Mako

MAKO

July 24, 2006

Mako died on Saturday, July 21, 2006 after a long battle with cancer.  He was 73.
In my head there is a list of character actors I've always wanted to work with.  Mako was always at the top of the list.  Strangely, with a couple of exceptions, I've almost never seen Mako in a good movie.  Before I knew who he was, I remembered him as the Wizard in Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer.  The first time he truly came to my attention as Mako was in 1993, in Sidekicks, when he played Mr. Lee, the Mr. Miyagi-like karate teacher to the late Jonathan Brandis.   As the head of the Nakamoto corporation, he had very little to do in the movie adaptation of Michael Crichton's Rising Sun besides look stoic and play golf with Sean Connery.  In 1994, Mako played the sorcerer Nakano, chewing the scenery and teaching Connor MacLeod “the power of illusion” in Highlander: The Final Dimension.  Although he was in Bulletproof Monk, I don't remember him in it or anything else about that movie.  I don't recall seeing Mako again until he appeared as Admiral Yamamoto in that piece of garbage Pearl Harbor.  He got to utter the key line: “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”  The exception to the Mako-in-bad-movies rule was his brief cameo appearance in Memoirs of a Geisha.  Mako would have been the voice of Splinter in the animated  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie next year. Good movie or bad, Mako always stood out to me; he was always fascinating to watch, a twinkle in his eye, his performances filled with nuance. It was always a pleasant surprise when I'd watch a movie and Mako appeared (he is rarely billed in promotional materials.) A glance at Mako's IMDB page shows a career spanning over 40 years in film, television and animation.  You've seen Mako's work too and probably never realized it.
He was a pioneer for Asian-American actors in the United States. Mako has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Sand Pebbles in 1966.
It's as Mr. Lee in Sidekicks that'll always remember him best.  Sidekicks is one of my favorite bad movies and I loved Mako as the cantankerous but wise and caring karate teacher who called Jonathan Brandis "Mr. Dumpling." I still watch Sidekicks like a mental patient if I see it on cable just to watch Mako.   Mako was usually called upon to play wise but mischievous characters, something he did exceptionally well. He had tremendous natural comic timing and he had a gift for being able to convey that he knew a lot more than he was letting on.  One of the reasons I love Mako was that he reminds me of an older, Japanese version of my dad.  Mako always seemed like a nice man and a great guy.
I wish I got to work with him or at the very least meet him and tell him how much of a fan of his I am. I'm probably always going to regret that now.
I'll miss you, Mako.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (**1/2)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

 

July 8, 2006

Yarrrr.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon come to life. It's over the top, mateys. Over the top. I don't like seeing quite so many loud clanging things in my movies, not even my summer blockbusters. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a model of restraint compared to this sequel. It was also a better movie by far.

Coming to kill Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann were Davey Jones, the East India Trading Company, island cannibals, every kind of CGI-fish monster the sea could spit out, and even familiar faces like ex-Commodore Norrington. Yet never once are Jack, Will, and Elizabeth in any real danger. Never once are they in genuine jeopardy. There is no chance whatsoever that any of the three main characters will be harmed in any lasting way. No matter what kind of absurdity the movie throws at them, they manage to scream, run in just the right place in just the right way, fight anything just well enough, and they never get tired or hurt, hungry or thirsty, or bored with all the screaming, running, and fighting they have to do.

Actually, that's the movie's strength: It's not boring and it's hellbent on entertaining you. It's weakness is that it's hellbent on entertaining you Saturday morning cartoon-style. Not one but two very long rolling ball gags: the first act with Will Turner and the crew of the Black Pearl caught in a bone version of those rolling spheres on American Gladiators , and then another one with Turner, Sparrow and Norrington having a triple threat swordfight on a wheel rolling along an island. Dead Man's Chest throws everything it can think of at you to show you a good time and thinks you'll have an even better time of it throws it at you again. Many critics have complained the storyline is incomprehensible but the multitudes of children in the audience understood what was happening just fine because they're used to cartoons.

For the pubes and post-puberty crowd, there was some enjoyable stuff. Johnny Depp is still pretty entertaining as Captain Jack Sparrow. His performance is no longer surprising and unique, but he was the only character who was in on the joke and conveyed to the audience that he understood everything that was happening was ridiculous. Sparrow is half-mad, but he's really more half-sane in a madman's movie.

Sparrow's character thankfully wasn't compromised: he's still a rogue out for his own ends, coming up with strategies on the fly and using everyone around him constantly as means to an end while fighting his heroic inclinations every step of the way. I liked the twist in the big finish where his one big act of conscience: returning to save the Black Pearl from the Kraken, was met with his being betrayed and essentially doomed to death by Elizabeth Swann.

The cliffhanger was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan all over again, which is now officially both the greatest and most borrowed-from second-act finish in movies today. (only McCoy didn't turn on Spock and chain him to the exploding warp core.) Jack Sparrow “dies” to save his crewmates, who vow to bring him back in the third movie. We just saw this aped three years ago in X2: X-Men United and here it is again. Kill a main character and promise to bring him or her back in the third movie. Works every time. Those Star Trek writers were geniuses. I hope they get a check every time someone steals their gimmick.

Oddly, while I didn't really enjoy myself while I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, looking back at it, I'm dwelling a lot more on the things I did like: 

Keira Knightley got to play like a boy this time and she can run, scream, and swordfight CGI monster men with the best of them. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever get tired of looking at her; I found myself fitful and impatient whenever she wasn't on screen. The third act of the movie when she finally shared scenes with both Depp and Orlando Bloom was the part I liked best. I liked the reveal that Sparrow's broken compass points the user towards what he or she really wants and the running gag of Elizabeth being frustrated that it kept pointing her towards Sparrow. I suppose she'll figure out in the next one that it isn't telling her she wants Jack but that she really wants a pirate and for Will to become a real pirate. And that she wants to be a pirate as well. I also liked Elizabeth using her dress to “haunt” the merchant ship she was stowed away on. I loved the shot where the dress sinks down to the depths of the sea and the implication that Elizabeth and Will's intended life together as regular people is lost forever. 

Bill Nighy is such a fantastic actor that it's a shame he was buried under the CGI claws and tentacles as Davey Jones. The animators did manage to convey some of Nighy's trademark facial expressions: his pout and his raised eyebrow. Davey Jones didn't quite have the menace he should have had, but he was much more effective and relatable than the CGI fish monsters who crewed the Flying Dutchman. Davey Jones was a neat idea in conception but lacked the menace and pathos of Geoffrey Rush's villainous Captain Barbossa, and that's the damn CGI's fault. (Rush's cameo at the very end as the Captain on the expedition to World's End was a great fucking twist that sold me on the third Pirates movie instantly.)

I liked the Kraken and I liked the plan Jack, Will, and Elizabeth executed to blow it up with the gunpowder and rum. I also liked the expanded roles of the two pirates, the fat one and the wooden-eyed one, and their philosophical conversations. They're a non-gay pirate version of R2D2 and C-3PO.

It's a strange dichotomy: ultimately, I think Dead Man's Chest is a bad movie but a good cartoon. Regardless, I still want more Pirates and I'll be there with bells on for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End .

Superman Returns: An IMAX 3D Experience (**1/2)

SUPERMAN RETURNS

"WRONG!"

Superman's back but he didn't bring the fun.  What's lacking from Superman Returns is joie de vivre. Superman Returns has lots of good intentions, a few beautiful and poetic visual moments, a bittersweet love story, and some (but not-quite-enough) awesome action and spectacle.  Yet the movie, burdened by angst, never lifts off.  Everyone is dour, somber, and grossly underwritten.  The characters lack sparkle and there's only a modicum of wit. Every character seems down in the dumps that they're in a Superman movie.

Superman never quite soars and takes our hearts and imaginations with him.  He's more human and vulnerable but not awe-inspiring; the movie not exhilarating.  At the end of seeing a Superman movie, you should feel like you're up there in the stars with him.  You shouldn't feel like buying Superman a beer and telling him, “Everything's gonna be okay, man.  You're still the godddamn Superman.” 

As Superman, Brandon Routh is good. Good enough.  I'm still not entirely sold on him but he's a fine rental with serious fixer-upper potential. Comparisons to Christopher Reeve are inevitable and not unfair considering he was hired in part because of his resemblance to Reeve, and he is taking over the character Reeve forged in a wobbly continuation of the movies starring Reeve. Routh was earnest and credible but he didn't quite have Christopher Reeve's authority, style or panache as Superman or as Clark Kent. Nor did he quite make the role entirely his own. Routh was also done a disservice by having relatively little dialogue, and none particularly memorable that weren't direct quotes from Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie.

I wish Routh's Superman said more and didn't internalize everything. Routh's Superman seems younger and is much more emotionally vulnerable, which is fine and works for this story, but this also remained at odds with the fact that Superman has been active for years and has fought Lex Luthor, three Kryptonian villains, and has turned back time once.  Though Routh was burdened by the shadow Reeve left, he had a moment early on in the Daily Planet where he smirked just like Reeve did that was really kind of wonderful. Superman's lack of joie de vivre was disappointing and it carried through to everyone else throughout the entire movie.

Superman Returns presents us with an unfortunate reality of being Superman: After Superman Superstalked Lois and her family at their house, it seems that one of the reasons he flies around saving people is that he doesn't have any friends or anyone to talk to. He has no hobbies, no other interests.  Saving people is how he spends his days. But a fundamental aspect of Superman that this movie didn't quite get across is that Superman loves saving people. It gives him great joy to help people in need, he has fun with it, he loves interacting with all kinds of people, even criminals he's busting, and he has a wry humor about it.

Watch Chris Reeve in his first night in Donner's film when he's saving people.  He's having a good time. Helping people is not a burden or his sacred duty (or a curse of being a messiah figure) as much as it is Superman loving using his powers to help people in need. Because he loves people. One of the most important lines of dialogue ever spoken about Superman is by Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie: “Superman cares about everybody.”  Joie de vivre again. Routh's Superman had some fun but it was all polite and restrained and a little distant. After five years being in space alone, you'd think Superman would have loved being with people again. Still, Superman's good deeds around the world, starting with the amazing space shuttle/airliner rescue sequence and including visits to Manila and Gotham (nice touches), were my favorite Superman moments in the movie.

Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane still can't spell, a lasting invention of the Donner movie. Bosworth's Lois worked best when she was on the space shuttle grilling Peta Wilson and doggedly tracking down the story behind the blackout. As a hard-news reporter, she was believable enough, one supposes. As a Pulitzer Prize winner, not so much. Unfortunately when she wasn't at work, Bosworth's Lois was a frowny face who pouted her way through the movie. Whether flying with Superman through the Metropolis skies, dealing with her fiancé or her son, or just trying to catch a smoke on the roof of the Daily Planet building, she wouldn't turn that frown upside down. (Also, what happened to her ass?  Where did Blue Crush Kate Bosworth's hot body go? There's a moment when Lois is in the kitchen cooking; she turns around to go to the sink and her ass was flat as an ironing board.  I think I speak for the male audience when I say I would like nothing more than if Lois Lane would put down the cigarettes and took up surfing again.)

Though his very existence is a lightning rod of criticism and discontentment, I actually liked Jason, Lois's son and also the son of a mysterious person the movie keeps as a big surprise. (It's Superman.) It was pretty obvious from the start who the kid's father is just from doing the math.  (Gee, Superman left Earth five years ago, right after having sex with Lois. Jason is roughly five. Unless heartbroken Lois Lane immediately jumped Richard White's bones in the rebound, or she was whoring around on the side, there really isn't any other candidate for the father.)  But young Tristan Lake Leabu was a sweet, sincere, likeable kid.  It was a nice touch that he has asthma.  I especially loved when he took one look at Superman and then at Clark and figured it out right away.  Sadly, Jason was as underwritten as everyone else, so we didn't get to know him better, but there's a Superboy idea here that may have potential. 

Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor is stunningly a bust considering the casting of Spacey seemed like the slam dunk. The evil billionaire Luthor is the most popular version of the character but of all the Luthors, I'm in the minority in that I've always loved Gene Hackman's egotistical, homicidal land baron the best. I did like how Spacey's Lex is still obsessed with real estate, with a side hobby of killing people that he really enjoys. Spacey was playing that character but a darker, bitter version of him. One can understand his bitterness: Five years in prison. A throwaway line about how even a man of his intelligence is worthless locked up with lunatics indicates he was forced to drop the soap in the shower more than once. And then pimping himself to a withered old crone to get her dough.  This Lex Luthor had some hard times and it took the twinkle out of his eye that Hackman's Luthor had. I miss Hackman's self-amused wit and wordplay but what I missed most were Hackman's self-aggrandizing monologues. “Lex Luthor!  The greatest criminal mind of our time!”

Spacey's Lex was grossly underwritten and he didn't seem to start having much fun playing the role until the third act when Lois and Jason stumbled onto his yacht. His diabolical master plan had the sole virtue of being novel: creating the crystal Krypton continent, wiping out 3/4th of the United States, and killing billions of people. A neat idea even though it makes zero sense. (He still wasn't going to name a town on his new continent Otisburg.) But again, he was subdued when he could have gone all out. He didn't seem to enjoy and relish getting to physically beat the shit out of Superman and stab him with the Kryptonite shiv like you'd think he would. Nor did he seem particularly crushed when Superman lifted the ice continent into space (which was awesome).  Spacey's Lex was kind of a buzzkill and couldn't appreciate when he was supposed to be having a good time.

Lex's henchmen were dull as dishwater. In the Miss Teschmacher-substitute role, Parker Posey was mostly shrill and irritating. She had one good moment when she screamed at Lex for actually cutting the brakes to her car (one of Lex's finest moments in this movie). Other than that, she did everything else Valerie Perrine did as Miss Teschmacher, such as flirt with and then feel bad for Superman when Lex was about to kill him, but nowhere near as well. Still, she fared better than Kal Penn and the other two nameless, humorless henchmen. They made me really miss Otis. None of Luthor's sour faced, no-charisma goons in this movie were worth a pair of Ned Beatty's soiled underpants. 

James Marsden came off pretty well as Richard White, considering. He had a lot to do. He was understanding of his fiancée's confusion towards Superman, he loved his adopted son, and he was damn heroic when he took his sea plane to save them from Lex Luthor. Sometimes, nice guys do get the girl too. Lois staying with Richard and kept the family together in the end was for the best. Still, Superman's gonna disrupt his happy family and wreck that home eventually. Richard White ought to start a support group with John Jameson of Spider-Man 2. And also, Cyclops, but that would be weird.

After years of being spoiled by Annette O'Toole as Smallville's hot redhead Martha Kent in her early 40's, it was a little disappointing to have old lady Martha Kent back, Eva Marie Saint notwithstanding. When Superman's rocket ship or whatever that was crashed on the farm and she pulled Superman out, the burning debris and heat didn't seem to bother the old lady a bit. One of the most compelling moments in the movie was when Superman was dying in the hospital and Martha couldn't get into see him without exposing his secret identity. Too bad the movie couldn't have done more with that idea. Martha could have tried what Howard Stern did when Christopher Reeve was paralyzed and called the hospital as Jor-El demanding to see his son, but thankfully, she didn't.

It's great that Marlon Brando's Jor-El was resurrected for the movie, but it seemed like his flashback voice overs came out of nowhere half the time. Lex was also pretty non-plussed about returning to the Fortress of Solitude for the crystals and seeing the Jor-El hologram. In the theatrical version of Superman II Superman Returns is sequeling, Lex had already met Superman's mother's hologram but he seemed less impressed by the father. And then there was the terribly composed, ambiguous dialogue: “You act like you've been here before, Lex.” No response. Lex ought to have said: “Why yes, once with Miss Teshmacher, whom you can't hold a candle to, and then again with Lois Lane and three Kryptonian arch villains who were going to let me be ruler of Australia. I think their corpses are around here somewhere…”

Surprisingly, I hated every bit of dialogue lifted from Donner's movie. Might as well have Superman actually wink at the audience then hand out Superman: The Movie DVDs.

“Statistically speaking, flying is still the safest way to travel.” 
“What was it my father said?” “Get out!” 
And especially: “Good evening, Miss Lane.  I didn't mean to startle you.” 

That last one pissed me off the most. The first time Lois encounters Superman in five years, he gives the “statistically speaking” quote and blows her off.  The very next time they speak, he surprises her with the same line he opened with in their first interview. “Good evening, Miss Lane”?!  Is he trying to be funny? They slept together, they have a relationship. Dump your wife or girlfriend, leave for a week, and then sneak up on her and call her “Miss Whatever her last name is.” You'll sound like an asshole. What's more, the Donner movie's dialogue written by Tom Mankewicz is so zingy and iconic, it served to show how lacking the rest of the dialogue tended to be.

Having said that, there were enjoyable subtle visual references to the Donner movie, especially Lex's wall of books (no Wikipedia for him), the chunk of Kryptonite from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Lex's maps of the world. The opening credits brought back the nostalgia, with the use of the streaking credits used in the prior Superman films and the welcome return of John Williams' score by John Ottman. Fun seeing the ice crystal world of Krypton again, complete with the dome where General Zod was tried and sentenced to the Phantom Zone.
 
After five years "away" where no one compared his reappearance to Superman's return, Clark Kent's returned to the Daily Planet and he noticed how different everything was. I'll say. The last time Clark showed up for work, they didn't have the Internet or Samsung plasma screen HDTVs.  Everyone smoked at their desks and used typewriters . Notice how Clark never actually did any work. All he seemed to do was hang around the office and wait for Lois to show up so he could fumble a conversation. Perry White assigned Clark the blackout story, but Lois juggled that and the Superman Returns story on her own while Clark dicked around the office eavesdropping on everyone with Super Hearing.

The glum lack of emoting trickled down to the supporting cast. It seemed to skip Jimmy Olsen but Perry White was practically comatose. He whispered his command to his news staff to get on the Superman story and then barely got the words “Great Caesar's Ghost!” out when Superman saved him from the falling Daily Planet globe. This Frank Langella Perry White seemed pretty exhausted.  Maybe he should have been sucking some hot intern's blood on the side. Speaking of the falling Daily Planet globe, Superman did a real asshole move after catching it when he rolled it on top of some guy's car.  Why would he do that?  How's that guy gonna get home?  Who's gonna pay for the damage?  Man, Superman is a dick sometimes.

The Superman rescue of the airplane sequence was, again, awesome. And so was the climax of that with Superman landing the airliner in the baseball field and getting the standing ovation from the capacity crowd.  The kicker of Lois fainting and sliding down the inflatable ramp was also a great comedic touch. However, the flashback about young Clark leaping across the cornfields and discovering he could levitate didn't seem necessary.  It doesn't lead to anything in the story and seemed to contradict Superman: The Movie, where Clark couldn't fly and walked to the North Pole to build the Fortress of Solitude.

When Superman was in the coma in the hospital towards the end, he was totally faking it, like Buster on Arrested Development. The doctors and nurses at the hospital couldn't inject anything into him, but they managed to get the suit off of him. Begs the question:  Does Superman wear underwear inside his suit too?  Which nurse got to put the hospital gown on him?  Will there be pictures of Superman's ass or balls on ebay?

The penultimate scene where Superman spoke to his sleeping son was something we've never seen in a Superman movie before. (I think Jason was also faking sleep. Like father like son.) Routh nailed the emotion of Superman saying to his son all the promises Jor-El told him.“One day, I'll explain to you why I wear glasses and goof around my office not doing any work.  One day, my son, you'll wear glasses too.  Or a red cape and booties.  Preferably both.”

And that's just about all I've got to say about Superman Returns. I hope the next one will be better.

The Omen (**)

THE OMEN

Devil May Care

Hey kid, smile once in a while, will ya? You're the goddamned Antichrist. That's gotta be good for some shits and giggles. Nannies hang themselves in your name, priests get impaled, monkeys go apeshit when you visit the zoo, your adoptive mother falls off a third story balcony and ...what? Nothing? Not even a chuckle. C'mon, kid, what's a guy gotta do to amuse Mr. Satan's Baby Boy?

I saw Richard Donner's The Omen a couple of years ago and it was pretty good for its time. This remake by John Moore is the same movie, not so good for our time. Moore changes a few things (9/11 and the tsunami of 2004 are portents of the coming of the Antichrist, says the movie) and not for the better by any means. Everything else plays exactly like the 1976 movie. Except not as good by any means. The plotline of The Omen has always been preposterous, but it seemed less so in the original.

Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber have no chemistry as husband and wife. Their dialogue together is tedious and lumbering. They are simply not believable as a powerful married couple, he a 34-year old U.S. Ambassador and she a stay-at-home unwitting mom of the Antichrist. When Damien goes all out to kill his mom, there's little sympathy for her, it comes off as a vehicle for inadvertant laughs. Schrieber's Robert Thorn is a steel-jawed dope. The talents of three of the great British character actors, David Thewlis, Pete Postelwaithe, and Michael Gambon (in a cameo) are largely wasted. Mia Farrow's evil nanny gets upstaged every time she's in a scene with Damien's evil dog.

There were numerous opportunities to go beyond the 1976 film and stake new ground but this remake doesn't try. For instance, Stiles complains to Schreiber that she feels like a terrible person for thinking her son is evil and trying to kill her. That's interesting and could have been explored further. Instead, Stiles chooses to turn Damien over to a total stranger who is clearly behaving maliciously while she sits around her house in silent terror waiting for Damien to do her in. While she's waiting, she has spooky dreams of being in a bubble bath and having her wrists slit while people in Halloween masks watch. Then Stiles inexplicably decides to water the plants hanging from the ceiling so she can fall to near death because of Damien. She could have just let the maids handle that chore.

The biggest problem with this story is Damien. Although only five years old, he hardly ever says a word, just glares when the director calls action. It's supposed to be spooky that Damien rarely speaks. That's not like any 5 year old I've encountered; kids hardly ever shut up unless the TV is on. Damien apparently doesn't even watch TV. It's never entirely clear what Damien is thinking or how much he understands about who and what he is. And for being the embodiment of evil walking the Earth, he doesn't seem to enjoy it all that much. Surly glares at the camera don't equal malevolence.

The ending of The Omen is a bit of a cheat. According to the movie, the only way to kill the Antichrist is to stab his body repeatedly with knives, forming the shape of a cross. But neither versions of the movie have any intention of showing a father stab his evil five year old son like that, so it never gets to happen. The ending is exactly the same, with the heartwarming message that evil is among us and it's all a matter of time until we're fucked and dead. Hopefully, in that order, at least.

One thing I liked was that every time Schreiber asked who Damien's real mother was, he kept hearing that "his mother was a jackal." Naturally, you assume it's a metaphor. Nope, Schreiber exhumes the grave of Damien's real mother and sure enough, it's an actual fucking jackal. He really is a son of a bitch.

X-Men: The Last Stand (**)

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

Take a Stand Hike

Watching X-Men: The Last Stand was a frustrating ordeal, trying desperately to connect with the characters, to care about anyone or anything. This proved X-tremely difficult when the characters are cardboard cut outs of themselves and the movie shows so much contempt for everyone, the X-Men and the audience.

When Cyclops, the X-Men team leader, is killed off by his lover Jean Grey, it shouldn't have happened clumsily off screen. His death shouldn't be treated with such callous indifference that the audience doesn't even know if he's actually dead or not for a good 20 minutes. Why, his closest friends don't bother to investigate his disappearance, even when they find his ruby quartz glasses yet no other trace of him. Later, it's casually mentioned Cyclops is dead. No one was particularly hurt by his loss.

When Dark Phoenix murdered Charles Xavier in cold blood, when she peeled the flesh from his bones and then burst him into Xavier stew – when the founder of the X-Men is murdered in cold blood – my reaction should not have been laughter. But the execution of the death was so garish and amateurish it was actually hilarious to see old man Xavier bite it. There were Xavier bits all over Jean Grey's walls! Gross!

To top it all off, they hold a funeral for Xavier (“Of all the mutants I've ever known, he was the most… human …) and not for Cyclops, even though by that time, they already knew Jean Grey had killed Cyclops. Cyclops got a headstone later, along with Jean when she died. Since Storm was gonna close the school and no tuition money would be coming in, I guess the X-Men were just being economical and trying to save on funeral costs by that point.

Rogue, the heart and soul of the first X-Men, is wantonly written out of most of the movie. Her job was to stand around and glare at her boyfriend Iceman in a romantic misunderstanding the CW regularly handles with more grace and style, and then disappear. She's “cured” now, but then returns to Xavier's school, which she no longer belongs in because she's no longer a mutant. Rogue's goodbye scene with Wolverine, insultingly underwritten and hamfisted (“Be good.” Be good?! ), was an affront to their relationship, which was the highlight of the first X-Men movie.

Mystique, the coolest, most competent character in the previous films, was depowered and kicked aside like a bag of crap. But the movie made sure to get Rebecca Romijn as naked as PG-13 will allow before she's carted off to the home for discarded X-Men movie characters.

Wolverine, who never met a smug one liner he didn't love (“Don't get your panties in a bunch.”) when he wasn't bawling like a lovesick teenager over Jean Grey, had the most to do, including things he had no business doing. With Xavier dead, why was Wolverine leading the X-Men? Why was he mapping out the plans, drafting the X-Kids Iceman, Kitty Pryde, and Colossus, and barking out orders in battle? Note that they made damn sure Hugh Jackman had his shirt off in his emotional denoument with Jean Grey.

The person who should have been in charge, Storm, whom Xavier made leader before he died, followed Wolverine's orders. Storm was more interested in getting to finally fly around like Halle Berry keeps harping about and then getting her cape and white wig handed to her by Callisto (Dania Ramirez).

Of all the new mutant characters crammed into the movie, Kelsey Grammar as the Beast probably acquitted himself the best, but as far as animalistic blue mutant characters in these movies, he paled in comparison to Nightcrawler in X2. Oh, but the dialogue!

"Wolverine. I hear you're quite an animal."

"Look who's talking."

Someone gut me with an adamantium claw already. The dialogue in The Last Stand was just atrocious.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scored!”

“By any means necessary!”

No cliché was left un-mined. And that was just the President talking. The mutants were just as lame-brained:

“If you're with us, be with us!” Inspiring.

“You of all people should know how quickly the weather change.” Ho ho. Get it, ‘cause Storm controls the weather…? Ho ho ho.

The worst was the brilliant name calling from the Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones). “I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!” Nice. Kitty Pryde didn't take that lying down and called Juggernaut a “dickhead.” Actually, that helmet is kind of shaped like a dick. Ho ho ho.

Did I like anything? Yeah, it wasn't all bad. There were moments. I got excited when the X-Men took the Brotherhood on at Jean Grey's house. I liked Callisto being totally intent on whipping Storm's ass and I wouldn't have minded if Callisto killed that white-haired dope. I liked Juggernaut bouncing Wolverine all over Jean Grey's house. I thought the final battle at Alcatraz had its moments: I liked Magneto tossing cars and Pyro lighting them on fire.

Kitty Pryde had two cool moves, when she phased past a Brotherhood member and then gave him the Edgematic, and then when she phased the Juggernaut into the floor. For that matter, underwritten and perfunctory a character as she was, I liked Kitty Pryde a lot because of Ellen Page, who is both little and did a lot with a little.

I liked the moment on the X-Jet when the three kids were gripped with fear at their first mission and Beast taking notice (not that he said or did anything to alleviate their fears.) I liked Iceman making the ice skating rink for himself in Kitty in the stupid same way I like Lex and Lana's stupid romance on Smallville.

Iceman and Pyro finally going at it was cool for like two seconds before it ended lamely with a fucking headbutt. And I thought Magneto's stunt moving the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz was neat. Although in the scene before, the Brotherhood of Emo Mutants bitched and moaned about how they were supposed to get to Alcatraz. How did they even get to San Francisco from Alkalai Lake? Did they all walk?

Just about everything else sucked in various levels. Dark Phoenix blew. She didn't do anything for 90% of the movie except stand around next to Magneto in a waking coma. She killed Cyclops and Xavier for no reason and then went nuts at the end with little provocation. What did it feel like to die and be reborn with omnipotence? What does one do with all that power? The movie's answer: Stand around. Kill people. Repeat. Yawn. Who gives a damn?

What a hideous mess X-Men: The Last Stand was. A better title for this debacle would be X-Men: Inglorious Endings. For this merry band of mutants, this was no way to go.

Getting "Would?"

GETTING "WOULD?"

May 23, 2006

Alice in Chains is back together and last night at Avalon, it was 1993 all over again.  To their credit, they found a lead singer for this reunion tour who sounds a lot like the late Layne Staley.  We missed Layne, but the black guy they brought on board did a pretty credible replication of Layne's vocals the whole night.   Jerry Cantrell introduced him to the crowd and I made it a point to remember his name.  Then seconds later, I completely forgot it.  He'll always be Black Layne to me.

With Black Layne filling in for Dead Layne, the reunited Alice in Chains didn't miss a fucking beat.  They played about maybe a dozen songs in their set and encore, mostly the older stuff from “Dirt”, “Facelift” and “Sap.”   There was nothing from “Jar of Flies ” and I wanted to hear “Got Me Wrong”.  (Come to think of it, they didn't play “Grind” from “ Alice in Chains”, either.)  

The lack of “Jar of Flies” was a little disappointing but made sense; it would have required the band to go acoustic and for Black Layne to sing exactly like Layne as opposed to just scream like Layne.  Helping Black Layne out on the vocals was the crowd, doing half the work singing along with the big hits.  The set was heavy but slowed down the hard stuff like “Them Bones”, “Junkhead” and “Dam The River” with the moodier big hits like "Would?", “Down in a Hole” and “Rooster.”  The big Layne Staley tribute songs.

Of course, the whole night would have gone to shit and been for nothing without “Man in the Box.”  Christ, they made us wait for it.  All night long, all Jeff and I kept screaming for was “Man in the fucking Box, goddamn it!”  Finally, the last song of the night we got it.  “Man in the fucking Box”!  It was the only way to close the show and goddamn, it was worth the wait.  Jerry Cantrell will probably never know how much we equate that song with a doughy, goateed pro wrestler in a black T-shirt and black nylon workout pants getting his bloody balls split open with a kendo stick.  That's probably for the best, actually.

It was a really good set that really took us back to the old glory days of grunge, but if they asked me, I'd have planned the set out a little differently:  Open with “Man in the Box,” then “Man in the Box”, slow it down with a little “Man in the Box,” then just when you're expecting “Man in the Box,” play “Would?”, then “Rooster”, then “Man in the Box” and say good night.  For the encore, “Man in the Box” three times.  No, four.  Four. ...Seven.

While the music was brilliant and as close as you can get to how it sounded back in the early 90's, the audience wasn't quite the way I remember when I was a teenager.  I don't recall quite as many enormous, thick-necked, lacrosse T-shirt wearing, crew-cut meathead jocks back in the day.  They were big, loutish, drunk, and they were all over the place.  They felt the need to constantly chant “Jerry! Jerry!” as if they were at a Jerry Springer taping.  Also, for some reason, when "Down in a Hole" played, a few of the jocks hugged each other.  What the fuck was up with that?  Do they even know what the lyrics mean or are they like the guy Kurt Cobain described in "In Bloom," someone who sings along to all the words but has no idea what the song is about?

It was as obvious as the white on their baseball caps that while these meatheads are fans of Alice in Chains, they are not veterans of the mosh pit.  Mosh pits are treacherous; they can open up at any time.  The crowd will sway back and forth, elbows and shoulders pushing you from several directions, and seconds later a hole will open up with a few bodies slamming into a hastily-made circle, pushing the moshers back towards its center.  The rules are very basic and simple:  When the circles form, pull back into the circle.  If you're shoved, you sway and then shove back, but not aggressively.  Let the people who want to dance dance.  Always protect the girls in the vicinity (the pussies hide behind the girls).  Stay alert at all times – an elbow or head butt can come from any direction.  It's best to keep an arm across your chest like a boxer on guard, both arms during the more violent bursts.  Anyone crowd surfing; get your arms up, push them aloft and move them along.  Let anyone who wants to leave and move to safety do so immediately.  Most of all, don't be a dick.  Stay cool and enjoy the music.  And if you're Jeff, somehow continually find the hottest girl in the vicinity, press up against her and smell her hair.

It's been a decade since I'd been in a mosh pit, Foo Fighters in Worcester back in 1995 if I recall correctly, and I'd forgotten the etiquette.  But if I had forgotten how to mosh and stay relatively safe in the pit, the meathead jocks never knew how at all.  When Alice in Chains started playing, a couple of teenagers who were probably 10 at most when the band broke up went nuts and began pushing and moshing.  The jocks in the vicinity got pissed off and shoved back angrily.  I was kind of annoyed too at my limited personal space being invaded, and also with the douchebags who were continually jostling past us to get closer to the stage (another point – the mosh pit is a modular thing and when it gets moving and flowing, there are numerous opportunities to move closer to the stage without being a douchebag about it).  When the jocks glared at the kid, he said, “You're gonna get pushed.  It happens.”  And the kid was right.  That's how it works down here.  Reminded of that, I remembered what to do and jumped into the fray.  The jocks also did their share of moshing but they didn't last very long.  They were all gassed up and were blown up pretty quickly.

The last time I saw Alice in Chains was at Lollapalooza 1993 at some air field in Rhode Island .  I'll never forget what I remember of that – a crowd surfing skin head was dropped on top of me and his steel toed boot collided with my external occipital protuberance. (The back of the head, what I named this very website for.)  I know I was groggy for most of the set, but I remember making it all the way to second row in front of the stage and staring up at Layne as he sang “Would?”  He was wearing a horizontal stripped shirt, his black wrap around shades, and he had his long King Tut goatee.  He wore black gloves but the puncture marks on his forearms were visible.  I never saw Layne again, and he died a few years later, but at least I saw him in his prime.  I don't remember how I got out of the mosh pit but I ended up lying on the top of my van recovering while Primus closed the show.

I'm not quite as beat up today as I was then.  Just a little banged up, as the Red Sox announcers repeatedly described the Yankees line up last night.  Self-preservation was more important to me than it was when I was 18.  Slight ringing in my years, hoarse voice, and some minor shoulder and neck pains aside, I'm fine.  I feel great.  Alice in Chains was a great fucking time.

Jeff's review of last night's show:  Black Layne was good enough.

The Da Vinci Code (***)

THE DA VINCI CODE

So Dark The Con of Man

Ron Howard's been kicked around a lot this week. The critics and media, momentarily tired of Tom Cruise bashing, have unleashed their claws at Howard's The Da Vinci Code. I'd say the malice towards the movie, which is by no means a masterpiece, is largely undeserved. Listen, the movie ain't great, but it was never designed to be either. Like the novel, The Da Vinci Code feature film is disposable entertainment. The movie's crime is supposedly being slavish to the novel, but having read the book and now seen the movie, I can't savvy any way to interpret the material differently and still maintain the preposterous story that sold 40 million books worldwide and enraged the Catholic Church.

The movie's problems lie directly with the source material. Dan Brown is a crap writer. His storytelling is boneheaded and repetitive. His characters are stock. His ability to concoct a thriller plot is TV movie-of-the-week caliber at best. His idea of a cliffhanger is to end a chapter with a character in mid-lecture and then pick the lecture up in the very next chapter. And yet, his novel manages to be entertaining and the subject matter at the heart of The Da Vinci Code is a fascinating one to imagine.

Creatively, Ron Howard and his filmmaking team were in an unenviable no-win situation. They had to dramatize a book that basically was about people lecturing each other for dozens of pages, and then dashing off to another location for even more lectures. At the end of the day, given what he had to work with, Howard did a damn fine job. The Da Vinci Code carries most of the flaws of the novel, but then at its best, the movie improves upon and transcends its source material.

Ways Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code drastically improves upon Dan Brown's novel:

Instead of opening with Robert Langdon being woken in his hotel room, Howard condenses and visually illustrates Langdon's career as a lecturing Harvard professor of symbology by introducing him in mid-lecture, deftly easing the audience into how symbols have been co-opted and corrupted throughout time. This was a very engaging and effective departure from the novel and one of several innovative ways the film managed to convey the material of the endless lectures found in the book. 

Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, and Sir Ian McKellan rise far above the material with their performances. The critics complained Hanks was an uncharismatic bore. Bullshit. Hanks did exactly what he was supposed to do: he took Robert Langdon, a character that was nothing more than a cardboard lecture machine, and humanized him. It didn't happen right away; the first hour of the movie forces the characters to hurtle along the checklist of events set by the novel, allowing the actors precious little time to work their magic.

When Langdon and Sophie Neveu arrive at Sir Leigh Teabing's estate, the actors are able to breathe a bit more life into their roles. McKellan's entrance delivers an instant jolt of energy and humor that Hanks and Tautou were able to play off of. McKellan was the most entertaining actor in the entire movie. It was evident he was having a jolly old time, and the movie practically reset its tone and became much more interesting once Teabing came into the picture.

A crucial masterstroke here was to alter Langdon's character to be skeptical of Teabing's conspiracy theory about the Holy Grail and the alternate history of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdelene. In the novel, Teabing and Langdon spend hours tag teaming Sophie with their lecture. Just pages and pages of the two of them blah blah blahing; about interesting stuff, sure, but dramatically, it's impossible to play two men taking turns talking at a woman in a living room. With Hanks countering Teabing's rants with skepticism and pragmatism, it creates a balance and puts the audience on Sophie's side, sharing her disbelief and confusion as to who is right. Plus you could see Hanks and McKellan were having a ball.

Audrey Tautou is really fucking beautiful, but beyond that she has one of the best moments in the movie on Teabing's plane when she slaps Silas the albino monk twice for killing her grandfather. When Silas says that every breath she takes is a sin, Sophie fires back that his God doesn't condone murder, he punishes it. This was an awesome moment, especially if you already know Sophie is the descendant of Jesus Christ's bloodline. Think about it, this is the Sion of Jesus who slapped this monk and told him he was going to be punished. I don't recall if this moment is in the book, but regardless it's fantastic and works even better when one is aware of the vital information about Sophie.

At the end, when Langdon is forced to decipher the cryptex while Sophie Neveu is held at gunpoint by Sir Leigh Teabing, Howard makes brilliant use of Langdon's pre-established photographic memory and creates a CGI representation of Langdon's memory of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb. I don't recall if Langdon had a photographic memory in the novel, but this was an ingenius way for the audience to literally see Langdon break the most important code in the movie.

Unfortunately, the novel has three endings: the reveal and capture of Teabing, Langdon and Sophie at the church in Roslin, and Langdon back in Paris discovering the Grail's final resting place. The best of these, and the shining moment for Hanks and Tautou, was at Roslin after Sophie has discovered the truth about her royal bloodline. Langdon and Sophie's talk about faith and what Sophie should do with the knowledge of her heritage was just terrific. And it was capped off with a nice gag about Sophie testing to see if she can walk on water. Did she cure Langdon's claustrophobia with her hands? Can she turn water into wine? Does Sophie have Jesus' superpowers? It was all handled sweetly and beautifully, with deft humor and grace. To me, this was the scene that made the movie and was superior to anything found in the novel.

The story plays like an art history episode of 24 set in Europe. Langdon and Sophie are on the move for more than full day and night straight, traveling across France and Great Britain. They stop to eat once only briefly, they never have a chance to sleep, shower or change clothes, and are constantly running from the police and from a gay cripple and a monk trying to kill them. Critics accused Hanks of being lethargic in his performance, but his character was tired.. When he wasn't lecturing or running for his life, he was busy trying to decode puzzles and anagrams.

Certain ideas and scenarios from the novel were condensed or excised altogether, all of it a wise move. Frankly, we didn't need to see the sordid details of Sophie's grandfather having hot and heavy secret society sex in a flashback. And thanks, Ron, for not showing the dead grandfather's genitalia. Another director might have, but not you, Ron. Good man.

Is the movie flawed? Quite so. Is the source material flawed? You'd better believe it. Did Ron Howard and company do a great job? I'd say they sure did. At the end of the day, The Da Vinci Code is an occasionally tedious, occasionally thrilling, but largely successful piece of pop filmmaking entertainment. A worthy cinematic adaptation of a truly wretched, if popular, book. If Ron Howard had chosen to act as the narrator, and if a one-armed man appeared at the end to say, “And that's why you don't go looking for the Holy Grail!” it would be a four-star masterpiece, but the way it is, it's a solid three.