film: March 2006 Archives

The blockbuster -- or at least budget-busting -- Lord of the Rings musical hit the boards this week, way off Broadway, way off the West End... in Toronto. Critics have been about as kind as, oh, Sauron. Charles McNulty in the L.A. Times:

Had there been no film, the audience would no doubt have found it perplexing in the extreme. Of course, had there been no book, it would have seemed borderline insane to have sunk so many millions into what seems here like a crackpot chronicle.

Whoops.

Charles Spencer in the British Telegraph:

If you find a line like "As a hobbit might say, may the hair on your toes never fall out" deliciously rib-tickling then this is undoubtedly the show for you. If, like me, you find it insufferably twee, then you are going to find the show a penance

C’mon, that line turns even my stomach, and I’m a pervy hobbit fancier.

Most of the reviews state what should be obvious: that the fanboys will come out in droves and make this a hit. Then again:

Ming writes: I attended the LOTR stage show in Toronto this afternoon, and I regret to say that the Helm's Deep scene is still error-prone. During the performance I attended, Saruman's orcs were scaling the walls of Helm's Deep when, abruptly, they all left the stage (was there some kind of signal, I wonder?) and the raised platforms on the stage descended. I sat for a moment in bewilderness (though I had a very bad feeling about it, pardon the other-movie reference) before the voice of God announced that they were experiencing some "technical difficulties" and that we should remain seated. That announcement was repeated twice before the voice of God decided to have an "unscheduled intermission".

[from TheOneRing.net]

Double whoops. Then again, Ming had already shelled out his dough, and wasn’t gonna get it back:

I asked to speak to the house manager, from whom I requested a free pass to see another performance of the second act. Unfortunately, he said he didn't have the authority to grant such a request, and gave me TicketKing's customer service e-mail address. I will be going back to New York on Saturday morning so if I don't receive a favorable response by Friday, they're going to have one very disgruntled hobbit.

Sounds like they’ve already got one.

This is not the official poster for the upcoming New Line movie Snakes on a Plane, currently scheduled for release on August 18:

But maybe it will be. Because based purely on the so-bad-it’s-good title and the fact that it stars geek icon Samuel L. Jackson, the geek community online has gone wild with creativity, as a Reuters article today explains:

Haunted by V for Vendetta like I am? I've seen it twice now, and I feel a desperate urgency to see it again. Been a while since I've fallen in love with a movie like this. The Lord of the Rings installments, sure, but before that, maybe The Matrix? These Wachowski Brothers, they vibrate, eh?

I dunno how expansive geekiness can be, whether I'm alone in appreciating the theatrical geekiness of Vendetta, but I do know that V's introductory monologue might be pretty atrociously written -- maybe; I'm not sure -- but it would not work without the theatrical geekiness of Hugo Weaving behind V's mask and supplying V's voice. That speech with all the V words... it's so thrilling because it's so convincingly delivered, however ludicrous it might be on its face. V is a seductive lunatic because he's funny -- he is, like all good geeks, self-deprecating:

This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Compare...

The TV series spin-off of the Stars Wars film franchise will run to at least 100 episodes, according to producer Rick McCallum.

...

The series will be set between episodes three and four of the film saga.

It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.

[from BBC News]

...and contrast...

LUKE: It just isn't fair. Oh, Biggs is right. I'm never gonna get out of here!

THREEPIO: Is there anything I might do to help?

LUKE: Well, not unless you can alter time, speed up the harvest, or teleport me off this rock.

THREEPIO: I don't think so, sir. I'm only a droid and not very knowledgeable about such things. Not on this planet, anyways. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure which planet I'm on.

LUKE: Well, if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from.

[from your childhood hopes and dreams]

Looks like we’re all going nowhere:

(music swells...)

[crossposted at FlickFilosopher.com]

Or should I be asking myself, What color is the sky in my world? Is it me? Am I the crazy person here?

The reviews for V for Vendetta are running 75 percent fresh over at Rotten Tomatoes, but even the positive reviews don’t seem to really understand the film, its mythological underpinnings, and all the really powerful, primal stuff at work in it. (Maybe I’m the one totally off-track: judge for yourself.) It’s not necessarily about not understanding comic-book-ishness, the interplay of strong imagery and metaphoric dialogue... although even with the enigmatic metaphors and verbal playfulness of the Vendetta graphic novel drastically played down, many of the film’s detractors still curse V’s penchant for florid speech.

Cuz this is pretty typical: Eclipse Magazine’s Michelle Alexandria, who thinks Vendetta is “one of the most provocative movies in several years,” says this with an apparent straight face:

UPDATE: The New York Times had a longish piece on Moore a coupla days ago.

===
If you’ve been reading anything about the Wachowski Brothers’ film adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta lately, you’ve probably noticed that lots of the articles and reviews just sort of drop in a casual reference to the fact that Alan Moore demanded his name be removed from the film, with no further explanation. It serves almost as little dig at the film, a goes-without-saying sign that the movie surely is V for Very Bad if its own creator wants nothing to do with it.

I had to go back almost a year to find, in a May 2005 story on Comic Book Resouces, a bit of an explanation for Moore’s actions. Some of it had to do with the Wachowskis’ film itself:

Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."

There’s nothing quite like a metaphor-laden story about mutants with superpowers to strike a chord with disenfranchised-feeling geeks. Which is why the X-Men films are so damn cool, at least to those of us who feel like ostracized mutants ourselves. So how to parse, then, the very arty, very how-like-a-fashion-spread feel of these beautiful teaser posters for the third installment in the franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand? They’re extraordinarily eye-catching, yet they’re also very conservative in the same way that fashion photography is: it would like to think it’s daring, but it’s really just selling you overpriced clothing.

I’ve approached this X-Men image from a different angle over at FlickFilosopher.com, but it’s worth exploring here, too: Does the fact that these ads are not particularly geeky signal a sort of acceptance of geeky things, like, oh, genetic comic-book mutants who fight for truth, justice, and the American way? And is there some nugget of cultural awakening to be found in the “Take a Stand” tagline? Are we ready, as a society, to start taking a stand? Or are we content merely to gaze at pretty people?

Ya say the Oscars left ya cold? Just not geeky enough for ya? Got a nerd jones to scratch while we wait for V for Vendetta? Then check out writer Will Carlough and director James Duffy’s “Robin’s Big Date,” which you can watch online for free. It stars Sam Rockwell and Justin Long, vets of geek films galore -- they were both in Galaxy Quest, for one...

There was a sense of the passing of a torch during last night’s Oscars. And not just because the first rap song to be nominated for Best Original Song actually won: