gwax's rumblings

I saw Avatar last night in RealD 3D and, I have to say, it is a very pretty, rather fun, awesome to watch movie. The 3D for Avatar was incredibly well done but it gave me such a bad headache and nausea that it almost wasn’t worth it. Luckily, I was able to immediately go home and go to sleep, thus not dealing with the discomfort much. Needless to say, I think that I’m going to stick to 2D movies for the foreseeable future.

Diatribe about 3D aside, Avatar is a pretty great movie. Sure it’s Dances with Wolves in space but Dances with Wolves was a good movie so why not put it in space. Actually, more than that, to me Avatar was Dances with Wolves meets Dinotopia in space. The color palettes of Avatar were vibrant and pretty in much the way that the palettes of Dinotopia were; furthermore, the creatures and world were sufficiently realized to make it seem like a place that one might really want to go. In fact, I think Avatar has provided me with the first artificial setting that I have had a strong desire to visit since Dinotopia.

So, having discussed the pain (literally) of the 3D, the adequacy of the story (adequate being the right word), and the beauty of the world, let’s talk about the special effects. For quite a while, I have been adamantly opposed to the use and overuse of CGI in the film industry. Certainly, some studios do CGI correctly (Pixar, DreamWorks) but when mixed with live action, I tend to think that the Jurassic Park or Aliens approach of relying primarily on live action, puppets and robots is a much safer and more visually appealing approach. The clearest example of where real is good and CGI is bad is to look at the original Star Wars trilogy in comparison to the new Star Wars trilogy. Somehow, thankfully, James Cameron has not fallen in the same way that George Lucas has; Avatar beautifully mixes the real with the CGI and I did not once feel as though things had fallen into the uncanny valley.

Hopefully Avatar will end up profitable in spite of its truly ludicrous budget (officially $237M + $150M marketing) and James Cameron will be allowed to keep making crazy as heck science fiction stuff (it was at >$232M after its opening weekend so odds are pretty good). The outstanding question now is whether he’s going to make a sequel to Avatar or whether he’s going to make Battle Angel Alita like he’s been talking about for a while.

So yeah, overall, I am inclined to recommend the Dances with Wolves meets Dinotopia in space movie, otherwise known as Avatar but I do not recommend it in 3D unless you’ve got some dramamine to take beforehand. Actually, that’s an idea; maybe I’ll pop a couple dramamine and try seeing it again, you know, for science.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be considered good. Transformers 2 is, however, an awesome movie in the sense that summer blockbusters are designed to be awesome. It’s pretty typical to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is somewhat farcical, in my opinion.

The logical conclusion to the trend of summer blockbusters is that story/plot isn’t actually that important and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what happens if you reach that logical conclusion and make a movie that is an open acknowledgment of the frivolity of plot in summer blockbusters? You end up with something that is a gorgeous, shiny, moving piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intellectualism; you end up with something that every traditional movie-watcher will think is terrible as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in looking for plot and traditional quality, have failed to see the gorgeous, shiny, sense-satiating, monster of an experience that Transformers 2 is. The critics made a similar experience with Speed Racer, which was not very compelling but nonetheless excessively beautiful.

In addition to the amazing experience that Transformers 2 is, its quality has also inspired, what is probably the finest review of anything, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I completely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because people don’t understand that this isn’t a movie, in the conventional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get overstimulated; and enjoy the culmination of all that is the summer blockbuster.

Thanks to hunch, I recently discovered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as anyone who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will understand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the battle scenes are just awesome. On top of that, there are some pretty great characters in the show; I am especially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of completion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo caliber but it’s certainly worth hunting down and giving a shot.

I finally got around to watching the end of Battlestar Galactica (sure took me long enough) and I have to say that I was somewhat displeased, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong; the series, as a whole, was quite pleasant and I did enjoy watching the end but, still, somewhat displeased.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

Points of contention:

• Luddism: We had lots of technology and lots of war so let’s throw away all of our technology. Seriously? Going one step further; you think that you can actually just throw away all of your knowledge. It’d be zero to super-polymers age in one day. Oh, le sigh.
• Religion: God this, destiny that, magical know-how the other; ugh, give me a break.
• Starbuck: What’s the deal with her? Just going to write her out with no explanation at all? Talk about sloppy. Talk about cop-out.
• Prehistory: If that’s supposed to be Earth, how do you explain linguistic evolution? Where are the records of ships and technology? What about the super fancy materials? I bet they didn’t degrade in the past 150 thousand years.
• Matrix Architect: Didn’t we get the this has happened a bunch of times before idea out of the way in The Matrix Reloaded? It was a so-so idea then and it’s even more so now.
• etc.: Those were the big ones, at least.

Seriously, you guys couldn’t come up with a better way to write a conclusion to this thing? I guess mediocre closure is still better than no closure. Thanks for the four/five seasons of pretty great, Battlestar Galactica. Oh well, time to catch up on Lie to Me and Dollhouse, I guess.

Let me add Outlander to the list of awesome movies that you’ve never heard of. Outlander came out in US theaters last Friday and having followed it for a while, I went and saw it. Now, let me come clean here, Outlander isn’t a particularly good movie but it sure as Hell is a totally awesome movie. That said, I do recommend going to see it while it’s still on the big screen.

Vikings versus aliens really should be all the synopsis that you need to convince you to go see it but, I guess if you want more, I can give you a brief synopsis. Earth is actually an undeveloped, abandoned seed colony for the spacefaring human race. Kainan, a man from space, crash lands his ship on Earth in viking-age Norway. Kainan soon realizes that a particularly nasty alien, called a Moorwen, had stowed aboard his ship and is now on the loose. There are subsequently a lot of spaceman/viking integration/culture-shock dynamics and eventually it becomes vikings+spaceman vs. alien monster.

Just to be clear, I keep saying that this is vikings vs. aliens because that’s both what it purports to be and what it delivers phenomenally well. Outlander has cult classic written all over it.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not that bad. With the crap that George Lucas has been putting out recently, I’m surprised the new Indiana Jones movie was not worse. The increased use of special effects and CG definitely hurt the movie but not as much as that Gungan idiot hurt Star Wars. Ultimately, the goal and ending of the movie were pretty poor but the early and middle parts of the movie were plenty decent as far as Indiana Jones’ style is concerned.

Funny that aliens and flying saucers are less reasonable than the hand of God but I think that’s just the way my mind says the world of Indiana Jones is supposed to be.

Saturday evening, I went out with some friends and saw The Fall, which was, I must say, a gorgeous movie. The movie is quite artistic, pretty and rather fun. It gets a wee bit on the odd side at a number of points and there are a few WTF?! moments but, overall, the film is quite coherent and a very nice way to spend a couple hours. Unfortunately, The Fall, being thoroughly independent, is suffering very poor distribution and showing up in a rather small number of theaters but, in my opinion, it’s worth seeking out one of those theaters and seeing it.

In today’s edition of George brings you obscure movies that you should have heard of, District B13. This 2004, French film, produced by the great Luc Besson, stars David Belle, founder of Parkour and involves acrobatics and ass-kicking that easily match the better things coming out of Asia recently. Take one part post-apocalyptic action film, add a dash of drug lords, some neutron bombs, two parts crazy martial arts, a liberal sprinkling of really good French traceurs, bake for an hour and a half and you get, well, a pretty phenomenally awesome movie. No wires or special effects necessary.

Ralph Bakshi is a particularly interesting American maker of animated films. I expect relatively few of you have ever heard of Ralph Bakshi and almost as few have seen any of his works, which is why it is necessary that I bring Ralph and his works to your attention.

My first encounter with Ralph Bakshi came when, at a young age, I saw the box for his 1977 film Wizards at my local video rental location, Video Revolution, and thought that it looked phenomenally cool (same image as the poster image to the right). For reasons I do not recall, I didn’t manage to actually watch Wizards until I was in high school and, let me tell you, it’s a pretty fantastic movie. Wizards is set in the far, far, post-post-apocalyptic future and tells the story of a war between two wizard brothers, Avatar and Blackwolf of the land of good and evil respectively. If I recall correctly, the war is precipitated by Blackwolf’s discovery of ancient Nazi war propaganda. The film does a fantastic job of alternating between light, dark and flat out surreal; I highly recommend it.

It wasn’t until just recently that, in deciding to hunt down a copy of Wizards, I learned the identity of Ralph Bakshi. Being the obsessive consumer of media that I am, I decided to see what else Ralph has done and, lo and behold, Ralph Bakshi was responsible for Cool World. Cool World was a rather odd mix of cartoons and live action that I am rather fond of in spite of the rather poor critical acclaim that it garnered in its time; I must be a member of the cult for which it is a cult hit. Upon realizing that Ralph was responsible for Wizards and Cool World, it became necessary for me to track down his other works and what should turn out to be his seminal work? None other than the film version of Fritz the Cat. Fritz the Cat is noteworthy both as the first independent animated film to gross more than $100 million in the box office and as the first X-rated animated feature film. R. Crumb did not like Bakshi’s take on Fritz the Cat and killed off the comic character in retaliation but, by most accounts, R. Crumb is a whack-job and the film was great; I have obtained the film but have not yet had the chance to watch it so I must withhold my personal views for now.

Ralph Bakshi is one of the behemoths of mid-20^th century animation, responsible for many things beyond the few that I have mentioned, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t bring him to your attention. Having done so, the disservice of not watching Bakshi’s works is now yours to remedy.

Ok, blogosphere, or whatever you interwebzorworkpeople want to call yourselves, this is a plea for help. I try not to depend on other people for much but this is truly important to me and if you can help me, I will be gracious towards you in quantities hard to express.

There was a movie that I saw on television when I was young (somewhere between 6 and 13 (so 1989-1996 probably)) that involved some kid waking up in his bed, seeing a weird glowing over the hill behind his house and then getting abducted by aliens that wanted to do terrible things to him. Eventually, this kid escapes from the aliens and returns to his home and finds comfort with his family. Unfortunately, it turns out that the kid’s family have already been taken over by the aliens and turned into aliens themselves and another adventure ensues. The kid, returns again to his home and manages to destroy the aliens, which I think resolves the matter but might not. I admit that I remember very little of the movie but I know that, if I were to see it again, I would instantly recognize it. So, if any of you have any idea what I might be talking about, please let me know and I will investigate the leads.

Really, the key bits are the kid waking up from sleeping to see some weird glowing behind the hill in his back yard, going to investigate, finding aliens trying to eat him, escaping, returning home, finding his parents are aliens in disguise, repeating the whole escaping part and then being left unsure as to whether his parents are real or not. Seriously, this movie is something that I remember with a combination of intense curiosity and traumatic peculiarity, which I would like to track down for my personal edification. I think the title was something like Martians ate my Parents or Martians ate my Family but I am not certain.

Please, tracking down this movie will either serve to resolve some weird issues that I have holed up in my psyche or, at the least, it will enable me to source some weird memories that I can’t seem to rid myself of.

I don’t generally ask too much of you, Internet, but this I ask of you for your own good: go see the new Transformers movie and go see it now. I saw the new Transformers movie at the earliest possible showing, last night at 8pm, and was completely blown away.

The new Transformers movie is everything that the first generation cartoons and movie were and so much more. With this new movie, the transformers have finally become everything that they should have been before. Now, understand, as I say these things, that I have loved and worshiped the first generation cartoons since I was a child.

The new Transformers movie improves on the old cartoons in a number of ways and adds depth in ways I could not have imagined. The biggest improvements come as a result of the freedoms found in PG-13 movies targeted at teenagers and twenty-somethings, specifically the shear brutality of the Decepticons and interpersonal interactions that haven’t been dumbed down or overly cleaned up. Where Megatron was once a greedy and self-serving megalomaniac, he is now a cruel and brutally violent sadist; it feels as though Megatron has come into his own as never before. There is a depth and amusing fish-out-of-water awkwardness to the Autobots that makes them both endearing and surprisingly human. Michael Bey has done a fantastic job of direction and, combined with fantastic cinematography, every scene appears to come across as total perfection; there are times when the tension is palpable, others when the comic relief smooths things over, slow-motion at just the right moments and then the action sequences are amazing.

From about five minutes into the film, clear through the end, I was stuck in a deer-in-headlights state of paralysis, unable to escape the onslaught of awesomeness that was bombarding my senses. The culmination of all my expectations and the majesty of the films orchestration left me, quite literally, in tears as the credits began to roll. If you’ve already seen the new Transformers movie, I’m sure that you already know that I’m right, but if you haven’t seen it yet, I can’t understand why you’re still reading this instead of going to see it right now. Seriously, go now; it’s more important than anything else you could possibly be doing.

Dear Internet, go out and see the movie Hot Fuzz at your next possible option. Every moment that you delay going to see Hot Fuzz increases the extent of the disservice that you are perpetrating against yourself. Hot Fuzz is the best, funniest, most entertaining movie that I have seen in a very long time. Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop movie by the guys who made Shaun of the Dead and it manages to combine all the best elements of, make fun of and pay homage to all the good action and police movies of the past. I was totally engaged and laughing for nearly every minute of the entirety of this movie.

Bottom line, if you haven’t seen Hot Fuzz yet, you should be checking movie listings right now and getting yourself to the next available showing. No hyperbole, this is the best movie that I have seen in a very, very long time (and I have seen some pretty good movies recently). Don’t delay, don’t wait for the DVD, just go see this movie now, right NOW!.

Ok, Internet, I know we’ve been doing a poor job staying in touch with each other lately and I don’t really feel like pointing fingers, so let’s put that behind us. After all, right now, I have something important that I want to talk about: Voltron. In my random being up late, eating a snack and watching some television, I happened to partake in a rerun of Voltron on Adult Swim. This rerun led me to a couple of realizations, which I would like to share with you. Realization 1: the Power Rangers were the biggest ripoff of Voltron anyone could have possibly perpetrated; seriously, Power Rangers would have been more aptly titled Voltron: The Live Action Series. Realization 2: Voltron was a terrible show; don’t get me wrong, The Transformers was only 90% as glorious rewatching it in my 20s as it was before I was 10 but Voltron, rewatched in my 20s, is terrible. Internet, if you have fond memories of Voltron, please, take my advice don’t ever watch it again; let your fond memories remain unclouded for the product itself will fail to deliver.

I recently came across a trailer for the movie Land of the Blind at the beginning of some DVD or other. Strangely, prior to the trailer, I hadn’t heard hide nor hair of Land of the Blind. Anyway, working on the premise that the preview seemed mighty neat, I set about finding an opportunity to watch it. Having now watched this film, I have to say that I can’t understand why it didn’t show up on the radar. Land of the Blind flew so low that there are only 17 reviews of it aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes (as opposed to the more common 200ish).

Anyway, Land of the Blind follows a political revolution in a totalitarian state, from the standpoint of a military underling that befriends the head of the revolution. The movie starts out kind of normal and political but then descends into bizarre and political before finally descending into crazy and confusing. Basically, I feel Land of the Blind has been done a terrible injustice and in order to rectify the matter I am recommending it to you folks. If you’re my friend, you’ll probably like it (Sherv, Riad, it’s right up your alleys).

This evening I watched The Paper Chase with a few of the other law students here. For those of you that don’t know, The Paper Chase is about a few law students (one in particular) going through their first year at Harvard Law School, with a particular focus on their contracts class (and it’s professor). If you would like to get some idea of what law school is like, I recommend watching this movie as it has a lot of very accurate elements. In spite of its accuracy, The Paper Chase does not match up with my experience in a few key ways: none of my professors are quite as mean as Professor Kingsfield and none of my classmates are quite as self-servingly cutthroat as most of the other students in the movie. The movie does, however, give a seemingly accurate portrayal of the workload, class structure, stress levels, sleep deprivation and general style of the experience. I should like to add the caveat to everything previously said in this post that I’ve only finished one month of my first term and things could change dramatically between now and finals.

I have just now discovered that Pee-Wee’s Playhouse exists in re-runs on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network) and let me tell you, Internet, the television shows that existed while I was a child were decidedly bizarre. In fact, when I think about it, there were some really wonderful shows on television when I was a child (Transformers, Bill Nye, etc.), some really f***ed up ones and an awful lot of overlap. Of course, on top of Pee-Wee Herman being a very strange children’s show star, there’s also the part where he got arrested for exposing himself in public; I wonder how many people in my generation that left an effect on and what those effects were. I wonder if every generation gets to look back on their childhoods in the way that television re-runs and downloading old shows from the Internet allows me to; my guess would be not and it leaves me wondering what strange effect that’ll leave on my generation.