The film ended, and the credits started rolling. People started milling about, gathering their things and leaving the theater. The names of the cast and crew slid past my view as I was pummeled by a repetition of the movie’s sweeping, brooding score. Mrs. Speculator nudged me to see if I was okay, and I told her I was listening to the music. But it wasn’t true—I was regathering my senses, trying to pull my thoughts together, digesting the impressions of what I had just seen. Readers, to put it mildly, I was completely blown away and I wanted to go back in line, get another ticket, and see it all again.
But you know, for the first hour or so, I was trying to figure out what the hype was all about. The movie I was seeing was a good movie but not a spectacular one. All the set-up elements were there: re-introducing the hero and other characters repeated from the first movie, introducing the new villain with a daring bank robbery, introducing the new district attorney, and then proceeding with a fairly standard plot regarding the mobs of Gotham City reeling from the effects of a costumed crusader thwarting their plans. Heath Ledger was a little creepy as the Joker, and his introduction served to show how smart he was as well as how unpredictable he could be. Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent is amiable enough, his reputation as a crusader more apparent from other people describing him than from any actions we see on his part (though his one courtroom scene packs some wallop). Christian Bale, almost an after-thought in some ways, gets what feels like very little screen time beside the two new stars, but in fact, he stands back and lets them dominate their scenes. Bale’s (and screenwriter/director Christopher Nolan’s) Bruce Wayne is happy to be in the background, using his money and influence to pull strings, not necessarily to be the spokesperson for his charities or his business. This is in keeping with the way he is usually written in the comics, but not so much in the way he has generally been portrayed in previous movies.
Things really get moving when the Joker blackmails the city: either Batman unveils himself or people are going to start dying. And as proof of his intent, he murders the police commissioner and a judge, using very subtle planning, again demonstrating his intelligence. The threat shines a bright light on Batman and how Gotham feels about him: they are willing to put up with a vigilante who might be acting beyond the law so long as he is performing a perceived good, but when their lives are on the line, they are willing to give him up to save themselves. At last we get to see the real, canny madness behind the Joker—forcing people to face themselves and challenge their preconceptions, using their indecision to advance his own world-view of even more chaos. And then the movie breaks open, becoming about not just inherent good and evil, but about whether or not chaos and/or order are inherent. Aligned for the forces of order are the police, the judicial system and Batman, and even the mobs who deep down really want order themselves, just an order they control. Opposing them is one man, the Joker, and he slowly brings not just the city but its inhabitants to their knees. No one can predict or figure out what the Joker is going to do, and thus no one is safe, and every citizen of Gotham feels that fear.
There is no doubt that what makes this movie so spectacular is the Joker. I’m pretty sure that you could read articles for days about Heath Ledger’s performance, and I won’t deny it is breathtaking and hypnotic. He really should be nominated for an Oscar for this performance. It is a masterpiece of method acting, down to the repugnant noisy repetitious licking of his lips. His eventual soliloquies in the local jail and in his final battle against Batman are eerie, stark, and all the more chilling for how logical their arguments. And while Ledger delivers them perfectly, a ton of credit must go to Christopher Nolan, the man who directed those scenes and wrote them (along with David Goyer) in the first place. Without Nolan’s vision of Gotham as the battleground between chaos and order, without the context he provides, Ledger’s performance, while great, would be rudderless. The Joker is perhaps the most terrifying character I have ever seen on-screen: he is brilliantly smart, masterminding and pulling off complex plots with the finesse of a battlefield tactician, and he is utterly unpredictable.
And then, after Harvey Dent loses part of his face to a fire, becoming Two-Face, one of the most powerful scenes in the movie—his confrontation with Joker—takes place. Joker turns the bastion of order into an agent of chaos with agonizing logic. After the fire, Dent’s soul is not lost, but he is in emotional and physical agony. The Joker does what he does, turning Dent’s fears and anger in on him until there is no escape, and Two-Face explodes, shaping his own relationship with chaos. The acting in that scene is stunning on the part of both actors, but again, it is the direction and writing that get us to that point in the first place.
But I am really saving my last and hopefully best praise for the element of the movie that, I think, pushes it that last bit into becoming iconic: the score by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer. While the film is brilliant in its writing, acting and direction, the score should be long studied as the quintessential mood-setter and emotional undercurrent for drama. I don’t know enough about music to talk about it in detail, but I can say that echoes of it still rebound within my head, alternating between the half-familiar new Batman theme and the strident discord of the Joker’s theme. If the movie fails to win an Oscar in any category, it will succeed in this category. Nothing musical has moved me in a movie like this since the first moved me in a movie like this since the first Star Wars, but even that pales in comparison because the score didn’t need to be complex but instead accurately reflect the primary characters and their themes. The music for The Dark Knight, on the other hand, has a wider range of emotion to reflect and amplify, and in the deft hands of its composers, it takes on a life of its own becoming one of the principle characters of the film.
At last, a groundbreaking movie that takes the foundation of superhero stories and transports the entire concept into something much much greater. This is not just a really good comic book movie; The Dark Knight takes its viewers to themes and thought that they are probably unfamiliar with. It is simply a great movie, for any category. It transcends its genre and demands conversation and repeated viewing. It is a classic movie and one that fans of movies will be talkign about for a long long time.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Jhegaala
I have made no bones about my love for Steven Brust's books. Here I am, buying book eleven of his Taltos series, pre-ordering it months in advance. I proselytize. I send people to others of Brust's books in order to prepare them for this series. I have long discussions about his style—of writing, of story-telling, of sentence formation. Book eleven! As many books as there are in the longest series I have ever read—the Barsoom novels by Burroughs—maybe my all-time favorite series. Well, you can see where I am going.
Jhegaala just doesn't live up to the rest of the series.
Brust has always been a quirky storyteller, moving back and forth in time between books and telling stories out of order. He's difficult enough to follow without two years between every book, which almost demands reading all of the books again to get caught back up to where the action is. But that usually doesn't matter—once Vlad Taltos begins narrating, all the concerns get swept away in masterful narration. And honestly, after the triumph of Dzur, I could not have been more excited about the series. But it's all broken in Jhegaala, and for a variety of unhappy reasons.
First, there is the jump back in time. Jhegaala takes place somewhere in Vlad's past relative to the ongoing series. It's not exactly clear when this is, and trying to figure out the context would require rereading the first ten books. Such issues generally don't matter to the stories, but in this case, the action involves Vlad's return to the land of his heritage, Fenario. Mixed in with references to the events current to the timeframe of the book (but not the series), it feels imperative that we do know when this takes place. Brust has done this kind of time-jump in past novels in this series, and I could generally let it ride, but for some reason, it was not something I could let go in the course of reading Jhegaala.
Secondly, and far worse, the first-person narrator in Jhegaala is trapped in events that he does not understand. A good 13 of the 17 chapters of the novel involve Vlad—usually so forceful and forthright, even when it is the wrong thing to do—wandering around in a daze. And when he is not just meandering from place to place without real cause, he is actually laid up in a sickbed. So we get the action of the story secondhand, as Vlad relays the information he gathers from his familiars he uses as spies. Even when he is not in his sickbed, however, Vlad is whiny and confused; if this had been his personality in the first ten books, I doubt the series would have made it as far as it has. It is only through his banter with his familiar that we see glimpses of the character that has become so beloved.
My one hope after putting the novel down is all these issues are intended to set up the next book in the series, when we will hopefully getting back to the “present.” But after setting the book down upon completion, I can only say that I was really stoked for the next novel and really disappointed in the reality.
Jhegaala just doesn't live up to the rest of the series.
Brust has always been a quirky storyteller, moving back and forth in time between books and telling stories out of order. He's difficult enough to follow without two years between every book, which almost demands reading all of the books again to get caught back up to where the action is. But that usually doesn't matter—once Vlad Taltos begins narrating, all the concerns get swept away in masterful narration. And honestly, after the triumph of Dzur, I could not have been more excited about the series. But it's all broken in Jhegaala, and for a variety of unhappy reasons.
First, there is the jump back in time. Jhegaala takes place somewhere in Vlad's past relative to the ongoing series. It's not exactly clear when this is, and trying to figure out the context would require rereading the first ten books. Such issues generally don't matter to the stories, but in this case, the action involves Vlad's return to the land of his heritage, Fenario. Mixed in with references to the events current to the timeframe of the book (but not the series), it feels imperative that we do know when this takes place. Brust has done this kind of time-jump in past novels in this series, and I could generally let it ride, but for some reason, it was not something I could let go in the course of reading Jhegaala.
Secondly, and far worse, the first-person narrator in Jhegaala is trapped in events that he does not understand. A good 13 of the 17 chapters of the novel involve Vlad—usually so forceful and forthright, even when it is the wrong thing to do—wandering around in a daze. And when he is not just meandering from place to place without real cause, he is actually laid up in a sickbed. So we get the action of the story secondhand, as Vlad relays the information he gathers from his familiars he uses as spies. Even when he is not in his sickbed, however, Vlad is whiny and confused; if this had been his personality in the first ten books, I doubt the series would have made it as far as it has. It is only through his banter with his familiar that we see glimpses of the character that has become so beloved.
My one hope after putting the novel down is all these issues are intended to set up the next book in the series, when we will hopefully getting back to the “present.” But after setting the book down upon completion, I can only say that I was really stoked for the next novel and really disappointed in the reality.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Don't let the trailers fool you—Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a melancholy movie. While the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is out there protecting humanity from the magical entities that threaten it, the same cannot be said for those magical beings requiring protection from us. And on that hinge pivots the entire movie. In a delightful prelude to the modern portion of the movie, a young Hellboy is told Christmas stories by Professor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) involving the ancient treaty between the elves and man. The elves had joined with the trolls and gnomes to create the Golden Army, a mechanized militia that fought with magical rapacity. That army had proved to be too destructive for the elven king and so he had crafted a treaty by which mankind would get the cities and the elves the forest lands with the Golden Army looming as a threat to see that the treaty was held to. Of course, over time, mankind has encroached into the country and the crown that controlled the army was lost from its original holders. Dissatisfied, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) vows to release the Golden Army, and the BPRD stumbles into his plan when they arrive on the scene of an auction that has been destroyed by tooth fairies.
What follows is an examination of the magic missing from the typically human life. Liz (Selma Blair), Abe (Doug Jones), and Hellboy (Ron Perlman) find themselves fighting the Prince, whose intentions they don't entirely disagree with. Recently outed to the media, the BPRD are at first figures of fancy to the public, but they rapidly become centers of derision ultimately because they look different than humans. Liz attempts to act as a mediator for a little bit, but she finds herself on the side of her friend and lover. (About that—there's nothing graphic in the relationship between Hellboy and Liz, but the screenplay makes it clear they have issues, and they seem to be based a good bit on Hellboy's immaturity. I found the idea of them having a physical relationship off-putting precisely because he doesn't appear emotionally ready to have one—for sure, he loves Liz, but he isn't willing to adapt his habits to sharing his life with another person.) And all the while, the BPRD finds itself visiting fantastic lands and battling magical creatures on the verge of extinction due to mankind's greed. Nuada acts as Hellboy's bad angel, telling him how he should go over to the elvish side.
At the same time, Abe finds himself falling in love with Nuala (Ana Walton), Nuada's twin sister, and must balance his role as humanity's protector against the growing emotional attachment he feels for the elven princess. Nuada tries to thwart her brother's plans, but it does not appear to be out of it being wrong, but because it was the plan their father put together. All of the complex connections are brought to the surface in a huge battle between the BPRD and a plant elemental that Nuada releases in Brooklyn. Even in victory, the BPRD loses in unexpected ways.
Hellboy II contains all the stunning effects and costumes that mark it as a Guillermo del Toro film. The troll market is beautiful in its ugliness, and owes a great deal of debt to places like China Mieville's Un Lun Dun and the market in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (not the Star Wars cantina as some critics have suggested). That debt to earlier sources is a straight line to old myth and legend, and drawing those comparisons again pulls on the melancholia that surrounds the movie. The troll market is a place of wonder and magic…and it is located in the sewer of New York. The creatures are gorgeous and outrageous all at once, and yet sad in some ways.
And despite the paragraphs above spent describing the tense conflict between man and magic, old and new, the real conflict really does mostly live in the background of the movie. Most movie-goers will get lost in the action sequences and the stunning effects, and so miss the conflict at the heart of the movie. Even when the prophecy of Hellboy eventually destroying all the world is repeated, there are no overt references to the battle that Hellboy and his team are currently fighting and the warring emotions within them. Only upon reflection does that scene's real effect become clear. And, unfortunately, the overt conflict of the movie ends predictably, the resolution of the crisis foreshadowed I heavy-handed fashion. But del Toro makes it beautiful and magical, mired as it is in movie cliché.
One other highlight of the movie is Seth MacFarlane's voicing of Johann, the newest member of the BPRD. His voicework with his cartoon series makes him memorable in the voicework required for animating a bag of gas (literally). He has most of the humor in the movie, and achieve solely through his voice, with a single slapstick moment when he animates a locker room. But even that scene, evoking the laughter of the people in the audience, has more serious ramifications, lost in the laughter at the Three Stooges antics.
There's a lot going on in Hellboy II and I recommend it, because it is a beautiful film. But the denouement doesn't really resolve much of anything, and the hope that is offered Hellboy by Liz is symbolic of how to resolve the underlying conflict in all the characters. It can easily be argued that, while humanity wins and thus the movie is a comedy in the Greek sense, mankind loses overall. It is on that winsome fulcrum that the movie leaves us, obviously leading to a third movie. But given the set-up, it will take a truly magical feat to resolve in a fully satisfying fashion.
What follows is an examination of the magic missing from the typically human life. Liz (Selma Blair), Abe (Doug Jones), and Hellboy (Ron Perlman) find themselves fighting the Prince, whose intentions they don't entirely disagree with. Recently outed to the media, the BPRD are at first figures of fancy to the public, but they rapidly become centers of derision ultimately because they look different than humans. Liz attempts to act as a mediator for a little bit, but she finds herself on the side of her friend and lover. (About that—there's nothing graphic in the relationship between Hellboy and Liz, but the screenplay makes it clear they have issues, and they seem to be based a good bit on Hellboy's immaturity. I found the idea of them having a physical relationship off-putting precisely because he doesn't appear emotionally ready to have one—for sure, he loves Liz, but he isn't willing to adapt his habits to sharing his life with another person.) And all the while, the BPRD finds itself visiting fantastic lands and battling magical creatures on the verge of extinction due to mankind's greed. Nuada acts as Hellboy's bad angel, telling him how he should go over to the elvish side.
At the same time, Abe finds himself falling in love with Nuala (Ana Walton), Nuada's twin sister, and must balance his role as humanity's protector against the growing emotional attachment he feels for the elven princess. Nuada tries to thwart her brother's plans, but it does not appear to be out of it being wrong, but because it was the plan their father put together. All of the complex connections are brought to the surface in a huge battle between the BPRD and a plant elemental that Nuada releases in Brooklyn. Even in victory, the BPRD loses in unexpected ways.
Hellboy II contains all the stunning effects and costumes that mark it as a Guillermo del Toro film. The troll market is beautiful in its ugliness, and owes a great deal of debt to places like China Mieville's Un Lun Dun and the market in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (not the Star Wars cantina as some critics have suggested). That debt to earlier sources is a straight line to old myth and legend, and drawing those comparisons again pulls on the melancholia that surrounds the movie. The troll market is a place of wonder and magic…and it is located in the sewer of New York. The creatures are gorgeous and outrageous all at once, and yet sad in some ways.
And despite the paragraphs above spent describing the tense conflict between man and magic, old and new, the real conflict really does mostly live in the background of the movie. Most movie-goers will get lost in the action sequences and the stunning effects, and so miss the conflict at the heart of the movie. Even when the prophecy of Hellboy eventually destroying all the world is repeated, there are no overt references to the battle that Hellboy and his team are currently fighting and the warring emotions within them. Only upon reflection does that scene's real effect become clear. And, unfortunately, the overt conflict of the movie ends predictably, the resolution of the crisis foreshadowed I heavy-handed fashion. But del Toro makes it beautiful and magical, mired as it is in movie cliché.
One other highlight of the movie is Seth MacFarlane's voicing of Johann, the newest member of the BPRD. His voicework with his cartoon series makes him memorable in the voicework required for animating a bag of gas (literally). He has most of the humor in the movie, and achieve solely through his voice, with a single slapstick moment when he animates a locker room. But even that scene, evoking the laughter of the people in the audience, has more serious ramifications, lost in the laughter at the Three Stooges antics.
There's a lot going on in Hellboy II and I recommend it, because it is a beautiful film. But the denouement doesn't really resolve much of anything, and the hope that is offered Hellboy by Liz is symbolic of how to resolve the underlying conflict in all the characters. It can easily be argued that, while humanity wins and thus the movie is a comedy in the Greek sense, mankind loses overall. It is on that winsome fulcrum that the movie leaves us, obviously leading to a third movie. But given the set-up, it will take a truly magical feat to resolve in a fully satisfying fashion.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
WALL-E
Mrs. Speculator and I have been excited about WALL-E for some time, finding the trailers to be engaging and cute, and relying on the cachet that just coming from Pixar brings to a movie. And of course, the reviews for WALL-E have been huge, describing it as one of the best movies of the year. So it was with big expectations that we took our nephew to the movie this past week. And we all enjoyed it a good bit, but I appear to be in something of a minority when I suggest that it isn't all that it was made out to be.
First, the good news: the animation, especially in the scenes that take place on Earth, is just spectacular. Except for WALL-E's friend the cockroach, everything on Earth is animated in a super-realistic fashion. If you've seen the trailers where WALL-E is chased by grocery carts, they are great evidence of the verisimilitude of the animation. Of course, this leads to wondering about the value of animation for the viewer if it is so life-like that it can't be distinguished from real actors, but that's a subject for another time. Suffice to say that the animation is engrossing and absorbing so that when they end up on a spaceship with people animated not so meticulously, it's a little bit jarring.
And there is WALL-E himself. He is a thoroughly engaging character, expressing more personality than any other characters in the film. The much-discussed first half-hour of the movie, with its lack of dialogue, is an extended set piece spent filling out the character of WALL-E (and the problems with Earth to some degree). WALL-E may be the perfect naïf, expressing what is best about people without any of their foibles or faults. I'm reminded to some degree of the best Charlie Chaplin films, where generally the naïve hero is just moving along innocently in his life's patterns until something disturbs them and he has to cope. That WALL-E's emotional foundation comes from repeated viewings of Hello Dolly! only enhances his naiveté a well as giving the animators opportunities to have WALL-E dance.
WALL-E's love interest, EVE, is initially less developed than WALL-E, but she grows into a more fully realized character as the film moves along. She has purpose beyond WALL-E's single-minded devotion, and is often faced with difficult choices that resonate with audiences of all ages. The viewer expects that she will persevere and manage to save the human race as well as WALL-E, but it is the verve with which she acts and the setting of those actions that sets this film apart. I think a really strong argument could be made that she is the true hero of WALL-E, much as the hero of Rain Man is Raymond's brother rather than the Rain Man himself.
Unfortunately, the glowing reviews of WALL-E generally indicated that this was a message movie, and I had expected denser plot and a moral, much like Ratatouille. However, this is not a complicated movie at all, with a really straightforward plot. I find myself arguing with myself that this should not be considered a weakness for the movie, and am slowly winning that battle. But while engaged with the animation, brighter viewers may not be quite so with its basic premise that "good guys always win out in the end." I've seen articles with people expressing concern about the movies views on commercialism and obesity, but those are not what the movie is focused upon. That the Earth cannot sustain life is a fairly standard science-fiction trope and how we get to that state is never explicitly stated. That the world seems dominated by a single global corporation is also fairly common in science fiction and the source for more humor than any diatribes. And if anyone complains about the obesity of the humans aboard the starship Axiom, they missed the explanation given by the movie—extended stays in space remove bone mass. Laziness and corporate sloth is not the cause of the humans' appearance, it is the effect of a scientific premise that the movie deftly explains.
Ultimately I find myself making two comparisons. First, I can't help thinking of Ratatouille, perhaps my favorite movie of 2007: WALL-E is animated far more realistically and meticulously (which is saying a great deal given how stunning the animation for Ratatouille is), but its story is not nearly so engaging. Its main character is equally loveable but not nearly so developed as Remy in Ratatouille. I also find myself making mental comparisons with the 70s science fiction film, Silent Running. Again, the backdrop is an Earth in the midst of an ecological disaster, and again humans and robots must work together to try to save mankind. There are as many differences in the movies as there are similarities, but the lasting images from both of them are the robots stars as metaphors for the goodness inherent in their human masters.
First, the good news: the animation, especially in the scenes that take place on Earth, is just spectacular. Except for WALL-E's friend the cockroach, everything on Earth is animated in a super-realistic fashion. If you've seen the trailers where WALL-E is chased by grocery carts, they are great evidence of the verisimilitude of the animation. Of course, this leads to wondering about the value of animation for the viewer if it is so life-like that it can't be distinguished from real actors, but that's a subject for another time. Suffice to say that the animation is engrossing and absorbing so that when they end up on a spaceship with people animated not so meticulously, it's a little bit jarring.
And there is WALL-E himself. He is a thoroughly engaging character, expressing more personality than any other characters in the film. The much-discussed first half-hour of the movie, with its lack of dialogue, is an extended set piece spent filling out the character of WALL-E (and the problems with Earth to some degree). WALL-E may be the perfect naïf, expressing what is best about people without any of their foibles or faults. I'm reminded to some degree of the best Charlie Chaplin films, where generally the naïve hero is just moving along innocently in his life's patterns until something disturbs them and he has to cope. That WALL-E's emotional foundation comes from repeated viewings of Hello Dolly! only enhances his naiveté a well as giving the animators opportunities to have WALL-E dance.
WALL-E's love interest, EVE, is initially less developed than WALL-E, but she grows into a more fully realized character as the film moves along. She has purpose beyond WALL-E's single-minded devotion, and is often faced with difficult choices that resonate with audiences of all ages. The viewer expects that she will persevere and manage to save the human race as well as WALL-E, but it is the verve with which she acts and the setting of those actions that sets this film apart. I think a really strong argument could be made that she is the true hero of WALL-E, much as the hero of Rain Man is Raymond's brother rather than the Rain Man himself.
Unfortunately, the glowing reviews of WALL-E generally indicated that this was a message movie, and I had expected denser plot and a moral, much like Ratatouille. However, this is not a complicated movie at all, with a really straightforward plot. I find myself arguing with myself that this should not be considered a weakness for the movie, and am slowly winning that battle. But while engaged with the animation, brighter viewers may not be quite so with its basic premise that "good guys always win out in the end." I've seen articles with people expressing concern about the movies views on commercialism and obesity, but those are not what the movie is focused upon. That the Earth cannot sustain life is a fairly standard science-fiction trope and how we get to that state is never explicitly stated. That the world seems dominated by a single global corporation is also fairly common in science fiction and the source for more humor than any diatribes. And if anyone complains about the obesity of the humans aboard the starship Axiom, they missed the explanation given by the movie—extended stays in space remove bone mass. Laziness and corporate sloth is not the cause of the humans' appearance, it is the effect of a scientific premise that the movie deftly explains.
Ultimately I find myself making two comparisons. First, I can't help thinking of Ratatouille, perhaps my favorite movie of 2007: WALL-E is animated far more realistically and meticulously (which is saying a great deal given how stunning the animation for Ratatouille is), but its story is not nearly so engaging. Its main character is equally loveable but not nearly so developed as Remy in Ratatouille. I also find myself making mental comparisons with the 70s science fiction film, Silent Running. Again, the backdrop is an Earth in the midst of an ecological disaster, and again humans and robots must work together to try to save mankind. There are as many differences in the movies as there are similarities, but the lasting images from both of them are the robots stars as metaphors for the goodness inherent in their human masters.
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