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.

Nathan on Local News in San Antonio

Leaguer Nathan Cone is on TV promoting the Texas Public Radio film screenings they run in the summers. See him do the Pee-Wee Hermann dance!

Here's Nathan.

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:

Happy B-Day to Mangum

Happy Birthday to League Pal Matty Mangum.

I met Matt circa 1996 when he moved with a crowd of friends from Colorado to Austin. I found his directness refreshing (the first conversation we had was him criticizing the album I was listening to when he walked into my apartment), and quickly found his curmudgeonly ways endlessly entertaining.

We wound up both working as students at the same office on campus, and both parlayed our student gigs into full-time gigs, and consequently spent no small number of hours together inside and outside of work.


Mangum thinks tigers are greeeeeaaat!

Obviously I enjoy the man's company as I was happy to have him crash here for a short while during the renovation of his condo. He's a frequent guest to Steans-Family holidays, and we enjoy having him around on game day, etc... He's the guy i actually will hand the tongs to over the grill, and defer to for food choices every time. Matt's a traveler (he was recently in Thailand, and is prone to head to Europe or wherever the wind takes him), a blackbelt in some form of karate, and is now a scuba diver.

He's a longtime pal, and I wish the dude the best of birthdays.


Denby, Matt and Nicole (Nicole is tucked under Mangum's arm there).

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.

Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart

Let's wrap up what's become Bonnie Tyler week with a League Super THX to Randy for sending me the Literal Reading of the video for Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart".