How to Train Your Dragon review Pt 2: Swag and Final Thoughts

Here is the second part of my review of "How to Train Your Dragon," in which  I review the swag I got at the preview screening and give some final thoughts on the movie and the experience I had watching it.

How to Train Your Dragon review part 1

Here is my latest review: The new, live action version of "How to Train Your Dragon, coming out on June 13, 2025!

Gladiators NYC and I got free passes to an advance screening of the provided we tell people about it. I thought it was great! 

1917 movie review

1917 is an excellent movie, well deserving recognition for its cinematography and direction. It is a "must see" war movie, especially among WWI movies, and, as so many WWI movies do, expresses the pointlessness of so much of that war.

It was not the movie I expected, though. I had read a review that said that it was like a feature length version of the last scene of Gallipoli, the movie about Australians in the failed Turkish captain of that war, starring Mel Gibson. That final scene of the Australian Light Horse going "over the top" in a futile charge to allow the British to land tore my heart out when I first saw it when I was 12 years old, and had the same effect when I saw it again when I was around 20. Such a comparison reminded me of one made of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, saying that it was basically the last scene of Braveheart extended over the length of a full movie.

Though the story dynamic was essentially the same (runners told to deliver a message to stop a potentially disastrous attack) There was none of the on-screen death and bloodshed that we saw in the earlier movie. There is very  little actual "battle action" in the movie. Most of the movie is about the territory covered by the two British soldiers as they traverse the land to deliver the message.

And what diverse ground it is! They go from crowded trenches to blasted no-man's-land to subterranean tunnels to open farmland, walking, crawling, riding in trucks, crossing rivers, and running through the ruins of a mostly-demolished town. They are constantly surrounded by death. Dead soldiers, dead animals, dead land, in all states of decomposition. Every conversation in every encounter involves death, which I gather from, well, everything about the First World War, is what that war (and every war, really) was about. No war as famously had so many soldiers living in such close proximity of death nonstop for such a long time, which is why it is the defining characteristic of that "war to end all wars," which didn't. This movie definitely gets that across.

Even the title of the movie, and the opening words on the screen (a date in April, 1917) help to strike home the awfulness of the fact of the war, as it was destined to go on for another year and a half after the events in this movie.

One cannot say enough about the production design of this movie. The constant appearance of dead bodies in all their infinite varieties, as common in the landscape as bushes or trees might be in a lightly wooded countryside, is both impressive and oppressive in its omnipresence. The rats crawl around and literally through them. The med react, or don;t react, to them in ways that completely fit with the respective context. And of course the omnipresence of dead bodies provides many opportunities for contest.

But even with all this death, there are beautiful landscapes through the movie. They provide a welcome contrast, and the transitions from one to another are remarkable.

The film is edited to look like it was shot in one long single take, much in the manner of  Birdman. Of course it was not, and, in fact, I kind of forgot that it looked like it was all one take. I suppose my mind, used to cuts and transition, simply assumed that there were cuts and transitions.

The friendship between the two soldiers is real and engaging, although one of them looks too much like the actor who plays that evil bounty hunter in The Man in the High Castle for me to feel too much sympathy at the beginning.

There are certain cliches that are in almost every war movie, and 1917 has a bunch of them. It is a sign of how well the movie is made that they are unexpected, never feel like cliches, and the emotional beats hit home. This was in welcome contrast to such films as the cliche-ridden Patriot (Hah! Another Mel Gibson reference!) and Platoon that had me truly laughing out loud.

The "star cameos" (Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch) were noticeable, and, though unnecessary, not nearly as distracting as Ted Danson in Saving Private Ryan.

There was another movie about World War I that I saw on Vudu recently that shared some thematic similarities but had significant differences. I may review that also if I get the chance.

Here is some background on the characters and events of the film:
https://time.com/5751665/1917-movie-history/

And here are some more videos about the movie:

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Review

This is the best Star Wars movie so far. "The Empire Strikes Back," of which it shares the most common elements, is close behind, but still lacking strength in a few very important elements that give this one the edge.

Ant-Man & Fanstastic Four are the same movie. So why...

...in fact, almost all superhero movies are exactly the same frickin' movie. If you have seen any number of them, you should know this by now, but for the record, let me break it down for you...

1. Protagonist has a problem.
2. Protagonist tries to do something because of the problem.
3. Protagonist gains the ability to become a superhero.
4. Super-feats occur.
5. Villain threatens something protagonist cares about.
6. Protagonist defeats villain with more super-feats.

To add depth and meaning to the story and give it a more satisfying payoff, often the villain will have something to do with the hero's initial problem and/or the way the hero gained his ability to be a superhero.
 
I could list of all the examples of movies in which this pattern is played out, but I have to get up in the morning and I don't feel like staying up that late. However there are a few movies that do attempt to deviate from that, and are better than your average superhero movie in that regard. "X-Men 2" and "Batman Forever" are among them (though a case can be made that Catwoman was the protagonist in the latter, in which case, it reverts back to the formula).

The latest two superhero movies, "Fantastic Four" and "Ant-Man" fit the formula like they came out of the same cookbook. In both movies, co-protagonists (on the one hand, the students, on the other, Hank Pym and Scott Lang) are having trouble with authority. They all do something about it, in these cases, making unauthorized use of some high-tech.  Their powers are revealed, and then the true threat is revealed. In both cases (Dr. Doom and Darren Cross) the threat was involved with the incident that gave the protagonists their powers. In fact, the villains in both of these movies wind up with powers of their own from the same source as the heroes, and they wind up battling it out with those powers.

So why did one movie set new levels on enjoyableness while the other  was a mercifully brief waste of time?

It was the ingredients, and the skill with which the chef combined them.

Ant-Man, from its Latino music over the Marvel studio logo, was set as an urban comedy, with inner-city low-level underworld types with hearts of gold bringing their ethnic flavor to every scene. This was not just comic relief, but the undercurrent of the entire film. From Luis' rambling non-sequitors to Kurt's Eastern-European accent and syntax to the reactions of Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, there was hardly a scene without a laugh. Add to this the tension between the protagonist and the female lead, the realized comic potential of an ant-sized man discovering the world around him for the first time, and constant insect references, and it is very possible that you could be laughing from beginning to end.

And yet, all this comedy did not detract from the gravitas of the conflict. Rather, it helped us grow sympathetic to the protagonist and actually care that he would come out ahead.

On the other hand, "Fantastic Four" deftly avoided taking advantage of any opportunity for humor. This made the movie mercifully short, for the previous version of this franchise had padded their films with all sorts of attempts at humor, many of which fell flat.

It is not enough to have humor in a movie, it has to actually be funny. "Ant-Man" took advantage of certain cinematic techniques (in a couple of notable instances, quick-cutting to follow a story, and having actors lip-synch the narrrator, even when such words would have never come out of such a character's mouth) etc; The earlier "Fantastic Four" movies used very few cinematic tricks for comedy, and the jokes and gags came accross as pedestrian. A waste of time really.

So if you are not going to have humor, you need to have...something else, something to make us care about these characters and what they do. If they are supposed to be heroes, we should sympathize with their need to do heroic things so we can cheer at their successes and feel tension when they come near to failure.

And I must have missed the Stan Lee cameo in "Fantastic Four."

So that's how two movies that tell the same damn story can be so different in how much you enjoy them.

One other weird thing about "FF": At the very end, after the credits, there was a tile card that said, in bold letters with no serifs, how long it had taken to produce and how many people it employed. But why was that important to say? We obviously know that it employed lots of people, we had just sat through six minutes of double-column credits. Are you that insecure about the reception of this movie that the best thing you can say about it is that it kept some people off the unemployment rolls for a while? WTF?

And let's face it, if you were to take out the stupid pop-culture references, "Superhero Movie" was every bit  as satisfying a superhero movie as just about any superhero movie. More so, even, than "Fantastic Four."




 

Asterix at the Movies...

I just saw "Asterix in Britain," the latest adaptation f the Asterix graphic novels fro Europ by Gosciny and Uderzo.

It was fucking brilliant.

The problem with many "satires," "parodies," and "pastiches" in recent years is hat they seem to work on the assumption that merely mentioning, evoking, or referencing a popular movie, TV show, commercial or "meme" is enough to et a lough, as if that was comedy. That is not the case. you have to use it in a way that says something about the subject that you are parodying, and you get bonus points for saying something about what you are referencing as well.

It also helps if the actors are talented, the story is moving, the script is well-written, and the editing is paced properly for the material.

Comedy has rules. A running joke is used three times, and the third time goes wrong. Characters reveal their true natures under stress. Hang a lampshade on an obvious plot device. Someone getting thrown out a window is funny. Cultural differences are funny. Important people being taken of their high horse is funny. People from different walks of life falling in love is funny. British people are funny. A bit with a dog, and love conquers all.

"Asterix" used all these rules, and used them well. It also referenced everything from James bond to "Pirates of the Caribbean" to "Shrek" to "300" to "Downfall" and did it well. My GF could barely contain herself in several scenes, and had never seen an Asterix comic in her life.

The film is a worthy companion to the recent "Adventures of Tintin" in to category of "recent adaptations of classic popular cult European graphic novel series that never quite hit the mainstream in the US but are really, really good," and is flat-out one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.

For those of you who need more: The story is loosely based on the graphic novels "Asterix in Britain" and "Asterix and the Normans." It follows the adventures of Asterix, a Gaulish warrior in the time of Julius Caesar, and his friend Obelix as they go to Britain to help fight the Romans. They decide to bring a nephew with whom they are charged with turning into a man, but who would prefer to be a bard and spends all his time wooing maidens and singing…badly. They are also charged to bring a magic potion which gives great strength to the Britons, and in the course of the adventure the barrel is lost. They happen to run into a allow from India time and again. Asterix and Obelix have a falling out. A lampshade is hung on an obvious plot device. British people are funny. People are thrown out of windows. Cultural differences occur. People are thrown out of windows. People from different walks of life fall in love. There is a bit with a dog, and love conquers all.

See this movie. Now.

Here is it on Amazon.com...

Here are some other movies in the seres...

New channels, old shows and movies

A few weeks ago I was told of new channels on the new HDTV system that has been in effect for the past couple of years. I figured, then, that it must be time to re-scan for tv channels that could be picked up by my digital converter box.

The new channel selection reminds me of cable TV from the 1970’s. There are kids’ channels Spanish channels, shopping channels, Christian channels, Spanish kids’ channels, Spanish shopping channels, Spanish Christian channels, Spanish kids’ Christian shopping channels, Chinese Channels, Korean channels, and a few channels that show old TV shows and movies.

This is a great opportunity to see what the medium of television was giving us before cable TV and changing technology and social mores gave us the diversity, excitement, and mature subject matters we see today. Shows like “Robin Hood,” “Life with Elizabeth,” “I Married Joan,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Peter Gunn,” "Daniel Boone," and “Bat Masterson” show us the attempts that were made to fill time on TV with quality, wholesome entertainment. We also occasionally get to see some well-known actors in their younger days. Acting, writing, and directing styles were very different back then. We even get to see views of cultures that don’t exist anymore, like dinner/dance nightclubs and beat poets.

But what is more personally interesting (and addictive) is This TV (HDTV 11-3 in New York City), a station that shows nothing but movies almost all day and night (with some children’s shows in the morning). But most of the movies are the second-tier, lower-budget sequels and knock-off movies with less-well known actors. Instead of “Bad News Bears” we get “Here Come the Tigers.” Instead of “The Magnificent 7” we get “Guns of the Magnificent 7” and “Magnificent 7” Ride. Instead of “The Guns of Navarone” we get “The Iron Coast.” Instead of “The Wild Angels” we get “The Glory Stompers.” Instead of “Oceans 11,” James Bond, or even Matt Helm, we get “Salt and Pepper” and “One More Time.” Instead of "True Grit" we get "Rooster Cogburn." Instead of "Billy Jack" we get "The Born Losers."

I find it nice to see that these lesser-known works of pop culture get an opportunity to be screened, especially on free TV. Cable TV, the growth of the VCR (followed by the DVD and Blu-Ray), and the commercial effectiveness of the infomercial have meant that free TV has been showing fewer and fewer movies over the past two decades. And even on cable and at the video store, older and lesser-known movies have been drowned out by the ongoing crush of major blockbusters, reality TV, and the forward march of time.

I fear that This TV will go the way of many other stations that have been movie-heavy or had a single programming concept (WPIX in the 1980’s, MTV, The Nashville Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, WBIS). It will find greater profits in original programming and diversity. Then these movies will go back to the dustbins of film-making history. But for now, let’s enjoy seeing what our parents and grandparents saw, and let that inform us on where they came from when we don’t understand them.

Pieces of April - nothing original, but well done

When a movie is just like every other movie of its type, it really has to be done well to be tolerable.

In this case, "Pieces of April," written and directed by Peter Hedges and released in 2003 (which was just broadcast on PBS, Channel 13) hits a lot of notes of a young indie director's movie:

Hot girl in counter-cultural clothing and makeup - check.
On-location shooting - check.
Estranged family that doesn't understand her - check.
Arguments between mom and dad - check.
Road trip - check.
Oddball urban characters - check.
Rough, trash-strewn, graffiti-covered urban landscape - check.
Generally quiet soundscape - check.
Girl breaks down in tears - check.
Bikers - check.
Reconciliation with family at the end - check.

It was a story of a young woman (Katie Holmes) living in an inner-city neighborhood with her boyfriend (Derek Luke) preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her family. The family happened to include her terminally-ill mom (Patricia Clarkson), and this was the first time that the girl had ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

This film proved that just because a film is a lot like many other films doesn't mean it can't be very good.

"The Patriot," on the other hand...

Kick-Ass kicks ass!

On Monday night I was fortunate enough to have obtained a pass to the advance premiere of “Kick-Ass,” the new movie based on the comic book written by Mark Millar and drawn by John Romita, Jr. Of all the movies I wish I had seen before making my latest movie, this is the one that fit’s the category best.

The story is a Campbellian hero’s journey that takes the concept of “what if a real person tried to be a superhero” to the dirtiest, most violent, foul-mouthed, and glorious degree.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, it goes sorta like this: A high school student comic book geek wonders why no one has ever really tried to be a superhero. Of course this kid and his friends are regularly pushed around and ignored by girls, and muggers don’t even have to threaten them with violence. One day he buys a scuba suit and tries to be a superhero. It doesn’t work out, but he doesn’t give up. His example inspires others, and he winds up in a deadly, violent confrontation with an organized crime boss. People die, and he finds the hero within himself and becomes a man.

“Comic book movies,” that is, movies based on comic books or comic book characters, come in two varieties these days. There are those that are based on a character, usually with a long publishing history, and try to build a movie around the concept (with varying degrees of seriousness and success), ie: Superman, Bat Man, Spider-Man, etc. Then there are those that are based on specific comic book stories or graphic novels; A History of Violence, Sin City, Watchmen, Etc. Those of the latter kind seem to have a higher rate of success, both as movies and as adaptations, and this movie, fortunately, fits that pattern.

The casting of the movie is excellent; combining perfect talent (Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz) and some inspired “gimmick casting” (Nicholas Cage, Christoher Mintz-Plasse). As the hero, Johnson’s face echoes Toby Maguire’s “gee, something good actually happened to me” cockeyed half-smile, combining cultural reference with endearing honesty. Cage, as the ultimate badass superhero, does some of his best work as a mild-mannered father, and hits all the right notes imitating the delivery of a noted 1960’s TV actor. Mintz-Plasse brings a surprising darkness to a role that seems like a development of his character in “Role Models.”

There are differences between the movie and the book. Some of them are simply matters of the necessary structural difference between a movie and an 8-issue comic series. As Mark Millar stated in the Q&A after the screening, the miniseries was an eight-act structure, while a movie has a three-act structure. Some of the differences, though, were blatantly involving the difference between what you can do in a comic book and what you need to do to sell a movie. Millar pointed out that one change (and a very drastic one, I thought) was instituted because they simply needed to have some sex in the movie.

Another change was a bit more of a trade-off than a pander to the masses. There is a moment in the comic book where the hero makes a moment of immense personal sacrifice, paying off a setup from very early in the story and showing the character take control of a situation unlike he had ever done before in his life. That scene was eliminated in the movie, allowing for a touching moment between a father and daughter. This gave more of the movie to another character, and made it less about the titular hero. The hero did get to have his hero moment later, but it was not as strong and significant as the one in the book.

The audience, packed with fans of comics in general and the original comic in particular, ate this movie up with a spoon. They cheered and laughed at all the right moments. I happened to be sitting between two women who were not fans, and they seemed a little shocked at some of the violence, though at they end they admitted it was a good movie. I agree that the gun violence does get a little gratuitous at times, but this is not a movie for the weak of heart. Life and death can be an ugly, unforgiving business, and by not skimping on the blood and violence, they show how far you have to go if you really want to be a hero.

And that’s what heroism is about. It’s about taking your lumps for something you believe in. The hero, Kick-Ass, believes in fighting for decency, protecting the weak, saving lives, and helping people. Even in the face of death, he keeps true to his beliefs, and takes his lumps.

In my movie, “Redemption,” the main character proves that he is willing to take his lumps to be the best that he can be. This movie is the grittiest, gutsiest, most literal expression of that I have ever seen.

So, the Incredible Hulk, Eh?

Well, I first saw this movie sneaking in after the first 15 minutes or so. I came in during a chase scene where Banner was running from the soldiers under General Ross trying to catch him, the scene that ended with the first appearance of the Hulk. I figured I had missed some of the initial character set-up and I didn't know if the origin of the Hulk had been shown, and I had not seen the Ang Lee movie, so I was willing to take the movie on its terms at that. I thought the the movie was awesome! The Comic Book Superhero Movie genre has finally hit its stride, with Dark Knight, Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men 2, and now this.

Then a few days later I saw the entire movie. It seems all I missed was the montage of shots that covered the origin and a little set-up of Banner in Brazil. There was very little dialogue, very little character development or even exposition to get you into the character and scenario. It's ;like the filmmaker assumed you knew the origin already and this was just a quick reminder.
From what I hear tell, the Ang Lee film was all about how childhood abuse had built up much anger in Bruce Banner, which was the source of his great rage as thew Hulk. This movie did not even touch anything regarding anything about any possible psychological background for Banner, and was the weaker for it. It acted as if all the background was either known by the audience already or was being hidden so that the reveal would be the shock.

This workled a little bit, such as when Betty Ross first called General Ross “Daddy,” if you did not know the connection there it was a worthwhile reveal. But still, as the movie was set up as if you were plopped into the middle of a story, as a stand-alone feature it would have been strengthened by just a little more character set-up.

That having been said, there were many reasons that it did work as a Comic Book Super Hero Movie. As a genre, the CBSHM plays best to comic book fans, especially those familiar with the character. By the time the movie is made, it can be assumed that the character is popular enough to support a movie. That being the case, there must be a reason the character is popular. Therefore, the best CBSHM's are true to the character and trust the source.

The source for this movie, and character, seems to be as much the 1970's TV series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. The references are legion: Banner says “Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. There is a clip from another Bill Bixby TV show, “The Courtship of Eddie's Father,” playing in one scene (although I think “My Favorite Martian” would have been a more appropriate homage). Lou Ferrigno has a cameo appearance. Banner is referred to as a “Fugitive” no less than twice (“The Fugitive” was a TV series that predated, and was conceptually much like the Hulk TV series).When Banner changes into the Hulk, at one point we see the close-up on his spot-lighted eyes just like the TV show; we see the shirt split across his back; we even see the Hulk pull the shirt off his chest, Ferrigno-like.

The action is astounding. I often have problems with these sorts of action movies when the director feels we have to have everything close-up, in your face, to give a sense of the drama. Michael Bay (Transformers) and Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever) are particularly guilty on that score. This time, however, the director trusted the drama of the actual action, allowing us to see the Hulk battle his adversaries, much the way Fred Astaire and Gene Kelley and Jackie Chan were always allowed to be seen in action. Yay!

However, weakness is shown when the movie assumes that all viewers will be familiar with the character, and thus necessary set-up and development is set aside. So this is an awesome movie , but could have been just a little bit more.

Narnia: Deus Ex Machina...well Duh!

I saw the latest Chronicles of Narnia movie, “Prince Caspian” the other day. First off, it fulfills the requirement of a wizards and warriors fantasy movie quite capable. There are magical creatures, court intrigue, lots of armor and action, noble heroes, dastardly villains, and courage, resourcefulness, and faith wins out in the end. The four children from the first movie travel back to Narnia a year later their time, 1300 years later, Narnia time. They find the ruins of their old castle, and that the country is overrun by humans who have taken over the land from the magical creatures, much the way the White Man took over America from the Native Americans. The human prince who is supposed to fulfill a prophecy by becoming king escapes a murderous rival and resolves the differences between his people and their enemies.

Yes, the story very satisfactorily plays out the formula. The good people live, the bad people die, but only because they are killed by other bad people or by good people in a fair fight.

One thing that did seem remarkable, was that after many more centuries than the US has beenin existance, the conquerors of Narnia had not neither subjugated, assimilated, nor exterminated the original inhabitants. In a similar ammount of timejust about every people that Rome conquered had fallen into one of these categories. Further, in the resolution of the film, rather than the two people reconciling and learning to live together (a very modern, American idea), the had-been conquerers are sent packing. You'd think after several hundred years, and at least 9 kings (Prince Caspian was to be the 10th of that name), they would have started to identify the land as their home.

But the ending, oh the ending. The denouement is so “perfect.” It has Aslan, the magical creature and savior, meting out justice to one and all and making sure that every dilemma is resolved by his use of magic and wisdom. This is the very definition of Deus Ex Machina. After all, the whole Chronicle of Narnia is a Christian parable, and Aslan represents Jesus Christ. So there it is.

Captain Zorikh
http://www.bigapplecon.con/
http://www.captainzorikh.com/

The Fall: A different sort of Fantasy movie

Everyone in the world is going to see Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Chronicles of Narnia, The Hulk, etc., etc. this year, but I want to encourage you to seek out another movie that is every bit as visually inventive, fascinating, and fantastic as any of those movies want to be: The Fall.

The Fall is about the relationship that develops between a young girl and a man who tells her a story. They are both in a hospital, having suffered injuries from falls. The girl has a broken arm from picking oranges, and the man is paralyzed from the waist down from a stunt accident while making a movie. The man starts to tell a fascinating adventure story that draws the girl in, and a friendship grows between them,. The film takes place around the turn of the century, when movies were just getting started, and the story the man tells takes place in an adventure-fantasy world, and is seen visualized through the eyes of the child, who interprets everything through what she knows, her family, the people in the hospital etc. However as the story develops, the man's depression and pain starts to be revealed.

The images are truly fantastic in this film. The production traveled all over the world to find sites to shoot, and they found some amazing, surreal locations. If there is any use of CGI, it is subtle and used to show things that would simply be too dangerous or difficult to convincingly show in real film.

The story told by the man is of an adventure in which an escaped slave, an Indian warrior, Luigi the Explosives Expert, Charles Darwin and his companion monkey Wallace, a primitive mystic, and a masked bandit go on a quest to exact revenge on the evil Governor Odious for wrongs he has done them. The adventure takes them to amazing places and they do amazing things, all within their characters.

The view of the story through the girl's eyes is fascinating. While the hospital is in California, and the storyteller is American, the girl is apparently from India, and her interpretations are thus drawn form what she is familiar with. One of the most blatant examples is the “Indian,” which although described by the man as having a wigwam and being married to a squaw, is seen in the mind of the girls as a turbaned, bearded, sword-wielding warrior from the Asian subcontinent.
The title refers to several falls that occur in the movie, those of the two protagonists that put each of them in the hospital, several that occur in the film, and at least one fall of a character's standing in another's eyes. Those who like looking for symbolism will find much to play with there.

This movie was made in 2006 and has taken several years to get an American release. The poster for it is as abstract as parts of the movie may feel, and I fear it may not get many viewers outside cities like New York. It is based on a 1981 Hungarian film called Yo Ho Ho which I now hope to see sometime.

In the midst of all the “Summer Blockbusters” and franchise movies and “Eagerly Anticipated” epics, I hope many, many more people take the time to see this movie. You can get your fill of fancy costumes, spectacular sets, and fantasy concepts, and still have a thoughtful movie worth thinking about that says something about the role of fantasy and friendship in life.

Captain Zorikh
http://www.bigapplecon.com
http://www.captainzorikh.com
http://www.captainmarvelculture.com

Star Wars is Everywhere

I just saw the promo spot for this week's "Deal or No Deal," one of my least favorite game shows. It is Star Wars Week for them, apparently. All the girls will be dressed in "Slave Leia" costumes. I did make note of two things: 1. they were referred to as "Princess Leia," not "Slave Leia" (which make sense, after all, since "Princess..." is the name of the character as the general public knows her and "Slave..." is what we fans call her when she is in our favorite costume ;)), and that they were not wearing collars. And here I thought SM had entered the mainstream. I guess that would have just been a bit TOO daring for prime time.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

RIP Arthur C. Clarke
Word the world learned of Arthur C. Clarke's death on March 16 2008. He dies at the last surviving member of what many consider to be the great triumvirate of classic science fiction writers of the 20th century, Himself, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein.

Like many people, my first, and most intimate contact with Clarke was through the movie “2001: A space Odyssey.” I was born the year it came out, which was also the year the first Planet of the Apes movie came out. It was a good year for science fiction films, creatively, critically, and commercially. Both of these films took a genre that had been relegated to b-movies, world destruction, alien invasion, etc, and showed that the science fiction could be used to examine the human condition in a first class manner.

“2001” also tapped into a social movement that saw mankind's destiny in the stars and sought new ways of exploring consciousness. On the one hand, folks were attempting to find a new, harmonious relationship with the planet and beyond, and on the other, were lying down in front of the front row of the theater smoking pot watching the colors zoom past them.

As a teenager I read the novel, the sequel “2010,” (though it would be a few years before I saw that movie), and “The Lost Worlds of 2001,” the original short story and a collection of writing exercises by the author around it. This was during a summer I spent at a summer stock theater in Upstate New York. I never saw stars like that before in my life. The crystal clear mountain air opened up the heavens to me and I found myself spending hours lying in the grass of the harness racing track at the fairgrounds just gazing up at the Milky Way. I imagines that somewhere up there was the Monolith, just waiting for me.

I also read the Foundation series and Battlefield Earth that summer, so it was a good summer for Science Fiction.

But before I had ever read the books or seen the movie, I had been aware of it. Even before VHS, Betamax, and DVD made every movie have three birthdays and was instantly available to everyone, “2001” was a cultural icon. My closest contact with it was the comic book series by Jack Kirby. I found an issue of it in a grab bag from Supersnipe, the old comic book shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In it was a story of a stone-age leader who, after contact with the Monolith, uses the revolutionary technology of metalworking and the wheel to conquer his neighbors. The story then jumped forward in time to his distant descendant who's journey paralleled that of Kier Dulea in the movie.

I was very much a child of my times. The idea that mankind had a connection to the stars, a destiny beyond this planet attracted me. Having been given an unusual name in that era helped. I was a bit of an outsider, and such outsiders frequently were the ones chosen to find their cosmic destiny in stories I read and saw in the movies.

Not only had Arthur C. Clarke written the definitive story about mankind's cosmic destiny, he predicted that we would reach the moon before 1970, and he was right. In many ways, I am a product of the culture that he began.

Captain Zorikh
http://www.captainzorikh.com/
http://www.bigapplecon.com

More Star Wars?

Earlier this month it was announced that there will be two new programs for television created from the Star Wars universe. One will be “The Clone Wars,” which will be a CGI animated full-length film on Cartoon Network which will cover events between “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”; the other is an as-yet unnamed series described in the New York Post as “Deadwood” meets “The Sopranos” in outer space.

But why?

The first Star Wars movie was, as we all know, but one fraction of the story George Lucas says he wanted to tell, yet it was a completely satisfactory moviegoing experience. It took us into a completely new universe that was at once strange and familiar at the same time. The story had a beginning, a middle, and an end, a backstory, a broader universe, and a conclusion and resolution. It did have an open ending, unfinished business, but one could write one's own ending. The foreground conflict had been completed.

The second movie continued the story and developed the characters that we had grown attached to in the first movie. It took us to new places and we learned new things about the characters and the universe in which they lived. But it was not the end of the story. The conclusion, as it were, was merely the set up for the climax to the greater story arc, which would come in the next film.

The third (and some thought, the last) film wrapped up the great drama, but gave us very little that was new. It made a few choices, answered some questions, but for all the sound and fury, thrill and excitement, it was really little more than a juiced up rehash of all the elements that made the first movie so new and fresh.

Yeas passed, and the technology of film making improved. Star Wars had become a cultural phenomenon that redirected popular culture. Yet eventually there were adults who had not been born when the first movie was released. A “special edition” of the Original Trilogy” was created, in which Lucas allegedly gave us the Film He Always Wanted to Make. But part of the brilliance of the first film was how he had made so much of so little. Many of the additions to the original film were quite unnecessary.

Finally, Lucas decided to tell the backstory. Sure it what we all wanted to see, but would it still have the magic?

Sadly, no. Was it the dependence on CGI? Was it that George had lost his touch for writing and directing? Was it the political incorrectness and sheer annoyingness of Jar-Jar Binks? I'll let everybody decide for themselves. The succeeding films continued to give us more lightsaber fights, more space dogfights, more alien races, and so much CGI that a rumor was spread that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would categorize it as an “animated” film.
This does not even take into account the comic books, comic strips, radio show, novels, fan fiction, Ewok adventures, Droid cartoons, and the notorious and infamous “Holiday Special.” Let's face it: we loved that original movie so much we just couldn't get enough. Fortunately the Star Wars franchise shattered Harlan Ellison's rule: less than 90% of it was crap.

So now there is almost no more room for debate, or creativity with regards to the Star Wars universe. We no longer have the freedom to wonder what made Luke's father go bad, who is that “other hope,” what happened to the Empire after the Death Star went kablooey, or even how one measures The Force. All these questions have been answered. The first movie was so brilliant for giving all these little hints and little mysteries, and we all could create our own little answers to all those question, much like the way that one would imagine the face of someone described in a book.

But lets face it, we want to see more stormtroopers in white plastic armor. We want to see what the Clone Wars were all about. We want to see a young, virile Obi-Wan face off against the future Darth Vader. We want to see Luke and Leia's parents. We want to see And we want to see our favorite badass with a purple lightsaber. Look at the prequel trilogy again. Doesn't it show you all those things you wish you had seen in the original trilogy, they just didn't have the budget to give you?

We were lucky with that first movie. It is not easy to make a perfect fantasy adventure movie, as you can tell by looking at “Battle Beyond the Stars,” “Deathstalker,” “The Sword and the Sorcerer,” “Star Crash,” even the various versions and chapters of “The Lord of the Rings.” Sometimes the best we can hope for is that the film is well produced and enables us to forget our world for a while. And instead of having to watch that same movie over and over again, we now have a large and ever-growing library of adventures in that universe, so by having established a universe we are familiar with, we can explore further concepts in that universe. We don't have to create a whole new universe for every new story.

So is it necessary to have a never-ending, ever developing universe based on a modestly produced but wildly successful sci-fi fantasy film from the 1970's? No, but it sure makes life more pleasant.

Captain Zorikh
http://www.captainzorikh.com
http://www.bigapplecon.com

Doomsday ain't what is used to be, only more so

When I was much younger I was into role-playing games and wargames. I was also very concerned about the threat of nuclear war. A friend of mine told me “The Road Warrior” was the most awesome movie ever, but I was too young to go see it on my own, and my mom wouldn't take me. Then I found the game Car Wars. And I thought that this must be what the Road Warrior is about. Then finally I was old enough to see the movie in a revival theater in a double feature with Blade Runner (which I had also never seen).


I was totally blown away. This may have been my first post-apocalypse movie ever, and it was certainly the most exciting. Who knew the end of the world could be so exciting? The fast pace, the sense of speed, the production design, the action, it all left a very big impression on me. I watched that movie every time it came to the revival theaters (this being years before owning a VCR. I hunted down every bit of information I could fins about it,and when I was at a friend's house who had cable, snuck down to the living room to watch Mad Max for the first time.


I can quote chapter and verse on those movies. I would talk about nothing else for years. I even adapted Shakespeare's MacBeth to tell the story of the Nightrider. At one time I had three different Road Warrior T-shirts. My girlfriend called me her “Little Road Warrior.”


I then hunted down post-apocalyptic films like a fiend. 42nd street gave me “Warriors of the Lost World” “Warriors of the Wasteland,” and “Steel Dawn.” Revival theaters gave me ”Night of the Comet,” “A Boy and his Dog,” and repeated showings of “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior.” TV gave me “Damnation Alley,” “Dead Man Walking,” “The Day After,” and “Weeds.” Videotapes gave me “Defcon 4,” “Radioactive Dreams,” “After the Fall of New York,” “Wheels of Fire,” “Six String Samurai,” "Gas-s-s-s-s-s or We Had to Destroy the World in Order to Save It,"and many more. I still have yet to find a copy of “No Blade of Grass.” I would judge every movie by how realistic the post-apocalyptic landscape was, how believable it was that the world had gone to hell, and how exciting it was compared to “The Road Warrior.”


In time, the Cold War ended and the fear of nuclear holocaust faded. With it, the post-apocalypse genre fell out of favor. Recently, however, it has come back with a new scourge: zombies/plague.


I am not the sociologist/historian to fully analyze the whys and wherefores of this development, but I suspect it has something to do with th acclimation of the world to the AIDS epidemic and the popularity of the zombie movies created and inspired by George A. Romero. There is probably something about the purity of zombies as an adversary: they have no soul so there is nothing wrong with killing them (again,) they are unstoppable, and they are ugly; like vampires without the sex appeal. Thus they can appeal to horror fans who don't want their terror interfered with by soul searching and sexual tension.


There is also something appealing about exploring the story of last survivors of mankind. They pick through the ruins of the old world, using familiar items in unfamiliar ways. Stylings frequently have a s&m/punk/heavy metal look, which is exciting to look at. There is usually a lawlessness that resembles the Old West, and who doesn't like a good western? There is also the opportunity to explore fright and terror, as with the collapse of civilization, there is nothing stopping the rampages of the truly depraved.


So put the appeal of the post-apocalypse film together with the modern concerns about disease and the popularity of the living dead, and you've got a new genre of film, the zombie/plague post-apocalypse film, who's most notable entries include “Land of the Dead,” “I am Legend,” “28 Days Later,” and the “Resident Evil” series.


Now put all these films together into one, and make that film not quite as good as the best of them,. And you've got “Doomsday,” which I saw last night at a midnight screening. Just about everything in it is borrowed/stolen from another movie. All of Scotland in quarantined due to a plague, like New York in “I Am Legend.” 20 years later, the land is scorched, like in “Reign of Fire,” and the plague appears in London, like in “I Am Legend” again. A team is sent in to Glasgow to find the doctor who had stayed there working for a cure, like the search for the last fertile woman in “After the Fall of New York.” They travel in large armored vehicles like the ones in “Damnation Alley” with a crack military team equipped with two-way video devices, like in “Aliens.” Also like in “Aliens,” most of the team is killed and their vehicles destroyed early. The survivors are led through a “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” type culture but escape, and find another society living in a recreated medieval culture (one of the few bits I could not place the inspiration of). There is a “Gladiator” fight scene, and then our heroes escape again, which leads to a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” type storehouse, which leads to a highway battle scene that is straight out of “The Road Warrior.” There is also a subplot involving the government that echoes “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” and “Dr. Strangelove.”


In the near six decades since the post-apocalypse film first appeared, action, horror, and violence in films has seen a steady increase in intensity. This has been due to improving technology, makeup technique, and the drive to one-up each previous film. “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior” were breakthrough films in that regard, and future car chases and post-apocalypse action films were all compared to them, frequently failing.


“Doomsday” does not fail in trying to be harder, faster, and more intense than any similar film before it. Where earlier movies may have tastefully or strategically looked away from a beheading or a body on fire, this one showed it right on screen, front and center. With the fast pacing and quick cuts of the car chae, the pace was made even faster and the cuts even quicker. However, this extreme graphic violence and frenetic camera work and editing did not really improve the film. Instead it distracted from the story and sometimes made it too confusing to know what was going on.


I must especially say this about the car chase scene in the end. Several notes that were hit in “The Road Warrior” were blatantly copied, but were either lost in all the chaos, or were simply not done as well or were too obvious.


The thing that I thought was most specifically interesting was the medieval culture. As a well-known medievalist, I of course dug the idea of a post-apocalyptic society that chose to bring back an age of chivalry. However this culture was not one of goodness and hope that the heroes had been looking for. Instead it was ruled by a cynical madman, and ultimately was just as ruthless and evil, in its own way, as the Glasgow cannibals. Whereas in every medieval movie you would see a skeleton in a cage hanging from the castle walls, in this one, you actually saw people on the verge of death in cages right next to them. The cruel Darwinian philosophy of the ruler of this kingdom was just an excuse to kill, in as entertaining a way as possible, outsiders. The modern primitive tribal punk s&m-styled culture in Glasgow also killed outsiders in as entertaining a way as possible for them, they were merely more simplistic about their reason, their hatred of the outsiders.


So the film gets point for effort, and for showing that they know what they were trying to do, and the film did not lack pace. But if there was a lesson in there, something about a warning for the future and about how it is bad to kill people, or even let them die, that in that way we lose our humanity, but it was kind of lost in the graphic violence and hyper-kinetic editing.

Postscript: since I originally wrote this review, I saw another review that pointed out that this was a "tribute" to post-apocalypse movies. Ok, there it is then.

Thoughts about Golden Compass

"The Golden Compass" was a "big event movie" by all standards. It had massive media push, a first-rate cast, cutting-edge special effects, and an incredible display at the San Diego Comic Con. By all appearances, it seemed like it would be reaching for the same audience as "The Chronicles of Narnia." It presented a world of early-20th century technology and culture with fantastic creatures and young children on an amazing journey.

But the buzz about the movie was that it was based on a book that was an anti-religious answer to "Narnia." Now I will admit right here that I do not read as many of these epic fantasy novels as some people do. Lately all my reading has by necessity had to be about Captain Marvel, comic book history, and American social history (to see why, go to my website http://www.captainmarvelculture.com). My big reading years for fantasy and sci-fi were in High School, when I worked my way through the Foundation, 2001, and Dune series. I started "The Fellowshiop of the Ring" in 7th grade but found it hard to get into somewhere around the Inn of the Prancing Pony. I read a lot of medieval and Arthurian literature after high schoool due to my involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism and some courses in college. So I have not read Narnia, Compass, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or most other famous and popular book series that everyone else seems to have these days.

"The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" was read to mne in 3rd grade, though, and I do go to most fantasy movies when they come out. I read much of the criticism, and engage in discussions with fans and active readers of these series. I am aware that Narnia was a Christian parable, that Aslan represented Jesus Christ etc.

I am not a Christian, and am critical of certain effects that religious faith has on society. I have seen dogma get in the way of everything from simply having a good time to scientific inquiry to life-saving medicine. I have also seen faith unite people and inspire them to suffer through adversity and do deesds of great good. I also recognize that the story of Jesus fulfills many of the hallmarks of a Campbellian universal hero. The return from death, near death, or seeming death of a great and noble warrior/leader/king/hero is always a crowd-pleaser. Therefore, I can enjoy Narnia as such a magical fantasy adventure.

If the Golden Compass was a story that critiques religion and promotes science, that point was kind of lost in the translation to the silver screen. The establishment of certain story elements, such as everyone having an animal that represented their soul, talking polar bears, flying sorceresses, the seemingly magical "dust" that connected universes, and the McGuffin of the title, the Golden Compass itself, all set up a fantasy world where science as we know it did not apply. Thereofre when the religious establishment in the world of the film tried to stifle scientific exploration of "dust," it seemed as much like a coflict of the state religion against the true faith as much as anything else.

The rest of the movie fulfilled all the requirements of a Campbellian hero journey, and a magical child's adventure, that any science vs. religion debate was just lost.

That having been said, the writing felt a little stilted and unrealistic. I mean would you really trust someone who came along and gave you all that exposition that Sam Elliot gave when he meet the girl? The repeated special effect of the use of the Compass go tiresome. The Polar Bear fight was awesome, though.