saw Up again a few nights ago. What a great movie – and somewhat different than the usual Pixar fare.

On the one hand, the animation keeps on getting better and better – the balloons above the house look almost real, and it’s interesting that they’d make a movie about an old man and his early child dreams of South American adventure (?). And the usual Pixar ‘warm & silly’ touches are there too (talking dogs with several recurring jokes, gentle slapstick humor throughout, a weird chocolate-loving bird named Kevin, etc.).

I also appreciate Pixar’s continued willingness to subtly slam the corporations (not that Hollywood doesn’t make a lot of income doing that anyway) but Pixar is more sublime than most, barring say, WALL-E (that movie is a more extreme position on the subject :)). Here the anti-corporate commentary largely takes the form of Carl’s house being ‘built around’ by skyscrapers (reminds me of the old lady’s San Francisco firehouse in Herbie Rides Again) but there’s also implications for both the two heroes (Carl and explorer scout Russell) and villain (Muntz) concerning the underlying theme of adventure and seeking the unknown. The ‘real world’ is never kind to that one, to be sure.

There are definitely varied movie and pop-culture influences at work here – at least in my mind. Muntz’ airship is right out of The Island at the Top of the World; kerewin noted the house + balloons as possibly inspired by James & the Giant Peach; and my own (i’m sure unintended) reference is the Alpha dog’s distorted voice (heard at two different times in the movie) being identical to Conan O’Brien’s Pimpbot 5000 – too funny. And the whole ‘travel adventure’ artwork seen early on by Carl and Ellie as kids is very reminiscent of the earlier Pixar movie The Incredibles (I’m thinking of Mr. Incredible in his office looking at all his old glory newspaper articles, and of the artwork in the closing credits, too – classic stuff!)

But what makes Up more than a bit different than other Pixar movies (and other family fare) is their willingness to inject a lot of sadness into the movie and plot. The early montage of Carl & Ellie’s life together by itself is enough to get out the hanky, but it doesn’t stop there. Although they balance it somewhat by the various triumph(s) in the movie, this is still a much sadder story than most – one of our friends is adamant he’d never bring kids to this movie, way too depressing! 🙂 But to his point, I think at least some of that sadness is aimed far more directly at adults and you have to be one to really appreciate WHY it is sad and not simply transition periods between the more action-oriented portions of the movie. Maybe it’s not sad per se, but rather, poignant and wistful? The writers obviously make strong points about ‘live life to the fullest’, ‘don’t forget to look around you for the adventure you already live’, and themes to that effect. Sage advice indeed – but rare in an animated family movie?

I guess that’s what continues to make Pixar special and their movies stand out from the crowd. While I think the next couple movies are going to be sequels (Cars 2, Monsters Inc. 2) hopefully they’ll continue with the original, unique stuff.

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watched the original TRON last night. Given how recently we saw the sequel, it was good to go back to the original for comparisons.

1) I missed the nuance of ‘clu’ in the original until this time. You may remember early on when Flynn is trying to hack the MCP (before he goes ‘into’ the computer himself) he has a tank running around with a program that looks like him – that’s Clu – seen far more prominently in the sequel of course. Sadly the ‘loose bit‘ seen here (and a bit later) didn’t make the sequel….

2) LIked the far more prevalent Recognizers here. In the sequel, they basically get one scene early on, and that’s kinda it. Here they are much more a part of the plot, including when Flynn steals one and flies it (not entirely successfully) to the I/O tower to meet Tron and Yori. The Recognizers for me are one of the definitive icons from TRON, and I wish they had done far more with them in the sequel , doh!

3) They make far more effort to tie together the computer world, the human world, and the relationship between the two here. Which of course ends up as background in the sequel, but if they hadn’t done it the sequel would be extremely confusing (rather than just sort of).

4) The plot holds together decently – there are some slow spots, yes – but on balance, it sets up the villain(s) well and then provides several good guys to battle them in various ways (although not really explaining what the MCP ultimately wanted to ‘do’ once it infiltrated all the computers in the human world – wait for the rise of/fight Skynet? :))

5) I am still amazed at the lameness of the critics slamming this movie in their reviews of the sequel. It is patently obvious most of them never watched it, or were too young for the original (and then never watched it priot to the new one), and/or simply don’t get it, period. Yes, many ideas from this movie have been done later and arguably better in other ways, but TRON showed the way and visually has a style all its own (doesn’t hurt having Syd Mead and other renowned artists/conceptual designers setting a pretty high bar, either).

This movie is not Citizen Kane – and perhaps by today’s standards it looks kind of dated – kerewin commented more than once on the ‘lame special effects’ – which I have to counter with ‘dated’ – they aren’t lame! And maybe you had to grow up at that time during the earlier ‘rise of the computer’ in our daily lives vs. now. But seen vs. much of what has come later – and especially how lame at least half of the vaunted Star Wars movies have been and the third Matrix movie, etc. – there’s certainly plenty of room out there for an alternate vision. Viva TRON!

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So while my wife was stuck working yesterday, I watched 1982’s The Thing – yep, another John Carpenter movie. While I’m not much of a horror movie guy – this one, being just as much about sci-fi in most ways, is a bit of an exception.

So a few interesting trivia – the movie is a remake of a 50’s monster movie by the same name. But here, the story is much closer to the original short story by John W. Campbell – ‘Who Goes There?’ But if you’ve read any HP Lovecraft, you will recognize Campbell’s story as being more than a bit derivative of his novella ‘At The Mountains of Madness‘. And fans of the X-Files (1st movie) will also remember a flying saucer in the Antarctic at one point in one of the movies also – not sure whether inspired by any of these stories/movies or not, but it’s there.

Finally, the most silly far-fetched reference I can think of is in Godzilla: Final Wars, where at the start of the movie an advanced submarine about to be destroyed by Godzilla ‘buries’ him far beneath the ice by blowing up an ice cliff over his head – later in the movie they are forced to blow him out of there to save Earth (because in the meantime, aliens have taken over all the other crazy Kaiju monsters and now seek control of mankind, too). Of course, Godzilla literally ‘walks’ (ocean depths notwithstanding) to all these various cities on different continents, defeats the other monsters, then helps a crazy team of Japanese kung-fu mutants (led by an even more ridiculous American soldier who looks like the white trash cousin of GI Joe) defeat the aliens and save earth.

But back to The Thing – this movie’s closer adherence to the John Campbell story means far more gore and tougher special effects than the 50s movie. At one point a guy’s head melts off and turns into a spider to run away – great stuff! Basically a shapeshifter alien infiltrates an American Antarctic research base and begins killing/imitating everyone – the Americans start to fight back, led by Kurt Russell, but it’s a tough battle. Wilfred Brimley (who now largely sells life insurance on tv) is the scientist who figures out what’s going on (but then weird stuff happens).

If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it sometime – but not for kids, definitely – unless you want to be up all night with them crying. The cast is great and the atmosphere of the flick really creates a sense of what it would be like to be isolated in a research base like that while being stalked by a killer – who could look like anyone!

oh and yes, Merry Christmas! 🙂

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Well, the day finally arrived, and we saw TRON: Legacy tonight. Given that there’s already quite a few reviews out there (here, here, here, here and here for starters), I will add my two cents as well.

First, the good:

1) Music and effects are great. The look and feel of ‘the grid’ is as unique as ever (just like it was the first time around in 1982) and Daft Punk provide a great soundtrack. They apparently even got a cameo as the DJ’s in the nightclub where Sam Flynn and Quorra go to meet the mysterious ‘Zeus’ (who turns out to be a semi-albino Willy Wonka sans top hat, but I still liked him anyway). The light-cycle scenes are very cool, again, just like last time, and it was great to see the Recognizers get their moments in the sun again too (although they aren’t really as ‘malevolent’ as in the last film).

2) Jeff Bridges generally is good, although they don’t really give him enough to do IMHO. Yes, he’s the central character (in more ways than one) but barring the opening narration, we don’t see near enough inside his head – and that’s a real missed opportunity. And Bruce Boxleitner is even more in the same boat, given that he’s a sideman as before, despite being the namesake of the two movies (Tron).

On to what didn’t work as well:

1) On the one hand, I give them props for not making the movie into one action scene after another (a la the second and third Matrix movies) at the expense of storyline and character development. Despite what some of the reviewers above may think – the original TRON really tried – if you are paying attention while watching it, and had the benefit of growing up back then – to really imagine what it would be like to ‘live inside a computer’, and came up with a unique vision of that, which has influenced a LOT of movies since, the most obvious being The Matrix but there are plenty others.

But in attempting to get inside the characters more, you have give the audience more to go on. There is a scene where Sam talks to Quorra about Flynn’s book collection – but they don’t explain why she likes the books or thinks they are important? By the same token, yes, Clu (Flynn’s self-created perfectionist computer doppelganger) is Flynn’s opposite number (in misdirected megalomania) but even so, he’s never ‘evil’ the way the MCP and Dillinger were in the original. In that movie the MCP ultimately is calling the shots in BOTH the digital and human worlds at one point? The villains here just don’t compare in that respect.

2) Flynn’s hideout brings back a lot of Blade Runner (an original TRON contemporary, it was two years later, flopped about as badly at the time and since has influenced everyone else to an equal if not greater degree) in its look and feel to me. And the scene where Flynn, Quorra and Sam are eating dinner is reminiscent of near the end of 2001 where Discovery astronaut Dave Bowman is eating dinner/rapidly aging in the Louis XIV dining room – all that white on white.

3) As discussed with fellow moviegoers after seeing it, the big ‘Clu rally’ scene where he reveals his plans is right out of Lord of the Rings, with Christopher Lee rallying the Orcs and monsters to attack as they stamp their weapons and yell (not like this type of scene doesn’t happen at least once or twice in each LOTR movie, for that matter :)).

And this brings up my continual point about supervillains – why? When General Zod and his buddies kicked everyone’s ass in short order in Superman II, they were then seen lounging around the White House with nothing to do? They had already beaten all the lame humans, taken over the US (and of course by implication the world – helps when you make the movies in Hollywood that you can imply that) and are bored out of their gourds until Superman shows up to give them something to do?

So what was Clu going to do if he managed to pull an ‘Agent Smith’ and get back to the ‘real world’? Smith was similar – what was he planning on doing? After killing Neo and turning everyone in The Matrix into duplicates of himself, then what? Here there is lip service paid to Clu/Flynn’s vision of ‘perfecting the system’ – but they don’t really explain what that means or why it ultimately ‘twisted’ Clu in the end?

4) The scene of Flynn talking to Clu (near the end) about where things went wrong – I hate to point this out, but it really smacks of Keanu confronting Patrick Swayze at the end of Point Break, with the speech and how ‘Bodie’ can’t be caged, etc. – that movie is cornball from the word go (despite otherwise being great entertainment) – but if you agree with my point (and you may not), it makes Flynn’s self-confrontation somewhat less effective.

5) The son of the original movie’s Dillinger/bad guy is wasted here – they have but one scene with him (played by an uncredited Cillian Murphy, making the waste DOUBLE because he’s always such a great bad guy) – I was half-expecting a weird twist where it is shown that Dillinger’s son is ultimately behind Clu’s betrayal, not Flynn’s vision of perfection. And then it might have made some weird attempt by a ‘revived’ MCP worth trying in turn? In any case, it could have been very cool.

6) In an earlier post, I noted an article where apparently the Pixar guys were brought in to discuss plot and character with the director and writers. Not sure if it did any good here, or whether they actually took the suggestions and used them? To me, if someone like Brad Bird is giving you free advice on a movie – you TAKE it! It would be like being a newbie actor and having Dustin Hoffman, De Niro or similar in a bit part but on the set for a week or two – I’d be hitting them up or trying to learn by osmosis, hello? Just sayin’.

7) Yet another movie where the 3D is largely ‘meh’. I really don’t think it adds much of anything – you’re already in a huge screen, big sounds, special effects. etc. – it’s not like this is the Star Trek holodeck where you’re ‘in’ the action directly or something – I think the whole 3D thing is eventually going to go the way of the original Cinerama process, if more slowly.

8 ) It’s weird how much of the last 20 minutes or so of this movie are nearly identical to the first one. They have a big getaway on the Solar Sailor; the Recognizers and bad guys chase them; they get to the portal and have a big shootout. Here there is a bit of speeching at the expense of action (in the first one, Sark turns into a ‘giant’ (with the help of the MCP) and is about to crush Tron permanently when Flynn hacks the portal and ‘ends’ the MCP for good). If only the speech had told us more…..

Ultimately for a sequel like TRON, this is a good question to ask – how much of the original movie do you pay homage to while (trying, anyway) to craft a new story? Or do you? The recent Incredible Hulk movies (having seen none of them) were all but back to back remakes (notwithstanding the 70s TV series) within 5 years of one another?

All in all, I’m glad I saw it, but like so many movies (e.g. parts of Matrix 2 and most of Matrix 3, among others) – there’s a lot of missed opportunities here. It was definitely better than Avatar though, although it may have cost even more to make ($237M for Avatar vs. an est. $300M for TL)?

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finally got around to watching Escape from New York (yes, the 80s cult classic) last night. Always meant to watch it, have read about it, seen a few clips here and there but never the whole movie. For those souls hiding under a rock the past 30 years, basically Kurt Russell is Snake Plissken, an ex-military hero who is actually on his way TO the prison (for robbing a bank) when Lee Van Cleef enlists him to save The President, because Air Force One crashed in NYC, now a max-security prison for the entire country.

Some thoughts:

1) do *NOT* watch the ‘extras’ until AFTER the movie! While I already knew mostly what happens (the movie is 30+ years old after all) there were a few spoilers in the featurette (interviews with John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, and others from the movie/writers) that unfortunately did their evil work. Doh!

2) it isn’t a super high-budget movie. But for what it has, it’s not bad. And it has the advantage of depicting NYC as a prison (versus trying to depict a future robot theme park on a budget), so you expect things to be thrashed and on fire, etc.

3) The fight scene with Kurt Russell and the big wrestler guy is lame. I guess it was inevitable they had to have *some* big ‘fight’ in a movie like this – but they should have had some crazy alley battle like the ridiculous one in They Live (also by JC but later) or some square-off between Isaac Hayes (the ‘Duke of New York’ – has a ’70s big-ass Caddy with chandeliers mounted on the hood – I am not making that up) and KR.

4) Harry Dean Stanton is always good, he plays great freaks. Ernest Borgnine (‘Cabbie’) was kind of wasted in his part (who takes cabs in prison? And how has he been driving a cab in NYC for 30 years – did he just decide to stay when they converted it into a prison?)

5) Like the featurette says – Snake Plissken is a great anti-hero, and KR definitely plays up the Clint Eastwood aspect (as he admits). Minimal dialogue, maximum attitude. Would that we could all be Snake Plissken 🙂 But I’d toss the eye-patch – I like having depth perception, myself. Get some scary tattoo or wear goth clothing or something.

6) it’s a bit weird to see SP land his glider on the Twin Towers, given that they aren’t there anymore. And the chase across the bridge to ‘escape’ seems like an awfully small bridge? Foot bridge? Every car/transit conduit into Manhattan I’ve ever seen is at least FOUR LANES? Even the smallest bridges in Seattle are four lanes? Just sayin’.

All in all, an entertaining watch – it’s always interesting for me (having been there first time around) to see how well the ‘tech’ ages in movies like this. Here, they don’t really play that up, save for some computery-looking fonts on some of the signs and computers – and a few terminals that were obviously stolen from a nearby airport for the early part of the movie. SP’s radio is a bit on the big side as you might expect, and the ‘phone’ Lee Van Cleef uses to call him on later almost covers the side of his entire head and neck – now THAT’s a phone! One he could call with *and* use as a TV tray for his dinner while waiting for SP to get back?

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Oh, if only. 🙂

Finished this book today, very entertaining read and right up my alley. It is a ‘generic superhero’ story (meaning no Marvel, DC, etc. ‘traditional’ superheroes in there) – not *too* far removed from The Incredibles, but not focused on a family or played near as much for laughs as TI was.

The story is told from two first-person points of view; the perspective of Dr. Impossible, the smartest/greatest/most powerful/you get the picture supervillain of them all, and Fatale, a female cyborg and most recent new member of The Champions, the current ‘Superfriends-like’ group who protects the world from villains like him. Both characters are developed far more than the rest of the others – either villain or hero – but the others are pretty interesting too, as their origins and back stories are revealed throughout the book.

While this book has more than a few similarities to the ‘traditional’ superheroes of yore (The Avengers, The X-Men, and even the far more cheesy Saturday-am ’70s cartoon Superfriends) it also invokes the more nerdy tastes of The Watchmen in more ways than one. It also goes further than most traditional hero stories in that these heroes and villains inhabit a world with TONS of heroes and villains, most with superpowers (and several charlatans on both sides to boot) – the only series I’ve seen that implied this were the X-Men movies to my knowledge (world ‘full’ of mutants beyond the X-Men themselves).

I don’t want to spoil anything – of course this book has the usual superhero story touches (supervillain is bent on taking over the world, crazy technology, freak accidents that create superpowers, etc.) – all the right stuff. If you liked The Watchmen (graphic novel, movie or both), or other superhero/comics, you will like this story. In other words, you’ve seen this story before in other forms, but this is yet another page-turning way to tell it, and is pretty darn good. Enjoy!

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less than a week now – getting stoked!

Seattle Cinerama

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It sure did. If there ever was a movie that (largely) encapsulates what a teenage American male (especially wimpy nerds) want to be at least temporarily – a superhero – this is surely it. This kid makes it happen, usually the hard way with bruises and broken bones, but ultimately gets a boost from YouTube along the way. And Nicholas Cage in (finally!) a quirky, weirdo role like those he used to do early on (Birdy, Raising AZ, etc.) – although here he’s a man with a mission. And his daughter pretty much steals the show every time she’s onscreen.

This wasn’t at all the movie I thought it would be – but it was still great – get it!

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Saw Inception last night (yes, we were a bit slowww in getting to the theater on that one) at the cheap seats. What a GREAT movie! Sure, it was obviously influenced heavily by The Matrix (as to both the ‘bullet-time’ slow-mo filmmaking and to some degree, the dream-premise behind the movie itself) but it’s yet another great movie by Christopher Nolan (who has already made two better Batman movies than ALL the previous ones combined!).

And another nicety – this was one of the only recent movies where they don’t explain the entire movie plot in an over-long trailer shown for weeks beforehand (which is why I’ve been avoiding TRON trailers like the plague until it debuts in a few weeks). Even though you see some pivotal sequences in the Inception trailer – there’s little to no way you’d figure out the plot from them given how the basic premise is very different than you’d expect, and that seeing them in isolation without knowing what is going on – doesn’t help. Kudos again to Mr. Nolan!

I also liked that Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t given the ‘center of everything’ to the exclusion of the rest of the cast – as is often seen in movies where there is a ‘big star’ surrounded by either up-and-comers (here, Ellen Page and even more so, Cillian Murphy) veterans (Michael Caine – is he now going to be in all Nolan’s movies? :), Tom Berenger) and comparative newcomers (the rest of the key cast). This is definitely a movie where all the key players largely play against one another time and again throughout the movie, and it really *works*.

If you can (and haven’t yet seen this movie), see it in a theater or at a friend’s house with a big home theater system – you will be thankful. This is one of those movies that definitely makes far more impact on a big screen.

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Haven’t caught any anime recently, but with the vacation – woo ho! – saw 2008’s The Sky Crawlers this afternoon. This was directed by Mamoru Oshii, the same director as Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

The main characters are ‘Kildren’ – they are permanently young children, used to pilot/fight air battles in planes that look a lot like WWII-era fighters, but at closer range they are an amalgam of various fighters put together – One looks like a P-51 Mustang with Stuka wings, others like a love child from a LIghtning + a British Mosquito, the others are similar amalgams. The battles are apparently a ‘violence outlet’ for an otherwise peaceful society (this theme has been done before, think Rollerball), companies are the employers and stage the battles (which do in fact kill the pilots/etc.). The plot concerns the struggles of the Kildren in and around their lives and ultimate, inevitable fate (likely death in a dogfight).

While this is a beautifully animated movie – i’d put it up there close to Appleseed and others that seamlessly combine CGI (the planes, most of the backdrops and scenery) with animation (the people, some of the dogfighting when people are shown) – the plot is kinda lacking. There are a lot of slow background sequences which again – while very pretty – don’t really add much. Some of it you figure out later is implied and key to the mental state of the main characters – but a lot of it is kinda ‘surplus’ screentime.

It also reminded me of early episodes of Witch Hunter Robin – where the camera plays over the scene, people sit there, atmospheric or trippy music in the background, but some minutes drag by before anything happens. Hm.

If you already watch some/a lot of anime, you may like this movie – if you are looking for a ‘first anime’ to watch – this definitely isn’t it. Either of the Ghost in the Shell movies (or the two TV series) are better, Appleseed, etc. are all better intro’s to anime.

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