I share Jamie Piazza’s psychic pain when I read that they’re actually going to remake Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The remake will be done by the original producer, which elicits a certain “Bucket List” quality to the whole idea, only serving to make it much, much worse.

Here’s the thing about it: not to step on anyone’s aging second-childhood fantasies, or anything, but doesn’t anyone that the original was so great because it was so bad? That was the point.  Remaking it will only improve on all the things that made it worth watching.  That’s not good.

As for Jamie’s request for nominees for the Frankenfurter 2009, go give him some suggestions!  I’m getting mine in there right now.

My wife and I got tickets to see The Dark Night at Tinseltown last night.  No time to rest when I got home, it was straight out to get some running around done, eat a meal at Pixley’s in Gates (yum!) and into the packed theater to watch the latest incarnation of Batman.  What a way to end one of those horribly long weeks following a vacation.

The Batman “franchise” has undergone a surprising array of changes over the decades.  Where even most major comic heros either never extend beyond the ink or do so only sparingly, Batman seems to have caught our imaginations like a prism, extending from it’s dark roots through the campy seventies television show I grew up on, to Tim Burton’s graphic cinema-novels and the subsequent failures of imagination, and most recently, into it’s current incarnation, a dark psycho-thriller with rubber suits and explosions.

If that last description seems a tough series of archtypes to pack into a couple hours worth of movie, that’s because it is.  But Christopher Nolan seems to take a page from George Lucas to accomplish this, allowing the great sets, awesome toys and breathtaking stunts to take their proper place as setpieces for the characters to play with, rather than dominate the screen just because they’re expensive.

Thus instead of becoming yet another knock-down, drag-out adventure film, The Dark Night gets deeper into some of the subtext themes Tim Burton touched on - hinted at, really - but didn’t delve into.  At it’s core, this movie is not about good and evil as it’s been presented in some reviews I’ve read, but a much deeper and scarier conflict between order and chaos.  It is really along this border that most of our conflicts as humans truly lie, often putting us at odds with what we think is good and evil, and this movie goes to lengths to find as many ways to blur the lines between all four that it can.  For the first half of the movie, I began to wonder if this movie wasn’t one of those that apologizes for the popular political themes of the day, but not to worry: it doesn’t.

And of course, Batman’s role is more often than not on the side of chaos, much though he would wish it otherwise.  This is the real conflict in the movie.  What unfolds is a panoply of moral relativism where nearly every character finds himself on the side opposite his preference.  It’s a fascinating thing to watch; not at all an uncommon theme, but rare in this genre and flawlessly original in its execution.  You can see this sort of tension in many a Little Theater European production, but it’s especially entertaining when this whole psycho-drama plays out amidst great special effects and heart-pumping action.

If I have one complaint - and of course, I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this paragraph - it’s that the first half hour of the movie is edited surprisingly badly.  There is a frenetic pace to the cutting between scenes and camera angles that has nothing to do with the plot and only serves to make that all-important first few moments of the movie unsettling in the way watching television while someone else flips through channels is.  To some extent, it seems driven by the need to get a fair amount of back-story out of the way ahead of the rest of the movie, but it’s just sloppy.

And really, that’s just a quibble.  Beyond that, this is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking movie which takes it’s place in that oh-so rare pantheon: that of movies actually worth the bullshit prices they charge at the theater.  It’s another discussion, of course, but it’s gotten to the point where it makes no sense to see certain types of movies.  Who wants to risk $19.00 on a comedy - a genre always dancing on the edge of lame - when $5.00 gets you the same movie in high-def at home a month later?

And one more note, for those of you who actually need it: don’t bring your fucking toddlers to see this movie, please.  You would have thought people would have learned their lesson with the original Tim Burton Batman.  Nope.  But I guess it’s not about learning lessons, it’s about irresponsible parents whose personal entertainment is more important than their kid’s restful sleep for the next month.  Hire a baby-sitter, pawn the kid off on your parents, or stay the fuck home and watch the Food Network.  This movie isn’t for kids.  Sorry.

One really does need to think deeply before attempting any kind of “viral” or “guerrilla” ad campaign tactics:

‘Dark Knight’ Promo Goes Awry

NEW YORK A Dark Knight promotion, featuring a chocolate cake wired to look like an explosive device, prompted a San Antonio news station to call in the bomb squad earlier this week.

Echoing the Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare in Boston in February 2007, the low-budget guerilla campaign delivered some unintended results for the Santikos Theater chain.

“Causing that kind of disturbance with the bomb squad and police officers was never our intention,” said Meghan Vincent, a rep for the eight-theater chain in Texas. “This was not exactly the kind of press we were going for.”

Ah, well. Good to know a terrorist incident wasn’t what you were going for. You just kinda over-shot, that’s all. . .

BTW, the wife and I have tickets to see The Dark Knight tonight at 7:45. I’ve not read an even marginally poor review of this movie so far. I’m totally stoked.

I was going to write this post last night, but opted to leave well enough alone, in hopes that anyone who might have visited the page yesterday would have seen my Memorial Day video tribute.

But now the holiday is over, so let us begin. If at the opening of the new Indiana Jones movie you were confused as to how a fifties car could drive 65+ miles an hour through brush desert without leaving it’s wheels in a rut or it’s oil pan on a rock, you wouldn’t be alone. If when the kids in said vehicle pulled up on a desert road amongst a military convoy and challenged the lead driver to race you wondered why any kid of reasonable intelligence would do such a thing in the mid Fifties - the height of McCarthyism, the height of the Red Scare, the height of Ike’s military-industrial complex - you doubtless would have been in good company. And if, when the soldiers revealed themselves to be Ruskies posing as U.S. soldiers, you wondered why the hell they would do something as trivial as actually take the kids up on the race, well then my friend, you have taken your first baby steps into a larger world of idiocy that is Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

I’m no movie critic and generally take critic’s assessments of movies with a very large grain of salt. Indeed, when I read a review of this movie on MSNBC that said this movie was “all the stuff you expect out of Indiana Jones movies, but nothing interesting,” I naturally assumed that this person was a typically snobbish movie critic. In point of fact, this movie was ten times worse than he described it and I have to wonder if he didn’t step out of the theatre half way through to go play with his Star Wars figures. I wish I would have done the same.

Because I certainly don’t expect much of an Indiana Jones movie other than plain good fun, but I’d like the plot line to at least make some limited sense and I’d like the stunts to seem at least mildly physically possible. Sadly, neither came to be in this movie. And while I would never recommend anyone take safety tips from Indie, I do have to make a special note: kids, if you find yourself in the middle of a nuclear blast site moments before impact (George Bush still has a few months to make that dream a reality) you’re going to want to find yourself a better shelter than a Fifties refrigerator. It won’t work like it did - beyond all reason - for Indie.

And the movie just keeps going like this, from improbable plot line to impossible stunt, for two hours, three locations and three crypts of near exact decor. It gets to the point that you just stop really watching and just start observing. Even worse, in direct contradiction of the afore-mentioned review, there is one overriding missing element that could have made this movie a bit more livable: some gratuitous, comically gratuitous violence and gore. No one’s face melted, no one’s back was thrashed into an airplane’s propeller, no one got crushed in a big wheel thing, no one’s still-beating heart was removed. . . I mean, what’s the point?

For chrissakes, they didn’t even pop any rotten corpses out at anybody in the temples. What the hell is an Indiana Jones movie without corpses? And bugs. Lots of creepy, crawly bugs. All there was were a couple of lame-ass scorpions. What? Were the beetles too expensive? There was one snake, whose introduction was the most flaccid, ineffectual moment of silliness in the entire movie.

But I begin to believe that all my childhood sci-fi directorial heroes have gone senile and become doddering old fools, parodying their own works. From the insufferable dialogue in the Star Wars prequels to the juvenile impossibility of the new Indie movie, it makes me think the best policy going forward is to avoid anything associated with Skywalker Ranch.

If anything, please take this post as a warning to at least avoid this movie, lest the entire Indie franchise be tarnished for you as it is for me.

Late Note: Perhaps the most telling thing about the movie is the fact that every single promotional image - from movie posters to Snickers kiosks - features images of Harrison Ford from twenty years ago.  Instead of a fun movie where we could have a little fun with the aged Indy taking over his dad’s role, we have a movie equivalent of Harrison Ford’s second childhood.

Those of you who regularly stop back to this blog have no doubt noticed that a fair amount of the news updates are concerned with “DRM,” but many of you might not know what that means. You’ve seen Warner Brothers, Sony, Apple and iPod, along with lots of other big media names tied to those articles. I figured this morning would be a good opportunity to tackle some of the basic concepts surrounding “DRM,” and why I think they are important issues for progressives to be out in front of.

DRM means Digital Rights Management, but more importantly, it represents attempts by media conglomerates to use technological means to prevent users from copying content they’ve produced. Originally, it meant preventing CDs and DVDs from being copied, but with the digital age n full swing with MP3 players and digital downloads, it has meant a variety of other things in a variety of different venues all centered around the media industry’s “right” to make as much money as possible.

Concepts in this arena get messy quick, so I’m going to keep this post relatively short and leashed to only one relatively narrow topic: what is it about digital media that has so complicated copyright law?

» Continue Reading…

So, yesterday evening, the wife and I decided to go see Superbad, the newest in a string of winners for Judd Apatow.  Strangely, despite the great reviews the movie has been getting, there were like six people in the theatre, including us.  That’s probably because it was Sunday, but still. . .

Anyway, every good comedy requires a great soundtrack, especially those awkward teenage movies which are really meant more for us thirty-somethings.  A well-placed funk tune always gets you when they can catch you up in the “laugh and groove” transition to the next scene.  Well, Superbad has a kick-ass soundtrack that includes Van Halen’s Panama, Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold, loads of great funk and a particularly painful rendition of The Guess Who’s These Eyes. . . . and I do mean painful. . .

Yeah, I damned-near laughed my ass off at this movie because every stupid, awkward moment with every girl throughout the picture was like a much funnier replay of my single years.  All of them.  That is, of course, the whole point of a comedy like Superbad: to look back on what it really meant to be young and single and give thanks that you’re not there anymore.  There are moments, such as when Evan (played by Michael Cera of Arrested Development fame) is talking with the flirtatious Becca, trying to simultaneously brag about his non-existent social life and avoid discussing why he’s never at any parties, that just made me sink into my seat.  I was Evan, once.

There are also some odd serious moments in the film.  Not like that “a very special episode of Silver Spoons” kind of thing, but just some moments that sort of make your skin crawl because you know the kids are going to get into something all too common and none too fun.  Seth’s drunken admission of his feelings for Jules - the kind of thing that can get you booted out of the booty-call roster with all but the most forgiving of girls - is one such moment.  In fact, that whole scene, with all it’s moving parts, is really quite disconcerting for those who’ve been through all that once before.  I’m not sure if they were meant to be so serious, or if that’s just me projecting.  Either way, I’m glad the movie neither tries to proselytize or joke at those moments and just kind of lets them be what they are.

And they’re not enough to drag the movie down into the Robin Williams sappy territory.  (Seriously, I dig Robin Williams, but can we see just one movie where he doesn’t do the “sad clown,” crying at the end of the movie thing?  Just one?)   In fact, when you get into the schmaltzy post-script moment when Seth and Evan finally come to terms with their separate futures in college, it’s actually one of the funnier moments in the movie.

And oh, yeah.  My favourite line from the whole movie:

“Hey, we just cock-blocked McLovin.  We should be guiding his cock, not blocking it.”

Micheal Moore is soooo cool. The Sicko phenom has continued to gather steam and the production company has agreed to release more copies of the movie to smaller cities across the country. That’s great news for Universal Health Care because many rural people, especially in the Mid-West, don’t get to see films like this very often in the theatre and this is one that needs to be seen far and wide.

But what makes Michael Moore so cool is his inventive and creative ways of generating interest in the movie. Its this that Conservatives find so goading about him; they figure only Corporate America has the right to use slick promotional gimmicks. I guess that’s sorta fair, since after all, they’re usually selling us poison, so you’ve gotta work extra hard to make that palatable.

But check out Mike’s new promotion:

And, to show my thanks to all of you who’ll go see “Sicko” this weekend, I’m going to send one of you and a guest on a free weekend to the universal health care country of your choice! That’s right. You’ll get to pick one of the three industrialized countries featured in the movie where, if you get sick, you get help for free, no matter who you are. All you have to do is send us your ticket stub (make sure it says “Sicko” on it and has the name of the theater and this weekend’s date on it — Friday, Saturday or Sunday - July 20th, 21st, 22nd). Attach the stub to a piece of paper with your name, address, phone number and email and send it to: ‘Sicko’ Night in America, 888c 8th Avenue, Suite 443, New York, NY 10019. (Yes, you have to use that old 18th century device called the U.S. Postal Service, and it has to be postmarked on or by Tuesday, July 24th). First prize is a weekend in the city of your choice: Paris, London or Toronto. This includes airfare, hotel, meals and, most! exciting, a representative from their fine universal health care system who will give you a personal tour so you can see how they treat their fellow citizens. You’ll meet people who pay nothing for college and citizens who are in the fourth week of their six-week paid vacation. Oh, and you’ll have time to see the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben or whatever they have in Toronto that is old and tall. (If you don’t have a passport, we’ll pay for that, too!)

Who is up for seeing Sicko a second time? I am.