Because I have nothing to do on Friday...

The Max Payne trailer looks fine but if it doesn't have Nikki Payne in it: Fuck it, I'm just not interested.

John McCain has announced his running mate to be Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. This election is going to be historic no matter which way it goes: If Barak Obama wins the US gets a black president. Historic. If McCain manages to win, not only will the US have a female vice president, but between her and Cindy McCain it'll be the first administration to be surrounded by a weird aura of MILFy fuckability. Historic and strangely arousing.

I don't know why, but I'm not ready to hop aboard the Hamlet 2 bandwagon just yet. Maybe it's just a case of We Can't Show Any Of the Good Stuff in the Trailer Because it's Too Darned Offensive-itis, but the little I've seen of it is just leaving me cold. Christ jokes? Just not as outrageous as they used to be. Also for something that's supposed to be so amazingly controversial, I haven't heard about one Christian group protesting it. How offensively hilarious can it be if Christians can't be bothered to make a few bristol board signs and effigies in a vain attempt to stop it?

I'm usually in the "It's possible to make a movie out of anything" camp when it comes to video game adaptations, but Guitar Hero? The only thing more pathetic than wanting to make a movie out of a game that's essentially a Simon with a whammy bar and delusions of grandeur is Brett Ratner's description of what he'd like to do with this potential "Franchise":

“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

So this hypothetical kid wants to be a rock star: Worshipped by millions of screaming fans while making horrendous amounts of money, and spending his off hours engaged in crazed sex acts that would make the internet blush. But then, through some fantastical twist of fate, he instead gets to pound brightly coloured buttons on a hobbit-sized toy guitar at a competition sponsored by some local bowling alley where he can hopefully win 10,000 dollars and a lifetime supply of Red Bull? That's not just depressing, that's a fucking tragedy.

Tropic Thunder

Watching Tropic Thunder, I got the distinct impression that this all could have gone very, very wrong. It tippy-toes ever so carefully along the thin, wiggly, often blurry line between funny offensive and offensive offensive. It's easy to imagine that somewhere, perhaps in an alternative universe not too far from our own, there's a version of Tropic Thunder playing in theatres that will make you shit your pants in righteous outrage.

Don't feel too bad for the denizens of that universe, though. Scientifically we're not even sure they exist, and if they do maybe in their universe they got some decent Star Wars prequels and their version of Jessica Alba actually got naked like she was supposed to in Sin City. These things have a way of balancing themselves out.

Actually, Ben Stiller takes very few real chances in his making of a Vietnam war movie movie. The rightrope act is ultimately an illusion: On the surface there's a lot of blood, bombast, blackface, and use of the word "retard", but the bulk of the satire is directed at sociologically agreed-upon safe zones: The grotesque results of Hollywood's attempts to be subtle and meaningful through mawkish excess, and how their isolation from the rest of society at large has rendered them blind to their ignorance.

In the hands of Matt Stone and Trey Parker this material might have gotten pushed a little harder and its talking points might have been tweaked a little more, but Stiller is not Stone and Parker, or even one of them. That's not to put Stiller down: Just because Tropic Thunder is a little thin on depth, doesn't mean it skimps on the funny. For a guy whose last big hit was Night at the Museum Co Writer/ Director Stiller shows a remarkable willingness to take the targets he's allowed himself and tear them to hilarious shreds. In fact, other than Pineapple Express this is the funniest film I've seen this year.

The premise, in case you need to know it, involves a big-budget Hollywood production that has come to Vietnam to make a film adaptation of "Tropic Thunder", a Heart of Darkness analogue written by a grizzled apparent veteran (Nick Nolte). The film within a film has gone wildly over budget due in large part to the fact that the director (Steve Coogan) cannot control his overindulged self centered actors. (played by Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., and Stiller)

So at the suggestion of the author the director flys his leads into the jungle equipped with only a scene list and fake guns. There he plans to make an authentic "guerilla style" film which in this case seems to mean exploding stuff around them and filming their terrified reactions with hidden cameras. Beyond that it's not clear how he planned to make this into a coherent movie, since there seemed to be no arrangements made for extras to attack them so they'd have someone to shoot at, or any other crew present except the author and the overzealous pyrotechnics guy (Danny McBride) both of whom are miles away from the actors.

I guess none of that really matters since the plan falls apart nearly immediately, leaving the actors stranded in the jungle being stalked by a drug cartel who believe that they are DEA agents. Stiller's character, (Tugg Speedman, an action star past his sell by date), in turn thinks the drug dealers are day players and stunt men. His conviction persists long after his fellow actors, and indeed any sane person, would have realised the truth.

Downey Jr. once again turns in a superior comic performance as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor who has his skin artificially darkened to play the role of a gunnery sergeant who also happens to be black. It seems preordained that of course RD Jr is one of the best things in the movie. The difference here is that unlike in Iron Man and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he's given a role that's not just a riff the usual blithe, self-aware smartass he does so well, but something that's almost the flip side of those characters. Much of his screentime is spent playing the role within a role of a man so un-self-aware that it almost seems like he had his superego shut off while he was getting his pigment done. What could easily become an uncomfortable caricature instead is a cunning, almost affectionate, parody of an actor playing an uncomfortable caricature, but being too far up his own ass to realise it. Junior pulls this off so effortlessly that it's easy to forget what a misstep this role could have been.

But even that's not the most unlikely long shot in this film that pays off, that award goes to Tom Cruise, slathered with Rick Baker fat makeup, playing a borderline psychotic, bullying movie mogul. Displaying comic timing and range of which I honestly didn't think him capable in this day and age, Cruise simply walks away with the film every time his character appears to deliver an apocalyptic tone poem of obscenity. His wild, glassy stare is hypnotic and his rage is delivered with such earnestness that I sometimes wondered watching him if he was informed that he was in a comedy. Whatever he was doing, it worked.

Those two roles alone make the film worth going to see, but it also boasts a phalanx of comic ringers sprinkled throughout the cast, all of whom have something to add to the proceedings. Stiller even manages to extricate some great stuff from Matthew McConaughey, who in hell has done that lately?

Tropic Thunder might not be everyone's cup of tea, in many ways it's a throwback to the 90's when multi camera setups were soley the domain of sitcoms, improv was curtailed, and cartoonish characterizations roamed free across the plains. However, its success does prove that while it helps in this brave new world, a big studio can still make a good R-Rated comedy even if there's no one involved named Apatow.

Warner, Darkness, And Pereira Hair part II

Aint It Cool News had a write up on an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, about Warner Brothers plans for their future superhero movies, Warner being the company that owns the film rights to all the DC comic characters. (yer Superman, yer Batman, yer Wonder Woman) One thing that made me a little worried about what's going to be sliding out of the Warner pipe was the following quote from Warner Bros. President Jeff Robinov:

"We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it"

The implication is what I've been fearing since Dark Knight started prison-pounding box office records after it was released in July. As the reports rolled in I could hear the clicking of gears over at WB: Dark Knight was a superhero movie, Dark Knight was Dark, Dark Knight did well, therefore in order to be successful all superhero movies have to be dark.

The funny thing was they also mentioned in the article that they were modelling their strategy after Marvel's since Iron Man did so well, what made it particularly funny was that Iron Man was a fairly upbeat film. The only thing they seem to be interested in imitating, however, is Marvel's plan to release fewer films in general and introduce characters in their own films as a buildup to a big team-up movie somewhere down the line.

"Well that's great," I hear you say, "Dark Knight was awesome, so we'll get a lot more awesome superhero movies! I'm getting my raincoat and going to buy my tickets now!"

To which I would respond that Dark does not always equal Good. Good Equals Good, which is why Dark Knight and Iron Man, two vastly different approaches to very similar subject matter, can both be good movies even though one is dark and brooding and the other is fun to watch.

Dark Knight happened to catch the fancy of moviegoers more than the Iron Man did, but the moviegoing public has always had a soft spot for Batman, back as far as when Adam West played him. And I have no doubt that Iron Man would have gotten killed by Dark Knight had they been in release at the same time, but they still both made assloads of money, Dark Knight made more assloads of money, but there were still assloads of money changing hands. Assloads.

And keep in mind before you buy your ticket for whiny, brooding Goth Superman or self-cutting Wonder Woman or whatever, that it probably won't have Christopher Nolan writing and directing it. Sure a somber tone is great when Christopher Nolan does it, but can you imagine someone like the guy who directed Fantastic Four trying it? Cause that's probably what's gonna happen. In the wrong hands, a downbeat tone, especially shoehorned in where it doesn't belong, can make for teeth grindingly awful movie experience.

Also, an update on the whole Kevin Pereira hair thing: He appeared last night on AOTS with a crew cut, which is not a bad look for him, really. It cuts down on his resemblence to Mac Tonight:



It was explained during the show, by the way, that the previous evening's hair trimming was something that was agreed upon during a commercial break, but the reality went well past what was negotiated.

In the end Pereira came up with a kind of weird way to get even with Munn. The fact that it was based on performance art serving to make it an even weirder. It required an apparatus that looked like what would happen if you had to design a torture machine using only stuff that could be purchased at The Happy Birthday Store.



So it looks like that's all settled, anyway.

K-Pear's hair

I was working on a review of Tropic Thunder, but I since I don't want two Robert Downey Jr. love-fests in a row I've decided to hold off a few days and see what else is going on.

And really, there's only one thing worth talking about and that's what has happened to Kevin Pereira's hair. Some of you, indeed maybe a sizable chunk of you, may have no idea who Kevin Pereira is, so let me explain before we go any further. Kevin Pereira, K-Pear as he likes to be called, is the host of a show on G4 techTV called "Attack of the Show". G4 is purportedly a gaming and computer themed specialty channel headquartered in southern California. They have many on-topic shows where they review video games, shows about how to turn off cookies in your browser, or video game shows from England that are three years out of date.



Like most specialty channels that picked a topic too narrow to fill out a day's worth of programming they also have stuff that has nothing to do with tech, computers, or even drift racing. Japanese game shows, reruns of "COPS", The Man Show, and most recently a show about vomiting have all been prominently featured on the network at one time or another. G4 is the nerdier, lower rent, less sporty cousin to Spike TV.

Attack of the Show kind of straddles the void between these two extremes. On the one hand they do review consumer electronics and video games, but on the other they cover more general interest topics like movies, TV shows, and, chillingly, sex advice, in a hybridized talk/comedy/newsmagazine format. Like most of the in house shows on G4, its reach slightly outperforms its grasp in terms of production value. The set looks professional enough but all the video walls and funky robot sculptures in the world can't disguise the cable-access feeling you get from a show that can't afford an audience and has to have its crew cheer for the hosts after each commercial break. It just lacks that spanky professional sheen that it might have had if it were on, for example, Comedy Central. It feels transient, like everything could be squashed flat with a wheel loader during a commercial break and replaced with a completely different show and no one would be the wiser.


I still never miss an episode, mostly because the cheapie nature of the show allows the two hosts (the aforementioned Kevin Pereira and now also mentioned Olivia Munn) to further bizarrify their already weird chemistry. I could waste more pixels typing out what makes this pairing so what it is, but why waste the time when its oddball nature is crystallized so perfectly in this clip:

The Clip.

I've read where some people think that he's actually pissed off about what's been done to his hair at the end here. But it seems pretty obvious to me that he knows the damage has been done on the first pass after he picks up the big chunk of fauxhawk off the table. He's clearly playing it up at the end, at least to my eyes. He might have been concerned about the razor hitting one of his eyebrows like in that movie trailer that I don't care enough about to look up, but that's probably the extent of it.

Like many of my entries, I don't really know how to end this so...

Thoughts on Downey, Dark Knight, and Iron Man

I really liked "The Dark Knight", but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that agreed with Robert Downey Jr.

The Things He Said.

If Mr. Downey Jr. was serious and he wasn't misquoted, or if this wasn't an off the cuff joke that, stripped of its tone, came off kind of assey and willfully ignorant, is being kind of harsh here. But joke or not, I can see the essence of what he's saying:

I mean, yeah on a intellectual level when it comes to Dark Knight I'm there: The adult re imagining of the character, the Batmocycle, a Heath Ledger performance that was so good you forgot he's dead, the realistic portrayals of what it would be really, really like to dress up in body armour and a cape and fight a clown...for real.

There's no questioning that this is the best Batman movie that ever wore pointy ears and punched theme-coordinated street thugs in the face, hands down, bar none. From the dense James Ellroy-esque screenplay to the sober, measured direction of Christopher Nolan: Who managed the seemingly impossible feat of making what might be the best movie of the year and a Batman movie at the same time, and then had them be the same freakin' movie. Dark Knight is a rare case where the major studio strategy of grafting the Best Talent Hollywood Has To Offer onto a Big Summer Movie Property worked. No doubt about it: The Dark Knight was a class act all the way.

Now I don't want you to think that I'm being spoiled here, I know we as moviegoers have got a good thing going with this new Batman movie. As a movie, it's as good as it can be. However, I am now going to go on public record and say:

As far as summery superhero entertainment goes, I liked Iron Man better than Dark Knight.

That is not to say that Iron Man is a better movie than Dark Knight. It's not. And I understand if you think that it doesn't make sense to say: "I think that Movie 1 is an A+ and Movie 2 is an A-, therefore I like movie 2 better."

I get it, I'm on your side here, I really am.

It's just that there's one thing that Iron Man had that Dark Knight, in all its film noiriliciousness, did not: Iron Man was fun to watch while Dark Knight was like going to a really, really entertaining funeral.

I think part of the reason for my preference is that in many ways Iron Man was a throwback to the action adventure movies that Amblin made in the 80's. Bright, noisy entertainments that breezed along as much on the charisma of their leads as their visual effects. It was subgenre that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg willed into existence with the original Raiders and subsequently strangled to death in its sleep with Howard the Duck. It's a distinctive kind of bubblegum storytelling where even the serious action beats, when they occur, take on a kind of airy insouciance.

And the thing was, it didn't make Iron Man feel dated in any way. On the contrary it felt like a perfect fit. The mildly jokey fluffypuff tone matched the material perfectly. It was clear that the filmmakers enjoyed and to a certain degree respected the subject matter, but they didn't respect it too much. It wouldn't be right to call it throwaway, but it also doesn't stick around long enough to wear out its welcome.

Dark Knight, on the other hand, resounds with an almost operatic self importance. It practically beats you to death with all the subtlety that's on display. The combinaton of a screenplay that's stuffed with dialogue drenched in meaning and smothered in rich subtext with performances that start out perfectly honed, and are subsequently put on a program of steroids, injected with rocket fuel, and shot out of a cannon threatens to overwhelm the fact that this is, after all, a Batman movie.

Guy in a cape. Fights crime. Committed by clowns and alligator men.

Nolan's film doesn't do any disservice to Batman, on the contrary it blows the Bat/Clown conflict up to biblical proportions. But it's so concerned with being a great movie that it forgets to be a fun one. Even the Frank Miller comic from which Dark Knight takes its name and noir overtones (and little else) occasionally stepped back from big speeches (that seem a little too poetic for police commissioners and butlers to be coming up with off the cuff) and give a bit of a nod to the profound silliness of it all. Hell, in the first Nolan Batman movie Liam Neeson made fun of his superhero outfit. Those were good times. But it seems as if Nolan has made a conscious effort to outgrow that now, as if he wanted, instead of Bat-Man, to deliver Oscar Bait-Man. And the results teeter dangerously on the brink of arthouse pretentiousness.

I'm aware that there is a certain amount of stoicism that goes along with the Batman franchise, but I think in the next installment The Dark Knight could afford to lighten up just a little bit.

Just to add one more time, I really liked The Dark Knight. I think it's a great movie. Hooray.

The Bourne Sycophancy

Did something happen in the last week or so that made everyone lose their mind but me? Why in the name of all that is crap is everyone so intent on giving sloppy textual blowjobs to Paul Greengrass for The Bourne Whatever?

I'm at a loss. This movie has all the elements in it that movie critics love to turn up their snot crusted noses at: Plot free action, spazz-assed monkey editing, and shaky, shaky, shaky cam. But they make an exception for this piece of shit.

When I say shaky cam I mean shaky cam. This is cam that is as shaky as shaky can possibly be. Transformers looks like an oil painting compared to this movie. During most of this movie you can see nothing, literally NOTHING that is happening on screen.

Let me get a little more specific, here: They'll have a scene, like having the camera follow Matt Damon while he runs down a hall for example, where for a couple of seconds it just looks like the way a normal cameraman would hold a camera if he was running with it and wasn't a cartoon hunchback with two broken arms.

Then, all of a sudden, the camera will start to wobble from side to side for no reason whatsoever except to obscure the action that's going on. It's like someone was yelling at him "Hey, Camera Guy, I can see stuff on my monitor here! We gotta take care of that: Shake the camera like you have no idea how to use it!"

Then there's the action scenes which, apart from some bits where people type on computers and yell at maps on big-screen tvs, pretty much make up the whole movie. An action scene will start and the camera, which has been jittery up to this point, will literally have a conniption fit. Sometimes it's not even pointing in the right direction, we're just looking at a wall or a traffic light, or France or something. And when they do decide to bestow us with the fight scene or car chase we paid to see it's nothing but BLURS and SOUND EFFECTS! I might as well be watching a fucking RADIO PLAY!

It's not limited to the action scenes either: There's one conversation that's filmed over one guys shoulder at the guy who's talking. Gradually the camera tilts like it's slowly melting until nearly the whole screen except for one little corner in the upper left is filled with the shadow of the back of the guy's head.

Yet everyone loves it. They love it with waves of hyperarticulate critic love usually reserved for Very Important movies about England! And they're not just overlooking what I pointed out, they're saying that the fact that the action scenes are unintelligible visual mayonnaise is the BEST PART OF THE MOVIE! Go to Rotten Tomatoes and read some of the reviews. There are a few dissenting voices in there, but the vast majority might as well be accompanied by a picture of themselves naked and licking the poster. Such an image would not be inappropriate for any of the positive Bourne Whatever reviews. "He spends an entire fight scene filming the floor and parts of the bathtub? Badly? Genius! I pronounce him Best In Show!"

I thought action movies were in a bad way before, but if this shaky cam shit catches on, I don't know what's gonna happen to the genre. Between this, giant clashing army epics, and wire-fu it's getting so a brother can't watch a guy blow up a station wagon with a rocket launcher anymore. At least there's going to be a new version of "Commando" on DVD. Now there was an action movie.