MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Rowdy Roddy Piper is gone.

Which may not mean much to non-wrestling fans, except the ones who liked They Live.



For me, of course, Piper was part of the Toontown that was the WWF’s heyday in the late-80s. And he was always one of the standouts, whether in the ring or on the mike.

Also, while he wasn’t the first WWF superstar to break into films, he was one of the few who made at least one really good one (see above). The rest of them were mainly straight-to-video B-movies, but I’ll take that over Hulk Hogan’s kids films any day.

Piper brought Hell to Frogtown.



He went to the police academy with Jesse Ventura.



He inspired a punk rock song.



It’s hard not to respect that.

I think Jade Bos sums it up well:


Amen.

Sooner or later everybody pays the Piper,

This is dF

I haven’t been getting to the cinemas as much as I would like these days. But I have managed to see a couple of things.

Mad Max: Fury Road

An argument could be made that we really didn’t need another Mad Max film – not least since any “reboot” would have to live up to at least the first two films, if not Beyond Thunderdome. But if yr going to revive the series, this is the way to do it.

George Miller made two very wise decisions with Fury Road: (1) real car stunts that rely as little on CGI as possible (though perhaps not little enough at times) and (2) going with an all-new story instead of rehashing Max’s origins, although the plot follows a framework similar (but not identical) to Mad Max 2.

Still, it’s the details that matter, and on that score, the film delivers just about everything you’d want in a new Mad Max film: insane car battles, insane post-apocalyptic tribes, and insane visual design, with a decent story engine driving it along. My only real complaint is the CGI thrown in for 3D purposes. But that’s a small quibble for a film where everything is deliberately over the top. Where else can you see an assault force led by a heavy-metal guitarist with a flamethrowing guitar?

Meanwhile, Tom Hardy is a worthy successor as Max, but Charlize Theron steals the show as Imperator Furiosa. Which has apparently upset the Men’s Rights groups who are annoyed at all the "feminism" George Miller poured all over their movie. If that’s not a recommendation to go see it, I’d like to know what is.

Ex Machina

Almost the polar opposite of MM:FR in terms of OTT energy, Ex Machina is a slow-paced but absorbing AI-thriller written and directed by Alex Garland. The story involves Caleb, a coder at a giant search engine company (not that one), who wins a company lottery to work with reclusive legendary founder Nathan Bateman on a super-secret project that turns out to be Ava, a female robot with artificial intelligence. Nathan wants Caleb to apply the Turing Test to Ava whilst already knowing she’s not human. But as the tests go on, Caleb suspects that both Nathan and Ava have their own agendas.

Oscar Isaacs is great as Nathan, equal parts brooding psychopath and charismatic-to-the-point-of-intimidating genius, and Alicia Vikander makes for a smart and sympathetic Ava. Domhnall Gleeson is a little lackluster in comparison as Caleb, but fulfils his role as the average guy who finds himself in over his head.

Like other films Garland has written, the third act falls a little short on logic, and some bits are predictable. On the other hand, he does avoid some of the more obvious tropes for this kind of film, and does a good job using the storyline to explore the ethical issues involved with developing AI (especially the way in which Nathan went about it), the differences between human intelligence and AI, and the possible consequences. Even the inevitable sexbot trope serves more to raise the ethical issues involved instead of “hey guys, sexbots!” Overall, if yr expecting a straight techno action thriller, you’ll be disappointed. But if you like yr SF a little more thoughtful, this should be right up yr street.

Smarter than the average robot,

This is dF

ITEM: Marvel is killing the popcorn movie. Furthermore, it doesn’t care. And Avengers: Age of Ultron is proof.

So says this op/ed piece in Wired, which is not a diatribe against popcorn films, but against the approach that Marvel has taken to them, and the effect it’s having on the overall popcorn-film genre.

I don’t agree that A:AoU will have a knock-on effect on all popcorn films – fans love it, critics mainly liked it, and the box office take is healthy, so Disney/Marvel and other studios have all the incentive they need to do more things like it.

That said, I do think the article brilliantly sums up the way I feel about the whole Marvel Cinematic/TV Universe. Namely: Marvel’s stipulation that each part must serve the whole. Apparently the A:AoU script had to conform to Marvel’s guidelines to the point that a number of scenes served no purpose except as set-ups or promos for other Marvel franchises.

From the article:


Now, I get that the above is more of a problem for an ensemble franchise like The Avengers than it would be for a standalone MCU franchise. And I also realize that interconnectedness is a key feature of the Marvel comics.

The thing is, that's easier to do with comic books that have been around 50+ years than it is with films and television. Universes don't mean much if the characters are one-dimensional and the stories are nothing but a series of epic fight scenes.

And even then, I have to say one of the reasons I stopped reading Marvel comics in the 90s was that same emphasis on interconnectivity in the Marvel Comics Universe. The result was too many damn crossovers. It got to the point that you had to read ten or eleven titles to be able to follow what was going on. Which of course was fine with Marvel because $$$$$.

Apparently Marvel wants to do the same basic thing with the films and TV shows and spinoffs of both. IMO, eventually it's going to backfire. Some MCU fans I know are already complaining that some of the TV shows have writing that's not Whedon-levels of clever. God knows how they're going to feel when they realize that Robert Downey Jr can't play Tony Stark indefinitely, which is going to ruin the continuity.

And now Warner Bros/DC are looking to emulate the same Cinematic Universe formula (since DC Comics, of course, does the universe/crossover thing as well), which seems to be a problem for a lot of fans because the existing DC film aesthetic has already been established by Chris Nolan’s Batman films and Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel. Which is apparently a bad thing because those movies sucked.

Which is news to me. Not Man Of Steel, of course (which I haven't seen, but I know it wasn’t that well received by Superman fans), but the Nolan Batman films. I seem to remember comics fans generally liking them (especially The Dark Knight), apart from some minor quibbles and the inability of The Dark Knight Rises to live up to TDK. Then the MCU happened, and now suddenly it seems all the fan sites are talking about how the Nolan films were actually awful the whole time because they’re not as fun as the MCU films and are about stoopid things like intelligence and emotion.

I might be imagining it. Or my memory is faulty. Maybe it’s just that Nolan’s Batman was better by comparison to every superhero film before it, but now it suffers in comparison to Iron Man and the Avengers cos they're superhero films done “properly”. That’s arguably true of Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films – I remember fans seemed generally impressed with the first two (not so much the third one, admittedly), but none of them have really aged well. Which I suppose is one reason why they rebooted it.

Anyway, I’d just as soon both Disney/Marvel and WB/DC drop the whole Cinematic Universe concept – especially if it’s only going to serve as a cross-promotion tool for other properties.

FULL DISCLOSURE #1: I haven’t seen A:AoU. Or any of the Marvel TV shows.

FULL DISCLOSURE #2: I like Zack Snyder as a director. And I don’t care who knows that.

Avengers disassemble,

This is dF

I don’t really go out of my way to see Oscar-winning/nominated films, but it seems that – for once – this year’s Oscar bait actually turned out to be films I would have gone to see anyway. Or some of them, anyway.

As usual, all of them opened in Hong Kong just before/just after Oscar Night (for maximum publicity), except for Selma, which opens this week. Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve seen:

Birdman

It’s not often I can post about seeing the Oscar-designated “Best Picture Of The Year” – partly because I don’t recognize the authority of NARAS, and partly because the films that win Best Picture are usually the kinds of films I’m not interested in seeing. But I saw Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman before the Oscars happened (I’m just now getting around to writing the review), and I’m surprised it won – not because it’s bad (the opposite, in fact), but because it’s not the usual kind of film the Academy goes for.

Or maybe it is. Between the buzz about Iñárritu’s heroic efforts to make the film look like a single shot and the storyline (actor famous for playing blockbuster superhero Birdman tries to revive career on Broadway with adaptation of Raymond Carver story while his family life, his sanity and the production itself falls apart around him), it’s tempting to write the film off as self-indulgent Oscar bait with actors acting a story about acting and the art of acting and how hard it is to be an actor, and isn’t it ironic that we’re satirizing actors, etc.

Which would be accurate except that (1) the film never comes off as being ironic or self-absorbed, and (2) the performances overall are just too good to write off, especially for Michael Keaton, who takes the title role far beyond what you might expect from a guy who once played Batman. The film’s only real problem is a tendency to get sidetracked with a couple of subplots that don't really go anywhere and seem to serve as a distraction while they’re setting up the next scene off-camera. Apart from that, though, it’s fascinating to watch the tension build as the film edges towards opening night.

Whiplash

That jazz drumming film that “real” jazz lovers hate because it’s unrepresentative of real jazz and music conservatory instructors. It’s kind of like people complaining that Lethal Weapon is unrepresentative of law enforcement procedure – it might be true, but who would go see a realistic version?

In any case, I don't really think Whiplash is about jazz – it’s about obsession with jazz, or with music in general. Both aspiring drummer Andrew Neyman and cruel teacher Fletcher are obsessed with jazz and musical genius in different ways, and it’s that obsession that pits them against each other. Fletcher is undoubtedly abusive – he’s the R. Lee Ermey of jazz schools, only more so – but J.K. Simmons makes Fletcher so believable that it doesn’t matter that most jazz instructors don’t behave that way. This one does, and he’s terrifying.

So yeah, I liked it, although it’s such an intense film that I don’t know if I could sit through it again. But in a good way. It's like a rollercoaster – intense while yr on it, then once yr off you want to ride it again. 

The Imitation Game

I don’t go much for biopics, but at least this one has an interesting hook – how Alan Turing cracked the Enigma code, invented computers and for his trouble was later arrested for being gay with another man. And I’ve got mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand – like all biopics (and hence the reason I don’t generally like them) – it plays fast and loose with the facts in order to make Turing’s role bigger than it actually was. On the other hand, filmmakers have almost always sacrificed facts for drama, so the real benchmark is whether the film holds up on its own merits regardless of accuracy. On that level, The Imitation Game works as a WW2 thriller – it’s a great story that’s well told and brilliantly paced.

That said, I’m also a little critical of Benedict Cumberbatch’s take on Turing – it plays a little too strongly on the tortured-antisocial-arrogant-genius stereotype that these kinds of movies tend to deploy (and which Cumberbatch has already done via Sherlock Holmes). For the most part he’s very good, but occasionally he overdoes it. But overall, it’s still entertaining.

Real genius,

This is dF

Because you can’t possibly have enough “Best Of The Year” lists on the Internet.

Films now. Music soon.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: If yr favorite movie of 2014 isn’t here, it’s likely because (1) I didn’t get a chance to see it, (2) it hasn’t been released in Hong Kong yet, or (3) I did see it but didn’t like it as much as you did. Also, if some of these seem kind of old, it’s because their release date was 2013 for yr country, but 2014 for Hong Kong. Get me?

TOP TEN DEF FILMS OF 2014

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Interstellar
3. The Wolf Of Wall Street
4. Edge Of Tomorrow
5. Lucy
6. Godzilla
7. A Most Wanted Man
8. The Railway Man
9. Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes
10. The Monuments Men

HONORABLE MENTIONS

American Hustle
Only Lovers Left Alive
X-Men: Days Of Future Past

THE ONE FILM I LIKED THAT NO ONE ELSE DID

Kiki's Delivery Service

THE ONE FILM I DIDN’T LIKE THAT EVERYONE ELSE DID

The Two Faces Of January

WORST FILM OF 2013

Transformers: Age Of Extinction

( Want capsule reviews? Cos we got some right here )

Tomorrow: the music! 

dF out

For some people, anyway.





[Via The Pie Shops]

Context here.

Into the white,

This is dF

I’m old enough to remember this.



[Via My Monster Memories]


Also, this:






FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven’t seen the new TMNT film, admittedly in part because it doesn’t really look all that good. But surely it can’t be any worse than this.

Right?

Shell shocked,

This is dF

Where have I been? Well, to the movies, among other things ...

Guardians Of The Galaxy

The latest– and arguably unexpected – Marvel comics adaptation, and one that’s received a lot of hype, not least because of the “raccoon with a machine gun” meme. Some people have also been throwing around a lot of comparisons (Farscape! Firefly! Star Wars!). If nothing else, it’s certainly in the same vein as “spaceships, laser guns and aliens who look just like humans except for the skin color and head shape”.

Anyway. Is the hype justified? If yr a fan of the comic book, maybe. If yr me – and I’ve never read the comic – no.

The basic story – criminals band together to stop evil person from acquiring ultimate MacGuffin to destroy universe – is pretty standard, as is the CG rollercoaster action, and – to a point – the retro 70s soundtrack. It’s not bad, mind you – but it’s not especially clever, either.

What the film mainly has going for it is a sense of humor and a pretty likeable cast of characters, though it has to be said they’re more interesting as a group than they are individually. And even the humor angle, at least for me, is pretty uneven – some bits work great, others fall flat. I can’t be too hard on it, since it’s intended to be light summer entertainment, and it’s reasonably successful, but I still feel this could have been a better film than it is.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

The second installment of the PotA reboot, which takes place ten years after the Simian Flu virus unleashed at the end of the first film has decimated humanity. Caesar and his band of genetically modified apes have set up a village in the woods and assume all the humans are dead and gone – until they encounter a team of humans trying to access a nearby dam in the hope of restoring electric power to San Francisco, where human survivors of the plague have holed up.

Things get off to a bad start when one of the humans shoots an ape in panic, and both Caesar – who still doesn't hate humans per se – and human leader Malcolm try to get past mutual mistrust and avoid a war between both sides.

The story that follows borrows a few riffs from Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, but is otherwise a strikingly well crafted exercise in paralleling the human and simian societies – at least when it comes to love, hate, fear, greed and the inevitability of war. The film is not exactly subtle, but it has a point to make and it makes it reasonably well – so much so that in many respects, it’s a vast improvement over the first film.

On the downside, the dialogue hasn’t gotten any better, and the family angle on the human side doesn’t have as much impact thanks to Malcolm’s wife and son being underwritten to the point that they might as well not exist. Also while the story may be well structured, it’s also pretty predictable. On the other hand, the fact that director Matt Reeves can still keep the tension simmering for most of the film is a remarkable achievement in itself. Overall, despite some flaws, it's a pretty good film. If we have to have a PotA reboot, DotPotA is a welcome upgrade to the franchise.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch’s take on the vampire genre, and while I knew full well going into this that (1) it was a romance drama and (2) Jarmusch would avoid the usual cinematic clichés (i.e. Twilight sappiness, True Blood horniness and horror-movie gorefests), I have to say it’s a very slow film that takes forever to go anywhere, and when it does, it doesn't go very far.

The story focuses on two very old vampires who are also lovers – Adam, currently a reclusive underground rock musician living in Detroit, and Eve, who is hanging out in Tangier with fellow vampire Christopher Marlowe. Separated for unexplained reasons, they get back together in Detroit after Adam starts having suicidal tendencies, and they have a good time until Eve’s trainwreck sister Ava shows up to ruin everything.

That’s really it. Along the way there’s a lot of discussions about love, art, music, science and the general decay of humanity – some good, some underdeveloped. And while it’s not strictly necessary for this kind of film to stick to any given vampire canon, the ending doesn’t really make much sense.

What the film really has going for it is Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, who really nail both their respective characters and their relationship as lovers. There’s also an awful lot of guitar/home studio porn, which is great for people like me. It’s not a bad film; I just came away feeling Jarmusch could have done more with the premise (and without trying to do a “proper” vampire film).

Detroit Rock City,

This is dF

Q: What do Judy Garland, Herman’s Hermits and cowboys have in common?

A: This song, both of which were performed in movies with cowboys.





I can’t decide which is more awesome: watching Judy play sleepy guitar, or watching Herman’s Hermits play in the back of a pick-up truck.

Some fellers,

This is dF

It’s that time of year when only franchise summer blockbusters are playing. So …

How To Train Your Dragon 2

In which awkward teenage Hiccup is now awkward young man Hiccup trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Meanwhile, the evil Drago Bludvist is amassing a dragon army, and is coming for Berk’s dragons. Hiccup is convinced he can stop the coming war. But events – to include some shocking revelations – complicate matters further.

Probably the most striking thing about HTTYD2, apart from the noticeably upgraded animation, is that it’s a great example of how to do a sequel right – telling a different kind of story, and letting the characters grow without simply rehashing jokes and catchphrases. It’s also got some surprisingly grim moments for a G-rated animated film.

The trade-off is that it’s not quite as fun as the first one, particularly when it comes to some of the family-drama angle, which occasionally feels a little too contrived and slows the film down. But overall, it’s a good film that sets the bar not only for sequels, but animated films in general.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction

It’s not really fair to review this one, since (1) Michael Bay’s target audience is teenage boys who go to movies to see explosions and babes in Daisy Dukes, and (2) the bride and I only saw it because we wanted to see Hong Kong get decimated by Dinobots.

And even there, it was a bit of a rip-off, since a lot of HK looked suspiciously like Lower Wacker Drive and a set made up to look more like the dilapidated town square of a mainland Chinese village than anything you might actually find in HK. Still, they did do some filming in Quarry Bay (where I used to work) and Victoria Harbour, and they did rip up some digitized downtown HK, which was fun.

The cameos by local HK actors and pop stars were also amusing – especially the part where Michael Wong says, “We need to call the Central Government!” You can almost see Xi Jinping slow-clapping off-camera.

Other than that … well, yes, it’s everything you expect from both a Transformers movie and a Michael Bay movie – annoying asshat characters (this time it’s Mark Wahlberg doing the overprotective dad routine), female eye candy and a stupid storyline with a complete disregard for logic (because it gets in the way of the explosions). I sometimes wonder if Bay isn’t somehow conducting some bizarre multi-million-dollar experiment to prove that you can dumb down summer blockbusters until they really are nothing more than three hours of explosions, destruction and ass shots and STILL get people to go watch them.

Anyway.

Maleficent

In which we get to hear the tale of Sleeping Beauty from the villain’s POV, for once. And as you’ve probably heard, Maleficent isn’t as evil as the 1959 Disney classic would have you believe – so much so that the blogscape is abuzz will all kinds of intellectual dissections about role reversals, female empowerment, queer politics and to what extent the movie succeeds as whatever sociopolitical screed a given blogger/critic thinks it was intended to be.

Which is probably giving Maleficent too much credit – at the end of the day, it's a fairly obvious attempt by Disney to repackage and recycle intellectual property. On the other hand, it does have some merit as a rewrite. The 1959 Maleficent was always pretty one-dimensional as villains go (even Disney fairy-tale villains, who are usually evil just because EVIL), so there’s a lot of room to play around with her character. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton does a pretty good job of recasting Maleficent as a powerful fairy wronged and betrayed by the human world. And Angelina Jolie really does bring that character to life.

But while Woolverton does manage to subvert a few fairy-tale conventions, almost everything that’s not about Maleficent herself directly falls back onto the usual genre clichés, and director Robert Stromberg gives some uneven direction that veers between stunningly picturesque imagery and the usual rollercoaster CGI action sequences. Also, the focus on Maleficent comes at the expense of almost every other character in the film, all of whom feel underwritten. All told, it’s not a bad film, but it’s not a great one either.

Wake me when it's over,

This is dF