07.02.09
Posted in Film, Sci-Fi/Fantasy at 12:01 am by Alex
For the moment, imagine there’s a picture of Megan Fox’s boobs here.
There is practically no purpose served by writing about Revenge of the Fallen, because it’s already been said. The bombast has been brought, and it has been good, from Roger Ebert’s “horrible experience of unbearable length” to the Awl’s “fall[ing] into a city sized Cuisinart” and io9’s argument of the film’s merit as a breakthrough piece of avant-garde movie making. I have a certain barometer in my office, a man of diplomatically different tastes to my own. Even he was unhappy with the film, thinking that Michael Bay should maybe have dialed it back a bit so that he could have an idea of what was happening. That said, he liked the twins, so we’re all doomed despite the little beams of hope that penetrate the dense canopy of hopelessness that is the modern cinema.
I have since learned to stop asking people what they thought of it because so many responses I have received have been depressing in their likeness: how “awesome” is a word that could ever be applied to this visual and narrative mess is entirely beyond my ken. One of my best friends informed me in a text that it was good, “not as good as [the] first but that often happens”. You can never really know a person …
The fact of the matter is that Revenge of the Fallen is so bad that after a time I started feeling nostalgic for the first movie, which is odd considering that I’ve spent the last two years bitching about it on street corners to whomever will grant me an audience. I don’t know if there’s such a strain as “Super Stockholm Syndrome”, whereby your present captor is so bad that you find yourself longing for the tender embrace of your last, but I think I got myself a case of that.
This movie gets so exponentially worse as it progresses that you long for the minutes when it was absolute shite rather than whatever expletive it evolves into. Sam’s mother ended up becoming a highlight of the movie, and she was really just crude and shrill up to that point. I’ll probably go to my grave not knowing what the point of the French interlude was, or why the audience hung on every word that Sam’s idiot parents spew forth from their gormless gullets.
I got the impression after a while that Megan Fox was the only person on the film actually trying, and her performance actually endeared me to an actress whom I traditionally see as an inexplicable holy grail for heterosexual men. When she started bouncing away from explosions in slow motion, I laughed legitimately for the first time. She brings a sort of warmth to the role of Mikaela (Mikaela … Bay?) that is lacking in the remainder of the movie, no matter how many times we see Shia LaBoeuf shed tears for his precious robot chums.
This was truly a schadenfreude experience for me, seeing it with a friend who thought that the first film was a masterpiece, without exaggeration. He ended up comparing Revenge of the Fallen to the Matrix sequels. My friend Tony declared that Dragonball Evolution was a better film, and we came out of that in a waking dream that we only shook an hour and a half later. I’ve also heard unfavourable comparisons to Speed Racer, which isn’t fair at all. Speed Racer tested credulity, challenging me to acknowledge and accept and at least try to understand its existence. Eventually I came to terms with it as something that should not exist but was awesome purely because it was able to gain a foothold in our dimension. I understand why Revenge of the Fallen was made, and it depresses the Hell out of me.
There’s probably some rider in my contract that says I have to go into more detail about the movie itself. You may have detected that I don’t really give a damn about this execrable excursion into the cinematic form, so it goes without saying that there will be spoilers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
06.25.09
Posted in Books, Sci-Fi/Fantasy at 11:51 pm by Alex
I’m not normally much of a one to read fantasy or science fiction, with my toes only dipping as deep as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – special men, and special exceptions. It’s not a failing of the genre so much as it’s a failing of the self: I find so much of the material I’ve tried so dry that I haven’t been able to immerse myself much further than a few pages. Combine that with the authors’ tendencies to prolificacy, which makes it dang near impossible to find a place to start, and then in sequence, and it’s something that I generally stay clear of.
Let’s ignore entirely SF and fantasy writers’ other tendency, after their works get a bit long in the tooth: that of transforming their series into a collection of rape, incest and paedophilic fantasies – which is a wild generalisation, but common enough to note – and let me focus on something good.
The other week, browsing in my favourite “surprise” bookstore (there’s no point going there for anything specific, it’s a pot luck affair), I saw Stephen Hunt’s The Kingdom Beyond The Waves on the shelves. Intrigued by its cover, featuring a steampunk u-boat trailing an ancient diving suit, I meditated on the book and its promise of an archaeology professor seeking the lost civilisation of “Camlantis”. I didn’t buy it immediately, but rather came back a few days later and purchased it after the allure of a Victorian submarine could no longer be resisted.
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves turned out to be well worth it, but I had some initial misgivings. It soon became clear to me that this was not the first book that Hunt had written in this world. It turned out later that it’s a case of world and history sharing, rather than character sharing, but this still poses a problem because if you’re unprepared you can drown in terms for races and places and drinks that you’ve never heard of. Hunt is a good enough writer that soon enough you’ll realise that there are apparently a race of four armed crab people operating alongside humanity and – more importantly – “steammen” who subscribe to a voodoo like religion.
Once I’d figured all of this out, the book became one giant ball of “yes” for me. Hunt hits so many of my buttons that it’s almost as if he cut into my head and realised so much of the stuff I’ve always wanted and then overlaid it with things I never knew I was even allowed to want. Look at it like this: it’s kind of like Indiana Jones in a fantasy setting with crabs and robots. Mix this in with a traditional Atlantis/Laputa quest, add disgraced royalty reduced to swashbuckling beneath the sea and then season with an eccentric man of high standing who has a thousand false faces and one “true” one, and you have a great book. There are eventually three plot threads running at a time, and every time I reached a new one I’d be cursing because I wanted to know what was going to happen next in the last one. It’s a particularly vicious cycle, and one that can only be solved by continuing to read.
What does fantasy have to offer us? Lost technology is one of the greatest lynchpins: people operating machinery and other devices that they simply do not have the wherewithal to produce in their own context: relics of ages long gone. Hunt offers that here with the oil powered car of “Diesela-Khan”, not to mention the pure excellence that abides in the steammen and their feral siltempter enemies.
You also have people who “aren’t what they seem to be” and who, under Hunt’s tutelage, manage to be both exciting and surprising despite their obvious mystery: early in the book a blind man with awesome power manifests his awesome powers. Soon thereafter a blind man with uncanny sonar ability joins the u-boat’s crew. Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not!
I should also mention that not only are we treated to steam powered robots, but steam powered robots who have made mortal enemies of thunder lizards. Yes, dinosaurs versus robots. I realise I sound like I’m being flippant here but all of this material works very well together and achieves precisely what it should do: it captured my imagination in a way that forced me to run to the final destination and find out precisely what was going on.
Hunt takes many old ideas, blends them together and creates something that is at once both compelling and familiar. I think that the reason a lot of people stick with genre writing of any sort is because they’re given something that is reassuring but hopefully also invigorating, something that reminds them why they follow whatever it is they follow in the first place (for crime, for instance see Ian Rankin’s Rebus books). Even now, reading through Terry Pratchett’s books again, I’m frequently floored by paragraphs of insight or turns of phrase that resonate deep in my core, and have for the twelve years that I’ve been reading his work.
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is the second of what presently stands at three books. I’ve only just barely touched on what makes the book so good, but I think it’s clear that I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Permalink
05.10.09
Posted in Film, Sci-Fi/Fantasy at 1:58 am by Alex
Again, I find myself feeling like a traitor, a stranger in a strange land: I’ve seen a franchise film in a franchise that I’ve forever been indifferent to. Star Trek is a franchise I was never really the right age to get into, and prior to JJ Abrams’ latest outing I’d only seen Generations at the cinema and that one where Data swears (that’s really all I remember of that particular title).
I’ve had a rough few weeks at the cinema. I wanted something good that I could watch without wanting to tear somebody’s eyes out. I got precisely that from Star Trek. I was so grateful for the quality of the experience that tears sprang to my eyes a few times. It was just that beautiful.
It was so well done that, after saying “Eric Bana was the villain?”, Raymond was then heard to remark “the characters were good”. They are. Star Trek is essentially a character driven film with a more than working story that effectively sets up a new Trek continuity in a wholly accessible way. I know that a lot of people are going to avoid it by virtue of it being Star Trek, but they’re doing themselves a grave disservice. I’ve ran into so many people who have loved Wolverine, though, that I simply don’t know what to think of society anymore.
Basically: watch Star Trek.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
05.06.09
Posted in Film at 1:18 am by Alex
While Dragon Ball Evolution left me without words, Fast & Furious left me wondering if I should even bother with words. For a big movie allegedly about fast cars and explosions, the whole exercise is surprisingly boring: tedious plotting and cashing in on nostalgia for a movie that I never saw are the key ingredients. To stretch an analogy, it’s like making a cake out of Vin Diesel.
Yeah. You wouldn’t want to eat it, would you?
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
05.03.09
Posted in Comics, Film at 11:27 pm by Alex
Bad movies need to stop being made or else I am going to die. Today’s plan was to write a screed about reviews in response to Shamus‘ review lore. But first I am going to have to kill X-Men Origins: Wolverine in the face for being such a slipshod, lazy and uninteresting movie. Even as someone who doesn’t have an investment in the X-Men franchise, it wouldn’t have taken much to make this movie enjoyable. The premise of the franchise is sound: dudes have cool powers, get discriminated against because of it, and blow shit up in a variety of ways using those powers.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Wolverine you’ve seen all of the cool bits. The extent of the long awaited Gambit’s involvement is really throwing a few cards and using a sort of shock stick (I’m not a scholar; I don’t know the technical terms). What you have left after that is a total lack of momentum and a lot of smirking from Liev Schreiber. Hugh Jackman’s arms really cannot carry a movie by themselves, not even in conjunction with the unmercifully brief showing of Ryan Reynolds’ arms. It’s just not on.
Twitter is the place to go if you want a fairly instantaneous review from me, and I said all that needed to be said in 123 characters:
Wolverine was poorly shot, badly motivated and the characters seemed little more than cameos. I would recommend against it.
But I’ll write a little more and get the word out. I would suggest that if you were a kneejerk reactionary who doesn’t think about his choice of words, you could suggest that several of your favourite X-Men characters have been “raped” by this movie. If you want to say stuff like that, I’ll see you for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in a couple of months!
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
04.08.09
Posted in Film at 11:50 pm by Alex
There’s a right way to go about making a film centring on nostalgia, and Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked goes about it the right way. Casting aside the shackles of romantic comedy that have burdened him for so long, Curtis has produced a funny, largely plotless, broadly charactered examination of a period of time plainly dear to him accompanied by an excellent soundtrack.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
04.04.09
Posted in Animation, Film at 1:59 am by Alex
The optimism with which I approached Monsters vs Aliens was not cautious. I was not expecting great things, but I had a quiet confidence in Dreamworks, despite my abiding hatred for Shrek and its hideous bastard offspring. When the opening credits finished with the line “and Stephen Colbert as The President”, I lost it. I was determined to enjoy Monsters vs Aliens, and that’s precisely what I came away with.
I should probably make clear once more that I am a fan of animation. While that means I can be a harsh critic of “cartoons”, it also means that I’m more inclined to like them than Joe Q. Public who is indifferent to the whole exercise. It’s an important distinction, because it’s not a form (animation is not a genre) that I simply view as “take or leave”. Wall-E and The Incredibles are included among my favourite films in general, not just in the field of animation.
Having said that, Monsters vs Aliens is not a Pixar level film (then again, neither was Cars). That doesn’t stop it from being a consistently entertaining movie with a semi-clear to somewhat muddied moral. As a general audience movie, I don’t know how it would fare and, as is always the case with this sort of stuff, many of the best jokes likely won’t be understood by the target audience of children. (Axel F., for crying out loud!)
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
04.02.09
Posted in Film at 12:54 am by Alex
Knowing is probably not 2009’s The Happening, but that doesn’t make it a good film. It takes a special kind of movie for me to say “but nothing’s happened” when fifty minutes remain and I’ve borne witness to a fiery plane crash and a lengthy train derailment – and all at high speeds!
Knowing is a singularly unconscious film. It’s impossible to pinpoint the genre of a film that can’t decide whether it’s a supernatural mystery, a thriller, horror or a treatise on the apocalypse. It doesn’t quite manage to be any of them and the result is not so much incoherent as it is inconsequential. If the audience (that is, me) doesn’t care about the fate of the world, let that mother burn.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
03.10.09
Posted in Site at 4:40 pm by Alex
Every time I attempt to do something new and exciting, I invariably get bitten in the arse. This is precisely why, in these heady times when I am inexplicably attempting a second degree and also thinking “perhaps I should make a go of actually writing as part of this writing gig”, my laptop has died.
It may be a short lived death; it may return, like Lazarus, and walk once more.
The fact of the matter is, until then, I’m living on borrowed computer, sneaking peeks from the iMac downstairs (are they still iMacs? I don’t know. The ridiculously large screened ones that have the built in hard drives), and breaking into the UNSW libraries and using their computers for an hour at a time.
If you never hear from me again, it is because I have been devoured by people who are utterly mystified by the internet. People who are within the 18-22 age group, and don’t know anything about this online world excepting Facebook and Youtube. It’s depressing, really. How can you never have heard of the Great Firewall of China, be unable to conceive of government censorship?
How, for that matter, can you be doing a Media degree and not notice that the government has, for the past little while, been trying to censor and strangle our own internet with all the grace of an ocean trawler indiscriminately taking in dolphins and narwhals along with the pedophiles, anorexics and paranoids?
For my own part, regret nothing. Have lived life, free from compromise… and step into the shadow now without complaint.
If reading this now, whether I am alive or dead, you will know truth. Have done best to make this legible. Believe it paints disturbing picture. Appreciate your recent support and hope world survives long enough for this to reach you, but tanks are in East Berlin, and writing is on wall.
Permalink
03.05.09
Posted in Comics, Film at 11:04 pm by Alex
I realised, after watching the Watchmen film today, that I had been approaching it as an adaptation rather than as a film. I really don’t know how it is as an actual film, apart from the fact that it is quite long with no indication as to its pacing if you’re unfamiliar with the story, and that it remains fairly episodic.
What do I think of it? The reviews have been mixed, I know. Unlike Wil Wheaton, I have not been waiting for Watchmen for more than twenty years. Unlike Roger Ebert, I don’t consider it a four star film.
A brief history of me and Watchmen: I bought it about eighteen months ago, and read it last month. As is the case with such things, the moment of consumption is the moment that you kick yourself for not doing it earlier. It was very good. I was even moved at points, and would describe the end of chapter eleven as one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in comics.
The movie is brought to us by “the visionary director of 300“. I advise rereading that sentence. If it makes you shout “THIS IS SPARTA!”, carry on. If it makes your eyes roll back into your head and your mouth begins to foam, I accept no responsibility for your medical bills. I’m not sure how much of a visionary you have to be to produce near carbon copy faithful recreations of comic books, but I’m not sure that Zack Snyder is one – particularly in light of the fact that, despite the absolutely ridiculous fidelity to the source material, Watchmen differs in places both minor and key – including the much talked of yet infuriatingly vaguely whispered new ending.
SPOILER CITY FROM THIS POINT FORTH
NO, SERIOUSLY, I SPOIL THIS MOVIE SO HARD
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »