The recent literary analysis reminded me that I still need to unpack my review trapped in the old phpNuke db… no, wait, I’ll do it now. Here it is. It’s not as rage-fuelled as I remember it. Damn that reasonableness thing!

Davinci Code – 2/5
You’ve probably seen this book around, goodness knows I sure did. It was everywhere, in every store. I figured it was one of those Oprah book club things, so I didn’t pay much attention. Then there was a glowing review in my forums and my wife just happened to buy it for me a couple days later. So I thought I would read it.

Let me summarize my review before continuing: this book is a craptastic exercise in total schlock, and unremarkable even by those low standards. The DaVinci Code is drivel, but it didn’t make me want to hurl it across the room so it gets two stars rather than one. The book is a modern Hardy Boys mystery, but nothing more.

You can take all the mystic hoodoo and religio-inspired jacket text and throw them out the door; they are about as relevant to the plot as the Xerox machine is in The Firm. The book is crap from page one and crap until the very end. Though it is your basic crap book, it wasn’t horrible (unlike, oh, say Potter 5) and was even enjoyable at times so I don’t hate it. It’s just nothing special and it’s popularity over other equivalent books is surprising to me.

Theoretically it’s about the Holy Grail which consists of actual documentation of Jesus’ marriage and offspring.

If you’ve ever read a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew book, you’ve read the DaVinci code. Brown is a total hack who relies primarily upon stock characters, cliche, absurd “puzzles”, and most annoying of all: “cliffhangers”. Add in a cop-out ending and dialogue that would make Tom Clancy proud, and you’ve got yourself one crappy book.

The stock characters are what you expect.

• Protagonist: middle aged white male ivy league professor with a baritone voice. Check. Quirky trait? Of course! A Mickey Mouse watch.
• Female lead: younger than protagonist. Check. Beautiful with [insert color here... auburn] flowing hair. Check. Smart and with attitude. Check. Character loses definition, primary characteristics, and does a 180 into helplessness and childishness? Check (for example, she’s a super cryptographer but can’t figure out an anagram. Or she goes from being capable to helpless, whenever the protagonist needs to be the Protagonist. More on this later). A Big Secret? Check! Bonus points for revealing it in the last five pages, though it was obvious for the last 300.
• Friend/Rich benefactor/[redacted]: yep. Disfigured or impaired? Check. Rich? Check. Quirky trait? Of course! He was an actor.
• Bad Guys: multiple layers? Check. Code names? Check. Could be good guys? Check.

and so on. I’m sure you get the idea.

The cliches and stereotypes are no better than the stock characters (who are themselves cliches by definition, but whatever). The French police? Drive Citroens. The Professor? Wears a tweed jacket. The head cop? Vain, officious, and trying to frame the protagonist. Butler? Evil. Church? Evil and/or misguided (though Brown is careful not to piss off the Catholic establishment and instead paints Opus Dei as his Evil Organization of Doom). Plus the Bad Guy #1 is an albino. Behold, the genius at work!

The female protagonist has the most egregious lapses of character. For example, when coming home to her grandfather’s house as a 21-year old college student, she walks in on him having sex (which she has both presumably had by now and presumably should know that he had to do at some point in order to begat one of her parents). You should know that this is a French woman who is obviously very capable and has had an adult-type relationship with her grandfather since she was a little girl. But somehow, someway, walking in on him having sex causes her to be so disturbed that she never speaks to him again. Ever. Even though he writes her all the time, she just keeps the letters in her dresser unopened. You ready to cry “bullshit” yet? Because I sure was.

The puzzles, these oh-so-”witty” (to Dan Brown) clues that were created by the great masters and are so, so, so! difficult… are completely assinine. Yo, I’m going to spoil some things here, but not major points. The first puzzles? Fibonacci sequence and some anagrams. Yawn. The others? single-pass cypher and some blindingly obvious verse, along with mirror writing which amazingly (or, out of characterly if you are thinking like I am) no one is able to decipher. Because, you know, DaVinci never, ever was famous for writing his diary in mirror script. Even better, this mirror script is in fuckin english (because english is a “pure” language, I’m sure), so it’s not even cypher text or a non-native language. That one was a real boner of a “puzzle.”

All of the above pales in comparison to the sheer abrasive power of the cliffhangers. Each chapter is approximately four pages long, on average. I am not making this up. Four pages. Nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger or tease, and nearly every one of these is clumsy to the point of absurdity. The Hardy Boys did it better. Here are a couple examples:

“Um, sir?” The agent pointed to a nearby pegboard on which hung several sets of keys. The labels above the keys bore familiar names.

DAIMLER . . . ROLLS-ROYCE . . . ASTON MARTIN . . . PORSCHE . . .

The last peg was empty.

When Collet read the label above the empty peg, he knew he was in trouble.

That’s on p. 282. Six pages later, you get this groaner:

“Robert?” Sophie was still watching him. “A funny look just crossed your face.”

Langdon glanced back at her, realizing his jaw was firmly set and his heart was racing. An incredible notion had just occurred to him. Could it really be that simple an explanation? “I need to use your cell phone, Sophie.”
“Now?”
“I think I just figured something out.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. I need your phone.”
Sophie looked wary. “I doubt Fache is tracing, but keep it under a minute just in case.” She gave him her phone.
“How do I dial the States?”
“You need to reverse the charges. My service doesn’t cover transatlantic.”

Langdon dialed zero, knowing that the next sixty seconds might answer a question that had been puzzling him all night.

The DaVinci code is 449 pages long. My rough estimate is that there are approximately 2 million cliffhangers similar to the above. But wait! There’s more!

Here’s my favorite cliffhanger wannabe, and the one that made me decide to save these for posterity. It gets double bonus points for the tense change and unclear subject (check out the second paragraph). Triple bonus points for another stylistic annoyance of Brown’s, the awkward intrusion of his research notes into the text (also see: brand name recognition, overly-descriptive architecture, and ostentatious display of adjectives concerning fashion and other couture):

Aringarosa had heard of this place – the Vatican’s Astronomy Library – rumored to contain more than twenty-five thousand volumes, including rare works of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Secchi. Allegedly, it was also the place in which the Pope’s highest officers held private meetings . . . those meetings they preferred not to hold within the walls of Vatican City.

Approaching the door, Bishop Aringarosa would never have imagined the shocking news he was about to receive inside, or the deadly chain of events it would put into motion. It was not until an hour later, as he staggered from the meeting, that the devastating implications settled in. Six months from now! he had thought. God help us!

Note, this is a flashback, so the tense is triply screwed.

In the end, Brown’s book is somewhere between LeCarre and Grisham, with dialog that approaches a Tom Clancy-level wince factor at times. The plot is inane, the puzzles retarded, and the whole thing is contrived and trivial. I can see why it is popular: you don’t need to think – ever – when reading this book, and the 4-page chapters make for great during-commercial reading.

It wasn’t total dogshit like Potter5, so I’ll give it a 2. The DaVinci Code totally sucks, but if you’re on a plane or the beach and need something and don’t want to be challenged with creativity or novel (in the adjectival sense) characters and you liked the Hardy Boys or Drew novels when you were a kid, go ahead and pick it up.

Addendum: Another thing that annoys me is that the book plays it safe with its outrageousness. The DaVinci Code is heretical, but in a way that won’t discomfort too many people, just like a meal at Dennys or a show on Lifetime. Though there is far more evidence to support the assertion that Jesus was a myth created by the church as a nice, if necessary, moral tale, but the book never addresses it. Instead, the existence of Jesus the man is taken as fact, which is a lot more palatable to your average American. The heresy here is that he was married and had offspring, which is a far easier thing for indoctrinated people to accept than the idea that their entire belief system is based upon a myth. Brown’s “academicians” who are seers and seekers of the truth, able to pierce any mystery, knowing the truth from history, ignore the 5-ton elephant sitting in a room (that Jesus of Nazareth never existed) with some hand-waving “everybody knows…” and “no serious person disputes his existence…” -type statements. Believe in Jesus the man or not, but to have the scholars assume his existence without question strains my suspension of disbelief. Sure, a Jesus who had sex and offspring is fun, but it’s still just as likely to be a myth as Jesus’ existence. You wimp, Brown.

Bean, the Movie – 3/5. It’s some of the better bits from the TV show. If it’s your first introduction to Bean, it’s hiliarious, but otherwise unnecessary.

The Black Adder, Season 1 – 3/5. I think you have to both appreciate British history and cheesy sitcoms to really enjoy this. Rowan Atkinson is a spedcial kind of talent, that’s for sure.

Chungking Express – 4/5. Wong Kar Wai’s first crossover movie, and it’s a good one. Two movies, actually, with a split in the middle and only a bit of crossover. Tony Leung and Faye Wong star.

City of God – 4/5. Boyz in the Hood, if the Hood is Rio. Aside from the crushing poverty and rampant violence, one of the most striking things of the movie is how beautiful Brazillians are.

The Cooler – 4/5. Quirky, enjoyable. It’s supposed to be W.H. Macy’s movie, but Alec Baldwin steals the show. The movie follows a guy whose luck is so bad that he is employed by a casino to cool off anyone who is winning by too much. And then he falls in love…

Gentleman’s Agreement – 2/5. Featuring a so-young-as-to-be-unrecognizable Gregory Peck, this movie is a heavy handed diatribe on the evils of antisemitism. Antisemitism is bad! Bad, bad, bad! As a message, it’s great. As a movie, this is dogshit.

Gladiator – 1/5. I hated it in the theatres, I still hate it. Ridley Scott and his awful direction should stick to commercials or glacially paced scifi horror movies. Anyone who pulls the 12fps/48fps directorial bullshit during a fight scene to show the “ebb and flow” of the action deserves to be taken behind the NYU woodshed.

Good Night, and Good Luck – 4/5. Good movie, well told. Some annoying indie schtick (the jazz interludes). Stratham’s role of a lifetime.

Irma Vep – 4/5. Gonzo filmmaking plus satire of French New Wave cinema. Maggie Cheung is awesome in this role written specifically for her by her ex-husband. Think: Being John Malkovich meets In the Presence of a Clown meets Shadow of the Vampire.

La Femme Nikita – 5/5. French original, not shitty American remake. Still Luc Besson’s best, with an edginess not recently captured. I can’t believe they made a TV series out of what is essentially an indictment of the sociopathy of governments.

Matchstick Men – 2/5. Was a 4 right up until the bullshit ending. Grifters getting grifted was good, but don’t fucking show the post-mortem, particularly when it’s just to rescue the reputation of an actress who wants a big time Hollywood career show the grifter with a heart of gold angle. Plus, upon reflection, the movie is told in a fundamentally dishonest way, which is unfair to the audience.

Maverick – 4/5. Good, clean fun, with good acting and rapport. They really needed to do a Maverick 2, but I think Garner’s health and the animosity between Foster and Gibson probably short circuited that.

MST3K: The Wild World of Batwoman – 2/5. Even the MST3K boys couldn’t save this thing. Dear FSM, it’s awful. Best line: “Hello, college Republicans”… guess you had to be there.

The Mummy – 2/5. Mindless crap action. Bonus: Rachel Weisz, not as bad as The Mummy Returns.

My Summer of Love – 2/5. I have no idea what makes this movie remarkable other than a lesbian angle and that its competence won it a BAFTA award. It’s got some potential and cute moments, but overall it feels strained, awkward, and amateurish. Emily Booth could be a doppelganger for Fiona Apple, and may make a career out of this movie business.

Phantom of the Opera – 2/5. It has pretty costumes, shitty music, a retarded plot, and horrid acting.

Romance – 2/5. French existentialism with “shocking” graphic sexual content. Supposedly an exploration of need, desire, love, and sex… movie would have been a lot better – and shorter – if the protagonist had dumped her boyfriend in the first 20 minutes.

Stargate – 3/5. It’s a crap movie, but it’s fun. Too bad it was successful, because it directly lead to the decline of Western civilization via ID4 and Godzilla.

Uzumaki – 1/5. Japanese horror film. Two of earlier examples of which, Ringu and Ju-on, have been remade as Hollywood thrillers The Ring and The Grudge. Uzumaki will not be a third. It’s a cheese fest with Saturday night made-for-TV movie scare attempts. It feels like it had a budget of about $20 and a student film crew headed by the cliched gotcha! direction of M. Night Shyamalamadingdong.

Kings of Infinite Space – 3/5.
Starts off well, fades badly. Goes from creepy Lovecraftian/Wellsian to Carroll-esque plus cheese.

The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman – 4/5.
Excellent surrealish British fantasy/adolescent novel. There are two more in the series, which I hear turns more into some Manichean religious end times type deal, but the first book was just fine. The Golden Compass is a charming book, though not nearly so excellent as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (admittedly, they are aiming at different audiences), which I link in my head because they both have that indefinable fantasy Britishosity, or at least what I consider to be the archetypical examples of such.

Memories of Ice – Steven Erikson – 5/5.
With this book, Erikson passes George Martin as the best hard fantasy series ever. A world so detailed, so incredibly well envisioned by the author that it requires no extemporaneous explanations. Erikson (a pseudonym) is the Salman Rushdie of the fantasy authors – complex, rich works that require investment on the part of the reader to complete, but are well worth it nonetheless. Like Rushdie, you need a break after one of these novels before you can go on to his next one

The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler – 3/5.
My first Chandler book. The misogyny that comes through so well in the movies is definitely present, but the movies miss the misanthropy, alienation, dissociation, and depression of the novels. It’s a good, quick read with lots of active verbs and not a lot of fluff in the prose… but the plot is as disjointed and jumpy as the worst of the movies, like say The Big Sleep. You want deus ex machina and massive leaps of logic? Chandler’s your guy. On the plus side, he doesn’t laboriously paint every step in the ladder, which is a nice change of pace.

Amnesia Moon – Jonathan Lethem – 3/5.
I loved Lethem’s Gun with Occasional Music, and this was his followup novel. They are completely unrelated. Amnesia Moon deals with the subjective nature of reality, dreams, human society, and forms of dominance. It feels incomplete.

Blood Music – Greg Bear – 3/5.
Greg Bear’s first book, and you can see why he became a successful author and one of my favorites (at least up until Dinosaur Summer, but there are at least 4 of his early works that I call great without hesitation). This one is the biological version of the nanotech nightmare of a grey goo planet. It feels somewhat like a bastard child of To Marry Medusa with an update written in the 80′s by a scientist.

Now, I’m going to spoil the “joke” if you keep reading. Instead of hiding it in spoiler markup, just skip the blockquote if you don’t want to know. Here goes:

A man, his wife, their son, their daughter and the family dog walk into a talent agent’s office and says “I’ve got a great act, audiences love us.”

The talent agent says, “Great, what do you do?”

[ and here's where the comedian shows their mettle, with their description of the act. Typically, this involves shit, piss, cum, fucking, fisting, incest, asses, dicks, pussies, and cunts. Typically. And that's just the first couple minutes. ]

At the end, the talent agent says “What do you call your act?”

The man says, with a big shit eating grin on his face (and a flourish) “The Aristocrats!”

I enjoy watching comedians just going at it. The 4/5 rating is not for The Aristocrats as released – it’s a pretty shitty documentary, probably a 2/5, but for the Aristocrats is actually for the almost unedited full tellings in the special features section of the DVD.

The comedians that most stood out to me were the intellectual ones, not the schticky ones. I thought the cream of the crop was Bob Saget, Kevin Pollack telling the joke as Christopher Walken, the South Park bit, Sarah Silverman (though admittedly my other brain might be clouding my judgement there), Taylor Nagron, George Carlin doing the intellectual angle, and Gilbert Godfried just going for it at the Hefner roast. Oh, and Doug Stanhope telling it to his infant. That was just precious. Oh, and Ron Jeremy too.

Good times, good times.

Here’s five words I thought I would never utter in sequence: Bob Saget is my hero.

Malena is a beautiful picture without an overabundance of dialogue. It stars Monica Bellucci as the eponymous character, and her magnetic beauty dominates the movie – as it was intended to. Malena works on multiple levels – coming of age, budding sexuality, obsession, human cruelty – but it is primarily director Giuseppe Tornatore’s ode to his beloved Italy.

There’s a lot to like here. Beautifully shot, the easy symbology, the score, multiple points of interest thematically, humor, love … oh, and Monica Bellucci is nekkid. A lot. Full frontal nekkid, even (import version only). There’s something for everyone! Unless you’re into cock, in which case I think there’s half a ball at one point and the rest is up to your imagination. Me? I’ve got Monica. Hubba hubba.

You know, Bellucci probably deserves more credit as an actress than she typically receives. She takes some difficult, uncomfortable roles sometimes (see, e.g. Irreversible), and even here where her primary purpose is to be an unobtainable beauty there are a few excruciating moments. Bellucci and Jennifer Connelly are cut from the same cloth in that way. I’m not comparing their acting chops because, frankly, I can’t tell if Bellucci can act. It’s a language thing; gimme a couple movies, but I’m leaning toward “yes.” Then again, I haven’t seen Tears of the Sun. At any rate, Bellucci’s fearless and she does well at the uncomfortable situations. One of the better models-turned-actresses around. How’s that for damning with faint praise?

As mentioned previously, the symbology in Malena is shallow. Which is good for guys like me, because then we feel all smart but don’t have to actually strain ourselves. W00t! See, Malena is Italy and Italy is Malena. From jaw-dropping beauty to desperate, used, and reviled outcast to acceptance once the beauty has been pummelled – this is Italy from 1939 onward.

Of note: don’t pick up the New Line American release – it’s a far lesser version. They cut 15 minutes of the movie, mostly for the teen sexuality (not only the nekkidness, but a (non explicit) handjob in a theatre, some of the fantasy interludes, and other such imageries that pose a danger to the republic). Fuck them puritanical bitches and get ahold of the uncut import version. Tornatore fans, movie buffs, and onanistic pervs will thank me… not that those are mutually exclusive categories. As of today, there is no uncut American version to buy, so the import it is. As a humorous side note – on the import version, if you are watching with Korean subtitles… there naughty (pubic) bits are censored out with this big black dot. Hahahah!

Malena. A good, solid 4 of a movie. If you like the story, you’ll probably also like Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. Make sure you pronounce it “cheen-ee-mah” at the art house, or your beatnik cred will be revoked.

First off, this movie isn’t a parable. It’s not a proselytizing Christ story. No. It’s a 2 hour 30 minute product placement for Turkish Delight. Yes, folks, Turkish Delight is trying to become the next Reese’s Pieces and, frankly, I’m just ashamed for Disney. We’re paying $10 for a ticket and we still can’t get away from the disgustingly obvious commercial product placements like the one here. For Turkish Delight. I hear it costs about 30 shekels.

OK, perhaps there are some Christian overtones, but I really don’t see them. I mean, how can a prophecy where the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve travel to a distant land, meet a powerful lion who dies for their sins and also forgives them, and then kick righteous butt be a parable? I totally don’t see it. Jesus would have been a lamb.

Hmm… what did I learn from the Jesus lion? One, that Jesus has some powerful halitosis. Seriously, yo. He melts statues and kills Satan poor Tilda Swinton with it. Floss, dude, floss.

Two, Turkish Delight is awesome. Also, surprisingly and disappointingly, it’s not a reference to a deviant sexual practice.

Three, Santa passes out deadly weapons at Christmas. Where was this Santa when I was growing up? Why couldn’t my Santa have given me a broadsword or a bow and told me to go whack some evil? I got the whack, but no kickass sword. Jerk.

Four, Christmas is about getting presents. It’s totally not about Jesus. Just ask Disney through the voice of Lucy. Seriously. It’s about presents like a stuffed idol of the Jesus lion.

Five, I’m glad to see Prince William finding a spot of work to help out the royal family’s income stream.

So there you have it. It’s totally not a Jesus movie, because that would be the most brain dead Vogon-level nonimaginative Me Too!!!!!itish by middle managers since Critters followed Gremlins.

If offered the choice between seeing this movie a second time and having a root canal, I would choose the root canal.

Utter trainwreck. Pretty, but empty. Book received the Hollywood treatment. They violated by foreign accents in movies rule (which is: if they’re supposedly speaking japanese but we’re hearing english… why are we hearing accented english? Ridiculous!). The casting is awful as well; not that these aren’t good actresses, but they a) aren’t Japanese; b) with the exception fo Yeoh, are speaking english for the first time (think acting is difficult? Try it in a language not your own); and the casting director should be retroactively fired. The score (by John Williams) is abrasive and cliched. Williams really should stick to the imperial marches.

It’s a topic for another rant some day, but I hate Hollywood casting agents. They have a set list of people to cast, based on who’s hot at the moment rather than who is right for the part. They have an A, B, and C list. For this movie, it was obvious they went “hmm… what asian actresses are on the A-list? Zhang Ziyi (Chinese) is red hot right now, let’s get her. Hmm. That’s it. How about B? Li Gong (Chinese) is still a beauty at 41, was on People’s 50 Most Beautiful list 10 years ago, and the second most famous Chinese actress. Michelle Yeoh (Malaysian)… yeah, people know her. Jackie Chan, Bond, and Crouching Tiger, right? Right. Sweet! We’re set then.” As opposed to, say, casting American actresses of asian descent, Japanese descent if its important.

Hey, at least the dudes are Japanese, right?

It’s a muddle of a movie. Poor pacing, poor metaphors, stupid plot devices (the American colonel part is especially retarded. Are we to believe that the American is speaking japanese, or that they somehow speak english?), and poor lighting in many areas. jAnd, oh, the typecasting… Gong Li plays a conniving bitch (gee, what a surprise), Michelle Yeoh plays the thoughtful compassionate older woman (gee, what a surprise). Zhang Ziyi is supposed to play a headstrong, fiercely spirited woman but somehow that got lost in the translation to screen and she’s much more of an unsypathetic wallflower than any sort of artisan.

Anyway, it’s crap. It’s not as bad as King Kong, but boy did they screw the pooch with this one.

Literature is not like the Special Olympics. You don’t get points just for trying and not everybody is a winner.

This is true for everyone except, apparently, Christopher Paolini. He is a winner in the same way that Dan Brown is a My Pet Rock winner for fad o’ the nonce, or the Lemony Snickets are for the Must Find the Next Potter land grab.

The backstory behind Eragon is a whole lot more interesting than the book itself. Paolini wrote the book as a 15 year old. Apparently the “good job kid” pat on the head turned into massive number of book orders by a desperate publisher. Too bad they didn’t choose a book worth publishing.

Want to know how bad it is? Here’s the first sentence:

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.

That’s right, people, a scent is going to change the world. Only it turns out not to be the scent that changes the world at all. Shocking misdirection or amateur hour at the word processor, you make the call.

In the realm of literature, as defined by the words you can read on the page in front of you, works are judged by what is on those pages rather than the backstory of the author. There was no reason for the utter piece of tripe to be published. Ever. In anything outside of a vanity publishing house. Where Paolini’s parents paid.

Look, the book shows that Paolini is a decent writer for a 15 year old. He can construct sentences fairly well and the grammar is straightforward (simplistic would be my term, but then “you’re picking on a 15 year old!” comes into play). I admire the dedication it took for this home schooled geek to create and finish his novel.

But that’s as far as it goes. Outside of the proper sentence construction, there is nothing to recommend this book. At all. There is not one ounce of originality, interest, arc, insight, or vision evident. There is no character development. There is inconsistent and frequently poor writing. There is no motivation. There is a book written by someone who would feel right at home on a TV action series or any recent Hollywood offering (motto: “where plot creates the characters, not vice versa!”)

Every plot device, every being that populates Paolini’s world is lifted from some other fantasy book, Tolkien most of all. Even the main character’s name – Eragon – is dangerously close to a straight life of Tolkien’s “Aragorn” (not to mention one letter from “dragon”). You’ve got elves who came from across the sea, and who are the fair folk, and the best the world has to offer. Dwarves live underground with towns that are one letter removed from actual places in Norway. None of the races were native to this continent. The Mystical Mark makes an appearance. And pretty much every other cliche in the fantasy universe, yadda yadda yadda. The writing is not that remarkable either – I was a better writer at age 15, and I’m nothing on the literature scale. The best I can come up with is that this book exemplifies the middlebrow lowered expectations of the modern pop lit market. It’s depressing, really.

Paolini may develop an original vision or may actually prove to be an astute observer of human nature and interactions at some point, but if so, as evidenced by Eragon, that day is long in the future. Life’s too short to waste my time reading crap, so I will not be reading the rest of the series (too bad I already bought the second one stupid Costco fad pushers).

As a (home) school project, Eragon would get you an A for the semester. As a work of literature, it makes a great doorstop. I strongly advise against shelling out cash for this book.

Told you I mainlined the movies in the past day or two.

Anyway, Pi is Darren Aronofsky’s debut (he also did Requiem for a Dream… and nothing since, though it looks like he’s got some projects lined up in the near term). Pi is edgy, shot in high-contrast, grainy, black and white. It follows Maximillian Cohen, a mathematician observing patterns in nature… or in this case the stock market. His theorem is:

1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge.
Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.

As he gets closer to the solution, there are kabbalists and a wall street analyst firm tring to control him. Or are they? Is it real or is it a paranoid delusion? Cohen is sick… it could all be in his head. You never really know. And that’s part of what makes Pi great.

I really don’t mean to be this nice to so many films in a row, but I guess it’s selection bias – I pretty much only have good movies in my collection, so it’s to be expected. I’ll have to increase my Netflix quota o’ crap.

In my mega-ass long review of 2046, I mentioned this movie, but wanted to give it an official post, since it’s such a great movie in its own right.

Set in 1962 Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love features Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) as neighbors who happen to move in on the same day. Both are married, but their spouses are often absent. Eventually they figure out that their spouses are having an affair with each other. Chow and Su start spending a lot of time together and fall in love… but they never admit it, nor do they consummate it. Because they are determined not to be like their spouses. Eventually, Chow flees to Singapore.

As with most Wong Kar Wai movies, the movie is visually sumptuous, the music stirring, and the acting superb. The chemistry between Leung and Cheung is fantastic and tension-filled. And if Cheung’s cheongsams aren’t a visual metaphor for the constricted and uncomfortable societal rules to which she must abide, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

In the Mood for Love is everything Remains of the Day wishes it could grow up to be. Beautiful, compelling, smoldering, and romantic. Plus, no ewwww Hopkins factor.

For ghostfinger – you’d love this movie, you must put it on your list. Wong is twice the autuer that Baz is, with none of those fucking jump cuts. It’s also a) in color and b) Chinese, so I’m preemptively cutting off your b&w samurai movie eye-roll.

Unlike Braveheart, this movie has aged well. Granted I watched it with the commentary of Sam Mendes rather than the actual dialogue this time, but still. The point holds.

If you haven’t seen it, American Beauty is a tale of life and the beauty therein. Not the superficial beauty, but the beauty of small moments, the beauty of gusts of air, or death, or reality.

The acting throughout is superb and the source material is pretty good as well. My main quibbles with the story is that I find the ending to be trite bullshit (SPOILER WARNING :: the idea of a repressed homosexual southern military man is just too cliche to enjoy. I mean, c’mon, people. :: END SPOILER). This movie made Chris Cooper a name (well, this and Adaptation) and provides some of the strongest performances from Annette Benning and Kevin Spacey’s career.

Of note from the voiceover: I always took Angela Hayes’ (Mena Suvari) declaration that she was a virgin to Lester to be a lie. I thought it was in her character that she would expect that her lover would really want to hear that, so that’s what she said. It had the opposite effect on Lester, of course, but still… a lie, I thought. However, Mendes and the writer Alan Ball said she was speaking honestly.

Frankly, I don’t buy it. It doesn’t fit the character as we know it (though it puts her in a different light, particularly her grilling Jane on sex with Ricky – I took it as a clinging for control over her formerly compliant “friend”). No one as cruel and as self-focused as Angela (who was aware that men wanted her since she was 12), would not have had sex by then. It’s a form of power and self-adulation that Angela would not have hesitated to use. Anyway, I don’t care what the guy who wrote it says, she’s a loose woman and was lying to Lester and very little you could say would change my mind.

Brazil is one of the top scifi movies of all time, in the dystopic-humanist scifi section as opposed to the spaceships-n-lasers BOOM! scifi. The backstory behind the battles over the editing, distribution, and release of this film are even more entertaining than the movie itself in many ways (long story short: Gilliam’s American distributor was an exec who cut and recut the film down to 90 minutes and made it into a romance movie with a happy ending. I know, twisted).

It’s a big, shambling mess of a movie. That Brazil is almost a 5 despite of that is a testament to the source material and the people involved with it’s making. The plot relies on too many absurdities and my suspension of disbelief is broken about four or five times throughout. At other times, it seems that it can’t decide whether it’s a farce or merely satirical. As a result, some pieces are aburd in a way that can be appreciated and other are absurd in an eye-rolling way. Not that a movie has to stick to any particular genre, it’s just that when someone’s going “take me seriously! just kidding! no, no, no, take me seriously! again! juuuust kidding! that time. I’m serious now. No, wait, I’m not. Nooooow I am…” it gets tedius.

A film fest of 1984, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, and maybe City of Lost Children would be a pretty sweet grouping.

Not a movie that bears repeated viewings or much scrutiny. I loved it when it first came out, but you can never go home again apparently. The ridiculous gay caricatures and the distorted history really kill it. As if Wallace being a commoner and impregnating Isabelle wasn’t enough, having the battle of Stirling Bridge without the bridge was a mythmaking feat for the record books. Braveheart is also an early look at Gibson’s obsession with torture, blood, and masochism.

Still, it’s a pretty good war hero movie, all things considered.

Stone’s second best work after Platoon. Eric Bogosian, who wrote the original play and co-wrote the screenplay, is great as the outrageous, courageous, rude, and vulnerable asshole of a DJ. The story is largely based on the last days in the life of Alan Berg, a talk show host in Denver who was murdered in 1984 by white supremacists. Powerful and moving.

Stone’s direction only gets annoying a few times… which makes it stand out among the Stone ouevre. More than half the movie takes place just watching Bogosian talk into his mic, and that’s a really hard movie to make exciting and edgy, but Stone and Bogosian manage to do it, so my hat’s off to them.

A great $6 DVD buy.

Works OK as a suspense piece. The silence is used as a wonderful tool. Could have been a 4 or 5 if it weren’t for all the ridiculous deus ex machinas (like the spar locking Sam Neil in the room, or the trite return of Billy Zane). The rape scene isn’t painful enough and is another big knock against it. Almost a 2.

At first glance, there isn’t much noteworthy about 2046. If you’re just watching to watch, you’ll notice the fantastic, artsy cinematography, the excellent soundtrack, and the flat storyline. Hmm… asian film, pretty visuals, empty storyline… pretty much describes every anime film ever made. I was ready to dismiss it after the first 40 minutes as art house eye candy.

However, when I reflected on what I had just watched, I realized at least some of the multiple levels that this movie was operating on. 2046 is also a story of love (not a love story, that is here too), an exploration of the human imperative to be with someone in a world of loneliness, a story of loss, memory and the past, and also an inner existentialist dialogue.

2046 is all of these things, but it is also a eulogy for Hong Kong.

Let me back up a step. 2046 is the sequel, sort of, to In the Mood for Love (summary: a man and a woman living in the same building realize that their spouses are having an affair. They spend much time together and have much in common, but are determined to not be as lowly as their spouses). There is plenty of crossover, from the opening monologue to the name of Chow’s Great Loves (Su Li Zhen, played in the original by Maggie Cheung, played in 2046 by Li Gong). It’s more of an echo than a sequel. Think of it as a derivative of ItMfL, but not a continuation of the storyline.

In 2046, Chow has become a womanizing, hard-drinking, cynic. He leaves Singapore in 1966 and returns to Hong Kong (the setting for In the Mood for Love), where he writes for a newspaper. He womanizes, he loves, he loses, he gains… and he’s also writing a novel set in the present but told as coming back from the future year of 2046. The tense of the narrative changes from present day (ca. 1966-67) to future looking backward (2046 to now) a few times. See, in 2046, there are trains connecting the whole world and many people are trying to get on them. To get to 2046, a place where nothing changes and no memories (and thus, no loves) are lost. No one ever returns. No one, that is, except Chow. Or the literary character that Chow is writing, at any rate. The voice of Chow-1967 and Chow-2046 are intermingled in a pleasing, and quite intentional, way.

There’s plenty in this movie for numerologists to love. There is a shot of Hotel 20×25 (Chow’s newspaper bits are 20 characters by 25 lines), there’s something to do with 10s, 200s, eight, and of course 2046. 2046 is the hotel room number that Chow wanted to stay in and the room he and Su share in In the Mood for Love.

2046 is also the year that the People’s Republic of China’s “status quo ante” guarantee to Hong Kong expires. Technically, it’s January 1, 2047, but 2047 is Chow’s room in 2046, so take your pick. Same difference.

In this way, 2046 is quite similar to Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, with a world-weary, heavy-drinking, cynical writer looking ruefully toward an inevitable future of loss and wistfully toward a past of loss beauty, standing in for Fowler’s world-weary, heavy-drinking, cynical writer looking ruefully toward an inevitable future of loss and wistfully toward a lost beautiful past. Chow’s loss is self-directed and under his control, Fowler’s is the opposite, a loss of captive love against his will.

It’s possible, though I highly doubt it, that Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) is a stand-in for the Chinese flirtation and dismissal of the British (she leaves for Singapore). I can see it, but… it’s a big stretch. Oh, and if someone wants to explain what the symbolism of Chow’s Japanese character (the one coming back from 2046) biting so forcefully into the apple, I’m all ears. Note: I am not sure any of this symbolism was intentional. Wong is a great director of moods, not so much one of meaning and all of this could be just subtext unknown but present. Or I could be reading too much into a pretty movie where the image is the message, man.

There are tons of of great, artsy type things that are not necessarily symbolic, but are demonstrative of a Work of Art as opposed to get-it-out dross. Things like the noir aspects to the Singapore line (cinematography, dialogue, and stilted acting), to the sepia toned cab rides that mirror Chow’s character’s development (in the second shot, Chow is alone, but in the same posture as earlier when he wasn’t, making the absence of the Other that much more poignant and memorable; both of these echo a cab scene with the One Love from Chow’s past). There are many bits like this throughout, showing the level of care and attention to detail that went into this movie. Bully on ya, Wong Kar Wai!

Stepping away from the symbolism, I also greatly enjoyed Chow’s character. A man filled with self hatred and still longing for the One Love that is no longer present, that he refuses to allow himself any real fealing or to allow himself to get close to anyone, particularly women. He is a user, grossly cruel and distant, a playboy, and yet… kind and loving at the same time, so long as no permanent relationship is required. Chow’s goodness and warmth shine through even when he’s being a cad. It is but a shallow warmth, though – he loves helping women do Big Events (such as paying for a plane ticket), but heartless, cruel, and most of all clueless in the same instance (paying for dinner with his and Bai’s blood/love money. For the record, I think he was clueless as to the money; he had an inkling it should mean something, but couldn’t place it, so he used it anyway, thus breaking Bai’s heart (again) and echoing their very first encounter when he ruined the moment by becoming a john). Chow’s existence is warped by his constant comparison of every woman in his life with his perfected image of his One Love, Su Li Zhen. This distorts him, distorts his viewpoint, destroys his capacity for relationships, and leads him to write 2046, the novel in the movie of the same name. He’s a great character and one that I feel I understand deeply. Make of that what you will.

And so on. For whatever reason, this movie really got my neurons all fired up.

The visuals throughout the movie are amazing. Lots of heavily saturated reds and greens, and you can tell that each shot was meticulously thought out for color and balance. For example, there is a shot of Zhang Ziyi on her bed; her robe is purple, her comforter is green, one pillow is blue, one is white, and the lighting is pinkish. All the colors are complementary (shades of pastel, actually) and gorgeous… and that shot was maybe 6 seconds long. Now stretch that for 128 minutes and you’ve got an idea of the visual opulence. The Hong Kong/Bai Ling sets are all greens, reds, and yellows. The Singapore/Su Li Zhen sets are all noirish black and white with heavy use of shadows. The soundtrack is superb as well with lots of classical and latin pieces.

Acting is good, this is Zhang’s best performance by far of anything I’ve ever seen her in. Leung Chiu Wai is steady and believable, I think without Leung, Chow would have lost that important warmth. Cast notables include: Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Hero, Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love), Zhang Ziyi (everything, lately), Li Gong (every Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige movie, ever), Faye Wong (famous C-pop singer too, Chungking Express), and a brief brief appearance by Maggie Cheung (Irma Vep, Bride with White Hair, Dragon Inn, Hero, a bazillion others).

Side notes: it would be a close contest between Zhang Ziyi and Reese Witherspoon for tiniest mighty mite on the silver screen. Both are lucky to hit 5’1″, I’m thinking. And Leung’s lucky to be 5’3 or 5’4 (don’t believe IMDB – it’s like NBA guidebooks where the heights are never accurate. Everyone in IMDB is actually 4 inches shorter than their listing). Li Gong is a normal sized, like 5’6-5’8 or so (watch the scenes between her and Leung, she’s taller for sure). Normal sized for people, pretty large by asian standards, and huge v. the Zhang/Witherspoon bifecta of powah!

Where was I? Oh yes, great movie. Purty, too.

It was OK for the first 14 hours or so, but then it started to drag.

King Kong is a movie in some serious need of editing, I might have liked it quite a bit if it was, oh, 2 hours long or so. I think the movie lost me for good when they got to the native village on Skull Island (hey! look at us! we live amongst rotting corpses!), but it never really grabbed me so there was not much to lose.

The movie is filled with surperfluous scenes that either do not advance the plot (such as much of the first 40 minutes) or are there merely to show off the CGI (velociraptor stampede could have been cut in its entirety). Jackson’s direction is his typical schlocky hackmeister crap, such as the switch to 12fps film with a tilted camera angle zoom in on some crappy skulls with a weak ass roar in the background. That may have worked in Braindead, but here, it’s just crap.

Other annoyances: there is no chemistry, none, between Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody. The natives on Skull Island are all whiteys in blackface (blue eyes, the makeup under the armpit of one of the white white white drummers is missing). Actually, the natives are just embarassingly bad. The first one they meet looks like gollum and the rest look like the orcs from LOTR. The native pole-jumping/kidnap scene is just retarded. Kong would have at least separated Darrow’s shoulders if not ripping her arms off her body when he first takes her. Darrow is remarkably never dirty, her slip never tears, and even in a chorus dress with no coat on the top of the Empire State Building, she never gets cold. Or hungry. The Starship Troopers 3 scene was totally unnecessary, and boring to boot.

Oh, and Jack Black as Carl Denham was the worst casting since Billy Bob Thornton did the voiceover for Jigo in Princess Mononoke. He was awful. Worse than awful.

Good parts: um, Kong was pretty sweet. The score really pushed the maudlin buttons. The Skull Island adventure park just rendered Jurassic Park 4 obsolete.

Not much to say, really. Good concept, poor execution. Intersting lighting is probably the best thing about it. The end, really from the middle of the movie on, is just horrible and ruins everything that came before it.

Of course, if the actors onscreen had taken my advice from the 10-minute mark, the whole movie would have been over by minute 12. Maybe they should consider that next time. I’m smart that way.

Saw could have been a 4 or 5, a shining star of the genre if it had been done right. Like, oh, Se7en. Instead we get a, ahem, hack job aiming for the quick buck. Oh well, c’est la vie.

The more I think about it, the more I want to give it a 1, so I’m just going to think upon it no more.

Rumor Has It – Jennifer Aniston has sex with Kevin Costner. As if that’s not enough to make you choose death by mariachi over seeing this movie, so does Shirley Maclaine. And probably the baby bug-eyed alien/sister Mena Suvari. Wild horses could not drag me to the theatre. Plot summary: fucked up family is un-fucked by fucking the same fucker.

King Kong – probably pretty decent, but 3 hours?!? From a schlocky director? For a movie we’ve already seen? Dude, cut an hour, would ya? My ass is numb.

The Family Stone – family unfeelgood piffle. Man brings uptight woman home to family for holidays, where he intends to propose. Hijinks ensue. Let me spoil the ending for you: Man (Dermot Mulroney) ends up with Sarah Jessica Parker (woman)’s sister (Claire Danes), and Luke Wilson (Mulroney’s brother) ends up with SJP. Shocking.

Bareback Mountin’ – gay cowboys in love. There’s mountains and pretty scenery and sociological claptrap and clenched jaw-scenery chewing by Heath and Jake. Or the Brawny paper towl guy and the Marlboro Man, I can’t really tell the difference which set of dudes is in this film. Lee’s direction is just this side of Eastwood-soporific, but those mountains sure are purty. No actual sex is shown, and the movie is offensive only to those who would rather exist in a world where homosexuals did not. Big Oscar noms, but destined to go the English Patient/Titannic route of zzZzZzzZZZZ/crapfestola.

I’ll be here all week, ladies and gents. Feel free to forward me any tidbits you would like me to PREreview for you. Offer void where prohibited by law.

I’m also going to take this moment to step aside and pat myself on the back for “fucked up family is un-fucked by fucking the same fucker.” That’s the best sentence I’ve written in months!

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first: there is no plot, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, the characters are hackneyed, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, it’s ridiculous, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, and the digital look they applied makes everything slightly fuzzy so you feel like the cameraman either needs to focus or you need glasses. Also, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow.

That said, Sky Captain is unique and I love it for that. The movie is meant to be a ridiculous swashbuckling adventure, straight from a comic book or those mid-century cliffhanger serials. An uber Buck Rogers, if you will. Similar to Sin City, almost the entire movie was bluescreened, and with this fredom, Sky Captain carves a world of its own. Unlike Sin City, Sky Captain was a box office failure. I blame fishsticks. (I expect the movie was surprisingly cheap to make, what with no location shoots and all, so it probably did alright, profit-wise. I expect a slew of CGI-primary movies coming up. Sort of like “reality” TV, the studios have an accelerant for their ROI)

The visuals styling is amazing, consisting largely of golden age scifi; the aftorementioned Buck Rogers, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and art deco. There are also minor homages to the Wizard of Oz, King Kong, RKO pictures… and Buck Rogers. The movie was directed with a visceral impact and the fantastic unreality of the universe is thrown in your face – submersible airplanes, miniature elephants, smoke hole ray guns, dinosaurs, and a complete disregard for the laws of physics. The sound is fantastic, too. It’s the greatest movie I’ve yet to play that gives one of those “wow!” demonstrations to my 8-channel receiver. Booyah.

The story, as mentioned previously, is nothing. Cotton candy filler. You’re not here for the destination, though, you’re here for the journey. Giovanni Ribisi, Jude Law, and Angelina Jolie all have pretty decent chops (and Jolie almost steals the movie. Now there is some charisma). Not that they need them, I could act in this movie and get away with it. Fishsticks Paltrow, on the other hand… that her appearance in this movie could be both nails-on-chalkboard grating and her acting be awful says as much about her skills as it does about my revulsion for uncharismatic schmoozers who only received their jobs and awards through nepotism. Was I editorializing? Oops, my bad. Fishsticks. Hate her.

Any movie that involves flying riveted robots with laser eye beams, Shangri-La, flying aircraft carriers, rockets, and a P-40 Warhawk is A-OK in my book. If you can accept the movie for what it is, rather than what you think it (or a “Movie”) should be, then you’ll find an emminently enjoyable ride.

At least, I did.

The reason I bring up Santa is because he makes a cameo appearance in the dull-as-prison-flatware Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Right smack dab in the middle, jolly Old Saint Nick pops up as a Deus Ex Machina to hand out some gifts that double as badly needed tools later in the story. I don’t remember the C.S. Lewis novel being so stupidly obvious, but I do remember it having Santa.

His presence is the most powerful reminder that The Chronicles of Narnia are stories for children about minotaurs, talking animals, wicked witches and folklore. It’s fantastical shit, fun for kids, but hardly suitable for the plumped-up epic-striving entombment that it gets in this movie. It’s pretty damn hard to take seriously any movie that has him making a cameo and wants you to go “ooooo.” But the makers here want you to. They don’t want to entertain you nearly as much as they want you to think you’re seeing something epic. It tries so hard to be The Lord of the Rings that they even film it in the same New Zealand wilds and weigh it down with just as many sweeping panoramic shots.
…
It continually fails as a story because it feels more like the cold, calculated construction of someone building a franchise series with big budgets. So, it takes even the silliest portions of the slim novel, like Santa, totally seriously. The dialog is sentimental claptrap. It is also nearly humorless, but the few occasions it makes an attempt are tired and trite. In fact, almost all the secondary characters are corny. The old professor the kids go to live with is doddering and “charming”. A pair of squabbling beavers are like fourth generation Xerox of Married… with Children.

One of the best recent-era modern arts films. There are political and social overtones (Chinese-Japanese hate/love, etc.) that act as more than the typical bridge-to-the-next-fight-scene window dressing, but they don’t get in the way too much.

The first fight scene is what really makes the movie. There is maybe one scene afterwards that approaches the brutality and brilliance you see there in the first 4 minutes.

The fights were choreogaphed by by Yuen Woo Ping, before he became Yuen Woo Ping!!!! in the west (for his work with the Matrix series, and more recently, Kill Bill). So the choreography is good. Jet Li is still in his high energy phase (his work in Once Upon a Time in China is more amazing, but he’s still a quick little guy in this 1994 film).

By “the choreography is good,” I mean… the fight scenes are amazing (even if the “boxing like a westerner” thing never went anywhere). The wire work is unobtrusive, the action is explosive, the fighting is stellar. None of those punch-missing-by-a-mile things you see all over western cinema. The precision here is remarkable; misses are by mere inches, at most. The speed is remarkable as well. No big windups, just flurry after of flurry of this stuff. Amazing.

There are tons of continuity and story problems, of course (this is a kung fu action flick, after all), but nothing sufficient to bring the rating down a notch. Good times.

The DVD is another weirdo: there are subtitles… but the only audio option is english! So you can… have your english subtitles… with your english-dubbed movie? Definitely not the Criterion treatment. No frills, no extras, and dubbing make the DVD less than stellar, but the movie still r0x0r5.

King Lear, as interpreted by Akira Kurosawa, and done so brilliantly. I think Throne of Blood (Macbeth) is possibly better, given the technological limitations when Throne of Blood was made.

Nevertheless, Ran is brilliant. A masterpiece. The first half is slow and ponderous and full of much acting and buildup. Then BAM one of the greatest war scenes ever put to film. Kurosawa’s use of color throughout the film is brilliant.

A technical note: there are no closeups the entire film. I think a telephoto lense was used throughout. Even when Ichimonji (Lear, played brilliantly by Tatsuya Nakadai) is shown solo on the screen, it’s not a true closeup; there are no I’m-a-star face shots.

If you know Lear, you know the plot. If not, old king has epiphany, divides his kingdom amongst his sons, the corrupt ones turn on him, take everything, and he wanders the world crazy and alone.

Unfortunately, I saw the old DVD version which has no special features and, this is funny, no subtitle options. Instead of using the built-in DVD subtitle features, the makers of the first DVD moved the picture up and filmed the English subtitles. So, there’s no option for other language subtitles, or no subtitles, or other audio, just… a filmed subtitle track along with the movie. It’s fun-nay.

There’s a masterworks DVD version which takes care of these things. Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t carry it, so I can’t check out the extras. Bummer.

Pros: Leo, Tom
Cons: everything else

Uninteresting, typical moralizing/moronic Spielbergian slants (robodirector: You. must. hate. the. mother. She. is. a. whore.), unimaginatively shot, no energy. People typically love these rogueish rapscallions who break the conventions of society and get away with it in a charismatic way. Even when they’re later caught.

Here, it’s just presented a tragedy, and that takes away the joy that should be present. A younger or more energetic director would have been a better fit. Except they would have done jump cuts and just ruined it in a different way.

Spielberg’s moral of the story: parents, don’t get divorced or your kid will run away and become an international criminal jetsetter. (from my point of view, that’s a pretty good tradeoff, actually.)

Oh, and the Jennifer Garner/whore scene? Painful. Absolutely the worst single scene I’ve encountered in recent memory. She can’t act, the lines were awful, and it was nails-on-chalkboard painful. Leo does his best, but Ollivier couldn’t save that scene. Just… ouch. And the deus ex machina in re: Walken? Puh-leese.

Frankly, I would much rather watch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Sure, one’s imaginary and the other is based on real events. Sure, one is a rogue and the other a supersecret CIA agent/game show host. At least Confessions is interesting and fun. Plus, Kaufman.

It’s pop schlock, but I liked this movie quite a bit. Perhaps it was the zero expectations I had for it, or the presence of Alan Tudyk (Wash in Firefly/Serenity, Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball), or the surprise appearance of Laura Fraser (Neverwhere) as the Farrier… but it’s just a pleasant, fun, movie. In the Blade sort of way.

Not too grand, doesn’t take itself too seriously, not overwrought with emotion… just fun with faint trappings of Grand Hollywood Hero on top. I hated Shannyn Sossamon (she does diva bitch really well, for a reason. Also, her handmaiden was waaaay hotter than the “beautiful princess”, so take that you hipper-than-thou DJ-ite! Sorry, got catty). I take that back, I hated her in the first half when she played a Heather, then when her character changes to the supporting love goddess girlfriend she was OK. I think I just hate hipsters, but that’s my cross to bear. Anyhoo, Heath is dreamy and appropriately charismatic. The bad guy is not over-the-top malevolent bad in a Potter-sense, just bad.

And I liked the 70s rock anthems thrown in there. Good times.