Exceptional Inception

I'm sad to say that's it's been a too long of a time since I've been in a movie theater, that last time being this year's birthday movie of AVATAR...and that was back in January, for Buddha's sake.

To be perfectly honest, there hasn't been a wealth of product out there to pique my interest enough to venture off to the cinema. Oh, I'm sure I would found something to see, probably along the lines of a more eclectic nature that I am increasingly drawn to instead of the dreary, mundane product that fill what pass for movie houses these days. Of course I'm talking endless sequels, reboots, remakes, recycles, rehashes all regurgitated back into the sausage maker to make more hot dogs of decreasing taste and nutrition. In other words, Hollywood's on safe mode right now, that means more of the same, literally and figuratively. Who is the worse off in all this? For a change, not the public because they're finally catching on and staying the hell away. Nope. it's Hollywood, hurting itself almost beyond repair and destroying its own legacy by denying creativity its due in favoring of endlessly producing the tried and true until its used-up and false.

This summer has told the tale perfectly. Few diamonds have sat in this rough as TV, once the vast wasteland, has overtaken the great god Film as the hope of the future. Why? Because in the last few years, it has returned to the source-the written word. Compare, if you will some of the output of this summer's movie season to TV's.

Film: IRON MAN 2, SEX AND THE CITY 2, video game adaptation PRINCE OF PERSIA (with Jake Gyllenhaal as Kevin Sorbo), SHREK FOREVER AFTER, GET HIM TO THE GREEK (with the supremely unfunny Russell Brand, who's also starring in an upcoming remake of ARTHUR for Chrissakes!)), THE LAST AIRBENDER, KILLERS, KNIGHT & DAY (basically the same movie), SALT (this year's WANTED), TOY STORY 3 (yes, it's Pixar, but I hold them to a higher standard so it's just another sequel), THE KARATE KID, THE A-TEAM (or as I used to call it THE EH TEAM) and the 547th remake of ROBIN HOOD.

TV: TREME (the best new show of 2010 that you've never seen), MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD, TRUE BLOOD, JUSTIFIED, RESCUE ME, LOUIE (Louis C.K.'s MUCH better show than HBO's LUCKY LOUIE) , THE BIG C, WEEDS, NURSE JACKIE, THE UNITED STATES OF TARA...are you getting the picture yet?

Bottom line: TV has intelligent, intricate stories with compelling characters and superb acting.

Film has...3-D.

Yeah, I know it's summer, give me a reason to leave home, huh? (I know I'm ignoring works like WINTER'S BONE, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and GET LOW, but these little oasises-or is it oasi ...the plural of oasis-in the desert-haven't drawn me out either. Chalk it up to lethargy and pessimism, a deadly combination.)

I can only thank my lucky stars (or charms) for Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION, probably the best movie of the year thus far, a bold statement for someone who hasn't ventured out of the house all year. I needed a reason to go and INCEPTION has proved to be...well, the exception.

Here at last is an action film with a brain that is, by the box office take thus far, is undoubtedly being embraced by the public. Sure the imagery is incredibly fantastic and the pace non-stop, but the ideas and their delivery behind it all are garnering repeat viewings. The dream within a dream concepts set forth in Nolan's film have definitely struck a chord in audiences and certainly within me. I was also taken by the lack of cliches, such as the duplicitous team member, the obvious nod to a sequel (Its all about the franchise!) and the Gotcha! ending that would have ruined an absolutely perfect touching moment, one of the best in recent film history.

It's not a flawless work. Nolan has a tendency to blow his work all of proportion with piling on action scene after action without letting up much, almost unnecessarily pandering to today's short attention span audience. But unlike a hack like Michael Bay whose action scenes are played out like a game boy hopped up on Mountain Dew cocktails with Red Bull chasers, Nolan at least adds surprise elements of wonder within all the carnage, elevating his set pieces without sacrificing his premise. There is also no denying that the visuals are indeed spectacular such as the zero gravity fight scenes and Ellen Page's introduction as the dream architect. Still, there's a sense of overkill and INCEPTION could have benefited with at the very least, a ten minute trim.

Thank goodness for filmmakers like Christopher Nolan. With INCEPTION, he is on the path ascending to that pedestal of artists that work within the system and manage to turn out works of art within a damn fine motion picture, right beside directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock.

I'm so pleased with myself that I held out to see INCEPTION at the best theater in Portland, the Roseway. I've sung its praises before and will continue to do so. A single screen cinema with crystal clear digital projection and superb sound, the Roseway Theatre is well-worth the 50 mile round trip from my home.

What can I say? I'm spoiled. And you know what else? I deserved it.

Summer Has Left the Building

Well, that's the end of that. Labor Day has come and gone. Now is the time to put your white shoes

away for another year 'cuz summer is outta here. The cinema was chock full o' the usual crap, lotsa toys made into disposable garbage for the landfill, but I was able to mine a few nuggets here and there. Among them:


STAR TREK-Totally worth the dollar admission I paid to see it in second-run. This re-booting of another franchise didn't exactly set my phasers on stun. As TREK movies go, it ranks very high, the gold standard (well, gold plated anyway) still being the great WRATH OF KHAN, but I find it hard to get to worked up about yet another TREK movie. It turned out to be a competent, entertaining piece of work that I have trouble recalling anything memorable or significant beyond Zachary Quinto's Spock. The rest of the cast were all adequate enough, but I find it hard to believe Paramount will be able to reassemble this cast intact beyond the next installment. A good effort, but honestly, what's all the hub-bub, bub?

And what the hell is all the backlash against THE NEXT GENERATION all of a sudden? TNG was a better TV show than the original, but the original had better theatrical films. Maybe if Nicholas Meyer directed a TNG film instead of Jonathan Frakes, they would have had something.

DRAG ME TO HELL-Sam Raimi's attempt to recapture his EVIL DEAD credo after spending the last decade in mega-blockbuster film making kind of flounder, albeit with lots of the gory slapstick for which he is most famous. It's too bad he didn't totally commit to the project, relying too much on Hollywood bombast, dragging his picture out about 15 minutes too long. Star Allison Lohman should get the Good Sport of the Year award for what Raimi put her through, but actually the film would have benefited from a female Bruce Campbell, an actress that could go way over the top and back again. Ultimately, a good future rental with plenty of decent sight gags-both literally and figuratively.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS- Once again, Quentin Tarantino proves that there is nothing more he loves than the sound of his own voice, something that worked so much against him on his last work, the wretched DEATH PROOF, that he almost lost all creditability with this one singularly horrible film. This time, however, he returns to form with his crazy-ass combination OF THE DIRTY DOZEN and CINEMA PARADISO. This is almost his bloody valentine to film itself, a geek forever sampling works from the world cinema while trying, sometimes in vain, to maintain his voice. Sometimes, his tributes take me completely out of the film, like much of the Ennio Morricone music, mainly because I know what movies they came from initially. And the theme from the CAT PEOPLE remake...so far out of left field that I was actually enchanted when I should have been sneering. Quentin...you big goof. I wanted more of the Basterds themselves. I think they were short-changed. How about a little scalping tutorial or some kind of training for these guys? I also would have welcomed a battle scene. Tarantino can stage action beautifully, but he's kinda stingy here except for the superb climax. I could have done without the Mike Myers cameo also. Brad Pitt? He's one of the best as far as I'm concerned. When he plays goofy, as BURN AFTER READING or TRUE ROMANCE, he's aces in my book. His reading of "BONE JORNO" had me rolling. The breakout stars have to be Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna/Emmauel Mimieux-beautiful, sad and mighty damn fierce and of course the much-heralded Christoph Waltz as Hans "That's a bingo!" Landa, the best villain of the new millennium. With his giant head, Waltz looks like a real-life Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet. Shortcomings aside, 2/12 hours went by like nothing. I actually wanted more. In the end, Quentin got a bingo.

DISTRICT 9- I'll gladly jump on this bandwagon to proclaim Neill Blomcamp's sci-fi film the best movie of the summer and of 2009 thus far. Imagine STARSHIP TROOPERS (satire included)
mashed together with Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY in the framework of a South African version of THE OFFICE and you've got yourself just a fabulous piece of film making, miles above the stench of Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS or GI JOE: THE RISE OF CRAPPY SUMMER FILMS. Sharlto Copley is brilliant as the weaselly little bureaucrat who is unfortunately transformed into an alien, making him more human in the process. An exciting, funny, sometimes gross and finally heart-breaking work, DISTRICT 9 is divine. That's right. I said it.

And once again, I treated myself by watching DISTRICT 9 at the Roseway Theater, the best venue in the Portland area. Beautifully crisp digital projection and superb sound helped push this baby over the top for me. This was a 50 mile round trip from my home that I didn't mind at all.

Sometimes you have to go the extra mile and that's the fact, Jack.

Watching the Watchmen

I never thought it was a good idea in the first place.

When it was first announced that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book masterwork THE WATCHMEN would be adapted to the big screen many moons ago, my hackles were raised like never before. This had been back when no less of a cinematic legend Terry Gilliam had been initially attached to the project. It just didn't feel right. In order to transform Moore/Gibbons' vision to the screen, I feared that much would be lost. Too much, in fact. I didn't want my WATCHMEN corrupted or diminished in any way, shape or form.

Of course, this applies to any literary work and those who embrace their worth, a situation that has been occurring since the dawn of adaptation. In recent years, LORD OF THE RINGS comes to mind. On a smaller scale (in the brain and taste department, that is) look at all the hub-bub over the TWILIGHT crossover from book to film. The two mediums are separate, but it's difficult to accept those terms when one form can reduce the other's appeal by ineptitude, wrongheadedness or just plain bad judgment. WATCHMEN had enormous credibility going in since it is one of the main reasons comics became elevated to a legitimate art-form in the first place. WATCHMEN truly is iconic.


WATCHMEN was the pinnacle of my comic reading period, a complex, brutally involving tale of superheroes and their legends turned inside out. At that time, I knew nothing would match the power of that series and I began to slip away from the comic world once and for all. I still hold onto the original issues to this day, the last puzzle pieces to a huge collection, most of which lost in a home fire in 1986.

As time passed, the project seemed to lay in development limbo in Hollywood, passing from director to director, mostly from the post-Boomer era-Aronofsky, Greengrass, even Michael Goddamn it to Hell Bay. Finally came someone I considered to be the flavor of the month. Zack Snyder was set to helm WATCHMEN, but somehow, I didn't raise my shields. He showed promise in in both the actually unnecessary remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD and the successful 300. The latter proved the viability of live action CGI work after the disastrous SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW earlier in the decade.

I remained guarded until last summer when the WATCHMEN trailer ran with THE DARK KNIGHT. While the rest of the world waxed Christopher Nolan's apple over his overrated triumph, I walked out of the theater whistling a tune in the future tense in anticipation of Snyder's film.

With the legal wrangles potentially tying up the release, WATCHMEN still managed to sally forth until the inevitable parade of fanboys came marching over the horizon, heading for the very first previews and prone to tear the film and Zack Snyder a new asshole collectively. Naturally, in true geek fashion, the backlash (aka snivelling-ass whining) began. "They changed too much!" "They didn't change enough!" "It's no DARK KNIGHT!" Naturally, this was speculation since most of this filtered out before the film's actual release. It's this kind of knee-jerk (emphasis on the jerk) that has raised my ire since I grew from being a fanboy myself and into a fanman. It's this kind of petty snarkiness that is deeply embedded in the geek community like a computer virus, the same kind of attitude that holds it back when it should be basking in the glow of legitimacy.

But the geeks aren't the only culprits. We've got the media to thank (or blame) as always. Because we are world that exists merely on instant gratification, the opening weekend box office figures did not blast into the stratosphere and WATCHMEN was immediately besmirched with the worst label a possible: "A disappointment".

With that extra anxiety pulsating in my subconscious, I set out last Sunday afternoon for a fifty mile roundtrip to the wonderfully refurbished and full digital projection equipped Roseway Theater on the other side of Portland to finally take in the film that I had both dreaded and eagerly anticipated. Add to my discomfort a sinus headache and upset stomach that nearly made me turn the car around and go back home, the signs began to point to "Waste of a Good Sunday Afternoon".

I am so pleased to proclaim that the signs were wrong.

WATCHMEN fulfilled its potential and is indeed the best comic book movie yet. Zack Snyder pulled off the seemingly impossible task of successfully translating Moore and Gibbons' vision to the screen visually, spiritually and philosophically. This intricately plotted, multi-charactered epic comes as complete as I ever would haved hoped. Should it have been a mini-series instead? Maybe, but it isn't and never was headed that direction, so the argument isn't just moot, but non-existent. What stands now looms large, overshadowing ridiculous nit-picking and needless speculation on what could have been. This isn't a Reader's Digest condensed version. Maybe critics who claim it doesn't breathe because they've forgotten how. It was have been so easy to go the Stephen Norrington route, he being the hack director of the wretched LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN adaptation and just hit the bullet points of Moore's story, turning WATCHMEN into an empty, however well-tailored suit. But armed with David Hytner and Alan Tse's screenplay, Snyder has taken the high road. While this is an incredible visualization and realization of the source material, WATCHMEN lives and breathes as its own special entity, one with brains, flesh and blood.

Oh, and what blood. Snyder didn't restrain himself at all in the violence department, updating the ZAP, BAM, POW of more innocent, naive times to the present of CRACK, CRUNCH, SPURT.

This movie really pushes the R rating in the violence department, overdoing it to the extent that it does become repetitious,but, hey, this ain't no cartoon. If Wile E. Coyote were to arrive on the scene, he'd be a rabid, snarling, drooling predator who would have his skull crushed by an ACME anvil in an explosion of crimson splat

There is also a pretty graphic softcore sex scene, widely criticized by geeks uncomfortable in their own underwear, that plays out beautifully in the story. The speculation is over. This is how superheroes screw! Grow up, for chrissakes.

The cast gives WATCHMEN life as well. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian, the masked brute at the end of his rope, is a real find. He seems to be the love child of Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey Jr. Billy Crudup transcends the CGI restraints of Dr. Manhattan, putting to rest in my mind any debate over the viability of this approach for this character. Patrick Wilson's Night Owl is a pitch perfect riff on pre-Frank Miller Batman type hero. It's also great to see a couple of veteran character actors like Stephen McHattie and Matt Frewer (aka Max Headroom) with some decent screen time for a change.

Not all the cast members reach this high level. Matthew Goode as Ozymandias is serviceable enough, but really needed to command more presence that he was able to muster. And Malin Akerman's acting skills are bit bland for her part as Silk Spectre, though she is involved some of the more uncomfortable melodramatic pieces of the story.

However, if one cast member rises above and beyond the call of duty and makes every single one of his scenes an instant classic, it is Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Talk about nailing a character to the wall and owning it. I have no hesitation in saying that Haley gives a performance equal to Heath Ledger's Joker. He is just that strong. While some dim bulbs have compared his gravelly delivery to Christian Bale's, it is not only an unfair comparison, but wrongheaded as well. Bale seemed to push his voice more to compensate for his diminished appearance next to Ledger. Haley becomes a naturally feral beast, uncompromising and more than makes up for his smallish stature with mighty authority, demanding your every attention while on camera. When finally unmasked, the actor soars, especially in the jailhouse sequences, some of the best in the film.

I would have to criticize the length of this film. I'm really tired of long-ass movies, even one that kept me as riveted as this does. What the hell ever happened to intermissions anyway? One scene could have been lost at the end without any problem,because, goddamn it, I had to pee like Seabiscuit's nephew. But, even though my head still throbbed and my bladder was about to absolutely explode by the final credits, WATCHMEN made me want to torture myself because I didn't want to leave it alone for a second. it is that good. (When the credits rolled, I flew out of the theater like the fucking Flash, careful not to leave a piss trail in my wake)

Still, well done, Zack Snyder. You pulled it off...and you did so masterfully. I am relieved.

And the best thing about WATCHMEN that I can add?

I can't wait to see it again.

What a "Burn"

So sue me.

I enjoyed the new Joel and Ethan Coen film BURN AFTER READING more than NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

I don't think it's a better film. Not by a long shot. In fact, in the Coen brothers film canon, it sits probably between O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE. But the truth of the matter is I laughed my fool head off at this goofy, wonderfully convoluted comedy, their funniest since the now legendary THE BIG LEBOWSKI. While it took a little while to ramp up, this tale of supposed espionage in a self-important world gave me the horselaugh more than a few times. The story fell together like the Dance of the Seven Veils and underneath is a beautifully convoluted mess. The caricatured characters, from Frances McDormand's lovelorn sad sack to John Malkovich's pompous mid-management intelligence officer hit every right note, though the film is outright stolen by Brad Pitt as one of the Coen Bros.' best American idiots (see also: O BROTHER and RAISING ARIZONA), a dim bulb satisfied with his own low wattage.

I had a lot of problems with NO COUNTRY, particularly with the final third of the film. I, like many others, felt cheated by the outcome of one of the main characters. It made me very so ambivalent after the first viewing that I reserved my opinion until the second time through. I have to stand by my initial assessment: I felt that the Coens have given me a wild ride, then dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, causing me to find my own way back.

In BURN, there is an entire series of events that is talked about and not shown. I didn't feel gypped by this at all. The telling of that tale by fine actors like David Rasche and J.K. Simmons, one of the best character actors around, was sublime. And I found out WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.

P.S. I caught BURN AFTER READING at the newly remodeled Roseway Theater, a classic old cinema in Northeast Portland and found hope in the world of single-screen venues. Here's another addition to the list of why I love it up here.