Ceaseless Idleness

Iron Man has a frowny face which makes him look sad and tough. Tony Stark is conflicted, self-destructive (and I wonder if they’ll ever bring in his alcoholism or just nod to it, like they did in one set of scenes. I doubt it, it seems to be made for kids, who don’t care). I’m getting tired of self-destructive superheroes. I’d like to see one that likes his/her job, does it well, knows the score, and doesn’t need people taking care of them and “getting through to them”. They’re normal, they like people, and they have superpowers. Does this exist?

I did like the scene where they land in the biodome and talk for a minute, then the ensuing action sequence, where there was no music and good chemistry between Mr. Cheadle and Mr. Downey. Chemistry between males was pretty high all around, actually. The action in general was pretty good, if confusing at the end.

Best part, honestly, trailer for Tron 2. I could have watched that several times and called it good. Much better in the big theater. No matter how the movie ends up, the trailer was well done.

Really terrible. Through the first 20 minutes I kept saying, “Wow, this is Michael Bay bad.” But then it took it to a whole new level and finished . A quick run through:

• I don’t know how this thing got green-lit. It’s so WEIRD. The tone is so off – I’m trying to imagine how they decided who the target audience was: “Well, there’s about 500 people who have read the comic, and then there’s about 1000 guys who like action movies and hate themselves. That’s our audience.”
• Which leads me to…the makers seem to hate the audience. Or just hate in general. There’s this whole theme of – If You Work at a Regular Job You’re A Loser that it keeps coming back to, as if it couldn’t see past the whole destiny thing and keeps getting caught on the job. Makers – watch Matrix again: once he leaves the office he doesn’t go back, because we don’t want to see it again – IT’S NOT IMPORTANT. Being a superhuman killer, is not, in fact, a viable career choice for everyone.
• But then the closest thing that it cam be compared to isn’t The Matrix, it’s anime. Pick a standard weird anime. Loser kid with hidden superpowers and overwhelming fate? Check. Untouchable hot chick mentor? Check. Unlikeable loserness difficult to get past even when he’s supposed to be cool? Check. Overly dramatic, cliched dialogue, with unbelievable plot twists and points? Check. Out-of-place gory fighting and crueltly? Check.
• Angelina Jolie is by far the best thing in it. I don’t really like her in general – but she’s quite likeable here, she actually makes her lines sound like they come from a cohesive human – so she’s rising in my estimation. Morgan Freeman, even in all his Morgan-ness, can’t sell the Loom of Doom.
• A couple of the set pieces were amazing. But if you’ve seen the extended trailer you’ve seen them. Yep.
• No one says the f-bomb that much. We’re back to 90′s action movies that came out after Pulp Fiction and felt the f-bomb was the reason it worked. It’s distracting. DISTRACTING.

Advice: It’s not a stupid movie popcorn movie to watch after a long day – I wish I had that time back. Watch the trailer a couple of times, then move on. Here it is, to save you some time.

I’m really trying to like this movie (1992 Director’s Cut, mainly, though I look at the Theatrical Cut as well) because I know it’s place in the sci-fi canon, which I respect. Some movies have taken quite a bit from it – Fifth Element is a strong homage, Dark City takes a lot stylistically. But the move it reminds me of the most is the Crow (I’m aware that sounds weird. Of course the Crow came afterwards. But that’s not the order I saw them in). What they share is they take forever to get where they’re going, they’re often dark (literally) and rainy. They’re shot really well (this movie exceptionally well). They don’t telegraph action – they post it in the mail, go inside and listen to Vangelis, come back out to make sure it’s in the mail, and go back inside and watch some shows about rain. It takes forever to get anywhere, except in scenes where things happen too quickly and are over too quickly (I could have watched a lot more interrogation at the beginning, it was the best-written part of the whole film).

The shot in every reference to Blade Runner in books.

The narration in the theatrical version is terrible. Narration, in general, is fine – this narration doesn’t work. Wrong tone, wrong delivery for this film, which is an artistic, sci-fi “thinker”. Have a listen:

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The narration’s like the dopey cousin who wanders into the shoot thinking he needs to clarify things when they don’t need clarified. Harrison Ford’s often not sure of what he’s doing here. He smiles, grimaces, stares, etc. but not consistently or in a way that builds a specific character. The best performances were from Joe Turkel as Dr. Eldon Tyrell and William Sanderson as J.F. Sebastian. Check out this scene from Dr. Tyrell where he questions Deckard about his process for determining if Rachael was an android:

Turkel, channeling Boris Karloff.

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James Hong, in a small part as Hannibal Chew who makes eyes (“just eyes, I just do eyes”) for androids was good as well. Rutger Hauer was solid as an android with feelings (it’s clear why he’s the leader) until the last scenes where he got down to his biker shorts and tiptoe-ran around the big wet gloomy apartment building with glee. There is no hyperbole in the last sentence – watch it and tell me that’s not what he does. Sean Young as Racheal is fine, but pretty cold for someone who (gasp!) might be an android. Daryl Hannah was pretty good as Pris – innocent enough to con her way into a meeting with Tyrrel but apparently a killing machine with the thighs.

A couple of differences between the book and the movie:

There are many, but here are a couple of the most dramatic.

• Book: Deckard is in a troubled marriage, the opening scene with them arguing about the setting on their mood-altering drug tells us about their relationship.
  Movie: He’s single (director’s cut) or divorced (theatrical cut).
  Does it work? Makes him look like less of a jerk sleeping with the android. Fits with noir theme (troubled wife doesn’t).
• Book: Rachael, the android, does know she’s a replicant, and is a full-on femme fetal. She seduces Decker to keep him from killing her replicant friends (you have emotional attachment to me, have emotional attachment to them, the approach) and then kills his real goat  (on the roof with his android sheep) in revenge when it doesn’t work.
  Movie: Rachael just finds out she’s a replicant during the process of the story. Decker seduces (forcefully) her and they drive off together at the end, supposedly to try to work out human/android marriage and it’s consequences on society.
  Does it work? The book is pretty depressing, even though it’s so enjoyable. The movie would have to be 20 hours longer to sustain it’s gazey pace with the complexities of human behavior described in the book.

The book is a good read. It approaches (APPROACHES) actual literature – nuances in mood and character are observed pretty well, and it isn’t formuliac. It makes me want to read other Phillip K. Dick stuff, when I want to get depressed about the future.

I think at some point they just lost track of what the hell they were doing and gave it to some goth kids in drama to take care of. “Go ahead and finish. There’ll be a movie out later called the Crow. You’ll need to inspire it quite a bit. So heavy on the drama, and heavy on the weird. Heavy on the slow.”

Randomocity:

• Deckard plays piano? Because he has a Past, I guess, with a unicorn, no less.
• Roy kisses his maker on the lips. Probably a lot of people want to do that.
• It takes people too long to get places – it’s taking Harrison Ford about 5 minutes to get up these stairs. Just head on up, brother! They ain’t gonna break!
• This scene where he goes to get Darryl Hannah is nice and creepy.
• Between you and me, they got the noir thing down. If it isn’t rain, it’s dark with fan, shutter, or hole-in-the-ceiling lighting, an emotionally mute and troubled cop (ex-cop pulled out of retirement, even), even a femme sort-of-fatale.
• There are very few uncool shots. There are a lot of cool shots. Most of it is really beautiful to look at. Which may be why it took so long to get anywhere narratively – everyone just kept getting distracted?

Background: Re-watched High Fidelity tonight. I watch a lot of movies lately. First couple of times I saw this movie I didn’t like it – too depressing. First time I saw it a friend who worked at a video store got it the day or the day before it was put on the shelves and brought it home so I could watch it with she and her roommates, a little gift. I told them I was looking forward to it, had read the book (recommended to me by a friend, now my wife) and then watched it with them and after told them how depressing I thought it was. Nice.

The book, though, is not a rose garden either. It’s funny because it’s accurate and painful and it’s fun to read because it’s well written but it’s depressing as well. Not Jude the Obscure depressing, but it’s not an escape book, at least for me.

Review: The movie is great. The content is great: insightful 30-something media snob grappling with relationships. There were parts I loved: when he screams and holds his head in the rain after he realized he’ll never get back together with Charlie. How he wears big geeky high-quality headphones on the train to work. The give and take at the record store. It looked in the movie like he actually worked there. I could relate to the character more when I was younger. This time I picked up this whole “Come to Chicago” vibe – like it was a travel guide fo the cool parts of the city. I’m sure Chicago is cool and growing up there is cool. People around here who are from there like to say that they’re from there. I’ve been there – it’s a nice city! It’s not the center of cool, though (that’s reserved for other parts of the midwest – like…actually, for the midwest, that’s probably as ‘cool’ as it gets). And in the movie he’s never as big of a loser as he is in the book, unforunately. But it’s very likeable.  The best parts were how he was falling apart and how hard a time he had pulling his head out, the accurate stuff about relationships and how they’re messy and how dramatic single life is and can be. The extras were good if you read the book, for example you got the scene in the house with the amazing vynil singles, which is a good scene. The interviews with Cusack and Stephen Frears, the director, confirm as usual that most Americans in Hollywood are idiots and precious when interviewed about films and most people from the UK come off as normal, charming, or intelligent. A few exceptions to this: Claire Danes (extras for Stardust)…actually that’s the only exception I can think of. The maxim my wife and I got by – if you enjoyed the movie, don’t watch the extras. They’ll only ruin it for you. The most dramatic case of this for us was another Cusack film, actually, Say Anything, which is an amazing, wonderful, great film to me and to listen to him and Cameron Crowe and Ione Skye talk back and forth over each other about each other’s wonderfulness made me think carefully about the movie. ‘The hell?’ I thought. ‘How do they ever get any work done, they just sit around mirrors and light candles to each other.’

Great song I heard through this movie:

	The Beta Band – Dry The Rain
	Found at skreemr.com