SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

BIGWIG: We have had a very good run of late, haven’t we? I was amazed, One, that you managed to pull back the entire cast of the original The Fast and the Furious to make a sequel to The Fast And The Furious despite the fact that we’ve already made at least two sequels to that movie, one of which had none of them in it.
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Vin Diesel asked if I had any spare change!
BIGWIG: And Two, remaking The Women as a “Sex In The City” clone? Outstanding.
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Some girl I was trying to nail made me watch the original, and I thought “why aren’t they talking about men more?” And I ran with it.
BIGWIG: And Three… well, I’m not sure how you tricked me into making Hamlet 2, but it seems to have been a success for us, so I can’t blame you for that.
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I misrepresented it to you as an actual sequel to Hamlet, and disingenuously suggested that we might possibly cast Jason Statham as Fortinbras.
BIGWIG: You’re learning to play the game, Three. This pleases me. But now, gentlement, to business. We have Dane Cook under contract for several more movies, and I plan to maximize our use of this investment before his career collapses into a black hole from whence nothing can escape.
FIRST: Batman fights Popeye! Batman fights Popeye!
BIGWIG: One, we have been over this: so long as we have no means of blackmailing Christopher Nolan, your concept of Batman and Popeye fighting each other in outer space has to remain on the backburner.
FIRST: Aw.
SECOND: I have an idea. Let’s cast Dane Cook as a suave, romantic leading man type. Let’s make him classy.
BIGWIG: And then…
SECOND: And then he fucks Eva Longoria, but leaves her for a hooker with a heart of gold.
THIRD: She wouldn’t go out with you?
SECOND: I was going to buy her lobster and everything!
BIGWIG: I do not like your idea, Two. Three, hit me.
THIRD: I say we cut our losses. Dane Cook is an unlikable asshole, and the public is rapidly realizing that. He can get by as a standup, because you don’t have to like a standup, but as a leading man he’s worthless.
BIGWIG: Interesting. You have said something of merit.
THIRD: So we’re going to cancel the project?
BIGWIG: Don’t be stupid, Three. We are going to use your observation to our advantage. Gentlemen, we are going to make a romantic comedy which stars Dane Cook as an unlikable asshole.
FIRST: Fantastic!
SECOND: Brilliant!
THIRD: Oh sweet Jesus.
BIGWIG: We will do this by making use of the canard that hot girls secretly want to be with assholes. Dane Cook’s character will be an asshole, but all the other guys in the movie will be enormous wimpy baby-men, thus making Dane Cook look attractive in comparison.
SECOND: Wait, wait, and when Dane Cook has doubts that being an asshole is the right thing to do, we can have Alex Baldwin give him a speech about how being an asshole is the best thing in the whole world!
FIRST: Why Alec Baldwin?
SECOND: Because he’s an asshole who essentially gets paid to play an asshole in movies and on TV.
BIGWIG: I like this idea, Two. We shall use it.
FIRST: Can we call Dane Cook’s character “Tank”? I knew a guy in high school who beat up nerds, and he was called “Tank.”
BIGWIG: Excellent idea, One.
THIRD: Look, seriously – I don’t think this movie can work. You’d need the world’s most emasculated, most non-aggressive, most – oh, hell, you’re going to cast Jason Biggs as the lead whiny man, aren’t you?
BIGWIG: Precisely, Three. As I said, you learn quickly, and this pleases me. We will also find a variety of other nerdy, non-manly actors that Tank will “help” by treating their ladies like total crap, convincing these women that whiny, clingy passive-aggressive schmucks are the absolute best they can manage.
THIRD: …but that’s not a story, that’s a plot setup. For there to be a plot you need to introduce conflict. That means Tank actually has to fall for Jason Biggs’ girlfriend for real…
BIGWIG: Impressive. Most impressive.
SECOND: Can we get Kate Hudson to play Tank’s girlfriend?
THIRD: Are you over Eva Longoria already?
SECOND: I’ve moved on. There are plenty of whores on the street, my friend.
THIRD: Don’t you mean “fish in the sea”?
SECOND: I know what I said.
FIRST: Ooh, ooh, ooh, I have an idea!
BIGWIG: Do tell.
FIRST: Let’s shave off Jason Biggs’ eyebrows!
BIGWIG: In the movie, you mean?
FIRST: …that works too.
BIGWIG: Good. And yes, Two, I believe we can get Kate Hudson to star as our romantic interest in this film. We will tell her she is the new Meg Ryan, and that appearing in a string of romantic comedies is the only way for her to achieve film immortality and a successful career. When we contact her, be sure to use the phrase “just like Bogie and Bacall.”
SECOND: Who the fuck are they?
BIGWIG: Just do as I say. Trust me, she’ll flip if you say that.
SECOND: ….reeeeeeeallly…
THIRD: Not like that, dumbass.
BIGWIG: Actually, I understand that’s how Chris Robinson got her to marry him. Well, gentlemen, I believe we’ve worked out the kinks here. Send the notes down to the script monkeys and have them hammer out something PG-13ish, flirting with a light R.
THIRD: Let me guess: a scene in a strip club, but no actual nudity? Daring without being daring?
BIGWIG: Precisely.
FIRST: Wait! I think a movie like this needs a prestige director. Like that guy who directed King Kong.
THIRD: There is no possible way we will get Peter Jackson to touch this.
FIRST: No, I mean the one about the video game.
THIRD: …you mean The King of Kong? The documentary? I don’t think this is his kind of –
BIGWIG: It is if we pay him a lot of money. Right: let’s get this movie made, people. Somebody has to finance the big blockbusters with a chain of solid C-level money-generators this week, and that somebody is us. Three, why are you shuddering?
THIRD: …no reason.

I kind of love Diablo Cody.

1.) This movie really exemplifies the differences in pacing between movies made in the 1960s and movies made now. If you asked most people what Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is about, they’d tell you “it’s about a family going on a fantastic adventure thanks to a magical car.”

This is not entirely wrong, but in a movie that runs two hours and twenty-five minutes (ASIDE: holy shit, this is a long movie) there is quite literally no adventure at all until the first hour is almost done, because the movie feels the need to introduce the car itself in its racing prime (the first five minutes, and man do they drag), Dick Van Dyke and family, explain why Dick Van Dyke is brilliant but poor, introduce multiple failed ideas by Dick Van Dyke to make money so he can buy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, finally let him succeed, then have him repair the car. Only then, at minute fifty-seven, does the movie that anybody actually remembers as “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” actually begin. This is a movie that was designed to have an intermission (it’s included on my DVD version of it) and shouldn’t have one and should be at least forty minutes shorter.

Another differences between movies made in the 1960s and now: we don’t have nearly as many comic mock-German performances these days.

2.) Another reason the movie should be shorter: the actors playing the children are singularly shrill and talentless. Whenever the movie focuses on anybody other than the children, it dances. When it focuses on Jeremy and Jemima (oh, yeesh) it drags. Plus, their characters are retards. When the Childcatcher (an idea that is singularly ludicrous but works because of it) shows up pretending to be a candy salesman, they fall for it despite that they just saw him not five minutes previous in the movie, threatening their death and everything, but hey, he promised treacle tarts! Watching this movie again, I suddenly remembered that at the age of ten I thought these kids were idiots. I strongly doubt I was alone in this regard.

3.) I’ve grown so used to Dick Van Dyke in elderly-doctor mode over the years that I’d forgotten what an absolutely brilliant physical comedian he was in his prime. When he impersonates the giant puppet in the “toys for the Baron” sequence, he does it perfectly – you can almost see the nonexistent strings holding him up, particularly in a couple of moments where I honestly can’t figure out how he managed to stay upright given how off-balance he was. It’s glorious to watch. And he’s just a solid comic actor, which people tend to overlook sometimes due to his dreadful Cockney accent in Mary Poppins. (Also, a fun fact: Lionel Jeffries, playing Dick Van Dyke’s father in the movie, is one year older than Van Dyke.)

4.) Benny Hill, as the Toymaker, moves with such frustrated energy it fascinates me – every step is a bounce, his walk is a tightly constrained run, his arm motions are thrusts and sweeps rather than easy movement. Watching him, it’s easy to think that he just wants the Yakety Sax to start up and have somebody in a gorilla suit chase him around the set.

5.) My god, if there was ever a movie demanding to be remade as a balls-out family fantasy adventure, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is that movie. Keep the car. Don’t bother to explain anything beyond handwaving of the vaguest sort possible. “It’s quantum, that’s how it works. Trust the quantum-ness.” Travel to a parallel Earth. Aliens! Childcatchers with spidery, robotic limbs! Baron and Baroness Bomburst being even more insane (if such a thing is possible – they’re pretty insane in the original, after all)! Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flying over distant horizons! Somehow, Uluru is involved! Hot damn it would be fantastic.

Sigh.

X-posted to Say It With Pie.

For everyone who wanted to see it: the trailer for An American Carol.

(Hoooooooooo boy that looks bad.)

When it’s being used as a comparator-slash-lesson by real estate salespeople.

Comedies, as a rule, do not age well. Good comedies are plagarized endlessly until nobody laughs at the gags because they’ve already seen them on The Simpsons, and if not, simply become dated as senses of humour shift. Bad comedies are just bad and remain bad. It takes a truly timeless comedy to remain funny decades later – A Night At The Opera, Some Like It Hot, A Shot In The Dark, Animal House – and they are few and far between.

However, comedies, over time, can transform. The Apartment, for example, hasn’t aged particularly well in terms of its humour, but its romantic aspect is strong enough that now it works better as a lighthearted, clever romance (as opposed to a laugher with a romantic plot). For most comedies, this is the eventual goal: redefinition into another genre or success on grounds other than the pure hilarity they can’t, for whatever reason, manage.

The Man In The White Suit, made in 1951, is an excellent example of a comedy redefining itself as time passes. Modern audiences, honestly, won’t find it particularly funny – but it’s smart, and engaging, and clever.

The story of the film is that of an inventor named Sidney Stratton, played by Alec Guiness (yes, that Alec Guiness – he started out as a comedic lead). Sidney is obsessed with a mysterious discovery, so much so that his demeanour at times becomes almost sinister as he pursues his goal. Eventually we learn that Sidney’s plan is to invent a superstrong fabric that never wears out and repels dirt. And one day, he finally does it – and promptly has a white suit (he can’t figure out how to make the fabric hold dye) made from the fabric. (Which he has to cut with a blowtorch.)

All of this would prove decent enough comic fodder, but the reason The Man In The White Suit works is because everybody in the movie except for Sidney has an admirable degree of common sense as regards their own livelihoods. The textile mill owners want Sidney’s invention suppressed because they can’t make enough money off suits that never wear out. The textile mill workers want Sidney’s invention suppressed because they realize once everybody has enough clothes made from the new fabric, they’ll all be out of work. (This actually leads to one of the best plot developments in the movie, as Sidney desperately manages to escape from the owners holding him hostage only to be caught by the workers, who think the owners are going to screw them – until everybody realizes what page everybody else is on.)

Guiness plays Sidney perfectly, a near-Aspergin’ level of obsession and lack of social experience without any hint of malice or bad manners; for most of the movie Sidney honestly hasn’t any idea why everybody is so panicked about his invention. He’s focused on the big picture: when everybody has indestructible clothes, Life Will Be Better. And in the long run he’s right, of course, but nobody is going to be comforted by the long run and he can’t understand that, and Guiness brilliantly makes it obvious that his lack of understanding has nothing to do with arrogance or stupidity but simple innocence.

So thus we have a movie, originally a comedy, but now far more of a low-tech sci-fi movie, or alternately a parable about progress and science; it works on both levels. The performances remain intelligent and nuanced, the story remains engaging. It’s just not as funny as people once found it, and the ending doesn’t quite match the tone a modern viewer will find in it (although it’s not completely off, either). But that doesn’t mean it’s not still relevant, in its way.

FLAPJACKS: I didn’t know Brendan Fraser competed at the Olympic level of killing mummies. Things you learn!
ME: Killing mummy. He only killed one mummy. Didn’t you watch the trailer?
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but he killed the same mummy twice. Like, once in 1928 in Amsterdam, and then he killed the mummy again in 1936 in Berlin. It was a major victory for Canada at the time, as we did not win many gold medals in those days.
ME: Of course people gave all the credit to John Hannah and chalked it up as a British medal by proxy, but we know now that John Hannah is a coward and that Brendan Fraser did all the real work.
FLAPJACKS: Still, we can’t ignore the fact that John Hannah was an early hero for gay athletics, as his lover Garath would attest.
ME: Interestingly, Brendan Fraser’s 1936 victories caused a major international rift because Hitler was determined to see Germany walk away with the gold medal for mummy-killing that year.
FLAPJACKS: He later claimed that Brendan Fraser was the crux of an insidious Jewish plot against the German people.
ME: Is Brendan Fraser Jewish?
FLAPJACKS: He was in School Ties. And what’s more, in that he was secretly Jewish.
ME: I never would have dreamt that Brendan Fraser would be part of the international Zionist conspiracy.
FLAPJACKS: They’re sneaky.
ME: All that having been said, I’m glad to see that the Beijing Olympics will reintroduce amateur mummy-killing to the highest level of competition.
FLAPJACKS: The five-hundred metre stealing of the canopic jars!
ME: Freestyle zombie decapitation!
FLAPJACKS: And of course the mummathlon, featuring shooting uselessly at the undead, flying a plane through a dust storm, driving through a crowded street without running anybody over, quipping, ancient-style swordfighting, and having your child age more rapidly than they should.
ME: The official motto of the International Mummathlete’s Association is “If you compete in any other sport, you’re a pussy.”
FLAPJACKS: Although it appears a lot of this year’s athletes are cross-training with mummathletes this year.
ME: Given how they’re exploding out of sand, I think they’re actually cross-training with mummies.
FLAPJACKS: Oooooh, the IOCC isn’t going to like that at all!
ME: Why not?
FLAPJACKS: Remember how hard they came down on steroids?
ME: …you mean pretending that steroids didn’t exist for decades, then doing an abrupt about-face and deciding they were the worst thing ever once their use became too prevalent to ignore?
FLAPJACKS: Exactly! The mummies have been behind the scenes since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
ME: You know, I thought it looked suspicious when Alonzo Mourning opened his mouth crazy-wide and vomited a torrent of bugs at the Angolan centre in that basketball game, but the commentators said it was perfectly normal, and I don’t watch basketball regularly, so I figured it was just a normal sort of a basketball thing.
FLAPJACKS: Right. Anyway, this is all part of the Chinese Olympic mummy conspiracy –
ME: Wait, another conspiracy?
FLAPJACKS: Yes.
ME: This is different from the Jewish conspiracy, then.
FLAPJACKS: Don’t be silly, there aren’t any such things as Jewish mummies. Remember, mummies regard Jews as only fit to be slave fodder. Didn’t you watch the first movie?
ME: I see. Please continue.
FLAPJACKS: As I was saying, since Brendan Fraser killed all the Egyptian mummies, that leaves the Chinese mummies as the only mummies left to influence international Olympic competition. So the Chinese mummies have been “helping” athletes all along, either for money or, more nefariously, for patriotic reasons.
ME: So you’re saying that the Chinese mummies will stop helping athletes from other countries, and only assist Chinese athletes in the 2008 Olympics, thus leading to an unprecedented show of Chinese athletic superiority, which the Central Committee will then use for a propaganda coup?
FLAPJACKS: Exactly! Unless midway through the IOCC decides to crack down on mummy use finally.
ME: But how does the IOCC stop the mummies from, like, eating them and stuff?
FLAPJACKS: That’s what Brendan Fraser is for.
ME: And that, in turn, gives the Jewish people their long-awaited revenge on the mummies for enslaving them!
FLAPJACKS: There are so many levels to this thing it is scary.

Andrew Klavan had a truly batshit (that’s a pun, there won’t be more) editorial in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend in which he argued that The Dark Knight vindicates the Bush administration as noble heroes, left to defend a world that doesn’t understand them. It’s absurd on its face, of course- Batman is a fictional vigilante who stalks around at night and punches out bad guys in his pajamas, while George W Bush was elected to serve a nation by its people. The two aren’t comparable on any terms. But you call the Joker a terrorist in the script, and people like Klavan rush to put on their thinking caps and explain how George Bush is just like Batman. It gets really dumb, though, once he starts asking rhetorical questions about liberal Hollywood. I’m feeling charitable today, and I’ll help him out:

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?

There’s no need to "put on a mask" if your point is to explore the complexities of a situation. If you want to examine the military policy in the Iraq war, you don’t need to re-shoot Star Wars from a viewpoint that’s critical of the Jedi council’s tactics against the Sith. You can just set the damn thing in Baghdad. But if you want to claim that Lyndie England was a hero and George W Bush is the bravest man to ever walk the face of the planet Earth, you need a lot of layers of allegory for people to not laugh (or spit) in your face.

Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

Because the idea that those values can be determined without any messy moral ambiguities only exist in worlds created by people who are specifically trying to have easily identifiable good guys and bad guys. You have to create a world in which the right-wing "reality" applies. It’s easy to know who the bad guys are in Lord of the Rings because they’re orcs led by a giant evil eye. It’s easy to know who the villain is in Spider-Man 3 because he’s named Venom and wears an evil black costume. If the world actually worked that way, then right-wingers would be welcome to make their films as direct and realistic as they liked.

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Don’t look now, but I think that this guy just made the claim that the first person to make a film in which George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld personally beat up Saddam Hussein will be the next Jesus.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They’re wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

And for evidence, witness how successful caped vigilantes have been at protecting major world cities from supervillains.

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them — when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

What’s awesome about statements like this is that, when you decide that intolerance, unkindness, and hate are useful tools for a better world, you become indistinguishable from those who use them for purposes you don’t find quite so noble.

It’s almost like you become two-faced, using your unambiguous moral certainty that you’re doing the right thing to commit unspeakable acts. I don’t know if this guy actually watched the whole thing, but the self-righteous, unquestioning character convinced of his own goodness is Harvey Dent, not Bruce Wayne. And dude, I’m pretty sure he was a bad guy.

(cross-posted to www.dansolomon.com)

Because it debuted before The Dark Knight, which, this past weekend, became the single most successful movie to open ever, the trailer for Zach Snyder’s Watchmen garnered a lot of attention. Lots of (well deserved) drooling, lots of controversy. My particular favorite note came from Galleycat, which said:

“Remember earlier this week, when a well-placed movie trailer turned Watchmen into a hit 22 years after the first installment of the graphic novel appeared in comic book shops?”

As if it were a trailer for the book and not for the upcoming moviezation.

Also, I’m pretty well certain Watchmen has been a “hit,” off and on, for the better part of two decades.

I’d bet that, if comic books sales systems pulled a Soundscan to remove the bestsellers overall from the charts (because stuff like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon still sells so many copies, so many years later, it would affect the sales reporting), Watchmen would rank up there along with The Dark Knight Returns and Sandman; books that still sell well so long after their original publication.

And so now this is where I admit something: I couldn’t get through Watchmen.

I tried. I picked up the book at some point either during college or shortly thereafter. I’m pretty sure I bought it at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, which I still consider the single coolest comics shop I’ve ever been to. Back then, I was a regular commuter between midtown Manhattan and southern New Jersey, and I often picked up comics or entertainment magazines at Midtown to read on the Greyhound back home. So I’m pretty certain I intended to read Watchmen on the bus, and I know I started it, but I also know I got about 30 pages in before I gave up on it. Even still, that paperback is somewhere in my parents’ basement.

I’ve picked it up again to skim a few times, hoping each time that I would appreciate it, get into it, like I hadn’t before. I hated Shakespeare until my sophomore year of college, when a professor-prompted epiphany finally demonstrated to me how awesome King Lear was. I read both The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye in high school but appreciated neither until I read them on my own while in college; I reread Gatsby a year or so ago, and discovered it was even better.

I keep hoping I will experience something similar with Alan Moore.

Because it’s not just Watchmen; I’ve read enough people I admire praise him that I’ve tried lots of stuff by him. Promethea. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Lost Girls sounded vaguely interesting, because I always like modern fiction that remixes and revamps old stories to change the way we look at them, but I never did pick it up. But I’ve discovered the cool reaction I had to Watchmen is roughly the reaction I have to anything Alan Moore writes. And I really do want to “get” him, I think; I know he did seminal work on Swamp Thing, and I know he wrote a bunch of Superman stories a lot of people I admire think are awesome, and hell, the man gave Neil Gaiman what may be the most awesome nickname ever (“Scary Trousers”), which comes with one of the single coolest nickname stories in history:

(edit: I couldn’t figure out how to embed the video, so here’s the link.)

But I don’t. I never have, and I am unsure I ever will.

I keep hoping it will come with age. That as my taste becomes more sophisticated, I will begin to appreciate the writing, the nuance, the genius of Mr. Moore.

Because that’s his big thing isn’t it? That he’s such a genius? That he’s so smart, and he crams his writing so densely with references to literature and popular culture, that his work is above the understanding of most mere mortals? From The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to From Hell and such, everything I’ve seen of his is dense and verbose and meticulous, but more in the way that I want to say, “Yes, Mr. Moore, I understand you’re intelligent. Now if you’ll just stop attempting to demonstrate/prove it, can we please get on with the story?”

It’s because, of course, he wants to “keep out the scum.” No, really, that’s what he says. In this interview with Forbidden Planet, when asked about his to-come novel Jerusalem, the interviewer asks if it will have “one of these intractable, impenetrable first chapters like with Voice of the Fire,” to which Moore replies:

“Now, I did deliberately put the Hob’s Hog chapter in Voice of the Fire. I have been asked since why I did that. The only thing I could think of was, to keep out scum.”

Well, hey, mission accomplished, Mr. Moore. This particular scum? Totally kept out.

The thing about the Watchmen movie, though, is that I totally loved V for Vendetta, so maybe, I figure, this new one will be all right. I know a lot of people hated V for the changes it made to the story in the original comic, but I had the distinct advantage of never having read the comic before I saw the movie, which, on its own, I think, is just spectacular. Having only read a few dozen pages of Watchmen before putting it aside for something I might enjoy more, I can’t help wondering if I’ll have a similar experience with Watchmen; I’m one of the people interested in the movie but with no real investment in it either way. I like a couple of the actors (Crudup ftw! And seriously, the dad from Supernatural? Hell ya!), and the visuals, from what I saw on the giant IMAX screen with the holy-shit sound, were certainly impressive.

So who knows? I may just watch the Watchmen.

Reading it, though? Whole other story.

(cross-posted to Will in the World. Sorry for the updates/editing; I totally screwed up the coding)

There are many reasons to see The Dark Knight, many of which have been repeated elsewhere many times over, but I will merely say this: any movie starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman which trusts one of its most powerful and emotional moments to Tiny Lister, and makes it work perfectly, is a movie that is a cut above.

ME: So apparently the trailer for Watchmen will run in front of The Dark Knight.
FLAPJACKS: Because they are both comic book movies. I get that!
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe they could run a trailer for the new Terminator in front of it as well, because they both have Christian Bale in the movie. And then maybe a trailer for Traveling because they both have Aaron Eckhart in it. And then – no, wait, Heath Ledger is dead, that one doesn’t work.
ME: It’s also available online.
FLAPJACKS: So we should watch it then.
ME: Aren’t we going to go see it this weekend? On a big screen?
FLAPJACKS: That would mean, like, waiting and shit.
ME: A cogent point.
FLAPJACKS: So let’s watch it now.
ME: All right.
We start watching the trailer.
ME: “In 2009, everything will change.”
FLAPJACKS: Previously, in 2008, the first thirty seconds of the trailer are watching the hairs on Billy Crudup’s arms stand up.
ME: Owlship looks cool.
FLAPJACKS: Yes. Hey, when did Silk Spectre plunge through a burning building and land with great agility on her feet in the comic book?
ME: I believe that did not happen.
FLAPJACKS: Oh.
ME: Adaptation!
FLAPJACKS: Originality!
ME: …wow, the “fling the Comedian through the window” scene seems… familiar.
FLAPJACKS: “THIS! IS! WAAAATCHMEN!”
ME: I thought we’d declared that joke dead.
FLAPJACKS: It’s relevant, because he also made 300. So it can be used this time.
ME: Can’t you come up with something better?
FLAPJACKS: “THIS! IS! AN OVERLY PRECIOUS SOULESS PASTIIIIIICHE!”
ME: Never mind.
FLAPJACKS: Ozymandias looks… what is it, when something is exactly the opposite of “intimidating”?
ME: Not intimidating?
FLAPJACKS: More than that.
ME: I just think he looks like a little kid playing dressup.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe that’s sharp, purposeful cultural commentary.
ME: It is a brief look at Rorshach! Does his mask go oogy with the moving blots? Rewind it! I want to see if his mask goes oogy.
FLAPJACKS: I don’t think it goes oogy.
ME: Crap.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe it’ll go oogy later.
ME: Okay, fair is fair: Dr. Manhattan looks exactly as creepy as he should look.
FLAPJACKS: I concur.
ME: …I think Vietnam is entirely greenscreened.
FLAPJACKS: I think your mom is entirely greenscreened.
ME: Shut up.
FLAPJACKS: Oh, quit whining. We’re supposed to be surprised that there’s greenscreening in a Zach Snyder movie? Did you even see 300? I think that title actually referred to the number of animators they had rendering CGI cliff faces.
ME: The Comedian also looks badass.
FLAPJACKS: Well, if you can’t make the Comedian look badass, you shouldn’t even bother making the movie in the first place. Making the Comedian look badass is easy. Making Nite Owl look badass, on the other hand, is hard.
ME: Nite Owl looks like a cheap Batman ripoff.
FLAPJACKS: Cultural commentary! He’s playing with our preconceptions! And stuff.
ME: Hey, can you see Dr. Manhattan’s dick in the trailer?
FLAPJACKS: …okay, why do you care?
ME: Look, we get an extended shot of full-frontal Manhattan in this trailer, I want to know if Zach Snyder is out to pervert the minds of nerd America.
FLAPJACKS: He could make it worse?
ME: Rewind, I wanna see.
FLAPJACKS: …I think they made his groinal area glow so brightly you cannot make out individual parts.
ME: Zach Snyder, you wuss.
FLAPJACKS: Well, I don’t think Billy Crudup wants to… well, maybe he does want to expose himself to teenagers. How would I know?
ME: “The most celebrated graphic novel of all time.” Wait, nobody told me this was Maus.
FLAPJACKS: That’s not fair and you know it. Come on, it’s Watchmen. It’s entirely fair to give it those props.
ME: All right, I guess – NO! NOT CGI PADDY HAT SOLDIER!
FLAPJACKS: He had four CGI kids and a fifth one being rendered!
ME: What will we tell his wife?
FLAPJACKS: Something in binary. Do you speak binary?
ME: Fuck no.
FLAPJACKS: Well, let’s not tell her anything then.
ME: Agreed.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, there is Rorshach’s mask going oogy for you. Are you satisfied?
ME: On that level, at least.
FLAPJACKS: And there’s the Mars jewel ship.
ME: Pretty cool.
FLAPJACKS: So, how do we rate this trailer?
ME: In terms of being a good trailer, A. In terms of making me think the movie will not be dogshit… I dunno, B minus.
FLAPJACKS: I’m closer to B plus.
ME: Yeah, but you like all that stylized compu-fighty stuff Snyder does.
FLAPJACKS: We will have to agree to disagree. Except about Nite Owl looking lame. We agree there.
ME: But do you think it was on purpose?
FLAPJACKS: …probably not.
ME: A ha.

Look. I know it’s not your fault that DC’s direct-to-DVD movies have been largely mediocre thus far, but come on:

Wonder Woman should not have a face that looks kind of like a horse.

I mean, it is Wonder Woman, she’s supposed to be an athletic paragon of female beauty and stuff. She should not look like a horse. Really, you could put together a list of what not to do when drawing Wonder Woman, and right at the top there would be “make her look like a horse.”

And if you have to make her look like a horse, couldn’t she at least look like a really nice horse, rather than… this?

I’m just saying. Nobody wants to buy Wonder Horseface.

One thing movies tend to do for the most part really badly is portray realistic geniuses. I mean geniuses, not just smart people. The people whose brains run on different tracks. Almost uniformly these characters get slotted into two tracks: the comic relief nerd (Egon in Ghostbusters) or the crazy savant (for example, the horrifically bad A Beautiful Mind). Worst of all is the tortured genius genre, wherein the filmmakers take pains to make sure we all understand how tortured the genius in question is, merely because he’s a genius. How persecuted a genius must be!

Zero Effect is that rare accomplishment: a movie about a tortured genius that avoids cliche, easy answers, and mawkish sentimentalism. It’s also very entertaining on a quiet, subtle scale; the dialogue crackles and the plot is brilliant. It also manages to portray the fact of being a genius in an original, compelling way.

Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman) is the aforementioned genius – the “world’s greatest private detective,” but for real. He apes certain trappings of Sherlock Holmes (naming his cases with ostentatious names like The Case Of The Man With The Nonexistent Suitcases), but he’s also an emotional wreck – agoraphobic, obsessive-compulsive and with social skills that are poor. But – and this is wonderful – over the course of the movie it becomes apparent that he is these things not because he is a genius, but because like everyone else on the planet, he is fucked up in his own way.

A “before he got real famous and annoying”-era Ben Stiller plays Zero’s Archie Goodwin analogue, Steve Arlo. Steve hates his job, but remains loyal to his boss even as he realizes he has to quit, and assists Zero in handling the case. It’s a good dramatic performance by Stiller, who can actually act when he wants to do that. (Which, because he is rich thanks to mugging like a jackass, is not often. But frankly, if I were rich thanks to mugging like a jackass, I would do the same thing.)

Arlo, on behalf of Zero, is contacted by a rich man named Stark (Ryan O’Neal at his sleazy best). Stark is being blackmailed, and wants the blackmailer found. That’s the mystery, and it absolutely ruins the movie if I tell you how Zero solves it or how it plays out – but I assure you, the payoff is excellent and the process utterly engaging.

But this isn’t just a mystery; it’s also a story about a guy who is fucked up trying to unfuck himself a little. Zero begins this process when, in the course of his investigation, he meets Gloria (the superlative Kim Dickens, who went on to play the magnificent Joanie Stubbs in Deadwood and nowadays occasionally shows up as the mother of Sawyer’s kid in Lost), an enigmatic EMT with obvious smarts. It spoils nothing to say that Gloria ends up being involved in the mystery to an extent (I mean, come on), but how she is involved and the ramifications of her interactions with Zero are fascinating to watch.

This is a difficult post to write because the process of watching this movie is half the fun; it’s just well-written on a scale that’s amazing, every performance is just about perfect and the direction by Jake Kasdan is competent enough to know not to get in the way. As I write this, I want to explain how the follow-the-money sequence brilliantly shows, rather than tells, how great a genius Darryl Zero is (and does so with a narrative voiceover, normally the bane of evocative filmmaking). But if I did, that would ruin it.

So you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Sadly, not to life, the universe, and everything, but rather to the movie quote quiz I posted last week.

continue reading "The answers"