I'm at a conference/ Tank Girl/ Twitter

I should mention, I was at a conference here in Austin today, will be so tomorrow until quite late, and then again on Thursday. My usual blogging and comment section maintenance is going to be less than perfect.

Also wanted to say: Tank Girl is a deeply flawed movie. I'm trying to watch it on cable, but it's pretty bad. Comic folk and Hollywood could learn some lessons regarding what not to do with Tank Girl. So much potential, and it sort of sputters around like they had no idea what they really wanted out of the movie while they were making it. Add in a layer of early-90's sheen, and TV-style directing, and it feels not entirely unlike one of its contemporaries in the Pauly Shore wacky-movie genre.

I find it odd that I often hear folks defending the movie. It may be that I felt Lori Petty's reading of the titular character mistook blaring every line in the same cadence for sassiness. Plus, the kangaroo dudes just don't work. I don't care what was in the comic.

Oh God, Malcolm McDowell... did you ever have any shame?

On Twitter

A week ago The League posted one word in a post about things that drive you nuts on the internet. I dropped one word: Twitter

Its unlikely I'll do so again. Friends and Leaguers know that I don't use the application for my personal use, preferring Facebook as my personal poison. Also, blogs, e-mail, etc...

I think we basically hit a point at which the folks who are enthusiastic about Twitter and those of us who are less so were just sort of squawking uselessly at one another. We clearly use, used or would use the technology in different ways, and do not share the same perspective on how we engage in the communication cycle. Different technologies are going to expose these things in different ways.

The bottom line is that we are in a world where instant communication is possible on a massive scale, and in the hands of anyone with an e-mail account, a username and password. As NTT would point out, that's an incredibly important thing in events like the Iranian election or a natural or other disaster.

I confess that it is deeply hypocritical to walk away from Twitter for the reasons I did when I maintain a personal weblog. And I honestly feel that, if Facebook Twitterfeeds are any indication, that we've passed through the goofier stages of people figuring out what to do with Twitter and not just informing you of every time they have a meal, hit the head, what-have-you...

For all the good it can provide, Twitter has a ways to go, and people will need to be very careful in how they use it once it becomes part of expected types of communication. We all need phone lines, and they're also good for passing emergency information, etc... but if the phone rings off the hook from telemarketers, we taken them off the hook. Heck, I confess that even if the phone rang all evening from friends and family, I'd keep it off the hook.

And that's where I am with Twitter right now.

I don't expect this will come remotely close to closing the book on Twitter in the comments section or at this blog or elsewhere. But I'm shelving the topic for a while.

We are, of course, all over Facebook. We're in the middle of working on incorporating Twitter into our professional life, and, in fact watched part of a panel of archivists discussing how the Tweets from Iran would be preserved for future generations (using the near complete loss of record of how Tiananmen Square played out.

I think it also raises some questions regarding expectations of one another not just in ownership of devices that can handle and manage these modes of communication from a financial standpoint, but the fact that we're now so attached to our devices that instant messaging at all times from any direction doesn't seem unreasonable to many. That may be overstating it a bit, but I'm not sure its by much, whether you're spending time managing your communication or not (and it is, in my personal and professional experience, a tough thing to explain that most people prefer their tools do this for them. They do not wish to spend their time monkeying with and tweaking their tools).

So that's that.

I gotta go to bed.

There's a Reason we aren't showing up for "Grown-Up" movies, and it isn't the freakin' economy

Entertainment Weekly ran an article recently entitled How Movies for Grown-Ups Became Movies Endangered Species.

Not surprisingly for a standard EW article, the article isn't even really able to articulate the problem except by taking digs at movies that actually are financially successful, such as 2007's Iron Man, and pointing out that people didn't show up to see this Spring's offering of "State of Play".

Utterly shocked, the reporter releases these bombshells:

Even projects that might once have been considered Oscar bait have fallen prey to executives' squeamishness. Paramount turned down director Bill Condon's planned biopic about Richard Pryor, with Eddie Murphy attached to star. Universal axed a drama starring Naomi Watts about a global activist.

Well, actually... good call, Hollywood. I am an adult (no comments from the Peanut Gallery), I actually have a film degree, and I tend to think about this stuff as much as anyone would when their wife has had an Entertainment Weekly subscription since 1993. And I can't really imagine myself paying to see either of those movies.

Naomi Watts? You want to be seen as serious actress, and something that Meryl Streep would have acted the hell out of in 1986 probably sounds like your road to real Hollywood respectability. Your pal Nicole Kidman Cold Mountain respectability, but... surely some eagle eyed accountant pointed out that lately when actors get made up to look all grubby in some 3rd world country, and do something "important", nobody really shows up to see Naomi Watts or whomever pretending to be a global activist.

And, look, I like Richard Pryor's work (I even embrace his Gus Gorman in Superman III), and I understand he led a colorful, messed up life. But... I saw "Man in the Moon" and a dozen other bio-pics of entertainers. I AM an adult, which means that, like other people, I grew up on a steady diet of movies about all kinds of folks, from Johnny Cash to Charlie Chaplin, all of which sort of follow a familiar pattern of rise to fame, trouble, flagging career, some sort of ambiguous redemption as the entertainer's life really turns out not to fit too neatly in a 2 hour, 3-act structure. And our star is portraying someone so familiar, it really only sorta works...

How many of these do I need to see?

The article sites "State of Play" as an amazing adult thriller. I saw State of Play. It's a pretty standard airplane-novel story of intrigue with a standard issue hard-living journalist character with the only memorable scenes coming from a very hammy Jason Bateman. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone as anything other than "it's exactly what you'd think it is."

I see three major problems with what the author champions as "grown-up" movies.

1) As I mentioned, we've seen these movies. Another biopic about someone who led a fairly standard rise-to-fame, imbibed too much and cratered might be the bedtime story you tell little starlets at night in Hollywood to warn them of their potential future, but... I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to get out of the biopic that i didn't get out of 80% of the biopics that Hollywood churns out.

"Milk" is an interesting exception as it was actually about something different, but still about a real person. Sure, it felt all a little too pat as a movie, but I didn't necessarily feel I'd seen it before a dozen times.

So many of these movies, even ones that would have been considered cutting edge have just been done to death. The similarity to other pictures that Hollywood uses to suggest that if X made money, then X+1 should also make money sort of doesn't hold up after the tenth iteration.

2) Television is actually sort of interesting now. And I have 400 channels.

Subsection 2a) reality TV isn't all dumb

If I want a meditation on the effects of alcoholism, I need not wait for Oscar season and an actor trying to get a serious role which will lead to an Oscar. I wait for Intervention to run on cable. Likewise any of the topics, including global and political issues.

Thanks to the power of voyeurism and the bizarre habits of people to want to be on TV, no matter their issue, there's often little I feel I can learn about on a topic from a multimillion dollar production than I feel I can't learn from scrolling through my cable channels.

In some cases, it actually works against the film, even while promoting it. I actually skipped Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie" not just because Tom Cruise is a boob, but because the History Channel ran a documentary on the topic in support of the movie while it was in theaters. After spending two hours watching a doc with historians interviewed, etc... It seemed sort of a waste to go see the movie.

Certainly I appreciate the attempts made by filmmakers to remain authentic, but in comparison to well-crafted documentary, its a tough sell to this viewer to really want to see an actor fake "important" topics. Even something as simple as divorce in a movie is nowhere near as bizarre, painful or compelling to watch as the slow dissolution you can get once a week on "Jon and Kate Plus 8".*

Subsection 2b) Narrative TV has improved

An odd side effect of having a blog that focuses on media and pop culture is that I am often suggested TV shows to check out. Everything from Deadwood to Whale Wars. There actually are some fairly engaging programs on premium cable, basic cable and broadcast TV. Stuff I can enjoy just as well, and with just as well written content. Hell, I may not love the show, but how much did Sex in the City make as a feature, coming from HBO subscriptions and syndicated re-runs?

3) Your definition of "Grown-Up" is useless

Sure, kids show up to see Iron Man, but its sort of useless to suggest that adults should be going to see movies like "State of Play" BEFORE they shell out their bucks to go see a dude in armor like a Camaro with missiles strapped to the hood fly around and give terrorists a hard time.

Sure, Iron Man isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but for the high dollar entry fee of going to see a movie these days, I'd point you to points 1 and 2 above, and what people seem to be willing to pay for, or at least what's compelling enough to convince them that it will be novel or different. Even if the plot of the Marvel origin story movies is always essentially the same (and it is), there's at least the promise of something visually interesting.

I'd also argue, that Hollywood's inner workings are now so well covered and reported, in conjunction with most folks' basic familiarity with how a movie is going to play out, that the insistence of sincerity in the making of a film and marketing of a film and obvious attempt for certain kinds of roles which are so familiar they're dubbed "Oscar Bait" (think of all the actors playing the mentally challenged, deranged, or putting on one long impression of a popular entertainer, etc... that get nominated each year), that we're sort of immune to "grown-up movies". When the process behind them seems canned and silly, and somewhat childish, how seriously can we take the final product?

I don't particularly care for "Tropic Thunder", but it did have the benefit of acknowledging to a wide audience outside of Hollywood what they already suspected about "grown-up" movies. It's a half-assed attempt to be kids playing grown-ups in situations that nobody involved with the production actually has any experience.

And point 2a, and the ready availability of documentary and reality programming may have devalued the currency of the institution of the "grown-up" movie.

So in conclusion...

I don't want to suggest that movies should only be superhero movies, or that we should be dancing on the grave of the American cinema experience in favor of the X-Boxification of the recent wave of hits.

What I would say is that (a) genre does not always equate to "kid's movie", and (b) Hollywood needs to quit playing it safe with their "grown up" films if they want to get people to show up for them. And, of course, realize when the audience is no longer onboard with your commonly held belief (you may want to believe Julia Roberts is box office gold, but that well ran dry for the average movie goer about 10 years ago). Know when you're just making more of the same (stop making celebrity biopics). Know when your mall-theater audience isn't likely to take your mega-star seriously in a role (Tom Cruise in anything. Naomi Watts as the White Savior of the earth). Don't assume Star Power is enough to get me to the box office. I didn't see "Michael Clayton" because I had no idea what it was about thanks to the plotless trailer (George Clooney threatening Tilda Swinton does not equal my $9).

Quit playing it safe and bring something new to the table, and we can talk.



*seriously. That show is just messed up.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Golden Hornet Project

When I was 15, Jason talked me into renting Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction opus, "Metropolis". I was, of course, immediately disappointed to learn that Madonna's "Express Yourself" video was not a concept baked entirely new for The Material Girl. Instead, the creative team had told a sort of parallel (and sexier) story to the happenings of "Metropolis", in the same landscape.

Madonna's "Express Yourself"*

At any rate, I doubt I'd ever watched an entire feature silent film prior to that cut, but as I recall, it had some pop songs on it, and, of course, even on VHS the movie was brilliantly stunning and the story moving.

I don't really want to get into a whole conversation here on German Expressionist film of the pre-Nazi era, and how one of the seldom-mentioned casualties of Hitler's regime was the crippling of an entire media and art form. But there you have it. While I do enjoy some American and British silent film (like all good former film students, I appreciate me some good Buster Keaton and Chaplin), I'd argue that anyone watching Metropolis will be awed at how far ahead of Hollywood and London that the German's were in using the medium.


Ladytron

It's also impossible to separate Germany's post-WW1 conditions with the output of their cinema, and not wonder a bit about what Lang saw in his countrymen in the years prior to the rise of Hitler. Or his refusal to allow the film's resolution to make a solid case completely on the side of beleaguered labor (what with the Reds running around Mother Russia).

The dimensions of the movie are huge, even by today's standards. And while sets are necessarily re-used for the story, they're unbelievable in scale and practical effects, number of sets, etc... The models of exteriors are phenomenal, some scenes that I assume are matte prints continue to astonish, and the cast is enormous. It's tough to believe such efforts used to go into moviemaking, but clearly Lang wasn't cutting corners.


Sort of makes "New Detroit" in Robocop seem kind of silly, 1980's Dallas.

The imagery has, of course, become iconic and endlessly emulated in sci-fi films, in comics and elsewhere. Lang's Metropolis would come to define the massive super cities seen in everything from "The Fifth Element" to "Blade Runner", acknowledging that these cities will grow on the backs of a labor class who will most likely always have the short end of the stick. The glories of the towers and the miseries of the folks below would become a perennial theme in science fiction, and, one can see how the first quarter of the 20th Century would be enough to tell you where this was headed. The predictions for technology aren't as important to the film as the homily shared using the backdrop and extremes of the future presented in the film.

The effects are mostly practical and hold up because Lang's grasp didn't overextend his reach. The Man-Machine's metal body looks exactly like what its meant to look like, the flying machines and cars don't take bizarre shapes.


why is evil always more fun and noticeably hotter?

But what's just as striking are the hallucinatory visions experienced by Freder, including the approach of "death". These scenes are a fairly straightforward moment when Lang's involvement with Expressionism crosses over into the Metropolis.

And, curiously, its funny how different the same actress is as Brigitte Helm as "good" Maria and "evil" Maria.** While acting styles have definitely changed for film in teh ensuing 80 years, the actors are still committed and engrossing.

We lost a few things when they added sound to film, but nothing so much as the possibilities for a film to easily cross borders, simply applying new title cards.

My hat is off to the Golden Hornet Project. A friend at dinner asked if they're an offshoot of Austin's "Golden Arm Trio", and I really don't. But the band/ orchestra/ whatever was made up of about 8 musicians, featuring keyboards, two percussionists (phenomenal percussionists), and several strings and guitar players. I am actually very interested in seeing their other work in town this summer.


seriously, when was the last time you got this excited about one of your ideas?

The score was terrific, going above and beyond the call of duty to execute upon their task: helping to tell the story without getting in the way. Its unfair to try to categorize the work, so I won't try too hard here to do so. But what would you be if you didn't try? I kinda/ sorta would compare it in spirit to... oh, David Byrne's score for "The Forest". Only totally different.

Anyway, the movie is a favorite. It was a huge treat not just to see it on the big screen, but with such a huge amount of love put into the music.

I like to point out that for all the snooty, looking down the nose critics like to do with sci-fi, this 80 year old movie had three sold out shows and inspired musicians, who could be doing plenty of other things with their time, to create new works of art just to support it. And not just here. Nathan mentioned a similar effort in San Antonio, and when I described the screening to League-Pal Robb at dinner, he told me about a screening at Seattle's Gasworks Park about a decade back that attracted thousands. THOUSANDS.

Its not the genre that attracted the audiences, but there's something to the mix of story, homily and visuals that sci-fi makes possible. And while few have done it anywhere near as well as Metropolis in those years, I don't see "Wings" (best picture, 1928, and a really good movie in its own right) drawing three sold out nights and a new score.

For the record, there's no known direct connection between this movie and the naming of Superman's adopted hometown. Nor does there seem to be any direct connection between the film, its themes, its portrayal in the comic, etc... and the movie. I think teen-age comic developers, Siegel and Shuster, picked it out of the zeitgeist in the years after the movie appeared in the US. Superman would appear roughly 10 years after Metropolis, by the way. So, yeah, the Germans were ahead of us on this crazy sci-fi thing.




*Dang, yo, Circa 1990 Madonna... you are a bad, bad girl.

**Or "boring" Maria and "hot" Maria, as I declared when we left the theater.

Metropolis Sunday at Alamo South

I am going to the Alamo on South Lamar on Sunday evening for a special presentation of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis". The show is at 7:15.

There's a new score by the Golden Hornet Project. Should be fun!

For more info, look here.

Ghostbusters: 25th Anniversary

So this week marks the 25th Anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters.

I deeply, deeply love this movie, and I find it curious that I never think to include it in my profile lists when they ask me to name my favorite films. Well, today I put a flag in the ground and declare my love for the Ghostbusters.

Going to matinees in the summertime is an age old Steans-Clan tradition, and so it was that the KareBear took a fresh-faced League and Steanso to the cinema to catch the flick. I probably already knew the Ray Parker Jr. theme song (a Huey Lewis knock off that wound up getting somebody sued).




As a kid, I recall enjoying the more slapsticky elements (sliming), the sci-fi and ghostly elements, and the big finale. It was in middle school that I realized how quotable the movie is, to the point where the dialog works itself into everyday speech (when training staff in my previous, more technical jobs, I'd frequently wrap it up with "the light is green, the trap is clean"). And, I imagine, I'd do quite well at a Ghostbusters quote-along at The Alamo.

On the whole, its just a very tight movie. From a scripting standpoint, it does a great job of carrying its characters from the basement of a university to fighting Gozer the Gozarian for the fate of world to the cheers of New York City, the guy gets the girl, and the stick in the mud EPA guy gets his comeuppance.

And, it features this scene:


Maybe one of the most brilliant scenes ever put on film.

The movie plays so often on cable that I suspect its now taken for granted, becoming television wall paper in the manner of "Vacation" or "Fletch".

But I recommend going back and checking out "Ghostbusters", and I dare you to wish you weren't a little more like Dr. Peter Venkman.



The sequel was a little too cutesy, and missed the edge of the original. Once babies are involved and it lost the "working stiffs" element (as well as the uncertainty and shooting from the hip nature of taking on the actual ghost busting), there's just going to be a point where its not the same movie anymore. Still enjoyable, but...

There was also a Saturday Morning cartoon that ran for a few years and tried very hard to keep the spirit of the original series, although toned down for kids (who were going to be surprised when they'd watch the movie years later, slapping themselves on the head when they figured out the whole "gatekeeper/ keymaster" deal).

One of the great things about the original is how well the entire cast clicks. Not just Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis... but Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver (and poor William Atherton who became consigned to a career or playing schmucks after nailing the role of Walter Peck in Ghostbusters). No doubt Moranis is hilarious (and who has the greatest closing argument in legal history in Ghostbusters II*), but Ernie Hudson's blue collar guy who's just in it for the job and Sigourney Weaver's bemused high class NYC musician all really draw from a world of New York that seems very ground in reality. Juxtaposed against three jobless professors hunting ghosts... it just works.

I can't think of a big budget, more or less all ages comedy like Ghostbusters coming out in recent memory. Especially one that mixes genres so seamlessly. For some reason, the only thing that comes to mind is stuff like "Pluto Nash". I'm probably wrong, but its been a while since something like Ghostbusters hit.

There are rumors of the original cast reuniting for a sequel (I am neither for, nor against, a sequel until I know more). There's also a long-in-development video game coming in a few weeks, and featuring most of the original voices (I hear Moranis was a hold out).

At any rate, it would be nice to see the movie remembered as more than a sexy Halloween costume.

*Your Honor, ladies and gentleman of the audience, I don't think it's fair to call my clients frauds. Sure, the blackout was a big problem for everybody. I was trapped in an elevator for two hours and I had to make the whole time. But I don't blame them. Because one time, I turned into a dog and they helped me. Thank you.

The League Watches "Up"

I had today off, and so Jamie and I took the afternoon to go see Pixar's latest, "Up".

This post is going to be short as there is not a laundry list of gripes and complaints that I'd spend paragraph after paragraph cataloging. In fact, this was my favorite movie since last year's "Dark Knight". All though... this movie has less punching and fire. And its probably my favorite Pixar movie since Incredibles (and, Leaguers, I loved Wall-E. This one just pushed all the right buttons).

Pixar's focus on story and character is generally much better than most movies in general, and is light years better than most all-ages entertainment. And the impetus for the story here is not what you'd normally sell as a kid's movie, just as I'm not sure kids would really get their heads around the existential dilemma of Bob Parr in "The Incredibles" that leads him to re-don the spandex.

The characters are very well defined, and the script features none of the relentless mugging that's mistaken for jokes in the average Dreamworks project that's the legacy of Robin Williams' "Genie" and trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the first Shrek movie. Instead, the humor (and tears) come straight from the story and characters.


Our protagonists. I really liked that bird.

The animation is fantastic, and I guess you can see this thing in 3D in the right theaters (we didn't miss it). But the character design, etc... all feels spot on, as do the various set pieces.

I would forewarn parents of kids under 7 or 8 that we had a scared kiddo sitting behind us. There's nothing too threatening popping out at the heroes, but I sort of think that because the movie does a good job of wrapping you up in the proceedings that when danger does occur, the kids may get a little more spooked than normal. There is a little more "life and limb" sort of danger than in Wall-E.

Two of our protagonists are not human. There's a huge bird whose name is actually a punchline, so I don't want to give it away.

And, of course, there's Doug the Dog.


I have just met you, and I love you!

For all the tear-jerking and hilarious moments in the movie, the parts with Doug were my favorite. (If you like dogs, this is really a good movie for you.) But it was also a little sad, given our year, only because Doug was, more or less, Melbotis.

I was surprised by developed Karl's storyline was, and how gently Russell's storyline was conveyed, when both could have been standard kid's faire, heavy-handed stuff.

There are some great action sequences, and I know I was never bored, and neither did the kids ever seem like they were growing impatient (just wait for the little planes to show up).

Anyhow, I don't have much else to say, other than that I hope you Leaguers see it, and hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Its also great to know that Pixar's collection of talent is so deep. While I love Brad Bird and the rest, these guys really knocked it out of the park.

Happy B-Day to Norma Jean

So, apparently today Marilyn Monroe would have turned 83.



In high school, I was unlikely to hang a poster of Kathy Ireland or the other favorites of the day on my wall, but somehow I decided that it was perfectly acceptable to hang a poster of Marilyn Monroe. Actually, several images of Monroe, if memory serves.

I did watch a few Monroe movies (although my favorite still only really has her in a small part, John Huston's crime drama, "The Asphalt Jungle"), and read up a bit about Monroe in the way you did before the internet made that sort of casual interest all too easy.

Monroe's fame comes far more from her all-but-confirmed extra-curricular romances with JFK and possibly Bobby Kennedy, her downward spiral and the mysterious events surrounding her death than her film career, although she was in a few classsics. She also managed to marry not one but TWO American legends in Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. (You put all this in one place, and its sort of mind-boggling.)

Her early death, of course, froze her in time in the mind's eye of America. And, I am certain, there have been many a theses and dissertation written on what it means that the American gold standard for WASPy beauty and sexuality is represented by Monroe.

Her contemporaries haven't enjoyed the same household name status, and its hard to think of anyone in the past 40 years who has attained her status as American Icon, even if stars such as Jane Russell and Jayne Mansfield enjoyed similar film careers. Moreover, it's difficult to imagine the entertainment industry of today creating another Monroe, either by intention or blind luck.



In the past twenty years it does seem that Marilyn (like Elvis, James Dean and others) has become such a part of the cultural landscape that it can be forgotten that she was ever more than a Halloween costume, or a caricature for failed starlets to dress as, standing out in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater for the tourists.

Maybe that's okay. The films will always be returned to by enthusiasts, and enough ink has been spilled for those willing to read up on the person behind the soft-lit photos. And that's far more than most can expect out of even such a short life.

Happy birthday, Marilyn.

Probably Monroe's most famous sequence:

The League Watches "The Spirit" So You Don't Have To

I just finished watching the 2008 film "The Spirit" on OnDemand, and I think its safe to say... it's not very good.

Written and directed by comic superstar Frank Miller, its curious to consider how the movie wound up the way it did in the first place.

Eisner first launched The Spirit as a roughly 8 page weekly newspaper insert pre-World War II, trying to find a way to get away from the superhero fads and other things he didn't like about the conditions at many comic publishers. The strip ran for years, and attained great popularity, retaining cult status among a certain breed of comic aficionado, seeing occasional revivals and reprints.

Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City) became friends with Will Eisner at some point, and the two put out a book of interviews and discussions, which I actually bothered to read a few years back. While Miller may idolize Eisner, the two have very different approaches to character and storytelling.


from some Spirit reprints

Following the groundbreaking success of Dark Knight Returns, Miller did some work in Hollywood, including screenplays for Robocops 2 and 3. However, the adaptation of Sin City by Robert Rodriguez, which maintained the look and panel-by-panel pacing of Miller's work, and cited Miller as a co-director, opened new doors for Miller on a much bigger scale than what modern comics affords. Paired with Zack Snyder's adaptation of Miller's original graphic novel, "300", someone in Hollywood felt that Miller could handle his own film project. And Miller, it seems, received the approval of the Eisner's to let him handle Will Eisner's most popular character for a big screen adaptation.


would have been totally cutting edge if he hadn't done this already

It should be mentioned... there was a 1987 television movie of "The Spirit". I missed it. I had a basketball game or band concert or something.

Oddly, Miller more or less abandoned the look, feel, story and everything about the comics that makes them interesting, and inserted a sort of sci-fi/ fantasy take on the events from the comics. Miller's worldview permeates the movie, with the Sin City look overwhelming Eisner's gritty but still friendly cartoonish feel to a stand-in for a North Eastern City, circa 1940ish that The Spirit seemed to perpetually inhabit.

Further, Miller doesn't bother to ever even make a nod to the kind of groundbreaking work Eisner did in page layout and as a master of his craft in managing the comic page.

The Spirit comics became often much more about the crooks and the stories around the people in the comics other than The Spirit, something in the manner of a lot of cop procedurals. The Spirit was cool, two-fisted and had a peculiar relationship with luck, but that was more or less a wink and a nod as a storytelling device. Tracking the past of Sand Serif, Wild Rice, or even a toy machine gun was much more likely to fill the pages of a Spirit story than following Denny Colt around.


The Spirit is a Peeping Tom

I do think its kind of a neat idea to include a handful of the femme fatales of the Spirit comics into the movie. After all, Eisner loved drawing women and found many-a-way to set them up as the equal to The Spirit (not entirely common in strips of the time). While I felt that the movie could have used P'Gell, I didn't get hung up on it. It would have been worth exploring, however, how and/ or why The Spirit of the movie engaged all women as sexual objects when the back story suggested the opposite.

I find it puzzling that Miller would have been such a fan of Eisner's work, routinely complained about how Batman is portrayed on the screen, and then saw fit to take Eisner's creation and manhandle it. That doesn't begin to get into the problems with pacing and story telling that Miller runs into (let alone technical issues such as camera placement and that every shot in the movie looks as if Kevin Smith were DP, selecting mid-range, static shots that don't ever seem to move). One has to assume pride or ego are the culprits here, but I have no idea. I'd have to hear more from Miller.


a good reason to watch the movie, but not good enough

Miller's sense of humor may also not jive with that of his own movie. The Looney Tunes-like fight sequence at the beginning seems less funny and more like a dip back into the post-Adam West-era of comic movie making where nobody seemed to be able to keep a straight face if they knew the source material were a comic.

Scarlett Johansson seems just happy to be there, even if she is rightfully lost as to what is actually going on. Eva Mendes is a lovely woman, but there are places where even in this mess, she seems a bit out of her depth. I do give credit to Gabriel Macht for probably being as solid a portrayal of Denny Colt as you're likely to get. And I can only hope that the set makers could keep up with all the scenery chewing Samuel L. Jackson was responsible for as The Octopus.

All in all, I'm not even sure its a renter. The look is no longer experimental, as we've seen it elsewhere to better effect. The pacing is grueling and the whole thing just feels like maybe someone should have stepped in and stopped this mess before they ever rolled video.

Movie Meme: Last Ten Movies I watched.

Calvin from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool wants to know what the last ten movies I watched might have been. I can only remember back so far, but let's try this. I assure you, there are probably three or four in here I'm not remembering.

In something approximating reverse order from last night backward:

1) Supergirl
2) Burn After Reading
3) Bolt
4) Superman III
6) Star Trek
7) Star Trek: The Motion Picture
8) Wolverine
9) The Incredible Hulk (it was on cable, plus... Liv Tyler)
10) Slacker

I watch a lot of stuff on Cinemax, which in spite or its reputation, actually has the better movie selection, but not the original programming one gets with HBO. So there were probably a few movies in there I missed.

Editor's Note: I also watched the movie "Role Models" in there, somewhere.

Sherlock Holmes movie en route

I'm not a Sherlock Holmes aficionado. Nor am I a member of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Society, etc... But like many people, I read my fair share of Holmes at one point in my life.

I'm not really sure Holmes translates very well to a late 20th or early 21st Century aesthetic when it comes to movie making. And as much as I like him in movies from Iron Man to Chaplin, I'm not sure Robert Downey Jr. would immediately pop into mind as my first choice for Holmes. Or Jude Law as Watson (that one just baffles me). Both are fine actors, certainly. But it also sort of screams "this ain't your father's Sherlock Holmes! This is EXTREME Holmes, kids!". Not surehow I feel about that.

I'm also noting that like many trailers these days, this trailer indicates absolutely nothing about story. There was a theory when I was in film school that the usefulness of story had come to an end. I'd sort of scoffed at the idea at the time, but... apparently you at least don't need a story to sell people on showing up for a movie.

On the plus side, it also means somebody is going to cash in by putting out nicely bound editions of the actual Holmes work. And while I will most certainly go see this movie (note: it features explosions), I will also probably be looking for a nice edition or two of a Holmes collection.

Friday Linkage and Heads-Up

I really don't have a whole lot to discuss. Sorry, kids.

The long Memorial Day Weekend is coming up, so I hope you've got a BBQ or two planned. And, of course, will observe the day with the utmost respect, attending your local parade, etc... All you leaguers are good citizens, so I'm sure you'll hit three or four local events.

Not sure what we're up to, but I am certain we'll make the most of our precious weekend hours.

Next week will probably be very, very quiet here at The League. I (wait for it) am running a conference. There's a tale there, and one day when I'm not still recovering, i shall share that tale. For it is a cautionary tale, and the many lawyers in the League's readership would be doing some serious forehead slapping as described what happened. But we'll put that aside for right now.

But NEXT week, I'll be playing host/ MC/ and event coordinator to 125 of the rowdiest, craziest librarians you're likely to see in this life or any other. (I got them free padfolios and flash drives! Suck on that, SXSW!)

Anyhow, my assumption and game plan is that from Tuesday at 7:00 AM until Thursday evening when I flop into bed, I will be a bit pre-occupied for the blogging. Perhaps you'd like to follow our Tweets? No, really. We're maybe going to Twitter this mutha'.

Links

So...


Here's a link to a preview at Newsarama for JackBart's Poe comic.

Here's the trailer for JimD's movie.


As you can tell, its a lot like Weird Al's "UHF" in spirit.

Here's a link to an especially magical site called "Awkward Family Photos". I welcome you to view the images and put that one away in the 'ol memory bank for the day when you have family photos to take of your own.

Hat tip to Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool, which, if you haven't bookmarked it, then you probably should.

For some reason I received a catalog in the mail this evening from design Toscano. I have something of an inkling of how I might wind up on such a mailorder list, but I'm not really sure. I highly recommend browsing their website and purchasing all that you can afford.

There's even a very special lawn ornament that I might need to get for Jason.


Only $90 before S&H!

And for some reason, I'm now receiving Architectural Digest in the mail. I have no idea why.

Also, I'm already sick of the new Green Day song. But I've also been sick of Green Day since 1996, so...

JimD Makes a Movie

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, JimD asked me to take a look at a screenplay he'd written. I was interested to read it as I'd enjoyed Jim's work that I'd previously got my mitts on, but then he let me know... he'd been working on the film for a while with his pal, Alistair (an occasional Leaguer). And, unlike most of the stuff I was used to from folks I remembered talking big from film school, they were actually going to get their movie made.

Sure, I gave JimD a few notes, but the script was sort of past that point. You could tell a lot of what was going to happen next would depend on directorial and actor's choices because the thing was ready to go. I liked the script, liked the ideas in it.

JimD and Alistair went ahead and produced the darn thing a while back, and I couldn't be happier for them or more impressed with the results. Sure, it would have been better if it had starred a certain chubby, yet good looking comic book fan, but I don't think you can argue with the results.

The movie is called "Pleadings" - it's about lawyers -, and I welcome you to check out the IMDB site. (They might want to add a plot synopsis. Just sayin'. I'm a little reluctant to say too much about the plot as I wasn't sure what I shouldn't say.)

It looks like the movie is ready for DVD distribution. No, I have no idea how the hell that works, so don't ask.


This here would be the DVD cover. Click on it to read the plot synopsis.

The movie turned out very well, thanks for asking. I think you Leaguers will enjoy it. Performances from their troupe are strong, the directing and cinematography creative and more than occasionally showing bits of brilliance. So there you go.

So I'll keep you guys posted as to when YOU can obtain a copy of the DVD for your very own.

Superman/ Batman: Public Enemies

A few years back, DC launched a new series: Superman/ Batman.

It was in the spirit of the old comic series, World's Finest, which had been the series launched in the 1940's which put Superman and Batman in the same comic (it had originally been conceived as "World's Fair Comics", to coincide with the 1939 World's Fair in New York).


Comics are awesome. Oh, yes they are.

After 20 years of Dark Knight Returns inspired animosity, the powers that be at DC finally decided that just because Superman and Batman didn't always agree on methods, etc... they were more interesting as a mismatched pair of cops than they were as Batman being a jerk and Superman just standing there letting Batman rattle on (I mean, seriously... at what point would Superman not just start avoiding the guy?).

So was launched Superman/ Batman, with words and story by Jeph Loeb (the writer of Teen Wolf! and Commando!) and art by Ed McGuinness. McGuinness had come to notoriety through his work on Mr. Majestic, one of several Superman-like titles that popped up in the 90's explosion, and which was eventually folded into the DCU multi-verse (along with the entire Wildstorm Univere). He went on to pencil Superman circa 2001, and I actually have one of his original art pages from the "Our Worlds at War" storyline.


Super Pals

The first storyline was entitled Public Enemies, and drew to a close the long-running storyline set up in the Superman comics when Lex Luthor nabbed the 2000 election, becoming President of the United States. So what happens when he puts out a warrant for the arrest of Superman? And a bounty for his capture? Awesomeness. That's what happens.

Anyhow, I don't want to reveal too much, as DCU Animated is now bringing the story to DVD as an animated movie. The art style is probably as close as they could get to translating McGuinness's unique style to an animated form. They'll probably also have to drop a few elements of the comic tied to continuity, but I'm optimistic that this will be a really fun ride.

The comic was a big, ridiculous action flick sort of thing. Looks like the movie will be more of the same.

Check out a semi-legal trailer here.

Lazy Weekend

Hey Leaguers,

It was a nice weekend, all in all.


Bolt

Friday night Jamie and I stayed in and watched Disney's "Bolt" on OnDemand. Quick recap: Bolt is a dog that's a TV star of a sci-fi show about a sort of superdog protecting his person, a 12-years-oldish girl, Penny, from an evil scientist and his minions. He is sort of lost from the studio and has to learn that he's not a superdog (he doesn't know he's a celebrity, so that whole part of the fish out of water bit is conspicuously absent).

The movie has some issues, not the least of which is that the opening sequence in which Bolt is acting as a superdog is the best animated, coolest part of the film. The rest of the movie is fairly pat, which is fine. Its family entertainment and the "incredible journey" part of the story will be new to your young 'uns. And, somehow, I found the whole movie kind of sad in a way I don't think was intended.

I do think it picked up substantially in the second half and the ending is sort of classic Disney feel-good. Disney's 3D animation wing has greatly improved, but they haven't quite mastered the form in the manner of Pixar, finding ways to humanize and animate more stylized characters.

Kids and adults will enjoy Rhino, the hamster who joins the journey. perhaps for different reasons, but I sort of loved Rhino. Who gave the best motivational speech I've seen in a movie in a while.

I should also note that for Superman fans, the comparisons between Bolt's sci-fi TV show character and Krypto, Superman's canine Kryptonian pal is inevitable. And, yeah, I would love to see Krypto receive the big screen treatment. So there's a little envy there, but it didn't last too long, given the nature of the story.

You should check it out, especially you Leaguers with kids.

Also, Jenny Lewis is on the soundtrack. Go figure.



Role-Models

As very little opened this week and it was raining, we wound up then watching "Role-Models" on OnDemand. It was pretty much exactly what I expected.

My Office

I also spent time goofing in my office and re-arranging junk. Ie: playing with my toys.

Korean BBQ

We wound up having dinner with Mangum, who recommended we try Korean BBQ, which I'd never tried before. I have to say that my first experience was, once I got oriented, very good.

I don't know if Matt and Jamie were terribly excited that I selected squid as one of our options, but I liked it. Of course, I know nothing about Korean food, so... just because I liked it doesn't mean a whole lot. But the prices were okay, and it was nice to try something new.


Sunday

Letty and Juan are due fairly soon. We've not heard the name of the child yet, but Juan pitched Lando Calrissian Garcia, and that seemed to be a popular favorite.

We had a few folks over to wish Letty and Juan well with their final days as couple before they become 2 plus 1. We over purchased on meat, but that's what usually happens when I hit Central Market infrequently. Everything seems like a good idea.

Anyhow, it was nice to dust off the grill and have some folks over. I think Matt is right, that we haven't done this since football season. Hopefully we can roll right into football season with the cookout season.

It was a beautiful day, somehow, and we did manage to get outside a bit. Probably the last of that before things heat up and we're all running for air conditioning until October.


Hope ya'll had a good weekend.

Giant Octopus vs. Mega Shark (or something like that)

...all I know is that I am going to watch this movie.



God bless you, little Debbie Gibson.

Trek and Me

Ed. note: This isn't my Trek review. I'll get to that later.

When I was a very small kid, I recall watching Trek re-runs a little bit. There was a cartoon I caught once or twice, but I was mostly into Star Wars, so the pacing and lack of space ninjas and whatnot was just not that exciting to me. They spent an awful lot of time talking on Star Trek, and too little time shooting at stuff or employing Ewoks an cannon fodder.

In 2nd or 3rd grade, someone showed me Star Trek: The Motion Picture on VHS, and I mostly remember being painfully, painfully bored. Until the end, which I found trippy and awesome. Somehow back then I knew exactly what Voyager was (I'll thank The Admiral), and so it sorta made sense where they were coming from. I appreciated the scope of the movie, but as an ADD-riddled kid, it was just so sloooooow.

Summer after 3rd grade, we stayed at my grandparents in Missouri, and though I had not seen Star Trek II, we rented Star Trek III one night (they owned a VCR. We did not.), and watched the movie, which I recall really liking. We also watched that Nostradamus documentary that everyone watched back then, and I liked that less because it predicted nuclear armageddon in my lifetime. Sure, some of it freaked me out, but I liked the Klingons and sort of pseudo-sciency stuff around Genesis.

In 4th grade we moved to Austin, and I had a lot of downtime around 5:00pm for some reason. 5:00 was also when KBVO showed Star Trek reruns. So each afternoon I'd decamp to the TV and try to watch Trek. The episodes that really stick out are The Cage, Arena, the salt monster episode, The Trouble with Tribbles, The Enemy Within, and many, many others. Mirror, Mirror, of course...


My make-believe buddies in 4th grade

There was also one where McCoy was driving around Spock's body by remote control for some reason, and I thought that was the craziest thing, ever.

I got into the characters at that point, sort of lionizing Mr. Spock in particular. So I sort of bought into the Trek thing pretty hard. Not like Reed, Jason's new pal... but I was into Trek. In fact, I remember trying to talk to friends at school about Trek, and it seemed (and this is a painful stereotype, but its true), the kids in my nerd/honors classes were always much more inclined to be into Trek than the rest of my classmates. It was a sort of given that the boys should have some working knowledge of Trek. The girls... not so much.

In part, thanks to Trek, I learned that just because I was enthusiastic about something, not everybody was going to love it. For God's sake, I wore Spock ears to school for my Halloween outfit in 5th grade (I would go on to dress as Kirk for a high school drama party my senior year).


the League, circa 1986, wishes you to live long and prosper. Special tip 'o the hat to Jamie for finding and scanning this classic for her own post. And to Jason, for taking this picture a few decades back.

But I also understood pretty early on that love for Trek took many forms. I might like Trek the way I liked basketball and football, but not the way I loved X-Men or Batman at the time. But I saw that there were folks who really, really loved Trek.

We would attend comic conventions at the Holiday Inn down by the river (its that round tower, sort of by Picky's Pantry Chevron, Austinites. You know it.), and those would be held in conjunction with Trek cons. And those guys were intense. I think Jason saw more of it than I did (I was digging through back-issue bins, he was looking around knowing he could read anything I spent my money on), but I do recall seeing the guys in Star Fleet outfits and thinking that was just kooky. Let alone, where did one secure one of those get-ups?

Upon its release, we went to see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one in the 1980's with the whales) at the Arbor IV, back when that meant something. The Arbor had THX sound, and something resembling stadium-style seating. At the time, if you wanted to get the full cinematic experience, and didn't want yoru shoes to stick to the floor of Showplace 6, you talked Dad into taking you to The Arbor IV. And I want to say this, because nobody ever believes me but...

The audience STOOD for chunks of the movie. STOOD. That was how excited these folks were about their Shatner and Spock. There was applause, and shouting, and just a damn lot of love for what they were seeing on screen. When the harpoon bounced off the Klingon ship? Oh. My. God. Pandemonium.

Afterward, we dissected the movie with my dad at Taco Bell. That's how much I remember being jazzed about that experience. That was all, of course, before Star Trek V: The League Demands a Refund (which featured a fan dance from Nichelle Nichols about 20 years too late).

I've only been to one other movie where people freaked out like that, and it was seeing Pulp Fiction at the Hogg on UT's campus fall of 1994, prior to widespread theatrical release. People also stood up there. But I really understood how important Trek was to people at that moment, and it was pretty huge for me, too.

I wound up keeping gerbils for a while. I think I was more interested in the habitrail than the actual animals, but I did wind up naming one of them Leonard Nimoy (the other was named Richard Nixon. I don't know exactly why.).

Like a lot of other young guys watching Trek, I had a TV crush on Lt. Cmdr. Uhura. You can have your Nurse Chapel or your Ensign Rand. But I was all about a savvy communications officer in go-go boots. Because I think if I ran a star ship between 4th grade and college, that's how I'd have run it, too.

I don't want to overstate this, but I did grow up seeing Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise, understood she was an officer, and that was sort of a social battle won for somebody, somewhere. I would be in college before I actually stopped to think about how odd that must have been in the 1960's to have a black woman on a prime time show appearing as a capable military officer. Sure, she wasn't part of Kirk's inner circle, but she was featured as much as any bridge members back in the day. And she would go on to be as important as anyone in the feature films (in certain trek media, she's an Admiral).


a sweet-ass ride

No sooner did kids our age have their hands on a camcorder than we were doing our own Trek spoofs. I still recall a video of Jason and Reed as the crew of the Starship Win-a-Prize. Reed's Captain Kirk was a little trigger happy, if I recall, and Jason's science officer kept being approached by our border collie, Misty. He worked her in. Exterior shots were Lego. The bridge AND outerspace looked curiosly like our living room.

I initially rejected The Next Generation as looking like somebody's living room zipping through space (I still hate the set design). Plus, it took a few episodes to have someone who looked like a high school principal running the ship. Eventually I settled down, got over the lack of Vulcans (I never, ever understood why they didn't have a Vulcan or three), and got on board with the show. But that first season was rough.

I followed the original series through "The Undiscovered Country" and into "Generations". But once Next Generation wound down and took over the movies, I just wasn't super-interested anymore. I'd only dipped in and out of Deep Space 9, occasionally watched Voyager, and never took to Enterprise. Bully for you folks who did, but I don't know really my Tuvok from my Archer.

As much as I loved Star Wars (until, circa, 2002, when I gave up), Star Trek's tendency to lean toward science fiction rather than fantasy appealed to a completely different side of me. It wasn't as flashy as droids and lightsabers, but it all seemed so possible. And even if it weren't peering into the future, it seemed to suggest ideas as problems for engineers to solve and diplomatic and naval strategy to ponder rather than just accepting that "it's The Force, go with it."

I don't agree with all of Roddenberry's vision of the future. The notion of an enlightened world, free from human avarice seems so far off, that's the hardest part of his fantasy to swallow, but I see why he wanted to present that vision. Without believing in that goal enough to put it forth as an option, how can you work towards it?

And he didn't always achieve his own vision. Trek, after all, was still basically (as I like to say) three dudes flying around space in their space corvette, getting into scrapes while the swinger of the group picked up chicks and his wacky pals sniped at each other. Roddenberry's vision of the future still featured three white dudes and a lot of helpless women in need of Kirk's tender ministrations.

But it did throw open the door for what came later in other series that had internalized those notions a bit better.

I think it's now closed, but the Hilton casino in Vegas had a whole wing devoted to this show that only made it on TV for three seasons. The Star Trek Experience was an amazing fan-boy's dream. The restaurant was built to look like the set of the bar from Deep Space 9, there were real props from the shows everywhere, including models of the ships. Klingons wandered about and folks in Starfleet uniforms. There was a ride with a narrative associated with it that started after they somehow faked beaming you aboard the Bridge of the Enterprise. Which... I still don't really know how they did it. I'm sure they heard "whoa!" a hundred times a day.

I was always a little sad Jason never saw it.

Anyhow, Trek has been with me for a long, long time. I am actually quite thrilled that Paramount is taking steps to make sure it might be with me for quite a lot longer, and with some version of the characters who I loved first and best. I don't see it as dishonoring Gene Roddenberry. I look at it as caretaking the vision of teh future Roddenberry first shared more than 40 years ago.

If Kirk's communicator could plant the idea of a cell phone in an enterprising engineer's head, then what else can we hope to see materialize? How long before they're beaming us up?

I have to admit, I was at Target last week and saw they were selling Star Trek toys. After wanting one for 20 years, I am now the proud owner of a Starfleet Communicator. If I can locate the Tri-Corder, my mission is complete.

I forgot.

In my previous posts, I completely forgot about Supergirl, starring Helen Slater. Whom I am now too old to say the things about Slater that I said when it was more age-appropriate and OK. Lets just say that as a younger person, i was fond of Helen Slater.

As penance... over the next week, I shall watch Supergirl. And you will read my review.

Slater showed up on Smallville a season or two ago. She's holding up just fine.

Worst Comic Movies of All Time

Ho-boy. Here we go.

I'm sticking with the same rules in regards to superhero comics adapted for the big screen. I also have to apologize for posting this a day late. I was working on it last night and became tired and opted for bed over an incoherent second half.


So...

The biggest challenge, except where otherwise noted, is that I haven't bothered to watch several of these again since I first bore witness to their malice. So some of these I barely remember at this point, except for a deep sense of melancholy when I try to recall my theatrical experience.

These are as bottom of the barrel as I can go and not somehow do an about face and grow to love the production for its awfulness. I've referred to the JLA TV pilot that never aired, and I kind of like how the only thing right about it is that someone thought to throw some cash around and hired Miguel Ferrer to play a version of Weather Wizard.

1) Spawn.
When discussing terrible movies a few days ago, Jason mentioned this particular gem, and I cannot disagree. I'm not sure the idea of Spawn in itself is bad, even if it does sound like a 14 year old's idea based on an inability to reconcile his love of death-metal album covers with wanting his creation to be heroic. The idea of turninga negative into a positive is one I can get behind, but...

in the comic and movie, Spawn is a rebelled agent of the devil. Rather than leading Beelzebub's forces on Earth, he uses his nightmarish powers, in a big ol' plot twist, for GOOD, fighting and hunting Satan's demons, who don't appear as metaphors, but as actual demons. I have to admit, once you actually show the face of THE Devil, you've sort of lost me. In fact, all of the "hell" sequences lost me, as they all looked like they'd been cooked up on an Amiga, circa 1993.

Aside from the premise, I'll be honest, all I remember about the movie is the following:
a) I was terribly embarrassed for Martin Sheen, who was, for some reason, in the movie
b) If I did not already have a deep disdain for John Leguizamo before, this movie sealed the deal
c) The FX were the sort of cheap CG one would usually see on Xena or other syndicated shows of the time.
d) I wanted to leave, but could not. Jamie had already decided to go hang out in the lobby, where she remained for the last 3rd of the movie, all the while I sat both despising the film and wondering when she'd come back so I could tell her we were leaving. A smarter person, she.

I've seen Spawn comics and the cartoon, and I admit, I don't get it. But aside from well rendered MacFarlane pencils, I don't know what I was ever supposed to get in the first place.

2. Judge Dredd
A cult-favorite in the US and, I understand, very popular in Mother england, this UK-based comic is about a utopian future in which "Judges" are police, judge, jury and executioner.

I'm not familiar with the comic to much of a degree, but I do know that it does not feature Rob "Makin' Copies" Schneider, or even David Spade.
The film was in trouble when Stallone decided this was his comeback vehicle, and hired some poor schlub out of nowhere to direct so he could basically dictate a great deal about the film, not actually have to direct, and not take ALL the blame if the movie tanked. Any relevance to the state of things in Thatcher's England that led to the Judge Dredd comic was missed entirely by the production, as we got, instead, to endure 2 hours of Stallone bellowing and moping.

I have no idea if it made money or not, but the movie received terrible critical review from everyone but my college-pal, Richard, who had seen it a day or two before and insisted I see this masterpiece right away.

The movie actually follows the Superman II/ Spidey 3 pattern of removing the costume for a big part of the movie and not letting them kick the crud out of thugs. Seeing someone lose their job or quit their job is NOT what people are generally paying to see at a super-hero movie. Especially the FIRST in a series.

The movie strips Judge Dredd of BEING Judge Dredd before the end of the first act.

Maybe the FX were okay. I have no idea. All I remember is being deeply unhappy walking out of the theater.


3. Batman and Robin
Tim Burton had abandoned the Bat-flicks after making two movies about a guy ostensibly like Batman, and who lived in Gotham City, etc... but who was pretty clearly NOT Batman (Batman can turn his head).

"Lost Boys" director Joel Schumacher took over the franchise and proceeded to chuck any goodwill Burton had built up with his loving, if off-kilter treatment of the franchise. It was a bold move in circa 1987 when Burton got Batman to disregard the old Adam West show (which most people identified as defining superheroes). Apparently squarely in the "this is stupid" camp, Schumacher must have thought he was helping when he dismissed Batman's motivation as childish and felt Batman was and always should be high camp, or not exist at all. A Batman for the 90's!

"Batman Forever" was the crummy third installment, which doesn't hold up well these days at all. It introduced a 20-something Chris O'Donnell as "The Boy Wonder", Robin, foisted Jim Carrey in tights upon us, and made an ass out of Tommy Lee Jones, who may have now seen Dark Knight and still be unaware he was playing Aaron Eckhardt's character.

"Batman and Robin" decided to expand the franchise and, developed in the late-90's "star power" era, added Alicia "I can't read" Silverstone as Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Commissioner Gordon-- no, she was suddenly Alfred's niece for some reason. Silverstone generally looks and delivers lines as if marginally lobotomized, but apparently enough people liked her rack in that Aerosmith video that we were supposed to think she was a super addition to the franchise.

Look, in the 1990's, I had it in for Silverstone. She kept getting work when she was clearly not talented, and I still find "Clueless" a vapid and stupid exercise from which I think you can trace a direct line from there to The #$%^ing Hills.

There was also the unfortunate casting of George Clooney, who gets ribbing for being in this movie, but... seriously...? Clooney? The guy just stands there and grins like a geek and tries to deliver the dilaog as if any of it (and of it at all) makes a lick of sense.

And in comparison to his cast-mates...

Uma Thurman demonstrated her inability to vamp, deliver a line or be sexy as villainess, Poison Ivy. Thurman CLEARLY believed she was in an Adam West episode, and may not have been wrong. But it doesn't mean she was as good as Vincent price as Egg Head.

The newest Bat-villain, Bane, supposedly the Dark Knight's equal in the comics, was reduced to a mindless drone in his screen debut. And, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger was given bot the role of Mr. Freeze, and an endless stream of quips and one-liners about ice. Most of which make no sense.

Luckily, the movie was both a financial bomb and the closest thing you can get to Hiroshima as far as critical reviews go. Its failure triggered the Bat-movie reboots under Chris Nolan.

Oddly, the movie is so mind-numbingly awful, I can't help but watch it when it comes on cable. From the "Gotham is a Fabulous Disco" set design, to the bat nipples, to the awful one liners, to the plot which makes just absolutely no sense, to the frequent toyetic costume changes and the endless amounts of money obviously poured into this trainwreck.

It is schadenfreude at its sweetest.

4) The Fantastic Four Movies

Did Fox want me to hate the FF?
A typical case of "the studio knows better what will work, rather than 40 years of success in your comic", the FF movie went deeply off the rails well before production began.

Oddly, these two train wrecks are movies one hears occasionally defended, and I can never imagine wanting to be the one whose critical thinking skills have failed them so completely, that somehow either FF film seems like a good idea.

The first failure was probably in hiring director Tim Story, who had done light comedies with Jimmy Fallon before taking on Marvel's second most precious comics commodity. Clearly, Story was much more into the idea of what sort of sight gags he could cook up around the FF's powers and physical irregularities than pounding out a solid story or paying any attention to what had made things work for 40 years. Ha ha... Invisible Girl has to get naked... Oh, good times.

Sure, both are kids movies, and the FF SHOULD be family friendly. But the FF comics have been kid and family friendly for decades without requiring the sound of a trombone coming in with a "wah-wah-waaaaaaah".

They managed to miscast, neuter and dethrone Doctor Doom. Not to mention change his background, abilities, motivation, etc... To absolutely no end.

FF2 is, amazingly, worse than FF1. At least FF1 had the charm inherent in the super-hero origin story. FF2 introduced the Silver Surfer, had the most obvious and embarrassing bachelor party scene of all time, needlessly employed Doom, and failed to give anyone in the FF anything to actually do except for stand around and stare at the Silver Surfer. Seriously, they don't actually DO anything in the entire movie but watch the other characters.

And, for comic geeks, the decision that Galactus was not a character, but a big, purple cloud... pretty lame, studio. Way to forget there's a whole act wherein the FF could have actually DONE something.

Word is that the cast figured out the studio wasn't too keen on the sequel when they hadn't already heard about a sequel within three weeks of the film's premier.

Possibly the most maddening thing is that FF1 came out so close to Pixar's "The Incredibles", a movie which demonstrated the spirit of what a family-centric superhero movie can be. It's a franchise I'd love to see get a second chance.

5) Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
The first Superman film had fantasy, magic and wonder going for it, as well as strong performances, an astronomical budget and a director who didn't think he was on the set of "Three's Company".

Sadly, Superman IV lacked all of these items, but did give us a "Jon Cryser is: Hiding Out"-era Jon Cryer, Mariel Hemingway and Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man.

The frustrating thing about the movie is that you can see that at one point, it was an ambitious script, but something happened along the way, and they made the movie they could with the money they had, and the lack of talent, etc... associated. While its easy to shrug off the premise of Superman trying to remove the world's nukes as stupid, its also the most immediate logical question to bring up about a nigh-unstoppable god-man who is supposedly here to protect us. Why wouldn't he make a pre-emptive move on everyone on Earth to keep us from atomizing ourselves?

Obviously a complicated question, but rather than just answer it, the movie goes off the rails, cloning Superman into this guy.



Nuclear Man's weakness... he loses his power if he's not in direct sunlight. IE: his greatest fear is a good shade tree.

The FX in the movie are sub-par in comparison to the earlier installments, poor Margot Kidder is looking like somebody's mom who doesn't want to be there (but is back after the contract dispute that led to all the Lana stuff in Superman III), and has to endure a scene in which she double-dates Superman and Clark with Mariel Hemingway. realizing you are going to see what you think you're about to see gives you that same feeling you used to get when you realized you hadn't studied for a test or that you forgot to file your taxes on time.

Jon Cryer attempts to channel, I guess, some surfer-dude character or something. I don't know if that was funny when the movie was released, but it just sort of makes one sad now. Sort of like when you accidentally watch Power Rangers.

And, God bless Chris Reeve, because the man is still Superman despite the various obastacles of budget, directing (the only other recognizable film in the director's repertoire are the Iron Eagle movies and the Rodney Dangerfield opus, "Ladybugs"), possibly drug-addled co-stars, and who knows what else.

I could have NOT included the movie but (a) its a failure that ended a franchise and did damage to a genre, (b) its sort of joyless and kind of unwatchable.

But, again, its seeing the big ideas that Superman could and should be addressing, and seeing the numb-skull-edry that overtakes those ideas and crams them into the mold of a standard "I must fight my equal" punchout scene.

Superman III also has its flaws, but... honestly, this film is somehow even more disappointing. People have just seen it less.

Honorable Mention

Superman III. Aside from Annette O'Toole, who has twice graced the Superman franchise with her foxiness, the movie is a mess. But it is also the driver for re-shaping Luthor as a corporate tycoon as seen in the comics from 1986 - 2006. And, sorry, I actually like the Clark v. Evil Superman fight. As a kid, i remember having a sort of revelatory, deep-gut reaction to that sequence. Plus, it features DRUNK, ANGRY SUPERMAN. And that is awesome.

The Phantom. Slam Evil! said the poster. But this low-budget picture was more about slamming me with cliches and an oddly-cast Treat Williams. Sadly, what I mostly remember about the film is Kristy Swanson in tan adventure pants. Everything else is a blur.

I do recall being very excited that this very pulpy looking movie was coming out, and then THAT is what they did with it. Hey, I LIKE Rocketeer and The Shadow. No, really. I own them on DVD. So I don't know what happened here.

The Punisher - Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane. Both are bad, but Lundgren's Punisher is epically bad. And I say that as someone who used to pay to see Steven Segal movies in the theater. It oddly features a lot of Louis Gosset Jr., Italian-American stereotypes, the Yakuza, bad lighting and Dolph Lundgren acting as if he's on qualudes for 90 minutes. Thomas Jane's version missed the whole part about not being real specific about which mobsters the Punisher was taking on and re-located everyone to some resort town the Florida Keys or something. Its hard to believe anyone would be that upset when everyone looks like they should be enjoying a drink with a little umbrella in it.

Captain America - the Tv movies and the 1990ish feature The 70's TV movies of Cap needlessly rewrite Cap's origin and sort of make him a walking gun for the cops. They're just... sort of half-assed, but do feature Cap as a van-owner. and that I can get behind. The 1990's movie gets the WWII and freezing bits right, but gets literally every other detail wrong, including the choreography of the action, any pacing whatsoever, and not casting Ned Beatty as a central figure to the movie. It all looks like the budget was probably roughly what I was making that year in the allowance dollars given to me by the folks.

GhostRider. I don't know if you could have made a compelling movie out of this comic franchise to begin with, but its tough to imagine me wanting to sit through that movie less than I wanted to finish watching this one.

Catwoman. Oh, God. Well, this is actually probably worse than anything above, but I'm not looking back now. I also didn't finish watching it. What you can say is that it created a job for someone at Warner Bros. whose responsibility it is not to accidentally damage anymore DC franchise items the way we saw with Catwoman. (Why do you think marvel is producing its own movies now?)

Elektra. It was like they sorta skimmed the Elektra comics, and decided that was too interesting, so they should go a different direction and make a sort of poorly paced and awkward movie. Couldn't finish this one, either.

Daredevil. Well, its unlikely anyone was really going to capture Frank Miller in his prime quite right for a movie, and sure enough... they failed. So, so many places where this didn't need to be as bad as it was. One day I really hope they try again with Daredevil because he should be a very movie or TV ready character. Just... not like that.



What I have not seen:

The Spirit (most recent or 1980's TV version)
TV movie of Dr. Strange
TV movie of Spider-Man from the 1970's
Corman's Fantastic Four

What I have seen:
SuperPup, which, to view it is to know madness...

Best Comic Superhero Movies of All Time

So in the comments on my post about Wolverine, Jason challenged me to name the best and worst superhero movies of all time. I think, wisely, Jason suggested I stick to
superhero movies that were actually adapted from comics or graphic novels.

Like any genre or sub-genre of film, there's a few shining stars, there's several in the mid-range, and then some movies that are epic in their failure to execute and/ or entertain. Those films often gain legendary status among geeks, as (in)famous as their more successful counterparts. But, of course, they enjoy the word-of-mouth "you haven't seen it? Oh. My. God." status.

The problem with superhero movies (much like sci-fi) is that there seem to be a far greater number of movies that hit the ultra-bad status rather than the very good.

So what did I pick?

How about this? Here's my top five in no particular order.

1) Superman: The Movie
Sure, its Metropolis scenes are hopelessly mired in the ill-conceived fashions of the 1970's, and the whole "Can you read my mind?" sequence is a test of anyone's patience/ sanity... But it also tells a deeply complete story on a scale that's still difficult to match. I still find the characters and motivations of everyone but Otis (read: RHPT) to be truly thought out from a writer's perspective. Cliche they may be these days, but lest we forget: Superman originated a lot of those cliches, so credit where credit is due.

Its hard to believe Reeve is in his early 20's (about the same age as Routh, who was often criticized as "too young") as he managed to define the character of Superman for a generation. Throw in Kidder's "tough city reporter", the essence of Lois Lane, and Hackman as a daffier-than-expected Lex, and it adds up to the capstone on a great cast.

Its also got one of the most memorable scores in all of filmdom, fantastic cinematography, amazing practical effects and manages to tell an amazing, epic story. Something almost no other superhero movie has managed to pull off.

And I know you think Superman II is better, but its far campier and goofier than what you remember. I assure you.

2) Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2
Spidey swung in on a web and saved the superhero movie for the 21st Century. When we'd come to expect dreck (more on that later), Sam Raimi's love of the wall-crawler in both the first and second installments hit pitch perfect with the audience and recreated the superhero film by actually paying attention to the original source material instead of dismissing it as kiddie-garbage.

Raimi, unlike Burton and his Batman, "got" Spidey in all the ways that mattered, and understood what had made the original source material work. Rather than slavishly try to hit all the beats, he distilled down why we love made the damn best two hours of a Spidey movie anyone could ask for.

Sadly, Spidey 3 was a terrific mess and a disappointment.

But Spidey 1, especially, is a hell of a lot of fun. Who didn't want to web-swing after that movie?

3) The Dark Knight
I grew up as a huge fan of the Burton films, but they never felt exactly like the comics I was reading when I'd head home from the store with Detective or Batman comics in my hand. The Dark Knight built on the based-in-comics foundation of the Goyer-assisted Batman Begins (which was great, but could have used more Year One), and sets Batman firmly in a world much more like our own. And then drags the audience along, like someone tied to a galloping horse for about two hours.

In many ways, the Batman comics WISH they were as we well put together as Dark Knight, and I don't think any writer since Morrion did "Arkham Asylum" or Moore and Bolland finished The Killing Joke has managed to make the Joker so completely frightening or menacing in a way that seems all too possible.

Sure, I've failed to do a Maggie Gyllenhaal "DITMTLOD" post, but the replacement of Katie Holmes as Dawes is not what makes me love the movie. Its just a rock-solid film from start to finish with clearly defined characters struggling in a world where morality is punished.

Also, the score is nothing to listen to for relaxation, but its a huge part of the environment of the movie.

4) Iron Man
It's a recent entry, and so I'm reluctant to place it so high in the rankings, but Iron Man is a great story of circumstance creating a hero from the complacent.

Its tough to imagine anyone but Downey in the role these days (Tom Cruise actually had the role locked up for a few years until the rights expired).

Had Iron Man not been overshadowed by Dark Knight's insistence on refining the genre, it would be the movie we'd all still be talking about (I am. I have it on Blu-Ray. Thanks, Jason!).

The movie was probably mostly there in the script, but its not too difficult to imagine how it could have gone wrong. Humorless. Forcing in the alcoholism angle of the 1980's too early. Too many one-liners. Someone deciding it was a kids movie, and could we lighten up the middle-eastern portion... So many ways it could have been nothing but, literally an empty suit of a movie. But Favreau and Downey found some perfect pitch to hit. Sure, its spirals into the same mad scientist/ my evil twin-ness of several other superhero movies, but its a great ride getting there.

Plus, I liked Gwyneth Paltrow again. Who knew?

If Dark Knight made me want to lay down for a while afterward, Iron Man made me want to stand up and cheer.

5) Justice League Unlimited
is not a movie. But it's available on Netflix, and is the best representation of the JLA I've seen. And that includes Morrison's JLA, to which I have a slavish devotion (Rock of Ages? Best. JLA. Story. Ever.).

It doesn't hurt to watch the preceding two seaons or so of the series "Justice League", or all the various seasons of Batman or Superman (also available via Netflix). But JLU's two seasons were a high point in American televised animation.

Brilliantly voice-acted, well-animated, and with a team of peopel scripting the thing at a level not seen on most prime-time shows (aside from, maybe, Lost or something...), JLU encapsulated everything there is to love about the DCU. Big stories with small, personal moments. A wide cast of characters fighting for the common good, questions of power and responsibility... all that stuff. Plus a wild array of villains and villainous plots, grounded by well defined characters on both sides of the good/ evil dichotomy.

Plus, Amanda Waller.

Its a great run on a great series. Never embarasrsed about being a show about superheroes, and never feeling that because its a show about folks in capes that it should be anything less than the best show they could make it.

If not for the greed of Cartoon Network officials (unhappy the toy money was going to DC and not to them), we would have had another few seasons. But I'll take what i can get.

And if you don't find anything cinematic in the season endings to either season, the Amazo episodes of JLU, the Dark Heart episode, etc... well, more's the pity. I love that they can do this on the comic page, and I love it that Timm, McDuffie and Co. brought me such imaginative work over so many episodes.

But I also don't mind their straight-to-DVD features. All of which have been worth picking up, in my opinion.


Honorable Mentions:

Obviously X-Men and X2 are great movies. Simply terrific at condensing down the expansive X-Universe. But the first film's ending is kind of goofy, and I'm not sure the second film's ending pays off the set-up of the film on the scale I would have preferred.

I actually like both of the recent Hulk movies for different reasons, and would gladly pay to see a sequel to the Edward Norton-starring Hulk. I really don't know what else you're going to do with the Hulk, so it worked for me.

Superman II and Superman Returns certainly get an honorable mention.

Hellboy 1 (but, sadly, not Hellboy 2).

I still like the short-lived Flash TV series, Seasons 1-3 of Smallville, and Wonder Woman.