Blogorium Review: Megamind

 Megamind was the second "villain who goes good but doesn't really know how to do that well" movie that came out in 2010 - Despicable Me was the first, and as I'm constantly being told by children or friends who have children, the more popular of the two. However, people my age without kids were on the sidelines whispering, "you know, Megamind is actually pretty good." While I haven't seen Despicable Me, I did watch Megamind, and I can totally understand why kids wouldn't really be into it. I can also understand why geeks would be, and not just because Guillermo Del Toro and Justin Theroux were story consultants (listed in the credits, by the way).

 The story isn't necessarily original - in fact, it's Superman but told from the perspective of Lex Luthor, if Lex Luthor were also General Zod or something to that effect. Two babies were launched from two different planets facing oblivion. One landed in a wealthy, well-to-do family's living room and the other landed in a prison for the criminally gifted. Accordingly, one discovered he had super powers and the other realized he was very good at constructing devices of mayhem. They grew up to be Metro Man (Brad Pitt) and Megamind (Will Ferrell), and along with his minion, well, Minion (David Cross), the latter attempts to destroy the former and fails miserably every time. That doesn't stop Megamind from kidnapping reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey) and tricking Metro Man into flying into the fake Metro City Observatory, but when Megamind accidentally kills his nemesis, he's left not knowing quite what to do in victory.

 From there the film takes a few choices than I expected - one in particular about the inevitable return of Metro Man - as Megamind settles into what he's supposed to do with Metro City (which he has the habit of pronouncing like atrocity). I wasn't really expecting his plan to construct a new superhero named Titan (well, Tighten) using Roxanne's cameraman Hal (Jonah Hill), or a prolonged flirtation with the reporter while disguised as a guy named Bernard (Ben Stiller), but I think you can guess how things turn out. Well, maybe. The Metro Man subplot has a nice twist, anyway.

 It's not really the familiarity with comic book tropes that's going to throw off kids, though. More likely it's going to be the moral quandary Megamind finds himself in throughout the film - he wants to be evil, but he's not very good at it. On the other hand, when he tries to do the right thing, he's not very good at that either. His huge cranium and blue skin tend to scare off people, and Minion isn't very comforting either: he's a giant fish inside of a robot suit. Megamind has what I've come to refer as the "little cute anthropomorphs that don't talk" that all kiddie movies seem to have these days (in Despicable Me, for example, they're called minions) - but somehow I don't see many cuddly toys being made from the Brainbots.

 There's also the issue of the music which, save for the exception of Michael Jackson's "Bad" and ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", tends to lean on the heavier side. There's some AC/DC, some Guns 'n Roses, some George Thorogood (guess which song?) and the general attitude of the film reflects that rowdy, unruly attitude. When Titan invariably turns evil and starts destroying Metro City, I can imagine children wiggling in their seats uncomfortably. Of course, adults are probably doing that during the "everything's okay" dance number at the end, but for most of the film they'll be happy not to be pandered to. Megamind may be rated PG and sit comfortably in the shelf next to children's movies, but it is not of children's movies. It's a movie made in stylistically and narratively to be a companion piece to The Incredibles, and while I don't feel Megamind quite makes it that high, the end result is still pleasantly surprising. If you're inclined to check in on what the kids are watching these days (or have friends with children over) this is one of the rare Dreamworks Animation films I've seen not immediately bogged down in pop culture references. Okay, there's one that might be totally irrelevant after 2012, but it made me chuckle. Check Megamind out.

Spoiler of the Day: Surviving the Game

 Ice-T walks away from Rutger Hauer, but not before jamming the barrel of his gun. The gun explodes and Hauer's life slips away like tears in the rain. The moral of the story: Replicants can't beat Cop Killers.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Basic

Blogorium Review: No Escape

 Today I thought I'd take a look at a movie that the Cap'n thinks of from time to time: No Escape. It's a movie that I've never seen, nor has anyone I know ever seen*. No Escape is the kind of movie that I remember seeing the trailers for in 1994, thinking "wow, Ray Liotta really didn't capitalize on that bounce from Goodfellas, did he?" It's always in the back of my mind for reasons I can't explain; it's not like I ever wanted to watch No Escape, or that (until today) I've even entertained the idea, but it's always hovering on the outskirts of my cinematic radar.

 No Escape comes from the days when studios would give it a go with movies we would today assume were "direct to video" releases. It's not as though there wasn't DTV back in the mid-nineties, but for some reason there was just as good of a chance of seeing a movie like Surviving the Game playing in an actual movie theatre instead of inconspicuously appearing on shelves at video stores. That's not to bag on Surviving the Game, which is an entertaining action movie loosely based on The Most Dangerous Game starring Ice-T and Predator 2's Gary Busey. Actually, Surviving the Game has a pretty good cast, although if it were released today you'd swear I was talking DTV: Rutger Hauer, Charles S. Dutton, John C. McGinley, and F. Murray Abraham. It was released the day after my fifteenth birthday, and I didn't see it in theatres, but I watched the hell out of it on video.

 Wait - shit, what was I talking about? Oh, right - No Escape. See how hard it is to pay attention to this movie for very long?

 Ray Liotta plays Captain J.T. Robbins, an insubordinate military type who shot one of his superiors and is sent to Leviticus Level 6 Maximum Security Prison, where "death is the only way out." The movie opens with a Death Race 2000-esque text screen explaining that in the year 2022, "the international prison system is operated by private corporations" and that "criminals from all over the world are exploited at a profit." The Warden is played by Michael Lerner, who I immediately recognized from Barton Fink, but was apparently also in Newsies and Maniac Cop 2, if you're more familiar with those**. At first we just see The Warden (listed in the credits as "The Warden" as a giant holographic head, which fits into this stupid looking post-apocalyptic(?) world where a prison that looks like an oil rig in the middle of the desert is only accessible via monorail and everybody carries cheesy looking rifles.

 The Warden takes an interest in Prisoner 2675 (our boy Ray), who was, incidentally, court marstialled some time this year in Libya (what are the odds?) and he has a "pathological aversion to authority" and is constantly escaping from prisons. I'll give No Escape credit for cutting right through most of the futuristic prison crap early on (like in the first ten minutes), including the "don't mess with me because I'm the warden" and the "learning the rules of the prison," because if I'm going to watch a "badass in prison movie," it's going to be Escape from Alcatraz or The Great Escape or something that's not this movie. I remember two things from the trailer: a cliff and Ray Liotta with what I now understand is probably a stupid-looking future rifle.

 The cliff is on Absolom, an island owned by the international prison system where the worst of the worst live, fight each other, and lead primitive societies. Why? Because they haven't heard of the Battle Royale program yet, I guess. It's funny, because the computer images of the island sure look like the ones from BR, and it's divided into sectors in the same way. But no explosive collars; definitely and oversight on The Warden's part - he could televise everything and make big bank, like The Running Man. But oh well, Captain Robbins is unceremoniously dumped into a pile of rats and the helicopter takes off. Let's guess whether a tribe of savages who used to be prisoners capture him!

 If you guessed no, then apparently you also haven't seen No Escape or the part of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome when he meets the kids in the jungle. Except that instead of kids, these prisoners have completely reverted to ridiculous "primitive" stereotypes complete with half-jumpsuit / half-loincloth outfits and face tattoos. This "Road Warrior" knockoff is run by Walter Marek (Stuart Wilson), who wears a washboard and has piercings through the bridge of his nose but brags about his camp like it's a hotel. Instead of Thunderdome, it's Thunderpool, but thankfully Liotta isn't having any of this crap and the fight scene is comically shortened. Again, this is one of the small favors No Escape gives us - setting up something stupid and then quickly dispensing with it.

 There's nothing in this movie that I haven't seen done before (or better) somewhere else, but at least the people in No Escape and the people who made it are aware of this and inject it with a certain goofy charm. When Robbins rejects Marek's offer to stay, the tribal leader says "now that was a very silly thing to do." To be fair, it was silly to push a man into his own pool, but the asshole had been talking about this dump like it was a luxury hotel, so he at least can appreciate being made fun of in turn. If No Escape was meant to be a comedy, I missed that in the advertising, but some of the shenanigans Roberts gets into are edited like joke "setup / payoff" moments. Like when Liotta is supposed to be falling off of that cliff I mentioned, but it's clearly someone being lowered by wires that's just barely flapping his arms around. That's some funny shit right there.

 Of course, there is another tribe, like the one with Ernie Hudson in it that's run by Lance Henriksen. They decided to rip-off Asian culture in the vaguest sense possible, so they wear armor that looks a little bit like Sherpa clothing and robes. Henriksen is the "Father" of the Insiders tribe, and the other jerks we met were the Outsiders; one group is the prisoners and the other are the enlightened prisoners who want to create a society free of... whatever. You get the dynamic. Despite being a rebel and general malcontent, Robbins almost immediately offers to help the Insiders fix the weapon he brought with him. Then he meets some more crazy characters (including Kevin Dillon***), learns about how he can't escape, deals with the inevitable showdown between Outsiders and Insiders, and then proves the title incorrect. But that was to be expected, right?

 To be honest, it all got to be a bit of a blur after the movie turned into The Road Warrior meets The Postman (but before The Postman came out, so take that Kevin Costner!) on a prison island, and I found myself wishing that I was watching Surviving the Game. Because Ice-T with dreadlocks really was something to see. That movie was also really derivative, but it didn't get really boring and wasn't two hours long like No Escape is. Why is No Escape two hours long? I have no idea. Martin Campbell (who would go on to make Goldeneye and Casino Royale) does a good enough job with the action and if I'd read Richard Herley's The Penal Colony, maybe I could say that Michael Gaylin and Joel Gross did a good job adapting it. Not really sure how to weigh in on that one.

 The truth is that No Escape just isn't that memorable. It's just enough of a movie to keep reminding you that it exists, but not good enough to make you remember anything about it you couldn't see in the trailer. I chuckled a few times, but I think I'm comfortable enough in saying that I won't be feeling compelled to watch No Escape again. Once was enough, thank you very much; I think I'd rather watch movies that are better knock-offs from before and after 1994 after all.



* If this is untrue, Cranpire, Professor Murder, or others, I apologize. You've never mentioned it.
** He's also in a movie called Wax On, Fuck Off that I suddenly have the urge to see.
*** Ha ha, get it? Because Matt Dillon was in The Outsiders!

Spoiler of the Day: Hobo with a Shotgun

 The Hobo kills The Drake and then dies in a hail of gunfire because the police all work for The Drake. Just when it looks like the Hobo is actually dead, he's whisked off in a time machine to help hunt Ice-T in the 1990s.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Surviving the Game.

Spoiler of the Day: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 Paul Reubens dies, but very, veerrrrry slowly - not even the credits can kill him. Buffy takes a few years off, regenerates into Sarah Michelle Gellar, and begins life anew on the WB. Rutger Hauer, wounded, but not dead, begins riding the rails in hopes that he can buy a lawnmower. Instead, he finds a different path...


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Hobo with a Shotgun.

Retro Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace

 While talking about Star Wars last week, it occurred to me that like many movies I hold near and dear I've never given them a proper write-up. This still won't really be a proper write-up for The Phantom Menace, but I do want to continue the thread I began in the triple feature review of Rush Hour 2, The Siege, and Star Trek: Insurrection. In that I laid out the pattern of an obsessive Star Wars fan (one who'd gone batty at seeing the Special Editions but was old enough to have seen at least one film the first time around) and this is the payoff. This was what it all boiled down to: no more teasers, trailers, leaked audio from ADR sessions or pictures or crazy rumors / script reviews*; it was time for the real thing, at midnight.

  May 18th, 1999 came too soon - I didn't have tickets for the midnight showing because I'd just returned from school an hour-and-a-half away and hadn't been able to procure any. Even working for a local theatre proved futile in getting to see The Phantom Menace on opening day. I was convinced it would be sold out by the day before (and I say the 18th because most of this takes place before midnight, May 19th, 1999) and was scrambling to find anybody who had an extra ticked. A friend of my brother's had one at the appropriately named Imperial Cinemas (now it's the Galaxy), and I got there around... 9:30?

 Young, delusional, and buying into the hype, I was convinced that the massive line would already be happening in short order, so two-and-a-half hours early seemed like a good idea**. I was probably the seventh or eighth person in line, which gives you some idea of the level of fandom for The Phantom Menace and the futility of my fears. By the time 11:45 rolled around (when they opened the doors), there was a line wrapped around the front and side of the building, although it was nothing compared to the one I was in for Revenge of the Sith, where we were in a parking lot for the grocery store next to the theatre two hours before the film started.

 We all piled in, got our popcorn and drinks, had a seat (third row) and waited for new Star Wars. Holy shit, can you believe it? NEW Star Wars! The sensory overload, the crowd's adrenaline, and the glow of lightsabers sustained two hours of wooden, stilted line delivery, personality-less characters, dumb jokes, and soulless fight scenes. We were too overwhelmed by the event to care that the movie didn't live up to its tremendous hype, let alone to the minimum expectations of a competently made film. For days, I would continue to delude myself into thinking that The Phantom Menace was a film that needed to be, one that I was better for having seen.

 The fundamental flaw of Episode One isn't any of the litany of illogical plot developments or the "kiddie" tone (for that, I direct you to the notorious Mr. Plinkett reviews of the prequels, which are hilarious, brutal, and often illuminating). The problem is one inherent in any prequel: you already know where the story is going. New characters introduced are going to be killed off or shoved to the margins in order for the characters the audience already knows ARE in the original films to step forward. So unless you really want to know HOW Obi-Wan Kenobi came to train Anakin Skywalker or WHY Yoda decided to go into exile on Dagobah, there's not a lot for you in these films. But we were willfully ignorant of this, and I did ruin at least one person's experience by casually mentioning that Qui-Gon Jinn was going to die before the movie ended.

 I watched The Phantom Menace in its entirety four times that summer: the midnight screening, twice with friends, and once with my Dad, who was unimpressed. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't the disappointment that everyone said it was (and that I knew deep down was true) by sneaking off during breaks at the movie theatre I worked at to watch the Obi-Wan / Darth Maul lightsaber fight. I'd time breaks so I could walk in just in time to see it. All this time, this interest, invested for naught? It couldn't be. Twenty year old Cap'n Howdy couldn't believe that. It can't be true; it's impossible.

 But search my feelings I did, and I knew it was true. You could hear it drop like the proverbial turd when The Phantom Menace dropped on VHS. Already Lucas had made changes - extending the Pod Race and including a longer sequence where our heroes fly through Coruscant. Why? Because he felt they "improved" the experience. The really just made the film longer, and without the big screen and crowd enthusiasm, The Phantom Menace was as bad as I knew it was. I just couldn't pretend otherwise.

 I tend to think of that experience as the point at which I became more cynical about the hype surrounding films - I'd been burned, and so had many other geeks my age. Sure, we went to see Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (sometimes at midnight), but more out of a grudging sense of completion, a "let's get this over with." The excitement turned to caution, then dread, then relief. The scratch had been itched, and I was no longer outraged by Lucas' incessant tinkering with his films on DVD (and now Blu-Ray); this was the man who brought us the Prequels, his undiluted vision of the Star Wars universe, and they were not good. They were barely watchable, and I don't own them any more. It grouses me a bit knowing that if I want to see the bounty of extra material Lucasfilm has been ferreting away for decades that I'll have to own them again. I tried watching the end of Revenge of the Sith on TV yesterday and howled with laughter at how bad the writing was.

 At this point, I don't really feel like it's worth piling on to George Lucas for his rotten prequels, but they are the reason that I have to temper expectations for movies I really like. Yesterday's Attack the Block review is a great example - I really enjoyed the movie, but don't want the film to get bogged down by people who think it's going to fix their car or something. Somehow we got on this kick that any movie that's better than "pretty good" has to be elevated to transcendent levels, and a lot of that has to do with the built-in cynicism that came for geeks in a post-The Phantom Menace world. Half of the geeks automatically assume something is going to suck because "they" will "mess it up," so the other half pushes too hard to counter that attitude and movies suddenly have to be the second coming to be worth seeing. I remember going to see just about everything pre-Godzilla and The Phantom Menace with a blissful ignorance of whether it would be good or not - The Big Hit? Lost in Space? Suicide Kings? The Faculty? We were there. Hate it, love it, going was fun. I think that The Phantom Menace took some of that away, or at least changed the way I looked forward to movies.


* Like this one, for example. I can't find the one on Ain't It Cool that goes over-the-top about a SPOILER that can't be revealed - and I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what people coming into this movie could have been "spoiled" by. On the other hand, I don't think Jeffrey Wells feels too bad about his column now, or even six months after the release of The Phantom Menace.
** True story: on a whim, two friends drove by Mission Valley and Park Place 16 to look at the lines for The Phantom Menace only to find empty parking lots.

Spoiler of the Day: Teenage Mother

 The miracle of life. Also, a prudish teenager gets her comeuppance, and a Swedish Sex-Ed teacher gets molested and kind of likes it. Future David Hyde-Pierce does not approve. Fred Willard doesn't seem to mind.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Blogorium Review: Attack the Block

 Attack the Block is a movie I'd been interested in, but cautiously optimistic about. Films that seem to come out of nowhere and get heavy praise from "geek" friendly websites tend to reach a fever pitch of hyperbole about how "awesome" it is. By the time the average moviegoer gets to see an Attack the Block or Kick-Ass or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (or even Stardust), the end result is underwhelming. These movies aren't usually the second coming, and even if they are really good (and Attack the Block is better than really good), they get beaten up for not living up to exaggerated hype. Opportunistic bloggers and critics sick of hearing how "amazing" something is will use this disconnect to "take the film down a peg" and the general public is left with the impression that the latter opinion is more trustworthy.

 The film is sort of a mirror universe version of Harry Brown, where the kids are the heroes and instead of a cantankerous old man, visitors from outer space threaten their way of being.  I noticed that the first wave of really negative reviews of Attack the Block focused on the fact that the "heroes" of the film are not only anti-heroes, they're downright unlikable for long stretches of the film. Windham Tower in South London is the home of Moses (John Boyega), Pest (Alex Esmail), Jerome (Leeon Jones), Biggz (Simon Howard) and Dennis (Franz Drameh). The first thing you see them do is rob Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a nurse who lives in the same building (though they don't know that yet).

 The gang of teenagers are interrupted when a creature falls from the sky and destroys the car near them, and while investigating, Moses is attacked by the alien. The boys decide to chase the alien down and kill it, and instead of being afraid, they parade its body around the neighborhood, bragging about how they run the block. Eventually deciding it might be worth money, they take it to the top floor where Ron (Nick Frost) sells weed, and Moses hides the alien corpse in his grow room with the permission of Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). From the window they see more creatures falling (overlooked by most of London because of the fireworks) and head out to kill more aliens. Unfortunately, the new arrivals are a lot more dangerous, and they seem very interested in Moses and his friends.

 I can understand why some critics don't enjoy the fact that audiences are asked to cheer for characters who are (at best) petty criminals. They continue to threaten Sam after an arrest goes wrong thanks to alien attacks and force her to help Pest when one of the creatures bites his leg. They seem to think that it's okay that they robbed her and that things are evened out because she was in the police van when they escaped, so they "saved her life." When things calm down and she mentions that she was thinking of moving because she "didn't like the neighborhood," the boys berate her and Biggz tries to leave her to the aliens when they abandon her first floor apartment. The best apology Moses can offer is that they wouldn't have robbed her if they knew she lived on the block. It's a tough sell for audiences, even if the film ends in a more realistic way than most science fiction films would. It's an odd balance between racial, class, and gender tensions with an alien invasion movie, and I can see why some people react negatively.

 That said, the film is really a lot of fun. Director and writer Joe Cornish keeps things moving at a brisk pace and never over-explains anything. There's no fat in the film: Brewis (Luke Treadway), a Zoology student / pot head that provides what may be the only exposition in the film, and while there are subplots that involve Hi-Hatz (the boys crash into his car and incur the wrath of an underwritten character) and two younger kids - Probs (Sammy Williams) and Mayhem (Michael Ajao) - who look up to the gang, Attack the Block is mostly focused on the boys, Sam, and the "big alien-gorilla-wolf motherfuckers."

 The aliens are sort of like the monsters from Critters, except with longer arms and legs like apes. They're fur and glowing blue teeth, and seemed to the Cap'n to be a mix of practical puppets and CGI. As nemeses, they're a palpable threat, and unlike many "young people vs. mystical something," there are casualties within the gang - usually in vicious ways. Cornish wisely doesn't over-use them, and the logic behind why they might be on Earth is solid enough. Really they just need to be dangerous, which they are, and to keep the tension high and the pace elevated. Cornish uses smoke from Pest's firecrackers to create suspense at critical junctures in the film, and the narrow walls of the apartment complex keep the boys with few options but to fight.

 Whether you like the characters or not (and it's hard not to at least appreciate the Boyega's charismatic Moses), Attack the Block is a very well made film that is getting all kinds of attention because Edgar Wright is an executive producer (Cornish is a friend of Wright's and appeared directed Fuzzball Rally, which followed the press tour for Hot Fuzz). I don't know that I'd say that Wright appears to have influenced Attack the Block in any noticeable way (other than possibly casting Frost in a smaller role than the poster indicates), and the film is more John Carpenter-esque than anything else. I really think that people will enjoy Attack the Block as long as they ignore over-the-top praise. Yes, it is funny. Yes, it is unabashedly R-rated (violence and language), and yes, it's a nice take on the "alien invasion" genre. It's not going to make you breakfast the next morning or walk your dog. Sorry; Attack the Block is just a movie. A damn good movie, which is more than enough for me.

Spoiler of the Day: Death Bed - the Bed that Eats

 Well, there's this Death Bed. And this ghost who lives in a painting and tells us the story of the Death Bed. After eating some people (and some Pepto Bismol), this guy gets his hands eaten and stares at his skeleton fingers, and the Death Bed is lured outside of its basement abode. There's a naked girl who had been buried, and then the Death Bed catches fire and dies...?


 Watch it for yourself and see if you find a more coherent explanation of what happens.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Teenage Mother.

Spoiler of the Day: Event Horizon

 The Event Horizon's experimental black hole generator caused the ship to intersect with a hell dimension, unleashing some variety of alien evil that turned the ship sentient and killed the crew. The crew of the Lewis and Clark are picked off by the Event Horizon, and while they attempt to destroy the ship, they find themselves trapped aboard half of the Horizon, using it as a lifeboat. A rescue ship finds the surviving crewmembers in stasis, but the Event Horizon appears to still have some evil left in its gears...



Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Death Bed - The Bed That Eats

News and Notes: Technical Edition (with Books)

 - Let's start with why it doesn't matter that Starz decided not to continue its contract with Netflix. This news is being treated the same way that Netflix's split with Showtime (and the never-to-be HBO deal), but I for one am happy to hear this.

 Consistently, I've found that Starz content on Netflix tends to be the most egregious examples of "pulling a fast one" on streaming viewers. In an era where "full screen" means something very different than it did five years ago, Starz streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix were constantly shown as "letterboxed" 4x3 images. If you aren't quite sure what I mean, try watching a show like MTV's Jersey Shore on a widescreen TV. See how the black bars are still on the top and bottom of the screen, even though it doesn't fill out the left and right of your TV? This is a fake "widescreen" that only really worked on old television sets.

 MTV released their Jersey Shore DVDs in the same fashion, and Starz did it with everything I watched from them on Netflix. It's a lazy alternative to providing 16x9 enhanced content and it actually diminishes the size of the picture on your screen. While it might have been nice to watch newer Disney films on Netflix, it certainly wasn't worth the drop in picture size. Not in this day and age. Netflix is hurting, and more companies jumping ship isn't necessarily good news for them, but I avoided the "Starz" section of Instant Viewing like the plague after being burned repeatedly. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.

 - Speaking of "Full Screen," it makes me chuckle when I see stores (like one I will soon no longer be with) that still sell new DVDs with that moniker. Widescreen has slowly become the norm, and the pan-and-scan 4x3 discs are less and less desirable for customers. Many studios don't release new movies in "Full Screen" anymore, because it doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Not so long ago I would have to pay careful attention to the DVD cover of a movie I wanted to pick up in order not to buy one with a butchered "full" transfer.

 Every now and then, I put this video up, just to give folks a primer of what I mean by "pan-and-scan," because it doesn't just mean removing the black bars from the top and bottom of widescreen films:



  I often wonder what families who made the transition from standard TVs to widescreen TVs do with their collections of "Full Screen" DVDs when watching them. What probably happens is that they set their TV to automatically zoom in on the image so it fills the whole frame, creating an image twice as messy as the one shown above. Imagine taking a "Full Screen" image and then stretching it out even further to the left and right, because that's what probably happens. Yikes. I've seen it done before with VHS (hell, I did it once with the Star Wars Holiday Special) and if you really don't mind things looking messy, I guess it's watchable. But again, we were watching the Star Wars Holiday Special here, and mostly in fast-forward.

- Some time in the near future the Cap'n might have a book review up again. It's been a while, I know, but I've started reading Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. From the introduction, it certainly seems to be interested in Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham, George Romero, John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, and Brian de Palma and uses the William Castle produced, Roman Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby as the point at which Old Horror passed the torch to Modern Horror.

 I was a little nervous starting out because I have followed much of the history of Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, and Alien, but the chapter on Rosemary's Baby already included an anecdote about Vincent Price I don't think I've seen anywhere to this point as well as a more balanced approach to Castle's involvement into bringing the picture to Paramount than is evident from Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture. The next chapter is about Hitchcock, particularly Psycho's oft cited influence on Modern Horror, and seems to be adding some nuance to the claims that it spawned the slasher films of the next two decades. Anyway, I'm clearly only starting the book, so I'll give it a proper review when I finish. I will say that it really makes me want to start working on a book idea I've had for years...

Spoiler of the Day: They Live

 Aliens have infiltrated our society, and are posing as the wealthy, or police, or politicians; anyone who has real power. They keep humanity down by brainwashing them with hypnotic signs that say "OBEY" or "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Fortunately, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper discovers a box of sunglasses hidden an a resistance-run church, and he convinces the rebels to destroy the signal aliens send out over television, allowing the world to see them for what they really are. After kicking ass (he was all out of bubblegum, or this movie might be called "They Wait for Him to Chew Bubblegum") Piper is mortally wounded but destroys the TV antenna, exposing the aliens. But don't worry, "Hot Rod" fans; he came back to life just in time to beat up Morton Downey, Jr. at Wrestlemania V.

 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Event Horizon

Spoiler of the Day: Dark City

 *All Together Now* Aliens have been kidnapping humans to study their behavior. The city our hero (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in is not on Earth, but a floating station somewhere in space. The aliens periodically wipe the memories of their subjects, set up new scenarios, and watch them play out. With the help of Doctor Schreiber, the aliens' human accomplice, Sewell learns how to manipulate the city, save Jennifer Connelly, and defeat his captors. At the end they stand on a pier. Sewell writes down his experiences and sends them to Earth, where the Wachowski brothers and Joel Silver promptly replace the word "aliens" with "robots," change the title to "The Matrix," and sit back and make megabucks. Then two terrible sequels.

 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: They Live

A Theory About Star Wars

 ...or really a theory about George Lucas, I suppose. Star Wars is, as usual, the method by which Lucas has chosen to again antagonize geeks everywhere. By now, most of you have heard about the change to Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" before throwing the Emperor deep into the Death Star, as well as a few other "adjustments" to the Original Trilogy* (and the Prequel Trilogy, but really, who cares about that?). Attentive internet geeks have been pitting George Lucas from 1988 against the George Lucas of today, once again desperately trying to appeal to the director / producer. That, or to once again make the argument that the guy is a money-grubbing hack. Or that other thing - the totally overboard reference to what Lucas is allegedly doing to your "childhood" that I cannot abide by repeating.

 At this point, it gets really old hearing about how angry people are at George Lucas and about documentaries like The People vs. George Lucas, etc. Every time the inevitable re-release of the film comes out, people swear they're being cheated and that "this is the last time you'll get MY money, George!" and then news comes out about changes and then the hyperbole kicks into high gear. Star Wars came out on DVD - but it was the Special Editions. Then Lucas released the Original Versions on DVD, but not anamorphically enhanced and with 2.0 stereo mixes (direct ports from the Laserdiscs) and that was ripping people off so of course they aren't going to buy it. Now the Blu-Rays are coming out and another series of alterations are in place and fans are shocked to discover that a man who has digitally altered every single film he's directed for DVD and Blu-Ray release once again took the opportunity for more tinkering.

 Here's the catch - I think he knows that you're going to complain. He also knows (as I do) that the calls for boycotts are no reflection of actual sales. They haven't been in the past - and I've worked in places that sold those movies and toys and I know for a fact that people continue to buy the versions of Star Wars they claim to loathe - and I strongly believe that other than grousing the internet community, Lucas knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't even mind ruffling those feathers, because it helps his cause.

 Lucas has, once again, shrewdly concocted a way to keep everyone talking about Star Wars as the Blu-Ray release approaches. It's not enough to sell ad space and to make deals with Best Buy about exclusive this or yadda yadda that; despite what's said about the man, George Lucas knows how to get his audience passionate about Star Wars when it's time to have their wallets out. Whether the passion is positive or negative, I suspect he doesn't care, because here's what's going to happen: outraged fans are going to scream all the way up and down the internet about the classics being "butchered" again, swear that THIS TIME they won't be buying them, and then quietly ordering that nine disc boxed set off of Amazon so that the next time they see their friends, they can authoritatively rant with indignation.

 The changes we DO know about aren't the only changes, which may or may not be true - we know that puppet Yoda from The Phantom Menace is now digital, and that Obi-Wan's "dragon" noise is, *ahem* more suggestive, and that Ewoks blink now - but the earliest promise from Lucasfilm was of more "surprises" in the films. In order to be a properly incensed geek, that means purchasing the set (on the down-low, of course) in order to catalog the changes before someone else gets to it and then poring over every minute detail on chat boards.The people who yell the loudest online are almost always the first people to say to you "can you believe that Lucas did THIS and THIS???" at the first opportunity, usually before the average fan even noticed.

 So is this outrage surprising? No, not really. Is it fun to sit back and listen to? Yeah, it kind of is. If people really stuck to their guns and didn't buy this Blu-Ray set after rating it with one star on Amazon sight unseen, I'd be more impressed with the sturm and drang, but I don't see that happening. I've yet to decide if I'm going to pick it up or wait another year (*ahem*, thirty-fifth anniversary of A New Hope) for some other, cheaper, repackaging once this version is pulled from shelves (20th Century Fox, like Disney, will do that to drive up demand). I'd like to see those extra three discs of footage, and wouldn't mind watching the films in high definition, but it really depends on if I have a hundred dollars to spare in two weeks. I waited on The Lord of the Rings and that worked out well enough. Lucas has my passing attention, and he may well have my money, but I can't give him the outrage; just a passing glance and "Huh, this again?"




 * Actually, it's not even the Original Trilogy at this point. For a detailed examination of how the original films became the Special Editions and then the DVD editions, go here.

Spoiler of the Day: Knowing

 The mysterious code that Nicolas Cage was trying to decipher came from aliens, who whispered it in the ear of a little girl fifty years ago. It contains all of the dates and death counts of Earth's major disasters, including an impending Solar Flare that will wipe out Mercury, Venus, and Earth. As Cage searches for a way to survive, mysterious men follow him around, and are waiting when he locates the final set of coordinates. The strange men are aliens, and they take him, his son, and the little girl's granddaughter away in their spaceship, along with other people chosen arbitrarily to be saved.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Dark City