Stop Frame

Slashfilm has the new international trailer for James Cameron ’s Avatar . Still looks meh , but now complete with horrific, cliche-ridden dialogue in a trailer that seems give roughly 90% of the story away. Hasn’t this sort of story been done to death already? I hope I’m wrong. I always want a film to knock me out of my socks, whether in subtle or explosive ways. I’ve noticed that Cameron’s best films have music by Brad Fidel , while his very good films are scored by James Horner , and his crap is scored by someone else. Well, this one is scored by James Horner, so maybe there’s reason to hope.

For no particular reason, I found myself reminded of Naomi Wolf’s article Fascist America, in 10 easy steps . The 10 steps? Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy. Create a gulag. Develop a thug caste. Set up an internal surveillance system. Harass citizens’ groups. Engage in arbitrary detention and release. Target key individuals. Control the press. Dissent equals treason. Suspend the rule of law. While she was speaking specifically of the Bush administration, she did make clear: History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise. She names Hillary and Giuliani becaus...

Harley-Davidson is shutting down its Buell Motorcycles division. Not selling it, not letting it spin off as its own entity. They are killing it. Silly wabbits. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, or re-stating the facts and arguments, I defer to Hell for Leather : Cutting through the [excrement of the male bovine], it seems you can boil Harley's plan down to this: cut costs by streamlining production and lowering output, thereby alleviating dealers of stock they can't sell, then hope that the loans carry the company through to a projected return of middle-class solvency and credit availability. All this sounds startlingly similar to the business practices that got Harley into so much trouble in the first place. It'll continue to rely on the same demographic buying the same motorcycles and, since a large proportion of those customers don't have enough money to buy either the bikes or the accessories, it'll continue to give loans to people that can't ...

Oh my… French drop Polanski release call The French government has dropped its public support for Roman Polanski, saying the 76-year-old director “is neither above nor beneath the law”. […] Speaking to reporters, French government spokesman Luc Chatel said: "We have a judicial procedure under way, for a serious affair, the rape of a minor, on which the American and Swiss legal systems are doing their job." […] [T]he Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has distanced himself from the move by asking his ministers to show "greater restraint" in defending him. He added that despite a "leading Polish director" being involved, it is still a "case of rape and of punishment for having sex with a child". A member of the British parliament has called on the Council of Europe, of which he is also a member, to support Polanski's extradition to the US. Denis MacShane said the film-maker "should be held accountable...

Look, I’m as conservative as they come. Does that make me right-wing? Fine, have a nice time with the label. But here and now, let’s be clear: Roman Polanski is not a right-left issue. The defense coming from the “art world” in general isn’t an expression of left-wing, or even liberal, values, it’s an expression of depravity. Am I being too subtle? Roman Polanski was charged with multiple felonies, all stemming from having sex with a 13-year-old girl . Will you please read that again? 13. The age of consent in California, since the early 1900’s, has been and is 18. Polanski, at the time, was in his 40’s. Any sexual conduct between him and her would be a felony. The age gap aggravates the offense, compounding the possible sentencing. If Polanski had been 18 at the time, it would have been bad enough, but 43…? Now, add the alcohol and Quaaludes that he introduced into the mix, shake well with both vaginal and anal intercourse, and voila, the crime. Polanski was charged but reac...

“My car has a flat tire.” “You should buy a new car.” Every time I hear President Obama and other Democrats talking about “health care reform,” that’s what the conversation sounds like. A health care crisis is declared and the only solution is to replace the entire system. At most, around 15% of the American population is without health care insurance. Ignoring the fact that for most of them, this is a matter of choice, it also means that 85% are insured. And of that 85%, something like 70+% like their current coverage and don’t want the government to touch it. So for the vast majority, the current system works and works great. Yet, because of the minority for whom it allegedly does not...toss it all, start again. Admittedly, regardless of insurance coverage, it all costs too much, but again, the only accepted approach to controlling costs are to throw out everything and turn it all over to the government. Tactics that are proposed to address specific cost issues are not consid...

The first teaser trailer for James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar is up. I am unmoved. It’s an incredibly dull “tease.” In full-on 3D it might come to life, though. It certainly attempts to have sweeping vistas, an entire epic feel, but I’m just left feeling “meh.” Matters are made worse by what the trailer shows. You have a soldier in a wheelchair who is given the opportunity to remote operate an alien body, his “avatar.” They can grow an entire alien, complete with the necessary central nervous system, yet they can’t fix his original body? Can’t wait to hear the techno-babble explanation for that. Humans can fly across vast expanses of space, yet can’t “nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”? We’re reduced to fighting hand-to-hand, looking for all the world like Hollywood’s lasting image of Vietnam (door gunner hanging out of his helicopter, machinegun a-blaze…)? I thought the reason for the avatars was because humans can’t work on planet Pandora (and ...

Oh, what might have been. This is not a good film, but wow, it might have been. I remember seeing early talk and clips for this over at io9 ; none of the commentary was positive. But somehow I was intrigued. So here it is on DVD and…well, it’s not that good a film. And yet. The story goes that at the end of the ice age, a great machine fell onto earth and starting cranking out mutants. The ancient tribes of man united and buried the machine, sealing the mutants in. Fast forward to the dark future. The world is split between four corporations, fighting for the scraps of the planet. A battle between two of the corporations unseals the mutant machine, and the mayhem begins. The fate of the world rests with a small band of warriors who, on a suicide mission, must descend into the ground and destroy the mutant machine. I don’t know about you, but that plot description sounds like all sorts of awesome to me. Alas, it’s in the execution where great ideas live or, like here, die. The wri...

Further proof of the coming Apocalypse: Steven Spielberg has committed to his next film, and it will be an adaptation of the Mary Chase Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Harvey,” which will be done as a co-production between 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks. What’s next, a remake of Casablanca ? Citizen Kane ? Jaws ?!? H/T: AICN .

So I’m in Best Buy the other day, buying discounted copies of Wanted and Taken , sweet deal, and I start watching one of their Blu-Ray Disk (BD) and high-definition TV setups. It was playing U-571 , a film that resides in my DVD collection. Awesome , thought I. Only it wasn’t. It was awful. Everything had this gloss and sheen to it. It was so sharp that it stopped being film. It looked exactly like “quality” video. Yes, it was high-quality video, but it looked like video nonetheless. And it was, as said, awful. I don’t think anything was out of adjustment because it looked so damn sharp. It’s just that the end product came out looking terrible. Another demo setup was showing Spider-Man 2 and it looked just as bad. I know this isn’t an across the board result of BD + hi-def. My son has a BD setup (though the TV is only 720P) and we watched the BD version of The Dark Knight on it. Nonetheless, it seems like a distinct possibility if the film isn’t treated right when it gets re...

Sometimes excess is just that, excess. It serves no purpose whatsoever, and that’s my biggest problem with Watchmen . It presses the outer boundaries of an R rating for no reason other than to make you cringe; it doesn’t serve the story, it distracts and detracts. In a different age this film would have been rated NC-17. It’s a sad commentary that Watchmen makes A Clockwork Orange appear tame. The irony is that Watchmen ’s best character, Rorschach, would probably condemn a film like Watchmen . Nonetheless, and here’s the twist, I think A Clockwork Orange is a brilliant film, and I’m beginning to believe that Watchmen is, too. The genius lies in creating a superhero, masked vigilante world and taking it serious. If The Dark Knight illustrates the high ideals such people would have to hold, Watchmen is their dark side. It illustrates what happens when some of those “heroes” fall prey to their baser instincts, the very instincts they claim to fight. How well you appreciate this...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a decent enough film, but the accumulating problems of the series are beginning to take their toll. I’ve never read the books, but I’ve seen all the films. The first two are near-dreadful, the third is near-brilliant, the fourth is near-meh with glimpses of brilliance, and the fifth is just meh. With the sixth film, however, it’s become clear that to really understand what’s going on, you have to have read the books. In the films, characters tend to speak in short-hand. Fans of the books will easily fill in the missing pieces; those who haven’t are left hanging. The accumulating lack of data is beginning to show. For example, why did Voldemort kill Harry’s parents? Why is he obsessed with Harry? Where’s he been lo these many years? In the books, much of this is explained in the prophecy Voldemort was after in The Order of the Phoenix . If you’ve read the books, obviously, you know this. If you haven’t...? Fans of the books know this stu...

I woke up the other day with the realization that I was one of maybe three people on Earth who hadn’t yet seen the latest Transformers film. Feeling the need to lower my IQ, I went to remedy this. There are now, somewhere, only two people who haven’t seen Michael Bay’s latest...thing. Possibly the most accurate review of the film, though laden with spoilers, may be found here . Written as a Q&A, an example of its commentary is: Can you explain Megan Fox's appeal? Yes. She looks like a porn star and has the same acting talent as one, yet for some reason she makes mainstream movies. This tonal disconnect is what's so appealing about her. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (RotF) is a loud, sprawling, loud, drawn-out, loud, colorful, loud, spiraling, loud, dizzying, loud, train wreck of a film.  And knowing that train wrecks are governed by the laws of physics, and even while appearing chaotic proceed along understandable lines, calling this film a train wre...

Actually, more like a half-dozen 2 nd looks. Over at Big Hollywood , I got into a short, pleasant exchange with another reader ( dcase ) about Quantum of Solace . In the end, we agreed that it was better the second time around, and then he made an intriguing statement, that it was as close to an art house film as a Bond film is liable to get. Art house? Bond? Let’s work our way to that, and I’m afraid there are liable to be SPOILERS in this discussion. Sorry. First, I was perhaps less than kind to QoS when I first reviewed it. Many of my objections still stand. The action is, more often than not, disjointed, an example of the extreme close-up, shaky cam, rapid cut “style” that dominates modern action films. It’s not a style, it’s a disease. Most people blame Michael Bay for this plague, but I think the real cause is Paul Greengrass and his two Bourne films. Action films, Bay aside, want to imitate Bourne. Bay always takes a moment or two to pull the camera back and remind you...

Nothing I could say would surpass the words of the great man himself: SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their streng...

I’m still trying to understand just how good a film Up is. I emphasize film because I don’t put any qualifier ahead of it. I’m not saying “animated film” or “CGI film;” I’m saying film, period, end of story, as in it should compete for Best Picture Oscar and never mind that silly best animated feature award. Live action films, beware, you are now in competition with a cartoon that pretty much kicks your ass. Pixar is in a rather enviable position. The trailers for Up really give you no idea what the film is about, other than a man flying off in his house. Yet millions are flocking to the theatre, more than went to see other, recent Pixar films on their opening weekend. That’s pure good will and expectations, buoyed even higher by what is sure to be excellent word of mouth. Up tells the story of Carl and Ellie. Ellie, mind you, is no where to be found in the trailers, for the simple reason that she dies in the first five minutes of the film. And yet she inhabits most every fram...

My daughter is finishing up her sixth year of active duty with the US armed forces; my son-in-law-to-be is completing his eleventh. Both are aiming to be 20-year veterans. Friends have sons and daughters who have served six or more years. They have all seen multiple deployments overseas, in one hot zone or another. None of them regret enlisting (or re-enlisting), all serve with distinction, all are proud of who they are, what they do, and the country they serve. There aren’t enough words for me to express my gratitude for those who serve. As said, I know a lot of them, and I find them remarkable. Their sacrifices are many, in little and immense ways. I know exactly who to thank for the freedoms I enjoy. For all who serve, who have served, and who will continue to serve, and in memory of those who have given all and to their families who have lost so very, very much: Thank you, and God bless.

I’m at a loss. I’m not really sure why this film got so much critical praise and award nominations. While far from bad, it’s also far from great. It’s another example of where “it doesn’t suck” is taken as high praise. The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons unfolds at a lugubrious (love that word) pace. It tells the tale of a man born physically old, who grows physically younger as he grows chronologically older. It’s a cute concept, much better done here than Frances Coppola did with Youth Without Youth (which is just tedious). It just doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the story that unfolds on the screen. I suppose it could be an illustration of the saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Only it never seems to work that angle. The punchline, such as it is, seems to be that you can swear, fight, struggle, but in the end, you die. This is news? In many ways, this is Forest Gump Revisited , only a shade more mature. Where Gump was more often humorous, Buttons is almost alwa...

Well, it doesn’t suck. Despite J.J. Abrams repeatedly telling me to stay away (“Not your father’s Star Trek”, but what if I’m the father you’re referring to?), my son, his wife, and I went on opening day. I’ve been thinking how to put all this down ever since. Where to begin? The opening sequence is simply brilliant. Watching the USS Kelvin get smeared by The Villain is a vivid experience. A small sample is watching members of the crew race for their emergency stations as the ship comes under attack. Without warning, a wall rips open and several are blown into the silent, lethal vacuum of space. The moment is made all the more horrific by going from screaming sounds to (literally) deathly silence. Most of the first half of the film lives up to this promising start. A scene where young Kirk steals a car and throws it off a cliff is just awful, though, and meeting Spock as he beats the snot out of a school bully is painful. Despite these stumbles, characters are introduced in good...

It’s possible that Pixar is becoming a blight on the world of animation. Yes, they do some really great work ( The Incredibles , Ratatouille ), but they’ve also done some clunkers ( Cars , Wall-E ). Their greatest sin, though, is that they apparently radiate a variation of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, so that any other animated film – especially if done with CG – is automatically judged inferior. There is some justification to this, but you don’t see every live action film being compared to, say, the films of Ingmar Bergman (well, except by brooding people wearing dark glasses sitting in dim coffee shops smoking clove cigarettes discussing cinema, damn you ). In the traditional film world, it’s accepted that different artists turn out different products. In the animated world, everyone is supposed to match or surpass Pixar, or so it seems. Needless to say, that’s just a crock. Monsters vs Aliens is to your typical Pixar production as Spielberg is to Scorsese. And I h...

Not too long ago, Toto asked for people to confess their guilty pleasures, which films they love to watch despite the fact that they are truly awful. This got me to thinking, and now I confess: I am a lover of bad cinema. I don’t mean the obvious disasters, like Plan 9 From Outer Space . No, I love the film gone wrong, that one that started with the best of intentions and went astray. That’s the only way to explain why I think a wreck like Wanted is good. And if that’s not sufficient proof, consider that I can’t get enough of Hitman . The plot (choke, how did I even write that word in this context?) is laughable, the acting significantly short of sublime, and the writing...oh dear oh my. Yet I can’t get enough. Watched it again just the other night. All the while, I’m thinking how no one seems to notice these bald killers with bar codes tattooed on the back of their heads, and how in the hell do they conceal all those weapons under those snazzy coats (dual pistols, silencers, r...

Star Trek: Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek film by a country mile, and just about the best Star Trek of any sort (TV, film, animation, books, whatever). It’s one of the highest ranked geek films ever, and deserves a broad audience, including those who routinely shrug at either Star Trek or science fiction in general. It is why Star Trek will always be better than Star Wars. Director Nicholas Meyer had a simple attitude toward his project. He wasn’t interested in making a film about spaceships, but was intensely interested in making a film about the people inside the spaceship. From that simple notion came a landmark film that stands up against the best of both Trek and the best of science fiction. The story was setup in the TV episode “Space Seed,” wherein a Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) met and defeated Khan Noonian Singh (Ricardo Montalban), a brutal dictator from 21st Century Earth. Rather than condemn Khan and his followers to a 23rd Century prison, Kirk allows Khan...

Awful. The film is an environmentalist wacko wet dream. No one else could like this thing. I’m trying to think of something positive and all I can come up with is how positively awful it is. The original The Day the Earth Stood Still is a science fiction masterpiece. In it, Klaatu comes to Earth with a simple message: Do what you want among yourselves and on your planet. But if you attempt to export your violent way to the stars, Gort and his friends will hit you with so many lefts you’ll beg for a right. (Gort being the cosmic version of Chuck Norris, you see.) The ultimate warning was that we needed to change our violent ways if we expected to be accepted among the stars. In this remake, the aliens are environmental busy-bodies who have bought into the entire notion that we puny little humans are capable of destroying the planet. Therefore, we must be eliminated so that the planet, for God knows what reason, can try again. To count the ways in which this film makes no sense ...

In no particular order, these are a few films I’d buy in a heartbeat if they were on DVD. Five Came Back (1939) – Lucille Ball in a very serious film. I haven’t seen this in decades, but I still remember the chilling conclusion, an ending where silence invokes a sense of horror and dread. This film must have had some subliminal influence on me because it wasn’t until I was discussing it one night that I came to realize how close it comes, in several ways, to my one published book, right down to the number of survivors. I had pitched Derelict as sort of a haunted house in outer space, a variation on an Alien theme, but in retrospect it was also influenced by this film. Five Graves to Cairo (1943) – An early film by Billy Wilder, an excellent little World War II thriller. Franchot Tone is a British soldier, fighting Rommel’s Afrika Corps. The sole survivor of a disastrous engagement, he is saved from death by the owner of a small hotel in the middle of the Sahara. Before he can g...

DRM-free, that is. April 7 is the official date when “all” of the music offered through iTunes is supposed to be free of Digital Rights Management (DRM). As with so much with Apple, this is both accurate and incomplete. Certainly every song for sale from this date forth is DRM-free. What tech writers, reviewers, critics, and consumers are discovering, however, is that iTunes library has shrunk. There are tunes that are simply no longer available. So if you downloaded a DRM-protected file, there’s a possibility that you won’t be able to upgrade that tune to DRM-free; it’s simply not offered any more. And I’m wondering how Apple’s variable pricing is going to work. I’m also wondering how critics who complained about Microsoft’s tiered pricing scheme will react. Is it okay now that Apple is doing it? Amazon has had variable pricing from the get-go, but I’m sure someone somewhere complained about that, too. What’s interesting is that you can easily shop for cheap music at Amazon. The...

To call this film disappointing is to praise it with faint damnation. Is it horrible? No. But is it good? Well, no, not really, especially when compared to its immediate predecessor, Casino Royale . Casino was a first step in re-launching the Bond franchise and it was a great film. Daniel Craig seemed born to play Bond in a way not seen since Sean Connery’s heyday. It’s biggest fault was its attempts to top the Bourne films, transforming Bond from suave and sophisticated to blunt and crude. Even there, though, the film showed Bond’s first steps towards sophistication and thus seemed to make a promise: Just wait until the next one! Liars. Quantum picks up minutes after the end of Casino , making this the first Bond sequel rather than just another episode in the series. The biggest mystery left over from Casino is who was behind Le Chiffre. Who were those bastards blackmailing Vesper? Just what the heck is going on? And so Quantum starts off with Bond interrogating Mr. White,...

Sit back, relax, join me in a thought exercise. Normally I’d ask you to close your eyes, but if you did that you couldn’t read the instructions. Imagine you are sent to a foreign city, somewhere you’ve never been. It can be for most any reason: business, pleasure, etc. You are given a map that shows you the route from the airport to the hotel where you’ll be staying. So equipped, you start walking on your way. Over halfway to your destination, you face a long stretch of dark streets. You can see, off in the distance, the lights of your destination. Between you and it, though, all is dark. You have no choice, there is no other way, you must proceed along those dark streets to reach your destination. You step into the dark. Imagine how you would feel. Imagine the emotions racing through your mind. Imagine how your senses would expand, how you would begin to pay more attention. Imagine how alert your senses might become, attentive for any sound of danger, ready to react in response to...

Seriously. I’m San Francisco born and bred, though I currently live in the Sacramento Valley. I’ve spent my entire life in California. I’ve visited hither and yon and have always returned to the Golden State. I like it here. If you’re a motorcyclist, you’re never too far from a great riding road. If you like the sea, you’re never too far from the ocean, or some vast lake. If you like the mountains, well say hello to the Sierra Nevadas. If you like the desert, it’s right down there, and if you prefer gentle rolling hills, no problem. Love cities? Fine, we can accommodate that, too. Bright lights, big city, welcome to this corner’s Starbucks, better than the next. And did I mention movie stars, glitz, and glamour? And politics? Oh, boy, do we have politics. Which is the problem. California politics aren’t just left-wing – and they’re not even extremely left-wing if you really look at them – they are insane. There is a complete sense of disconnect from reality. “Let us initiate ...