More Than Meets the Eye

A good portion of my childhood was spent in a world created by Hasbro. I was always incredibly enamored with the Transformers. I played with the toys; watched the cartoon; read the comic books; pretended to be the characters; and talked about the toys, cartoon, comic books, and characters with friends and family. I would recreate the sounds from the cartoon every time one of my toys or my pretend body would go from one physical state to another. Needless to say, I was looking forward to the movie.

Anne mentioned that if we wanted to, we could head to the theater when we were at her folks' for the weekend and see Transformers. You can see why I love this woman. We went to the theater, paid way too much for two people going to see a movie, grabbed our pop and our seats, and prepared for the movie.

First, the good. The special effects were really, really good. There wasn't any "out of place" effects where the actors don't seem to be part of the special effect that I noticed, which is a feat in and of itself. There was a slight nod to the sound of the transforming the first time that we saw a vehicle change in to robot form which I greatly appreciated considering how many times I mimicked that noise on my own. Then there is the voice. I would have boycotted this movie if Peter Cullen wasn't the voice of Optimus Prime. Any other voice commanding the Autobots under the name Optimus Prime would have been a travesty of epic proportions. I got goosebumps when he said "Autobots, roll out." They need to get a recording of Cullen doing every possible sound in the English language so that he can always be the voice of Prime. Nothing else will do. The human characters did an admirable job in the "I'm shocked by this car turning in to a giant robot" category. Also, they served as good comic relief in appropriate places. The director, Michael Bay, seemed willing to embrace the "cheese" of the animated series which was actually welcome from a nostalgic point of view.

Now, the bad. The plot seemed to skip forward in several different places such that I felt like we missed something. Some characters just seemed to be abandoned without seeing the ultimate resolution of their plot lines. The fight scenes felt too brief. I wanted to see Prime lay some smack down over a few minutes. Also, during the battle scenes, it was sometimes hard to determine which giant robot was which. They seemed to mesh together at different times.

This is a movie that is crying, screaming, yelling, and begging for a director's cut. For me, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring did not feel complete until we received the extended version. I think the same is true for Transformers. I want the holes in the story to be filled. I want to be able to watch the giant robots pummel each other for more than 30 seconds at a time. I want there to be an educational section at the end to close the show with someone saying "Now I know!" and to have someone respond "And knowing is half the battle." Oh, wait. Wrong '80's cartoon show.

Final verdict: Very good, but not awesome action movie. Four out of five energon cubes.

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Upon Further Review: Ocean's Twelve

I can tend to be very critical of movies. Especially sequels of movies that I really enjoy. For instance, see my opinion on the two Matrix sequels. With the advent of a new summer and, subsequently, a new round of summer sequels, this issue came to a head again. One of the movies that we were interested in seeing (if for no other reason than completeness) was Ocean's Thirteen. We had seen the first two, so we figured that we should probably see the third. I should point out that both Anne and I really enjoyed the first one. I loved the pacing. I loved the twists. I loved the cast. Then we saw the second one. I thought that it was horribly unbelievable. I know, I know, the first one wasn't exactly believable either, but that's not the point.

The entire movie seemed to hinge on the very flimsy premise that they were able to get things completely in place pretty much before the main story even started. And it was all mainly a ploy anyway. All things considered, it was a fairly disappointing movie to me. After we watched the third movie, I had pretty much the same reaction as I did following the third pirates move: it was better than the second one. Anne, not letting me rest on making a blanket statement like that, asked the obvious question: "Why?" Nuts. I wasn't prepared for that. Now, I have to defend my position, and to be perfectly honest, all I had was my memories of the impressions that I had of the movie instead of any actual remembrance of the "why." I mentioned this to a friend of mine at work, and he had said that he felt the same way after seeing Ocean's Twelve, but that "it gets better after watching it again." Since we really didn't have any memories of the second movie, we figured that we should get the first two and watch them again. I somehow made it through a full-screen version of the first movie (I'm kind of a jerk when it comes to movies, in case you haven't noticed. I need to watch the wide-screen, or it drives me nuts), and then we came to watching Ocean's Twelve again. I have to say that my friend was right. Perhaps I was simply paying closer attention this time around. Or maybe it was a case of wanting to pay closer attention this time. Either way, it seemed to make more sense. As such, I enjoyed the movie more. Is it better than the first one? No. Is it better than the third? No. However, it's now closer than it was before. I guess that's something.

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Yaaarrrrrr!

Anne and I seem to develop traditions with movies. During the run of Lord of the Rings movies, we would go to see the current one during Christmas with at least part of Anne's family. It was a lot of fun, but left us with a bit of a hollow feeling when they were all done. Then, we went and saw the second Pirates of the Carribean movie with some friends of ours. At that point, Anne was expecting Squeaker. This time around, they were expecting. If they make another one, we're going to have to flip for who's going to be expecting at that time. Vegas currently has odds saying that it'll probably be me.

Anyway, we were all a bit disappointed with the second film. It seemed to me to be a series of events put in place to be able to get from one gigantic set-piece to another. There was a lack of the solid and coherent story that made us care about any of the characters that we fell in love with in the first film. A good summation of the situation was done by the brilliant people at Ask a Ninja. Check out their review of the second film.

I'm a completist. If I have one album of a group that I really like, I try to collect them all. If I have one graphic novel of a series, I try to get them all. If I watch one movie, I try to see them all. Such was the case with The Matrix, even though I saw that the series was very quickly going downhill. To a certain extent, when you were disappointed with the second movie in a series, it helps the third movie by lowering expectations. You aren't necessarily expecting to watch a fantastic movie, so there's no let-down. This helped Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End.

All of the major characters are back: Jack Sparrow (excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow), Elizabeth Swann, Will Turner, and their crew. Elizabeth and Will are charged with the task of retrieving Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones's locker. I was disappointed that they didn't have a Monkey's song playing when they were there, but such is life. They are opposed by Lord Bennet and Davey Jones himself, who has really let himself go since the sixties. OK, I'm done with the same name jokes.

Ultimately, I think that the best thing I can say about the third pirates movie is that it's significantly better than the second film. For one thing, the third move has an actual plot, which was a nice change of pace. It's also significantly darker than either of the first two films and has the gigantic, epic battle that's becoming standard in these sorts of movies. However, it still doesn't nearly approach the classic (yes, I said "classic") that the original film was. To a certain extent, they should have just left the first move to stand on its own without creating sequels. I think we all would have been happier for it.

Final Verdict: two-and-a-half large, floppy hats out of five.

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Third Time's the Harm?

I remember the comic book that got me into collecting when I was in junior high. It was a one-shot (complete story contained in one issue as opposed to a multiple-issue story arc) of The Amazing Spider-Man (issue #340) in which Spidey fights a group of women super villains. At the conclusion of the episode, he had decided that he wanted to be permanently rid of his powers, which he accomplished through the help of a "gracious" researcher's special ray beam gizmo. I didn't put a spoiler alert on this because the issue is now almost 15 years old. If you haven't read it by now, you probably aren't. Anyway, I collected the next 59 issues of that title, missing only #344 on my way to #399. I never got the 400th issue, for some reason. That's about when I stopped regularly collecting comics. At any rate, because that issue of Amazing was the one that got me going in my collection, Spidey's always had a very special place in my heart. It's the reason that the movies based on the comics are two of the few movies that I demanded we see in the theaters instead of waiting for the DVD. I've really enjoyed the work that Sam Rami, Toby Maguire, and the whole team have done on the first two efforts. They've remained relatively true to the source material (which I greatly appreciate) with their deviations being understandable, justifiable, and done in a way to not detract from the character. However, I'm having growing concerns with the upcoming third installment of the series.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping for something to go wrong this time; I just think that there's a chance of it happening. What they have going for them is obvious. The fact that the large majority of the cast is returning for the third installment of what is essentially a sci-fi/fantasy film is a testament to Rami, who also returns as the man in the big chair for number three (got tired of saying third movie) which is another plus. Rami deserves a large portion of the credit for the first two movies. They're still working with a character that has a ton of material from which to draw (40 years and counting) and, presumably, they'll be remaining true to the story lines again. Now we come to my ever-popular "however."

However, here are some of the things about which I'm concerned:

• It's still a sequel - It's incredibly rare in Hollywood for a sequel to be as good or better than its predecessors. We saw this with the Batman films, with the third X-Men movie (though the second was the best of the bunch), the Matrix films, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. Not to mention the huge number of sequels that go right to video ("Oh, hey! I didn't know that they made a sequel to that. Why is it starring Dolph Lundgrin?") The sequel successes is a much shorter list which includes Indiana Jones (at least for now, depending on how much input Lucas insists on having) and a few others. Now, a large portion of the "horrible sequel" list includes the common theme of the reigns and roles having been passed on to someone else, though the Matrix and Pirates movies also had colossal cast and crew continuity. Man, with alliteration like that, you'd think I was Stan Lee or something.
• The ego potential - Everyone involved in the film right now knows that they've done great work in the past. There is always a temptation to assume that you can just breeze through another one just like the previous (see also: Matrix, The and sequels). Are the actors going to put in the preparation necessary for their roles? Is Rami going to be as demanding of the cast since he has such a history with them? Where will they fit Bruce Campbell and Stan Lee in cameos?
• Character overload - This is my largest concern. One of the nice things about the previous two movies, is that they were really allowed to have focus. The first movie allowed us to concentrate on the origin story of the character and his battle with the Green Goblin. That was largely it, and it was a good thing. It was the first movie in what was hoped at the time to be a franchise of films. We were given the time to meet the principle characters, learn how they interact, and to care about them. In the second movie, we had the on-going love story of Peter and Mary Jane and the introduction of and conflict with Doctor Octopus, with the smaller sub-plot of Harry's downward spiral. Essentially, only two major new characters were introduced in the second movie: Doc Ock and his arms. The third movie is going in a new direction, though. We're going to be introduced to the Sandman. There will have to be at least two epic fight sequences with him along with learning his origin story. The whole sub-plot with Harry's hatred of Spider-Man looks like it'll be coming to the forefront. Peter's relationship with MJ is continuing to grow. It looks like we'll see the introduction (beyond a 30-second bit in the first movie) of Betty Brant - another love interest of Peter's. There's the symbiotic costume that will be introduced, along with where it comes from and what it actually does when Peter puts it on. In theory, we would also have the introduction of Venom in this movie as well. That's a lot of stuff to throw at an audience in one movie. The concern is that some or all of the characters won't receive the necessary development on the screen to make us care about them, which was so vital for the first two movies. Who gets short-changed? I ask you to remember the Batman series. They felt the need to keep "upping the ante" as they progressed through the movies. One villain in the first movie (Joker). Two villains in the second (Penguin and Catwoman) and third (Riddler and Two-face). Three whole villains in the fourth installment (Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze and Bane). The fourth movie is universally panned as the worst of the group. They relegated Bane, one of the best Batman villains to have appeared since 1970, to essentially being idiot hired muscle. This is the character who, in the comics, out-thought Batman on his way to breaking Bruce Wayne's back in the Knightfall story arc. I don't want the same sort of thing to happen to Venom or the Sandman. Sandman may not be a world-shaking villain, but played by Thomas Haydon Church, he should be a compelling character on film. Venom is one of the best Spider-Man villains to have appeared since 1990 (sound familiar?) and needs to be given time to show his motivation. I should probably get out of the bullets now.
  

So, as you can see, I feel pretty passionately about these characters. To a certain extent, I grew up with them, and I want them to be treated with dignity and care. And I hope that Rami and the crew cause this whole post to be laughable in about a month.

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Music and Lyrics

I really enjoy going on dates with my wife. After nearly seven years of marriage and three kids, we need to take opportunities the present themselves (in the form of grandparents arriving on the doorstep) to get out on our own and remember the fact that we actually are husband and wife before father and mother. So, we took the restaurant gift certificate that was hard-won in a Christmas gift exchange game and the movie tickets that were a prize for a Super Bowl party and went out on our own. We had been planning on seeing Pursuit of Happiness because I really wanted to see Will Smith work a Rubik's cube, but since it had already been out for quite a while, it left the theater for which we won the tickets the day were were going to watch a movie. C'est la vie. The decision was made to go see the romantic comedy Music and Lyrics. I'm the type of person that really enjoys watching movies of nearly any genre. I'm not big on pure romantic films, but I enjoy a good love story woven into the plot. I'm not big on musicals, but I enjoy a good dance fight as much as the next guy. As far as comedies, I'm pretty much always in the mood for a good laugh. So, I was fine with seeing Music and Lyrics, and here's my review.

Music and Lyrics stars Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant along with his infamous world's smallest nipples. That's the best line in this piece. I'm sorry. Grant plays a washed-up '80s pop music star who has been getting by in life on his former fame by playing such highly-prestigious venues such as Knotts Berry Farm and the Illinois State Fair while his former writing partner, who handled the lyrics while Grant did the music, went on to sell millions of albums, make movies and be knighted by the queen. Really. It's like the an '80s version of the Beatles if, instead of dying, John Lennon went on to be a complete has-been and Paul McCartney had become Tom Hanks along with being, well, Paul McCartney. Or should that be Sir Paul McCartney?

Barrymore is a flighty young lady with some skeletons in the closet and a penchant for killing house plants. She does pretty well with the plastic ones, however. Grant is frantically trying to come up with a song for a Christina Aguilera-like pop princess to revive his career. Or, at least, make a couple of quick bucks out of the deal. Since he only works with the music part of things, he needs a lyricist. Enter Drew Barrymore's character. She's done some writing in the past (poetry and the like, no music), but a bad experience has really shaken her confidence. In short: They need each other. Everybody now. Awwww.

Before I mention any other opinions on the movie, let me say this: I liked it. It was a cute movie with many good moments and good laughs. The casting was fantastic from top to bottom. Yes, the plot was predictable, but what romantic comedy has a plot that isn't predictable? I don't think it's a gigantic spoiler to say that they end up falling in love. That's the way these movies work. Now for the problems. Any time that you can leave a movie and talk about things you noticed in the editing, it's probably not the best job of editing ever. There were quite a few times in which the shot would switch from Barrymore to Grant and back again that I would notice what was being said didn't match up with how the face was moving. Once or twice having that happen is forgivable, but multiple times in the same scene is, quite frankly, sloppy. At the same time, there were two very noticeable long takes in which the actors are going back and forth, going through their scene with the director never cutting. That's either showing a lot of faith in your actors, or a lack of faith in your editors. At this point, I'm willing to say that it was probably a combination of the two. Barrymore is passably-likable in her role and puts in a generally-solid performance. No Oscar nominations will come out of this movie for her, but she did a good job. Hugh Grant plays the Hugh Grant character to perfection. He rarely goes beyond that role of the likable, witty Englishman (see also, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually, et. al.), but there's nothing wrong with knowing what you do well and sticking with it. He's never going to be mentioned in the same breath as DeNiro, Hanks and Farrel (sorry, had to throw that one in there), but he's a good actor. Even if his nipples are very distracting. The movie could very easily have been rated PG if they would have (A) toned down on the pop princess's dancing a bit and (B) increased the fabric in her wardrobe slightly. At one point, she was wearing what I can only describe as a "full-body thong." There was no noticeable swearing, no nudity and only two instances of intimacy. One when they start kissing, fall to the floor and then we cut to the next morning and the other with their legs sticking out from under the piano.

All things considered, it was a good movie that made me laugh, and Anne liked it too. It's a great movie to which you can take a date.

I give it a three out of five very tiny nipples.

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My Latte!

Normally, when I wake up, I'll have some form of a song running through my head. Lately, this has included songs by Brad Sucks and OK Go. I don't know why. Maybe my dreams have a sound track. If that's the case, I'm glad that I've never woken up with a Village People song stuck in my head. I don't know that I'd want to be involved in one of those kind of dreams. This morning, however, I found myself with the line from a movie running through my head. I don't know if it's from (completely self-imposed) sleep deprivation or what exactly, but it was a line from the movie Cheaper By the Dozen. Not the original, but rather the remake which starred Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt. It's a scene where a few of the kids finally confront a couple of bullies that have been bothering one of the siblings. A fight breaks out when one of the bullies has his Starbucks cup slapped out of his hand at which point he exclaims, "My latte!" with just the right blend of pout, shock and whine. I laugh every time that I see that scene. Really, I laugh every time I hear that line, so you can imagine that I'm chuckling pretty good at the moment. I really appreciate a line delivered well enough to make me laugh. It started me thinking about some of the other great lines from movies.

Steve Correll as Brick in Ron Burgundy:

Ron: Brick, where did you get a grenade?
Brick: [completely deadpan] I don't know.

Morpheus (Laurance Fishburn) and Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix:

Neo: [completely lost] I know Kung Fu.
Morpheus: Show me.

Grandma (Jean Schertler) to Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts) in Runaway Bride:

Grandma: [talking about Richard Gere's character] I like his tight butt.
Maggie: [shocked] Grandma!
Grandma: Well, I do!

Marty (Carol O'Conner) about Charlie (David Duchovney) in Return To Me:
Marty: This is Charlie. His wife's dead.
Everyone else: [exuberant, inviting him to play poker]

Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) to the Count (Christopher Guest) in The Princess Bride:
Inigo: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

I think you get the idea.

We don't usually relate scenes from movies; we relate lines. At least, that's what I do. I enjoy the overall experience of a movie. I enjoy breaking it down and talking about why I liked or didn't like certain aspects. I love it when a movie or television show gets a line stuck in my head that'll pop up randomly and bring a smile to my face. I love sharing it with friends. Reliving that shared experience of having seen a good movie. I relish that connection. Getting them to smile or laugh or say, "I loved that part!" Maybe I just need to get out more. There are times where we get too caught up in the "big picture" and the "long-term." Yes, they're important. However, what is the long-term but a collection of moments? What is the big picture if not the sum of collected scenes? Carpe Diem, but be willing to stop and smell the roses. Enjoy the laughs. Enjoy the silly (Brick), the shocking (Grandma) and the dense (Neo). I know that it helps me get through my day. This is usually where the whole group breaks into a musical number. Maestro, if you please...

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