21st Century Digital Boy

I Think I Love My Wife: It starts off as typical Rock/C.K. humor: witty, incisive, cutting. The problem is, it’s also a 3-minute joke, or perhaps a half-dozen 3-minute bits. 18 minutes in, you’ve laughed all you can laugh.

We have Our Hero, a good man whose life has of late lost its fire: he has a Good Job and Good Kids and a Good Wife and a Good Home. He spends a lot of time talking about the doldrums of marriage (or any long-term relationship, really), best summed up as “single and lonely or married and bored”.

It is here - 18 minutes in - that the film has to switch from 3-minute stand-up/sketch comedy bits to a movie with a narrative, and that’s where it loses it. Our Hero attempts to reclaim some of his “lost” youth by entering into a friendship with a young hot chick.

Without giving too much away, I hate it when the protagonist spends the entire film making obviously poor decisions and is then saved from the penultimate bad decision by deus ex machina. Other characters then forgive the visible transgression(s) of the protagonist, because said deus ex has kept the real transgression(s) hidden from view. (In the film, I find it impossible that the real transgressions would not have been discovered, esp. given how flimsy the deus ex was in the first place).

You could argue that it’s not deus ex machina but “an attack of conscience”, but whatever, you’re wrong: a machine comes down from the heavens and makes everything work out in the end.

Still, it’s a fairly amusing flick, if you don’t mind an opening act that will pretty much make one of you (assuming you watch it with your spouse/SO) ask difficult questions.

Shoot ‘Em Up: I can see why a lot of people wouldn’t like this that much: it gleefully ignores the laws of physics to such an extent that you may have serious problems suspending disbelief now matter how much it’s clearly not even trying (the first gun battle isn’t over and it’s already way out there). For me, a hyperviolent live-action B. Bunny v. E. Fudd is just too amusing to resist; I smiled the whole time.

PotC3: At World’s End: Boy talk about losing the plot - this should have been pared down by about 30-45 minutes, had the entire Chow-Yun Fat subplot removed, and limited itself to a half-dozen double-crosses. I got confused about who was fucking whom over. Amusing but far too in love with itself and aware it’s a multi-million dollar franchise.

“Death Proof” sucked. It sucked long, and it sucked hard. It was a bunch of meaningless people sitting around talking about nothing. It had perhaps 60-90 seconds of genuine tension in the span of 90 minutes. 

 ”The Pirate Coast” was non-stop awesome. It is rare that a historical novel can be as gripping, fast-paced, and downright badass as the best modern fiction technothriller, but this was entirely the case.  Cannot recommend it highly enough.

“Charlie Wilson’s War” is a close runner up on awesome.  It’s a big … lengthy, and slow-paced at times, but still totally worth a read. (Or wait for the movie, which seems like it might be even more awesome by chopping out the slower parts and focusing on the cool parts?) 

“Now You Know“: slow but usually amusing build to a disappointing conclusion; the journey is more amusing than the destination. Good to watch for fans of View Askew, but feel free to bail before the “big reveal”.

“Blood Diamond“: OK this was over-long, and at times followed the annoying racial-buddy-movie cliche of, “white guy holds forth on how he’s not a racist then 5 minutes later calls a black guy the n-word”. It was very well shot, though, and irritated the shit out of the diamond industry, which is a plus. It actually mentions the other shame of the diamond industry, that of false scarcity, which is pretty cool. Also it lacks notable Jennifer Connelly boobage.

“Flightplan“: OMG SUCK.

“Slither“: Pretty damn good schlock horror flick.

I jumped ship from Netflix to Blockbuster, for 2 reasons. 1, Netflix has been fucking me raw with return times. In Fairfax, I’d return a movie Monday and have another by Wednesday; in Ashburn, I’d return a movie Monday and maybe - maybe - have another by Thursday (but more likely, Friday). This is unacceptable. 2, my gym is a few doors down from a Blockbuster retail store, so it is easier to take advantage of the return-online-movies-to-the-store thing since I’m right there.

The downside of Blockbuster Online is their web interface is a little less clean than Netflix, which makes it a little painful on my shit connection; and their search engine blows goats. A search on “House” returns no popular movies in the first page: not “House of 1,000 Corpses”, nor “House, MD” or any other ostensibly popular (read: recent) results.

How much did Transformers suck? Let me count the ways. Here’s 10, off the top of my head.

1. Michael Bay is a hack. He confuses action in a story, with making something happen every 8 minutes. Ideally no “scene” in a Michael Bay flick will last longer than 2, maybe 3 minutes; there was to be Big Action every 8-10 minutes, or he gets hives or something. In short the story moves forward more by fiat than actual plot.

2. Did you notice how the Transformers weren’t really that important in the flick? It was about Shia Lebeouf trying to get laid, and happened to feature giant, transforming alien robots. In fact, one could argue that it took giant transforming alien robots to get him laid; how sad is that.

I don’t think any Decepticons really had any dialog at all; Megatron appears late in the film; the Autobots exist only to crack the occasional one-liner, or complain to OP about “why are we fighting for the humans”. In fact I’d wager the scorpion robot or the boombox spy robot had more screen time than Megatron; probably only Bumblebee had any appreciable time (and that was as car).

No more summer sci-fi blockbusters that are actually about one boy’s desperate quest for pussy (Deep Impact, etc). PLEASE?

3. “OK, John (Turturro). Look, I know you’re a great character actor, but basically, just mug for the camera and overdo the shit out of it. OK? Your motivation is, ‘You need to make some car payments so you took a stupid role in a Michael Bay film’. Aaaaaand … action.”

4. “OK, John (Voight). Look, I know you’re a great character actor, but basically, just ” etc etc as above. Also why bother to focus on SecDef? To make the one boring and stupid POTUS joke? Look I’m all for “insert GWB analog, then make him look like a doofus” but there’s just no point. Skip the political commentary altogether, OK? Giant robots people. That’s what we’re here for.

5. This is of course a “you’re over-thinking” flaw, but I just can’t get past, “Why the fuck do intelligent alien transforming robots rely on missile and projectile weapons, esp. when they also have energy weapons and, shit, advanced spaceflight?”. Like, do they “grow” ammo?

You will forgive the sci-fi nerdery but isn’t it cooler to think, “maybe they’re some kind of silicon-based intelligence, that that all-spark thing energized, or maybe its a kind of gestalt mind thing, the creation of some post-Singularity species, and their bodies are just that; shells for the brain. So blowing one in half is not a big deal, they only need to preserve their mind/consciousness, which is why the all-spark thingee is so important”.

6. CAN WE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE RID OF THE FUCKING COMPUTER VIRUS MEME THINGEE FROM ALL SCIFI ACTION MOVIES PLEASE KTHXBI

It’s a crutch of the weak screenwriter. For fuck’s sake, just, stop. Come up with something new for fuck’s sake.

7. The action was, in typical Michael Bay fashion, egregiously hyperkinetic, such that it’s all one big whirling robot-and-too-much-bass-and-reveb sandwich. It’s OK to calm things down a little. It almost seems odd to reference it, but notice how in 300 they used slow-mo, traditional and bullet-time pans/sweeps, and other things to turn hyperkinesis into “you’re there on the battlefield with a god’s-eye view”? 300 deserves props for its fight scenes; Transformers was just ZOMG MORE ACTION MORE MOTION MORE SOUND.

8. (SPOILER) I totally dig how to make the Megatron/Optimus Prime fight more “dramatic” he randomly announces they’re brothers. HO HUM NO ONE CARES

9. (SPOILER) Could the death of … umm .. whatever the fuck was the one that died, be any more ignominious and boring? See above: he had no dialog, in fact I forgot which one it was, but I’m supposed to be all sad that he’s dead? He didn’t do shit. Waste of time.

10. Criminal underuse of the canonical transformer transform noise. Nuff said.

Don’t get my started on the hipster NSA geniuses who have to go get Anthony Anderson to decode the alien language, the data encoded in the glasses, egregious product placement and name-checks, etc etc.

(Does WordPress.com strip embeds?)
Think 300 could use a little more man-on-man action? Here you go.

“Sparta, Spandex and Disturbing Distortions of ‘300′“

Wow. Apparently the author is a professor of hellenistic history and sucking all the fun out of a room.

Repeat after me:

• It is a movie based on a comic book that is not a documentary or historical document
• It is a movie based on a comic book that is not a documentary or historical document
• It is a movie based on a comic book that is not a documentary or historical document

As I said in my review, yeah, “Wow, Spartan society is really fascist”. Hopefully even the Fanboy Armies charging to the multiplex will realize that, but even if they don’t, who cares? If you’re the soft-minded type who strives to live his life according to the a movie based on a comic book, there’s not a lot of hope for you at all.

There’s no need to rebut point-by-point. Simply, “he tries very hard to suck the fun out of the room, and succeeds”.

He’s the kind of guy who’d look at a porno, a porno so hot you’d wanna pull out your junk and start tugging right there with 20 other people in the room, and announce loudly, “You know, they really don’t like each other, she’s faking her orgasm, and almost certainly doesn’t like having that many cocks in her ass”.

It’s sad that people won’t watch ‘300′ and go to the library and read some books on what really happened; I bemoan our society’s lack of intellectual desire. But the movie still fucking rocked, even if you know all the history.

• Lambastes the film for lack of historical accuracy: tool
• Goes too deepy into film’s obvious (almost humorous) homoeroticism: tool
• Complains of realism issues (eg, “Yeah, like the Persians would have fought so hard over that pass”): tool
• Delves into deep sociopolitical parallels with today (eg, “Is this a good movie for a war-weary public?”): tool

Gets it: Gene Seymour, Richard Roeper (in fact, his review is probably the best I’ve read, of any movie in the fanboy action-movie; he completely gets it). Total fucking tools: AO Scott, Kyle Smith.

The movie is a wonder to behold: it is stunning on the eyes in every single frame. The action is bloody and highly kinetic. Just about every line is shouted, arrogant, and laden with suicidal verve.

I enjoyed every moment, save 2: When I offhandedly thought to myself, “Christ, the Spartans are fascist”, and when I totally lost suspension-of-disbelief and thought, “Hey when did Leonidas have time to put eye makeup on?”. But otherwise, this film is glorious, a total wonder.

The shot from the trailer, where the Spartan phalanx pushes the Persians off the cliff? Beautiful. The first big fight, rendered in a kind of grey/bronze/sepia tone, except the bright red of the Spartan cloaks? Beautiful. The fights, frenzied and incredible. Everything by which a comic-book movie, esp. a fanciful one like this, should be judged.