All along the watchtower!

No, not that one.

Good grief! It's WATCHMEN! Seriously! I don't think there's anything (other than some of the particulars of the costume design, and even then it's close!) that isn't a frame out of the comic book. They're even keeping the logo the same. I would think that this is the sort of trailer that if you didn't know the comic you'd say "Um. Ok. That looks... Busy." But if you DO know the book, every frame sets you tingling. Especially Osterman in the disintegration chamber. That got me more than the crystal city on Mars. Oh, and of course the Comedian getting tossed out the window. Yowza.

(For the unwashed, look here.)

p.s. Googling for the image at the top of this post led me to this. Small world, eh?

WaaaaAAAAAlll-E

LATE! Everything's LATE! (I've mostly written my BSG finale review. Good thing I'm not getting paid for this. Then again, if I had been this would have been on time. And had better punctuation.)

Since I've written this a week ago there has been a rather amusing WALL-E lash/backlash. Go look for it. Laugh. You'll read it again in a minute: We get FTL. We win.

Ah. Well, I've made my first mistake this morning: I read Lileks before I wrote my WALL-E review. Oh, well.

PERFECT. Like, Incredibles perfect. Like, when do I get to see it again perfect.

Ok, elephant in the room time: "Hey, ain't you a planet hating Republican?" Why, yes. And that's one of the many things I LOVED about this movie. I've been muttering somewhat cynically (it's what I do best) that this movie depicts a world where we've "used up the Earth". Well, that's supposed to be the end, isn't it? Nope. We are able to move a goodly chunk of the populace into very comfortable space while we put the Earth back together. I call that a win! But now I've seen the movie, it's even BETTER! It isn't a BSG "Oh, it sucks to be out in space and everyone is DEAD." No! Everyone is ludicrously comfortable! So much so that we're supposed to 'tsk tsk' at them for their obviously over-done comfort! For a rampantly consumerist society, they've managed to develop an enclosed environment that thrives at "MORE MORE MORE!" levels for SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS. (I'm sure there's a dark side: Soylent Green - in a cup!) And the other thing that no-one has touched on? They're all NICE. We only meet a few people in the movie, but they're all friendly, well meaning, and, ok, maybe more than a little bored. We should hope for such a future. Oh, and we've apparently developed CRAZY good FTL. Not bad for a dying species. (Oh, and they all seem to be, well, American. *cough*)

Plus, it's NOT global warming. It's not carbon footprints. It's not the ozone layer. (It's a little Haliburton.) It's good old fashioned post-apocalyptic pollution. It's not a warning, it's a McGuffin. (And it's GORGEOUS.)

But enough of all that. Oh, this is a wondrous film. WALL-E has heart and soul to spare. He's just so... so... well, blast it, he's CUTE. He's everything anyone gets into animation for in the first place. There was much concern (still voiced by people who haven't seen the movie) about a kids movie with no talking for the first 40 minutes or so. Hey, there was no talking in Tom and Jerry or the good Pink Panther cartoons. Or Roadrunner for that matter. And this is sublime. In ten minutes alone you'll get joy, wonder, laughs, and melancholy despair. For a start. The last few days bits of the movie have been popping back into my head. (WALL-E before he has his morning sun, for example.) Some of the beginning almost has an "I am Legend" vibe.

The trailers for the movie are just about right. There are a couple of shots that I'd take out. But 1) they lie to you (my favorite trailer technique) and 2) they show you enough to get you into the movie and hold a LOT back. So this will be brief because the movie moves into spoiler territory rapidly. There's a stretch of the movie that pretty much is just the first trailer. (WALL-E hitting himself in the head with the paddle-ball is still making me laugh.)

I can't go into much about EVE (certainly not All About EVE) without spoilage. But I love that it's the GIRL who is the "kill everything that moves psycho robot". Heh. Again, it's the Superman / Lois Lane thing: It's not that EVE is THAT lovable. It's that WALL-E loves her SO much. The scenes on Earth after EVE meets her "directive" are some of the sweetest in movies ever. You'll never look at Pong again without giggling.

Gee, WALL-E starts up with a Mac sound and EVE looks like a flying iPod. Who owns this company?

Pixar continues to be Story Writing 101. Everything pays off. The movie runs on rails. It's so tight it squeaks. Why don't THESE guys write an Indiana Jones movie? I'm sure this will be even better a second time around when you know where it all goes.

This is Pixar doing sci-fi. Ohhhhhhhh! It's so BEAUTIFUL!

From Wikipedia: "After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt they "had really achieved the physics of believing you were really under water, so I said 'Hey, let’s do that with air.' Let’s fix our lenses, let’s get the depth of field looking exactly how anamorphic lenses work and do all these tricks that make us have the same kind of dimensionality that we got on Nemo with an object out in the air and on the ground.'"[5] Producer Jim Morris added that the film was animated so that it would feel "as if there really was a cameraman".[8] Dennis Muren was hired to advise Pixar on replicating science fiction films from the 1960s and 1970s, including elements such as 70 mm frames, barrel distortion and lens flare.[9][10] Scale models were made for Muren, which he used to teach Pixar."

Muren! The Old Man of ILM! Jinkies! Pixar is the CG studio that is trying to look like MOVIES instead of video games. Stanton is slated to do John Carter of Mars next. How Pixar will pull that off, I have no idea. But at least it will look like David Lean instead of Michael Bay.

And the sound. It's Ben Burtt. The man who gave us lightsabers and R2-D2. Who re-popularized the Wilhelm Scream. Oh, all movies should sound like this. Thirty years later and he's still amazing.

And if you're as obsessive as I am, stay for the credits. It's cool. Not Iron Man or Pirates cool. But cool.

So, yeah, I liked it.

Go.

The Man with the Hat is Back...

...and this time he's bored. Well, ok, maybe not THAT bad. But still.

You know, I remember coming out of Temple of Doom with a nagging feeling of disappointment. (I'm not nearly the Temple of Doom hater that most of the world is. I understand the problems. If I haven't already posted the ups and downs of the Indy films - and I think I have - then I'll get to it directly.) But I don't remember feeling the weight of it while I was still in the theater. No, wait. I take that back. When they jumped out of the airplane on an inflatable raft and fell and fell and fell and FELL and then LIVED I knew there was something wrong.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is a lot like that. A LOT.

My biggest gripe with the movie? Sets! It's all sets! And apologies to Mr. Spielberg because I think there was more location footage than it felt like. Which meant that he shot real places to look like SETS! (I don't care how cool it was in War of the Worlds or even Drive. Don't film car chases in an Indy movie on SETS!)

There were sets in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Well of the Souls. Marion's bar. But 1) none of these were extended with pretty obvious green screen and 2) there were GLORIOUS locations. Peru. Cairo. Heck, even the Nazi island had location shooting. (Look! It's Obi-Wan Kenobi!) Remember when all of the workers are digging for the Well and Indy puts on his hat back lit by the setting sun? Nothing of that kind of scope here. Skull feels very stage-bound and very very VERY small. It reminds me of Hook in that respect. When you're in an Indy movie and the BIGGEST location is Yale, you're in trouble.

Someone once tried to encourage me that at least we'd get a new Williams score. But even Williams does something he never did for the previous Indy scores: He does a direct reprise. One of the first times we hear the Raiders march it's a repeat of Flight from Peru. *sigh* There are a couple more. I haven't bought the score and I'm not sure I will. If you know me and that doesn't make you a little dizzy then you must be made of stronger stuff.

I liked it better than the Mummy movies. I liked it better than Star Wars 2 and 3. There are some very charming moments. There's a couple of good action sequences. (They've never held a candle to the truck chase in Raiders even in the other Indy movies.) They depend on your good will from the last three movies (Last Crusade more than anything else) and they largely get it. I thrilled when I heard the Ark theme. (But it's one of Williams' four or five best themes ever, so that was easy.) There are several very nice nods to Marcus Brody. (He's treated with more respect here than in the entirety of Last Crusade.) It's good to see Marion again. The bad guys are largely forgettable. Take From Russia With Love and add henchmen from North by Northwest. (Oh, and if you're going to take a stance that the anti-communist
paranoia of the 50's was crazy, don't put commies around every corner!
Seems the paranoia was justified, eh comrade?)

"I like Ike." Heh.

But it never made me tingle the way that Raiders did when the old man tells them about the Staff of Ra. That movie still holds the award for Best Exposition Ever. I did like the quieter bits of this film more than many reviewers. Maybe because when it was quiet there was no lame CG or bad bad BAD sword fights. Let's face it, this movie goes a long way on Harrison Ford.

If I never see another damn CG prairie dog again it will be too soon.

The actors were still top notch. Harrison Ford is still Harrison Ford. (Has anyone pointed out that Indy is 8 years younger than Ford in this movie?) If he ever manages to be in a great movie again he'll be terrific. John Hurt is still awesome. Jim Broadbent is still a treasure. I even liked Shia LaBeouf. A lot. (Remember when actors used to change their names if they had names like Archie Leach? Or Shia LaBeouf?) He was almost as cool as he thought he was. And I'll admit that's not nothing.

So there we have it. It's over and done. Better than The Mummy. Not as good as The Rocketeer.

Dr. Jones, adieu.

**** SPOILERS *****

I'm really expected to believe that Indy doesn't think of Marion right away when he hears her name? Seriously?

The A-Bomb looked COOL.

The snake scene had three actors (and an audience) doing a terrific job with a STUPID idea.

I LIKE that it was flying saucers.

THE ANTS ROCKED.

The library scene is a perfect example of a neat idea push just that much too far.

Did Indy move into Dad's house?

Looks like Indy has his mother's ears and his father's theme.

The Ark was a waste. Totally a waste. In Raiders that warehouse was one of the spookiest things in a movie not wanting for spooky stuff. Here: A waste.

Glad they kept the old-school Paramount opening like in the other three. Too bad it led to a blasted CG prairie dog.

And finally, CG melting heads do NOT compete with practical effect melting heads.

Tone deaf?

This reminds me of when Hillary played Billy Joel's Captain Jack at a campaign rally a few years ago. Someone picked these clips because they figured it was Jack Nicholson saying cool things. Except a lot of us know the rest of these lines. And I'm not posting ANY of them on my blog. Let alone in a national presidential campaign.

I don't think Hillary would want any of these characters associated with her run for presidency if they were real. Especially... Well, no there's not an especially in the group since Jake Gittes is the most well adjusted in the bunch. Otherwise we have quite the collection of murderers and sociopaths. I want to see Jack Torrance coming through the door with an axe saying "Vote for Hillary!"

But anyway, if Col. Jessep gets his wish (the rest of that clip) then I'd just have to say didn't we have enough of that in the first Clinton administration?

Gee, where was Jessep stationed again? Think he had much of a problem with waterboarding?

Dodged Bullet!

Wow, did I get lucky! I saw the trailer for Jumper and thought it looked moderately cool. Then I read the reviews and found out it wasn't. All the while not knowing it was a Hayden Christensen flick! Arrrrgh!

Cine Capri - a Followup

Here's a nice link with a TEENY picture of THE BIG GREEN WALL. Read the comments. Lot of info there.

The Cine Capri 1966-1998

Can anyone believe it's been ten years? Goodness.

The Cine Capri was THE movie theater in Phoenix, Arizona. It showed Star Wars exclusively for over a year in 1977 / 1978. Exclusively. One theater. One screen. Imagine that. If you saw Star Wars in the Valley first run, you saw it at the Capri. I did not. I saw it (at night) in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

But I got to see the theatrical release of Battlestar Galactica. In SENSOROUND! If I'm remembering correctly, this was the cut where they actually killed Baltar. When they put it on TV they realized that 1) John Colicos was COOL and 2) that people are cheaper to film than robots. (Although they did introduce Lucifer - to an eight year old, this was a subtle and crafty name. But then so was Adam-a.)

Then The Empire Strikes Back opened. Imagine the coolest movie ever made having a sequel - that was ALSO the coolest movie ever made! I know there's been one since then. Ok, X2 is close. But seriously. And this was my first Cine Capri Line. There was this BIG GREEN TILED WALL (that I have NO pictures of). You'd get your tickets, then you'd stand in line next to this wall. There was a small misunderstanding of procedure (get tickets, THEN stand in line) so we didn't get in to see Empire on our first attempt. I apologize for any atrocities I committed or promised that night. I was eleven.

But when we DID get to see it... Oh, my. This was the second Star Wars. We didn't know how it would work. We didn't know that the beginning and ending would be the same for all NINE (NINE, George, you said NINE - not that we WANT three more movies now, thank you) movies. So when the crowd before us came out and I heard THE music... You think I'm excitable NOW?

We didn't see many movies at the Capri when I was a kid. Galactica, Empire, Fantasia (that I sadly walked out on and went to play Asteroids in the lobby. Uncultured twerp.)

The next movie I saw was Aliens (1986). AND we saw it immediately after watching Alien on videotape. I had never seen it. So I got to see them back to back. That was just cool.

Lotta movie over the next ten years. Probably the biggest event was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Lawrence of Arabia had played before that and it had gone long every night that it ran (it had an intermission - I've talked about this). The night Indy opened was no exception. So as we stood in the 100 degree heat at midnight, some over-caffeinated (or whatever) fanboy ran up to the lobby to MOON the camera crews inside. Well, he was running a LITTLE too fast. He wound up slamming into the window with his bare bottom, and cracking the glass! (Hrmmm, do I change the word choice? Noooo...) He then limped off into the night, bleeding a little, and was not heard from again.

Finally got to see the ORIGINAL Star Wars there in 1993. Drove down from Prescott a couple times for it. Ahhhhh. While I was in Ohio they ran all three. The only time the original Jedi played at the Capri.

We saw Independence Day at four in the morning on opening night. It was on, we were up.

Then there were the Star Wars Special Editions. (Little did we know...)

Which means I have to tell the Empire story. Some friends where sitting many rows in front of me. There was an altercation involving 1) my friends 2) a jerk 3) stupid kids and 4) a theater sized cup of Coke. There was flinging and shouting and dousing. But from many rows back, it played like this:

Luke: How am I to know the good side from the bad.
Yoda: You will KNOW. When you are calm. At peace...
Voice: F*** YOU! G**-D*** IT! AAAAARGH!

Gone to the dark side, had they.

A year later there would be a smoking hole there. And then an anonymous office complex. The land was too valuable. And the Powers That Be decided that they would take no chances. There was a night club at the site that nobody cared about. They were allowed to stay open until they actually needed the land. But TPB knew that every moment the Capri stood was another moment for some fool petition to succeed and keep the Capri open. So as the closing credits of Titanic rolled, ten years ago today, they started to dismantle the theater. Some of us got bits of the signature green tiling from the wall (I gave mine away as soon as I got it, but I know folks that have theirs). The next day it was gone.

There are several new "Cine Capri" Auditoriums. They're nice. I like them. But they don't even come close. Not even close.

Movies that I saw at the Cine Capri:

Battlestar Galactica
Fantasia
The Empire Strikes Back
Aliens
Tucker
Lawrence of Arabia
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Abyss
Back to the Future part II
Back to the Future part III (?)
Days of Thunder
Memphis Belle
The Godfather Part III
Batman Returns
Far and Away
Casablanca
Addams Family
Star Wars
Blade Runner (Director's Cut)
Jurassic Park
My Fair Lady (Added)
The Fugitive
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Belle de jour
Toy Story
Mr. Holland's Opus
Twister
Mission: Impossible
The Rock
Independence Day
Star Trek: First Contact
Evita
Star Wars SE
The Empire Strikes Back SE
Return of the Jedi SE
Contact
Das Boot
LA Confidential
Devil's Advocate
Starship Troopers
Titanic

The No-Ballad of Sweeney Todd

Got the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd this morning. The good - Johnny Depp sings better than Gerrard Butler. Sounds very David Bowie, actually. And Johanna sounds terrific. The bad - he doesn't sing as well as Len Cariou. And Helena Bonham Carter is NO Angela Lansbury. Obviously we'll see what it looks like on film. On the album everyone sounds like they're singing in small apartments but trying not to disturb the neighbors. Restraint is only good up to a point, Tim.

The inexplicable: It's not just the overture. There is NO Ballad of Sweeney Todd! I say again !!!!! And maybe #&$*! I'm piecing together the rumors I have heard and I think it comes up like this: The movie was going to have a chorus of ghosts. Well, the chorus is who sings the Ballad throughout the play. They didn't have time / budget / something like that to do the ghosts. So you cut the SIGNATURE SONG?!?! Um, doesn't that mean your movie isn't FINISHED? To add insult to injury they ghosts where going to be, among others, Tony Head and Christopher Lee! EDIT: Ok, the word is that since the ballad is always sung by a chorus, that it was too "stagey". Um... Whatev.

So, until I see the film, I will put this down as "Not as bad as I thought it would be." (Oh, and Alan Rickman's not half-bad!)

Meet the Robinson's

We saw Disney's Meet the Robinsons last week. What an INCREDIBLY STUPID movie. I loved it all to pieces. It's not quite the Emperor's New Groove, but it's in that vein. Only with time machines, dinosaurs, and space ships. It's basically a bunch of writers and animators just like me who got to play with Disney's money.

I remember seeing an interview with Steven Spielberg on why 1941 was his first flop. He said that looking back on it, he realized that the only people who would enjoy this movie were the people with exactly the same sense of humor as him, Bob Gale, and Robert Zemeckis. Well this is kind of the same situation. And in both cases, I'm that guy!

Worst Pies in London!

The opening titles to Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are on line. Warning: These ARE disturbing. Not as much left to the imagination on screen as on stage.

What cracks me up is that there is STILL no SINGING in these titles. In the trailers there are a few snippets of Depp kind of singing "there's a hole in the world like a great black pit". But they're not really going out of their way to say MUSICAL.

One of my favorite movie quotes from the Harrison Ford remake of Sabrina was thus:

Mack: The most difficult tickets to get will be for a Broadway musical.
Linus Larrabee: So?
Mack: That means that the performers will periodically dance about and burst into song.

Anyway, brace yourselves. (If the Zombie song disturbed you, don't click here.) Here it is.

Big Opening

Too fast! It's all too fast!

Over on TrekMovie.com they had a poll asking if you saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture on opening night. (I didn't, but we saw it within the week. Liked it then. Like it more now.) Over 60% said they didn't see it because they hadn't been BORN yet. Arrrgh.

I saw this and Disney's The Black Hole within a week or two of each other. Both of them had something I'd never seen before, and never saw again with a new release motion picture: An Overture. Just a few minutes of music played over a background. (ST:TMP's was a black screen in the theater. The Director's Edition added a moving star field.)

Films I have since seen that have Overtures: Lawrence of Arabia. Gone With the Wind. My Fair Lady? Sound of Music? Wizard of Oz? Have to go check those. (edit - No. But 2001, King Kong, and Mary Poppins did.) Looks like the only two movies after ST:TMP and The Black Hole to have overtures were Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005).

An overture signaled an EVENT. Something was about to HAPPEN. Heck, these days we don't even have a main title, unless it's trying to be all retro (like Superman Returns).

I realize that the whole purpose of an overture is somewhat at odds with the world we live in. It's intent is to settle you in to the theater. Get you into the movie mood. Well, people don't DO that anymore. They never GET into the movie mood. They're worried about cel phones and blackberries and going back out for candy or maybe over to the next theater for another movie.

Another concession that I will make is that I miss overtures because I enjoy the kind of music that most overtures used to contain. Maurice Jarre, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry. A rap star overture just wouldn't do it for me.

Another "old school" movie tradition I miss is Intermission. Used to be when you went to go see the latest three and a half hour epic, you'd get a potty break. I remember seeing Lawrence of Arabia at the Cine Capri. Two hours of dazzling desert-scapes. I've never seen the concessions stand so full. Then ten years later I saw Titanic (with NO intermission). Afterwards I've never seen the restrooms so crowded.

We Happy Few...

In case you were wondering, today is St. Crispin's Day. So it's a good day to post this!



Hey look! (At about 1:43) It's little Bruce Wayne in the front row!

Indiana Jones and the...

Well, here it is.



Still not all that excited. (Prove me wrong, Steve. I dare you.)

THIS is exciting. The flying shots alone will get me in the theater. Oh, and Aliens v. Predator is actually looking cool this time out.

Attend the Tale!

Well. This is alarming looking...

I just saw that Christopher Lee is "Gentleman Ghost". So there are obviously some liberties. UPDATE!!!! Anthony "Giles" Head will also be one of the singing ghosts!

Ron Weasley's Rat (hey, he was in Chicken Run? Had no idea! - Also as a rat, btw) will be Beadle Bamford. There WILL be SINGING in this movie, no? So that's three Potter alumni. (But can any of them, well, make pleasant pitch changes with thier voices set to a tune?)

Chinatown needs new art?

I hate photo movie posters. For one thing, it's all we get anymore. Unless you're Harry Potter or Star Wars. Even then... (I'm guessing Indiana Jones: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up will have a Struzan poster.)

But I REALLY hate when they take a movie that had awesome art (or at least good art) originally and give it a photo cover. The Big Heads look that is so popular now. Hey look! It's a Jack Nicholson movie. And it's got Jack Nicholson in it! So here's a big picuture of Jack Nicholson's head! Doesn't it look just like Jack Nicholson? (Gosh, I hope I spelled Nicholson right, otherwise I have to correct, like, FOUR of 'em. EDIT - Whew!)

So here's the original.

Here's the "New and Improved".

Don't even get me started on James Bond covers. (The covers are popular enough that there are BOOKS dedicated to them, but they ain't good enough for DVDs. No sir!)

So let's all do our best John Huston impersonation:

Jake Gittes: I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!

Zounds, he was scary!

Hoist the Colors!

Ok. Ok. Ok. I'm writing my Pirates 3 review. Ok. Really. Ok. Mean it. Spoiler Free (until I say otherwise). It's been out for a month and a half anyway. I could tell you that Barbossa and Governor Swan are the same person, and it should be free and clear.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (AWE).

Wow. I don't know why, but this was really really wow for me. She Who Is My Wife loved it, but not as much as I do. I'm obsessive, so this is no surprise. I saw it again today just to see if I really loved it as much. I did. I might go see it again tomorrow.

This is the Promised Third Movie. Third movies are really hard. Either you topped the first movie in the second or you didn't. So now you either have to top the topper, or you have to make the apology. Also, if you decided in your second movie that you are now making a Grand Epic, you probably left lots of follow up lying about like confetti in your second movie that you now have to make good on. I don't think I've ever really seen it done. Back to the Future had a really good part III. Star Wars, um, no. Matrix? Oh, heavens no.

I'm reminded of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. A movie with, shall we say, flaws. But it also made a LOT of promises. It zagged in a lot of places that (because of the original trilogy) we thought it was going to zig. (I can go on about this a lot. I won't.) The short version is that it was at least interesting in that respect. Episodes II and III almost universally failed to pay of on any of it. I'm not going into detail. I use Shmi Skywalker as an example (don't blink, you'll miss her) and leave it at that.

Maybe this is why I'm so enamored of the Pirates Saga. It leaves very very few threads unexplored. If it dropped a hint (unintentionally in Curse of the Black Pearl and intentionally in Dead Man's Chest) then it pays it off in At World's End. There isn't the Return of the Jedi feeling that the creators are bored with most of it, or that they wrote themselves into a corner they can't get out of. (They get out of some great corners is some delightfully surprising ways.) If flows like the music that George Lucas goes on about. (Lucas says that the reason his stories repeat is because they are like music, with choruses and verses. Uh huh.) There are wonderful variations and reprises, and I think there are only two or three that fall flat or feel forced in the whole trilogy. (Sadly, two of my favorite characters from CotBP, Mullroy and Murtogg are one of them. They should have been in the second movie and they feel shoe-horned into the third. Sigh.)

The Curse of the Black Pearl (CotBP) (actually, the Pearl didn't ever really have it's own curse, it was cursed) was a terrific surprise. Nobody expected it to be good, let alone great. It hit so many great beats, and avoided so many places where it could have been really really bad. And it had GREAT sword fights. And it gave us Captain. Jack. Sparrow. More on that in a bit.

Dead Man's Chest (DMC) has it's flaws. The whole cannibal island bit goes long and gets stupid in ways that CotBP managed to avoid. I've found that without it, the movie is awesome. But DMC also lays a lot of groundwork (and has the task of turning stuff from CotBP that wasn't really groundwork into groundwork).

AWE is complicated. You have to pay attention. Movies like that are usually labeled “un-followable”. Well, so was Raymond Chandler. This is a film that expects you to keep up. And being that I like the setting, and all of the characters, I'm happy for the exercise. I admit, this is a big reason I like it so much.

But how is Jack? Jack is never as good as he is in CotBP. He's just not. He's not as funny. He's not as smart. He's not as misunderstood. I realize that he is in a different place. He's not supposed to be firing on all cylinders in DMC. But there should have been a better way. He almost gets it back in AWE. There was some Jack stuff that really blew me away on the second view. The scene that never happened again in the sequels was when Jack is in the cell in Port Royal. He's listening to the other inmates going on about the legends of the terror of the Black Pearl. They say there are never any survivors. Jack (who is not in the mood to be all Jack-like) says “No survivors? So where do the stories come from, I wonder?” He's smart. He figures stuff out that other people don't. And he often acts the buffoon to cover it. But he's always smart. In the sequels, he's smart just in the nick of time, but you don't as often see the wheels turning underneath. The is fixed up a bit in AWE, but not as much as I would like. There's never quite the moment when Jack just shows up in the cave and Barbossa says “Impossible!” and Jack sheepishly corrects him “No, just improbable.”

So here we are for part three. This is the Return of the Jedi that we didn't get. The one that feels like it was always supposed to be the end. DMC left a heaping helping of loose ends and AWE gets almost all of them. You jump right back into it. I say if you don't know DMC stem to stern, make sure you watch it at least once before you see this one. They don't recap much if at all.

They up the scale in this one. In CotBP the bad guys could have won and it would not have changed much. We're told that the stakes in AWE are the seas themselves. Historical note: In real life the “bad guys”, the East India Trading Company, won for a very long time. (*cough* Halliburton! *cough*) It's movie magic that the rascals, scoundrels, villains, and knaves, devils, black sheep, and really bad eggs are the freedom loving heroes in this film. But heroes they be. Enjoy it. I love it when Big Social Commentary goes so badly wrong, because then you can just ignore it. (“They said habeas corpus! They must be bad! Like Lincoln!”)

Oh, speaking of “really bad eggs” there are at least a couple more ride refferences that just made me grin. It's nice to hear both Paul Frees and Thurl Ravenscroft in a major motion picture.

Every single character in this flick has a motive. Everyone has an agenda. They took the line in CotBP (“Who's side is Jack on?” “At the moment?”) and ran with it. Allegiances don't just shift, they leap. Good guys are bad, bad guys are good, the only one who stays mostly put is Becket. But he's the bad guy, so there you are.

William and Elizabeth. The love story is great. It nothing new, but they don't pull a Han and Leia (love story? That was last movie!) in this. Will and Elizabeth are still really the central characters. None of these movies are about Jack. They are because of Jack. Will gets a good edge to him and Elizabeth (the distressing damsel) is as resourceful as ever.

Barbossa. Oh, is he still great. You want to see the movie where he mutinies on Jack back in the day. As Depp describes it, "We're like a couple of old ladies fighting over their knitting needles." There's a reason we all cheered when Hector shows up at the end of DMC.

Tia Dalma. She is a force in this movie. Her character takes a rather dark turn right from the get go. She gives Orlando Bloom a lot of help, IMHO. The mischievous voodoo sprite from DMC is quickly gone. She more than anything else telegraphs that it's different this time out.

Davy. Jones. My favorite character in movies in years. More than Jack Sparrow (Captain). He still pays off here. He's not a special effect. He lives. He breathes. He's why I watched DMC as many times as I did.

No spoilers, but Norrington isn't nearly as cool in this movie. He is duped. I can't explain why it's different than it was when Jack stole the Interceptor out from under him, but it is. And in DMC he was so wonderfully damaged. I was expecting him to be a terror in this movie. He's kind of soft here. He's one of the balls that gets fumbled a little.

The Rest of the Cast. They juggle a lot of balls. And they keep almost all of them in the air. They manage to give what would be an otherwise unwieldy bunch of folks all in the right place and doing the right things. Gibbs has been awesome since the beginning. I was greatly surprised at how much I liked Pintel (“Hello, poppet.”) and Ragetti (the guy with the wooden eye) in the second movie. I actually cheered at their entrance this time out. BTW, everybody gets a great entrance. I laughed the second time when I realized that Will's first line is “Jack Sparrow.”

The Song. Pay attention to the song. It explains the whole movie. Really. I love that song.

So there you go. It's awesome. It's fun. It's the overblown sequel that I expect to still like twenty years from now. When you have your Pirate Marathon, you actually anticipate part three instead of dreading it. And it doesn't have a speeder bike chase.

I'll post some of my favorite bits and maybe some of the stuff I didn't like in a spoilerific post somewhere down the road.

Just remember, it's pronounced “E-GREE-JEE-OUS”.

The Man With The Hat Is Back, and This Time He's Really Old

Yes, they've really actually finally started making Indiana Jones and the Disappointing George Lucas Movie. Ok, it's probably not called that. But we're all thinking it, right?

Well, here's George, Steven, Frank, and the gang making another go-round.

And for those that didn't see it, here's Indy his own self. It's not the years, it's the mileage, indeed.

I'll try to get excited about this movie. I will. Honest. *grumble*

Pizer. Charlie Pizer.

Oh rapturous day! iTunes has added the score to The Black Hole by John Barry! Zounds! I checked Amazon: No CD. Just iTunes. Truly, brave new world that has such soundtracks in it. I wonder what the licensing deal with this is.

An my gosh is it a John Barry score. I mean, this is almost definitive Barry. Translation? It's James Bond in space! Ok, Moonraker is James Bond in space, which came out the same year, but this may be more so. That's the amazing thing. We played this record into the ground when I was ten. I'm trying to think of an analogy that isn't John Williams. But Williams will do. It would be like kids listening to Harry Potter and then finding out that a long time ago- er, a while back Williams had written this Star Wars and Superman stuff. Which sounds just a LITTLE bit like John Williams, right? Now I go back and listen to this and wonder at the idea that it could have been anybody EXCEPT John Barry. It's got the low brooding strings, the muted horns, the light pensive snare drums, it's all dark and foreboding and terribly mysterious. Set lush factor twelve. Oh, and then there's this fanfare because it was 1979 and space needed fanfares. Unless you were making Alien. But this was adventure. Even though it was mostly "haunted house in space" adventure. There are two amazingly awesome things that keep this from being a totally awful movie: The art design (Mary Poppins in space!) and the score. (Almost anything gets better with "in space!" Western? In space! You can't take the sky from ME!)

When I was a kid I listened to the fanfare, and the title (swirly music!), and maybe one or two tracks that were "tuney-er". I have a lot of scores from that time like that. Then I grew up (stop laughing) and realized that Star Trek: The Motion Picture has NO bad notes. Neither (obviously) does Star Wars. This isn't boring, it's just not fast. Learn the difference, skinny boy. (Bernard Hermmann would have left me lost back then. Maybe not, I was quite taken with Journey to the Center of the Earth.) Now the robot funeral may be one of my favorite tracks. It's gorgeous! Oh, and it sounds more than a little bit like James sneaking around Istanbul in From Russia with Love. But I heard it first with Ernie Borgnine and Slim Pickens the Robot.

Also on soundtrack news I got a suite from Grand Prix by Maurice Jarre. Not terribly well recorded, alas. This was my first film score ever. My Dad had the album and the beginning sounds like race cars, so that was exciting to a small child. Got played a lot when I was, oh, two? Again, years later I'd hear Firefox or Laurence of Arabia and realize what a recognizably Jarre score this was.

I'm trying to think what other Holy Grail scores I have left. Other than a few Star Trek episodes ("RISK is our BUSINESS!") I think I'm done! Wow....

The Not So Great Gatsby

Lileks mentions the movie of the Great Gatsby yesterday, and deplores it. This is largely what I have heard about the film. (I've never read the book.) Nobody liked it. Well, nobody I've ever heard of or from.

Yet I'm almost certain that I'll see it some day. (But I'll never see Driven.)

A la Peanut Butter Sandwiches!

This weekend we watched The Illusionist with Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti. (The film included them, they did not watch the film with us.) We are now the only people I have met that have watched both The Illusionist AND The Prestige. Both are turn of the century (19th/20th) movies about stage magic. Both are moody and stylish. Both contain a SECRET.

I will have to say that I like The Prestige better. Not just because I saw it first, although that can't be totally dismissed. TP just seemed like it had a little bit more depth that TI. TP seemed a little more interested at winking at the audience and saying "allll of this can be explained" and taking the audience through a good magic trick. TI kind of wanted it both ways. On the one hand it was magic and a good magician never explains his tricks. But on the other hand since it's a movie, and you can do ANYTHING, there was no real difference between a stage trick they don't explain and just plain magic. There was nothing that really established WHY Eisenhiem was such a good magician. He just was because the movie said he was. TP showed you EXACTLY why Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman were great magicians.

She Who Is My Wife liked TI better for reasons of plot and story. Heh.

I'd recommend both, but I plan on watching The Prestige a couple more times.