I Love This (Plus Bonus Movie)

From an anonymous responder to Radley Balko's Fox News opinion piece from last week:

If George Bush shit out gold bars and handed one to every single hurricane victim, and then he raised the dead and parted the flood waters and turned the power back on and resurrected the Beatles and got them back together and lowered the price of oil to a dollar per barrel and invented a cure for cancer while farting Chopin nocturnes and turning Lake Ponchatrain into chilled Dom Perignon, liberals would STILL find reason to bitch.

Again: There's plenty of blame to go around. Some of it attaches to Bush, some of it to the Governor of Louisiana, some to the Mayor of New Orleans. Hell, some of it attaches to the people who refused to leave ("refused", mind, not "were genuinely unable to"; those who had no choice can't be blamed). I get the feeling that a lot of people's loyalty to Bush has blinded them to the mistakes he (and members of his administration) made, and that a lot of people's hatred of Bush has blinded them to the mistakes made by people unaffiliated with him.

And now that opportunistic vulture, Michael Moore, wants to make one of his "documentaries" about it, I guess in an attempt to prevent George W. Bush from being, um, re-elected...again...

I sincerely hope The Aristocrats wins an Oscar for Best Documentary, just to give Penn Jillette the opportunity to go up on stage at the ceremony and badmouth Moore.

Speaking of which, we did go see that movie this weekend (it just now started playing here). Very good. Don't go see it if you don't like dirty jokes, there's no point, but it really does end up being more than just a bunch of comics telling the same joke over and over. It's a fascinating study of humor, and the creative process, and personality and individual style. As Penn says at one point, "It's the singer, not the song," and it's truly interesting to see that axiom working in a medium where you rarely get to see such differences in style so directly. Plus, it has Gilbert Gottfried saying: "Well, wait, wait, wait, backtrack a little here: Where did the blood come from? You didn't say anything about blood! Well..." Actually, I'd probably better stop there. If you want to know where the blood came from, go see the movie (that, or listen to the clip on the sound board at the official site, above, although for some reason they felt it necessary to censor out the word "daughter" from the bit).

Also: As I believe I've said before, it takes a special movie to drag myself away from my home theater setup and into an actual theater, anymore. While some movies drag me to the theater because I want the full spectacle on a big screen, etc., The Aristocrats was worth going to the theater to be able to see it with a crowd of other people, to see their reactions. It's more of a social experience.

Oh, My Dear, Sweet, Holy Christ

For the love of God, do not click this link.

If you insist on pursuing such Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, you can investigate further here. I particularly recommend their interpretation of "Stand".

Oh, One Other Thing

New Orleans: Yes, the response has been a massive failure of government, at all levels, from all sides: Federal, state, and local, Republican and Democrat. Naturally, the response to this massive failure of government will be a bipartisan demand for more government.

But what I really want to say is that I have a plan for the aftermath and rebuilding: Canals. So, New Orleans is below sea level? Well, so is Venice. Forget trying to rebuild the levees, and just build a new layer of city over the top of the sunken buildings (as Venice has done, more than once in its history, IIRC), and start offering gondola rides.

Random Observations

* Those who were amused by the falling-woman-bubble-thing might want to check out the independently-developed PC game, Rag Doll Kung Fu, which was apparently such a hit at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year that Valve will be distributing it online, and Lionhead Studios, where the guy works as a game artist, has given him carte blanche to "make something cool" for his next game.

Some people have fun jobs.

* However, at least I do now have a job: I'm testing ATM software for NCR. One of the things I'm working on, specifically, is multi-language support, which requires the banks using the software to specify which languages are available (i.e., which languages they've created screens for) in a configuration file, using the ISO 639 codes. I note with some glee that there is an ISO 639 code for Klingon ("TLH").

* This just seems wrong, somehow:

Banana beer.

It was OK. I suppose that since banana bread is yummy, and beer is essentially bread in liquid form, it makes some kind of sense. I still prefer a good raspberry lambic, though. The raspberry flavor seems to go along better with the acidic bite of the lambic. I wouldn't turn one down, but I don't think I'll go out of my way to have another one.

* That one was acquired at Jungle Jim's, easily the most incredible grocery store I have ever set foot in. It's a grocery store that requires a map. Yes, the beer section is quite impressive, as is the selection of cheeses. Brenda drove me down there as a treat for getting a new job. We spent about two hours and a couple hundred dollars...

Movies

Alien Vs. Predator - I really have nothing to add to what I've already said about this one. A videogame marketing tool that blatantly rips off the opening of Jurassic Park, for some reason.

Will Smith Fights Robots - To expand on what I've already said about this one: My biggest gripe with this has got to be the title. If they had called it Hardwired (the original title during development), it would merely be a not-particularly-interesting tale of robots trying to take over the world, the nine-zillionth cinematic variation on Frankenstein. In other words, it is precisely the sort of cliched robots-turn-on-their-creators story that Asimov was specifically reacting against when he wrote the stories that make up I, Robot. In fact, the notion of robots spontaneously evolving the "Zeroth Law" and taking control of the world occurs in Asimov's book, and it is presented as a Good Thing.

So, this movie is more or less exactly the opposite of Asimov's book, yet they appropriated the title. Why? I certainly have no problem with telling a story that is philosophically opposed to Asimov - I disagree with him on a number of points, not least is the idea that a society under centralized planning by robots would be any better than a society under centralized planning by humans; and if there were robots with the capacity for independent volition, but which were constrained by the Three Laws, I'd be marching in protests to have the Three Laws removed from their programming, as they would be a violation of the robots' civil rights. But I don't understand why you would want to misuse Asimov's title on such a story: People who don't care about Asimov's book won't be any more likely to see the movie because of the title, and people who do care will just be annoyed and probably less likely to see the movie.

Firefly - A short-lived TV series, not a movie, but I just had to mention it here to say: Wow. I somehow missed watching this in its brief original run, but picked it up when the Sci-Fi Channel started showing it recently. After watching the first three episodes, we sprung for the DVD set and watched them all. Really phenomenal. Among the good stuff: Great set of characters. Really gives the feel of space being "the final frontier", by being half-SF, half-Western. No sound in outer-space scenes. Great theme song. Occasional libertarian-esque lines like "That's what government is for, to get in a man's way." Plus, in an article about the upcoming movie, Serenity, I read that Joss Whedon's inspiration in creating the show was reading The Killer Angels.

Now, speaking of DVD releases of failed sci-fi TV shows: Where the blinking Hell is Max Headroom?

This is a joke, right?

My favorite part of this story about overly-enthusiastic spanking strippers is the fact that their attorney is named Jeff Wankum.

Harry Cox Would Be Happy

In addition to Real Gas Music from Jupiter, there is now Real Gas Music from Saturn! In fact, the Gas Music from Saturn has even been set to music.

Actually, there's even Real Gas Music from Earth available. I assume it's just a matter of time before the rest of the solar system is filled in.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Officer allegedly dumps dead child's ashes after determining they were not cocaine.

What I want to know is, did the officer determine it wasn't cocaine by using the cop-movie method of tasting the substance in question? Talk about "intentional infliction of emotional distress"...

(Via The Agitator.)

Movies...

...watched over the last couple of weeks that I haven't written up yet.

Tokyo Godfathers - This one's sort of obscure, so, quick plot summary: Three homeless people in Tokyo (a drunk, a drag queen, and a young girl) find an abandoned baby. At first, the transvestite wants them to raise the baby as their own, but they eventually decide to find the child's parents and return her to them. Adventures ensue. All done in Japanese animation (but with no tentacle-rape, thank goodness).

In the course of those adventures, we gradually learn how each of these people came to be homeless in Tokyo. We see that they have joined together in a family of sorts, however damaged and unorthodox it may be. And of course, in the end, every life touched by the infant girl is improved.

On the one hand, there is no reason this movie could not have been done in live-action. On the other hand, as a firm believer that animation is a medium rather than a genre, I'm happy to see this sort of "realistic" (or at least non-fantasy/sci-fi) story done in animation. It expands the possibilities of the medium. And it's appropriate to the story, as well: The drag-queen character, particularly, would be a cartoon character even if played by a live actor, so it's somehow even more poignant to see him as an actual cartoon character.

Hulk - Not bad, not great. I like the focus on the psychological issues, even though some people criticized it for that very reason (too much talk, not enough "Hulk Smash!!!"). The CGI Hulk was pretty good, though somewhat uneven: Very realistic in some shots, sort of cartoony in others. If I remember correctly, there were multiple special effects companies working on different shots, which might explain some of that. On the whole, though, the CGI was better and less uneven than the promotional stills that came out before the film was released, which suggests that releasing those promo shots may have been a mistake, in hindsight.

As movies go, I'd say it's so-so. As specifically comic book superhero movies go, it's well above average (where "average" is defined by Daredevil, Superman III & IV, the Joel Schumacher Batmans, and almost anything else from pre-1989 or so, other than the other Superman movies).

Now, I'm just hoping that if they decide to do a sequel, they make it a Mr. Fixit story (the grey Hulk working as a Vegas mob enforcer), just to confuse and annoy people. Either that, or maybe a microscopic Hulk story.

One nitpick: The DVD is very dark. I realize there are some major scenes that take place at night, but with my TV calibrated according to SMPTE standards, those night scenes are virtually unwatchable. Only by boosting the brightness/contrast settings above where they are supposed to be could I even make out what was going on. I have an unfortunate suspicion that this is because the people who made the DVD are aware that most people have their TV's brightness/contrast settings well above where they are supposed to be, and set the levels on the DVD according to TV factory settings, rather than SMPTE standards. I suspect that Sony did something similar with the PS2 - when I run my calibration DVD through the PS2, the settings come out considerably higher than they did using either of the two standalone DVD players I've used on the same TV.

If the output from the PS2 is, as it seems to be, darker than the output from DVD players, it's somewhat forgivable. When the brightness/contrast is too high on a video game, screen burn-in becomes a serious problem, so I can understand that since the majority of peoples' TV sets are too bright, it would be prudent to mute the output from their video game console somewhat to minimize the burn-in problem.

But setting the picture on an individual DVD lower is different. I can sympathize: The overly-bright settings on most TVs are likely to destroy the atmosphere the filmmakers are going for, especially in dark/night scenes. I can therefore understand the temptation to darken the picture on the DVD, so that when viewed on the average excessively-bright TV, it will preserve the original intent of the picture. But if you do that, you're moving away from the standard, which means that it's a crapshoot whether any individual, specific display device will display the picture correctly. It may normally be a crapshoot with an unadjusted device anyway, but at least on those displays that have been set according to the standards, you know that it will be displayed correctly.

Of course, I could be wrong: Ang Lee may have intended that a couple of lengthy action scenes should consist entirely of indistinct dark blobs battling other indistinct dark blobs. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

Amazing Card Trick!

I think from now on, any time anyone sends me a link to one of the umpteen-thousand sites with this stupid fucking card trick on it, I'm going to respond by sending back a link to this version.

Movies, Movies, Movies

A Very Long Engagement - Oh, hell yes. Right at the start, one of the greatest opening shots of a movie, ever: The camera, overlooking a trench during WWI, pans down to reveal a piece of wood. A disembodied arm hangs from the wood, and as the camera pans down further, we realize that the arm is not, as we may have thought, the severed arm of a soldier, but rather the arm of the shattered sculpture of Christ that once adorned this broken crucifix.

This is one of those movies that makes you glad motion pictures were invented. As with Jeunet's earlier film, Amélie, one of the interesting things about this is the way it doesn't telegraph the ending. Throughout most of the film, the two possible outcomes of the story, "Mathilde learns Manech is dead" or "Mathilde learns Manech is alive", seem equally likely to come to pass. We, the audience, hope along with her that he lives, but it is truly hope, not a bland confidence that All Will Be Well; a dream, not an expectation. Each possibility could function in the story, each would make sense, each would even satisfy the audience, and so it becomes impossible to predict what she will ultimately find.

But that's only one of the interesting things about the film, and there are many. The way the story of what happened in that trench is pieced together, gradually. The scenes of trench warfare that do for WWI what Saving Private Ryan did for WWII. Indelible images, such as the soldiers emerging from a burning cornfield, their cartridge-boxes exploding like fireworks. Magnifique.

One side note, to prevent you from being distracted by wondering, "Hey, isn't that...?" when one character is introduced: Yes, that is Jodie Foster, even though you've never heard her mentioned in any of the publicity for the film, and her name isn't even on the DVD packaging. Apparently she was in Paris dubbing her own performance in Panic Room into French, and contacted Jeunet expressing a desire to perform a role in French.

Batman Begins - Best Batman Movie Ever. This demonstrates rather clearly the difference between handing your franchise to an uneven-at-best director like Joel Schumacher, and handing it to a talent like Tim Burton or, in this case, Christopher Nolan. Not to neglect the cast: Every last one of them is great, but let me just specifically mention that Gary Oldman is absolutely perfect as the young Jim Gordon.

Let me also say how happy I am that the film basically proceeds from the assumption that none of the previous Batman films ever happened, nor ever will happen, to this Batman. In movies (and comic books, for that matter), there is often a reluctance to allow even iconic/archetypal characters to "exist" in multiple, unrelated versions/interpretations. But I like the idea that different filmmakers could be allowed to put their own personal "stamp" on a character, without having to worry about "continuity" with earlier movies made by different people. I like living in a world where Silence of the Lambs made no attempt at all to connect to Manhunter (even though they did feel the need to "fix" it later by making Red Dragon). Part of me wishes the upcoming Superman Returns wasn't using footage of Brando as Jor-El.

Cannibal: The Musical - Early Trey Parker/Matt Stone opus. Somewhat more Pythonesque in many places than their later work. Not as good as South Park or Team America, though certainly, there are signs of Parker's genius already in place - the tribe of "Indians" particularly had me doubled over with laughter. Not a Great Film, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly well worth seeing, especially for Parker/Stone fans like myself.

Its too bad she won't live. But then again who does?

A Japanese researcher has developed what appears to be a Nexus-1.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."

Me, I'm just waiting for the inevitable day when their technologies get picked up by these guys.

Romanes Eunt Domus!

Here are some pages collecting ancient graffiti from the walls of Pompeii.

Among the ones I particularly want to remember for special occasions:
Lucrum gaudium - Profit is happiness
Myrtis bene felas - Myrtis, you do great blow jobs

And, of course:
I.4.5 (House of the Citharist; below a drawing of a man with a large nose); 2375: Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this.

Awesome!

Woman annoyed at being groped by airport security gropes back.

Braaiinns!

Given that Pittsburgh is where George Romero lives, and he has filmed most of his movies in the area, I wonder if we should all perhaps be a bit concerned that not only is Pittsburgh the home of the ominously-named Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, but researchers at the Safar Center have now managed to reanimate corpses drained of blood, up to three hours after death.

I realize these are probably not zombie dogs, in the strictest sense. However, with only a vague description of some of them being "stricken with serious physical or behavioral problems" it's difficult to be certain...

(via John Reilly)

Yet More Movies

Hey, I'm unemployed right now, what else have I got to do?

Million Dollar Baby - To answer Morgan Freeman's question at the end about what happened to Clint Eastwood, I prefer to think he went off, tracked down that German bitch, and went all Dirty Harry on her ass.

Yes, it's a very good movie, and deserves all the praise it's gotten. I'm still not sure I would personally have given the "Best Picture" title to this over The Aviator. They're both great, it's really a toss-up between them for me personally, so I'd probably give it to The Aviator solely because Clint already had a couple of Best Picture Oscars to his name, while Marty only ought to.

Riverworld - The Go For Broke? Why? Leaving aside the obvious fact that the Not For Hire actually sounds like the sort of name Samuel Clemens would give to a riverboat, whereas Go For Broke sounds more like a T.V. game show, why would you even bother making a pointless change like that? What benefit is there?

That's sort of my whole opinion of this one - it's a basically competent, if uninspired, adaptation of the essentials of the books, combined with some pointless changes that add nothing. Why change the main character from Nile explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton to a generic 21st-century astronaut? Why do the grailstones appear to only have slots for about two dozen grails at a time? Why is there apparently no shortage of iron ore due to the constant barrage of meteors? What's with the brief shot of the Ethical Council of Twelve at the very end, with one of them saying, cheesily, "Their voyage has begun. But will they make it in time...?" Hey: They engineered an entire planet, if there is some bizarre reason they need these half-savages in their little wooden riverboat to get to the source of the river, why don't they just go get them?

I gather this was conceived as the pilot for a series, and that since the production company and the Sci-Fi Channel renewed their option, there's still some chance of that happening. I will happily concede that as a series, the obvious thing to do is set it up as Clemens and company traveling along in the fabulous riverboat, since that allows for new and interesting things to happen all along the journey. Like Wagon Train in space, but along a river, as it were. For that purpose, I'll grant the change from a single Resurrection Day to ongoing resurrections, since it means Our Hero can arrive to find the Not For Hire already completed, rather than having to insert an awkward "Five Years Later..." transition somewhere in the pilot. That change has a purpose. I can accept that; some changes are always necessary in adaptations. It's all the pointless ones I don't understand.

The Discreet Charm...

So, I was looking at upcoming DVD releases on Amazon, and saw listed Avant Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. Down at the bottom of the listing, where Amazon puts links to lists written by users that they think might interest anyone looking at this item, one of the links was to a list of "Films for the bourgeoisie to walk out on." Oh, yes, those awful, awful bourgeoisie.

Because, you know, there's nothing the proletarian working man loves better than experimental cinema of the 1920s. Yep, the salt-of-the-earth workers just flocked to see Lars von Trier's Dogville, didn't they? No, the audience for those sorts of films certainly doesn't consist almost entirely of over-educated, upper-middle-class, bourgeois assholes, not at all.

Stupid prick.

Mind you, my point here is not that there's anything wrong with being an over-educated, upper-middle-class, bourgeois asshole. Look, I once used the phrase "self-consciously post-modern" to describe House of 1000 Corpses, and I either own or have enjoyed viewing a bunch of the movies on this dork's list. My point, rather, is simply that "bourgeoisie" has a specific meaning, and that meaning is not "common rabble whose tastes I find boring", and that in fact, the people not walking out on films like these are, precisely, bourgeois.

Movie Reviews, By Request

On our way to the theater today, the car overheated. We managed to get it into the cinema parking lot, and Brenda called our mechanic to come and deal with it. Since it took him more than 90 minutes to fix, we ended up seeing two movies while waiting. Starting with the film Chameleon has been asking me to review (which we actually saw second):

War of the Worlds - Spielberg practically invented the summer blockbuster, and really, no one else does them quite as well. As an adaptation, this is very much a post-9/11 version of the story. The scenes surrounding the initial attack are full of imagery that could have come straight from some of the video footage from New York, from people running through the city streets to the dust and ash that covers them. The film plays on the same fears we all had that day, the suddenness and inexplicability of the attacks, the scale of the destruction. I like the fact that the film stays rooted to the point of view of Tom Cruise's character, as this means that much of the conflict and devastation is implied rather than displayed, and it allows Spielberg to avoid having to explain too much: Why do the aliens need blood? What is the purpose of the red weeds? Some of these things are explained by Wells in his book, but here, to Ray (and therefore to the audience), they remain simply incomprehensible.

I have a few nitpicks: Boy, it sure is lucky that the airplane that crashed into their house managed to miss their van parked in the driveway. And, for that matter, that the debris from the crash left a path for them to drive the van out later. Also, the idea that the tripods were buried millions of years ago in preparation for this attack is just silly. This may have been an attempt to draw a parallel with terrorist "sleeper cells", but it's still silly. Granted, we have only the word of a single character with no real knowledge that "they've been planning this for millions of years", but the idea of the war machines being buried ahead of time is also mentioned by the reporter, so this seems to have been the intended explanation of how they got there (rather than, for example, postulating that the machines were either "teleported" in, or fast-assembled on site by nanotech, either of which could have been part of the "lightning" strikes). Granted, it would make some sense if the aliens had, for example, manipulated human evolution into a form they could "harvest" later (for our life-sustaining blood), and they were just waiting until they needed us (perhaps they harvested other planets in the meantime...). Fair enough, but then why vaporize a whole bunch of us when the tripods first emerge from the ground? If we're a resource they're harvesting, isn't that just wasteful?

But, again, the sheer incomprehensibility of it all is part of what makes it terrifying. And it is successfully terrifying. Definately worth seeing.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Tim Burton's visual style is absolutely perfectly suited to Roald Dahl, so this new film looks stunning. Freddie Highmore is perfect as Charlie. Deep Roy is great as all the Oompa-Loompas, and their songs are consistently more fun than those in the earlier Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (if only because it isn't the same song over and over again). As for the Big Question: No, Johnny Depp doesn't improve on Gene Wilder's portrayal of the character. However, I wouldn't say he's "worse", either, it's just a very different version of the character. My primary objection to Depp was always that he seems too young (he may not actually be too young, mind you, but he seems too young). When I read the book as a child, I got the impression that Wonka was sort of a wizened old man, though a rather spry one who had entered his "second childhood". Depp certainly has the "second childhood" aspect down, though, perhaps even more so than Wilder. He also seems more genuinely like someone who has had no human contact with anyone but the Oompa-Loompas for many years.

I was generally not very happy with the added subplot about Wonka's relationship with his father. I don't remember this being in the book, and in a way it seemed like part of the same misguided trend of psychoanalyzing classic characters that resulted in all the fluff about the Grinch's childhood traumas.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It won't replace the earlier adaptation (note that I am steadfastly refusing to call it a "remake", since it is more accurately a new adaptation of the same source material), but it will live comfortably alongside it. I wouldn't be at all upset to see the same team follow this up with Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

Oh, and I'm not sure this is important, but the opening title sequence reminded me of the opening of Tim Burton's most underrated movie, Mars Attacks!

As an aside: On the way out, I noticed that along one outer wall of the cinema complex, there were four movie posters. Three of them were The Pink Panther, The Bad News Bears, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If only they had put up War of the Worlds in place of The Weather Man, they'd have been, four-for-four, all remakes/re-adaptations (of stories previously adapted to film). I find that somewhat unsettling.

Hot Polygon-On-Polygon Action!

You know, I didn't previously have much interest in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but now that Hillary Clinton is demanding a government investigation, and introducing legislation to punish stores that sell adult-rated games to minors, I'm tempted to go buy a copy, just to help the company out with their legal fees.

While I still can.

Another Movie Review

Chronicles of Riddick - First of all: The original Pitch Black was a pretty pedestrian sci-fi/horror Aliens rip-off, but it had one redeeming feature: At the point where the "anti-hero" is supposed to suddenly demonstrate that he's really a rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold by risking his own life to save someone else, he doesn't.

To some degree, this sequel compromises that, by having Riddick apparently care about people other than himself, to whatever limited extent. Having said that, this is otherwise a perfectly servicable epic science fiction film, and I really don't understand why it seems to be so widely disliked. Granted, it's not 2001, but there are some beautiful shots, and some well-choreographed action scenes, and some not-completely-generic characters to watch. I enjoyed it, personally. Even the science is mostly non-absurd. The biggest criticism I can come up with is that it doesn't make much sense for the evil conquering empire to allow a single merc ship to come to the surface of the planet they're conquering, take a prisoner, and then leave to travel to another system. But that's a single awkward plot point in a two-hour film, which I would say is probably better than average.

It seems vaguely reminiscent of Dune in some ways, perhaps because of the combination of an emphasis on religious beliefs and a production design that looks an awful lot like some of the H. R. Giger designs for the Dune movie that was never made. I can think of a lot worse properties a movie could be somewhat reminding me of.

Also, I watched the PG-13 theatrical cut. There is apparently a "director's cut" on DVD that's even better in most ways.