Vic Sage

we're going this weekend for my son's 13th birthday party, with some of his friends (i.e., on-line colleagues). Adolescent gamers save the world... sounds like their wet dream. ENDER'S GAME was a great book, and had a great sequel too. But the third one was not so good, and I haven't read any of the subsequent ones (i think there are some). O.S.Card is a brilliant writer and an asshole. i don't blame the one for the other.

you don't need superhero movies for that (see DIE HARD, etal)

Wel, they WILL have Yondu and Star-lord, so they won't ALL be strangers. And Gamora, Nebula, Ronan and Drax should be known to fans of the Infinity Gems saga, and Thanos, and Warlock titles. But it does seem that they've merged the characters of Nebula with Moondragon by having Karen Gillan shave her head for the part. In which case, i'll be well and truly pissed.

Me no likee so muchee. Zero character development, with video-game action. And as i feared, Malekith is an uncharismatic and uninteresting villain. While the ending of the 1st THOR movie was kind of lame, that story was at least about THOR (and it had agent Colson!). This movie, on the other hand, is about some convoluted nonsense about darkness and aether and convergence, and our hero goes through practically no evolution in his character. Portman is basically there to stand around and look pretty while spouting pseudo-science, and i wanted to hit that 2 BROKE GIRLS girl about the head with a steel rod. Speaking of steel rods, the villain is killed and his plot foiled by the scientist's invention, not so much by Thor. In fact, Thor plays a relatively unimportant role in the story's outcome. You could have done this movie with Loki and Jane Forster (and her pants-less scientist pal), with no Thor at all, and told pretty much the same exact story. Favorite scene: Thor walking down the hall with Loki, and Loki screwing with Thor's head just for fun. Actually, my favorite scenes were any ones with Tom Hiddleston. And which of the infinity gems were Thor's pals giving to the Collector for safe-keeping, in the scene after the final credits (which is now a de rigueur Marvel movie cliche at this point)? was it the "aether"? That's not an infinity gem. This scene was included to set up GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and I liked Benecio Del Toro in that cameo. But i like him in practically anything. i have mixed feelings about the GUARDIANS movie, from what i've heard and read so far.

yeah, i guess i don't see the problem you're seeing. Slater is believable to me both as the romantic lead and smart-ass tough guy; i found him totally sympathetic. He's had that "Nicholson" thing hung around his neck his whole career, but that's the way he talks and looks. If there hadn't been a Nicholson before him, Slater may have become a major star. Maybe he played into the charicature too much in some roles, but i didn't have that problem with him in this. I can't imagine Jack ever playing this kind of guy, or even wanting to.

Slick? with a daddy in a trailer, a job in a comic store, and a hooker for his birthday. Nah. The gods of tarantino just smiled down on his good heart and his true love and gave him the wherewithal to raise himself up. and he does. and us too, by extension. No, I wouldn't call him slick. I'd call him smart (smarter certainly than his station in life would have anyone realize) and brave (with a courage forged in love. and borne out of nothing left to lose), and amusingly lucky (because the gods favor true love). This gives him a certain coolness that others respond to with respect... a respect he likely had not been the target of until that moment in his life when luck, courage and smarts converged to give him what he deserved. When was the last time you saw a movie with 2 doomed lover/losers on the run that ends with them getting everything they wished for? Those characters don't usually get happy Hollywood endings; they get noble sacrifice and bloody tragedy. Tarantino says fuck that... i like these guys, you like these guys, and they deserve to win, no matter the body count they've left in their wake. so here ya go. and I said thanks, Quentin. May we have another? And he said, yeah, here's some more.

My son asked me why she didn't move her fat ass over, so Leo could climb on too? I had no acceptable response. Other than that, i enjoyed TITANIC for what it was, but wished it weren't about the actual event; it trivializes that tragedy by making it all background to their UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS romance.

he's the closest thing we have to a legit OF prospect near the top of our system. Hail Cesar!

actually, i based my high rating of this film on a 2D viewing, so i don't think it matters for this film all that much. i rarely see 3D versions... it gives me a headache, and usually doesn't look as good, and its almost never worth the extra cost (Imax 3D). The only film that i've seen both 3D and 2D versions of, and that is markedly better in 3D, is AVATAR. There, Cameron created a fully immersive experience about a guy going through a fully immersive experience, so it made thematic sense, and he's one of the few technician/directors that can pull it off so well.

...and that Sears is worth shopping at.

i'm sorry, Edgy. While i was using comments in your post as a jumping off point, i wasn't necessarily disagreeing or criticizing your viewpoint. It's your viewpoint. I think our views overlap more than they don't, but i've heard some of the criticisms of the film you've offered more generally (which demonstrates that its not an unsupportable view) and so am responding to it generally. To say it "doesn't hit as deep as it could" certainly does not mean that it fails to hit deep at all, or that it's superficial, or that it has nothing on its mind but thrills. But i think the movie does hit deep. And there's the rub.

Loved it. I found that the film's "thriller" structure did not hinder character development; instead, it provided the reason for it. Frankly, i would classify this a character study, from a narrative structure POV... a thrilling one, to be sure. When she becomes an "embryo" (as a visual metaphor) we know we are going to witness her transformation, and we do. Clooney's good humored commander on one last mission did not strike me as oily in the least. He becomes (quite literally) the sympathetic voice in her head that drives her towards survival, in contrast to those voices from Earth which are entirely impotent. I care not a smidgen or a whit about distances between space stations or relative orbits of satellites. They were far enough away from each other to provide the necessary tension when they're hopping from one to the next, and that's what matters here. As to big questions, well no, it doesn't posit theories about the nature of evolution, or the need for conservation to save our blue planet, nor does it deal with our relative place in the universe, but it addresses the biggest questions and, frankly, the only ones that really matter... the ones about our humanity. How does a life go on when its soul has been frozen in place? How do we reach into ourselves and find the strength to keep going, every single day? How do you get up and walk on the shifting sands when the gravity of your life is literally pulling you down? It deals with pretty profound shit, emotionally speaking. I'm not saying it does so perfectly or deeply, but it's not just an empty thrill ride of a movie, despite its non-stop tension and velocity. It is an exhausting film to watch, though, as we watch Bullock's misfortunes accumulate relentlessly. For some, it's just too much (as it was for my wife); for others, its impact can be powerful. Other than SOLARIS and 2001 (already mentioned), and APOLLO 13 and MAROONED (these are obvious), GRAVITY evokes films about a person confronting themselves in a struggle to survive... 127 HOURS comes to mind. A MAN CALLED HORSE. The "real time" aspect heightens the tension, too, as it did in HIGH NOON. I don't know if it's strictly "real time", but it sure feels like it. By the way, it looks amazing and Bullock gives an award-winning performance.

There are the films from the period: WILD IN THE STREETS (68), THE ACTIVIST (69), MEDIUM COOL (69), RPM (70), GETTING STRAIGHT (70), STRAWBERRY STATEMENT (70) and ZABRISKIE POINT (71), and you can also include HAIR (79), which came out later but was very much a work of the 60s. But it's the RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7 (79), coming out the same year as HAIR, that is really the beginning of the retroactive introspection of middle-aged filmmakers about the impact of the 60s on their lives and the culture to come. A few years later, THE BIG CHILL (83) offered Kasdan's watered down apologia, suggesting that social activism of the SECAUCUS 7 was just a fashion of the time, and not genuine commitment to certain values (values which Kasdan had himself sold out by going from a college activist to a Madison Ave ad man). The 80s also brought SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS (80), DANIEL (83) and BIRDY (84), with 1988-89 offering a final burst of movies that dealt with the issues of the period: PATTY HEARST (88), RUNNING ON EMPTY (88), HAIRSPRAY (88), 1969 (88), MISSISSIPPI BURNING (89), RUDE AWAKENING (89), BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY (89). A few more came in the 90s: FORREST GUMP (93), GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI (96), PANTHER (95) The trickle continuing into the "oughts": STEAL THIS MOVIE (00), TAKING WOODSTOCK (09), THE HELP (10), and now COMPANY YOU KEEP (12). Most of these films are better, or at least more interesting, as sociological artifacts then they are as movies, especially the films from that period. But i would recommend HAIR, BIRDY, HAIRSPRAY and FORREST GUMP for their entertainment value (BIG CHILL, too, i guess, but solely on that basis, despite its moral reprehensibility). I also have a nostalgic affection for SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS and SECAUCUS 7, despite their not being great movies. BORN ON THE 4TH and MISSISSIPPI BURNING, too, have their adherents; I'm not among them. RUNNING ON EMPTY, though not great, is a decent drama and substantially similar to COMPANY YOU KEEP in its narrative and themes about our radical 60s past haunting our current life.

so out of the loop am i that i never even heard of this one, and with this cast i'd have given it a shot. stories about the aftermath of 60s radicalism... that's a list to come.

I remember watching it as a teen. It came out while LeFlore was still in the midst of a short but spectacular career, and was more about his tragic background and his redemption then his baseball exploits per se (some of which hadn't even happened yet). I don't remember particularly liking it at the time, and I haven't seen it since. Jordi LaForge just didn't project sufficient menace to be a convincing thug saved by Billy Martin and baseball. The movie also came out too early in his career to deal with his career year in `78 or his great season in Montreal (he still holds their club record for steals). Nor could it trace his fall... the time he let a fly ball bounce off his head for an inside-the-park homer, his quick fade with the White Sox, his subsequent admission that he was 4 years older than he had claimed, having to become an airline baggage handler, failing in an attempt to become an umpire, kicking around as a coach in independent and semi-pro leagues, and later arrested again (twice) for failing to pay child support. The real story didn't end happily, but you know what they say... no biography ends well, because if you tell the story of a whole life, it ultimately ends in death. I'd be interested to see it again just to see how much baseball there actually was in it. I don't remember that there was that much, but i could be misremembering.

Despite a lack of overall production and power so far in the minors, we have to be happy with his approach at the plate (with an OB% close to .400), with the size and athleticism to fill out and develop power later. He also has the arm and speed to cover ground in CF, and if he ever learns to steal bases, he can be a... well, a good base-stealer. I don't know that he'll ever be a major-leaguer, but he still has the promise he showed as a high draft pick.

2H, 2BB, 1K, 1ER in 1/3 of inning... bully?

I'm sure it was a great adventure, and possibly a good movie, but his theory is still believed to be incorrect by most of the contemporary anthropological community. So he didn't really prove anything other than that he was able to make the journey and survive.

But i thought we HAD stopped, pretty much. Yet he keeps going, like a bizarro energizer bunny, sucking the life out of everything he touches. sharpie wrote: Jeez, Vic. I've pretty much loathed everything he's done in this century including the ones that some people liked (those two London movies, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA). Truly hated that stupid Rome movie. I'm gonna go so far as to say that I liked it better than anything since, I dunno, SWEET AND LOWDOWN. Part of it is that I like to watch both Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins and although it was set in San Francisco it seemed less like a travelogue than his recent films. Plus he wasn't acting in it which is a huge plus. Not a great movie, but not the pile of dogshit that Vic implies. He has this habit of churning out movies every once in a while about wealthy, over-educated, pretentious new yorkers who are absolutely loathsome, and when he makes a comedy out of it, or a light romance in which the characters are redeemed by love (to some extent), he can sort of get away with it. Sort of. But when he makes it a tragedy, unrelieved by any humor at all (or even song and dance numbers, in the case of EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU), with a story of an awful person causing awful things to happen to herself and everyone around her, why the fuck should any human being on the planet care about that? Yes, i love Cate Blanchett too, and she is acting up a storm ("ACTING! THANK YOU!), but to what purpose? To drive me out of the theater? well, it worked.

Just stop, Mr. Allen. Just stop. vote carefully; it's in reverse.

Not "real"? Grimm, you of all people!

But the Mets are real. Batman isn't. just because Batman is fictional doesn't mean he's not real. The stories are real. the books are real. the movies are real. The writers are real. The artists are real. The readers are real. And if the next film tanks, and it takes 20 years to make another, then watching the recent ones over and over will be cold comfort. I will want new stories. new real stories. And if Affleck's presence reduces the chances of that, and it may, then fans are rightfully pissed. And as far as realness, the only difference between Batman and the Mets is that the gods guiding Batman's destiny aren't as perversely sadistic. The other difference is that, as between Batman and the Mets, only one has a good relationship with bats.

The problems with BATMAN & ROBIN didn't include Clooney. Bruce Wayne has to be a sophisticated, urbane, aristrocratic charmer, to the manor borne, with an air of arrogance and disinterest in the world, with a hint if madness behind his eyes. Once they put on the suit, its only a matter of voice-acting and silent movie star eyes. Clooney had much of this; Affleck has none of this. Christian Bale was perfect, Clooney a bit old but not inappropriate (though a better Wayne than Batman), Adam West's Wayne was too nice but in the right direction, and his square-jawed unneurotic Batman was right for his time. While Keaton lacked the sohistication of Bruce, he captured the crazed intensity of the Bat, but Kilmer was just not up to it at all. Affleck, however, seems like a joke in this part, with his Boston Southie working-class persona offering absolutely none of the characteristics of either Wayne or the Dark Knight. He seems more likely to make us long for the days of Val Kilmer than to live up to the current standard of Bale. With him already having shat a turd as DD, i cringe to think of the hash he'll make of the caped crusader. maybe they can bring Shumacher back to direct it, so at least it will be epically awful, instead of just tedious and wrong-headed. And Zvon, "it's just a movie... relax"? Yeah, the Mets are just a sports team, too. Why would you waste your time bitching about sports? Its just, you know, sports. Why are here at all? Look, Batman is a character in our popular culture for almost 75 years, existing in every medium known, then and now. He is part of our modern mythos, and people have become emotionally invested in this character; it matters to them what happens to him. They freaked out when Keaton was cast and were pleasantly surprised he didn't suck. But all they had to measure him against was the satirical version of Adam West 20 years earlier. And then Keaton's film relaunched the franchise (and comicbook movies as a genre). Now, though, Affleck stands in the shadow of the bat, Christian Bale, and a series of successful well-regarded comic book adaptations of all different kinds, so the potential of going back to the Shumacher-era Batman films seems seriously depressing for those who give a shit about such things.

But did he live in a van down by the river?

Then they might as well play to those of us who were. why pick a 3rd rater when the first 1st tier baddies are still available?