I just saw “Thor” with my brother and nephew, and was struck by how dead-on ordinary it was. In short, this would be a good rental on a Friday night if you’re staying in to drink. In long…

DARK, DARK, DARK

Having heard that “Thor” wasn’t filmed in 3-D natively, we opted to see the regular 2-D version, and the first twenty minutes or so were just annoyingly difficult to see what was going on because the screen was so dark. Even in golden (and so ostentatious) Asgard, my eyes couldn’t adjust to the muddy contrasts between “light” and dark. I’m not sure who needs to fall on their sword for this because according to the end credits, most of Los Angeles was involved in one way or another. My advice to people who haven’t seen the movie yet is to bring a flashlight.

Ratiocination

Loki’s motivation for doing anything he does is a complete mystery to me, and, watching his constant, almost guileless switching-of-sides, makes me think Loki had no idea either. At the beginning of the movie, we see a young Loki and a young Thor being instructed by Odin about the war with the Frost Giants and how the Asgardians came to possess the dangerous Frost Box, certainly the most powerful and boxy of all mystical weapons outside of the Ark of the Covenant. Odin waffles about which of his sons will be king one day (even though Thor is his first-born), but it’s clear from Loki’s face that’s he’s gearing up to be disappointed. From the comics’ history, this is half of Loki’s problem with Thor: jealousy (the other half is that Loki is just an evil son of a bitch).

After that things get a bit… murky. Loki for most of the movie is portrayed as a neglected, but loyal, son. A bit of a prankster, but gods will be gods. He has no insidiousness about him. He has no plots within plots. He has no.. frankly, he’s got no game. But after Thor is banished and Odin falls into the Odinsleep, Loki is made king and ham-handed lies just pop out of his mouth, like “Sorry, Thor. Dad’s dead and it’s your fault. You can’t come back to Asgard because it’s part of our peace treaty with the Frost Giants. Also, Mom said so.” Granted, Thor had no way of verifying this story, and since he seems to trust his brother (God of Lies and Mischief, remember?), the fibs are taken as truth. However, later, Loki does three things that make no sense:

1.) He encases Heimdall in ice and leaves him standing on Bifrost for anyone to find. Yeah, Heimdall attacked him, but Loki had admitted he earlier let a raiding party of Frost Giants into Asgard, so the attack was warranted. What happens when someone finds Heimdall and thaws him out and Loki’s betrayal is discovered?

2.) After freezing Heimdall, Loki allows frost Giant King Laufey and a larger raiding party into Asgard to kill Odin, who is vulnerably napping away. At the last moment, Loki kills Laufey (his biological father) and says he did it for Odin to recognize his worth.

3.) Loki tries to destroy Jotunheim, the realm of the Frost Giants because, again, he wants recognition from Odin. However, the whole movie is based on the idea that Thor was punished by Odin for starting a war that would lead to death and horror on both sides. And Loki was a first-hand witness to this. How this is supposed to be “worthy” is unclear. Also, that is some righteously misplaced anger on Loki’s part. Only a few scenes before, Loki found out that he was taken from Jotunheim by Odin and that he was actually a Frost Giant by birth. He accused Odin of manipulating him for selfish purposes, then he kills his biological Dad instead. And I think my family has issues.

For being an experienced Trickster and the villain of the piece, Loki was just amateurishly written, though well-acted by Tom Hiddleston.

Telescoping Humility

It took Thor all of two, maybe three, days to discover how to be worthy of Mjolnir. That is quite an accomplishment for anyone, though not a god, it seems. Apparently, therapists just have to get people in life-threatening situations in order to get them to emote better. Dying seems to be the left hand lane of spiritual healing.

Conventional Conventionists

WHYYYYYYYYYYYY????!?!?!?!??!, shouted to the storm-battered sky. Why aren’t we over this yet?

Slow-motion smiling faces on the verge of cracking in half, and turning heads to show great joy. The climax of the movie was lifted right out of the last scene in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone“, and I was critical of it ten years ago. Imagine how I feel about the same technique now.

Beyond the alarmingly ordinary cinematography, characters like Thor’s companions – Sif, Hogun, Volstagg, and Fandral – are paper dolls compared to even (dare I say it?) the well-developed roundness of Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, Astrophysicist. They move as one; they think as one. They are never out of each other’s company, and they are all blandly on the same page at the same time. Branagh was somehow unable to tease the least bit of character development out of any of these gods when they are nothing if not bold and well-defined: Volstagg is boastful and somewhat cowardly; Hogun is grim; Fnadral is vain and a flirt, and Sif is…. Sif is supposed to be a warrior, but she’s acted like Pippi Longstocking – smiling and laughing while carrying a horse around on her back, making her seem vaguely autistic.

Gang of Five (Plus One)

“Thor” apparently had five writers involved in the script, including Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne (none of whose names I recognize), and J. Michael Straczynsk (whose run on the comic book Thor I loved) and Mark Protosevich (known for the JLo vehicle “The Cell“). And maybe because there were so many hands involved in writing the script that it became the middle-ground blahfest it was. Never having worked with a team (and not really wanting to for this exact reason), I have to assume that things get lost or over-written or deleted while being passed from hand to hand. Of course, if I’m wrong someone correct me. just know that I’m going to throw “Titan A.E.” back at you. Kenneth Branagh also has to take some spankings for this. Here is a man who did a four-hour Hamlet for movie-going audiences and made it accessible. Why couldn’t there have been more Shakespeare in “Thor”? It would have highlighted his alienness while on Earth, but it also would have given the character some more dignity than the teeth-clicking, eye-winking celebutante from another dimension he was. More than that Thor has been talking with “thees” and “thous” since Journey into Mystery #83. Why change now? Branagh could have made it work if anyone could have.

FINALE

In the end, “Thor” had moments that were watchable and funny, but there was no drama, no cohesiveness to the story. And the lackluster characters couldn’t rise above the aimless script.

GRADE: C

In short, the movie is called “Sucker Punch” because you simply don’t see the stupid coming. I am deeply DEEPLY worried about the Superman franchise because of this.

In long, I’m going to ruin the movie for you. There will be no coy references to possible plot points, or oblique descriptions of the action in order to avoid possible spoilers because I want to spoil the movie for you. I want you to read this review, and say to yourself, “Well, thanks a lot, Sean! Now I know what’s going to happen!” Exactly. I want you to save your money for something important, like paying parking tickets or… neutering your pets.

If you’ve seen any of the trailers, you have an idea of what the movie is about: a girl is taken to an insane asylum and left there by some sweaty older dude for what can only be nefarious purposes. There is a voice-over saying something about “using the weapons that are in side of you”, “be strong”, and “find the way out.” From this, I inferred that this girl was involved in some kind of experimental therapy that would not only heal her mind, but give her the power to go full-on Hamlet on the aforementioned sweaty, old dude. Sadly, that was not Zach Snyder’s “Sucker Punch”, and, frankly, the movie in my head was a gagillion times better than what I saw in the theatre last night. Sweaty old dude is actually Babydoll’s (we assume this is her name, though I’m sure that was not the one given at the baptismal font) step-father, widower of her recently deceased mother, who left all of her considerable estate to her two daughters, Babydoll and Soon-to-Be-Dead-at-Babydoll’s-Inexpert-Handling-of-a-Gun, much to the chagrin of Step-dad. Whether out of revenge or creepy plot to impregnate and marry one of the girls, Step-dad makes a move for Babydoll, gets scratched across the face for his efforts, locks Babydoll in her room, then goes for the younger sister. Babydoll escapes out an window and returns holding a gun, fires at Step-dad, but kills her sister instead (in the most magical of bullets since the one that took out JFK). The cops come and Babydoll is taken to an asylum for “the mentally insane”. In the asylum, we see the major therapeutic vehicle for the inmates recovery: “The Theatre”, where girls work out there problems by re-living them for an audience. Step-dad makes a deal with an orderly named Blue to have Babydoll lobotomized before the cops can ask more questions about that night’s events. In three days, the doctor will arrive to perform the “surgery”. So, we have the set-up: dead mother and sister, guilt-wracked innocent (you can tell by her pink pajamas), salacious and covetous step-dad, corrupt institution, method of redemption, possible allies, and a deadline to escape. All this is done in a tableau/montage to a re-mix of “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”, and is a pretty effective prologue (mostly because it matched what was going on in my head), so I thought I could settle in for two hours of me and Zach Snyder quibbling over the details of how “our” movie would unfold.

Nope. The very next scene is the doctor arriving and lobotomizing Babydoll with a leucotome, but before the hammer can hit the nail on the head, the action becomes a slow motion freeze, and Babydoll is replaced by Sweet Pea in a blonde wig asking Dr. Vera Gorski how or why this scene should even happen. We are no longer in the insane asylum; we are in a brothel/theatre in which the young ladies of the music of the night are taught one dance with which they can seduce/entertain clients. Babydoll has been watching the performance from the audience, as her priestly caregiver from the orphanage sells her to Director/Producer/Pimp Blue.

There are three layers of reality to this movie: Real Life, “The Theatre”, and “Hyperlife”. Real Life is the one we saw at the very beginning with the institutionalized Heiress Babydoll. “The Theatre” is the metaphor Babydoll uses to cope with her circumstances in Real Life.
“Hyperlife” is the sword-and-skirts kung fu fantasia that, let’s face it, is what everyone going to the movie thinks they want to see. “The Theatre” is a completely unnecessary conceit in this film, and, in fact, is the major source of confusion for most viewers, but without it, the movie would have nothing to hold it together (unless, of course, MY script were being used) and would probably top off at around 45 minutes. What’s confusing is that it is entirely a flashback to the three days starting with Babydoll’s arrival at the asylum right up to her lobotomy, but is told in the moment before the lobotomy cuts her brain in two. So, what we see in the movie is Arrival at the Asylum-Lobotomy(I)-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Lobotomy (II). In actuality, the order is Arrival at the Asylum-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Hyperlife-The Theatre-Lobotomy. Why this had to be told in flashback is anyone’s guess. We find out at the end of the movie that everything Babydoll accomplished in Hyperlife as a metaphor for what she accomplished in The Theatre was all a metaphor for what she accomplished in Real Life. In essence, there was a narrative middleman who upped the charges for selling us these goods when really, we should have gotten them directly from the buyer. So to speak. I’ve read that people are comparing “Sucker Punch” to “Inception” for showing layers of alternate reality, and while this is true on the surface, “Sucker Punch” has none of the depth or novelty that “Inception” did. We don’t wonder about how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone because we know. We see the sign posts that say “This way out”. We see how this is a daydream and not a soul lost in the crushing grandeur of the multiverse. There is no awe in “Sucker Punch”.

In The Theatre, Babydoll befriends four other inmates – Rocket and her sister Sweet Pea, Amber, and Blondie. Together they plot their escape by obtaining four objects – a map, fire,a knife, and key. Babydoll knows they have to find these items because they came to her in a vision she has while she dances for the first time. According to all witnesses, Babydoll has a raw power about her dance that leaves men and women breathless. However, the only move we ever see her perform is a shoulder roll, then she escapes to Hyperlife and walks that I’ve-been-across-the-world-yet-even-the-peaks-of-Tibet-bore-me, weary-yet-powerful slo-mo walk that “The Hangover II” made fun of 20 minutes earlier in the previews. Don’t tell me there’s going to be cake if there’s not going to be cake. It makes me think you don’t know how to bake. But here’s the thing, Mr. Snyder, even if you don’t know how to bake, I’ll bet there’s a pastry shop somewhere in your town. Hire them to bake a cake. Of course, the cake you’re serving up might actually be pie, so if you don’t let us see the cake, maybe we’ll never guess that it’s pie. If that’s what happened here, I have to wonder why you didn’t hire cake in the first place. There is also a fifth item that is necessary for escape, but, as Babydoll is told, it is something that only she can find and will require a great sacrifice. Then she has to fight three giant samurai with a sword she picked up only moments before. Can you guess the end? Yeah, she wins after leaping a tall learning curve in a slow-motion-freeze single bound. Three more fights like this one to gain their quest objects – against zombie Nazis, wyvern, and a runaway train – are mind-numbingly dull. There is never a sense that these girls aren’t going to win, so the Snyderized fights become these impenetrably dull and lifeless pantomimes. And so ponderous. They’re the visual equivalent of a Calculus textbook.

With two of the items – a map and fire – won, the knife and Rocket are lost when… something goes awry. I’m not sure what or how. Rocket tries to get the knife away from the cook while Babydoll dances for him, but when he discovers her wandering hands, he stabs her. Babydoll is shaken out of Hyperlife for a moment, then retreats back to watch her friend die, which doesn’t make sense because she stood up to the cook in Rocket’s defense only 30 minutes beforehand. What causes her to distance herself now is never explained nor does it make Rocket’s death tragic, heroic or anything-ic. She just dies in Hyperlife and in The Theatre. Then Blue discovers their plan and condemns Sweet Pea to the closet, and executes Amber and Blondie (who never did much of anything to begin with except have ironic names).

Now, here’s what I guess the sucker punch of the movie is supposed to be: the climax. Babydoll stabs Blue and steals his master key. She absconds with Sweet Pea, but finds that the main gate of The Theatre is guarded by heavies. Babydoll then deciphers the message of her first Hyperlife experience: this is not her story; it’s Sweet Pea‘s story. I beg to differ with you, Babydoll, but an hour and forty-five minutes of following your POV tells me this is, indeed, your story. Babydoll has to sacrifice herself so Rocket can escape. it’s this kind of “Oh, look how profound I am!” self-satisfied moment that led my brother to declare that this movie was made for “13 year-old horny, emo cutters.” I have to agree. This is just bad poetry. Bad like… oh, Lord. An ex of mine, whom I hope doesn’t read my blog, once read me a poem of his that said something like “I’m as old as the mountains and as young as the sea.” And my first thought was, I’d really like to get laid tonight, and if I’m honest with him that’s not going to happen. So, I dissembled a bit and got lucky, but not even all that deep down I knew that the poem was bad because it was so greenly self-conscious. Much like this twist in “Sucker Punch”. Babydoll distracts the guards by kicking one of them in the balls. As Sweet Pea exits the gate, the guard punches Babydoll in the face, and…

POP! In goes the leucotome. We’re back in the Real World, and Babydoll is a vegetable. No revenge on Step-dad. No regaining her position in society. No becoming a stronger person by tapping into her fantasies of power. Just… leafy greens and $6 gone.

“Sucker Punch” is full of allusions – I’m being charitable when I call them “allusions” – to other media. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”, “Akira”, and “I, Robot” to name a few, but I think visuals may help a bit:

This falls hard after reading about the weekend of Megacon drama. Not to say that Zack Snyder is a plagiarist or anything like that, but how far can “homage” go?

And, finally, not to put too fine a point on my disdain for this movie, but while I can see a “steam- and cog-driven” mecha suit – steampunk is making the rounds these days (have you see the “The Three Musketeers” trailer?), and nothing seems too old-fashioned that it can’t be retro-fitted into being more modern – why are there floating computer screens inside the mecha? Can steam really make light-based UIs? Why even explain it at all if girls in SCA coswear are fighting zombie Nazis? If I can accept one, I can accept the other without explanation. It’s like Julie Taymor’s Arachne explaining her love for all things cobbled with, “I descended from the astral plane with the help of human shoes!” Silence would have been a better answer.

I wrote this review from the hip, so I’m sure there are errors here and there, some unfinished thoughts, and perhaps a bit of libel, but I wanted to get it out as soon as possible and keep others from making the same mistake I did. Stay home. Masturbate. I insist.

In brief: See it, but pretend that someone else is playing Scott Pilgrim.

Too gay to be straight?

Several weeks ago, there was a minor rhubarb in the gay blogosphere when Ramin Setoodeh of Newsweek suggested that Sean Hayes, co-starring opposite Kristen Chenoweth in Promises, Promises, ruined the play because his gay was sparkling through what was supposed to be a straight character. I’m going to suggest the exact same thing about Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Dude acts like a lady. I’ve seen him in similar movies about disaffected and intensely understated teen love – Juno springs immediately to mind – which end in emotional waterfalls of caring and empathy, but I’ve never actually bought it from him. I’m now convinced it’s because is ways too subtle for the conscious mind to perceive, he was actually projecting his love for J. K. Simmons. (And who wouldn’t?) Never having read the manga-books, I wondered for the first thirty minutes if Cera’s lispy and breathless performance was foreshadowing Scott’s coming out later the film. Even his roommate, uber-slutty manbanger Wallace, in a metafictional moment says of him, “And you think I gay up the place too much?”

Is Cera really gay? Is he really straight? Who knows? Who cares? All I can say is, he needs to butch it up there a little and step out of his “less is more” schtick or he’s going to be typecast in the way of D J Qualls who is mostly famous for being Holocaust-thin. That or, ya know, he can start up a production company with Chad Allen. “Cerallen” or something mish-mashy like that.

Too hip to be square?

And speaking of disaffected. Is the… I dunno, are they still called “hipsters”? What is the generation of Xbox addicts and lonely souls in skinny jeans and pork pie hats called? Someone let me know, but until then I have to ask, is the Hipster Revolution over yet? I’m kinda tired of them. Yeah yeah yeah, my generation had the spotlight held up to our disappointments in The Breakfast Club, but kids these days remind me vaguely of kids from my college days who didn’t have jobs or any visible means of financial support but who still managed to be dropped out of helicopters to snowboard down mountains.

Holy crap. I’m my father…

Scott Pilgrim and his friends are like that (not my father; the previous thing): they don’t do much, but their days are full of activity – playing video games, wearing ironic t-shirts, faking suicides, trying to get signed with a music label, making much ado about trivia, and muddying the waters with their unexpressed emotions in a self-conscious way. Of all the gang, only Kim (Allison Pill) has the facial chops to pull off the seething cauldron of rage and resentment that threatens to bubble over at any moment. Scott himself is dating a high schooler – 17-year old Knives Chau – because he wouldn’t get any play otherwise. Though he wants to hang out with her, and they have a simpatico ninja-ass kicking video game technique, it’s awkwardly apparent that the power dynamic between them is WAY off. In one moment, Scott literally freezes his affections towards Knives until she obsequiously puts more quarters into their arcade game then he continues as if she had done nothing wrong. Yeah, right away, I didn’t like Scott (the character, not Michael Cera), but I’m certain I wasn’t supposed to like him, otherwise how could he grow into a better person by the end? Thinking of it, the ladies of the film were actually far superior to the boys in every way, not only as characters, but also as actresses. Knives (Ellen Wong), Kim, Stacey (Anna Kendrick), and Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) are part of what I’m calling “Hit Girl Syndrome”: “when a secondary female character upstages the male lead in every scene.” (I’ve already submitted it to Urban Dictionary, bitches.)

I think the only current cultural obsession missing from the movie was zombies (seriously, it even had a bacon moment! I don’t think even Twilight had a bacon moment.), but it did have winged Japanese succubi in sailor outfits. Is that almost the same thing? Is Scott Pilgrim too, almost cynically, relevant?

What’s a meta for?

None of this movie is meant to be taken literally, postmodern bitches.

+8 Balls

It may not seem like it, but I enjoyed this film a lot. I could relate to the story and the difficulty of forming relationships in what is now the 128-bit digital age (yeah, the NES graphics are part of the metaphor, too.), and though I wasn’t moved by the characters, I was certainly touched by their woes. Had it been directed by anyone other than Edgar Wright, it would have been forgettable, maybe even terrible. But Wright brought all the charm of the comic book medium to the screen as literally as was possible, and in doing so kept the usual translation problems to a minimum. Perhaps Neil Gaiman should have a sit down with Wright before Anasi Boys goes into pre-production.

A-

In short, the action sequences are doled out like handfuls of rice in the Congo but without the accompanying satisfaction; however, the characters with the exception of Rhodey, are all hot. Don Cheadle is a bit too serious in his role, Chekovian levels of serious. He makes “The Three Sisters” look like vaudeville.

Look, anyone who wants to go see “Iron Man 2″ is going to go see it no matter what I say. Hell, I warned all my friends about “Clash of the Titans”, and yet some of them still went (and regretted it). I’m not saying “Don’t see it”. Definitely not! Go see it in an auditorium full of people because this is probably the Cotillion of summer films, the social event of the season. It’s all downhill from here. I’m just saying I didn’t like it as much as the first one, despite the snappy dialogue (reminiscent of Mandy Patinkin’s overlapping arguing with just about everyone during his stint on “Chicago Hope”) and the inclusion of the Black Widow. OH OH OH! andthe 40-by-his-face Mickey Rourke, who has the uncanny ability to do a consistent Russian accent. Yeah. Go see it.

Like its protagonist, “Kick-Ass” suffers from an identity crisis.

When Kick-Ass the comic was first released, I was impressed by how far the writer, Mark Millar, was willing to take his characters. However, as the story moved on, the body count grew higher and higher, and the scenes bloodier and bloodier to no good end except that Millar could do it that way. His property. His choices. No problem with that, except it didn’t make for good reading after an issue or two. However, sitting in a theatre watching an 11-year-old girl, supposedly living in the real world, pull off these amazingly choreographed kills was nothing but fun. And pretty much weightless. The concern I felt for all the heroes in Kick-Ass the comic, wasn’t present in Kick-Ass the movie at all. While I fretted over Dave’s choices and Hit Girl’s salty vocabulary and sociopathic upbringing in the reading, I never felt that there was any damage being done to their psyche’s in the film.

And this is the schizophrenia of Kick-Ass: it’s a terrible read with gem-like commentary and a featherweight movie that doesn’t even stand up to Titus Andronchus for character violence. Or for more modern watchers, it doesn’t even stand up to Die Hard 4 for general mayhem.

I will give Kick-Ass and Mark Millar this: I appreciate the wanton escalation and huge payoff at the end because there’s no expectation of continuance. Unlike most comic books which want to preserve a core cast of characters because the buying public identifies with them and wants to buy products in which they appear, and, therefore, must keep these characters alive ad infinitum, Kick-Ass has no upper limit that keeps characters “in play,” as it were, because the characters are not what drive the story, so they are expendable in the face of a rising action that has to keep rising. And I’m torn on liking this or not. On the plus side, it hurries the story along and stakes seems that much more risky. This was a lesson that Jericho learned after being canceled less than a season into the story. I tried to watch when it was on, but after four or so episodes of the town facing one more post-apocalyptic crisis yet settling down to a cold brewski at the end, I gave up. I never felt like these characters were at risk because they weren’t. Keeping a story going for as long as possible, usually past the point of usefulness or interest, is the TV way of telling a story. However, after “Jericho” was canceled, the writers took the story into some radical and life-threatening directions (I caught a clip here and there). Too bad they didn’t do so earlier. I hope that “V” learns the same lesson. Soon. (Related kvetch: the pacing on that show is glacial. And a resistance movement of four people?!? Riiiight.) On the con side, it hurries the story along and characters are sacrificed along the way. Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass was apt: kinda bland and not much of an emotional range, but there wasn’t a lot of call for emotion in “Kick-Ass”. Alone, Johnson couldn’t carry the movie, but he luckily had Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl) to do all the heavy lifting. More than anyone else, she had a story that was worth telling. and Nic Cage… good Lord. He’s almost like Shelly Winters, the butt of his own joke. More than once, I thought he was Nic Cage playing a man who was mocking Nic Cage.

And for comic that was so audacious, I was shocked that Millar signed off on (I assume he signed off on) a Hollywood ending: boy gets girl, boy lays girl, boy uses personal bazooka to dispatch antagonist and usher in the dénouement (not as cool as it sounds). The ending to Kick-Ass the comic was much more coherent, or at least much more in line with the rest of the story. The movie’s seams show so badly that I again found myself wondering if there was an element of parody involved.

While the movie didn’t live up to Mark Millar’s own hype, it’s an adventure worth catching. If it were 3D, I’d tell you to see it now, but it’s 2D, so wait till it’s on DVD.

I did not have a very productive morning in terms of getting my grades done before noon like I normally do. I was a bit distracted by… a pressing matter that will come to a head tomorrow. So, at noon, I packed up my laptop and student essays, hid them, and made my way to see How to Train Your Dragon, which I’d wanted to see for a while. So worth the interruption to my day. If you haven’t seen it, get to your local theatre before it’s gone.

That being said, don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the film. Spoilers ahead.

“You’re not my son.”

Hiccup, the protagonist, is the skinniest of all the Viking in his village (except for Astrid, so you know they’re going to get together by the end) and the least physically able to participate in his tribe’s all-consuming pastime: dragon slaying (further evidence Hiccup will get together with Astrid by the end because, as Paula Abdul knows, opposites attract). Even though he has a million inventions to do the heavy lifting involved in dragon slaying, his father, the village chief, isn’t interested in progress. He’d rather rely on old-fashioned ways of dispatching the winged terrors. During a dragon raid, Hiccup traps a never seen, but rumored to be the worst dragon of all, a Night Fury. However, no one believes him when he announces his triumph. Hiccup sneaks away from the village and finds the Night Fury, whom he befriends over time and names Toothless. I’m going to have to admit that there were parts of this movie that made me tear up a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that I was really caffeinated at the time which always makes me emotional. Maybe it’s the fact that I have several pets, little souls in my care, whom I love more than I’ve loved most of my exes (not in an Erick Rivera kind of way, but in an appropriate human/animal kind of way). Maybe it’s because I have daddy issues out the wazoo (I can barely sit through The Lion King). Pick your trauma, but I found the plot of How to Train Your Dragon to be one with more depth and interest than most movies I’ve seen of late (including the last-in-a-line-of-godforsaken-French-films-that-unfathomably-win-awards opus, A Prophet).

“You just gestured to all of me!”

There’s something about a running gag that I love, and HtTYD is full of them, mostly directed at Hiccup. I want to call this “The Muppet Movie Syndrome”. Thankfully, the jokes never have the chance to grow predictable, and by the end, they’ve evolved into expressions of affection, again, directed at Hiccup. There’s also one transgressively bawdy joke at the expense of Hiccup’s dead mother. Stoick gives Hiccup his first gift: a horned helmet made from Mom’s breastplate. He explains, pointing to his own, that they’re a matched set; they keep her close. Hiccup tries to be appreciative, but, ya know, “Ew!”

The language is a little bit “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and a little bit “Glee”. Nothing wrong with that since that’s the demographic the movie points itself at (I was there! What more proof do you need?), and I didn’t even notice. At all. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m losing my linguistic edge.

“Well, most of him.”

I didn’t see the crippling at the end coming, though given all the other motifs, I should have. Still, I gasped when Hiccup got out of bed for the first time since being wounded fighting the Tyranodragon and his metal prosthetic touched the ground. It grounded the movie. Without it, the movie would have been good, but this irreversible maiming of a character made it, dare I say, profound.

“The food is tough and tasteless; the people even more so.”

I’m glad that How the Train Your Dragon was as fun as it was. Dreamworks is sometimes hit or miss with its animated features. Madagascar and Shrek had great early movies, but the shine dimmed quickly with all the sequels. Monsters vs. Aliens never got off the ground due to its glacial pacing and comic mistiming. However, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Kung-Fu Panda and Chicken Run were all well done full stop.

One thing I found odd was the darkness of the 3D. At the end of the movie when I took my glasses ff, I couldn’t believe how much color had been filtered through the dark lenses. It obviously didn’t interfere with my enjoying the movie, and I obviously wasn’t even aware of it, but now I’m going to peek over my glasses during every 3D movie I go to to see if I’m missing something.

“That’s for everything else.”

When all is said and done, dragons will probably make a comeback at Christmas this year. I know I left the theatre wanting a dragon, but I had to settle for zipping through Friday afternoon traffic at speeds in excess of 15 MPH over the posted limit (I know: “Do you dare?”). I shouldn’t say that. My friends already think I’m a hazard on the road. Still, would I be less of a hazard riding a dragon? Well, maybe for airplanes.

Hie now!

I saw Clash of the Titans tonight. For those who don’t have time to read a whole review, I’ll summarize for you: “Don’t bother.” But if you have a few minutes, let me tell you why.

The Tyranny of Slavish Devotion vs. Just Call it the Fuck Something Else

No one loves deconstructed stories more than I do. Being able to take a familiar story and inject it with new and surprising elements is a skill that few people have, but more people should practice. Greek myths are, what, closing in on being two thousand five hundred years old now? Can we count how many times the stories have been told, re-told, embellished and spun? Doubtful. To tell the story of Perseus as one might find it in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology to a modern movie audience would invite sudden critical box-office death, which no one in the studio wants. Even to re-shoot the 1981 Clash of the Titans might cause audiences to wonder why a script with more 21st century sensibilities wasn’t used. In and of themselves, there is nothing wrong with these approaches to updating movies (whether one should update movies in the first place is another issue altogether), but every once in a while, something like 1995’s The Scarlet Letter rises from the brew.

Clash of the Titans is 2010’s The Scarlet Letter.

Again, one does not have to be tied down to the source material – Lord knows the original CotT wasn’t – but why mess with the relationships between the characters? Hades is out to rule Olympus? Danae is not Acrisius’ daughter, visited by Zeus in the form of a golden shower (ahem…), but his wife, visited by Zeus in Acrisius’ form a la Uther meets Igraine? Djinn? Perseus loves Io? Wasn’t she a cow? Should someone tell Perseus or will he discover her udders for herself (speaking of which, what an odd costume choice that was for Cassiopeia)? If that much re-arranging is going to be done, why even bother with the CotT name-recognition? Make up some mythical land with its own pantheon and released it under a different title altogether. Maybe Dungeon Siege is in need of a sequel.

“Getting to Know Nothing about You”

How is it possible that in the scope of a two-hour movie, almost nothing exciting happened? Wait. Let me qualify that: there was lots of destruction and things exploded and monsters were around every corner. But I could have cared less. I didn’t have the slightest interest in the problems of these characters because I didn’t know who they were. Thinking back, I can’t recall most of the names of the characters who I watched for most of the film. Frankly, I’m not even sure their names were said. I searched vainly on IMDB for a picture of the youngest member of Perseus’ party, first, cuz “woof!”, and second, because that was the only was I could hope to locate him: by his looks. I don’t have the slightest clue what his name was, though I’m guessing it ends with “-us”. Not that it matters because every character died in the Underworld anyway. Talk about Princess Parking.

The Schizophrenia of God

To look around these days, religion is getting kicked in the nads. Hard. Mostly through the fault of church leaders who, from all available reports, are in it for either a.) the tax-free donations, b.) the love of power, or c.) child-raping with impunity. The situation is exacerbated by the screaming devoted who on one had are a little too quick and a little to proud to make sure everyone knows they’re Christian, yet on the other are some of the biggest assholes around. Jesus loves you, but God will punish you. Do as I say, not as I do. Obama is a dark-skinned socialist, not at all like who Jesus was. God obviously needs a better PR machine than the one he has now because one doesn’t have to look any further than them to see why His stock is swirling the drain.

The Olympians are much like that. Zeus wants the love of the humans he created, but isn’t above terrorizing them to get it. He has a bastard son whom he’s willing to sacrifice because he’s not showing Dad any love, but then goes out of his way to help this son whose goal is to topple Olympus, yet somehow doesn’t see that or doesn’t care. Because family is just that important. All of which makes it easy to believe than an entire country has gone anti-god, and that a rabid pro-god cult has sprung up to fill the vacuum. Maybe it’s me and how I view religion, but the underlying message of “religion bad” was more pointed than an honor student’s pencil collection the morning of the SAT.

I’m torn between to possibilities: this was just part-in-parcel with the rest of the sloppy writing and editing in the film, or this was an on-the-nose condemnation of organized religion. I lean towards the latter because I’m a devoted anti-theist: I believe in a God of one nature or another, and I believe God’s true believers need to go find their own planet to live on. My proof, if one can call it that, is V for Vendetta. As soon as it was (relatively) safe to release an on-the-nose metaphor for the Bush Administration, they did. Better late than never, I suppose. Is CotT taking aim at the religious bedlam that has placed itself on the largest, yet most beleaguered (they say) soapbox in the public forum? No doubt Bill Donohue would be all over this cinematic lion, sending out poison e-missives to whomever still listens to him if he weren’t so busy making excuses for all the child-raping.

“Bitch” is the New Black

There is exactly one adult word in Clash of the Titans: “bitch”, as in speaking of Medusa, “Now let’s go kill this bitch!” After Perseus said this, I had a moment of déjà bolus. I had choked on this word before. Then I remembered from where: X3 with its now iconic “I’m the Juggernaut, BITCH!”

It was just as distasteful now as it was then.

Moments. Mere Moments.

Despite what I’ve said, not everything was terrible. Of course, there were Sam Worthington’s calves (sadly, he never took off his shirt. Not. Once. What the hell kind of sword-and-sandals movie is this?), but there was also a glimmer of a larger story. When Perseus and company arrived at the lair of the Stygian Witches, Io explained the ruins were the site of the battle between the Kraken and the Titans. Just like that, I wondered where the temples and personalities and nymphs and fauns and gods were. The one thing missing from this movie about Greek mythology was the mythology.

Another treat was the Bubo-shaped Easter egg that was in the movie for 15 seconds, though sadly as the butt of a derisive joke. It was cool to see him, but like the rest of the movie, this scene mocked its better.

“Re-make” ≠ “Better”

I saw Clash of the Titans at the Alamo Drafthouse South, where they showed classic “Dynarama” trailers spotlighting Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects work on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts, and the original Clash of the Titans. Even with the clunky monsters and their sometimes awkward interactions with real people, I just added the gift set to my Amazon.com wish list (hint hint). I can say with no uncertainty that will not happen with 2010’s CotT.

The And

Of course, this is just me. I’m a firm believer in “Go and see”. Once you do, let me know and we’ll talk. I’m eager to hear what others think. A final dire thought: as everything else goes these days, is it impossible that a sequel is in the works already?

According to a CNN report today, people who have watched the movie Avatar are experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts.

On the fan forum site “Avatar Forums,” a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

“I wasn’t depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ,” Baghdassarian said. “But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.”

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

“That’s all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about ‘Avatar.’ I guess that helps. It’s so hard I can’t force myself to think that it’s just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na’vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie,” Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ ”

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

I’ve experienced this kind of depression before (though not with “Avatar”), most notably after seeing “Les Miserables” for the first time and wanting to run away with the touring company. Come to think of it, some women in grad school quit four weeks into their first semester to become “RENT” groupies after seeing the show for every performance of its DC run. I think that was actually my fault.

Call it what you will – Post-Holiday Letdown, The Back-to-Reality Blues, The After-Event Crash – but I’m going to call it Marauders’ Guilt. I’m also going to suggest that people stop worrying about what disgusting things movie people are doing to a fictional planet and wake up to how we’re destroying our own. That, if anything, was James Cameron’s message. Be angry (and active) here; not in make-believe.

Had the above poster been the official one for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I would have applauded it for its refreshing honesty, not only for the movie itself but for the state of high-action summer blockbusters dating back to Independence Day (yes, I know that wasn’t the original summer blockbuster, but it was about the time if ID4′s release that the “bigger, badder, louder” idiom took root). However, I would also say that the poster’s tag tag line – “More ALIEN ROBOTS, bigger EXPLOSIONS, and much much more MEGAN FOX” – unironically states exactly what’s wrong with the movie. But you don’t have to believe me. Here. This is the movie summary from where I found the poster (my suggestion is to NOT click on the link because it’s one of “those sites” that give off a bad vibe, like perezhilton.com or boysfrombrazil.com. I include the link only for citation purposes.), which I found to be just about as clear as the movie itself:

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This may be the most accurate portrayal of what it was like to watch ROTF I’ve come across. Yeah, yeah, Roger Ebert was pretty clever with his “choir of hell” analogy, but he didn’t really capture the sense of what it was like to be sitting in the theatre watching the mess that was ROTF unzip and shake its privates at us. Metaphorically speaking. Except when I’m speaking literally.

There’s nothing like standing next to a child to really throw a situation into sharp relief. Things that adults don’t think twice about – the little slights of daily life – suddenly become large and vulgar displays of callousness when a kid is in the picture. So, thinking “ROTF is only PG-13; there may be a few things we need to explain, but surely we (my brother and I) can take Dominic (my five-year old nephew) to see it.” Dominic loves Transformers, and this was my special treat to him before I left PA to go back to Texas. A “treat” for which I will feel forever guilty because of how MISLEADING the PG-13 rating is. I was genuinely humiliated to be there, thinking about how we were going to have to have a Talk with Dominic after the credits rolled. Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that we suspected Dominic didn’t “get” some of the
things that happened and was there to see his favorite bots “live”, I would have walked out as early as Megan Fox’s first appearance: a completely unnecessary 20-second shot of her dry-humping a motorcycle.

Not that there is anything wrong with sex. Given a choice between sex and violence in movies, I’ll go with sex every time over violence. HOWEVER, the sex in ROTF was there to be sex in ROTF and served no other purpose than to be there on the screen, pandering to fanbois (as in “I’ve never known the touch of a woman and therefore have no idea what real skin should look like”) and those who like it gross (multiple shots of humping dogs, John Turturro’s fleshy ass, a bot humping Megan Fox). Lord knows I think that the ass-shot in Orgazmo was hilarious, so I’m not above this kind of thing, but Orgazmo was rated NC-17 and was not an action film with a toy line geared for kids.

Sex aside, what else made this movie an incomprehensible mess?

First, I cannot believe that the language in the movie (when one can understand it through the explosions and screaming) is pg-13. “pussy”, “asshole”, “shit”, and I SWEAR someone said “fuck” – these are now PG-13 standards? And while it’s not language per se, is there ever going to come a day when people stop using phrases like “Not on my watch!” and
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”?
Because, trite much?

Second, there are way too many bot on the screen, most of whom go unidentified. What’s the point of that?? I wanted to see the Autobots (yes, i’ll admit here that i was not dragged unwillingly to this film) and Decpticons go at it, but who were some of these guys? and why include new Minicons like the Pretender or the the kitchen appliances gone bad? Why does it seem that the Decepticon numbers flourished over the years, yet only a few Autobots made it to earth? And where the hell did Starscream find The Fallen after 19,000 years on earth??

Third, one cannot get from Giza to Jordan and back to Giza in under a day in foot. It even took the Israelites forty years. Also, one cannot see Giza from Petra. Nor should one be in CA in one scene and in Princeton two scenes later. It reads funny.

Fourth, it’s not just the racism which is a popular kvetch. It’s every ass shot, vixen is a baby-doll dress, scrotum joke, gay image, dog-on-dog action, famous midget cameo, and unfunny bit of toilet humor and crass imagery. And the mystery is, was this something the director did or was it something the writers did? I personally see Michael Bay’s handiwork in it (especially after watching Armageddon last night and realizing bay has become a WORSE director over the years, adding in nonsense that has nothing to do with the plot and certainly had nothing to do with good story-telling.

Fifth, when, oh when, will Sam just tell… uh… what’s-her-name that he loves his car way more than he loves her? And tha Bumblebee’s cooler in every imaginable way than she is?

And is it me, or is Megan Fox just. not. talented? At all. Not that Shia LaBoeuf is any better.

Sixth, say it with me a la Wanda Maximoff, “No mo’ slo-mo!”

I’m sure there’s more to kvetch about, but the horrible thing is that this could have been a better movie – one can see it in moments when the plot rears its enfeebled head between the crassness. Sadly, ROTF was “Bay-icized” before it would be that movie. I’m waiting for some talented SOB to re-cut ROTF into a watchable film a la “star wars: the phantom edit”, then show it to my nephew and hope he forgives me.

According to a recent interview, Neil Gaiman wanted Henry Selick to do a stop-motion adaptation of Coraline even before the book was released to the public. Gaiman said that Selick’s first draft of the screenplay was “too much like the book and we needed to expand it.” And my question to that is “WHY???”

At its heart, Coraline is a fairy tale, and to have watched Selick’s meticulous work in driving a stake into that heart was at times more than I could bear. Maybe I’m being a purist, not only for the book itself but for fairy tales in general. As metaphors for growing up or lessons on leading a good like, fairy tales need only the hero to get their point across, mostly that life is a solitary adventure and that one is totally responsible for one’s own actions. They may not always start out capable, but by the end of their stories, fairy tale heroes (usually) accomplish their aims and have become clever and apt. If this is so, then why did Coraline herself have to be less capable in the movie than she was in the book? Why did she need Wybie to help her execute her less-than-clever plan at the end? I really disliked Coraline’s coming into her own being shoved aside like that for… what? The sake of having a sidekick-cum-knight? The boys in the audience who think girls need a boy’s help? For girls who thought they didn’t need a boy’s help? For a man who makes his living by writing good stories, it’s amazing to me that Gaiman willingly lets others treat them this way.

This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie. I did. Seeing the puppets move, their hair ruffle, their bodies jump and twist, and knowing the time and effort the stop-motion animation process requires was stunning (even moreso in 3-D). If I had a complaint at all (beyond the above), it was that Teri Hatcher was Madea levels of mad as the real mother. So much so that I thought the movie was going to be some kind of reversal of the book, much the way Gaiman took on Snow White in his Snow, Glass, Apples. Sadly, I was instead forced to watch an intolerable (and at times violently uncomfortable) mother-daughter dynamic that begged for court-ordered emancipation. Why Hatcher went to this extreme and why she was permitted to do so is a question I hope someone will answer one day.

All in all, had I not read the book, the movie of Coraline would have been satisfactory, but like so many adaptations of popular books, the movie doesn’t live up to Gaiman’s written words. And it’s his own fault.

My friend Drew was involved with the Alamo Drafthouse’s “Bloodshots” 48 hour horror movie challenge a few weekends ago and WON first place with the entry “Meet the Maydays“. Yay, Drew!

Seattle’s The Stranger has one of the best movie reviews I’ve read in my life, ostensibly written by Diane Keaton. I have no idea if this is her work or not, but I can totally see her saying this (she’s a wild woman!):

What’s up, bitches? Diane Keaton here. I just got back from seeing The Women and, um, I couldn’t help but notice something: I AM NOT IN THIS MOVIE. Where the fuck am I? I am the queen bee of this shit. The hive mother. Annette Bening wishes she could smile through her tears like Diane Keaton! You know the Meg Ryan character? The one who spent her whole life trying to be everything to everybody but somehow somebody is always disappointed? That’s like if my entire oeuvre mated with itself and gave birth to a mega-me. I’m sure you remember when Meg Ryan says, “Wouldn’t it be great if when you were born, they gave you a rule book?” I am, like, ALWAYS saying that! I should have mailed that shit to myself. Then there’s the Jada Pinkett Smith lesbian (“If we’re lost, we both ask for directions”). I could SO play that character. I invented lesbians. Look it up. And the little girl who makes a tiny bonfire of tampons because she’s just not ready to become a woman? Did you even THINK of casting Diane Keaton in that role? No? Big. Fucking. Mistake. I can play young. Hey, Hollywood. Write this down. Next time you make a two-hour vaginal suppository that hasn’t met a feminine cliché it didn’t dip in chocolate and shove down America’s gullet (smoking, shopping, cheating, faked orgasms, diets, supermodels, bubble baths, hunger, water breaking, Botox), maybe you should do your job and fucking call Diane Keaton. Bitches.

–via JoeMyGod

About four weeks ago, my friend Michelle started asking me if I wanted to go see Beowulf on November 16th. While unusual for her (Michelle, much as I love her, is no great fan of the classics. Moreover, she asked me three times about going. After the second time, I was going to call her husband and warn him about her having a pod with his name on it waiting at home.), being a Brit Lit geek and Neil Gaiman fan, I was hardly going to say no.

Yeah. Then I started to see the trailers.

And not the trailers I had been seeing. Beowulf was sold high and low at Comic-Con this past July, much like Stardust was in 2006. And let’s talk about that particular piece of effluvia for a moment. I loved the Stardust comic books (if they can be called that). Together, they were a beautiful piece of work that was not embarrassed to reveal the cruel nature of fairy tales perfectly exemplified when the incarnate star evaluates her Earth-bound situation in a single word: “fuck.” Gorgeous drawings. Lyrical prose. Well-rounded characters. And a pat, but satisfying, ending.

Throw all that away and you have the movie Stardust; truly, no relation to the book. Complaint #1: Claire Danes as Yvaine?!? This is the girl who smiled her way through Brokedown Palace and Princess Mononoke. All the appeal and interest of white rice. Take this as you will, but in the IMBD entry for Stardust, she’s listed below Ditchwater Sal (then again, Robert Deniro is listed below Claire Danes for his… let’s call it a “role”, just for the sake of argument. The only thing I liked about that was the role-reversal of his faux gay pirate being beaten up by real-life poofter Rupert Everett). Complaint #2: the Hollywood ending. There just had to be a fight, didn’t there? And not jut swords clashing but headless capering corpses, witch guts, a tearless reunion and a “let me shimmer” moment the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Mac and Me. Gag.

But back to the Beowulf trailers.

Different trailers. Newer trailers. Trailers that made me think, “I can’t believe XBox has jumped on Beowulf for video game fodder. I wonder if this will make kids read the poem. Nah.” but then turned out to be actual trailers. This trend in using digitally enhanced live action hopefully will not last long.. well, let me qualify that. If this is a related process to what was done in Sin City and A Scanner Darkly, why did Beowulf have to look like Final Fantasy XII? Real people are made to look like video games? Why not just use real people? Does wiping out texture and color tones equal artistic film-making? Did that work out well for Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings (a movie I love, actually).

The long and the short – Neil Gaiman needs to get out of Hollywood, just like Stephen King does. They may be great in their writings, but so far, no one has gotten a handle on how to make them into decent cinema.