I wish we didn't live somewhere so new

Note: If you're interested in this movie at all, go read Vice’s feature on the movie, in which they interviewed much of the cast and filmmakers and describe a lot of the production. It’s a pretty in-depth look at the movie with commentary from cast and crew. If you want to know what my particular feelings on the movie are, keep reading.

A few weeks ago, I saw that Cinefamily was airing a 35mm print of Over the Edge and I was ecstatic for about eleven seconds before I remembered that my chances of being able to find a babysitter so that I can go see a midnight movie 45 minutes way were pretty much nil. It was kind of a bummer, but it also sparked me to go out and rent it. It’d felt like ages since I’d seen it last, and I thought it might be a fun thing to write about here.

So far, it hasn’t been. Not due to the film itself or anything, but more due to the countless reviews (both from when it opened and more recently) and features I’ve read about it in the last week. So many people have tied this movie to so many issues, and it has sort of blurred my perception of the film and what I’ve always loved about it. My first attempt at writing this up turned into a whole screed about city planning and the shift in parenting ideals over the past 30 years. It was as boring as it sounds. My second attempt turned into a whole thing about Kurt Cobain¹. My third attempt came after way too much research into juvenile crime trends. But since making the mistake of announcing my intentions here, I will continue to clatter away until I get something usable.

On its face, Over the Edge is a movie about teenagers in the newly constructed prefab town of New Granada. Tired of having little to do and being pushed out of sight by their parents, the kids revolt. The filmmakers based it on a growing trend in the mid-70s of juvenile crime spiraling out of control in planned communities, mostly on the West Coast². The text that opens the movie states as much:

In 1978 110,000 kids under 18 were arrested for crimes of vandalism in the United States.

This story is based on true incidents occurring during the 70s in a planned suburban community of condominiums and townhomes where city planners ignored the fact that a quarter of the population was 15 years old or younger.

This is slightly misleading, since while there was certainly a spike in juvenile crime in the mid-70s, it was on par with the rest of the country³. What is prompted concern was mostly the fact that these communities were suburban and largely white. Furthermore, while many of the city planners were shortsighted in failing to consider the youth populations of the towns they were creating, these kids at least had nominal parents⁴, right?

In spite of the dated clothing⁵ and soundtrack⁶, the film holds up incredibly well as one of the best snapshots of adolescence ever put to film. As a quasi-juvenile delinquent who was somewhat of a latchkey kid growing up about a decade later, a lot of this film resonates with me, as I’m sure it does with many who see it. I can’t think of another movie that identifies the struggles of being a teenager so succinctly⁷. Much of it is in the bravado you see these kids⁸ carry themselves with, especially when there are no parents around. It’s in the drunken swagger of the kid hosting a party while his parents are in Reno, aping I don’t know, the Festrunk Brothers? It’s in Matt Dillon’s character saying, for the second time in the movie, “a kid who rats is a dead kid” to a squealing drug dealer before throwing him into a pond (and not killing him)⁹. It’s the bullshit posturing that shows a kid standing defiantly on a cop car just minutes after you see him riding around on a bike that literally bears a flag with his name on it.

They also do a fantastic job of reminding the adult viewer just how dramatic and insane teenage love is. When the protagonist Carl sees the girl he likes making out with another guy and he stares daggers at her before leaving the party in an exaggerated huff. That feeling of being hopelessly in love and over-reading every little smile and gesture. It’s the same thing that shows up later when the two spend a clumsy night together and you know that they aren’t even considering that they won’t spend the rest of their lives together.

In the film’s climax, the kids finally get what they want (thanks largely to Carl’s plan): total freedom. Kids are quite literally running amok and wreaking all sorts of havoc. Carl looks around and quickly realizes that, as the scene rapidly spirals out of control, that he wanted something else. He decides to leave soon after.

I could write about this movie for days. I sort of already have. But there in this movie to inspect in detail, both literally and thematically. There are facial cues, and a physicality. There’s the dirtbike scene! I didn’t even get to the fact that the main character has a black eye through most of the movie! Or that all of the kids have New York accents!

In spite of my numerous lengthy footnotes, there’s so much more I could go into about the effects of suburban sprawl or parenting trends or whatever, but the fact is I don’t think I could go into that rabbit hole of research right now and still finish this thing before October.

Instead I will remind you that this is a simple teen movie, about kids that feel like a town’s afterthought. And their parents, who try everything but having an honest discussion with their kids. And about the America of almost 40 years ago. In spite of the film’s shortcomings, and there are many, I can link my own adolescence directly to several specific moments of this movie (excepting much of the third act, of course). It’s a story wrought with exaggeration and melodrama, but it is a movie that can show me a group of adolescents and forcibly remind me exactly what it was like to be that age. After all, what defines the teenage years more than exaggeration and melodrama?

Yeah, it’s just a teen movie, but it might be the best one ever made.

  ^{[1] It would seem that Cobain frequently cited this movie as one of his favorites, and claimed to have identified with the Claude character in particular. None of this surprises me in the slightest, but I’ve never really liked Nirvana all that much and tend to loathe Cobain’s status as the John Lennon of my generation (whatever that means). While hyperbolic angst and self-loathing are certainly notions that I have held, it’s just a little too much for me most of the time. ↩}

^{[2] They based it specifically on an article from the San Francisco Examiner called “Mousepacks: Kids on a Crime Spree” that has seemingly been scrubbed completely from the internet. ↩}

^{[3] The scary thing here is that it wasn’t so much as a spike as it was the beginning of a plateau. On a national level, juvenile crime held pretty steadfast from the mid-70s to the early 90s. Within that window, property and drug crimes seem to taper off, however the scary trend of juvenile murder (and violent crime) begins to soar. I got much of this information browsing the Uniform Crime Report, as well as articles like} and this, this/ ↩

^{[4] Which is another contributing factor. The 70s featured that special form of post-hippie parenting, which relied on parents allowing kids unprecedented freedom while still expecting them to remain kids. In hindsight, this is a spectacularly flawed logic. ↩}

^{[5] Aside from Matt Dillon’s half-tees, the coonskin cap, and maybe Johnny's sunglasses, most of the clothing in this movie seems pretty tame. Even the girls are dressed sensibly. I can’t help but wonder if this was most of the cast were actual teenagers or if the studio requested it. In any case, it’s notable that the person who shows the most skin in this movie by far is Matt Dillon. ↩}

^{[6] The soundtrack for this movie is a straight up coup. It’s aged incredibly and while it seems out of place, the Hendrix song makes sense within the context of the movie. The only outlier here is the closing number, Valerie Carter’s “Ooh Child”. Reportedly, the producers wanted to use the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” with it’s “teenage wasteland” theme, but it was too expensive and/or depressing. In any case, in spite of the overexposure, in spite of the lyrical content, these songs still feel to me like the battle hymns of a forgotten struggle documented only in things like this movie, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Freaks and Geeks. It’s music for the teenagers circa 1980 whose parents didn’t get it at all. It’s the music of the neglected or misunderstood. Of course, now most of these songs are entering grandparent country and all the kids listen to Skirlix. ↩}

^{[7] That isn’t to say there aren’t any. Fast Times in particular did a great job. But it’s far from the norm. ↩}

^{[8] and there is no mistaking the bulk of this cast for actors masquerading as teenagers. They were straight-up kids. This ads such a huge weight to the movie. The difference between watching a stubbly 26 year0old brag about taking speed in school and a scrawny 13 year-old doing the same is both palpable and terrifying. ↩}

^{[9]This spurs my favorite line in the whole movie, when the drug dealer exclaims that he can’t swim, Matt Dillon’s character tells him to “grow fins, turkey.” This, and his exchange with the police officer in the first five minutes of the movie NEVER fail to make me laugh. ↩}

Gone With the Wind

Last night I watched Gone With the Wind. Actually, I read comic books and half paid attention and half complained while Carrie watched it. I had never seen it before, mostly because I've never had much desire to. From the story's content to its fans to the era in which it was filmed, it never held much for me to be excited about. to be honest, I think it's way more of a crime that I've never seen Casablanca than my not caring about Gone With the Wind, and my feelings haven't changed since last night.

  Let's ignore the fact that the movie is 11 hours long and absurdly racist*, and what I took away from that movie is that everyone is crazy and horrible or stupid and horrible. I mean just the sort of people I would absolutely not be able to sit in the same room as. Not that I could afford to, but still. I don't know why people don't talk about that. Probably because it's just a movie, and when you think about it, movies rarely feature characters that act like normal people. Hell, why pay for that? Pretty much all the best movies have a characters that would make you crawl out of your skin had you encountered them in real life.

Normal people.

 Fredd Ott's Sneeze

The earliest surviving piece of copyrighted film.

It took 5 days to film. It required a machine the size of a refrigerator to view and takes up about a billionth of my hard drive.

 "The star is Fred Ott, an Edison employee known to his fellow workers in the laboratory for his comic sneezing and other gags."

comic sneezing?

The Saw is Family. Horrible, disgusting family.

 At the moment, I'm watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. I have no good reason why, other than when Dennis Hopper died, I put it in my Netflix instant queue, and it's been sitting there ever since. Of course, nobody in their right mind wants to watch this movie with me. Hell, I don't want to watch it. But right now Carrie is in the throes of thesis hell in the other room and Jose is holed up in his room, so I can take this chance to watch a movie that nobody wants to watch.

Which leads to me sitting here, agog at the sheer insanity of this movie. As many of you know, I enjoy a horror movie. I don't go to conventions, and I haven't seen almost any of the remakes, but I do consistently own fake blood and probably would include 4 zombie movies in my top 20 of all time if you asked me right now*. But when I was a kid, I was terrified of horror movies. I remember my brothers making me watch Nightmare on Elm Street 2 when I was a kid and being aghast for WEEKS. My brothers, of course, thought it was hilarious, but the joke was on them when I began waking them up every night at 3 AM asking what they'd to if a murderer broke in the house**. I remember crying during the opening library scene of Ghostbusters when I saw it in the theater***. But every week my family would go and rent a movie from the Rite Aid down the street from my house**** and I would just sit in the horror section staring at the display boxes. It was the same unsettling curiosity I held for KISS posters, a band that my aforementioned brothers convinced me was comprised of serial killers. In retrospect, I was kind of a stupid kid if I thought a serial killer would dress up as a kitty cat.

Update: There have been 2(!) chainsaws to the groin in this movie, which is not over yet, despite my lengthy ramblings.

So yeah, by age 8 I was intimately familiar with the covers and stills of some of the worst horror movies ever made. Maybe I was subconsciously trying to conquer my fears. Maybe it was the seeds of a dumb interest that would manifest around 7th grade. I wish I could say I preferred the more high-brow movies, but it was the slasher flicks that delivered the most satisfying images on the box. Plus, there's something to be said for a good slasher movie poster*****

Which brings me to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The poster was one of those that I constantly looked at. For one thing, it was a mirror of The Breakast Club poster. Also, it's like a family who are 80% walking corpses. and Leatherface is wearing a suit! People freak out about how smooth Patrick Bateman was in American Psycho, but look at how damned cool Leatherface looks with a tie and carnation in his lapel!

But this movie... holy shit. It's not so much as bad, but a disgusting exercise in splatter humor. In Roger Ebert's review of the original, he said something to the effect of "this is a well-made and effective movie, but I can't imagine for the life of me why anyone would ever want to make it". I can, because it's one of the scariest movies ever made. Special effects or jerky camera cuts in the world have yet to create a scarier movie in my eyes.

But this sequel... holy shit. It's actually grueling. Remember how that first Matrix movie was interesting, like scratching an itch you didn't know you had? Then you saw the second one, and it was like someone taken a belt sander to that itch and even the remnants of those nerve endings were long gone? The TMC sequel was like that, but with gasoline and fire ants. There are funny parts, sure, though most of the attempts at humor are more unsettling than anything. And the "scary" parts are more disgusting than scary. But I think the most disturbing part about this movie is that it wasn't hijacked by the studio or whatever, this is the same director of the first one. How the fuck does that happen? Also, how does Tobe Hooper go from Poltergeist to this mess in 3 years? Yikes.

So now the movie is over, and I'm thinking about watching Carnival of Souls just to purge what I just saw from my mind. Also, that I basically wrote for over an hour about horror movies when I sat down with a much different topic in mind. Chalk it up to my short attention span, or that I wrote this while watching a movie featuring at least ten chainsaws throughout, and once again, I've subjected you to to rambling nonsense, which I apologize for. The fact is I sat to write about something very serious and a little personal, but felt so sick over thinking about it that I started watching this shit to take my mind off things and it snowballed from there. I'll write the real update in a day or two. and hey, look at it this way. I might have just wasted a couple of minutes of your time. Okay, I definitely did. But there's good odds that I just saved you a good 90 additional minutes wasted on that movie. Or not. A few minutes ago, Carrie asked me what sort of person does this movie appeal to, and my response was "the kind of person who was an alcoholic Cannibal Corpse fan in high school". and I stick by that.


*Predictably, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and Shaun of the Dead, in no particular order.

**My brother Rob's response one night: "Well, then I guess we're all gonna die in our sleep. Go back to bed". I do not like to dwell on the psychological ramifications this statement might have had on my impressionable young mind.

***Again, I don't like to consider how this might have affected recent educational and occupational decisions of mine.

****I swear this was a thing, a Rite Aid renting videos, but my adult brain cannot comprehend the concept of someone renting The Exterminator from the same place they buy makeup, even if Target does that now.

*****I still think the original Friday the 13th poster is one of the best ever, and Prom Night 2 is no slouch. These asterisks are getting tired, no? Google needs to get with the damned superscript already. Or I should move this thing like I vowed to do like a year ago.

The Third Man

One of the more productive things I got to do over the trip home was get some reading done. A lot of it has been a massive book about basketball, augmented with magazines, comics (I re-read We3, and it still sucks the air out of my chest), and the annotated screenplay to The Third Man. It's a movie I'd seen a couple years ago, but had for the most part forgotten, so I was happy to read through it on the flights to and from California.

One of the more impressive of the story's many, many impressive qualities is the way that the story so fittingly describes an time and a place -namely postwar Vienna- so perfectly. The confusion and disconcordance of having one city ruled by four different allied powers, most of whom not sharing a language with each other, let alone the people they are set to govern/protect. The stoic optimism of a war-scarred populace, eager to move on from the conflict but living in  system that won't let them... it's a rare thing to me, to get that sort of sense from any type of work, let alone a book and a film. I honestly don't know how they do it. Part of me suspects that it's a talent that eludes even the best of storytellers. Part of me is certain that it's more a result of my place and time. Does living in America in 2009 (yeah, I know) have a flavor that could be expressed? I could write in a story about economic peril and the hopes of a black president, but in fifty years from now, would someone read that and think "that's exactly what it was like!" Or would I have to include some veiled Rihanna reference?


Obviously, it's more than pop culture. While we (meaning, I) love to think that popular culture goes a way towards defining the greater culture, it far more often than not means sweet fuck all. With the exception of post-9/11 media, I can't really think of anything that snapshots specific American culture after the Cold War*. Perhaps it's because we as Americans have such a diverse climate of economic and social stations that it's nearly impossible to connect them without the benefit of several decades of distance to provide hindsight. It might be that most Americans tend to project their experiences and backgrounds onto the country, effectively ignoring everyone else. Maybe it's the apathy of the suburban MTV generation that has shifted our attitude to that of a vapid shrug (it's a cliche, I know, but not an unfair one). I have no idea. But as I was thinking about this, I was convinced that the most common way to get a picture of our country at any given moment is to show it in or immediately following tragedy**. It sounds dramatic, but maybe that's the only time we'll be able to look around and agree about what's going on. Or at least that's the closest we get to it.

But I digress. I want to write about The Third Man. Because it's one of those movies that holds up so damned well. I'm not one of those classic film nerds that can't watch anything made in America after the mid-70s. I will talk loads of shit about Avatar, and yet I avoid most foreign films on the grounds that they're depressing for the sake of being depressing, and I will prefer color to black & white. I don't consider myself an erudite scholar of film, but I like to think I know what I like. and I love The Third Man. I could rail on about the framework or the advancements in cinematography, but it'd be 100% bullshit lifted from other places, ass opposed to the 50% bullshit that I'm just making up. In order for me to even notice things like that, it has to be so spectacularly good or bad that my attention is taken from the dialogue, acting, and overall theme. So I don't notice that when I'm watching The Third Man. I notice the more obvious things: the Karas soundtrack, which I put on a mix at some point in college and baffled even myself with, The zither fluttering along through the scenes, almost ditzy when juxtaposed against the story. There's the drunken petulance of protagonist Holly Martins, a European caricature of an American if there ever was one***, even if the character was supposed to be Canadian****. There's the opportunists, fops, and schemers that show up throughout the story, and the distance of the Austrians, who don't want anything to do with anything that isn't getting their lives back on track. This is classic noir, and still it stands as more than just a detective story. Oh, and there's Orson Welles. He was already the major filmmaker of the world, and he had just turned his back on Hollywood. He was just the actor here, but he improvised one of the best movie lines in history (he later said he stole it from somewhere else) like it was nothing.

I don't want to get into the story too much, because there are turns and revelations that still amaze me (even if one of the biggest ones is given away by the movie poster/DVD cover).  But I would recommend checking it out. You can watch it on Netflix ad the moment, and you can probably pick up a (non-Criterion) copy for pretty cheap since it's in the public domain. But I'd suggest checking out the book or screenplay first. It won't take up much of your time (I read most of it on the worst plane ride ever), and it really is worth it. Afterwards, check out the movie, and tell me I'm wrong about this. Tell me you don't get a feeling for postwar Vienna, despite the fact that it serves mostly as a backdrop for the story.

Anyway, that's just what I'm feeling on it.

* of course, this isn't entirely true. Wall Street probably did a great job of  defining the mid-late 80s for a lot of people, despite the fact that there's no mention of the decline of American industry, the dumbest fashion sense in history, and the historic rise/acceptance of rap music. Philadelphia might also carry a distinct resonance, while Forrest Gump will always serve to remind us how fucking dumb and self-servingly nostalgic we can be.
** the other might be comedy. Of course, this is not always the case, but it's a lot easier to gain insight towards the culture of a time and place by what jokes can and can't be made and the way that they are made. Of course, 85% of American comedy disproves this entirely.
*** I still laugh every time he intentionally gets Calloway's name wrong.
**** what non-hockey playing Canadian shows up in another country and takes a swing at a cop first thing off the plane? There are Canadians that don't play hockey, right?

Watching The Friends of Eddie Coyle's Criterion edition, which I didn't even know was released back in May. It's been ages since I've seen this movie, and even longer since I read the book in college. This was released in 1973, not long before The Rockford Files started, and as I mentioned the other day, this feels like the last great era for really good crime stories that don't involve electronic surveillance, DNA tests, etc... There's a reason why Criminal (which is back, and still the best noir/crime stories being told today) is so ambiguous with the period in which it's set.

  Anyway, go see this movie. It's a great story, with Robert Mitchum simultaneously at his booziest and most judicious. Peter Boyle (who remains one of the most puzzling actors ever) meeting him step for step the entire time, and Steven Keats as the young punk gunrunner... it's really a classic crime movie, without any of the flash and pomp that seem to go with these stories a lot of the time.

So yeah, go rent that. 

Okay, I really, really need to get back to my paper.

As a big fan of public-domain, early 20th century science fiction, it pleases me to know that they're making a Princess of Mars movie. I think it should to be pretty interesting, and perhaps followed up by 9 or 10 repetitive, but nonetheless entertaining sequels. I'm also excited by Dominic West playing Sab Thar (what's up with his role choices lately? Did he attend villain school after the Wire?), though I'm thinking they're going to have to CGI the shit out of this production. What I'm terrified of is that they're going to try to update this in some ultra-sleek, action packed movie, which is just sorta wrong and weird. Which isn't to say I don't shudder at the thought of a steampunk-inspired movie, either. But I guess it don't count as steampunk if it's set on Mars, does it? I guess the best course of action would be to just read the damn books. They're each like 60 pages long.
One of the things I always enjoyed about the books is just how surreal the whole planet is described, especially its' inhabitants, which range from dog-like creatures to a variety of civilizations spanning the planet. I always liked that notion that Martians, despite having advanced technology, still can't get their shit together enough to stop fighting with each other. Good on Edgar Rice Burroughs for including racism in outer space.

alright, back to work for me.

Captain Chaos R.I.P.

Great, now I got the Golden Girls and Cannonball Run to slough through.

It isn't often that I ask something of you, the HDF reader. This is partially because I feel guilty enough for not updating this site enough, and largely because I get squeamish in asking anything else of anyone reading this (other than that West Wing idea!) other than to keep checking this site every once in awhile. Sure, it doesn't really offer anything other than linked news stories and the occasional story about my cat, but then seriously, you're probably at work and bored, so I can only hope to help fill that void. I don't send forwards, and I'm not on Facebook, so really this is my only web presence, and I'm happy with that. I don't feel bad about whingeing on about my own lefty idealistic dogeared beliefs, because, because hey, you came here. But I -hey, where are you going? Please come back, I didn't mean that. Stick around for a minute, I'm getting to the point, I was just trying to talk about something here.

Okay.

Anyway, I'm always impressed with m friends, who are in fact the best people in the world (now that Paul Newman is dead). My friends are industrious and creative and fun and, well, people I'm proud to be friends with. There isn't a one who doesn't impress me semi regularly, and I mean that with the utmost sincerity. Y'all make me look like a coma victim.

And then there's Neil, who's putting together another documentary, this one about United States bombing campaigns from the people who make the decisions to drop them to the people they hit (intentional or not) and the way it affects our national conscious as a whole. It's solemn work, and it deserves our attention whether we want to think about it or not. Just because last month we made it illegal to sell cluster bombs doesn't mean that we made it illegal to use them or (shudder) just give them to Israel. and not even counting those godawful things, think of these weapons, these awesome (not in the good way) munitions, which we drop from several tens of thousands of feet up in the air into very much populated areas. I can't spit 4 stories in a closed stairwell* and hit the ground, and there's not even wind in there. Sure, my spit isn't laser-guided, but then how laser-guided was that bomb that blew up a wedding in Afghanistan (oh wait which one?) or the thousands of other accidents we've had? You can chalk it up to being the costs of war, but it's a bullshit war and it's a bullshit write off. If our taxpayer dollars are responsible for killing this many people by accident, we should damn sure be thinking about it.
But I'm getting off track, and I'm talking about things I don't know about, and the only way I'm gonna get my shit straight is by watching the movie when it comes out. and that's where Neil comes in.
The thing about Neil, though he'd probably deny this, is that he's one of the most decent people I know. Seriously, he resides in the uppermost strata of decent (heretofore referred to as the Carmody/Halloran barrier) of all the people I know, which is remarkable. At which I have to stop and wonder "why do these people even know a bastard like me?". I could never imagine working on a project like this and coming out the other end with my humanity intact. I just don't have that in me, and I'm certain if I could utilize my ape mind to slap together a film, it would not only be terrible and more than likely feature of accidentally inserted scene of me drunk and crying a la Martin Sheen in Hearts of Darkness, but it would also have no point. and that's one of the myriad of reasons why I can't make films. But I get the feeling that in addition to Neil's spirit remaining, and in addition to him continuing to be Neil, I'm pretty sure that after watching this film I will say to myself "Holy shit, there's something I can do", which is pretty rare if you know me at all. And I'm looking forward to having that feeling, but in the meantime, what I can do is tell you about it.

So please do me a favor. Go check out OurBombs.com. Watch the trailer. Look at the Air Strike Tracker. If you know someone you think might be interested in it, tell them about it. I promise I won't ask anything else of you until the movie comes out (you know I mean it!), but in the meantime, it's not going to take up too much of your time, and you're going to learn something, and you're going to help out my friend Neil. Tell you what, you go check this out and I won't post any more pictures of my cat**. That's win-win! Anyway, thanks for listening.


*this writer performed these tests in a controlled environment with no person in any danger of being hit. No humans or animals were harmed or humiliated in the tests. I messed some plants up pretty bad, though.
**This is not a guarantee.

I'm really not all that sure what to make of this Away We Go movie. On one hand, I've enjoyed something from pretty much everyone involved at some point (except perhaps Maya Rudolph). On the other hand, this whole project is a They Might Be Giants soundtrack away from me hating it on principle alone.

Let's hope it's better than that (?)

Finally got around to seeing the Watchmen movie...

and I really liked it. Despite some of the more widespread complaints (the one about the music is completely valid), I thought it did a great job trying to tell the general story. I thought the opening credits were among the best montages in a movie I've ever seen (and for some reason felt almost Scorsesean). Of course I had my little nitpicks (he was supposed to look like Clark W. Griswold, right?), but in the end it was a film and I enjoyed it. It definitely left me with a lot on my mind.
First of all, I think that if I hadn't read the book several times, I probably would have spent the bulk of the film either completely confused or bored out of my skull. I don't mean to say this in a pretentious literary catfight way, but maybe to illustrate my own ignorance.
The story itself is not all that tough to follow, I guess, but I think so many references are made to the book without full explanation that I'd spend too much time focusing on the wrong things. It took me a few reads of the book before I really grew to appreciate it for what it was, and I can't imagine things being much different with the movie, though sometimes the really obvious stuff goes over my head and I have to assume that you are a more astute viewer/reader than I.
But I also think that the biggest challenges to this film are the medium in which it's told and the time which it's released.
One of the things that I think works the most for the comic medium* is that the artist decides exactly the pace in which the story is told. You can set panels as rapidly as you want, and rely on the reader to use their imagination to fill in what happens between them. One of the most jarring things about any comic movie to me is the fight scenes. In reading comics, you really have to make every punch, dodge, kick and parry count, since the last thing the reader needs is to see every little motion. Celluloid makes things harder, since you have to fill in those blanks, and often times the director tries to do that as quickly as possible, thus making every fight scene look like a fast-forwarded kung fu movie. As someone who spent a lot of time watching martial arts films in his youth, I can stand to watch a real-time fight every once in awhile. The same can be said for the conversations that take place. The reader also can take seperate time to ingest both the art on the page and the dialogue/narration being read, unlike the movie where both eyes and ears must be alert and receptive. I don't think either medium is superior, but there are definite advantages to either.
As far as the timing... it can't be stated enough how dramatically this has an impact on the story. Even reading the book now leaves one slightly unimpressed unless they consider both when it takes place and when it was written, which are the same, but also wildly different. With that I mean that both were around 1986, but I'm reffering to the difference between the political landscape and the comic book landscape. While we certainly haven't ended terror and war from our national mindset, it's hard to compare to that of the cold war, which I think might have seemed a lot more terrifying at the time. I mean, I was 8. My strongest memories of the cold war were probably formed by Rocky IV, Iron Eagle, and a slew of Chuck Norris films more than the newspaper or talking about bomb shelters. I'll never know how the Cuban Missile Crisis** would have affected my life, as much as in ten years, young adults might not have any idea how badly 9/11 fucked us up.
The comic landscape is a whole other story. Because despite the ills of America at that time: the post-hippie malaise aroused by Watergate, the oil crisis, and whatnot, despite the appearances of crack and AIDS, despite the beginning of the end for American manufacturing... comic books were still pretty goddamned optimistic and, well, still pretty much written for children. With a few notable exceptions***, most comics were bound by the comics code not to mention anything happening in the real world unless veiled in allegory so thick that it you find yourself comparing vampirism to AIDS (seriously!). Watchmen, along with books like Frank Miller's first two Dark Knight stories were pretty fucked up. It's hard to explain the leap they made in terms of storytelling. Imagine never knowing any Batman other than Adam West. Imagine going your whole life with the ridiculous dialogue, dumb plots, dumber villains, and enough piffs and pows to make you hate life. Then, you see Batman Begins. Hell, even the Burton Batman would freak you out a bit, but we're talking so much more than that....
These books effectively brought an end to the bronze age of comics by themselves. To go back and read it now, one has to basically ignore anything that was written after them. I can't say that writers like Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, etc... would never have existed without these books, but they certainly would have a different set of limitations on them.
I really don't even remember how I ended up on this tangent, but I guess my point is that it would be hard not to be a little underwhelmed by Watchmen, considering the decades of praise that have been heaped upon it. But it's such a massive milestone in the art of graphic storytelling that it can't be denied status as one of the all-time greats. The weird part is, I don't even think it's among my 3 favorite Alan Moore works. But that's a whole other post, and one which I might well have already written...

*(I'm not using the term graphic novel, because I think that this applies to more than that. A really great arc in a long-running comic deserves the same attention/respect that a graphic novel does).
**I'm sure I've mentioned this on here before, but one of my favorite professors in college used to love to tell us how during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he and his girlfriend lugged their mattress down to the basement of his apartment building, bought all the canned goods they could find and a case of whiskey and then spent the duration having as much drunken sex as they could. He always sounded like they were a little disappointed when after two weeks or so they emerged from that basement to find the sun still shining and kids playing on the lawn.
***The most obvious example is the incredible Green Arrow/Green Lantern series by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, which tackled some pretty racy stuff for the time, including drug addiction, untion busting, hippie cults, etc...

I really didn't want to go on and on like this about a movie that's already been covered to death. The worst part is, I probably could've written this long before I saw the movie, but it's what was sort of running through my head as I was watching it.

Weird Russian movie: Piranha Hunt

Weird tip to avoid piranha attach: Swim at night.

If you've never had the chance to read Watchmen, or want to give it a runthrough before the movie comes out, you can watch the entire motion comic here . Though my bandwidth here prevents me from watching any of it, I've seen the first few and I know they're the actual book. I don't know if they would make watching the movie itself more enjoyable, but it'll give you a chance to get brushed up with the book or see if you'd like it.

So yeah, that's a nice little treat. I guess it is LONG though. Eh, you got 6 weeks to get through it if you want.

(from I Read Comics)

Tales of the Black Freighter

While I'm excited for this Watchmen movie, I am going into this with a good deal of reservations. Namely, I don't think it will be as universal a success as some of the other superhero movies that we've seen as of late. Not because it's a bad story or because I don't trust the director or anything, I just don't think it will work well as a film. I also think that when audiences go to see this expecting a superhero story, they're going to be disappointed. Obviously, I want the film to succeed, and so I'm hoping that doesn't happen.
But as more and more details emerge, I'm starting to get hopeful... for the DVD.

"Tales of the Black Freighter", a story within the larger story of the Watchmen book, is a profoundly messed up story that I was certain would never be admitted into the film. It would screw up the pacing for a 90 minute film, and it would probably just confuse audiences. It turns out I was right, but they're still animating the thing anyway for release on DVD. The trailer was released today.

I'm happy about this, because the story is one of the first things I considered when I heard they were actually going to make this movie. It's a great story, however disturbing, and it would be stupid to make no attempt to tell it with the movie.
How it will be released, though, is yet to be seen. Sure, it'll be by itself on DVD, but I'm wondering if when releasing the film on DVD they could splice scenes from this movie throughout the tale in Watchmen. It's probably much harder than it would be worth, but I guy can dream...
Anyway, I'm excited for how it turns out. For now...

So, I'm thinking of holding another movie marathon tonight, this one being horror movies on account of the date and my lack of plans to do anything else. The problem is that I have no idea what to watch. The movies I own won't hold any sort of suspense for me, so it's up to me to set up a worthwhile lineup from whatever selections I can beg, borrow or steal in the next 6 hours or so. It should turn out to be pretty interesting? I guess we'll see. More to come later...

You sick bastards

I complain enough about remakes on this thing that I really should just make it a theme. But really, most movies don't need to be remade, and I can't possibly believe we've exhausted every good idea.

I thought I'd addressed the upcoming Friday the 13th remake here already, but my search came up empty. Which is fine, because they already remade well, let's go down the list:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, Carrie, The Hills Have Eyes, The House on Haunted Hill, The Amityville Horror, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (like seven times), Dawn of the Dead, The Hitcher... I could do this for HOURS without even delving into all the foreign remakes or sci-fi, but italicizing them all bores me. I mean, why should this genre in particular seem so ripe for the plucking? Why hasn't anyone tried to remake Gone With the Wind, or Casablanca? The Maltese Falcon or The Wizard of Oz? Eh, I guess The Wiz sorta counts.

Because people will lose their goddamned minds, that's why. As long as they avoid movies that aren't widely considered classics they're in the clear. But these are my classics. And it pisses me off to see them treated so shoddily. Remake Dr. Zhivago into a Dane Cook vehicle for all I care, but I swear to you, if some fucker puts their creasy hands on Phantasm, there's going to be a bloodbath.

Of course, as I'm looking up this stuff, I see that they're remaking Poltergeist. Are you kidding me? Is there any reason to do this? What, was the trail of bodies not long enough after the last few? The original Poltergeist is one of the best movies ever made. In fact, the very remake of it makes me suspicious. Can you imagine Spielberg remaking any of the other movies he's ever made? Is it because he didn't credit himself as the director that he felt okay selling the rights to it? Fuck you, Spielberg. Go remake Hook or Empire of the Sun or some other bullshit movie and stop messing around with the ones that I love.

Apparently, they're remaking Hellraiser, too. Though to be honest, I don't really care. There's already like 40 of those, and I'm not sure anyone has noticed that.

My real reason for starting this post, though, is completely different. Because the movie that they're remaking now is even more ridiculous. The Last House on the Left is an extremely disturbing movie. It's gorey and rapey and honestly makes you sick to your stomach watching it. Along with I Spit on Your Grave and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this movie heralded an entirely new wave of low-budget horror that not only became Drive-In staples, but really fucked up a lot of the American psyche and certainly helped usher in that acid hangover that followed the late 60s and early 70s. Also, I would say they're directly responsible for Cannibal Holocaust, make of that what you will.
BUT.
There's no reason to remake it. Especially since there is NO FUCKING WAY POSSIBLE that it can be made in today's studios without half of America starting their own letter-writing campaigns. So we will get a watered-down and and ill-conceived version of a movie that really can't be made more terrifying. Let's face it, one could argue* that the original should never have been made. But it was. And it sets a boundary for about as sick as a (non-Japanese) horror movie can get. Why fudge that line?

So listen, Hollywood assholes. PLEASE knock it off. Make more comic book movies if you have to. Shit, make another 200 Fast y Furiouses if that makes you feel better. But try to give us something remotely new.

or you know what? Remake chick flicks. Steel Magnolias could use an update. or Beaches. If cou can't use a sliver of imagination in writing movies, at least pretend to have some variety in the genre of film you want to ruin. Dicks.

*Not me, but I can see the rationale behind it. I wonder if the remak would be NC-17. Is that still a thing?

Yeah, a hundred bucks of my own money for the first of my guys who really nails that creep.

I tend not to care about sports movies all that much. Sure, there are glaring exceptions, but for the most part they come off as hackish and predictable. For me, it's easy to make a sports movie. It's very difficult to make a great sports movie. Hoosiers. The Natural. Chariots of Fire. Seabiscuit. Pride of the Yankees. These are my favorite sports movies. I can also count those tangential movies, in which sports is a theme but little more: Brian's Song. Caddyshack... the list goes on.

But my favorite ever will always be Slap Shot. Because it's both realistic and absurd. Hilarious and somber at times. It was written by the sister of a minor league hockey player, featured actual players in nearly all of the roles, and contained what must have been an ungodly amount of swear words at the time. It carries itself with a look at the athlete's lives much less glamorous than was usually shown at the time. Long hours on the road, overblown contraversy put on for the fans, locker room discord... this wasn't the picture of superstars, these were the bums of minor league hockey. Which means that they're either on the way out or on the way up.

It also shows how a team deals with decreased interest in them as a local economy falls into decay. Filmed in Johnstown, PA (and based loosely on the Johnstown Jets) as the mills were all starting to get shut down, you get to see it in the exterior shots as plain as plain as possible. Notice how in the parade scene, which runs right along the square in the center of Johnstown, the movie theater is running Deep Throat. Why they set the movie in Charleston (claiming the loss of "factory jobs" and even going so far as to mention a flood there) seems pretty ridiculous, but then I guess things were pretty bad all over then and that's what they were trying to get across.

At the center of the whole story though, is Reg Dunlop, who might be my favorite Paul Newman role ever*. He's conniving, endearing and tenacious. He is unscrupulous and desperate to keep having a career. Kevin Costner stole much from him in Bull Durham a few years later. But of course he was no Paul Newman. Nobody ever will be again. Which is why I got super pissed off earlier today when I read that they're going to remake Slap Shot.

It's bad enough they made that sequel with the shitty Baldwin brother. To remake this movie doesn't even make sense anymore. Violence is no longer a selling point for minor league hockey the way it was back then. I don't think player-coaches have existed in any sport since about that time period, either. And Paul Newman is dead. I wish someone -ANYONE- had learned a lesson from that remakes of The Bad News Bears and The Longest Yard that these films are indicative of a certainl era and that attempts to remake or to relive those movies will result in failure and (hopefully, for the makers of that last movie) embarrassment. These movies all contain a sense of... crudity that virtually cannot be featured in films today. Usually for good reason, but to try and sterilize these plots now is just insulting.

There are millions of sports movies that you can make. Try one about that famous Willis Reed play. Make a movie about Tommy Carlos. Dock Ellis's career would be a great movie, even without the gimmick. I'm sure there's some Japanese baseball team that's earned the right to have their story told. Or even just make something up. But stop fucking around with the movies that are loved by millions of people and try to think up something new. Please.

Hell, remake Space Jam if you have to. But leave Slap Shot alone.

*I think this directly contradicts a previous post of mine about Mr. Newman.

Also, this means that pretty much every movie filmed in Western PA has been remade with 2 exceptions. I think The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh is safe for now, but I'm willing to bet that some idiot will take a shot at The Deer Hunter in the next few years, further provoking both my anger and rationality as a concept.

Here's some stuff that makes Slap Shot an even better movie than you thought.

When it was announced that there would be a Hellboy movie a couple of years ago, I just couldn't see it working. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the idea, but the two things that always made that book so strong for me were Mike Mignola's amazing art and the way old folktales and myths were incorporated into the story. I figured that those two characteristics would at best just help to shape the story.

I was very wrong. Obviously, Mignola's art was an influence as well as the mythos. But I hadn't counted on Guillermo Del Toro. the first movie was much better than I expected. But the second movie, which I just finished watching, was fucking fantastic. It might be my current mood or whatever, but it ranks among my favorite movie of 2008. Sure, there was completely misplaced pop songs that showed up randomly, and Seth McFarlane's voice can be distracting. But then Dark Knight was a half hour too long, and I haven't seen a single Oscar nominee*, so there you go. This movie was funny, smart, imaginative, and featured an abundance of Tecate and kittens. Also, I now have a weird crush developing on Selma Blair. and Ron Perlman. Yikes.

No, it wasn't completely loyal to the comic, but I've yet to see (or really want to see) a comic book movie that is. So yeah, there's an official HDF endorsement. Although, if you're already of the mindset that you won't like this movie, you probably won't. But I hope you do.

*I refuse to watch since they seem to be by and large the most depressing group of movies ever assembled. I WILL watch Slulmdog Millionaire sometime in a few days, but I'll leave the rest of that shit for the commitees.

For fuck's sake... (pt. 2)

Baz Lurmann is set to direct remake of The Great Gatsby.

Another one the greatest books ever written will be turned to shit.

Not that the 1974 version was any good either, but that's gonna look like goddamned Dr. Zhivago compared to what this guy does to it.

I was going to make a comment about why don't people just option the shit out of every great novel ever, but then saw that Pale Fire apparently has been in development or awhile. The end is extremely fucking nigh.

(wow. I'm cursing a whole bunch today. My apologies. I'm trying to get over that).

Stephen Chow No Longer Directing Green Hornet

I've got many, many reservations about a Seth Rogan-scripted remake of the classic superhero TV show. For one, it was never really supposed to be all that funny. Also, Seth Rogan looks more like a yeti than Van Williams. Hey, I actually like the guy more than most, and I'm sure he'd agree with me. So why star in this?
But I have to admit that I was hesitant to see Stephen Chow direct it. I've thoroughly enjoyed every one of his movies I've seen, from God of Cookery to Kung Fu Hustle (still dragging my feet on CJ7 for some reason). But I'm not sure I'd understand how he'd fit with a project like this. I guess he isn't sure anymore, either. He's still playing Kato, which I'm sure he's doing solely as homage to Bruce Lee, who really made his reputation in this country in the mask.
So, I guess this is my roundabout way of saying I have no clue what's going on with this movie. I'm sure I'll see it, hell, I'll probably even like it. Comedy + Action is tough to pull off well, especially when you're writing and acting. That was one of the bonuses of having Chow direct this. I mean, there's a strong chance that this movie could be the next Casino Royale (obviously I mean the Woody Allen one and not the one with the hilarious ball torture scene). Wait, Edgar Wright is still busy doing that Scott Pilgrim movie, right? Goddamn I hope that's funny. Later, though, he's doing Ant-Man, which could very well herald a return of the comedy superhero movie.

holy shit. They're going to remake Greatest American Hero, aren't they? Mark my words, in 5 years, this there will be a development deal on this.

I scare myself sometimes with my chilling prophecies.

Edit: That's really, really green. It was probably time for a change anyway.