31 July 2004
MOVIE: THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004).
A global corporation stands poised to successfully elect the first brainwashed-to-order president. I had high hopes for this movie; after having been seriously creeped out by the inspired original, I was eager to see how the film could achieve the same effect while exploring how its original themes could apply to today's post 9/11 climate.
Oh, so wrong was I. This "updated" version, which takes place amid the modern-day din of the 24-hour news cycle, is just a mess. Just a complete mess. Denzel Washington, who plays the Gulf War veteran who's been haunted by the same dream for ten years, valiantly (but barely) survives a script of cartoonish melodrama fraught with the kind of pre-packaged, Hollywood-approved paranoia we've come to easily identify: manic scribblings in notebooks; feverish drawings covering the walls; clanging flashbacks ending in bolt-upright cold sweats. Couple that with a story that shockingly reveals non-secrets we already knew about (corporations hold politicians on puppet strings, didn't you know), and we're left with a flat exercise in formula storytelling.
See, the movie is essentially a one-note mishmash: one-note in that it maintains the same histrionic franticness throughout the movie, without a single moment of modulation; mishmash in that it's just, well, noisy, both visually and aurally. Music is present in every scene appropos of nothing, whether it's blaring at you from a stereo or thudding off frame from behind a wall. Pedantic, obvious news voiceovers constantly blab on and on about how the world is going to hell in a corporate handbasket. National guardsmen patrol every outdoor shot, no matter how improbable the location (a shopping mall?). And campaign posters pepper every frame, perplexingly drawn in faux styles of Soviet propaganda ("Freedom from fear"), Barbara Kruger's artsy truisms, or Warhol's silkscreened portraits, all of which clash with the film's one-dimensional realism. I'm sure it's all supposed to convey a sense of a world spinning into info-chaos. But that's about as earth-shattering as listening to someone complain about the lack of privacy in the credit card age.
I could go on and on. Meryl Streep, her talents wasted as the sinister mother of the candidate. The overly technical explanation of the brainwashing, which drains the conspiracy of its mystery while simultaeously raising boorish and trivial questions as to its feasability. Or the plot, which is so distracted by its own art and sound direction as to neglect the motivations of every character. Tragic! Because when you have a movie with so subversive and important a theme as this, you really should try not to screw it up by making it into just another summer gunfight.
You have 30 seconds, mother.
29 July 2004
MOVIE: JU-ON (2003).
The house in which horrific murders took place haunts all those who come in contact with it. Ju-on, which has unfortunately been translated as The Grudge for the upcoming American version starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, is no masterpiece by any stretch. But filmmaker Takashi Shimizu, who scared the crap out me with The Ring, has such a sensitive, almost artful touch that he turns this simplistic, 90-minute-short flick into a gut-wrenching gauntlet of non-stop creepiness. Seriously. Every scene presented yet another member of the ensemble cast encountering still more demon shadows lurking just around the corner. 90 minutes? Felt more like two-hours. And not in a bad way. Much like The Ring, Ju-on exploits low-budget, common items to elicit our worst fears: horrifyingly distorted video; mysterious phone calls; stone-faced, undead children. I was impressed at how Shimizu achieved all this toe-squirming dread with almost no special effects at all--just old skool chops like makeup, strategic lighting, and dramatic camera angles. I could, of course, complain about the very Japanese plot, which leaps around in time and leaves much to interpretation (read: makes no sense), but who cares. It's summer. I walked out of the theater utterly exhausted, and exhilarated, from my prolonged spook. On the other hand: Nicki, who scares easily, punched me in the arm, accused me of neglect (for letting a movie scare her so badly), and declared the evening "The Worst Date Night Ever." In other words: good stuff. That is not our child. That is not our child. That is not our child.
26 July 2004
GAME: CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004).
 Yes, it's true what all the kids are saying: Riddick might be the first movie-based game ever that is not horrible. Amazing visuals create a dark world filled with dully sparkling metallic surfaces everywhere. Every detailed character expertly voice-acts their lines. Dynamic lighting casts shadows on walls, creates blinding halos, or distorts the viewfield's edges peephole-style, like when Riddick uses his night-vision to skulk around in the (ahem) pitch black. The game's story even makes enough sense to keep me curious, despite its scarily alpha-male atmosphere of a futuristic supermax prison from hell. Some of the scenes look straight out of the sci-fi classic Outland, and slick movie sequences make great use of the set.
And yet. And yet. Riddick, in the end, is all about stealth. Most of the game, which you can probably finish in two post-work sessions, is spent crawling about air ducts while weilding crude hand-to-hand weapons: shivs, clubs, brass knuckles. Given the sometimes aimless level design, unrelated mission objectives running in parallel, and heavy load times, all this slow-paced wandering can easily drain precious minutes from your evening. Especially when you don't exactly know what you should be doing next, which happens a few times.
When you do finally get to hose down a room full of guards with a minigun, it feels like too little and too late. And given that the final boss can be defeated simply by holding down the trigger for ten seconds, I get the feeling that developer Starbreeze just plain ran out of time. Sigh. Not very fun, I must say. Beautiful to look at, but not fun.
- GAMEPLAY: First-person shooter/stealth action.
- REMINISCENT OF: Thief, Deus-Ex, or Splinter Cell, but with heavy emphasis on hand-to-hand combat.
- LIBRARY WORTHY? No. But it's not like the movies are, either.
25 July 2004
MOVIE: THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004).
An amnesiac super-agent seeks answers to his mysterious predicament. Now, genre movies, especially spy movies, usually fall flat on their face. Or, they are so ridiculous that they parody themselves. But not Bourne: this is as good as genre fiction gets, and damn, did the filmmakers do a bang-up job. Damon plays Bourne with a quiet economy of emotion, creating a believably intense and driven character. Every scene shoots the movie forward so efficiently that it successfully avoids becoming bogged down by even those requisite computer paperchasing sequences. The lean, mean storyline leaps athletically across continents, giving Bourne plenty of opportunities to show off his clever spy hacks without once (not once!) talking down to the audience. I haven't seen a movie keep such a brisk pace ahead of me in a long time; nice to have the brain engaged, especially during this summer media haze.
Oh, but I have to mention the action sequences. There is a fight scene, mano a mano, that for some reason is the best damn fight scene I've ever seen. Was it the lack of music? Was it the disturbingly silent strangulation at the end? I don't know, and that's a kind of magic. Also: the car chase scene. It easily tops the one in the last Bourne film, if you can believe it. So absolutely breathtaking, smart, even, that me and Nicki spontaneously whooped and applauded when the vehicles finally screeched to a halt. Just...awesome.
When someone you love is taken from you, you have a right to know the truth.
PHOTO DIARY.
On the way back from the ComiCon, I snapped some shots of my favorite LA-to-San Diego landmarks. The big-ass Mormon galactic temple, for example.
The massive concrete bosoms of the San Onofre atomic power plant.
A warning to keep an eye open for new immigrants.
PHOTO DIARY.
I went to the San Diego Comics Convention this weekend to hang out with Patrick at his booth for Komikwerks.com. That's his partner Shannon to the right.
I wandered the floor for a while before things got too crazy. Korean manwha, which is Korean for, um, manga, is gaining exposure stateside, apparently. Here's Pucca.
Lou Ferigno and his muscles were there.
Everywhere were young geeks playing with their Magic: The Gathering cards or their Heroclix.
The beloved Uglydolls had their own little case at the Critterbox booth.
I kept meeting really famous people without knowing who they were. This gentleman, Patrick was quick to inform me, is Will Eisner, who is such a god in the industry that they named an awards ceremony after him (The Eisners). I also somehow wound up having dinner and drinks with Jim Shooter, who (after being briefed) turns out to also be a comics god. He used to be editor-in-chief at Marvel, for example.
My favorite part of the Con had nothing to do with comics: the Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle booth, complete with gigantic hamburger and booth babes.
PHOTO DIARY.
More food wackiness at work.
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