9 posts tagged “disappointment”

Man, that Six Feet Under cast can get me to watch anything. I gave a whole season to Dexter before I realized that Michael C. Hall was the bright shining star of talent in the middle of a really sloppily written serial killer procedural. Frances Conroy and Deadwood's Molly Parker never had a chance of redeeming last year's remake of The Wicker Man. And now we have Civic Duty, a grim little piece of business starring Peter Krause, who carried Six Feet Under on his dreamy shoulders as the prodigal son of the Fischer Funeral Dynasty.

Krause is Terry Allen, an accountant who finds himself with plenty of time on his hands after being laid off. His boredom gives way to obsession, though, when a young Middle Eastern man (Khaled Abol Naga) moves into the apartment downstairs. Allen watches him with growing suspicion, alienating his wife (Kari Matchett) as he becomes convinced that his new neighbor is one of them there enemies of freedom.

I get the post-9/11 Rear Window thing that it's going for, and I agree with the sentiment that cable news and the rhetoric of war can rot your brain and encourage nutcases to become even more nutcasey. As a man losing his grip on reason in a world gone mad, Krause is exciting to watch. On Six Feet Under and Sports Night before it, he was always the embodiment of modern liberal machismo, so here's the role he's been moving towards for his entire career, the mind torn asunder by fear of terrorism while his politically correct J. Crew existence spirals towards tragedy. It's a shame, then, that Jeff Renfroe, who directed the film, didn't trust Krause enough to let his performance tell the story. There are all sorts of goofy stylistic bells and whistles, whether it's the frenetic look-at-this-trick-I-can-do-on-Final-Cut editing or the spotless production design, that are supposed to heighten the tension well before anything should be remotely tense.

Renfroe also avoids specificity, failing to set the film in a recognizable city in favor of making it a kind of catch-all urban area. That's great if you're writing a poem, but a film about this specific moment in time (George W. Bush makes several appearances on TV) should also be about some specific place. After all, it means something completely different if Allen lives in New York City than it does if he lives in Seattle, Washington.

I can recall a similar disappointment in Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo (2002). In that film, Robin Williams developed photos for a Wal-Marty store and became obsessed with a particular family's snapshots, eventually using this entrance into their lives for his own nefarious purposes. But what was supposed to be a film about a very mundane kind of evil quickly turned into an over-the-top exercise in Romanek's fetish for blue light. The imposing stylistic choices prevented the film from taking place in any sort of recognizable world. At least, I've never seen a Wal-Mart or a Target that looked or felt like Romanek's glowing alien commerce chamber. Again, specificity, people. And if not specificity, at least recognize that these "yuppie thrillers" are much more effective when they emphasize the casualness and familiarity of evil (think Rosemary's Baby) and avoid the director's fondness for odd lighting and dutch angles.

While I think that Civic Duty is purposeful in its loud directorial stamp and its sometimes incredible dramatic manipulation, it would have been a much more effective film if it had only trusted its ridiculously watchable lead.

Note: Please don't make fun of my man crush on Peter Krause. Just because I called his shoulders "dreamy" and referred to him as "ridiculously watchable"...

Gypsy: New York is the center of everything!
Mama Rose: New York is the center of New York!

The Nanny Diaries is not for me, and though it tried to fool me with the presence of Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, and Paul Giamatti, it was never going to be.

Johansson is Annie Braddock, an intolerably passive college graduate who eschews starting her life "properly" in favor of a menial nanny job for the "X" family of the Upper East Side. Annie thinks it will be a lark, but the monstrous Mrs. X (Linney), neglectful of her son and cartoonishly self-absorbed, ensures that she'll have to earn her keep. Against her better judgment, Annie becomes fairly attached to Grayer, her ward, and then finds herself knee-deep in Mrs. X's problems with Mr. X (Paul Giamatti) and unable to extricate herself because of a promise to Grayer. And if that weren't enough, she's forbidden by Mrs. X to pursue a romance with the implausibly perfect "Harvard Hottie" (yes... that's the cringe-worthy name he's given in the voice over), played amicably by Chris Evans of the Fantastic Four movies.

Laura Linney is great, though if you've seen You Can Count On Me, The Squid And The Whale, or The Truman Show, you know that she can do characters of much colder depth in her sleep. The most interesting performance here is Paul Giamatti, who is fucking terrifying as the glassy-eyed and emotionally vacant Mr. X. I don't know if he was going for "serial killer", but if he was... mission accomplished.

As satire, it's far too chuffed with its own access to the Manhattan's Upper East Side to be effective. "Look, they have tofu cutlets in the fridge! Can you believe how they go to parenting seminars instead of actually parenting?! And isn't it clever how we're framing all of this as if it's an anthropological paper? Because New York is like an adorable jungle, but without all the mosquitoes and brown people!" I get it.

I have an irrational hatred for things like Sex & The City that treat New York as a kind of Narnia for affluent white people, and The Nanny Diaries is firmly in that mold. In a maudlin subplot involving Annie's put-upon New Jersey mother, we are given plenty of lip service about Annie's own working class roots, but her ambition at the end of the film as in the beginning is to leave New Jersey behind and live in Manhattan, where anything can happen! Sure, it's poking fun at the selfish wealth of New York's elite, but it's also buying into every cliché that New York irrationally perpetuates about itself. The Upper East Side is all demonic rich people! Everything below 14th Street is funky and authentic! Central Park is a dewy meadow rife with snow cone salesmen! Oh God, why won't you shut up?

The film is also constantly reminding the viewer that this job is beneath Annie's station in life, which is to be young, white, and beautiful in New York. No, a nanny gig is only a long term option if you are foreign and poor, a stance confirmed by the ending (spoiler alert, I suppose) in which Annie leaves her fellow nannies behind in the trenches to attend graduate school. They make a point of saying that she's doing it with the help of scholarships, as if all of those other nannies could also leave their jobs behind if only they had Annie's plucky ambition.

What about those women who weren't just slumming for a summer? The film features these working class nanny characters, as if it's to be commended for acknowledging that most people in this job do not look like Scarlett Johansson. But all it does is bring the breezy non-problems of our heroine into sharper focus, and it gives the whole affair the feeling of, well, "crappy puff piece".

There is no way for me to look at this movie objectively. I suppose that's true for every review, but it is inescapable as I try to organize my thoughts on The Simpsons Movie.

As someone who came of age in the mid to late nineties, The Simpsons was as important to the development of my personality as the pacifier is to Maggie's. When it premiered, edgy and as yet unco-opted, George Bush moronically decried it as a stain on American family values. There was a smart, unappreciated kid! There was a bratty ne'er do well kid! There was blue hair! There were fart jokes! Teachers were idiots! And best of all, it was a cartoon! What could be better?

Over those first years, the show taught me what funny meant. I can remember having hysterical, unable-to-breathe laughing fits over the town's monorail song or Ralph Wiggum's bent Wookie. Recently, I lost my shit while rewatching an old episode in which Milhouse, unable to ignore the Simpsons' new pool and pretend that he cares about Bart's broken leg, inadvertently signs Bart's cast "Milpool" before running off.

OK... it's a lot funnier on the show. Really it is. Huh-huh... Milpool...

From "yoink" to "meh" to that old standby, "d'oh!", The Simpsons even had a formative hand in my vocabulary. I mean, look at the subtitle of this blog, for God's sake.

And then on September 21st, 1997 (thanks IMDb!), something changed. That was the Sunday night that the Simpson family went to New York City in their ninth season premiere, and there was a distinct shift in the timbre and direction of the show. It had been creeping into season eight, but here it was in the clear light of a season premiere. From that point on, there were a lot more musical montages, guest stars, and meta-jokes. And all of these things were symptoms of a single problem: The Simpsons stopped mining Springfield for jokes and started mining the outside world.

Now, obviously the show's strength was its foundation in real American family life. I don't mean to imply that The Simpsons didn't correlate to what was going on in America proper. Of course it did. But what those first eight seasons did so well was create a self-contained world within which all of America existed. Here was a single small town that went from Junkyville and Bumtown to Krustylu Studios, from Evergreen Terrace to Burns Manor. It's a town that's got characters like Apu and Flanders and Disco Stu, all of whom grew in our collective consciousness with a life-like gradual progression. And what began when the Simpsons went to New York, that slight tectonic shift that I couldn't quite put my finger on at the time, was that they stopped working within the perfect American microcosm that they'd worked so hard to create. They started working within America. Like, real America, complete with boy bands, Las Vegas, SUVs, and most disturbingly, breast implants.

Lately, it seems to have become a show primarily about how bad reality TV is. Seriously, that's the basis for what feels like a good 50% of the jokes these days. Which is fine if you're working in the nihilistic universe of Family Guy or South Park. But The Simpsons used to be about a lot more. Whether it was a dearth of new ideas or a changing of the guard in the writers' room, The Simpsons was never the same.

I'm not saying that there's nothing of worth after that hard marker of "The City Of New York Vs. Homer Simpson". There's a great episode in season 14 called "Moe Baby Blues" in which Moe the bartender becomes obsessed with Maggie Simpson after he saves her life. It's really beautiful, and it recalls the Springfield-centric nature of those first eight seasons before it descends into some awkward Godfather references and then redeems itself once more ("I'm the president of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League... and this really burns my cannoli!").

And so here we are, ten seasons after that turning point, twelve or thirteen seasons after the show's zenith, and they've released The Simpsons Movie to both critical and financial success. The show displays no signs of slowing, especially after the boost it will get from the summer advertising blitz that's coincided with the film's release. But once again, the film committed the cardinal sin of the recent seasons; it's a movie about our world, not their world.

For example, in The Simpsons Movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the President of the United States. Why, you ask, is he the President? I don't really know. I suppose it's intended to be a comment on how absurd it feels to Americans that he's the governor of California. But The Simpsons already has a Schwarzenegger proxy in Ranier Wolfcastle, Austrian beefcake star of the McBain action franchise. Why not use Wolfcastle, who has been used in jokes about the Republican Party before, as the Schwarzenegger stand-in that he is? That way, the movie is topical without being narrow, holding Springfield's satirical mirror up to America's confounding nature. And as a bonus, it would be making good use of the characters that we know and love (Burns, Skinner, and many others are given devastatingly short shrift).

I dwell on the minutiae because with The Simpsons, the devil was always in the details. And that's another thing. Springfield is a rich, complex place with a geography, culture, and politics all its own. But the film's writers opt to spend a good portion of the film with the Simpsons as they try to start their life anew in Alaska, of all places. It's a fine plot for an episode, I guess. Wait... no it's not. I'm not suggesting that they should have pandered to hardcore Simpsophiles for the entire running time, but why not harken back to the gripping Anytown U.S.A. which made the show so effective in the first place?

The show has never taken snarky internet critics lying down, even going so far as to coin the phrase "Worst. Episode. Ever." as a defense mechanism against the legions of disappointed fans. So you can't help but be self aware when voicing your meager opinion on your meager blog in meager Pennsylvania. But if there's a silver lining to my cloud of privileged disappointment, it's the performance of Julie Kavner, who gives a deeply emotional monologue that catalyzes the film's climax. Sincerely, I was getting all teary-eyed. It was that moment that brought me back to everything I always loved about the show: the true emotional engagement with these sarcastic, yellow, four-fingered bastards.

But alas... there are a few genuine laughs, but there are plenty of jokes that fall flat. Tom Hanks' appearance is everything a celebrity cameo should be, Green Day's is superfluous and distracting. In the end, The Simpsons Movie plays like a Frankenstein monster of the show's entire run, but since it has now been bad for longer than it was good, the bad carries the day.

And so... I choose to remember the good times. Let's all enjoy the following clip before Fox calls for its removal from YouTube.

Pan's Labyrinth
(Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)

Marge: Did anybody see that new Woodsy Allen movie?
Flanders: Y'know, I like his movies, except for that nervous fella that's always in 'em.

To say that I would have liked to have seen Pan's Labyrinth in the hands of another director is not fair. Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, it is his story to tell. Who am I to take that away from him?

Some asshole with internet access. That's who.

I am told that Pan's Labyrinth is the most beautiful, wrenching film of the year. And I see how it could be. In war torn Spain, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) accompanies her widowed mother to the outpost of Captain Vidal (Sergi López), Ofelia's new stepfather and a herald of the newly empowered fascist regime. As Vidal quashes a noble rebellion, Ofelia becomes embroiled in the magical world of the forest around the outpost, in which a woodland faun tasks her with proving herself the heiress of a fantastical birthright.

Intellectually, I love this film. What's not to love? It's got beautiful production design, fine performances, it respects the intelligence of its audience (and by intelligence, I mean ability to watch people get stabbed), and it's all in the service of decrying blind obedience. Sold!

I'm torn, though. I wonder if the film is too territorial about its R rating (or the Spanish equivalent). This is fantasy strictly for adults, made so by the gruesome nature of the war around Ofelia. Vidal smashes skulls in, defiles corpses, and uses his pistol as casually as a flyswatter. Kudos for pulling no punches in a film that's about the brutality of fascism, but there is little here in the way of economy. When we are shown Vidal's violence once, it is all we need to inform the rest of the piece. But Vidal never stops, and he is dangerously close to becoming cartoonishly evil throughout, even tinkering in his lab like a mad scientist. The film seeks to take fantasy out of the realm of children, and it is often succesful. But the brutality of the film sometimes feels like its overcompensating, replacing a psychological depth that would truly speak to the adult viewer with the gratuitous violence that only adults are allowed to watch. "This is for adults! Of course it is, can't you see all the blood?"

I think I would forgive all of this if the film were a little less clean. From a design standpoint, the Faun is a complete triumph. But in terms of cinematography, the film is just... there. Here is a film that is being hailed as the most visually inventive fantasy film since The Wizard Of Oz, and to me it looked like it was shot by CSI's 2nd unit crew. (This is also a criticism I would level against Del Toro's Hellboy, which took a gloriously murky comic book and turned it into a slick, Hollywood shell of a film). In a year in which Children Of Men shows us just what a dynamic camera can do to an audience, Pan's Labyrinth doesn't even opt for an minimalist cinematography; it's too clean and self-aware to be invisible, too boring to be evocative.

I'll say this; it takes a special filmmaker to make his or her own film exactly the way he or she wants to make it, based on no pre-existing properties, strictly from his or her own mind, and make a film that is not a failure but a disappointment. If that makes any sense. I think it does.

Note: The film is being sold on the back of Handsy Eyes, that ghoulish imp who shows up in all of the press material. And Handsy Eyes is terrifying. That is not in question.

Consolation arrives in the realization that my car contained nothing worth taking.

Here are some awkward and passionate thoughts on Bryan Singer's Superman Returns.

Heavy spoilers follow. Seriously.

What is troubling about this Superman film is that it seems unconcerned with the fundamental questions that it raises about the character; it takes big chances, but only for the benefit of neat moments, and with no concern for what it all comes together to say.

Firstly, the film does not grapple with the primary superhero question; which identity is the mask? Is he Clark Kent, or is Clark Kent a nebbish persona? Is he Superman, or must he project false confidence when he dons the cape and tights? Perhaps he's someone else entirely, someone who is only comfortable enough to show himself in Kansas, and who has about four minutes of screen-time before he is whisked away in favor of the masks.

So who are we watching? The film never decides, and no one seems to care. Least of all Clark Kent, who is content to play the fool while Lois, now attached to Richard and mother to Jason, pines over Superman. The classic Clark-Lois-Superman love triangle is not only sidelined (which I don't necessarily have a problem with) but completely lost (which I do), as is the idea that Clark and Superman are seperate persona within same man. Clark Kent provides a few moments of comic relief while Superman gets all the play. Which is how Superman seems to like it.

The conceit is that Superman, upon learning that astronomers had found fragments of his home-world, set off into space for five years to see what he could find among the wreckage, and has now "returned". The world that he returns to is, we are told, different. Lois Lane has penned a Pulitzer winning op-ed entitled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman". What this piece says, presumably, is, "Because he's not here," because the minute Superman shows his face again (with its perfect cheekbones and glorious eyes, damn you Brandon Routh), the world erupts in appropriate applause and excitement.

The fact that Superman's five year absence puts his date of departure in 2001 seems like it could be the tip of a really interesting iceberg. Is the film trying to say that the country's potential for hope and decency abandoned it with 9/11? Is it attempting to courageously comment on our country's transformation from beacon of light to ogre of greed?

Alas, this is no tipped iceberg.

So how has the world changed? In short, it hasn't. Nothing has changed since the 1930s, except that everyone has seen Richard Donner's Superman film. Boy have they seen it. And one woman now has a boyfriend. And this is the main concern of the film.

In the universe of DC Comics, Lex Luthor was president for what corresponded to George W. Bush's first term in office. This storyline makes me so happy because it acknowledges the limitations of the character without descending into melodrama. Superman cannot go against the will of democracy. And yet he knows that Lex Luthor is a lying, evil sack of shit. This is an appropriately insurmountable obstacle for Superman. It is worldwide, it is incapacitating, and it is fraught with complication. The conflict that Superman Returns presents is a less complicated one, unless you are a shithead. Which our Superman seems to be.

I will give the film this; Lois Lane's boyfriend is a decent guy. He is intelligent, good looking, and a good parent (unlike Lois herself, who endangers her son with troubling ease). And the fact that Richard is a great guy is both respectable and frustrating; it does not present us with an easy way out.

But this is not a conflict for Superman, and here's why; Lois Lane is now a mom, and she is domestic with a man who is (it seems at first) father to her child. As far as Superman knows, she is happy. End of story. Guess what, Superman? Eat it. You don't have to be Superman, or even ModeratelyDecentMan, to understand that this family has established itself, and that to try any rooftop canoodling with this woman is unconscionably selfish. To see Superman wrestle with this and err by macking it to Mom Lois would be fascinating; to watch it treated as a foregone conclusion that Superman will breach Lois's relationship with Richard is frustrating.

I do not consider myself a purist; do with the character what you will. The fact that the film is not simply an origin story is great. But to ignore the moral gray areas raised by the story belies ignorance not only of this character, but of all character.

In and around the events of this film, Superman does not act like Superman. Here are some things that he does which are not acknowledged to be troubling in any way.

1) Superman slept with Lois Lane without revealing to her that he is Clark Kent. He didn't tell her his real name. This may be acceptable behavior for a fraternity brother at freshmen-ladies-drink-free-night, but it is unbecoming of a superhero. Even a shit superhero like Daredevil.

2) Superman left for Krypton soon after sleeping with Lois Lane. He did not tell her where he was going or why, and did not bother to pick up a phone while he was away. This is why he does not know that his relationship with Lois resulted in a pregnancy.

3) Superman learns of an in progress aircraft disaster from the TV news that happens to be on while he pities himself in a bar. Had that TV crew not been covering that particular flight live and had Superman not been watching TV at that moment, everyone on that flight would probably be dead. This really bugs me, not because Superman needs to be responsible for every human on the planet, but because it makes him so unnecessarily ineffectual.

4) He tells Ra's al Ghul, "I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to save you," and lets him die.

Wait. Scratch that last one. Wrong cowardice.

5) While he could be saving a life or two, Superman invades Lois Lane's privacy by spying on her and her family as they prepare dinner one night. He does this for no reason other than that he is bummed that Lois doesn't like him anymore. Boo hoo.

6) Superman did not call his widow mother while he was away. For five years. Not even to say, "I'll be home by 2006."

Superman. For the love of God, call your widow mother. She worries about you.

These things are truly troubling. The wonderful thing about Superman is that he is, first and foremost, a decent fellow with the power of God. He's no whiny teenage web-slinger or "tortured" dark knight detective ("Ooooh look at me I'm so tortured"). He's just a good guy. And to see what writers do with this limited template of decency is what makes him engaging. But this film is unconcerned with whether he is decent at all. Or, more unsettling, the film seems to set some pretty scary parameters for what is heroic and what is just excusable because, after all, she's just a woman. And you liked her a lot. Once more, boo hoo.

The film treats the revelation of Jason's super parentage as a "cute twist" without addressing Superman's responsibility or abdication thereof. He knocked Lois up and did not even stick around long enough to notice some tummy bulge. And thus her anger with Superman comes to make more sense. My anger with Superman comes to make more sense.

Let us talk about a guy. We'll call him Ralph. Ralph is no Superman, but only a guy with some unpaid parking tickets and a fondness for cheese sandwiches. Ralph finds out that Sally, a woman he slept with five years ago (and hasn't spoken to since, though he cares about her deeply and respects her greatly) got pregnant with his child and went through that pregnancy alone. Because Ralph left soon after sleeping with Sally and hasn't been in touch with her. Even though he loves her.

Ralph feels unimaginable guilt! Ralph must make amends by developing a relationship with the child, but must navigate the choppy waters of the child's delicate ideas of family! Ralph must, like a man, discuss the situation with Sally and Sally's new man, who is a wonderful father for a child to whom Ralph has contributed nothing but DNA.

I bring up Ralph because Superman is supposed to be at least as good as the Ralphs of the world. And if he's not going to be, if the film is going to take Superman in new and flawed directions, at least acknowledge that fathering a child and disappearing is a shitty thing to do.

Other things bother me as well, but I'm trying not to descend into nitpickery.

Kevin Spacey is fine, but his Lex Luthor is a nitwit. Why does he hate Superman? Because he "doesn't share his power"? What does that mean?

Here are things that don't make sense in the movie, and are frustrating because I am not an idiot.

1) Camera phones do not take high resolution, front-page-ready photographs. Their photos are blurry.

2) Who would want to buy real estate on Lex's kryptonite continent?

3) What kind of a major metropolitan newspaper lets people take five year hiatuses? It's addressed with a throwaway line about someone dying, so I guess I'm just nitpicking.

4) How can Superman lift a continent made out of kryptonite? This is definitely nitpicking, since I like this sequence a lot.

5) What kind of reporter, when faced with Superman, who left five years ago for who-knows-where and has been doing who-knows-what, faints? I don't care if you're Lois Lane or Tokyo Rose, you ask Superman a damn question. "Where the shit have you been?" for example.

Lois Lane, you are a shit reporter and a shit mother. And despite that, I still don't think you deserve the old dine-and-dash from your man friends. Especially your Superman friends.

Here are some things that I liked about Superman Returns.

1) Brandon Routh. When he's allowed to do things, he does them well. Especially bumble. He's a great bumbler.

2) Nice moments involving elevators. Clark waving to Lois in a crowded one. Superman watching Lois ascend in one.

3) Lex Luthor violating Superman, first in his home, and then physically. It is really well done, and appropriately brutal.

4) All of the Jesus stuff (of which there is not that much). Because that's good fun.

5) The suit looks great. Good coloring.

All in all, it is a film rich with odd inconsistencies and a fair amount of unpleasantness.

I was told yesterday that Ernie Hudson is also none to happy about it.

From November 14th, 2004:

Dear Mr. Hudson,

First, let me say that I am writing to you as a fan. In my opinion, you’ve always brought genuine class to your roles, as well as an inarguable authenticity that few actors possess. Over the years, I of course enjoyed your memorable turns in films like The Crow, Congo, and Airheads. However, my main exposure to you, which I’m sure comes to you as no surprise, is through the Ghostbusters films. It is these that I want to discuss.

To me, and to many in my generation, the Ghostbusters films are the pinnacle of film comedy. They are expertly written, acted, and directed, and their success was well deserved. Most importantly, they are films of great heart and compassion. I can think of no more inspiring moment in the history of cinema than when the Statue of Liberty comes to life at the end of Ghostbusters 2, inspiring the citizens of New York City to let go of their cynicism and embrace one another in order to defeat the forces of evil amassing around them. This compassion, this heart, stems from the solidarity of the Ghostbusters team, a group of guys whom we love, and whom we feel certainly love each other.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I bought a copy of Ghostbusters 2 on DVD and took a look at the cover. The image (as I’m sure you are aware) is of Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Dan Akroyd, towering above the New York City skyline with proton packs at the ready, looking heavenward, ready to protect the forces of good. There’s Egon, there’s Venkman, there’s Ray, but where in God’s name is Winston Zeddemore? Where’s that pivotal 25%? Where’s our man who likes big Twinkies, hates Jell-O, and has “seen shit that will turn you white?” I ask you, where is the soul of the Ghostbusters?

The DVD case’s description of the film further drives the knife into our collective back. “Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis take up their proton packs once more to battle the forces of evil in Manhattan.” Well, I got some news for you! Ernie Hudson also takes up his proton pack! Ernie Hudson takes a goddamn ghost train to the face in this movie! Is the painting at the end of Ghostbusters 2 just the three of them surrounding that baby? Would that make any goddamn sense? The fact that he’s not even mentioned in the film’s synopsis (a crime repeated from the first DVD case) is deplorable, and belies an ignorance of what makes the films so important to begin with.

You’re on the cover of the Ghostbusters DVD and you’re hardly even in that movie! Comparatively speaking. Even so, you have the pivotal final line in that film. Your “I love this town!” (which you pulled off beautifully) is the declaration of genuine exhilaration that comes with defending your beloved hometown from Satan’s hellhounds.

Winston is “our guy”. “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say,” he says when we first meet him. A man of common sense (“Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes”), he is a down-to-Earth force on a team that necessitates his pragmatism. Through Winston, the audience is able to identify with, connect to, and have all but interactive discourse with the Ghostbusters. He is truly the Ghostbuster of the People.

Mr. Hudson, I do not mean to open wounds of which I’m sure you’re perfectly aware. However, I find your exclusion from the Ghostbusters 2 case to be not only an insult to you (and a disgusting one), but an insult to Ghostbusters fans the world over. You are our Ghostbuster. But who will be yours?

I'm not even going to try to keep this organized. Some thoughts on Peter Jackson's King Kong:

1. King Kong (1933) is, I hear, Peter Jackson's favorite movie. The concept of wanting to remake your favorite movie (or even a movie you moderately enjoy on any level) is beyond comprehension. There is no way my brain can understand the reasons that this movie was made. It reminds me of Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot Psycho remake. But Gus Van Sant is nutty, and his film was doomed both artistically and financially from its inception, so in a lot of ways it makes MORE sense.
2. I kind of feel like this is a $200,000,000 piece of fan fiction.
3. Digital lens flair makes me feel like the john that asked the hooker to wear his wife's pajamas.
4. Peter Jackson likes a good wall. He's into walls. Big walls, ancient walls, and preferably walls that are, at one point or another, ablaze.
5. My favorite movie is Seven Samurai. I think it's damn near perfect. And there's no way I would ever want to remake it. And if I were to remake it, I wouldn't set it in Japan. I would do something crazy with it and make it my own. I'd have the samurai be superheroes, and make sure it was an all baby cast. It would be called The Adorables. Don't steal that. That's my sweet sweet brain sugar flowing.
6. Naomi Watts makes me want to cease MY chest-thumping, dinosaur ravaging ways as well.
7. If 1933 Kong fought 2005 Kong in a cage match battle royale, 1933 Kong would win (even though he was only an 18 inch model) because he existed. 2005 Kong doesn't exist and never did.
8. Man, this story would actually make an awesome 100 minute B-movie. Maybe we could remake this King Kong as a... let's see... how about they remake it as if it were actually from 1933, and even digitally correct the film so that it looks like it's from the thirties? They could even digitally animate Kong as if were a model, and CGI in some old time actors like Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot. Man, wouldn't that just be the ultimate? That would be such an improvement on the original remake. Has anybody pitched it to Peter Jackson?
9. CGI has jumped the shark. Jack Black's Carl Denham is a filmmaker so passionate about shooting on location and capturing reality that he risks not only his career, but his life and the lives of his crew. "No one's going to think they're fake," he says of dinosaurs as he hand cranks his camera, fever in his eyes. And yet... aah. Does no one see the sadness of this whole affair?
   

There's something I'm told that you have to know about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Apparently, keep it under your hat, but the book's author, C.S. Lewis, intended the novel to be an allegorical companion to the New Testament. Perhaps you've heard that Disney is marketing their first Narnia film to the church crowd that made The Passion so successful. Perhaps you've heard that Aslan the lion is our Jesus figure, making a similar sacrifice in the film. But calm down, calm down, don't worry. It's all marketing. Narnia is certainly less zealous than The Matrix, though I guess it's not as chilled-out-let's-smoke-weed-with-this-gray-haired-old-wizard-and-go-smote-a-Balrog as Middle-Earth. But who cares? Forgiveness and sacrifice are not exclusive to the Bible, and Lewis's novel is powerful in its simplicity and engaging in its fantasy. It's more pleasant and palatable than Lord of the Rings, and often a lot more fun.

And then there is this movie. It follows the novel's plot point-by-point, but director Andrew Adamson (and, I'm sure, the Disney suits) have dictated a thoroughly modern cinematic language for the film, very little of which adheres to the lazy, comforting feel of the novel's narrative. No, instead, cinematic Narnia is just as intense as Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, complete with rip-roaring final battle for the good of the world.

I don't mean to fault the film for its departure from source material. Does it work as a film? The answer is no, and the primary reason is CGI. Aslan the lion is, save for very few close-ups, a completely digital creation, and thus he's completely castrated. Can you imagine the effect Aslan would have if the filmmakers had used a real lion (at least for some shots)? I realize that this would've been difficult, but what we end up with here is a cinematic IOU. "This is pretty much what a lion would look like..."

CGI beavers? CGI leaves blowing? Are you kidding me? CGI wolves are the White Queen's secret police, but in a few dazzling shots, they're real wolves indeed. And it's beautiful and relieving, but only for a flickering moment of reality. I don't know. It just becomes so tiresome when you realize that Adamson is working without limits, and so he doesn't have to direct the scenes with any semblance of balls.

The best scene in the film comes early, as Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus the fawn for the first time, and they return to his home for tea. Almost everything in the scene works, clicks, and for a brief moment the film is on its legs. But alas, it's quite brief. And it's not all digital mess. It's also editing mess, performance mess, pacing mess. The kids are good, especially little Georgie whatever-her-name-is as Lucy, and Tilda Swinton is fine I guess. Kind of "Blah".

By walking this uncomfortable-PG-Disney-gore line, the final battle does nothing but accentuate the disparity between the source material and the film. We also solidify the odd patchwork of disparate mythologies that Lewis was working with. That's not the film's fault, obviously, but to see it brought to life on such a grand scale and without humility is almost laughable. Cheetahs, rhinos, Centaurs, a Phoenix...? Why not a pirate, a WWI veteran, and an Indian chief as well? It's a complaint that could be levied against the Harry Potter movies too, though they've never pretended to be anything more than loose quilts of everything magic. I think that there needs to be a little more Narnia in their Narnia, and the film doesn't quite capture it.

Perhaps I'm too close to the source material (it holds a special little children's corner in my big big man heart), but I still think that this movie sucks a lot. But it's not Jesus that ruins everything.

Note: It occurs to me that I prefer Narnia in the winter and always have. Maybe it just means that I have no soul, but I wish Narnia had stayed frozen.