I just saw that The Expendables won the weekend for the second week in a row. This seems to be baffling a good many Hollywood types who never would have written a movie starring (virtually only) 30-50 something year-old men, actors who have all had their heydey and have since been relegated to streaming Netflix catalog filler.
I can’t stop thinking about Inception. (*wa-dump-tish*) As a medium, film is probably in its third act. Videogames and internet are more highly evolved forms waiting only for their renaissance, so when a film enters the zeitgeist as Inception has, it’s worth noting. Spoilers ahoy…
I finally saw Inception. Oof, that’s how you make an entertaining movie. I’m not sure when the last time was that I walked-out of the theatre so satisfied. As far as I’m concerned, it ought to be the first serious contender for Best Picture 2010.
Time for end of the year lists. I HATE that any end of the year list runs before January 1st. I think they should all run January 30th, a month after the year has passed. That said, I want to participate in the ongoing discussion, so here we go.
Monday – Minutiae
Tuesday – LA Live Experience
Wednesday – Favorite Non-LA Recordings
Thursday – Favorite LA-Local Recordings
Friday – LA Bands
Disclaimer: I don’t know enough about anything to claim “best” with much confidence. Most everything on the CGT lists are unranked favorites.
Overview
Let’s face it: 2009 kind of sucked. I don’t like the pop route indie music has taken. Everything is too electro, too acoustic, or too disposable. It was uncool to like rock music in 2009, unless your idea of rock music is to stare at shoelaces all night. Maybe, maybe four records this year entered my all-time playlist. I spent most of the year listening to old Ted Leo and Superchunk records.
CGT went on tour with the Henry Clay People, which was a lot of fun. We got famous for taking cheap shots at the Jonas Brothers. On the blog we reviewed fewer records, put-on fewer shows, stopped live reviews on a regular basis, and did some writing for Web In Front, Fuel, and Radio Free Silverlake. CGT was always intended as a destination for my voice as a writer, not as a music blog competing for notoriety, and that’s largely what it was this year.
I most regret not seeking-out new music with the same enthusiasm I have in years past. I got pretty comfortable going to see the same bands I already liked and a part of me feels like I did readers a disservice by not unearthing new stuff.
Favorite Colts Players in 2009
I always list my favorite Colts players for the regular season. It’s never Manning or Reggie Wayne or the stars, but the lunchpail guys who deserve recognition:
Brown puts some power back in the run game. Rookie receiver Austin “The Stormin’ Mormon” Collie and virtual redshirt receiver Garçon have made Marvin Harrison a distant memory. (“Peter Waiter” is a future stud.) I’ve got to love the rookie corners playing most of this entire season better than the injured vets played the last two seasons. Sessions is the new difference maker now that Bobzilla is on the IR. Sanders’ replacement, Melvin Bullitt, is equally valuable.
Favorite Movies in 2009
This year was pretty disappointing. There was no brilliant Marvel property film like Iron Man or X2. I’ve barely seen any Oscar calibre movies yet because so few of them seem interesting. (Up in the Air, Precious, and Brothers are on the eventual to do list.) I’ll happily proclaim 2009 the worst year in movies since 1997.
Star Trek, The Road, District 9, and Inglorious Basterds are the only “great” movies I saw. I thought Where the Wild Things Are, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Watchmen were successful and appropriate (but obviously imperfect) adaptations of beloved properties. Funny People and The Terminator sequel were pleasant surprises, and the new Potter flick was surprisingly fresh and engaging.
Biggest Disappointments in 2009
Favorite Music Blogging
Last year I bookmarked all the blogging I liked during the year. This year I forgot to do that. This is a half complete list.
WLFY isn’t actually a new blog, but they are new to me and I love their cranky, elitist writing voice.
Joe Fielder left LA and left Radio Free Silverlake in the hands of a diverse range of scenesters (full disclosure: including yours truly!) RFS’s Let’s Independent! shows used to be the center of the scene (to me, anyway), and the spirit of those shows lives on with the new site. I wish for more online magazines like that one.
Surfing on Steam is an odd choice for CGT’s Blog of the Year. An Aquarium Drunkard and Buzz Bands would be obvious choices based on expertise alone. And in terms of the music SOS covers, I only like so much shoegaze and SOS dislikes / doesn’t care for most all of my favorite bands.
But Scott McDonald’s blog is fiercely consistent, it takes a stance on “what music should be,” is unapologetic, covers everything from local to national / known to unkown, and (perhaps most importantly) is always short and to the point. Every post tells you the who, what, and why you should care in about thirty seconds. That’s “what blogging should be” going into the year 2010 and SOS was most consistently worth my time more than any other site in 2009.
I never offered my thoughts on X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was not horrible. Liev Schreiber is quite good as Sabretooth and Hugh Jackman is always great. I thought including Cyclops and Professor X would be hamfisted, but the cameos worked.
Still, the overwhelming feeling I got from the film was “What a waste”. Fox had on its hands one of the best-handled comic book franchises in film history and the last two entries have been rushed into production with no regard for the fans’ feelings, the casual viewer’s self-respect, the integrity of the source material, or the integrity of their own company. Can’t Marvel get the X-Men rights back already?
This post assumes you’ve seen the Watchmen movie and read the book, so if you don’t want spoilers, move along.
I’ve had numerous long conversations about the film with friends, in real life and on the internet. Some of these ideas may not exclusively be my own. I don’t claim ownership for the ideas in this post so much as I am saying all the things that I’ve heard or read that I agree with.
First thought: “That was as good of an adaptation, as faithful of an adaptation, as I could reasonably expect.”
Second thought: “They didn’t ruin anything. There was no ‘Daredevil would never throw a criminal into a train!’ kind of moment.”
Third thought: “For all it’s flaws, the film is still a conversation starter on heroism and justice.”
Fourth thought: “Other than the ending, this movie was scarcely altered from the source material with the aim of appeasing convention or appealing to the mainstream. It’s not perfect, but it’s not nerfed.”
I can’t write about Watchmen objectively. As you’ve read a million writers, reviewers, and internet nerds say, the graphic novel is “the Citizen Kane of comics”. You can’t talk about the film without talking about the book any more than you can talk about Branagh’s Hamlet without talking about Shakespeare.
The film’s central flaw is that it is too faithful to the source material.
Zack Snyder and his actors are so beholden to the legend of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s seminal graphic novel that they don’t take ownership of the story or characters. There are great directorial moves and riveting performances, the film is smartly and deftly made, but nobody takes any risks. Even Jackie Earle Haley, who is amazing as Rorschach, is simply embodying Moore and Gibbon’s Rorschach to utter perfection. At times, at its worst, Watchmen reminded me of the shot-by-shot remake of Psycho.
That said, Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan were perfectly adapted. Nite Owl II was very close. (Patrick Wilson “got it”. I loved his booming boyscout voice in the suit.)
Most fans love The Comedian in this film but I was actually a little disappointed. I always felt like being a spook / going to Vietnam is what taught Comedian his world view. He needed to be more of a two-bit punk in the flashbacks, though the rape scene was properly horrifying. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was good, but that role had potential to be a huge homerun and instead it was a base hit.
Dr. Manhattan’s clocktower on Mars should have been the most beautiful image in the film and instead it is a hideous CGI stain on the giant screen. If ever there was a case for employing Hollywood’s aging miniature model wizards, that was it. Unfortunate.
Watchmen is character-driven and Ozymandias is the film’s weakest link. It’s clear that Snyder is more comfortable with emotion and action than ideas, and I don’t think he was entirely comfortable with the super-intellectual Adrian Veidt.
In the comics Veidt isn’t a cynical celebrity or Donald Trump analog, he is a total golden boy. His Alexander the Great obsession is not merely centered on Alexander’s Egyptian conquest, but also his Greek heritage. He’s beautiful, intelligent, adored. This man does gymnastics for charity. When one reads Watchmen for the first time it is a reveal that Veidt is the mastermind “villain”.
But in the film you can smell him as the rat from his first scene. The horror of what he’s done for the betterment of mankind isn’t as painful to swallow because well, he wears a shitty suit and dresses in dark colors the whole movie. He’s the “bad guy”? No kidding!
Though I liked replacing Captain Metropolis with Ozymandias in the “meeting” scene, I would have added a short scene in a flashback where we see him fighting crime, maybe during the riots. Ozymandias is the only masked character in the whole film that we never see fighting crime at any point and that is a subtle (but strong) tell to the third act’s events.
All of the changes made were too delicate and calculated, especially the ending. I like the ending. In many ways, I think it is a superior ending, story-wise. But in the graphic novel the first eleven chapters are drawn in perfect 3×3 panel pages with the occasional 1×3 or 2×3 frame. The structure is utterly disciplined. It reflects the psychological confines of the characters and the physical confines of the world of the book. When the “disaster” happens in the twelfth chapter that structure is broken and Gibbons moves to larger, full-page, asymmetrical panels.
An early page in Watchmen.
Chapter 12.
For the entire book violence is skipped around, hidden from us, and mostly hinted at, and then in chapter 12… grotesque, deformed bodies line the streets.
In the film we see grotesque violence throughout, desensitizing us to the eventual horror of Veidt’s actions. And then when the destruction comes, when Veidt obliterates a small portion of the human population for the betterment of the rest, we don’t even see the loss of life! It is at the ending where the violence should be most grotesque and instead the audience is spared with meaningless, blue CGI blobs.
There’s a version of this movie to be made where Rorschach is the central character, taking us through the world and plot of Watchmen, with Ozymandias and Manhattan being the next two most important characters, and where the Sally / Dan stuff being a subplot. It wouldn’t have been as faithful of a film, but it could have been a more powerful one.
All that and I give the film an “-A”.
Zack Snyder is not subtle, but he is admirable in his refusal to compromise. Snyder’s films always have a clear and concise world with clear and concise rules of that world. That is true here. The film was visually stunning. It was the most expensive non-mainstream film I’ve ever seen. It takes comic books and superheroes as a serious, important medium to critique our culture. It has a masked man killing Kennedy, Richard Nixon in the Dr. Strangelove warroom, a lesbian costumed crime fighter kissing the WWII nurse instead of Alfred Eisenstaedt, and there was copius giant, blue, radioactive dick.
My favorite part was from the scene Rorschach is arrested until the end of the prison breakout. I thought the end conversation between Sally, Dan, John, Veidt, and Rorschach; the scene where they decide “what to do now,” was incredibly moving and effective.
I had a blast. I plan on seeing it again this weekend.
This review of The Dark Knight is SPOILERIFIC and I strongly suggest you not read further if you haven’t seen the film, whether or not you think you care. Seriously.
I didn’t see The Dark Knight until Sunday, 7:30pm, at the Universal Mouth-Breatherwalk IMAX theater. We got there an hour early and 120 people were already in line. For a Sunday evening show. We had to sit four rows up from the front and the screen easily filled our fields of vision.
That was two nights ago. I am still not sure how to respond to what is, without qualification, the best superhero film ever made. I’m not even being hyperbolic. By any metric or standard it tops all others. I adored previous superhero flicks like X2, Spider-Man 2, and Iron Man and now… now I am not sure if I could sit through them. They seem utterly silly and adolescent to me now. The Dark Knight is a fantasy genre game-changer.
The Dark Knight is not even really an action movie and its scarcely a superhero flick. It’s really an ensemble crime drama — an ensemble crime drama that is equally as good as Heat.
The Dark Knight is also a post-9/11 commentary film that honestly and intellectually explores themes of terrorism, good and evil, and moral compromises in the name of security for civilized society and a better future. There are five heroic characters in this film (Batman / Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent, Lt. Gordon, Luscious Fox, and Alfred) and none of them have the golden key to moral righteousness. They just do the best they can.
Gordon, Dent, Bats, and Luscious all have ethical dilemmas in trying to be heroes. Even the mobster Sal Maroni says “this is too much” and does the right thing despite his criminal nature. For everyone in the films wants something except The Joker. That primal desire, whatever it is for (wealth, fame, justice, etc) is what makes them complex human characters. The slow realization over the course of the film that The Joker wants nothing at all, that he is in his own words “just a dog chasing cars,” is what is so horrifying. Sal Maroni is a bad man, but The Joker “just wants to watch the world burn”. Even the worst gangster in the film doesn’t want that, a theme that is echoed when a boat full of criminals decides not to detonate a second boat of passengers in an act that would allegedly save their own hides.
Even in tweaking details, the story was remarkably faithful to the comic books. Dent, Gordon, and Batman worked together to clean-up Gotham and then Dent was a casualty in the war. Both Gordon and Batman have to live with Dent’s existence as a consequence of their decisions to go to war against crime and as a consequence to the moral compromises they made. Worst of all is that Dent was the most pure, the most “good,” the least compromising of them all.
More than anything, the Nolan Bros. in their script really understood the principal moral cores of all of the characters. Batman, Alfred, Gordon, Dent, The Joker, Luscious, and Maroni all have lines they will and won’t cross. Even the Joker has one line he won’t cross: he’ll kill anyone but Batman. And the Nolans got all of those characters right on every dotted-I and crossed-T. Not a single character did something out of character as they are in the comics.
The Dark Knight really serves as a second piece of the Batman origin. In killing-off Rachel Dawes they have finally gotten one piece of Batman’s core character right that no Batman film has ever had the guts to be faithful to: Batman has nobody he loves. The film leaves us with a Batman who is responsible for no one and responsible to no one. He is a shadow, a foil, a hero, and a villain to the people of Gotham, half of a rorschach drawing for the city’s own psychological ills. His costumed villain nemeses are the other half of that drawing.
The circumstances surrounding Heath Ledger’s death causes his performance as The Joker to drown-out praise for the other actors and that is unfortunate. Yes, everything said about Ledger’s fearless performance is correct. He showed himself to be a master thespian in his last bow. But The Joker is more of a psychological profile of our own species’ capacity for evil than he is a real person. The most believable character in the film is Gary Oldman’s Lt. Jim Gordon, a man whose personal failings and tragic mistakes on screen are nearly as painful as those in our own life. Every day Gordon has to decide how many corrpupt cops he can stomach just to bag a bad guy and his anguish is expertly rendered.
Kudos also to Christian Bale (Side note: Dude, treat yo mama right.). His Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins was psychologically complex, but in this film he brings that same complexity to the character when he dons the suit as well. His interpretation of Batman is now, without a doubt, the most faithful of all who have played the character — and more faithful than most of the comic book interpretations to boot.
I haven’t talked about how well-shot the action is, how Chicago was realized as Gotham, how the film has a Shakespearean 5-act plot structure… I could write ten pages on this movie, easily. I wouldn’t change a frame.
Well, Speed Racer was a pretty interesting artifact.
It’s an epic-scale, alternate-history, alternate-future, family drama whose plot revolves around megacorporations rigging sporting events in the interest of manipulating the stock market. Oh, and its a kids’ movie.
The negative reviews have said much of the same: bad acting, bad dialog, bad design, bad directing, it’s too long, it’s too complicated, it’s too hoaky, and who wants to see this ridiculous thing, anyway?!
All valid points.
But I suggest that the negative reviews don’t have a proper appreciation for the courage and audacity to take some chances, to try new things, and to further the medium. Say what you want about Speed Racer and here is my response: Look, nothing has ever been shot like that, been animated like that, and been edited in such a way to pace a movie quite like that. It might not be great, but its as original as they get.
Sure, Speed Racer has its predecessors. Dick Tracy, The Flintstones movie, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are its style-and-design ancestors. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sin City certainly blazed the trail in terms of hyper-stylized green box CGI affair. But this is truly different. This is live action anime. This is a living, breathing cartoon with performances by living, breathing actors. In 15 years when they re-make Batman again, its going to look like this. It is a step forward.
Is there a more-hyped filmmaker than The Wachowski Brothers? (Tarantino, I suppose) Some of it really, really justified though. Film’s limitation, as a medium, is its dimension and its reliance on the real-time capture of live events for its principle elements. Throughout film history filmmakers have used deeper lenses and more complicated camera rigs to defy the dimensional limitations of the medium. The Wachowskis, more than any other filmmaker out there, see the film world in three dimensions. They conceptualize and visualize camera angles and camera movements in an entirely different way than anybody else. Their “world of the film” does not exist in flat-panel framed shots like John Ford or Stanley Kubrick. Their world is a living, breathing space, and they take the viewer with them when they journey through it.
And the “world” of Speed Racer is a bizarre one. There are no subdued colors or subdued personalities. Every location has its own visual flair, be it a unique tinge of red that dominates the lighting or a different style of architecture. Large accessories and obscenely colored lipstick dominate a universe whose chief form of entertainment and chief engine for business is… high-stakes, stunt-oriented auto racing.
And the race tracks! Good lord! Speed Racer nearly grounds race tracks that resemble either the most absurd Hot Wheels tracks of the 1980s or the absolutely whimsical off-road courses of the “wacky race” formatted cartoons from the 1970s. Say nothing of the supporting cast racers who are right out of the WWF or a bad Sega Genesis video game.
I credit for the film for trying to depict all of the personalities in its racing circuit. We don’t just see second-banana drivers, but we get cut-away glimpses into their own worlds. In one race where the entire field is out to wreck Speed Racer’s car, every time a driver appears we see what they were bribed with in order to go after Speed’s head. (Glamor drivers take diamonds, the Viking drivers take furs, etc) It’s cartoony, but it also shows’ the amount of consideration the Wachowskis gave to the world they’ve created.
As for the story… its tough to follow. Stock market manipulation and racing team sponsorship politics don’t exactly translate to a streamlined plot — especially for a kid’s movie. But like George Lucas’ Star Wars films, Speed Racer goes for the Joseph Campbell archetypes: devilish villains, hero’s journeys, falls from grace, themes of redemption… its good stuff, even in the face of pretty awful dialog.
Speed Racer‘s biggest problem is its target audience. Its really a kids movie, but I’m not so sure that chimpanzee shit-throwing really has a place in children’s entertainment… and the women in the film are awfully sexualized. (To Christina Ricci’s defense, all she has to do to inspire naughty thoughts is to stand still with her mouth slightly open and her eyes wide) Despite the adult-ish aspects of the design of the film, the dialog is so on-the-nose that it would utterly fail in any kind of film that aspires to reach a mature audience.
Speed Racer is an infantile, overly stimulating world with hyper-sexualized costumes and a whole lot of automobiles. (Cars! The quintessential symbol of masculinity!) So who could this film possibly be intended for? 20-something, middle-class, male manchildren. And I liked it! Hrm. Notwithstanding, the technical achievements and raw creativity justify its existence — with room to spare.
The short of it is this: Iron Man is one of the best comic book adaptations I’ve ever seen — and it handily wins the “most faithful to the source material” award.
Iron Man has its shortcomings. Some of the dialog is not great. The end action sequence isn’t as good as the jet fight in the middle. The score is really cool and very fitting, but it isn’t memorable. There’s a “the reactor is going to blow!” moment that reeks of lazy plotting.
But those shortcomings don’t begin to add-up against everything the film gets right. From casting (Robert Downey Jr. is a god) to directing (Jon Favereau doesn’t out-stylize what the film demands) to design (everything “looks” like the Iron Man that nerds love)… Iron Man is, quite simply, a perfection and celebration of the super hero genre.
Story-wise, the first half of the film sticks to the comic to a T. (Other than trading Vietnam for Afghanistan, an obvious necessity) A friend of mine said something to the effect of “They actually made drafting, engineering, and testing interesting!” The stuff about Stark’s captivity, the building of his suit, his social status put in jeopardy by his ambition… it was everything that is wonderful and iconic about the original comic.
Credit Robert Downey Jr. for making Tony Stark as interesting as the character’s potential allows. We see Stark, a hawkish weapons manufacturer, forced into a scenario where he witnesses first-hand the effects on the world by the weapons he builds.
I think every voter in America feels a small piece of personal responsibility and subconscious guilt for the failures in Iraq, and Downey succeeds in making Stark’s journey not a two-dimensional morality tale, but a multidimensional, character-developing gut-check. It’s a gut-check we’ve all had to make, and Stark shows us that we don’t have to be haunted forever by a mistake, no matter how costly. That’s a message that the average American wants (and needs) to hear right now; I think it resonated with audiences.
Say nothing of how hilarious RDJ was. Is there an American actor who is more enjoyable to watch and listen to in dialog scenes? I can’t think of one.
Gweneth Paltrow’s character, Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts, doesn’t have a whole lot to do. At times she is a bit of a distressed damsel… but kudos to the producers for casting the role with an actual adult, grown woman. Five years ago, Potts would have been played by the latest 22 year-old send-off from “The O.C.” Putting Paltrow in the role gave the romance angle more maturity and put her screwball-comedy scenes in the hands of a master actress.
In the comics, Jim Rhodes (eventually an Iron Man substitute, then War Machine) suffers perpetual “second banana syndrome”. It took a lot of integrity for Terrance Howard, an acclaimed and highly talented actor, to take-on such a small role in the film — especially a character who doesn’t show a whole lot of strength. It shows foresight by both Howard and the producers. His willingness to play Rhodes now, knowing that an expanded (and more rewarding) arc for the character would come later, shows that the film production team was investing in this world. Clearly they have the patience to do it right. I think an audience can sense that. Iron Man didn’t insult anybody’s intelligence, whether they were performing in the film or watching it.
Jeff Bridges takes a Lex Luthor cliche and transforms him into an interesting, complex (even if not conflicted) villain. Script-wise, Obediah Stane didn’t have a lot of meat. But Bridges convincingly portrays a snakey businessman whose ego, anger, and male aggression drives him to violence. “Alpha male gone bad” is tough to do without hamming it up, and Bridges pulls it off. Friends of mine who didn’t know the mythology didn’t even see his villainous turn coming.
What’s really wonderful about Iron Man is that it was “for everybody”. It seems like every six months the trades and the entertainment magazines run the “Is Everyone Sick of Super Heroes Yet?” column — Iron Man seems to prove that the only people sick of the new American mythology are 5o-something film critics who are out of touch and lack an appreciation for the creative freedom today’s film technology affords. (Super hero films and the technology used to create them are more reflective of our times and our psychology than any other mainstream entertainment — from network television to major label records.)
So, why did Iron Man make 100 mil on opening weekend, before Memorial Day even? Part of it is the marketing, which was boosted by the exceptional (and Marvel Comics faithful) art design.
The Iron Man suit was The Iron Man suit. You saw it and you knew what it was instantly.
Iron Man did as well as it did in large part because the art direction allowed the pre-release marketing to work. Months ago a friend of mine said “I could care two shits about Iron Man” or some such thing. That was true of most comic nerds. Iron Man is B-list to Marvel dorks, C-list to comic dorks at large, and D-list to “The Normals”. But man, when Favs took that Mark 1 Afghanistan clip to ComicCon, the hype exploded.
The art direction was such that the characters were instantly recognizable. The second people saw the Mark 1 in action, they saw that original Iron Man comic book cover.
The nerds went nuts for it. They kept telling their friends they were excited for it. They spread it on the internet. They told their non-nerd friends it would be good. Asked their non-nerd friends to go with them when it came out. The entertainment magazines, blogs, and shows took notice and followed the lead. That snowballed into mainstream coverage. By the time the mainstream marketing hit, there was a bedrock of positive feelings. The mainstream excitement was built on a foundation of fanboy approval.
All because the producers recognized the essential elements of the source. The producers recognized what aspects of Iron Man elicited nostalgia. That got it out there. The fact that they recognized also what aspects made the Iron Man character good (and cast / directed accordingly), and made a good film, is what made the reviews and audience response good. But the audience response never would have been achieved if the art direction had chosen to re-design the essential nostalgic elements of the character.
And along those lines, I appreciated how unabashedly comic bookish Iron Man was. It didn’t apologize for asking you to believe that characters could withstand deadly impacts or fiery explosions. It didn’t make apologies for its technological impossibilities. Nor did it excuse-away the costumes. (“What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?”) It’s interesting how most studios would bomb by staying so faithful to the source, but with Marvel producing films based on their own properties, they are able to do it; they know the material in-and-out and they know what their pre-existing fanbase wants and expects.
Iron Man is clearly the introduction into the “Marvel Film Universe” where crossovers are possible. There’s a Nick Fury sequence at the end of Iron Man and the upcoming Incredible Hulk, and RDJ makes a cameo in that film as well. Marvel has already announced Iron Man 2 (April 2010), The First Avenger: Captain America (May 2011) and The Avengers (July 2011). With Hulk on its way, and Ant-Man (date TBA) and Thor (June 2010) in development, it will be interesting to see if they can pull-off an entire comic book world of continuity in these pictures. Will Robert Downey Jr. really do three Iron Man movies? (Counting The Avengers) Would Ed Norton do an Avengers cross-over? I’ll be amazed if all the pieces fall into place.
And if they don’t pull it off? Well, we’ll always have Iron Man. Thank The Watcher for that.
It’s a Mouse birthday tradition to go to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles and then see a movie at The Chinese Theatre. (By the way, the yams at Roscoes? So delicious they’re blasphemous.) My Hoosier friends and I didn’t get around to it until yesterday.
10,000 B.C. was… well, it… it was… astonishing.
This is one of those movies where it just leaves you incredulous, trying to comprehend “How did $150 million get poured into this? Hundreds of people had to believe in it! It took months of running with this absurd idea in order to bring it before my eyes. How?“
Was 10,000 B.C. based on a true story? That depends. Were woolly mammoths employed to build the Egyptian pyramids? Did Germanic barbarian hordes learn the secrets of maize from the tribes of the dark continent, forging an everlasting friendship? Did our primitive ancestors bear a striking resemblance to Rob Zombie and Adam Duritz? I suppose if the Pharaohs were secretly Anglo-Saxon, then yes, 10,000 B.C. was based on a true story.
Also, the slaves of the Egyptians kept blind men beneath the floorboards. As oracles. — I know!
Really, this film belongs in a special category of awful. It’s the kind of awful that brings to mind Deep Impact, Battlefield Earth, and Timeline. You can’t even try for this kind of awful, it can only be the result of fantastic folly and human error on a grand, colossal scale.
To the film’s credit, the CGI is terrific. You really feel the “weight” of the mammoths. As my friend pointed out, the leaps from Return of the King to King Kong to 10,000 B.C. in terms of large creature CGI are notable. There’s a mammoth hunt early in the film that was genuinely exciting to watch, and something I’d never seen before in a movie.
Also, the on-location chopper work was fantastic. There were some really, really cook vistas.
The movie definitely slobbered all over my nerd-pole. I mean, 40 mammoths stampeding down a ramp that leads to a half-contructed pyramid, swiping-away Egyptian soldiers who are engaged in battle with African tribesmen and Eurasian cavemen? This is the stuff of my sheet-soaked dreams. I guess Roland Emmerich said in an interview that he was inspired by the worlds of Robert E. Howard, and I could totally see it. Each culture in the movie had distinct markings and traits, and each locale consisted of a single kind of landscape that gave it its own personality. I’m into that stuff.
Roland Emmerich pretty much only makes movies about the downfalls of societies. Independence Day, Stargate, Universal Soldier, The Day After Tomorrow… and these movies almost always have some aspect of ancient cultures and contrived spirituality to them. It’s weird. I’m pretty sure Emmerich thinks he’s making some grand cosmic point — but its all insane babble to the rest of us. There’s a shot in 10,000 B.C. of this giant boat burning inside of its housing in the Egyptian palace, and you can almost imagine Roland Emmerich thinking “See! Don’t you people see now?!?! This will be the end of us all!” But really, its just silly. And whatever point he’s trying to make is always compromised because the heroes win and get the girl in the end, in spite of the collapse of societal structure. Gee, great.
I can’t recommend 10,000 B.C. to anybody but giant dorks with $13 to burn. If you like nerdtastic trainwrecks though… this one is truly special.
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