A great pic found by fellow blogger Ben Hwang...
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Review of WATCHMEN Director's Cut
A week ago Watchmen arrived on DVD and Blu-ray. You have a choice between getting the original theatrical edition (when the movie debuted back in March) or you can opt for the Director's Cut. There's also another version coming out later this fall that incorporates the "Tales of the Black Freighter" animated material into the movie itself. I'll most certainly be buying that when it comes out ('cuz I'm such a Watchmen nut)......but if you're wondering which version to get now, the Director's Cut stands as the definitive adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Don't get me wrong: I loved Watchmen when it came out in theaters (read my original review here). But having watched the Director's Cut three times now, I cannot help but believe that had the studio execs let Zack Snyder release his original vision from the getgo, that Watchmen would have performed substantially better at the box office.
As a huge fan of the book, I had to applaud all the new additions that the Director's Cut brings to the Watchmen film. The flashback sequences, apart from Sally's, are each greatly extended. Jon's memory of the Comedian during the Vietnam War particularly stands out: I love the shot of the helicopter as it flies past Jon, with Eddie hanging on from the outside and opening fire on the Vietcong... and then landing and roasting one poor schmuck with a flamethrower (after igniting it with his cigar, how cool is that?). Rorschach gets much more dialogue - most of the new stuff being lifted straight from the book - and action. I don't recall the scene where he retrieves his equipment and his "face" as being in the theatrical version, but it's in the Director's Cut. The scene where Dr. Long is trying to talk with Rorschach in prison also has more to it. We see Jon teleport everyone out of the studio following the disastrous television interview. In his flashback on Mars we see Jon inscribing the hydrogen atom symbol on his forehead, and we also find out how the United States government determined that Jon was on Mars (via satellite telescope) when the theatrical edition never bothered to explain that.
But by far the biggest and most welcome - if also the most heartbreaking - new thing that Watchmen Director's Cut brings to the table is the death of Hollis Mason at the hands of the Knot-tops. Most of the scene is done from Hollis's point of view, as we see him fighting the costumed bad guys from his younger days as the original Nite Owl... and then the film juxtaposes the villains of that more innocent time with the unrestrained depravity of the modern day street gangs. All while the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana plays during the scene. That was a tragic but appropriate detail, if you've read the Under the Hood excerpts from the Watchmen graphic novel. It's not long after that when we see Dan, as the second Nite Owl, hear the news of Hollis's death while he and Rorschach are at the tavern and then vent his rage on an innocent Knot-top. Both scenes are brutal to an extreme that has never been witnessed in a comic book-inspired film before (incidentally, there's also far more gore during the assassination attempt on Adrian, and during Rorschach's killing of the child murderer).
To sum up: Watchmen Director's Cut feels like the complete and defining vision of Watchmen. There's a refinement and exposition here that was missing from the theatrical run, and I found myself "buying" the world of this alternative 1985 far more easily than I did when I first saw the movie in March. The film doesn't feel overwhelmingly lengthened, in fact I thought the new material made the time watching the movie go by even smoother. I'll give Watchmen Director's Cut a very high recommendation for your DVD or Blu-ray collection.
Monday, July 27, 2009
National Novel Writing Month (like I need something ELSE to do...)
Inspired by my good friend Jenna St. Hilaire, I am taking part in this year's National Novel Writing Month.
So what the heck is National Novel Writing Month?
Between this coming November 1st and midnight on the night of November 30th, each participant will try to crank out a 50,000 word, 175-page novel from scratch. You can read more about it here.
As Jenna puts it, "...I smell challenge--the sort of challenge I cannot resist." So it is with me. And this is gonna be tough to do, not the least of which is because my life seems constantly besieged by all manner of general craziness (self-employed, more than occasional crises, trying to do what some will say is too much creative project already, community theatre, etc.).
But the biggest reason why I'm going to take a stab at "NaNoWriMo" is because I think this is going to be very therapeutic and cathartic for me as a writer.
It's like this: try though I have, writing fiction is very hard for me. I can write a fictional screenplay quite easily. But a long narrative novel? That is something that I have never been able to do. So I'm thinking that if compelled (by my own volition) to write a novel within the narrow span of one month, that it might break that stranglehold/bottleneck on my authoring skills. And maybe even free my mind and spirit to write more fiction.
It's gonna be hard. But in the end, I think it will be worth it.
So far as ideas for a novel go: I've had a few already since last night. There's one in particular that I'm inclined to go with at the moment, but we'll see what percolates in the ol' gray matter between now and October 31st.
KONG: KING OF SKULL ISLAND to become a real movie!
Variety is reporting today that Spirit Pictures is setting out to adapt Kong: King of Skull Island as a feature film. The plan is to use motion-capture technology like what Robert Zemeckis used to make The Polar Express and Beowulf (i.e. very life-like computer modeling and animation).
The thought of that kind of filmmaking applied to Kong: King of Skull Island is enough to get me totally jazzed about this project...
Kong: King of Skull Island was a lavishly illustrated 2004 novel by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland. It serves as a sequel to the original 1933 movie King Kong (it even received the blessing from the family of King Kong creator Merian C. Cooper) as well as being a "prequel" of sorts in that it lays out the tale of what Skull Island was like before Carl Denham and the crew of the Venture arrived. I reviewed the book way back in late 2005 and had nothing but good to say about it. In fact, I recently wound up re-reading it and was just as overwhelmed by Kong: King of Skull Island as I had been the first time.
Trust me folks: if done right, this could be a seriously terrific movie. One that I would gladly pay to see several times at the theater (and even multiple times in IMAX). In the meantime, I'll be keeping an enthusiastic eye on this as it develops.
Just a random thought for the day...
God does not work on our time. God works on His own time and it's more than a little silly to demand otherwise from Him.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
A most excellent quote to share this evening
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."Found by my friend R. Lee Wrights (who keeps a terrific libertarian-minded blog that y'all should check out).-- Bertrand Russell
Stating the obvious
Barack Obama's public approval ratings are plummeting through the floor.
His opponents are crowing about how Obama is now officially not as bad as George W. Bush was.
But let's call it for what this really means...
All this seriously demonstrates, unequivocally, is that twice in a row we have had Presidents of the United States who were/are so bad that they suck donkeys balls to no end.
The demise of cursive handwriting
Among the unwitting casualties of our increasingly techno-mad society: good penmanship is becoming an endangered species. So notes Claire Suddath in the latest issue of Time...
I can't remember how to write a capital Z in cursive. The rest of my letters are shaky and stiff, my words slanted in all directions. It's not for lack of trying. In grade school I was one of those insufferable girls who used pink pencils and dotted their i's with little circles. I experimented with different scripts, and for a brief period I even took the time to make two-story a's, with the fancy overhang used in most fonts (including this magazine's). But everything I wrote, I wrote in print. I am a member of Gen Y, the generation that shunned cursive. And now there is a group coming after me, a boom of tech-savvy children who don't remember life before the Internet and who text-message nearly as much as they talk. They have even less need for good penmanship. We are witnessing the death of handwriting.This takes me back to 1982, when Mrs. Casanega was teaching us in second grade how to write in cursive. By the end of the year, I felt like John Hancock himself. I'll always be grateful to her for giving us this skill (and I hold only myself accountable for that hideous beast of illegible scrawl that has arisen from my hands over the years... sigh).
Anyhoo, 'tis an intriguing commentary from Claire Suddath. Perhaps it's time to reinvest in teaching handwriting? Much like the samurai of old, I'm inclined to believe that it lends itself a certain self-discipline to the pupil and practitioner. A small detail to be sure... but a little refinement more often than not goes a long way in the scheme of things.
WAY weird LOST video from Comic-Con
Every year since Lost began airing, its producers have let loose a teaser video for the upcoming seasons during Comic-Con. The one for Season 4 gave us our first glimpse of the Orchid station, and last year's hinted at the messed-up time/space stuff that this past season became notorious for.
So what did Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse unload for the sixth and final season of Lost?
Hurley as the CEO of Mr. Cluck's (what the...?!?!?):
Even for Lost, that is way out of left field.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Something I've long wondered about...
I just saw a TV commercial for Lysol. And like usual it was boasting about how Lysol "kills 99% of household germs".
Okay so if that's true, then logically if I spray a can of Lysol twice on my furniture or toilet or whatever, then that should kill the remaining 1% of germs that survived the initial onslaught.
Right? Right?!?
Are there any consistent politicians left?
As I write this, Drudge Report has a red-colored link to a story about Governor Rick Perry of Texas vowing that he would assert that state's Tenth Amendment rights if he had to in order to oppose President Obama's plans to nationalize health care.
Hey, I'm all for that. I think every state should consider using that Tenth Amendment. But does Governor Perry seriously oppose Obama's mad medical plot on account of principle?
Because as recently as two and a half years ago Perry was very much for government-mandated medicine! It was in February of 2007 that he issued an executive order mandating that all girls entering the sixth grade be vaccinated against cervical cancer. The only vaccine available, Gardasil, is manufactured by Merck & Co.
And it soon turned out that Perry was more or less in Merck & Co.'s pocket, having received $6000 from the corporation's political action committee and that his former chief of staff was one of three registered lobbyists for Merck.
Ultimately the executive order was defeated by act of legislation, after a tremendous uproar from doctors, parents and others. Had it been enforced, that would have been all of Texas's young ladies having to get a shot at $120 each... with the money going to one of Perry's campaign contributors.
Rick Perry wanted to take a vital health care decision out of the province of families and their private practitioners, and hand it over to bureaucrats and government flunkies.
Sounds like Rick Perry was "for it before he was against it" when it comes to government-managed health care.
I am so damned sick and tired of these partisan #&@$ers who apparently have no virtues or principles that they aren't willing and able to sell out for the right price. And I mean both of the major parties that are dominating this country's politics.
How many elected officials in high office can I say that I respect? I'll only remark that I can number them all on one hand. And maybe only one of those is from my own home state of North Carolina.
It's not just a parliament of whores. It's a system-wide corruption.
So when the hell are we the people gonna stop falling for the "shuck and jive" of these bastitches and whip them all out of where they should have never been allowed in the first place?
Or to paraphrase that Nazi agent from Raiders of the Lost Ark: "Shoot them. Shoot them all!"
Friday, July 24, 2009
Concept footage/semi-teaser thingy for TRON LEGACY
This afternoon Disney finally made an official release of that concept footage for Tron Legacy, next year's sequel to the 1982 movie about a parallel reality that exists within the realm of computers. This is the same footage that Disney showed at Comic-Con last year, but with the new Tron Legacy logo...
Click here to zap back down onto the game grid.
And you might wanna also take a looksee at Flynn Lives, a Tron Legacy teaser website about what has happened to Kevin Flynn (the character that Jeff Bridges played in Tron and will reprise again in the sequel). It hints that in the years since Flynn took over ENCOM he has become a "Bill Gates meets Howard Hughes"-type of person.
Wanna meet the proprietor of THE KNIGHT SHIFT in person?!
I'm planning on being at HyperMind in Burlington, North Carolina tomorrow for most of the day, doing videography for their big Monsterpocalypse store-wide event but also gonna finally play this game for the first time ever. Here's the promo video that I made for it (which is also in the Top Ten for the Monsterpocapalooza contest!)...
Anyhoo, the festivities start at 9 a.m. at HyperMind, located at 3396 South Church Street in Burlington, North Carolina. It's a family-run store with great atmosphere and good people always stopping by to play Monsterpocalypse, Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons and just about everything else :-)
Gary Oldman sez: Third Batman movie shoots next year!
Awesome news coming out of Comic-Con in San Diego: Gary Oldman - who plays James Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies - was asked during a panel about his upcoming movie The Book of Eli about when the next Batman film would begin filming. Oldman's reply was surprisingly open (read that as: he was encouraged to let it slip by The Powers That Be): "We start shooting next year, so we are at least two years away. But you didn't hear it from me!"So that potentially puts the next chapter of the definitive Batman film saga with a release date of 2011.
Until then, I guess we just keep watching The Dark Knight: a film so overwhelmingly good that I couldn't bring myself to write a review of it. But if that movie was any indication, I suspect that the next installment is going to ramp up the "escalation" and start bringing in a lot more freak villains to Gotham City... and ironically, Gotham will come to realize that it has no other choice but to turn to Batman for help.
However the story goes: We're getting more Batman movie people!! That's always a good thing (unless Joel Schumacher is making the movie...)
Missing: Michael Jackson's nose
For the first time ever, it is not a joke.
Michael Jackson's prosthetic nose has disappeared. It was discovered gone as the late performer's body lay in a Los Angeles morgue. In its place was "a small, dark hole surrounded by bits of cartilage": what remained of Jackson's decades of plastic surgery.
But the good news is that a security camera at the morgue caught this image of two individuals who are suspected of heisting Jackson's nose...
(Okay, that's actually a still from Woody Allen's 1973 classic comedy film Sleeper, which was the first thing that came to mind after I read this story :-)
Fifty years ago today: The "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Krushchev
On July 24th, 1959, one of the more unusual events of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union took place. At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, visiting U.S. Vice-President (and future President) Richard Nixon accompanied Russian Premier Nikia Krushchev on a tour of a model "typical" American house, complete with all the modern conveniences of the late Fifties. It was meant to be a goodwill gesture on the part of both countries... but soon devolved (or escalated) into a rambunctious argument between Nixon and Krushchev about the pros and cons of their respective countries' systems of capitalism and communism. The impromptu discussion reached its climax in the kitchen of the model house, where Nixon enthusiastically pointed out American household appliances such as an automatic dishwasher.
And so it was that the "Kitchen Debate" received its more-or-less formal moniker.
Here's a newsreel clip of the event...
Fifty years ago, our country's leadership was arguing against government-run industry. A half-century later, and our "leaders" seem hellbent on running as much industry as they possibly can.
Kinda makes you pine for a simpler time, don't it?
