Nov
30
“Image United” #1 Review
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It’s been a little over six months since I quit reading monthly comics. I still visit comic book stores every so often because I miss the smell. Occasionally I’ll pick up a trade paperback. It’s very rare that I’ll buy an individual issue. It does happen, though, like it did a few weeks ago with “Haunt.” If anything, buying a random issue will remind me why I finally gave up the hobby to begin with. I never cultivated any real taste in comics over the 18 years I was an avid reader. As such, I couldn’t resist the temptation to pick up “Image United” #1 yesterday at a comic book shop in Ventura.
Let’s see if I can do this without consulting Wikipedia. The seven founders of Image Comics were Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, Jim Valentino and Whilce Portacio. Hot dog, I did it! Formerly artists for Marvel Comics, these gentlemen grew tired of not enjoying any creative control over the books they penciled, so they formed their own company and published titles that proved none of them really were all that creative to begin with.
Image came into being about six months after I started collecting comics. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t buy every issue with the Image logo for the first year or two they put out books. It didn’t get as expensive as it sounds. Since every Image artist was also his own editor, deadlines were frequently missed, and the issues shipped hella-late. “Wetworks” #1 came out like a year after it had been originally scheduled to. But, these were all new superheroes — who looked like Spider-Man or Wolverine for the most part — by the hottest working artists in the industry. It was a dream come true for an undiscriminating 13-year-old.
And as an undiscriminating 30-year-old, I couldn’t resist “Image United” #1, a new mini-series that re-teams the original Image artists in the ultimate collaborative effort. Each artist draws his own character(s) in the book. Youngblood is drawn by Rob Liefeld, Spawn is drawn by Todd McFarlane, the Savage Dragon is drawn by Erik Larsen and so on and so forth. Witchblade is in there too, although her book wasn’t one of Image’s inaugural titles. Mark Silvestri’s first Image comic was “Cyberforce” — basically X-Men with bionics — but he enjoyed much more success with his top-heavy Witchblade character. So there she is. Jim Valentino’s Shadowhawk is also sadly part of the series. I don’t think there’s a bigger mort in all of the Image Universe than that also-ran.
The experience of reading “Image United” #1 is not unlike revisiting an old cartoon show from your childhood that’s clearly not as flawless as you remember. Unfortunately, the book came out last Wednesday. That it reads just as shittily as Image titles from over a decade and a half ago is nothing short of remarkable. Series writer Robert Kirkman is no better at breathing life into these characters than their creators.
The plot, such as it is, should satisfy anyone who endlessly obsesses over the outcomes of superhero fisticuffs. The super-team Youngblood joins forces with the Savage Dragon to beat up on a Spawn villain, Overt-Kill; I’m embarrassed that I just typed that sentence. Because each artist handled the penciling chores on his own characters, the fight scenes look like Colorforms. Punches don’t connect. Characters may exist on the same page, but the stylistic flourishes of each artist work against any sense of cohesiveness.
Each artist only seems to know about three different character poses, too. The characters can run, jump or punch. Regardless of their body type or gender, they perform these actions all pretty much the same. Facial expressions are also about as varied. Everyone’s screaming, clenching their teeth or being all closed-mouthed and stoic. In almost two decades, these artists haven’t matured at all. They’re still sloppy and cutting corners.
In all, “Image United” #1 didn’t really compel me to get back into buying monthly comics again. It’s a gimmick, not a comic. Knowing these artists, I can’t imagine the mini-series will reach its conclusion before the year 3000. That said, instead of buying the individual issues, I think I’ll wait for the trade.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
27
“Titanic” Review
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With “Avatar” opening in just a few short weeks, I thought I’d revisit James Cameron’s greatest box office triumph, a film that is a victim of its own success, “Titanic.” It’s hard to believe that more than a decade has passed since the movie became an omnipresent force in our popular culture, which ain’t bad for a chick flick that lacks a bunch of wussy vampires. None of the “Star Wars” prequels could usurp this film’s B.O. haul, and neither could “Spider-Man” or even “The Dark Knight.” Movie geeks in general have a deep-seeded hatred for “Titanic” because it’s positively un-geeky, a historical romantic drama with a teen heartthrob in the lead.
And yet, I still dig the film.
On a side note, I find it kind of amazing that the most financially successful love story ever committed to film was written and directed by a dude who’s been married five times. That’s what you call irony, my friends.
For those of you who didn’t just watch the movie again last night, “Titanic” opens in the present day with a completely unnecessary framing device. Bill Paxton plays a modern day treasure hunter named Brock Lovett, who’s sifting through the wreckage of the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean. He and his team discover a safe inside one of the state rooms that they believe contains The Heart of the Ocean, a fist-sized blue diamond that’ll make them all rich. Once they crack the safe, though, they instead find a doodle of some hot naked chick wearing the diamond in a necklace. They really didn’t have to go to all that trouble to find nude images of Kate Winslet when the Internet is teeming with them. But then again, this is 1996 and people still use Netscape.
At any rate, news of this fairly inconsequential find makes it back to the States, and a 101-year-old woman named Rose (Gloria Stewart, who must’ve been smoking hot in the Mesozoic Era) reaches out to Brock, claiming that she’s the “dish” in the old picture. So she’s airlifted out to the middle of the Atlantic to begin having a series of lengthy flashbacks wherein the bulk of the film takes place.
Way, way back in 1912, we see Rose (now played by the luminous Kate Winslet) at 17. She’s engaged to wealthy industrialist Cal Hockley (Billy Zane at his most awesome) and not terribly thrilled with the concept. They board the Titanic with Rose’s loathsome crone of a mother and some two-thousand other people, including one artistically-inclined scamp named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who won his ticket in a poker game.
(Somehow, Old Rose is able to flash back to events she didn’t witness firsthand, like the particulars of how Jack got his ticket. This is why “Titanic” didn’t win the Oscar for Best Screenplay, folks.)
Suicidally depressed, Rose is about to throw herself off the ship later that evening when Jack comes along and talks her down with the film’s dialogue motif: “You jump, I jump.” Rose then slips and nearly falls into the crummy greenscreen effect that’s supposed to pass for the open ocean, but Jack saves her. And so begins the love story between Jack and Rose that everyone’s been waiting patiently for, bringing us that much closer to some rare PG-13 female nudity.
The film has a few historical inaccuracies, like the completely bogus claim that it was an iceburg that struck the Titanic when we all know it was in fact al-Qaeda. Nonetheless, the ship begins to sink, much to the passengers’ surprise, and the movie radically shifts gears. The lovey-dovey scenes in the film’s first half don’t quite pack the same punch as the rip-snorting disaster porn of the second half. Cameron’s more confident as a director when he’s nearly drowning his two leads than he is at getting them to sell his dialogue during the more intimate moments. It’s melodrama, though, so you go along with it. The characters are chess pieces anyway. Besides, knowing in advance that the ship’s doomed I think lends a sense of tragedy to the proceedings. It gives even some of Cameron’s really tin-eared groaners a dramatic heft.
I remember back when the movie came out, all these weirdos lamented that (*Spoiler*) Rose doesn’t get off the piece of flotsam and freeze to death in the water once she discovers Jack is no longer among the living (*End Spoiler*). What idiots. If she were to do that, we wouldn’t have the wholly unnecessary framing device that we return to at film’s end, where Old Rose chucks The Heart of the Ocean into the frigid depths, goes to bed and dreams about Jack for the bazillionth time.
And that brings me to another bit of stupid controversy concerning the denouement of this film. Old Rose does not die at the end of “Titanic.” The goddamn Celine Dion song over the credits tells you exactly what happens. She has a dream about Jack. Yeesh. It isn’t all that esoteric, really.
Twelve years on, “Titanic” still works. I might’ve been dismissive of some of the film’s hammier moments, but I think the movie has aged better than some of Cameron’s genre fare. The question remains, Will he top himself with “Avatar?” I doubt it. “Titanic” is one of the happiest accidents in film history, a movie that shouldn’t have been a mega-hit for so many reasons. And yet, the flick, unlike the ship, remains unsinkable to this day.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
26
“The Road” Review
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Arriving just in time for Thanksgiving, “The Road” is this year’s latest entry in the apocalypse porn genre. It comes on the heels of other cataclysmic popcorn flicks like “Terminator Salvation,” “Zombieland” and “2012.” Have we become cynical? I hope so.
The film is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy. Its theatrical release was delayed a full year, rarely a positive sign. And so, I adjusted my expectations accordingly going in. I liked the book well enough. I didn’t find it to be as shattering as the news that Oprah’s going off the air in 2011, but it resonated with me all the same. I personally dig stories set during the glum period after everyone else has been Raptured up.
The film is pretty faithful to the source material. The trailers make it out to be “The Road Warrior” with Charlize Theron, but it’s not an action pic, nor is it a Charlize Theron pic. It’s the moodiest, hungriest and most existential road movie you’re likely to see, and that’s taking into consideration “Road Trip” starring Tom Green.
In the film, Man (Viggo Mortensen) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are heading south on a ribbon of blacktop several years after Roland Emmerich’s destroyed the Earth a hundred times over in “2012 Part II: 2013.” All their belongings are piled into a creaky shopping cart. Man also carries a pistol with two bullets, one for each of them should things go sideways. Along the way, they encounter different sorts of rogues and scamps: cannibals and other hopeless individuals like them. Everyone sort of resembles the folks you see on PeopleOfWalMart.com but better dressed.
I enjoyed the film. I think I would’ve liked more tension throughout. Man and Boy get into a few tight spots, but seem to easily escape from whatever marauders they encounter. The environment could’ve been harsher, too. I’m always annoyed when critics and filmmakers refer to a location in a film as a character in and of itself, and yet I felt the landscape in the movie needed more personality, to be more desolate and unforgiving. Yeah, it’s ugly, but modern day Detroit looks way worse and the world hasn’t even ended yet.
All that being said, “The Road” as an adaptation is much more solid than I’d expected. I was pleasantly surprised. That’s a strange critique for a downer movie like this, but there you go.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
24
Working at a Movie Theater
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Back when I was in sophomore in college, some 10 years ago now(!), I worked at the Newport Cinemas in Spokane, Washington. The building has since been leveled. Unfortunately, the customers and many of my former co-workers weren’t still inside when it got the wrecking ball. The job actually wasn’t all that bad. I have to admit that I felt a pang of sadness when my mom told me the Newport was no more. Call me crazy, but I look back on many of my experiences there fondly, and not just the time I made out with fellow co-worker Michele (with one “L”) after seeing “Entrapment.”
The Newport was actually the second movie theater I worked at. When I was 17, I briefly worked at an ACT III theater in Alderwood, Washington, but I got so few hours, I have virtually no stories to tell about that place. All’s I did was clean auditoriums after showings of “Speed 2: Cruise Control” where I was driven to near madness by the shit-awful island soundtrack that plays over the film’s end credits. Oh, and my manager Tammy had a nervous breakdown shortly after I left. I wish I could take full responsibility for that. I think she had other things going on, though.
Shortly after I turned 19, I put in for a job at the Newport and was hired on the spot. They were understaffed with people who could close, and being over 18, I was the perfect candidate. Most of my co-workers were 16 or 17 and female. Many of them didn’t even like movies. And all of them smoked. So it was like being back in high school again, surrounded by pimply chicks I had nothing in common with.
The Uniforms
We all had to wear these dopey uniforms. The ACT III theater chain had recently been bought out by Regal Cinemas, and gone were the swanky black vests and bowties that I’d worn at the Alderwood 7. Instead we had to wear burgundy vests and black neckties. At the time, I didn’t know how to tie a tie, so I asked a co-worker of mine to do it for me. At the end of a workday, I’d simply loosen it enough to slip it off without untying it. Then I’d slip it back on again and tighten it when I came in for my next shift. I didn’t learn how to tie and tie until the following summer after I’d quit working at the Newport.
Box Office
The worst thing about the job, worse than the chain-smoking bimbos and the brick red vests, were the clientele. It’s no mystery to me why “New Moon” has made so much money. Movie-goers are the stupidest people imaginable. They really do turns their brains off when they catch a flick. I couldn’t believe how many folks would just show up at the theater, not knowing what they wanted to see, and then hold up the line at the box office, asking me to synopsize all our films. It was also pretty amazing that they’d struggle with movie titles that had more than two words in them. Nobody could manage to call “There’s Something About Mary” by its actual title. I got a lot of people who called it “What About Mary” or “How About Mary.”
No, they couldn’t remember the title of a movie, but customers could always recall how much ticket prices used to be. At the time, our matinee price was a staggering $3.75. That was until 6 pm. After 6, a ticket was $7.25, enough to buy the presidency! People bitched and moaned endlessly about our outrageous ticket prices and reminisced about a simpler time when a matinee was a mere $3.25 and you could get a girlfriend experience from a crack whore on Sprague Street for a nickel. Then they’d pay for their ticket with a $100 bill. I hate people sometimes.
Concessions
Tickets in hand, customers would then go buy concessions. On days when we were understaffed, I’d work both the box office and the concession stand, meaning I’d have to deal with some of these retards twice. Working concessions was way worse than box. Regal Cinemas is run by space aliens who have no idea that most customers vehemently despise Pepsi. Twizzlers and all the other candies (Snow Caps?!) were also wildy unpopular. Oh, customers would still reluctantly shell out money for Cookie Dough Bites, but begrudgingly so. It’d give them yet another opportunity to lament our high prices.
Upselling was something we concessionaires were encouraged to do. Man alive, what a pain in the ass that was. Upselling is when I asked the customer, who’s ordering a small- or medium-sized beverage or popcorn, if they’d like a larger sized beverage or popcorn instead for just a few cents more. I basically told them they don’t know what they want. It’s stupid and flies right in the face of the old axiom, “The Customer Is Always Right!” About half the time, customers caved in and went for the larger size, earning Regal another couple quarters. Whoopty-shit.
Usher
Sometimes, I’d get to work the usher podium and teach customers their left from their right. You’d be amazed how many people could screw up the following directions: “Down the hall, first one on the right.” Never mind that the entrance to each auditorium had a sign over the door with the movie’s name on it, too. I guess many of them were looking for the theater showing “How About Mary.”
Cleaning auditoriums was always an interesting archeological expedition. I found empty beer bottles, full diapers and everything in between. One of my managers said he’d found a syringe once. Customers never finished their popcorn or their beverages; I guess they shouldn’t have gotten those larger sizes for a few cents more. The best part about cleaning theaters was when we got to use electric leaf blowers after a big-ticket movie dropped. Blowing around clouds of popcorn and candy wrappers made dozens of small messes into a big one.
Wowie, I’ve done all this place-setting and not even told any stories yet. I’ve got a great one about Thanksgiving ‘98, too. That said, why don’t I lower the curtain on this exposition-heavy installment and post another chapter tomorrow that’s more character-driven?
TO BE CONTINUED…
-Brad Lohan
Nov
23
The original “Bad Lieutenant” doesn’t exactly come across as a franchise starter. Abel Ferrara’s NC-17 police procedural makes “The Shield” look like “Dragnet.” I love the movie. Harvey Keitel really brings it. I have a particular fondness for the scene where he shoots his car radio upon learning he just lost a bundle on a bad sports bet. That scene got rewound about six times.
Against Ferrara’s wishes, “Bad Lieutenant” now has a follow-up, what I consider a spiritual sequel, starring Nicolas Cage. Apart from the title, there’s really nothing that links the Ferrera film with this one. Director Werner Herzog(!) claims to have never even seen the 1992 version. Tonally, the new “Bad Lieutenant” is more of a black comedy than a gritty drama. It also has a more audience-friendly R-rating.
Cage has a field day with the character of Lt. Terence McDonagh, casually strutting around with a .44 Magnum shoved down the front of his pants. McDonagh suffers from back problems, the result of having rescued a suspect from a flooded lockup in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now he goes about his police work in a drug-fueled haze. He has a guy in the property room who supplies him with coke. When that dries up, he starts confiscating controlled substances from suspects. He has a sports gambling habit, too. And his girlfriend is a prostitute. He’s also the lead investigator in a brutal homicide that leads back to a powerful New Orleans drug kingpin named Big Fate.
What I liked about the film is how tangential it seems in its first two-thirds. Herzog’s not terribly interested in how policiers are plotted, and as such, the film sort of goes off in different directions. McDonah’s trying to solve the case, but he’s working a few other things on the side as well. The investigation takes a backseat for part of the film when the local mob and Internal Affairs both start putting the screws to McDonah for his various foul-ups on either side of the law. Then the movie brings everything together, wrapping it all up nicely in a bow and rewarding you as a viewer for going along with its seemingly unfocused storytelling.
It’s great to see Cage in a role that reminds you of what fun he can be. I wish he’d strike more of a balance between the commercial films and the edgier fare. Here’s a character that challenges him, one that asks him to dig deep inside his bag of tricks. What he comes up with is so bad, it’s good. Yeah, I went there.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
20
My next-door neighbor is unnaturally obsessed with Ultimate Fighting, a sort of no holds barred rasslin’ that pits two ‘roided-up thugs against one another in the most boring display of male aggression this side of “Hardball” on MSNBC. I’ve seen bits and pieces of UFC and rank it somewhere below “American Gladiators” in the hierarchy of stupid bullshit I’ll never find appealing. I’d rather watch cricket.
Whenever there’s a UFC match on TV, I know about it. My neighbor invites over all his Cro-Magnon buddies from some bitch-slap class they’re all in (Krav Maga or Long Duk Dong or what have you), and they gather in his apartment, crank up the television volume all the way, and react vocally to every girlie punch that’s thrown over the course of two merciless hours. I usually split from my apartment and frequent adult bookstores in Van Nuys while this cacophony is going on.
My neighbor isn’t the worst person in the world, but it’s sort of impossible to have a conversation with him, being that he’s clearly brain-damaged and all. When I moved in, he came over to introduce himself, and during our brief talk, he found out that I’m a fan of lunk-headed B-movie stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme. As such, that’s pretty much all he wants to discuss with me. Yep, whenever I run into him, he’ll deliver a lengthy monologue from “Kickboxer,” which I haven’t seen in 18 years, and I’m supposed to be impressed. Thing is, I don’t even like Van Damme’s beat-’em-ups like “Kickboxer” because they’re not all that far removed from UFC, which I’ve already established is bilge.
On the other hand, Van Damme’s “Timecop” is genre movie perfection. Does he quote that? Hell, no.
At any rate, I’m not sure how UFC crossed over and became mainstream. I remember Phil Donahue taking it to task in the early-’90s back when it was still an underground thing. Unfortunately, not even Donahue could prevent UFC from becoming wildly popular among young men who need to masturbate more frequently. Now everywhere I look I see these meatheads in Tapout shirts, enthusiasts for this crap-brained sissy-fighting. Boxing requires speed and endurance. Pro wrestling requires…uh, acting talent, I suppose. What does it take to be an Ultimate Fighter? I guess the inability to make it as a boxer or a pro wrestler.
Eff UFC. And eff you if you like it.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
19
A Few Nitpicks About the New “Star Trek”
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J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” is by far one of the better movies that came out last summer, although that’s kind of a backhanded compliment. Summer 2009 was an embarrassment even by Hollywood standards. Audiences were inundated with “strike movies,” films that had been greenlit with unpolished scripts before the WGA strike. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” literally began production with an outline, and boy, does it show.
“Star Trek” has a host of narrative inconsistencies, what you might call “plot holes.” The pacing, however, is at warp speed, so casual viewers hardly even notice. It’s not the best “Trek” film by a longshot. But it is incredibly fun to watch. I saw it twice in the theater — once in Fake IMAX! — and will probably revisit the DVD more than a few times. I rank it right below the holy trinity of “The Wrath of Khan,” “The Search for Spock” and “The Voyage Home.”
Last summer, I powered through all three seasons of the Original Series on DVD. The television series, particularly its first season, is astonishingly good. I finally saw why the show had found a second life in syndication and spawned a record number of spinoffs as well as a profitable film cycle. I can honestly say that I now consider myself to be an unabashed Trekkie or Trekker or whatever.
The new movie sets up an alternate timeline that radically departs from the TV series’ continuity. That being said, I have a few nitpicks about the differences between the film and the show, things that just can’t easily be explained away by having things set in a parallel reality.
James T. Kirk Was Born in Outer Space?!
Even watching the movie for a third time, I still welled up with tears as Capt. George Kirk prepares to kamikaze the USS Kelvin into Nero’s ship while saying goodbye to his wife, who’s bugging the hell out of there in an escape pod with their newborn son, Jim. But wait just a damn minute here. Jim Kirk wasn’t born in deep space. He was born in Iowa. And why would the Federation allow a woman who’s nine months pregnant, not to mention married to one of the crew, on board a starship in the first place? I mean, space is teeming with genocidal nogoodniks, like the ones we meet about five seconds into the film.
Kirk Calls McCoy “Bones” Because of His Divorce Settlement
Brash Jim Kirk enlists in Starfleet on a dare (seriously), and while aboard a shuttle to Starfleet Academy, he meets Dr. Leonard McCoy, who’s still smarting from a recent divorce. McCoy says, and I’m paraphrasing here, that his ex took the whole planet, leaving him only with his bones. Um, okay. So whenever Kirk refers to McCoy as “Bones,” it’s actually an esoteric reminder of the outcome to McCoy’s lousy divorce. Weird.
But Starfleet Academy Gave Kirk a Commendation for Original Thinking After Beating the Kobayashi Maru
Anyone who’s seen the excellent “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” knows that Jim Kirk doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios, and as such, he reprogrammed the computer for the Kobayashi Maru test of character while he was a student at Starfleet Academy. We get to see that scene in the new film, but instead of getting a commendation for original thinking, as he says he did in “WoK,” he’s admonished by Madea and nearly booted out of the Academy altogether.
Sulu’s Swordsmanship
Kirk, a Redshirt and Hikaru Sulu are drafted to do a HALO jump out of a starship into the Vulcan atmosphere, where they’re to land on a drilling platform and beat up a couple of Romulan goons. But hold on a second. Isn’t Sulu a helmsman? The guys in red shirts are the security officers. It’s why they’re the ones who are notorious for getting bumped off so frequently. That said, Sulu reveals to Kirk that he’s an experienced fencer. Oh, okay then. This is actually a reference to the original series episode, “The Naked Time,” where a shirtless and highly intoxicated Sulu starts waving a fencing sword around on the bridge. However, the sword Sulu uses in the movie isn’t even a fencing sword, nor is he drunk during the action sequence.
Scotty’s Got a Funny Accent, So He’s the Comic Relief
Somewhere along the way, it was decided that Montgomery Scott should be a comedic character. He’s actually a pretty serious fellow on the old TV show. But years and years of stand-up comics riffing on his Scottish accent, not to mention his negative attitude, turned the character into a loveable goofball rather than a stoic engineer. On the show, Kirk often left Scotty in charge of the comm, where he had to make difficult, life-or-death decisions concerning the entire crew. As far as the updated film version of Scotty goes, I wouldn’t trust Simon Pegg with much of anything beyond bashing zombies over the head with a cricket bat.
Those were the most glaring discrepancies between the new movie and the TV series. I considered also pointing out that the Enterprise wasn’t a “new ship” as Captain Pike describes it. Pike wasn’t even the first captain of the Enterprise, but then we’re getting into the Animated Series’ continuity, which I believe is non-canonical. So there’s no need to go down that rabbit hole. The Animated Series blows anyway.
Any Trekkers out there who identified wonky continuity issues I forgot to mention? Post ‘em below.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
18
I’ve never seen “Twilight,” nor have I read any of Stephanie Meyer’s wildly and undeservedly popular novels in the “Twilight” saga. The whole thing strikes me as a defanged spin on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” “New Moon” opens this Friday and continues the sissification of the supernatural by bringing werewolves into the fold.
From what I understand about “Twilight,” it’s a May-December romance between a hundred-year-old vampire named Edward and a boyish-looking teenage girl named Bella. Edward apparently has some sort of learning disability (vampire ADD?) because he’s still in high school. Why a vampire needs a high school diploma is probably explained in one of the later books. Ratcheting up the lameness even higher, Edward doesn’t feed on human blood, making him a “vegetarian” among his ilk; and even worse, he sparkles in the daylight. Most vampires turn to ash, but not Eddie, no sir. Rather, he twinkles like he’s been covered in pixie dust or something.
If a man were to read a “Twilight” book or watch one of the films from beginning to end, his penis would fall right off.
At any rate, Edward and Bella strike up a romance in spite of the fact that they’re from two different worlds. Obviously, they can’t have sex because that’s venturing into Roman Polanski territory, and the books were written by a caffeine-free Mormon. Instead, they spend a lot of time climbing trees and swooning. There isn’t a hell of a lot else to do in a podunk town like Forks, Washington.
I cannot believe people actually read this shit and watch this shit. “Twilight” sounds like utter bilge to me. It used to be that teenage girls would get excited about edgier fare, like Elvis or the Beatles or Menudo. Nowadays, teen girls and their mothers both adore the “Twilight” novels and movies. They’ll wait in line for 24 hours to see the trailer for “New Moon” at Comic Con. I watch myself not have sex everyday. I don’t need to drive all the way to San Diego to watch other people not have it in a two-minute commercial.
I think it’s high time for another monster mash-up in the vein of “Freddy vs. Jason” and “Alien vs. Predator.” I’d like to see “Twilight vs. Blade.” I think that’d be a good flick. Like Edward, Blade doesn’t have an acute allergy to sunlight, being a Daywalker and all; he also makes it a point not to drink human blood if he can avoid it. Unlike Edward, he’s a major badass who knows martial arts, wields samurai swords and carries a mini-arsenal of automatic weapons. Blade’s mission in life is to vanquish all bloodsucking freaks from the face of the Earth. Someone should point him in the direction of Forks, Washington.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
17
How Did I Become a Movie Geek Anyway?
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Back in high school, a super-hot girl I’d briefly dated told me, “I don’t watch movies; I just look at them.” It’s one of the most stunningly dim-witted things I’ve ever heard in my life, which is why I committed it to memory. I think I understand what she was trying to get at. It was clearly meant as a dig. At 17, I was already an unabashed movie geek, though my tastes weren’t fully formed. I lacked the sophistication I’ve since developed over the ensuing years (read my review of “Donkey Punch” here). At any rate, I have a fascination with the cinema that your everyday super-hot girl apparently lacks.
Where did it all begin? Lots of movie geeks who are slightly older than I am can trace their love affair with the medium all the way back to the first time they saw “Star Wars” when it came out in 1977. But, I was born two years later and didn’t see “Star Wars” theatrically until the misnomered Special Edition was re-released in 1997. So it couldn’t have been then. I didn’t even really like “Star Wars” that much when I was a kid. So it certainly didn’t begin my lifelong fascination with movies.
Actually, I think it might’ve been Disney cartoons that got me interested in filmmaking. I’m not talking about “Duck Tales,” but the old animated shorts, the ones that actually starred Mickey, Donald and Goofy before they were condemned to the autograph circuit at the various Disney parks. Believe it or not, the Disney Channel used to run half-hour blocks of cartoons that were older than my parents. It was also the era when Disney started releasing feature-length animated films on VHS in those cushiony boxes. I’ve probably seen “Pinocchio” a thousand times.
And so, when I later learned how cartoons were made, it sparked my interest in drawing, though I didn’t really have a grasp on how painstaking the process of single-cell animation is. But, I’m pretty sure that was the genesis of my interest in visual storytelling.
I grew up in Seattle, where it’s wet and cold virtually every single day of the year. It’s also where Starbucks and clinical depression originated. I can’t believe people live there on purpose. Since the weather was almost always shitty, I stayed inside most of the time and watched movies. I began noticing things, too, like how they were constructed. I paid attention to weird things, like shot composition, editing, music, sound and special effects. Films like “Ghostbusters,” “Back to the Future,” “Die Hard,” “Batman,” “T2″ and “Army of Darkness” became my study guides.
When I was about 14 or 15, I started branching out, watching films from the New Hollywood era in an attempt at deepening my understanding of film language. I saw movies like “A Clockwork Orange,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Deliverance” and so forth. I was a little too young to appreciate what the filmmakers were doing, what the films were saying, so I found those flicks to be kind of sluggish, redeemed only by their flashes of ultraviolence.
Then I saw “Clerks” and “Pulp Fiction.” Filmmaking suddenly became something that seemingly any socially inept nerd like me could do. At 16, I enrolled in a screenwriting extension course at the University of Washington and learned how to knock out a script. Back then, I could write a 90-page screenplay in about a week or so. I remember my first draft of “Slugman” took approximately six days from concept to completion. The only major writing challenge I encountered was coming up with one-liners. My early attempts at screenwriting were about what you’d expect from 16-year-old with very little experience with the fairer sex. That said, they’re pretty much like the horrible movies that people go see in droves every summer, films in which they clearly hashed out the action sequences first then went back and wrote a story around them.
I then wrote and directed a short film called “Trekkies” during my senior year of high school. This was two years before the documentary “Trekkies” came out, so don’t think for one second that I ripped off their title; they ripped me off, the bastiches. Funnily enough, although “Star Wars” did not influence me to become a filmmaker, one of my earliest films is coincidentally about hardcore fans of “Star Wars;” go figure. And no, you’re not reading that wrong. The two main characters in the film, who remain nameless throughout, go on a madcap adventure to see the original “Star Wars” in the theater. The running gag in the film is that all the characters they encounter along the way conflate “Star Wars” with “Star Trek” and refer to them as “Trekkies,” a pejorative, one that’s doubly-insulting for Star Warriors or whatever bullshit label Lucas apologists use to identify themselves.
A high school buddy and I starred in “Trekkies.” My high school sweetheart reluctantly cameoed at the end of the film, too. We were losing the light when we did her scene, so she’s practically unidentifiable. Another buddy of mine dropped out right when we began shooting, forcing me to turn his character into a Blofeld-like figure, whose face we never see. I guess it makes him more menacing, like the shark in “Jaws” or Dr. Claw. I provided the voice for the character, who’s a kidnapper that tries to abduct the heroes while they’re en route to the multiplex. Using a tape recorder to feed us the kidnapper’s lines, we shot a dialogue scene with his literally non-existent character that basically took the concept of ADR but did it in-camera. Granted, we blew about fifty takes trying to get it right, but hey.
So that’s basically how it all started. I like to think that my cinematic education will never quite end. I mean, I have yet to see “Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks.” Someday, though, I’ll watch that flick. I won’t just look at it.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
16
Roland Emmerich, the destroyer of worlds, has finally topped himself. It’s been 13 years since “Independence Day” put him on the map as a filmmaker who lays waste like no other. But his follow-up to that film, 1998’s “Godzilla,” is a lazy, shambling disaster picture that makes kaiju even more boring than the Toho-produced, man-in-suit entries. In 2004’s “Day After Tomorrow,” Emmerich brings environmental consciousness to the disaster movie genre, suggesting the next Ice Age will be deadly dull as well as our own damn fault for not heeding Al Gore’s advice.
For more than a decade, it seemed as though Emmerich had lost his touch. His films about humanity overcoming the end of everything were indeed big and dumb. But there were no fun. “2012″ marks Emmerich’s return to form. It’s his most bloated, most unbelievable, most existential blast to date. It is at once straight-faced and a self-parody. If this is what the apocalypse will be like, buy me a ticket.
As we all know, the Mayan calendar predicts that Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012, and the world will summarily come to an end. The film changes the Mayan prediction slightly, hoping to play better in red states, and instead posits that a planetary alignment will destabilize the Earth’s crust. Planetary alignments in movies typically awaken moribund demon gods or activate some sort of ancient archaeological MacGuffin. They’re also an impossibility. You just have to go with it.
John Cusack plays failed novelist and part-time limo driver, Jackson Curtis, whose weekend with his kids is cut short when the Earth opens up and swallows Los Angeles. “2012″ is a little flabby in its opening third, but once all hell starts to break loose, the film delivers the most relentlessly entertaining chase sequence of the year. Curtis loads his kids, his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and her new boyfriend into his limo and drives from Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica, as Southern California crumbles beneath them in 10.9 earthquake. Then they pile into a private plane, take off as the tarmac sinks into oblivion and buzz past toppling buildings.
In an age where most filmmakers can’t shoot action for shit, Emmerich maintains a clear sense of geography throughout this entire setpiece. It’s completely and totally implausible, but it’s nonetheless engrossing because you can actually tell what’s going on.
Curtis finds out from kooky radio personality Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) that the government’s known about the impending disaster for a few years now. They’ve also been preparing for it by building super-secret arks in China for dignitaries and VIPs who can afford to drop a billion dollars (in Euros!) on a ticket. So Curtis and his family join a Russian oligarch on a trip to the Far East, hoping to board one of the titanic vessels any way they can.
Meanwhile, President Wilson (Danny Glover) bears the burden of being the last POTUS and not having issued an Executive Order to get “Lethal Weapon 5″ made before Mel Gibson came off the rails. His Chief of Something-or-Other, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), butts heads with geologist Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, the man with the easiest name to pronounce in Hollywood) over the ethics of maintaining “the continuity of our species” in the way they’ve chosen. Fortunately, billionaire giraffes and rhinos are being loaded onto the arks too, so the mega-rich can at least enjoy a trip to the zoo after 99.9% of mankind has died horribly.
Emmerich is the leading disaster pornographer of the cinematic medium. The only problem with “2012″ is that it’s practically impossible to outdo. Maybe next he could destroy the entire solar system. Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.
-Brad Lohan