The Tain

I saw the The Decemberists live last night for the third time. Later I will tell you of the show, for twas awe-inspiring. However, for now I just want to point you to my favorite of their endeavors: the musical interpretation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (pronoucned t-oi-n bo cooley), one of the most important works in Irish mythology (interpreted from Irish as "The Cattle Raid of Cooley").

Here, the 18 plus minute song simply entitled "The Tain" is visualized in an awesome paper-style animation that explains the story. Enjoy:

He's Just Not Into Chick Flicks

I don’t think I would be dropping any bombs on anyone in saying that I watch a lot of movies. If you could stream movies from my head you’d probably have a much better selection than what you can view for free at Hulu.com (shameless plug.) That being said, even though I watch an inordinate amount of films, I try to be selective. There are too many classics I haven’t seen for me to justify dropping down in front of something like Saw 2-5 (are they up to six yet?). I figured until I have seen every John Wayne movie, I won’t go near Twilight.

That being said, there are two periods of time every year that, for a few reasons, I engage in what can only be described as cinematic flagellation. The first period is of course “awards season” in the fall and early winter where all the crap meant to pass as the best in cinema that year is carted out in limited spurts to garner almost obligatory acclaim before being relegated a few months later to the five dollar bin at Wal-Mart (The Reader, for example.) I do my duty as a critic of film and culture and see nearly all of the nominated films (or potential nominees) primarily to write brilliantly articulated warnings to anyone and everyone who might mull over the idea of buying a ticket to Revolutionary Road instead of Gran Torino (one of last year's, nay the decade’s, best films).
That is my duty, and I take my charge as The Free-Lancer very seriously.

Now, the second period is a little less honorable. It is the time, usually during the summer, wherein for a host of reasons (boredom, too much freedom in front of a computer at work, curiosity, etc…) I spend a few weeks to a month watching....wait for it….romantic comedies. This is without a doubt one of the most painful times of my year. Sometimes I discover a gem (last year’s Definitely, Maybe was a surprising treat…and Zack Galiafinakis and Rob Cordrey were hilarious in the otherwise abysmal What Happens in Vegas.) Yet more often than not I feel like I have to work to finish these movies, and in the end I have lost just that much more faith in the American movie-going public. If ever there was a reason to be a misogynist, it is the modern chick flick.

Doesn't this guy look like Bradley Cooper?

I say all this because that dreaded period in my year has apparently begun for me again, as I have just finished watching He’s Just Not That Into You

…and I want to blow my brains out.

The movie is over two hours long, has maybe five jokes in it (despite a cast that boasts Justin Long, Bradley Cooper, and E from Entourage.) The length is the first problem, because all the insight this movie has to offer is in its title. The rest of the time is spent showing us the myriad ways in which women are insane, delusional, or just plain retarded. The great cast is wasted on a stupid, one note script, though the girl from Big Love was endearing. Scarlett Johansson just plays a whore like she always does, and Ben Affleck doesn’t get enough screen time. At the end of the movie the pearls of wisdom Hollywood wishes to leave us with are:
1) You can cheat on your wife and still keep you marriage, but you better not smoke cigarettes or you are the scum of the earth.
2) Women are allowed to break up marriages for “true love”, but if that guy goes back to his wife and leaves the adulteress, he is a horrible person.
3) We are meant to believe Justin Long is a stud (you know, the scrawny kid from Dodgeball.)
4) Sometimes your happy ending isn’t a person, it’s moving on…WTF?

Also, Drew Barrymore is in the movie for about a minute, and I have no idea why. Ultimately, the best part of the movie was the Keane song that played over the last few minutes.

Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions

Nobody cares about the MTV Movies awards. I have no idea why they even take the trouble to put the show on in the first place. However, it would be interesting to see how MTV stacks up against the Oscar's ratings wise.....

Anyway, one good thing to come out of the MTV Awards every year is the spoofs wherein comedians will be inserted into scenes from the previous year's popular films in parody--such as 2009's opening with host Andy Samberg added into Slumdog Millionaire, Twilight, The Reader, etc:

MTV Shows

This year however, the original content was taken to a whole new level as nearly a dozen Internet videos were created with Andy Samberg. (UPDATE: sorry, apparently MTV doesn't want you to see there promos anymore, because they've all the embed codes have been deactivated.)

However, probably the best video to come out of the whole thing was the music video homage to "cool guys walking away from explosions" featuring Samberg, Will Ferrell as Neil Diamond, and a very surprising guest:

MTV Shows

A Taste of Things to Come

I just wanted to post something so there would be a buffer between the two Friday Batman's, since I didn't get a chance to add anything new to blog since last Friday.

Thus, I present you with a scene excerpt from my newest finished, feature length screenplay tentatively entitled "Rogue Endeavor." It is the story of a CIA Agent who teams up with a British TV survival show host and a retired spook-turned-ranch hand in an effort to thwart a Japanese death cult that is trying to build a nuclear bomb in the Australian Outback.

Enjoy:


INT. SHANERTON PUB - DAY

The Gunmen stand at the bar staring down the barrels of the Bartender’s shotgun as Lead Gunman’s message CRACKLES over their radios.

BARTENDER
I don’t know if you understand English,
but I reckon you understand this.

He pulls back both hammers on the shotgun. They CLICK. The Gunmen slowly back towards the door, keeping their eyes locked on the Bartender.

BARTENDER
That’s right.

Billy leaps to his feet from behind the bar and in a flash FIRES his AK-47. Bullets SLAM through each of the Gunmen, and they crumple to the floor.

BILLY
That’s for Greg, and Irene, and...and...
and whoever that PA was!

Kerry stands up in a rage.

KERRY
What did you do?

Billy looks at her in confusion.

BILLY
What do you mean? I just saved our arses!

KERRY
You can’t just shoot people like that.
You’re a civilian, in a foreign country no less!

BILLY
Come off it love,
this nation was founded by bloody criminals.

The Bartender points a finger at Billy, his face stern.

BARTENDER

Watch it, fella.

BILLY
No offense.

KERRY
Jack was right, you really are idiots!

Sam stands up with an offended look on his face. Kerry pushes past them in a huff and hurries over to the front door of the pub. As she steps past the dead Gunmen, their radios CRACKLE with animated Japanese. Kerry pauses to listen, and then carefully pushes her head out of the front door.

Terminator Salvation: A Review

There are a few things that must be considered when looking back at Terminator Salvation, both in regards to its stand alone value as summer blockbuster entertainment and to the place it holds as a continuing element of a beloved franchise and mythology.

In the first regard, Terminator Salvation succeeds in being an exciting, fast-paced action movie experience that isn't quite as smart as Abrams' Star Trek but is itself not lacking in thought-provoking material. Of course, that is were the comparisons should end because Terminator Salvation is not trying to do what Star Trek did, which is reboot a franchise and try to endear new generations to decades-old characters. Salvation is moving a story forward, past anything the first three movies were and into a new paradigm it is creating along the way (with lots of cool action sequences set to a dramatic Danny Elfman soundtrack.)

Thus we must consider the second regard: does Salvation work as a "Terminator" movie, and what does it mean to the franchise? The short is answer, is yes; the movie works and, more over, it steps the game up, transforms the series, and manages to grapple more seriously with the series over-arching themes then Terminator 3 did. The fact is, Terminator (1984) as a movie isn't all that complex. For its time and place, it was amazing. Cameron brought to life a low-budget action movie that introduced some intriguing and vaguely-original concepts and captured audiences imaginations with its simple, efficient story-line that is essentially your basic monster movie plot. The sequel (Judgement Day), the best of the original three, is the same movie told again with a few frills attached--as is the third film. As entertaining and classic as the original film and its sequels may be, they don't do much to expand on what is established in a 8 or so minute monologue by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) half-way through the first movie. In comes Salvation, looking to not only expand on the premise, but to give the story an engine that drives the mythology onward. Salvation isn't the monster-movie "Terminator", it is a sci-fi war movie that continues to explore the man vs. machine dynamic I so expertly elaborate upon HERE.

McG said as much, and thus I will judge him by his own words. The man presents us with a film that takes itself very seriously and he, to his credit, is able to keep a consistent tone. The film doesn't become laughable, which is good because for a movie about people fighting robots in the desert it is markedly humorless. The funniest part of the whole movie is probably McG's jackass name, and that's only funny in a sad way. McG as a director manages to bring us into a post-apocalyptic world that is fascinating to look at. I am a sucker for these sorts of stories (The Road Warrior is one of my all time favorites) and Salvation borrows heavily from the best elements of contemporary dystopian fantasy (the aforementioned Road Warrior, McCarthy's The Road, Blade Runner, etc.) both visually and narratively. Though obviously highly influenced, the film doesn't come across as plagiaristic, rather the recognizable elements seem respectful homages. Visually, the film is a huge success and there is some outstanding camera work, and more than one "wow" sorts of shots. The action is thrilling and continuous, and never once does the film fail to capitalize on its future-war setting. However, there are some pretty bad cuts (to my taste) that jarred me out of the story.


Yet, McG as a director clearly cannot handle the human element. Many of the negative reviews I read, at least in summary on rottentomatoes.com, make note of how the human drama is weak and (as journalist are all so fond of their cheesy puns) "robotic." To an extent, this is true. There are only a few "character" moments where the film slows down and has two or three people simply interacting apart from the plot, and these moments by and large fall flat. This is due to three reasons:
1) Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, and Anton Yelchin are movie stars and handle their material with the intensity and talent we can expect (it easy to see why Bale was so keyed-up on set now), or will come to expect (Worthington is fresh-faced from Australia but is destined for greatness. Yelchin was most recently seen as the lovable Ruskie Chekov in the new Star Trek. Just as a side note, all three of the aforementioned actors are foreigners.) Thus their intensity and strength as actors helps them to rise above McG's lame direction thereby throwing them in stark contrast to the others, particularly because...
2) ...There are no strong female characters, which is only really worth mentioning because of the importance of Linda Hamilton's presence in the first two films and Len Hedly's in the TV series. Like Claire Danes in Terminator 3, Bryce Dallas Howard is just along for the ride. Her character has no real purpose in Salvation, and I don't even think her character's name (Kate) is even once uttered in the movie. The other female lead, Moon Bloodgood's Blaire, is even worse. She is meant to be a Sarah Connor replacement; a tough as nails, warrior woman. Unfortunately she has some of the worst lines in the film and her character isn't given enough development to justify her actions. It appears as though good deal of her role was cut, and had they gone all the way and just sliced her out of the movie entirely it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.
3) McG obviously doesn't know how to get good performances from actors (i.e. direct.). Other than the stars, who know what they are doing, the supporting cast is mostly serviceable at best and in Common's case, absolutely abysmal. Why does this man keep popping up and ruining his scenes in my action movies? You'd think after his continually worsening performance in Smokin' Aces and Wanted somebody would have figured out that, sure he looks tough, but he delivers lines with the emotional equivalence of a brain-dead ten year old.

Bale takes some shots in other reviews, but those clowns are simply wrong. Bale nails this role. This is John Connor, a man whose whole life has been a battle to survive so that he can become mankind's savior. Now, the war he has been trying to stop his entire life has arrived and he is just some soldier in This Man's Army. He isn't treated like a savior, he has to take orders from men who don't know what he does, and his ineffectualness is straight pissing him off. The TV show touched on what Bale brings to the character, an anger at not getting to be his own man. Bale's Connor is everything the savior of mankind would makes himself if he knew his destiny from day one and had seen what he had seen in his life and then reached that climatic point only to be pushed aside by lesser men. He is hard, determined, focused, and highly frustrated.

The film's story is engaging, and manges to continually raise the stakes and throw in a few unexpected twists despite a brief second-act lull. If you are a "Terminator" fan, you will find that the story honors everything that came before and manages to kick start a whole new chapter that I hope gets a chance to play out over the two planned sequels. Ultimately I liked the movie, even though it did not achieve greatness and in many respects is a mess (particularly, as another reviewer pointed out, the last third wherein heavy editing and studio meddling is apparent.) To a degree, how much you enjoy the film really depends on how invested you already are in the characters beforehand, since McG and the screenwriters didn't seem to care too much about that "development" stuff.

Of Men and Machines

The apprehensions of human beings toward technological advancements are as old as our race, and well documented. Anecdotes pepper history wherein the introduction of a new invention or machine is immediately met by a group of individuals, spurred on by fear, who either through word or force of action oppose and rebel. Take for example the Luddites, who met the oncoming Industrial Revolution head-on by destroying mechanized looms, and anything that sought to replace the strength of man with the promise of science. Such was the reaction to the fire arm, the steam engine, the automobile, the computer, Skynet, etc.

In literature, the fears of technology are the underlying inspiration of the science fiction genre; many of the classics being imagined accounts of dystopian futures where machines run amok, where computers terrorize, where mankind has become subordinate to his creation. J. R. R. Tolkien's seminal work, The Lord of the Rings, is strongly influence by anti-machine sentiment as he, like many of his contemporaries, viewed the Industrial Age through the lens of World War I, wherein the brightest scientific advances were put to use solely to kill millions. As Saruman takes over in Isengard, his first order of business is to rip out the trees. He declares war on the nearby forests and seeks at once to turn the pastoral dreams of the past into the iron-wrought nightmares of Mordor's proposed future.

Romanticism was born during the Industrial Revolution of the wistful longings for an imagined, green past where man and nature cohabited in a spectrum of beauty. Reading Keats or Coleridge (or worse, Wordsworth) one gets the sense that before all the damnable industry took hold, the world was a bright and idyllic vision, a Dahl landscape. Yet the undeniable surge of science could not be ignored or stemmed, and thus mere nostalgia gave way to utter terror: Futureshock. Blake began to see the devil in everything, and soon men like Orwell would begin linking technology to man's darkest ambitions.

We almost have a subgenre now, a period of paranoia and fear of the machine. It has overtaken every aspect of artistic expression from Dick's novels to the striking visions of fields of human batteries in the Matrix. This is where The Terminator fits in, a seemingly straight forward action movie that somehow managed, whether wittingly or not, to tap into the reservoirs of anti-futurism that has been accumulating like ground water since the invention of the cotton gin. James Cameron's film is set in a world where the worst has happened, not only have the machines taken over under the leadership of a omnipotent Artificial Intelligence, but they have become the dominant species on Earth. The future of the Terminator films is one in which man has become an endangered species in a fight against un-winnable odds for survival. Thus the first three films exist in a paradigm where, inevitably, man creates his own destruction. Yet, as is quintessentially human, there is hope.

The Terminator series is set in the dystopian universe of technological paranoia, but it is built upon the Messiah Myth. John Connor, a man, is destined to lead humanity back from the edge and restore balance. The Matrix shamelessly worked off the same model, as have many stories in literature leading all the way back to their origins with Jesus Christ. Where the Terminator succeeds in being unique is in the way it creates its savior (through time-travel rules so improbable they bear no in-depth examination) and then has him, from day one, dealing with a picture of his future self that is already determined and completely outside of his control to change. He must rise to the occasion, or mankind is doomed. Granted, the idea of a messiah sentient of his own inevitable destiny is another direct Christian thematic, but in John Conner's case there is no divinity. The burden of mankind's fate must be shouldered and dealt with by a simple man (Connor) without the knowledge of a guiding hand of providence (the knowledge of the Father's will), and without the omniscience that lead Christ to the cross (the mind of God in the body of Man) though not without difficulty as Gethsemane demonstrates.

With such strong thematic blood coursing through its narrative, the Terminator franchise has proven fertile ground to explore deeper ideas then simply man's fear of machines. Though sadly cut short after only two seasons, the Sarah Connor Chronicles managed to delve into the very dichotomy of the Terminator's narrative foundation: having the A.I. that would eventually become Skynet ponder about God and the human compulsion towards good that such a belief engenders, or similarly having a machine try to grapple with the aspects of love and its inherent irrationality. What makes a human being a human? The very question of men's souls, their duties to a higher power, and many other such queries often found themselves working into the simplistic man vs. machine plot structure.

This week Terminator Salvation will be released, and will likely succeed in presenting a decent summer action flick. Whether or not it will continue to pursue the philosophical implications of its ethos is another matter. I personally am hoping for the best, because with a title that wears its implications on its sleeve, one can do no less. The question that sits in the back of my mind, is what will be John Connor's cross?

Friday Batman

Okay Ladies and Gents, as you all know Terminator Salvation is to be released upon the world next Thursday, the 21st. I can barely contain my excitement, and neither can Batman.

In fact, the whole Terminator mess might actually turn out to be Batman's fault, at least according to this amazing mash-up trailer that some brilliant young person cut together: