wally:

kaiju!

and finally – oops!

Finished the novel Civil War a few days ago. It is based in the Marvel universe, with Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and Captain America as its central characters, amid a cast of many, many more minor hero (and villain) characters.

This novel is a very mixed bag for me. On one hand, it’s interesting to see these characters applied into a semi-real world situation (the ever-expanding American Police State we live in – the novel is set just after Obama’s election, even though he’s not mentioned in the story). On the other hand, I really find it hard to believe that Captain America would be the only ‘main’ hero with serious problems about the main plot of the novel (which I won’t spoil for you) – and Reed Richards in particular seems a complete sell-out from the first page, almost like he was drugged or something (cult follower). Just not believable based on past stories from these various characters. And fine, Tony Stark is leading the compliance charge, but that itself flies in the face of immediately recent past stories too – heroes just don’t lie down and give up like seen in this novel.

Finally, this novel completely demonstrates a fundamental problem with superhero stories as a genre: They really only work well when you have ‘one’ team of them that are the good guys, amid a possible sea of villains or indifferent others. When you have too many, it just doesn’t work well because the story has to pay homage to all of them and in the end, shortchanges nearly all the characterizations and plot in the doing. I thought the X-Men movies in the past (not all of them being very good, of course) effectively walked this line, because most of the X-Men aren’t heroes and aren’t interested in being mutants much for that matter – they just want normal lives. So having a bazillion of them all over the world isn’t near as much an issue as most aren’t going to be putting on spandex anytime soon. Here, it seems like there are so many superheroes that its hard to see how there COULD be any crime (save possibly white collar – but for that, we have The Punisher anyway) because there are so many of them.

Moreover, SHIELD ends up in a villainous role here too for the most part, and given their historical role, that’s fairly unbelievable too. Yes, Nick Fury isn’t running the show here either, but they just seem like high-powered vigilantes that effectively force the human govts to kowtow to them too.

Basically, this story is a big disappointment, even if the ending does ring a bit true for Captain America’s fate – he is effectively painted as the one true soul throughout the book, and remains that way.

Sigh…..

candybowl

As I’ve continually maintained, being a child of the ’70s means that you automatically use that decade as a baseline cue for style, sensibility and your world perspective. Setting aside many abnormal (if not outright offensive – but then again, hawaii shirts and golf-anything are still with us, so you can’t *only* blame the 70s) fashion trends, what still most often resonates is 70s music.

In this case, however, you have a cut-rate sci-fi film – Starship Invasions – that has a typical plot (alien race needs to colonize and overrun Earth because their home planet is about to die, unseen guardian aliens already reside here and would stop them but they are all but wiped out by the invaders until a UFO expert and math whiz human pair are enlisted to help, then things work out) with B list actors (Robert Vaughn who plays it fairly boring, Christopher Lee as the more interesting archvillian, the rest of the actors are no-names.

While the plot varies between boring (the attempts at transition scenes to show character development fall fairly flat), predictable (the invaders being successful and then being thwarted), and unconventional (Ramses’ visit to the pleasure center at the guardian alien base, which is populated, of course, by scantily clad alien women – Capt. Kirk, eat your heart out) – what carries the movie is the soundtrack, really. It goes between ’70s action scene’ upbeat jazz to piano interludes and stuff that wouldn’t otherwise be out of place in The Six Million Dollar Man or similar – definitely not your typical overblown orchestral fake grandeur by any means.

The spaceship effects are fine given the obviously low budget, despite the androids on the base looking like paper mache halloween costumes painted silver and every guardian alien having a huge, white bald egg-shaped head. And the fact that they were able to repair (well, temporarily) the saucer when they were on the run by raiding a downtown Toronto computer company – impressive…

As I saw this movie back in the day, it was nice to revisit, but it’s not going to win any Oscars anytime soon. Still, the soundtrack was very cool, i’ll have to look for other movies by the composer to see if they measure up.

Other voices:
Rotten Tomatoes
IMDB

candybowl

it’s a Deathmobile 🙂

candybowl

Finally saw the new Godzilla movie last night – great stuff! Nerdy review:

Likes – Godzilla (big surprise); the comparative size of the monsters (huge) and that they don’t mind stomping the crap out of everything they see or that bothers them. Also kudos to newbie-ish director Gareth Edwards, who after cutting his teeth on the earlier Monsters from 2010 – which you can actually watch online here – was selected to write and direct this movie – well done, sir! I also liked the fact that you are intended to feel sympathy for the Motu even when her babies are getting the ‘Ripley treatment‘ – well I did, anyway 🙂

Puzzled – Ken Watanabe‘s constant ‘thousand yard stare’ even when people are asking him questions (and he’s supposed to be the decades-long chief scientist who knows everything?!?) Maybe he lost his Godzilla Prediction Network card…? 🙂

Major nit – *no classic Godzilla roar*? I realize this is a ‘re-imagining’ (aren’t they all these days) but people, Come ON! And the roar provided is adequate but nowhere near loud or powerful enough? At least they didn’t forget the firebreath (oops, spolier alert!)

Minor nit – not enough monster battle scenes. I realize they did this in part to build tension and not just have a big battle at the start and then nowhere to go with the plot, but at least 5-10 min. more of battle would have been fine, guys. Maybe with the kaiju crushing Oracle’s HQ in downtown SF, or possibly John Woo’s office at Berkeley? now THAT would have rocked!

all in all, a very good film, however, and definitely up there with Cloverfield and other recent monster fare….see it – or be stomped!

candybowl

here’s where I’ll be, hoping Thu night!

Cinerama – Coming Soon

in the meantime, 3 comics from another person who can’t wait for the new movie…. (keep scrolling)…..

candybowl

I have always been fascinated by iconoclastic people – some being celebrities, many politicians or leaders, musicians – the list is somewhat long. In a recent discussion with a friend about the somewhat old movie Westworld (1973), I happened to come across this interview with Yul Brynner. What an interesting and candid guy – compared to most celebrities, he seems fairly genuine, relaxed and happy to simply talk and open whatever the interviewer wants to talk about:

I then found a Biography-style one hour piece on him. Between this and the info on IMDB, it paints a very interesting picture – besides his unique physical appearance and charisma, he was just a guy comfortable with being mysterious, yet a perfectionist and an extremely hard worker that also got to enjoy the results along the way. My favorite is the anecdote they tell about his directing days in the early 50’s at CBS, proving he defnitely had a sense of humor as well as his own self and value to the network at that time:

Of course for me the iconic role was in fact Westworld – I knew about The Magnificent Seven but have never watched it – i’ll definitely be going back to check out some of his older stuff. I saw The Ten Commandments when I was a kid but may have to even go back to that one, too!

A true original, to be sure.

candybowl

So Wed. night I rewatched Airplane!. I’ve seen this movie several times, last time was several years ago at the beach with my nephew. Always funny, and I distinctly remember the first time seeing it in the theater (because I’m old) and never laughing harder at a movie than this one, then or since. When it came out, this movie skewered all the stupid disaster films that were all the rage at the time (the tiresome Airport series, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure – the list went on). All the more reason to tear it down by sending the ‘genre’ up. 🙂

While there’s a few bits now that are a tad bit borderline (this was the ’70s after all) – it’s still funny through and through. And it’s one of those movies that has so many sight gags in it, you have to watch closely (or repeatedly) to catch all of them. To wit, the Peter Graves scene at the magazine rack – can you spot the obvious (and not-so-obvious)? 🙂

And of course the announcers arguing over the PA about the ‘white zone’ and the ‘red zone’ – and the airport cult member smackdown (remember cult people in the airports? Ah, memories….).

What is also hilarious is how many veteran actors are spoofing themselves (Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack), especially Lloyd Bridges with all his side comments and ridiculous posturing as a stressed-out airport traffic mgr. I had forgotten the scene where he slams the phone down and leans forward on his desk all intense, and the camera pans out to show an identical picture of him doing the same thing, hanging on the wall behind him – too funny!

And the cameo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was genius, even if he’s obviously reading off a cue card at one point. And don’t forget Johnny, or the ‘Automatic Pilot’.

here’s a clip montage that only shows the tip of the iceberg – and if you have never seen this movie, get crackin’ and watch it 🙂

candybowl

Watched The Wolf of Wall Street the other night at a friend’s house. Oh Martin Scorsese, wtf? This is going to be a short review because barring a sadly few jokes here and there, this is a stupid, way overlong (3 hrs!?!) movie that tries to be the next Goodfellas, but fails in almost every way.

You have the first person narration of most of it. You have a hugely unsympathetic central character. You have actors I otherwise like (jonah hill, leo dicaprio, matthew mcconaughey and even rob reiner) playing people I don’t, in a movie lined with and praising ‘douchebags uber alles’. And you have what has to be the most contrived BS story (the book it is supposedly based on – that guy has to be lying through his teeth or has the smallest penis on earth to brag about this stupid s*** like he does) i’ve ever heard.

At least with Goodfellas, while the main characters were largely unlikable (especially Joe Pesci), you were hooked because it was outright crime (and made BEFORE this stupid movie) – watching this one was like just ‘not-nearly-as-Goodfellas’ over and over again.

And do NOT believe the rating on IMDB – you will want your 3 hours of life back when this is over, I guarantee you. Again, unlike Goodfellas.

What could be the only redeeming grace would be if the upcoming Gojira movie had a scene where G stamps this d-bag flat as a stamp in the first 5 minutes. Bryan Cranston, can you help a brother out?

Update: I think this parody movie poster sums it up quite nicely, actually…

candybowl

I vaguely remember this house being at odds with development in nearby Ballard, but don’t remember the rest, nor that it inspired Up – one of the more somber, yet touching Pixar movies…

The Real-Life Story That Inspired “Up” Is Even More Heart-Wrenching Than The Movie

Viva Tiny Mailmen! 🙂

candybowl