Uncategorized

Fassbender, Viggo, and Keira Knightley, as Jung, Freud, and  Sabina Spielrein. I’m in.

Also, Cronenberg.

Sorkin. Pitt. Hoffman. Baseball. I will be there.

Although, to baseball geek out for a minute, ‘Moneyball’ never made the eternal ‘never be the same again’ impact on baseball that the movie (as the book did) looks to imply. Baseball has already disproven Beane’s method of “OPS/no stud power pitchers” over everything, instead allowing the brilliant on base concepts and attention to runs that ‘Moneyball’ preaches to inform the tried and true scouting methods that make small market teams like the Twins perennially great far more consistently than the A’s.

Beane has been great for baseball, and he’s an amazing GM, but we won’t look back in 20 years and say there is the pre-Beane and post-Beane eras of baseball. Teams are starting to steal bases again, and bunt again, and play small ball with productive outs again, and those small market teams are far more successful (Rays, Rangers, Giants) than a pure ‘Moneyball’ team (A’s), although the A’s have departed from that a bit themselves because the obsession with Moneyball above all else left their farm system in rough shape (Baseball Prospectus ranks their farm system 28th out of the 30 major league clubs).

Also, to close the case for good, Felix Hernandez and Timmy Lincecum are players ‘Moneyball’ teaches a team to avoid like the plague, whereas Barry Zito was once heralded as proof the system works. Oops.

Going into this movie I only knew a few things:

1. A young, pre-slapstick Leslie Nielsen starred in it.

2. Everyone says it heavily influenced Star Wars.

3. It’s hailed as pulpy 50’s sci-fi at its best.

4. Richard Castle and Kate Beckett on Castle love it.

I wasn’t sure if I was more likely to enjoy watching it because it was unintentionally funny, or actually good. The answer, it would turn out, is ‘actually good.’

I loved this movie. It definitely had its share of 50’s camp shortcomings. Weak dialogue (although not nearly as bad as I anticipated), a robot who doesn’t make any scientific sense whatsoever, no believable relationships. Yet, what the movie lacked in many areas, it more than made up for in sci-fi brilliance.

I never expect to see smart sci-fi in a movie from the 50’s. For example, they arrive on Altair IV, which has enough oxygen to support them without life support systems, but as they fly over and land there are no plants. So, while I expected as much, in my head I’m chuckling that oxygen isn’t just something that sits somewhere indefinitely. These humans, as well as the original colony they are searching for, would breathe said oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, run out of breathable air, and die. Yet, they find living people, and these people have set up homes surrounded by gardens and trees. They brought an eco-system with them to turn their carbon dioxide back into oxygen. In a cheesy sci-fi movie today, they would mention this in dialogue, in a really overt fashion. In Forbidden Planet, they NEVER talk about it. It’s just legitimate science, in the background. WHAT?!? It’s awesome.

The movie is full of stuff like that. For all its weaknesses, the narrative is tight and strong, keeping you guessing the entire time. It’s much more like a Asimov novel than a silly sci-fi movie in premise and plot. The scope once you start seeing more of the forbidden planet is also really amazing. This remarkably huge subterranean world I wasn’t anticipating.

I also think people undersell this movie when they simply say “Star Wars was heavily influenced by this movie.” It’s very true, but watching the movie I was reminded of what makes me love sci-fi. About two thirds through, as I was starting to love the movie in earnest, I was struck (almost emotionally so) by how important this movie has been in the history of film. All of the movies I love in the sci-fi realm may exist because of this film. I thought, this movie came out in 1956 and is capturing my imagination now; how much more so was that the case when a 12 year old George Lucas, and a ten year old Stephen Spielberg were watching this for the first time, or the tenth time?

Forbidden Planet planted an imaginative seed in the brains of folks who have been making smart, wonder inspiring movies ever since. I’m so glad to have finally been a witness.

Oh yeah, and Leslie Nielsen was sci-fi pulp movie gold.

First, Attack the Block got a date: July 29. Well, that’s only in select cities apparently, but fortunately my city is one of those cities.

Now, Attack the Block has a wonderfully long redband trailer. It’s entirely possible I’ll see this movie like five times this summer.

So far, various screenings of the film have people going crazy for it. I can’t wait!

I’ll keep this short, because it’s a busy week writing-wise, but I really did want to write briefly about seeing Super 8. 

I loved this movie. It certainly wasn’t perfect, without spoiling things I’ll just mention that parts at the end were a bit overdrawn, and there were some key moments in which there was emotional growth that made no sense based on the events in the movie. Those things will probably keep the movie from finishing the year as my favorite film of 2011. Still, I really did love it.

It was so beautifully reminiscent, as an homage should be, of Spielberg’s work in the late 70s and 80s. Close Encounters and ET, with a bit of The Goonies (which was co-written by Spielberg) thrown in for good measure. Youthful yearning for adventure, rooted in a deep desire for community, feelings that were aroused by movies like ET when I was young, came rushing back into me. That’s actually a likely part of my disappointment with parts of the end of the film, a comparison to ET will often leave a film lacking, because I think ET has one of the most perfectly crafted final acts in the history of film.

A few of my favorite elements of Super 8 were:

1. Satisfying contents in the mystery box. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard tell many times of a talk Abrams has given when he discusses his ability to create an atmosphere of mystery and anticipation and wonder. He talks of the mystery box, and how our anticipation of what might be in the box is always more satisfying than what is actually in the box. I was reminded the other day (by the lovely and talented Rebecca Canlis) of a really good example of a mystery box with really disappointing contents : Signs. I still like Signs much more than most people, but those aliens were so lame and disappointing. In large part, that was because the CG wasn’t prepared for what M. Night wanted to do with aliens, but it’s come a long way since then. The alien in this was really awesome looking and imaginative.

2. Amazing young cast. Finding young actors who don’t suck is really, really hard. Directing them well is just as hard. This movie has got the goods. The kids played off of each other really naturally, they were likable, they cared for one another in believable ways, and Elle Fanning was nothing short of a revelation.

3. It reminded me of falling in love with movies. One reviewer who had a snippet on a commercial I saw for the movie mentioned something along the lines of Super 8 having everything that made us love movies to begin with. I whole-heartedly agree. The scope, the relationships, the sense of adventure, the impossible seeming truly possible… Super 8 really did remind me why I fell in love with movies in the first place. Sure, that love is deeper and richer now. I love movies for different reasons than I did when I was 11 and could imagine nothing better than going to the movie theater, or renting six movies from Blockbuster and watching them all within like 30 hours (Okay, so, minus the Blockbuster part, I still can’t imagine anything better than that). In Super 8, Abrams offers the world exactly what Spielberg was once the master of, a well-crafted adventure story full of delight, wonder, friendship, and young love.

This movie was just silly. Perhaps it was intentionally trying to embrace the sci-fi B-movie vibe. If it was, they nailed it: bored acting, half-assed story, the waste of a great premise. Also, for some reason, when getting close to the black hole it turns out black holes are actually big magma storms. That is, until they went through the hole, then there was some sort of twist ending where they decided to get philosophical/theological and enter heaven and hell territory. Weird.

The good part, unlike the robots in Silent Running, the robots in The Black Hole were enjoyable for the most part. They were just as impractical, or almost, but they talked, which at least added a bit of charm.

This trailer is actually all gameplay footage?!?

In the spirit of Tracy Jordan, I’m going to take this game behind the middle school and get it pregnant.