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| Friday, July 30, 2010 01:31 PM |
| Recyclotron |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Who doesn't love a good novelty toaster? This one's like a defibrillator! Imagine how dramatic your breakfast could be: "Live, damn it, live! You've never given up on anything in your life, now fight! Fight!!"
- There are already way too many versions of Monopoly out there, and a DC Universe-themed one would make exactly no sense, so it's probably just as well the project got cancelled. But I still love these sketches by Mike Allred for the Community Chest cards. (Via)
- At last, some plot details for Lars von Trier's upcoming sci-fi epic, Melancholia. Intriguing.
- The Venice Film Festival's competition lineup sounds pretty impressive. Included are the latest projects from Sofia Coppola (Somewhere, starring Stephen Dorff), Tom Tykwer (Three), Takashi Miike (13 Assassins), Vincent Gallo (Promises Written in Water), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), and Tsui Hark (Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame).
- That Total Recall readaptation is on the way, with direction by Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard) and writing by Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen, Salt, Equilibrium). Hmmm...
- Various Grant Morrison movies are in the works! Woo hoo!
- This teaser trailer for Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage isn't particularly impressive, but the filmmakers appear to be following in Ray Harryhausen's footsteps, which could be fun.
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| Tagged (?): Art (Not), Board games (Not), Comic books (Not), Food (Not), Gadgets (Not), Gaming (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Products (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Video (Not) |
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| Tuesday, July 27, 2010 04:44 PM |
| On the Viewer - Recently Seen Film Roundup |
 by Fëanor |
Holes - I don't know if it's because I'm a big softy anymore, or because I was blinded by my fond memories of the young adult novel that this film is based on, or because it actually is a good film, but I really enjoyed Holes, and found it to be very moving. It's the story of a young boy sent to a brutal work camp for a crime he didn't commit. That story is interwoven with two other stories out of his family's past which turn out to have essential connections to people and events in his present. Ultimately it's a story of redemption, and the way everything ends up coming together is really powerful. It's a funny, clever, poignant film with a surprisingly great cast which includes Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler, Dule Hill, and Shia LaBeouf (whom I still like, despite the fact that he was in the Transformers movies and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull). It's hard to call it a kids' movie, though. I mean, the story set in the Old West that revolves around Hill's character is incredibly dark.
Toy Story 3 - The Toy Story films are probably Pixar's greatest achievement in a long line of great achievements. If you think they're just kids' movies about talking toys, you are woefully mistaken. Toy Story 2, I feel, is about becoming aware of the inevitability of death - or at least, the inevitability of change and loss. In Toy Story 3, that change and loss - that death - cannot be put off any longer, and we must finally stare it in the face and come to grips with it. The film is incredibly effective and moving, especially to a new parent like myself. It's about a child growing up and learning to leave childish things behind. But it's also about a parent learning how to let a child grow up. It's about knowing when and how to stick together, and when and how to let people go. And besides all that, it's also incredibly entertaining, clever, imaginative, fun, and funny, and in the middle it turns into a classic, perfectly executed jailbreak thriller. It's an amazing cinematic achievement. But I warn you - have tissues handy. The scene in the garbage dump, where they're staring the end in the face, and they all join hands? Oh my God!!! The weeping! Anyway, I assume they will eventually release a Toy Story trilogy DVD set, and when they do, I'm going to have to pick that up and introduce Griffin to these films.
Ratatouille - Speaking of Pixar, I missed a lot of their movies! Seeing this one was my first step toward catching up. I almost didn't finish it, though. I watched the first ten minutes or so and I got bored and turned it off. I just couldn't connect with it. I didn't care about a rat who could cook. I think part of my problem, oddly enough, is that I was having trouble suspending my disbelief. Usually at the opening of a movie, I have almost no problem with that; I'm willing to accept nearly any crazy premise you want to feed me, as long as the rest of the movie follows logically from that premise. But for whatever reason I had a hard time accepting a world where rats can not only cook, but also read, and understand human speech. Oh, and they can also talk to each other just like we do, we just can't understand them. I know it's ridiculous for me to rebel at something like that considering all the other insane things I'm willing to believe, but what can I say? I'm fickle. Anyway, I eventually turned the movie back on and watched the rest of it, and it ended up winning me over. I continued to have issues with suspension of disbelief, especially during the sequence [SPOILERS AHEAD!] where the rats take over the working of the kitchen entirely, and the sequence where the famous food critic accepts that his delicious meal was cooked by a rat. But by that time I cared about the characters, I'd bought into the story, and I was willing to let things slide. Plus, c'mon, the scene with the health inspector is hilarious. Ultimately, it's a really sweet story with a rather wonderful moral: not everyone is an artist, but great artists can come from anywhere. I was particularly moved by the scene in which Anton Ego (who's a wonderful character with a great name and a perfect voice - thank you, Peter O'Toole) eats the ratatouille and is instantly transported back to his childhood. It's a wordless sequence that captures perfectly what's so comforting about comfort food, and how deeply someone can be affected by great food - and, by extension, great art. This is not one of Pixar's great works, but it's definitely a fun and lovable film.
Ponyo - I haven't caught up with Pixar yet, but now that I've seen this movie, I've caught up with Hayao Miyazaki. I've seen all his feature length films, and although there are a few I didn't love, there isn't one that I disliked. This latest work is another masterpiece - a simple, weird, beautiful, gentle film which is Miyazaki's take on "The Little Mermaid." It's about how a child's love is so blind and pure, it can save the world. It's also about how ham is delicious. It's a ridiculously cute film, with riotously colorful, insanely imaginative, jaw-droppingly epic visuals. The story is simple, yet also deep. Miyazaki's usual plea for humanity to treat nature with care is delivered with more subtlety than he's used in the past. He introduces us to the characters and their relationships and tells us their stories with careful mastery, using a minimum of words and backstory. We see a mother looking up at her child out of one eye, and in that glance are a thousand words - none of which need to be said aloud, and so they are not. As with many Miyazaki films, Ponyo is pretty much devoid of villains. The "evil wizard" turns out to be more frustrated and misguided than evil, and even the cranky old lady has a good heart. Nobody can paint shades of gray more beautifully than Miyazaki. |
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| Monday, July 19, 2010 01:26 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Animals (Not), Art (Not), Cartoons (Not), Celebrities (Not), Comedy (Not), Food (Not), Links (Not), Lists (Not), Lovecraft (Not), Mortal Kombat (Not), Movies (Not), Music (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Star Wars (Not), Thor (Not), Video games (Not) |
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| Thursday, July 15, 2010 07:43 AM |
| On the Viewer - Inception |
 by Fëanor |
See. This. Movie.
I'll talk more about it, because I can't help myself, but that's really all you have to know.
I'm not even sure how to describe Inception. It doesn't fit comfortably into any one genre. It's perhaps closest to being a heist film, as it follows the general structure of that type of movie, and includes various tropes from that genre: the extremely talented thief with a heart of gold who only has to pull this One Last Job to get out of the game forever (our main character, Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio); the Setup, where we learn the details of the incredibly difficult Last Job; the sequence where the master thief assembles his Team - a team which includes the dependable buddy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur), the slick, sarcastic grifter (Tom Hardy as Eames), the outsider he has to take along against his will (Ken Watanabe as Saito), a specialist with the drugs and the knowhow to get them through (Dileep Rao as Yusuf), and a team member who's secretly unstable and almost sure to ruin everything (who, in an interesting twist, is in this case our main character himself, Cobb); the sequence where they develop the Plan, which is complex and brilliant, but still almost certainly doomed to failure; the Job itself, during which unforeseen complications arise that seem to present our heroes with insurmountable obstacles.
The problem with labeling the film a heist movie, however, is that it's not about stealing anything. In fact, the thief and his crew are breaking into the deepest recesses of someone's mind, not to take something away, but to leave something behind that wasn't there before: the seed of an idea. They're attempting a feat so rare it's considered a myth by some. They're trying to change someone's mind without him knowing they're doing it. It's called inception.
And here's where the movie starts to seem less like a heist flick and more like a fantasy or sci-fi film, as the entire plot revolves around a technology that allows people to share a dream, and manipulate the world within that dream. An astonishing opening sequence acquaints us with some of the rules that govern this technology. Then our main character has to recruit a newbie into the group - a dream architect with the almost too appropriate name of Ariadne, played by Ellen Page - to help with the final job, and as Cobb teaches her, we learn along with her. The dream world is surreal and breathtaking, with stairways that lead in infinite loops, cities folded in on themselves, hotels without gravity, giant mirror doors that shatter and reveal new landscapes, huge decaying cities built over years of dream-time, secret totems to keep our heroes grounded and remind them whether the world they're in is real or an illusion. But throughout these opening sequences, writer/director Christopher Nolan is only laying down the ground rules. During the Job itself, he switches into high gear and cranks everything up to another level, dropping us down into dreams within dreams within dreams, where seconds can last hours or even decades; layering mazes one within another; carefully orchestrating and interweaving multiple action sequences across many different realities.
Because you see, on another level, the film is also an effective action movie, fast-paced and violent. But the violence doesn't always have the consequences we're used to - it can be the gateway back to reality, or to a hellish limbo from which few have escaped.
But at its center, the film is perhaps most of all a character drama. It's the story of the flawed, shattered Cobb, trying to escape the ghost of his wife (Mal, played by Marion Cotillard) and the terrible secrets that surround his past so he can get back home to his children. It's about Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy), a man haunted by his own ghost - that of his powerful and distant father. Like all great films, Inception is about people and their relationships with each other - although thankfully the movie refrains from trying to build the usual, tired romance between the leading man and lady; Ariadne is clearly interested in Cobb, but the film is content to leave their relationship at that level, and so was I. Inception is about creation and destruction; it's about getting lost and finding oneself again. It's about the strange and difficult task of living in the world - a world where nothing is certain.
Watching Inception is an experience of true joy - the joy of observing a wondrously complex, carefully constructed mechanism spin through its paces. It's a film of such bravado and such wild invention, displaying such a mastery of the art of cinema, that it's hard to keep your jaw from dropping and your breath from being sucked away in gasps as you watch it. It's visually stunning, the writing is excellent, and the performances are complex and effective across the board; even secondary characters are played by great actors, with Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, and Michael Caine turning in satisfying cameos.
Certain truly great films have endings that, when they come, seem inevitable - perfect. The only possible ending. You see them coming, but only from a short way away. It's as if you're returning to the conclusion of a half-remembered dream you had once. Inception has an ending like that. |
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| Monday, July 12, 2010 04:27 PM |
| The Hulk Thought of the Day |
 by Hulk |
Hulk annoyed that sites reporting Edward Norton will not play Hulk in Avengers movie. Norton never played Hulk! Norton played puny Banner. Hulk was played by computer animation, because no one can play Hulk but Hulk! That why Hulk should be cast as Hulk in Avengers. Hulk for Hulk! For Hulk's sake! |
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| Thursday, July 8, 2010 06:48 PM |
| The Hulk Thought of the Day |
| by Hulk |
Hulk can exclusively reveal what team LeBron James really going to: The Avengers. Everybody on that damn team now. Except Hulk!! Bah. |
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| Wednesday, July 7, 2010 11:21 AM |
| The Hulk Thought of the Day |
| by Hulk |
Hulk glad to hear Lindsay Lohan will be off the streets. Hulk will sleep better at night. |
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| Wednesday, July 7, 2010 11:07 AM |
| The Take |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor's (semi-)weekly comic book review post.
This post covers new releases from the week of 6/23. Beware spoilers!
New releases
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #3
Blackbeard mistakes Bruce Wayne for The Black Pirate, despite the fact that it's obviously that other guy. Naturally they end up infiltrating the Bat-People's caves looking for treasure, and Bruce has to steer them through various traps, before finding past relics of his future self. "Whatever happens, Jack," Bruce says. "Never give up the fight." But years later, an older Jack says, "If I listen closely, I can still hear them now. The bells of the All-Over." Will Bruce really be the cause of apocalypse?? At the end of the issue we jump through time again and learn that next issue will apparently feature Jonah Hex versus a cowboy Batman. Awesome. This is a fun book, with Morrison getting to stick Batman in any time period he wants. It's also clever and eerie.
Thumbs Up
Fringe: Tales from the Fringe #1
I rather enjoyed the last series of Fringe comics, so naturally I picked up the first issue of this new series. Turns out it's another anthology book. The first story follows Peter in Iraq, before he became part of the Fringe gang, and reveals that he was really kind of a bastard. The second story is a weird time loop with shades of La Femme Nikita, in which a woman's glimpse of her future apparently causes that future to occur. Neither story is particularly bad, but neither is particularly imaginative or exciting, either.
Thumbs Sideways
Heralds #4
Luckily, Reed Richards has a black hole-stopping gun, so the problem from the end of last issue is quickly cleared up. Thanks, Reed Richards! Anyway, there's a bit more of an explanation as to why Frankie/Frances is the way she is (I guess the Silver Surfer made her a Herald of Galactus, and along with the power came part of the personality and self of previous Heralds?); there's some relationship drama; and then - uh oh, she's got the kid! Which is too bad, because I really like the way Valeria declares, "Popsicles. Let's go." But seriously, I'm sure she'll be fine. This issue is less interesting than the previous ones, as it's mostly a lot of screaming and melodrama, but it's still intriguing enough.
Thumbs Up
Incorruptible #7
Max's new buddy is going to get herself in trouble, dressing up in Jailbait's clothes like that. And what the real Jailbait's going to do now, I don't know. I was pretty bored with Max's fight with the white supremacist Plutonian supporters, but now that they've found his weakness and exploited it, things have gotten a little more interesting. Still don't like this art, though.
Thumbs Sideways
Joe the Barbarian #6
The metaphors get deeper as Joe finally makes his way to the Queen - his mother - who is still in mourning over the loss of the kingdom's great hero - Joe's father - and in serious denial about the war raging all around her. She wants to hole up in the castle where things are safe and ignore everyone and everything outside. Joe nearly embraces her melancholy paralysis, but then his friends seem to invade his world and drag him back to the fight. When all the heroes join them, it seems like things are looking up - but Joe is soon to come face to face with Lord Death himself. I have the feeling the last issue of this is going to be pretty shattering.
Thumbs Up |
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| Wednesday, July 7, 2010 09:50 AM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Art (Not), Business (Not), Celebrities (Not), Comic books (Not), Facebook (Not), Harry Potter (Not), James Bond (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Star Wars (Not), Tolkien (Not) |
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| Tuesday, July 6, 2010 01:25 PM |
| The Hulk Thought of the Day |
| by Hulk |
Well, if Prince say internet is over, maybe Hulk should just pack up and leave. |
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About
Welcome to the blog of Jim Genzano, writer, geek, and web developer. For a more detailed run-down of who I am and what goes on here, read this.
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