Real Genius
You have to rent this movie! It's a moral imperative!
DVD Review
Also posted here.

The summer doldrums have us dredging around in the weird sections of our local video store. July is awful for video releases - we are all waiting with bated breath for The Two Towers and it seems like that is going to be forever. While we are waiting, we've been dusting off a bunch of the oldies-but-oldies out there.

Real Genius hit DVD last summer, but I must have missed it. I hadn't seen this thing since it came out in '85. Val Kilmer and Gabriel Jarrett star as two of the ten best minds in the world. Kilmer plays a mellowed out clowning senior named Chris Knight and Jarrett plays a straight-laced 15-year-old freshman named Mitch Taylor. Knight and Taylor are working on a top-secret laser that is designed to be accurate and powerful enough to vaporize a human target from space. Of course, they don't know that. They are being duped into this job by their glory-hounding professor who has embezzled a bunch of the project's funds. The rest of the film is cast with sterotypical rejects from the cast of Revenge of the Nerds, but with a slightly more functional edge. This gang is weird, but it is usable weird. It reminded me a lot of work, to be honest.

On the surface this looks like your typical 80's teen comedy. Lots of silly situations, a fair amount of silly humor, the bad guy gets what's coming to him in a back-handed way, and everyone dances off into the morning sun. But along with that, there is some groundbreaking (especially for the time) character work. Remember, this was back before geekdom was cool. Anyone who had a brain in their skull was a loser, and if you hung out with them you would catch it. They certainly couldn't be cute like a young Val, or female like Jordan. If you were smart, you had to look like Rick Moranis.

This one broke the mold. Instead of downplaying brains at the expense of cool, this film enjoys it's geekiness. But it is handled in a very low-key sort of way. They didn't go for the usual jokes, and none of it is played in that overbroad Chevy Chase style. The characters feel real, not one-pixel-deep caricatures of themselves. I was amazed to find out that this one was directed by a woman, Martha Coolidge of Valley Girl and Lost in Yonkers fame.

It also carries a delicately-placed message about finding balance in your life that resonates with many of us these days.

If you know what a Unit belt is, you should probably dust this one off and take a little stroll down Amnesia Lane. If you still quote "Ferris Buehler's Day Off", then you definately need to go and get this movie.

Invincible
Film's First Happy WireFu Master
DVD Review
Also posted here.

ZillaJr picked this thing out of the rack at our local Schlockbuster. After reading the back I figured it was just your stereotypical Wire Fu slap-fest, but it looked innocuous enough, so I let him get it. I mean, it was made for TV. Can't be too horrific. Right? I watched it this evening, and was pleasantly surprised.

The bad guy looked like an accountant, dressed like a pimp, and had Darth Vader's conversational skills. It was an odd combination. Billy Zane is his usual bulky self. The bald pate made you look twice, but it was about fourty-two times better than the heinous rug he starts the film in. The rest are the usual ragged band of action flick suspects - sort of like an ass-kicking ethnic joke.

It feels kind of like a cross between Tomb Raider, Highlander, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The same basic plot was done better in Warriors of Virtue, but in that one you have to deal with the animatronic kangaroos. The story is the typical bad guy shows up, good guys are chosen, everyone takes sides and improbably high kicks ensue with the usual nods to the five rings and the elements.

The bad guys are some sort of immortals who were sent here to be punished and have spent some unimaginably long time here randomly being evil. It is refered to as "pulling the wings off of human flies" at one point. There is an artifact that if it is found by the bad guys he can basically reset the universe, and he thinks it is the only way he can get off this rock. Billy, who starts off as his most powerful henchmen, is off being evil but in the process is tapped by a Power of the Light called the White Warrior, who kicks his backside up around his shoulderblades and in the process cleanses his black soul and sends him off to find and train humanity's destined protectors in their duties so they can fight off the bad guys when they find the tablet.

Bad points first. Even for a story this over-done, a lot of the dialog is heinous. I mean really heinous. Like worse than Darth Tyrannus and C3P0 in Episode 2 heinous. The production values for a made-for-TV is good, though. The sets and the photography are well done, and give it a feel of scope, but it isn't anything fabulous. Whatever. Nothing new or exciting there.

The first hints of newness show up right after the fight with the White Warrior. After Billy is converted, he is laying there on his back in the cement, but instead of being all cool, he is overcome with emotion. He is laughing and crying at the same time, totally filled with this light and trying to come to terms with it. This carries through.

For the first I have seen on a film, oriental philosophy isn't played like some sort of Vulcan Kohlinar. When the Warrior fills him with love, he is really filled with it, and it comes out all over the place. You can just see him laughing inside the whole time. He isn't an inscrutible master teaching his pupils solemn precepts, but a fellow participant sharing a joyous truth. He's just found this stuff out for himself, and he revels in the use of it. Sometimes there's almost a televangelist level of fervor.

This was something I had been missing in my own studies. In the Zen and Budhist texts I've read there's a lot of use of the words "love" and "joy" and what have you. But the teachings are so internal, and my images of the practice of it so hackneyed that I could never see it.

That was what sold the film, for me. Yes, you have your usual bashing and flying around with swords and what have you. But instead of being given a stern and solemn duty to protect the universe from whatever and they need to put on a stiff upper lip, they are given an awesome power and responsibility that also gives you great joy and a brotherhood to help share the burden. To me it said that you can love your job even when it is hard. I liked to hear that.

And hey - a little trivia. Byron Mann (plays Michael Fu) is also a member of the California Bar Association.

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones
I have a fairly good feeling about this
Theatrical Release and DVD review
Originally posted here.


I finally gave in and bought the Attack of the Clones on DVD. I did see it in theaters (and that was where a lot of this text comes from originally). I watched it again and came to a lot of the same conclusions. Overall, it was a fun movie. Not a great cinematic masterpiece, but fun.

My only real complaint in the entire film was the dialog. Whomever was helping Mr. Lucas write his dialog needs help. Rule of Thunb - one does not plagerize jacket copy off Regency Harlequin novels to write one's romantic scenes. The bad-guy dialog is just as bad - Christopher Lee's sinister black velvet voice was completely wasted on this tripe. And someone needs to work on C3-PO badly because he is channeling Rodney Dangerfield.

As a setup and foreshadowing of things to come, I think it did an excellent job. Seeing Palpatine watch the launching of the Valiant and her sister-ships with all those legions of white-battle armor forming up on the ground was unsettling in a way I can't describe. You wanted to stand up and scream "I have a REALLY bad feeling about this!" at the screen. And when Lord Tyrannus clicked on the holoviewer and that familiar ball-shape showed up, I got shivers down my back.

Action-wise, it will be hard to top the next time around. The sky-chase on Couruscant was gorgeous. The bar-scene where they caught Jana brought a nostalgic twinge for Mos Eisley Cantina (can you have nostalgia for something that hasn't happened yet?). Obi-wan and Jango Fett battling it out on top of those ocean-stations on Camino was way way cool. The droid factory was cool, but the arena-fight on Genosia felt contrived at first - you just didn't think they were in any real danger. Once that purple lightsaber started going, though, it degenerated into a good brawl - a suitable last stand for the Jedi order. The final battle was eerie and wonderful all at once. It was disconcerting to see Stormtroopers as the battle-savvy menace that they really were supposed to be. The other films tend to make them look like the Keystone Cops. I definately enjoyed Yoda and Mr. Lee battling it out. I would, and will, pay full-price to see it again.

And that segues into the best character in the whole film - Yoda. You really get a sense for why everyone reveres him so. He is pretty silly, if you think about it. Particularly in Return of the Jedi on Dagobah, it was hard to remember that he was actually an extremely powerful Jedi - the most powerful of all except for Anakin. Here, you get to see him in his true element. When he catches that purple lightning, my jaw just dropped. That is the same stuff that nearly killed Luke. And when he pulls out the saber, all bets are off. Until that moment, I had sort of missed the puppet-version of him. I think the halting movements of the puppet lent some weight to his age - he is supposed to be almost 900 years old. But you sure can't do that with a puppet! And as the general in charge of the forces, he manages to show a majesty even though he is only knee-high to his troopers. And yes, he still needs the stick because walking and jumping around are two different things and if your body is optimized for one (which becomes fairly obvious in the combat scene), the other can be difficult - take a look at a frog on land, and you get the idea.

Acting-wise, I think I actually liked Hayden Christopher's wooden delivery - it made him seem like the boy he still really is. It also makes the petulant crap a lot more realistic. If he was suave and smooth I think he would loose a lot of credibility. Also, please remember, Darth Vader wasn't exactly the master of pleasantries, either. Conversations with him tend to degenerate to a Force Crush to the throat rather quickly. As a character, Anakin annoyed the living crap out of me, as he should have. He needs a huge spanking. With a lightsaber. I think that if Yoda had hauled his sorry butt off to Dagobah and had him carry him on his shoulders through the jungles and swamps for a year or so and lift a few fighter jets out of the mud it would definately have done this boy some good. Of course, these movies would have ended rather differently.

I'm not all that into Senator Amidala, but that is probably a gender bias thing. I thought she did well in the acting. She stepped on him just like a normal 23-year-old would step on a 18-year-old's clumsy advances. Definately appreciated the less-intense hair - I think they were trying to hide hyperdrive parts in a couple of the old ones. The only mystery I'm still wondering about is how the cat-thing in the arena scratched her on the back and tore off the front of her costume. Even Captain Kirk never managed that artfully a ripped shirt. ;)

Obi-wan was as he should be as well - magnificent but still fallible and failing to get through to Anakin. They did a very good job of aging him to fit. I enjoyed the scene with the children and Yoda basically telling him to get a clue; even a child could see this. I could wish they didn't turn him into quite as bad of a fall-guy in the last battle. Seemed like a bit of deux ex machina to get Anakin's hand off.

All in all, two thumbs way way up. I don't listen to critics on these things anyways. The weren't too keen on The Empire Strikes Back, as I recall, and this movie has many of it's same failings. It is the middle of a story, and is doomed to have to give you enough background for you to truly appreciate the climactic movie. This can make for hard slogging, even without the heavy hype and expectations of this one. We enjoyed it, and will again. I can't wait to sit down and watch all three of these back to back as well.

MST3K-fodder
Very bad science fiction and fantasy movies...
The ones that are only funny when you are hammered or if you are several days short of sleep. You know the films...

Some of my most embarassing favorites:

"Battle Beyond the Stars"
It is a heinous piece of bad pseudo-sci-fi, with John-boy as the lead in it and the ship had a female voice and "tracts of land". Oh, and George Peppard as a "space cowboy" (don't get me started....) It just doesn't get much better and worse than this.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/BattleBeyondtheStars-1001788/preview.php

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"Spaceship"
This one is hard to get ahold of, but SOOO worth it. The legendary Leslie Nielsen is joined by Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham, and Bruce Kimmel in a piece of bad camp that can only be experienced, not described. If you see it, don't miss out on Ben Vereen's rendition of "I Want to Eat Your Face" sung by an eight foot red slimy alien monster. We wouldn't want to appear in any way...ominious......

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Spaceship-1019530/preview.php

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"Krull"
Who can forget that really cool five-bladed knife? And those really bad striped pants!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Krull-1011727/

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"Beastmaster"
A hunky young man in a leather thong travels through the desert battling a wide array of mad sorcerers and bulky swordsmen as he attempts to avenge the destruction of his village. Hmmmmmmm. Wonder where we heard this plot before? On the other hand it is the highly under-rated-for-camp Marc Singer in that fuzzy butt-floss, and he is carrying trained rats in his backpack.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheBeastmaster-1001880/

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"Legend"
Ridley Scott's attempt at fantasy. This one actually is a great film. It's only real tarnish in my opinion is the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead. Of course, he doesn't say much, and on the plus side Tim Curry steals the show from him in the most criminal fashion as Darkness which helps. The new DVD special edition has some great documentaries on how the film was made, too.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Legend-1012164/

Well, now that I have completely demolished any respect anyone might have had for me, I'm going to stop now.

An Evening with Kevin Smith
DVD Release

I had missed out on the whole Kevin Smith thing over the last several years. Jay and Silent Bob are most definately not G-rated, and that was the space I was in. I guess it is yet another sign of how much they have all grown that my kids borrowed "An Evening with Kevin Smith" on DVD, and I was silly enough to watch it. This is a two-disk set, and it is collected from several Q&A presentations he has made at colleges all over the country.

I was shocked. I had no idea who this person was and it took me a bit to make the connection. I had heard of Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, but had never watched them due to the above-mentioned ratings problem and no real hook into the topics at hand. But I love Dogma. It is a subtly crafted satire that leaves you laughing and wondering what the hell he meant all at the same time. It is both blatently broad and quietly subtle. It is shallow as the concept of a rubber poop monster, but addresses the big cosmic questions at the same time. Even so, I'm sad to say that I had never looked into it enough to know that the guy standing there smoking like a fish in the big green coat wrote it and was in fact in charge of the whole thing.

On stage, he makes a great raconteur. The stories he tells are engaging, and provide an interesting glimpse into what happens when one of the A.V. geeks you remember from high school really makes it in this business. His discussions of the Hollywood types he deals with reminded me poignantly of my Microsoft days (find the story about the Superman Reborn script - priceless). I spent a lot of time trying to explain to Marketing why we really shouldn't make the titles of the pages pale yellow on a white background.

I guess that is actually the source of my comfort. This guy looks like he could work in technology. In fact, he bears a startling resemblence to several of my co-workers past and present. He is a wonk. A geek. A dork. But somehow, he managed to turn that very wonkishness into a feature that has driven his career.

In an odd juxtaposition, he had Jason Mewes with him on stage for part of it, but Jay rarely said anything. It was the Bob and Silent Jay show.

Two caveats on the whole thing: 1) language and 2) language. The "firetruck" word is used as punctuation, or a replacement for sematic nulls. Basically, anywhere we would have a comma or an "Uhhhh" in our speech, be prepared for "firetruck" or "cocktail", if you know what I mean. Lots of explicit jokes about sex and sexuality.

The disk extras are thin, but semi-interesting. Just the menu is funny - make sure you let it cycle all the way through before you start playing at the beginning of both disks. Also included is a trailer for another DVD of him interviewing Stan Lee about comics and comic-based movies which I am definately going to have to try and find.

DVD Extras Roundup

Did you make the move to DVD because of the films, or did you do it because of the extras? Well, I'm such a wonk that a great set of extras makes or breaks a DVD release for me. The Fellowship of the Ring "Please Please Please Get a Life" edition has so far topped my list of best extras, but it isn't in this list because it induces such violent geeky wibbles I can't write about it. We'll see what the Two Towers does.

There's a lot more out there, though. So, aside from that, here are just a few movies with great DVD extas in their releases:

* Warner Brothers Family Entertainment 30th Anniversary edition of "Willie Wonka and Chocolate Factory": It includes an original making-of movie from when the movie was released, a new one with new interviews of the actors (at least the ones that are still with us), as well as sing-a-longs for several of the songs in the show. Not only that, but for those of us who never got to see the footage on the big screen and have only seen the grainy miserable VHS transfer, the transfer on this one is a revelation! Absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

* MGM's Special Edition DVD of "The Princess Bride": The making-of videos are clear, well structured. They are a well balanced mix of old film from the original shooting and new interviews. The interviews with the writer, William Goldman are great. It also includes some great interviews with the actors here-and-now, including some rare (though rather tear-jerking) footage of Andre "the Giant" Rossameau (sp?) taken from interviews on the set before he died.

* AI: Articficial Intelligence: Had serious issues with the movie, but can't complain about the extras, that's for sure. The extras disk is packed chock-full of great technically detailed making-of information. The only thing that would have made this disk better is if Speilberg would have stopped saying, "my friend, Stanley Kubrick" at the drop of a fricking hat. I wanted to slap him by the end, but that might also have been residuals from my extreme dismay with the film.

* ADV's Farscape series: If you are a fan of good SciFi, this series is a lodestone anyways, but on DVD it gets even better. The season highlights disks includes great interviews with the creative minds behind the scenes. Brian Henson does some great work explaining how the puppeteering works. Also, on each disk there are profiles of the major characters, containing interviews, footage, and other goodies that makes it very entertaining - look for the one of D'Argo (2nd disk of Season 1 Highlights set, I think) - Anthony Simcoe out of costume and speaking in his normal voice is hysterically funny. The profile of Chiana is also very good. The menus are cool, too.

* Columbia/TriStar's "A Knight's Tale": The collection of making-of snippets (I think most of them got run on TV as part of the marketing push) give some great insight into the film and its process, and some great candid moments with the actors and on the challenges of making a film off the beaten track (the film was shot on location in Czechoslovakia). Paul Bettany's discussion of the filming of his nude scene was pretty funny. It also doesn't hurt that it contains a music video of Robbie Willaims and the original members of Queen singing "We Are the Champions". I still miss Freddy, but this made it cool enough I can listen to my Queen CD's without having the kids giving me crap about them being old, which is an intangible fringe benefit (so is any footage at all of Rufus Sewell, but that is another thing entirely).

* The Grinch: Another set of very technically competent making-of shots, covering how the film was actually constructed in filmgeek-level detail. If you like to dabble in this sort of stuff, it gives some great insight on how those sorts of CGI-heavy scenes go together. Great discussion of the Grinch and Who makeup, and the Who School. Also, in case anyone has missed it, Ron Howard is getting seriously OLD. The kids section is quite cool - it contains a section where it reads a book to the kids. The obligatory Faith Hill music video is in there, too. The blooper reel is really funny, particularly if Jim Carey is your thing.

The Sound of Music Special Edition: The extras are full of rare footage of the making of the film, including a great documentary about the real Family Von Trapp, and an interesting little documentary made by the young lady who played Liesel about her experiences in making the film. Definately made in the late 60's, but still cool.


My votes for wierdest extras are:

* Zoolander: Another film whose extras recieved a good boost from the film's TV marketing budget. The making of stuff was fairly perfunctory, but they included all those silly promotional spots they played on MTV, and the original sketches from the MTV Fashion awards that inspired the film. Some of that stuff was hysterical, and the menus fit the movie very very well. Very silly stuff, but then the film was pretty silly too, so it works in a sick sort of way that I am embarrassed to say I enjoy sometimes.

* Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone: The problem with these is that I think they were trying to make them more interesting to kids by making it a sort of game to find the extras, but actually it was just really really annoying. On the other hand, I now know what to mix up to make the Draft of Living Death (some sort of sleeping potion mentioned in the book), so I guess no knowledge is useless. Oh, and don't bother to watch the film over again to see the sequence of bricks Hagrid hits to get into Diagon Alley, it doesn't match the one you have to hit to get into it on the extras.

* ADV's "Evangelion" series: They actually managed to clean up the TV footage to an acceptable quality on the DVD. They translate the subtitles of the opening credits in English on one episode, then in Japanese for the next so you can learn the words in both languages - feature my kids really liked but was still pretty wierd. The extras snippets are spare and worded in such a way that they are obvious translations from Japanese, so they sound a bit peculiar. On the other hand, they are necessary if you haven't seen enough of the series to know what the hell is going on. All in all, the best extra on these disks is actually the trailers from other series that you cannot get in the US without major effort and wouldn't know about if they didn't have it on there. (Gasaraki KICKS!)

And the worst making of materials in the world IMHO (drumroll, please):

* Square's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: No depth. No nothing. The making-of stuff obviously came right out of Square's marketing department. I was hoping for the sort of technical detail we saw in the Grinch and the Matrix, but this was no where. I was seriously pissed off. If it hadn't been for the fact that the DVD transfer actually improved the films visuals by re-aliasing the composites together better in several spots I would have returned it.

The Two Towers
Theatrical Release Review
Originally posted here on December 23, 2002

I have seen it only once so far (aren't I a model of restraint!). I saw FOTR in the theaters 15 times before even I got too embarrassed to go again, and I expect this one to be similar.

For a purist, this one is going to be a harder slog. The first book was written in a format that made the transition to visual storytelling fairly smooth (in comparison). As a result, the book and the movie follow each other pretty closely. In the case of TTT, the structure of the text just won't play nice. It quite literally separates the threads of the story out into two separate "books" within the book. There is no real interleaving between the two. It would have been a nightmare to film it that way, and it would have been a terrible movie to watch.

Jackson took the bull (and the fanboys) by the horns and made a good film out of it, rather than slavishly following the story arc as outlined. The various story lines are intercut together, sort of in the manner of an old Western serial (meanwhile, back at the ranch...) We are kept abreast of events in chronological order, rather than following the thread through. That meant running both books and materials from the epilogues through the blender. While this sacrificed some things, in many ways it actually brought out more of the story. It adds a certain manic feel to the movie, and an interesting drive to it. It also adds the sense of paralellism - in the book it can be hard for newer readers to keep track of the timeline. When Frodo and Sam met Gollum, where were Aragorn and the rest of the gang in their story? This way, we know.

It is rushed, though. Again we are cheated by the clock. Sometimes the intercuts are really sharp, as if they literally had to shave seconds off the shots on either side just to fit things in under the gun. Some of the pacing is jarred off track by it. That isn't to say that all that we are missing isn't sitting in a film vault waiting for it's entrance cue in the Special Edition DVD. I'll reserve the full weight of my judgement on the cutting until I see that.

That said, I think he did a better job of keeping some of the more important character development stuff in. The by-play between Legolas and Gimli is there, and beginning to develop into the friendship that will carry them into the Grey Havens together. I won't ruin it by gabbing. Aragorn finally stands up, straightens his shoulders and steps up to the plate, and it is glorious to see. Merry and Pippin begin the process of growing into the roles they will play in the next film. Gandalf the White is both more solemn and and merrier at the same time. Sam starts to come into his own as Frodo's anchor.

And Gollum was a wonder. For anyone who cringed at Jar Jar and has since written off all CG characters as awful puppets, here is a reason to look again. Andy Serkis gave us the voice performance of a lifetime, and a reference that gave Gollum a weight and manner that is frighteningly real. I'll leave you to see for yourself how beautifully they balanced the pain and pity and true horror that is Gollum.

Something that I loved about the last movie is the way that Jackson likes to make the extraordinary commonplace, and the commonplace extraordinary. The Hobbits are as common as you get but there is a sense of magic to them, and on the other side Legolas' Elven super-powers are downplayed almost to the point of invisibility. This carried through here to great effect. There is a scene when the column rides up to Legolas. In true George Reeves style, he vaults into the saddle in front of Gimli one-handed. If anyone else had filmed it it would have been center-frame, lovingly displayed. Instead, it is done behind the vangaurd of the riders, as Theoden and Aragorn are moving into position, just as if it was something they saw every day. Which is my point - you and I would have stood slack-jawed, but it was something they saw every day and it really didn't shock them any more other than possibly as a minor urge to slap him for being a show-off.

Whargs and tolls and Uruk-hai, oh my! He pulled them off like a digital Cecille B. DeMille. The muster of Orthanc, the march of the Easterlings through the Black Gate, the thunder of hooves of the Eored... it was all there. Gandalf's battle with the Balrog in the watchtower at the top of Moria was frankly incredible.

And yes, the battles. Despite the sword-and-sorcery motif, this movie and the next are WAR MOVIES. This plays out with that sort of sensibility. Jackson hinted he could run large-scale battles well in the last film, and he proved it here. I won't go on about the particulars - just a couple general points.

The battles were fought with a sense of foot-tactics, which was great to see. Most of the time these things are shot as disjointed messes whirling around like the Tasmanian Devil with just a couple raising seige ladders sticking out to give a nod to the highly developed science of reducing fortifications with foot troops. Here, they use all the tricks, in a way that makes sense for logically breaking into a layered fortification (watch for the Turtle up the causeway when the Uruk-hai take the Keep gate). They actually paid attention to things like sight-lines and sally-ports (the little door Aragorn and Gimli sneak out - for those who were wondering what the hell that door was doing there) which are important parts of any fortification.

And more importantly, they don't bring in stuff they shouldn't! Aragorn didn't magically pull wall-mounted ballistae out of his left ear, and neither did that contingent of Elves. There were no nods to idiot castle-battle film-convention. One "individual" on onering.net was spouting that he saw pictures of them pouring boiling pots of something down over the seige ladders. I was worried (if nothing else, I hoped he was just mistaken and it was at Ithilien or Gondor). I mean, think about it. The Rohirrim got to the Keep with a three day march behind them, of mostly women and children. They sure as hell wouldn't be lugging the stuff to pour boiling ANYTHING down the walls. The Keep is not manned under normal cicumstances, and not kept provisioned (hence the discussion of "bring only provisions" on the flight from Edoras). They weren't exactly rolling in firewood (not a tree in sight), and plus anything of a size to do any good would require quite a long time to get heated and they weren't rolling in time to get ready once they arrived either. I was afraid that they would somehow magically find the stuff there, and start a big pot of Orc-stew. I was happy to see that they didn't.

There were some changes I wasn't too happy about at first, but I think overall worked. A lot of people have had a cow about the way Faramir was played, but after thinking about it and talking with a friend of mine, I have come to the conclusion that it will work if played out properly in the next film. Yes, he did come off as a glory-hound trying to upstage his brother. But guess what, he and his brother didn't have a fab relationship, and the one he has with his father is even thornier. I find it much more creditable that he came to the realization over time, rather than just magically finding his better self over one night after Sam spills the beans and bitches him out. In the end, he passes his test, and I think we are going to be the better for the way this played out in the next film. Plus, if he hadn't done it this way, we wouldn't have gotten to see the fall of Osgiliath or those great shots of the Nazgul-mount on the wing. ;)

Gimli got a little too much help in this one. He is a funny character in a lot of ways, but there were times when the humor got in the way of the realization of just how amazing a warrior he is supposed to be. There were a couple of cases where he got bailed out where he shouldn't have needed to be. On the other hand, one of those times was because they did faithfully stick to the fact that dwarves DO NOT EVER SWIM because they can't (they are too dense and they sink like rocks, even without Gimli's steel bathrobe). They also did bring out the uneasy relationship between Dwarves and horses, and I don't see how that could have been done in any way that wasn't funny without a whole lot of exposition. And the discussion of Dwarven women from the epilogue was well played. The battle where they pile all that stuff on him has an interesting irony after that other film he was working on dropped that wall on him and hurt him like that recently.

That whole thing with Elrond and Arwen in the middle of the film has also been roundly decried, but I thought it was a great addition. That material is in the epilogues, and it is an important part of the story. How Elrond handles loosing his daughter to Aragorn is a huge motivator for the Elves as a whole. It also brings out a point that is usually lost, which is that Elrond actually looses all of his children in the course of these events (all three of them elect to stay behind in one fashion or another). Like those scenes that end up in Civil War movies with families being divided along the Manson-Nixon line, it underscores the entire Elven dilemma in this whole thing. IMHO, without it the decisions of the Elves would really have made much less sense, and they would have been much less admirable as a people. Instead of just fading artistically into the black, they pulled their heads out of their enchanted sands and chose to become a full part of Middle Earth for the time that they are there. I think Gil-galad would have been proud.

It also played beautifully into the unrequited romance between Eowyn and Aragorn. That was handled delicately and tastefully. She wasn't hanging off him like a groupie, and he didn't brush her off like a child. I love how the loosing and finding of the Elfstone counterpointed his wavering and then firming commitment to Arwen. And speaking of Eowyn.... Her part in all this never made much sense to me in the books. Of course, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Tolkien preferred to believe that women didn't exist below the neckline, and really had absolutely no connection at all with how they think. The addition of the more overt menace of Grima (only alluded to after the fact in the books) and the carefully constructed conversation with Aragorn give us enough of a glimpse into why she does what she does later on to give a hook into her.

And speaking of Grima Wyrmtongue.... I was impressed. I was too afraid from the pictures that they would make him out as too much of a cartoon character. In the stills, he looks like Snidely Whiplash does SCA. Somehow, it just worked though. And the scene between him and Eowyn over Theobald's body was delightfully creepy, as was his leading Theoden about by the nose in the Great Hall. Him standing with Sauraman on the ramparts at the Mustering was a lovely piece that displayed absolute contrast and yet soul-deep similarity at the same time, without saying a word. They are actually both sad wanna-be's, and instead of the yelling at each other they do in the books, all we needed was that simple image.

The cleansing of Medused and of Theoden of Sauruman's influence was cool visually, but my favorite scene there was actually over Theobald's grave. Bernard Hill does a great job of conveying someone who has been pulled out of a hole and really doesn't realize that he can move his arms away from his sides yet. It is going to be great to see what happens as we move towards Gondor and he learns to take a free breath again.

The Ents were fabulous. I would have wished for more from them, but to be honest, only in a longer film. Getting into their language and all the rest of the stuff Treebeard says and the Entwives and getting Quickbeam in there, as much as I would have loved it, if you hadn't done it all, it would have sucked. It was much better to leave it all out and just concentrate on doing the stuff that is truly essential to the story. I did miss the fact that the entire forest didn't move, just the Ents themselves. I can see why, visually speaking. But something still cries out, "But the Ents left their herds, and they would never do that." Besides, it is going to make the, uh, planting of the Watchwood a whole lot harder later.

Yes, it is different. But I think that without the rest of the story to fill in the blanks, I can't say whether or not they are bad decisions or not. Just like on the other, the watchword is going to be wait and see. And try not to drive yourself comepletely mad for the next 12 months.

The Hulk: It's Not Easy Being Green
Theatrical Release Review

I saw The Hulk, finally. Interesting flick. I wish I could say it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, but I can't. There are spots of pure magic, but then there are some really saggy spots.

Everyone has made much of the sort of picture-in-picture editing, and while IMHO it could have added much to certain places, it wasn't used there. It was mostly wasted trying to add interest to some incredibly boring crap (that interminable shot of those helicopters carrying Bruce in that container, for example). There is just no amount of slash-and-dash editing that could rescue some of it.

I like that they did bring over that he didn't just kill everything standing. I loved watching him dump those guys out of the turret carriage of the tank before he used it to bash the holy living crap out of the other one. There were spots where the peril just wasn't there, though. I wish those helicopters hadn't just laid down on the ground like that - I know that they shouldn't have exploded, but tattered metal remains would have made it seem more dangerous. He almost looked like he was dancing with them. The pure destruction scenes were among the best parts of the film. Those cars sliding down that hill in San Fransisco looked wonderful.

The Hulk himself looked awesome. I do wish they had toned down the color in a couple of spots. I mean, there are a couple of times where he shines out Xbox green. Other than that it was hard to quibble with. The movement was spot-on; the flea hopping thing comes off a lot cooler in the comics but was well handled. I loved the detail work - the dimples in his skin from the bullets bouncing off him, that cut he got from the explosion that healed over in front of our eyes. The way they managed to keep just enough of Bruce in his face to make it almost credible when Betty recognizes him on sight (I said ALMOST). The transformation scenes were so good they were painful to watch, and well balanced between showing the process and lingering over every detail. Thank a gifting God he didn't come out as the Gray Hulk in this one - they are going to have to figure out how to deal with the constant stream of Parker-esque one-liners he spews.

I didn't find Bana flat, as some others have intimated. I deal with a lot of geeks who are walking wounded, and I'm afraid far too many of them go blank like that when they are confronted with that messy emotion stuff. Sam Shepard did a great job as the iron-jawed general, and no one does dewey-eyed ingénue like Jennifer Connolly. Nolte was pretty good as the young scientist, but really didn't come into his own until he lost his marbles.

Character-wise, I had some issues with the way they were written. Betty really seriously could use a spine. For that matter, so could her father; he had a LOT of stars on his collar to just lie down in front of that contract company. Talbot, that blonde guy from "Atheon", was such a nonentity and a complete moron to boot. David Banner was incredibly creepy and incredibly well-played. You really believed he was enough of a compulsive freak to commit that sort of experiment on himself.

I really wish they had made the ending a little more explicit - did David Banner die, or what? That was the start of a VERY long conversation on the way home with the gang and it was different enough from the comics I read that I had a hard time answering the questions. The opening credits some others have complained about make a hell of a lot more sense if you know anything at all about genetic science - they were a montage of David's notes and experiments about what he did to himself - I thought it was a great way to avoid 10 minutes of geek-soaked exposition which is how most directors would have handled it.

The gamma dogs (referred to as "fruppies" at my house after the game - the only one in the game is the doberman one which my girls decided looks like a cross between a frog and a dog) were well realized as well. The poodle was a great touch; I don't know about getting him mashed through Betty's windshield, though. Ick.

At any rate, I would suggest seeing it in theaters at least once just to revel in the action sequences.

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