A Fistful of Super-Free Comic Book Movies! (Matt's Picks)

    With Snowpiercer finally hitting screens in America (limited number though it may be), we here at In the Mouth of Dorkness want to take a look at some of our favorite comic book/graphic novel adaptations that don’t involve super powers or caped crusaders.

5.  Red:  Several retired government killers are forced to get back in the game.  Not exactly the most unique premise for a film, but the cast does a fine job and the script is a great deal of fun.  Helen Mirren proves she’s still hot as hell.  It’s goofy fun all around.

4.  Weird Science:  It’s true!  Loosely based on a story from an old anthology comic, Weird Science was one of my childhood favorites.  I totally understood the two dorky leads, and was blown away by the lovely Kelly Lebrock (I never hated her, because she was beautiful).  It’s a fringe Brat Pack film, but probably my favorite.

3.  A History of Violence:  My favorite latter day David Cronenberg film, it’s got a great cast, some intense ultra-violence, and a cool story.  I gather from several friends who’ve read it, the movie is far superior to the graphic novel it’s based on.

2.  300:  What can I say?  I love this big, dumb movie.  Almost certainly more than anyone should.  Visually outlandish and wonderful, full of muscle and bravado, heroic and weird.  It’s great.

1.  Dredd:  They got him right!  2000AD’s venerable hardcore Judge Dredd finally hits the big screen with all the scowling, helmeted badassery that makes him so beloved.  The movie is gorgeous, simple, fun, brutal, and everything I wanted it to be.  Now that people are discovering it on DVD, maybe we’ll get that follow-up after all.  Maybe Judge Anderson will come into her own.  Maybe we’ll get a taste of Judge Death.  Who can say?

-Matt

"All Those Years Wasted..." Latest X-Men Trailer Hits, Do We Care?

I recently watched Bryan Singer's original X-Men.  It certainly seems like the start of this new wave of Super Heroics we're battling these days, but other than that I found it to be incredibly sophomoric.  Of course, I was never much of a fan as I felt it just never captured the spirit of the characters.  Fanboy problems, ya know?  Hugh Jackman is dashing as all that, but is that what we really want out of Wolverine?  Apparently it is since we've gotten seven outings from the actor with no end in sight.  First Class is certainly my favorite in the series thanks to Fassbender & McAvoy, and the time travel story placing them alongside Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellen is enticing.  But the only hope this film has of working is in relegating the majority of the cast to the sidelines.  Too many faces, not enough plot.  A concern we've expressed enough on ITMOD.  The new trailer out of the UK looks fun enough.  Fassbender & McAvoy still look like the best element.



--Brad

Comic Review: Saga Volume 2

    Sometimes, I just don’t get other people.  Look, taste is taste.  I get that I like things that others don’t like.  I get that others like things I don’t like.  But sometimes the disconnect, especially when it comes to people with whom I share similar views, is rather profound.  Many science fiction fans, for example, put Terminator 2 on their list of best sci-fi films.  Huh?  Getting past it being a shallow remake of the first film, it also manages to do all the things everyone hates about the Star Wars prequels, nearly a decade earlier (read: make everyone and everything cool into someone or something stupid and lame).  This struck me again when I picked up the first trade of Saga.  Here was a comic being hailed as one of the best new series, as a great science fiction epic, etc.  Well, everyone who said those things is wrong.  Not saying they can’t like the book, but they’re wrong to claim it as a) good or b) good science fiction.  And as I read the second volume (for a graphic novel club), my bafflement at the love and my general distaste for Saga crystallized.  What Saga is, is not a grand science fiction epic.  It’s a bland retelling of Romeo & Juliet, filtered through years of wink-wink snarky Joss Whedon dialog.  This feels like something a teenager would scribble on the back of her English Lit notebook after discovering Piers Anthony.  It’s like Jewel poetry turned into a comic.  And this from the guy who wrote one of my all time favorite comics, Y: The Last Man.  I don’t get it.

    In skimming the first volume again, as I prepared to read the second, I was struck anew by how uninteresting most of the characters are.  The introduction of The Will and The Stalk made me wish the story would immediately change directions, dropping the sappy love story and turn instead into some science fiction adventure tale.  Alas, by the end of the first volume, one of the only interesting characters to come along was dead.  In volume 2, the other interesting character quickly gets tied up in a creepy anime-vibe storyline I’d rather not dwell on.

    As my comment about the 16 year old girl might indicate, I found this whole thing to be quite childish.  There’s even a lot of ‘shocking’ stuff, that feels like it was thrown in by an adolescent in the hopes of getting a reaction (see: the film career of Lars Von Trier for an example of this on a larger scale).  I was not shocked, but mildly annoyed by obvious stunt writing.  And the narration.  The narration.  Ugh!

    I’ve read worse comics.  Astonishing X-Men, Young Avengers, etc.  These are worse.  But I’ve read few things that make me more angry.  So much wasted talent on such a juvenile and hackneyed series.  And people are eating it up?!  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.  It’s like when I tried to watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory, and I felt like I was being punked.  Certainly it is not one of the most popular shows on TV, right?  Someone is was having a go.  Alas, it is popular.  And Saga is, unaccountably well received by people who otherwise seem to have a functioning sense of taste and quality.  I don’t get it.

(edit: After the group discussion, I understand more of the reasons why other people like the comic.  From its exploration of parenthood to the 'fun' things it does.  I can't join in on the love; and I am glad I don't have to read any more of it; and I still don't think it's one of the best comics out there.)

Saga Volume Two
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Fiona Staples
Publisher: Image
ISBN: 978-1-6070-6692-7

-Matt

"We Need You To Hope Again." - The Star-Studded X-Men Days of Future Past Trailer

If I remember correctly, the trailer seen below for Bryan Singer's X-Men epic is the exact same one we saw at this year's San Diego Comic Con.  I certainly have the same feelings now that I did back then - Wow!  How great it is to see all those actors in one film.....and how on Earth is one film going to do all that talent justice.  The answer is probably that most of those folks are going to get the shaft.  Halle Berry's Storm will have one thunderous moment, Ellen Page & Anna Paquin will get their chance to look weepy, and Shawn Ashmore will stand behind the real stars of the film.  It certainly looks like Hugh Jackman's movie, but I'm hoping for some solid screentime from the headmasters both old & young - give me plenty of Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen, & Michael Fassbender.  Deliver some kickass sequences with those folks and I'll be happy.  Of course, Bryan Singer hasn't made a good movie since The Usual Suspects and my expectation for this film is dim.  All these actors are going to be tripping over themselves and the fanboys in the crowd will be left with a muddled mess.  Please prove me wrong.

If the film never delivers at least I got to be a part of the Hall H extravaganza.  The pictures seen below were taken by me from the second row of that beautiful 7,000 seated ballroom.  Nerd Meca for sure.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (9/15/13-9/21/13)

I'm no flat tire. How 'bout a Gin Rickey?

    Trying to fit some reading and some writing in, but mostly just working and recovering from working.  Got a little cycling in.  Otherwise, mostly just stared at my walls.

Riddick:  “It matches your nipples.”  This movie is not horrible, and that’s about all I wanted from it.  I really enjoyed Pitch Black, and while I kinda enjoy Chronicles of Riddick, it never quite worked for me, seeing how it seems to take place in a totally different style of science fiction universe.  This third film feels more like Pitch Black in style, though it holds over some elements of the more fanciful Chronicles.  It starts as a Robinson Crusoe story, with Riddick left for dead on a hostile world, learning to live and thrive in the environment.  This is the best part of the movie, and I was a little sad to see him push the button that would summon more characters and shift the tone.  From that point on, it began to smell more and more of Pitch Black rehash, though it still wasn’t bad.  The dialog is frequently awkward (though nothing tops ‘you keep what you kill’ and a dozen other idiocies from Chronicles’ Necromongers).  As a science fiction movie?  This is pretty crappy.  As a fun, silly adventure film in space, this is exactly what I was looking for.  Again, if movies like this, After Earth, Oblivion, etc. were just more common, I’d be a bit harsher on them.  But as it is, big-idea, out there science fiction is still all too rare.

Beyond the Rocks:  I’m always happy to hear about movies thought lost that are rediscovered and recovered.  But, while the fact of its recovery is good, the movie itself is so-so.  A fairly bland romantic film with little to make it stand out.  Apparently, putting two big names in one feature (here, Valentino and Gloria Swanson) was unusual.  Sadly, neither seems to be especially energetic or interesting.  I’m assuming Valentino is better elsewhere, because as far as silent actors go, he did not impress in this film, and I know ladies went nuts for him once upon a time.

The Delicious Little Devil:  Not much to this short film.  It’s mildly amusing.  But it’s also pretty darned forgettable.

The Bad and the Beautiful:  Kirk Douglas’s eyes should be registered as deadly weapons.  The man can hate-stare so intently it makes women pregnant and men into women (who subsequently discover they are pregnant).  The rest of the cast is quite good.  I especially like Walter Pidgeon and Barry Sullivan (who was also awesome in the recently viewed Tension).  But it’s Douglas’s movie, and he’s a mad genius who takes no guff.  Hollywood is skewered from the inside by this expose sort of movie.  But it makes all the dirty backstage dealings seem sort of charming and exciting, anyway.  Gloria Grahame shows up briefly (somehow earning an Oscar for the part, which isn't much more than a glorified cameo) as a conniving, luxury hungry wife, and she’s quite good.

    Friday night, we all gathered at Robert’s place for a Barbeque and graphic novel club meeting.  We discussed Astonishing X-Men volumes revolving around the marriage of Northstar and his idiot boyfriend Kyle.  I was unable to read the whole assigned work for various reasons.  But as far as I made it, it was bloody awful.  I have come to hate the X-Men (and the Avengers right along side).  Just dreadful writing and awful characters.  Enough of this status quo maintaining mandated garbage.

Looks like Kyle read this garbage.

Valley of the Dragons:  I had never heard of this particular adaptation of a Jules Verne story, and I guess I can understand why.  It’s not especially interesting.  Still, I do love lost world stories.  And a lost world that is also on the Moon?  Cool.  Two big problems present themselves, however.  I don’t like when real animals are used as ‘dinosaurs.’  Partly, because they look terrible.  But mostly because I don’t like that so often it is clear that the animal was being mistreated to get the shot right.  No, I don’t think lizards have a great deal of mental capacity, nor are the self aware.  But needlessly causing pain to an animal, even to reptiles or insects seems barbaric and lacing in a degree of class.  The second problem is Rodan.  Yes, Rodan.  The giant kaiju from Japan seems to be flying around this moonscape.  I guess they had access to the footage and thought nobody would notice?  But I noticed.  Getting past that, the story of two rivals forced to work together on a hostile world is pretty good, and their adventures with the local population are nice.  The Neanderthals and whatever the heck the albino things were (Morlocks?) are especially disgusting.  Worth a watch if you’re into this sort of film, but not one to expend a great deal of effort tracking down.

    Saturday found me feeling pretty crappy, my weeks of not sleeping and stress finally catching up with me.  Some kind of cold or something.  Oh, boy.  I started going through my various con acquisitions and other sundry things that have been piling up of late.  In doing so, I read through three comics I got from local artist/writer Andy K.  Mind Games is a pretty gross little horror short.  The Secret Origin of John Elway is nuts.  And Neon Super Gladiator has a cool feel.  His stuff reminds me of something that might have been on Liquid Television back in the 90s.  Weird and uncomfortable.  I also read Jennifer Hachigian’s Pocket Editor Two, which she gave me because she liked my shirt (“Arthur Turing Fought Nazis With Science”).  It plays on that old video game thing with “All your base are belong to us” but manages to correct the grammar.  I flipped through super-nice guy Alex Fine’s Il Brutto, which re-imagines various movie characters as played by Charles Bronson.  And lastly, I looked through Sam Wolk’s Alpha Beasts and Alpha Bots, two collections of 26 drawings, each based on a letter (T is for Twiki, J is for Jersey Devil, etc.).  Quite cool.  I still have more stuff to get to, and some prints to frame.

    When I got home Friday night, I had a package waiting for me.  I keep forgetting that I’m a patron of the arts.  My old high school chum Serena Andrews is a musician and artist, and has a project she’s working on that involves a tour and a book.  I got some perks for my donation to the project, including a CD of music by Serena, which I listened to on Saturday afternoon.  Buried somewhere in the attic of my mother’s house is a cassette of Serena's music she put out back in the mid 90s.  I always liked her stuff, and still do.  It has a Tori Amos/Regina Spektor kind of thing going, with a bit of Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson.  All good in my book.

    And late Saturday night I picked up and finished the very short, but fun book Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney.  It’s a hand book for Roaring 20s living, with phrases, cocktails, party plans, and fashion, mixed with historic notes and cultural gossip of the time.  The book doesn’t go into a great deal of depth, but I think it would be a handy guide to have while reading fiction of the time (like The Great Gatsby), or history texts (like Flapper), or for those inclined, playing period roleplaying games (like Call of Cthulhu).  If you're looking for a sweet biscuit for barney-making, and you need to know if the bank's closed, this book ain't banana oil.  It's the elephant's instep, see.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/28/13-8/3/13)

    Sunday started the week off right, with a morning movie, a trip to a comic shop, and an early evening movie.  Brad, Ben, and I made a day of it, finally checking out the Angelica theater that has recently been built in a newly developing town center ten or fifteen minutes from my place.  The area has a Reston Town Center kind of vibe.  Nice, lots of shops, lots of open spaces, and lots of families.  The weirdest Target I’ve ever been to (it rests on top of a parking garage…?). 

The Wolverine:  Is it great?  No.  Is it better than most of the X-Men movies?  Yeah.  This movie did what Wolverine Origins should have done, focusing less on mutant battles, and more on character and story.  Unfortunately, the action it did feature was kinda awful.  Except for the train-top fight, which I enjoyed, I found all the battles and action sequences in the film extremely dull.  Not as dull as the battles in Man of Steel, but that film kind of set the gold standard for fights that WILL NOT STOP. 

Only God Forgives:  If you thought Drive was a bit slow, a bit too quiet, a bit too violent, then you should probably stay way away from this film.  Much more in tone like Valhalla Rising, with long sequences of not talking punctuated with sudden bursts of ultra-violence.  Although, when you look at it, there isn’t actually much onscreen violence, considering how oppressive it feels.  Most viewers are just not going to respond to this movie.  But if you enjoy stuff like Lost Highway, Valhalla Rising, Beyond the Black Rainbow, etc. you might want to give it a go.

Doctor Who: Battlefield:  The Doctor runs into Arthurian myth in this not entirely bad late story.  I’m finding it hard to push through these Sylvester McCoy tales, and I completely understand why the show was on its last legs.

Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack:  “It’s like a monster convention!”  This movie is weird.  It pretty much ignores 50 years of Godzilla films, with only the first one actually having happened.  And it re-writes the monsters.  Here, Ghidorah is a guardian monster, not the ultimate alien foe.  The story, as is so often the case, revolves around a plucky reporter trying to follow the action.  And of course, the military is helpless.  The mix of CGI and new filming techniques make the film look cheaper and more TV-like.  I liked a lot of the stuff about the people on the ground, but the actual monster action was less impressive.  I did find Chiharu Niiyama particularly charming as the reporter.  I might have been a little happier if they’d cut back on the military stuff and play up her role a bit more.

    And my vacation started on Friday evening.  I have a lot to do in the next week, including a good deal of serious time wasting.

Brotherhood of the Wolf:  This movie is total kitchen sink entertainment.  What genre is it?  What genre isn’t it?  It’s not a ‘teen sex-comedy.’  Otherwise, I think it fits into nearly anything you can think of.  Historic mystery, martial-arts fantasy, buddy cop, religious/political conspiracy, costume drama, western, horror, etc.  The set-up is simple.  A creature is killing people in the French countryside during the mid 18th century.  A war hero and his Acadian blood-brother ride in to town to investigate.  Things get crazy.  Is it a wolf?  Is it a monster?  Is it something else entirely?  Secrets and lies, politics and religion, lust and honor.  Crazy stylized action scenes, beautiful Hammer-style production design, and a crazy plot progression make for some entertaining viewing.

Space: Above and Beyond:  This show had big problems.  The main cast of characters are uninteresting clichés (though they get better as time goes on), the effects suck, the production looks cheap most of the time, and the A.I. rebel subplot is handled surprisingly poorly.  But, the WWII vibe and character growth do help.  The building storyline and sometimes heart breaking moments, along with the authentic feeling military jargon and behavior make it stand out.  A lot of sci-fi shows have action/war themes.  Few make it feel ‘real.’  Though on a totally different quality ballpark, this reminded me a great deal of Band of Brothers, or even The Big Red One.  I would love to see someone re-launch the show today.  Better technology and technique, as well as less devotion to the episodic nature of TV that was still fairly firm in the 90s could make up for a lot.  Drop or substantially alter the A.I. business (they’re cartoonishly stupid villains with little or no rhyme or reason, and inconstancies that are unforgivable).  In the post-Battlestar reboot landscape, with our generation’s own long term military conflicts hanging over our heads, a show like Space: Above and Beyond, handled with more care and more (or better used) money could be an effective vehicle for storytelling.  Sci-fi fans should probably watch this show, but know it’s uneven and gets off to a very, very shaky start.  The second half is a marked improvement, and it is sad that the show did not come back for another season, as I think there was a good deal of potential.  Who knows, maybe someone will Ronald D. Moore it one of these days.

    More reading.  More music.  Worked on a script.  Not much accomplished.  You know, another week in the life.  Dork life!

-Matt

Dork Art: Battle For The Atom!

Matt may disagree on this matter, but I am LOVING Brian Michael Bendis & Stuart Immonen's All-New X-Men; the series is a celebration of all the things I loved about the X-Comics growing up.  Sure, Bendis loves to take his time, and wander his way through comic book storytelling but I love how his fetishizing of characters as well as the emotional torture he puts them through.  Angst.  It's what the X-Men are all about.  Soon Bendis will be spearheading another massive crossover for his merry band of mutants, The Battle of the Atom.  This event will run through All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine & The X-Men, as well as the Battle of the Atom mini-sereis drawn by Frank Cho.  It's so easy to begrudge Marvel and its lackluster sagas (Age of Ultron, Secret Invasion, Fear Itself were snoozes), but I can't help but get giddy over this one.  It harkens to those whacky days of X-Cutioner's Song and the height of my X-Love.  And with Frank Cho bringing those retro cool covers from Savage Wolverine to the party?  I am down.

--Brad

Comic Review: Silver Surfer - Parable

    Here’s the thing.  I really like the Silver Surfer.  I do.  I think he’s a really cool and interesting character.  Buuuuut, you see, Stan Lee wrote a good deal of his stories and Stan Lee is, um, a terrible writer.  Like Wonder Woman, The Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Cat Woman, and so many more, the core concept of the character is sound, but the execution is almost universally bad.  So, being a glutton for punishment, I’ve read a good deal of Surfer comics, usually gritting my teeth while thinking about how awesome it should be, and how not very good it is.  That same thing happened while reading this volume.  Famed European comic artist Moebius, one of the key visual storytellers of the 70s, whose work frequently graced the pages of Heavy Metal issues I’d sneak peaks at when I was a boy, is a perfect match for the cosmic nomad, and there are some beautiful panels.  But Stan…Oh, Stan.

    You see, Stan Lee is an important figure in comics.  That can’t really be debated.  But, like August Derleth in Lovecraft circles and George Lucas & Gene Rodenberry in sci-fi circles, his actual ability in the arena is…not so good.  I must admit that his writing in this volume is much better than what he was doing in the 60s.  Though he crams entirely too many words into each panel, without saying much of anything, he thankfully avoids describing what we can plainly see in gratuitous captions (Check out early Surfer, FF, or Spider-man for panels where the character says what he’s doing, the caption describes the action, and the picture shows you what’s happening.  It’s a visual medium, Stan, we know what’s happening because there’s a picture!).  And as bad as the writing in this is, it’s still better than Chris Claremont.  But his flowery, overly dramatic dialog is painfully silly and out of step.  His heavy handed moralizing isn’t even subtle enough for the worst episodes of original Trek (Eeb planista!).  There’s a phenomena friends and I have come to call the ‘Marvel crowd.’  This is the crowd of people who change opinions and moods on a dime.  You can see them in the awful Spiderman movies, in the Fantastic Four films, and even in non-Marvel films like The Dark Knight.  Occasionally I’ll spot a Marvel crowd in film unrelated to comics at all.  But Marvel Comics have got to be the worst perpetrators of this menace, and Stan Lee seems to be their most fervent perpetrator.  A kind of meta-example of this is the relationship between the X-Men and EVERYONE else in the Marvel Universe.  All normal people hate and fear the X-Men, and want to persecute them.  But few people (unless someone manipulates them…which is extremely easy to do) have any problem whatsoever with the Fantastic Four, Spider-man, or any number of other strange heroes.  That doesn’t make any danged sense.  And that’s plagued Silver Surfer all along.  Everyone hates him.  He villages, stops alien invasions, gets cats out of trees, yet everyone hates him…Um…’cause he’s an alien, er something.  No, it’s because Stan can’t write, and he needs characters to be persecuted so he can slap readers across the face with his ‘shouldn’t we be ashamed of ourselves’ self-hating Liberal mentality.  Parable is all about how people are sheep, anyone with power is evil, the Surfer is like Christ, and Galactus is organized religion.  I even agree with his general thoughts about how religious figureheads are generally power hungry and corrupt, and how some people simply want to be told what to do and what to think, so will go out of their way to put themselves in the power of charismatic leaders.  But the rest of it?  Ugh.

    The volume also contains The Enslavers, written by Lee again, with art by Keith Pollard.  This feels more like classic Surfer stuff, with some nice art, but a pretty silly story.  The villain is pretty lame, and like all too many Silver Surfer stories, it centers around Earth.  But I like the art, and I like that at least sometimes, he gets to do stuff in space.  Considering he’s a ‘cosmic’ character, he spends entirely too much time within Earth’s atmosphere.  The Enslavers sort of feels like a send-off for the Surfer.  Though, honestly, I don’t really know what Marvel has done with him over the years.  He seems to pop up randomly, and there doesn’t seem to be much continuity.

    Here’s hoping that someone with some writing talent and someone with artistic talent will be teamed up in the future on a Silver Surfer project that explores some of the potential in the character, without falling back on Stan Lee’s particular brand of problems.  I do think there’s potential for some compelling and contemplative science fiction stories and philosophical meditations.  Somewhere else I said I wanted a Silver Surfer movie to be a 2001 style trippy flick, and that’s kind of what I want from the comic.  Moebius would have been a great artist to have on that, but Lee was the wrong writer.

Silver Surfer: Parable
Author: Stan Lee
Artists: Moebius and Keith Pollard
Publisher: Marvel Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6209-4

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/2/12-12/8/12)

    Work continues to dominate my time.  Though I’m reading a couple really good books right now.  One on the Byzantine Empire and one the autobiography of the pretty awesome Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  And Friday boosted my Dork cred with another meeting of the graphic novel club.


Lincoln:  This epic of American history manages to make many of the names from the history books seem a bit more like real people.  Though still holding Lincoln up as the wise old god, passing down justice and always on the right, it is a bit less one-sided than most portrayals.  Not nearly as maudlin as the trailers would have you believe.  But getting past the cynicism, the film is uplifting and sweeping.  The cast is excellent, and the relationship between Lincoln, his friends, his opponents, and the common man is very powerful.  An array of ‘that guy’ actors lend support to the stars, and they bring their most excellent facial hair.  Good stuff.

Anna Karenina:  Highly stylized, even more than Joe Wright’s work normally is, this lavish production is beautiful, but perhaps a bit too concerned with visual flair than with story or character.  The actors all do a good job, but at the end of the day, Anna is a horrible, flip-flooping, self-involved bitch, and her boyfriend is a vacuous pretty boy.  It’s hard to feel for them, as they crush and destroy everything and everyone around them in the name of their empty passion they mistake for love.

Hugo:  I still find this a bit odd.  It starts out as a fairly typical kids’ adventure film, set in a train station some time after World War I.  There are hints of mystery, the magic of books, that sort of thing.  But then, about a half hour in, it takes this turn, becoming a tale of movies and the love we have for them.  A broken old man in a run down old toy shop is more than he seems, and a boy with noting left is driven to find out the truth.  For any film buff, this movie is a must.

Immortal:  This movie is certainly visually interesting.  Sadly, the script is absolute garbage.  The characters make choices and say dialog that doesn’t seem to have any logic.  The world created is interesting, but so vague that it’s nearly impossible to feel grounded enough to care about anything or anyone.  Egyptian gods, alien incursions, mutant red hammerhead sharks, a girl with blue hair (got to have blue hair), and lots of CG people.  You can kind of tell that writer/director Enki Bilal used to write comics that appeared in Heavy Metal.  It has that European comic feel (beautiful but stupid).  I can’t recommend the film if you’re looking for a good story.  But if you want to turn your brain off for a while and enjoy some interesting imagery, go for it.

Men in Black 3:  “You’re distressing.  Everything about you upsets me.”  It’s the sequel that nobody was asking for.  The boys are back.  Somehow J doesn’t seem to have come to terms with the nature of his job, in spite of more than 10 years passing.  The time travel gags are actually pretty funny, though.  And the 60s aliens are cool.  The villain, Boris, is genuinely disgusting.  The script was a heck of a lot more clever and the story more interesting than the second film.  All in all, a pretty entertaining film.

Dark Shadows:  Finally, Tim Burton had a chance to redeem ten years of spitting on his early success with a franchise nearly tailor made for his style.  With Dark Shadows, he could embrace the Hammer Horror vibe he reached for in Sleepy Hollow and run with it, ramping up the Gothic dread and mystery.  Or, he could do a crappy Adams Family rip-off.  Set in “Maine” (seriously, it’s totally not the England!) in the 1970s, I genuinely think this could have been something…other than crap.

Killing Them Softly:  Ouch.  This is a collection of sad bastards, dumbasses, and scumbags.  They all get together in the ugliest city outside of OCP occupied Detroit, to screw over, smack down, or murder each other.  And all while being depressing, awful people.  And the Ray Liota beatdown has to be one of the most horrible things I’ve seen.  He’s so sad, and gets so much kicked out of him.

The Package:  The Cold War is winding down, and an old soldier gets wrapped up in a conspiracy to keep it going.  A trip to The Fugitive’s Chicago and a team of crack character actors are needed.  Everything looks good and depressing as the chess board takes shape.  There’s really nothing especially good about this movie, but it’s a fine bit of action/espionage fluff.

Life of Pi:  Wow.  If you’re looking for vacuous pap, the kind of garbage some ‘spiritual healer’ might blather on about on Oprah, then you’ve come to the right place.  This is the ultimate expression of the idiocy, ‘it doesn’t matter what you believe (what silly, made up BS, that is) so long as you believe something.’  And as that ultimate expression, it is about as vapid and useless as it gets.  Basically a kid wanders around and stuff happens; he’s on a boat with a tiger and stuff happens; then he’s not on a boat and stuff happens.  Or not.  So warm up the drum circle, pop on the Shadowfax cd, spark up a doobie, and just let the universe flow, man.  And if the mumbo jumbo chicanery of the story isn’t condescending and trite enough, you can always watch the Richard Dryfus wannabe, hipster author listen with exasperated, ironic but sensitive interest to Yoda…I mean adult Pi tell his Grandpa Simpson stories (“I was wearing an onion on my belt!”).  Twelve years ago, Ang Lee made one of my all time favorite films, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  Now he’s making something worthy of latter day M. Night Shyamalan.  What happened, dude?  You used to be so beautiful.

The Campaign:  “I crapped GOLD.”  Featuring the best baby punch I’ve seen in film, this goofy political send-up has its moments.  The jealous dogs crack me up.  Everyone seems to be having a good time being silly and saying stupid stuff.  But it’s not quite as tightly scripted or consistent as I’d have liked.  Worth a watch if you’re in the mood for some stupid comedy, but it’s not amazing.

    I watched another disk of Winds of War, this one dealing with the attack on Warsaw and the aftermath.  There are some interesting characters, for sure, but most of them drift in and out of the story for only the briefest of times.  The main cast is kind of drab.  Even Mitchum’s character has little to do but stand stiffly and look disapproving.  It’s just interesting enough to keep watching, but not much more.  And I watched another disk of Magic City, which is starting to grow on me.  The characters are becoming a bit more interesting.  I’m just hoping that at least one of the big ‘problems’ gets resolved by the end of the season.  I like Danny Huston, but his snarling ogre villain is too obvious and too pointlessly evil to stick around, and I’m hoping one way or another, he’s out of the picture in the finale.  We’ll see.

    Friday night, Lisa and Brad hosted another night of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club.  This time up, The Avengers: Children’s Crusade.  Opinions were split, with some people really enjoying it, and others totally hating it.  I fell on the hate side, as you’ll see in my full review.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the massive array of characters and any motivations they might have had.  And trying to figure out the good guy/bad guy ratio.

Gambiiiiiiit!!!

-Matt