Saturday, May 05, 2007
Review: Spider-Man 3 (Andrew's Take)
An outsider is alienated from the world by his powers, but uses them at great personal cost to save a humanity that doesn't understand him. I'm not talking about Spider-man here, but Optimus Prime, star of upcoming toy commercial Transformers and a character most are happy to dismiss as empty. He has the same basic set up as Spider-man. If you want to get picky about ordinary, relatable humans and giant alien robots, compare Optimus to Super(-? No? Well fuck you)man. They're the same, yet are treated very differently. Does this blatant geek-baiting have anything to do with reviewing Spider-Man 3? Kind of. Read on!
Now we're at the third entry in the franchise, we're very much into 'villain of the week' territory. This is shown by having a load of unrelated scenes shoved together in the first act. How does a scene with Peter Parker being hopelessly in love with Mary Jane relate to a scene about a petty crook visiting his sick daughter? It doesn't. The underlying grammar of the scene change is 'here's this week's bad guy, so let's give him a motivation'. It is intertextual film grammar, based on the audience knowing what is going to happen in these sorts of films. They know that the unrelated crook is going to turn into a supervillain and fight Spidey, so all these scenes make perfect sense. Without that outside knowledge of the formula most of the first act, which consists of endless unrelated scenes of set-up and exposition, is horribly bitty and disjointed.
We're dealing with a standard superhero movie here, whereas Spider-Man 2, with only a small amount of reaching on my part, could be regarded as a real movie, with a story, theme, character arcs and everything, that just happened to be about a superhero. A good test for whether this will be a problem for a viewer's enjoyment is the introduction of an alien symbiote goo monster. It is introduced by simply landing on earth near to Peter Parker. That's it. If that seems too coincidental, too abrupt or too random for you, this movie is going to annoy the hell out of you. If you can accept it, and think 'woah, and alien symbiote goo monster! I wonder how that's going to cause trouble for good old Spidey!' (and let's just assume for a moment that we don't all know the various histories of Venom from Secret Wars/the 90's cartoon/The Ultimate line of comics etc...), then you're pretty much good to go.
Because this movie is cut from very much the same cloth as the first two Spider-man films. Massively energetic fight scenes that are always given strong emotional motivations linked to the current crisis in Peter Parker's life, interspersed with very simply shot scenes of relationship drama and a couple of wacky fun bits, usually involving JJ Jameson. It was a very deliberate approach by director Sam Raimi to alternate the fantastic with the mundane and, while I personally got a little bored by the talky scenes, they were integral to the success of the films. On the whole, the individual scenes, taken by themselves, are as good, if not better, than anything in the first two movies. Here's the problem though:
In the first two movies, in which there is only one villain, the relationship scenes inform the fight scenes and vice versa, so even when their pacing (especially in number 2) grinds to halt with long, slightly cheesy speechifying by Aunt May or moping by Peter, the overall momentum is kept up by a unity of purpose and theme. The magic came in how the slow and the fast fed off each other. In this film we have Harry as a new Green Goblin, a rival photographer, The Sandman, an alien symbiote and Peter getting into arguments with Mary Jane. Each storyline has a relatively intersting arc, but each one is picked up and dropped every five minutes with very little connection between them until the last act so that balance between slow and quiet scenes and flash bang wallop scenes is destroyed. The film has the same building blocks as the first two but, and let's keep this Lego metaphor, all the different colours make for a very messy wall.
All criticisms revolving around the pacing being off, the film being over-stuffed, too short, too long, boring, too hyperkinetic, random, meaningless and so on all come from this fast/slow waltz around one theme formula from the 2nd movie in a film that has at least three themes.
As a 'villain of the week' movie, these criticisms don't hold too much weight as the movie mostly pops along at a fair old whack and gives us plenty of nifty fighty action and otherwise entertaining scenes at regular intervals. Fans of good, stand-alone movies, or those who think Spider-man is a character of some depth (see first paragraph), will be left wanting.
Let's add some more criticisms while we're at it. The central crisis between Peter and Mary Jame is set up very badly. You see Peter is supposed to be acting very selfishly, ignoring MJ's pain at the loss of an acting gig so he can talk about his own life as Spider-man. Unfortunately, Peter remains one of the most gormlessly unselfish characters in all of movies ever and MJ simply comes over as a pouting, self-obsessed teenager. 'Who cares if you are saving the world, someone said I couldn't sing very well!'. Peter is never portrayed in the first act as anything other than trying to help. So the crisis is actually completely the opposite to what the movie thinks it is plus Peter's self-obsession is what leads to the symbiote having power over him, so that stumble over setting up that aspect of him doesn't do any favours for the symbiote story line. So, that bit is demonstrably bad.
Equally demonstrably bad is the final act fight. If we can accept that this is just a 'villain of the week' movie, the narrative shenanigans needed to reach the two-on-two battle are fair enough, but the fight itself not only recycles beats from previous fights but doesn't feature all that much two-on-two action. Sandman is rooted to the spot for most of it and Venom and the Green Goblin seem to appear and disappear from the fight with alarming convenience.
Back on the 'good stand-alone movie' tack, it also commits the sin of just being a punch up. Despite all those pacing flaws, all the other fights in the movie still manage to be motivated by Peter's emotional state, giving them meaning and heft. The final one is reduced to 'save the girl by punching the bad guy a lot'. Spectacular for the most part so it's hard to complain, but less involving then the others and, when the emotions and thematic stuff finally turn up, they feel corny and shoe-horned in.
So: a worthy enough third part but shows a franchise rapidly descending into, albeit excellently made, superhero gruel. I'll give it a seven, if we're counting, as I'm feeling generous and not yet worn out by a summer's worth of hyper-edited explosions.
Before I go though, I'd like to bring up the criticism of the evil-Peter dance scene. It's always a joy to read through the various reviews on the geek websites for films like this as the things they tend to get annoyed at give us a nice perspective on why we, as a group, are a very silly lot.
The dance scene is embarrassing, shameful, totally out of place, horribly made and kills the movie. Apparently. That all of the movies mix humour with straight faced heroics and slightly lumpen melodrama is ignored. That all of the scenes, be they fighty or weepy, are over the top, on the nose and cheesy is also ignored. The joy of the Spider-man films is that the over-the-topness is always grounded by Peter's emotional state. The scenes that work always start with Peter, in this case distraught over losing MJ and overcoming it through braggadocio and general acting-like-a-dickness, and then layer the entertainment over the top as needed, and the evil-Peter scenes are no different. It is also the companion piece to the 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' sequence in Spider-Man 2, which everyone loves.
I would suggest that those who hate the dance scene are simply those think web-slinging superheroes are more realistic than a dance scene, think dance is a bit gay, and are only a couple of steps away from thinking Batman should be a hard-R. Danger!
As readers of The Fake Life are all blessed with great intelligence and snake-like hips, I'm confident that you all love the dance scene.
7 out of 10
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Reviews, Spider-Man
Continue reading Review: Spider-Man 3 (Andrew's Take)Friday, May 04, 2007
Review: Spider-Man 3 (Charlie's Take)
SPOILERS AHOY!
3 is a hard number to reach without something going wrong somewhere. When you get to a third film, trilogy or not, you start to wonder whether it’ll keep matching up, or whether this is when it’ll all fall down, especially with the demands of the modern audience who like every sequel to be bigger and more expensive than the last. Will this be the moment when the seams rip? Or will it be business as usual?
Spider-Man 3 has a lot of plot threads, so much so that I’m having trouble writing a synopsis. Maybe I’ll try listing the characters:
Peter/Spidey – Wants to marry Mary Jane, the city loves him, but he comes upon a black goo that makes him wear eyeliner and listen to My Chemical Romance.
Mary Jane – Terrible actress (the character, ahem), kicked off Broadway, thinks Peter doesn’t have any idea what she’s going through.
Aunt May – Old and Yoda-esque.
Flint Marko/The Sandman – Daughter is ill, he robs banks to get the money to make her better. Loves stripy T-shirts.
Eddie Brock/Venom – Competing photographer for the Daily Bugle. Doesn’t like Peter. LOVES the symbiote.
Harry Osborn – Still hates Spidey. Is running around in his dad’s gear. Loves doing James Dean impressions.
I think you get the picture. So we’re finally on part 3 of the Spidey saga, with Sam Raimi again taking the reigns, and also co-writing the script with part-time screenwriter/part-time emergency surgeon, brother Ivan Raimi, as well as Alvin Sargent who wrote Spider-Man 2. So it’s a Raimi picture through and through, and it shows. But that isn’t always a good thing.
Let’s talk about the good. Once again, the double talents of Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi are at the forefront. Maguire is as good as ever, and pulls off some pretty awkward dialogue with true aplomb. Raimi’s direction is – as usual – very assured, showing he really has kept his creative side, and especially his love for odd decisons (I speak mainly of the Black Goo POV shot) that shouldn’t come off but do.
The action is unbelievable. This is real breathtaking stuff, and it’s easily the most accomplished of the three films, especially when it comes to the final showdown. The animation work is sensational, and that leads me into my next point: Venom. While I’d like to have seen a bit more of him, he was just a joy to behold. The creature design, the attitude, everything just came together brilliantly, and he’s probably my fondest memory of the picture.
More plaudits go to the Sandman, or at least Thomas Haden Church’s performance and the effects. There was a certain comic purity about the way he was created – I can’t remember if it was like the comics – and the beauty at seeing him jump a fence that had a sign saying “WARNING: PARTICLE TESTING FACILITY” attached to it warmed my heart. The effects, well I don’t want to waffle on cause it’s really fucking boring, they were great. Harry, as well, was great. I wasn’t sure at first with the whole extreme snowboarder/ninja look, but that storyline turned out really well. Franco is a fine actor, and probably should’ve been Anakin Skywalker.
But this is where it starts to turn for me. I see where they were going, that they wanted to make this the big final fight for Peter’s soul and the final emphasis on revenge and ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ but it’s just so fucking overwrought. And when it should be getting more serious, there are some utterly misplaced scenes of comedy that just tear you out of the picture and make you bellow ‘WTF’ at the screen. Peter’s vengeance storyline was well-created, but then everything got so much that by the end it felt like a bad piece of meat sitting in your stomach unable to be digested, but finally moved only by the sweet dessert of the final rumble.
It just seemed, well, so inconsistent. The whole section where Peter walks through the streets doing his comedy James Brown routine made me scream with frustration. It was just ludicrous. And then the Anchorman scene in the Jazz Bar, which led to the one great point in that scene, where Peter schizos out on MJ.
MJ herself, well I’ve gone through this with so many people. The role seems terribly written, Dunst seems completely wrong for it and it hurts it because I cannot see how Peter can fall for her. On the flipside, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy, like her comic book incarnation, didn’t really do much but still came out smokin’ hot. Funny how that is.
I’m in two minds on the whole Flint Marko backstory. The end scene between Flint and Peter is the best acted scene in the film, and brilliantly done. Yet a part of me wonders if it was really necessary to have the whole ill-daughter stuff, because perhaps it would have made Peter’s forgiveness a little more powerful? Have Flint still feel bad, have Peter forgive him and then turn him over to the cops and maybe have Doc Conners hook up some sand-containment prison thing. I dunno, I just sometimes like my villains to be bad for the sake of being bad. I think that’s why I like Venom, because he’s bad and makes no apologies for it.
It just seems like the flick needed some restraint, or at least a clear view of where it was going. I think it had the makings of a stunning film, but somewhere in the translation something got lost, and I never really felt much emotion which has always been one of the biggest successes of the films previously, maybe because it did seem so dragged out and so patently in your face.
Technically, the film was fine. I don’t know how long it was (two hours fifteen maybe?) but it breezed along, and I had a lot of fun watching it. The music was pretty bad, like Chris Young was doing Danny Elfman just fine until he needed new themes and suddenly everything went topsy-turvy. But I did enjoy watching it, especially the ending, which is as close as we’ll get to Spidey and his Amazing Friends on the big screen. But when I stepped out of the theater, I felt very little, only this middling little feeling in the pit of my stomach. And it makes me sad, because it could have been truly great. But it’s a fun silly popcorn flick, I dunno, maybe it’s my fault for wanting more? Answers on a postcard...
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Reviews, Spider-Man
Continue reading Review: Spider-Man 3 (Charlie's Take)Heavens To Betsy... I Mean... Betty!
TFL's not really down with reporting news anymore, mainly because we don't care. We're a blog and we're gonna do bloggy things. And whatever Andrew's been doing. That being said, since I have the day off tomorrow and am terribly bored at such an ungodly hour, I'll be covering the only thing I'm truly good at: a news item that requires pictures of a scantily clad Liv Tyler. She's gonna be Betty Ross in next year's rampaging reboot, The Incredible Hulk.
The deets from THR: [Betty] Ross, a classic "Hulk" character from the comic book's beginning in 1962, is Banner's fellow scientist and an ally in his quest to rid him of his lurking monster deep inside. The movie will unfold with Ross estranged from Banner (Norton), but with the pursuit of the Hulk heating up and Banner on the run trying to cure his condition, Ross finds herself swept back into his life.
And as promised, scantily clad snaps of la femme Tyler:
Source: The Hollywood ReporterDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Heavens To Betsy... I Mean... Betty!
DVD/CD Review: Mitch Hedberg - Mitch All Together
Mitch Hedberg is my 2nd favorite standup comedian of all time. The first is, of course, the great Richard Pryor. If you have never seen Mitch, you might be thinking right now, “Second after Richard? Not George Carlin or Chris Rock or Bob Newhart or Bill Cosby or Jerry Seinfeld or Lenny Bruce or Ellen DeGeneres or fill in the blank?” Nope, it’s Mitch. If you have seen or heard Mitch Hedberg, you are not asking yourself that question. You are very cool.
If you are not a Mitch fan yet, let me begin by breaking the news to you that Mitch Hedberg is dead. I had to get that out of the way before I make you fall in love with him or you would hate me at the end of this review. Mitch died in 2005 at the age of 37 of a heart attack that may or may not have had something to do with heroin. If you haven’t figured it out yet, comedians are among the most tortured people on Earth. While a comedian is usually the smartest guy in the room, you can be sure that he/she is also the most insecure and socially inadequate. Mitch was no different.
But, hey, cheer up! We’ve still got “Mitch All Together.” This is the quintessential Mitch collection. It’s what the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack is to disco. It’s not new, but part of my goal here is to help you build a library of standup comedy, so that you spend your money where it will bring you the most enjoyment. This package contains a CD plus the DVD of Mitch’s Premium Blend spot, and, now this is the important part, both the cut and the uncut versions of his Comedy Central Special.
A comedian friend of mine once said you can make all your jokes funnier if you just say them like Mitch Hedberg. Mitch’s stoner/slacker delivery and vocal quality were perfect. His long hair hanging over those dark oversized sunglasses reminds you of either your youth or the movie “Dazed and Confused,” depending on your age. If your high school had a smoking area or you know that Cheech used to have a Chong, you totally feel me right now.
But, don’t think for one second that Mitch’s talent begins and ends with his persona. No, my friend, Mitch Hedberg was a genius. Now, I know that nowadays people like to throw words like “genius” and “Nazi” and “freedom” around like they don’t actually mean anything. But, believe me; I do not use that word lightly. I never bullshit about comedy. I take it way too seriously.
Mitch has most often been compared to Steven Wright. It is a fair comparison. Both do short jokes, lots of one-liners, and rarely do personal material. And yet, you feel like you get a sense of who they really are from their skewed views of the world. As far as style, Mitch is like a slower, stoneder Steven Wright (that’s right, stoneder; it’s poetic license). You probably didn’t think that was even possible. If Steven Wright were pot, Mitch Hedberg would be acid, and a lot of it. Sometimes, Mitch stops short, saying all that needs to be said on a subject-he’s in and out. Sometimes he takes his weird thoughts a step further, not really due to confidence in those ideas, but almost out of a compulsion to finish the thought.
Mitch does not believe in confining his jokes to fit one style. He can deliver a one-liner that would make the old Catskills comics proud and then seemingly drift into a stoner monologue a la Lenny Bruce in which he takes 5 minutes to tell one joke. The following Mitch Hedberg jokes read great on paper, but if you haven’t seen Mitch’s delivery, you are missing a big part of his genius. Do a bong hit and read these jokes out loud, really, really slowly.
• This shirt is "dry-clean only," which means…it's dirty.
• I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
• I bought a doughnut, and they gave me a receipt. There is no need for that, man. I'll just give you the money, you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this. I cannot imagine a situation in which I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Hey man! Don't even act like I didn't buy that doughnut! I got the documentation right here...damn...I forgot it at home... it's in the file cabinet...under D...for doughnut.
• I don't have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.
• I was gonna get a candy bar, and the button I was supposed to push was HH. So I went to the side, I found the H button, and pushed it twice. Fuckin' potato chips came out man. Because they had a HH button for Christ's sakes, you need to let me know. I'm not familiar with the concept of HH. I did not learn my AA, BB, CCs. God God dammit dammit.
I have a lending library in my standup comedy classes in which I allow my students to check out CDs and DVDs of dozens of comedians to see different comedy styles, unless that is illegal in which case I have no idea what you are talking about. Anyway, my top two recommendations (allegedly) are the documentary “Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian” and the “Mitch All Together” collection. You can learn more about comedy from those two selections than from watching all the rest combined.
Here’s why, regarding Mitch. First of all, you get to experience Mitch in all of these different situations over a period of time. On the CD, he seems way more confident than usual. It was recorded in a comedy club in his home state of Minnesota in 2003, and he is really in his element. The Premium Blend spot from 1998 is one of his earliest TV appearances, and he looks young and energetic, albeit nervous, sans glasses. Rumor has it that Mitch suffered from terrible stage fright, which does not surprise me in the least. The Comedy Central special was filmed at The Palace in Hollywood in 1999, and it is from that set that much of the wisdom is gleaned. I recommend that you watch the DVD sets in chronological order. First, watch the Premium Blend spot. Then watch the uncut version of his Comedy Central special and, finally, the version that actually aired on Comedy Central. The difference between the two versions is significant and Mitch’s behavior in the uncut version points to his demons and can show a new comedian or an interested comedy fan how a comic’s own insecurities can be his demise.
Standup comedy is a relationship between the comic and the audience, but the comic has to be in charge. The comic cues the audience what to feel or think and how to react and when. The comic tells the story and the audience buys it or doesn’t buy it. In the uncut version of his special, Mitch goes out and immediately asks how many people in the audience actually know who he is. When only a few people clap, he basically says that this is not going to go well. The audience believes him. He tells one brilliant joke after another to a lukewarm response. He keeps pointing out that, in fact, it’s not going well, calling it the “not so-special.” He said he was getting a “what the fuck is up with this guy” vibe from the audience. At one point he sits down on the stage, frustrated.
After a while on stage, Mitch finally seems to loosen up and so does the audience. He starts to get laughs and he relaxes, then he gets even more laughs and relaxes even more. He begins to groove with the flow, and announces “Cool, y’all like me now; my special starts right now.” Everything he said after that killed. He told the audience they liked him and they believed him, so they started acting like it. He was telling the story. They were doing what they were told. By the end of the special, he was having fun and getting huge laughs.
When you watch the cut version that actually aired on Comedy Central, it’s a totally different show. Clearly, laugh tracks and editing are a comic’s best friends. When Mitch bombed, it was either pumped up or cut out. A lot of the jokes that were used in the special came after his announcement that “y’all like me now.” His frustrated collapse on the stage looks like a casual chilling by a laid back hippie comic. The editor was kind to Mitch.
But, the uncut version speaks volumes about Mitch, the person behind the persona. He was nervous, self-deprecating, vulnerable, and needy. He had reached a point in his career (having a Comedy Central special) that basically meant he was somebody and yet he clearly felt like nobody. While I see this side of comedians as often or more than the “wacky” side, I know that most lay people don’t usually get those kinds of glimpses into the pain behind the genius. I’m not trying to be all Harlequin Romance about it, but it’s an interesting dichotomy worth pointing out.
Steven Wright is not the only person Mitch Hedberg is often compared to. The other is Kurt Cobain. Whether it’s the painful inability to deal with fame, the (alleged) heroin addiction, or the need for an immediate shampoo, the two icons did have similarities. Rock stars and comedians share a similar self-destructive streak. Like Kurt, we have heard all we will ever hear out of the genius that was Mitch Hedberg. You have to wonder what else was in that head that we didn’t get to hear. But, like Andy Kaufman, Janis Joplin, Bill Hicks, and Jimmy Hendrix, he is forever young to us. Mitch said he was in a band once. He said, “People either loved us or hated us…or thought we were ok.” We loved you Mitch.
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: DVD Reviews, Mitch Hedberg
Continue reading DVD/CD Review: Mitch Hedberg - Mitch All TogetherThursday, May 03, 2007
Summertime
10°C, mostly overcast, with a 14km/h northeasterly wind: yes it's summetime in London! We're also about to get four months of big swinging cinematic cock courtesy of the annual blockbuster season. Has the year finally started, or is it the end of civilisation? Here are some random talking points:
Why do we get excited about the blockbuster season? Do you care about Britney Spear's career revival? Maroon 5's new album? Justin Timberlake's tour? The new John Grisham? The Da Vinci Code 2? When most mainstream entertainments are regarded as empty cultural gruel for morons, good only for some cheap digs about white trash before being completely ignored in favour of the new Decemberists album/Cormac McCarthy opus, why do we still get excited about summer movies? They are the same and we do, all of us, still spend an enourmous amount of time on them. Well?
Spider-Man 3 cost more than God. Can the tentpole business model survive? These films basically have to break all box office records just make any profit at all so surely, especially in a summer so rammed with maximum budgeted spectaculars, the losers in this gamble will lose so big careers, if not actual sutdios, could die. How long can the arms race of quarter billion dollar movies carry on? Would you actually want a reversion to sub-$100m dollar backyard home movies (a huge number only a dozen or so years ago when True Lies broke that particular cherry)?
Die Hard 4 is a PG-13: Oh for fuck's sake. If we assume that the summer is for empty headed flash and spectacle, don't sex and violence fit that bill perfectly? Or can a movie be as dark, serious and brutal as you like without all those cuss-words? Which is the more offensive: realistic, painful, slow bloody death, or vast amounts of slaughter with no blood, no bodies and, seemingly, no consequences?
Michael Bay's Transformers: nadir of marketing synergy, flash-over-content, explodo-grammar movie making, or basically the whole reason for the summer season in the first place. I actually have an answer to this one: Transformers will rock your fuck.
Why do we get so wound up by Shrek? Seriously.
If explosions are for boys, why aren't chick-flicks full of implosions?
Now we've got pirates, where are the ninjas?
Now that comic book movies are due to implode, what sub-genre is next for the blockbuster production line? Remember, once upon a time, musicals were the big budget spectaculars. Not that long ago, for that matter, you were lucky to get a DTV comic book adaptation. Or has the summer season finally found its perfect form? Instead of trying to dumb-up dramas or comedies with fights and explosions, they can now busy themselves classying up a genre that is based on fights and explosions with bits of drama and comedy.
Finally, at what point before September 1st will you seriously consider cutting your own eyes out?
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Bitching, Summer, Will Smith
Continue reading SummertimeWednesday, May 02, 2007
Review: Spider-Man 3 (Luca's Take)
By Luca Saitta
As a pretty huge Spidey nerd, there was little doubt as to whether or not I’d enjoy this outing. After all, this was from the same creative team as the flawed first and supreme second, right? I am happy to say this fucker does not disappoint. Raimi is a filmmaker at the top of his game, and it shows. Action scenes are kinetic, energetic, hyyyydromatic. They’re just short of greased lightning. The melodrama hits every dirty switch in the book, and it works gloriously.
Maguire is in his element once more as the misunderstood wall-crawler, although the “misunderstood” does not really come into full swing as much as in the second film this time. You could even say that this film is to MJ what Spider-Man 2 was for Spidey himself (if that makes any sense). This makes Dunst less of a dead weight than in the previous films, simply because she actually has something to do in this film besides being arguably pretty and an object for Peter to pine over. Aunt May is preachy as ever, but I liked her in the previous films. There needs to be a moral center, dammit, and this woman and her ghostly spouse fulfill that role with gusto. The Stacys aren’t in this film much at all, but Gwen is pretty and the captain is strict-looking. So there.
Villains, you say? James Franco ups the psycho-ante with his New Goblin, smirking delightfully throughout most of his scenes. Thomas Haden Church is an epically tragic anti-hero. His strangely poetic origin scene and climactic duo-battle with Spidey and some… others... are among the film’s many highlights. His “sick daughter” motivation is melodramatic as balls, but the man sells it. It certainly helps that Church carries his scenes so well, to the point that I totally bought the “real uncle Ben killer” retcon. Like Cillian Murphy in Batman Begins, Topher Grace is creepy before he ever approaches supervillain status. His freaky photographer (alliterations are cool in comic books, okay?) is a welcome change from the misguided Jekyll-and-Hyde types populating the previous two films. As he himself puts it, “I like being bad, Parker. It… makes me happy.”
Some scenes are sure to divide audiences. While the JJJ/Ted Raimi/Campbell bits worked like gangbusters, I heard more than a few groans during Peter’s dance sequence and his admittedly pretty long Tony Manero-style strut. Personally, I really dug these bits. Like 2’s “Raindrops” montage, they show Raimi’s style as much as the Evil Dead-reminiscent Symbiote-Sam-O-Cam shots, and elevate these Spidey flicks above the generic action blockbuster pap audiences are spoon-fed today.
This movie is far from perfect, though. It sometimes relies on some groan-inducing plot devices – especially concerning Harry – to keep the story going where Raimi wants it to go. The plot strands certainly make the film feel very episodic until about halfway through. They’re fun strands, but there’s still a fuckload of them. The film may very well drag near the end for younger viewers, as I saw a lot of them not quite managing to keep quiet after the final fight. Imagine if someone threw the kitchen sink at you, but he was nice enough to glue a bunch of nude pictures of Scarlett Johansson to it. It’s too much, but you can’t really dislike it.
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Reviews, Spider-Man
Continue reading Review: Spider-Man 3 (Luca's Take)Monday, April 30, 2007
The Big Screen: Los Angeles, May 2007
Summer's here, which for some reason means that everyone wants to get out of the beautiful weather and into a cold, dark theater for two hours. This seems odd to me, but no more odd than me writing up a survey of interesting screenings happening in L.A., knowing that everyone who reads this is just going to go see Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean.
The Tarantino-curated Grindhouse Festival is wrapping up at The New Beverly Cinema, but there's still a month of fantastic double bills worth checking out. A few worth noting: the new technicolor western from Thailand, Tears of the Black Tiger, will be playing a double bill with A Fistfull of Dollars on May 9th and 10th, followed by a double bill of the dark comedies Harold & Maude and The Loved One on the 11th and 12th. The Lives of Others and Army of Shadows sounds like a fantastic double-dose of period paranoia, and later in the month, tribute is payed to the late, great Bob Clark through a double feature of his zombie flicks Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and Deathdream.
At The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque has a lineup of movies from the 70's which celebrates classics like Five Easy Pieces, Husbands and The Parallax View while demanding a second chance for less-celebrated fair like Saint Jack, Mandingo and Freebie and the Bean. Meanwhile, on the smaller screen at The Speilberg Theater, a chance to see three interesting new films, including The Far Side of Jericho, a rollicking western directed by Tim Hunter (director of The River's Edge, one of my favorites of the 80's) this week, Paul Giamatti in the Harry Crewes adaptation The Hawk is Dying this Saturday, and the devastating The Death of Mr. Lazarescu May 10 through 13.
At the Cinematheque's other theater, The Aero in Santa Monica, a rare retrospective of possibly my favorite director, Jacques Tati, including his masterpiece Playtime and rare screenings of The Big Day, Traffic and Parade. There's also an extension of the 70's Cinema program that is playing in Hollywood, with arguably even more interesting films. The big event of this program will be a sort of addendum to the New Beverly's grindhouse program, a screening of The Dion Bros., a rarely seen film which has become legendary since Tarantino programmed it at one of his festivals in Austin. The double feature of Two Lane Blacktop with Cockfighter should make for a great evening as well.
Tomorrow night at The Silent Movie Theatre, a very special one-night program presented by cartoonist Kim Deitch entitled Serial Queens of the Silent Screen will include such early serials as The Iron Claw, Lightning Raider and The Timber Queen. Later in the month, Hitchcock's early film The Pleasure Garden is playing, but the real reason to go to that show is the short Menilmontant, a reputed masterpiece of early experimental cinema. Similarly, going to see Buster Keaton in The Battling Butler will give you a chance to see Windsor McKay's 1911 cartoon Little Nemo.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is running a retrospective of The Greatest Actress of the Golden Age, Barbara Stanwyck! A chance to see her early pre-code work in Baby Face and the women's prison drama Ladies They Talk About, screwball comedies like The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire, and of course, the gold standard for femmes fatale in Double Indemnity. They're also running programs of Godard and recent documentaries, so check the schedule.
Finally, as the month comes to a close The Los Angeles Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats program gets underway. This is your chance to see some classic movies on the screens of Los Angeles' classic movie palaces. May 23, Hitchcock's North by Northwest is playing at The Orpheum Theater, and May 30, Roman Holiday screens at the Los Angeles Theater. Both theaters are downtown. The series continues every Wednesday through June, with more movies at The Orpheum and The Los Angeles, as well as the Alex Theatre in Glendale and the John Anson Ford Ampitheatre in the Hollywood Hills. Tickets are $15 for Conservancy members and $18 for the general public. Become a member and you can help preserve the soul of L.A. in great movie houses and landmarks throughout the city.
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Los Angeles, The Big Screen
Continue reading The Big Screen: Los Angeles, May 2007Blood On The Popcorn
So I was at the cinema a couple of weeks ago to see Sunshine and I realised that the worst people in the world are the ones that vocalise their sneezes.
A sneeze is a violent reflex and contraction of the body which propels air out of the lungs and through the nasal passageways at over 400 miles an hour. Sneezing is the body's way of flushing and clearing out the breathing spaces in the head. It is an involuntary, healthy and, above all, natural event.
However, some people, like someone in the cinema with me while watching Sunshine, will insist on engaging their vocal chords while sneezing, something that is entirely voluntary, unhealthy and un-natural. It's really fucking annoying. It can come out as an aggressive, explosive bark, a piercing, high pitched whoop or, worst of all, both syllables of the 'atchoo' can be vocalised in a spastic speech-bubble of obnoxious stupidity.
Have you ever heard a dog say 'woof'? Or a cat 'meiow'? Why on earth would you actually say 'atchoo'? The answer is because, if you do, you are scum, and here's why.
First, there are those who seem to be believe that saying 'atchoo' is the noise that you make when you sneeze. They read it in a children's book or saw it in a comic and have never considered the possibility of questioning the literary convention. To actually be stupid enough to think this you would, surely, be too dumb to breathe. Seriously, being that stupid means you would have been run over by a truck the first time you crossed a road. Surely? As such I am willing to believe that about 30% of vocalisers are like this, most of them being educated and middle-class (the natural home of those who have no actual use in the world). It's quite sweet I suppose - they think they're people - but like watching your pet trying to grab something they see on the tv, it gets annoying fast.
But second, and far worse, are those that feel a need to announce that they are doing something special or different. This can come from a position of embarrassment; they are aware that they shouldn't be sneezing in such an environment so, by engaging in an act of conscious communication - that is, by using the vocal chords as if speaking - they are trying to acknowledge the act and apologise for in is a hopeless jumble of compromised gestures and, of course, only making the sneeze louder and more invasive than usual. It will usually manifest itself as a bizarrely ornate and affected sneeze, often high-pitched, as the sneezer tries to make it seem ridiculous, to take on the role of a clown and therefore be unthreatening. Bless, but learn some self-esteem fuckwit.
Then there are those who will vocalise loudly, enjoying the feel of this relatively rare bodily function, and needing to announce it to the rest of the world. You know how the smell of your own farts is strangely addictive, while others' eruptions are foul? The same thing here, only if the farter pinned you down and grunted in your face, loudly exclaiming 'Smell that! Fuck me! that's awful! I reckon that vindaloo I had last night was rancid! Ha ha ha!'. It betrays a total lack of empathy for those around them, A total lack of body-consciousness, and a childishly deluded idea that the rest of the world is interested in the things that happen to them. They want to be the centre of the room, they need to be, and they can't actually pay attention to something other than themselves for more than about 10 minutes. It's probably all down to a screaming insecurity they can't admit to themselves, but they'll get no sympathy from me, the foolish, failed humans they are. A baby will quite happily smear themselves with their own shit to get attention. I'll be quite happy to give these people a room where they can do that all day long, as long as I own the key.
Getting offended by an actual sneeze, on the other hand, is entirely your own fault. Making noise is actually the normal state of humans. It's very difficult for us to be silent. Watch someone trying not to make any noise at all. It's a creepy and mildly pitiable sight, similar to a mime doing an impression of Inspector Clouseau trying to be a ninja.
More than this though, noise is important. I am a musician, and I play a lot of gigs, so i'm faced with audiences staring at me a lot. The question of noise is posed almost every night, with some singers constantly telling the audience to be quiet. These singers come over as arrogant asses, the audience loses all sympathy and interest in them, get annoyed at having to pay attention to them and I, for my part, am totally on the audience's side.
Because there is an 'energy' in an audience. Every one has a particular 'feel', and you can tell when they are paying attention, getting distracted, very happy or getting a bit teary at a sad song. There's nothing new age-y here, it's just that we are taught to pick up on the behaviour, body language, noise and, even, smells of those around us and react to them. Just as we can instinctively 'read' the emotion of a face even if it only raises one eyebrow fractionally, so can we 'read' a crowd, and it is this communal sense that makes it so much fun to be in an audience, beyond watching me sing songs, of course. People being quiet, listening to music or watching a film, actually make a lot of noise.
So, wanting actual silence is not only a bit weird but works against the very experience you are trying to get. Sneezing comes into this as it is simply the sound of a person being in a room. The noisiest form of it, yes, but still natural and normal. The only problem you can have with it is if you basically hate people. This is fair enough, but a different problem.
No, my hate lies with those worthless sacks of gas that must impose their noise on a room. You can always tell if someone is genuinely laughing, or 'haw-haw'ing in a fake and contrived manner. The former is an act of losing control, is actually a very vulnerable and open state, and is rather lovely in its own way. The other is an obnoxious forcing of someone else's opinion on you. It is patronising and, essentially, a lie. Same with sneezing!
So if you ever hear someone vocalising their sneezes remember - it isn't cute or 'just something they do', it is proof positive that they are the worst people in the world and must be destroyed, possibly by holding their mouth and nose closed the next time they sneeze.
Source: AllernetDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards!
Labels: Bitching
Continue reading Blood On The Popcorn
