Rumbling to life.....

The Continuing Saga...
The incipient trainwreck known as the latest Transformers movie is still rumbling towards that bridge. The recent exposure of the exploding truck full of Furbies just fit the whole metaphor. I'll be there opening day, but I'll make sure to bring some Pepto Bismol along.

On this topic I did have a minor glimmer of hope - they cast Robert Downey, Jr as "Ironman". However, the leaked pics of the mechanical suit design look like Oscar's trash can and The Rocketeer had an illicit affair. I hope like heck that's FUD.

Cautionary Note
If your video store has the same sort of employee demographical profile as ours, he's a couple things to look out for:
-- Desert Punk does not belong in the Family or Kids sections. I know it's animated, but it's most definately not a kid flick. If you're a grownup who enjoyed Futurama or Family Guy, it might be right up your alley. But definately not for the short set.
-- The 10th or 11th "Land Before Time" video is due to come out. Please run (do NOT walk) away from this disk as fast as humanly possible.
-- Troy is as bad as you remember it.
-- So is "The Black Hole".
-- Jersey Girl has improved over time, though. Weird.

Summer Movie Madness...

Theatrical
It's summer! It's time for big flashy things to go crash and bang! Bright shiny things in all directions. Here's a few that are on their way:

Fantastic Four - This has been in production for over a decade, and finally technology and just the right screenplay came together. I've been in full-scale geeky wibble mode for over two years on this one, and so far things look pretty good. The Thing isn't CG, but a blending of CG and actor that wasn't possible even a year ago. Story-wise, this isn't going strictly to canon so the predictible fanboy flailing about has already started. Considering the past record of the production crew I'm confident that they'll be able to setup something that will fly. If nothing else, Ioan Gruffudd in spandex with those sexy silver streaks in his hair should make for good landscape appreciation. This first pass kicks things off and gives us a world to build on, and then we'll see where they take it. Hits theaters on July 8, and is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action, and some suggestive content.

Murderball - A documentary that's running the circuit about wheelchair rugby, and the guys who play it on the Olympic level. If you're thinking this some touchy-feely Chariots of Fire thing, you're dead wrong. It seems to play more along the lines of a skateboarding video, and it's inspiration seems to be more in spite of itself. If you are completely annoyed by Peralta's flogging of the Dogtown dead horse, this might be just what you're looking for. It's on limited release starting July 8th.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up to give us another romp through this beloved story. Johnny Depp had this to say, "If Tim wanted to shoot 18 million feet of film of me staring into a light bulb and I couldn't blink for 3 months, I'd do it." Lord willing it isn't that. The jury's still out for me on this one; I think Gene Wilder truly left his mark on this character and I just have no idea how this is going pan out. We'll all be able to see for ourselves on July 15th. Rated PG.

The Brothers Grimm - "The Sting" meets Terry Gilliam. Two brothers go from village to village, conning them by pretending to help them get rid of various supernatural monsters. Unfortunately, they run into a village with a real problem with a evil sorceress, and they're called in to investigate. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger star, and I assume Monica Belluci is the sorceress. Terry's son Harry also joins the cast in his first film role. Hopefully we've finally got a fractured fairy-tale for grown ups. Hits wide release on July 29th, and is going to be very very PG-13.

Sky High - Come to a school where the children really are out of this world! It's a shoe-in at my house. One of the favorite comics in my house is Aaron Williams "PS238" which has the same basic premise but in an elementary school, and I play the pen-and-paper roleplaying game "Champions" with my kids. With Kurt Russell as the Dad, Lynda Carter as the principal and Bruce Cambell on staff, if nothing else it should be a good time. Blasts off July 29th, with a PG rating.

Zu Warriors - I saw the preview for this two years ago, and was very upset to hear that the US release had been pushed out indefinately. Tzui Hark of "One Upon a Time in China" fame had taken the wire-fu bull by the horns to put together a beautiful fantasy on the scale of Crouching Tiger and we wouldn't be able to see it. Well, they've tried again, but they've cut over 25 minutes out of the film and over-dubbed it in English and both of those things are just guaranteed to torque me off. Considering the hack job Miramax did on "Shaolin Soccer" and "Hero" I just don't know. We'll see. If nothing else it should hit DVD relatively quickly and then I can get the real thing. we have a theatrical wide release on August 19th and it comes in as a PG-13.


DVD
Seems like it's time for the mid-eighties to hit the fan - we've got "Cry-Baby", "Love at First Bite", and "Max Dugan Returns" hitting video store shelves. I've got a few others I'm looking for, too:

Steamboy - This only came out on limited release in the US, and it didn't even hit SEATTLE. I was TORQUED OFF. We've been waiting eight years for Kazuhiro Otomo's effort. If Miyazaki is Japan's Spielberg, Otomo is it's George Lucas with his concentration on every aspect of the creation of his films and the way he likes to push the envelope. Ever since Akira we've been waiting for his next stint as a director (he also writes and serves as animation staff), with only his short section of "Memories" to hold us. The buzz out of Japan was amazing on this, and so far the US reaction has been pretty good, considering it's not a Miyazaki film and most reviewers only grudgingly put up with anime as of yet. The DVD hits the stands on July 26, and my copy is already paid for.

Constantine - A surprisingly bad adaptation of an interesting comic (Hellblazer) that somehow seems to have hit a nerve. If nothing else, hang on for the ending and the closing credits. I won't spoil it for you. If you avoided it in theaters, you might want to give it a rental. Hits shelves July 19th, and is very very R rated.

Sin City - Frank Miller's graphic novels of the same name have been a staple in many a bookshelf for years. When it came time to make the film someone got a brilliant idea and brought him in to help direct it. What they got was one of the most faithful adaptations ever made. You can literally compare frames of the film with the pages of the book. This is a very good thing from a fan standpoint, but a bad thing from many other people's. The source material they're rendering so fully may be some of the most violent twisted stuff you've ever seen. Makes Kill Bill's red splatters look pink. I read the books several years ago and knew what I was in for so I waited for DVD just so I could take some of the teeth out of the visuals by viewing them smaller. This thing is rated R for just about everything you can imagine. Hits DVD August 16th.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - DON'T PANIC. A "mostly harmless" adaptatation of a classic of science fiction and humor. Mos Def gives a surprisingly excellent performance as an out-of-work actor who is actually an alien tourism writer and Sam Rockwell gives an interesting take on our two-headed, three armed galactic president. Arrives September 13th.

Ghost in the Shell: Innocence...
DVD release

In 1996, "The Ghost in the Shell" came out and took us all into the distopian world of a near future cyber reality. Set three years later, Innocence brings us back into it, and provides a launching point into more. What makes a man? His body? His "soul"? How much of either can he loose before before becoming something else?

At it's heart, it's a hardcore cop show. The gang from Public Safety Section 9 are back. They're dealing with terrorists, gangsters, and the realities of a world where technological advancement has blurred the hard line at the edge of humanity to a faded gray smudge and allowed the creation of robots that are indistinguishable from normal humans except for something they can see and manipulate but can't make called "ghost".

This is NOT a kid's show. I'm not sure who or what got kicked, killed or kissed to give this thing a PG-13 MPAA rating here in the states. People are killed all through the film, and blood and viscera are splattered in several places. The entire premise involves female robots who are designed and built for the sex trade who look disturbingly like children and are often shown in the film naked and murdering people gruesomely with their bare hands. One of the reasons the MPAA didn't rate this one higher is because most of the deaths and nakedness and implied sex is the robots, which are referred to as "dolls". To them, the 30 or so naked Hadaly who go after Batou on the ship don't matter any more than a naked Barbie.

It kind of highlights the point of the film in an odd way. There are people who range from having almost no hardware involved (Togusa) to people who only have a part of their brain and their brainstem to call their own (Batou) to people who have nothing but a ghost left to themselves (the Major). They are all real, and they all have life. There is no real obvious visible difference between the two with a physical existence, other than the fact that Batou is twice Togusa's size and built like Vladimir Kulich. When the Major shows up things get even muddier. She has to take one of the dolls to do her work and cram enough of herself into it to get things done. On the outside, she looks like them except for Batou's chivalrous gift of his kevlar jacket. Each of the dolls has a shard of the ghost of a kidnapped little girl in her, though, too. So, which one of these don't count as "people"? Which deaths matter and which ones don't?

The film takes it's time getting places. The pace can seem very slow in places, and then in one stride it skips into a maddened overdrive that's hard to follow. This isn't a mad race against time, or the explosive action-fest we're used to. With nearly infinite knowledge available in their E-brains, a philosophically minded man can sit around and trade profound quotes with his partner all day. And in a couple spots they do. Then they go soften up a yakuza office with a box-fed heavy machine gun. Then they go to a grocery store. And then there's a Chinese parade. Somehow this starts to make perfect sense after a while.

With these movies, knowing something about the director is far more important than it is in American movies. Yes, knowing that Kevin Smith swears like a fishwife and Spielberg has a strangely bright view of the world can help, but they didn't actually hold onto the camera for their films. In the anime world, the director is often weilding a pencil with the rest of the animation staff, and they write a lot of their own scripts. In the case of the "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence", he is a key factor. He wrote the script, with the assistance of the creator of the original manga. Oshii-san is known for his dark, nihilistic films. "Avalon", "Talking Head", and even "Mobile Force Patlabor" all contain a dark future worlds. In his eye, the glass is not only half empty, it's been used as a makeshift ashtray.

The look and feel of the film is a cyberpunk fantasyland. His worlds are deep with color and texture and detail, but it's a dark and dirty place. There's a noir sense to it. In the real-world sequences, the only thing bright is the staggering flourescent fixture throwing a cone of dirty purple light over the character's shoulder in a grocery store. The "virtual experiences" that they go through during the film have a heightened reality. The computer effects are sharp shards of brightness stabbing into a murk. His work in blending 2D and CGI animation gives a surreal viewpoint to even the simplest scenes. Then he'll let out all the digital stops and just drop your jaw.

Pixel-wizardry aside, there's a matter-of-fact realism to the movements and the actions the characters take that makes it feel more present than many live-action films. It's characteristic of the Japanese style of animationf. It's hard to explain if you're not watching it. The way the character's actions are designed, it looks far more real than most actors would ever let themselves move in front of a camera. Every step is lovingly displayed from loading a clip to preparing a dog's meal. Masses move and bend, and it's even awkward sometimes. On top of the usual Japanese impassivity you add cyborg features and cybercom conversations that leech all the expression out of the faces. They're almost Vulcan in places. The details are in the worlds. The backgrounds aren't static in many places; the people are animated to move in the crowd scenes. Batou's bathroom looks like yours or mine, but the fixtures that he would have no use for are obviously gathering dust and clutter. Ishikawa is the jerk he's always been, and drives a gorgeous antique roadster. It's one of the geeky pleasures of this style. No matter how close you look, no matter how many times you see it, there's more to notice.

As far as the soundtrack, well, it works for me but I'd say it's an acquired taste for most. Unless the three little girls who sing for Mothra shrilling what sounds like an anthem from a Noh play to the accompaniment of Taiko drums and wind chimes is your thing. If it's any consolation, most Japanese people can't understand the ancient dialect he's using, either. Just hang in there. The drums really kick in, and then it develops a far more accessible sort of feeling. Don't get too comfortable, though. The music goes from mode to mode all the way through. There's a classic torch song in the middle, followed by a rendition of it on a music box. Each piece is balanced with the action and the story and each other and they're all interwoven. There's a whole house that's a music box that comes in later has this subtle eerie sound like they'd hooked it up to a pipe-organ. In the making-of stuff I found out it's not a digital effect - they actually made the music box and recorded the music and then took it to a huge old warehouse and re-recorded it with the echoes bouncing off old stone walls. It's an effort that makes all the difference, though. That piece turns a string of eye-candy and psychobabble into a strange unbalanced realm.

If you're a cyberpunk fan, this is a great example of the genre. If you like to have a little thinking with your action, I'd definately recommend it. If you like a lighter sort of anime, I'd go with the TV show (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) and see how you like it before jumping into this one. It's set before the first film so you aren't ruining anything for yourself if you go that route. If these don't sound good at all, I'd just hang on for Miyazaki's next, "Howl's Moving Castle" which premiers in the US on June 10th.

Troy
DVD Release
Never have so many pixels died in vain.

Watching the closing sequence, I see. I sift through the ashes of the hours I spent watching this film. I watch as the flames carry the smoke towards heaven, and I wonder what the heck they were thinking.

It's definately pretty. I'll grant them that. The production crew all needs a big hand. Troy was gorgeous, the locations were spectacular, and the historical details in the ships and the encampments was great. The cast was beautiful - landscape appreciation value for all. But even the eye-candy can't stretch to cover the gaping flaws in the rest of it.

And where was the supposed homoerotic stuff between Achilles and Patroclus?! Everyone made such a big deal about it, but I didn't see a bloody thing that would have been out of place in a locker-room of towel-snapping boys. Have people gotten so innured to sex that they can't imagine any other reason for loyalty or feeling? He was his cousin, his guardian, his teacher, and yes, in the real story there were some interesting elements to their relationship. But none of that was here in the film.

The story has been beheaded. You know that when you go to a film that's adapted from something else, there are things that are going to be trimmed out and changed. It just has to happen. However, most literary adaptations try to nibble off the toes, or niggle off a corner here or there to try to fit. This film drove a bronze spear right between the story's third and fourth cervical vertebrae. Removing all the Olympian maneuvers behind the events leaves us with nothing but pettiness.

There are the sparse bare bones of a story of mortal pride and ambition, but they can't carry the rest of the historical weight. And they sure can't carry the weight of that marqee. Criminitly! Peter O'Toole, Brian Cox, Brad Pitt, Brendan Gleeson, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Saffron Burrows. And the list just keeps going. Maybe we can get our two former professional wrestlers (Nathan Jones as Boagrius and Tyler Mane as Ajax) to handle the job.

I know it was "inspired" by the Illiad, but come on! This is a little ridiculous. Helen wasn't forced to marry Menelaus - she chose him out of a lineup her father set up because there were too many kings chasing her. Achilles had a woman who was named Briseis, but the acolyte of Apollo was Criseis - not even the same chick. The Greeks attack the Trojans at night, not the other way around. And it wasn't a full-on battle, but a raiding party led by Odysseus and Diomedes (who is nowhere, just like this battle). And for that matter, Oddyseus is also the brother of Agamemnon and Menelaus - where is his grief and his weight on their choices? Ajax doesn't die - there are stories written about his return home, going mad and his death by suicide. Menelaus isn't killed by Hector. Hector's the one who gets stabbed in the throat, not Patroclus. Agamemnon doesn't die at Briseis' hand (much longer and cooler story, actually). Achilles is dead before the Trojan horse is even thought of. Achilles had five ships, not one, and more than 50 Myrmidons. Achilles charges out to kill Hector in the midst of battle, not by calling him out behind the gym. He certainly wasn't wailing like a throat-cut banshee in front of the walls of Troy like that. It's Agamemnon who pisses off Apollo with his overweening pride, his lack of piety and his attacking of the city, not Achilles' adventures in holy wealth redistribution. There was something weird with Priam's death, but I can't remember. We moaned and complained when they chopped 19 days out of Fellowship of the Ring between Bree and Rivendell - they cut nine years out of this one.

Even if we take the newly-wrought story at face value, the attempt to pin the actions on the mortals tortures the characters out of shape. Paris went from a dupe of the arrogant gods to a cowardly, skirt-sniffing slut. Achilles' now seemingly mortal mother and the loss of the rest of his divine attributes turns him into a strangely distorted and pathetic Launcelot. Hector's biggest claim to fame (the domesticating of the horse and the invention of cavalry) went unheard until the penultimate line. Oddyseus was as "Sharpe" as he should have been in a few places, but he spent most of the rest of the time as a royal errand-boy.

Don't get me started on the royal women. That gal they picked for Helen is a very beautiful girl, but with no vengeful goddess to drive her she just seems stupid and petty. Plus, with the story change it really wasn't her face that launched a thousand ships, but her naughty bits and lack of self-control. It wasn't Aphrodite's jealousy over her beauty that helped get things started but her matress-dancing with Paris. It feels cheap. You may remember Andromache as Angel from the film Wing Commander so you know she can apply boot to seat if necessary. Unfortunately, the script seems to have missed the parts of the story where her steel spine helped save the remnants of her people; all that was left was her looking terrified. Briseis is covering two parts with one job here, and neither one of them get handled well.

I know Wolfgang Peterson can do better than this. He directed "Das Boot", and he managed a good re-telling of the story. As a director he has plenty of clout to give them exact anatomical directions as to where they should have stored this screenplay, and get someone in there who has at least read the source materials and can make intelligent adjustments. And he better get it back together quick, fast and in a hurry. He's been tapped to make the filmed version of "Ender's Game", and if he hoses that up it's not going to be pretty.

Stop-motion animation genius...

It doesn't get any better than this. Before Godzilla, before computers, there was a man who could make monsters out of little models that would make people hide under their seats in the theaters. His name was Ray Harryhausen, and this collection contains some of his finest work.

Get your hands on it and enjoy.

The Day After Tomorrow...

I think I'm about to get myself in trouble again. I just saw it, and I am appalled. Not at the film, per se. It was so earnest in it's presentment it's hard to pan it.

The causalty count is what gets me. If you write off the people who were in the path of the super-storm, and give a say 1% survival rate (that's really optimistic judging by the thin evidence in New York), that means between North America, Europe, and Asia you're talking a minimum of 2 and a half BILLION people dead. And this passes without a word. WTHeck?!

I had this same problem with Independence Day and it's ilk, too. I'm working on a real review, and it should show up here soon. But in the mean time, can we just think for a second of the scale of what they showed, and what it really would mean?

Update: I WAS going to write a review of this movie, until I read Jim Lilek's Bleat here (scroll about halfway down). Looks like he's pretty much got it covered, and now I have to go clean tea out of my keyboard again. Sheesh! The man should have a warning label on his site: "Caution: Reading portions of this site while drinking will cause you to blow beverages out your nose."

The Verdict is IN!....

.... and the obviously monkeyed-with Star Wars DVD's are out.

Check this out!