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Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Review (Spoilers!)
General | Posted 3 years agoSo, I was skimming through some old journals I'd posted a (long) while back, and I found that I once did a half-gripe, half-optimistic thing on the then-upcoming 'Rescue Rangers' movie that Disney had just green-lit. Seven years later, and much to my surprise, the dang thing's finally come out... and to my even bigger surprise, I rather enjoyed it. Like, quite a bit. At long last, nearly-a-decade-ago me can breathe a sigh of relief.
Not that I didn't totally call the 'munks-in-a-toilet gag, or the countless pop-culture references, or the fact that Seth Rogen's in it... but I'm delighted to say that my cynicism about these things was largely unfounded, because unlike so many other nostalgia-bait junk flicks that have come and gone by the wayside, the meta spoofery on display in 'Rescue Rangers' isn't a lazy cash-grab so much as a clever satire - and thankfully, one that's tempered by an actual sense of affection for the source material.
Not that many of the film's choices haven't been controversial amongst us die-hard C&D fans (and here come the spoilers)... for one, they've ditched the classic helium 'munk voices, which may be a first for the characters (though it kinda makes sense in context). Also, for a 'Rangers' movie, it's mainly a story about Chip and Dale, with fan-faves Gadget, Zipper and Monty sidelined as essentially extended cameos. The biggest rug-pull, though, is the right outta the gate reveal that 'Rescue Rangers' itself was only ever an in-universe tv show, with all the beloved Disney Afternoon critters being actors playing fictional versions of themselves.
We first meet the 'munks in grade-school, a pair of 'toon misfits who grow up as inseparable besties with a gift for comedy. Parlaying their skills into a successful show, their celebrity comes crashing down on them when clashing egos drive them apart (and get their show canceled in the process). So far, so 'Access Hollywood'... but then the story jumps forward 30 years, and that's when things get appealingly strange. Chip has quit the biz completely to become an insurance agent, while Dale clings to his old fanbase via the convention circuit, desperate to re-live his glory days. It's a surprising choice, to hang themes of obsolescence, aging and a wistful nostalgia for one's glory days on a pair of cartoon chipmunks whose previous incarnation's biggest concern in life was stopping Fat Cat from stealing all the pies... but it also gives Chip and Dale an appealing richness of character that they've never really had before. If 'Rescue Rangers' the tv show was mainly for kids, the movie version shows us the lonely, disappointed grown-ups behind the scenes.
The movie does its best to sell you on its peculiar 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' world building, and while it definitely suffers in comparison to that much more elegantly-crafted film, it's serviceable enough... until you start to think about it too much. Therein lies the first of 'Rescue Rangers's two shortcomings - for a flick that's trying pretty hard to remind you of 'Roger Rabbit', both in terms of its irreverent metafictional humor and its 'toons-and-humans-together-in-Hollywood setting, it's problematic that the rules of Chip and Dale's world are drastically inconsistent. This would be less of a problem in a fluffier, who-cares-it's-just-a-dumb-movie context... but aging and the struggle against obsolescence are key themes here, and it's just plain weird that major plot points only seem to apply randomly. For instance, our main characters are shown as little kids (kits?) who grow up into adults - as does the main villain, a bitter and dumpy Peter Pan whose mid-life crisis has taken a criminally dark turn. Why, then, is one of the original Lost Boys from Neverland who pops up (for an admittedly hilarious cameo) still a kid? Why, too, does the threat of violence seem palpable (guns and explosions do a lot more damage here than they do in 'Roger Rabbit'), except when 'toons are still shown to be capable of regenerating body parts and shrugging off skull-crushing blows with heavy sticks? 'Roger Rabbit' may have side-stepped some of the weirder questions that arise when you blend cartoons and reality, but it also took a lot of care to establish the basic rules. 'Rescue Rangers' doesn't ignore its own rules so much as contradict them for narrative convenience, and it's distracting.
The other big quibble is the quality of the animation itself. While some of the character designs are nicely expressive, there's no getting around the irony that, for a story that largely spoofs cheap cash-in cartoons, some of the main characters themselves look pretty rough. Chip, in particular, is supposed to represent classic hand-drawn 2D animation, but he never looks like anything other than a flatly-rendered 3D model. Still, even he fares better than Gadget, who quite frankly looks terrible from any angle... honestly, the brief snippets of the original '80s animation look better.
For all of its flaws and gripes, though, in the end what saves the movie for me is the core relationship between our two pint-sized would-be detectives... underneath the snarky tinseltown spoofery (much of which is legitimately funny) and pop-culture fluff is a genuinely warm-hearted story of two estranged best friends reconciling their differences while solving a fast-paced and enjoyable crime caper.
Not that I didn't totally call the 'munks-in-a-toilet gag, or the countless pop-culture references, or the fact that Seth Rogen's in it... but I'm delighted to say that my cynicism about these things was largely unfounded, because unlike so many other nostalgia-bait junk flicks that have come and gone by the wayside, the meta spoofery on display in 'Rescue Rangers' isn't a lazy cash-grab so much as a clever satire - and thankfully, one that's tempered by an actual sense of affection for the source material.
Not that many of the film's choices haven't been controversial amongst us die-hard C&D fans (and here come the spoilers)... for one, they've ditched the classic helium 'munk voices, which may be a first for the characters (though it kinda makes sense in context). Also, for a 'Rangers' movie, it's mainly a story about Chip and Dale, with fan-faves Gadget, Zipper and Monty sidelined as essentially extended cameos. The biggest rug-pull, though, is the right outta the gate reveal that 'Rescue Rangers' itself was only ever an in-universe tv show, with all the beloved Disney Afternoon critters being actors playing fictional versions of themselves.
We first meet the 'munks in grade-school, a pair of 'toon misfits who grow up as inseparable besties with a gift for comedy. Parlaying their skills into a successful show, their celebrity comes crashing down on them when clashing egos drive them apart (and get their show canceled in the process). So far, so 'Access Hollywood'... but then the story jumps forward 30 years, and that's when things get appealingly strange. Chip has quit the biz completely to become an insurance agent, while Dale clings to his old fanbase via the convention circuit, desperate to re-live his glory days. It's a surprising choice, to hang themes of obsolescence, aging and a wistful nostalgia for one's glory days on a pair of cartoon chipmunks whose previous incarnation's biggest concern in life was stopping Fat Cat from stealing all the pies... but it also gives Chip and Dale an appealing richness of character that they've never really had before. If 'Rescue Rangers' the tv show was mainly for kids, the movie version shows us the lonely, disappointed grown-ups behind the scenes.
The movie does its best to sell you on its peculiar 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' world building, and while it definitely suffers in comparison to that much more elegantly-crafted film, it's serviceable enough... until you start to think about it too much. Therein lies the first of 'Rescue Rangers's two shortcomings - for a flick that's trying pretty hard to remind you of 'Roger Rabbit', both in terms of its irreverent metafictional humor and its 'toons-and-humans-together-in-Hollywood setting, it's problematic that the rules of Chip and Dale's world are drastically inconsistent. This would be less of a problem in a fluffier, who-cares-it's-just-a-dumb-movie context... but aging and the struggle against obsolescence are key themes here, and it's just plain weird that major plot points only seem to apply randomly. For instance, our main characters are shown as little kids (kits?) who grow up into adults - as does the main villain, a bitter and dumpy Peter Pan whose mid-life crisis has taken a criminally dark turn. Why, then, is one of the original Lost Boys from Neverland who pops up (for an admittedly hilarious cameo) still a kid? Why, too, does the threat of violence seem palpable (guns and explosions do a lot more damage here than they do in 'Roger Rabbit'), except when 'toons are still shown to be capable of regenerating body parts and shrugging off skull-crushing blows with heavy sticks? 'Roger Rabbit' may have side-stepped some of the weirder questions that arise when you blend cartoons and reality, but it also took a lot of care to establish the basic rules. 'Rescue Rangers' doesn't ignore its own rules so much as contradict them for narrative convenience, and it's distracting.
The other big quibble is the quality of the animation itself. While some of the character designs are nicely expressive, there's no getting around the irony that, for a story that largely spoofs cheap cash-in cartoons, some of the main characters themselves look pretty rough. Chip, in particular, is supposed to represent classic hand-drawn 2D animation, but he never looks like anything other than a flatly-rendered 3D model. Still, even he fares better than Gadget, who quite frankly looks terrible from any angle... honestly, the brief snippets of the original '80s animation look better.
For all of its flaws and gripes, though, in the end what saves the movie for me is the core relationship between our two pint-sized would-be detectives... underneath the snarky tinseltown spoofery (much of which is legitimately funny) and pop-culture fluff is a genuinely warm-hearted story of two estranged best friends reconciling their differences while solving a fast-paced and enjoyable crime caper.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Shaun the Sheep Movie
General | Posted 10 years agoI may be biased here. As a longtime fan of 'Wallace and Gromit', 'Chicken Run', and even 'The Pirates!', an underrated lark which nobody seems to have actually seen, I'm always ready to settle in with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy whatever gentle blend of comedy, pathos and sparkling wit Aardman Animations dishes up. I'm also a fan of stop motion animation in general... in my book, that tactile realness and painstaking attention to the tiniest of details gives it a level of charm that most CG flicks just can't match. And, of course, I love sheep. Adore them, in point of fact. I love their wooly fluff, placid little smiles and warbling bleats. I love the way they gently but insistently devour ice cream cone fragments from the palm of your hand with their soft, fuzzy muzzles. I love the way they nudge up against you at petting zoos, as though to say, 'You're okay, you can be in the flock too.' Sheep are awesome.
One of the biggest charms of Aardman's long-running 'Shaun the Sheep' TV series is the way it anthropomorphizes smarty-sheep Shaun (the diminutive but clever and playful young ram introduced in the acclaimed 'Wallace and Gromit' short 'A Close Shave') and his flock without losing their inherent sheepiness. Sure, they're fun-loving in ways that real sheep aren't, being just as inclined to play Frisbee or have a pool party as they are to graze on fresh grass, but the animators have a lot of fun contrasting their human-like perceptiveness with their tendency to wander off randomly, panic at the sight of a wayward kite, or mindlessly devour a pizza takeout menu rather than order from it. They're people, but they're still appealingly sheep, too.
Most of the TV episodes serve up Shaun and his flock's antics in brisk, dialogue-free, 10 minute chunks, usually following such simple notions as "wash day" or "where'd my shovel go?" to mounting extremes of Chaplin-esque physical comedy. It's slapstick, but thankfully it's never manic or desperate, often taking its sweet time to set up oddball conflicts and then pay them off in unexpected ways. With his prankish but ultimately kind demeanor, Shaun is the bleating heart and soul of the series, and it's a pleasure to report that he and his flock not only survive the transition to the big screen, they seem tailor made for it.
In Shaun's first (but, one hopes, not final) big screen adventure, what starts off as a series of small-scale setups (Shaun and his flock, bored and annoyed by the tedious routine of being a flock of sheep on a working farm, decide that they'd simply like a day off to relax) quickly escalates into a string of bigger and funnier disasters, leading to an impromptu mission to the "big city" to rescue their gruff but good-natured human caretaker. What follows is a madcap (but thankfully never overwrought or desperate for laughs) caper that makes room for both surreal Rube Goldberg-esque set pieces and quiet moments of genuinely heart-tugging emotion. The movie takes place in a world where a flock of sheep can successfully disguise themselves as patrons of a fancy French restaurant simply by throwing on trench coats and knitted scarves, but the story never forgets to keep the emotional stakes honest. There are moments of true warmth and heartbreak in Shaun and flock's quest, and you'll likely find it impossible not to be moved by wondrous scenes like one in which the sheep perform an impromptu acapella version of the film's theme song in order to comfort a sad baby lamb.
The 'Shaun the Sheep Movie' is beautifully cinematic, touching, often hilarious, and has a heart as warm and sweet as a fresh-dipped candy apple. You don't need to be an Aardman aficionado, or to love stop motion animation, or even particularly be a fan of sheep, to let its considerable charms work their magic on you... you simply need to be able to appreciate the simple (wooly) pleasures of a good story, well told.
One of the biggest charms of Aardman's long-running 'Shaun the Sheep' TV series is the way it anthropomorphizes smarty-sheep Shaun (the diminutive but clever and playful young ram introduced in the acclaimed 'Wallace and Gromit' short 'A Close Shave') and his flock without losing their inherent sheepiness. Sure, they're fun-loving in ways that real sheep aren't, being just as inclined to play Frisbee or have a pool party as they are to graze on fresh grass, but the animators have a lot of fun contrasting their human-like perceptiveness with their tendency to wander off randomly, panic at the sight of a wayward kite, or mindlessly devour a pizza takeout menu rather than order from it. They're people, but they're still appealingly sheep, too.
Most of the TV episodes serve up Shaun and his flock's antics in brisk, dialogue-free, 10 minute chunks, usually following such simple notions as "wash day" or "where'd my shovel go?" to mounting extremes of Chaplin-esque physical comedy. It's slapstick, but thankfully it's never manic or desperate, often taking its sweet time to set up oddball conflicts and then pay them off in unexpected ways. With his prankish but ultimately kind demeanor, Shaun is the bleating heart and soul of the series, and it's a pleasure to report that he and his flock not only survive the transition to the big screen, they seem tailor made for it.
In Shaun's first (but, one hopes, not final) big screen adventure, what starts off as a series of small-scale setups (Shaun and his flock, bored and annoyed by the tedious routine of being a flock of sheep on a working farm, decide that they'd simply like a day off to relax) quickly escalates into a string of bigger and funnier disasters, leading to an impromptu mission to the "big city" to rescue their gruff but good-natured human caretaker. What follows is a madcap (but thankfully never overwrought or desperate for laughs) caper that makes room for both surreal Rube Goldberg-esque set pieces and quiet moments of genuinely heart-tugging emotion. The movie takes place in a world where a flock of sheep can successfully disguise themselves as patrons of a fancy French restaurant simply by throwing on trench coats and knitted scarves, but the story never forgets to keep the emotional stakes honest. There are moments of true warmth and heartbreak in Shaun and flock's quest, and you'll likely find it impossible not to be moved by wondrous scenes like one in which the sheep perform an impromptu acapella version of the film's theme song in order to comfort a sad baby lamb.
The 'Shaun the Sheep Movie' is beautifully cinematic, touching, often hilarious, and has a heart as warm and sweet as a fresh-dipped candy apple. You don't need to be an Aardman aficionado, or to love stop motion animation, or even particularly be a fan of sheep, to let its considerable charms work their magic on you... you simply need to be able to appreciate the simple (wooly) pleasures of a good story, well told.
Childhood Soundtrack by James Horner
General | Posted 10 years agoFilm composer James Horner died on June 22, 2015 in a plane crash. I was listening to his majestic space-opera score to 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' (one of my favorites) when I caught the sad news, which hit me hard and which I'm still processing.
James Horner scored so many of the films that informed my youthful sense of wonder, my childhood whimsy, my aching sense of delight in worlds that could be and might have been, that it's hard for me to express. His emotive, evocative, bombastic, vividly memorable music was the engine that powered so many of the films that meant so much to me as a wistful, awkward, dreamy kid. Along with Jerry Goldsmith ('Secret of NIMH'), he gifted my youthful years with achingly beautiful old-school orchestral scores and soundtracks that still have the power to touch me. I listen, and I'm not just remembering what it was to be my young self... I AM my young self, staring up at the night sky and dreaming of otherworldly vistas, of dragons and spaceships, of heroes and far-flung futures that haven't yet been written. I owe a part of myself to his music.
For 'Star Trek II', 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', 'Star Trek III', 'Krull', 'Aliens', 'Willow', 'An American Tail', 'The Land Before Time', 'Glory', 'Balto', and so many others... all I can say is, thank you.
James Horner scored so many of the films that informed my youthful sense of wonder, my childhood whimsy, my aching sense of delight in worlds that could be and might have been, that it's hard for me to express. His emotive, evocative, bombastic, vividly memorable music was the engine that powered so many of the films that meant so much to me as a wistful, awkward, dreamy kid. Along with Jerry Goldsmith ('Secret of NIMH'), he gifted my youthful years with achingly beautiful old-school orchestral scores and soundtracks that still have the power to touch me. I listen, and I'm not just remembering what it was to be my young self... I AM my young self, staring up at the night sky and dreaming of otherworldly vistas, of dragons and spaceships, of heroes and far-flung futures that haven't yet been written. I owe a part of myself to his music.
For 'Star Trek II', 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', 'Star Trek III', 'Krull', 'Aliens', 'Willow', 'An American Tail', 'The Land Before Time', 'Glory', 'Balto', and so many others... all I can say is, thank you.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Guardians of the Galaxy
General | Posted 11 years agoLet's just get this out of the way right off the bat: I kinda sorta totally have a thing for Rocket Raccoon. Have done ever since I stumbled across his character bio in an old Marvel Character Encyclopedia, way back in the late 1980s. As a young teen coming of age in the pre-internet, pre-furry-fandom era, I pretty much took what I could get (heck, my first, innocent kid-crush was probably Ranger Rick... hmm). Still, you could do way worse than Rocket. He's dashing, if you think fur and stripy tails are dashing. He's charming and fun. He's a little gritty, but with a good sense of humor, and even better he's always having awesome space adventures. How could I not swoon a little?
So, when Marvel announced that a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' movie was in the works, and that Rocket would be a major character in it, I think my heart actually skipped a beat. Sure, Cynical Adult Me was worried that they'd find a way to screw it up, but Teen Kid Me couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear. Even better, they'd turned the controls over to James Gunn, the quirky talent behind 'Slither' and 'Super', and whose sensibilities (and sense of humor) seemed like a perfect fit. My anxiety as I counted the weeks up to, and then through, production was less "it's gonna suck" and more "please oh gods of the cinematic universe, just let this one actually happen. Let this movie actually exist. I won't care if it's not a masterpiece or anything, I just need to know that a fun movie with a talking, gun-slinging raccoon (swoon), a sentient tree, and an army of oddball aliens, rogues and thieves can even happen anymore."
So, without any spoilers or anything, was it worth the wait? Does 'Guardians' deliver?
Hell yes, it does. I can honestly say that it not only meets expectations, it exceeds them. This isn't just a quirky, irreverently fun sci-fi romp, it's a genuinely terrific movie, stuffed almost to overflowing with great characters, laugh-out-loud humor, tear-jerking sentiment, lavish spectacle and above all a whiz-bang, kid-in-a-candy-store sense of wonder. There's an infectious feeling of joy running through 'Guardians', a deep fondness not only for the characters and their colorful alien worlds, but for the possibilities of movie-making itself. There's never a moment that doesn't feel like Gunn and his crew weren't having a total blast telling this story.
Even better, the story itself, with all of its imaginative, fast-paced detours into otherworldly vistas and candy-colored cityscapes, is compulsively entertaining. You'll want to know what happens next, and you'll relish every moment you get to spend with the film's charmingly smart-assed group of semi-heroes. It's not that the flick aggressively demands to be loved... it's that it goes out of its way to actually earn your affection. In an era of over-directed, overblown event movies, it's beyond refreshing to come across something that seems so unfashionably retro in its willingness to simply trust the audience. In one breezy sci-fi burst, Gunn and company have managed to deliver in spades what the bloated, combined might of the 'Star Wars' prequels and the new 'Star Trek' franchise together could not: a good old-fashioned sense of fun.
(And yes, Rocket is completely, totally, lovably awesome. Double-swoon.)
So, when Marvel announced that a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' movie was in the works, and that Rocket would be a major character in it, I think my heart actually skipped a beat. Sure, Cynical Adult Me was worried that they'd find a way to screw it up, but Teen Kid Me couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear. Even better, they'd turned the controls over to James Gunn, the quirky talent behind 'Slither' and 'Super', and whose sensibilities (and sense of humor) seemed like a perfect fit. My anxiety as I counted the weeks up to, and then through, production was less "it's gonna suck" and more "please oh gods of the cinematic universe, just let this one actually happen. Let this movie actually exist. I won't care if it's not a masterpiece or anything, I just need to know that a fun movie with a talking, gun-slinging raccoon (swoon), a sentient tree, and an army of oddball aliens, rogues and thieves can even happen anymore."
So, without any spoilers or anything, was it worth the wait? Does 'Guardians' deliver?
Hell yes, it does. I can honestly say that it not only meets expectations, it exceeds them. This isn't just a quirky, irreverently fun sci-fi romp, it's a genuinely terrific movie, stuffed almost to overflowing with great characters, laugh-out-loud humor, tear-jerking sentiment, lavish spectacle and above all a whiz-bang, kid-in-a-candy-store sense of wonder. There's an infectious feeling of joy running through 'Guardians', a deep fondness not only for the characters and their colorful alien worlds, but for the possibilities of movie-making itself. There's never a moment that doesn't feel like Gunn and his crew weren't having a total blast telling this story.
Even better, the story itself, with all of its imaginative, fast-paced detours into otherworldly vistas and candy-colored cityscapes, is compulsively entertaining. You'll want to know what happens next, and you'll relish every moment you get to spend with the film's charmingly smart-assed group of semi-heroes. It's not that the flick aggressively demands to be loved... it's that it goes out of its way to actually earn your affection. In an era of over-directed, overblown event movies, it's beyond refreshing to come across something that seems so unfashionably retro in its willingness to simply trust the audience. In one breezy sci-fi burst, Gunn and company have managed to deliver in spades what the bloated, combined might of the 'Star Wars' prequels and the new 'Star Trek' franchise together could not: a good old-fashioned sense of fun.
(And yes, Rocket is completely, totally, lovably awesome. Double-swoon.)
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip and Dale?
General | Posted 12 years agoOkay. So, I am a huge Chip and Dale fan. Huge. They're quite possibly my favorite Disney characters, and I say that as someone who adores all things Disney (except 'The Wild', because *&!$# that movie.) I buy Chip and Dale goodies. I have Chip and Dale hats, shirts, pins, DVDs, the works. Yes, I have even written fan fics, that's how geeked out I am for our two nut-hoarding chipmunk heroes.
So, how to take the recent news that Disney has green-lit a live action/CG 'Rescue Rangers' movie? I dunno, honestly. I really don't. It's like I'm rejoicing and cringing at the same time. As a 'munk fan, I'm greatly intrigued by the possibilities... after all, Disney hasn't done much with C&D in many years, apart from slapping their likenesses on merchandise, so it's a thrill just to think that there may be some new material in the works.
But what material? What, exactly, are they planning on doing? That's what's got me worried. Let's break it down into pros and cons:
Good - Chip and Dale and friends, on the big screen? Yes, please. Fans of the original 'Rescue Rangers' cartoon may remember that there was an animated feature film in the works back in the day, but it was scrapped following the perceived "failure" of the 'Ducktales' movie (failure, Disney? Seriously?) I've always wondered just what it was that we missed out on, so this new flick may just be the next best thing.
Bad - Let's be cynical for a second here... there have been an awful lot of these live-action/CG nostalgia cash-ins lately, and to put it bluntly, most of them have sucked. My apologies if you're a huge fan of the 'Smurfs' movies, but personally I find these half-assed money grabs, with their lame pop-culture jokes, ugly CG, tired fart and boobie gags, slumming C-list celebrities and awful pop music soundtracks to be nothing less than depressing. Of course, it's easy for me to just roll my eyes and skip over, say, 'Garfield' or 'Scooby Doo', but this one hits me right in the feels.
Good - The 'Rescue Rangers' characters and universe are ripe for a thoughtful updating. To be frank, as much as I adore the original cartoon, I'll be the first to say that it wasn't exactly the best written or animated show in the Disney Afternoon lineup. 'Ducktales' and 'Gummi Bears' had way better artwork and snappier writing, while 'Talespin' put a clever, imaginative twist on 'The Jungle Book'. In comparison, 'Rangers' was sort of clumsy, with only sporadically amusing jokes, underdeveloped characters and a strange pun-based universe that never really came to believable life. A smart, inspired writer could do a lot with the Rangers... for crying out loud, it's a show about intelligent rodents using homemade trinkets to build flying machines and save the world from mad scientists and criminal masterminds. In the right hands, this could be a whimsical, fun adventure filled with delightful characters.
Bad - In the wrong hands, this could be 90 minutes of yelling, farting, mugging, twerking, Google plugs and One Direction cameos. I would rather leave the 'munks in the Disney vault than see them run through that smug 'Ha ha, nostalgia sure is dumb, amiright?' shredder. You'd like to think that Disney would treat some of their most beloved, iconic characters with a bit of respect, but then again this is the studio that gave us 'G-Force'.
Good - If they make this movie, and it turns out halfway decent and successful, it will doubtless lead to sequels and other such tie-ins (new comics? New merchandise? New tv series, even?) If they take enough trips to the well, even a disappointing start can lead to greatness further down the line.
Bad - This movie is not going to be made with folks like myself in mind. I'm a fringe fan, someone far outside Disney's main scope... they (understandably) care a lot more about the 13 and under set, or folks my age who actually have kids (shudder). What I would want from a new 'Rangers' movie - complex characters, a richly imagined world, clever humor and touches of honest poignancy - are not required elements for a film like this to be successful, and let's face it, it's a lot simpler (and safer) to go for cheap and easy rather than take real creative risks. These movies are almost never someone's passion project. They're investments, and Disney's probably looking for a safe bet after the financial losses of 'John Carter' and 'The Lone Ranger'.
Good - If the Marvel movies are any indication, Disney appears to have learned that sometimes hiring talented people with real vision pays off. Would 'The Avengers' have been a success if they'd gone with Brett Ratner instead of Joss Whedon? Probably, but by going with someone who understood the material (and then largely staying out of his way), they reaped huge profits as well as critical acclaim.
Bad - I doubt if Joss Whedon is in line to make 'Rescue Rangers'. The guy who's pitch they bought is essentially a commercials director with an unproven track record, while the production studio, Mandeville Films, is all over the map in terms of quality. Sure, they gave us a halfway decent updating of the Muppets, but they're also responsible for 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua'. It's possible, of course, that there's an inspired classic in the works (or at the very least, something that respects the original idea), but...
So here's an old-school 'Rangers' fan in a queasy state of both anticipation and dread. The cynic in me keeps jabbing me in the ribs and going "Hey, you'd loooove to see the 'munks fall into a toilet, right? And are you ready for some helium-pitched Katy Perry songs? Maybe a surprise cameo by a bored-looking Seth Rogen?" On the other hand, that cynical voice has never fully been able to drown out the little kid in me, the one who still looks forward to these sorts of things with a sense of hope and wonderment at what-could-be. Until further information reveals itself, put me down as "cautiously, perhaps even foolishly, optimistic".
So, how to take the recent news that Disney has green-lit a live action/CG 'Rescue Rangers' movie? I dunno, honestly. I really don't. It's like I'm rejoicing and cringing at the same time. As a 'munk fan, I'm greatly intrigued by the possibilities... after all, Disney hasn't done much with C&D in many years, apart from slapping their likenesses on merchandise, so it's a thrill just to think that there may be some new material in the works.
But what material? What, exactly, are they planning on doing? That's what's got me worried. Let's break it down into pros and cons:
Good - Chip and Dale and friends, on the big screen? Yes, please. Fans of the original 'Rescue Rangers' cartoon may remember that there was an animated feature film in the works back in the day, but it was scrapped following the perceived "failure" of the 'Ducktales' movie (failure, Disney? Seriously?) I've always wondered just what it was that we missed out on, so this new flick may just be the next best thing.
Bad - Let's be cynical for a second here... there have been an awful lot of these live-action/CG nostalgia cash-ins lately, and to put it bluntly, most of them have sucked. My apologies if you're a huge fan of the 'Smurfs' movies, but personally I find these half-assed money grabs, with their lame pop-culture jokes, ugly CG, tired fart and boobie gags, slumming C-list celebrities and awful pop music soundtracks to be nothing less than depressing. Of course, it's easy for me to just roll my eyes and skip over, say, 'Garfield' or 'Scooby Doo', but this one hits me right in the feels.
Good - The 'Rescue Rangers' characters and universe are ripe for a thoughtful updating. To be frank, as much as I adore the original cartoon, I'll be the first to say that it wasn't exactly the best written or animated show in the Disney Afternoon lineup. 'Ducktales' and 'Gummi Bears' had way better artwork and snappier writing, while 'Talespin' put a clever, imaginative twist on 'The Jungle Book'. In comparison, 'Rangers' was sort of clumsy, with only sporadically amusing jokes, underdeveloped characters and a strange pun-based universe that never really came to believable life. A smart, inspired writer could do a lot with the Rangers... for crying out loud, it's a show about intelligent rodents using homemade trinkets to build flying machines and save the world from mad scientists and criminal masterminds. In the right hands, this could be a whimsical, fun adventure filled with delightful characters.
Bad - In the wrong hands, this could be 90 minutes of yelling, farting, mugging, twerking, Google plugs and One Direction cameos. I would rather leave the 'munks in the Disney vault than see them run through that smug 'Ha ha, nostalgia sure is dumb, amiright?' shredder. You'd like to think that Disney would treat some of their most beloved, iconic characters with a bit of respect, but then again this is the studio that gave us 'G-Force'.
Good - If they make this movie, and it turns out halfway decent and successful, it will doubtless lead to sequels and other such tie-ins (new comics? New merchandise? New tv series, even?) If they take enough trips to the well, even a disappointing start can lead to greatness further down the line.
Bad - This movie is not going to be made with folks like myself in mind. I'm a fringe fan, someone far outside Disney's main scope... they (understandably) care a lot more about the 13 and under set, or folks my age who actually have kids (shudder). What I would want from a new 'Rangers' movie - complex characters, a richly imagined world, clever humor and touches of honest poignancy - are not required elements for a film like this to be successful, and let's face it, it's a lot simpler (and safer) to go for cheap and easy rather than take real creative risks. These movies are almost never someone's passion project. They're investments, and Disney's probably looking for a safe bet after the financial losses of 'John Carter' and 'The Lone Ranger'.
Good - If the Marvel movies are any indication, Disney appears to have learned that sometimes hiring talented people with real vision pays off. Would 'The Avengers' have been a success if they'd gone with Brett Ratner instead of Joss Whedon? Probably, but by going with someone who understood the material (and then largely staying out of his way), they reaped huge profits as well as critical acclaim.
Bad - I doubt if Joss Whedon is in line to make 'Rescue Rangers'. The guy who's pitch they bought is essentially a commercials director with an unproven track record, while the production studio, Mandeville Films, is all over the map in terms of quality. Sure, they gave us a halfway decent updating of the Muppets, but they're also responsible for 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua'. It's possible, of course, that there's an inspired classic in the works (or at the very least, something that respects the original idea), but...
So here's an old-school 'Rangers' fan in a queasy state of both anticipation and dread. The cynic in me keeps jabbing me in the ribs and going "Hey, you'd loooove to see the 'munks fall into a toilet, right? And are you ready for some helium-pitched Katy Perry songs? Maybe a surprise cameo by a bored-looking Seth Rogen?" On the other hand, that cynical voice has never fully been able to drown out the little kid in me, the one who still looks forward to these sorts of things with a sense of hope and wonderment at what-could-be. Until further information reveals itself, put me down as "cautiously, perhaps even foolishly, optimistic".
Stitch's Movie Madness: The Nut Job
General | Posted 12 years ago(Mild spoilers ahead)
Do you love squirrels? I do. I'm a fan of most kinds of rodent, really, but there's just something a little extra awesome about squirrels. Maybe it's the poofy tails, or the nibbly way they devour peanuts with their delicate little paws... they just seem to say "Holy crap, can you believe how adorable I am?" Frankly I'm surprised that there haven't been more movies that feature squirrel characters, and maybe beggars can't be choosers, but I wasn't about to let "The Nut Job" pass through the theaters without giving it a whirl.
Gotta be up front, I knew full well this flick wasn't going to be any kind of masterpiece. Even discounting the critical brickbats it's been taking, let's face it, the trailer is 50% loud farts and screaming. Any movie that aims that low on the humor tree is clearly not trying to be the next "Ratatouille" or "Wall•E", and that's fine. Not everything has to be a game-changing tour de force. Sometimes it's good to just dial your expectations back and have some simple fun.
Oh, "Nut Job", you came so close. So very, damnably close to being one of those rough-diamond, nutty treat movies... you know the kind, that sort of sneak in under the radar and leave you going "Whaddaya know, that was actually pretty good!"
"The Nut Job" is not one of those, which is a real shame. Because it could have been. Because the things that it gets wrong aren't what you'd expect it to get wrong, and because there are some things that it gets right, things that slip in and leave you dazzled and moved in a way you didn't see coming. Things that make you wish someone with real storytelling chops had come in to help with the script.
Set in what appears to be the 1950s, "The Nut Job" tells the story of Surly, a purplish squirrel with a gleefully selfish attitude about life. "I'm no hero," he says at the beginning of the story, and it's to the movie's credit that he doesn't say it with wistful regret, but with matter-of-fact pride. It's an intriguing touch that the film avoids the usual cliché of the dreamy would-be hero who just can't catch a break... nope, right off the bat we learn that our protagonist is kind of a dick. Of course, that's clearly just a set-up for an eventual change of heart, but it's refreshing that a family flick about talking squirrels is willing to make such a gutsy, gray-area choice for a main character.
Only looking out for himself (and, grudgingly, his best pal Buddy, a perpetually fawning gray rat who can't seem to speak and who follows Surly around with the wide-eyed adoration of a love-struck puppy), Surly starts the story with a bang when he inadvertently detonates the winter food supply of the animal denizens of the city park where he lives. Unrepentant, Surly finds himself banished by the park's leader, a smoothly aristocratic raccoon (unimaginatively, and even strangely, named Raccoon... do raccoons not have names in Surly’s world?) who seems to be something like... I dunno, the mayor, maybe? President? King? The film's pretty hazy on how the animal society actually works.
Starving and scared on the mean city streets, Surly (and Buddy, who tags along) seems to hit the jackpot when he discovers a store that sells nothing but nuts, but complicating his dreams of blissfully cramming his cheeks with pecans and cashews all winter are a gang of human crooks who are using the store as a front for a bank heist. Even more hitches arrive in the form of a tenacious pug guard dog, a squadron of glowing-eyed sewer rats, lots of mousetraps, and a contingent of not-particularly-friendly rodents sent by Raccoon to try and forage some cold-weather food. Allegiances are made, double-crosses are dealt, explosions and farts happen with regrettable frequency, and through it all, Surly just wants to grab his nuts (yeah, that's the sort of pun we're dealing with here) and get away.
For a comedy, "The Nut Job" is surprisingly dark at times, dishing out violence that's either cartoonish or genuinely threatening, depending on the scene. There's quite a bit of serious dramatic undertone to the storyline, setting up as it does weighty issues about the nature of heroism, responsibility, social politics, and the ethics of stealing... but underwhelmingly, the filmmakers just don't seem to know what to do with those ideas. More often than not, an interesting opportunity for something moving or challenging pops up, only to be left unexplored, glossed over with a shrug, or buried by a flatulence joke. And there are way more of those than this movie needs - frankly, "The Nut Job" is so anally fixated on its furry cast that it's practically it's own slash fiction. Not that the uninspired "ewww, farts sure are stinky, aren’t they?" gags are really the problem here. The problem is that, whether it's being dark or goofball, silly or dramatic, the half-baked story simply fails to make any of it particularly meaningful.
This is the sort of movie where stuff just sort of happens, without much rhyme or reason. Friendships and alliances are made and broken at the drop of a hat. The characters are defined almost entirely by their archetypes, with no real depth or backstory to involve you in what they're doing. Why, for instance, is Surly so determined that he doesn't need anyone for much of the movie? Did something happen to him when he was younger, something tragic and bitter that left him unable to trust other folks? The story never fills in even a hint of his background, leaving his selfishness completely unexplained – as is his similarly intriguing (but also never explored) interspecies companionship with Buddy. "He’s cranky because he's named Surly", is about the best you can infer from the movie, which in all honesty isn't good enough – especially since we're meant to be moved later on when his callous heart starts melting a little.
Even more problematic is the character of Raccoon, who (spoilers here) the movie sort of shoehorns into being a villain for no discernible reason. I can’t overstate this… Raccoon’s eventual bad-guy behavior makes absolutely no sense. At all. He has no believable reason to betray his loyal subjects, and in fact his actions are blatantly counter to what he says he’s trying to do. He’s not just a poorly-motivated villain, he’s a distractingly baffling one. And he’s not the only character who does an about-face seemingly at random… virtually all of the characters say and do things that only kinda-sorta make sense, and never with anything resembling real depth.
Instead of investing the squirrels and other assorted rodents with actual personality, the filmmakers rely almost entirely on attitude and adorableness (which admittedly they do get right – unlike the grotesques in “Fly Me to the Moon” or “Space Chimps”, the cute critters in “Nut Job” are beautifully animated)… it’s worth noting that the two most genuinely touching, poignant scenes in the entire film involve Surly and Buddy simply staring (mostly) wordlessly at each other.
It’s all quite frustrating, because “The Nut Job” does show flashes of real inspiration, and there are brief snippets when the story sparks to life in a way that suggests that, with a bit more care and polish, this could have been a real gem. Instead, regrettably, it is what it is… an auspicious misfire, just clever enough to make you wish it was smarter, almost-funny enough to make you wish it had better jokes, nearly poignant enough to make you want to meet its rough ambitions halfway, and very close to being something special. Far from being a total failure, it’s got enough legitimate plusses that it makes you yearn for the truly good movie that it could have been. I’m actually glad that they’ve green lit a sequel, because these characters and their world are promising enough that, like Surly, they deserve a second chance.
Do you love squirrels? I do. I'm a fan of most kinds of rodent, really, but there's just something a little extra awesome about squirrels. Maybe it's the poofy tails, or the nibbly way they devour peanuts with their delicate little paws... they just seem to say "Holy crap, can you believe how adorable I am?" Frankly I'm surprised that there haven't been more movies that feature squirrel characters, and maybe beggars can't be choosers, but I wasn't about to let "The Nut Job" pass through the theaters without giving it a whirl.
Gotta be up front, I knew full well this flick wasn't going to be any kind of masterpiece. Even discounting the critical brickbats it's been taking, let's face it, the trailer is 50% loud farts and screaming. Any movie that aims that low on the humor tree is clearly not trying to be the next "Ratatouille" or "Wall•E", and that's fine. Not everything has to be a game-changing tour de force. Sometimes it's good to just dial your expectations back and have some simple fun.
Oh, "Nut Job", you came so close. So very, damnably close to being one of those rough-diamond, nutty treat movies... you know the kind, that sort of sneak in under the radar and leave you going "Whaddaya know, that was actually pretty good!"
"The Nut Job" is not one of those, which is a real shame. Because it could have been. Because the things that it gets wrong aren't what you'd expect it to get wrong, and because there are some things that it gets right, things that slip in and leave you dazzled and moved in a way you didn't see coming. Things that make you wish someone with real storytelling chops had come in to help with the script.
Set in what appears to be the 1950s, "The Nut Job" tells the story of Surly, a purplish squirrel with a gleefully selfish attitude about life. "I'm no hero," he says at the beginning of the story, and it's to the movie's credit that he doesn't say it with wistful regret, but with matter-of-fact pride. It's an intriguing touch that the film avoids the usual cliché of the dreamy would-be hero who just can't catch a break... nope, right off the bat we learn that our protagonist is kind of a dick. Of course, that's clearly just a set-up for an eventual change of heart, but it's refreshing that a family flick about talking squirrels is willing to make such a gutsy, gray-area choice for a main character.
Only looking out for himself (and, grudgingly, his best pal Buddy, a perpetually fawning gray rat who can't seem to speak and who follows Surly around with the wide-eyed adoration of a love-struck puppy), Surly starts the story with a bang when he inadvertently detonates the winter food supply of the animal denizens of the city park where he lives. Unrepentant, Surly finds himself banished by the park's leader, a smoothly aristocratic raccoon (unimaginatively, and even strangely, named Raccoon... do raccoons not have names in Surly’s world?) who seems to be something like... I dunno, the mayor, maybe? President? King? The film's pretty hazy on how the animal society actually works.
Starving and scared on the mean city streets, Surly (and Buddy, who tags along) seems to hit the jackpot when he discovers a store that sells nothing but nuts, but complicating his dreams of blissfully cramming his cheeks with pecans and cashews all winter are a gang of human crooks who are using the store as a front for a bank heist. Even more hitches arrive in the form of a tenacious pug guard dog, a squadron of glowing-eyed sewer rats, lots of mousetraps, and a contingent of not-particularly-friendly rodents sent by Raccoon to try and forage some cold-weather food. Allegiances are made, double-crosses are dealt, explosions and farts happen with regrettable frequency, and through it all, Surly just wants to grab his nuts (yeah, that's the sort of pun we're dealing with here) and get away.
For a comedy, "The Nut Job" is surprisingly dark at times, dishing out violence that's either cartoonish or genuinely threatening, depending on the scene. There's quite a bit of serious dramatic undertone to the storyline, setting up as it does weighty issues about the nature of heroism, responsibility, social politics, and the ethics of stealing... but underwhelmingly, the filmmakers just don't seem to know what to do with those ideas. More often than not, an interesting opportunity for something moving or challenging pops up, only to be left unexplored, glossed over with a shrug, or buried by a flatulence joke. And there are way more of those than this movie needs - frankly, "The Nut Job" is so anally fixated on its furry cast that it's practically it's own slash fiction. Not that the uninspired "ewww, farts sure are stinky, aren’t they?" gags are really the problem here. The problem is that, whether it's being dark or goofball, silly or dramatic, the half-baked story simply fails to make any of it particularly meaningful.
This is the sort of movie where stuff just sort of happens, without much rhyme or reason. Friendships and alliances are made and broken at the drop of a hat. The characters are defined almost entirely by their archetypes, with no real depth or backstory to involve you in what they're doing. Why, for instance, is Surly so determined that he doesn't need anyone for much of the movie? Did something happen to him when he was younger, something tragic and bitter that left him unable to trust other folks? The story never fills in even a hint of his background, leaving his selfishness completely unexplained – as is his similarly intriguing (but also never explored) interspecies companionship with Buddy. "He’s cranky because he's named Surly", is about the best you can infer from the movie, which in all honesty isn't good enough – especially since we're meant to be moved later on when his callous heart starts melting a little.
Even more problematic is the character of Raccoon, who (spoilers here) the movie sort of shoehorns into being a villain for no discernible reason. I can’t overstate this… Raccoon’s eventual bad-guy behavior makes absolutely no sense. At all. He has no believable reason to betray his loyal subjects, and in fact his actions are blatantly counter to what he says he’s trying to do. He’s not just a poorly-motivated villain, he’s a distractingly baffling one. And he’s not the only character who does an about-face seemingly at random… virtually all of the characters say and do things that only kinda-sorta make sense, and never with anything resembling real depth.
Instead of investing the squirrels and other assorted rodents with actual personality, the filmmakers rely almost entirely on attitude and adorableness (which admittedly they do get right – unlike the grotesques in “Fly Me to the Moon” or “Space Chimps”, the cute critters in “Nut Job” are beautifully animated)… it’s worth noting that the two most genuinely touching, poignant scenes in the entire film involve Surly and Buddy simply staring (mostly) wordlessly at each other.
It’s all quite frustrating, because “The Nut Job” does show flashes of real inspiration, and there are brief snippets when the story sparks to life in a way that suggests that, with a bit more care and polish, this could have been a real gem. Instead, regrettably, it is what it is… an auspicious misfire, just clever enough to make you wish it was smarter, almost-funny enough to make you wish it had better jokes, nearly poignant enough to make you want to meet its rough ambitions halfway, and very close to being something special. Far from being a total failure, it’s got enough legitimate plusses that it makes you yearn for the truly good movie that it could have been. I’m actually glad that they’ve green lit a sequel, because these characters and their world are promising enough that, like Surly, they deserve a second chance.
Grocery Store Geek-Out
General | Posted 12 years agoIt's not just me, right? Everybody loves shopping for groceries, right? Like, really loves it? I mean, I know it's sort of a chore, and it's got to get done, and sometimes you're just there because you're in the middle of making cookies when suddenly you realize that you're completely out of organic pineapple-infused turbinado sugar (and your cookies are going to taste like burnt hockey pucks without it, dang it) so you rush out on an emergency sugar run, scowling impatiently the whole time... but most of the time, I absolutely adore going to the grocery store.
Why is that, anyway? It's probably weird. I find myself geeking out over heirloom carrots and lemon truffle oil the way some folks do at the old-timey record store when they stumble across a first edition pressing of Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints". I talk to myself, blurting out things like "Ooh, Tuscan kale!" and "Champagne grapes... local grown? Really? Awesome!" I come in just to pick up some tomatoes, and before long my basket is overflowing with pickling cucumbers, red leaf lettuce, a bottle of pinot, two frozen pizzas (they're on sale!), green onions, quail eggs, fresh chow mein noodles, three jars of marinara sauce and a bag of jalapeños. I can't help it.
I'm particularly fond of little hole-in-the-wall produce stands and local shops, the kind that sell farm-fresh fruits, veggies, nuts, honey and house-made jams and candies. It's one of the perks of living where I do in California, right on top of what used to be called the Valley of Heart's Delight (back in ye olden days when it was a lush Eden of orchards, farms, and ranches). It's true, we took some of the best farm land in the world and, perversely, plowed most of it under to make room for Silicon Valley, but there are still plenty of local growers around, tilling what's left of the rich soil to produce apricots, cherries, apples, oranges, lemons, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, artichokes, garlic, walnuts, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers and just about anything else you can think of. There's almost always something or other in season, and you can usually get it dirt cheap when you buy directly from the grower.
Yesterday, I made a pit stop at one of these little open-air stores, just to see what they had. Within minutes, I had a basket overstuffed with fat, ripe, juicy purple and yellow heirloom tomatoes, onions so fresh-pulled they still had moist little crumbles of dirt tangled in their roots, a medley of multicolored chili peppers, a huge head of red leaf butter lettuce and a perfumey-ripe Sharlyn melon. I'm not sure, but I think I was smiling to myself the whole time... I know I was on the drive home, which I spent daydreaming about the huge batch of fresh tomato and pepper salsa I was planning to make (I did, and it turned out delicious).
I suppose a lot of this has to do with the fact that I love to cook. For me, there's always been a special alchemy to home cooking... it's not just about the finished meal, it's also about the process, the way you can take fresh raw ingredients and transform them with knives, peelers, graters and presses, applying fire and spices, mashing and stirring and whipping until that head of cauliflower has become a rich, creamy bisque, or until that simple slab of raw salmon is now a picture-perfect, char-grilled fish steak sprinkled with lemon, garlic and minced red chilies. There's nostalgia, too... memories of my little kid-self standing in the kitchen, peeling garlic cloves and passing them to my dad so I could watch him crush them into a delicious-smelling cauldron of bubbling stew, or helping to sprinkle nutmeg and brown sugar onto a split, oven-bound acorn squash. I remember tagging along to the store, where I would contentedly watch the cart fill up with zucchinis and plums, cartons of cream and cans of chicken stock, bottles of sherry and sprigs of fresh tarragon, my imagination working overtime as I wondered what dish they were going to end up becoming.
No matter where I am, no matter how far from home I've found myself, I feel like I can always find a little bit of comfort at a grocery store. In the end, maybe that's an even better deal than simply scoring a pepperoni Tombstone pizza for half price, or finding a spread of artisanal goat cheeses and chocolates, or even a jar of real Moroccan preserved lemons... of course, I'll be happily putting those in my basket, too.
Why is that, anyway? It's probably weird. I find myself geeking out over heirloom carrots and lemon truffle oil the way some folks do at the old-timey record store when they stumble across a first edition pressing of Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints". I talk to myself, blurting out things like "Ooh, Tuscan kale!" and "Champagne grapes... local grown? Really? Awesome!" I come in just to pick up some tomatoes, and before long my basket is overflowing with pickling cucumbers, red leaf lettuce, a bottle of pinot, two frozen pizzas (they're on sale!), green onions, quail eggs, fresh chow mein noodles, three jars of marinara sauce and a bag of jalapeños. I can't help it.
I'm particularly fond of little hole-in-the-wall produce stands and local shops, the kind that sell farm-fresh fruits, veggies, nuts, honey and house-made jams and candies. It's one of the perks of living where I do in California, right on top of what used to be called the Valley of Heart's Delight (back in ye olden days when it was a lush Eden of orchards, farms, and ranches). It's true, we took some of the best farm land in the world and, perversely, plowed most of it under to make room for Silicon Valley, but there are still plenty of local growers around, tilling what's left of the rich soil to produce apricots, cherries, apples, oranges, lemons, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, artichokes, garlic, walnuts, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers and just about anything else you can think of. There's almost always something or other in season, and you can usually get it dirt cheap when you buy directly from the grower.
Yesterday, I made a pit stop at one of these little open-air stores, just to see what they had. Within minutes, I had a basket overstuffed with fat, ripe, juicy purple and yellow heirloom tomatoes, onions so fresh-pulled they still had moist little crumbles of dirt tangled in their roots, a medley of multicolored chili peppers, a huge head of red leaf butter lettuce and a perfumey-ripe Sharlyn melon. I'm not sure, but I think I was smiling to myself the whole time... I know I was on the drive home, which I spent daydreaming about the huge batch of fresh tomato and pepper salsa I was planning to make (I did, and it turned out delicious).
I suppose a lot of this has to do with the fact that I love to cook. For me, there's always been a special alchemy to home cooking... it's not just about the finished meal, it's also about the process, the way you can take fresh raw ingredients and transform them with knives, peelers, graters and presses, applying fire and spices, mashing and stirring and whipping until that head of cauliflower has become a rich, creamy bisque, or until that simple slab of raw salmon is now a picture-perfect, char-grilled fish steak sprinkled with lemon, garlic and minced red chilies. There's nostalgia, too... memories of my little kid-self standing in the kitchen, peeling garlic cloves and passing them to my dad so I could watch him crush them into a delicious-smelling cauldron of bubbling stew, or helping to sprinkle nutmeg and brown sugar onto a split, oven-bound acorn squash. I remember tagging along to the store, where I would contentedly watch the cart fill up with zucchinis and plums, cartons of cream and cans of chicken stock, bottles of sherry and sprigs of fresh tarragon, my imagination working overtime as I wondered what dish they were going to end up becoming.
No matter where I am, no matter how far from home I've found myself, I feel like I can always find a little bit of comfort at a grocery store. In the end, maybe that's an even better deal than simply scoring a pepperoni Tombstone pizza for half price, or finding a spread of artisanal goat cheeses and chocolates, or even a jar of real Moroccan preserved lemons... of course, I'll be happily putting those in my basket, too.
Big Wow! ComicFest 2012
General | Posted 13 years agoJust finished up two days of gorging myself on comics, toys and movie memorabilia at the Big Wow comics show in San Jose, CA, and I must say it was ridiculous fun (fortunately for me I never stopped being 12 years old). Here are some highlights:
Sat in on a panel/got my picture taken with Juanjo Guarnido, the outstanding artist of the "Blacksad" graphic novels. Later, I waited in line to get an inscribed copy of the Dark Horse reprint (which collects the first 3 stories) and watched him for 20 minutes while he drew (freehand) a gorgeous inked sketch of Blacksad and a femme fatale in some guy's sketchbook. Nice chap... wish I could have chatted, but there were 20 people lined up behind me.
Random wandering led me to a dealer's table stacked with homemade-looking DVDs and movie magazines, being run by a cheerful old bloke with an awesome white ZZ Top beard who turned out to be none other than rockabilly musician/filmmaker Johnny Legend (you genre fans might remember him as "Skinny Corpse" from "Bride of Re-Animator" or as the director of Andy Kaufman's underground fave "My Breakfast With Blassie"). He shared some awesome stories about his cult X-rated hit "Teenage Cruisers" and about having cockroaches thrown in his hair while making a terrible movie with James Doohan.
Bought a hand-drawn character sheet of Tan the space-faring otter of the "Fusion" comics from Lela Dowling.
Bought a signed print from/shook hands with a very polite man in a yellow kimono who turned out to be Toshio Maeda, creator of the immortal hentai series "Urotsukidōji".
Ate too many overpriced hot dogs.
Spoke briefly to horror hostess/filmmaker Miss Misery about zombies and electric chairs. Also, bought a Crow pin from James O'Barr, who had an adorable 6 year old girl running his sales for him while he drew stuff.
Had a good long chat with author/director/horror host John Stanley, who saw me skimming through his book and rushed over to say "You look like an intelligent person!" Local Bay Area fans might remember him from his run in the early 1980s hosting "Creature Features" on KTVU Channel 2, where he helped introduce budding film buffs to "Night of the Living Dead", "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Twins of Evil". As an interviewer, he chatted with everyone from Ray Harryhausen to William Shatner to Douglas Adams, all of whom he approached with both a scholar's insight and a fan's enthusiasm, eventually talking to over 800 authors, actors and filmmakers. At my request, he graciously inscribed for me a DVD of his 1978 tongue-in-cheek vampires in San Francisco flick "Nightmare in Blood". If you ever read this, Mr. Stanley, you are a class act - stay spooky.
Zombie pirates? Yes. Yes, there were. Also, an inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, because of course there was.
Sat in on a panel/got my picture taken with Juanjo Guarnido, the outstanding artist of the "Blacksad" graphic novels. Later, I waited in line to get an inscribed copy of the Dark Horse reprint (which collects the first 3 stories) and watched him for 20 minutes while he drew (freehand) a gorgeous inked sketch of Blacksad and a femme fatale in some guy's sketchbook. Nice chap... wish I could have chatted, but there were 20 people lined up behind me.
Random wandering led me to a dealer's table stacked with homemade-looking DVDs and movie magazines, being run by a cheerful old bloke with an awesome white ZZ Top beard who turned out to be none other than rockabilly musician/filmmaker Johnny Legend (you genre fans might remember him as "Skinny Corpse" from "Bride of Re-Animator" or as the director of Andy Kaufman's underground fave "My Breakfast With Blassie"). He shared some awesome stories about his cult X-rated hit "Teenage Cruisers" and about having cockroaches thrown in his hair while making a terrible movie with James Doohan.
Bought a hand-drawn character sheet of Tan the space-faring otter of the "Fusion" comics from Lela Dowling.
Bought a signed print from/shook hands with a very polite man in a yellow kimono who turned out to be Toshio Maeda, creator of the immortal hentai series "Urotsukidōji".
Ate too many overpriced hot dogs.
Spoke briefly to horror hostess/filmmaker Miss Misery about zombies and electric chairs. Also, bought a Crow pin from James O'Barr, who had an adorable 6 year old girl running his sales for him while he drew stuff.
Had a good long chat with author/director/horror host John Stanley, who saw me skimming through his book and rushed over to say "You look like an intelligent person!" Local Bay Area fans might remember him from his run in the early 1980s hosting "Creature Features" on KTVU Channel 2, where he helped introduce budding film buffs to "Night of the Living Dead", "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Twins of Evil". As an interviewer, he chatted with everyone from Ray Harryhausen to William Shatner to Douglas Adams, all of whom he approached with both a scholar's insight and a fan's enthusiasm, eventually talking to over 800 authors, actors and filmmakers. At my request, he graciously inscribed for me a DVD of his 1978 tongue-in-cheek vampires in San Francisco flick "Nightmare in Blood". If you ever read this, Mr. Stanley, you are a class act - stay spooky.
Zombie pirates? Yes. Yes, there were. Also, an inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, because of course there was.
Stitch's Movie Madness: The Black Hole (Disney)
General | Posted 13 years agoBlack holes used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid. In my young, easily freaked-out mind, they were like these giant, immensely powerful vortexes spinning around in space, just sort of... sucking stuff up. And if you got too close, you were doomed to fall in forever, with no hope of escape. I would lay awake at night, staring up into the starry sky and imagine that a huge whirlpool would appear overhead and begin to swirl up the stars, getting bigger and bigger until it would gobble up the Earth too. Presumably this is why I always had such an obsession with Disney's 1979 sci-fi opus "The Black Hole," a movie that both played into my fears of the cosmic unknown and dished up plenty of laser battles, robots, and spaceships (the holy trinity of any young boy's fantasies.)
Now, right off the bat, it has to be said that "The Black Hole" is not exactly a masterpiece. It's got some pacing issues, the characters are paper thin, much of the science is flat-out wrong (or just head-scratchingly weird), and the comic relief (oh, those wacky robots) starts off weak and veers into intrusively annoying as the story chugs along. That said, there are plenty of things about the film that remain impressive, even 30-plus years later.
Disney may have made the film mainly because "Star Wars" had suddenly made science fiction a hot property at the box office, but "The Black Hole" has a charmingly old-fashioned story that's part "Posiedon Adventure", part "2001", and topped with a heaping scoop of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Set in the year 2130, the film kicks off with a deep space science vessel's discovery of a monstrous black hole... a phenomena made all the more fascinating by the revelation that another, much larger ship is hovering impossibly close to the event horizon. Deciding to investigate, the crew finds that what at first seems to be a derelict ghost ship is in fact a legendary lost vessel, the Cygnus, still under the command of the charismatic - and slightly menacing - doctor Hans Reinhardt (played with maximum beard by Maximillian Schell.) Rounding out the less than welcoming crew of the Cygnus are a squadron of creepy, mysterious robots wearing blank, mirror-like masks and monk's robes.
At first looking only to repair their ship and be on their way, the crew of the science ship soon find themselves caught up in Reinhardt's insane quest to plunge the Cygnus into the nearby black hole, which he believes is a gateway to the ultimate knowledge of the universe. As Reinhardt's madness escalates, grave secrets about the fate of the original crew come to light, and soon our heroes must fight their way off the ship before the Cygnus passes the point of no return.
It's a nifty idea for a sci-fi adventure that mixes operatic space action with a looming sense of wonder (and terror) at the mysteries of the universe... not to sound too much like an old codger pining for the good old days, but they really don't make them like this anymore. For starters, the film opens up with a bona fide musical overture, courtesy of composer John Barry. Just two and a half minutes of rousing, atmospheric music set to the background image of a star field. Just to set the mood. I know, I know... in this ADD-addled day and age, nobody would ever sit still through something like an overture ("Where's the moooovie? I didn't pay to just... listen to stuff. Blow something up already!"), but see, back in ye olden days, going to a movie was more than something you did at the mall in between buying shoes and chugging some Mongolian BBQ at the food court. Going to the movies was an event. You went to the theater expecting something grand, something bigger than life. The musical overture was a way of pulling you out of the real world and into the world of the film. It set the tone for what you were about to experience. By the time the story began, the music had truly made you ready for it.
If the characters of "The Black Hole" aren't exactly three dimensional (they range from such stock archetypal classics as Stoic Captain, Science Lady, Cowboy Lieutenant, Funny Robot and Ernest Borgnine), they're at least serviceable enough to keep the story moving. Interestingly, the most accomplished performance comes from (uncredited) Disney movie vet Roddy McDowall, who gives the crew's floating, trash can-like "funny" robot V.I.N.CENT an aura of poignant humanity that manages to overshadow some of his human co-stars. Unfortunately, both V.I.N.CENT and his even "funnier" counterpart, a battered earlier model named B.O.B. (voiced with a southern twang by a likewise uncredited Slim Pickens) are responsible for most of the film's attempts to lighten an otherwise dark storyline with some really intrusive moments of comedy. (It also doesn't help that both robots, with their big, squarish eyes, squat bodies and round heads, bear an unfortunate resemblance to "South Park's" Kenny.)
Of course, a big-budget ($20 million, which was colossal in its day) sci-fi opus lives or dies on the quality of its special effects, and here is one area where "The Black Hole" really soars. While some of the opticals and matte paintings are dated by today's standards, the model work on the ships (particularly the huge, darkly menacing Cygnus itself) is extraordinary, while the vast, elaborate sets, particularly Reinhardt's massive control tower, are nothing less than stunning.
One of the most unusual aspects of the film, however, is its ending, which (mild spoilers here) conceptualizes the final trip into the cosmic unknown as a bizarre, Dante-like representation of heaven and hell. Tinged with overtly religious imagery that recalls Kubrick's "2001" by way of a Sunday school instructor's simplistic vision of the afterlife, it's a mind-bending way for the movie to end... not because it makes a whole lot of sense, but specifically because it doesn't. As a little kid, I remember scratching my head and going, "Huh... guess I'm too little to understand this part," not realizing that a good many grownups in the audience were just as baffled as me. Now that I'm older, I can more or less see what they were going for - a sort of "science doesn't have all the answers, and in the end, Reinhardt tried to meddle in God's domain" 50s-esque moral that probably sounded better on paper. Doesn't make it any less anti-climactic, though... after all the buildup about learning the ultimate secrets of the universe, getting a bunch of hazy, heavy-handed symbology about good and evil is like going through three "Matrix" movies just to find out that Neo is CyberJesus.
In any case, while "The Black Hole" may be flawed, it's also fascinating and often sincerely entertaining. Heck, at times it's even thrilling. Dark - and sometimes legitimately scary - it's a reminder of a time when the fun of science fiction came from ideas and atmosphere, not just eye candy.
Now, right off the bat, it has to be said that "The Black Hole" is not exactly a masterpiece. It's got some pacing issues, the characters are paper thin, much of the science is flat-out wrong (or just head-scratchingly weird), and the comic relief (oh, those wacky robots) starts off weak and veers into intrusively annoying as the story chugs along. That said, there are plenty of things about the film that remain impressive, even 30-plus years later.
Disney may have made the film mainly because "Star Wars" had suddenly made science fiction a hot property at the box office, but "The Black Hole" has a charmingly old-fashioned story that's part "Posiedon Adventure", part "2001", and topped with a heaping scoop of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Set in the year 2130, the film kicks off with a deep space science vessel's discovery of a monstrous black hole... a phenomena made all the more fascinating by the revelation that another, much larger ship is hovering impossibly close to the event horizon. Deciding to investigate, the crew finds that what at first seems to be a derelict ghost ship is in fact a legendary lost vessel, the Cygnus, still under the command of the charismatic - and slightly menacing - doctor Hans Reinhardt (played with maximum beard by Maximillian Schell.) Rounding out the less than welcoming crew of the Cygnus are a squadron of creepy, mysterious robots wearing blank, mirror-like masks and monk's robes.
At first looking only to repair their ship and be on their way, the crew of the science ship soon find themselves caught up in Reinhardt's insane quest to plunge the Cygnus into the nearby black hole, which he believes is a gateway to the ultimate knowledge of the universe. As Reinhardt's madness escalates, grave secrets about the fate of the original crew come to light, and soon our heroes must fight their way off the ship before the Cygnus passes the point of no return.
It's a nifty idea for a sci-fi adventure that mixes operatic space action with a looming sense of wonder (and terror) at the mysteries of the universe... not to sound too much like an old codger pining for the good old days, but they really don't make them like this anymore. For starters, the film opens up with a bona fide musical overture, courtesy of composer John Barry. Just two and a half minutes of rousing, atmospheric music set to the background image of a star field. Just to set the mood. I know, I know... in this ADD-addled day and age, nobody would ever sit still through something like an overture ("Where's the moooovie? I didn't pay to just... listen to stuff. Blow something up already!"), but see, back in ye olden days, going to a movie was more than something you did at the mall in between buying shoes and chugging some Mongolian BBQ at the food court. Going to the movies was an event. You went to the theater expecting something grand, something bigger than life. The musical overture was a way of pulling you out of the real world and into the world of the film. It set the tone for what you were about to experience. By the time the story began, the music had truly made you ready for it.
If the characters of "The Black Hole" aren't exactly three dimensional (they range from such stock archetypal classics as Stoic Captain, Science Lady, Cowboy Lieutenant, Funny Robot and Ernest Borgnine), they're at least serviceable enough to keep the story moving. Interestingly, the most accomplished performance comes from (uncredited) Disney movie vet Roddy McDowall, who gives the crew's floating, trash can-like "funny" robot V.I.N.CENT an aura of poignant humanity that manages to overshadow some of his human co-stars. Unfortunately, both V.I.N.CENT and his even "funnier" counterpart, a battered earlier model named B.O.B. (voiced with a southern twang by a likewise uncredited Slim Pickens) are responsible for most of the film's attempts to lighten an otherwise dark storyline with some really intrusive moments of comedy. (It also doesn't help that both robots, with their big, squarish eyes, squat bodies and round heads, bear an unfortunate resemblance to "South Park's" Kenny.)
Of course, a big-budget ($20 million, which was colossal in its day) sci-fi opus lives or dies on the quality of its special effects, and here is one area where "The Black Hole" really soars. While some of the opticals and matte paintings are dated by today's standards, the model work on the ships (particularly the huge, darkly menacing Cygnus itself) is extraordinary, while the vast, elaborate sets, particularly Reinhardt's massive control tower, are nothing less than stunning.
One of the most unusual aspects of the film, however, is its ending, which (mild spoilers here) conceptualizes the final trip into the cosmic unknown as a bizarre, Dante-like representation of heaven and hell. Tinged with overtly religious imagery that recalls Kubrick's "2001" by way of a Sunday school instructor's simplistic vision of the afterlife, it's a mind-bending way for the movie to end... not because it makes a whole lot of sense, but specifically because it doesn't. As a little kid, I remember scratching my head and going, "Huh... guess I'm too little to understand this part," not realizing that a good many grownups in the audience were just as baffled as me. Now that I'm older, I can more or less see what they were going for - a sort of "science doesn't have all the answers, and in the end, Reinhardt tried to meddle in God's domain" 50s-esque moral that probably sounded better on paper. Doesn't make it any less anti-climactic, though... after all the buildup about learning the ultimate secrets of the universe, getting a bunch of hazy, heavy-handed symbology about good and evil is like going through three "Matrix" movies just to find out that Neo is CyberJesus.
In any case, while "The Black Hole" may be flawed, it's also fascinating and often sincerely entertaining. Heck, at times it's even thrilling. Dark - and sometimes legitimately scary - it's a reminder of a time when the fun of science fiction came from ideas and atmosphere, not just eye candy.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Happy Feet Two
General | Posted 14 years agoWhen the first "Happy Feet" came out a few years back, it defied a lot of expectations (and some really bad trailers) by being, you know, actually pretty good. A logline of the plot might read something like this: "A young penguin who lives in a society where singing is the most important thing in the world finds that he cannot sing... but he can dance up a storm. What will happen to him?"
It sounds like a simplistic story, but writer/director George Miller (yeah, the "Road Warrior" guy) and company managed to spin a winningly entertaining hero's journey out of it, while also dishing up some refreshingly bold socio-political commentary and setting it all in a lush, dazzling Antarctic wonderland. The snappy jukebox musical numbers helped quite a bit, too. As enjoyable as it all was, though, it didn't particularly seem to cry out for a sequel, and regrettably, "Happy Feet Two" can't even hope to measure up. Why? Well, here's the logline this time around: "The characters from 'Happy Feet' like to sing and dance, except for main hero Mumble's kid, who doesn't for some reason, and also there are some cranky elephant seals, a puffin who pretends to be a flying penguin, a pair of krill who are having an existential crisis, some humans in a boat who don't really do anything, a great big iceberg that kind of represents global warming, and something or other about self-empowerment through the power of positive thinking." Got all that?
You almost need a flow chart to keep track of all the oddball subplots going on in this film. The first "Happy Feet" may have had plenty of strange twists, but they were all anchored by the hero's quest to find himself. Part 2 doesn't just meander, it flounders, offering up new characters and side stories with a frantic sort of desperation, as though the people making it didn't really know what the movie was supposed to be about either. Action scenes, drama, comic relief and elaborate dance numbers just sort of fly off the screen, with nary a story-driven reason to care what's going on... in this one, stuff just sort of happens, until it either stops happening, or some dazzling eye candy shows up to distract you. Characters argue with each other, then make up, then yell some more. Funny characters swoop center stage to deliver jokes and mugging at random intervals. The song and dance numbers, which were so crucial to the first film, are just sort of shoehorned in because it's a "Happy Feet" movie and you expect them to be there. Certain things are foreshadowed but never pay off, while other important events seem to come out of nowhere. It's like someone just threw a bunch of story notes into a blender and hit frappé.
Which is a real shame, because there are some major plusses to be had in "Happy Feet Two". The animation itself is truly stunning... everything, from the inside of a vast cloud of softly glowing krill, to the sunlight sparkling on sugary snow and icicles, to glimmering reflections within thousands of tiny water droplets, has been rendered with a jaw-dropping skill that manages to raise the bar (at least until the next Pixar movie comes along). The characters, too, are once again artfully and adorably depicted... even the shrimp are cute. There are also moments when the sheer joyfulness of the music and dance choreography delivers an emotional punch that the poorly written story simply can't. The film shows us a delightful world and then fails to bring it fully to life.
Of the returning characters, the best that can be said of them is that they happen to be in this movie too. Mumble, Gloria, Ramon, Lovelace and even Noah the Elder (Mumble's parents, interestingly, are MIA)... they're still around, but now they're not doing anything particularly interesting. The new characters fare somewhat better, maybe because they're simply bringing fresh shtick with them. A considerable amount of the story revolves around a pair of krill (you know, those little microscopic shrimp that whales eat by the billions) named Will and Bill, who decide to change their lot in life by leaving their swarm behind to become fierce predators. Stunt-voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, who at least sound like they're having a good time, the two mini-shrimp seem to be occupying a different film for much of the running time, but they do deliver some of the pathos and humor that's missing from the penguins.
By far the most interesting new character in part 2 is the "flying penguin", an appealingly strange Scandinavian puffin named The Mighty Sven (delightfully voiced by Hank Azaria, who does this sort of thing way better than Robin Williams). Sven, like Lovelace in the first movie, may be a bit of a charlatan, but unlike Lovelace his motives aren't so selfish, and he ultimately provides both charisma and warmth to a film that desperately needs it. One can't help but wish he'd been the main character this time around.
It sounds like a simplistic story, but writer/director George Miller (yeah, the "Road Warrior" guy) and company managed to spin a winningly entertaining hero's journey out of it, while also dishing up some refreshingly bold socio-political commentary and setting it all in a lush, dazzling Antarctic wonderland. The snappy jukebox musical numbers helped quite a bit, too. As enjoyable as it all was, though, it didn't particularly seem to cry out for a sequel, and regrettably, "Happy Feet Two" can't even hope to measure up. Why? Well, here's the logline this time around: "The characters from 'Happy Feet' like to sing and dance, except for main hero Mumble's kid, who doesn't for some reason, and also there are some cranky elephant seals, a puffin who pretends to be a flying penguin, a pair of krill who are having an existential crisis, some humans in a boat who don't really do anything, a great big iceberg that kind of represents global warming, and something or other about self-empowerment through the power of positive thinking." Got all that?
You almost need a flow chart to keep track of all the oddball subplots going on in this film. The first "Happy Feet" may have had plenty of strange twists, but they were all anchored by the hero's quest to find himself. Part 2 doesn't just meander, it flounders, offering up new characters and side stories with a frantic sort of desperation, as though the people making it didn't really know what the movie was supposed to be about either. Action scenes, drama, comic relief and elaborate dance numbers just sort of fly off the screen, with nary a story-driven reason to care what's going on... in this one, stuff just sort of happens, until it either stops happening, or some dazzling eye candy shows up to distract you. Characters argue with each other, then make up, then yell some more. Funny characters swoop center stage to deliver jokes and mugging at random intervals. The song and dance numbers, which were so crucial to the first film, are just sort of shoehorned in because it's a "Happy Feet" movie and you expect them to be there. Certain things are foreshadowed but never pay off, while other important events seem to come out of nowhere. It's like someone just threw a bunch of story notes into a blender and hit frappé.
Which is a real shame, because there are some major plusses to be had in "Happy Feet Two". The animation itself is truly stunning... everything, from the inside of a vast cloud of softly glowing krill, to the sunlight sparkling on sugary snow and icicles, to glimmering reflections within thousands of tiny water droplets, has been rendered with a jaw-dropping skill that manages to raise the bar (at least until the next Pixar movie comes along). The characters, too, are once again artfully and adorably depicted... even the shrimp are cute. There are also moments when the sheer joyfulness of the music and dance choreography delivers an emotional punch that the poorly written story simply can't. The film shows us a delightful world and then fails to bring it fully to life.
Of the returning characters, the best that can be said of them is that they happen to be in this movie too. Mumble, Gloria, Ramon, Lovelace and even Noah the Elder (Mumble's parents, interestingly, are MIA)... they're still around, but now they're not doing anything particularly interesting. The new characters fare somewhat better, maybe because they're simply bringing fresh shtick with them. A considerable amount of the story revolves around a pair of krill (you know, those little microscopic shrimp that whales eat by the billions) named Will and Bill, who decide to change their lot in life by leaving their swarm behind to become fierce predators. Stunt-voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, who at least sound like they're having a good time, the two mini-shrimp seem to be occupying a different film for much of the running time, but they do deliver some of the pathos and humor that's missing from the penguins.
By far the most interesting new character in part 2 is the "flying penguin", an appealingly strange Scandinavian puffin named The Mighty Sven (delightfully voiced by Hank Azaria, who does this sort of thing way better than Robin Williams). Sven, like Lovelace in the first movie, may be a bit of a charlatan, but unlike Lovelace his motives aren't so selfish, and he ultimately provides both charisma and warmth to a film that desperately needs it. One can't help but wish he'd been the main character this time around.
Stitch's Movie Madness: 120 Years of Horror.
General | Posted 14 years ago1896 – Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle), directed by Georges Méliès. Cinema pioneer Méliès probably saw himself more as a magician than a filmmaker. His silent shorts seem like more staged vaudeville tricks than true stories, but back when "moving pictures" were something most folks had only read about, you could honestly dazzle a paying audience with little more than jump cuts, smoke pots and overlapping negatives. Clocking in at just over 3 minutes, Le Manoir du Diable dishes up what seems like a naive little kid's idea of horror: a flapping bat that turns into a man, a dark corridor, a bubbling cauldron, a prop skeleton. It's charmingly innocent by today's standards, but it's also, in a way, one of film's earliest thrillers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmKaz3Quzo
1903 – Le Cake-Walk Infernal (The Infernal Cake Walk), directed by Georges Méliès. Just a handful of years later and Méliès' bag of cinematic tricks had gotten much more sophisticated, with elaborate moving painted sets, lavish costumes and dancing fireballs being just a few of the "wonders" on display. It's still pretty much just a stage act with no real story, but you can see that a rudimentary sense of atmosphere and spectacle has already started to make its way into what we'd eventually call "the movies": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5YhbY0OUiU
1910 – Frankenstein, directed by J. Searle Dawley. Historically important as both the first filmed version of Mary Shelley's classic novel and as a legendary lost film that has since been rediscovered. This "Frankenstein" manages to boil the entire story down into 12 or so minutes and jettisons pretty much all of the plot, turning the fable of a mad scientist who creates a monster into a simple "good versus evil" morality tale that nevertheless hinges on some interesting metaphysical concepts. Director Dawley makes imaginative visual use of a mirror to nail home the idea of the monster and the scientist being one and the same, and there are also a few moments of genuine horror (particularly in a sequence depicting the creature's steaming flesh creeping back up onto its skeletal bones, as well as his first ghastly, twisted appearance from behind some bedroom curtains): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLxsOJK9bs
1922 – Häxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages), directed by Benjamin Christensen. Swedish filmmaker Christensen conceived of this epic exploration of witchcraft (as it's been historically imagined to be, anyway) as a feature-length condemnation of superstition and the dangers of rejecting reason in the face of hysteria. That said, he knew full well that spectacle was was the best way to get attention, so he put his considerable skill (not to mention a huge-for-its-time budget) into recreating scene after scene of lavish black masses, Satanic orgies and, in later sequences, heartbreakingly cruel witch hunts that destroy the innocent under the guise of moral purity. It's a rollicking trip through the world of the supernatural that ultimately argues in favor of reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq2_jVmJ6wA
1932 – Freaks, directed by Tod Browning. Though it was made nearly 80 years ago, few horror films have ever been as viscerally disturbing as the notorious Freaks. While it could be argued that the film's treatment of human "monstrosities" is exploitative (director Browning's choice to cast real live circus performers was both a masterstroke and career suicide), there's also no denying that the story's real sympathies lie with its downtrodden pinheads, bearded ladies and Siamese twins. The gruesome climax, in which an enraged mob of malformed "freaks" crawls relentlessly through the rain and mud toward their righteous vengeance, is unsettling in ways that few modern films would even try to pull off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA&feature=related
1945 – Isle of the Dead, directed by Mark Robson. Legendary producer Val Lewton made a string of horror classics in the 1940s, often at the behest of studio heads who literally picked lurid-sounding titles out of a hat. Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher were cranked out as b-movie filler, but Lewton took great delight in subverting the formula at every turn (his 1943 flick The Ghost Ship has only metaphorical ghosts in it, which must have ticked off the folks at RKO Pictures something fierce). Isle took its inspiration from a painting, setting its story on a remote Greek island during the Balkan War. As a quarantined group of people begin to die of the plague, the superstitious survivors start blaming the deaths on a young woman. What could have been a cheap melodrama is, in Lewton protégé Robson's capable hands, a grim, gloomy meditation on death that, towards the end, dishes up one of the scariest moments in movie history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI4D8KokkWg
1958-59 – Quatermass and the Pit (Television Series), directed Rudolph Cartier. Professor Quatermass is a sort of proto-Doctor Who, a clever British scientist who uses his wits to fight alien menace. Created by writer Nigel Kneale, Quatermass appeared in several television series and films, a stoic but generally good-natured man whose human strengths and foibles are every bit as helpful in defeating monsters as any ray gun. The Quatermass series undoubtedly reached its pinnacle in Quatermass and the Pit, an ambitious story about an ancient artifact uncovered in London that begins to exert a strange and menacing influence on the people around it. As its secrets come to light, terrifying truths are revealed that may change the world forever. Both a crackerjack sci-fi mystery and a legitimate high-water mark in television history, Pit paved the way for everything from Doctor Who to The X-Files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i7JxVWxXuw
1968 – Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves. You’d expect a horror flick about 17th century witchcraft, starring Vincent Price as a megalomaniacal “witch hunter” cutting a bloody swath of terror through the English countryside, to be an overbaked slab of ham, but Reeves’ dark, cruel picture is deadly serious. Dialing back his usual corny brand of creepiness to play the titular power-hungry sadist, Price delivers one of his most chilling performances, but it’s the grim, gory, and ultimately sad message that lingers – power corrupts, innocence suffers, and in the end even vengeance is meaningless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh5b-2WeY7k&feature=related
1970 – I Drink Your Blood, directed by David E. Durston. A bunch of vile Satan-worshipping hippies drive into a small mountain town in their filthy love-wagon and proceed to rape and murder their way through the local populace. In retribution, a young kid injects a batch of meat pies with blood from a rabid dog and gives it to them, not realizing that the ensuing madness will result in gory dismemberment and psychotic carnage. It was only 1970, just a few months after the Rolling Stones’ tragic Altamont concert, but to many folks it was already apparent that the “peace and love” movement was not only dead, but rotting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-vdVgiytEo
1985 – Return of the Living Dead, directed by Dan O’Bannon. Anyone who’s ever imitated a zombie by going “Braiiiiins…” has this raucous, punk-rock horror movie to thank for their catchphrase. In O’Bannon’s lunatic re-invention of Night of the Living Dead the resurrected don’t want body parts so much as living brains, the only drug that will quiet the eternal “pain of being dead.” With its giddy black comedy, day-glo mohawk & leather studded fashion, and anarchic “we’re all screwed, so let’s party” attitude, no other fright flick so perfectly encapsulates the turmoil of the Reagan era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wylpeAXYcBQ
1992 – Man Bites Dog, directed by Rémy Belvaux. A film crew working on a shoestring budget decides to follow a serial killer on his gruesome rounds in this horrifying pitch-black satire of the media and celebrity culture. Actor Benoît Poelvoorde so convincingly inhabits the role of the manic, fame-conscious murderer that you’ll wonder why he wasn’t arrested after the premier, while director Belvaux nails (and bloodily skewers) our “anything to be famous” ethos about thirteen years before Youtube and Failblog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPhaieTg4o
2007 – The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont. Adapting a bleak Stephen King novella from 1980 about the end of the world, writer/director Darabont if anything made the film version even more dark and hopeless by setting it in the post 9-11 world. Pitting a tiny pocket of rational heroes against both a slew of grisly inter-dimensional creepy crawlies and, even worse, a batch of psychotic nuts right out of the Westborough Baptist Church’s “you’re ALL going to hell” playbook, The Mist manages to be an entertaining monster movie and a grim condemnation of where the world seems to be headed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vwWJ0c-J4
1903 – Le Cake-Walk Infernal (The Infernal Cake Walk), directed by Georges Méliès. Just a handful of years later and Méliès' bag of cinematic tricks had gotten much more sophisticated, with elaborate moving painted sets, lavish costumes and dancing fireballs being just a few of the "wonders" on display. It's still pretty much just a stage act with no real story, but you can see that a rudimentary sense of atmosphere and spectacle has already started to make its way into what we'd eventually call "the movies": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5YhbY0OUiU
1910 – Frankenstein, directed by J. Searle Dawley. Historically important as both the first filmed version of Mary Shelley's classic novel and as a legendary lost film that has since been rediscovered. This "Frankenstein" manages to boil the entire story down into 12 or so minutes and jettisons pretty much all of the plot, turning the fable of a mad scientist who creates a monster into a simple "good versus evil" morality tale that nevertheless hinges on some interesting metaphysical concepts. Director Dawley makes imaginative visual use of a mirror to nail home the idea of the monster and the scientist being one and the same, and there are also a few moments of genuine horror (particularly in a sequence depicting the creature's steaming flesh creeping back up onto its skeletal bones, as well as his first ghastly, twisted appearance from behind some bedroom curtains): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLxsOJK9bs
1922 – Häxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages), directed by Benjamin Christensen. Swedish filmmaker Christensen conceived of this epic exploration of witchcraft (as it's been historically imagined to be, anyway) as a feature-length condemnation of superstition and the dangers of rejecting reason in the face of hysteria. That said, he knew full well that spectacle was was the best way to get attention, so he put his considerable skill (not to mention a huge-for-its-time budget) into recreating scene after scene of lavish black masses, Satanic orgies and, in later sequences, heartbreakingly cruel witch hunts that destroy the innocent under the guise of moral purity. It's a rollicking trip through the world of the supernatural that ultimately argues in favor of reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq2_jVmJ6wA
1932 – Freaks, directed by Tod Browning. Though it was made nearly 80 years ago, few horror films have ever been as viscerally disturbing as the notorious Freaks. While it could be argued that the film's treatment of human "monstrosities" is exploitative (director Browning's choice to cast real live circus performers was both a masterstroke and career suicide), there's also no denying that the story's real sympathies lie with its downtrodden pinheads, bearded ladies and Siamese twins. The gruesome climax, in which an enraged mob of malformed "freaks" crawls relentlessly through the rain and mud toward their righteous vengeance, is unsettling in ways that few modern films would even try to pull off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA&feature=related
1945 – Isle of the Dead, directed by Mark Robson. Legendary producer Val Lewton made a string of horror classics in the 1940s, often at the behest of studio heads who literally picked lurid-sounding titles out of a hat. Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher were cranked out as b-movie filler, but Lewton took great delight in subverting the formula at every turn (his 1943 flick The Ghost Ship has only metaphorical ghosts in it, which must have ticked off the folks at RKO Pictures something fierce). Isle took its inspiration from a painting, setting its story on a remote Greek island during the Balkan War. As a quarantined group of people begin to die of the plague, the superstitious survivors start blaming the deaths on a young woman. What could have been a cheap melodrama is, in Lewton protégé Robson's capable hands, a grim, gloomy meditation on death that, towards the end, dishes up one of the scariest moments in movie history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI4D8KokkWg
1958-59 – Quatermass and the Pit (Television Series), directed Rudolph Cartier. Professor Quatermass is a sort of proto-Doctor Who, a clever British scientist who uses his wits to fight alien menace. Created by writer Nigel Kneale, Quatermass appeared in several television series and films, a stoic but generally good-natured man whose human strengths and foibles are every bit as helpful in defeating monsters as any ray gun. The Quatermass series undoubtedly reached its pinnacle in Quatermass and the Pit, an ambitious story about an ancient artifact uncovered in London that begins to exert a strange and menacing influence on the people around it. As its secrets come to light, terrifying truths are revealed that may change the world forever. Both a crackerjack sci-fi mystery and a legitimate high-water mark in television history, Pit paved the way for everything from Doctor Who to The X-Files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i7JxVWxXuw
1968 – Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves. You’d expect a horror flick about 17th century witchcraft, starring Vincent Price as a megalomaniacal “witch hunter” cutting a bloody swath of terror through the English countryside, to be an overbaked slab of ham, but Reeves’ dark, cruel picture is deadly serious. Dialing back his usual corny brand of creepiness to play the titular power-hungry sadist, Price delivers one of his most chilling performances, but it’s the grim, gory, and ultimately sad message that lingers – power corrupts, innocence suffers, and in the end even vengeance is meaningless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh5b-2WeY7k&feature=related
1970 – I Drink Your Blood, directed by David E. Durston. A bunch of vile Satan-worshipping hippies drive into a small mountain town in their filthy love-wagon and proceed to rape and murder their way through the local populace. In retribution, a young kid injects a batch of meat pies with blood from a rabid dog and gives it to them, not realizing that the ensuing madness will result in gory dismemberment and psychotic carnage. It was only 1970, just a few months after the Rolling Stones’ tragic Altamont concert, but to many folks it was already apparent that the “peace and love” movement was not only dead, but rotting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-vdVgiytEo
1985 – Return of the Living Dead, directed by Dan O’Bannon. Anyone who’s ever imitated a zombie by going “Braiiiiins…” has this raucous, punk-rock horror movie to thank for their catchphrase. In O’Bannon’s lunatic re-invention of Night of the Living Dead the resurrected don’t want body parts so much as living brains, the only drug that will quiet the eternal “pain of being dead.” With its giddy black comedy, day-glo mohawk & leather studded fashion, and anarchic “we’re all screwed, so let’s party” attitude, no other fright flick so perfectly encapsulates the turmoil of the Reagan era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wylpeAXYcBQ
1992 – Man Bites Dog, directed by Rémy Belvaux. A film crew working on a shoestring budget decides to follow a serial killer on his gruesome rounds in this horrifying pitch-black satire of the media and celebrity culture. Actor Benoît Poelvoorde so convincingly inhabits the role of the manic, fame-conscious murderer that you’ll wonder why he wasn’t arrested after the premier, while director Belvaux nails (and bloodily skewers) our “anything to be famous” ethos about thirteen years before Youtube and Failblog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPhaieTg4o
2007 – The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont. Adapting a bleak Stephen King novella from 1980 about the end of the world, writer/director Darabont if anything made the film version even more dark and hopeless by setting it in the post 9-11 world. Pitting a tiny pocket of rational heroes against both a slew of grisly inter-dimensional creepy crawlies and, even worse, a batch of psychotic nuts right out of the Westborough Baptist Church’s “you’re ALL going to hell” playbook, The Mist manages to be an entertaining monster movie and a grim condemnation of where the world seems to be headed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vwWJ0c-J4
Stitch's Movie Madness: The Thing (2011)
General | Posted 14 years agoYou don't have to be a fan of John Carpenter's horror classic 1982 adaptation of "The Thing" to be disappointed by the 2011 reboot/prequel, but being a fan of Carpenter's film all but guarantees it. It's not that this new "Thing" is terrible (though it is fairly underwhelming), it's just that its slavish devotion to reminding you of the particulars of Carpenter's story invites constant comparisons to that much better film.
The plot of the new film, directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., is pretty much the same this time around... a team of snowbound scientists manning a remote Antarctic outpost discover a spaceship and a seemingly dead alien entombed in the ice. After digging the creature up and thawing it, it proves to be very much alive, and what's worse, it exhibits the terrifying ability to consume and then replicate, in perfect detail, any other organism... including people. This begs the central question that made Carpenter's film so memorably tense and frightening: how do you survive a fight against a deadly foe who could be standing right next to you in the guise of your friend? Who can you trust, when any one of your comrades might be plotting to get you alone and then literally devour you?
It's a great premise for a horror story, evoking as it does some truly primal fears - of isolation, paranoia, violence, and above all the fear that your mind, soul and body could be completely taken over by something cold and alien. Carpenter's 1982 film masterfully exploited that premise with a near-perfect precision, depicting the breakdown of an isolated pocket of human civilization with an appropriately chilly bleakness and an almost nihilistic sense of grim, impending doom. Also, its awesomely gooey, nightmarish special effects, wrangled by artists Rob Bottin and a young Stan Winston, were nothing less than game-changers in terms of both their technical wizardry and their sheer wondrous imagination.
It's important to remember these things, because they all represent elements that this new "Thing" gets wrong, to varying degrees. It might seem unfair to continually compare 2011's "Thing" to the 1982 version, but this is a film that strives mightily at every turn to remind you of Carpenter's film, both in its basic story and especially in numerous bits of specific fan-baiting marginalia... ever wanted to know how that bloody axe got stuck in the wall, or why there was a burned creature with a ghastly melted face out in the snow, or where the helicopter pilot got his grenades from? This "Thing" takes pains to fill in those blanks, sometimes going to almost ridiculous contortions to fit certain things in. Make no mistake, this "Thing" wants very much to be compared to Carpenter's "Thing", both as a slicker updating and as a work of "let's explain how everything probably happened" fanfiction (and what could be scarier than having every detail explained so that it all makes perfect sense?) Regrettably, slicker doesn't always equal better, and dishing up constant fan-service doesn't automatically make for good storytelling.
This "Thing" falls into the same trap that's befuddled so many recent horror films, confusing sheer volume for terror. While this "new" (primarily CG) creature may be rendered with a level of squidgy, tentacle-y detail that would have been impossible to pull off in 1982, it never stops looking like a cartoon. Bottin and Winston's twisted creatures, in comparison, were frightening in part because they were tangible. (If Jan de Bont's spectacularly misguided 1999 remake of "The Haunting" should have taught us anything, it's that swirling blobs of CG flying around while shrieking just aren't scary, no matter how loudly and insistently they're shoved into your face.) Van Heijningen may be a true fright film fan, but his take on horror regrettably falls squarely into the school of having special effects jump suddenly out of the shadows with a loud "boo" noise.
What's really missing this time around, though, is a sense of atmosphere. 1982's "Thing" worked because it took its time building up tension, establishing the characters and then making us feel their mounting sense of isolated panic. This "Thing" tries to do the same, but mainly dishes up overlong scenes of underdeveloped characters yelling at each other, running away from things, or trading chunks of expository dialogue. The suspense builds occasionally, then tends to go flat for long stretches while we wait for the next boo-scare to come bursting out of nowhere. The question of "Who's the alien, and who's human?" was a central hook in Carpenter's film, and there was always a cold sense of logic behind that mystery... the plot took care to make the alien seem cunning, a predator whose strikes were more like moves in a chess game. This time around, the question of who's-the-alien can usually be answered by "Whoever happens to be standing around in the background in this scene, because it's been five minutes since the last kill." That approach may make for plenty of gooey monster attacks, but it fails to provoke genuine chills, and it leaves you not caring very much as to who might get killed. The characters have become secondary to the effects.
I want to mention that blood-spattered axe one more time, the one stuck in the wall in the 1982 version, because to me it's a perfect metaphor for why this new "Thing" fails to justify its existence. In Carpenter's film, it's simply a gruesome detail, a brief suggestion of the awful carnage that went on prior to the movie's beginning. You never see how it gets stuck there, because you don't need to... it's merely a creepy visual cue that something terrible has happened, and that's all you need. Your imagination runs with it, coming up with all kinds of frightening possibilities and adding an extra sense of haunting menace to an already tense scene. In the new "Thing", you will see exactly how that axe got embedded into the wall, and honestly, what I imagined back when I was a little kid was way scarier. As controversially gruesome and explicit as Carpenter's classic often was, it also understood that sometimes it's better to leave things hidden in the shadows.
The plot of the new film, directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., is pretty much the same this time around... a team of snowbound scientists manning a remote Antarctic outpost discover a spaceship and a seemingly dead alien entombed in the ice. After digging the creature up and thawing it, it proves to be very much alive, and what's worse, it exhibits the terrifying ability to consume and then replicate, in perfect detail, any other organism... including people. This begs the central question that made Carpenter's film so memorably tense and frightening: how do you survive a fight against a deadly foe who could be standing right next to you in the guise of your friend? Who can you trust, when any one of your comrades might be plotting to get you alone and then literally devour you?
It's a great premise for a horror story, evoking as it does some truly primal fears - of isolation, paranoia, violence, and above all the fear that your mind, soul and body could be completely taken over by something cold and alien. Carpenter's 1982 film masterfully exploited that premise with a near-perfect precision, depicting the breakdown of an isolated pocket of human civilization with an appropriately chilly bleakness and an almost nihilistic sense of grim, impending doom. Also, its awesomely gooey, nightmarish special effects, wrangled by artists Rob Bottin and a young Stan Winston, were nothing less than game-changers in terms of both their technical wizardry and their sheer wondrous imagination.
It's important to remember these things, because they all represent elements that this new "Thing" gets wrong, to varying degrees. It might seem unfair to continually compare 2011's "Thing" to the 1982 version, but this is a film that strives mightily at every turn to remind you of Carpenter's film, both in its basic story and especially in numerous bits of specific fan-baiting marginalia... ever wanted to know how that bloody axe got stuck in the wall, or why there was a burned creature with a ghastly melted face out in the snow, or where the helicopter pilot got his grenades from? This "Thing" takes pains to fill in those blanks, sometimes going to almost ridiculous contortions to fit certain things in. Make no mistake, this "Thing" wants very much to be compared to Carpenter's "Thing", both as a slicker updating and as a work of "let's explain how everything probably happened" fanfiction (and what could be scarier than having every detail explained so that it all makes perfect sense?) Regrettably, slicker doesn't always equal better, and dishing up constant fan-service doesn't automatically make for good storytelling.
This "Thing" falls into the same trap that's befuddled so many recent horror films, confusing sheer volume for terror. While this "new" (primarily CG) creature may be rendered with a level of squidgy, tentacle-y detail that would have been impossible to pull off in 1982, it never stops looking like a cartoon. Bottin and Winston's twisted creatures, in comparison, were frightening in part because they were tangible. (If Jan de Bont's spectacularly misguided 1999 remake of "The Haunting" should have taught us anything, it's that swirling blobs of CG flying around while shrieking just aren't scary, no matter how loudly and insistently they're shoved into your face.) Van Heijningen may be a true fright film fan, but his take on horror regrettably falls squarely into the school of having special effects jump suddenly out of the shadows with a loud "boo" noise.
What's really missing this time around, though, is a sense of atmosphere. 1982's "Thing" worked because it took its time building up tension, establishing the characters and then making us feel their mounting sense of isolated panic. This "Thing" tries to do the same, but mainly dishes up overlong scenes of underdeveloped characters yelling at each other, running away from things, or trading chunks of expository dialogue. The suspense builds occasionally, then tends to go flat for long stretches while we wait for the next boo-scare to come bursting out of nowhere. The question of "Who's the alien, and who's human?" was a central hook in Carpenter's film, and there was always a cold sense of logic behind that mystery... the plot took care to make the alien seem cunning, a predator whose strikes were more like moves in a chess game. This time around, the question of who's-the-alien can usually be answered by "Whoever happens to be standing around in the background in this scene, because it's been five minutes since the last kill." That approach may make for plenty of gooey monster attacks, but it fails to provoke genuine chills, and it leaves you not caring very much as to who might get killed. The characters have become secondary to the effects.
I want to mention that blood-spattered axe one more time, the one stuck in the wall in the 1982 version, because to me it's a perfect metaphor for why this new "Thing" fails to justify its existence. In Carpenter's film, it's simply a gruesome detail, a brief suggestion of the awful carnage that went on prior to the movie's beginning. You never see how it gets stuck there, because you don't need to... it's merely a creepy visual cue that something terrible has happened, and that's all you need. Your imagination runs with it, coming up with all kinds of frightening possibilities and adding an extra sense of haunting menace to an already tense scene. In the new "Thing", you will see exactly how that axe got embedded into the wall, and honestly, what I imagined back when I was a little kid was way scarier. As controversially gruesome and explicit as Carpenter's classic often was, it also understood that sometimes it's better to leave things hidden in the shadows.
Stitch's Movie Madness: James Bond 11-20
General | Posted 14 years ago“Moonraker”
Plot: Bond heads for the stars (or at least, Earth orbit) as he squares off against a fascistic industrialist who plots to fire chemical weapons from an orbiting space city in order to destroy the world and then remake it in his own demented image.
The Good Stuff: Featuring some incredible model work and set design, "Moonraker" may have been riding on the coattails of "Star Wars" but the tone is its own goofy blend of 50s sci-fi pulp and modern (for their time) space race trappings. Also, the sequences in Rio de Janeiro are pure Bond goodness.
The Bad Stuff: Ultimately the whole endeavor suffers from a silly desire to make a sci-fi blockbuster, not least an over the top (even for Bond) space-set laser battle climax. The biggest mistake, though, was in listening to all the little kids who wrote the producers begging for iconic henchman Jaws (once again played by the always-welcome Richard Kiel) to be made into a "goodie" instead of a "baddie", leading to a ridiculous last-minute conversion to the forces of good for a guy who, just one movie ago, was tearing a guy's throat out with his teeth.
Timeless Message: If you're planning to destroy the Earth, don't get the ball rolling by doing something that will draw the entire world's attention to you.
“For Your Eyes Only”
Plot: Bond teams up with a lovely archaeologist in a quest for a rogue piece of cold war technology as well as revenge against the leader of a powerful international smuggling ring.
The Good Stuff: Perhaps sensing that they'd gone a bit too far with the last movie, the filmmakers bring this one back down to Earth and keep the tone closer to the earlier Fleming novels. Interestingly, the pre-credits sequence also definitively wraps up the Bond vs. Blofeld story arc in an amusingly offhanded way that may not be particularly satisfying, but does deliver one of Bond's more memorable kills.
The Bad Stuff: While the film's tone is more gritty and less fantastical this time, the story itself remains fairly forgettable stuff, with more than a few scenes and plot points that seem lifted from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".
Timeless Message: When pleading with James Bond for your life, offer him something more appealing than his own "diner in stainless steel".
“Octopussy”
Plot: Bond's investigation of a stolen Fabergé egg leads him into conflict with an exiled prince, a traitorous Soviet general, and a seductive circus owner who leads a dangerous octopus cult.
The Good Stuff: While Moore's Bond flicks were getting pretty goofy by this point, the filmmakers still make it a point to dish out some impressive action sequences, and manage to make the final "stop the bomb" chase sequence fairly exciting. Also, charismatic tennis star Vijay Amritraj makes for an appealing ally who gets dispatched by one of the cooler gadgets in a Bond flick: a buzz saw yo-yo.
The Bad Stuff: Perhaps signaling their desire to make these flicks more kid friendly, the film literally puts Bond in a clown suit for part of the climax (plus he does a Tarzan yell while swinging through some trees... ugh.) Octopussy herself (played by Maud Adams) may be the title character, but she's primarily memorable for the fact that her name is a double entendre for "vagina" and not because she's particularly interesting.
Timeless Message: A blue-ringed octopus does not make for a very good pet.
“A View To a Kill”
Plot: Bond squares off against a psychotic business tycoon who intends to detonate the San Andreas fault in order to destroy Silicon Valley.
The Good Stuff: Christopher Walken gamely sinks his teeth into the role of the villain, while Grace Jones makes for a strange but memorable “evil Bond girl”. This one thankfully downplays some of the sillier aspects of the series, while ratcheting up the intensity to sometimes shocking levels… Walken’s controversial climactic machine-gunning/drowning of his own men counts as one of the most violent sequences this side of Daniel Craig’s Bond.
The Bad Stuff: By this point, Moore is getting a bit too creaky to play Bond convincingly… he looks like M, not 007. The storyline strains credibility too, particularly when it comes to Walken’s ultimate plan to create a giant earthquake, while Jones remains fairly under-used in her role.
Timeless Message: Watch out for blimps… apparently they can sneak up on you.
“The Living Daylights”
Plot: Timothy Dalton takes over the Bond role for a departing Moore in this convoluted tale of Soviet espionage, political double-crosses, Afghani freedom fighters and international romance.
The Good Stuff: Timothy Dalton’s brief tenure as Bond was characterized by a seething undercurrent of darkness… he may have tossed out quips and one-liners, but underneath the flippancy was a legitimate sense of menace. There are also some fabulous locations this time around, including Vienna, Tangiers and the Rock of Gibraltar.
The Bad Stuff: Tonally, this one’s a bit of a mess – the filmmakers don’t seem entirely sure what to do with Dalton’s more intense take on Bond, so they try to shoehorn in moments of humor that don’t entirely work.
Timeless Message: Those with a Napoleon complex should know better than to build models of Waterloo.
“License to Kill”
Plot: Bond goes rogue when his best friend gets mangled by a sadistic drug lord, setting him off on a quest for vengeance that may end up compromising his loyalty to King and country.
The Good Stuff: A solidly entertaining Bond adventure that was underrated when it was first released, this film took additional brickbats for its bloody violence… it’s the first Bond to be given a PG-13, a rating it handily earned. Its dark edge, though, was perfectly in step with Dalton’s crueler Bond, and gave the story a real sense of menace and tension. A young Benicio Del Torro sizzles in a small role as a knife-wielding henchman, while Robert Davi exudes an almost palpable mixture of charisma and sleaze as the main villain. Also, watch for Wayne Newton in a great bit as a slimy televangelist.
The Bad Stuff: Again, the humor sometimes feels out of step with the darker tone.
Timeless Message: You should not, in fact, disagree with things that can eat you.
“Goldeneye”
Plot: A ghost from Bond’s past comes back to menace all of Britain with a devastating space-based weapon.
The Good Stuff: Following a five year hiatus, Bond gets a solid comeback courtesy of action specialist Martin Campbell and particularly Pierce Brosnan, who confidently inhabits the Bond role with a nice blend of Connery’s suaveness, Moore’s twinkle and Dalton’s mean streak. Under Campbell’s solid direction, “Goldeneye” feels like both a slick, modern action flick and a pleasant throwback to the “Goldfinger” days.
The Bad Stuff: There’s an unnecessarily goofy edge to some of the comedy (for instance, Alan Cumming hams it up a bit too much as an obnoxious Russian hacker). Also, could Tchéky Karyo please be allowed to survive to the end of just one movie?
Timeless Message: Driving a tank is not only easy, it’s fun.
“Tomorrow Never Dies”
Plot: Bond must foil the schemes of a ruthless media baron who seeks to spark an international war in order to boost his own power and influence.
The Good Stuff: The filmmakers graciously allow action ace Michelle Yeoh, as a high-kicking super spy, to share considerable screen time with Brosnan, and she makes the most of the opportunity… her character is so strong one hesitates to even think of her as a traditional “Bond girl”. Jonathan Pryce makes for a memorably mock-cheerful villain, while the motorcycle/helicopter chase across the rooftops of Saigon is an action highlight.
The Bad Stuff: “Turner & Hooch” director Roger Spottiswoode may have apprenticed for action movie master Sam Peckinpah, but he seems to have inherited none of Peckinpah’s skills behind the camera. Here, he directs action with an almost squeamish distaste for violence, resulting in several potentially showstopping sequences playing out as soft-pedaled and underwhelming. It’s a Bond movie, for crying out loud.
Timeless Message: That big whirly thing with gnashing metal teeth? Don’t stand in front of it.
“The World is Not Enough”
Plot: Bond finds himself up against a mortally wounded former KGB agent turned nuclear terrorist who is all the more dangerous because he has nothing to lose.
The Good Stuff: Villain Renard isn’t just another menacing Bondian sociopath… as played by the always excellent Robert Carlyle, he’s strangely sympathetic, even tragic. If he wasn’t trying to commit mass homicide, he’d probably qualify as the film’s underdog. Sophie Marceau likewise makes a memorable impression as a tough but sensitive romantic foil for Bond who may be more than she seems. It’s also nice to see Judi Dench’s M given a meatier role this time around, while the title theme song by Garbage is one of the better ones.
The Bad Stuff: Director Michael Apted doesn’t seem entirely comfortable doing a large scale action movie, bringing little personality or zest to the big set pieces. Denise Richards stumbles her way through the badly-written and pointless role of Bond girl Christmas Jones, who ends up being one of the series’ worst.
Timeless Message: Fizzy ice in your cocktail means something bad is about to happen.
“Die Another Day”
Plot: Bond teams up with a highly-skilled female agent to try and thwart a brilliant young diamond tycoon who is secretly plotting to shift the lines of global power.
The Good Stuff: Conceived as a loving homage to all the Bond films that had come before, “Die Another Day” is crammed chock full of clever references to everything from Honey Rider’s iconic surfside appearance in “Dr. No” to the shoe blade in “From Russia With Love”. Director Lee Tamahori brings considerable flair to the numerous action showstoppers, while Halle Berry acquits herself nicely as a Bond girl who can take care of herself.
The Bad Stuff: The film often flirts with being too absurd for its own good, particularly by the time the villain has strapped on an electricity-spewing robo-suit for a climactic showdown on a burning airliner. The copious use of CG is a detriment… it just looks fake, undermining some moments and flat out ruining others. Also, Madonna's gratuitous cameo not only stops the film cold, but her auto-tune-mangled title theme plays like a parody of a Bond song.
Timeless Message: Having diamonds embedded in your face might look kind of cool, but seriously, dude. Tweezers.
Plot: Bond heads for the stars (or at least, Earth orbit) as he squares off against a fascistic industrialist who plots to fire chemical weapons from an orbiting space city in order to destroy the world and then remake it in his own demented image.
The Good Stuff: Featuring some incredible model work and set design, "Moonraker" may have been riding on the coattails of "Star Wars" but the tone is its own goofy blend of 50s sci-fi pulp and modern (for their time) space race trappings. Also, the sequences in Rio de Janeiro are pure Bond goodness.
The Bad Stuff: Ultimately the whole endeavor suffers from a silly desire to make a sci-fi blockbuster, not least an over the top (even for Bond) space-set laser battle climax. The biggest mistake, though, was in listening to all the little kids who wrote the producers begging for iconic henchman Jaws (once again played by the always-welcome Richard Kiel) to be made into a "goodie" instead of a "baddie", leading to a ridiculous last-minute conversion to the forces of good for a guy who, just one movie ago, was tearing a guy's throat out with his teeth.
Timeless Message: If you're planning to destroy the Earth, don't get the ball rolling by doing something that will draw the entire world's attention to you.
“For Your Eyes Only”
Plot: Bond teams up with a lovely archaeologist in a quest for a rogue piece of cold war technology as well as revenge against the leader of a powerful international smuggling ring.
The Good Stuff: Perhaps sensing that they'd gone a bit too far with the last movie, the filmmakers bring this one back down to Earth and keep the tone closer to the earlier Fleming novels. Interestingly, the pre-credits sequence also definitively wraps up the Bond vs. Blofeld story arc in an amusingly offhanded way that may not be particularly satisfying, but does deliver one of Bond's more memorable kills.
The Bad Stuff: While the film's tone is more gritty and less fantastical this time, the story itself remains fairly forgettable stuff, with more than a few scenes and plot points that seem lifted from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".
Timeless Message: When pleading with James Bond for your life, offer him something more appealing than his own "diner in stainless steel".
“Octopussy”
Plot: Bond's investigation of a stolen Fabergé egg leads him into conflict with an exiled prince, a traitorous Soviet general, and a seductive circus owner who leads a dangerous octopus cult.
The Good Stuff: While Moore's Bond flicks were getting pretty goofy by this point, the filmmakers still make it a point to dish out some impressive action sequences, and manage to make the final "stop the bomb" chase sequence fairly exciting. Also, charismatic tennis star Vijay Amritraj makes for an appealing ally who gets dispatched by one of the cooler gadgets in a Bond flick: a buzz saw yo-yo.
The Bad Stuff: Perhaps signaling their desire to make these flicks more kid friendly, the film literally puts Bond in a clown suit for part of the climax (plus he does a Tarzan yell while swinging through some trees... ugh.) Octopussy herself (played by Maud Adams) may be the title character, but she's primarily memorable for the fact that her name is a double entendre for "vagina" and not because she's particularly interesting.
Timeless Message: A blue-ringed octopus does not make for a very good pet.
“A View To a Kill”
Plot: Bond squares off against a psychotic business tycoon who intends to detonate the San Andreas fault in order to destroy Silicon Valley.
The Good Stuff: Christopher Walken gamely sinks his teeth into the role of the villain, while Grace Jones makes for a strange but memorable “evil Bond girl”. This one thankfully downplays some of the sillier aspects of the series, while ratcheting up the intensity to sometimes shocking levels… Walken’s controversial climactic machine-gunning/drowning of his own men counts as one of the most violent sequences this side of Daniel Craig’s Bond.
The Bad Stuff: By this point, Moore is getting a bit too creaky to play Bond convincingly… he looks like M, not 007. The storyline strains credibility too, particularly when it comes to Walken’s ultimate plan to create a giant earthquake, while Jones remains fairly under-used in her role.
Timeless Message: Watch out for blimps… apparently they can sneak up on you.
“The Living Daylights”
Plot: Timothy Dalton takes over the Bond role for a departing Moore in this convoluted tale of Soviet espionage, political double-crosses, Afghani freedom fighters and international romance.
The Good Stuff: Timothy Dalton’s brief tenure as Bond was characterized by a seething undercurrent of darkness… he may have tossed out quips and one-liners, but underneath the flippancy was a legitimate sense of menace. There are also some fabulous locations this time around, including Vienna, Tangiers and the Rock of Gibraltar.
The Bad Stuff: Tonally, this one’s a bit of a mess – the filmmakers don’t seem entirely sure what to do with Dalton’s more intense take on Bond, so they try to shoehorn in moments of humor that don’t entirely work.
Timeless Message: Those with a Napoleon complex should know better than to build models of Waterloo.
“License to Kill”
Plot: Bond goes rogue when his best friend gets mangled by a sadistic drug lord, setting him off on a quest for vengeance that may end up compromising his loyalty to King and country.
The Good Stuff: A solidly entertaining Bond adventure that was underrated when it was first released, this film took additional brickbats for its bloody violence… it’s the first Bond to be given a PG-13, a rating it handily earned. Its dark edge, though, was perfectly in step with Dalton’s crueler Bond, and gave the story a real sense of menace and tension. A young Benicio Del Torro sizzles in a small role as a knife-wielding henchman, while Robert Davi exudes an almost palpable mixture of charisma and sleaze as the main villain. Also, watch for Wayne Newton in a great bit as a slimy televangelist.
The Bad Stuff: Again, the humor sometimes feels out of step with the darker tone.
Timeless Message: You should not, in fact, disagree with things that can eat you.
“Goldeneye”
Plot: A ghost from Bond’s past comes back to menace all of Britain with a devastating space-based weapon.
The Good Stuff: Following a five year hiatus, Bond gets a solid comeback courtesy of action specialist Martin Campbell and particularly Pierce Brosnan, who confidently inhabits the Bond role with a nice blend of Connery’s suaveness, Moore’s twinkle and Dalton’s mean streak. Under Campbell’s solid direction, “Goldeneye” feels like both a slick, modern action flick and a pleasant throwback to the “Goldfinger” days.
The Bad Stuff: There’s an unnecessarily goofy edge to some of the comedy (for instance, Alan Cumming hams it up a bit too much as an obnoxious Russian hacker). Also, could Tchéky Karyo please be allowed to survive to the end of just one movie?
Timeless Message: Driving a tank is not only easy, it’s fun.
“Tomorrow Never Dies”
Plot: Bond must foil the schemes of a ruthless media baron who seeks to spark an international war in order to boost his own power and influence.
The Good Stuff: The filmmakers graciously allow action ace Michelle Yeoh, as a high-kicking super spy, to share considerable screen time with Brosnan, and she makes the most of the opportunity… her character is so strong one hesitates to even think of her as a traditional “Bond girl”. Jonathan Pryce makes for a memorably mock-cheerful villain, while the motorcycle/helicopter chase across the rooftops of Saigon is an action highlight.
The Bad Stuff: “Turner & Hooch” director Roger Spottiswoode may have apprenticed for action movie master Sam Peckinpah, but he seems to have inherited none of Peckinpah’s skills behind the camera. Here, he directs action with an almost squeamish distaste for violence, resulting in several potentially showstopping sequences playing out as soft-pedaled and underwhelming. It’s a Bond movie, for crying out loud.
Timeless Message: That big whirly thing with gnashing metal teeth? Don’t stand in front of it.
“The World is Not Enough”
Plot: Bond finds himself up against a mortally wounded former KGB agent turned nuclear terrorist who is all the more dangerous because he has nothing to lose.
The Good Stuff: Villain Renard isn’t just another menacing Bondian sociopath… as played by the always excellent Robert Carlyle, he’s strangely sympathetic, even tragic. If he wasn’t trying to commit mass homicide, he’d probably qualify as the film’s underdog. Sophie Marceau likewise makes a memorable impression as a tough but sensitive romantic foil for Bond who may be more than she seems. It’s also nice to see Judi Dench’s M given a meatier role this time around, while the title theme song by Garbage is one of the better ones.
The Bad Stuff: Director Michael Apted doesn’t seem entirely comfortable doing a large scale action movie, bringing little personality or zest to the big set pieces. Denise Richards stumbles her way through the badly-written and pointless role of Bond girl Christmas Jones, who ends up being one of the series’ worst.
Timeless Message: Fizzy ice in your cocktail means something bad is about to happen.
“Die Another Day”
Plot: Bond teams up with a highly-skilled female agent to try and thwart a brilliant young diamond tycoon who is secretly plotting to shift the lines of global power.
The Good Stuff: Conceived as a loving homage to all the Bond films that had come before, “Die Another Day” is crammed chock full of clever references to everything from Honey Rider’s iconic surfside appearance in “Dr. No” to the shoe blade in “From Russia With Love”. Director Lee Tamahori brings considerable flair to the numerous action showstoppers, while Halle Berry acquits herself nicely as a Bond girl who can take care of herself.
The Bad Stuff: The film often flirts with being too absurd for its own good, particularly by the time the villain has strapped on an electricity-spewing robo-suit for a climactic showdown on a burning airliner. The copious use of CG is a detriment… it just looks fake, undermining some moments and flat out ruining others. Also, Madonna's gratuitous cameo not only stops the film cold, but her auto-tune-mangled title theme plays like a parody of a Bond song.
Timeless Message: Having diamonds embedded in your face might look kind of cool, but seriously, dude. Tweezers.
(The Rapture) I must have blinked and missed it.
General | Posted 14 years agoAs I write this, it's a tad after 6:00 p.m. on a lovely Saturday afternoon. At present, there are no earthquakes tearing through the Earth's crust. No stinging locusts are picking at me or anyone else in my vicinity. There's not a risen corpse to be seen anywhere, and the air is filled with the sweet perfume of the evening's roses and the sound of chirping finches outside my window. No horn of Gabriel. No cosmic retribution. I find myself thinking, for an Apocalypse it's been a wonderfully nice, warm day.
Turns out the guy responsible for all the end-of-days hullaballoo is a local in my neck of the woods - one Mr. Harold Camping, president of Family Radio. He lives in San Francisco, which is not much of a drive from where I live. I'm almost tempted to go check on him, just to see how he's feeling. Come to think of it, how are all of his followers doing right now? The ones who believed him with all their hearts when he said that today was the last day of life as we know it?
Are they disappointed? Befuddled? Angry? Confused? Resigned? Deep down, are they a tad embarrassed that they stood on street corners for months, wearing sandwich board signs proclaiming that today, May 21, 2011 would absolutely and without question be the day of the Rapture? That today was the day when that tiny minority of saved folks would be whisked up to Heaven to spend an awesome eternity with God and Jesus while the rest of the human race (and, presumably, every other critter on Earth) would be tormented with plagues of locusts, earthquakes, volcanoes and overwhelming despair before God simply pulls the plug on the universe (October 21 of this year, apparently), causing it to blink out of existence forever?
I have to say, I'm rather glad it didn't happen, not least because it would have seriously put a crimp in my upcoming vacation plans. Thing is, I wouldn't really want to live in a universe ruled by that sort of God anyway. According to Mr. Camping's interpretation, God's end-game is ultimately a crap shoot, a form of theological Russian roulette wherein your status as "saved" or "damned" is all but beyond your control. You could be the most devout, kind, humble, church-going Christian in the whole world, but since there's only room for 3% of the world's population in the afterlife (that's only a couple hundred million, give or take), the odds are pretty good that you still wouldn't make the cut. It's most likely locusts and then oblivion for you.
That's right, oblivion. Not Hell, oh no. Mr. Camping is an annihilationist, meaning that the unsaved simply cease to exist after God's finished with them. No soul, no Purgatory, no damnation, no nothing. Which begs the question, why the months of torment, if God's simply going to wipe you out anyway? What, exactly, are all of the gnashings of teeth and howls of anguish and stings of locusts supposed to accomplish? Is God going to torture us just to make us extra, extra sorry that we weren't among the winners of his rigged cosmic lottery before he disappears us forever? Sorry, but if that's God's game plan then he's just being a jerk.
I do feel a bit bad for Mr. Camping and his followers. Not so much because they didn't get their way today, but because these are people who peer out at the world from between trembling, clenched fingers and see nothing worth saving. To them, this planet, indeed this entire universe, is just a doomed, meaningless way station on the road to somewhere better, somewhere that they can spend a blissful eternity in their own private "we told you so" club. And think about this... they spent $100 million dollars on banners, billboards, radio ads, pamphlets and signs just to get the word out. $100 million to basically tell the rest of the world "hey, great news! Me and mine are going up to Heaven! Sucks for you, what with all the locusts and disaster and the world ending. Guess you'll be sorry then, at least until you disappear forever." That's not just a sad, paranoid perspective, it's a colossal waste of resources. How many blankets could they have bought with that? How many bowls of soup, or shots of insulin, or water purifiers, or school books, or new trees, or antibiotics, or vials of morphine, or new shoes, or sandbags for flooding rivers could they have got?
I am not a religious person, but I have to believe that if there is a God, then maybe his plan is for us to use our time here on Earth making it a better place for ourselves and for everyone else who happens to live here, whether they're part of our little group or not.
Turns out the guy responsible for all the end-of-days hullaballoo is a local in my neck of the woods - one Mr. Harold Camping, president of Family Radio. He lives in San Francisco, which is not much of a drive from where I live. I'm almost tempted to go check on him, just to see how he's feeling. Come to think of it, how are all of his followers doing right now? The ones who believed him with all their hearts when he said that today was the last day of life as we know it?
Are they disappointed? Befuddled? Angry? Confused? Resigned? Deep down, are they a tad embarrassed that they stood on street corners for months, wearing sandwich board signs proclaiming that today, May 21, 2011 would absolutely and without question be the day of the Rapture? That today was the day when that tiny minority of saved folks would be whisked up to Heaven to spend an awesome eternity with God and Jesus while the rest of the human race (and, presumably, every other critter on Earth) would be tormented with plagues of locusts, earthquakes, volcanoes and overwhelming despair before God simply pulls the plug on the universe (October 21 of this year, apparently), causing it to blink out of existence forever?
I have to say, I'm rather glad it didn't happen, not least because it would have seriously put a crimp in my upcoming vacation plans. Thing is, I wouldn't really want to live in a universe ruled by that sort of God anyway. According to Mr. Camping's interpretation, God's end-game is ultimately a crap shoot, a form of theological Russian roulette wherein your status as "saved" or "damned" is all but beyond your control. You could be the most devout, kind, humble, church-going Christian in the whole world, but since there's only room for 3% of the world's population in the afterlife (that's only a couple hundred million, give or take), the odds are pretty good that you still wouldn't make the cut. It's most likely locusts and then oblivion for you.
That's right, oblivion. Not Hell, oh no. Mr. Camping is an annihilationist, meaning that the unsaved simply cease to exist after God's finished with them. No soul, no Purgatory, no damnation, no nothing. Which begs the question, why the months of torment, if God's simply going to wipe you out anyway? What, exactly, are all of the gnashings of teeth and howls of anguish and stings of locusts supposed to accomplish? Is God going to torture us just to make us extra, extra sorry that we weren't among the winners of his rigged cosmic lottery before he disappears us forever? Sorry, but if that's God's game plan then he's just being a jerk.
I do feel a bit bad for Mr. Camping and his followers. Not so much because they didn't get their way today, but because these are people who peer out at the world from between trembling, clenched fingers and see nothing worth saving. To them, this planet, indeed this entire universe, is just a doomed, meaningless way station on the road to somewhere better, somewhere that they can spend a blissful eternity in their own private "we told you so" club. And think about this... they spent $100 million dollars on banners, billboards, radio ads, pamphlets and signs just to get the word out. $100 million to basically tell the rest of the world "hey, great news! Me and mine are going up to Heaven! Sucks for you, what with all the locusts and disaster and the world ending. Guess you'll be sorry then, at least until you disappear forever." That's not just a sad, paranoid perspective, it's a colossal waste of resources. How many blankets could they have bought with that? How many bowls of soup, or shots of insulin, or water purifiers, or school books, or new trees, or antibiotics, or vials of morphine, or new shoes, or sandbags for flooding rivers could they have got?
I am not a religious person, but I have to believe that if there is a God, then maybe his plan is for us to use our time here on Earth making it a better place for ourselves and for everyone else who happens to live here, whether they're part of our little group or not.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Rango
General | Posted 15 years agoStop what you're doing right now and go see "Rango". Here are ten reasons why:
1) It's the antithesis of all the mediocre CG-animated junk that's been crammed down our collective throats for the last several years.
2) It's smart, vibrant, fun and original.
3) It's the best surrealist western since Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo".
4) It's not really for kids. Nothing an older kid couldn't enjoy, mind you, but it's really a movie for grownups.
5) It doesn't treat you like you're six years old, and instead trusts that you'll "get it" without needing to have everything explained.
6) The voice acting is outstanding.
7) So is the animation.
8) Bats + gatling guns = one of the best extended chase scenes in recent memory.
9) If this movie is a hit, it might just encourage Hollywood to start letting talented people tell interesting stories again.
10) In an era where every movie is a sequel, remake, or adaptation of a breakfast cereal, "Rango" is both a loving homage to the spaghetti westerns of yore and a uniquely weird existentialist action adventure unlike anything you've ever seen before.
1) It's the antithesis of all the mediocre CG-animated junk that's been crammed down our collective throats for the last several years.
2) It's smart, vibrant, fun and original.
3) It's the best surrealist western since Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo".
4) It's not really for kids. Nothing an older kid couldn't enjoy, mind you, but it's really a movie for grownups.
5) It doesn't treat you like you're six years old, and instead trusts that you'll "get it" without needing to have everything explained.
6) The voice acting is outstanding.
7) So is the animation.
8) Bats + gatling guns = one of the best extended chase scenes in recent memory.
9) If this movie is a hit, it might just encourage Hollywood to start letting talented people tell interesting stories again.
10) In an era where every movie is a sequel, remake, or adaptation of a breakfast cereal, "Rango" is both a loving homage to the spaghetti westerns of yore and a uniquely weird existentialist action adventure unlike anything you've ever seen before.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Hop (trailer)
General | Posted 15 years agoLet me be up front about something right off the bat: I proudly own some pretty horrible movies. "Boarding House"? Yep. "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare?" Love it. Even Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" has a place on my shelf. My point is that I don't consider myself a film snob by any stretch, so please bear that in mind, because this is probably going to sound like something a film snob would totally say, but I have just finished watching the full trailer for the upcoming Easter Bunny CG/live action comedy "Hop", and quite frankly I am pissed. No, I wasn't expecting it to look like a great film, but I have to hand it to whoever cut this thing together: it's been quite a while since a film trailer actually made me angry. Not bored. Not disappointed. Angry.
To recap the highlights: the movie appears to follow the adventures of this generation's newest Easter Bunny, a fun-loving young rabbit who would rather follow his dreams of being a rock star than deliver candy. So far, so banal. We see him hop his way to Los Angeles, get run over by a car, meet up with a perplexed-looking human dude (James Marsden), make jokes about pooping on said dude's floor, play his music for an approving David Hasselhoff, poop candy all over Marsden's car hood, inappropriately fondle a hot blonde chick who thinks he's a stuffed animal, and twitch his nose cutely at the camera. Then, because we weren't done with the poop yet, the blonde chick eats some of his delicious candy waste while Marsden struggles not to vomit.
No, I'm not mad at this trailer because it's dishing out a whole lot of stupid-looking third grade jokes... that's par for the course these days, and I'm sure by this point nobody really expects anything better. It's not even the uncomfortably drawn-out moment where the bunny takes a dump on the hood of the guy's car - despite it being yet another step closer to making full-on scat footage available to the under-12 set - or the fact that the chick ends up eating some (it's funny because poo goes in mouth ha ha). I'm talking about the line that Marsden has to deliver in response to seeing the Easter Bunny crap a load of jelly beans onto his car: "You poop candy." That's right, the movie not only dishes out a gag wherein the hero takes a magical shit, but then it assumes that you, the audience, need to have that information repeated verbally... just in case, you know, you didn't get it.
I know it's hardly news to point out that most mainstream Hollywood movies treat their audience with quite a bit of intellgence-insulting contempt, but seriously. This movie thinks you need to be told that one of the characters has just taken a crap, because otherwise you might not get the joke. I thought that Michael Bay hated his fans, but in comparison this really takes it to a new level. Say what you will about "The Room", but as jaw-droppingly bad as that filmic abomination is, it at least feels like a sincere attempt. "Hop" and all the bajillions of other movies just like it don't even have the honest intention of telling you a simple story... they're just crass, shallow, cynical money grabs that work by appealing to the absolute lowest common denominator. They trade in kindergarden-level potty humor and instantly dated pop culture jokes not because anybody involved really thought they were being funny, but because it's cheap and it's easy. These movies aren't bad because somebody had a misguided vision. They're bad because the people making them honestly think we're all a bunch of idiots. Well, up yours too, Hollywood. Give me Tommy Wiseau any day.
To recap the highlights: the movie appears to follow the adventures of this generation's newest Easter Bunny, a fun-loving young rabbit who would rather follow his dreams of being a rock star than deliver candy. So far, so banal. We see him hop his way to Los Angeles, get run over by a car, meet up with a perplexed-looking human dude (James Marsden), make jokes about pooping on said dude's floor, play his music for an approving David Hasselhoff, poop candy all over Marsden's car hood, inappropriately fondle a hot blonde chick who thinks he's a stuffed animal, and twitch his nose cutely at the camera. Then, because we weren't done with the poop yet, the blonde chick eats some of his delicious candy waste while Marsden struggles not to vomit.
No, I'm not mad at this trailer because it's dishing out a whole lot of stupid-looking third grade jokes... that's par for the course these days, and I'm sure by this point nobody really expects anything better. It's not even the uncomfortably drawn-out moment where the bunny takes a dump on the hood of the guy's car - despite it being yet another step closer to making full-on scat footage available to the under-12 set - or the fact that the chick ends up eating some (it's funny because poo goes in mouth ha ha). I'm talking about the line that Marsden has to deliver in response to seeing the Easter Bunny crap a load of jelly beans onto his car: "You poop candy." That's right, the movie not only dishes out a gag wherein the hero takes a magical shit, but then it assumes that you, the audience, need to have that information repeated verbally... just in case, you know, you didn't get it.
I know it's hardly news to point out that most mainstream Hollywood movies treat their audience with quite a bit of intellgence-insulting contempt, but seriously. This movie thinks you need to be told that one of the characters has just taken a crap, because otherwise you might not get the joke. I thought that Michael Bay hated his fans, but in comparison this really takes it to a new level. Say what you will about "The Room", but as jaw-droppingly bad as that filmic abomination is, it at least feels like a sincere attempt. "Hop" and all the bajillions of other movies just like it don't even have the honest intention of telling you a simple story... they're just crass, shallow, cynical money grabs that work by appealing to the absolute lowest common denominator. They trade in kindergarden-level potty humor and instantly dated pop culture jokes not because anybody involved really thought they were being funny, but because it's cheap and it's easy. These movies aren't bad because somebody had a misguided vision. They're bad because the people making them honestly think we're all a bunch of idiots. Well, up yours too, Hollywood. Give me Tommy Wiseau any day.
Lost FC luggage...
General | Posted 15 years agoIt was a great FC for me all around, but unfortunately my good friend 
goliath had one of his suitcases lost by the hotel. On the off chance that anybody watching me knows anything at all, please get in touch with him. His journal detailing the issue is here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2031031/
Thanks!
goliath had one of his suitcases lost by the hotel. On the off chance that anybody watching me knows anything at all, please get in touch with him. His journal detailing the issue is here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2031031/Thanks!
Stitch's Movie Madness: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
General | Posted 15 years agoWhen I was a young teenager, I hated the Ninja Turtles. Haaaated them. For one thing, they were freaking everywhere. In the late '80s through much of the '90s, it seemed that you couldn't turn around without seeing their green, masked, toothily grinning faces beaming at you from the sides of cereal boxes, toothpaste dispensers, candy bars, shirts, posters, birthday cards, kleenex boxes, disposable drinking cups, pillowcases, coloring books, stickers and a billion other cheap bits of easily marketed flotsam. It was more than that, though. I hated their catchphrases. I winced every time I heard "bodacious, duuude" or "let's have an awesome pizza party, duuuude" or "duuuuuuude, dude," or whatever the hell they were saying. I hated their weird, froggy faces. I hated their invincible ninja awesomeness. Most of all, I hated their gargantuan, unstoppable popularity.
Mainly this is because I was a teenager. Unlike the four teen-turtles themselves, who seemed to always be smiling, I spent much of my teen years sulking, complaining, sleeping, and being smugly cynical about everything under the sun. For something to be as successful as the Turtles meant that they had to suck, and only I was perceptive enough to know it. Now, to be fair, an awful lot of the Turtles crap that was being pumped into our culture was, in fact, pretty crappy. The cheap taint of shoddy quality control hung over many of those poorly manufactured plastic toys, badly drawn Turtles activity books, and awful rap albums like a green cloud of sewer gas. Toward the tail end of Turtle-mania (must have been around the third live-action movie), the four reptilian ninja heroes had been so thoroughly whored out that they didn't seem to have a reason to exist outside of hawking their own cheap junk.
But like I said, I was bound and determined to hate them right from the get go. When the first live action movie came out in 1990, I eagerly gave it a miss. True, the reviews weren't half bad, with many reviewers grudgingly admitting to having kind of enjoyed the flick, and there was also an intriguing amount of controversy regarding the film's dark tone and (to some eyes) excessive violence. But no matter... I'd been ticked off at the turtles for years, and I wasn't about to change my mind just because their movie actually sounded kind of interesting. I let that nagging little voice in the back of my head, the one that kept saying, "You know, you could just rent it, and maybe watch it late at night when nobody's around " go unheeded. Time marched on, I got older, and then the second Turtles movie came out and seemed to justify my distaste, with even hardcore fans bemoaning its goofier tone and gratuitous amounts of Vanilla Ice. I let the Turtles fall off my radar, content that I'd done the right thing in ignoring them all those years.
But had I done the right thing? Had I, really? Because the Turtles never really went away, and for many in my generation they continue to inspire the sort of toasty-warm nostalgia usually reserved for only our most cherished childhood memories. Mention the Turtles to a child of the '80s and you'll likely see them get a warm gleam in their eyes as they drift back to happy Saturday mornings spent huddled under a fuzzy Turtles blanket, eyes glued to the Turtles cartoon on TV as they clutched a bowl of marshmallowy Turtles cereal in their fingers. Even older kids (kids my age, the ones who I'd assumed should be sharing my disdain) seemed to think the Turtles were cool. In the years that followed my adolescence, I began to wonder... had I, in fact, cheated myself out of something I otherwise would have loved?
So here's me, in my mid-30s, finally sitting down with an open mind to watch the first Turtles movie. At first it takes a little doing, not least because the film itself is so very dated. Every poofy hairdo, spiky mohawk and garish '80s fashion disaster that pops up reminds me that I'm peering through a time capsule into the tail end of the Reagan era, and I have to remind myself to try and just watch the film. After a little while (and after getting past some inevitable, fan-baiting lip service about radical, bodacious pizza), I find that this is less of a problem... the story's kind of pulling me in, and the retro cheesiness of the late '80s trappings is rather charming.
What really strikes me, though, is how well crafted a movie it actually is. Sure, it's got plenty of clunky bits, with a few dodgy fight sequences and with some of the attempts at humor falling completely flat (that weird cartoon "boinnnng" noise the Turtles make every time someone says "pizza" is pretty annoying), but overall it's much better written and directed than I was expecting. Not a masterpiece, by any stretch, but for a commercial endeavor meant to capitalize on the Turtles phenomenon I'm impressed by how much care seems to have gone into the thing. The story at least attempts to put individual personality into the characters, giving them something resembling dramatic arcs. While much of what happens is standard action movie cliché (there's a troubled youth who falls in with the wrong crowd, one of the turtles has to deal with his anger issues, there's a kid-friendly version of romance blossoming between two of the characters and, naturally, past conflicts between bitter rivals come to the surface just in time for the big climactic showdown), but at least the clichés are dished out with sincerity, and with a modicum of restraint. Yes, it's all pretty silly, but at least it isn't treating the audience with open contempt, à la Michael Bay. If you're willing to just go with it, the movie’s actually quite a lot of innocent, high-energy fun.
So, do I get it now? Yes, I think maybe I do. The Turtles themselves, when you look past all the shoddy merchandise and media oversaturation, are a pretty appealing group of characters. They're literal outsiders (what with being mutated reptiles and all), forced to live hidden in the sewers, but they still comprise a close-knit family (presided over by their master/father figure, Splinter, a kindly sage who also happens to be a giant rat), and they still love to do all the cool stuff that teenagers do... plus, you know, they get to be ninjas. So there's that. Turtles purists like to grumble about how the Turtles got "dumbed down" into being pizza-loving goofballs, as opposed to the dark, uber-violent vigilantes they were in the original comic books, but honestly, I think the characters were greatly improved when they were made more accessible to the mainstream... they're certainly more likeable, and it's easy now to see why a whole generation of young teenagers found them so appealing. Given the choice between being a typically awkward, greasy, clumsy junior high student, or being a kick-awesome (excuse me, bodacious) teenage mutant ninja turtle having pizza parties in your underground hideout with your equally cool brothers and your doting, loving rat-dad-sensei, and then emerging from the shadows every night to fight crime... well, duh. No contest. Looking back on it, it's kind of ironic that I was being too much of a teenager to even understand the appeal.
Mainly this is because I was a teenager. Unlike the four teen-turtles themselves, who seemed to always be smiling, I spent much of my teen years sulking, complaining, sleeping, and being smugly cynical about everything under the sun. For something to be as successful as the Turtles meant that they had to suck, and only I was perceptive enough to know it. Now, to be fair, an awful lot of the Turtles crap that was being pumped into our culture was, in fact, pretty crappy. The cheap taint of shoddy quality control hung over many of those poorly manufactured plastic toys, badly drawn Turtles activity books, and awful rap albums like a green cloud of sewer gas. Toward the tail end of Turtle-mania (must have been around the third live-action movie), the four reptilian ninja heroes had been so thoroughly whored out that they didn't seem to have a reason to exist outside of hawking their own cheap junk.
But like I said, I was bound and determined to hate them right from the get go. When the first live action movie came out in 1990, I eagerly gave it a miss. True, the reviews weren't half bad, with many reviewers grudgingly admitting to having kind of enjoyed the flick, and there was also an intriguing amount of controversy regarding the film's dark tone and (to some eyes) excessive violence. But no matter... I'd been ticked off at the turtles for years, and I wasn't about to change my mind just because their movie actually sounded kind of interesting. I let that nagging little voice in the back of my head, the one that kept saying, "You know, you could just rent it, and maybe watch it late at night when nobody's around " go unheeded. Time marched on, I got older, and then the second Turtles movie came out and seemed to justify my distaste, with even hardcore fans bemoaning its goofier tone and gratuitous amounts of Vanilla Ice. I let the Turtles fall off my radar, content that I'd done the right thing in ignoring them all those years.
But had I done the right thing? Had I, really? Because the Turtles never really went away, and for many in my generation they continue to inspire the sort of toasty-warm nostalgia usually reserved for only our most cherished childhood memories. Mention the Turtles to a child of the '80s and you'll likely see them get a warm gleam in their eyes as they drift back to happy Saturday mornings spent huddled under a fuzzy Turtles blanket, eyes glued to the Turtles cartoon on TV as they clutched a bowl of marshmallowy Turtles cereal in their fingers. Even older kids (kids my age, the ones who I'd assumed should be sharing my disdain) seemed to think the Turtles were cool. In the years that followed my adolescence, I began to wonder... had I, in fact, cheated myself out of something I otherwise would have loved?
So here's me, in my mid-30s, finally sitting down with an open mind to watch the first Turtles movie. At first it takes a little doing, not least because the film itself is so very dated. Every poofy hairdo, spiky mohawk and garish '80s fashion disaster that pops up reminds me that I'm peering through a time capsule into the tail end of the Reagan era, and I have to remind myself to try and just watch the film. After a little while (and after getting past some inevitable, fan-baiting lip service about radical, bodacious pizza), I find that this is less of a problem... the story's kind of pulling me in, and the retro cheesiness of the late '80s trappings is rather charming.
What really strikes me, though, is how well crafted a movie it actually is. Sure, it's got plenty of clunky bits, with a few dodgy fight sequences and with some of the attempts at humor falling completely flat (that weird cartoon "boinnnng" noise the Turtles make every time someone says "pizza" is pretty annoying), but overall it's much better written and directed than I was expecting. Not a masterpiece, by any stretch, but for a commercial endeavor meant to capitalize on the Turtles phenomenon I'm impressed by how much care seems to have gone into the thing. The story at least attempts to put individual personality into the characters, giving them something resembling dramatic arcs. While much of what happens is standard action movie cliché (there's a troubled youth who falls in with the wrong crowd, one of the turtles has to deal with his anger issues, there's a kid-friendly version of romance blossoming between two of the characters and, naturally, past conflicts between bitter rivals come to the surface just in time for the big climactic showdown), but at least the clichés are dished out with sincerity, and with a modicum of restraint. Yes, it's all pretty silly, but at least it isn't treating the audience with open contempt, à la Michael Bay. If you're willing to just go with it, the movie’s actually quite a lot of innocent, high-energy fun.
So, do I get it now? Yes, I think maybe I do. The Turtles themselves, when you look past all the shoddy merchandise and media oversaturation, are a pretty appealing group of characters. They're literal outsiders (what with being mutated reptiles and all), forced to live hidden in the sewers, but they still comprise a close-knit family (presided over by their master/father figure, Splinter, a kindly sage who also happens to be a giant rat), and they still love to do all the cool stuff that teenagers do... plus, you know, they get to be ninjas. So there's that. Turtles purists like to grumble about how the Turtles got "dumbed down" into being pizza-loving goofballs, as opposed to the dark, uber-violent vigilantes they were in the original comic books, but honestly, I think the characters were greatly improved when they were made more accessible to the mainstream... they're certainly more likeable, and it's easy now to see why a whole generation of young teenagers found them so appealing. Given the choice between being a typically awkward, greasy, clumsy junior high student, or being a kick-awesome (excuse me, bodacious) teenage mutant ninja turtle having pizza parties in your underground hideout with your equally cool brothers and your doting, loving rat-dad-sensei, and then emerging from the shadows every night to fight crime... well, duh. No contest. Looking back on it, it's kind of ironic that I was being too much of a teenager to even understand the appeal.
Stitch's Movie Madness: The Star Wars Holiday Special
General | Posted 15 years agoJust how big of a Star Wars fanatic are you? Do you dress up like Boba Fett for Halloween? Do you own an entire set of mint in box action figures that you value more than your own kidneys? Is your "Yoda voice" the hit of the office party year after year? Have you ever written slash fiction featuring Han Solo taking a romantic holiday on Coachelle Prime with Jaxxon the rogue space bunny smuggler? ("I can outrun Imperial cruisers, but I can't outrun... my heart.") Well, I don't care how much you worship the ground that George Lucas walks on. There is no way... NO WAY... that you'll experience anything other than a gargantuan level of heartbreak, nausea and stunned disbelief at the cosmic abortion known as the "Star Wars Holiday Special".
Sure, you thought Jar Jar Binks was embarrassing. Hayden Christensen lulled you to sleep with his "acting". CG Jabba shoehorned into Episode 4 had you rolling your eyes. Still, there's bad, and then there's Bad. Really bad. Apocalyptically bad. Trust me when I say this: the Holiday Special is the worst thing ever to come out of the Star Wars entertainment empire. It might even be the worst thing ever filmed. That sounds like hyperbole, I know, like the sort of overwrought histrionics you'd expect from a disappointed fan trying desperately to be funny by quoting Monty Python and doing the "Mua-ha-ha" laugh for extra effect. That's probably because you haven't actually seen the Special yet.
You might have heard it described ("No, really, it suuuucks. Like, it's just soooo bad, you know? It's like, all the characters are in it, but they're all retarded and stuff"), but until you've actually tried to sit through the thing you can't really know just how truly painful it is. First, though, a little bit of historical context: in 1977, there was literally nothing bigger than Star Wars. To call Lucas's ambitious little sci-fi opera a smash hit would be a major understatement. The world was insane for Star Wars. It played for almost a year in the theaters and earned the gross domestic product of a small country. For my generation it was a cultural touchstone that fueled thousands of hours of happy childhood memories. Star Wars was, in our young eyes, maybe the best thing ever.
While prepping for the inevitable sequel, Lucas and company apparently made the decision to greenlight a tv special that would keep the torch burning, maybe drum up some fresh interest in the series. Lucas hashed out a half-baked outline (possibly on a booze-soaked bar napkin) that would feature Han Solo desperately trying to get his Wookiee friend Chewbacca home to his family in time to celebrate "Life Day", which is apparently the Star Wars equivalent of "Non-denominational Generic Holiday". You didn't know Chewbacca had a family, did you? Well, indeed he does, back on his unpronounceable homeworld of Kashyyyk. He's got a wife named Malla, who looks kind of like him except for her juicy, kissable woman lips, and also a cranky gray-furred dad with a horrible underbite named Itchy. Rounding out the family is Chewie's pint-sized son, Lumpy.
Take a moment to digest that. Chewbacca's got a family, and they're named Malla, Itchy, and Lumpy. Lumpy, for God's sake. Look them up on Wookieepedia sometime. Or better yet, don't. Anyhow, Han and Chewie are making for home in the Millennium Falcon while dodging some badly edited outtakes of enemy spaceship footage from the first "Star Wars" movie. Han promises that they'll make it in time for Life Day, but it won't be easy because he looks so pained by the film he's in that it seems like his dialogue is burning his tongue on the way out. Meanwhile, Malla is attempting to cook up a traditional Life Day feast (Bantha Rump), which she does by watching a cooking show hosted by none other than Harvey Korman in ghastly drag playing a woman with four arms. Lumpy, meanwhile, is watching a bargain basement version of Cirque du Soleil on some kind of hologram projector, grunting and squealing with delight as tiny multicolored clowns prance clumsily for what feels like twenty minutes.
Things take a decidedly more disturbing turn when a kindly local merchant (played by Art Carney, who approaches his ostensibly comedic role with wayyyy too much enthusiasm) shows up to give sour old Itchy a really special Life Day present: cyber porn. Right there in the living room, Itchy plugs himself into what looks like an old-fashioned hair dryer, switches on a virtual sex program, and spends the next ten minutes gurgling excitedly and waggling his grotesquely distended lower jaw up and down while a computer generated Diahann Carroll groans, "Oh, yesssss... I can feel my creation. I'm getting your message. Are you getting mine?" Then she sings a spectacularly forgettable song that goes on for what feels like another ten minutes. That's right, this thing has musical numbers. Is Carroll's love ballad to a geriatric Wookiee who looks like he's having a seizure while masturbating not enough mellifluous wonderment for you? Not to worry, there's also an awful tune played in its entirety by Jefferson Starship, with the lead singer crooning into what looks like a glowing purple dildo.
Eventually, Malla gets worried about Han and Chewie, and calls up Luke Skywalker on her video phone. (Mark Hamill, who was still recovering from a bad car accident, appears to be wearing about twenty ounces of pancake makeup that makes him look like his own action figure if it melted.) Oddly, Luke seems almost giddy with excitement (painkillers?) as he tries way too hard to comfort Malla. "Come on, Malla, let me see a little smile," he tells her, grinning in a way that suggests that a little Wookiee-style hanky panky might be on his mind. A similar call to Princess Leia and C-3P0 yields nothing useful either, except for the revelation that Carrie Fisher's eyes don't point in the same direction when she's freebasing. Things get even hairier (ha ha, get it? I made an Art Carney-style funny) when a group of vaudevillian-level Imperial baddies show up to literally spoil Chewie's family celebration by sneering derisively, knocking over books, breaking glasses and, hilariously, ripping the head off of Lumpy's stuffed bantha. Take that, merry-makers!
As if that wasn't evil enough, the Empire then sends out a communication to the rest of the universe telling everyone that essentially fun is over and everybody needs to go home. We then flash over to Tattooine, where the famous Star Wars cantina is apparently now being run by Bea Arthur (no, really). While all the rubbery aliens listen to that cantina song for what must be like the billionth time (seriously, does the band know any other song at all?), Harvey Korman (yes, again) shows up to inexplicably profess his love for Arthur and drink some egg nog through a giant hole in his head. Arthur has other problems besides rebuffing the creepy advances of a sad sack alien, though... she needs to close up shop for the night by singing a song called "Goodbye, Friends" to the tune of the cantina song while making jazz hands with Greedo and cuddling with a giant rodent. What does any of this have to do with anything, you might ask? Not a damned thing, but it's so gob-smackingly weird you quite literally won't believe that what you're seeing is real. "This is a hoax," your mind will tell you. "This has got to be a put on. There's just no way this thing actually exists."
But exist it does, and what's more it was broadcast to millions of people in what has since gone down as one of the most infamous nights in entertainment history. If I've made any of this sound like it might be a hoot to track down and watch, then I'm sorry. None of this is meant to be a recommendation. It's a warning. Watching Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman share the screen with Luke Skywalker and Han Solo might seem like it'd be fun, but there's no spark of life anywhere to be found in this whole sad endeavor. It's an entertainment void, a place where substandard jokes take forever to be woodenly delivered, and then sit there awkwardly long after everyone realizes they aren't funny. It's a realm of endless uncomfortable pauses dished out by bored and drunken actors who are clearly delivering their lines for the first time. It’s a maddeningly confusing jumble of poor variety show skits highlighted by ugly, cheap special effects and grotesque, honking Wookiees who never shut up. In short, it's a terrible idea that should never have gone any further than that gin-soaked napkin that Lucas first scribbled it onto. See it if you must, if you're just that much of a Star Wars fan, and then run back to the relative comfort of Jar Jar Binks and CG Jabba... they still suck, too, but they're suddenly going to look a whole lot better in comparison.
Sure, you thought Jar Jar Binks was embarrassing. Hayden Christensen lulled you to sleep with his "acting". CG Jabba shoehorned into Episode 4 had you rolling your eyes. Still, there's bad, and then there's Bad. Really bad. Apocalyptically bad. Trust me when I say this: the Holiday Special is the worst thing ever to come out of the Star Wars entertainment empire. It might even be the worst thing ever filmed. That sounds like hyperbole, I know, like the sort of overwrought histrionics you'd expect from a disappointed fan trying desperately to be funny by quoting Monty Python and doing the "Mua-ha-ha" laugh for extra effect. That's probably because you haven't actually seen the Special yet.
You might have heard it described ("No, really, it suuuucks. Like, it's just soooo bad, you know? It's like, all the characters are in it, but they're all retarded and stuff"), but until you've actually tried to sit through the thing you can't really know just how truly painful it is. First, though, a little bit of historical context: in 1977, there was literally nothing bigger than Star Wars. To call Lucas's ambitious little sci-fi opera a smash hit would be a major understatement. The world was insane for Star Wars. It played for almost a year in the theaters and earned the gross domestic product of a small country. For my generation it was a cultural touchstone that fueled thousands of hours of happy childhood memories. Star Wars was, in our young eyes, maybe the best thing ever.
While prepping for the inevitable sequel, Lucas and company apparently made the decision to greenlight a tv special that would keep the torch burning, maybe drum up some fresh interest in the series. Lucas hashed out a half-baked outline (possibly on a booze-soaked bar napkin) that would feature Han Solo desperately trying to get his Wookiee friend Chewbacca home to his family in time to celebrate "Life Day", which is apparently the Star Wars equivalent of "Non-denominational Generic Holiday". You didn't know Chewbacca had a family, did you? Well, indeed he does, back on his unpronounceable homeworld of Kashyyyk. He's got a wife named Malla, who looks kind of like him except for her juicy, kissable woman lips, and also a cranky gray-furred dad with a horrible underbite named Itchy. Rounding out the family is Chewie's pint-sized son, Lumpy.
Take a moment to digest that. Chewbacca's got a family, and they're named Malla, Itchy, and Lumpy. Lumpy, for God's sake. Look them up on Wookieepedia sometime. Or better yet, don't. Anyhow, Han and Chewie are making for home in the Millennium Falcon while dodging some badly edited outtakes of enemy spaceship footage from the first "Star Wars" movie. Han promises that they'll make it in time for Life Day, but it won't be easy because he looks so pained by the film he's in that it seems like his dialogue is burning his tongue on the way out. Meanwhile, Malla is attempting to cook up a traditional Life Day feast (Bantha Rump), which she does by watching a cooking show hosted by none other than Harvey Korman in ghastly drag playing a woman with four arms. Lumpy, meanwhile, is watching a bargain basement version of Cirque du Soleil on some kind of hologram projector, grunting and squealing with delight as tiny multicolored clowns prance clumsily for what feels like twenty minutes.
Things take a decidedly more disturbing turn when a kindly local merchant (played by Art Carney, who approaches his ostensibly comedic role with wayyyy too much enthusiasm) shows up to give sour old Itchy a really special Life Day present: cyber porn. Right there in the living room, Itchy plugs himself into what looks like an old-fashioned hair dryer, switches on a virtual sex program, and spends the next ten minutes gurgling excitedly and waggling his grotesquely distended lower jaw up and down while a computer generated Diahann Carroll groans, "Oh, yesssss... I can feel my creation. I'm getting your message. Are you getting mine?" Then she sings a spectacularly forgettable song that goes on for what feels like another ten minutes. That's right, this thing has musical numbers. Is Carroll's love ballad to a geriatric Wookiee who looks like he's having a seizure while masturbating not enough mellifluous wonderment for you? Not to worry, there's also an awful tune played in its entirety by Jefferson Starship, with the lead singer crooning into what looks like a glowing purple dildo.
Eventually, Malla gets worried about Han and Chewie, and calls up Luke Skywalker on her video phone. (Mark Hamill, who was still recovering from a bad car accident, appears to be wearing about twenty ounces of pancake makeup that makes him look like his own action figure if it melted.) Oddly, Luke seems almost giddy with excitement (painkillers?) as he tries way too hard to comfort Malla. "Come on, Malla, let me see a little smile," he tells her, grinning in a way that suggests that a little Wookiee-style hanky panky might be on his mind. A similar call to Princess Leia and C-3P0 yields nothing useful either, except for the revelation that Carrie Fisher's eyes don't point in the same direction when she's freebasing. Things get even hairier (ha ha, get it? I made an Art Carney-style funny) when a group of vaudevillian-level Imperial baddies show up to literally spoil Chewie's family celebration by sneering derisively, knocking over books, breaking glasses and, hilariously, ripping the head off of Lumpy's stuffed bantha. Take that, merry-makers!
As if that wasn't evil enough, the Empire then sends out a communication to the rest of the universe telling everyone that essentially fun is over and everybody needs to go home. We then flash over to Tattooine, where the famous Star Wars cantina is apparently now being run by Bea Arthur (no, really). While all the rubbery aliens listen to that cantina song for what must be like the billionth time (seriously, does the band know any other song at all?), Harvey Korman (yes, again) shows up to inexplicably profess his love for Arthur and drink some egg nog through a giant hole in his head. Arthur has other problems besides rebuffing the creepy advances of a sad sack alien, though... she needs to close up shop for the night by singing a song called "Goodbye, Friends" to the tune of the cantina song while making jazz hands with Greedo and cuddling with a giant rodent. What does any of this have to do with anything, you might ask? Not a damned thing, but it's so gob-smackingly weird you quite literally won't believe that what you're seeing is real. "This is a hoax," your mind will tell you. "This has got to be a put on. There's just no way this thing actually exists."
But exist it does, and what's more it was broadcast to millions of people in what has since gone down as one of the most infamous nights in entertainment history. If I've made any of this sound like it might be a hoot to track down and watch, then I'm sorry. None of this is meant to be a recommendation. It's a warning. Watching Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman share the screen with Luke Skywalker and Han Solo might seem like it'd be fun, but there's no spark of life anywhere to be found in this whole sad endeavor. It's an entertainment void, a place where substandard jokes take forever to be woodenly delivered, and then sit there awkwardly long after everyone realizes they aren't funny. It's a realm of endless uncomfortable pauses dished out by bored and drunken actors who are clearly delivering their lines for the first time. It’s a maddeningly confusing jumble of poor variety show skits highlighted by ugly, cheap special effects and grotesque, honking Wookiees who never shut up. In short, it's a terrible idea that should never have gone any further than that gin-soaked napkin that Lucas first scribbled it onto. See it if you must, if you're just that much of a Star Wars fan, and then run back to the relative comfort of Jar Jar Binks and CG Jabba... they still suck, too, but they're suddenly going to look a whole lot better in comparison.
My 2 cents.
General | Posted 15 years agoOkay, so new TOS. Cubby prons have been banned due, interestingly, to financial pressure and not (despite what many folks have been saying) because of any morality issues. Beyond proving once again that money talks louder than ethics, I can't help but feel that this decision is ultimately detrimental to FA.
Not, firstly, because of how I might or might not personally feel about the specific subject matter. Generally speaking, I've always subscribed to the "if you don't like it, don't go looking at it" philosophy, and at the end of the day, it's all just fantasy anyway.
Not, secondly, because I feel that this is an infringement on freedom of speech. Let's face facts: FA is not a democracy. It's a privately run website that provides free services to a large number of furries. The admins can pretty much do anything they want, like it or lump it. They could make a new TOS that says the color purple is now permanently banned, and those who continue to use the site would have to abide by it.
The reason I find the new TOS distasteful has more to do with what I see as a diminishment of its inclusiveness. FA has been the go-to place for furries largely because up 'til now there's been a place here for pretty much everybody who wants to participate. Anyone could stake out an identity here and share with others the things that make them furry. Artistically, it's been a bit of a furry Wild West show... porn art, clean art, toony art, realistic art, crazy art, random art, rule 34 art, photography, animations, stories and journals, it's all here in whatever flavor you like.
The moment you single any one group out, no matter how small that group is, and no matter how distasteful you might personally find their artistic bent (whatever it might be), and say "you're not welcome here anymore", you're slicing away a bit of what makes FA special: it's diversity. You're taking away a bit of color from the palette, and making the overall portrait that much grayer and more homogenic.
To those who have been crowing about the ban as some sort of moral victory, I would respectfully remind you that you have not, in fact, won a thing. The ban was driven by financial reasons, not because somebody finally decided to enforce your personal tastes. So the ban happened to coincide with your desire to see a certain subject matter removed from FA... would you feel the same way if the ban had been aimed at something you are interested in? Ask yourself what kind of precedent has been set, where an outside influence is allowed to dictate the terms of what should and shouldn't be allowed here. Will you maintain that holier than thou attitude when it hits you where you live?
None of this is meant to suggest that this new TOS is some kind of disaster for all of furry-dom. Again, it's just one website, doing what websites do: setting up whatever rules they deem necessary and enforcing them. C'est la vie. I'm not angry about this decision so much as I'm disheartened by what it represents for FA, specifically: a step away from inclusiveness that, regardless of the subject matter in question, leads us that much closer to a standardized vision of what a "furry" should and should not be. Like I said, FA can do whatever it wants to do, whittle away whatever burrs it wants to and smooth everything down to a nice, safe, generic furry suburbia... but at the end of the day I still prefer the Wild West.
Not, firstly, because of how I might or might not personally feel about the specific subject matter. Generally speaking, I've always subscribed to the "if you don't like it, don't go looking at it" philosophy, and at the end of the day, it's all just fantasy anyway.
Not, secondly, because I feel that this is an infringement on freedom of speech. Let's face facts: FA is not a democracy. It's a privately run website that provides free services to a large number of furries. The admins can pretty much do anything they want, like it or lump it. They could make a new TOS that says the color purple is now permanently banned, and those who continue to use the site would have to abide by it.
The reason I find the new TOS distasteful has more to do with what I see as a diminishment of its inclusiveness. FA has been the go-to place for furries largely because up 'til now there's been a place here for pretty much everybody who wants to participate. Anyone could stake out an identity here and share with others the things that make them furry. Artistically, it's been a bit of a furry Wild West show... porn art, clean art, toony art, realistic art, crazy art, random art, rule 34 art, photography, animations, stories and journals, it's all here in whatever flavor you like.
The moment you single any one group out, no matter how small that group is, and no matter how distasteful you might personally find their artistic bent (whatever it might be), and say "you're not welcome here anymore", you're slicing away a bit of what makes FA special: it's diversity. You're taking away a bit of color from the palette, and making the overall portrait that much grayer and more homogenic.
To those who have been crowing about the ban as some sort of moral victory, I would respectfully remind you that you have not, in fact, won a thing. The ban was driven by financial reasons, not because somebody finally decided to enforce your personal tastes. So the ban happened to coincide with your desire to see a certain subject matter removed from FA... would you feel the same way if the ban had been aimed at something you are interested in? Ask yourself what kind of precedent has been set, where an outside influence is allowed to dictate the terms of what should and shouldn't be allowed here. Will you maintain that holier than thou attitude when it hits you where you live?
None of this is meant to suggest that this new TOS is some kind of disaster for all of furry-dom. Again, it's just one website, doing what websites do: setting up whatever rules they deem necessary and enforcing them. C'est la vie. I'm not angry about this decision so much as I'm disheartened by what it represents for FA, specifically: a step away from inclusiveness that, regardless of the subject matter in question, leads us that much closer to a standardized vision of what a "furry" should and should not be. Like I said, FA can do whatever it wants to do, whittle away whatever burrs it wants to and smooth everything down to a nice, safe, generic furry suburbia... but at the end of the day I still prefer the Wild West.
Spiffy Halloween Flicks (You Probably Haven't Seen)
General | Posted 15 years agoAs Punkin' Day approaches, those of us with a taste for scary movies are getting in the mood with a bit of video entertainment. What to watch, what to watch? Can't go wrong with Carpenter's "Halloween", of course, or maybe "Scream" or "Night of the Living Dead". This year, though, why not mix things up with a selection of some of the more obscure Halloween-themed movies? Here's my pics:
"Lady in White" - A young Lucas Haas stars in this creepy ghost-mystery set in an idyllic small town. Aiming more for atmosphere than splatter, writer/director Frank LaLoggia channels his inner Ray Bradbury to sometimes excessive extremes (the deleted scenes on the DVD are particularly purple, layering on sugary gobs of homespun nostalgia with a trowel), but he often deftly straddles the fine line between whimsical and frightening, and the cinematography is lovely.
"Trick 'r Treat" - You probably blinked and missed Michael Dougherty's bloody, darkly funny ode to Halloween night, since it never got its planned theatrical release and went straight to DVD instead. An unashamedly old-school anthology, the interlocking stories revolve around a serial killing school principal, a busload of undead kids, vampires, werewolves, and a mysterious child in a scary sack mask who perpetually lurks in the background like a silent witness to the carnage.
"FleshEater" - Writer/director/editor/star Bill Hinzman is best known for playing the original "cemetery ghoul" in George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Perhaps sensing an opportunity to milk his minor celebrity for everything nickel he could get, he essentially re-makes NOTLD here with an even smaller budget and a delightfully Ed Wood-esque lack of skill. Shambling around the woods in his pasty white makeup, gorily munching on horny teens and innocent urchins alike, he's less like your worst nightmare and more like your uncle on Halloween after a few beers.
"Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman" - Alvin, Simon and Theodore square off against a neighborhood werewolf in this pre-CG family flick that boasts better than average old-school animation and a few surprisingly funny moments (Simon's dry, snappy comebacks provide some of the best chuckles). It may not be particularly scary, and the grotesque Chippettes, who unfortunately resemble inappropriately tarted-up kewpie dolls, are an unwelcome presence, but at its best, "Wolfman" is an adorable adventure that nicely captures every kid's wildest fantasies about ghosts and goblins living next door.
"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" - Often viciously (and IMHO unfairly) maligned as "that one really bad Halloween flick without Michael Myers in it", SOTW tried to shift the series into supernatural territory with its oddball story of modern-day Celtic witches who plan to use the evil magic of Stonehenge to... well... essentially melt the heads of a whole generation of trick-or-treaters. Yes, that's as ridiculous as it sounds, but it's to the film's credit that it largely plays the absurd situation for sick laughs (while also dishing up some truly nasty gore). Considering how lame many of the subsequent Myers-centric sequels were, SOTW seems now less like a misguided disaster and more like a promising push in a new direction for the series that unfortunately didn't get a chance to happen.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" - A sinister carnival comes to a quiet town and starts spreading its dark tendrils of influence into the local populace, and only a pair of young boys stand in its way in this flawed but fascinating adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel. Produced by the Disney company, the film is often surprisingly grim and frightening, layering gruesome moments and atmospheric suspense in between its warm blankets of nostalgia for small town Americana. Pam Grier has a small but memorable role as a character called the Dust Witch, while Jonathan Pryce is truly menacing as Mr. Dark, the carnival's mysterious owner: "Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well. To stuff ourselves on other people's torments, and butter our plain bread with delicious pain..."
"Lady in White" - A young Lucas Haas stars in this creepy ghost-mystery set in an idyllic small town. Aiming more for atmosphere than splatter, writer/director Frank LaLoggia channels his inner Ray Bradbury to sometimes excessive extremes (the deleted scenes on the DVD are particularly purple, layering on sugary gobs of homespun nostalgia with a trowel), but he often deftly straddles the fine line between whimsical and frightening, and the cinematography is lovely.
"Trick 'r Treat" - You probably blinked and missed Michael Dougherty's bloody, darkly funny ode to Halloween night, since it never got its planned theatrical release and went straight to DVD instead. An unashamedly old-school anthology, the interlocking stories revolve around a serial killing school principal, a busload of undead kids, vampires, werewolves, and a mysterious child in a scary sack mask who perpetually lurks in the background like a silent witness to the carnage.
"FleshEater" - Writer/director/editor/star Bill Hinzman is best known for playing the original "cemetery ghoul" in George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Perhaps sensing an opportunity to milk his minor celebrity for everything nickel he could get, he essentially re-makes NOTLD here with an even smaller budget and a delightfully Ed Wood-esque lack of skill. Shambling around the woods in his pasty white makeup, gorily munching on horny teens and innocent urchins alike, he's less like your worst nightmare and more like your uncle on Halloween after a few beers.
"Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman" - Alvin, Simon and Theodore square off against a neighborhood werewolf in this pre-CG family flick that boasts better than average old-school animation and a few surprisingly funny moments (Simon's dry, snappy comebacks provide some of the best chuckles). It may not be particularly scary, and the grotesque Chippettes, who unfortunately resemble inappropriately tarted-up kewpie dolls, are an unwelcome presence, but at its best, "Wolfman" is an adorable adventure that nicely captures every kid's wildest fantasies about ghosts and goblins living next door.
"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" - Often viciously (and IMHO unfairly) maligned as "that one really bad Halloween flick without Michael Myers in it", SOTW tried to shift the series into supernatural territory with its oddball story of modern-day Celtic witches who plan to use the evil magic of Stonehenge to... well... essentially melt the heads of a whole generation of trick-or-treaters. Yes, that's as ridiculous as it sounds, but it's to the film's credit that it largely plays the absurd situation for sick laughs (while also dishing up some truly nasty gore). Considering how lame many of the subsequent Myers-centric sequels were, SOTW seems now less like a misguided disaster and more like a promising push in a new direction for the series that unfortunately didn't get a chance to happen.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" - A sinister carnival comes to a quiet town and starts spreading its dark tendrils of influence into the local populace, and only a pair of young boys stand in its way in this flawed but fascinating adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel. Produced by the Disney company, the film is often surprisingly grim and frightening, layering gruesome moments and atmospheric suspense in between its warm blankets of nostalgia for small town Americana. Pam Grier has a small but memorable role as a character called the Dust Witch, while Jonathan Pryce is truly menacing as Mr. Dark, the carnival's mysterious owner: "Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well. To stuff ourselves on other people's torments, and butter our plain bread with delicious pain..."
I want to be a Polynesian otter.
General | Posted 15 years agoJust got back from a 4-day whirlwind tour of Oʻahu island, which was my first-ever visit to the tropical awesomeness known as Hawaii. I knew it would be fun, but now I understand something I never did before: Hawaii is where otters belong. Here's why:
1) Real Hawaiian shave ice. I thought I'd had shave ice before, but I was wrong. The stuff you get in California is a snow cone, just a wad of crushed ice bits with flavor syrup on top. In Hawaii (and especially if you go to the Waiola shop in Honolulu), it's a cup of powdery smooth ice dust with the texture of fine sugar served over a scoop of vanilla ice cream and smothered in three kinds of syrup. Add mochi balls and condensed milk and you're in for a creamy, fruity delight guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
2) Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. Imagine floating gently through warm, turquoise waters over a labyrinth of coral, surrounded by a confetti rainbow of tropical fish (including the awesomely named humuhumunukunukuapua'a, Hawaii's state fish). Now imagine how much spiffier it'll be when you round a corner and find yourself swimming with not one but two green sea turtles, who float placidly past your face as they nibble lazily at the coral. Also, you will find an octopus, because hey... octopus.
3) Poke. This is a salad made of glistening crimson cubes of fresh raw ahi tuna marinated in shoyu, sesame oil, crushed red chili, sea salt, green onion and (if you can find it) minced limu kohu seaweed. I'm not going to say that it's the most delicious thing ever... no, scratch that. It's the most delicious thing ever.
4) People are nice in Hawaii. It's a stereotype to suggest that everyone on the islands lives in a state of perpetual laid back bliss, and I'm sure there's plenty of drama in Hawaii if you go looking for it. That said, coming from California it's hard not to notice the casual smiles, polite exchanges and helpful attitudes you run into everywhere you go. Heck, even the roads seem less stressful. Traffic in California is often best described as "I'm cutting you off, and that makes me mad." Traffic in Honolulu is more of a random jumble of cars just sort of... going places. I don't recall even hearing one horn.
5) Spam musubi. Spam is everywhere in Hawaii. You hate it now, but you'll come to love it, especially if you start your day with a delicious brick of warm sushi-grade sticky rice topped with a slab of salty, lightly grilled Spam, all held together with a strip of dried nori seaweed. If you're really hungry, head over to Da Kitchen Cafe in Honolulu for a plate of deep fried musubi drizzled in teriyaki sauce and minced green onions. Your mouth, as they say, will love you for it.
6) Fresh fruit. At the Aloha Stadium swap meet (biggest dang flea market you'll ever see, where you can buy cheap but stylish aloha shirts, kukui nut necklaces, luggage and tropical perfume), I bought a ziplock bag filled with fresh cut chilled mango spears that I ate with a plastic fork while I browsed the goods. Sweet? It was like eating mango candy. Also, pineapple in Hawaii is so succulent and sugary that it will ruin you... nothing else is going to taste as good, ever.
7) The weather is beautiful. Granted, I visited after the really broiling hot days of July and August were over, and it was still plenty warm... but that's fine. I like warm. There are sunny blue skies, puffy white clouds, dark rain clouds and warm drizzle, often all at once, and none of it is unpleasant (true, I didn't see any real tropical typhoons or massive rainstorms while I was there). Any place where rain can be considered comfortably refreshing gets a vote in my book.
8) It's a birder's paradise. I'm a big fan of birds, and there are birds everywhere. Herons, frigatebirds, sandpipers, zebra doves, parakeets, cuckoos, nightjars, mynas and red-crested cardinals... you'll start to see them as soon as you get off the plane (or boat, if you're on a cruise), and many of them are tame enough to let you get in for a photo or two. There are also pigeons in the food court at the Ala Moana Makai Market shopping mall, perhaps attracted to the Yummy Korean BBQ meat jun plate, kalua pork manapua buns and delicious Dole whip pineapple cone I was having for lunch.
9) You're surrounded by beaches. I'm not knocking the colder, grayer beaches one finds on the mainland (actually I rather like that foggy New England lighthouse kind of ambience), but there's really nothing to compare to a long strip of powdery white sand flecked with coral and black lava rock being gently licked by warm azure saltwater. You can wade, you can snorkel, you can scuba, or you can just kick back on a towel and watch the surfers skimming through the tube-shaped hearts of curled, white-capped breakers.
10) You're overdressed if you're wearing pants. I have to admit I've never been one for fashion... my idea of dressing up is often finding a shirt that isn't wrinkled. One thing I learned very quickly in Hawaii is that my usual garb of pants, t-shirt and clunky hiking shoes just doesn't cut it in a tropical setting. Within a day, I'd gotten myself into some surfer shorts and flip flops, and I let my shirts go baggy instead of tucking them in. It felt great. Not that I didn't spiff myself up with a thin lei of tiny black and white momi shells... no need to look like a total bum, after all.
Did I mention the poke? Good. Seriously, I can eat that stuff all day.
I would be remiss if I didn't give a huge special thanks to
blackberrydragon for being my very own host and spiffy tour guide dragon. Going to the islands is fun enough on its own, but going with someone who has insider info means you can skip all the tedious stuff and go right to the obscure, the out of the way, and the awesome (kulolo, anyone?)
1) Real Hawaiian shave ice. I thought I'd had shave ice before, but I was wrong. The stuff you get in California is a snow cone, just a wad of crushed ice bits with flavor syrup on top. In Hawaii (and especially if you go to the Waiola shop in Honolulu), it's a cup of powdery smooth ice dust with the texture of fine sugar served over a scoop of vanilla ice cream and smothered in three kinds of syrup. Add mochi balls and condensed milk and you're in for a creamy, fruity delight guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
2) Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. Imagine floating gently through warm, turquoise waters over a labyrinth of coral, surrounded by a confetti rainbow of tropical fish (including the awesomely named humuhumunukunukuapua'a, Hawaii's state fish). Now imagine how much spiffier it'll be when you round a corner and find yourself swimming with not one but two green sea turtles, who float placidly past your face as they nibble lazily at the coral. Also, you will find an octopus, because hey... octopus.
3) Poke. This is a salad made of glistening crimson cubes of fresh raw ahi tuna marinated in shoyu, sesame oil, crushed red chili, sea salt, green onion and (if you can find it) minced limu kohu seaweed. I'm not going to say that it's the most delicious thing ever... no, scratch that. It's the most delicious thing ever.
4) People are nice in Hawaii. It's a stereotype to suggest that everyone on the islands lives in a state of perpetual laid back bliss, and I'm sure there's plenty of drama in Hawaii if you go looking for it. That said, coming from California it's hard not to notice the casual smiles, polite exchanges and helpful attitudes you run into everywhere you go. Heck, even the roads seem less stressful. Traffic in California is often best described as "I'm cutting you off, and that makes me mad." Traffic in Honolulu is more of a random jumble of cars just sort of... going places. I don't recall even hearing one horn.
5) Spam musubi. Spam is everywhere in Hawaii. You hate it now, but you'll come to love it, especially if you start your day with a delicious brick of warm sushi-grade sticky rice topped with a slab of salty, lightly grilled Spam, all held together with a strip of dried nori seaweed. If you're really hungry, head over to Da Kitchen Cafe in Honolulu for a plate of deep fried musubi drizzled in teriyaki sauce and minced green onions. Your mouth, as they say, will love you for it.
6) Fresh fruit. At the Aloha Stadium swap meet (biggest dang flea market you'll ever see, where you can buy cheap but stylish aloha shirts, kukui nut necklaces, luggage and tropical perfume), I bought a ziplock bag filled with fresh cut chilled mango spears that I ate with a plastic fork while I browsed the goods. Sweet? It was like eating mango candy. Also, pineapple in Hawaii is so succulent and sugary that it will ruin you... nothing else is going to taste as good, ever.
7) The weather is beautiful. Granted, I visited after the really broiling hot days of July and August were over, and it was still plenty warm... but that's fine. I like warm. There are sunny blue skies, puffy white clouds, dark rain clouds and warm drizzle, often all at once, and none of it is unpleasant (true, I didn't see any real tropical typhoons or massive rainstorms while I was there). Any place where rain can be considered comfortably refreshing gets a vote in my book.
8) It's a birder's paradise. I'm a big fan of birds, and there are birds everywhere. Herons, frigatebirds, sandpipers, zebra doves, parakeets, cuckoos, nightjars, mynas and red-crested cardinals... you'll start to see them as soon as you get off the plane (or boat, if you're on a cruise), and many of them are tame enough to let you get in for a photo or two. There are also pigeons in the food court at the Ala Moana Makai Market shopping mall, perhaps attracted to the Yummy Korean BBQ meat jun plate, kalua pork manapua buns and delicious Dole whip pineapple cone I was having for lunch.
9) You're surrounded by beaches. I'm not knocking the colder, grayer beaches one finds on the mainland (actually I rather like that foggy New England lighthouse kind of ambience), but there's really nothing to compare to a long strip of powdery white sand flecked with coral and black lava rock being gently licked by warm azure saltwater. You can wade, you can snorkel, you can scuba, or you can just kick back on a towel and watch the surfers skimming through the tube-shaped hearts of curled, white-capped breakers.
10) You're overdressed if you're wearing pants. I have to admit I've never been one for fashion... my idea of dressing up is often finding a shirt that isn't wrinkled. One thing I learned very quickly in Hawaii is that my usual garb of pants, t-shirt and clunky hiking shoes just doesn't cut it in a tropical setting. Within a day, I'd gotten myself into some surfer shorts and flip flops, and I let my shirts go baggy instead of tucking them in. It felt great. Not that I didn't spiff myself up with a thin lei of tiny black and white momi shells... no need to look like a total bum, after all.
Did I mention the poke? Good. Seriously, I can eat that stuff all day.
I would be remiss if I didn't give a huge special thanks to
blackberrydragon for being my very own host and spiffy tour guide dragon. Going to the islands is fun enough on its own, but going with someone who has insider info means you can skip all the tedious stuff and go right to the obscure, the out of the way, and the awesome (kulolo, anyone?)Stitch's Movie Madness: "The Last Airbender"
General | Posted 15 years agoTo understand exactly what's wrong with M. Night "Still Coasting on the Fumes of The Sixth Sense" Shyamalan's painfully dunderheaded adaptation of the beloved animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender", you need look no further than its opening five minutes. Young waterbender Katara (Nicola Peltz) magically levitates a large globule of GC water over her older brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), finally dropping it on his head. "Don't do that," he tells her glumly (I'm paraphrasing a bit here). "I always get wet," he mumbles, as though bored and mildly ashamed by his own attempt at humor. It's the last joke he cracks in the entire movie.
Following that, the two of them wander off over the frozen, icy wasteland they call home, halfheartedly searching for game to hunt while trading brief chunks of exposition back and forth in lieu of conversation. "Tiger-seal," Sokka exclaims blankly, following some tracks in the ice. We never actually get to see said hybrid beast, though. Instead, they stumble across a large ice bubble, which smashes up underneath their feet. Sokka is afraid it's some kind of "Fire Nation trick", thus letting the audience know that 1) the Fire Nation are the bad guys, and 2) Sokka is an idiot. "Katara, don't touch that sphere!" he tells her, but his clunky, unintuitive words fall on deaf ears (maybe because he's speaking with the emotionless cadence of a robot). Katara smashes open the giant ice ball to reveal a young boy and a giant shaggy white carpet with a hideous black, hairless face that we are soon to learn is a flying, six-legged bison. Could this boy (Noah Ringer) be the legendary long-lost Avatar, the one person in the world who can manipulate all four elements of fire, water, air and earth and save the world from the tyranny of the Fire Nation?
Fans of the series will recognize all of this, naturally... it's the same set-up that happens in the first episode. I'll give Shyamalan credit for at least (more or less) following the basic plot points of the first season fairly faithfully. What he gets wrong is pretty much everything else. The series worked as well as it did thanks to its deft blending of humor, drama, fantasy, spiritualism, dazzling action sequences and especially its endearing characters. Shyamalan, who professes to be a big fan of said series, appears to have watched the whole thing while laboring under the impression that while all of that is fine and dandy, what would really make the whole concept sizzle would be to take out all of the fun and wonderment, then replace them with a gloomy, self-serious sense of emotionless detachment. Take Sokka, for instance (please). In the series he is a constant source of lighthearted humor, all blustery bravado and corny puns, but in Shyamalan's take, he's so dour and serious that he appears perpetually ready to do a full-blown emo meltdown... or would, if he had any personality or dialogue that wasn't purely expositional.
Katara and Aang (which for reasons that probably only make sense to Shyamalan is constantly mispronounced as "Ohng"), the young airbending Avatar of the title, fare no better, their entire character arcs stripped of any complexity and reduced to being blank vessels for Shyamalan's single-minded determination to make everything in the movie über-serious. And honestly, I wouldn't have even been bothered by a more "serious" Airbender, except that all of Shyamalan's austere dialogue is so clumsily, painfully awful. Even in his best movies, he always did prefer his characters to speak in thick, portentous slabs of unrealistically purple verbiage, but he's downright tin-eared in "Airbender". "It was not by chance that for generations people have been searching for him, and now you have found him," mumbles one character, and you can hear the strain in the actor's voice as he tries to breathe life into that clunky mouthful. It doesn't help at all that Shyamalan, again channeling his pathological need to make everything really serious, has apparently instructed virtually all of his actors to remove any trace of passion or emotion from their delivery. Honestly, there haven't been this many stilted, mannequin-like performances on screen since "Attack of the Clones".
Shyamalan also seems to be, shall we put it kindly, at a bit of a loss as to how to stage a convincing action scene. Again, in the series the use of magically manipulated elements is a constant source of inventive, kinetic action... just imagine the coolest Jackie Chan fight scene, and then imagine how much cooler it would be with floating ice walls, stone shields, air whips and swirling fire jets added into the mix. Shyamalan, whose detached directorial style is much more suited to long, moody takes from halfway across the room, is not the first name you think of when you think of "action", and if you had a nagging doubt about his ability to pull off this kind of martial arts mayhem... well, you were right. He doesn't have a clue how to stage, choreograph, shoot or edit an action scene, nor does he seem especially interested in doing so (Aang's airbending is presented largely as sending wispy puffs of steam out of his hands, while earthbending comes across as a bunch of tai chi maneuvers that eventually, after about five minutes of waving your arms around, can make small, potato-like rocks float very, very slowly at your enemies).
Awkward, ponderous and often hilariously misconceived, "Airbender" is all the more painful to watch because Shyamalan clearly cared about the film he was making. While the story and acting are uniformly terrible, he does pull off some occasionally lovely imagery, and there are brief scenes where the film threatens to spark to life. It never does, but for once it's not because the director was too generic or "too Hollywood". Shyamalan had a vision, and he stuck to his creative guns. Regrettably, overwhelmed and incompatible with the source material, he was simply the wrong guy for the job.
Following that, the two of them wander off over the frozen, icy wasteland they call home, halfheartedly searching for game to hunt while trading brief chunks of exposition back and forth in lieu of conversation. "Tiger-seal," Sokka exclaims blankly, following some tracks in the ice. We never actually get to see said hybrid beast, though. Instead, they stumble across a large ice bubble, which smashes up underneath their feet. Sokka is afraid it's some kind of "Fire Nation trick", thus letting the audience know that 1) the Fire Nation are the bad guys, and 2) Sokka is an idiot. "Katara, don't touch that sphere!" he tells her, but his clunky, unintuitive words fall on deaf ears (maybe because he's speaking with the emotionless cadence of a robot). Katara smashes open the giant ice ball to reveal a young boy and a giant shaggy white carpet with a hideous black, hairless face that we are soon to learn is a flying, six-legged bison. Could this boy (Noah Ringer) be the legendary long-lost Avatar, the one person in the world who can manipulate all four elements of fire, water, air and earth and save the world from the tyranny of the Fire Nation?
Fans of the series will recognize all of this, naturally... it's the same set-up that happens in the first episode. I'll give Shyamalan credit for at least (more or less) following the basic plot points of the first season fairly faithfully. What he gets wrong is pretty much everything else. The series worked as well as it did thanks to its deft blending of humor, drama, fantasy, spiritualism, dazzling action sequences and especially its endearing characters. Shyamalan, who professes to be a big fan of said series, appears to have watched the whole thing while laboring under the impression that while all of that is fine and dandy, what would really make the whole concept sizzle would be to take out all of the fun and wonderment, then replace them with a gloomy, self-serious sense of emotionless detachment. Take Sokka, for instance (please). In the series he is a constant source of lighthearted humor, all blustery bravado and corny puns, but in Shyamalan's take, he's so dour and serious that he appears perpetually ready to do a full-blown emo meltdown... or would, if he had any personality or dialogue that wasn't purely expositional.
Katara and Aang (which for reasons that probably only make sense to Shyamalan is constantly mispronounced as "Ohng"), the young airbending Avatar of the title, fare no better, their entire character arcs stripped of any complexity and reduced to being blank vessels for Shyamalan's single-minded determination to make everything in the movie über-serious. And honestly, I wouldn't have even been bothered by a more "serious" Airbender, except that all of Shyamalan's austere dialogue is so clumsily, painfully awful. Even in his best movies, he always did prefer his characters to speak in thick, portentous slabs of unrealistically purple verbiage, but he's downright tin-eared in "Airbender". "It was not by chance that for generations people have been searching for him, and now you have found him," mumbles one character, and you can hear the strain in the actor's voice as he tries to breathe life into that clunky mouthful. It doesn't help at all that Shyamalan, again channeling his pathological need to make everything really serious, has apparently instructed virtually all of his actors to remove any trace of passion or emotion from their delivery. Honestly, there haven't been this many stilted, mannequin-like performances on screen since "Attack of the Clones".
Shyamalan also seems to be, shall we put it kindly, at a bit of a loss as to how to stage a convincing action scene. Again, in the series the use of magically manipulated elements is a constant source of inventive, kinetic action... just imagine the coolest Jackie Chan fight scene, and then imagine how much cooler it would be with floating ice walls, stone shields, air whips and swirling fire jets added into the mix. Shyamalan, whose detached directorial style is much more suited to long, moody takes from halfway across the room, is not the first name you think of when you think of "action", and if you had a nagging doubt about his ability to pull off this kind of martial arts mayhem... well, you were right. He doesn't have a clue how to stage, choreograph, shoot or edit an action scene, nor does he seem especially interested in doing so (Aang's airbending is presented largely as sending wispy puffs of steam out of his hands, while earthbending comes across as a bunch of tai chi maneuvers that eventually, after about five minutes of waving your arms around, can make small, potato-like rocks float very, very slowly at your enemies).
Awkward, ponderous and often hilariously misconceived, "Airbender" is all the more painful to watch because Shyamalan clearly cared about the film he was making. While the story and acting are uniformly terrible, he does pull off some occasionally lovely imagery, and there are brief scenes where the film threatens to spark to life. It never does, but for once it's not because the director was too generic or "too Hollywood". Shyamalan had a vision, and he stuck to his creative guns. Regrettably, overwhelmed and incompatible with the source material, he was simply the wrong guy for the job.
Stitch's Movie Madness: Summer Wars
General | Posted 15 years agoIf there's one thing about computer technology that we've learned from the movies, it's that it's almost impossible to make a good, exciting story about computer technology. Remember Sandra Bullock's "The Net"? You probably don't, but that was the one that tried to make sitting at a keyboard the stuff of high-tension nightmares. Same with more recent attempts like the A.I.-gone-evil caper "Eagle Eye"... it's no accident that the filmmakers try to shoehorn as many extraneous explosions and car chases as possible into these things. There's no way around it: computers by themselves are cinematically boring. They don't do anything other than shuffle information around.
In fact, there's only one trick that moviemakers have that seems to consistently work: put the main characters inside the computer. Like, literally. Stories like "Tron", the "Matrix" films, "Wild Palms", Satoshi Kon's "Paprika", and even crapfests like "Johnny Mnemonic" succeed in making computers cinematic by turning their neon-and-blinky-lights inner worlds into "real" places you can actually step into and explore. After all, why would you want to watch a guy just tap-tap-tapping away at a monitor when you can see him blast through glowing blue walls in his flying laser-powered ASCII hovercopter?
That's still only half of the equation, of course... you’ve got to dish up solid storylines and interesting characters to go with all that high-concept techno razzle-dazzle - at least if you want your movie to be any good. Bearing that in mind, Mamoru Hosoda's extraordinary 2009 anime feature "Summer Wars" is better than good. In point of fact, it's great. I know that word gets tossed around a lot, but I don’t use it lightly: “Summer Wars” is a great film, seamlessly melding rousing sci-fi adventure, ingenious satire, poignant humor and warm character-based drama in equally satisfying proportions. It’s also stunningly directed by Hosoda, who brought a similar smartly-controlled visual panache to 2006’s “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”.
“Summer Wars” tells the story of Kenji Koiso (Ryūnosuke Kamiki), a shy 17-year-old math prodigy who spends most of his time in OZ, a dazzling computer-generated world where over a billion people live virtual lives through their personalized avatars. Kenji is preparing to spend another summer online when he is startled out of his shell by a sudden job offer from the popular and pretty Natsuki Shinohara (Nanami Sakuraba)... she claims she just needs someone to accompany her to her ancestral family home in the countryside. When they arrive at what turns out to be a huge, sprawling estate (her once-wealthy family used to own a silk empire), Natsuki’s true motives are revealed: she’s promised her 90-year-old grandmother Sakae (Sumiko Fuji) that she’s engaged to be married, and not wanting to disappoint, she hastily presses a stunned Kenji into playing the part for grandmother Sakae and the rest of her boisterously approving family.
As if this wasn’t complicated enough for Kenji, that night he receives a mysterious email containing a complicated numerical cypher and, thinking it’s a puzzle, he solves it and mails the solution back to the sender. The next morning he wakes up to find that all of OZ is in chaos due to a seemingly impossible security breach, and what’s more, his face is being broadcast on the news as the prime suspect in the attack. Worse, since thousands of companies and government offices worldwide have OZ accounts, the confusion quickly spreads to the real world. Modern conveniences like GPS, traffic lights, and even emergency response teams are hopelessly compromised, leaving everything in a state of bedlam. But who, or what, is behind it all... and what can a shy math whiz, an iron-willed grandmother, her lovably temperamental family and a 6-foot-tall anthropomorphic rabbit do to stop it?
There are many pleasures to be had in “Summer Wars”, not least being the vivid realization of OZ itself. Depicted as a sky of white filled to bursting with brightly colored galaxies of floating buildings orbited by rings of data and swirling clouds of millions of avatars, OZ is both a candy-coated fantasyland and a plausible concept for where our technological future may lie. Fortunately, though, director Hosoda and scripter Satoko Okudera devote just as much energy and enthusiasm to building the real-world lives of Kenji, Natsuki, Sakae and the rest of her clan. Like any family would, they struggle with not only the troubles in OZ, but also with more seemingly mundane dramas like how the local baseball team is doing, and whether or not the computer glitches mean the birthday dumplings will make it to the party on time. As gorgeous a place as OZ is, at the end of the day it’s the human characters that you’ll fall in love with (well, them and the giant bunny). By the time it's over, you (like Kenji) will have grown so fond of spending time with Natsuki’s family that you’ll be sorry to see the credits roll. “Summer Wars” is a beautifully crafted treat in every sense... here’s hoping for a bona-fide U.S. release (preferably on Blu-ray).
In fact, there's only one trick that moviemakers have that seems to consistently work: put the main characters inside the computer. Like, literally. Stories like "Tron", the "Matrix" films, "Wild Palms", Satoshi Kon's "Paprika", and even crapfests like "Johnny Mnemonic" succeed in making computers cinematic by turning their neon-and-blinky-lights inner worlds into "real" places you can actually step into and explore. After all, why would you want to watch a guy just tap-tap-tapping away at a monitor when you can see him blast through glowing blue walls in his flying laser-powered ASCII hovercopter?
That's still only half of the equation, of course... you’ve got to dish up solid storylines and interesting characters to go with all that high-concept techno razzle-dazzle - at least if you want your movie to be any good. Bearing that in mind, Mamoru Hosoda's extraordinary 2009 anime feature "Summer Wars" is better than good. In point of fact, it's great. I know that word gets tossed around a lot, but I don’t use it lightly: “Summer Wars” is a great film, seamlessly melding rousing sci-fi adventure, ingenious satire, poignant humor and warm character-based drama in equally satisfying proportions. It’s also stunningly directed by Hosoda, who brought a similar smartly-controlled visual panache to 2006’s “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”.
“Summer Wars” tells the story of Kenji Koiso (Ryūnosuke Kamiki), a shy 17-year-old math prodigy who spends most of his time in OZ, a dazzling computer-generated world where over a billion people live virtual lives through their personalized avatars. Kenji is preparing to spend another summer online when he is startled out of his shell by a sudden job offer from the popular and pretty Natsuki Shinohara (Nanami Sakuraba)... she claims she just needs someone to accompany her to her ancestral family home in the countryside. When they arrive at what turns out to be a huge, sprawling estate (her once-wealthy family used to own a silk empire), Natsuki’s true motives are revealed: she’s promised her 90-year-old grandmother Sakae (Sumiko Fuji) that she’s engaged to be married, and not wanting to disappoint, she hastily presses a stunned Kenji into playing the part for grandmother Sakae and the rest of her boisterously approving family.
As if this wasn’t complicated enough for Kenji, that night he receives a mysterious email containing a complicated numerical cypher and, thinking it’s a puzzle, he solves it and mails the solution back to the sender. The next morning he wakes up to find that all of OZ is in chaos due to a seemingly impossible security breach, and what’s more, his face is being broadcast on the news as the prime suspect in the attack. Worse, since thousands of companies and government offices worldwide have OZ accounts, the confusion quickly spreads to the real world. Modern conveniences like GPS, traffic lights, and even emergency response teams are hopelessly compromised, leaving everything in a state of bedlam. But who, or what, is behind it all... and what can a shy math whiz, an iron-willed grandmother, her lovably temperamental family and a 6-foot-tall anthropomorphic rabbit do to stop it?
There are many pleasures to be had in “Summer Wars”, not least being the vivid realization of OZ itself. Depicted as a sky of white filled to bursting with brightly colored galaxies of floating buildings orbited by rings of data and swirling clouds of millions of avatars, OZ is both a candy-coated fantasyland and a plausible concept for where our technological future may lie. Fortunately, though, director Hosoda and scripter Satoko Okudera devote just as much energy and enthusiasm to building the real-world lives of Kenji, Natsuki, Sakae and the rest of her clan. Like any family would, they struggle with not only the troubles in OZ, but also with more seemingly mundane dramas like how the local baseball team is doing, and whether or not the computer glitches mean the birthday dumplings will make it to the party on time. As gorgeous a place as OZ is, at the end of the day it’s the human characters that you’ll fall in love with (well, them and the giant bunny). By the time it's over, you (like Kenji) will have grown so fond of spending time with Natsuki’s family that you’ll be sorry to see the credits roll. “Summer Wars” is a beautifully crafted treat in every sense... here’s hoping for a bona-fide U.S. release (preferably on Blu-ray).
Stitch's Movie Madness: James Bond 1-10
General | Posted 15 years agoSo, I've been marathoning my way through my James Bond collection, starting in order with 1962's "Dr. No" and working my way up through 1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me". It's been fascinating to revisit so many of these flicks, most of which I haven't seen since I was a kid (and some of which I never saw in the first place).
One thing that particularly strikes me is how completely I missed the point, watching these bits of slick escapist fluff as a young boy. As a kid of 10, I could have cared less about the complex espionage plotlines, the hot boob-laden women Bond was for some reason always compelled to take off his clothes and jump into bed with, or the drawn-out scenes where Bond goes gambling at high-end casinos. What I wanted were the car chases, the weird flying gadgets, the submarine shootouts and the escalating chain of explosions that conclude nearly every film. My attention would wane whenever Bond was doing his slick "I'm too cool for all of this nonsense, now get into bed with me" thing, sparking to life only when an evil henchman would pop out of nowhere for a grandiose showdown (preferably one involving razor-sharp bowler hats).
Now that I'm fully grown and (vaguely) mature, I feel like I finally get it. The Bond flicks, for all their boyish wonder in gadgetry and villains who live in kick-awesome volcano hideouts, are ultimately meant to be enjoyed by grown men. They're not just pure escapism, though, they're direct windows into the male id, a rich fantasy world where perfect heroes clash mightily with outlandish evil, where good always triumphs and the guy always gets the girl... every girl, in fact, with no strings attached. Bond is the guy who lives deep down in the heart of every boy who ever grew up, got a job, got married, had kids, bought a house and secretly dreamed that one day he'd leave it all behind to go be a brilliant, confident, successful hero who'll save the world in time for breakfast. It's no wonder I couldn't grasp this as a kid... kids don’t know that stuff like this never actually happens.
"Dr. No"
Plot: James Bond is pitted against a creepy mad scientist with metal hands who works for a criminal organization called SPECTRE and wants to menace the world with an atomic-powered ray gun.
The Good Stuff: Dr. No's secret atomic laboratory is the epitome of late-50s, early-60s sci-fi cool, while Sean Connery effortlessly projects suave class and quiet menace... he was born to play this part.
The Bad Stuff: Not much to quibble about, save Bond's typically sexist attitude toward women and the obvious sheet of glass protecting Connery from the tarantula attack.
Timeless Message: Metal hands might seem awesome, but they have some pretty severe drawbacks.
"From Russia With Love"
Plot: Bond is after a Russian encryption device in a chase that involves Istanbul, gypsies, Russian agents, another SPECTRE plot and intrigue on the Orient Express.
The Good Stuff: Darker and a bit edgier, this flick takes spying seriously, resulting in one of the best and most satisfying Bond stories. Also, Robert Shaw as an icy assassin makes for one of Bond's most legitimate threats... their visceral close-quarters showdown on the train remains one of cinema's greatest fight scenes.
The Bad Stuff: Again, not much to criticize. The pace might seem a bit slow compared to later, more fantastical Bonds.
Timeless Message: If James Bond offers to show you the inside of his suitcase, you should politely decline.
"Goldfinger"
Plot: SPECTRE baddie Goldfinger wants to corner the market on the world's gold supply, and only Bond stands in his way... or would, if he wasn't strapped to a table with a laser aimed right at his gajoolies.
The Good Stuff: Though a bit goofier in tone than "From Russia", Connery again grounds things nicely with his confident charisma, while Gert Fröbe makes for one of Bond's most colorful and menacing villains.
The Bad Stuff: Homophobia rears its nasty head in the whole "Bond rapes a man-hating dyke into being straight" sequence.
Timeless Message: Lasers and weapons-grade bowler hats might earn you some style points, but they aren't really as efficient as a good pistol.
"Thunderball"
Plot: Bond is off to tropical Nassau to try and discover the whereabouts of two stolen atomic bombs, now in possession of SPECTRE's second-in-command, a wealthy thug with a shark obsession.
The Good Stuff: Walking a fine line between camp and thrills, "Thunderball" delivers lots of exotic locales and a terrific extended underwater scuba battle.
The Bad Stuff: The pacing seems a bit more lax in some scenes, while Connery is clearly starting to lose some of his enthusiasm for the role.
Timeless Message: It's awfully hard to use the word "Thunderball" in a theme song.
"You Only Live Twice"
Plot: SPECTRE head honcho Blofeld finally makes a full-on appearance from within his Japanese volcano lair as he attempts to spark WWIII.
The Good Stuff: While campy in the extreme, there's an appealingly surrealist edge to much of the proceedings, making this one feel kind of like a grand-scale episode of "Space: 1999". Donald Pleasance plays Blofeld with a delightfully spooky sense of evil. Also, come on... volcano lair.
The Bad Stuff: Some of the effects, particularly during the helicopter chase, are pretty fake-looking, while the plot meanders at times. Bond's misogyny gets ratcheted up to full-throttle in this one as well.
Timeless Message: When visiting the mysterious and exotic East, you should stay away from any local vodka.
"On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
Plot: George Lazenby temporarily takes over the Bond role from Connery in this Alpine-set story of dangerous skiing, Scottish kilts, forbidden romance and poisoned perfume.
The Good Stuff: There's an outstanding car chase on an ice track mid-film, while director Peter Hunt gets maximum use of his spectacular Swiss mountain setting. Lazenby, while not making you forget Connery, does a decent job of stepping into Bond's shoes.
The Bad Stuff: The story never really seems to catch fire, while the climax of the film sort of fizzles.
Timeless Message: We don't know what steak Piz Gloria is, but it sounds delicious.
"Diamonds Are Forever"
The Plot: Connery makes one final "Okay, guys, but this is really the last time" appearance as Bond in this desert-set adventure as he tries to stop Blofeld (yeah, still) from using a batch of stolen diamonds to power a deadly space laser.
The Good Stuff: The desert setting turns out to be a nifty place to stage a moon buggy escape, while the mid-section car chase through the nighttime streets of Las Vegas proves to be one of the series' best. Connery seems to be having more fun this time around, too.
The Bad Stuff: The plot is sometimes needlessly convoluted, while the final showdown on an exploding oil rig seems... stale, somehow.
Timeless Message: The creepy guys bringing you free baked Alaska are probably up to something bad.
"Live and Let Die"
The Plot: Roger Moore takes over the Bond role for this tale of corrupt island dictators, drug smugglers, voodoo and allegedly hilarious bayou hijinks.
The Good Stuff: Moore plays Bond with an appealing sense of fun that Connery sometimes lacked. The tropical island setting makes for a nice backdrop, and Yaphet Kotto smolders with charm and menace as the villainous Dr. Kananga.
The Bad Stuff: Tackling the racial turmoil of the 70s in a fluffy escapist adventure film might not have been the best idea, especially in one that seems targeted exclusively at the paranoid white perspective. Virtually every black character in this movie is in on some vast, murderous conspiracy, and many of them practice voodoo as well, because hey... black people do that, right? Also, Clifton James has an incredibly obnoxious extended cameo as a racist, redneck sheriff who seems to have wandered in from "Smokey and the Bandit".
Timeless Message: Black people are scary, and they want to kill you.
"The Man with the Golden Gun"
The Plot: Bond looks into a stolen energy-generating device and finds himself squaring off against Scaramanga, the world's best assassin.
The Good Stuff: Casting Christopher Lee as the ominously cheerful Scaramanga was pretty smart, as was giving him pint-sized henchman Hervé Villechaize. At times the film has a strange, "Dr. Phibes"-like surrealist edge to it, particularly once it settles down at Scaramanga's bizarre island-set mansion/fun house for an extended showdown.
The Bad Stuff: Director Guy Hamilton, perhaps getting bored with Bond, seems more interested in making a comedy than a spy film. To that end he ratchets up the goofball sight gags to sometimes insufferable levels, even adding cartoon sound effects to what should have been a show-stopping car stunt. Also, Clifton James makes a most unwelcome and improbable return as the redneck sheriff.
Timeless Message: If your disguise includes a fake third nipple, wait until you get home to remove it.
"The Spy Who Loved Me"
The Plot: Cold war tensions heat up when Bond is paired with a lovely Soviet agent who is every bit his equal, and together they try to stop a modern-day Captain Nemo from plunging the world into nuclear war.
The Good Stuff: The slapstick is thankfully downplayed this time around, leaving plenty of room for thrilling chase scenes, stunning model work and special effects, and a tone that playfully walks the line between campy and serious. Barbara Bach is up to the task of matching wits with Bond, while Richard Kiel injects the iconic part of henchman "Jaws" with equal parts menace and charm. Hands down, this is one of the best, most entertaining Bonds.
The Bad Stuff: The more serious and dramatic scenes, while adding a nice level of grit to an otherwise purely camp storyline, are so few and far between that they seem underdeveloped.
Timeless Message: The cold war can, in fact, be ended by smoldering hot sex.
Coming soon: Bonds 11-20(?)
One thing that particularly strikes me is how completely I missed the point, watching these bits of slick escapist fluff as a young boy. As a kid of 10, I could have cared less about the complex espionage plotlines, the hot boob-laden women Bond was for some reason always compelled to take off his clothes and jump into bed with, or the drawn-out scenes where Bond goes gambling at high-end casinos. What I wanted were the car chases, the weird flying gadgets, the submarine shootouts and the escalating chain of explosions that conclude nearly every film. My attention would wane whenever Bond was doing his slick "I'm too cool for all of this nonsense, now get into bed with me" thing, sparking to life only when an evil henchman would pop out of nowhere for a grandiose showdown (preferably one involving razor-sharp bowler hats).
Now that I'm fully grown and (vaguely) mature, I feel like I finally get it. The Bond flicks, for all their boyish wonder in gadgetry and villains who live in kick-awesome volcano hideouts, are ultimately meant to be enjoyed by grown men. They're not just pure escapism, though, they're direct windows into the male id, a rich fantasy world where perfect heroes clash mightily with outlandish evil, where good always triumphs and the guy always gets the girl... every girl, in fact, with no strings attached. Bond is the guy who lives deep down in the heart of every boy who ever grew up, got a job, got married, had kids, bought a house and secretly dreamed that one day he'd leave it all behind to go be a brilliant, confident, successful hero who'll save the world in time for breakfast. It's no wonder I couldn't grasp this as a kid... kids don’t know that stuff like this never actually happens.
"Dr. No"
Plot: James Bond is pitted against a creepy mad scientist with metal hands who works for a criminal organization called SPECTRE and wants to menace the world with an atomic-powered ray gun.
The Good Stuff: Dr. No's secret atomic laboratory is the epitome of late-50s, early-60s sci-fi cool, while Sean Connery effortlessly projects suave class and quiet menace... he was born to play this part.
The Bad Stuff: Not much to quibble about, save Bond's typically sexist attitude toward women and the obvious sheet of glass protecting Connery from the tarantula attack.
Timeless Message: Metal hands might seem awesome, but they have some pretty severe drawbacks.
"From Russia With Love"
Plot: Bond is after a Russian encryption device in a chase that involves Istanbul, gypsies, Russian agents, another SPECTRE plot and intrigue on the Orient Express.
The Good Stuff: Darker and a bit edgier, this flick takes spying seriously, resulting in one of the best and most satisfying Bond stories. Also, Robert Shaw as an icy assassin makes for one of Bond's most legitimate threats... their visceral close-quarters showdown on the train remains one of cinema's greatest fight scenes.
The Bad Stuff: Again, not much to criticize. The pace might seem a bit slow compared to later, more fantastical Bonds.
Timeless Message: If James Bond offers to show you the inside of his suitcase, you should politely decline.
"Goldfinger"
Plot: SPECTRE baddie Goldfinger wants to corner the market on the world's gold supply, and only Bond stands in his way... or would, if he wasn't strapped to a table with a laser aimed right at his gajoolies.
The Good Stuff: Though a bit goofier in tone than "From Russia", Connery again grounds things nicely with his confident charisma, while Gert Fröbe makes for one of Bond's most colorful and menacing villains.
The Bad Stuff: Homophobia rears its nasty head in the whole "Bond rapes a man-hating dyke into being straight" sequence.
Timeless Message: Lasers and weapons-grade bowler hats might earn you some style points, but they aren't really as efficient as a good pistol.
"Thunderball"
Plot: Bond is off to tropical Nassau to try and discover the whereabouts of two stolen atomic bombs, now in possession of SPECTRE's second-in-command, a wealthy thug with a shark obsession.
The Good Stuff: Walking a fine line between camp and thrills, "Thunderball" delivers lots of exotic locales and a terrific extended underwater scuba battle.
The Bad Stuff: The pacing seems a bit more lax in some scenes, while Connery is clearly starting to lose some of his enthusiasm for the role.
Timeless Message: It's awfully hard to use the word "Thunderball" in a theme song.
"You Only Live Twice"
Plot: SPECTRE head honcho Blofeld finally makes a full-on appearance from within his Japanese volcano lair as he attempts to spark WWIII.
The Good Stuff: While campy in the extreme, there's an appealingly surrealist edge to much of the proceedings, making this one feel kind of like a grand-scale episode of "Space: 1999". Donald Pleasance plays Blofeld with a delightfully spooky sense of evil. Also, come on... volcano lair.
The Bad Stuff: Some of the effects, particularly during the helicopter chase, are pretty fake-looking, while the plot meanders at times. Bond's misogyny gets ratcheted up to full-throttle in this one as well.
Timeless Message: When visiting the mysterious and exotic East, you should stay away from any local vodka.
"On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
Plot: George Lazenby temporarily takes over the Bond role from Connery in this Alpine-set story of dangerous skiing, Scottish kilts, forbidden romance and poisoned perfume.
The Good Stuff: There's an outstanding car chase on an ice track mid-film, while director Peter Hunt gets maximum use of his spectacular Swiss mountain setting. Lazenby, while not making you forget Connery, does a decent job of stepping into Bond's shoes.
The Bad Stuff: The story never really seems to catch fire, while the climax of the film sort of fizzles.
Timeless Message: We don't know what steak Piz Gloria is, but it sounds delicious.
"Diamonds Are Forever"
The Plot: Connery makes one final "Okay, guys, but this is really the last time" appearance as Bond in this desert-set adventure as he tries to stop Blofeld (yeah, still) from using a batch of stolen diamonds to power a deadly space laser.
The Good Stuff: The desert setting turns out to be a nifty place to stage a moon buggy escape, while the mid-section car chase through the nighttime streets of Las Vegas proves to be one of the series' best. Connery seems to be having more fun this time around, too.
The Bad Stuff: The plot is sometimes needlessly convoluted, while the final showdown on an exploding oil rig seems... stale, somehow.
Timeless Message: The creepy guys bringing you free baked Alaska are probably up to something bad.
"Live and Let Die"
The Plot: Roger Moore takes over the Bond role for this tale of corrupt island dictators, drug smugglers, voodoo and allegedly hilarious bayou hijinks.
The Good Stuff: Moore plays Bond with an appealing sense of fun that Connery sometimes lacked. The tropical island setting makes for a nice backdrop, and Yaphet Kotto smolders with charm and menace as the villainous Dr. Kananga.
The Bad Stuff: Tackling the racial turmoil of the 70s in a fluffy escapist adventure film might not have been the best idea, especially in one that seems targeted exclusively at the paranoid white perspective. Virtually every black character in this movie is in on some vast, murderous conspiracy, and many of them practice voodoo as well, because hey... black people do that, right? Also, Clifton James has an incredibly obnoxious extended cameo as a racist, redneck sheriff who seems to have wandered in from "Smokey and the Bandit".
Timeless Message: Black people are scary, and they want to kill you.
"The Man with the Golden Gun"
The Plot: Bond looks into a stolen energy-generating device and finds himself squaring off against Scaramanga, the world's best assassin.
The Good Stuff: Casting Christopher Lee as the ominously cheerful Scaramanga was pretty smart, as was giving him pint-sized henchman Hervé Villechaize. At times the film has a strange, "Dr. Phibes"-like surrealist edge to it, particularly once it settles down at Scaramanga's bizarre island-set mansion/fun house for an extended showdown.
The Bad Stuff: Director Guy Hamilton, perhaps getting bored with Bond, seems more interested in making a comedy than a spy film. To that end he ratchets up the goofball sight gags to sometimes insufferable levels, even adding cartoon sound effects to what should have been a show-stopping car stunt. Also, Clifton James makes a most unwelcome and improbable return as the redneck sheriff.
Timeless Message: If your disguise includes a fake third nipple, wait until you get home to remove it.
"The Spy Who Loved Me"
The Plot: Cold war tensions heat up when Bond is paired with a lovely Soviet agent who is every bit his equal, and together they try to stop a modern-day Captain Nemo from plunging the world into nuclear war.
The Good Stuff: The slapstick is thankfully downplayed this time around, leaving plenty of room for thrilling chase scenes, stunning model work and special effects, and a tone that playfully walks the line between campy and serious. Barbara Bach is up to the task of matching wits with Bond, while Richard Kiel injects the iconic part of henchman "Jaws" with equal parts menace and charm. Hands down, this is one of the best, most entertaining Bonds.
The Bad Stuff: The more serious and dramatic scenes, while adding a nice level of grit to an otherwise purely camp storyline, are so few and far between that they seem underdeveloped.
Timeless Message: The cold war can, in fact, be ended by smoldering hot sex.
Coming soon: Bonds 11-20(?)
