Nov
29
I had a dream last weekend that I was an understudy for the nefarious Broadway musical, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” When the actor I was understudying fell ill, I was called up to take his place. Trouble is, it was one of those dreams where I’m in a play, but I don’t know my lines or my blocking or how to sing for that matter. And so, I bumbled through my Broadway debut, missing my cues and putting other people’s lives at risk.
It was kind of like how things actually happened during the first audience preview.
I’m pretty nuts about Spider-Man and have long contemplated making the trip out to Manhattan just to see the stage spectacular…and to have my genitals touched by a TSA junk inspector. It seems that the production could eclipse “Carrie: The Musical” in terms of being the biggest disaster in Broadway history. I’d kind of like to see what a $65 million failure looks like. Given that 42nd Street is all cleaned up now, what else is there to do in NYC? Get mugged?
Also, there is the slight possibility that it could be kind of great. It has a staggering amount of super-villains (Green Goblin, Kraven, Carnage, Swiss Miss, theatre critics) and some aerial acrobatics that might put the dodgy CGI in the films to shame. What I’ve heard of U2’s musical contributions leaves something to be desired; I guess you could say I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. But, once all the kinks are worked out, who knows? It might be worth shelling out almost $200 for a ticket.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
23
“Batman: Prey” Review
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Last week, I read the delicious rumor that “The Dark Knight Rises” will be based, however loosely, on the five-part “Batman: Prey” storyline from the “Legends of the Dark Knight” comic book series. I’d never read that arc, so I bought the individual issues on eBay and they came in the mail yesterday.
Written by Doug Moench and drawn by Paul Gulacy, “Batman: Prey” is set in the wake of “Batman: Year One” — Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli’s retelling of Batman’s origin and required reading for fans of the Caped Crusader. Batman has forged a shaky alliance with Captain Gordon of the GCPD, but is still largely viewed as a menace. And so, the mayor nominates Gordon to head up a task force to apprehend Batman with the help of the aloof criminal psychologist, Dr. Hugo Strange. Gordon asks the incorruptible Sgt. Cort to be his second-in-command on the task force, as Strange tries to work up a profile on Batman. Strange’s methods for psychoanalyzing the Dark Knight include dressing up in his own homemade Batman costume and spending a lot of alone time in his penthouse apartment with a mannequin wearing lingerie. Strange later kidnaps Sgt. Cort, drugs him with a hallucinogen and sends him out to stalk the city streets as the bone-crunching vigilante, Night Scourge. All the while, Batman tries to cope with being the crosshairs of both cops and criminals alike.
Oh, and Catwoman’s in there, too.
I can see how “Batman: Prey” could work as the next film in the series. It has that gritty realism that Nolan’s going for (i.e. Robin ain’t in it). Dr. Hugo Strange is one helluva nutjob that a solid character actor can really sink his teeth into. Beefing up the subplot with Catwoman would give Batman an interesting love story subplot to further complicate matters. If anything, Catwoman feels a little shoehorned in on the page. Sgt. Cort/Night Scourge is an interesting addition to the mythos. Rumor is that Tom Hardy’s been cast as a cop in the new film, so instead of Strange, he might be Cort or some sort of Cort-like surrogate. Either way, pitting him against Christian Bale’s Batman is an inspired casting choice.
What’ll likely happen is that Nolan will borrow elements of “Batman: Prey” rather than doing a straight adaptation. “The Dark Knight” owes some plot elements to “The Long Halloween” but is largely its own story. This is definitely one of the stronger runs I’ve read in the Batman mythos. I find Grant Morrison’s current runs on “Batman and Robin” and “Batman Inc” to be infuriatingly inaccessible to casual readers. I picked up “Batman: Prey,” which was published 20 years ago, and was drawn in immediately. It’s definitely something to tide Batman fans over until the next film.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
22
George Lucas Exposed My Childhood to Dangerous Levels of Cadmium
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I vaguely remember getting the entire set of “Return of the Jedi” drinking glasses at Burger King way, way back in the summer of 1983. Although my fondness for the “Star Wars” saga is at an all-time nadir, I still proudly keep all four of those glasses in my cabinet at home right next to my complete set of “Star Trek” glasses that came out last year. I even have a set of “E.T.” drinking glasses on my eBay watch list. I have no idea why, but I’m fixated on collectible drinkware.
Well, I was until I learned that those very same ROTJ glasses have highly toxic levels of lead in them. Oops. And to think I’ve been drinking out of those off and on for over a quarter-century. I guess that explains a lot.
There was some outcry last summer when the “Shrek Forever After” McDonald’s glasses were found to be more toxic than the film they were based on. But that was within a month of the film’s release. I’ve owned the ROTJ glasses since Eddie Murphy was genuinely funny, which was a long, long time ago.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
19
Has it been nine years since the first Harry Potter movie? It doesn’t feel that long. Well, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1″ feels like it goes on for the better part of a decade. But it seems like just last week that I watched Chris Columbus’ first — and slavishly faithful — adaptation of JK Rowling’s franchise-starting novel.
The best film in the series canon is the Alfonso Cuaron-directed “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Fact. It’s in that film that the characters and the story world finally come alive. Subsequent entries have all emulated Cuaron’s approach, never quite hitting the right balance of humor and teen angst. Cuaron was also the first to eliminate the boring parts and direct a true adaptation of the source material.
Superfans want to see every page of Rowling’s books brought to life, but that approach doesn’t lend itself to a particularly strong film. Did I segue into what’s wrong with “Deathly Hallows, Part 1″ like a champion or what? Zounds, this movie is endless. It gets off to kind of a wonky start, begins to find its footing and then at the 45-minute mark, Harry goes camping…for like an hour.
I read the seventh book and found the camping scenes to be a real pace-killer on the page as well. They’re just narratively inert, and the interpersonal conflicts within the core trifecta of Harry, Ron and Hermione just aren’t enough to hang most of the second act on. Harry mostly comes across as passive and listless. After six damn movies, he’s still relying on too many of his allies to do a lot of the heavy-lifting for him. It was one thing when he was 11. Now that he’s creeping up on adulthood, he needs to man-up and stop hiding behind his friends.
Splitting the film in two does a major disservice to the first half. I can understand why Warner Bros. wants to squeeze as much blood from the [Sorcerer's] stone as they can. However, the experience of watching this part is wholly unsatisfying because it’s all setup and no payoff. The previous Harry Potter films resolve some sort of central conflict in the service of a much larger story, giving you a bit of closure while enticing you into seeing the subsequent entry. This movie just sort of stops after a confrontation with one of Lord Voldemort’s lackeys. A minor, but likable enough, character dies, and yet there’s not enough weight given to any of the proceedings. It’s an anti-climax, and after nearly two and a half hours of movie, you feel a bit gypped.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
17
As a general rule, I try to avoid getting too excited about rumors regarding “The Dark Knight Rises.” The movie is a year and a half away, and they haven’t begun filming. Hell, “Men in Black 3″ was filming, and they’re now taking a two-month break from shooting to rework the script. But, this Batman rumor is so good, I want it to be true.
Tom Hardy will be Hugo Strange in “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Wait, who’s Hugo Strange? And who’s Tom Hardy? Well, Tom Hardy was the thick-necked Englishman in “Inception.” He’s already been cast in the new Batman movie in an unspecified role. Word is, he’ll play the bald-headed, bearded and bespectacled Hugo Strange, a criminal psychologist called upon to aid Commission Gordon in Batman’s apprehension. He’s got such a great look. And I’d love to see what Hardy does with the role. The actor played the titular role in “Bronson,” playing the UK’s most famous prison inmate. Hardy can deliver one hell of a performance.
I’d like to see Nolan tackle another villain that’s relatively unknown to mainstream audiences. The Riddler and the Penguin really don’t fit within his real world approach to Batman. It’s difficult to top Heath Ledger’s Joker, so choosing on obscure character and an up-and-coming actor means much less baggage for the audience to overcome. There have been calls for Nolan to use the assassin Deadshot, which I’m not opposed to, but Hugo Strange just seems like a terrific fit for this universe. Pairing him with Commissioner Gordon also presents all sorts of internal conflict within the GCPD. Lots of possibilities here.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
16
I’ve been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately, gleaning all sorts of arcane trivia from the Retroist podcast.
I had no idea that there was a video game crash in 1983, since I was a toddler at the time. But apparently, the market was flooded with product from Atari as well as the long-forgotten Coleco and Intellivision consoles. That, coupled with the colossal failure of “E.T.,” caused the video game bubble to burst. Wait, “E.T.” was a failure? Wasn’t the movie a huge hit? Yes, the movie “E.T.” was successful to the point of shattering one’s senses. The Atari game, however, shit the bed in terms of sales and critical reception.
Now I want one.
After “E.T.” opened in the summer of 1982 — within a week or two of “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” IIRC — there was no shortage of “E.T.” merch; I have a collection of “E.T.” Pizza Hut glasses on my eBay watch list as of this writing. But, there wasn’t a video game released in tandem with the film, not like today when most major films have some sort of tie-in for the PS3, XBOX 360 and Wii released around the same time they hit screens. And so, Atari took a meeting with Steven Spielberg in July of ‘82 to discuss an “E.T.” video game that would be released in time for Christmas of that very same year. Atari apparently sank $125 million into the production of the game. That’s more than 12 times what it cost to make the movie.
The game was cranked out within the limited time frame and was obviously one of the most anticipated games of the holiday season. But, retailers overestimated exactly how many units would fly off shelves like Elliott’s gravity-defying bike. About 3.5 million unsold units were returned to Atari after the holiday season. Here comes my favorite part of the story. All those unsold cartridges were buried beneath a layer of cement in a landfill somewhere in New Mexico. It’s almost like the game pissed off the Mafia.
An even worse fate was met by the 1.5 million consumers who purchased the game. By all accounts, it’s terrible. Players control E.T. as he waddles through different environments, looking for parts to build a phone so that he can call home. The gameplay wasn’t on the level of the literal game-changers of the time like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. E.T. just falls into pits, finds the components he needs to build a phone and evades FBI agents. He recuperates from any injuries he sustains by eating Reese’s Pieces. I find a crude charm in the lack of sophistication as far as the graphics are concerned. The game mechanics are probably maddening.
Still, I’d love the play the thing.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
9
I finally watched the pilot episode of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” last night. Based on Robert Kirkman’s long-running (and slow-moving) graphic novel, the series opener was written and directed by Frank Darabont (“The Mist”) and produced by Gale-Anne Hurd (“The Punisher”). I think the show should be retitled “Bored to Death,” but there’s already something called that on HBO.
What a shambling corpse of an episode! It runs through all the familiar tropes without breaking any new ground. In fact, there’s a section that draws heavily from the beginning of “28 Days Later,” but without the growing sense of dread or creepy atmosphere. The zombies simply ain’t scary in this thing. David Tattersall’s cinematography is so brightly-lit and washed-out. Afternoon is probably not the most spooky time of day to encounter flesh-eating corpses.
Andrew Lincoln stars as Rick Grimes, a deputy sheriff who was laid up in the hospital during the first few weeks of the zombie apocalypse and slept through the whole thing. He spends most of the episode stumbling around bow-legged in a hospital gown, trying to comprehend what’s happening. Characters in zombie movies, TV shows and comics always seemingly exist in universes where there are no zombie movies, TV shows or comics. And so, we have to watch them flounder for awhile until someone comes along and tells them what’s what.
The zombie rules are the same. If you’re bitten, you turn into one of them. The only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head. You could try putting one to sleep by showing it the pilot episode of “The Walking Dead,” but even a slow-moving zombie wouldn’t sit still for this slog.
The problem with “The Walking Dead” graphic novel — and I’ve read every one of ‘em, so I know — is that everything feels padded out. Kirkman is more interested in on-the-nose dialogue and his bland characters than zombie carnage. The show has the same bloat. It runs a little over an hour, but it feels like three. Nothing really happens until the final moments, just like in the damn comic, and then — boom — it’s over. I like cliffhangers as a narrative device when the events building up to them keep me engaged. Otherwise, they’re a cheap gimmick used to salvage otherwise underwhelming material.
And trapping the hero INSIDE A TANK doesn’t even seem like all that much of a cliffhanger to me. “Ooh, how’s he going to get out of this scrape?!”
I don’t think I’m going to bother with another episode of “The Walking Dead.” I know the pilot had boffo ratings for AMC, but I’d've probably bailed on this if I hadn’t dropped $3.99 for it on iTunes and desperately needed to come up with something to complain about on my blog.
-Brad Lohan