Such as this “found script” of Michael Bay writing The Dark Knight.

The old standby: the movie quote quiz. Full points for guessing movie title, actor, and character, so a possible three points per flick, up till question #34, which is a trick question and therefore worth one point. NO FAIR USING GOOGLE. If I find out you cheated and used Google (I am not sure how I would do this, but I have ways and means), Ima cut you.

Of course it’s relatively easy to cheat off other people’s answers as well, but it’s not like there are valuable prizes at stake here.

As a special bonus to make it easier for you: no actor has more than one quote on the list. (One director is represented twice.)

continue reading "A Monday Morning Diversion"

Everybody else has already said it and probably more eloquently, but: if you have not already done so, go see WALL-E as quickly as humanly possible. It is probably the best picture Pixar have ever made.

Let me repeat that to make sure it sinks in: this is the best movie that Pixar Studios have ever made.

(If there is a creative force on this planet equivalent to Shakespeare in his prime, folks, it’s working for Pixar.)

EDIT TO ADD: And since a couple of people have asked me now: yes, it’s also a fantastic children’s movie. I always try to catch a matinee of any Pixar release because I like to see how the intended market takes it, and A) my theatre was crammed and B) the kids around me were goggling, enraptured, completely and absolutely lost in the story.

People forget that storytelling without using words is exponentially more difficult than simple dialogue, and vast chunks of this movie are completely dialogue-less, which just makes the creative achievement here all the greater; this isn’t just Pixar topping their previous works (which already set the bar for excellence in animation and in movies in general), this is Pixar topping themselves after they intentionally handicapped themselves. It’s utterly unbelievable how perfect their achievement is.

Also, the short (“Presto”) is ludicrously good.

ITEM! The Middleman debuts on the teevee. Unlike a lot of the comic blogosphere, I didn’t read the comic first, so I have the benefit of not having any expectations when considering it as a TV show, and I will say this: while entertaining enough, the dialogue (wherein you can practically hear the panels changing) often errs too far on the side of tweeness. Yes, I’m glad there’s a television show with gun-wielding gorillas and ray guns and robot receptionists, but it’s a bit too stylized in its execution for me to be completely blown away. I’d give it a solid B with room for improvement, and pilot episodes frequently have kinks they need to work out. We’ll see if it continues being overly precious.

ITEM! You know what’s surprisingly good? The “JLA Goes To The Tangent Universe” miniseries DC is publishing. Now, given all the immense amount of crap DC has published regarding different universes over the last year, I honestly expected this comic to be terrible, and Ron Marz on the writing skills didn’t particularly give me hope as I’ve never been a fan – but it’s really quite decent in an understated way. Partly it’s because the Tangent Universe was always pretty decent and revisiting it is pleasant (and Marz is doing a decent job not overplaying the “JLA reacts to different universe” bit in a hamhanded manner), and partly it’s because the path of the Tangent world (with the Tangent’s Superman, a near-omnipotent psychic, taking over as a dictator) is dramatically different from standard superhero fare in a way that seems unforced and genuine, and partly it’s because Marz is really hitting all the character voices really well. It’s just a decent little superhero comic, and that’s just fine.

ITEM! I’ll just echo again what everybody else already said: The Incredible Hulk is pretty good. Not Iron Man good, but good. And Lou Ferrigno remains awesome.

ITEM! Trinity continues to underwhelm me. I mean, never mind that the whole “entire DC Universe jerks off over how awesome Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are” thing is one I have never particularly enjoyed, but additionally it smacks of telling-not-showing. I figure, if you’re going to write a comic about the three of them, I don’t need to be told over and over again how special and important they are. Presumably if someone buys the comic they already think Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are pretty great shakes, and do not need to see the rest of the JLA getting their asses kicked and then praising Heaven when the almighty frigging Trinity shows up.

But beyond that, the comic is just kind of bland. I say this with disappointment, because Kurt Busiek is probably one of my most reliably favorite writers; I greatly enjoyed his run on Superman – I thought the Prankster issue in particular was one of the best in years. (Honestly, somebody should just pay him a lot of money to write a series where he gets to write short arcs about minor nobodies in a superhero universe if we can’t get Astro City on a regular basis.)

ITEM! On the other hand, Secret Invasion continues to be mostly pretty good, with most of the tie-ins both recognizing the comic-book lunacy of Earth being invaded by little green men and running with it while simultaneously managing to successfully convey the paranoia of the Body Snatchers-like plot points. It’s a really tricky balancing act to pull off and Marvel is doing it with nearly a dozen books, all simultaneously. Sure, there are some minor gripes to be made about how the third issue of the main series was basically a placeholder, or how Mighty Avengers serving as a backstory book is probably a bit of a waste, but these are at best secondary complaints; the primary issue is the quality of the story being told. And it’s really good. (High point: the return of Lyja in the Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four mini, which also has the Richards children operating a tankbot.)

ITEM! Chuck Dixon John Nee Dan Didio blah blah bling bling blah. I have literally no opinion to express about this; like many comic fans I don’t like the direction DC has taken over the past year, but like many comic fans I am also relatively clueless as to how much of that is Dan Didio’s fault, and I don’t like to rely purely on gossip when offering forth opinions (well, not always, anyway). So I got nothing to say there.

If we’re going to get an animated Star Wars film, why on earth are we getting the Clone Wars, which has already had live-action movies and an animated series and potentially a live-action series in the future about it – instead of, and this is just off the top of my head, an adaptation of the Heir to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn, AKA “the only good Star Wars novels ever?”

I mean, seriously – you get together a thousand nerds, and say “would you rather have animated Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala and nameless Jedi #6, or animated Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker” and you know you’re going to get 999 people voting for “never tell me the odds!” and one person complaining that we can’t get a CGI adaptation of Dune or something.

Another film that got overlooked in theatres, and although most who have seen it sing its praises (and given the subject matter that is kind of a bad pun), it still hasn’t found the audience it rightly deserves on DVD as of yet. Right now it’s mostly a cult flick.

Saved is an excellent film about the troubling and fascinating power of faith, which takes very little for granted. As such, predictably, conservative Christian movie review sites hate it. The movie is a liberal one, but it is most certainly not an antireligious film; its conclusion lies firmly in the pro-faith side of the argument. I personally think this is part of the reason it fell under the radar – its target audience of tolerant faithful, while much larger than anybody gives it credit for, is not nearly so outspoken as the conservative religious and liberal non-religious camps.

It’s a movie with a number of nuanced performances, all uniformly excellent. Mandy Moore started off her penchant for playing hilarious psycho bitches with this movie. Her Hilary Faye is a terrific villain, but not unsympathetic – her nervousness and obvious lack of self-generated self-esteem turn what could have been a total cariacature into a compelling downward spiral. She might be bad, but she’s never one-note and she’s always understandable.

Jena “was Ellen Page before Ellen Page was Ellen Page” Malone plays the lead – a devout girl who becomes pregnant as a result of trying to “cure” her gay boyfriend’s homosexuality. She’s excellent – watching her faith shatter, then reform on her own terms is fascinating. When she hits bottom and stares at a church and just starts swearing, daring God to strike her down for blasphemy, it’s both sad and at the same time slightly funny. She’s not any good at blasphemy, so she just utters a few basic swear words like they’re the text of the Necronomicon, but Malone makes it work and then some. You can feel her devastation thoroughly.

The rest of the cast are uniformly terrific. Macaulay Culkin – of all people – contributes a gentle, understated and clever performance as Hilary Faye’s crippled brother. Patrick Fugit (who, I am informed by girls I have seen this movie with, has grown up all dreamy-like since Almost Famous) plays Malone’s love interest, a returning missionary who rides a moped. Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse) contributes a brief turn as Hilary Faye’s lackey. Martin Donovan’s conflicted Father Ted is well done, and Mary-Louise Parker (whom I will watch in anything) is fantastic as Malone’s mother.

It’s a damned good movie, and a reclamation of religious faith for liberal values; the two are not incompatible and anyone who says different is simply wrong. And it’s funny. Especially when Mandy Moore runs Jesus over.

Twitter. I utterly fail to see the appeal of Twitter. Understand that I am someone who is online a lot – I am not offering up the standard crank “why you kids playin’ with those danged computers dang it” rant here. But this need for total connectedness is beyond me, and frankly it’s not even total connectedness because it’s entirely a one-way conversation: you blather whatever into Twitter and other people see it, but you don’t have to listen back to them. Which, come to think, is pretty ego-driven communication in a passive-aggressive sort of way. You can tell people what you’re doing and you don’t have to listen to their responses, and not is this the expected norm, it’s the driving design principle!

What the fuck is up with that? People have suggested this is the evolution of the Facebook status message, but Facebook exists primarily for the purpose of two-way communication, obsessive as it might be. (Well, that and Scrabulous.) Twitter in essence takes the self-absorption that the connected lifestyle demands (all the co-presence of a community, without the niggling demand of learning to tolerate the in-person social quirks of others) and caters to it.

All of this might be forgivable if Twitter produced clever, interesting communiques, but it doesn’t – it’s an endless parade of banalities. Another way of looking at Twitter’s general pointlessness is to consider how many Twitter messages would be worthy of mention when replying to the question, “so how was your day?” Easily most would not qualify, because in person when someone asks you that, you don’t tell them about the thousand little annoyances in your day; it’s just the (relatively) important stuff.

The “Green Arrow goes to supervillain jail” movie. People recently started talking about this again and I just don’t see the appeal. The concept isn’t bad, but I can tell you right now the execution will be hamfisted dogshit.

Why will it be hamfisted dogshit? Well, other than Green Arrow being a terrible superhero concept (“has a bow”), this is the sort of movie that demands immense, immense amounts of exposition to explain what the hell is going on. The problem is that most filmmakers are really, really bad at delivering details of a differing world without simply vomiting up a horde of banal, boring, patronizing explanatory dialogue.

(This is one of the things that people who mock the original Star Wars trilogy really miss – Lucas created an entire expansive universe and, unusually so for him, resisted the temptation to explain anything more than necessary. It is a rare achievement, which is one of the reasons the original trilogy is so good and the second prequel trilogy is not.)

This is not to say that the movie might not be good. It might well be good. It just very likely won’t, because it’s setting itself up for failure right from the premise by choosing such a difficult focus, and let’s be honest, you are not going to get a Bryan Singer or Christopher Nolan making this movie. This is the Steel of this generation right here, people!

Also, “Supermax” is a terrible, terrible title, sounding not unlike a giant Japanese fighting robot. GO SUPERMAX! ELECTRON JUICE ATTACK SUPREME! Et cetera.

People who bag on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It’s a better movie than Last Crusade, people – a movie which gets by mostly on Sean Connery’s charisma and the extra import added by the Holy Grail. (And I like Last Crusade, people, so don’t start.) Yes, Kate Capshaw is kind of annoying. Yes, Short Round is a questionable character idea. But it’s got the best action in the entire series – moreso than Crusade and even Raiders – and its closing sequence is easily the best, most exciting in the series. It’s simply the most daring movie of the franchise.

Grey’s Anatomy. It’s like Scrubs, except not as funny, not as good at the dramatic moments, and twice as long.

Apparently there is a movie version of Pac-Man in the works.

All righty then. But I thought they already made that?

…okay, that was the best story they could manage for the Indiana Jones movie people had been waiting two decades to see?

(Sidenote: in the digital advertising thing they run before the trailers, one of the things was a segment on “Indiana Jones”, where Frank Marshall explained that the final shot of Last Crusade, with Indy and Sean Connery and all riding into the sunset, was the perfect way to close out the trilogy. Which is correct, but why do you mention that when you’re hyping the next movie? “The third movie had the perfect ending to the series! Then, twenty years later, we decided we all wanted some more money…”)

I had a “Movies You Should See But Have Not Seen (Because They Are Good)” in the queue for next week, and now I have to write something else, because Pajiba went ahead and did an excellent column about the merits of Sneakers.

BASTARDS!

In a more serious vein considering superhero movies (as opposed to previously), some random thoughts about where the origin story is appropriate for a superhero movie, and where it just isn’t.

GREEN LANTERN: This is probably the last of the really good “movie is the origin story” superhero movies, because Green Lantern’s origin, when told right, is really fucking awesome. To wit:

1.) Hal Jordan in exciting test pilot plane sequence
2.) Abin Sur “interrupts”, gives ring
3.) Fun stuff with Hal using ring, maybe fighting criminals who have, say, golden battle armor for some reason (so to explain ring’s weaknesses).
4.) Sinestro-as-a-Green-Lantern shows up, starts training Hal on Earth then in outer space. Tentative student/apprentice friendship emerges!

This is the obvious first act. Then you go into the balls-out SECOND act:

5.) Trip to Korugar. OH SHIT it turns out Sinestro is INSANE, because Sinestro thinks the need to keep “order” means you need a fascist interstellar government. Plus, Hal has no way of knowing that Sinestro doesn’t represent the Green Lantern ethos, so now it’s him against ALL the Green Lanterns, he figures.
6.) So Sinestro has an interstellar battle fleet and he’s going to restore order to the universe sector-by-sector, planet-by-planet. STARTING WITH EARTH because he wasn’t impressed with it and because Hal, who is Hal, resists him.
7.) Sinestro reveals that it was HE who killed Abin Sur, because Abin Sur found out what he was doing and was trying to stop him.
8.) Sinestro uses his awesome will to strip Hal of his ring and dumps him OUT OF A FUCKING AIRLOCK into SPACE.

And finally you get the awesomer than awesome THIRD act:

9.) In the seconds before Hal dies of space death type thing, he gets picked up by a stealth shuttle piloted by Katma Tui and Tigorr. (YES FUCK YOU IT IS MY GREEN LANTERN MOVIE AND I SAY TIGORR IS IN IT.)
10.) Whoops, Sinestro finds them on Korugar and Hal Jordan uses WILLPOWER to get his ring back and they have a ring-fight which is AWESOME and Hal knocks Sinestro for a loop long enough…
11.) …for Hal to go into space and really GO TO FUCKING TOWN on the interstellar space fleet with his power ring. I am talking ten-mile-long buzzsaws, swarms of a billion boxing gloves, enormous star-devouring Bea Arthurs, you name it.
12.) But Sinestro shows up for ROUND TWO and they ring-fight EVEN MORE and at this point everybody watching the movie should have an enormous erection because it will be JUST THAT GODDAMNED COOL.
13.) And then the Guardians show up and you play the “wait, what if the Guardians are on SINESTRO’s side?” to the hilt until Tomar Re and Kilowog show up and say “fuck YOU Sinestro” and Sinestro gets exiled to the Anti-Matter Universe and Katma Tui gets the power ring and replaces him and then the movie makes eleventy billion dollars.

I’m of course being exceptionally facile here, but the point stands that the Green Lantern origin story just works in a way that a lot of superhero origin stories don’t because it – much like Iron Man – is fundamentally a movie about the superhero origin story as self-discovery, about the realization of greatness (Tony Stark and Hal Jordan share one thing in common, traditionally – they’re both, as people, way above average on the “ability” scale) and the responsibility borne with it. Origin stories work as movies when the origin makes you want to root for the hero.

FLASH: Now, this is fundamentally the opposite of a Green Lantern movie right here, because Flash’s origin story is shitburgers from a movie storytelling standpoint.

1.) Meet Barry (or Wally)! He’s a decent guy! He’s a cop!
2.) He gets zapped with chemicals and lightning!
3.) So he becomes a superhero!
4.) And fights, I dunno, Gorilla Grodd or Captain Cold or whoever.

Compelling, frankly, this is not. You can layer on stuff about “it’s tough to be a decent upstanding guy in the world” but Christ, that’s a shitty movie right there because every day your audience has their own shit to go through and you don’t want to paint Barry (or Wally) as a whiner when he can run at the speed of something really fucking fast.

Does this mean a Flash movie is unworkable? Of course not, but it means you have to take a different approach. I gave Speed Racer a well-deserved heaping of shit because it was really just a bad movie, but one thing it did right is that it didn’t bother explaining why Speed Racer lived in this crazy-ass world with these crazy-ass cars driving on crazy-ass racetracks, and also why they had a monkey. The point is that if you start your movie with the premise “this is how things are,” audiences will, more often than not, be fine with that so long as you suspend their disbelief and never question your own narrative.

Applying this to a Flash movie allows us to use the strongest element of the Flash concepts, namely the heroic legacy model. In short, a Flash movie has Barry and Wally and Jay in it – Barry as the star, Wally as the sidekick, Jay as the elder statesman. You want Professor Zoom as the main villain, although you can of course throw in any number of Rogues for color. And most importantly, you establish that Barry has been the Flash for years and everybody knows him and is used to him and Jay as the elder Flash and Wally as Kid Flash.

And the movie is about Barry’s last adventure as the Flash, ultimately joining the Speed Force and becoming the lightning bolt that gives Wally his powers. (You probably want to retcon Jay’s origin just to make it closer to Barry and Wally’s for the purposes of the flick.) Wally and Jay can help defeat the Big Bad, and somewhere in there Zoom dies, but the important thing is Barry sacrifices himself to save the world. Then, at the end of the movie, Wally puts on the Flash outfit for the first time, says “The Flash lives again!” and that’s your triumphant ending right there – a hero has died, but the legacy continues.

People will eat that shit up with a fork. It’s the superhero story as Greatest Generation-style narrative of shared sacrifice and shared victory.

(And you’ll note, incidentally, that this sets up the sequel for an almost-straight retelling of Mark Waid’s “The Return of Barry Allen” story, which continues the theme of heroic legacy while being an awesome story that translates incredibly well to a filmed narrative.)

ALSO: If and when they ever make a movie for The Flash, they must set a sequence to Madonna and Justin Timberlake’s “4 Minutes,” because that would be awesome.

So I just saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it’s good and funny and everybody in it is good and funny, but what the hell is up with Mila Kunis – Mila fucking Kunis of all people – being the single best thing about it?

THE WORLD DOES NOT MAKE SENSE ANY MORE!

GREEN LANTERN
PROBLEM: Really stupid costume nobody would actually want to wear in real life.
SOLUTION: “The Jack T. Chance”: Green Lantern symbol (which is cool) as badge on regular clothing.

CAPTAIN AMERICA
PROBLEM: Getting international audiences to watch movie without sneering.
SOLUTION: Plot features Captain America finding out about dastardly plot within American government to blah-blah-blah-fascist-something and foiling it, thus maintaining American patriotic credibility and issues rest of world has with American government in nifty nutshell.

THE FLASH
PROBLEM: Barry is boring; Wally is hard to explain without Barry; Jay is old; Bart raped Veronica Mars on her teevee show.
SOLUTION: Meet Steve Zurkel, AKA The Flash!

WONDER WOMAN
PROBLEM: Character does not really have a defined reason to exist beyond being “pre-eminent female superhero.”
SOLUTION: Accuse anybody who complains about this of being rampant sexist.

LUKE CAGE
PROBLEM: Fanboys complaining that movie Luke Cage takes fashion cues from Bendis-era New Avengers rather than 70s-period tiara/afro/yellow puffy shirt.
SOLUTION: Death camps.

GREEN ARROW
PROBLEM: Arrows are stupid.
SOLUTION: Give him a samurai sword and make him the best ever with it and ignore it when people ask why he uses a bow at all and why don’t you just call it Green Sword, huh?

NORTHSTAR
PROBLEM: Is gay.
SOLUTION: Make him be a manly gay. Sample dialogue: “time for you to get on your hands and knees now, Alex. You have to realize Northstar… is the man.”

MARTIAN MANHUNTER
PROBLEM: Nobody outside of comic fanboys knows who he is.
SOLUTION: Change title of movie to The Martian Manhunter, A Notable Silver-Age Character And Founding Member Of The Justice League, Who Shares Many Elements of Superman’s Origin While Remaining A Distinct Character In His Own Right, And Who Is A Really Big Deal.

THOR
PROBLEM: When you say things like “yon Avengers” and “thou art no worthy opponent” out loud, they sound really stupid.
SOLUTION: Three words: thick, Swedish, accent.

KARATE KID
PROBLEM: Keith Giffen stalking and killing whoever accepts lead role.
SOLUTION: Match Giffen’s rage with Ralph Macchio’s desperation for a comeback.

MAGNETO
PROBLEM: Character now much older than Ian McKellen, who is, let’s face it, pretty damn old already.
SOLUTION: Magical de-aging ray turns Magneto into Jared Padalecki.

HAWKMAN
PROBLEM: His superpower is flying.
SOLUTION: Tagline for movie: “You Will Believe A Hawk Can Fly.”

GHOST RIDER
PROBLEM: They already made a Ghost Rider movie and it really sucked.
SOLUTION: Invent time travel, convince young Nicolas Cage to become insurance salesman.

I theatre-hopped to see it and still feel like I should ask for my money back.

…although volunteer-driven CG movies have a long history of not succeeding, I can’t help but hope that Iron Sky manages to make a go of it.