Category: Fanboy

Spiky Wheels and Sith Lords.

In somewhat related news, a number of RotK:EE screencaps turn up online, including new and spoiler-filled looks at Voice of Saruman and the Mouth of Sauron. And, along the same lines, some official Episode III pics are released, perhaps to offset this extremely spoiler-laden review of the final installment. Update: The official official Ep. III teaser poster gets out, and, well, it’s kinda lame.

Ghost in the Machinist.

Batman? Try the Scarecrow. Christian Bale purportedly lost 65 pounds for his role as The Machinist, and, boy, does it show. In a film that swims in unease, Bale is the creepiest special effect of all, jutting collarbones and vertebrae this way and that. If nothing else, he has done for eating disorders here what highway-gore films of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s did for Driver’s Ed. And the movie itself? Well, I’m not sure if it (or any film, for that matter) would be worth Bale’s gruesome physical transformation, but The Machinist is a pretty solid foray into puzzle-movie territory, one that establishes a grim, unsettling mood early on and maintains it throughout.

Bale’s Trevor Reznick — Given the explicit nods to Dostoevsky throughout, the name resemblance to NIN’s frontman is probably also intentional — splits his time among his job, an airport cafe, and the bed of his favorite hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh, less show-offy than usual.) He shambles through the world without food, sleep, or even much color (everything, other than the occasional flash of red, has that institutional-green Matrix cast to it.) And, as the film goes on, Reznick tries to make sense of the increasingly strange events that befall him…events which I can’t really talk about without giving the game away, but that may involve conspiracies, murders, impending madness, and/or all of the above.

I have to say I was a bit dismayed by the way the pieces ended up fitting together in the end, but The Machinist is more about the journey than the destination anyway, and as a sinister tone poem the film works quite well…not a masterpiece by any means, but definitely a respectable night at the movies. Now, Alfred, could you please bring Mr. Wayne here a few cheeseburgers?

Masters of Puppets.

So, just before the Sox took George Steinbrenner down a peg this past Wednesday, I got to witness an ornery Kim Jong Il marionette suffer a similar fate at the hands of Team America: World Police. Going in to said puppet show, I was expecting a gut-bustingly funny film a la the South Park movie (and most South Park episodes), despite David Edelstein’s warning about sloppy satire. Well, unfortunately, Edelstein was right: While Team America does have some really hilarious moments (the cyanide hammer, Kim’s attack panthers, Matt Damon, the Michael Bay song), as a whole it doesn’t really hold together.

I should say first off that, the humor notwithstanding, this is probably one of the most amazing (non-stop-motion) puppet shows ever put to film. There are a few extended sequences — Paris, the Panama Canal — where the scale and execution of this puppet world is breathtaking. But, sadly, this ambition and devotion to detail doesn’t carry over to the script. For the first two-thirds or so, Team America is a spot-on imitation of pretty much any Jerry Bruckheimer film…but, unfortunately, it lampoons the genre so closely that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a parody. Instead, half the time I felt like I’d stumbled onto one of the New Classics on TNT.

Then, the final third of the movie swings too far in the other direction, and ends up relying way too heavily on puppet entrails and cussing dolls to generate laughs. As for the politics of the piece, I just don’t get how the South Park guys, who usually craft some of the most devastating satire around, couldn’t mine anything more substantive out of the War on Terror than the notion that left-wing Hollywood activists coddle tyrants by speaking their mind. (And, Trey & Matt, if we’re not supposed to care what the likes of Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin think, then why in Hell should we listen to you two?) In short, the puppetry in Team America is inspired, but the comedy is often lazy. Funny at times, sure, but I expected more than just an intermittently amusing anti-Hollywood screed from the creators of Cartman & co.

Fruits of the Palantiri.

Several choice clips from the RotK: Extended Edition materialize online, including more from the Gandalf-Witch King fracas, a longer Paths of the Dead, and a quiet moment between Faramir and Pippin. (Also, the Merry-Pippin post-Pelennor sequence has gone from day to dusk, thanks to the magic of digital grading.)