Club Parnassus

In Theaters: Moon

2009-07-12T20:39:00.003-05:00

MOON is the latest attempt at what’s dubbed “serious” science-fiction; if I sound a little flip it’s because the subgenre seems to be more about being grim, depressing, and monochromatic, the line of thinking apparently being that bright futures and good cheer are for the dumb summer blockbusters. Okay, I’ve vented that, but I was still interested in this picture and made a point to catch it when I found out it hit Kansas City. It’s actually pretty damned good, my apprehension notwithstanding; as arty and subtly psychological as it is, it’s a solid story buoyed by good acting and a low-key attitude. This is partly a puzzle movie, and I will spoil a small part of it, but fortunately it has value beyond simply working out what’s going on.

Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell (must have been confusing), the sole worker on a large lunar mining facility that churns up Helium-3 from moon rocks and sends the gas to Earth, to be used as a source of clean, cheap energy. He’s been up there for three long, lonely years and is about to be sent home, but when looking after one of the massive machines that churns the satellite’s surface, he crashes his rover and loses consciousness. He comes to in the medical bay, with no clear idea of how he got there. When he goes out again to the crashed rover, he finds... himself, barely alive. The two Sams aren’t quite the same, but neither of them knows which one is really supposed to be there.

And I think I’ll stop there; it’s hard to know just how much is spoiling the plot, because the way this unfolds is very gradual and strangely logical. It’s not the kind of thriller that arbitrarily twists things for shock value and ceases to make sense the instant you leave the theater; the apparent inconsistencies of the story start to work themselves out, and become part of the answer. The answer isn’t the end of the story, either, as there’s still at least one man to deal with, and the company has decided to send a rescue team to help repair the damaged equipment, and they won’t be too happy seeing two Sams walking around.

Needless to say, this is Rockwell’s picture- he has to not only carry the entire film, but do so twice. He does an excellent job, particularly in differentiating between the mannerisms of the two Sams, showing how they’ve been differently affected by their situation. You always know which is which, quite an accomplishment. (The effects putting them both on screen almost seem to get better as the film goes on- at first they’re rarely in the same shot, but then it becomes commonplace.) There are other actors, but seen only in transmissions from Earth. Kevin Spacey provides the voice of GERTY, a robotic waldo system that assists Sam, and amusingly “emotes” via a smiley face on his monitor; it’s a nice twist on the old HAL 9000 bit, and the character becomes fairly sympathetic. Seeing DARKPLACE’s Matt Berry in a serious role is disarming, though.

For a low budget picture, the film looks great; the visual style is obviously hearkening back to 2001 and ALIEN, and at times the sets seem almost too similar, but the chunky aesthetic is downright comforting at times. It keeps the action grounded, and the effects work is strong. At times the miniatures do betray their scale, but it’s an odd thing to evaluate, because the moon does have low gravity and seemingly heavy objects are going to sort of rattle and bounce.

The story inevitably drags just a little once the major revelations have been made; other elements fall into place, but a lack of urgency hangs over the proceedings for a short time. Fortunately, it ramps up to an excellent climax, one which treats the characters as more important than another twist or some grand philosophical point.

MOON’s a great picture, an attempt at small-scale sci-fi that, though it continues in the dark, low-color, and somewhat male-centric tradition of other art-house sf productions, works enough on those terms to make them unobtrusive. The film’s doing a slow rollout, so keep an ear to the ground, because it deserves to do well. It’s a pleasant little surprise in between blockbusters.

Story by Duncan Jones
Screenplay by Nathan Parker
Directed by Duncan Jones

Grade: A-

Random Who Report: Vengeance on Varos (1985)

2009-06-30T22:44:00.003-05:00

The Colin Baker era of DOCTOR WHO is an interesting one, held in relative disgrace by a lot of Who fans. The sixth Doctor’s first season (of only two) was a strangely experimental one, with longer episodes, a darker tone, and a brash and arrogant lead character with the most ridiculous outfit imaginable. Ratings eroded and the show was yanked off the schedule for 18 months, and the next season was a gutted reformatting, signifying that the BBC no longer had any confidence in the institution. I honestly think that this period of WHO gets more flak than it deserves; yes, it was uneven, and took the show from being a popular hit to a cult item, but it was a daring attempt to move the show forward, and it produced a few classics.

Case in point, VENGEANCE ON VAROS. This is probably the best executed of Season 22’s stories, without the awkward structuring that plagued the show’s expansion to 45-minute episodes, but at the same time it demonstrates the stylistic change that had come over the show. It’s a grim, violent, gritty story about a dystopian society where torture and murder are used to distract the public from their crippling poverty, and it’s laced with surrealism and murky morals. It’s also bordering on brilliant, with a magnificently constructed premise that touches on a lot of social issues in a way that, while not subtle, avoids preachiness for the most part. Like much of the season it’s slick and stylish, and it introduces one of the show’s more memorable villains. If only I could figure out what, precisely, the title is referring to.

Varos is a desolate mining world, originally a prison colony. Its chief export is the precious metal Zyton-7, which it sells to an intergalactic mining conglomerate represented by the sluglike Sil (Nabil Shaban). The conglomerate uses its muscle to extort a low price for the metal, keeping the planet poor; the current governor (Martin Jarvis, being fucking awesome) wants the people to hold out for a better deal, but they need food and keep voting him down. Incidentally, whenever the governor loses a vote, he’s subjected to a shower of laser beams, and losing too many or by too much means they’d better sweep him up and find a replacement. To try and keep the public happy, the governor also broadcasts executions and torture sessions from inside the colony’s punishment dome, and there’s no shortage of dissidents. Into this fascist society with a veneer of democracy comes the Doctor and Peri (Nicola Bryant), as the TARDIS needs its Zyton supplies replenished. They happen to arrive just as the rebel Jondar (Jason Connery) is about to be executed, and they try to escape the dome’s many traps and mind games, while the arrival of two offworlders brings tensions between Sil and the governor (and his underling, who is taking payoffs from the mining company) to a point of no return.

A main reason why I love this story is that the society presented is so damn fascinating. Most looks at the story focus on the “video nasties” angle, but that’s just one salacious part of a larger picture; what we have is basically a corporate-run fascist state with the trappings of democracy. The art direction is very reminiscent of 2000 A.D. (the Judge Dredd comics in particular), and despite middling production values the story has a strong atmosphere. A kind of Greek chorus is provided by a middle-aged couple, the miner Arak (Stephen Yardley) and wife Etta (BRAZIL’s Sheila Reid), who watch the Punishment Dome proceedings, vote via television screen, and never leave their little hovel- a decision both economic and evocative.

One of the things that really disarmed viewers during Colin Baker’s first year was how poorly the Doctor and his companion got along. The arguments between him and Peri aren’t as severe as in some other stories, and they don’t spend quite as much time wandering around on their own as they do in other stories (the season’s major problem- writers weren’t really used to the 45-minute format, and never had time to get comfortable with it.) The Doctor’s still a blowhard, but he’s dealing with such baldfaced evil that he doesn’t have to go far to be the hero.

The story has its rough patches, namely loads of clunky expository dialogue from Jondar and his main rebel squeeze Areta (Geraldine Alexander); the good guys can’t help but come off bland in such a fascinatingly dark environment. As the governor, Jarvis fares much better- he’s so dignified and charismatic you almost forget that he’s part of the system. Nicholas Chagrin (best name ever, by the way), also has some great scenes as Quillam, the sadistic head of the Punishment Dome with a fondness for genetic experimentation who gives the proceedings a bit of a David Lynch feel, and Shaban and Forbes Collins are both impressive. I like Colin Baker’s Doctor quite a bit, including his ridiculous outfit, and Nicola Bryant is, well... bouncy, in whatever way you care to interpret that.

Forced to make a snap decision (I’m not getting left with 5 posts a month again), I’m going to give this one a very high grade. It’s the best of C. Baker’s stories, and if you want to see just one of his, this is it. It’s fiercely intelligent, well directed, solidly paced, and though it embodies a lot of the stylistic weirdness and grimness that made season 22 so polarizing, it’s also just plain good sci-fi. This is a classic that stands up with the best of any era.

Written by Philip Martin
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Grade: A

Random Movie Report #67: Monster From A Prehistoric Planet

2009-06-29T13:57:00.004-05:00

When I reviewed GAMERA VS. MONSTER X, it was from a double feature DVD, so I’ve decided a week later to take a look at the back-end. MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET, also known as GAPPA, THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTERS, is the only kaiju film made by Nikkatsu studios, and despite having fallen into obscurity it’s been put out on video and DVD several times now. If you’re wondering how a film can be both obscure and prolific, well, I can imagine that after Nikkatsu fell on hard times in the 70s they sold the rights at bargain basement prices and haven’t bothered to raise them since. It’s become sort of an off-brand monster movie, cheap but lacking the identification of a Godzilla or Gamera, and unfortunately this is an accurate reflection of the contents. MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET is one of the most generic entries ever in a genre that’s already dominated by formula.

The film opens on a scientific expedition traveling the South Seas to find exotic animals for “Playmate Land”, a lush tropical resort built by the manager of Playmate magazine (which I guess is supposed to be Playboy, but with a conspicuous lack of models, clothed or otherwise.) They happen upon a volcanic island beset by frequent tremors, which the unfortunately-made-up natives attribute to something called “Gappa”. The expedition finds a giant egg, out of which hatches a strange bird-like reptile or reptile-like bird. Over the natives’ objections, they take the Gappa creature with them to Japan, theorizing that the prehistoric egg was kept in suspended animation for millions of years and that the little fellow is alone in the world. Needless to say, they’re wrong, and both mama and papa Gappa emerge from the depths in search of their lost offspring, ultimately following its cries to the mainland.

The logical response to such a situation would be to set the creature free as quickly as you possibly can, and run, but naturally this can’t happen right away. The film’s major problem is that it can’t really convey why this can’t happen; usually it’s because the money men are evil selfish bastards, the kind you’d see foreclosing on orphanages in early talkies, but the Playmate manager is just kind of a curmudgeon, and the scientists just sort of overly ambitious, so it’s just the script preventing them from coming to their senses half an hour in. In the meantime, the Gappa parents destroy a whole bunch of stuff in some reasonably impressive destruction scenes, but that’s really all the film has to offer. The story is pretty much a straight line from beginning to end. If you’ve ever seen a giant monster movie, you will know what’s coming. If you haven’t- well, I’d suggest something else to start.

It’s not that this is a bad movie. The monster action is decent, the visuals are colorful, the execution is competent. But it’s too transparently put together from parts of other movies; the giant-monster-going-after-its-child plot is from the British epic GORGO, the jungle adventure stuff is KING KONG by way of Toho’s KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, the idea of two flying monsters as mates is from RODAN, the evil-capitalists stealing from humble native types is from MOTHRA, and so it goes. This is not a genre that requires original thinking, but the way these elements are conflated seems cheap and cynical; Nikkatsu saw the kaiju genre was making money and rushed out something that was just like everything else. It’s the definition of uninspired.

As I said, the actual monster scenes are not bad. The Gappa design is interesting, and the only really inspired part of the production, and the final scenes are almost touching. The miniatures work is decent, but the scenes start to lose interest after a while because, again, they’re just marking time until we get to the climax. On the human level, there’s some attempt at a love triangle that doesn’t quite work because it’s presented in a downright obtuse way, and there’s some business with the publisher being a widower looking after a young daughter, and in a nod to the Gamera movies, there’s one child from the island who understands the Gappas and tries to help get the baby released. Rather unfortunately, the child is in black face, and I was almost going to excuse this as being down to the lack of a diverse casting pool in 1960s Japan until I noticed that he was also wearing bright red lipstick. Yeah. (And don’t worry, there’s also a bit of old-school sexism to go alongside the racism- though it comes from the love subplot that makes no sense, so the effect is diluted.)

Now, if you enjoy watching giant monsters wreck shit up, the film does deliver on this basic element, and isn’t terrible at it. I didn’t really dislike this film, it just got old after a while. It’s a perfectly average entry in the genre by people who apparently thought that would be good enough, but that’s what you tend to find in the discount bin. Now, I will say that I’ve only seen the pan-and-scanned American edit, and maybe the original Japanese version makes more sense or is just better overall, but then again maybe it’s worse. So it events out.

(Also, MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET makes no sense as a title, except AIP distributed a movie called VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET. GAPPA, THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTERS makes a little more sense, but I’m not sure “Triphibian” is a word.)

Written by Ryozo Nakanishi and Gan Yamazaki
Directed by Haruyasu Noguchi

Grade: C

In Theaters: The Hangover

2009-06-28T02:35:00.003-05:00

A common law of comedy is that no bachelor party can ever go well. They are always planned as decadent, orgiastic affairs, but the stripper catches a cold, the booze runs out, and any number of things can go wrong with the porn. The actual party in THE HANGOVER may or may not have gone well, depending on the evidence that the memory-robbed main characters are able to piece together as they hunt down the groom. Needless to say, this is not the most original of comedies, but it compensates for that by being funny, by being well-made, and by being a genuinely engaging story. It pays more attention to actual filmmaking than you would expect, and though you may be thinking that the last thing we needed was yet another male-bonding grossout comedy, strong work can keep a genre fresh after a surprisingly long time.

Doug Billings (Justin Bartha) is getting married, and so his friends- Phil (Bradley Cooper), the henpecked Stu (Ed Helms), and the not-all-there future-brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis)- drag him to Vegas for a night of carousing. The friends wake up the next morning in a deluxe suite, with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, no sign of Doug, and no recall of how things got to this point. They’ve also managed to steal a cop car, and Stu- who was going to propose to his girlfriend later- finds that he’s gotten married to an attractive and friendly escort named Jade (Heather Graham). Not to spoil too much, but they’ve somehow also gotten into trouble with local underworld figures, and also Mike Tyson. And the wedding’s tomorrow, so there’s that.

The fact that I even have to worry about spoilers this time is interesting; the plot of this kind of comedy is usually the least important thing, but here we have an actual mystery, complete with red herrings and what in retrospect is an almost logical answer. It’s genuinely fun to watch the story come into focus, and to see apparently random elements start to come together. It’s a very smartly plotted film, and it’s one that has the power to surprise the viewer now and again.

But THE HANGOVER is also, like all movies in the smart-dumb-guy subgenre of comedy, about its characters and their relationships. We basically have three people who would probably not be friends if not for Doug, and under pressure and without him they start to have trouble. Our three main actors are funny on their own, but they establish a really strong rapport that, though it involves insulting each other frequently, manages to go deeper when it needs to. Graham is also nice to see again; she’s not the most versatile actress, but this is a part she makes believable instead of a stereotype. Mike Tyson’s appearance as himself is amusingly low-key, though I’m not entirely clear on the joke with Ken Jeong’s character.

Nothing in Todd Phillips’ filmography makes you think you’re in the hands of a skilled veteran, but in terms of visuals, editing, and pacing, this is actually tighter than quite a few comedies. At times it comes off as a spoof of Vegas-situated thrillers, with people in trunks, cards being counted, etc., and a weird intensity is maintained through much of the proceedings, however stupid they are. I always appreciate it when filmmakers don’t let genre get in the way of good material, and though this film never stops being a comedy, it doesn’t take that as an excuse to be lazy with the visuals or storytelling.

In short, yes, there have been more than a few for-the-guys comedies lately and THE HANGOVER doesn’t reinvent the genre. But it’s pretty smartly put together, and infectiously funny as a result. It’s a film that’s better than it has any right to be, and those are always great to stumble across.

Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
Directed by Todd Phillips
Grade: A-

Random Movie Report #66: Gamera vs. Monster X

2009-06-21T15:50:00.003-05:00

The Gamera series gets no respect. Sure, he had a great run on MST3K and there’s the trilogy of films he made in the 90s that got a solid US release and a lot of fan acclaim, but for whatever reason, the super turtle’s original adventures remain the stuff of budget DVDs with mediocre full-screen transfers. But even though Gamera was Godzilla’s cheaper competition, his films relegated to TV in the states, he’s had his moments, and GAMERA VS. MONSTER X (which somehow never made it to the Satellite of Love) is one of them. The sixth film in the series, MONSTER X boasts better than usual production values and some interesting and creative wrinkles in the story. It still has all the goofiness of the Gamera series, but it’s the kind of goofy that can grow on you.

The film is centered around the 1970 World Expo, which actually was held in Osaka, Japan, so it’s a sort of plug (a lot of location work was done at the fairgrounds, but the cropping was so bad for the TV print that you’d never notice.) A possibly British, possibly American professor has uncovered a giant stone statue on a Pacific island that he thinks would make a perfect exhibition piece for the fair, despite the local warnings of curses and demon beasts and so on. Gamera himself tries to stop the statue being moved, but it gets lifted off anyway, which unleashes the strange monster Jiger from beneath the Earth. Gamera’s natural inclination is to pound the crap out of the sluggish quadruped, but Jiger has a number of tricks, from the ability to fire spikes into Gamera’s limbs (preventing him from retracting them and flying away) to actually injecting his foe with something particularly nasty via a tail stinger. This later development forces two children to borrow a miniature submarine and actually travel inside the giant turtle’s body, in what I am absolutely sure was in no way inspired by FANTASTIC VOYAGE.

You can’t accuse this one of being slow paced; the series made a point of having Gamera show up early on to make sure the kids kept paying attention during any plot stuff to follow, and there’s not much of a human story getting in the way of the monster action. There’s some brief conflict between the Hiroshi, the main Japanese kid (Tsutomu Takakuwa) and Williams’ two children Tommy and Susan (Kelly Varis and Katherine Murphy, respectively); Hiroshi’s very much a Gamera fan, but the two Anglo children are present when Gamera attacks the dig, so they briefly dislike him, until Jiger appears and all is forgiven. There’s also the question of a mysterious curse on the statue itself, which seems to sicken the people who handle it, and this is part of the overall mystery of how the ancient people of Mu managed to trap Jiger in the first place.

The monsters dominate, and Jiger is an interesting beast. He’s one of the most successful attempts at a four-legged animal I’ve seen in vintage kaiju eiga- obviously the actor has to bend his legs back, but while other such monsters clearly walk on their knees, the Jiger suit makes it seem like he’s using four feet. Both monster suits seem more detailed than usual, and the miniatures work has also improved from past entries. Granted, it’s still fakey, but it looks quite nice. The interlude inside Gamera’s body is particularly surreal; somehow the interior of his lung has soft cave-like floors and man-size corridors, like that one Zelda level. Jiger has a weird grab bag of powers- he’s got the spikes, the stinger, he shoots out a high frequency death ray, he can propel himself through the water like a motorboat, and he can draw objects to his body using suction. He’s far from the only Japanese monster to have rolled his powers on a random table, and in general the Gamera series seems to have been what started the trend. The action is fast and brutal, with a slight apocalyptic tone owing to Jiger’s seemingly demonic nature.

The film is a little slight to start, and falls prey to many of the familiar clichés of the Gamera series; you have children who can muscle their way into high-level government meetings, you have Gamera being incapacitated not once but twice before the final showdown, and you have the young hero’s passionate insistence that Gamera will save everyone no matter how bad things look. As much as credibility is stretched in some points (and for a giant monster movie that’s saying something), the story has a bizarre logic to it, and there’s more atmosphere than usual, especially in the scenes at Jiger’s island home. There are even a couple of solid intentionally funny bits, mostly involving the parents’ reactions to their kids running off inside Gamera’s guts.

Despite maybe a misstep here and there (there’s some gross documentary footage of larvae being surgically removed from an elephant’s trunk, for which the scientist presenting it even apologizes), GAMERA VS. MONSTER X does merit some distinction as probably the last strong entry in the franchise until 25 years later. Bad times would hit Daiei for a while, but at their peak they managed to produce a fun and almost-lavish monster throw down that’s worth a look for fans. There’s nothing too spectacular, but it does its job well.

Written by Nisan Takahashi
Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
Grade: B

In Theaters: Drag Me To Hell

2009-06-15T13:08:00.003-05:00

These days it’s considered a bad sign when a horror film is released with a PG-13 rating; the assumption is not that the filmmakers have decided to be classy and restrained, but that they’re saving all the blood and gore for the DVD and gifting theatrical audiences with watered-down teenybopper fare. So it’s nice to see Sam Raimi not only return to the genre that kicked off his career, but do so with a fun shocker like DRAG ME TO HELL, which milks the- heck out of its rating, and is never anything less than over the top and insane. It’s nowhere near the schlocky heights of the Evil Dead films, but it’s an unpretentious and fun picture; audiences may not get that it’s supposed to be more than a little cheesy and silly, but, well, I just told you so it’s not like you have an excuse.

The film revolves around a particularly nasty gypsy curse, in which the victim, in possession of a hexed object, is carried off body and soul to the Underworld by a horrific demon called a lamia, after three days of psychological torture. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), an aspiring bank loan office, runs afoul of this curse when she denies an extension to an old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) who makes a bit of a scene begging not to have her house taken away. One switch of a button later, and Christine is being set upon by shadows, visions of demons, flies, and various and sundry scary stuff. She’s doomed unless a local fortune teller (Dileep Rao) and her skeptical fiance (Justin “Giving Mac Users a Bad Image” Long) can help find a way to break the curse before her three days are up.

So, a simple plot, on which is hung a series of scare sequences that frequently switch off between frightening and funny. I don’t think the people in the theater when I saw this movie entirely got this; Universal promoted this as a straight horror film, and for a while it plays like one, but that’s never really been Raimi’s bag. There’s a lot of deliberate exaggeration, both in the shock sequences and in the everyday scenes; I suspect Sam and Ivan Raimi are drawing heavily on EC Comics and its gruesome, heavy-handed, but strangely sardonic morality plays. It’s a style that takes some getting used to, mainly because it hasn’t been dragged out in a while.

The difference between horror and comedy seems to boil down to how much we are driven to identify with the protagonist, and it’s here that the film pulls off an unusual balancing act. Christine is no innocent; she does a bad thing, and later is motivated more by self interest than by repentance. However, her situation is sympathetic, we understand how she came to make her decision, and on top of everything the curse just seems like excessive punishment, especially when we first see it employed on a young boy whose great sin was to snatch a necklace. I’ve seen a couple of complaints about how gypsies are portrayed in this film, and this does seem to paint them as almost, well, dickish, and the sheer awfulness of what’s happening does tend to put us on the main character’s side.

Of course, it helps that the main character is a sweet-looking young woman, and I have to give Lohman a lot of credit; the film puts her through the wringer in an almost Bruce Campbellian fashion, and she comports herself well. That she never fully loses our sympathy even after some ugly behavior gives the picture some genuine suspense. None of the performances are anything less than broad, but of course that’s the point.

Now, I’m not entirely sure about the ending of this picture; on one level, it’s as sensible a direction as any for the story to go, but it’s pretty telegraphed and frankly reminiscent of, well, every other horror movie of the past few years. It’s a trick that was edgy sometime around the late Sixties, but that edge has been dulled and I honestly wonder just how shocking it would really be if horror movies started doing the exact opposite. But again, I can see why they went that way this time around, so it’s not really a flaw.

(Hence ends my entry for the 2009 Vaguest Paragraph competition. I’ve got a good feeling about this year.)

I gave SPIDER-MAN 3 a good grade and remember well that I enjoyed it, though I honestly haven’t seen it since, so honestly I can’t say whether or not this is a return to form for Raimi. But it’s a nice project to see from him, a film that sets its own terms and succeeds on them even if it’s nothing close to what audiences expect. You’ve got about five days before this one disappears from theaters completely, so hop to it.

Written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi

Grade: B+

In Theaters: Up

2009-06-07T11:13:00.003-05:00

UP is a deceptively simple film, a sweet character-driven story that becomes a wild and unpredictable epic without ever betraying itself. Pixar is basically the one studio left that can turn out original stories every summer and still walk away with lots of money, and what we have here is a true original; a story you’d never expect to get past the drawing board realized with a lot of dedication and commitment, touching on themes of old age, dreams lost and recaptured and realized, and bitter obsessions. Heavy stuff, but also lighter than air.
It’s the story of Carl (voiced by Ed Asner), who grew up wanting to become an adventurer, and met Ellie, who wanted the same. They were married, wanted to have kids but she couldn’t, tried to save up for a trip but never could, and she passed on- a series of events related heartbreakingly simply at the picture’s start. In the present, he’s now an old curmudgeon keeping his old house in order while around him, a major business development is being put up. When it seems as though he’ll finally be forced out, he uses leftover helium balloons from his time working at the zoo to lift his house off its foundations, turning it into an airship destined for the lost plateau of Paradise Falls, his and Ellie’s dream destination. It turns out, though, that a well-meaning junior Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai) has inadvertently stowed along for the ride, and a bumpy half-landing forces the two to walk across the plateau, towing the house towards the resting place Ellie always envisioned. But they’re not alone- a legendary explorer (Christopher Plummer) is on the hunt for a rare bird, and when Russell meets the creature, his scout training compels him to help out.

I feel like I’m already spoiling too much, because part of the pleasure of the film is in the way the story unfolds. It starts very simply, as the story of one old man’s ambition, and adds the other elements slowly enough to avoid upsetting the balance. The plotting is both elegant and loopy; as goofy as it all is, all the elements fit together very well, and as is the standard at Pixar, plot movements are often indicated by very simple gestures or clear images, with the dialogue doing support work.

The film definitely evokes pulp adventure at times (with the plateau being reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s LOST WORLD), but is hard to pin down to any one genre. You’ve got the sadness of Carl’s past, lots of physical comedy, a pack of talking dogs who are no smarter for their verbalization (co-writer-and-director Bob Peterson provides the voice of the lovable Dug as well as the sinister Alpha), and some action and adventure, and you get the feeling that the filmmakers had a distinct vision and weren’t too concerned about shoehorning it into any particular set of conventions.

The characters are what make this work; Carl can be sour and cranky but never truly comes across as just a bitter old man. He has a dream and a sense of adventure, and compassion and imagination, and these are never too deeply buried. Russell is a perfect counterpart, all motion and energy, not stupid but definitely reckless. Dug is, well, a dog, who thinks in dog logic and often thinks he hears a squirrel, and steals attention every time he’s on screen. Muntz, the explorer, is almost admirable, but he’s let a mad dream drag him away. All the character beats are natural and realistic, and as such, no matter how absurd the action gets it makes sense.

This is Pixar’s first film made in 3-D, but again, I was not able to see it in the format intended. I’m told it doesn’t make a huge difference either way, but the visuals are up to the company’s normal standard; perhaps not as elaborate as those in WALL-E, but the character designs are strong and the action is always clear and coherent, which is saying something when you bring in giant zeppelins, packs of talking dogs, and a flying house.

UP continues a tradition of great storytelling, building imaginative hilarity around a sweet, sad core. Its emotional content is simple and honest, and never at the expense of entertainment value. It’s hard to say where this ranks in Disney/Pixar’s charts, because you’ve only got the 90-100% range to work with for these guys, but it’s a picture well worth seeing, and the best of the summer so far.

Story by Bob Peterson, Thomas McCarthy, and Pete Docter
Written and Directed by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter
Grade: A

Dredged from Youtube: Moon Madness (Secret of the Selenites)

2009-05-31T23:26:00.004-05:00

When a cable channel starts out, it usually doesn’t have much money to produce its own programming and is dependent on buying shows from wherever they’re available. A side effect of this is that kids like me, watching Nickelodeon and/or the Disney Channel back in the late 80s and early 90s, saw some really weird shit. I believe it was the former that broadcast MOON MADNESS (or SECRET OF THE SELENITES) back when I saw it, and for a couple of decades the theme tune and some of the visuals have bounded around in my mind, in the area where nostalgia becomes “What the Hell was that, anyway?” One Youtube search later and here we are.

I am, of course, completely compromised on this. To see this at last in an adult and lucid state is gobsmacking, and though I’m not blind to MOON MADNESS’ flaws, it’s such a bizarre work of art that I don’t think I can give it a fair assessment. Also, since it’s either Youtube or ultra-low-budget DVD that may or may not even be in print, this isn’t so much a review as it is an introduction. However you wish to see this is up to you.

The story takes place in 1753, as the astronomer Sirius tells his cousin and good friend the Baron von Munchausen of a legend about the inhabitants of the moon, and a talisman they possess which gives them eternal life. Sirius wants immortality for himself, and promises to make the Baron his sole heir if he gets it for him. The loophole there is kind of obvious, but the Baron is game and takes his ensemble of superhuman companions on a trip to the South Seas, where a helpful typhoon helps lift their boat into the air, and some hot air balloons do the rest and take the travelers to the moon. Settling into one of the craters, the Baron and company dodge attacks from some bizarre monsters before meeting the Selenites, friendly satyr-like creatures with detached crescent-moon heads and three legs. The Selenites knew the Baron and company were coming, and hope they can help defend their people from an invasion of “Green Means”, tiny green robot-like characters attacking from an orbiting satellite. In the meantime, there’s plenty of time to have an athletic competition, and to watch the young Selenites spring fully-formed from walnuts.

On a couple of key technical points (and the minor theft from YELLOW SUBMARINE notwithstanding), the film has not held up that well. The animation is extremely crude, with a weird tendency for characters to bob in place or undergo strange repetitive movements for no reason other than their being animated. Despite this over-drawing in some parts, the film frequently recycles brief shots, leading to a bizarre pace.

The English voice dub is also far from top-level; the Baron has a thin, vaguely Snidely Whiplashian voice, the Selenite King sounds like Ed Wynn with a bad cold, and nobody really sounds that good. Not that the writing is particularly great, but better delivery would have sustained it a lot more.

And yet, the film has a special atmosphere to it that can’t be written off. The look of the inner moonscape is wonderfully strange and whimsical, bringing 18th century ideas of space travel to life in a way that hasn’t really been matched elsewhere. (Terry Gilliam’s live action ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN has a fun moon segment, but it’s not nearly as detailed.) It’s a lush and colorful hollow world that plays by unusual rules. There’s an insanely catchy theme tune, and a dreamlike tone- the conflict never seems too serious, and everyone is good natured throughout, so the film seems less of a narrative than a short assembly of pleasant images.

Like I said, I’m biased. This is too wired into my subconscious for me to not like it, and whatever flaws it has just seem to wash by in what is, after all, a very short space of time. It’s not half as good as it should be, but it’s also the only film that tries to do what it does, and until someone actually improves on the same story it’s hard to dismiss. You should see this simply because you’d be hard pressed to find anything like it, but be warned, you may never be sane afterwards.

Written by Jean and France Image
Directed by Jean Image

Grade: ???

Random Movie Report #65: Battle Beyond the Sun

2009-05-30T23:28:00.003-05:00

I honestly had a good reason for buying this one. I own the poster. I got it years ago from a booth in a mall where a guy was selling a bunch of sci-fi/horror memorabilia, and anyway, I had this thing for years without ever having seen the film it was based on. BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN is actually an interesting obscurity in a couple of ways. One, it’s a cut-down version of a hugely ambitious Russian space epic that still bears faint traces of Soviet politics. Two, the American edit was supervised by none other than Francis Ford Coppola. In its re-arranged form it’s a brief, almost slight science fiction adventure, but the central theme of scientific idealism and cooperation holds, and it’s still kind of impressively made, despite some questionable additions.

In the future of 1997, after an atomic war, the world has been split up between the major powers of North and South Hemis. Both empires are planning expeditions to the planet Mars in secret, and we follow the team from South Hemis (which, according to the map, just happens to contain most of Russia), led by a kindly, brilliant old doctor with a plain peasant wife. The crew is first shuttled from Earth to an orbiting space station, where the Mars craft, the Nebula, has been built. While they’re waiting, though, a North Hemis craft docks for emergency repairs, and it turns out to be their own Mars craft. When the North Hemis expedition runs into trouble, the South Hemis scientists must decide between the success of their own mission and helping their fellow explorers. Okay, you can imagine what the decision is, but it leads to further surprises and complications.

Though this is an obscure film released thusfar only on a “budget” DVD, BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN was a big production for Mosfilm at the time, and despite poor picture quality it’s easy to see how. The miniature work is very elaborate and impressive, with some interesting use of mattes as well, and the orbiting space platform is particularly gorgeous. The original film was made in 1960, and this is about as good as pre-Kubrickian spaceflight scenes would get. There’s a strong atmosphere throughout, with repetitive but evocative music.

The American cut of this film anglicizes all the names (even in the credits) and leaves only a credit to Mosfilm as any indication that this was a Russian production, but knowing that now it’s interesting to see the subtext. The North Hemis characters are clearly Americans, and as such impulsive and misguided, but the film’s compassionate enough not to make them into out and out villains. There really aren’t any such things in the film, if you don’t count the space monsters.

Oh, right, the space monsters. These were also a late addition, crudely grafted onto the film’s third act (though it’s not clear what was supposed to have originally happened in the part of the movie.) And... the poster art may not make this terribly clear, but these are the most Freudian creatures ever not created by H. R. Giger. One is tall, one is round, and when they get into a fight the outcome is outright pornographic. There’s no way the U.S. team didn’t know what they were doing when they filmed this, and precious little way I can imagine them not falling over laughing while doing so. I’m not sure why you’d go this route, but for better or worse the monster scenes are a very short part of the movie.

Though this is clearly a greatly compromised version of whatever the Russians originally shot, and suffers from a choppy pace at times, I have to say its charm won me over. It’s pretty, optimistic, and doesn’t condescend to its audience. The DVD itself is not terribly good, and the original version of the film has yet to be made available, but in its mutant form it’s still worth your time.

Written by Mikhail Karzhukov, Yevgeni Pomeshchikov, and Aleksei Sazanov
Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov and Aleksandr Kozyr, and “Thomas Colchart” (Francis Ford Coppola)

Grade: B

Random Movie Report #64: Redline

2009-05-26T12:24:00.003-05:00

Let me set this up for you. Rutger Hauer plays a criminal in a dark cyberpunk future who’s betrayed by his partner, killed along with his wife, is brought back to life by the government, breaks out and goes in search of vengeance. Sounds like a good movie, right? Hell, it’s Rutger Hauer, the movie doesn’t even have to be that good for him to kick ass, right?

This is the premise of REDLINE, one of the worst films I’ve seen in a while that wasn’t accompanied by snarky commentary from a man and two makeshift robots. I picked it up for $1 at Half Price Books and I think somehow I was cheated. REDLINE is an ultra-low-budget direct-to-video affair from 1997 that’s also appeared under the name DEATHLINE, and it manages to waste just about any scrap of potential there was in the premise, its star, and an assortment of undressed European girls.

Hauer’s character is named John Anderson Wade, and he’s an American doing business in Russia, and that is more or less the extent of what we learn about him. His cowardly evil partner is named Merrick (Mark Dacascos), and he’s in deep with the Russian mob which goes by some name I’ve already forgotten. Trios or Triage or something. Anyway, Merrick doesn’t have much of a motivation either, he’s just a jerk. Wade is picked up by the government because they have some way of bringing people back to life and turning them into super fighters or something, but he breaks out of the lesbian-nurse-staffed hospital (and no, nothing interesting comes of that plot detail) and hits the streets. After this it’s bog standard revenge movie fare, you know the drill, villain sends assassins after the hero, none of them get anywhere near doing their job, hero uncovers some grander plan, etc. Along the way Wade meets up with Marina K. (Yvonne Scio), a prostitute who happens to look exactly like his late wife. She goes along with him for some reason, and a vague romance blooms. Oh, also, the MacGuffins being smuggled are electrochemical stimulants that can be used to induce voluntary fantasies, but apart from a few scenes that goes nowhere either.

If you’re noticing a certain vagueness to my description, that’s because I was rarely if ever entirely sure of what was going on. The details aren’t so much complex as they are unclear and unimportant- there’s some sort of coup in the making, the police are corrupt, but nothing’s ever allowed to get in the way of what is basically a string of random scenes. Wade and his girlfriend move from one blasted post-industrial set to another, one minute a parking garage, the next a nightclub where nobody wears shirts, the next a great hall where a boxing match is taking place well outside anywhere the ultra-rich patrons would be able to see.

There’s just nothing here. The action sequences are uninspired; not only do the bad guys always miss, they always miss so completely that Wade doesn’t have to duck. There’s no sense of any challenge, there are no crazy death defying stunts, even the explosions are weak. The closest we get to an interesting setpiece is when Wade is ambushed by a couple of naked boxer women in a gym area at the boxing match mentioned above, and even that sequence just sort of fizzles out. The visuals are a constant stream of grey and lifeless images.

Now, Rutger Hauer is a genuine bad ass, the kind that demands that you use both words separately. He’s a pretty good actor with loads of presence. NONE of that is on display here. He has no character to play; there’s some banter between him and the girlfriend about how he’s apparently got a problem with women, but we see no evidence of this and it’s forgotten about two scenes after it’s mentioned. Yvonne Scio is very pretty, and not very fully clad, and there’s the spark of a potentially interesting character somewhere in her portrayal, but again, nothing comes of it. The villain is so bland it hurts, and the only thing remarkable about the entire Russian Mafia angle is that his boss (Michael Mehlmann) is doing a pretty good impression of Christopher Walken. To make a good dumb action movie you at least need some crazy quirk for the bad guy, or to make the hero a wisecracking surfer, or throw in some veiled homoeroticism, or... you need to DO SOMETHING, basically. This is close to being absolutely generic- it’s not an action movie, it’s the template for one.

The film just sort of unspools, all the way through an idiotically drawn out climax. There are exactly two clever sequences, which I will list now. The first is a scene from “Russia’s Most Wanted” wherein Wade, now a hunted criminal, is given the dramatic re-enactment treatment, and the re-enactment is a blatant low-budget riff on BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN’s legendary Odessa Steps sequence. The second is a scene where Wade has been captured and is being interrogated- or, rather, subjected to a hallucination of a violent interrogation via the electro-plasmid-thingies the film is supposedly about. It’s a little twist but I like it.

Otherwise this is a chore. I’m not sure why I didn’t hit fast forward on this thing, except that I knew it would be good blog fodder. Also, it’s the kind of bad movie that’s an object lesson in how not to make a low budget picture; anyone could have made a better film using the same resources, just by having things actually happen and letting a plot take shape. I hope this is the worst movie Rutger Hauer has ever been in, because if not, God help us all.

Written by Brian Irving and Tibor Takács
Directed by Tibor Takács

Grade: F

Random Movie Report #63: Gamera, Super Monster

2009-05-19T13:46:00.003-05:00

It’s a sign of my kaiju addiction that I buy DVDs of films in this genre that I don’t even expect to be any good. GAMERA, SUPER MONSTER was made by Daiei in 1980 at their lowest ebb; the Japanese film industry was still in bad shape and the company was facing substantial debt. To try and raise money quickly, they made the first Gamera film in 8 years, while spending as little money as possible on it. The bulk of this film is simply clips from other Gamera movies, arranged around a plot that steals as many elements from recent blockbusters as it can. It doesn’t work: the movie is only of interest as a morbid curiosity, a threadbare production drenched in desperation and attempting to reach an audience despite having nothing to offer.

A series of still images informs us that the evil and apparently sentient spaceship Zanon (which in no way resembles an Imperial Star Destroyer) is on its way to attack Earth. It’s apparently chasing after three superpowered spacewomen, who have blended into the normal population. Despite their powers, they’re unwilling to confront the evil spaceship directly, and can’t even turn into their super selves without alerting the ship to their presence. So, Zanon starts sending monsters to destroy the Earth, starting with the bat creature Gaos. Fortunately, through what seem to be the whims of a precocious monster-loving child named Keiichi (Koichi Maeda), Gamera appears out of nowhere to battle these monsters and save the day. In the meantime, Zanon sends a female agent to befriend Keiichi and track down the spacewomen, all while monster fights ensue.

All of the footage of the evil space monsters, and their battles with Gamera, are culled from previous Gamera movies. (They even manage to fit in some material from the black and white original by showing it as TV news footage.) New music has been slapped on, but this is basically a clip show. Some new footage of Gamera himself was shot, but it seems like they didn’t bother to build a full suit- instead, the monster is a stiff prop, always seen in the same flying position and only capable of moving its jaw. He resembles nothing so much as a prop for a theme park ride, and the evil spaceship fares little better, seen only a few times, never in much detail. One also suspects that the superwomen aren’t using their powers because that would cost too much.

It’s almost amusing how little effort this movie makes in cribbing from the hits. You’ve got a STAR WARS-type spaceship and three super-people two years after the SUPERMAN movie, the spacewomen rely frequently on a three-note chime that sounds suspiciously like the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS music, and when the sharklike Zigra’s fin cuts across the water, music a lot like the JAWS theme starts up. On top of this, Keiichi has two separate dream sequences in which he envisions Gamera flying through space alongside the Space Cruiser Yamato and the Galaxy Express 999- both scenes simply have the monster superimposed in front of shots from the relevant anime series, and it goes without saying that this has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. There’s even a plug for Shonen Jump and what looks like the M.U.S.C.L.E. franchise. It’s a genuine surprise when something happens that can’t immediately be identified as a steal from something else.

Of course, it would help if what was left weren’t so unmemorable. The characters are never established in much detail, except for Keiichi, who, among the Gamera series’ various monster-loving children, may be the most insistent and irritating of all. He holds the film hostage twice with his organ rendition of the Gamera march (not the same as the one from the Sixties films), insists that everything he dreams about Gamera will come true, walks through the entire film with the most maddening grin plastered on his face. To call the plot episodic would be charitable- you can basically tell things are winding down when they run out of monsters, and while the climax makes a game attempt at drama, the fact that it takes place in an abandoned playground kind of kills the mood.

The reason this film’s not a complete failure is that, even out of context, the older footage is still somewhat entertaining. A monster fight is a monster fight, after all, and while you may have seen these scenes before, it’s not bad as a greatest hits package. This doesn’t really excuse the movie, but it makes it almost painless as a viewing experience.

GAMERA, SUPER MONSTER is a curio, a career low for the super turtle but an interesting portrait of a studio trying something they had neither the resources nor the public interest to pull off. Only completists should bother.

Written, in a sense, by Nisan Takahashi
Directed, after a fashion, by Noriaki Yuasa

Grade: D+

In Theaters: Star Trek (2009)

2009-05-13T11:00:00.002-05:00

Rebooting moribund franchises has become the new “in” thing, and I suppose I really can’t complain when the results are this good. Nobody doubted that the STAR TREK franchise needed a good kick in the pants, and J. J. Abrams was, as predicted, the one to do it. The un-subtitled reboot is a fun, fast-moving space opera built on strong characters and a commitment to capturing the energy of the original series while sloughing off the accumulated burden of 40+ years of continuity. It has to do a lot of work just to tell the tale of how a young James T. Kirk became a starship captain and met up with Spock, McCoy, Uhura and company, and in the process it sometimes skips over plot points, but it holds together very well nonetheless.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) grows up in the shadow of his father, who died in a battle between the Federation starship Kelvin and a mysterious spiky craft that appeared out of a mysterious anomaly (see, it’s not that different from regular Star Trek after all!) He’s reckless and troubled and gets into a lot of fights, but is encouraged to join Starfleet by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), and after a cunning trick involving an Academy simulation program, ends up serving under Captain Pike on board the newly christened U.S.S. Enterprise, when it and several other ships are dispatched to respond to an emergency signal from the planet Vulcan. The mysterious ship has returned, captained by the vengeful Nero (Eric Bana), who witnessed the destruction of his homeworld in the future and blames the Federation- and specifically the half-Vulcan Spock (Zachary Quinto)- for the calamity. Pike is captured in the battle, leaving Spock in command, but Kirk thinks he knows what has to be done, leading to a conflict between the two over how to stop the madman.

One of the more interesting decisions that the filmmakers made here was not only to reboot STAR TREK, but to explicitly reconcile the new TREK universe with the continuity that every fan knows by heart (even though none of it makes any sense.) The future calamity that destroys Nero’s homeworld of Romulus also creates the time vortex that draws his own ship into the past, and his arrival and destruction of Kirk’s dad’s ship messes around with the course of history. Thus the entire movie takes place in an alternate timeline, thus explaining any discrepancies and allowing the filmmakers to make some pretty dramatic changes. It’s arguable how much this is actually necessary, since it does add an extra layer of complication to the story, but it’s a nice gesture and it allows for a welcome torch-passing cameo by a familiar face.

I was surprised at just how good the cast was for this movie. Chris Pine may look like one of a hundred CW players, but he manages to play Kirk as a sly, sort of self-satisfied bastard who’s too damn charming for any of the above to be a problem. Zachary Quinto plays Spock’s visible repression well, while Karl Urban nails Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy from his very first line. Zoe Saldana carries Uhura well through a plotline which makes more use of her character than the entire original series, but it’s Simon Pegg’s Scotty who nearly steals the show, interpreting the engineer as a tech geek boy genius who can’t help but think several steps ahead of everyone else, as long as he doesn’t have to think outside his field of expertise.

As one expects, this is mostly a movie about Kirk, and Spock to a lesser extent. But it seems that for every “bridge” character, the script is calculated to give them something awesome to do that’s not necessarily confined to the station they have. Uhura is great at picking up subspace transmissions, and is the only woman in the universe who is completely immune to Kirk’s charm. Sulu (John Cho) can drive the ship and also swordfight, while Chekov (Anton Yelchin) has trouble with his V’s but is good at beaming people out of difficult situations. McCoy uses his medical knowledge to guarantee Kirk a place on the Enterprise. The characters aren’t defined entirely by their jobs, and the film similarly ignores the chain of command whenever it’s convenient- there are field promotions flying everywhere from scene one, and it’s a good way of puncturing the formal pomposity that had undermined the franchise for so long.

The plot does have a few problems, mostly hinging on unlikely coincidences and VERY chance meetings. Also, a common movie cliché pops up not once but twice, and both times it’s justified by the plot but without spoiling too much, once is acceptable, twice is a Disney movie. I love the shiny and unspoiled visual style, but the lens flare gets so excessive at times the film really shouldn’t be viewed by the seizure-prone. (I understand even Abrams has said they went a little too far, but by the time they figured it out it was too late.) And though this isn’t actually a flaw, it’s interesting how the engineering areas of the ship now look like the kind of factory they used to shoot low-budget sci-fi movies in.

It’s hard for me to make up my mind just how much I enjoyed this movie; because of the relentless speed and unpretentiousness of the film, some bits don’t stick strongly in the memory, but I still have an overall great impression. As some have noted, the movie lacks any major intellectual themes and is short on gosh-wow concepts like the Genesis device in WRATH OF KHAN, but if the film shortchanges the “visionary” side of the franchise it doesn’t betray it. It’s still a bright and colorful universe full of neat aliens and gorgeous looking spaceships and people boldly going places- they haven’t removed the underlying optimism of the franchise, just focused on the action elements. Maybe the next voyage will give us a touch more sense of wonder, but really I can’t complain. Too much has been done right here for any flaws to linger. STAR TREK is what a summer blockbuster should be: spectacular, exciting, and generally upbeat. I had my doubts, but it works brilliantly, and I think I’ll see it again.

Based on “Star Trek” created by Gene Roddenberry
Screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Directed by J. J. Abrams

Grade: A

The Comics Page #23: DC Showcase Presents Ambush Bug

2009-05-12T22:55:00.002-05:00

Comedy superhero books have an unfortunate habit of not lasting very long, so those of us who appreciate the genre tend to treasure the ones that come down the pike. To call Ambush Bug a superhero would maybe be inaccurate, and he’s only briefly a supervillain, but he’s the DC Universe’s silliest resident and primary deconstructionist, and while his current miniseries languishes in publishing limbo just shy of its final issue, it’s as good a time as any to enjoy DC’s comprehensive showcase collection of his earlier misadventures. Created by Keith Giffen, and given dialogue by Robert Loren Fleming, Ambush Bug can be seen here quickly evolving from a mildly interesting supervillain concept to a character whose very existence seems to threaten the tenuous nature of comic book continuity itself.

Ambush Bug first popped up in DC COMICS PRESENTS in the early 80s, during a bit of a doldrums for the company. The Bronze Age was slowly moving towards a close and a bunch of characters and concepts were on the verge of being retconned by CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, and in this bleh period the green suited bug first pops up to menace Superman and the then-new Doom Patrol, murdering a Metropolis D.A. just to establish his villainy and popping around town thanks to a miniature robot bug teleportation network (and that idea makes a lot more sense in context.) He gets away and causes trouble later for the Legion of Substitute Heroes and Supergirl (who he thinks is Superman, just looking a bit different) before starting to work as an independent hero type and slowly drifting out of normal continuity as we know it, into a succession of miniseries and specials.

Ambush Bug’s actual origin story involves a suit sent from a doomed planet in a rocket that was later bitten by a radioactive spider, before ending up in the hands of Irvin Schwab, who was raised by a solid-state television set. Or maybe not- later he insists that his secret origin is just that, secret, and you aren’t ever gonna hear it. Whatever he is, wherever he comes from, the Bug can go anywhere he pleases, and with his loyal sidekick Cheeks, the Toy Wonder (don’t ask) he confronts discontinuity, giant Koalas, editor Julius Schwartz, an evil sock, and... *gasp*... DARKSEID!

Silliness doesn’t begin to describe it. To say that Giffen did the plotting for Ambush Bug (at least after he came into his own as a character- Paul Kupperberg wrote the Doom Patrol and Supergirl stories) implies that there’s plot, which is a half truth at best. Oh, there’s usually a pretense of a story, but Giffen and Fleming frequently get bored and digress into side gags like puppetry, art lessons, recipes for teriyaki burgers, data sheets (of the DC and Playboy variety), Cheeks as a combat medic, the adventures of Ambush Bug’s magna counterpart Mitsu-Bishi, the list goes on.

Most of the humor comes from satirizing comic trends, specifically DC’s attempts to present a coherent and serious universe in light of decades of pure silliness. Its efforts are personified by Jonni DC, the continuity cop who is turned from a personified DC logo into a disturbingly curvy woman due to the efforts of the Interferer, who revises and reboots comic characters at a whim. As inside-baseball as it sometimes seems, Giffen and Fleming’s satire is sharp and engaging, and Giffen’s uniquely scratchy art style matches the material pretty well.

In some ways the collection is a mixed bag, with a few almost normal superhero stories preceding a slide into absolute insanity. I actually enjoyed the early appearances just as a look at what DC was like in the early 80s, and it’s fascinating to see how Ambush Bug developed from a mildly humorous villain concept to a pure comedy figure. There’s some really brilliant stuff here, and some stuff I don’t understand at all, and the occasional moment that’s almost moving (Cheeks is nothing if not sympathetic.) Definitely worth having around and dipping into now and then, if only as a reminder that good comic books don’t necessarily have to make sense.

Grade: A-

The Comics Page #22: Dan Dare: Prisoners of Space

2009-05-08T01:47:00.003-05:00

I actually picked up DAN DARE: PRISONERS OF SPACE thinking it was the immediate follow-up to THE RED MOON MYSTERY, which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. Hey, these things aren’t numbered. Instead we end up jumping ahead a few years for a return engagement by Dare’s favored enemy the Mekon, in a story that is conceptually bog-standard but executed tightly enough to be a fun read. Not every story arc could involve ancient mysteries from the depths of space, after all.

The action starts at Space HQ’s Astral Training College, where promising cadets Steve Valiant and “Flamer” Spry (don’t say anything) are taken on a tour of Dan Dare’s new experimental rocket, the “Performing Flea”. Through normal boys’ adventure shenanigans they accidentally launch the rocket (with a curmudgeonly Scotsman named “Groupie” on board), and are forced to dock with a nearby space station while Dan prepares to pick them up. Unfortunately, said station has been commandeered by the reptilian genius known as the Mekon, along with his loyal Treen soldiers, and the cadets and Groupie are quickly captured. The Mekon promises he’ll let the prisoners go in exchange for Dare’s surrender, and Dare solemnly agrees. However, Digby stows away on Dare’s ship, and they quickly discover that the alien mastermind has designs on reconquering his old Venusian stomping grounds.

This is pretty much pure cliffhanger stuff as soon as the plot gets moving; it’s a simple set-up, so writers Frank Hampson and Allan Stranks don’t have to dwell on any potentially boring exposition. Nothing really strange or exotic pops up, we’re just watching the good guys face off against the established bad guys for what was then the third time.

Most of the drama this time comes from Dan Dare’s very heroic and very properly British integrity- once promising the Mekon that he’ll give himself up to save the boys’ lives, he’s pretty thoroughly committed to that course of action even when an opportunity to save them and himself arises. It’s up to the others to help him and to the Mekon to be so predictably underhanded as to force the hero to act. We know that one or both of these things must inevitably happen, so the fun is in seeing how. Codes of honor and such also come into play regarding the boys trapped on board- Steve Valiant is forced to play along as the Mekon’s willing servant to prevent the others being killed, which causes Flamer to see him as a dirty deceitful rat. Such are the sacrifices one must make for the greater good (the greater good).

That heady business aside, most of the strips are just about twisting the story enough to keep the reader hooked for next week, and on that level the writers do their job. There’s never the sense that the plot is being unnecessarily dragged out or that the pacing is off; overall this particular arc lasted for almost a year, but despite its simplicity it never outstays its welcome.

The art here- by Hampson, Desmond Walduck, and Don Harley- is a bit more polished than on RED MOON, though this may just be a sign that Titan Books improved their printing process. The colors are bright and candylike, and though this story doesn’t offer as many opportunities for visual spectacle as the other I’ve reviewed we get some nice spacefights and the like.

Reading a big collection of work that was meant to be taken two pages at a time by bored British schoolchildren is an unusual experience, but PRISONERS OF SPACE holds up surprisingly well for something that was obviously never meant to be read all in one go. There’s nothing that makes it a real must read, but for someone already hooked on Dan Dare there’s nothing that disappoints either. Hampson and company deliver what they promise, with as much style as ever.

Grade: B+

In Theaters: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009-05-05T14:46:00.004-05:00

From the opening scene, in which a young boy in flannel pyjamas cries out “NOOOOO!” and stabs a man with bone claws embedded in his hands, you can rest comfortably knowing what kind of movie X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE will be. It’s not good by any means, in fact it hovers quite near outright bad. But it’s the rare funny kind of bad, not so close to good that it frustrates you but not so utterly horrible that it’s hard to bear. The first theoretically solo screen outing for Marvel’s immortal cash cow is comfortably dumb, and in a sense captures the unwarranted seriousness and bizarre plotting that have dogged the character’s comic incarnation ever since he became a draw.

Hugh Jackman plays James Howlett, later Logan, later Wolverine, a mutant with healing powers that allow him to survive just about anything and keep him and similarly mutated brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) alive through the Civil War, both World Wars, and Vietnam, which is sort of interesting because I’m almost sure they’re Canadian. They’re recruited by General William Stryker (Danny Huston) for a special covert group of mutant soldiers doing unsavory black ops, but flees when Victor and company massacre the inhabitants of a village in Nigeria. Years later he’s living in the mountains with a gorgeous girlfriend (Lynn Collins) and working as a lumberjack, when Victor shows up again and for vague reasons kills said girlfriend. Wolverine signs up with Stryker again to get revenge, and his powers are augmented by a skeleton of unbreakable adamantium, with claws to boot. He overhears that Stryker plans to wipe his memory and ship him to “the island”, so he breaks out and triggers a manhunt that eventually leads him to some old partners and the revelation that Stryker and Victor are working together to capture mutants for a program to build the ultimate mutant soldier under U.S. control, or something.

As twisted as the overall story is, it’s almost impossible NOT to predict where a given scene is going to lead. The script is composed of at least 75% action film clichés, and the film makes no attempt whatsoever to disguise the recycling. The dialogue is particularly ripe with this sort of thing, all sorts of macho posturing about blood and vengeance and badassery that becomes giggle-inducing after a while.

It helps that Hugh Jackman is an actor who’s apparently game for anything. After three movies he’s comfortable with the part of Wolverine, obviously, and he jumps into it with enthusiasm. There’s even a bit of comic exasperation in his performance, Wolverine being constantly betrayed, knocked around, having things fall on him, etc. Schreiber plays off him well, but strangely Victor gets sidelined in the film’s final act.

Now, I suppose you’re wondering what, for me, the practicable difference is between a bad but enjoyable film and one I’ll legitimately defend. I gave a good review to TRANSFORMERS, after all. But TRANSFORMERS knew it was kind of silly, while WOLVERINE comes across as almost entirely straight faced. There’s comic relief, of course, and a scene where Wolverine battles the corpulent Blob (Kevin Durand) in a boxing match approaches a kind of kitsch brilliance, but we’re apparently expected to take most of the amateur melodramatics seriously, and the filmmakers show too much restraint for the picture to realize its full camp potential.

A certain inconsistency dogs the action and effects sequences. Some of the effects work is quite good, some is not great but acceptable, and some of it was clearly done the day before release. None of the action scenes really stand out, although the climactic fight has a few good shots in it. The direction is sometimes quite sloppy and pedestrian, and last minute editing seems to have cut out most of Ryan Reynolds’ performance as Wade Wilson / Deadpool, which is a shame. Speaking of editing, I’m fairly sure that we don’t hear Wolvie’s girlfriend’s name until some time in the final act. (It’s Kayla.)

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE may be so slipshod it makes THE LAST STAND look like a polished masterpiece by comparison, but if you know what to expect going in it’s hard to dislike the film too much. Honestly, the convoluted backstory and enforced edginess of the Wolverine character/brand made any solo effort likely to fail from the start, and an effort that fails entertainingly is probably not the worst we could do. I’m disappointed that it didn’t turn out to be a musical, but that was too much to hope for.

Based on characters created by various persons within Marvel Comics
Screenplay by David Benioff and Skip Woods
Directed by Gavin Hood

Grade: C

Opening Credits Sequence Theatre: Superman Returns

2009-04-30T21:58:00.003-05:00

I'm a big fan of Bryan Singer's SUPERMAN RETURNS; it's a controversial film at the very least, and the number of people who utterly despise it is kind of disheartening. I gave it a glowing review at the time, of course, and I still hold out the vain hope that he'll be given another go and that Warner Bros. won't hand the franchise off to a hack. As a way of continued tribute then, the film's wonderful opening, which needs little commentary:

Yes, I'm well aware it's the end of the month, what's your point?

The Comics Page #21: Dan Dare: The Red Moon Mystery

2009-04-30T13:37:00.003-05:00

Seeing as I’ve looked at Garth Ennis’ solid DAN DARE revival recently, it only makes sense that I should also go to the original. Titan Books has released several collections of Dan’s adventures in the beloved UK comics weekly EAGLE, and I’ll go through a couple. Because I found both at random we start with the second volume; “The Red Moon Mystery” was my introduction to the character, and a fine one it is. Written and drawn mostly by Frank Hampson and his studio, the second major Dan Dare arc is a classic old-school sci-fi tale which mixes over-the-top space opera with some rather intriguing scientific concepts.
Dan Dare is visiting his uncle Ivor, a famous archaeologist investigating the ruins of the dead planet Mars. Ivor has discovered writings of the inhabitants’ last days, warning of a red moon which approached the planet and somehow wiped out all life on the planet in less than a week. No sooner has this discovery been made than a red moon appears in the solar system, heading towards Earth in a way that makes it appear that it’s being steered by some intelligence. It falls to Dare, his pal Digby, the lovely and brilliant Prof. Peabody, and others to unravel the mystery of this celestial menace while protecting the people in its path, including the colonists of Mars.

Obviously I’m not going to disclose the secret of what the moon is, suffice it to say it’s a downright clever concept grounded in reasonably plausible science. There’s no true antagonist character here, though mutineers among the evacuees provide a bit of extra conflict; it’s mostly a disaster story, with epic scenes of destruction and tempestuous storms aplenty. The pacing on this arc is excellent; there’s always a sense of forward momentum because the Red Moon simply keeps moving closer, bringing chaos with it.

The art isn’t reproduced as well as it could be, but it’s remarkably well-detailed and has an interesting use of color; British and European comics weren’t quite as restricted by printing techniques as their US counterparts, and the deep shades used here add to the story’s atmosphere. The future technology is rendered with great dedication, the character designs (with sketches often being based on poses by people in the studio) are all memorable, and I was particularly struck by the surrealistic vistas of the moon’s surface.

The ending of this story drags on a bit as a way of leading into the next major plot arc, but it’s still suspenseful up to that point. People wanting to get into the classic Dan Dare adventures will likely want to start at the beginning, but if like me you chance across this particular volume, it’s a great introduction. It’s pulp sci-fi done with intelligence and polish, and a certain bit of class.

Grade: A-

The Bookshelf: The Wages of Fear by Georges Arnaud

2009-04-29T00:10:00.003-05:00

For a while I was convinced that I wouldn’t ever find an English copy of WAGES OF FEAR (the book) outside of a rare books dealer or a library’s special collections. Still, I would look, and at one library my inquistiveness unexpectedly paid off. The copy seems to date from the early 50s and I’m surprised it’s still in circulation, but I’m not going to argue. Instead let’s just enjoy a classic thriller, one which inspired two equally-brilliant film adaptations yet has somehow disappeared from the US book trade.

The book takes place in Guatemala (and somehow neither movie mentioned this), in Las Piedras, a town dominated by an American oil company. An explosion at one of their derricks leaves the company with a fire to put out quickly, and doing so requires that a quantity of volatile nitroglycerine (the only kind worth having) be hauled with great delicacy across 200 miles of treacherous jungle roads. The company puts out a call that is answered by four desperate men; all foreigners, hiding from crime or debt, hoping to buy their way out of the poverty-ridden hellhole. The focus of the book settles on Gerard, a Frenchman and former smuggler with ambitions of buying a boat, and Johnny, a twitchy Romanian fleeing a death sentence.

The book is short and tersely written, despite a few meditations on fear and its effects on people, how it both helps and hinders us. (The translation by Norman Dale is smooth enough, with a few clunky passages.) This is at heart a page turner, one to be blazed through in a few days at the most. It’s a form of novel that’s been tragically sidelined by modern publishing- nowadays even the trashiest of books is a disappointment if it doesn’t make it to 300 pages. In fact, I find it almost ironic that both film versions of this seemed to devote more attention to developing the characters. Speaking of the films, I can now definitely say that the original French version (which I need to get to reviewing sometime, if only to complete the triptych) is closer to this, but both took some interesting liberties.

The lack of space devoted to character development is sometimes to the book’s detriment, but the exploration of the relationship between Gerard and Johnny is quite well done. Gerard resents Johnny’s cowardice, but an inevitable comraderie develops. Where Arnaud really excels is in the attention to detail; according to the book jacket, he was taken prisoner in WWII, escaped to Latin America, and worked at a number of odd jobs, truck driving being one of them. The mechanics of moving a truck across bad roads as delicately as possible are, understandably, a huge part of the story, and with his own experience as an aid to research, Arnaud makes every step of the journey seem authentic. It’s the sort of thing that I have to seethe with envy at, because it would take me a solid six years buried in technical manuals to even begin to fabricate something as plausible.

At heart, THE WAGES OF FEAR is a good read, overshadowed by the cinematic genius it inspired but a compelling book nonetheless. It’s a damn shame that it’s been allowed to drift out of print; I’ll regret having to return this copy, that’s for sure, and you know what Amazon resellers are like. So keep your eyes peeled, or if you feel so inclined, start boning up on your French.

Grade: A-

Dave Arneson, 1947-2009

2009-04-10T14:07:00.004-05:00

I was hoping to get back to regular reviews at some point, but for now, another formless text piece. Not a rant this time, but another memoriam. Dave Arneson, the co-creator of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, passed away recently at the age of 61, over a year after the passing of his collaborator, E. Gary Gygax. Arneson wasn’t quite as well known or prolific as Gygax, and so doen’t quite get the credit he deserves. So I figure he deserves a tribute at least as long as Gygax got, even if I’m now finding myself rummaging for something new to say.

I’m fuzzy on the early history of D&D’s development, but I do know that Arneson was the creator of Blackmoor, a fantasy setting that actually predated the game. He’d been working with miniature wargaming and introducing fantasy elements, and Blackmoor was the world he had the games take place in. The desire for a more codified rules set than existed at the time led him to team up with Gygax, who had been involved in the CHAINMAIL medieval miniatures game, and together they developed D&D based on the structure of one of Arneson’s Blackmoor scenarios. It formed the background for the earliest D&D games, but the world wasn’t presented in much detail until it was published as a third-party campaign setting in 2004.

Arneson parted ways with Gygax and TSR near the end of the 70s, (though he briefly returned to author a few Blackmoor modules when Gygax temporarily took control of the company) and was kept out of the copyright for ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS by virtue of Gygax writing the whole thing. At one point Arneson was involved in a lawsuit against TSR regarding ownership of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS trademark, but this was resolved when WotC took over (hence the third edition going back to D&D.) Despite these troubles Arneson never seemed bitter about his experience, and continued running games and working with game design in various forms until shortly before his death.

Arneson’s death came at the end of a long battle with cancer, and far too soon for anyone. But he leaves behind a great legacy- a game that spawned a medium, a game that encourages the imagination, and something very fun for the nerdier set, i.e. people like me. He didn’t get quite enough credit for it, but he’s not going entirely unsung. I hope I’ve done justice to him in my small way, and if it’s not too sappy, I’d like to imagine he’s just now started on his greatest adventure. Or, at the very least, that he and Gary are finally collaborating again.

Rest in peace, Mr. Arneson. We won’t forget you.

Rant the Second: My "Scott and Jean"

2009-04-09T02:23:00.003-05:00

Another late meme, and another rant that you may or may not be interested in. Basically, over at AlertNerd, a post coined the phrase “My Scott and Jean”- which specifically refers to Scott Summers and Jean Grey of X-Men fame, their romance and her death/rebirth and all the drama associated with it, etc., but generally means one thing in fiction you can’t discuss rationally (or wholly rationally) because of how geekily you are devoted to it. They’re also known as “Geek Sacred Cows”. Since I’m a geek, I don’t want for these things, so one week after everyone has ceased to care, I’ve narrowed it down to three.

1. Maxwell Lord is a sleaze, a scumbag, a shady character. But he’s not all bad.

In Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’ legendary run on the Justice League, Maxwell Lord was introduced as a corrupt businessman with designs on giving the League international status and U.N. backing. He was also working with an alien computer to try and take over the world. He was first intended just as a villain, with artist Kevin Maguire basing his appearance on that of Sam Neill in OMEN: THE FINAL CONFLICT, but by the time they got around to resolving his arc, Giffen and DeMatteis decided they wanted to keep the character around, so he had a change of heart and redeemed himself in a rather touching issue. Since then he became the league’s UN liaison and boss, and generally went back and forth between blatantly self interested, manipulative scum, and someone with the League’s best interests at heart. You never knew where you stood with him.

At least until COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS, wherein he became the evil head of Checkmate and blew Ted Kord’s brains out. Now, I understand this was to develop the story that would become INFINITE CRISIS, and when Lord was killed by Wonder Woman later, that set up a bunch of plot threads for her that have yet to die.

Frankly, though, the move never made any sense to me, despite various retcon attempts. Yes, Max was a bastard, but he had limits. He was willing to let a crazed would-be terrorist get himself killed as part of a set up for the League, and in his past came close to killing his own boss, but held back. More importantly, I like him as an ambiguous figure. The entire point was that you didn’t know where you stood with him- it was impossible to say at any given moment whose interests he was pursuing. He was a complex figure, a three-dimensional one, and at heart I’m a sucker for redemption narratives. As an out-and-out supervillain his possibilities were extremely limited- you know from the start not to trust him, because he’s wearing Black Ops gear and trying to control Superman’s mind, so he becomes Lex Luthor with added mind control powers.

The presence of extra-evil Maxwell Lord was enough to drive me away from the “Blue and Gold” arc in BOOSTER GOLD, as many good things as I keep hearing about that series. And he’s showing up in BLACKEST NIGHT, or so rumor has it. So I may sit that one out.

2 (though related to the above). I want Ted Kord alive, dammit.

Ever since the death of the second Blue Beetle in the aforementioned pre-INFINITE CRISIS event, a lot of writers have tried to make sure that Ted gets the respect in death he didn’t in life. The aforementioned BOOSTER GOLD arc apparently dealt with how Ted’s seemingly-insignificant sacrifice actually prevented Lord and the Omacs from getting too far in their plan for world domination or whatever, and how it was a necessary and noble thing, etc. I get that it’s now considered a moral victory- Ted was physically defeated but held to his principles up to the end.

And yet- I dunno. Maybe it’s just that, due to geek sacred cow #1, I didn’t accept that this storyline had much worth to it in the first place. But also, Ted is probably the superhero character I most identify with, and I wanna see him win it all, get the girl (though many shippers would dispute this particular point) and if they have to retire him, have him ride into the sunset. Not quite as dramatic, but it makes more sense for a lighthearted hero like him- especially since he’s easily the nerdiest of the superheroes, an insecure joker who sometimes messes up but whom you can’t help but love.

On top of that, I get turned off by the underlying idea that the time Ted proved himself was the time he stopped kidding around. That he had to get serious and get grim in order to do what had to be done. There’s this impression I get from superhero comics sometimes that superheroing now is considered a business which requires both the discipline of a Navy Seal and the solemnity of a death row prison guard. I don’t think it’s right that the character’s defining moment is his most serious. He needs a do-over.

That said, as I hope I’ve established before, I’ve got nothing against the new Blue Beetle, and if/when Ted comes back I don’t want him to displace Jaime.

3. The Time Lords are more interesting as a living civilization than a lost legacy.

I love the new DOCTOR WHO, and I totally understand why Russell T. Davies decided to blow up Gallifrey offscreen at the start of it. It’s a great deck-clearing situation which also served to give the character some extra motivation and give everyone a mystery going in. But it’s been nearly 4 years to the day, and I think the well’s run dry. The whole “lonely god” aspect of the Doctor has been played out, and though that’s always been part of the character, he needs to veer back towards “eccentric adventurer”, and not having a lost planet to brood over might help.

Also, even though the Time Lords are generally regarded as hard to write and not conducive to great stories, I love the guys. Super-advanced dead civilizations are everywhere in science fiction, it’s a valid and common trope, but frankly I think it’s even more interesting if you’ve got a godlike ancient race that’s still around and still has some power. The Time Lords are also versatile- they can be the bad, corrupt people repressing the Doctor or doing some unethical meddling in one story, and decent folk who need saving from Sontarans the next. I want to see the grandeur of Gallifrey captured as best the production team can (though I was grateful for the flashback near the end of Season 3), and I want to see it explored. And I don’t want the Doctor to be forever the last of his kind and someone who only wanders because he had to destroy his home. The Time War thing is coming dangerously close to defining the Doc’s whole character, and we need to see more that he’s a wanderer and adventurer by choice.

I spent way too long on something that’s supposed to be irrational and inexplicable. Oh well, that’s my contribution to the meme. And I’ll try to have something more coherent next time.

Probably a bad idea.

2009-04-04T19:09:00.003-05:00

Warning: The post that follows contains spoilers for DOLLHOUSE, the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA finale, and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. It is also a rant, and thus poorly structured and vague in its intent. Feel free to skip it. However, to prevent this from being a complete waste of time, and also to conduct an experiment in site traffic, here's a photo of Jennifer Connelly.

I’ve developed a kind of precogniscence that I’d rather do without. (Now I know how Christopher Walken felt.) It seems that after years of discussing media on the internet, as well as enjoying unpopular examples of said media, I now know when people on the internet will hate something well out of proportion to its actual flaws. I’m not sure whether I’m becoming more perceptive or if fandom, in the broad sense of the word, has become that predictable.

Last night I saw an episode of DOLLHOUSE, Joss Whedon’s latest series, set in a creepy facility where “actives”, people who’ve had their personalities wiped, are implanted with different personalities and skill sets to do jobs for wealthy clients. It’s a decent show, took a while to get going and will probably be canceled sooner rather than later, but never mind that. The episode in question involved a bunch of actives remembering who they were and trying to escape the facility. In the end, it was revealed that this was a psychological experiment to deal with some of the repressed baggage these particular actives had, that had been surfacing in prior missions. It was a fun episode which deepened some of the characters, expanded on the setting, and moved at a good clip. But I knew the final twist, and the fact that this episode had not demolished the status quo as the network promos had hinted, would in fact piss a lot of people off, and so it did. I was enjoying the episode but dreading the inevitable blowback.

Go back a bit to the ending of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. In a final confrontational moment, resident religious nut/glorious scumbag/whatever the Hell else he is Gaius Baltar offered his explanation of divine forces at work bringing the Cylons and the last hope of humanity together at one vital moment. The possibility of divine influence in this series was always present, but sci-fi fans were generally hoping for something more concrete and detailed, and detailed explanations- of whether Baltar was right or an idiot, of what the Head-things are, of what Starbuck was, etc.- were not forthcoming. I didn’t mind the ambiguity but I knew that others would, especially since the Sci-Fi Channel had been promoting the final season by promising that all questions would be answered. On top of that, I knew that a final decision by the characters would be perceived as particularly anti-science, pro-Luddite, and generally backwards and reactionary in our modern political climate, and in this case I thought the articulation of that decision was kind of weak (the show, magnificent as it was, had a tendency to lapse into cliché dialogue now and again), so I felt some of the end scenes were flawed, but to me they were minor issues. To others they totally ruined the end of the series.

I’m getting repetitive but I’d like to go back even further, to May of last year and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. My positive review of this film is a matter of public record, and at some point opinion on the film went from polarized to profoundly negative, as seems to be the fate of anything George Lucas has his name even remotely attached to. (I’m sure he doesn’t care, having enough money to start his own country, but the way his name is spoken like a curse annoys me. Price of success I suppose.) Now, the film definitely had flaws. But more unpleasant than the actual bad parts of the movie (the overly abrupt ending, John Hurt having nothing to do, etc.) was watching the parts that I knew fanboys on the Internet would lose their shit over. The early scenes in the desert have a lot of prairie dogs popping up, and they’re obviously CG and sort of a passive Greek chorus to the high-action absurdity going on, which is weird but funny. But because it’s so cartoony, it was once again evidence of Lucas’ sinister immaturity tainting a formerly dignified franchise. And then there’s the nuked fridge. Indy rides out an A-bomb test in a lead-lined refrigerator, which I found amusing and it set up a great shot of him looking up at a mushroom cloud signifying the passing of an era. It’s blatantly impossible, so lo and behold, “Nuking the Fridge” is now common Internet parlance for ruining a franchise.

And it’s not like this only happens with moments I otherwise don’t mind. I do think the business with Mutt leading a bunch of monkeys to mess with the Nazis was kind of stupid. Emphasis on “kind of”, because it’s an obvious Tarzan homage and this is a pulp movie and seriously, have you seen some of the crap they get away with over in the Mummy series? But of course, if there is one thing fans cannot stand it is a series not being taken as seriously as they themselves take it, so this movie ends up on worst-of-the-year lists and anything wrong with it is the fault of you-know-who.

Objectively I shouldn’t care. If you enjoy something, the fact that others don’t shouldn’t give you pause. If you think it’s actually objectively good and others think it is terrible, you are not necessarily wrong. But sometimes the sheer level of vitriol makes a reasonable give-and-take over something harder to engage in- the con side defines the terms of the argument and you end up having to defend monkeys and fridge-nukes before you get to talk about the things you actually liked. On this blog, at least, I can structure an argument without going into defense mode, but I enjoy actually having a give and take with people as well.

If you’re not sure what point I’m making, welcome to the club. Obviously people will disagree on things, and such is the Internet. I wish debates like this took place on more fundamental levels- story and character and aesthetics rather than individual weird moments- but at the same time I suspect that a lot of the complaints you hear are shorthand. BATMAN AND ROBIN isn’t a terrible film solely or even primarily because there are nipples on the batsuit, but “nipples on the batsuit” is sort of a code for the film’s campy attitude and aesthetic, which doesn’t work because the performers don’t sell it like they did on the Adam West series, etc. DIE ANOTHER DAY’s problem is not that James Bond windsurfs down an iceberg but that the film seems to ricochet between absurd madness like that and attempts at low-key geopolitical intrigue like two scripts were shoved together at random.

I suppose my problem is perspective and a lack thereof. We’re talking about things that represent individual whims and choices on the part of writers/directors/etc., conceptual decisions that in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. It’s all in the execution, and examining why something works or doesn’t is a lot more interesting than just pointing to it. I suppose all of us, myself included, could also stand to be more open to disagreement and the idea that the opposing side may in fact have valid points. Too often I hear these points espoused as geek gospel, something that’s been decided on, and someone who challenges them is an apologist- a Whedonite, a Morrison whorrison (though that’s actually kind of clever), an undiscerning fanboy who refuses to recognize the truth. It hate it when these situations occur, and that’s why I hate being able to see them coming. There’s no way for creators to avoid it because fans are impossible to uniformly please, and catering solely to them means losing your own voice, a fate I would not wish on Whedon, Ron Moore, George Lucas, or frankly even Michael Bay. Not that they’re paying attention.

Opening Credits Sequence Theatre: Watchmen

2009-03-30T23:50:00.004-05:00

Been meaning to do this one for a while, and perhaps I should have done so before Warner Bros. and/or Paramount started taking it down wherever it popped up. Whatever, it's worth seeing (though Not Safe For Work):

Since one of the things that was cut from the film version of WATCHMEN was Hollis Mason's memoir "Under The Hood", which details the heyday of the costumed crimefighters, it's good that the information is conveyed in such a creative fashion. A fun sequence done by a firm called Yu+Co which conveys how these characters have subtly altered history (the twist on the famous V-J day photograph, for example), and though the song choice is a little on the nose, the use of a protest anthem does bring in the political element of the story as well. Also, it's a good song (though I suspect it's the reason the lawyers are so adamant about taking down a video that would have been good publicity otherwise.)

This one might get taken down, so see it while you can.

The Comics Page #20: Dan Dare

2009-03-28T17:43:00.003-05:00

Many people reading this may not be familiar with Dan Dare; though the British space opera hero has been an iconic figure in UK comics for over half a century, for some reason he remains mostly unknown in the United States. Now, I’ve actually read some vintage Dan Dare material and may actually tackle that at some point, but recently I decided to take a look at a recent take on the character by writer Garth Ennis and artist Gary Erskine. When I first heard Ennis was tackling this project, I was not confident; thanks to titles like THE BOYS and PREACHER he’s earned a reputation as a shock artist who does cynical “mature” titles. I gave him too little credit, as he’s a devoted fan of Dan Dare and wrote the new series as a straightforward update, and it’s a damn fine job. The collection I bought, an oversized “collector’s edition”, may not have been the ideal purchase, but this series from the now-defunct Virgin Comics is something to seek out.

Dan Dare (yes, that’s his actual name) used to be the pilot of Earth’s space fleet, but now lives in retirement in a holographic England-that-was on a remote asteroid, while the modern world, led by a strong but strangely amnesiac United Kingdom, moves on around him. (The US and China blew each other up at some point in the past, though this doesn’t affect the plot much.) However, the UK government has figured out that Dan Dare’s old enemy, the alien mastermind known as the Mekon, is alive and well and planning an attack on civilized space, and the Prime Minister has no sooner contacted Dare than the unprepared fleet is attacked by the Mekon’s warships. Dare and a couple of old friends- scientist and PM advisor Jocelyn Peabody, and old soldier Digby- are quickly called upon to help battle the invasion and protect human and alien alike from the Mekon’s monstrous horde.

That’s as far as I got, since this collector’s edition only contains the first three issues of the six issue series. It keeps the price low, I’ll grant you, but it ends abruptly and since Virgin is no longer in the comics game (owing to a number of factors, but the name may not have helped) we’re not going to get a second such edition, so you’re better off looking for the Omnibus Hardcover. The secondary market can be such a pain sometimes.

Anyway, the comic. What struck me at first was that this is not actually a reboot. Dan (still with the bizarre eyebrows) had all of his old adventures, it’s just that the world has changed around him. Erskine pencils the book in a style that’s modern but still close enough to the old Eagle comics that when we get a splash page flashing back to the good old days, the juxtaposition doesn’t seem completely outrageous. The art’s pretty brilliant, and one thing I will say in favor of this prestige format is that it shows it off to fine advantage. The cover art is good, but for the fact that Dan appears to have more ammo pouches than a Rob Liefeld creation. Still not sure about that.

In addition to the fine art, we have a plot that moves at a good pace and throws out some surprises without going very far afield. There’s more to the invasion than just a bunch of aliens appearing out of nowhere, and Dare has to lead a military that hasn’t been prepared to do battle with giant green monsters roaming the Martian surface. There’s some attempt at social commentary here, with Dare representing the forgotten spirit of Great Britain, and at times Ennis goes a little overboard- the Prime Minister doesn’t even know about the Battle of Britain, which Dare’s grandfather fought in, and remember, this is a country where students are currently taught the importance of events that happened over 900 years ago as a major part of their history. In fact I’m not entirely clear why Britain is supposed to be suffering this identity crisis- as the book makes clear, they’re the survivor of a war that destroyed the two leading superpowers, so you’d imagine they’d be feeling particularly smug about themselves and trying to export their culture all over what’s left of the world. That said, there’s a nice panel showing the London skyline, with the old monuments still there but overshadowed by giant glass structures out of Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD.

Again, the whole thing cuts off early and I need to read the whole arc at some point, but it’s a good three issues. Virgin Comics may be done with, but hopefully this revival of the Dare franchise won’t fall by the wayside. It’s a good continuation point for the character, and a good jumping-on point for people unfamiliar with him. I’ll be putting the Omnibus link in the sidebar so you can get the full story, and unless the ending is spectacularly bad it’s worth the investment. It’s good to have Dan Dare back, even for those of us who didn’t know he was gone.

Grade: B+

Fling on DVD

2009-03-26T01:40:00.004-05:00

Just as a heads up, the movie FLING, directed by John Stewart Muller (friend of the blogger) and co-edited by Ben Waters (brother of the blogger), is now on DVD. I did a not-quite-review of the movie back here, suffice it to say I recommend it (and need to get around purchasing a copy myself.) As always, you can purchase it via the image above. Enjoy.

Short Film Report: Nemesis

2009-03-22T01:54:00.002-05:00

Recently I received an e-mail from Stian Hafstad, an aspiring filmmaker who wanted to point me towards his student project, a sort of superhero comedy called “Nemesis”. It’s on Youtube, so I’ll be putting it up for you to look at as well. Below the cut, my thoughts.

As familiar as the subject matter is these days, “Nemesis” takes an interesting approach. The humor is straightforward and low-key, light enough not to undermine what story and characterization there is. The basic concept, of a hero and nemesis “battling” each other for the sole purpose of awakening whatever power lies within them, is fascinating, and though the film isn’t long enough to explore all the implications, it still feels like a complete story.

The acting is good throughout, and though I actually watched the low-quality version I still thought it came off as very polished and professional. (Apparently it’s been through a couple of drafts.) The cinematography is sharp and the music selections are well placed. I also have to give kudos to the translation done for the subtitles; I didn’t spot any grammatical errors or idiomatic issues.

There’s not much else I can say about the project, so if you haven’t given it a watch already I recommend you do so. A fun little movie that’s worth 10 minutes of your time.