quipping in the face of impending doom still gets me kind of misty-eyed (although that scene was from Universe X - bite me).
But man, this video is actually pretty lame. It's interesting to see Ross's models in costume, but to put them together in such a melodramatic way sure brings to the foreground all the less-than-flattering touches he smoothes over in his artwork. From the fake beards to the awkward facial expressions, but mostly from the bad music to the lack of any sense of Earth X's wonderful narrative (the video's just a series of models in costume standing around), this hardly seems worth including. I'd love to see a documentary with this material - seeing Ross's artistic process, how he puts together first-hand reference material for out of this world characters - but to put it together like some kind of trailer does a disservice to the entire material. A couple of the shots are kind of neat, though.
I don't want to harp on - Ross himself says the project was ill-conceived - but still, it's an odd let down after years of being interested in seeing this thing. I thought Ross was just being too hard on himself, but I'll give him credit... he's a fair self-critic. Still, now that we're getting Marvel animated movies - and pretty good ones too - I think it's time someone gave Earth X the DC's New Frontier treatment. As long as they can have the running time they deserve this time (did New Frontier feel choppy or what?).
I was discussing Alex Ross & Jim Krueger's outstanding Earth X trilogy today with a friend and the rarely-viewed short film Ross included in a low-print run hardcover edition came up. I was bemoaning the fact that I had never seen the thing when, suddenly, out of the blue, something occurred to me...
Youtube.
Earth X is one of the greatest single accomplishments ever to come out of Marvel comics, tying together a mythology created haphazardly over decades by writers and artists with no master plan into a single narrative that, suddenly and brilliantly, makes everything seem to have been crafted for a reason. And that reason is Earth X. All the plot holes, all the out of character moments suddenly come crashing together into perfect sense in a tale that, on its own merits, stands as one of the most involving and dramatic storylines in all of Marvel canon. Universe X is a worthy follow-up, as is most of Paradise X (although its ending sure does seem rushed), but Earth X in particular is one of those rare books that I make a point of re-reading every year or two just to remind myself of how good comics, and superhero comics and Marvel comics in particular can be. Just remembering the scene where Peter Parker teaches his daughter the importance of quipping in the face of impending doom still gets me kind of misty-eyed (although that scene was from Universe X - bite me).
But man, this video is actually pretty lame. It's interesting to see Ross's models in costume, but to put them together in such a melodramatic way sure brings to the foreground all the less-than-flattering touches he smoothes over in his artwork. From the fake beards to the awkward facial expressions, but mostly from the bad music to the lack of any sense of Earth X's wonderful narrative (the video's just a series of models in costume standing around), this hardly seems worth including. I'd love to see a documentary with this material - seeing Ross's artistic process, how he puts together first-hand reference material for out of this world characters - but to put it together like some kind of trailer does a disservice to the entire material. A couple of the shots are kind of neat, though.
I don't want to harp on - Ross himself says the project was ill-conceived - but still, it's an odd let down after years of being interested in seeing this thing. I thought Ross was just being too hard on himself, but I'll give him credit... he's a fair self-critic. Still, now that we're getting Marvel animated movies - and pretty good ones too - I think it's time someone gave Earth X the DC's New Frontier treatment. As long as they can have the running time they deserve this time (did New Frontier feel choppy or what?).
Sunday, August 3, 2008
SUPER NERVOUS SUNDAY REVIEWS!
I start my new job tomorrow morning. Normally, this calls for little more than a clean shirt and a shave, but for the first time in about four years I really want to excel at my new position, so I am actually really nervous. To expel this nervous energy, I am now blogging.
MOVIE REVIEWS:
ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
I rewatched Rosemary's Baby this week for the first time since high school. I wasn't planning to, but the lovely girl who returns my affections had never seen it and so it was rented. My initial viewing was met with a mixed reaction. While obviously a quality production, the film left me cold at the age of 16. At the age of 26, however, I found myself incredibly affected.
Rosemary's Baby is a classic, and you certainly don't need yet another film critic (not that I define myself as such) telling you the same. Critics have a tendency to build certain films up too much. The Exorcist, for example, is a film that a lot of people claim is "the scariest movie ever made." But to modern audiences, "scary" is frequently equated with "gory," or at least "shocking." While the crucifix scene is still pretty fucked up, the actual horror in the film comes from the mundane, particularly the mother's plight of knowing her child is sick, but finding herself incapable of helping her in any tangible way.
Rosemary's Baby, unlike The Exorcist, has no shocking moments of violence for modern audiences to latch on to. At its heart, it's simply the story of a woman who's pregnancy is... wrong. She isn't gaining weight. She's in inexplicable pain. And all the people who should be in her corner - her husband, her doctor - refuse to listen to her. It's like they want her to suffer, and she just can't figure out why. By the time she comes to the conclusion that there is a very real plot against her, she can't get anyone to see her side of the scenario. "But there are plots against people, aren't there?" she asks a disbelieving doctor, to which even his objective mindset has to agree. Yes, there are, but most of us have never actually seen one.
Pregnancy is scary without the threat of cultists. A person's body goes through unusual changes, and every little thing can seem to threaten the health of not just the conscious adult, but an innocent unborn child as well. Seeing Mia Farrow wasting away when she should be at her most vital is painful to watch, but in the best way possible. An adult would have to be completely heartless not to die a little inside with every passing scene. It's emotionally devastating in a way that few horror films even attempt in this day and age, and a must watch if you haven't, or were a little too young to appreciate it the first time out.
NEVER BACK DOWN (2008)
"Who knew?" is the question I asked myself after watching Never Back Down, a blink-and-you-missed-it release from earlier this year. Little more than The Karate Kid with mixed-martial arts as a plot synopsis, the resulting film is a clever take on the familiar American fight genre. New kid in town, has something to prove (mostly to himself), gets his ass handed to him by some jerk dating the girl he likes, takes martial arts classes from a wise master with a troubled past of his own, eventually learns to control his anger and loses his desire for a rematch, but eventually finds himself in the ring against his will. Been there, done that, and too cool to wear the t-shirt, right?
But it's the smaller moments that make Never Back Down worth watching. The screenwriter, Chris Hauty (whose only other IMDb credit is Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco), knows his stuff. His script hits all the familiar beats that resonate on an emotional level, but when he finds one that has become a cliche, he hits it from the side. The moment where the hero forgives the girl who has wronged him because she too has a troubled past? Well, he's smart enough to know that she's using her backstory as an excuse, forcing her to actually earn his trust through her actions. That works. I'm also fond of the final fight, an underground tournament where we know our hero and our villain will duke it out in the final round, only for their names to be called in the first elimination round. It's simple change, but so logical that it borders on profound. The odds would are equally good that in a tournament they'd fight early on. But by the time it registers, they pull a switcheroo. The hero's generic name was actually called as a result of typo, and we're going to have to wait a while longer. Clever. Not ingenious, but clever, and this kind of storytelling keeps the audience on their toes in what should be well-trod territory.
Never Back Down is not the best movie of the year; not by a long shot. But it may turn out to be the most surprising. I popped the DVD in expecting a one-star movie at best, and ejected it having watched a solid and entertaining three-star film instead. Well worth a rental, believe you me.
MOVIE REVIEWS:
ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
I rewatched Rosemary's Baby this week for the first time since high school. I wasn't planning to, but the lovely girl who returns my affections had never seen it and so it was rented. My initial viewing was met with a mixed reaction. While obviously a quality production, the film left me cold at the age of 16. At the age of 26, however, I found myself incredibly affected.
Rosemary's Baby is a classic, and you certainly don't need yet another film critic (not that I define myself as such) telling you the same. Critics have a tendency to build certain films up too much. The Exorcist, for example, is a film that a lot of people claim is "the scariest movie ever made." But to modern audiences, "scary" is frequently equated with "gory," or at least "shocking." While the crucifix scene is still pretty fucked up, the actual horror in the film comes from the mundane, particularly the mother's plight of knowing her child is sick, but finding herself incapable of helping her in any tangible way.
Rosemary's Baby, unlike The Exorcist, has no shocking moments of violence for modern audiences to latch on to. At its heart, it's simply the story of a woman who's pregnancy is... wrong. She isn't gaining weight. She's in inexplicable pain. And all the people who should be in her corner - her husband, her doctor - refuse to listen to her. It's like they want her to suffer, and she just can't figure out why. By the time she comes to the conclusion that there is a very real plot against her, she can't get anyone to see her side of the scenario. "But there are plots against people, aren't there?" she asks a disbelieving doctor, to which even his objective mindset has to agree. Yes, there are, but most of us have never actually seen one.
Pregnancy is scary without the threat of cultists. A person's body goes through unusual changes, and every little thing can seem to threaten the health of not just the conscious adult, but an innocent unborn child as well. Seeing Mia Farrow wasting away when she should be at her most vital is painful to watch, but in the best way possible. An adult would have to be completely heartless not to die a little inside with every passing scene. It's emotionally devastating in a way that few horror films even attempt in this day and age, and a must watch if you haven't, or were a little too young to appreciate it the first time out.
NEVER BACK DOWN (2008)
"Who knew?" is the question I asked myself after watching Never Back Down, a blink-and-you-missed-it release from earlier this year. Little more than The Karate Kid with mixed-martial arts as a plot synopsis, the resulting film is a clever take on the familiar American fight genre. New kid in town, has something to prove (mostly to himself), gets his ass handed to him by some jerk dating the girl he likes, takes martial arts classes from a wise master with a troubled past of his own, eventually learns to control his anger and loses his desire for a rematch, but eventually finds himself in the ring against his will. Been there, done that, and too cool to wear the t-shirt, right?
But it's the smaller moments that make Never Back Down worth watching. The screenwriter, Chris Hauty (whose only other IMDb credit is Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco), knows his stuff. His script hits all the familiar beats that resonate on an emotional level, but when he finds one that has become a cliche, he hits it from the side. The moment where the hero forgives the girl who has wronged him because she too has a troubled past? Well, he's smart enough to know that she's using her backstory as an excuse, forcing her to actually earn his trust through her actions. That works. I'm also fond of the final fight, an underground tournament where we know our hero and our villain will duke it out in the final round, only for their names to be called in the first elimination round. It's simple change, but so logical that it borders on profound. The odds would are equally good that in a tournament they'd fight early on. But by the time it registers, they pull a switcheroo. The hero's generic name was actually called as a result of typo, and we're going to have to wait a while longer. Clever. Not ingenious, but clever, and this kind of storytelling keeps the audience on their toes in what should be well-trod territory.
Never Back Down is not the best movie of the year; not by a long shot. But it may turn out to be the most surprising. I popped the DVD in expecting a one-star movie at best, and ejected it having watched a solid and entertaining three-star film instead. Well worth a rental, believe you me.
Friday, August 1, 2008
VICTORY!!!
I just got a new job starting Monday, and I really wanted this one too. It's back in the film industry, doing something I actually care about. Only one song will do:
Monday, July 28, 2008
MAKE IT HAPPEN TRAILER
Save the Last Dance, have you met Coyote Ugly? Coyote Ugly, Save the Last Dance? I mean, seriously, the try-outs sequence looks exactly like Save the Last Dance. It's spooky.
I love a good dance movie, although they're few and far between. One of the hardest elements in a dance movie trailer, however, is somehow making giving dancing dramatic weight beyond, well, getting freaky. This trailer tries twice, as near as I can tell. First, it emphasizes the difficulty of bookkeeping. "The other bookkeeper? Lasted about week." Damnnnnnnn... Sounds hard.
The second comes when Mary Elizabeth Winstead tries out a second time (!) for the big... dance... thing that she wants. Seriously, that guy's all like, "Bitch, make an appointment!" And she's all like, "I took three buses and a train to get here! I'm hijacking this motherfucking stage and by God you will watch my pelvic thrust!"
Here's hoping the movie ends with the snooty guy saying, "You have certainly learned a lot of new dance moves, but you are apparently a total diva so I'm afraid we will once again have to pass on your application and have your car towed." "But I don't have a car anymore!" "We'll wait."
Another recent favorite dance trailer was for Step it Up 2: The Streets, which for all its various degrees of popping and locking all boils down to one line of dialogue, 1:29 into the video:
"You realize with those competitions you are risking everything!"
Everything? I almost paid good, or at least unnecessary amounts of money just find out what exactly she's risking. Everything? Do the losers get shot in the head? If she dances for "urban" kids will she be kicked out of school? Will she forever lose the ability to become pregnant? Wow, everything. That's a lot.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
ODDS AND ENDS
1. Haven't blogged in approximately FOREVER and if anyone actually read this I might even apologize. Sigh...
2. Been spending a lot of time with my new girlfriend (GASP!), who is totally awesome and I adore her. So there's an excuse right there for ignoring my legions of non-existent readers.
3. Didn't go to Comic Con AGAIN this year. A friend of mine said he'd try to pick up some stuff for me. I asked him to pick up CHOCOLATE, the new action film from the guys who made ONG-BAK and TOM YUNG GOONG, and L, the spin-off film from DEATH NOTE. Hopefully I'll get them.
4. That said, I COMPLETELY forgot to ask him to pick up the new SCOTT PILGRIM merch they have available this year, and I don't have his number since he's a casual work friend so there's no way in hell I'm getting any. It's literally eating me up inside.
(I would have settled for these damned buttons. Oh well...)
5. THE DARK KNIGHT was built up pretty badly by the surprising number of people I know who got to see it early, so my expectations were pretty high. These expectations were thoroughly trounced when I finally saw the finished product. There may be a couple of loose ends here and there (Batman basically abandons the Joker in a room full of his friends and associates to rescue Rachel early on, which feels like a mistake to me), but these are the definition of nitpicks. One of the best movies I've seen in years, although WALL-E comes damned close.
6. Work is KILLING me, Smalls. Usually when I'm stuck at a job I find boring I spend most of the time coming up with screenplay ideas, but now I'm hitting 2 or 3 good ones a day, then talking myself out of writing them by the time I get home because I'm neurotic like that. That said, I've got a couple new reasonably low-budget horror ideas in the last few weeks that I may try to just pump out in the coming months to add to my portfolio.
(Expectations? Exceeded.)
7. Reading the new ZOT! trade paperback by Scott McCloud. UNDERSTANDING COMICS practically changed my life when I first read it back in high school, but despite that I always wondered who this Scott McCloud guy was and what made him so qualified to define comics for a generation. Now that I'm reading ZOT! I am convinced that he's the real deal... someone who can DO, not just teach. Check out the trade paperback if you can, it's worth the read. And if you can find it in a back issue bin, read the Superman mini-series he wrote a few years ago called SUPERMAN: STRENGTH. It stands alongside some of Grant Morrison's finer issues of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN as my favorite Supes stories of all time.
(Maybe he's an asshole, but at least in this one he's a likable asshole.)
8. Finally got around to watching PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP, Brian Helgeland's director's cut of that Mel Gibson revenge movie from the late 90's, and it's a much better film. They undid that atrocious color-timing that took a well-shot movie and made it look, well, blue. REALLY blue. It was pretty oppressive and helped ruin my enjoyment of the film the first time around. Also, the score, the tone and the ending are vastly improved. I know I'm a little late on this, but if you hadn't heard of it or were simply uninterested before, I'd recommend checking it out.
(There's an entire book to be written about Erig Bogosian's performance in UNDER SIEGE 2, but I sure as hell don't want to write it...)
9. I've been reading Vern's SEAGALOGY, and it's a pretty entertaining examination of the action star's oeuvre. B-Movies are frequently disregarded in the critical community as being beneath their scholarly attention, and while Vern may not have proved them wrong, he does provide a nice counterpoint.
10. In related news, a critical studies book I myself have been ruminating for some time may finally start getting typed out in the next few months. I don't want to say too much about it on the off-chance it doesn't get written (as is likely to happen with me), but I've been pretty frustrated at my lack of output lately and trying something different like an actual BOOK-book may be just the ticket. I'm debating starting a new website to feature the material I come up with to help promote the book, but again, this is all probably a long way away.
11. A screenplay I beated out earlier this week went from being a fairly clever idea for a low-budget revenge movie and became this pretentious rumination on loss and redemption. As a result, all the fun got ripped out of the idea and I'm probably going to scrap it altogether, as there's no point in making an action movie that will depress an audience more than IN THE BEDROOM.
12. A similar project got stalled when a sexually charged horror movie born from my own frustration with the opposite sex lost all of its appeal to me when I finally found romance again with a member of the opposite sex. All that anger I had reserved for the page got smooched out of me, and while it's still a really good idea and I am likely to return to it someday, I'm just not in the mood anymore right now.
(Great book. Maybe I'll finish it one day.)
13. UNFINISHED BOOK #102398 - HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS by David Simon. I loved THE WIRE and almost meant to read this thing, so I picked it up from work and fell in love with it... then got distracted and forgot to read it for a while. I may not get back to it anytime soon, which bugs me. I also picked up Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, which I'm excited about because I love her work and it's short enough that I may actually finish this one.
(I have judged this book by it's cover, and it is very, very good.)
14. Had my first run-in with "image retention" on my plasma-screen TV. I just about had a heart attack. Luckily, the problem was relatively minor and I was actually able to fix it(!) using the "SCROLL BAR" function on the TV's menu screen. It took about an hour longer than it was supposed to, but at least I got it to work. Thanks for thinking up a solution to that little SNAFU, Panasonic.
(I approve.)
15. Loving the t-shirts coming out of the ASTROBASEGO website for the new VENTURE BROS. season on Adult Swim. Well, most of them. I ordered an ORDER OF THE TRIAD shirt and that ugly grey one with the brown letters that says DEAN! on it. Fans of the show may remember that shirt being mentioned on one of the commentary tracks for the DVD releases. I thought they were just spitballing, but I'm glad they remembered it because it was and still is a pretty funny idea. Now if they'd just arrive in the damned mail...
16. I figured MOTHER OF TEARS would be in theaters for more than a week, so I missed my opportunity to see it on the big screen. As an Argento fan who has never been able to see his work in the theater, I'm pretty danged bummed about it. I'm still hoping the New Beverly will have a double-feature with INFERNO or SUSPIRIA sometime soon so I can fix that problem, however.
17. Everyone's talking about the WATCHMEN trailer, and while it does look a lot like the book, I do have some reservations, but also some potential for forgiveness. My initial concern arose when I recognized the SMASHING PUMPKINS song from the trailer. Did anyone else catch that it's from the BATMAN & ROBIN soundtrack, and was used in pretty much every commercial for that film? Is that really what Zach Snyder wants to evoke here? And the Joel Schumacher-esque quality of Ozymandias' uniform is pretty disturbing, although almost thematically appropriate given that he's the hero who sold out and made himself into an action figure. If that's where they're going with it, I can cut them some slack.
2. Been spending a lot of time with my new girlfriend (GASP!), who is totally awesome and I adore her. So there's an excuse right there for ignoring my legions of non-existent readers.
3. Didn't go to Comic Con AGAIN this year. A friend of mine said he'd try to pick up some stuff for me. I asked him to pick up CHOCOLATE, the new action film from the guys who made ONG-BAK and TOM YUNG GOONG, and L, the spin-off film from DEATH NOTE. Hopefully I'll get them.
4. That said, I COMPLETELY forgot to ask him to pick up the new SCOTT PILGRIM merch they have available this year, and I don't have his number since he's a casual work friend so there's no way in hell I'm getting any. It's literally eating me up inside.
(I would have settled for these damned buttons. Oh well...)5. THE DARK KNIGHT was built up pretty badly by the surprising number of people I know who got to see it early, so my expectations were pretty high. These expectations were thoroughly trounced when I finally saw the finished product. There may be a couple of loose ends here and there (Batman basically abandons the Joker in a room full of his friends and associates to rescue Rachel early on, which feels like a mistake to me), but these are the definition of nitpicks. One of the best movies I've seen in years, although WALL-E comes damned close.
6. Work is KILLING me, Smalls. Usually when I'm stuck at a job I find boring I spend most of the time coming up with screenplay ideas, but now I'm hitting 2 or 3 good ones a day, then talking myself out of writing them by the time I get home because I'm neurotic like that. That said, I've got a couple new reasonably low-budget horror ideas in the last few weeks that I may try to just pump out in the coming months to add to my portfolio.
(Expectations? Exceeded.)7. Reading the new ZOT! trade paperback by Scott McCloud. UNDERSTANDING COMICS practically changed my life when I first read it back in high school, but despite that I always wondered who this Scott McCloud guy was and what made him so qualified to define comics for a generation. Now that I'm reading ZOT! I am convinced that he's the real deal... someone who can DO, not just teach. Check out the trade paperback if you can, it's worth the read. And if you can find it in a back issue bin, read the Superman mini-series he wrote a few years ago called SUPERMAN: STRENGTH. It stands alongside some of Grant Morrison's finer issues of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN as my favorite Supes stories of all time.
(Maybe he's an asshole, but at least in this one he's a likable asshole.)8. Finally got around to watching PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP, Brian Helgeland's director's cut of that Mel Gibson revenge movie from the late 90's, and it's a much better film. They undid that atrocious color-timing that took a well-shot movie and made it look, well, blue. REALLY blue. It was pretty oppressive and helped ruin my enjoyment of the film the first time around. Also, the score, the tone and the ending are vastly improved. I know I'm a little late on this, but if you hadn't heard of it or were simply uninterested before, I'd recommend checking it out.
(There's an entire book to be written about Erig Bogosian's performance in UNDER SIEGE 2, but I sure as hell don't want to write it...)9. I've been reading Vern's SEAGALOGY, and it's a pretty entertaining examination of the action star's oeuvre. B-Movies are frequently disregarded in the critical community as being beneath their scholarly attention, and while Vern may not have proved them wrong, he does provide a nice counterpoint.
10. In related news, a critical studies book I myself have been ruminating for some time may finally start getting typed out in the next few months. I don't want to say too much about it on the off-chance it doesn't get written (as is likely to happen with me), but I've been pretty frustrated at my lack of output lately and trying something different like an actual BOOK-book may be just the ticket. I'm debating starting a new website to feature the material I come up with to help promote the book, but again, this is all probably a long way away.
11. A screenplay I beated out earlier this week went from being a fairly clever idea for a low-budget revenge movie and became this pretentious rumination on loss and redemption. As a result, all the fun got ripped out of the idea and I'm probably going to scrap it altogether, as there's no point in making an action movie that will depress an audience more than IN THE BEDROOM.
12. A similar project got stalled when a sexually charged horror movie born from my own frustration with the opposite sex lost all of its appeal to me when I finally found romance again with a member of the opposite sex. All that anger I had reserved for the page got smooched out of me, and while it's still a really good idea and I am likely to return to it someday, I'm just not in the mood anymore right now.
(Great book. Maybe I'll finish it one day.)13. UNFINISHED BOOK #102398 - HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS by David Simon. I loved THE WIRE and almost meant to read this thing, so I picked it up from work and fell in love with it... then got distracted and forgot to read it for a while. I may not get back to it anytime soon, which bugs me. I also picked up Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, which I'm excited about because I love her work and it's short enough that I may actually finish this one.
(I have judged this book by it's cover, and it is very, very good.)14. Had my first run-in with "image retention" on my plasma-screen TV. I just about had a heart attack. Luckily, the problem was relatively minor and I was actually able to fix it(!) using the "SCROLL BAR" function on the TV's menu screen. It took about an hour longer than it was supposed to, but at least I got it to work. Thanks for thinking up a solution to that little SNAFU, Panasonic.
(I approve.)15. Loving the t-shirts coming out of the ASTROBASEGO website for the new VENTURE BROS. season on Adult Swim. Well, most of them. I ordered an ORDER OF THE TRIAD shirt and that ugly grey one with the brown letters that says DEAN! on it. Fans of the show may remember that shirt being mentioned on one of the commentary tracks for the DVD releases. I thought they were just spitballing, but I'm glad they remembered it because it was and still is a pretty funny idea. Now if they'd just arrive in the damned mail...
16. I figured MOTHER OF TEARS would be in theaters for more than a week, so I missed my opportunity to see it on the big screen. As an Argento fan who has never been able to see his work in the theater, I'm pretty danged bummed about it. I'm still hoping the New Beverly will have a double-feature with INFERNO or SUSPIRIA sometime soon so I can fix that problem, however.
17. Everyone's talking about the WATCHMEN trailer, and while it does look a lot like the book, I do have some reservations, but also some potential for forgiveness. My initial concern arose when I recognized the SMASHING PUMPKINS song from the trailer. Did anyone else catch that it's from the BATMAN & ROBIN soundtrack, and was used in pretty much every commercial for that film? Is that really what Zach Snyder wants to evoke here? And the Joel Schumacher-esque quality of Ozymandias' uniform is pretty disturbing, although almost thematically appropriate given that he's the hero who sold out and made himself into an action figure. If that's where they're going with it, I can cut them some slack.
Monday, March 31, 2008
TO ALL STANDARD DVD USERS
I was once among you, living and breathing in blissful ignorance of the true power of my DVD player... until this weekend.
Having come into some money recently, I decided that I would finally find myself a nice HDTV and settle down. I had been enjoying a standard tube-based television, a gift from a close friend who moved a few years ago and didn't need it anymore. The screen was pleasantly large, and my DVDs appeared just fine via a standard red/white/yellow video/audio cable. Over the past few years, however, standard wear-and-tear began to appear. The power button on the front of the set broke, but the remote control was all we ever used and worked fine, so I ignored this as a cosmetic deficiency and, hey, the price was still right. More annoying were the speakers, which had begun to blow out creating a noticeable but ignorable hiss whenever the TV was set to a reasonable volume.
Then I got myself an HDTV, and the difference is remarkable. DVD is nothing when it isn't connected via component cables - this is a simple fact. I had no idea the image from my seven year old DVD player could look so good. So it's nice to know that even though a PS3 is in my near future, I don't actually have to replace my already massive DVD collection (which was annoying enough when I had to convert from VHS to DVD in the first place).
So, standard DVD player looking great. Took me about a day before I realized that I hadn't reset my DVD player to display anamorphic (I thought the formatting looked off). The real joy has come from my XBOX 360, now displaying at 1080i. HOLY FLURKING SHNIT. Bioshock is now the prettiest thing I have ever seen that wasn't a woman.
As a test, I downloaded episode 2.01 of Lost off of XBOX Live and borrowed a friend's DVD to compare the image between standard, already impressive anamorphic DVD and HD displays. The reduction in digital noise and deep, rich blacks are the biggest eye-grabbers. It's a marked improvement, even at only 720p on a set capable of 1080p, and cements my need to get a Blu-Ray player soon.
I was going to wait, but God bless the Best Buy Rewards system. After buying my TV, I checked how many points I was awarded (accumulate a certain amount of points and receive a coupon for X dollars off). Lo and behold, I'm getting a $250 coupon. That PS3 is practically payed off already. This in addition to the ridiculously low price I received on the TV (about $600-750 off comparable sets elsewhere), and Best Buy's policy of matching and improving upon price differences between local competitors (knocking off an additional $360), and boy, can you get a good deal on these things.
To make a long story short (too late), HDTV is completely worth it. There are a lot of fantastic deals you can find for yourself with a just an hour or two of research online, and the difference in quality is intrinsically obvious with even your existing DVD player. I knew I wanted one, but I didn't fully realize how much until I got one home.
FINAL THOUGHTS (FOR ANYONE MAKING THE CONVERSION):
1. DON'T FORGET TO ADJUST THE DISPLAY MODE ON YOUR DVD PLAYER TO ANAMORPHIC. It's easy to fix, and easy to forget about if you've had a standard 4:3 television for years and never had to fiddle with it. While you're at it, don't forget to adjust the settings on any videogame settings as well. They'll automatically look better already, but they'll look at least twice as good using their maximum output.
2. CUSTOMIZE YOUR VIDEO DISPLAY YOURSELF. When I purchased my HDTV, I asked about the video displays at the store. They're automatically set to factory default setting that pumps up the contrast and the color to a degree that is literally painful to watch when you look at it for too long. When I asked about configuration, the salesperson offered a service in which a professional comes to your home and adjusts them for you... for 300 dollars extra. I didn't pay for this extra, but was slightly concerned when I got home that I wouldn't be able to get the display to look right. WRONG. There are several settings available automatically on my set, and it only took the slightest tweaking to get the image to look as natural as can be.
3. GET AS MANY COMPONENT/HDMI INPUTS AS POSSIBLE. Trust me, once you see the difference, they're all you'll want to use.
If I discover any other extras or defects I'll update later, but if anyone reads this who doesn't think there's a difference in video quality between your standard TV and HDTV, you genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
Wow.
Having come into some money recently, I decided that I would finally find myself a nice HDTV and settle down. I had been enjoying a standard tube-based television, a gift from a close friend who moved a few years ago and didn't need it anymore. The screen was pleasantly large, and my DVDs appeared just fine via a standard red/white/yellow video/audio cable. Over the past few years, however, standard wear-and-tear began to appear. The power button on the front of the set broke, but the remote control was all we ever used and worked fine, so I ignored this as a cosmetic deficiency and, hey, the price was still right. More annoying were the speakers, which had begun to blow out creating a noticeable but ignorable hiss whenever the TV was set to a reasonable volume.
Then I got myself an HDTV, and the difference is remarkable. DVD is nothing when it isn't connected via component cables - this is a simple fact. I had no idea the image from my seven year old DVD player could look so good. So it's nice to know that even though a PS3 is in my near future, I don't actually have to replace my already massive DVD collection (which was annoying enough when I had to convert from VHS to DVD in the first place).
So, standard DVD player looking great. Took me about a day before I realized that I hadn't reset my DVD player to display anamorphic (I thought the formatting looked off). The real joy has come from my XBOX 360, now displaying at 1080i. HOLY FLURKING SHNIT. Bioshock is now the prettiest thing I have ever seen that wasn't a woman.
As a test, I downloaded episode 2.01 of Lost off of XBOX Live and borrowed a friend's DVD to compare the image between standard, already impressive anamorphic DVD and HD displays. The reduction in digital noise and deep, rich blacks are the biggest eye-grabbers. It's a marked improvement, even at only 720p on a set capable of 1080p, and cements my need to get a Blu-Ray player soon.
I was going to wait, but God bless the Best Buy Rewards system. After buying my TV, I checked how many points I was awarded (accumulate a certain amount of points and receive a coupon for X dollars off). Lo and behold, I'm getting a $250 coupon. That PS3 is practically payed off already. This in addition to the ridiculously low price I received on the TV (about $600-750 off comparable sets elsewhere), and Best Buy's policy of matching and improving upon price differences between local competitors (knocking off an additional $360), and boy, can you get a good deal on these things.
To make a long story short (too late), HDTV is completely worth it. There are a lot of fantastic deals you can find for yourself with a just an hour or two of research online, and the difference in quality is intrinsically obvious with even your existing DVD player. I knew I wanted one, but I didn't fully realize how much until I got one home.
FINAL THOUGHTS (FOR ANYONE MAKING THE CONVERSION):
1. DON'T FORGET TO ADJUST THE DISPLAY MODE ON YOUR DVD PLAYER TO ANAMORPHIC. It's easy to fix, and easy to forget about if you've had a standard 4:3 television for years and never had to fiddle with it. While you're at it, don't forget to adjust the settings on any videogame settings as well. They'll automatically look better already, but they'll look at least twice as good using their maximum output.
2. CUSTOMIZE YOUR VIDEO DISPLAY YOURSELF. When I purchased my HDTV, I asked about the video displays at the store. They're automatically set to factory default setting that pumps up the contrast and the color to a degree that is literally painful to watch when you look at it for too long. When I asked about configuration, the salesperson offered a service in which a professional comes to your home and adjusts them for you... for 300 dollars extra. I didn't pay for this extra, but was slightly concerned when I got home that I wouldn't be able to get the display to look right. WRONG. There are several settings available automatically on my set, and it only took the slightest tweaking to get the image to look as natural as can be.
3. GET AS MANY COMPONENT/HDMI INPUTS AS POSSIBLE. Trust me, once you see the difference, they're all you'll want to use.
If I discover any other extras or defects I'll update later, but if anyone reads this who doesn't think there's a difference in video quality between your standard TV and HDTV, you genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
Wow.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Dreamcasting 1.01 - The Fantastic Four
I'm avoiding work on this comic book script, and not the one I'm supposed to be working on either. So that's twice as much procrastination as usual! Anyway, I think dreamcasting is always kind of fun, so here's the first installment.
According to Chris Evans, it looks like Fantastic Four 3 is out of the question now, and since Marvel has no qualms about restarting even the most recent of franchises I figure someone over there has to be thinking about doing FF correctly. I think we can all agree that whether you hated or tolerated Tim Story's two "Fantastic" films, neither of them were anywhere near as fantastic as they could have been.
The rules? No actors can return from the original films, even if they were good the first time around (sorry Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis). Also, no actors who have starred in prominent roles in other superhero movies (sorry Christian Bale and Tobey Maguire). And since this is an ensemble cast, no huge stars can be present, as they would either distract from the team dynamic or become too cost-prohibitive to cast en masse.
Let the dreamcasting begin!
REED RICHARDS = PAUL BETTANY
Paul Bettany has played a number of intellectuals already, is considered reasonably attractive though never quite the leading man, making him kind of perfect. And he's lanky enough to be called "Stretch" before his powers even kick in. Although older than Hollywood would perhaps like to make Mister Fantastic, the character was kind of an old stick-in-the-mud when he appeared, and was popular enough to sell more issues in a single month than most Hollywood movies can sell tickets these days. So there has to be something to the "old charm."
SUSAN STORM = CLAIRE DANES
Beautiful, intelligent and a plausible blonde, Claire Danes fits Susan Storm to a "t." She's also about 8 years younger than Paul Bettany, which once you reach your late twenties is just enough age difference to be a plot point, but not a creepy one. She's got her action movie chops (the under-rated Terminator 3), but most importantly she has a strong, confident on-screen presence that will help prevent her character from being the token, damsel-in-distress woman that basically happened to Jessica Alba in the first two movies.
JOHNNY STORM = BEN FOSTER
Slightly younger than Claire Danes, check. Same ethnicity so they actually look like they could be siblings? Check. Blonde? Check. Bad-ass rising star who should have been nominated for an Oscar for 3:10 to Yuma? Check. Foster's going to be one of the hottest commodities within the next few years if talent is any indication, so the time is now to snatch him up to play the flighty, flamboyant and flambe Johnny Storm. And yeah, he already played Angel in X-Men 3... for about two minutes. And pretty much every human being has strived to forget that movie anyway, so I think the slate's fairly clean.
BEN GRIMM = ADAM BALDWIN
Adam Baldwin redefined "rough on the outside, cuddly on the inside" in Joss Whedon's Firefly, and has continued that career path on the surprisingly entertaining series Chuck. Sure, we've never seen him attempt a genuine Yancy Street accent, but he's a professional. Hell, he's worked with Stanley Kubrick. He has it in him.
ALICIA MASTERS = ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Alicia Masters is lovable, pure and simple. Naturally beautiful (that is, I don't think she spends too much time in front of a mirror), but she has to have a quality that makes everyone immediately recognize what a wonderful person she is. It is this quality, after all, that eventually saves the damned planet. Can't think of anyone better than Zooey Deschanel, the adorable star of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Tin Man. Though perhaps a bigger name than the role suggests, she's still not getting any major lead roles at the moment, so instead of distracting the audience with her smaller role, she should instead make audiences see her as a more intrinsic part of the core dynamic.
VICTOR VON DOOM = KARL URBAN
The trick with casting Victor Von Doom is that, as much as you'd want to cast Gary Oldman, Viggo Mortensen, or any of those other wonderful actors with a bigger-than-life presence, he still needs to be the same age as Reed Richards. They were, after all, in college together. So who, then, has a dark charisma, and preferably a career of being an also-ran despite an enormous amount of skill to help the actor stay in character? Karl Urban, so charismatic in The Two Towers, yet so incapable of finding a decent starring role (Doom, The Pathfinder), is perfect. And we already know that he's comfortable wearing a full suit of armor.
HARVEY RUPERT ELDER = RAY WINSTONE
A minor villain, but when the Fantastic Four reveal themselves to the public for the first time, they certainly can't A) defeat Doctor Doom, because the FF can never really defeat him anyway, and to do so in the first act would utterly diminish him as a franchise villain, or B) fight some chump, or faceless group of terrorists. The Mole Man's appearance, tied in directly with the Negative Zone portal built by Richards (we're using the Ultimate Origin, incidentally), as a wrangler of inter-dimensional monsters kicks the action off with a bang, and allows Ray Winstone to go nuts as the underlord of Manhattan.
ANNIHILUS = GARY OLDMAN
At the end of Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom can't be defeated or his presence over the sequels won't hold any weight. So instead, he has to be set back. The best way to do this is to use a villain that even Doom wants to defeat, forcing an uneasy alliance between our heroes and their greatest nemesis. After a perceived "first strike" by the Fantastic Four against the Negative Zone, Annihilus invades Earth in retaliation. And the only way to top a well-written Doctor Doom is to have the top villain in Hollywood, Gary Oldman, play his greatest threat.
What do you think, sirs?
According to Chris Evans, it looks like Fantastic Four 3 is out of the question now, and since Marvel has no qualms about restarting even the most recent of franchises I figure someone over there has to be thinking about doing FF correctly. I think we can all agree that whether you hated or tolerated Tim Story's two "Fantastic" films, neither of them were anywhere near as fantastic as they could have been.
The rules? No actors can return from the original films, even if they were good the first time around (sorry Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis). Also, no actors who have starred in prominent roles in other superhero movies (sorry Christian Bale and Tobey Maguire). And since this is an ensemble cast, no huge stars can be present, as they would either distract from the team dynamic or become too cost-prohibitive to cast en masse.
Let the dreamcasting begin!
REED RICHARDS = PAUL BETTANY
Paul Bettany has played a number of intellectuals already, is considered reasonably attractive though never quite the leading man, making him kind of perfect. And he's lanky enough to be called "Stretch" before his powers even kick in. Although older than Hollywood would perhaps like to make Mister Fantastic, the character was kind of an old stick-in-the-mud when he appeared, and was popular enough to sell more issues in a single month than most Hollywood movies can sell tickets these days. So there has to be something to the "old charm."
SUSAN STORM = CLAIRE DANES
Beautiful, intelligent and a plausible blonde, Claire Danes fits Susan Storm to a "t." She's also about 8 years younger than Paul Bettany, which once you reach your late twenties is just enough age difference to be a plot point, but not a creepy one. She's got her action movie chops (the under-rated Terminator 3), but most importantly she has a strong, confident on-screen presence that will help prevent her character from being the token, damsel-in-distress woman that basically happened to Jessica Alba in the first two movies.
JOHNNY STORM = BEN FOSTER
Slightly younger than Claire Danes, check. Same ethnicity so they actually look like they could be siblings? Check. Blonde? Check. Bad-ass rising star who should have been nominated for an Oscar for 3:10 to Yuma? Check. Foster's going to be one of the hottest commodities within the next few years if talent is any indication, so the time is now to snatch him up to play the flighty, flamboyant and flambe Johnny Storm. And yeah, he already played Angel in X-Men 3... for about two minutes. And pretty much every human being has strived to forget that movie anyway, so I think the slate's fairly clean.
BEN GRIMM = ADAM BALDWIN
Adam Baldwin redefined "rough on the outside, cuddly on the inside" in Joss Whedon's Firefly, and has continued that career path on the surprisingly entertaining series Chuck. Sure, we've never seen him attempt a genuine Yancy Street accent, but he's a professional. Hell, he's worked with Stanley Kubrick. He has it in him.
ALICIA MASTERS = ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Alicia Masters is lovable, pure and simple. Naturally beautiful (that is, I don't think she spends too much time in front of a mirror), but she has to have a quality that makes everyone immediately recognize what a wonderful person she is. It is this quality, after all, that eventually saves the damned planet. Can't think of anyone better than Zooey Deschanel, the adorable star of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Tin Man. Though perhaps a bigger name than the role suggests, she's still not getting any major lead roles at the moment, so instead of distracting the audience with her smaller role, she should instead make audiences see her as a more intrinsic part of the core dynamic.
VICTOR VON DOOM = KARL URBAN
The trick with casting Victor Von Doom is that, as much as you'd want to cast Gary Oldman, Viggo Mortensen, or any of those other wonderful actors with a bigger-than-life presence, he still needs to be the same age as Reed Richards. They were, after all, in college together. So who, then, has a dark charisma, and preferably a career of being an also-ran despite an enormous amount of skill to help the actor stay in character? Karl Urban, so charismatic in The Two Towers, yet so incapable of finding a decent starring role (Doom, The Pathfinder), is perfect. And we already know that he's comfortable wearing a full suit of armor.
HARVEY RUPERT ELDER = RAY WINSTONE
A minor villain, but when the Fantastic Four reveal themselves to the public for the first time, they certainly can't A) defeat Doctor Doom, because the FF can never really defeat him anyway, and to do so in the first act would utterly diminish him as a franchise villain, or B) fight some chump, or faceless group of terrorists. The Mole Man's appearance, tied in directly with the Negative Zone portal built by Richards (we're using the Ultimate Origin, incidentally), as a wrangler of inter-dimensional monsters kicks the action off with a bang, and allows Ray Winstone to go nuts as the underlord of Manhattan.
ANNIHILUS = GARY OLDMAN
At the end of Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom can't be defeated or his presence over the sequels won't hold any weight. So instead, he has to be set back. The best way to do this is to use a villain that even Doom wants to defeat, forcing an uneasy alliance between our heroes and their greatest nemesis. After a perceived "first strike" by the Fantastic Four against the Negative Zone, Annihilus invades Earth in retaliation. And the only way to top a well-written Doctor Doom is to have the top villain in Hollywood, Gary Oldman, play his greatest threat.
What do you think, sirs?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Meet Snake-Eyes in What is Apparently a Dark Alley
My response to the new stills of Snake-Eyes in Stephen Sommers' G.I. Joe?
Well, at least Snake-Eyes looks right. It's nice to see that filmmakers have realized that it's important to see costumed live-action characters in interesting lighting when introducing them to an existing fanbase. Remember those X-Men pics that everyone hated, with flat lighting, flat backgrounds, that made some eventually really sweet costumes look like utter crap?
Well, at least Snake-Eyes looks right. It's nice to see that filmmakers have realized that it's important to see costumed live-action characters in interesting lighting when introducing them to an existing fanbase. Remember those X-Men pics that everyone hated, with flat lighting, flat backgrounds, that made some eventually really sweet costumes look like utter crap?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Is THIS the face of Scott Pilgrim???
(Hmmmm...)Now, according the Hollywood Reporter, Juno's Michael Cera is in negotiations to star as the titular character.
(The greatest line of dialogue in comics history. Possibly the greatest page in comics history. Easily the greatest use of swearing in the history of the English language. For reals.)Not sure I see it. He's talented, sure, but can he pull off the awkward, yet all-encompassing charm? Can he play bass, but not very well? And can he kick massive amounts of ass?
Looks like we have a "wait and see" on our hands, folks. I'm not sold yet, but if Edgar Wright can see it, then I'll give him the benefit of the doubt...
For now.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Anthony Minghella, I Mourn Thee with Mixed Feelings
Tragedy struck this week when Anthony Minghella, the Academy Award-Winning director of The English Patient, died at the age of 54. Too soon... Too soon...
With any remembrance, the tendency is to focus on all of the positive things about the person in question. Of course, I didn't actually know Anthony Minghella in any particular way aside from his movies. But even that was a rocky affair, with highs and lows, and I feel that any serious discourse on his passing should take the bad with the good. And Anthony Minghella was a lot of both, to me.
A minor SPOILER ALERT for each film discussed below.
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (1990)
(The DVD cover for Truly, Madly, Deeply - surely one of the worst DVD covers of all time. Try and guess what the hell is happening to Juliet Stevenson up there. Is she laughing? Did she just see a rat in her kitchen? Did she just spot Justin Timberlake? Damned if I know...)
I first met Anthony Minghella when I found a VHS copy of Truly, Madly, Deeply at the 99 cent store in Pasadena. I had heard of the film previously via my copy of "The Entertainment Weekly Guide to the Greatest Movies Ever Made," an indispensable volume that, though immediately dated (like all "Best of" books truly are), has never steered me wrong in over ten years. So, seeing little harm in spending 99 of my mother's cents I convinced her to purchase me the British weepy in question. My mother didn't bat an eye at my choice, as she knew me very well.
Though at the time relatively unfamiliar with the concept of genuine loss, I was nevertheless struck by the film's quiet, peaceful examination of the subject. Anthony Minghella walked me through the stages of grieving along with his protagonist, played by an immensely likable and plausibly attractive actress named Juliet Stevenson. The man she loved has just passed away, you see, but she can't move on. To cope, she imagines that he still looks out for her in all the little ways that the truly, madly, deeply in love do. He reminds her to brush her teeth the right way, and walk safely in the streets at night.
It's a tender dementia, both understandable and forgivable, but one day she finds out that she wasn't really crazy after all. He's waiting for her at her apartment, the same as always, and they resume their relationship. It's not as if nothing has happened. He tells her a bit about the afterlife, though always remaining vague, and occasionally has his living-impaired friends over to watch videos. The problem is that he can't ever seem to leave the apartment, and no one else ever discovers that he's back.
There's an reasonable interpretation that the entire thing is in Nina's head, but being fanciful as a rule I prefer to think otherwise. Nina discovers by continuing her relationship that perhaps she was wearing rose-colored glasses since his passing. Their love, while genuine and sweet, was not perfect and perhaps was not meant to last in the first place. By living as if he were still alive, she manages to move on with her life and eventually meet someone new... someone who perhaps isn't better, but at least equally sweet and perfect for her new outlook on life.
Her lover is played by Alan Rickman, in one of the few roles where he doesn't play either a villain or someone who at least acts as such. As far as I'm concerned, it's the greatest role the actor ever had. He is at turns charming and carelessly flawed, and to see his character for even the briefest of periods is to understand Nina's affection. To know see him over longer periods, however, we begin to understand him as an individual - as needy and imperfect as even the finest among us.
The film is understated to the point of being almost plain, but the effect is one of the most believable worlds captured in cinema from the last 30 years. It is, by far, my favorite Anthony Minghella film.
MR. WONDERFUL (1993)
(Matt Dillon in a movie I actually hate far more than Mr. Wonderful. That's damning with faint praise, though...)
But then, Minghella followed it with this. Trite Hollywood romantic mish-mash of the highest (read: lowest) order. Matt Dillon can't get a loan on a business because his alimony payments are bleeding him dry, so he tries to get his ex-wife married, and stat. It's one of those concepts that sounds cute on paper, but even the most casual of examinations reveals it to be a hollow premise for a film, and ultimately a rather mean-spirited one that depends on a protagonist trying to control a former loved one's life in a comparatively disgusting way. I haven't seen this movie since it came out, and frankly it left such a bad taste in my mouth - not just because of the plot, but because of the overall blase demeanor of the filmmaking as a whole - that I have no desire to ever see it again. Strike 1.
THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)
(The only scene anyone actually remembers from The English Patient, and that's only because of the parody from the Academy Awards.)
And I'll never understand this film's popularity. Actually, "popularity" should be viewed as a relative term here, because despite a surprise Oscar sweep, it never made much money or found too significant an audience. But this film always manages to polarize those viewers who do make the effort to watch it. Some are enraptured by it, but everyone else hates its ever-loving guts.
I'm in the latter camp, incidentally. There's quality work to be found here in individual scenes and performances, but none of them - none of them - are in any way involved with the A-plot, in which an army nurse cares for a wounded man with no name and a mysterious past. Of course, we discover his past throughout the course of the film, only to discover at the end (MAJOR SPOILER) that he left his one true love to die in a cave. Sure, he tried to get back there, at the cost of betraying his own country, but yeah, that's what we're left with.
Ouch, right? That would be a truly tragic ending if we felt a sense of urgency as he struggled to get back to her, but we don't. It's pretty unemotional stuff at that point. In fact, despite a few overly choreographed love scenes we never really feel the connection between these two people at the heart of The English Patient, resulting in a fairly painful experience made occasionally tolerable by supporting players Naveen Andrews (TV's Lost) and Willem Dafoe, in roles so engaging that you quickly begin to wonder why the movie wasn't about these characters instead. Tying everything together is Juliette Binoche in compassionate performance as a character with ultimately quite little to actually do.
Back when I worked at the website The Tuesday Night Movie Club, we would force the loser of the annual Oscar pool to watch and then review The English Patient as punishment. I never lost that particular pool, but never heard the end of it from the poor bastards who did. This is a painful film, both saccharine and heartless, and after Mr. Wonderful and this I had just about written off Anthony Minghella as a director.
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999)
(Remember the good times...)
Luckily for me, Minghella followed his Academy Award-winning opus with The Talented Mr. Ripley, an adaptation of the first in Patricia Highsmith's remarkable series of Ripley tales. Highsmith's Ripley is an impenetrable man who uses everyone around him in cunning, cruel and outright sociopathic ways to achieve whatever his ends are at a given time. It's captivating to watch him work, and the suspense frequently derives from hoping he gets caught, instead of the other way around.
Minghella, however, took the source material and made a film about why Tom Ripley does what it is that he does. In one of Matt Damon's very best performances, Ripley constantly finds himself sacrificing what he truly desires in order to fulfill what he thinks he wants. He manipulates and consumes lives for the illusion of happiness - to have others see him as successful and desirable - but sacrifices relationships with the people he truly cares about in order to do so. Frequently through murder. The great tragedy comes not from this dilemma, but in a fatal flaw in his very character. Ripley is too damaged and incomplete a person for anyone to truly like him for who he really is, whatever that means in his case. So the murder and con games, and the fleeting moments of vague satisfaction that they bring, are as happy as he will ever get.
This emphasis on character takes what would in most hands be a quick, pot-boilerish film noir to a running time of 2 hours and 39 minutes, but the plot is crisp enough and the suspense unbearable enough that it doesn't feel like your time has been wasted. It's a remarkable film that had me thinking that Minghella as a director is completely bi-polar, and only capable of making films that I love dearly or utterly despise.
As a side note, 2002 brought us another adaptation of one of Highsmith's Ripley novels, with John Malkovich taking over as the lead. Ripley's Game takes a less empathetic look at the character, but Malkovich's performance provides all of the nuance needed to find a human being inside the monster. It's one of the best films ever made that never saw theatrical release, and I recommend it with absolute confidence that you'll thank me for it.
COLD MOUNTAIN (2003)
(I couldn't find any pictures of the albino acrobat sharpshooter, but let's try to take this movie seriously anyway, all right?)
Minghella's last film (that I saw, at any rate), proved me wrong on that count. Cold Mountain is an over-long, melodramatic mess of a movie, and like The English Patient, the various asides and subplots are on the whole far more interesting than the love story they are supposed to support. Jude Law loves Nicole Kidman. Jude Law goes to war. The war is hell, and the initial battle sequence is one of the best scenes Minghella ever shot, so Jude Law leaves to walk home.
The problem is that home is apparently over 50 billion miles away, leading to a frustrating number of montages showing Jude walking, and walking, and walking while some amorphous singer drones over and over again, "I'm going to FI-ind my true LO-ove." Look, we get it, okay? But along the way, he encounters a large number of characters who - with generally only one or two scenes each - are fascinating and dramatic enough that you forget that, once again, you really don't care about Minghella's protagonists. Phillip Seymoure Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Cillian Murphy and Jena Malone still come vividly to mind as I recall this film, and all in remarkably positive ways.
Less positive are Nicole Kidman and Butterfly McQueen's story, which we cut back to at regular intervals. At least, I think that was Butterfly McQueen. When she's in whiteface she sure looks a lot like Renee Zellweger, doesn't she? Zellweger's performance in a role clearly designed for a racial stereotype inexplicably won an Oscar that year. And for the record, I like Renee Zellweger, but man, Minghella was trapped in another period of storytelling at unusual interviews throughout this film. All of the female driven melodrama, complete with a far-too-broad for any modern movie villain, all feel like they were ripped directly from a D.W. Griffith film. And the villain's trusty albino crackshot acrobat sidekick? Where exactly does that come from?
My on-again, off-again relationship with Anthony Minghella probably stops here, with a mixed-bag of a film that alternates between the director's finest work and his worst, and while it certainly is a tragedy that he died far, far too young, it almost seems like an appropriate capper. Minghella gave me characters and films that both enlightened and infuriated me, frequently within moments of each other. While I prefer to remember the good times, in order to move on I need to also come to terms with the bad. Anthony Minghella taught me that, and I'm thankful for it.
With any remembrance, the tendency is to focus on all of the positive things about the person in question. Of course, I didn't actually know Anthony Minghella in any particular way aside from his movies. But even that was a rocky affair, with highs and lows, and I feel that any serious discourse on his passing should take the bad with the good. And Anthony Minghella was a lot of both, to me.
A minor SPOILER ALERT for each film discussed below.
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (1990)
(The DVD cover for Truly, Madly, Deeply - surely one of the worst DVD covers of all time. Try and guess what the hell is happening to Juliet Stevenson up there. Is she laughing? Did she just see a rat in her kitchen? Did she just spot Justin Timberlake? Damned if I know...)I first met Anthony Minghella when I found a VHS copy of Truly, Madly, Deeply at the 99 cent store in Pasadena. I had heard of the film previously via my copy of "The Entertainment Weekly Guide to the Greatest Movies Ever Made," an indispensable volume that, though immediately dated (like all "Best of" books truly are), has never steered me wrong in over ten years. So, seeing little harm in spending 99 of my mother's cents I convinced her to purchase me the British weepy in question. My mother didn't bat an eye at my choice, as she knew me very well.
Though at the time relatively unfamiliar with the concept of genuine loss, I was nevertheless struck by the film's quiet, peaceful examination of the subject. Anthony Minghella walked me through the stages of grieving along with his protagonist, played by an immensely likable and plausibly attractive actress named Juliet Stevenson. The man she loved has just passed away, you see, but she can't move on. To cope, she imagines that he still looks out for her in all the little ways that the truly, madly, deeply in love do. He reminds her to brush her teeth the right way, and walk safely in the streets at night.
It's a tender dementia, both understandable and forgivable, but one day she finds out that she wasn't really crazy after all. He's waiting for her at her apartment, the same as always, and they resume their relationship. It's not as if nothing has happened. He tells her a bit about the afterlife, though always remaining vague, and occasionally has his living-impaired friends over to watch videos. The problem is that he can't ever seem to leave the apartment, and no one else ever discovers that he's back.
There's an reasonable interpretation that the entire thing is in Nina's head, but being fanciful as a rule I prefer to think otherwise. Nina discovers by continuing her relationship that perhaps she was wearing rose-colored glasses since his passing. Their love, while genuine and sweet, was not perfect and perhaps was not meant to last in the first place. By living as if he were still alive, she manages to move on with her life and eventually meet someone new... someone who perhaps isn't better, but at least equally sweet and perfect for her new outlook on life.
Her lover is played by Alan Rickman, in one of the few roles where he doesn't play either a villain or someone who at least acts as such. As far as I'm concerned, it's the greatest role the actor ever had. He is at turns charming and carelessly flawed, and to see his character for even the briefest of periods is to understand Nina's affection. To know see him over longer periods, however, we begin to understand him as an individual - as needy and imperfect as even the finest among us.
The film is understated to the point of being almost plain, but the effect is one of the most believable worlds captured in cinema from the last 30 years. It is, by far, my favorite Anthony Minghella film.
MR. WONDERFUL (1993)
(Matt Dillon in a movie I actually hate far more than Mr. Wonderful. That's damning with faint praise, though...)But then, Minghella followed it with this. Trite Hollywood romantic mish-mash of the highest (read: lowest) order. Matt Dillon can't get a loan on a business because his alimony payments are bleeding him dry, so he tries to get his ex-wife married, and stat. It's one of those concepts that sounds cute on paper, but even the most casual of examinations reveals it to be a hollow premise for a film, and ultimately a rather mean-spirited one that depends on a protagonist trying to control a former loved one's life in a comparatively disgusting way. I haven't seen this movie since it came out, and frankly it left such a bad taste in my mouth - not just because of the plot, but because of the overall blase demeanor of the filmmaking as a whole - that I have no desire to ever see it again. Strike 1.
THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)
(The only scene anyone actually remembers from The English Patient, and that's only because of the parody from the Academy Awards.)And I'll never understand this film's popularity. Actually, "popularity" should be viewed as a relative term here, because despite a surprise Oscar sweep, it never made much money or found too significant an audience. But this film always manages to polarize those viewers who do make the effort to watch it. Some are enraptured by it, but everyone else hates its ever-loving guts.
I'm in the latter camp, incidentally. There's quality work to be found here in individual scenes and performances, but none of them - none of them - are in any way involved with the A-plot, in which an army nurse cares for a wounded man with no name and a mysterious past. Of course, we discover his past throughout the course of the film, only to discover at the end (MAJOR SPOILER) that he left his one true love to die in a cave. Sure, he tried to get back there, at the cost of betraying his own country, but yeah, that's what we're left with.
Ouch, right? That would be a truly tragic ending if we felt a sense of urgency as he struggled to get back to her, but we don't. It's pretty unemotional stuff at that point. In fact, despite a few overly choreographed love scenes we never really feel the connection between these two people at the heart of The English Patient, resulting in a fairly painful experience made occasionally tolerable by supporting players Naveen Andrews (TV's Lost) and Willem Dafoe, in roles so engaging that you quickly begin to wonder why the movie wasn't about these characters instead. Tying everything together is Juliette Binoche in compassionate performance as a character with ultimately quite little to actually do.
Back when I worked at the website The Tuesday Night Movie Club, we would force the loser of the annual Oscar pool to watch and then review The English Patient as punishment. I never lost that particular pool, but never heard the end of it from the poor bastards who did. This is a painful film, both saccharine and heartless, and after Mr. Wonderful and this I had just about written off Anthony Minghella as a director.
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999)
(Remember the good times...)Luckily for me, Minghella followed his Academy Award-winning opus with The Talented Mr. Ripley, an adaptation of the first in Patricia Highsmith's remarkable series of Ripley tales. Highsmith's Ripley is an impenetrable man who uses everyone around him in cunning, cruel and outright sociopathic ways to achieve whatever his ends are at a given time. It's captivating to watch him work, and the suspense frequently derives from hoping he gets caught, instead of the other way around.
Minghella, however, took the source material and made a film about why Tom Ripley does what it is that he does. In one of Matt Damon's very best performances, Ripley constantly finds himself sacrificing what he truly desires in order to fulfill what he thinks he wants. He manipulates and consumes lives for the illusion of happiness - to have others see him as successful and desirable - but sacrifices relationships with the people he truly cares about in order to do so. Frequently through murder. The great tragedy comes not from this dilemma, but in a fatal flaw in his very character. Ripley is too damaged and incomplete a person for anyone to truly like him for who he really is, whatever that means in his case. So the murder and con games, and the fleeting moments of vague satisfaction that they bring, are as happy as he will ever get.
This emphasis on character takes what would in most hands be a quick, pot-boilerish film noir to a running time of 2 hours and 39 minutes, but the plot is crisp enough and the suspense unbearable enough that it doesn't feel like your time has been wasted. It's a remarkable film that had me thinking that Minghella as a director is completely bi-polar, and only capable of making films that I love dearly or utterly despise.
As a side note, 2002 brought us another adaptation of one of Highsmith's Ripley novels, with John Malkovich taking over as the lead. Ripley's Game takes a less empathetic look at the character, but Malkovich's performance provides all of the nuance needed to find a human being inside the monster. It's one of the best films ever made that never saw theatrical release, and I recommend it with absolute confidence that you'll thank me for it.
COLD MOUNTAIN (2003)
(I couldn't find any pictures of the albino acrobat sharpshooter, but let's try to take this movie seriously anyway, all right?)Minghella's last film (that I saw, at any rate), proved me wrong on that count. Cold Mountain is an over-long, melodramatic mess of a movie, and like The English Patient, the various asides and subplots are on the whole far more interesting than the love story they are supposed to support. Jude Law loves Nicole Kidman. Jude Law goes to war. The war is hell, and the initial battle sequence is one of the best scenes Minghella ever shot, so Jude Law leaves to walk home.
The problem is that home is apparently over 50 billion miles away, leading to a frustrating number of montages showing Jude walking, and walking, and walking while some amorphous singer drones over and over again, "I'm going to FI-ind my true LO-ove." Look, we get it, okay? But along the way, he encounters a large number of characters who - with generally only one or two scenes each - are fascinating and dramatic enough that you forget that, once again, you really don't care about Minghella's protagonists. Phillip Seymoure Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Cillian Murphy and Jena Malone still come vividly to mind as I recall this film, and all in remarkably positive ways.
Less positive are Nicole Kidman and Butterfly McQueen's story, which we cut back to at regular intervals. At least, I think that was Butterfly McQueen. When she's in whiteface she sure looks a lot like Renee Zellweger, doesn't she? Zellweger's performance in a role clearly designed for a racial stereotype inexplicably won an Oscar that year. And for the record, I like Renee Zellweger, but man, Minghella was trapped in another period of storytelling at unusual interviews throughout this film. All of the female driven melodrama, complete with a far-too-broad for any modern movie villain, all feel like they were ripped directly from a D.W. Griffith film. And the villain's trusty albino crackshot acrobat sidekick? Where exactly does that come from?
My on-again, off-again relationship with Anthony Minghella probably stops here, with a mixed-bag of a film that alternates between the director's finest work and his worst, and while it certainly is a tragedy that he died far, far too young, it almost seems like an appropriate capper. Minghella gave me characters and films that both enlightened and infuriated me, frequently within moments of each other. While I prefer to remember the good times, in order to move on I need to also come to terms with the bad. Anthony Minghella taught me that, and I'm thankful for it.
WALLACE AND GROMIT: A Matter of Loaf and Death
Everyone with a heart in their chests has a soft spot for Wallace and Gromit. The animated duo have starred in a trio of classic shorts, and one classic feature film, bringing Aardman Animation's touching, understated and human sense of whimsy to appreciative audiences around the world. After the tragic fire that recently decimated Aardman's studio, along with most of their Wallace and Gromit models, I was worried that it might be some time before we saw more W&G, but...
Empire announced the following:
"Wallace and Gromit have a brand new bakery business, ‘Top Bun’. Their whole house has been converted into a granary with a ‘Wallace patent-pending’ old-fashioned windmill on the roof. Although business is booming, Gromit finds himself having to run the whole operation single-handedly as Wallace is ‘dough-eyed’ in love with the beautiful Piella Bakewell, former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials.
But Gromit is not so enamored of Piella - her ‘woman’s touch’ at 62 West Wallaby Street puts the dog’s nose out of joint. What’s more, a dozen local bakers have disappeared in recent months and Gromit is worried that Wallace may be next. Gromit turns sleuth and the duo soon find themselves drawn into a sinister murder mystery - it’s ‘A Matter Of Loaf And Death’."
Okay, that's cute, but isn't that the same plot as A Close Shave? Wallace and Gromit have a new business, but Wallace gets distracted by a new, pretty clearly doomed lady love who is involved in committing crimes? Anyone? Anyone? The Holly-Smoot Tariff Act which, anyone? Anyone? Raised or lowered...?"Wallace and Gromit have a brand new bakery business, ‘Top Bun’. Their whole house has been converted into a granary with a ‘Wallace patent-pending’ old-fashioned windmill on the roof. Although business is booming, Gromit finds himself having to run the whole operation single-handedly as Wallace is ‘dough-eyed’ in love with the beautiful Piella Bakewell, former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials.
But Gromit is not so enamored of Piella - her ‘woman’s touch’ at 62 West Wallaby Street puts the dog’s nose out of joint. What’s more, a dozen local bakers have disappeared in recent months and Gromit is worried that Wallace may be next. Gromit turns sleuth and the duo soon find themselves drawn into a sinister murder mystery - it’s ‘A Matter Of Loaf And Death’."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends thoughts
So writing about Spectacular Spider-Man got me thinking about this classic series from the 1980s. In watching the old intro on Youtube, two things came to mind that always bugged me.
1. Peter's apartment weirds me out. Pulling on a football trophy causes supercomputers underneath Pete's couch to appear? How does Aunt May not notice this? Has she never dusted that trophy? And how long until she realizes that he nerdy nephew never played a game of football in his life? And how do the people living beneath them feel about having a super-computer on their ceiling every day, except on those rare instances when there's a couch instead?
2. Yellow is not Dr. Doom's color.
I'm famous (again and again)
To those who don't know:
I was recently interviewed for both Viral on Veoh and Jonathan London's Geekscape podcasts about Bus Pirates. On Geekscape, I also got to go all Tarantino-like and review some movies, comics and videogames. Here are the links, hope you enjoy them, blah blah...
VIRAL ON VEOH:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6234985a7Fk56je?searchId=2381827141820972017&rank=6
GEEKSCAPE:
I was recently interviewed for both Viral on Veoh and Jonathan London's Geekscape podcasts about Bus Pirates. On Geekscape, I also got to go all Tarantino-like and review some movies, comics and videogames. Here are the links, hope you enjoy them, blah blah...
VIRAL ON VEOH:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6234985a7Fk56je?searchId=2381827141820972017&rank=6
GEEKSCAPE:
http://www.pod.geekscape.net/Geekscape065.m4v - Right click and Download and watch it in Video!!
http://www.pod.geekscape.net/Geekscape065.mp3 - Right click and Download the magic in Audio!!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=211000351 - Click for iTunes video and all the action!!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=212023196 - Click for some iTunes audio, baby!!
Da Fug? Spectacular Spider-Man is good?!
Well, I didn't see this one coming...
If you haven't checked out Spectacular Spider-Man on "Kids WB" (and I really hate writing that), then you should. It looks like Marvel finally has a decent animated series to their credit.
And before you argue, shut up. Have you actually tried watching X-Men: The Animated Series or the 1990's Fox Spider-Man series lately? I too have rose-colored glasses hiding in a drawer somewhere that I used to put on when talking about these shows, then I actually tried watching a few episodes. The writing was "eh" at best - good for Saturday morning, pale in comparison to the Bruce Timm-iverse. And the character models were so heavily detailed that the actual animation quality suffered as a result. Way too hard to make those characters move when each one always has to look "just so."
Spectacular, on the other hand, is shaping up quite nicely after a slightly rocky start. The art style is slightly mangafied. In fact, I'd venture far enough to say that the creators are probably big "Scott Pilgrim" fans judging from the character models. The result is a fluid, youthful feel that's very inviting once you get used to it.
From a story perspective, they're actually creating a very cohesive universe between episodes. Character arcs continue as the show progresses, and they're dovetailing a lot of characters' origins into plausible narratives that are faithful to the comics without being beholden to them. Granted, a few of the costumes leave a little to be desired. Electro in particular is something of a disappointment, but each villain also has a fair amount of pathos to them, keeping the show from being a "villain of the week" series and instead creating done-in-one plots with people you actually care about.
That said, it's a little annoying that villains keep "naming themselves" after something someone called them off-handedly only once. I wouldn't have noticed if it didn't happen twice in only three episodes.
Still, a list of things I appreciate:
1. Surprisingly infectious new Spider-Man theme song. Weird the first time you hear it, but it genuinely grows on you.
2. Gwen Stacy is one of the main characters. Apparently Mary Jane is showing up later, but the show's creators decided to use Gwen even though she hasn't been a series regular in any major Spidey series in years/decades.
3. The series really shows Spider-Man screwing up Peter Parker's life. The old series had Peter being late for dates and such, but in this one there are consequences. Peter has a curfew as a result of Spider-Man related activities, and so frequently has to call Aunt May in the middle of fighting for his life. Peter keeps trying to get pictures of Spider-Man to sell to the Bugle, but they always suck for one reason or another (blurry, or a window reflects the flash making it unusable, etc.) And the one time he does get a good picture, his byline proves that he was out taking pictures when he should have been helping as Peter Parker, making him lose his job. This is good stuff, people.
4. Armpit webs. Haven't seen 'em in action before, to the best of my knowledge. My roommate didn't even know Spider-Man suppose to have those.
And some flaws:
1. The naming thing is a little lame, as discussed above.
2. Every episode ends with an establishing shot, in which a spider web is super-imposed over the sky. Retro, but distractingly so.
3. Making all of the origins cohesive leads to some distracting coincidences. Two monsters in two weeks, both stemming from Doctor Connors' lab? Might be time to pack up shop, Doc. That place is cursed.
Still, even these problems are all a result of over-thinking rather than under-thinking. It is weird that people would name themselves something villainous, so they try to explain it away. And it's almost more of a coincidence if all of these failed scientific experiments are completely UNconnected, so I'll let that slide too. And at least the spider-horizon is a cute idea in theory.
Once again, however, I have to say that this is officially a TV show worth watching for Spider-fans and casual viewers alike, and I went in thoroughly expecting to hate its ever-loving guts too.
Go Spidey, Go!
Thursday, March 6, 2008
WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES... PLEASE STAND BY!
Stay tuned for more comics reviews and unrequested opinions very soon!
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