Wednesday, December 10, 2008

A Season or Two at the Movies

Welcome back, people.

Proving once again how ahead of the curve we are here at B&C, we shut down between the months of April and December in response to the financial crisis that hadn't finished happening yet. And, in anticipation of the unanticipated post-Christmas Dow rally, we're back to catch up on...

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED THIS YEAR?!

ITEM ONE! MOVIES
First Iron Man blew away everything Marvel had done before. Who better to play the world's most powerful alcoholic than the Nineties' most famous drug addict? Absolutely nothing was wrong with that movie. Everything was right with it. Although I have been combing the DVD extras and have not yet found outtakes of Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges, duh) saying "this unchecked aggression will not stand" or "you mean... like, coitus?"

Then Incredible Hulk came out and I forgot that a) "requel" is not a real word and b) Edward Norton and Tim Roth had ever been in any bad movies, ever. I even almost liked Liv Tyler... actually, she was fine in LOTR as far as I'm concerned... and ugh, now that I think of it, can you imagine Jennifer Connelly as Arwen? I'd have strangled myself with one of Aragorn's ridiculous Celtic-knot belts... anyway. Thumbs up for the Hulk, two thumbs up for making the old Hulk TV show's "sad walking away music" into an actual theatrical score that sticks in your head, not unlike Tim Burton's Batman theme or John Williams's Superman march... everything else Marvel's done, including Iron Man unfortunately, has had a soundtrack that sounded like the theme to their old animated Saturday morning cartoons minus the lame electric guitars (not to get off on a tangent, but what the fuck was up with the theme to Enterprise? What was the reasoning behind basically rolling a Michael W. Smith b-side during your opening credits? If anyone has a reason for self-loathing it's Trekkies, but you've gotta get over it and try to pass yourselves off as cool, not... this.)
REMEMBER WHAT THE FUCK YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT
Sorry.
Then came The Dark Knight.
End of discussion.
Hellboy II, Wall-E, Hancock, blah blah blah. They were all well and good. I will literally not spare an ounce of my saliva for the genitals of Pixar, Dark Horse or Will "Scientologist?" Smith that could be used on Christopher "I'm Crazy" Nolan, Christian "So Crazy I'll Slap My Own Mama" Bale, or Heath "I Acted So Crazy I'm Dead Now" Ledger.
To date, Heath Ledger has been posthumously knighted in thirteen countries, including the USA, who didn't know they could do that 'til now; Christian Bale has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the London police department and given immunity to assault "whomever he wants," Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman have been pre-emptively cleared for canonization by the Vatican and the Academy has designated a "Best Gary Oldman" award to be given to Gary Oldman every year, whether he has appeared in a movie or not that year.
Chris Nolan has been released on his own recognizance without bail.
IN WHAT COUNTRY?
Everywhere.
WHY?
Because of him, the best movie of the decade teaches us that we can either choose to go around the system in order to bring people to justice, or just say "fuck it" and burn or shoot or stab anyone or anything that stands between us and self-fulfillment.
Awesome.

ITEM TWO! WATCHMEN IS ALSO APPARENTLY A MOVIE NOW
Billy Crudup's blue dick is coming to a theatre near you! Huzzah! I guess now I'm glad Keanu didn't get the part, as was once the word around the campfire. You've seen the trailers, right?
People were shushing me in the theatre during the previews at the Dark Knight opening. I responded that they were lucky I didn't just whip it out and start jacking it in the theatre.
I don't want to hear a word of negativity from anyone about this. I'm not usually one for superficiality, but all that matters is that it looks perfect. Every costume, every special effect, is as perfect as humanly possible without resorting to full-blow Beowulf-style mo-cap CGI. Short of trying to do Ang Lee's retarded take on comic book panels within a movie screen, this is basically a transforming of a comic book into a film. Even if Zack Snyder has, as reported, fucked up the ending, I don't care. There will be costumes, violence, moral ambiguity and insanely over-detailed sets. Snyder's like an idiot savant for recreating other people's work. I think if you gave him the Torah or the New Testament and told him to turn it into a coherent narrative, you'd have a blockbuster that would expose The Passion for the snuff film it is within eighteen months. Seriously, when I get drunk around other people I start calling for the execution of any and all citizens and subjects who won't bow before the brazen image of the Emperor (I don't know which Emperor, it doesn't matter, don't ask), and I would gladly put down $10 to see Gerard Butler deliver the Ten Commandments (cue a bunch of drunk guys screaming "THIS! IS! ISRAEL!"). I am that passionate about Zack Snyder's weird knack for taking our past and making it look a little bit cooler.
Three months, and then we get to see... the same exact thing I've read twenty times... only on a screen. Uhm. Okay, I guess now I get why people aren't so hot and bothered about Snyder's Watchmen. Or maybe I'm just sobering up. I'm not sure anymore.

No comments: