This is going to be spoilerriffic. Stop reading now if you don't want anything spoiled.

Seriously, not fucking around.

Tonight I went to see Star Trek with Maynard and KBK. I'd wanted to see it earlier, but the universe kept throwing new things at me. Anyways, while we were busy tearing apart a pig yesterday, KBK suggested we go to the movie tonight.

I loved it.

I grew up watching the original Star Trek series. I was never a big "Trekkie", but one of my fondest memories is being eight years old and watching episodes with my father. I remember that I didn't really understand exactly what was going on, but these dudes had a space ship and frickin' lazers.

The show didn't air very often. I would see episodes from time to time in syndication, but I never really "got" Star Trek until the Next Generation (a premiere that I watched with my father, also). So, for me (and I'm gonna lose some geek cred here, maybe), the characters of Kirk and Spock and Bones didn't really resonate with me in the way that Picard and Riker and Data did.

Until now.

I'm not sure if this is because I have a knowledge of the original series, or remember the characters and how they act, or what they are supposed to become.

Star Trek is an origin film. By and large, I enjoy well-made origin films. With many iconic characters - from film, television, comics, books, what have you - there are usually only three stories that are the most important: their origin story, a major event or quest (usually the story that can be considered the "defining moment"), and then the last story (usually the death of the character).

So Star Trek is the origin story of Kirk and crew.

(Arguably, the "defining story" with the original characters is Wrath of Khan and the "final" story is The Undiscovered Country; Generations was a punk-out bullshit story and unsatisfying.)

And yet, it is also not an origin story. The fact that it is "in canon" with the previous films and shows pleases me. The way they inserted it into the canon while still "rebooting" the franchise was, in my opinion, very well handled.

( Stuff I Really Liked )
( Stuff I was Meh About )

Anyways. Go check it out.

Okay, I lied about taking a nap. Doesn't mean I didn't try to, but several mental, physical, and situational gremlins conspired to prevent this.

Watchmen.

This was one of the more surreal experiences I have had in a theater in a long, long time. Partly, this is due to the nature of the film's topic. Partly, this is due to the nature of my twenty year relationship with the original work. Partly, this is due to it being a midnight showing - and the film is long.

But mostly it had to do with the cocktail of chemicals that were vibrating through my spinal cord.

I've been fighting off a pretty heavy chest cold for the past couple of days. Respiratory infections are, for me, a terrifying thing. A history of spontaneous pneumothorax means that every cough is examined thrice: is there pain that shouldn't be? am i feeling a bubble along the lung wall? is that translocated pain along my shoulder?.

Deep coughing sessions can (and do) initiate asthma attacks. These then lead to panic attacks, which is a hellish cycle. Panic introduces the fight-or-flight response; this increases the heart rate, which increases blood oxygenation demand, which increases respiratory demand, which can't happen since we're having an asthma attack. So I end up feeling like a goldfish flopping around on the floor after a five year old knocked over its bowl.

This evening was a perfect storm for many of these things. I had been having panic attacks all day long. Just before we left the house, I took a heavy dose of Dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant that has side effects that include dissociative hallucinations.

Charity gave me a Xanax to combat the panic attacks. I had never taken one before.

Turns out, not a fan of the Xanax. It performed as advertised: the panic attacks subsided. Instead, I was filled with a cohesive, dripping, existential anxiety. All of the mental filters which are in place to protect me from my hyper-active perception vanished, leaving every tiny moment more brilliantly important than the last, all things fightingformyattentionatONCE HEYLOOKAT THAT NO THAT NO THAT NO THAT NO THAT NO THAT NO THAT...

Then someone has grabbed my hand and created something for me to focus on and I'm able to think.

It was in this mental state that I was audience to the film made from one of Time Magazine's top 100 novels of all time.

Hollywood in general has a really bad habit of fucking up Alan Moore's work. So I was apprehensive that this, the magnus opus, once called "unfilmable" by Terry Gilliam, would be castrated, butchered, and sanitized.

I am happy to say that my fears were unwarranted. Zack managed to pull it off. It was shot with a great deal of love and respect for the source material. In fact, most scenes were obviously storyboarded using the panels from the comic.

Some material from the comic - beloved material, for me - did not make the cut. We have a generous two and a half hours to look in on this alternate version of 1985. This requires some surgery in the story. Hollis Mason's death is given a lumpectomy. The Tales of the Black Freighter is amputated. The story of Rorshach's psychiatrist: an excised tumor.

Sadly, there is a depth to the comic that simply cannot be placed on screen. How exactly would one express excerpts from Under the Hood, or Dan's essay about owls, in the medium of film? We cannot. There are little things that I miss (Laurie's smoking out of the strange pipe, or the fact that cars are electric), but I forgive them.

There is a change to the story - one that has some fans of the comic freaking out. I am speaking of the removal of "The Squid." Take a deep breathe: It's okay. It works, and it works better than the Squid. The Squid is, honestly, a hokey product of the year 1985; today's audiences are a bit more sophisticated. The change doesn't alter the core plot in the slightest. In fact, it brings the story whole.

You may notice that this review is heavy on "experience of" and thin on "discussion of" the film. There is a reason for this: Watchmen is an experience - in any media. Each successive reading of the graphic novel has revealed to me new facets of its experience.

Likewise, I expect that successive viewings of the movie will show new things to me as well. I will definitely be seeing this movie again.

Probably this weekend.

It is late. I'm fried. I have a conference call in three hours.

So I'm going to nap.

I'll write more later, but know this: It Does Not Fail You.

They are making a sequal to Donnie Darko.

There is even a trailer.

Welcome to Rape Club.

If this is your first night at Rape Club, you have to be raped.

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Tonight I went to see the "reboot" of Friday the 13th, with what can only be described as predictable results - that is, the projector broke down after an hour into the film.

However, that first hour was wonderful, and exactly what you expect. It is a cornucopia of brutal stabbiness and cats being thrown from stage left.

There are stupid campers who have sex in tents with the lights on. There are college kids getting super excited about finding a secret pot garden. There is an ominous cut-and-pan over a woodchipper. There is the douchebag fratboy who you just know is going to get dropped into said woodchipper. There are plenty of artificial boobies on display. There are big machetes stabbed into people's skulls.

Also: people trussed up into sleeping bags and set to roast over campfires.

Also: Hockey masks.

Who cares about the plot? Or the acting? It's a slasher flick. Nay, it is the slasher flick.

We arrived late, having decided to get drinks before the film. There were no seats, which at first light seemed to bleed as a downer. However, we plunked down on the floor and made camp in the area reserved for wheelchairs, leaning against the wall, nomming on popcorn. It felt like a drive-in, which was ferpect.

To our left sat a gaggle of young girls - they could not have been older than 13 - and they screamed in terror at every dark moment, a gleeful orchestra of soprano fear. Easily, they were half of the entertainment value for me.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Had I been in lesser company, I might feel a different song, but I got my money's worth, I think.

There is exactly one (1, uno, ein, 2/2, 4 -3, second and third numbers in the fibbonaci sequence) ticket for the midnight Watchmen showing unclaimed at this point.

I bought ten; nine are claimed.


I've gotten about ten requests from people like, "I'd like to go but can I also bring my significant other" and the answer is "I'd absolutely love to see you show up! The more the merrier!" However, I'm out of doubles tickets.

If you wish to join us, here is the information:

Movie: Watchmen: The IMAX Experience
Theatre: AMC Loews Metreon, SF, CA
Date: Thursday, March 5, 2009
Time: 12:01am (late Thu. night)

Lemme know if you're going. We can hook up; do crimes.

An exhibit about Watchmen is is opening at the SF Cartoon Art Museum at the end of February.

I know KBK is going to be down for this. Anyone else?

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack.

There is something black and vile that is running through the "current events" thread of my family. I am not yet at liberty to talk about it publicly, but suffice to say that it involves the words "oncologist," "chemotherapy," and "lumpectomy." I'd like to discuss it more, but there is a moratorium on public discussion until everyone in the family has been notified.

I'm seriously, seriously getting sick of this entire "people I care about having heart attacks and needing bypasses and other life-threatening illnesses" schtick.

I am exhausted and frustrated by it.

I wish, sincerely, that it could be me that these things happen to. Surely, it would suck, but I can take it, and then I would feel less helpless. As it stands, I can only watch from behind the glass as horrible things happen.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks theres no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before its too late.

In the "good news" category, my contract with my dark masters has been extended through the 31st of March, and I am told it will continue past that (EA has a policy of only allowing 3 month contracts at a time, so they continually require renewal).

Since my impending project schedule will likely keep me busy for the next six months at least, I'm feeling relatively safe despite the fact that the company has been laying off people right and left.

I've been working a lot lately. Probably too much, but I've had a project that's been nipping at my heels for the past month or so pretty hard. In fact, I am demoing it tomorrow for the client as well as a couple high-level people. So I spent all day (and the early part of this evening) applying a lot of spit and polish.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live. aces high.

I've been playing a lot of guitar lately. So much that the other night I ended up with blisters the size of Texas on my fretting hand . . . and one popped. That made me slow down for the next couple days.

I seem to be up against a new "wall." In my brain, I'm hearing all sorts of stuff, and I can tab it out, and then even pull it off . . . just really slow. I keep doing a lot of speed exercises (like spending an hour or so every evening pulling off scales while watching TV or something) but for some reason I just can't do the stuff I write at the speed it needs to be.

I think I'm getting old.

We (Maynard and I) got a microphone and set it up with the gear in the apartment and then promptly realized we didn't have anything to route it through. So we tried putting my vocals through a bass amplifier for a bit, and that sounded frickin' awesome for the most part (since I have a very low singing voice) but anything mid-range or higher sucked ass.

So I got this old Fender monitor from my friend Joe. Only, it isn't powered, and I don't have a spare amplifier to push through it.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away
Roll over, spin round and come in behind them
Move to their blindsides and firing again.

I finished Prince of Persia last night (review here).

I have to say that, now that I'm finished, my review is still pretty bang-on for my thoughts. The combat got more tedious (as expected), but the story kept me captivated - even the post-credits activities (if you play it, you'll know what I mean). I found the ending to be a bit of a bleak nut-punch, but that's okay, because there was hope in the form of a "to be continued" thing.

This is infinitely preferable to the "to be continued" ending of Assassin's Creed, where I couldn't care less about the story or any of the characters by the time the game ended.

(Maynard sat and watched the final fights and the post-credits stuff with me. He said it was enjoyable to just watch.)

Bandits at 8 oclock move in behind us
Ten M-E-109s out of the sun
Ascending and turning our spitfires to face them
Heading straight for them I press down my guns

Speaking of bleak, we went to see The Wrestler over the weekend.

It's a Bleak Steak served in Bleak Sauce with a side order of Bleak with a Red, Bleaky wine. But it's also an excellent, excellent film - one of the best of 2008 - and well worth seeing if only to remind you of how much shittier your life could be.

Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.
Run, live to fly, fly to live, aces high.

I am trapped, watching Heat, and it is 1:15 A.M., and only halfway done.

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere.

2008 was a year of defeats.

I don't really know what, if any, major accomplishments I managed to pull off last year. It seems that most of my time was spent being reactive rather than proactive: there was just so much shit rolling down the hill towards me and those I care about that I haven't been able to secure any footing and make forward progress.

(There is still stuff coming down the hill. I just can't talk about it yet.)

2009 will be better, I think. I actually have a resolution (sort of) which is mostly to sort of clean myself up and stop being such a mess.

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow.

I had a most excellent visit with my parents and family over the Christmas holidays. I had not been back to West Virginia in four years or so - and hadn't made the journey alone since 2001.

My time was mostly spent drinking, smoking cigars, and shooting the shit with my father. Our relationship - his and mine - has improved so much over the past fifteen years (pretty much since I moved out) that he has become one of my best friends. We talked about everything - including politics, which is a subject we tend to avoid (we agree to disagree, for the most part).

I managed to get in all the food I planned: Jim's Spaghetti House, Tudor's Biscuit World, Midway Hot Dogs, Chili Willi's, and my mom's fried chicken. I ate a lot. I think I've gained ten pounds.

While I was out there, I had hoped to find a decently-priced semi-acoustic guitar. In this I succeeded (I found one for four hundred dollars) but it was a peice of crap, so I did not purchase it. It felt kind of cheap, and I swear to $DEITY I think it had a plastic fretboard.

While at the pawn shop, I thought I had found the Holy Grail: a vintage 1957 Fender Stratocaster. However, upon doing some investigation and matching the serial numbers, I discovered that it sadly was not a fifty year old guitar but was instead probably made in 1986. Still a good guitar (and I really want a good Strat) but I couldn't justify the expense.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad world

I saw several movies.
( Details )

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen.

The return trip to San Francisco was much better than the outward journey. My luggage even followed me, which was a pleasant surprise.

The most surreal moment was when I was strolling through the central hub at Charlotte airport and I heard what I thought was a muzak version of Mad World. Not the Tears for Fears version, but the really sad, depressing one. Turns out it was a kid - maybe fourteen - playing it on a big grand piano.

I think I was the only other person there who knew the song.

(Riddle me this, Batman: why, if we are under "heightened alert", did they give me real, metal silverware - including a knife - with dinner on the flight? Do they somehow think that terrorists cannot afford first class tickets?)

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me.

This morning it felt like someone had opened my skull and replaced my brains with some kind of itchy cotton that had been soaked in pain.

That means for new year's eve I . . . well. I don't really remember what I did, to be honest. I'm pretty sure alcohol was involved. I know that I hadn't planned on partying or anything like that, but when I got home from the airport, I found myself instantly bored, so I went out.

Today I have been productive. I changed the litter box, restrung my guitar (slapping on some higher gauge strings), and did a bunch of work (I have a project due on the 5th and time is getting tighter and tighter on it).

Maynard has been staying with me for the past two weeks, and will likely be here for the next several. The reason why is his business, so I'll leave that quiet. However, having a roommate is a new experience. I haven't lived with someone I wasn't sleeping with in maybe fourteen years.

We are keeping different schedules and he's been very busy (and I've been out of town) so we haven't seen a lot of each other. He's camped out in the library right now on an air mattress but I expect that if this becomes a more permanent arrangement we'll move the books out of there and he can make the room his own.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad World
Enlargen your world
Mad World.

I am sad to say that I only recently managed to watch No Country for Old Men. This is an intolerable sin; however, it is merely yet another tacked to the millions that will already drag my soul to the lands south of Heaven.

Today, several days later, I find myself thinking still of the film and what it means. Well, let me rephrase: I am not thinking so much about what the film itself means but more what it means in relation to my understanding of the greater Coen Brothers library.

I have come to believe that they (Ethan and Joel) are nihilists.

The reasons I think this are many and varied, but there are a few films which seem to directly speak to this idea. There is a theme that runs through many of their works that I can only sum up as "things happen, and they do so for no rhyme or reason, and there is no guiding force behind them."

The most obvious example of this is, of course, No Country for Old Men: Chigurh is effectively a force of nature. He simply happens. Nothing that Sheriff Bell does can stop him and Chigurh's actions further send Bell into despair for his ability make a difference in the world.

Fargo. Fargo is a brutal film and it is sometimes easy to forget that while remembering only the funny parts. We, from the vantage point of Frances McDormand's character, are mere observers to what amounts to a series of random acts of violence (they have a reason - but again, it is something that happens). It doesn't happen to us; we are the investigators.

Now, The Big Lebowski speaks to nihilism, but it does so in a mocking tone. This is, I think, intentional: the three "toughs" claim to be "nihilists" but do so in a manner that is so transparently cliched that they cannot be taken seriously. They believe in "nothing," which is a logical fallacy.

The Dude, however, is possibly a true nihilist: he goes through life understanding that "shit happens". And, in the course of the movie, it does (Donnie's death being just one element).

(I should point out that I think Lebowski is one of, if not the, greatest comedy ever made. I have found that it takes most people three viewings to catch the full "zen" of the film. If you have not watched it in a while, I suggest you do so.)

This thread - that things simply happen - rears its head even in their most screwball comedies (though typically with less violence). For example, in Raising Arizona we have a biker who might as well be the devil and at the end of the film we are left with the concept that hope is futile because everything may be a dream.

"And then I woke up."

What are the tenets of "true" nihilism? In a sense, they can all be reduced to the idea that any moral direction that exists is a falsehood. If there is a "god", it cares little about us and less so about what is "good" or "evil". Many people attach an emotion of "despair" to this idea but I do not think that is accurate: despair assumes a morality within it.

(This is not too far from my own philosophical and religious beliefs: I think there is a god of some sort, but I also believe that we are to him as a single bacterium on my skin is to me: irrelevant. Applying a moral stance to a deity is arrogance in the extreme; "good" and "evil" are relative to our own mortality.)

I'm not entirely certain where I am going with this writing save this: in a world where In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale could have been made, god must surely be oblivious to our plight.

Babylon A.D. is one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot of shitty films. It is a film that is vigorous about being shitty - like, it fucking spent years training to win the Shitty Film Olympics.

Unrelenting Shittiness.

The only reason Maynard and I went to see this is because we'd seen everything else and we (seriously) said, "well, how bad can it be?" I mean, it can't be worse than Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. No. Every time I thought to myself, "this cannot possibly get any worse" it managed to exceed my expectations and, indeed, get more miserable.

It really says something about a movie when the film's fucking director calls it a piece of shit. The film feels like someone grabbed a bunch of Philip K. Dick novels, tore two pages out of each, and then stapled them together. It is a disjointed, horrid mess and positively reeks of studio interference.

No plot element makes sense, there are holes large enough to fly Coca-Cola branded airplanes through (yes, there is one), and (best of all) there is no resolution to what flayed plot there is. None. Nothing. Zip.

There is one redeeming quality. Well, two. The first is that there are lot of nice touches with the visuals . . . from time to time. However, the sheer singleminded drive of the film towards Shittytown prevents this from being a check in the "win" column.

The second is Michelle Yeoh, who should dump whatever guy she's with and become my next ex-wife. However, there isn't anyone there who can catch the balls she throws, so she ends up being wasted.

Had I been watching this film on DVD, I'd have popped it out and thrown it back to Netflix.

Skip it. Burn it. Torch it.

The Death Race video game, released in 1976 was one of, if not the very first video games made from a movie (in this case, the original Death Race 2000, released in 1975). It was highly controversial for its time because it was so violent.


The remake of the 1975 film is called simply Death Race (they dropped the date from the title, presumably so that they can just point to "a nebulous future"). It is appropriate that its predecessor spawned the "video game from a movie" genre, because the film is a video game. Normally I would compare a game to a movie but for this one we're going the other way.

Death Race is Mario Kart meets Manhunt meets Grand Theft Auto IV.

And I'm totally not kidding. Memorize the Manhunt box cover; you'll be seeing it a lot.

The movie stars Jason Statham's Beard and Abdominal Muscles as Jason Statham, a scruffy dude who drives a car and kicks ass. He is (of course) wrongfully framed by Joan Allen who needs him to drive cars in prison. His chief mechanic is Al Swearengen and his arm candy is Smoking Hot Chick With Awesome Boobs.

It is a film that takes place in a world where everything is grey. And I mean everything: don't adjust your set; the color tubes have not blown out. Somehow the cinematographer managed to turn bright red colors into overcast skies (even Smoking Hot Chick's boobs are grey). This works, though. It's arty and stylized, but in the end any artistic merit it may have is wasted because we're really only there to see guns, cars, and boobs.

The film is exactly what it says on the tin and it is exactly what your expectations lead you to believe.

The opening crawl says "In 2012, the United States economy collapses." So Obama apparently isn't going to be that great of a president. We also seem to have reverted back to a completely industrial economy. Who knows what the future holds? It doesn't matter; that's all unimportant.

What is important is that you turn your brain off at the door. Sit back, enjoy the hot chicks, fast cars, and explosions.

Lost Boys: The Tribe is just as wonderfully bad as you expect.

This evening, after an evening of excellent sushi at Jimisan, Maynard and I went to see Pineapple Express, a film starring Harry Osborne, that Dude in Every One of Judd Apatow's Films, Ed Begley, Jr., and some kind bud.

The movie takes its name from a specific strain of pot (which takes its own name from a weather phenomenon that supposedly is the reason why the dope is so good). It's a very unique blend, and (as shown in the opening sequence) was, uh, made by the military before World War II.

This film made me want to smoke pot more.

It is fantastically funny - though I must apply a caveat to this statement. This is a stoner flick. It is about getting high. Ergo, much of its comedic value comes from identifying with, you know, being totally fucking baked dude I'm totally not kidding, dude, I just had the best idea ever but I could really chow on some Doritos, know what I'm saying?

Wait, what?

Oh. Yeah. The movie.

Pineapple Express is really an "anti-buddy cop film." It's Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle meets Lethal Weapon meets (seriously) Grand Theft Auto (which, really, is just a video game of Harold and Kumar meets Lethal Weapon, when you think about it).

There is a series of completely implausible happenings and character decisions that, you know, make, you know, totally no sense at all to the Un-Experienced. It is a series of gags tied together with a recycled plot from a 1970's action film. And it works.

Seth Rogan may well be one of the best "straight men" in today's cinema. His sense of timing and ability to express incredulity and frustration are well served here: despite being stoned in every scene his character is the "smart one." He has a "real" job. He's dating a chick in high school and he has no real goals and all he does is smoke pot, but he is the responsible party in this union.

Surprisingly (and seriously, I mean this), James Franco is a funny guy. I'd only ever seen him in films where he plays a kind of "heartthrob" character. Semi-serious, typically action-oriented dramas. So to see him play the comic was a twist - and he pulls it off. Further surprisingly, he applies a level of depth to what amounts to a throw-away character. When we first meet him, he's a sort of shut-in pot dealer whose loneliness is palpable enough to be felt by those in the audience. He plays it well.

The "70's action film" plot I alluded to earlier comes across, at the end, as a bit too much while you're there, but afterward it seemed necessary. A satire requires its beginning, middle, and end to be seen within a predictable arc. So the final gunfight is required in that mode.

My one complaint - and again, this has a caveat - is that the film may be a bit too long. However, I can't think of where I'd cut it down. Each sequence is funny as fuck, no one sequence feels too long, and they all feel important. I could not pick any one part to chop out completely, and I expect that the director felt the same way.

It's not a film that I think needs to be seen right the fuck now. In fact, it may be better viewed from the comfort of your own home where you can get righteous with a doobie and not be overly concerned with people harshing your mellow.

I laughed my ass off, and if you have ever gotten loco, you probably will, too.

Stuff I've watched in the past month. This is all Netflixed or Torrented. I've got a big book list I'm working on, too.

Burn Notice is an excellent, excellent television series. You should watch it now.

Chaos is a clever film. 3 Stars, figure. It stars Jason Statham as a scruffy cop or a criminal or a driver or something like that.

Evan Almighty, despite being Jesus-ful, is actually pretty good.

Ellie Parker is a boring wank fest masquerading as some kind of art film.

Jumper is much better than you think it is going to be, even with little Anakin.

Wanted is okay but the comic is better.

Gone Baby Gone is well constructed but overlong.

Grandma's Boy is pretty funny, and I think I know all the characters.

Closure is okay, and made better because Gillian Anderson is still hot.

The Bucket List is okay but kind of tear-jerky.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut would have been better if he asked for more life, fucker.

Rambo is better than you think and explosion-y.

Dragonlance is a poorly animated suckfest from frame 1 to credits.

War is a telegraphed action film starring Jason Statham as a scruffy cop or a criminal or a driver or something like that.

Revolver is a surreal, choppy film starring Jason Statham as a scruffy cop or a criminal or driver or something like that.

The 2008 Knight Rider Reboot is better than expected. Plus: Val Kilmer as KITT.

Juno is excellent.

Untraceable is pure, stupid dreck. Dear Hollywood: it is the year 2008; you should understand computers.

The Game Plan has the Rock in it, and he's always fun. Disney schmaltz, otherwise.

Slipstream is intensely surreal and difficult to follow.

Southland Tales is a surreal sci-fi story. It has the Rock in it, and he's always fun.

Fracture is a legal crime drama that's pretty good.

The Brave One was better when it was called "Death Wish".

Balls of Fury had some fat hairy guy and a hot chick. I forget everything else.

The Lost Room bored me to tears.

Walk Hard had some clever moments but otherwise was overlong and tedious.

Michael Clayton was just plain excellent.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets was better than Indy IV.

American Gangster bored me.

Date Movie was hellish.

Hitman surprised me with how entertaining and stylish it was.

Crank was one of my favorite films of 2006. It was a tight adrenaline rush with a solid idea.

Why would you do this to it?

This evening, after Huff's birthday get-together, Maynard and I got bored talking game design and development and decided to take in a flick. Sadly, the only thing playing that both of us hadn't seen was The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

It says something about a flick when, as we exit, I say, "Well, I enjoyed myself, but really that was only because I was 'at the movies' and I always enjoy myself at the movies."

As you watch the movie, you may find yourself feeling peculiar levels of Deja-Vu. "Self," you might say, "I think I may have seen this movie before."

That's because you have. Or, at least, you've watched every scene before: just in different films, and they were probably directed by Senior Spielbergo, and probably were done better.

When someone pours the magic healing water on the injured guy and his wound closes up inside of a temple carved in a mountain? You may have seen a movie that had the exact same fucking scene (only done cooler and cheaper with hydrogen peroxide instead of bad CGI).

When a character who is immortal talks about how she can't fall in love with someone because she doesn't want to watch him die? You may have seen a movie where this is a plot point (instead of a throw-away line).

When the evil, 2,500 year old undead army lets loose a volley from their crossbows (more on that later) and the arrows in flight darken the sky? You may have seen a movie that uses that exact same image.

This film is pretty much exactly what it says it is on the tin. It is a completely stupid, action-oriented B movie story with A-minus list actors and bad puns.

Watching this movie will make you dumber, so check your brain at the door.

I don't know why I can't just eat the popcorn, smile, and nod for films like this. Perhaps it is because of the little things.

Like, oh, how come soldiers from 2,500 years ago have crossbows? Why has the rope in the 2,000 year old tomb not rotted away? Why are we introducing Yetis into the story, when they have no real purpose? How was General Ming's corpse put under the wall when he was killed mere moments before the Emperor? Why do we make bad jokes about Himalayan yaks vomiting?

I'm a stickler for shit like that. I'll accept that your undead army's arrows and weapons may not have rotted away: "magic makes it work." And yet, I won't accept that your undead army is carrying around weapons that were not going to be invented for another 2,000 years or so.

(Also, I've seen the real terra-cotta soldiers, back when the Emperor of Heaven exhibit toured the country in the late 1980s as well as knowing just a teeny bit about the Great Wall. Perhaps this fucks with my suspension-of-disbelief.)

There's something else, too. The CGI was of a crisp quality that reminded me very much of the year 1999 it was that realistic. This, combined with the (seriously) laughable quality of the fake snow on the sets (it looked and behaved like sand, shit you not) just made the film feel poorly budgeted and forced.

The sad thing is this: I think there might have been a really cool, really dark and scary story in there. But they slathered it over with bad dialog, poor characters, and derived scenes.

I'd say "wait for Netflix" but don't even do that.

I have to read Watchmen again.

And I just re-read it like, last month.

My succinct review of The Dark Knight:

....


Seriously, that's about as simple as we can get. And it doesn't say anything, because trying to describe the . . . experience . . . of the film is probably nothing that can be accomplished in the English language.

Well. The Joker would understand, maybe. He seems to be looking at things on a different plane.

I'm going to try to be spoiler free here, but I never really remember which parts of the Batman mythos are "public knowledge" and which ones are "geek cred". So.

I'm going to start by saying that I love Batman Begins. It is one of my favorite films and I probably watch it at least once a month. I feel that it is the first time that Batman was taken seriously on the big screen (the animated series of the 1990s did as well, but the 1980s/1990s movies turned to camp and crap).

I loved every frame of it, beginning to end.

So I am (almost) sad to say that The Dark Knight turns Batman Begins into a lesser film by comparison.

You know how The Empire Strikes Back is head and shoulders above Star Wars? It's like that. And this film is absolutely Batman's Empire: it is dispassionate and unrelenting in the way it assaults our hero, his loved ones, and his world.

Make no mistake: this is a dark film. It is darker than Revenge of the Sith - and that film is about the hero turning to evil, slaughtering everyone he loves, murdering his wife, having all his limbs chopped off, burned alive, and ultimately rebuilt into a grim machine of death.

It is darker than that.

I seriously do not know how they got away with a PG-13 rating - especially with Two Face's makeup.

Much has already been said about Heath Ledger's performance in nearly every media outlet on the planet. I don't really know what I can say to add to it save this:

Watching his Joker is mesmerizing in the way that watching a King Cobra dance is mesmerizing.

He owns the screen. Every twitch, every word, every shrug. He moves like broken clockwork and speaks hypnotically. At one point, he explains to the Batman his philosophy about rules and freaks and it comes across so bold and so well that he made me believe. Every breathe is filled with . . . well. I don't want to use the word "menace" because that's not right. "Menace" implies a moral code and an intent to evil. Ledger's Joker has neither a moral code nor a motive of evil.

He simply is. He is a force of fucking nature. And that force just happens to be pretty damned evil. He is a terrorist, and he sure as fuck knows how to make a pencil disappear (This is quite possibly one of the best bits in cinematic history. You'll know it when you see it.)

All the Jokers before him: Cesar Romero, Lennie Weinrib, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, Kevin Michael Richardson - they are mere stewards to the role. Ledger is, and probably always shall be, The Joker, forever and ever, a-men.

But the Joker is only half of the story. The rest of the story begins and ends with the White Knight, Harvey Dent.

Dent's story arc is wrought with the care and detail of a Fabergé Egg. It is the pinnacle of tragedy, and (forever and ever, a-men) the ultimate victory of the Joker: the corruption and destruction of the most noble human being ever to walk the streets of Gotham City.

He is handled brilliantly by Aaron Eckhart (who looks disturbingly too much like my friend JQ). Through three quarters of the film, I was sucked in by his words and deeds. I believe in Harvey Dent. So does Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon - which makes what happens to him so much more a tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet in the end.

This is a grim, dark film. But it is, I think, an important film because at its core it is not an "action" film nor is it a "comic book" film. It is an exploration of the psyche, and the limits that people are willing to be driven to. We watch as Bruce Wayne teeters across the edge, violating each of his principles one by one in order to combat his polar opposite: Batman is the representative of pure order; the Joker that of pure chaos. And the further Bruce falls from his ideals in order to defeat the Joker, the closer he comes to being defeated.

It is a film about the Prisoner's Dilemma (and, in fact, this scenario is visited several times, but most blatantly during the film's climax).

I will absolutely see it again.

While the film is rated PG-13, I. . . I disagree with that rating. It is an R rated film in PG-13 clothing. So think very carefully before bringing children to the show.