Sherlock Holmes (***)

SHERLOCK HOLMES

** SPOILERS **

Sherlock Holmes has what turns out to be a pretty funny credit at the end that says something to the effect of, "Sherlock Holmes was created by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His adventures are available in books." No foolin'? Honest and true? There's a lot to like in Sherlock Holmes, a smart, thoroughly entertaining re-imagining (sort of, much of this depiction of Holmes, such as his wardrobe and bare knuckle boxing, are actually found in Doyle's books) of the venerable detective and his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson, as they uncover a sinister supernatural plot in an awesomely designed Victorian London on steroids. The theme of Holmes, the man of utmost reason, putting his deductive science against black magic was effective. You simply cannot go wrong with Robert Downey, Jr. playing the smartest, fastest talking man in the room.  His Sherlock Holmes is the most entertaining lead character in a Hollywood action picture since... his Tony Stark in Iron Man. Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, painfully self-aware that he exists to provide Holmes with exposition and, more importantly, a straight man. ("Straight" is relative. The movie toys with the ramifications to their bromance caused by Watson's intention to marry. A woman.)  Turning Holmes and Watson into action heroes lead to the coolest aspect of Sherlock Holmes: Downey's ability to use his deductive powers to create hand to hand combat strategies and then implement them in bone-crushing slow motion. Downey showcases this ability twice in the first hour, most memorably in 19th century London's version of Fight Club, yet he doesn't use it in his final mano e mano clash with the villainous Mark Strong atop the still-under construction Tower Bridge. Strong was also poorly served; he begins as an intriguing mystical villain for Downey but then is relegated to the shadows until the very end. We don't get to know Strong's evil Lord Blackwood at all. Holmes does make up for this with a novel take on the great detective explaining how he solved the case, which had Downey doing just that in the most smug, self-satisfied manner possible.  Shoehorned into Sherlock Holmes is Rachel McAdams as an American thief and love interest for Downey. McAdams is startlingly unconvincing and glaringly out of place. She seems to only exist to set up the sequel, which brings Professor Moriarty in as Holmes' adversary. Even while bending over backwards to have the details of the plot make sense, there are some logical leaps and holes in the third act (Law gets himself blown up, ends up hospitalized, is out with a cast a day later, then the cast is gone and he's 100% brawling with thugs again), but Sherlock Holmes compensates for it with rollicking action, sly wit, and pure entertainment. It's no shit, Sherlock.

Avatar (****)

AVATAR

Gone Native

** SPOILERS **

Not to undercut the tremendous technological achievement of James Cameron's Avatar, but looking beyond the cutting edge CGI and 3D technology for a moment, you quickly realize you've seen this movie before.  It's basically every movie. I lost count of how many movies Avatar is.  It's Aliens, it's Dances With Wolves, it's Last of the Mohicans, it's King Kong (the Peter Jackson one), it's The Last Samurai, it's Pocahontas, etc,.etc.  It's a Star Trek  episode or two also (I'm thinking of the one where Captain Pike goes to live on Talos IV after he's crippled.)  

Avatar is also very long.  It could stand to lose a half hour.  Showing off the tech and the vast, impressive CGI vistas and creatures of the planet Pandora is cool and all, but at its worst, Avatar feels like the longest, most expensive, and elaborate video game cut scene ever made, where you sit in frustration for 160 minutes because you know you'll never get to play.

Sam Worthington plays a crippled space Marine who volunteers to go to Pandora, an alien world inhabited by blue skinned cat people called the N'avi.  The N'avi as a race look like a WNBA team who blue themselves Tobias Funke-style. Released in the same year as Watchmen, Avatar is positively Puritan in its depiction of blue-skinned people who live au naturel. The N'avi men wear loin cloths but seem to lack genitals.  If Dr. Manhattan teleported into Pandora with his big blue dick swinging in the wind, he'd probably replace the shiny tree as the N'avi's new god.

Inhabiting a genetically engineered N'avi body, Worthington lies in a space coffin and mentally controls and lives the life of his super athletic N'avi avatar.  Mistrusted at first by the other N'avi, specifically the one he has the hots for, played by Zoe Saldana (doing a voice over that sounds just like Calypso from the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels) Worthington eventually becomes one of them, and rises up the ranks (in three months, mind you) to become leader of the tribe.

Trouble is, Worthington was sent to the N'avi by his asshole superiors in the military, and their asshole superiors in the mining corporation (lead by Giovanni Ribisi, playing Paul Reiser from Aliens) that wants to exploit Pandora's natural resources for human gain.  His mission is to figure out a way to get the N'avi to relocate themselves, or else they're coming in with their gunships, robot suits, and poison blankets.

Instead, Worthington totally goes native and leads the N'avi against the humans.  No shit, he does.  Worthington is positively shocked when he finds he treasures the N'avi more than his own people. It's as if he's never seen a movie like this before.  The asshole colonel is also surprised Worthington went native, despite his reading Worthington's video journals where he gradually describes his preference for living with the Thundercats, especially his favorite Thundercat, ho. 

To his credit, writer-director James Cameron brings his A game to A word: action.  The story may be familiar, much too familiar, but even after a 12 year break since Titanic, Cameron is still at the very pinnacle of action directors, and he stages some thrilling sequences.  Avatar also allowed Cameron to do something many of his peers have done but he hadn't had the chance to: stage a gigantic third act action set piece involving two huge armies, the high tech human Marines taking on the low tech N'avi warriors, going at it.

Cameron then shifts the action expertly into smaller and more personal sequences involving the main characters, culminating in the mano e mano showdown between Worthington's avatar and the colonel in his Aliens/Matrix Revolutions battlesuit.  I especially liked how Cameron had Saldana's N'avi deliver the final coup de grace; Jim Cameron has always been the most pro-woman, grrl power A-list director in Hollywood and proved it once again.

In IMAX 3D, Avatar is disorienting at first, like you're in a Universal Studios ride that absolutely refuses to end.  After about half an hour, your mind stops screaming "This is wrong!", accepts the 3D, and you stop noticing it (or you reject it entirely and go to sleep.) Still, Cameron achieved the immersive technological breakthrough he was looking for, which was clearly his primary objective for making Avatar. Cameron has successfully, aggressively pushed the medium of 3D cinema forward, all the while going a complete 180 on the (I suppose) less-than-important screenwriting aspects of filmmaking.

Some stuff baffled me.  For instance, Worthington spends many, many hours operating his N'avi avatar but must occasionally shut down and do stuff in the real world.  When he disconnects from his avatar, the avatar just lies on Pandora inert until he comes back in to operate it.  One would assume Worthington disconnects from his avatar while the N'avi are sleeping.  But when he's in the real world, he doesn't just go directly to sleep.  He goes and does other things like eat, talk to Sigourney Weaver, and record his video journals.

So if say, Worthington is a N'avi for 15 hours, and then he's gone for several more hours doing his human thing, the other N'avi must get kind of annoyed at how much their new friend sleeps.  This actually does get dealt with in one scene where the human miners invade a sacred N'avi space, but it must have happened a lot more than that.  There must have been moments where Worthington is hunting or some shit and then disconnects and his avatar just collapses in the middle of the forest.  The super active other N'avi must have been annoyed once or twice at this.

A lot is made of Pandora's natural life force and the mumbo jumbo about how the N'avi and all the other creatures draw from the spirit of the planet.  It's made clear early on Worthington's avatar is a genetically engineered clone of a N'avi.  It's an artificial construct at its core.  And yet the planet of Pandora embraces Worthington with open arms and every creature and N'avi eventually bows down to his specialness, completely ignoring that Worthington's avatar is in fact an abomination of nature, the exact opposite of natural creation.  Shit, Worthington is practically supernatural by the very end.  I guess the message is man's science can always trick nature.  Or maybe nature just won't give a shit if it's convenient for the movie.

If I have a favorite scene in Avatar, it involves Michelle Rodriguez. Rodriguez plays the role of "the snarly pilot who wears aviators". (Yeah, Cameron had one of those in Aliens too.) She doesn't have a character or arc to speak of, nor does she utter a single acceptable line of dialogue.  But in one scene, where Worthington and Weaver are arrested for helping the N'avi and are thrown in the brig, Rodriguez comes to bust them out.  It's the pivotal scene in the movie, because she does so wearing a torn white tank top.

What Rodriguez and Cameron are telling the audience is, "Hey fellas, you've been staring at blue, furry CGI cat boobs for the last two hours - here's what real human boobs look like!"  Then she wears the torn white tank top and flaunts the boobies for the rest of the movie. As far as I'm concerned, that makes her the most important person on Pandora. 

For the greatest, most accurate skewering of Avatar, read Avatar: The Metacontextual Edition. Absolutely correct, absolutely worth reading.

The Cove (****)

THE COVE

Remember the episode of The Simpsons when Lisa freed Snorkey the dolphin and Snorkey lead the dolphins to attack the people of Springfield and drive them into the sea?  The Cove reveals why the dolphins were so pissed off.  Turns out they were right to be vengeful. In all seriousness, the stunning documentary The Cove dramatically uncovers the real-life, wholesale slaughter of bottle nosed dolphins that has been going on for decades in Taiji, Japan ("the little town with the big secret"). Every year the waters of this tiny cove in Taiji run red with dolphin blood. 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered for their meat there, with some live "show" dolphins being sold for upwards of $150,000 each.  The man standing against this slaughter is Ric O'Barry, who is also responsible for the industry of holding dolphins in captivity by marine parks like Sea World in the first place. O'Barry was the man who personally captured and trained the four bottle nosed dolphins who played the role of Flipper on TV in the 1960s, creating the world's desire to swim with captured dolphins and see them flip through hoops at Sea World. For the last 35 years O'Barry has been trying, with little success, to bring down the multi-million dollar industry he helped create. O'Barry's partner in crime (according to Japanese law) is filmmaker Louie Psihoyos, who recruited a world class "Ocean's Eleven" team of scientists and technicians to successfully record the gruesome goings-on in Taiji, using high definition cameras and audio equipment, including cameras hidden in artificial rocks, mounted on dirigibles, and using Paris Hilton sex tape-style night vision. The filmmakers' Mission: Impossible-style operations succeed in shedding light on this tragedy where even famous (and hot) protesters like Hayden Panettiere and Isabel Lucas (who are shown getting arrested for swimming out to the Taiji cove in 2007) failed. There is an incredible amount of information in The Cove, enough to fill anyone with outrage about how nothing is done to protect bottle nosed dolphins from the creepy, cartoonish Japanese fishermen slaughtering them and eating their sweet meat.  (It turns out the fishermen are poisoning themselves and anyone else who eats the dolphin meat, which contains 2000 times the World Heath Organization's set toxic levels of mercury.)  Those fisherman will get the painful death that's coming to them in the end, but the dolphins can't afford to wait that long.

Up In The Air (***1/2)

UP IN THE AIR

** SPOILERS **

Up In The Air makes air travel as glamorous and thrilling as it must have been at the dawn of the jet age.  For George Clooney it still is: as someone who travels 260 days a year and is a member of the elite programs of his preferred airlines, hotels and car rental services, Clooney practically lives in planes and terminals, and he loves it. Of course he does.  Shit, so would I.  Clooney's lifestyle in Up In The Air isn't unrealistic, but it is the kind of luxury enjoyed by a privileged few who can breeze past the lines in terminals and stretch out in business class with liquor in highball glasses while the rest of the cattle graze in coach.  Up In The Air has a lot on its plate besides a commentary on travel.  Clooney's job is to travel from city to city and fire people (a "termination engineer", because "terminator" sets off Legal), making Up In The Air immediately timely and relevant in today's economic climate. Anna Kendrick arrives at his company as a hotshot hire fresh from Cornell (alma mater of the Nard Dog) with groundbreaking ideas about grounding Clooney and using the Internet to fire people via video conferencing.  Clooney takes her on the road with him and shows Kendrick what exactly it is their job entails.  The relationship between Clooney and Kendrick is deftly handled as they run the gamut from mentor/student to professional rivals, as Clooney is ever-aware Kendrick's success would ground him and his chosen lifestyle permanently. In an especially terrific scene, Kendrick discusses her ambitions and worldview as a 23 year old versus Clooney and Vera Farmiga's life experience-derived wisdom. ("He broke up with you by text message?" "That's like firing someone over the Internet.")  The only turbulence Up In The Air hits is that the lifestyle Clooney clearly enjoys is made to seem so pleasurable that the later scenes where he's grounded and reunites with members of his estranged family are almost a disappointing dose of reality. Director and co-writer Jason Reitman put together a simultaneously witty, tragic, and insightful movie about human connections, be it through travel, work, technology, or in one's personal life.  It's much closer in vein to Thank You For Smoking than Juno, with tart, adult dialogue, no phony sentimentality, and some surprising directions taken, especially in the third act, which at first seemed to be plodding down the road to formula.  Reitman also achieved the unlikely in making cities like Omaha and St. Louis seem as almost as attractive travel destinations as Miami and San Francisco.  Travel lessons one can learn from Up In The Air include never getting in line behind families and old people (they're riddled with hidden metal and never seem to appreciate what little time they have left on Earth).  Instead, line up behind the Asians: they pack light, they move fast, and they prefer slip on shoes.  Is that racist?  Stereotyping?  Whatever, as long as it gets you through the line quickly.

Fired Up! (*)

FIRED UP!

I know, I know.  I watched this on purpose, so I got what was coming to me.  Fired Up! tells the story that had to be told:  two high school football player hornballs decide to go to cheerleader summer camp so they can score with the 300 chicks present. And, get this, they learn a lesson! The 300 chicks are well cast for their hotness, including Sarah Roemer from Disturbia. One can be distracted by the girls for a while (about 37 minutes by my count) but the screenwriting 101 plotting and everything else horrible about Fired Up! cut a straight path to madness.  The football players are what's-his-name, who played Hunter, Jan's assistant on The Office and Claire's flying tool boyfriend in season 2 of Heroes.  The other guy in it is someone I never want to see or hear of again.  There was no need for two main characters; their dialogue and characters were virtually identical and each seemed to exist only so the other had someone to trade "clever" dialogue with.  There's a "hilarious" scene where everyone at cheer camp watched Bring It On and recited every line of dialogue.  There have been four (and counting) Bring It Ons since Bring It On, so why did they need to make Fired Up!? Why, damn you?!

Twilight Saga: New Moon (*1/2)

TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

"The wolf's out of the bag."

The Twilight Saga: New Moon goes about its business under the mistaken assumption that everyone in the audience is blessed/cursed with eternal life.  This is a looong movie. Long.  And boring. Interminably paced and bursting at the seams with overwrought, wretched teen drama, New Moon is a grueling endurance test with an ending that only promises even more interminably paced, overwrought, wretched teen drama in next year's sequel.  In the opening scenes, Edward Cullen speaks about how much he envies humans for their varied means of committing suicide.  By the time the credits finally rolled, I had a pretty good understanding of what pretty boy Cullen was talking about.

New Moon could be retitled Everybody Loves Bella. Bella Swan is in almost every scene; sought after, courted, abandoned, threatened, and tolerated by every other character in the movie.  Everybody Loves Bella, but we still don't know why.  Kristen Stewart plays Bella as a stubborn, sullen, difficult bore suffering from night terrors and adrenalin addiction.  She pines for Edward Cullen with a dangerously unhealthy level of obsession, composing self-absorbed email after undeliverable email to Edward's clairvoyant sister Alice (who must have foreseen her Inbox being spammed and canceled her email account).  Considering how much blunt force trauma Bella suffers throughout New Moon from being thrown through a table, flying off a motorcycle into a boulder, and cracking her skull on a cliff wall under water, what Bella needs most isn't Edward's eternal love, but a CAT scan.

The love of Bella's life, Edward Cullen, is again the stuff of tween dreams. Edward is the vampire who can slow-motion walk against the wind, even when there's no wind.  This time, Edward swaps his wild emotional mood swings in the first Twilight movie for a bizarre fixation with killing himself if Bella ever dies, a morbid trait he passes onto Bella as the movie bludgeons the audience with obvious references to Romeo and Juliet. After he leaves her, the specter of Edward (lets go ahead and call it Head Edward since it's a pretty shameless riff on Head Six haunting Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica) haunts Bella's waking life throughout New Moon.  The most LOL-inducing moment in the movie is the quick scene of Edward in Rio crushing his cell phone and about to burst into tears when he thinks Bella is dead. If there's one thing I do somewhat marvel at about Edward Cullen, it's how Robert Pattinson is able to play him as if he's about to burst into tears at any moment.

With Edward out of the way, the object of Bella's affection becomes Jacob Black, played by a ripped, chiseled and jacked Taylor Lautner.  As Twilight did regarding Edward Cullen being an unholy bloodsucking vampire, New Moon wastes a lot of time being very coy about Bella discovering a Very Shocking Reveal that absolutely everyone in the audience already knows going in: Jacob Black is an American werewolf in Washington State.  Lautner acquits himself well in New Moon, playing Jacob Black as a stand up good guy who, unfortunately for him, is just Bella's rebound man. The first chance Bella got, she literally ran back to Edward. "Don't make me choose," Bella tells Jacob. "It's him. It was always him."  Aw, poor Jacob.  He deserves better.  He's a good boy.  Here, have a cookie.

With the vampires moved out of Forks for most of the dragging middle act of New Moon, Bella and we get to know the local pack of werewolves Jacob runs with.  While the vampires are allowed to have their own personal style, the werewolves subscribe to a uniform appearance of short cropped hair, being perpetually and inappropriately shirtless, and wearing denim shorts as if they are Never Nudes from Arrested Development.  (Come to think if it, judging from the rippling pecs and eight pack abs on display, Tobias Funke would be hungry like the wolf.)  When they transform into werewolves, their denim shorts are shown to tear completely off (unlike the Incredible Hulk's shape-changing purple pants).  It begs the question of what the werewolves' budget is for denim shorts, since they must go through at least a pair a day.  The shirtless-ness is generally amusing, except for one scene between Bella and shirtless Jacob that takes place in the rain where I felt terrible for the actors, especially Lautner, who was visibly shivering under the torrent of the rain machines.

Jacob warns Bella off of being with him for the same reason Edward bails on her; because, being monsters, a moment of losing control could be tragic and fatal for Bella.  Bella never seriously considers cuddling up to the wolves; she's first and foremost a vampire kind of girl.  When Bella confronts Jacob's dawgs and slugs one, Jacob springs to her defense.  The wolves tear into each other but a scene later, while snacking on fresh baked muffins and making wolf puns, Jacob and the other wolf are all cool, dawg.  Maybe, as Conan O'Brien joked, this was left on the cutting room floor:

Besides the werewolves, New Moon introduces us to the vampire ruling council in Italy, the Volturi, which must be Latin for "Vampire Dandy Fops."  The Volturi still dress like Marie Antoinette is the Queen of France. The Volturi include Michael Sheen as their leader, who was a werewolf himself in the Underworld movies and now gets to play a vampire on the flip side.  Dakota Fanning is the other famous face among the Volturi but she isn't given much to do except stare into the camera and make big saucer eyes.  We're told the Volturi enforce the vampire laws, the main one being they don't obviously kill humans.  Explain then why the last thing we're shown of the Volturi is them leading a gaggle of human tourists into their throne room where they're rather obviously slaughtered?

A bit of unfinished business is carried over from Twilight into New Moon, including the evil redhead vampire coming after Bella as revenge for Edward killing her boyfriend in the first movie.  The main story continuing from the end of Twilight is Bella badgering Edward about wanting to be turned into a vampire.  There is simply no talking her out of it and she even got most of the Cullens to okay it. On one hand, Bella's probably already sick of her perptually throbbing loins and Edward's quivering any time they suck face.  Plus, no matter how much they like her, all of her various monster friends still feel like they want to kill her.  I suppose the only practical solution really is for Bella to just become das vampyre and be done with it.  It must get old being the only human in the monster mash.

I've been a pretty good sport about the so-called "Twilight Saga".  I harbor no ill-will towards this franchise or its legions of female Twi-hards.  I gave the first Twilight movie a reasonable pass.  In fact, there are some positive aspects to New Moon: It's shot better and looks prettier than its grimy, monochrome predecessor.  What little action there is, mainly werewolves chasing blurry-running vampires through the forests, is stepped up from before.  There are a couple of amusing moments sprinkled throughout, especially Bella going to the movies with the jock dude who always liked her and Jacob cock blocking him outside the theater.  The Cullen clan still seem like pretty cool cats, even though there's a lot less of them in New Moon.  Drop dead gorgeous Ashley Greene livens up every scene she's in as Alice Cullen, the hottest and bounciest of the vampires.  Greene and Lautner have fun with their mutual vampire/werewolf loathing. Still, those are brief respites of interest from how slow, redundant and boring New Moon is to the male non-Twi-hard.

As for the most important question of all: Am I Team Edward or Team Jacob?  Let's just say I don't hate the players, but in New Moon's case, I hate the game.  New Moon really screws the pooch.

The Road (***1/2)

THE ROAD

One For My Baby, And One More For The Road

** SPOILERS **

The Road makes for a terrible Friday night at the movies. That it's anything but a feel-good, humorous barrel of fun means it's doing almost everything right.  Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel (I own it; will read it one of these days), The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a man trying to help his young son survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  We're never told how or why the world ended, just that it did.  No animals survived the apocalypse so there's nothing to eat except what the mostly extinct human race left behind.  The main fear of any survivor is cannibalism.  The central story of Mortensen doing everything and anything in his humanly power to keep his son safe while teaching him basic human values and decency ("holding the fire in your heart") is as effective as the world around them is bleak and harrowing.  Even in this brutal setting, with father and son battling constant exhaustion, starvation, illness, and the constant threat of death, Mortensen somehow manages to work in two nude scenes, one-upping that scene from Eastern Promises in quantity if not quite in exposure. The production design of the barren wasteland America has become is awesomely convincing. If I have any real quibble with The Road, it's with the ending.  In my estimation, given the story and circumstances of the movie, there's no ending that could be considered "happy".  The Road manages to end balancing tragedy hand-in-hand with a glimmer of hope.  Though that hope feels a little like a cheat, it's still a better ending than the one the thematically similar I Am Legend came up with.

V 1x4 - "It's Only The Beginning"

I want some of that Bliss.  That was a pretty cool sequence.  Anna can make Vs feel real, real good.

So that's their plan!  They're pretending they have a miracle cure but really, they're fucking with our flu shots. It's so simple!  No, it isn't - it's needlessly complicated.  And it's also the very same plan Homer Simpson uncovered when he was Mr. X that got him banished to the Island in their parody of The Prisoner.

If I understand Visitor math correctly, Ryan and Valerie's baby will be half black, half Hispanic, and half lizard.

The new Resistance kind of blunders around and yet manages to get stuff accomplished.  I thought Georgie was a skilled rebel survivor who's been fighting Vs for a long time or something but no, he's just a greasy dude who doesn't know what he's doing and got himself shot. Where was Georgie after Erica, Jack and Ryan blew up the warehouse?  Did they just leave him in the car and forget about him?

I'm disappointed we didn't get to see the skinning.  Four episodes in and we still haven't seen the lizard within except for the brief shot of Dale's eye.  It's kind of weird how Visitors have all this super medical science but they use scalpels to skin each other.  Or maybe that's just Visitor punishment, going medieval on each other's asses.

I wish they went the extra mile and developed a Visitor spoken language so that when Vs are speaking to each other on their ships with no humans around, they're not speaking English.

I like the Visitor suicide method.  Vs about to kill themselves should yell out, "Kiss my ash, human!"

Tyler doesn't seem like he ever plans on going back home.  He's on a motherfuckin' spaceship with his hot blonde alien girlfriend and her hot mother.  He's in teenage boy paradise.

The ending was very encouraging.  Father Jack taking a shiv in the gut was a nice surprise.  The final shot of the Visitor fleet heading for Earth was pretty bad ass.

In the original V, the Visitors were from Sirius.  I hope in March, 2010 we learn what galaxy they're from and what the Visitors' name for their race is.  They can't possibly refer to themselves as "the Visitors" to each other.

Wonder Woman (*1/2)

WONDER WOMAN

 

Wonder Woman is probably the single most problematic superhero to adapt into a motion picture, judging from the failed attempts to do so in the decades since Lynda Carter guided a generation of boys through puberty in the 1970's.  DC Animation's Wonder Woman drops headlong right into all of the pitfalls.  Of all the DC Universe animated features I've seen, this is the strangest. Wonder Woman opens with little explanation or context, in the midst of a bloody battle between the Amazons and the man-beast forces of Ares the god of war at some undetermined point in the past.  Then the Amazons are granted their own island paradise, where they live in isolation, festering in the man-hate their queen Hippolyta heaps onto her Amazons, especially her daughter Diana, formed from clay and given life from the gods. (Although her superpowers seem severely downgraded considering Wonder Woman's might is supposed to rival Superman's.) When pilot Steve Trevor crashes on Themyscira, Diana wins the right to escort him to Man's World and hunt down the escaped Ares. But where does her star spangled bathing suit costume come from? Where the hell did the invisible jet come from?  How does Diana know how to fly a plane?  She parks it in Central Park like it's the Klingon Bird of Prey in Star Trek IV.  When she starts interacting with people who aren't Amazons, whose bright idea was it to write Wonder Woman as if she's Dr. Temperance Brennan from Bones?  The producers might as well have gone all out and hired Emily Deschanel to voice Wonder Woman.  Keri Russell provides her best tough grrl growl voicing Wonder Woman, while Virginia Madsen robotically voices Hippolyta.  Nathan Fillion has the most fun as Steve Trevor.  He gets all of the humorous dialogue and sleazy (but apt) innuendo about the Amazons, who are shown frolicking nude in a grotto that Hugh Hefner himself may have built on Themyscira. (Is this cartoon for kids?)  Alfred Molina plays Dr. Otto Octav -- I mean, Ares. The movie is a slapdash headscratcher with some painful battle of the sexes arguments between Wonder Woman and Trevor. The wonder of Wonder Woman is not at all serviced.

The Prisoner

** SPOILERS **

After spending six hours in the Village, I walk away feeling that I quite liked it there.  The Prisoner was, at first, difficult and frustrating.  It's a challenging viewing experience; looking away from the screen for a few seconds meant missing any amount of jump cuts from either of the realities presented. Intercut happenings in the Village or in the world outside it demanded constant focus and attention.  It is an incessant flow of often bewildering visual and aural information (the soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard on television).  The storytelling seemed murky and impenetrable at first, the characters cyphers speaking in riddles. But putting in the time immersed in the Village, the more reasonable and then occasionally fascinating it became.

I've only seen a few episodes of the original The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.  In terms of which is better, the original or the remake, or reasons why, I have no dog in that fight.  The Prisoner 2009 is decidedly unlike the original stylistically or tonally, and it has some differing ideas and themes.  It also owes as much to more modern works like The Matrix, 12 Monkeys, and Fight Club as it does to its predecessor.  On it's own merits, however, The Prisoner 2009 is really well done and powerful.  Also frustrating and maddening.  But I always assumed those would go hand in hand in anything called The Prisoner.

My favorite episodes of the six were episodes three and four, "Anvil" and "Darling."  The former dealt with surveillance within the Village ("Everything is suspicious if you look at it properly.") and delivered the major character reveal of 11-12, the son of number 2.  It contained the answer to the oldest question in the Village -  Who is number 1? - delivered by a schoolgirl:

"There is no number 1. There never has been and there never will be. The concept of the number 2 is an act of humility. The title reminds us all that we are all public servants, even number 2.  No one is number 1."

That's some philosophical toilet humor right there.  In all seriousness, I found the education of the children in the Village, who are taught "facts" like the light bulb being invented not by Thomas Edison but by a number, fascinating and infuriating.  6's attempt to get the children to perform surveillance on 2 for him and the end result of that idea was disturbing to say the least.  Then there was the occasion when the Village welcomed new arrivals.

"Where did you come from?" "We just got off the bus." "But if the Village is all there is, where did you get on the bus?"

The most successful episode for me was "Darling", which dealt with 6 meeting 4-15, the woman he falls in love with.  Or is made to fall in love with.  Or loved in a different life but was chemically induced to love in the Village.  The relationship between 6 and 4-15, or Michael and Lucy, was for me the most compelling aspect of the entire series.  The flashbacks to them in New York intercut with 6 and a blind 4-15 nearly marrying in the Village was provocative and heartbreaking.  It raised compelling questions about the nature of love and attraction, with the addition of 313's chemically induced love of 6. (As 2 condemned her: "Your punishment is already inside you.")

Both episodes seemed to raise the idea that the key to a man/woman's heart is surveillance (Bono and Sting have written songs about such) and constant druggings.  Well, that goes without saying.

The greater meaning of it all, and the reveals of what the Village really is, why it was built, and why everyone was brought there, didn't excite or anger me.  I feel ambivalent towards The Answers, though I was intrigued by the final moments where 6 seemed to reverse his hatred of the Village and began questioning building a better Village; he seemingly becomes 2.  Or perhaps more accurately, 6 becomes 1. ("6 is the 1.")

The acting was superlative throughout.  Jim Caveizel's forlorn and intense 6 was well matched by Ian McKellan's dastardly but secretly conflicted 2.  The two women in the story, Haley Atwell as 4-15 and Ruth Wilson as 313, were both lovely and tragic.  The runaway breakthrough character is Jamie Campbell Bower as 11-12, the son of 2, and the only principal character "born" in the Village.  Director Nick Hurron didn't spare anyone almost intrusive close ups.

In the end, even with the questions seemingly answered, I would be happy to return to the Village for an extended stay.  "More Village!" indeed, 2.

V 1x3 - "A Bright New Day"

Erica Evans, Hero of the Visitors.  There should be an Erica Evans Day on the V motherships.

Big step up in story and character from last week.  The Resistance leadership is finally being formed, but the Fifth Column within the Visitors is an even cooler major development.  The references to "reconnecting" and "bliss" are interesting. The Vs' monitor screens linked to their swanky blue jacket cameras are cool. The more we find out about those damned dirty lizards, the better.

I also liked Ryan's threat that the Visitors would skin Cyrus alive.  The Vs skin each other?  Into what, suitcases and belts?  "See these sweet boots I'm wearing?  I used to know this guy.  He was a dick."

We spent a lot more time with the Visitors and this week, it didn't seem like scenes ended prematurely right when Anna was about to say something interesting.  I liked Anna's rehearsal of her speech to Mary Faulkner, right down to fake (crocodile) tears.  Anna must have studied Method acting on the Visitor homeworld.

Thumbs way up to Lisa's quick thinking of getting into her underpants rather than Erica seeing her in her uniform.  Lisa's mother (Anna!) didn't hatch no dummy.

Now that the Visitors have visas, do they have the same "diplomatic immunity" the South Africans in Lethal Weapon 2 had?

Michael Jackson's This Is It (****)

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT

As a living document to the talent of Michael Jackson, even at age 50, and his intent to bow out with the most spectacular tour of his career, This Is It couldn't have been better. One thing becomes perfectly clear upon viewing This Is It: Michael Jackson's final concert tour was going to be a hell of a show.  This Is It opens with interviews of Michael's dancers as they auditioned for the honor of joining him on stage.  They all regarded Michael the same way; with deep, reverential awe.  Then for the next two hours, Jackson earns every bit of that awe. First, there is the music, with Jackson performing a medley of his most crowd-pleasing hits, like "Bad", "Billie Jean", "Human Nature", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Jam," and "Man in the Mirror". (Michael was shown to struggle a bit with old Jackson Five songs.)  The biggest surprise was how much Michael sang. The infamous backing track was present at some points when numbers required heavy dancing, but Michael sang a great deal of his songs (to the point where he admonished himself for "singing out" when he should have been preserving his voice.)  Jackson and his team had some awe-inspiring video and special effects planned for the tour.  My favorites were the "Smooth Criminal" video, with Michael super-imposed in an old Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson movie, and the "Thriller" video, which had his dancers as zombies and ended with millions of spectral images descending from the sky.  The most fascinating and rewarding aspect of This Is It is watching Jackson at work - the way he interacted with his musicians, dancers, and crew, the way he could hear notes in their performances and find ways to improve or perfect what he was hearing, his insistence on their following his lead when he's "sizzling".  Jackson is shown to be a meticulously hard worker who pushed his team, and more importantly himself, to their limits.  And yet he was humble and kind, never abusive.  This Is It would have us believe creating this concert tour was all harmony, hugs, and uplifting moments of the crew applauding Michael's rehearsals on stage, but, given how things ultimately ended, anyone going to see This Is It is happy with that illusion. This Is It has no time for scandal or sadness.  There is no interest in who Michael Jackson was as a person, off stage, or in his private life.  This Is It is about the concerts Jackson intended to perform, and by focusing only on how he worked to put those concerts together, Michael Jackson is showcased in the finest light possible: as a consummate showman, a world class musical genius, and as what he was at his very best - the King of Pop. 

2012 (**)

2012

** SPOILERS **

I still can't figure out what Roland Emmerich's problem is with the world.  2012 is the third time he has cinematically destroyed it.  The first time was the most fun because it involved spaceships and aliens and Will Smith and Bill Pullman's speech as the President.  "Fun" isn't really what I had watching 2012, a two and a half hour-long exercise in cutting edge CGI effects and screenwriting banality.  The plot is simple: Thousands of years ago the Mayans predicted the end of the world would happen on December 21, 2012 - to the day, mind you. The end comes in the form of a "solar climax".  There's nothing sexy about this sungasm.  The solar flares combining with the planets aligning in a particular way cause the seas to rise, the Earth's crust to rearrange itself, and "life as we know it is over."  In the midst of all this, John Cusack must get his ex-wife Amanda Peet and their family to safety in the most unlikely, preposterous way possible, while top scientician and one of my favorite actors Chiwetel Ejiofor tries to mastermind the rescue of 400,000 people to start all over in super high-tech arks.  The money sequences all involve whole cities rising and collapsing or tidal waves smashing cities (American cities are shown mainly.)  While that's going on, Emmerich goes to the well twice showing Cusack driving an unlikely vehicle (a limo, then later a camper) through explosions and collapsing buildings.  Then he goes to a different well twice to show airplanes barely taking off and flying through explosions and more collapsing buildings (instead of just, you know, flying straight up).  2012 cribs from similar disaster movies like Deep Impact and Poseidon.  The ending is pretty similar to the ending of Battlestar Galactica. Emmerich also tacks on subplot after subplot of characters we don't care much about.  In 2012, Danny Glover is the President and lovely Thandie Newton is his daughter, which is pretty neat, until you realize Emmerich has the end of the world happen on the black President's watch.  The screenplay does go multi-national.  While Hispanics are non-existent (except for Rio biting it), 2012 ends up being very fair to white people and Chinese people, while dealing very harshly with whiny, asshole plastic surgeons,  fat, asshole Russian billionaires and (sadly) their big boobied blonde mistresses.

V 1x2 - "There Is No Normal Anymore"

Not quite the episode 2 I was hoping for. I read a review of the pilot last week that said something to the effect that V was like a cop procedural with aliens in the background. "There Is No Normal Anymore" really felt like that.

I can't help but compare to the original miniseries where by the end of hour 2 the Resistance was set up, all the main characters knew each other, and we knew the Visitors were evil and what they were generally up to. By the end of hour 2 now, we know... not too much new from what we knew by the end of hour one. We know not to trust anyone.

Don't trust anyone.  How fitting that the motto of V is the same as a certain Texas Rattlesnake.

I did like Lisa turning her back on Tyler because he punched out the protester. Tyler was trying to be all macho and impress the hot alien girl whose people's motto is "We are of peace. Always."

I feel like the Visitors' dialogue is ending up on the cutting room floor. Scenes end right before Anna starts saying something really interesting. The Visitors need personalities, stat.

The Box (**)

THE BOX

The Box wants to know if you'd push a button and kill "someone you don't know" for a million dollar cash prize, tax free, delivered in a briefcase. The briefcase itself could also be worth some dough.  Who wants to know, anyway?  Why, Frank Langella does.  He was struck by lightning and is missing the left side of his jaw. (Harvey Dent would play the world's smallest violin for him.) A perpetually distressed, not-at-all hot Cameron Diaz and a harrowed James Marsden are a married couple in Richmond, Virginia who receive The Box from Langella.  Do they push the button?  I won't say, although the movie would be over in 15 minutes if they didn't. The Box is set in 1976 but the movie is much more reflective of the 1950's with its Cold War-era science fiction roots, shadowy men in black huddling in NASA HQ about life on Mars, and several characters referencing Amazing Science Fiction stories of Martians with "technology so advanced it resembles magic."  Diaz and Marsden live in a town where everyone acts super creepy all the time, including their son, who is jarringly out of tone with the actors playing his parents in the first scene they share together.  The son ends up being an important component of the third act dilemma Diaz and Marsden face, but it would have worked a lot better if we cared at all about him. Turns out Richmond, Virginians in 1976 don't all have invisible rods up their asses that make them act creepy.  Their bizarre behavior is directly related to the eerie powers Langella possesses.  The storytelling is so murky, we're never sure if Langella's abilities came from Mars or from, as Langella says, "whoever controls the lightning." (Or do Martians control the lightning? What?)  Meanwhile, like the rat in the last scene of The Departed symbolizing obviousness, The Box beats you over the head with on-the-nose set design (the wallpaper in Diaz's kitchen resembles thousands of buttons) and dialogue (a character notices Marsden has blood on his knuckles and says, "You have blood on your hands.")  The Box tries to out-grim and out-pensive the last three M. Night Shyamalan pictures, and like the last three M. Night Shyamalans, it was ripe for all kinds of comedy.  Virtually every scene involving Langella would have brought the house down with laughter if Diaz and Marsden played them in the exact opposite way (which would have been the more entertaining way.)  That should become clear when The Simpsons inevitably parody The Box in a future "Treehouse of Horror."

V 1x1 - "Pilot"

V felt a little sparse. I wish the pilot were two hours. I wonder how it played to people who'd never seen the original miniseries when it aired in the 80's, on DVD, or on Syfy over the last few days?

Having refreshed my memories of V thanks to Syfy, it was interesting how the new V zigged where the original zagged:

• The Nazi/Jew parable is out in favor of a religious parable ("the Saviors of humanity") mixed with the hot button issue of "universal health care". Literally, in V's case.
• The Visitors looking more corporate and refined as opposed to military. I sort of missed the red uniforms, red sunglasses, and especially the amplified voices. Also the Visitors' modified Swastika logo.
• Elizabeth Mitchell's son, which eliminated the sociopath kid in the miniseries who joined the Visitors and sold his family out to them and merged that character instead with the girl who had the hots for a Visitor and ended up giving birth to the Starchild.
• The Visitors announcing right away via Anna's introductory video that they wanted Earth's water, which was a big secret in the original V, along with their being lizards, their plot to discredit and eliminate scientists,  and their intention to kidnap humans for food.
• The reveal that the Visitors are reptilian was kind of just tossed out there in dialogue. I suppose at this point the first thing anyone who knows anything about V knows is that the Visitors are lizards so they didn't bother to act like it was a big shock. Alan Tudyk's sudden appearance as part of the Visitors' raid on the Resistance meeting was pretty surprising though. And I was wondering what the point of Morris Chestnut's character was. I never saw him being a Visitor coming, so that was a cool spin on how some Visitors are part of the Resistance in the original V.
• The red V tag now being in support of the Visitors instead of as an act of support of the human Resistance = awesome.

Although I cringed at the implications that Visitors positioned on Earth for decades are responsible for all our problems (the "unjust wars" line was a bit of an eyeroller), I was wondering what the fuck all this plot about the FBI investigating terrorist cells was about when there are ALIENS in this story. I really liked the reveal at the end that the Visitors are the cell.

Elizabeth Mitchell said the Visitors were arming themselves with the most powerful weapon out there: devotion. Really? Because the word that came to my mind was "sex." Morena Baccarin and Laura Vandervoort? I'd walk a mile to kiss those reptiles.

Hulkamania Comes to TNA

The biggest bombshell in the history of TNA: Total Nonstop Action wrestling hit today: Hulk Hogan has signed with TNA. And with him, Eric Bischoff.

In terms of being able to stake a claim in the general public's minds that they are indeed serious about becoming the kind of powerhouse promotion WWE is (or WCW was when it challenged the WWF in the 1990's), signing Hulk Hogan is the greatest move possible for TNA.

Whatever impact (pun intended) Hogan's presence has, specifically whatever benefit/damage to the status quo (firing Vince Russo is the top of my personal list) or to whatever the elements of TNA are going to be upended by him (will Samoa Joe and AJ Styles be eating the big legdrop, brother?), in terms of public perception - and TNA has very, very little to the general public - Hulk Hogan's name, stature and star power gives TNA instant credence.

There are really only three true free agent megastars that TNA could bring in to give them the kind of recognition they need to be considered a rival - or they hope, an equal - to WWE:

Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Rock.

Everyone else, including Ric Flair, is a just wrestling star, no matter how big a wrestling star. Those three guys are household names transcending the wrestling business. Rock and Austin are pipe dreams for TNA. Hulk Hogan is the biggest score they'll ever have.

TNA, by the majority of credible accounts I've seen regarding their business, was just not growing. With Hulk Hogan's name and Eric Bischoff working with them, given what they did for WCW (not to WCW, because that's a whole different ball of wax) TNA has the best chance they've ever had to be seen as an equal to WWE. What they do from this point on will be hotly debated, dissected, complained about, but it may also work.

I'd say congratulations to all parties are involved. I would suspect that today, for the first time probably ever, Vince McMahon took some time out of his day to seriously consider what TNA is and what this means to his business.

Paranormal Activity (no stars)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

 *** SPOILERS ***

A tremendous crock of shit masquerading as a horror movie phenomenon, Paranormal Activity literally has nothing up its sleeve beyond a few parlor tricks. Made on a shoestring budget of $15,000, one is still left wondering where all that money went, because it isn't on the screen. What is on the screen are two of the most boring people ever committed to high definition video occupying a million dollar four bedroom house that I'm not convinced they could even afford. (She's a student, he's a "day trader". Sure.) The house is too well-appointed to be creepy or claustrophobic and creates zero atmosphere for horror. Also in the house with them is a demon, or something, that's haunting the girl. So says a "ghost psychic" who, in one of many LOL moments (although this one was probably intentional), couldn't wait to get out of the house. The girl is told that leaving the house wouldn't help and that the demon would follow her, but it's never clear why the leaving the house option is never explored anyway. (Best guess: there was nothing in the budget for shooting exteriors.)  The couple are haunted over the course of 20+ boring days and nights.  The demon or whatever takes for-fucking-ever to pick up its game, going from spoooky things like turning on the hallway lights and loud stomping noises to setting fire to a Ouiji board to finally getting physical. The demon is out of the bottle when one quickly realizes the demon will only do as much as the budget will allow. After an interminable amount of stalling, Paranormal Activity empties its bag of tricks in the final minutes for a startlingly banal payoff.  The fact that Paranormal Activity has made 100x its production budget at the box office is a testament to the ability of Paramount Pictures' marketing department to bamboozle moviegoers. They're laughing all the way to the bank.

For a similar idea to but a much better movie than Paranormal Activity, try The Strangers.

Where The Wild Things Are (***1/2)

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Where The Wild Things Are, a gorgeous little film about a lonely, angry little boy played by Max Records befriending lonely, big monsters, isn't so much for children as it is about one particular child.  The Wild Things themselves feel completely alive; they're a triumph of practical effects, CGI, and voice acting by James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Forrest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, and Catherine O'Hara.  All of the characters, human and Wild Thing, struggle mightily with issues of loneliness, abandonment, rage, longing for acceptance, and the questions of what is right and wrong.  To the credit of director Spike Jonze and his co-writer Dave Eggers, these issues are not spelled out blatantly nor wrapped up and solved for the audience. Though Max enters a fantasy world of escape, the movie is light on whimsy. There are unexpected moments of real fear and real uncertainty, along with a genuinely troubling event that take place between Max and his mother, played by Catherine Keener.  These are balanced by some beautiful, vibrant sequences set to the music by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids.  The story itself, expanded from Maurice Sendak's beloved children's picture book that contains just nine sentences, feels unwieldy and incomplete. Max's adventures with the Wild Things, who reflect aspects of himself, his family, and what's missing in his life he can't quite articulate, don't feel like it reaches a conclusion as much as it just stops. But to honor the farewell request of one of the Wild Things, I'm happy to overlook the flaws and say good things about them.

The Invention of Lying (**)

THE INVENTION OF LYING

The Invention of Lying is the best movie of the year.  I'm lying.  Ricky Gervais co-writes, co-directs, and stars as a fat loser who lives in an alternate world where no one in the world ever lies.  Everyone tells the truth all the time.  Not even lying by omission exists, or little white lies.  Hard, cold truth always.  The first 20 minutes or so were really good, with every character blurting out any thought they have no matter how negative or insulting. Gervais' self-deprecating style of humor involves his character calling himself a fat, dumpy loser followed by every one else calling him the same. The novelty of brutal honesty for laughs quickly wears off, however, and the concept reveals itself to be a clever SNL skit dragged out to 90 minutes.  The all-star appearances by Louis CK, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Rob Lowe, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Tambor, Jonah Hill, and Edward Norton each momentarily distract from the wildly unbelievable turns the story takes and the rote, formulaic conclusion it reaches. The first act promised a different, better movie than what it eventually became.  I did like the clever, underlying themes of how the little white lies we tell in real life actually do help people and can make life better.  Lies don't always make Baby Jesus cry.