Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/2/14-3/8/14)

    Busy, busy, busy.  A Dork’s life is never (OK, often) dull.  Up first thing on Sunday for my recommended dose of Neeson, and then I was off, for another week of running around, trying to read, catching too few movies, and generally doing what I do.  F’in snow storm on Monday threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works.  Seriously.  I moved to Virginia in part to get away from snow and winter storms.  And everyone kept telling me they’re so rare here.  Well, three out of 7 years we’ve had severe winter weather and I’ve had to shovel.  Not cool.  Anyway, on with the usual Dorkness.

Non-Stop:  Not quite as good as Taken or Taken 2, this “Liam Neeson gets angry and kills a bunch of people” movie is more on the level of Unknown.  It’s fun and perfectly watchable, but it won’t be going on any best of lists.  Like an Agatha Christie story, the movie sets up everyone to look as guilty as possible, so you never quite know who the villain is…except that I knew who the villain was from the first moment said person showed their face on screen.  If you’re in the mood for Neeson yelling and looking angry, while occasionally snapping a neck, watch Taken.  But if you just watched Taken, this is a fine follow-up.

Fiancee of Dracula:  Grave yards, weird nuns, a circus dwarf on a motorcycle, a baby eating ogress who looks like a porn star?  Oh, yes.  Jean Rollin.  This film deals with many of the themes Rollin used from his earliest days.  His vampires are sad, slightly baffled extra-dimensional beings, disconnected from those around them and often thought mad.  They wander and stumble across each other, and across other weird characters as they try to figure themselves and their world out.  Rollin never really grew as an artist, but within his very strange, very specific little world, he was a master.  Dream logic, vague pretension, an almost Romantic sexuality, and a playful touch of the absurd.  Though not traditionally good, I find Rollin’s films compulsively watchable, and for more than just the pretty women taking their clothes off.  The atmosphere he creates sometimes feels like what Hammer Studios was reaching for in their most Gothic of films (though Hammer had a tendency to expect their films to have some modicum of plot and logic).

Pilot X: Murder in the Sky:  This feels like a truncated serial, with much the same plot progression common to the ‘masked criminal’ series.  Planes have been getting shot down, so in an attempt to find out who is doing it, the likely suspects are brought to a secluded house to be observed.  Of course, they start getting picked off, the most obviously guilty first, and so on.  The acting is mostly stilted and the editing makes most of the flying scenes almost impossible to follow.  Several times, I couldn’t tell who was involved in a dog fight, who was winning, or who’d just been shot.  And honestly, the reveal was pretty darned obvious.  The details, not so much, but I had the killer pegged from early on.  It’s an OK bit of fluff, but there are many better.

Tim’s Vermeer:  I’m glad this isn’t simply the ‘mad eccentric’ movie the trailer made it out to be.  Tim Jenison is a very smart guy, and yes, perhaps a bit mad.  And he’s interested in a lot of things.  He’s made enough money that he’s able to investigate and explore these interests to sometimes surreal extremes.  And this is the case with his fascination with the artist Vermeer and how his paintings were made.  Following in the footsteps of a few researchers, Tim conceived of a wild project to try to recreate one of the paintings in what he believes may be the unconventional way it was originally done.  What follows is part archeology, part art history, part This Old House, and more than a part obsession.  Tim isn’t the distant savant, or creepy loner that usually anchors a subject like this.  He seems like a mostly normal, if clearly genius level, human being.  A guy you might get coffee with, or discuss the latest film.  And as crazy as what he’s doing is, he reacts to much of it in a perfectly reasonable way, even admitting at one point that if it wasn’t part of an ongoing film production, he’d have quit working on it.  But I’m glad it was part of that film.  There are a lot of things discussed over the course of the movie, about philosophy and history, etc.  But I think the most interesting and important realization, or assertion is that art and science were not, and should not be separate things.  I think the separation of art and science has led to some serious cultural dissonance.  A satisfying documentary, which made me want to go out and paint…not a Vermeer, but something.

    Thanks to TCM showing so many great movies you just can’t find on DVD, I got a chance to see a Ruth Chatterton movie I’d been wanting to see for some time.  They’re really the only channel I watch, and the one thing I’ll miss when I don’t have cable again in a year.

Dodsworth:  Walter Huston is so much fun as the newly retired industrialist, off to learn how to live his life and love his wife.  Sadly, his wife, played by Ruth Chatterton, isn’t so much interested in love as she is in holding on to her quickly receding youth.  She is attracted to flattery like a moth of flame, and that can’t end well.  Considering that this film came out after the Hayes Codes were in full effect, I was a bit surprised by some of the content.  I suppose, even with the crackdown, not everyone was on board or had their puritanical hooks into everything yet.  I’m gaining a new appreciation for Walter Huston recently.  And I’ve become quite a fan of Ruth Chatterton, who is playing someone very different than I’m used to here, but doing a fine job of it.  You really hate and pity her as it goes on.

About Time:  Absolutely, this is a sappy romantic fantasy, with a very odd time travel twist that allows it to make its point.  Fine.  But dang it, it’s super sweet and adorable, and I love the cast.  It’s funny, it’s charming, and if I had a heart in my chest, I would imagine this warming it.  Now, the movie is guilty of one cinematic sin, for sure.  It uses the old ‘frumpy hair/outfit’ in order to try to make us imagine that Rachel McAdams isn’t a painfully beautiful woman.  However, I thought McAdams is a good enough actor that she made me forget how hot she is for a while, and focus on how awkwardly cute her character is.  I could certainly understand people accusing this of being saccharine or schmaltzy.  They wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.  But I enjoyed the heck out of the whole thing.

    On Thursday night, we were again at our usual haunt, The Alamo Drafthouse, to see a double shot of muscle and steel.  I’d seen 300 on the big screen when it first came out, but not in a really nice theater.  And it made a difference.  This time around, the first time the Persians slam against the Spartan shields, I felt the impact as much as I heard it.

300:  One of the most wonderfully ridiculous, over the top, macho, beefy films ever made, this rousing tale of buff dudes battling mutant hoards has about as much to do with the historic events as The Ten Commandments, but it’s got a heck of a lot more awesome.  Lots of great lines, lots of wild scenes, lots of driving music, and so, so much wacky slow/fast motion.  The battles are intense and fun, the dialog almost Shakespearian in its theatricality.  And the badassery on display not only from the Spartan soldiers, but from Queen Gorgo …Awesome.  I hope that when I’m called to defend my lands against ravaging hoards of horror, I have a woman half as hardcore as Gorgo watching my back.  In a movie so crammed full of baby-oiled up muscle men, chest pounding, and testosterone pumping speeches, it’s great to have a woman who stands toe to toe on heroics.  And something I can’t help but mention when I talk about this movie, I love that it portrays a couple who are deeply and passionately in love with each other, enjoy each other’s company, and still has a vigorous sex life.

300: Rise of an Empire:  Everything that worked in the first film did not work in this one.  I was horrified to find myself longing for 300’s subtlety…Yeah, a movie that’s about as subtle as a Nic Cage freak-out, and this film makes it look like the world's greatest spy giving a lesson on subtlety at the University of Subtle, Secretly Located In Oxford (accredited!).  We’re subjected to the sad, sensitive, irritatingly concerned, blue eyes of a perpetually young warrior poet from Athens, Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who explains in great detail how everything that he and his army does is ‘what living/fighting/being free is all about.’  And then we have the most feared and powerful naval commander in the Persian Empire, Artemisia (Eva Green), who manages to blow every opportunity for victory and display every possible level of incompetence, seemingly having gained all her position and power by using secret vagina magic.  Then we get to find out how she has the most cliché back story they could come up with (yes, that’s right, the toughest sorceress/general/warrior/naval commander and right-hand of the Persian Emperor is just an injured little girl looking to get back at the people who wronged her…For the love of crap!  F&%$ you, writer(s) of this film!).  Show don’t tell.  That’s the golden rule of cinema, and the one this movie breaks most often.  I kept trying to like it.  For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, I think I managed to not hate it.  But at some point, I couldn’t pretend anymore, and the taint it was putting upon the first film was too much.  Zack Snyder has his faults, and his last two movies (Sucker Punch  and Man of Steel) have disappointed me greatly.  But I missed him on this project, for sure.  And really?  Really?  Penetrated by his cock-sword?  Really?  300 only had one female character, but she was f'in hardcore and stood as much for heroism as any of the beefy Spartans.  This movie has two.  Gorgo has inexplicably become a sword wielding warrior woman (not her brand of badass), and Artemisia who seems to embody Victorian Man's fears and hatreds of women.  Ugh.

Old Boy (2013):  I know so many people who go so gaga over the original Korean film, but watching it a couple years back, I was left cold/bored by it.  I don’t tend to respond well to Korean film in general; something about the pacing, I don’t know.  Whatever the case, combined with the fact that Spike Lee was behind this remake, it was not something I gave two craps about.  Not even sure why I ended up putting it on my NetFlix queue.  But I did, and now I’ve seen it, and it’s…OK.  I felt a bit more engaged in this version than the original.  However, it still left me cold; though not as bored.  Everyone is fine.  The story is pretty messed up.  Sharlto Copley tries his darnedest to channel Vincent Price in his wildly silly villain role.  But Lee’s usual camera tomfoolery is off-putting, and while Elizabeth Olsen does a good job, I can’t help but feel her character stepped out of a crappy 80s action/cop movie (if only she lived in a converted warehouse and did welding/sculpting as a hobby).  I wouldn’t avoid watching this, but I wouldn’t go out of my way, either.

    Saturday afternoon, the director and the star of the short film I’m working on came to my place for a penultimate meeting, with some test shots of costume and set, and a final checklist of props and such.  I felt a heck of a lot better after seeing how the set wall looked on camera.  That was making me a bit nervous.  Otherwise, it all seems good.  I’m so danged excited to see this as a final product.

Love:  You can probably guess this from the trailer, but Love owes a good deal to Kubrick’s 2001 and many other science fiction movies besides.  But that shouldn’t lessen your enjoyment of this slightly non-linier story about an astronaut stranded in space.  Pieces of the story are rooted in the American Civil War, and there are lots of flashbacks and cut-away shots of people living and talking about life.  It’s all very artsy, but didn’t feel particularly pretentious.  The film looks great, with some gorgeous Civil War battle shots and lots of excellent space stuff.  Yes, there’s gravity on the space station.  So what?  This isn’t a high budget film, thus, no zero-G filming.  Don’t be a dick.  The sets are nice, and the lead actor doesn’t botch it.  I don’t know that he’s the most charismatic or interesting to watch, but he’s got the weight of the whole film on his shoulders and he doesn’t mess it up.  So, bravo.  Fans of more serious science fiction should give it a go.  Not one for the ages, but good.

    It was interesting to watch Love when I did.  A few things I’ve seen recently play with some of the ideas of this short film we’re working on.  Like Gravity, All is Lost, The Wall, and some others I’ve seen recently, Love deals with isolation and the stress of being out of contact.

    And that’s about it.  I had a busy week, but not as much on the Dork side as I like.  I’m hoping with the weather finally looking like it might not totally suck, I’ll be able to get my bike out and start breathing outdoor air again.  Time will tell.

-Matt

Dork Art: Francesco Francavilla's Point Break

Comic Book Superstar & ITMOD Favorite, Francesco Francavilla vented some remake fatigue this morning through his twitter feed.  Point Break 2015 starring Gerard Butler & Luke Bracey, and directed by Ericson Core (the guy responsible for the look of Daredevil, The Fast and The Furious, & Payback).  Does anybody want that?  Not me.  But I'm always rooting for Gerard Butler.  Rocknrolla, Law Abiding Citizen, Gamer.  I love those whacky flicks.  Olympus Has Fallen...well, the man tries real hard.  And I've stated on ITMOD before, and I'll state over & over again - remakes are as old as cinema itself.  Some of your favorite films are remakes - The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, A Fistful of Dollars, The Thing, The Fly, Sleepless in Seattle, The Bourne Identity, and The Ladykillers.  So this small handful of films justifies Total Recall, Evil Dead, Carrie, Oldboy, Robocop, Point Break??  Probably not.  I'm just not ready to jump on the hate wagon anymore just cuz the general consensus says REMAKES ARE DUMB.  I'm a film freak with hope in his heart.  Godzilla!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--Brad

Brad's Two Weeks in Dork! (3/17/13-3/30/13)

Hey ITMOD readers, long time no see.  Glad Matt's been keeping this place tidy & organized, but I've just come off a long streak of work and even though I managed to watch a crap ton of movies & tv I really haven't had the time to shove it into the void of the internet.  Saw 6 2013 new releases, but with the exception of Room 237, each theatrical outing proved to be a disappointment.  It's April now.  Side Effects is still my favorite film of the year.  This cannot continue.  I need quality filmmaking stat.

The film that's really grabbed my noggin these past couple of weeks was Holy Motors.  I'm still trying to process all the crazy contained in that surreal headtrip, but what is certain is that Denis Lavant is a beautiful monster.  Just look at that mug up top in the header.  That's a dude who's lived a life.  A strange, wild, absurd life but one I want to see played out in a franchise of Holy Motor limo rides.  And while we're at it, why don't we pair his gorgeous mug with Nicole Kidman's red eyed rage face from Park Chan Wook's Stoker.  That film may not have been what I was looking for, but the climactic closeup of Nicole Kidman's contempt for her offspring sent chills down my spine.  Make it your wallpaper and you'll become entranced by her Lovecraftian nothingness.  But before we get to Stoker, we must suffer through banality...

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:  Steve Carell, he's funny right?  I've enjoyed him in movies.  Brick in Anchorman, love that guy.  Crazy Stupid Love, there's a dad you root for.  The 40 Year Old Virgin, that's me...or was me until I tricked a lady into coming back to my toy filled apartment.  But Burt Wonderstone...he's an unfunny ass.  I certainly enjoy the world he inhabits.  I've been fascinated with stage magic since I saw my first Penn & Teller show.  And the debate between old school vs new school (Chris Angel, give me a break) is ripe for comedic exploration.  But this film is chuckles at best, yawns at worst.  Steve Buscemi is in Adam Sandler mode here.  I love you Steve, you're doing your finest work on Boardwalk Empire right now, but this stuff is way beneath you - come on, you're beyond funny face yucks.  Jim Carrey is violently disgusting as the Brain Rapist street magician, and if you've been missing the days of Fire Marshall Bill than you'll probably enjoy his assault.  Olivia Wilde, do better movies!  Alan Arkin is the only guy who gets away with it.  The man's a working actor.  You win some, you loose some, you certainly move on to the next paycheck.

Blacksad - A Silent Hell:  Private dick John Blacksad and Weekly the reporter travel to the Mardi Gras hell of New Orleans to investigate the disappearance of Blues musician, Sebastian "Little Finger" Fletcher.  Another solid Blacksad mystery.  Guarnido's art is lighter & brighter down south, but as the dope fiend conspiracy spreads into medical malpractice manslaughter, the shades get sour and the gin joint panels go pitch black.  All Blacksad tales feel more style over substance, but they can survive on the beauty of mood.  How much you love these stories probably depends on how much you love noir, and how open you are to furry interpretation.  I will say that A Silent Hell is too brief to contain its Dark Horse Hardcover and the sketchbook back half is not profound enough to warrant the 20 dollar price tag.

Stoker:  Park Chan Wook makes beautifully upsetting movies.  I still hold Oldboy as cinema's greatest revenge film.  And Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is pure sadness on screen.  Thankfully, for his first English language feature, the director brought his steadfast cinematographer Chung Chung-Hoon with him across the pond and they've crafted another pretty picture.  Unfortunately, a pretty picture does not make a good movie.  Stoker is utterly forgettable in terms of plot.  After her father dies in a mysterious car crash, Mia Wasikowska must suffer the flirtations between her emotionally empty mother and her sexual predator uncle.  Not to mention her own violent tendencies bubbling to the surface.  I think what I wanted was Oldboy USA.  Instead what I got was Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer.  Is that the film's fault?  No.  But Stoker is as emotionally empty as its players.  Nicole Kidman might give an epic speech of Greek Tragedy child hate, and Matthew Goode might have the perfectly quiet eyes of the devil, but what does it all amount to?  A girl with a gun.  Blood splattered flowers.  A pretty picture.

My Amityville Horror:  Ghosts.  I'm not a believer.  I don't want to get into it too much, but I've certainly never experienced anything in my life to hint at the existence of Caspers.  Every time I see a spook story "Based On Actual Events" I role my eyes and try to enjoy the fiction.  In this documentary, Daniel Lutz attempts to explain the phenomena that's haunted his life ever since the release of the "classic" ghost story The Amityville Horror.  He talks about the ghosts, the flies, and the blood he witnessed when he was 10 years old.  He talks about his mother, his stepfather George Lutz, and the fame they sought after they became minor 70s celebrities.  It reeks of bullshit.  But it's sad bullshit.  How much does he believe?  How much reality was implanted by the film and its endless sequels?  How much of it is his own grab for acceptance?  The film certainly doesn't leave me with a belief in the supernatural.  Daniel Lutz was defined by an event that occurred when he was ten.  That's a depressing thought, a sad curse for sure.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds "Push The Sky Away" @ The Strathmore:  A few years ago during the Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! tour, The Wife & I were lucky enough to see The Bad Seeds at the 930 Club.  We got right up to the stage, and Nick Cave screamed his songs above us - the shepherd leading his flock.  It was an epic dork experience.  The finest concert I've ever been a part of.  Now they're back.  But The Strathmore is not the 930 Club.  It's a concert hall.  Big, spacious...BIG.  And The Wife & I had seats way up in the balcony.  Looking down on The Bad Seeds as they quietly pushed the sky away was like watching a concert on MTV (you know, when MTV actually televised concerts).  It was a good time.  But it certainly wasn't epic.  Their latest album is a soft spoken poem.  Cave whispers his words.  It's hypnotic in its own way, but it's not the punch to the gut I often look for in The Bad Seeds.  For the first half of their performance they stuck to the new album.  The best tune from that part of the show was "Jubilee Street" The Bad Seeds couldn't help but ramp up the song, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear them transform the ballad into a rock opera - beating and bashing a crescendo.  The second half of the show were the classics.   Red Right Hand.  Deanna.  Stagger Lee.  Even way up high, it was easy to thump to those beasties.  A good night out, but not a religious experience.

Lawless:  After the high of the Nick Cave concert, I needed more of his lyrical grit.  I could have snapped up the nightmare landscapes of The Proposition or The Road, but chose Lawless cuz I've also been craving Tom Hardy's mumble mash dialog.  I want to love this movie.  I love the period.  I love the look.  I love the cast.  Even Shia.  But it's lacking in the narrative.  And it never gets as brutal as I desire.  I want the whole film to be Tom Hardy & Jason Clarke covered in mobster blood.  You get a brief glimpse, but it never descends into proper moonshine hell.  John Hillcoat & Nick Cave made a masterpiece in The Proposition.  They may never equal that beast again.  I'm okay with that.  But hopefully they'll scrape the surface of the sun again.

Justified - Season 4 "Decoy":  Raylan Givens, Deputy Bob, & Rachel attempt to flee Drew Thompson from Harlan County.  Theo Tonin's goons patrol the skies in their helicopter, and Boyd Crowder unleashes sniper Colt upon a decoy of Marshall SUVs.  This is the most intense chase we've seen from this show yet.  And even though we get some machine gun fire and a molotov cocktail, the greatest action of the show occurs without a bullet being fired.  Timothy Olyphant shows off his badass side once more with a grin, and some harsh words directed at the Detroit Mafia.  Seriously, just when you think this man can't get any cooler he pulls another trick out of his bag.

Rust and Bone:  This film is curious.  Marion Cotillard is a whale trainer who drinks too much when she goes clubbing.  Mathias Schoenaerts is a street fighter bouncer with a bratty kid and an unstoppable sex drive.  After a horrible killer whale accident severs the legs of Cotillard the two find friendship (if not love) in the sex act.  Not to mention some serious dough in the art of bum fighting.  What the hell?  I don't get it.  Both characters feel like manipulations to poke my heartstrings, but Rust and Bone fails to capture my emotions.  Cotillard & Schoenaerts are sooooo not good for each other and as the film marched towards its climax I did not care if they found comfort in each other or not.  Then the ice breaks.  More sadness.  Shoulder shrug.  French, man.

Holy Motors:  "I Have A Plan To Go Mad." I man wakes up in his apartment, he opens a secret door in the wall, and steps into a cinema. Denis Lavant enters his Tardis-like limousine, he travels the passageways of Paris. When he exits the limo he's someone else. A female beggar. A flower gnashing maniac with a hard-on...I mean, an appreciation for cemeteries and fashion models. With the help of his chauffeur and vanity mirror he takes on various appointments; wild trips into cinematic genre where he might encounter Kylie Minogue one moment and battle off track suit gangsters the next. What does it all mean? I have no idea right now. But I already have a strong desire to rewatch the film. The interlude in which Lavant leads an Accordion Gang down a corridor while rocking the Doctor L cover of RL Burnside's Let My Baby Ride is hypnotizing. A youtube classic at the very least.

Prometheus:  A trip to Toys R Us yielded a Michael Fassbender David toy into my collection.  Why do I bother to collect action figures for a film I find so frustratingly mediocre?  Cuz I have hope in my heart, and that maybe my next viewing of Prometheus will reveal a genuine masterpiece.  There is so much to love about this film.  Fassbender.  David.  This should have been his story, and in turn the story of man's continuing evolution.  Instead Noomi Rapace bungles about the spaceship hiding from her tentacled fetus, swinging an axe at whatever Frankenstein storms out of the shadows.  Lame.  And Guy Pearce, stay outta this picture!  You and your makeup have no place here.  Ridley Scott certainly knows how to film sci-fi, and I really don't need to dump on screenwriter Damon Lindelof any further.  The man has taken his lumps.  And I'm sure he's not the sole credit to this film failure.

Olympus Has Fallen:  How much do you love the sight of the American Flag being burned, torn, tossed, and riddled with bullets? How much do you love seeing skulls popped with gun fire? How much do you love seeing emotionally crippled secret serviceman jab knives into the brains of evil grinning Koreans? If your answer ranges from a lot to a fuck ton than you will absolutely adore Olympus Has Fallen. Gerard Butler is the only man strong enough to survive an onslaught of tourist butchering North Koreans, and he manages to blast his way into the fallen White House where platoons of GIs and Navy Seals could not. This is a ridiculous film. To call it jingoistic doesn't even scratch the surface. Melissa Leo, face-punched, screaming, crying, and hailing the pledge of allegiance as she's dragged off to her execution is fascinating in its humorlessness - this is bonkers, absurdist entertainment. And if you're hipster enough than you'll find joy to be had in the Mars Attacks! toppling of the Washington Monument and Gerard Butler's "This Is Sparta" terrorist bashing.

Deadwood - Season 2:  It might be hard to believe, but season two is even better than the first.  As the stage carrying Mrs. Bullock and her son William arrives to Deadwood, Sheriff Bullock & Al Swearengen bash on each other in the thoroughfare after a casual exchange of insults.  The brawl leaves Bullock with a couple lumps, but pretty much puts Swearengen out of commission for the first round of episodes.  Al's absence allows for an agent of George Hearst to sink his talons into the business of camp.  New villains appear, and Bullock is too busy not putting the screws to The Widow Garrett to notice the evil descending.  Garrett Dillahunt returns, but not as the killer of Wild Bill, but a new character far more sinister, the geologist Francis Wolcott.  He steals nearly every scene he's in, and I love how uncomfortable Powers Boothe is in his presence - if you make Powers Boothe squirm than you are a genuine devil.  Season 2 puts each Deadwood player through the meat grinder.  This is not the kind of show where people get knocked down and dust themselves off.  They get knocked down, wallow in the mud, and dig themselves straight to hell.

Law Abiding Citizen:  This film comes oh so very close to being the great contemporary update of Michael Winner's Death Wish.  A home invasion takes the life of Gerard Butler's wife and daughter.  He survives the attack, but his eye witness testimony is deemed circumstantial and Jaime Foxx's huckster D.A. pleads the killers into a short jail term.  Butler begins plotting.  Law Abiding Citizen is not concerned with simple revenge.  In fact, Butler dispatches the scumbags who took his family pretty early in the proceedings.  Mr. Butler's anger is larger than an execution.  He sets his sights on the justice system.  Judges.  Lawyers.  Mayors.  These are the real criminals.  And the film does an excellent job putting them on the bad guy side of the screenplay.  As the heads of fat cat judges pop and sleazy defense attorneys smother, Gerard Butler's Death Wishing finds great satisfaction with the audience.  The problem is Jamie Foxx.  Apparently he's the real good guy.  Not the way I see it.  The screenplay should let Butler slaughter his way to victory - screw Foxx's sense of "good."  I want Butler to break authority.  I want him to be Charles Bronson on top.  Law Abiding Citizen pretends to have a morality.  And that's where it fails.  This just isn't the type of story where good beats evil.  Still, the first 2/3rds of this flick are so close to 70s pessimism that it's worth a watch or two.

Gamer:  Now here's a film that revels in its amorality.  Set in one of those "Not Too Distant Futures," Gamer introduces a world in which players live the bodies of Slayers, controlling their movements on a kill crazy field of combat.  Gerard Butler is Kable, a Slayer with just three kills to freedom.  But, of course, there's no way master blaster Michael C Hall will allow such a victory.  Directors Neveldine & Taylor treat extras like chum, and they make violent exploitation pictures rarely seen in this day and age.  Having just days before whimpered at the CG blood spatter of Olympus Has Fallen, it's a treat to see a flick like Gamer gush with splashes of stringy Karo syrup.  Real squib work equals flinchy revulsion.  But it's not all blood & guts.  Gamer actually has some biting truth or commentary to it.  If this technology was made available to us, I am 100% positive we'd have large chunks of the population signing up for the Sim City wannabe, Society.  In relishing the grotesque, Gamer succeeds in properly mocking our whackjob internet culture.  A culture I'm firmly and terrifyingly a part.

Spring Breakers:  Here's another flick I'm still processing.  Is there something more to this than sexploitation?  Is there something more to it than just seeing Selena Gomez & Vanessa Hudgins in bikinis?  My first reaction is, no.  No matter how much Terrance Malick dialog overlaying occurs or how much James Franco K-Feds the scenery, Spring Breakers is little more than a navel gazer.  What's the deal with Spring Break sexuality?  I have no idea.  It's a cesspool of free will.  Add machine guns and wannabe gangstas and you've got dumb people killing dumb people.  Girl empowerment?  Don't think so.  Just an excuse for these actresses to shed their goodie goodie personas.  But they leave the real dirty work for Rachel Korine and the nameless jigglers on the fringes.  The perverts who show up for the Disney princesses will be sorely disappointed.

Justified - Season 4 "Peace of Mind":  Drew Thompson might be safely in custody (well, that's what we're left to believe), but poor Ellie May is still floating out there in the Holler.  She quickly becomes the season's final grab, with Boyd & Ava desperate to plant her in the ground and Raylan's crew doing their Law & Order routine.  But this episode's highlight really belongs to Tim & Colt.  Ron Edlard's junkie goon has struggled all season to find his place in Boyd's gang.  Does he find redemption here?  Or doom at the end of Tim's barrel?  Either way it's a proper button for his role in the season.  Now all we have to worry about is Nicky Augustine, the long arm of Theo Tonin.  He's got to die.

Fatale #13:  Another peak into the past of the Fatale universe.  Black Bonnie is a bandit of the wild west.  Possibly a descendent of Josephine, or at the very least a female gifted the curse of power over men, Bonnie falls in with a snakeoil salesman and a redskin warrior.  Naturally they can't stay free from the clutches of the cult and we get a pretty brutal showdown.  I was really looking forward to this Western tale, and even though it was solid stuff, issue 13 doesn't add much to the mythology.  It certainly wasn't as Earth shattering as the previous issue - I want more Lovecraftian terror at the point.  Still, Fatale is the best book on the stands and even a weak entry in the series is still better than 90% of the other books out there.

Batman Incorporated #9:  John Layman, Peter Tomasi, and Scott Snyder might have all had the first cracks at depicting Batman post-Damian's slaughter but the only voice that matters on the subject is Grant Morrison.  No matter what anyone tells you, those guys are working in a different reality.  Damian Wayne didn't die in The New 52 - he got gutted in the Morrison arc, & that's where the emotion of his absence is really going to be felt.  Issue 9 jumps back and forth in time.  In once scene Bruce, Tim, Dick, & Alfred are burying the boy's body in the backyard.  In the other Bats is going toe-to-toe with the Damian clone, jabbing fingers into eyes, stomping swords bare footed.  Both transactions are brutal and painful.  Morrison's epic run is winding down.  As stated before, it's had its peaks and valleys, but for the most part this saga has been stellar.  Batman might have already died and come back in his tenure, but nothing has hit the solar plexus quite like Damian's execution.  And Batman is going to destroy Talia Al Ghul.  Bitch got to die.  And then he's gonna salt the Earth with the hot toasty ashes of the Damian Clone.  F that thing.  But first he has to tell Bat-Cow that young Damian is dead.  And, damn, that's one sad moo.

G.I. Joe - Rise of Cobra:  This movie sucks.  Marlon Wayans.  Cobra Commander Rex.  The mindwarped Baroness.  The Mech Suit hippity hop.  Snake Eyes has lips.  I hope Stephen Sommers has been properly banned from Hollywood.  You know, tarred, feathered, stoned, drawn & quartered.  Each body part shipped off to the far corners of the Earth.  Buried and consumed by graboids.  I'm not saying that the GI Joe cartoon or its toy line deserves great amounts of our respect, but there was potential for a really silly & fun action film here.  A wide array of weirdo characters battling it out with green and red lasers.  I can take stupid.  Hell, I love stupid.  But I've got no place for lame.  And GI Joe - Rise of Cobra is lame.

G.I. Joe - Retaliation:  "Does Brenda get a vote?"  This is going to sound weird, but I was hoping that director Jon Chu would bring some of that Step Up 3D flow to the action of Retaliation.  There are some moments (Flint's parkour charge, the cliff top ninja assault) but for the most part GI Joe Part 2 is depressing in its banality.  Yes, The Rock was unable to save this franchise cuz it's certainly not Fast Five.  Sure, the toys get more play here.  Cobra Commander looks like Cobra Commander.  The Rock gets a badass tonka truck to tread.  And Jonathan Pryce was obviously having loads of fun on set - he hasn't hammed this hard since his Tomorrow Never Die days.  But Bruce Willis only pops up for his one day of filming.  The Rock never gets a beatdown brawl to battle despite a quick tussle with Ray Stevenson's Firefly (seriously!?!? Titus Pullo vs. The Tooth Fairy oh hell yeah!!!), and Snake Eyes saga goes way awkward with the inclusion of The Rza's latexed Blind Master.  Retaliation is a little fun, but I was hoping for some gonzo entertainment.

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season 1 & 2:  I've been craving to revisit The Wire but before I re-explore that depressing ass world I thought I'd give this ahead-of-its-time drama another spin.  Easily the best procedural to come out of the 90s, Homicide excels cuz it doesn't wrap each story at episode conclusion.  One of the early proponents of season long arcs, the Adena Watson murder never quite has  a solid resolution and what little it does have takes nearly 9 episodes to reach.  Meanwhile the players involved are left tortured and psychologically beaten.  I absolutely adore how cruel or ambivalent the show can be.  It's pure character work.  You don't watch to see who winds up behind bars.  You watch because you want the bickering of Munch & Bollander, or to witness the pride behind Pembleton's excellence.  I cranked through these two short seasons in a matter of days.  I'm already well into season 3.  Just great television.

LOST - Season 1:  Looking back it's easy to pick at the flaws of LOST.  Rewatching Season 1 with The Wife (our nighttime tv successor to DS9) it's stunning to ponder all the balls dropped from the narrative.  Walt's psychic "specialness."  Claire's baby.  And nearly all the various flashback stories.  Who cares about the countless reexaminations of Jin & Sun's marital problems.  At the same time, all that flashback mumbo jumbo is a lot of fun.  This is where our love for these characters begins (or disdain, cuz Michael was a punk from the very first episode).  The rewatch also reveals John Locke to be possibly the saddest creation in television history.  What a chump.  Easily my favorite character throughout the series, but damn, he's proven to be the fool.  Yet, LOST is Dharma.  I need to get into the hatch.  I need my Desmond.  I need the sci-fi crazy.  Cuz that's the best thing about the original watch of the series.  You knew something kooky was going on (polar bears, roaring woods, French women), but you had no idea how batshit sci-fi it would all become.

Room 237:  Absolutely fascinating.  And bonkers.  Director Rodney Ascher details nearly a dozen weirdo theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's psycho saga.  One individual claims The Shining to be Kubrick's confession for having filmed the moon landing.  Another guy is adamant that The Shining is a violent condemnation of America's genocide of the Native American people.  And another chap sees Minotaurs along the outskirts.  Whatever.  Room 237 doesn't promote such madness.  But it is a celebration of cinema, or more to the point, our passion for cinema.  I love the frenzy The Shining has sparked in the film conversation.  I love how one man can see rocket ships in the number 42 and another can see mass murder in a can of Calumet coffee.  This is craziness.  But hypnotizing.  And you'll immediately want to watch the flick (in HD!) upon completion.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/24/13-3/30/13)

    On Monday night I went to see a school play directed by the Bride of Dork, Lisa.  Cute stuff.  School plays are a fascinating thing.  I remember doing a couple performances as a kid.  It was super stressful and extremely difficult.  But I look back and think how easy everything was and how little it mattered.  I wish I’d been able to simply enjoy it.  But I couldn’t when I was that age.


Olympus Has Fallen:  OK, I know this is a broken record here, but seriously, they’ve got to stop using CGI blood in action movies.  It NEEDS to stop.  This had the potential to be a really fun 80s style crazy action movie.  There are hundreds of acts of violence, but the CG robs them of their power.  It’s still fun, but not nearly as much as it should be.  And frankly, the final act doesn’t live up to the jingoistic silliness of the first half.  If only the villain could have been stabbed with an American flag, or at least be killed in front of a painting of Washington or something.  But the finale ends up being more generic shooting and punching.  It’s an extremely dumb movie, but it was mildly enjoyable.  With bloody squibs going off, it could have been much better.

Doctor Who: Season 7 Part 1:  “1938.  We just bounced off it.”  I’m still having fun watching this show.  But, it has some flaws, and those flaws are becoming more profound.  Part of the problem is a lack of grounding; a melodramatic streak that gets wider by the episode keeps shooting over the top so many times it has become like the proverbial boy who called wolf.  At some point, the cry ceases to be scary or impressive.  The rousing speeches and sudden resets after the story has been written into a corner steal the impact of any later dangers.  It all becomes too easy to fix.  A third of the population dies in an instant?  Wave a magic wand (sonic screwdriver) and suddenly, all is well.  Really?  Any drama is eroded by that kind of thing.  Again, the show is fun, but I’d like to see some changes; maybe writing staff, companions, tone.  I’m not sure.  While I don’t want a return to ‘the way things were,’ I’d like a return of some of the things that made the show successful.  I want crazy ideas, yes.  That’s Who.  But I also want interesting characters and plots, where danger feels real and the potential for failure (no matter how slight) feels like a possibility.  The Weeping Angels episode from this season was better than the previous.  I didn’t like the one (season 6?) where you actually saw them move.  They’re much creepier when you see them from the perspective of their victims, always frozen when you look at ‘em.  But otherwise, there weren’t any particular standout episodes.  Not really.  The dinosaur episode was amusing, but I wanted more Silurians and less friends from history.   I found the exit of Amy and Rory a bit of a letdown.  It’s OK.  There have been much worse.  But it left me cold.  Probably just an echo of my general feelings on recent seasons.  And when are they going to have a really interesting companion?  Enough with the pretty, 20 somethings who spend their time pining after the Doctor, subbing for the squeeing ladies who have (admittedly) helped propel the show into its newfound popularity.  (By the way, ladies, there are plenty of guys just as dorky around you every day, but they’re emotionally available, so you may want to keep clear).  Where is the new generation’s Jamie, or Leela, or Romana (I or II), or Vicki?  Martha and Rory are probably the best new companions, and they’re good.  But why do we have to keep meeting their family, and how about someone who isn’t from today’s UK?  After tantalizing us with Jack and River, even a few crazy possibilities like that girl stuck in a Dalek body, they’ve never lived up by giving the Doctor someone really wild to partner with.  In the classic run, he’s had two future dwelling super-geniuses, a savage girl from a failed human colony, a math wiz from another dimension, a Highlander, and a Time Lord (two regenerations worth), among others.  The new show could use something like that.  And a bit of restraint on the melodrama.  And an end of magic wand waving/reset button finales.

Onmyoji:  “I hear you have quite impressive skills.”  Demon haunted ancient Japan is in trouble.  It’s up to the Onmyoji, a bunch of astrologer/wizard/priests who like to smile at each other to save the world from all those danged monsters.  They smoke a lot of scrolls in the combating of evil.  There’s some weirdass crap for sure.  An interesting look into the more fantastic, magical side of the Samurai myths and stories.  This is some Twin Peaks Red Lodge kind of crazy stuff.

Magnum P.I. Season 2:  “Higgie Baby!”  Oh, man.  I just love this show.  The cast is so much fun to watch.  The wink & a smile stories and infrequent but well used Fourth Wall breaks, along with healthy helpings of early 80s cheese, make it intoxicatingly watchable.  I especially love episodes when Higgins gets in on the action.  The typical exasperated interplay between him and Magnum is great.  But when they work together the adventures are that much more fun.  Whenever the Magnum theme starts playing, I can’t help but have a giant smile on my face.

2010:  “Something is going to happen…Something wonderful.”  Destined to be a letdown, thanks to the all consuming love of the first film held by most cinefiles, 2010 is actually a very good, fairly realistic science fiction film.  It’s well made, well acted, and well written.  A great companion to movies like Alien, Outland, etc.  It obviously did not deliver what fans of 2001 wanted, but I think it delivered the goods, none the less.  Go in with an open mind and I think you’ll enjoy it just fine.  The last act is a bit iffy, but not bad.  Also, is Max gonna be a new Star Child?  And I do like that Time cover that shows the US and Russian leaders.

Ronan Gai:  “Samurai noodles!”  This homage to classic Samurai films does an excellent job of capturing the look and feel those venerable, violent epics of the 60s and 70s.  You would never guess it was made in the last 80s.  Four former samurai have fallen on hard times, their honor tarnished, their purses empty, their souls broken.  The film is a sad look at people who have lost their way, lost their purpose in life.  The four leads are some of the saddest sadsacks to ever sad up a movie.  The weird murder-gang story that slowly builds over the course of the film feels random, in spite of being integral to the, uh, plot(?).  I’m not sure if it’s cultural, something about the script, or what.  But I really didn’t get half of this movie, what was going on, who was doing what, or why for a large chunk of time.  Everyone seemed to be truly awful and vile, and whatever they did seemed bad.  But that is one nutty, drunken Johnny Depp samurai fight at the end.  He’s so tired and drunk and sweaty and half naked.  Whatever the problems with the film, the ending is pretty cool.  According to the trailer, “the last 17 minutes are the biggest massacre in history!”  I think if I was a) Japanese or b) more versed in Samurai culture or film, I’d have probably understood it more.  But even so, the overall feel of the passing of an era, the collapse of a societal system, is hard to miss.  These old warriors’ time has passed, and they have nowhere to go in the new world.  Very sad.

The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption:  “I smell delicious.”  The Mummy 2 hinted at some crazy fantasy adventures in the spin-off movie The Scorpion King.  Instead, we got a boring Xena episode, with pretty much no fantasy adventure at all.  Just guys with mullets and a lot of slow-mo.  The Scorpion King 2, which went straight to video, at least featured some weird elements, but they cast off the Egyptian mythology for over-used Greek stuff.  Combined with the prequel storyline, it seemed more like a Young Hercules movie than Scorpion King.  This movie tries to bring things back to the Mummy movies, if only in a few details.  There’s still precious little Egyptian mythology or weirder fantasy elements; no monsters, no gods, just a bit of magic and some resurrected warriors.  Once again, more Hercules & Xena, blending random bits of history and art from unrelated places and times.  The script is really bad, and the acting steps up to the plate, matching it swing for swing.  Like Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (see my Week in Dork for March 3-9), this feels like somebody’s D&D group wrote a movie.  There’s way too much dialog.  A lot of scenes would have been better served by characters shutting up instead of saying especially stupid things.  Temuera Morrison and Ron Perlman show up to cash some checks.  But Billy Zane is there for other reasons.  Billy Zane is there for Art.  Sadly, the movie is really stupid.  Another chance to do a fun fantasy film squandered with bad writing and poor planning.  Also, it’s rated PG-13, so it can’t even attempt to make up for shortcomings in script with violence or T&A.  And that’s just lame.  But, when Billy Zane takes center stage as the villain, he elevates the movie to Nicolas Cage levels of class and subtlety (how much stuff does he have stashed in his crotch?).  For some reason, he seems to be playing the role as a slapstick comedian.  It’s so jarringly wrong for the movie, it somehow becomes right (could this be his On the Waterfront?).  Somehow, as stupid as the movie is, and as bad as the script is, Zane grabs it, breaks it like a wild horse, and rides it into the sunset of B-movie glory.  After this, I can see Zane dressing up in a bear suit and punching women or ranting about blood in his urine (see Nic Cage’s magnificent performances in the Wicker Man remake or Port of Call: New Orleans).  This is the Billy Zane who hangs with Derik Zoolander.  His performance alone almost makes up for how blah the rest of the film is.

    “You have no concept of the depth of my ire.”  With all this excitement, you might think I didn’t have time to start watching season 3 of Magnum P.I.  How wrong you’d be.  Shot shorts, mustache, baseball cap, sunglasses and all the cool millions of years of evolution could pack into one man’s body.  The first episode features an odd, extended sequence of TC doing his job (flying).  It’s actually pretty cool.  The scenery is amazing and it’s kind of fun to see TC just enjoying himself without Magnum messing with him.  The flashbacks get pretty intense in this one, with a bunch of racist lingo thrown around.  I’m not a fan of the flashback episodes.  But this one is so danged brutal.  And the ending.  Hardcore.  Then episode 2...Simon & Simon crossover!

Star Trek:  I’ve been a Trek fan since I was a wee lad.  My favorite of all is the original series.  So, keep that in mind when I sing this film’s praises.  While I love the original show, I’d hardly hold it up as ‘intellectual’ science fiction.  It was as much an action show as TV had in the 60s, with much more attention paid to fast moving stories and often heavy-handed morality than to well thought out scientific concepts and their ethical relationships with humanity in the future.  This film, like Wrath of Khan and First Contact, keeps the action rolling fast enough that you don’t worry about occasional logic leaps (have you watched Star Trek?  Logic leaps are not new).  It sets up an alternate timeline where Kirk’s life is drastically altered by a time event.  Ripples of that event  effect the universe in various ways, but fate seems to be determined to bring some people together.  I’m not a big fan of Kirk’s character arc in the film.  I don’t like the reluctant hero archetype, and I don’t like that they shoehorned Kirk into it.  Other than that and that the film’s plot follows the basic Wrath of Khan mold that most of the films have, I don’t have any major complaints about the movie.  It has a distinct look and feel, a solid cast who manage to avoid imitation while capturing the essence of their characters.  I would like to see filmmakers get back into space exploration and problem solving, as opposed to space battles and fist fights.  Still, if they’re gonna do action, they could do worse.

Quicksilver:  Kevin Bacon and his amazing mustache blows it hard at the stock exchange.  But through his fall he learns a life lesson, that being a bike messenger is the key to freedom.  As a warrior-poet once said, ‘breaks are death.’  Like everyone who was anyone in the 80s, he lives in a crazy unique apartment, occasionally lives via montage, and has great hair.  This has that feel, that magic feel that 80s movies had.  Some combination of the fashion, the movie making technology, I don’t know.  But it’s there.  Am I nuts or do they suddenly end up in San Francisco during a street race?  That doesn’t look like New York, and I think Alcatraz is in the background of one shot.  When I watched Premium Rush a few months back, I kept thinking how 80s it was, and kept remembering Quicksilver.  I’d never seen it, but the poster was up for years at every video rental shop around.  Premium Rush was clearly inspired by this film.  They both come from the same headspace.  I found myself enjoying this movie quite a bit.

G.I. Joe Retaliation:  After the travesty that was the first film, the powers that be must have listened to the backlash and said, ‘how about we make a movie where we actually use the property it’s based on for inspiration?’  This, unlike the first, is actually a G.I. Joe movie.  It’s like the cartoon made live-action.  The plot is ridiculous, the action silly, the resolution completely stupid.  Just like the show.  Cobra takes over the White House, old guys lend a hand, lots of stuff blows up, and Jonathan Price is clearly having the time of his life.  We finally get a real Cobra Commander doing his usual silly crap.  I could have dealt without all the ninja crap, but I never liked that in the cartoon, either.  However, I know a lot of the fans like Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes.  Me?  Meh.  The movie is stupid and silly.  And it’s exactly what I wanted.  Now there has been a G.I. Joe movie.  And about time.

Godzilla VS. Megalon:  Deep under the ocean, the white robed people of Seatopia watch interpretive dance and bow before Easter Island heads while they stew in their hatred of surface dwellers.  A couple of swell chums (and their awful voiced ward) have invented a silly looking robot with a name that really fits him (just ask them), Jet Jaguar.  When the Seatopians unleash their skyscraper handed, star headed bug monster Megalon, it’s up to size expanding Jet Jaguar to save the day.

    I finally popped Rome on.  I watched a few episodes a long time back, but never got around to watching the whole thing.  Figure I’d better get started.  HBO, man.  They make some fine shows.  If only they would get hold of something like Conan, and give it a serious take.  I feel like, in large part due to movies, we have this vision of Romans as these supremely civilized folk, where in fact, they seem to have been bloody barbarians.  Just successful ones.  Watching this series helps make real the descriptions of Rome seen from the recent Cleopatra biography.  Close, dirty, stinking, and brutal.  Its façade of civilization all surface, with a beast’s heard beneath.

Quantum of Solace:  “I don’t have any friends.”  I’ve talked a lot about my love of Daniel Craig’s take on Bond, and these new movies.  They’ve gotten back to the best things about Bond, dropping the bad.  And how cool it was that this movie didn’t try to redo Casino Royale, serving instead as a continuation of its story.  So I’m not going to go into any of that again.  Instead, I’ll just talk about a) how hot Olga Kurylenko is and b) how much I like Mathieu Amalric’s sleazy villain.  Olga Kurylenko is so hot.  I really like Mathieu Amalric as the sleazy villain.  There.  Check the movie out.

The Quiet American:  “I’m English.  I have habits.”  I know I should so something about it, but I have never read any Graham Greene.  Put him on the list.  I enjoy Brendan Fraser, in spite of all his crappy roles.  And obviously, Michael Caine is awesome.  The exceptionally awkward friendship/rivalry between the two is gut wrenching, and such an odd counterpoint to the sweep of history going on around them.  The conflict that will eventually explode into the Vietnam War grinds away while two men vie for the love of a woman.  Caine is kind of a monster, but a monster one can sympathies with.  While Fraser is aw gee shucks swell, but kind of a bastard at heart.  And Phuong…well, she might just be the most monstrous of all, beautiful on the outside, but a soulless tormentor.

Earth VS. The Spider:  “There’s a rubber glove; put it on.”  A surprisingly bloody opening sets the stage for this Atomic Age monster movie.  Cut to cute bobbysoxer Carol and her doofy boyfriend wander the downtown of Middle America.  Mike can’t help but put his foot in it, because he’s a dimwit.  Cut to Mr. Wizard’s class, full of 30 year old high school kids for a lesson in Electricity! that I’m sure will not come back to be important later.  Mike is such a dolt, you keep hoping Carol will pitch him in a bottomless grotto.  In the spider’s defense, if it hadn’t been for his web in that cave, those two dumb kids would have plunged to their death.  So, in a sense, the spider is kind of a hero.  And you can put ‘waking up a dead giant spider’ on the list of things that can be accomplished if you rock hard enough.  I’m not a fan of movies that use real animals and trick photography, so this had a pretty big strike against it on the creature front.  But there are a few effective moments.

War of the Colossal Beast:  “Get the picture?”  I hardly remember The Amazing Colossal Man, but this sequel is about on par with the silliness.  Our giant mutant is now seriously injured and seemingly mentally challenged.  I guess getting half his face blown off effected him quite a bit.  More Bert I. Gorgon MST3K fodder.

    I got in a bit more Fraggle Rock.  That’s another show that just makes me feel happy.  It’s extremely charming and good natured, without being dull or stupid.  One of the best kids shows I’ve seen in part because it doesn’t dumb things down.  If I ever had kids, this would be on the list of things I would feel good about letting them watch, as it teaches good lessons in creative ways, and is entertaining as well.

Speed Racer:  Whenever I’m down, I can just pop Speed Racer in and things feel better.  I love that this movie about racing, something I couldn’t give two shakes about, ends up being this amazing martial arts film at its heart.  This movie is about kung fu, and one young man’s quest for enlightenment.  The sweet family dynamic, Christina Ricci being as adorable as she has ever been, Matthew Fox and his suave cool Racer X.  That’s all great.  And the insane, colorful explosion of visual effects blasting at your eyes makes for a fun watch.  But at its heart is Speed learning to reach the essence of excellence, transcend skill, and become an artist.

    On Friday I tried a nearby bike path again, hoping maybe it had improved in the four years since the last time I rode it.  Sadly, no.  It’s randomly paved, often covered not in gravel but rocks, and difficult to get to.  And so far as I’ve found, it doesn’t connect with anything, so when I reach the end, I have to turn around and follow the whole thing back, instead of making a circuit, as I would prefer.  I don’t like retracing my steps on recreational bike trips.  Annoyingly, it’s also the closest one to me.  My place is in this horrible dead zone, some of the only territory in Northern Virginia that doesn’t have good biking.  I don’t like the idea that I need a car to go to a bike path.  I think the problem is that this city is old, and while there have been a few scattered attempts to modernize, it’s still basically a car town, like my hometown of Bangor.  It’s not as pedestrian/cyclist hostile as Bangor.  But it’s not friendly, either.  To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a foot path that would allow me to walk to DC, for example.  At least, not without traveling miles and miles in a different direction first.  Even though I’m close to at least one main road that goes right into the city.

-Matt