Dispatches from the Flying M

Zombieland

We saw Zombieland last night.  I'm not going into any great detail about it.  If you enjoy funny (occasionally hilarious) movies, if you're a Bill Murray fan, if you want to see Woody Harrelson in the role of his career, if you like clever scripts and really imaginative visual effects, if a little gorey comedy doesn't put you off, go see it.

If you're a person who likes Twinkies (yes, I know it's hard to admit it in public...), sneak a pack into the theater with you to eat while you're watching.

It's a purely fun movie, start to finish--but not stupid fun. Smart fun.  It's worth your $5.50.  That is what they charge for tickets where you live, right? Because that's what we pay here...

In the Electric Mist

My friend Didi tipped me off to a movie I hadn't l known about, that never had a US theatrical release but is available on DVD.  It's a French/US adaptation of James Lee Burke's brilliant novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.  For the movie that's shortened to In the Electric Mist, but the Confederate dead show up just the same.

I was never a big fan of the previous Burke adaptation, Heaven's Prisoner's (I wouldn't mind catching it again one of these days, to see if it's any better than I remember), but this one seems very faithful to the novel and to the overall mood and themes of Burke's fiction. It's a twisty, turny mystery that assumes the viewer's intellligence--which might be why it never had a US release, come to think of it, because that's rare these days.  It's stylishly shot on location in Iberia and St. Martin Parishes, Louisiana.  Tommy Lee Jones is a fine Dave Robicheaux. 

Because the book was told in first person, from Dave's point of view, there are very few scenes in which Dave doesn't appear.  That's okay, because Tommy Lee is an easy actor to watch.  Here he's abetted by fine performances by John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Ned Beatty, Peter Sarsgaard, and others.  The only not-great performances were by Buddy Guy as Sam Hogman Patin and The Band's Levon Helm as General John Bell Hood.  Helm isn't bad, just not quite in a class with Tommy Lee.  Buddy Guy isn't terribly convincing as an actor--he pulled me out of the experience and made me feel like I was watching someone act--but he gets to play a couple of songs, and watching and listening to him perform is compensation enough.  And that's only part of an excellent bayou-tinged soundtrack.

It's highly recommended, especially if you're a fan of James Lee Burke's books.  And if you're not a fan, then get reading, because you're missing out on one of the best American writers ever to put words on paper.

Terminator: Salvation

Is there a tripod shortage in Hollywood?  Should we take up a collection?

Knowing

Full disclosure first--I wrote the novelization of the movie Boogeyman, based on scripts by Juliet Snowden, Stiles White and Eric Kripke that were far better than what was eventually edited together and appeared on-screen.  I haven't met any of them in person, but wrote one Supernatural novel, based on Eric's show, and have corresponded off and on with Juliet.

When I saw the trailer for Knowing, I was intrigued.  When Juliet told me she and Stiles were writers on it, I was doubly anxious to see it.  So yesterday, we were over in Sierra Vista, and it was playing at the mall.  We went to a showing at 4:10 in the afternoon, the the ticket booth people told us to go in right away (we were about 40 minutes early) because every showing was selling out and if the four of us wanted to sit together we had to act fast. 

I'm glad we saw it, and doubly glad we did so before seeing any spoilers.  It's a very smart, beautifully shot, well-acted sf/thriller with genuine suspense and philosophical implications that most thrillers leave at the door.  Taken, for example, was suspenseful, but you can't think about it too much or it falls apart.  Knowing challenges you to keep thinking, while you're watching and after it's over.

Here's Roger Ebert's rave review, and here's a more involved Ebert consideration, WITH MAJOR SPOILERS.  Don't click the second link unless you want surprises to be ruined.

I won't say more than that except to guarantee that there ARE surprises--that although the trailer shows you the set-up, there is still plenty in the movie that you will not see coming.  It's visually stunning, and it's a lot of fun.

I also saw The Wrestler recently, about which I think everything has already been said.  If you haven't seen it and it's still playing, it's more than worth your time.  And Bruce wuz robbed, Oscar-wise.

Gran Torino

We saw Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino yesterday, and were glad that we did.  It was a fine film, and reconfirmed my belief that Eastwood is best when he directs himself.  Play Misty For Me, his directorial debut, remains one of my favorite Eastwood movies (and KRML, the radio station his character worked for, is still broadcasting jazz in Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA today).  Eastwood may be one of the biggest movie stars in American history, but more than that, he's an auteur in the classic sense of the term, at his best when he's intimately involved in shaping the film he acts in, right down to--at least in this case--helping to compose the song that ends the movie.

A few semi-random thoughts:

Rowdy Yates can still kick some ass, even at 78 years of age.

Clint's hoarse growl is much more convincing coming from Clint than it is coming from Christian Bale (in The Dark Knight, Batman's Eastwood impression was laughable, and one of the few things that kept Dark Knight out of the running as one of the year's best movies).

Had the movie been released a few months ago, John McCain might have screened it at campaign stops and won a few votes.

Despite its effectiveness at depicting how tough an old veteran can be, though, the movie is surprisingly right for this moment in our nation's history, and seeing it on Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday weekend is perfect timing.  Its ultimate message is pure Obama-era: that racial and cultural differences can be bridged, that far more important than what someone says or what language he or she speaks or what gods she or he may pray to is how that person behaves.  People of decency and goodwill can come together.  Or, to paraphrase King, the content of our character is more important than the color of our skin.

Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is a decent man hiding beneath layers of distrust and prejudice.  By opening himself up to his Hmong neighbors, he is able to cast aside those layers and let the real Kowalski emerge.

I'd even take it one step farther and say that because of the specific setting and history--the Hmong fought on our side in Vietnam and then came here in droves when we withdrew from Vietnam, leaving them in danger of retaliation (and Walt's history of killing Asians in Korea) it is a story about burying the divisions left in our society by the Vietnam war.  This is also Obama's challenge; as a president who was just a kid when those rifts were formed, he's of a generation not shaped by them, and as a result might be better able to help heal them.  He has promised to try.

So while McCain might have wanted to co-opt the movie's message, it's really the Obama philosophy that shines through.  If you have a chance to see it before he takes office--or after--do it.  It's worth your time, and your five-and-a-half bucks. 

Or maybe that's just what we pay for movie tickets out here in the sticks.  Hey, I told you we like it here.

Twilight?

If you love love love Twilight (especially the movie), then you probably don't want to read this.  If, on the other hand, like most rational people you think teenage girls should be reading Witch Season instead, give it a try.  It's pretty funny...

Quantum of Something

Marc Forster needs to go back to film school.

Living where I do, I don't get out to movies all that often.  Making it on opening night is even more rare.  But after Casino Royale invigorated a franchise that I loved for years--bus has been in a decades-long slump, with lousy Bonds and stupid stories and a sad over-reliance on one-liners and gadgets, I had high hopes for Quantum of Solace.

Daniel Craig, despite my initial misgivings, is a great Bond.  And he looks cooler in a black shirt and sunglasses than anyone since Steve McQueen.

But he couldn't save this mess.

Forster, the director, takes a bad recent trend to a ridiculous extreme.  His fight scenes and chase scenes (which together comprise about 80% of the movie) are all quick cuts and close-ups.  The idea (speaking as an ex-film major with at least some historical and technical perspective on this) is to make the viewer feel like he or she is immersed in the action, because if you were fighting a Bond baddie, that's what you'd be seeing.

But we're not Bond and we're not IN the action.  We're supposed to be watching the action and concerned for the characters that we like.  Unless the whole movie was shot from Bond's POV (which would be unwatchable), forcing us into the middle of those action sequences only calls attention to itself as an artifice, and yanks us out of the story.  Yes, I tensed up at those moments--but only because I could tell, as soon as one of those scenes started to unfold, that I was in for another several minutes of bad filmmaking.

If Forster wants to learn how to stage and shoot a close-quarter fight scene that's effective, that makes the viewer feel the desperate tension of the characters and experience the violence of the moment, he should go back and watch Roy Scheider's hotel room fight in Marathon Man--or even Sean Connery's face-off against Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.  Those are fights that hold up today.  Quantum of Solace's are fights that will make me NOT buy the DVD.

The story is pretty awful, but that might largely be because with only 20% of the movie's screen time to play out, it never really went anywhere.  And if you haven't watched Casino Royale recently, or memorized it, you'll be even more lost, because Bond's every action in this film is a response to that one.

It's sad to see a once-great franchise brought back from the brink, only to be dangled over the edge again.  With any luck, the next movie will be be better written and much better directed.  As it is, I wish this one had starred Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton, so I would feel better about never watching it again.

Thanks, Paul

Paul Newman, actor, director, activist, race car driver, humanitarian. January 26, 1925-September 26, 2008.

The Dark Knight

For most of my life, movies based on comic books have failed to live up to my hopes and wishes for them.  Although there have been good moments (and my love for the Adam West Batman movie of the 60s remains unabashed despite everything I'll say here) the problem as I saw it was that filmmakers refused to take superheroes seriously.  In comics themselves, superheroes could take themselves seriously, but when it came to film the filmmakers always had to insert a wink and a smile, as if to say, "Hey, we know guys can't really fly and do all this stuff, we're just having fun with it."

The Spider-Man franchise began to turn that around, but didn't do the job entirely.  This summer, though, we've finally reached the point where a superhero movie can be played as absolutely straight as any other action movie.  I didn't see the Hulk movie, because the texture of the CGI Hulk bugged me too much, but with Iron Man and now The Dark Knight, we've had two powerful films populated by real actors playing real people, films with gripping suspense and brilliant action sequences.  Heath Ledger's Joker looked a little lifeless to me in the early trailers I saw, but after watching the film last night, I take it all back.  It was an incredible performance, bringing Joker to a far different kind of life of grotesque sadness than Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson ever did.  Watching it was bittersweet, of course, because we know Ledger will never reprise that role or any other, but as an actor it's an amazing legacy to leave behind.  The other roles were well cast, too (best stunt casting choice--the actor who played Batmanuel in TV's live action The Tick as Gotham's mayor).

Oddly enough, now that filmmakers are playing superheroes straight, they're setting box office records.  Does that mean the audience for these movies has matured at just this moment?  Or does it mean that I was right all along, and it just took Hollywood decades to catch up to what I wanted all along?  Not for me to say...

My one complaint with the film (besides sound mixing that was terrible, but which I blame on the theater, not Warner Bros.) was the Batman voice, as opposed to Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne voice.  It's way overdone and over the top, kind of a Clint Eastwood with laryngitis effect.  When an audience member cracks up every time the Dark Knight speaks, that's a problem.  Next time, guys, tone it down!

During the movie it started to rain, and apparently came down in buckets.  To get home, we had to drive through faster, deeper water than we have ever had to before--the kind of water that passenger cars can't navigate, and that remind us why, despite the price of gas, we continue to drive high-clearance 4WD vehicles.  Our dogs were outside, and we had just gone to town for a movie (under relatively clear skies, when we left home), not an overnight stay.  Had the water  been much deeper or faster, or had we not been able to gauge about how deep it was based on our knowledge of the road (the only road option) between town and home, we might have had to turn around. But we didn't, even though it meant sometimes driving blindly, water from under us splashing over the windshield so we couldn't see a thing.  It was a pretty hairy experience getting back, but the dogs were glad we did.  This morning our rain gauge showed that we got an inch and a quarter here last night, in just a few hours, and probably more closer to town.

Get Smart

The original Get Smart took the James Bond-initiated spy craze to its most absurd lengths, and from 1965 to 1970 the Mel Brook/Buck Henry creation was one of the funniest shows on TV, with a terrific cast headed, of course, by Don Adams and the beautiful Barbara Feldon.

We caught an afternoon showing of the new Get Smart movie yesterday, and loved it.  The usual problem with movies made from old TV shows is that the people making those movies try to "update" them for modern audiences by adding "irony"--and as a result, instead of capturing the essence that made the original show popular, they make a mess that mocks the original property instead of paying tribute to it.  I'm thinking here of movies like The Avengers, The Wild Wild West, I Spy, etc.  Anyone would be far better off just watching DVDs of the original TV series instead of trying to sit through those execrable film versions.

But Get Smart gets it.  Brooks and Henry are credited as "consultants," which is probably a good sign, because as two of the funniest writers ever to work on TV or film, they know how to move from one medium to the other.  Steve Carrell is almost as good as Don Adams at some things, better than Adams at others.  Anne Hathaway is brilliant, and if she's not quite as gorgeous as Barbara Feldon, she's close, especially when she wears a Feldon wig and a form-fitting metallic dress.  About 15 seconds after she came on the screen, I had a crush on her, and it only got worse through the rest of the movie.

The action is good, with stunts and effects work on a par with any other contemporary action flick.  The suspense is not quite nail-biting, but it works.  And most of the comedy is laugh-out-loud funny, which is really the point.  One doesn't have to be a fan of the original series to enjoy the movie, but if you are, rest assured that there's a shoe phone, a cone of silence, some "Would you believe" and "Missed it by that much" and "The old XXX trick" gags.

The first season of the original series will be out on DVD August 5.  That one will be a keeper.  But for once, modern moviemaking has done an excellent job of bringing a classic TV show to new life on the big screen.