film: June 2005 Archives

Paramount was right to keep images of the alien creatures and the alien ships tightly under wraps (though perhaps requiring Steven Spielberg to check his cell phone at the door of the New York premiere last week may have been a tad unnecessary), because when you finally see them, you're sharing the experience with the characters in the film, and that is: Holy fuck. And you almost want to look away, it's too much to deal with, and yet you can't, it's so horrifyingly fascinating.

Click on over to FlickFilosopher.com for my review of the new Spielberg flick.

Oh, I so wanted to like this flick.

The story behind it has all the elements of, well, a great film itself: hope, tragedy, resilience, imagination, cunning, pluck, even a David-and-Goliath aspect. I wish I could call it a triumph for the little guy, but it's such an utter failure on all levels that it almost serves as a warning against giving in to great ambition.

That’s from my review of the Victorian-era, direct-to-DVD "competing" War of the Worlds flick. There’s much more, of course...

There’s this beaten-down weariness to Land of the Dead that’s unlike your typical gore-and-shuffle zombie movie, and -- even though this is Romero’s Big Hollywood Film -- it’s unlike anything that the typical big-budget splatter flick has going for it, either (but you see it in Cinderella Man -- picture Russell Crowe boxing zombies, and you’ve got it).

Click on over to FlickFilosopher.com to read the rest of my review of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead. The film -- and my review -- has lots of GenX significance. Of course, I’m seeing GenX significance in a lot of stuff these days: I’ve got geek philosophy on the brain.

Mmmm, brain...

You know why this new Batman feels so potent and important and necessary? Because he is. Because the world, the real world, feels like it’s falling apart, rotting away at its core from all manner of injustice and greed and indifference. Because we share this Bruce Wayne’s incoherent grief and shattering rage at the misdeeds of the powerful and the cowardly timidity of those supposedly in the right. Because the world is desperate for a champion like this, who channels fury through compassion and gets things done.

Click on over to FlickFilosopher.com to read the rest of my review of Batman Begins.

I’m filled with geeky delight to be able to say that this is, without question, the greatest comic-book movie ever made. I’ve felt similarly about some other recent comic-book movies, and the thing is, it’s always true. X-Men was the best comic-book movie ever... and then came Hulk, which one-upped it... and then Spider-Man 2, which supplanted that one... And now we have Batman Begins. We must be in a golden age of the comic-book movie if each new one is even better than all the amazing ones that came before, right?

I had so much to say about BB that I never even got around to mentioning the extraordinary cast, every one of which is the kind of actor who elevates everyone else around him... and when everyone’s like that, the raw creative power onscreen just about blows you away. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Linus Roache... Man, what a cast! (Yes, Katie Holmes is cute and all, but she’s not quite in the Morgan Freeman stratosphere, I think even her biggest fans would concede.)

What a film. It’s everything we geeks go to the movies for.

I’ve got an essay up over at The Internet Review of Science Fiction (free registration is required to read the site) about how Anakin Skywalker fits into mythological traditions that turn up all over the globe. I know a lot of fans think Lucas has let the mythmaking thing go to his head, and maybe he has -- I’m not interested in getting into a debate about it. But I mention it because I think almost everyone would agree that if Anakin/Darth Vader is any kind of "hero," he is emphatically not heroic in his Vader phase.

So why is Darth Vader turning up selling everything from Burger King hamburgers to M&Ms?

I mean, sure: Dark chocolate M&Ms? It’s about bloody time. But what is being suggested by a "Darth Mix" of somber colors and a red M&M done up like Darth Maul? "Eat this candy... and turn to the Dark Side"? Am I the only one who finds this a tad uncomfortable?

But the M&Ms and the creepy Burger King TV ads aren’t the worst of it. I touched on this in my review of the film at FlickFilosopher.com, how icky it is to have a mass-murdering maniac with evil superpowers selling stuff to children, and that was before I came upon this:

This is truly demented. "Lava Berry Explosion"? Holy crap: why not just have a burned-to-a-crisp Anakin on the box, howling in agony as all the nerves in his dermis are cooked away while his former best friend looks on and refuses to put him out of his misery? Why not engineer the Pop Tarts to smell like burning hair and frying human skin while they’re toasting in your kitchen? (In the IROSF essay I touch on how Anakin’s journey through the Dark Side might be considered akin to a crucifixion such as those the mythological figures of Jesus or Odin endured. Passionfruit of the Christ Pop Tarts, anyone?) Cuz that’s what these artifical-everything breakfast treats are commemorating: a man being roasted almost to death... and surviving to live on another 20 years or so in what can only be a neverending hell of emotional and physical wretchedness and torment.

Breakfast of champions? Oh, wait, I forgot: Ani’s not on the Wheaties box, he’s on Corn Flakes. My bad.

Have you seen this Nike commercial, the one that starts out looking like Chariots of Fire and morphs into a sneaker ad? Man, I’m loathe to bring any more attention to a company that uses child labor to make $200 running shoes, but the ad so perfectly encapsulates the geek approach to pop culture that I can’t help it. (You can watch it here if you haven’t caught it on the tube.)

From its perfect reenactment of that famous scene from Chariots of Fire, with the runners jogging in slo-mo down the beach and the inspiring Vangelis music, the real world slowly intrudes -- someone trods on a manhole cover in the surf; a taxi scoots by along the shore; fire escapes and parking meters slide past on the beach. One of the runners, we eventually learn, is running along a busy city street -- it’s his new Nikes that make him feel as if he’s jogging barefoot in the sand.

I’d bet the rent money* that whoever conceived of this ad is between 25 and 40: because this is how we Xers take the pop culture we’re fed and make it our own. We see allusions to the stuff we love everywhere; we can’t help but quote from a movie or a song when it seems appropriate (usually, it seems irresistible to do so); we don’t just passively consume what’s handed to us, we rework it into the soundtrack in our minds, into the movie of our lives that plays in our heads constantly. I don’t know whether it’s either a healthy or unhealthy thing that so much of how we relate to the world gets filtered through someone else’s images and words -- I just know that it happens.

I may never buy a pair of Nike sneakers (though I have to confess that a pair of shoes that makes it feel as if you’re running barefoot are rather intriguing), but I’ll never forget this ad. Because it recognizes that my understanding of myself and the world around me frequently percolates through a filter of iconic pop culture imagery.

*Offer not valid anywhere.