Testosterone!

With the A-Team and The Losers coming out,(*) it's going to be a good year for action movies in which a band of elite soldiers are betrayed by someone (causing them to seek revenge).

(*) And the Expendables, but I don't trust that yet.








I'm surprised at how fun the A-Team looks, and concerned at how the trailer for the Losers seems too fun - doesn't quite capture the tone I liked from the comics.

... Hmm. OK. After actually watching the new Expendables trailer - I've changed my mind. All three of these films have great casting, and look like they're going to deliver my fix of badass.

Movies: February

Cover of Marebito

I can tell February was busy because of the small number of movies I watched.

I got through the first third of Marebito, a J-scare from the director of The Grudge and Reincarnation. I actually ended up napping instead of watching, and still haven't gotten to the point where the story actually kicks off ... I'll probably go back to it and give it another 10 minutes, but so far it seems less solid and more pretentious than Reincarnation.

Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part 1) was a nice 'moving the pieces into place' episode with a great scary kick at the end of the episode that absolutely makes me go "What the hell is the Doctor going to do?" *and* may give me some closure on Donna Noble.

Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part 2) made me cry. An effective payoff to the "He will knock four times" set-up, and a series of scenes that provided closure on a number of Russell T Davies plots. This part was less about the plot and more about the emotions, and I choked up as David Tennant finished his run. I think I'll miss his Doctor about as much as I miss Tom Baker's.

Started watching my favourite film, The Insider, but had to go do something else. Even watching the first 20 minutes though has reminded me how good this script is. An expanded review is definitely coming.

A Nightmare on Elm Street played like a sit-com to me. The last half hour of this movie consists of idiot cops and ultra-violent pratfalls as Freddy Kruger falls victim to a series of booby-traps that Nancy has set up in her home. An odd, hilarious movie.

Movies: January

Surf's Up is a surprisingly enjoyable animated film. It's a story about a penguin trying to win a surfing competition, and the film takes advantage of the fact it's shot in a handheld reality TV style to create a relaxed (almost-improvised feeling) series of jokes.

Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a film I remember as being long and dull. I was wrong - this time round it played out as a fun romp with engaging characters.

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest is a film I remember as being long, dull and overly-complicated. I was mostly wrong - it is extremely long, but I think my two main problems when I watched this in the movies in 2006 were (i) I'd completely forgotten who all the characters were in the two years since I'd seen the first one (like, who is this 'Norrington' guy, again?), and (ii) in the cinema this played out like an ADD assault on my senses with a volume at somewhere around 120dB. Both Dead Man's Chest and its sequel play better watched as part of a trilogy - they play even better when viewed as a single epic fantasy film that you can break up into easily digestible pieces on your computer.

Avatar was good.

I watched Mike from Milwaukee's video review of The Phantom Menace. It's a 70 minute long work of incisive, cruel comedy gold. Among the many highlights, a two minute explanation of why Qui-Gon Jin's strategy to free Anakin Skywalker from slavery makes no sense whatsoever. It also spends a lot of time pointing out the biggest flaw of the movie for me: that it lacks a main character, and that the most obvious choice for a main character (Anakin) doesn't show up for 45 minutes and then proceeds to do basically nothing for the rest of the story. What I hadn't noticed before was the story potential to be mined from amalgamating Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's characters. Anyway it's great: here's a link to all seven parts of the review. I've embedded the first part, below.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End. Again, I enjoyed this, breaking it up into smaller chunks. (Perhaps I have become influenced by watching too much TV on DVD, and 45 minutes seems like a natural amount of time to sit down to watch something.) Particularly liked spending alone time with Jack, and the battle at the end.

Inglourious Basterds doesn't actually feel like a Tarantino film to me, and I think that's a good thing. I suppose what I mean by that is that there's a focus on the story that I appreciate (as opposed to focusing on making sure that you'll perceive that the story is being told in a way that's cool). As a script, I guess the main character is Shoshanna, the protagonists are Shoshanna and Aldo Raines, and the antagonist is the German education system - which seems to produce perceptive and resourceful soldiers. I broke this in a multi-day viewing - because the film itself is broken into chapters - and I found it immensely satisfying.

Watched Reincarnation at Chris' recommendation. An excellent J-scare by the director of the Grudge, involving a movie being shot about a horrible slaughter at a hotel 35 years ago. Past lives, repressed memories and multiple timelines ensue. What's great about this film is that it slowly trains to you keep looking into the backgrounds of shots, because weird and disturbing shit keeps happening there in really subtle ways. After about 25 minutes of that, the movie had me on the edge of my seat without really needing to do anything scary at all - it had made the ordinary terrifying. Bonus points for NOT playing out a twist with one particular character, and for having a very very appropriate ending. I, too, now recommend this film.

2009: Favourite Movies

Here are the stand-out movies I saw this year:

500 Days of Summer: A playful structure, a melancholic mood, and a conflict between the characters that I really cared about.

District 9 is great fun. An excellent action film that reinvigorated my love of movies.

The Fountain: Beautiful, emotional, and the first Aronofsky film that I can imagine myself rewatching.

It Might Get Loud: I am the target audience for a movie about how Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White became guitarists.

The Room is the Plan 9 from Outer Space of '90s indie movies. I suspect that within 2 to 10 years, The Room will be as well known as Plan 9.

Shortbus: an extremely explicit movie about people trying to overcome sexual problems in their lives. Provocative, funny, moving, and dealing with conflicts that most movies prefer to ignore. I thought this movie was fantastic.

Soul Power covers the 1974 concert in Zaire that took place at the same-ish time as the Ali-Foreman fight. Lots of great performers including James Brown, favourite-bluesman-ever BB King, and new favourite singer Bill Withers. For me it's a movie that really illustrated the joy of playing music, and the satisfaction of playing music yourself rather than receiving it from some 'star'. Great stuff.

Zombieland: a feel-good romantic comedy with an attitude that's perfectly pitched to my tastes. Taught me that interesting things can happen in a zombie movie when you dial the zombie threat down to about a 2 out of 10.



Rather than pick a best film of 2009 (whatever that means), I can see myself rewatching all of these. But the ones that I think I will continue to get something from are (500) Days of Summer and Shortbus.

Movies: October to December

There will be Blood was great on a rewatch, but I still haven't managed to perfect my Daniel Plainview impersonation.

I expected Rescue Dawn to be a man-against-the-jungle movie, but it turned out to be far more of a prison break film. Nice to see Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn get some serious screen-time (and it reminded me of my favourite Steve Zahn performance - in Sahara, where he plays a cocky guy who doesn't realise that he's Matthew McConaughey's sidekick.)

Drag Me to Hell: Torment porn from Sam Raimi. I really enjoyed it, even though the last half hour had that inevitability that comes from figuring out a key plot point a little too early. This film provided a powerful reminder to me that inappropriate bodily fluids being forced through people's mouths is what true gross-out horror is all about.

The Science of Sleep is Michel Gondry's film about dreams, love and hope. At first it uplifted me, but in the end it left me terribly terribly sad.

The Godfather Part 2 didn't seem as clearly plotted to me as Part 1, perhaps because the identity of Michael's antagonist is hidden for so long, but the intercutting between timelines is elegant. It's a satisfying, classy story of revenge, and a timely reminder never to go fishing on Lake Tahoe.

Priceless is a fun sexy French comedy with a totally coherent storyline and sexy selfish characters I really cared about.

Twilight was brilliant because when it turned out that Bella's mum was played by Sarah Chalke (Nina Myers on 24), I learned that my flatmate is a huge fan of 24 too, so we spent the last half hour of the film talking about that.

Green Street Hooligans is a fun B-grade movie (that wants to be an A-grade movie) about Elijah Wood learning to be a football-hooligan. Worth watching for the climactic fight where the film-makers were unable to afford the rights to Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, and instead had to create a similar-sounding song.

2012 is totally worth $16 at the movies. It feels like a video-game with some pretty annoying things to say about how women should look after the kids and not take any independent action, but it blows stuff up amazingly. A really (often unintentionally) funny film, with the best cast of actors of any Roland Emmerich film so far.

I still like Miami Vice, but I suspect my opinion may change after a few more viewings. Perhaps it is the The Phantom Menace of Michael Mann films.

12 Monkeys is a movie I'd forgotten I'd owned. It gets increasingly strong as the film goes along, and Bruce Willis gets saner and saner. I'm not a fan of overly expressive camera angles, but I am a fan of doom.

Last Days is Gus van Sant's take on Kurt Cobain's suicide. I got through about half of it before having to turn it off. While it's brilliantly shot, performed and written, with a really quiet quiet way about it, Last Days was just taking me into an emotional place that I didn't want to go.

The Waters of Mars had some nice scary imagery in it - reminiscent of The Event, actually - but overall felt like stuff I'd seen before. Loved the final two or three minutes though. The Doctor as 'arrogant' is something I'd like to see more of, and I can't wait for the fifth Dr Who special.

Torchwood: Children of Earth. I don't know if I'm on the record about Torchwood, but I don't think it works as a show. Season 1 veered between broad comedy and OTT angst; while it had a few good episodes, I found Season 1 so inconsistent that I didn't even bother watching its finale. I certainly didn't bother watching any of Season 2. So bear that in mind when I say that Torchwood: Children of Earth, a 5-part mini-series about alien abduction. Is. Fucking. Awesome. If you're in to dark British SF at all, it's a must-see.

Enemy of the State is a movie I've only watched in bits and pieces before. Having now sat through the whole thing, I feel exactly the same way. It's excellently crafted to stress you out though, and quite amazing in how quickly (and implausibly) they make scenes move through plot points in order to destroy Will Smith's life.

Zombieland is one of the feel-good films of the year. The way it turns zombies into an element of the setting, rather than a threat helps focus the story on the survivors and their rom-com / buddy movie relationships. Also: a fascinating example of how you can make splatter completely acceptable as long as you surround it with a sight gag or a really funny line of dialogue. Highly recommended.

The Plan is the final film in the Battlestar Galactica reboot. It's the story of two Cavils who find themselves in different parts of the war. I found that seeing the Galactica-based events of Season 1 from Cavil's POV gave me a lot of insight. Unfortunately, the other Cavil (based on Caprica) didn't have enough screen-time to really justify his change of character for me. As a result, I'm calling this one insightful but not essential.

I found Where the Wild Things to be a melancholic film about gently damaged people. It was not the movie I'd hoped for. Rather than being full of subtext, there were a few too many sequences for me where what was happening on screen was all that was happening - which made the movie a little too simple in places. It is, however, beautifully shot, with spectacular images, great performances and an interesting message about how complicated human relationships are. I'm torn about this one - but I'm coming down on the side of "it's good and worthwhile seeing."
It's pretty much an art film in

New Media: No more CDs! No more DVDs!

I suspect reading about what the media landscape is going to look like over the next five to ten years has made me decide I'm not going to buy CDs or DVDs ever again.

First off, EVERYTHING is going to be available for us to download. This BBC article about spotify.com has convinced me that having access to everything and not needing to own it is the way forward.

I'm looking forward to owning less stuff. As I see it, there are three tiers of media: stuff I'll watch once, stuff I'll watch more than once, and stuff I develop an emotional attachment to. It's only stuff in that third category I really need to own. The other stuff I'm happy to download as bandwidth becomes cheaper. (In fact, I watched the first episode of The Cult on TVNZ on Demand and thought the experience was fine.)

But, obviously, this raise concerns about the companies providing these downloads censoring material or restricting access to them (through price, digital rights management [DRM], or whatever. But the counter to that is torrenting.

I also think that JP's concerns about not being able to own the physical artifact are going to be addressed through:

i) treating the physical items as rarities
ii) being able to manufacture any item you want in-store (burn a CD, if that's what you want, or print any book you have the files for).

I also recommend checking out Amanda Palmer's post, 'why i am not afraid to take your money':

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks.

please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money.

dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it.

And a bit of an RPG geek-out: The Future of Tabletop Gaming. If that post was too long, and you didn't read it, then here's the summary: Technology is going to change gaming. That's inevitable. So figure out what tech-assisted games are going to look like, and go out and make them.

Tabletop gaming favours young people.(*) Pretty soon, we're all going to be carrying around extremely powerful computers (iPhones, smart phones, PDAs). The costs for developing programmes for these ubiquitous technologies is getting cheaper.

(*) As you get older, it's tough to get people together for a game once you factor in family commitments, transport, and work.

Therefore, we'll move away from books, and into creating technology assisted imaginary spaces. And the business model will change:

... [Do] whatever it takes to get people playing your game. The old model was Selling More Books = Making More Money. That’s gone. Already gone. The future is more people playing = making more money.

... Sell your content. No, I don’t mean your fifty pages of history for your setting. I mean new classes, new skills, powers, gear. Stuff your players can use. Stuff they can play with.

... The lesson here is not “Augmented Reality is going to change tabletop gaming.” AR is just one component of it. The fact that all the players in the target demo will live with and on their personal mobile web devices complete with cameras and social networking is the lesson. The fact that they’ll pay you $5 for a new class or race is the lesson.

I think I disagree with one minor thing in the article: I can see how tech like virtual tabletops and Skype can get older people together, while still balancing families and work. But the rest of the article seems pretty damn sound to me.

Movies: August to October

My Neighbour Totoro really deserves the warm fondness that Jenni and Svend use when they talk about it. To me, it felt like an essential film in building up my understanding of Japanese fairytales and its spirit world. There is also a scene at a bus stop which plays out an incredibly audacious intersection between our normal world and the spirit world; the whole movie slowly, plausibly builds up the idea of spirit creatures living in the forest ... but this scene is simply incredible in the way it matter-of-factly brings Totoro in the lives of the main characters.

Bruno is pretty much a masterpiece of script writing. Much like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it features a protagonist who believes he's competent but who fails at every single turn. Bruno has an outer motivation of becoming a celebrity and an inner motivation of finding true love - and the film brings both of those motivations (and Bruno's dominant character trait of outrageous hyper-homosexuality) together for a draw-dropping climax. The only problem for me was that I felt many of the comedic set-pieces featured people who were in on the joke. So, the script = great; the candid camera stuff veered between okay and freaking brilliant. I now want to check out Borat.

Desperation adapts a very large Stephen King novel into a tele-movie. That means a TV budget, so instead of an actor like Terence Stamp or 1980s Peter O'Toole playing Johnny Marinnville, you have Tom Skerrit. Which, I admit, is an interesting choice. The film feels forced, in that typical Mick Garris way, with lots of extreme camera angles and stupid jump scares (a slot machine that pours blood? Really? He didn't get enough of that bullshit when he had the cash register ring up 'No Sale' in the mini-series version of The Shining?). In fact, by about halfway through I felt that Desperation was taking its visual cues from a Resident Evil game, rather than 100 years of cinematography.

On the plus side, Desperation's score has a simple memorable main theme, and it contains a couple of great flashbacks and an amazing establishing shot of the mine at the story's centre. Overall, though, I felt it rushed through the emotions of the book: there were quite a few instances where I didn't feel for the characters, or where the story moved along so fast that it was hard to follow. Also, this is a story that is very much about God ... and unfortunately God's presence in the film felt cosmetic to me, rather than heavy and urgent. All-in-all, I think this one is ready for a smarter version with a slightly bigger budget.

Weird thing about that music - it reminds me a lot of the theme from Moon; there are a lot of interesting parallels that I lack the vocabulary to describe accurately. Here's the first 10 minutes of Desperation (the music is in the first minute thirty):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXVIwB6Gi_8

(There's no embed for this, unfortunately.) Now, here's the trailer for Moon - and beware! Spoilers. If you haven't seen Moon yet, I wouldn't watch this.

District 9 is great fun. Mostly an excellent film, with frequent moments of awesome and occasional bursts of greatness. Warning: Contains action, aliens, robots, racists and an extremely funny pig. My favourite thing about the film was the inexorable escalation of violence between the different factions as the movie pushed its way towards the end - there was a great moment where I realised, "But if they do that, then the Nigerians would have to do this, and that would mean the MNU would have to respond like this ... oh shit!" Cue an extremely satisfying finale to an impressive film.




Coraline was remarkably more subdued than I expected. For most of the movie I didn't quite feel a sense of excitement about the magical other world that Coraline was exploring - possibly because, for me, her real world seemed just as interesting, and possibly because the script didn't build up the sense of wonder and awe for me. However, once the battle of wills really started between Coraline and her Other Mother, I was seriously into it - the talking cat, the small world, vampire dogs ... it all worked for me. But the end result was a smaller, more intimate film than I was expecting. And the 3D was definitely not essential to the experience.

After three viewings, The Godfather finally worked for me. Perhaps I needed a break of a decade, and to watch The Sopranos and The Wire, but now I can see exactly how influential it is and more importantly how simple and clear the story is: after two introductory sequences (meeting the family at the wedding, seeing how the Corleones operate in Hollywood) the story deals with the implications of a single decision to say no to a man with powerful backers. I cannot wait to watch Part II.

Jenni and Lee arranged a screening of Hopeless. I had a blast watching it for the first time in about three years - I'm now pretty confident about the audience response to the film - the slow build, the scattershot laughs and then the second half of the film jelling more and more. It's funny looking back on it; Hopeless is about young, insecure characters who don't really know how to talk to each other or be in relationships. The film is similarly a little insecure - dashing around the place and aiming to amuse. Which it does ... but watching it, I can't help feeling that we should have gone for the dramatic throat a bit more: that it's not Richard who Phil makes his confession about but rather the guy standing next to him; that Ben actually declares that he loves Maryann (rather than that he loves her as a friend). And it's only in retrospect that I can see the movie seriously pulses with suggestions of bisexuality and polyamorous relationships - that would've been some seriously awesome stuff to explore.

I watched the last hour of Southland Tales, and then the next day watched the whole thing. I'd actually kind of recommend this - knowing where the movie's going eased me into putting up with how it gets there. It kind of feels like Strange Days as directed by Terry Gilliam and written by someone from the 1980s influenced by Repo Man and Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. The film sprawls and the script doesn't really make it easy to let the audience in on what's going on, instead preferring to consistently make an odder choice than you'd expect. But the use of the screenplay inside the film to represent fate, and the ultimate destinies of the characters ... well, I found they moved me on my one and half-th viewing.

Stardust is like a darker, more epic version of the Princess Bride. Slightly less witty, more episodic and possessing more protagonists to keep track of. I recommend it though - it was a good reminder for me of how powerful fantasy can be in delivering an emotional kick.

500 Days of Summer (2009)

scr. by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber

There's a lot to enjoy about this relationship comedy, much of it centring around its playful structure.

Pay attention to the difference between how Tom and Summer are presented. Tom is definitely the main character of the film: the story is presented mostly through his eyes, and it's sympathetic towards him. We have way less psychological access to Summer and what's going on with her; as a result, to Tom she appears to flip between being his dream girl and a complete bitch. And there's at least one point in the movie where Summer does something that makes no apparent sense whatsoever.

But ...

Here's the thing when you watch it: accept that Summer is not the main character but play a little mental game and pretend that she is the protagonist of the film. The one who has to make choices and change.

Go further and pretend that Tom is her antagonist. From the Elements of Persuasion:

Antagonists keep the Hero from achieving their goal.

Antagonists don't create conflict; they "clarify what the conflict is about"....
[Stories] aren't about 'defeating' the Antagonist, they're about us discovering
what we need to change in order to defeat them.

Keep that in mind and you might find the script's structure is not only playful but extremely balanced.

I highly recommend this film - so far it's in my top 5 for the year.

Movies: Film Festival mini-reviews

Soul Power covers the 1974 concert in Zaire that took place at the same-ish time as the Ali-Foreman fight. Lots of great performers including James Brown, favourite-bluesman-ever BB King, and new favourite singer Bill Withers. For me it's a movie that really illustrated the joy of playing music, and the satisfaction of playing music yourself rather than receiving it from some 'star'. Great stuff.

Moon is impossible for me to discuss without talking spoilers. So, I'm talk about it at the bottom of this post.

2009 was a middling year in terms of the number of movies I missed that were on my must-see list: In The Loop (scheduling conflict with Moon), Rachel (got the start time wrong), This Way of Life (couldn't be bothered, on the day). Far more impressive were the number of movies I missed that I only really really wanted to see: Mother, Afghan Star, Rough Aunties, Visual Acoustics, Thirst, and The First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

It Might Get Loud was the last film of the festival for me, and definitely my favourite. I am the target audience for a movie about how Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White became guitarists.

OK, back to Moon. I guess all I really wanted to say is that I have a brain that can't help but try and guess the twist in a movie. As much as I try to shut it off, it keeps ticking along - adding new information into my working theories about what's really happening. It's ruined the full effect of a few movies for me (Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, in particular).

Moon doesn't really have a twist. As a story, it plays pretty fair - and actually reveals what's happening very early on. My problem, though, was that the reveal implicitly establishes a few things that need to happen. Two characters have to come into conflict. There has to be an investigation. Certain people have to respond to events that occur early in the movie. That sense of inevitability bugged me.

On the other hand, I was anti-bugged by Sam Rockwell's performance, the look and feel of the film, and the Clint Mansell soundtrack. These things were extraordinary.

Movies: Some capsule reviews

My consumption of feature-length media continues.

Beetlejuice is a movie I haven't seen since it came out in 1988. It's far more incoherent than I remembered, but I totally forgave it because of its great over the top performances and production design. Weird that Beetlejuice doesn't actually show up as much as I remembered, though.

Knowing is the movie that taught me it now costs $16 to go to the movies. Way freaking darker than I expected, but lacking in psychological plausibility and possessing a cringe-inducing epilogue.

Paprika is an anime about dreams, movies, and weird surreal parades filled with fridges and frogs. For me, this was an almost great movie, despite its repetitive scenes and frequent incoherence. Here are the opening credits (which I fell in love with):



Shortbus is a movie about people trying to overcome sexual problems in their lives. It may have kicked off the Bex/Steve breakup via a pretty intense discussion about pornography and morality, but I thought this movie was fantastic.

Snakes on a Plane has an unexpectedly lame opening credit sequence, but is pretty much utterly ludicrous fun for the rest of its running time.

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor was quite fun, with the best giant robot threatening London since Steamboy, and I found the ending moving and affectionate.

Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead was great; the storyline had a clarity to it that I appreciated. Nice dread at the end, too. Michelle Ryan would've been an excellent on-going companion but I can see that she might have overshadowed the new Doctor as he finds his feet in the role.

The Frighteners is a nice companion piece to Beetlejuice. I'd forgotten how it descends from frivolity into darkness. The Director's Cut makes a whole bunch of stuff play better too: Jeffrey Combs delivering the classic line "My body is a roadmap of pain", and the murder-spree flashbacks in the hospital. Overall: PG for Pretty Good.

Snatch lacks a compelling central story or characters to focus on, but it's got a nice, ironic big-picture view of seedy London. I particularly liked this guy:




Layer Cake, on the other hand, has a clear focus and a taut, political view of epic-level criminal London while still remaining filled with the potential for brutal violence. This and Shortbus are the best movies I've seen recently.

The Fountain

scr. by Darren Aronofsky

A beautiful and (I felt) moving film, this is the first Aronofsky film that I can imagine myself rewatching.

Brief summary: It's a love story told in three time frames (15th century, modern day, and far future) about the search for immortality.

Something strange happened to me while watching this film.


*** SPOILERS ***






The movie begins with a sequence of a Spanish conquistador fighting and struggling to the top of a ziggurat, where he is attacked and apparently killed by a Mayan angel wielding a flaming sword.

Later, after establishing the other two time frames (far future and modern day), it's revealed that this 15th century South American sub-plot is actually a novel written by one of the modern day characters. At which point, we cut back to that sub-plot. And immediately I started wondering "Well, given that I know these people are just fictional characters, do I actually care about them less now?"

... which, after a few seconds, made me go "What the hell am I saying?" Every character in the film is fictional. Every character in every film I've ever watched is fictional. Should I care less about 15th century Hugh Jackman (15cHJ) just because I've had my face rubbed in his ... ah ... 'intra-fictional' nature?

And the answer I had to come to was 'Of course not'. As long as the script is making me care about them, then it doesn't matter what particular degree of unreality a character exhibits. In the case of The Fountain, not only did I enjoy the parallels between all three stories but I forgot that 15cHJ was a character in a story written by a character in a story to such a degree that I was shocked when he met his eventual fate.

It all reminded me of an argument (friendly but intense) that I got into with Sean and Andrew during the post-production stage of hopeless. I'd watched so much of the film's raw footage - actors pissing around on set before the 1st AD yelled action - that sometimes, when I looked at the film just so, the illusion of that it was a story would disappear. All I'd see was the moments we'd specifically selected, the moments where we liked the actor saying this particular line in this particular way.

What this meant, I argued, was that we were actually watching a documentary about things that had happened on set. And our brains were choosing (quite reasonably) to interpret that as a story filled with characters and plot, rather than the inter-spliced moments of reality that they actually were.

In the case of my 'films are actually documentaries' opinion, our brains don't really need to exercise much choice at all to create a story. In the case of The Fountain, I found I needed to make a real initial effort to buy into 15cHJ as a character I could care about (after all, if he's just a story, who cares if he lives or dies, right?).

There's something connecting those two points, but I can't quite see it at the moment.

Terminator Salvation: more constructive

OK, so I found the film deeply annoying. Annoying enough that before I went to sleep last night, I had to figure out what I would do with it. Rather than exercise any original thought, I took the premise of the film as my starting point and here's what I came up with.

*** SPOILERS ***

It's a trilogy.

Rather than focusing on the plot of each film, what I'm most interested in is setting up interesting arenas for each film to explore. The first film is about friendship, the second film is about loyalty, and the third film is about achieving victory when you're not protected by destiny anymore.

Movie 1: Is all about establishing the relationship between Marcus Wright and Kyle Reese. Maybe the movie starts the same way, or maybe it starts with Marcus walking out of the desert. Either way, Movie 1's mission statement is make Marcus/Kyle the coolest post-apocalyptic duo ever. Make their friendship legendary. Kyle is the boy with the plans; Marcus is the guy who can pull them off.

John Connor is an off-screen figure, a legendary inspiration who is essential to the Resistance.

During Movie 1, much of the same stuff happens to Kyle, giving Marcus an against-impossible-odds rescue mission. During it, he discovers pivotal information about himself (and what he's supposed to do to Connor). Movie 1 ends with Kyle rescued, Marcus reeling, and both of them forced by circumstance to team up with Connor on a mission of pivotal importance to the war.

Movie 2: Is all about playing with tensions and loyalties. Kyle grows to know John Connor, but still thinks of Marcus as his best friend. Connor grows to know Kyle and Marcus, trusting the two of them. The question of what happens when the switch in Marcus' head flips on is present throughout the film - which is mostly a kick-arse action setpiece that incorporates many of the moments we saw in 'The Terminator '. A central question that's often asked in this film would be "We don't understand the enemy, so how can we destroy them?"

This second movie ends with Marcus turning on them, and Kyle and John teaming up to try and execute him. The film finishes with the cliffhanger of Connor's team beginning the assault of Skynet's time base.

Movie 3: Starts with the assault on Skynet and getting Kyle into the time machine. After that, everything is in play - Connor can die, the war can still be won or lost. Let the action ensue; hell, bring back Marcus from the dead if you can think of something interesting to do with him.

... or you could send giant robots back to London 2011 to beat the sh!t out of everything.

Terminator Salvation: if you haven't seen it yet

The answer is no.

But before I start talking about Terminator Salvation (no colon), let's review John Rogers' three principles of writing a good scene:

1.) Who wants what?
2.) Why can't they have it?
3.) Why do I give a shit?

OK, no spoilers.

This isn't John Connor's movie. Connor is a sidekick in this film. That's right: a sidekick. Actually, he's less than that. The film not only doesn't establish why John Connor is special, it doesn't even provide a compelling reason to keep him alive. This is a Terminator film in which John Connor lacks a destiny. ... And actually, it's even less than that: Connor is a LIABILITY to the Resistance - he gives away their position and their plans, and doesn't seem to have learned anything about Terminators, ever (*).

(*) There may be a little bit of hyperbole in that last sub-clause.

OK, Connor is a sidekick. Fine. Now I've got that out of my system, I think my rage is spent. This was going to be a long rant but I think I can summarise it now.

The movie's not all bad. While the first act rushes through a whole bunch of stuff and doesn't give us any reason to care about anyone, it does do a great job of establishing that terminators are badasses. Well done.

There's some nice future robot shooting action, and a 30 or 40 minute sequence in the middle (from the gas station through to the swimming lesson) where the film has: (a) momentum, (b) characters with understandable motivations, and (c) an interesting central dilemma. Well done.

From that point on, I was sniggering at the film until it ended. That's about 30 minutes of mocking something I once loved.

Not. Cool.

And the film has two other big problems:

First, John Connor wasn't even supposed to be in this movie! This link has much spoilerage in it, but is pretty essential to figuring out why the Connor scenes don't work, don't advance the plot, and don't make you care about anyone.

Second, the whole way the Resistance works is completely implausible (and I say this acknowledging that they are fighting a war against AIs and cyborgs). They have jets, and airbases, and helicopters, and a base that's two days walk from Skynet that's surrounded by ... well, you'll find out if you see the movie, but the fact that these characters survived more than two or three minutes ASTOUNDS me.

Here are two other spoiler-filled reviews to read before I ask the question: Poland. Quint.

So the question you need to ask yourself after reading all this is, "Should I see Terminator Salvation"?

Adaptations

Chris asked me what I thought of Watchmen. That reminded me that I judge films where I'm familiar with the source material VERY differently to other films. My ranking system for adaptations goes kinda like this:

1. Incompetent: The film completely misses the point of the source material; quite possibly it's narratively incoherence or lacks an inner life.
... Examples: The Punisher (Dolph Lundren version)*

* Yes, I think there's probably a good version of The Punisher waiting to be made.

2. Mishmash: Cobbling together moments from the source material, this film creates a narrative that makes sense but doesn't really capture the spirit of the original
... Examples: Aeon Flux (in places), Constantine, The Return of the King (pre-Shelob), Fantastic Four 2, From Hell

3. Photography: This is simply and literally translating the book on screen. While it looks and moves like the source material, there is no excitement or engagement. It's a dead but accurate adaptation.
... Examples: the first half of Harry Potter 1, all of Harry Potter 2, Smilla's Feeling for Snow*

* Which is the film that started me on the path of developing this system.

4. Competence: A translation that basically hits the mark, recreating some of the moments of the original or standing on its own as a movie.
... Examples: The Two Towers, Hellboy, Aeon Flux (sometimes), the second half of Harry Potter 1, Harry Potter 3, most of Harry Potter 4*

* I'm confused about exactly why I'm using Harry Potter as my go-to reference, but let's roll with it.

5. Dead On: An adaptation that nails exactly what I love about the original material. In some cases, it even improves on the original.
... Examples: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King (post-Shelob), Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter 4 (the school dance sequence)

6. Masterpiece: The adaptation to film has given the story new meaning or resonance; it transcends the original
... Examples: The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather

Given that, I can say that I felt Watchmen veered between competence and being a dead-on adaptation* (with sporadic moments of being a mishmash) ... which shakes out to a film that's slightly above average.

* Places where I felt it was dead-on: Rorschach / Nite Owl II scenes. Dr Manhattan revisiting his life, on Mars. Quite a bit of the Antarctic finale.

Star Trek (2009)

It's an amusing diversion filled with performances that range from satisfactory to excellent.

Most Satisfying: the rowdy, pulp action. Swordfights! Gun battles! Perilous Footchases!

Most Suprising: that the space battles didn't really engage me.

Biggest Regret: reading ANYTHING about the film before I saw it.

Biggest Failing (*) : that quite a bit of the storytelling felt functional rather than gripping; that the outcomes of conflicts seemed inevitable.

* I'm going to have to see it again (probably on DVD) before making final judgments about this, but there were moments and conflicts between core characters that just felt bland to me. I mean, there's basically a scene where a character says "This is what you need to do," followed by a scene of it happening. I haven't seen writing like that since the end of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Kirk: Is hilarious. For the first half of the movie, Ed and I were sniggering in our seats every couple of minutes at how outrageous he was being. Top marks.

All in all, a reasonably fun way to reintroduce the franchise to a new generation of fans so that Paramount can suck money out of them for the next 20 years. It's a sexy, rowdy, funny Trek that's gotten better in my memory.

And here's the thing: the original actors played these roles into their 60s and 70s. Given that, and given a movie every two or three years, that means we could expect another 12 to 15 films from this iteration of Trek (**).

** Given that sort of timeframe, I'd prefer it if the Kirk-Spock relationship had been developed a little slower - across multiple movies.

I have no idea what that means for the future of the Trek franchise. No more stories in the original TV universe? A reboot of The Next Generation? Star Trek movies shot back to back, Pirates of the Caribbean styles?

Movies to Look Forward to

Star Trek - Seen. Short review later today.

The Hurt Locker - a bomb disposal thriller by Katherine Bigelow

Solomon Kane - it sounds badass

Moon - indie SF film set on the moon, starring Sam Rockwell, and the voice of Keyser Soze as the possibly-crazy computer.

What about you?

The Room is a great bad movie

The Room is the Plan 9 from Outer Space of '90s indie movies. I suspect that within 2 to 10 years, The Room will be as well known as Plan 9.

It is damn funny.
It is terrible.
These things are related.

And it is having an obsessive effect of many of my friends.

Pop quiz: sexual chemistry

Pop quiz: name the last mainstream movie from Hollywood where there was sexual chemistry between the two leads.

Your answers will be assessed on (a) how recently it was made, and (b) how long the leads are on-screen together.

The next Batman movie

Given where The Dark Knight leaves Batman (and given who managed to make it through to the closing credits), I got my pick for one of the new characters in Film 3:

Huntress.

Death Proof

The script gets off to a slow start and middle, but there's a point to it. And that point is the final third of the movie - which is brilliant, and completely justifies casting Zoe Bell as herself.

The dialogue almost never reaches super-quotable Tarantino levels from 16 years ago, but the action at the end makes up for it, for me.

Also, funniest ending to a feature film in recent memory.