- Rian Johnson posted his original script for his film “Looper” on the official website of the science fiction flick. He stresses that it’s only the “shooting script”, therefor it is different in some ways from the final product. I found it interesting that he noted writing the first half years ago, and starting the script back up again years later. It’s obvious where this happens when you watch the movie. And at first it’s a little jarring but in the end the 3rd act is what gives the movie all of its heart.
- I’m compiling a list of my favorite albums of the year and holy shit I have a ton of them. Probably more than I’ve ever had before. Last night I was writing up little 3 or 4 sentence justifications for my picking them. I still have quite a few do to. So hopefully that’ll be posted soonish. While I was digging I ran across a review for P.O.S.’ latest album “We Don’t Even Live Here” and was kinda blown away by it. Apparently though, I am not the first to find frustration with a review from this guy at Pitchfork, a one Ian Cohan. This led me to the site RipFork, in which select music critic reviews (mostly from Pitchfork) are torn apart in pretty hilarious fashion.
Actually I’d like to, when I have time, dig into that POS review line by line, because a lot of it just doesn’t make much sense.
The lamp is as simple as it is inexpensive. A cable hangs from a gear mechanism holding onto a plastic bag filled with dirt or rocks. The energy created by gravity pulling the bag downwards is enough to power an LED bulb for up to half an hour. Riddiford and Reeves have posted their creation on the fund sourcing site indiegogo and thus far pledges have doubled the $55,000 goal.
The two note on their page that over a billion and a half people in the world today have no access to a reliable electricity source. When it gets dark, their only light source comes through burning wood, peat, or other biomass materials – the most popular by far, is kerosene. They also note that the World Bank has recently estimated that up to three quarters of a billion women and children regularly inhale smoke from kerosene lanterns, which is they say, equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day – a situation that leads quite naturally to very high lung cancer rates.
- Cover for Jonathan Hickman’s next “Avengers” issue:
There may be no other South Park statement I disagree with more than when Kyle says (Season 8, Ep. 3: “The Passion of the Jew“) — very much sounding like the words are coming straight from Matt Stone’s mouth: “we watch movies to be entertained”. He’s referring to Mel Gibson’s slaughter fest about Christ, but it really does feel like that’s what Trey and him believe about all movies. That movies are entertainment, pure and simple. And once you cross over that line your movie turns to garbage. It’s this type of thinking that led to Orgazmo and Baseketball. That’s what happens when you reach no higher than entertainment alone.
I bring this up because last night I saw Lincoln, a film that somehow is caught in the middle of such a debate. A film about the political mechanizations of a two party system, and the struggle to get things done within that system. It should be boring. “Boring”. And it’s funny cause I’m reading a number of reviews that think it is boring, from “critics” and general public alike. They’re wrong, it isn’t boring. In fact, it tries really really hard not to be boring. That’s part of the problem. Why even include that opening Civil War scene? Looking back it seems grossly out of place. The film opens with an incredibly violent war scene between a “colored” regiment of The Union and a Confederate regiment in an all out brawl scene reminiscent of Gangs of New York. Bayonets are stabbed into bellies and before you can blink it’s over. This is probably included to further pad a scene late in the film when Lincoln is strolling through the remains of a battlefield before War’s end. But for the audience, it’s actually less of a shock because we’ve already seen the carnage, even if Abe hasn’t.
It may have been clever (well, I guess not that clever… more like serviceable) to bookend the movie with another horrific scene of violence in Lincoln getting assassinated. Two horrible and terrifying scenes to start and end the film, one with faceless soldiers dying in the muck, the other with the main character dying at a play in the nicest box-seats in the theater. Contrasting bookends. But that didn’t happen either, the film ends in another theater, where the Lincolns’ son Tad is watching another play, sitting in another box. And as the camera panned to the left, my wife and I both thought: “well this isn’t very historically accurate”. But it was all a red herring, and you’re left leaving the theater a little befuddled. It kinda feels like Spielberg is trying to fuck with as many different types of movie-goers as he can, and it turns into a meal someone kinda screwed up but it tastes okay so no one is too pissed but the food is really simple to begin with.
Structurally, it’s just sort of a mess. The “horror of the War” stuff is in there to make the “passage of the 13th” stuff feel secondary, and to make Lincoln seem all the more so wholly dedicated to the freedom of the slaves even to the detriment of thousands more lives. Scenes of Gordon-Levitt as Abe’s older son Robert outside a military hospital feel forced and crammed in, as do domestic scenes between Day-Lewis and Sally Field. Okay… holy crap Sally Field is really bad in this movie. Like, really really bad. And I know that Mary Todd Lincoln was probably bi-polar and suffered from migraines and had mental problems, but she doesn’t really play it that way. You don’t get the sense that those things exist really in that, 1) she doesn’t really play the character that sympathetically, and 2) you can just see it in her face that she’s of a level mind. This may have been the way she was written too, but she certainly does nothing to pull the character off the page and present a real, living, breathing tortured First Lady.
Day-Lewis is, of course, amazing as Lincoln. Everything from the way he walks, sits, writes, speaks, even the way he crawls feels like history in the flesh. Easily one of the best performances of the year. David Strathairn, who probably shares the most screen time with Abe, is almost as good as William Seward, a dedicated and brilliant Statesman from New York (who survived his own assassination attempt the night Lincoln got shot). In fact, the entirety of the cast is just brilliant. And rightfully so, as these are some of the best character actors working today. Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, David Costabile, Tim Blake Nelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and on and on and on it goes. These performances are what really elevates this movie, without them it’d be just another terribly average period piece.
But hey at least I have new material when someone proposes that Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest directors of all-time… from now on I’m just going to say, “eternal-flame dissolve cut”. Equal bad marks should probably go to Tony Kushner — who’s strength is definitely dialogue (probably why he’s such a good playwright) — showing both a lack of creativity and screen-writing class working knowledge when it comes to structure. In the end, this movie might know what it is, but I hardly do.
- So Disney bought Star Wars. If you don’t know. Which is… meh. I mean, I’m not like a huge Star Wars fanboy or anything so I don’t have to strong of feelings either way. I do, like 80% of humans, love the old Star Wars movies; and I do, like 85% of humans, hate the new ones. From what I’m reading from people who know a lot about this stuff, there are novels that act as the official “post-Original Trilogy” story. Something to do with Han and Leia’s kids, Luke running a new Jedi order, and the resurgence of the Empire and the Sith. This could be decent I suppose. The problem with the new ones — and I’m sure this has been written about extensively — is the fear of treading new ground. This notion that they had to fall back on the old ones to be good. You can see that in everything from the bizarre and wacky coincidences written into the story, the way the ships are designed, even the way Palatine was scarred to look like a shitty Halloween costume of himself in Jedi. As long as they don’t do any of that, and focus on a new story, new characters, new designs, they should be alright I hope.
[But hey, I'm one of like 3 million assholes writing my opinions on the Internet about this so what the fuck do I know?]
- William Gibson’s seminal novel Neuromancer is being turned into a film as we speak. Little is known about the project. The IMDB page is empty, to say the least. Liam Neeson’s name is on the cast, which may or may not be true, but sounds awesome. If you don’t know about the novel it’s one of the best science fiction novels of all-time. It started the genre we call “cyberpunk”. It also featured characters “jacking into” the Internet which was obviously directly lifted for The Matrix movies. Anyways, here’s a new poster (the first):
I have the impression that this is the opinion the government wants to impose on people, their way of opposing the situation. I think that when a person goes somewhere, she reflects, she thinks about where she is going and why, because she is using her time and energy. It’s a conscious choice. I don’t go to a demonstration because it’s cool. It isn’t at all cool to go to demonstrations today. The forces of order are nearby. They can beat you up. The demonstration on May 6th proved that. Nowadays, many people find themselves behind bars solely because they went to a public demonstration.
If I mentally transpose the words “entertaining” and “sport,” Dylan’s sentiment gets close to what I’m trying to express (and what I want to feel, but can’t). There was a time when I watched football in order to not think about my day-to-day life, but fantasy sports slowly changed that — in fact, my affinity for fantasy only makes it worse. I turn the players I draft into tiny parts of my life, which stops me from remembering that they have no relationship whatsoever to who I am. It makes me unconsciously think of them as extensions of myself. And I wonder if this is more problematic than I want to accept. Do I have any right to get angry at Chris Johnson? Does anyone?
- The Trouble With The Mask. Great op-Ed on the inherent problems with the new Joker in Batman and featuring a brilliant Bukowski quote.
- The BBC should be switching the word “wimps” for “addicts” when discussing the abuse of prescription pain killers in the United States, the “Nation of Wimps”. The USA consumes 80% of the world’s pain killers. And maybe we are complete pussies, but I personally know several people who have been, or are, addicted to pain killers (one being a former employer). It’s a big problem. We don’t think twice about it because, hey… ya know, a doctor told me to take these so it’s okay right? Getting prescribed something from a doctor certainly makes it more acceptable, but not necessarily more safe. As the BBC video and accompanying article explain:
“Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug abuse in the USA with more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.”
- Currently going through a huge Buck 65 kick. This song is awesome:
- Updates on Ridley Scott’s upcoming projects. Including a sequel to Blade Runner (or… “spin-off”), a Prometheus sequel, and some sort of thriller with a script written by Cormac McCarthy. I’m so glad he got all that epic, historical war shit out of his system.
“What does this image actually tell you about the story at hand? The art is undeniably suggestive, with Wonder Woman’s breasts front and center, Vixen in a position that could be most charitably described as “aggressive doggy style,” and Black Canary’s breasts and butt on display simultaneously. Oh, and in the background to the left is a bisected robot, and nearly hidden off to the right are four more members of the JLA, three-fourths of which are male. But the focus of the page, the first thing your eyes go to when turning the page, are Wonder Woman’s breasts.“
“Bruce’s first act as a vigilante is to confront a dirty cop named Campbell as he accosts ‘Mistress Selina’ in the cathouse, but Campbell ends up dead and Bruce narrowly escapes being blamed. Realising that he needs to operate with more methodology, he initially dons a cape and hockey mask — deliberately suggestive of the costume of Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th films. However, Bruce soon evolves a more stylised ‘costume’ with both form and function, acquires a variety of makeshift gadgets and weapons, and re-configures a black Lincoln Continental into a makeshift ‘Bat-mobile’ — complete with blacked-out windows, night vision driving goggles, armoured bumpers and a super-charged school bus engine. In his new guise as ‘The Bat-Man’, Bruce Wayne wages war on criminals from street level to the highest echelons, working his way up the food chain to Police Commissioner Loeb and Mayor Noone, even as the executors of the Wayne estate search for their missing heir. In the end, Bruce accepts his dual destiny as heir to the Wayne fortune and the city’s saviour, and Gordon comes to accept that, while he may not agree with The Bat-Man’s methods, he cannot argue with his results.”
- Trent Reznor is doing the music for Timur Behmambetov’s next flick Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Without Atticus Ross, importantly, who helped craft the remarkable soundtracks for both The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (and also worked with Reznor on How To Destroy Angels). Those were all wonderful projects; the presence of Ross brings the overall production down a bit –not in quality — in feel. The music is more ambient than Reznor’s other work, haunting and hypnotic. I hope they continue working together in the future, particularly on Fincher’s movies where they seem to blend so well with his desolate and cold visuals.
BUT, I am very interested to see what Reznor does by himself on a project with such a ludicrous title. I’m guessing it’ll hearken back to his NIN roots: heavy Industrial beats with a touch of evil. And I’m into that. It would match perfectly the visual style of Behmambetov — who’s “Night Watch” trilogy is a real trip for supernatural fans (if you like that kinda thing, I’d suggest checking out at least the first film): the high speed, which side is up camera work, the colors, the stylized violence (which I’m sure we’ll see in bucket loads in this movie).
As for the movie itself, I think it could be a whole lotta fun. I mean… it’s a supernatural slasher action flick with Abe Lincoln slaughtering the dead, all it has to do to be worth watching is look cool. An easy task for Behmambetov.
The caveat for me personally is I’m not the biggest fan of Spielberg, at least for the last 20 years or so. Often times his movies end up being good because of a performance, a script he didn’t write, or subject matter it’s hard to screw up. As a director, he’s extremely overrated, using cliched devices over and over and over again until you stop thinking about it and simply anoint him one of the best film directors of all-time. So there’s that. But I’ll probably still watch this because of that cast.
Here’s a video of Terry Gilliam explaining why Kubrick rules and Spielberg sucks (yes… I realize that Spielberg’s movies have been, and will be, infinitely more commercially successful/viable than Gilliam’s; before someone jumps down my throat):
He hits it right on the head, doesn’t he?
Speaking of “having to think about it” , The White Ribbonhas got to be one of my favorite films of the past few years. I went and saw that by myself and I remember leaving the theater feeling so uneasy; I wanted to see everything in black and white, of course grey metaphorically, there was this knot in my stomach and no matter what I did it would not go away. That’s what a good film does to you. It stays with you, either mentally or physically or both, for days after watching it. The same thing happened to me with Black Swan.
- Once upon a time Frank Darbont wrote an Indiana Jones screenplay called “Indiana Jones and the City of Gods”. An Indiana Jones story which would take the character to a lost city in Peru, introduce the idea that he conceived a daughter with Marion, and push the franchise into the post-War climate. Spielberg loved it (apparently calling it “the best script he’d read since [Raiders]“), but demanded several rewrites resulting in taking out the daughter and changing the fled Nazi war-criminal villains to Soviets. Years later, Spielberg filmed “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” including several elements from Darabont’s original script. Not surprisingly, the new additions to the script turned out to be the weakest parts of the film (especially the idea that Indy had a son, not daughter, called “Mutt Williams”).
- Topless Robot has an article up right now detailing the lives of 10 notable real-life superheroes (besides Phoenix Jones). I saw a documentary on some of these nuts once on HBO called “Superheroes”. In a general sense, none of these people do anything that remarkable… at least not anything any other altruistic citizen of a city could do. Most are out of shape — when measured on the “super-hero” scale — and basically do things like bring food to the hungry. Which is admirable, but like I said, any normal citizen can do that. There was a group of people in New York, however, which I would not like to fuck with.
- I don’t watch all that much television, but I gotta say… the list of 5 December TV debuts CBR’s Spinoff is excited about really does nothing for me. The only show in there I could myself maybe watching is Doctor Who, but for whatever reason (maybe my Americanism?) I never could get into it.
- Terence McKenna was one hell of a crazy bastard. Still though, it’s hard to argue with his “Novelty Theory” (or “Timewave Theory”) which attempts to show the inter-connectedness of the Universe around us. If you look at the layout of the waves, it’s uncanny how the ebbs and flows lineup almost perfectly with a variety global events of the last 50 or so years.
- The newest PS3 update is taking forever. And apparently quite a few hardcore Playstation people are not happy with it either. The update is “4.00″. The company created and debuted the update to take place before the Japanese release of Playstation Vita, which is the newest portable device from the company, a successor to the PSP. Kind of annoying that people like me, who have no intention of ever getting a portable gaming device, need to update their systems for the future Japanese release of said device.
- I ordered a Telecaster. I’m very excited to get it. It looks like this:
Continuity is such a pain in the ass. With some of these comic book properties, we’re getting to the point now where publishers should almost hit the “refresh” button on their company oversight browser. Even some of these secondary characters — think Spiderman, Punisher, the second wave of characters (or, arguably, the third) — are approaching or surpassing 50 years of continuity for writers to carefully tread through. It isn’t worth it.
Not that I’m trying to disrespect the past. Or the legendary writers who epitomized what these characters are all about with their runs. And you know what? Really good writers can draw off of what has happened before them — no matter how recent or dated — to create something new and fresh while still referencing and playing with ideas/concepts of the past. A really excellent recent example of this was what Morrison did on Batman. And that character has, shit, an almost 80 year old history?? So it’s possible.
But enough is enough. If Frank Castle supposedly earned his chops in the Vietnam War, came back stateside to raise a family at which point they were butchered by the New York Mafia, wouldn’t the slimy bastard be in his 60′s by now?? I mean… sure, the angry-old-kook with nothing to live for vibe works for a while. But how long can it go on for? Til he’s 70? 80? At some point in the near future his back story is going to need to change to a Gulf War veteran, or even an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran (actually this would work well what with the general ambiguity of these conflicts; though I’d probably make him a gristled veteran of a private contractor, think a high-up commander of Blackwater International). Back to the point…
I was shocked to hear that Favreau was bullied by the studio into essentially NOT ending Iron Man 2(presumably the second of a trilogy) with any sort of “cliffhanger”. Why? For continuity’s sake. You see, Marvel wants to make a shitload of money like any other corporation. Especially like any other corporation who’s a sub-company of one Disney Inc. So they planned this whole slew of movie’s bound to be inter-woven to “encourage” viewers who see one to see them all. You can call it a “revolution” in movies or visual story telling all you want, but the only “revolution” here is in terms of marketing. It’s a money grab. Read the rest of this entry »
This story about Kevin Smith is really starting to make the rounds. Apparently he boarded a Southwest flight earlier today and minutes before taxiing the staff booted him for being too fat. A quick Google News search of “kevin smith southwest” will get you all the feeds, hits, articles you need and then some. He’s been updating his Twitter page all day about the incident, many of which have been down right hilarious. Like:
“Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.”
Meanwhile Southwest — who’s defended their policy to a T — has sent out their “heartfelt apologies” to Smith. No doubt they’re only on damage control at this point seeing as Kevin Smith is the poster boy for cool, successful, smart overweight folk in America. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is already calling for bans and boycotts of the airline. In the end, this is all just really good press for Smith who’s feature “Cop Out” comes out in a couple weeks. Don’t expect much from it, though, as Smith didn’t have any part in writing it (which is clearly his strong suit). I’ll be skipping the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan flick for his next flick “Red State“. The movie that will satire political extremism in America while somehow also playing with classic Horror Film tropes and conventions. Sounds like gold!
Until then, I’m gonna throw in Clerks before picking a family member up from the airport this President’s Day Sunday.
This might possibly be the most brilliant re-interpretation of a film in any shape, era, or way. Adam Bertocci – filmmaker, screenwriter, author, Shakespeare and Coen Brothers lover — somehow turned The Big Lebowskiinto a legitimately worded/staged Shakespearian play titled “The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski“. Here’s just one monologue, of many, to give you an idea of what I mean. This is the first bowling scene when The Dude’s, or in this alt-universe “The Knave”s, explaining how this rug really tied the room together. Take a peep:
It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.
