Summer Movie Stuff

So the Summer is half over and the usual bunch crap has been dumped out for the movie going public to sit through because hey, it's hot outside. And like the rest of you I've sat through my share of dross. For no purpose other than to vent my spleen ( I have to vent it occasionally or it explodes and makes a big mess) here are my utterly valueless thoughts on what I've seen so far this summer...By the way, these are just Chock a Block with spoilers, so if you still want to see any of these and you dont wanna know, stop reading now...Seriously...Right now



X Men : The Last Stand- So Bryan Singer makes the first 2 X Men movies, and they are generally well-written, and while the action in them is good (particularly in the second) what really makes them work are the way the characters are handled. Yes, they are from a comic book, but Singer never makes them cardboard. They are real people, all with their own issues, flaws, prejudices. They just happen to have these powers which, for the most part only add to their problems. They make them different, and we all know how well people with differences are tolerated



It's clear where we're going from the first scene in the Original X Men Movie. In the Warsaw Ghetto of World War II, 13 year old Eric Lehnsherr is being separated from his family who are being put on the trains for the concentration camps. As he is being dragged away by Nazi soldiers, he reaches out towards his parents and the fences between them begin to buckle and collapse, and only a rifle butt to young Eric's head keeps them from being destroyed completely...Eric grows up to be Magneto, and he's the VILLAIN of the piece



This scene signaled that this wasn't going to be just another comic book movie (and by the way, most people who use the term comic book dismissively haven't actually read one in the past 3 decades. Some of the best writing I've seen is going on in so-called comic books, courtesy of the likes of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Judd Winick, and Kevin Smith...yes, THAT Kevin Smith, about whom more later).



I wish there was something in the 3rd installment of the series that came close to matching that one scene, but alas Bryan Singer apparently took all that good stuff with him when he decided not to carry on with the trilogy and took, what from all reports was an offer he couldn't refuse from Warner Bros. to resuscitate the Superman franchise (whether that proved to be a wise move, gentle readers, we shall see later).



X Men: The Last Stand is at its best during the many action sequences. It's good that it has a lot of them, because when it tries to tell a real story, it falls flat on its ass. And here's where Singer's touch is missing. The established characters seem to be phoning it in as if to say "I only signed on for 3 of these things, and this is the last one", the acting equivalent of a kid watching the clock on the last day of school before Summer. Sir Ian steals the movie yet again, but he doesn't have much in the way of competition this time. Jackman's Wolverine goes through the motions, but the edge is gone. Halle Berry, who apparently demanded her part be expanded or she wasn't going to do the film, needn't have bothered ( Geek Note: I always thought Angela Bassett would have made a much better Storm who, as the name tends to imply, is supposed to have power. Ms. Berry is just pretty, whereas Ms. Bassett would have been a badass) And Famke Janssen as Phoenix (the resurrected Dr. Jean Grey who it turns out , after 2 previous movies where it is never mentioned, has a split personality), who is a fine actress normally, lets the jaundiced makeup and contacts do most of the work for her. James Marsden doesn't get much chance to grow in the character of Cyclops because he gets killed off in the first half hour by the aforementioned Phoenix (probably as punishment for also following Bryan Singer to Metropolis). I missed Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, and resented the substitution of Kelsey Grammer as the Beast (Apparently youre only allowed 2 blue mutants per movie, and since Rebecca Romijn is always one of them...) Anna Paquin as Rogue seems to have decided to get off this train too, although its just as well. They never knew what to do with her character after the first one, anyway.



And since there will no doubt be a mass defection of the principals after this movie (Don't let the "Last Stand" thing fool ya, they've left plenty of wiggle room for sequels, as evidenced by the tag after the closing credits. Have we learned nothing from Friday the 13th movies?) we are introduced to a whole new crop of mutants, bad and good (Remember, Bryan Singer's gone and there are no shades of gray here) Unfortunately they're not given enough to do so you can't tell whether they can carry a movie or not. Again lots of action...little character. You don't know these people because, unlike the first 2 films, these are Action Figures not realized characters. And the film is a lot like those games you played with them as a kid, only with better effects and waaaay more

expensive



The Movie does get bonus points, however, for discovering yet another use for CGI. In the opening sequence Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, in a flashback, visit the Young Jean Grey. The two have had 20 years digitally knocked off of them, without ever having to go near a plastic surgeon. This means, of course, that we'll be seeing Sharon Stone's cooch for another few decades, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad...But we'll leave Basic Instinct 2 for someone with a stronger stomach.



The DaVinci Code: Didn't read the book. Don't really get the controversy. I'm just judging it as a movie, and as a movie...Well...About 20 minutes in, my body had its own review...I fell asleep. During my nap, I apparently missed 3 more murders, but I noticed that our heroes (Audrey Tautou and the Weirdly Haired Tom Hanks) weren't much further ahead from when I was awake, but Ian McKellen was there, and since he wasn't wearing a red cape this time, I felt safe in assuming that I hadn't woke up in the middle of X Men III again. The movie is confusing enough without having missed a good portion of it. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman have revived the trick they used in "A Beautiful Mind" of floating text magically rearranging itself into some pattern that is supposed to make sense...It doesnt , but its still a neat effect (and if I were them I wouldn't do it again). And Hanks looks tired in the movie, not exactly the attitude you want in a thriller (and possibly what led to my slumber...Sympathy Sleep). And the surprise ending is no big surprise even if you missed stuff...And the tag after the real climax doesnt make any sense, but there you go. It fits the rest of the movie perfectly in that respect. The pacing is sluggish (also not a big seller in a thriller) and the dialogue has to do a lot of work in getting the plot over and ends up sounding like a series of disconnected lectures. It could use a few more jokes too.



As for the plot points that have everybodys spiritual knickers in a twist, a couple of things:

1) Since when are the Gospels considered "history"?

2) For you to buy into the central conceit of this movie requires leaps of logic, coincidence, and credibility that even Superman couldn't make...Speaking of which...



Superman Returns: In 1932 a couple of bespectacled nerds ( the original comic book geeks) created a Pop Culture Icon, and a fantasy for every kid who ever got picked on for being different. After six years of trying they unwittingly sold the rights to said Icon for 132 bucks (They thought they were selling a story. They didnt realize they were selling the rights to the character as well. They were kids.)



Nearly 70 years later their creation, Superman, is back on the big screen for the 9th time (Yes, I can count. Take the Fleischer Cartoons as a body, and dont forget the 2 Kirk Alyn Serials and that Superman and the Mole Men, George Reeves debut in the role that made/doomed him, was a movie first...Geez... How geek defensive was that? ). Yes, Superman Returns and having seen the movie twice now (IMAX 3D and regular), I'm still not sure how I feel about that.



Here's the thing. I'm in the middle of writing a musical about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the aforementioned bespectacled nerds, and I've been immersed in research about them, their creation, changes the character went through over the years, the various media versions...So for the past little while I've been totally swamped by the Superman Mythos. Therefore I feel I come to this discussion with some credentials, for lack of a better term.



I've been wrestling over my thoughts about this film for a while now, and they are a mixed bag to say the least. I guess its easiest to break it down into what I liked, and what I didnt like about it. The simplest ways are often the best



Like: The fact that the movie actually, finally, got made after being talked about for nearly 10 years. I'm also glad it wasn't made by Tim Burton, with Nicolas Cage in the lead.



Didn't Like: The almost slavish dedication to the Richard Donner films from the opening credits, to the attitude, to the look (mostly), to the end fly by (at least they didn't do the patented Chris Reeve smile at the camera, but I bet they wanted to). Yes, they were good (I say they in anticipation of the long awaited Richard Donner Cut of Superman II coming in November. To me the existing version has always looked like it was mashed together [the credited director being Richard Lester, who was brought on after Donner was fired, and did a lot of reshooting] with completely different visions of the material. So different, in fact, that you can pretty much go through the movie and tell which director did what scene.) but I think it was a mistake to make it a virtual sequel to Superman II (presumably the Donner Version) and not start over again a la Batman Begins. I know we dont need another version of the origin story, but a new approach wouldn't have been unwelcome.



Liked: That Jack Larson and Noel Neill actually got speaking parts in the movie (albeit small ones) and not just cutesy cameos. They've done their time for Big Blue and they deserved it.



Didn't Like: Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. She's cute and all, but where was the spark, the fire, the (dare I say it?) spunk? I didn't buy her at all. There was no there, there. And considering it's supposed to be one of the great romances in pop culture, that's kind of a big thing.



Liked: Brandon Routh's Clark Kent. Yes, it was a virtual Chris Reeve impression, but it had its own little tics and foibles. (By the way, much was made about how much he looks like Reeve, which didn't floor me nearly as much as how much he SOUNDS like Reeve.)



Didn't Like: Brandon Routh's Superman. Here's where Routh and Reeve part ways. How do you play an all powerful being who at his core has to be not only human, but humanity at its best (even though hes an alien)? Reeve was confident, but not cocky. Sincere without being a goody two shoes (... he looks at Lois underwear, fer cryin out loud, and probably had before she asked the question...and she's embarrassed, he's not) Superior without being smug. He knows what he is, what he can do, and he's only here to help. You believe him when he says with a completely straight face (and despite the whole double life thing) "I never lie". And, maybe most importantly, Reeve's Superman has a sense of humor. The most you can say about Brandon Routh's take on the Man of Steel is that he's stoic. He takes his job way too seriously, so much so that when he tries to pull off one of the signature lines from the first movie ("I hope this little incident hasn't put you off flying. Statistically its still the safest form of travel") It falls flat. I'm not ragging on the poor guy, though. It's a hard part to get right. Hell, only one actor has been able to pull it off so far. 9-1 are pretty long odds. Also the new suit doesn't help...The rubber/leather wear look is more suitable for fetishism than heroics, and the S is too small.



Liked: Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. He brought something to the role that no other actor, save John Shea in "Lois and Clark" has. Danger. Gene Hackman was having way too much fun., Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) has yet to scare me, but Spacey's Luthor is funny, brilliant, and teetering on the brink of insanity. Now if we could just get rid of the lousy sidekicks... (Sorry, Parker).



Didn't Like: The Fact that Lex Luthor is the only Superman villain deemed worthy of screentime. I have one word for the producers of the presumed sequel (although until the domestic grosses hit 200 million, that isn't a given). Brainiac. Take a look at "Superman: The Animated Series". You'll see what I mean.



Liked: The Effects. Absolutely Amazing. This time I believed a man was flying.



Didn't Like: Superman's powers have gotten way out of hand. In his original incarnation Superman could jump over buildings, lift cars, and "nothing less than a bursting shell could pierce his tough skin". I'll accept flight as a substitute for jumping around like a grasshopper. Strength, sure. Near invulnerability, fine. But He Lifts a Freaking Island out of the Ocean and flies it out into Space!! C'mon, guys...I think his powers need a serious ramping down. That's why they've always had trouble finding decent villains with credible threats. And while were on the subject of threats, Can we get together on what Kryptonite actually does or doesn't do to him? It seems to be pretty flexible in terms of how long and how much damage. Hmmm? Can we get a standard here? Please?



Liked: Sam Huntington as Jimmy Olsen, although for the life of me I don't know why.



Didn't Like: Bryan Singer's lack of a personal vision. While I think he is a very talented director with a proven track record, his biggest mistake on this movie was letting another director's previous interpretation dominate. I would rather see Bryan Singer's Superman than Bryan Singer's continuation/vindication of Richard Donner's Superman. That decision comes at the expense of what Singer's great strength as a director is, and that's character. It's not here, particularly with the principals. What's missing in "Superman Returns" is Superman. Unlike Singer's X Men movies, we get no sense of who this guy is, what he thinks, what he wants...except in one moment, where he tries to show Lois how he sees the world...but can't really communicate it because it hasn't been set up properly. Maybe Singer's just tired of superhero movies and wants to go back to neo noir, or something new. But there's a disconnect here that throws the whole movie off kilter, and despite some great moments, the whole doesn't come together.



And don't get me started on the kid...



Art School Confidential : If you saw Ghost World, (and who didn't?... Okay...Never mind) there are a number of scenes where Thora Birch is forced to attend a Summer School art class. Art School Confidential is essentially those scenes expanded into a 90 some odd minute movie. And why not ? Same Writer and Director, right? Well, yeah...except there's nothing new here. It's merely cliché heaped on cliché . The Moral of the story is that most people who call themselves artists are talentless hacks, and most real artists can't get anywhere because of them, and the people who run the art scene wouldn't know real talent if it bit them in the ass. Get it? Got it? Good...Moving right along.



Clerks 2: You get the sense that Kevin Smith really wants to grow up, but he's got this fan base that is totally content with dick and cum jokes. So that's what he gives them. He tried to make a straight movie and was roundly slapped for his troubles. Despite what you may have heard, and apparently more people heard about Jersey Girl than actually saw it, it is a decent movie with a heart. It's just not Clerks. And unless there's a connection to Clerks (i.e. Jay and Silent Bob) the fanboys just dont wanna know. So after getting beaten up for Jersey Girl, and withdrawing from "The Green Hornet", which he was to write and direct (and which I secretly hope he still does) he decided to go back to square one and make Clerks 2



Smith had talked about doing a Clerks 2 for a long time prior to actually doing it but I get the impression that it was always a fallback position. But then he made the mistake of saying that "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" would be the last appearance of everyone's favorite hetero lifemate dope dealers. As Sean Connery could have told him "Never Say Never Again".



This preamble sounds like I'm going to slam the movie, but I actually liked Clerks 2. Yes, it's familiar territory. Yes, the dick and cum jokes are back galore. Yes, Jay and Silent Bob dealing again (although Jay has apparently found Jesus...And he got Mary Magdalene knocked up...Oops...wrong movie). Dante still whines and Randall finds new ways not to work, and yes it's all very funny...but...The 800 pound gorilla in the room is "Arent we a little old for this shit? Isn't it about time we grew up? Don't you want more than this?" And Smith is not only asking himself these questions, he's asking his audience too.



I just hope he gets the right answer...

The Three Burials of Miscellaneous Blogada

...in which we put together a mish mash of topics in the hope that it will come to a cohesive end…

Well, we can always hope.

So, how was your weekend Mike?

Glad you asked, Self! It was one of those weekends where the Carol was gone to San Diego andI was left to my own devices. Usually this is a recipe for disaster. I rent a bunch of bad movies and eat junk food. But this weekend was a little different. Oh sure, I still rented the bad movies ( I'm still debating whether Fun with Dick and Jane was worse than Bubba Ho Tep, and Madagascar was no great hell either), but I ended up going out with Kim and Dan on Saturday Night.

Kim and Dan are fellow Canadians living in LA. I've known Dan for years. We did theatre together in Toronto for decades, acting together and I'd directed him in a bunch of stuff. He is one of my favorite people to work with, and just in general. He's got a common sense to him, that is rare in the acting community, and he's basically unflappable. Well, at least I've seldom seen him flapped. He has this innate ability to put things in their proper perspective, which I envy...He's Rudyard Kipling's "If" embodied.

His wife is pretty much the same, and I like her a lot. Also involved in theatre, Kim stuck to back stage...never losing it, that I ever saw. She has a patience that I could never emulate. She managed to stick out the animation courses I couldn't. She's worked all over California for various studios and is currently working at Sony/Columbia in Culver City, which is where they live.

So we have a lot of common ground and when we get together part of our ritual, as displaced Canadians, is to vent about what the crazy Americans are doing. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. It's not out of a lack of respect for the people of the US. They're great. Part of it is what I call Valentine Michael Smith Syndrome (Stranger in a Strange Land). All of us spent the majority of our lives in Canada. We're used to the system. We understand it. Another part of it is the way we as Canadians define ourselves, and the main way we do is by being adamant about not being Americans. Not superior, just different. And living in Canada we are, more than most other countries save Mexico, constantly exposed to American culture. It’s the consequence of being neighbors, or as Pierre Trudeau said, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt…” Hell, I knew more about American History by the age of 10 than I knew about Canadian History (I’ve since made up for it). I still study American History, because it fascinates me. I’m currently reading Sarah Vowell’s “Assassination Vacation”. Dan and Kim are equally well read, if not more so. So when we discuss what’s happening in America, it’s from that informed perspective. And when I say “Crazy Americans” I’m talking, of course, about the politicians…Well, the majority of them, anyway.

Where was I? Oh yeah…So we went out to the movies. Kim has been itching to see Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” since it came out last year ( I wanted to see “The Notorious Bettie Page” which ought to show you where my head was at, and about which more later). It seemed like an odd choice, but she had read good things about it, all of which turned out to be true. On the surface it’s a simple story about loyalty, retribution, and redemption. Underneath that is an examination of the illegal immigration situation and the hypocrisy on both sides of the issue. It’s not heavy handed, or preachy. It’s there for you if you want to see it, and if not, the story is interesting enough on its own.

I’m not going to take sides on this particular issue, as I’ve seen it from both ends. As a landed immigrant with a green card that I had to go through miles of red tape, and jump through several fiery hoops (including not being ALLOWED to work for nearly 3 years) to get, and as a guy who got stopped at the border and wasn’t allowed to be with my fiancée for almost a year because I didn’t have the proper paper work. I understand that this is a serious situation which has been ignored for far too long and requires cool heads and not knee jerk politically opportunistic reactions (from both sides) which are only going exacerbate the matter. No matter what you hear, there is no quick fix for this and beware of anyone that offers one…

The following day I went to the L.A. Times Festival of Books. It’s an event I’ve gone to every year since we moved to Los Angeles, and I love it, although this year seemed a little less festive than previous years…or maybe I just found less that interested me this year, plus I got a nasty sunburn. Or perhaps it had something to do with the following.

The Festival was sponsored by, amongst many others, The Canadian Tourism Board. I happened to arrive in their tent, greeted by the requisite Mounties in full regalia (Really, if we’re going to get annoyed at other people perpetuating cultural stereotypes, we’ve gotta stop reinforcing them ourselves). As I approached the table, I happened to be just in time for Mr. Loudmouth Blowhard (not his real name). He decided to regale the people working the booth with his sense of humor such as it was.

“Hey (hyuck hyuck, hyuck) Do ya know how Canada got its name?” he brayed.

My eyes rolled to the back of my skull out of reflex…

“They reached into a scrabble bag and as they pulled out the letters they said C-eh? N-eh? D- eh? Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!!!” ( The real story of how Canada got its name is actually funnier. “Schindler’s List” is funnier for that matter. Look up the story sometime, you’ll be in hysterics…Then again, maybe not, but at least it’s funnier than that joke)

The people behind the counter laughed nervously hoping, no doubt, that any reaction would mollify him and he would go away. It was not to be.

Mr. Blowhard was on a roll. He did another lame joke, and then started voicing his opinion about Canadian Immigrants and how they were just as bad as Mexicans, if politer and at least they spoke English, well most of them…and how they were lucky to be here…ad infinitum, ad especially nauseum…All the while I’m standing there holding my backpack, which has a Canadian Flag prominently on the front of it, facing him…

After another minute of this, and having had about as much as I could stomach, I began to walk away. As I passed by one of the guys at the counter, I muttered “Jackass” out of the corner of my mouth. He broke up laughing, long and loud, thus confusing Mr. Blowhard, who was in the serious portion of his act.

Here’s the thing. The jokes didn’t bother me. They’re as old as dirt, and we wrote most of them. Nobody is better at self-deprecation than Canadians, except for the Brits. Hell, Bob and Doug MacKenzie are the product of two Canucks satirizing the CBC (who had arbitrarily decided that SCTV needed 2 more minutes of “uniquely Canadian Content”)

And while I’m coming clean, we’re also the first to out other Canadians, in any given situation. I’m guilty of it, more than most. Because of runaway production, It’s gotten so I can identify which city something was filmed in from the Canadian bit players in the trailers. My wife finds it annoying. I suppose I would too, if the shoe was on the other foot.

I guess all this by way of saying that we’re proud of who we are, but we’re not loud about it.

I guess my reaction to this guy was more about the overt racism in what he was saying, and the presumption of superiority by virtue of geographic nativity, plus he was just plain rude. Nobody asked to hear his stand up routine or his opinions, but out of politeness they listened.

We’re all about politeness, we Canadians…He even said so.

I left the Book Festival, after picking up the aforementioned Sarah Vowell (whom I love, by the way. Sorry, Honey) book. Having spent time with loftier forms of literature, I wandered over to Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, Kevin Smith’s comic book store in Westwood, near UCLA. I had a Celebrity Sighting…A woman was having trouble getting her kid to choose a toy, and the kid was going through a “What’s this?” jag. I turned to look at one point and the woman gave me a sheepish grin and I realized it was Cynthia Stevenson (Cheers, Oh Baby, The L Word. By the way, IMDB says she’s a Canadian Actress, despite being born in Piedmont, California. Apparently she was raised in British Columbia. See how this is all linking together?). She looked great, as opposed to the other celebrity sighting I had at the Book Festival, Terri Garr. The MS appears to be taking its toll, but she seemed in good spirits.

On the way home I stopped off to see “The Notorious Bettie Page”. Great Movie. Gretchen Mol is wonderful and looks so much like Page it’s scary. A great look at mores and the odd standards of what constitutes pornography. How does this link to everything else, you ask?

The director is Mary Harron, daughter of Don Harron AKA Charlie Farquharson from Hee Haw. He was also one of Paddy Chayefsky’s favorite actors, a witty, erudite man ( I know this because I met him) and a talented writer. His daughter is also an accomplished writer, and directed one of my favorite movies “ I Shot Andy Warhol” (whose star, Lili Taylor also looms large in “Bettie Page” as Paula Klaw, one of Bettie’s principal fetish photographers)

Oh yeah, and Mary Harron is also, you guessed it, Canadian.

See? I told you it would all tie together somehow…

In Praise of Older Geeks

I was lucky enough to see a preview of a direct to DVD documentary called "The Sci-Fi Boys". The movie itself was just okay, but the panel was something else. It was held at the Egyptian Theatre AKA American Cinematheque. The star of the evening was the legendary (among our people....Geekus North Americanus) Forrest J Ackerman, one of the original fanboys and creator of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, of which I was a devoted reader. The magazine began publishing in 1958 and Ackerman resigned as editor in 1995. After a protracted lawsuit the magazine ceased publication in 2001. In the intervening years it influenced several generations of movie geeks, some of whom went on to become some of the most influential artists around and include names like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Landis, Rick Baker, Stephen King, George Romero to name but a few. "The Sci-Fi Boys" is a love letter to Uncle Forry and his fans and contemporaries. He was there, frail looking, he is after all going to be 90 in November (Another Sagittarian Go figure). He looked much more robust when I had first met him a few years earlier at Comic Con in San Diegosince then he had gone through a major illness and had been forced by finances to move from his infamous "Ackermansion", where his amassed collection Monster Memorabilia was one of the most extensive in the world. It included things like the original robot from "Metropolis", and one of the Martian Ships from George Pal's "War of the Worlds". A portion of the collection had to be sacrificed to pay medical bills. Some of it has been donated to museums. Still Uncle Forry has thousands of friends and fans. When he finally goes to join his heroes (Chaneys senior and junior, Karloff, Lugosi) he will be remembered fondly and missed.

It also reminded me that it doesn't always end so well.

The genesis of a movie geek is an individual thing. I believe it's part nature, part nurture. You have to be born with a mind set predisposed to this kind of thing and both of my parents were of the same persuasion, so I saw a lot of what they saw, which ended up being a pretty eclectic mix. As previously mentioned, I was hooked on Monster movies at a pretty impressionable age, but I also ended up seeing a lot of other things too. My Mom's passion was spy movies. We saw a lot of Bond Double Bills, We saw the Flints, the Matt Helms, The Ipcress File, The Man from UNCLES, Operation Kid Brother (starring Neil Connery...you guessed it)... Hell I could have written Austin Powers...It's seems Mike Myers and I saw all the same stuff. Add in the occasional Musical, but my Mom's taste also ran to black humor, specifically I remember "The Wrong Box" and "The Loved One".

My dad, on the other hand was into epics and war movies as well as horror films. The epics were not really my thing. Remember, I saw most of this stuff between the ages of 5 and 10. I was a kid, after all and bum factor was a major issue. I fell asleep during Khartoum. Dad also introduced me to another future obsession, the serial, when he took me to a revival of the original Batman chapter play.

Around the age of 7(this was in a different time and I was an ugly kid) I started going to movies on my own. I'd take the subway, or walk by myself. Essentially I went to movies my parents had no interest in, and in retrospect, I can't say I blame them. I saw a lot of Jerry Lewis and Elvis Movies in that time frame. Still I was developing my own tastes, dubious as they might have been.

After the divorce and the big move to the suburbs, my movie going was curtailed by the lack of theatres and distance between them. But around that time, the Ontario Educational Channel...TV Ontario started a program called Saturday Night at the Movies. It was hosted by Elwy Yost , a jovial older movie geek ( we know our own), whose enthusiasm for film came through the screen in spades. The opening show was a marathon that included the Original Fleischer Popeyes and Supermans, the latter of which I never knew existed prior to that night, as well as all 15 chapters of "The Mysterious Dr. Satan". They didn't have to try so hard. They had me at Popeye.

That night they had a panel of people talking about the serials and cartoons. The one that spoke most clearly to me was a man who went by the handle "Captain" George Henderson. He knew his stuff, he was funny, and he was a genuine fan. I also discovered that he owned a store in the Mirvish village called Memory Lane.

So at the first opportunity I took the hour long bus and subway ride down to the Annex and visited Captain George's world. It was an old building in a state of some disrepair. If there was an area of blank wall space I couldn't find it. Every inch of space was cover by original posters for sale. Hundreds of them. Boxes of photographs. Bins of lobby cards (all original) arranged alphabetically by film and/or actor. There were 2 rooms like this, the back room being the smaller, and also had comics and books. The musty smell of old paper was everywhere.
Captain George would sit behind the counter watching old movies on an old reel to reel VTR. He was always approachable, would talk to anybody. This meant a lot to me when I was in my early teens. He recognized that I had also done my homework, and knew My stuff as far as certain genres were concerned. That also meant a lot.

The poster and lobby cards were all for sale at reasonable prices, where even a dumb kid like me could afford build up a collection. This was before the big boom in Movie Memorabillia. I went mostly for lobby cards, as they were more affordable, among them was an original from Tarzan the Ape Man, with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O' Sullivan, but I did have a couple of great full sized posters, including "Monster on Campus" "Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman" and "The Court Jester", all originals.

Unfortunately the forces of evil overcame Captain George.

My former partner Donna was working at a downtown nursing home, which occasionally had to take in indigent patients. She came home one day and asked if I knew of somebody called Captain George Henderson. I said I did. She told me he had been admitted into her home. He was in bad shape. He had lost his kidneys, suffered a stroke which damaged his part of his memory function (he had trouble with names, which was frustrating for him). During the course of his illness he had lost the store. The city had seized it for property taxes. The collection he had built up his entire life was gone. To top it all off, he had nobody. No family and his friends had all drifted off. Donna wondered if I would go in to see him.

So I did. I introduced myself. Told him I had been a patron of the store. We talked. He told me his story. I told him I'd be back. Next time I came, I had dug into my own collection and I put together a video recreation of a Saturday afternoon matinee, complete with a cartoon, newsreel, a serial chapter (The Mysterious Dr. Satan, of course) and a feature (As I recall, the first one was "Angels with Dirty Faces". Subsequent movies, as this became a regular thing, included Arsenic and Old Lace, The Big Sleep, and Scaramouche). We would talk during these times, remembering meeting some of the stars although, because of the stroke, he had trouble with the names. He talked about watching "Scaramouche" with Stewart Granger, and how the star cried, having not seen the movie in years, and recalling the days spent on the climactic sword fight.

I tried to contact some of his old acquaintances to let them know of his condition, and perhaps get him some vistors. These included some of the top names in Toronto broadcasting. People whose shows he'd been a guest on several times. Only one ever contacted him. Still he was overjoyed.

In addition to the visits, we went on field trips. It was on these I discovered that "wheel chair accessible" is a subjective term. I took Captain George to the Royal Ontario Museum. He specifically wanted to see the Egyptian Section, but we couldn't get to it, as it involved stairs. He also wanted to see Dances with Wolves (it had been out for a while), so I took him, but the theaters definition of "Wheelchair Friendly" meant sitting in the front row. Imagine "Dances with Wolves" viewed at practically a 90 degree angle. We were told we couldn't sit further back as we wold be blocking the aisle, despite the fact we were the only ones in the theatre.

All of this abruptly ended. Without notice (Donna was just as surprised as I was) he was transferred to another nursing home. I contacted the new place, but they were unwilling to let me continue with the matinees, and before I could visit him again Captain George Henderson succumbed to his illnesses. He was all but forgotten.

But I will never forget him.

The preview of "The Sci-Fi Boys" brought it back to me with a fresh perspective.

I'm still the same kid, by the way. Also on the panel was one of my all time heroes, Rick Baker, makeup artist extraordinaire, Six time Oscar winner, and I got to meet him. I was a 12 year old again. I shook his hand. We chatted briefly. I asked him if he ever thought about doing the Lon Chaney story, to which he replied " Yes, in fact I was just talking to Ron Chaney, Chaney's great grandson about doing a remake of "Man of a Thousand Faces" and it looks like it might happen". After I managed to keep myself from drooling at the prospect, I finally gasped out "That would be amazing." and after thanking him again, took my leave. Visions of what Rick Baker would do with Lon Chaney dancing through my head*sigh* Once a geek always a geek.

P.S. Captain George's old store has since been taken over by a charlatan who calls it Vintage Video and overcharges outrageously for used videos, and movie posters. When in Toronto avoid it at all costs.

Never Mind the New Year, Gimme an Old One

So here we are in 2006. We’re 6 years (5 for purists) into the so called “New Millennium”and thus far I’m not impressed. Where are the flying cars we were promised? Huh? I have yet to see one lousy flying car in anyone’s garage, let alone everyone’s . And what about the personal rocket packs? I don’t have one, do you?

To be fair, it’s probably not the millennium’s fault. It’s me. After four and a half decades on the planet I have come to the conclusion that I was born in the wrong era.. I do not belong in this time, and I’d like to go home please.

Where is home? A darn good question. It could be the Warner Brothers back lot in the 1930's through to the 50's with side trips to RKO and Universal. In my fantasy previous life I am Thomas Mitchell, the great character actor. You know who Thomas Mitchell is...You’ve seen him countless times, although you may not know his name. His resume for the year of 1939 would be a satisfactory career for most people. In 1939 Thomas Mitchell appeared in Stagecoach, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Only Angels Have Wings, and Gone With the Wind...He would go on to be seen in a couple of other minor films entitled Our Town, Bataan, The Long Voyage Home, The Outlaw (admittedly a terrible film, but a classic nontheless) It’s a Wonderful Life, High Noon, While the City Sleeps, and Pocketful of Miracles among many, many more. He worked until he dropped essentially, in 1962.

If not Thomas Mitchell, I’d like to be Allen Jenkins...From 1931 to 1974 Allen Jenkins appeared in about 119 movies, 67 of them before 1940. While Jenkins may not have been in as many “prestige” pictures as Thomas Mitchell, he did his share including I Am A Fugitive from A Chain Gang, 42nd St., Dead End, Five Came Back, and Destry Rides Again. In addition he appeared in many Jimmy Cagney pictures (My favorite is The Irish in Us, where he plays Carbarn Hammerschlog, not his real name, a contrary never was fighter who goes ballistic whenever he hears a bell ring). He was also in a bunch of series movies (one of my many movie weaknesses, I’ll admit) such as the Warren William Perry Mason Series, The Falcon, he even took over the Barton MacLane role in the Torchy Blane series (admittedly only for one movie) He worked with the Rat Pack in Robin and the Seven Hoods. His last film appearance was in Billy Wilder’s remake of The Front Page in 1974. He died the same year.

Or Jerome Cowan. Jerome Cowan was Miles Archer...You know Sam Spade’s partner who gets bumped off in the opening minutes of The Maltese Falcon. Among the 130 some odd movies he appeared in, as if that weren’t enough, are such gems as Shall We Dance, The Gracie Allen Murder Case, Castle on the Hudson, High Sierra, Mr. Skeffington, The Song of Bernadette, Who Done it?, The Kid from Brooklyn, Young Man with a Horn, and Miracle on 34th St. to name a few. He worked with such varied Icons as Bogart, Reagan, Elvis, The 3 Stooges, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin (separately), Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Lucy, Bette Davis, Dick Van Dyke and was in over half a dozen movies in the Blondie series. According to IMDB. com, He also made 73 TV guest appearances. Now that, my friends, is a career. And that’s not taking the radio work all these guys did.

I am an old movie geek. I would much rather watch something from the 30's or 40's than much of what’s currently being offered. There are exceptions of course, but for the most part give me a Warner Bros. Gangster Epic or an RKO Film Noir over the latest special effects epic, or the predictably lame excuses for comedy being put out. I admit it. It’s not that I’m a prude or anything. I just prefer the style and energy of the older stuff. It’s more...oh what’s that word...entertaining....Yeah, that’s it.

Cartoons were better then. I miss Popeye and I can’t understand why noone has yet put together a collection of the Fleischer cartoons. Yes, they’re rough and crewd and that’s what I like about them. They’re anti-Disney. They’re urban and funky, as opposed to pastoral and pretty. And, despite advances in special effect, noone has yet to capture the beauty and exhilaration of what a man would look flying better than in the Fleischer Superman Cartoons. And the pre-fifties Warner Brothers cartoons are, with a few exceptions, far funnier than what came after.

I love the Saturday Afternoon Serials. I own a bunch of them and revel in their cheesy glory. “The Great Heroes League”(My as yet unpublished book) is a love letter to them. Yes, the writing and acting are usually terrible, but they move . They are pure action. At their best the Republic Fight Scenes are violent ballets. I have a special place in my heart for them, particularly The Mysterious Dr. Satan, Batman(1943), Zombies from the Stratosphere, Daredevils of the Red Circle, and The Masked Marvel.

But it doesn’t end with movies. My favorite writers come out of that era too. I love Hammett and Chandler, Kaufman and Hart, Dorothy Parker, Charles Finney, John Steinbeck. They speak to me more than my own generation does. What they have in common, apart from the fact that they’re all brilliant writers (and some drinkers), is the knowledge that all great writing throws in the occasional joke.

Add to this that I’m an Old Time Radio Show collector and I think that’s enough proof. There’s an old thing about preferring radio, because the “pictures”are better. And I totally agree. Here’s how much of a geek I am...I don’t understand why radio drama, and variety ever went away ( It hasn’t totally but it’s comparatively rare compared to what it was). I still think there should a station on the dial where you can turn to it now, and judging from the number of Online OTR Stations , I’m not alone. When I listen to them, I’m transported to another place and time before I existed, but where I feel as though I belong. What surprises me is how well they hold up, the comedies, in particular. When the visuals are taken away, you’re left primarily with words and character. Jack Benny is still funny. Burns and Allen are still funny. Abbott and Costello are still funny...

And while we’re on the subject...

For all intents and purposes the era of the Comedy team ended on July 15, 1957, when it was announced that Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were dissolving their partnership of twenty years. 355 days earlier, the other partnership that had dominated the era came to an end on the stage of the Copacabana when Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis called it a night in front of a celebrity filled house.

Before teaming up they barely new each other. Abbott and Costello had been working with other partners, while Martin and Lewis had been slogging away at solo careers. If the legends are to be believed, the partnerships were formed out of necessity. Somebody didn’t show up(Costello’s straight man), or somebody (Jerry Lewis) promised something that didn’t actually exist. And then the miracle happens...

There are numerous similarities and just as many differences. You can play that game forever. 3 out of the 4 were born the east coast, New Jersey to be precise, while, ironically, the “Coolest” of the bunch came from the mid-west. 2 were Italians and Catholic , 1 was a WASP, 1 was a Jew. Ironically Lou Costello discovered Dean Martin and actually had him under contract first. None of that really matters. At their peak, both teams were riotously funny, and that was all that really mattered.

Bud was a straight man. In retrospect he was THE straight man. None before or since could match his flawless pacing or delivery. And he possessed a gift crucial to that vocation. He listened. There are dozens of individual recorded performances of their signature “ Who’s on First?”and no 2 of them are alike. It’s a difficult routine on its own. It requires Swiss precision watch timing, even without your partner ad-libbing (As Lou was famous for doing). The right cue has to be there at the right time, otherwise it becomes a house of cards. Or even worse. It’s not funny. The performances work because Bud Abbott is there with the right line at the right time and is able to gently nudge his partner back on the track to the end.

Lou Costello was the comic, but not in the joke telling sense. He was the patsy. If Bud was the Con Man, Lou was inevitably the Conned. He walks the Earth in perpetual confusion. He is the constant victim., and it’s his response to that victimization that makes him funny and unique. The reactions are unpredictable. He may scream, and rage but the rage is always impotent. He may actually start to participate in his own fleecing ( As in the “I Quit” routine where Bud explains through simple “logic” that although Lou was hired at a dollar a day, after a year of employment he is only owed a dollar).However, his best moments are saved for when he has to show fear. Starting with “Hold That Ghost” in 1941, Lou Costello basically ruined “Scare takes” for anyone who came after. He loses his voice, he gasps for air, he stutters, he cries, and eventually screams for help. When help arrives, of course, whatever frightened him has conveniently disappeared. A patsy again.

The dynamics of the great comedy teams are all different. The Straight Man/ Comic Paradigm only really works for Abbott and Costello. With Laurel and Hardy there is no straight man, though at first blush it would seem Oliver Hardy is the prime candidate for the role. They are both adept comedians. What makes Laurel and Hardy funny, among many things, is Ollie’s presumption that he’s the smarter of the two of them. If this were the case he would never utter the words to Stan that inevitably seal their doom “Why don’t you do something to help me?” It never occurs to him to ask anyone else, mostly because there is noone else. They are locked together as spiritual Siamese Twins. Laurel and Hardy also break the comedy team mold in that they always got along, genuinely loved each other, and never really broke up. Their partnership ended when Oliver Hardy died. (True, when Stan was ill, Ollie did a couple of separate projects, Zenobia, and The Fighting Kentuckian where he does the Gabby Hayes thing with John Wayne. It’s not the same, because at no time does Wayne break into hysterics, or scratch the top of his hair) What they have in common with the others is that one of the partners was the driving force while the other played golf.

The aggressives were Stan Laurel(who wrote and edited most of the material), Lou Costello and, of course, Jerry Lewis. Hardy’s main contributions happened during filming. Bud Abbott was a total professional, but was less concerned about the creative aspect. Dean Martin was so passive he would leave the meetings to Jerry, only to find himself gradually being edged out of his own movies.

With Martin and Lewis you also have two comedians, but their styles are so radically different that it becomes less a comedy team and more a physical manifestation of a Manic/Depressive disorder. Like Abbott, Martin’s timing is flawless. Unlike Abbott, Martin gets in his own on occasion. Like Costello, Lewis is the master of the reaction. Unlike Costello, the reactions are so far beyond reality that they become grotesque, yet he is so quick that by the time you respond, he’s already moved on. Understand I’m differentiating between the Movie Jerry and the radio and TV Jerry. The movie Jerry is generally a nebbish, sometimes a victim, but mostly just a screw up. On radio and TV he was more like a primeval Robin Williams, who breaks in and out character at the drop of a hat. The laconic and the insane merge into a frequently hilarious whole. So when they did break up, neither was ever entirely complete. Certainly Dean was the more versatile but, yes kids, there is such a thing as too cool. There are times in Dino’s solo career that he’s so laid back it borders on comatose. On the yang side Manic without anything to bounce off of becomes tiresome after a while. It becomes exhausting watching Jerry trying to manufacture with others, what came naturally with Dean and then, at a certain point, try to morph himself into Dean in other words trying to be his own straight man. Jerry has admitted that he was never as good as when he was with Dean. He’s absolutely right.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Why I was born in the wrong era... I get sidetracked.

I suppose it’s a longing for what was supposed to be a simpler time. This of course is Bullshit. There is no such thing as a simpler time, only the clothes change. I was thinking about this on the weekend when I went to the Masters of Comic Art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. In LA. I was particularly struck by seeing a set of original artwork by one of my favorite artists, Will Eisner. I won’t go into his history... This is the internet, y’all can look it up. Suffice to say that Will Eisner was a master story teller and illustrator. For all his exceptional talent as an artist, he just as good at writing, and that’s saying something. And his stories are grounded in the realities of his time. Granted, it is a heightened reality, but at its core is a world we all recognize. Eisner’s characters are people we know even if they wear masks (Actually the only one who does is the title character, externally at any rate). And He was doing this in the 40's, when comics were supposed to be just kid stuff. He is regarded by the people in the industry as a legend and rightly so. If it weren’t “Comics” he would be mentioned in the same breath with people like Mark Twain and O. Henry.

Maybe it’s not a longing for a simpler time as much as wishing we were at a place when people took more pride and put effort into what they did. When I saw the work I was struck by the amount of detail. I’ve done comic art, and I know how difficult it is, but my puny efforts are nothing by comparison. These guys are called masters for a reason. And when I look at what passes for comic art these days, I don’t see that. I don’t see that in most things today. Maybe what you lose in the never ending demand for speed and product, is craft and detail.

I dunno...

Maybe I miss originality in a time of clones and remakes

Or maybe I just like the clothes....

It’s PETER JACKSON’S King Kong and Don’t You Forget It!

Warning!! Spoilers Galore!!

There was a point where I just knew. It was on the way to Skull Island when the young rascal of a former stowaway Jimmy, and now crew member of The Venture, is reading a copy of “Heart of Darkness” he purloined from the New York Public Library, and asks the stoic first mate, Mr. Hayes, why Marlow continues up river when he knows no good can come of it. Mr. Hayes responds with a series of postulations on inner motivations, the dichotomy of humanity and coming face to face with our inner monsters, which leads young Jimmy ask “ This isn’t an adventure story, is it Mr. Hayes?”

“No, Jimmy” Hayes replies “It isn’t.”

At that point I knew we were in trouble.

So I saw a press screening of PETER JACKSON’S King Kong on Monday, and make no mistake about it, It’s Peter Jackson’s Kong complete with all his talents and his excesses. It was an odd experience on a number of counts, not excluding the film itself. For one thing they wanted an older age range than normal. They wanted people 25-59. Usually they’re trying for the younger demographic ( I’d been turned away from free screenings in the past because I was older than the required target audience, and this was in my 30's). I can only assume that they were looking for people who were familiar with (or had at least seen) the ‘33 original. Well if that’s the case they got their man. The only thing I asked for, and thankfully got, for my birthday was The King Kong Collection Box Set( about which, more later). I know the original Kong forwards backwards and sideways. I’m familiar with the background, the process, and the struggles to make it. Hell, Fay Wray and I are from the same hometown. It brings to mind the old “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it” warning.

The other thing was the level of security. I’ve been to Airports Post 911 that didn’t have as much. We were told in no uncertain terms, no cel phones, no cameras, no electronics of any kind. We had to pass through metal detectors. I had a feeling they were going to ask me to take off my shoes but mercifully, for the rest of the audience, they didn’t. They needn’t have worried . The 2 gallon Tubs O’ Coke they were handing out before the movie ensured that no pirate would be able to sit through the entire thing without taking a potty break. That’s because the movie’s 3 hours long.

Yes. That’s right. 3 hours long.

The original comes in at about 100 minutes, depending on which cut you’re watching so the Peter Jackson version comes in at nearly twice that. And what takes up all that time? More. Lots of More.

More Backstory: We learn Ann Darrow is part of a Comic Acrobatic Slapstick Vaudeville team with her father(for some reason they both dress in drag), when the theatre she’s playing at is unceremoniously closed. Her father decides to quit the biz and go back home, leaving Ann in New York at the height of the depression. She aspires to be a legitimate actress. She longs to be in the new play by that darling of the Federal Theatre Program Jack Driscoll...She is on the verge of becoming a stripper when she’s offered a long ocean voyage. Naomi Watts does some nice work in the part. She’s very likable as Ann and screams real good.

The character of Jack Driscoll has had the most drastic overhaul in the Jackson version. In the ‘33 film he‘s the rough, tough first mate of the Venture. Here he’s the sensitive Clifford Odets type, who is dragged off on this little boat ride very much against his will. The part has obviously been tailored to Adrien Brody who would have looked ridiculous trying to play the role as originally conceived. As the revised Jack Driscoll, he’s quite good..

Which brings us to Jack Black as Carl Denham. When his face first appears on screen he’s doing that trademark eye thing he does, and the audience starts giggling before he says a word. It’s a bad start because Carl Denham has to be the driving force behind the movie or it doesn’t work. Black can’t seem to decide whether he’s going to play it straight or for laughs and so neither way works. I just think it’s a crucial role and totally miscast.

Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann) is definitely more interesting this time around. He runs the Venture with an Iron Hand, and dabbles in poaching on the side. And good looking too. At first I thought they were setting him up as a rival love interest for Ann, but I was mistaken. Just as well. Things are complicated enough as it is.

More Characters: This time Carl has brought along a leading man named Bruce Baxter(Kyle Chandler), and the character is pretty much as one dimensional as the name suggests. He has a couple of good moments but is essentially a comic relief ham. There is one scene where he admits to Driscoll that he is not a hero, that real heroes aren’t handsome. (Thing is the person he describes doesn’t look anything like Driscoll either. In fact it kinda sounds like a description of Peter Jackson...)

Colin Hanks is fine as Denham’s long suffering assistant director Preston, who appears to have the conscience that Denham was born without.

And there’s the previously mentioned literary crew members, Jimmy and Mr. Hayes. Theirs is a subplot that never really develops, only serves to slow down the film, and comes to an abrupt end when one of them is thrown with great force against a rock wall by the titular character.
Which brings us to Kong. I have nothing bad to say about Kong. He is a brilliantly realized special effect, that manages, like the original, to evoke sympathy. He is a bad ass 24 foot tall, battle scarred silverback gorilla. King Kong is probably the most believable character in the film, which is a great thing but also part of the problem.

More Everything: Peter Jackson has long said that the original King Kong was his inspiration to become a film maker, and I’m pretty sure he’s sincere. The thing is that in choosing to remake it , he also has to deal with its long shadow. Jackson’s solution seems to be that if we just add more stuff that’ll make it work. It’s like some bizarre competition at certain points. The natives of Skull Island are much nastier. The original has a rampaging Brontosaurus, so Jackson has a stampeding herd being chased by Allosaurs (or Raptors maybe...the scene is right out of Jurassic Park so it could be either). Instead of one T Rex , Kong now fights 3. A single Pterodactyl is replaced by a ravening hoard of flesh eating Bats. A lot of the action sequences are spectacular, but a lot of them are also confusing and the perpetual camera movement is enough to make you seasick at times.
There are even points in the film where Jackson seems to be outright mocking the original Kong. There’s a scene on the boat where Denham is filming Ann and Baxter doing a scene. The acting is stilted and phony but the dialogue is from the ‘33 script. Later during Kong’s New York Debut, they do a re-creation of the tribal dance from the first movie along with Max Steiner’s original score, only it’s played for absurdity. One could argue that these are homages or tributes to Kong ‘33, but they’re done with such a smugness that I found it hard to take them that way.
Speaking of the score, there’s way too freaking much of it. At times the music is overwhelming and, at other times seems inappropriate.

Please don’t misunderstand me. There were a lot of things I really liked about Peter Jackson’s King Kong. There are also some things I thought were really wrongheaded. Like altering the dynamic of Kong and Ann’s relationship to the point where it becomes a primate version of Stockholm Syndrome. This leads to perhaps the stupidest scene in the movie. In the midst of Kong’s New York rampage, after picking up and tossing away various blondes, he finally finds Ann. They don’t actually run into each other’s arms (they couldn’t) but they sure look like they want to. And then they go on what can best be described as a winter frolic in Central Park, until the Army goes and breaks things up.

And while we’re on the subject of dumb things, they go through a great deal of trouble to painstakingly recreate 1930's New York, and the cars, the signage, the costumes are all dead on. So why couldn’t anyone take a clipper to Jack Black’s sideburns, and give he and Brody.period haircuts? Just curious.

The bitch of it is that I really wanted to like this movie a lot more than I did. That’s what so disappointing about the whole thing. At least it isn’t as bad as the 1976 version, not that the bar was real high there. But can we make a deal here? Can we all agree that we should never ever remake King Kong again? I think they did it fine the first time.

Happy Birthday to Me

November 29th is my Birthday. I share this birthday with (among millions of others no doubt) John Harvard (whom Harvard College is named after) Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) Busby Berkeley (director of 42nd Street and many other elaborate musicals) C.S. Lewis (author of the Narnia Books among many others), Merle Travis (songwriter 16 Tons, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke), Madeleine L’Engle (author of A Wrinkle in Time, Canadian), Minnie Minoso (White Sox Outfielder),Vin Scully (voice of the Dodgers) Jacques Chirac (President of France), Diane Ladd (Actress), John Mayall (Blues Player), Chuck Mangione (Horny Guy), Denny Doherty (Mamas & Papas, Canadian), Felix Cavaliere (Young Rascals), Suzy Chaffee aka Suzy Chapstick (Skier), Gary Shandling (comedian and Larry Sanders), Howie Mandel(Comedian and Canadian),Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull), Kim Delaney(NYPD Blue)Andrew McCarthy (Brat Packer), Don Cheadle (Actor and New Rat Packer) Jonathan Knight (New Kid on the Block) Joel Coen (Favorite Director).

I get to be 46 this year. I say “get” because I never thought I’d make it to this age. When I was a teenager I figured that I would never make 30. When I was 25 the figure changed to 35. Close to 35 it became 40 briefly, then 45. I promised myself setting these arbitrary dates if I made it past 45. Having said that I will probably drop dead as I’m writing this.

I think Tom Stoppard said something about the moment when we realized we don’t go on forever, that we will eventually cease to exist, and wonders when that was. I know exactly where and when it was. I came to this realization for no apparent reason on my 8th birthday. It just hit me out of nowhere. I was sitting there in a neighbour’s apartment having cake, and there it was “You are going to die someday”. Scared the crap out of me I can tell you. Even the memory of it creeps me out.

And the moment coloured everything that came after. Add to it hypochondria, and anxiety disorders, and there are times when life isn’t a lot of fun sometimes. But I’ve made it so far *knock wood*.

Besides, I got the “King Kong” box set. All’s right with the World.

And it’s my Birthday...

In Which we discuss Theatre just because I wanna...

So the Carol and I saw David Mamet’s “Romance” at the Ahmanson Theatre, for her birthday (she’s 12 for about the 4th time, give or take a time or half), and we were thoroughly enjoying it right up until the very last line of the play, which was such a dud that it came pretty near to negating what had come before. But it was educational, because it served to remind me of a couple of things. It reminded me how delicate and transitory theatre is. It also reminded me that live theatre is, by its very nature, a perverse exercise.

Understand that I’m not talking about content here. What goes on, on the stage, is neither here nor there. It’s all been done. There’s nothing to shock anymore. Human sacrifice, buggery, eating cucumber sandwiches, there’s nothing new under the sun. The Greeks did it all before. When I talk about the inherent perversity of theatre, I’m talking about the relationship between the audience and the performers.

The dirty little secret of Live Theatre Audiences is that they go to a performance hoping that something will screw up. They’re wishing that tonight a disaster of epic proportions will manifest before their waiting eyes. That tonight will be the night that it will be “ To be...or...or”.
That tonight a piece of scenery will drop on Annie’s head (preferably during one of the ad nausea reprises of “Tomorrow”...The sun won’t be coming out for you, kiddo). That tonight Blanche DuBois will actually stab Stanley with the broken bottle.

That last one is more likely to happen than you might suspect. It has long been my contention that any woman (or man for that matter) that desperately, desperately wants to play Blanche DuBois should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to. Why, you may ask? Because inevitably they are too close to the part to ever do it justice. I would suggest that casting a woman slowly but inevitably losing her grip on reality to play a woman slowly but inevitably losing her grip on reality is a dicey proposition at best. At the least it involves absolutely impeccable timing. John Gielgud pointed out that Vivien Leigh was far to close to a Tennessee Williams character to ever actually be playing one, but there you go. That’s the exception. To put it another way, you wouldn’t want a real sociopathic cannibal psychologist playing Hannibal Lecter, would you? Well, maybe you would. Which brings me back to my point...I think...

Most audiences are sitting there subconsciously hoping that something will go wrong, if for nothing else than to make their experience unique. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think most people are actively willing a calamity, but the hope is there buried in the back of their minds. It’s part of the thrill of a live performance. It’s the equivalent of watching a tight rope walker and surreptitiously blowing to alter the air currents just enough so that...you know.

Remember “The Carol Burnett Show”? What was the best part of it? Not the sketches or the songs. It was watching Harvey Korman start corpsing (the theatrical term for cracking up on stage) whenever Tim Conway did something that wasn’t in the script. That’s a mistake. Professionals hate it when it happens. Why did we at home get to see this? They were on tape. They could have done a retake. So why did they leave them in? Because audiences loved it. It got so they were disappointed when it didn’t happen.

Still think audiences aren’t perverse? Okay, here’s a slightly different example. In 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival Bob Dylan succeeded in pissing off the folk purists by showing up with an electric guitar and a rock band. People booed. There were cries of sacrilege. Ultra-Pacifist Pete Seeger threatened to cut the microphone cord with an axe. It was a major controversy in the folk community, and became legend in the music world. Dylan then went on to record 2 albums in the new style. His fans were well aware of the change in style, and the controversy. So what happens? He goes on tour, and people buy tickets and show up just to boo. Get it? They know what he’s doing. They know what he’s going to play. They know they don’t like it. But they show up anyway, just to screw up the performances. They’re going to specifically try to provoke an incident. Now this would mean nothing if it were an isolated incident, but it happened not only on the American dates, but all the European ones as well. Now that’s what I call audience participation.(BTW all this is well documented in Martin Scorsese’s excellent “Bob Dylan: No Direction Home”)

And here’s the kicker. The performers feel exactly the same way. There isn’t an actor I know (and I know a bunch, including myself) whose mantra is not “ Please God, don’t let me fuck up”, thus initiating the self-fulfilling prophecy. And so you have a strange variation on the old school Double Dog dare that goes something like this:

Audience: I bet you’re going to fall on your ass tonight.

Actor: Oh yeah? Well, I bet I will too!! So there! Nyah!

So why do we do it? Why do we continue this version of the "(Sado)Masochism Tango?" I haven't got the slightest clue. Having been involved in theatre for over 40 years you might think that I would know something about it. But this would be a mistaken assumption. I know absolutely nothing about theatre. But I have my suspicions.

Miscellaneous Drivel: The Sequel
Let's see...
It occured to me that I did an injustice to 2 of the films I mentioned in the last blogs. It's always easy to go on about something that's bad, because the bad and what causes it is usually obvious. What makes something good tends to be more intangible...and besides in the end, it's all subjective anyway. I mean hell, I listen to the Monkees more than the Beatles...*waits for the lightning bolt* At any rate, I'm gonna try to give these movies their due...Like they need my help...

CAPOTE

I was never a fan of Truman Capote, probably because my first exposure to him was he had become a casualty of his own success(Hell, for the longest time I didn't even know he was a writer, I only knew of him as the flamboyant, vitriolic troll who showed up on Merv Griffin occasionally. When I did read him, it was confusing. He was good but it seemed that his major work was long gone, and that he was coasting...and as it turned out, I wasn't far from wrong)

"Capote" is not your standard bio pic, rather it picks up the trend of just concentrating on a specific period in the subject's life.("Good Night, and Good Luck" does the same, as does the forthcoming "Walk the Line" ) which to me makes far more sense than trying to cram an entire life into 2 to 3 hours. In this case we're concentrating on the period during which he created his most notorious work "In Cold Blood".

Given his history, a botched robbery which resulted in the wholesale slaughter of a Kansas Farm family might seem an odd choice for the author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and indeed most of his friends thought so. Here's the thing. An artist never knows what's going to spark creativity. It can be a word, a musical phrase or, in this case, a buried item in the Times. As an artist, you never know what will speak to you. When asked why this particular story, Capote basically said "Why not?"

It's very hard to make an interesting movie about writers, because what they do isn't all that exciting. They sit in a room with a machine or a pad and pencil, and type or scribble as the case may be. The process isn't that interesting, it's the results that matter. There are exceptions( Adaptation, Throw Mama from the Train,All the President's Men)and Capote is , happily, one of them. You follow our hero(?)as he and his friend Harper Lee (just prior to the publication of "To Kill a Mockingbird") investigate the brutal murder of the Clutter family. We see his manipulation of the principals involved in the name of research. The way he invades the psyche of Perry Smith, one of the killers. His frustration because he can't finish the book unless and until...

It's also a warts and all portrait of a complex, manipulative, ambitious, self promoter who will do practically anything (and I mean anything) in the service of his art. The only criticism I have of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is that he's too tall, but I suppose he can't help that(I had a fleeting thought that they could do what they did with the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings,you know, forced perspective and all, but the producers chose not to go that way. Just as well). Once you get past the height thing his performance is flawless. In fact all of the performances in this film are exceptional. Catherine Keener does a complete 180 from anything you've ever seen her in. Her portrayal of Harper Lee is a brilliant counterpoint to Hoffman's Capote.

So why does it work when so many biopics don't? Because the sum of its parts ( and they're pretty great parts. I haven't even talked about the excellence of the direction, screenplay, and particularly the cinematography) adds up to a great cohesive whole. So see Capote, even if you didn't like the man. At the least you'll get some insight into why.

"Good Night and Good Luck"

I find the McCarthy Era fascinating. I think it's amazing that a man waving a piece of paper that nobody ever saw could have such a stranglehold on an entire country. But then that's how it's always done, isn't it? Keep the message simple and scary.

"The Jews are keeping you poor, because they control all the money!"

"I have a list of over 200 names of members of the Communist Party in control of the Government"

"Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction and they're aimed at your house!"

Edward R. Murrow is a journalistic Icon. He represents an integrity that is sadly lacking in today's media with a few exceptions (too few). He also had something that is also lacking in what passes for journalism today, a lot of control over the stories he told, and a minimum of interference by the corporate ownership. Further, he had little or no fear of biting the hand that fed him, and it ended up costing him.

"Good Night, and Good Luck" concentrates on the 5 episodes of Murrow's pioneering news program See It Now, where he took on the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. This was huge, and you can't really compare it to anything in modern times. The Washington Post vs. The Nixon Administration comes close, but even that doesn't quite get it. Why? Murrow had Television. McCarthy had it too, but didn't know how to use it as well. Murrow had something else that McCarthy didn't have. The trust of the American people and the truth...not to mention a pretty much captive audience. Remember...Only 3 Networks.

It is a brilliant movie, and Clooney juggles the 4 jobs of writing, directing, acting, and producing like a master, and it's only his second film . The claustrophobia is palpable as is the all too justified paranoia that runs throughout the movie. "The fear is in this room..." Damn right it is. And Clooney is smart enough to exploit the parallels to today's situation for all they're worth ( Why make it otherwise?)

David Strathairn is another great actor that's been waiting in the wings for a breakout role (like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote)and he nails it (also like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote). He embodies Murrow to such a degree that, despite the fact his voice is slightly higher pitched, if you close your eyes, you think you're listening to Murrow. But don't close your eyes, because it's a truly amazing performance.

The framing device of the movie is a speech Murrow made to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, which has rightly become legend. In it he accurately predicts the future of Televison generally and news in particular. It made him (along with Paddy Chayevsky with "Network", and Budd Schulberg in " A Face in the Crowd) one of the soothsayers of the future of the media. Only I doubt he's cheerfully saying "I told you so". He's probably shaking his head and butting out another cigarette.

Long Time No...Ah Skip it
Since I last blogged, I went back to Canada for a badly needed reality check, and it left me with a longing to move back as soon as possible. It's not just the health care thing, of course. It's the beer...and my family...and my friends ...and the fact that I used to have a life. Little things, you know? A whole mess o'movies have done come and gone in my absence, and since I've been told by a couple of impartial people that they like it when I write about movies, I'll tell you what I saw and what I thought, and try to keep it brief. I said try.

FANTASTIC FOUR

If Batman Begins and Spiderman 2 are lessons in how to make a Comic Book movie, Fantastic Four is a lesson on how to royally screw one up. In fact it could serve as a textbook, right next to the screenplay for The Hulk.

There's a difference between the Marvel and DC approach to adapting their characters to the big or small screen. The DC approach is the Basics are sacred. Krypton will always blow up and the infant Kal El will be sent to Earth in a Rocket his father Jor El built before that happens. Bruce Wayne's parents will always be murdered before his eyes...The Motivation remains the same.

There are, of course, variations within those parameters...The Kents don't appear in the Comic Books until years after the origin story from 1938...The Radio show ignores them altogether by having Superman stepping out of the Rocketship fully grown, and in costume (" Hmmm Clark Kent...That sounds like a good human name.." or words to that effect). Alfred didn't show up until after Robin...But the basics are always there. The gospel according to DC Comics. Trust me. In "Superman Returns" which comes out in Summer of 2006 all else may change(I doubt it, but it's possible), but Krypton will have exploded etc. etc... That's how DC does things...

Over at Marvel they seem to have a slightly different philosophy, and that is "You bought the rights, you can do whatever you want to do with them"

There are exceptions. The X Men and Spiderman movies stick to the Basics and are great examples of the genre when it works...The Hulk did not and was consequently a big green Turkey. Daredevil straddled the fence and was consequently so so. Which brings us to Fantastic Four...

Yeah, the schtick with Cosmic Rays is still there. They do the transformation thing all well and good. Where the movie starts to go wrong is its approach to the characters. Reed Richards is supposed to be the one of the most brilliant scientists on the planet, yet here, he doesn't say anything that a 4th Grader watching the Discovery Channel couldn't understand. Johnny Storm is fine...The Thing is played for a tad too much pathos but he's there. As for Jessica Alba as Sue Storm *sigh*... There lots of talented and actually blonde actresses out there, so why did they feel the need to hire Jessica Alba and dye her hair? She can't really act...She pouts nice, but that's not really acting in the traditional sense( although some have been getting away with it for years...See the complete works of Renee Zellwegger)

But where they really screw up is the handling of arguably Marvel's best villain, Dr. Victor Von Doom. First off they try to turn him into a cross between Donald Trump and Gene Hackman's version of Lex Luthor. They try to humanize him...Yes, I said it. They tried to humanize him...HIS NAME IS VICTOR VON DOOM FER CHRISSAKES!!! How human is he gonna be? Secondly they try to tie his origin into that of the FF...The stupidity of that I won't even bother to go into, except to say it's a direct steal from Tim Burton's Batman...In Fact this movie swipes a lot of things from Comic Book book movies that work, only to botch them.

BTW It might surprise some people that this is in fact the second Fantastic Four...The first one was deemed unreleasable...Would that that were the case here...

DARK WATER

The only reason I saw this movie at all is because while I was up in Toronto, my mom won tickets to a preview...10 Minutes into it I turned to my Dad and said " I bet there's a dead kid in the water tower"...I was right. If you saw The Ring you saw this one. And what the hell have they done to Jennifer Connelly? There oughta be a law...

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Ya know that old Dick Van Dyke show where they have a running gag "You SLEPT through the GUNS OF NAVARONE??!!"? Well, I slept through the WAR OF THE WORLDS...AND IT WAS LOUDER!!!

MR. and MRS. SMITH

Okay I'll admit to having seen Fantastic Four...but a masochist I'm not.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

Ever watch a National Geographic Special...Well, that's exactly what this is, no more, no less. Except with Penguins and Morgan Freeman...well his voice anyways.

CAPOTE

In which we discover that the writer of this blog was dead wrong when he prejudged this movie after last year's Oscar as being probably just another lousy Biopic (I may have to eat my words on "Walk the Line" too). The only criticism I have of this movie is that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is too tall for the part. Other than that It's the most inrelligent and well executed movie I've seen since "Sideways" which makes it darn near perfect in my book...except for the height thing.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

A close runner up to Capote. In my next life I want to be George Clooney. Don't we all?

More soon... I promise...

To the Stars on Borrowed Wings

As I may have mentioned previously, I am an Old Movie Junkie. Love ‘em. I’m especially fond of serials from the 30's, 40's, and early 50's, and have collected a bunch of them over time. They’re cheaply done, badly written and great fun to watch. They were also a great influence on some of the most successful film-makers of all time, chief among them one George Lucas...
Apart from American Graffiti, the well George Lucas most often returned to for his inspiration are the Saturday afternoon chapter plays. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My book “ The Great Heroes League” came from that same well. In fact pretty much anytime Lucas has strayed from the Serial source, it’s been a disaster (Howard the Duck, Willow). And while there are some things that were great to bring along from the serials, like action, pacing, and stunts, there are some things that were better left behind...Which brings us to Episodes 1, 2, and 3...
What should have been left behind from the serials in the Prequel Trilogy were bad writing, wooden acting, one dimensional characters and gaping plot holes. All 3 movies have these faults in Spades.

I hear the gasps of fellow geeks everywhere, as one of their own breaks ranks. Sorry guys, but there it is. Rosebud is a sleigh, the Emperor is wearing your mom’s panties under the robe and George Lucas can’t write for beans. He has a gift for imagination(or borrowing from enough different sources so that at least it looks original, from Kurosawa to Flash Gordon), for outline, but he can’t write dialogue to save his life. And twas ever thus...American Graffiti he co-wrote with Gloria Katz, so it doesn’t count. The original Star Wars (or episode 4, if you insist) has some very bad dialogue(oddly enough among the myriad changes he’s made to the first 3 movies fixing the writing on Episode 4 wasn’t one of them). The Cast complained about the dialogue long and loud. Supposedly Harrison Ford said something to the effect of “You can type this shit, but you can’t say it!”.

You will note that what has been generally acknowledged as the best movie in the series, “The Empire Strikes Back”(Another nod to the serials are the cheesy chapter titles). You will also note that it was neither written nor directed by George Lucas. And suddenly the characters are fleshed out, the dialogue is sharp, the acting leaps up a few notches and we start to care for these people, because they finally are people. Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, 2 of the best screen writers in movie history, are the ones chiefly responsible for the change, also Irvin Kershner, the director.

“Return of the Jedi”(or Episode 6, like I care) isn’t as good. Why? Leigh Brackett died in between, and guess who stepped in to take her place. That’s right . George. And so we have the Ewoks...And the smiling waving Jedi trinity at the end...Yeesh...Larry Kasdan could only do so much...

And we finally get to 1,2, and 3...George Lucas as solo writer and director for the first time since Star Wars (or a New Hope or Episode 4...Aahh get a life!). The Saga is about, among other things, The Fall of the Republic, The Fall of the Jedi, and Anakin Skywalker becoming the Emperor’s Chief Enforcer, Darth Vader...but wait...All that happens in Episode 3...What are the other 2 stories about...Some would argue backstory. I say padding. He promised a trilogy( Hell, when he was really ambitious it was supposed to be 9 movies) and he had to deliver. Unfortunately he only had enough material for 1 maybe 2...) So what do we get...Episode one introduces a bunch of new characters who die, or ( mercifully in the case of Jar Jar Binks) are rarely seen again. His choice for Anakin Skywalker is annoying and apparently difficult ( check out the Making of feature on the DVD) and yet he’s built the movie around him. The new great villain that fanboys went out of their way to get the makeup down perfectly on, ends up getting killed at the end. And the relationship being set up between Padme Amadalla and an 8 year old Anakin Skywalker is disturbing, because of the fact that you know what has to happen in the next 2 movies if you were paying attention during the first 3...this will be a recurring theme. The movie is mired in trade negotiations, racial stereotyping, and celestial political bafflegab. The dialogue is gibberish (Harrison Ford’s words were never truer). The same holds Episode 2 (Attack of the Yawns)in which Hayden Christensen steps into the role of Anakin Skywalker, 10 years older, but not a lot brighter. More action figures are introduced and dispatched with. Nothing much about this movie makes a hell of a lot of sense if you stop to think about it. The only saving grace of it is the duel between the amazing Christopher Lee and the now fully CGI Yoda. Anakin and Padme are secretly married, which is basically the only purpose this movie has in the great scheme of things.

“Revenge of the Sith” (What they’re getting revenge for is never really spelled out) is the movie where all of the aforementioned elements are brought together to link this 3 film albatross link to the first 3. Like I said, if you were paying attention at all during the first 3, you know what has to happen...And it does...No surprises...Nada...And that’s what the fans seem to want God love ‘em...Christensen is still hopelessly out of his element as Anakin , and as a result, the transition from Skywalker to Vader doesn’t work....The Skywalker Twins are born...Their’s a wholesale slaughter of the Jedi which they deserve( Hey , they should have seen it coming....They’re supposed to be able to do that, ya know). The only one who emerges out of this whole mess is the indistructible Ewan MacGregor who is the only thing worth watching in all three movies. But as a whole Episodes 1, 2, and 3 (even though it’s superior to the other 2, it had to be) are a colossal waste of time. I could be cynical and say they were a cash grab by a film-maker who’s run out of ideas. But I think it’s more a case of a guy not admitting to his own limitations. You could postulate what Lawrence Kasdan, or David Koepp etc.would have done with the scripts. You can fantasize what Spielberg(who was apparently asked) or Singer would have done with the direction and casting. But it ultimately is what it is, and it does what it does. And what I think it does, ultimately, is detract from the original trilogy which stood on its own.

May the Schwartz be with you...

“The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”Movie was Douglas Adams last gift to we, the unworthy earth types lucky enough to have shared( and happily destroying, without his permission) the planet with him. I’m not going to go into a lot of details here, but all the dread most Adams fans felt when we found out Disney was were making the movie, were pretty much unfounded. It’s good, It’s funny and if you cam find it, see it.


In 1978, Superman: the Movie came out. Upon its success a whole spate of Comic Book were announced were suddenly greenlit, including a new Batman movie. And I thought “Finally”.
You have to understand, I am a total geek when it comes to Batman. When I was a little kid my dad took me to see a revival of the original Batman Serial(1943) at a small theatre in Toronto. And I was hooked. Then the TV show debuted, and I didn’t know it was supposed to be funny, more to the point, I didn’t care. It was Batman, and that was enough. I bought the comics. I bought the records (hearing the real origin story for the first time, and the first Joker story scared the crap out of me), I bought the toys...I briefly switched allegiances to the Green Hornet...well, Kato really...but my heart belonged to Batman.

So the show gets cancelled and I’m left with the comics, but the comics started to change.
And Batman started to change. He became nastier, more of the vigilante he started out to be(the 1939 Batman of the comics thought nothing of shooting people who got in his way). This was when Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams decided to reclaim Batman from the TV series, and brought a more realistic approach to the stories. The Joker went from merry prankster to full blown psychopath. Robin pretty much disappeared. And they created the only other Batman villain, to come close to the Joker in intensity, Ra’s Al Ghul. The stories were well written, and the art was spectacular. Other artists have drawn Batman (Marshall Rogers being my 2nd favorite) but none have come close. Neal Adams (and I say, despite the fact that he snubbed me at Comic Con a couple of years when I tried to talk to him). That era was brilliant, and was in large part responsible for the comic book renaissance. And Batman was still my book...with occasional nods to X Men (John Byrne) and Spiderman (Ross Andru).

So here we are back in 1978, and I’m figuring “Cool, they’re finally going to make a serious Batman movie! Can’t wait!”. Well, it turned out I was gonna have to. There were rumors. Robert Towne had written a noirish script set in the 30's, putting The Batman in context, which became as legendary as his Tarzan script which was eventually ruined into “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan”(He was so pissed at what they’d done to the script that he put his dogs name on it, and was subsequently shocked when his dog was nominated for best adapted screenplay). Unfortunately, nobody wanted to make it as a period piece, so that one fell apart. It took 11 years for Tim Burton’s vision of Batman to start filming...

By this time the comics had started changing again. With the emergence of the small presses and independents, the Majors were forced to experiment to maintain sales. Enter Frank Miller. Miller had been doing amazing things at Marvel with Daredevil. He created The Dark Knight Returns, a seminal work that redefined comics in general and Batman in particular. It touched everything that came after. The book is set in a dark, depressing world (hinted to be the 1980s) where criminals run amok, and Batman's home of Gotham City is being terrorized by a gang of murderers called The Mutants. Bruce Wayne (Batman) is 55 years old, and gave up the role of Batman ten years before the story begins. Finally, he reaches a point in his life where he cannot sit back and watch the world be overrun by thieves and murderers.He dons the mantle of the Caped Crusader one last time and embarks on a final battle to purge Gotham of crime. The Dark Knight Returns deals in large part with Wayne's uncompromising obsession with his dual identity. In this bleak world, Batman's obssessions and demons finally, completely submerge the (at least slightly) sane Bruce Wayne, and Batman is finally given free rein to wage his war without inhibition. Miller also uses the story to satirize the way the modern media works. In their coverage of the Caped Crusader’s return, all the experts are trundled out to analyze the significance. There are debates as to the pros and cons of vigilantism. Reports on how pop culture is effected. Hell, the Joker even appears on a talk show (that looks suspiciously like David Letterman) and proceeds to kill the entire audience. The Dark Knight Returns was a phenomenon. It proved that comics could be literate, and deserved to be taken seriously as an art form

With all this as a background, movie talk started again. There was talk of making “Dark Night Returns” into a movie and Clint Eastwood was to star. Ultimately the project landed in Tim Burton’s lap, who immediately pissed off most comic geeks (seriously, there were petitions...I’m not kidding) by casting Michael Keaton. “Beetlejuice can’t be Batman!! Are you crazy??? He has no chin...Batman has to have a chin!!”

Oddly enough a friend and I had a chance to stop the Burton Batman movie in its tracks...We were driving to my apartment in Toronto and as we came around the corner a figure in jeans and a white t-shirt darted in front of us, so much so my friend Shawn had to squeal the brakes. The guy waves his hand and I notice that it’s Michael Keaton. He was there filming “The Dream Team”. He finishes crossing the street, and we move along, and I said “Gee, we could have saved the fanboys a lot of grief.” I had to explain to Shawn who is semi normal and not into the minutiae of the comics/movie industry. Sometimes I envy him.

But I didn’t have a problem with Michael Keaton as Batman. For one thing he looks like he enjoys inflicting pain which I think is an important aspect of Batman’s character. Secondly he arrived at the same conclusion that everyone save George Clooney has come to (Myself included when I read “Dark Knight Returns” to my dyslexic brother), that Batman sounds like Clint Eastwood. So I didn’t have a problem with his Batman...I had a problem with his Bruce Wayne. See when you play Batman, you’re actually playing 3 people...You’re playing Bruce Wayne, an obsessive who saw his parents murdered in front of him...You’re playing the Millionaire Playboy he fronts to the public...And you’re playing playing Batman, a vengeful vigilante whose raison d’etre is fear and punishment.

I liked the Tim Burton movie. It had a lot of great things in it. It had a lot of things I didn’t like. But Nicholson was great. I liked Keaton. Robert Wuhl irritated me, and I wasn’t crazy about Kim Basinger. It wasn’t what it could have been, but it would do. And (heresy alert) I actually preferred Batman Returns...For one thing they finally got the costume right, and for another...Michelle Pfeiffer.

But there was still something missing.

I won’t even talk about the 2 abominations Joel Schumacher put on screen. Suffice to say that for all the other Batman movies I was there, opening day, first show. For “Batman and Robin” I waited for it to come out on video...and even then I waited ‘til I had a free rental.

And so we arrive at “Batman Begins”

Quite simply, this is the movie I’ve been waiting for since 1978.

It answers all the questions we’ve wondered about all these years. Like, as Nicholson asks “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”. How did he learn the fighting arts? Who made the costume? How do they cover the purchases? Why the Bat? Where did he get the car? What happened between the time of his parents death and the emergence of Batman? This is the core of the movie.

Initially I had reservations over Christian Bale, but I happily admit to being totally wrong. His performance is simply brilliant. He plays all of the levels of the character and then some. His Bruce Wayne is complex, yet he knows how to turn on the shallow when he needs to. His Batman is everything you expect and, at times, actually scary.

The supporting cast with the exception of Katie Holmes, is great too. Michael Caine makes you pretty much forget everyone else who has ever played the role, and the relationship actually makes sense for the first time. Morgan Freeman plays a Morgan Freeman character the way only Morgan Freeman can. Liam Neeson goes over to the dark side, for his character is the complete opposite of the one he played in “Phantom Menace”. Cillian Murphy is suitably creepy as The Scarecrow. And Garl Oldman gives one of his most subdued performances as Sergeant then Lieutenant Gordon, and is totally believable and likable. Again, for the first time, the relationship makes sense(It owes a lot to Frank Miller’s Batman Year One). And Gotham is appropriately dark but not completely gothic, which gives you a sense that it just might be worth saving.

This is not to say the film is perfect. It ain’t. The fight sequences are confusingly edited. The pacing in the beginning is on the slow side. Katie Holmes, as previously mentioned But the pluses so outweigh the minuses, that I feel ungrateful kvetching about them. Compared to previous Batman movies, this is Citizen Kane...

I hope I don’t have to wait 27 years for another one.