Technically, doesn't a "preview" still count as a "view"?

"Hi! Glad to see you've made it to our little preview.

"I'd like to thank all of you for coming out in the rain to see us. You guys are in luck, because you are part of one of the first audiences that gets to see the upcoming brand-new, animated -- "

This is pretty close to the way that "Vicki," the MovieView representative seemingly in charge of Sunday afternoon's preview showing of ^%$#%$(#@^*, greeted us once we had been wanded, strip-searched, groped, patted and all but rogered to make sure no one was sneaking any recording devices (including cell phones), and then sent to our seats to await confirmation of the film we had been invited to see. Jen and I were about 99% sure of the film's title -- they didn't exactly hide the details that would have kept it a total secret -- and we were pretty certain everyone else there knew it as well. In fact, the people next to me were openly talking about it, so let's mark that on our scoresheet as "definitely sure."

"Vicki" may have actually said , "You guys are in luck, because you are part of the first audience to see the upcoming brand-new, animated --," but it has gotten screwed up in my mind by this point, so I wanted to hedge my bets by expanding the range somewhat over what she may have/may not have said to us. For this same reason, and in the interests of libel prevention, there probably wasn't any groping, patting and strip-searching going on either. The real truth is that we did, however, have to form a queue which led us through a metal detector, we had to let them rifle through our pocket items, and we also let them wand us too. (If someone was accidentally rogered at this point, I am unaware of it -- but let's say they were.)

And so we sat down, got the nicey-nice spiel, and watched the upcoming, brand-new animated -- oh, but I am waaay ahead of myself. There was the matter of how we ended up at this event. 24 hours before, we stood in line for tickets to Michael Clayton at the AMC 30 at the Block Theatres in Orange. The Block is a place we do not normally hit -- we have only seen a handful of movies there -- as it is generally laden with a zillion slightly snooty teenagers, a trait which seems to ignore the fact that they only live in Orange. In Newport, it would be moderately forgivable, but not Orange. (The teenagers at The Block might not actually be "slightly snotty"... they might just be assholes. For the purpose of moving on with this, we shall merely refer to them as "slighty snotty" assholes.)

So, waiting to purchase the Michael Clayton tickets that would then allow us to complete our collection of this year's Best Picture nominees, we were struck on our portside bow by a man bearing handouts: sheets that would enable us to get into a free preview the following afternoon. When someone asks me if I want to see a free movie, I always say "yes, goddamnit!," no matter what it is about or who is in it or even what pushy religion might be trying to snatch me into their seemingly caring grip. (Usually at the point where I add the "goddamnit" part, the pushy religion backs off. I usually speak with purpose, even when it seems I do not.) All we had to do is give them a phone call, confirm our presence at the event the next day, and then show up 45 minutes before the show. He also, because he did not know I was cursed to always say "yes, goddamnit!" to these things, felt the need to give us the hard sell on the product to be on display. "I can't tell you what the title is, but I can tell you it is an animated film set to be released this summer, and it is from Dreamworks."

Anyone with a computer (which is pretty much everyone that I know now, except perhaps my grandmothers and Jen's grandpa) has access to IMDB or some other movie site where they can look up Dreamworks and instantly discover the full slate of any studio's upcoming productions for the next few years. But we didn't need access to the site in this case. We only knew of one movie it could be. And, despite the vocal presence of a certain star that I absolutely adore, I was actually not looking forward to seeing the film. But -- yes, goddamnit! -- I was going to see it's preview, ambivalent or not!

And this is how Jen and I found ourselves sitting at a five-months-in-advance screening of the upcoming, brand-new, animated Dreamworks comedy... Kung Fu Panda.

(To be continued tomorrow...)

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Burning (1981)

The Burning
Director: Tony Maylam // 1981
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Here's a confusing one. This film really isn't as bad as it might seem, given that it is clearly a purposeful member of the post-Mrs. Voorhees "rush to slasher stardom" crowd, and when it sticks to that supposed intent, it delivers fairly well. In fact, there is a particular attack sequence that nearly one-ups, at least in body count and relative savagery, much of what had come before it on the big screen. (Yes... the raft scene.) It hits the marks expected within the genre: disfigured killer bent on revenge -- check! Framing device setting up killer's disfigurement and anger against all nubile teens in sumer camps -- check! Fatally stupid, horny teenagers wandering off on their own and then removing their clothes -- check! The film knows what it needs to do, and for the most part, does it.

That is, it does it when it gets around to it. The film, for a good lengthy while, often feels like a more sensitive sequel to Meatballs -- also a relatively recent hit at the time The Burning was made -- than it does as a fully committed horror movie. After the initial mayhem setting up the killer's hospitalization and his escape and first kill, the film takes an incredibly long time to get to the grim business at hand. A huge portion of the film sticks mainly with the patrons of the camp across the lake from the killer's burned-down camp of origin. And that means normal teenage stuff: flirting, pranking, fighting, bullying, gossiping, skinnydipping... you know, the expected stuff. The film actually seems somewhat reluctant to allow the killer to forge on with his psychotic mission, instead allowing the viewer some time to begin identifying with certain characters, even if their actions are mainly a pack of childhood cliches. Of course, they only seem like cliches to us because most of us experienced a lot of these same feelings and problems, so don't blame the messenger. Fault mankind for falling into these predictable ruts.

So, think F-the-13 crossed with Meatballs, but with Jason Alexander cracking wise instead of Bill Murray. What's that? Did I get your attention? Yes, George Constanza makes his film debut here, sporting real hair and a baby face, reading Playboys in the cabin and throwing his endorsement behind the Masturbation King campaign of an even more baby-faced Fisher Stevens. Yes, pre-Brother from Another Planet, pre-Short Circuit Fisher Stevens, also making his film debut. That Ratner kid from Fast Times plays the main put-upon nerd character here, himself plotting revenge against the camp bully, but there is someone else of major stature here, making her debut as well. It takes a few scenes to get a decent glimpse of her, and she barely has anything to do but sit around in a swimsuit (and always shot from either too far a distant or when she is sitting behind someone else), but there's future Oscar-winner Holly Hunter, six years before Broadcast News and paying her dues. With a handful of other seemingly familiar faces of the era popping up (I guess that I was stumbling across more soap operas at that time than I thought), the film loses focus as a horror film (or even impending horror film, given how laidback it gets), and almost becames nothing more than a stargazing festival. (It might be worth a rental just for this, if you are so inclined.)

This is not the fault of the filmmakers, because none of them were known at the time by anyone except their parents and agents, but even watching the production credits at the beginning takes on this aspect nowadays. The creators and producers of The Burning? Well, it's also the first film credit for Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Likewise, debuting here with a story credit is future Sopranos and Larry Sanders producer Brad Grey. (On a smaller level, Jack Sholder edits the damned thing too.) But I saw this film years ago for one reason only: Tom Savini, still my favorite effects guy, doing his best to keep things bloody even when the film only wants to tease you with shower scenes as much as it wishes to tease its killer with false kill scenarios. Savini gives us a deformed monster, fingers snipped off by sheers, and a handful of OK kills, but because the filmmakers themselves diminish the horrific aspect of the story, there is only so much that his then-groundbreaking work can accomplish. He shocks a little and his artistry shines through, but by the film's resolution, everything comes off as disappointing.

Seeing it now, I am reminded of my exact reaction when I saw it back in the day: a shrug of the shoulders and a barely breathed "Eh..."

waking into a dream journal 01.29.08

this morning's brink-of-disaster teetering
no such thing
director: hal hartley // 2001
cinema 4 rating: 4

movies are not generally the realm of doodlers -- this film feels like a less-than-half thought out sketch scratched while its creator were on the film having a conversation about something absolutely removed from whatever was in its creator's head, and then said creator decided later to expand that sketch into a entire canvas -- hal hartley, the creator here, specializes in low-budget indie gems (there is no other word for them), but you have to become immersed in his scruffy style to truly appreciate each of their dryly humorous, rough-hewn facets -- he is responsible for at least a half-dozen films of this type (in memory of the late adrienne shelley, please check out h.h.'s trust and the unbelievable truth... if you love them, then you will be hooked on hartley for life; if not, you are either a hard nut to crack or an impatient boob) -- i want to give hartley a higher rating for no such thing due to the sheer chutzpah within his brave little soul, but the result here shows all the signs of someone dabbling in genre fare for which they have little overall regard -- it's fine to wear your high hat into a lowbrow party, but please take it off at the door out of respect for your hosts -- hartley might be taking mankind's standard myths and washing them in a patina of ambitious wanderlust, mixing this with a second-rate satire on mass media... or he might just be damned pretentious for fuck's sake here -- whatever his motives, his cause is lost in a rush of sloppy filmmaking, lazy characterizations, haphzard pacing and whatever else can go wrong in a film but still have it come out strangely watchable, if not bearable -- all it needs is about two buckets of blood, six gratuitous breasts and a masturbation scene, and it would seem like latter-day ken russell -- while i am used to hartley's scores (he also composes much of his own music), for some reason, i found the use of music in this film almost ran counter to my moods while watching it -- if purposeful, it merely made things more annoying -- its strength lies in its casting, but they are misused to sad effect for the most part -- helen mirren seems to be having as much fun as she is allowed to have, given the brevity of her part, but julie christie is entirely wasted in a nothing role -- robert john burke is a much underrated actor, and he does look swell as the monster, but he is actually completely wrong for the part -- his opening speech (and this actually may be the fault of the script) comes out as non-committal, and immediately gave me the sense (upheld by the film to follow) that this would be a journey of constant disappointments -- but i would not wish to turn anyone away from watching it -- watch for the cosmic sweetness of miss sarah polley, adorable beyond measure, and the only one who seems to understand what is going on here, even if she actually may not know -- watch for hartley's dissertation on mankind's need to both have monsters in our lives, and our simultaneous impulse to purge them from existence (it's possibly a metaphor for man's unease with evolution and whatnot, but by the point it comes up, i didn't care anymore) -- but don't watch for resolution, for there is none here -- hartley is big on ambiguity anyway; if you've gotten this far in his career, you are used to this already -- if i had seen this film at the age of 22, i would have declared it an instant classic, and made all of my friends watch it against their wills -- they would have hated me (again...) -- it's the sort of film that almost feels like it could all seem great with just one major editing session, so close to truly cool does it feel -- all told, a fascinating failure...

...next thing you know, we landed smackdab on top of a witch...

"This was the thing that I was least worried about moving here," Jen declared to me once we had switched our DVR back to live TV after we had just finished watching what was the first of the evening's two brand new episodes (finally!) of Chuck, NBC's wacky, totally illogical but adorably super-spiffy spy comedy.

Strolling casually in a bottom-screen crawl on the local NBC affiliate was a tornado warning for southern Los Angeles County. A tornado warning. I had to agree with Jen. Moving here, I expected a much higher crime rate, insufferably hot weather, several of the biblical plagues (I've got my fingers crossed for frogs and toads, like in Magnolia), and of course, earthquakes. But I come from Alaska, and earthquakes are basically a thrill-ride there. But, tornadoes? Really? Jen said she expected a volcano to appear and erupt before she would ever hear of a tornado in this area. (Personally, I do not know how often such things occur around here, but now I am interested. All I know is that I have never heard of one, nor have I heard any one mention one before.)

We switched the channels several times to 1) make sure this wasn't a put on of some sort or part of the show that was on when it went live (this would be Trump's crappy show, itself a disaster that should come with its own red crawling warning... oh, it doesn't need it. It has Stephen Baldwin, a warning in itself...), and 2) find some other local information that wasn't part of a network crawl. Amazingly, no one seemed all that worried about an impending twister ripping apart L.A. All of the major networks simply had the crawl, no one had gone live to some control center, with panicked, blithering weathermen waving their arms frantically at maps that aren't really there, and even the Weather Channel had clung fiercely to the corporate line and gone to commercial just as we jumped over there for information. As had every single one of the cable news channels. So, no one seemed concerned... except, where we were, us.

Now, none of this would have concerned us normally, except that the phrase "south Los Angeles County" basically means "adjacent to north Orange County," which is where Anaheim lies, and therefore, where we lie down out heads at night. So, to see this, that there is a strong possibility of a tornado forming basically next door, and then to read in an ominous suspense-building text-crawl all of the things you should do in case of a tornado, actually became a little scary. I should say, a little scary for a few minutes. Because, within ten minutes of us first reading the crawl, the damn thing was over. They called off the warning, and apparently, even though we were (and still are) getting hitting by rain and wind, that particular storm cell that was causing the rampant fear had dissipated.

If we had just watched the next thing on our DVR recorder, we never would have seen this. And once we turned that show off, even just twenty minutes later, we would have had no way of knowing (unless we actually watched the 11:00 News, which we never do) that this happened at all. I worked from home today, so I didn't get a chance to ask anyone at the office about it, or get to see everyone's reactions to it. (Certainly I shall ask on Monday.)

And now, if I hear of amphibians raining from the sky, I will only be halfway surprised. I'll say to the first toad that I happen upon crawling across a windshield, "What took you so friggin' long? The tornado has already been here!"

He will merely say "ribbit." He's used to this disaster crap.

waking into a dream journal 01.24.08

this morning's gothic fantasy rapture
northanger abbey
director: jon jones // pbs, masterpiece, 2007
cinema 4 rating: 7

early on in this new version of jane austen's first (but posthumously published novel) on the former masterpiece theatre (yes, i do watch jane austen flicks, and would do so even without jen kind of making me do it. i actually read all of her books growing up, along with those bronte chicks, none of whom (the brontes, i mean, jen can stand), it is said of the just-then-of-age catherine morland by her proud father, "look! our catherine has turned out rather well. she's quite a good-looking girl. why, she's almost pretty today!" -- ahem, i know this plays off the fact that cathy was supposedly rather indistinguished and plain growing up before she blossomed, but you'd think they would have noticed slightly before this point in time -- after all, she is played in the film by felicity jones -- here's the scoop on dear felicity: she is exactly the sort of apple-cheeked, slightly overbitten, supple-lipped, fiery-eyed beauty that has caused me to lose so much sleep, twitter so nervously in anguish and despair, and trundle my heart to the savaged repair shop endless times throughout my torturous existence -- if she perhaps reminds me of someone i once knew, i'll not own up to any form of admittance -- but she might -- so what if it's austen's least complicated or involving storyline, it has felicity carrying me through the story in much the same way that frances o'connor did in the most recent theatrical version of mansfield park: "huh, what? it's over? where did the time go?" -- it's not sleep; it's hypnotism -- i'm sure many of my more testosterone-obsessed pals will take me to task for not being manly about this, and to take the side briefly of the gender of which i have, by rights of nature, supposedly been grandfathered, they are probably right -- it might appear to not be the most manly thing, watching what are considered by the male population at large to be "chick flicks" -- they would maintain i am supposed to get more excited over action films, where guys get all down and dirty, fighting and killing and shooting and acting tough and getting sweaty and gritty -- so, basically, getting right down to it, if you are speaking of being "manly", it's all about popping a boner -- some of you get your kicks from the fighting and killing and shooting and acting tough and getting sweaty, and some of us would rather achieve that same state from 90 minutes spent with an impossibly gorgeous nymphet walking about in a dark castle wearing a flouncy nightdress in a state of fantastical gothic arousal -- so, take your pick, "manly" men -- i'm spending my hour and a half with felicity jones... you can spend yours with john rambo...

Death in the Links (and It's Not the Title for a Golfing Mystery...)

I have a friend -- a very dear friend of just over a quarter century -- with whom I have very little correspondence anymore. I send the occasional email but get little response. Every once in a while, I receive an email from him pertaining to something within our group of friends back in my old stomping grounds; I will often respond, in that way that I do, with a snarky comment or two, but he hardly ever gets back to me regarding this bad behavior. Whether I have annoyed him or done something deeply to offend him at some point I am unaware of, and if I have, then it would be a surprise, for the behavior which caused it would be par for the course for me, because, as it states in the long-running contract that I signed with my dear old gang, this is exactly what I was hired to do: annoy and offend, but in a playful, friendly manner. I say I hardly ever hear from him, but I do receive a constant stream of a certain type of email from this friend of mine. If a celebrity dies, usually within an hour of their demise, sometimes mere minutes in the case to which I am referring, I will receive an email bearing a subject line that declares the celebrity's death, and then in the body of the email there will be nothing else but a link to a popular news site carrying the full, sad story. For a while, I, the rightful king of spontaneous annoyance, became annoyed myself by these intrusions into my state of well-being, wishing them away so I could keep from spending the remainder of the day in a negative mood which would keep me from concentrating on the work at hand, and dwelling instead upon this crushing state of mortality under which we all exist.

After a while, I began to develop this image in my head of my friend spending his evenings plowing through the news sites, hoping beyond hope to discover any mere mention of even the lowliest celebrity just so he could grab a link to it and send it ASAP to his email-trapped compadres. I began to feel sorry for him, believing him to be caught in some strange new form of addiction, like those people who have to pass on every single piece of spam that lands in their mailboxes, only my friend's seemed more proactive in design, and therefore, possibly far more dangerous to his person in the long run. And then anger overtook me when he would send emails for celebrities that I didn't give two shits about, and it would become compounded when he would completely miss on an author or an old-time actor whom I felt deserved more attention, and then would totally ignore their demise for that of what I would consider to be an inferior being.

And then, eventually, I stopped feeling sorry. My friend wasn't an addict, and he wasn't sad. We wasn't mutating into some bug-eyed, drooling, blithering death-beast, hiding in the dark praying for Chaka Khan to drop face first into her bon-bons. He was merely a good friend of mine passing on information about famous or influential people whom he believed some of his pals and gals loved or admired, or even people we may have hated but of whom he felt we would find the notice of their untimely passing of some mild interest. We would, for the most part, hear about these things on our own, but he was still providing a valuable if trivial service (and, in a sick way, sort of fun... like we were on the info end of one of those "dead pools" you hear about... which we aren't). Because, despite the lack of replies to his initial charge, he was, at the very least, attempting a connection in some small fashion.

He's still providing this service, the latest volley of which I discovered on one of my personal "national" holidays: Oscar-nomination day. Caught up in speculation fever, this time, when I read the email, I thought he was joking. It was about Heath Ledger, not long after he was discovered in his Manhattan home. The news of this swept from my own agape jaw to that of my office-mate Raw Meat, and then it rocketed through our building, pretty much carried by me as I made my way through the halls, acting pretty much as the human-viral version of the email my friend sent in the first place. Some people found out on their own, but I did the main work, and when the deed was finished, I was shocked more by my immediate reaction to this news than the news itself.

Certainly, we, as a society, have grown increasingly inured to tragedies of this sort. We would perhaps not care half as much if the media didn't jump onto the story without hesitation and flood us with every single rumor concerning Mr. Ledger's demise before even checking a single fact. We would not care at all if there were no media to do so, but, inversely, were there no media about, Mr. Ledger would not have his career, and we would therefore not know him at all. Now, I have enjoyed Mr. Ledger's presence onscreen over the past few years, even if his movies (even the notorious sheepherder film which launched him to superstardom) did little for me. I was excited by the prospect of his playing the Joker in the next Batman film, if only because I had long given up hope that Paul Reubens would one day play the character (his, though, would be bound to be a more traditional version of the Clown Prince of Crime), and I agreed with Ledger's left-field casting only because I thought it might prove interesting at the least. I must admit, in trying to name films in which he appeared to people who were a little unsure of who he was, I was hard-pressed to come up with more than three right off my tongue. He had become a major celebrity in my personal view of the media, and yet, I had little regard or remembrance of his work at large. Mainly I remembered him from the media's tendency for gossip, a system I try vainly to avoid. Of course, I can't, and neither can most of you. It is the age we live in.

And so, we will get deluged with report after report of celebrity misdeeds, overdoses, murders and accidental deaths. It is our lot, and every once in a while, I will hear of a celebrity who has fallen into such misfortune, and I will react in the way that I did to Mr. Ledger's: sadly and confused. He seems like someone I should be sad over, but I don't really know why. I watched Suzanne Pleshette in far more things than I did Ledger, even growing up watching her and having sort of a crush on her as a youth, and the news of her death the day before shocked me far less than Ledger's. (Suzanne Pleshette, by the way, was a celebrity my friend was remiss in reporting to the rest of us, though he did tag the racist schmuck Bobby Fischer a couple of days before.)

It may have been Ledger's youth that triggers this reaction in us, though the even younger Brad Renfro's recent o.d. didn't shock anyone. Of course, Renfro had never been nominated for an Oscar. Personally, I feel it was a combination of his youth, ascendancy as a celeb, and my own grappling with getting gradually older: eyesight starting to fuzz a bit, knees giving me more pain than before, back aching at increasing intervals. I hear of the death of someone -- anyone -- and I think even more about the brevity with which we all tackle life. Locked as I am in a fascination with horror stories and movies, you'd think I would have a better grip on this subject, perhaps even approach this with a more cynically detached and blase attitude towards the subject of mortality. But, I don't.

[This paragraph removed at the last second in one of my more calm, reflective and thoughtful moments. It was in bad taste compared to the piece, though it did prove a point about my reaction. Perhaps I will print it later.]

So, I plunge headlong into the future, knowing that should Bobby Brown, Stephen King or Tiffany meet some cruel, shocking fate, my good friend will be there to inform us of the news of their passing. I am strangely comforted by this now. Though I am sure he will miss telling us about Carl Hiaasen...

waking into a dream journal 01.22.08

this morning's this morning's lack of this morning's lack of this morning's judgment
salvage
director: jeff and josh crook // 2006
cinema 4 rating: 3

this morning, i woke up in the middle of a dream where a constant stream of my friends from anchorage were coming by our manse in anaheim just to tell us what a mess our place was -- at the point that dion asked to use the facilities and was attacked by the massive pile of entertainment weeklies, travel & leisures, rolling stones and time magazines (apparently, we have become an unknowing slave to time warner, inc.), while i struggled to move dinosaur toy after dinosaur toy off the dining room table, and jen jumped to shampoo the rugs, my "real" self awoke in the middle of the oscar nominations -- and then i got up, post-noms, and plunged into a movie where a girl takes a ride she really shouldn't even consider for a second, gets killed and then somehow keeps reliving the moments leading up to her death -- or is it really her experiencing her death over and over and over? myyyaahh-ha-haaaa! -- i'll give the crook bros. credit for one thing: they sure got their fourth movie made and distributed -- this one followed ghetto dawg 2 -- if they had any true eye for staging a scene or for building suspense, even the slightest bit beyond what is displayed here, i might have given in to its obvious conceit and accepted it as a decent, low-budget hidden wonder -- but they don't, and thus, i can't -- people might give them some credit for ambition here, but there is no moment here that rings true even on human terms, and no ghostly move that wasn't swiped (lovingly, i'm sure) from j-horror of the recent past -- plus, i grew tired of looking at liz phair's country cousin and her crazy eyebrows after about twenty minutes -- and then, there's that sheriff character, who seems to have finished working part-time at a comic book store to come over and hunt down criminals -- play around with timelines and perspective ineffectively all you want to, but at least make your cops seem like they can do the job when the moment comes to pull the trigger -- this guy looks like he wants to run and get a 64-oz. slushie -- and then, at the moment that the oh-so-hidden twist is revealed in the film, i was hit by the actual truth: my breathless realization that i could have been cleaning my house instead... and having a better time of it...

[note: you may notice that, however hackneyed and overused these days, the dvd cover betrays some form of visual sense and design -- you will not find this quality in the actual film -- i saw it on cable, so i was not fooled by the cover -- i was merely fooled by its description in the cable guide...]

waking into a dream journal 01.21.08

this morning's collateral van damme-age (minus the jean claude...)
cyborg 2
director: michael schroeder // 1993
cinema 4 rating: 4

i remember hardly one moment of the original film in this series (is it really a series if the first film wasn't any good, and wasn't even really intended to be a series?), but i do remember seeing it in a theatre, which was a direct result of the van damme madness that swept the video world following bloodsport and kickboxer -- sure, the guy couldn't act and turned out to be, from most accounts, an ass -- but he was, at the time, kind of cool, had a cheesy/cool name, was certainly better looking than chuck norris, and could, on screen at least, kick major ass -- i and a small assortment of friends began a vigil for several years, going to any van damme film that hit the big screen, waiting for that moment when the plot would catch up to his accent, a process which sometimes involved the plot jumping through hoops and over roadblocks to try and explain why he sounds the way he does (double impact is the best example for this) -- does any of this jar loose memories of cyborg? hmmm... not at all --- i know he wasn't the titular cyborg... i think it was some chick --- he was just some amazingly talented martial artist that helps her out --- there's nothing on the line, really, in fighting ring square-offs if j.c.v.d. is merely an android that is programmed to kick everybody's butt -- honestly, is it revealed that he is really one too? i simply can't remember, except the fact that the film was probably the worst-directed piece of schlock i had seen since starcrash (ahhh, caroline munro...) in my teens -- and then, the sequels came out in the '90s to this terminator, er, homage, and were i the world at the time, i would have breathed a collective, long low sigh of disbelief -- i think i did that on my own -- rest assured, i did not rush to rent these films, and in fact, had not seen one until now -- if i had, i would have fallen instantly in love with the then-18-year-old angelina jolie, already fully slutty and gettin' naked onscreen -- i would have studiously supported the viewpoint to all of my friends that, "no, really, this one is much better than the original," and become so firm in this belief (which would have been technically correct, but only by a slim margin), that i would make my friends watch it to prove my point, and they would all use the fact that i made them watch this tripe against me, in much the same way some of them would use eraserhead or spider baby against me, and others would later use motorama -- my point, as always, was not that any of these were great films (though eraserhead is), but that they were at least more entertaining as pure reckless junk than were most of the stifling major studio releases that people were exposing themselves to at those moments -- i would have held this viewpoint on cyborg 2 throughout most of the following decade, but then give it up through sheer ennui, and also through the gradually dawning realization that cyborg 2 is almost exactly like its progenitor in one major aspect -- it is merely several hours after i initially viewed it, and i have already forgotten most of it, except that jolie was one hot cyborg -- the time will surely come when i will forget even this fact...

waking into a dream journal 01.19.08

this morning's one last job before i retire for good (i swear it)
direct hit
director: joseph merhi
cinema 4 rating: 3

rated "r" -- i point this out because the plot of this s-t-v dreck involves a hit man protecting a stripper, and there is an early scene where a batch of everyday drooling idiots are watching two women numbingly grind their respective ways through what must be just another soul-crushing dance in just another strip bar -- the lead character is also, it is rumored within the script, a stripper -- she had a boyfriend who forced her to have sex with other men, including a well-connected politician, who pulls some strings with "the agency" (hmmm... wonder which one they mean...?) to have her whacked -- why? well, said politician is being blackmailed with photos of himself with the not-really-a-stripper, and he thinks she is doing the blackmailing -- the non-stripper will eventually fall in love with the hitman who is originally sent to whack her, and they will have one of those slow-motion, shot-in-the-afternoon, woman-on-top love scenes which were (and are) so popular in films (it is surprisingly contracts aren't drawn up to ensure they appear in disney films as well) -- let's recap: we have strippers, we have a woman who is allegedly also a stripper, blackmail sex photos, spouse-forced adultery and the requisite love scene between action hero and his lovestruck charge -- so, where's the nudity? -- it's not that i need to see nudity; i know exactly where to find it if i wish to view it... i'm not twelve, after all -- it's just that i started to watch the film, and i noticed that the strippers didn't really strip -- then i noticed the girl who is supposedly a stripper trying to convince her boss to let her go on stage with more clothing, a request to which he replies with great derision, telling her he is paying her to strip, which struck me as odd since her cohorts that preceded her on stage must not have been paid to do so, since all they did was gyrate and rub themselves through their admittedly scanty clothing, but clothing nonetheless -- then i noticed that in the blackmail photo, the non-stripper is wearing a bra, and then i noticed in the love scene that great care was taken not to show any actually nudity -- in fact, we see more of pug-nosed star william forsythe than we do of the woman -- the woman was the reason i tuned in anyway, so perhaps my interests were totally prurient after all -- she is jo champa, whom i found rather amusing as the randy housekeeper consuela (with the italian accent and the spanish name) in the mesmerist last month -- a striking mid-30s woman there, i thought this would be a chance to see here over a decade earlier than that film -- she couldn't be dowdier if she tried, this character who is supposed to be a stripper, all bundled up in full-length flower dresses, bad footwear and a horribly mangled bob -- strange costuming choices when considering that she was a supermodel in italy for many years before this film was made -- she is also not really all that sound as an actress either, but in this film, she doesn't need to be to come out o.k. -- george segal slums in that manner that he learned to do for a long time until sitcom money came along, and forsythe is his usual tough, dependable self (though he should have perhaps laid off a bit on the running and jumping stunts) -- too bad it's all for naught, as this is dreariest, densest muck to be captured on film since any number of wings hauser films in the '80s -- how come hitmen in movies always seem to be doing that "one last job before retiring" bit, but movie directors never seem to do the same -- since that last job always seem to go haywire in some fashion, sometimes dangerously so, perhaps if director merhi had declared that this film would be his last job, then we would know precisely what went wrong -- but the guy kept going on and on and on, so you know it's not the case -- it's just a shitty movie... without the expected nudity... it's probably why baseball player and noted adulterer steve garvey only shows up ever-so briefly as a television reporter; he knows there's no action to be had in this action movie...

waking into a dream journal 01.18.08

kill your idols
director: scott crary // 2004
cinema 4 rating: 6

it's nice that the boredoms are name-checked as being influenced by these early new york "no wave" bands like dna, teenage jesus and the jerks, suicide and james chance and the contortions -- i have stuff by all of them, and their work remains uniquely and strangely, for lack of a better word, innocent in its musical naivete and frontier-crashing boldness -- the film points out that, while it was a scene of some sort, it wasn't a purposefully arranged scene... it just happened, almost the opposite of warhol's "happenings," which were often quite staged -- i get the connection with sonic youth, but little is said by the previous generation about the group, but lunch and her compadres go to great length to castigate those of the current generation influenced by sonic youth (and, i imagine, mostly by accident by the "no wavers") -- in fact, despite the happy inclusion of this harsh section of the film where young punks turn into cranky old farts (it happens to us all, i suppose), the film flails wildly to include new bands into this mix -- gogol bordello doesn't really seem to belong at all, it being more imported than organic to the new york groove, unless you take "new york organic" to include anyone of immigrant blood, which they probably do -- then they would count, but their sound is still far more a mix of the clash and the pogues stirred up with gypsy rage and desire than it is anything that james chance spat out of a saxophone in a funkified fury -- overall, a nice introduction to "no wave", the scene that really wasn't, though i wish more time were spent showing us footage and performances from those not-really halcyon days, rather than showing lydia lunch whining about the yeah yeah yeahs -- and why did they blot out the shot of her blowing the guy in the porn video? guess that's what i get for watching this on ifc...

The Shark Film Office: Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

Open Water 2: Adrift
Director: Hans Horn // 2006
Cinema 4 Rating: 4
Shark appearance: quite surprisingly, in dialogue only -- and the constant implied threat that they may show up, which they never do...

I understand. Really, I do. I get the basic appeal when an Open Water or a Saw comes out, and the world flips out because, by and large, the genre films we had gotten for the brief period preceding the respective debuts of those films had been a soggy lot overall. Something slightly off-kilter from that with which we had been deluged seemed refreshing -- it's the reason why the world shat bricks when Blair Witch went "Boo!," giving half the audience the chills, and the other half motion sickness.

Me? Open Water was indeed a breath of fresh air... for a very short while. But then a pair of completely self-absorbed lead characters brought me to the early conclusion that mere death by exposure, hypothermia and drowning was simply too nice a way out for these people -- so, bring on the sharks, by all means! I was inventing gods so that I could momentarily believe in them long enough to be able to pray for the deaths of these egotistical idiots. Render them to shreds, finny ones, and torture those assholes until they are left spitting fear and half-mad from exhaustion and blood loss. Too harsh, you say? Clearly you are the sort of person represented by the characters in Open Water. You just don't know how wrong you are...

Here is where I am confused by the introduction of a sequel to that film, appended with the numeral "2" and coloned to a subtitle: "Adrift." On my end of things, I love sharks, so it would seem that I love films that would feature sharks. The problem is that when sharks are featured in these films, it is generally as agents of man's destruction. The sharks come off as evil, which they aren't, and the people, with the rare exception of an outright villain, come off as the hapless victims of these intruding and terrible creatures, which neither one is at all. As with Jaws -- a film that as a fan of both genre film and great movies in general, I adore unreservedly -- sharks can come up on the losing end of the deal when too much negative media attention causes the public to backlash against an imagined threat to humanity. (For this very same reason, it is surprising that the Black-Eyed Peas are still alive for all the damage their music has done to our culture. Quick, Time Magazine! Put up a cover article about that form of terrorism! Let's get our fishermen trying to haul in Fergie...)

So, it would seem that I would not want shark movies to be out there in the abundance that they are. Yes, we have twenty years of Shark Week helping the public understand the role of sharks in our world, but our primary impulse when shown a picture of a great white or mako is instant fear. I love sharks, but if I walk around a corner and there is a giant shark statue or poster staring me square in the face (as has happened most recently at Disney, and previously as several other locales such as aquariums), despite my admiration, I still jump. Despite my knowledge that it is a mere representation, I still jump. Certainly, fear is our most primal instinct; certainly, fight or flight are our two most necessary reactions. It doesn't surprise me that people reacted in the way they did to Jaws, though for reasons pertaining to my own agenda, I like to chalk it up to the fact that most people are basically morons. And it doesn't surprise that there is an audience for films and shows that continue to play off this fear, even in an age where we really should know better.

I know better. So, why do I watch and even anticipate shark movies, even when I shouldn't according to my own politics. One would be I like to see people get eaten. I don't want the shark to get hurt at all, but I don't mind someone sliding down something else's gullet. But, here's the chief, A-Number-One reason: I am simply waiting for another good shark movie. There is Jaws... and then that is pretty much it. I kept going to the sequels, because I kept waiting for that magic to strike again. Ugh. What a waste of time that proved to be. If you corner me, I will tell you why I own a copy of Deep Blue Sea: because, despite the fact it is a bad film, it's actually a great time at the movies. The script is so crazily constructed, with half-assed concept on top of another half-assed concept on top of yet another half-assed concept -- a tower of klutzy half-assedness that equals the size of the sunken shaft the protagonists have to negotiate within the film's plot -- that it becomes rather lovable, like a lost, drunken puppy. Plus, there is a completely unnecessary but perfect strip-down-to-her-scanties scene, a handful of good, amusing lines, an amiable hero, some half-swell and half-horrible special effects, and a great if not ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson death. And LL Cool J players a preacher/cook who closes the credits with a song about how his "head is like a shark fin!" C'mon, it's so pathetic, I have to love it.

But, it's still not a good film. And that is what I was hoping for in the original Open Water. This, you may have surmised, it turned out not to be. Still, I am not one to instantly dismiss the chance that a sequel can outshine its predecessor. (I am an Empire Strikes Back and Mad Max II guy, after all.) It's rare, but it can work out. But, even though it goes against what I just espoused above, there was one thing I was completely expecting out of Open Water 2: Adrift... friggin' sharks!

Screw spoiler alerts! I don't care if it pisses anybody off, because if you get to a certain point in the film, no matter who you are, no matter what you feel about sharks... there will come a moment about midway through the film where you casually say, "I wonder where the sharks are? I mean, gee, it's great that someone has expressed their concern about sharks showing up, but... when do they show up?" Then, about ten minutes later: "Boy, those sharks should be here by now!" You will tap your watch, and then check to see if it matches the time on your DVD player to make sure the universe hasn't gone out of whack, and that you haven't got caught in some sort of time loop where you are stuck endlessly watching a six-pack of complete douchebags, who have stupidly leapt off a yacht anchored in Mexican waters without first creating available access by either rope or ladder to get out of the water, float about and slowly go crazy trying to figure out another way out.

Ten more minutes, you'll be checking the disc envelope to see if it actually does mention there are sharks in this film so you can sue someone for false advertising (it doesn't -- you are sooooo lucky, Netflix!). Five more minutes, you start frothing at the mouth. You will jump off the couch and over the coffee table in one magnificent leap, yelling "Here's your fucking shark! I'm your goddamn fucking shark!," and then you will start to chew your way through the television in the hopes that you will take out one of the remaining whining cast members with your own gnashing jaws, mastication skills learned from all of the shark movies you rented where the sharks that were implied to show up did show up. Then, you will need someone to call an ambulance for you, since your mouth is now full of shards of glass, and your face and upper torso are possibly covered in second degree burns. And you won't ever know if sharks actually do show up in the last ten minutes. Which they don't.

No one renting this film is doing so with the belief that there aren't any sharks in it. People are renting it because they have either seen the first film, and either liked it or were at least entertained just enough to feel like checking out the sequel, or they have heard second-hand from someone who liked it, and now find themselves faced with a late-evening nothing-else-on-the-store shelves choice between this and a Mary Kate and Ashley shopping caper. "Well, this one has sharks in it, so I will rent it!," they might say. They will hear a character impart her fears early on that sharks may come, and they will also view a scene not much later where there might be a shark or something bumping someone's leg.

And then, half an hour later, each and every one of these misled people will attack the television in the manner which I described earlier. Somewhere, in that mythical TV land that we hear so often about (and that Nickelodeon makes easy money off of), televisions huddle in fear over a story about a legended DVD that causes human beings to try and chew their way through a screen in complete raving madness because the disc didn't actually have sharks in it when it was implied through the simple marketing of a title that there were. It is the TV land version of The Ring, where a television has 70 minutes from the time the disc is inserted in the player before it is trashed to pieces. All because of a shiny, seemingly harmless little disc called Open Water II: Adrift, that doesn't mean to lie to us, but causes untold destruction from its inability to follow through on its inherent implications.

For the sake of our televisions (and our dental insurance), these Open Water people must be stopped now...

[Author's note: Open Water 2: Adrift is actually well-shot, not too badly acted by most of the cast, creates a fair amount of suspense, sticks to its initial intentions, isn't really exploitive, and I suspect it's possible that it may have been filmed without really being intended as a sequel to the first film. Whatever the reason, it is the producer's fault for its ultimate disappointment for mere association with what is widely and famously known as a shark movie. Imagine Jaws 2 actually being about a bunch of dentists stuck in the middle of the ocean. "Water, water everywhere, but none with which to rinse and spit!" Actually, this might have made a better movie...]

waking into a dream journal 01.17.08

this morning's craving for a pinky and leather tuscadero sandwich
grand theft auto
director: ron howard // 1977
cinema 4 rating: 4

i admire ron howard for his initiative -- i certainly wish i had his drive (no pun intended) and i also admire him for not just wanting to break free of his bonds on sitcom television and expand to theatrical films, but to get behind the camera as well -- initiative and drive aside, this is the work of a kid with a set of very expensive tinkertoys and hot wheels -- there has always been a little bit of the devil behind his comforting smile, which comes out occasionally in his work (richie cunningham's constant yearning to be a cooler guy than he appears... or is; narrating arrested development; tackling night shift as an early project, etc.) -- of course, even when beginning his feature film directing career, he is still enough of a family guy to co-write the script with his father rance (who has a dandy stunt moment here) and also cast his small-screen mom mrs. c in a role almost stutteringly against her normal type (marion ross is grand, but here it really doesn't work that well) -- in the car crash '70s, it seems that if there was a car that didn't have a bumper dented in or an unbroken taillight, it would have one by the end of the film -- howard goes crazy here, with more crashes per minute than even death race 2000, which pales in comparison for carnage purely involving the bodies of automobiles -- though, unlike death race 2000, because it is a young freckle-faced ronnie howard here, everyone walks away from every single car crash -- this is a comedy, after all, and while it smacks of the ambitiousness of a young spielbergian wannabe, it mainly fails on the laughter front -- the laughs are too desperate, too yearning for instant approval -- that said, there are some good ideas here, and if you like to see cars crash, you won't be disappointed -- i, however, need a little bit more -- it would have been interesting to have seen howard revisit this script a few years later (maybe post-ransom) with a little more experience under his belt -- still might be a cool idea -- i'd release the new version in a double feature with the gumball rally... or cronenberg's crash...

waking into a dream journal 01.16.08

this morning? gone over...
the edge of the world
director: michael powell // 1937
cinema 4 rating: 7

as much as i love the works of michael powell (and his partner in archery, emeric pressburger), i have been strangely slow about collecting their films -- thus far, only the red shoes and tales of hoffman have made it into my dvd collection -- shimmering, quiet and as beautifully craggy as the people who inhabit the island of its plotline -- a fragile glimpse at an even-then vanishing way of life: a small, remote village done in by the uncaring economics and changing morality of the modern world -- it can be seen in every frame how clearly powell fell in love with the terrain, even as it apparently became increasingly difficult to mount and maintain the production -- it may be the age of the print used on tcm (is it the same on the dvd? i will have to find out...), but much of the cinematography seems far more soft in focus than i initially expected -- it doesn't devastate with sweeping vistas, but more tightly controlled and exquisitely framed shots that show both the tender beauty of the place and the harshness that nature and the god of its inhabitants could visit upon it -- doomed to tragedy from its beginning (thanks to its prologue with director powell acting onscreen), one can't help but read the growing dread on the people of the island as it crashes against their resolute toughness -- completely engaging for its brief running time (only 74 minutes) -- i have continually surprised myself when stumbling into these tiny, nearly flawless gems from the british film industry -- raised on american fare, and really only knowing pre-'60s english films through early hitchcock and alec guinness comedies, i have much catching up to do -- almost seems a piece with another stumbling discovery of mine, the ealing comedy whisky galore!, even if this one is a good deal more dour than the latter film -- really, the only connection is secluded english islands, but they each do remind of the other...

Spout Mavens Disc #7: Out of Balance: ExxonMobil's Impact on Climate Change (2007)

Cinema 4 Rating: 6

There has been much discussion lately about whether a film marked primarily with the label "documentary" has a certain responsibility to present a balanced detailing of the particulars surrounding a subject, representing opinions on both or multiple sides of a debatable issue. Certainly, Michael Moore is due a certain amount of blame for this discussion. His films are unfailingly one-sided, and yes, he does have a tendency to push things in his favor; some even go so far to say he creates situations to lead to such a result. I couldn't care less for two reasons. The first is that I am, without any doubt, squarely on his side on all of the issues upon which he has has planted his weighted camera lens, even if he is a bit of a tad of a not-even-sort of a dickhead. So, don't come crying to me if you feel he treated Charlton Heston in much the same manner that Heston chewed his merciless way through script after script over the years; if you take a very public position within a uniquely asinine organization, you deserve to have your ancient bones raked over the coals a little bit. The second reason I couldn't care less is that, whatever their demerits as actual journalism, Moore's liberal screeds are entertaining simply as "films." If a Republican-leaning filmmaker came along and made "documentaries" half as entertaining, I'd be inclined to check them out as well. Out of Balance will get numerous reviews from those with oily pockets, who will undoubtedly note that the title certainly lives up to the content. There is not a doubt where director/writer Tom Jackson stands from the very first frame, and there is little in the way of denial from the target company apart from their snooty and ridiculous behavior over the years in relation to their epic attacks on the only planet we possess. Oh, I should mention at this point, and remind those that already know, that I am from Alaska and even visited some of the coastline affected by the Exxon Valdez disaster. I have seen oily, dying birds, and I know numerous fishermen who have felt the cost deeply in their declining way of life. Also, I do not drive at all, hate any corporation above a mon-and-pop level, and also believe that individual transportation should be phased completely out of the picture. If this makes me a bad candidate for an unbiased film review about the savage environmental and economical raping a single corporation has visited upon not just our country, but mankind in general, then call me guilty. I am not the guy for the job.

Or am I? Because this is a film review, not a political position paper, I feel that I should review this DVD in much the same manner I would review anything: not just for its content, but for the way in which it is presented. In this regard, I am very sorry, for even at just over an hour, I found Out of Balance, despite my zealotry for the subject matter, literally put me to sleep three times. I was forced to jump back chapter by chapter over and over due to the dullness of the presentation. Please don't try and accuse me of merely finding this film a drone because I am now used to Moore docu-antics and can't watch a straight documentary, because it is quite clear throughout Out of Balance that Jackson is a dedicated follower of Moore's once unique style. But it is the difference between Buster Keaton performing a stunt, and Donald O'Connor portraying Buster Keaton performing a stunt. Something gets lost between generations. Jackson tries to liven things up in a minor fashion, as Moore does, with humorous graphics, but he is best when he outright attacks the objects of his fury. These were the parts where I was fervently caught up in the piece, booing the evil corporation for all I was worth. It was in Jackson's brief tangents from the main attack where I would lose consciousness.

That said, I eventually rallied myself, finished the film, struck my fist against the sky in anger over ExxonMobil, made some popcorn (without oil, mind you) and watched it straight through a second time. I wouldn't do this for most films that put me to sleep three times, but its brevity proved to be a double positive in this case. And then I went outside and threw a rock at the tiny oil well across the street (I am not joking) that a local landscaping company has pumping relentlessly day and night. After I threw the rock, I felt bad, if only because I started to brood about what would have happened if I had caused a rupture and the oil well started spewing oil all over the brood of unchecked neighbor kids who seem to sprout all over the sidewalks in greater and greater numbers every day in this place. Next thing you know, both I and the landscaping company would get hit with a bill for the expense of the cleanup and the damage we did to the denizens of my street. This bill would have been $318.63.

Did I mention that human life is cheap in this place? And that it was a tiny oil well? The parents of the kids covered in the oil would have been day-hired from the front of the local Home Depot to clean up the mess. This means that not only would we save money on the clean-up, but that it would also get done right and without complaining, since the unions weren't involved. See? (Si...)There are positives in every situation.

The positive in ExxonMobil's case is that, ultimately, unlike the film that aims to shred their reputation, they are entertaining. The main thing that Out of Balance has going for it is that Jackson has cast an incredible villain. And if there is one thing that has proven itself true throughout the history of film, it's that you can't lose with a great villain. Out of Balance may indeed unbalanced as a documentary, but it will keep you watching, as I eventually did, for the asshole in the black hat. That black hat is covered in oil, but ExxonMobil will never admit to it.

waking into a dream journal 01.15.08

this morning's "oh, yeah? sez who?"
mystery house
director: noel m. smith // 1938
cinema 4 rating: 5

i've said it before, and i shall reiterate, i am not really a mystery guy -- i don't mind them, and i did read a lot of agatha christie and doyle as a kid, but i've never really been all that concerned with plot and motives and whatnot -- jen can watch mysteries nonstop for days and be thoroughly entertained but i've always found them somewhat monotonous -- which is strange considering some of the admitted dreck i do find entertaining -- perhaps i relate to monsters and animals more for their inherent innocence, even when committing a terrible (from our angle) transgression against some other creature -- with people, i've always assumed that everyone is guilty of something -- it's never been "who done it?" with me, but rather "who didn't?" -- so, we have this little detective novelty from the late '30s, the age where everyone, even the non-guilty, talk tough and fast in every scene, like there is some sort of prize for being proven innocent last -- dick purcell, as the p.i., and ann sheridan, resplendent in a tight-fitting nurse's outfit, have real chemistry in this extremely short (56 minutes) filler -- works o.k. as a mystery, but if everyone didn't instantly start yelling and acting defensive when people just walk into a room, it wouldn't be such a headache -- of course, nowadays, with our crime scene scouring units, calling in a p.i. in this situation would be unthinkable -- besides, he himself commits several bonehead acts that would also be no-nos today -- "oh, let me pick up this broken necklace with my handkerchief very carefully, but, oh! what's this? a pistol lying next to it? let me just manhandle that right away!" -- not that the gun had anything to do with it, but you get the drift -- jen does have me watching poirot and columbo once in a while, so maybe there is hope for me yet...

Recently Rated Movies #58: Warning - Watching This Movie May Lead to Literacy. Proceed with Caution.

OK, I have to admit that I watch far more movies than I have the free time to write about them here on the Pylon. And in order to have material to write about, I need to use some of that limited time to actually watch movies. Add in my job and the various pastimes in which I have buried myself, this leaves me little time to engage in the activity which I probably enjoy the most: reading. In fact, when faced with the awesome pile of books that I have sworn for the last few years that I would read, I generally throw out an "oh, well..." and dive into another movie instead.

This isn't to say that I do not read books at all. I almost always have about a half dozen books going at any time. The last time I didn't perform this juggling act was when the new and final Harry Potter came out, which I barreled through like a Jamaican bobsledder, showing little concern for the niceties of proper reading, knocking down the occasional unwary adjective out of my way, and all in a desperate race to keep Jen from revealing any more of the plot to me than she, the news media and Entertainment Weekly had already fiendishly hinted around. Indeed, there are always books in the bathroom, on the nightstand, and at least one in my backpack. But the leisure time to read as much as I would wish? Not with my movie addiction in place.

And so I sometimes run into a film whose adaptation of a well-known novel so thrills me that I kick myself for not reading the source material first. Sure, there are plenty of The Silence of the Lambs in my past, where I not only read the novel years before, but purchased it initially in hardback, because the author or the genre were right up my alley, so to speak. But then I am confronted with Atonement, a not-great but severely good adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel which I have not read. I did enjoy the novels he wrote which bookend Atonement, Amsterdam and Saturday, but somehow I missed out on the one of the film's concern, and I am now deeply interested in how closely the book's structure mirrors that of the film, which leaps about in the narrative enough to cause several plebians following our showing on Saturday night to complain about the lack of a more linear narrative. (Not that these dullards would have actually said the phrase linear narrative...)

Which leads me to the chief cause of my dismay over my wayward reading habits: Tom Perrotta's Little Children, which instantly became the focus of my attention through Todd Field's amazing film of two years hence. I only recently saw it on DVD, and I was stunned. Floored, really. And though I have heard both Perrotta and Field strove to make the film a separate entity from the book, I am now intrigued by the possibility of finding another author that will capture my attention in the manner in which John Irving became a fact of my life for about a decade after I first ran into Garp on a late-night HBO viewing. In those days, I read mainly horror and science-fiction authors, and Irving, however removed from the subsequent authors in style and intent, launched me into reading more adult authors. You know, not the greasy kid stuff (though it really wasn't) upon which I subsisted through those teenage years. Working for a bookstore chain for years kept me up on William Kennedy, Charles Bukowski and, eventually, at the end of that line, Michael Chabon. Now, I primarily depend on my sister-in-law and brother to alert me to potential new author interests (they, in fact, introduced me to McEwan) but it's tough for me to crack anything that isn't non-fiction or film-oriented these days.

And through this all, I missed out on Perrotta. Luckily, in spite of the cries of those more inclined to razz Hollywood for its baser instincts, the damn place is causing me to read. Now, maybe the writer's strike will allow me some extra time to do it...

Atonement
Director: Joe Wright // 2007
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Little Children
Director: Todd Field // 2006
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Sleeping Dogs Lie [Stay]
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait // 2006
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté [The Beat That My Heart Skipped]
Director: Jacques Ardiard // French, 2005
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Mortelle Randonnée
Director: Claude Miller // French, 1983
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

waking into a dream journal 01.12.08

this morning's reason to be scared (but for entirely different reasons than the filmmakers intend...)
are you scared
director: someone who apparently doesn't know better // 2006
cinema 4 rating: 3

as down as i have been on the saw series thus far (i am not one of those taken with it at all, though the first one was a tad refreshing when i first, ahem, saw it), if this film is any indication of the declination of inspiration, i now wish the series had never gotten off the ground to begin with -- combines two of my least favorite modern things: torture porn and reality shows (which i actually consider to be one and the same), and then spews the result up in a chunder so completely (and expectedly) dull-witted as to make one wish they were actually in the drill-bit scene within the film to make the pain go away -- here's an idea: instead of enlisting generic teenie bimbos and himbos for one of these maniacal displays, how about having the killer put out a call for producers and torture porn movies and reality shows, make them show up in a secluded location, and then give them a dose of the same crap they've been foisting upon us for the past decade or so -- how about when you make a film where one mad genius or stalker or slasher is torturing a whole building of people slowly and methodically, that you give us some sense of the sweat this guy is building up trying to intimidate these people back and forth -- i can multitask with the best of them, but if more than two people walk into my office, i need to have someone take a number -- if six people are all trying to escape a building, the other five don't just stand around and wait for the first one to be killed before the next one gives it a shot -- but, no, this cheeseball has time to slowly talk to each victim and describe the little games he has set up, which aren't really games at all, but assured death scenarios -- at least jigsaw gives his victims a slight chance of survival -- his are puzzles built on moral dilemmas, a point the writer/director of this film (and saw copycat) seems to have missed -- not surprising though, since he also doesn't give the audience a chance at entertainment either... outside of the people who are exactly like him -- avoid at all costs, please -- at least turistas had titties...

These Are My Friends...

"Speak to me, friend
Whisper - I'll listen
I know, I know
You've been locked out of sight all these years..."

Mr. Depp, as Mr. Todd, sings those words, but I may as well have in these past couple of weeks. Not as a tortured soul to a set of shining razors, thirsty and hellbent on blood-soaked revenge, mind you -- certainly, the context and relationship would change, but I could sing them all the same.

The friends to whom I would croon would be the pent-up denizens of a comic book collection that has lain dormant for over three years, and virtually ignored for several more. Some of my oldest friends, dating back to my earliest years in many cases, or representing some of my most formative cultural moments in others, or both. Sitting untouched since their reemergence into my life in October, they sat patient but anxious for my next move: that moment where I could no longer resist box after box of graphic pleasure; that moment where I would dive once more into the generally comforting though often perplexing world and words they offered to me throughout my life.

Somewhere in these boxes lies a much beloved copy of Avengers #159, the cornerstone to my collection; the comic which got me so caught up in the supergroup's battle against the fiend Graviton, who through his power has ripped a section of Manhattan out of the ground to create an island in the sky which hovered threateningly over the rest of New York, that I had no choice but to scour the racks of my small town for the very next issue. I picked a great time to become obsessed with the Avengers. (I had loved Batman and Superman since a small child, but only rarely picked up an issue.) The next Avengers issue introduced me to the incredible rock-detailer George Perez, and soon enough I would be completely enraptured by the stylings of John Byrne. And within a couple of months, the X-Men (whom I had already started reading a year earlier -- I owned issue #100 almost by accident -- and by whom I was justifiably confused, not having much access in those pre-internet days to their convoluted past) became a second obsession. Also in that time, having already read the paperback (with the McQuarrie cover!), I picked up Star Wars #1. I was doomed to Lucas, and I was doomed to comics.

Back to the present, a call from my brother Chris on, appropriately, Christmas broke the silence. He had recently discovered a website called www.comicbookdb.com, as in Comic Book Database, a resource for comic books fans, and a site chiefly maintained by its users. Can't find an issue which you own on the site? Add an issue, filling in all of the pertinent creator information (so important to the comic geek mind) along the way. My brother had discovered it would be a great (and, most importantly, free) way to keep a rein on his collection, threw in about 1200 of his titles, and then recommended that I check it out, as I was actively seeking out a way to handle this dilemma that would be far removed from actually typing in all of the information into an Excel spreadsheet, one comic at a time. It took a couple of days, but on New Year's weekend, I took the plunge.

I popped open a taped-up comic box containing a batch of old '70s issues of The Avengers, and started knocking them into place. Soon enough, I had fifty comics in my online collection, and before I proceeded any further, I commenced to checking out the various features on the site. Chief, for me at least, is the ability to export my list. It's nice to rack up one's movie collection on IMDB, but there is no facility to export, unless you rely on the bad ol' drag-and-drop method, which is a pain in the ass with tables. I didn't want to do this with my much more ponderous comic collection. Since Comic Book Database afforded me this feature, I carried on through experimentation with its other features. Trying to add a decrepit issue of Boris Karloff's old Gold Key horror series, which did not appear in the database, simply took more time than I had on hand to give it the attention I normally would. Besides, my scanner is still not hooked back up, so I had to make a note to do so later. Regardless, by adding this issue, I felt that I had officially become one of the stable of people for whom the website was developed: the true geek, willing to tap in the most ridiculous minutiae regarding the most obscure titles... just 'cuz....

And then I went crazy. As of two nights ago, I had over 7200 comics in the system, and I figure with a good solid weekend of determined crashing through the remaining dozen or so long-boxes in my abode, I should have the initial part of the dirty deed completed by Monday morning. I say "initial," as I have already discovered about 300 comics that are nowhere to be found in the Comic Book Database, all of which I shall now have to enter by hand, including that all important and aforementioned creator information. It looks like I might have to find that "time on hand" after all.

So, if you were wondering at all why the new year has been so silent in the Cinema 4 Pylon, the cause has been revealed. Sometimes when old friends pop by, you can't wait to get rid of them; sometimes, you welcome them with open arms and heart. The jury is still out for much of my collection, but Avengers #159? Star Wars #1? X-Men #107?

"These are my friends..."