Brain Drippings

awesome |ˈɔsəm| adj. extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear

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Basil Rathbone 1892 – 1967

One year, two films. Five Years, twelve more films. Fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies over 50 years ago and still the definitive Sherlock Holmes actor.

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The top Sci-Fi Television Series of all time
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WATCHMEN (2009)

Capsule: A worthy adaptation of a seminal graphic novel,  Watchmen manages to find a balance that should please both fans of the comic and people who are new to the story.  Only the most die hards will be disappointed at the story changes to fit the movie into 2h40.  High +2 (-4 to +4) or 8.5/10.

WATCHMEN manages to stride a fine line with grace, balancing the needs of a movie against a seminal graphic novel that spans several hundred pages. I know Alan Moore is upset by this adaptation (not the movie specifically, but the simple FACT of the movie), and though he may demand I turn in my Alan Fan Club card, I have to say I found some of the changes in the movie were an improvement. In particular, the whole resolution seemed like a much better idea than the original, strategically. More than this, I cannot say.

On the other hand, there were some changes that didn’t quite manage to make a lot of sense.  In the graphic novel, the world of 1985 is running on electric cars and airships and clean cheap energy.  The movie 1985 has no such changes, and yet we still have Hollis’s sign “Specializing in Obsolete Cars.” Obsolete is a strange choice of words  in a world where petrol is still king. Towards the end there is a death of one of the characters that, with the changes in the movie’s plot, makes absolutely no sense. Minor quibbles.

Visually the movie is pretty close to perfection, evoking both the grimy apocalyptic feeling of the graphic novel and the spandex-tights of Silver age comics. The action sequences are very well done, without all the over-cutting and super-fast “hey, we might have seen something if you’d stop cutting” editing that is so common to action movies. In several places there are top-notch fight scenes that look more like something out of a 1970′s Bruce Lee movie in that the camera simply sits back and lets the action happen, full-frame. The judicious use of slow-motion, again not over done for every punch like some new SFX toy the FX guys got this week, but instead inserted where it will do the most good, is extremely good.

The violence is unlike anything most people will be expecting in a ‘heroes in tights’ sort of film.  This was a grimy, violent, and bloody graphic novel, and the movie does not shy away from that at all. We do not have long intense fight sequences and nary a drop of blood. At times the film is quite gruesome in a way that the graphic novel, with its still images, could never be. This is, somehow, even more effective in this film than in many others. I don’t shy away from violent films, but I found myself cringing in my seat several times during WATCHMEN and I think the reason is that you do not expect the superhero movie to be truly violent. And even when it is, over and over, each time it’s a bit if a shock.

The soundtrack, particularly through the first half of the movie, is absolutely wonderful, with songs chosen that immediately bring you full circle to the time period. Nena’s “99 Luftballons” intros a discussion on the impending nuclear holocaust; Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyrie, a la Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, over a battlefield in Viet Nam (the failure of the Tet Offensive); Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” softly underplayed during a conversation between some of the world’s top CEOs, including Lee Iacocca; these are but a few examples.

And finally, the place where WATCHMEN really shines is in the casting. Every single actor is spot-on for the role. I admit that I was not so sure about Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffery Dean Morgan, or Patrick Wilson. And I thought Billy Crudup looked more like Dan than Jon.  OK, so I was wrong.  They were all convincing, and all drew you in to their characters. If I have any complaint here, and it is a minor one, it is that sometimes Jackie Earle Haley’s Kovacs sounded a little too much like “Dirty” Harry Calahan.

Jenny Sawyer wrote a review in the Christian Science Monitor of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in which she posits that the series “lacks the cornerstone of almost all great children’s literature: the hero’s moral journey.”

I have to wonder if she read the same books I did.

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I am going to talk about the predictions I made previous to the publication of book seven, so don’t click on this link if you haven’t read the book.

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OK, time to make myself look silly. The book is fast approaching and the ‘tubes’ are alive with the sucking noises of people making predictions. Might as well join in.

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Well, a Halle Berry movie may win another one of those coveted March awards. No, not the Oscars, the Razzies. To be fair, her performance is not bad, and Bruce WIllis is quite good; to bad the movie is complete crap. No, seriously, it’s bad. So bad I was shocked to see it was shorter than the four solid hours it felt like. Heck, it was less than two hours, but I am half-convinced that involved some sort of time-flux, perhaps with a McFly and a Delorean. It couldn’t have been that short. I’ve had more entertaining days getting my teeth cleaned.

The movie shows some promise at first, but quickly falls into a spiral over ever escalating stupidity. It could have also sorta redemed itself at the very end with a somewhat interesting twist, but even that is ruined with the final shot of the movie where the entire audience simply groaned. Whether this was at the stupidity on screen or the cumulative pain of the previous 109 minutes is not clear.

Something I wrote when I was in High School. I won something or other for it. Keep in mind that 1) this was high school and 2) this was my first draft as I wrote it the morning it was due and never rewrote it. Typos are unique to this version, as I had to transcribe from dead-tree to digital.

The theme of Darkness is one that has been presented in many works of literature through the ages. From the darkness of evil and madness in MACBETH to the darkness of war in JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, Darkness has been a major focus of writers.

Conrad, in his novel HEART OF DARKNESS creates a new type of Darkness, one that is far more intangible, ethereal, and terrifying than that of previous writers; a darkness of not just a man or a madness, but rather of an entire society. The illness of Victorian (or in a larger sense Western) Society is displayed in a carefully shadowed network of definitions. Conrad’s definitions are very vague, though, and the thrust is always oblique. The meaning of his work becomes clear only after careful consideration, as with most great works of literature.

Conrad’s fictional character (Marlow) is a Victorian, numbed by society to the illness and evil that is occurring. Here is the real reason that Conrad is not telling the story, but has invented Marlow to tell it for him. Conrad wants to disassociate himself from the events while retaining enough presence to react to the story as it is told. Marlow is Conrad’s shield from the horror and evil of Kurtz; he is the shield to protect Conrad from the depictions of the Victorian English in Africa. Marlow is a Victorian character trapped in the inconstant world: Africa. He cannot accept the horror and evil of society, so he passes it by, ignoring it.

To preserve the integrity of his character Conrad shows the evil to him. Marlow does have the compassion and humanity to notice the plight of Africa, but lacks the potency to act for a cause.

Coppola’s cinema depiction of HEART OF DARKNESS made a brilliant adaptation for contemporary Americans: Coppola moved the setting to Vietnam.

Americans are familiar enough with Vietnam to understand that the horrors that are shown are truly evil, much as the turn of the century Englishman would react to the horror of Africa. The point doesn’t change, it is merely adapted to fit the time.

Realizing the power of film, Coppola made APOCALYPSE NOW a vivid depiction of the horrors of war. Unlike the Victorians, Americans knew the horrors of war, so the force Coppola used was much greater than anything Conrad would dream of. Coppola used the Marlow character as a hero, representing the individual American, not a filter or a shield. Both Marlows exist for the purpose of examining the putrid wounds of the contemporary society, but Conrad’s Marlow represents society while Coppola’s represents each individual within the society.

Society, as a unit, is slow to recognize and dispel evil; often it is even the society itself that creates the evil. The individual, however, is quick to act. The individual can, with a single cut, amputate evil. Conrad’s Kurtz dies a slow, lingering death brought on over time by the illness of his society while Coppola’s Kurtz is cut down with Marlow’s blade. Coppola’s Marlow is like a High Priest of an ancient cult making a sacrifice to the blood-thirsty gods. In the case of APOCALYPSE NOW the gods are the military organization that replaced Conrad’s “company”.

Here is the focus of the Horror that Kurtz sees at death, and that Conrad’s Marlow can only guess at. the Victorian Marlow looked over the line of life and death and saw nothing. While Kurtz and Coppola’s Marlow saw the fetid carcass of a slowly decomposing social structure. Coppoal’s Marlow saw that the evil was not within Kurtz, but that he was the result of the evil within society. Kurtz was the sacrifice for the temporary preservation of society, but by a unit within society.

Society cannot move quickly enough to actually kill Kurtz; society can only allow his Horror to overwhelm him. This is why Conrad’s Kurtz dies from the jungle while Coppola’s dies by Marlow’s hand. Kurtz, to Coppola, is the “Beast of feast”, struck down by the society that nurtured and raised him, all the while knowing that in the end he would become only meat for their collective stomachs.

In either case, the real evil is not Kurtz; it is the society that created him.

2006 saw the ushering in of YAJB (Yet Another James Bond). I have to say, when I heard the news I was not impressed. I was not one of the legion of Bond fans who were complaining about Daniel Craig (wtf is Daniel Craig was my reaction). I was, actually, not in the legion of Bond fans any more as I thought the character, and the movies, had run their course. Yes, I enjoyed Timothy Dalton’s turn at the role, but I thought the movies had declined to the point where they were little more than live-action cartoons with plots to match. And I think I was right on that score.

But, I admit I was a little intrigued when I found out they were making (remaking, sort of) Casino Royale. The only one of the Ian Fleming books to never be made as a ‘real’ Bond movie we’d only had the very funny 1967 Casino Royale (with David Niven, Woody Allen, and Peter Sellers). Casino Royale is the first of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming, and a book I’d read fairly recently.

So, by the time the movie came out, I was 1) not expecting much and 2) somewhat interested.

First off, it is nice to see that after 40 years and over 20 movies there is finally one movie in which the character of James Bond as written appears. No, really. This is the first Bond movie to actually have James Bond in it.

James Bond in Flemings books was not a dashing handsome posh dandy with some nifty spy gear thrown in. He was a right bastard to the core. A cold and almost sinister anti-hero who was, I suspect, a lot more like a real spu than anything we’d seen in a Bond film previously.

Daniel Craig is an excellent Bond. Daniel Craig is Bond. It is unfair to compare him to his antecedents since he is playing a completely different character, but if forced to say, I would say either he or Timothy Dalton is the best of the bunch, but I would be hard pressed to pick between them. Trouble is, the films with Dalton were simply not as good as this one, through no fault of Mr. Dalton.
The film itself is very good as well. Craig’s performance could have easily been wasted in a poor movie (like, say, most of Timothy Dalton’s), but it is not. In a film that is remarkably close to the 53 year old book we still have a story that works in 2006 with a minimum of change.

Work is already underway for the next Bond film, due in 2008. For the first time since the early 80′s when I heard that Pierce Brosnan would be Bond, before NBC prevented him taking the role, I’m actually really looking forward to a new James Bond film.

A solid +2 (-4/+4 where 0 is average) or 8/10.

The best movie of the year has been out for months, but not in the US. It opened in the UK in September and has had wide release all over Europe, but has barely shown at all in the US. It opened to extremely limited release on Christmas Day (just enough of a release to qualify for the Academy Awards) and is currently in limited (but still very limited) release across the US.

I am talking, of course, of Children of Men, the new film from Alfonso Cuarón (A Little Princess, Y tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine and based on the dystopic novel from PD James. For those few who have read the book, the movie is at once similar at also completely different. If you’ve read the book, you will not know the plot of the movie, although the feeling of the movie will be familiar.

Of course, the feeling of the movie will be familiar to anyone who has seen Rollerball (not the crap remake), Soylent Green, Gattaca or any of a number of other dystopic movies made since the 1970′s.

Clive Owen (Inside Man, Sin City) is absolutely perfect as this washed up former activist who is, like most people around him, simply coasting through the latter days of the human race. He meets up with his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore), who is still very much an active activist and sees a way to make some money and get himself out of his current situation.

Along the way we meet his old friend Jasper (Michael Caine) and we also get to meet a few people in Julian’s group, primarily Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor; Inside Man and Serenity), Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) and Miriam (Pam Ferris; Aunt Marge in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).

Technically the movie is amazing, with a richness of detail that will likely only become apparent after many close viewings with a DVD. The overall feeling of the movie is amazing, and some of the camera work and extended single-shot scenes are remarkable. However, at no time does the feeling that the director is showing off come through. The movie is as it is because that was the best way to tell the story.

As for the story, while the PD James book was more about the nature of humanity and the role of children and parenthood as an essential part of that humanity (or at least that’s how I read it), the movie is much more about racism, fear, hatred, and the sort of fervent fascism that we are starting to see a resurgence of in these early years of the 21st century. Yes, some of these elements where in the novel as well, but the focus has shifted with the movie.

It is, in a very real way, a movie that is an indictment of the present-day political climate, and should serve as a reminder of what sort of future lies at the end of the road we find ourselves on.

I can’t find anything wrong with this movie, and give it a +4 on the +4/-4 scale, where 0 is an average movie. Or, if you prefer, a 10/10.

A Night at the Museum could have been a great movie; it certainly has the cast for it: Ben Stiller, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, and Ricky Gervais). That said, it is not a great movie, and I’m certain some movie reviewers expressed their disappointment in not getting a Young Frankenstein with some lower than deserved reviews.

There is nothing wrong with this movie. It sets out to be what it is, and it does so successfully. It is fun and enjoyable and there’s nothing in it, with perhaps the exception of one scene with Attila the Hun, that falls flat or rings hollow. The plot is what it needs to be, and no more. The special effects, which once would have been stunning, are very well done, but nothing we’ve not seen before.

The movie is funny, and has some great moments, most of them involving Wilson, Coogan, or Gervais.

If you are looking for some light comedy fun then this is the movie for you. The movie is rated PG, though the 4 year old I was with loved it just as much as the 9 year old and I didn’t notice anything in it that was inappropriate.
On the old +4/-4 scale, where 0 is average, a +0.5 for this film, or a 6/10.