Thugnificient: Attack the Block

Won some passes from Hollywood Chicago for an advance screening of Attack the Block at Landmark Century Centre tonight.

And OMG OMG OMG! I am sooo glad we did.

This was released in the UK back in May. It'll have a limited US release starting July 29. (And since that slashfilm link already goes there, let me just say that Super 8, which was fine, is not fit to sift through Attack the Block's poo. In fact, I said to the ZK as we came out of the theater, "And THAT's how you do Goonies in 2011.")

I can't think of a single thing I didn't love about this movie. (Oh, wait. There's the dog. Hrumph.) The cast is wonderful. The script has exactly the right balance of humor, horror, character development, and a nice story arc. The pacing is excellent, and the exposition is flawless. A car that's destroyed in the first scene is later revealed to belong to a supporting character; a British flag visible in every exterior shot of the block . . . well, that would be telling.

The "block" in question is estate housing in South London (roughly equivalent to housing projects in the US). Moses is the leader of a group from the block that's just on the verge of graduating to gang. In fact, the movie opens with them mugging a young nurse (Sam, who is later revealed to also live in the block).

Baby's first mugging (later revealed to have been carefully planned by the group to minimize their chances of pissing themselves) is interrupted by a ball of fire from the sky, destroying the aforementioned car. When they go to investigate, Moses is attacked by something mysterious. He puffs himself up and vows to hunt it down. They do (in grisly, foley-tastic fashion) and drag their trophy back to the block, where they decide to hide it in Ron's weed room ("It's a room. And it's full of weed. And it's Ron's.") until they decide how best to make a profit from it.

At Ron's (beautifully, disgustingly played by Nick Frost in a deeply, deeply wrong leather jumpsuit), we meet High-Hatz, the local gang boss (or the Moses of Christmas Future, if you'd like to rock the Judeo-Christian-Dickensian canon). High-Hatz decides that it's time to accelerate Moses along his career path and hands off some product to him, specifying how much profit he expects. Moses is elated, terrified, and uncertain all at the same time, but doesn't neglect to swagger for his ecstatic followers.

Just then, though, they notice more and more great balls of fire streaking to earth. Although none of the "grown ups" believes them, they recognize the situation as a full-blown invasion. There's a lovely series of scenes of each member of the group turning back into the little boy he is as he gathers weapons and makes excuses to his family, pleads for 10 more minutes, or gets stuck taking the dog out. We pointedly do not see the inside of Moses's home until a very nicely done scene late in the movie. That scene is understated, but conveys a wealth of information about how Moses has gotten to the tipping point we see at the beginning of the movie.

I don't need to do a blow-by-blow plot synoosis, because I KNOW YOU ARE ALL GOING TO SEE THIS, but it just unfolds beautifully. Having seen what Moses is on the road to becoming in High-Hatz, we also see what he was or might have been in "Probs" and "Mayhem," the would-be gangstas with their cap pistols and supersoakers. And as the group gets into deeper and deeper shit along the way, we get to see how race, class, gender, circumstance, and yes, personal responsibility contribute to their highly localized apocalypse.

Ok, I know I ragged on Super 8 above, so that bears some comment. It's true, I lack some, but not all, critical J.J. Abrams receptors: Thought Cloverfield was a boring-ass piece of shit. You can see for yourself what I thought of Star Trek. On the other hand, I enjoyed many things about Lost, and I absolutely love Fringe (granted, I refer to it as the All-Denethor Comedy Power Hour). I liked Super 8 ok, or at least the first 2/3 of it. And I certainly was impressed that they'd assembled a cast of really solid young actors.

What. Ever. The cast of Attack the Block blows them away. John Boyega is just outstanding as Moses. Alex Esmail and Luke Treadaway are the pinnacle of comic relief as Little Stoner (Pest) and Big Stoner (Brewis). As Sam, the victim-turned-ally-turned-White-Street-Cred-With-The-Po-Po, Jodie Whittaker gets to be profane, bitchy, concerned, brave, selfish . . . . you know, a real human being. (Although it's worth noting that the movie probably passes the Bechdel-Wallace test, but only just, thanks to a conversation between Sam and a helpful neighbor just after she's mugged.) The female counterparts of Moses et al. also get to try their hand at saving themselves, saving the blokes, and leaving the blokes behind because their tired of the trouble they bring.

Love. Just lots of love for this movie. Might be the best horror movie I've seen since The Host.

Monsters, Boobies, and OCD: Danny Boyle's Frankenstein at the National Theatre

Sadly, we are not in the UK, but we did just return from The Music Box Theatre where we saw the last show they're broadcasting there. The title is the ZK's review.


This has been getting rave reviews, lines around the block for day-of tickets, and so on. In many ways, the production deserves that and more. I liked it, but did not love it.

Every element of the design and staging is incredible. The stage is round with a central revolve, and overhead, there's a fixture comprising hundreds of lightbulbs. They're gathered in bunches, hung at different lengths, and it's at once oozing and organic and cold and artificial, evoking forges, power plants, and circuses. To represent the creature's first stumble into a town, there's this gliding platform topped with huge gears that rotate. Extras hang from the front and sides, jerking, slamming, writhing, and do-si-do-ing to something too clanging and brittle to be music, too patterned and hypnotic not to be. It's like Steampunk and German Expressionism had a Marxist-informed Baby.

The blind scholar's hut is represented by four scrimmed walls with a few natural elements stenciled on them; the Frankenstein home is all stiff, stuffy windows and shadow, but it churns up from beneath the stage and sits at a subtle angle. Victor's hut in Scotland has an appropriately claustrophobic, subterranean feel.

The monster is scarred, sutured, scabby, and oozing. The development of his movement, command of language, and command of . . . consciousness and self-awareness . . . are all stunning. The production we saw had Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor (the two leads swap roles each night). Both occupied their roles in a way that signals and excellent director and a creative process that's hard to achieve where actor and character are constantly growing and stretching. Really fantastic.

Oh, look! It's my "but" face. Charitably, Nick Dear's script is uneven, which is not to say that there aren't brilliant parts of it where Mary Shelley's text is illuminated, enlarged, and brought to life by the adaptation. But then there are parts that are just . . . clunky as shit: Felix and Agatha (the blind scholar's son and daughter-in-law) have awkward Tolstovian orgasms about having cleared all the rocks from their field; the Scots resurrectionists have painfully stilted attempts at Shakespearian comic relief; and Elizabeth lectures Victor on the God-given, societally approved power of her uterus. No, really.

Elizabeth, in general, is a nightmare. Boyle casts all the Frankensteins, save Victor, as actors of color for no reason that is particularly apparent (which is not at all to say that I think the actors ought to have been all white in some misguided attempt at authenticity, but Victor's whiteness becomes pointed). George Harris was simply not very good as Victor's father, although I wonder if his wooden delivery was directed that way, so that we remain entirely within the mind of Victor/The Creature.

Naomie Harris's portrayal of Elizabeth is almost beside the point as a performance. Her character is the victim of the worst of the script and a choice that came within a hair of ruining the whole shebang for me. As through the vast majority of the play, the action stays with the Creature, who springs from Elizabeth's bridal bed and has a conversation with her that, at times, almost salvages an otherwise dreadful scene. Then, unlike the book in which Victor hears a scream and comes across Elizabeth's lifeless body, Dear/Boyle have Victor burst into the room, revolver drawn (if you will) only to flail around on the floor for no apparent reason while the creature rapes Elizabeth, achieves orgasm, snaps her neck, and declares, "Now I am a man."

W.
T.
F?

Extra special bonus points not just for going to the "Women Exist For Men to Use in Their Attempts to Exert Power Over Other Men" Well, but going the extra mile and making the woman non-White. Seriously, just what the fuck?

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it really, truly is a magnificent creative endeavor beautifully brought to life. But I'd consider nipping out for popcorn at strategic moments.

Review: Young Frankenstein at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

My review for EDGE Chicago

Review: Big Fan + Q & A with Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt

EATA: Awesome! Video of the Q & A.

ETA: Oops, I butchered the spelling of the director's name in my original post title. Sorry, Mr. Siegel, wherever you are!

I'm not defensive about being a Twitter user, but if I were I would defend it by pointing out the fact that I wouldn't have known that Patton was scheduled to be at yesterday's second showing of Big Fan at the Music Box Theatre. So THERE, STOOPID HEADS?!?! I AM EATING TWINKIES! LOLZ!

I actually didn't know much about the movie at all before we were standing in line for our 9:40 showing. Some of the promotional materials pointed out that Siegel (who wrote and directed this) was the writer of The Wrestler. The ZK then commented that he'd heard this wasn't a "Ha ha!" comedy, but I knew that like Apocalypse Now, BIg Fan was bound to be a gay romp.

Paul, played by Oswalt, is a fan boy. In many ways, the object of his desire seems irrelevant at first: He lives with his mother, has a sad sack job as an attendant in a parking garage. His entire social world comprises a single friend who is nearly as sad as he (Sal, played by the great Kevin Corrigan) and the listening audience of a local late-night sports radio program.

See how I slipped that in there? Anyone familiar with Oswalt and his comedy is probably inclined to call shenanigans at the thought of him as a sad, rabid sports fan. As he put it himself in the post-Q&A "I'm not a sports-waching mouth breather, I'm a Green-Lantern-shirt-wearing mouth breather." So in some sense, it certainly matters that sports is the character's obsession, and specifically that football is where he vicariously lives out his life.

After the Q&A the ZK and I both wished we'd asked how Oswalt had become attached to the project. Certainly sports makes Oswalt at once the perfect choice for the role and a very strange choice for it. On the perfect front, if you've never seen him, have a look. He is built on the Little Teapot model, short and stout. In his stand-up and last night, he's referred to himself as "hobbit," "troll," and so on. Physically juxtaposing him to his hero of heroes, a defensive lineman named Quantrell Davis, is visually hilarious and sad by turns.

On the strange front, as a comedian, writer, and actor, Oswalt is incredibly articulate, obviously a nerd, and if I'd been called on to do so, I'd have bet large wadges of cash against him being any kind of sports fan. Not, I might add, that I think it's impossible to be a nerd AND a rabid, foul-mouthed sports fan, as the significant sideways glances the ZK was shooting me throughout the movie demonstrate.

After the Q&A the ZK and I both wished we'd asked how Oswalt had become attached to the project. It may be that his total lack of affinity for sports is what slotted him perfectly into the role. (And make no mistake, he is perfect for it, and he gives a great performance. Not great for a comedian. Not great with any qualifications. It's a straight-up great performance.)

Not to go all Sapir-Whorf on the performance, but it's just possible that Oswalt's complete lack of vocabulary for the subject acted as a substantial aid to his performance. In the Q&A, there were the inevitable questions about how much of the script was improvised. I have the sense that some actors, particularly those coming from comedy, have a tendency to downplay those silly writer people and claim that they are brilliantly making things up on the fly. Siegel was actually fairly sanguine about the questions (which I've gotta imagine are annoying), saying that Patton was free to improvise when he liked, but both acknowledged that it was pretty much a disaster when he tried in Big Fan, as he'd either launch into something witty and articulate that was totally at odds with the character, or the scene would require sports chatter, and both he and Kevin Corrigan (also not a sports fan) would come up completely empty.

So Big Fan isn't the movie for those seeking out wacky Patton. Although very funny at times it's a pretty seriously dark movie. It's also quite quiet, depending heavily on location shoots in Staten Island as well as visual shorthand in his supporting cast. Siegel, a Long Islander, admitted that he'd always found the other boroughs and their denizens exotic. When accused of stereotyping in this movie, he claimed that Staten Island natives laughed at how well he'd captured them, whereas his own landsmen were offended on behalf of the defenseless white trash. Or something.

I tend to be on Seigel's side in the white stereotype debate, but I admit that there were things about the QB character that chafed a bit. On the one hand, it doesn't matter that he's black, as he's readily recognizable as any given high-profile athlete on a self-destructive binge. On the other hand, he didn't have to be black. On the gripping hand, particularly the handful of brief "fantasy sequences" that feature Jonathan Hamm looking manfully, somewhat homoerotically sportsy have a different cast to them, given his blackness and Paul's whiteness. Probably I'm overthinking it in my white, privileged way, but I also think Siegel was underthinking it in his white, privileged way.

As far as bromancery goes, it's not really the point of the movie. But that doesn't mean that the movie doesn't capitalize on the great work that Oswalt and Corrigan do together. In fact, the final scene between them is quite brilliant, not just because they play off one another beautifully, but because it's the ideal capstone (I won't say resolution, because that's also not what the movie is about) to a story that in retrospect could have ended with a giant fizzle.

For me, the evening DID end on a tragically indignant note, as Capone outed Patton as Neill Cumpston. I don't read Ain't It Cool News with any kind of regularity, but I had an epiphany as soon as Patton started to talk about the birth of this alter ego as he watched two 13-year-old boys so pumped by Blade 2 that they were physically beating on one another as they told each other how cool it was: He had perpetrated the infamous I totally camed in my pants review of Sin City. What can I say, except PATTON OSWALT, I TRUSTED YOU!

And while we're airing our dirty laundry, Mr. Oswalt, I do have to tell you that I was very touched when you talked about how Robert Ebert taught you that you didn't have to hate things to be cool, and how much his positive review meant to you. Sincerely, I may have wiped away a tear last night. But it's important to note that no one looks cool when they are enabling Joel Schumacher.

Ahem.

In conclusion: Big Fan is really good. Patton Oswalt is really good in it, and you should go see it and ensure that this movie has legs.

Undead By Numbers: Dead Snow

From the time that the very first previews for Død Snø popped up, there was never any doubt that the citizens of the Painful Acres would be taking in a film. We very nearly missed it at the Music Box Theatre, but not even our short attention spans could undermine our resolve, thanks to the fact that the run was extended, and off we went Wednesday night.


I know that you're all thinking "Of course that's what she was going to say!", but it's good! Wait! Shane! Come back! Mother wants you! I know she does!

Ahem.

No, seriously, it's good.

It's good as a zombie movie: Gross, but not too gross. Funny, but not too self-consciously funny. Filled with surprising moments and suspenseful moments in good balance with one another. (And if one is looking for further evidence that Tommy Wirkola has studied his Hitchcock, I'd swear that there's a scene or two where hand props are oversized.)

It's good as an homage to the horror genre, generally speaking, and to the zombie subgenre, something that is not easy to do. One character is a movie buff, and Wirkola and co-writer Stig Frode Henriksen (who also stars) lightly sprinkle the dialogue with references to other genre classics. There's very little that's unexpected as the plot unfolds, but Wirkola is very good at including shots or sequences so typical of the genre as to be mandated, and still making his own mark on them.

It's good as a movie, period. All the cast members are good, and there's no one in particular that you'd like to see chomped immediately. The screenplay is structurally successful. It starts with zombies. It ends with zombies. It capitalizes on the genre very well by having 99% of the exposition confined to "Monologue by Mysterious Stranger in Act II" (in this case delivered by Bjørn Sundquist, aka the Norwegian Harvey Keitel). And it moves along at a good clip, running just 90 minutes. It's filmed with considerable technical skill (no heavy-handed irony about inept filming techniques or subpar equipment), and it has considerable style.

For example, the opening sequence involves an outdoor chase through a snowy mountain forest. It's set to "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt: Not exactly a bold and new choice for horror music, right? But it's deployed in a really effective way. The music drops out entirely in midsequence, then returns, reaching its crescendo as the chase comes to its expected conclusion. Visually, we've been given the briefest of glimpses of the zombies, and even briefer peeks at a character that hardly appears at all, but who is nonetheless important to the plot. All we see of her unfortunate end, really, is bare, winter-blackened branches shaking wildly, but it's somehow a perfect distillation of the sex and violence mash-up that is the horror genre.

Certainly there are excesses and bits of silliness. As the ZK pointed out, someone seems to have gotten a bulk discount on pig intestines, and I was wondering what it is about this particular species of Norwegian tree that makes it crave entrails. In an otherwise pretty solid screenplay, Wirkola and Henriksen are perhaps a bit too casual about the plot mechanism driving the zombies. Toward the end, they also might veer slightly over the line into heavy-handed hilarity (then again, it's handled admirably by the actors).

So don't listen to Ebert and those other cranky butts. Many disembodied thumbs up!

De Trop: Transformers 2—Revenge of The Fallen

There's really so little point in my attempting to review Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen, first because it is not really a movie, as such, second, because you can't top Topless Robot. But when have I ever left it at that?

In some ways, T2:RotF (hmmm, is that a 533kr1t message in the title's acronym?) is more successful than the first movie, because it does not make the mistake of shorting you, the viewer, on the Giant Robots Kicking The Asses Of Other Giant Robots front as the first "film" did. Even Optimus Prime's stabby, stabby swordfist makes a very early appearance in Shanghai.

Speaking of Shanghai . . . oh, damn, I was about deploy my Home Movies–based "shooting day-for-night, like Truffaut" joke ('cause the helpful War Games-era computer-y text at the bottom of the screen says "Shanghai, 22:15," but it's bright daylight), but I just realized that this could be a time-zone thing. Alas. Can I still quibble about the movie's deep confusion regarding to which branch of the military Josh Duhamel (still pretty, still charming) belongs? Can I note that I appreciate Rainn Wilson in . . . an opera cape? . . . as much as the next gal , but I have never, in my whole born life, been to a huge lecture class attended by "the Dean" or even "a Dean"? Yes, I think I can.

I'm not even going to have a go at this plot, because, really "Michael Bay does not understand what a robot is" and "Because... because FUCK YOU, that's why" pretty much sum it up. I'm not sure that these statements are any less true of the first movie, by which, you will recall, I was pretty charmed. I was not charmed by Transformers 2.

Despite the aforementioned stabby, stabby swordfist, despite the fact that Devastator is pretty freaking cool, despite the complete absence of the demented Australian Black Canary rip off from the first movie, and despite the fact that Michael Bay clearly stopped creaming himself long enough while watching The Incredible Hulk to write in a car boxing gloves scene of his own, I was really not charmed. Why?

Well, you've seen the trailer, right? So you, like everyone else in America, are qualified to comment on Megan Fox's pelvic health, courtesy of the scene of her dry humping the motorcycle. If that struck you as a bit much, let me tell you that the scene in the movie would have required lights, gels, and make-up for her freaking fallopian tubes. It is that extended and invasive. Even if I didn't think less than nothing of Megan Fox, to say that this is creepy doesn't begin to describe this sequence.

Of course, Fox has competition this time in the form of Isabel Lucas, the human-form Deceptislut planted at Sam's college for God Knows Why. At first, it simply seems that "Alice" is simply the most frequently objectified blip on the radar of Sam's web entrepreneurial roommate (I do have to be grateful to Michael Bay for NOT exploring the purpose of the serial killer wall of photos of young women in the cyberden). You see, women go to college to walk the hallways with washcloths wrapped around them, and Alice excels at fitting into this environment. But then she enters upon her campaign to show Sam that MF knows exactly jack about dry humping.

I find that here I really must pause—and I apologize, because I know you're excited about the humping—to address a "plot" element not covered in the Topless Robot FAQ. So Sam lives in LA, right? And it's mentioned several times that he is going to college "On the East Coast." There's a whole baked scene at his natal home with them all packing up the minivan before the appliances come to life in a scene that I'm pretty sure is just doctored footage from Gremlins.

(Here I pause in my pause to, once again, thank Michael Bay for NOT including one of Sam's mother's sex toys among the appliances come [so to speak] to life. Given your rock-bottom opinion of women, Michael, it must have KILLED you to skip the "ZOMG! Middle-aged women like sex! HOW GROSS IS THAT?" joke.)

ANYWAY. LA to East Coast, presumably by minivan. Except that all members of the Witwicky clan are wearing exactly the same things when they arrive at the college as they were when they left LA. Fine, whatever, they were loading up the minivan to head to the airport to pay another $40K in extra-baggage charges, rather than driving cross-country. BUT THEN Bumblebee, who was cruelly left behind by Cool!CollegeBound!Sam in move that smacks of Act III of any nerd-based 1980s classic, shows up on Sam's first night of college. Can he, like Jetfire, inexfuckingplicably teleport? AND WHY DO I CARE?

In truth, I do not. I want to get back to the Deceptislut for a moment. So Sam, who is having the world's least convincing quasi-epileptic episodes, courtesy of the Hellraiser shard, initially tries to fend off her advances. Bumblebee, like a true nerd!friend, is determined to save Sam and his relationship from Sam himself, so he drives up on the hedge of the fraternity house. Sam beats feet out of there, and Deceptislut calls shotgun. She starts talking car!pr0n to him, and Bumblebee deploys the possessed radio gag, beginning with "Your Cheatin' Heart." Funny! He then switches to "Superfreak." Still funny! And then he whips the passenger seat forward, slamming Alice's face into the dashboard. HILARIOUS, right?

You can certainly feel free to call me a hypocrite, because I enjoy violence-laden action movies. So what is it about this that really chaps my hide? It's a passing moment in a comic relief scene. It's hilarious that Sam is such an over-caffeinated boob! It's touchingly funny that Bumblebee is so devoted Sam, despite the fact that Sam has spent their time together in this movie being a complete prick, that he will totally put that bitch out of commission to protect Sam. So he—I have to say it again—slams her face into the dashboard for comic relief purposes. And, yes, I know she's a Bad Guy! (although Sam doesn't know that, and his reaction is so underwhelming that that's a huge part of what's disturbing about the scene).

Moving on. With all my sensitive girly worrying about misogyny here, I'd certainly be remiss if I did not give a WTF?!? shout out to racism in the movie as well. Recall, this is from the same director who included a scene of unbelievably old school racism with a human in the first movie, BUT STILL. Skidz and Mudflap both have giant, sticking out ears and buck teeth. Their dialogue out-Jar-Jars Jar-Jar by a loooong shot. Also, please note the gold pimp tooth. That's Klassy with a K, Mr. Bay.

Overall, the movie is just without charm. It's just as baked (literally in this case, and I'm with Topless Robot in wondering what the hell they were thinking with the pot brownie scene) and nonsensical as the first one, but there's very little that's fun about it. John Turturro seems sort of pissed off and slightly bitter. Also, though I love him, I did not need to see his butt crack being flossed by a Sector 7 thong (although that provided postproduction hilarity when the ZK asked me, "Did he say I wear it when I fuck?" No. No. he did not. He said, "I wear it when I'm in a funk.") The EBIL GOBERNMENT subplot makes no sense at all. The attempts to inject emotion into the relationships Sam has with MF and his parents were a tragic mistake.

This thing is One Hundred And Fifty Minutes Long. There is no excuse for that in a well-ordered society. A lot of the dead weight that the movie is carrying seems to be 12-year-old boy-directed humor. I do not begrudge my up-and-coming tween nerds their dumb comedy, but there has to be 20 minutes of ill-advised scenes like Johnny 5 or whatever the hell his name is humping MF's calf, and every one of those 20 minutes was met with dead silence in our theater, which was heavily populated with the presumed target demographic.

So I have to ask myself, as you should be asking yourself: At what price more hot robot-on-robot violence?

Welcome to the Bridge of the USS Crap You Already Knew: Star Trek

First, everyone either looooooved or haaaaaateed Watchmen, and I thought it was ok at best. And now Star Trek—this would be the same Star Trek that has a 96% at Rotten Tomatoes—well, it was ok.

I mean are we getting the subpar Midwestern cuts?

I suppose I should begin by praising casting: They certainly prepared me to watch Chris Pine for a couple of hours by casting two astonishingly ugly people as his father and as his younger self. On the other hand, is wholly unbelievable that these eyebrows, this blank stare sprang forth from the loins of Jennifer Morrison, who is quite gorgeous. I'm not sure I'll ever feel the same about Cameron again, though.

We'll be kind and leave the aberration of casting Winona Ryder in any role for any reason and say that casting really did quite a good job.

• Zachary Quinto as Spock is rather a no-brainer. I do wonder how many times daily they had to stop filming to remove his 11 o'clock, 11:15, 11:27, etc., supraorbital shadow. Also, the back of my mind kept screaming that Kirk had obviously stolen Sylar's eyebrows.
  
• Zoë Saldana was a good Uhura, and she had a promising start in the movie. Actually, I'll reserve my reservations (ha, do you see what I did there?) on this front for later.
  
• I like Anton Yelchin. Have liked him since !Huff, although he took a while to grow on me. Sadly, all Chekov is to Abrams is an ambulatory accent joke that, in retrospect, is kind of a slam on Walter Koenig.
  
• I was not feeling the love for John Cho as Sulu. I didn't dislike him or anything about his performance, it was just kind of a void. And, yes, it bothers me that he's Korean not Japanese.
  
• Simon Pegg was completely flawless and wonderful for the 8 minutes that he is actually in the movie.
  
• Karl Urban. I can't remember if it was an Onion joke or something from Peter Sagal or others on the WWDTM crew, but I chuckled in my usual sophisticated manner at the thought of Karl Urban losing it and lapsing into Eomer. Whoever it was appears to have been joking on the square. Ok, so he wasn't Eomer in the scene where he and Kirk meet, but he was like some awful DeForest Kelley impersonator. Certainly he was better later, but I don't know what kind of director yells "Cut! Print! GOLDEN!" after those shenanigans. Oh, wait: I do.
  
• Bruce Greenwood's good. He even manages to sell the line about Kirk being the only "genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest" while looking into the terrifyingly blank eyes of Chris Pine.
  
• Pine. Other than cheap shots about how unattractive I think he is, how was his performance? Kind of irrelevant. Abrams' approach is to catapult Kirk through a series of masturbatory Adventure!Scenes! Really, a crash-test dummy could have played Kirk, so there's not a lot to judge Pine's performance by. I will say that most of the cast managed to have at least one moment of emotional reality, despite Abrams. Not Pine. Not even with Nimoy on Hoth the M-class planet near Vulcan.
  
• Bana's Nero was exactly what I imagine they wanted. He outgrowls Bale in The Dark Knight; He yells SPOOOOOCKKK presumably until the entire crew reaches climax; he wears the prosthetics well. I thought maybe there would turn out to be something interesting about his relationship with Ayel (and you should totally go see Clifton Collins, Jr., in Sunshine Cleaning, by the way), but . . . no, they're really just two Romulan miners displaced from time hoping . . . well, I really have a better idea of what the Decepticons' goals were, I guess, because I was thinking that they deserved a trip to Disneyland after getting not one but two Spocks to witness the destruction of Vulcan.
  

I really should have liked the whole movie more, because the casting really was very good. Unfortunately, the script and direction weren't. Last fall, my sister, my niece, and I went to see the stage version of Dirty Dancing. It was a very strange experience. Not unenjoyable, but strange. The leads were made too look as much like Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as possible. They were very good dancers. But other than a strange and misguided attempt to inject some more Civil Rights–Era weight into the script, it's basically a stage reenactment of the movie.

The dancer (I deliberately refrain from calling him an actor) playing Johnny had an extremely strange and heavy accent. I remember being very surprised that he was supposedly from Australia, because his delivery strongly suggested that he had learned his lines phonetically. This mattered not a whit. The crowd still went wild when he declared, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner." It's fortunate that this comes near the end, otherwise one senses that the place would have emptied faster than Springfield's Ghery-designed Concert Hall.

The script for Star Trek resembles nothing so much as a series of post-it notes, each with a "must-have" moment scribbled on it. You have the heavy-handed establishment of the "Bones" moniker in Urban's painfully unchecked DeForest Kelley impersonation, and later the mandatory "Dammit, Jim!" You have "I have been, and always will be, your friend," and I admit that Nimoy, as always, pulls it off despite Pine's resemblance to the world's most mentally challenged cocker spaniel. You have the tragically underused Simon Pegg "Givin' it all she's got!" You have the audience fairly shouting "Say it! Say it! Say it!" for Chekov's "Wictor Wictor" and later "Wessels."

I suppose sticking to the well-known territory was all for the best. From early on, when the script tried to be a script for the movie in progress, it was filled with "Wait, what now?" moments. It's true that I often have to consult my spousal unit to clarify certain issues about Trek. So when a Romulan shows up on screen and no one on the Kelvin has any reaction whatsoever to what I gather is supposed to be the first-ever sighting of a Romulan in this shiny new timeline, I figured I was misunderstanding something, but it seems not.

When big-handed Kirk (ok, I admit that I got deep satisfaction from McCoy chasing Kirk around and jabbing him in the neck repeatedly) busts on to the bridge and makes his big reveal to Pike, well correct me if I'm wrong here, but our Young Turk has just bust in and said Shit. That Everyone. Already. Knows. The only thing that he even arguably reveals is the transmission that Uhura intercepted, a little fact that would've been common knowledge if Abrams—as every watcher of Lost knows—didn't have some deep fear of periodic staff meetings in which information is added to the common pool.

As the ZK pointed out, I guess Kirk gets Pike to raise the shields before dropping out of warp (which, call me crazy, if I'm flying blind into a distress call–driven situation with no further information, I'm all about the shields). Starfleet really has lowered the bar if that's enough to get you bumped to first officer.

The ZK inadvertently preyed on my shaky Trek knowledge when he started flipping out about Spock's mother dying. I, for one, supporting killing Winona Ryder as often as possible on screen, particularly when she has been inexplicably mummified with half a pony keg over the front of her torso. (In general, my feeling is a giant WTF? about the costuming; nice slash-pocket Dockers on all the boys!) PLUS, I was all "Why is he worried about messing with the fact that Spock's mother is supposed to be alive and well when I am worried about the fact that, as far as I know, VULCAN has never been blowed up real good." But the ZK's Trek priorities, like Tim Conway, defy augury.

It's a shame that the script is such a shambles, because I don't think it had to be. I really like it being anchored in the extraordinary relationship between Kirk and Spock. (I liked it better before the unnecessary scene with Nimoy and Quinto that spelled this out, not because I begrudge either of these two screen time, but because it shattered my last hope for any kind of delicacy in this movie.) But I don't think that centering the movie on that relationship should involve sacrificing your other characters to campy "TCB now! No New Crap!" cameos." And if that IS the center of your movie, then maybe spend a little less time on the Wet Dream Adventures of James Tiberius Kirk and a little more time on WHY that relationship is important (and why it's crucial that Spock be the "bottom" in it).

Let's now talk completely extraneous crap:

• Hoth the M-class planet near Vulcan? In addition to being silly, what the hell's up with having Kirk climb out of the pod's crater in his Academy jammies? Couldn't help thinking that this looks like the kind of planet where exposure = death in seconds. Also, totally gratuitous use of Cloverfield leftovers. I would like to invite Mr. Abrams to get over himself.
  
• I'm willing to give Abrams a pass on the "Why do we even have that cavernous central pit?" for the Romulan ship, because it's de rigeur for all space-faring movies at this point. But seriously, a ship designed entirely around catwalks?
  
• I honestly don't know if the Uhura/Spock relationship is extraneous. Sadly, Uhura is practically extraneous, which is made worse by a promising start for the character. I don't particularly object to the relationship (although I don't buy them macking in plain sight on the transporter pad for a minute), but it highlights Star Trek's gender fail. I appreciate that the movie is stuck with a lot of the baggage of the 60s series (especially the costuming, and both the ZK and I agreed that female crew's uniforms were an area where the costuming succeeded pretty well), but I don't get the feeling it was a priority to work their way free of that baggage. I mean, seriously: A "Hope this hick isn't bothering you!" bar fight? Serial "lingually gifted" jokes? I liked the chemistry between Saldana and Quinto. I liked that she is supremely uninterested in Kirk. But it chafes that making her the girlfriend is all they could think to do with her.
  
• The scene with the convertible—and again, I feel I must point out the incredibly ugly child.
  
• Abrams' directorial "style." Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad and again BAD. Step away from the shakier-than-thou hand-held nonsense. And I SWEAR TO BA'AL if you dolly in and swing 270 degrees around a character's GIANT NOSTRIL HAIRS just one more time, I am going to give you such a pinch. Oddly enough, I had some hopes early on that he'd toned down some things. In retrospect, the directorial moments I didn't hate seem to have been cribbed from Battlestar Galactica.
  

I suppose that's about it. I could rant about the IMPLIED VIOLENCE AGAINST BEAGLES! But then I would never stop. I could spend some time on "It's a big red ball. I can't wait to tell my friends. None of them has a red ball this big." I could chide Abrams for stealing the Fire Swamp's Flame Spurt gag from The Princess Bride. But that would be piling on, now wouldn't it?

Please, I go through *everyone's* trash: Watchmen

Saw Watchmen last night. This is probably going to be terse. For me, I mean:
It was ok.

It starts out well, in fact. The murder of the Comedian establishes the visual style that will dominate for most of the movie, and it seems like a good balance between honoring the artwork of the graphic novel and realizing that a movie can't be panels strung together.

The credits are fantastic, and the opening scene looks even better in comparison. In the retelling of the story of the Minutemen in a series of snapshots and headlines, the colors are brighter and the lighting is designed to make the scenes flatter and less realistic. The good times of the past are more romantic, the bad times more lurid. The recreation of historic events in the credits is also more successful, in part because Zack Snyder almost always does something that breaks the fourth wall, signaling movement into a new scene. All very nice.

Everything about Rorschach is perfect. The costume is great. The shifting effect of the mask was done very well. It was only near the end of the movie when I was deep in "Why am I here? Why is anyone in this movie doing the things they are doing? Why did some terrible, but not life-threatening accident not befall Malin Akerman in childhood, saving us all from this 'performance'?" mode that I wondered why it does shift. (IMDB's trivia notes that the material for the mask had been intended for a dress ordered by Kitty Genovese, which is an interesting detail, but sheds no light on the effect.)

Jackie Earle Haley is magnificent as Rorschach. Perhaps even more important, Haley is magnificent as Walter Kovacs, and so often things go whizzing down legs when the mask comes off.

On our drive back down to LA, the ZK and I were listening to the Filmspotting podcast that includes their Watchmen review, and they compare his performance with Heath Ledger's Joker. I concur, and although it might seem to be picking on the dead guy to do so, I'd give Haley the edge if I were required to choose the better performance, mostly because the writing for the Joker is perfect, whereas the writing for Rorschach is merely the best writing in a pretty terrible screenplay.

Ok, if I'm going to have to talk about the screenplay, and I assume I must, I guess I have to nitpick one thing about Rorschach: The presentation of his origin story deflated my enthusiasm for the character. Worse still, the poor work on the origin story made me think about a facet of his characterization throughout the movie that is not done well. Most of his origin story is spun well. The case that kills the last of Kovacs and gives birth to Rorschach is compelling (although I think Snyder veers too much into torture porn at the end of it).

But poor widdle Walter's mommy was a prostitute and not nice to him? Please. What a half-assed, trite, misogynist piece of boo hoo. Probably I have Alan Moore to blame for the original sentiment, but neither screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse nor Snyder do anything to elevate the moment. By the time the events in the hallway are spelled out, we've already seen those events several times. WE GET IT.

In addition to finding the director's lack of faith in the audience disturbing, spelling out this element of Rorschach's story also calls attention to his Puritanical-bordering-on-phobic distaste for sex. The world that's represented isn't exactly crawling with sexual debauchery (with the exception of a scene where Rorschach is pursued by an aggressive prostitute). I guess we're supposed to attribute the recurring theme in his voice overs to his sociopathic misperception, but as the most memorable instances of it are directed at the first Silk Spectre and at Silhouette, it comes off, once again, as simple misogyny. Yawn.

But the screenplay has more dire problems. There is very little in the way of through narrative. Again, that might be the fault of Moore and the graphic novel originally, but it behooves the screenwriters and director to show some attention to the translation from one medium to the other. Character-establishing sidestreets and character-building interactions in the present seem to have been flung down randomly on the timeline.

The Filmspotting blokes were critical of the long digression into Dr. Manhattan's history. They were ultimately of the opinion that we didn't need to see it at all. I can't agree, though, because Dr. Manhattan is so poorly integrated into the story to begin with, I feel that if I knew even less about him, it would have been impossible to regard him as anything more than the deus ex machina inappropriately placed on the mantel in Act I. The poor exploration of Dr. Manhattan left me wondering about things like why his execution method ends up so gory. On the one hand, I appreciate making death look like death, when violence is too often rendered beautifully and lovingly. On the other, if there were ever a killer whose method would be neat without fuss or nasty clean-up, it seems like that killer would be Dr. Manhattan.

I also wanted more Dr. Manhattan, because I really liked Billy Crudup's performance both in and out of the magical light suit. I do agree that the origin story is both too long and placed far too late in the film. It might have worked better if it had been interspersed in the story as flashes of memory or reflection on Dr. Manhattan's part. In contrast, I think Dr. Manhattan's yogic sojourn to Mars went on far too, long. In particular, his 9-minute monologue about the miracle that is Silk Spectre II rang, shall we say, false in my ears.

I'd argue that the handling of Veidt/Ozymandias is a cautionary tale of how much worse things could have been on the Dr. Manhattan front. I mean no disrespect to Matthew Goode, whose performance I also liked. I really loved the precision of his speech and the fact that the smartest man in the world visibly struggles with talking in Slow. Loud. English. to the rest of us. But Ozymandias is a disaster.

The ZK asked me if I figured out early on that he was the villain. "Figured out" is probably inaccurate. There were no options other than Ozymandias presented (Nixon or Kissinger, I suppose). I assumed he was the villain about 4 seconds into his Annie Leibovitz shoot, but doubted myself on the grounds that his plot makes no sense at all. That's ok, plots often don't make sense to the outside observer, but I know virtually nothing about Ozymandias (except that he apparently missed the irony in the Shelley poem), so I don't know why it makes sense to him, and that's a big problem. I'm not sure what the scene with him and the '80s vintage robber barons is meant to accomplish. It certainly doesn't give the character any depth, the ruse with the assassin is laughably transparent, and YES LISA, WE ALREADY FIGURED OUT THAT HE SHOVED THE CYANIDE CAPSULE IN THE GUY'S MOUTH, WHICH HE WAS HOLDING CLOSED EVEN AS HE DEMANDED TO KNOW WHO'D SENT THE DAMNED ASSASSIN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Ahem. Moving on. The Filmspotting guys took issue with Patrick Wilson as a schlumpy loser who can only get it up in his owl head high above the city. It is utterly unfair of me to attribute the fact that I had no problem buying him him as a complete loser whose face seriously needed murdering to Patrick WIlson at all. I actually liked Patrick Wilson as Raoul in the horrible Schumacher Phantom of the Opera, thus ensuring that my and Ebert's opposition would be completely diametric.

Nonetheless, the sad truth is that poor Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl II is so persistently saddled with Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II that I can barely think about him and his chin butt without throwing up in my mouth a little. Akerman is certainly the worst tragedy to befall this actor and this character, but the screenplay is doing him no favors, either. His monologue in the riot scene is horrible. His tushy in the Owl!Cave is sad. His pathetic thrusting is cringe-worthy, and his cuddling in Archie's eye socket made me want to auger out my own eye sockets.

But I should back up to the prenookie fire rescue. (1) What part of "The roof is starting to cave in" inspires Nite Owl to knock a water tower over on to said roof? (2) Given that it is 1985, not 1885, why is your primary weapon some kind of Gatling gun? (3) Leaving aside issue (2), if all you have is a perforating gun, why not shoot a big hole in the water tower itself, rather than delicately shooting out the supporting struts?

I just don't think I can talk about Malin Akerman directly. It's probably best to let Madeline Kahn do the talking. (So true, so often.)

What. the hell. were they thinking?

The trivia in IMDB for the movie counters every possible argument for her casting and every possible argument that might temper any criticism of her performance. She is only 7 years older than the many-times-hotter Carla Gugino. She is actually older than Laura Mennell, who plays Janey Slater, the "older woman" that Dr. Manhattan leaves for Silk Spectre II. And the generous speculation of the Filmspotting guys that she might've had to act opposite a tennis ball in her scenes with Dr. Manhattan is negated by this: "Billy Crudup simultaneously provided Manhattan's placeholder and motion capture on set. Crudup wore a specially-designed motion capture suit and face markers, and was constantly filmed by at least two cameras, one for all-over movement and another trained on his face to follow his expressions. This way, his on-set performance as the placeholder could be used directly in creating the CGI character."

If I must say something nice, I'll say that Akerman's performance has the presumably unintended result of boosting my estimation of Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta.

It's probably right around the time of owl-head nookie that I think the movie falls completely off the cliff. Even the look of it disintegrates. Yes, I understand that it's set in 1985, so I have to live through the fashion and hair choices of that era. I do not, however, understand why Ozymandias appears to have stolen the building materials for Karnak II from the set of Flash Gordon. Seriously, when he hurls his throne through the air and Nite Owl uses his Colecovision controller to saw the leg off, I thought, "Does your mother know that you stole her faux French Provincial chair AND took off the plastic slipcover?"

It's just . . . arrrruguuguuhhh.

I really did like big chunks of the movie, so I'll try to end on a smattering of positive notes. Matt Frewer's supporting role as Moloch is wonderful, and it was a gift to give him and Haley that much time together on screen. (But the flashback to the Comedian's tearful night-time visit was terrible.) Everything from the moment that Rorschach says, "I have to use to the men's room" to his rejoining Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II is gold. Shooting the scene through the swinging door was beautifully done. (But Snyder just HAS to go back to the cheezy shot of the blood running out from under the door.)

The movie had real potential, and it realized some of it. Perhaps it's best to be grateful for that, given the fact that a movie version has been in development for something like 15 years. But I stand by my original assessment: It was ok.

Outta My Way, Nerdlingers: South Water Kitchen & Coraline 3-D

So my sweet boo-boo and I were apart for Commercial Love Holiday this year because I was giving a Darwin Day talk at not!church in Jesus Central, Real America. (This represents a substantial improvement over Commerical Love Holiday last year when we were together, but the ZK was mostly dead.) Anyway, we had a belated VD celebration last Friday when we went to South Water Kitchen for dinner and thence to River East for a showing of Coraline in 3-D. Which I liked, but didn't love. Please stop shooting me, Gaiman devotees!

Meal at South Water was terrific, which is good, because I was spitting mad when I got there. Traffic was a nightmare (bite me, Chicago Auto Show, have you heard about this little thing called a recession?), and furiously blinking cars were 9 deep at the Hotel Monaco with nary a valet in sight. Presumably the valets were attending to the complimentary fishies.

But! Screenwipe! New Scene! Dinner was marvelous. Every dinner is improved by the Jesus!Phone, which not only distracts from what would otherwise be awkward silences between this old married couple (Kidding, Kidding. Please recall, we often have other couples inching away from us when we are out or Certified Romantic Evenings, because our conversations are nonstop and strange), but also enables me to marinate all my food in the virutal tears of wire monkey mother's envy.

Twitterstream dutifully reproduced:
ZK begins with a trio of whiskey & orange cocktails. Shooting star blue franc for me.
ZK belatedly remembers that he isn't a fan of goat cheese. More flatbread for me.
Scallops with chanterelles & homemade bacon. Trayflicious! [NB: Mushrooms were simply "wild mushrooms, not chanterelles; also forgot the sunchoke puree. YUM!]
ZK's duck confit salad is good - very good - but tragically lacks homemade bacon
Entrees: sturgeon with yet more fabulous chanterelles, plus whole roasted & smashed baby reds. Ironically earthy fish, but fabulous!
Entrée for ZK: pork chop with cheese grits & creamed brussel sprouts + homemade bacon FTW!
For dessert: bittersweet chocolate cake with salted caramel and malted vanilla gelato. Cake edges a teeny bit dry, but lovely under gelato.
ZK's dessert: deep dish apple pie & toasted almond gelato. Also good, but sadly lacking in chocolate.
And they comped our dessert, which alleviates parking rage.

We weren't actually sure why the comped our dessert. The service was maybe a touch slow, but we weren't fussed by it. I took it as karmic repayment for the parking debacle.

So anyway, Coraline. Theater was completely packed. We weren't prepared for that and had to sit in the front row. (Other movies I've seen from the front row: JFK, Branagh's Hamlet.)
Visually, the movie is wonderful, and it is certainly true that it makes wonderful use of 3-D, rather than throwing gratuitous pick-axes at you. (Although as an avid Dead Rising fan, I am generally pro–pick axe.)

Continuing on the visual here's something deeply appealing about the way Selick renders human motion. It's sinuous without being at all fluid, and it feels like a loving homage to Rank-Bass, Harryhausen, and every other stop motion giant. But it's also not simply more of the same from The Nightmare Before Christmas, at least not when real people in the real world are being rendered.

It's a good thing that I didn't look to closely at the voice casting before going in. In fact, I only knew that Hodgman was the Father and Al Swearengen, now with 100% fewer references to snatch, was involved somehow. I am surprised to find that I hated War of the Worlds so much that I was comparatively speechless about it. (As anyone who has ever met me, literally or virtually, can tell you, hate usually makes me wax eloquent.) My entire review:

There is nothing to enjoy in War of the Worlds. It's two hours of riding on Tom Cruise's back while he trudges slowly from one special effects disaster to another, many of which seem not to have been edited down from the original prolific bad!fic version. There is no plot to speak of. It's the least suspenseful, least interesting Apocalypse on record (and I include The Nonsensical Mission-Statement-less, Highly Localized, Be-Platformed Shoed The Beast from Angel, Season 4 in that). The ending is not only ridiculous, it's a giant Republican "fuck you" to the scabby, the poor, and the ethnic as our clean-scrubbed Boston Brahmins emerge from their pristine brownstone, intact, coiffed, and manicured, giving their blue collar ex-son-in-law /ex-husband/subpar sperm donor a grateful elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist-wrist wave from an appropriate distance.

Do you see that? Not a SINGLE mention of how Dakota Fanning's character needed to die more than any annoying child in any movie ever—including Pia Zadora in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians—needed to die. But I can assure you that is true. So, no, I would not have cast Dakota Fanning. And let us not speak of Teri Hatcher, whose only enjoyable role ever has been as a corpse 15 minutes into Tomorrow Never Dies.

Wow, that was a little vehement, wasn't it? So you can see why not having paid close attention to casting was a good idea for me. As it turns out, Fanning was better than I expected. Hatcher was not quite as bad as I expected, although the performance deteriorates just when the movie most needs her to step up.

Hodgman was amazing, and I am not simply saying that because he had the good grace not to run screaming from the signing table when I brought him a giant stack of More Information Than You Require to sign. His Father was distinctly NOT Hodgman the minor television personality, and his Other Father was magnificent in its mix of chipper and creepy. McShane, French, and Saunders were likewise absolute gold, and the scenes of their performances in the Other World were easily the highlights of the movie. (Along with Coraline's ride over the garden on Hodgman's Magical Steampunk Machine.) Keith David? Well is it any surprise that Keith David rocks as the cat? Everybody wants to be a cat.

Before getting into why I liked it, but didn't love it, I should admit that I haven't yet read the book. That's unusual for me, as I am a neurotic spoilerphobe who doesn't even read book jackets. But the fact of the matter is I seem to be missing some crucial Gaiman receptors. I'm not trying to be too-cool-for-school by disdaining a popular-to-the-point-of-inspiring-fanatacism author. I don't hate him, I just . . . don't get the fuss. I've read American Gods (and I still think that SOMETHING should eventually happen in a 400-page book), Anansi Boys (better than AG, but its appeal for me was pretty superficial), and Good Omens (which I love, but one has to factor in Pratchett), so maybe I just haven't hit the sweet spot yet.

But I haven't read the book, it's true, so I am unsure whether to lay the things that left me cold at its feet or the feet of the screenplay and/or editing-room floor. The fact that Coraline the character starts off as rather a pill and is eventually revealed to have some frighteningly sociopathic tendencies (giving the forcibly muted Wybie the the thumbs up springs to mind, but her mean-spirited attitude toward her eccentric neighbors goes well beyond childish self-absorption into real cruelty) certainly seems to be a problem with the original text. I'm less sure whether Coraline's eventual face-turn-amid-the-rotting-vegetables is so pat and shallow in the book, or if the reasons she realizes that she'd rather embrace her life in the real world (as opposed to simply escaping from the scary button-eyed world) are better communicated in the original and were poorly translated to the screen. I have no problem with main characters that aren't all sweetness and light (in fact, Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, two of my favorite authors, are masters at somewhat unlikable characters with whom one can emphathize), but it takes a defter hand than is evident in Coraline.

I wonder if the ZK will have more to say about the British fascination with truly horrible parents, but the Senior Joneses are truly horrible, narcissitic, VW-Bug-Driving poseur greenies. It's really no wonder that Coraline herself is such a beast, given that her parents are prone to foist her off on the neighbors for whom they have such ill-concealed contempt. Certainly I can see the eye-buttoning process as a strong motivator to get the hell out of the Other World, but it's not as though Coraline's real parents have anything to induce genuine, active longing to be reunited with them.

The Other Mother/Belle Dame was yet another problem for me. Perhaps it's just that Teri Hatcher always sounds like a complete raging bitch to me, but there seemed to be no appreciable reason to be attracted on one incarnation of the Raging Bitch over the other. Given that OM/BD's hedonism goes to 11 from the start, Coraline falling for it leads one to worry about head injuries. If there is anything that sells the sinister attraction of the Other world, it is Hodgman's performance as the Other Father. He's genuinely fun and affectionate, and yet the slight slow slur in his speech has warning bells clanging in the distance.

Unfortunately, the OF being a victim (or a tool? he seems to have been raised from a pumpkin? this also raises the question of who the hell is muted Wybie? How does the OM/BD create/control the Others in her world?), rather than an accomplice, gave the story a distincly misogynistic tinge in my opinion. Yes, it ties the story more closely to Keats' poem, but associating the OM/BD with the original Belle Dame Sans Merci, as well as the more generic Hansel & Gretl witch/Snow Queen/Shelob, etc. ends up feeling like piling on. Yes, we get it, she's an Evil Spiderwoman constructed from evil parts that look like Coraline's mother designed to do evil. We get it. I'm not doing a great job at articulating why the OF's enslavement changes the equation, but for me it did, and changed it for the worse.

Some of the disjointedness in the story may be attributable to lack of editing fu. For example, when Coraline soliloquizes about Mr. Bobinsky, she notes that Wybie, the story's only character who is even arguably sympathetic and narratively reliable, has been talking trash about Mr. Bobinsky being crazy. As far as I can recall, that conversation didn't make it into the dialogue, and it seems out of character and out of storyline for Wybie (after all, he isn't allowd in the Pink Palace). And speaking of Wybie, he's pretty poorly integrated into the story (again, at least the story we see on screen), and it feels like he could have/should have been important.

When I brought up the putative editing error to the ZK, he said he had the impression that we were not seeing all of a continuous stream of time, so there would have been conversations taking place off screen. (He cited Mother Jones knowing the downstairs neighbors well enough to snark about them before unloading her little shit on to them.) I, in contrast, felt that the story was pretty dependent on us following Coraline constantly for a couple of days in a row. Not adhering to the Aristotelian unities isn't exactly a deal breaker in a movie based on a children's book, but I think the lack of decisiveness about time contributed to the jerkiness of the plot, which kept me at least from understanding and being fully invested in the emotional forward progress in the story.

There are things that I did like about the story, even though I sound like a giant, sulking curmudgeon. Coraline has the potential to be a great, punky heroine, and there are moments when that shines through. Her "I like it" upon seeing Wybie with his sewn-up mouth, though, just left her dead to me. I love the unflinching attitude toward the terrifying in the story. I will say for Gaiman that he gives kids more credit for being able to handle an emotional roller coaster than they seem to get from most these days. The tone of the movie is exactly that of movies that both attracted and terrified me as a kid, and I think the world needs less milquetoast in it. Strangely enough, if it weren't for the absolute beauty of the art and the wonderful elements of the story, I probably would have been less discontented with the weaker elements of plot and acting.

There you have it. I liked it. I may have even like liked it. But I didn't love it. Commence evisceration sequence.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Pestle: A La Card #2 @ Kitsch'n + Chandni Chowk to China

Today was mash-up day for the denizens of the Painful Acres. We used our second "A La Card" card for brunch at Kitsch'n (in its somewhat paradoxical River North location). We then repaired to Piper's Alley for a matinee of Chandni Chowk to China, which completely tickled my silly comedy–dumb action movie sensors.

It appears we've only been to Kitsch'n once before, and quite a while ago. I guess that's yet another point in the plus column for the A La Card Deck, as we had a great meal.

When we went in '05, I rather scoffed at the kitschyness of the Roscoe location, both on the grounds of my own desensitization to kitsch, and (I should have added at the time) on the grounds that it's in a very wonderfully kitschy area of the city to begin with. River North is antikitschy. Observer, for example, that this location of Kitsch'n is actually in the same building as Japonais. The interior of this Kitsch'n location reflects an awareness of a need to fit in. It's more that the booths are orange vinyl, the tables are chrome and formica, and there are groovy faux-vintage light fixtures.

Granted, immediately behind our table was a genuine, avocado green refrigerator, and there were shelves of self-consciously hipster toys, but it's a far cry from the concentrated, loving homage to the 70s at Roscoe. I also thought it was a little outside the mission statement to have large, shiny flat panels on CNN (and later on the playoff game, leading me to briefly wonder why in the hell they were letting Howie Long cover the inauguration).

Positively no complaints about the meal, though, unless we're allowed to complain that the portions are too satisfying, thus preventing us from trying the large number of things we'd love to try. I was lured in, once again, by the Green Eggs & Ham, and they were even better than I'd remembered. The potatoes that come with them are positively scrumptious, and I hadn't remembered the springs of rosemary, which were wonderful. I supplemented it with a simply marvelous $2 pomegranate mimosa. The ZK had the fried chicken and waffle, as well as a side of biscuits and gravy.

Another positive of the A La Card deck is that the $10 cards are for a variety of restaurants at a variety of price points. Whereas the card for Primehouse made a pretty small contribution to the total bill (although they seemed to have given us 10% off, rather than just $10), at Kitsch'n, it's a nice chunk of a really reasonable bill (even more reasonable, as our waitress, bless her, comped our coffee simply because there was a slight delay before we got our first cup). Yum!

Onward to the film, though! Despite a great trailer Chandni Chowk to China is getting savaged, rather, in reviews. What perplexes is me about the reviews is the frequent complaint that the movie is "stupid." Well . . . yes. It's a mash-up of a slapstick comedy, a typical Bollywood musical extravaganza, and a chopsocky movie. That's, like, stupid cubed!

It's exactly as formulaic as you'd expect: A complete loser (Sidhu) in a down-and-out part of India is constantly looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, much to the chagrin of his hard-working adoptive father (Dada). Said hard-working adoptive father is always there to (literally) kick Sidhu's ass all over town.

Meanwhile in China, downtrodden villagers under the evil thumb of Hojo (yes, really, Hojo), are looking for emancipation. Through various syncretic rituals, they believe they have located the reincarnation of Liu Sheung. They send an envoy to Chandni Chowk to retrieve their liberator.

Once the villagers arrive in Chandni Chowk, they enlist the help of Chopstick, a local con man who has been happy enough in the past to take Sidhu's money in exchange for amulets and other sure things, to explain to Sidhu what they want of him. Chopstick sees his own opportunity to ride Sidhu's coattails to prosperity in China. He tells Sidhu that "Dado Hojo (Kill Hojo)" means "Very cool." Although Dada's instinct is to continue kicking Sidhu and his Ganesh Potato (seriously, he has a Ganesh Potato, which you can go ahead and add to the list of things I wish I'd made up) all over town, father and son eventually conclude that Sidhu should head off for China.

While trying to get a visa for China, Sidhu encounters (and is conned by) "Miss TSM"—the spokesmodel for the Indian equivalent of QVC. She grabs his number in line and makes a break for China ahead of our boys. Initially obsessed with her hotness, Sidhu becomes obsessed with chasing down the cheater.

At the airport in China, Sidhu runs after a woman he thinks is her, but who turns out to be a pregnant Chinese woman. OR IS SHE?!? Sidhu is convinced that the "baby" is another con, and he runs after her, yelling, "Who cooked your bun?!?" The baby is indeed revealed to be a false belly filled with diamonds, and she is revealed to be Meow Meow, Hojo's answer to GoGo. Diamonds scatter everywhere, and soon Meow Meow's mug is on WANTED posters all over China.

As the villagers celebrate the reincarnation of Liu Sheng with a visit to his monument at the Great Wall, we stop back in with Miss TSM who is picking up a variety of samples (a universal translator that looks suspiciously like a bedazzled iPod nano, and a bullet proof umbrella cum parachute) from the nerve center of QVC. Someone asks a question roughly equivalent to "how's it going?" in conversational sincerity, and she answers with a 20-minute flashback montage to the day Hojo threw her twin sister and father over the side of the Great Wall, prompting her mother's suicide. So glad you asked!

Everyone who's anyone (or putatively been anyone in a past life) then converges on top of the Great Wall so that wackiness can ensue. Miss TSM (whose name turns out to be Sahki) is there to lay her father and sister to rest. Sidhu is there to get his Liu Sheng vibe on. Meow Meow (whose real name is Suzy) is there to kill Sidhu, presumably because the silliness of Liu Sheng reincarnate is just annoying in some unspecified way, and/or because Sidhu ruined her superfly diamond mule pregnancy belly. Oh, and by the way, Sahki/Suzy's father is there, too, because he's a bridge troll crazy amnesiac who lives under the wall.

Meow Meow fails to kill Sidhu. Sahki is mistaken for Meow Meow by the police. Meow Meow is mistaken for Miss TSM by Sidhu. Sidhu accidentally puts the police correctly on Meow Meow's track, thinking that she is Miss TSM.

Everyone except Meow Meow eventually repairs to the village. Meow Meow repairs to Hojo's lair, and Hojo sends her back out again to kill Sidhu, this time with poison lipstick.

Sahki tries to hide in a troupe of Chinese dancers, but she's eventually discovered in Sidhu's bed. Chopstick and Sidhu, now thinking that she's Meow Meow, subdue her and lock her in a wardrobe, vowing to turn her in for the bounty in the morning. Meow Meow shows up for the smooch of death, and Sidhu is frustrated with her slippery ways. Chopstick, presumably getting his first look at her, becomes a fan of her slippery ways. Nonetheless, Sidhu subdues her before she can kiss Chopstick, and they lock her in the other side of the wardrobe that already contains Sahki.

Sahki awakes and recognizes her twin through a hole in the partition between them. Before she can free herself, one of Hojo's minions arrives to rescue "Meow Meow." Meow Meow frees herself and is about to off Chopstick when he yells that Sidhu is nothing and Chopstick is everything. A lightbulb goes off over Meow Meow's head, and she drags Chopstick back to Hojo.

I honestly have no memory how the Mystery of the Duelling Meow Meows is solved. At some point, Sahki just . . . isn't there anymore . . . Oh, wait! She escapes and runs ahead of Hojo's EvilMobile to announce that he's coming. And indeed, he is coming, because about 3 minutes before this, Joey has somehow already returned from India and Hojo has a surprise guest: None other than Dada!

The villagers urge Sidhu to kill Hojo. Sidhu (very slowly) clues in that "Dado Hojo" might just mean something other than "Very cool," and Dada gets his throat slit. (But it's slit by a boomeranging bowler hat, and if you have to lose your great vessels, wouldn't you want to lose them with that kind of panache?)

Not content to also kill Sidhu on site, Hojo's help goes for narrative closure by chucking him over the side of the Great Wall, where he is miraculously caught and saved by Chiang, father to Sahki and Suzy (are you still a family if 66.67% of you don't know you are for one reason or another?).

Sahki vows to retrieve her sister. Chopstick goes to work as a spy for her in Hojo's organization. Sidhu and Chiang spend some time wondering why it is that Chiang seems to speak Hindi, and then they go for tea. (Seriously, I do not know why Chinese people even BUILD tea houses any more.)

From there on out, it's pretty much uncovered identities and training montages, you know? Oh, there's an opera, a codpiece, and a funny bit with a hot pink Razr that has an old timey bell ring. But you get the idea.

As I said: Formulaic. Twins separated in infancy? Check. Giant Albino Henchman? Check. Deadly haberdashery? Check. Training montage? Check. Dead mentors and multiple calls for revenge? Check. And so on and so on and so on.

But it's big fun! The whole cast is very good, and there are many stand outs in the supporting cast. Mithun Chakraborty as Dada is the film's emotional center, and it does have one. He's quite a wonderful hero very much in the style of Ben Parker. Roger Yuan is equally watchable as the drunk under the wall and as the kick-ass Police Inspector.

In the leads, Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone could easily have been either hate worthy or negligible, but they're both as charming as they need to be without fearing to be nerdy and inept as the situation demands. (It's also worth noting that Kumar is one of those people who is utterly transformed by clothing and facial hair. I was genuinely shocked that he's fairly attractive without the stache.)

I think it also has some more depth than it's getting credit for. Without hammering any kind of Message! home, it casts unbridled self-interest in a very negative light. In the end, it comes around to Dada's moral about hard work and belief in the self, rather than hoping for divine intervention.

I will concede that it's a bit overlong, although most critics seem to imply that the fights could be trimmed or more frenetically timed to cut some temporal fat. (Totally misses the glory of the chopsocky movie, where only ass-kicking, foley work, and long-armed yogis pad the film.) Some are more generous to the musical numbers, claiming these are the only charm the film holds. Were I to tighten it up, I'd probably have tried for a slightly less complicated plot, and although I love Dada, I'd have taken my merciless blue pen to the broad physical comedy at the beginning.

But for all its length and convoluted plot, it's a fun and charming movie. It's also a damned sight better than Paul Blart Mall Fucking Cop, and shame on you America for not knowing it.

Husky Voices, Winning Smiles: Dark Knight

We finally got to see this on Saturday, after having given up delusions of IMAX. The theater was very crowded, but not completely full, and we did have to line up. However, we had good seats, and I did not have to kill the two 11-year-olds behind us as it looked as if I might have to throughout the trailers. Although perhaps I should have, if they were the ones surreptitiously sucking down Keystone in the bathrooms. I mean, Keystone! Really!

I'd seen the entire opening sequence for Dark Knight, strangely enough at the IMAX theater when we saw I Am Legend. It loses nothing on second viewing, and there was an added frisson seeing Heath Ledger for the first time and holding and holding for his fantastic first line. It's a kick-ass opening sequence on all fronts.

Having seen it in teaser form, it establishes the very different look of Gotham in this film. Well, very different for others. It could hardly be more familiar to me if it were my own back yard. It also establishes that the Joker is a kill in the daytime monster. The shot of the Joker's bus pulling out of the bank and into the convoy of school buses isn't just comedy gold, it prepares us for the complications the Batman (a nocturnal, cold-blooded jelly doughnut by nature) is about to experience in battling this particular foe.

What's impossible to appreciate from the teaser alone, though, is how important it is as the set up for the Joker's Mission Statement: It Just Takes a Little Push. Sure, he's talking about madness when he deploys that line, but when he does, it illuminates the long and winding road of dominoes that have been falling all the while: The little push of greed disposes of the Joker's cronies, leaving him the last clown standing and sending an unambiguous message to Gotham's lords of organized crime; the little push of desperation and disillusionment turns two in Gordon's trusted inner circle against him and his cause; and the little, persistent push of fear and certainty that each individual must do what is necessary, no matter how violent, evil, and unthinkable, to protect those closest to them, because society will not; Dent "makes his own luck" with a little pushing of his own; and, of course, you have the previously-pushed-for-your-convenience henchpersons, who are already enthusiastic recipients of the Joker's newsletter.

The Bat's opening scene is an admirable, deliberate mess in comparison. The TiVo recently picked up Tim Burton's Batman, which I haven't seen since its original theatrical release. I only watched the very opening, right up to the first appearance of Himself, and . . . well . . . it's pretty goofy isn't it? But you wait for it and you watch and you can't help getting at least a bit of a chill when you first spy those ears.

Giving the audience its first glimpse of the genuine article amidst a cavalcade of impostor ears is . . . hilarious. And as the movie wears on, poignant, tragic, and moving. (I recognize how manipulative-to-the-point-of-heavy-handed-and-soon-to-be-dated the Joker's "terrorist" video with the Bat-wannabe is, but damn if it didn't still get tome.) I was also completely thrilled with Cillian Murphy's cameo. I'm so glad that the Nolans thought of injecting that continuity between the two films, pleased that Murphy was up for it, and delighted with the value added to the crucial hero's opening scene and to the movie overall. The Scarecrow "pushed" with his fear homebrew and his high-brown insight into the psychology of fear. The Joker is a blue-collar, Everyman pusher and fear monger. Neat.

Heath Ledger's death is a shame and a tragedy in so many regards, but one of the shallower aspects of it is the fact that his and the Nolans' combined vision of the Joker can never be evaluated on its own merits. I know there's talk of posthumous Oscar, I know there are accusations of tackiness and opportunism in emphasizing the Joker in the movie's marketing. (For my money, I'm with Kel on that: I can't see making or marketing a movie that includes the Joker without being at least as much about the J man as it is about the Bat.)

I wouldn't dream of arguing that my perception of Ledger and this Joker are not influenced by his death. I will argue to the point of my own death that Ledger dead, Ledger alive, I think both the performance and the concept were fucking brilliant. The look I can honestly say I fell in love with from my first peek at it. Having now had an extended gander, I love it even more. I love that the make-up exaggerates every naturally occurring line on Ledger's face and that it's in those lines that the face he was born with and the face he gives himself meet (the creases are outlined in clown white, but the wrinkles themselves are flesh toned). I love that the rings of black around his eyes mirror the Bat's (and that the Bat's are meant to blend into the black of the cowl, the Joker's to make the white of his face starker).

I love Ledger's body language down to the last detail. I wanted to stand up and applaud his girly little flounce off the curb just before he blows Gotham General into oblivion. I wanted to conduct the note-perfect soundtrack accompanying his jaunty gunwork from the side of the semi as he goes after the armored car carrying "the Batman" to county. I wanted to be on the top of the tryout list when he snaps the pool cue and casually tosses it into the ring of abruptly ronin-ized mobsters, then struts out.

I also loved his vocal work: Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and yes, even Nicholson. They're all there, and they're all carefully deployed for comedy, sincerity, insanity. He slips in and out of caricature and sincerest flattery of these unmistakable voices, but they're all built on the hard, jagged surface of something all his own. I don't think there was a single moment that led me to feel it was over- or underdone. His delivery of the "He completes me" line was the best non-parodic recognition of the thin line between hate and homoeroticism inherent in male-male relationships in action movies.

The highest praise I think I can offer to his performance, though, is that I believed—really believed wholeheartedly in the moment—every single bullshit origin story as he told it, down to really wanting shush up the Batman when he launches into another when he's hanging upside down. So my verdict is that it's unfortunate all evaluations and accolades of Ledger's Joker will be marred with the dread asterisk of his death, because it's a performance that stands up to the gimmicky moments as well as it does the character long haul. IMDB says that Christopher Nolan answered "Why Heath Ledger?" questions by saying "Because he's fearless." Ledger more than earns that response.

As unassailable as Ledger and the Nolans' Joker are, the screenplay certainly has chinks in its armor. I has a job of work before it, as it's really telling so many stories. Viewed from one angle, Bruce Wayne/the Batman is really the B-side of Harvey Dent/Two-Face's: Bruce's stalled romance with Rachel is withering on the vine as Rachel makes some believable, painful realizations about the two men in her life and comes to see Harvey as something more than a consolation prize or an also-ran; Bruce himself flirts with the heady possibility of hanging up the cowl thanks to the competence of the new sheriff in town; and, of course, Dent does the heroic thing (which ultimately results in Rachel's sea change in affections) by taking up the Bat mantle and taking himself out of the game so that Batman can do what Batman does best.

It's a brave take and an interesting one. Unfortunately, though, there are some aspects of the story that are problematically underwritten. We don't really get a sense why Bruce believes that Dent is the real deal or when he comes to that realization, given that the first meeting between Wayne and Dent is all classic dick-waving. It seems unlikely that we're supposed to think this is weariness, wishful thinking, and pining for Rachel on Bruce's part, but the story doesn't firmly establish that.

The biggest character problem, though, comes at the climax of the film (or one of them, which is something of a problem in and of itself). You have the Joker's interrogation scene. Not only am I not prepared to lodge any complaint about that, I will happily punk anyone who does. But! But! But! The Joker gives the Batman two addresses: Rachel is at one and about to be blowed up real good; Harvey is at the other and ditto. As the Batman races out, Gordon asks which one he's going after. With no hesitation, Batman answers, "Rachel."

Despite the classic visual misdirection that ensues as the Batman races toward Avenue X at Cicero and Gordon and his men race to 250 52nd Street, I'm not sure that we—or the Batman—are meant to be surprised that the Joker has lied about who is where. Rachel and Harvey are both so positive that he's for it and she'll be saved. Certainly, there's not a single moment's shock or hesitation when the Batman shows up and finds Dent. Worst of all, there isn't a moment's commentary on it at any point later in the film, not even in Bruce's heartbroken conversation with Alfred. (That's an unusual scene in a Nolan film: It's visually perfect but the content is just off. Caine and Bale are usually on 100% of the time and have great rapport, so my inclination is to blame the script.)

I'm all for not over-explaining plot points, but the audience very much needs to be sure that it was Bruce (who'd clearly choose Rachel) who made the decision about whom to save, not the Batman (who, less clearly but probably, would choose Dent). And we need to know what that choice means to Bruce Wayne. We especially need to know these things given the Batman's acceptance of the mantel of the Dark Knight—and responsibility for what Dent does after he's been "pushed" into his own alternate identity (incidentally, that's sloppy too: Gordon tells the Batman that Dent has killed 5 people, 2 of the cops, but we had a hard time figuring out who those were, especially the second cop)—at the end of the movie. No further reference to the switch is just sloppy, and I expect more of the Nolans.

Broader narrative problems may help to explain the specific slip-ups.The movie is nearly 3 hours long, and there are the storyline is dense. To name just a few of the major threads: Dent's mass prosecution of the mob, which is interwoven with the Gordon/Batman sponsored radioactive tagging of money (not really well explained); the mob's interactions with the Chinese (I, like the Batman, have never heard of Sky Hook, but its ideas intrigue me, and I'd like to receive its newsletter; also, I would not sacrificed one minute of the Hong Kong scenes, which were rife with the Nolans' spin on Woo-y goodness); the Joker's wanting to get the mob's attention (not particularly well explained); Harvey/Rachel; Bruce/Rachel; a pretty meaty supporting storyline for Gordon; local Gotham politics; the evil that does or does not lurk in the hearts of ferries full of convicts and ordinary joes; and the Wayne Industries employee's discovery of the Batman's true identity. That's a lot going on on top of a minor villain's origin (and apparent demise) and the story of the most major villain of them all. Things, perhaps unsurprisingly, feel cluttered at some points and superficial at others.

Most of these complaints need to be viewed in the context of the really high bar the Nolans' have set for themselves. They're very good writers and excellent filmmakers. I guess I've heard some minor whining about C. Nolan's proclamation that Chicago has always been Gotham in his mind. With my unholy love of my city, I'm unlikely to be among the balkers in the first place, but I think the whole tone, look, and feel of the movie is a more elegant defense of Nolan's statement than I could offer.

As heartbreakingly beautiful as I find Chicago to be every minute of my life, Dark Knight does for Chicago what Meet the Robinsons for William Joyce: It's a walk through a familiar landscape with someone who defies belief in showing you dark and beautiful and terrifying new things about it. There's no question this is the Joker's movie as much as it is Batman's, but it's Gotham's, too, and in being Gotham's it makes every citizen therein a heroes, villains, victims, and saviors. Without at all being dark and tangled as the Gotham of Batman Begins so wonderfully is, Dark Knight's Gotham is clotted, congested, slow, and sluggish, by day and by night. Without drawing attention to the device, Nolan is having some fun with how superheroes and villains can get a damned thing done when they're hung up in traffic or trying to get past the knot of morons having deep and meaningful conversations at the foot of the escalator.

I've given the lion's share of performance rumination to Ledger, which seems fair because, alive or dead, all eyes are and would have been on him. I'd say Bale's performance is maybe not quite up to Batman Begins, but I acknowledge that I really only "discovered" him in that, and everyone knows you can't go home again. It's just that there's less for him to do in the acting department this time, and there are the scripting missteps explored above. On a pretty petty note, both M and I wish they'd tone down the attempts to disguise the Batman's voice. The voice so husky it could pull a sled was pretty distracting at times, and Bale's more than good enough to inhabit and project two distinct characters.

Caine's good again, Freeman's excellent (although the Bat Sonar gag was visually goofy, conceptually muddled, and Bruce doing the 'right thing' by giving Lucius Fox the power to destroy it after it had been used to find the Joker was too predictable). I always love to see Bat Manuel getting work (I'm perhaps the only person on the globe still mourning the cancellation of Century City , and you can't top the fact that Nestor Carbonell always brings Eyeliner!Gate to the party. Gary Oldman: man I loves me some Gary Oldman, and Jim Gordon may be my favorite character of his. I continue to get a complete kick out of his utter lack of weirdness. He may be Nolan's most brilliant piece of casting.

Aaron Eckhart is very good as Harvey Dent and pretty good as Two-Face. The Two-Face look is entirely nauseating (and more importantly, not as anatomically implausible as these things normally are), and unfortunately the narrative demands that he go to 11 pretty much immediately. (Ok, that's not entirely fair to the Nolans' script: His potential for 11 is nicely explored when he takes the Joker's henchman hostage and it's the goddamn Batman who stops him from giving himself that little Joker push.)

Maggie Gyllenhaal is better than Katie Holmes, and Dark Knight's Rachel Dawes is better than that found in Batman Begins. Yes, some of her lawyering dialogue is hokey, but at least she gets to do some lawyering (and actual badass interrogation), some personal growth, and so on. But she's still a girl in a superhero movie, so there's some whining, some damsel-in-distressing, and ultimately, some getting blowed up real good being overshadowed by how the boys feel about her getting blowed up real good.

Overall, it's a more than stand-up second entry by the Nolans into the Batman mythos. Furthermore, the film's visuals and Ledger's performance, at least in my opinion, more than stand-up to the hype. Drink the Kool-Aid, people.

Not an Iceberg, Just the Tip: Hancock

We tried to see Dark Knight yesterday, but the suburban multiplex was positively heaving with suburbanites. We were in line behind 3 girls who were about 14 or so, and decided that stabbiness would result if we were in the same theater. So. Hancock, which everyone seems to have hated. But we're on the same page as Ebert & Roeper, which has got to count for something, si?

Of course, we can't know if this is simply the magic of drastically lowered expectations at work, but M and I both found it far more entertaining than some of the more savage reviewers would believe possible. The smattering of positive reviews all seem to touch on the potential, even as they allow that the movie didn't realize most of it. That's pretty much my take.

The script, in particular, felt very much like a draft in several senses. There are lines of dialogue that are slightly off. Jason Bateman's character says, "I'm running at windmills," for example. Running vs. tilting isn't the biggest deal in the world, except that Bateman's character is a PR guy—someone who is likely to know the usual phrase and is in the habit of using words just so. In other instances, there's odd use of prepositions or other elements of dialogue that clunk, either because there was insufficient editing, insufficient direction, or the lines were, at one time, meant to evoke a specific dialect that was abandoned after casting.

More substantively, it feels like some of the important logical and emotional points of the plot feel underwritten. Certainly the mythos/origin for Hancock, which is left until the last two acts, turns out to be kind of a mess. I don't necessarily mind not dwelling on what Hancock actually is, and although amnesia is a plausible reason not to dwell on it, the revelation that he has no memory from before the moment he woke up in a Miami hospital with a skull fracture 80 years ago comes a bit late in the game. And I'm not sure that Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan intended for that reveal to be as out of the blue as it turned out to be, at least for me. In retrospect, I realized that the battered Lucky Strike tin holding a little cash and two tickets to Frankenstein were meant to foreshadow his immortality and the duration of Hancock's current incarnation, but we don't see the items closely enough, nor are they unambiguously of the past. I'm pretty sure I have a ticket stub from seeing Frankenstein.

I'm about to reveal a big spoiler in the following paragraph, so in the unlikely event that you care or will see this, don't read on.




As I remarked to M after the movie, one thing about Hancock completely tanking is that I was wholly surprised by the revelation that Charlize Theron's character was a superhero, too. (Of course, the fact that Charlize Theron is in the movie at all was some kind of state secret.) Again, I had retroactive realization that something was supposed to be foreshadowing. In this case, I think it was a flat out script flub, though, rather than my missing something subtle. When Ray (Bateman) invites Hancock in for dinner, he asks, "Honey, is the heat on?" Given that they're in southern California, my first question was, "They have heat?" In the moment, I took it as a reference to financial problems the family was having that had resulted in loss of utilities or something, but it seems to have been referring to the fact that there's some kind of literal shedding of heat going on, either as that's one of Mary's (Theron) powers or as a byproduct of the rather muddled power loss that results when these pairs are together.

As for more legitimate notes that the script hits to foreshadow Mary's secret identity, certainly her character's instant hate-on for Hancock raised an eyebrow. Interestingly enough, though, it's played in such a way that it could be read as unwanted attraction (although they're still playing up the personal grossness of Hancock at that point) or even as racism. Even though the latter turns out not to be the case (and the former isn't exactly the case), it's interesting that the movie lets that note ring. More interesting (and a little disappointing, because there's some distinct issue skirting), there is passing reference to the fact that these two might've come under attack not just as supernatural beings, but as an interracial couple.

Other narrative problems include a fairly sudden face turn for Hancock and the instant acceptance by the public that goes with it. It feels odd to make that criticism, because backsliding, becoming a complete turd to the geeky friends who made you as you become enamored of the new in crowd, etc., would have been so very done, but the movie just kind of skips to the plot twist rather than doing a whole lot to deepen what the audience sees of Hancock's character. The villains are completely undeveloped, too. In fact, it was downright distracting to have the backstory for "Red" delivered by a newscaster in the background.

But even if the story as a whole has some pretty serious flaws, it also contains a number of really well done moments and emotional notes: The surprising and ironic earnestness in a PR guy; Hancock's very real, very comprehensive loneliness; not playing the convicts' support group for laughs; and, surprisingly, the belated exposition about Mary and Hancock's history.

Ebert and Roeper both seem to have been unable to bring themselves to hate the movie, because the performances are so good. I second that. I'm not quite willing to say you either like Will Smith or you don't (I do), because he handles the role differently than you might think. Hancock is the first role I've seen Smith in (including I Am Legend) where it looks like he might be aging a little (ironic, given that he's playing an immortal), and it's more than a visual trick. His performance really conveys how eroded the character is by his isolation.

I probably should have been watching Arrested Development all along, given that my heart was broken when It's Your Move got canceled before the much-anticipated (at least by me and my posse of 1) Part 2 of "Dregs of Humanity" could air. (Tv.com does NOT back me up on this, but I KNOW IN MY HEART that the show went on hiatus after part 1 aired, and it never came back. Who are you going to believe, me or some stinky website?) He's great, great, great in this, and I'm pretty sure that he made me feel and think about all the things that Tom Cruise supposedly made everyone think about in the incredibly trite, boring, and overrated Jerry Maguire.

It's never good when a name actor's role in a movie gets no press whatsoever. This, at least, claims that this was a deliberate omission to protect the plot twist. Certainly, Theron's performance gives no indication that she was a reluctant inclusion in the cast. She's good on the face of it, and very good indeed in retrospect when her real identity and relationship with Hancock are revealed and you realize the subtle notes she's been playing.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue that you should blow the cash on seeing this in the theater, but it's far more entertaining than its bad press suggests.