In The Summer, In The Cinema

My most recent poll was put up probably too late to draw much attention, but for once that screw-up was only partially my fault. As I mentioned before, this is a particularly weak summer line-up, and we can perhaps attribute that to the after-effects of the writers' strike, as well as the stellar quality of 2008's summer season, which set the bar so high. How could this year compare to a line-up that featured such entertaining films as The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Kung Fu Panda? Still, I should have at least made more of an effort, even if only for old time's sake. Here are the results:

• JJ Abrams Risks Death by Unwashed Nerd Rage-On - 8 (47%)
• Quentin Tarantino and the Broken Spellcheck - 3 (17%)
• Transmogrifiers 2: Return of the Awesome - 1 (5%)
• I’d Rather Be Dragged To Hell Than Watch Spider-Man 3 Again - 1 (5%)
• Pixar’s Whassup, Bitches? - 1 (5%)
• The Time-Travelling Bana - 1 (5%)
• Harry Potter and the Thing in the Place with the Whatsit - 1 (5%)
• District 9 (AKA Neill Blomkamp Rocks Your Face Off) - 1 (5%)
• Terminator Franchise: Salvage Operation - 0 (0%)
• The Curious Case of Wolverine Wutton - 0 (0%)
• Angels, Demons, and Probably Ewan McGregor’s Schlong - 0 (0%)
• Another Worthless Woody Allen Movie - 0 (0%)
• Hott Sam Rockwell’s Lunar Oscar Bid - 0 (0%)
• Depp and Bale in: Untouchablesque - 0 (0%)
• Sacha Baron Cohen and the Inevitable Lawsuits - 0 (0%)
• (500) Days of Self-Conscious Indie Movie Quirk - 0 (0%)
• Demetri Martin + Ang Lee + Hippies = WTF? - 0 (0%)
• G.I. Joe: The Struggle to Give a Shit - 0 (0%)
• The Unnecessary Remaking of Pelham 123 - 0 (0%)
• Final Destination: Rube Goldberg’s Revenge - 0 (0%)
• Judd Apatow’s Self-Loathing People (feat. The RZA!) - 0 (0%)

What's weirdest about Star Trek's overwhelming success is that people were still voting for it weeks after it had come out. From what I can tell people were seeing it more than once, so perhaps this was a retroactive vote of happiness after people had already seen it. Whatever the reason, it's great to see so much support for something that was treated as a hubris-tainted disaster before even a frame of it had been shown. I had expected something approximating greatness for a while, hoping that J.J. Abrams would go for broke after playing safe with the frustrating Mission Impossible 3, but sadly my anticipation worked against me.


When I finally saw it I was a little disappointed, even though I liked it a lot. The hectic pace was necessary to get all of the characters into place while setting up the Trek universe for N00Bs and telling a story, but it might have been a touch too crazed even for me. It didn't help that seeing it in IMAX made all of those whip-pans and lens flares far more exhausting than they would be on a regular screen, as well as making Zachary Quinto's eyebrows and the... how can I put this tactfully... heavily-detailed face of Chris Pine hella-distracting. I have been trying and failing to see it again on a normal sized screen to give it another shot at blowing my mind. Even without that reassessment, so far it's the movie to beat this summer. Why? Because Abrams destroyed Vulcan. That takes balls of brass. Or dilithium.

After that, the only movie generating more than baseline excitement is Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. All the more surprising after the critical drubbing it received at Cannes. Not that that matters. Tarantino is one of those rare artists that have created a work of pop culture art of such great impact that they get a free pass for life. Just as I'll follow Eno or Dylan or Scorsese through thick or thin, Tarantino movies will always feel like an event, even when the result is a disappointment (I'm thinking Kill Bill Part Two). It worries me that a die-hard Tarantino fan like Bradshaw gave it a memorable slating, but he seems uncomfortable around schlocky b-movie stuff.


Yes, he gave Star Trek a big five-star review, but then claimed throughout the review that Nero and his grumpy cohorts were Klingon. It suggests he never really pays attention to the "baser" end of the cultural spectrum. Which is fine, of course. Thank God for him giving props to Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Andrei Zvyagintsev despite the whining of readers offended that he would dare like something "arty". Nevertheless, if the movie is going to feature more than one explosion or decapitation, or is actually colossally dreadful, stupid, and predictable on almost every level, best to take his review with a pinch of salt/gunpowder.

Speaking of things that explode, Disguisatrons Two: There Will Be Oil got my vote. Yes the first one had as many flaws as it had great moments. Yes it could be confusing. Yes it blah blah ah fuck it. I loved the first one just because it set out to be a robot mayhem movie with broad jokes and explosions and unearned drama, and it did that with zero apology. I wasn't a huge Transformers fan so I didn't weep because Mammothtron was the wrong shade of teal. I think Michael Bay's decision to make every action scene hectic and every conversation a series of unconnected smart-ass jokes is a terrible kind of genius because you can tune out every few seconds and never lose track of what's going on, because there's nothing coherent to lose track of, and nothing has any dramatic weight. It's spectacle for the sake of spectacle. Criticising Bay for not being Ingmar Bergman is as futile as criticising cheese for not being gaseous. (ETA: I wrote that sentence yesterday, and what do you know, Bradshaw hated it, using a customarily brilliant metaphor about sex to illustrate the point. However, when criticising the awful Megan Fox, he invoked the memory of Liv Ullmann! Spooky.)


Bear in mind, he's probably the only action filmmaker I'm willing to give this latitude to (see Stephen Sommers comments below), simply because he does this stuff bigger and better than anyone else. Without the outrageous spectacle, that dramatic emptiness is really apparent. As I feel obliged to say every time I get excited about a Bay movie, I'm not crazy. I'm fully aware it could suck, but I won't have to wait long to find out. I'll be seeing it on Saturday on IMAX, Crom willing, and if that format made Star Trek hard to watch, it will almost certainly render hardcore Bay nigh-unwatchable. But, you know, who cares? BOOM!

I'd be very very surprised if it gave us anywhere near the pleasure Drag Me To Hell did. Sam Raimi's gloriously silly granny-spitfest entertained parts of my brain I'd forgotten I had, i.e. all of the neurons that were born during my first viewing of Evil Dead II. Much as I have grown to dislike seeing movies with large audiences, I would have liked to have seen this with more people, even if only to drown out the noise of this one old guy who chattered away when we went to see it (my intense glare of disgust did not phase him, oddly). The few dozen people who were in there hooted and shrieked and laughed throughout, and it was great.


I can't remember the last time I saw a film work so well simply because it is so proudly base and silly, but then that's probably because Sam Raimi has not been making those films for a while. Seeing his return to his roots has been one of the highlights of the year, and not enough people have experienced it. For shame, humanity! If you've not yet seen it, you have to go see it right now, even if only for the fight scene in the car about twenty minutes in. I can't remember a more brazen attempt to get a response from a crowd, nor can I remember a scene that has been as successful in generating one.


Canyon's vote went to Pixar's Up, the long-awaited follow-up to Monsters Inc. from Pete Docter. This is a particularly hard movie to write about as the majority of Americans we know have already seen it, and we remain Ed-Asner-less. It's not out in England until October, meaning we're going to have the same silliness we had with Ratatouille, where we saw the movie on the big screen three weeks before the release of the region 1 DVD. Wall*E came out quickly, but we were not crazy about that. Up's trailers have been so wonderful, and unexpected, and glowing, that we're more excited about this than any other Pixar movie to date. Now I know how the Japanese feel (movies get released months late over there, for reasons I do not understand).

Then there's some weirdness. A vote for The Time-Traveller's Wife? Was this a Journeyman fan? An Eric Bana fan? Just for having Ron Livingston in the cast, I'll be giving that sucker a miss. Same goes for Harry Potter and the Wig of Translucence or whatever it's called. I'm afraid I'm not a fan, though that's partially because I stopped reading the books before they, apparently, got a lot more complex. While Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy captured my imagination, J.K. Rowling's books almost completely passed me by. I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban (the book), but never got any further.


As for the films, Chris Columbus' dreadful work on the first one put me off for good, even though Alfonso Cuaron eventually turned up to save the day. Of course, that fifteen-hour narcolepsy-inducing disaster is the one Potter movie that's in constant rotation on Sky Movies, so there's no getting away from it. I will watch them all eventually, even though the second one is full of icky spiders BAD BAD MOVIE!!! I like that they're becoming darker as they progress (just like the books), but from the impressive trailers for the latest film, if the next two are darker, they'll have to be directed by Michael Haneke. (Idea!)


One final vote, for Neill Blomkamp's District 9. Alien Nation without a rubber-headed Mandy Patinkin drinking sour milk? I can't wait either.

After that, the majority of the films on the list got no votes. Fair enough. I struggled to come up with a list, and most of these films wouldn't interest me either. I had high hopes for Terminator Salvation, though most fans had written it off just because McG was involved. For a good stretch of the film he did a good job, with two stand-out setpieces in the first hour, and the good sense to hire Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, relative newcomer and scene-stealer Sam Worthington (Marcus Wright rocked), and last but certainly not least, internet search engine sensation Moon Bloodgood, as Tough But Beautiful Post-Apocalypse Lady In Sexy Tight Trews.


Sadly, it all fell apart in the final twenty minutes, with action scenes dragging on for too long, before a horribly compromised final reel fell flat. Then there was the distracting and relentless tide of references to the first two movies. I had had enough by the time Christian Bale pulled out the CD player and cranked out You Could Be Mine, an act that suggested he had occupied himself during the nuclear winter by scavenging in burned-out record stores when not shouting into his walkie-talkie. Sadly, there was more to come, with numerous shots lifted wholesale from James Cameron's originals. By the time "Arnie" showed up, I half expected Rick Rossovich to rush in from stage left to hit him in the head with a lamp.

Still, at least I had enjoyed it for a while, and it exceeded my expectations by some distance. The opposite could be said for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which could well be the worst Marvel adaptation to date. It's definitely in the bottom three. There are no words to express how awful the goddamn thing is, and even my fanboyish pleasure in watching Hugh Jackman do his thing was dented, probably because I know he got more involved in the making of it, which means the stink of failure is upon him. Sadly, that stink oozes off the screen like some kind of miasmic deathcloud, and settles on us as well. And when I say stink, I'm talking a mouthful of skunk-ass-juice stink right in the mouth. That stinky. That FAIL-y.


Even weeks later, after numerous failed attempts to remove the stink with lemon juice, Viakal, and Febreeze, I was still flashing back to some of the dreadfulness. The hilarious sped-up shot of Wolvie hacking away at a fire escape; Ryan Reynolds wasted as Deadpool; that horrible final fight in front of a green screen; the pointless last act retcon of one major death just to have that death happen all over again; Cyclops' eyes setting fire to things when any fule kno that his eyebeams are pure force, not heat; Wolverine meeting Ma and Pa Kent and getting them killed within a few minutes of showing up; "Why is the moon so lonely?", which has to be the funniest line of dialogue of 2009; the galactic-level stupidity of the whole sorry enterprise. Right now, not even an Uwe Boll movie written by Paul Haggis and starring Cameron Diaz and Paul Walker could topple it from the Worst Movie of 2009 position.

I mean, Angels and Demons was not as bad as Wolverine. How is this possible? Middle-aged man runs around Rome shouting factoids about Catholicism vs. adamantium berserker rage. It should have been a slamdunk. And yet the former was more entertaining, even though the identity of the bad guy was obvious as soon as they opened their mouth. I spent the whole film being very obnoxious to Canyon, acting like a cross between Rex Reed and Sherlock Holmes, and I was even more annoying when my suspicion was vindicated. Still, my mom liked it, so it all worked out well.


What else is there? I have high hopes for Moon, as my mancrush Hott Sam Rockwell is pretty much the only person in it, which is how I feel about a lot of movies he's been in. God knows when it comes out here. Public Enemies will thrill me no matter what: my love of Michael Mann is so strong that I liked Miami Vice despite its many many flaws, so the only thing this could do to disappoint me is to be less entertaining than John Milius' muscular feature debut, Dillinger. Bruno could be fun. Who doesn't love jokes involving dildos and rednecks?

Other than Woody Allen, who seems to have hired Larry David to replicate his own shtick but without the bite. No votes for Whatever Works, which tells me that this blog is not read by Larry King. He recently tweeted 'Just saw Woody Allen's new movie Whatver [sic] Works" It's his greatest movie, even better than "Annie Hall" I can't say good enough about it!' Considering the endearingly random quality of his tweets, which are not that far removed from the comments in this prescient Onion article, I'm not sure this is an opinion to be trusted. After the hysterical car-crash that was Cassandra's Dream, I just don't see how Allen can even recapture the dizzy heights of Alice and Another Woman, let alone Husbands and Wives or Manhattan.


I'm also uninterested in (500) Days of Summer and Taking Woodstock, partially because they seem super-quirky, but mostly because I can't help but think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Demetri Martin accidentally switched movies. Surely JGL should be working with Ang Lee by now? If we do see (500) Days, it'll be in the hope that a) Zooey sings, and b) we find out if that fucking irksome (500) is justified by the plot.

For a change, I'm even less interested in seeing the last two action movies on the list, which is odd considering my love of pyrotechnics. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is by Stephen Sommers and will therefore have the same tedious talkFIGHTtalkFIGHT structure, but without the exuberance of Bay, or his gift for composition. (I will ignore all flaming on this point, so don't bother.) Plus, it will not be anywhere near as good as the Warren Ellis-scripted cartoon on Adult Swim.


Speaking of futile attempts to improve on greatness, The Taking of Pelham 123 shouldn't even exist. Last week we rewatched the original Joseph Sargent thriller, and it's enormous fun. Plus, it's already been remade as a TV movie, and indirectly by Spike Lee with Inside Man (obviously it's not the same plot, but it has the same feel, and has great fun dramatising New York's infamous air of exasperated cynicism and multicultural tension).

Though I'm not surprised no one wants to see The Final Destination (now in eye-shattering 3D!), why does no one want to see Funny People? Okay, so it sounds like incredibly mawkish navel-gazing sub-James-L.-Brooksian tripe, but The RZA is in it! Bobby Digital, people! Have you seen Derailed? He plays a postroom guy who hangs out with executive Clive Owen, and it's the most out-of-place performance I've ever seen. Each time they interacted, my brain tried to leap out of my head. There's that bloke from Chancer, walking through the office, and OMG HE'S CHATTING WITH THE RZA! Everything's better with a bit of RZA in it.


So, anyway. Go see lots of movies, and in a couple of months, if I remember, I'll put up my usual end-of-summer polls to determine which movies sank, which swam, and which soared like celluloid eagles.

Another Day, Another TV Channel Boycott...

As Canyon recently mentioned on her Facebook page (yes, we have both succumbed to Facebook's inexorable pull. I even have a Twitter page devoted to what I'm eating and what's on TV), we have been greatly angered and saddened by FX's decision not to renew its contract with Comedy Central, meaning the UK has become Colbert-free once more. A very small but piercingly intelligent cross-section of a nation mourns.


We have been dreading this since The Colbert Report debuted a year ago, a dread that intensified after FX (short for FuXX0rz) pushed the show back from 11pm to midnight (we even predicted it here). If a schedule is being tinkered with, something is going wrong. Was it low ratings that sank the show in the UK? Even the lovely folks at Late Show UK have not had any official confirmation from the channel as to why this has happened. That said, we are talking about a channel owned by News Corp, and they're not big on listening to the little guy, preferring instead to take on the role of Heartless Corporate Monolith with such complete dedication that it's almost parodic. I honestly believe they run on the tears of rage shed by the people they crush underfoot like so much blood-filled gravel.


So yeah, we're fucking pissed off. And we're not the only ones. An overwhelming two people are so annoyed at FX that they contributed to this forum. I smell the beginning of a grassroots campaign to change FX's mind. Considering how News Corp got excited about the Tea Bagging parties recently conducted across America (shouldn't that protest have been called Balls Across America's Forehead?), perhaps we should send teabags to FX. Used teabags. That I've rubbed on my forehead.

Or we should just stop watching the stupid channel. I mean, they don't even air the best shows US FX makes; The Shield is aired on Five and Five US, and Sons Of Anarchy is going to Bravo instead. Funny how the US FX business model is to make shows to sell around the world, and UK FX's model is to buy other shows cheap and then dump them when they don't fit their macho line-up. Though it's nice that they're showing Generation Kill, I'd rather see it all in one gulp on DVD. What else does FX have that's worth watching? More Dexter? I'm dutifully plodding through The Most Overrated Show On TV™, but I can just get that some other way. I have no interest in The Listener, or the various Canadian or Australian police procedurals that keep cropping up, and I've got The Wire on DVD so I don't need to watch that any more. Neither does anyone else, now that it's being shown on BBC Four. The only other things they have to offer are Family Guy and American Dad, but seeing as how they are to comedy as Stephenie Meyer is to literature, that's not exactly enticing.


So, we shall find another way to watch our beloved Stephen skewer the right-wing mindset so completely that conservatives don't even realise it's happening, and in the meantime, I'll avoid FX and stick to watching Bravo (so much A-Team!), Sci Fi (Star Trek: TOS is getting a lot of rotation in anticipation of the new movie), Current TV (I can't see enough documentaries made by well-off American post-teens during their most recent backpacking vacation through South America), and Controversial TV (it should be known as Edge Media TV but our EPG has renamed it so that it sounds like it was created by 1980's-Ben-Elton). Fuck FX, fuck Fox, fuck News Corp.

'Twas Here My Summer Exploded

Summertime! Or, as Prince of Freshland Willard Smith once put it, summersummersummertime! All of its joys (such as the sunshine, the wasps, the ever-present sheen of sticky sweat) pale into insignificance next to my favourite thing in the world ever; the summer movie season. As usual, the anticipation is bound to be much more nourishing than the actual movies themselves, though last year saw an unprecedented bumper crop of excellent popcorn entertainment which should, technically, raise my excitement to even greater levels, what with the summer movie season finally offering brainfood as well as robot wars. Sadly, that 2009 highwater mark and the recent writer's strike means I'm less excited about this year's line-up. Sure, I'll see a fair few, but there's only one or two I'm goggle-eyed with obnoxious enthusiasm over. My face is sad.

Those who know me have a pretty good idea which movies have me froth-mouthed, but I'll save that for now, because I'm more interested in what you, the readers of this blog, are most excited about. Just like last year, I want to see what is getting this small cross-section of people most pumped. Sadly, due to RL complications, I forgot to do this earlier, and have therefore included a film that has already been released (The Further Adventures of Logan T. Loganstein And His Whirring Claws Of Kill), but perhaps, if you've already seen it, you enjoyed it so much you can't wait to see it again! I gather it's depressingly bad hella-exciting. Anyway, here's the list.

• Terminator Franchise: Salvage Operation


• I’d Rather Be Dragged To Hell Than Watch Spider-Man 3 Again


• JJ Abrams Risks Death by Unwashed Nerd Rage-On


• Transmogrifiers 2: Return of the Awesome


• The Curious Case of Wolverine Wutton


• Angels, Demons, and Probably Ewan McGregor’s Schlong


• Another Worthless Woody Allen Movie


• The Unnecessary Remaking of Pelham 123


• (500) Days of Self-Conscious Indie Movie Quirk


• The Time-Travelling Bana


• Harry Potter and the Thing in the Place with the Whatsit


• Demetri Martin + Ang Lee + Hippies = WTF?


• District 9 (AKA Neill Blomkamp Rocks Your Face Off)


• Hott Sam Rockwell’s Lunar Oscar Bid


• Pixar’s Whassup, Bitches?


• Depp and Bale in: Untouchablesque


• Sacha Baron Cohen and the Inevitable Lawsuits


• G.I. Joe: The Struggle to Give a Shit


• Quentin Tarantino and the Broken Spellcheck


• Final Destination: Rube Goldberg’s Revenge


• Judd Apatow’s Self-Loathing People (feat. The RZA!)

Seriously! The RZA is in the next Judd Apatow movie! I can't wait, though I'd much rather see a full-length Bobby Digital film than some navel-gazing James L. Brooks homage, no matter how good it is. Anyway, the poll will be up in a sec, and will be around for approximately numerous weeks.

It's Trek Day!

At the beginning of the year, in my Shades of Caruso Listmania quadrilogy of obsessive list-making, I gave Cloverfield the Best Marketing Award. Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures did a fantastic job of generating interest in their film, and by giving nerds at the Nerd Mecca of the Alamo Drafthouse a chance to see the first public screening of the new Star Trek film, complete with guest appearance by Leonard Nimoy, they've done it again by putting those relentlessly hatey buzz-killers on the back-foot, if only temporarily. Even with the release of a bunch of exciting trailers, old-skool Trek fans have been deeply upset about the franchise revamp, and this resistance has been the focus of much of the online coverage. With one fell swoop they put that on hold, and managed to generate far more enthusiasm about the movie than with the usual round of premieres and what-have-you.


They've also made me, and a lot of people, very very jealous. Just the act of scheduling a screening of Wrath of Khan, with Kurtzman, Orci, and Lindelof in attendance, and then bringing on Nimoy to announce a sccreening of the full movie, shows they care about the franchise and the reaction of the fans. How cool would it have been to be there? How playful an act? It's no secret to readers of this blog that I think Damon Lindelof is a great humanitarian, but knowing he was involved in a trick this cool makes him even more awesome.

Of course, when the movie comes out there will be even more back-and-forth about whether the film is any good, and if it is a big success (which seems guaranteed by now), there will become a bizarre schism between old and new fans that will generate so much online debate that it will make all who stand on the sidelines wish that we could tap the wasted energy pouring off outraged and entitled fanboys when they get pissy. Whatever. I just hope it's better than JJ Abrams' directorial debut Mission Impossible The Third, which was technically proficient and featured a McKee-tastic plot constructed with the best punch-card computations money could buy, and yet felt like the most expensive episode of Alias ever. As much as I enjoy Abrams' shows, they can often feel like lucite sculptures instead of flexible armatures. (This metaphor makes perfect sense to me. Sorry if it doesn't translate.)


The enthusiasm during that screening has proven to be infectious. As a result of the numerous online reviews, I am now totally psyched about the forthcoming release, even more so than I already was. My childhood love of Trek was obsessive, and even after I stopped watching the TNG spinoff series (due to being at university in a series of pokey rooms without TVs), that affection remained. One of my most cherished childood memories was of the day my mom came to my primary school to take me home because of an unnamed family tragedy.


But there was no tragedy! It was a cunning ruse to get me out of that hellhole and take me to the first screening of Star Trek: The Motion Picture at our local cinema. How cool is my mom? Of course, I was pretty unhappy about the pace of the movie (the image used above is the one of the most exciting scene in the film, which tells you all you need to know), but even so, I tripped out on Doug Trumbull's amazing effects, and at least wasn't traumatised like this poor viewer. I also still remember the first time I saw Wrath of Khan. Best major character death in nerdfilm history? Very possibly.


So, today has become Trek Day, thanks to multichannel TV. Search For Spock was on Sky Movies this morning, and even though it's not my favourite Trek movie, it was just the tonic. Though it's far too uneventful, especially coming after the rightfully beloved Khan, there are some wonderful moments (the death of Kirk's son, and the destruction of the Enterprise), some great FX work from ILM (especially the lovely matte paintings of Vulcan at the end), and some classic Shatner acting. Knowing that Trek is liable to be found everywhere on satellite TV, I went from there to Virgin, where they were showing the Voyager episode Warlord, which was notable for its creative use of nose/forehead prosthetics and some flirting with girl-on-girl lip-action (not consummated, those cowards).


Aired right after that was the second half of the final episode of Deep Space Nine. I had never seen past the end of the fifth season of DS9, so I was in two minds about watching it, but hell, this is Trek Day, so I left it on while I trawled Wikipedia and Memory Alpha for information about what the hell was going on. Gul Dukat looks like a Bajoran? Garak is in charge of the Cardassian Resistance? Ezri Dax is involved with Bashir? Hell, anyone at all is involved with Bashir? It was a lot to take in. And what the fuck? Sisko "dies"? Screw that. Nobody messes with Ben Sisko.


Still, it didn't seem as contentious an ending as that of Battlestar Galactica, even though comparing the two is unfair due to BSG's greater ambition. Plus, this is an unfair criticism, but DS9, for all its strengths, looks horribly dated compared to Ronald Moore's later series. Anyway, it was nice seeing it, but it pales into insignificance next to the original series. It's an amazing coincidence that Sci Fi (or should I say SyFy) was showing one of my "favourite" episodes from TOS: the Trek-Meets-Taming-Of-The-Shrew craziness that is Elaan of Troyius.


It's not particularly exciting, or thought-provoking, or performed well in any way, but my God it's spectacularly, almost wilfully wrongheaded. As an insight into Kirk's deeply worrying attitude to women, and his occasionally out-of-control machismo, not to mention how women were portrayed on US TV in the 60s, it is essential viewing.

Later on today Virgin is showing an episode of Enterprise, which I suppose I should watch in order to "catch 'em all" even though I have no enthusiasm for that show whatsoever. Of all of the various incarnations of Trek, that is the one with the most depressing Good Character / Gupta ratio. I'll get to that in a moment, but firstly, I have to unleash a howl of outrage from the depths of my nerdcore. There is no way - NO WAY! - that Captain Sam Beckett deserves high ratings like these compared to the feeble, barely above average scores given to Sisko in the card shown above.


Sisko would fuck you up six ways to Sunday! Archer was even crap at being captain of an intergalactic FAILcake. Anyway, that's not the main problem with Enterprise. All of the later shows had some excellent characters - Picard and Data, Quark and O'Brien, Tuvok and The Doctor (the last one being my favourite modern Trek character of them all) - and a few total Guptas - Riker and Troy, Kira and Bashir, Neelix and Tom Paris - but Enterprise had almost no characters I liked at all. Only Trip caught my imagination in any way; the rest might as well have not been created at all. I only remember the weapons officer being a hostile British jerk, and there was a sexy Vulcan in it. A sexy Vulcan? There's only one of those, thank you very much.


He's fighting to gain access to your lovebits, you know.

Virgin is now showing a Q episode of Voyager (Yay Q!!!), followed by some TNG, which means I'll have experienced all of the Old Trek (yes yes, I've not read any of the comics or books, or watched the animated series, but let's just move on). After that I might stick on Wrath of Khan, if I can make it to the end without sobbing bitter nerd tears all over the laptop. All of this has been made possible by the recent screening of the film, so thank you, Bad Robot, for totally distracting me from doing far more important things.

ETA: Nice! The TNG episode is Redemption, one of Ronald D. Moore's amazing Klingon episodes. He writes Klingons better than anyone. These were the highlights of the 1990s Trek renaissance, I reckon. Gowron is my bug-eyed hero, you know.

Car Shoot Car

My promised rant about The Mummy 3: How To Waste Jet Li has been postponed momentarily so I can make this horrible confession. Though I don't want to say it, and feel like I'm betraying everyone I know and love, I watched Paul W. S. Anderson's Death Race a few hours ago, and I didn't think it was the worst film of the year. Whether this has anything to do with seeing the truly appalling 88 Minutes a couple of days earlier, I do not know. BTW, if you're after a synopsis of Death Race, read the Wiki page I just linked to. There's no way I'm going to go through it again, which means I'm exhibiting as much effort as Anderson did while writing it.


I usually cannot abide anything the guy does. Resident Evil remains one of my least favourite films of all time, Aliens Vs. Predator defecated all over two franchises that even hacks like Stephen Hopkins and Jean-Pierre Jeunet couldn't soil beyond salvation, and I'll never forgive the guy for wrecking David Webb Peoples' script for Soldier. Knowing that he was going to swallow Paul Bartel's entertaining Death Race 2000 and then regurgitate it out as a hairball of mediocrity angered me a lot, though perhaps not as much as the die-hard fans of the original.

Of course, PWSA has stripped the original tale of its subversive edge and satirical bite, turning in a homogenous tale of wronged convicts and duplicitous wardens, as if crossing Steve Jackson's Car Wars and John McTiernan's Rollerball remake with John Flynn's Lock-Up, adding just a dash of Mario Kart to appeal to the gamers in the audience, while cynically introducing exploitation tropes like exploding people, gratuitous hotties, and Grizzled Old-Timer Ian McShane saying "Bullshit" a lot (but sadly, no "Cocksucker"). The cast aids and abets PWSA in his quest for mediocrity. The usually likable Jason Statham merely scowls and shows off his disconcertingly buff bod, Tyrese Gibson fails to act (as usual), and worst of all, Joan Allen appears as the warden of the prison within which the Death Race takes place. Having had her face filled to bursting with enough botox to kill a blue whale, she is incapable of emoting anything other than muted anger. It's like she's trapped behind a mask that looks like a puffy parody of her own face.


This, more than anything else on display, depressed me totally. Joan Allen is a terrific actress (if you don't believe me check out her turn as Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's biopic of the shamed President), but here she has been plastinated so badly that she looks like a cross between Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a cat with Moebius Syndrome. Just to rub the misery in, she also gets to deliver such lines as "Release the Dreadnought!" and, worst of all, "Okay cocksucker. Fuck with me, and we'll see who shits on the sidewalk", which is obviously PWSA trying to please the audience by getting an Oscar-nominated actress to utter profanities in a "shocking" manner, but just ends up sounding desperate, not to mention incomprehensible.


This all might have worked if the whole enterprise wasn't so joyless and measured, aiming for a Grindhouse aesthetic but blowing it by being too neat and tidy. People explode, cars fly through the air, necks get snapped, and men hoot and holler at the sexy ladies brought in for no other reason than that sexy women attract viewers (an actual bit of meta-exposition from the film, horribly enough), but it feels hollow and gratuitous. That's saying something, considering Grindhouse movies are supposed to be hollow and gratuitous, but this is like the pod person version of those movies, all sheen and competence instead of enthusiasm and imagination.

And yet I still found myself enjoying it on a lizard-brain level, perhaps because I thought the design on the cars was so sweet. They don't look particularly battle-hardened, even when peppered with bullet-holes, but they look butch and tooled-up. Who can resist the sight of a car covered with mini-guns, even though, illogically, they fire constantly throughout the movie and never seem to destroy anything?


PWSA has raised his game with the action scenes as well. Though repetitive and often unimaginative, they are at least edited and shot with more coherence than a lot of modern action films, and with more muscular effect than he has exhibited in his previous, lethargic films. They're not perfect by a long shot, and confusion creeps in from time to time, but for the most part they are mindlessly fun to watch, with the added bonus of seeming to be filmed using real cars, pyrotechnics, and stuntmen (with sporadic CGI blowouts). Sadly, all of the good will generated by that commitment to real stuntwork was erased at the end of the film when Ian McShane addressed the camera. Totally unearned, and utterly embarrassing. You don't mistreat Al Swearengen like that, Anderson, you tool.


So basically I'm saying the movie does not count as pure FAIL, which is a really insipid bit of praise, but considering how badly this most awful of directors usually screws up, it's a notable improvement. However, compare it to Neil Marshall's Doomsday, and the lack of quality becomes apparent. That was exactly the film this wished it was, and once more I urge any readers to watch it immediately. Either that or watch 88 Minutes. I'm serious! That shit is off the mu'fukken chain.

Oh, and for the ladies (and gay fellas) who have just Googled "Jason Statham hot muscles", here is a screencap of him doing pull-ups, which he does in the middle of the film for no reason other than that his fanbase kinda expects this to happen at least once a film.


It's a totally insane bod.

Lost - There's No Place Like Home (1)

I'm nothing if not sensitive to the requests of this blog's regular visitors, so when blogger The Judge (aka glitternova) told me how much she loves Lost and thinks I could stand to talk more about how great Lost is, and basically just never ever shut up about it and post about it, like, every day, I realised I should hurry the hell up and get cracking on my long-delayed post about the excellent three part finale, There's No Place Like Home.

Why the delay? Other than the usual life-stuff (and the rigmarole of getting screen grabs from over two hours of intense action and mind-bending weirdness), it's hard to know where to begin with it, partially because it was so complex and dramatic (obviously), and partially because it aired about a month ago and everyone in the world has moved on. Then it struck me. Why not make this season of Lost-blogging circular, and go back to my ten reasons list, and see how it matches up to the spectacular finale. Turns out, with its focus on action and emotional drama, the show was less about the usual sci-fi weirdness (though it still featured it) and more on wrapping up the Oceanic Six backstory and getting some killin' action going on. That's more than fine by me, but I do have one strong reservation about the show now (say it ain't so!), and I'll get to that eventually. For now, let's do this list.

Reason 10: Awesome Character Actors

With a lot of story to get through, the finale wasn't the place for extraneous characters, and so the only new actor to add to the rollcall of cool guest spots was the always welcome Michelle Forbes, playing an Oceanic representative shepherding our saved heroes to a press conference in Hawaii.


I've been a fan since she played the fascinating Ensign Ro in Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I was psyched to see her here, but sadly she wasn't in it for long. TV can make it up to me by changing its mind and finally going ahead with Global Frequency, damn it. Other than her, it was good to see Cheech Marin return (again doing a solid for his old Nash Bridges boss Carlton Cuse), this time being used as a symbiotic host for Donald Trump's hair.


Another welcome return came from L. Scott Caldwell. Rose has been regrettably missing for almost all of this season, and while it's great to see Sam Anderson's Bernard getting more to do, we've missed her snark, here aimed right at obnoxious Miles after catching him snacking on Dharma nuts.


Another return, though this time not as welcome, as Andrea Gabriel as Nadia. Not because I don't like her, but just because it was horrible seeing her reunited with Sayid, knowing that they were not going to get to spend their lives together. Her appearance was practically a cameo, and not for the first time. If the fifth season is going to show more of the Oceanic Six's post-island life, perhaps she'll be back, but I doubt it, somehow.


However, if the finale belonged to any single guest actor, it has to be Kevin Durand, playing the supremely evil Keamy. From his first oily appearance to his brutal demise, he has been an unnerving presence, and by appearing to be an unstoppable enforcer of doom, he sealed his future place as a Lost fan-fave.


It's always fun to see an actor who, while having a large and interesting resume, has yet to make big waves in the popular consciousness, finally turn up in a hugely successul network show and make such an impression that viewers will hopefully remember him from then on, and his performance here, with his increasing paranoia and escalating hostility, was truly memorable. He really took the role and ran with it. It helps that before now the villainy in the show has been of the cerebral, duplicitous kind, so to have someone come along with such a menacing physical presence was a real change. This was best shown in this Bourne-esque fight scene, one of many highlights, during which Keamy gets battered and stabbed, beats Sayid anyway (!!!), gets shot by Richard Alpert, and then somehow still has the strength to make it to the Orchid station to terrorise Ben.



Keamy, even though I hated you, I'll miss you, you evil bastard.



Reason 9: Beautiful Hawaii

With Lost A-directors Stephen Williams and Jack Bender on the case, shots of humbling grandeur were littered throughout the three-parter. The only thing that could ruin this shot was the awful knowledge that those on the raft were heading for a worse fate than being stuck on an island.


These other shots are just pretty ones. No special reasons for choosing them.



Blurg! I have got to go to Oahu. Of course, it's not all natural beauty. The show still features some of the most eyeball-gratifying compositions on TV.


Not to mention some great set design...


...and "bigness", I guess you could call it.


It so rarely feels like a TV show anyway, as it is so large in scope, but with 132 minutes of finale to watch, it was like the best sequel to a really long movie ever. With so little time to shoot, edit, and score, it's even more impressive than usual that it looks so great. It's shallow, but I don't see how it's possible not to respond to the look of the show.

Reason 8: Echoes

There was some repetition of themes from previous episodes throughout the finale, though not as many as there were during last season's finale, Through The Looking Glass. That really felt like the full-circle conclusion of everything that had come before it, while this was perhaps a little less satisfying in that respect. That's not to say I didn't love it; I think we screamed and cried all the way through it. It just didn't feel as rounded, but then we are talking about a cast and crew racing to get done following the strike delays, and polishing things off to a fine sheen was right out (see also some really shaky green screen work).

I feel bad for carping about that, as the Lost team did the best they could with not much time to spare, and the overall result was superb. Plus, there were some elements that resonated. I particularly liked that Sun and Widmore's big meetup was conducted outside Le Pont de la Tour, situated on the South Bank of the Thames, in view of Tower Bridge.


A couple of seasons ago, we saw Penny and Desmond breaking up on the South Bank (with the help of not great effects), just a hop, skip and jump down the river, at about the point where the Royal Festival Hall resides (though they were unable to replicate that properly, the FX shots of the Houses of Parliament gave the location away). Considering my previous theory that Widmore has cunningly "enlisted" Desmond to act as a guardian for Penny, it's oddly apt that Widmore is now possibly organising his fightback against Ben just ten minutes walk from the place where his daughter and possible "bodyguard" split up.

I say possibly, because I'm not yet convinced Sun is really working against Ben, though that might be residual feelings from when I thought Jin might still be alive. Seeing as how Jin's ultimate fate seems to be pretty unequivocally decided now, perhaps she really is out for blood. Who knows what the price of that will be, but it will make her inevitable return to the island along with the rest of the survivors all the more dramatic (I say that with confidence as the show will otherwise make little sense if the island isn't revisited). Oh, and as for Jin's fate, according to Canyon there is NO WAY Jin is dead. I think she wants to be sure she will get to see more of DDK's guns.


Another echo, which might also serve as foreshadowing, came with the sight of Sawyer emerging from the surf following his awesome sacrifice, somehow sans shirt.


Perhaps it was removed as he passed through the bizarre time differential, which means it will always be thirty minutes behind him from now on. Shirtless Sawyer for the rest of the season, ladies! Rejoice! So why is this an echo, and not just an excuse to bump up the number of hits we get by putting these pictures here with the phrases "Josh Holloway shirtless", "Sawyer shirtless", "Josh Holloway hot wet", "Sawyer hot sexy freeware examination answers", and "Sawyer hot body water rippling pecs shirtless Moon Bloodgood" nearby?


Because someone else emerged from the surf without a shirt; Juliet (played by Elizabeth Mitchell; hot, shirtless), when having a sexy picnic with Goodwin (played by Brett Cullen; hot, not shirtless).


And Juliet was getting hammered on Dharma Rum as Sawyer approached and finally realised the Kahana had blown up...


...while in the past Juliet had been having a civilised drink with her lover while discussing porn and free things, probably.


Ergo, Juliet and Sawyer are going to close the love-trapezoid that so far has seen Kate/Sawyer, Kate/Jack, and Jack/Juliet. Excellent.

I also liked how Locke appeared to his new followers, the Others/Hostiles/Time-Travelling-Island-Supercomputer-UFO Rotary Club, on top of a hill. Not only was it a heroic pose, it echoed the sight of Ben staring down at Locke in the grave after shooting him in the space in his torso where a kidney had once been.


I also liked that Locke was now the opposite of Ben, who is willing to sacrifice himself to exile from the island in order to save it, either by turning a large frozen wheel or by giving himself up to evil evil Keamy. Here we see him from above in a position of weakness; the opposite of Locke being shot from below in a position of triumph.



I really liked the seemingly dilapidated or unfinished Orchid exterior. It was here that Jack and Locke had what appears to be their final argument about whether the island is a place of miracles or not, with Locke on the side of faith and Jack on the side of science. The visual was not too subtle, but still pleasing to anyone who has become invested in their bickering.


Jack is still sceptical at this point, and when the island disappears later, he is still in denial about it all. Man, even Scully eventually came around on the UFO thing, and she spent the last reel of the movie in an alien sarcophagus with a weird breathing tube in her mouth. Of course, one of the main themes of the show, other than the free will/determinism thread which is becoming more and more important (and upon which my favoured Sirens of Titan theory depends), the science/faith battle is the main one, and certainly the one that divides Jack and Locke, but one of my favourite things about Lost is not that the battle is between science and religion, but current scientific knowledge and the hope that there is something more there. Darlton Cuselof has said that the events of the show are explicable using science, so we can say that the island isn't God's back, or something equally dreadful. Of course, if that turns out to be wrong, I'll pretend I'm not miffed. Compare that to Battlestar Galactica, where the presence of God appears to be likely, though I hope it isn't and that the entity that is moving the Cylon and human pieces around is some natural but very powerful phenomenon.

The only other echo I could find involved Keamy, who ::choke:: managed to beat Sayid (I'm not getting over that any time soon), prior to getting shot by Richard Alpert, though it merely paused his evil rampage of evil.


Later on, still alive but bleeding badly, Keamy invades the Orchid station, and while bragging about his Dead Man Trigger, gets ambushed by Ben, and much stabbing happens real quickly.



Ben's assault of Keamy is like a very clumsy re-enactment of the hella-intense fight earlier, but Keamy ends up lying in the same position as Sayid, this time with knife wounds in his neck instead of a big bit of wood.


Of course, it is at this point that Ben responds to Locke's panic over the people on the soon-to-explode Kahana with the immortal line, "So?" The only echo that generated was the echo of my bellowing laughter. Oh Ben, I wanna hang out with you and drink Dharma beer (though I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to gas me to death).

Reason 7: Easter Eggs

The biggest screengrab moment in the whole episode was from the frozen chamber under the Orchid station, where we saw a group of hieroglyphs scratched into pillars and walls.



There are some translations of some of them at the ever-dependable Lostpedia, and they seem to revolve around violence against enemies, which is curious. The island seems to have been inhabited by another civilisation once upon a time that is just as concerned with protecting the secrets of the island as the Hostiles and Ben have been, and has encoded legends or laws about such a philosophy into the walls of its weird archaic teleportation technology.


Hurley seemed to be experiencing a lot of the weirdness this time around. For a start, he arrived home in what looked to me like the murderous Golden Pontiac of Lost myth. Okay, I accept I could be really wrong, as I have no idea what a Pontiac looks like, but it certainly piqued my attention. Just to make things weirder, he encounters a coconut (possibly delivered to his home by an errant Hurleybird, a la the African Swallows of Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and more of those pesky whispers, signalling a possible instance of Island-Meddling, though it remains unclear as to whether he has experienced any peculiar behaviour prior to that moment.


Even though it all turns out to be a false alarm, his reaction is such that you wonder just how much his already battered psyche was further damaged by his time on the island. Plus, Jesus Christ is not a weapon (a line designed to make Lost fans' brains explode with the potential significance).


A few minutes later and his birthday party is wrecked by the return of the numbers, which have been on holiday for a while. It was nice to see them back, but if we're talking about awesome cameos, surely the best was the return of Mr. Eko. A cheeky little cheat on the part of Cuselof, but the fans understand what was going on there, and it was an elegant way to acknowledge that that character was still important to the overall picture of the show, as well as providing another echo, this time of the mention of Ana-Lucia in the fourth season opener.



Reason 6: ZOMG Michael Giacchino

As ever, my musical hero Giacchino did the do, but my favourite moment came with his reworking of the Parting Words theme from the season one finale, which played over the departure of Michael's raft. Here it returns, slightly altered, as our heroes arrive at Membata, suntanned and heartsore. And yes, there were tears, he said defiantly.



How good was that? Good enough to get him into the Academy. I gather that the season four boxset will feature a documentary about The Lost Symphony, which is great news. It's out in October in the UK, folks! Rare we get to beat the US (the region one release is in December), so I'm going to gloat like crazy over that.

Okay, this is already huge, and splitting it up might be the only way to ever get it done. Hold onto your hats, folks! The finale review nobody asked for will continue shortly!