Posse Incitatus

Movie Review: Act of Valor

At this point, when critics hate a movie for being "flag-waving," "simplistic," and "jingoistic," I'm almost certainly going to love the film.

Such is the case with Act of Valor, which generated quite a bit of buzz by being the top-grossing movie over Oscar weekend - despite not a single big name in the cast.

Indeed, most of the cast are active-duty SEALS.  This means their acting is a little stiff, but their emotion and professionalism is amazing.

The storyline is solid and while not terribly complicated, has the virtue of carrying the ring of truth.  Unlike many Hollywood projects that claim to be "torn from the headlines" this one is extremely plausible.

Make no mistake, this is a powerful film, and while much attention has been lavished on the action scenes (which set a new standard for accuracy and pulse-pounding tension), the emotional aspect is profound.

I'm sure other aspiring filmmakers will take note of this project, which cost only $12 million to make and looks to recoup ten times that. 

Perhaps the most amusing part of my evening was watching the trailers.  There was one for some insipid, weepy romance starring the kid of High School Musical (all buff, tattooed and ex-soldierified) and then the G.I. Joe sequel (I have a warm place in my heart for that movie - saw it on an overseas military base and the crowd response to his hilarious inaccuracies was...sublime).

Anyhow, the juxtaposition of these two Hollywood productions - the one all melodramatic and the other stuff with meaningless special effects - demonstrated that even when they try to appeal to the same audience as Act of Valor, the establishment can't get it right any more.

Go see it in the theater.  It's worth the money.

Movie Review: Tron Legacy

I go to the movie theater on an annual basis these days.  Usually I’ll see a preview, think:  Gosh that looks cool, and watch it on dvd six month later.

But the Younger Posse Members still like to go, so over the holidays I herded them into the local multiplex and we watched Tron:  Legacy.

I should say at the outset that I had very low expectations for this movie.   Action films these days suck rocks.  I saw “Inception” for some reason over the summer and thought it a massive waste of time.  Oh and Hans Zimmer is a terrible composer with one and a half tunes to his credit that he keeps using over and over (seriously his soundtracks for:  Pirates of the Caribbean and Gladiator use the exact same melody), but I digress.

Knowing nothing about Daft Punk, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and while the trailers looked promising, most of Hollywood’s production these days seems to go into making deceptively good trailers.

I must also preface this by saying I loved the original movie and, when I heard a sequel was in the works, I snagged a rare copy of the 25th Anniversary Edition on dvd (and I got it cheap, before the price spiked, more on that later).

All of this out of the way, I really, really enjoyed this movie.  I believe movies need to be taken as they are.  You cannot lump Casablanca, Star Wars and Airplane all into the same category.  A movie should be evaluated on what it sets out to do, and whether it does it.  Tron Legacy updates a seminal film about the dawn of the digital age and it does with a lot of style. 

It is not a deep film.  I derived no great insights from it.  It is one of those films that I call “atmospheric” – while you are in it, you are utterly immersed.  The Grid is a great place to lose yourself for a couple of hours.

Ironically, the original has aged very well and many of the issues it touched on are more relevant than ever.  The rise of Encom has some clear parallels in Microsoft, and looking back on it, the Master Control Program was clearly an early version of Windows.

Tron Legacy also has a few (muted) things to say, and the scene where they discuss their new operating system (same as the old one, but with a new box) causes our protagonist to ask why they don’t give it away.

To some reviewers this is a pointless anti-capitalist techie laugh line, but it is actually a point of heated debate in tech circles.  As this post is being composed on a Linux machine, well you know where I stand.

This brings me to the strange behavior of Disney regarding this movie.  Where are the dvds of the original?  Normally the release of a sequel (or remake) is an excellent opportunity to boost sales of the original.  True Grit got a new release, why not Tron?  Others have asked the same question, and I’ve yet to hear an answer.

I like the original enough not to sell my copy (well, if anyone wants it badly enough I’ll think about it), but they were going for three or four times their retail value a few weeks ago.

What makes this behavior even stranger to me is the fact that Tron Legacy draws heavily upon the original.  No, you don’t need to have seen it at all to enjoy the film, but if you have you will get a lot more out of it.  There are tons of references – clearly they wanted to build on the, er, legacy of the original rather than replacing or “rebooting” it.

 

Re-hash of the Titans

A few weeks ago, Sithkitten was shopping at Wal-Mart and noticed that they were selling the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans on dvd for $10.  

As a special promotion to the (then) upcoming remake, they offered a voucher for a free movie ticket.  Because we always liked the old film and figured the Younger Posse Members would as well, she bought it.  After all, if one calculated the value of the free ticket, we were basically getting the movie for the cost of a rental.

When she told me about it, I agreed that it was a good deal, but I wondered if the studio was including the free ticket because they knew the remake was a real stinker.

This is what we call “foreshadowing.”

Yesterday we saw the remake (in 2D, 3D gives us headaches).

It stinks.

It’s pretty, but that’s about all you can say for it.  The plot is nonsensical, the dialogue pathetic, basically nothing works.  Even the CGI is disappointing – yes, it looks nice, but some of the monsters are actually inferior in terms of creepiness to Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures from 1981.

The 1981 version is of course campy and over-the-top in places, but it is actually pretty true to the source material.  The Greek gods are capricious, jealous and arbitrary, the heroes heroic and the princess is quite good looking.  Interesting side note: there is actual nudity in the 1981 version, even though it was rated PG.  I’d be amazed to see bared breasts get a PG rating these days.

Now for those who missed the original, go grab a copy, kick back and enjoy.  The cast is great: Laurence Olivier as Zeus, Harry Hamlin as Perseus, plus a supporting cast that includes Burgess Meredith and Sian Phillips.  Good stuff.

As I said, the plot is very Greek:  King Acretius of Argos has a beautiful daughter named Danae and is so determined to protect her virtue that he locks her in his treasury.  Zeus transforms himself into a shower of gold and gains entrance and then impregnates her.  The King is outraged at his daughter’s loss of virginity and after she gives birth to Perseus casts her and her child into the sea in a locked casket.

Zeus is pissed, so he has Poseidon unleash the mighty Kraken, which devastates Argos, but mother and daughter are borne safely to a small island and there they live in peace until Perseus grows up.

This is great stuff and it only gets better and more convoluted as the gods constantly torment each other and use mortals as pawns.

I’m sure the purists out there will sniff that it does not strictly conform to the Greek legends, but there are usually several versions of these to pick from.  The ancient Greeks were famously divided on all sorts of things and that applied to their mythology as well as their politics.

The point is that if you watch the 1981 version, you get an idea of something very close to an actual Greek hero-story.  We have the youth seeking fortune and adventure, the meddlesome gods, companions and of course his magical weapons, each of which serves a purpose.

It has become cliché in movies to give a hero a magic sword or gadget and then have it prove its worth later in the show, but for a classical tale, it’s essential to the genre.  Thus, Perseus gets a sword that cuts almost anything, a helmet that makes him invisible and a shield that one day will save his life.

All of this is foretold and it all comes to pass.  Call it trite, predictable or whatnot, but some of the best stories are the ones we all know.   It is no accident that Star Wars in its original incarnation was hugely successful precisely because it followed these conventions.  Is anyone surprised that the prequels are so lacking given that George Lucas abandoned this formula?

But I digress.  Back to the review.

The plot of the new version makes no sense.  Basically Perseus declares war on the gods themselves and tries to defeat Olympus.  I’m not a big fan of militant atheism, but I can see how, in today’s generally safe and technologically sophisticated world, people would doubt the existence of God.

But in a world where the gods actually manifest themselves and strike mortals down with lighting bolts and blazing maelstroms?  Uh, no.

Instead of a classic hero story, we get a mish-mash of idiotic plot devices, set-piece fight scenes and lots of people running from CGI.

I simply cannot understand why they wouldn’t just go for a straight-up remake.  Every time Hollywood has decided to depart from a tried and true heroic story, they screw it up (see, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Trojan War…).

Oh, I’m sure the studio hacks can give me a sheaf of reasons why they need to make these stories “more modern” and give them an “edge,” but c’mon!  The fact that it took four writers to come up with this tripe really speaks volumes about Hollywood’s creativity (or, more specifically, lack thereof).

I must admit I was really surprised because this film came from the same studio that gave us the superbly awesome 300.  I can’t say enough great things about that film.  Had they gone with a straight-up remake of the 1981 feature with the look and feel of 300, it would have been amazing.

Alas, what we have instead is yet another CGI demo reel.

The subversive message of "How to Train Your Dragon"

This weekend the Posse took in "How to Train Your Dragon," an amusing family movie that everyone enjoyed.   

***SPOILERS now follow***

Over at National Review, Jonah Goldberg comments that HTTYD is yet another entry in the “monsters can be our friends” line of films, a tradition that goes back to Sesame Street and basically teaches children that there are no bad people, just misunderstood ones.

I agree with his argument but I don’t think that HTTYD actually falls into this category.  In fact, it’s actually a quite subversive little film.

Oh, I can see how people might think it is.  Indeed, as I was watching it, I was grumbling that here was yet another version of “our ancient quarrel is just a misunderstanding and that surely we can all just get along if we only give peace a chance.”

But then we learn that the dragons themselves are oppressed.  They prey upon the Vikings because they are compelled to by an even bigger monster – one that is really a monster and not nice at all.

This is a key distinction.  The movie isn’t saying that monsters are really friends we haven’t made yet, it is saying that there are friendly ones and unfriendly ones.  The unfriendly ones need to be killed, and if you are smart, you can get the friendly ones to help you.

What Hiccup actually does is break a strategic deadlock by building a coalition of former enemies to destroy a common foe – or to put it another way, he convinces the underlings of a cruel and predatory regime to turn upon their master.

If we want to get allegorical, Hiccup is the OSS or CIA, recruiting a group of exiles and elite operatives to eliminate a long-standing strategic threat.  Like our CIA, he’s clumsy, unpopular and prefers to operate in secret.

Unlike our CIA, he actually gets positive results.

Now some might see parallels to Iraq and Afghanistan in all of this, but they really don't apply.  The situation is more analogous to the Cold War.  The dragons are like the East Bloc nations - as varied and unique as the Czechs, Slovaks, Hugarians, Poles and so forth.

We are of course the Vikings.

Like the East Bloc, the dragons pretty much had to do what they were told, but they hated it.  Once the Soviet domination was lifted (or, in the case of the movie, the big hungry dragon was killed), it was possible for the oppressed masses to befriend their former enemies.

Some might say I'm reading too much into this, but basic concept is clear, and that is why HTTYD is a better movie than the latest offering from Disney and the unwatchable "Planet 51."

Do I think the film makers intended this?  No.

I think they probably meant to do a monster-victim mixup that Goldberg finds so common, but their dedication to a good story overcame their instinct for political correctness.

As someone important whose name I forget once said: "Life is conservative."  The best dramas maybe written by card-carrying communists, but the core plots have to be conservatism because if they aren't, the show gets really stupid really fast.

HTTYD makes the crucial decision to leave the liberal reservation and thus escapes being yet another Ferngully/Pocahantas disaster.

That's why I call it subersive - it's so subversive its authors may not have even realized it.

The problem with zombies

This week Sithkitten and I saw Zombieland, which was quite amusing.  If you like zombie movies - and all the over-the-top gross stuff that they embody - this is your movie.

But it does highlight one of the genre's big problems - how the damn disease spreads so quickly.

Like other zombie films, the disease is carried by the bite.  All well and good, and it has that nice "best friend/lover/spouse/kid inevitably goes bad after a bit" vibe going on.  You know, "Kill me now, before it takes over."

And they never do, and then you get the horrifying transformation, etc.

But think about it: if the zombie bites a victim once, it will probably bite again and again until the only thing that can animate is a pile of body parts.  Far from spreading easily, the zombie virus should be very hard to spread - the only ones who get are the ones who almost get caught.  Basically the walking wounded.

Some other, better vector is required.

Just saying.

Movie Review: Star Trek

The Posse took in the new Star Trek movie last night and it was quite enjoyable.

The hard-core fans should be satisfied with its nods to “canon” Star Trek lore, while the action and pacing keep it interesting for everyone else.

I fall into the latter category. I used to think Star Trek was pretty cool, but burned out by the fourth movie, which I think was the last one I saw in the theater. I happen to own a copy of Gene Roddenberry’s book on the series first published in 1968. It’s interesting not only for the background material it provides about the Trek universe, but also the window it opens into late 1960s network television production.

A couple of thing stand out, one of which is the positively Byzantine politics behind getting a show on the air.

More relevant to this discussion, however, is the fact that Star Trek was nothing more than Roddenberry’s latest attempt to sell a show. He’d come up with several, but this was his most ambitious project and clearly his most successful – though that wasn’t clear at the time.

Hugely expensive to produce, the subject of massive rewrites (the “captain’s yeoman” was an integral part that got thrown over the side rather quickly) and recasting (Majel Barrett got “demoted” from executive officer to nurse), it never lived up to what it was supposed to be: a ratings powerhouse. (This, by the way, puts it in considerable contrast to the original Battlestar Galactica, which dominated its Sunday night time slot and its pilot episode boasted one of the largest audiences ever).

The point is that there is no real Star Trek mystique, when you get down to it. As William Shatner put in it in the classic Saturday Night Live skit 20 years ago, it was a show they did for a lark in the 1960s, nothing more.

Knowing that, and reading the bios of the actors in the 1960s – people who wanted nothing more than to make it big and bring home a paycheck – puts the new movie into a different perspective.

It was an amazing cast, and they clearly each brought something to their characters – which were also drawn with a keen eye for drama. Most of them were seasoned bit-part players, and this was their big break. They did the most they could with it. It helped that Roddenberry and his writers were happy to do “feature episodes” that focused on some of the minor characters.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the characters were thinly drawn, which allowed the actors to flesh them out. Mark Steyn notes that James Doohan was able to determine the nationality and first name of his character because the writers hadn’t really fleshed him out that much. So a large part of what make the original cast work so well was that the actors had an unusually large stake in fleshing out their own roles.

I should say at this point that the remake (which is actually a reboot) avoids the pitfalls of having its actors imitate other actors. This is nice, and a good way to go. They are doing what stage actors have done for generations: take an existing character and put their own imprint on it. It’s kind of funny to think of Star Trek as the Shakespeare of our time, but there you are.

So the acting is fine. Still, watching them basically use time-travel to utterly rewrite the entire thing, I couldn’t help but wonder if enough is enough already. Clearly the franchise was all played out, but I’m not sure this was the way to reinvigorate it. You’ve basically got a show about the future that has apparently run out of future. Their solution is to re-do the past. Not a good sign for a genre that feeds off of creativity.

Anyhow it is a fun movie to watch and maybe its wholesale rejection of the Star Trek canon will help strip away the decades of geekdom that have dominated it and turn it into just another genre.

The Oscars came and went

The opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference. 

The Posse is truly indifferent to Hollywood.  This year, not only did we not watch the ceremony, we neglected to blog about how we weren't watching.

Thanks to commenter David for reminding us, or the whole thing would have passed us by entirely.

This mummy shouldn't have returned

Though I rarely agree with movie critics, I usually consult them before deciding what to go and see. Most often this is an exercise in contrarianism: if the critics hate it, it may be worth seeing.  The important question is why they hate it.

When I saw a new mummy movie was coming out, I omitted this step.  After all, it’s set in China (cool) and has Jet Li (very cool) and Michelle Yeoh (way cool) and they fight each other (way ultra cool).

I figured that given the talent, and special effects, this was a sure thing.

Whoops.

Maybe some Hollywood insider will explain to me how someone can take a fun concept (Chinese armies of the dead!  Does it get better than that?) and turn it into a boring clunker.  Seriously, this thing sucked.  It was actually boring to watch.  Even Sithkitten, who is remarkably tolerant of mediocrity so long as there is something redeeming, was ready to bail after the first few minutes.  We hung in there in the hopes that at least the culminating fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh would be worth watching.  It wasn’t.  I mean, it was okay, but only in the sense that it should have set the stage for a bigger battle later on.

And where was Rachel Weisz?  No doubt she had better things to do than participate in this clunker – and from the looks of it, so did Brendan Fraser, who totally phoned in his part.

Gah.  What a waste.

Movie Review: Iron Man

This past weekend Sithkitten and I took a rare visit to the cinema to see “Iron Man.”  Watching the previews I was encouraged.  This could be a good year for Hollywood, simply because the movies they are making look like ones worth watching – for a change.

Anyhow, I enjoyed “Iron Man,” chiefly because Robert Downey, Jr. is quite a good actor and his character is more interesting than most.

Let’s be honest, super hero movies are pretty formulaic.  We meet the hero before the transformation, watch it happen, and then he goes and kicks butt.  The film usually ends with a nod to a possible sequel.

So plot-wise, there isn’t much going on, and one can only watch so many special effects demo reels before the whole thing gets a little tired.  So what is the jaded movie-goer to do?

Basically, you need good actors to save the day, and that also means funny ones.  Yes, there are going to be explosions, mind-boggling special effects and the epic destruction of monuments, but will I laugh?

Happily, I did.  Perhaps because of his personal struggles, Downey brought something a little extra to the part of Tony Stark.  I don’t go much in for spoilers, but the stewardesses on his private plane were classic.

There was one other element of “Iron Man,” that caught my attention:  the good guys and the bad guys.

The good guys are the US military.  Not surprising when the Air Force cooperates, but it’s nice to see more filmmakers realizing that the public is tired of seeing our troops portrayed as either helpless idiot-victims or mindless killers. Similarly, while not making a big deal out of it, it was pretty clear that the bad guys were, if not actual Al Qaeda honchos, someone who is on their speed dial list.  I’m sure that resonated with a lot of folks as well.

I’m not sure if they can sustain it in the all-but-inevitable sequel, but at least this movie was pretty solid.  Worth the money.

There Will Be Review Pt.1

Hollywood again depicts Christianity as fanatical superstition!

The Posse recently took in the film "There Will Be Blood". What can we say- excellent! thought provoking, interesting, visually stunning, full of human emotion and drama, etc. In our humble opinion it should have garnered best score and sound editing at the 07 Oscars. Just because a film is edited in a fast paced over-the-top style (read the Jason Bourne trilogy) doesn't mean it's Oscar quality.

Anyway, great film. One problem!
Hollywood, again! cannot show religion or faith in God in any kind of positive light! It must be used as a plot device juxtaposed to the sensible main character. The hero is intelligent and successful and godless. The local man of faith is shown to be a foolish fanatic bent on personal gain.

We are sick to death of this portrayal!