Paul Newman

I'm pretty sure the only Paul Newman film I saw in a theatre was Nobody's Fool, and my attention was not entirely on the movie, as I was also trying to figure out if I was on a date. (I wasn't.) Even in my distracted condition, though, I recognized the sheer casual magnitude of Newman's talent. Later I enjoyed his performance in The Sting, and pointing out to comic geeks that he was Gil Kane's original "model" for Green Lantern.

Roger Ebert has a nice appreciation, and reposted an interview with Newman promoting Nobody's Fool. And now I'm going to do update my Netflix queue.

Indiana Jones

The sweetest moment in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull was discovering that by 1957 Dr. Jones had gotten tenure. It's good to know that this rejection letter wasn't the final word on that subject.

Dare I suggest...?

After reading about the origins of this summer's Hulk movie mulligan, and seeing the trailer for Frank Miller's movie adaptation of The Spirit (featured below), I have to ask: Why doesn't Marvel Studios make its next movie do-over a Daredevil feature by Frank Miller? No one remembers, or much liked, the 2003 movie with Ben Affleck (except, I imagine, Affleck and Jennifer Garner and their kid). So why not let Miller return to the character in a great big graphic green-screened tale?

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

Random links

• Lawrence O'Donnell presents one scenario for settling the Democratic nomination fight.
• Science fair photos. I must remember to use the phrase "juicy beans" more often.
• Gender inequity in the new Horton Hears A Who movie.
• When did the present-day parts of Cryptonomicon take place? (Which strikes me as something of an impossible task, since the book clearly takes place in a world not-quite-just-like ours, with Attorney General Comstock, not Reno, the existence of Qwlghm, and the use of "Nippon" in lieu of "Japan"...)
  

Things I learned watching "Michael Clayton"

Tom Wilkinson is in better shape than I am.

WTF Theatre: The Apple

There are bad movies that are bad. There are bad movies that are guilty pleasures. There are bad movies that are so-bad-they're-good. And then there are movies that are so bad you're not quite sure you can't think clearly about them, because they're so amazingly terrible that they've blown your brain out the back of your frakking head leaving you to wonder if THIS is what taking all the drugs would feel like.

And then there's The Apple. Which was ably deconstructed by Nathan Rabin a few months ago over at the Onion's AV Club. I can't quite top his summation of the movie:

The peculiar genius of The Apple is that every time it appears that the film cannot get any crazier, it ratchets up the weirdness to almost indescribable levels. It belongs to the curious subset of movies so all-consumingly druggy and surreal that they make audiences feel baked out of their minds even when they’re stone-cold sober. The Apple is both the perfect mind-fuck to see while high (on life of course, this column in no way wishes to promote the disgusting, disgusting practice of consuming drugs) and a movie that makes drugs seem redundant and unnecessary.

I think everyone in the world should see The Apple. It should be taught not just in film classes, but in regular schools as well. It should replace the Bible and the Constitution as the immutable cornerstone of our civilization.

Rabin is right -- I don't so much remember watching the movie as experiencing it, and when She Who Must Be Obeyed came home I made her watch a few scenes just to get confirmation from someone who hadn't already been exposed to it that I had not imagined the whole thing after accidentally taking Sudafed and NyQuil at the same time. Which I suppose is par for the course for a science-fiction-ish retelling of the Adam and Eve story where Satan is a record producer and Adam and Eve are an innocent Canadian folk-singing duo. The damn thing moves into your brain with its relentlessly and surprisingly catchy-but-terrible music -- did I mention it's a disco opera with more musical numbers than most Bollywood films? -- and while the movie is not good by any definition known to man, the mere fact of its insane, improbable existence makes it some sort of demented triumph. I didn't like the Apple, and I don't actually recommend it, but I think you should see it anyway.

The greatest movie never made

This is completely and totally unsafe to watch at work, school, or even, probably, at home. On the other hand, it's completely hysterical and awesome.

Snark of the day

From this article about torture porn movies:

The Saw films represent the flagship series in the "person tied to a chair and tortured" horror genre (see also: Hostel, Captivity, The Passion of the Christ).

Christmas in October

We went to Home Depot this weekend to check out paint chips for our upcoming bathroom redo. And what did we see there? Christmas trees.

In OCTOBER.

At least I can justify watching Bad Santa anytime I want between now and January...

Trekwood

We decided to give Deadwood another chance on DVD this summer and we're glad we did -- not just because it's a terrific show, but because it's given me more ideas about casting the new Star Trek movie. Tim Olyphant could easily play Captain Kirk, and if Gary Sinise is busy Brad Dourif could probably pull off Doctor McCoy.

And while I'm casting things, they should totally get William Petersen to play Howard Dean in the movie version of World War Z.

Recasting Trek

Some thoughts on the actors who should join Zachary Quinto (AKA "New Spock") in JJ Abrams' new Star Trek movie:

Trying to play James T. Kirk will break just about every actor on the planet. That said, I think one of the only people who could pull this off is Christian Bale. I think Lance Mannion has also suggested this, but I haven't been able to find the post I'm thinking of on his site.

Gary Sinise is Doctor McCoy. Period.

Freema Agyeman should play Uhura. I'm just throwing this out there. She'd be awesome.

You've finally made a monkey out of me!

So last night the History Channel aired Planet of the Apes. Did I, um, miss something?

Iron Man may not suck.

The final version of the armor actually looks pretty frakkin' cool.

Our ironic cousins

Simon Pegg of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead shares some thoughts on American and British styles of humor:

It's not so much about having a different sense of humour as a different approach to life. More demonstrative than we are, Americans are not embarrassed by their emotions. They clap louder, cheer harder and empathise more unconditionally. It's an openness that always leaves me feeling slightly guilty and apologetic when American personalities appear on British chat shows and find their jokes and stories met with titters, not guffaws, or their achievements met with silent appreciation, rather than claps and yelps. We don't like them any less, we just aren't inclined to give that much of ourselves away. Meanwhile, as a Brit on an American chat show, it's difficult to endure prolonged whooping without intense, red-faced smirking.

Of course, it's the mainstream output of our respective entertainment industries that tends to shape our general opinion of each other. Ask the average American what they perceive British comedy to be and you will most likely be quoted shows such as Benny Hill and Are You Being Served? (although, thanks to BBC America, this is beginning to change). The fan demographic for both shows is markedly more diverse than in their country of origin. This is probably due to their parochial peculiarity, rather than the quality of the comedy (although both shows had their moments) and perhaps explains why the American audience took to Shaun Of The Dead with such affection. A refusal to occupy that transatlantic middle ground that sometimes scuppers British films intent on appealing in America means that the film plays as resolutely British. That approach does risk certain social and cultural references being lost in translation. But not many. The only joke in Shaun Of The Dead that never got a laugh in the States was Ed's request for a Cornetto ice cream at 8am on a Sunday morning. Overall, the cast's understated reserve in the face of flesh-eating zombies just added another layer of amusement for American viewers.

When it comes to their mainstream, America's emotional openness has often given way to a sentimentality that jars with our more guarded and cynical outlook. This is why the initially enjoyable Happy Days became blighted by saccharine lessons in family values, as Henry Winkler's originally subversive Fonzie was mercilessly appropriated by the middle-class American family, castrated by Marion Ross's Mrs Cunningham and forced to sit on it (although it's interesting to note that in outtakes from the series, Winkler and Ross would often play out an irresistible sexual tension between them with stolen gropes and kisses, solely for the enjoyment of the live studio audience, hinting at darker, more interesting themes than the show itself ever tackled). Generally speaking, sentimentality isn't easy for us. It makes us nervous and uncomfortable. We become edgy and dismissive of these brazen displays of emotion.

YO! Hollywood!

When is someone going to make a movie where Owen Wilson and Dennis Hopper play the same character, Wilson in the flashbacks and Hopper in the present?

He's still got it

From Roger Ebert's recent update:

And I am working on the follow-up to "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," tentatively called, "Your Movie Sucks."

Super.

So not long ago Superman III was on TV. It's a terrible movie, with none of the grandeur and weight of the orignal Richard Donner film and a nonsensical plot and, well, Richard Pryor. There's almost nothing to recommend it to anyone.

Almost.

Because it's still got Christopher Reeve playing Superman. And even trapped in this horrible movie, he found ways to make his portrayal work. It's the little things. There's an overlong, unfunny extended opening to the film that tries very very hard to be hysterical, and it isn't, and what's more unfunny than that? At one point, a car crashes into and on top of a fire hydrant and fills with water, for some reason --

-- look, I TOLD you it was terrible --

-- and Superman rescues the driver and lifts him out of the flooded car, as Superman does.

And then, once he's made sure the driver's fine, Superman shakes the driver's hand.

That's awesome, in a peculiarly Supermanic way; he's honored to have had the chance to help you and he's thrilled you're OK and he takes a second to convey that with a casual gesture.

And then he flies off to do it again.

The movie.

I liked it.

It wasn't Superman: The Movie, but what could be? Oddly, the very things that gave me pause prior to seeing the movie, and still make me wonder how the hell they could ever make a sequel to Superman Returns, are also the things I like. The temptation with this sort of a movie, I think, often is to do an impersonal, respectful take that hits the right notes but doesn't actually DO anything. But the weirder aspects of the movie -- and I'll steer clear of saying anything too spoilerish for now -- also make it a much more idiosyncratic and personal and affecting story. I'm not sure it works or holds together or makes a great deal of sense, but it's got its own point of view and perspective beneath the set pieces and special effects and that gives it a charge that it might otherwise have lacked. It reminds me more of something like Kurt Busiek's Superman: Secret Identity or one of the weird Elliot S! Maggin Superman annuals from the early 80s than a "normal" Superman story. And that's a good thing.

I say all of this as someone who was deeply, deeply skeptical of this movie all through the production process; most of the dribs and drabs of information we got were as likely to fill me with dread as anticipation. Nevertheless: I liked it, and I recommend it, and I recommend going in with an open mind.

The suit.

Like a lot of comics fans, I was underwhelmed by the first images of the Superman suit for the new movie. The collar was too high, the reds were too dark -- approaching brown in some shots from some angles -- the boots were needlessly fussy, the texture on the blue was weird, the seams were too big and too bold, the embossed, raised "S" wasn't right.

In still photos, all of these things are true.

In motion, on a big movie screen, the damn thing actually works, for the most part. The dark red isn't the stopping point it looks like in photos, the texture on the blue looks line, the seams fade away almost to nothing, and the "S" looks no more or less weird or wonky than, say, Gil Kane's stylised rendition as compared to something like Jerry Ordway's more mainline one.

The one early complaint that still holds is the belt buckle. For some reason, instead of leaving the belt alone, with the simple yellow oval buckle of the comics and previous movie costumes, the designers chose to replace it with a miniature version of the "S" logo.

It doesn't work. It's not awful, but it's distracting and silly and breaks up the look of the costume in a number of key scenes, mainly because the "holes" in the logo are colored red. If it were a solid yellow, it probably wouldn't matter, or even be much noticed, but as is it's a pretty weird costume element.

Still, given my early apprehensions, the suit was a very pleasant surprise.

28 Years Later

I'm pretty sure Superman: The Movie was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater; if I'm wrong about that, I never want to be corrected. When it came out in 1978, I was three. I don't remember a single thing about seeing the movie that first time, except that when I got home I started running around in my Superman underoos (eventually my grandmother to made me a red cape with an "S" to go with it). Since then, I've seen the movie at least a hundred times on TV or video, which is not so awful when you break that down over thirty years. So you could say I've seen it a lot, and could hum the theme music by John Williams more or less in my sleep.

And, boy, is that theme about as close to perfect as any movie music has ever been.

And last night, sitting in the weird multiplex in the middle of nowhere, hearing that theme used again in the opening sequence of the new movie in a darkened theatre in full surround sound, I felt goosebumps that I didn't even know I had. I felt like that little kid who didn't quite get that Superman: The Movie wasn't a documentary -- hell, I'm STILL not quite convinced of that -- all over again.