Thought for Yesterday 7/30/09

Don't even start. Long week. Anyway...

Have y'ever noticed that American political party's "pet issues" are usually NOT things that are especially popular or "important" to voters (statistics-nuts please note use of the word "voters" and not the more all-inclusive "citizens" or "Americans")? Take the Democrats: currently tearing eachother apart over Universal Health Care even though voters tend to be ambivalent about it (I don't say that as a positive or negative, just as a fact.) Or, if you like, the Republicans - ALWAYS ready to go with the less-electable candidate in the name of pandering to the anti-abortion/anti-gay crowd even though neither of those positions constitute an overwhelming voter majority.

Political Parties, it seems to me, are primarily in the business of keeping and holding power (read: their jobs) for as long as possible, and that's more-or-less the explanation for this phenomenon: They both want things that can "shore-up" a go-to base of massive GARAUNTEED votes each time an election rolls around.

That's why Democrats have been obsessed with passing all-encompassing health insurance (again, this isn't about whether or not you think it's a good idea) for decades: A large group of (mostly) impoverished people getting (mostly) free health-care becomes a large group of people who you can scare into voting for you every cycle because "the other guys will take that away from you!" Sure, plenty of Democrats probably think it's the good/moral thing to do anyway (President Obama certainly seems to); but make no mistake: NO idea in politics has traction if it doesn't increase the staying-power of the party. Republicans are running the same exact game when it comes to abortion. They WANT an all-encompassing ban on the procedure so they can turn around and whip up the base every two years by telling them: "If you don't re-elect us, the OTHER GUYS will start KILLIN' BABIES again!"

Meanwhile, the economy is still crumbling, the ecosystem is destabilizing, an American soldier is still being held by The Taliban, and none of our leaders seem to think any of this is priority #1.

Thought For The Day 7/29/09

"G.I. Joe" will be out next week, an event which will likely mark a "sink or swim" moment for the burgeoning subgenre of "action films based on animated TV programs which actually advertisments for action figures" (someone needs to "name" this) in as much as it's the first one to come out post-"Transformers" and trends are gauged by how much the subsequent entries play out. Remember, when the first "Batman" movie hit in 1989 everyone assumed the start of a "superhero boom" and HUNDREDS of comic book movies were optioned... but most of them never got made and most of those that did didn't pan out very well. The genre slid into dormancy for years, only to eventually reawaken after the one-two punch of "Blade" and "X-Men" and the subsequent "Spider-Man" knockout.

Here's my question: What exactly does "G.I. Joe" have to do to be considered an artistic failure, objectively? I mean, once it's out it'll be only the SECOND entry into the entire genre, and let's face it: You KNOW it's going to be better than "Transformers" because EVERYTHING is better than "Transformers." So... is that it? Does Joe automatically get to be the "best ______-movie EVER" and that's that, or does there need to be some other standard applied because this particular test is too easy to pass?

Thought For The Day 7/28/09

Linked below (hat-tip: Kotaku), the two most "talked about" (read: complained about) poster images advertising "Halo Legends," a DVD project in the vein of "Animatrix" wherein a collection of top-tier Anime production houses will produce animated short-films set in and around the universe of the "Halo" video games...

http://kotaku.com/5324119//gallery/?selectedImage=3

It's kinda weird, for me, to see Halo looking... well, interesting and visually-dynamic all of the sudden. Y'see that up there? That's an image I'd expect to find on a golden-age pulp-scifi magazine or 80s NES game box-art, not in association with the incredibly bland Halo universe.

There was no way this wasn't going to turn out interesting on a culture-clash basis alone: Halo - alongside the entire First Person Shooter genre - may as well not even exist in Japan, where all these films are coming out of, firstly. Secondly, for a larger-than-you'd-think number of it's devoted fans, Halo has become a kind of rallying-point for Western gamers who HATE the prevelance of the Japanese aesthetic in the medium. That's why I like THIS one the best:

http://kotaku.com/5324119//gallery/?selectedImage=4

Sunny day, field of flowers, woman's hands holding a teddy bear charm. I love this image. I love it because it looks as though Production IG is deliberately whacking the hornet's nest in regards to Halo's angrier fans. It makes me picture thousands upon thousands of backward-ballcap'd, gold-chained, 13 year-old suburban douchebags collapsing to their knees, fists shaking at their sides, staring up at their framed posters of Tony Montana and Dominic Toretto with tear-filled eyes, screaming at the heavens "RAARRGHHH!!! TEH JAPS R TURNIN' MASTER CHIEF INTO TEH GHEY!!!!!"

I picture that, and it makes me smile ;)

Thought For The Day 7/27/09

The first generation to be aware of the existance of Alzheimer's BEFORE most of them were old enough to have to consider the possibility is turning 60 faster every day. How long until we see the first of what will be MANY "Rear Window" variations on the theme of "I saw a murder (or did I?) and no one will believe me because I've been diagnosed with Alzheimer's!!!" movies? This'll be BIG with aging leading-men.

"Dad... I know what you THINK you saw..."

"I KNOW what I saw!!!!" ::throws medication at wall::

Orphan (2009)

Possible Spoiler Warning

Here's a good rule to pick movies by: If the TRAILER is already talking about a Shocking! Twist!! Ending!!!, it's probably not very good. If they thought it was good enough to stand on it's own, they wouldn't feel the need to imply that you might be missing "this year's Sixth Sense."

In full-disclosure: I went into "Orphan" 99% sure I knew what the "twist" was, having heard of a certain producer making a film with a certain "really dumb" final shocker a year or so ago. Thusly, I can't tell you whether the "secret" is as easy to figure out as it is dopey; other than to opine that it's one of those things that you'll only guess if you've heard of "it" before. In this case, I think that especially devoted fans of either "Law & Order: SVU" and/or "Batman: The Animated Series" will probably call it right off the bat. Make of that what you will.

Whatever. The fact is, knowing or guessing the "twist" doesn't really effect the film much - this isn't like "Psycho" where the big reveal explains a central mystery and redraws everything you thought had happened. Here, it's just a lurid "oh by the way" that mainly serves to take the "teeth" out of an otherwise potentially-disturbing sequence it's intercut with toward the end. Otherwise, this is just a 100% by-the-numbers, unimaginative "spooky kid" movie. Title baddie is overly well-mannered and dresses like an American Girl doll? Check. Marriage recovering from recent tension? Check. Kid with exploitable disability? Check. Knick-knack of irreplaceable sentimental value that might as well be labeled "break for purpose of of escalating tension? One parent has job that keeps them out of touch constantly? Check. Ridiculously-ornate house in the middle of fucking nowhere? Check. "Audience POV character" with dodgy "nobody trusts me" past? Double-check. There's not a single thing that happens here that you won't see coming.

"Spooky Kid" movies, of course, belong to the subgenre of exploitation movies I've occasionally liked to call "projection monster" films - wherein the "monster" is a generalized version of a certain type of person or identity that most of us never get to "confront" the way we secretly want to; usually for purposes of social correctness (see: "Evil dad" movies, "evil cop" movies, etc.) The ultimate expression of this is the Zombie Movie, wherein the form of the monster allows for the good guys to lay indiscriminate waste to humanity itself. That's why "spooky kids" are always prim and smug, as though they're fully aware of how much you HATE bratty kids sometimes. Don't lie. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Ill-trained little rugrats running around causing chaos, screaming infants inexplicably brought into movie theaters... there are times you just fuckin' HATE children, and "spooky kid" movies are an outlet for that - particularly seeing them take the innevitable beatdown at the end (in fact, one of the few marks in "Orphan's" favor is that it has seemingly no qualms about inflicting physical harm on it's population of obnoxious tots.)

In any case: Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are the mom and dad. She's a recovering-alcoholic, he's an architect, she got drunk and nearly allowed one of their kids to drown, he's straining under the weight of being the "stable one," they're both getting over a recent miscarriage. Their son is an angry little shit, their daughter is a hearing-impaired cherub. The titular adoptee is Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) a Russian refugee who's foggy past has evidently imbued her with advanced skills in the fields of piano-playing, painting, period dress and never being seen by doctors (got it yet?) Bodies, injuries and coy manipulations are piling up before you know it, and poor ex-alkie-mom can't get anyone to believe her.

At the very least, it goes at the material feet first: The (very) R-rated gore helps give the third act a bit more heft than it deserves (since you can't be 100% positive people won't be killed) and the actors are all really good. A mountain of buzz will fall on Fuhrman, who's good but not exactly a revelation - how many times can you see the "I'm too glib and well-spoken for my age and therefore you should be unnerved" schtick and still be impressed? Aryana Engineer, a newcomer who plays the deaf, sign-language speaking younger daughter (she's apparently partially deaf in reality) has the harder part and shows real range... though I hope she was unaware of the context of most of her scenes. The "twist," sadly, ends up sucking a lot of the edge out of things... it almost feels tacked-on in order to make Esther's "bigger plan" less creepy to the audience and "justify" the eventual punishment she takes.

It's not very good, is the bottom line; though I imagine it'll be pretty impressive to younger audiences who never saw Bad Seed or Omen.

Thought For The Day 7/26/09

Well, a pair of thoughts actually. BELOW, the trailer for "Ninja Assassin."



Question number one: I get (and ADORE) that this film seems to "get" that Ninjas carry a certain ironic/humorous baggage with them at this point but that it's "more fun" to play them stone-cold serious than joke about it, but... the title is a blatant redundancy on purpose, right? Cuz otherwise, "Ninja Assassin" is sort of like saying "gay homosexual" or "police cop." Just sayin'.

Question number two: "International" readers (I must have some of those by now, right?) preferably from the East... is Rain (Korean pop superstar, lead actor here) taking - or can he be expected to take - any degree of "grief" from his native country for playing what I imagine has to be a Japanese hero character in this? I mean, Korea and Japan are still really, REALLY not fond of one another, correct?

Thought For The Day 7/25/09

So, we're all fair to moderately excited/interested about the "Green Lantern" movie, yes? I mean, not as excited as Ryan Reynold's agent or any blank t-shirt distribution middle-man with an excess of stock in "green," but it's got the people it needs talking talking. But... here's something that I haven't seen considered around much:

GL is one of those comic figures like Iron Man who (prior to the movie) is HUGELY important and well-known in the comic-reading world but not so much outside of it. To that end, the only real "penetration" the GL brand has had into the cultural mainstream has been the character's heavily-featured presence on the Bruce Timm "Justice League" cartoons - which was probably watched and internalized by more young kids than will EVER pick up a GL comic these days - sorry, Geoff Johns.

On the one hand, that means that the character already has some semblance of a "broader" audience. On the other hand, well... the movie is using the "best loved by fans" Hal Jordan Green Lantern (briefly: The Green Lanterns are a space police force, so there are and have been a fuckton of different ones) while the League cartoons used the John Stewart version. Principal difference between the two: John Stewart is Black. And for a pretty solid segment of the generation "behind" the comic-reading thirtysomethings who're thrilled to have Hal Jordan back (it's complicated); Stewart isn't just "a" Black cartoon superhero... he's THE Black cartoon superhero. In other words, when the posters and trailers for this movie start showing up within the next two years, there's going to be A LOT of people who're genuinely surprised to see that Green Lantern is white - and a good number of them are likely to be African-Americans who have "grown up" with John Stewart and may be more than a bit dissapointed to now "lose" one of the (scandalously) few superheroes who looked like them.

Make no mistake: This WILL come up. And it'll get a little ugly in spots, too, particularly on the "comic fan" side. One of the less-attractive elements of geekdom is the way some of "us" occasionally behave toward people who're fans of properties from "second tier" versions, (want to make a hardcore DC comics devotee bleed from the eyes? Tell him you think the "Smallville" version of Superman's origins is superior to the comics'...) add a racial component to that and... yikes. My question is: How much do you want to bet that Warner Bros. has NO IDEA that this is going to be an issue?

This is how noob I am at this job...

Alright, so... here's what it is:

I've got a question... a search for info, really. And since making phonecalls and chasing leads doesn't seem to yield much I'm going to try a desperation move: I'm told the blog here is actually getting somewhat widely-read, so, let's try throwing it up out in the open and see if anyone knows. So, here goes...

Movie Critic press-screenings: How do you get into these?

Yeah. Strange question for a (technically) professional film-critic to be asking, but for a guy only starting out it's like digging for Hoffa trying to find out how you get on the "list" (lists?) of pro critics who get invited to pre-screenings for new/upcoming films. No one seems to know, and the folks who do know (i.e. publicity houses that run that particular side of the business) don't seen to return phonecalls.

So... yeah. Do I have any readers who maybe know anything about this? Any little scrap of info or lead would be appreciated, either here in the comments or feel free to email me at MSTmario2@aol.com . I'm based in the Boston, MA area if that makes any difference to the "who should you call" end of it.

Thanks in advance to ANYONE who knows anything. We now return you to our regularly-scheduled movie gripe-fest ;)

Raimi directs Warcraft

...Huh.

So, according to AICN: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41761

AND Variety: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006299.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Unless both of those are full of bupkiss, apparently... Sam Raimi will direct the feature film adaptation of "Warcraft." There's no specification as to whether this is just a fantasy/action film set in the "Warcraft" universe or something tied directly to the "World of Warcraft" MMORPG franchise, but it's the popularity (and pop-culture ubiquity) of "WoW" that's driving this, no question.

Until there's something concrete (story, tone, pitch) this is honestly kind of a "huh, could be good" for me. The idea of Sam Raimi helming a mega-budget fantasy/action epic is, of course, automatically worth looking forward to even if you DON'T take into account what an awesome steward he was of that genre with his Hercules and Xena shows... in which case it becomes a MUST SEE... but I've really never been into MMORPGs or Warcraft in general; so I won't be geeking out until I at least start seeing some under-dressed starlets done up as Night Elf wenches (again, thank Rao that Raimi was also the boss of Xena.) And even WITH Raimi's involvement... look, I'm sorry Warcraft fans but... without substantial plot additions, how can this hope to be anything other than LOTR/Narnia again but with different costume choices? Part of the appeal of this franchise (especially in MMORPG form) is the way it encapsulates a generalized melenge of every fantasy cliche and trope in existance. Until details emerge, I maintain my earlier position that doing the formula of a normal human pulled "into" WoW for real (or vice-versa) is the most plausibly-decent way of doing this.

Funny, though, how things change: When Raimi was announced as the director of "Spider-Man," it was a HUGE deal for film geeks because it represented something "we" almost never get: A major studio taking the chance of letting a geek-cinema icon take charge of a big-ticket franchise the pairing of which was a geek wet-dream. Now, not even a decade later, his attachment here is big news in an entirely different direction - Raimi is NOW the type of A-list blockbuster talent that "we" almost never get to see tackle game-adaptations.

The Ugly Truth (2009)

Romantic Comedies, on-balance, are almost never good. They used to be good. They were good in the "golden age" when they were about dizzy, silly women and the exasperated men who wrangled them. They were good after that, too, in the early stages of what would come to be called feminism; when they were about assertive (but maybe not) women and their bewildered (but wily) men. They were good amid the institutional collapse and psycho-sexual chaos of the 70s. They were even good in the working-girl "backlash" atmosphere of the early 80s.

It's the last decade or so when they hit the wall - robbed of anything to say about the battle of the sexes by the crush of political correctness. They became, to the letter, predictable stories about mismatched opposites learning that they were both "wrong" in their approach to life and love and finding happiness only in bland, regimented compromise. Watching two people - however attractive - run in-tandem toward a haze of gray isn't interesting. And when they DID try to have something to say, usually it was of a vaugely self-hating (since, let's face it, these films are made for women) misogynist variety: Stories of overwhelmed career women rescued by a confident (but nonthreateningly-boyish) man enter the scene and declares - as "Family Guy" put it with uncharacteristic insight - "over the next 90 minutes, I'm going to show you how all your problems can be solved by my penis."

With all this as background, I feel comfortable saying that "The Ugly Truth," due to open wide on the 24th of July, is the best "traditional" romantic comedy to come along in a long time. It does almost everything right, it's inventive where it needs to be, and it WORKS. Taken as an example of it's genre, on those merits, it's a total success - a dynamite movie.

The premise you've been seeing in trailers for over a year now: Katherine Heigl is the genre's standard-issue "Type-A" career women; a TV producer (shades of Liz Lemon) who's daytime news program is in ratings trouble and who's love life is nonexistant because she's a control freak. As a ratings fix, her bosses opt to add to the show "300's" Gerard Butler as one Mike Chadway (sp?) the neo-neanderthal host of a vulgar (but massively popular) "guy's perspective" relationship advice cable show. She hates him, but he's a born TV star, they clash, etc. You get the idea. Being evidently just well-read enough to be aware of Cyrano DeBergerac, he makes her a deal: He'll prove that following his "how to get any guy" advice can land her the handsome doctor next door of her dreams... or he'll quit. Of course, if they should become friendly or close during the tutelage and he then has to hand her off to the other guy... yeah. Like I said, it's "Cyrano" again with one of the pieces swapped. Think you know who ends up with who? Yeah, you're right. Fuck a spoiler warning, honestly.

Why does this work? First, because it's funny. The script is mostly throwing layups, but their going in almost all the time. Uptight girl buying naughty lingerie? Yup, they make it work. Comedy phone-tag? Ditto. Food allergy slapstick? Yup, even that. Solid material, good cast, score. Execution is EVERYTHING. It also helps that Heigl and Butler are perfectly cast as leads in a film trading on the starkest of gender archetypes: With her impossible smile and Barbie body, Heigl is "The Girl" on an almost elemental level; while Butler - sporting permanent stubble, hatchet-job haircut, affecting an American accent that seemingly relies on speaking mostly from one side of his mouth and evidently still carrying most of his "spartan" physique around - is "Man" in the strictest anthropological sense of the word. They fit right in in the arch hyperreality of the genre.

But the main key here is that (okay, fine, SPOILER WARNING) the film doesn't take the "lesson teaching" route in it's resolution. We know they're going to discover that they love eachother, but in almost every other version of this story they discover this only after she's "taught" to lighten up and he's learned to be more civilized. That doesn't happen here!!! Because this is a film that "gets" these two people and doesn't look down on them. Either of them. SHE'S a control freak, but she's also a decent person and her Type-A mannerisms are what make her good at her job - which THIS film sees as a GOOD thing (take notes, "The Proposal.") Meanwhile, there's no "secret" or "psychosis" to Mike... he's an intelligent, observant guy who's arrived at his opinions on relationships logically and through experience and is open about the line between himself and his character ("your supposed to use that on stuck-up 25 year-old girls who think they're hot" he chides a nephew who borrowed some advice from his show "not 14 year-old girls you want to like you.") And the movie DOESN'T think he's all that wrong.

When it's said and done, SHE doesn't learn to "change" and neither does HE... they fall in love because they have chemistry and like eachother for who they are. She likes his gruff sincerity, he likes that she's a "control freak," and off they go. This isn't a "put her in her place" guy-movie or a "make a proper man out of him" chick-flick. It's "I'm who I am, you're who you are, this WORKS." When's the last time you saw that? AND it's really funny, to boot.

I say go see it, but that's me.

ETTM: "Harry Potter"

Game fuel

Have we all seen this commercial advertising the "World of Warcraft"-branded Mountain Dew?



Okay, in case YouTube is down the gag is that two women (it MUST be said, btw, that they're both in waaaaaaaay too good of shape to plausibly be THIS into either Mountain Dew or WOW) each buying one of the two flavors (red for Horde, blue for Alliance) recognize this fact, covertly draw big-ass medieval weapons and try to surprise-attack one-another, eventually morphing into their respective in-game avatars and going at it all over the store. Cute.

I submit to you that a 90-minute narrative expanding on this scenario is the only reasonable way for a "Warcraft" movie to work. (Or, at least, work WITHOUT just being Lord of The Rings in vastly less-practical costuming.) IMO, sometimes that's the key to these things - find a way to film what makes the property "work" rather than just the (typically-rote) mythos attached to it. See also: A movie about "Magic: The Gathering" ought to be built around various wizard/despot guys amassing armies to conquer big chunks of forest, lake etc. land in order to make their magic work better - until, of course, one of them messes with The Wrong Guy's Village ;)

"You put it together..."

I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm about the only guy left on the web who still thinks "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" has a fair chance of being good. I'd say the chances have only gotten BETTER recently - at this point, it can't possibly be WORSE than it's most-logical competition in "Transformers 2;" so objectively all it's gotta do is be better than... I dunno, "MegaForce?" What exactly is the gold-standard for paramilitary super-soldier scifi actioners at this point?

Eh, we'll see soon enough. For now, as far as I'm concerned, if the ONLY good thing to come out of this movie is this gloriously "retro" commercial for the film's tie-in action figures, it'll almost be worth it:



C'mon, admit it: How nifty is that?

If I'd waited one more day, no one would've hated me...

So, yesterday I tossed out all my geek street-cred by coming out as "I'd be okay with this" in regards to the rumors that Justin Timberlake was on the short-list to play The Green Lantern...
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2009/07/get-ready-to-hate-me-folks.html

...as it turns out, nobody needed to get worked-up about anything either way. Regardless of whether Timberlake was ever on "the list" or not, Green Lantern will apparently be played by Ryan Reynolds: http://weblogs.variety.com/bfdealmemo/2009/07/ryan-reynolds-is-the-green-lantern.html

This will be met with near-universal acclaim and celebration by the film-geek set, of which I will have no trouble joining in. How much do nerds love Ryan Reynolds? Well, he participated in Blade 3, the desecration of "Deadpool" in the Wolverine movie, he appears largely in romantic comedies otherwise... and we DON'T hate him. That makes him damn near invincible. WHY do nerds love Ryan Reynolds? Well, because he openly gives the impression that he's "one of us" only much more handsome and successful, which makes him a first-class foil for projected self-image (see also: Bruce Campbell, Nathan Fillion.) For my part, I'm in debt to Reynolds because every film role he takes is a role that DIDN'T go to Dane Cook - in THAT respect, the man is doing the lord's work.

"So," some of you may be asking "that was WAY too fast to not have been mostly decided already; so why the business about Timberlake?" Who knows, really. But if a Z-lister internet film-commentator had to guess (and I do) I'd say it was a quick attempt to "work the web" - i.e. freaking the geek-set out with rumors of a choice most of them were bound to hate ("ZOMG! A pop-star my sister likes playing a DC hero!!??") in order to make the "good" real casting sound that much better.

Either way, while I stand by the notion that Timberlake would've been a good choice, there's no question that Reynolds is among the best anyone could hope for in the age-range that Warners was going to limit itself to for this role. For those not ultra-familiar with this particular franchise (but who still read this far) the version of Green Lantern apparently being done here is named Hal Jordan - a fearless-to-the-point-of-cocky US Army test-pilot who gets drafted as the Earth-jurisdiction arm of The Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic police force who's agents fight spacecrime with magic rings that can create any object or image the wearer has the will and imagination to conjur. Can you see Reynolds being good in that? I can.

As for Timberlake... frankly, I hope both his "people" and various casting entities were paying attention to the fact that this "rumor" wasn't met with anything NEAR the bile anyone was expecting - I actually wasn't so "alone" in this at all, it turns out. Evidently, the "he's okay" blessing of nerd-demigod Andy Samberg was enough to make Timberlake palatable for a lot of people, in which case... hey, not for nothing, but his comic timing and substantial physical skills (ANYONE who can dance that well has action chops, plain and simple. I bet Fred Astaire lost very few fights in his day) would make him one terrific Barry "The Flash" Allen ;)

Experiment: Reading through "Twilight" (no, really) Part 4

(NOTE: The following post(s) include discussions of plot points from a bunch of books already published but that have not been made into movies yet, much of which can be considered SPOILERS. So no carping at me for not doing inviso-text or something.)

Quick preview/summary of the following spiel: Holy. Shit. What a disaster. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this (supposed) last act to "Twilight" actually makes all the prior novels slightly more attractive in comparison. I think the last time I saw a work of fiction go so completely awry in it's final moments it was "High Tension." But before I get going...

...in reading and reconsidering this series, I've tried to pinpoint what it is exactly that I found so off-putting about Stephenie Meyer's writing. What I think of her subtext is a seperate matter, I'm talking about the mechanics of storytelling. Finally, I think I have it: 'Twilight' reads like it's it's OWN fan-fiction. By that I mean, the bigger IDEAS at play here aren't all inherently bad - in fact, many of them have been GOOD many, many, many, MANY times before in other vampire books/movies/etc. It's a style/execution thing, in other words. Reading through, I was occasionally aware that - did I not know any better - I'd be inclined to assume that "Twilight" was actually some other, more interesting franchise and what I was reading was an "imaginary tale" composed by a 14 year-old fan to accompany the heavily manga-inspired pencil-sketch of various characters "doing it" she'd uploaded to DeviantArt. In any case...

Breaking Dawn: I observed before that the series is at it's worst whenever it tips into it's own mythology. Unfortunately for me, Book #4 is ALL mythology, ALL the time. The human supporting players either vanish, die or get brought in on "the deal;" so now it's ALL superpowered magical/mythic beings and their attendant whys and how-tos ALL the time. To be a little inside-nerd-baseball about it, the best descriptive I can find is that it reads like someone doing a near-perfect parody of Chris Claremont... except it's not meant to be funny.

To the story: Edward and Bella get married and jet off to experiment with vampire/human sex before she officially switches sides herself. The attempt ends with her waking up looking life a used pinata but accepting that it's her own fault for wanting sex in the first place - a position the book seems to agree with her on. Really.

Sidebar: Before we get any further, just so it doesn't have to keep coming up let me put down for the record that - seperately from my opinion on it's literary merits - on a purely THEMATIC level I loathe and despise every single archaic, hyperreligious, feminist-backlash bone in this series' body. Taken as a whole narrative, "Twilight" is basically all about taking a female lead who's essentially independent and cautiously-cynical about romance and teaching her (frequently by violence) the virtues of submissive co-dependency. All joking aside, fuck this.

So, in short-order, all that 'experimenting' unexpectedly leads to Bella getting knocked-up with a half-human/half-vampire baby that's apparently draining her life-energy en-route to making it's exit Chestburster-style. How exactly did this work, anyway? Three books have been spent telling us how ramped-up the vampires various physical attributes are AND how little self-control Edward has in these situations, so... look, it's been a long time since I read all the way through "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (look it up) but instead of a fetilized egg shouldn't she instead have an exit wound somewhere in the vicinity of her tailbone? Whatever. The male characters mostly want her to get rid of it before it kills her (do coat-hangers even COME in pure silver? will it need to be blessed?) but she refuses even under threat of death because the fetus is talking to her and doesn't want to be "killed." Yeesh. Thus, we now have an answer to the question: "What if Sarah Palin had written 'Alien?"

A series of character-contrivances set up a big combination brawl/birthing/turning-Bella-into-a-vampire sequence (which if filmmed could potentially rival "Flash Gordon's" football-fight for what-am-I-watching high camp) capped off with Edward performing a C-section with his teeth. Huh. Okay, well... four books in, the male lead FINALLY does something cool. The resulting baby is a rapidly-maturing telepathic... well, "Daywalker" basically for those of you who've seen Blade (though in the Twilight universe having "none of a vampires weaknesses" means she'll have to apply her OWN body-glitter) and Jacob the werewolf falls in love with her while she's about an hour old via the werewolf "life-partner imprinting" thing. ...Yeah. Somehow, I imagine that a lot of heated Twilight fan-discussions of "imprinting" on the interweb end with one of the parties being surprised by Chris Hansen.

One Deus ex Moronica misunderstanding later, though, and the Volturi (bad guys) are making a beeline for some baby-vampire extermination (it's against the rules, or rather looks like something else thats against the rules.) Good guys' solution: call in favors from all the OTHER good vamps they know and meet the baddies with a joint good-vamp/werewolf army for a showdown. Alright, THAT I can get behind. Two teams of good and evil vampires lined up for combat throwing superpowers at eachother. Pretty hard to fuck THAT up, right?

...and then a character we've never met or heard of before shows up out of nowhere, explains that it's all a big misunderstanding to the bad guys, the bad guys go "oh, okay. Our bad," waste ONE extraneous bit-player for good measure and then take off. And that's it - it's over. No, really. That's the big finish to this: The villians shrug and walk home, the good guys get back to playing house. No major status-quo changes, nobody important dies, nothing.

Yeah, I wouldn't even know where to start to "wrap up." Suffice it to say, this last one is the one I'd most like to see as a movie just on the basis of how silly it all gets. Overall, I can say that gaining a better "understanding" of this series didn't actually help me LIKE it any more. It starts out boring, flirts with becoming interesting towards the middle then crashes and burns at the climax... not much more to say of it than that. In the end, I'd say this "experiment" made for amusing blogging. Maybe I'll do it again sometime... if I find myself in a situation where I can blaze through another similar inexplicably-popular series. Did "Left Behind" officially end, yet?

Get ready to hate me, folks...

Courtest AICN comes this weekend's geekdom anger-generator du jour:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41645
Apparently on the shortlist of actor's desired for Warner Bros. Green Lantern movie? Justin Timberlake. Let the battle begin.

So... here's something you need to understand about movie geeks and superheroes: Right now, they (okay, we) hate EVERY superhero casting decision until we don't anymore; usually for the sole reason that the role has not gone to Nathan Fillion, who is generally adjudged to be "perfect" for every such role due to having a vaugely all-American WASPy look and having appeared as an action lead for Nerd-God Joss Whedon (see also: David Boreanaz.) But if you REALLY want to get our dander up? Cast someone who's more popular with "the mainstream" and/or tween-aged girls than with us. Which is why I doubt that this is true, because it's "too perfect" of a "rile the fanboys up" scenario.

However, since I'm feeling frisky, let me throw every shred of my film-geek street-cred away and say that I think it'd be good casting.

Yeah, I said it.

No, he wouldn't be my first choice. Yes, I think he looks too young. But then, we think EVERYONE is too young. Hell, Christian Bale is frankly a little too "fresh" looking as Bruce Wayne, yes? The fact is, we all want superheroes to look like our surrogate father-figures no matter how old we get - this is why Alex Ross's paintings are so "iconic": he paints these characters who're mostly supposed to be in the mid-30s at the oldest looking like hard-hewn 40-something John Wayne type dudes who these days ONLY exist in paintings and old movies. Warners is almost-certainly NOT going to cast someone over thirty as the lead in an action franchise.

As to Timberlake... look, we ALL despised NSync. But if you still "hate" this guy, I'm sorry, you need to mentally leave High School behind. He's an extremely talented singer and dancer (not a genre I enjoy, but that he excells at it is a fact) and his SNL stints prove he's gifted actor with great comic timing and real physicality. Not to mention - and I'm aware of the daming with faint praise aspect of this - he frankly has much more of a grown-up "man" look than most other actors in his range. I mean, would you rather they go with LaBeouf, again?

Heck, there's even prior acting experience to point to: Jordan is supposed to be military man, and Timberlake played an Army Rangers vet pretty convincingly in "Black Snake Moan." I'm sticking by this: He'd be well-cast in this role.

Experiment: Reading through "Twilight" (no, really) Part 3

(NOTE: The following post(s) include discussions of plot points from a bunch of books already published but that have not been made into movies yet, much of which can be considered SPOILERS. So no carping at me for not doing inviso-text or something.)

Among the many (MANY) valid criticisms lobbed in Stephenie Meyer's direction i.e. "Twilight" is one that I think is a little unfair - namely pointing to her self-professed lack of familiarity with the genre outside her own work. I'm of the mind that it doesn't matter - if anything, it ought to make the series more original... but instead only serves to make me both dissapointed and a little perplexed that someone who's not a "fan" of the horror/vampire scene puts out an entry that's so incredibly familiar and cliche.

Where it DOES hurt, though, is in the suspension of disbelief. The teenaged characters in the series are - as befits their age - sponges of the popular culture, but seem to exist in a world where no one has EVER made a movie or written a book about either werewolves or vampires... how else to explain how NO ONE picked up the veritable "hi, I'm a vampire!" name-badges the Cullens (good guys) are wearing all the damn time? The only other possible explanation is that everyone in the series is a moron, which is probably closer to likely as demonstrated in...

Eclipse: ...case in point: This, book #3 aka "the 'action' one," turns on two main plot threads. #1: There's a 'serial killer' in nearby Seattle, but it's really a small army of freshly-minted vampires. #2: The girlfriend of the now-deceased vampire villian from Book 1 is still skulking around looking for a revenge-shot at the good guys. It takes HALF THE FUCKING BOOK for anyone to put together that these things are probably related.

Brief sidebar: Most of the "Hm, something's fishy in Seattle" foreshadowing (which the author isn't getting any better at, btw) comes from Bella's cop father, who filled a similar role last time dropping lines about "strange animal sightings." Somewhere amid the slog, it occured to me that this was how Nancy Drew (30s version) often got her more unusual stories set up - save that her father was an attorney (right?) and she usually wound up solving a problem that had either baffled or escaped the (usually male) adults around her. Bella, on the other hand, typically winds up immediately in-over-her-head, bruised and bloody or flat on her back cooing "thank you sir, may I have another?" to the nearest available dominant-male. Aaah, progress ;) Incidentally, new plot point: Edward puts his foot down and refuses to either sleep-with Bella OR turn her into a vampire until they're married, for those wondering if the weird-ass abstinence metaphor kept on going.

Anyway, this means Superhero Team-Up time for the vampires and werewolves, preceeded by a training montage wherein the wolves learn proper tactics for such a situation. I can't wait to see this part filmmed, since given the way the FX and casting has gone for this series so far I imagine it'll look something like the "pose-off" contest in "Zoolander." The "war" is actually a bit of an afterthought - the real focus is on the increasingly dippy love-triangle, culminating in an awkward sequence involving Bella freezing in a tent (don't ask) and only one of her two paramours being capable of generating body heat. This scene will innevitably be an acting challenge for Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward in the films, because he'll have to try and look even MORE like a whiny punk than he already does...

There's also a lot of backstory on the werewolves, unfortunately including lots of mythology-building (which Meyer is lousy at) and foreshadowing (WORSE at that.) The big new plaything is "imprinting," (which MIGHT have been mentioned earlier but I'm not going back to check) the process by which the wolves 'mate for life' by having their entire worldview snap-focused onto their "chosen" woman the moment they run into her. This is, of course, problematic for werewolves already in relationships (or by-the-numbers love-triangles) but it has an ickier side in that there's no set "age limit" on this - so several of the young-adult wolf guys are "locked-in" on pre-adolescent fate-indicated girlfriends, whom they hang around "babysitting" like Daddy Long-Legs (as in the movie) until she's old enough to screw without Dateline showing up. Apparently the girls in question don't object to this, in fact the book goes out of it's way to infer that this kind of stalker-ish fixation is something they ALL either want or ought to want. So... yeah. For those keeping track, you can add "child-brides" to the list of Retrograde Misogynist Relationship Scenarios That "Twilight" Considers The Height of Romance... right next to ritualized-abstinence, technical-exemption incest and marriage-by-contract.

As to the promised dust-up between the goodies and baddies? Not bad (probably going to need a trim for the innevitable film version's PG13, in nothing else) but one does begin to REALLY notice how situational everyone's "power-set" is. Also, for about the sixth time since starting the things, I find myself wondering if Stephenie Meyer's DVR is full of Inuyasha reruns...

To be concluded tomorrow.

Experiment: Reading through "Twilight" (no, really) Part 2

(NOTE: The following post(s) include discussions of plot points from a bunch of books already published but that have not been made into movies yet, much of which can be considered SPOILERS. So no carping at me for not doing inviso-text or something.)

I should start setting weekly "projects" for this thing more often - when's the last time I updated the very next day. Anyway...

New Moon: Since the whole point of putting myself through this was to try and get inside the head of where this "phenomenon" is coming from, I made it a point to hit up a quick sampling of fan opinions. One main recurring point: Apparently Book #2 "New Moon" is the "love it or leave it" installment - regarded either as the series high-point or a fundamental low; no middle ground. It doesn't take long to discern why...

(incidentally, tip for making it through these at top-speed: Every time Meyer starts in on a positive description of male beauty, flip ahead five pages. Trust me - ALL you're missing is about eighteen paragraphs worth of synonyms for the words "hard," "cold" and "pale.")

...anyway, the whole story turns on Bella (female lead) getting a paper cut, the blood from which makes one of the good vampires momentarily flip the hell out and nearly attack her (visualized with unintended hillarity in the film's teaser trailer with a slo-mo sequence of pale skinny dudes throwing eachother through a piano.) She lives, but Edward (male lead, vampire) pulls a Bruce Banner - i.e. throwing a masochistic "I've got to protect you from me!" hissy-fit and running away, for whatever reason taking the rest of his crew with him. Bruce Banner, incidentally, is a reference Edward probably wouldn't "get" - since if he did, he'd know that doing this is the surest way to garauntee that one or more of the two not-as-nice vampires still living after #1 turn up again. Anyway, Bella gets mopey(er) and (more-specifically)-suicidal over this; but perks back up by reconnecting with old-buddy Jacob, fun-loving grease-monkey and member of the local Indian tribe... who's spent the interim between books growing into what my mother's generation called a "hunk." Oh, and he's a werewolf. See: title of the book plus pages upon pages of amusingly clumsy foreshadowing.

This, I infer, is where the "division" in the fandom comes from: Edward basically VANISHES for about 90% of this installment, supplanted by his diametric opposite. Fangirls, help me out here: This is like Twilight's version of Kirk-vs-Picard or Mike-vs-Joel, right? You're either a "Jacob Girl" or an "Edward Girl," in which case "New Moon" is either oasis or desert? Are there 'nicknames' for the two 'sides?' Anyway, though for what I imagine are profoundly different reasons than the target audience, I'd have to cast my lot in on the "Jacob side." Not that he's any less a one-dimensional cliche than anyone else in the series... but having suffered through a book and a half (plus a movie) of this stuff I'm inclined to be sympathetic to ANY character who's checklist of motivations includes "wanting Edward to die."

Moreover, though, I can say with some certainty that I'd call this the highlight (such as it is) of the series. The cartoonishly-unlikable male lead isn't around to bother me, that's part of it, but it's kind of the first (and, it turns out, LAST) time that the series makes good on it's own apparent hook of reworking mythic monsters into teen-romance archetypes - i.e. the vampire is the rich classy suitor vs. the blue-collar "fun" werewolf guy, fire vs. ice, a gender-swapped Archie/Betty/Veronica thing... but with monsters. Okay. Not really my "thing," but at least I'm getting a rough idea what the point is. This is - speaking of foreshadowing - the closest I'll ultimately come to enjoying this...

...too bad it doesn't last. A 3rd-act plot-contrivance drags Edward back into the mix, but mainly serves to introduce the franchise principal supervillians: A vampire self-policing aristocracy called "The Volturi" (cute) who hail from the vampire city Volterra (oh, gawd... y'know, even as a five year-old noting how for example the Thundercats came from Thunderra or Crystar came from Crystalium I thought that kind of naming-scheme was dopey.) They've got more exotic names and better super-powers than everyone else, basically, and their main function here is to hand the good guys an ultimatum to either turn Bella into a vamp sooner than later or off her before she spills the beans to someone. "That's light Team Amelica! A TICKING CROCK!!"

But anyway... yeah, compared to the first one, this one I didn't mind - to the point that, until Act 3 rolled around, I was struck by the sinking feeling I had a lot of "perhaps I misjudged this" crow to eat. It's tempered, however, by the fact that the stuff I liked I think I liked for the wrong reasons - it's obvious that the book intends for the reader to miss Edward, whereas I couldn't have been happier to not have him hanging around. Also, now that this is officially a "fantasy world" story instead of just a "vampire story," a problematic flaw rears it's head: While the teen-romance stuff works in fits and starts... ALL the mythology stuff is bad. All of it. The vamp/werewolf backstories are dripping in tired cliche, and the new stuff (like the "shiny" vampires) is pretty awful. And since "mythos" tends to get MORE dense as these things wear on... well, spoiler alert: That's goin' where you think it is. Starting tomorrow.

Experiment: Reading through "Twilight" (no, really) Part 1

(NOTE: The following post(s) include discussions of plot points from a bunch of books already published but that have not been made into movies yet, much of which can be considered SPOILERS. So no carping at me for not doing inviso-text or something.)

Something that never really made it into the well-known movies (and probably won't be in the new one) about Sherlock Holmes is that the title character is a habitual abuser of cocaine (intravenously, even!) and other narcotics. The reasoning behind this - aside from "Hey, YOU find a way to give this smug, antisocial, asexual intellectual show-off whos ALWAYS right some depth!" - is that Holmes is so cerebral he can't bear to be mentally disengaged even for a moment and will take the synapse-stimulating haze of a "high" over not having any cases to solve or chemistry to dick around with. (If he'd lived today - or at all - Holmes would've been forced-fed handfuls Ritalin as soon as he was old enough to talk back to this teachers and Professor Moriarty would be ruling half of Western Europe right now.) There's an amusing element of truth in this: Nerds HATE to be bored. That's why we turn casual leisure activities like movie-watching or gaming into marathons of endurance, why we "collect" instead of "aquire," and why we'll take bad stories that are "in continuity" over good ones that aren't (looking at YOU, everyone who's sooooo psyched about Ben Reilly coming back.)

Which is kind of a long-ish way of explaining that Bob works in a used book store, and occasionally Bob has NOTHING to fucking do for hours on end, so Bob will read just about ANYTHING to pass the time. As a rule, I avoid anything I expect to really LIKE because I want to be able to drop it once work actually rolls around and I'm "that guy" who can't put a good read down. One day, for example, I read Sean Hannity's book. Guess how I feel about Sean Hannity. Go on, guess. By far my favorite "snack" in these cases is bad "genre fiction" - read: scifi and fantasy of the type so brilliantly parodied with Stephen Colbert's "Tek Jansen" bits - because it's usually a quick read and even when it's REALLY bad at least I get some aliens and/or sexually-aggressive amazons. A little while back the store made a big thing out of finally carrying the "Twilight" books, so I figured... well, only a matter of time. Plus, I needed to take a break from the lesser works of R.A. Salvatore at SOME point ;)

Frequent readers and/or fans of my Escapist stuff may recall that I quit shortly through book #1 and HATED the movie (dubbing it "Mormon Vampire Abstinence Porn") and I honestly had very little intention of ever reading these save for a rare attack of negative introspection. See, they've been teasing the release of movie #2 "New Moon" with glamour shots of the Indian Werewolf dudes (hey, I warned you at the top of the page) standing around shirtless looking like a parody of early-90s designer-jeans ads. Like everyone else in the web geekverse, this struck me as immediately hysterical but also gave me a subsequent pause: There's nothing INHERENTLY "funny" about this, other than the blatant sexualization of mythic characters... in which case, am I now on the "other side" of seeing my female compatriots roll their eyes at the likes of Power Girl and Fathom (okay, thats not fair, EVERYONE rolls their eyes at Fathom...) etc? In other words, am I missing the "point" here by not at least trying to engage the rare genre-entry that's actually AIMED at women (instead of aimed at ME with some girl-power bones thrown to a female audience - looking at you Joss Whedon.)?

So I figured... what the hell? I'll read the damn things, maybe get a run of blog entries out of it and MAYBE I'll have to revise my feelings toward the franchise as a whole (spoiler: that didn't happen) and in doing so further endear myself to the she-geek set (fingers still crossed on that one - hey ladies, did I mention I ALSO happen to love chocolate, flavored-alcohol and Tina Fey?) So I did. Took about a week reading in-between customers and stocking duty, probably coulda done it in about twelve hours uninterupted (see above i.e. nerds and boredom.) Overall verdict: Shoulda gone with my first instinct - yeesh, this goes from not-very-good to holy-shit-what-a-train-wreck more profoundly than the last three M. Night Shyamalan flicks. BUT can I wring some blogging out of it? Um... yeah, actually, since I've already banged FIVE paragraphs out of "so, I read some bad vampire books recently...") So here's how this "experiment" is gonna work: 4 books, 4 days. I'm gonna collect and post my insightful recollects (read: mean-spirited sex jokes) regarding each; and then YOU'RE going to read it, hopefully laugh and not be too angry with me when I recycle/cannibalize 90% of this material for reviewing the subsequent movie adaptations ;)

Why break it up over 4 days? Because this particular blog format doesn't let you do the space-saving "click to read more" teaser-paragraph thing, and I'd rather not have loooong posts vanish from prime viewing space the moment I find a new youtube bit to link to. Anyway, onto #1...

TWILIGHT: Thanks to the media-blitz, the story you already know: Mopey high-school girl moves to overcast town, falls for whiny douchebag who's actually a vampire. It's most infamous for the way it reworks the typical fetishism of the vampire myth into a kind of pro-abstinence/"surrendered wife" thing; but there's a few more levels of "huh?" to it - part of the main vamp's apparent attractiveness to the heroine is that, being a century or so old, he's basically a worldly old man pursuing an inexperience high schooler. That in an of itself is nothing new to vampire stories, but usually it's played as a dark metaphor for predatory behavior - HERE, it's treated like the most dizzyingly-romantic thing evah. Quick tip, girls: In real life, the phrase "he's soooo much more MATURE than guys my own age" is often followed by an Amber Alert ;) There's also a slightly-icky vibe of incest-fantasy hovering over the vampire "family" and their romantically-paired adopted "children," though given that the female-authored-vampire-romance has Anne Rice and Laurel K. Hamilton as it's major touchstones I guess one should be thankful it remains just a "vibe" instead of a book-length digression. There's also some bad guys, who aren't especially interesting, some Native Americans who have kind of a "wolf" thing going on, and apparently vampires get one specific "super-power" in addition to everything else. Lead guy, for example, is a mind-reader... except it doesn't work on the girl. Incidentally as to those last two bits... recurring theme for the series: Stephanie Meyer "foreshadows" like Michael Bay "utilizes pyrotechnics." Overall, my impression of this one - book and movie - remains that it's "this generation's" answer to V.C. Andrews: Cheezy as all hell, not especially artful in it's prose and feels a lot like reading the Myspace pages of it's target audience. In book-form it's a little less embarassing than the movie, but given the choice I'll take the movie because Ashley Greene (who plays "Alice") is fucking GORGEOUS.

So... tune in tomorrow, where I'll either continue this OR sober up to the point that I realize this is a stupid idea to blow 4 days on ;)

Jennifer's Body

Below, the R-rated "redband" trailer for "Jennifer's Body," screenwriter/blogger Diablo Cody's followup to "Juno," evidently based on the STUNNINGLY original premise of a murdered/beaten (raped, also, I infer?) high school cheerleader who "comes back" as a literally man-eating demon (or maybe she was always that way and this "woke it up?" I dunno.)



Here's what's bugging me: Diablo Cody is ONLY famous for ONE thing - her dialogue. Nobody cares (so far) about her plotting, her stories or her characterizations - she's a "brand" based on her ability/prediliction for a writing style in which characters blurt out quippy, ironic, reference-laden dialogue like a belt-fed machine-gun hooked up to Liz Lemon. And that's great, good on her, I liked "Juno," yadda yadda. But in this....

...look: if the whole "hook" of this movie is that it's a teen horror deal but with a focus on Cody's celebrated dialogue... what would possess you to hire a talentless, personality-deficient non-actor like MEGAN FOX for the lead role? I've seen this woman trying to deliver dialogue... it's like watching a quadraplegic try to moonwalk. I understand she's mainly here to stand around wearing vaugely post-orgasmic expressions and possibly pop the twins out... but geez, there are Youtube videos of "talking" cats who can form coherent sentences more ably than Megan Fox can.

And speaking of the dialogue...

"I thought you only ates boys!"

"I go both ways."

Yikes. See, here's the other problem: Cody's style is often afflicted with David Mamet's Disease - in that it ONLY sounds really, really good when spoken in the right way by the right actor. Nobody in this seems to be "the right actor."

Asteroids, Viewmaster, etc.

I'm lately finding myself a bit of a rare species here on the interweb, in as much as I'm not reflexively aghast at each new "low" in the current trend of greenlighting major movies based on brand-name properties of dubious narrative potential (usually video games or old toys.) The problem is probably with me, being that I'm A.) a film geek born in 1981 and thus the textbook "mark" for these films and B.) not concerned with artificially-increasing my percieved coolness by being a snide douche and pretending these things don't still occupy a place of affection in my psyche.

For awhile, this particular trend confined itself to action figure lines from the 80s, most of which had nominal stories attached that could be plausibly adapted to film. Recently, though, it's branched off into stuff like random playthings or board games that don't really have any attendant "story" or "theme," which has gotten people all hot and bothered about "the end of cinema" and other such hyperbole. Current most-punchline-y cases: Viewmaster and Asteroids (as in the photo-viewing visor toy and the minimalist late-70s arcade game.)

Frankly, the aquisitions of THESE kinds of properties makes me a lot LESS apprehensive than the stuff that was already narrative. 80s action-figure backstories, with the mandatory dueling teams of good and evil characters fighting over some mythical widget or another, don't exactly mandate the most complex stories be told. Stuff that IS "just a hook and a brand," on the other hand, seems to me to hold more possibilities. Asteroids, for example, is "about" a spaceship tasked with blowing up space debris. Something you could build a decent scifi movie out of? Sure, I think so.

Elsewhere, Ridley Scott apparently wants to make a "Monopoly" movie - as in the board game. Now... a Ridley Scott movie about wealthy people fighting dirty over real-estate? Yeah, I wanna see that - and if he has to slap the Parker Bros. brand on it to get it made... still deserves a chance, as far as I'm concerned. Same deal with the proposed "Battleship" film. Viewmaster? How many movies have already been made about looking-glass type devices having some extra-natural function? Does the cheezy branding make it an AUTOMATIC "don't" regardless of the outcome? (Oh, in case your wondering, YES, someone already grabbed up the rights to make a horror movie out of "Oujia Board," probably the biggest 'duh' property in this cycle.)

I can certainly see, if nothing else, a kind of perverse creative "fun" to be had if one if the guy (or guys) tasked with coming up with narrative contexts for these things. Lemme try some out...

SILLY PUTTY: Terrorists pursue a kid who's unwittingly used his Silly Putty to "copy" the only known text of missle launch codes.

CREEPY CRAWLERS: Rubbery insects come out "alive," chase people.

EASY BAKE OVEN: Girl makes surprisingly-good amateur pastries, often with comically magical results (so, "Simply Irresistable"/"Like Water For Chocolate" but with a kid.)

OPERATION! Disgraced surgeon must perform delicate operation on a man who has been wired by terrorists to explode if bomb parts not removed precisely (This Summer: Don't blink. Don't breath. Don't... touch the sides!)

HOT WHEELS: That unused script for "Fast & Furious 5" might as well get used for SOMETHING, right?

TWISTER: Teen sex-comedy. Vaugely-dweeby guy re-evaluates life after round of titular party-game accidentally lands him in semi-compromising position with longtime female friend he'd previously not thought of "that way." (Paging Mr. Cera...)

RADIO FLYER: Oh, yeah. Nevermind.

Ong Bak 2 trailer

What I like most about the Tony Jaa "cycle" of Thai martial-arts movies is that they all affect this seemingly straight-faced kind of fairytale moral naivete amid all the head-kicking. Jaa - a simply incredible physical-specimen of a fight-star if certainly NOT the most charismatic figure the genre has ever seen - generally plays a Thai version of Lil' Abner: An old-fashioned, reflexively-patriotic, churchgoing country bumpkin who happens to be a superhuman ass-kicking machine and puts those skills to use against unscrupulous "big city folk" who make trouble for his rural compatriots... usually by disrespecting their religious customs or screwing with their resources. In "Ong Bak" he beats up about 1/3rd of Bangkok trying to find a stolen Buddha statue, while in "The Protector" he has to save a baby elephant from a crime syndicate that's running an illegal resturaunt that serves endangered animals to evil gourmets. Read that last one again.

Which might be why, while the rest of the web is losing it over the shot in the new trailer for "Ong Bak 2" where Jaa appears to be fighting a live crocodile; MY favorite part is the sublimely ridiculous shot of him standing on the rock while what looks like an army of elephants GENUFLECTS in front of him like he's fucking Babar or something:



Incidentally, this looks to be a period film; which leads me to believe that it doesn't actually have anything to do with the first one - which makes sense, since "Protector" was actually already called "Ong Bak 2" in some territories.

Escape to the Movies: Public Enemies