I saw THE AVENGERS yesterday with my son. He loved it, naturally, and so did I. While we waited for the bus home, I asked him which Avenger he would most like to be (a sure way to tell which he that was the most awesome) and his answer, after a moment’s thought, was Hawkeye.
Hey, who could argue with that? Or with a kid pretend-shooting arrows at all sorts of unlikely targets as we walked home.
Here are my thoughts on the movie: (Spoilers behind the cut) Continue reading
1) Avengers Mashup Movie Posters
2) Hard to believe it’s been 20 years.
3) Planet of the Apes Dance Remix. Video. Pure Awesome.
4) Mark Waid’s Thrillbent is live.
5) Bed Cartography. Not that this has any relevance to my life, not at all.
6) Alien vs. Predator, the infographic.
7) D&D co-creator Dave Arneson’s personal collection and archive to be auctioned.
So, Forbes is reporting that JOHN CARTER has earned back its budget overseas, partly by topping the box office for two weeks in a row in China.
Of course, there’s still the marketing budget, but never mind about that. DVD preorders are strong and I like to imagine that quality will out.
But this does give me an excuse to revisit the film, just a little, in a way I couldn’t before.
After seeing it a few times, I think I might have worked out one of the reasons people didn’t go for it in large numbers. The ending. [Spoilers, obvs] In most movies, the big fight scene/marriage would be the end of the film. It feels like an ending.
Then you cut to Dejah waking alone in bed, and Carter walking around the tower deciding to throw away his amulet (wouldn’t it have been nice to take Dejah to Jasoom at some point to see the sailing ships, assuming she could survive in Earth’s gravity?).
Then he’s back on Earth, and we return to the journal and ERB, and…
Okay, here’s where I make a confession: One of the tropes I completely fucking hate to see in a book or movie is “Death will reunite you with the ones you love the most.” I seriously hate it, because to me it seems to be objectively pro-suicide.
There was a novel–I thought it was written by Dan Simmons but a scan of his bibliography doesn’t show anything familiar–that ended that way. His family died at the start, he traveled around like Kwai Chang Caine until he finally jumps off a bridge and is reunited with his loved ones. God, how I hated that ending! I hated it so much that I felt queasy at the finale of GLADIATOR.
But the ending of JOHN CARTER is pretty similar: the protagonist happily walks into his own tomb and shuts the door, then lies back with the lilies around him. He smiles speaks the words that take him out of the this world and into the one he calls home.
And as much as I love this ending, I think it’s the reason people were soft on the movie. Lawrence Block tells the story of a time he sat on a plane while the man beside him watched the movie BURGLAR, which is based on one of Block’s novels. As he tells it, the man was engaged throughout, laughing often. When the film ended, Block asked him: “What did you think of the movie?”
The reply: “It was okay.”
Block believes it was because the ending was soft. The guy enjoyed the whole thing, but it didn’t have a strong ending so his last experience of it was a let down. And what about the people who see JOHN CARTER, expecting a typical action movie denouement? So many folks complained about the nested flashbacks (always with the tone of “Some other people might find this troubling, but not me) that I think the real source of the objection is that ending, where things feel like they’ve been wrapped up, but there’s a whole frame scene story that everyone’s forgotten about.
Did I mention that I love the way it ends? I love fantasy novels and movies. I love adventure stories. And the end of the movie seems so like the way I enter into a fictional world that it felt like falling into a story all over again. Very powerful. Yeah, the movie is flawed, but for me that ending was quite strong.
And now I’ll stop writing about this movie for a while.
Saw JOHN CARTER yesterday with my son and not only did I like it, I walked out of the theater aching to write some sword-and-planet. I’d always wanted to read some Leigh Brackett, and that would be a fantastic excuse.
Still, it’s strange to see this movie dumped in the post-Oscars garbage pail release schedule and to read the NYTimes dumping on it unseen. I understand that some people have no interest in the genre, and the pseudo-insider “Hollywood spent lots of money on a flop!” articles are incredibly easy to write, but come on! This was a lot of fun.
I picked up the book two years ago because it was the most interesting option at an in-store Espresso Book Machine (video) but I never got around to reading it. Seeing this movie bumps it up my list.
Thing is, the movie is so freaking romantic: a dying world, interplanetary love, forbidden compassion, open-air “planes”, a cowboy with a tragic past, warring city-states, mysterious tombs, swords and armor dueling, ancient ruins, secret temples, mysterious villains behind the villain… the whole thing is really well put together. My bladder nearly burst because I just had to stay for the whole thing.
Damn it’s a good movie. You should see it in the theater if you can.
1) Deleted for potential malware. Try this instead: Westeros in Minecraft: Video.
2) Motherfucking Bike: Music video for the lol. My wife and I are/have been bike commuters, but we have never done anything like these guys, I swear.
3) My Little Golden Book About ZOGG
4) LED light gives off more energy in photons than it takes in as electrons. I don’t *really* understand this, but I’m pretty sure it means I’ll be getting a lightsaber soon.
5) Toy Shining “Heeeeerrre’s Woody!” via Keith Brunkard
6) 19 Really Bad Family Feud Answers.
7) Hunger Names.
1) United Artists’ Rejection Letter for STAR WARS. via @rodramsey
2) The Internet Justice League
4) Finally, a lit contest I can care about: 2011’s Oddest Book Titles of the Year. I’m rooting for the chicken sexer.
5) Why do innocent people confess to crimes they haven’t committed?
6) Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain. Big Bird wrests celestial justice from an Egyptian god in a Sesame Street special. For real.
7) A prosecutor and cartoonist creates A Criminal Lawyer’s Illustrated Guide to Crime.
1) Worst Car Chase Ever, from the movie KHILADI 420. Video. via Bill Martell
2) 52 Films Unfairly Rated Below 6 Stars on IMDB.
3) Real places that look like cgi sets from a fantasy movie.
4)
After I finish this post, I’m going to write an email to another author about writing style and naturalism, because when it comes to books, I like naturalism. Even if the setting has fantastical elements in it, I like the language to be precise and not-particularly-metaphorical. I have a distaste for the pathetic fallacy, for settings and characters that are deliberately artificial, and for flourishes that “pull me out of the story.”
But with film it’s different. With film, I enjoy those flourishes very much, thank you.
Which brings me to BUNRAKU (Trailer | Netflix) a martial arts movie starring Josh Hartnett and Gackt. It’s very, very art designed–about as naturalistic as a movie musical–in fact, the opening fight scene deliberately, consciously begins like a big dance scene, with rows of identically-dressed men side-stepping through an arch, and a major villain strutting into the fight like a murderous Gene Kelly.
If what you want from a movie is what a producer once called “suture” (that is, a white-knuckle involvement in the dilemma of the characters), this isn’t the film for you. All the art direction, set design, colored gels, wild costumes and animated intrusions has a distancing effect; it can’t be helped. When Josh Hartnett steps into a round elevator and, instead of going straight down, it rotates down to the side with the same click you’d hear from a giant revolver, the response is That is totally fucking cool and I want that for my Sin Mansion, but it also reminds you that this is a movie.
It’s theatrical. And I love it.
It’s not a perfect movie; there are a few choices I would have done differently. I wish it hadn’t been rated R, for instance. But the truth is, I don’t think I could have imagined a movie like this, let along make one.
Anyway, as my wife and I were watching it, she asked me how it did in the theaters. I said that I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think it had a theatrical release. “Of course not,” she answered. “It’s beautiful. People don’t care about beautiful movies any more.”
If you get a chance to watch it, you should.
“Bunraku”, by the way, is a kind of Japanese puppet theater. And the movie opens with an amazing puppet sequence.
1) Former ‘Static Shock’ Writer John Rozum on ‘What was Really Going on Behind the Scenes’.
2) Harry Potter and the Chinese Bootleg Subtitles.
3) Classic depictions of Venus Photoshopped to make her thinner.
4) This karate rap is even worse than you expect. Video.
5) A scented candle for ebook haters.
6) How to use a women’s urinal. “I am convinced that women could pee standing up, with the same accuracy as a man (which means, what, 90% accuracy?), if they practiced as often as men do.” Via @ccfinlay
Hard to believe these guys started with a choreographed treadmill dance routine.
They played their song with a car. I love it.
