One of my favorite cinematic "moments" of Left 4 Dead 2 occurs when some dumbass on your team decides that they're going to go scout ahead by themselves and clear the path for everyone else. They might have other reasons, but they're largely irrelevant. Because we all know what happens to the lone hero in zombie movies.
fucked
Left 4 Dead really punishes loners because if a special infected gets a hold of you, you cannot escape or fight your way out of the situation by yourself. You need a teammate to come and rescue your ass before that Hunter tears all your guts out.
On the one hand, it can be pretty gratifying to watch dumbfuck "PsychoKilla69" get eaten alive because he simply refused to listen to everyone else saying, "stick with the group", "don't wander off by yourself", "cover me", etc. Similarly, there's a sick satisfaction from watching the airheaded cheerleader bite the dust in any zombie flick. Zombies provide a uniquely rapid form of natural selection. You've got to follow some basic rules or you don't deserve to make it to that mystical "safe-house". Who wants your dumbass genes polluting the oh-so-delicate future of the human race?
On the other hand, sadly, you sort of need Dipshit. In L4D2, 3 good players can take on a zombie horde but there's significantly less room for error. Inevitably, you'll find yourself running into dangerous situations to rescue said dumbass, and five minutes later, you're wallowing in a pool of your own bile, blood, and internal organs. Where should we draw the line on self-sacrifice for our fellow human beings versus letting the Horde punish the Retarded?
Normally, I think we'd all be comfortable saying, "Fuck 'em". But there's nothing "normal" about a Zombie Apocalypse. In particular, the value of an individual non-infected human being is dramatically increased. Therefore, when calculating whether you should put your own vulnerable ass in danger to save the life of an idiot, your brain needs to take into account the rarity of humanity. This heavily skews our trusty cost-benefit analysis.
Another example of this is Battlestar Galactica. After the Cylon attack on the colonies, less than 50,000 humans survive, instantly making us an endangered species. The value of an individual human life skyrockets, which means that you have to learn to put up with idiots, pricks, and sadists. I mean, in any sane galaxy (with billions/trillions of humans), no one in their right mind would let Saul Tigh near a car much less XO a battlestar. But beggars can't be choosers.
So go ahead and jump in that sewer to save yon big-breasted bimbo. After all, you need her for breeding.
Aili and I watched an interesting foreign sci-fi flick the other night: Sleep Dealer. Certainly worth renting, especially if you have an interest in Mexican-US sociopolitics. The best science fiction is speculative but realistic and tends to confront people's anxieties about the near future. It can also approach difficult philosophical problems with a unique eye, given the enormous latitude it has in narrative. Philip K. Dick, for instance, was particularly good at tackling tough issues, like the nature of human consciousness and "soul" (see "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and Blade Runner).
Sleep Dealer is very much an expression of Mexican anxiety about the current and future state of migrants. It takes place in a near future where the wall between Mexico and the US is fully established, rivers have been dammed and water reserves controlled by militaristic corporations, and migrant workers no longer actually physically enter into our country. Instead, the desperately poor have "nodes" surgically inserted into the bodies, serving as an interface between computers/virtual reality and the human nervous system. These people often end up working in factories where workers "plug into" jobs located across the border, and find themselves remotely controlling machinery.
For example, the protagonist, Memo, finds himself "inhabiting" a small robot that is helping build a giant skyscraper in Los Angeles. Workers endure long shifts, often falling asleep while still interfaced, and periodically suffer dangerous surges of electrical feedback that can leave them blind or dead. So even though the "migrant" is no longer required to travel into the US to work, their condition in life has not improved. Memo lives at the edge of Tijuana, in a desolate shanty-town inhabited by old, blind men, former victims of the sleep factories.
Memo's story is an interesting one - full of more depth and emotion than you'd expect from a science fiction film with TV-quality CGI. And both Aili and I found it refreshing that while the movie is infused with anxiety and threat, there is no explicit "villain." There is a Mexican-American military pilot, Rudy, whose narrative purpose is left vague for much of the movie, who but plays a central role in the metaphorically uplifting ending.
Have been watching a few of these every morning...
Lynch recently traveled X-country (twice) in a van with a small film crew to conduct interviews with random Americans in random towns. The interviews are nicely edited, often with music and backdrops of the local scenery. They are all quite short, less than 5 min each, which really isn't enough time for someone to tell their whole life story - but you do get a sense of what these people are like. Lynch asks them questions on their life-goals and regrets, how they'd like to be remembered when they're dead, what they're most proud of, etc. Many are fascinating. Here's the first:
"I ain't proud of anything except just bein' alive."
Spent a good hour or so this morning thoroughly enjoying TV Tropes. A web-wiki written in a (dare I say) refreshingly casual style, on all manner of narrative conventions that tend to define our modern age entertainment products. While at first glance, you might think that a perusal of TV Tropes will only fill you with a deeper sense of cynicism and repugnance at the industry status quo - further reading may allow you to appreciate the archetypal aspects of tropes, and how they serve as brutally efficient but necessary mirrors of our own absurd nature.
Hot Librarian is a fun place to start, and be aware that the joy is in the examples, especially esoteric ones from the late '80's that few (but you) remember. "Theora in Max Headroom." Ha! I remember.
"Incidentally, the character that caused a few things to gel in this troper's head and inspire me to put this trope in the wiki in the first place was "Dr." Cataline Stone in the film Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, a film of such constant, royal stupidity that "the day would quake to look on."
I do not know this "Megalodon"... yet.
Just going through the list of Plot tropes may dizzy you.
Anticlimactic Parent
Badass in Distress
Captured Super Entity
Doorstop Baby
Faustian Rebellion
Inadequate Inheritor
Macho Disaster Expedition
And so on. I suspect we all could place at least one TV episode/film into every one of these categories with just a little thought.
"In a competition of science and technology versus simple hard work, science and technology will almost invariably lose. See, science finds an easier, faster way to achieve something and is therefore cheating and far less honorable than honest sweat and effort. Thus, no matter how much a scientist researches, experiments and innovates, he will never achieve what someone else can with good old practice and hard work.
This trope works because 1) hardly anyone in the audience knows much about science, and 2) people are always eager to believe that anything they don't understand couldn't possibly be important....
...Very much related to Dumb Is Good and Rock Beats Laser. Might somehow be related to Reed Richards Is Useless. See also the physical equivalents Technician Versus Performer (where The Gift overcomes intense training) and Good Old Fisticuffs (where simple fists beats flashy kicks).
Further, there are two different flavors of this trope. If the point is to stress the importance of hard work, then the technological/scientific opponent is presented as an intimidating Goliath that the plucky underdog must struggle to overcome... But if the point is, instead, to deride technology or science as unworthy of human effort and manly men, the opponent is presented as a total joke and the hard worker wins easily. A Straw Man propaganda story. Also, what this trope consistently forgets is that science is hard work, requiring considerable intelligence, as well as lengthy and difficult procedures to create anything useful. Yet rarely or never the hard work of the science-user is shown or screen in relation to the plain old guts."
A story on NPR the other day irked me with its suggestion (apparently endorsed by the current CEO of Hasbro) that the early Transformers and GI Joe cartoons were simply toy commercials, and apparently lame ones at that. Given the profound influence these cartoons had on my cultural development as a child, I took some offense. The contemporary Transformersschlock-films by Bay et al. are more product and advertising than the original 'toons ever dreamed of being. And it truly pains me to have my beloved Autobots & Decepticons treated so poorly by our modern special-effect princes and big-screen storytellers.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. Watch the animated epic, The Transformers: the Movie (1986) and be cured of your Hollywood-induced cynicism. I saw this movie in the theaters with my brother when I was an aging 12-year old and I still consider it my most fond farewell to these legendary icons. The plot is satisfyingly absurd, some of the characters actually die (which never happened in the episodic cartoons), and the majority of the film takes place off Earth, providing a novel backdrop for the storyline.
Broadly speaking, the film was meant to bridge the gap between the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the cartoon - and yes, to introduce some new characters (i.e. "toys") for us to latch onto. The new generation of toys were more futuristic in design, and from my standpoint, less appealing. So, Optimus Prime was replaced by Rodimus Prime (voiced by Judd Nelson) as Autobot commander; Megatron was replaced by Galvatron (voiced spectacularly by Leonard Nimoy).
(Galvatron)
It is worth pointing out how "cool" the original Megatron toy was to boys of my age-group. Here's a photo:
Pretty hardcore, really. I'm not sure how many parents nowadays would be comfortable with how "realistic" looking this thing is - but that, of course, was the whole point of the Transformers. Megatron was relatively unique in that the object he was imitating was small enough that the toy itself was a replica. You don't run into that problem with Optimus Prime - he's just a rad toy truck. Now that I think about it, this may ultimately explain why they made the move from Megatron to Galvatron, even though the latter's "laser-gun" form was much less interesting to me. Cops mistakenly killing kids touting toy guns is always bad press.
So probably the strongest selling point of the movie for me was the heralded death of Optimus. I always fucking hated that guy. Just a big boyscout, teaching his "lessons" about world peace and being generous and listening to your parents and shit. Watching him eat it in the spectacular battle-scene between him and Megatron confirmed my belief (always confounded by the episodic cartoons) that Megatron was simply tougher and better. A gun beats a truck. It seemed simple to me.
And if that wasn't enough, both Ironhide and Starscream - two of the most obnoxious characters in the series - bite it as well. Ironhide with his disingenuous southern drawl and frank idiocy, Starscream with his weaseling and whining and constant backstabbing. Good riddance.
The larger threat at play in the movie is Unicron: a robotic planet that wanders the galaxy consuming worlds (voiced by Orson Welles, in the last role before his death). So, yeah, he's got a Galactus thing going on and that makes him one bad-ass ripoff.
As a final selling point, we should consider the bizarre Quintessons, the divine watchmakers, the gods of this universe. Imagine that your most profound existential quest leads to the discovery that your creators are psychopathic, multiple-personality disorder freaks with 5 faces who spend their time feeding robot slaves to mechanical sharks. Yeah.
Really, the dweebs who write wikipedia can do a much better job explaining this stuff that I can:
"Twelve million years ago, the alien race known as the Quintessons used the planet of Cybertron as a factory to produce cybernetic lifeforms. Their early experiments in fusing organic and technological components into one being resulted in the creation of the "Trans-Organics," which proved too primitive and unstable, particularly a living energy siphon named "The Dweller", and they were all sealed away in the lowest levels of Cybertron.
Subsequently, the Quintessons turned to pure robotics for their creations, and produced lines of consumer goods and military hardware robots—which would eventually become the lineal ancestors of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively.[1] Forging their bodies in the Plasma Energy Chamber,[2] the Quintessons programmed their robots with intelligence using Vector Sigma, to allow them to carry out their tasks on their own, thereby leaving the Quintessons to do nothing other than live in leisure. However, what they failed to realize was that their robots had developed true sentience and real feelings — after a million years of slavery, they could now feel and know the difference between it and freedom, and they struck back against their masters. The Quintessons fought back against the rebellion with their Dark Guardian robots, unconcerned and thinking themselves untouchable, but when the Coda-Remote, a device created by the rebel leader, A-3, was used to shut down the Guardians, the robots got the upper hand, eventually forcing the Quintessons to flee Cybertron.[3] They scattered through the galaxy until they became largely forgotten by the Transformers."
With a creation mythology like this, how can someone suggest that the Transformers cartoon was merely a commercial vehicle? Clearly, there is love and depth of process here that belies an actual narrative. Compare, for a moment, to Pokemon, the "media franchise" in which the cartoons, I would argue, primarily served as a means of driving product sales and secondarily served as entertainment.
The Transformers Movie has so much going for it, I can even overlook the lameness of our one human protagonist, Daniel (son of Spike, who's homoerotic relationship with Bumblebee in the cartoon series still gives me the willies). In general, the lack of human involvement in the plot is a refreshing release from the hominid-centrism that is characteristic of so much sci-fi fantasy. It also suggests that the Transformers of old had enough character that they didn't need Megan Fox to bring in an audience.
Finally: you must watch this YouTube parody featuring my favorite Transformers character, Soundwave. It summarily encapsulates all that I feel about this whole modern-day Transformers debacle...
"Beth: eject. Operation: shut the fuck up." Fucking brilliant.
The reference to "The Touch" is from The Movie's original anachronistic, butt-rock soundtrack which, I should mention, also contained Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid":
1. "The Touch" (Performed by Stan Bush) 2. "Instruments of Destruction" (Performed by N.R.G.) 3. "The Death of Optimus Prime" (Performed by Vince DiCola) 4. "Dare" (Performed by Stan Bush) 5. "Nothin’s Gonna Stand in Our Way" (Performed by Spectre General) 6. "The Transformers (Theme)" (Performed by Lion) 7. "Escape" (Performed by Vince DiCola) 8. "Hunger" (Performed By Spectre General) 9. "Autobot/Decepticon Battle" (Performed by Vince DiCola) 10. "Dare To Be Stupid" (Performed by "Weird Al" Yankovic)
Aili and I watched the documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?(2006) last night and were intrigued enough to seek follow-up information. Briefly: 73-year old eccentric & former long-haul trucker Teri Horton buys a painting for $5 at a local thrift store. It is, ostensibly, ugly and she buys it primarily as a joke to cheer a friend up. Later, when trying to re-sell it in a garage sale, an art teacher informs her that it might well be a Jackson Pollock. She embarks on a mission to authenticate and sell the piece for what she believes is its true worth (something around 50 million dollars). Given that there is no signature on the painting and no provenance, the art-world is decidedly unimpressed. Here is the piece:
For general comparison sake, here is a genuine Pollack:
Side note: in my younger years, I used to find Pollocks as ugly as Teri Horton does, and as pretentious as Mondrian. I think that I now actually like these things. At least for museum walls - nothing I'd want hanging over my bed.
I won't relate the entirety of the docu-drama but will say that the saga continues to this day. Horton has apparently turned down offers of 2 and 9 million dollars, feeling insulted by them. Last winter, her piece was, for the first time, exhibited at a Toronto gallery which accepted its unusual authenticity:
They also placed it on sale for $50 million. Thomas Hoving, a self-declared "effete, nose-in-the-air art expert" (who makes an unforgettable appearance in the documentary) has argued repeatedly that the painting is not genuine for the following reasons:
"* It is too neat and too sweet, using soigné colors that Pollock never used. * Some lines are perfectly straight. It’s hard to drip straight lines. * The canvas is commercially sized, which means that paint does not come through the back of the canvas. All real Pollocks are unsized and his paint patterns can easily be seen from the back. * The thing is painted with acrylics. Pollock never used acrylics."
You can read more of his response to the painting being exhibited here. Overall, I have to admit to being less than convinced myself, mostly due to the clear scientific bias that has gone into "proving" the piece is a Pollock. The individuals involved, in particular the forensic expert Paul Biro, seem determined to find evidence that establishes the authenticity of the painting. It certainly seems possible that the painting is a masterly "look-alike," perhaps even generated by this man, Francis Brown:
Ultimately, of course, the painting is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And in this case, if you're a fan of wealth-redistribution, you can certainly root for Ms. Horton.
If you're a fan of science-fiction, at some point you have to confront your own personal feelings about the use of time travel in narrative. My father, for instance, absolutely detests time travel. It nearly always creates a series of paradoxes which, for him, destroy the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy the story. And certainly, there are numerous examples of movies and books that prominently feature time travel as a plot device to their own detriment. I'd have to put the whole Terminator series in this category. Given how easy it has become in the future to create and send back homicidal robots, I just don't see how/why anything in these movies actually matters.
Then there are stories that feature time travel but the plot is kept constrained so that we don't care about potential paradoxes. In particular, these stories avoid discussion of the so-called Butterfly Effect (as it applies to time travel) wherein a minor alteration to past events can lead to an entirely new future. This idea was first penned in a sci-fi context by Ray Bradbury, in his short story "A Sound of Thunder" (parodied amusingly in the Simpsons episode, Treehouse of Horror V).
For example, consider Planet of the Apes, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and 12 Monkeys. Time travel exists but we need'nt worry about our protagonists fucking things up.
Then there are movies that focus quite specifically on this paradox, but do it with so much style and thought, we are moved to forgive them. The excellent and perplexing Donnie Darko is a good example of this.
We might very well place the indie movie, Primer (2004), in this category as well. I watched it a fortnight ago, with my DVD remote close at hand, and indulged in its time looping depravity. Briefly, the film takes a very modern, engineering approach to time travel. What if two young technical entrepreneurs successfully created a time travel device? One that could only take you back in time, mind you, but worked nevertheless. And what if they not only used this time machine to make money (in the predictable stock market way) but also to affect their personal lives and relationships?
I'm not sure how much more I want to tell you about it, except that it's probably worth seeing. Many, I'm sure, detested it. My god, this movie is probably the worst possible thing I could have my father watch. But I appreciated how seriously the writers took the topic of time travel - the paradoxes form the basis of the entire narrative structure.
The only way to resolve time travel paradoxes (and it's not entirely satisfying, of course) is to create alternative time-lines (universes) every time someone activates a machine. This is necessary because the mere presence of an individual in the past creates a different future. Furthermore, it prevents infinite loops that would halt all of reality (travel back to the past, live, eventually travel back to the past, live, etc. - the so-called, predestination paradox).
Here's a simple schematic of the time travel in Primer, which could very well apply to every story featuring temporal movement.
But that doesn't cover the details at all. Just for kicks, take a look at this:
It's the complete breakdown, created by some committed fan of the work. After watching the movie, you might want to at least glance at it to see if some of your suspicions are confirmed. Regardless, my tiny human brain could not process all of these possibilities at once - and so, ultimately, Primer must be judged on whether it is a satisfying artistic experience. I'm not sure if it is. It really is all about the time travel - there's nothing else that matters - and if that frustrates the hell out of you, the film-makers say, "too bad, you probably shouldn't have rented this."
If you want something quite different and ultimately more satisfying, I might suggest another book by my favorite author, Gene Wolfe. Pirate Freedom looks cheesy as hell, but like everything Wolfe, it's deeper and more challenging than you initially expect. Overtly, it's a tale of a boy who somehow (never explained fully) travels back in time to the golden age of piracy in the 17th century. The narrative is revealed as a first-person account, typical of Wolfe, in which you as the reader must constantly wonder at how much information the narrator is failing to reveal or simply lying about.
Fortunately, you can enjoy the book as historical fiction about what it may have been like to be a pirate in those days. Wolfe is obsessive about his research, and if you know anything about the history of piracy, you'll be able to identify important events and patterns in the text. For example, at one point early in the story, our protagonist, Chris, is left on the island of Hispaniola by the English privateer, Capt. Burt. On Hispaniola, Chris falls in with Frenchmen surviving by hunting wild cattle - the historical origins of the buccaneer. It's an action-oriented plot, and it's about pirates god damn it, so there's killing and torture and raids and booty and even hidden treasure. Wolfe never forgets the essential trappings of whatever genre he is writing within.
But of course, there's a time travel element involved, and only towards the end of the book do we get a sense of its implications. Depending on how you feel about Wolfe's writing in general, you may find this intriguing or incredibly frustrating.
I'm curious to know how other people feel about time travel as a narrative device. Leave a comment if you're so inclined.
Let the Right One In is like no other vampire movie I've seen. It's a Swedish flick, based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Our protagonist is Oskar, a 12-year old boy living in a suburban community near Stockholm with his mother. He is blonder-than-blonde, slight and frail, and the target of incessant bullying at school. We also quickly learn that he's a bit obssessed with "true crime" and keeps a somewhat disturbing scrap-book of murders tucked under his mattress.
One day, a sickly looking girl, Eli, moves into the apartment next door. The two become friends, much as one might expect. And yet there's something not quite right about Eli: she's never out in the daylight, she seems far more mature than her years belie, and she alternatively appears to be on the brink of death or brimming with health.
She's a vampire, of course, and the filmakers don't attempt to hide this fact from the audience for long. Instead of feeding on random victims herself, she sends out her "father" (more a caretaker) to murder young men in the community, drain their blood into a jug, and bring it back to the apartment. Things get complicated when her caretaker gets caught in the act and Eli is forced to fend for herself.
Throughout, Let the Right One In is a poignant love story between awkward pre-adolescents, much as we've seen before. But Eli and Oskar's relationship develops in a fascinating direction, and their evolving co-dependency is at once heart-warming and absolutely horrific. I love how carefully the movie progressed, and how it fully embraced the classic horror dictum (all but forgotten in modern America) that "less-is-more." With approximately 15 minutes left to go in the film, I had decided that it was good but not great. However, those last minutes, and especially the final scene on the train, push Let the Right One In into the realm of truly exceptional.
Be warned: an American remake is planned for release in 2010 and is likely to be far bloodier, extreme, and mundane.
One of the many things I appreciated about the recent Batman film, The Dark Knight (2008), is how the Joker's background and raison de'etre are kept appropriately mysterious and vague. In two separate scenes, one with the gangster Gambol and one with Rachel Dawes, the Joker reveals the origins of his facial scars. The two stories, of course, are at odds with each other - suggesting that neither is true. Herein lies the horror of the Joker: he refuses to provide us with an easy explanation for his existence. If he was understandable, perhaps just "insane" from some traumatizing childhood experience, we could package him away into a safe little box along with Two-Face, Scarecrow, et al. and reduce his existence to consumable ideas & theories.
Another possibility, often cited, is that the Joker is Batman's ethical doppleganger. If Batman did not exist, neither would the Joker - and as long as Batman haunts Gotham, so will his evil twin. The Joker is fond of taunting Batman with this dilemma, mostly to piss him off. Sometimes this version of the creation myth is made more literal by having Batman be the cause of Joker's disfigurement. This is the storyline revealed in The Killing Joke (1988) by Alan Moore, one of the first graphic novels I ever read. The Joker starts out as a two-bit comic trying to make ends meet for himself and his pregnant wife:
Odd to feel sympathy for the Joker, no? But you gotta love that bow-tie.
In increasing desperation, he falls in with the wrong crowd, unknowingly taking on the role of the Red Hood in a doomed robbery attempt of the Ace Chemical Processing plant. Batman shows up, and "the Joker" (at this point unnamed) jumps into a vat of chemicals to escape.
His skin burns and discolors, and he emerges as Bolland's archetypal Joker:
If you've only seen the movies, you may recall that Tim Burton's version of the Joker borrowed heavily from this myth - providing a relatively straightforward case for why the Joker hates Batman so much.
But this is a little too convenient and doesn't offer the Joker any of the psychological depth he deserves. In the end, it's not any specific trauma that creates the Joker, it's not the Batman - it's us. It's this crazy, fucked up world. Here's the Joker's monologue to Batman (but really, to us), explaining it all:
I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that...
"Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! HA HA HA!
"But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you?
"I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! TELEGRAPH POLES! HA HA HA HA HA!
"It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?
Ironically, it's more sobering to consider the possibility that we, as a society, have created a breeding ground for evil men. When we see the big bad black man being carted off to prison, we want to believe in simple explanations for human criminality and violence: bad neighborhood, bad parents, bad schools. But when we're forced to ponder why those bad neighborhoods exist in the first place, when we begin to consider our own personal role in the propagation of inequality and hate, our self-righteous indignation might well fade into uncomfortable laughter.
Like many other fans of the genre, I find the Joker to be a particularly interesting and even appealing villain. Ultimately, maybe it's because we sense that he's just smarter than the rest of us. He's decided he doesn't want to play the "civilization" game anymore (I loved the scene in The Dark Knight when he burns that giant pile of money). He's ripped off the rose-colored glasses and sees the world in all its ugliness. He respects the Batman more than us, because at least Batman has ideals and values - which, though absurd and meaningless, are worthy of admiration. But he has no sympathy for the sheep and wishes we'd all just get a little perspective.
Looking for an escapist piece of postmodern nonsense to distract you from the Holiday Recession Blues? Please try Shoot 'Em Up (2007). I don't know if it's just because I was in the right mood or what, but I watched this with my brother over vacation and frickin' loved it. I have no idea how this got by my radar last year, since usually the presence of Clive Owen in a movie will perk my interest a little.
It's disturbingly, humorously violent. It's aware of what it's trying to do and does it unapologetically. Clive Owen plays the mysterious bad-ass, Paul Giamatti the annoyed villain, and Monica Belluci the lactating prostitute. Don't want to spoil it for you, but several things won this movie over for me.
Wolfmother & Motorhead on the soundtrack.
Scene: Owen is shooting at thugs while protecting a pregnant women, and the empty shells slow-mo onto her exposed, bulging belly.
Owen tries to buy a gun with food stamps.
A carrot is used as a killing weapon.
The movie bends over backwards so that there can be a firefight in a gun factory.
If you're still not convinced, that pretentious A.O. Scott of the NY Times dubbed this a "worthless pile of garbage."
If you're looking to add some tripe to your film diet, let me suggest a couple Neil Marshall movies. Aili and I have extracted some serious enjoyment out of his latest projects: The Descent (2005) and Doomsday (2008).
The Descent is a genuinely frightening horror movie that received critical acclaim upon its initial release in Great Britain and later release in the States. A group of 5 outdoorsy women go spelunking in an uncharted cave in the Appalachians. The first half hour of the movie builds the suspense quite effectively, and Marshall even takes some time to develop his main characters before throwing them into hell. At first, The Descent seems like it's going to be a psychological horror story, as the women go deeper into the cave, get cut off from the outside world, and begin to fight and suspect one another. That all the characters are female, and not treated like idiots or cheesecake, is both refreshing and effective. There are some absolutely horrific claustrophobia-inducing scenes, and all it takes is the right camera angle and appropriate lighting.
Of course, the story doesn't end there. The women begin to discover signs of predatory life and come to realize that they aren't alone in the dark. The nature of this mysterious troglodyte is a little disappointing; think, Gollum, without the paralyzing insecurity. The climax is very dark, thankfully, although for American audiences it was toned down a bit and made a little more vague. The "director's cut" DVD includes the original ending that Marshall feels is most appropriate for his story. Recommended.
You may have seen ads for Doomsday, as they seem to be ubiquitous on Redboxes, etc. I was particularly looking forward to this one, as it received satisfyingly terrible reviews and concerns a dismal, post- apocayptic future. The setting is Great Britain, and a lethal virus (the "Reaper" virus - pretty clever, huh?) has wiped out a significant chunk of the Scottish population. The British government sets up a perimeter defense to quarantine the entire country - they build a modernized Hadrian's wall and patrol the coasts.
Time passes. The government is corrupt. A naked blonde chick in a bathtub shoots a shotgun. The Reaper virus eventually infiltrates London and all hell breaks loose. A hero is chosen, Eden Sinclair (played by Rhona Mitra), to go beyond the wall, enter the hot zone, and see if there's a cure. Rumor has it, some people survived.
If you're thinking this is a mish-mash of a lot of films you've already seen, you're right. The wall and chaos within the quarantine zone is straight out of Escape from New York. Hell, Sinclair even has an eye-patch just like Plissken (although this time, she uses a cybernetic, removable eye to her advantage). The crazed behavior of Reaper virus victims recalls zombie movies galore, but especially 28 Days Later. Once Sinclair gets to the hotzone, she and her team discover an entire "civilization" of tatooed punk-rock cannibals, that may as well have timewarped from the set of Mad Max. Up to this point, it's all pretty ho-hum and not-interesting silly - but then there's this crazy scene with a warlord, Sol, dancing to the Fine Young Cannibals song, Good Thing. It's seriously bizarre and definitely gives Doomsday some potential for future, B-movie cult status.
And then things get even weirder. Sinclair escapes from Sol into the mountains and is eventually captured by another warlord, Kane (played by Malcolm McDowell). His minions dress up like medieval knights. It's deliberately anachronistic and doesn't make any sense at all (although there is a nice shot of a biohazard stained-glass window). Apparently, one of Marshall's guiding visions for this film was a standoff between a futuristic soldier and medieval warrior. Marshall was heavily influenced by Excalibur (a damn good film, I'll admit), and wanted to incorporate some of its elements into his whimsical potpourri.
The final 30 minutes of the film devolve into a tedious series of improbable events, including a Road Warrior-wannabe car chase, and culminating in successful acquisition of "the cure." The ending of the movie seems to set up not a sequel, but rather some sort of half-baked television series on the sci-fi channel (e.g., Stargate SG-1). Throughout most of this film, I kept wanting to hit "R" to reload Sinclair's automatic, which also makes me think they might try for some crappy video game spin-off as well. If you want to watch a blatant homage to every awesome 80's action sci-fi thriller made, Doomsday is your bag.
Dark Knight is in the theaters, and looks to be a winner. We haven't seen it yet but I'm especially optimistic after the gritty Batman Begins seemed to herald in a re-invention of the movie series. But what about Hellboy II? If you're teetering on the fence about this one, our mutual suggestion is to skip it and wait for video. I admit to having high hopes, since Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors right now. But it was surprisingly slow,the plot was typically clichéd, and the action sequences were humdrum. Stay at home and cozy up with one of the following instead:
Also directed by del Toro, a much more imaginative and emotionally taxing film. The main character is Ofelia, a little girl living in Spain just after the civil war (1944). Events unfold in a less-than-pleasant reality and a fantasy world that may or may not be the product of Ofelia's escapist imagination. It is a dark fairy tale, as if you were watching a Neil Gaiman nightmare unfold. Del Toro has listed the following authors and artists as sources of inspiration: Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Francisco Goya, and Arthur Rackham. Do not be pushed away by the English subtitles. This is an amazing story where the special effects are used for specific purpose and aren't the whole point of the thing (e.g. Hellboy).
Produced by del Toro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. A remarkable movie, and perhaps the best ghost story I've even seen. I've mentioned before that I am relatively impervious to horror-fear in movies, due to my father's unwitting immersion therapy during childhood. But The Orphanage evoked real fear in me, and perhaps even more impressively, dread. It is a movie that benefits from very little being said about it, except a strong recommendation. Again, please do not shy away from the Spanish language and English subtitles. This is a superb film that, like Pan's Labyrinth, dances across the boundary of the depressingly real and sublime fantastic. It is difficult to know what is "true" and what is not and, as in the best of magical-realism, the distinction is meaningless.
Keep an eye out for del Toro's version of The Hobbit, planned as a duology for release in 2011/2012. It may be the best on-screen Tolkien experience since 1977's animated movie (take that, Peter Jackson).
Just so you don't get the impression that Aili and I only blog about stuff we really like... A couple nights ago, we saw the new Indiana Jones movie and agreed that it was a lackluster, tedious affair. Now, Aili's not a huge fan of the action/adventure flick anyways - but I grew up on Indiana Jones and absolutely loved it. Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981 when I was 8 years old, and it thrilled my imagination. The Temple of Doom was a decent story, except for 'Willie' Scott's annoyingly useless female character (admittedly, she had a hard act to follow with Marion Ravenwood). And The Last Crusade seemed a strong end to the series, mediated largely by the on-screen synergy of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.
But now we get this hollow, CGI-heavy bit of rubbish mucking up the whole mystique of one of my childhood heroes. Thanks for ruining things again, Lucas/Spielberg. Rather than bore you with all the aspects of this movie that were disappointing, I'll just concentrate on the primary villain: Irina Spalko, played by Cate Blanchett.
At first, it seems like a match made in heaven. Blanchett is an excellent actress, and having her play a Russian agent in the post-WWII Cold War seems like it will provide Indy with a complex and intriguing opponent. But, no. All one gets is a fake accent and some yawn-inducing sword play. Where's the hate? I want to despise, or at least admire, my protagonist's opponents. For comparison's sake - just to make this point clear - consider the following nemeses from the earlier Jones' escapades:
Raiders of the Lost Ark Dr. Rene Belloq & Major Toht. Belloq is the quintessential villain you love to hate. Always a step behind Indy, stealing his glory at the last moment and then dumping him into a pit of vipers. Arrogant, brilliant, and, of course, French.
Do I need to even say anything about Toht? This guy gave me nightmares when I was a kid, and he barely even does anything in the movie. But, oh, how satisfying is it when they open the Ark and his face melts?
Temple of Doom
Mola Ram. Ummm... this guy would pull your heart out and hold it beating in front of your face while you died. Plus, he enslaved children to mine for Sankara Stones. Yeah, I'd say he's pretty evil.
The Last Crusade Dr. Elsa Schneider, an Austrian art professor who covets the grail and seduces both Indiana and his father to acquire information. Beautiful and deceitful, playing to one of Indiana's few weaknesses. She dies because her greed refuses to allow her to give up the grail.
I don't really want to be another one of those haters that wishes Lucas would just leave things from my childhood alone... but I really wish he would leave things from my childhood alone.
.jpg)
Another example of this is Battlestar Galactica. After the Cylon attack on the colonies, less than 50,000 humans survive, instantly making us an endangered species. The value of an individual human life skyrockets, which means that you have to learn to put up with idiots, pricks, and sadists. I mean, in any sane galaxy (with billions/trillions of humans), no one in their right mind would let Saul Tigh near a car much less XO a battlestar. But beggars can't be choosers.
